Stargate-SG1 Fic "2003". First fanfic attempt.
Posted: 2004-12-20 06:08am
This is my first real attempt at a fanfic. And while I am completly sure I have no hope of matching the acomplishments of people like Stravo or Chuck (and many others here), I have enjoyed writing what I have so far. There is quite a bit more I am working on, if I can get past smashing my head on the desk, and I hope to continue if people here think its worthey of it. I'm still not entirely happy with what I have, but decided I could fiddle for the next two weeks and just get a very sore head.
So here it is. Feedback will be most appricated.
*EDIT, this takes place roughly a week after Orpheus in S7*
“Stargate SG-1: 2003”
By Chris O’Farrell. Edited by Mathew Eustace
This is a work of fan fiction. Stargate-SG1 and all associated characters remain the property of MGM. Legal crap blah, blah, blah.
--
-P5C-629. March 1, 2004. 16:55 Zulu.
*INIT: PID 02; EXEC FORK; LOAD POLL*
*POLL PID 03 PID 02 EXEC POLL*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………1: ERROR *
The 'red flag' in Remote Probe SGC-P-08-B came without warning, without preface and without care for the doom it would be announcing upon those who had built it. The omnipresent housekeeping process trapped the flag at speeds far beyond human comprehension, then shuffled it forward to another resident program before returning to its waiting state. The second process matched the exception code against its database and determined a reading had been stored that fell within its “expected perimeters”, necessitating communication with Stargate Command.
Circuit pathways inactive the vast majority of the time grudgingly came to life as power surged along them. The wide solar panel that soaked up the local stars energy opened to its maximum length, to meet the energy surge demanded by the caretaker program. Seconds later, an onboard minicomputer booted and proceeded to crunch down the flagged readings.
It had done this dozens of times in its life.
Each and every time a closer examination of the readings had shown it was simple chaos noise, background radiation of the Galaxy spontaneously coming close enough to the target patterns to send up a flag. Each and every time the minicomputer and crunched down the numbers and dismissed it as a false alarm. Each and every time the minicomputer had shut itself back down and gone back to sleep. If had been human, it may well have grown miffed at the cycle of alarm – analysis – dismissal, but the machine approached this reading with the same cold and impartial appraisal it had shown the others.
Except this time it did not immediately dismiss the data. It fed the data through multiple algorithms and looked for correlations and relationships from all angles. It focused in on points of correspondence and matched up and down at fantastic speeds, without error or bias. Eventually after a full ten second scrutiny it calculated a 67% probability the data did indeed fall into the range of signals it was watching for. This was more then enough for a rarely used subroutine to kick into action.
Fifty meters from SGC-P-08-B, out in a clearing overgrown from lack of use sat a paired Dial Home Device and Stargate. In the late afternoon light, it took several minutes for the remote probe to soak up enough energy to power the device clamped over the DHD but finally a tiny mechanical arm methodically whirled around and punched in seven symbols one after the other until finally the alien device channelled power from some unknown source into an unstable vortex, which collapsed into the familiar event horizon of a wormhole. Orienting a UHF antenna directly at the Stargate, the probe started to transmit.
-Stargate Command Operations Centre. Earth. March 1, 2003. 17:00 Zulu.
Technical Sergeant Walter “Harriman” Davis was bored.
Not that he was bored with his work per se. He loved his job and had turned down several wonderfully cushy offers at the Pentagon – with promotions to boot – to remain where he was. Very few people in the US military or even the world got a chance to participate in the kinds of things he did. Quite a few of his classmates he had stayed in contact with were frustrated at his apparent refusal to move up in the ranks. Seven years with Space Command in some dead end system admin job wasn’t inductive to climbing the ranks after all. He knew all the jokes about the typical USAF technician, in a nice office Nine to Five with the closest distance to a combat zone being peak hour…but he was willing to bet that none of the stereotypes had survived alien invasions, time distortions, weapons fire to their duty station, gained missile kills on alien planets OR fought off the original Von Newman machine from hell.
Not that it stopped the Marines on SG3 from cracking the same jokes at him every time they went off to blow something up on an alien planet.
Walter had become affectionately known as the ‘Chevron Guy’ to most of the senior officers, and he was proud to be recognized as one of the most experienced personnel at the SGC when it came to Stargate technology and the human-built interface. In fact, when you got right down to it, he was the one who really controlled of the day to day running of the SGC. He made sure that General Hammond only dealt with the matters that needed his immediate attention and did his best to handle or divert any of the thousand minor administrative tasks that worked their way through a USAF base…even one that officially didn’t exist.
So it was with some surprise that he’d found himself with absolutely nothing to do. As soon as he’d arrived in with the Alpha shift that morning he’d taken care of all the standing orders. The base’s mainframe was happily chewing down the latest set of stellar drift calculations. He’d hacked up some of the code that Major Carter had wanted for her revised dialling program. And after all that it had left him with nothing to carry on with except sit and drum his fingers on the console in front of him, so the sound of the Stargate as it spun to life was almost a relief. Automatic sirens started to wail through the base and Walter slapped at the base-wide loop.
“Unauthorized off-world activation!”
Men and women all over sublevel 28 started to scramble as they heard his voice. Chevrons began to lock in sequence as the two side corridor doors slid back and fire-teams of heavily armed security troops stormed into the Gateroom. Walter pulled in close to the computer terminal and pressed his hand flat against the palm scanner that controlled the Iris and a familiar metal grinding sound echoed through the Gateroom as the metal barrier sealed. Fire-teams manned the two fifty cal's and took aim at the Stargate while others held their weapons ready at port arms. A stillness settled over the level for a half second, then the sound of the vortex filled the room with a mighty whooshing noise as the seventh chevron locked into place and a wormhole connected to Earth.
Walter heard rapid footsteps on the metal stairwell behind him; General Hammond had entered the control room. Walter spoke before the General could. He had become good at anticipating the General’s questions.
“Unscheduled activation sir.” Without much surprise Walter noted that Major Carter and Jonas Quinn had followed Hammond down. The General acknowledged Walter with a nod before turning back to the Stargate
“Any remote signal Sergeant?”
“None as yet sir,” Walter said. “We have two teams off-world. Colonel O’Neill and Dr Jackson are due back from the Alpha site at Fifteen Forty Five hours…wait.” He paused and checked his screen. “…we are receiving special code eight on the GDO frequency. Sir, it’s the seeker probe.”
Jonas frowned. “Seeker probe? I’ve never heard of that. Something new?”
“The seeker probe was an attempt to provide early warning of Goa’uld ships on a course for our Solar system,” Carter started. “The theory was that a ship in hyperspace would still leave a ‘footprint’ in real-space that could be plotted to show velocity and direction – kind of like how a supersonic aircraft can’t be detected by sound as it approaches – but still leaves a clear audible shockwave in its wake.”
“So it’s an early warning system,” Jonas said.
“Well…” Carter said. Her voice trailed. She looked slightly sheepish.
It had been her brainchild after all, Walter thought. He smirked a little.
“It didn’t work too well,” Carter continued. “A subspace window of a ship in hyperspace leaves a directional trace in real-space. It is directly proportional to the mass of the ship and the energy its hyperdrive puts out.”
“So the bigger the ship, the bigger the sensor contact?”
“Exactly, but that’s the problem. Even Goa’uld motherships don’t put out the energy levels needed to be detected more then say a light day out from the sensor platform. It would take a truly massive ship, like Anubis’ command ship, to be picked up at any great distance. In the end we never really continued the project, though we do check up on the probe as a long-term research project. It was developed by JPL and they use our observations in designing newer probes…”
Listening with half an ear, Walter continued to watch as the control rooms minicomputer communicated back and forth with the remote probe, the two modems eventually hooking up an encrypted link after thirty seconds of electronic chatter, allowing him to access the remote systems.
“Connection established with the probe,” he said. Carter tapped the junior officer sitting next to Walter on the shoulder and she obediently vacated her seat. Carter brought up the remote link and the energy signatures. Her eyes scanned them critically.
“Sir,” she said. “It looks like the probe recorded a massive energy reading a few minutes ago. I will need to check the data, but it does look like a subspace window of a ship in hyperspace. Must have been near the planet to see it this strong.”
“Can you tell where it’s headed?” the General asked. “Or who it is?”
“Yes sir,” Carter said as she hit a few controls. “I just have to adjust for the Doppler shift and intensity and it should come up…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the screen.
Hammond frowned. “Major?” She shook herself off and keyed a final sequence.
A whirring sound behind him caused Walter and the others to turn. On the other side of the control room the robotic arm on the massive Plexiglas map of the Stargate network moved back and forth as it scanned for a location. It came to rest on a point just shy of four hundred light years from Sol.
Carter walked over to the map. “This is P5C-629,” she said. “Sergeant?”
Walter hit another key and the arm went into motion again.
“And this is where the computer is projecting the course leads to,” Carter continued.
The arm came back into motion, moving to the point where all the lines on the glass led, at the very centre of the map.
Sol.
Whoever they were, they were heading straight for Earth.
-Stargate Command Briefing Room. Earth. March 1, 2003. 18:20 Zulu.
Colonel Jack O’Neill looked around the briefing room. It was packed with people. Everyone from marines, to airmen, to Alpha Site personnel that had returned with O’Neill and Daniel, and even some of the eggheads from upstairs filled every space of the room. O'Neill realised that he stuck out like a sore thumb. He had only just retuned from the Alpha Site and hadn’t had time to get changed. He didn’t want to keep Hammond waiting though, as he could tell from the curt recall message that whatever was happening was very important. Daniel and him had left their weapons in the Gateroom and ran straight up to the briefing room to where Teal’c had managed to save some seats for them. O’Neill had been surprised to see Jonas at the table, he had been due to go home earlier. But there was nothing like a crisis to bring the family back together Jack reflected as he tried to get comfortable while in full field gear. Carter had already started talking, using the projector’s remote control as a pointer as she showed various pictures and graphs that O’Neill didn’t want to understand. She nodded as a sign of acknowledgement as O’Neill and Daniel sat down before continuing.
“The ship, assuming its speed remains constant, will arrive at Earth in less then seven hours.”
“Do we know what it is yet?” said Major Pierce. Pierce was head of SG-15 and the acting commanding officer of the Alpha Site while the main CO, Colonel Riley, was on
rotation. Pierce had been come back with O’Neill at Hammond’s order. It was unusual to call a base commander away on such short notice and that, more than anything, had O’Neill worried.
“Well,” Carter began. “We’re still-”
“Major if I may?” said a voice. One of the eggheads in the room started waving his hand in the air before Carter could finish.
Carter acknowledged the man. “Yes, Doctor Lee.”
The balding man stood up, pushed his glasses up nervously and shuffled to the front of the room.
“Well we’ve finished crunching the numbers,” he said. “And whilst we can’t be completely sure here, as we don’t have much data to work with, and the background noise was difficult to filter out… oh, and the phase shift was mostly negative from the vector and–”
“Doctor,” Hammond’s stern voice filled the briefing room causing everything to go still. You could’ve heard a pin drop. “Will you please come to the point” His voice held the implicate warnings of straining patience.
Jack smiled to himself. He appreciated his curtness. Whenever Carter or any of her fellow eggheads got onto a technical spiel, it almost took a Presidential order – or blunt trauma – to get them back on track.
“Oh yes, sorry,” Lee said. He shifted his glasses again and swayed a little on his feet. He put out a hand and Carter gave him the projector’s controller. He fumbled it towards the projector and brought up a looping video file. It was the ten-second sensor readings Seeker had recorded. Under it, another window encased a waveform that even to Jack’s untrained eyes looked very similar.
“Preliminary analysis of the energy signature suggests that it was not Goa’uld in origin,” Lee said.
“You are sure of this?” Teal’c said. To O’Neill, the stoic Jaffa almost sounded disappointed.
“Oh yes! It’s a simple matter of energy intensity verses duration…” Lee’s voice trailed as Hammond cleared his throat loudly. He finished lamely, “Which… uhh… isn’t that important right now.” He pressed another button and another waveform appeared. It was almost the same as the first one. Lee continued. “But we compared it with all the files we had on record and it was very similar to this one.” He tapped the new projection.
“What’s that one?” Jonas said.
“Nobody here recognise it?” Lee said.
“Doctor please,” Hammond said.
“Yes, sorry. The waveform matches the background engine reading we had for an Aschen harvester.”
The room broke into conversation instantly as the various officers started to debate what the information meant. Doctor Lee, happy that he didn’t have a room full of people staring at him, returned the remote to Carter and shuffled back to his seat at the back of the room. O’Neill noticed Daniel frown and shift in his seat.
“Daniel?” he said.
“Jack?” Daniel responded.
“What’s the matter?”
“Aschen?”
“Need a little help?”
“No, no! I’ve got it.”
O’Neill waited for a moment. “Daniel?”
“Give me a minute. I’ll get it…”
“Hasn’t your memory come back fully yet?” Jonas asked.
“Not yet,” Daniel said. “I get little bits, all the time. Sometimes I’ll just sit up and remember something from a decade ago for no reason, but when I try to remember a specific event…” Daniel’s hands closed into fists as he strained to remember. “…it just falls away.”
O’Neill waited a few more seconds. “Still nothing?”
Daniel let out a sigh. “Nope.”
“The Aschen,” Carter said, her voice just loud enough to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “Are a race of technologically advanced humans who appear to prey on less advanced worlds. They do this to gain territory and control of the population in what they call the ‘Aschen Confederacy’.”
She walked back towards the projector screen and clicked the remote. The images shifted into the form a large aircraft.
“This is an Aschen harvester,” she continued. “They use them to harvest and maintain large tracts of farmland completely automatically under computer control. They have matter energy transporter technology and can house genetically targeted bio-weapons. These bio-weapons, according to what the Aschen told us, can be programmed to attack specific DNA sequences.” She clicked the remote and the image changed again, this time to a faded yellow newspaper in an alien language.
“This is part of a newspaper that Daniel recovered from P3A-194,” Carter said.
“I did?” Daniel said.
“Yes Daniel,” Carter said. “This is where we encountered the Aschen for the first time. Now, Daniel managed to translate a little of the paper.”
“I did?” Daniel said.
“Yes,” Carter said. “And it said the Aschen made contact with this world when it was at a level of roughly early twentieth century Earth. They sterilized the population under the guise of distributing medication to combat a plague, and then turned most of the world into farmland for their harvesters. Only a few thousand of the original population remained, without any idea about their past. The Aschen have no qualms about wiping out millions of people and destroying entire cultures to ensure their dominance.” Sam paused for a minute to let that fact sink in. “We managed to avoid this fate through a combination of pure luck, and the trap that Daniel’s translations gave us the means to set.”
“I did?”
“Stop that!” O’Neill said, pointing at Daniel.
“The Aschen almost sent us a bio-weapon but we managed to avoid it,” Carter said.
No thanks to Kinsley, O’Neill thought bitterly. The Senator’s meddling and his ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ attitude to the whole Aschen situation had nearly seem Earth turned into the next Aschen family farm. Worst of all, Kinsey had nearly destroyed Earth all for his ‘holy’ quest for the White House. Still, O’Neill thought, the Aschen may well get their new family farm if it really is them. But, on the other hand, it would mean that Kinsey wouldn’t get to the White House.
“Oh! I got it!” Daniel said, ripping O’Neill from his thoughts. “The Aschen! We first met that boring guy–”
“His name was, in fact, ‘Boren’, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said.
“He was boring,” Jack muttered under his breath. Carter heard it, and rolled her eyes.
“Then we found out about their sterilizing the population and then…” Daniel’s euphoria at recapturing a piece of his memory faded as it led to the true tragedy of the whole incident.
“And the State Department assigned a diplomat to start formal negotiations,” Carter said as she finished the memory off for Daniel. “His name was Joseph Faxon. When the Aschen realized we were onto them, they tried to drop a bio-weapon through the Stargate to kill all life on Earth. I got away, he…didn’t.”
O’Neill noticed something in her voice. He knew Faxon and her had hit it off well. But any friendship had been cut short when she had to abandon him, in order to save the planet from destruction. It had been the correct decision, but he knew she carried his name on a list in her head; a list of everyone who had died as a result of her orders or actions.
Carter composed herself and went on. “From what little we know, its clear the Aschen are a technologically advanced culture. They were able to ignite a gas giant in the solar system we visited into a second star, to increase growing seasons for the farmers. Their medical technology effectively doubles the human life span. Beyond that, we know very little.”
“Thank you Major,” Hammond said as he stood up. He stepped to the front of the room and assumed control of the briefing. Carter nodded and shut off the projector. The lights returned to normal as she sat down next to Teal’c.
“We’re operating under the assumption that they’re hostile,” Hammond started. “To that end, the President has ordered limited Alpha and Beta site evacuations to begin immediately. Major Pierce?”
“Sir!” Pierce said.
“I want you go back to the Alpha Site the rest of SG-15 to supervise the evacuation groups. Take SG-11 and SG-14 with you. In the event of a loss of contact with Earth, you will maintain contact with our allies and if possible, attempt to ascertain our status. The extra manpower won’t hurt at any rate; the situation between the Jaffa and Tok’ra has not improved much in recent weeks. All other teams will maintain full deployment status in this facility from now point on, and we are recalling any outstanding teams. The President has authorized DEFCON 2 and THREATCON 2 for the SGC and other key planetary defence installations. We will proceed to Level One if and when an attack looks likely.”
O'Neill sat up. “And SG-1, sir?”
Hammond looked down. “Colonel you and Major Carter will report to Area 51 as soon as this briefing is over. An aircraft is waiting for you at Peterson now; you will lead a scratch F-302 fighter squadron to supplement the X-303’s own fighter screen. Doctor Jackson, Teal’c, I need you to go over everything we have on the Aschen. We have no intel on them at all so we you to find out as much as you can.”
“General,” Jonas said. “What about me?”
O'Neill was surprised to hear Jonas speak up. Clearly Hammond hadn’t considered him.
“Mr. Quinn, you’re no longer an active member of the SGC, not to mention a rather important public official back on Kelowna. I was planning on sending you home immediately as I can’t justify risking you on our behalf-”
“General I understand, but I want to help,” Jonas said. “They’ll manage fine without me back home; I’m more of a figurehead then anything.” He flipped a folder in front of him open. “And from what I’ve been reading the X-303 is still having problems with its new naquadria reactor. I helped design that reactor, I know I can be of help here.”
Hammond looked at O'Neill.
“He’s a member of SG-1 as far as I’m concerned sir,” O'Neill said.
Hammond nodded in agreement. “Very well Mr. Quinn, its good to have you back.” He looked back at everyone in the room. “That’s all people, make it happen. Dismissed!”
The room started to empty quickly as everyone moved off to their assigned tasks. SG-1 was left sitting there alone.
O'Neill stretched and let out a mighty yawn. He winced suddenly as his leg holster stretched uncomfortably.
“So campers, once again we’re off to save the world. This is, what, number…”
“Nine” Teal’c answered.
“Nine times. T, do you even think we’re getting to old for this?”
The Jaffa appeared to think about it for a second. “No. I do not.” He stood and left the room without another word.
O’Neill shrugged. “Ok… anyway. I better get going. Daniel and I have to change,” he said as he looked at the munitions covering his chest. “Be back in a day or two,” he added as he walked out.
“Bring me back a snow globe!” Jonas yelled after the retreating Colonel.
-Stargate Command. Earth. March 1, 2003. 21:30 Zulu.
“Daniel Jackson.”
Daniel looked up from the mountains of books and materials strewn about his desk.
“Teal’c?” he said to the hulking form standing right next. The Jaffa had a quizzical look on his face. Daniels concentration had been so focused on his work that he hadn’t even heard him enter. “Uh… how long were you standing there?”
”Approximately thirty seconds,” Teal’c said. The matter-of-fact tone that he always had was hard not to laugh at sometimes. “You were concentrating quite heavily. I believe you were ‘In the Zone’ as Colonel O’Neill calls it.”
“No I wasn’t!”
“Yes, you were.”
“No I wasn’t…I was just…concentrating.” He reached over and lifted a bulky plastic folder on his desk. “Here, look.” Inside an ancient yellow “newspaper” lay protected by thick plastic sheets.
“The documents you recovered from P3A-194?” Teal’c said.
“Yeah,” Daniel said. He shifted the folder around so Teal’c could see the words. “I’ve been going over them trying to see if it mentions anything more about the Aschen that we could use.”
“And have you succeeded in this?”
“Well I’m regretting not getting more then a couple of these things out before the whole place collapsed.”
“Considering that the building’s structural integrity was failing rapidly, we were in fact extremely fortunate to exit the building. You said as much yourself.”
“I did? Can’t remember that. But if I had grabbed the right one, we might have been able to guess their new plan.” Daniel sighed and rubbed his eyes. Teal’c pulled up a stool and sat beside Daniel. He glanced at the massive bulk of material. The folder was nearly a foot in thickness and had several dozen pages that made up the old newspaper. Teal’c could see that Daniel had scribbled notes all over the plastic with black and red markers; notes and inscriptions filling in the bits and pieces without the danger of damaging the old and degraded text.
“What progress have you made Daniel Jackson?”
Daniel remained focused on his computer monitor and absently gulped a cup of coffee. He winced and put the cup back down. “Uh! Cold,” he said before looking at Teal’c. “Well, the writing in black is from when we first got the newspaper. The red is what I’ve been able to do in the last few hours.”
Teal’c carefully placed the folder back on the desk. Daniel had scribbled twice as many notes over the sheet, markings and question marks all over the place.
“A most impressive achievement. Precisely how have you completed so much more?”
“Jonas, actually,” Daniel said. “While the text is similar to ancient Celtic, it’s actually closer to old classical Kelownan. I asked Jonas to bring a couple of reference books and I’ve been using them to make translations. Which may indicate that P3A-194 was another Goa’uld colony founded by Thanos.” Daniel noticed that Teal’c had cocked his head to the side. “…but that’s not that important. Anyway, the point is we’ve uncovered references to what I think are the Aschen’s foot soldiers.”
Daniel saw Teal’c raise an eyebrow, a clear sign that he had his complete and undivided attention.
“Where did you find this reference?”
“Right here” Daniel said flipping to the third page and moving his finger to a block of text. “I’m not completely sure, but I think this is the equivalent of an editorial. The key sentence reads, roughly, ‘Ashen protectors blank control of our cities blank unstoppable’, then a word that translates loosely as ‘unclean machine person’ .”
Teal’c thought for a moment and raised his eyebrow a little further. “Do you believe this is referring to some kind of cybernetic enhanced Aschen?”
Daniel shrugged. “Or one of their own people, used by the Aschen as loyal servants and enforcers. I mean we have a population of millions from what I’ve been able to work out. Wide scale sterilisation of the population would be extremely difficult to hide with even this kind of limited level of communication.” He tapped the folder to indicate the newspaper. “They would need the co-operation of the government, or, more likely, the complete control of it. Not that this information helps us much.”
“We now know that the Aschen may in fact use powerful cybernetic ground forces. I would say that it is a great deal of help.”
Before Daniel could reply the phone on his wall began to ring.
“Teal’c can you get that?” Daniel asked as he attempted to pull himself from the mess he had buried himself in. A pile of books at the edge of his desk swayed precariously as he moved. Daniel froze, a bead of sweat running down the side of his head as he realised how unstable the pile was. He edged as close as he dared to grab the pile before it fell and in one swift movement lunged out of his seat. The pile shifted a half centimetre out of reach and collapsed onto the floor. “Great.”
“Our presence is required in the control room,” Teal’c said. Teal’c turned and left the room. Daniel sighed at the mess and picked his way across to the door.
-Stargate Command Operations Centre. Earth. March 1, 2003. 21:35 Zulu.
“Chevron six encoded,” Walter said as the Stargate spun before him.
Steam hissed from the alien device’s taxed cooling systems as energy flowed into its power conduits. Megabytes of data pored back and forth between the base computers and the Ancient’s machine as spatial calculations were crunched and raw energy raced through subspace to a Stargate hundreds of Light years distant.
Walter kept one eye on a secondary diagnostic readout although he didn’t expect any problems. When the Stargate was idle technicians scrutinised every inch of the interface and control systems and any problems would have been reported long before he started the dialling sequence. Power flow was steady and energy consumption was increasing smoothly along predicted lines. With no problems, he executed the pending command that would allow the final chevron to lock in place. A few seconds later, the great ring slowed and halted on the final symbol, the stylised symbol representing the Goa’uld System Lord Ra and the point of origin, Earth. The triangular chevron stabbed down, lit up-.
“Chevron seven locked!”
-And nothing happened.
“What the hell?” Walter said. Instantly screens throughout the control room went red as error codes buzzed back and forth sending everyone into a mad rush of activity. Through the great windows that looked down into the Gateroom, Walter saw Major Pierce and his men look up at him in confusion as the seven-lit Chevrons suddenly faded to black and the thrum of power fell away with an electronic sigh.
“Sergeant?” Hammond said from behind him.
“The wormhole didn’t engage for some reason,” Walter said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know sir. All seven chevrons locked, the Gate positively established a lock and the sequence completed. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Major Pierce appeared at their side. “Could the Alpha Site Gate be in use?”
Hammond shook his head. “They were ordered to terminate all Gate operations outbound once Colonel O’Neill and Doctor Jackson returned.”
“And besides, sirs, if the Gate was in use, the final Chevron would not have actually locked …but it did.” Walter pointed at his screen as a large red error code popped up. “We’ve never had an error like this.” Pierce and Hammond leaned in to wince at it.
“What’s is a 1-2-0 error?” Pierce said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Checking it now sir,” Walter said. He wished Major Carter were there to help. She had designed the dialling program including its error management systems and was the leading expert on the Stargate interface. She was usually the first on the scene when the Stargate failed. Now all Walter felt were the eyes of his CO boring into his back now instead of hers.
With a beep, a line of text scrolled across his screen under the glaring red numbers.
“Sir, according to the computer, this error was generated by the Gate being unable to establish a wormhole all the way through subspace to a given destination.”
“What does that mean Sergeant?” the General asked with a frown.
“It means,” another voice cut into the conversation from behind them. “That the Gate wasn’t able to maintain a wormhole all the way to the destination co-ordinates through subspace, a bit like a river hitting a dam…sort of!” Hammond, Walter and Pierce all turned as Doctor Jay Felger half-ran, half-tripped down the stairs into the control room with a mass of paperwork bundled in his arms. As he lurched down the stairs he completely failed to see Sergeant Dan Siler and collided with him, sending the man into Pierce. Piece managed to avoid Siler’s wrench and kept the man from falling over. Felger’s paperwork went everywhere.
“Oh sorry! Sorry! You ok? Yes? Good,” Felger spurted out as he skidded to a stop. Hammond caught Siler's eye and motioned with his head towards the Gateroom. Siler nodded, brushed himself off and briskly started down the stairs.
“Doctor,” Hammond said. “You’re trying to tell me that the wormhole generated by the Stargate is unable to reach its destination?“
“Yes, yes exactly!” Felger said. He sounded very excited. “The Stargate, when you attempt to lock the seventh Chevron, sends out a signal across subspace to bounce off the destination Gate. Basically it checks if its active and not in use, sort of like if you had a telephone and called to see if it was ok to…uhh… call!”
Walter winced at the look Hammond directed towards the Doctor.
“So if it sends back the signal,” Pierce said. “Then the chevron locks and the Wormhole forms?”
Felger snapped his fingers. “Exactly! But here, despite the ‘go ahead’ signal the Wormhole itself hit some kind of block on the way and collapsed, hence why you didn’t see the event horizon actually form and why the Seventh Chevron actually locked.”
“Can you fix it?” Hammond asked.
“I…don’t know. The problem isn’t on our end I think.” He stabbed his finger at the ceiling. “Something outside is blocking the wormhole…we could try dialling other gate addresses to see if there’s a problem between us and the Alpha site.”
Hammond considered it for half a second. “Do it,” He said. “Major Pierce, stand down your team for the moment until we sort the situation out.”
“Yes sir,” Pierce said. He headed back towards the Gateroom.
“Sergeant,” Hammond continued as he looked at Walter. “Generate a sample of Gate locations around Earth and dial them. Oh, and when is Major Carter due at Groom Lake?”
Walter glanced at the wall mounted time display. “Twenty four minutes sir.”
“When she gets there, contact her and co-ordinate your efforts. And have Doctor Jackson and Teal’c meet us upstairs.”
“Yes sir,” Walter said as Hammond retreated upstairs. Felger grabbed a nearby chair, straddled it, and rolled it right up to Walter. Walter did not like him that close.
“So,” the excentric scientist said with an enthusiastic expression on his face. “Who you gonna call?”
So here it is. Feedback will be most appricated.
*EDIT, this takes place roughly a week after Orpheus in S7*
“Stargate SG-1: 2003”
By Chris O’Farrell. Edited by Mathew Eustace
This is a work of fan fiction. Stargate-SG1 and all associated characters remain the property of MGM. Legal crap blah, blah, blah.
--
-P5C-629. March 1, 2004. 16:55 Zulu.
*INIT: PID 02; EXEC FORK; LOAD POLL*
*POLL PID 03 PID 02 EXEC POLL*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………0*
*………1: ERROR *
The 'red flag' in Remote Probe SGC-P-08-B came without warning, without preface and without care for the doom it would be announcing upon those who had built it. The omnipresent housekeeping process trapped the flag at speeds far beyond human comprehension, then shuffled it forward to another resident program before returning to its waiting state. The second process matched the exception code against its database and determined a reading had been stored that fell within its “expected perimeters”, necessitating communication with Stargate Command.
Circuit pathways inactive the vast majority of the time grudgingly came to life as power surged along them. The wide solar panel that soaked up the local stars energy opened to its maximum length, to meet the energy surge demanded by the caretaker program. Seconds later, an onboard minicomputer booted and proceeded to crunch down the flagged readings.
It had done this dozens of times in its life.
Each and every time a closer examination of the readings had shown it was simple chaos noise, background radiation of the Galaxy spontaneously coming close enough to the target patterns to send up a flag. Each and every time the minicomputer and crunched down the numbers and dismissed it as a false alarm. Each and every time the minicomputer had shut itself back down and gone back to sleep. If had been human, it may well have grown miffed at the cycle of alarm – analysis – dismissal, but the machine approached this reading with the same cold and impartial appraisal it had shown the others.
Except this time it did not immediately dismiss the data. It fed the data through multiple algorithms and looked for correlations and relationships from all angles. It focused in on points of correspondence and matched up and down at fantastic speeds, without error or bias. Eventually after a full ten second scrutiny it calculated a 67% probability the data did indeed fall into the range of signals it was watching for. This was more then enough for a rarely used subroutine to kick into action.
Fifty meters from SGC-P-08-B, out in a clearing overgrown from lack of use sat a paired Dial Home Device and Stargate. In the late afternoon light, it took several minutes for the remote probe to soak up enough energy to power the device clamped over the DHD but finally a tiny mechanical arm methodically whirled around and punched in seven symbols one after the other until finally the alien device channelled power from some unknown source into an unstable vortex, which collapsed into the familiar event horizon of a wormhole. Orienting a UHF antenna directly at the Stargate, the probe started to transmit.
-Stargate Command Operations Centre. Earth. March 1, 2003. 17:00 Zulu.
Technical Sergeant Walter “Harriman” Davis was bored.
Not that he was bored with his work per se. He loved his job and had turned down several wonderfully cushy offers at the Pentagon – with promotions to boot – to remain where he was. Very few people in the US military or even the world got a chance to participate in the kinds of things he did. Quite a few of his classmates he had stayed in contact with were frustrated at his apparent refusal to move up in the ranks. Seven years with Space Command in some dead end system admin job wasn’t inductive to climbing the ranks after all. He knew all the jokes about the typical USAF technician, in a nice office Nine to Five with the closest distance to a combat zone being peak hour…but he was willing to bet that none of the stereotypes had survived alien invasions, time distortions, weapons fire to their duty station, gained missile kills on alien planets OR fought off the original Von Newman machine from hell.
Not that it stopped the Marines on SG3 from cracking the same jokes at him every time they went off to blow something up on an alien planet.
Walter had become affectionately known as the ‘Chevron Guy’ to most of the senior officers, and he was proud to be recognized as one of the most experienced personnel at the SGC when it came to Stargate technology and the human-built interface. In fact, when you got right down to it, he was the one who really controlled of the day to day running of the SGC. He made sure that General Hammond only dealt with the matters that needed his immediate attention and did his best to handle or divert any of the thousand minor administrative tasks that worked their way through a USAF base…even one that officially didn’t exist.
So it was with some surprise that he’d found himself with absolutely nothing to do. As soon as he’d arrived in with the Alpha shift that morning he’d taken care of all the standing orders. The base’s mainframe was happily chewing down the latest set of stellar drift calculations. He’d hacked up some of the code that Major Carter had wanted for her revised dialling program. And after all that it had left him with nothing to carry on with except sit and drum his fingers on the console in front of him, so the sound of the Stargate as it spun to life was almost a relief. Automatic sirens started to wail through the base and Walter slapped at the base-wide loop.
“Unauthorized off-world activation!”
Men and women all over sublevel 28 started to scramble as they heard his voice. Chevrons began to lock in sequence as the two side corridor doors slid back and fire-teams of heavily armed security troops stormed into the Gateroom. Walter pulled in close to the computer terminal and pressed his hand flat against the palm scanner that controlled the Iris and a familiar metal grinding sound echoed through the Gateroom as the metal barrier sealed. Fire-teams manned the two fifty cal's and took aim at the Stargate while others held their weapons ready at port arms. A stillness settled over the level for a half second, then the sound of the vortex filled the room with a mighty whooshing noise as the seventh chevron locked into place and a wormhole connected to Earth.
Walter heard rapid footsteps on the metal stairwell behind him; General Hammond had entered the control room. Walter spoke before the General could. He had become good at anticipating the General’s questions.
“Unscheduled activation sir.” Without much surprise Walter noted that Major Carter and Jonas Quinn had followed Hammond down. The General acknowledged Walter with a nod before turning back to the Stargate
“Any remote signal Sergeant?”
“None as yet sir,” Walter said. “We have two teams off-world. Colonel O’Neill and Dr Jackson are due back from the Alpha site at Fifteen Forty Five hours…wait.” He paused and checked his screen. “…we are receiving special code eight on the GDO frequency. Sir, it’s the seeker probe.”
Jonas frowned. “Seeker probe? I’ve never heard of that. Something new?”
“The seeker probe was an attempt to provide early warning of Goa’uld ships on a course for our Solar system,” Carter started. “The theory was that a ship in hyperspace would still leave a ‘footprint’ in real-space that could be plotted to show velocity and direction – kind of like how a supersonic aircraft can’t be detected by sound as it approaches – but still leaves a clear audible shockwave in its wake.”
“So it’s an early warning system,” Jonas said.
“Well…” Carter said. Her voice trailed. She looked slightly sheepish.
It had been her brainchild after all, Walter thought. He smirked a little.
“It didn’t work too well,” Carter continued. “A subspace window of a ship in hyperspace leaves a directional trace in real-space. It is directly proportional to the mass of the ship and the energy its hyperdrive puts out.”
“So the bigger the ship, the bigger the sensor contact?”
“Exactly, but that’s the problem. Even Goa’uld motherships don’t put out the energy levels needed to be detected more then say a light day out from the sensor platform. It would take a truly massive ship, like Anubis’ command ship, to be picked up at any great distance. In the end we never really continued the project, though we do check up on the probe as a long-term research project. It was developed by JPL and they use our observations in designing newer probes…”
Listening with half an ear, Walter continued to watch as the control rooms minicomputer communicated back and forth with the remote probe, the two modems eventually hooking up an encrypted link after thirty seconds of electronic chatter, allowing him to access the remote systems.
“Connection established with the probe,” he said. Carter tapped the junior officer sitting next to Walter on the shoulder and she obediently vacated her seat. Carter brought up the remote link and the energy signatures. Her eyes scanned them critically.
“Sir,” she said. “It looks like the probe recorded a massive energy reading a few minutes ago. I will need to check the data, but it does look like a subspace window of a ship in hyperspace. Must have been near the planet to see it this strong.”
“Can you tell where it’s headed?” the General asked. “Or who it is?”
“Yes sir,” Carter said as she hit a few controls. “I just have to adjust for the Doppler shift and intensity and it should come up…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the screen.
Hammond frowned. “Major?” She shook herself off and keyed a final sequence.
A whirring sound behind him caused Walter and the others to turn. On the other side of the control room the robotic arm on the massive Plexiglas map of the Stargate network moved back and forth as it scanned for a location. It came to rest on a point just shy of four hundred light years from Sol.
Carter walked over to the map. “This is P5C-629,” she said. “Sergeant?”
Walter hit another key and the arm went into motion again.
“And this is where the computer is projecting the course leads to,” Carter continued.
The arm came back into motion, moving to the point where all the lines on the glass led, at the very centre of the map.
Sol.
Whoever they were, they were heading straight for Earth.
-Stargate Command Briefing Room. Earth. March 1, 2003. 18:20 Zulu.
Colonel Jack O’Neill looked around the briefing room. It was packed with people. Everyone from marines, to airmen, to Alpha Site personnel that had returned with O’Neill and Daniel, and even some of the eggheads from upstairs filled every space of the room. O'Neill realised that he stuck out like a sore thumb. He had only just retuned from the Alpha Site and hadn’t had time to get changed. He didn’t want to keep Hammond waiting though, as he could tell from the curt recall message that whatever was happening was very important. Daniel and him had left their weapons in the Gateroom and ran straight up to the briefing room to where Teal’c had managed to save some seats for them. O’Neill had been surprised to see Jonas at the table, he had been due to go home earlier. But there was nothing like a crisis to bring the family back together Jack reflected as he tried to get comfortable while in full field gear. Carter had already started talking, using the projector’s remote control as a pointer as she showed various pictures and graphs that O’Neill didn’t want to understand. She nodded as a sign of acknowledgement as O’Neill and Daniel sat down before continuing.
“The ship, assuming its speed remains constant, will arrive at Earth in less then seven hours.”
“Do we know what it is yet?” said Major Pierce. Pierce was head of SG-15 and the acting commanding officer of the Alpha Site while the main CO, Colonel Riley, was on
rotation. Pierce had been come back with O’Neill at Hammond’s order. It was unusual to call a base commander away on such short notice and that, more than anything, had O’Neill worried.
“Well,” Carter began. “We’re still-”
“Major if I may?” said a voice. One of the eggheads in the room started waving his hand in the air before Carter could finish.
Carter acknowledged the man. “Yes, Doctor Lee.”
The balding man stood up, pushed his glasses up nervously and shuffled to the front of the room.
“Well we’ve finished crunching the numbers,” he said. “And whilst we can’t be completely sure here, as we don’t have much data to work with, and the background noise was difficult to filter out… oh, and the phase shift was mostly negative from the vector and–”
“Doctor,” Hammond’s stern voice filled the briefing room causing everything to go still. You could’ve heard a pin drop. “Will you please come to the point” His voice held the implicate warnings of straining patience.
Jack smiled to himself. He appreciated his curtness. Whenever Carter or any of her fellow eggheads got onto a technical spiel, it almost took a Presidential order – or blunt trauma – to get them back on track.
“Oh yes, sorry,” Lee said. He shifted his glasses again and swayed a little on his feet. He put out a hand and Carter gave him the projector’s controller. He fumbled it towards the projector and brought up a looping video file. It was the ten-second sensor readings Seeker had recorded. Under it, another window encased a waveform that even to Jack’s untrained eyes looked very similar.
“Preliminary analysis of the energy signature suggests that it was not Goa’uld in origin,” Lee said.
“You are sure of this?” Teal’c said. To O’Neill, the stoic Jaffa almost sounded disappointed.
“Oh yes! It’s a simple matter of energy intensity verses duration…” Lee’s voice trailed as Hammond cleared his throat loudly. He finished lamely, “Which… uhh… isn’t that important right now.” He pressed another button and another waveform appeared. It was almost the same as the first one. Lee continued. “But we compared it with all the files we had on record and it was very similar to this one.” He tapped the new projection.
“What’s that one?” Jonas said.
“Nobody here recognise it?” Lee said.
“Doctor please,” Hammond said.
“Yes, sorry. The waveform matches the background engine reading we had for an Aschen harvester.”
The room broke into conversation instantly as the various officers started to debate what the information meant. Doctor Lee, happy that he didn’t have a room full of people staring at him, returned the remote to Carter and shuffled back to his seat at the back of the room. O’Neill noticed Daniel frown and shift in his seat.
“Daniel?” he said.
“Jack?” Daniel responded.
“What’s the matter?”
“Aschen?”
“Need a little help?”
“No, no! I’ve got it.”
O’Neill waited for a moment. “Daniel?”
“Give me a minute. I’ll get it…”
“Hasn’t your memory come back fully yet?” Jonas asked.
“Not yet,” Daniel said. “I get little bits, all the time. Sometimes I’ll just sit up and remember something from a decade ago for no reason, but when I try to remember a specific event…” Daniel’s hands closed into fists as he strained to remember. “…it just falls away.”
O’Neill waited a few more seconds. “Still nothing?”
Daniel let out a sigh. “Nope.”
“The Aschen,” Carter said, her voice just loud enough to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “Are a race of technologically advanced humans who appear to prey on less advanced worlds. They do this to gain territory and control of the population in what they call the ‘Aschen Confederacy’.”
She walked back towards the projector screen and clicked the remote. The images shifted into the form a large aircraft.
“This is an Aschen harvester,” she continued. “They use them to harvest and maintain large tracts of farmland completely automatically under computer control. They have matter energy transporter technology and can house genetically targeted bio-weapons. These bio-weapons, according to what the Aschen told us, can be programmed to attack specific DNA sequences.” She clicked the remote and the image changed again, this time to a faded yellow newspaper in an alien language.
“This is part of a newspaper that Daniel recovered from P3A-194,” Carter said.
“I did?” Daniel said.
“Yes Daniel,” Carter said. “This is where we encountered the Aschen for the first time. Now, Daniel managed to translate a little of the paper.”
“I did?” Daniel said.
“Yes,” Carter said. “And it said the Aschen made contact with this world when it was at a level of roughly early twentieth century Earth. They sterilized the population under the guise of distributing medication to combat a plague, and then turned most of the world into farmland for their harvesters. Only a few thousand of the original population remained, without any idea about their past. The Aschen have no qualms about wiping out millions of people and destroying entire cultures to ensure their dominance.” Sam paused for a minute to let that fact sink in. “We managed to avoid this fate through a combination of pure luck, and the trap that Daniel’s translations gave us the means to set.”
“I did?”
“Stop that!” O’Neill said, pointing at Daniel.
“The Aschen almost sent us a bio-weapon but we managed to avoid it,” Carter said.
No thanks to Kinsley, O’Neill thought bitterly. The Senator’s meddling and his ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ attitude to the whole Aschen situation had nearly seem Earth turned into the next Aschen family farm. Worst of all, Kinsey had nearly destroyed Earth all for his ‘holy’ quest for the White House. Still, O’Neill thought, the Aschen may well get their new family farm if it really is them. But, on the other hand, it would mean that Kinsey wouldn’t get to the White House.
“Oh! I got it!” Daniel said, ripping O’Neill from his thoughts. “The Aschen! We first met that boring guy–”
“His name was, in fact, ‘Boren’, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said.
“He was boring,” Jack muttered under his breath. Carter heard it, and rolled her eyes.
“Then we found out about their sterilizing the population and then…” Daniel’s euphoria at recapturing a piece of his memory faded as it led to the true tragedy of the whole incident.
“And the State Department assigned a diplomat to start formal negotiations,” Carter said as she finished the memory off for Daniel. “His name was Joseph Faxon. When the Aschen realized we were onto them, they tried to drop a bio-weapon through the Stargate to kill all life on Earth. I got away, he…didn’t.”
O’Neill noticed something in her voice. He knew Faxon and her had hit it off well. But any friendship had been cut short when she had to abandon him, in order to save the planet from destruction. It had been the correct decision, but he knew she carried his name on a list in her head; a list of everyone who had died as a result of her orders or actions.
Carter composed herself and went on. “From what little we know, its clear the Aschen are a technologically advanced culture. They were able to ignite a gas giant in the solar system we visited into a second star, to increase growing seasons for the farmers. Their medical technology effectively doubles the human life span. Beyond that, we know very little.”
“Thank you Major,” Hammond said as he stood up. He stepped to the front of the room and assumed control of the briefing. Carter nodded and shut off the projector. The lights returned to normal as she sat down next to Teal’c.
“We’re operating under the assumption that they’re hostile,” Hammond started. “To that end, the President has ordered limited Alpha and Beta site evacuations to begin immediately. Major Pierce?”
“Sir!” Pierce said.
“I want you go back to the Alpha Site the rest of SG-15 to supervise the evacuation groups. Take SG-11 and SG-14 with you. In the event of a loss of contact with Earth, you will maintain contact with our allies and if possible, attempt to ascertain our status. The extra manpower won’t hurt at any rate; the situation between the Jaffa and Tok’ra has not improved much in recent weeks. All other teams will maintain full deployment status in this facility from now point on, and we are recalling any outstanding teams. The President has authorized DEFCON 2 and THREATCON 2 for the SGC and other key planetary defence installations. We will proceed to Level One if and when an attack looks likely.”
O'Neill sat up. “And SG-1, sir?”
Hammond looked down. “Colonel you and Major Carter will report to Area 51 as soon as this briefing is over. An aircraft is waiting for you at Peterson now; you will lead a scratch F-302 fighter squadron to supplement the X-303’s own fighter screen. Doctor Jackson, Teal’c, I need you to go over everything we have on the Aschen. We have no intel on them at all so we you to find out as much as you can.”
“General,” Jonas said. “What about me?”
O'Neill was surprised to hear Jonas speak up. Clearly Hammond hadn’t considered him.
“Mr. Quinn, you’re no longer an active member of the SGC, not to mention a rather important public official back on Kelowna. I was planning on sending you home immediately as I can’t justify risking you on our behalf-”
“General I understand, but I want to help,” Jonas said. “They’ll manage fine without me back home; I’m more of a figurehead then anything.” He flipped a folder in front of him open. “And from what I’ve been reading the X-303 is still having problems with its new naquadria reactor. I helped design that reactor, I know I can be of help here.”
Hammond looked at O'Neill.
“He’s a member of SG-1 as far as I’m concerned sir,” O'Neill said.
Hammond nodded in agreement. “Very well Mr. Quinn, its good to have you back.” He looked back at everyone in the room. “That’s all people, make it happen. Dismissed!”
The room started to empty quickly as everyone moved off to their assigned tasks. SG-1 was left sitting there alone.
O'Neill stretched and let out a mighty yawn. He winced suddenly as his leg holster stretched uncomfortably.
“So campers, once again we’re off to save the world. This is, what, number…”
“Nine” Teal’c answered.
“Nine times. T, do you even think we’re getting to old for this?”
The Jaffa appeared to think about it for a second. “No. I do not.” He stood and left the room without another word.
O’Neill shrugged. “Ok… anyway. I better get going. Daniel and I have to change,” he said as he looked at the munitions covering his chest. “Be back in a day or two,” he added as he walked out.
“Bring me back a snow globe!” Jonas yelled after the retreating Colonel.
-Stargate Command. Earth. March 1, 2003. 21:30 Zulu.
“Daniel Jackson.”
Daniel looked up from the mountains of books and materials strewn about his desk.
“Teal’c?” he said to the hulking form standing right next. The Jaffa had a quizzical look on his face. Daniels concentration had been so focused on his work that he hadn’t even heard him enter. “Uh… how long were you standing there?”
”Approximately thirty seconds,” Teal’c said. The matter-of-fact tone that he always had was hard not to laugh at sometimes. “You were concentrating quite heavily. I believe you were ‘In the Zone’ as Colonel O’Neill calls it.”
“No I wasn’t!”
“Yes, you were.”
“No I wasn’t…I was just…concentrating.” He reached over and lifted a bulky plastic folder on his desk. “Here, look.” Inside an ancient yellow “newspaper” lay protected by thick plastic sheets.
“The documents you recovered from P3A-194?” Teal’c said.
“Yeah,” Daniel said. He shifted the folder around so Teal’c could see the words. “I’ve been going over them trying to see if it mentions anything more about the Aschen that we could use.”
“And have you succeeded in this?”
“Well I’m regretting not getting more then a couple of these things out before the whole place collapsed.”
“Considering that the building’s structural integrity was failing rapidly, we were in fact extremely fortunate to exit the building. You said as much yourself.”
“I did? Can’t remember that. But if I had grabbed the right one, we might have been able to guess their new plan.” Daniel sighed and rubbed his eyes. Teal’c pulled up a stool and sat beside Daniel. He glanced at the massive bulk of material. The folder was nearly a foot in thickness and had several dozen pages that made up the old newspaper. Teal’c could see that Daniel had scribbled notes all over the plastic with black and red markers; notes and inscriptions filling in the bits and pieces without the danger of damaging the old and degraded text.
“What progress have you made Daniel Jackson?”
Daniel remained focused on his computer monitor and absently gulped a cup of coffee. He winced and put the cup back down. “Uh! Cold,” he said before looking at Teal’c. “Well, the writing in black is from when we first got the newspaper. The red is what I’ve been able to do in the last few hours.”
Teal’c carefully placed the folder back on the desk. Daniel had scribbled twice as many notes over the sheet, markings and question marks all over the place.
“A most impressive achievement. Precisely how have you completed so much more?”
“Jonas, actually,” Daniel said. “While the text is similar to ancient Celtic, it’s actually closer to old classical Kelownan. I asked Jonas to bring a couple of reference books and I’ve been using them to make translations. Which may indicate that P3A-194 was another Goa’uld colony founded by Thanos.” Daniel noticed that Teal’c had cocked his head to the side. “…but that’s not that important. Anyway, the point is we’ve uncovered references to what I think are the Aschen’s foot soldiers.”
Daniel saw Teal’c raise an eyebrow, a clear sign that he had his complete and undivided attention.
“Where did you find this reference?”
“Right here” Daniel said flipping to the third page and moving his finger to a block of text. “I’m not completely sure, but I think this is the equivalent of an editorial. The key sentence reads, roughly, ‘Ashen protectors blank control of our cities blank unstoppable’, then a word that translates loosely as ‘unclean machine person’ .”
Teal’c thought for a moment and raised his eyebrow a little further. “Do you believe this is referring to some kind of cybernetic enhanced Aschen?”
Daniel shrugged. “Or one of their own people, used by the Aschen as loyal servants and enforcers. I mean we have a population of millions from what I’ve been able to work out. Wide scale sterilisation of the population would be extremely difficult to hide with even this kind of limited level of communication.” He tapped the folder to indicate the newspaper. “They would need the co-operation of the government, or, more likely, the complete control of it. Not that this information helps us much.”
“We now know that the Aschen may in fact use powerful cybernetic ground forces. I would say that it is a great deal of help.”
Before Daniel could reply the phone on his wall began to ring.
“Teal’c can you get that?” Daniel asked as he attempted to pull himself from the mess he had buried himself in. A pile of books at the edge of his desk swayed precariously as he moved. Daniel froze, a bead of sweat running down the side of his head as he realised how unstable the pile was. He edged as close as he dared to grab the pile before it fell and in one swift movement lunged out of his seat. The pile shifted a half centimetre out of reach and collapsed onto the floor. “Great.”
“Our presence is required in the control room,” Teal’c said. Teal’c turned and left the room. Daniel sighed at the mess and picked his way across to the door.
-Stargate Command Operations Centre. Earth. March 1, 2003. 21:35 Zulu.
“Chevron six encoded,” Walter said as the Stargate spun before him.
Steam hissed from the alien device’s taxed cooling systems as energy flowed into its power conduits. Megabytes of data pored back and forth between the base computers and the Ancient’s machine as spatial calculations were crunched and raw energy raced through subspace to a Stargate hundreds of Light years distant.
Walter kept one eye on a secondary diagnostic readout although he didn’t expect any problems. When the Stargate was idle technicians scrutinised every inch of the interface and control systems and any problems would have been reported long before he started the dialling sequence. Power flow was steady and energy consumption was increasing smoothly along predicted lines. With no problems, he executed the pending command that would allow the final chevron to lock in place. A few seconds later, the great ring slowed and halted on the final symbol, the stylised symbol representing the Goa’uld System Lord Ra and the point of origin, Earth. The triangular chevron stabbed down, lit up-.
“Chevron seven locked!”
-And nothing happened.
“What the hell?” Walter said. Instantly screens throughout the control room went red as error codes buzzed back and forth sending everyone into a mad rush of activity. Through the great windows that looked down into the Gateroom, Walter saw Major Pierce and his men look up at him in confusion as the seven-lit Chevrons suddenly faded to black and the thrum of power fell away with an electronic sigh.
“Sergeant?” Hammond said from behind him.
“The wormhole didn’t engage for some reason,” Walter said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know sir. All seven chevrons locked, the Gate positively established a lock and the sequence completed. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Major Pierce appeared at their side. “Could the Alpha Site Gate be in use?”
Hammond shook his head. “They were ordered to terminate all Gate operations outbound once Colonel O’Neill and Doctor Jackson returned.”
“And besides, sirs, if the Gate was in use, the final Chevron would not have actually locked …but it did.” Walter pointed at his screen as a large red error code popped up. “We’ve never had an error like this.” Pierce and Hammond leaned in to wince at it.
“What’s is a 1-2-0 error?” Pierce said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Checking it now sir,” Walter said. He wished Major Carter were there to help. She had designed the dialling program including its error management systems and was the leading expert on the Stargate interface. She was usually the first on the scene when the Stargate failed. Now all Walter felt were the eyes of his CO boring into his back now instead of hers.
With a beep, a line of text scrolled across his screen under the glaring red numbers.
“Sir, according to the computer, this error was generated by the Gate being unable to establish a wormhole all the way through subspace to a given destination.”
“What does that mean Sergeant?” the General asked with a frown.
“It means,” another voice cut into the conversation from behind them. “That the Gate wasn’t able to maintain a wormhole all the way to the destination co-ordinates through subspace, a bit like a river hitting a dam…sort of!” Hammond, Walter and Pierce all turned as Doctor Jay Felger half-ran, half-tripped down the stairs into the control room with a mass of paperwork bundled in his arms. As he lurched down the stairs he completely failed to see Sergeant Dan Siler and collided with him, sending the man into Pierce. Piece managed to avoid Siler’s wrench and kept the man from falling over. Felger’s paperwork went everywhere.
“Oh sorry! Sorry! You ok? Yes? Good,” Felger spurted out as he skidded to a stop. Hammond caught Siler's eye and motioned with his head towards the Gateroom. Siler nodded, brushed himself off and briskly started down the stairs.
“Doctor,” Hammond said. “You’re trying to tell me that the wormhole generated by the Stargate is unable to reach its destination?“
“Yes, yes exactly!” Felger said. He sounded very excited. “The Stargate, when you attempt to lock the seventh Chevron, sends out a signal across subspace to bounce off the destination Gate. Basically it checks if its active and not in use, sort of like if you had a telephone and called to see if it was ok to…uhh… call!”
Walter winced at the look Hammond directed towards the Doctor.
“So if it sends back the signal,” Pierce said. “Then the chevron locks and the Wormhole forms?”
Felger snapped his fingers. “Exactly! But here, despite the ‘go ahead’ signal the Wormhole itself hit some kind of block on the way and collapsed, hence why you didn’t see the event horizon actually form and why the Seventh Chevron actually locked.”
“Can you fix it?” Hammond asked.
“I…don’t know. The problem isn’t on our end I think.” He stabbed his finger at the ceiling. “Something outside is blocking the wormhole…we could try dialling other gate addresses to see if there’s a problem between us and the Alpha site.”
Hammond considered it for half a second. “Do it,” He said. “Major Pierce, stand down your team for the moment until we sort the situation out.”
“Yes sir,” Pierce said. He headed back towards the Gateroom.
“Sergeant,” Hammond continued as he looked at Walter. “Generate a sample of Gate locations around Earth and dial them. Oh, and when is Major Carter due at Groom Lake?”
Walter glanced at the wall mounted time display. “Twenty four minutes sir.”
“When she gets there, contact her and co-ordinate your efforts. And have Doctor Jackson and Teal’c meet us upstairs.”
“Yes sir,” Walter said as Hammond retreated upstairs. Felger grabbed a nearby chair, straddled it, and rolled it right up to Walter. Walter did not like him that close.
“So,” the excentric scientist said with an enthusiastic expression on his face. “Who you gonna call?”
