Chapter Text
DISCLAIMER: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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Purcell, Lewis, Connelly and I had gotten up at dawn for a brisk six mile run, as we had every morning for the last three weeks. Of course for the last week, we'd been in Colorado Springs, our new duty station, and at 6000 feet, we were feeling the burn a lot more than we had at sea level, despite the cooler temperatures and drier air of the mountains. The first morning had been the worst. We'd only done two miles and still felt lightheaded and ready to puke afterward. Except for Connelly, of course. She was pushing for us to do the hike up Pike's Peak, but the rest of us had unanimously voted to put it off until we were better acclimated to the altitude. She's a real glutton for punishment. Not to mention that she grew up in the mountains west of Denver where you can find whole towns at over 8000 feet.
Today none of us dawdled at the end of the run, we were reporting at 0800 to our new assignment at Cheyenne Mountain. Our transfer papers said 'Deep Space Radar Telemetry', but the new security passes we had picked up the day before all were stamped "SGC". Of course we all knew that telemetry wasn't what we were really going to be doing. We were former shuttle astronauts who'd decided to seek a new assignment after making a rendezvous with a couple of black alien gliders in orbit and returning with their passengers back to Earth. One of those passengers had been an Air Force Captain named Samantha Carter. I had tracked her down and asked for her help in getting us reassigned to the secret project we figured was America's real space program.
At Cheyenne Mountain, we met with half a dozen other new assignees and were walked through some of the most elaborate security arrangements I have ever seen. Two elevator rides later, we were led through bare gray concrete corridors to a well-appointed briefing room. An airman at the door checked off our names, and then unexpectedly addressed my fellow astronauts and I. "Howard, Purcell, Connelly and Lewis?" When we nodded, she said, "Please follow me."
She brought us to a plain door with a solid brass plaque that read, "General George Hammond". We lined up and braced to attention but the expected 'at ease' didn't come. The airman shut the door behind us. The heavyset balding man behind the desk looked at us with no particular favor. I felt a trickle of ice down my spine. How can we be in trouble already, we just got here? "I want to make it clear to you, that security is something we take very seriously at the SGC."
None of us twitched and he continued. "You were sworn to secrecy following the Endeavor mission, and told not to ask questions. Yet, a month later, here you are." He gave us the senior officer's glare, and while I know it must be partly for effect, such is the military conditioning that I could feel the sweat dripping down my back. "The only reason you are here today is that Captain Carter and the other members of SG-1 argued most eloquently for your inclusion." SG-1? That must be Carter's team. All of her team argued for us? Guess they really were grateful. I'd have to remember to thank them. Hammond continued. "Be aware that any further security issues coming from any of you will result in your immediate removal from the SGC."
"Yes, sir!" We chorused. I caught a glimpse of the others out of the corner of my eye. Yep, they were sweating too.
The airman returned and led us back to the briefing room, with Hammond and an officer with Major's tabs on his collar right behind us. We settled gratefully into chairs in the briefing room getting curious looks from the other new folks. I was curious myself. Though most of the other people in the room were in uniform, there were two people in civvies.
Hammond was looking a lot more relaxed and genial now that he wasn't chewing us out. "I'm sure that you are all curious about your new assignment." No shit. Please get on with it. I was leaning forward waiting to hear just what the hell this was all about. "In the early part of this century, a discovery was made in Egypt." I had no idea what I had expected, but this certainly wasn't it. "Underneath a ten thousand year old cover stone was found-"
I could hear one of the civilians mutter, "Ten thousand? That's ridiculous." Hammond ignored him and continued.
"- a device made of a material unlike anything found on earth. Two and a half years ago, the symbols were deciphered and we were able to activate the device. It created a stable wormhole-" I think that was when Lewis stopped breathing. He had a minor in astrophysics, which I suddenly remembered was Samantha Carter's field. "The wormhole connected to another similar device on a planet light-years away." Nobody was even twitching by this point. We all just sat there with our mouths hanging open while we listened to the general. "That planet was Abydos. We sent a team through the wormhole, where they encountered not only a population of humans transplanted there thousands of years ago from Earth, but a member of an alien race, the Goa'uld, who did the transplanting. The Goa'uld are a race of parasitic aliens-" I was poleaxed. This was unbelievable. Yet Hammond delivered it all with a straight face and kept right on going. "-who use humans as hosts. They believe they are gods and that all humans are naturally their slaves. The first team that went to Abydos was able to destroy its Goa'uld overlord and free the population there. A member of that team discovered the Abydos Cartouche, a collection of addresses for other planets we can travel to through the gate. Since then, the Air Force has created a dedicated command, teams of four to ten people who are trained to go through the gate, explore new worlds-"
"-seek out new life, new civilizations-" irrepressibly murmured the same civilian who had spoken before. This time he got a reproving look from Hammond.
"-make contact with both lost human races and aliens, winning new allies and finding technology to use in our war against the Goa'uld. Make no mistake, people. This is a front line combat facility."
I saw the major tap his watch and move over to a switch on the wall. The general nodded and we watched a metal plate slide down to reveal a two-story room. We all turned to look. The gate had pride of place, dead center, with an opalescent luster that made it clear that it was rock, not metal. A short ramp led up to it. Below, I could see four people, adjusting their packs. I swiftly realized that I recognized them all. Carter, the older man named Jack and the large black guy we'd met on the shuttle, plus Carter's friend Daniel. "That's SG-1, getting ready to leave for Cimmeria," the general told us. Then we saw the inner ring start to spin and clouds of vapor jet from the sides. Part of the device lit up. The major must have turned on the PA system as well, because we could hear something that wasn't exactly a countdown. "Chevron one, encoded." We watched the ring spin and each of the seven chevrons light up, and then there was a whoosh like a whirlpool or the underside of a drain. It settled into a shimmering blue interface like water. I don't know if anyone else had managed to pick their jaws up yet, mine was still somewhere down around knee level.
"It's the event horizon," whispered Lewis, awed. We continued to watch, dumbstruck as the four members of SG-1 strolled casually up the ramp and disappeared into the shimmering surface. The wormhole disengaged, the shimmery surface seeming to dissolve into mist and then nothing. The room was empty, with no sign of the four people who had just stepped into the wormhole. I couldn't take it in. They were hurtling millions of light years through vacuum to another planet, protected by no more than a light jacket. This was space travel?
General Hammond cleared his throat, and a roomful of stunned gazes returned to him. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Stargate Command."
The general waited a couple of minutes for composure to return and then indicated the major. "This is Major Ferretti of SG-2. He'll be continuing with your orientation this morning. You'll get a tour, some background briefing materials and then be split up to start getting familiar with your individual duty assignments. Good day." He started for the door, and Ferretti moved to the front of the room. The talkative civilian was just starting to protest.
"Hey- Um."
Ferretti said, "You have a question, Dr. Marshall?"
"Yes. Are we going to be doing that? Going through that thing?" If the answer was no, he was obviously going to start arguing the matter on the spot. His eyes were shining like he'd just seen the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Most of the officers in the room were looking relieved that someone else was asking questions.
"That will be up to you, Doctor." Ferretti replied cheerfully. "You're all candidates, but anyone on an SG team must pass the medical and fitness requirements. You'll also have to qualify with weapons and basic first aid. Those are the rules, no exceptions. Being a civilian is not a bar, though. Although we don't employ many, there are two civilians currently serving with SG-1 and another on SG-9."
"And if we can't meet the qualifications?" That was the other civilian, a stocky vaguely Hispanic-looking woman.
"Than you don't go through the gate, you sit in a lab at the SGC and analyze what the teams bring back." Ferretti looked sober. "The general wasn't kidding about this being a combat zone, Ms. Espinoza. There's no room on a field team for anyone who can't or won't shoot back if the team is under fire." Ferretti looked at the rest of us. "Most of you have already had some training, but I realize that it may have been a while ago. Everyone will be doing some refreshers, as well as filling in gaps in their original training."
Weapons, first aid, walking; Daniel had given me good advice all right. "Boot camp," murmured Lewis beside me. I was really grateful that the four of us had spent the last three weeks working out and on the shooting range. Despite starting out in good shape, this would have been more daunting to come into cold.
Ferretti must have ears like a bat, he picked up the comment easily. "Very like boot camp, I'm afraid, Lewis." He gave Lewis and the rest of us an amused look. "For the sake of you four, I'll relate one other story before we go back to the general orientation. You may recall having seen or heard about a bright flash in the night sky about a month ago." Everyone nodded.
"The news said it was the military destroying an asteroid," Dr. Marshall said.
"Yes, but it wasn't." Ferretti contradicted immediately. "It was a pair of Goa'uld motherships, coming to attack Earth. That bright flash was SG-1, blowing them out of the sky."
Since it seemed like it was okay to ask questions, I asked, "How?"
"A hell of a lot of C4." Ferretti replied. "At least for the first ship. After they planted the C4 on the first ship, they took the control room more or less by frontal assault, moved the first ship closer to the second, transported to the second ship- the ships have a sort of teleporter for short-range travel. Anyway, they disabled the protective shields on the second ship so that when the first one exploded, they'd both go. Then the remaining team members escaped in gliders as the ship went up."
The four of us were looking wildly impressed. No wonder Jack had said he wished he had nukes. For that matter, why hadn't he had nukes? The rest of the room was obviously finding it tough to believe. Connolly said. "Four people did that? Those ships were enormous!"
"SG-1 has a remarkable gift for beating the odds." Ferretti told her. "Of course Colonel O'Neill and his team had help from some Jaffa on the ship- the Jaffa are another race enslaved by the Goa'uld and used by them as soldiers. A few of them are our allies. Three of them helped in the assault. Two died, the other came back to Earth and returned home through the Stargate."
"Braytak," I said, remembering the oddly dressed older man who we had evacuated off the damaged gliders in orbit.
He nodded. "The other two Jaffa died and Dr. Jackson was badly wounded in the assault on the control room of the first ship. Jackson came back to the SGC via the Stargate."
Espinoza was looking at me curiously, "So what do these people have to do with that?"
I glanced at Ferretti and got a nod of permission. "My friends and I were crew on the space shuttle Endeavor. We got sent up to try and take out the ships if the first plan failed. We picked up SG-1 and, um, the Jaffa Braytak after the explosion and brought them down from orbit."
Marshall was stuck a couple of comments back and looking a bit shocked. " Dr. Jackson is one of the civilians you mentioned? So civilians go out with their teams even on military missions?"
Ferretti shrugged. "We're recruiting civilians to fill technical specialties that we can't find military personnel for. There are relatively few people with anthropology and archeology backgrounds in military service. There are more people with foreign language skills, but not many with specializations in ancient languages or linguistics. If you're counting on a civilian translator to eavesdrop on the enemy and provide intelligence or decipher the operating instructions for the alien spacecraft, he's not going to be a lot of use if he's cowering in the SGC."
Both civilians were looking daunted. Not that the military people seemed less shocked, but they were hiding it better. One of the other officers said, "That's a surprisingly liberal attitude for the military, sir."
"Isn't it?" Ferretti grinned amiably. "All Dr. Jackson's fault, really. You'll understand better when you've heard more about the history of the program."
Espinoza was busy putting two and two together, "I thought that guy looked familiar. Isn't he Dr. Daniel Jackson?"
"That's the one."
"But he's a crackpot. A crank." She looked at the room of blank expressions. "He's an archeologist and linguist, he had some nutty theory that the pyramids were... oh..." She trailed off looking stunned all over again.
"Built by aliens?" Ferretti was openly amused. "Sure. Landing pads for alien spacecraft actually. Check your assumptions at the door, people." He dragged a box full of bound notebooks out from under the table, and started handing them around. I hefted it- several inches thick and it must have weighed over three pounds. "Here are your briefing packages. We'll do the base tour, and then you'll have time to start reading before we assign you to duty areas."
By the end of the day, it felt like they'd tried to stuff the entire suddenly expanded universe between my ears. By the look of it, I wasn't the only one with a headache. Lewis was slouched in a chair in the cafeteria looking like he'd been beaten. Purcell, normally the most reserved of us, had just finished telling us about the labs. His background was biochemistry with a subspecialty in planetology. We often called him Marvin, because he was a passionate advocate of Mars colonization. From the look of him now, he had pretty much forgotten all about Mars. Connolly was a physical chemist and geologist and she told us her assignment was pretty much what we'd expect. "My first job is to get familiar with the properties of naquadah, the material the Stargate is made of," she told us. "I've got a feeling I'm going to be sick of the stuff before I've been here too long, a lot of the alien tech seems to use it." It seemed to excite rather than to disturb her though. She looked at me.
"Looks like I'm slated to learn about alien tech." I told them. Engineering physics was actually not a bad specialty to have for this assignment, given that there weren't any universities offering Alien Technology 101. "I'm working with a guy called Siler- a Sergeant, but rank doesn't always seem to mean much in terms of duty assignments here."
Lewis nodded. "I expect I'll get some of that too, but first I'm going to be cross-training with the anthropologists." At our surprised looks, he shrugged. "I took a lot of anthro courses in college, and since I speak four languages already, they thought I could probably pick up Goa'uld and ancient Egyptian which is what they seem to speak on a lot of planets. And I'm guessing they're kind of short of anthro people. Seems that the Goa'uld aren't the only problem. They lose a certain amount of personnel to ah, cultural misunderstandings with the native races they contact. Lots of inhabited worlds out there, and most of them were split off from Earth cultures thousands of years ago."
"Besides," Connelly gibed, "They might as well assign you to talking, since they aren't going to be able to shut you up anyway." Lewis put on an offended expression and the rest of us laughed.
"Ah, is this a private party, or can anyone join in?" We looked up to see the two civilians, Marshall and Espinoza, standing there with trays.
I shrugged, by the sound of it we were going to be working side by side with these folks. "Not at all, pull up a chair." They set the trays down and looked dubiously at the food.
"Enjoy it while you can," Lewis advised. "It'll be MREs- military rations- in the field."
Espinoza shrugged and dug in. "Can't be worse than undergraduate cooking on a dig."
"You're an archeologist?" I asked.
She nodded. "I'm working on my doctorate in ancient civilizations, but needed to take a break due to an acute cash-flow problem. And I have a minor in Egyptology, mostly for fun, but I expect that's what originally interested the military. It's almost impossible to get jobs in the field." She stopped looking nonplussed, and said, "Or it used to be."
We laughed again. I asked Marshall, "How about you?"
"Cultural anthropologist and linguist," he said. He nodded to Espinoza, "You know, after you mentioned him earlier, I remembered hearing about Daniel Jackson. A brilliant scholar, wrote some articles on comparative linguistics of the Afro-Asiatic language groups. He hasn't published much lately that I'm aware of."
"He was rumored to be dead." Espinoza told him. "Dropped out of sight completely after the whole pyramid alien thing a couple of years ago. I guess he must been here all that time."
"I bet there is a great story there." Lewis remarked. "One of the guys in the anthro lab said something weird about that. How did it go? 'Jackson gets killed all the time, but it never slows him down for long.' Everyone seemed to find it funny."
I changed the subject. "How about the other guys in our orientation class? Anybody talk to them?"
Marshall said, "I tried to, while we were waiting for you this morning. They all seem to be purely military types. Special forces, commandos, that sort of thing." No wonder the civilians wanted to sit with us. Military or non-military, we were all technical specialists of one sort or another.
The conversation became more general and it was already dark when we trooped out of the mountain in a group to take the winding road back down to Colorado Springs.
The next few days were a whirlwind of activity. Thanks to the homework we'd done before we arrived, we were quickly released from the weapons training, but we continued to work out while studying the details of our new assignments. Luckily for me, Siler was very good at distinguishing between the things they knew about the alien tech, the things they only guessed and the stuff no one had a clue on yet.
The SGC was a hotbed of gossip and we quickly found out a lot about the SG teams and especially SG-1. The reports of their exploits were pretty incredible, but whenever I started to think people were pulling my leg and pulled up an old mission summary to check, the stories were true. I wondered aloud if people were talking about them a lot just because the team was overdue coming back from Cimmeria, but one of the other techs shook his head. "Nah. If they aren't in the middle of a crisis they're recovering from a crisis or preparing to head into another crisis. They make for much more interesting water cooler conversation than who said what on late night TV, or the latest plot twists on ER." Yeah, and it probably didn't hurt that Carter was drop-dead-gorgeous and the three men on the team seemed to be just as attractive to the female personnel on the base.
Still, the keen interest that everyone in the facility seemed to feel about the activities of the SGC's first-line contact team was underlain with a sincere current of concern. The whole place seemed to heave a sigh of relief when they came back from Cimmeria in one piece.
And within a couple of hours, the complex was boiling with rumors. They'd made contact with a highly advanced alien race, the whispers said. One that had helped them kick Goa'uld butt on Cimmeria. Others said that it was Roswell aliens. It was a couple of days later and the official reports were out showing that the rumors had been largely correct when Lewis and I happened to go into the cafeteria and find all of SG-1 sitting there eating breakfast. Lewis and I glanced at one another and headed over to their table. Dr. Jackson gave a friendly wave while Colonel O'Neill turned and looked at us. "Yes?"
"I'm Captain Howard." I began.
"I remember you, Howard." O'Neill assured me amiably enough and looked at Lewis. "And Captain Lewis, I believe." He nodded
"Yes, sir."
"Lewis and I just wanted to say thank you." I told them. "General Hammond told us that you all spoke up for us."
O'Neill shrugged. "Thank Daniel. He said we shouldn't leave you to explode from unsatisfied curiosity. Think of the mess."
Daniel Jackson was looking amused. "Well, I know how I'd feel if I'd caught a glimpse of something amazing and then wasn't allowed to follow up." He gave O'Neill a meaningful look. The colonel rolled his eyes.
The Jaffa, Teal'c, inclined his head gravely. "You handled yourselves most competently in orbit." I felt absurdly privileged.
"Thank you."
Carter looked up at us and said, "You were lucky." I hope my face went blank rather than showing the flash of irritation, because she continued. "The kind where preparation meets opportunity. You all had specialties that will be useful to the SGC. It's not all that unlikely that you'd have eventually wound up here anyway." Yeah but sooner is better than later. Huh, guess she decided we'd be of some use after looking at the personnel records I'd given her when I was trying to persuade her to help us.
"We still appreciate it. The general was a little upset that we tracked you down."
O'Neill drained his cup and they all started to rise. "He's understandably worried about just any-" he looked at us "-Howard, Lewis or Connelly being able to track us down and find their way into the program. If you don't do anything else to piss him off, he'll get over it." He nodded to us and left with Teal'c and Carter. Jackson refilled his coffee cup and turned back to us.
I spoke first. "It wasn't Carter. You talked them into supporting our application, didn't you?" I asked him.
He replied. "Sam supported your application."
Pieces were falling together. "But you talked the Colonel into supporting it too. And then you and O'Neill convinced Hammond to ask for us. This would never have happened so fast with only Captain Carter's recommendation. Why?" He answered the question obliquely.
"Actually, I should be thanking you." He told us.
"For what?" Lewis was still two conversations behind me in observing the SG-1 team dynamic, so it wasn't surprising he had missed some of this.
"Bringing them home." He nodded after his teammates and gave us a quick but extraordinarily warm smile. I remembered the things I had heard about this team's legendary closeness. He turned to the door. "I'll see you around."
Lewis looked after him for a moment, uncharacteristically silent. "Did they all seem to you to be, I dunno-"
"A little bigger than life?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's it."
"No shit." I shook my head. "And even then I can't believe they've done some of the things I've heard about. I mean, I believe it but-"
"You don't believe it." Lewis understood perfectly.