Chapter Text
2012 - January
The White House
"It's been a helluva ride."
I sipped at my coffee hiding a mixed grin and grimace.
Eight years ago, the Stargate program almost didn't survive the change in presidency. And it could have doomed the Earth, practically immediately.
"Know what you'll be doing for your last week in office?" Elizabeth asked from next to me.
I let the casual conversation wash over me.
Almost eight years ago, - just a few weeks shy of it, by their reckoning, I had just blackmailed my way into the program at the tender age of fifteen. More than half a year later, I was in the Pegasus Galaxy.
Now, Eight years for them, was... a lot more than eight years for me.
I honestly don't even know what my age is supposed to be, given a lot of what I lived mentally wasn't even experienced by my body. And even though I look around my calendar age, I'm older than the current out-going President.
With Matthew Ellis' inauguration in a week, a lot of people in the program were on tenter-hooks.
"You said you wished to shift your focus away from the Stargate Program for a few years?" Hayes asked me, piercing my thoughts.
I nod, and note Elizabeth's sigh. "So much has happened. You're aware of my apparently partial alien heritage."
His lips twitched. "I recall the sporadic hints in those reports. Something about you, have an alien grandfather?"
I sigh. "A Kree, apparently. But whilst they're from another galaxy that we haven't been to yet, they've supposedly not been to earth in centuries. I... I need to know the truth. After what this... uh... human-looking Thor said to me..." I shift. "And that his own first experience with Human government was through this, SHIELD..." I pause, wondering how to say the bit that hadn't made it into reports.
"Whom prevented you from being adopted." Weir finished. I look, and she shrugged. "Jack's wanted an excuse to look into SHIELD ever since he realized none of your... extending... family could take you in permanently.
Of the, many, placements I had in the foster system, ever since I was eight a really large portion of the foster parents were USAF - a foster father assigned to Peterson's air traffic control, a foster mother who worked an SGC Lab, a few where both foster parents were in the Air Force, though not the same direct chain of command. And almost every one that had its connection - direct or tenuous - to the SGC pretty much became my 'extended family'. And it meant that even afterward, when I ran to Pegasus to literally get out of the foster system fully since, hello, fifteen year old with a GED didn't mean the system kicked me to the curb. Well, I made... friends so easily that I have a huge circle.
Teyla still finds it hilarious, to this day, that after the trouble we had early on with the Genii that a few of their military leaders wanted to adopt me after just... twenty minutes with me?
Then there's the Asgard, Or as Jack now calls them to differentiate the two 'species' with the name, The Rosgard. (Damnit Jack.) As in, Roswell-grey looking Asgard that for thousands of years couldn't even procreate, they only maintained population when someone's body died by cloning the body in a process that at best had a point-something-one-percent error rate, so over those thousands of years, they went from human looking with... those body parts, to their current 'Roswell-grey' look, without those body parts. They're certain they'd be extinct by now if they hadn't been able to shift their focus from fighting the replicators to fixing the issues thanks to Reece. And apparently, Reece things that the way she'd gotten a bit, hostile, with the SGC... if I hadn't been there and become her friend... that maybe she'd be dead, and therefore later, unable to help the Asgard. They basically made me a 'sister to all Asgard' is what I'm saying. (They did the same with SG-1, for the several times that the team saved the Asgards' butt)
I have a huge extended family. I sip my coffee to hide my mixed reaction to them pointing it out. Fifty years of living with only SG-1 on the Odyssey did nothing for my ability to react to personal things like that well. Part of the reason for getting away too. Sometimes... it's a bit, much.
June
Camp David
"I understand your investigation until recently was personal."
I sipped lightly from my coffee, looking over at the new president, savouring the taste (delaying my response, as he didn't say it as a question).
I'm guessing he figured that out, as he spoke again. "Unlike the IOA, and particular members of the Homeworld Command and the Stargate, Atlantis and Destiny Programs, neither the UN's World Security Council oversight nor the agents of SHIELD itself seem to be all that forthcoming with information. Now, at General O'Neills suggestion, I did look at the particulars that lead to your own investigation, and cannot help but think that we may, perhaps, have aligned goals."
I smirk. "That's politician speak for, 'Since you're doing it anyway, mind doing it on taxpayer dime and share with the class when you're done'." He nods his head in agreement, and with a slight shrug, placing my now empty coffee mug down... "I'd like to start with, what do you know about the size and capabilities of SHIELD?" I don't ask to know what he knows about the specifics around the invasion, nor how it came about. Shield, per usual, was being... evasive.
"Well, they're basically an intelligence agency that is overseen by the United Nations, with a specific mission focus on intervening and enforcing rules regarding the development of dangerous technologies, as well as supporting the safe development of potentially dangerous but beneficial technologies. A bunch of scientists and spies, I believe."
I sigh, and look to the box I had had brought with. "They have an active fleet of twelve former US Navy carriers, six Flying carriers built in-house, secret military bases around the world, operate their own network for unrecorded prisons housing people of wildly mixed criminal histories from, Nazi's of world war two, serial killers, to hackers who were simply trying to get the truth out there. The latter, even the FBI, CIA and NSA stick those who they can't recruit into the regular justice system with charges of electronic espionage or similar 'cybercrimes'. SHIELD do not actually charge any of them, regardless of how deserving of a prison sentence, they simply stick them in a cell in some black site. They have an air force, not just for those carriers, that make them the largest air force in the world, larger than the US Navy, Marine Corp and Air Force put together. They have a greater number of combat-rated agents than there are people of any MOS in our entire military. They regularly send in agents undercover into private and public-owned companies around the world performing, essentially, corporate espionage. They also use their political links to strong-arm their way into surpressing genuine normal scientific development, hijacking the technology for themselves. Half of the then-recent human-originated technologies we had in the Prometheus and Daedalus classes when they launched for instance were developed specifically for those ships, and we experienced significant issues with releasing the more, normal, advances in the open market, and it was only, somewhat, recently I found it was SHIELD pushing back." I take a moment, mouth open as I gather my next thoughts.
Thankfully, I'm not interrupted, so get to continue as I get it together, "In addition, despite it not only not being a mandate from any government or the UN, and in point of fact, the US Government," I nod to the President as the current representative of such, "along with the international community, through the creation of the IOA, agreeing that such is the purview of Homeworld Command, the Stargate, Atlantis, Destiny Programs and the IOA participants with their own Daedalus class ships... Alien activity on earth is not theirs yet they barrel into everything of the sort that they hear of before we get to. As earth's technology in the last decade progressed, or rather, how much regular people have access to through smart phones, laptops, and how they use it, like with social media, and so on... we've had a harder and harder time of intervening before SHIELD do, unlike eight years ago, when we'd have been first on scene ninety-nine times out of a hundred. And, I'm told, President Hayes has even been on record as SHIELD acting outside of their mandate, every time. It's only when I started my personal investigation that I found just far outside of their mandate they are operating, Mister President."
"... Military forces of their own?"
I nod. "Their name used to stand for Scientific Hazard Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Basically help allies with, enforce rules around and stop others from doing hazardous science, essentially. Two name changes. First to go was Scientific in favour Strategic, made them sound like like nerds. Then Hazard, for Homeland. Which is weird, because given they're overseen by the UN and are supposed to be an international thing, that means they're not supposed to even have a homeland to strategically... intervene with?" I shake my head and note Ellis is smiling grimly, getting that the name was, kinda, important.
"So when did they stop coloring only in their mandated lines?"
I blink at the metaphor, and smile a little. But... this isn't a good answer to give. "... I don't think they ever stuck within their lines, Sir. At least as late as the mid seventies, as that's when they acquired their first Aircraft Carrier, the CV-19 USS Hancock. They completely stripped and reoutfitted the ship with upgrades that made it look like the Forrestal ships. Some clever engineering for where the ship number markers are, so a flip of a few switches and suddenly sporting different numbers? I've already read a few reports of Navy pilots landing on what they thought was their carrier, only to find it was a SHIELD carrier, and forced to secrecy. Those Carriers existence were then covered up in those situations with one of a few standard procedures, like for instance, the pilot being left in the drink after a false mayday out-of-fuel radio call and told to pretend he'd had to eject after emptying the tank."
Ellis looked away. I know he was a pilot and, excluding the shield carriers part, so the cover story, had that very thing happen to him, twice, during his Navy career, and both times due to combat situations that lead to forced fuel expenditures, that were then followed by the Navy's mid-air refuellers not showing up where they should.
"It, gets worse, Sir. The laws regarding human experimentation? It seems SHIELD has been in violation of those laws, except they couldn't just do it themselves, but talked members of the US Army into it." I pull out one file, and opened to a page on a General. "This part, excluding the SHIELD link that lead me to even finding this whole, mess, I have already seen to the dissemination of to relevant parties, within and outside of the United States Military. Given that some of the civilians who died as a result of General Ross' military assault of Culver University a couple years ago, have... had... links to some particularly powerful individuals in the Stargate Program as well as the IOA... I expect the US Army is about to have a lot of cake on its face." Belatedly, I added, "Sir."
I just told the current sitting President of the United States of America, that I had just spread technically classified information to international parties, and probably also reporters. ... which I did. I did the thing.
"Sir, I know you brought me here to basically, ask me to spy on SHIELD. Well, I'll do the thing, on two conditions. It's an investigation into the legality of SHIELD, both as an organization, and their operations specifically, therefore at some point, should the findings be that they really are operating wildly illegally, they can be taken down."
"And Second?"
I grin... on the inside. "We use recent events as a jumping board for the publication of the entire Stargate Program, but also declassify like, the entire reason that the battle in New York happened." Oh... Jack's gonna hate me... sorta? Well, hey the public know about aliens now! 'Perfect timing, yo!' as my outer 25 year old is pointing out. "This way they know that yes, we're capable of defending them, but yes, this caused by a bunch of spies messing about with things they had no business doing."
Also... I didn't get to blackmail him into something only days into his first term as president, versus doing the thing with Hayes. Maybe this is going to be my new tradition? And that, Jack would LOVE!