Four faces stared up. Their necks craned back as they squinted against the sun peeking over the roof of the structure that had seemed to appear our of nowhere. Thick green vines and undergrowth swung down from the dark stone building, and draped over the detailed masonry. SG1 had been treading through the knee high foliage for the last three hours, tracking the energy reading the UAV had found originating from this location. They had no idea what could be causing the energy spike, and even to the moment they stumbled through the trees and onto the crumbling steps leading up to the structure, they had no idea what to expect.
"Whoa." Sam said quietly, still staring.
"Yeah, whoa." Daniel agreed.
"Where did that come from?" Jack asked. Even he had been caught by surprise at the sudden appearance of the ancient structure.
"No kidding. It's hidden very well." Daniel rambled, walking up the steps a few feet. "It looks like some sort of Mayan architecture, but I don't recognize any of the writing on the stones. Maybe a different dialect of something."
"Right, lets make sure there's nobody home first." Jack instructed, walking the remainder of the steps, leading up to a large stone door.
Daniel quickly bound past him, eager to study ever nook and cranny, before the Colonel could ruin anything with his careless demeanor. Jack grimaced at the archaeologist, and was quickly distracted by a large sculpture of a creature reminding him something of a wolf. He stared at it for a few moments, before turning and looking at Sam, who was watching him with a hint of amusement.
"Beware of dog?" he guessed, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the beast.
"Hope they only come in stone." she teased.
"I believe we may have trouble taking Doctor Jackson away from this place." Teal'c observed as Daniel dug through his pack, pulling out his camcorder, and shuffling back around aiming the device at the doorway.
"Right. Teal'c, you stay here with Daniel. Make sure he doesn't open that door til we get back. "Carter, lets check out the area, make sure there are no non-stone dogs lurking about."
Sam grinned and followed Jack up another set of steps to the left of the first landing. They ducked under some low hanging vines and Jack cursed as his toe caught on a tree root that had grown through the cracked stone.
"This place is amazing." Sam commented as they rounded another corner, and spotted some taller stone sculptures of people.
"Can you imagine what it would cost to cool a place like this."
"You know sir, Teal'c is right. It's gonna be hard to get Daniel to leave this place."
"Yeah, well, it's hard to get him to leave any place with rocks. Any ideas on that energy...thing?" Jack asked, motioning his hand to the device in her hand.
"It's really strong now. I think it may be coming from inside the structure." She answered. "Those doors looked pretty solid though. Not sure how wer're gonne be able to get in, unless it's written on the walls something, and Daniel can figure it out how to read it."
"I suspect C4 is out of the question then?" he wagged his eyebrows at her.
"Yes sir." She grinned. "I don't think Daniel would appreciate us blowing up his new obsession just yet. Besides, with something inside emitting that much energy, it could magnify a blast by thousands of degrees."
"So, not a good idea?"
"Not really sir, no." she smiled again, ducking under another branch.
Back on the first landing, Daniel was practically dancing with excitement. He stopped every few feet to take a still image of the text on the wall with his camcorder, before moving on to another section and repeating the action.
"This is incredible Teal'c. I have never seen anything like this. The language is like nothing I have ever seen. Maybe some sore of variation of ancient Akkadian, or maybe even Gaelic. It could take years to translate something like this."
"We just need to know how to open the door." Jack said as he and Carter rounded the opposite corner.
"Uh, I wouldn't know where to start Jack. The people that built this are obviously very gifted architects. The masonry is exquisite, and considering the elements, it had held up incredibly well. As for getting inside, the door is sealed. They obviously didn't want anyone going inside and snooping around." Daniel rambled quickly.
"It's not as big as it looks. We walked the whole perimeter already. No sign of anyone being here in a long time." Jack informed dully.
"I'm gonna need more references and its gonna take alot of research to translate this, if I even can translate it." Daniel sighed. "Give me a few hours to record and document everything that I can. I can take it back to the SGC and see what I can do with it there."
Jack nodded, then walked up to the giant door, eyes scanning the deeply engraved scrawling over it. Slowly he placed both hands flat against the stone and looked up at the place where it came together with the top of the frame. He spread his feet a few feet apart and pushed as hard as he could against the door, until his feet started to slide on the dirty stone. A few seconds later he stood up straight, and wiped his dirty hands together, knocking off the grunge that had come off the stone door. He turned and met the faces of the rest of his team, staring at him. Carter's grin a complete opposite of Daniel's grimace.
"What? I had to try that first. Now do it your way." He said before he walked over to the steps and sat down on the top one, settling in for the boring hours ahead, while Daniel video taped the stones and trees.
Daniel shook his head and lifted the camcorder, returning to the matter of research and documenting.
Six full hours later, the very tired, and dirty sweat covered team came clambering through the gate and down the ramp. They handed off their weapons and with the General's permission, left for the locker rooms to shower and clean up.
#
Daniel sat at his desk, books scattered about, covering two desks, a small end table, and over the top of his computer monitor. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses then continued to flip through the images he had taken with his camcorder and downloaded onto his computer.
"Who are you?" he said quietly to himself, jotting a few notes in his notebook, then grabbing another book from the bookshelf, flipping through it and adding it toe the pile on his desk.
Doctor Janet Fraiser had head the bustle of activity that only came from the activation of the stargate. It was a very common sound that she rarely paid much attention to anymore. SHe knew that this particular activation would be the return of her friends. She waited on edge a few minutes, waiting for the sound of the intercom to order a medical team to the gateroom. When none came, she let herself breathe easy then turned her attention back to her paperwork in front of her. SHe sat like this for a few moments before realizing she was totally caught up on everything. It had been a particularly slow week in the infirmary and she had busied herself with taking inventory, double checking unfinished charts, and even doing mundane tasks of cleaning up around the infirmary. She sighed then stood, deciding to go see how SG1's mission had gone.
Janet was on her way to Sam's lab when she heard a quiet curse escape from Daniel's office on her way by. She took a few steps back, until she could clearly see the man hunched over a stack of books, flipping through their pages, then turning to stare at the computer screen, before flipping through another book. She watched him work for a few minutes, amazed at the amount of reading material the man had strewn about his office. She walked into the dark office, and came to stand behind him.
"What are you working on?" she asked, deliberately startling him.
He jumped and turned his head to look at her, his tired features softening at her grin.
"Sorry, I couldn't resist." she teased, "What are you working on?"
"Trying to translate the text we found on some ruins on P54-X27 this morning."
"No luck?"
"None. I've never seen anything like it. It looks to be some loosely based variation of two or maybe three completely dead languages."
"Sounds frustrating. Maybe you should take a break. Give your eyes a rest. I find that staring at the same thing for a long time makes it all start to blend together. Come back to it, you'll probably see something you didn't before." she suggested.
Daniel nodded and closed a few books, tapping his computer mouse in the process. The black computer screen saver flicked off, and Janet glanced at the picture on the screen.
"Hey I've seen that place before." she said casually.
"You what?" Daniel looked at her wide eyed.
"I've seen that before," she said again pointing at the computer. "Or a drawing of it at least."
"I just took that picture on P54-X27 this morning."
"Oh, my mistake then. It looks alot like something I've seen before." She shrugged and turned to leave the office, before turning back to her friend. "Seriously Daniel, try taking a little break."
Janet didn't find Sam in her lab, so she made a quick round through the corridors before returning to her office and sitting down at her desk, kicking her fett up on top of it and leaning back in her chair. She was bored. It was a rare occurrence that she didn't have any work to do, and she found she didn't know what to do with herself. She glanced around her office, eyes settling on the tidy bookshelf in the corner. Curious, she stood and walked up to the shelf, scanning the titles until she sttled on a small group of leather bound books. She pulled each one from it's spot on the shelf, flipped through the pages, then replacing it and grabbing the next until she found the one she was looking for. Grinning, she marked the place in the book and set off toward Daniel's office again.
"See, look." Janet said, setting the book on the desk in front of Daniel, and pointing to the open page. "Tell me that's not the same building."
"I could have drawn this myself this morning Janet." Daniel said after studying the image for a few seconds, "Where did you get this?" he aske, running his fingers over the page.
"After joining the SGC, I started doing a little cultural type research. A lot of the stuff you guys bring back have some sort of relation to things here on Earth. So I figured it was a good start. I got hooked on that author. She comes up with some pretty bizarre theories, but always finds a way to back them up. She goes on these crazy quests to find answers to the worlds unexplained mysteries. I've actually seen some stuff play out here at the SGC, that she talked about happening in ancient cultures. She's been pretty accurate on some of them."
Daniel listened while Janet explained her new found interest, and bragged as only a fan of the author could, all the while staring every line of the drawing in front of him.
"She discovered a lost village in Western Cambodia which was covered with old records written in an unknown language. She spent three years translating the language, and finally realized they weren't records but a description of a place of worship. She drew that from the description."
"She found this village in Cambodia?"
"Yeah, she and her team found it by accident. They were supposed to be searching for El Dorado."
"El Dorado? As in the City of Gold El Dorado?"
"Yes. She was determined that if it did exist, she was going to find it. Instead she found that."
"El Dorado is supposed to be somewhere in Columbia, not Cambodia."
"She had some theories on that as well. It's all very interesting. She's like some real life Indian Jones." Janet laughed.
Daniel arched an eyebrow and flipped the book over in his hands and scanned the leather cover. His eyes settled on the author's name, printed lightly on the bottom right corner, faded in mock wear.
"You've got to be kidding me." He groaned.
"Heard of her?"
"Yeah, I've heard of her. " he answered, his eyes telling her it was more then that.
"Friend of yours."
"Not particularly." Daniel snorted. "She and her brother Nikko used to be a pretty good team. They got started as apprentices to my Grandfather. After a few years, they went off on their own, taking Nick's funding with them. They were sent on some mission to dig up information on the Dropa society. it wasn't really a big case study, but they were Young and a little wile. The Archaeological community figured they could use them to bring in a "younger generation" interest."
"So they became the poster children of archeology?"
"Something like that. Apparently they had developed some sort of fan base though, because they got the grants they wanted, and were handed some pretty interesting case studies, pissing off alot of seasoned PHD's in the process. They were working hard and bringing in some serious funding for the department when they found some hidden tunnels in Cairo, which eventually was discovered to have been a hiding place to a mad who had assassinated a Pharaoh. While they were excavating the tunnel, there was a cave in, and Nikko lost his footing and didn't make it out. She never really got over his death."
"That's horrible. I didn't know that."
"He was a great kid. She went off the deep end after that. Started taking on really risky stuff, and breaking some pretty big rules in the process. She's not in it for the knowledge anymore. She likes pushing limits, and causing a commotion. Apparently she still has a fan base." he said handing Janet her book. Janet blushed. "As you said, she's a real life Indiana Jones."
"Maybe she can help you on this Daniel."
"I haven't seen or heard anything about her in, god, must be eight years. I heard she's some crazy loner, doesn't even keep in touch with her old colleagues."
"Crazy or not Daniel, it looks to me like she's right on the money on this one." Janet said tapping a fingernail against the computer monitor. "It took her three years to translate it. Do you want to wait that long?"