The First Steps
Chapter One: Prologue
Extract from the best-selling memoirs of Samantha Carter: 'Deep-Space Radar Telemetry'.
After the speech at the UN, well, that's when it all changed, of course. We answered the questions as well as we could before referring them to the briefing packs that were being distributed. On the advice of George Bates, our security consultant, we returned to the IOA headquarters in our Alteran gateship, just in time to see Henry Hayes's joint press-conference with President Obama and General O'Neill, and that's when it really started to sink in for all of us. Seeing Jack up there, discussing SGC in the White House pressroom was a bigger deal for me, believe it or not, than actually standing and speaking in front of a gathering of multinational diplomats!
In any case, I'd like to think that we did a good job. It had been President Obama's intention to disclose the program anyway during his term in office, and given the turmoil that we experienced as a planet, I think that that could have been a better choice, especially considering what happened on the day of the new President's inauguration.
I was in the group on the Capitol steps on that day, and we'd just watched the Daedalus and Odyssey perform their flypast after the inauguration and speeches, complete with a short formation display by their F-302 squadrons. Colonel Davis crept up behind me and whispered that there was an urgent matter to attend to. That was when I found out about the attack. A co-ordinated strike by Al-Qaeda on Coalition bases in Baghdad, Basra, Kabul and Helmand, using radiological weapons. The rest we all know now, that the Trust had also infiltrated some of the world's terrorist organisations, but the deaths and mutilations of all those servicemen was shocking. In the end, we felt we had no choice but to involve our so called 'alien' technological advantages in hunting down the perpetrators. The eventual capture of the Al-Qaeda leadership and the trial of Osama Bin-laden was taken, grudgingly by some, as a great success for the US.
However, at the time, the attacks only added to the volatile political situation. The vote of no-confidence in the British Prime Minister after Disclosure was not especially surprising, but their expulsion from the EU, led by Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Eastern European nations was a great surprise at the time, given that we didn't know of the French behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, which tainted relations between the two countries for a few years.
The biggest problem was the Global South bloc, gathered in response to the IOA. Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia surged to the political Left and were verging on open communism. Israel faced an unprecedented wave of violence from all sides, although, thankfully, there was no outright invasion.
The galactic situation was also of some concern. Our main challenges since the end of the Ori crusade were aiding reconstruction of worlds that had been severely depopulated from both the Ori and the Replicator incursion of a few years previously, locating and suppressing rogue elements of the Ori forces that refused to surrender, and locating a small but dangerous cadre of former minor Goa'uld that had evaded both ourselves, the Jaffa and the Tok'ra.
The situation in Pegasus was even more unstable. The Wraith were deeply unpredictable, and we had very little intelligence on their bases or even their most important planets. Furthermore, without Atlantis there (at that point), and Earth representation consisting solely of the Aleph Base and the Sun Tzu, the Pegasus Coalition was becoming obstinate, particularly the Genii, who had gone once again into a state of barely-concealed hostility.
On the positive side, the USS George Hammond was officially commissioned at the start of February. General O'Neill made a typically eloquent speech about our former commanding officer, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. The launch of the Hammond was followed in March by that of the RFSGagarin and HMS Ajax. These three new ships field-tested a few new systems developed at Area 51, including a prototype Asgard-designed neutrino-ion generator and a through-bay hangar system. The use of the Asgard power source allowed us to start using their technology more extensively, including their sublight engines. The advantage of these systems was in their superior packaging. They delivered much better results than naquadah-based generation in a smaller footprint, and this had a snowball effect on the combat effectiveness of our fleet.
Area 51's work with the Asgard core was finally starting to yield results. In addition to the new 304s, they were working on two new craft, which would become the SF-1 and the Ida-class, neither which I hadn't seen at that point, and furthermore, they were also considering ideas for a large command-ship class, to form the centrepieces of the fleet.
Earth-bound technology made a leap, particularly that of power-generation. Rodney McKay and I helped with the testing of naquadah-based power generation equipment at a number of power stations in France and Germany. The initial signs were very promising, and Rolls-Royce, Westinghouse, and the Area 51 engineering teams were all working on competing reactor designs for eventual deployment worldwide.
In April 2009, preparations were almost complete for Atlantis's return to the Pegasus galaxy. There had been a lot of negotiating over the city's future, with a group led by the Global South bloc demanding that the city stay on Earth, and that it be placed under a democratic-socialist administration. Apparently the IOA managed to listen politely to the proposal before Woolsey famously dismissed them with a pithy 'The needs of the many' quote.
At the end of April, the city was ready. McKay, Radek Zelenka and a horde of engineers, scientists and technicians had managed to repair almost all of the damage done to the city, in addition to installing a more thorough defence system of beam weapons, surface to orbit missiles and updated railguns. There were also a few changes in Atlantis's power structure. Woolsey stayed on as leader, but he was joined by Shen Xiaoyi, who was his deputy, and Daniel, who acted as the civilian counterpart to the newly-promoted Colonel Sheppard, in addition to expanding his research on the Ancients.
At that point, in the dying days of April, the British Prime Minister paid the city a visit, to take the tour and have a few last-minute discussions with Richard Woolsey as to the upcoming departure.
