There tended to be very few hectic days on Abydos, and that was the way Daniel Jackson preferred it. The last time there had been a hectic day was when a sandstorm hit in what should have been a rainy season. The last hectic day before that had been... Ra.
The crops were doing fine, there were enough clouds to make the desert heat bearable, and his small school would soon be beginning its second full year. The closest thing to excitement had been a few of the younger mastadges acting up and throwing their riders off.
That all changed when a young man pounded his hands on the door of his and Sha're's home.
He listened with only half an ear once the man started to repeat himself. The message was simple. Humans had been spotted at Ra's landing platform. The same building which housed the Stargate. Humans who were wearing strange clothing. Yet no ship had landed. It meant another team had come through the Stargate.
It had been weeks since he'd gone out to look at more of the hieroglyphs at the structure. Occasionally he would visit, idly contemplate turning on the Stargate and returning to Earth. Then he'd shake his head and go back to the small city. And Sha're.
Now it seemed that the choice of contacting Earth was taken out of his hands.
He mounted his mastadge and threw a scarf over his face to shield him from the wind. He instructed the few warriors they had to wait for him. That it would be better if he went alone to speak with them.
He nodded one last time to Sha're before kicking his heels into the mastadge. It wasn't a long trip to the temple and it was one he'd made plenty of times.
He crested the dune and saw the building. Then he saw them. A small group of soldiers, all armed and wearing the same uniform, were walking around the building. A woman in what looked like a business outfit was standing at the top of the ramp. She was looking at the three moons in the distance until she spotted him.
As he approached the building, she walked down to greet him. He tried to figure out who they could be. The uniforms were different than the special forces group he'd first traveled with, he could see that even from a distance. The weapons were different as well. He narrowed his eyes as he got a decent sight of two of the soldiers. On their arms was a series of emblems. The emblem at the top was the same but unfamiliar, while the one at the bottom was different for each person. He recognized them as flags. American and Austrialian. A multinational team?
He took a glance at one of the men further away. Black, white and red stripes with... Kufic script? Was that an Iraqi flag? His confusion deepened. He'd never been one for current events, but the Gulf War hadn't been too ago. Just how much of the Stargate was public knowledge? What else could bring Iraq to work alongside western governments?
He finally reached the base of the access ramp and dismounted. He took off his scarf and waved hesitantly.
"Good afternoon." He tried in English. She looked American or British. Or at least Western European.
"Dr. Jackson?" She asked. She was tall. She had dark hair and eyes. She was probably fairly young, mid-thirties at most, but he could make out lines caused by stress and work which made her look older and more severe.
"I am. I'll admit I'm surprised to see you here. Well, to see anyone here."
The woman smiled graciously. It was a politician's smile. Easy, relaxed and calming. And practiced.
"Understandable. O'Neill and his men's… fib lasted some time. The Stargate program was shut down and set to be buried. But things changed. Your survival and the events that took place here were eventually revealed. When verified it was decided to reactivate the Stargate as soon as we could manage. General O'Neill was yelled at quite thoroughly." The woman smiled in more genuine humor. Daniel winced in sympathy. He hadn't gotten along with Jack at first. But they had come to understand and respect each other in these very sands as they fought against Ra. He wouldn't want the man to suffer because of what had happened. It had been his idea to remain on Abydos and keep the natives a secret. The woman continued. "Afterwards he was promoted and transferred to a more appropriate military group."
One part of that stood out more than the rest.
"…General O'Neill?"
"Lieutenant General, to be more specific. Partly due to his experience with aliens and partly due to necessity." The woman shrugged. She was answering his questions just as much as she was avoiding them. It was a little irritating.
"Huh." That was the best Daniel could come up with in response to that. "Well, that explains how you're here. Pardon my bluntness but, uh, why are you here?"
The woman nodded. Her smile lessened and her posture straightened. Down to business, then.
"My name is Elizabeth Weir. I work for the United Nations' and currently assigned to the extraterrestrial diplomatic corp. I'm here to formulate a report to the U.N.'s Assembly and Security Council and, if possible, open diplomatic relations with the people of Abydos and negotiate access to the planet's naquadah deposits."
Daniel Jackson blinked at her owlishly. He looked away and took a deep breath. He ran through what she said in his head. Finally he looked back to her.
"I see." He really, really did not. "I was unaware the United Nations had an extraterrestrial branch." He trailed off leadingly. What the hell had happened in the time he'd been gone? How much of the Stargate was public knowledge? How did the UN get involved?
Weir's smile was one of vague amusement but also something… else. Daniel had gained some skill at reading people. Being among the open culture of Abydos had definitely rounded out his social abilities.
She was amused but… hesitant? Worried?
"It's a relatively recent development. A lot has changed since you chose to remain here." The diplomat answered. It explained effectively nothing.
Daniel licked his lips.
"I can imagine. Um, just for reference, what date is it? I tried to make a calendar but the years are different here. I'm pretty sure I messed up somewhere along the line." Daniel confessed. Just how long had it been? He needed a reference.
Weir nodded. "It is September 24, 1999."
Daniel blinked. He had almost gotten his calendar right. That was good to know at least. Three and a half years since he'd chosen to stay on Abydos. It was almost unreal.
"Ok. Ok." He stalled as he ordered his thoughts. "Can I ask what the big changes were? What prompted this kind of action? Why there is an extraterrestrial branch for the UN? I mean, if O'Neill did explain what happened here then you know we had no idea what we were stepping into. We barely got away with our lives. We didn't want to bring alien attention to Earth."
Weir's smile was smaller now. She looked almost sad. "I know. General O'Neill explained the reasoning. You wanted Earth safe and the local population free from exploitation. You both believed Earth wasn't ready for interaction with another hostile species."
Daniel nodded. "That's the short of it, yes. So what's changed? What happened?"
Elizabeth Weir took a deep breath before answering. She looked down and pursed her lips for a moment before regaining her professional appearance.
She looked him dead in the eye as she answered.
"On July 2nd of 1996, humanity made contact with an intelligent non-human species."
Daniel stared at her in shock for a few moments.
Non-human. Made contact. Humanity. Which meant there was no secret project. No cover up to hide from the public. The whole world knew.
His mouth hung open as he processed the words and the date given. He sputtered as he put them together. "That- that was only a few months after I came here."
"That's correct, Doctor." She confirmed quietly.
Daniel's mind raced. "Was it... was it because of us? Did our activation of the Stargate send out some kind of signal or something?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "No. It was considered at first. But information came to light that they were on their way to Earth well before you turned on the device. If they have any relation to Ra or his race, we are unaware of it."
Daniel nodded. Then he froze. The way she was talking. About Jack being promoted for fighting aliens. His promotion being a necessity. First contact with another species. The need for naquadah, an extremely potent energy amplification mineral. Used in weapons.
He breathed in sharply and looked at her. She stared back patiently; almost resigned that he had pieced things together.
"This… this contact with another race… was it a good contact? Or a bad one?"
Elizabeth Weir looked at him wearily. For just a moment the pleasant façade slipped. She blinked and Daniel could see wetness at the corners of her eyes. Her mouth was a thin line. She swallowed thickly.
"How bad?" Daniel took a step forward without realizing it.
Her words were almost a whisper.
"Bad. Very… very bad."
Daniel held his head in his hands. Next to him was a small glass of liquor. It was empty. He wished he had more but he'd never really been one for drinking. Now was as good a time as any.
Elizabeth Weir sat across from him on the other side of his house's table. Calmly answering any questions he had before about the past before they started to discuss the future.
It felt like the world was ending. In a way, he supposed it had.
Yes. Yes, the world had ended. He had simply been on a different one when it happened.
On Abydos he'd been living in peace. Teaching and learning and falling in love. He had married Sha're. He'd been happy.
But lightyears away? On Earth? On his homeworld?
The Independence War. The First Contact War. The War of 1996.
Different names for the same thing. The worst conflict in human history. Worse than every past conflict combined.
It had lasted two days. It had killed 1.6 billion people.
1.6 billion people dead in two days. 650 million in the first ten minutes. Two days of horror and helplessness and terror as city after city was reduced to rubble and cinder. Conventional weapons had failed against the Locust's ships and fighters. Desperate, nations across Earth resorted to their nuclear arsenals.
Nuclear bombardment. The words chilled him to the bone. And it hadn't worked.
Another billion lives had been lost in the aftermath. Starvation, sickness, and chaos spread as global economy and trade collapsed. Infrastructure, factories, shipping ports and freight lines were simply gone. There'd been plenty of food in the bread baskets of the world but no way to get it to those who needed it.
Millions more as warlords rose up across the planet only to be beaten down as the governments slowly took back control.
2.8 billion in all. Nearly half of the planet's entire population.
He could barely grasp those kinds of numbers.
But Earth had won. Somehow. Scientists and engineers had developed a computer virus and uploaded it into a Locust warship, which had then unwittingly transmitted it to all the others. Their shields had come down, offering Earth a chance.
In that single moment, Weir said, humanity had united. The scattered remnants of every remaining nation and military organized a worldwide counteroffensive. Thousands of aircraft flying side by side without caring where they were from. China and Taiwan and Japan. India and Pakistan. Israel and Iraq and Palestine. Decades of bad blood left at the wayside. The entire world had fought together and won.
Against all odds, that unity had continued when the fighting stopped. There were mass migrations as humanitarian aid flowed and reconstruction began. Even now, borders were becoming less important as the world continued to unify and rebuild. The UN had been reorganized into a supranational world government, overseeing all the member states. The Earth Space Defense Initiative was the new military, folding in armed forces from around the world. It was the ESD that O'Neill had been transferred to. A global army for the defense of the entire species.
The ESD, under the directive of the UN Security Council and the Presidents of a dozen countries, had reinitiated the Stargate project. It had taken the U.S. government a year just to pull the Stargate out of the crater the Locust had turned NORAD into.
It was too much to take in. Too much change and too much loss. He'd learned that New York and Chicago, the two cities where he'd spent most of his life, had been destroyed. Most everyone he'd ever known was dead. He'd been asking questions about a few others. Some Weir could answer. Some she couldn't.
"What about… what about Dr. Langford? Catherine Langford? She was the one who-"
"I was briefed on the personnel of the original Stargate project, Doctor. I'm sorry but she was at the Louvre when Paris was hit."
Daniel lowered his head again. The elderly woman had found peace after figuring out what the Stargate did. Her father's mystery had been solved. He had wondered if he'd ever see her again. Now he knew he wouldn't.
Then he stiffened in realization at what Weir said. The Louvre in Paris. Oh god.
The museums of New York. The Smithsonian at DC. The historical buildings and ruins of London, Rome, Jerusalem and a dozen other cities. All burned. Thousands of years of history lost. The historian in him wanted to cry.
He let loose a shaky breath. He tried to focus.
"What exactly is Earth proposing? What will they do with Abydos?" It was easier, just a little, to push the thoughts away. To narrow his vision to what needed to be done. He wondered if that was how Earth was managing. Just trying to move from the past while focusing on the future.
"We just want the naquadah, Dr. Jackson. We have no intention of making the locals mine for it or even bothering them if we can help it. But we need all the tools we can get to defend Earth. It's why we've reactivated the Stargate project."
Daniel shook his head lightly. "It's not up to just me. I may have influence in the village but I am not an elder. It will be up to them to decide."
"I understand. The U.N. is willing to negotiate."
"Negotiate how?" Daniel gestured at the door with his hands. "These are simple people. Money has no meaning here. Most Earth crops can't grow here. Giving them food or goods in exchange for minerals will only make them dependent on Earth."
"We can protect them."
Daniel looked at her. He leaned slightly across the table. "Protect them."
"The Stargate is not the only means of interstellar travel. Ra's race is not the only one in the galaxy bent on destruction."
Daniel was silent. She wasn't wrong. Just how little did they really know about the galaxy they were part of?
"So, what? You mine until the naquadah is gone and then leave?" Perhaps he was being cynical. He just didn't want the place he had come to call home be used and discarded by a wounded, militarized Earth. He knew what people could do when pushed to desperation. There were a thousand examples through human history.
"That would be negotiated, Dr. Jackson. If the people of Abydos want us to protect them, from orbit, or a military base far, far away, with no other contact, we can agree to that. If they want us nearby, we can agree to that. The duration can be negotiated. If they want to buy goods or sell goods, it can be negotiated." She set her hands on the table, trying to sooth him. "We don't want to conquer the planet, Doctor. We're not unreasonable. We did not fight monsters just to become one."
Daniel gestured helplessly before he put a hand back to his temple. "I'll call for a meeting. I'll tell them what you want. I'll act as a translator. But if they say 'no', you have to respect that." He pointed a finger at the woman.
Elizabeth slowly nodded as she reached into her backpack. "Believe it or not, we have not forced any nation or people into obeying us. Before I was sent here, I met with an African warlord called Upanga Umbutu. A Locust warship landed in his country, one of the few warships still intact. He's been fighting a ground war with them for the last three years. We offered him assistance and membership with the U.N. He refused both. We'll try again later, but we have not forced him to do anything. Even though many people want the warship and the technology it holds."
Daniel raised a hand in apology. "I don't believe you'll exploit them but I care for these people. I don't want to see them come to harm, even from the well-meaning. Not after generations of slavery."
"Understandable." Weir took out a small folder and slid it across the table. "I've also been asked that you take a look at these. See if you can make anything of them."
Daniel took the folder and opened it. There were a few dozen photographs of symbols and glyphs.
"This is the Locust language." He stated more than asked. "I thought you already knew it? The virus."
Weir explained further. "Their programming and written languages use very different symbols. Knowledge of one does not greatly help with the other."
Interesting. Without an intermediate language, or a common root, it could take years to translate the language if no Locust was willing to cooperate. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs had eluded understanding for centuries until the Rosetta Stone had been found.
"You are a skilled linguist Dr. Jackson. If you will allow it, we would like your assistance in translating the Locust's language." Weir gestured at the papers in his hands.
He lifted his gaze from the photos. "You want me to go to Earth."
Weir nodded. "It would be preferable. It would be a temporary assignment. If you wish it, we could even arrange for your wife to come with you. If you don't wish to leave Abydos, we could have the information sent to you here. You could collaborate with the other experts through periodic conference calls through the Stargate as you work on the translations. Not our preferred plan but it's on the table."
Daniel looked to the side. Going back to Earth was a very big step, even if the Stargate would let him come back easily. But if Earth and Abydos were going to have a working relationship... if he could bring Sha're...
"I'd have to speak with my wife."
He alternated between looking at his notes and out of the helicopter window as he passed by Montreal. The city was one of those that had been spared destruction by the Fourth of July Counteroffensive. Though he could see sections of the city were still damaged from the battle that had taken place over it, it was in mostly good condition.
Montreal had been lucky.
He'd seen DC in person. He'd stood in the middle of the National Mall. Stared at the sites where monuments had once been. All that was there now was blackened ground or scorched rock or construction vehicles cleaning up or laying foundations. The patch where the White House once stood had been fused into glass.
Daniel shook his head. He had also seen the plans, however nebulous they were, to rebuild the museums and the monuments. He'd seen the cranes and construction crews waiting for the blueprints to be finalized. There was talk about adding to the Washington Memorial: making it bigger and adding the names of every serviceman and volunteer who had died fighting the Locust in the war.
The helicopter crested a small mountain and Daniel's breath caught. He got out of his seat and looked out the front window. He gripped a handle on the ceiling to keep steady.
"Good god." He breathed as he took in the sight of the Locust Destroyer.
Ra's ship had been large. Several hundred meters across and just as tall. It was both angular and smooth. Shiny and metallic to capture the attention. Its interior surfaces gilded gold, covered with inlaid gems and precious metals sculpted into art. It had been ostentatious and extravagant and elegant. A pleasure palace that could fly.
This ship was, simply put, a behemoth. Monolithic. A simple black disc fifteen miles wide. There were no real features on the outside except for one section by the edge: a groove and a tower a hundred times the size of a sky scraper. It stretched as far as the eye could see; utterly dwarfing the surrounding hills, mountains and the few structures it hadn't crushed under its mass. He could see white tarps spread across sections of the surface. Dozens of cranes were dotted around the sides and the top of the vessel. A small city of prefabricated buildings had sprung up around it.
"Pictures just don't do it justice, do they? This is one of the more intact ones, so you can really get the scale of it."
He looked at the woman who had spoken. He'd barely paid attention to her during the flight. He'd been too absorbed in the Locust's strange language and the few translation attempts he'd been given.
"Colonel Samantha Carter, ESD. Formerly U.S. Air Force." She extended her right hand. Her only hand. For a moment he stared at her and the burn scars that extended along the left side of her neck and jawline. He realized he'd been staring and sputtered.
"Daniel Jackson. Linguist. I'm sorry, I- I didn't mean to-" He shook her hand.
The blonde smiled wider. "It's alright. But you're Daniel Jackson? You may not know it, but I was assigned to the Stargate Project back when you first went through. I was almost chosen to go with you and O'Neill. There was an issue with the computer interface so they wanted me monitoring the activation instead."
Daniel adjusted his glasses and took a look at her. He didn't really recognize her but he hadn't interacted much the base staff when he'd been translating the Stargate. "Really? Well, I'd say you didn't miss much. Just... more genocidal aliens."
"I suppose so. It's disappointing, you know?" Carter smiled grimly. "Aliens exist, but they're all assholes."
That, Daniel could agree with. After so long wondering if they were alone in the universe, the question had been answered in the worst ways imaginable.
"If you don't mind me asking... did you... fight them?" He gestured vaguely at her.
Carter shrugged in her seat. "Fight? Not really. I was heading into NORAD when it came under attack. Considering what happened there, I count myself pretty lucky. I'm an optimist and scientist. If I'm really lucky we might be able to reverse engineer their bio-suits before too long. Maybe get a brand new prosthetic."
"That… that would be something." Biomechanical suits. Plasma weaponry. Anti-gravity. Nanotechnology. Earth really was picking apart everything it could find, civilian or military. Already a few tech companies had developed prototypes of some kind of buttonless super-phone. He had no idea how that would work out. Phones were phones.
The helicopter passed over the edge of the black dome and descended through a massive opening in the top of the Locust craft. Parts of the opening were jagged and blackened, probably from a bombing run or a heavy missile strike. The rest of the entrance was cleanly cut through the outer hull. He wondered how many man hours it had taken to cut and haul that much metal away.
"Just making sure, the ship is... safe?" Daniel looked at Col. Carter for reassurance. How easy would be to hide in a ship that size?
"It's safe. Took nearly three months to clear out the last of the Locust survivors, but the ship is ours."
The inside was just as large as the outside implied. There was plenty of room for the helicopter to maneuver forward several hundred meters before landing on what looked to be an internal landing pad. There were other helicopters present, alongside a few dozen small vehicles and groups of armed men. Scores of men and women in lab coats, blast helmets, or harnesses were moving around crates and distributing equipment. The whole area was a bustle of activity as everyone from security guards to theoretical physicists went about their duties on the alien ship.
As the helicopter touched down and turned off its engines, Daniel took a look at his map and mission briefing. He was supposed to go to one of the control centers, take a few photos of the symbols there, and then head down to the lower hangar and meet Jack O'Neill for the first time in over three years. Carter informed him of the lower hangar's location. She was assigned to study the anti-gravity generators of the Locust fighters. She gave him a point in the right direction before heading off.
He slowly made his way through the ship, asking for directions twice and then finally getting a lift in a golf cart to where he needed to be.
Daniel entered the control room and took a look around. It was unsurprisingly large, probably the size of a football field. There were more scientists and more soldiers spread throughout. Sections of the floor had been peeled up around the room, exposing the cables and circuitry underneath.
Near the center of the room, two men were having a loud conversation. One was white, tapping away at a laptop hooked into a Locust console. The other man was black, idly walking around as he spoke. Many of the others were giving them a small berth, allowing them to speak. They looked vaguely familiar but Daniel couldn't place either one.
"-I'm just saying if you want I can give you a ride in one."
"Uh, yeah, no. No thank you. I get airsick. You know that."
"Look, David, you've gotta get over this. You threw up on Air Force One. That's embarrassing."
"I get airsick! And traveling in an alien craft -which I also got sick in- will not help with that."
Daniel slowly made his way through the whole room. He curiously looked at some of the consoles and took photos of the many symbols and their post-it note translations. He half-listened to the pair's conversation.
The black man walked over to one of the consoles near David. It was cordoned off with bright orange cones and yellow caution tape. DO NOT APPROACH and DO NOT TOUCH signs were stationed around the large console.
"Hey Dave, is that supposed to be flashing?" The black man pointed at the very center of the large panel. Sure enough, there was a small button flashing orange.
David looked over. "Yeah. Yeah, the flashing button is good. Don't push that. It's cordoned off for a reason."
The dark-skinned man slowly, slowly turned to him. "So what happens if someone pushes the button?"
David looked straight ahead for several seconds. Then he turned to face his colleague. "Uh… do you remember 'oops'?"
The black man raised his eyebrows and gave his associate a look. "I will never forget 'oops'."
"Pushing the button would be an 'oops'. An enormous 'oops'."
The man raised his hands and stepped away from the caution tape. "Nope. No 'oopses' today. The fat lady will not be singing, thank you."
The other man threw his hands up. "Again with the fat lady? You're obsessed with the fat lady. Obsessed, Steve."
Steve simply laughed. "It's great how much it bothers you."
David ignored Steven's teasing and kept talking as he returned to working the laptop. "Does- does Jasmine know about this? Does your wife know about your obsession? This thing with the fat lady seems like something she should, uh, know."
Daniel finished talking his pictures and moved to the other end of the room. He gave only a single glance back before leaving to head down to the hangar where most the resident researchers had set up.
'What a strange pair.'
AN: So I got inspired and threw this together in an airport on July 5th. I hope it's enjoyable but I don't really have any plans to continue it. I think it would be an interesting jump off point, though. With the Locust in play it wouldn't quite follow the typical 'advanced humanity' routes of some SG fics. There would be different relationships with different factions due to humanity defeating the Locust and not being quite so dependent on offered technology- they have a lot right on Earth. Not to mention possible conflicts between Goa'uld and Locust.
Resurgence may not have lived up to my expectations, but I'm still a fan of the worldbuilding they did for Earth after the first movie.