TURNOVER
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
05OCT2015
The invention of the smartphone revolutionized standing by.
This far underground there's no cell phone signal. It's obviously an unintended consequence of building the base like this. I suspect, however, that the command hasn't minded since cell phones got common in the 2000's. There's a lot less reason to fuck around on the job without signal.
There's no cell signal on other planets, either, as a number of instructors had often reminded me. Zero G's, Swanson.
I'd been checking my phone over and over again, hoping to get one or two bars, and a hint of what was going on topside with them, but it never worked. So I have to do what all other soldiers, sailors, marines, and, obviously, airmen, have been forced to do for centuries – stare at the wall and wait.
Around me, the mountain is nearly empty. The offices and cafeterias are dark, the armories stripped bare of everything. The missiles are gone, the drones, the rockets, P90s and machine guns – they've even handed off the threadbare old M16s. Most of the crew is gone. Occasionally, someone like me treads the echoing corridors, but they go on past shooting tight, hurried glances at me. After a while, I quit bothering to walk around – there's nothing else to look at. The whole place has the feeling of a gutted ship, or maybe a big, empty old warehouse. It's neither as somber or as impressive as I'd hoped. It just feels like it's waiting to die. They've already sealed up the lower levels.
I'm leaning against walls and staring at the floor, checking my iPhone every five minutes, while the battery slowly drains away. An hour later, it finally dies, and, as if waiting for that moment in time when all hope is finally extinguished, the PA system crackles on. The voice speaking over it is not lacking in military squared-away-ness, but it sounds as subdued as the hallway feels.
Lieutenant Swanson, lay to the gate control room. Lieutenant, control room.
I practically run up the stairs, slightly relieved that I haven't been forgotten about. There's practically nobody up there, and, in fact, practically nobody else in the entire station; they've all left already, and only a handful of people stayed behind. It's what the military calls a 'skeleton crew.'
The computer banks are all shut off, except one. It's the aging system that runs the Stargate, and only two other people are attending to the over-worked machine. One is the Chief Master Sergeant, an aging man who's been on base longer than everyone else. The other is the Colonel. I open my mouth, planning to report as ordered, but the CO cuts me off with a quick glance and I keep that shit to myself. She's not one to stand on ceremony - Colonel Carter has been with the Stargate program and, in fact, stationed in this very hole in the ground, since I was too young to write my own name. I'd heard stories about her, just like every other junior officer selected to enter the program. Our lives had, honestly, not been that different, and there but for the grace of God go I. She'd gone from a hero of both Desert Storm and the entire planet in general to an officer with two failed commands and a sex scandal involving a General that, were she a little lower on the security clearance ladder, would have been talked about in every corner of the Air Force.
And I, well, there was a reason why I was part of the skeleton crew for Earth's last remaining Stargate, and all of its effects, instead of part of the crew of PROMETHEUS. I was, as the selection board had stated, 'not up to standard.' Or, as Haley Briggs, my fiance, joked, 'Ellen Swanson is the officer the Air Force deserves, but not the one it needs right now.'
"I've read your file."
I stiffen, eyes snapping to the Colonel. The blast doors are open; the Stargate is vaguely visible behind her in the glow of emergency lights.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You gave up a space on Prometheus in favor of getting engaged to another cadet in the training problem?"
I don't see any use denying it. She's entitled to talk about regulations at this point, I know; but she doesn't look like she's about to give me the senior officer career lecture. She just nods instead.
"You'll bounce back," the MSG says from the corner. It is, I know, not true: my officer review had suffered as much as my pride and career, and there's no coming back from 'unmaking' Captain. Not in this reality's U.S.A.F., at least. I shrug vaguely as a response. I'm through with the Air Force, after this, just as much as he and the Colonel are.
Colonel Carter knows it, even if he doesn't, or is pretending not to. A familiar expression crosses her face, briefly; I don't need to see it for long to identify it. I see the same bitter frown on my own face pretty often, after all. Every time I wake up in the morning and stare in the bathroom mirror, honestly. Maybe I had less reason to be wearing it every day, though. Two careers were ending here, with as much of a whimper as was possible. No accolades, parades, or even departing awards, just standing by to stand by while more important people made decisions for them. After twenty-five odd years, most of them spent doing things that I would have figured were impossible until not too long ago, it has to be a bit of a smack in the face to finish up in a throwaway job. The last command of Stargate Command.
Unless, I think, maybe they both wanted it that way.
They've stopped paying attention to me, or so I think; they're looking through the ballistic glass at the Gate room. I've been inside, of course, briefly, but the Stargate was covered in plastic tarps at the time, and surrounded by senior officers from several countries and a menagerie of other animals that I wanted to avoid. Now it isn't, though, and I can see the massive ring, the hieroglyphs on the sides, and the heavy shield that fills in the inside. It's impressive, and I regret missing the chance to go through it.
Not, of course, that anyone from the U.S. is going through this portal to the stars any time soon. Maybe never again, in fact.
Footsteps ring down the metal staircase, and someone else enters. It's a lonely Marine. He says, hesitantly, "The Koreans are here, ma'am."
They're here for the Stargate, and the computers.
We're here to officially give it to them, in exchange for some compensation that I, and, probably, Colonel Carter herself, are not allowed to know about.
He leaves, when offered no particular response. The Colonel is still looking out. I can't see her expression, but I can see the slump in her shoulders, and for a minute I wonder if this is something I want to be here for. I'm used, even after my own battles in my career, to the idea that the military has only one face, and it's as featureless and obscenely strong as the haze grey steel of the old missile silo in the other room.
The moment barely lasts long enough for me to have the thought. Colonel Carter shoves her hands in her pockets, turns, and smiles brightly. It's an odd sight on the aging woman, but I smile back after a minute, feeling as uncertain as the Marine must have.
"That's it, then."
Its all over doesn't come out of her mouth, but I can imagine she has to have been thinking it. I do, for a second.
The MSG shuts the lone computer down and the machine's labored hum dies.
I later wonder, when I get back to my apartment and watch the far-off sun set and the dismal stars get brighter, how someone could be so calm about giving up something like this. But then, I think, that's what the military is about, really. Giving things up. Turnover. Change of lifestyle, change of command, change of station. Nothing's ever the same, and, with that knowledge, comes the ability to let even things like this go. Things like the stars, and things like a quarter of a decade of what often feels like pointless struggle. And, when the lights on the computer go off, and the Stargate is sitting, dead, in the other room, it occurs to me that the MSG is correct. I'll bounce back. If she's capable of it, then I am, too.
Maybe, I think, we're all done with standing by and hoping to get a flicker of a signal from somewhere to break the monotony.
But, back in the control room, looking at the Stargate, I'm not thinking about any of that. I'm thinking about the two people standing in front of me and wondering if I have any of their strength in me. Colonel Carter's already on her way out of the control room, without a second glance at the object that has to have symbolized half her adult life, a smile on her face and a show of military efficiency in her step. She turns that smile on me for half a second, like I'm expected to get the joke, and says, "Let's give them the keys."
*a/n: some background aspects of this story are pretty well made up off the cuff and may not completely fit in with Stargate canon. TBH, the last time I watched this show was maybe 10 years ago and I've never seen either Atlantis or Universe, so I made up a great deal of stuff as I went along (while attempting to be as vague as possible so it doesn't break the storyline any more than it needs to.) If something is totally wrong u can yell at me, idc. May have also messed up some aspects of the Air Force. I did my best but I'm not in the Air Force and some things may not be exactly the same like I think.