SGC: UK

Episode One ~ The Big Silver Disc

Winter

The hurricane hits the south coast with sixty mile an hour winds, clawing at the coastline like a wild beast, devouring beach huts, promenades, cars and cliffs. Crashing waves over buildings and tearing trees from the ground, it leaves a trail of devastation in its wake as it passes.

Commander Jack O'Neill leans nonchalantly against a wall outside the empty diner, sipping on a cup of coffee, enjoying the calm, bright sunshine after the storm the night before. Deep underground, the SG:UK base had been untouched by the hurricane but the coast had taken a pounding nearby. One or two small villages are still flooded from the high storm surge and roads are blocked by fallen trees. The army had been mobilised and some of the ground crew from the base have gone to help.

'There you are... we are wanted for a briefing, now!' Daniel Jackson calls from the doorway of the diner.

'Briefing? What about?' Jack doesn't move from his resting spot.

'I guess we will find out at the briefing.' Daniel yells over his shoulder heading back to the express lift. 'Hurry up!'

Jack sighs and drinks the rest of the coffee, feeling it scald the inside of his throat. 'Ouch, this had better be worth it and not another one of the Professor's team building sessions,' he mutters under his breath. By the time Jack reaches the atrium where the rest of the team are gathered, Professor Pete Cromwell is pointing to a video of what looks like a cliff on a beach playing on all the screens.

'Last night, the south coast, as you know, was battered by a once in a century storm. This is a cliff at Charmouth. A stretch of shale and clay, notorious for cliff falls and mudslides. Last night a huge section was washed down onto the beach by the storm revealing this.'

Pete points to a large silver object wedged tight into the cliff, sunlight glinting off it's curved edge. 'I have already dispatched the ground crew to cordon off the area ahead of us arriving. We will fly in by helicopter from this end of the beach and approach with caution.'

'Embedded into the cliff by the storm?' Jack asks, taking a closer look at the footage playing on a loop.'Is it a grain silo roof?'

'Possibly.' Pete replies.

'Look how much cliff has fallen onto the beach.' Tealc remarks, 'Is it possible this object was revealed by the storm?'

Daniel wanders over to a nearby screen and freeze frames the video, capturing a slightly blurry close up of the object. 'Buried in the cliff? Those shale sediments must be thousands of years old, hey, this is our first UCO!'

'UCO?' Jack knows he is going to regret asking, Daniel's jokes are never that good.

'Unidentified Cliff Object.'

Jack flinches slightly and nods in reply. Just as he thought, not funny.

'Jurassic, the cliffs are Jurassic era, it was a seabed about 195 million years ago, that's why they are famous for their fossils.' Agnes Dale pats Daniel's arm consolingly. 'Not an unidentified flying object, more like a unidentified seabed object, USO...'

'Alright! Enough with the acronym's UCO, USO, UFO... whatever. The helicopter leaves in ten minutes, get your kit, be on it!' Pete abruptly brings the meeting to a close.

As Jack leaves the atrium he glances at the object, freeze-framed on screen, if it was alien technology it would pre-date anything they had ever discovered, ever. Without knowing why, he runs over to the cabinet where the glyph coins for the Stargate Pool are kept and keys in the password, the glass cover clicks open and he takes one of the gold tokens and slips into his pocket. By the time he grabs his jacket, cap, field bag and side arms and sprints through one of the tunnels that lead to the old quarry where the utility vehicles and helicopter pad are, the rest of the team are already waiting. He leaps on board just as the helicopter takes off and it turns in a wide, low arc over nearby Stonehenge before heading south to the coast.