This is my first ever StarGate fic, so anyone who r&rs, please be gentle! Also, its a kind of crossover with a fabulous sci-fi fiction that my good friend AKL wrote (which can be found here for curious people - http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/realms/440/cats/catsfic/catsfic.htm) and it is based on the musical Cats, but in a very wild and brilliant way. If you are not interested in that, could I please ask for comments on my portrayal of the characters, bearing in mind I have only seen series 2 and 3 of SG1. I would be eternally grateful. Thank you.

Chapter One

"The co-ordinates were found in a Medieval book in England." Gathered around the commitee table with the rest of SG-1, Daniel Jackson opened out the folder and spread the sheets of paper across the surface. "No one could understand them and they were sent on to me, by a specialist colleague."

"And they are StarGate co-ordinates?" The question was voiced by Colonel Jack O'Neill, the leader of the most infamous StarGate groups. After all, he and Jackson, the Linguist, had been two of the original group to enter the StarGate when it had first been opened, years before, and begun the project of World exploration.

"It certainly would appear to be the case." Jackson replied. "They match symbols on the gate and, like the original co-ordinates on the coverstone, they are enclosed in a kind of cartouche, although its not completely Egyptian in style. The text surrounding them is in a language or script that I'm not familiar with, but I have been running some of the samples through the computers to see if they can identify a theme or pattern of lettering to make it comprehensible."

"You say this book thing was Medieval?" Jackson nodded, pushing a hand through his brown hair. O'Neill frowned slightly, folding his hands on the table top, puzzlement written on his face. "But hadn't the StarGate been hidden by the Middle Ages?"

"That's what has been causing some problems in the labs, Sir." Carter put in. She had joined their group soon after the StarGate project had become accepted. Deceptively delicate-looking with blonde hair and pretty features, she had quickly gained a reputation in her role as the astrophysicist in the group, as well as being a brave and determined soldier. "Unless the writers of the book found some writings that Archaeologists somehow missed, this book was written in England in the Middle Ages, in a never before seen language, about an unknown object that was discovered in Egypt in the 1920s."

O'Neill ran a hand over his weathered face. "Daniel," He turned to the linguist. "You say you've been doing experiments with the language in the book. Have you got anything out of it?"

Searching through his folder, Daniel nodded, withdrawing a bundle of sheets. "Some pages were damaged, so it doesn't make a lot of sense in some areas. There's a possibility that this was a copy of earlier documents." Flicking through the sheets, he withdrew one. "Judging by the writing style, the co-ordinate symbols at least were copied from some other source."

"So where was it copied from?"

"I-I don't know yet." Jackson shrugged helplessly, pushing his glasses up his nose. "We've managed to translate some pieces, but we need more time to work on it. There's mention of a conflict, an invasion of some kind and the species, the "tribe" they call themselves, managed to get a small number of their kind to Earth and to safety from the invaders, although - according to what we've pieced together - Earth wasn't the original target for a shelter."

"When and where on Earth did this happen?"

The linguist raised his eyes. "In what we call Ancient Egypt." He replied quietly.

"So a species of alien arrived on our planet in the time that the StarGate was still functioning?" Jackson and Carter exchanged glances, then nodded. O'Neill leaned forward. "And you don't think they could have kept their history in books like, oh say, that one you've got in the labs?"

"It is possible."

"How possible?"

Examining a sheet, Daniel replied. "Almost a hundred percent."

"And would any of this species still be around?"

"We're not even sure what race of aliens they are, Sir. They call themselvesd Y'lika or something along those lines. Its nothing that we've ever heard of before."

"Daniel, do you have anything?"

"I can't be sure until the translation is double-checked, but there's some kind of description of a sundering, some time many millenia ago, nearly a thousand years after their initial arrival."

"A sundering?"

Daniel scratched his cheek with his index finger. "A separation of sorts." Leaning forward, he snatched a pen from the table. "Just a second..." Scanning through the sheets in front of him, he frowned. "If I understand this right, the alien species split their form into two, so they could continue to live on this planet undetected."

"So we have a race of split-in-half-aliens running around on Earth?" O'Neill rocked back in his seat. "Just when I was thinking I would have a quiet weekend." Gazing at Daniel, his eyes half-closed, he asked. "Is there anything about that race miraculously going home through the lost StarGate?"

Thumbing through a wad of sheets, Jackson shook his head. "There was some mention of a home-coming and the Master, but nothing about it being successful. That could be in the missing or damaged pages, but the Master appears a lot and it seems they were waiting for him."

"Ra?"

"It doesn't seem so." Daniel replied, withdrawing a sheet with a copy of an elaborate, although slightly faded illustration from the aged book. In the image, there was a shadowy, almost shapeless figure with gleaming, scarlet eyes. "There's a little written about him, with the word Ha'rum'kha, so I guess that's his name." He gestured with his right hand. "He's described as the Master of this world, the core and central power of it. There's no mention of Ra."

"And there's something about invaders? Could Ra and the goa'uld have been these invaders?"

"Yes and no."

"Yes and no? What's that meant to mean?"

Exhaling a breath, Daniel looked up at O'Neill. "It seems like there was an invasion by some kind of alien that almost wiped out the whole species. There's mention of previous visits, peaceable ones, but this one...it almost sounds like an army of Anubis had been unleashed. There's a picture of one of the invaders..." He pushed the copied image towards O'Neill, who lifted it up to study it.

"Looks like a human with a dog's head, not just one of those helmets."

"Thats why I said it may or may not have been Ra." Daniel acknowledged quietly. "Its possible that there may be a race of dog-headed aliens, or the artist doing these illustrations may have taken some artistic liscence when drawing the figure and thought it may have looked more threatening in that style than simply by using the image of a Goa'uld in a helmet."

"If there was a StarGate present on their world, it suggests that the Goa'uld have been present." Teal'c murmured, his forefingers steepled beneath his chin. The serious-looking, exotic-looking male alien was the fourth member of their group and a Jaffa.

The Goa'uld were seen as the soldiers of the army of "Gods", the aliens intending to dominate the Galaxy, through violence if necessary. Humanoid in appearance, the Goa'uld were symbiotes, joined with a parasite-like creature. Teal'c himself, as an adult Jaffa, contained an infant Goa'uld within his body.

Teal'c was one of the few, possibly the only, to change sides, the only outwardly visible evidence of his previous affiliations being the embossed gold disk on the centre of his forehead and the neutral, reactionless expression that never left his face, even in the most perilous of situations.

Daniel spread his hands. "That's where we have another problem."

O'Neill raised a brow. "Oh good. Another one. Can't have just the one problem, can we?" Daniel gave him a helpless look. "So what is this one?

"They didn't have a StarGate at their end, before they sent the "tribe" through. They didn't use one."

"But that's impossible!" Carter straightened up in her seat. "You can't emerge from a StarGate without going through one at the other end!"

"I know that, Sam, but that's what the book says." Reading through some of his notes, he quoted. "The wizards at the Citadel - I'm guessing that was their central point of power - joined their powers to open a gateway from nothing to allow five and twenty chosen ones to seek refuge on another world. There was much pain and suffering, the battle raging, as the powers connected with an accessible doorway on another World, forcing it to open and accept them. Those chosen few entered the doorway to the new World and it closed once more behind them."

"How does that prove that there wasn't a StarGate?"

"The opening a gateway from nothing suggests it and the fact that they had to force a wormhole to open on another World back it up." Daniel answered. "From the sounds of it, they had some very powerful mystical agents who had the power to form a mental StarGate just long enough to allow a small contingent of their kind to escape."

"Then why do we have the co-ordinates to the gate if it didn't exist?" O'Neill demanded.

"If an unclaimed planet linked to a StarGate, Ra and Apophis would both have been aware of it." Teal'c said. "He would wish to find this planet and, if it was suitable, he would place a StarGate there. If the magical force was powerful enough to open a wormhole from the planet of origin, it is certain that he would be intrigued by it. I believe that there will probably be a StarGate there now."

"You think its possible that someone could open a wormhole from the inside? With magic?" O'Neill asked skeptically.

"It would be possible, although it would probably cause the deaths of those performing the task." The former Jaffa answered calmly. "For them to perform it, they would have been formidable magicians."

O'Neill raised a hand, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but I just can't accept this explanation. For me, magicians are the guys in top hats and cheap costumes who make balloon animals and pull rabbits out of hats. I can't see them opening a wormhole by mind-power alone."

"We can't prove it, Jack." Jackson replied quietly. "It is possible, though."

"Then why are the co-ordinates in that book? Why didn't they use them, instead of just writing them down? Why did the race go to the trouble of 'sundering' themselves," He made airquotes with his fingers. "If they could have simply returned through the gate, using the co-ordinates?"

"Well, the gate was sealed and buried in Ancient times." Sam suggested. "Maybe, they got the gate's co-ordinates some time after the humans had buried the StarGate and they had no choice but to sunder themselves, to save their species."

"So who would be the one writing the book, then? You said its written in an unknown language, right?"

Daniel nodded. "If the species split into two forms, I would assume that one of those forms was human, to allow them to move freely." He said. "If this was the case, it could be the human form who wrote the book and continued to record the history of the species, which would explain why they kept the co-ordinates - in case they ever found a gate to take them home."

"In it's own language?"

"Sir, it would have to be written in some kind of different language." Sam said. "If you wrote in a human's language about space travel, supernatural Masters and overlords and magic during the Middle Ages, you would probably have been executed for being a follower of Satan."

"Well, that solves that mystery." O'Neill sat back, his palms spread on the tabletop. "So what are we gonna do with this information? Do we go through the StarGate to see what these invaders were? Do we find out what this species is and whether they managed to get back to their planet by some other means?"

Sam nodded. "Sir, a probe was sent through as soon as Daniel located the co-ordinates on the Gate. The terrain was too rough for it to move far and the gate was positioned awkwardly so it could not show the full gate, but the conditions it relayed are almost identical to those on Earth, so it would be safe to at least scope it out."

"And the chances of these invaders still being there?"

"There's a chance, Jack, but they've been there for almost seven thousand years now. They're probably civilised beings and if they're not, we don't have to approach them, unless strictly necessary. If we encounter hostility, we can always set a seal on the gate for after we leave."

"You're really fired up about this, aren't you, Daniel?"

"I-I just think the whole world sounds fascinating."

"If we come under attack, I'll remember that."