Chapter 2

"Carter, what are you looking at?" The General asked.

"Look over there, General." She said, nodding toward the man who was engrossed in his book across the aisle.

"Okay…. What am I looking at?" He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Did Catherine ever tell you about the linguist she tried to get into the program?"

"Jackson? Wasn't that his name? The guy that turned her down, delaying the project a few years?"

"Yeah. I have his file, and from what I've seen, he's sitting across from us at the table over there."

"How can you tell, Carter?"

"Well General, Catherine gave me his file; I have it right here," She reached down and fished through the bag at her feet, bring out a manila folder, took out some photos, and slid them across to him. Jack frowned at them, then at the man across from them, comparing the two.

"Okay. That looks like him, so what?"

"We should try again."

"Excuse me, doctor? Try again? What does that mean?"

"Catherine used to tell me she regretted not bringing an Air Force officer to that meeting. Said it might have convinced him more that she wasn't just pulling his leg. We have that; you. Not only are you a military officer, you might be his boss if he accepts. And, I have some writing for him to translate, an appetizer, if you will." She winked at him, then asked him for sunglasses and his black gloves. He gave them to her, and she put them on, looking like a black ops soldier, except for her long hair, which she swept back and secured in a tight bun. She nodded to him, and walked over to Jackson, sitting across the table from him.

"Dr. Daniel Jackson, I presume?" Daniel was interrupted from his book on ancient Mayan language by a blonde woman, who nodded to him coolly and sat down across the table.

"Why do you care?" He grumbled, eager to get back to his book. Sam shrugged and cut to the chase.

"Just over a year ago, you were approached by a Dr. Catherine Langford about doing translations."

He groaned and shut the book. "Why the hell would you care? They were just making fun of me."

"Indeed? Why do you say that?"

"Let's see, an old lady comes up to me and tells me she needs to talk to me, right after laughing her ass off at me during my lecture. Why do you think?" He watched the strange woman smirk and pull something out of a manila folder she held in her hand.

"What does this say?" She pushed the paper toward him. It was a picture of some hieroglyphs. He grunted, looked at them and said, automatically, "Lord Ra, king of the gods."

The woman took off her glasses, fixing him with a piercing stare, her blue eyes dead serious.

"We still need you, Doctor."

"We? Who the hell is we?" Understanding dawned on him, and he glared at her."You're with the old lady? Oh, for crying out loud!"

Jack had had enough. No stupid archeologist was going to talk to his head of physics and engineering like that.

He walked over and said, "Listen buddy, we are offering you a job. You gonna take it or not?"

"General!" Sam groaned, rubbing her temples and hoping to make it look she didn't want him over there.

"General? You work with the military?

"Yes, she does. I don't see why she thinks we need you, but apparently you speak over twenty languages or something."

"What about it?"

The general took a seat next to the woman and leaned in. His voice lowered.

"What if, theoretically, we told you your theories were true?"

Daniel stood up. "I don't have time for this. I wish you people would stop mocking me!"

"Sit down, doctor" The command presence and anger clear in the General's voice, dropping Daniel back into his chair. "You doctors are all the same; present astrophysicist excluded, of course," he nodded to the woman with him, and she smiled at him. "The rest of you are all too busy burying your head in the sand to wake up and see the sunrise! We're offering you a job, doctor. Will you take it or not? Last chance to change your mind. Here, have some more hieroglyphs." He slid the pictures from the mission to the good doctor, along with a business card with a number on it.

"Oh, and while you have a heyday with those pictures we gave you, never forget that two people died to take them so we could give them to you." He got up, hauled the younger woman up with him grabbed their bags from under the table across the aisle, and was gone, leaving the coffee shop.

Daniel looked at the hieroglyphs, most of which spoke of Ra and how great he was. Then his eyes widened when he translated a line of text that said, Through the Chappa'ai our lord Ra comes, great pyramids are his doorway. He brings all other minor gods to kneel before him, even Kronos and Freya. Hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt mentioning a Greek god and a Norse goddess in the same sentence? This could be very, very big. He looked at the card. It said,

Dr. Catherine Langford, Archeologist

It had her number and address. He groaned and thought about the striking blonde and her military boss. He hoped he knew what he was getting himself into. He took a deep breath, left the coffee shop, taking his book and everything with him, pulled out his phone, stared at it for about a minute, then took another deep breath and, walking down the street, he called the number and listened to it ring.