AMBITIONS
by Soledad
Author's notes:
For disclaimer, rating, etc. see Part 1.
You'll find some familiar names in this chapter – and it's not a coincidence:o)
The technobabble has been borrowed from the GateWorld website. I don't even pretend to understand it.
PART 03
The following Thursday found Calvin at Colorado Springs Airport, staring out of the large window that occupied the entire wall of the lounge at the night skies of the city. He suspected that the military had had a conscious choice by booking him an evening flight, so that he'd arrive at nighttime. Either they wanted to intimidate him – which wouldn't work by someone whose father's favourite punishment had been to shut him into the walk-in closet under the stairs – or they didn't want him to find the way to the base alone, should the deal not come together, after all.
There were several other people waiting in the lounge, their moods varying between anxious (a small Japanese woman wearing unproportionally large, round glasses), excited (a somewhat pudgy-faced, sandy-haired man in his mid-thirties) an impatient (a rather plain woman of about thirty, with shoulder-length dark blonde hair, whose entire demeanour practically screamed "scientist"). Ruling out the group of boy scouts with their balding leader and the family with the teenaged kids practicing their skateboard skills in front of the window, Calvin would imagine the three to be the other newbies. The general had scheduled a meeting for all of them for tomorrow; it would be only logical to have them arrive at the same time. One could think of the military what one wanted, but they certainly were one thing – efficient.
The next flight was announced, and the boy scouts grabbed their backpacks and left the lounge, followed by the teenaged kids and their somewhat… weary parents. Barely were they gone, a dark-skinned man in a Marine uniform entered the room, with a list in his hand.
"Dr. Felger?" he asked, and the pudgy-faced man raised a hand excitedly. Calvin briefly considered the possibility that the man might be Jay Felger – something of a legend among young scientists, both for his brilliance and eccentricity. But it didn't seem very likely that this rabbit-like creature would actually have four post-graduate degrees and half a dozen highly innovative theories in applied mathematics.
The Marine ticked a name on his list and looked up again. "Dr. Kavanagh?"
"That would be me," Calvin said, ignoring the disapproving look the soldier gave his ponytail with practiced ease. People tended to have funny reactions to his preferred hairdo, but he couldn't care less. They'll get used to it. Or find something else to get upset about.
The Marine ticked off his name and looked at the Japanese woman. "Dr. Kusanagi, I presume?"
One didn't have to be a rocket scientist – well, some of the people present probably were, but that wasn't the point – to guess which one she would be. She nodded nevertheless, giving the soldier with the forbidding facial expression a nervous smile.
"And Dr. Simpson," the Marine pocketed his list, not even asking the blonde woman's name. It wasn't so as she could have been anyone else. "Welcome to Colorado Springs, ladies, sirs. I'm Gunnery Sergeant Michael Bates. General Hammond sent me to take you to Cheyenne Mountain. If you'd follow me…"
"Just a moment, Sergeant," the blonde woman, Simpson, said in a manner that revealed that she was used to deal with soldiers. An Army brat perhaps? Or had she worked for the military before? Calvin wondered what her field might be. "We need to get our luggage first."
Bates shot her an unbelieving look. "You mean you don't have it yet?"
"We were told to wait here until someone came to fetch us," Simpson replied. "The instructions were very clear."
Bates seemed a bit frustrated, having the military literal-mindedness turned against him for a change. "Just how much stuff do you ladies need for a single flight?"
Simpson rolled her eyes. "My stuff is here in my travelling bag. But Miko… Dr. Kusanagi comes directly from Tokyo, and she needed a little more, understandably."
The Japanese woman blinked apologetically and nodded several times. She seemed downright terrified. Apparently, military intimidating techniques did work on some people. Simpson patted her on the fragile shoulder encouragingly.
"It's all right, Miko. How many suitcases do you have?"
"Two," Dr. Kusanagi admitted, with an uncertain look at Sergeant Bates' handsome but slightly unfriendly face. "Is that too much for one person? Will there be enough room in the car for them?"
"I'm sure there will, won't there, Sergeant?" Simpson patted her shoulder again and gave Bates a sickeningly sweet smile.
To his credit, Bates recognized a commanding presence when he saw one. "Yes, ma'am. It won't be a problem, ma'am."
His eyes grew cold, and Calvin hoped for Simpson's sake that there were some very specific orders for the Marines at the base that prohibited the shooting of geeks. Sergeant Bates seemed to him like a man who was capable of keeping grudges for a very long time.
They followed Bates out to the parking lot, where a military jeep was waiting for them. Bates ordered the driver, a good-natured PFC of the size of a walk-in closet to go and fetch Dr. Kusanagi's suitcases, calling him "Smithy", which was something of a surprise. Marines weren't renowned of giving each other pet names. The young soldier carried out the order in record time, and they stuffed all their bags into the jeep and finally got in themselves to leave for the base.
The way through relative darkness was quite long. Calvin supposed they were taking the scenic route around the city, rather than through it – again, so that they'd have difficulties finding their way, until they signed their contracts. With his near-perfect memory, he could have noticed the twists and turns of their route, of course, but he saw no reason to do so. He'd be travelling through the city later anyway. So instead he chose to stare out of the window into the darkness, thinking about the possible scientific challenges that were waiting for them, and trying to persuade himself that he was not excited, studiously ignoring Dr. Felger's feeble attempts to start a conversation.
When they reached the automatic vehicle gate of the base, he noticed with slight discomfort the armed sentries at the checkpoint. They seemed just a bit more wary than they should have been on any normal, boring day.
"The base is on full alert," Simpson commented in a low voice.
Calvin gave her a questioning look behind Bates' back. She pointed at the roof of the cinder-block buildings surrounding the entry that was tucked under the granite overhang of the mountain. In the matte light of the lamps the airmen patrolling the roofs were barely visible but very much present nonetheless.
Calvin considered the importance of their presence. Apparently, those sentries shouldn't be there under normal circumstances, or else Simpson wouldn't be surprised seeing them. Have they been called in because of some sort of impending military crisis? God, he hoped not. All he wanted was a quiet lab where he could do his job.
They passed second and third checkpoints, where both Bates and the driver had to show their ID-cards before allowed to pass. The whole thing made Calvin increasingly nervous. What had he gotten himself into? This started to look like some bad sci-fi movie.
Finally, the vehicle was parked and they got out. Bates ordered Smithy, the driver, to get their luggage to the main facility. That was where they were heading themselves, walking past more sentries – who were carrying both sidearms and rifles – down a long hallway and into a steel elevator. Bates touched a button labelled "Sublevel Eleven", and the elevator began to sink with them deep into the mountain.
Calvin wondered just how deep they were going to go. He'd done his homework, of course, researching on the Internet, and found some limited information about Cheyenne Mountain. So he knew that the center was housed two thousand feet underground and that it was designed to withstand a multi-megaton yield weapon at a range of almost three kilometres. He'd also tried to imagine the design of the complex based on the descriptions, but these depressingly similar corridors didn't tell him whether his imagination was right or wrong.
At Sublevel Eleven they left the elevator and walked down another hallway. Passing a reception desk, Bates swapped information with the uniformed young woman sitting behind it, using some military jargon that said Calvin nothing. He looked at Simpson who shook her head slightly. Must have been some very specific military jargon, then. Bates nodded to the female airman and turned back to his charges.
"We'll have to take another elevator," he announced. "It's a long way down yet."
Calvin refrained from asking how long, knowing he wouldn't get an answer. They rode the other elevator, plunging even deeper into the mountain, then left the steel cabin at Sublevel 27 and walked through other halls. Finally, they turned one last corner and confronted one last guard, who exchanged wordless nods with Bates.
Bates knocked on the heavy door.
"Come," a gruff voice answered from within.
Bates opened the door and indicated them to enter. "This way, please."
They came into some sort of briefing room, equipped with a long conference table, an overhead projector and a video-conference setup. There was even an automatic whiteboard, the sort where one had to push a button so that a scanning bar would pass over its surface, transferring every written information to a piece of glossy paper extruding from one side. Apparently, no tax dollars were saved when this place had been built.
Several people were sitting on one side of the table (Calvin only recognized Dr. Carter among them, who, just like the others, was military fatigues). The other side was left unoccupied, with four empty seats for the visitors. A middle-aged, rotund man rose from the head of the table when they entered. He had a bald head and sharp features; his small eyes sharp and attentive. He wore the rank insignia of an Air Force general.
Bates came to attention right inside the room, snapping a smart salute.
"Sir, doctors Felger, Kavanagh, Kusanagi and Simpson, as ordered," he said crisply. Calvin rolled his eyes but realized this wouldn't be the best moment to protest.
The general returned the salute. "Thank you, Sergeant. You're relieved, until further notice."
"Yes, sir!" Bates turned on his heals smartly and left the room.
The general looked at his guests with frank interest. "Welcome to Cheyenne Mountain, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I'm General George Hammond, currently the commanding officer of the command you'll be working for. Have a seat, please."
Calvin took the offered seat with some barely veiled nervousness. He was eager to find out what exactly had he gotten himself into and glared at the general, as if he could make him go on faster by sheer willpower.
"This will be a short orientation only," Hammond continued. "You'll be debriefed in detail later, by Major Carter and the other scientist working here. But before we start anything," he placed similar-looking printouts in front of Calvin and the little Japanese scientist, "you need to sign these."
Ignoring the obvious impatience of the others, Calvin took his time to read the document to the last footnote. It simply said that he swore not to give any information to anyone about anything he might do, see or hear within the MCOC – only phrased more officially and intimidatingly. Well, he could do that. He fished a pen out of his pocket and signed the thing.
Then something occurred to him.
"What about them?" he asked, looking at Felger and Simpson.
"They've already signed a similar declaration at heir previous workplace," the general explained.
Calvin shot them a suspicious look. "Which was where exactly?"
"Area 51," Simpson replied simply.
"Trying to figure out how the hyperdrive of the Roswell UFO works?" Calvin asked with biting sarcasm.
"No," Simpson answered calmly. "Trying to adapt Goa'uld technology to ours and thus developing the first prototype for an outer space combat vessel; an atmospheric glider that is capable of interplanetary space flight as well."
Calvin stared at her in mild shock. "You're kidding, aren't you?"
Simpson shook her head. "No, I'm not. Granted, we were far from finished when I got reassigned, but..."
Calvin needed a moment to digest the information. So, this was the reason for all the secrecy. They wanted to have this project ready before the Russians could catch up with them. Well, good luck. He was all for national security – as long as they didn't want him to be the one who built the weapon. There was one bit of information, however, that didn't say him a thing.
"What sort of technology did you try to adapt?"
"Goa'uld," Carter replied in Simpson's stead. She was sitting near the head of the table, next to an elegantly greying man with an uncanny resemblance to Calvin's childhood TV hero, MacGyver. The one who used his brains instead weapons to fix problems. The very one who'd inspired little Calvin to choose science for the rest of his life.
"We've extracted it from an alien vessel," Carter continued.
"That had crashed in Roswell in the 1950s," Calvin finished for her sarcastically.
"No," Carter said, her eyes deadly serious. "Actually, we shot it down only a couple of years ago."
"As in defending Earth against an alien invasion?" Calvin asked disbelievingly. "Do you think me such an idiot that I won't be able to make a difference between science fiction and military operation? That believes in little green men who'd want to conquer this planet, which, by the way, we've already managed to make near uninhabitable due to pollution? To enslave us all? Oh, please!"
"We're not speaking about little green men," the man who looked like MacGyver said dryly. "We're speaking of snake-like parasites that burrow themselves into your neck and warp their slimy bodies around your spinal cord. After which your central nervous system and your brains are under their control, your eyes begin to glow, and you start talking funny. Trust me; they are way worse than the little green men from Mars Attacks."
Calvin couldn't suppress a slightly hysterical laughter.
"Oh, this is rich," he chuckled. "You're trying to make me believe in Wormhole X-Treme? Is this some gigantic practical joke? Am I on the set of that silly series? I hope you didn't have me quit my job at CalTech for that."
The general and the man who looked like MacGyver exchanged exasperated looks. Before either of them could say anything, though, a fine vibration shook the long conference table, making the glasses with mineral water tremble. At the same time, red lights began to blink above the doors and alarm claxons began to howl. A voice boomed over the loudspeakers.
"Stand by for arrival! Stand by for arrival!"
The MacGyver look-alike gave the general a sardonic smile. "Are we expecting anyone, sir?"
"Major Pierce is due to return with SG-15," the General answered.
"Well," the other man said nonchalantly, "perhaps Dr. Kavanagh would be more inclined to believe us when he got the chance to see the real item with his own eyes."
The general hesitated for a moment – then he pushed a button somewhere under the table and a heavy snap door covering the briefing room's large side window was slowly pulled up, revealing a cavernous chamber beneath them.
It was a huge room indeed. Calvin guessed it to be about three stories tall; it was hard to make an educated guess with all those surreal dimensions in the gut of the mountain. With all that concrete and steel that seemed to absorb the light of the lamps in there.
At the end of the cavern, opposite the briefing room window, a huge disk stood, seemingly made of steel and stone. A shallow steel-grid ramp led up to it, both ramp and disk set off from the rest of the room by a wide-painted border of yellow and black stripes, alternating with the KEEP CLEAR warning. The disk seemed to be encircled by two concentric stone circles, divided into sections. Each section was engraved with some unknown symbol that vaguely reminded Calvin of simplified drawings of star constellations. The inner ring was moving, like the circle of a combination lock. Following some pattern Calvin couldn't figure out, it spun back and forth. Each time it stopped, a V-shaped section of the outer ring seemed to snap into place, and the symbol under the locked section glowed.
There were soldiers down there in the room, about two dozens of them, in flack jackets, armed to the teeth, pointing their rifles at the middle of the disk that looked like some tightly closed, sharp-edged metal diaphragm. Even some machine-gun emplacements were in place, and Calvin swallowed convulsively. As much as this looked like some all too realistic scene from Wormhole X-Treme, Liam's favourite TV-show, he knew with a sickening certainty that this was not a game. This was real. Much too real for his taste, truth be told.
"Receiving SG-15's ID code," a disembodied voice said through the loudspeakers.
"Open the iris," the general ordered, and they all watched with various levels of fascination as the metal diaphragm spiralled open, revealing a shimmering surface that was neither light nor water – and yet it seemed to be both at once.
"The event horizon," Simpson commented sotto voce, but there was awe behind her seemingly factual comment. "I've seen vids of it… but they're nothing compared with the real item."
"The event horizon?" Calvin repeated incredulously. "As in a black hole?"
"Actually," Carter replied, "this is the event horizon of an incoming wormhole. That's how we travel to other planets: through the Stargate."
"The Stargate," Calvin repeated tonelessly, feeling like an idiot, but at best as a parrot. "Which is… what exactly?"
"That ring over there," Carter nodded towards the lower room. "It generates a wormhole that ends on a far-away, different planet with another Stargate. It enables us to travel hundreds of light years within seconds."
"Impossible," Calvin shook his head. "I'm no astrophysicist, but the energy needed to form a stable wormhole…"
"… is astronomical," Carter finished for him with a charming grin. "You're right, of course. But you'll see a lot of things here that you'd think impossible. We're dealing with a technology here that's way beyond everything we've been able to create so far."
"And who did create the technology?" Calvin asked. "Those parasites your colleague was speaking about?"
"Not originally, no," Carter replied, "although they've used it ever since the original Gate builder had vanished. No, the Gates – and much more that we've encountered during the last five years – were probably built by an advanced humanoid race that we call the Ancients. They've moved to a higher level of existence a couple of millennia ago and don't need their toys any longer, but we've found their traces on many worlds and are learning more with every new found." She smiled. "I know all this is a bit much to digest at once. I've asked Jonas to give you a thorough introduction as soon as you got settled here. Now, watch!"
And turning his chair, Calvin watched with open-mouthed fascination as several men in military fatigues stepped through the shimmering curtain of the event horizon, as if they'd be appearing out of thin air. Their leader, a handsome officer in his mid-thirties, waved to the armed soldiers in the lower room, then looked up to the briefing room's large window, nodded in greeting and spoke through his radio that was fastened near his left shoulder.
"Mission accomplished, General," his voice came through the loudspeaker. "No casualties. We're all through. Dr. Corrigan has found some interesting stuff."
The general bent to the microphone built into the conference table in front of his seat.
"Welcome back, SG-15," he said. "Debriefing in twenty minutes, Major."
"Understood, sir," the officer replied, then turned to his men. "Move it, people."
The soldiers shouldered their backpacks again and marched out of the room, followed by a short, dark-haired young man who wore the same clothing but was not armed. Probably the aforementioned Dr. Corrigan, then. The event horizon collapsed, the shimmering vanished, leaving the middle of the disk – of the Stargate – silent and empty.
"When it's inactive, you can simply step through it, like through a stone arch," Carter commented softly.
Calvin shook his head in helpless denial. This was so not happening to him! This was insanity. No, worse, this was science fiction. He was a scientist, not some lunatic, why was he here to begin with?
But at the same time he knew that this was, indeed happening. That all this was very, very real.
For some reason, that thought frightened him very much.
"Who shut that… thing down, after the soldiers came through?" he asked the first thing that occurred to him, just so that he'd not look like a complete idiot.
"Nobody," Carter replied matter-of-factly. "The Stargate will not close as long as there still is matter in transit, or else the travellers would be killed, accidentally or intentionally. After the transfer is completed, it shuts down automatically, unless kept open. With a strong radio signal, for example, although Colonel O'Neill," she nodded towards the MacGyver look-alike, "once kept it open by simply putting his hand through the event horizon. Anyway, the Gate uses density molecular structure and the force being exterted on the event horizon to determine if something is actually trying to pass through. It interprets radio signals the same way it interprets matter."
Calvin nodded slowly. Although, as he'd pointed out earlier, he was not an astrophysicist, he'd taken astrophysics as a tertiary field for two years, just out of curiosity, so he had enough basic knowledge to understand the explanation.
"I still can't remember any material capable of handling the massive amounts of energy required to create a stable wormhole," he said.
"There isn't any, not on our planet anyway," Carter agreed. "The Gate, like various other pieces of Ancient technology, is made of naquadah – a heavy mineral that does not exist naturally in our solar system, but can be found on various other planets in our galaxy. It can also used for the building of reactors, as it can produce tremendous amounts of clean energy. We got naquadah generator technology from a race called the Orbanians."
"And it could just as easily used to build horrendous weapons, couldn't it?" Calvin asked grimly.
Carter nodded. "Of course. It has highly explosive properties, which make it useful for enhancing the yield of bombs, missiles, and the like."
"Why am I not surprised?" Calvin murmured. Carter gave him a patient look.
"Dr. Kavanagh, you can't even begin to understand what we are dealing with here. We, the people of this little planet, have been facing a threat much more severe than our own foolishness for the last five years. And we are the first line of defence against that threat. Once they get through us, the petty bickering between the individual states would become irrelevant, because none of us will be there to see who had the last word."
"I thought you didn't want me to build weapons," Calvin said bitterly.
"We don't," Carter replied. "We want you to help us to figure out how various pieces of Ancient – or Goa'uld – technology work. To understand better the properties of liquid naquadah. To find a way (or rediscover a way) how to use it in propulsion systems. We have enough people to build weapons."
"But why am I here, instead of in Area 51?" Calvin asked. "Isn't that the place where alien technology is supposed to be studied?"
"It is," Carter nodded, "and we have more than enough people over there to do so. "But the really interesting pieces of technology are usually way too big to drag them through the Gate. So we have to go to the places where they are firmly installed, and study them there. Currently, we have fifteen SG-teams that are exploring potentially useful planets all across the galaxy. Half of them have an archaeologist assigned tot hem, but not a really good engineer. We intend to change that, which is the reason why we got Dr. Felger and Dr. Simpson reassigned and hired Dr. Kusanagi and you. Among other people who will follow later."
The air suddenly became much too thin in the briefing room.
"You… you want me to go through that… that thing to visit other planets?" Calvin asked, fighting the urge to laugh hysterically by the sheer stupidity of how it sounded.
It sounded exactly like a line from Wormhole X-Treme, to tell the truth. No, this couldn't be happening to him!
"Yes," Carter answered simply. "Don't worry; the Gate travel itself is completely safe. And we don't send newbies to potentially dangerous worlds."
Calvin had never been so grateful for being seated like at this moment, when everything went black before his eyes. His last, half-conscious thought was that he really should have eaten something on the plane. Low blood sugar had always been his main physical weakness.
TBC
Note: The fainting thing in Critical Mass always seemed a bit… overdone for me. But since it happened, I've tried to find a logical explanation for it. This is the best I could come up with.