History Deferred
Chapter Seven – Reveals
I think it was shock more than anything else. The Stargate and everything that followed undermined the worldviews of fifteen people and by extension, the fifteen nations they represented. For a moment, just a brief blip in time, politics fell by the wayside and these widely disparate individuals responded with their hearts and not their heads. I gave me hope that maybe it was possible for us to come together, not out of fear or greed, but for common-cause.
- Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Terran Stargate Alliance Ambassador to Tollana, 2051
North American Department of State
Foggy Bottom, Washington DC
April 24, 2043
As she sat staring at her notes, Doctor Elizabeth Weir couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so exhausted. The last few weeks had been a whirlwind; a near constant sprint between Cheyenne Mountain, Groom Lake and Washington as she prepared for what was perhaps the most important assignment of her life. It had been a rewarding experience to be sure; learning everything she could about the technologies and intelligence recovered in the six months of the resurrected Stargate Program and how they had and would impact her nation and the world at large. She'd need that information if she was going to be successful here. But still it had been a punishing exercise for a woman who had just celebrated her seventieth birthday.
Diplomacy was as often as not an exercise in stamina, outlasting your counterparts without making a serious mistake. It was a skill she'd learned studying at the feet of the last generation of Cold War diplomats; those invaluable few that had kept the world from descending into the nuclear holocaust of a Third World War. She'd continued her education in the viper's nest that was the United Nations. Having served as a member of the United States' delegation and later its head, she'd seen that idealistic organization's decline and had come away far wiser to the realities of international politics. Five years as America's ambassador to Germany, three as ambassador to France and four as Secretary of State had brought her to the pinnacle of her profession. Her work has seen wars prevented and ended, been responsible for negotiating treaties worth trillions and had organized missions that had prevented plagues. But never in her life had she expected to have a responsibility such as this placed upon her shoulders.
Settling into her chair she took a moment to study the rest of her party, her 'comrades in arms'. General Hailey and Colonel Silva were in full dress uniform, their worry and doubt expertly hidden behind cast iron faces. Neither were particularly comfortable with disclosure but for different reasons. For the general is was worry over increased political interference in with her command. Having come of age during the Afghanistan War, she'd seen what happens when elected officials and the people they appointed played at being generals; often to brutal consequences. For the colonel is was more instinctive. Having spent almost fifteen years as a Special Forces operator, she'd become accustomed to working in the shadows, influencing events from behind the scenes. This kind of exposure had ended many a career, comrades shuffled downwards to other commands because of the inability of politicians to keep their mouths shut.
Beside them sat General Carter and Doctor Jackson, both dressed in civilian clothing. Unlike their military counterparts, they were relatively at peace. Sam had remarked more than once that one of the advantages of retirement was the ability to ignore politics; often to the chagrin of her protégé. For Daniel it was even easier. His life's work, remembered for its seeming ridiculousness, was about to be vindicated almost fifty years after the fact. The memory of the ridicule he'd received wasn't something easily forgotten and he was looking forward to the day when he could rub his rightness the faces of his detractors.
Elizabeth turned back to her notes as the final ambassador took his seat. It wasn't necessary of course. She'd memorized her opening address days earlier. Standing up, a signal that ended the idle small-talk of her foreign counterparts, and clearing her throat she began. "Thank you all for agreeing to attend this meeting. What is to be discussed here today will, without a doubt, change the course of human history. I use those words without embellishment as what is about to be revealed is without precedent. It is something that the North American Union and the United States of America before it has kept buried for more than a century for better and worse. I'd like to introduce Generals Jennifer Hailey and Samantha Carter, Colonel Myra Silva and Doctor Daniel Jackson. I ask for your patience as they walk you through the history of Project Stargate. Doctor," she said, nodding to the aging archeologist.
"Thank you Madam Secretary. My name is Doctor Daniel Jackson. I hold a Ph.D. in archeology from the University of Chicago and I'll be taking you through the historical portion of this presentation," he began.
"Doctor Jackson?" asked the ambassador from the European Union, an Englishman named Sir Robert Ward. "Weren't you the chap who proposed the theory that the Great Pyramids of Giza were in fact landing pads for alien spaceships?"
"That was a long time ago," replied the archeologist with a smile. He hadn't expected anyone in the room to know who he was. "I was far younger then and perhaps I didn't express myself as well as I could have. I'm surprised you've heard of me."
"I was studying at Cambridge at the time and remember hearing about it from a colleague, Sarah Gardner."
"Indeed, how is Sarah these days?"
"She went missing many years ago I'm afraid," replied the diplomat with a frown. The two of them had been close before her disappearance while on a dig in Egypt had hit him hard.
"A shame," replied Daniel. "She was a brilliant woman. Anyway, let's get back to the topic at hand. This story begins in 1928 during an archeological expedition to the Giza Plateau led by a professor by the name of Paul Langford." As Daniel began, a holographic display activated behind him showing a number of ancient black and white photographs from the dig. "Towards the end of the six month period granted to them by the Egyptian Government, the expedition uncovered a large metal ring buried beneath a sandstone cover stone. The ring was engraved with thirty-nine unknown pictograms while the cover stone bore both hieroglyphics as well as several pictographs matching those on the ring. Tests done on the ring were unable to determine its composition. Indeed the material did not match any element on the periodic table of the time."
"The ring and all associated artifacts were stored in Cairo until 1939. In the buildup to the Second World War, the American government wanted to keep any potentially valuable materials out of Nazi hands. The artifacts were shipped across the Atlantic aboard a freighter named Achilles. During the voyage, something took place that punched a six meter hole in the ship's hull, nearly sinking her. There were no witnesses to this event however a nearly identical hole was found burned through the ring's transport crate leading some of the crew to speculate that it was responsible; a supposition we can now confirm."
"After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the United States Army, in cooperation with Professor Langford, began running tests on the ring. For nearly three years a team worked to uncover how the device functioned. They discovered that the inner ring would rotate when exposed to certain electrical currents and that the device was capable of absorbing and storing unprecedented amounts of energy. Finally on February 21, 1945 they made a breakthrough. The footage you're about to see was found in the classified documents section of the Pentagon only three months ago and has been left unattended since it was filmed so I apologize for the quality," said Jackson as he tapped a command on his tablet.
The holographic display again activated, showing grainy footage of the ring. Several of the ambassadors gasped as the Stargate activated while silence followed as a figure stepped through. "What you are seeing is the formation of an artificial wormhole," commented Carter as the image showed the gate deactivating; technicians picking up the severed umbilical of the figure's dive suit. "The initial explosion was a plasma wave, a vortex of unstable energy that helps in the formation of the wormhole itself. The man in the dive suit is, or should I say was, Doctor Ernest Littlefield."
"How is this possible?" asked the Japanese Ambassador, Hamada Saitou. "Such a device…"
"Shouldn't have been possible," finished Carter. "At the time they didn't know what to make of it. I've read the notes from the team back then and they didn't have a clue as to the underlying physics. Their studies were the equivalent of mashing on a computer keyboard and hoping something appears on the screen."
"What exactly happened to this Doctor Littlefield?" asked the ambassador to the Southeast Asian Alliance, Saanvi Sharma.
"He never returned. The scientific team assumed he'd perished as soon as he stepped into the device," replied Carter with a shrug.
"The test was labeled an accident," continued Daniel, nodding his thanks to Sam, "and with the Allies by that time winning the war, the Army decided to shut the whole thing down. All knowledge of the ring was suppressed, the personnel reassigned to other projects and the facility was stripped bare. The ring itself was shipped to a storage facility just outside Washington DC and forgotten. It would've remained that way save for one person. Doctor Littlefield had a fiancé, Catherine Langford, the daughter of Paul Langford. For reasons she chose never to share, she was convinced that Ernest was still alive despite all data to the contrary."
"In 1954 she utilized one of her father's contacts to arrange a meeting with President Eisenhower to petition for the resumption of experiments. While he refused, Catherine wasn't deterred and her petitions continued until 1993 when she was finally able to get permission from the newly incoming Secretary of Defense. He agreed to her proposal and provided funding for the project. The United States Air Force, which had gained control of the ring in 1947, assigned a general by the name of William West to oversee the project. They set up in an abandoned rocket testing facility beneath Cheyenne Mountain and began working to reproduce the 1945 results, something that was hampered by the belief that all of the original research data had been lost."
"I was part of that team," continued Carter. "Technology had come a long way since the 1940s and we were able to make a great deal of progress in understanding the device. We determined that it was made up of a stable isotope of what in 2003 would officially become known to the scientific community as element-115 or ununpentium. Now because ununpentium doesn't occur in nature, at least terrestrially, we theorized that the ring was therefore of extra-terrestrial origin. Further tests aided by two of, for the time, state of the art supercomputers allowed us to create a rudimentary control interface. However actually getting the ring to activate proved beyond our means."
"How was the original data lost?" asked Ward. "In my experience the Pentagon doesn't lose anything, aside from the odd country that is."
"It was a clerical error," replied Hailey sheepishly. "When the Air Force was officially created from the Army Air Corps, several records were lost including those related to the location of the project's classified documents. It didn't help that the Army had gone out of its way to suppress all knowledge of the ring either."
"In was in 1996 that I first entered the project," said Daniel. "Catherine approached me after my famous, or should that be infamous, presentation. She asked me to translate the hieroglyphs on the cover stone and given that I'd just been evicted from my apartment and my grants had run out, I didn't have anything to loose. One of my first contributions to the project was to correct the mistranslated hieroglyphics," he said, bringing up an archived image of the stone. "The scientists, who were really just working out of a textbook, had made several errors. The proper translation is, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'Ra, the sun god, having come from the sky a million years ago, brought with him suffering. We seal and bury his Stargate for all time'."
"Stargate?" asked the Russian Republic's ambassador, Vasily Ivanovich Maheyev. "In the literal sense?"
"Yes the name is very accurate," replied Jackson with a nod. "Judging by the artifacts recovered from the surrounding region, we believe that the Stargate was in active use until sometime around 3000 BCE."
"Are you telling us that the ancient Egyptians were using this thing to travel to other planets?" continued Maheyev incredulously, his expression mirrored on the faces of every one of his fellow ambassadors.
"That is exactly what I'm saying," replied the archeologist. "Believe me, without proof I wouldn't believe it either. An ancient Earth culture capable of faster-than-light travel? It seems ridiculous. However any doubts we had were put to rest within weeks of my translation. Now despite my giving the device a proper name, we were still no closer to actually figuring out how to activate the Stargate itself. Actually at the time I didn't even know the Stargate existed. I was asked to focus on the inner pictographs but after weeks of work I was no closer to figuring out what they meant. Ironically it was the astrology section of the Colorado Springs Gazette that provided a solution. You see the pictographs weren't a language at all. Rather they were simplistic representations of constellations visible in the night sky."
"Now of course the research team had already entered these symbols in the gate but without any real success. You'll note that the cover stone has a large fracture through the middle, partially obscuring the seventh symbol. Making things more difficult, the gate itself doesn't actually have this precise pictogram on its inner ring. The symbol on the cover stone was a heavily stylized interpretation. I determined that the Stargate required seven symbols to activate; six representing the location of the target gate and a seventh representing the point of origin. I was able to figure out the correct symbol for Earth and the Stargate was successfully activated on April 12, 1996."
"We immediately sent a probe through to determine what was on the other side. After several seconds of travel it arrived on a planet with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere located 416.4 light years from the Sol System. With a viable environment established a reconnaissance team shortly followed led by a Colonel Jack O'Neill. I accompanied them in case there was anything on the other side that needed translation. We arrived in a darkened room with a single entrance. Exiting the structure we were confronted with a large desert and when we turned around we found a perfectly preserved Egyptian pyramid, identical to those in Giza. It also didn't take us very long to determine that we weren't alone."
A murmur broke out amongst the assembled ambassadors before one of them worked up the courage to ask the obvious question. "Aliens?" asked Ward incredulously. It was an expression that hadn't left his fact in several minutes.
"What did the journey through the Stargate feel like?" asked Saanvi a moment later, curiosity overriding any decorum.
"And what about this pyramid? How close was it to the ones here one Earth?" asked the Korean ambassador, Shin Whang.
"To answer your questions, the trip was… hard to describe," began Jackson. "Imagine a feeling of numbness, like when your foot falls asleep, but overtaking your entire body. You see images of stars, or maybe energy rushing past you as you shoot down a tunnel, a screeching noise in your ears. But it only lasts a few seconds and then you exit as if nothing happened. Honestly until you experience it yourself, it's hard to understand exactly what it's like. As to the pyramid, it was virtually identical to those here on Earth, at least upon first glance. Definitely in better condition as it hadn't been abandoned for thousands of years however. I'll get into some of the differences later on though."
"As to the locals, no they weren't alien. They were human. We initially surveilled them before making contact. Their culture and language were nearly identical to those of the ancient Egyptians circa approximately 3500 BCE. More so, they still worshipped, or perhaps I should say lived in fear of, Ra. Initially we took their beliefs to be little more than that, ancient holdovers from their distant ancestors that had somehow survived to the current day. However several things raised red flags. Technologically they hadn't progressed past where they were when they came from Earth and their culture had adopted a prohibition against writing of any kind. All of which they claimed were edicts from their god."
"Approximately forty-eight hours after we arrived we realized just how wrong we were. Ra came down through the clouds, his spacecraft landing on the pyramid. Never in my life had I wished I'd been wrong more than at that point. The pyramids were landing pads and the aliens that used them were as evil as anything our own species has cooked up over the centuries. When Ra realized we were among the locals, the Abydonians, he attacked using several aircraft. Lacking any form of anti-air weaponry we were quickly overwhelmed and captured. I was brought before Ra himself and he recognized an amulet that I was wearing; a good luck charm that Catherine had given me and something she herself had received from her father after he found it during his Giza expedition. Ra recognized it and wasn't amused."
"What were your first impressions of this Ra?" asked Sharma.
"At first I believed him to be human. He was young and appeared to have been of Mediterranean descent. I later learned just how accurate that was. You see Ra's race, the Goa'uld, are actually parasitical in nature. The boy I was seeing was in fact Egyptian, taken by Ra when he first arrived here around 5000 BCE. According to what I later discovered, Ra was fleeing his enemies and stumbled upon our world. Injured and with his original host dying, he infested a curious Egyptian boy. Over the next two thousand years he allowed his fellow Goa'uld limited access to our world in order to harvest hosts and slaves, posing as gods through the use of their advanced technology. Our ancestors eventually rose up in rebellion and forced the goa'uld off Earth. The Stargate, long seen as a symbol of Ra's power and dominance, was buried and forgotten."
"Didn't that translation of yours indicate that the Ra had been here for a million years?" asked Whang.
"Indeed however I suspect that was hyperbole. The human race had yet to evolve a million years ago after all," replied Daniel with a smirk. "When Ra realized just who we were, he grew angry. The goa'uld have long enslaved human populations on thousands of worlds and have brutally put down anyone who could pose a threat to them. Unfortunately when the Air Force drew up the mission, they also decided to send along a failsafe in the form of a five megaton thermonuclear warhead. Ra captured the device and it provided more than ample enough evidence of how much of a threat we could pose. He sabotaged the timer, activated the device and intended to send it back to Earth along with a quantity of ununpentium, or as the goa'uld mercifully call it, naquadah."
"How bad would it have been," asked Maheyev.
"I'll take this one Daniel," interjected Carter. "In a word ambassador: bad. Very, very bad. Naquadah has many uses, most of them beneficial. It can be used as a power source both passively, in a process similar to the nuclear fuel in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator or actively as part of a fusion process. Combined with several metals it creates alloys of extreme tensile strength and conductively. By itself it can be used as a room temperature superconductor. But it also offers numerous opportunities for weaponization. When combined with either conventional explosives or potassium is can be used as a powerful non-nuclear weapon. And when exposed to large bursts of radiation, such as the x-rays produced by a nuclear device, it amplifies the explosive yield and releases all of its energy in one massive burst."
"Now to give you an idea of how big this detonation would have been, we'll start with terrestrial nuclear devices as a baseline. The most power nuclear bomb ever test detonated on Earth was the AN602 Tsar Bomba thermonuclear device built by the Soviet Union. Tested in October of 1961, the weapon had an estimated yield of between fifty and fifty-eight megatons. The explosion was so powerful that the mushroom cloud actually touched the edge of the atmosphere and the shockwave shattered windows for over a thousand kilometers. In fact it was so destructive that the Soviets immediately cancelled any further development of that series of warheads."
"Now keep in mind that all we have are rough estimates as to how much naquadah was to accompany the device and its overall purity. However conservative estimates suggest that the explosion would've been at least two orders of magnitude greater than the five megaton stated yield. At the very least it would've devastated Colorado as well as parts of the surrounding states. Worse still, the tectonic shockwave would've caused earthquakes for hundreds of kilometers beyond the immediate blast wave. This would've impacted the San Andreas Fault in California and probably the Yellowstone, Long Valley and Valles Calderas, causing their eruptions. At the very least, most of North America would've suffered catastrophic damage. Casualty figures would've been millions of dead in the initial explosion with tens if not hundreds of millions more joining them in the following months. And it gets worse still."
"How could it possibly get worse?" asked Ward gravely. This was already a nightmare scenario.
"The explosion and eruptions would've thrown massive amounts of debris and ash into the atmosphere causing a nuclear winter. Global temperatures would've fallen causing a minor ice-age, a collapse of agriculture and soon thereafter a world-wide famine. Worse still, if Ra had salted the warhead with cobalt or something similar, the radiation would've poisoned much of Earth's biosphere on top of everything else. We're talking about an extinction level event or something very close to it. Within a few years global population levels would've fallen to roughly the same levels as they were in the twelfth century at best."
"My god," whispered Saitou. "It would've been the end of everything."
"Indeed," said Daniel. "Fortunately we were able to prevent it from happening. Ra ordered his vessel into low orbit before activating the warhead as a safety precaution. During the ascent the surviving members of the expedition and I were able to escape and return to the surface using a teleportation system. We recaptured the now active warhead and transported it back aboard the ship, at that point in low orbit. It detonated and took Ra with it. I elected to remain behind with the Abydonians while Colonel O'Neill took his team back to Earth. He promised to tell the Air Force that the Abydonians had been killed in the explosion and the gate buried. I was afraid of the consequences of further contact with Earth."
"When the expedition returned we naturally verified Colonel O'Neill's claims," said Carter. "All attempts to reconnect to Abydos failed and we believed that the Abydonian gate had indeed been buried or destroyed. We now know that they had placed a large stone block in the aperture to simulate burial. Over the next nine months we continued our tests on the gate in an attempt to find an alternative use for it. However by early 1997 the program was again shut down and the gate scheduled for decommissioning and return to storage."
"Approximately six months after the expedition returned to Earth I found something extraordinary," continued Jackson. "During an excavation of the Abydos pyramid I unearthed a secret chamber. The walls were covered in golden hieroglyphs and symbols. Each grouping contained a Stargate address and there were almost ten thousand groupings. I had been content to cut off all contact with Earth when it was believed that the two gates only connected to each other. But the discovery of this cartouche changed things. I immediately tried to dial Earth but was unable to make a connection."
"It was bad timing on Daniel's part," commented Carter with an apologetic look. "His first attempt coincided with a series of power tests we were running that evidently interfered with the normal functioning of the Stargate. By his second attempt, nearly five months later, the project was already in the process of being shuttered and someone had left a crate in the aperture, mimicking what the Abydonians themselves had done. By the third time seven months after that, it had already been crated up and shipped back to Area 51 for storage."
"In the following decades that gate remained there until a combination of negligence, bureaucratic incompetence and climate change led to its return to use. If you'll all remember, in December of 2038 California and parts of Nevada were hit with a massive snowstorm. The fall was so heavy that it damaged structures across the region that had never been built with snow in mind. Following snow storms in 2039, 2041 and again last year worsened the damage to the warehouse the gate was housed in. Somehow it was never detected by the base personnel and the roof literally caved in and smashed the gate's storage crate wide open."
"I had gotten into the habit of dialing Earth once every four months," said Daniel. "I knew that it was probably a futile exercise but I kept at it all the same. Needless to say I nearly had a heart attack then it actually activated. The expedition had left behind much of their equipment, including a radio set and a solar charger that was still functional. My first try yielded no response so I decided to try again in a month."
"After the gate's sudden return from the dead, Project Stargate was reactivated," said General Hailey, speaking for the first time. "The gate was shipped back to Cheyenne Mountain and a new control interface was built. By the time Daniel redialed we had equipment set up to receive his transmission. He informed us of his discovery and the President authorized a return to Abydos. Colonel Silva led her team through the gate and returned with a digital rendering of the Cartouche. It was decided that an exploration program would be established to begin charting these new worlds that had become available to us. Over the past seven months, five teams under my command have traveled to one hundred and thirty-four worlds and made contact with sixty-seven separate populations of displaced humans."
"We also discovered that Ra wasn't the last of his kind," added Colonel Silva. "The goa'uld, as previously stated, control a vast empire and enslave billions of humans. They do so through the use of genetically engineered humans known as Jaffa, who serve as their foot soldiers as well as incubators for their young. It was during an expedition to a world designated P4X-144 that we first encountered these Jaffa. The locals had previously been enslaved by Ra and when he died so too did his dominion over them. Another goa'uld, this one posing as Ra's brother Apophis, has been expanding into Ra's former territory and had sent an expeditionary force to demand the fealty of the locals. They were, as you can imagine, not particularly happy about a return to slavery. I decided to intercept these Jaffa and warn them off."
"Why?" asked Maheyev. "Surely you knew that such an action could lead to hostilities."
"I did," replied Myra with a nod. "My intention was only to talk to them. Initially I had hoped that they'd prove open to some sort of compromise. The locals were terrified of the Jaffa. They believed that they were going to be punished for falling away from worship of Ra. I had to make a decision: either abandon them or try to help them. I chose the latter and I don't regret that decision."
"Of course colonel," replied the Russian with a nod of understanding. A former soldier himself, he could well understand her wanting to protect civilians that couldn't fend for themselves. "Do not take my words as anything but curiosity. I did not mean to offend."
"I understand ambassador and thank you," replied Silva with a smile. "We used a reconnaissance drone to observe the Jaffa for almost an hour before I decided to make contact. They were clearly heading for the main settlement. I ordered two of my team to take up overwatch positions around a clearing the Jaffa were about to pass through while my second in command and I waited in the clear. When the Jaffa arrived I confronted them and informed them that the locals did not wish to return to service. Their leader, Teal'c, tried to defuse the situation by entreating us to leave. However one of his subordinates took our refusal to abandon the locals as blasphemy against Apophis and opened fire. I took a round to the chest but luckily my armor held. We returned fire without further casualties and all of the Jaffa with the exception of Teal'c, whom I ordered captured, were killed. We stripped the bodies of valuables including their weapons and disposed of the corpses before returning to Earth."
"Do you realize what you've done?" asked Ward, a look of horror on his face. "You've started a war!"
"With all due respect ambassador," replied Hailey, "the war began when Ra opened fire on our expedition fifty years ago. I should also note that Colonel Silva attempted peaceful negotiations before being forced to defend herself. My team didn't start this war. The goa'uld did."
"An academic distinction," commented Sharma acerbically, "and one I doubt the goa'uld will make. How do we know they won't come to Earth and kill us all?"
"Because they don't know where we are," replied Weir. "The goa'uld lost the location of Earth thousands of years ago. Our planet is a myth to them."
"And my command has implemented protocols to prevent our location from leaking," added Hailey.
"What sort of protocols?" asked the Swiss ambassador, Andre Fortana.
"We've removed any and all ornamentation from our equipment that could lead to the location of Earth, implemented a mapping program to identify goa'uld worlds so we can avoid them, changed our reconnaissance protocols to more thoroughly scout target worlds before sending personnel, prohibited direct travel to Earth through the stargate, instead using pre-scouted proxy worlds as intermediary points in order to hide our stargate address, adopted a randomized faster-than-light travel pattern for any recovered spacecraft and all of our frontline personnel have volunteered to be fitted with self-termination implants should they be captured."
The last point caused several of the ambassadors to gasp in surprise. A moment of silence followed before the Japanese ambassador spoke to Silva. "You are willing to commit suicide to protect Earth?"
Myra considered the man's words for a moment before speaking. "You know, I've read some things about your nation's history ambassador. About how when confronted with a lingering death at the hands of an enemy, a samurai would chose to end his life rather than face endless torture. That's what we face every time we confront the goa'uld. They have the ability to warp a person's mind, to extract their memories and even resurrect the recently dead. I can't speak for anyone else but if I found myself in that situation I know that I'd like a way out. More so, I know that I'd want to face death without the knowledge that I betrayed my entire world, involuntarily or not. So to answer your question, yes, I would."
Weir observed her counterparts while smiling inwardly. From the moment she'd met the colonel she'd known she was dealing with someone special. That the young woman was intelligent was obvious. Her record spoke of her resourcefulness, strategic mind and sheer competence in abundance. But her words spoke of deeper understanding. While Myra might not have the training or experience, she was clearly able to be diplomatic when the situation called for it.
Her words had been clearly calculated to influence Saitou. It was well known within diplomatic circles that he was extremely proud of his nation's history, barring a few decades in the twentieth century, and that information had been provided within the dossier that had been issued to the SGC's delegation. But her words had also had an impact on three of the others. Ward, Maheyev and the Georgian ambassador, Anastasia Giorgadze had all spent time in their nation's respective militaries. They all understood the kind of sacrifice that Silva had spoken of and respected it. Inwardly Elizabeth moved the three into the 'likely to support and alliance' column.
"Be that as it may, the fact is that you've engaged in hostile actions that could impact the entirety of this planet," replied Sharma. "The North American Union bears the responsibility of any fallout from these ill-advised actions."
'On the other hand…,' thought Weir as she suppressed a sigh. Unlike many of her counterparts, Saanvi Sharma had been assigned to Washington as a way of appeasing certain political elements of the Alliance. Relations between the North American Union and the Southeast Asian Alliance had become increasingly strained with their recent elections. While the SEAA had been formed as a reaction to the Chinese annexation of Mongolia, there was still a strong pro-Chinese faction within the superstate. That was not to say that the SEAA might embrace their northern neighbors anytime soon. But it did make things more difficult for the NAU, especially considering the absence of the Chinese ambassador at this meeting.
"Seeking for the Russian Republic," began Maheyev, "I am less interested in placing blame than looking for proactive solutions to this problem. Now Doctor Weir, you obviously didn't ask us here to simply reveal this program. What is it that you, or should I say your nation, wants?"
"You're correct of course mister ambassador," replied Weir with a genuine smile. Maheyev had always been blunt to the point of rudeness, a legacy of his long military service. He was also not known for his patience, a rarity among diplomats to be sure. "When we were first debating the creation of an ongoing Stargate Program, there were many, myself included, that argued that the stargate should not be kept a secret. Eventually we agreed that while keeping it from the public was the correct course of action, at least for the time being, keeping it from the governments of the world was ill advised. The stargate and everything that comes with it will impact the entirety of the world, for better or worse. So the rest of the world, we argued, has a right to know about it."
"Are you offering us access?" asked Ward curiously.
"We are. We're not arrogant enough to believe that we can maintain complete control over the stargate indefinitely."
The aging Englishman nodded, a smile on his face. "But you want to maintain majority control."
Weir nodded at that, ignoring the look of anger on Sharma's face. "We did after all establish the program and provide the resources to this point. We welcome the participation of all of the nations represented here today and we are willing to share access to all technologies developed from the program, both military and civilian, with reasonable restrictions of course."
"What sort of technologies are we speaking of?" asked Giorgadze curiously. She'd been content to listen to the others to this point.
"I'll field that question," said Carter. "While the list is extensive, perhaps the most interesting technology we've discovered to this point is the Touchstone."
"Which is?"
"We found the Touchstone on PX7-941, known to its locals as Madrona. We first encountered them just a little over five and a half months ago when one of our reconnaissance teams, SG-3, was sent to scout the planet. The Madronans are a relatively primitive people, their technology roughly corresponding to the late bronze age at best. Initially we believed that the mission would be little more than a standard meet and greet. That was until they demonstrated a remarkable ability. The Madronans have near complete control over their world's meteorological conditions. They can control their planet's weather."
"How?" blurted Saitou.
"They use a device known as a Touchstone," replied Carter as an image of the machine appeared behind her. "This remarkable technology takes the form of a small statuette with three calibrated rings surrounding a small sphere. By adjusting the position of the rings you can literally dial up various weather phenomena ranging from clear skies to violent thunderstorms. When we realized the potential applications we requested permission to setup a research outpost and the Madronans agreed in exchange for a standard developmental aid package."
"What does this package include?" asked Ward somewhat concerned; the specter of past 'development' efforts by European settlers haunting his words.
"The packages are primarily focused on technology," reassured Daniel knowingly. Abydos had been for all intents and purposes the 'prototype' for the SGC's aid efforts. "We're teaching them things like advanced agricultural techniques, better building methods, sanitation, basic medicine and mathematics. Things that here on Earth took in some cases centuries to develop but nothing beyond what we had developed by the mid-nineteenth century with a few exceptions. Certainly nothing that could destabilize their culture or pose a threat to Earth."
"And those exceptions are?"
"A good example is cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The modern method wasn't put into wide scale use until the mid-twentieth century but its benefits are obvious. We've also committed to providing them with continuing access to certain modern medications. Again nothing that is likely to have a negative impact."
"I see. Thank you doctor," replied Ward satisfied. "I apologize for interrupting you General Carter."
"Our course ambassador. Anyway we setup a monitoring package in the Touchstone's chamber so we could observe the device in operation. Part of the agreement with the Madronans was that we not interfere with the functioning of the device or remove it from Madrona. Their oral history tells of a great cataclysm befalling their world should that happen. After several weeks our observations led us to the conclusion that the Touchstone could not possibly be regulating Madrona's entire atmosphere, at least not by itself. Reconnaissance UAVs were dispatched and it didn't take them long to locate other structures on the planet's surface, each containing another Touchstone. Additional observations revealed the presence of satellites in geosynchronous orbit as well as high altitude atmospheric platforms."
"We setup a secondary outpost near one of the more remote Touchstone installations and after about two months work we were able to establish an interface with its computers. As it turns out, the Touchstones are part of a vast planetary network. We also found that there were subsurface installations in operation as well that are responsible for monitoring and dampening seismic events. According to the logs, since the network came online nine hundred seventy-six years ago, there hasn't been an earthquake greater than a two point eight on the Richter Scale anywhere on the planet. We also found that the Touchstone network employs specialized regulators installed within the planet's active volcanos, effectively capping them. The level of control exercised over Madrona is almost godlike to be frank."
"Could this technology be replicated here on Earth?" asked Sharma reluctantly. The SEAA, more than almost any other nation, had received the brunt of extreme weather caused by climate change.
"That is our hope ambassador," replied Carter. "However such a project would require the participation of the entire world to implement. And even then it would take many years to reproduce the technology. That's certainly our long-term goal but in the meantime we're working on other uses for the technology."
"What sort of uses?" asked Carlos Ruiz, the ambassador from the Organization of South American States.
"In the short term we hope to adapt the Touchstone's climate simulation software for use here on Earth. You see in order for the Touchstone network to function properly, it needs precise data on the state of Madrona's atmosphere at all times. It collects this data using the satellites, atmospheric platforms and the surface and subsurface installations and feeds it all into a climate simulation. The Touchstones themselves then know where and how to nip and tuck to achieve the desired meteorological conditions. In many ways it isn't any different from what we do here on Earth to forecast the weather. The difference is the level of sophistication."
"A joint team of engineers, programmers and climate specialists drawn from the SGC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Universities of California and the Michigan Institute of Technology have been working for the past six weeks on reverse engineering the Touchstone's software and adapting its principles for use here on Earth. At the same time they've begun designing a specialized supercomputer to run the simulation. When complete the system will draw data from across the planet and produce hyper-accurate long-range forecasts which will be made publicly available by NOAA free of charge. Current estimates suggest the system, codenamed Project Ceres, will be ready for use within eighteen months."
"And the practical benefits?" asked Maheyev.
"Last year the total cost of weather damage worldwide was estimated at nearly seven hundred billion dollars," replied Carter. "Almost three thousand people lost their lives in those storms. Project Ceres will allow us to predict the formation of weather events up to fifteen days in advance with near perfect accuracy. We'll know when and where a hurricane will form, how powerful it'll become, where it'll make landfall, how far it'll go inland and when it'll finally dissipate. The same can be said of tsunamis, tornados, monsoons, floods, thunderstorms, hailstorms and blizzards. Project Ceres will also be able to made seismic predictions so we'll know about earthquakes and tidal waves well in advance."
"Now studies have shown that when municipalities and individuals are forewarned of an encroaching disaster, the resultant damage can be significantly reduced. Cities can build temporary breakwaters and harden their infrastructure. Individuals and business owners can board up their properties, remove valuables and setup sandbags. And most importantly, people can evacuate the disaster zone while emergency services have more time to establish shelters. In terms of economic benefits versus costs, the estimated total cost of Project Ceres is approximately nine hundred million dollars by the time it becomes operational. But the forewarning it will provide will save billions in just its first year of operation, more than paying for the costs of developing the technology for terrestrial use. And that is to say nothing of the lives it'll save."
"How will this technology be presented to the world?" asked the Israeli ambassador, Chana Adelstein.
"We're still working out the details of technological disclosure procedures prior to the disclosure of the Stargate Program," replied Weir. "For the time being we're selecting academics that are willing to work with us. In the case of Project Ceres, the team will claim to have made a breakthrough and have been working to implement it for several years using classified technology. That will explain the secrecy and in fact it's not exactly a lie. The technology is classified and the scientists will have made a massive breakthrough. It's only the source of that breakthrough that is being kept secret for the time being. That is to say the source code for the software will be completely terrestrial but the underlying mathematic principles are what are alien."
"And I'd like to remind you all that this is only what we expect to reap from this technology in the short term," added Carter with an excited smile. "In the medium term we hope to adapt the Touchstone's weather manipulation technology for use on UAVs. This will allow us to intercept and dissipate a storm as it forms."
"What about using the technology to green a desert?" asked the Arabian Ambassador, Ali bin Aziz.
Carter smiled at the question. If there was one nation in the world who understood the limitations imposed by deserts it was the Arabian Alliance. "It's possible that the Touchstone can be used for such purposes but we just don't know yet. Madrona shows clear signs of having been terraformed within the past thousand years. In fact we believe that the primary purpose of the Touchstone network is to maintain the stability of the planet's atmosphere until natural patterns can be established, a process we have theorized will take several thousand more years. Needless to say we're investigating other uses for the technology including terraforming and as a possible countermeasure to climate change."
"And what of the tectonic stabilizers?" asked Saitou hopefully.
"We're also looking into that technology as well," replied Carter. "But we've yet to actually gain access to the devices themselves so all we have are schematics and remote readings. The devices are mobile and exist many kilometers beneath the planet's surface." Carter inwardly shook her head. Japan had long been at the mercy of earthquakes and it had done a lot of damage over the years; not the least of which was the partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi generating station, the results thereof something the Japanese were still struggling to find a solution to. It wasn't hard to understand the ambassador's eagerness.
"I assume the Touchstone isn't the only technology you've recovered," asked Ward.
"No we've recovered much more than that," replied Hailey with a smile. "Given the threat the goa'uld pose, we've made it a priority to recover as much of their technology as possible without exposing ourselves. To date we've engaged goa'uld forces three times. Of those, the second and third were in order to recover their technology."
"So you haven't just defended yourselves," replied Sharma accusingly. "You've actually launched offensive strikes?"
"Yes we have," replied Hailey, struggling to keep her anger under control. This was why she didn't like politicians getting involved in war. "Like it or not ambassador, we're at war. More so, we're at a rather significant technological disadvantage. The only way to close that gap is to recover and reverse engineer our enemy's technology. And the only way to recover those technologies is to proactively move against the goa'uld."
"What can you tell us of these… actions?" asked the Taiwanese ambassador, David Zhang.
"The first offensive operation against the goa'uld, and our second action, took place three days after our initial encounter on P4X-144. As was previously mentioned, during that first action we managed to take the Jaffa leader, Teal'c, alive. When he realized who we were, Teal'c almost immediately defected. We debriefed him but it quickly became clear that, although he was a very intelligent individual, he was unaware of the inner working of goa'uld technology. This was intentional as the goa'uld spread the idea that their technology is magic as a way of promoting and enforcing their appearance of divinity. So we asked another question, both as a test to prove whether he really defected or not, as well as out of necessity: was there a world we could raid for its garrison of goa'uld small craft."
"Teal'c provided the coordinates of a planet called Hesquiat. Not only was there several goa'uld spacecraft garrisoned there, but it also possessed something even more valuable. Hesquiat was the home of one of the goa'uld's leading scientists, Amtes. Even better, Amtes worked for Apophis and therefore Teal'c could provide extensive details of the planet's defenses; he, after all, had been the one to set them up. We scouted the world and confirmed Teal'c's information after which we launched an assault. We captured twenty-seven Jaffa during the raid of which twenty-three survived their wounds and are still imprisoned at Groom Lake today. We also took Amtes and her servant alive along with all of her research data."
"As for salvage, we managed to capture eight of twelve Tara'jeet-class Death Gliders, two Tel'tak-class cargo shuttles and a single Al'kesh-class bomber. This represents the majority of Hesquiat's space-capable garrison. While the death gliders, the goa'uld term for a fighter, weren't capable of faster-than-light travel, the cargo shuttles and the bomber were. We welded the gliders to the Al'kesh for the trip. As for the installation itself, we stripped it of everything of value and shipped what we could back to Earth via the Stargate. The equipment that couldn't fit was loaded onto the shuttles and the Al'kesh including the planet's Stargate."
"What was to prevent this Apophis from figuring out who launched the attack?" asked Ward.
"We spent almost four days sweeping the valley where the battle took place of anything that could identify who we were. Every shell casing was accounted for, every piece of garbage and bit of debris was recovered and removed. Once that was complete we took a page out of Russian history and dropped a large meteor on what was left of the installation."
Maheyev broke out laughing, "You recreated Tunguska?"
"It was the most logical way of covering our tracks," replied Hailey. "Despite our efforts, the possibility of something being overlooked during the cleanup was greater than zero. In addition, during the initial assault on the planet we deployed several missiles to eliminate bunkers that were guarding the Stargate as well as to deploy a non-nuclear EMP to disable local communications. The explosive residue left over from those missiles could've provided information that Apophis could've used to link us to the attack sometime in the future."
"Our highest priority was to cover up who was responsible for the attack," added Silva. "In the end I could only think of two options. The first was a nuclear strike. While it would've erased any remaining evidence of our presence, it would've also made clear that Hesquiat was attacked. Nuclear explosions don't happen by themselves after all and Apophis would've naturally gone looking for his attacker. While it probably wouldn't have led to us, it could've ended up being blamed on another goa'uld, upsetting an astropolitical balance we don't understand yet or worse, it could've been blamed on another actor outside of the goa'uld."
"According to Teal'c there are several other advanced human worlds out there," said Hailey. "We only know their names at this point: Tollana, Hebridan, and Orban. They may prove to be enemies or allies but either way we wouldn't want to sour any future relationship by our actions, unintentionally or not. In addition there is also some sort of anti-goa'uld resistance movement within the empire known as the Tok'ra. It would be logical to blame them for this attack and again, we don't want others to suffer the consequences of our actions."
"With those considerations in mind I chose to utilize a near planetary asteroid," continued Silva, a proud look on her face. "It would be as effective as a nuclear device but it's impact could've also just as easily been an accident. I'll be it a very convenient accident to be sure but still a plausible natural disaster. The point was to introduce as much doubt and confusion as possible into Apophis' mind."
"Maskirovka," commented Maheyev approvingly.
"Precisely," replied Silva with a nod.
"What about the third action?" asked Giorgadze.
"That took place last month," began Hailey. "Initially it wasn't planned at all. Colonel Silva's team was escorting the SGC's assigned ambassador off-world to begin preliminary negotiations with the government of a planet known as Lakona. We were hoping to establish a trade relationship with them to increase our access to naquadah. Shortly after they arrived on planet they were ambushed."
"They were mercenaries," continued Silva. "We were able to quickly eliminate the threat but while searching the bodies we discovered that someone had placed a bounty for the capture of SGC personnel. We also discovered that the mercenaries had also been contracted to recover cargo from a crashed Tel'tak on another world. We withdrew back to Earth via a proxy world and I was able to convince General Hailey to allow us to investigate the crash ourselves."
"Forgive me for saying so colonel, but that sounds like a setup," commented Adelstein.
"And we fully expected it to be one," agreed the colonel. "However we couldn't overlook the opportunity either. We extensively scouted the target planet but found it to be exactly what was written in the mercenary's contracts: a single Tel'tak that had recently crashed in a valley a fair distance from the local Stargate."
"I decided to give Colonel Silva the go ahead for the mission," said Hailey, concealing her inner thoughts. She hadn't exactly been enthusiastic about the mission.
"We took along several combat mechs and a Phantasm gunship for support. Good thing we did too. We encountered a small Jaffa patrol on the way to the crash site and were able to dispatch them with ease. We were expecting something like that. What we weren't expecting was what we found at the crash site. These are Kull Warriors," said Silva as she brought up an image on the display. "They're genetically engineered super soldiers. While not particularly intelligent, they're incredibly strong, regenerate quickly and are equipped with sophisticated armor and weaponry, far above and beyond what the goa'uld give their Jaffa. Fortunately we were somewhat prepared to engage them but it took extended fire from all five of us as well as a missile strike and nearly a minute of aerial bombardment from the Phantasm to take them down. And one of them was merely playing dead. I had to engage it hand-to-hand when investigating what I thought was a corpse."
"After we'd confirmed all of them as deceased, we attempted to access the Tel'tak only to find it locked. There was one more survivor inside; a minor goa'uld technician. When he refused to open up, we breached the forward windows with explosives. The goa'uld was killed in the process. We recovered the technology, loaded it, the Kull corpses and anything else of value on several pack-mechs we'd brought along and then set the shuttle's reactor to overload before departing."
"What was being transported?" asked Ruiz.
"It was a prototype shield generator that was being developed by the goa'uld Anubis," replied Carter. "Of all the goa'uld, Anubis holds the greatest technological edge. In particular, the energy shielding that protects his capital ships gives them the greatest survivability in combat of any standard goa'uld vessel type. This can be traced to many factors: better build quality, a superior shield control suite, improved capacitors, better buffers to protect against feedback and superior dispersion capabilities that spread incoming weapons fire over a larger area making it easier for the shield to reflect it back into the surrounding space. What this prototype brought to the table is the ability to use a portion of the incoming energy to regenerate the shield. Our best estimates are that this technology would increase the survivability of his ships by thirty to forty-five percent."
"Fortunately he won't be getting his hands on this technology anytime soon," added Hailey. "While he may have backups of the project data, there was only one prototype. Also being transported with the prototype was the project data. So we're actually in a better position to apply this technology than Anubis himself."
"So basically we've made an enemy of two for these goa'uld," commented Sharma, clearly not impressed by what she'd heard.
"Again ambassador," replied Weir diplomatically, "the goa'uld have no idea who was responsible for these attacks. The shuttle was destroyed and the Jaffa patrol was vaporized. As far as Anubis knows, the transport detonated shortly after impact. That is a completely reasonable scenario as a crash like that could've easily damaged its reactor."
"Putting aside the consequences for a moment," began Whang, "practically speaking, what technologies have we gained from these recovery missions?"
All eyes turned to Carter who smiled. "Practically speaking we've gained access to electrogravitics, which is to say the manipulation of graviton particles. This means artificial gravity, anti-gravity, inertial negation, graviton towing and repulsion, graviton-based energy shielding and reactionless gravitic sublight propulsion. From the study of their subspace-based systems we've gained access to faster-than-light propulsion, communications and sensors. We have access to their plasma and ionic weaponry, computing, sensors, communications protocols, encryption schemes and electromagnetic cloaking. And those are just the major advances. The capture of Amtes also nets us compact faster-than-light hyperdrives which, while still incomplete, are designed for use on fighter-sized spacecraft. That alone is a massive advantage over the goa'uld. And last but certainly not least, we also have access to goa'uld naquadah-based energy technologies, both solid and liquid forms. Even if we don't ultimately decide to use naquadah for energy production here on Earth, our study of goa'uld reactor technology, not to mention their plasma weaponry, will probably advance our understanding of fusion physics by decades if not centuries overnight."
"I cannot speak for anyone else but I think that considering the extent of the security measures already in place and the successes in recovering alien technologies that my government will most likely be satisfied with the stewardship of the Stargate Program under the North American Union," said Ward. "With the condition that everything recovered be made available to the European Union."
"Thank you ambassador," said Weir with a diplomatic smile. Even after all this time, the old Anglo-American relationship was still going strong.
"I myself am curious as to what we're actually facing in these goa'uld," asked Fortana.
"I'll handle that," said Hailey. "The truth is we don't have a complete picture of the Goa'uld Empire as of yet. We do know that there are currently three factions within the empire at the moment with several more goa'uld maintaining their independence. According to Teal'c, the goa'uld were far more united as little as a half-century ago. Ra was for all intents and purposes their leader and held the position of 'Supreme System Lord' with a small number of 'System Lords' beneath him. With his death, all semblance of unity dissolved. Between late 1999 and early 2016 each System Lords sought to capture as much of Ra's territory, armies and navy as possible. This left them highly factionalized and in a state that somewhat resembles Earth during the Cold War."
"The faction we have to be most concerned with is led by the goa'uld Sokar. This faction also consists of Apophis and another system lord named Heru'ur. According to Teal'c they collectively control a little over forty percent of goa'uld territory and have a distinct advantage in numbers and resources. Their main rival is the faction led by Anubis which also consists of the System Lords Ba'al, Bastet, Kali and Amaterasu. They control only about thirty percent of goa'uld territory but their technological edge makes up the difference. Finally the third faction is led by Yu-huang Shang Ti. He's one of the oldest goa'uld in existence and according to Teal'c he's gone senile and is little more than a figurehead. The real power is held by the System Lord Morrigan. The 'Yu' faction also consists of the System Lords Cronus, Ares, Camulus and Svorog. According to Teal'c they formed this third faction because of their mutual distaste for both Sokar and Anubis, both of whom are not pleasant individuals. They're the weakest but maintain their independence by threatening to side with one side if the other attacks them. If they did that, it would be enough to decisively end the stalemate between Anubis and Sokar."
"In addition there are two further System Lords that have maintained their independence. The first is Nirrti. She's an expert biologist and geneticist and has developed an arsenal of biological weaponry that makes everyone take her seriously. She hasn't exactly been squeamish about using those weapons either. The other is Moloc. His advantage lies in his control of the Sarov Star System. It's located within a protostar cluster and any vessel trying to enter the system without precise coordinates is almost instantly destroyed by the extreme shifts in gravity and radiation. He guards the coordinates carefully to ensure they don't fall into the hands of anyone who'd want to do him harm. It makes the perfect redoubt to fall back to. Worse still, the system is extremely resource rich and he's established extensive shipyards there. It makes conquering him next to impossible."
"In terms of military strength, the Goa'uld Empire, while a definite threat, is not as strong as it would first appear. The goa'uld, despite their technology, are feudal in nature. Many things we take for granted in the modern age are alien to them. Their mining techniques are no more advanced than what Europe employed during the twelfth century; inefficient and dangerous and their farms are little better. They don't have a standardized logistics and transport infrastructure to speak of and their idea of mass manufacturing makes the old Soviet Union look like an economic utopia by comparison. This means that despite controlling thousands of star systems, their space going navy is actually very small. We estimate no more than eight hundred Ha'tak-class motherships and some five thousand Al'kesh bombers."
"Their ability to project force beyond their immediate borders is also extremely limited. An expedition of any size would take months to organize and supply. They simply don't have warehouses full of supplies ready to go at a moment's notice like we do. Travel and transport on a goa'uld world is mostly done by either foot or horse and cart. They have no vehicles, no railways, no jetliners and no freighters. Most of their worlds lack electricity. While they have faster-than-light communications, they are restricted to their highest level Jaffa and the goa'uld themselves. Coordinating troop movements requires runners and written notes. They do have a public broadcast system but it's mostly used for propaganda. They have no military networks, no internet, no telephone system; nothing resembling modern telecommunications."
"The bottom line is that were it not for their ability to bombard us from orbit, we wouldn't have anything to worry about in the goa'uld. Their weaponry is awkward and inaccurate. Their fighters are limited to line of sight engagements and are extremely vulnerable to modern surface and air-to-air weaponry. Their body armor offers virtually no protection against conventional small arms much less newer electromagnetic and directed energy weapons. They have no concept of combined arms. Their infantry tactics are no more advanced then what were used in the Napoleonic Wars."
"Eight hundred of these Ha'tak motherships doesn't seem small to me general," said Sharma.
"Except for the fact that they can only deploy a small number against us at any given time," countered Hailey. "That number is a total for the entire Goa'uld Empire, which is not united. None of the factions could afford to pull more than a small fraction of their navies from their borders without opening them up to invasion. And the idea of a united force moving against us is unlikely. We're not that great a threat just yet. And if we do our jobs right, by the time we are, our defenses will be enough to hold off anything they'll be able to throw at us."
"What about these other worlds?" asked Aziz. "Could they help us?"
"It's possible," replied Hailey. "We haven't yet approached them. We want to have a bit more time to reverse engineer goa'uld technology first. That way we can approach them on more even terms rather than as primitives begging for protection."
"Understandable. I for one would not like to see Earth become someone else's protectorate," replied Aziz as the room fell silent. The ambassadors' faces reflected the turmoil within as they considered what they'd been told.
"I think this is a good time for a recess. I suggest we take the rest of the day and reconvene tomorrow," said Weir. She'd said what she'd wanted to say during the first day and anything beyond that would only cloud the issue.
"Agreed," nodded Saitou.
"Excellent. Then let's reconvene at eleven tomorrow morning. I'll ask you all to keep this information under the strictest confidence," continued Weir, reiterating that what had been said was not for public consumption. "The briefing packets being handed out now contain further information on what you've been told. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have further questions," she continued, bringing the meeting to a close.
As the ambassadors left the room, Myra leaned over "Ma'am, what is to stop them from spilling all this to the nearest reporter?"
Weir smiled at the colonel. "It's all part of the game. There is a trust that's maintained between diplomats. Even Saanvi, despite her attitude, will play ball. Because if she doesn't maintain that trust… well that's how wars can start. And no one in this room is eager for another one of those. Especially considering the threat the goa'uld pose to us all. So no, they'll keep the secret. Besides, they have an interest in maintaining order in their countries as much as we do. An uncontrolled disclosure of the Stargate would cause as much chaos in New Delhi, Moscow, London or Tokyo as it would in Los Angeles or New York. And we did offer to share what we've discovered with them. Carrot and stick as the old saying goes."
"I hope you're right ma'am. I've seen just how bad it can get when people don't think things through."
"So do I colonel. So do I."
