Egypt Earth July 17, 1998
A US Marine stood honor guard, along with local military, in the launch bay of the landed goa'uld Ha'tak, as their alien ally was working on yet another Death Glider. She began swearing in some language her translator couldn't, or refused to, translate as she popped out of the cockpit and her armored boot kicked the side of the fuselage in frustration letting out a resounding clang startling several people in the bay.
He approached her and asked what was wrong. Her helmet whose faceplate was open allowed her to give him a baleful eye. She answered. "The short answer is. Every Death Glider I've checked has been hardwired with recall software. Tearing out the software would make the Death Glider useless. And if we use them against an invading force they would all shut down and set a course out of the system to who knows where.
I've checked over a dozen and they all have it. I'm pretty sure that all the others will have it as well. I've found an easy way for my assistants to check for the program so I'll let them do it if the leadership thinks we should. Personally I think we should scrap them as junk since Novin Thopters are superior in most ways and you people of the Tau'ri are already figuring out most of their systems already."
The two Marines and the two guards from the Egypt armed forces followed behind her as she walked through the Ha'tak stepping over power cables and around flood lamps as they proceeded since the main power, and frankly everything else in the ship was unusable. They walked and climbed though the ship until they reached the lowest level and climbed down some scaffolding, for even the ring transporter could not be initiated from inside the ship.
Pausing on the way to the base camp a short way away to look at the tent city surrounding the cordoned off area. They watched as people on the other side of the barricade and armed security gawked at the two massive golden and black structures currently resting upon their national monuments.
Heaving a sigh Ember continued on her way toward the base camp's radio tent to get in touch with the SGC since they generally don't like it when she uses her systems to contact them unless it was an emergency.
SGC
Ethan Diggs Marine General in charge of the current shift of the SGC was handed the phone. "General Diggs." He grunted as he spoke into the receiver.
"Ah, General. This is Ember. So far myself and my assistants have gone through over a dozen Death Gliders and all of them are virtually useless to you as they are now. I left my assistants to keep checking them but I believe that all of the Gliders are compromised. If there are no objections I'll work on the compromised Al'kesh since those can be fixed."
The general sat back and thought for a while, while he scribbled down some notes. "Go ahead. I'm sending a report up the chain to see if they would like you to do something else instead."
With the conversation pleasantries finished with, the call was disconnected. He handed an aid a report to send up to General Hammond as he walked out to oversee SG-4 off on their scheduled mission to PX whatever planet it was this time he thought as he rolled his eyes.
As the wormhole stabilized a moment of curiosity caused him to ask one of the techs. "How do you tell the front of the stargate from the back of the stargate?"
The techs exchanged glances amongst themselves before one of them spoke up. "There are several safety devises built into the gate. And other than the initial unstable vortex they seem to protect from inadvertently entering the wormhole the wrong way.
Travel through a Stargate is strictly one-way: from the dialing gate to the receiving gate. This is not a limitation of the wormhole, but of the technology; wormholes will transmit anything that enters them, but no solid matter could survive the process. Thus, each gate in the pair takes on a specific role: the dialing gate creates a field that converts the traveler into its most basic components, sub-atomic particles, and transmits it, while the receiving gate reassembles the transmitted matter back into its original form. The transmitting gate creates a force field along the (back) of the event horizon to prevent anyone from losing something if they brush against it. The receiving Gate has the same field on both sides of the gate not letting anything into the wormhole but letting reconstructed matter and energy out."
The General nodded in thought as he slowly walked back to the office overlooking the SGC.
Antarctica
Gary was both happy and sad that the first habitation structure of the Antarctic research post was finished. He was happy because he could finally get some privacy. He was sad because the rooms were much colder than the Tel'tak cargo rooms they had been using for the past weeks. Since it was his off shift he wrapped his subzero sleeping bag around himself and settled down to get some sleep. He drifted off to the sound more felt then heard, of the drill thrumming on yet another trip through the ice for the next core sample.
Egypt
Sarah Gardner filed her resume in the manila envelope and signed the paperwork the military officer had handed her. She hoped that her connection to Daniel would give her a better chance to get into the SGC as a researcher than similarly credentialed archeologists.
As she left the building she headed out of the city to look one last time at the Ha'tak before her flight back to the states would take off in ten hours. She was stunned as she passed the tent city surrounding the site. People from several countries were everywhere. Some were protesters claiming it all was a hoax. Others were protesting about the defiling of the property of the gods and everyone should bow down to the gaudy ships in penance to the transgressions against the gods. Others were simply sight seers out to see the alien ships and confirming with their own eyes that they were not alone in the universe.
Having to dodge around more than one altercation between factions in this mob of humans, she finally left on her way back to the hotel, and then her home, to wait for her answer to her resume.
SGC
The new personnel were being shown around the SGC down to whichever level their clearance allowed them access to. Some were introduced to the Tok'ra who still remained on the base to look after Selmak and her host Saroosh.
Some of them were introduced to other visiting aliens however most of them were more primitive and those visits were merely pleasantries.
Hours later when SG-1 returned with tales of the fantastic virtual reality some of the programmers began salivating on getting their hands on the technological marvels.
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A/N
Yes the force field on the stargate is not cannon this was a simple way to show that this was an AU fic.
I want to thank all eleven of you who favorite-ed my story. I had off work this week so bonus chapter!
