A/N: In light of a recent number of reviews regarding the previous few chapters, I want to take a minute to address the situation. Firstly, the whoa le Ernest/Catherine/Samuel situation is, admittedly, not one of my best bits of writing. Samuel's character is heavily influenced by Frank Underwood from House of Cards, and a friend and adviser on this story suggested that it would be best served by incorporating a Claire Underwood equivalent as well, and, given the improbability of introducing a female OC in a position to serve that role, suggested repurposing Catherine. For lack of any better ideas, yeah, I had to kludge something together to make that work. If you have any practical advice to make that work out better, please, shoot me a message and we can discuss it further. I do have a plan for where that's going, so please bear with me and I hope the payoff will be worth it to you.

Secondly, I have guest review moderation on, so if all you're gonna do is be a complete asshole and use a guest review to hide behind while you hurl insults at me personally, I'm just going to delete it and go on my merry way. I mention this because somebody recently decided to do just that. If you've got a legitimate grievance with the story, I'm more than happy to listen. What I won't tolerate is using guest reviews to just be a shitty human being without allowing me opportunity to respond.

Chapter 8, Part Two

May 11th, 1946

Paul dejectedly set the folder down as he read the latest report. Nothing, that's what had been found at ES-3, a whole load of nothing. They'd spent five weeks exploring the area around the gate, more than one hundred square miles and found a fat load of nothing. No alien ruins, no strange new minerals, no aliens. Just miles and miles and miles of plains. The one noteworthy was that apparently the aquifer beneath the plains was massive, based on some speculation by several of the biologists when went through, one they claimed that could be as big, if not larger than the Ogallala Aquifer. While that was nice for agriculture, it was hardly what Paul had been hoping for. The Piper Cub had reported a similar story; the plain went on for hundreds of miles. Paul was trying to get authorization for a larger plane that could carry more fuel, and more fuel trucks for a potential exploration convoy, they needed to explore more and try and find something. There had to be something there, he couldn't fathom why the aliens would place such an important piece of technology like the Stargate on a worthless place.

Hopefully more would come of it.

May 13th, 1946

An's hand wafted over the crystal as the final countdown for the test began.

"All systems operational…Subsystems optimal." he said as the lights flickered.

As the system began final tests he'd thought about how they'd arrived at this point. The vile machines continued their relentless movement across Ida, devouring everything in their path. The warships of the Asgard had done their best, but were slowly losing their effectiveness, some were worried that even the mighty Bilskirnir class mother ship might not be able the stem the tide. While many were working on projects to build larger and stronger warships, An and his team were working the other way, creating smaller ships that could be manufactured more rapidly, but still wielded potent weaponry. The second component of his plan was the ability to build the ships using older parts and components from other ships used by the Asgard. While rapid fabrication technologies made much of that moot, repurposing old material rather than breaking it down and reassembling it could save valuable time. Initial tests were promising for the prototype, but now was the most important test, the hyper drive.

They'd worked with a small budget and few pieces of actual equipment, what could be reused was usually pressed into the more established designs, so the fact that they'd managed to secure an old navigational computer and new model hyperdrive was wonderful. They'd jumped over several testing steps, but if this worked, An's goals would be validated, and his people could potentially have a new weapon to turn back their foe.

"Initiating testing in three…two….one!" he said as he inserted the final crystal and watched as the ship disappeared in a hyperspace window. They hadn't placed any actual Asgard on the ship; just several blank clones to make sure the inertial dampeners were working properly. So far, all vital signs were good.

"Ship entered the window with no complications, hull integrity is fine, inertial dampener's are holding. Test is successful!"

"Excellent, bring the ship out of hyperspace and back here!"

"Yes sir, one moment….oh, oh dear." the technician said as the crystal flashed red.

"What is it?"

"I'm locked out of the navigational computer!"

"How? We made sure to purge all old data before using it!"

"I am unsure, but the ship is locked on a course and I can't override it!"

"What is our best estimate?"

"Well, we did repurpose a navigation computer from one of the old Evacuator freighters we used to use to move individuals between worlds. The system was fairly robust in order to make sure individuals made it to their intended destinations in case any failures were detected in the system. That lies in the secondary subroutines of the system, so that would have been unaffected by our purge. The ship most likely defaulted to its subroutines and is returning to its last location."

"If that's the case, then where's it going?!"

"Based on trajectory, it would appear it is leaving Ida, destination unknown."

"Can we catch it?"

"It's doubtful…We were using a new model hyperdrive, only our newest warships have those installed, and currently all of them are deployed on the frontlines…"

An curled his small hand into a fist in frustration, months of work gone, and who knew where they'd be able to get more resources. Sighing after several minutes, he finally spoke.

"Well, let's contact the shipyards to try and find new components…"

May 19th, 1946

Langford groaned as they rotated the gate's symbols once more to try and dial ES-4, and once again the slow hum started but then stopped once the last symbol was locked. Looking at the gate technician he frowned. Paul couldn't understand it. "What do you mean, it won't connect?" he asked.

"I mean, we get the sequence input, and it shakes, but it doesn't connect."

"Heliopolis connected to it less than an hour ago!" Paul exclaimed. "Ernest even said that Simmons reported the planet was heavily forested!"

"I know, Professor, and that's what doesn't make sense. We dialed Heliopolis just to be safe and everything is working fine with that. But when we dial ES-4, well…" he gestured to the inactive gate.

"Why not?"

"I don't know! The gate works fine, though. If I had to guess, I'd say that, for some reason, the connection can't be made from Earth. We have everything, but it's like we're missing that special something, and it takes a while to spin that gate around, it's not like Heliopolis where they can just dial and poof! I don't know what it is but it's like the gate is rejecting our command and..."

It hit Paul. "The pedestal!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"We don't have a pedestal like Heliopolis or ES-2 or those other sites. Maybe the pedestal device is critical to forming certain connections. Maybe some kind of alignment issue that the pedestal resolves. Like needing an operator to connect the phone line to its destination when you're making a long-distance call."

The operator furled his brow. "I guess that makes some kind of sense, but you were in charge of the group that was excavating this thing, there wasn't a pedestal there was there?"

"Well…no." the professor said, cursing his ignorance from nearly twenty years ago. "When we found the gate I was so excited, I moved a lot of our crews away from the other sites to focus on this. In hindsight, we might have left some stones unturned."

"Well that's not too bad, we just need to go back and dig, I'm sure.."

"No, the thing is after we left, dozens of other groups went over that area, there were a lot of expeditions there in the intervening years, from what my old colleges said when I visited a few weeks ago was that the site was picked clean of most artifacts."

"Well if that's the case, then who has the pedestal now sir?"

May 23rd, 1946, St. Petersburg, Russia, USSR

Joseph Orbeli clasped his hands in anticipation as the crates were gingerly wheeled off the trucks. "Careful! Careful!" he half shouted out of habit as the pieces were being slowly moved to their new home. The past couple of years had been difficult on the State Hermitage Museum, but with careful planning and hard work, he and his colleges had managed to save most of the priceless pieces of work in the Museum before the Nazis began their siege of the city. Now that the trains had brought the art back home from their temporary safe haven in Sverdlovsk, he'd been slowly working to try and add new pieces to the museum.

Currently they were preparing a new exhibit, one that would simultaneously showcase the great works of the world, and the glory of the motherland's soldiers.

His assistant walked up to him and checked several boxes on a form. "And this is the last shipment from Berlin, sir." he said. "We just have a small group incoming from Potsdam, but this is it."

"Excellent! We'll divide the works up accordingly; we'll have the paintings in one wing sorted by date and period. The larger pieces will need some more ordering and separation."

"Then there's also the matter of the artifacts the Nazis pilfered from Egypt."

"Oh yes, those will be in the Egyptian collection, I understand we recovered a surprising amount of them?"

"Yes it was quite interesting, apparently they had sent several expeditions to Egypt and found a number of artifacts, quite a few statues and other pieces of furniture mostly." He said as a large statue of a jackal headed man was pulled from the crate.

"Wonderful, they'll make excellent additions to the exhibit…"

Several hours later, Joseph Orbeli looked with pride at the newly expanded collection from Egypt, the liberated material adding more splendors to the hall. The statues made up a new centerpiece to the exhibit hall, but other pieces were given their own place as well, a sarcophagus containing a mummy was placed near the entrance, and a collection of furniture, with a ceremonial pedestal were placed near the exit. He made sure the workers polished the stones on the pedestal to bring out their natural beauty. He'd have to remember to assign someone to inspect the symbols on it as well, they didn't seem to match any hieroglyphs from the period, but perhaps this was a new find that was for an old temple.

Lost in thought he headed to the antiquities wing to inspect the new paintings…

June 1st, 1946

"...Aaaaaaaand with that, we have soil sample X-87 secure, moving to secondary site four sample collection of X-88" Dr. Monroe muttered to himself excitedly as he picked up a small vial of dirt and walked back towards the jeep.

Simmons was bored. ES-3 had no mystery or wonder to it, compared to the splendor that was the castle of Heliopolis, this place was more boring than a small farm on the plains, at least there you crops to watch out for, here, he only had an egghead to babysit.

He took a long dreg from his cigarette and sighed. When he learned he'd be going to other planets, he'd envisioned something more like the adventures he used to read out of the old magazines he used to read, ray guns, space princesses, amazing adventures, but so far all he did was sit around and occasionally go into one of the damned bubble suits. Hardly the glamour filled life of a space explorer he'd imagined.

As the doctor entered the jeep, Simmons sighed, back to the boring grind. Absentmindedly, he flicked his cigarette away and jumped into the driver's side of the jeep.

Suddenly a large fireball erupted several feet away, in the direction of his cigarette.

"THE FUCK?!" he screamed as he shielded his eyes. After several seconds, he lowered his arm to see a small fire burning over the ground.

"The fuc…" he started to say before Monroe chirped in.

"My goodness! Simmons…I think you found a natural gas deposit!"

"I wha..?"

"Yes natural gas, sometimes it exists in pockets close to the surface, or veins have shafts that extend upwards. It must have been seeping close up and that cigarette…How did I possibly miss that? Never mind, Simmons this is great, we finally hav…" The doctor was cut off as the fire began to expand around where the ball scorched the grass, quickly consuming the brownish plants that made up the plains.

"Oh shit!" they both yelled as Simmons hit the accelerator and drove towards the fire, if they were lucky, maybe they could use the wheels to stamp it down before it spread…

Later that day-Heliopolis

Sitting in the chair of his makeshift office, Lieutenant Hammond pinched the bridge of his nose as he listened to the two repeat their story again.

"So….You two started a wildfire after flicking a cigarette onto a natural gas pocket."

"It was an accident, honest!"

"Then you proceeded to spend the next hour and a half driving over the site putting out the fire with your wheels."

"Well yeah, we couldn't let the well burn, or let the fire spread out too far unless we wanted to endanger operations on ES-3 an…"

"At ease Simmons, I'm not mad at you, I'm just … I'm honestly at a loss for words. Your little discovery might have just given us some help, honestly."

"Sir?" Simmons asked.

"We've been stumped about what we're going to do with this site. Apart from some small scale agricultural efforts to supply Earth base and any other ES sites we might come across, there wasn't a lot of value here. Even a base would require fuel and it'd be inefficient to ship it through the Stargate each day. With the natural gas deposit here though, we could move the Stargate closer and even potentially establish a base of operations here, it'd give us a hell of a lot more room compared to Heliopolis that's for sure. We'll know more when Langford talks to Truman next month, in the meantime, I'll need you to go back and mark down exactly where that gas pocket was. If we're lucky there might be more there."

"Yes Sir." Simmons said as he turned to walk away.

"One more thing…You might want to shower, you're getting soot all over the place."

"Oh…" Simmons said as he locked down and realized his uniform was caked beneath a thick layer of dark brown soot.

"Whoops."