Guys, remember the wave of approval Teal'c got at the end of 'Legacy'? Well, this time it was definitely Sam's turn to feel the love, as all of you expressed in your reviews ;-). Thanks so much to everyone following this story - all of us on the VS team are very happy to know you're enjoying it!

Blackout, pt. 1

"The final run of simulations yielded the best parameters so far, and I've calibrated the jamming field to block out the gate's naquadah signature. The Asgard beam won't be able to get a lock on it." Colonel Samantha Carter pulled a page out of the thin folder she had brought in, and slipped it across the desk to her commanding officer.

General Landry looked impressed as he studied the numbers on the paper. "What about our own signals? Radio, IDCs?"

At that, Carter grimaced. "The jamming field needs to be high intensity, otherwise the Asgard beam would have no problem locking onto a signal as strong as the one from the stargate. Unfortunately a field that strong will also jam all our other signals. I'm working on a way around that."

"And once you find it? Will we be able to set up the jamming field on a permanent basis around the gate room?"

"There's still the problem of powering it," she admitted.

"Even with the Asgard upgrades you installed on our electric grids?"

The blonde nodded. "The upgrades made things a little faster and more efficient, but they don't provide an alternative power source," she explained. "Running the stargate already takes a lot of energy, and adding a round-the-clock high-intensity EM field will probably run up our electricity bill…"

Landry studied the paper for a moment longer before putting it down. "I think that would qualify as a reasonable expense," he pointed out.

"Yes, Sir…" She paused and looked away a little hesitantly, before meeting his eyes again. "Sir…"

"Do I think that someone's going to try to steal the stargate?" he anticipated.

Sam's silent look was answer enough.

"No," the General said slowly. "Notwithstanding the time that the Goa'uld tried to blow it up, or make us shut it down, or that incident with the Russian's gate, I'd say no one's tried something quite that insane yet." He paused, then tilted his head and arched his eyebrows. "However, Earth now has access to the Asgard technology on board the Odyssey, and the Odyssey is at the disposal of the higher-ups in the DC – some of whom, we suspect, might be involved in a plot with the Lucians."

He held out a hand for her report, and Sam passed it to him.

"We may not know exactly who's behind the conspiracy yet," Landry continued as he replaced the paper inside the thin folder, then placed the whole thing inside a locked desk drawer, "but I'm not taking any chances. Despite what the IOA thinks, the stargate is one of Earth's best lines of defence, and I'll be damned if I'll let someone beam it out from under my nose."

"Yes, Sir." Her tone was neutral.

He gave her a knowing look. "Feel free to call me paranoid."

Sam's serious expression was broken by a small smile. "No, Sir, I think I actually agree."

"Really." The General's eyebrows rose. "Because at my age paranoia is more excusable, Colonel. Not sure you've got an excuse."

"Well, we did use Thor's ship once to beam a stargate into space," she pointed out, still smiling, "and Thor was able to repeatedly transport General O'Neill out of the SGC with no warning. If anyone involved in the DC conspiracy has access to the Asgard beam, I'd definitely feel better knowing they can't use it against this base."

"Ah. Glad we're on the same page, then. Still," his tone became dry and he gave her a meaningful look, "let's continue to keep this under wraps. I may think this little side project is a useful expense, but I doubt the IOA would agree."

She couldn't help a fleeing expression of irritation at his mention of the antagonistic, always-looking-over-their-shoulder oversight committee. "Don't worry, Sir… I'm not planning to talk to them anytime soon."

As she spoke, her thoughts involuntarily went to two other members of her team, who sadly could not make the same claim.

"None of us would if we had a choice." As before, the General seemed to read her mind (Sam made a note to work on her poker-face… maybe Vala could give her a few tips when she returned to base). "Colonel Mitchell looked like he was considering deserting when I sent him up to DC with Ms. Mal Doran."

Sam let out a small chuckle. "I can't blame him... either of them, actually. Not after the 'interview' I had to give last year after being trapped in that alternate reality."

"Ah, one of my more pleasant memories," Landry smirked, "but not exactly what President Hayes wanted to hear the year before he was up for re-election."

Sam mirrored his grin, although she remembered quite well the endless interview in which the IOA and the President had asked, a dozen times over, exactly what had happened in the alternate universe she had travelled to. She really did not envy Vala... and the alien woman had looked a nervous wreck before leaving for DC earlier that morning. Sam hoped that Cam would be able to cheer her up a little on the plane ride up. And she had already asked Jack to discreetly keep an eye out for them…

"Don't worry, Colonel," the General reassured her, "I'm sure Ms. Mal Doran and Colonel Mitchell will survive even the IOA."And he really did believe it. Sure, Vala would probably get grilled and have to put up with the attitude of some officious IOA jerks (Fisher first among them), but Landry thought he had done a good enough job over the past few months of diverting their anger to himself. So if she managed to keep her head down and not insult anyone's manhood for a few hours, he imagined they'd drop it at that.

Not that she believed that. Much as he'd tried to explain that this interview was probably just a disgruntled politician flexing his muscles, Ms. Mal Doran had pretty much had to be chased down that morning like a wayward schoolchild on the first day of class. And damn if she did not look like he was sending her to face a shooting squadron. Landry had almost been tempted to go with her himself.

But of course, sympathy or not, the SGC commander could not simply drop everything and jump on a plane to DC. And Colonel Mitchell was more than up to the task of calming down Ms. Mal Doran and instructing her on how to make the interview go smoothly. And Landry had surreptitiously called Jack and asked him to sit in on it…just to make sure.

"Probably," the blonde colonel replied, startling him out of his thoughts, "although I'm sure they'd rather take their chances with the Lucians."

Before any of them could say anything else, the lights suddenly flickered for a few seconds. Sam looked up, a little surprised. When she met Landry's eyes again, he arched his eyebrows.

"Did you leave an experiment running, Colonel?" he teased good-naturedly.

The lights flickered again.

"Not me, Sir," Sam assured him…

…and the lights turned off completely.

There was a brief silence, while they both waited for the power to come back on.

"Colonel." Landry sounded suspiciously calm. "That electricity bill you mentioned earlier… we did pay it, right?"

The red phone on his desk rang a moment later.

The orange emergency lights were on, but although the base was on alert, none of them were flashing because that would have used too much power. Walter's voice came through the speakers, repeating some announcement related to required protocols.

Sam followed General Landry as he set a brisk pace down the dimmer-than-usual SGC corridor. "A blackout? Wow. I didn't think the Asgard technology could do that."

"Neither did I, Colonel," Landry pressed the elevator button before realizing that most elevators were out of order on emergency power, and his scowl deepened, "and neither did the President. He's not happy. Apparently someone on the Odyssey science team reported a malfunction and admitted he'd been 'trying something new' with the Asgard core." He turned to give her a wry look. "And before you ask, no, it wasn't Dr. Lee. I checked."

Sam frowned doubtfully. "Sir, I'm not sure I understand how any amount of experimenting with the Asgard core could cause an outage in an unconnected power grid. Besides, how did it even reach our part of the state? The Odyssey hangar is hours away."

"I don't understand either, but that's not the worst of it." The General stopped by a stairway exit. "According to the President, the malfunction is causing some sort of chain reaction in other high clearance facilities, and of course the geniuses that triggered it don't know how to stop it." He gave her an expectant look as he yanked open the door to the stairway.

Sam's eyebrows arched in surprise. "I'm not sure I can help from here," she said cautiously as she followed him down the stairs, "without even knowing what the problem is on the Odyssey or what they did to the Asgard core…"

"That's what I said," he agreed without turning, "but, you are the foremost expert on Asgard technology on the planet, so as soon as we get our back-up generators fully running, I'll have Walter set up a video call and patch you through to the Odyssey."

"Yes, Sir."

Landry opened the door to a lower level, and gave her a serious look. "In the meantime, I'd like you to try to find out why our power is out. Like you said, it doesn't make any sense that a fuse blows out on the Odyssey and the lights turn off here. And I don't like it."

Sam nodded and followed him back into another dim corridor and all the way to one of the main mechanical rooms, where a team of SGC technicians was assembled around an impressive array of electric panels. They were so engrossed in the repairs that they did not even notice the General walking up to them, until he boomed:

"Siler." He met the master sergeant's gaze when the man startled and turned. "Why are half our back-up systems offline?"

"Sir. Uhm, the generator was in the middle of a reset cycle when the power went out, and that caused a little hitch when it tried to go online automatically."

Landry's eyebrows arched meaningfully. "Can we fix it?"

"Yes, Sir." The sergeant glanced over his shoulder at the repair team, then back at his commander. "Half an hour and all our back-up generators should be up and running, Sir."

"Will the stargate work at our current power levels?"

"It's online," the man confirmed, "but we shouldn't dial out or we might blow out the generators, especially the ones not at full capacity."

"What about if someone dials in?"

Siler looked unsure. "Uh, it's fifty-fifty…"

Landry frowned, but nodded."Get those generators working. Walter."

His assistant almost seemed to appear out of thin air at his side, at the ready as usual. "We have two teams offworld and scheduled to return in the next three to six hours, Sir," he said without waiting for the question. "SG-6 and SG-15."

The General gave his two men a serious look. "Let's make sure the gate works by the time our people want to come home."

He walked away from the mechanical room, and Sam fell into stride beside him once more.

"Sir, I'm going to use one of the main terminals on this level to track down the source of the outage on base," she suggested. "I'll let you know as soon as I have something."

He acknowledged with another brisk nod. "I'll send Walter for you when he's got the conference call ready with the Odyssey. Hopefully they'll be able to give you more information on what caused this damn circus in the first place."

Before Sam could reply, a shrill ringing went off behind them, and they both turned toward the source of the noise. A small distance down the hall, Walter was picking up one of the closed-circuit wall phones.

"This is Harriman." He listened for a second, then met the General's gaze with a somewhat confused expression. "Uh, okay. Yes, he's right here." He held out the phone to Landry, mouthing: "It's for you, Sir. Cpl. Mason up at surface level."

Landry walked over and took the receiver. "Landry, go ahead Corporal." He frowned as he listened to the voice on the other side. "They're what? What do you mean, here?" His scowl only grew deeper as he listened further. "Keep them up there, Corporal, I'm on my way."

He hung up and turned to Carter with a dry look. "Forget about that video call, Colonel. Apparently the Odyssey science team decided to pay us a surprise visit."

Landry wasted no time on lengthy greetings as he met the three-person group waiting at the surface level of the SGC. The security guards saluted when he and Col. Carter approached, then they took a step back to let him speak to the newcomers.

"Dr. Lee. I see you decided to bring some company."

Bill Lee shook his head so vehemently that his round glasses almost flew off. "Not me," he assured the General, "I filed a formal protest against this plan of action. But Col. Davidson overruled me."

"So it's Davidson I have to thank for this visit." Landry was suddenly regretting not making Ian Davidson fill out more reports during his time as an SG team leader.

"General Landry." One of the two strangers behind Dr. Lee, a tall, bony man with a pinched face and protruding forehead, stepped forward and held out a hand. "Dr. Samuel Thompson, science team coordinator on the Odyssey. And of course, I've already met Dr. Carter," he said with a smile in her direction. His teeth looked too big for his face.

Landry looked at the outstretched hand for a moment, before giving it a brief, perfunctory shake.

"Since Stargate Command and the White House have also been reporting power issues," Dr. Thompson continued, "we decided to split our personnel to cover all affected areas. Fortunately the Asgard beam was still online when we left..." He scratched his tall, balding forehead. "We used it to transport us approximately to this location, although we did have to walk through a rather unfriendly patch of woods to get to the main gate… Now, I understand this isn't exactly ideal circumstances for us to meet, but –"

"Doctor," Landry interrupted. "I just went up twenty-six flights of stairs to get here. I want to know who's responsible for that."

The pinch-faced Dr. Thompson turned to glare at the last member of their group. The man, who looked a good twenty years younger, blushed a little and stepped up.

"Uh, I'm afraid that would be me."He scratched behind his right year, looking more than a little awkward.

"General Landry. Dr. Cas Layton," the Odyssey chief scientist introduced. "Dr. Layton was behind the experiment that caused the cascade failure in the Odyssey power system...and of course the unexpected side effects here and in DC."

Trust scientists to call a blackout spread out over several states, 'side effects'. Landry did a mental eye roll before turning to Sam.

"Col. Carter. Can you sit down with the Odyssey team and figure out this whole mess?" He knew she would get the translation – can you babysit them long enough to get to the bottom of the problem? – and was pleased when she nodded. "Good. Then let's not waste any time."

He motioned the small group to pass through the gate, then waited a small distance away as they each signed in as per required protocol. Since Dr. Lee was part of the SGC, he signed in quickly by simply swiping his ID card, and took the opportunity to approach Landry.

"I'm very sorry about this, General, I did warn Dr. Thompson that it made no sense to beam the two of them over here. If you ask me, they just wanted to get away from Col. Davidson." He cleared his throat a little uncomfortably. "He was very…displeased… when the Asgard core and half the ship's systems went offline suddenly."

Landry gave him a long look. "I know exactly how he felt, Doctor."

"Oh, right, of course." Dr. Lee cleared his throat again. "Well, now that I'm back, if there's anything I can do…"

"You can help Col. Carter babysit those two," Landry said frankly. "Figure out how to get the power back on, and make sure they stay out of the way."

As they proceeded back down into the heart of the SGC, descending endless flights of stairs coated in the dim orange glow of the back-up lights, Landry wondered if perhaps he should have gone up to DC that morning, after all.

Vala walked up the mobile staircase as slowly as she could, casting nervous glances around at the dozen or so airmen who walked about the small military airport.

"We gotta make it up to DC today, Vala." A few steps behind, Cam put a hand on her shoulder to gently push her forward when she stopped halfway up the steps again. "So stop looking like that plane door's about to jump out and eat you, and get on board…"

She swallowed hard, looked left and right one last time and finally stepped on board the plane. Mitchell followed her in at a brisker pace, and signalled two airmen on the runway that it was safe to take away the staircase. Then he ushered Vala into the main cabin, nodding appreciatively at the six spacious leather seats. Landry had been true to his promise and booked a 'diplomatic trip' for them, in one of the newer military models.

Which was the least the General could do, in his opinion, given their destination.

"Great, now we can make ourselves comfortable and enjoy the ride." He noticed Vala still staring out the window and tapping a foot nervously. "Would you quit fidgeting, you're like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Wouldn't have pegged you for the nervous flier."

She turned to him, her hands twisting nervously. "I don't want to go. Please, let's just turn back, there has to be another way."

"Ma'am," the copilot came up behind her, "you need to take a seat and buckle up." Her only reply was a wary glance, and she did not move from her spot in the middle of the cabin. The man mistook her behaviour for flight anxiety, and gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, it should be a nice smooth ride to DC. This is top of the line in military aircraft," he gave her a complicit wink, "plus some nifty improvements from our E.T. buddies."

Even Mitchell could not help feeling a little excited about that. Vala, on the other hand, only looked more apprehensive as her eyes darted quickly from the front to the back exit doors to the plane.

Finally, she let the copilot guide her to a seat and dropped onto the leather cushion, her hands absently gripping the seatbelt. As soon as Mitchell had sat down across from her, she faced him with the same pleading expression. "Look, I know we've had our differences lately, and you're still angry about that whole Ata House incident, but there must some small part of you that doesn't want this!"

Cam gave her a baffled look, as the routine pilot announcements went off in the background and the plane slowly started moving. "There's a big part of me that doesn't want this," he said. "This ain't exactly how I planned to spend my weekend either, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. So buckle up, sit back and stop putting up a fuss."

"No!" She stood up abruptly, the two halves of her seatbelt falling by the wayside.

He startled for a second, then let out an irritated breath and put a hand on her shoulder to urge her back into the seat. "Would you sit down before they make us drive there instead?" He took in her anxious expression, and shook his head in confusion."What's gotten into you?"

Vala was gripping the armrests of her seat and looked ready to bolt at any second. "Cameron, please, I know you're trying to make this easier…but you can't expect me to just go quietly!"

"Wh –yes, that's exactly what I'm expecting you to do!" He rolled his eyes, exasperated. "I get that you don't wanna deal with the bureaucratic nightmare, hell, I don't either, but you need to get a grip and settle down. This ain't gonna look good if I have to drag you in there, kicking and screaming!"

The colour drained out of her face at his last words, and she gave him a shocked look. Finally, she dropped back into the seat, her expression a mixture of misery and panic. "I didn't remember that I had it, I swear. And I stole it two years ago, that was before I really got to know all of you!" She passed both hands through her hair and gave him a distressed look "I'm sorry!"

Mitchell felt the familiar slight jolt as the plane took off. Across from him, Vala pressed her palms to her face in a classic gesture of anguish.

Cam stared at her in confusion. Top of the line military plane or not, this was so not going to be a smooth ride.