A/N: I am sorry for the long radio-silence again. My life has been crazy lately - been working 12h days every day, and didn't really have the time nor energy to write. But I am back now, trying to catch up a bit with writing, although quite frankly I may fall into the rabbit hole again as the project at my work is not yet finished. We'll see how it goes, but I promise you, I will not abandon this story. I love writing it so there it is.
Chapter 13, part 1.
It took Carter, Alice and four other engineers nearly three hours to repair the life support system—and it still wasn't one hundred percent functional, just enough to get them back to Earth safely. As they worked, the air became thinner and thinner, until their breathing was slow and laborious. At some point, they had to switch off the system altogether to effect the repairs, using up the oxygen that was already in the room. Thankfully, it took only half an hour from that point to finish the major fix, and when they re-engaged the system, pure cool air breezed from the vents, and for a moment all six of them just stood, inhaling deeply. It took Alice a considerably longer time to recover than the others, but she wrote it off to the lingering aftereffects of her misadventure in the tunnels beneath the surface of M2F-221.
Alice went back onto the Apollo before both ships jumped into hyperspace for the voyage home. She gave Ellis a short report and then got permission to go check on Alastar. He was still out of it when she found him in the infirmary, with his throat bandaged off, asleep in bed. He had thin plastic tubes inserted into his nostrils, providing him with a boost of pure oxygen. Alice had a few quiet words with the nurse on duty in the sick bay and learned that they did the X-ray and there would be no permanent damage. She also inquired after Martens, and the nurse informed her that the surgery was a success and the man was now resting in the post-op room. It was going to take a while, but he too was expected to make a full recovery. With that information acquired, Alice had nothing else to do and so she sat down in a chair next to Alastar's bed and waited, killing time by playing on her phone. There was no cell service, of course, but she had a few games on it and it was better than nothing. She wished she had her tablet or, better yet, her laptop so she could work. Still, while not exactly all-engrossing, it gave her hands something to do while her mind idled away.
They were still in the hyperspace when a grunt alerted her that Alastar was waking up. His eyes fluttered for a second and then opened all the way.
"Hey, Uncle," Alice said softly and reached out for a cup of water with a straw that she had prepared beforehand. She remembered how thirsty she had been each time that she woke up in a hospital bed. "Here, drink this." She helped him up and removed the nasal cannula for him. She didn't think he needed them anymore. He took a sip of the water and murmured appreciatively. Then he focused his eyes on Alice.
"What happened?" He croaked, despite the water. Well, his airways were seriously bruised, it was no surprise his voice had suffered, too.
"We managed to subdue the Goa'uld," Alice explained. "I'm afraid you were hit with the Zat shot along with him."
"Hit with what?" He frowned, trying to remember.
Alice unclipped her Zat from its holster on her thigh and showed it to him. "This is a Zat'nik'tel, Zat for short. It's an energy-based weapon, of Goa'uld design. It's a little perverse that we're now using it on them—" she mused "—but they are a very handy tool when you don't wanna kill your target. See, one shot from these babies doesn't kill—just stuns you into unconsciousness. Second shot kills."
"So you mean if you shot me right now with this…?" He hesitated. He was no longer the confident, even arrogant trumpeter of before. Alice felt bad for him, but at the same time—they all had warned him, right? Sure, none of them had expected to actually wind up in danger, but this was an inevitable part of the territory. Now, he knew. It was a lot to take in—all this in one day! At least she hoped he learned something valuable—namely how important it was to keep the Program going—and keep it secret, too.
"You'd probably be fine," Alice assured him. "The energy load dissipates after a while. You've been out for nearly four hours, I figure that's enough time for the effects to wear off completely."
"But you're not sure?" He was eyeing the Zat suspiciously.
"I'm not, but only because I never really took that much of an interest in this technology." Maybe she should. The Wraith had a similar weapon that only stunned, not killed—and wasn't Ronon wearing a gun that could also be set to stun only? And then there were the Intars, the clever little pieces of tech that could take form of any weapon, but shot energy that also only rendered targets unconscious—or not even that much, as the intensity could be changed.
"Have you ever been…?" Alastar pointed at the Zat.
"Yes, once, a long time ago during my initial training." It had been part of one of their combat simulations, just to familiarize them with the weapon. "It hurts like hell. I'm sorry," she added.
"I don't rightly remember," he admitted. "It's a bit of a blur. I don't even understand what really happened, nothing above that one of our guys suddenly went crazy and tried to kill me."
Alice raised her eyebrows, but then realized that, from his perspective, it must've been what it looked like. "That's not exactly what happened. He didn't actually tried to kill you—just show us he was ready to do so if we did something stupid. You were his leverage, you know. A hostage. And it wasn't our guy—it was the Goa'uld inside him."
He frowned, unconvinced, so Alice told him the whole story—starting from her arrival on the Hammond and ending with the repairs they did to the ship. By the time she was done, they had dropped from the hyperspace. Alice took the time to finish before she rose and waved the nurse closer to ask her if Alastar was alright to walk. The nurse agreed, told the patient to leave the bandages where they were for the night and gave him an ointment to use at home to prevent inflammation and help the bruises heal faster.
They stopped at the locker rooms to retrieve their clothes and changed before going back to the bridge. With his designer suit back on, Alastar looked more like himself again—and apparently felt it, too, because he recovered some of the bounce in his step and kept his head a little higher, although his voice was still too hoarse to distinguish any kind of tone he might want to use.
Ellis stood up when they entered the bridge. Through the front window, they could see the familiar blue sphere that was their home. They were already in the orbit.
"Congressman, I am sorry for the ordeal you have been through aboard my ship." Ellis had the good grace not to mention that it was at Alastar's own insistence. "How are you feeling?"
"They say I'm gonna live," Alastar croaked and then surprised everyone—most of all, Alice—by smiling quite pleasantly. "But I'm still glad I came. I would never have the understanding of the state of affairs of this Program had I gone back with my colleagues."
Uh-oh, Alice thought. On the surface, it sounded benign enough, but Alice had a horrible suspicion that it didn't mean anything good for the Program.
"I'm glad to hear that," Ellis replied, though Alice saw that there were question marks in his eyes as he shot a glance at her.
"So you see now why we need to keep it all a secret?" Alice asked, still a little hope in her voice.
"Oh, I see," he assured her in a way that only worried her more. "Don't worry, Allie, I know when to keep my mouth shut." But that was neither confirmation nor denial, really. And he said when which suggested there might be times when he wouldn't.
"You can't talk about it, Uncle, only to people who already know, and even then you have to be really careful," she stressed the last two words.
"Do you think anyone would believe me? I'm not crazy, you know," he bristled, and it actually made Alice feel a little better. It was true enough—without much in the way of evidence, which Alastar didn't have, there was no way for him to convince anyone who wasn't already in on the secret. And he was a politician, he lived and died with how people perceived him, so obviously he wouldn't want a reputation as someone who believed crazy stories about aliens and space travel.
"What are you gonna say about the bruises?" Alice had wondered about that before.
"Oh, I don't know, but I'll be sure to think up some dramatic tale of my heroism," he half-joked. Alice didn't put it past him to do just that.
"I've already briefed General O'Neill," Ellis interrupted the conversation. "He ordered me to deposit the congressman at his apartment. And he wants to see you, Captain."
"Uh-oh, somebody's in trouble!" Alastar joked again and Alice felt her eyebrows go up in surprise. He was really taking it all rather well—or maybe it just didn't hit him yet. How closely he brushed against death! Alice actually shuddered at the memory of his purple face, blue lips gasping for air that wasn't coming. Not to mention the grenade—that was the part of the story he most likely didn't fully grasp yet.
She shook her head at his quip. "I'll talk to you later, Uncle. I'll call you when I can."
He nodded and turned to Ellis. "Well, I guess I should thank you for allowing me to be here…"
"No thanks necessary, sir. It was a pleasure having you here, despite the turbulence," he said, though Alice could have bet her yearly salary that pleasure was nowhere near what he really felt. "Now, if you'll let me, we will beam you down home." He nodded to Kumar and a flash of white light later the congressman was gone. Alice looked at Ellis dubiously and saw him shrug.
"As for your actions, Captain… good work," he allowed benevolently. "That was a big gamble, but it paid off, so all's well."
"When will you take the Goa'uld to the Tok'ra?" Alice asked, curious.
"The SGC is gonna do it, we've already transported him down to Cheyenne. With the Hammond in the dry-dock for repairs, we're back to being the only ship to defend the Earth." Which reminded Alice of an idea she had had before, but it wasn't time—or the person—to talk about it.
She nodded and he gave the order to his helmsman. The familiar white light enveloped her again and she blinked. When she reopened her eyes, she stood in an office room—a familiar one. It was the same place she and Jake had their briefing in with O'Neill before going to the Hill.
The General was waiting for her in a chair. He looked pretty relaxed, though vaguely uncomfortable in his class A uniform. He reminded Alice of Sheppard—in fact, the two shared many characteristics, if one thought about it. A certain irreverence and loose attitude towards rules, surely, but both also had kind hearts and a lot of passion for what they did, even though O'Neill's job was no longer in the field. She wondered if he missed the action. You bet your ass he does! She answered herself. A man like that—a man with such history—could not have enjoyed sitting on his butt much.
"Well, that was a little more exciting than we expected," he said, only the slightest echo of sarcasm in his tone.
"I can vouch that my Uncle Alastar will not be insisting on going off world again anytime soon, sir," Alice agreed, but then thought that she ought to warn O'Neill. "Though I'm not quite sure he'll leave the matter entirely."
"Meaning what?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. I got a strange vibe off of him. At any rate, I doubt he'll be trying to talk about the Program to unauthorized people anymore. Whom would he talk to, anyway? The press? He'd be just branding himself as a lunatic who believes in crazy conspiracy theories. But that doesn't mean that he'll just sit completely quiet. My guess is, he's gonna try to use this knowledge to gain political influence or possibly even hurt the majority. It's his second term as a congressman but his party's been in the minority all this time."
"What about the others?"
"Macmillan might be the biggest problem, he's the most senior of them—but in the grand scheme of things, he's still just a junior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. If anything, he'll be taking his cues from Alastar. He maybe the senior politician, but Alastar's the more… persistent, if you will." He'll go far, Alice didn't add. Alastar was pig-headed alright, and he could be ruthless—in the political power play sense—but he was also smart and knew how to manipulate those around him. He had been re-elected with a wider margin than his initial victory, and he was forging good alliances on the Hill, from what she'd heard. Sooner or later the tables would turn and his party would end up as the majority, and he'd be sure to position himself well when that came. Knowledge of the Stargate Program gave him not only broader scope of looking at things, but also political leverage. Secrets were always helpful to know.
"Potential threat to the Program?" O'Neill wondered.
"I don't think they'd do anything directly detrimental to the Program." Alice shrugged. "But I wouldn't put it beyond them to treat it as a pawn in their political game."
"The President will not be very happy about all this," the general observed.
Alice decided not to voice her opinion: that it had been his own fault for allowing Alastar to go with them in the first place.
"But, all's well that ends well," he summed up. "And I hear you took quite a gamble."
"It was a calculated risk, sir," she repeated what she'd said to Ellis. "I knew I'd have at least two seconds to get the grenade. The variable was—whether I would be able to grab it in time." It almost didn't work, too, she remembered. There was a split second moment when she had thought it was all gone, that she'd miscalculated and would miss—but good old gravity (which was, she realized, produced artificially aboard the ship) had helped her to succeed.
"And you did," O'Neill observed, almost lazily. "Carter told me you also helped repair the Hammond. Overall, good work, Captain."
"Thank you, sir." She finally allowed herself to smile just a bit. That was a second attagirl she received that day, and now from O'Neill himself! That was a real honor.
"Alright, Captain. Write up a report for me, will ya? I should have something solid before I go explain to the President why he shouldn't fire me for endangering one of the precious crooks from the Hill," he said with charming self-derogatory humor.
"Yes, sir." Alice managed to keep her face straight, but thought her voice betrayed her amusement anyway.
"Dismissed." He waved her off and Alice stood to attention and saluted. She wasn't formally required to—not indoors, and anyway Pentagon was a no-hat, no-salute zone. But she wanted to recognize the honor that it had been for her to meet O'Neill. He smiled and saluted back rather offhandedly, much like Sheppard often did. With that, Alice executed a perfect about-face and walked out of the room.
Alice got back to the Air Force Inn in the middle of the night and collapsed into bed without waking Jake, who slept soundly (he was a snorer) in the other room. She faded into unconsciousness immediately and thought it had only been a minute or two when the alarm went off at five-thirty in the morning, barely four hours after she had gone to sleep. She told the entire story to Jake over breakfast—he was adequately impressed by her exploits and vaguely worried about what would Alastar do with all this knowledge—and then called her Uncle to check on him. He assured her that he felt good and his voice sounded a little better, too. He didn't give her any clues as to what he was planning, only complained that he had to cancel his public appearances for the coming week, because of his injury. Alice was sympathetic, but her anxiety didn't diminish.
Alice and Jake caught a commercial flight to Colorado Springs. Alice didn't want to strain Ellis's patience with a request for a lift, and besides she enjoyed the additional time with her brother. That ended all too quickly—as soon as they arrived at the Stargate Command, she had to go through, back to Atlantis. Once there, she had to make another report for Sheppard and Woolsey, and then a less formal retelling of the story to her own team. They were sitting around a table in one of the less frequented chow halls, all of them with a bottle of beer in hand. It wasn't the first such casual gathering for them, but it was sufficiently rare that it felt like a treat.
"Sounds like you saved the day again, Alice," Cooper commented, toasting her with his beer.
Alice raised her eyebrows. "Again?"
"Yeah, t'wouldn't be the first time, right?" Will shrugged. "The way you got rid of the beast from underground the M2F-221 was fuckin' A."
"Bloody quick thinking, ma'am," Karim agreed in his quiet, measured voice. "Then and now."
"Thanks." Alice smiled, dropping her eyes demurely to look at her hands, holding the beer bottle.
"It's good you are back with us," Perrault proclaimed to the other two's nods.
"By the way, there's something I wanted to talk to you about." Alice looked back up and decided to change the topic—as much as she enjoyed all the attagirls, it was beginning to feel just a shade too awkward. "I was supposed to mention it to General O'Neill, but I had forgotten at the time," she admitted.
"What is it?"
"I had a thought about Earth's defense." She took a sip of her beer. It was a standard Heineken, nothing fancy, but it was cold and it felt good to be drinking it with her comrades—or friends? Perhaps. "As you know, the Earth's Chair was destroyed during the attack of the super-hive. The planet's safety is now entrusted to the single battlecruiser which is stationed on the orbit, and in two Jumpers we've sent over there. That is sufficient for the moment, but it locks these assets in place. Ships are not meant to be always floating by the shore, they're meant to explore or at least patrol a wider territory." She half-smiled at herself for using a naval metaphor. Her father would be glad.
"Yes, but without the Chair, there is not much else to do," Perrault pointed out. "We can't leave the Earth entirely without protection."
"I agree." Alice nodded solemnly. "So let's get another Chair."
The three men didn't say anything, but looked at her with varying expressions. Karim's was blank and serene as always, Will looked confused, and Perrault was frowning heavily.
"How?" He demanded.
"There is one world here in the Pegasus that possesses a Chair and does not use it. We've been there recently."
"The M5S-559?" The commandant guessed and his brow smoothed. "Putain, that's brilliant!"
"They don't have the ZPM to power the Chair anymore," Alice continued, though she knew they would have to agree with her assessment. "They won't miss it, I'd wager. And we've already done a lot for them, including setting them free from Lord Protector's oppressive rule. They ought to agree to us taking it. It won't be as easy as moving our Chair on Earth from the Antarctic station to Area 51—this one is interfaced with the city-ship under the surface of the planet, but I think it's doable. If we could successfully transplant it to Earth, then the battlecruisers could leave their posts on Earth for regular trips—currently they can only go if there's an emergency somewhere in the Milky Way."
"That's really ingenious." William shook his head. "Why didn't anybody think about it before?"
Alice shrugged. "Why hadn't anybody think about penicillin before Alexander Fleming?" She asked rhetorically. It was a phenomenon very well known in all sciences—something that appeared to be so obvious, but only with the benefit of hindsight.
"I'm gonna go to Sheppard first thing in the morning," Perrault promised and raised his beer. "Good thinking, Capitaine."
Alice smiled. "Thank you, sir."
"You know, I am actually surprised that we don't bring more of tech from Pegasus to Earth," Will mused. "I mean, we've adapted a lot of technology of the Goa'uld and even the Asgard, but not really much of the Ancients'..."
"That's because we don't understand much of the Ancient technology yet," Alice quipped half-jokingly. "And making it work in connection with ours is a pain, too. Although we're coming to depend on crystals much more than before, which is a good thing."
"Why?"
"Crystals can store enormous amounts of data and they have huge processing power, one that could be matched only by quantum computing. And not without cause—much of the Ancient tech is related to quantum mechanics, although sometimes in ways that makes us scratch our heads in ignorance."
"You make it sound worse than it is," Perrault opined. "At least Zelenka and McKay must understand a lot of this stuff, just look at what they did over the years!"
Alice smiled. "Just because you can use the technology, or sometimes fix it when it breaks, doesn't mean you understand the essential principle that rules it. We have some knowledge about Gate travel, we jerry-rigged our own DHD on Earth, and Colonel Carter and Doctor McKay can manipulate the Gate network like some kind of wormhole wizards, but for all that, we still lack fundamental knowledge of the physics involved. We can theorize a lot, but it'll take much, much more time and effort before we are able to build our own Gate—if we ever do."
"That does not sound right." Perrault was obstinate.
"That's why you're the grunt and she's the scientist," Cooper gibed, drawing a hearty laugh from the team's commander, and smiles from Alice and Karim. It was still so rare to see the Brit smile that it always took Alice by surprise.
And yet, their friendship continued to bloom in the coming days and weeks. Alice found that she got along better with him when it was just the two of them; anyone else tended to tip the balance and Karim retreated back into his shell of blank calmness. And yet—and yet—he did make an effort to be present when the whole team was gathering for lunch or a beer in the evening. Not only present in the physical sense—he tried to actually engage with the others, although admittedly it was still pretty minimal, even compared to Alice who—unless put on the spot by Will or Perrault—kept rather quiet as well. Still, Alice enjoyed the time spent with her team, and really felt a sense of belonging. This, however, had been a little marred by what happened a couple days after she had told them about her Chair idea.
They were in the conference room, gathered for a briefing on their next mission. They sat at the huge mahogany table, opposite Sheppard, who was sprawled on his chair comfortably, and Woolsey, who sat rigidly straight, as was his way. The two could not have been more different.
"Your next mission is not exactly one of exploration," the expedition leader began. "Following Commandant Perrault's suggestion to remove the Ancient Control Chair from M5S-559 to Earth, we have made the same recommendation to the SGC who passed it onto the President and the IOA. All agree that it is a brilliant idea on his part." Woolsey nodded towards Perrault.
Alice blinked. On his part? It was her idea! She looked at her unit commander, wanting him to say something, to correct Woolsey's assertion—but he wasn't looking at her and remained silent. Alice felt cold and hot at the same time, and tasted the bitter flavor of betrayal on her tongue. She wasn't aware that the look she was giving Perrault showed real hurt, enough that it gave Woolsey a pause and his eyebrows rose up questioningly.
"I believe it was the Captain's idea, actually, sir," Karim spoke quietly, rising to her defense. Alice turned to shoot him a grateful little smile.
"Yes, it was," Cooper also rushed to her aide. "Perhaps there was some miscommunication." He threw a reproachful glance at Perrault. As he sat across from him, it was impossible for the commandant to miss it.
"There must be," Perrault said coolly and immediately changed the subject: "Did the President give a go-ahead for the Chair to be moved to Earth?"
"Yes." Woolsey's scrutinizing eyes were traveling between Alice to Perrault and back again. "And the IOA backed it as well."
"That was possibly the first time they made a decision that fast in history," Sheppard pointed out. He looked relaxed enough, but his gaze was moving from face to face diligently, too. Alice felt extremely uncomfortable because of the entire situation and dropped her eyes to look at her joined hands. The knuckles on them were white. She made a conscious effort to exhale slowly and relax her fingers.
"Since the idea came from your team—" Woolsey picked his words carefully "—it will be your mission to negotiate the move of the Chair with the people from M5S-559, and then retrieve it and install it in the newly-built United Nations' Stargate Program facility in the Nevada desert, near Area 51. Captain Boyd, it will be your responsibility to make sure it works properly. Take anyone from the science teams that you need."
"Yes, sir." Alice nodded without lifting her gaze.
"I don't need to tell you that this is sensitive, folks," Sheppard cautioned. "We're friends with Eldred's people and we don't want any problems on that front. But we definitely need this Chair to defend Earth. The Wraith will not give up the search for it any time soon, too rich a feeding ground it would be."
"At this point there's more people on Earth than in the entire Pegasus Galaxy," Cooper agreed, because nobody else spoke for a few seconds after Sheppard's dictum.
"Right. Alright. You'll go to M5S-559 tomorrow at noon," the expedition's military leader ordered and then stood up. "Dismissed."
They filed out of the conference room and went their separate ways. Alice saw that Will wanted to talk to her, but she just shot him a weary smile and shook her head mutely. She didn't feel like talking to anyone. She was still feeling hurt and betrayed by Perrault. Not only did he claim her idea as his own, but the way he handled the situation—or rather, didn't handle it—was offensive to Alice's very sense of fairness. Trust was an essential part for any team to be effective, and trust between the unit's commander and their subordinates—doubly so. Not only the leader should be able to rely on their people—but even more importantly, the people needed to be able to rely on their leader. For Alice, that trust was now eroded—perhaps irreversibly so. Maybe in time she would be able to forgive and forget—but for now, she just felt hurt and betrayed.
This feeling did not wear off the next day as they deployed to M5S-559 in a Jumper. Alice picked two women from Zelenka's team to help her dismantle the Chair on the planet, Doctors Alison Porter and Angela Bryce—she knew them, and their work, pretty well by that point. They went off with Karim straight into the Tower's throne room, where the Chair still stood, while Perrault and Cooper negotiated with Eldred and his people. That way the three scientists could already begin their examination of the Ancient ship's control piece and had a pretty good grasp on how it was connected—and how it could be dismantled—when the other two came to them, accompanied by Eldred himself. They announced that the negotiations were a success and Alice, Porter and Bryce set to work immediately.
It was not an easy thing; this Chair was not an exact copy of the one on Atlantis, although it looked the same. Still, it was similar—and they were proficient enough in Ancient technology, so after a few hours of hard work they managed to disconnect it from the base in a way that would allow them re-installation in another place—provided that the base was compatible. Alice's biggest worry was that it wouldn't be, since the Earth's Chair was that of an outpost and not a city-ship, and it stood to reason that wiring and connections might be different. With the help of their male colleagues they managed to load the Chair and all the various cables and connectors to the back of the Jumper and, with the rest of the team aboard, Alice took the little ship up and through the Gate back to Atlantis. They didn't disembark there, but rather dialed Earth right away. On the other side, they found the roof of the Gate Room already retracted—not all the way, but enough that the Jumper could slither out of the base. It was much easier than offloading the Chair, moving it manually through the base all the way up, and then driving it to Nevada. Alice simply cloaked the Jumper as they rose up into the air and flew them the short distance to the new facility.
It was built some fifty miles south of Groom Lake, just off the Interstate 95, but hidden behind the rocky terrain. Comprised of five one-story buildings, it was a surprisingly inviting place, with lots of reflective glass in the windows and even some greenery in between the structures, more like an office space, really, than a military base. There was, however, a barbed wire fence all around it, security checkpoints on the one driveway, and a single, smallish airstrip with a large hangar on one end and a short traffic tower on the other.
Alice put the Jumper down by the hangar and uncloaked it, feeling slightly nervous doing so. Technically every person on this base was supposed to be in on the Stargate Program, but it still seemed odd to her to be out in the open on Earth. A minute after the spacecraft appeared, a number of people spilled out of the closest building. Most were marines who saluted to her and Perrault, and without a word took to removing the Chair from the back of the Jumper to transport it to wherever it was supposed to go. Along with them came an Air Force officer dressed in blues, with the insignia of a lieutenant colonel. Alice, Karim and Perrault snapped to attention and saluted, receiving a formal salute in reply—none of that causal, off-handed stuff Sheppard and O'Neill accustomed them to.
"At ease," the man said with a benign smile. "I am Lieutenant Colonel Davis, I was asked to oversee this operation. You must be Commandant Perrault." His French pronunciation left a lot to be desired, but the Fourth's team leader must have been used to it. They shook hands and then Davis turned to Alice. "Captain, I've heard a lot about you. You think you can install the Chair here?"
"Yes, sir," Alice replied with confidence she didn't really feel. "The variable is how long it will take, though. I understand that a large part of the previous Chair's base has remained intact?" She knew the Chair itself and the immediate area around it were destroyed in the Super-Hive's attack, but not the underlying structure that housed the Ancient drones.
"Intact isn't the word I would use," the colonel answered carefully. "But we were able to rebuild much of it. Still, the head of the project tells me there's still much to do."
"We would like to see it, if possible, sir."
"Of course, Captain. Follow me."
They all did, including Doctors Porter and Bryson. Davis led them into one of the buildings—the inside looked like a corporate office, too—and to the elevator. He pressed a button labeled B12 and a retinal scanner had to confirm his identity before the door closed and they started moving down.
"How far underground is it?" Bryce asked curiously, looking at numbers changing on the screen above the row of buttons.
"The level twelve is the lowest one," Davis explained. "That's where the Chair is going to be housed, beneath a hundred yards of ground and a double trinium-reinforced steel cover. No attack from space should be able to penetrate this time," he added with satisfaction.
"When did the construction of this place begin?" Cooper wanted to know. "It hasn't even been six months since the Wraith attack."
"Before that," the colonel admitted, but didn't really answer the question and Will didn't press, because at that moment the door to the elevator opened and they got out into a blank-looking corridor which ended in a security checkpoint. There was a palm scanner, a retinal scanner, and a metal detector, in addition to two marine guards who looked each of them carefully in the face, checked their Common Access Cards—the civilians and foreigners also had been issued these—and confirmed their clearance in their computers. Once on the other side, the corridor split in two directions. Davis took the one on the right. They came to the end of the way where a final door stood, with another palm-scanner on the side that controlled the lock.
The room was surprisingly small, but appeared larger because the walls were all glass, showing a storage area all around, where hundreds and hundreds of drones lay primed and ready to go. The floor of the room resembled a belly of some mechanical beast—tubes and cables and wires snaked around a battery of crystals; in the very center, there seemed to be some missing, and further away they were halfway shattered, chipped, or blackened. A man sat in the middle of the whole mess with toolkits and an assortment of replacement crystals in a plastic container. He lifted his head when the party entered. He looked familiar to Alice.
"Professor Makrov!" She exclaimed with surprise. The man was around fifty years old, with a sagging yellowish skin and a balding head with a small remainder of gray hair on top. He stood up and stepped out of the ring of crystals and wires, an excited grin on his face.
"Alice Boyd!" He grasped Alice's offered hand and shook it enthusiastically. "Who would have thought!"
"I take it you two know each other?" Davis prompted them.
"Oh, yes, Ms. Boyd was in my class in CalTech. One of the most gifted students I've ever had!"
"Thank you, sir." Alice smiled warmly. Makrov had been one of the best teachers she had in college; not only was he a brilliant scientist and engineer, but he was also very human. He helped the then fifteen-year old Alice—well, if not adjust, then at least not to feel as alienated. He never made them work in groups and rewarded people for hard work—but never publicly, so Alice never had to contend with jealous peers in his class. "Professor, this is Doctor Alison Porter, Doctor Angela Bryce, Doctor William Cooper, commandant Perrault, and Sergeant Karim. Folks, this is Professor Timothy Makrov of the California Institute of Technology."
He shook each person's hand with a smile.
"Lots of doctors here," he remarked good-naturedly. "Y'all here to help us install the Chair?"
"Indeed," William confirmed with a straight face. "I'm sure my expertise in particular will be invaluable."
Alice elbowed him playfully. "Please don't listen to him, Professor. He is a doctor, but of anthropology. He's here because he's part of my unit."
"Good, good." Makrov nodded. "Listen, there will be time to reminisce and catch up later. We need to get to work. As you can see, there is a large part of the base still missing. We've been trying to build it back from schematics and photos from before the destruction of the Chair, but I'm afraid we've hit a wall. And to think we actually hoped at the onset of this project to be able to jerry-rig something to control the drones! This setup is so complicated that I'm finding it difficult figuring where individual crystals fit in the whole."
Alice frowned and turned to Davis. "Sir, this will require quite some time to get it done."
"How much time?"
She shook her head. "Impossible to say. Perhaps two days, perhaps two months. Remember, it's the single most complex piece of technology we've ever encountered. We may have to go back to Atlantis or M5S-559 to look at how it's done there, or even take more components than what we've brought."
"Alright, Captain." Davis gestured towards the mess on the floor. "Can you get to work right away or do you need some rest?"
Alice looked around her shoulder at Porter and Bryce. They both nodded. "We can work," she assured the senior officer.
"Good. Just don't overdo it, Captain, remember to get your rest."
"Yes, sir."
Davis turned to leave the room. Perrault only nodded to Alice, Cooper wished them luck and Karim only looked at her in his expressionless way, but she knew him better now and understood it meant "good luck" as well. The three of them followed Davis and the door closed behind them.