AN: I'm always sceptical of chapters like these. They have to be done but its literally just guys sitting in an office giving the readers exposition. Perhaps it would have been better to write this as a TL, but then again I wouldn't have gotten the interesting social stuff.

The stuff toward the end of this chapter is all canon, actually. They made these weird little prequels called 'Stargate Origins', never watched them, they look dubious. However, like some of the weird novels, it's quite good to fill out this fic with.

As always, comments, suggestions or criticism are appreciated.

-x-

Captain Konovalov, the Stargate Program's resident logistics officer was sitting in his office several levels below the surface of Magnitogorsk, the mountain of iron that held the Urals together. He had just finished most of the outstanding requests for equipment, approving several and sending some other odd ones to Moscow. It was unlikely that anything was refused, as the Program had some very important people watching its progress, but because of the effort involved at getting certain things quietly without arousing suspicion from within the Union or without, certain items required permission from his superior, Colonel Tarelkin. Among these things he'd requested were a number of aircraft, with the centre piece, two American Catalina flying boats, being fairly rare in the inventory of the Soviet Air Force, and so requiring extra planning to get them to the SGC. They had been struggling decide which aircraft to use for the Program's growing fleet, so far two camps had formed.

The first, made up of mostly logistical officers and the higher staff, advocated larger planes, which all needed runways built. These would have complex photographic equipment and stores enough to fly several hundred kilometres before turning back. The other camp was mainly composed of the SG-team leaders as well as many of the Regimental officers. They were excited at the prospect of sending planes through the Stargate, and so far had contended themselves with devising a ground support doctrine for when the SG-teams inevitably required support. Against primitive societies and their armies, even smaller lightly armed aircraft like the armed cropduster Captain Mikhailov had used to strafe the false god Vulcan with would be effective. Mikhailov's attack had delayed the Goa'uld long enough for Ivanovich and his SG-2 to get there, and had won the pilot a medal.

The Catalina was a compromise, it had long range, large carrying capacity, and could be used to explore the large salt lake the Scythian-descended tribes had spoken of when some of them had been interviewed. Along with the flying boat though Konovalov had approved a dozen light aircraft fitted for bombing and reconnaissance duties. They couldn't fly though the Stargate, but they could be carried though and take off very quickly, making it almost as good.

Now that those duties were done, Konovalov turned to less pleasant matters, composed essentially of looking for needles in haystacks. In this case, the haystacks were the archaeological museums of the world and the needles were anything looking vaguely like it might be alien technology. He had photographs, notes and sketches of various objects in Vulcan's palace-ship, including his staff weapon, the strange snake like device no one could figure out the use of (Konovalov suspected it had run out of power) and several ornaments, one of which being an assortment of bangles with jewels, which had apparently been able to generate a protective energy field over the user. While leafing through fragments of catalogues or badly copied inventories that had been requested from the various archaeological departments of the Union and beyond was tiresome, Konovalov tolerated it. If nothing else, the military applications of these devices, even if they were inert, were incredible. They'd received a first-hand report from Captain Ivanovich that Vulcan had used his bracelet to shoot a wave of concussive energy and throw several men off their feet, while Gaius the Roman had corroborated this ability, describing a number of other functions of the device, such as the shielding function. If the army could equip even a small number of its troops with such weapons they would certain have the upper hand in any engagement, let alone in combination with alien spacecraft, or the heat ray Vulcan had used to destroy Roman fortifications over 50 kilometres away from him.

Just then though there was a knock on the door. Konovalov looked up, startled. In came Colonel Durov and the Captain rose to his feet and saluted smartly. Durov greeted him in the same fashion and waved him down. Ivanovich waited a moment till Durov had begun to sit down before he did. It hadn't been strictly necessary to salute, especially given the informality of the office and the base in general, but like all the military personnel, Konovalov had great respect for the Colonel. He was a fine officer and good communist.

"Is it snowing up above sir?" he joked as Durov brushed some of the powder from his jacket before hanging in on the back of his chair.

Durov nodded, "Not much, but you lose time down here don't you?"

Konovalov nodded back, "How was Moscow sir?" Everyone knew where the Colonel had gone, and it was his report they were all waiting on eagerly.

"All in all," said Durov, "Excellently. Unfortunately, Minister Vasilevsky wasn't there. Though he sends his regards to us all. I made my report to Marshals Zukhov and Konev."

Konovalov looked up, he had missed the chance to parade for Konev when he was in Romania, and had always resented the Major who'd given him orders meaning he couldn't go. On the other hand, he'd probably have the opportunity to meet one of the great Heroes of the Soviet Union if they were so personally interested.

"Vasilevsky was inspecting a base outside Belgrade, the Boss was with him. They'd gone to meet with the Yugoslavs and so couldn't attend the debrief. Another officer was there in his place though, a Kiritov? I think you may know him."

"I do, Vasily's a good man, he was on the external side when I was working in Moscow. I found out what the Program needed, he got it."

"Yes he seemed a sharp fellow." Remarked Durov, "He mentioned the meeting I was talking about being some sort of Balkan summit, though I didn't know what to think of it. I seem to remember you'd spoken with a Greek about the war there?"

"A Serbian sir, if who you're talking about is the same person I'm thinking of, though the officer in question had been active in Greece. An advisory role, that sort of thing." Indeed, Minister Vasilevsky had always been very interested in the outcome of the Balkan situation, both the reconstruction of the countries devastated by Fascism, but also of the civil war in Greece. Knonovalov supposed it wasn't for him to speculate about, he'd only met the Serbian by chance. That being said, the reports he'd heard about what was going on in that country were offensive, no doubt good communists like Durov or Vasilevsky would be just as interested as he was.

"In any case," Durov continued, "Zukhov and Konev were very pleased with our progress so far, the only things they weren't as happy about was the death of the Vulcan parasite, as well the lost teams, however they accepted there wasn't anything we could have done differently. Then they wanted a weapons demonstration of the staff's effectiveness, so we all set off out into the woods and a firing range. That went rather well also, the staff weapon Gaius took is still there."

"What were the results sir?"

"It's essentially as I thought when Mikhailov flew back the Minotaur's one. In a relatively light weapon you have the power of a 20 or 30mm cannon. I managed an aimed shot every few seconds easily, but I'm sure it could fire once a second without great difficulty. The shots themselves are plasma, extremely hot gas. They went straight through two tanks I had for targets. If they'd been fuelled and loaded, I've no doubt a shot to the magazine would have sent the whole thing up. The scientists there say the gas is kept together through some magnetic effect, or so the theory goes, it's very inaccurate, but the bolts don't dissipate, or drop as a bullet would, apparently because the gas is so hot."

"Was Dr Losev of any help?"

"Actually no, not at all."

Konovalov frowned, Oleg Losev had been recommended by the engineering staff, apparently he'd had theories about 'solid state light' which had been a good way to describe the plasma projectiles of the staff weapon. Nevertheless, Konovalov felt somewhat responsible, they'd obviously told Losev about the Program and now he'd have to be sworn to secrecy. "I'm sorry about that sir, I thought- "

"Yes I know Chernov recommended him, happily though he's an expert in crystal radios, so he's going to assist us in figuring out those panels all over Vulcan's ship." Explained Durov, waving a hand. "Speaking of scientific assistance we have another Oleg joining us here, he should be coming any moment, I told him to drop off some materials when we arrived."

Durov continued his remarks about the possibilities of wide scale adoption of the staff weapon and the potential issues related to it, but indeed after a few minutes there was another knock on the door. A man came in, wearing the uniform of an army junior sergeant.

"Konovalov, here's Sergeant Oleg Lavrentiev, we were in a few battles in the Baltic together, although for several of them on different sides. My team and I were all dressed as Germans." Remarked the Colonel with a grin, "He's been writing letters about the military applications of the physical sciences and Tarelkin got hold of him for us."

"Really? Well I'm pleased to meet you Sergeant." Replied Konovalov.

"I'm proud to be part of the Program sir!" said Lavrentiev enthusiastically.

They all sat back down again and Durov continued, "Now while I was there we had a presentation by Dr Igor Tamm, a professor of physics at a Moscow institute. It would seem there's a great deal of discussion about the implications of plasmatic science and power resources, and their application to our own nuclear program."

"Is this about the test? I saw it had been moved up." Konovalov had received the memo only a few days ago. The naquadah the Colonel had brought back from Abydos on one of the first missions had gone to several technical institutes unrelated to the Program for study, under the story that it had been recovered from a railway excavation. The mineral had provoked great interest among certain scientists and there'd been proposals for its use in atomic bombs. It was thought that because of the great atomic weight of naquadah compared with plutonium or other heavy metals, that the addition would improve the destructive power of the device. The science behind the theory largely escaped Konovalov, but everyone seemed excited about it. The Americans thought themselves secure and unassailable because of their nuclear weapons, if the Union had something stronger perhaps it too would be secure.

"Yes." Continued Durov, "Lavrentiev here is to study any plasmatic technology we recover, and report upon its uses in fusion, or possibly fission, I don't recall."

"Fusion sir." Put in the Sergeant.

Durov nodded, "In any case, we've got less good news in other areas. There's been very little progress made in setting up technical institutes for the secret study of alien technology, no one seems to want to make a decision on it. I suppose it doesn't matter to us as much," he mused, "But out standing orders have changed, straight from Minister Vasilevsky's desk, we're to acquire as much as naquadah as possible, both for use in Vulcan's psychic transmutation device, but also because everything used by the Goa'uld seems to use it. If we're to fight them, we must have a stock of it. I need to discuss it with the General, but what progress have you made?"

Konovalov restrained a little wince, "Well sir I've certainly made progress there. Though I've got good and bad news. There's certainly alien technology here on Earth, however, at least some of it is in West. Three staff weapons recovered during Bonaparte's expedition and seized by the British along with various other artefacts are in the British Museum in London, while I'm fairly sure another is in a French museum, all of them are described as metal staffs, with a glass material running along their back end, and carvings of snakes and similar. The ones in the British Museum have the same inscription of 'Praise Atok' that Dr Diakonoff found on Vulcan's own staffs, but thankfully the ones I've found so far seem to have run out of power. Each is speculated to be ceremonial in purpose. Apparently that's some sort of joke among archaeologists, if you don't know what it is you put it down as 'ceremonial use'."

Durov thought for a moment, "Well we knew this was a possibility, there's never been any substantive Russian expedition into Egypt in the manner of the British or the French, but nevertheless its concerning."

"I agree sir; we can only hope no one's made the connection between these different artefacts. I've been combing through the catalogues for different museums and a lot of its simply quite difficult to find. The Goa'uld, or at least Vulcan, seem to have a particular aesthetic, meaning their technology is relatively distinct, but it still leaves massive amounts of objects to sort though, even in our own collections."

"And your solutions to this problem?"

"I have a few sir, but ideally I think we'd want to check these objects for naquadah. If the ship, the staff weapons and the Stargate are all made of it we should be able to tell it apart from other golden or steel material used in other objects. However, that raises more problems, what if the Anglo-Americans realise we're looking for something specific? If they have actual alien technology, they will know that what they have is important if we dedicate ourselves to searching for it."

"True, but let's say its due to academic curiosity. Let's say I go along with the next lot of delegates to London or Paris and walk around their museums, to check the artefacts for anything that's got snakes on it… I can pass for a German or a Pole, and I speak both languages. It's far less suspicious than a Soviet officer who's supposed to be dead doing so."

"Yes sir, I had a similar idea, I don't think Dr Diakonoff could go though, and you don't speak Goa'uld or Egyptian, what if he was recognised? The scientific community on these matters isn't that large, perhaps the Doctor went to a conference and now is seen in the company of a Soviet officer of higher rank, wouldn't that be even more suspicious."

Durov nodded slowly, "Yes I suppose you have a point, I'll take it up with Igor later. We could simply fabricate the identities of whomever we needed to get into these museums. In any case, we'll table it for now, and take it up when you've made a more through survey."

Konovalov agreed, "We'll also have to check the Mesopotamian museums and the Greek or Roman ones here, as well as further afield, I doubt the Goa'uld would have stopped in Europe. We already know they built pyramids in other areas."

"I'm aware." Said Durov, "Igor has his theory about them as landing platforms, you've read the paper?"

"Something about the density of the soil and the difficulty of preventing subsidence when a large ship landed? Yes I took a look at it, though I must say Diakonoff writes exactly like an academic would sir."

Durov laughed, "And acts like one on occasion, but Igor's a good man. Now, I must be getting away, was there anything else you'd found that's important?"

Konovalov didn't say anything for a few moments then, and Durov began to look at him with suspicion. "Well sir." He started finally, "Yes actually there is something. Though I don't have any proof of it yet so I haven't thought to bring it up yet."

Durov, who had stood in preparation to leave, sat back down again, "Well go on, if you think it's important."

Konovalov sighed and opened a draw in his desk. He pulled out a large folder, filled with files and reports and handed it to Durov. "This is something I've been gathering for the last week. An investigation if you will…"

The Colonel leafed through the folder slowly, "These are reports on the early Program, before there even was a Program even. What've you got? Receipts for transport of the Stargate, reports on early tests?"

"Yes sir, I was assigned to set up a lot of this, while I was working at Minister Vasilevsky's office. I received and summarised many of the earlier reports to him before General Abramovich and yourself were involved."

"And?"

"Well sir I found something concerning as I was going back through the materials to file them. There are several… inconsistencies." Konovalov explained hesitantly, he was worried about even raising this issue, "Now during the Battle of Berlin we found the Stargate, there was a district being guarded by the remnants of two SS divisions, the 32nd Grenadier and the 28th Panzergrenadier. Their presence in an industrial area, guarding two warehouses aroused suspicions and we attacked. After the battle was over an inventory was conducted to find out what they were guarding, there was some suggestion that it might be a secret entrance to a bunker or similar, but actually we found the Stargate, the DHD, and several other objects like the Giza Capstone that Diakonoff translated to get the Gate working. Now it's not recorded in the immediate report, which is why I think no one followed it up, but there were also a number of broken boxes in the warehouses that probably got shot up during the fight. Luckily someone thought to inventory them as well. They found straw and other packing material, as well as a few other artefacts, all looking vaguely Egyptian. However, when this inventory was done, they recorded the stamps. Some come from a German expedition to Egypt in 1905, the others are more recent, some taken from the Italians in the Desert Campaign, others from the French."

Durov regarded him seriously but said nothing while Sergeant Lavrentiev fidgeted and pretended not to be listening.

"The boxes were also numbered, and more recently than they were labelled, the lowest number being 18 and the highest 26. Unfortunately, we don't know how many there actually were, but we recovered 8 of them intact, and the officer who conducted the inventory approximated 10 boxes broken. Interviews of prisoners gave a number of 15 boxes in the warehouse at the time of the attack."

"But sir!" started Lavrentiev, "Even if there were another 3 boxes… surely!" he trailed off under the gaze of his officers.

"If there were only 15 boxes." Said Durov. "Go on Captain."

Konovalov looked at Lavrentiev, "I agree Sergeant, if there were only another 3 boxes that weren't accounted for it wouldn't matter. However, in that folder Colonel there's a request for the repatriation of various personal effects of one Oberst Kessler, and have been countersigned by some absent-minded fool who didn't think to question a fascist. With a little digging I found an order for 3 trucks going to Dortmund several months after the end of the war, delivering items to an address which is the same as the one Kessler gave after his acquittal for war crimes, apparently no one could substantiate anything, he left no witnesses..."

Durov's face was still, "That's a lot of personal effects." He said, "This Kessler, who is he?"

"I can't get much about him," said Konovalov, shaking his head, "Not through official records that I can find anyway. I also didn't want to draw too much attention to my search…"

Durov nodded, "You were right to do so. Go on about Kessler then."

"I know that Kessler got his orders from Wilhelm Brücke, a Standartenführer who led something called the 'Ahnenerbe' which was some sort of racial purity league. Now Brücke is confirmed to be dead, assassinated in Greece. However, he was active in Egypt as a Sturmbannführer in 1938, visiting a Dr Heinrich Gruber, one of the members of Professor Paul Langford's team who excavated the Stargate in 1928. I have all of that confirmed using the research we did when we first set the Program up. However, I suspect much more. I think Gruber told Brücke about the Stargate, presumably to prove the Fascist idea of Aryan supremacy, Brücke then smuggled the Gate back to Berlin before the war started, which may explain why Langford and his daughter disappeared just after Brücke's visit. I think Kessler saw which was the war was going and surrendered to the Anglo-Americans to save his own skin, and then somehow claimed all the artefacts from Egypt were his personal property. I find this very hard to believe, but Gruber is missing as well, if he's alive he could have supported Kessler's claim or worked to verify the artefacts, given he was a professor at Hamburg university before the war."

"And of course if the boxes were simply misplaced archaeological relics no one would have thought to question a professor and a German officer moving them about once the fighting was over." Muttered Durov.

"Exactly sir." Replied Konovalov, "Now getting back to the boxes. I have no idea what they contain, or even if they exist, I just have this receipt for 3 trucks traveling west, with Kessler's signature on it. The prisoners claim that there were only 15 boxes, but if one of the broken ones was labelled '26' there might have been more, and only certain ones were left behind. I calculate that 12 boxes could fit into a single truck, based on the size of average crates used for this sort of thing. If so, that's 36 boxes worth of trucks going west, bringing the total up to around 50. I think perhaps the interrogator of the prisoners misheard the number and took 'fünfzehn' for 'fünfzig'."

"15 for 50." Durov said in Russian, "It's not the first time it's happened. If we can find the prisoners, we might get more information…" he thought for a moment. "So you're telling me Kessler and Gruber, two committed fascists, may have 30 boxes of alien technology."

Konovalov winced, "In a word sir, yes." He shook his head, "I don't know, there's too many uncertainties. There might have not been 50 boxes there, Kessler might have really had 3 trucks worth of personal property, and so on, but even that little round bomb Vulcan set was small enough to fit into a bag, let alone a crate as large as the ones we found."

Durov nodded and stood. "I've barely been here an hour and you hand me this." He grinned and then adopted a very serious look. "Very well, I'm going to go get changed and have something to eat. Once I finish I'm going straight to Abramovich. I expect to see you there with a presentation of the relevant documents for his inspection. Write all of this up clearly, a timeline, the calculations of the box sizes, everything. Lavrentiev here will assist you. Even if you're wrong this is too important to leave to chance. Get started."