Chapter 10
Thoughts
"speech"
"Goa'uld speech"
SG SG SG SG SG SG SG
September 19th 1997 - Siwa
"Is that the old Siwa necropolis?" Beatrix asks, looking down from the side of the carpet.
She's dressed to the T, in dark cargo pants, high boots, tight black top, and messes the film costume with an upmarket desert over-shirt, an elegant wide brim straw hat and designer's sunglasses.
She sits crossed legged, and straight backed, as if flying on carpets is something she was born to. She also puts our general trainers - T-shirt – Jeans, to shame. Not that she's trying. Outstanding are R, who is dressed in such a cliché secret service 'field clothes', it makes me smile each time I look at her. Obviously, she has her service gun in a concealed strap, and a light sub-machine gun ready. I'm quite certain Beatrix has a gun in her posh rucksack of hers, but she isn't carrying it visibly, for now. Keira only concession, form her regular goth attire, are good (if black) hiking boots. Fleur and Bill are, obviously, dressed professionally, in their cures beaker's suites.
"Yes, exactly, have you been here?" Harry asks.
"No, but I've seen some pictures. Mum told me there is a wee place, attributed to Isis priests, a bit to the south. Seen a picture too – just few stone poking out of the sands, in between the dunes.
"She also told me the lake here is spectacular", she smiles.
"Right! Our night camp is there – can't wait for a swim and some sundowners!"
"We cleared the sand, about a month ago," Fleur remarks.
"And then, Hermione spread the roof stones around, a bit," Harry chuckles.
I hit him on the back of his head.
Childish – I know…
"Can't see anything down there, though. Could the dunes have covered it back?" Calvin asks.
Beatrix is about to tell him something, probably about the fact that dunes don't move that fast, but I cut her short.
"Oh sorry, listen girls - Isis small temple is located south of the old Siwa necropolis,"
People 'oows' at the blown-open temple below. Visible now, through the hole in the roof, is a medium-sized vehicle. Roughly the size of a business jet, it's grey and rough, and clearly not designed like any flaying craft on earth – starting with it having no wings.
"Precious," I say softly, looking at it fondly.
Beatrix sniggers.
She heard me!
"You have certainly done a good job on the roof." She just says.
We land and walk inside, mainly since we have no idea how to open a hatch, or if Precious even has any hatches, cones to that. I show them the ring in the floor and takes the new team up first. The ring looks too small for the whole group and I don't want to push it.
Coming back up I see the whole group spread out. R is in the pilot seat, mostly stopping Calvin from pushing every button in sight. Keira is more interested in the rings.
"Didn't feal any motion at all, did you?" She asks Seth beside her.
"Neither did I."
"Reckon it's a genuine transporter? Bollocks!"
Seth looks to be quite miffed at that. "What? you disintegrated us, and re-integrated back again, without verifying it's actually working? It needs tests!"
What? It works?
Beatrix is resting at Harry's place, upon the throne, and looks to be more in place than Harry can ever dream of being. She has a camera out and is busy taking pictures of any hieroglyph covered surface.
I see Harry grabbing Calvin's hand to stop him from touching something. "Better not touch this one, mate. Those are the guns." Calvin jerks his hand back, as if bitten.
"Guns? This one? What a stupid place to mount a trigger?!" R remarks.
We are swarmed with question:
"Was that a transporter?" "Did you fire it?" "How fast does it fly?" "did you verify it's integrity?" "Are you daft?" "Did you find anything else here?" "Did you have your shots?" "what fuel does it use?" "Does it have a computer?"
Sod it!
"Enough!" I say, a bit more loudly than intended.
Sorry?
"We discovered this place, and Precious in it. We verified it can fly – to a degree. Doing so I did destroy the roof of this temple. Otherwise we don't know – We're not qualify. This is the reason you are all here."
They seem to understand.
"Hey, let me take you up for a spin, and show you it actually works, then it's all your game," I offer.
I shoo R from the pilot seat.
She seems reluctant.
Precious comes to life at my touch. I lift off, close the landing gear, and fly around. Low and slow. Once in between dunes, and far from the village – I fire the lasers once. Then go back and land.
Harder than intended, I cringe. R smirks.
There's a flurry of activity all around. People are touching, poking looking in every corner. Fleur volunteers to go out and catch few animals for Seth. He takes samples of us all, and the mouse and lizard Fleur has brought in. Then sends those in and out, again and again, taking further samples, on the way.
Keira is standing beside him, taking scans of electric and magnetic spectrum, or something like it. She's getting more excited by the minute.
Harry, with the help of Beatrix do their best to mark the buttons and switches we had recognized in the past. At the same time, Beatrix and Bill do their best to recognize more. It isn't helped by the fact that the press-to-try method, Harry and I used the last time, somewhat successfully, is ruled out by a very exasperated R.
"Guess that's the way you've discovered the guns?" she sneers.
All this also isn't helped by the fact that many, many systems only work when it's me operating them. About the fifth time Seth frowns at me, for not returning him to the ship fast enough, I stop, to looked him in the eye.
"Let me remind you that the probably most pressing task, on our table, is for you to discover a way for more of us to operate these systems. Maybe you should put aside those tissue sample of yours and set your priorities straight?"
He looks properly chastened.
By the time we are back at our beach camp, I'm knackered.
Not a bad day tough.
Lots of work done. Calvin was busy opening panels, following lines and trying to understand just where the hell are the computerised systems, on this spaceship. He narrowed it down to few groups of crystals. He's both owed, and shocked.
"On one hand, when you told me to dream much further into the future, I couldn't have possibly dream just how far. These crystal-based computers are fiction kind of science. On the other hand, If I'm reading this system right – and I might be completely off the mark here, mind you, it looks like the system on this shuttle…"
"Hey!" Harry complains. "Precious is a bad-ass fighter!"
"Right… As I was saying – the systems are so centralised one malfunction, never mind an unlucky hit, and this thing's history." He says.
"What do you reckon Keira?" he adds.
Keira is too busy typing away on her computer to even hear his question. Her tough goth looks broken by the pink polka-dot bikini she wears, which can generously be described as 'itsy bitsy'.
Interesting tattoos though. This one must leave much better tan lines than mine…
Harry too seems interested in her body art. I elbow him to reality.
Our Kid can ignore Fleur charms without a blink, but show him some ink…
"Keira?" Calvin insists.
"Sorry, what?"
"About the centralised systems?"
"Yeh, right – stupid. I was more focused on the power plant." She says.
"Good news – this thing runs on your bog-standard electricity. We won't need to develop a whole new field of science to understand it. But the output levels. My god! I'm afraid to even think of cranking this up."
"What does it use for fuel?" R asks.
Ever the practical.
"No idea. It's some substance I've never seen before. Won't be able to tell you more before taking some of it into a metallography lab," she shrugs.
"A metal?"
Harry digs a nugget out of his pocket and pass it around. "For all we know, this whole technology is built around this metal. We've seen it as ore – like this nugget. Precious is practically made of this. We've also seen it as liquid – I can show you all tomorrow on Precious. Apparently, Hermione has traces of it in her blood now. Arguably a residue of being physically possessed by Isis."
"I can feel when this metal is near me," I explains. "It's how we have located the ring lift into Precious."
People pass the nugget around.
"Isis called this metal Naquadah," I move on with the explanation. "I did run blood tests right after I've managed to get rid of the infestation. The lab isolated some metal in it, though all they got for it are errors.
"We have reasons to believe this metal can only be sourced off planet. At least, any quantity we have managed to locate, up till now, can be trace to an off-planet origin, or connection. Still working on this, and we'll keep you updated."
R is extremely unhappy with this.
"Listen friends," Harry says, before any objections can be voiced. "We all work on this together, and I personally hope we will find ourselves friends. But we are mages, and all around the globe we have one key rule. It's called 'the statute of secrecy' and basically says that mages are forbidden to disclose magic, to normal people."
"Witch hunts, Inquisition…" Beatrix says before anyone else can voice any objection to that.
"Right," Harry moves on. "We are breaching this statute as it is, so please give us credit here. If we ever have relevant information – we'll share it with you all."
R is dissatisfied, but fortunately willing to move on.
"back to the fuel issue – Does Precious has enough fuel for now?"
She says 'Precious' with such scorn.
"Yes, good news," Keira says. "As far as I can tell, it's been topped-up."
"How can you tell?" R insists.
"There's a container with liquid, Naquadah?" she hesitates.
Harry nodes in approval.
"Well, it's full," she shrugs.
"By the way," she tells Calvin. "You'll love this stuff - It's a natural superconductor, as far as I can tell."
"Get out!" he exclaims, and grabs the nugget back, looking at it with renew interest.
There's a 'what now' elephant in the, err – camp. It's R's role to be the practical one. "We need to bring it back to the WIB headquarters, so we'll be able to work on it properly."
"Can Hermione fly it all the way to London?"
"We tested it earlier. Hermione can probably fly it. And I can pilot it too, as long as Hermione is touching any of the controls. We'll do. Problem is not being discovered, never mind attacked on the way. An unidentified aircraft heading towards central London, will attract all kinds of attention we should probably avoid."
Thought we're trying a avoid all kinds of attention.
"We can try Disillusionment?" Bill offers hesitantly.
This just confuses them all, so I tap Harry on the head with my wand.
"Yikes!" he says, as he gradually disappears from visible sight.
"This is so cool! You guys have cloaking technology?" Keira enthuses.
"But federation is banned from cloaking, according to the treaty of…" Calvin whines.
She smacks him. "Not now, child!"
"Disillusionment," invisible Harry says.
I wave my hand and lift the charm. He shrugs again – now visibly.
How predictable, I smirk.
"Can we Disillusion something that big? How long would it last? Harry turns to Bill and asks.
He has no idea. Something this big will have to be done by runes. With the way Naquadah channels magic, it might stay charged forever, or it might be drained from the magic almost immediately. They will be testing it tomorrow.
"Good," R agrees, "but this will solve only half the problem. If air defence will notice something invisible heading towards central London, on radar…"
"Notice-me-not?" Bill offers.
He has no idea what radar is. "It's a good charm to add, if possible, but radar is a machine, not a person," I explain. How visible is precious to radar? What if we fly low?"
Obviously, my understanding of modern radar is just a tad better than Bill's.
"I don't know, but this is something we can, and should test." R concludes. "anything else?"
"We need to remove all the alien devices from the temple and take it with us, so we can drop the wards, once we leave," I add a task to the list.
"So, immediate task list – Bill, Fleur and Harry will test the disill… cloak thing. Hermione, Calvin and Keira – please work on disassembling the equipment in the temple, and pack it for transport – I'll help you when free. Beatrix, maybe you can see what they are doing?" she offers, pointing at Bill. "All those runes sound right up your alley. Seth – sorry but no medical work. Help, or do whatever you like?" R concludes.
"I'll have another drink now, then off to bed." she adds. "Been a long, long day, and I'm knackered. Just hate fieldwork and tents…"
"She wasn't inside yet?" Beatrix whispers in my ear.
I smile.
I'm knackered too. "Come, Harry, take me to bed" I tell him.
He smiles, picks me up over his shoulder, and goes,
"Not like this, you twit!" I smack him, with a huge smile, and everyone laughs.
Keira goes into the water, for one last swim, before calling it a night. I can hear Fleur joining her. Harry isn't the only person intrigued by all this ink – Imagine that.
October 20th - RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus
=Control this is lance, confirmation code Golf-Lima-Bravo-Five-Two-Seven-Echo-Three, please acknowledge?=
=Roger, Lance, receiving you loud and clear=
=We are approaching testing sector at 15 thousand, heading Zero-Two-Five. Is Watch ready? Over=
=Roger. Watch and control ready. You are green for testing. Good luck Lance. Control out=
We are flying in circles over the Mediterranean for half an hour now, at various speeds and altitudes. R, or is she 'Lance' tonight? Locates a civilian airline, and follows its course, at a much lower level.
"And the game begins," she smirks. "They received notification on a two-sided attack profile fly-by/discovery exercise. We are supposed to test Flight, Pair, and Solo attack vectors, over this sector. They are, obviously supposed to discover us.
"They expect a class-A unit, so moderate to good stealth. I'm certain the AWACS was up early and both it and control did a through calibration of the systems, to current and local conditions. They'll be looking for us and keep the line open, so we can learn.
"God, I miss flying!"
We were easily discovered on our first run.
=Control, Lance, coming around for a second pass, over=
=Roger=
Second pass went better. R heads in low, at 150 ft. We can hear Control and Watch identifying and loosing targets few times. Some were us, some not, till they managed to 'lit us up' and marked us.
=Control, Lance. Good work, coming around for last pass, heading Two-One-Five, over=
=Roger, Lance – that was some nice flying there=
"This craft stealth is quite good. They did excellent work to locate us this time. Probably would have gone through, if not actively searched for, at this specific location."
"Try lowering the shields?" I offer.
R looks at me questioningly, then turn them off. "You're right – we don't really know how the shields influence the EM spectrum," she remarks.
Not that I understand what she means – Just thought it's something worth trying.
Disillusionment and Notice-Me-Not went through brilliantly. Fleur says this metal holds enchantments better than anything, this side of Goblin's silver.
That's why they want it so much. It's the make of Goblin silver!
Problem was doing the actual engraving – Naquadah's harder than anything they've ever worked on. That includes Goblin silver, in Bill's case.
Not that it makes any difference right now – We are holding a night exercise, and being eye-sighted isn't an issue, or on test.
We make two more passes, at low altitude, and remain undiscovered. By the end of the second pass, R raises Precious gradually, to approach the flying radar from below.
"Wow!" She exclaims. "They really lit up the sky. If they'd done this during actual combat– they'll be dead to an anti-radar missile."
We are almost on them when control calls us for it.
=Lance, Control. That is a verified kill. Very good flying there. Roger=
=Thank you Control. Leaving game arena now. Thank you for your time=
=Roger. What were we flying against? That last pass was very impressive. Over=
=Sorry control – classified. There will be a report, as soon as permitted. Thanks again. Lance out=
We turn carefully and head south. "Must be careful around here. Syrian, Israeli and Egyptians are always very attentive to what's in the air. It has been quiet for a while now, but the Israelis always have interceptors up, and more on short alert. So does the Syrians, and we don't want to be discovered. Certainly not create an international incident.
"Would you like to test your Precious for speed?"
Without waiting for an answer, she turns precious west and push it forward. For few minutes, the sea rushes underneath us at a gradually and finally astonishing, and frankly – frightening speed. After few moments, she eases out, and lazily turns us back to return.
"Sorry. Don't want to go hypersonic, low over the Mediterranean. Couldn't even feel the inertia. On a regular jet, we would have been losing consciousness, by the end of it, even with a G-suit. Dampeners probably – science fiction stuff."
I listen to her semi-professional chatter. R is clearly impressed.
"That was fun." She finally says when we are landed. "I know I wasn't your personal choice," she says softly, when back at the temple. "I was probably lucky – unbelievably so, mine you, to be in the right place, at the right time. But I want you to know that I really appreciate you doing this and giving me this opportunity."
"You're welcome," I smile.
I'm starting to enjoy working with her.
"Hey," she calls in surprise, looking under the floor hatch. "It's like this thing doesn't use any fuel at all".
"Good thing, though," I answer. "Next petrol station is at Alpha Centauri."
She giggles.
Great – Tomorrow we fly home.