AN: I have written stories off and on over my life but never taken it seriously. This is my attempt to try to get a little more serious about my writing and see if I can get the creative juices flowing again. I hope you enjoy it but if not, I appreciate any critique you have.
Chapter 1: SGC General Hammond's office
Senior Chief Francis, aka Frank Hopkins adjusts his Navy uniform and raps on the door of General Hammond's office… He hears a muffled, "Enter."
He pushes the door open, enters and snaps to attention with a crisp salute as he speaks, "General Hammond, Senior Chief Frank Hopkins reporting for duty." General Hammond returns the salute.
"At ease, senior chief…. Welcome to the SGC. I've been looking over your service record and you have had quite the career… 3 purple hearts, 2 Distinguished Service medals, and the Navy Cross for your actions in Afghanistan. There is also a recommendation from Chief of Staff Ryan to join the SGC…. Very impressive son"
Frank smiles at the general, "Just doing my duty sir." The general shakes his head and wonders how he got so lucky to be surrounded by these great soldiers and sailors. The thought was only slightly cynical. Every new kid that came through his door emotionally dropped and gave him 20. That was fine with Hammond, he already had enough smart mouthed Colonels to deal with. A little respect for the stars would be a nice change.
"Well, son, I say you have succeeded…. Let's get you settled into your billet and we will get you briefed and assign to your SG team tomorrow." Hammond reaches for the intercom. "Walter, please come escort senior chief Hopkins to his room and then to the mess hall." Walter replies and the com goes silent.
Frank salutes the general and replies, "Thank you sir. I'm looking forward to serving with you and the SGC."
There is a knock at the door and it opens. "Ready to go, senior chief?" He turns and nods and follows Walter out of the office. Hammond smiles and makes a mental note to keep en eye on the new member's missions.
That next afternoon, Captain Lynn Schultz walked into the Commissary. She'd have killed for pumpkin pie but it looked like all that was left was Jell-O. Lynn wrinkled her nose. Hard pass. She was avoiding her team this afternoon. The morning had gone… badly.
It wasn't her fault. It really wasn't. Her job was to make things work better than they already did. To do that she documented the changes she made so if it didn't work, she could reverse the change order. This was especially important on anything military related because her ass would be in a sling if she did NOT submit documentation to Major Carter and sign off on the new MIL-SPECs.
She had left her notes on her bench next to the cam shaft she was fiddling with. She'd been carefully grinding off various edges to see if a lighter weight shaft would make the MALP motors more efficient. She still had to stress test each one though so she'd been setting up a stress program in her computer while keeping an eye on Sean who had been helping her set up a testing cage.
No one would admit who it was but she knew. Oh she KNEW Bev had been flirting with Mike and not at all paying attention to where she was sloshing her coffee cup around. How else had her pile of documentation been saturated with sticky brown coffee stains. How else were they stuck together in a way that meant they were never coming apart again.
To add insult to injury as she had been panicking over the condition of her notes her BOSS walks into the lab and asks her how things are going. Because that's what she needed. Major Carter looking at her with… pity.
Lynn sighed and picked at fruit salad she'd grabbed. Maybe she needed to go to the gym and punch something.
At the same time, Frank was outside on the firing range. This will be his third run through, Frank thought. He has to say he's impressed with SGC's firing range. High quality kill houses, lots of medium to long range targets, it's almost as if he's in DEV group.
He checks his gear one more time, side arm, MP7 silenced and assorted knives. HE pulls up the MP7 and puts it in combat sight position and turns the corner and heads for the kill house. He scans his part of the pie (the designation of where a shooter is to shoot in a combat situation). His eyes dart left to right when he approaches the building when suddenly on his right, a target of a Jaffa pops up. He puts three rounds in its head.
No sooner than the bullets hit their target, another pops up and he swings to the left. Just as he's about to pull the trigger he notices that it's a female carrying a basket of fruit. He immediately looks at the door that is thirty feet away, slowly making progress to the building. No more targets pop up.
He gets to the door and goes to the right side of it, back pressed against the wall. Taking a deep breath he pulls a flash bang off his chest harness. He spins, kicks the door in, throws the flash bang in then enters the building. Scanning left to right, he approaches the main room, there are no visible targets and he proceeds to the first side room on his left. Noticing there's no door, he goes for a dynamic entry. He goes in quickly and goes to the right side of the room. There are two Jaffa standing side by side. He puts a three round burst in the left one's chest, pivots and gets the second one with a three round burst.
There's no hostage so he leaves the room quickly and quietly. He heads down the hallway. There is only one more room in the building. He enters the room. There's one Jaffa and he pulls his MP7 up and aims for the Jaffa's head. The gun clicks. He's out of ammo. Quickly, he drops the MP7 on its strap and goes for his handgun. Diving to the right, he fires his handgun multiple times hitting the target in the chest and the head. He stands and sees the hostage dummy behind the Jaffa. He grabs the dummy, puts it over his shoulder in a fireman carry and exits the building.
He walks back to his starting point with the dummy and sets it down then checks the timer. Five seconds quicker than last time. He's good with that. He takes his weapon over to the table where his gear is set up and starts replacing the rounds for the magazine in the MP7 and the handgun. He enjoys keeping his close combat skills honed even though he's a sniper. You never know in the teams when you will be called to do something outside of your purview. Everyone can do everyone's job. He's going to try to bring that kind of philosophy to his team. Everyone will cross train.
His next action for the day was to check his sniper skills to make sure they hadn't become rusty. He has two sniper rifles sitting on the bench. The first is a TAC-338 fitted with a suppressor. It's made for soft targets out at longer ranges. The suppressor kept him hidden so no one knew where the shot came from. It's optimal range is sixteen hundred meters. His other was an M82 50 caliber sniper rifle. This gun was considered an anti materials sniper rifle. It can engage soft targets with devastating effect but it can also be used to take out targets behind walls, destroy an engine block on almost any kind of truck, knock out power generators, disable communication arrays and with special rounds puncture armored vehicles.
He picks up the TAC-338 first. He has three targets set up, one at twelve hundred meters, one at fourteen hundred and one at sixteen hundred. For the first target at twelve, he sets up across a bench in a sitting position. He pops the caps on the scope and starts looking down the sights. Usually he has a spotter but today he's got tell tails letting him know wind direction by each target. He takes a deep breath and chambers the round.
As he looks down the scope he remembers his sniper training and the famous word BRASS stands for breath, relax, aim, slack, squeeze. He lets out his breath, slowly relaxing. He has the target in his sight and he takes up the slack on the trigger and pulls. There's a soft cuff coming out of the gun, barely audible. He watches the scope as he sees the target hit dead center, then he hears the ping of metal as the sound of the round hitting the metal resonates back to him a moment later.
He stands up and goes to a wall that has a window opening cut into it. There is no glass, just an open hole. For this shot, he's going to take a standing shot simulating shooting from cover. It's a little harder shot but sometimes in urban situations, necessary. He goes through the same sequence he did during the first shot and fires the gun. Little off center to the right. He makes adjustments on his scope for the windage and moves around the wall and goes to a small berm fifteen feet away.
For this shot he's going to lay prone on the ground as the longer shot requires a steadier position. He checks the tell tail to make sure he has the wind down and the scope sited, There is no need to rush the shot. Once he feels comfortable he does the brass again. The gun coughs. Watching through the scope. Dead center. Perfect shot. Not bad for an old guy he laughs to himself.
He takes the gun back to the table and picks up the Barrette. Walking back to the berm, he has three targets at nineteen hundred meters. Concrete block wall with dummy behind it, an old duce and a half troop transport truck, and a fifty five gallon drum simulating a power generator. This baby packs a little bit of a kick so he should be able to take out all three targets within five seconds of each other. So in the span of fifteen seconds, he should be able to get maximum damage before they anyone is aware of the first round hitting the target.
This thing is more of a hammer than a surgical device but at this distance you still had to calculate the curvature and spin of the earth. After making a few adjustments to the scope settings, he takes sight on the wall. He's painted a small tennis ball sized black dot, simulating where the enemy would be crouched, thinking he's safe.
He pulls the slack up on the trigger and prepares for the kick. This thing kicks like a mule. He sends the ordinance down range. He doesn't wait to see if the round hits, he immediately changes targets to the truck. Sighting where the engine block would be, he pulls the trigger again. He quickly shifts to the final target, the fifty five gallon drum. This is a special round, the other two were armor piercing, the third one is incidentary. he pulls the trigger. As soon as the round is out of the gun, he spins to look back at the wall as it shatters due to the force of the fifty cal. As the wall experiences spontaneous deconstruction, the dummy, which has a bladder of red paint in it, energetically disassembles in a red mist. One down.
Scanning the truck, the only thing giving away the fact that the block is destroyed is steam rising under the hood. Thirty minutes prior to targeting the truck, he'd run it until it was hot so he'd be able to tell he hit his target but he only got a brief glimpse of it as the drum erupts in a huge fireball. A huge grin spreads across his face and he giggles a little. It always makes his heart flutter when things go kaboom kaboom. He gets up and dusts himself off, picks up the rifle and heads back to the bench. As he turns around, he notices someone standing behind him with a shocked look on her face. His time must be up on the range.
As he reaches the bench, he sets the gun down and smiles at the young lady and says, "Sorry about the mess."
"Sorry about the mess." The grey haired man told her with a smirk and a light drawl that had her eyes narrowing a bit. His age was ambiguous. Like Colonel O'Neill, his hair was graying but it looked like he might be younger than you would suspect at first in the same way.
Lynn shook her head, her curls bobbing about randomly. The only reason she'd come topside was General Hammond had ordered all military personnel to submit range scores. She was a little rusty and if she was honest with herself, there was a reason her TO had told her to stick to fixing aircraft. She wasn't the first person you called for a firefight and she knew it. This guy, though, apparently was Rambo.
So here she was, up here to practice alone and work off some steam per a rather odd conversation she'd just had with Colonel O'Neill regarding the lab incident. Apparently Major Carter wasn't mad at her at all, but she was miffed at the other techs for horsing around near a test area. Colonel O'Neill had pointed out that if Carter, as he called her, wasn't being suspiciously polite to her then she wasn't mad at her specifically. Doctor Jackson had then teased the older man that he ought to know as he'd been on the receiving end of said overly polite tone himself more times than he should admit to.
Her boss' team seemed nice enough and Lynn envied her for getting to be part of not just a team that went through the gate, but the team SGC sent out for scouting missions. Her envy was tempered by how many times Major Carter had come back severely injured in the field. Major Carter was a tough officer so if she was coming back injured it was obviously rougher out there than it needed to be.
"Er, hi. I'm just here to practice actually. Before I go in and get my range scores updated." She told the man hoping he'd take his ordinance and go pillage a local village or something so she could shoot badly in peace.
Inwardly he smiles, he's usually good at sizing people up. Let's take three guesses: nerdy, science type that has no clue what the working end of a gun is, probably barely scraped though basic. He smiles. "Names Frank. Surprised I didn't hear about this from Hammond but he's probably got my qualification scores from just before I left the teams to come to SGC. So, what kind of weapon are you shooting?"
She shrugged. If Frank Rambo wants to be chatty who was she to argue. He wasn't hard on the eyes. "About the only thing I'm qualified to fire fairly well. A Beretta. "
He nods. "Can I see the weapon please?" He holds out his hand.
She looks at him askance. It's SGC issue so it's going to be exactly like every other Beretta on the rack. "Sure." She says in a 'whatever, weird dude' sort of way.
He smiles. He likes her. She's got a sense of humor. Standard issue, nothing fancy, well maintained and loaded, one in the chamber, safety on. He hands the gun back to her. "Ok, if you don't mind I'd be willing to give you a few pointers."
One dark, arched eyebrow raises as she looks up at him, he only has a few inches on her 5'6" height. What's his game, she wonders. She was just a lab geek. All she had to do was qualify with a weapon of her choice. It wasn't like she was going to see action unless she had a foothold situation and she was trained as a first responder not back up for the airmen who guarded the facility.
"What do you want?" She finally asked bluntly.
He crosses his arms across his barrel chest. Typical academic, never thinking that they would ever be in any danger at any time. "Look, the real world is a lot different than your schoolbooks. What's the point of having a weapon and not knowing how to use it properly. Now let's get some aeronautics in it. Take for example you're in an SH60 Blackhawk, flying around normal. There can never be any kind of mechanical error, until there is one. Do you just give up flying? Because you have no power? Or do you use the aircrafts momentum and auto rotate to a safe landing?"
"Well I'm not the pilot so I bail. This sounds like a 'you' problem. But let's say academically I'm piloting. Yah I put her on the ground but the base, last time I checked, doesn't launch and we have an iris and blast doors for a reason. Anything that can get through either is probably going to mow me down even if I am armed." She says giving him a scathing look as he has such a low opinion of the people who make sure his coffee maker performs to specs.
In one fluid motion his arms come to his sides, right hand grasps his M1911 out of its drop holster, he pivots left and puts 3 rounds in a target fifty feet down range, center mass the head. Just as quickly, he holsters his side arm and glares at her. "Look, princess, my point was it's better to know how to do something and not need it than to need it and not know how to use it. Your choice. Do you want help or not?" he growls at her, leaning in slightly, his eye narrowed.
She looks up and glares back. Rambo thinks he's hot shit. Unfortunately, he's also not technically wrong though she doubts if push came to shove he could tear down a turbine and repair it in the field either. Those green eyes of his were going to be a real problem. "Fine, hot shot. Let's say you're right. My TO barely dragged me through qualifying. What makes you think you'll be able to make me any more proficient?"
"You think I got this good overnight?
"I think you watch John Wayne movies and jerk off to them."
"Well, you're obviously not a fighter. What's your specialty? What are you good at?"
"The short list? Making stuff work better, particularly aircraft but I've been known to MacGyver my share of ground units too. I'm pretty good at fixing broken crap on the fly so we can get the hell out of Dodge when need be. I make sure everyone gets home." She was good at some other stuff too but she doubted he needed a lengthy list of random skill sets like being able to eyeball grinding a piece of metal down to .04 microns for instance or run stress test calculations in her head.
Finally, something in common. Aeronautics. "Ok, so, aeronautics. You have a skill set. First time you ever tore down a turbine, rebuilt it and reinstall it, how long did it take?"
"Well that's a trick question. You always do that job as a team and you work your way up on what task you take on as you gain proficiency."
"Point taken. Still, how long did it take you to do your first one?"
"It took my team a little over six weeks for full tear down repair and rebuild." She admitted which wasn't a bad time for a bunch of recruits but was as bad as domestic turn around time on a rebuild.
"And after you did about two dozen, and I'm sure you've done field repairs, how fast was your turn around on a jet?"
She shrugged, "Assuming we had parts in house? Worst case seventy two, but, for a swap, less than six."
"So Brainiac, what's the answer to the question?"
She looks at him, her eyebrows knitted together. "Which question?"
"How did you get so good? Repetition. After you did the job multiple times, you got faster and better. Here's a little side note. I bet you didn't know about me. I originally joined the Army. I was exceptional in aeronautics, wanted to fly helos with the Night Stalkers, an elite group of pilots used to haul special forces in and out of hot zones. I was in the Philippines on a training mission, two weeks out from graduation, full combat simulation, we had a group of Seals on the helo along for the ride when we got a call on a hostage rescue, not a drill, real world. I flew these men into a hot LZ and was fascinated with how well they moved and worked together to save those hostages. When I flew back in to the LZ, I made up my mind that more than just flying these guys in, I wanted to be one of these guys. I put a transfer in to the Navy and immediately applied to BUDs.
"It was the hardest thing I ever did in m life but just like with flying, the more I trained, the better I got. Your problem isn't that you can't hit anything. Your problem is you haven't had enough practice." He pointed with his shoulder. "Come with me." He said gruffly.
First he's rude then he tells me his life story which I did not ask for. She thinks sourly but the guy did have a point, most of her lack of proficiency was lack of practice. Range time had cut into classes and she had to pick one or the other so she'd gotten just proficient enough to pass but little more. She could tear down and clean a firearm with the best of them and load without a second glance but she was only adequate at hitting the target because it was required of her to be so. She'd watched Major Carter practice and she was as proficient with a weapon as she was with a screwdriver.
So she followed the crazy squid with a shrug. What harm would it do to have someone try to make her a little less likely to fail qualifications. "All right. It's your ulcer."
He shakes his head. Boy, this is going to be tougher than hell week.