The Apache put down smoothly on a concrete pad that someone had built in the middle of nowhere. Dust blew in from across the barren landscape, making only a change in colour from the powdered snow that had been scattered around their departure point. Outside the immediate area of the helipad, conifers had replaced the squat military buildings that marked their Washington base. They were impressively tall; similar to the commercial high rise that ranged behind the JAG building near the Pentagon.
Sarah Mackenzie looked around the landing field disappointed. For a state that could claim the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming could certainly turn on the bland and barren with the best of them.
Carter cut back the fuel feed to the drive, allowing the turbine to wind down. The noise levels were still oppressive. Mackenzie thought she would be carrying a ringing in her ears for some time to come yet. Tinnitus, it was called, she remembered irrelevantly.
She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that she hadn't eaten for close to six hours. The lack of fluids had been welcome in the limited confines of the chopper, given its lack of facilities, but now she was parched and hungry.
"How much further?" she asked Samantha Carter.
"It's about a ten minute drive from here," she said and pointed into the hills.
A jeep waited for them in the cleared scrub immediately outside the line of the concrete pad. A Marine Sergeant occupied the driver's seat, looking suitably bored with proceedings. He leapt out of the vehicle to help with their disembarkation, as though it was the highlight of his day. Which it just might have been thought Sarah Mackenzie unkindly. She was right, but that just made the situation all the more tragic.
Sarah Mackenzie climbed awkwardly from the passenger compartment, again hamstrung by the confines of her skirt's hem and cursed the designers of her uniform. It was certainly impractical. With a tinge of envy she watched Samantha Carter leap athletically through the pilot's door and turn to toss all of her paraphernalia onto the pilot's chair.
A second jeep was on its way to the helipad Mackenzie realised. Carter was going to accompany them, leaving the chopper behind. That was a possibility that Mackenzie hadn't anticipated.
The weather was still cool, despite the brilliant sunshine that illuminated the day. For all that it was blessedly warmer than the weather she had left behind in Washington. It was probably the greatest benefit she could gain from this assignment. A thin quality to the cold air told Mackenzie that they must have landed at a reasonable altitude.
The marine sergeant was obviously waiting for them. Mackenzie took her seat in the front of the jeep while the Sergeant tossed her bag into the back of the jeep. Carter and O'Neill leapt into the back seat. O'Neill's ubiquitous sunglasses hid his eyes. Something about the body language of those two suggested a certain proprietary attitude on both parts. It was probably the lack of body space they left between themselves. They weren't touching, but there was just too little space between them for people who only worked together. Mackenzie wonder how far that chemistry had been taken, and then decided that it was none of her business…Yet. At some later date there might be some sort of fraternisation issue to settle.
The ride was short, which was just as well because it was also bumpy, being almost as far in the little up and down motions as it was in the big along motion. They squeaked to a halt and pulled up at a security gate that had been placed outside the tunnel entrance to what was obviously a subterranean facility. It was probably meant to look like a disused mine. In fact that might be what it was, but the 'newness' of the infrastructure suggested it was built too recently to be disused already. Although to be completely fair, there are mines that get the geology completely wrong during the exploration phase and go bankrupt almost before they get going. It's referred to as mining the widows and orphans funds, and is depressingly common. Usually they sell for a song to some sort of major corporation looking for a strategic way to waste shareholder funds. This one was altogether too malevolent in outward appearance to be one of those operations. The guy at the gate had the letters MP on his armband and, it's not that he was happy to see Mae West; that actually was a gun on his hip.
Mackenzie realised that the mine-like appearance might for the benefit of spy satellites and high altitude reconnaissance planes.
It was in the middle of the USA. Who were they hiding it from? She had an uncomfortable idea that it might be hidden from the people of the USA.
Their driver flashed his ID. O'Neill waved to the gate guard and the boom gate rose to allow them to pass. They drove through the portal that marred the side of the hill, and down a steep-ish grade before the road (tunnel) opened into a brilliantly lit cavern way beneath the peak of the hill. The driver brought their jeep to a halt in a painted parking bay and shut the engine down. All Sarah Mackenzie could hear was the whum whum of large ventilation fans at work. The place smelled of concrete and stone dust, and seemed to be completely artificial.
O'Neill leapt out of the jeep, grabbed Mackenzie's bag from the back of the jeep and threw it over his shoulder. He thumped a button on the wall, placed his face against a retinal scan reader and waited until the speaker above the security door chimed. An elevator door slid aside to reveal a small lift. O'Neill stepped inside and gestured for the two women to follow. Their driver waited at parade rest until the door closed.
The door closed behind them and they rode the elevator deep into the bowels of the Earth. No levels were presented in the little display above the OTIS nameplate. The ride seemed to go forever.
When the elevator came to rest, Sarah Mackenzie was staring up at the blank CRT display, trying to puzzle out the number of levels they had plummeted, when the door opened and she missed the fact that the corridor outside the elevator door was already occupied.
"Colonel Mackenzie, meet General Hammond," said O'Neill in his laconic manner. His comment brought Mackenzie back to the world with a start.
She had been presented to a man who was of average height and more than average girth. He was somewhat less than hirsute. In fact he had a head like a billiard ball and a neck like a bull. His uniform covered his barrel of a body as though it was sown together while he was inside it rather than buttoned around him like everyone else's. It probably was sewn onto him. There can't be any other way that he could get that neck inside that collar.
"Pleased to have you on board," the General said. His voice was smooth and deep. He shook her hand. "If you will just come this way? We can get this show in the road. Has Jack filled you in on what we are doing here and what we need from you?"
"Briefly," she said non-committal-ly.
O'Neill and Carter stepped from the elevator ahead of Mackenzie and fell in behind General Hammond. Mackenzie stepped through the elevator door and joined them, looking around at the bland décor of the subterranean facility. A team of four marines hustled past them, momentarily filling the corridor. They seemed to be covered by a fine layer of desert sand. No explanation was offered and the General Hammond led the little delegation away from the lift. Mackenzie stared after them for a moment, confused.
They walked through grey corridors that seemed to echo their footsteps back from miles away before they finally came to door marked 'operations room'.
Mackenzie decided to chance her arm. She hustled up to General Hammond. "Can I see the stargate?" she asked.
"Certainly Colonel," Hammond agreed affably. "It was the first thing we meant for you to see in any case. Major Carter? Can you do the honours?"
"Certainly sir," Carter stepped forward and beckoned Mackenzie through the door and led her across the operations room. Mackenzie followed along behind, taking in the organised but apparently chaotic activity that had been revealed when they opened the door. She found herself surrounded by the latest in graphic user interface technology operating through a networked computer system. Considered from her point of view, Mackenzie might have been looking at an air traffic control centre or the operations centre of a nuclear power station, the facility was so technologically dependent. A number of operators sat in a semi-circle beneath the gaze of a wide glass window. They worked intently. An expectant hush filled the room. Over their heads a counter ticked down the seconds to some important future event. She had no idea of what it might be.
Samantha Carter stepped forward and gestured for Sarah Mackenzie to step over to the window. The pair of them squeezed into the small space between a couple of computer desks, momentarily upsetting the work of a NCO technician. Mackenzie apologised for the interruption and then looked toward Carter.
With a flourish of her arms, Carter presented the gate, as though it were her baby. She seemed to radiate expectation. Sarah Mackenzie looked through the window and down at the device that sat in the centre of the cavern. Her confusion escalated. She was looking into a giant cavern cut into the native rock. The void would have been close to twenty metres wide and at least ten metres high.
A gigantic circular thing dominated the space within the imposing subterranean cavity. It carried the appearance of a carefully machined stone ring. Around the periphery, the builders had engraved runes into the device, strange eldritch shapes that appeared to contain meaning beyond the squiggles that they might have appeared to be to an observer that indulged in just a hasty inspection. The ring was about forty centimetres thick and approximately five metres in diameter. Inside the ring, an irised shutter had been installed, something like the aperture that controlled the light fed through a camera lens, but executed on a seriously grand scale. Its purpose was obvious. The iris was meant to block an opening that would have engulfed the full five metres of the gate's diameter.
"Has it worked yet?" Sarah Mackenzie asked breathlessly. She was struggling to keep her mouth from gaping open and to keep her brain in gear.
"You obviously haven't read the entire briefing," concluded General Hammond.
"Long story," O'Neill told her.
"Are there any other areas that Colonel Mackenzie is not yet appraised?" General Hammond asked O'Neill.
"Lot's sir, we kinda gave her a lot to take in at short notice."
"Hrmmph."
O'Neill seemed to be impervious to the rebuke.
"Come on, you need to meet the Delegate," General Hammond said to Sarah Mackenzie. He pushed the door to a conference room open and stepped aside so she could walk through ahead of him. Men have been holding doors open for women for centuries. It is in no way a sign of respect or courtly manners, it's purely and simply so that the men can watch the women's butts move while the men walk along behind them. The door holding gesture is a way of achieving that physical arrangement without making it more obvious than it needs to be. As we have already discussed, Mackenzie often had her butt checked out. It was one of life's little trials and she just had to live with it.
So it was that she was not concentrating on what was in the room, rather she was concentrating on what the people behind her were doing while she stepped into the room and consequently she was not paying the levels of attention to the events ahead of her that they demanded.
A delegation awaited her in the conference room and it was going to change the way she looked at the world. As soon as she starts taking input from her eyes, rather than listening to the crap that finds itself ploughing through her head, things are seriously going to change around here.
First she saw that lunch was layed on, placed along the table for a large contingent, she noted its existence thankfully. She was starving after the long chopper ride without food. That was one primary need met, so she was able to raise her attention from the survival criteria.
She stepped quickly through the door and turned toward General Hammond expectantly, waiting for an introduction to the people who were already in the room and awaited her.
She was prepared to meet with a Russian advocate. She had even worked out a list of names, the possible members of the consular staff who might be awaiting her.
Instead she saw…