Since the stargate's discovery in an archaeological dig hidden away in the back blocks of Egypt, the US government had secreted it beneath the Chyanne Mountains, hiding it from the world's prying eyes by burying it in a secured military compound.
Samatha Carter's booted feet clanked on the surface of the metal ramp as she walked upward. She took one grim look over her shoulder, taking in the sight of the overhead mission control centre, the cavernous excavation in which the entire facility was housed and the team of armed marines that lined both sides of the entry ramp.
The iris that protected the US stargate installation from unauthorised entry (particularly from that unwelcome bunch of parasites that were responsible for placing the thing in Egypt in the first place), spiralled open like a well oiled machine. It made a noise like some-one sharpening knives on an oilstone.
Carter turned back to face the stargate, and so doing he looked directly into the optical cloak that protected them for the violent storm of radiation that would otherwise be emitted from the event horizon inherent in the stargate's wormhole. The gate was about five metres in diameter, apparently carved in rock with machine tolerances. Symbols have been engraved into the circumference of the giant toroidal piece of stonemasonry and research by Egyptologists had resulted in a rough decoding system for establishing what those addresses represented. Ahead of her was a visually disturbing damper/interface that was modulated from within the wormhole portal so that it cloaked the event horizon. It looked like some one had suspended the surface of a swimming pool in the vertical plane, and then the bastards had neglected to tell the water that it should run away and sulk (like it would have done if it had really been water).
There was no point in looking at it any more, she had looked at it dozens of times before and it always looked the same.
Carter stepped through the stargate portal. It is difficult to explain what she endured during the next few seconds. The passage through the gate seemed to last for eternity (and just might have done, if the latest research into the stargate phenomenon is correct. Physicists' have begun to show an unfortunate tendency to border on metaphysics in their dabbling-s nowadays. I mean, do you really think that a sub-atomic particle has 'charm'. Seriously, that is one of the characteristics that modern subatomic particle physicists have used to describe the behaviour of particles, go figure).
Carter endured a gut wrenching ride like some sadistic bastard had tacked the Universe's worst roller coaster design onto the far side of the portal. It was accompanied by a visual track that was intended to heighten the impression that one was about to look at one's breakfast again really soon. Then Carter appeared somewhere else in space-time, only a few moments (or eternities, depending on your scholastic allegiances) later. The trans-spatial ride was still a wild trip even after all these years spent crossing the portal on his way to distant places where she got to meet lots of exotic people and sometimes managed to get back in one piece without shooting any of them.
So it was that on the discworld, the cloak of shimmering, distorted space-time that floated in the maw of the stargate parted and Samantha Carter stepped through. The degree to which Carter was physically attractive was something upon which Jack O'Neill had wasted a considerable amount of thought, despite her blonde hair being cut relatively short and her unfortunate dress sense. She has a PhD in physics but you could never tell the extent of her education or intelligence from an examination of her outfit or her demeanour. Carter was a handsome woman, still somewhere in the early phases of the transition from young to the 'uncertain age' of female matriarchal hierarchy.
When she stepped through the gate she struggled a little because she was overloaded with gear. She carried a gun; she had a knife and grenades on the webbing around her waist. Her helmet crushed her hair into a shaggy fringe that protruded around the edges. Her combat fatigues mould themselves to a shape that was worth a second look, especially if you like them with metallic objects of malevolent intent clipped and stashed all over her person.
Hey, there are some guys out there who… Never mind that, this is not one of those stories.
She wore a distracted expression, which told the world - or the disc - that she was lost in her thoughts - none of which were happy. Thing were not gong well on this mission. She had found things out that made her very concerned, thing that suggested most of her knowledge of physics was close to useless here and to top it off, the rest of her team had gone missing. It wasn't as though that was such an unusual experience. Hardly a mission went by without at least one of them going missing. In fact they were frequently killed in the line of duty, but it was rarely permanent. You got used to that sort of thing after a while.
But for some reason she though this time it was different. She had tried for a couple of hours to contact the rest of the SG-1 team, with no success. Either they were underground, where their radio's were out of reach, or they were in trouble. They were usually pretty good when it came to informing her about being out of range or whatever. This time there was just the sudden cut off of communications, and when that happened it was usually bad.
Left on her own devices she had reached a command decision, and she had dialled home and gone back to report the situation. General Hammond had put a team on stand-by. It was all he was prepared to do until the nature of the threat became clearer or things happened and she could report in more detail. So Carter had come back to the discworld to wait for O'Neill and team to report back in. If she wasn't back at SGC in a couple of hours, then they were coming through.
And upon her return to the disc, she discovered that she was not alone in her little investigative area.
Two men dressed in gaudy cloaks awaited her arrival. At first glance she was put in mind of a hirsute and drag-dressed version of Laurel and Hardy. Nothing that happened afterward changed her initial opinion. Carter and the newcomers eyed each other off carefully.
As soon as the gate showed signs of life again, Ponder Stibbons and Mustrum Ridcully had tensed in anticipation of battle with tentacled monsters from the dungeon dimensions. They were poised with staffs raised and the first spell they could come up with under the circumstances, half uttered.
Then Carter stepped out of the event horizon.
They swallowed their words with an effort. After all, though the denizens of the dungeon dimensions often took on the form of beautiful young women, they tended not to be armed to the teeth with hardware in the way that this one appeared to. They were usually dressed more alluringly. There was none of this camouflage and combat gear for them. In the dungeon dimensions tentacles worked best.
Ponder Stibbons looked at Mustrum Ridcully as though asking, 'what do we do now?'
Women in chain mail were rare enough, but this? She had more metal hanging off her than an infantry regiment.
"Who are you?" Samantha Carter asked.
*
Sam Vimes led Captain Carrot, Detritus and Jack O'Neill into the Patrician's palace. They wandered through the area being worked by Cheri in her crime scene investigation and then they squeezed into the secret passageway. Detritus managed to get through the doorway by the expedient of creating a new one. While they stepped lightly along the corridor, carefully dodging a thousand blades and blunt instruments that made up the selection of ironmongery that was now on display, O'Neill glanced at a few of them as though they were old friends. From the corner of his eye, Vimes watched O'Neill's reactions, noted the way he inspected the display of weaponry. He had obviously seen it all during his team's march through the hallway a little earlier.
"Look familiar does it?" Vimes asked.
"Of course," O'Neill answered. He stepped nonchalantly around a morning star and placed his hands into his pockets.
"That office back there," Vimes pointed over his shoulder, "belonged to the Patrician. He's gone missing."
"Oh," commented O'Neill.
"Yes. Oh. You came in, dodged this lot, marched into the Patrician's office and… What?"
"Found it empty and kept going."
"Normally, I'd have to say your story was a pack of lies," Vimes told O'Neill, "but this is the discworld after all, and, damn but some weird stuff goes down here. Coming to visit from another star is probably the least implausible story I've heard over the years. But there's still the missing Patrician. Either you were responsible or you're my best witness. Which?"
"I wish I could help" O'Neill shrugged. "This is all just bizarre."
"The guy's you're going to meet are the experts at bizarre. I'm just a humble policeman. I deal in facts and people."
"Well, yeah you got that right, you've got the bizarre market cornered" O'Neill said and eyed Detritus off.
For his part, Detritus was getting a bit fed up with the attention. It was as though the guy had never seen a troll before.
"You claim you didn't create the ring, gate whatever it is?" Vimes continued.
"That's right. We just came to investigate. Offer the hand of peace."
"We've had this discussion."
O'Neill stooped to push a cross bow aside. It would have delivered a nasty bolt at a little below the waist level of most men. O'Neill had winced when he saw it the first time and did so again this second time. The very thought…
Vimes was still speaking. "It would have been nice if the thing in there had been created by the Wizards. Them I can deal with. They might break through to the dungeon dimensions occasionally, but at least they look after their own problems. This thing," he said and ushered O'Neill through the door and into Leonard De Quirm's study/cell, "is a whole new kettle of fish as far as this place is concerned. You sure you don't have any idea who put it here?"
O'Neill stopped beside Vimes. The two of them filled the doorway. There was no need to follow Vimes' gesture. O'Neill was comfortably familiar with the thing that filled the far half of the room.
"None whatsoever," O'Neill said. "It's what we came through to find out."
Vimes shook his head ruefully. He had the feeling he was being lied to. Not the whole story, just that last statement.
"Figured it might be something like that," Vimes said with his usual sardonic edge. He had already figured that O'Neill was of the genus 'guard' in one of it's otherworldly manifestations. The clues were all there. He didn't have the furtive spy-type approach to him everywhere he looked and everything he said and did. Vimes had actually begun to warm to the man. There was obviously a kindred spirit in there.
It was just such a pity about the gonnes. That was the truly scary aspect of O'Neill's team's appearance. It said something bad about the sort of things O'Neill's team had to guard his city against. Whatever it was that they encountered out there, the guards who watched out for it needed to carry gonnes and that suggested it was a really bad thing for the discworld to have encountered. The Patrician's disappearance made it all the worse.
"We'll help you in every way we can to get the Patrician back," O'Neill offered.
Vimes nodded. Sometime during the last few minutes O'Neill had gone from prisoner to case consultant. Carrot noted the change with interest. The similarity between Vimes and O'Neill had not escaped him.
Regarding the stargate they encountered a trio of people. Two of them were unfamiliar to O'Neill. The third was one he wanted to get more familiar with if the fraternisation regulations of the SGC ever relaxed.
"Hi Sam," O'Neill said as soon as he passed through the doorway. "I was wondering where you had gotten to."
"Thank god you're back," Carter replied. "When you didn't report in, I went back through to SGC. You were gone for such a long time."
Vimes followed O'Neill's line of sight and caught sight of the woman who was waiting beside the two Wizards. For some reason he was put in mind of his own Sergeant Angua. It probably wasn't the military uniform, or the blonde good looks or anything; it was more likely the look of restrained motion. A posture that said, as soon as no one is looking, I'm out of here.
"Another of yours," Vimes said to O'Neill. "I take it."
"Yep."
"How many more of you are out there, blundering around in my town."
O'Neill raised one laconic eyebrow. "That's all of them accounted for now."
"You're sure now? You wouldn't want to count them again to make sure?"
"No. I'm pretty sure that's all of them accounted for now."
Vimes looked him over for a minute. O'Neill remained poker faced. "Then perhaps I should introduce you to the wizards," Vimes finished.
*
Daniel Jackson marched along the Tudor lined streets on Ankh Morpork beside Teal'c. They weren't bound in any way and there appeared to be no physical reason for them to walk along the pavement as though they were prisoners, except there remained this imposing presence that strolled along behind them. She looked pleasant enough, but there was always this underlying suspicion that there was something real underpinned her vulpine smile.
Since their last turn, Jackson had found himself in familiar territory. SG-1 had walked these streets before their fateful encounter in the Mended Drum. He had a horrible idea that he knew where they were being taken. And he wasn't happy at the implications.
Angua directed them around a corner. Teal'c and Jackson went to round it and almost tripped over… something coming the other way.
Jackson took a second look to be sure of what it might be.
It looked like a fur-ball that embodied the essences extracted from most of the world's bad smells, all distilled together into one compact package. It stepped into their path. Jackson blinked. It moved. It was still alive… whatever it was. Jackson figured it might once have been a dog.
Gaspode was the dog's name and contrary to most people's perceptions on the matter, Gaspode could think and speak. Both were unusual skills for a dog and owed a great deal to his early years, which were spent hiding in the Unseen University. Magic contaminates. It contaminates land and it contaminates other things. Animals for instance.
Just when Jackson thought it might have been safe to move forward, a larger ball of olfactory assault appeared behind the first and proved that the first was only a prelude, an entrée, nothing more than a taster or a teaser, a lead in before the main event.
Teal'c turned to face the apparition and gagged.
Jackson turned as well, but his nose wanted to go somewhere else and fought for control of his neck. His first thought upon encountering it was that whatever it was, it must have been formed from upright ambulatory sewerage sludge, wrapped in a threadbare coat and cloaked in mind-blowing assault of olfactory artistry that it had a virtual life of it's own. Daniel Jackson knew a lot of words and was always charitable in his first impressions, but even he was running out of adjectives and synonyms for awful.
"Millennium hand and shrimp," the apparition croaked. Foul Old Ron's breath added a new depth to the entire olfactory experience. It entered Daniel's nose like an assault by a SWAT team and took his brain prisoner.
When he recovered from his attempts to cough the smell back up and take his contaminated lungs with it, Jackson could draw a few conclusions. OK, we're dealing with a male here, Jackson concluded. Human? He wasn't sure. He had one question answered but he had another few to get through before he could reach a conclusion on that one. "Hi gorgeous," the apparition continued, much more lucidly than it had been in it's opening remarks.
Jackson's mind wouldn't go near the idea that the lucid second sentence seemed to come from a slightly different direction. Closer to the ground and a few feet in front of where the other, taller, dirt ball stood.
Angua wisely stepped back slightly.
Daniel took an almost perverse pleasure in the utterly disgusting nature of his immersion in the entire olfactory experience. The smell clung like a malevolent cloud and the advance storm troopers that shot through his nostrils threatened to dissolve his brain.
"What do you want Gaspode?" Angua asked from a position behind Jackson and Teal'c. Her attention was on the dog rather than the man behind it.
Beside Jackson, Teal'c took defensive action. Both eyebrows rose. Teal'c wisely stepped sideways and watched the by-play between Angua and Foul Old Ron from a slight distance, hiding behind an invisible biological buffer of a few metres. The breeze shifted. He stepped back another metre to further avoid savouring the experience any more than he had to.
"Buggerit," the grotesque pile of biological detritus continued. "Saw them going into the Drum, saw the whole millennium thing."
"Who?" Angua asked guardedly, not wishing to give away the status of the prisoners. It was always a good thing to remain tight-lipped on those matters. Especially so in situations where politics had so much to do with things.
"The guys with the gonne."
"With the what?" Angua asked.
"You trying to lie to a dog?"
Angua shrugged. Eloquently, in Jackson's opinion.
"Did you take a good enough sniff to be able to describe them to us?" Angua asked. Hoping to divert attention. Gaspode was altogether too political for his own good sometimes.
"Do I look bloody stupid?" He asked in return. "Buggerit."
He needed an effort, but Daniel managed not to speak. It would have meant drawing breath and he wasn't sure that would be advisable.
Foul Old Ron coughed a great hacking phlegmy bark that set off a whole fresh round of activity among the flees and moths that floated before Jackson's eyes. Jackson had an overwhelming urge to sneeze. He was sure a doctor could catalogued a whole medical dictionary full of diseases and obscure poisons from the air he was breathing, most of which he couldn't even pronounce, let alone know their effects.
The apparition recovered, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, making one or the other dirtier than it had been. Jackson was uncertain which. "There was three of them though," he continued. "Buggerit."
"We know," Angua told him.
"Just though you might like to know that there was another one. Favour for an old friend."
Angua shuddered. "Mr Vimes has him as well."
"OK, then," Gaspode agreed.
Jackson sneezed, and then sneezed again. They were great hacking, racking cracking sneezes that threaten to strain his grey matter through his sinus cavity and drop his brain on the pavement.
"Get away yer germ-y bastard," the apparition said.
Foul Old Ron, and his thinking dog Gaspode, slunk back around the corner.
The smell made a more leisurely exit as though it had a life of it's own. There was a growing school of thought in Ankh Morpork that suggested his smell had life of it's own so naratively it's possible to make that statement.
Gaspode reappeared. "Going to tag along," he told Angua.
Dog's can't talk, Jackson told himself and actually believed it. People are funny like that.
*
Vimes pushed the plans for a set-type-by-the-action-of-the-fingers-so-that-words-could-be-printed-on-the-page machine onto the floor and sat on the desk where the plans had been. He waved at Ponder Stibbons and Mistrum Ridcully and introduced them to Jack O'Neill.
"Have you drawn any conclusions?" Vimes asked the wizards.
"Dungeon dimensions," Stibbons said.
"Nothing concrete," Ridcully corrected. "Although that looks to be a genuine possibility."
"These people claim it's a made thing," Vimes said and gestured toward O'Neill. "You have anything to say to the gathering?" Vimes asked O'Neill.
O'Neill turned to Samantha Carter instead. "Have you been able to draw any new conclusions yet?" he asked.
"Nothing concrete," She said. She frowned. "There's not enough back up to the design anywhere among this lot." She gestured in such a way as to encompass the piles of paper scattered about the room. "You know what you would expect, research notes, references to other works, that sort of thing. There's just none of that here; nothing. The plans just appeared on the paper, complete, and then it was built."
O'Neill didn't like the sound of that. "So, what does that mean to us?"
"The plans have to have come from a Goa'uld," Carter said earnestly. "The guy who invented it must have been either working with a Goa'uld, or at least a Jaffa."
"So they're here then?"
"Looks that way."
"If you don't mind," Vimes reminded O'Neill of the reason that they had come to the room in the first place. "You want to explain what that means to us? And how that might relate to the Patrician's disappearance."
Across the other side of the room from them, the two wizards had abandoned the conversation. Ridcully was not happy with the way that woman was sprouting the sort of stuff that he normally expected to come from Stibbons' mouth. The wizards had to regain lost ground in the explanation of unknown phenomena stakes and there was only one way to do that. When the rest of the conversation went on, he dragged Stibbons aside and they were now lost in their examination of the stargate. The pair crouched between the gate mechanism and the wall, trying to read the runes on the far side of the thing. They were not having much luck.
Carter wandered away from O'Neill so she could re-join the wizards. She was hoping for a little enlightenment. Stibbons had talked sense. She might be able to get a few clues from him.
O'Neill leant against the opposite wall, close by where Vimes waited to speak with him. Carrot and Detritus stood either side of O'Neill like good palace guards. O'Neill had a really bad feeling about the presence of Goa'uld and the Patrician's disappearance. A really bad feeling. He dragged his attention back to what Vimes was saying with a huge effort.
"Here's what I know," Vimes said and chewed the end of his cigar. It had gone out and he wanted to light it, but he had no dragon, and he was reluctant to strike a match on Detritus again. "Lord Vetenari was last seen in his office yesterday. His secretary brought him a report from our ambassador in Sto Helit. I'm not sure what was in it, and the secretary is no help, because the thing was in code." Vimes waved a sheet of paper at O'Neill. "This came through the clax a few minutes later," Vimes continued. "It appeared to be in the same code, so the Secretary brought it through to Vetenari in a rush, only to find his office empty.
"Ordinarily the fact that Vetinari vanished without a trace would be a cause for concern, because every other time it's happened in the past, there was something sinister going on. Since things have become more balanced, most of the Guild leaders go to a great deal of trouble to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. They like the stability. So now, when he disappears again, I start to look really hard for outside agencies, those people who don't know what the hell is going on in this town or understand how the system works. They're the ones I look at first."
Vimes jabbed the stubs of his cigar in O'Neill's direction. "Imagine my reaction when I find you in town. You fit the bill exactly. Armed, trained and from out of town. I just have to be suspicious. And then you go and tell me half a story. Give me bits. Not any more. I want the full story mister. Spit it all out."
He paused, waiting for O'Neill's comments.
"Oh, yes!" said Samantha Carter. Her fist punched at thin air. She held something in her hand; it looked like a neatly bundled sheaf of paper.
O'Neill looked from Vimes to the stargate. "You figure anything out there Sam?"
"Yes," said Samuel Vimes.
"Sorry," said Samantha Carter. "Who were you…?"
"I've been telling you what…" began Samuel Vimes. "Oh, perhaps we should use surnames."
"Maybe this is it," O'Neill told Vimes and then gestured for Carter to go on. "Maybe the answer to what happened here is in what Carter is about to tell us. You got something useful Sam?"
Both Sams blinked.
Cater figured it out first. She answered slowly, punctuating each work with a glance into the notes she held in her hand. "An enormous amount sir," Carter said. "I think." She thumbed through more of the sheets, one after another, reading pieces here and there, sampling really. "There's more of the drawings for the construction of the machine, but there's also a dissertation on the theory of wormhole travel and even an operators manual. Oh, and the operators manual has the most amazing sketched in the margin. When ever you look at it your sure the eyes follow you around the room. I have to take all this back to base. That's where I was before, when I first figured out that the Goa'uld had to have been here. I tried to contact you sir, but you didn't answer your radio."
"Ah that would be because we were unconscious and locked in the cells," O'Neill said.
"Sorry about that sir," Carrot said. "We weren't to know."
"Not to worry, happens all the time in this job," O'Neill flipped him a vague wave and then returned to Carter. "You said the Goa'uld are here…?"
"No we really are sorry," Carrot apologised again.
"It's fine. Like I said, happens all the time in this job," O'Neill focussed on Carter. "Does that book prove or disprove that the Goa'uld are here?"
"Prove, I would say."
O'Neill nodded slowly. "You can read the book?" he asked.
"Oh… yeah… Right… It's in reversed English."
"Not hieroglyphics?"
"Well… No."
"Doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't them."
"I guess not."
"You're saying that some one here on the discworld created this thing," Vimes concluded. "But that they had help. Who are these Goa'uld? You tell me that and the rest of what I need to find out, who, why and where they took Vetenari. Then we can act. These Goa'uld, they are the same aliens that you mentioned earlier?"
O'Neill didn't want to think about what it could mean if the Goa'uld had taken the Patrician. They had seen stuff like that way too often in the past.
He never had the chance to answer Vimes' question because the discussion broke off when footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Angua stepped through the door, followed shortly afterward by Daniel Jackson and Teal'c. A scruffy little terrier like object followed them through and hung around Angua's feet. She shaped to kick at it once and it dodged skilfully.
"I see you found Gaspode," Carrot commented to Angua. She grimaced in reply.
"I wondered what that smell was," Vimes said.
'Woof, bloody woof woof," Gaspode said.
Everyone knows that dogs don't talk so they all ignored the second word. Vimes puzzled over the fact that the little dog appeared to speak the bark, rather than bark it out. He didn't let the problem use up much of his time. It was puzzling though.
"So where do these things normally come from?" Vimes asked. He pointed at the Stargate. It was a redundant gesture; everyone knew what 'thing' he was referring to.
"The Gou'ld leave the things lying around," O'Neill said. "The galaxy is full of the bloody things."
"The who?" Angua asked.
"Show her Teal'c," O'Neill said and waved the Jaffa over.