Content warning: Mild Language and violence

Desolation, Pt. 2

Earth (Unknown Date)

Sharp stood in silence with a blank stare for what seemed like decades. And for all intents and purposes, he had. It was obvious from the stench and decay in the air that no living thing had set foot there in years. Well, maybe they had, but they didn't stay alive very long. Harris and the others exited the gate behind Sharp and took a look for themselves.

"Where are we?" asked one of the young men with Harris.

"The SGC. Or what's left of it anyway," answered Sharp in a pained tone.

Harris moved next to Sharp. "I told you, Sharp. This place hasn't seen a living soul in years. Can we go now?"

"No. I want to know what happened here. And I'm not leaving until I find out," Sharp said with a determined look and then proceeded to move down the ramp.

Harris called after him. "Where are you going? There is nothing left here. Everyone's dead. What do you expect to find here?"

Sharp turned toward Harris. "I expect to find the truth. Less than seven hours ago I was in this very room preparing for a mission to your planet. Now something is very wrong here and I am going to find out what it is and fix it."

"And what if you can't fix it?"

"Then I'll do the next best thing. Send the bastards that did this straight to hell." Sharp moved to dig the debris out of the way of the exit.

"Fine, you go on your little crusade. But we're not sticking around. Now if you would be so kind as to point out the DHD."

"There isn't one," Sharp answered without stopping.

"What?! Then how the hell do we get back?!"

"Well, if you can get power to the gate, you can dial it manually. Until then, you're stuck with me."

Harris ran down the ramp in a mad rage. Grabbing Sharp, he picked him up off the floor and threw him against the wall. "You son of a bitch! You stranded us all here in this damn tin can!"

"Get a hold of yourself, Harris! I can get you and your people back, but you have to calm down!"

Harris put Sharp down and composed himself. "How do you plan on doing that? I don't think the local power plant is exactly functional."

"Did you notice that the lights are on? What do you think is powering them? So, Harris, I have a couple ideas actually, but all of them involve us getting to the rest of the base and that would go a lot faster if you and your men would help." Harris just stood there scowling at Sharp. "Look, you're stuck here until I can power up that gate. The faster I get what I want, the faster you get home."

Disgusted, Harris motioned to the young men behind him. "Chris, Luke, help him. John, I want you and Paul to help me look for a way to power the gate from here." The four men immediately obeyed. Harris stepped back to assist the two young men who began moving debris around the gate. The two known as Luke Corra and Chris Stewart approached Sharp.

"Why don't you two start over there," Sharp said as he motioned to a large pile of debris to his left. The young men slowly moved to do as he asked. After several minutes, Sharp broke the silence between. "So how old are you two?" The two looked up but didn't answer. "You know, I'm not your enemy, despite what Harris says. By helping me, you help yourselves."

"And why should we believe you?" Corra asked. "Robert has looked out for us as long as we can remember. We trust him. You, we've just met."

"That's a good question. And to be honest, I don't have a good answer. All I can do is tell you that I don't mean you or your people any harm. I'm just trying to figure out what happened to my friends and help my people."

"Well, you just make sure saving your people doesn't include selling out mine," Corra warned and then moved to the other side of the debris pile.

"I apologize for Luke, Captain," Stewart said softly. "He's lost a lot of loved ones to the Maldorians and he comes off mean, but he's not a bad guy once you get to know him."

"I was like him once," Sharp said understanding. "You guys close?"

"I've known him since we were kids."

Sharp laughed. "In my eyes you still are kids!" Then Sharp sobered a bit. "But if that's true, here's a tip. Don't let him self destruct. I see the fire in his eyes, but its the fire that consumes people. It'll consume him and those around him."

"Robert says that his fire makes him a hero."

"Heroes don't let fear control them, Chris. Luke's fear is what drives him. He's afraid he'll lose what he has left and he lets that fear lead into dangerous situations without thinking."

"You don't even know Luke. How can you judge him so quickly?"

Sharp looked right at Chris. "Ok, YOU know him. Tell me am I right or wrong?" Stewart was silent. "Being a hero doesn't mean going in with guns blazing every opportunity you get. And sometimes being a hero does mean you won't come back alive, but a hero makes those sacrifices only when necessary and when he does its not motivated by fear.... its motivated by love." It was then that Sharp tossed the last piece of debris blocking the door. "Well, let's see what's behind door number one."

Sharp forced the door open and slowly walked through. He forced himself to hold back his emotions. He told himself that was no reason to fear what he saw, because what he saw was not... could not be real. This couldn't be his earth. An alternate dimension? A Gou'ald trick? He wished Riley was here. She could explain it. She could pretty much explain everything. He was just some computer geek turned Air Force soldier. And now he had to figure out what the hell had happened to him on his own. Lovely, thought Sharp. I am sooooooo screwed!

Sharp moved through the hallways trying to picture them the way he remembered them instead of the state they were in now. Stewart and Corra followed him a few feet back inspecting the long revered home of their heroes. Seemingly on instinct, Sharp led them through the base and he somehow found himself outside of what looked like Riley and Chrislyn's old quarters. Slowly, Sharp turned the knob unable to hide the fear of what was behind the door. As he stepped inside and turned on the light, for a moment he could see their faces. Riley's smile and Chrislyn's 'what do you want now?' look. But then it was gone. In its place was a room devoid of life. Both bookcases were trashed and their contents were all over the floor. The couch and beds were torn up but intacted. What struck Sharp as odd, however, was the fact that they had left so much behind. "They must have left in a hurry," Sharp thought. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw the light reflect off of a distinctively purple book. Leaning down to pick it up, he finally recognized it as Chrislyn's journal. Replacing one of cushions on the couch, he sat down and willed himself to open it. Most of the pages were distorted and unreadable, but finally Sharp found a portion that was legible.

********

... haven't heard anything from him. Riley's convinced he's dead, but of course she won't talk to me about it!

With the General gone, Colonel Taylor is in charge and he says he might make all "unnecessary" personnel leave! Basically any one who's not stupid military. So not fair! I am necessary! Riley needs me, doesn't that count? I think he's just trying to get rid of me cause I keep telling everyone how much of dork he is.

Oh! I finally figured out that piece of Maldorian text today! I laughed at that stupid Colonel. He thought it was some kind of battle plan, but it was....

********

Maldorian? That couldn't be a coincidence. Sharp couldn't make the rest out but skipped down to another portion.

********

...was going on about the new spaceships they are building. God! He is such a little boy with his toys! If he puts Riley on one of those things like he said, I am so going with her, no matter what he says!

Oh and guess what else...

********

Once again Sharp couldn't figure out what the next part said. He took a deep breath and was about to close the book when he noticed the date on the next entry.... June 21, 2007. 2007??!! It was then that something inside of Sharp snapped. There was no way he was on that planet for 5 years! Someone wanted him to think that had his world had been destroyed. That all his friends were dead. That was something Sharp just couldn't accept.

Slamming the book shut, Sharp stormed out the door. With each step, Sharp felt more and more like he was going to explode. Corra saw him coming and stepped in his way to confront him. Sharp was so angry, he grabbed him by the collar and got right in his face. "Where's Harris?" He asked with a snarl and a look that quite possibly could have killed.

Corra, caught totally off guard, blurted out, "Some lab! D-d-down the hall..."

Sharp tossed him aside and took his pistol. None of this added up and if he found out Harris was a part of it, Sharp was gonna make him regret it for the rest of his life. All thirty seconds of it. Sharp realized the only lab on this level was Riley's. He marched down the hall and upon reaching the lab, threw the door open. Harris was rummaging through some of the projects Riley had left behind, obviously looking for something to get the gate back up and running. With Harris distracted, Sharp was able walk behind him without being seen. Grabbing him by his scalp, Sharp slammed him face down on the workbench and pointed the gun at his head.

"Alright, Harris. I'm done playing this little game. Who set all this up?" Sharp practically spat the words at him, his face red with anger.

"I don't know what you're talking about. What the hell has gotten into you?"

"Wrong answer!" Sharp moved his free hand to around Harris' neck. "Did you think all this could fool me? Who are you working for? The Goa'uld? What have you done with my team? Where are we?"

Harris struggled to breathe. "You've lost it, Sharp. The Gou'ald are long gone. The ones the Maldorians didn't kill, left this part of the universe years ago." Sharp had just about had enough when two of Harris' men came in to see about the commotion.

"Robert!" one of them yelled, shocked at what was happening. Both men then trained their guns on Sharp. "Let him, go. NOW!" he demanded.

"Paul," Harris gasped, "he's nuts, take him out!" Grissom was about to oblige his mentor, when Stewart rushed into the room.

"No! Wait!" Stewart exclaimed desperately. "There's no need for this!" Stewart moved in front of Sharp, blocking the sight line of Grissom and Davenport.

"Get out of the way, Chris!" Davenport demanded.

"He's flipped! We gotta take him out!" Grissom yelled.

"No one is leaving this planet until I get some answers!" threatened Sharp.

"Captain, that is unnecessary, we will answer all your questions the best we can. Please! If we all calm down, we can settle this," Stewart pleaded. None of the three moved. "Think about it! We need each other! Paul, it will take a lot longer to get back to our planet without the Captain. And Captain, obviously you have questions about what happened here. We can help you answer those! If we work together, we both get what we want."

Sharp looked down at Harris. "Seems like we keep getting in this situation, Harris. At each other's throats. The kid's right though. We kill each other, neither of us gets what we want. Your call, Harris."

Harris' was still struggling to breathe even as Sharp lessened his grip, but still horsely gave his response, "Put 'em down, boys."

Davenport and Grissom hesitated, but then reluctantly lowered their pistols. Sharp followed by letting go of Harris' neck, putting the pistol in his holster. Harris walked over and joined Grissom and Davenport. Just then, Corra stumbled in, holding the back of his head where he had hit it when Sharp tossed him.

"Alright, start talking," Sharp ordered.

"Not so fast, Sharp," Harris countered. "How do we know you'll help us get back after we tell you what you want to know?"

"You have my word as an Air Force officer. You tell me what I want to know, I'll reroute the power from the backup generator and you can go home."

"Not good enough," Harris said, staring Sharp down, trying to read his intentions.

"Its all I got, and until I know exactly what happened here, no one is leaving."

Harris let out a long sigh and nodded his head. "Alright. Paul, Luke, John, search the base for supplies that we can take back with us. Stewart, you stay here with me."

"You sure, Robert?" Davenport asked, keeping one eye on Sharp.

"We'll be fine, John. Just do it," Harris said, also eying Sharp. Paul and the others gave Sharp one last glare before complying. Exiting the room, each of them took a different route through the base. "What do you want to know?"

Sharp looked directly at Harris and swallowed hard. He suddenly wasn't sure he wanted the answers to the question he was about to ask, but if he ever wanted to see his team again, he had to figure out what was happening. "Let's get down to business. You said earth has been a dead world for over a decade. According to you, how did that happen?"

Harris glanced at Stewart before answering. "Most of earth was devastated from space by Maldorian destroyers. The attack was so quick and so sudden, almost all of earth's population was killed in the initial attack. The rest went underground, but the Maldorians didn't stop there. It wasn't enough to defeat us, they wanted to exterminate us." Harris' face turned sour. "They used our own people to hunt the rest down and kill them."

Sharp just sat there with a look of frustration and confusion. "Ok, I just went from a few questions to like ten thousand and I have no clue where to begin!" Sharp took a deep breath. "I suppose the next thing you're gonna tell me is that this all took place during the five years I was gone, right?"

Now it was Harris' and Stewart's turn to be confused as they looked at each other. "Five years you were gone?" Stewart asked.

Sharp pulled out the Chrislyn's journal and handed it to Stewart. "I was looking through that for some answers. I wasn't able to get much but I was able to read a date, June 21, 2007. Now that is almost five years after I left for the mission on your planet."

Harris looked down at the journal and then back to Sharp with a look of reluctance and carefully asked his next question. "So... you left for our planet in 2002?"

"Yes, September of 2002." Sharp smiles and in a skeptic voice asked, "So tell me, Harris, what year is it now? 2007? 2008?"

"Sharp... we can't be exactly sure, it was hard to keep track of the days during the war, but the best we can tell... its February of 2025."

Sharp burst out laughing. "You expect me to believe that?"

Harris' look faded from reluctance to frustration. "Look around you, Sharp. How else can you explain what you see with your own eyes?"

Sharp stopped laughing and his face became deadly serious. He paced back and forth as he spoke. "How do I explain it? Well let's see, this could be an alternate dimension. Several earths in alternate realities have been overcome by the Goa'uld or other circumstances. This could be one of them. This could also be a Goa'uld trick, s-s-something to get me to reveal how to deactivate the iris or interrogate me for weaknesses in our defenses. Hell! This could all be a dream. I could be in the SGC right now, sleeping off the effects of being caught in that wave! It could..."

Upon hearing him mention the wave, Stewart immediately became excited and interrupted him, "Did you say wave? As in you saw a wave formed from a bolt of lightning?"

"Yes, we were sent to investigate the phenomenon that creates the energy field on your planet. We encountered a large storm and then the wave formed just like you said." Sharp stopped pacing and leaned against the workbench. He seemed to be staring off into space as he carefully recounted the rest of the mission. "I went out to investigate. Riley... uh... Captain Fox and the others warned me not to go but I wasn't about to leave without finding out what it was. The next thing I knew, I was laying unconscious on the ground and my team was gone."

"We lost a few of our camp to the storms. I have always wondered where they went, but they never reappeared so all I could do was theorize," Stewart said in awe. "The wave must be a time inversion wave. It pulled you from your time into ours."

"Chris is our resident egghead," Harris added.

"How do you know that? That's just one of a multitude of possibilities!" Sharp yelled back.

"Captain, think about the options for a minute. You said this could be an alternate dimension, which would mean that it is the year 2002 in that dimension. Look around, Captain. This damage was done a long time ago. Would any of the people you know be working here when this base was destroyed?" Stewart argued.

"No," Sharp admitted.

"As for a Goa'uld trick, we have asked for no information and all we want is to go back to our planet. We want nothing from you other than a trip home," continued Stewart.

"All this is got to be a nightmare..." Sharp said with his eyes closed, trying to wake up.

"Captain, do you really believe this is just a dream?" asked Stewart in a skeptical voice.

"It has to be! I refuse to believe that everything I've worked for is doomed to failure!" Sharp's frustrations were now boiling over. He wanted to do something, anything to make all this go away. He was so upset, he grabbed a nearby piece of equipment and threw it across the room and then walked back into one of the corners. He stood for a moment and took a deep breath. He may not be able to figure out a way to make all of this go away, but he could get rid of the messengers. Sharp turned back toward them. "You know what? You kept your part of the deal. Its time for you to go home."

"I don't understand. What about you, Captain?" Stewart asked, confused.

"Don't worry about me. Like I said, I'm here to find out what happened here and to fix it, but there's no reason to keep you here," Sharp replied, seemingly preoccupied with something. He moved toward the door. "Follow me. I'll help you with the backup generator and you can get out of here" As they left the lab, Davenport and the others were just returning.

"Robert, we got good news," Davenport said smiling and holding a P90. "We found the armory. Most the weapons are in good shape and there is plenty of ammo."

"Nice job, John," Harris responded. "Now pack 'em up we're going..." Harris stopped himself in mid-sentence as the emergency lights went out, leaving them in darkness once again. Sharp pulled out and turned on his flashlight. "Damn it! Now how the hell are we gonna get home?"

"Don't get all worked up Harris," Sharp said, trying to calm him. "I told you I had several ideas to power up the gate. I suspected the generator may not have had the juice to get the job done." Sharp walked back into the lab, hoping that Riley had left what he was looking for behind. He moved the flashlight throughout the lab until it rested on the device. Sharp was both relieved and disappointed at the same time. Relieved that he could use the device's power source to power the base, but disappointed because that meant that all the time Riley had spent working on it had gone to waste. She had never gotten it to work. He thought back to the time he foolishly asked what it did. Riley's explanation had given him a headache. Finally she plainly told him it was supposed to make things invisible. Why hadn't she just said that to begin with? Glenn smiled to himself for a moment but it didn't last long. He shoved the memories into the back of his mind and went to work removing the power source. A few minutes later he returned to where Harris and the rest stood. He then turned to Stewart and put the flashlight on the device's power source. "Do you know what this is?"

Stewart's eyes couldn't believe what he saw and his face brightened. "This... this is a naquda reactor isn't it? I've heard about them but I've never seen one before."

"That's exactly what it is," Sharp replied.

Harris stepped in to take a look. "This is a what?"

Sharp started to answer but Stewart cut him off. "A naquda reactor. Naquda is the material that makes up the stargate. Years ago they began making these at the SGC because they found that they could use naquda to release and store massive amounts of energy."

"Exactly right, Chris," Sharp admonished him. "I imagine that's what they hooked up to power the base before they left. That's why the base had power for so long."

Stewart looked up at Sharp. "So you've accepted our explanation of what happened?"

Sharp handed the reactor to Stewart and turned down the hall toward the generator room. "Let's just say I'm taking it under advisement until I come up with a better one." Harris, Stewart and the others followed Sharp into the reactor room. Sharp looked over the device that was completely foreign to him and was obviously not a part of the SGC he left.

Stewart moved closer to take a look as well. "It looks damaged. That may be why it ran out of power. It had been running on what was stored and it finally ran out."

"Never mind that," Harris ordered. "Can you hook up that nattaca thing to power the base?"

"Naquda, Robert, and yes I think I can." Stewart grabbed the reactor and went to work.

"Sharp, we're going to load up and take some of these weapons," Harris informed, matter of factly.

"Fine, whatever," Sharp replied, not even looking up. Harris, Grissom, Davenport and Corra left to do just that. Things were quiet until Stewart broke the silence.

"So, you're staying here?"

"For now. There are bound to be other clues here. Besides, where else would I go?"

"You could come with us," Stewart replied, hoping he'd take him up on it. Sharp didn't answer and the rest of the repairs were made in silence. Within a few minutes, Sharp and Stewart had restored power to the base.

"Come on, let's get you guys home," Sharp said as he got up and walked out of the room. Stewart got up and followed him silently. When they reached the gateroom, Harris and the others were just finishing bringing the weapons and ammo they wanted to take with them. "Ok, three on each side. The dialing computers are out of commission so we'll have to do this the hard way." Harris, Davenport and Corra took up the right side while Sharp, Stewart and Grissom stood on the left of the giant metal ring. Each of them took hold of the gate and began to turn it to the first symbol for their planet. A few moments later they stopped turning and the first chevron locked. All of them were tiring by the time the fifth chevron locked in the fifth symbol but they continued until the seventh symbol, the point of origin for earth, was dialed. Instantly, the wormhole opened and Harris and his men, except for Stewart, each grabbed a crate.

"Let's go, Chris," Harris called to him. Stewart looked over to Sharp.

Sharp looked back at Stewart. "I have my mission, you have yours." Sharp extended his hand and Stewart shook it. "You guys take care. Who knows, we might just meet up again." Stewart then grabbed a crate and one by one, all of them except Sharp stepped into the event horizon.

****P9T-573 (February, 2025)****

Emerging on the other side, Harris set down his crate and looked in the direction of the camp. "How many times do I have to tell them to keep the fires small?" Stewart was a lot more concerned than Harris, however.

"Robert, I don't think that's a simple campfire."

Understanding what Stewart meant, all five took off in a dead run toward the camp. Hoping Stewart was wrong and terrified that he was right.

****To Be Continued in "Born of Fire"****