Chapter 7: Confirmation and collisions.

Thundersdawn

The position of comm. Officer no longer meant someone who sat a control panel and was responsible for all incoming and outgoing transmissions, Thundersdawn had grown, and with it the number of radio channels in use. Nowadays the comm. Officer was responsible for a number of people who monitoring various channels, controlled any inbound and outbound craft much as an air traffic controller would, as well as being responsible for the equipment they used. It left little time for actually listening to the chatter flowing over the air, well technically spacewaves, never less the comm. Officer of the watch, a lieutenant Edwards, always found time to listen in, and check how good the people manning the radios were, which is why he was listening when the call came in.

"Thundersdawn, this is Prospector, come in Prospector!"

The voice crowded out the others on the channel, overly loud and out of turn, a dreadful breech of comm. discipline, Edwards made a note to himself to send a memo to Prospectors crew reminding them of basic comm. discipline. The next transmission derailed that train of thought at the station.

"Thundersdawn, we are declaring an emergency"

The blaring sound of a hull breech alarm in the background emphasised his words. Luckily this had been anticipated, and a shunter loaded with a lifeboat module was shadowing Prospector just outside the asteroid belt. The dangerous nature of the asteroid belt made that precaution necessary.

"Hull breech in the cockpit, we lost atmosphere, but we're all in suits here, the sarge is out for the count, took an knock to the head, request retrieval"

"Roger your retrieval request, Lifeboat is…"

"PEAK! PEAK!" the shouted words from Prospector shut down all conversation on that channel, did they mean…?

"Thundersdawn, we have a Major peak on the naqueada sensors, and… Shit! The sensors just overshot their scales! We have a major naqueada signal here!"

"Roger your peak, can you I.D. the source?"

"Negative, got a general vicinity, but the pressure lost has knocked a connection lose somewhere, we can't lock the signal down, get another sensor platform to this location, ASAP!"

"Affirmative on that, Lifeboat signals they are 3 minutes out, switch to lifeboat frequency for retrieval and data-burst your sensor records to GC St Athan and us"

"Wilco"

SGC

The airman rushed up to Hammond's office, scattering other personnel like bowling balls as he flew up the stairs. He hammered on the door, and all conversation from within stopped.

"Come in" the general voice, the airman thought irrelevantly, had to be a perfect number 45, I.E. you better have a damm good excuse for disturbing me or a posting to Antarctica will be the least of your worries.

The airman opened the door and quickly entered, saluting the general as he did so. He guessed by the prescense of SG-1 and the number of closed folders with fingers keeping pages that he had interrupted a meeting, he was right.

"Sorry to disturb you general, but a Critique priority message just came in from RSS Thundersdawn"

He handed the message over, before saluting again and leaving. Hammond read the message and smiled.

"Good news, general?" O'Niell asked.

"Kind off, Prospector has a general location on an asteroid which caused their naqueada sensors to overshoot their scales, but Prospector depressurised and had to leave before they could lock the location down. They are sending everything they can to that location and hope to have the asteroid identified within 2 days"

"So why the kind off? Sounds like great news to me?" Jackson asked.

"The RSS has the only spacedock and asteroid mining facility in this system, within days they will control the only known naqueada supply, and when those defense stations they are planning come online they will pretty much control this system"

"Ahh"

"I do not see how that could be a problem Hammond, you are allied with the British are you not?"

"Teal'c, would you like an ally controlling your home system? Not only is it a bad idea militarily, but it's potentially a political nightmare!"

"Like telling Apothis that Hathor now controls the space around his favourite planet, even though they are allied at the time, Apothis isn't exactly gonna like it is he?" O'Neill added.

"I see"