** See Part 1 for disclaimers and story details.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thank you so much for all of the continued interest in this series! I'm currently working on new chapters for story number five which will be the first longer than two part story. I was trying out a different style of storytelling with shorter stories built into a whole, but number five is demanding its own way. So the crossover continues! I hope you enjoy this latest addition. It was a blast to write.
Still unbetaed so any mistakes are all on me. I try to catch as many as I can, but something always sneaks through. As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.
Clipping the visitor's badge to his lapel, Harm stifled the pang of nostalgia and followed the Air Force tech sergeant through the security check point. He'd been within the Pentagon complex dozens of times over the course of his career, but always in uniform and always with a solid grasp of his mission. Now? The uniform was hanging in his closet and he was following around an NCO as if he'd never stepped foot on these floors.
He tugged at his cuff, pulling a kink out of the sleeves. The gesture was automatic and over before he'd realized he'd done it. Stifling a frown, he dropped his hands to his sides, his briefcase bumping his thigh. It had taken more perseverance than he wanted to admit to pull on a suit instead of the rattiest pair of jeans he owned for this meeting. The feeling of resentment lingered in an ugly ball of heat deep down where he didn't want to acknowledge it. Major Davis had done nothing to contribute to his current situation and Harm had no desire to dishonor him within the halls of the Pentagon itself. The walls in which he walked had ears and eyes and a very long memory. Davis didn't deserve to take any fallout from Harm's personal grievances.
Before they'd reached the elevators, Harm realized he was in foreign territory, even more than the recent turns his life had taken. He was surrounded by Air Force blue, with nary a hint of Navy winters in sight. A few spots of green broke up the monochrome, but they were few and far between. The Army and Air Force had a similar relationship to the Navy and Marine Corps, each supporting and working with the other service. Harm had rarely had any dealings with the other two services, though their legal corps followed the same regulatory doctrines as he had.
Tech Sergeant Haskins greeted various people as they walked, clearly a well-known figure in this part of the ring. It could be either a point in Major Davis' favor or a pleasant assistant to mask over the hard-nosed supervisor.
And stop borrowing trouble, he commanded himself as they came to a halt at a door marked with a discrete plaque bearing 'Major Paul Davis' in a standard, easy to read font. He followed the NCO into the office, not surprised to see it was an antechamber with a partially closed door to the right of the large desk. Harm remained near the desk while Sergeant Haskins gave a perfunctory knock on the inner door. He spoke a few quiet words to presumably Major Davis, nodded, then turned back to Harm. "Go on in, sir. Major Davis is ready for you."
"Thanks." After another subconscious tug at his sleeve, Harm pushed the door open. Davis was just getting to his feet as the door closed with a solid click. "Major Davis, thank you for agreeing to meet with me so quickly." Even though the major would have been junior in rank if he still held his, Harm had to suppress the urge to come to attention as if he were reporting. He hadn't been around so much military in months. The familiar discipline and protocols playing out around him were a welcome sight.
"No, Commander, thank you for calling. Colonel O'Neill's been asking about you for the last three days." Davis' handshake was firm and confident without a hint of competition. "Please, have a seat."
Harm sank into one of the two chairs in front of the desk, setting his briefcase to one side. In a surprising move, Davis took the other chair as opposed to the much more comfortable looking one back around the desk. "I'm not a commander any more, Major. It's just Harm."
Davis was lean, roughly Harm's age, with lightly salted black hair and a pleasantly forgettable face. All good characteristics for the face of a super secret DOD task force. Then he focused on Harm with unwavering attention and Harm quickly began reevaluating the man. "You earned your rank, Commander. We don't forget our own so easily. If your former commanding officer chose to do so that's his loss."
A tiny snap released in his chest, one he'd almost stopped noticing every breath. "Well, I have to admit I gave him a few reasons over the years to respond as he did. I, uh, may sometimes push the envelope on mission objectives." It wasn't like he was telling Davis something he didn't already know. O'Neill, and by extension Project Blue Book's senior command structure, had to have read Harm's personnel file, including the restricted sections. If he was going to give serious consideration to joining them, he wanted all of the cards out on the table. He'd just been adjusting to the way the CIA worked when they yanked the ground out from underneath him.
"In Project Blue Book we just call that Tuesday."
Harm returned the smile, though he knew he couldn't grasp the full joke. "I take it cowboys abound in the command?" It was out and in the air between them before he could bite the words back. Admiral Chegwidden's stab at his character had dug deep and had hurt much more than Harm's pride. He'd always thought his former CO has respected him, had respected his abilities and his unfailing push for the truth, even when the truth had been inconvenient or had a personal cost. Apparently, Harm had never known the admiral as well as he'd thought he had.
As if knowing there was as much more behind the comment as Harm had the joke, Davis merely nodded once. "Colonel O'Neill's a big fan of cowboys, sir." He pointed to Harm's briefcase. "Did you read and sign the documents?"
Grateful for the change of topic, he quickly pulled out the folder with the NDA and other pertinent information O'Neill had given him. "Speaking as a lawyer, I'm impressed with these. I've written and signed a lot of NDAs. This is something else."
"You haven't seen anything yet, Commander." Davis accepted the folder and scanned through the pages as he walked around the desk. He pulled out a pen and scribbled in the appropriate areas before returning the pages to the folder which he then tucked into the middle of a thick tri-fold personnel jacket. Next, he opened one of the side drawers and removed two small devices, setting one on the desk. It was a domed triangle that looked vaguely like a tele-conference speaker. He tapped an orange jewel centered in the dome which blinked twice before steadying into a solid glow. The other device he carried back around the desk to retake his seat. "Your security clearance is now reinstated and upgraded, though the CIA barely had time to change your status before General Hammond countermanded it."
He took note of the new name, recognizing it from Catherine's scant bit of information she could find. Major General George Hammond, commander of Project Blue Book, at least on paper. "They must have been pretty confident I'd be intrigued by the offer to work so fast."
"After reading through your record, I can see why Colonel O'Neill was chomping at the bit to speak with you." He chuckled quietly, one hand tapping on the arm of his chair. "He was ready to storm into Director Kershaw's office and demand they release you, he was so angry with the CIA. The colonel's been eyeing you for years."
"He mentioned something to that effect when we spoke." Harm's gaze ticked toward the tri-fold folder sitting center stage on the desk. "Is that me?"
"All of your greatest hits, Commander."
"And some of my not so great ones as well, I imagine."
Davis paused, eyes narrowing as he held Harm's gaze. "Colonel O'Neill found it enlightening reading."
"Then he's either crazy or you Air Force gentlemen use a different set of regs than we did."
"Probably the former, although the SGC operates on a completely different level than anything you've seen before. That's one reason your record speaks for itself."
"We're tossing around a lot of names and speaking awfully clearly for such a secure project in a non-secure area. I know this is the Pentagon, but even these walls have ears." It was a gentle rebuke and one he really didn't have the authority to make, but he simply couldn't let it pass. What game was Davis playing with him?
The major's lips twitched as if holding back a smile, which only further confused Harm. Davis pointed to the device glowing cheerily a few feet away. "That device forms a bubble of silence roughly ten feet in radius. No surveillance known to man can penetrate it, even most not known to man. Despite being along the interior ring of the building, the walls have a special filament integrated into the drywall designed to obscure video and heat sensing equipment. It's easier to eavesdrop on the Oval Office."
Harm didn't think it was false pride to acknowledge his ability to process new information at an almost impossibly rapid rate. His training both as a combat pilot and as an attorney, as well as sheer natural ability, allowed him to categorize, evaluate, then choose a course of action in mere heartbeats. This time, however, his brain simply froze on the impossibilities it had just been thrown. 'Even most not known to man.' He knew there was nothing wrong with his hearing and Davis had not mumbled. "There is no such technology that can guarantee what you're suggesting. Even the CIA is years away from developing it."
"You're right," Davis agreed without missing a beat. "No such Earth technology exists. That is a modified Asgard communication device. It's not from around here."
His gaze flicked back and forth between the glowing rock and Davis' face. The major's expression was calm yet serious. If it had been Bud, Harm would have called shenanigans and laughed along with the joke. But this man wasn't Bud, last night Harm had signed the most iron-clad non-disclosure agreement he'd ever had the pleasure of reading, and he was one hundred percent certain if he looked up his security clearance in the J-PAS system it would reveal not only the reactivation but the jump in clearance Davis had mentioned. Absently, Harm filed away the unfamiliar term to ask about later. "Deep space radar telemetry isn't merely a cover story, is it, Major?"
The smile broke past his control, though he managed to keep it contained to a polite amusement. "Colonel O'Neill was right about you. You are a perfect fit." Davis raised the second device he'd kept in his lap, setting it on the arm of his chair between them. With the touch a finger, an image appeared and hovered in the air above the device like a hologram from one of Bud's "Star Trek" movies. "This, Commander, is called the Stargate."
Harm lost all sense of time as Davis spun a tale so unbelievable he could do nothing except believe it. A parasitic alien race that inhabited and took over humans. An intergalactic war that had been raging for millennia and how Earth had been dragged into it. A secret gateway to other planets buried deep under NORAD's alternate command center. An international organization with multiple countries participating in travel to other planets. And the most unbelievable part of it all was that they'd managed to keep it from getting out to the public for over seven years.
"Wait. Wasn't there some idiotic sci-fi show a couple of years ago that started off a chain of wild conspiracy theories?" He caught the wince on Davis' face even as he remembered Bud's inexplicable fascination with the show. Harm had had less than no interest in it, but after his amputation the show had given Bud some measure of escape so Harm had let him go on about it at length. It had seemed like so much drivel to Harm at the time. Taking in the other man's frankly sheepish expression as he fiddled with the device on the arm of his chair, he could only imagine what Bud would say if he ever found out the truth. "Don't tell me. Plausible deniability? You couldn't come up with anything better?"
"It wasn't us. We just used what happened to fall into our laps." Davis scrolled through images on the device so fast Harm could barely catch one in three. Finally, he settled on one: a short, balding man with glasses who looked more like he should be attending a geek convention than appearing on an alien imaging device. "This is Martin Lloyd, a human born and raised on a planet seeded with humans by the Goa'uld untold millennia ago. His people were destroyed after rebelling. He's one of five survivors."
A sharp spike punched through his chest. Harm had lost many people over the years, some in devastating ways, but he couldn't begin to comprehend losing his entire planet, literally. "He created the show?"
"It was already in production when we found out about it. It seemed easiest to let him write our cover story for us. No one was ever going to take it seriously."
And it was a way for a man grieving an entire world to feel a part of something bigger than himself. Though Davis didn't voice the words, Harm heard them all the same. The compassion in that gesture decided it for him. The Air Force could have forced the production to halt. Even the President could have stepped in to end it. But they hadn't. "Colonel O'Neill told me I could join the SGC as a civilian contractor or request my commission returned. How would either affect my duties?" It didn't escape his notice how easily the acronym fell off his tongue.
With a flick of one finger, the imaging device shut off, Lloyd's face vanishing. The major leaned forward to set it on the desktop next to the still glowing silencing one. "You have a myriad of skill sets that would prove useful to the SGC. Your legal and negotiation skills as well as your knowledge of military regulations alone make you a valuable asset. As a civilian you would receive the same training as any of our scientists and linguists. All are prepared to travel off-world, though many have only been to the Alpha site where we handle training that we can't explain away here on Earth. Primarily, I believe you would handle international and interplanetary treaty negotiations, document certification, legal support and counsel for SGC personnel, and, of course, any UCMJ actions that arise. We rarely have need for disciplinary actions now as our personnel are screened much more thoroughly prior to acceptance than in the early years of the program."
"That sounds fascinating, though I have to admit interplanetary anything will take some getting used to." It couldn't be any more difficult than earning a cease fire from Colombian drug cartels or getting a spy plane back out from under the nose of the Iranian government, could it? "And the military side?" His heart thumped hard against his ribs simply voicing the question. Working with the CIA, flying for them, had replaced a portion of what he'd felt to be his life's calling. It had been an honor to serve his country, even when that country hadn't quite held up her end of the bargain. As much as he longed to return to military service, he wasn't sure he was ready to chance so much heartache so soon.
"There are civilians who are permanent members of active off-world teams. SG-1 has a civilian and a Jaffa, for example. But there are some positions which may only be filled by active military. Team leaders and pilots are two of them. The responsibilities inherent in those roles require a higher adherence to UCMJ standards and punishments. And as talented as civilian pilots can be, none of them have gone through the tactical training of our pilots. We are a world at war and can't afford to find out the hard way that a civilian pilot can't pull the trigger when necessary."
Harm's pulse thudded through his chest. He was afraid to blink, afraid he'd wake up and discover the last seventy-two hours had been nothing but a fanciful dream. "By when would I have to make my decision?"
From the look on Davis' face, he knew what Harm was really asking. "As Colonel O'Neill told you, it's open-ended. You can come onboard as a civilian and upgrade at a later date. Don't worry about the particulars of that paperwork. We're used to explaining unusual situations."
The snort escaped without permission and they shared a grin. "I'll just bet you are. I don't supposed there's any way I could get a chance to see the facility itself? Speak with some of the personnel assigned there?" He knew it was a long shot, but he'd already signed the NDA and sworn his very existence away if he violated its terms. Seeing the SGC was only a small step forward from the briefing he'd just received.
"Of course, Commander. Colonel O'Neill delayed his departure one day when I told him we were meeting. If you can be at Andrews tomorrow at 0800, he'll ensure you're cleared at the gate and onto the flight line. I have it on good authority you're familiar with the facility and won't need an escort."
"That I am, Major," he said. His gaze traveled back across the desk where the two alien devices sat on the same surface as his own personnel jacket. Three days ago his hopes for a new career and a new life had unceremoniously ended. Now everything that life had promised and more had been dropped in his lap. The only things missing were his former coworkers and friends. But a new assignment and a new state of residence didn't mean he couldn't mend those fences. All he had to do was swallow his pride and accept what fate had given him. Turning back, he saw Davis waiting patiently, as if he was ready to sit in that chair all day for him to make up his mind. "0800 tomorrow. I'll be there."
"I'll inform the colonel." Davis stood and stepped toward the desk, one hand reaching for the glowing device. "Any final questions?"
"Just one." Harm stood as well, briefcase in hand. "Why would Colonel O'Neill hold a space open in the SGC for me all this time?"
Turning to face him directly, the major smiled. "That one you'll have to ask him yourself, sir. The colonel has his own method of picking his teams." With a press, the orange glow shut off and the two devices were disappeared into the drawer once again. "If you're ready, I'll have Sergeant Haskins escort you back to security. I'm sure you have plenty to do with the rest of your day."
"Thank you, Major. I'd appreciate that."
They shook hands, Davis adding a hearty squeeze on his part. "It was an honor to meet you, Commander. I hope to see you again in the future."
Harm turned back at the door and felt a familiar anticipation worm its way down his spine. "Be careful what you wish for, Major." He closed the door behind him, cutting off a bark of laughter. Fate and pride, he thought as the sergeant led him back out into the hallway. Two of the most difficult things to conquer. He'd failed in one over the last months, in spectacular fashion. It was time to find out if he'd learned anything the hard way.
fin