A/N: Wow!! Thank you all for the reviews! I haven't gotten this type of response to any of my other stories! I honestly wasn't sure what the response to this story would be like, especially after just the first two chapters. Your reviews are extremely encouraging to have me finish this story.
Thank you dapper, I really appreciate your review (you're right about Arnie's last name-thanks for catching that!).
And now...
"Okay, you have my complete attention," he told them as he sat down.
Arnie and George looked at each other as they sat down. Arnie nodded at George to have him start off. "Mr. President, as I said earlier, what I'm about to tell you is known by only a handful of people here in DC. I should start with some history… In 1917, the greatest discovery on Earth was made in Giza, Egypt," he began as he pulled out several folders from his briefcase and started to pull out a few pictures. "They found this," he told the President as he laid a picture of the SGC's Stargate on the table.
Jack leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees as he looked at the picture. Andrea herself even subtly leaned in to look at the picture. "What is it?"
"That, Mr. President, is a Stargate. It is a piece of alien technology used to travel instantly between different planets across the galaxy."
Two pairs of eyes stared at Hammond wide-eyed. Jack was the first to find his voice, "Alien technology?" he finally stammered out.
"Yes Mr. President. We are not alone in the galaxy. There are thousands of planets out there populated with humans."
Jack looked down at the picture and then up at Arnie, "Is this some kind of joke?"
"Mr. President, we have been fighting a war with aliens for the past ten years. This is very much real. This is one of the aliens we've fought," he told him as he laid a picture of Niirti on the table.
"She's just a woman!"
"What you are seeing sir, is a human. However, you are only seeing the host. What you can't see, is this," he told them as he pulled out another picture. "This is the Goa'uld parasite that lives within a host and has complete control of the body and mind."
Jack and Andrea stared at the pictures in silence, they had never seen a creature like this before. Arnie stood and walked to the mini-bar to retrieve two glasses of whiskey. When he came back, he offered them to Jack and Andrea. Andrea absently accepted the drink as she continued to stare down at the picture. As Arnie was sitting down, Jack looked down at the drink he now held in his hand and then up at Andrea, who was as confused and shocked as he was. "Sit down Andrea."
She absently sat down on the couch next to the President as she continued to stare at the pictures in front of her. "That… that thing lives in people?" she asked with a trace of fear and trepidation.
"Yes."
Jack looked at George. "I think you better start from the beginning…" he told him as he took a small sip of his drink, enough to calm his nerves but not affect his judgment.
"Yes sir… Ten thousand years ago, a race called the Goa'uld arrived on Earth through this Stargate. A Stargate is capable of creating a stable wormhole between two Stargates located on different planets throughout the galaxy. It allows for near instantaneous travel between planets that are hundreds of light years apart. There's a lot of physics and science behind it that I can have someone else explain to you later, Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter is the world's expert on the Stargate and alien technology… When the Goa'uld arrived on Earth, their hosts at the time were the Unas," he pulled out another picture. "When they arrived, they discovered the human race, and decided that humans would serve as their new hosts. The Goa'uld made themselves out to be Egyptian gods, Ra, Apophis, Anubis, Hathor, Osiris… The list goes on and on.
"We're not sure why or what happened, but for some reason the Goa'uld left Earth after a few hundred years. But, not before taking thousands of humans from here through the Stargate to other planets to serve as slaves and hosts. The Goa'uld have populated the galaxy with the descendents of our ancient ancestors from Egypt and across the world. Once the Goa'uld were gone, the Egyptians buried the Stargate to prevent their return. In 1917, the Stargate was uncovered. It took almost eighty years to figure out how to work that thing. Lt. Colonel Carter was able to develop the mechanism we use to operate the Stargate. Dr. Daniel Jackson was the one who figured out what it was and how to use it.
"Eleven years ago, we sent a mission to a planet called Abydos, at the time we thought it was the only planet accessed by the Stargate. While our team was there, they encountered the Goa'uld first-hand, they were able to destroy the Goa'uld they encountered, Ra. After Dr. Jackson had figured out how to return home, the team came home. Unknown to us, Dr. Jackson stayed on Abydos alive and well; he was married to a woman there, Sha're. When the team came back they told us that the other side had been destroyed, so we closed down the project… A year later though another Goa'uld System Lord, named Apophis, came through our Stargate. We went back to Abydos and found Dr. Jackson, who by that time had found out that there was an entire network of Stargates out there connecting thousand of planets.
"We at the SGC have been fighting the Goa'uld ever since. I was in charge of the SGC for the next seven years. The Stargate is located below NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain." Hammond paused as he let his brief overview sink in.
"Why is this the first time I'm hearing about this?" Ryan asked his chief of staff.
This was the question Arnie had been dreading, he took a deep breath before explaining. "As long as the Stargate has been operational we have kept its secrets classified to the highest levels. In the past, all the knowledge and background of the Stargate has been limited to the base personnel, the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, SecDef, a few members of the Senate Armed Forces Oversight Committee, an SGC-Pentagon liaison officer, and myself. We don't let anyone tell anyone on their staffs. You can understand why."
"Why haven't I been told about this?" Ryan glared at Arnie as anger slipped into his voice.
Arnie and George shared a look with each other. "Honestly, Jack, you had too much on your plate at the time."
"You don't get to make these types of decisions for me!" he yelled.
"There are a lot of decisions I make that I don't tell you about. Listen Jack!" he yelled back before Jack could interrupt him. "I made a call, I take full responsibility for it. But consider what was happening when you came into office! You were the entire US Government! You had no Congress! You had no Cabinet! You had no Joints Chiefs! You had no one to succeed you in the case of an accident! The only people left in DC who knew about the SGC were the two of us and Major Davis, who serves as the SGC-Joint Chiefs liaison. We met and decided that it was in your best interest not to burden you with this.
"We had enough going on at the time here on Earth, I couldn't have you be distracted by what was going on under a mountain in Colorado and throughout the galaxy! We were under attack here, on our own soil! Generals Hammond and O'Neill know how to do their job, I let them do it! We couldn't tell Congress because they were all too new to really understand the gravity of what we were telling them. We couldn't tell Bretano because he had enough to do trying to shape up the Pentagon and we didn't know if he would be here after November. And the Joint Chiefs we didn't tell because… hell I don't remember why we didn't, but we didn't!"
"So you're only telling me now because you are pretty sure that I'm going to win the election?"
"Yes!" Arnie exclaimed back. "Can you honestly tell me that you would have been able to handle hearing this information while trying to rebuild the government and dealing with that war we had with Daryei?"
Jack stared at Arnie for a long time before his face visibly softened, "You're right… But damn it, Arnie, you can't keep stuff like this from me."
"I know Jack, but I had to. Can you understand that?"
Jack nodded his head, "Yeah… I'm too Catholic to know that global security trumps national security."
Hammond silently chuckled. Jack looked over at the general, "What's so funny General?"
"General O'Neill said you were too Catholic," he told him lightly.
"Who's General O'Neill?"
Hammond explained, "He's the current CO of the SGC, has been for almost three years now. You actually know him, it's Jack O'Neill."
TBC
Author's Note: Okay, I'm going to come clean with you all. I actually have quite a few more chapters already written. Before you start yelling at me to post them all up, hear me out first! So I have some chapters following this one written out, and also some more for later on, but there is a gap in there. I don't like posting chapters too close to where I have a gap in my story in case I decide to change some things. So please bear with me... and to satiate your needs, I am posting two more chapters for you all as well. Again please read and review!