MONDAY, FEB. 21, 2006
1430 HOURS
"It cannot be recent," Teal'c stated categorically. "The last pyramid ship was scrapped six years ago. The armor on the ground must be as old."
"I would tend to agree," Jackson said. "That looks like centuries' worth of vegetation."
"I don't care," said O'Neill. "We've got a big honkin' mothership here that no one told us about, and I'm not about to go anywhere until we have backup, at least in radio contact."
Someone at the SGC apparently agreed, because SG-2 emerged from the Stargate cave less than half an hour later and began setting up a defensive perimeter. O'Neill ordered them to blow up the cave if SG-1 didn't return within six hours, and then SG-1 started the long walk toward the pyramid ship.
The interior was empty, as expected. Or rather, not empty: soil was everywhere, and plants grew in all of the many places where the outer wall had been breached. SG-1 slowly picked their way upward through the wreckage, finding no sign of anyone having been there recently.
About halfway up, Jackson found a section of wall on which the inscriptions were largely intact. "Take a look at this," he told the others. "This ship belongs to - belonged to - Ra himself."
"Then I know where we are, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c answered. "This system is known as Attyo. Its very name is anathema to the System Lords."
"What happened here?" Jackson asked, his curiosity piqued.
"Ra sent a great war fleet to this system to destroy an outpost of the Furlings. The fleet reported complete victory in its last transmission. But none of the ships returned."
"How long ago was this?"
"Approximately four thousand years ago, Daniel Jackson."
Daniel nodded and SG-1 went on their way again. They reached the top level without further incident to find the door to the bridge shut and locked..
"Any guesses?" O'Neill asked rhetorically.
Teal'c was quick to answer anyway. "Colonel O'Neill, it appears as if the remaining crew barricaded themselves on the bridge."
"Hard to see them, sir, but infrared still shows staff blasts all over the corridor," Carter added. "And there's all this armor scattered around."
"OK, so there's been a fight," O'Neill said. "Anyone else anxious to find out what happened here?"
"Uh, yes, but... how?" Jackson replied quietly.
Without hesitation, O'Neill pulled out a small C4 charge and placed it at the foot of the door. Once the entire team was safely around the nearest corner, he detonated it.
A loose girder started to slide as a result of the vibrations. "Look out!" the colonel shouted as he realized that Jackson was directly underneath it. The archaeologist looked up just in time to see it begin to tip and fall, and dove out of the way, landing against a pillar which knocked the wind out of him.
"You okay, Danny?" O'Neill asked.
"Yeah, I'll be fine. Just hafta catch my breath. You guys go ahead."
Having decided this ship was perfectly safe, the other three members of SG-1 went back around the corner to the now-open bridge. O'Neill's radio crackled. "What was that?" a surprised-sounding voice asked.
"Just had to break down a door," he answered nonchalantly. Smoke wafted upward through a gaping hole in the ceiling just outside the bridge area. SG-2 must have seen the flash and the smoke from the explosion.
A cursory examination of the bridge found that it was still sealed - or had been until the door had been unceremoniously ripped from its frame. The fate of the lone occupant was again clear. The corpse had been well-preserved in the stale air; a few feet away lay the desiccated remains of a Goa'uld symbiote. They radioed back the information. No signs of Goa'uld presence nearby, though Carter was quick to recommended a UAV survey of the area to make doubly sure. Then, on the way out of the bridge area, they ran straight into Daniel Jackson.
The archaeologist was holding a hand-sized metal device with a small glasslike ring at one end.
"What's that?" Carter asked.
"Something I found in that big pile of dirt over there," Jackson answered.
"Any idea what it does?"
"It does not appear to be of Goa'uld origin," Teal'c observed.
"Well, this looks like a push-button," Jackson said, pointing at a dimple in the upper surface, "but it's quite stuck." He jabbed at it with one finger, and nothing happened. He tried more forcefully, and suddenly the button yielded. A white beam shot out from the ring.
"It is a weapon!" Teal'c shouted as Jackson struggled to keep the device under control. The trigger was stuck again, this time with the weapon firing. O'Neill didn't need to be told. He hit the deck before the last word was out of the Jaffa's mouth. The device finally fizzled out with a loud crack, its power source exhausted, but only after burning a dark line across at least thirty feet of wall.
"Watch where you point those things!" O'Neill reprimanded Jackson. He scrambled to his feet - or tried to. As he planted his left foot, there was an audible pop, and with a groan, he sank back to the floor. In an instant all three of his teammates were at his side.
"It's my knee," the colonel gasped between deep breaths as Teal'c and Carter laid him out on his back. "We're gonna have to... head back... Carter... radio for a stretcher." He handed his radio to his 2IC and dropped his head to the floor.
TUESDAY, FEB. 22, 2006
1800 HOURS
"So we were just wasting our time exploring that wreck?! Why didn't you guys tell us earlier?" O'Neill, sitting bolt-upright on an infirmary cot, demanded.
"Colonel O'Neill," Selmak patiently reminded him, "you could .have told us you were going there."
"Not you too!" O'Neill muttered under his breath. He creased his brow, flustered. He didn't need both Jacob Carter and his snake ganging up on him like that. "Look, we've been over this already," he said aloud.
The sound of the argument had drawn an audience, Jack observed with annoyance as Daniel Jackson and Teal'c appeared in the doorway. They were not the only ones. The doctor on duty, the short, stocky Asian man named Kevin Hsu, had also wandered closer, having little else to do on this particular day.
Jacob/Selmak lowered his head. The voice that came out now was human. "Just making sure," Gen. he said calmly.
"General Carter, I did not know you were here," Teal'c said he approached.
Jackson launched immediately into archaeologist mode. "Jacob or Selmak, I was just wondering if you knew anything about this." He reached into a pocket and pulled out the weapon he had found. "We found it on P7S..."
"335," Jacob interrupted him. "Jack just asked me about it." He turned to O'Neill. "Mind if I tell it again here?"
It turned out that the Tok'ra had explored the planet three thousand years ago as a possible base, finding nothing but the wreckage of a Goa'uld warship. A discreet inquiry with an Asgard operative had given more information. Shortly after the destruction of the Furling base, the Goa'uld ships had been surprised by a combined Asgard and Furling fleet, which destroyed all but one in a thirty-minute battle. The surviving ship crash-landed on the nearest planet; there, an Asgard army came through the Stargate, cleared the ship floor by floor, and sealed the bridge to prevent the Goa'uld inside from escaping. A few Jaffa were shot down attempting to reach the Gate.
"And the weapon?" Daniel had to ask to be sure.
"It's an Asgard sidearm. This kind hasn't been used in over a millennium."
There was a moment of silence as Daniel and Teal'c digested the information. "So if the Goa'uld have been there before..." Daniel started.
"Then there shouldn't be much to worry about," Jacob Carter finished for him. "That's probably one of the better places to put a base - the System Lords will never look there without a really good reason."
"But if the Tok'ra have explored the place since then..."
"The Tok'ra don't have all the Goa'uld racial memories, Dr. Jackson. We split from them several centuries before that Goa'uld fleet disappeared. And with two minds working together in one body, one mind can overcome the other one's fears. The System Lords can't do that - they'll be terrified at the very thought of going to that place."
"So why aren't the Tok'ra there?"
"Because the fact that we had some contact with Asgard and Furling intelligence didn't mean their main battle fleets would be able to recognize us as Tok'ra."
"OK, that's that," O'Neill said, interrupting Jacob's explanation. "Daniel, Teal'c... tell Hammond we're done searching."
FRIDAY, FEB. 25, 2006
2030 HOURS
."Don't think too hard, dear," Abby said as she walked by.
Kevin didn't even ask. He knew she could read his mind, just like he could read hers. They went all the way back to high school. When Abby Powers moved to Houston after her freshman year in high school, no one really knew what to make of the new girl from Alaska. Kevin was one of her first friends. He still remembered seeing her standing outside, early in the morning in the middle of Houston's coldest winter in decades, in shorts, and telling him that was about as warm as Kotzebue, Alaska ever got. For Kevin, who had lived in the Middle East for some years, it was hard to imagine. But they had hit it off swimmingly from there, the son of the desert and the daughter of the remote Arctic, and even though they went to college and medical school in different states, their eventual engagement and marriage were virtually a foregone conclusion.
So he tried to think about something else - which also turned out to concern his job.
"So, uh, you've heard about the off-world colony plans?" he blurted out. Both of them had heard, separately, about Alpha Base. Neither had mentioned it to the other until now.
"Yup. Heard all kinds of things about it. Word gets around fast." Abby didn't seem to mind the question, which was a good sign.
"I was just thinking about it, since I heard O'Neill himself talking about it in the infirmary the other day."
"Oh?"
"They've picked a place. They start building as soon as they get the equipment over." He paused. "Just out of curiosity... would you go, if we were transferred over there?"
The question would have been asked sooner or later, Kevin thought. He and Abby were the doctors on the two rapid-response medical teams that handled off-world emergencies. Because both had Gate travel experience, it was almost inevitable that one or both of them would have been offered a position at the new base.
"I really don't know," Abby said. "I'd have to think about it. Might be nice to live off-world for a while, depending."
FRIDAY, MAR. 25, 2006
1100 HOURS
"Good morning, General O'Neill, and welcome to Alpha Base."
The words surprised O'Neill, but he returned the salute that the Marine officer had given him. "Major... Krogstad," he started awkwardly, "how did you know so fast? I've only been a general for..." He looked at his watch. "Three and a half minutes." He'd literally received his star on the Gate room ramp, just before making the trip.
"Hammond told us yesterday, actually," Jesse Krogstad answered. "Said something to the effect that you'd be a general the next time you showed up."
"Gotta hand it to him. Have we met before?"
"Briefly, I think," Krogstad said thoughtfully. He extended a hand. "Jesse Krogstad. I've been assigned as your base security chief."
"Call me Jack. The title 'General' makes me feel old."
"Will do. Need a hand, sir?"
"Yeah, I'd appreciate it."
As Krogstad picked up O'Neill's suitcase, the newly-minted general hobbled forward on his crutches. The Stargate was still in the same cavern he'd found it in a month earlier, but now it was well-lit, with banks of fluorescent lights extending across the ceiling. The floor was cleared of obstacles, though some debris remained. A steel-frame-and-plexiglass enclosure near the entrance would serve as a command post, and niches were cut into both side walls for use as machine gun emplacements.
"Expecting anyone else today?" Krogstad asked suddenly.
"Not sure," O'Neill answered. "Teal'c might be around today with some Free Jaffa reps."
The two men rounded the corner and walked out into the sunlight. O'Neill almost couldn't believe the transformation he saw. A large cluster of buildings extended from just below the Stargate cave to the edge of the woods to the north. A short distance south of the main base was an airstrip. O'Neill was about to ask about it when a helicopter flew overhead, a steel I-beam dangling on a cable below it.
"We're still putting up the last few buildings," Krogstad explained. "That includes a gatehouse over the mouth of this cave. All the medical facilities are gonna be up here." O'Neill nodded in agreement; having medical facilities close to the gate could mean the difference between life and death for a wounded soldier. Meanwhile, the major went on to point out completed buildings: a command center, research labs, barracks, supply depots.
Then O'Neill's gaze fell on the lake. There was a pier jutting out into the water, with a skiff tied to it. "And that?" he asked, pointing.
"Oh, that stuff's mine. We've had lots of downtime lately, not much for us security people to do since the Tok'ra unloaded their last shipment. I built the pier myself."
O'Neill looked at Krogstad quzzically.
"There's good fishing in that lake," Krogstad continued. "Not like back home, but it'll do."
"Don't think I've ever asked... where are you from?"
"Minnesota."
"Dang. We have to talk fish some time," O'Neill remarked. "Should have packed a rod."
"I think I have a couple extra," Krogstad said helpfully. "I was going to take the boat out today, as soon as you got settled in."
The whoosh of an incoming wormhole, and the sound of footsteps coming across the cavern, announced another new arrival. "Hey, Teal'c," O'Neill called without even looking behind him. "Feel like doing a bit of fishing?"
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I'm done with finals, which means more time to write. Thoughts so far? Comments? Suggestions? Anyone getting impatient for the beginning of the real plotline, or should I continue filling in backstory at the same pace?