Author's note: I'm going to try for at least one more update before I start medical school (that's three weeks from now). After that, well, you've probably heard horror stories about how busy med students get. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to write, it'll just depend on how much spare time I can find...
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2006
1030 HOURS - LATE EVENING
"Alpha One and Alpha Six, you have a go. Good luck."
A bead of perspiration rolled along the general's brow. O'Neill himself had gone through the Stargate on combat missions before, but this was the first time he had ever sent others into unknown territory from the relative safety of his own base. He still wished he could be out in front - not so much for the action, which he knew had taken its toll on his body over the years, but out of concern for the people he was putting in harm's way. His hand involuntarily went to his left leg, still wearing a steel-frame knee brace four months after his ACL went out on this same planet. As the members of the former SG-1 knew from their years together, he would have sacrificed himself to save anyone under his command, but from now on that would no longer even be an option.
Preparations for this rescue mission were rushed, after O'Neill had made the crucial error of sending the MALP to scout ahead. While it made sense in principle, the rookie commander, along with everyone around him, had forgotten about the possibility of enemy forces being immediately on the other side. Alpha Base's only MALP had lasted just long enough to transmit a few frames of video before succumbing to a volley of staff weapon fire.
As ranking officer on the mission, Phil Davenport directed the assault. He brought both teams to a halt at the foot of the ramp, just long enough to give John Gardiner some last-minute instructions and run a final equipment check.
The armaments the two teams carried were fairly standard. Davenport himself carried the standard P90 submachine gun as his main firearm, as did most of the others. The exceptions were Pasanen's Heckler & Koch MSG-90 sniper rifle; Fletcher's heavily modified FN Five-Seven pistol; and Murray's ugly-but-effective M249 Para machine gun. Each was also equipped with a Zat gun. Distributed among the soldiers were several C4 charges and detonators, just in case they were needed. On the logistical side, they were traveling heavily loaded; not knowing what kind of dangers they might face, Gardiner had insisted that each person bring a full medical kit, rations for a full week, and ammunition to last almost as long.
Davenport was satisfied enough. He glanced over the faces of his comrades again. Even Kat Fletcher and Valerie Russell, the two women he had harbored serious doubts about, showed nothing but quiet confidence in their demeanors. If the truth were any different, he'd know soon enough. "Let's roll," he said, and both teams sprang into action.
They'd practiced their procedure for going in hot many times, even using the Stargate and traveling to uninhabited planets to include the full experience of wormhole travel in their training. A pair of flash-bang grenades went through first, followed two seconds later by a pair of fragmentation grenades. After that, on the count of five, Alpha One and Alpha Six charged up the ramp, the leader of each team firing several three-round bursts even before hitting the event horizon. Once through, the first two members of each team rolled to the side and opened up on the remaining Jaffa guards, Davenport and Fletcher going to the left while Gardiner and Murray took up positions on the right side of the ring. The remaining four each dropped to one knee and took aim at one of the last few moving targets. It was all over in seconds. In all, ten Jaffa lay dead around the Stargate, half of them felled by the grenades and early gunfire before anyone had passed through the Stargate.
The Stargate was located at the floor of a dry gorge, a dusty path in front of it and a pile of rubble marking a collapsed cavern entrance behind it. Smoke and dust hung in the air, obscuring anything beyond the immediate vicinity. Weeks of training as a unit kicked in, making Alpha One's response automatic. Davenport, Fletcher, and Hsu immediately scrambled to the nearest cover, Zat guns at the ready, while Pasanen took cover behind the Stargate itself and scanned the scene before him. Alpha Six did not deal quite as well; Gardiner, seeing Russell bravely trying not to vomit at the sight of the corpses around the Stargate, directed Paisley and Murray to the perimeter, while he himself pulled the linguist to cover. A single staff blast split the air, missing Gardiner and Russell by only a few feet; but the lone Jaffa that had fired it never had time to try again. Despite firing freehand, Pasanen dropped the Jaffa off the lip of the gorge with a single bullet.
Pasanen flipped on his radio as the smoke began to clear. "SG-1, this is Martin Pasanen with Alpha One, do you read me?" he called in a loud, clear voice.
This time, there was no answer, only static.
"Alpha One, let's clean up the evidence," Davenport ordered, motioning with his Zat gun. "Six, I want a quick recon."
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2006
1045 HOURS - LATE AFTERNOON
As far as John Gardiner could tell from the top of the cliff, the gorge was cut out of a high plateau overlooking the base. Even with Alpha 1 disintegrating all the corpses behind him, there was the distinct possibility that more would be here soon. From the skyline, at least, it was fairly obvious that some Goa'uld was on this planet. Outlined in front of the setting sun, a huge pyramid surrounded by dark, almost metallic-looking buildings was flanked by four ha'tak-class pyramid ships, and through his binoculars he could see thousands of Jaffa around the ships, most of them apparently unloading large pieces of cargo. What looked like a whole squadron of death gliders was being moved on carts from one of the ha'taks to the base. From all appearances, the Goa'uld had just arrived recently and was shipping in arms and equipment.
"Hey, Murray, take a look at those Jaffa," he said to the only Stargate veteran on his team. "Recognize the helmets?"
As he pulled himself onto the lip of the gorge, Orlando Murray reached out and took the binoculars from Gardiner's outstretched hand. "Don't know, sir," he answered. "Mostly serpent guards, but since Apophis died, I can think of at least half a dozen System Lords... wait a minute."
"See something?"
"There's one more column just coming out of a mothership. Horned helmets. Looks like the snake's here in person. It's Baal. No... yes, it's definitely Baal."
Gardiner nodded. "Better stay clear of them if we can, then. I'd say our first priority is finding somewhere we can take cover, and then we try and figure out if SG-1's okay."
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2006
2200 HOURS MSK
"Mr. Komarinsky, I've got a man on the line who wants to talk to you."
"Who is it, and what's his business?" Komarinsky replied gruffly. This had better be worth his time, he thought, or the night manager wouldn't be calling him at home.
"An American, who wants to remain anonymous. He says he has information about the Stargate situation."
"I'll take that call, then. Give him my cell phone number."
"Will do."
"Thank you, Mikhail Ivanovich."
Not ten minutes later, Igor Komarinsky was out on the balcony of his penthouse apartment, notebook in hand, when his cell phone rang.
"Mr. Komarinsky," the voice on the other end of the line said in Russian, with a distinct American accent, "you may call me Fireman." Clearly a code name. Possibly someone involved with the Stargate program itself?
"Before we get started, is there anything you want from me?"
"Only that you refrain from leaking my identity, which should be easy enough given that you do not know it."
"That is what my night manager told me."
"Let us begin, then. I am calling you from Montreal, Canada. You will not be able to contact me at this number when we are done tonight. I am an officer in the United States Marine Corps, assigned to Cheyenne Mountain."
Komarinsky raised an eyebrow, though he knew the speaker would not see it. A disgruntled soldier accusing his commanding officer of something? Immediately doubts appeared in his mind - Komarinsky considered himself a serious newsman. Disgruntled former soldiers were a dime a dozen in Russia in the years after the Soviet Union collapsed, and their allegations were usually ridiculous and not at all newsworthy. But perhaps the cynicism of the new Russia was creeping into his judgment, and things were different in a stable country like the United States.
Fireman continued. "I believe that Brigadier General Jack O'Neill and his Alpha Base are responsible for the recent shutdown of the Earth Stargate. As you may or may not be aware, nearly three-quarters of all Stargate traffic in the past two months have been supply shipments for O'Neill, according to all the records. I personally do not believe that his base needed all the supplies it was allegedly getting, and I suspect that things other than basic supplies are being sent over."
"You're giving me a conspiracy theory that's already on half the news blogs in Russia. Do you have evidence?"
"You will receive in your e-mail, within the next 24 hours, a list of the last ten supply shipments to Alpha Base, indicating both estimated weights based on officially requisitioned items, and the actual weights of the shipments at the time they enter the Gate room. Every single one of them weighs at least twenty percent over the estimate. None of this is classified information. Any American citizen can put in a Freedom of Information Act request for it."
"Interesting, but it's only circumstantial evidence."
"Yes, my friend, but there's a lot more of it." Fireman went on to cite several other statistics, most only tenuously connected to the recent Stargate shutdown but all relating in some way to O'Neill and Alpha Base.
"So there's one thing you're not telling me," Komarinsky cut in. He'd had quite enough, and while some of Fireman's arguments were plausible, others required some stretch of imagination from Komarinsky's admittedly limited knowledge of the Stargate program. "What motive does O'Neill have to do this, and how would he carry it out?"
"You can see what's blocking the Stargate," Fireman answered. "It's very simple. Someone is dialing in from another planet, every thirty-eight minutes exactly. It is not hard to build a robot that will do that automatically, with the resources that a typical US military base has. As for his motive, I am trying to find out myself. I will call you again when I know more. Good night, Mr. Komarinsky."
"Wait a minute..."
But Fireman had already hung up, leaving Komarinsky more puzzled than ever.
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2006
1700 HOURS - AFTER MIDNIGHT
"Clearly they were in this village at some point, unless Baal's taken to planting Air Force issue socks around here."
"Don't rule it out, Kevin. Didn't you know it's the best way to distract an unsuspecting human?" Kat Fletcher didn't even look up from her lukewarm cup of coffee, but her voice was full of barely concealed mirth.
Just for effect, Kevin Hsu held the sock up in the air in front of him. "So he's intentionally got us chasing lost socks, then. Diabolical. Just diabolical."
"Yupyup, very."
You know what bothers me?" Hsu said after a long pause, spreading a map out on the floor of the mud hut. "Other than the fact that we've had no radio contact with SG-1 since we got here, that is."
"Mmhmm?" Fletcher lazily raised her head, and inclined it the way she seemed to do whenever she was deep in thought.
"I was getting messages from Julio every day for a week, and not once did he mention that huge Goa'uld base over there," Hsu continued, gesturing in the general direction of the buildings they had seen. "It's nowhere on any of the maps that SG-1 sent back."
"Kind of bothered me too. Any theories?" came a voice from the doorway, as John Gardiner, who had just been on watch, ducked under the low frame and came in.
"I was hoping one of you would have one," the doctor replied.
Hsu, Fletcher, and Gardiner were the only three still awake. The two teams had found shelter for the night in an abandoned, largely burnt-out village about three miles south of the Stargate. The ghost towns dotted the landscape east of the Goa'uld base, and most of the larger ones had been found by SG-1 in the past week. This one was the second that the Alpha teams had passed through, and both appeared to have been abandoned long ago. The base, on the other hand, whose giant pyramid seemed to dominate the horizon even from this distance, was nowhere in SG-1's reports.
"Well, I for one don't think Baal's been here for more than a couple days," Gardiner mused. "I'm thinking he must have found something pointing to a buried complex, and come here to excavate it. Only one hole in that theory, which is how they dug it out so fast."
Hsu nodded. "Hell of a lot of dirt to move."
"Not to mention, there'd be just a little bit of a hill there unless they raised the whole thing out of the ground."
"Well, you'll be the first to know if I come up with anything better," Hsu said hesitantly. He glanced over at Fletcher, hoping she would have something to say. The girl shrugged her shoulders with a very nervous smile and took another sip of her coffee. He'd seen that plenty, with her being as regular a guest as she was - this was the "confused little kid" face for when she didn't want to have to comment.
"Sure," Gardiner said. "Oh, and Fletcher, it's your turn," he added as he moved to the back of the hut and unrolled his bedding.
Fletcher nodded, and quickly got ready to take her watch. The expression on her face changed in an instant to quiet determination, and within a minute, with her shoulder-length blond hair tied back and covered with a black bandanna, and pistol in hand, she stepped out into the darkness.
She had not been outside for five minutes when she stuck her head back into the doorway, looking quite nervous again. "Kevin!" she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I'm not sure I can handle this."
Hsu's first thought was that she needed someone out there with her to boost her confidence. As a civilian, he had never been asked to stand watch himself, but he could see how nerve-wracking it might be for someone like her. Especially alone, in the middle of the night, in hostile and unfamiliar territory. But then Kat Fletcher had always been a night owl, and there was no sign of fear in her eyes; besides, Hsu suspected that she could take care of herself better than he could himself in such situations. His next thought was: what if there's really trouble outside, and she needs backup? Why wasn't she waking everyone else? Finally, Hsu decided that something minor must have come up, probably something that she should have been able to take care of on her own. Maybe she just needed moral support, which wouldn't be at all unlike her. He followed.
The girl led him around another hut, to where they could see a lone man in the center of the village, wearing a loincloth and leopard skin, laying two throwing spears and a large oval shield on the ground in the light of a torch planted beside him. As they watched from the shadows, Fletcher's gun pointed at the man the entire time, he worked himself into a ritualistic frenzy, raising his hands in the air and dancing wildly around the torch. Finally, after this had gone on for several minutes, he sat down in front of his shield, cross-legged, and closed his eyes as if in meditation.
Suddenly, Hsu heard distant footsteps somewhere behind him. He looked down at Fletcher, who had already turned to him and was indicating, with hand signs, that she would go see what was there. She handed him a second pistol - arming a Zat gun now would make too much noise - and headed back toward the footsteps. Hsu, meanwhile, took a step forward, so that he could lean against the wall at his side. Fletcher's shoulder bumped into him and she stumbled slightly.
Apparently the man heard all three pairs of feet in motion, because he suddenly grabbed a spear and jumped to his feet, shouting what sounded like a challenge. Fletcher stopped in her tracks, unsure of whether to go toward the unknown intruder behind or the armed man that Hsu was facing. "Don't worry about me, I think I can handle this," the doctor whispered urgently, and he waved the young lieutenant back toward the source of the footsteps.
Hsu spoke no Zulu, but he stepped into the open to try and start a dialogue anyway. "Jambo, bwana!" he ventured in Swahili, reasoning that both languages shared a common Bantu root and hoping that the man would speak a similar enough language to understand. The man blinked and nodded hesitantly, as if unsure how to answer.
"Tunakuja kwa amani," the doctor added - "we come peacefully" - but he drew only a blank stare. It was obvious by now that the tribesman hardly understood what Hsu had said.
He did, however, realize that he was being addressed, because he responded with a question in a suspicious tone of voice: "Wena ungubani?" (1)
The sounds of a scuffle came from behind Hsu. He swallowed involuntarily. There was a fight going on behind him, and in front of him was a suspicious native with whom he had no common language, pointing a spear at him. Although there was no doubt whose weapon was likely to win if it came to it, Hsu wasn't sure he could bring himself to shoot the man confronting him. Shooting in the air - that was a thought, but it could easily backfire on him. Now he could hear muffled voices to his rear, and he moved to press his back against a wall, fervently hoping that the voices belonged to the cavalry.
(1) Rough translation from Zulu: "You! Who are you?"
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