Chapter 6: Into the Gate

Dawn was starting to regret her decision to join the SGC. She had spent a couple of months here, most of it cooped up in her office, translating documents brought back from off-world by others. Some of the documents contained vital information: such as the crop yields on a planet that had been obliterated by the Goa'uld three hundred years ago.

The training sessions were fun. Survival training had included several weekend camping trips. They got to practice various emergency scenarios in the relative safety of the Colorado mountains. On one trip, after leading them on a ten mile hike up a canyon trail, Master Sergeant Callahan had declared himself a casualty, and they had to carry him back down the way they had come up. There were some narrow sections of the trail, where a misstep could lead to a nasty fall, that took some ingenuity to come up with a way to safely transport him across.

The weapons and combat training had been a snap for her. Buffy might never come to like guns, but she knew that they were something that the Slayers were likely to come up against, so all Slayers and Watchers were trained in how to handle them. Dawn had never handled a P90 before, but she had experience with other automatic weapons. She also got to fire Jaffa staff weapons, and zat'nic'atels…which she repeatedly annoyed Master Sergeant Callahan by calling "bug zappers."

Dawn's survival training had culminated with her being dropped off by a helicopter in the middle of the Colorado wilderness. She was allowed to take anything she happened to have on her when a pair of SFs had come to take her from her office, was given a pack with basic supplies in it, and told that civilization could be found fifty miles to the east. They gave her a radio, told her to check in frequently, and told her that she could use it to call for a pickup—but if she did that, she would fail the exercise.

Dawn had come out of the bush, onto a highway, three days later. She had tried hitchhiking back in to Colorado Springs, but no one seemed to be interested in picking up someone who looked as filthy as she did by that point. One of the motorists who passed her by did call 911 though, so she got picked up by a cop a little later. The police had been told to be on the lookout for her, so they gave her a ride back to Cheyenne Mountain.

After that experience, Dawn went back to her old habit of always carrying a few things with her. The guards came to know her as 'the girl with the knives.' The DSRT people were known among the Cheyenne Mountain guards as the most unusual bunch in the Mountain, and with the knives on top of the sword incident, Dawn was coming to be known as one of the weirdest of the weird.

Her friendship with Cassie had grown, but they didn't get many opportunities to socialize away from work. Their schedules rarely meshed, with Dawn mostly working a normal nine to five shift. As an intern Cassie's schedule was much more erratic. She often had to work 24 hour shifts, and when she was done, all she wanted to do was go home to sleep. Dawn had also started to form a few friendships with some of the other linguistics staff, and she had found a couple of soldiers that were good sparring partners, to keep her fighting skills honed.

She had actually managed to impress Master Sergeant Callahan with how well she could fight. He didn't have a very high opinion of most of the so called "martial arts" and he hadn't been impressed when she'd first told him that she had a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Master Sergeant Callahan didn't think of fighting as a "sport" and he didn't think much of anyone who did. Real fighting was quick and dirty, and the only rule was to incapacitate your opponent before they could do the same to you.

Fortunately, Dawn had learned to fight using the same philosophy, and many of her training partners had been Slayers whom she couldn't hope to match in strength or speed, so she'd had to learn how to be sneaky. She had nearly managed to beat the sergeant, the first couple of times they had sparred together, and after that he had been delighted to recommend a couple of his marines who were in her weight class, that he felt could use a good drubbing.

It was another Monday. Dawn was immersed in the translation of yet another ancient text that contained nothing more interesting than a report about the trial of a man accused of stealing sheep. She heard a knock, just before lunch, and looked up. Dr. Hayes was standing in her open door. "What is it, Elliot?"

"They want you in the briefing room. ASAP."

"What is it?""

Elliot grinned at her. "That would be telling."

Dawn took the elevator down to level 27. The SF on the conference room door opened it as she approached. She stepped through it, and stopped.

She recognized everyone seated at the table: General O'Neill, Teal'c, Dr. Jackson, and Colonel Carter. She also recognized the rest of SG-2: Ry'ac, Teal'c's Jaffa son; and Lieutenant Phillips, a former Navy SEAL. She felt a whir of hope and fear.

SG-1 had set the pattern for the first contact teams. Four people: a physical scientist, a special forces officer, a Jaffa expert on the Goa'uld, and a cultural scientist. Everyone knew that SG-2 was looking for a new cultural scientist. SG-2 burned through them, the way Sunnydale had burned through magic shop owners. They'd had a series of them assigned to them over the last few years, and none of them had lasted very long. The good news was that it had been a couple of years since one had been killed. The bad news was that the last archaeologist that had been permanently assigned to their team was still in the hospital. Mostly they took whatever specialist they felt was best suited to the current mission.

Dawn pulled herself into a semblance of attention, and addressed General O'Neill. "You wanted to see me, Sir?"

"Yes, Dr. Summers. Take a seat." Jack gestured toward a vacant chair at the table. "Dr. Hayes tells me that you're our best person, when it comes to Sumerian."

"Well…uh…I've been reading it since I was sixteen," said Dawn.

"Great!" said Jack. "That's good! 'Cause we need someone who reads it." He pressed a button on the remote he was holding and the lights dimmed. An image formed on the screen against the wall.

Dawn looked at the cuneiform displayed on the screen. "Oh great and mighty Ba'al," she read. "Protect us from the sky-gods. Make our crops flourish. Make our cattle be fertile. Yadda, yadda, yadda." She looked at Jack. "Usual religious posturing."

"Well, Ba'al has been a pain in our ass for several years now," said General O'Neill. "This was clearly one of his worlds once, but now it seems to have been abandoned. We're hoping that the reason why will give us something that we can use against him. SG-2 is shipping out this afternoon. I want you to volunteer to go with them."

Dawn thought about it for less than half a second. "I'm in."

Dawn was feeling considerably less certain a few hours later. She stood in the gate room, surrounded by Colonel Carter, Ry'ac, and Lieutenant Phillips. She shifted her pack on her shoulders, as if trying to get more comfortable, but that wasn't what was really bothering her. The Stargate was shimmering before her, and she could feel it calling to her. She still hadn't told anyone that she could feel the gate. Every time it opened, with either an incoming or outgoing wormhole, she knew it. If she was in the base, it was like an electric shock through her system, but even when she was at home in her apartment in Colorado Springs, she felt a tingle. But this was the first time that she had been in the gate room itself, while the gate was active.

Dawn felt drawn to the gate, like it was her purpose in life to go through it. She watched the shimmering pool of light as first Ry'ac, and then Lieutenant Phillips vanished into it. She heard Colonel Carter move up behind her.

"Let's go." Sam placed a hand on Dawn's shoulder, and pushed her gently toward the gate. They walked up the ramp together.

Dawn hesitated for a moment at the top of the ramp, looking at the pool of light a few inches in front of her face. Something told her, deep down, that this was her destiny. She took a deep breath, and was about to take the next step, but Sam beat her to it. She grinned as she gave Dawn the same initiation to gate travel that Colonel O'Neill had given her, fourteen years ago, and was now something of a tradition for first time gate travellers with SG-2: Sam pushed Dawn into the wormhole.

Dawn Summers ceased to exist.