Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 remains the property of Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Greenburg et al. No money is being made from this story. (This story is set before Daniel's "Ascension" as it is my first attempt at a Stargate story and I'm nowhere near confident with the original quartet of characters as it is, never mind trying to get a handle on Jonas Quinn).
Summary: See Part 1.
SARCOPHAGUSPart 2
CHAPTER TWO
Jack O'Neill shifted in his chair slightly, enjoying the harried look in Major Paul Davis's eyes as General Hammond came quickly up the spiral staircase from the Stargate Control Room directly below into the Briefing Room. The Briefing Room looked out and down onto the Stargate itself, and it was a view Jack never got tired of.
He cranked up the glare slightly, pleased when Major Davis flinched. In the aftermath of Makepeace's capture, Davis had been seconded permanently as the 'liaison' between Stargate Command and the Pentagon, or as Jack openly called him, the 'Joint Chiefs' pet spy'. Fortunately nobody had been foolish enough to try and get Davis included in General George Hammond's briefing meetings with SG-1 unless the General invited him. However, due to the magnitude of what SG-1 had discovered on Cardassia, both Dr Fraiser and Major Davis were present besides SG-1 and General Hammond himself, who now took his customary place at the head of the large, long desk, indicating that the briefing could now commence.
"So it's definite, those things are…sarcophagi." Jack enunciated the word with relish, having taken the precaution of looking up the plural of 'sarcophagus' and practising the pronunciation in front of his bathroom mirror.
"Yes." Dr Janet Fraiser nodded confirmation though it was unnecessary, knowing that – with the exception of Colonel O'Neill - the other six people round the table would have actually read her report. "They don't have the Goa'uld decoration, but they are sarcophagi. However, all of them are either damaged or completely inoperative, which probably accounts for why they were left behind."
Leaning back in his chair, absently rubbing one thumb up and down the side of his coffee mug, Daniel nodded agreement, "It makes sense," he pointed out, "we know the Goa'uld are scavengers. Everything from their technology to their languages and cultures are what they took from their hosts, not the other way around."
"Any further information on why the Cardassians built the sarcophagus technology in the first place?" asked General Hammond. "What happened to their civilisation?"
"No sir," Jack admitted. "The images coming back from the Orbital show that whatever happened, it was big, nasty and global, but apart from that we need to go back and have another scout around."
"Major Carter?"
"I agree, Sir. In fact I'd like to recommend that you assign Cardassia Alpha Level Defence-Science Status to bring back their technology and cultural artefacts through the Stargate as fast as possible."
"It's a dead world, Major," Hammond reminded her.
Carter dipped her head briefly in acknowledgment, "Yes, sir, I know, but that's what I mean. The Cardassians were a highly advanced race – I'd say on a par with or maybe even slightly ahead of the Asgard themselves. The existence of sarcophagi seems to indicate that the Goa'uld looted Cardassia at least once before. I have no idea why they left so much valuable technology behind, maybe the System Lord who discovered it was killed before he or she could transmit the information, but with the luck that SG-1 seem to have these days, do we really want to take a chance on the Goa'uld suddenly coming back for another supermarket sweep?"
"I concur with Major Carter's assessment," Teal'c said flatly, as he said everything flatly. "Cardassia is worthy of further study, at least for the present."
"I take it you make the request unanimous, Dr Jackson?" Hammond enquired.
"Sir," Daniel smiled wryly. "The Stargate seemed to be situated in the capital city of that continent, which gives me the optimum chance of finding the Cardassian Rosetta."
Hammond nodded thoughtfully; after five years with the SGC, even Jack knew without thinking what SGC-associated people meant by 'Rosetta'. Discovered in the late 1700s, the Rosetta stone had enabled Thomas Young and then the great Champollion to finally decipher the previously incomprehensible Egyptian Hieroglyphs, as it was written in three scripts, one of which was Greek. Able to read the Greek, and recognising the repetition of Pharaoh Ptolemy V in each section had allowed the translators to figure out what each hieroglyph denoted.
The same held true for the myriad languages the SG teams encountered through the Stargate. Philologists estimated that modern humans spoke about 3,000 languages, and that perhaps as many as five to ten thousand languages had once existed on Earth, including those now extinct. The SG teams had discovered a corollary with other cultures. Instead of single global societies, many worlds were populated by two or more cultures with distinctive languages and customs; on worlds where the SG teams discovered simply ruins, it was often impossible to determine the native language or languages unless you came across text saying the same thing in both or more languages, just like the Rosetta Stone had done.
"Very well," Hammond decided. "You have a go; dismissed."
"Teal'c! Wait up," Jack carolled as he spotted his Jaffa friend ahead of him in the corridor.
The massive ebony-skinned man obediently halted. "You are ebullient, O'Neill."
"Yeah," Jack frowned then shrugged, "For some reason, I suddenly feel really good, even though ten minutes ago it was just 'another day another dollar'. Now…I'm full of the joys of Spring I guess."
"It is currently your autumn season on this continent, O'Neill."
Teal'c had no equal when it came to the art of deadpan wit, and so O'Neill, having no idea from that impassive face whether Teal'c was serious or making one of his rare jokes, prudently decided not to answer.
"Colonel!" Carter, a big smile on her face was suddenly coming out of a lab ahead of them.
"Carter, how goes the day?" declaimed O'Neill, still feeling remarkably cheerful, though he couldn't have explained quite why.
Incredibly, her smile broadened as she fell in beside the two men as they walked towards the Briefing Room. "Daniel found the Rosetta, sir, or actually one of the UAVs did in one of the city's libraries."
"And what does the Rosetta say that's got you so excited?" Jack asked.
Blushing slightly she admitted, "It's a trade agreement between the Cardassians – actually Daniel says their species were called the Nemetae - and their neighbouring planet, which was called something like Uhutac or Oota – not sure which that this point, for the Ootans to buy sarcophagi. The Nemetae word for the sarcophagus is repeated constantly through both sets of text, Daniel says that both languages are pretty easy to grasp once you've figured out one word, he hopes to help the xeno-linguists at Nellis to begin translating it by Friday."
"I do not see why this information is of such interest to you, Major Carter," Teal'c declared as Jack opened his mouth to less tactfully urge her to get on with it.
"It's because there isn't a Stargate address for Uhutac-stroke-Oota in our system, but the trade agreement seems make reference to one. I'm on my way to stellar cartography now to see if I can calculate the likely position of Uhutac-stroke-Oota and compensate for planetary drift so we can get there…"
"Whoa, Carter." Jack waved his fingers as her eyes began to glaze over with enthusiasm. "Why should there be a Stargate on Hooter or wherever?"
"The Nemetae and Uhutac-Ootans were allies and friends for hundreds of Earth years, sir," Carter patiently explained. "That most likely means that the Uhutac-Ootans were physically like the Nemetae, that is, they lived on an Earth-like planet with a breathable atmosphere and a comparable level of culture and technology."
Jack shrugged. "But if there'd been a Stargate on Oo-whatsit wouldn't I have input it when I got my free 'Place of our Legacy' download?"
Carter shook her head. "Not by a long way, Colonel. You only managed to input a few – relatively speaking - Stargate addresses before General Hammond had Teal'c stop you. Even including the Abydos Cartouche addresses, that's a mere fraction of those that we could access if we only knew the addresses. You also knew we didn't have sufficient power to reach Thallia again so you didn't even start on addresses with eight or more chevrons."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "You believe that there are many Stargates that require eight chevrons when dialling?"
"Teal'c, it wouldn't surprise me if there were Stargates out there with addresses nine, ten, eleven, twelve or even more chevrons long. Remember, the only thing preventing us from reaching those addresses is power. Our Stargate only has enough juice to reach seven-chevron addresses – PO plus SDC –"
"What?" His happy mood now evaporating as they closed in on the Briefing Room, Jack glared.
"Sorry, sir, technical jargon; PO plus DC means 'Point of Origin plus Distance Calculations'. Here at the mountain we only have sufficient power for our Stargate to achieve PO plus SDC – Six Distance Calculations. Thallia was PO plus Seven Distance Calculations. My personal theory is that the Stargate system is, well, for all practical purposes, infinite."
Jack considered this for a moment. "Nah, come on Carter, we know now how the Ancients can zip about – Orlan and Oma Desala showed us that. To be honest, I can't see why they ever bothered with Stargates in the first place, never mind built one on every planet they passed."
"I think I know the answer to that, Colonel: Fear," Carter said quietly but with that stubborn tone he recognised.
"Fear of what?" Daniel appeared in the doorway of his office, clearly having caught a good portion of the conversation. "I mean, if Oma Desala was any indication I don't think the Ancients had much reason to fear anything."
"True, but I was actually thinking of other beings' fear of them." Seeing their blank expressions, Carter elaborated, "Colonel, how did you react when you saw the Reetu – Charlie's mom?"
"Yowser!" admitted O'Neill, having a faint inkling of where she was heading.
"Exactly, she created Charlie because she knew how traumatic it would be for us to deal with her directly, so she created her intermediary in a form we could relate to."
"Like the Gadmeer ship created Lotan to interface with the Enkarrans," Daniel put in thoughtfully.
"Exactly," Sam agreed. "Now consider the Ancients. There seems to be a growing trail of evidence that Ancients and humans are the same thing, but think about what they look like in their Ascended form? Take away the 'unearthly angelic glow' and you're basically left with – "
"Tentacles…" realised Jack.
"Right," Carter nodded vigorously, "with all due respect, what resembles a giant squid straight out of Moby Dick. There's no way to know for sure but my theory is that the Stargate was initially invented because not all Ancients developed the ability to Ascend at the same rate."
"Some still didn't have the money to get out of economy into business class," Jack translated.
"Right…However, I think they expanded the Stargate system universally once they had begun it, even after everyone…got into Business Class…because the Ancients started to realise what sort of effect they were having bouncing around the stars like an out-of-control pinball. Their appearance was freaking out the natives and though they may have left a planet quickly they probably realised that they were leaving seismic culture shock in their wake nine times out of ten."
"So how would the Stargate have helped that?" Jack demanded.
"By enabling the Ancients to appear in a form more easily related to, like Lotan and the Enkarrans." Warming to her theme, Carter postulated, "My personal belief is that the Ancients probably scouted a planet invisibly – all floating and other dimensional, then they'd position a Stargate near a major city or important place and just wait for someone to notice it and then they would come through the Stargate in human form, as it's certainly far less threatening than - "
"A giant glowing squid," Teal'c commented, deadpan as ever.
"That's not a bad hypothesis," Daniel praised. "I mean, with the odd extremely rare exception like the Goa'uld – which are the result of a freak cosmic accident anyway - most sentient life forms we've ever encountered anywhere have been entirely or mostly bipedal. Most have some form of vocal chords and at least two upper limbs possessing the equivalent of opposable thumbs – even the Reetu had opposable thumbs. Even highly sophisticated societies like the Asgard would find human-form Ancients easier to relate to than, well, a giant glowing squid."
"That's what I think," Carter affirmed. "It must have been like building the trans-continental railway. Earth is the Grand Central Terminus of a vast intergalactic Stargate network, because we are – if we're right - the home world of the Ancients. Earth is the ultimate Point of Origin. The Ancients went from Earth to planet B, left a Stargate and then went to planet C and so on. They travelled in every direction throughout the universe and each time they went a little further out they built another Stargate so the network extended a little further than it had before. I'd bet there is a sufficient number of Stargates in certain galaxies that if you simply stood in front of a DHD and hit symbols randomly you'd more than likely manage to open a wormhole to somewhere."
Jack screwed up his face in concentration. "So, you go to stellar cartography and put in Nemetae's Stargate address. Since Oota…Uhura…?" he looked at Daniel expectantly.
"Uhutac seems to be the closest I can get." Daniel corrected with a shrug.
"Right, since Uhutac was its neighbour, chances are that there's only going to be one symbol different and if we can get the computer to find it we can go." He looked at her expectantly.
"Exactly right, Colonel –"
"Yes!" Jack clenched his fist and for the first time in a long time, Daniel's eyes gleamed at him with genuinely affectionate amusement as the archaeologist grinned.
"Fortunately, the Ancients grouped Stargate addresses together like we group everyone in Denver with one telephone area code and everyone in Colorado Springs with another area code and everyone in Aspen with yet another," Sam confirmed Jack's hesitant words as they headed to stellar cartography. "The Ancients divided, why, the universe I guess, up into easier chunks. They had quadrants, then galaxies within quadrants, then solar systems within galaxies and down to individual Stargates. All the Stargates in a particular quadrant have similar addresses; some of the stellar cartographers at Nellis can take one look at an address and tell you where it is."
Daniel's eyebrows drew together. "But doesn't that mean that even with only one symbol of difference there could still be a lot of possible Stargates near Nemetae that we end up opening a wormhole to?"
"That's the down side," Carter admitted. "We received a delivery of Orbitals this morning so General Hammond decided that to make the search for Uhutac's address worthwhile, we would send a MALP and UAV with an Orbital through each wormhole we manage to open from the computer's list. The Orbital will stay once we recall the MALP and UAV and will provide valuable surveying data -"
"Whoa, back up a minute." Jack waggled his fingers. "Just how many possible address combinations can the computer come up with if there is only one symbol difference between Nemetae and Orator?"
"Actually, quite a lot, Colonel," Carter winced but didn't correct his mispronunciation of the planet's name. "We can't tell the computer that the first five symbols are the same and just to change the sixth symbol because it might be the third symbol that's different, or the fifth. Besides, I'm only guessing on the one-symbol difference thing –"
"You're assuming the word neighbour means a similar thing in Nemetae to how we use it on earth – a person or place that resides in close proximity to our position, like Tantalus was next-door to Abydos in terms of celestial navigation," Daniel put in. "You're hoping that Oota-Uhura-whatever really is the 'planet next door'?"
"Yes, Daniel, if not…" Carter shrugged. "We found indications that the Nemetae were frequent Stargate users, but I'm hoping their idea of 'Uhura' as a neighbour was meant literally, not in terms of how fast they could get there. Your example of Ernest Littlefield's planet was very apropos; via Stargate, it took us seconds to get to Tantalus even though it's like going from Miami to New York, but our neighbour planet is Mars, which takes us weeks to get to because there is no Stargate on it…that we know of."
"Ouch," muttered Jack as he realised how complicated this plan was shaping up to be.
They entered stellar cartography to find General Hammond waiting for them with the technical guys. Setting off the process, Carter explained to them all, "A lot depends as well on how many Stargates there are in that galaxy. Though the Ancients did favour nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere M- or L- type planets for their Stargate system –"
"Planets such as this one," commented Teal'c as Jack's eyes unfocussed and began to glaze.
" – they did have exceptions to that," Carter continued. "Some galaxies have lots of Stargates, others only dozens, still others just a couple; and of course I'm ignoring Stargates constructed aboard ships or in orbits around planets rather than actually on them."
"Go on, Major," Hammond encouraged when Jack gave his I-don't-understand-this-stuff glare.
Sam shot them all an apologetic look, as if the fact that someone had figured out it was possible to construct a working Stargate on a ship orbiting a world as long as it was close enough to use the planet as a point of origin, (á la Apophis) was somehow her fault.
Carter explained, "The reason that Earth didn't have aliens tramping through the Antarctica gate daily for millennia like day-trip tourists was because this spiral arm of the Milkyway Galaxy has only half-a-dozen Stargates along it's entire length, including the two on Earth, so unless you knew the address, it's not probable you'd get here by chance. In the galaxies populated by lots of Stargates, it would be very easy to misdial one symbol and end up on the wrong world, but it's unlikely you'd ever misdial enough symbols to open a wormhole up to Earth by accident."
Jack snorted, "Carter, are you saying that Earth is ex-directory?"
She smiled. "Pretty much."
"Proceed Major," ordered Hammond looking amused at the byplay.
Using Cardassia's address as a template, the computer began to search through possible permutations. Within a few seconds one came up flashing green on the screen; through the large flat-screen monitor installed in stellar cartography they could see the same address flashing on the computer monitors in the Gate Control Room as Sergeant Walter Harriman input the address and looked expectantly towards the Stargate. Nothing happened.
"This number is not in service," chimed up Jack suddenly in a passable '1950s' falsetto voice. "Please check and try again."
"Colonel," reproved Hammond softly, though the peculiarly contorted twitching of his lips suggested he was suppressing a grin.
"Sorry, sir," but Jack's already positive mood increased when he heard Daniel suppress a definite snort of laughter. While ever he could still make Danny-boy laugh, all was not lost.
Three more possibilities came up, each time nothing happened. With the fourth, however, the Stargate began to turn and a wormhole opened. The UAV shot through with the Orbital attached at the MALP trundled up the ramp.
"Receiving telemetry," Walter reported from his position in the Gate Room. "UAV and Orbital are go."
Carter had arranged for the signal to be sent from the Gate Room monitors down into stellar cartography on more of the big flat-screen TV monitors. Though they couldn't see it, the Orbital was broadcasting as it detached from the UAV and shot off towards the upper atmosphere to establish a geosynchronous orbit around the planet. The UAV performed a grid search with a ten mile radius from the Stargate, while the MALP panned 180° from its position in front of the Stargate. At first glance, the area resembled the Serengeti Plains – a vast vista of grasslands with big brown creatures resembling buffalo grazing peacefully. There were no signs of artificial construction or that there ever had been. The UAV likewise sent back images of a huge grassy plain populated by herbivores. No energy signatures or indications of sentient life either primitive or advanced.
"Major Carter?" Hammond asked.
"No, sir." She shook her head. "The Ancients generally built the Stargates so they would be conveniently accessible to the native populace of the planet, usually near urban centres. If this were Uhutac-stroke-Oota-stroke-Uhura then there should at least be the vestiges of a major city within a mile or so of its position and the UAV has visibility for hundreds of miles."
Recalling the MALP and UAV, they attached another Orbital and continued. It was another five possibilities before another wormhole engaged.
"Actually this is quite good for us, sir," Carter told the General. "These not-in-service addresses probably mean that there aren't that many other Stargates in that sector."
There was a loud bang that made everyone duck and then whirl to look at the monitors. The UAV was flying through thick fog and smoke and being hit by small projectiles.
"Yee-ouch!" Jack whistled as they saw the MALP's visual relay. Like most Stargates, this one too had been built on a high point of land, which was why it was still viable. The Gate seemed to exist on a crag surrounded by a semi-solidified ocean of lava; steam, magma and small rocks were constantly being expelled with some force in the vicinity. In the far distance to the left, a large volcano had lava, ash, smoke and debris belching out of it. The initial eruption must have been colossal, and certainly nothing would survive in the area for some time.
On two more addresses, the MALP, UAV and Orbital were destroyed as they were prevented from reintegrating on the other side; Sam Carter had created a link so any such addresses would be added her 'cold address' program, which redialled all inaccessible Stargate addresses every three months, though considering how that had turned out the first time they'd tried it…just SG-1's rotten luck to land on the continent that worshipped Nehrfertum as a god rather than the Optrikan side…
On a third address they could only see pitch blackness and the UAV instantly crashed into something and exploded. Turning on the MALP's light they determined that the Stargate appeared to be deep underground in some sort of cave, the Stargate was lopsided as if part of it had sunk lower, and there was rubble everywhere. It looked uncomfortably like the Stargate that had led to Linea's underground prison.
"Major Carter!" Walter exclaimed a few minutes later.
The MALP and UAV had both reintegrated the other side of the latest Stargate address. The UAV had flown up and around the 'back' of the Stargate, transmitting pictures of rolling hills, dotted by flourishing deciduous woodlands and what appeared to be a rather pretty, dainty dappled species of deer grazing contentedly. The MALP's sensors showed what lay directly ahead. Right next to the MALP's extension arm was an obviously intact presumably working DHD. A short flight of what seemed to be white marble steps led to a long, white marble boulevard that stretched along to end in a semi-circular colonnade of marble arches. Through the arch that formed the centre point, they could see what appeared to be a floral centrepiece, with a large fountain surrounded by colourful blooms and verdant foliage.
"The MALP can't get down those steps," General Hammond mused, "Major Carter can you reprogram the UAV to fly over the city?"
"I'll try, sir." Seating herself at the console, she tapped a few keys and the UAV began to change direction.
A loud screech emanated through the speakers as transmitted from the UAV's audio recorders making everyone jump. The display showed huge trees vaguely reminiscent of the eucalypt family; the UAV had flown near one such and they could clearly see a large nest of twigs with dirty-grey bundles moving in it. Abruptly two birds the size of herons but with iridescent emerald plumage launched themselves from it and dive-bombed the UAV, pecking and shrieking.
"Oops!" Carter hastily typed in commands for the UAV to beat a retreat, but the parent birds pursued the craft. "Sergeant Harriman, shut down the gate and see if you can get the MALP to redial Earth, we need to get that UAV back before those birds knock it from the sky!"
"Yes, ma'am," acknowledged the Sergeant, rapidly tapping out a command sequence that made the MALP's extension arm begin to move even as he was shutting down the gate.
They waited keenly; using a MALP's extending robot arm to remote-dial a Stargate address instead of sending a human to the planet was possible, but such an extremely cumbersome procedure it was very rarely done. However, the gate's inner mechanism began to spin and the chevrons glowed after a few minutes. As the wormhole connected they began to receive audio-visual telemetry from the MALP again and heard the loud whine that signified the UAV was still in the air, but when the MALP angled up they could see that both parent birds were dive-bombing the machine; inevitably they would knock it from the sky shortly and probably injure themselves in the process. Quickly Carter typed in a recall command to the UAV.
Pursued by the protective parent birds the UAV hurtled into the open wormhole at greater than usual speed. The Marine squad in the gate room ducked as the UAV shot out of the wormhole and Carter desperately managed to get it flying in a circular trajectory before it hit the windows of the Gate Control Room or worse the Briefing Room directly above. Shrieking madly one of the emerald herons also shot out of the wormhole and began to fly frantically around the gate room.
"Don't kill it!" yelled Daniel into an open mike desperately.
Jack glowered at him at the implication that the Marines would either panic or simply blast at the poor thing, but Daniel returned the glare and even cranked it up a notch. His former good mood evaporating into an overwhelming and unexpected surge of defensive anger, Jack turned his attention to the gate room where Carter had finally managed to land the UAV and cut power – but now they had to get rid of the unwelcome avian.
"Sergeant!" Carter called, but Walter was ahead of her. The instant the heron had followed the UAV he disconnected the incoming wormhole and immediately redialled it as an outgoing wormhole, forced to time the dialling sequence so the wormhole's 'bow wave' didn't disintegrate the madly flying bird in the process.
The 'heron' continued to circle above the UAV for another minute, but apparently deciding that the 'enemy bird' was dead, started to slow down as if preparatory to perching on something. With great presence of mind, one of the Marines crouched near the top of the ramp waited until the bird's flight path took it in front of the reactivated outgoing wormhole and then jumped forward with a yell. Blind instinct made the bird veer away from this new threat and it was promptly sucked back into the wormhole and ejected the other side where it flew off with its mate at great speed with no apparent harm. Jack shot Daniel a look that quite clearly challenged: See?
"Sorry, General Hammond." Carter apologised.
Before he could make any comment, Teal'c stated, "The inhabitants of this world appear to be most deficient in the monitoring of their Stargate."
Jack looked back at the MALP's pictures. There was no sign of anything sentient approaching, neither on foot nor in any kind of vehicle. "They've never encountered the Goa'uld, or the planet's already enslaved by one?" he suggested.
"Or perhaps their society is so advanced that they do not need to worry about the arrival of Goa'uld." Teal'c's usually expressionless face managed to look vaguely hopeful.
"Or else it's still way too early," Carter suggested prosaically and pointed at one of the brief pre-homicidal heron images sent back by the UAV of the planet behind the Stargate, where a familiar-looking bright yellow sphere seemed to be pushing up from the horizon. "It seems to be only dawn on that world, sir. I think everyone must still be in bed…"
"You're good to go," decided Hammond, never one to dither, and knowing from past experience that the safest looking planets tended to be the wrong side of lethal, while those ventured to in trepidation, distaste and/or outright worry often proved most useful/friendly/hospitable.
The founding SG teams were by now capable of preparing for a gate trip in about ten seconds even if comatose, trussed up like a Christmas turkey and deep frozen, and none more so than SG-1. Within twenty minutes they were all at the bottom of the ramp with General Hammond watching from the Gate Control Room as the address was redialled. When the wormhole opened, the MALP on the other side automatically sent back the latest telemetry, which showed that the local population were apparently still asleep; though not yet high enough to send any telemetry, the still-travelling Orbital's functioning systems had also detected no threat. The treaties and other literature discovered in Nemetae libraries had given Daniel a head's up on basic linguistic structure – assuming this really was Uhura, as they seemed to have taken to calling it – and though he had no pronunciation key, he could if necessary write down a few basic questions in a format the Uhurans should be able to grasp.
As always when he 'reintegrated' into solid form on the other side of the Stargate, Jack experienced a frisson of something that could be described as a heady mixture of wild excitement and raw terror. However, within a few seconds, the word that suddenly popped into his head was 'bucolic', followed rapidly by 'soporific' and he was completely unsurprised when Carter's scanner showed zero pollution, etc. Jack didn't relax his guard – he remembered all too well the highly advanced, pollution free wonder world that had been annihilated by that giant flying bug that nearly had Teal'c literally buzzing off the mortal coil.
They set off down the steps, which did indeed seem to be a form of marble. Jack wasn't that bothered – he figured there could only be so many types of rock in the universe after all. The long walkway turned out to be a short-span bridge over a wide, beautiful river, whose gently sloping banks sported deep, vibrantly green grass and a stunning profusion of gloriously-coloured flowering plants and shrubs.
"Wow," murmured Daniel, pausing to peer down at the water over the left-hand-side marble balustrade, "talk about retirement fund."
"The water?" asked Carter, also peering down. "It doesn't look drinkable?"
"Actually I'm willing to bet that it's 100 percent pure," Daniel commented in the face of their scepticism as they gazed down at the river, the water of which was a bright, almost glowing blue, streaked with snowy white swirls, like blueberry and vanilla ice-cream. "I spent some time with the Maori in New Zealand on the South Island. Their rivers were like this – exactly like this. It's claimed1 that the South Island is the only country in the world where you can drink directly from the rivers without risking something gruesome taking up residence in your gullet. More importantly, up until just a few years ago, amateur gold-panners were still getting decent sized nuggets out of the rivers – you would not believe the tonnage of gold New Zealand produced."
"Gold?" Jack looked at the unprepossessing water speculatively; anything that looked less likely to harbour wealth beyond the dreams of avarice was hard to imagine.
"By the cubic ton," Daniel confirmed.
They continued along the walkway, walking up the three steps into what appeared to be an arbour of some kind with the fountain as its centre-piece. Again, there was a sort of 'artificial wildness' about it, as though someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as natural as if you'd come across it on a country stroll.
"Colonel, the Uhurans use crystal technology too," Carter pointed at familiar crystal blocks discreetly hidden under the lip of the fountain's outer wall. "I bet they control things like the height of the water feature –"
"O'Neill!"
Teal'c voice was harsh and grim and the other three hurried through the arbour and out the other side of the colonnade – except that there was no other side. Hidden by the structure and the flourishing foliage, the view of the city proper through the arbour was obscured and of course the Emerald Herons had prevented the UAV making a pass flight, which would have revealed…that there was no city.
His manner as unperturbed as ever, Teal'c stood mere inches from the edge of a chasm at least two miles across at this point, and at least seven miles long and a good mile deep; it was literally a gargantuan gouge in the surface, like someone taking their first spoonful out of a tub of ice-cream. What parts of the city had existed here had been completely obliterated; on the other side of the gorge, clearly visible in such optimum conditions, roads terminated suddenly, what seemed to be apartment blocks had been sheered in half, with scattered debris still discernible on the opposite slope of the rift in places. SG-1 exchanged grim looks of deep disappointment. Even from here it was obvious that the city had suffered a catastrophic military assault; blast damage was apparent and most of the city seemed to be nothing but tumbled ruins.
Jack narrowed his eyes, remembering what Martin Lloyd's planet had looked like, with everything also shattered and twisted. "The question is: did the Uhurans do this to each other, like the Nemetae, or did the snakeheads have a party?"
"I fear the latter, O'Neill." Teal'c had moved and was now down on one knee next to something half hidden under large bushes.
Jack, Sam and Daniel moved closer, not needing any identification of what they were seeing. It was the partial skeletal remains of a large bipedal creature, with large fragments of armour mingled with the bones. What could be nothing other than a staff weapon lay in a twisted heap nearby, and the tiny skeleton of a small snake lay about where a human stomach/abdomen would have been had the being been alive and lying down. It was undoubtedly a Jaffa, or what was left of him, and his larval Goa'uld.
"Anything to ID his System Lord?" Jack enquired with acidic disappointment – the damned snakeheads ruined anything they touched.
"His armour is exceptionally ancient, and of a design I have never before seen any System Lord incorporate." Teal'c frowned as he cautiously examined the remains without touching them. "It is of such antiquity that this Jaffa may even have been Unas rather than human."
"I thought that the Goa'uld had discovered humans by the time they came up with the idea of the Jaffa?" Daniel asked.
Teal'c frowned, "The Goa'uld lie about much of their history; they claimed humans had always been their only hosts. There were rumours that when the Goa'uld first came up with the idea of Jaffa bred to nurture their young, they were still Unas, so any Jaffa would have been Unas. As usual, such stories were forbidden to be mentioned on pain of death."
"Carter?"
"There's no way to tell from a visual inspection of the main skeleton," Carter explained. "The Unas are much taller and heavier built but to the naked eye, their skeleton looks like human bones. The skull of an Unas and a human are distinctively different though – is it there?"
Teal'c nodded. "It appears to be present and intact." Using the butt of his staff weapon, he carefully eased off the remains of the Jaffa helmet to show a large skull that had a massive fracture across it, but which was still intact. Teal'c frowned in obvious consternation, "It is human."
Jack looked at the skull, momentarily unable to tell the difference, but then he remembered Daniel's Unas buddy Chaka…and those teeth. The skull of this creature was clearly that of a… "Omnivore!" from somewhere the word just came to him. "Humans are omnivores, Unas are primarily carnivores."
Narrowing his eyes, Teal'c reached into the helmet and brought out a small, oval disc that fitted easily in the palm of his large hand, and which shone a dull buttery yellow in the light against the café latte of his palm. Jack and Sam exchanged astonished glances: this was not merely a dead Jaffa. All Jaffa bore the symbol of the System Lord they served on their foreheads, but these symbols were tattoos, done usually in black ink; only the System Lord's First Prime qualified to have the mark of his master or mistress branded upon his forehead (an agonising procedure) in solid gold, as Teal'c still bore the mark of Apophis. The corpse was no mere cannon-fodder foot soldier, but had been the First Prime of whichever System Lord had done a shoot-and-loot on the Uhurans.
"Daniel, you need to have a look at this," Jack ordered.
"No, actually I think we need to run. I think we need to run very fast, starting now." Daniel was already edging towards the arbour and pointing significantly back towards the ruined city.
Jack looked up and for a moment thought he was back on the bug-planet where Teal'c had so nearly died. Hundreds of flying objects were coming towards them. They looked miniature UAVs, but one immediately striking difference was that these babies clearly had ordnance. The question of whether the Uhurans had guarded their Stargate had just been definitively answered, and not in a good way.
For all his current issues with his friend, Jack could only be grateful that long gone were the days when Danny-boy, 'the civilian', wasted precious seconds of a perilous situation merely staring uncertainly at the incoming threat, or else looking at Jack waiting to see what the Colonel would do to get them out of danger (no pressure, of course!) Taking off like a coursed hare, Daniel bounded up to the DHD and frantically dialled symbols; as soon as he was assured the wormhole had connected, he spun back round and aimed his MP5 above the other three's heads, spraying the approaching attack drones with covering fire.
"Damn it! Crystal technology!" Jack cursed as some sort of energy weapon from one of the drones hit the balustrade of the bridge, sending painful shards of marble into his cheeks. Hadn't he just known this world would have some stupid booby trap that would work with moronic efficiency millennia after there was nobody left around to turn it off, courtesy of damn non-polluting, ten-thousand-year-lasting crystal batteries?
They dove as a synchronised quartet into the wormhole as the horde began to swoop down, spat out by the wormhole and tumbling down the ramp in ungainly and painful rolls, exhorting the SGC to close the gate. Hammond instantly had the iris activated, but one drone shot through the centre gap at high speed a second before it closed; it hit the wall directly underneath the Gate Control Room and dropped to the floor with a loud crack, where it lay inert. As he hauled himself painfully up to his knees – which were too old for this crap – Jack wished he could do likewise.
To be continued…
© 2005, Catherine D. Stewart
1 My BETA reader, Shallan, an American, states that there is a glacier-fed river up in the Banff National Forest from which she and others were able to drink from directly and use untreated to fill coffee pots.