42: Arrivals

John's weary legs carried him down the stargate's ramp, but they did so at a slow, uneven gait, and the wound at left leg only hurt further with each step he took. It was not a serious injury, but a burn was a burn, and a patch of skin there had become red, bloodied and blistered. Natalia had helped him bandage it up back on Dalabrai, a temporary measure until he could get it looked at in the infirmary at stargate command. It was a relief, then, to finally be back in the SGC, met with the familiar sight of General Janssen standing past the end of the ramp with a pair of airmen at his side and a handful of medical personnel awaiting the weary team.

John, Natalia, Elsie, Aithris and Jonas; they were all dirty, all in varying states of weariness, carrying with them cuts and bruises. Elsie even more so, her grubby face still baring the bruises of her brief captivity under the Calsharans in the makalvari town of Blaskane. The attending medical staff came hurrying over, led by the resident chief doctor, Stephen Takagi, a middle-aged man of Japanese descent. He often had a careful frown on his face, as if everything he saw before him deserved careful scientific examination. He stopped before Elsie, taking one look at her bruised and bloodied face before gesturing to one of the other medical technicians.

"Take her to the infirmary," he ordered. His voice carried the kind of accent one would find on the east coast, as despite the surname, Takagi had been born and raised in North Carolina. John walked by him, steadying himself on the ramp's rail, headed for the General. Takagi took one look at his wounded leg and went to speak, but John simply pressed on by him, ignoring the dutifully concerned doctor in order to reach Janssen.

"I take it things did not go as planned?" Janssen asked the Colonel as he approached. John stopped a few paces before him, the stargate at his rear deactivating, the shimmering portal vanishing with it. The wavering blue light it had presented was gone, returning the embarkation room to its usual dry, white lighting.

"SG-21?" Janssen asked. The missing personnel were apparent now. His expression hardened immediately.

"Only the Lieutenant made it," John answered. He could not keep his voice from adopting a grim tone as he said it. They had lost nearly an entire team, whilst the one survivor would be dealing with the guilt of that event for the rest of her life. John knew what it was like and he knew full well that such guilt, whether it be the guilt of being the lone survivor or the guilt of losing someone under your command, did not ever go away entirely. Sure, time would lessen it, but it would always be there, lingering in the background and ready to spring back to the forefront if such a thing happened again.

"It was rough out there, sir," John added.

"And the makalvari?"

"Some were helpful. Captain Kav'rak was hiding a few things from us." He turned to Jonas, who came to a stop at his right. "Jonas here acquired a data crystal from the main computer in the weapons facility. Kav'rak did the same and thought we didn't notice him take it."

Jonas reached into a pocket on his vest and pulled out the small, vaguely cylindrical crystal. He handed it to the General, who gave it a careful once-over.

"Might be some interesting stuff on there," Jonas remarked.

"I'm sure there is." He passed the crystal to one of the airmen. "I'll have our R-and-D team take a close look at it." He paused briefly, before quirking an eyebrow: "I take it, then, that the Calsharan weapons facility was destroyed?"

"Completely, sir," John said. "Along with a battalion of Calsharan soldiers."

"Sounds like quite the result. Once you get yourselves cleaned up, come up to the conference room for debriefing. Say, in an hour?" He looked to John for confirmation. That should be enough time to get their minor wounds cleaned up, not to mention a shower and a quick snack. John nodded his head in agreement.

"Whatever you want, General."

"Very well, Colonel." He looked over to Elsie, who had more or less collapsed onto a wheeled gurney nearby. She was still conscious, but utterly exhausted. With the adrenaline no longer flowing, her various injuries were finally taking their toll. John noticed that she had left her rifle leaning up against the railing; he walked over and took hold of it, ensuring that the chamber was clear and the safety was on.

"I'll look after this, Lieutenant," he told her, as the med-techs started wheeling her out of the embarkation room. She turned to him, offered him a small smile from amongst the dried mud that coated her face, before she lay back and allowed herself to enjoy the short ride to the infirmary.

"Did the Lieutenant do well?" Janssen asked him, once she was out of the room. He wore a curious, if cautious, gaze. John turned to the General and nodded his head in the affirmative.

"Yes, she did, sir." John slung the heavy .50 calibre rifle around one shoulder. "Better than you probably thought she would."

"I'm glad to hear it," Janssen said. "She's a bit of a troublemaker, that one. She did not get along with Major Faulkner." Lawrence Faulkner had been SG-21's team leader, now deceased, his body left to rot on some alien planet. They had left him and the rest of the team behind, and there was no knowing where their remains might have ended up now.

"She got along fine with us, sir," John said.

"Maybe that's a good thing. I guess it depends on her commanding officer. She's been in the service since she was in her early twenties, got to Lance Corporal before she put in for officer's training. According to her record, she passed it by the skin of her teeth but she's been a Lieutenant a lot longer than most."

"She's a good shot."

"So are you, Colonel. And Aithris here, I believe." He nodded to the Nomad, who loitered nearby. Compared to the rest of the team, Aithris looked in somewhat better shape. Dirty and bruised, but generally more vibrant, as if the ordeal on Dalabrai had done little to dampen his overall spirit.

"You hear anything from Daniel?" It was something he had been meaning to ask, and from the look Janssen gave him in return, it was apparent that nothing had come from Daniel's self-given mission.

"Nothing so far," Janssen said.

"What about tracking him?" Most personnel had some form of tracker on them. Nothing implanted, but phones were easy enough to track as it was.

"That's just it, Colonel. Nothing on that end either." Janssen frowned, his face adopting a grave countenance. "It's as if Daniel Jackson has disappeared off of the face of the Earth."


Some press representatives had arrived, mixed in with some of the international delegates. Cameron Mitchell was in the main docking bay of Anchorpoint Station, a sizeable space at the base of the station's central structure. Like most of the station's interior, it was painted in cool blues and greys, with a firm carpet underfoot. A thick, reinforced window was off to the left, offering a dazzling view of the Earth below them, all blue oceans and swirling white clouds. For this batch of arrivals, a refitted Goa'uld cargo ship had been used, and it had attached itself to a docking tube beyond the airlock ahead of Mitchell and the others with him.

Woolsey and Banachek stood to either side of him, as did a pair of uniformed guards. The uniforms were a navy blue in colour, the shoulders carrying the emblem of Homeworld Command. All five looked on to the airlock expectantly, with Banachek's face a stoic mask and Woolsey's own carrying something much friendlier. Cameron kept a straight face himself, although deep down he was not looking forward to mingling with the politicians and the press. Some of those press members had already arrived, and they were gathering in the main hall several levels above in preparation for the official commissioning ceremony.

"You should smile, General," Woolsey said, from where he stood to Cameron's left. Cameron glanced at him and gave the man a quick frown.

"I only smile when I'm feeling pleased about something," he countered. "I don't like to force it."

"A warm smile can go a long way."

"Sorry, Dick, but a forced smile is barely a smile at all." He knew Woolsey was not very fond of being called 'Dick', which in itself was part of the reason he used the name. Before either of them could say anything more, the airlock doors ahead of them slid open, hydraulics hissing and some small white gusts of smoke billowing from vents near the floor. There had to be about ten people in the chamber behind, dressed in the expected suits and ties. A young blonde woman in a smart black dress was there among them, accompanied by two men in somewhat less formal attire. One carried a boom-mike, the other a shoulder-mounted camera.

More press, Cameron mused. The vultures were gathering on Anchorpoint Station. He much preferred the days of old where no one from the press was allowed to set foot on anything related to the stargate program, by it a facility or starship. Times changed, and sometimes he wondered if they really did change for the better. Banachek certainly seemed to think they did, and he was first to greet the bemused politicians who emerged from the airlock, the camera crew being quick to dart off to the group's left in order to start filming the space station's interior.

He recognized one of the delegates, realising he was the Prime Minister of Canada. The others consisted of representatives from Belgium, Italy and Norway, three nations with no real involvement in the stargate program or its offshoots, but nonetheless invited here as part of Banachek's attempts at 'unifying' Earth's governments on the notion of an international force dedicated to fighting alien threats.

"Welcome, Mister Prime Minister," Banachek said, shaking hands with the Canadian. He then proceeded to shake hands with the others, as did Woolsey. Cameron, however, had turned his attention to the nosy news crew, especially as they had approached him directly. The camera operator practically shoved the lens into his face, with the female reporter doing much the same with her microphone.

"You must be Brigadier General Cameron Mitchell, United States Air Force," she said, her accent carrying a distinct trace of something Canadian. She, and her two companions, were wearing official press pass badges, each emblazoned with the symbol of Homeworld Command. "I'm Lora Jackson, from Canada's Channel Forty-four Nightly News. I was wondering if you had anything to say, perhaps an official welcome to Anchorpoint Station?"

Cameron looked at her, noted her expectant eyes and also her attractive, young features, before he shrugged.

"If you want an official welcome, speak to those guys," he said, and he nodded towards Banachek and Woolsey. "I, meanwhile, have a station to run." He turned around and left the news crew, leaving Lora looking distinctly annoyed. He offered the slightest of nods to the newly arrived delegates, his generally dismissive demeanour getting him a glare from Banachek himself. Woolsey, meanwhile, was already caught up in small talk with the Norwegian representative, whose English was good, ensuring that Woolsey had no difficulties with a language barrier.

"If everybody would follow me," Banachek announced, "We can head up to the main hall. Food and drinks are already being served." He was doing his best to sound the part of a welcoming host, yet the man's cold eyes and severe moustache did little to help that image. The elevator at the other end of the room was able to carry the entire group up the six or seven levels to the hall, wherein the other attendees were starting to gather.

Up here in the hall, the place had been thoroughly decorated, complete with the flags of every attending nation hanging over the stage. A few other camera crews were present, with politicians and bureaucrats mingling. Cameron noticed, as he stepped off of the elevator, that the commanders of the starships currently docked with the station had gathered in their own little group off to the side. Most of them seemed unwilling to join in with the politicians, save for one or two who saw it as an opportunity to get cosy with some powerful people.

Some of the attendees glanced his way, no doubt realising from the sight of his uniform that he was the man in charge. Cameron worked his way through the gathering crowd, not at all keen on the prospect that he would be expected to make a speech at some point during the ceremony. He had hardly worked on writing it, having postponed that work every day since he had been given the task. He figured he would simply get up there, speak from the heart and make it brief. Be honest, as his father had always said. If you speak honestly, you would never be short on words. Or something like that, Cameron could not remember his father's exact words and unfortunately, his old man was no longer around to clarify them.

"General?" It was Banachek again, and he had snuck up behind him during Cameron's brief reverie. He had done so with barely a sound, moving like a snake in the grass, weaving between the assorted visitors with finesse. Cameron paused and turned to face the Director, narrowing his eyes.

"Have you received any word from General Janssen?" Banachek asked him.

"Janssen?" Cameron shook his head. "Afraid I haven't, Director. I'm sure he'll show up, eventually." Somehow, he doubted this very much. Banachek no doubt thought much the same, judging from the sigh he emitted.

"I might try giving him a call," he said.

"You're welcome to try," Cameron added, knowing that it was likely Janssen would simply not pick up. He would have even less interest in taking part in this ceremony than Cameron himself did. Unlike Cameron, Janssen was in a position to simply not show up at all and have plenty of credible excuses as to why.

Banachek walked off, no doubt headed for the nearest communications terminal. Cameron made his way to the long table at one side of the hall, whereupon the various foods and drinks on offer were being laid out. He was starving, and the cream-topped cupcakes he saw upon one platter looked appetising. In about an hour the ceremony would start proper, which more or less meant one boring speech after another. Not the most exciting thing in the world, and he looked ahead to what was likely to be a dull exercise punctuated by small-talk and fake smiles.


Kav'rak was drifting in and out of consciousness during most of the trip back to the home-world, pulled along on a wheeled trolley that was adorned with somewhat uncomfortable, mostly flat cushions. The pain in his leg went from agonising to a persistent, dull throb. It fluctuated between these two extremes depending on how lucid he was, and the female nurse who tended to him, an attractive young thing with jewellery adoring her narrow head plume, kept on dosing him up with painkilling medicines during the trip.

After one point in which he simply dozed off, he woke up to find that he was suddenly on the home-world, within the command centre around the stargate, with soldiers milling about on their respective duties. The nurse was with him all the way to the landing pad atop the offshore military ocean platform, and she even boarded the shuttle that was waiting there, keeping by his side during the flight across the sea and to the capital.

Kav'rak spent much of the following trip unconscious again. When he did awake, it was hours later, an awakening brought on by something being injected into him. He sat up in a white linen bed, the walls around him a dull blue and the room itself mostly bare. The nurse was by his side again, in the process of disposing of the spent syringe. Sunlight filtered in through the window at his right, the wispy curtains over it doing little to hide the view of the city offered from what he took to be about thirty floors above street level. He recognized the capital city right away, and he sighted the imperial palace off towards the west.

"What's happening?" Kav'rak realised he had been cleaned up and dressed in a loose-fitting blue gown. The nurse, adorned in an immaculate white medical uniform, narrowed her blue eyes slightly when she heard him talk. He sounded a little groggy, but it passed quickly, and he returned to full lucidity within moments.

"Someone is here to see you," she told him.

"Am I all right?" Probably a stupid question to ask, as it was apparent that he was still alive. Even so, he found himself blurting it out without much thought behind it. The nurse quirked one brow-ridge, amused by the question.

"You're still here, Captain," the nurse said. "And you're going to be here for a while. The doctor will be around shortly to explain it to you."

Kav'rak flexed his arms and then held his hands out in front of him. All digits were accounted for. He remembered then what had landed him in this hospital, and he put his hands aside in order to gaze towards his legs. He noticed right away that not all was as it should be, and he emitted a horrified gasp when he sighted the way in which the sheets over him seemed to fall where his left leg should be. It was as if there was nothing under there, nothing past his knee anyhow.

"What?" He leaned over, feeling for the lower left leg that was no longer present. "What happened?" He glared at the nurse, his heart racing. She seemed bemused by the question.

"The doctor can explain it to you better than I can," she told him. "But the short version is that your lower left leg was simply too badly torn up and was getting infected. Had we gotten to it sooner, we may have been able to save it."

It was as he had feared would happen, and here he was, no longer quite the full makalvari he had once been. Despite their advanced medicine, their prosthetic limbs were seldom as efficient as the natural ones. To no longer be capable of the agility expected of a soldier such as himself was a small humiliation in itself, even if the loss of the limb was through no real fault of his own.

The door slid open then, and Brigade Leader Tav'kar, in his full ribbon-studded uniform, came marching inside. The nurse glanced at him and politely excused herself, leaving the two officers alone in the room to talk. Tav'kar stopped by the end of Kav'rak's bed, his eyes narrowed firmly. He must have sensed the rising panic on Kav'rak's face for he quirked one brow, a curious gesture.

"Did I come at a bad time, Captain?" He asked him.

"A bad time?" Kav'rak's voice rose an octave. The computer next to the bed that was keeping track of his vitals started to beep a little faster. "How long have I been here?"

"Six hours," Tav'kar said. As if to emphasise the point, he glanced at the timer on the computer display. "The doctor's fixed you up, from what I've been told."

"They took my leg."

"It was beyond saving, according to what they told me."

"And what else have you been told?" Kav'rak knew he should have been addressing the Brigade Leader by 'sir', or at the very least, by his rank, but his desire to adhere to proper military decorum had evaporated in the last minute or so. "I just woke up here and you're already pestering me. The Regent must be desperate."

"We found the crystal you retrieved from the facility," Tav'kar said. "So that's at least the main objective achieved."

"You sent me into a warzone with barely any support."

"And yet you achieved your objectives," Tav'kar countered, and he offered Kav'rak a smile. As was often noticeable with the older male, some of his teeth were missing. A symptom of getting old, at least for a makalvari.

"With the help of the humans. They were surprisingly good, and it was in fact a human who saved my life." Kav'rak was not normally one to praise any human being, but after what he had gone through on Dalabrai it seemed fair that he adjust his perspective of them. Even if it was just by a little.

"And now we can only hope the Calsharans divert some of their resources to dealing with the humans of Earth," Tav'kar said. "That is one objective that remains to be seen as to whether it's completed or not."

"I don't think the Calsharans will bother with the humans," Kav'rak said. He could not be sure of that, of course, but he hoped his opinion still counted for something when it came to the Brigade Leader. "They'll get rid of us first, then reconsolidate their forces and turn their attentions elsewhere."

"Perhaps." Tav'kar did not sound terribly concerned with this gloomy prediction. The war had not been going well for their people, that much was obvious. However, they had held out longer than anticipated, so all was not lost. Eventually, however, frontier worlds like Dalabrai would fall. And then the Calsharans would intrude into the heart of the Republic, bringing the war home for many of those citizens who continued going about their lives as if nothing were amiss.

"You may be promoted for your success, Captain," Tav'kar said. "The Regent seems to think you did well."

"I'm surprised."

"By the promotion?"

"That, and the fact that the Regent is capable of thinking. He usually has trouble remembering what he had for breakfast in the morning."

Tav'kar's expression turned into a scowl upon hearing this remark. Kav'rak remained straight-faced, only just able to conceal his rising anger and dismay at seeing his leg gone. They had cut it off, closed up the stump and presumably tossed the severed and mangled limb away as if it was nothing but refuse. That, or it was on ice in a laboratory somewhere, presumably to be put to use for scientific purposes. There was probably not much to salvage from a mangled leg, but the possibility always remained. The thought that part of him could very well have been thrown in a bin somewhere sickened him to the core.

"You should be careful of what you say and to whom you say it to," Tav'kar said, his voice carefully level. "Some people may take it the wrong way."

"Yes, well, I hope they do. Because I don't care." Kav'rak sat back in the bed, eyes blazing as he regarded the Brigade Leader and his stern gaze. "Our entire republic is in freefall, and you're content to puppet around the Regent because he's barely got a mind of his own. Don't think I don't see this, Brigade Leader. And I doubt I'm the only one."

"You're out of line…"

"And, what?" Kav'rak snorted in derision. It was strangely liberating, being like this. "What are you going to do? Arrest me? I've got just as many powerful friends as you do, so good luck with that. Besides, if the Regent wants to promote me, he can do just that. You'd have little say in it." His mind wandered to his wife and children, and he wondered then if they would come and visit him. Somehow, he doubted it. She had run off on him, after all, and taken the children with her. He would pay her a visit once he was out of here and try to make amends, even if he was fairly certain that his wife would not want to hear any of his excuses. Lina'rei had been a loyal and dutiful woman, raising their children as a full-time mother, but her patience only went so far where her husband was concerned.

"I can tell the Regent—"

"Anything you want," Kav'rak interrupted. "Chances are he'll have forgotten it all after a few hours." He looked the Brigade Leader in the eyes, and the older male returned the gaze in turn. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, as if sizing each other up for a fight. Finally, the Brigade Leader appeared to relax his shoulders, emitting an irritated huff as he did so. He eyed Kav'rak's stump of a leg, some small smirk crossing his ageing features.

"I hear the prosthetics are getting quite good these days," he remarked, the vitriol apparent in his voice. "Even so, with an injury like that, we may be forced to relegate you to more administrative duties."

Administrative duties? Kav'rak scowled. He knew what that meant. They would be appointing him to some glorified administration position somewhere, a role from which he would have little real power or influence. Somewhere to keep an eye on him, but somewhere away from anything that would allow him influence over the royal court. The pay would be good, but the work would be monotonous. Nothing like the special weapons research he had helped supervise, nor nothing to the level of excitement such as his diplomatic talks with the Langarans months before.

"I take it someone else will be overseeing the special project?" Kav'rak asked.

"Well, we do need some fresh talent. And with the information you retrieved from Dalabrai, we should be able to move along swiftly onto the next phase. We've already determined from our preliminary analysis of the data that the Calsharans had constructed a basic prototype. They were also experimenting with the exotic energies from it on live prisoners." Tav'Kar added this last part with some obvious distaste. "It shows how low they regard our kind."

"Then good riddance to that weapons facility," Kav'rak said. "But don't think I am simply going to sit back and allow you to remove me from my position on the project. I was the one who secured us the naquadria we needed from the Langarans. Without that, we would never have made any real progress."

"And yet it was the naquadria that caused the stability problems in our initial designs," Tav'kar replied. "The Calsharans did not use naquadria in their own."

"Because they have much more sophisticated power sources than we do," Kav'rak said. "The humans also have a few."

"I have a team of people on the hunt for a 'zero-point module'," Tav'kar explained. "That should solve our power problems." He gave Kav'rak a stern frown, and once again the pair stared at each other for a prolonged moment. Kav'rak was fuming internally, and had he not felt so lethargic he might have lunged for the Brigade Leader. It would have been a futile gesture really, but if he could have landed even one blow against his commanding officer it would have been worth it. Worth the reprimand that would follow, not that it would be too serious. His friends higher-up the chain of command would help him get out of any serious trouble.

"But you, Captain, need not concern yourself with the project or anything of the kind," the Brigade Leader added, a smarminess creeping into his tone as he spoke. It was the kind of tone that Kav'rak despised, and he made his disdain for it clear in the scowl he gave his commander. "You simply relax here, take it easy, regain your strength. Every day in here will be good for you, I suspect."

What he meant by that, and Kav'rak knew, was that every day in here would be good for him, Brigade Leader Tav'kar. Every day Kav'rak spent in here was one day Tav'kar did not have to worry about him getting in the way or being a nuisance. Tav'kar had his own schemes in play, this much was obvious, and they no doubt had something to do with currying favour with the Regent.

"You must be upset," Kav'rak said suddenly, causing Tav'kar to quirk one brow. "I mean, I came back alive. You sent me to Dalabrai knowing I had not set foot into a combat zone for years. You didn't think I'd be coming out of there, did you?"

"If I wanted you dead, Captain, there are far easier ways I could go about it," Tav'kar countered. He sounded sincere enough, but one could never be too sure. When it came to the power games so prevalent within the royal court, lying was practically second nature for many of those involved. Of course, the most masterful liars mixed some truth in with those lies. Deceit and misdirection, that was what it came down to. In a time of war, when the continuance of their Republic was at stake, so many of those who were meant to be running their empire were busy scheming amongst themselves. A sorry state of affairs, but an expected one.

"I'll be seeing you," Tav'kar said, giving the Captain a curt nod before he turned on his heels and left the room. Kav'rak watched him leave, before he finally allowed himself to relax on the bed. No matter what happened, he would show the Brigade Leader that he was not so easily disposed of.