49: Intruders

The official start of the commissioning ceremony had been a parade, although the term was perhaps overselling it. A few dozen Marines in full dress uniform, carrying the shoulder patch emblems for Homeworld Command, marched on down the main hall within Anchorpoint Station whilst a small orchestra played a triumphant tune. Cameron Mitchell stood upon the stage with several of the other 'important' guests, among them Banachek and Woolsey, as well as the commanders of the dozen or so starships docked with the station. To one side was a set of shielded, reinforced windows that allowed one to look down upon the blue vista of Earth from high orbit, whereon some familiar landmasses were currently visible, if partly hidden underneath swirling white clouds. The windows were a structural weakness, as far as Mitchell was concerned. They had put them in place anyway, regardless of any objections he had made. As a compromise, a set of very sturdy bulkheads could be lowered over them at the flick of switch, which was better than nothing.

The hall was filled with representatives and the like from all over the world. There were a few camera crews in the mix, the presences of which were another thing Cameron took issue with. Of course, Banachek wanted the press in on this, if only to get his face on camera and broadcast across the world. A world that was already in varying states of uproar over the secrets that had been kept from them. The existence of aliens had been revealed to them in perhaps the worst way possible, for the alien Field Marshall and his cohorts had carried out terrorist attacks in a handful of American cities, blowing the lid on the whole thing. And then there were the starships, each carrying weapons capable of incinerating cities. Understandably, many people were upset with those having been kept secret. Finally, there was the stargate itself, which remained secret despite the increasing pressure to reveal its existence to the world. Whereas Banachek was forced to play the public relations game, Janssen had no such issue. It was no wonder the pair did not get along so well.

"Where is General Janssen?" As if reading his mind, Banachek leaned his head over a little as to whisper to Cameron. "He's supposed to be up here."

"I don't know, Director." Cameron did not look at the man, he simply kept his eyes set ahead upon the large crowd. There had to be about three hundred people packed into this hall, most of them civilian dignitaries. The Marine procession had ended, with the soldiers taking up positions at either side of the hall. The orchestra ceased its triumphant march, and a quiet descended upon the hall, with some hushed voices sounding from within the gathered representatives.

The reasons why Janssen had decided not to show up were obvious, and as such Banachek did not press the line of questioning. Soon enough, Janssen would get an awkward phone call about it. Until then, Banachek would have to go on with the whole affair without him. Somehow, Cameron suspected this was what Director Banachek preferred.

Once the music had died down, Banachek stepped forward to the podium. Behind him, hanging over the stage, were the flags of various nations, and at the centre of them were flags emblazoned with the emblem of Homeworld Command. The on-board air-conditioning caused these flags to flutter slightly.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Director Thomas Banachek of Homeworld Command." His voice was carried loud and clear across the PA system throughout the station, being further broadcast to the various ships docked with it. It was also being broadcast on a number of live feeds provided by the camera crews on board, ensuring that Banachek was the first 'official' face for the new station seen by the public. Cameron remained a few paces back, with Woolsey and the others standing with him. He knew he would have to make a speech soon enough, and what little he had prepared he was not pleased with. He could very well make a fool of himself before an audience of millions, but he figured he would do well to speak from the heart, and even he knew how much of a cliché that was. Nonetheless, it had served him well before. Then again, it was something that had also gotten him into trouble in the past. He supposed he would see just how it went, once he was before that podium.

It did not take as long as he thought it would. Banachek prattled on with the expected self-congratulatory pap, speaking of a 'united front' and a 'new era' for humanity. It was the kind of speech Cameron had expected from him, and it went on for longer than it probably needed to. So much so that Cameron's mind drifted, so when he was finally called to the podium he found himself taken a little off-guard. Time flew when you were not paying attention, it seemed.

"Brigadier General Cameron Mitchell, the commander of this station," Banachek announced, and he stepped aside to welcome Cameron to the podium. As the General approached, Banachek glared at him a moment, telling him with little more than a look that he better behave himself. Cameron ignored the gaze and walked up to the podium, taking some appreciation from the applause he was granted. There were a few dour faces in the crowd, presumably those who disagreed with him being the commander here. More politics, Cameron mused, and thereby the sort of thing he cared little for.

He put a hand to either side of the podium, taking in the assembled representatives, recognizing a few faces among them. The odd Prime Minister or slightly-less-important minister, for one. Some high-ranking military officials. Not the kinds of people Cameron would actually choose to hang out with, of course.

"Good morning, everyone." His voice echoed throughout the hall. Through the windows, clouds swirled over the cool blue of the Earth's surface. One arm of the station was partially visible to the left of the windows, and thereupon that arm were docked two of the cruisers that formed Earth's burgeoning fleet of starships: the French De Gaulle and the Air Force's own Apollo.

"Or good evening, it's hard to tell up here." Cameron smiled then, although his attempt at humour had seemingly fallen flat. He cleared his throat, practically able to feel Banachek's eyes boring into him from behind.

"It's, ah, good that you're all here. I had my doubts about this place, in all honesty, but Director Banachek was able to reassure them. And looking around, I have to admit, this station does have a certain charm to it." Cameron sought a particular train of thought for his speech, but it did not come to him. Not right away.

"Now, I know some of you probably don't agree with what's going on," he said, and with that, he knew he was treading some dangerous ground, at least where Banachek was concerned. "The way all of this was probably revealed to you out of nowhere, all these secrets about aliens and spaceships and whatever else. The thing I want to say is, first and foremost, is to those who doubt what we've been doing all these years. Some truly great work has been done and a lot of people have lost their lives doing it. This station, Anchorpoint, is a testament to that hard work and dedication. Without those sacrifices, we would not be here today. In fact, a lot of us would probably be dead. The world was saved that many times, all without you folks being aware of it. And it's only now we can properly honour those we lost, when the veil of secrecy has been lifted." He paused, noticing that he had the attention of most of those among the crowd. He was on a good streak now, and it seemed inconsiderate to cut it short.

"Now, you're all here to mark the start of this new era of cooperation. That's all good. But it does get me thinking, and maybe some of you have had similar thoughts to what I've had. It gets me thinking about what we've achieved, about what we've done to achieve it over the years. And most importantly, it makes me think, do we deserve to be here right now? Do we deserve to have these wonders at our disposal? Because there is alien technology out there that's almost magical, it's so advanced. Some of it we're still struggling to unlock. Anchorpoint is child's play compared to some of the wonders I've seen. And at the end of the day, I sometimes wonder if we're truly worthy to have any of it."

He saw some bemused glances in the audience upon giving this remark. Cameron smirked, aware that Banachek was glaring at him with renewed intensity. He spoke from the heart, as he had intended, and now he figured he ought to follow through on the subject. He had started, and Cameron was not one to leave things unfinished.

"I don't mean to say it's bad that we have it," he said, and he could see right away that everyone in the hall was paying him very close attention now. If they had had any doubts about what the station's commander had to say before, those doubts had all but disappeared now.

"What I'm getting at, and it's something that I've thought about a fair bit recently, is that we have built this station, among other things, on technology that is not our own. We travelled the galaxy and took anything we deemed useful, even if it meant messing with some alien culture. We invited the Goa'uld to our doorstep, and the Ori and the Wraith; we have built wonders, but many of them have been based on items that we ourselves did not create. We simply built upon what was left to us or what we could steal. You might argue that some of this technology was left to us, but not all of it. And after every crisis that this program has faced and resolved, I have to wonder: are we truly worthy of inheriting these wonders? Look at you all gathered here today, representatives from all over the world. We continue to fight amongst ourselves, even more so now that we all know the truth behind the technologies we have at our disposal. Each of you fights for a bigger slice of the pie, and I'd bet good money that not all of you are here because you truly want to be. You're here to put on a friendly face and hope that maybe you can get a bigger piece of the action. Once all is said and done here today, I'm sure some of you will return home and go straight to complaining about the things you do not have, whether that be ships or power sources or alien weapons. The diplomatic fallout has been bad enough already, as has the unrest in the public. Rioting in the streets, upheaval in the less developed parts of the world. Are we truly ready to inherit what we have found and stolen?"

There followed an awkward silence. Cameron felt that maybe he was being a little too harsh on the whole program, as the technological wonders recovered over the years had changed the world and helped to save it on more than one occasion. Yet, standing up here on the stage, faced with a couple hundred representatives from various nations…All it did was remind him of how fractured Earth truly was, and that this entire ceremony had a sense of dishonesty to it that he could not look past. To him, it was a sham, and although he would not state outright, he felt that he was making his true feelings clear to those assembled.

"I hope this is the start of new era of cooperation," Cameron added. "I hope we can all put our differences aside, because there are things out there that make what we have now look like toys. And chances are they won't stay out there, not forever. The more we make of ourselves, the more attention we draw from outside. One day the outside galaxy is going to come knocking on our door, and it's not going to be so gentle like it has been the last couple of times. That business last year, with the alien terrorists, was only the beginning. So, when you go home after this whole thing's over, think about what truly matters. Does it matter that one nation has a starship and yours does not? Or does it matter that at least someone has the means to defend not only their own nation, but the planet as a whole?"

Cameron internally winced when he finished, if only because he felt that he was perhaps getting a little too preachy. Even so, his point was made. Banachek suddenly appeared beside him, ushering him away from the podium. He did not appear pleased, but Cameron did not much care for whatever Banachek thought about him. He sat down in his chair at the rear of the stage, and as he did so, Woolsey leaned over and grinned his way.

"Very good speech, General," Woolsey said, and from his tone of voice he did mean what he said. "A little on the nose, maybe, but very good."

"You think so?" Cameron leaned back in his chair, zoning out whatever Banachek had started prattling on about at the podium. "That came off the top of my head."

"Even better," Woolsey added.


Holt had to wonder how so much could go wrong so quickly. It was one thing to be abducted and tied up by an archaeologist and a physicist (aided by their alien warrior friend), but it was another to be tied up by them twice. And yet, that was exactly what had happened. Holt had been freed a little while after the trio of renegades had made their getaway, and he now found himself playing catch-up to the mess those three were making throughout Atlantis.

He marched down a corridor in the central tower, flanked by several armed and uniformed security personnel. A general alert had sounded throughout the city, spurring every available security trooper to their appropriate stations. A breach had occurred in the lower jumper bay, and when Holt found his way there he was startled by the sheer mess that had been made of the place. A jumper had crashed into the doors before exploding, with the doors themselves no longer present. Their place had been taken by a large, jagged hole in the wall. Debris littered the floor around it, as did the bodies of several security troopers. Some blood splatters were among the mess, and Holt had to step over the mangled body of one trooper in order to enter the bay proper.

Looking about the damage, he felt his heat pounding and his anger surging. How could this have happened? They had covered all their bases, surely? The city had been under their control, and yet now that control was slipping away so very quickly. Holt had the security officers with him fan out to search the bay, even though he knew it was unlikely to garner them any real results. The intruders had made their mess and moved on. That was another thing: while Daniel, McKay and Teal'c run roughshod about the city, another group of intruders had crashed the party in an almost literal sense. They were definitely in the central tower, although searching the place would be no easy task given the sheer size of it all. At its tallest point, the central tower was about eight-hundred and fifty metres in height. That dwarfed every skyscraper on Earth, with the interior of the tower being a veritable labyrinth of corridors, adjoining rooms and antechambers. The biosensors in the control tower had become patchy since McKay's meddling with the city's systems, no doubt an intentional move on his part.

"Jesus Christ, what a goddamn mess," Holt muttered, looking about the ruined jumper bay. He saw what looked to be a Calsharan pulse cannon lying amongst the rubble. No doubt some idiot had decided to use that thing in here, which would explain the damage. Said idiot was properly one of the bloody red smears visible amongst the rubble. Holt sighted a few of the dirtied, soot-covered survivors lingering amongst the mess. He stepped towards them, fuming.

"Which one of your morons decided to use the pulse cannon in here?" Holt demanded, his voice raising in volume as he continued. "For Christ's sakes, that thing's supposed to be locked up! You're meant to be professionals, not cowboys!"

Holt was about to rant on further, but he heard the familiar beep of an incoming call in his communications earpiece. Putting a finger to it, he was not surprised to hear the Old Man's voice sound through the static.

"Mister Holt, what is the situation in the jumper bay?" The Old Man sounded only mildly concerned. Holt could practically see the cigarette in his fingers, wisping smoke whilst he puffed on it between sentences.

"It's a mess, sir." Holt put a booted foot against one dead trooper beneath him, nudging the burned body gingerly. That was another thing he had noticed in here: the smell of burning flesh. It had a unique scent to it, one that could not be mistaken.

"If so, I suggest you locate and isolate the invading squad," the Old Man stated. "However, Mister Holt, you may wish to redirect some of your men to the control chair room. It would appear that both Daniel Jackson and Teal'c have barricaded themselves inside."

Holt let out a quiet sigh. No wonder the invading puddle jumper had reached the city; both Daniel and Teal'c had made sure to shut down the man in the control chair. That meant no drones being launched and thereby no effective defences for the city. The fact that the invading squad had used a puddle jumper was no doubt intentional, as such a ship would have had no difficulty passing through the city's shield.

"I'll see to those two myself," Holt declared. If those two idiots had barricaded themselves inside one room, then flushing them out should not have been too difficult. Holt motioned for a few of the security officers with him to follow, and he spun on his heels before striding out of the jumper bay. Somewhere from within the tower, likely only a few floors above, he heard the unmistakable thumping rattle of automatic weapons fire.

"Sir, might I suggest you evacuate?" Holt asked, speaking into his communicator. There followed a long pause on the other end. Something else sounded through the line then, a familiar and unnerving chittering noise at the level of a whisper. And yet, even through the digital signal, that noise seemed to sound within Holt's mind as much as it did within his ear.

"I have some matters to attend to before I consider evacuating, Mister Holt." The Old Man sounded almost offended that Holt would even suggest that he run away. "You take care of these intruders, and you do it quickly. At least then none of us will need to leave."

"It was simply a suggestion, sir. I can understand if you do not wish to be seen as weak, especially in front of your associates."

"You don't understand much of anything, Mister Holt. Now just stop wasting time and do your job." The Old Man, his voice harsh, cut off abruptly as soon as he finished speaking. The line closed, Holt took a moment to think of what the Old Man had just said and the way in which he had said it. Holt did not pretend to know everything about what was going on and how his employers operated; however, it was a rarity in which the Old Man spoke to him in such a way. If the Old Man's patience was wearing so thin as to draw such a reaction from him, then Holt knew he had to get this matter in hand as quickly as possible. His own life was on the line now, this much was apparent. If he failed here, then even if he happened to survive this mess, chances are someone further down the line would put a bullet in his brain. The Old Man did not tolerate failure, certainly not of this magnitude.


John led the team through the familiar corridors of the central tower. They were working their way up, one floor at a time. The first thing they had tried, once leaving the jumper bay, was to check the internal teleporter/elevator pads. As expected, they had been locked out to those without a particular passcode, a code no one in the team had. And so, that meant they had to take the stairs. There were not too many floors between the jumper bay and the control room. To make up for this, the people currently presiding over Atlantis had packed those floors with heavily armed black-clad troopers, the kind of faceless black ops sorts John would expect to be at the disposal of a shady conspiratorial cabal.

The team met resistance in one of the wider hallways not far from the jumper bay. Several of the black ops troopers were scattered throughout, taking up cover behind columns and in doorways. John and the others spread out accordingly as soon as the shooting started, bullets pounding into the copper-coloured walls and sparking off of the sturdier fittings. John sent one of the troopers falling, with Stanton and Guiterrez striking from the left, putting another of the security officers down. They could not have been too far from the control room, yet with a small army between them and there, it may as well have been miles away.

Elsie was off to his left, leaning around a bronze-coloured column and letting off a volley from her rifle. There had to be a half dozen of the security troopers ahead, and they were quick to return her fire by sending several rounds into the face of the column. John signalled to Aithris, who stood off to his right with Natalia, the pair taking shelter in a doorway. The Nomad nodded in understanding, and from his waist he retrieved a concussion grenade, pulling the pin before he tossed it around the doorway and sent it sailing towards the scattered security troopers.

The device went off with a sharp bang. Aithris and Natalia surged forwards, sweeping around the right-hand side. John and Elsie and Jonas all opened fire, covering the pair's advance, cutting down two of the security troopers. Aithris blasted another one with a thundering volley from his SCAR-H, sending the man falling into a bloodied heap.

Suddenly, a door by Aithris' right slid open. Another black ops goon was there, and he went to raise his gun, only for the Nomad to spin to face him immediately. Aithris swatted aside the barrel of the trooper's submachine gun, causing the shots he fired to fly wide. And then he was lunging forwards, elbowing the trooper in the face, shattering his visor and sending the gun flying from his grasp. Aithris levelled the SCAR-H and opened fire, sending about five of the high-calibre rounds tearing through the trooper at close range. Blood spattered and the trooper went falling backwards, landing against a desk that promptly fell over as soon as he hit it. Papers and a computer terminal went falling down around him.

John motioned for the others to push ahead. They had to be aggressive here, otherwise they could very easily get hemmed in and cornered. The team swept away the few guards in this section before moving on to the next, specifically a wide set of stairs that went up another level. Another guard was up here, faceless under a tinted visor and respirator; John shot him down before he could get his gun up, causing the guard's body to come tumbling down the stairs.

The guard came to rest a few paces from John. The small radio device attached to his vest crackled, and John paused to listen. Voices were filtering through it, and with careful fingers John pulled it off and placed it near his ear. It was a standard-issue military radio. The dead guard had left the channel tuned and open, and he had no doubt been about to change it to something scrambled before John had shot him down.

The rest of the team came around then, with a few of them keeping a close eye on the surrounding corridors. The voice coming out of the radio was presumably the man in charge, given the way in which he was barking orders to whoever else was on the line:

"Second squad, move in from corridor A-seventeen. I want these intruders found and locked down. They're probably on their way up to the control centre." A pause then, and John could picture the officer speaking to someone with him, wherever they were. "I need Charlie team to move in from the east wing. We're on our way to the control chair room. Two of the escapees are inside."

Two of the escapees…John looked up, seeing the realisation appear on Jonas' face, as it did for Aithris and Natalia. It could have been referring to any escaped captive, but chances are the man on the radio spoke of Daniel and one of the others, either McKay or Teal'c. They had escaped the custody of the conspirators here and had sabotaged the city's cloak. It seemed reasonable that they had holed themselves up in the room responsible for controlling the city's armaments. That may explain why the drones that had been pursuing the puddle jumper earlier had suddenly deactivated.

"All right, sounds like we have a line on where to go." John considered their options briefly, aware that every second now was crucial. He turned to Aithris then, seeing the Nomad as more of a de facto second-in-command than Captain Stanton. "Aithris, take Natalia and Stanton and Guiterrez and head up to the control centre. Everyone else, you're coming with me to the control chair room." He looked to Jonas, who nodded his head in acknowledgment. The two other volunteers, a Marine Lieutenant by the name of Hudson; and a Gunnery Sergeant, a stern thirty-eight-year-old woman by the name of Rachel Cortman. Whereas Hudson was fairly new to the stargate program, the Gunnery Sergeant had the demeanour of one who had been in the game a long time. Both were people whom John was somewhat familiar with, at least in passing, and both had volunteered for the mission as soon as John had put the call out.

Elsie looked a little strained, but was otherwise on her feet and rearing to go. John gave her a careful look, trying to gauge as to what kind of pain she might have been in. She must have noticed him watching her, for she gave him a wry smile, one that John felt looked somewhat uneasy.

"Sound like a plan?" He saw a few nodding heads. "All right. We'll secure the control chair room, you guys secure the operations centre. With those two areas secured, we'll have full control over the city." He had intended to go to the control centre himself, but if Daniel or any of the others were in the control chair room, then that is where he would go. No one got left behind, and with friends in trouble there were no alternatives in his mind but to go straight for them.

The teams split up, with John taking his half down the hallway whilst the others continued on upstairs. The command chair room was off to a somewhat smaller tower east of the central one, and as such it was accessible through a skywalk that joined the two buildings at the upper levels. Chances are the way there would be guarded, not that John was particularly worried about running into trouble. He had come in here looking for some, anyway.

The 'skywalk' was well on the other side of the tower. The team moved quickly, keeping their guns at the ready, pushing on ahead and checking their corners, watching each other's backs, pausing at intersections before ensuring that the ways ahead were clear. It was a coordinated advance, a necessity given the narrow confines of the corridors and the numerically superior enemy. Without the teleporters at their disposal, the going was a little tougher, and seconds became minutes, with every one of those seconds that passed only increasing the chances that those friends of theirs holed up in the control chair room would not survive.

The skywalk was a wide, enclosed bridge that crossed between the two towers. Sturdy windows lined both sides, with the odd potted plant spaced along its length. Here, there was a group of four guards at the far end. They had been headed into the next building, but the arrival of the intruding team caused them to spin about, warned by one of their own who had been watching the rear approach.

John darted behind a column off to the left as weapons fire thundered throughout the skywalk, the noise amplified by the walls around them, reverberating off of the surrounding surfaces. He ducked as a cluster of rounds tore into the front of the metal column, with another one striking a window nearby and leaving a visible crack on the otherwise reinforced glass. Jonas and the others took cover about the skywalk where they could, with the Gunnery Sergeant ducking behind an empty planter box about a metre in width that was in the centre of the corridor. Bullets pinged off of the top edge as she kept her head down. Lieutenant Hudson let fly with a volley from his M4 Carbine, striking down one of the guards at the far end.

John leaned around the column, hosing the enemy position with weapons fire. His gun clicked on empty after the sustained fire, and he quickly ducked back into cover before he reloaded the weapon with a finessed, well-practiced movement. Elsie was nearby, pouring on the fire from her own submachine gun, the steady-firing and hard-hitting UMP-45. Another of the guards fell, with the other two backing off quickly through the doors at the far end of the skywalk. John signalled for the others to advance, with caution. There was no telling what their enemies might have lying in wait for them, and there was always the chance that someone would come barging in from behind, drawn by the noise and any radio reports given by those they had just engaged.

John was first to the doors. They slid open as he approached, the corridor behind heading off to the left and right. He swept his aim from right-to-left, swinging around and catching sight of one of the guards further down the hall. John fired at him, hitting the trooper in the back as he was about to round a corner. He fell down out of sight, and John motioned for Elsie and the Gunnery Sergeant to move on ahead and check it out. Jonas and Hudson watched the other approach. No one else appeared, at least for now. The whole situation was touch-and-go, and John could hear voices coming out of the enemy radio he carried on him. Warnings and orders being relayed from one squad to another, including one that was apparently closing in on the skybridge from the way his team had come.

They had to push ahead before the enemy could lock them down into one place. John moved on after Elsie and the Sergeant, with the rest of the team falling in behind them. The control chair room was not far now, he could only hope that Daniel and McKay and Teal'c, whichever two were in there, were still alive.