The New Recruit-Chapter 5-Like an Indiana Jones Movie


Unknown to the other three teams, each group of two headed towards the source of whatever energy signal was showing up on their scanners.

"Are you sure that it's behind this wall?"

"Yes, Colonel; I'm sure," McKay snapped at the American as they searched for something that might open the wall.

"What should we be looking for?"

"Anything that shows signs of much use," Zelenka told Teyla as they, too, searched the dead-end wall they had come upon.

"Kind of reminds you of an Indiana Jones movie, right Doc?" Maj. Lorne asked Kavanaugh as the two men tried to find a way through the stone.

"Except that this is real life, Major, not a movie," the scientist, who had been getting annoyed by the little bits of conversation the major had tried to start, answered.

"What are you talking about?" Ronon looked through the darkness at the woman standing beside him.

"Relic Hunter was this show my brothers and I used to watch when we were kids. It was about this female scientist who traveled all over the world with her teaching assistant and found lost relics of the ancient world. They were always getting into sticky situations. Either that or this place reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie," she said as she searched for some sort of panel or button that would open the wall and reveal whatever was hidden behind it.

"The man who discovered your planet's Holy Grail?" He asked her, still slightly confused by Earth pop culture.

"Yeah, that guy. Have you found anything yet?"

"No. You?"

"No-wait, yes. I think I did."

"You're sure, Doctor?" Teyla asked the Czech.

"Of course I'm sure, major!" Kavanaugh snapped at Lorne.

"Well, are you going to press it or not?" Sheppard asked the Canadian standing next to him.

All four scientists, although whether it was at the same moment or not (no one is still quite sure who the first to press the panel was), pushed on the loose bricks they had discovered and all eight stood back as the walls began to back away.

"Well, well, well, fancy meeting you folks here," Sheppard commented as he and McKay walked into the room.

"I'm guessing you all fell through the hole in the floor, flew down a slide, and ended up in some sort of underground chamber like in an Indiana Jones Movie?" Lorne asked his CO as they watched the four scientists congregate on a single spot in the center of the room.

"Yeah, pretty much." The colonel answered.

"I am still unsure as to what you are referring to," Teyla told the men as she joined them and Ronon off to the side of the room as their teammates argued and pored over what their readings said.

"We'll show you later," Sheppard promised as they watched the arguing scientists.

"I'm telling you, it has to be this stone that triggers it," McKay was saying to, or rather, yelling at, Kavanaugh.

"Will you guys please just listen?" Ballard asked, annoyed at the childishness of her colleagues.

"It looks like a puzzle," Zelenka was saying over the commotion.

"That's what it looks like to me, too," she told the Czech.

"So, if we just move this stone here-"

"No, wait. It's written in Ancient which means that something is missing because 'Come to we call you' just makes no sense."

"Ah, yes, I see. Rodney, Kavanaugh, is you listening?" he asked the still bickering scientists.

"I don't think they are; excuse me," Ballard said as she walked over to her "bosses" and, leaning over so that she could read what the stones they were yelling at each other about said, pushed them aside so that she could lift the bricks and move them to the stone "table" that Zelenka had found in the floor.

"Hey! What the hell-" McKay and Kavanaugh started before they saw what their colleagues were doing.

"Is that what I think it is?" McKay asked as he quickly slipped back into his scientist persona.

"Probably; is this grammatically correct?" Ballard asked him as she pointed out the order she and Zelenka had placed the stones.

"Uh-'Come to/the temple and/lose your way/fly past the stairs of/night and day/place us right and you will see/come to us/we call you/progeny.' I think so, although it doesn't make that much sense."

"It's a poem, McKay. It's talking about that little adventure we had," Sheppard told the Canadian.

"And the progeny must refer to someone with ATA gene," Zelenka added.

"Which would mean that either you or Ballard will have to activate it, Colonel," Kavanaugh added as he re-read the bricks.

Sheppard approached the Scrabble-like stone in the floor and bent down so that he would have a better look at it. "How, Kavanaugh? There's nothing here for me to touch."

"Will you just shut-up? There's something missing here. It's circular, like some sort of key," McKay said as he studied the brown stone.

"Like that red stone in the wall?" Teyla asked as she approached the opposite wall and inspected the stone.

Ronon joined her and, taking out a knife, carefully shifter the gem out of the rock. They rejoined the group and he handed the dusty red stone to McKay who then proceeded to try to push it into the circle.

"That's not going to work," Ballard and Teyla said at the same time; Teyla took the knife from Ronon while Ballard took the stone and inspected it.

"There is a notch or hole of some kind," Teyla observed as she quickly cleared the brown circle of several millennia worth or dirt and dust.

"Well, there's a deformity of some kind on the bottom of this stone, so that must be what goes in the notch," Ballard confirmed as she deftly placed the red circle, deformity in the notch, into the brown circle and moved so that Sheppard could try to activate the device.

"Why isn't it working?" Lorne asked the group of scientists.

"I don't know, Major! Airman, could you please try to activate the device?" McKay turned to the blonde woman.

"Sure." She switched places with Sheppard and pressed the red jewel. Still nothing happened.

Rodney also attempted to activate whatever the device was, was to no avail. With no other brilliant solutions, he asked the five remaining members of the group to try. It still didn't work.

"So, now what?" Sheppard asked.

Zelenka, who had remained silent since observing the ingenuity of Teyla and Ballard, spoke up again. "Colonel, Airman, try together. Look at the stone; it is at least 7 or 8 centimeters, yes?" He looked at everyone gathered around. "Well, why not try to get two people to activate it. You both have close to the same natural ability to activate Ancient technology."

"Radek, that just might work," McKay told the Czech. Turning to the colonel and airman, he said, "Give it a try."

Wordlessly, they leaned over the stones again and, at the same time, pushed the jewel down. A moment later, the large stone that contained the Ancient bricks moved up. Everyone moved backwards as a glowing light emerged from the below the stone.

"What the hell-"

When the ground finally stopped moving, they gathered around the newly-emerged podium.

"It's a Zed-PM! We've found a Zed-PM!" McKay yelled for joy.

"Yeah, there's just one problem," Lorne said as he watched Zelenka and Ballard remove the glowing ZPM.

"Which would be what?" Kavanaugh asked as he observed the scene with only mild irritation.

"We still don't know how to get out of here. Remember the long slide-ride down?"

Everyone quieted down and stared in realization at the major.

"He's right. We do not know how to get out of here," Teyla said.

"We could probably use that staircase that's behind Kavanaugh, though," Ronon said as he nodded towards the doorway behind the long-haired scientist.

Seven heads whipped around to stare at the opening that had appeared behind the bespectacled man.

"That makes sense," Lorne said as he, Sheppard, and Ronon approached the dark doorway.

"If you're wondering whether or not there's anything that goes bump in the night, you shouldn't worry. There's nothing up there," a quiet female voice told the three men.

Quickly turning around, they stared at Airman Ballard who they obviously hadn't heard sneak up on them.

"Just go up, this thing is heavy," she said as she hefted the ZPM.

Cautiously, they turned back to the doorway and, turning on the flashlights on their P90s, started the trek up the stairs; all three wondering how she could know that nothing would attack them as they trudged up the stairs.

Ten minutes later, the eight expedition members emerged into the dying sunlight of M3X-179. They were soon greeted by four of the six Marines they had left outside the temple.

"Jamison and Chomsky went back to the gate," Corporal Jenkins informed his CO.

"How long were we gone?" Lorne asked the men.

"About 96 minutes, sir," Hernandez answered as he showed his watch to the major.

"I would have thought we'd been gone longer," Sheppard nodded to the Marines.

"You've obviously never gone spelunking, Sir," Ballard said as she approached the men who once again jumped upon hearing her voice.

"Please don't don that again, Airman," Sheppard chided as he motioned for them to start walking. "Let's go. Jamison, this is Sheppard, we're on our way back to the Gate," he spoke to the radio.

"Understood, sir," Jamison answered back.

"Yeah, that was definitely like an Indiana Jones movie," Sheppard heard Lorne tell the remaining Marines as they followed their leader.


Okay, that was a loooong chapter. I hope you all liked it.