II
Walter appeared in the doorway with that special little combination of officious and uncertain only he could do. "General? You asked me to remind you that you wanted to speak to Colonel Reynolds before-"
"Ah- yeah, I got it. Thanks, Walter." Jack gratefully abandoned his half-hearted attempt at doing paperwork, and swung himself out of his chair.
Technically, as the General, he could pretty much sit in his office and have everybody come to him. That was largely what General Hammond had done, after all, and Jack certainly wouldn't have dreamed of raising any complaint against him. But he liked to get out and walk among his people whenever it was humanly possible. His knees might thank him for the switch to a job with a higher than previous degree of desk in it, but the rest of him remembered action.
When you had a target, you moved toward it. When you had a safe position, you patrolled it. Sitting still was for when you had the enemy in your sights, or when the enemy had you. If he was in a position where he wasn't allowed to fidget, it kicked off that old impulse to get out there and kill or be killed.
Hmm. Maybe he should raise that defence next time somebody not-so-politely pointed out his habit of going off the rails in boring meetings with the big-wigs.
He tried not to flinch as he strode through the hallways. He couldn't quite get used to the way everybody straightened up at the first hint of his presence. Not that he hadn't gotten that as a Colonel, but that had been a different kind of respect - an earned respect. Not that this one wasn't, but it felt considerably more impersonal; they reacted to the stars on his shoulders first, and Jack O'Neill second if at all.
He kind of missed being plain old Jack O'Neill.
"Sir." Reynolds stood to acknowledge him, having been caught in his office doing paperwork - something that wouldn't have happened with Jack when he was a Colonel.
Reynolds was a decent guy - no Kawalsky, and certainly no Samantha Carter, but still the kind of guy you were always happy to have watching your back. Jack wondered if General Hammond had felt the same way about him, and really did hope so. Although he had a feeling he'd been a lot more annoying than Reynolds had ever dreamed of.
"SG-3 and 8 find anything?" He knew before the sombre head-shake that the answer was no. If there was one thing every member of the SGC knew they were always supposed to disturb the General for, it was news of a missing man.
"Major Schrody wants to take his team back to the planet and do another sweep as soon as he gets out of the infirmary."
Jack nodded slowly. The odds of another search finding anything were beyond minuscule - PX1-522 was devoid of native life, and a featureless dustbowl to boot. If the missing man or his captors had lingered, they'd have been found already. But Doyle had been on Schrody's team.
"I don't like this," he admitted to Reynolds. "This is the fourth time Baal's Jaffa have run into our people on a planet connected to the Ancients."
"They're looking for something," Reynold said.
Jack nodded slowly. "And whatever it is, they think one of our scientists can help them find it." While Baal enjoyed a spot of torture as much as the next psychopathic glowy eyed snaky thing, it wasn't like him to actually bother with extracting information from random SGC grunts. Hell, Baal hadn't even been interested in Jack originally, until the Tok'ra had left him behind to take the punishment for crimes he hadn't even known about. And then, of course, Jack had pissed him off.
So Jack, yeah, Baal would love to get his slimy little mitts on. And by association, the members of SG-1 would probably make pretty good second place prizes. But some poor kid whose closest contact with the General was occasionally sitting near him in the cafeteria? No. The Goa'uld thought they were gods; they didn't have the world's best grasp on the 'all men are created equal' mentality.
Which was probably just as well. If any of the snakes ever cottoned onto the fact that human beings would actually care about the wellbeing of people they'd never met before in their lives, things might just hit the fan in a big way. The only thing stopping the Goa'uld projecting twenty-four hour torture-o-vision through the Stargate until Earth sent its ringleaders out was the fact they assumed everyone else in the universe thought the way they did.
No, if Baal had taken Doyle, he'd taken him for information, not as a bargaining chip. And Goa'uld plus Ancient tech plus interrogated scientists added up to the kind of mixture that you really wouldn't want to put your foot in.
Baal had found something. Or at least had an idea of where it could be found. And since Nirrti had been toasted and Anubis dispatched, he was numero uno on Jack's list of Goa'ulds not to let play with the cool toys. Baal, disturbingly, had a bit more of a head for the technobabble than most of his wriggly little brethren, and the odds were that if he dug up something juicy, he'd be able to figure out how to use it.
Jack came to a decision. "Have Walter put together a list of all the planets where we've found Ancient ruins or technology. Strike the ones that Baal's hit already, and see if we can draw up some sort of patrolling schedule for others. We don't have enough men to defend everywhere, but we can at least mobilise a quick response if it looks like the snakeheads have found what they're looking for."
"Yes, sir," said Reynolds determinedly.
The Pentagon would scream about all the extra gate activity, but, hell, the Pentagon screamed when the base overstepped its monthly jello ration. Jack turned to go, then paused in the doorway. "Oh, and- Major Schrody? Let him have his sweep."
He didn't care what the budget committee had to say about the cost of unnecessary gate activations. Some things you just had to do.
"It's an Ancient medical lab." Doctor Zelenka beamed and bounced excitedly in the doorway; Doctor McKay had already pushed past him into the room and was poking around taking readings.
Ford had already exhausted most of the possibilities of the room, which, to be honest, wasn't all that interesting. It was vaguely hexagonal, with worktops of something like translucent marble running round the walls at about the right height to sit or lie on. There were a couple of handheld... gadgets... that could have been anything from arcane torture devices to cooking utensils, and a big machine in the middle. At least, he assumed it was a machine. It was a pillar about four feet high with a control panel of some sort, and an arrangement of six round blue crystals set into the top. Two of the crystals seemed to glow with an inner light like a ZPM, but the other four were dark, and one of them was obviously cracked.
"I believe this is some form of medical scanner," Zelenka was telling Beckett, indicating the pillar device. "This room is shielded - this is why no energy readings showed up in our original survey of the area."
"You think it's the Ancient equivalent of an MRI room?" Beckett said.
"Or similar." Zelenka nodded. "I am not sure about these other devices, but they appear to be diagnostic in purpose."
"It's rather far away from the main living quarters," McKay mused. "Wouldn't it make sense to have the medical facilities where most of your population is centred?"
"Perhaps there are others, scattered throughout the city," Zelenka said enthusiastically. "The shielding would make them effectively invisible to our sensors."
"Or perhaps this isn't a medical scanner at all," McKay said, always the voice of pessimism. "This could easily be an experimental lab. The shielding could be to protect everybody from the lethally dangerous radiation." He coughed and tugged anxiously at his collar, as if already feeling its hypothetical effect.
Zelenka shook his head emphatically. "Medical scanner," he said, setting his jaw.
Beckett prodded the cracked crystal tentatively. "Well, whatever it is, I think it's broken. Can you hook it up to another kind of power source?"
"These crystals are different from anything we've seen before," McKay said, frowning, as he clipped something to the back of the pillar. "It's unusual for the Ancients to go in for any kind of redundancy - it would be child's play for the race who invented ZPMs to create a power source with the same output as the six combined. It could be a safety measure, a specially designed low-output crystal array to prevent any risk of explosion from the radiation."
"One of them's cracked," Ford felt obliged to point out.
McKay gave him a sharp look. "Yes, well, maybe somebody dropped it," he said scathingly. "Anyway, I'm not about to jury-rig any kind of power system until we know what we're dealing with here."
"There is enough residual power from the two working crystals to power the control panel," Zelenka put in. "If we could call up a display-"
"Yes, yes, operating instructions, I already thought of that," McKay dismissed him impatiently. "Unfortunately, all evidence suggests that it should be working already."
"It does not appear to be working," Zelenka observed dryly.
"Yes, thank you for that. Carson, get over here and see if your gene can activate it."
"Me?" Doctor Beckett looked less than thrilled at that prospect, and hung back. Rodney rolled his eyes.
"Yes, you. As you pointed out repeatedly when you gave it to me, the artificial version of the ATA gene is not always as effective as its naturally occurring counterpart, therefore, you have a better chance of powering this thing up than I do."
"Just because I've got it doesn't mean I'm good at using it!" Beckett objected. McKay waved his hands around.
"Yes, yes, that business with the chair. Well, that was a weapon and tactical planning device - this is a medical scanner. You're a medical doctor. You should have an innate understanding of how it works."
"You said it might be a source of lethal radiation!" the doctor reminded him.
"Yes, well, even if it is, we only want you to switch on the display screen. Now go on."
Beckett reluctantly stumbled forward, with the assistance of a slight shove from McKay, and screwed up his face in concentration. Absolutely nothing happened. "Rodney, it's not-"
"Keep trying," McKay snapped. They did, for several minutes, but there was no sign of any life from the device. Finally Beckett stepped back.
"I told you, I'm not good at this," he said pathetically. "Maybe you should call Major Sheppard. He's much better at this sort of thing than I am."
The scientists exchanged looks, then Zelenka shrugged. "It cannot hurt to let him attempt it before we take anything apart," he agreed.
Ford reached for his radio. "Major Sheppard? This is Lieutenant Ford..."
All quiet on the western front. Or whatever front this was. It was hard to tell on these alien planets. Lieutenant Colonel Casey looped around and made his way back to the camp at a leisurely pace.
Hertzberg acknowledged his arrival with a nod. "Sir." His weapon was lowered, but he remained alert despite the apparently peaceful nature of the planet. Casey approved. The gung-ho Major hadn't been his first pick when he was putting together the new SG-6, but he'd proved a highly competent 2IC for all that, and now Casey couldn't imagine anybody else in the position.
Sorvino, by contrast, was completely oblivious as she worked on the translation - which was why she had the Major standing guard over her in the first place. Casey moved over to join her, only gaining her attention when he blocked out the light. "How's it going?"
She might not have noted his approach, but she didn't jump at it, either, just flashed him a distracted smile. "It's... complicated. This is an obscure dialect of Ancient-"
"As opposed to all those mainstream dialects of Ancient," Hertzberg put in. Sorvino stretched her neck and groaned.
"It's about somebody called Tacha - I think that's a name - who was working on something here. The vessel of the... shifting? It revealed good... something, but Tacha perished... or maybe sickened... and the people he left behind 'echoed him in soul'. I think that's supposed to be a figure of speech, like 'heartsick' or 'died inside'. They lost heart, and they were unable to continue his dream of... um, I'm not really sure what he wanted to do... I could really use Doctor Jackson," she confessed.
"Everybody wants Doctor Jackson," Hertzberg said. "There's a waiting list a mile long, and Carter hangs on to him nearly as tight as O'Neill did."
"This might get him," Casey observed. "This shifting vessel our friend Tacha was working on - if the guy died and his people lost interest in continuing his work, is there a chance it's still here?"
Sorvino shrugged apologetically. "No idea. I still haven't translated the bottom third of the inscription yet."
"Keep at it." He patted her on the shoulder and drifted back over to Hertzberg.
"You know if we call in the big guns we'll probably get kicked off this gig and sent somewhere else," the Major said quietly. Casey showed him a stern eyebrow.
"If there is a piece of experimental technology buried somewhere here-"
"I know, I know." Hertzberg held up his hands. "But the kids are having fun. Did you see the way Brand was hopping up and down over those energy readings?"
"Where is Brand, anyway?" Casey reached for his radio. "Brand, this is Casey, report."
There was a pause, long enough for Hertzberg to adjust his stance warily, then the radio crackled to life. "Sorry, Colonel," came the breathless voice of the team's youngest member and resident science geek. "I'm over behind that set of columns on the hill. I've just found something that-"
The next thing they heard was a loud and vaguely ominous click. Then there was a surfeit of rustling, followed by the sound of a USAF Lieutenant completely forgetting himself. "Aw, wow!"
Initial worries fading, Casey allowed himself a tolerant smile. "Care to clarify that last transmission, Lieutenant?" he said into the radio.
"No, sir, I would not," Brand said brightly. "Sir, regret I have nothing of import to say except: y'all should get up here right now."
They got up there.
Major Sheppard's ATA gene proved no more useful in activating the device than anybody else's. Which, really, Rodney could have predicted, had anybody bothered to actually ask him. Sheppard didn't have some mystically superior version of the gene, he was just less likely than Carson to be hampered by stage fright. Since Carson was quite possibly the most nervous man Scotland had ever produced and Sheppard was so laid back you could have used him to carpet the floor, that was an observation that anybody with half a brain ought to have been able to make.
"Major Sheppard." Teyla's voice broke into what had been a fairly quiet hour of frustrated struggling. Carson had long since wandered back to attend to his medical duties, and Ford to... do whatever it was marines did when they weren't on away teams or guarding things, but they'd hung onto Sheppard to see what he could do with the other devices. As it turned out, not much, but hey, that was why they had the Major playing with them instead of wasting Rodney's own valuable time.
"Teyla." He spared her a quick nod, but only listened to the ensuing conversation with half an ear as he focused most of his attention on the machine. Zelenka was working alongside him, understanding and responding to Rodney's actions with the kind of silent communication that made him one of the very few scientists Rodney could stand to work with.
"You missed our training session," Teyla told the Major mildly, apparently not particularly upset about this. "Lieutenant Ford told me that I would find you here."
"Yeah." Sheppard stretched like a cat and gave her one of those easy smiles that he obviously believed would excuse him anything. Irritatingly, they usually did. "The docs had me trying to activate some... stuff. Any idea what this is?" He held up one of the more mystifying of the devices, which looked a little like a miniature coathanger with antennae.
"None," she said, brightly. She gazed around the shielded room with interest, eyebrows lowering. "What is this chamber? I have seen nothing like it in the parts of Atlantis we have previously explored."
"Medical scanning booth," said Zelenka.
At the same time Rodney said, "Radiation test chamber. Very dangerous."
"I see," she said, her smile broadening. Then she paused, and approached the central machine. "These crystals... I believe I have seen their type before."
"Really?" That got Rodney's attention.
Zelenka also sat up, almost bumping his head on the access panel he'd opened. "In which part of Atlantis?" he asked eagerly.
"Not here," she said, shaking her head. "On one of the planets my people visited to trade... What are they?"
"They're networked together to provide the machine with its power supply," Rodney explained. "It's hard to tell with the limited diagnostic equipment we have available, but my guess is that the material is naturally impervious to whatever kind of radiation they use in here. There are superficial similarities to other Ancient power sources we've been able to study, but the power output is of course negligible compared to a ZPM."
"So, kind of like a ZPM-mini," said Sheppard.
Rodney gave him a look. "In every imaginable way, no."
"The device will not work without four more of these crystals?" Teyla asked.
Zelenka screwed up his face. "I believe we could get it working with... two."
"Three." Rodney corrected for his optimism. "The two that are still lit have about a ninety percent charge. The cracked one is useless, obviously, but the other three have varying levels below fifty percent. Judging by the way these six are chained there should be no problem with hooking the partially charged crystals together to take the place of one fully charged one."
"Or perhaps two," Zelenka persisted. Rodney shook his head at him despairingly.
"Then I believe I can be of assistance." Teyla smiled. "The planet I am thinking of, Iaerona, had a number of such crystals on display. The people know them to have been left by the Ancestors, but consider them to be no more than ornaments."
"Then we should be able to find something they're willing to trade for them," said Sheppard cockily, straightening up. "Pack it up, McKay. We're going on a road trip."