A/N: Thanks for the reviews so far, I'm looking forward to more of them!
Chapter 7 – Paperwork
When Colonel O'Neill had taken a shower and got dressed in his BDUs, he went to the infirmary. When he entered the hallway to the infirmary, he heard voices.
"Don't want to! It stings!" he heard a voice say.
"You'll have to, whether you like it or not!" he heard another voice, this one a bit higher, say.
"No!" the first voice said.
"What's going on here?" asked O'Neill when he entered the infirmary and saw Minos laying on a bed and doctor Frasier trying to grab his arm.
"She wants to sting me with a needle!" Minos said first.
"I'm just trying to take your blood!" said dr. Frasier in return.
"No!" Minos answered.
"Minos, please." O'Neill intermediated. "I won't hurt."
"I don't like needles sticking being stuck into my arm."
"She's just going to take a little of your blood to check if you're healthy."
"Can't she do it without the needle?"
"There are several other ways to take your blood, but none are as painless as the one with the needle."
"What are the other ways?"
"The first one I can think of is knocking you out with a frying pan, but that'll hurt like hell."
"And the second one?"
"That would be... uh, let me see... Ah yes. That would be shooting you."
"Are you sure that it won't hurt?"
"Yes, positive."
Minos stuck his arm out for doctor Frasier.
"Relax, this'll be over soon." She said as she pushed the needle carefully in the stick-thin arm of the young king.
"Now, that didn't hurt as bad as you'd have expected, now did it?" Frasier asked.
"No, it didn't." Said King Minos mockingly.
"Why are you so afraid of needles?" O'Neill asked when Frasier had walked away to deliver the blood samples to the lab.
"Because the last time I was stabbed with the needle, I was being tortured by a Goa'uld."
"What Goa'uld?"
"Doesn't matter. He's dead now."
"What happened?"
"I broke free, fled to Avalon and returned a few days later."
"And what did you do to him?"
"I stole everything of value in his entire empire, which was only three planets, but still, then I personally ripped the snake out of his head and threw it in an acidic bath."
"Was that it?"
"No. Of course not! I beamed the acidic bath into space, shot it with his own ships and then I beamed halfway into the star of that system."
"Cool. What did you do with the things you stole from his planets?"
"I kept them in storage for further use."
"And what did you do to the civilians on those planets?"
"Well, they were mostly slaves and when I had convinced them that the Goa'uld were not gods, I sent help from Avalon and we've been trading ever since."
"What were those planets called? Maybe we've visited them already..."
"Those planets are called Arachnos, Terrana and Felinis, but you've never visited them."
"How do you know that?"
"Well, they would have told me if visitors came that wanted to forge an alliance."
"Ah, I see. But how's your leg?" O'Neill asked, changing the subject.
"Doctor Frasier says it's not broken and only burned. She reckons it'll heal, as long as I rest it for the next weeks or so."
"And what do you reckon?" O'Neill asked.
"I think it's stupid, but that it's my own fault for being hit by those stupid Kull warriors, as you called them. Oh, and I'm gonna pay Anubis a visit when it's healed."
"Visit, as in...?"
"He may lose several important things. Weapons, naquadah, a few jaffa here and there. Oh, and I'm going to blow the base up from where those Kull warriors came."
"Would you mind if we tagged along with you, when you're going to raid his stronghold?"
"Nope. Just don't get in the way."
"Then I hope your leg heals fast, because I'd love to 'damage' a few possessions of Anubis."
"I know a way to help my leg heal, but Dr. Frasier doesn't like it."
"Well, what's that way then?"
"Sugar."
"What?" O'Neill asked
"Sugar. Saccharine, a sweet, white substance which is solvable in water."
"Oh, that sugar." O'Neill said, though he mainly understood the 'sweet substance' part.
"Yes. That one. If you put some of it in clear water, It'll give you a lot of energy when you drink it. Plus, the taste is good."
"I'm not so sure about the more-energy part. Frasier did say that your leg needed rest, didn't she?"
"Relax, Colonel. I'll use the energy to speed up the healing process of my leg."
Colonel O'Neill walked out of the infirmary to get some sugar for King Minos.
"Colonel!" whispered Dr. Frasier from behind him. "You're not actually thinking about giving him water with added sugar? The last thing he needs right now is to bounce around my infirmary with that leg of his. So NO SUGAR, do I make myself clear?" she asked with a bit of acid.
"Yes doctor." Said O'Neill reluctantly, because he knew he'd get in trouble if he'd cause problems in the infirmary.
"Good." Dr. Frasier said, still with a hint of acid in her voice.
Over the course of the remainder of the day, O'Neill divided his time between the usual stacks of paperwork and visiting the rest of SG-1 and King Minos in the infirmary. But when he checked on Minos near the end of the day, he wasn't in the infirmary anymore.
"Doc!" he called Frasier.
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Where's Minos?"
"He wanted to see Carter, to see if she could help him understand the Kull armour, I think."
"Thanks, Doc." O'Neill said as he walked away. He found king Minos in Carters lab, together with Carter, bent over a small piece of the Kull armour."
"Howdy, kids." O'Neill said.
"Hello, Sir." Carter answered. "We were just studying the Kull armour under the microscope. Their energy-distributing patterns are quite fascinating."
"Energy-distributing-patterns?" O'Neill asked questioningly.
"The way they absorb the energy blasts from staff weapons and Zats, sir."
"A. Now that I can understand. What did you learn?"
"Well, we discovered a small flaw in their patterns, Sir. If a powerful enough bolt is fired with the right frequency on the right spot, we can disable their armour."
"So, Kapow, Kapow, Kaboom?"
"Yes sir," Carter said with a smirk, "that's the simple way. We'd have to fire about six bolts or so on exactly the same spot to disable the armour."
"And they'd have to be fired in a really short amount of time to do any damage. Wait too long, and the effect will wear off." Added King Minos.
"Wouldn't firing one continuous beam have more effect?" asked O'Neill.
"No. The armour can then absorb the energy after the initial blast has dissipated." Answered Carter.
"And do you have any ideas for a weapon that can use this?"
"No sir, but I'm working on it." Said Carter.
"I do." Said Minos.
"What did you have in mind?" asked Carter.
"It's a gun like you have, but a bit modified. There are six specially-made bullets in six separate chambers in a circle around one opening. A power source located directly behind those chambers powers up the bullets. Once you pull the trigger, the bullets will be fired. I'm thinking about two modes. One that fires all six bullets, and one that fires only three of them, to stun the Kulls but not kill them."
"I wasn't expecting that..." said O'Neill in amazement as the young king rattled off his idea.
"That's a good idea, but what power source did you have in mind?" asked Carter
"I hadn't figured that out completely yet. It must be small enough to carry around and yet powerful enough to charge all six bullets in a relatively small amount of time. Maybe liquid naquadah? It powers the usual Goa'uld weapons."
"But how do we alter the frequency of the energized bullets?" asked Carter.
"Guys, I'm out of here, before my brain overloads." Said O'Neill.
"Bye." Said Minos
"Goodbye, Sir." Said Carter.
O'Neill left the room, leaving the two scientists behind. He was quite amazed that king Minos was just as smart as Carter. He'd expected a king to be smart, but not scientist-smart like Carter. He shrugged it off and paid a visit to Daniel, whose lab was just around the corner.
"Daniel. What-cha doing?" O'Neill asked.
He waited for an answer, but none came from the archaeologist who was bent over the remains of something old.
"Daniel."
Still no answer
"DANIEL!" O'Neill yelled.
"Huh? Oh, hi Jack. Did you ask something?"
"Yes. I asked what you were doing." O'Neill answered.
"I was studying the remains of the vase that SG-4 brought back last week."
"And, what did you find?"
"The vase belongs to a society long gone, but they never reached further than the Ancient Greeks, in particular the Archaic period from somewhere in the seventh century BC. The vase is quite large, at least compared to the vases we have on Earth from that time, but it is richly decorated, well, at least for the archaic period. There are several patterns on the vase, which may symbolize the routes those people took to get from oasis to oasis. There are many lines of different sizes, and where they have corners there are also little dots." Daniel interrupted himself to see if Jack was getting all this.
"Jack, It's a map." He explained.
"Oh. Now I get it. " Jack said. "You should really work on you English. I can barely understand you, just like Carter when she's excited about a new thing to investigate."
"Yeah, what's Carter doing actually? She sounded very excited about the armour of the Kulls."
"She's working on it. She'd found something about an electrical something pattern, and now she's working with Minos on building a gun that can kill those stupid Kulls."
"She's working with Minos? Shouldn't he be in the infirmary?"
"Frasier said he could walk with crutches and that he wanted to get out, so she released him."
"And now he's working with Carter to build a gun? That's pretty impressive for a kid his age."
"We still don't know exactly how old he is, Daniel."
"He looks fifteen or so."
"We've met a lot of aliens that were way older than we estimated. Teal'c is a lot older than me, but he doesn't look like it too? And Bra'tac? None of us would say he'd be about one hundred and fifty years old, now would we?"
"Ok Jack, you're right."
"Yes! One in a row. That's a personal record!" said Jack.
"But he still looks like fifteen."
"Daniel, stop it and get back to your vase-thingy."
"Ok." Daniel did not need to hear that twice, because as soon as Jack had said that, he was busy again with the markings on the vase.
Jack was bored again, because Daniel would only be interested in the vase for the next couple of hours, Carter and Minos would do scientific thingies way out of his league and he didn't want to have a permanent headache for the rest of the week, so he went to the only place where he could go at that time, the gym.
"Hi Teal'c," Jack said as he entered the gym.
"Greeting, O'Neill."
"What-cha doing?"
"I am training, O'Neill."
"Ah. I see. Wasn't expecting that." Said O'Neill sarcastically.
"I must train to keep my strength at a sufficient level, O'Neill."
"Yeah, I know."
Teal'c was obviously not in the mood to talk right now, as usual, so O'Neill decided that he'd better enslave himself to the almighty gods of paperwork once again. He left the sweaty-smelling gym and walked back through the long corridors to his own office, where large mountains of paperwork were waiting for him.