A/N: It's here that I have to admit that I'm neither science nor military, so I did all the research that I could, then bent the facts quite a bit to fit my purposes.
Chapter 25
Lansing, Michigan
21 October 1995
The noise and lights of the city faded as the car approached the quiet and hush of the exclusive neighbourhood and rolled to a stop in a long, elegant driveway that led to a white mansion that stood impressively lit at the top of a slight incline.
Senator William Curtis stepped out of the backseat, carrying his briefcase, and hurried up the stairs to his stately home.
The house was dark and quiet, his wife and children having gone ahead to their vacation home in the Bahamas, having made him promise to join them as soon as his affairs were taken care of. He hadn't intended to renege on that promise until the news of a few days ago had thrown the media into a frenzy.
The national and international headlines were impossible to ignore, not when the news of a General's suicide in the USAF and the arrest of several others came in quick succession, shedding new light and raising soul-searching questions on the military's purpose and authority in the country.
Peter Vandenburg. Taken into custody for illegal arms dealing. For the unlawful procurement of foreign nuclear production technology.
Thomas Baker. Arrested for the illegal stockpile of nuclear arms.
Special Agent Timothy Lee-Granger, Jacksonville, Florida. Arrested with a suspected connection to Baker.
Howard Vlasov, Border protection, Homeland security. Arrested with a suspected connection to Vandenburg.
The list went on. And grew longer each day as more names appeared in the regional papers.
With a pounding heart, Curtis knew that the members of the Aegis were being rooted out, one by one, all of them confronted somehow with undeniable proof of their underground activities.
Handing his coat and briefcase to the waiting butler, Curtis took the stairs as quickly as he could. He burst through his study doors, not bothering with the lights.
He strode to the table and reached under it, bringing out a bag packed full of cash. He checked its amount, then snapped its closure shut.
It was time to go. Flee. Any place where he could remain beyond the jurisdiction of the country's laws.
The private plane was already waiting, the bank account set up and a fully-furnished apartment in any district or country that he wanted.
Curtis spied the documents detailing the activities of the higher-ranking members still lying on his study table, untouched since he left them there a day ago. Breathing a sigh of relief, he moved to pack them away when a voice rang out in the darkness.
"I hear the Bahamas is great this time of year."
Curtis whipped around just as the light switch was flicked on by an invisible hand, revealing a brown-haired man standing in a corner dressed in civilian clothes.
He hadn't met the man, only seen the pictures. But Curtis knew immediately who he was.
"Colonel Jack O'Neill."
O'Neill's tone was mocking. "The one and only. My reputation precedes me, it seems."
"What are you doing in my house, Colonel?" Curtis bit out, but O'Neill was already studying the gun that had mysteriously appeared in his hands.
He took a cautious step backward, risking a glance around to see if his security detail was anywhere in sight. Then he remembered that they were just obeying his instructions not to stray anywhere near his study.
"I could shoot you now, Curtis, place the gun in your hands afterwards and do the whole world a favour. And then no one would ever find out exactly what you've been busy with behind the scenes," O'Neill pondered aloud, ignoring Curtis's question. "But that's making it easy for you, isn't it? A bullet in the head or the chest. You'll bleed out. Or maybe even die instantly. No, I won't shoot you, Curtis. Because I want you alive so that you can live through the consequences of what you've done."
Curtis released a breath he hadn't realised he was holding when he saw O'Neill slowly lower the gun. He instantly recognised the game of cat-and-mouse that O'Neill was playing, a subtle negotiation tactic that threw off the balance of power in a conversation as each party strove to pull the stakes in his or her favour.
Seeing his advantage, he pounced.
"That's naïve of you, Colonel O'Neill. You come alone, thinking that your…little night visit is going to change anything. I'd say I'll report you to the MPs as a man gone berserk. And you know what they do to such people."
O'Neill barked a laugh. "Look around you, Curtis. Your men are gone. Locked away. Taken out," he said in sanguine humour that slowly faded into a threatening snarl. "And you know what they do to such people."
Curtis didn't miss the significance of O'Neill's words. But he wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth.
"Colonel, I'll ask again. Why are you here? If you don't give me a good enough reason, I'll have the MPs on your tail-"
"Lists," O'Neill announced expansively.
"Lists?" Curtis repeated, convinced that O'Neill had a screw loose in his head.
"You wanted an answer, you got one."
"For fuck's sake, O'Neill, if you would just get to the poi-"
"As I said before, lists. A list of names of people who stood in your way and how you got rid of them. Long, long list, might I add." the Colonel interrupted pleasantly, suddenly swerving from the matter-at-hand, having taken out a folder that he hadn't noticed.
Curtis found his head suddenly pressed to his desk with a gun pointed at his temple, his arms uselessly splayed on the sides of the table.
"But there's something more exciting that I've found," O'Neill continued casually. "A covert, second list of names and accompanying investigative reports on others who were deemed a threat to your precious Aegis. A third list of your funding sources originating from an oil firm called Tullus, Inc. And a set of reports detailing illegal arms dealings that you've signed off and endorsed before leaving your minions to do your dirty work."
Curtis's snort of incredulous laughter came out as a groan against the flat wood surface of the table. "You have a big imagination, Colonel."
O'Neill smiled in genuine appreciation when he heard that. "You betcha. Shall I go on? Your ambitions of the US presidency haven't gone unnoticed, Curtis. There's a record – or shall I say a list – of what you've done or tried to do to make that happen. Get your head out of your ass, Curtis. You're not going anywhere tonight."
"Oh, I certainly plan to do so. And there's nothing, you of all people, O'Neill, can do about that."
"We'll see," O'Neill said and barked suddenly into a hidden mike. "Move in!"
The rough hand that was in his hair pulled him upright, then released the pressure. Curtis's hands went automatically to straighten the tie that had gone askew just as a group of federal agents moved into his study.
"Just to make this a bit more dramatic, Curtis," O'Neill was saying as the feds forcibly turned Curtis to face him, "there'll be a sea of reporters awaiting your statement."
"For what, exactly, O'Neill? If you leak classified documents–"
O'Neill's grin was feral. "I just simply…threw them a bone, shall we say."
Curtis didn't finish what he wanted to say. "Col-"
He was cuffed in less than ten seconds and read his Miranda rights by the feds in the next ten.
"Senator William Curtis, you are under arrest for multiple felonies, multiple acts of public corruption and for the neglect of official duties. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law."
Curtis had been convinced that it would never come to this. But the unthinkable had come to pass.
"Tag, you're it. "
Curtis looked up to see O'Neill standing quietly in a corner, looking all too sombre for a man who had just orchestrated his arrest.
As he was led out of his mansion, the camera flashes from his front lawn damn near blinded him. Curtis pushed his way through the swarm of reporters to the awaiting car, avoiding a deluge of never-ending questions.
A firm hand on his shoulder pushed him into the back seat. The slam of the car door shut out the incessant reporters' voices, leaving him in near silence.
Curtis stole a last glance up at his study through the passenger window, seeing the room already dark and devoid of human presence.
O'Neill was nowhere to be seen.
Undisclosed Location
Washington D.C.
22 October 1995
It was some payback for all who had died in the Aegis's wake, Jack figured as he strolled into the compound lost in thought.
But where justice was duly meted out, it never brought back the dead.
Jack stopped short when he saw Hammond waiting for him.
Not that he didn't like the temporary job or anything, but if it was going to be yet another strategic briefing with the federal agents, the JAGs and the other what-nots for the previous arrests they had made, he swore he was going to go AWOL for that one.
"Good job, Jack," the General said as a greeting, handing him a folder of the latest newspaper reports of the military arrests.
"Thank you, Sir."
It was amusing to read the media's love of the dramatic, each headline sounding more ridiculous than the previous one.
Michigan Senator William Curtis arrested
The military conspiracies in the U.S. Government and the Senators who back them
The suspected mafia connection in the U.S. Military comes to light after Senator William Curtis's arrest
He barked a laugh when he saw the last one. The media hadn't anything close to the full story.
"We have news that Senator Curtis is going to face an impeachment bid, on the account of multiple felonies with no regard for the rule of law or transparency. He will also be brought up on charges for violating the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as the U.N arms-trade treaty," Hammond said in satisfaction. "This is going to keep him away for a long, long time."
"Good to hear that, Sir. What about the rest of them?"
"Once investigations are complete, Vandenburg and Baker, among others, will be facing criminal trial and prosecution," Hammond said, contemplating the coming events that would likely change the face of the military. "Administratively, this leaves all of us a problem. Finding their replacements to fill the positions they've vacated."
"Good luck, Sir. Looks like it's just started for you. I'm guessing my job's done," O'Neill said candidly, tapping out a random tattoo on the folder he held. "Does this mean I can retire again? For good?"
Hammond gave him a patient look. "I know that we've agreed for Special Agent Pearson and Major Paul Davis to head this operation after you've stepped down. But the short answer would be, not quite yet, Jack. We have yet to receive conclusive reports from Captain Carter and Dr. McKay. Thus far, I have only received detailed outlines of their projects and the scans that they're slated to perform but not their results of them. If they do discover that Earth is indeed under threat, I'm going to need to recall all of my best field officers for this."
Silicon Valley
San Francisco, Northern California
22 October 1995
Sam grabbed the printout, checking its accuracy on the computer screen. She frowned in brief confusion.
The cursory knock on the door made her look up. "So it's you."
McKay grunted in response. "Hey, at least I knocked. The last time I came in, I nearly got strangled. And sometimes I wish you could be more pleased to see me. I know you're unhappy that I'm now seeing someone, but –"
He missed her brief, stunned look of disbelief and her heavy sigh of annoyance.
She finally looked away from her perusal of the report and turned her attention to him. "Not that I'm not happy to see you Rodney, but I have work to do."
He grumbled unintelligibly and protested, making her hide a grin beneath a hand. "What else do you think we do here? This facility is –"
"I get it, McKay," she replied without letting him finish and shoved a file at him. "Here, look at this."
He opened it curiously. "What's this?"
"Files that General Hammond sent over regarding Area 51's scientists' findings of the small alien craft that visited about a month ago and the reports they filed after that incident."
McKay was scanning the reports quickly. "Hmm, seems like the craft was emitting a kind of EM-pulse similar to the radiation in space caused by the so-called flares. Faint but still registered by their sensors. Leaving residual dust that resembles the interstellar dust around Earth's orbit."
"Look at the two spectrographs detailing the characteristics of the pulse, both of which showing wavelengths that are similar but not identical," Sam said, then looked at him expectantly.
McKay studied the first page of the appendix, noting the wavelengths and the frequency range of the first spectrograph. He turned the page, seeing a similar structure of the peaks and troughs of the second graph, then hummed in confusion.
"Wait a minute, the second set of spectrographs shows wavelengths with a less pronounced shape, meaning the pulses that we're getting are weaker than the first. But…but that makes no sense! I thought we were only looking at EM-pulses of the craft that landed."
"I'm not sure anymore," she confessed, standing up to take the file from him. She took a closer look at the comparison for the umpteenth time, still unable to quite make sense of it. "I initially thought assumed that both graphs were consecutive analyses of the craft's EM-pulses at 0, 0.1 and 0.2 seconds, because both sets of waves looked to be functioning in the same frequency range while sharing the same electromagnetic field."
He had also come to the same conclusion as she did. "Both shapes are not congruent, so it could only mean that there's something else here that the second graph is describing. Did the report indicate a hypothetical profile on the second spectrograph?"
"EM-pulse occurring at a level of twenty pulses per second in the second graph. The repetitive gamma signal is weak but constant, which means it's got the ability to broadcast into space."
"What? Into space?" McKay asked incredulously, "Weren't we looking at incoming rays, not outgoing?"
Sam turned the conflicting information over in her mind, trying to tease the variables into a semblance or order.
Residual, scorched atmospheric matter.
EM-pulses and signals coming from supposedly disparate entities but were similar enough that the scientists had overlooked them.
She reviewed the information that they already knew: an alien vessel hovered over Area 51's south shore about a month ago and left, leaving the hapless scientists with nothing but an EM-emittance that was almost like an alien fingerprint or energy-signature. But it probably wasn't the first alien craft sent here, as suggested by the presence of scorched atmosphere matter that she had noticed in early September.
Something else clicked in her memory, that conversation that she'd been having with Catherine early last month filtering into her remembrance.
"McKay, slightly more than a month ago, my team discovered similar remnants, even fainter than those recorded in the first spectrograph," Sam told him, watching his eyes narrow first in confusion, then in irritation.
"Why didn't you say so earlier?"
Sam ignored his annoyed question, talking her thoughts through. "The spikes in the exosphere from the emittance in early September are incredibly faint. Fainter than the one the probe sent to Area 51 gave out. The only logical explanation is that there must have been a first probe sent prior the one that visited Area 51 in September," she started out slowly. "Think about it. It's likely that the first probe had likely only stayed in orbit around the Earth, which accounts for the spikes in atmospheric readings."
"Why would there be a need for two probes?" McKay objected.
"Exploratory reasons," she shrugged. "Or maybe they're searching for something. But if so…for what?"
"Wait," McKay put in, looking closely at the charts again. "Look at this."
She saw what he pointed at.
Suddenly, it sank in.
"These are incoming pulses in the first spectrograph analysis," she exclaimed, "and in the second, we're actually looking at outgoing pulses! The only explanation for it could be-"
"-the existence of two objects. The first, conducting a search for the second, hence explaining the existence of an identical pulse while emitting the residual dust as remnants of their unique fingerprints, which could only mean that the probes were looking for something that has a-"
"Distress radio beacon signal," she cut in. "With a tracking transmitter."
Sam whipped her head around to see him slacked jaw in disbelief. The growing excitement on his face must be mirroring hers.
"It's the only thing that fits," McKay said, his speech accelerating a mile a minute. "An object broadcasting a signal can be detected by another object calibrated to pick up its distress call. That's exactly what we're looking at!"
"So the first probe in orbit determined the planet's location, the second one that came a few weeks later – the one Area 51 encountered – was in all likelihood," she speculated, "a second confirmation of what the first probe had already recorded. Maybe they were both receiving devices, triangulating the location of the distress signal."
He was already wagging his finger in realisation, hurrying over to a computer terminal in the lab and starting to type furiously.
Sam grinned at the heady feel of discovery, the rush of blood to the head making her slightly dizzy as her excitement grew. "Let's assume that both crafts are probes that have been sent because they had picked up a distress signal from…what? And…where?"
"I'm on it. Now that we know what we're looking for, I can write a script detailing search parameters for the EM-surveillance program and set it to triangulate the exact location of the transmitter. Just give me...thirty seconds."
Another piece of the jigsaw slid into place. "McKay, if the probe hovered over Groom Lake, wouldn't it – in all probability – mean that the distress signal is coming from…somewhere inside the facility?"
He was muttering to himself as he worked, and she wondered if he'd heard her. "Nearly there. Tracking, done. Triangulating. Now. Creating the surface co-ordinates in three, two, one and…it's coming from – what?! But it can't be…it can't-"
"Rodney-," she warned.
He'd taken a doubtful step back from the terminal, looking at her strangely. "The distress signal originates from an object deep underground in Area 51."
"Oh my god." Sam slumped back in her chair, the ramifications of McKay's statement hitting her like a sledgehammer to the head.
The Roswell incident of 1947 hadn't just introduced the idea of extant extraterrestrial life; instead, it had proven that it was just the beginning of the story.
It was proof positive that there had been more out there for millions or even billions of years than humankind could ever hope to understand, let alone interfere in. And that the myopic vision of protecting Earth by attempting to seal its open borders to the universe was eventually going to be a price too high to pay.
Suddenly, it occurred to her that McKay had actually entered her lab a few minutes ago for a reason, something that they'd never gotten around to discussing.
"McKay, before I go running off to Hammond with this news, what was it that you actually came in here for?"
He looked flummoxed for a second until he remembered. "Oh, right. I just wanted to show you this. Remote sensing data just obtained from several satellites probes, radio telescopes and hourly print-outs from the SBV sensor."
She took the readout from him. "Any anomalies in the readings?"
"All of them capture a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation in space, some more than others," McKay said. He grabbed the readout back from her, impatiently turning the pages until he found the graphs and the readings that he wanted her to see. Handing it back to her, he pointed out, "But look at this."
She looked at him sceptically. "Radio waves? Again?"
"I knew you'd think that," he crowed briefly. "But look at it again carefully. It's an anomaly of a radio wave found in space, even though they share the same basic characteristics. They have the same approximate scale and very low frequency; essentially, all the typical things you read about the radiation emitted by celestial bodies in deep space. All of which are strong enough to penetrate the atmosphere and disrupt the power lines here. But this particular one has a wavelength that is much longer than what's been recorded before, propagated from some part of the Milky Way that our own deep space radars haven't yet determined. Now we already know that theoretically, there pretty much isn't a limit for long wavelengths. I mean, look, they can be the size of the universe itself –"
"Hang on, Rodney," Sam stopped him, looking more closely at the data. "The emission has been increasing exponentially in all read-outs, occurring at a frequency of 0.1 Hz, gradually increasing to 12 Hz in the last three days."
"Hmm," he grunted and pulled the paper from her again, realising that he'd missed that particularly obvious fact from one of the graphs.
"I've never seen anything like this before. And they also seem to correspond to the increase of light and atmospheric emissions and the infrared output, all of which combine uniquely to form–," she trailed off, thinking of the far-reaching implications of that particular statement.
"-an energy signature," McKay finished her thought animatedly. "Or rather, energy signatures. All of them bear the same kind of emittance with only very slight variations in the propagation process. They also match the wave structures of the EM-pulses coming from both probes." His face turned worried. "But given the magnitude of this emittance…this would suggest a presence of a several celestial bodies moving through space or –"
Sam twisted her fingers together, quelling her first instinct to run to the phone and call Hammond with a load of information that could have devastating consequences for Earth's survival. But all she did was nod calmly and said, "McKay, before we even jump to any conclusions, is it possible to extend the range of our sensors and satellites so that they could provide a clearer picture, or maybe even some kind of visual verification of the unknown stellar bodies?"
"Hey, why is it that everyone expects me to work a miracle when someone or something's in trouble? I know that –"
He stopped abruptly when he saw her glare, then crossed to the same computer terminal to open multiple scanning programs.
"Is this the same McKay who used to say 'Difficult takes a few seconds; impossible, a few minutes'?"
"Yeah, well, never mind," he rushed to counter her mocking quip. "It's not that easy, but I'll try."
She stole a glance at the large clock that hung on the right wall of her lab.
Five minutes and 55 seconds.
Six.
Six minutes and 34 seconds.
"Enlarging scale of scanners," McKay announced. "Amplifying the waves from the deep space satellite readout."
She clenched her fists unconsciously in dread and anticipation, a tight knot growing in her chest.
For the next few seconds, the only sounds in the lab were the constant whirrs and ticks of the computers, punctuated only by McKay's intermittent typing.
"Oh my god. "
"What?" She barked impatiently.
"The deep space radar is detecting a group of extraterrestrial stellar crafts stationed at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, all of which bear the same electromagnetic pulses that are strong enough to reflect through this part of our solar system. Only a fleet of ships emitting this much of radiation could have caused such electrical outages on Earth. And if you ask me, it's likely that the alien probes were sent from one of those ships and now that they've found us….oh no, no, no…"
He clicked on a tracking diagram, closed it and clicked on it again, as though he hadn't quite believed the readings it was giving him.
"Rodney!"
McKay finally turned to her, his eyes wide with trepidation. "The stellar fleet isn't as stationary as I thought. It looks like they've set a course for Earth. Estimated time of arrival: twenty hours. "
And Earth had no ready frontline of defence.
"Son-of-a-bitch."
"You've said it."