A Stargate Fan Fiction
This story has been kindly translated by Jamie Melly (jamiemelly88). I thank him for his work. Good reading.
At Last, an Ancient in Atlantis
Chapter 1: QUIATUS
One afternoon, the entire staff of the SGC stood in silence waiting for a sign until the moment that a deafening sound, like someone pulling the plug out of a sink, washed over the room. This was the sound everyone was waiting for; a sound all the soldiers knew. It came from a giant ring linked to countless others in several galaxies: the Stargate.
When activated, the viscous blue liquid the gate produced gave it the air of being a mirror made of water.
As was customary, the on-duty airmen were on guard awaiting their companions' return. It was likely that people might get hurt or not come back at all. They all knew that any time they left on a mission, they would have to come round to the idea that they might not return. This time, however, the whole team returned without incident apparently General Jack O'Neill seemed satisfied with the outcome of SG3's latest mission. In the last report made planet-side, the explorers found unidentified items, in other words, all the items one tends to find on another planet. He was eager to try out these "new toys". Just two hours before, he had had to submit a report about some damned piles of stones that made no sense at all to him and whose purpose he cared not to speculate on.
Daniel came into the General's office in such a flurry, his foot got jammed in the door in the process.
"Owww!" he cried, hopping up and down on the spot.
"Hi Daniel, good to see you, I'm well thank you, how 'bout you?" O'Neill said smiling, "but could you not just take the time to knock before you demolish my door?" while continuing to read a report just next to an enormous stack of files, which in itself showed how long it was taking him to get through them.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine too," he said while rubbing his foot.
"Good," said O'Neill, an insistent look on the General's face.
"I'm sorry, General, how are you? I'm glad to see you too. What?" Seeing the motions of the General's head, "uh", Daniel pointed to the door while O'Neill likewise signaled to Daniel to turn back the way he came.
Daniel, playing the game, knocked on the door:
"Yes, who is it?" Said Jack, amusement flooding his voice
"Daniel", he said, sighing and growing increasingly frustrated with Jack's way of doing things.
"Ah, quelle surprise, it's been too long."
"Not at all, General, it's only been a few seconds," Daniel said, frustrated with his attitude.
"Really?" continuing to laugh to himself, despite the angry look on his friend's face, "ah, you're referring to the incident where you half-trashed my door."
"They're here", Daniel blurted out the words, so his nerves would not show.
"Yes, and..." looking to calm the archaeologist down.
"Well, uh, I wanted to..." he said, stressing every word.
"Ah hah! You wanted to see the new toys as well, didn't you?" the General cut him off.
"No, I just want to see if there's any news, he said hesitant, "but not in the same way you hear it."
"Yeah, that's what people always say. Well, go on, go look for Colonel Mitchell and his teammates."
But Daniel, visibly concerned, certainly wasn't going before he had asked his question.
"Can you please just remind me why he's here? He seems to me like he's not 100% comfortable, like he's not in his zone."
"This is because he broke your damn stone plaque."
"It contained the gate addresses of planets where the Ancients could have visited or sought refuge. It was priceless," Daniel finished, before finally sighing.
"You'll find other unreadable things to keep you entertained. And stop thinking about the Ancients, will you? If they don't want us to find them, then let's leave them alone and it'll be their loss." Not wanting to have the same argument again, O'Neill headed off in the direction of the conference room.
O'Neill made the most of every chance he got to tease Daniel. It was true that he missed going on missions, the bad guys and the times when Daniel would translate some text. He missed it more than he had ever thought he would. He had never really understood all that writing, even though he had made the effort to try. Same with all those science words Carter would use, although they did sound good when they came out of her mouth. 'Those lips of hers," he besides that, he really enjoyed terrorising his new SG1 because it beat the severe lack of action in his office, action largely consisting of but not limited to: paperwork, phone calls and more paperwork.
Two months previously, he had been at the bedside of one of his men, Mitchell, who had been injured during the attack on Antarctica. In O'Neill's view, it was thanks to him that they had been able to push back Anubis' fleet, a bad guy who was more than just your everyday bad guy. That soldier had thrown himself into the battle not knowing all of the issues at work. He definitely had no idea about "our E.T. buddies", as General O'Neill would say. In the face of an adversary far in advance of them technologically, Mitchell had shown exemplary bravery. He made a good recovery from his accident and it was for that reason that O'Neill, smiling to himself more than a little imagining the look on that soldier's face when he informed him of the truth, brought him into the SGC. The General was sitting near his bed. Mitchell had awoken from his coma three weeks previously. O'Neill had explained what had happened to him. That was the reason and he would Mitchell's wish. And he had not been disappointed by Mitchell's grimacing after hearing O'Neill's revelations.
After he left, Mitchell had a headache and thought he had been the victim of one of the General's bad jokes. A very bad joke. How could there be other human beings living in another galaxy? But for two months afterwards, he reflected on what he had been told and waited for the day when the General would come to take him into the SGC, a wish which was granted. He spent a long time waiting and hoping that he wouldn't regret that choice after having completed several missions. Once he got to the base, he had soon discovered everything O'Neill had described to him to be true, much to the General's amusement.
"Yeah, it had the same effect on me the first time," smiling at Mitchell's stunned face, "you get used to it, you'll see."
He had had his breath taken away and was imagining all the adventures to come. Today, Mitchell was fairly well integrated into his team, despite his awkwardness on missions. At that moment, they were all sitting in the briefing and meeting rooms waiting patiently for the General and Doctor Kovach, who had just returned from the expedition. He had found numerous items which could have belonged to the Ancients, builders of the famed lost city of Atlantis. In the course of a few months, they had made great progress in the history of the Ancients and had even succeeded in finding the lost city, a billion light years away in another galaxy called Pegasus. Aided by soldiers, the doctor made his way into the room with nearly all the objects he had managed to bring back with him.
Dr Kovach made his report so boring that O'Neill just asked him to skip to the important part, as he usually did. He then went about describing each object when the General took interest in a small green oval which lit up on his contact, after which he immediately dropped it. Indeed, he was the only former member of SG1 who possessed the Ancient Gene allowing the user access to and ability to use a certain object. He put it aside straight away given his prior less than savoury experiences with Ancient objects that had unwittingly nearly caused disasters such as travelling back through time and landing in Ancient Egypt and causing the Earth's destruction. Or there was the time he had sat frozen for a month in what was to all intents and purposes a coffin. Therefore, he knew better than to play around with these things.
Daniel for his part was more interested in the tablets the team had brought back through the gate, him being the only one able to read signs the rest of the team could not understand. He was absorbed in his reading while at the same time listening attentively to Dr Kovach, who was recounting a tale told by the people of the planet about "higher men" who came to deliver them from the Goa'uld and offered them all their knowledge, which explained their technological development, which was exceptional given their precarious life caused by climatic conditions. He had also discovered a plaque on which were written prophecies, chronologies and dates in the past but also those in the future. Daniel took his eyes of the tablets, his interest suddenly piqued.
"How can that be?" Daniel asked, putting his tablets down carefully, promising to himself that he would discover their secret.
"According to the villagers, the prophecies have all come true and allowed hundreds of lives to be saved. They followed the instructions to the letter."
"But we've already seen this once before on another planet."
"Yes, but these stones are more recent according to the carbon dating, only a hundred years or so old. What we have here are the most recent events," Dr Kovach retorted.
"So some of the inhabitants could attest to that and tell us where they took place?" Daniel said with an air of hope.
"If you had listened to my briefing, you would have heard me say that the oldest amongst them barely reach fifty. Their short life span is due to the extreme temperatures. Nobody remembers having seen these events, all that remain are stories told to children passed down from generation to generation and they say that the stones have always been there."
"However, I took some photographs so you could study them," he said, holding the photos up for Daniel to see, "also they don't attach any value to Ancient objects. They're quite used to them being around and therefore have no issues being parted from them. The stone is a different matter; it means a lot to them, they venerate it..."
"Thanks very much. Uh, well I'm gonna get started on this right away" Daniel cut him off, more concerned about his stone tablets, "I'm going to leave, Teal'c, can you come and help me?" Daniel was trying to find an excuse to avoid the conclusion of this mind-numbing briefing.
O'Neill cast pleading looks at the others to avoid being left alone with the doctor, when Carter started to get up to study the electronic devices the team had brought back through the gate.
"Uh, well ... I think I forgot," O'Neill began when an alarm suddenly sounded, "that we're gonna have trouble."
Despite his concern, he was glad to have an excuse to get away and thought he made a suitably amusing repartee. The sounding of the alarm was however a serious cause for concern given that it signalled danger or the return of one of the off-world teams, even though there was no team scheduled to return at that time. He therefore made his way hastily to the Control Room. It turned out to be SG5 making a premature return. They had been scheduled to conduct business with a people to exchange weapons, but apparently all had not gone according to plan. Since people now found themselves without their gods, others were moving in to profit from the fact. Before SGC humans had arrived, others had been charging much higher prices for weapons. According to Teal'c, their goal was to impose themselves on the population and grab power through the people's dependence on them.
Meanwhile, Daniel was explaining to Teal'c that the tablets ought to be placed in a precise order to form a sort of code or map. In the left hand corner of each tablet was a different sign every time and certain sentences were missing beginnings or endings. In total there were thirteen of them, which was not logical given that they were supposed to form a square, which meant that three were still missing:
"Doctor Kovach must have forgotten them and didn't search hard enough," Daniel remarked.
"Indeed. The planet's inhabitants may have hidden them or placed them in safekeeping, given that they were too primitive to understand the text," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, there's no doubt of that. I wonder how they're placed?" Daniel pondered, "we can try to translate them and then classify them based on the words or translations," he said, regarding the inscriptions intensely.
Teal'c was trying to comprehend some things and remarked:
"Daniel Jackson, look at these symbols. Could they not be those used on the Stargate to dial an address, this could be..."
"A gate address, of course. It's proof."
"And what is this on the lower right-hand side, there is a small marking, observe," rubbing the corner with his thumb, Teal'c traced out a relief just barely visible.
"Yes, it's so small, it looks like a point. How did you see it?"
"When my finger passed over it, I felt a form there," Teal'c responded.
"But it really is very small. I should ask Sam to see if she can make enlarged images, so we can see what it represents ", Daniel said, handing the stones to Teal'c.
"I will go immediately."
When Teal'c arrived at Colonel Carter's office, he found the door ajar. He knocked and then entered. He saw that she was engrossed and using her abilities to study the circuits of an object triggered by O'Neill's having touched it before. She was waiting for her computer to give her the results of the analysis, something she always did to determine that an item was safe to examine before going ahead with any further investigation.
"Colonel Carter," he said, lightly bowing his head, as was customary among the Jaffa.
"Oh, Teal'c, it's you," her attention taken by the results of the analysis which had just finished.
"Doctor Jackson would like you to scan these tablets and enlarge the images for his research."
"Sure, set them down there, it'll take one or two hours," she said, distracted by a screen which described the different physical phenomena of a new planet. She would often find herself studying more than one phenomenon at once given that missions had doubled since Anubis' destruction.
Two hours later, Teal'c returned to Daniel's office with the tablets and photos in hand where he found Daniel in his reflections.
"It doesn't mean anything," Daniel said, lifting up his glasses in frustration, by which it was clear that he had not yet succeeded in solving the mystery.
"That is certain if they are not in the correct order," Teal'c retorted amusedly.
"There should at least be some sense in it based on the elements I've already translated. The sentences just don't go together; they talk about the sun and then about an object used to make bubbles."
"Perhaps these will help," Teal'c said, passing the photos in his hand to Daniel.
"Yes, thanks," he said, taking the pictures, "I did at least manage to come up with a translation for the title: QUIATUS, the Ancients."
"In that case, I shall take my leave of you," Teal'c said, backing his way out of the room.
Though amused, Teal'c knew that Daniel would end up figuring out the translation and the solution to the enigmas he faced, even if Daniel got excited when speaking about the Ancients. According to what he had already discovered, the value of this discovery was priceless. The plaques indicated where the Ancients went after they left Earth as well as the methods needed to construct certain machines and vessels as well as how to operate them. He thought of these new discoveries which would doubtless entail new problems and, of course, new adventures.
End of chapter
This chapter has been translated from French to English by Jamie Melly (jamiemelly88). Thanks