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In fire forged

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Prologue: Hard Contact – Earth

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Part 3

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5 March 1997 ES /Earth Standard/
Cheyenne Mountain
United States

O'Neill spent the way to the mountain in silence, only interrupted by the rhythmic, almost mesmerizing noise of the helicopter's engine and the occasional bit of conversation between the pilots. During the short trip, he ran all kinds of scenarios through his head, each worse than the previous one.

There were no pyramid-shaped ships on top of NORAD, which thankfully scratched off his worst-case scenario. What he saw during the approach was bad enough. A convoy raced for the base. Judging by the APCs and even a few tanks, it was a National Guard unit. Jack had to give them that much, their reaction time was more than excellent. He could also see a flight of Apaches pass by loaded for bear, probably from the nearby Peterson Air Force station.

This only served to get him even more worried – keeping the Stargate under wraps would be that much harder if possible at all. When the Black Hawk went on final approach, heading for a roll of tents raised near the entrance of the mountain, Jack got a vague idea of how much of a fuck up had occurred. The parking lot near the entrance was a scene of barely controlled chaos.

Ambulances, both civilian and military raced near the entrance of the base to retrieve casualties. Now and then helicopters would hover nearby just long enough to disembark squads of heavily armed soldiers. The troopers promptly ran into the tunnel leading towards NORAD and the Stargate below it. A few of them waited to load casualties, while most of them lifted off immediately. More ominously, there were rolls of body bags to the right of the tunnel. A constant, if a slow stream of troopers carried more bodies out of the mountain.

That was far from it. All kinds of military vehicles, primary APCs, and HUMVEEs surrounded the whole area. At least two companies worth of soldiers aimed their weapons at the entrance. Not a good sign that.

The Black Hawk hovered near the tents. The Master Sergeant unstrapped himself and waved at Jack. "That's our stop, sir. Please follow me." He jumped out, and O'Neill went after him, briefly shuddering in the morning's chill.

The senior NCO led them to the closest tent and exchanged a few words with the fire-team guarding the entrance. Jack couldn't hear them over the roar of the lifting of a helicopter. The ensuring gusts of freezing wind did little to improve his disposition.

"You're cleared to enter, sir." The Sergeant shouted and took a position near the guards.

Jack nodded to the troopers, Army, not Air Force security he noted and entered in the tent.

Inside he found a spartan hastily set up command center - a few folding tables and chairs covered in equipment, a handful of specialists handling communications, and a pair of Generals.

"Colonel O'Neill reporting for duty, sirs!" Jack proclaimed aloud and stood at attention saluting.

"At ease, Colonel." A familiar voice said.

"General West, sir." Jack nodded in recognition.

Just like him, the former CO of the Stargate Project wore civilian clothes, apparently caught off guard by the unfolding disaster.

"This is General Roberts, the current CO of NORAD. He's been briefed of the Pandora's box we left him." West grimaced.

Roberts appeared to be in his early fifties and gave off a vibe similar to that of a REMF, if not quite. He simply lacked the air surrounding combat troops.

"What's the situation, sir?"

"At zero three fifty-nine this morning, the Stargate activated, then these came out." West leaned towards the folding table in the middle and fiddled with a large laptop and turned it around. It displayed a familiar immage.

The Stargate was right there, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Its surface could be barely seen rippling due to the less than stellar image from the camera. Tall, armored figures marched through. Their outfits were much bulkier than anything Ra's soldiers wore, however, the weapons.

"Son of a bitch…" O'Neill cursed. "Those weapons are like the staffs Ra's people had. Just turned into proper weapons." He nodded at the screen. The alien's weapons, if they were aliens because Jack was pretty sure Ra's goons were human, were cut down to be somewhat shorter, had proper grips and sights. Their end, however, had the same bulbous head as the staffs that he was familiar with. As soon as the intruders passed through the Stargate, they pushed switches at the sides of their guns which were invisible on the screen and the ends of their weapons opened glowing with familiar golden light.

Four of those serpent-headed soldiers marched down, followed by a pair of much larger troopers carrying what Jack supposed was a SAW equivalent, on a harness attached to their heavy armor. It was almost like something from a sci-fi movie. Behind those behemoths came two more figures. One wore golden ornamental armor engraved with motives that were unclear on the laptop's screen. He was dark-skinned, bald, with a thin golden cap on his head. As if that wasn't enough, both his lips and eyebrows were painted gold as well. He looked around, sneered, and barked something.

Then his eyes clearly glowed just like Ra's.

"Does that look familiar, Colonel?"

"The eyes obviously, though that's not Ra. He looked like a teenage boy. In the early twenties at best and very young looking at that. He had a slighter build, a bit shorter and from it looked like he was of Arabic descent. Unless he got a new body, and he could survive a nuke blowing in his face that's not him. The soldiers are different as well, however, the weapons are similar. Just turned into proper weapons." O'Neill shrugged. "You could barely hit the broad side of a barn with those staffs at anything but a point-blank range. Those instead look like proper rifles."

"They work like proper rifles too." West grimaced. "Their firepower is like a grenade, just without fragmentation. Those shock-troopers or whatever they are have shields as well. Small arms fire was useless against them. Base security managed to wound one with grenades and relief forces drove off another one with a satchel charge. Their regular soldiers are very tough, however, sustained small arms fire could take them out."

"They've pulled back through that gate…" General Roberts added. "We didn't drive them out. They just left after facing somewhat effective resistance. They took a few of my people alive, dragged a few bodies as well as weapons and examples of our technology. We're still securing the base. They've left explosive traps behind."

"You've faced them or something similar before, Colonel. I need your thoughts. Both the Pentagon and the President are considered collapsing the whole mountain on top of the Stargate if it comes to it." West continued.

"Conventionally or with a tactical weapon? You've read my report, sir. If Ra wasn't bullshiting us, the Stargate's material can enhance explosions. I'm not sure what can happen if we detonate a nuclear weapon or even a sufficiently powerful conventional charge close enough to the gate. My recommendation is that if it's at all feasible to retake the gate and physically block it."

"That has been my recommendation as well," West said with a somber expression on his face. That's why we've got everyone we can spare push towards the gate, despite the traps."

"Sir, merely sealing it might not be enough in the long run," Jack suggested. He had a lot of time to think about it, besides this particular conclusion was kind of obvious. "Ra had at least one space ship. Whoever struck us might have more." He glanced at the ceiling of the tent and the sky above it.

"I'm sure the Pentagon has taken the possibility under advisement."

"This might be an opportunity to capture technology and prisoners, sir," O'Neill suggested. "The gate is a bottleneck. While the primary danger is the enemy slipping in a tactical weapon, anything short of a tactical weapon or properly set up charges might leave the gate itself open with enough space to deliver such a device. We have to retake it." O'Neill repeated.

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Part 4

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5 March 1997 ES /Earth Standard/
Cheyenne Mountain
United States

Jack wasn't entirely sure how he ended up leading a platoon of weekend warriors down the endless corridors below

NORAD. Almost all tunnels were virtually the same, by design – gray concrete walls and pipes. For some reason, most underground facilities he had seen were chock full with pipes of all shapes and forms, most proudly displayed either near the ceiling or the ground, twisting and turning all around the place.

Fifteen levels down and the place was all shot up. That was admittedly not new. Back in the day, Jack did get to storm a few underground facilities. He left some corpses in his wake in there too.

Those places weren't full with bodies, and pieces of bodies of US soldiers. Much less, American soldiers fallen in their desperate bid to hold down an alien assault. Two hours after he arrived at the mountain, the constant stream of soldiers policing the dead hadn't been enough to make a dent into the slaughterhouse. The deeper they got, the worse it became.

If it wasn't for a relatively large quick reaction forces left in place since the time the Stargate Program was active, NORAD would have fallen. As it was, the facility held, barely, mostly because the aliens decided to pick up as much as they could and leave when the resistance they faced never quite collapsed.

The price for such a 'victory' was heavy. Hell, O'Neill couldn't recall the last time the US military lost that many people. They fought wars with less casualties, damn it!

They passed through a few intact corridors only to reach another hastily assembled defensive position. Burned out and scattered pieces of desks and file laid strewn all over a long corridor. Most lights were out with only a handful of emergency red lights bathing the area in their red glow.

A few medics were busy policing the bodies, or what was left of them. The stench of charred flesh, burned wood and plastic was particularly strong and nauserating in this area.

A subdued explosion echoed from the lower levels, prompting the soldiers to pick up their pace on the way down.

More concrete corridors and more mangled bodies followed. A damaged light blinked, staggering Jack and for a moment he was back on the alien planet he condemned. His ears rang with close range gunfire echoing in the surprisingly acoustic walls below the pyramid. Tracers and golden plasma lit up the dark corridors. Bullets bounced off dark, almost black armoured form raining sparks all over the dusty floor. Ferreti kept firing at a huge shadow which moved faster than anything that large had any right to.

Then Jack was back under the mountain. His body marched on autopilot, jogging towards the next stairway. They had to make their way down the long way, because every single elevator within the mountain was either totaled by the fighting or demolished as a precaution in order to slow down the enemy. The same was true for sections of the various stairways leading down, which ended up demolished by either high-explosives of plasma fire. That as much as anything might have prompted the aliens to leave – getting reinforcements up would have been hard, especially considering how large and presumably heavy their heavy troopers were.

Even that small respite had been bought with blood. The charred, twisted and broken stairways stank of scorched flesh and boiled blood. Squads of soldiers were busy dragging bodies and debris away in order to clear the way as well as they could, while more troopers were busy pilling up sandbags and fortifying the area against another push from below.

Jack was among the first of his makeshift unit to rappel down, even while a group of combat engineers arrived behind them to begin restoring the stairways. At the same time, demolition experts rigged whole sections of the mountain to implode upon anyone who attempted to fight their way to the surface.

On the way to the Stargate, Jack kept an ear for the chatter of the units that already made their way below. Between sweeping all the levels for hostiles, dealing with mines, dealing with the casualties and establishing defensive position, the mountain swallowed close to a battalion of infantry. Most of them were busy on the upper levels. The lower they descended, the worse the devastation became.

There were more bodies here, often left where they fell untouched save to confirm that they were dead. Ocassionally, Jack and his troops passed by a hastilly established defensive position manned by nervous soldiers. A few times they had to get out of the way of medics carrying wounded to the surface and better medical attention.

The way down felt like an endless journey through hell. As they got closer and closer to the Stargate and the advance units pushing towards it, Jack found it harder and harder to keep his head straight. The flashbacks from Abydoss plagued him more often.

Jack saw Sergeant Trask empty a magazine into the back of an alien, while Ferretti used the distraction to flank the bastard. Ra's elite guard shrugged the 9mm rounds from the SMG as if they were raindrops and whirled around in the blink of an eye. Trask barely managed to get into cover behind the corridor's corner, however it didn't matter. A bolt of plasma shaved off a large chunk of rock and the Sergeant fell screaming. Ferretti came to a skidding halt by diving below the unwieldy staff of the alien. From his prone position he emptied a magazine into the lightly armored thighs and bare legs of the alien. The huge bastard fell screaming and flailing in an attempt to get to Ferretti. The Major didn't bother reloading but instead grabbed his sidearm and continued shooting Ra's soldier.

Jack tore himself from the flashback breathing hard. The last thing he wanted to see again was that other bastard coming from the shadows and slamming an armored foot in Ferretti's back, shattering it.

They reached the level above the Stargate and could hear the advance units bellow, when a different, painfully familiar sound reached Jack's ears. The gate was activating.

"We need to get to the Stargate right now!" O'Neill snapped and sprinted forward, while calling General West.