SGC Stargate Operations - October 8th
The gate room was finally cleared of the hazards left by the NID team, and they'd been safely removed to a secure storage room, one designed to keep everyone on the other side of the door alive in case of a leak. Meanwhile, George Hammond had just finished with his last set of calls to spread the love around regarding the unauthorized hazards that had shown up unannounced on his metaphorical doorstep. The FRED was being decontaminated and would be confiscated for use by the SGC on future missions, and they'd just reached the six hour mark meaning it was time to call the specialist team and see where things were at, if they were even still alive after the appalling lack of self preservation that had been demonstrated.
Hammond dropped an antacid into his mouth and made his way to the control room.
"Dial it up, Walter," Hammond said.
"Yes, sir," Master Sergeant Harriman started the process, "Chevron one encoded."
As he typed into the computer the gate started spinning, and then the Chevrons lit up faster than he was dialing, he switched modes smoothly and triggered the iris closed before hitting the alarm and announcing, "Unscheduled off world activation."
Which of course resulted in SG1 strolling into the control room as the final chevron lit up and the wormhole shimmer of the puddle reflecting on the back wall appeared.
"Well?" Hammond asked.
"Receiving signal, IDC received, it's Colonel Makepeace, sir," Walter announced.
"Open the iris," Hammond ordered.
Walter placed his hand on the scanner and triggered the command to open the iris.
A few tense seconds and then Colonel Robert Makepeace appeared to a cheering gate room.
"Quite the welcome home," Colonel Makepeace said, unlatching his vest that had several items hanging off it. His pants were torn and a little bloody, and there were spatters of something unidentifiable across his face.
"Welcome back, you'll need to go through a decontamination shower and medical, and then we can debrief as soon as Doctor Fraiser clears you, glad to have you home, Colonel," Hammond said over the intercom.
- A new line has appeared -
"They had what," Robert Makepeace asked in disbelief as he blinked away the spots from the doctor's pen light.
"The really terrifying chemicals," Jack replied from the other side of the isolation glass.
"That would make sense for me to be in here," Colonel Makepeace said, as he moved behind the privacy partition and dropped his uniform into the resealable bags provided.
"And a nuke," Jack added almost as an afterthought.
"And you didn't lead with that?" Makepeace asked.
"The nuke was safely disassembled. The chemicals were one corroded seal away from everyone on this base spending the next day dying in agony," Jack said dryly.
"You should be fine, this is just precautionary measures," Doctor Fraiser said calmly from her positive pressure suit, "Your vitals are all normal and I dare say you're in better health than when you left."
"Thanks, I should've had a dozen scrapes and bruises from all the exercise I got with those maniacs, but I think there was a healing beam or something as I left. Oh, and can you get the stuff I was carrying through decontamination asap?"
"I've got it running through now, Colonel," the doctor replied.
Colonel Makepeace walked through each step of the decontamination process before pulling on a clean basic duty uniform and following the doctor out of the iso room.
"I'll have the equipment delivered to the briefing room in a few minutes, Colonel."
Makepeace nodded, "I'd like that pair of boots back if you could as well. They're comfortable."
"I'll see what I can do."
Jack caught up with him in the hallway and the two colonels walked together to the briefing room.
"How did it go," Hammond asked.
"Boring at first sir. You're going to want to make copies of the video from my pack. The first hour was spent using some sort of hacking tools to try and do something to the dialing pedestal and gate until the DHD appeared to shut down and reboot several times, wiping any changes they'd made in the process. After that it was fairly slow progress through the tunnels and some truly horrifying sacrificial tactics. They were paradoxically cautiously reckless, sir," Colonel Makepeace shared.
"How so?" Hammond prompted.
"They were extremely cautious in checking every inch of the tunnels but indiscriminate with their use of ordinance, not using any discretion with when and how they used their grenades. Specialist Byrd and Brandt didn't seem to care if it was clear to use them and our first fatality was the result of one such grenade. They didn't seem to hold much stock in my advice sir, and I was told to stay back and collect the loot like their pack mule."
"The second room was where we picked up these," Makepeace picked up the container holding three volleyball sized orbs with markings that split them down the middle and had various lights. "They're some kind of shock grenade. I made use of that one with the two red indicator lights, Captain."
Captain Carter had selected one of the shock grenades from the container and was carefully rolling it around to see all the sides.
"They bear some resemblance to the Tok'kal," Teal'c interjected. "The Tok'kal are reusable grenade type weapons, when activated and thrown into a group they will render those caught by the discharge unconscious," Teal'c elaborated. "This one would appear to have a design more in line with the weapons of your world though."
Carter had her toolkit out and was poking at the orbs at this point. "There's a standard barrel jack it looks like, I think these should be rechargeable. Don't ask me what the battery cell is made of though." Carter said, having made a cursory examination while Teal'c was talking. "How are they activated?"
"The procedure is quite simple, you gently pull the two hemispheres apart along the equatorial line until you hear it click, and then twist to set the desired timing, when you are satisfied you press the hemispheres back together. If you change your mind, twist until the indicator is back at the zero point as shown by the lights and then push it back together," Teal'c explained, while Carter made judicious use of her toolkit to disassemble the one she was holding.
As the casing came apart a small safety switch popped up with the removal of the outer shell. The lights along the edge that she assumed to be the timer lights all turned red and faded as they drained some internal capacitor.
With the power being clearly offline, she pulled the halves apart and noticed there were three stops with a noticeable click at one and two and some very helpful pictographics.
The first stop had a little stick figure getting shocked with lightning bolts, the second stop had a skull and crossbones, the third stop had a red triangle with spots where an internal light mechanism would have presumably backlit the pictograph if she hadn't disabled the power.
On the other half of the device opposite the timing indicator lights was a set of six lights which were currently dark. She assumed that was some sort of charge indicator.
"So, you got a bunch of shock grenades," O'Neill said.
"Those and another three pairs of those night vision goggles you got with the upgrades," Makepeace pointed to the goggles in the bin.
"Also, this showed up with the first of the shock grenades." Makepeace pulled a pamphlet out of the box with the rest of the loot. It had comical drawings of people in uniform using explosives badly with giant red X symbols over each violation.
"Promise me you'll make sure the safety pamphlet gets to the idiots that sent that team," Jack said.
"This one showed up in the last room." Makepeace pulled out a thick book with full color images, it resembled the air force's own manual on explosives with pages of blocky alien text and the last section had images from the NID team with a shiny red banner over one corner that seemed to indicate these were newly added additions to the manual.
"And a copy of the manual," Jack said.
General Hammond snorted.
"I also got a nice pair of boots that the doctor has with the rest of my uniform in decontamination," Makepeace said.
"Boots?" O'Neill asked.
"Yeah, mine acquired some unexpected holes while I was diving for cover from the maniacs and their grenades, nice and grippy too. Could've used a new pair of pants while I was at it," Makepeace replied.
"Huh," O'Neill said.
"They were successful in clearing a decent amount of the rooms at unacceptable rates of attrition. I think we lost a man in every other room, and the last one resulted in the last two blowing each other up and barely missing me, that's when I turned around and headed back, sir," Makepeace's statement was calm but you could tell he was rattled by the complete lack of self preservation that had been on display. "I don't think they expected their grenades to pack as much of a punch as they did, sir. If they left any of them behind that can be examined without setting them off, I think you might find they have some Naquadah incorporated into them.".
"You think they increased the yield by adding some of our limited supply of Naquadah to the grenades?" Carter asked.
"Given that last explosion? That seems likely," Makepeace said.
"Sir," Carter said.
Hammond sighed. "SG1, you can go in the morning. Captain, go examine those orbs with the R teams. Get some rest Colonel, it seems I have more calls to make."
"I think we can duplicate these, except for the power supply, but we might be able to substitute one of the liquid naquadah power cells from a staff weapon in a pinch," Carter said, putting the disassembled shock grenade back into the container with the rest of the equipment.
"As long as we can take at least one of them with us," Jack O'Neill said.
"Colonel," Carter nodded to Robert picking up the items and leaving the briefing room for her lab.
- A new line has appeared -
"Jack!" Daniel barreled through the door a moment later, "you need to see this."
Daniel brandished a VHS tape and file folder.
"Someone dialed the gate in 1945," Daniel said, popping the tape into the VCR and turning on the connected TV.
Jack watched as Daniel excitedly motioned to the image of scientists from 1945 manually pushing the ring around the gate with an old generator.
"It made a connection, see?" Daniel said.
"I see," Jack said.
"We have to go there, that address," Daniel said.
"I'll add it to the mission list," Jack said.
"I mean we have to," Daniel continued.
"Daniel, I already said, I'll add it to the mission list, we're going back to the Smelly Kale place in the morning though," Colonel O'Neill said.
"Kalach Shal'tek," Daniel automatically corrected and then realized what Jack had said. "Oh, well okay then. I'll put this stuff away and go make sure the flame thrower is ready for tomorrow."
"You do that," O'Neill said.
- A new line has appeared -
Dungeon Planet, Gate Entry room - October 9th
Carter and Daniel were the first ones through, and while they were looking around the room for signs of the damage that the team of supposed specialists had done to the place, Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c arrived through the gate.
There was a very quiet almost imperceptible sound of stone against stone as the Colonel arrived, and Captain Carter turned just in time to see the Oval stone relief above the entrance to the tunnel slide open to reveal one of those blocky symbols similar in appearance to the ones on the DHD.
"Hey Daniel," Carter said, pointing at the oval. "Was that always like that?"
Daniel looked up and examined the symbol in the oval, "I don't think so, that looks like it could be numerical in nature."
Daniel raised his camera and snapped a picture of the oval.
"This complicates things," Jack said.
"What does, Sir?" Sam asked, looking towards Jack.
"The sun angle is all wrong, and there wasn't a river out there last time," Jack said motioning towards the opening to the outside.
"What?" Captain Carter asked.
"Are you saying we aren't in the same room as last time?" Daniel asked.
"The only proof is that outside looks wrong, and I don't have a picture from last time to compare things to, but yes," Jack said.
Daniel took a few tentative steps out of the gate room onto the surface of the planet and looked around.
"Jack, there's a plume of smoke," Daniel said.
The rest of the team joined Daniel outside examining the entrance in the side of the mountain, about a mile off there was indeed a plume of dark smoke rising.
"Weird," Jack said.
"Indeed," Teal'c said.
"Back inside, campers. We have things to test," Jack said, and turned around heading back through the shimmering field that barely tingled as he passed through.
"You brought an RC Truck?" Carter raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.
"Don't sound so incredulous," Jack replied as he finished double checking all the addons he'd had the team back at the SGC install. "We did say that having some sort of advanced warning on what's ahead would be nice, didn't we? It was cheap and didn't require a month's advance notice or any approvals to bring it through security. Not to mention, easily modified to mount that remote camera on."
Jack grinned and propped open the portable TV receiver linked to the camera mounted to the bed of the little RC truck.
"Look at it go," Jack smirked and manipulated the controls on the remote to send the truck careening into the tunnel.
"It has potential," Carter grudgingly admitted from where she and the rest of SG1 were watching the tiny display on the remote. It wasn't quite as good as it could've been, but then it was just a few off the shelf components, thrown together haphazardly until they had something that was good enough to demonstrate the concept; and as she had just admitted, the potential was there.
In addition to the normal joysticks for controlling the throttle and turning the truck there was another set of joysticks rigged to the camera gimbal so it could be adjusted to look in a different direction than the truck was going.
As the little truck entered the dark cavern, O'Neill tapped a button on the heavily modified remote and the video washed out for a second until the camera adjusted. O'Neill explained that he'd snagged some of the new bright white LEDs that R was testing. Two of the powerful new LEDs were mounted to either side of the camera behind focusing lenses casting a spotlight on whatever the camera was looking at.
The team adjusted their gear and followed the makeshift mini-MALP into the caves, the oval stone relief above the dark entrance shifted as the symbol on the far right updated with a new block of stone.
The bugs in the first room, while somewhat mobile, seemed to ignore the truck. Or at least they didn't appear to be all that interested in the RC truck as Jack quickly took it through a basic search pattern of the room before returning it to the entrance.
They'd already managed the first room once without any special tricks on their first visit, but Carter was eager to test the new shock grenades and followed Teal'c's earlier instructions pulling the two halves apart, paying close attention to the pictographs she already knew about from the shock grenade she'd disassembled back at the base.
She pulled it past the little stick figure getting shocked with lightning bolts, straight to the second stop with the skull. She wasn't ready to risk the third stop which had a red triangle with lots of blinking lights around it. She felt the second click slide into place and twisted the separated halves to set the timer revealing a blinking series of red lights going around one edge of the split ball.
On the other half of the grenade was a set of six lights in green with two blinking between red and green. She assumed that was some sort of charge indicator, two to be used? The best way to find out was to use it though.
They already had a visual confirmation of the threat locations from the mini-MALP, which made it easy to plan for the one large group of bugs in the room. So, she took careful aim and tossed the grenade past Jack's new toy into the room before retreating to watch from the RC truck's camera with the rest of the team. A few short seconds later the last light on the ball disappeared and a violent cloud of electrical energy expanded from the orb sweeping through the room.
The bioluminescent roots throughout the room glowed brightly as they absorbed some of the energy from the shock grenade giving the room an eerie blue glow.
With the largest group twitching and dead on the floor to the grenade, Daniel's flame thrower and the new upgraded night vision goggles, they made short work of the remaining bugs in the first room.
Captain Carter retrieved the shock grenade she'd used and noticed there was a button on one side, she pressed it, and six dots of light appeared next to the button, four green and the last two red.
"It looks like they have six charges, the stun mode uses a single charge at a time, the kill mode uses two charges, and there's a third mode that I assume is destroy-everything-explosively with as much charge as you can generate mode, sir," Carter explained her findings.
"Sweet," O'Neill said.
"Indeed," Teal'c nodded.
While the team was catching their breath, Carter pulled a comical looking assemblage of electronics from her pack and a roll of duct tape. The item in her hands looked almost like a cartoon bomb that had a thick copper coil attached on one end. The captain found a spot behind the camera on the RC truck after a moment's observation where she felt safe anchoring her contraption.
"What's that?" O'Neill asked, having spotted her work when she placed the RC truck onto the next section of path deeper into the caves.
"Well, I had some trouble getting that shock grenade I disassembled back together after disassembling it outside of the lab, sir," Carter said, sheepishly.
"Carter," Jack said in faux disappointment.
"So, I figured out how to hook the shock generating components up to a power supply and remote, sir. If we have to use it, the RC Truck is already toast at that point." Carter shrugged.
"Well, if you're sure," Jack said.
The loot this time was a few replacement magazines of ammo and two new devices. They looked like they should slip onto the barrel of the P-90 and had a bridge part that would rest just behind the flashlight mount on top of the P-90. Additionally, there was a fabric tool case that held a variety of diagnostic probes that looked like they'd attach to the crystals in a DHD or one of the Goa'uld systems.
The colonel examined the new kit and found a switch on one side and a trigger mechanism that could pop out. The switch had two indicators under it, the same as the first two options of the shock grenade.
He experimentally fired a single shot into the corner of the room, a crackling blue ball of light formed at the tip that shot off in the direction he'd aimed and impacted a bundle of roots which sucked up the energy glowing brighter.
He attached the new item to his P-90 and left the selector switch set to the skull being shocked and fired a round.
The ball of light formed the same as before but seemed to catch the bullet and stretched into a speeding tracer of light that impacted another bundle of roots with a crackling pop spreading little arcs of plasma in a sphere around the impact point.
The colonel let out a low whistle of appreciation.
"That reminds me of the way a Zat'nik'tel weapon fires, the added penetration from your chemically propelled bullets should prove most formidable," Teal'c said.
"Indeed. What would really be useful though, would be something that can be less lethal for Daniel's bleeding heart, I'm sure he'd be more comfortable if he could shoot someone and only stun them," Jack said.
"Seriously?" Daniel shook his head exasperatedly.
"I wouldn't mind more of those shock grenades," Carter said.
The diagnostic probe kit found its way into Carter's pack, while the attachments were installed onto their P-90s.
"Alrighty, campers, ready for the sneak preview of the next room?" Colonel O'Neill asked, retrieving the impressively modified collection of levers, buttons, and thumbsticks that had been assembled to control all the added features of his RC Truck from his pack.
"You know, Jack, this little thing would probably be very handy for our regular missions," Daniel said.
The team gathered around Jack to watch the little truck as it barreled down the passage and into the next room. It was immediately apparent that this cavern held far more bugs, and they were much more active in their movements around the room. They got some really close up views of the bugs as several of them examined the interloper truck momentarily blocking the camera's view, though the bugs didn't seem to be all that concerned with doing anything more than being a nuisance. Despite the interference they still got a good look at things...including the ambush bugs hanging out on webs over the entrance, and they would need to be dealt with quickly.
Jack wasn't paying attention to the ground as the truck toured the room and he accidentally landed it in the pit where the loot normally showed up, which was just deep enough that the wheels couldn't quite lift it back out. So, it was with a grimace that he readied himself for the coming fight with the bugs, concerned that the flamethrower would damage his new toy. His worries seemed unfounded though as Daniel expertly guided the blasts of flame from the contraption away from the truck. Even when shooting clear across the room over the truck. The flames did a wonderful job in the Colonel's opinion, causing the webbing throughout the room to practically vaporize, dropping their prospective ambushers into the fire from both their P-90's and the flamethrower.
When the room was finally declared cleared with judicious sweeps of their flashlights and some careful blasts of flame from Daniel, and the last of the dead bugs had dissolved as normal, the team pulled some folding tripod type stools out of their packs and set them up in a circle to examine the loot that had appeared.
There were three new canisters of fuel for the flamethrower amidst the now expected P-90 magazines. The new ammo magazines were distributed, and Jack pulled out the controller again.
"See, and we didn't even need your special surprise," Jack smiled.
"Yet," Carter replied with a smirk.
"Indeed," Teal'c nodded.
"Ready to see what the next one holds for us?" Jack asked.
"Oh boy," Daniel deadpanned.
"And now I really want to add a tape or hard drive for recording if we make that a regular piece of our kit," Carter said.
Beyond the room, there was an immediate and obvious change in behavior from the bugs as O'Neill's makeshift reconnaissance vehicle progressed. Every few meters down the passage, another bug dropped from a hidden web in an attempt to attack, but O'Neill had the throttle on full and the bugs kept missing.
The team grimaced as they got their first view of the third cavern, which had enough bugs that he knew they would end up having to basically blanket everything in flames. Not to mention the bugs had definitely decided that the RC Truck was no longer welcome and were advancing on his poor baby instead of leaving it alone so they could get a good look at things
"Oh, I think they just took out the lights, Carter, if there's a time for your little surprise it's now," O'Neill said unhappily.
Sam Carter looked gleeful as she pulled her own, if much simpler, remote out of a pocket and pressed the single button on it.
Everyone winced as the high pitch whine from the electronics in Carter's surprise echoed down the hall, followed by the relief from the whine as a muffled crackle indicated it had discharged.
The team advanced, shooting down the previously revealed ambush bugs in turns, until they reached the entrance to the third cavern. They were greeted with the shriveled up and smoking mass of the bioluminescent roots that encircled an impressive char pattern on the ground. In the center of the zone of destruction was the merrily burning and melted remains of Jack's truck, a ring of fried bugs surrounding it.
"Impressive," Jack said, a little grudgingly at the effectiveness of Carter's surprise.
"And that wasn't even using the original power source, just something I cobbled together from the batteries we had on base, sir. I imagine a fully charged one of these shock grenades would pack a punch, sir," Carter said.
The rest of the room was still teeming with activity and Jack opted to motion for everyone to stay back from the entrance for him to toss one of the fragmentation grenades he'd snagged from the FRED the specialists had left in the SGC before their ill fated delve.
There was a loud bang and bug parts came flying through the opening.
"Daniel, you're up," Jack motioned for the team's normally mild mannered archaeologist to make with the flames already.
Daniel happily obliged, spreading the burning fuel around the room, reducing large swaths of the bugs to a crisp.
"Time to try out that new zapper attachment," O'Neill pressed the buttons on the side of the attachment on his own P-90 and opened fire.
Carter on Daniel's opposite side opened fire with her own P-90, and the difference was electrifying crackling bolts of blue accompanied the rounds out of the chamber of the gun spreading little blue tendrils of electricity around into the bugs around where they impacted splashing the damage effect across entire clumps instead of just a few bugs at a time.
Teal'c had stepped up with his staff and was adding to the outpouring of damage chewing through the pests infesting the cave.
With all the upgrades and the addition of the flame thrower the team made short work of the room until there weren't enough close bugs for Daniel to hit in a single blast; so he switched to his side arm slaying the remaining bugs with a few well placed shots.
As usual the dungeon absorbed the corpses and simultaneously dropped some items into a circular depression in the middle of the room.
O'Neill wasn't happy that his RC Truck had been taken with the rest of the dead things until Daniel called him over to the loot.
"Hey Jack, check these out," Daniel said.
Colonel O'Neill spun on his heels and walked over to the expected loot pile immediately noticing the new additions: a round basketball sized orb, and a second tok'kal orb presumably to replace the guts of the one that was destroyed with the RC truck, and a rectangular piece of kit that reminded him strongly of a handheld Sega Game Gear he had his eye on for a Christmas present to himself. Only this had a much bigger screen and a different layout of buttons.
"I see we got a replacement for the shock grenade guts you used. Does that mean I get a replacement for my RC truck?" O'Neill said.
The handheld lit up when Daniel handed it to O'Neill, showing a menu of strange symbols.
"What do you make of this," Jack held it out so that Daniel could see the symbols.
The archaeologist happily took the device back and started recording the unfamiliar language into his notebook, occasionally tapping the handheld device to shift the menus and see more words.
"Fascinating, it's definitely not a writing system I'm familiar with, but the structure seems almost familiar," Daniel replied, handing the device back.
"Yeah, but how do we turn it on," O'Neill asked, fiddling absentmindedly with the remote.
As he said the word 'on' one of the menu items on the display flashed and the second and larger of the two orbs that hadn't been identified yet started humming and then lifted off the ground.
"Some form of antigravity?" Carter said, now enthralled with the shiny new tech.
"Did I do that?" O'Neill asked.
"It would appear so," Teal'c stated.
Daniel made grabby hands for the remote control that O'Neill grudgingly handed over.
"I think you got it right, Sam," Daniel said, and rotated the device to show her the display with a view from a camera somewhere within the floating orb.
Daniel experimentally pressed on the thumbstick and the metal sphere started to move forward.
"Well, that seems to work," Daniel said and handed the controller back to O'Neill.
O'Neill grinned like a kid at Christmas and started toying with the buttons until he was confident he had a grip on how the floating orb moved.
"Time to try the new and improved reconnaissance drone," Colonel O'Neill said.
"Whenever you're ready," Carter said.
O'Neill suddenly stopped and looked up at the hovering camera probe, "What are we going to call it?"
"Kino?" Daniel suggested.
"Kino?" O'Neill asked.
"It's a European word for film or cinema in multiple languages," Daniel offered.
"I don't hate it," O'Neill said.
"Indeed," Teal'c said.
"Let's see what this kino can do," O'Neill said, piloting the kino into the passageway out of the room.
The room they'd just cleared, the third of the caverns, seemed to have been the largest of the rooms as the next one was smaller, and the kino had a surprise for SG1 as targeting reticles appeared on the display dancing around and identifying each of the bugs. It took longer for the bugs to take notice of it as well, and once they did, they had a harder time reaching it. But eventually at least one managed to land on the thing. On the right hand side of the remote one of the buttons lit up with a pulsing blue light.
O'Neill took the hint and experimentally pushed the button.
A tendril of electrified plasma danced across the viewport, very obviously blasting the bug that had managed to land on the kino clear off of it and chaining off that bug into the next nearest four bugs.
"Now that's more like it," O'Neill cheered, continuing to look around the room. "Now we can see where everything is without them taking out our cameras."
It didn't take long for the team to form their plan of attack for this room which turned out to be far less involved, and within a few minutes they were proceeding through the passage to their next goal.
With one eye on the view of the room from the Kino, and the other on the team, they quickly took their places at the entrance.
Carter pulled the original shock grenade she'd already used in the first room to the second stop and twisted it to set the timer. She then tossed it in the direction of the biggest cluster they'd spotted from the kino and watched with the team as it landed dead center as the last timing light blinked off unleashing the electrified plasma cloud that tore through the bugs in the room. The roots lit up again, absorbing energy from the grenade blast with only minimal charring from the roots closest to the center where the plasma from the grenade was the strongest.
"Nice work, Carter," O'Neill said.
"Sir," Carter replied with a subtle grin.
There were only a few bugs left ambulatory on the edges of the room, and the team quickly cleared the room. When the loot appeared this time, it seemed as if the dungeon had listened to Jack's earlier musing there was a more advanced side arm that retained the basic shape of the nine millimeter gun but had a beefier extended barrel with a selector switch that would change firing modes.
It had a removable battery pack integrated into the handle next to where a standard clip could be loaded, and another charging port. The metal looked more like stainless steel and there were visible screws and seams where the item could be taken apart.
"Sweet," Jack said, picking up the new weapon and looking it over.
Daniel made an appreciative noise as he accepted the proffered loot from O'Neill, and slipped the new and hopefully optionally lethal gun into the holster for his service weapon and the service weapon into his pack after making sure it was unloaded.
Finally, there was a white case with a blue heart circled in red. The heart symbol was a stylized human heart with the vein and artery connections and not the two lobes and pointed tip that would've been familiar to an earth team but likely not to anyone else.
"Not so sweet is that," O'Neill pointed to the white case.
"Why would that be," Teal'c asked.
"At a guess that's a first aid kit, and none of us are injured, which makes me expect the next room is going to be a pain."
"Good point, sir," Carter said.
"I'm guessing I should probably swap to one of those fuel canisters with the odd mix for the flame-thrower," Daniel said.
"Oh yeah," O'Neill agreed.
The team went through and checked their equipment while O'Neill piloted the kino down the passage that gradually widened into a larger room. Eight ominously glowing sacs of webbing intertwined with the bioluminescent roots hung from the ceiling.
At the far end of the room, a larger bug was crouched over the beginnings of an egg sac, its tail was three times the size of the rest of the body and likely swollen with eggs. The queen bug reared up and hissed with vestigial wing flaps fluttering in a threat display at the Kino. Two of the legs had metamorphosed into something resembling hands and it picked up two eggs from the ground around it and flung them.
"Ah crap! Definitely a boss room next," O'Neill said, working the controls to swerve out of the way of the improvised projectiles.
The thrown eggs impacted the wall, the shell disintegrating revealing two new juvenile bugs.
The path into the boss room didn't have any real option for cover like the prior passages had where the entrance to the previous rooms was slightly smaller giving the team cover before they fully entered. Instead, it just widened gradually until the tunnel was more room than tunnel.
Carter examined her shock grenades, not wanting to have to fully enter the room to use them and not enjoying the idea of not having cover to stand behind. Not seeing much of an option, she mentally calculated the distances and how long it'd take for the grenade to roll and how hard she'd have to throw it bowling style to get it into the cave before it timed out.
She used the last of the charge on her first grenade, setting it to kill as she tossed it into the room. It rolled about halfway into the room before it activated, where the cloud of energetic plasma and lightning expanded to little effect. Only what few eggs had exposed surfaces unprotected by the webbing tying them to the ceiling were affected, and it didn't seem to spread beyond them, aside from supercharging the roots causing them to glow brightly outlining the egg sacs against the gloom.
The momentum of the grenade carried it onward past the activation point and into the queen bug where it was swatted at high speed into the Kino. That caused both to go careening towards opposite walls, the shock grenade being halted by one of the partially damaged egg sac webs smashing through several eggs.
Carter wasn't pleased with the lack of damage and how the queen had simply swatted it away, so she adjusted her timing and opted for the third setting of the grenade to dump the full six charges into the emitters even if it meant the grenade would be damaged beyond usefulness. She took her stance, activated the grenade by closing it and bowled it perfectly down the middle of the passage into the room and right up to the where the queen was ready to smash down when the timer ran down.
The shock grenade whined loudly as it discharged everything it had in a violent explosion. The energy cloud saturated half the room, overwhelming the protective effects of the egg sac webbing nearest to the queen bug and severely damaging the webs at the trailing edge. All the eggs within the cloud of energetic plasma were fried nearly instantly and the queen bug screamed in pain, though much of the energy was grounded out through the protective properties of the queen bug's carapace.
The bioluminescent roots spread throughout the room glowed brightly as they absorbed some of the energy while those roots nearest the explosion shriveled, and all the roots directly within the plasma cloud were basically ash in the wind.
"Now that's the sort of big honkin space gun I like seeing," O'Neill crowed in delight.
"Holy Hannah," Carter said.
"Did the Kino even survive that?" Daniel asked.
O'Neill checked the remote which was showing static and shook his head sadly.
"Damn," Daniel said.
"Indeed," was all Teal'c managed.
The queen bug in the other room was still alive and angrily screeching its presumed vengeance upon the interlopers.
"Okay, Daniel you're on flames, Teal'c every shot goes down range into that queen bug, Carter and I will be working on shooting down those egg sacs that survived and then additional fire at the queen where possible," O'Neill brought his P-90 up and toggled the addon zat attachment.
Carter followed his lead, while Daniel readied the flamethrower between them. Teal'c brought his staff weapon up to his shoulder in the standard Jaffa precision mode and the team proceeded into the boss room.
The first of the egg sacs within range of the flame thrower ignited to the squeals of dying bugs and the crackle of burning web as Daniel walked the flame across the room ahead of the team.
Colonel O'Neill and Captain Carter used the extra visibility from the flames to rapidly detach the connecting webbing holding the four other egg sacs in the room that survived their initial assault and then started sending bullets charged with zat energy down the hall like room into the queen bug while Daniel continued sweeping the flames across the ground in front of the team and occasionally into the air to fry any eggs the furious queen was flinging at them.
Between the initial two grenades killing any bugs that had been out of the eggs, Daniels expert use of the flame thrower, and the zat charged bullets going into the surviving egg sacs, the room was clear of the smaller bugs and the team was now able to focus their full efforts on the beastly bug queen in front of them. Eventually their massed firepower overwhelmed the protection of the queen's carapace, splattering her insides and cooking the remaining eggs in her enlarged abdomen, and brought an end to the bug.
The glowing roots at the edge of the room were almost bright enough after all the activity to make the night vision goggles unnecessary.
"Clear," O'Neill called.
"Clear," the other three confirmed. Their flashlights cast beams of bright light around the room. The system sensed the end of the action and started reclaiming all the dead bugs including the Queen. As the massive bug disappeared into the floor, two replacement shock grenades and a new kino sphere were revealed as though the queen's carapace had been hiding them the entire time.
Additionally, next to the three orbs was a stack of plastic-looking material the exact size and shape of the armored ballistic inserts they used in their tactical vests for stopping bullets, the material was extremely light and flexible but didn't look like anything they'd seen before.
Carter gathered the new materials, placing the stack of inserts in her pack for analysis back at the SGC while O'Neill waved his remote over the new kino hoping it would activate with similar ease to the old one, which it promptly did.
- A new line has appeared -
At the back of the queen bug's chamber, instead of another darkened passage as had become the norm for their exploration, there was a solid door that slid into the wall at their approach. The room behind the door was brightly lit just as the gate room was from lights high in the ceiling. To the right of the opening was a pedestal beyond which sat a sliding door. To the left, two openings in the wall with paths that turned at right angles blocking the view beyond the bend in the path reminiscent of the style of entrance used for restrooms at more recently constructed major airports. Directly across from the opening they were looking through was another sliding door.
There were signs here. In the same strange block form language used on O'Neill's new favorite remote.
The walls of the safe room had a variety of interesting geometric shapes and greebles holding backlit panels of multiple colors, the team might have likened them to being similar to the swooping curves on the DHDs only more angular with inset channels about two centimeters wide and three deep outlining each shape, giving the room a very different feel from the caves they'd just left.
The team gingerly entered the room, and lights under and over the pedestal lit up. Daniel had the flamethrower up and unleashed a stream of flames before he'd even noticed his own action. The flames passed harmlessly through the hologram of the man.
"Excellent reflexes, Danny," O'Neill said.
Daniel sheepishly stopped the pointless stream of flames and lowered the nozzle of the flame thrower. As the flames died down, they revealed the image of one of the NID soldiers that hadn't survived the previous trip. He was still in full uniform, though missing most of the gear he'd carried through the gate.
"It's an advanced holographic projection with zero distortion," Carter said in awe.
The three dimensional image of the man turned to face the group as a whole and started speaking. Sounding nothing like the brash man from before. Actually, he sounded rather robotic.
"Congratulations. You have completed the Iratus bug challenge, after two attempts totaling 13 hours. You have set a new record: Queen's room challenge completed in ten minutes forty-eight seconds from engagement of combat, with zero deaths and zero team resets," the hologram said.
"Iratus," Daniel Jackson muttered, scribbling in a notebook.
"Welcome to the safe room. When you are ready to continue the next challenge proceed through the next door. You may return to the Astria Porta directly via the locuum porta behind this display."
"Astria Porta, and Locuum Porta" Daniel Jackson muttered, dutifully jotting these new words down as well.
The hologram winked out of existence with a warbling musical chime and a laptop sized device appeared on the pedestal where the hologram had been.
"Okay, that was more than a little creepy," Sam Carter said.
"Indeed," Teal'c said.
There was a control pedestal to the side of the hologram platform with several gel style buttons on it, and what looked like space where additional buttons could be installed but hadn't. Daniel let his curiosity take over and he approached and tentatively pressed the first button on the leftmost side, and then the center button.
There was a warbling musical note as the hologram shimmered back into existence with a different NID soldier this time. The first part of the message had been left out this time, but the hologram repeated the second message.
"Welcome to the safe room. When you are ready to continue the next challenge proceed through the next door. You may return to the Astria Porta directly via—"
"That dialog was definitely pre-recorded. Just the image was changed," Daniel said, pressing the button again, cutting the hologram off and replacing it with another NID soldier .
"Well, that happened. But, why would it use the image of one of the NID idiots?" O'Neill asked.
"Perhaps an attempt to show a familiar face?" Carter suggested. "If it knows they came from Earth like we did, anyway."
"I wonder if that means the NID team is still alive, just held somewhere further in," Daniel said, idly toying with the buttons and cycling through NID team members.
"Unfortunately, there's only one way to find out. Any idea what that thing is?" Jack O'Neill asked.
"It looks like a more compact version of the DHD," Daniel said after looking over the item that had been deposited at the feet of the hologram that was now a Goa'uld soldier.
"I think this would fit in a field computer bag, one designed for one with all the ruggedization options included..." Captain Carter said.
"Did you bring one of those bags?" Jack asked.
"...it's currently being used by my laptop sir," Carter said.
"Kree Jaffa, Chel hol, Avidan kree, cal mah! —"
Daniel pressed a button stopping the hologram of the Jaffa warrior mid speech.
"That was Norren, one of Chronus' former first primes." Teal'c said in surprise.
"And it has a serial port, the system must have figured out how that standard works from the example in my laptop," Carter said.
"Fascinating, I'm sure. Any idea why it would leave one here for us?" O'Neill said.
"Maybe it somehow detected that we aren't using a standard dialing computer?" Carter said.
"I'm not entirely comfortable plugging strange alien devices into critical base infrastructure, Captain," O'Neill said.
"Neither am I. We can still examine it more thoroughly before considering that. If it works better than our current setup, we can just keep it on an isolated system from the rest of the base," Carter replied.
"Are you done playing with that?" O'Neill asked Daniel, clapping him on the shoulder just as he pressed another button.
The hologram shifted again this time a tall lady with dark hair and flowing white dress appeared mid speech.
"...in our overconfidence we were unprepared, the wraith fed upon defenseless worlds until only Atlantis remained..."
In his shock, Daniel accidentally pressed a button causing the hologram to disappear again.
"Wait, go back to that last one," Jack said. But pressing the button only caused a tall androgynous alien with gray skin to appear and begin speaking in a strange language that sounded like someone playing a recording backwards.
"That's archaic old Icelandic, almost," Daniel said. "Or perhaps an ancestral, proto-Indo-European form of Icelandic."
"You know, it managed to talk to us in English but those signs are all in that weird font," Jack said. "Would it kill the people who build these things to include translations?"
"Oh, if only complaining about lack of translations worked," Daniel trailed off as the metal of the signs shifted into more recognizable English words.
"I was going to say that we can't expect possibly-extinct civilizations to use languages we understand, sir," Carter said.
"I'm going to regret this, but we really need to take a peek at what's behind the door. What say you, Teal'c?" O'Neill said, after the team had made use of the facilities and partaken of a snack from the food alcove.
"We have already surpassed my personal knowledge of this place, O'Neill," Teal'c said.
"At least we've got a name for the bugs now," Daniel said, with false brightness.
"Oh yes, because knowing the hologram boy called them Iratus bugs makes it so much better," O'Neill snarked back.
"Also, he called the stargate an Astria Porta," Daniel said.
- A new line has appeared -
O'Make:
"What's this button do," Daniel said, focusing on a control panel next to the hologram platform.
"Daniel," O'Neill started, but Daniel had already pressed the button.
The hologram shimmered back into existence over the octagonal platform, but this time had the form of one of the deceased NID team members. "The use of naquadah-enhanced grenades in enclosed spaces is not recommended." Then flickered right back off.
Daniel presses the button again.
The hologram reappears, this time it's a dark skinned Jaffa with graying hair, "The Goa'uld are not in fact gods, merely up jumped parasites with delusions of grandeur."
"That was the image of my great Uncle Korec, he did not return after his third visit to the caves under the command of Cronus," Teal'c said.
Daniel couldn't help it and pressed the button one more time.
An echoing voice sounded, "A new hand touches the beacon."
"And with that, we're out of here," O'Neill said.