Chapter 10 - Queen, Allies, Research
SGC Level 1 - Cargo Loading Dock C
"Any idea what's in the crate?" the delivery driver asked.
"Nope. No idea. And we don't get paid to ask those questions," the second backup driver replied, making a mark on their clipboard and showing it to the Airman ready with the pallet jack.
"Thank you, gentlemen," Airman Louis said, adding their signature to the paperwork before returning the clipboard. Then they used the pallet jack they'd brought with them to move the crate into the cargo elevator, thankful it was small enough to not need the use of the crane down the missile shaft.
-| A new line has appeared |-
PX8-987 - Hanka - Triage Center - October 16th 1997
"Well, the results are back, and I have some bad news. The samples my team collected show the entire area is contaminated. It's in the water and soil," Doctor Fraiser said.
"And that's bad, right?" Kahue asked.
"Yes, it means the entire area will need an extended project to clean everything up," Sean said.
"I'm not sure where we'd begin with a project like that," Carter said.
"Ah yes, containment is a little beyond us at this point. Though we can at least use standard sterilization procedures and disinfecting sprayers in the gate room to keep this from spreading. The lucky part, so far, is that the bacteria doesn't seem to be airborne. Though it has shown the ability to survive in a variety of environments. it's a gram positive bacteria, and the infection process greatly resembles an unholy mix of Cutaneous Tuberculosis and Yersinia Pestis," Doctor Fraiser continued.
"Yersinia, that's scarlet fever and bubonic plague, right?" Captain Carter asked.
"Correct. From the external appearance I might have made the assumption that this was a normally harmless earth native bacteria that someone had inadvertently carried through on their shoes. We already know it's possible for normally symbiotic organisms to learn undesirable traits and become a problem. However, the way the healing pod reacted indicates this isn't the case, it was able to highlight persistent and extensive signs of genetically engineered changes to the bacteria," Doctor Fraiser continued.
-| A new line has appeared |-
PX8-987 - Hanka - Village - October 16th 1997
"You have quite the competent team of first responders," Kesh said, interrupting the colonel's thoughts.
"Huh? Oh we do alright for ourselves," O'Neill said, he'd ducked out of the triage center part of the way into Fraiser's briefing after being assured that the plague wouldn't manage to circumvent their protective gear.
"I have no complaints. I'm actually feeling somewhat superfluous in spite of my own medical qualifications. Between your Doctor Fraiser's staff and the medical pods the Nox brought along, the triage center appears to have all the hands it needs," Kesh said.
"Is that a request to join me in searching for more villagers?" O'Neill asked.
Kesh tilted their head, but was interrupted by a melodic tone indicating their field computer had received a notification. They activated the holographic display in their gauntlet to examine the alert.
"Shame I did not load the extended Asgard identification files. I was not expecting this level of interaction with old friends, and I have no idea which of the Asgard are traditionally in charge of the Rothery or the Sleipnir," Kesh said before answering the communication request.
A hologram flickered into existence above their wrist, shifting from the log file interface to a video feed window, and what appeared to be a classic 'Roswell' grey alien with large eyes in a large head on a tiny body appeared in front of them. O'Neill had to take a moment to try and process that, almost missing the beginning of the discussion.
"Honored Furling, your presence is unexpected but welcome. I am Heimdall. My companion Hermiod and I stand ready to assist," the apparent-Asgard stated.
"Your assistance is most welcome, Heimdall of the Asgard. You may call me Kesh," Kesh replied.
Heimdall nodded. "Hermiod has set his ship to guard the system from further incursions, and I have already configured my transporters to begin teleporting those affected for stasis and treatment. May I enquire as to your companion?"
"I believe he introduced himself as Colonel Jack O'Neill, but indicated a desire to be referred to as simply O'Neill. He is of Terra, though I suspect there is more to his heritage. Something about him reminds me of certain friends of old, and he carries the most intriguing of devices."
"Now that is interesting. Well met, Colonel Jack O'Neill. I am, as you hopefully noted, Heimdall."
"Heimdall, right. Any relation to Thor?" O'Neill raised an eyebrow.
"Indeed. Thor is the Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleets. Kesh, I will beam down a supply of transponder tags for the bodies that don't register to my transporter sensors. If you will excuse me, I need to monitor the progress of the medical systems," Heimdall stated simply, there was a flash of light that revealed the indicated bag at Kesh's feet, and then Heimdall cut the connection.
"The voice says female, but I have no idea if I should be applying human expected norms to an alien race like the Asgard," O'Neill confided after a moment.
"The voice does say female doesn't it. In this instance your instinct is correct, the Heimdall line is female, and of course, since I know it will probably come up, Hermiod is male," Kesh replied with obvious amusement.
"Speaking of, I'm unsure about..." O'Neill trails off motioning to the suited figure and their complete lack of clues.
Kesh laughed. "My native language has some sixteen different terms that regularly fail to translate, more if you include combinations. I'd try to teach you the terms I prefer for myself, but your vocal system is incapable of generating several of the sounds required and you'd likely damage your teeth to generate one of them. You can stick to the indistinct third, they, or refer to me as you wish. I will not take offense."
O'Neill cringed. "Sheesh. And I thought that learning languages that apply one of two genders to everything was annoying. Sixteen or more would be ridiculous."
"Luckily, we don't apply the terms to items for which they have no meaning," Kesh replied.
Heimdall and Hermiod didn't waste time. Their transporters were already at work even before the communication with Kesh, rapidly identifying living plague victims and moving them into the transport buffers.
Typically Asgard teleporters would not have had the capability to hold a subject in transit over an extended time frame. For safety reasons the majority of Asgard transporter systems just weren't designed for it.
However, medical ships like Heimdall's made use of the technique to serve as emergency stasis units, and could store arbitrarily large numbers and coordinate with unmodified transporters like Hermiod's to increase the capacity and throughput of the system. Their goal now was preventing any further deaths and providing safe storage of the unfortunate few that had died and were now beyond recovery. Some of whom would need to be manually located by teams on the ground.
"What are you guys up to?" Daniel appeared, having stayed till the end of Doctor Fraiser's briefing.
"I believe we were just about to carry out the task of looking after the dead and those who may yet be saved, but are far enough gone to no longer register for transport," Kesh replied.
"Sounds about right, we'll search there first," O'Neill said, pointing to one of the houses that didn't have one of the orange ribbons used to indicate it had been checked yet.
They found a body within the house and Kesh reached out with their handheld scanner to evaluate them. The sad part of this event was how hard it had hit the oldest of the community. Kesh stood, shaking their head. They proceeded this way through another three houses and found a few young villagers that functionally appeared to be dead, but Kesh said they still had enough of a spark of life that they were still just this side of life and could hopefully be revived.
"Another too far gone," the Furling pronounced over the latest in the long line of villagers, and the body disappeared in a flash of light. "I hope we are not overtaxing Heimdall's systems," Kesh said. The tag they'd left letting the ship know not to send the body to one of the medical pods.
Eventually, when they were finished with their grim task and the area had been cleansed, the remaining villagers would be returned with their dead so they could perform the culturally appropriate last rites.
The part O'Neill appreciated most about their new Asgard friends and their ships in orbit was how quickly they'd dealt with the Goa'uld ship he hadn't even known was there until it exploded. He wondered again what it had been doing there and if they had anything to do with the plague.
"The remote just buzzed at me again. Just a moment." O'Neill extracted the device from the pouch. "I still don't know what this is saying exactly, but that's the word that showed up when we put the first patient in the pod, and I think that's the word for the stargate. So I'm assuming this is something related to the stargate and quarantine procedures."
"If I may?" Kesh asked, holding out a silver coated hand.
"Sure," O'Neill handed the remote to the Furling.
"Yes, you're making good progress with the language. It seems someone is trying to circumvent the quarantine and dial out. They have accessed the dialing console's internals," Kesh said, returning the device.
"Lieutenant Fischer, report," O'Neill said into his radio. "Have you seen anything odd near the stargate?"
There was no reply and O'Neill was getting a little worried.
"I will ask Hermiod to scan the location of the stargate," Kesh reassured Colonel O'Neill.
"Hermiod? Heimdall? Like Thor?" Daniel seemed a little less than enthusiastic.
"I see you're already aware of the Asgard as well, Daniel Jackson. That is good," Kesh said.
"Just Daniel please," Daniel said. Kesh simply held up a hand, over which the holographic image of one of the Asgard appeared.
"My ship detected the access violation alert from the dialing console before it went offline. As a matter of course I performed a more in depth scan. It seems there was a cloaked Goa'uld host attempting to circumvent the quarantine lockouts. I have beamed them up, as well as the human that was in a guard position nearby. The human appears to have been knocked unconscious. Since the dialing pedestal is not responding, someone will of course need to go to the dialing console in person to determine if there is any damage and enact repairs," Hermiod said, and O'Neill could hear the difference between Heimdall and Hermiod's voices, with Hermiod just having a more masculine voice.
"That's suspicious," O'Neill commented.
"Suspicious indeed. However, I have not been authorized by the council to handle interrogation of Goa'uld hosts. If the Furling representative wishes to trouble themselves with extracting information from our guest they are welcome to have them," Hermiod replied with a slow blink.
"Perhaps when we have finished cleaning up here," Kesh replied.
"Very well. The timing of this call is fortuitous, however, as Heimdall estimates that we will be completed processing the remaining villagers through our medical systems within the next two hours. Once a final sweep of the village has been completed we can focus the full efforts of our transporter systems on cleansing any remaining examples of this bacterial agent from the environment. At that time I would be happy to host you all aboard my vessel while the work is completed," Hermiod said, his hologram winking out of existence with the closing of Kesh's fist.
"Huh, definitely a male voice there," O'Neill said.
"Let us go check in with the rest of your team before we examine the dialing console," Kesh said.
"We can probably just radio Carter and have her take care of it," O'Neill said, grabbing his radio. "Though if you'd like to help her then I won't complain."
-| A new line has appeared |-
SGC - Level 12 - Secure Storage Room
Captain Helvetia Thrace sauntered into the storage room where Hathor's sarcophagus was tied up inside the shipping crate.
"What have we here," Thrace muttered, trailing a finger along the rough plywood and wincing as she caught on a splinter. "Damn. Harry had better be right about this being something good."
The visiting captain on loan from Peterson grabbed the pry bar off the nearby shelf and shoved it between two of the boards before working it around the crate. She ended up working her way around the thing twice before she'd loosened the entire top enough to lift it away. She winced as the plywood top slid to the side and fell off with a resounding slap against the concrete floor, hoping nobody had been close enough to hear it.
Captain Thrace let out a low whistle at the golden sarcophagus once revealed. It was covered in colorful ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs and intricate carvings, though the view was incomplete as it had been wrapped in heavy duty wire reinforced cargo straps. Helvetia laughed at the though of the sarcophagus having its own mummy wrappings.
"Such a pretty box to be bound so crudely, I wonder just what is inside," the Captain muttered. She searched the storage room, and at the far end of the room she located a set of bolt cutters that she grinned at.
"Better be quick, I've only got another ten minutes before security resets that camera feed," Thrace said to herself after glancing at her watch, before she started cutting the bindings.
As she clipped through the last strap at the base of the sarcophagus, there was a wisp of fog that slipped through the top covers. With a sudden ponderous grinding noise, the two halves of the cover split down the middle, shifting on the pivot point. The Captain grimaced at the unwanted noise.
From the depths of the container, an elegant hand arose. Captain Thrace stared avariciously at what she assumed to be a mere bit of jewelry, even as she backed away from the unexpected hand. She was unprepared for the burst of light from the focusing gem. Hathor's other arm gripped the side of the Sarcophagus as Ra's former queen lifted herself into a sitting position still holding the golden stream of light from her kara'kesh on the visiting Captain.
"Who dares," Hathor spoke in the dual tone voice of a Goa'uld symbiote demonstrating its control over its host as she sat up. She looked around the room still holding the Captain enthralled under the power of her kara'kesh before returning to the idiot that had released her. Something seemed to lift out of the girl's forehead into the device and then back.
"Pathetic," Hathor said after a moment's examination and intensified the beam of energy being emitted, scrambling the Captain's brain.
-| A new line has appeared |-
PX8-987 - Hanka - Stargate
"Good news, I don't think she broke anything," Carter said, having laid out all of the crystals on the access panel next to the DHD. "Though like most of the network, I can't imagine that this has had a proper maintenance cycle in quite some time."
"Agreed," Kesh said, holding a hand over the crystals and allowing their scanner to work.
"I should be able to have everything put back together in a few moments," Carter said, working through the control crystals still within their sockets and verifying their placement on the diagram on her laptop. Frowning, she moved to get a look at one in particular, then plucked it out of its slot. "Kesh, could you scan this one please?"
Carter held out a blue crystal that didn't look like it should be damaged at a first glance.
"Interesting, there's a hairline fracture in the second submatrix," Kesh said, allowing the light of their glove to play over the control crystal before handing it back. "It should be fully repaired now, though it would not have prevented anything from working for at least a decade. Just out of curiosity, how were you able to detect that flaw?"
"There was some slight discoloration from stress-induced birefringence," Captain Carter tilted her head looking over the crystals again, "It shows up as a rainbow-like effect where the structure has been stressed or fractured, but only when viewed through a polarizing filter or lens. Our isolation gear includes polarized lenses designed for reducing glare and reflections, though I also have some handheld filters in my kit as well." Carter examined another crystal she'd pulled while talking, "Huh, this one looks damaged too."
Kesh accepted the second crystal, scanning and repairing it as well, "Fascinating."
Having already found two flawed control crystals, Captain Carter decided to check each of the remaining crystals for stresses, and found another two that Kesh fixed for her in short order. Then she pulled up the diagram she'd made the last time she had access to the inside of a DHD, and used the reference document to socket all of the control crystals back into the appropriate locations within the dialing pedestal.
The large red power crystal was the last one to be slotted back into place, and the DHD cycled through the lights before blinking a cycling pattern of glyphs to indicate it was still in quarantine mode.
"Excellent work, Captain Carter," Kesh said, after running a diagnostic to verify everything was in working order. He was about to say more but was interrupted by the chime of the communicator in his suit.
"We have acquired enough data for the transporter biofilters to process the area around the settlement and remove any remnants of this disease, if you would like to move the remaining recovery operations to Hermiod's ship. I will begin the procedure once Hermiod has notified me that everyone is onboard," Heimdall said over the communicator in Kesh's suit.
-| A new line has appeared |-
SGC - Level 19 - Secondary Armory
Hathor looked around the room full of primitive weapons with a sneer. She'd lucked out and a male she could enthrall had been down the hall from the storage area her Sarcophagus had been placed into, but she'd wanted him to lead her to proper weapons. Not this primitive garbage, especially when her thrall admitted that there were far more females than she could expect to subdue present and very few males she could enthrall.
Worse, her thrall had a communication device that had informed him that the woman who had freed her had been found and that the few males present were to isolate themselves to avoid being enthralled themselves. She could no longer trust that the path back to the Sarcophagus was safe, but the Chaapa'ai was just a few levels further down. She'd just have to risk the trip. Luckily, her thrall believed he could move them much closer without being seen by the camera systems installed in the hallways.
-| A new line has appeared |-
Hanka Orbit - The Sleipnir - Hermiod's ship - Multipurpose Lab
"Hermiod, right? Nice digs," O'Neill said, looking around the room aboard Hermiod's ship. The group from the clearing by the stargate were the first to transport up, and Hermiod was standing behind a curved console covered in lines and norse runes that O'Neill was judging for aesthetics and usability.
"Greetings. Please wait while I bring the rest of the teams up," Hermiod said.
Kahue leaned over to O'Neill and hissed in his ear, "how the hell do you guys just go from 'scientific expedition' to 'emergency medical situation' like toggling a light switch?"
"I told you the day isn't over yet," O'Neill said, not turning away from watching the diminutive grey alien moving the smooth white control stones across the console.
Hermiod ignored his guests, focused entirely on the controls in front of him. Their patience was rewarded as the remaining teams of humans and Nox appeared in a flash of light, including one unexpected addition of a healthy young girl.
"Curious," Hermiod said, additional musical alert tones sounded around the room, and a cone of light appeared from above illuminating their unexpected guest.
"Who's this?" O'Neill asked. Everyone was now looking directly at the unexpected child, who was standing there frozen in place.
"I did not expect anyone but your respective teams to be actively moving. She appears to have been following one of the search units and was tagged alongside them."
"We're probably scaring her. Back up everyone, I think she's going into shock," Doctor Fraiser said, moving to the child. "What's your name?"
The child remained staring blankly into the distance.
"Can I remove my protective gear?" Doctor Fraiser asked Hermiod.
"Yes. The transporter system has removed all contaminants. The environment is sterile and neither of you will harm the other," Hermiod replied.
"How about a bed? She's likely to respond better if we can make her more comfortable," Captain Carter asked as the Doctor started to remove her suit.
"You would know best," Hermiod said, and used the command stones to deposit a newly constructed Asgard model medical bed in a flash of light.
"There, now. Everything will be okay," Doctor Fraiser finished removing her isolation gear and gently lifted the girl, carrying her to the newly constructed medical bed, shortly followed by Captain Carter pulling her own gloves and mask off. "How about a blanket?"
Hermiod needed no further prompting and tapped a few more times on the console causing a silvery blanket to appear folded on the bed. With another tap of the command stone on the control console a shimmering privacy field extended around the area of the room with the girl and the two human women working on comforting her. Seeing that the human doctor had the child taken care of, for now, Hermiod turned to the Nox expedition.
"Greetings, Obenne," Hermiod nodded.
"Well met, Hermiod," Obenne replied.
"Heimdall informed me that this was a class four plague event. The Furling is in their encounter suit. The humans are in their isolation gear. In fact, several of your people are clearly using loaned gear from the humans. But you and several of your contingent are not attired similarly."
"Our isolation fields are sufficient," Obenne said, and Hermiod's eyes narrowed.
"Sufficient indeed. It's my supreme displeasure to inform you then that the transporter biofilters cleaned sufficient levels of contaminants to restart this plague when you returned to your home, and worse those contaminants were removed from beneath your isolation fields," Hermiod replied.
A moment later there was a spark of light and Obenne's isolation field failed, shortly followed by three other fields across the team.
"I can practically hear you thinking it, Kesh. Please, do not say it," Obenne said in a tone that indicated he was clearly starting to rethink his life decisions.
"The planet's magnetic field expresses several oddities, likely an interaction with the blackhole that might have created an accidental deconstructive interference with our fields," the Nox standing to Obenne's left said.
"And that is why physical barriers are always preferred. You never know when something might compromise anything less," Kesh nodded.
-| A new line has appeared |-
SGC - Level 28
Hathor marched confidently through the corridor to the control room. Every now and then she used the concussive shock wave generator in her karakesh to blast any stray personnel they encountered out of her path. As expected from the primitive communication device that had warned the base of her presence, all of the guards they encountered were female.
The access door to the control booth was locked, but it seemed they hadn't had the chance to revoke her thrall's access card, and he dutifully let her into the room.
The females within hesitated unwilling to harm the male thrall that was between them and her. She however had no compunctions and quickly blasted the three with her karakesh tossing them away from her with negligent ease. Regrettably, she was running out of patience to be gone from this place and didn't want to spare the time to punish these impudent females beyond knocking them out cold.
As she looked around the primitive systems with a sneer, her eyes alighted upon the one piece of equipment that looked out of place. She wondered how such primitives could have come up with their own custom interface with the stargate's systems, though this one was not constructed in the same manner as the rest of the equipment. Nevertheless, it would do. Ra's former queen ran a hand through her hair while considering what possible addresses she could try. And, she hoped would still be under the control of one of the more sympathetic system lords, perhaps Bastet or maybe even Hekate. She could hear the echo of the defense forces in the corridor and the alarm was giving her a headache.
Finally making a decision, she tapped her chosen address into the dialing console and only paused long enough to verify that the stargate had accepted the command. She was pleasantly surprised that the stargate connected quickly and smoothly the instant she accepted the address as complete. She spared a moment's glance at the alien dialing device considering if she could steal it before deciding that it would take far too long to extract from the rest of the equipment and turned away reluctantly. Besides, it was a known annoyance that disconnecting dialing devices tended to close the Chaapa'ai.
"Come, I am ready to leave this vile place," Hathor said to her thrall.
Her thrall obeyed her command. A few short steps, and a swipe of the thrall's access card at the blast door, and she was standing before the stargate on the ramp.
The goa'uld queen styled after the Egyptian goddess of sex, drugs, and music turned and gave the room one last look of contempt before taking her shendyt in her hands and leaving through the open gate. The thrall tried to follow, but it seemed someone in the control room had managed to wake up in time as the iris slammed closed before he could leave.
-| A new line has appeared |-
Hanka Orbit - Hermiod's ship - Observation lounge
Hermiod had moved everyone except for Doctor Fraiser, Captain Carter and the girl to the observation lounge, in recognition that the eclipse would be an interesting event to watch.
There were smart displays along the windows showing a variety of sensor readings and a magnified view of the event, suitably dimmed for ease of viewing.
"Did we tell you what we were originally here for?" O'Neill asked.
"I don't believe so," Obenne said, having calmed down from his initial snit over the isolation gear.
"Our little observatory down there is still set up to record as much as we can get of the accretion disk of the black hole during the solar eclipse. As well as the following transit of the black hole," O'Neill said and pointed out the window at the star and its partner in the slow dance of celestial objects.
"Ah, I'd forgotten about this old art project," Kesh said, startling Obenne who had not sensed them approaching.
"Art project?" O'Neill asked, having spotted the Furling's approach but not hiding his grin at Obenne's reaction.
"Yes, it's not everyday you see a blackhole that small, most of them are pretty big, but this one is maybe three to six times the mass of the steller reactor in your home system, I could get a more exact measurement if you really want. Ah, it's good to see people appreciating the classics even if it means The Assembly is likely to push forward with maintaining it for additional cycles now instead of dismantling it safely as originally planned," Kesh made a slurping noise as they extracted the clear fluid from the round construct they held in their hand.
"Carter would probably appreciate the precision," O'Neill said.
"Then I'll see about making sure she has a suitable copy of the scientific data available in a compressed format suitable for your slower and smaller storage devices," Kesh offered.
There was a subtle beeping noise and Kesh looked down at their wrist computer, at the same time O'Neill spotted Obenne and Hermiod examining their own devices.
"What's that?" O'Neill asked.
"An alert from the Alliance meeting place. There's been an unexpected visitor, from Terra, and it looks like the medical systems flagged them as being a potential risk and beamed them into stasis," Kesh replied distractedly.
"Alliance Meeting place?" O'Neill asked.
"Pretentious place our four races set up way back when we first managed to iron out the diplomatic issues and finally come to a mutual understanding, there's a bunch of tests involved for anyone not a member. Speaking of... Hey, Obenne, is it your people handling that alert?" Kesh leaned back, aiming that question towards the Nox.
"How did you know about the alert? We only just set those up and hadn't configured them to send to everyone after having to correct a few oversights recently," Obenne said.
"I only just arrived in the galaxy. The meeting place of the alliance was my first stop and seeing there was a convenient set of local alert channels set up, I of course added myself to all local alerts," Kesh replied. "It was pleasantly surprising to find out I did not need to perform any maintenance on the meeting place when I arrived."
"I always remotely connect to the six local facilities and request alert updates as well," Hermiod added. "Otherwise we would not have known to come here."
"You're talking about the place with the treaty room and the crazy holographic elements display aren't you," O'Neill said, putting the pieces together.
"That's the place, yes," Kesh replied.
"What is the official name for that place anyway? I think we designated it Heliopolis," O'Neill asked.
Obenne, still in the vicinity of the conversation, caught the last question and interjected, "...it has several overly-pretentious official names. Most of us just refer to it as the meeting or gathering place, only adding mention of the alliance when that would be ambiguous."
Kesh scoffed and made a swiping gesture, "Forget that. I think I like the name Heliopolis, if I got the mental impression of the place name correct? Disregarding that dreck about Ra, the location was historically important as a center of diplomacy, learning, and knowledge. I'm registering it as that."
Several of the more pretentious members of the Nox present seemed taken aback by the sudden declaration, though they remained speechless. Though Hermiod appeared to have been busy at his console. As she spoke up, "Heimdall and I both concur, and Thor has sent me approval to register it as such in our systems as well."
"Getting back to the topic at hand, I believe the Nox will be sending a team to investigate, yes," Obenne said, ignoring the rest of the byplay over the naming conventions.
"What's this about Heliopolis?" Captain Carter asked, having left Janet to work with the yet to be identified girl.
"It appears someone arrived there from Terra unexpectedly," Kesh replied.
"Ah, that likely means someone ran afoul of the new security on the dialing program. I set it to silently redirect dialing attempts to all but a few whitelisted addresses if they aren't approved by select personnel," Carter said.
"Oh, then that's probably Hathor," Daniel spoke up.
"Hathor?" Hermiod asked shortly followed by several other people present.
"Yes, as I was saying, it seems some of our archaeological teams recently unearthed her sarcophagus on earth. We had her contained in the sarcophagus last I was aware, but that obviously changed. While we're on the topic of sharing things, I've been looking for a chance to mention that we may have accidentally broken Thor's hammer on Cimmeria to free Teal'c after it nabbed him," Daniel continued.
"We should warn you. The Goa'uld sarcophagi are an imperfect technology, and more of a headache than they're worth. I recommend sticking to the healing pods," Ahndar of the Nox interjected.
"I've only had the one experience with them, and now that you mention it, in hindsight I'd prefer one of the medical pods if at all possible," Daniel muttered.
"It may be annoying that you only mentioned this now, but emergencies do take priority over lesser concerns," Hermiod said.
"When we are finished with this alert, I would not mind talking with you further regarding your security system. There are codes you can use for these sorts of events, and alternate destinations as well," Ahndar said to Captain Carter.
"Did your team want to be the ones handling that alert then?" Kesh asked Obenne.
"It would probably simplify things," Obenne muttered.
"Get some actual isolation gear first, or better yet only send a team of females," Daniel said.
"I can to some extent understand your first comment, but the latter seems odd," Obenne said.
"Hathor has some sort of pheromone ability that she can use to enthrall males, and I'd hate to discover that the Nox are not immune," Daniel replied.
"Where's all this coming from," O'Neill hissed at Daniel.
"That meeting I had with the general and his guest before while you were showing Kahue's team around. We just didn't get the chance for me to let you know what was going on in the rush to deploy," Daniel replied.
"I have cleared the immediate area around the gate of plague materials, you are free to proceed with your task when you wish," Hermiod informed the Nox.
"While they're doing that, how about setting up that isolation cell where I can begin my questions of your captive goa'uld?" Kesh asked.
"I will have them in a cell and ready for you momentarily," Hermiod nodded.
"Speaking of, I am curious where this goa'uld was hiding while we were there, have you checked for any hidden complexes?" O'Neill asked.
Hermiod tapped a few commands on the console, "Very insightful, O'Neill. There is indeed a hidden complex underground within the forest outside of the village. It is shielded and difficult to spot, but the transportation rings are very obvious and noisy by nature as a connection point, and I can interface with it."
"The day isn't over yet," Kahue said quietly to O'Neill.
"Exactly," O'Neill replied with a grin.