[Stargate] Just Another Natural Underground Site

[Stephenopolos]

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Spoiler: Fanfic Disclaimer

The fanfiction I write is entirely for fun, with no commercial use implied, intended, or permitted. All original copyright holder's rights are acknowledged.

More specifically, as a basic, non-exhaustive disclaimer for main line or omake story elements currently used to date:

Basically, if you recognize it from a movie, comic, book, or other published work, it's owned by the rightsholders for that work. Anything else is my fault.

Reader contributed Omakes may incorporate other elements not listed above, and are otherwise © their respective authors. And much thanks is due to those authors for adding to my and your enjoyment!

Does anyone even read these? Does anyone even care about these?

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This introduction may change as time goes on, as I will answer common questions and address issues here, as well as announce the status of the story should it change. Check here first if you have any queries. I can't promise that you will always find an answer, but I'll steal them from Mp3 and CmptrWz if I have to

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You can all thank CmptrWz for this...

This is fun...

New story!

Someone appears to have escaped containment and been a busy bee...

Oh.

Whoops.

Poor Hammond and the SGC. Ah well, how bad can it get?

:evil:

As is often the way, especially these days due to work and other competing forces, I can't guarantee an update schedule, so chapters will come when they damn well feel like it and not before. However, they will come. There's no way to stop it at this point.

I know. I've tried.

As always, I will say the following, my standard boilerplate for a story:

I'm always open to corrections, typo spotting, math error checking, and all sorts of things like that, and I like hearing ideas about the way things could go and suggestions for interesting scenes. Or even simply discussing the story. Make a good point and I will probably use it in one way or the other if I agree with it.

On the other hand I will ignore demands to change parts of the story to fit your particular likes. This is not in any way meant to be rude, but the first rule of fanfiction is the same as the first rule of life, which is:

It's entirely impossible to please everyone at the same time with anything.​

Trying to do so is an exercise in frustration for all involved and therefore pointless. I would rather concentrate on writing the story rather than arguing about how to write the story, especially as that is a zero-sum game in the first place.

Bear in mind that this is an alternative universe, which means that some of the canon explanations may work in slightly different ways if it made it more convenient for the story. Most are meant to be more or less unchanged, though, so it's not impossible I made a mistake. If you aren't sure, don't worry about asking for clarification, I don't mind at all. I respond well to polite questions and genuine interest in why something happened the way it did.

 

[Stephenopolos]

Just Another Natural Underground System

Chapter 1

SGC Messhall - Saturday September 27th, 1997

"Hey, Teal'c."

Colonel Jack O'Neill caught Teal'c's attention as they relaxed in the mess hall after the mission that resulted in the destruction of Thor's hammer on Cimmeria. "You wouldn't happen to have memorized the addresses of any other worlds that the Goa'uld considered forbidden, would you?"

The former First Prime of Apophis and now member of SG1, Teal'c, paused mid-motion and raised an eyebrow. "There are several, Colonel O'Neill. Three such addresses where the gate was located within close proximity to pyroclastic flows, such that Apophis deemed those three fit only for disposal punishment of unwanted prisoners each with varying degrees of danger. Several where the explorers never returned after it was reported that the dialing devices were damaged beyond repair. The worlds of Sha'khan and Torhanna were declared off limits by collective System Lord decree for what I believe to be political reasons."

"Any you think might be worth taking a look at?" O'Neill prompted.

"Though the Goa'uld have not forbidden speaking of the planet, they have forbidden free travel to the caves of Kalach Shal'tek," Teal'c stoically replied.

"Victory or death?" Daniel Jackson interjected, his linguistics training picking up on the Jaffa's use of a different language and translating it on reflex.

"That is what it means, Daniel Jackson. I had not known it was possible until learning of Kalach Shal'tek, but no more than eight travelers may complete the journey to Kalach Shal'tek at a time," Teal'c replied.

"Oh?" O'Neill raised an eyebrow at Teal'c's statement.

"Indeed. Under normal circumstances, shortly after the eighth person enters, the gate will rapidly disconnect before additional travelers may enter. Any over the eight-person limit who make it through are either sent back without it disconnecting or sent back with an incoming connection immediately with no recollection of exiting the other side when the gate reconnects from the other side," Teal'c said.

"Wait, the gate somehow prevents more than eight people from traveling at a time?" Daniel asked.

"That is correct, Daniel Jackson. The Goa'uld Ares attempted to circumvent the limit by having the Jaffa hold onto each other physically as they passed through the gate. As the last person entered, the entire group returned through what should have been an outgoing connection without the gate disconnecting. I was told it was most undignified," Teal'c said.

"And our gate doesn't have any of these fancy features, Carter?" O'Neill asked Captain Samantha Carter.

"We're still learning about the gate system; I ... I can't say that any of that should be impossible," Captain Carter replied.

Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow. "The caves are dangerous yet rewarding to those who venture within its depths, hazards and hostile beings exist within that challenge any progress deeper into the complex on the other side of the gate."

"Hostile creatures? Wait, you said rewards; what kind of rewards?" Jack O'Neill asked.

"They were not allowed to say as the items were confiscated by the Goa'uld lord that sent them," Teal'c replied. "Apophis was under the impression that the optimal team size to send was a four-man unit."

O'Neill nodded sagely. "And we didn't even need some old cave with monsters in it to learn that."

"And you know the address?" Daniel interjected.

"I do, Daniel Jackson. I was required to memorize it in the event that Apophis wished to mount such an expedition," Teal'c confirmed.

"You get to brief the general on this one then," O'Neill said, picking up the cup of blue jello from his tray.

Some time later, the team gathered in the control room as Master Sergeant Walter pressed the button to send the MALP through the gate.

"So, this Shelly kale place," O'Neill said.

"Kalach Shal'tek," Daniel interjected.

"Right, that, any guesses on what's on the other side?" O'Neill mostly ignored the correction.

Carter shrugged.

Teal'c stoically raised an eyebrow.

"Teal'c said it was the Caves of Kalach Shal'tek, so I'm going to assume the stargate is in some sort of cave," Daniel said.

O'Neill gave a verbal acknowledgement of Daniel's comment and watched as the tail end of the MALP entered the gate.

The monitors in the control room for tracking the process of the MALP through the wormhole glitched, and the blue water-like puddle in the middle of the gate signifying the open connection rippled oddly before the MALP rolled back out of the gate, turned around as if it had entered from the far side.

"Well, that's certainly interesting," O'Neill said.

Carter took a seat at the controls and started typing in commands. "That's an understatement, sir. Our system says the MALP was never sent anywhere, the gate on the other end did something, and this code shows up from the gate on our end before that ripple changed, and then a second signal here as soon as the MALP has completely left the puddle. Sir, I think if I were to repeat these two signals to any gate before it sends a traveler, it would reverse direction and return the traveler to the origin; we'd need to figure out all the signals involved because there's still a bunch of information I'm missing, but this is big, imagine being able to reverse the call direction to extract a team after dialing to them."

"I'm sure that's exciting and all, but the MALP is here and not there," General George Hammond said. "Without those readings, we can't know that it's safe to send you through."

"Captain Carter, can I get a hand? The MALP telemetry just went odd." Master Sergeant Walter Harriman's tone was clearly confused as he pointed to the screen that was supposed to show the feed from the MALP currently sitting on the ramp in the gate room. The video was fading in and out of static, showing some severe interference.

"You're right, Sergeant, that is odd," Carter said, retaking the seat next to Walter at the controls and typing away.

"Airman, go press the power switch on the MALP," Carter ordered one of the men standing in the gateroom over the intercom after a few seconds of work.

"Normal atmosphere, at standard pressure and temperature; ...the feed appears to be coming from somewhere above the gate on the other side," Carter said, rapidly skimming through the information presented.

"A few more adjustments, and there," Captain Carter finished and the video feed adjusted from static to a view of the room on the other end of the connection.

"There's the DHD," Master Sergeant Walter said, pointing out the dialing pedestal on the screen. Though it looked a little different, having a more crystalline appearance.

"I had not given any credibility to the stories of such occurrences," Teal'c said.

"Wait, you knew this would happen?" O'Neill asked.

"No, O'Neill, I did not know this would happen, only that there are other addresses where a similar effect for automated probes was observed," Teal'c replied. "Though the probes did complete the journey unlike this one."

"So can we trust those readings?" Hammond asked as the gate connection timed out and disconnected.

"The data feed from the other side was far more detailed than what the MALP would've sent. The video signal alone was actually much larger than our systems are capable of displaying, so I had to apply several compression algorithms to get it down to something our system could handle. The original signal resolution would probably require a display as big as the whiteboard in the briefing room, sir," Carter said.

"So, you think it's safe then?" Hammond asked.

"Safe enough, we know that the other side does have a certain hostile nature based on Teal'c's information, but the risk seems worth it," Carter said.

"Alright then, SG1, I'll have your mission added to the schedule. See you first thing Monday morning in the gate room, it's the weekend though, so go get some rest or something," Hammond ordered.

Monday morning, SG1 walked into the gate room, O'Neill nodded to the airmen on security duty in the gate room and looked up at the window to the control room.

"Ready when you are, sir," O'Neill called out.

Hammond nodded to Walter to begin dialing.

Six symbols and a seventh chevron lock later, the unstable vortex expanded from the ancient technology at the far end of the room before subsiding into the now familiar blue ripples of the open connection.

"Receiving telemetry, no changes in readings from last time," Master Sergeant Harriman told Hammond as he pointed to the screen showing the view of the gate room on the other side.

"SG1, you have a go, good luck," Hammond said into the microphone that carried his voice into the gate room.

O'Neill saluted and started up the ramp, "Let's go campers."

From the control room, Hammond watched as the team left the SGC and a few moments later arrived in the video feed at their destination and then the gate shut down.

As the gate shut down, the room remained illuminated from lamps in the ceiling overhead and sunlight angling through a wide triangular opening in the wall to the left of the gate, a hazy blue flicker hinted that there was probably a forcefield there where it was wide enough across for two people to stand comfortably side by side as they entered.

Opposite the exit to the outside, and to the right of the gate, was the path to go further into the reported cave complex.

Teal'c had swiftly moved to position himself opposite the stargate where he could observe both openings into the room and the gate for any threat. Daniel was helping Carter as she worked her tablet computer out of her pack ready to start poking at the non-standard DHD.

O'Neill himself started pacing between the two obvious openings into the room.

"Carter, does that look smaller to you?" O'Neill said, pointing to the stargate.

Carter looked up from packing away her laptop and the cables she'd used to interface with the dialing pedestal.

"You're right sir, it does look smaller than standard. I wonder if that's why the MALP was returned. The DHD appears to be part of a larger system and all I've got here are the standard dialing functions," Carter said.

"Teal'c?" O'Neill said, looking at the exit into daylight.

"The Goa'uld know of nothing of immediate worth on the surface of this world, O'Neill. Attempts have been made to access the caves from a ship, but powerful shields prevent access to anything larger than a cargo ship, and the same restrictions to team size are in effect," Teal'c said. "Additionally, if a team was already present through use of the stargate new team members could not be added by ship unless those already present first made their way to the surface to invite them in or the entire team left via the stargate. In which case enough time to reset the caves would need to pass."

"Anything else that's of interest?" O'Neill asked the room in general.

"There's nothing significant here for me to translate, yet." Daniel shrugged. "Just this label on the DHD interface, odd blocky letters that I don't have a reference point for, possibly the word for DHD in the language of whoever built this place."

"Any reason we should expect the differences in the DHD and Gate to prevent dialing home?" O'Neill asked.

"The caves are lethal, but Jaffa that ventured within have returned safely with no concerns over the difference in the DHD," Teal'c replied.

"If we're going to find anything, I think we'll have to proceed further," Captain Carter said.

"I take it that's a vote for going onward then. Right, weapons hot, even you space monkey, let's go," Jack said, and toggled on the flashlight mounted to his P-90. Then, he pulled on his night-vision goggles and took the lead through the dark opening into the caves.

Captain Carter paused to gather a sample of the bioluminescent roots that ran along the walls casting eerie shadows that would've made it harder to see anything clearly without the infrared goggles augmenting their vision.

Above the entrance an oval shaped stone relief shifted as a small block of stone extended from the surface.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

The tunnel twisted out of sight of the gate room and led the team on a gentle downward sloping path into the first room. The floor was a teaming writhing mass of insectoid forms, they ranged in size from O'Neill's fist to small watermelon, with a long whiplike tail and four long segmented arms, two on each side of the bulbous body and two sharp looking pincers at the mouth. They might have shared something with spiders as well because there were layers of webbing coating the far end of the room leading into the next tunnel. High in the middle of the room, embedded into the ceiling was another cluster of faintly glowing roots.

"Oh god, why did I watch Alien before this mission," Daniel muttered.

"I take it these are the hostiles," Jack said.

"Indeed," Teal'c said, readying his staff weapon as the other team members took aim.

"Teal'c, you go for clumps, your staff should splash and hit more than a few at a time. Daniel, watch the ceiling if any of them try to get sneaky and drop on us from above. Carter, take the left, get anything coming close and targets of opportunity. I'll work on clearing the room and the right side. Carter, be ready to switch with me when I need to reload," Jack said.

As if they passed some hidden trigger, the swarm of bugs in the room turned and started aggressively moving towards the team.

"Open fire," Jack called out and pulled the trigger on his P-90 spraying bullets into the cave and splattering bugs across their fellows.

The sharp static of Teal'c's staff charging up warned Jack a split second prior to the bright ball of plasma burning across his vision and impacting into a mass of the writhing bugs wreaking havoc and quickly incinerating the closest webbing. Soon bursts of fire from Daniel and Carter's weapons sounded as they started clearing the bugs that were approaching from the sides.

As the seconds ticked by, Jack felt his P-90 growing warm from the repetitive firing, but the mass of bugs was beginning to slow and then his P-90 clicked empty.

"Reloading," Jack called, stepping back to allow the other three to close the gap.

It only took a moment for Jack to be ready to step back in and then Carter was next to step back, Jack taking over covering the left and center.

Just as Daniel's second service pistol clicked empty the bugs stopped moving, and Jack motioned for everyone to hold fire.

One of the bugs twitched a limb and he used his service weapon to fire a round there and then the cave was silent again. Then the ground seemed to bubble, and the bodies of the bugs sunk into the rock leaving a pristine floor. There were only a few bugs that didn't disappear, now visible as they twitched still trying to make their way to the team.

"I'm guessing I do not want to know what it looks like if one of those gets us," O'Neill said, and used his P-90 in single round mode to quickly dispatch each of the nine remaining bugs.

In the center of the room, revealed now that the room was no longer covered in bugs or the corpses of bugs, was a dip in which sat several new ammo clips for their P-90s as well as what appeared to be a modified set of night vision goggles that, when O'Neill swapped them for his own, seemed to have much higher detail and active light level adjustments that canceled out the bright spot from the beam of light from his P-90.

"What do you make of these," he said, swapping them for his original set and handing the new goggles to Captain Carter.

Carter put the goggles on and started switching between the modes intuitively, familiarizing herself with the vision modes and the way the goggles highlighted the team's heat signatures against the background as well as the higher fidelity of the display inside. Then she examined the outside casing noting the screw locations and after rummaging in her pack she had the case popped open and was viewing the circuit board and sensors.

"These are several generations more advanced than ours but look like they could've come from the same assembly line," Carter said, rotating the night vision equipment to see it from every angle.

"Let's take a break to check on our weapons and catch our breath," O'Neill said after shining his light all around the cavern and determining it was safe enough.

"Alright team, analysis," O'Neill said a couple of minutes later.

"While our bullets and Teal'c's staff worked, they just didn't kill them fast enough or in large numbers, any bigger sized mass and we'd risk being overrun or having to retreat," Carter said.

"I'm curious where the ammunition and goggles came from," Daniel said. "There must be some system that scanned us and manufactured it and then transported it here when we finished clearing the room."

"We may require alternate weapons that can hit multiple targets at once for enemies such as these," Teal'c said.

"I like the way you think," O'Neill said, and started rummaging in his pack.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

The team proceeded carefully down the rocky passageway deeper into the ground, pausing every few steps to burn another section of webbing away and kill a bug that had been hiding in the darkness, cringing at the death squeal.

Bioluminescent moss or some other glowing organic material gave the passage an eerie appearance.

As they turned a corner, they found the passage continued on but there was an opening into a slightly larger cave than the one they'd just cleared.

The team backed up a bit at the colonel's signal and paused to discuss things.

"I suspect that if we have to retreat, we'd get ambushed by that cave if we bypass it here, it's best to attack it now," O'Neill said.

Teal'c merely nodded.

"Same plan as before?" Carter asked.

"Somewhat, I'm going to try this," O'Neill said, pulling out a makeshift incendiary he'd cobbled together from a chunk of C4 and a rag soaked in oil from their cooking supplies.

"Ready?" O'Neill asked.

"Ready," Carter replied.

O'Neill lit the rag and tossed it into the cave as the team shouldered their weapons and started firing.

The improvised incendiary didn't help. It just reduced their visibility and caused breathing issues from the smoke. It did feel like it might be a step in the right direction though since a part of the swarm diverted towards the extra heat source and got burned instead coming towards SG1. The problem was that they ended up needing to go further into the room to keep killing the bugs and lost track of the ceiling and some of the areas out of sight of the door when the room turned out to be larger than it first appeared.

Eventually, they found themselves surrounded on all sides, low on ammo with no room for reloading. The bugs hanging from the ceiling got the drop on them first, one attaching to O'Neill's neck, then another dropping on Carter.

As he fell under the weight of additional bugs O'Neill remembered seeing Daniel and Teal'c standing back to back, Daniel firing his nine millimeter gun into the swarm.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

The team woke up back in the gate room down a few clips of ammo but otherwise unharmed.

"Right, anyone have an idea what the hell just happened?" Colonel O'Neill asked the room.

"If I understand the video game terms used by Airman Patterson. We appear to have been reset back to the spawn point, due to a team wipe," Teal'c supplied.

"That seems new, didn't you say this usually ended up being lethal?" Daniel asked. "Not that I'm unhappy with this state of affairs."

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"I think we need to rethink this one," O'Neill pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his hair.

"Maybe a giant bug zapper?" Daniel suggested.

"Maps, it'd be nice to know what's ahead of us," Carter said.

"Maybe a flame thrower, I don't think that I'd look forward to lugging around the batteries we'd need for a big enough zapper for these bugs. Teal'c? We don't have to stay and try again, do we? I mean, the system won't penalize us or prevent us from returning if we leave now, right?" O'Neill said.

"The Jaffa that attempted the caves and returned safely were able to proceed on further delves into the caves, I believe it should be safe if we return another day," Teal'c offered.

"Good, 'cause I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I want a shower and some equipment changes before we try that again. Carter dial us home," O'Neill ordered.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"Alright, I've read your reports," Hammond said, and motioned for the team to remain seated at the briefing table. "You got overrun, it's only through some fluke that whatever system is behind that place opted to keep you alive and you want to go back?"

"Sir," Carter started.

"Yes," O'Neill interjected plainly. "It's because we returned unharmed that I'm willing to risk it again sir, plus we did get those neat upgrades to our night vision goggles that Carter has the labs working on replicating now. My point, sir, is that I don't think it's a waste of our time."

"It did seem a little like a training scenario with different difficulty levels," Daniel slowly worked around his thought until he reached the conclusion.

"And we did learn, our weapons aren't enough for that kind of scenario," O'Neill said. "That's valuable information right there, sir."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

"So, you want to... what?" Hammond said, taking a seat at the head of the table with a stack of reports.

"We'd like the research teams to put together a few items, maybe authorize a flame thrower?" O'Neill said.

"I read what happened the last time you got near a flame thrower, Colonel, I'm not sure I'm ready to give you a second chance yet," Hammond said.

"Sir, they should be vulnerable to electricity, we can modify an industrial sized bug zapper, hook them up with a portable power supply," Carter said.

"Alright SG1 you have two days with the engineers and researchers," Hammond said.

"About that sir, can I have four days, I've got an idea that needs a trip into town," Colonel O'Neill said.

"Four days then, dismissed," Hammond said.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Four days later, SG1 gathered in the briefing room waiting for permission to proceed.

"SG1, unfortunately the mission is on hold. I know you've been looking forward to this, but I've been given a 'request' to allow a specialized team handpicked by some fools from some National Intelligence Department to try first."

"Never heard of 'em," O'Neill said.

The general shook his head. "I suspect that you'll be going through to figure out what went wrong when the lockout times out."

"Lockout sir?" O'Neill asked.

"Yes, against my better judgment and Teal'c's spirited recommendations, they're sending a full roster of eight," Hammond said.

"I spent many days detailing all I know about the planet and its dangers and emphasized many times the lethal nature of journeys there," Teal'c interjected primly.

"I'm not feeling the love for this specialized team, sir," O'Neill tilted his head.

"That's because I have none, and I've filed the paperwork stating that I object to them being permitted through the gate at all. We still don't know what made it so you survived when Teal'c has indicated that has never happened for any Jaffa team that he knows of. I was overruled, but that's in writing, so it won't reflect badly on us when they fail."

"Do they plan on not returning until they've made proper progress?" Captain Carter asked.

"I honestly expect them to get each other killed with the special grenades they cooked up. If whatever mystery tech returned your team keeps them alive despite that kind of idiocy, then I'll be more interested than I already am," General Hammond replied.

"And we can't sneak in before they get here?" Jack asked.

"I'd let you go through first, while we wait for them to arrive, but we're waiting on a replacement fuel valve for the flamethrower anyway," George Hammond replied.

"So, we're getting the flame thrower then?" the colonel asked.

"You don't, Doctor Jackson does," the general replied.

"Daniel?" Jack asked.

"What?" Daniel asked as the team turned towards him.

"Why'd they give you the flame thrower?" Jack asked.

"They cited me being the only one of the three of us that didn't need to be trained out of 'bad habits', and lack of prior incidents with one," Daniel replied calmly.

"...they would," Jack's eyes narrowed.

"The security footage of him using an aerosol can and a lighter to pick off spiders in the corner of his office didn't hurt," General Hammond interjected.

"...wait, really?" Jack's face adjusted to show grudging admiration.

"What?" Daniel asked again.

"The office constantly full of highly flammable books and papers?" Sam asked.

"Yes," General Hammond confirmed.

"Without setting everything on fire?" Sam continued. "Cause I tried that once."

"The safety briefing following that event was most memorable," Teal'c interjected.

"Huh," Jack leaned back.

"If that's all sir, I had some things I wanted to check from the gate diagnostics while we wait," Carter said.

"Keep me informed, Captain," Hammond dismissed the team.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Annoyingly for SG1, the specialist team didn't arrive until the next week, roughly nine days after SG1's first visit to Kalach Shal'tek, or the dungeon as O'Neill had nicknamed it, during which the team worked diligently on their plans for tackling the challenge the bugs represented. Daniel had fallen into a box of pentagon records forwarded to the SGC regarding earlier experiments on the gate by the original Langford team. Teal'c continued his martial arts practices in the gym. O'Neill was being secretive in one of the labs. Not that this would stop Captain Carter from learning about his project if she really wanted, given she was the head of the science department on base.

Finally, the day arrived, and Captain Carter watched bemusedly as the specialist team lined up in the gate room following the Field Remote Expeditionary Device or FRED that was loaded down with all sorts of neat things that she would just love to get her hands on.

"You do know that's not going to work right?" Carter asked.

"Who's the specialist here," Specialist Brandt asked, pressing the buttons to send the FRED toward the ramp.

"Behind the line please, or you'll lose part of your equipment to the unstable vortex," Carter said. "Holy Hannah, does nobody read the manuals we write?"

General Hammond suppressed a laugh, hearing her comment just as he entered. "Now you know why I'm not confident in them, Captain. I'm going to try one more appeal to sanity before we proceed."

"Better you than me," the scientifically minded captain muttered.

The eight men of the specialized squad assembled in the gate room carrying all sorts of weapons and bandoliers of grenades.

"All right people," Hammond said. "Time to ensure that they know what they're getting into."

"Shouldn't they have been briefed already?" O'Neill asked.

"There's a chance they were given a written packet," Carter noted. "But if they read that as well as you tend to read the ones you're given?"

General Hammond smirked and pressed the button next to the microphone to broadcast to the gate room. "I've been assured that you were all briefed on this mission before now, but to be frank, I don't trust your superiors. Everything we know about the trial you've been sent to face indicates that it's lethal. We have no clue why that wasn't the case for SG1, and have no evidence that it won't be the case for you. It's also supposed to be more difficult with a larger team, and based on what I could find of your records I suspect half of you weren't told this was voluntary."

"Voluntary?" one of the team questioned, getting evil looks from several of the others.

"Yes it is son, I have the personal guarantee of the President that you'd all be volunteers, made aware of the risks involved. If you'd like to back out then I have a similar guarantee of being able to transfer you to my command before the end of the day with no punishments, and to not 'inconvenience' the rest of your team I have several actual volunteers available to fill slots."

"Then I'm backing out," the man said, already pulling his vest off as he was leaving the room.

"I'm honestly surprised that only one of them bailed, I expected at least half of them to have been misinformed as to the danger. It seems that we only need one volunteer, Colonel, instead of the four to five I anticipated. I have no clue where they found the other seven down there, and that concerns me. Are any of you comfortable going with them alone?" General Hammond asked.

"If you're concerned about their temperament, sir, then I'd rather not risk any of my team or anyone else on this foolishness. I'm confident that I can handle them."

"Colonel Makepeace has volunteered to be your eighth man," Hammond said over the intercom. There was grumbling from the specialists but eventually they settled down.

Eventually, Colonel Makepeace appeared through the door to the gate room with his gear and a small camera mounted to his helmet with a stretchy cable trailing around and into a separate recording pack in his backpack.

"Ready when you are," the team leader called out.

"Dial the gate," Hammond nodded to the sergeant on duty.

The FRED rolled up the ramp as soon as the vortex settled into the shimmering silver-blue puddle of the stargate. The seven specialists started for the ramp while Colonel Makepeace held back after seeing Carter's expression through the window.

"Travel incomplete, please make room on the ramp," Carter said over the intercom as the gate rippled and the FRED reappeared, almost barreling into the specialists that hadn't put enough space between them and the FRED as it had disappeared into the wormhole. The FRED continued smoothly out the puddle as though it had come through from the other side.

"I told you so," Captain Carter muttered without pressing the button to speak to the gate room so they didn't hear her gloating.

There was more grumbling from the specialists as they unpacked as much of the FRED as they felt comfortable carrying and looked up to the gate room. Makepeace just shook his head and jumped a little, as though to mock them with his better mobility.

"The gate is back in outgoing mode, you can proceed when ready," Carter supplied.

Still grumbling the seven specialists proceeded through the gate followed by Colonel Makepeace who snagged an extra magazine of P-90 ammo off the FRED as he scooted past it.

Carter watched the video feed from the other end, noting the strange stone oval over the entrance and lack of inner shadow in the middle as the specialists and Makepeace appeared and radioed back before the gate shut down.

"So now we just, wait?" O'Neill said.

"Now you go see what they stupidly left behind," Hammond corrected. "Because I'm just now realizing that it looks like some of their GDOs are hanging off the back of the FRED."

"At least they left the remote control for it," Carter said, pointing to the remote that had been tossed carelessly onto the pile of equipment.

It turned out that the General was correct, and four GDOs were in a net hanging from the FRED. He was less enthused about the dismantled nuke and then the Airman investigating things yelled something that had everyone backing away from the FRED having found some canisters of an unknown chemical agent, one that apparently needed the four gas masks hidden next to the canisters for protection.

"You're going to need to know about this stuff before you check on them," CBRN specialist Sean Maxwell and recently transferred as of less than ten minutes after the General's offer over the intercom appeared in the control room with a stack of papers, looking for the general.

"Know about what?" General Hammond asked the frozen specialist as he stared out the window into the gate room.

"They didn't get the FRED through the gate? ...it's still here? Shit!" Sean said.

"You know what that stuff is," Hammond started. "Nevermind, you can advise our hazmat team as they remove that. Then I expect you in my office so we can get your transfer paperwork completed, son. It appears that my day is going to be spent yelling at people over the phone."

General Hammond lifted the dedicated telephone handset that was a direct line to the base security off the hook on the wall and started quietly issuing orders for a Hazmat team in full gear.

"That's some nasty stuff," O'Neill said, spotting the colorful hazard diamond and chemical names on the data sheet. "Maybe it'd be safer to just use one of those lava planets that Teal'c knows and get rid of it."

"Unfortunately not, Colonel, because that would be destruction of vital evidence of people trying to get everyone on my base painfully and mysteriously dead, and I need that evidence if I want to cause unholy hell for those responsible," Hammond interjected.

The general turned back to the gate room and over the intercom told the men still in the room, "Everyone hang tight, the Hazmat team is on their way, you'll have a brief decontamination shower for safety reasons. But this should all be cleaned up relatively quickly. Just don't touch those canisters unless the Hazmat team tells you to when they get here."

"I've got the gateroom air supply isolated from the rest of the base," Carter reported.

"Excellent work, Captain," Hammond said as he disappeared up the spiraling stairs, specialist Sean following at his gesture.

"So, bets on how long until we don't get a response when we dial?" Jack raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Don't be morbid," Daniel said. "I'm hoping Makepeace convinces them to give up and come back before anyone dies."

"Ever the pacifist," Jack said.

"I can't find out how the General has them punished if they don't survive to be punished," Daniel opined.

"I'm pretty sure he meant punishment for whoever authorized them coming here with that crap," Jack said.

"They did bring it in without saying anything and looked betrayed when the chemical specialist that was clearly forced-to-join-them left them behind," Carter said.

 

[Stephenopolos]

Chapter 2

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&D 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&D 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.

 

[Stephenopolos]

Chapter 3

Dungeon Planet - 2nd Challenge - October 9th

Beyond the sliding door of the safe room, the hallway was dimly lit by a scattering of dim blue lighting that filtered down from the ceiling through leathery looking beams, and the occasional bulbous organic column spaced evenly the walls cast an orange glow. The effect was rather like a laser tag arena built inside a living thing.

The floor was level and solid feeling aside from a slightly leathery texture, and a low mist hung above the floor with only the occasional disturbances from near invisible air filtration systems.

"I don't like this," O'Neill said.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

O'Neill shouldered his weapon and started a slow crawl into the hall, Carter shouldered her own weapon and moved up to his left, Teal'c was on his right and Daniel followed in the rear with his new side arm.

A hazy shadow flitted across the corridor ahead at a junction.

O'Neill brought the procession to a halt and pulled out the kino and remote, kicking himself that they'd forgotten about it.

The team held their position watching the kino as it floated down the hall.

"Wish there was a minimap," O'Neill grumbled.

The screen on the remote flickered and a little wireframe map of the hall appeared in the corner with little dots showing the team.

"Huh, and now I'm thinking of a slice of pie," O'Neill said, tilting his head.

"You literally just had one," Carter said.

"What, it was worth a try," O'Neill said.

"How is it doing that?" Daniel asked.

"There must be mapping hardware built into the kino," Carter said.

"No, I meant responding to what he asks for," Daniel clarified.

"Voice recognition? There's some limited examples of that technology in development back home," Carter suggested.

The team watched the map fill in as the kino worked its way through the maze of hallways and junctions.

"Hope you brought the golden thread for the maze, Daniel," O'Neill said.

Daniel looked askance at O'Neill's reference to the mythical labyrinth but chose not to say anything, because two blips had briefly appeared as the kino passed an open door.

"Let's go see what this enemy looks like," O'Neill said, having spotted the blips as they faded.

The patrolling wraith warriors that greeted them were an intimidating pair of blue-grey skinned humanoids with long white hair. They were wearing dark bumpy masks that completely covered their faces, and Jack wondered how they could see with those things on. The snarls came through clearly though and the weird not mouth on their hands was an obvious problem.

Daniel was the quickest to react with the flamethrower up and blasting the wraith drones enraging them further, as they thrust their weapons forward.

The first of the warriors only managed to send a single blast of cyan colored energy towards them, which hit Teal'c before Carter and O'Neill responded with their electrified P-90s and blasted crackling holes into the snarling warriors stitching a line of holes across their chests and downing them.

O'Neill warily watched the two bodies as Carter knelt to examine the long and pointy energy weapon the closer drone warrior dropped when he fell.

"Sam," Daniel called out.

"Carter," O'Neill said at the same time as Daniel.

Captain Carter looked up from the weapon and jumped back as she noticed the wraith's arm was twitching, the fingers grasping and clawing at the ground as though the warrior could drag itself closer to her from sheer finger strength alone.

The captain used her P-90 and fired another couple rounds and bolts of energy into the head of the warrior, until it stopped twitching and the body was absorbed into the ground as they'd come to expect.

The wraith stun weapon remained behind as their loot.

The second wraith warrior was still there so Daniel used his new side arm on that one figuring it was somehow still alive if disabled if the cave hadn't removed it yet.

O'Neill looked up realizing that Teal'c's silent presence seemed to be absent and looked around for the big guy only to spot a third wraith that had appeared from a now empty room behind them and had slammed its hand into Teal'c's chest, and not in a way that looked at all helpful for the big guy.

The wraith seemed incredibly angry about something though as whatever it was trying to do didn't seem to be happening as the wraith wanted, and Teal'c was having a bad reaction.

O'Neill's P-90 blasted the third wraith warrior of the day away from his friend. The impact disrupting the hold the wraith had on Teal'c's chest as the Jaffa warrior took one last shaky breath before being whisked away by the dungeon's retrieval system. The wraith warrior on the other hand twitched back and forth with each shot before finally collapsing.

"Dammit, Teal'c had better be waiting for us alive and unharmed in the safe room," O'Neill said.

Carter and Daniel followed the unhappy Colonel as he retrieved the kino and marched back the direction they'd come and through the doors.

Happily for the team, Teal'c was indeed lying in a medical pod that had extended from one of the shapes covering the walls of the safe room. Above the pod a second wall piece had moved aside to reveal biometric data graphs showing things like the pulse, breathing rate, and brain activity of the patient.

SG1 rushed over to Teal'c. O'Neill reached out to gently wake the warrior.

"Teal'c, are you alright?" O'Neill asked.

"That was most unpleasant, O'Neill," Teal'c's said once he'd gathered his wits and figured out where he was. "It felt as though the wraith was trying to take something from within me but was unable to do so.

"I really hope those aren't a real enemy, it took way too much work to bring them down," O'Neill said.

"I am in agreement, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said.

"Are you sure you should be moving just yet?" Carter asked.

Teal'c pulled himself into a sitting position with a grunt and replied, "I will be fine, Captain Carter. This was a remarkably cleaner feeling than waking up from a sarcophagus. I will only require a few moments to gather my strength."

"So, we can just use that door to go back to the gate, right?" O'Neill said pointing to the indicated door the hologram had informed them of.

"That's what the hologram said," Daniel agreed.

"Let's get out of here, I'm missing a new episode of The Simpsons right now," O'Neill said.

SGC - October 9th, 1997

"The builders of the training facility called the stargate an Astria Porta, and the bugs in the first challenge Iratus bugs. If I make some very heavy assumptions those are very close to Latin root words for, star, door, and irate or angry," Daniel started.

"Oh yes, because I really needed to know they called them the angry bugs in Latin," Jack muttered.

"Doctor Jackson, does knowing that the builders may have spoken something similar to Latin get us any closer to understanding why the place seems to ignore all prior precedent we know of?" General George Hammond interrupted the doctor's theorizing and leaned back in his chair at the head of the briefing room table.

"Well, uh... Sam?" Daniel seemed flustered.

"Nothing concrete sir, just this," Carter passed a printout of the picture Daniel Jackson had taken of the stone counter displayed above the entrance to the bug part of the dungeon.

"It was blank until the entire team was present and then sort of slid open to reveal those symbols," Captain Carter explained.

"I believe it's some form of counting system, the display updated after we entered the first time, and every subsequent time," Doctor Daniel Jackson interjected. He clicked a button causing an image of the symbols in the relief to show up on the projector, the last symbol was different showing additional blocks of stone hanging above a short fat T shape that took up a two block high by three block wide space at the bottom of the symbol. "Based on the spacing, I believe it will continue adding blocks in a three by three grid as a form of numerical counting."

"That second picture is from after we retreated from the wraith section and used a transport booth of some kind to go directly from the safe room between sections to the gate room."

"And what was this bit about the hologram using the appearance of one of the NID specialists," Hammond said.

"We think that was the facility trying to use a familiar face," Daniel said.

"Either that or a hint that they might still be recoverable if we get to the end of the challenges," Captain Carter said.

"Speaking of the first section, I assume the flamethrower was a success," Hammond prompted.

"It worked like a charm," O'Neill replied.

"Daniel Jackson was most proficient in the handling of the flamethrower," Teal'c said.

"I'm still surprised he handled it so well," Carter said.

"Gee thanks for the vote of confidence," Daniel said.

"We should get you certified to use that thing normally," Jack said.

"...I am certified. That's part of why I was using it," Daniel replied.

"...certification takes three weeks, minimum, if they put you through the rush course," Sam said.

"He's been certified for the last two months now," General Hammond said.

Jack turned to Daniel, his face the perfect expression of confusion.

"You aim to be a pacifist whenever possible. Why are you certified on flamethrowers?" Jack asked.

"I've been working my way through all the weapon certifications so that I know how to not kill myself when you inevitably hand me a weapon that is liable to kill me."

"Huh," Jack leaned back.

"They won't let me take the crew-served weapon certifications, since I'm not supposed to be manning those here in the base and we don't bring anything like that into the field," Daniel huffed and crossed his arms.

"Is that a sulk?" Jack leaned back.

"If we're finished with the relevant topics of this debriefing," the general interrupted Jack's heckling of the archaeologist.

"Actually, I wanted to know when you wanted us to make another attempt at things, Sir," Captain Carter said.

"Perhaps after another mission to a different planet, I'd rather not have you burn out from the stress of constant combat that the dungeon planet seems to offer," Hammond said. "And I'm sure that everyone involved in examining things would like more than a couple of days to look over the latest 'bounty'."

"Daniel did have something he wanted us to take a look at," O'Neill suggested.

"Ah, well you see, it looks like the original Langford team managed to make a connection back in 1945, I believe I should be able to determine the address from the film reel the pentagon sent over," Daniel said.

"That can be your next project then, SG1, dismissed," Hammond said.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

SGC - October 10th, 1997

Colonel O'Neill sauntered into Captain Carter's lab with two cups of blue jello, he placed one on the table next to her with a spoon and started eating the second one. In between scoops he leaned forward to examine what she was looking at.

"What's that?"

"Schematics for everything we could identify in the shock grenade, sir," Carter said, absentmindedly picking up the jello cup he'd placed down for her. "There's what looks to be an RF chip module here, and a sync button. I've been working on decoding the signals and programming a remote control. I've identified two unbalanced motors that can be used for movement and a second circuit here for discharging the shock grenade."

"And that?" O'Neill pointed at the portable DHD case.

"I've been hesitant to try and disassemble it since it doesn't have the same easy access screws as everything else, just the access hatch with sixteen clear crystal cards in slots and the input/output ports. Also, there's no obvious peripherals, so I've been waiting for the air-gap dummy machine to arrive from procurement before I power it up."

"Did Andy have anything to say about the power crystals?" O'Neill asked.

"Yes, actually, how did you know Doctor Covel was a lapidarist," Carter said around a spoonful of blue jello.

"Ah well, we had a chat in the mess hall a few months back and he mentioned he could fix a loose setting on Lieutenant Morris' birthstone ring," O'Neill said.

"That explains things, anyway, Covel was able to shave off a thin slice of the crystal and identified that it wasn't a pure corundum crystal, it has two intertwined microscopic lattices of lithium-ion and nanostructured carbon, the corundum separates the lattices attaching to a band of pure copper on either end."

"That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation," O'Neill said.

"It's a solid state ceramic battery sir, we don't have the techniques to duplicate it exactly, yet, but the chemical composition is very viable using more conventional film deposited construction methods, and it's in line with the most advanced battery research in the private sector."

"So, big battery?"

"Pretty much sir, our home grown versions are also just slightly unstable, think bursting into flames if punctured and not reacting well to contaminants during the production process."

"That might be a feature for if you need a self destruct option," O'Neill mused around his own blue jello.

"Also, it's about half the capacity of the crystal for the same weight," Carter said.

"Did they say anything about those armor inserts yet?" O'Neill changed the subject.

"Those are with Dr. Lee in lab four," Carter said.

"No live fire testing?"

"Not so much sir, we want to identify the composition first before we proceed to destructive testing on something we have a limited supply of."

"Ah, did they bring Doctor Franks the materials and chemistry guy in on things?"

"I don't know, let me check."

"Well, keep me informed," O'Neill said. Taking the empty jello cups with him past the airman with a PC tower and a pineapple on a cart that was headed into the lab. Behind him he could hear Carter happy with the arrival.

"Is that the air-gapped computer I requested?"

"Yes, ma'am, signature please?"

O'Neill whistled as he continued on to his next destination.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Daniel pulled another reel of film out of the box and a file folder full of blacked out text that made reading the documents rather annoying.

He'd just started the film rolling when Jack peeked into the room.

"Fascinating stuff," O'Neill asked.

"Oh definitely, if only they hadn't censored over half the documents," Daniel replied, waving the report at him.

"What's this?" O'Neill motioned at the film that was playing.

"Huh? Just more footage of the experiments they were running," Daniel trailed off, having looked up to spot the man in the diving suit entering the open gate.

"Those records didn't say anything about anyone using the gate, did they?" Jack said.

"You saw that too," Daniel said.

"You got the symbols they used right?" Jack asked.

"If it's the same ones as the other reel, yes. But I'll have this one sent over for digitizing and double check," Daniel replied.

"So...whoever that was went through. Don't suppose there's any footage of him coming back?" Jack asked.

"That's the last film reel in the box. All the other reels are just them trying different things, getting exploding generators and trying again, until they got a successful dial on the previous reel that I showed you," Daniel replied, standing up and removing the reel from the projector.

"What are you doing," Jack asked, watching as Daniel started flitting around his office space moving things around.

"Unfortunately all the names are blacked out in the documentation, so the only person I know that's still alive that could tell us about the experiments, even if she wasn't directly involved, is Doctor Catherine Langford," Daniel said.

"So you were just planning on dropping everything, to what, go and interrogate her?"

"Jack."

"Daniel."

"She has to know something."

"And there are procedures, Daniel, she could be the president, and I'd still have you go clear this with General Hammond first," Jack said.

"And if he says no?"

"He's not going to say no, Daniel. If he does though, then we find out if he has a good reason, and work around those concerns until he says yes."

"What kind of good reason would you accept?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe if she recently died."

Daniel looked aghast at the suggestion.

"What?" Jack asked. "It's a valid reason, she's old, Daniel, I'm pretty sure she's still alive, but it's a valid concern and you can't exactly ask a grave questions. We have a very good reason to go bother her in her retirement, and she's under existing NDAs that simplify things. Besides, the general will probably want to know what she knows just as much as we do."

Jack held an arm out and motioned for Daniel to walk with him to the general's office.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Teal'c swung his bo-staff sweeping the legs out from under the airman he was sparring with.

"You are improving, Airman Richard Bosworth," Teal'c said, holding out a hand to pull the airman up from the mat.

"It doesn't feel like it," Bosworth said, rubbing a shoulder.

"Your feelings can lie. Trust me, you are getting better," Teal'c said.

"Show me how you did that last move," the Airman asked, dropping back into the stance he'd been in.

Teal'c nodded and proceeded to show Airman Bosworth the sequence of moves that he'd failed to properly counter and then moved onto showing him the proper countermoves.

"Thanks," Bosworth said.

"You are most welcome," Teal'c gave a head bow of acknowledgement. "You will practice and next time we spar, you will be better still."

The Airman hobbled off the mat to the bench on the side where he grabbed his bottle of water and dropped onto the bench.

"I'll take next, if you're willing," Major Castleman stepped up to the edge of the mat.

"What do you wish to work on today, Major Castleman," Teal'c asked, not knowing the major as well as other members of the SGC.

"Hand to hand, if you would," Castleman said.

Teal'c nodded and returned the staff to the equipment rack before taking his place opposite the Major.

A crowd gathered to watch the match.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"So, Daniel and I are off to see Doctor Langford," Jack said as he poked his head into Sam's lab.

"Oh? Tell her I said, 'Hi.' Also sorry for missing our Tea date."

"Tea date?"

"Yeah, I usually take a Saturday off at least once a month to go have tea with her. Had to cancel this week," Carter motioned to the piles of projects across the room.

"Huh," Jack said, picking at a fingernail. "So, what are you up to now?"

"I'm going to be looking over the console thing with all the gate glyphs we got from the dungeon."

"Oh? Wishing you luck," Jack said.

"Thanks, but I was still trying to figure out if it's turned off because I haven't found the on button or because I need to hook it up to a power source."

Jack looked at the console for a moment before tapping a symbol on the corner of the thing. The symbols lit up and blinked on and off a few times before going dim. "Huh." Jack walked around the table until he was looking at what was presumably the back side of the device where the peripheral ports and card access door was. He pointed to a handle that was sticking out next to the access door. "What's that, and why is it sticking out like that?"

Carter leaned forward to see what he was talking about. The handle was obvious now that he'd pointed it out. With a shrug, she twisted the handle until it lined up with the depression where it slowly sunk into the slot. The lights on the power indicators went from feebly dim to full power.

"Must be an internal power disconnect mechanism," Captain Carter mused.

O'Neill stood there for a moment longer as Captain Carter grew more engrossed in the lines scrolling by on the screen of the computer she'd connected to the dialing console over the serial port on the back.

"I'll just leave you to it, then," O'Neill said, already moving for the door to the lab.

"Huh, sure" Carter vocalized, not even looking up from the screen.

O'Neill had reached the door and was half a step out of the room when the captain spoke up.

"Don't forget to tell Catherine 'Hi' from me," Carter said before O'Neill had fully disappeared through the door to her lab.

"I'll tell her," O'Neill said from the hall.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"You brought an overnight bag, right?" Daniel asked.

"Yup," Jack patted the duffle with a change of clothes and other essentials he was carrying. He decided to poke at Daniel on the way out of the mountain.

"Say Daniel, where is Doctor Langford living these days anyway, the base directory only had a post office box address listed for her somewhere up in Boulder."

"Ah, well she's up near the University, the house is held in a trust, so it won't show up under her name in any of the databases," Daniel replied.

"How do you know the address?" Jack asked.

"She insisted I stay with her back when she hired me for the project, I wasn't exactly financially stable if you remember," Daniel said.

"Huh, that's better than I expected, I was prepared to have to fly out of Peterson and ask for a vehicle from another base's motor pool. We should be able to get there in less than three hours, maybe get a hotel if we stay there late enough," Jack said.

Jack found the drive up from Colorado Springs wasn't that bad. It was just a short drive in Jack's truck, and they didn't even need to stop for gas.

"Daniel! You don't write, you don't call, why, one might be forgiven for assuming you had died or something. And you, Jack, I do appreciate the birthday and Christmas cards you sent last year, but you could call every now and then as well," Doctor Catherine Langford was in fine form, having received General Hammond's call that the two men were on their way to visit her.

Jack merely nodded in acknowledgement and leaned against the doorframe enjoying watching Daniel squirm under Catherine's piercing motherly concern.

"Thousands of Stargates, planetary shifts. Didn't you think I might be interested?" Catherin asked.

"That's why we came," Daniel tried to defend himself.

"Now, six months later. You could have told me sooner," Catherine needled.

"Wait, sooner?" Daniel asked.

"I have so enjoyed my chats with Samantha," Catherine smiled.

"Chats?" Daniel asked.

"Carter said, hi, by the way, and that she's sorry about missing Saturday Tea," Jack interjected.

"Thank you for relaying Samantha's words, Jack. She mentioned she might not have the leave schedule she originally planned when we last talked," Catherine said.

"... Saturday Tea? Cards? How am I only hearing about this now? No, wait, more importantly, how am I failing to be the good son here," Daniel asked.

"Don't look at me," Jack shrugged.

"Sit! Sit dears, I had Maggie prepare some tea before you arrived," Catherine waved for Jack to take a seat in one of the comfortable chairs opposite her.

Jack sauntered the rest of the way into the room and settled into the offered chair.

"I take it the general warned you of our impending arrival?"

"He did," Catherine said. "Something about early experiments done in 1945. How did you learn of those by the way?"

"The Pentagon was reviewing old materials recently for declassification, and they ran across old file boxes that someone recognized as related to the stargate. So, they sent them to us," Daniel explained.

"My father worked on the research team that worked on the gate during the war. Actually, they didn't know what it was then. But President Roosevelt was like that, curious. They suspected the gate was a weapon, or could be used as one. Nothing ever came of it though," Catherine reminisced.

"You weren't involved with the research?" Daniel asked.

Catherine scoffed, "you show how young you are, you forget that was 1945, the military had little use for a young woman such as I was then. I only know what little my father and Ernest were willing to discuss during dinner when they thought I wasn't listening."

"Ernest?" Jack asked.

"My late fiance, he was quite a dashing young man and a protégé of my father," Catherine trailed off into memory.

"You know, I was the one that suggested they use direct current instead of alternating current for powering the gate," Catherine said.

"Did you know the government kept the original files?" Daniel asked.

"I had my father's notes. He told me that was everything they had. Do you know how many administrations I had to petition to get the program started up again? Forty years had passed; the information was classified and buried. I never asked for the files, because I thought I had them. General West never offered, because he probably didn't even know they existed," Catherine replied.

"So, you don't know that they achieved a stable connection to another address in 1945," Daniel said.

"They did what now?" Catherine asked.

"They made a connection," Jack reiterated.

"No, I never knew they turned it on. My father never told me. It wasn't in his notes either."

"Then you should probably see this," Daniel said, and made a VHS tape appear from somewhere.

"I'm going to ignore the blatant disregard for proper handling of classified materials," Jack said looking up and away.

"Oh hush you," Catherine said, motioning for Daniel to make use of the VCR that was in the corner of the room. "Maggie left for the evening, the house is secure, and I have all the relevant NDAs signed."

"And I cleared it with Hammond before we left," Daniel added. "I can learn, you know. I'm not completely hopeless."

The picture flickered into existence and the trio watched the familiar ring in a less than familiar setting as a team of scientists in lab coats walked around checking things.

"Ernest," Catherine gasped as she caught sight of the younger man walking into view with a partially assembled diving suit, only identifiable thanks to carrying the helmet in his hands.

"That's Ernest?" Jack asked.

"That... that, idiot," Catherine said.

The three watched as Ernest in his diving suit stepped into the active puddle of the gate and disappeared. Shortly after he made it through, the shimmering puddle disappeared and severed the diving tether, stranding the young scientist at the destination.

"So, Ernest is the man that went through the gate," Jack said.

"Yes, and my father lied to me. He said Ernest died in an accident, an explosion. Probably thought he was protecting me," Catherine scoffed.

"From what?" Daniel asked.

"From knowing that my fiance chose to risk his life, that he chose his idea, his work, over me, without even talking to me about it first," Catherine replied. She then turned to Daniel. "You said this was a different address. Not Abydos?"

"Not Abydos," Daniel agreed.

"Jack?" Catherine asked, sweetly.

"Don't give me that look," Jack said.

"You get to explain this to General Hammond," Jack told Daniel.

"Oh don't be so dire, he's practically a teddy bear," Catherine waved off Jack's dire sounding statement. "I would go back to the mountain with you, but I'm scheduled to be a guest lecturer at the university in the morning. And this way you get to provide a nicer warning than if I came calling out of the blue. Oh, where are you staying tonight, you're not planning on driving back tonight are you?"

"It's only a two or three hour drive," Jack said.

"Nonsense, I have perfectly good guest rooms. You shouldn't endanger yourselves with too much driving, you'll stay the night. I insist," Catherine said.

"So, that's why you insisted I bring an overnight bag," Jack said to Daniel.

Daniel snorted. "Of course she was going to do this. How did you not know that she was going to?"

"Hey, it's not like I knew she'd have guest rooms. Though, you'll note that I didn't exactly argue about the overnight bag," Jack replied.

"Boys," Catherine laughed. "Daniel, you remember where your room is. Jack can take the one across the hall. Maggie will have breakfast served at seven. To think after all these years... I need to get my mind back on my lecture notes."

-| A new line has appeared |-​

The next day Jack and Daniel returned to the SGC to a scene of chaotic alarms a little after noon.

"Colonel O'Neill, Doctor Jackson," General Hammond met them at the last checkpoint having just arrived himself, having been called back due to the situation and apparently just finished receiving a briefing from an airman. "I take it you had a good trip."

"Generally relaxing, though I'm not fond of the traffic in Denver. What's going on, sir," O'Neill asked.

"The gate has been... acting up since about ten hundred hours this morning," General Hammond said.

"Carter?" Jack asked.

"She's in the control room going over the diagnostic logs from the dialing computer, she said something about the gate going through some sort of recalibration cycle when I talked to her over the phone," General Hammond replied.

"Let's go get our gear on, just in case," Jack said to Daniel and turned for the locker room.

"I'll meet you in the control room, Colonel," General Hammond said, and disappeared down the other hall.

Jack was quick to trade his civilian clothing for the BDU and snagged the remote he'd stowed on the shelf, only for it to light up with an obvious console log scrolling down one side of the screen and a wireframe of the gate with various red lines pointing to different things on the other side, one line changing to green seemingly at random as he watched.

At the top of the screen there was a series of words with arrows between each word, like a breadcrumb trail of sorts, though Jack still couldn't read the blocky script.

"Interesting," Jack said.

"What's that?" Daniel asked.

"I think I know what kicked this all off," Jack replied.

"Oh?" Daniel finished buttoning up his own olive green drab shirt and followed Jack out of the locker room.

"Yeah, I just want to take a peek in Carter's lab," Jack said, deftly turning through the maze of corridors heading towards his destination.

Jack smirked as he spotted the CRT monitor and computer hooked up to the alien console, with the remote in his hands he was able to quickly see how it updated with a new line in the blocky script at the same time as a new line appeared in the console window on the computer. He hesitated to call the words appearing on the screen English, the letters and words were all familiar, but the way they were arranged on command line interfaces on computers... Jack suppressed his distaste.

O'Neill ran a finger along the newest line that seemed to be something relating to a cleaning mechanism for the inner symbol track that was clearing out sand if he understood the reference to silica compounds correctly.

Looking at the remote in his hand, it looked like the inner track was about seventy-five percent of the way through the cleaning cycle and should stop spinning in another five or so minutes, at least if he understood the blocky little symbols next to that red line pointing at the inner track on the wireframe.

"To the control room," Jack said, leading the still slightly confused Daniel out of Sam's lab and down a flight of stairs and past some Airmen transporting a cart full of armor inserts to another lab.

Daniel wasn't quite sure why Jack slowed to a stroll but figured it had something to do with what he'd seen on the computer in Sam's lab and whatever was on the ancient remote control for the Kino, so he slowed as well.

"And we're being calm now because," Daniel asked.

"Because this is all Carter's fault, and not actually a problem," Jack replied.

The two entered the control room at O'Neill's leisurely pace to see Carter looking through a similar if less informative list of scrolling information on the SGC's dialing computer, and General Hammond standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed.

"This code here: must be for the inner... some metric relevant to the inner track since these codes here are referencing the rotation of the glyph track. Couldn't tell you what more than half these other signals from the gate mean. But so far, I know for sure that there have been log entries for each of the chevrons and every light on the gate, it even adjusted the iris, opening and closing the internal motors we attached the titanium shell to. I just have no clue what could've triggered it," Captain Carter said, pushing a strand of hair out of her face and back behind her ear.

"You did," Jack said.

"She did?" General Hammond said.

"Yup," Jack replied.

"How, I wouldn't even know where to start," Captain Carter picked up the cup of coffee next to the keyboard and took a sip.

"How many cups of coffee is that today?" Jack asked.

Carter looked at the mug in her hand and started counting fingers on her other hand.

"Too many, I take it, how long have you been up anyway?" Jack said.

"What day is it?" Carter asked.

"It's Friday, Captain," General Hammond said.

"I may possibly have pulled an all nighter," Carter said sheepishly.

"This is why I don't leave you to tinker in your lab often," Jack muttered.

"Back to how it's Carter's fault," Daniel said.

Jack held up the remote with the same scrolling console log, "The gate can apparently work wirelessly, and you told a fascinating piece of equipment currently sitting in your lab to run a full set of diagnostics and calibration cycle."

"I did?" Carter said.

"Yup, and if the pretty pictures on this are correct, it should be finished in about another hour," Jack said, before frowning and looking at the screen more closely. "No, make that two? Maybe three."

General Hammond shook his head, "get some rest, captain."

"But—" Carter motioned to the logs.

"The logs will still be here after you get some sleep, probably even easier to manage since you can review them with timestamps, Carter, get some rest," Jack said.

"I'll even have someone prepare a copy of the camera footage for you as soon as the gate finishes whatever it's doing," Hammond added.

"Sirs," Carter said, pushing back from the computer and looking at her cup of coffee, "I think I'll just dump this."

"Good idea," Jack said.

The three watched the captain leave the room, Jack waiting until her footsteps had faded before grabbing a sticky note and pen.

"What are you up to," Daniel asked.

"I'm just going to suggest that she review the log from the terminal on the computer hooked up to the dialing console in her lab as the logs there are in English and appear to be much more complete. Not telling her now or she won't sleep, but I'd hate for her to waste several days on guess work for unknown sections of the log using that when there's a more complete version already in her lab," Jack motioned at the less than legible log scrolling past.

General Hammond chuckled, "I'll make sure it's on top of the copy of the video when they hand it to her. Let me know when the gate is finished doing... that."

"Oh, by the way, sir," Jack said, turning to the General. "Doctor Langford requested that she be allowed to be involved, while we check on the status of her thought-late fiance. She said to let you know she'd be arriving in two days."

"I see," General Hammond replied.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"Sam!" Catherine entered the control room at General Hammond's side.

"Catherine, so good to see you! Just a moment, I'm waiting for the upload of the new code definitions file to complete," Captain Carter said from the control room computer where lines of code scrolled past.

"Doctor Langford," Jack greeted the doctor of archaeology.

"Jack, I told you to call me Catherine," Catherine scolded.

Jack shook his head. "I'm on duty and you're here on official business. Protocol says that you're Doctor Langford."

"And since when do you stand on protocol?"

"When it amuses me or sufficiently shiny brass is around," Jack shrugged.

Catherine vocalized her general disbelief of this statement.

"Is that your old ID badge?" Jack asked.

"It is, they let me keep it, though it expires soon," Catherine said.

"We just visited security to renew her clearances. Though it's a little delayed since new protocols require a new background check and my signature on the paperwork after it comes back," General Hammond grumbled.

"We actually run background checks to let people in here?" Jack asked.

"Yes," was the general's short reply.

"Could've fooled me, considering those idiots that came through last week," Jack muttered.

"And, done," Captain Carter said as the codes on the screen stopped scrolling and the system restarted. The familiar wireframe gate and symbol selector setup replaced the scrolling lines of configuration logs. "All the new diagnostic codes have been identified and definitions uploaded to our system. It's already improving the level of control our dialing computer has over the gate."

"Good work, Captain. Let's get this briefing under way," General Hammond motioned for SG1 and Doctor Catherine Langford to follow him up the stairs up to the briefing room.

"Catherine, this is Teal'c. Teal'c, this is Catherine," General Hammond introduced the one member of SG1 that Doctor Langford hadn't had a chance to meet before taking his seat at the head of the table.

"Daniel's told me all about you. Ah, let me see if I have this greeting right. Tek-ma-te," Catherine held a hand out to the Jaffa who gently took her arm and bowed his head towards her.

"Tek-ma-te, Doctor Langford," Teal'c replied.

"Doctor Jackson, this is your show," General Hammond said.

"Ah, right, yes, I've prepared some handouts," Daniel stood, handing the stack of the papers he'd prepared to Jack to be handed down the table, and clicked a slide onto the projector.

"We received several file and film documents from the pentagon recently regarding experiments performed on the stargate in the 1940s where they managed to achieve a connection to the following stargate address," Daniel clicked the remote, advancing the slide to enhanced images of each glyph shown on the gate as it had been manually dialed.

"The planet in question is relatively close to Abydos, so it shares several of the same locator glyphs as Abydos address," Daniel continued.

"The important part, though," Captain Carter interjected as Daniel paused in his presentation. "Is that the address in question was not present on the Abydos cartouche where all our existing database of addresses came from. "

"If you'll pardon the question, how is that significant?" Catherine asked.

"The absence from the Abydos cartouche implies that the Goa'uld haven't been there, which is additional proof that the gate network is merely being used by them and not their creation," Daniel said.

"Though that should be fairly obvious now given the dungeon planet," O'Neill said.

"The Goa'uld are scavengers by nature," Teal'c clarified.

"Additionally, this man went through the gate in 1945," Daniel clicked to the next slide showing Ernest Littlefield in a diving suit walking towards the gate.

"Doctor Ernest Littlefield, Also, Catherine's fiancé. While he would undeniably have had a hard life alone, while not exactly likely, it's entirely possible he's still alive and stranded there without the address to come home," Daniel said.

"Genuine American Hero, there," Jack said.

"Excellent and thorough analysis of the situation, SG1, I can see why Catherine wishes to be present, go send a MALP and if it's a viable address you have a go," General Hammond said.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Half an hour later, SG1 had changed into their gear and fitted Catherine with her own tactical vest and expedition uniform; they had a Field Remote Expeditionary Device waiting at the edge of the ramp.

"Spin it up!" O'Neill hollered up to the control room window, where General Hammond nodded to the on duty technician.

The FRED disappeared up through the gate, a MALP having already been sent along earlier to confirm the viability of the address.

"SG1, good luck," General Hammond's voice echoed through the gate room.

"Piece of cake," O'Neill said in a calming voice while Daniel held onto Catherine's other arm.

"Ready?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah," Catherine stepped forward into the puddle with Jack and Daniel on either side of her.

 

[Stephenopolos]

Chapter 4

Heliopolis - October 13th, 1997

Lightyears away from earth, SG1 and their guest stepped out of the gate.

"Piece of cake," Catherine patted Jack on the shoulder.

O'Neill looked around before commenting, "Did that feel smoother?"

"Yeah, that was practically seamless, even after Sam worked on the frosting issue we used to have there was still a little hitch, but that felt..." Daniel said.

"Like stepping through a door." Jack completed. "Well, there was that whole gate recalibration and diagnostics thing that Carter accidentally set off," Jack said.

The room they emerged into was mostly clean and clear with some minor damage from part of the roof falling in by the DHD, but only lit with natural light from tall thin windows covered in geometric patterns on either side of the room. The floor gently sloped down from the gate and leveled into a short ten meter path across the room and up a broad series of steps to the DHD, about halfway between the gate and the DHD two side paths went down towards openings on opposite sides of the room from each other.

"It's hot in here," Daniel said.

"Can't say much about the lack of air conditioning," Jack agreed.

"Indeed, I suspect that the opening in the roof there contributes to the unfavorable conditions," Teal'c pointed to the breach in the roof by the DHD.

"Oh my," Captain Carter exclaimed, having spotted the very man they'd come looking for, his modesty only saved through being backlit by light streaming in from the left-hand entrance he was standing in.

Carter turned away looking off towards the DHD.

Ernest looked at all the visitors he'd received in confusion walking towards them.

"Aw. For cryin' out loud," Jack muttered.

"Dr. Littlefield?" Daniel said, moving towards the aged man.

"Ernest?" Catherine blushed.

Ernest slowly shuffled the rest of the way to Daniel and lifted a single barely usable spectacle lens all that presumably remained of the glasses he once wore.

"Hello, I'm Daniel Jackson," Daniel tried to converse.

The aged scientist glanced at the ring of the stargate.

"Yes, we came through the... uh... stargate, from earth," Daniel continued.

Ernest slowly lifted a hand and reached out to Daniels shoulder before giving him a firm push.

"Yes, we're really here," Daniel said.

Doctor Littlefield pulled Daniel into a back cracking hug and choked back a sob, "It's about time."

The spry old man released Daniel and hugged Jack next and then Teal'c.

"Oh, boy," Carter muttered nimbly, moving out of range while Doctor Littlefield was preoccupied with Jack and Teal'c.

"Daniel, do something," Jack said.

"Doctor Littlefield?" Daniel said, pointing towards Catherine.

Ernest released Teal'c and shuffled over peering into Catherine's face.

"You don't recognize me?"

"Cah—Catherine?" Littlefield stuttered, and turned quickly walking into the depths of the building. "Hmph."

"Fifty years. That's all he says," Doctor Langford looked a little sad.

"I'll just, I'll go and follow him," Daniel said, pointing down the path to the other opening through which Ernest had disappeared.

The damage he'd observed in the gateroom appeared to have been limited to there, the air growing drier and cooler as he followed the sound of Ernest's shuffling footsteps into a comfortable looking room with a bed and warm overhead light.

"You're still here?" Ernest said. Sounding as though he'd had every expectation that the encounter in the gate room had been a product of an overactive imagination or heat stroke or possibly something he'd eaten.

Startled, Daniel whirled around from where he stood next to the bed only to look up and away again.

"You wouldn't happen to have something to wear, clothes perhaps?" Daniel said.

"Oh! Clothes, yes, going home," Ernest's face showed a hint of embarrassment as he recalled that clothes were necessary and he wasn't wearing any. Daniel continued to look up and away while the elderly man shuffled back around the corner, where he'd left the tattered remnants of the old diving suit he'd worn. It was now just the cloth pieces that he pulled into place over his head.

"Yes, home, we're bringing you home," Daniel said.

"Such a long... Did no one... so much time," Ernest said.

"It's a long story. Are there any others here? Other people?" Daniel asked.

Ernest shuffled to an alcove in the wall and shook his head at Daniel sadly.

"You... You've been alone? This entire time?" Daniel asked.

Ernest pushed on a section of wall sliding it open to reveal some sort of fruit that he handed to Daniel.

"Yes," Ernest said.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Catherine lowered herself to a sitting position on the steps up to the dial home device and looked at the stargate.

"I don't know what I expected. So close all this time. I mean, I can't believe he's right here. Alive!" Catherine said.

"He seemed like he was having trouble dealing with it too," Sam said, and sat next to her.

"Light years in an instant, and I felt forty years younger coming through that stargate," Catherine chuckled. "You think you're old and someone reminds you how to have wonder again."

"The heart should never grow old," Sam Carter hugged Catherine.

"I can't even begin to fathom. Such a long time. I don't even know... couldn't guess what he's been through," Catherine said.

"Why don't you go find him and Daniel, talk to him and find out," Captain Samantha Carter suggested.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Daniel followed Ernest out of the bedroom and down the hall to a new room. The old man handed him some handmade papers that appeared to have been made using local reeds; it was yellowed with age and covered in hash marks.

"Last day," Ernest seemed a bit shocked at the idea.

"You kept track of the days," Daniel said, a bit stunned at the thought of fifty years worth of days being counted up.

"As best as I could, I may have missed a day or two," Ernest said.

"Have you been able to figure anything out about who lived here or built this place?" Daniel asked.

"Heliopolis, Alexandria, Athens, Rome," Ernest listed off ancient cities

"Heliopolis?" Daniel asked.

"Repository, philosophy, astronomy, diplomacy, linguistics, natural science," Ernest rattled off.

"Places of learning, centers of culture, of civilization, of diplomacy, and leadership, meeting place... listen, are there any Egyptian hieroglyphs anywhere? Any symbols related to Ra? That would be a very important thing to know," Daniel said.

Ernest shook his head and then retrieved a second set of papers bound into a journal of sorts and handed it to Daniel.

"Four distinct languages. Writing is unlike anything on Earth. Catherine says they're probably alien," Daniel read out loud.

"Catherine says?" Daniel paused and asked mostly rhetorically.

"She found me long ago," Ernest muttered.

"We walked for miles today and still found no signs of civilization. Catherine seems concerned, but I am not. As long as she is here with me, I will never feel alone. It seems impossible, but everyday we're here together, I love her more," Daniel continued reading.

"Father lied to me," Catherine appeared in the doorway.

"O-oh," Ernest shuffled, unsure how to take Catherine's sudden appearance.

"I'll just—" Daniel marked where he was at with a finger and shuffled past Catherine and out of the room.

"You — here — real," Ernest stuttered.

"Yes, This isn't easy for me, either," Catherine said dryly.

"Y—you—you look—uh—different," Ernest stuttered again.

"We're old, Ernest," Catherine said.

"You—We—we had a wonderful life together!"

"I spent the past fifty years believing you were dead, Ernest. We didn't have a wonderful life," Catherine said, bitterly.

"You forgave me," Ernest said.

"I was never given that chance," Catherine replied.

"Oh," Ernest blinked, eyes suspiciously shiny.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"Empty, abandoned and in need of some touching up, but it could be a pretty sweet place. Though it's seen better days, if you know what I mean," O'Neill commented observing one of the tall support pillars holding the vaulted roof above them.

"Doctor Littlefield has been alone since he got here," Daniel said quietly.

"Wow," O'Neill replied.

"Indeed," Teal'c commented.

"The structure seems sound enough," O'Neill said.

"Someone shored up the cliff face a long time ago or there would've been more damage," Ernest said, entering the room with Catherine.

A distant rumble of thunder rattled the advanced materials used in the place of glass in the window frames.

"A storm approaches," Teal'c said.

"Sounds big," O'Neill said, looking through the windows to see if he could spot the thunderhead.

"Yearly seasonal monsoon," Ernest said, unphased.

"Yearly?" Carter asked.

"Yes, I usually stay in the display room for the duration, this place is sturdy enough aside from that," Ernest points to the structural damage by the DHD.

"The general has to be getting concerned, kids, we should probably let him know what we've found," O'Neill said.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"So soon?" Daniel asked.

"The cliff side looks like it can handle a few more years, but we should still check in with home," O'Neill confirmed.

"I tried for years to make it work," Littlefield commented.

"The glyphs?" Daniel gestured at the DHD. "We call this the Dial-Home Device. Basically, you enter the correct address and—"

"How about we just show him?" Colonel O'Neill interrupted.

The group ascended the steps and gathered around the dialing pedestal only to be presented with a mess of broken crystals, the red dome shattered into pieces and the central power crystal dim.

"That's not good," O'Neill said, pulling out his little remote control wondering if it might have something that could help since it seemed to have picked up on the gate diagnostic. He fiddled with the menus hoping there might be a gate dialer in amongst the options.

"I'm thinking that we should consider using something with more mobility like the kino instead of the MALPs. It was obviously unable to spot the damage from there with the steps being in the way," Carter said. "Or maybe get a flying camera for the MALPs to carry?"

"Ya think?" O'Neill said.

"Well, since we're going to be here a while, I'd like you to see something," Ernest said.

"What's that," Daniel asked.

"Come on. It's the safest room there is. You know? Especially in a storm," Ernest said.

The two proceeded deeper into the complex until they reached a vaulted room with a high ceiling and a sloped amphitheater ring around a central theatron or stage area, at the cardinal points of the stage stood four stone monoliths and in the center of the pillars a pedestal with a large crystal.

Ernest walked directly to the device in the middle and activated it. The four distinct and alien texts appeared on each monolith.

"I recognize that," Daniel said, pointing to the blocky text.

"And that's norse runes," Catherine pointed to another of the monoliths with projected text.

Ernest poked at the journal in Daniel's hands and flipped it open to the relevant section.

"I believe this room is some sort of meeting place where four alien races denoted by the symbols and distinctive writing on the walls would gather…possibly to share knowledge or discuss relations, like an interstellar League of worlds. Catherine agrees," Daniel read.

"You're right, I would have," Catherine patted Ernest's hand.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"It could take years to figure out where each of these crystals go," Carter muttered at the mess of exposed crystals scattered around the inside of the DHD.

Teal'c handed her a voltmeter and pointed to the large central crystal, "I believe this to be the power source."

"I'm inclined to agree with you," the captain replied, sticking the probes from the crystal toolkit into the mess and checking her laptop.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"Well this is new, and yet familiar," Jack said from the edge of the room.

"Touch it," Ernest motioned to the pedestal which Jack swiftly approached. With a brief contact of the crystal a beam of light projected upwards forming holographic images of spheres and shapes rotating around and high into the air above the amphitheater.

"It's quite beautiful," Catherine said in awe.

"Well, if this was the uh — alien United Nations or equivalent—this is more than it seems," Daniel said.

"Huh, atoms," O'Neill said.

"Of course! High School chemistry!" Catherine said.

"Right, graphical representations of the basic elements: Electron probability shells around a nucleus. The number of the electrons and protons indicating the element."

"One hundred and forty-six," Ernest said. "There were only ninety known to man when I left earth."

"This is incredible. I mean, we've only been able to speculate on the actual appearance and structure of an atom," Catherine said.

"Jack, this is the basics of a true universal language," Daniel said excitedly.

"I tried to read it. I tried to understand, but—" Ernest said.

"A hundred and forty-six elements. This could take a lifetime," Daniel ran a hand through his hair.

Ernest raised an eyebrow and snorted, "More than one I'd say."

"Oh," Daniel's voice lost the edge of excitement he'd been pushing.

"Exactly, more than any one person's lifetime, and probably more than any one person alone can truly manage," O'Neill said.

"Don't you know what this could mean?" Daniel asked.

"No, actually," Jack said.

"This could be the key to understanding our existence. The meaning of life."

"Or it could just be a very dry treaty between four stuffy old races," O'Neill snorted and left the room.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"How's it goin'?" O'Neill asked Carter, nonchalantly strolling back into the gateroom.

"Well, we think we've got power from the DHD directly connected to the gate. I'm about to run a test. Where's Daniel?" Carter asked.

"Oh, Ernest is showing him a new toy," Jack said.

"Really? What?" Captain Carter asked.

"Some fancy light show that may be the key to our existence or something like that," Jack replied.

"Huh," Carter shrugged and slipped the wire into place around the big red crystal in the middle of the DHD.

A low rumbling hum came from the stargate as it lit up.

"You did it!" Catherine said, spotting the lights on the gate.

-| A new line has appeared |-​

Daniel turned from the representation of the elements overhead back to the stone slabs with the alien texts. "And this is how you knew what this place was."

"Then you recognize it, too," Ernest said.

"Norse Runes; thought to represent the collection of numinous power and knowledge from past generations."

"And the gathering of clans to share a common interest. You know, there's more than just a coincidence here. That means that humans were here centuries, maybe eons ago."

"No, not humans— aliens. Those are from Thor's race."

"Thor was an alien?" Ernest asked.

"Oh, yeah. That's another long story. But a…good one."

"Time to go," Jack called as he reappeared at the entrance to the room.

"What's up?" Daniel asked.

"Carter's got the gate powered, and this meaning of life stuff, won't mean anything if we leave you here with nobody to share it with," Jack said.

"But Jack," Daniel whined.

Ernest reached out a hand and pushed the journal back into Daniel's hands. "He's right, you know, you don't want to be alone here day in and day out gleaning hints of something more but never able to unlock the full message. Besides, I've been here long enough that everything is written down in this."

-| A new line has appeared |-​

"Alright Teal'c," Carter said, watching as the Jaffa carefully spun the inner track around to the first symbol. Rain was pouring through the damaged roof onto the DHD now and filling the internal chamber where the power crystal rested causing shorts and sparks that caused the gate to go dark.

"The power supply is unsteady and insufficient, Captain Carter," Teal'c said.

"Dammit," Captain Carter said.

There was a bright flash followed by a near immediate boom of thunder, and a tree limb blasted through the damaged opening above the DHD, bouncing off the wall before smashing into Captain Carter.

"Carter!" Jack yelled, pulling out his remote control and frantically pushing buttons to go through the menus.

 

[Stephenopolos]

O'Make:

SG-1 warily passed the beam of light from their flashlights over the room and wondered what this new place was and why Jack O'Neill's alteran built remote dialer had brought them here.

Jack O'Neill stepped forward leading his team down the steps from the Stargate, beneath their feat lights in the floor slowly brightened with a subtle musical note and lights overhead turned on as well until the room was brightly lit showing three doors and a set of stairs leading up to a mezzanine hanging over the gate area, one wall had a large glass window with geometric stained patterns on it behind which a slowly brightening room with rows of medical pods.

In the center of the room a hologram activated and a balding man dressed in a tan uniform announced briskly, "please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"Woolsey?" Jack O'Neill reflexively asked, as the hologram bore a striking resemblance to the mild mannered oversight committee bureaucrat that had plagued the SGC over the past year.

"Pardon, that is not a recognized medical malady."

"It really does look like him doesn't it," Carter said.

"The resemblance is uncanny," Daniel agreed.

"Indeed," said Teal'c.