Reaching for the Stars - A Stargate Quest

The last hours had been taxing. You had spent most of the flight going over the mission report for Abydos and getting a crash course in higher physics by Captain Carter. During the car trip to Cheyenne Mountain, you were reading up on as many of your new staff as you could. And once you had reached the concrete reinforced caverns, there was already the first reports waiting for you.

Standing at the briefing rooms window, overlooking the gate room, you took the first deep breath since you had had opened that manila folder on the plane. Some things were going well. The armoury of Peterson SFB had some spare M2 heavy machine guns, ballistic shields included, and they had already been mounted in front of the Stargate. A few specialists were still busy stacking sandbags, though the gate was already much better defended than before.

There was still the other matter though. "Please repeat that for me, Major Samuels," you said slowly and quietly, inviting him to correct himself. "You found a sub-level not marked on any maps, containing what exactly?"

"Sir, we assume that it is the implementation of the 'self-destruct mechanism' that General West wanted installed." As you turned around, he clutched the folder even tighter. "We are still interrogating the technicians and scientists to see who might have been capable of assembling it, but with the staff changes over the years…"

"Yes, Major. The years." You took another deep breath pacing along the window. "You have been in command of this installation for two years at this point and you did not notice the three armed nuclear warheads sitting beneath your feet."

"That appears to be correct, sir."

"How? General West was court-martialled for deploying a nuclear weapon, and you want to tell me that the investigation failed to notice the other three he 'appropriated'?"

"That too appears to be correct, sir."

It would have been very tempting to shoot the messenger, maybe even literally, but it was hardly the Majors fault. He hadn't been serving under that lunatic West, or been involved in the apparently quite lacklustre investigation afterwards. "Have the technicians investigate the devices. They haven't been triggered yet, but I won't take chances with that. Dismissed, Major."

Stargate Command gains Trait: Self-Destruct Mechanism – There are three armed nuclear warheads placed in a hidden sub-level of the base. The system can be armed or disarmed by two commissioned officers and, if initiated, will destroy the entire base.

As the Major hurried out of the briefing room, you quietly wondered if that would be the last surprise left behind by General West. Hopefully, it would be, though it seemed unlikely you would be that lucky. Maybe you should have someone look into the matter once the immediate crisis was handled.

Before you could dwell any longer on the matter though, your next appointment was ushered in. Slightly greying at the temples, wearing a jeans and an open flannel shirt, he just nodded in greeting. "General Harrison."

"Colonel O'Neill," you replied flatly while ordering your thoughts. "Take a seat. You must be wondering why you were brought here."

"Oh, I have a faint idea." He took the nearest chair and swung his feet onto the table. "But since I'm happily retired and my security clearance was revoked, it's probably better if you tell me."

"I have some questions about your last mission during Project Lodestone."

He kept the jovial tone as he answered, but you had spent too much time around people with skeletons in their closets to not notice how he clammed up. "Well, I'm sure my report can answer those. It's been a while ago, so the details are a bit hazy."

"Interesting. Major Kawalski and Major Ferreti told me exactly the same." They had not. Ferreti was still on the way to the base and Kawalski was currently locked into a spare room two levels down for refusing to talk with you, but you were fairly certain you were the better liar between the two of you.

"When I look at your report, Colonel, I think…"


"… that you might have been wrong about your conclusions." You were pretty certain that he had lied in the report, though it would be easier to pry out the truth without accusing him of that.

"How so, General?" He seemed to take you seriously for the first time, even taking his shoes off your meeting room table.

"You wrote that Ra's ship and the gate were destroyed, but you were not present to witness that. Maybe the warhead failed to detonate, or the alien managed to defuse it. We have no proof that Ra is no longer a threat or that Abydos can't be used as a staging ground against us."

There was tense silence between the two of you, until O'Neill ground out. "Sir, Ra is dead and the Abydonians are not a threat."

"It would be easier to trust your assessment if you told me the truth. What happened during the mission?"

O'Neill visibly rung with himself, until finally making the right decision. "The report is accurate save for two things. We do know why Ra kept those people enslaved. They mined the mineral that the Stargate is made out of. I decided to leave that out of the report to not tempt General West to try and open the gate to Abydos again."

"As for the bomb, it happened as outlined, but when I used the ring-thingy to beam it up to Ra's ship, it was already in orbit. It exploded. We watched the chunks rain down on Abydos for a few hours while the people cheered. He's definitely dead, Sir, and the Abydonians have no reason or ability to threaten us."

"That also means that Daniel Jackson did not die in the explosion, correct? I take it he stayed with the woman he had gotten married to?"

"Well, I sure hope so. I didn't cover for him to dash on her."

"Alright," you said, while feeling the situation was anything but. "That will be all for now. You will have to stay my guest for a bit longer in case some other questions arise, but I won't be taking more than a day or two of your time." You waved to the guard at the door, ready to dismiss O'Neill.

"Actually, I would have my own question, General." He stood up and put on his most winning smile. "How is the enlistment going with the Space Force? Any openings for a dashing Air Force retiree?"

"Excuse you, Colonel?"

"As I see it, you will be sending a team to Abydos again and Kawalsky, Ferretti and me just happen to be the only people on this planet who travelled though the Stargate. Also, the Abydonians already know us and are quite fond of us for the whole freeing them from slavery thing."

He had a point. He was incredibly presumptuous about it, but still. And you were very short on manpower that you could send on a combat mission. "And assuming I accept your 'request', what reason do I have to believe you won't disobey my orders just as you disobeyed General West?"

"Do you plan to order me to blow up my own team and a few thousand civilians?"

You did not deign this with an answer and after a few seconds, O'Neill shrugged and turned towards the door. "I'll give you my request in writing once I found some stationary, General."

---

Another hour of meetings later, you sat down in your own office for the first time. A large cup of coffee in one hand and a thick stack of papers in the other. You already knew this would be a short night. Or maybe a nap of two hours.

The first request on your desk was indeed from O'Neill to be enlisted in the Space Force and not even as a handwritten note, but with the proper form and all T's crossed and I's dotted. Curiously enough he had not specified the rank he wanted to enlist as and noted among the remarks his stellar service record prior to Project Lodestone and that he had carried out every lawful order given to him to the full satisfaction of his superiors. The next two requests were, unsurprisingly, the very same forms from Kawalsky and Ferretti.

[] [Old Guard] Accept their requests and re-enlist them in their old ranks.

[] [Old Guard] Only re-enlist them in a lower rank as punishment for lying in their report.

[] [Old Guard] Deny their request and look for other soldiers.

The next one was from Captain Carter and surprised you a bit. She was applying to be transferred to a field posting, reasoning that her abilities would be very valuable when encountering alien technology in the field. However, this would also mean you would be missing her expertise in the scientific teams and those were already rather short on qualified staff.

[] [Carter] Accept her request and transfer her to a frontline posting.

[] [Carter] Deny her request. She is too valuable in the lab.

Next was perhaps the weightiest decision. The first Stargate mission. Orders from above were to find out where the attack had come from and, if possible, to retrieve the captured soldiers. The initial assumption was that they must have come from Abydos, but after reviewing more footage from the security cameras, that was apparently not the case. The leader of the attackers had somehow activated the Stargate with a device on his wrist and while the images where to grainy to be certain about the address, it was evidently not Abydos.

It could be narrowed down to about two dozen likely combinations. A small enough number to go through them by trial and error. On the other hand, you could not be sure if there was only one valid address in that set and you only had one team for now, so you might be sending them on a completely unrelated planet.

[] [Mission] Scout Abydos first.

[] [Mission] Try to follow the attackers.

Lastly, you gave one more order to be carried out while you rested for a while.

Pick one:

[] [Order] Urgently get some medical personnel there to analyse the dead bodies. You need to know what these aliens are.

[] [Order] Let the scientists do some tests with the captured alien equipment to assess their capabilities.

[] [Order] Have the technicians carefully dismantle the self-destruct device. You don't trust whatever West had his people cobble together there.

[] [Order] Get a staff of linguists. The reports mention that the aliens on Abydos spoke ancient Egyptian, so you will likely need people with knowledge of it.

[] [Order] Have the scientists prepare a briefing for you on what they have been working the last two years. Maybe there's something that could be immediately useful.

---

AN: I have a hunch how most of those votes will turn out, but the butterflies deserve to roam if they want.

"I think the new guy doesn't like us very much." Kawalski nodded towards the window of the control room from where General Harrison was peering down into the gate room. "You in particular, Major."

"Is that a way to speak with your commanding officer, Captain?" O'Neill shot back in a mocking tone, earning a laugh from both Kawalski and Ferreti in return. "Not as if you would mind either. If I put on a uniform again, then I'd rather go out and do something instead of mouldering behind a desk. I've got a nice camping chair next to a lake for that."

"You should be a bit careful, Sir." The latter chimed in without looking up from the magazine he was checking over. "I've read up on him once they've let me near a computer. His father is a Senator. Got his star faster than most get Colonel. He might prefer the old O'Neill."

"Come on. The old O'Neill was an ass."

Ferretti and Kawalski glanced at each other, though they were saved from saying something return by the arrival of the rest of their troop. "Major O'Neill," the young woman saluted. "Technical Sergeant Atkins, reporting as ordered, sir. With me are Specialists Bashir and Hartman."

"At ease, Sergeant. You know what you are about to do?"

"We've been briefed and know what to expect," she replied without much conviction.

Before they could say anything more, the klaxons started blaring and the floor began to vibrate as the inner ring of the gate began to spin. "Trust me, Sergeant," the smiling O'Neill shouted over the wailing to the stunned Space Force soldiers. "You do not."

---

Going through the Stargate did not actually feel like anything. One moment you walked into what felt a bit like a standing puddle and the next moment, you are on another planet, walking out of another. The problem was, in between those events, you were broken down into your component atoms, squeezed through a wormhole and reassembled on the other side. Hopefully in the same general shape as before. O'Neill had read enough of the technical documents to know this and somehow it helped to keep his breakfast down despite his stomach feeling as if he had just ridden every rollercoaster built by man at once.

Specialist Bashir, retching qietly a few steps away from the gate, seemed not like a rollercoaster fan. "Give it a moment. It passes," O'Neill told him while patting him on the back and walking on. Atkins was kneeling next to Hartman, who had sat down behind the stone altar, while Kawalski and Ferreti had taken up a firing position behind the nearby stone pillars. They still had the bullet holes and scorch marks from two years ago. He quickly joined them and scanned the room.

"Pretty sure I saw movement when we came in, Sir."

"Abydonians?"

Ferretti just shrugged and pointed towards the other end of the colonnade where he could faintly make out something shifting in the shadows. If those were Ra's minions, then there was a distinct lack of strutting around compared to the last time.

"Let's see. What was it?" He tried his best to remember, but it's been a while and he should really have written it down. "Inw herit!" No. That wasn't it. "Inwa hwrit?"

"Sir. What the hell are you yelling?" Ferretti not quiet yelled back at him, but it wasn't far off.

"It's either 'we come in peace' or 'live long and prosper'. That's the only two phrases Daniel taught me."

Footsteps could be heard from the far side of the room and a man with glasses and wearing a brown robe came out of hiding, raising his arms before even any weapons were aimed at him. "It should be 'inwe hwrit', but that was actually quite good." As the weapons were lowered, Daniel Jackson began to wave at them awkwardly. "Uhm, hi. You were not supposed to come back."

"Happy to see you too, Daniel."

---

Despite the armed stand-off, the greeting was quite warm, with plenty of the Abydonians seeming ready to throw another welcome party for the team. That also extended to the three Space Force soldiers, who were more than a bit bewildered to be greeted like this. Especially Sergeant Atkins was rather tense around the cheering crowd, doubly so around the 'guards' that had been posted around the gate and who were waving around a mix of their old MP5's and four of the alien staffs. Giving up on quieting the Abydonians down, O'Neill simply ordered Kawalski and the three soldiers to secure the gate while Daniel, Ferretti and him would go outside.

It wasn't far. A sizeable camp had sprung up right next to the entrance to the pyramid that housed the gate and they had barely time to feel the heat of the three suns beathing down on them before they were in a tent with a few cups of water. The tent itself was not exactly lavish by any standard, but it was still obvious that Daniel was in charge of the place by how people deferred to him.

"You've done quite well for yourself." O'Neill remarked after taking the smallest possible sip of water to be still polite. "Building your own city?"

"No, not at all. This is a dig site."

"Missed the archaeology and decided to dig up one more pyramid?"

"Unfortunately, it's more grave robbing." Daniel put down his own cup and began pointing at a large sheet of papyrus with a drawing of the pyramid and the temple, though they were a lot larger than what O'Neill had seen. "There's a whole city buried here. Ra had it burned to the ground when the people rebelled against him. It's fascinating to see this side of the development of this culture and I would love to excavate more of it but…"

He sighed and pointed at the temple. "We are mostly just digging into the temple and pyramid, hoping there's some weapons buried there." He looked defeated while saying it.

Ferretti laughed bitterly in response. "Didn't think I'd live to see the day where you would be looking for some fancy ray-guns, Jackson."

"It is certainly not by choice. I've been exploring the pyramid on my own for a while and, well, we found some signs that there might be other planets that can be reached with the Stargate. Probably they are ruled by other 'gods' like Ra and I doubt they will be any more reasonable than he was."

"That's actually why we are here," O'Neill began and drew out a tablet, showing Daniel the footage from the attack on the gate room. "We got visitors back on Earth and we are here to make sure that they are not from Abydos."

"You… did not bring another nuke, right? General West doesn't want you to blow up the gate anymore?" Daniel glanced nervously between Ferretti and O'Neill.

"West isn't in charge anymore and the new guy is…" O'Neill waved his hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "He can be talked to. I think. Haven't had much time to get to know him. But no nuclear warheads this time, just recon."

"Good. Yes. No nuclear warheads is good." He put on a forced smile and nodded a few times, before sighing and staring into the distance. "You think he would be willing to talk to me? Negotiate something? Might be better to take a chance with your new general than with Apophis."

"Who?"

"Oh, him," Jackson pointed at the tablet. "Or his people at least. There are a few deities associated with snakes, but Apophis, or Apep, is the most major one. He is also called the chaos serpent or the devourer of souls."

"Sounds like a nice guy," muttered O'Neill while Ferretti got out his own tablet to take notes.

"From context and since this pyramid has a few boasts about how Ra defeated him, I'd assume that he is another of Ra's kind and used to be his rival. So, when Ra died…"

"… this snake fellow decided to take over Ra's old turf," Jack finished the thought. "Has he attacked Abydos too?"

"No. We had guards near the gate the entire time to make sure that nobody was using it."

As if on cue, the soldiers radios buzzed shortly before Kawalski spoke. "Sir, the gate is activating."

"Reinforcements for you?"

"Nope."

An unknown, likely hostile group is trying to come to Abydos. What does the team do in response?

[] Prepare an ambush in the temple. Low visibility will impede both sides equally, but you have the element of surprise.
-[] (Optional) Spend 1 point of Luck on the first round of combat.

[] Wait till they reach the ramp leading down from the temple entrance. They will have no cover there, but if they are hostile, they might fire into the camp.
-[] (Optional) Spend 1 point of Luck on the first round of combat.

[] Convince the Abydonians to not fight and instead wait to see what happens. (Requires DC 4 diplomacy check.)