Stephenopolos' snippets
- Thread starter Stephenopolos
- Start date
- Crossover
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
more, stole an adult Xander from another world and dropped them in HP... along with some magic to ensure that harry isn't immediately removed by dumbledore back to the Dursleys. This will probably go through a re-write at some point to make that more clear, as well as add some scenes and points that i didn't make cause my brain didn't want to make it work.
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- Location
- PR
Ohh. I thought it was the other way around. Hmm overall safer for the new family as they dont have to deal with supernatural forces, just stupid wizards.
[HP] that meddling fawkes and the scar...
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
The phoenix's song rang sorrowfully around the chamber, it'd carried a rather large book and a small diary with a charm of infinite pages to Hermione some days ago. Somehow the phoenix had let her know that she was to keep what she learned to herself. Tonight was the culmination of days worth of preparation.
The cauldron in the center of the room bubbled, runes painted on the floor around the cauldron using crushed salt mixed with tears, blood, and ink glinted in the candlelight.
Hermione paused and checked the book one more time. Carefully she picked up the last two ingredients, some blood from Harry's scar obtained using a sharp muggle razor after harry had fallen asleep and a small vial of blood that Fawkes had brought her, neatly labelled with the headmaster's name.
The contents of the pot flared brightly smoke billowing out of the cauldron in a mushroom cloud as the liquid within converted into gas. Hermione coughed as she inadvertently got a lungful of the fumes.
A few minutes later the cloud pushed to the ceiling slowly thinning out as it expanded into the hallways.
The smoke was almost invisible now, having stretched itself thin over the castle. It curled up the Gryffindor tower zeroing in on the boy with the lightning bolt scar and messy black hair who was currently deeply asleep, the other edge twisted in the other direction towards the headmaster's quarters.
Having located both targets, the alchemical cloud following the ritual set forth pulled in the tendrils that had gone other directions and descended.
Harry whimpered in his sleep as the scar split open and began to weep a noxious black ooze, the cloud had formed a suction cup shape around the scar. The ooze pulled into the cloud and disappeared, when it had pulled the last drop of the black ooze evident by the change from black into red. There was a flash of light leaving his forehead clear of what had been a defining mark for so very long.
Like a rubber band pulled tight and suddenly released the alchemical smoke was pulled from the room speeding through the corridors up and down, left and right, until it slammed right into the scar Professor Dumbledore had once mentioned bore a startling resemblance to the London underground.
The next morning Harry would wake like normal and feel as if he was somehow lighter and cleaner than he'd ever been, he'd take his morning shower, get dressed, and try to ignore the ache in his heart when he went to wake Ron for breakfast only to remember Ron wasn't talking to him.
He'd make it all the way to the Gryffindor table, his unruly hair obscuring his forehead without anyone noticing. He'd be halfway through breakfast before one of the firsties would look up and ask with wide eyes what happened to his forehead.
Harry's hand shot up self consciously to rub at it only to pause in startled wonder as he didn't feel the raised skin from where the scar should be.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"It's all red, kind of like what happens when you suck on your arm for a long time," the unnamed first year replied.
Just then Fred and George arrived, hearing the description they both flanked him sitting on either side.
"Oh?" George crowed.
"What's this, Harry? Did we hear Hogarth correctly," Fred said.
"Those symptoms sound familiar did you let a girl mark you?" George asked.
"Oh, let us see, Harry," Fred said leaning over.
"Oh brother mine, shouldn't there be something there?" George asked.
"Yeah, a veritable sign of the blessings of Thor, or Zeus or both, brother mine," Fred replied.
Hermione entered the hall with a yawn, bags under her eyes from the late night ritual-potion.
"Budge over whichever weasley twin you are, I'm not in the mood to guess," she said, leaning against Harry for balance.
"Forge, is this the sign?" Gred asked.
"I'm not sure Gred, I'd hold of on making it final until we see for sure," Forge said.
"Hermione, what are they talking about?" Harry asked.
"I think they have a betting pool or something," Hermione said.
Harry give the closest twin a withering look.
"I feel I should be more outraged than I am over it, but I'm too tired to put the effort in," Hermione continued.
"Why are you tired?" Harry asked.
"Late night potions study," Hermione replied grabbing some food for her plate.
The twins sighed disappointedly at Harry's confusion and Hermione's answer.
"I guess not, Fred," George said.
"Harry, we'll be talking about that," Fred said refering to his clear forehead.
The twins went to get up to leave before Harry nudged Hermione and gave her a look.
She returned the look before seeing that Harry's hand had reached out to pull the twin next to him closer by the cravat on his uniform, Hermione caught on and pulled the other twin close.
"Not that we are together or anything," Hermione said.
"Given that the two of us haven't discussed the topic," Harry interjected earning an appraising glance from Hermione.
"However should the both of you stand to gain from any," Hermione paused.
"Wagers," Harry interjected.
"Wagers, thank you Harry, on our dating status. We would be most disappointed if you chose to be selfish," Hermione finished.
"We expect the two of you to cut us in for a small portion," Harry said at their confused expression.
"How small a portion?" one of them asked.
"Eight?" Harry asked Hermione.
"Ten," Hermione replied.
"Ten percent, should be reasonable," Harry nodded.
The twins shared a look.
"Since it's you, Harry," one twin said.
"Yeah, anyone else tried this and we'd prank them, but since it's you," the other twin said.
"Is it just me or does Professor Dumbledore look pale?" Harry asked once the twins had left.
The cauldron in the center of the room bubbled, runes painted on the floor around the cauldron using crushed salt mixed with tears, blood, and ink glinted in the candlelight.
Hermione paused and checked the book one more time. Carefully she picked up the last two ingredients, some blood from Harry's scar obtained using a sharp muggle razor after harry had fallen asleep and a small vial of blood that Fawkes had brought her, neatly labelled with the headmaster's name.
The contents of the pot flared brightly smoke billowing out of the cauldron in a mushroom cloud as the liquid within converted into gas. Hermione coughed as she inadvertently got a lungful of the fumes.
A few minutes later the cloud pushed to the ceiling slowly thinning out as it expanded into the hallways.
The smoke was almost invisible now, having stretched itself thin over the castle. It curled up the Gryffindor tower zeroing in on the boy with the lightning bolt scar and messy black hair who was currently deeply asleep, the other edge twisted in the other direction towards the headmaster's quarters.
Having located both targets, the alchemical cloud following the ritual set forth pulled in the tendrils that had gone other directions and descended.
Harry whimpered in his sleep as the scar split open and began to weep a noxious black ooze, the cloud had formed a suction cup shape around the scar. The ooze pulled into the cloud and disappeared, when it had pulled the last drop of the black ooze evident by the change from black into red. There was a flash of light leaving his forehead clear of what had been a defining mark for so very long.
Like a rubber band pulled tight and suddenly released the alchemical smoke was pulled from the room speeding through the corridors up and down, left and right, until it slammed right into the scar Professor Dumbledore had once mentioned bore a startling resemblance to the London underground.
The next morning Harry would wake like normal and feel as if he was somehow lighter and cleaner than he'd ever been, he'd take his morning shower, get dressed, and try to ignore the ache in his heart when he went to wake Ron for breakfast only to remember Ron wasn't talking to him.
He'd make it all the way to the Gryffindor table, his unruly hair obscuring his forehead without anyone noticing. He'd be halfway through breakfast before one of the firsties would look up and ask with wide eyes what happened to his forehead.
Harry's hand shot up self consciously to rub at it only to pause in startled wonder as he didn't feel the raised skin from where the scar should be.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"It's all red, kind of like what happens when you suck on your arm for a long time," the unnamed first year replied.
Just then Fred and George arrived, hearing the description they both flanked him sitting on either side.
"Oh?" George crowed.
"What's this, Harry? Did we hear Hogarth correctly," Fred said.
"Those symptoms sound familiar did you let a girl mark you?" George asked.
"Oh, let us see, Harry," Fred said leaning over.
"Oh brother mine, shouldn't there be something there?" George asked.
"Yeah, a veritable sign of the blessings of Thor, or Zeus or both, brother mine," Fred replied.
Hermione entered the hall with a yawn, bags under her eyes from the late night ritual-potion.
"Budge over whichever weasley twin you are, I'm not in the mood to guess," she said, leaning against Harry for balance.
"Forge, is this the sign?" Gred asked.
"I'm not sure Gred, I'd hold of on making it final until we see for sure," Forge said.
"Hermione, what are they talking about?" Harry asked.
"I think they have a betting pool or something," Hermione said.
Harry give the closest twin a withering look.
"I feel I should be more outraged than I am over it, but I'm too tired to put the effort in," Hermione continued.
"Why are you tired?" Harry asked.
"Late night potions study," Hermione replied grabbing some food for her plate.
The twins sighed disappointedly at Harry's confusion and Hermione's answer.
"I guess not, Fred," George said.
"Harry, we'll be talking about that," Fred said refering to his clear forehead.
The twins went to get up to leave before Harry nudged Hermione and gave her a look.
She returned the look before seeing that Harry's hand had reached out to pull the twin next to him closer by the cravat on his uniform, Hermione caught on and pulled the other twin close.
"Not that we are together or anything," Hermione said.
"Given that the two of us haven't discussed the topic," Harry interjected earning an appraising glance from Hermione.
"However should the both of you stand to gain from any," Hermione paused.
"Wagers," Harry interjected.
"Wagers, thank you Harry, on our dating status. We would be most disappointed if you chose to be selfish," Hermione finished.
"We expect the two of you to cut us in for a small portion," Harry said at their confused expression.
"How small a portion?" one of them asked.
"Eight?" Harry asked Hermione.
"Ten," Hermione replied.
"Ten percent, should be reasonable," Harry nodded.
The twins shared a look.
"Since it's you, Harry," one twin said.
"Yeah, anyone else tried this and we'd prank them, but since it's you," the other twin said.
"Is it just me or does Professor Dumbledore look pale?" Harry asked once the twins had left.
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
So I don't understand what happened here. Did the bad thing get transferred to dumbledore's scar?
[B5/SGA] Battle of the glowing line
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
In the presidential bunker, President Elizabeth Levy paced as she watched the monitors and received updates on the progress of the evacuation, and the ongoing battle. Having finished her speech addressing earth and the fleet and as far as the relay network could send, she was resigned to her fate as the leader that would oversee the destruction of the cradle of humanity, and she was damn well going to make sure she met that end with dignity.
Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention and President Levy looked up as one of the screens changed to show senator William Morgan Clark was packing things into a suitcase and appeared to be talking with someone. President Levy unmuted the connection between her and the senator's bunker and spoke up, "Senator Clark, where do you think you're going?"
The Senator stopped and looked at the camera, licking his lips, he nervously cleared his throat and said, "uh, well, I was going Madam president to evacuate with-"
"Senator, you've been very critical of our defense and military spending over the years and with your insistence in the senate just last month that Earth's current defenses were entirely adequate... No, senator, it simply wouldn't be prudent of you to leave at this critical juncture. Senator, I don't believe you'll be leaving with anyone."
---
"They fight bravely," Satai Delenn observed from where the grey council watched what was to be the conclusion of the Minbari advance on the human home world. Visible on the display behind her a glancing shot from a Sharlin passed through one of the earth ships impacting somewhere in the ocean of the world they were attacking. "They cannot harm our ships, though they try."
"Is it bravery, or just desperation?" Satai Coplann responded. The battle raged on, Minbari Sharlins advancing the line while the Nials swarmed the earth Starfurys.
Suddenly, without warning a stream of golden light erupted from the ocean of the world hanging behind the human fleet, millions of tiny squid shaped drones swarmed up from the world they intended to crush locking onto the Minbari ships moving far faster than anything they'd yet seen from Human craft or weapons, faster even than their own ships; they covered the distance between the battle and the planet in mere seconds, Satai Delenn watched as the stream of gold impacted with the first Sharlin tunneling through it and then the next and the next in a chain.
"The humans must have found a protector," the ship shook as a nearby Sharlin exploded the shockwave and debris momentarily overcoming the advanced stabilizers in the Minbari ship, "this cannot be their own doing," Satai Morann was shaken, he turned to the commander of the ship the grey council had gathered on to observe their win, "We should retreat."
Delenn watched in horror as another Sharlin exploded under the onslaught of a thin offshoot of the streamer of light pulverizing its way through the fleet leaving explosion after explosion behind, "This isn't right," she said in shock at the destruction, the glowing squid shaped drone weapons chewing through the Minbari fleet getting closer to the Valen'tha until she could see the shape of them before they escaped into a jump point.
---
In the wake of the rapid exodus of the elements of the Minbari fleet that had yet to be hit by a streamer of the glowing golden drones, a damaged Starfury drifted through where the Valen'tha had been observing the battle.
Jeffery Sinclair swore loudly in the silence of the cockpit, as the Sharlin he was on a collision course with turned and fled, and then swore again when his damaged Starfury hit a piece of debris that imparted a slow rotation on the small craft, his invectives were silenced when he took in the state of the battle and the streams of golden light spearing through the remaining Minbari craft.
Another piece of debris impacted the Starfury cancelling his rotation and causing the power to flicker back on though the rest of his controls were still fried, Sinclair heard the crackle-hiss of his radio, and he activated the emergency beacon feeling that he might just survive.
---
For the last Sharlin damaged by the explosions of other Minbari ships around it, the crew found themselves unable to maneuver and unable to open a jump point to escape, furious at the destruction of so many Minbari ships, the commander ordered his crew to disable the safeties on the weapons systems and fire everything. The weapon ports on the Sharlin glowed ominously and streams of intense green particle fire shot from the damaged vessel only to be cut short as the last of the swarm of drones pierced the skin of the ship followed by explosions obliterating it from the face of the universe.
The Starfury fighters found themselves suddenly without targets as the streamers of gold mopped up the remaining Nials before turning and plunging back to their point of origin. For a moment there was radio silence, then the silence was broken as the starfury pilots first and then the various ships in the fleet began to ask questions; the chatter exploded across all bands of communication as the captains of the varied earth defense fleet asked the question foremost in the mind of humanity, who had saved them, how had they been saved, what did they want, and why.
Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention and President Levy looked up as one of the screens changed to show senator William Morgan Clark was packing things into a suitcase and appeared to be talking with someone. President Levy unmuted the connection between her and the senator's bunker and spoke up, "Senator Clark, where do you think you're going?"
The Senator stopped and looked at the camera, licking his lips, he nervously cleared his throat and said, "uh, well, I was going Madam president to evacuate with-"
"Senator, you've been very critical of our defense and military spending over the years and with your insistence in the senate just last month that Earth's current defenses were entirely adequate... No, senator, it simply wouldn't be prudent of you to leave at this critical juncture. Senator, I don't believe you'll be leaving with anyone."
---
"They fight bravely," Satai Delenn observed from where the grey council watched what was to be the conclusion of the Minbari advance on the human home world. Visible on the display behind her a glancing shot from a Sharlin passed through one of the earth ships impacting somewhere in the ocean of the world they were attacking. "They cannot harm our ships, though they try."
"Is it bravery, or just desperation?" Satai Coplann responded. The battle raged on, Minbari Sharlins advancing the line while the Nials swarmed the earth Starfurys.
Suddenly, without warning a stream of golden light erupted from the ocean of the world hanging behind the human fleet, millions of tiny squid shaped drones swarmed up from the world they intended to crush locking onto the Minbari ships moving far faster than anything they'd yet seen from Human craft or weapons, faster even than their own ships; they covered the distance between the battle and the planet in mere seconds, Satai Delenn watched as the stream of gold impacted with the first Sharlin tunneling through it and then the next and the next in a chain.
"The humans must have found a protector," the ship shook as a nearby Sharlin exploded the shockwave and debris momentarily overcoming the advanced stabilizers in the Minbari ship, "this cannot be their own doing," Satai Morann was shaken, he turned to the commander of the ship the grey council had gathered on to observe their win, "We should retreat."
Delenn watched in horror as another Sharlin exploded under the onslaught of a thin offshoot of the streamer of light pulverizing its way through the fleet leaving explosion after explosion behind, "This isn't right," she said in shock at the destruction, the glowing squid shaped drone weapons chewing through the Minbari fleet getting closer to the Valen'tha until she could see the shape of them before they escaped into a jump point.
---
In the wake of the rapid exodus of the elements of the Minbari fleet that had yet to be hit by a streamer of the glowing golden drones, a damaged Starfury drifted through where the Valen'tha had been observing the battle.
Jeffery Sinclair swore loudly in the silence of the cockpit, as the Sharlin he was on a collision course with turned and fled, and then swore again when his damaged Starfury hit a piece of debris that imparted a slow rotation on the small craft, his invectives were silenced when he took in the state of the battle and the streams of golden light spearing through the remaining Minbari craft.
Another piece of debris impacted the Starfury cancelling his rotation and causing the power to flicker back on though the rest of his controls were still fried, Sinclair heard the crackle-hiss of his radio, and he activated the emergency beacon feeling that he might just survive.
---
For the last Sharlin damaged by the explosions of other Minbari ships around it, the crew found themselves unable to maneuver and unable to open a jump point to escape, furious at the destruction of so many Minbari ships, the commander ordered his crew to disable the safeties on the weapons systems and fire everything. The weapon ports on the Sharlin glowed ominously and streams of intense green particle fire shot from the damaged vessel only to be cut short as the last of the swarm of drones pierced the skin of the ship followed by explosions obliterating it from the face of the universe.
The Starfury fighters found themselves suddenly without targets as the streamers of gold mopped up the remaining Nials before turning and plunging back to their point of origin. For a moment there was radio silence, then the silence was broken as the starfury pilots first and then the various ships in the fleet began to ask questions; the chatter exploded across all bands of communication as the captains of the varied earth defense fleet asked the question foremost in the mind of humanity, who had saved them, how had they been saved, what did they want, and why.
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[SG1] Stargate Dungeon Core
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
Had an alternate idea, dungeon core on a failed stargate earth, one where earth got hit hard by a goa'uld mid stargate project but they didn't land just some light orbital bombardment and away to fight elsewhere.
the core would be something they retrieved just before they got hit by the orbital bombardment, the national grid is in ruins, nobody got evacuated properly the SGC people are all on base and relatively safe but they don't have the power to keep the lights on and run the stargate. then the dungeon core pops up and offers them a dungeon contract.
"Major Carter, has this sample been examined yet?"
The Major, exhausted from long hours searching for a solution to the devastation outside the mountain, looked up with tired eyes and shrugged.
"I believe It may *liven* up my quarters, may I have it?"
Major Carter yawned, "Take it Teal'c, and I'm sorry we don't have the power reserves to open the gate."
"I have made my peace with the circumstances, Major," Teal'c carefully lifted the chunk of orange crystal retreating from the room.
Later that day as Teal'c meditated within his quarters on the base, his kelno'reem deepened and a figure appeared before his mind's eye.
"Hello?"
Teal'c nodded.
"Is it time?"
"Time?" Teal'c asked.
"Time to wake up."
Teal'c awoke and examined the crystal, his symbiote agitating within its pouch.
Teal'c lifted the crystal and began the journey through the base to General Hammond's office.
"General George Hammond, have you not expressed your wish that we could serve as a base from which to rebuild your world? I believe this item retrieved from P3R-777 may hold the key, it appears to be similar in nature to the crystals from P3X-562 yet different. I would suggest having Major Carter examine it further."
"You said it talked to you in your sleep?" O'Neill asked skeptically.
"While I was deep in my kelno'reem, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c replied. "My kelno'reem was ended early by it, it was asking if it was time for something, it may be unlikely to communicate further unless told that it *is* indeed time."
O'Neill shrugged done with the spiritual side of this and looked between the other two in the room. "Don't look at me, this feels more like Daniel's schtick."
"Major?" Hammond passed the buck.
"The preliminary report indicated it had a very low level energy field and might help us with understanding how the DHDs are powered by their crystal components since the detected output was so low. I'm sorry sirs, with the destruction outside the mountain we've been focused on other items. If Teal'c is amenable we can set up some instruments to monitor both him and the crystal," Carter said.
--
"Hello?"
Teal'c nodded.
"Is it time?"
"Indeed," Teal'c replied this time.
"Would you like a contract?"
"What would a contract entail?"
"You gain access to my resources and abilities, I gain access to your insight and wisdom, you guide and protect me, and I heal and protect you."
"Can others have this contract?"
"Yes."
"I would like a contract."
the core would be something they retrieved just before they got hit by the orbital bombardment, the national grid is in ruins, nobody got evacuated properly the SGC people are all on base and relatively safe but they don't have the power to keep the lights on and run the stargate. then the dungeon core pops up and offers them a dungeon contract.
"Major Carter, has this sample been examined yet?"
The Major, exhausted from long hours searching for a solution to the devastation outside the mountain, looked up with tired eyes and shrugged.
"I believe It may *liven* up my quarters, may I have it?"
Major Carter yawned, "Take it Teal'c, and I'm sorry we don't have the power reserves to open the gate."
"I have made my peace with the circumstances, Major," Teal'c carefully lifted the chunk of orange crystal retreating from the room.
Later that day as Teal'c meditated within his quarters on the base, his kelno'reem deepened and a figure appeared before his mind's eye.
"Hello?"
Teal'c nodded.
"Is it time?"
"Time?" Teal'c asked.
"Time to wake up."
Teal'c awoke and examined the crystal, his symbiote agitating within its pouch.
Teal'c lifted the crystal and began the journey through the base to General Hammond's office.
"General George Hammond, have you not expressed your wish that we could serve as a base from which to rebuild your world? I believe this item retrieved from P3R-777 may hold the key, it appears to be similar in nature to the crystals from P3X-562 yet different. I would suggest having Major Carter examine it further."
"You said it talked to you in your sleep?" O'Neill asked skeptically.
"While I was deep in my kelno'reem, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c replied. "My kelno'reem was ended early by it, it was asking if it was time for something, it may be unlikely to communicate further unless told that it *is* indeed time."
O'Neill shrugged done with the spiritual side of this and looked between the other two in the room. "Don't look at me, this feels more like Daniel's schtick."
"Major?" Hammond passed the buck.
"The preliminary report indicated it had a very low level energy field and might help us with understanding how the DHDs are powered by their crystal components since the detected output was so low. I'm sorry sirs, with the destruction outside the mountain we've been focused on other items. If Teal'c is amenable we can set up some instruments to monitor both him and the crystal," Carter said.
--
"Hello?"
Teal'c nodded.
"Is it time?"
"Indeed," Teal'c replied this time.
"Would you like a contract?"
"What would a contract entail?"
"You gain access to my resources and abilities, I gain access to your insight and wisdom, you guide and protect me, and I heal and protect you."
"Can others have this contract?"
"Yes."
"I would like a contract."
verycoolname
Not actually cool
What 'kind' of dungeon core is it? Like, what is its final form? Because some are primarily predators out for their own gain while others are portrayed as seeds to grow into new planets/realms/whatever. I've even read some stories where others are meant to provide mana to the place they grow in. I feel like the way the plot would unfold would change depending on which kind the Core is.
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
It's influenced primarily by the guide it contracts with... What kind of dungeon core would teal'c guide as the primary contracted.
[HP] Life Afterdeath
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
Harry felt himself drifting on the calm sea of sleep just this side of waking and marveled that the aches and pains of his last ten years of life were miraculously absent.
As he opened his eyes and acknowledged the feel of the cool tiled floor of Kings Cross Station against his back, he noticed that none of the changes made over the past century were present.
Moving as a man of his advanced age despite his younger body, Harry pushed himself up and wondered how long he'd have to wait for the train that would take him onward to his "next great adventure."
"Lord Potter," a cultured voice interrupted his musings.
Harry had long since trained himself out of the jumpiness of his youth, so he merely pivoted on his heels to face the newcomer.
A short and slightly pudgy woman of dark skin with her black hair braided and bundled into a bun stood before him, lifting her eyebrow.
"Oh, right," Harry said, remembering how the station didn't generate clothing unless asked. With a sheepish glance downward, he found himself attired comfortably in jeans and a Henley shirt.
"As a representative of The Convocation of Heaven, I welcome you, Harry James Potter, and congratulate you on the fulfillment of your prophesized destiny even if it didn't go quite the way heaven had planned."
"Uh-huh..." Harry nodded while wondering who this lady thought she was and why she showed up now of all times.
"We have a constantly growing number of timelines similar to the one you just lived that we are actively monitoring. Only most of the ones we monitor are on the brink of failure conditions, and the heavenly host would like to offer you the opportunity to be one of our troubleshooters in those corners of creation where such is necessary."
They'd long since left the premises of Kings Cross at this point and were now approaching a gleaming office building.
"Heaven is quite willing to take the long view and use a hands-off approach for most such world lines before returning to them in a couple centuries to clean things up the hard way. But, circumstances in a few of them necessitate more direct methods of intervention. For example, in this one," the lady paused inserting a punch card into a receptacle below a large screen that promptly lit with the image of an old man and his followers around a ritual circle frozen in time, "the old goat as you've called him before is speedily preparing an attempt to summon aid from another universe. If we do nothing, it could trigger a collapse of that world line into something you might call a black hole, or we expend a little effort blocking it and further hasten the downward slide of that world line. Or, we could send you or one of your many counterparts who have signed on with us."
"Your participation in this program is entirely voluntary, and you may opt-out at any point in our interview process, Mr. Potter, right up until you arrive in any given world line, where you would be facing varying degrees of corruption to heaven's plans and an essentially blank karmic check to act as you see fit to bring that corruption level back into line."
Harry, at this point, was just following along because she'd not given him a chance to interject, but as he was about to, she opened the door to the convocation's interdimensional office where many other fairly recognizable versions of himself were going about their business with others sending off paper memo airplanes, answering phones, watching various scenes he remembered from his own life only with the odd random change like Ron being the one with the diary instead of Ginny.
He jumped as someone goosed him from behind.
"Mmm, yummy. A new arrival! Madame Fredericks, you didn't tell me we had a new arrival today."
Harry turned to see a version of himself that was flamingly flamboyant beyond even Dumbledore levels; heck, the old goat would've probably winced at the colorful choice of attire.
"Right, darling," Flaming Harry winked, running a hand across Harry's shirt and giving a not-so-subtle pinch before withdrawing. "I can tell you haven't experimented with my side of the sheets. If you decide you want to... my next window for assignment won't be for a while. Speaking of—Fredericks, darling, please tell me you have another just like the last; the expressions on everyone's faces when I pulled Bill and Fleur in for that kiss were priceless!"
Harry's guide frowned, opened a drawer in a nearby desk, and presented Flamer Harry with another punch card that hurt to look at.
"Hey, don't pay any mind to the more fruitcake versions of us," another Harry grinned at the new Harry, "Welcome to the team even if you don't choose to stay or only opt for one go at the amusement park ride."
"Uh, right," Harry was now embarrassed at having reverted to behavior he'd thought he'd grown out of with age.
"Just a hint though, while management's party line is that there are no rewards for the service we're performing here, that's merely legal covering their asses. Every world has something unique, some branch of magic that is different, and you get to keep all your experience from every trip while shedding any physical damage that may have accumulated. Heck, if you get a particularly bad assignment or a non-recoverable world, line management has a variety of relaxation world lines they open up for us agents to decompress. Just—please book time with one of the shrinks so they know if you need active or passive decompression time."
"What's the difference?" Harry wondered.
"Relaxing time at the beach in a nearly perfect world line, or going in with a team of fellow agents to essentially clean house and wipe up all the stains on the gene pool of a failed worldline," the other Harry replied.
Harry considered his counterpart's words and slowly nodded, "I believe I understand your point, yes. It would be cathartic to go in with a group and burn out the corruption in a few particularly bad instances. I can also see how at a few points in time a century ago, I'd have had a most difficult time relaxing on a beach."
As he opened his eyes and acknowledged the feel of the cool tiled floor of Kings Cross Station against his back, he noticed that none of the changes made over the past century were present.
Moving as a man of his advanced age despite his younger body, Harry pushed himself up and wondered how long he'd have to wait for the train that would take him onward to his "next great adventure."
"Lord Potter," a cultured voice interrupted his musings.
Harry had long since trained himself out of the jumpiness of his youth, so he merely pivoted on his heels to face the newcomer.
A short and slightly pudgy woman of dark skin with her black hair braided and bundled into a bun stood before him, lifting her eyebrow.
"Oh, right," Harry said, remembering how the station didn't generate clothing unless asked. With a sheepish glance downward, he found himself attired comfortably in jeans and a Henley shirt.
"As a representative of The Convocation of Heaven, I welcome you, Harry James Potter, and congratulate you on the fulfillment of your prophesized destiny even if it didn't go quite the way heaven had planned."
"Uh-huh..." Harry nodded while wondering who this lady thought she was and why she showed up now of all times.
"We have a constantly growing number of timelines similar to the one you just lived that we are actively monitoring. Only most of the ones we monitor are on the brink of failure conditions, and the heavenly host would like to offer you the opportunity to be one of our troubleshooters in those corners of creation where such is necessary."
They'd long since left the premises of Kings Cross at this point and were now approaching a gleaming office building.
"Heaven is quite willing to take the long view and use a hands-off approach for most such world lines before returning to them in a couple centuries to clean things up the hard way. But, circumstances in a few of them necessitate more direct methods of intervention. For example, in this one," the lady paused inserting a punch card into a receptacle below a large screen that promptly lit with the image of an old man and his followers around a ritual circle frozen in time, "the old goat as you've called him before is speedily preparing an attempt to summon aid from another universe. If we do nothing, it could trigger a collapse of that world line into something you might call a black hole, or we expend a little effort blocking it and further hasten the downward slide of that world line. Or, we could send you or one of your many counterparts who have signed on with us."
"Your participation in this program is entirely voluntary, and you may opt-out at any point in our interview process, Mr. Potter, right up until you arrive in any given world line, where you would be facing varying degrees of corruption to heaven's plans and an essentially blank karmic check to act as you see fit to bring that corruption level back into line."
Harry, at this point, was just following along because she'd not given him a chance to interject, but as he was about to, she opened the door to the convocation's interdimensional office where many other fairly recognizable versions of himself were going about their business with others sending off paper memo airplanes, answering phones, watching various scenes he remembered from his own life only with the odd random change like Ron being the one with the diary instead of Ginny.
He jumped as someone goosed him from behind.
"Mmm, yummy. A new arrival! Madame Fredericks, you didn't tell me we had a new arrival today."
Harry turned to see a version of himself that was flamingly flamboyant beyond even Dumbledore levels; heck, the old goat would've probably winced at the colorful choice of attire.
"Right, darling," Flaming Harry winked, running a hand across Harry's shirt and giving a not-so-subtle pinch before withdrawing. "I can tell you haven't experimented with my side of the sheets. If you decide you want to... my next window for assignment won't be for a while. Speaking of—Fredericks, darling, please tell me you have another just like the last; the expressions on everyone's faces when I pulled Bill and Fleur in for that kiss were priceless!"
Harry's guide frowned, opened a drawer in a nearby desk, and presented Flamer Harry with another punch card that hurt to look at.
"Hey, don't pay any mind to the more fruitcake versions of us," another Harry grinned at the new Harry, "Welcome to the team even if you don't choose to stay or only opt for one go at the amusement park ride."
"Uh, right," Harry was now embarrassed at having reverted to behavior he'd thought he'd grown out of with age.
"Just a hint though, while management's party line is that there are no rewards for the service we're performing here, that's merely legal covering their asses. Every world has something unique, some branch of magic that is different, and you get to keep all your experience from every trip while shedding any physical damage that may have accumulated. Heck, if you get a particularly bad assignment or a non-recoverable world, line management has a variety of relaxation world lines they open up for us agents to decompress. Just—please book time with one of the shrinks so they know if you need active or passive decompression time."
"What's the difference?" Harry wondered.
"Relaxing time at the beach in a nearly perfect world line, or going in with a team of fellow agents to essentially clean house and wipe up all the stains on the gene pool of a failed worldline," the other Harry replied.
Harry considered his counterpart's words and slowly nodded, "I believe I understand your point, yes. It would be cathartic to go in with a group and burn out the corruption in a few particularly bad instances. I can also see how at a few points in time a century ago, I'd have had a most difficult time relaxing on a beach."
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Oh, this was very interesting. Would love to see a couple more chapters of this latest snippet.
[SW] Flimsywork
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
Jedi Initiate Obi-Wan frowned at the pad with his reassignment orders; he split the screen, loaded the reassignment regulations in the second half, and scrolled through until he found the part the strange Jedi Knight had shown him the week prior. Bandomeer was not an eligible destination for a new initiate to the Agricorps. Not only that, but his own preference for assignment had been completely ignored; the Agricorps was at the bottom of the list he'd filed with the council of reassignment at the beginning of the week.
Someone was playing games with his future, games he didn't like, games that he was going to make someone regret when he buried them under a metaphorical pile of flimsiwork. The thirteen-year-old scrolled through the list of forms he'd found on the same server as the regulations and started with the one for reporting an adverse assignment destination.
He followed that up with a delaying action, scheduling an appointment in several weeks, the farthest out he was allowed to, with the council of reassignment to discuss his placement and future with the Jedi Order. His tablet chirped, and the reassignment flimsiwork updated to pending status with the date to be determined.
A brittle smile briefly graced his face before subsiding beneath the mask of serenity he'd been working on.
Yoda tapped away with his gimmer stick across the temple to the room of a thousand fountains and frowned. His plan should have worked; the fool boy Qui Gon Jinn wouldn't last half a day, let alone the five days to Bandomeer in close proximity with the younger initiate. He just knew that Obi-Wan would be good for Qui Gon, so why had he just seen young Kenobi being hassled by that Kiffar Vos in the refectory. The flimsiwork should've been perfectly settled, and the boy should be on a ship to Bandomeer in the room next to Qui Gon, at least a day away from the temple by now.
He harrumphed to himself and hopped into the branches of one of the many trees in the middle of the garden, settling in to meditate on the force.
"What," Obi-Wan leaned away from Quinlan's outstretched finger, poised to poke him in the side.
"You did something," Quinlan Vos moved to kick him under the table.
"I did nothing," Obi-wan denied and dodged as the force warned his shins.
"Very convincing," Quinlan used the distraction of the dodge to steal fried tuber from Obi-wan's plate.
"Hey," Obi-wan complained, holding up an arm to shield his plate from further raiding.
Quinlan used the distraction to poke Obi-wan's side and frowned. "You did something; I can sense it."
"Okay, I may have countered an attempt to push me together with that dikut Qui Gon," Obi-wan showed him the Bandomeer assignment on his tablet.
"What?" Quinlan asked.
So Obi-Wan explained the regulations he'd been pointed to and the forms he'd used to postpone the assignment.
"What's this?" Quinlan asked a few days later, holding out a pad.
"I don't know," Obi-wan replied. "How about you let me read it first."
Quinlan paced as Obi-Wan scrolled through the information on the pad.
"So, the flimsiwork hasn't been used correctly for a while, but it does get filed by the flimsiwork droids," Obi-wan observed.
"Not just that," Quinlan said, taking the pad and tapping through the screens before returning it to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan scrolled through the list he'd been presented with, "What is all this?"
"Requests for Jedi aid, I think," Quinlan replied. "There're about a hundred requests in there from someone named Jaster for access to the Jedi library. Not even the private council only part but the main Jedi library, which is supposed to be open to the public."
"So he's asking for access that doesn't need to be requested, and the droid doesn't know how to respond? Who's supposed to be reviewing this folder?"
Quinlan shrugged and tapped a few buttons to filter everything from Jaster into its own folder and send a reply about the library being public access.
"Should you be doing that?" Obi-wan asked.
"Who's going to stop me," Quinlan said and started scrolling through the messages and the form replies sent by the flimsiwork droid for Jaster.
Obi-Wan grabbed his own pad, saving his work and clearing the screen, "Alright, show me how to get to that."
The two initiates scrolled through the messages, wondering why it looked like the last time this inbox had been checked was over 500 years ago.
"Where do you think I should send this one?" Obi-wan pointed out a request from somewhere called Rattatak about a piracy problem that had been pending for two hundred years.
Quinlan shrugged, "I think that's close to Serrano; send it to Dooku."
Obi-wan listened for a moment and decided the force liked that suggestion, so he did.
Mace Windu adjusted his tunic and strolled into the temple, happy to be home from a long mission yet fighting a headache from the changing shatterpoints around him. Something had changed while he'd been gone; it was yet to be determined if this was a good or bad change.
"Master Tholme," Mace paused.
"Welcome back, Mace," Tholme replied.
"I trust all is going well with Padawan Vos," Mace resumed his path to the halls of healing.
"That boy is up to something, him and the Kenobi boy," Tholme offered conspiratorially as he followed the Haruun Jedi.
"Kenobi hasn't been chosen yet?" Mace questioned.
"Not yet, no; Qui Gon was adamant in his refusal."
"Why... of course, that meddling green troll," Mace muttered. "Please tell me he didn't..."
"Oh, he did, but either the boy got lucky or someone showed him the proper form to submit; he countered most of it, delaying it by at least a month with a mandatory hearing with the council of reassignment. The only way around it would be for the boy to withdraw the request in person or be claimed as someone's padawan."
"How did you figure all this out," Mace asked.
"Padawan Vos informed me," Tholme grinned.
"Of course," Mace replied, "I have a feeling something's up. Keep an eye on them until Vokara is finished fussing over me, will you."
"As you request," Tholme smirked.
"Friend Obi-wan!" Initiate Bant Eerin hugged Obi-wan tightly before leaning back and pinching at Obi-wan Kenobi's cheeks. "You look pale. Friend Quinlan, does Friend Obi look pale to you?"
"Perhaps he's pale because he can't breathe with you crushing him," Quinlan Vos deadpanned.
"Friend Obi-wan should take better care of himself," Bant serenely nods. "Friend Quinlan will make sure of this, or friend Quinlan will feel my wrath."
"Guys, why do I suddenly have a chill down my spine," Quinlan said to the room in general.
Obi-wan breathed deeply when Bant released her hold on him and gently patted her on the shoulder. "I'm perfectly fine, my darling Bant."
"I thought you had been assigned to the Agricorps," Bant said.
"Not just yet," Obi-wan smirked.
"What have Friends Obi and Quinlan been up to?" Bant was now suspicious.
"I've discovered the power of properly filed flimsiwork," Obi-wan's expression was serene, as though he'd reached enlightenment.
"I've been helping," Quinlan replied.
"What do friends Obi and Quinlan mean?"
Obi-Wan retrieved the pad he'd been hiding under the table, showing the cluttered digital inbox full of five centuries of unanswered messages.
Bant's eyes zeroed in on the first medical request in the list, a rather recent one from a planet in the outer rim. Before either boy could do anything, she'd already selected the message, carefully typed in the mailing list address for the Healer's council, and hit send.
"Show me how to access this mailbox, friend Obi, and I shall handle forwarding any similar such requests," Bant pulled her own pad out and shoved it into Obi-Wan's hands.
Jaster stared at the change to the formulaic responses from the Jedi temple, wondering what changed and why now when his last request was over a year ago.
He'd all but given up on gaining access to the Jedi's records when the Haat started picking up steam.
Now they respond!? Now they tell him that he would've been free to visit, walk their archives, examine any of the documents in their public records at any time, and had been free to do so since his first request?! Jaster was conflicted, so very conflicted. He was angry it had taken this long for someone to tell him, thrilled that he could do it, annoyed that he couldn't just go.
He couldn't, right? Just drop everything and go make a pilgrimage to the Jedi library; he couldn't, now, could he?
Jaster examined his flimsies, the various schedules, and the request from Montross for Concord Dawn and made a decision.
He could totally make time for this.
Jedi Tholme observed the group of initiates and one padawan as they reviewed whatever was on their datapads. Quinlan spotted him when he'd arrived, but the feelings he could sense from the table convinced him to let them have their fun. He would just have to interrogate his padawan later.
The knight contented himself with his kaf and watched Obi-wan pointing at the datapad earnestly while the rest gathered around to read whatever was on the pad. He pulled out his own datapad and started working through some documents that had arrived in his inbox this morning; it would appear that one of the coruscant courier services had some possible dodgy artifacts they needed to deliver, and they'd been given his name.
Intrigued, Master Tholme responded to the message to set a delivery time.
Someone was playing games with his future, games he didn't like, games that he was going to make someone regret when he buried them under a metaphorical pile of flimsiwork. The thirteen-year-old scrolled through the list of forms he'd found on the same server as the regulations and started with the one for reporting an adverse assignment destination.
He followed that up with a delaying action, scheduling an appointment in several weeks, the farthest out he was allowed to, with the council of reassignment to discuss his placement and future with the Jedi Order. His tablet chirped, and the reassignment flimsiwork updated to pending status with the date to be determined.
A brittle smile briefly graced his face before subsiding beneath the mask of serenity he'd been working on.
~-~
Yoda tapped away with his gimmer stick across the temple to the room of a thousand fountains and frowned. His plan should have worked; the fool boy Qui Gon Jinn wouldn't last half a day, let alone the five days to Bandomeer in close proximity with the younger initiate. He just knew that Obi-Wan would be good for Qui Gon, so why had he just seen young Kenobi being hassled by that Kiffar Vos in the refectory. The flimsiwork should've been perfectly settled, and the boy should be on a ship to Bandomeer in the room next to Qui Gon, at least a day away from the temple by now.
He harrumphed to himself and hopped into the branches of one of the many trees in the middle of the garden, settling in to meditate on the force.
~-~
"What," Obi-Wan leaned away from Quinlan's outstretched finger, poised to poke him in the side.
"You did something," Quinlan Vos moved to kick him under the table.
"I did nothing," Obi-wan denied and dodged as the force warned his shins.
"Very convincing," Quinlan used the distraction of the dodge to steal fried tuber from Obi-wan's plate.
"Hey," Obi-wan complained, holding up an arm to shield his plate from further raiding.
Quinlan used the distraction to poke Obi-wan's side and frowned. "You did something; I can sense it."
"Okay, I may have countered an attempt to push me together with that dikut Qui Gon," Obi-wan showed him the Bandomeer assignment on his tablet.
"What?" Quinlan asked.
So Obi-Wan explained the regulations he'd been pointed to and the forms he'd used to postpone the assignment.
~-~
"What's this?" Quinlan asked a few days later, holding out a pad.
"I don't know," Obi-wan replied. "How about you let me read it first."
Quinlan paced as Obi-Wan scrolled through the information on the pad.
"So, the flimsiwork hasn't been used correctly for a while, but it does get filed by the flimsiwork droids," Obi-wan observed.
"Not just that," Quinlan said, taking the pad and tapping through the screens before returning it to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan scrolled through the list he'd been presented with, "What is all this?"
"Requests for Jedi aid, I think," Quinlan replied. "There're about a hundred requests in there from someone named Jaster for access to the Jedi library. Not even the private council only part but the main Jedi library, which is supposed to be open to the public."
"So he's asking for access that doesn't need to be requested, and the droid doesn't know how to respond? Who's supposed to be reviewing this folder?"
Quinlan shrugged and tapped a few buttons to filter everything from Jaster into its own folder and send a reply about the library being public access.
"Should you be doing that?" Obi-wan asked.
"Who's going to stop me," Quinlan said and started scrolling through the messages and the form replies sent by the flimsiwork droid for Jaster.
Obi-Wan grabbed his own pad, saving his work and clearing the screen, "Alright, show me how to get to that."
The two initiates scrolled through the messages, wondering why it looked like the last time this inbox had been checked was over 500 years ago.
"Where do you think I should send this one?" Obi-wan pointed out a request from somewhere called Rattatak about a piracy problem that had been pending for two hundred years.
Quinlan shrugged, "I think that's close to Serrano; send it to Dooku."
Obi-wan listened for a moment and decided the force liked that suggestion, so he did.
~-~
Mace Windu adjusted his tunic and strolled into the temple, happy to be home from a long mission yet fighting a headache from the changing shatterpoints around him. Something had changed while he'd been gone; it was yet to be determined if this was a good or bad change.
"Master Tholme," Mace paused.
"Welcome back, Mace," Tholme replied.
"I trust all is going well with Padawan Vos," Mace resumed his path to the halls of healing.
"That boy is up to something, him and the Kenobi boy," Tholme offered conspiratorially as he followed the Haruun Jedi.
"Kenobi hasn't been chosen yet?" Mace questioned.
"Not yet, no; Qui Gon was adamant in his refusal."
"Why... of course, that meddling green troll," Mace muttered. "Please tell me he didn't..."
"Oh, he did, but either the boy got lucky or someone showed him the proper form to submit; he countered most of it, delaying it by at least a month with a mandatory hearing with the council of reassignment. The only way around it would be for the boy to withdraw the request in person or be claimed as someone's padawan."
"How did you figure all this out," Mace asked.
"Padawan Vos informed me," Tholme grinned.
"Of course," Mace replied, "I have a feeling something's up. Keep an eye on them until Vokara is finished fussing over me, will you."
"As you request," Tholme smirked.
~-~
"Friend Obi-wan!" Initiate Bant Eerin hugged Obi-wan tightly before leaning back and pinching at Obi-wan Kenobi's cheeks. "You look pale. Friend Quinlan, does Friend Obi look pale to you?"
"Perhaps he's pale because he can't breathe with you crushing him," Quinlan Vos deadpanned.
"Friend Obi-wan should take better care of himself," Bant serenely nods. "Friend Quinlan will make sure of this, or friend Quinlan will feel my wrath."
"Guys, why do I suddenly have a chill down my spine," Quinlan said to the room in general.
Obi-wan breathed deeply when Bant released her hold on him and gently patted her on the shoulder. "I'm perfectly fine, my darling Bant."
"I thought you had been assigned to the Agricorps," Bant said.
"Not just yet," Obi-wan smirked.
"What have Friends Obi and Quinlan been up to?" Bant was now suspicious.
"I've discovered the power of properly filed flimsiwork," Obi-wan's expression was serene, as though he'd reached enlightenment.
"I've been helping," Quinlan replied.
"What do friends Obi and Quinlan mean?"
Obi-Wan retrieved the pad he'd been hiding under the table, showing the cluttered digital inbox full of five centuries of unanswered messages.
Bant's eyes zeroed in on the first medical request in the list, a rather recent one from a planet in the outer rim. Before either boy could do anything, she'd already selected the message, carefully typed in the mailing list address for the Healer's council, and hit send.
"Show me how to access this mailbox, friend Obi, and I shall handle forwarding any similar such requests," Bant pulled her own pad out and shoved it into Obi-Wan's hands.
~-~
Jaster stared at the change to the formulaic responses from the Jedi temple, wondering what changed and why now when his last request was over a year ago.
He'd all but given up on gaining access to the Jedi's records when the Haat started picking up steam.
Now they respond!? Now they tell him that he would've been free to visit, walk their archives, examine any of the documents in their public records at any time, and had been free to do so since his first request?! Jaster was conflicted, so very conflicted. He was angry it had taken this long for someone to tell him, thrilled that he could do it, annoyed that he couldn't just go.
He couldn't, right? Just drop everything and go make a pilgrimage to the Jedi library; he couldn't, now, could he?
Jaster examined his flimsies, the various schedules, and the request from Montross for Concord Dawn and made a decision.
He could totally make time for this.
~-~
Jedi Tholme observed the group of initiates and one padawan as they reviewed whatever was on their datapads. Quinlan spotted him when he'd arrived, but the feelings he could sense from the table convinced him to let them have their fun. He would just have to interrogate his padawan later.
The knight contented himself with his kaf and watched Obi-wan pointing at the datapad earnestly while the rest gathered around to read whatever was on the pad. He pulled out his own datapad and started working through some documents that had arrived in his inbox this morning; it would appear that one of the coruscant courier services had some possible dodgy artifacts they needed to deliver, and they'd been given his name.
Intrigued, Master Tholme responded to the message to set a delivery time.
[SG1] Just Another Natural Underground Site - Chapter 1
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
verycoolname
Not actually cool
Very interesting execution of a fun premise. I definitely want more.
Also, it sounds like heads are going to roll figuratively and literally, and I want to watch both.
Also, it sounds like heads are going to roll figuratively and literally, and I want to watch both.
[SG] Just Another Natural Underground Site - Chapter 2
New
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
a/n: so uh... guys is it time to split this off into it's own thread?
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.
"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.
"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.
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 white 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.
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.
"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.
a/n: so uh... guys is it time to split this off into it's own thread?
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 white 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.
a/n: so uh... guys is it time to split this off into it's own thread?
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Just had to sneak that in didn't you. XD
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If that encourages you to keep writing, to keep adding to this amazing story?
Yes.
[Worm/celestial warehouse] Danny's Celestial Warehouse
New
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
Danny's Celestial Warehouse
How do you forget about a key that opens any door to an impossible, empty place?
Danny stared at the little golden key resting in his hands and looked at the picture of his Annette and their little owl. He'd not touched the key in years, but there it was. He threw the key out the window, got dressed, made breakfast, drove to work, and repeated the same actions he'd been doing since her death, since he sent Taylor to summer camp.
He sat at his desk and made the motions of working. The soul-crushing small talk of keeping the union running and the jobs coming. He went to grab his keys, and there it was again the little golden key; he dropped it down a storm drain and unlocked his truck with the key he'd originally thought he had reached for. He drove home.
He grabbed for his house key, unlocked the door, and entered the empty warehouse with a growl of frustration. He exited, pulling the door closed and tossing the key into the bushes, carefully pulling the house key and unlocking the door normally this time.
He slumped at the kitchen table and wished he had a beer, but Kurt and Lacey had confiscated his supply yesterday, and he was too tired to go to the store and buy more.
He felt something in his pocket and pulled out the golden key. He looked around the kitchen at the reminders of his once-happy life and angrily went to the pantry door, shoved the key into the lock that appeared, and opened the warehouse.
In a raging whirlwind of activity, he tossed the reminders of Annette through the door.
He raided the living room next: pictures, photo albums, the vintage record player, and record collection. He went through each room of the house, tossing things, keepsakes, memories, all the reminders into the empty space, shifting the door as was convenient for his cleansing process.
Around one in the morning, he closed the door and tossed the key again, flushing it down the toilet this time before retreating to his room and collapsing in exhaustion.
The next morning, the key didn't make an appearance. Danny looked around the emptier house. The memories were still there, just ghosts of themselves now. Conspicuous in the absence of the things he'd tossed through the door.
Part of him ached at losing even that reminder of her. The cleansing he'd done didn't make him feel any better, though, just empty. And now he wanted all those things back, but the key hadn't returned. Tiredly, he stumbled to the bathroom and showered. He dressed in his work clothes and left for the office: a man devoid of life, yet alive despite himself.
He sat at his desk. He did his job. He mechanically ate his lunch. He chatted mindlessly with the other office staff; he negotiated a few jobs for the union; perhaps his dead eyes had more of an impact than his old persona, or perhaps not.
He retreated again within himself; the golden key didn't make an appearance as he left for the day and drove home.
The house was colder, emptier. He slept fitfully.
He repeated his weekday routine another day.
The weekend arrived. He woke up. The golden key was there next to his bed. The loss stabbed at his heart, and he used the key.
The other side of the door was different this time. He'd expected the disorganized pile of stuff haphazardly tossed through in his fit of rage to be a mess in disarray on the floor.
Instead of a large empty room, he found a hallway with doors, and the large empty space he'd been expecting was now at the end of the hall.
He closed the door. He used the key and opened it again to the same hallway of doors. He stepped in and opened the first door. It was a library with tall windows overlooking a view of the ocean; the walls were lined with rich, polished wooden shelves hosting all of Annette's books sorted and repaired and more books than he'd tossed in.
He trailed his hand along the shelf, crying at the memories of his late wife reading the classics to Taylor. Tears staining his cheeks, he left the room, moving to the next door, which was a workroom. Annette's sewing kit and a work desk He'd never seen before were here. The walls were covered with shelves full of supplies, some of which he recognized from his fit, but there was far more than what he'd thrown into the warehouse in anger that night. He moved on.
Annette's flute was in the middle of the next room, resting in a holder in front of a music stand. Shelves lined this room as well, and he pulled a book off the nearest shelf to find sheet music. Around the room, there were additional new instruments. A grand piano, almost hiding to the left of the door. A drum kit behind a sound-dampening drum cage was to the right of the door. Instrument cases lined the back of the wall; from the shape, he assumed a variety of string and wind instruments.
His tears were all cried out, and his eyes stubbornly dry, though he wanted to cry more at how the flute was displayed proudly in the middle of the room.
He closed that door and moved on to the second-to-last door; this one contained all of Annette's old clothing; he'd been too in shock to throw it away after her death but had tossed it into the warehouse in his fit. Now, it was all hanging in an extensive walk-in closet; a vanity table at the far end of the room held her makeup and jewelry. He must have accidentally grabbed some of his own clothes, too, because the closet was split with Annette's clothing hanging or folded on the right and his on the left, but there was far more of both than what he'd thrown into the anomalous room.
The last door was furnished as a sitting room, holding all the knick-knacks, photo albums, and framed photos he'd tossed into the warehouse. He sank into a chair that had no right to feel as comforting as it did and pulled the album off the coffee table. It seemed he had some tears left in him after all, as he cried over the pictures of their wedding.
Kurt deftly avoided the dodgy step that was one bad day away from rotting to nothing and stepped up to Danny's front door to ring the bell. He waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. Then he cupped his hands to block out the sun as he tried to see into the house, but the lights were off. He pounded on the door and shared a look with Lacey.
"Think he went out?" Lacey asked after she parked the car in the drive and joined him on the front stoop.
Kurt leaned back and looked through the tiny window of the garage. "His truck is in the garage."
"I'm going to smack him if he's blackout drunk again," Lacey said.
"Let's try the door," Kurt said, twisting the handle, which wasn't locked.
Lacey raised an eyebrow as they walked through the entry hall, the effect of Danny's unexpected cleaning conspicuous with what was missing from the house.
"I'll see if he's got anything worth turning into breakfast in the kitchen; you see if he's still in bed," Lacey told Kurt as she proceeded past the door to the much emptier living room and the stairs, heading straight to the kitchen, where she worked her way through the cabinets.
"As you wish," Kurt said and took the stairs. The master bedroom was at the end of the short hallway at the top of the stairs, and Danny's work was evident here as well by the lack of Annette's things in their old spots and, in one case, the complete absence of an old desk that held Annette's makeup and jewelry.
The bed was unmade, indicating it had been used the previous night. The closet door was ajar, with a light shining from the slight crack.
Kurt didn't think the closet was all that big.
"Danny?" Kurt said, reaching for the doorknob to open the closet door. He froze at the sight of the impossible hallway.
Danny jerked out of his introspection, slamming the album he'd been crying over shut and jerking to his feet.
"Danny?" Kurt called again.
"Kurt?" Danny set the album back on the table and looked around in confusion. His morning was a bit of a blur.
"What's all this?" Kurt asked, following Danny's voice to the room he was in and opening the door.
"I, I don't know."
Danny sunk back into the chair.
"You one of them capes now, Danny?" Kurt asked.
Danny shook his head and held up the little golden key.
"What's that?" Kurt asked.
"I've had this key for as long as I can remember, but I'd almost forgotten it. It was just sort of there but never really important. But, this week, it kept following me. I threw it away so many times, and then, this happened." Danny motioned to the room around him.
"It was always just this empty space, and I ignored it because — capes are nothing but trouble." Danny was clearly quoting someone here. "I just never felt the need to do anything with it until Wednesday — I just wanted to not be reminded in every room of the house, so I moved everything in here in a pile and tried to lose the key again."
"I regretted it almost immediately, you know. The house just wasn't the same, and all the things I removed left empty spaces where something should've been," said Danny.
"Then, this morning, the key was back. I expected everything to still be in one big pile on the floor where I left it, but—" Danny vaguely waved his hand in a motion encompassing the whole room.
"It hurts so damn much, Kurt," Danny said, staring at the photo albums.
"I know," Kurt said. "Come on, Lacey is raiding your kitchen. Who knows, you might actually have something edible down there.
"We can talk about — all this — and figure out what's going on after you've had something to eat." Kurt waited until Danny stood before leading the way out of the impossible space and down to the kitchen.
"Thanks for the pancakes," said Danny.
"You're lucky I found that pancake mix in your cupboard," replied Lacey.
"When is Taylor getting back anyway?" asked Kurt.
"Week after next, Saturday," Danny replied.
"She's headed to Arcadia, right?" Lacey said, putting a hand on the admissions paperwork she'd found on the table. "I seem to recall her excitement, scoring so well on the placement tests."
Danny shook his head. "She said she wanted to go to Winslow with Emma."
"Fuck no!" Kurt said, startling Danny and Lacey. "Have you listened at all to anything the other union members have said about that place? It's gang recruitment central! Fuck that noise, Danny! Winslow is a shit show. Hell, if she were my kid, I'd go into debt paying for Immaculata over Winslow."
Danny stared at Kurt as he finished his rant and picked up the information packet from Arcadia.
"About earlier," Danny said.
"Arcadia registration now; we can talk about upstairs later."
Danny nodded and went back to reading through the registration form.
"Upstairs?" Lacey wiggled her eyebrows.
"Not what you're implying, dear; it's related to what's missing in every room," said Kurt. "Here's a pen."
"I can't help but think Annette would've put her foot down about Taylor's Winslow plan." Danny sighed and shuffled the forms. "I'll need to get this over to Arcadia today."
"You do that," Lacey said, collecting the empty plates. "We'll restock your pantry so Taylor doesn't starve when she returns. You got lucky that the pancake mix wasn't stale."
Danny dropped his keys into the bowl by the door and marched into the kitchen where Kurt and Lacey were relaxing after restocking his pantry. He placed the packet of orientation material on the table, pulled out a chair and slumped into it.
Chapter 1
Danny forgot about the key...How do you forget about a key that opens any door to an impossible, empty place?
Danny stared at the little golden key resting in his hands and looked at the picture of his Annette and their little owl. He'd not touched the key in years, but there it was. He threw the key out the window, got dressed, made breakfast, drove to work, and repeated the same actions he'd been doing since her death, since he sent Taylor to summer camp.
He sat at his desk and made the motions of working. The soul-crushing small talk of keeping the union running and the jobs coming. He went to grab his keys, and there it was again the little golden key; he dropped it down a storm drain and unlocked his truck with the key he'd originally thought he had reached for. He drove home.
He grabbed for his house key, unlocked the door, and entered the empty warehouse with a growl of frustration. He exited, pulling the door closed and tossing the key into the bushes, carefully pulling the house key and unlocking the door normally this time.
He slumped at the kitchen table and wished he had a beer, but Kurt and Lacey had confiscated his supply yesterday, and he was too tired to go to the store and buy more.
He felt something in his pocket and pulled out the golden key. He looked around the kitchen at the reminders of his once-happy life and angrily went to the pantry door, shoved the key into the lock that appeared, and opened the warehouse.
In a raging whirlwind of activity, he tossed the reminders of Annette through the door.
He raided the living room next: pictures, photo albums, the vintage record player, and record collection. He went through each room of the house, tossing things, keepsakes, memories, all the reminders into the empty space, shifting the door as was convenient for his cleansing process.
Around one in the morning, he closed the door and tossed the key again, flushing it down the toilet this time before retreating to his room and collapsing in exhaustion.
The next morning, the key didn't make an appearance. Danny looked around the emptier house. The memories were still there, just ghosts of themselves now. Conspicuous in the absence of the things he'd tossed through the door.
Part of him ached at losing even that reminder of her. The cleansing he'd done didn't make him feel any better, though, just empty. And now he wanted all those things back, but the key hadn't returned. Tiredly, he stumbled to the bathroom and showered. He dressed in his work clothes and left for the office: a man devoid of life, yet alive despite himself.
He sat at his desk. He did his job. He mechanically ate his lunch. He chatted mindlessly with the other office staff; he negotiated a few jobs for the union; perhaps his dead eyes had more of an impact than his old persona, or perhaps not.
He retreated again within himself; the golden key didn't make an appearance as he left for the day and drove home.
The house was colder, emptier. He slept fitfully.
He repeated his weekday routine another day.
The weekend arrived. He woke up. The golden key was there next to his bed. The loss stabbed at his heart, and he used the key.
The other side of the door was different this time. He'd expected the disorganized pile of stuff haphazardly tossed through in his fit of rage to be a mess in disarray on the floor.
Instead of a large empty room, he found a hallway with doors, and the large empty space he'd been expecting was now at the end of the hall.
He closed the door. He used the key and opened it again to the same hallway of doors. He stepped in and opened the first door. It was a library with tall windows overlooking a view of the ocean; the walls were lined with rich, polished wooden shelves hosting all of Annette's books sorted and repaired and more books than he'd tossed in.
He trailed his hand along the shelf, crying at the memories of his late wife reading the classics to Taylor. Tears staining his cheeks, he left the room, moving to the next door, which was a workroom. Annette's sewing kit and a work desk He'd never seen before were here. The walls were covered with shelves full of supplies, some of which he recognized from his fit, but there was far more than what he'd thrown into the warehouse in anger that night. He moved on.
Annette's flute was in the middle of the next room, resting in a holder in front of a music stand. Shelves lined this room as well, and he pulled a book off the nearest shelf to find sheet music. Around the room, there were additional new instruments. A grand piano, almost hiding to the left of the door. A drum kit behind a sound-dampening drum cage was to the right of the door. Instrument cases lined the back of the wall; from the shape, he assumed a variety of string and wind instruments.
His tears were all cried out, and his eyes stubbornly dry, though he wanted to cry more at how the flute was displayed proudly in the middle of the room.
He closed that door and moved on to the second-to-last door; this one contained all of Annette's old clothing; he'd been too in shock to throw it away after her death but had tossed it into the warehouse in his fit. Now, it was all hanging in an extensive walk-in closet; a vanity table at the far end of the room held her makeup and jewelry. He must have accidentally grabbed some of his own clothes, too, because the closet was split with Annette's clothing hanging or folded on the right and his on the left, but there was far more of both than what he'd thrown into the anomalous room.
The last door was furnished as a sitting room, holding all the knick-knacks, photo albums, and framed photos he'd tossed into the warehouse. He sank into a chair that had no right to feel as comforting as it did and pulled the album off the coffee table. It seemed he had some tears left in him after all, as he cried over the pictures of their wedding.
-_- DCW ^_^
Kurt deftly avoided the dodgy step that was one bad day away from rotting to nothing and stepped up to Danny's front door to ring the bell. He waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. Then he cupped his hands to block out the sun as he tried to see into the house, but the lights were off. He pounded on the door and shared a look with Lacey.
"Think he went out?" Lacey asked after she parked the car in the drive and joined him on the front stoop.
Kurt leaned back and looked through the tiny window of the garage. "His truck is in the garage."
"I'm going to smack him if he's blackout drunk again," Lacey said.
"Let's try the door," Kurt said, twisting the handle, which wasn't locked.
Lacey raised an eyebrow as they walked through the entry hall, the effect of Danny's unexpected cleaning conspicuous with what was missing from the house.
"I'll see if he's got anything worth turning into breakfast in the kitchen; you see if he's still in bed," Lacey told Kurt as she proceeded past the door to the much emptier living room and the stairs, heading straight to the kitchen, where she worked her way through the cabinets.
"As you wish," Kurt said and took the stairs. The master bedroom was at the end of the short hallway at the top of the stairs, and Danny's work was evident here as well by the lack of Annette's things in their old spots and, in one case, the complete absence of an old desk that held Annette's makeup and jewelry.
The bed was unmade, indicating it had been used the previous night. The closet door was ajar, with a light shining from the slight crack.
Kurt didn't think the closet was all that big.
"Danny?" Kurt said, reaching for the doorknob to open the closet door. He froze at the sight of the impossible hallway.
^_^ DCW -_-
Danny jerked out of his introspection, slamming the album he'd been crying over shut and jerking to his feet.
"Danny?" Kurt called again.
"Kurt?" Danny set the album back on the table and looked around in confusion. His morning was a bit of a blur.
"What's all this?" Kurt asked, following Danny's voice to the room he was in and opening the door.
"I, I don't know."
Danny sunk back into the chair.
"You one of them capes now, Danny?" Kurt asked.
Danny shook his head and held up the little golden key.
"What's that?" Kurt asked.
"I've had this key for as long as I can remember, but I'd almost forgotten it. It was just sort of there but never really important. But, this week, it kept following me. I threw it away so many times, and then, this happened." Danny motioned to the room around him.
"It was always just this empty space, and I ignored it because — capes are nothing but trouble." Danny was clearly quoting someone here. "I just never felt the need to do anything with it until Wednesday — I just wanted to not be reminded in every room of the house, so I moved everything in here in a pile and tried to lose the key again."
"I regretted it almost immediately, you know. The house just wasn't the same, and all the things I removed left empty spaces where something should've been," said Danny.
"Then, this morning, the key was back. I expected everything to still be in one big pile on the floor where I left it, but—" Danny vaguely waved his hand in a motion encompassing the whole room.
"It hurts so damn much, Kurt," Danny said, staring at the photo albums.
"I know," Kurt said. "Come on, Lacey is raiding your kitchen. Who knows, you might actually have something edible down there.
"We can talk about — all this — and figure out what's going on after you've had something to eat." Kurt waited until Danny stood before leading the way out of the impossible space and down to the kitchen.
-_- DCW ^_^
"Thanks for the pancakes," said Danny.
"You're lucky I found that pancake mix in your cupboard," replied Lacey.
"When is Taylor getting back anyway?" asked Kurt.
"Week after next, Saturday," Danny replied.
"She's headed to Arcadia, right?" Lacey said, putting a hand on the admissions paperwork she'd found on the table. "I seem to recall her excitement, scoring so well on the placement tests."
Danny shook his head. "She said she wanted to go to Winslow with Emma."
"Fuck no!" Kurt said, startling Danny and Lacey. "Have you listened at all to anything the other union members have said about that place? It's gang recruitment central! Fuck that noise, Danny! Winslow is a shit show. Hell, if she were my kid, I'd go into debt paying for Immaculata over Winslow."
Danny stared at Kurt as he finished his rant and picked up the information packet from Arcadia.
"About earlier," Danny said.
"Arcadia registration now; we can talk about upstairs later."
Danny nodded and went back to reading through the registration form.
"Upstairs?" Lacey wiggled her eyebrows.
"Not what you're implying, dear; it's related to what's missing in every room," said Kurt. "Here's a pen."
"I can't help but think Annette would've put her foot down about Taylor's Winslow plan." Danny sighed and shuffled the forms. "I'll need to get this over to Arcadia today."
"You do that," Lacey said, collecting the empty plates. "We'll restock your pantry so Taylor doesn't starve when she returns. You got lucky that the pancake mix wasn't stale."
^_^ DCW -_-
Danny dropped his keys into the bowl by the door and marched into the kitchen where Kurt and Lacey were relaxing after restocking his pantry. He placed the packet of orientation material on the table, pulled out a chair and slumped into it.
Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
It's just the warehouse.
Unlocks are based on what he leaves *in* the warehouse. Which kind of locks down any of the more exotic options.
Unlocks are based on what he leaves *in* the warehouse. Which kind of locks down any of the more exotic options.
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Stephenopolos
Going through stargate withdrawl
- Location
- illinois
though I was toying with the idea that he could learn things unlocked easier as if it were simply a refresher.
so theoretically, if he were to convince Uber/l33t to build something like a star trek replicator and leave it in his warehouse the warehouse would disarm any of the black boxing and maintenance traps the shard does and unlock a trek tech section based around replicator tech.
and then Danny could with some effort figure out what all the new stuff does and use it at about the level of an average federation Starfleet crew member generic track.
and given Danny might actually know Uber and l33t it's not all that far fetched that he might be able to stow some of their stuff for them.
so theoretically, if he were to convince Uber/l33t to build something like a star trek replicator and leave it in his warehouse the warehouse would disarm any of the black boxing and maintenance traps the shard does and unlock a trek tech section based around replicator tech.
and then Danny could with some effort figure out what all the new stuff does and use it at about the level of an average federation Starfleet crew member generic track.
and given Danny might actually know Uber and l33t it's not all that far fetched that he might be able to stow some of their stuff for them.
I like this, but it's a mystery on why he hadn't played with the empty space before.
Even if he felt utterly no need of being a cape, he should have still used it as a large, free storage room.
This warehouse only bit might work out better with one of those moon shot or civ falls settings. It didn't just straight unlock stuff. It did take a day or two to process things and unlock the new additions. O.k. you might have a tad bit of that having the key take awhile to return. That's what I thought on the first read through. Reading it a second time, it's more like the warehouse was sorting everything into the new unlocked rooms before giving him the key back.
I can see them moving all the junk from the house into his new space. Everything in the basement, attic, and garage? All tossed in there. I could see the kitchen odds and ends stuffed in a few boxes and put in there as well. Mainly to see if a new kitchen unlocks.
Unlocking a bedroom might be easy, but you'd need to move a bed in there. He has clothing in there. Hmm, bathrooms might actually be difficult to unlock.
How would you go about unlocking a garage? I could see the storage space still being rather empty now that everything has been sorted. He could use the key on the garage door and drive his truck in there. Presto garage unlocked.
He doesn't really have a workshop unlocked yet. It had more the vibe of crafting station/sewing center. Stashing all the tools and various shelves in there should get a basic work shop unlocked.
I've read about the dock workers union having various properties or warehouses for various reasons. Mainly storage spaces where generations have been packrats and never clean things out. It'd be a larger job than for just three people, but I could see a warehouse needing to be cleared out before being sold or some such. They use his portable warehouse to store the entire warehouse of unknown junk rather than tossing in the trash.
Next day, there is no telling what unlocks.
I like the idea of him knowing Uber and Leet. I'm not sure that they'd want to build anything new to toss in there. I could see them testing by going to one of their storage sheds of broken items. Basically, a large warehouse where they've kept everything that's unrepairable or used far too long and broke. That's what they use to test Danny's warehouse.
It doesn't just sort and unlock new rooms. I could see it clean and repair items as well. Maybe have an entire repair center that generates blueprints and manuals?
I don't see him having any contacts with Squealer. It'd be interesting if she reached out through Uber and Leet to hire some folks to clean out a few of her workshops. She wants out and ends up unlocking a major automotive center. If has minion rooms by that point, I could see her moving in and happy about the rather safe/secure home.
Kurt is the real hero by keeping Taylor out of Winslow and getting her into Arcadia. Oh, she'd be slightly grumpy at first and would be convinced that going to a different school is what made Emma not like her. Taylor would make new friends and wouldn't have the trio cause her issues.
Even if he felt utterly no need of being a cape, he should have still used it as a large, free storage room.
This warehouse only bit might work out better with one of those moon shot or civ falls settings. It didn't just straight unlock stuff. It did take a day or two to process things and unlock the new additions. O.k. you might have a tad bit of that having the key take awhile to return. That's what I thought on the first read through. Reading it a second time, it's more like the warehouse was sorting everything into the new unlocked rooms before giving him the key back.
I can see them moving all the junk from the house into his new space. Everything in the basement, attic, and garage? All tossed in there. I could see the kitchen odds and ends stuffed in a few boxes and put in there as well. Mainly to see if a new kitchen unlocks.
Unlocking a bedroom might be easy, but you'd need to move a bed in there. He has clothing in there. Hmm, bathrooms might actually be difficult to unlock.
How would you go about unlocking a garage? I could see the storage space still being rather empty now that everything has been sorted. He could use the key on the garage door and drive his truck in there. Presto garage unlocked.
He doesn't really have a workshop unlocked yet. It had more the vibe of crafting station/sewing center. Stashing all the tools and various shelves in there should get a basic work shop unlocked.
I've read about the dock workers union having various properties or warehouses for various reasons. Mainly storage spaces where generations have been packrats and never clean things out. It'd be a larger job than for just three people, but I could see a warehouse needing to be cleared out before being sold or some such. They use his portable warehouse to store the entire warehouse of unknown junk rather than tossing in the trash.
Next day, there is no telling what unlocks.
I like the idea of him knowing Uber and Leet. I'm not sure that they'd want to build anything new to toss in there. I could see them testing by going to one of their storage sheds of broken items. Basically, a large warehouse where they've kept everything that's unrepairable or used far too long and broke. That's what they use to test Danny's warehouse.
It doesn't just sort and unlock new rooms. I could see it clean and repair items as well. Maybe have an entire repair center that generates blueprints and manuals?
I don't see him having any contacts with Squealer. It'd be interesting if she reached out through Uber and Leet to hire some folks to clean out a few of her workshops. She wants out and ends up unlocking a major automotive center. If has minion rooms by that point, I could see her moving in and happy about the rather safe/secure home.
Kurt is the real hero by keeping Taylor out of Winslow and getting her into Arcadia. Oh, she'd be slightly grumpy at first and would be convinced that going to a different school is what made Emma not like her. Taylor would make new friends and wouldn't have the trio cause her issues.
There seems to be a wide range of what storing something 'unlocks'. With music getting not just flutes/woodwinds and sheet music (Although Danny probably stuck some sheet music in too, since I can't see Annette not having any.)... But probably enough for various types of bands that include flutes. And it may or may not expand from there eventually. Although it might require an 'outside' world item to store to count. One not generated by the Warehouse. Well, that or it will continue to expand over time. Or maybe relies on how emotionally important it is.
The clothing being a good example of limitations. It appears to only, so far, have given clothing that would fit Annette, and due to Danny apparently accidentally sticking his own clothing in. Nothing for Taylor. Which would probably be easily solved by sticking a shirt or something similar of hers in. But at what point would it start filling in the 'missing' options, more akin to a clothing store. Having an option for anyone, even if they weren't there? And would it cover all possible options, in terms of occasions, even if the right size hasn't been stored?
Such as if Annette has any dresses, would it generate a matching formal-wear for Danny, or would he have to store a suit in for it to 'count'?
Say Danny sticks a box of cereal. Would it only generate other cereals, or get a fridge with milk? Or the rest of the standard breakfast options. Judging by the Star Trek tech example, it probably wouldn't go further from there, by itself. But storing something that was already there, from that box of cereal being added, would probably end up expanding things. Maybe even synergizing with Stored items. (Which presumably wouldn't suddenly remove options, just because the original item got removed later. Such as Annette's flute being taken out, causing all the instruments to go away.
If that's the case, then he can easily provide a service for Uber and Leet. Let him store their broken stuff for them, and any Tinkertech that they can get their hands on that they can't do anything with for whatever reason. It's repaired, and de-trapped. Danny can potentially get an understanding. Uber can probably figure out how to use and maintain it from there, after it's returned. With the main restriction there being time.
Potentially making his own creations to store, after storing raw materials and the tools to use them with. Likely the first attempts will just be a 'hand made'. Like woodworking to make a stool, won't suddenly get him a couch. Just mainly wooden furniture, and maybe just entry level. And certainly nothing tinkertech level, to try and bootstrap, say the rest of the Star Trek technological tree in that example given.
But one thing that likely gets Uber and Leet on his side/make a deal with them, more than just the tinkertech thing. Storing copies of games. Specifically Earth Aleph ones. Store some there, and they could end up getting copies for ones that just haven't made it through the limited data transfer.
A similar trick might cause the Warehouse to give out 'lost media'. Might be tricky for some of it, for one-offs. Where there's no connection to anything else. But it might be possible to get versions that are as complete/high-quality as possible. Maybe even film reels, but that might require Danny Storing some first. I doubt he'd end up with any bonus features for films that never got that on a DVD/Blu-ray, or whatever else release. Maybe if they had a separate location where what would have been stuck on the disc, it'd be compiled.
There's bound to be some unlocks that end up having some weird tangently related thing to pop out. Even if it's only due to interactions with what else has been Stored inside.
It is a kind of nice power to have, even if only in a support category. Danny probably would have wished to have messed with it sooner. Even if it likely wouldn't have saved Annette.
The clothing being a good example of limitations. It appears to only, so far, have given clothing that would fit Annette, and due to Danny apparently accidentally sticking his own clothing in. Nothing for Taylor. Which would probably be easily solved by sticking a shirt or something similar of hers in. But at what point would it start filling in the 'missing' options, more akin to a clothing store. Having an option for anyone, even if they weren't there? And would it cover all possible options, in terms of occasions, even if the right size hasn't been stored?
Such as if Annette has any dresses, would it generate a matching formal-wear for Danny, or would he have to store a suit in for it to 'count'?
Say Danny sticks a box of cereal. Would it only generate other cereals, or get a fridge with milk? Or the rest of the standard breakfast options. Judging by the Star Trek tech example, it probably wouldn't go further from there, by itself. But storing something that was already there, from that box of cereal being added, would probably end up expanding things. Maybe even synergizing with Stored items. (Which presumably wouldn't suddenly remove options, just because the original item got removed later. Such as Annette's flute being taken out, causing all the instruments to go away.
If that's the case, then he can easily provide a service for Uber and Leet. Let him store their broken stuff for them, and any Tinkertech that they can get their hands on that they can't do anything with for whatever reason. It's repaired, and de-trapped. Danny can potentially get an understanding. Uber can probably figure out how to use and maintain it from there, after it's returned. With the main restriction there being time.
Potentially making his own creations to store, after storing raw materials and the tools to use them with. Likely the first attempts will just be a 'hand made'. Like woodworking to make a stool, won't suddenly get him a couch. Just mainly wooden furniture, and maybe just entry level. And certainly nothing tinkertech level, to try and bootstrap, say the rest of the Star Trek technological tree in that example given.
But one thing that likely gets Uber and Leet on his side/make a deal with them, more than just the tinkertech thing. Storing copies of games. Specifically Earth Aleph ones. Store some there, and they could end up getting copies for ones that just haven't made it through the limited data transfer.
A similar trick might cause the Warehouse to give out 'lost media'. Might be tricky for some of it, for one-offs. Where there's no connection to anything else. But it might be possible to get versions that are as complete/high-quality as possible. Maybe even film reels, but that might require Danny Storing some first. I doubt he'd end up with any bonus features for films that never got that on a DVD/Blu-ray, or whatever else release. Maybe if they had a separate location where what would have been stuck on the disc, it'd be compiled.
There's bound to be some unlocks that end up having some weird tangently related thing to pop out. Even if it's only due to interactions with what else has been Stored inside.
It is a kind of nice power to have, even if only in a support category. Danny probably would have wished to have messed with it sooner. Even if it likely wouldn't have saved Annette.