The Ninth Chevron - Chapter 7
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Previously: Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6
The Ninth Chevron - Chapter 7
Former capital, Kelowna, Langara, June 2008
"Time for Plan B!" Cam yelled to the small group he was leading as they returned fire from behind cover at a group of Jaffa across the courtyard, who were cutting them off from the Stargate. He slipped the spent magazine of his P90 from its housing and took out another clip from his vest, sliding it in and slapping it into place.
"SG-1 doesn't have a good track record with Plan Bs." Jonas Quinn aimed his own Kelownan rifle and fired off a quick burst before ducking back behind cover as several staff blasts, striking the concrete blocks in front of him, caused shards of debris to shower over them.
"Of this I am well aware." replied Cameron as he himself took aim for a quick burst at the enemy. "And we had such a good Plan A. It worked, damn it!" He took cover again as a staff blast sizzled overhead to strike the building behind them, shaking a flurry of dust and rock to sweep down over the reason for their presence on Langara. Ba'al sat nonchalantly against an overturned vehicle partly embedded into the wall, his hands tied behind his back, under the watchful gaze of Kianna Cyr, who had her zat'nik'tel trained on him. On the roof of the building sat a cloaked cargo ship belonging to Ba'al, which he was using to pilfer the unsecured stockpiles of naquadria in the abandoned former capital of Kelowna. After the departure of the Ori, the Kelownan government had demurred from reoccupying the former capital, which a Prior had wiped of all life in one of their displays of the power of the Ori. They also didn't feel the need to secure the stockpiles of naquadria or the Stargate, believing them to be safe. Something Jonas Quinn, in his position as leader of the Resistance to the Ori occupation, had protested vehemently, taking a small cadre of his own men to the desolate city to do the job himself, eventually going so far as requesting aid from the SGC when it appeared they were about to have a very familiar visitor.
"You did not truly believe you could capture me, did you, Colonel Mitchell? I am a god." The Goa'uld smirked as he looked at SG-1's leader before turning back to Kianna with a sweet smile. She grimaced in distaste at her former master, who had implanted a symbiote in her in order to turn her into a spy.
"Quiet from the peanut gallery." Mitchell was trying to think. They needed to get around the Jaffa.
"You know, maybe we should skip Plan B? Go straight to Plan C." offered Daniel, reloading his own P90 from his spot over by another two members of Quinn's Kelownan Resistance.
"Wouldn't be Plan C then would it? It would be Plan B by definition." countered Kianna from her spot beside Vala as she kept her eyes on the captured System Lord.
"That depends on your school of thought, do you number plans by when you came up with them or when they are enacted." Daniel rebutted then chuckled. "Sam would call it compile time versus execution time."
"Do we have a Plan M?" asked Vala with a mischievous smile. "We could go with Plan M."
"Is that not the plan in which Daniel Jackson dies, Vala Mal Doran?" asked Teal'c from her other side while keeping the Jaffa beyond them pinned behind cover.
"Okay, Plan M is a bad plan." Daniel muttered.
"This is not a heist show!" Cam glared at his friends while secretly laughing on the inside. They knew he was too. Maybe he shouldn't have let them watch that screener DVD he got from the showrunner last night. Meeting Martin Lloyd had been good for something at least.
"Ah, I do so enjoy watching SG-1 work." Ba'al gave them an oily smile and they all turned to glare at him. "I do wish Colonel Carter were here. I'm sure the banter would take on an altogether different frisson."
"Back in two weeks. Did I mention that already?" asked Cam while his mind continued to race.
"A few times, yes." replied Jonas with a bright smile.
"Looks like Ba'al knows some French too." muttered Vala as she squeezed off a burst of P90 fire from cover before ducking back down. They needed a distraction. Something that would allow some of them to slip around the Jaffa's position and flank them. There weren't a lot of Jaffa, and they were cut off from their destination as much as SG-1 was. SG-1's advantage was that they held the assets, Ba'al and the only entrance to the building upon which the cargo ship was landed. Although the Jaffa did have a crate of naquadria, which they were doing an admirable job of keeping out of the line of fire.
"Okay, I've got it." All eyes turned to Mitchell. "Jackson doesn't have to die, but he does have to scream like a girl and run for the next piece of cover in that direction." Cam pointed in the opposite direction he was planning to take his flanking group.
"Why do I have to scream like a girl?" asked Jackson with a glare.
"To be fair Daniel, you have a very convincing girlish scream." dead-panned Vala while Teal'c nodded his agreement.
"Indeed." he intoned and raked the Jaffa position opposite with automatic fire. Daniel's lips tightened into a thin line.
"It's an important part of the plan, Jackson." insisted Cam, cutting off further discussion. "When you and you," he indicated one of the Kelownans, "do that we'll flank them from the other direction."
"Do I have to scream girlishly too?" asked the Kelownan apprehensively.
"Can you do it well?" asked Cam seriously. The man shook his head. "Then you're okay."
"Who will comprise your flanking group, Colonel Mitchell?" asked Teal'c while staff blasts were raining against his position behind cover, he seemed unfazed by it.
"I know what you're gonna say, T-man, but I need you here. The Jaffa will notice if you're not firing back at them looking all menacing. They won't miss a few pasty white guys." He indicated himself, Jonas and two other Kelownans, Teal'c raised an eyebrow but bowed at the wisdom of the plan. "Vala, you help Teal'c and the rest of the resistance hold this position." Vala nodded. "You cool with this, Jonas?" He turned to the former member of SG-1 who grinned and nodded. Cam nodded and turned to Kianna. "Kianna, if Ba'al so much as curls his lip arrogantly, zat him." She looked at him askance. "No, wait, you're right, I'll leave it to your discretion." She smiled and nodded. "Everyone ready?" They all nodded. Cam signalled Teal'c who opened fire on the Jaffa along with Vala. "Go Jackson! And make with the girlish screams." Daniel and his Kelownan sidekick ran to the left, and he did let out a cry, though he tried to make it manly. "Jonas, with me!" Cam and his group set off in the opposite direction, blessed with more substantial cover to keep their movements out of sight of the Jaffa, distracted as they were, by Daniel changing locations.
"I can't believe he actually did it." Grinned Vala as she looked at Teal'c. "It was obviously a joke!"
"Indeed." replied Teal'c with an amused smirk.
"Ah, I do find Colonel Mitchell highly amusing. It is a pity he has so little time left." Ba'al pronounced cryptically. Kianna waved the zat menacingly and he stilled momentarily.
Cam and Jonas and the two other Kelownans stopped at a corner as Cam raised a closed fist and peeked around the wall. He counted about eight Jaffa by the improvised barricades. He knew there would be four more guarding the naquadria, he also had a rough idea where they would be. He turned back to Jonas and the four huddled down against the wall. Cam unslung his grenades and handed them to Quinn who distributed them to the man and woman he was leading.
"Okay, there are eight Jaffa by the wall around the corner. If I were them I'd have secured the crate of naquadria in that building over there," he nodded his head towards his guess as he spoke softly, "four men guarding, but with orders not to blow it." Jonas looked over at the indicated building and nodded. "I need you three to wait before taking on these Jaffa. I will approach the building and if I find the naquadria I will send you the signal." The three Kelownans checked over their weapons once more and readied their own explosives.
"And your signal will be..." Jonas raised his eyebrows, likely already knowing the answer. Cam turned his patrol cap around on his head to face backwards and checked the number of rounds left in the magazine on the top of his P90.
"Lots of gunfire." Cam said without a hint of a smile. Jonas himself simply grinned. Both men nodded and Cam broke away down an alley headed for the building. Approaching the back door he crouched under a window and took out a mirror from his vest and held it up to get a surreptitious look inside. He saw four Jaffa crouched defensively around a small crate, which was thankfully mostly concealed by a low interior wall that looked to be part of some shop counter. They vigilantly scanned the access routes into the building. Cam tilted the mirror from side to side to get a better look at their location. His eyes locked onto a large crack in the brick wall close to the Jaffa position. Perfect. He scrambled in a crouch around the side of the building, finding the crack, which indeed ran all they way through the wall. He slipped a block of C4 from his vest and a small detonator charge, which he pressed into the block, and attached them to the wall with tape. Looking around for a place close by where he could take cover, he spotted the broken wall of the next building and scrambled to it and over to the other side.
Taking out the detonator and arming the fuse he ducked down and covered his head with his arms before flipping the switch to set off a concussive blast which sent a huge shower of debris over his position. Raising up his P90 he waited a breath, and sure enough, a Jaffa appeared in the new hole he'd blown into the opposite building. He opened fire. In the distance he heard the tell tale sounds of fragmentation grenades and the loud report of Kelwonan rifles as well as the familiar bursts of P90 fire. Having killed the Jaffa he leapt over the wall and ran forward, shooting the Jaffa who appeared next in his line of sight through the gap. Without stopping he kicked the armoured warrior in the chest before he could fall forward and block off his entrance. Stepping over the body already slumped in the gap he swung his P90 around, looking for the other two Jaffa who were inside, finding one of them already dead, bloody and burned from the explosion.
A small scuffing sound and cry from his right had him swing his weapon over only to have it knocked aside by the butt of a staff weapon striking his hand over the trigger as he opened fire. Letting the weapon drop back down to his chest as his nerveless fingers would no longer be able to work the trigger, he used the momentum of the staff attack to pivot on his back foot and land a roundhouse kick against the back of the Jaffa's head, sending him scrambling unsteadily to the far wall and away from the crate of naquadria. Cam hoped desperately that Ba'al made his orders to not fire anywhere near the highly volatile material explicit and unequivocal. He shook out the fingers of his right hand trying to get feeling back into them and picked up the staff weapon dropped by the Jaffa killed in the explosion. It was long but he could use it.
"I should warn you. I know me some of them Sodan moves." he told the Jaffa as he spun the staff theatrically for effect and took a stance, signalling the Jaffa to come at him. He was still favouring his right hand but he didn't need as much control over it while using the staff. The Jaffa spun his own staff and charged him, raising it in an arc over his head and flying backwards to land in a smoking heap as the staff blast Cam fired hit him in the chest. "Gotta watch the classics, buddy."
He threw the staff weapon aside and checked over the crate, breathing a sigh of relief when he noticed only superficial damage from flying debris. He cocked a head up and heard only silence, the fighting was done. Reaching a hand to his shoulder he toggled his radio.
"Teal'c, what's your status?" he asked, releasing the button.
"All enemies eliminated, Colonel Mitchell. Ba'al is secure." Cam smiled and toggled his radio again.
"Any casualties?" He waited a breath before hearing his radio squawk again.
"None except Daniel Jackson's pride, Jonas Quinn also reports no casualties from his location across the square." Good news. He lifted his patrol cap and scrubbed at his hair a moment before engaging his radio once more.
"Naquadria secure. I'll need help carrying it." He let the button go and sat down on the crate to catch a much needed breath.
"Understood, Colonel Mitchell, I believe Jonas Quinn is approaching your location to render assistance." came the disconnected voice of his friend just as the Resistance leader poked a head through the door.
"What do ya know? Plan B worked!" Cam crowed and Jonas grinned at him. The man grinned a lot.
An hour later, Cam's hand was throbbing painfully while they stood in front of an active Stargate with a captive Ba'al looking decidedly unhappy. Jonas' men had taken custody of the naquadria and returned it to the bunker it had been housed in previously while they waited for the arrival of government troops. The cargo ship was also secure and would now be added to the Kelownan's inventory. One of a precious few.
"You need to stop by and say 'hi' sometime, Jonas. Sam's back in two weeks, did I mention that?" Cam smiled and shook the former SG-1 member's hand, trying not to wince, then took Kianna's and shook it, happily, as she didn't squeeze his. Jonas grinned and scratched at his shaggy hair.
"Yeah, you have. I'll do that, it's been a while since I've seen her." He glanced at Kianna as he spoke and Cam snapped his fingers a few times.
"Four and a half years ago, you took a prototype rotovator to drill close enough to a vein of naquadah and sever it with an explosion before its conversion into naquadria caused the core of Langara to explode. Kianna was your assistant, and the Goa'uld spy within her," he smiled apologetically at her, she nodded sadly in acceptance, "in service of Ba'al," he glanced at the Goa'uld who bristled, "sacrificed itself to ensure the success of the mission." Jonas looked slightly amazed.
"Don't worry about that, Jonas, he does it all the time. He read all our files." Daniel said from where he held onto one of Ba'al's elbows. "You get used to it." Jonas grinned and nodded.
"Farewell, Jonas Quinn, I look forward to seeing you again. Though perhaps next time, under less dire circumstances." Teal'c eyed Ba'al distastefully and held a little tighter to the former System Lord's other elbow which had the Goa'uld twisting slightly in pain.
"I'd like that, Teal'c. We'll try to come over soon." Jonas once more looked at the woman with the short blond hair standing next to him and smiled. "Now that the Ori are gone."
"Yeah, sorry about that, our bad." muttered Daniel softly, glancing at Vala.
"Now if I didn't know you were an alien, Jonas, I'd swear you were another example of the limited gene pool of Earth males, however interesting it might be." Vala looked at Cam and Daniel as she spoke and they both glared at her.
"Punch in the IDC, Vala." Cam kept glaring at her. She grinned back at him unabashedly. "Now let's take our Ba'al and go home."
"Oh God, I'll be so glad when Sam gets back," Daniel whined as he turned Ba'al around to face the Stargate, "she won't stand for these bad puns."
"Indeed." Teal'c glared at Mitchell before raising an eyebrow at Jonas' wide eyed grin.
"Why do you think I'm getting them all out now? Did I mention? Two weeks!" Cam smiled and gave a small salute to Jonas and Kianna before they all stepped through the event horizon. When they arrived at the SGC into the maw of several squads of armed Marines and SFs, they could see General Landry smiling broadly from the control room, standing next to him was a rather severe looking Tok'ra. Cam tried to stifle a grin behind his hand as he walked down the ramp. They must be so pissed that Ba'al was captured by the Tau'ri.
Tok'ra homeworld, July 31st, 2008 (alternate timeline)
They'd just watched O'Neill die. Stabbed with the needle from the extraction device by Ba'al, or Ba'al's clone as he claimed to be. They'd seen Teal'c disappear before their eyes, and Vala also had vanished while no one was looking. Now entire buildings were vanishing all around them and the ground felt like it was rumbling unsteadily under his feet. There was a flash of agony, a bright light sending starbursts into his brain, he felt hazy, insubstantial, his knees buckled and he stumbled, nearly pitching headlong into the ground. His mind felt on fire, images flashed through them, childhood memories of a BBQ, days at the Academy, the first bomb he'd dropped against an enemy target, intense Antarctic cold, his first trip through the 'gate, kissing Sam for the first time in a 302, talking to an Asgard aboard Odyssey while flexing his shock-numbed fingers. Wait. Kissing Sam?
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Sam's steadying hand grasped under his arm and helped him to his feet. He felt solid again, the pain and dizziness was gone. He glanced up into her concerned blue eyes. They had to get off this planet. Waving her on he began running again, taking the dog-tags clinking against his tac vest and tucking them back under his sand coloured t-shirt, dog-tags which read 'Mitchell, Cameron J.'
Stargate Command, July 2010
Cameron gave Sam an encouraging look and gave her arm a squeeze before going to his seat around the table next to General O'Neill after General Landry had told them to sit. He leaned back and looked at each of his SG-1 teammates as they focused their attention on Sam by the multimedia setup at the head of the room. A map of the Milky Way galaxy was displayed on the large television screen and two blue dots appeared.
"Last month we conducted two successful tests of the nine symbol dialling program from Hypraxia Base, the site Ba'al used in his failed attempt at galactic domination." She indicated the blue dot which began pulsing. "Our simulated attempts to connect to Destiny gave no indication they would be successful. The base can certainly produce the necessary power, we just can't channel that power into the Stargate carefully enough. In an attempt to diagnose where we would need to make any upgrades we made an attempt at a connection we believed would not only succeed, but prove our theories on the nature of the Ninth Chevron equations discovered by Dr. Rush and completed by Eli Wallace." The second dot which was just beyond the edge of the galactic disk began to pulse. "We dialled the nine symbol address of Atlantis which we found in the Asgard database on Odyssey. At the time, Atlantis was just leaving the Milky Way on its way back to Pegasus, and was in hyperspace." She grinned like a school girl at that, but her smile fell at seeing the Generals were not quite sharing the wonder of that. "You see, sirs, we've always believed it was im-"
"Carter!" O'Neill interrupted her and she glanced at him. "I know I'm going to end this briefing with a headache. I'd just rather the damn thing only start about halfway through." She sighed softly.
"Yes, sir. This test not only validated our theories but also confirmed that power generation capacity were more than sufficient to dial Destiny as long as we solved our infrastructure issue." Atlantis' blue dot disappeared. "The address for our second attempt was chosen for a multitude of reasons. One was the likelihood of its being a ship with a connection to Earth in the distant past, like Atlantis, another reason was the possibility it was more than a few galaxies away if Destiny's current position was any indication, the other was curiosity as to the nature of the address itself as it shared the first eight symbols with two other addresses we retrieved from the Asgard database. We wanted to know if the similarity in the addresses would translate into a similarity in the destinations. What we actually found was beyond any of our wildest guesses." A dot appeared, flashing ominously in red. "Not only wasn't the destination several galaxies away but it was right here in our Solar System," The view changed to indicate a three dimensional model of the Earth-Moon system, "on our Moon." A red spot began pulsing on the far side of the Moon from Earth. All of this had been covered in the debriefing they'd had a fortnight ago but it was proper to go over it again when laying out a new mission which depended on the information. "Tests and scans which we have conducted since then with Apollo's help, indicate a massive area under the surface of the Moon which our Asgard sensors cannot penetrate, we can only map the exterior edges. We cannot get any indication of the interior at all due to heavy distortion of the readings. There's something there we just don't know what it is."
"A ship is buried on the Moon." iterated O'Neill as he leaned forward over the desk and clasped his hands.
"That is one theory, but it would be a very large ship, larger than Atlantis itself." Sam confirmed. "So far we only know of nine symbol addresses being assigned to ships, or a mobile structure such as Atlantis. The nature of the equations necessary to make use of the Ninth Chevron don't make any sense if the target isn't in some way mobile."
"How far down is it?" asked Landry and Sam turned to the television and keyed in a change to display a cross-sectional cutaway into the Moon, showing the surface and below it a garbled mass of disrupted sensor readings indicating whatever was there, it was very large and shaped like a large disk at the top of it.
"Just a couple of hundred meters or so." indicated Sam. "Tests we conducted with the MALP and Apollo's Asgard beams indicate that they can get a lock on signals as weak as our transponders and safely beam them up. They can't beam us down however, not without the risk of putting us halfway in a bulkhead." Jack winced and shook his head. "The distortion itself is of such a nature that we can only really see the top edge of the object. Trying to map the whole exterior of it hasn't yet been possible."
"And we're sure this thing is Ancient?" he asked. Sam nodded vigorously.
"Yes, sir. In fact it looks like the technology in use there resembles Atlantis a great deal. Certainly far more than it resembles Destiny, which meant we couldn't use the remote interface we'd designed. We are assuming that whatever is there is contemporaneous or newer than Atlantis." Sam smiled when O'Neill's eyes glazed over.
"That one hasn't been on my new word-a-day calendar yet." He smiled weakly.
"It means 'of the same time', Jack." Daniel supplied and Jack nodded.
"See, you could have said that, Carter." He looked reprovingly at Sam. She smiled.
"I'm a scientist, sir, there are very strict rules..." Cam smiled, she was teasing him. Jack waved her away dismissively.
"It can't have been built by the Lanteans after they come back?" asked Landry and Sam had to look to Daniel to answer that.
"It's a possibility, though unlikely. When the Lanteans returned to Earth they did so to focus on ascension or to merely live out a solitary existence. They were not interested in creating any kind of foothold or society in this galaxy." He looked between the generals before concluding. "If they didn't build it, it's also unlikely they would have attempted to access it had they known of its existence at all, for the same reasons." Landry turned back to look at Sam. She carried on with her briefing.
"Telemetry received from the MALP while it was there, indicates minuscule power readings, no lighting, temperatures skewing cold but nominal, the atmosphere is not toxic but it isn't breathable. It's far too thin on oxygen at only two percent or so. Pressure is nominal which indicates there are no structural integrity issues. In and of itself that is quite remarkable considering we can only assume that whatever this is, it could be a few million years old."
"Thank you, Colonel Carter." Landry smiled at her and she nodded, taking her seat beside Cam. "So what do we think this is?" SG-1's eyes turned to Daniel which caused the Generals to turn toward him too.
"There are a few possibilities." He motioned towards Jack opposite him. "A ship, buried under the regolith, perhaps covered over after landing on the surface as it was millions of years ago. This isn't considered likely." At Jack's quizzical tilt of the head Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose and explained. "A ship on the surface would still be distorting the surface features even if covered over, just like burial mounds, settlement walls and boundary ditches do here on Earth."
"Also the chances of a ship on the surface having escaped impact from a meteorite for several million years is... literally astronomical." Sam supplied and Daniel thanked her with a nod.
"Another possibility is a city-ship like Atlantis, but..." he trailed off and Landry picked up.
"That suffers from the same problems as a regular ship, but even more so." He raised his eyebrows and nodded when Daniel confirmed that.
"The most likely scenario is some sort of underground base. The purpose of which is... unknowable without more information." Daniel concluded.
"Unknowable unless we go there." O'Neill supplied to Daniel's nod. "So what's the plan?" It was Cam's turn.
"We dial in from the SGC, wearing breathing equipment. We take with us a portable naquadah generator and try to find somewhere to hook it up. If we get into trouble Odyssey will be able to beam us out." He was leaning back in his chair as he gazed at each member of his team in turn. They'd discussed this in detail beforehand and all agreed this was the best plan. "The breathers will have a four hour supply, which isn't much but if we set up a transport beacon marked zone we can beam in and out the way we did with Atlantis when it was cloaked, if it takes multiple trips we can take multiple trips. If we're lucky the place will come on by itself when we 'gate in the way Atlantis did. Otherwise we'd need to locate a main junction to try to get power to primary systems."
"Once we have power, I should be able to get life support systems back on line, with Cam and Daniel's help with translations." Sam added.
"If this place doesn't respond to Mitchell the way Atlantis did to Sheppard." Landry interrupted.
"Yes, sir." Sam glanced at Cameron as she answered. "The rest of the systems can follow after that. We should be able to use the Stargate itself at that point if all goes well." They all quieted and looked around at each other before turning to Landry and O'Neill. Jack gave a slight nod to Landry and both men stood together. Cam and Sam bolted to their feet and the others followed suit at their own pace, expectantly.
"You have a go, SG-1." Landry ordered.
On to Chapter 8