Archaeology (9a/30)
Title: Archaeology ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7a-- 7b Chapter8
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Chapter 9: The Eye of Tiamat
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12 November 2000; Briefing Room, SGC; 0630 hrs
Dr. Rothman and Daniel were both in the briefing room when Jack arrived in answer to the summons. Since the two of them rarely took briefings together these days aside from planning meetings--it was an inefficient use of brainpower--Jack interpreted this as a bad sign.
"So, I'm in bed this morning," Jack said as he took his seat, waiting for the rest of his team to show up. "And I'm thinking it'll be a nice, quiet morning, since a certain alien friend of mine decided to stay on base for the weekend and isn't going to make a lot of noise bumbling around in the morning--"
"I don't bumble," Daniel retorted. "I walk around, and I don't make a lot of noise."
"You bumble," Jack assured him. "Tripping over things and--"
"I don't tri--I don't usually trip over anyth--"
"You fell down half a staircase once."
"You left a sock at the top of the stairs, Jack, and it was dark!"
"Then you admit you were noisy," Jack said. Daniel rolled his eyes. "But since you weren't there this morning, imagine my surprise when, in the wee hours of--"
"Six...okay, four-thirty, five o'clock is not 'wee,' Jack," Daniel said. "Well, not that wee."
"It's relative, Daniel. On a Sunday, five is very wee."
"Well, technically, the general called you, not me, so..."
"Oh, my god," Rothman groaned. He dropped his head to the table and covered his head with his arms, mumbling something like "shudp" into the table.
Daniel broke off and looked at the side of his boss's head. "I called and woke him up before you," he told Jack with chagrin. "Are we really that...?"
"Annoying?" Jack said dismissively. "Nah."
"Oh. Because--"
"Why aren't you tired," Rothman said, emerging enough to speak coherently.
Daniel picked up his mug of coffee and inhaled deeply. "Mm," he said in answer.
All hours wee and large considered, Jack decided that Daniel was probably more saturated with caffeine than he needed to be and took the mug away. Jack needed it more at this point, anyway. "What were you doing still up at that time of night--morning?" he asked, sipping the warm liquid and pulling it out of reach of Daniel's hands.
"I got an e-mail," Daniel said more seriously, giving up on the coffee and sitting back down.
Jack's eyebrows shot up. "Gonna tell the rest of the class what it was?"
"We should wait for the rest of the class," Rothman said, sitting back up with a yawn.
"Good point," Jack admitted, but, luckily, Carter walked in then, with Teal'c right behind her. He was wondering whether this was actually something important or just about the evils of spam when he remembered that Daniel's e-mail account shouldn't be receiving much of anything from anyone outside this mountain, since he didn't really exist to people without very high clearance. "Wait, Daniel got an e-mail? Who sent it?"
"Maybourne," Rothman answered as Carter and Teal'c sat down.
Carter froze halfway down into her seat. Teal'c looked very interested, in the sense that he'd been looking for an excuse to dismember the man for years. Jack took a sip of coffee, just to make sure he was as awake as possible and not just hearing wrong, then said, "What?"
"Colonel Harry Maybourne," Daniel said, giving him a look as if to say, 'aren't you glad I woke you up?' "Well, we don't technically know that. It was just signed 'Harry,' but unless there's another Harry who knows me and would send us messages from a Nellis base address and offer information in exchange for...uh...what was it..."
"He wants a pardon or a reduced sentence," Rothman said. "I read over it just now."
"Oh, no way," Jack said.
"What information does he offer?" Teal'c said.
"Coordinates, for one," Rothman said. "And information on a security threat."
"You opened the e-mail?" Carter said.
"Yes," Daniel said, avoiding her eyes. "And I opened the attached files, too."
"Because we have not yet located Colonel Maybourne, he could have contacted anyone about the nature of Stargate Command," Teal'c said. "That may be the threat of which he speaks."
"Yeah, probably," Rothman said to Teal'c, "which is why he's got something to bargain with."
"What was the subject line?" Carter asked while Jack rubbed his eyes tiredly and tried to sort out who was answering whom in the two conversations going on around him.
"Um..." Daniel said to Carter, and then ducked his head. "It said...'SGC security--let's deal.'"
She gave him a wide-eyed look. Jack caught Daniel's embarrassed expression and said, "You saw that it was from a fugitive and had to do with making deals about SGC security, and instead of, oh, I don't know, calling security, you opened the files on an SGC computer and then called an archaeologist?"
"Hey," Rothman said.
"What, you're not an archaeologist?" Jack said to him.
"I didn't see the subject until after I'd opened it and realized something was wrong," Daniel said miserably. "It was late. Early. Well, late, as in wee--"
"This is what happens when you work half-asleep! You should've just gone home on Friday--"
"Oh, but then I would've been noisy, Jack!"
"Gentlemen!" General Hammond's voice barked. They shut up and stood along with Carter as Teal'c raised an eyebrow at them. "We have enough problems right now without making new ones. Sit down," he ordered, and they plopped quickly into their seats. "Mr. Jackson, we haven't found any problems on your computer so far, but you need to pay attention before opening those kinds of files in the future. As it is, your data is now being backed up, and the system will be wiped and completely reformatted to make sure he didn't plant anything there."
"Yes, sir," Daniel said, chastised.
"We don't know where he sent it from?" Carter said.
"No, Major," the general said. "I'd like you to look over that once we're done here, just in case he left something to be traced."
"Okay, no offense to anyone," Jack said, leaning forward, "but I'll ask again--why did Daniel call the archaeologist first?"
"The attachment I opened was a picture of a tablet written in cuneiform," Daniel said.
"Wait," Carter said, "so Daniel got a cuneiform message and Dr. Rothman didn't?"
"He called partly to see if I'd gotten it, too," Rothman said, "which I hadn't. Which sort of makes sense, since I've never had personal dealings with Maybourne."
"But I'd guess all of you"--Daniel waved his hand to encompass the rest of the team--"would have gotten it, too. Just...not quite as early in the morning. The message was addressed to SG-1."
"He must have figured that by the time any of us opened it," Carter said, "he'd have had time to get away from the computer he was using so we couldn't trace his physical location. Sir--"
"Even with the early alarm," Hammond said, "Colonel Maybourne still has a few hours' head start on us. Our specialists eventually found an IP address that led to a second-hand laptop computer purchased under what we suspect was a pseudonym, which was found in a dumpster halfway across the world. By the time we had that, he was long gone. He might not even be in the same country anymore."
Jack's eyebrows rose. "So he's sending vaguely threatening messages and thinks we're going to be so pleased about it that we'll help him?"
"What exactly did it say?" Carter asked. "The tablet in cuneiform, I mean. I assume that's the other part of why Daniel called Dr. Rothman."
"Yeah, he's not great at cuneiform," Rothman explained. Daniel looked like he wanted to be offended but didn't argue, so it was probably true. "But neither am I. I'm not done yet, but the tablet seems to talk about...well. Okay. It's something to do with Marduk, a Babylonian god, who is sometimes also known as Belus. Or Bel-Marduk--you know, that kind of thing."
Jack glanced quickly around at his team to make sure he wasn't the only one for whom those names didn't ring a bell, but Daniel narrowed his eyes and said, "Belus. Isn't that, uh...we've read about Belus. From one of your early missions," he added to Jack. "P3X...866, I think."
"Right, the Oannes text," Rothman said. "As far as we could tell, Belus--or Marduk--was a Goa'uld. It's likely that he was on Earth, in Babylon, at some point before the Giza rebellion, and Marduk killed a bunch of alien beings who came to try to free Earth from the Goa'uld."
"They were unsuccessful, obviously, but they tried, and possibly planted the seeds of later rebellions," Daniel added. "Omoroca, the winged serpent, seemed to have been the leader. She got cut in half by Marduk, and he used bits of her to form the parts of the world."
"Ew," Jack said.
"Or so the myth goes," Rothman said. "Omoroca's also known as Tiamat, and these tablets say that the eye of Tiamat endowed Marduk with great magical abilities."
"Her eye?" Carter said doubtfully.
"Probably not literally a biological eye," Rothman said, tapping his glasses,
"It could be a Goa'uld weapon," Teal'c suggested.
"The tablets also give Stargate coordinates," Daniel added, sliding a photograph across the table to Carter. Jack and Teal'c looked on from either side of her.
"And if the message was addressed to SG-1," Carter added, "we can assume Maybourne thinks this is something worth commuting his sentence, and he wants SG-1 to check it out."
"Furthermore, this is the Tau'ri point of origin," Teal'c said, pointing to the last glyph scratched into the tablet. "This is not only a Stargate address; it is a Stargate address that was meant to be used from Earth."
"Wait..." Jack said.
"Yeah," Rothman said. "We think this means the tablet was found on Earth. But something like this...it's a piece of the creation myth that I've never seen anywhere else, not to mention the Stargate glyphs. This should've made waves. If it had been published, someone here would have picked up on it. I would've picked up on it."
"'If it had been published,'" Carter echoed. "Meaning that it never was. Someone somehow recognized the significance of those glyphs and got it classified."
Daniel nodded. "We think this is what Maybourne meant when he said there was a security issue. Someone knows about the Stargate--enough have picked out a tablet from an archaeological project and made sure no one found out about it."
"So this is just Maybourne's proof that he's not full of BS," Jack said. "He knows someone who knows something and wants to help us shut them down in exchange for lowering his sentence."
Carter made a face. "With a possible security breach, we have no choice but to contact him. He could be anywhere in the world right now. If another government or organization is keeping this as a secret to hold over our heads, we might never find out on our own."
"I'm going to have people start trying to figure this out ourselves before he contacts us again," Hammond said. "In the meantime, Dr. Rothman, I want you to finish the translation of that tablet. We've also found the address in the Abydos cartouche data. As soon as we've recalculated the coordinates, if the MALP telemetry looks reasonable, I'll send SG-1 to take a look around."
"What about me?" Rothman said. "Daniel's not an expert in this area."
"Neither are you," Daniel said. "And it could be a Goa'uld planet."
"Uh...yeah," Rothman said. "Is that supposed to be an argument for your going?"
"I want SG-1 to report back soon after arriving, anyway," Hammond said. "We'll decide after the initial assessment whether further exploration or archaeological expertise is warranted."
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12 November 2000; P2X-338; 1630 hrs
"Oh, wow," Daniel said, his eyes widening. "A ziggurat! I've never seen a real ziggurat before."
"Everyone watch your backs," Jack warned, because the MALP sensors said the place looked deserted and Teal'c didn't see any tracks or traces of life, but Jack trusted Maybourne about as far as he could throw him and MALPs' data about as far as he could shove them. "You know where the entrance might be?"
"Uh...the shrine will be at the top," Daniel said, shading his eyes and peering up the long path of stairs. "It's only open up there, if this is anything like ones on Earth."
"At the top," Jack repeated, leading the way up the staircase. "Of course it is."
By the time they reached the top, it was becoming clear that they couldn't stay too long. Even Daniel, who normally liked hot, dry weather, was starting to look uncomfortable in the heat.
"This appears to be the entrance," Teal'c finally said, looking at a solid wall.
"It's not doing such a good job of the 'entering' part," Jack observed, since it didn't open.
"Maybe there's a switch to open it," Carter said, moving closer to look with Daniel right behind her. "Can you read this?" she asked him, pointing at the wall.
Daniel stared for a few moments, then admitted, "Not in the time we have before check-in. If I had some references and some time--a lot of time--maybe I could, but..."
"Is this cuneiform?" she said, wrinkling her brow. "It doesn't look right."
"It is," Daniel said, reaching out to trace the carved writing with his fingers. "What we call cuneiform didn't start looking wedge-shaped--you know, 'cuneiform'--until later. This is very pictographic, suggesting it's older than what we were looking at on base. Later civilizations tended to use increasingly abstract or phonological units, which is probably what you're--"
"Can you read it?" Jack interrupted. "Or can either of you get it open?"
"I'll look for a mechanism," Carter said, bending to examine the bottom of the door. Daniel tapped the bricks one more time and started to turn away, but then he stopped.
"What?" Jack said. Teal'c turned from where he'd been standing guard as well.
"Sam," Daniel said sharply, ignoring Jack. She looked up. "They push in."
Taking a few steps closer, Jack saw what Daniel meant: the brick he'd been touching had sunken slightly into the wall. "Should you be doing that?" Jack said.
"I have no idea," Daniel said, looking like he wasn't sure whether he should take his hand off the depressed brick.
Carter leaned forward and tapped another. "These are the same--each one is like a button."
"Whoa," Daniel said, snatching his hand away. "It just popped back out."
"Timed?" she mused, watching until her own stone retracted back into place as well. "Maybe it's like a combination lock. We have to push the right ones to make the door open."
"There appear to be many possible combinations," Teal'c said.
"There's an understatement," Jack muttered, eyeing what had to be over a hundred bricks that formed the wall. Added to the fact that they had no idea what order to go in or which ones to push, they didn't even know how many were in the combination. The possibilities were infinite.
"Let me get some of this on film, just for Robert to see a sample," Daniel said, "or have him come back with us. Whatever is written on it has got to be a clue of some sort, and it'll be faster than waiting for me to try to figure it out on my own."
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Continued in Part b...