StarGate: Traditions

[Kemrain]

OOC: Sorry for the delay. Things have been stressful and bad. Running out of meds, needing appointments and the like, and it's pushed this out of the front of my mind. Sorry guys. I'm here now. Let's see what we can do.

"Shadowgate? Sounds like my favorite RPG... But they don't have it anymore? That's good, I s'pose...

Ashley grins, enjoying being asked easy questions that she could answer in her sleep that help her look good in front of Colonel Johnson.

"We recovered the second Stargate when half of SG1 was sent through it one time after a powerful energy discharge struck the gate while they were in transit. We're lucky our gate didn't sustain more damage. We found our people and brought the second gate to Area 51 for safe keeping, but the NID cracked it open and ran their own teams thround for a while before we could stop them. We only recovered it fairly recently."

"Are we sure there isn't a 3rd gate anywhere?"

"If there is a third gate, it probably isn't active. Keep in mind that there can be only one primary gate address for a given set of coordinates, and plugging in a DHD makes that gate the primary. SGC operatives have only come back through another gate once, and remember that we don't exactly have Earth's DHD plugged in. If there was another gate active, we'd probably know about it one way or another. Operating a Stargate causes siesmic disturbances that can be detected fairly easily. The NID had to have someone in the SGC feeding them our gate schedule so they could run theirs right as ours was closing, and doctoring the records so everything looked clean. If there is a third gate, it either hasn't been found yet, or it's being operated concurrently with our own and kept quiet on a need-to-know basis. It just seems incredibly unlikley to me."

"It wasn't labeled, but the writeup I got claimed it was NID. The encryption on the disk backs that up; it's consistent with the US intelligence standards. I cracked one layer of crypto, but I'll need to find a key disk to complete it.

As for whether or not it's your disk... Not sure. I know it was one of those new mini-CDs, about half the diameter of a regular one.. And it was blue. Memorex brand, I think. I got it this afternoon, about 14:30.

Come to think of it... Dr. Felger said I could work on it tonight. Look familiar, Ms. Wolfe?"

Ashley looks the small disk over when Julian places it on the table, sighing and shaking her head as she looks up at Julian.
"It looks a lot like the disk I checked out," she starts, "but given that they probably make copies of all the origional disks that come back through the gate and send those out for analysis, I don't have any way of knowing without comparing it to the one I looked at, and I don't happen to have it on me," she smirks a little as she finishes.
"That said, if the SGC has two seperate NID datadisks from two seperate worlds they're both doing something very right and running into some very sloppy NID operatives. Somehow, I doubt it's both- we're probably working on the same thing. I looked at it for a bit, but we have boys in crypto staying up all night to work on things like this," she says with a bigger smirk, "so I passed it on. I'd love to see what's on the thing. It would answer a lot of questions. Are you sure you can't crack it?"

 

[Jaeden]

"It looks a lot like the disk I checked out," she starts, "but given that they probably make copies of all the origional disks that come back through the gate and send those out for analysis, I don't have any way of knowing without comparing it to the one I looked at, and I don't happen to have it on me," she smirks a little as she finishes.
"That said, if the SGC has two seperate NID datadisks from two seperate worlds they're both doing something very right and running into some very sloppy NID operatives. Somehow, I doubt it's both- we're probably working on the same thing. I looked at it for a bit, but we have boys in crypto staying up all night to work on things like this," she says with a bigger smirk, "so I passed it on. I'd love to see what's on the thing. It would answer a lot of questions. Are you sure you can't crack it?"

"I've been trying. The problem is that there's no pattern to the encryption, so there's no way to break the pattern, or even see if you're on the right track. The only real way to get it decrypted is to have the key pattern, which would probably have been stored on some separate disk. It's possible the NID has a standard set, and it's also possible that if I had an example key disk, I could try fluctuations of the substitutions using a Monte Carlo method, and pray for the best. But without at least something to start from, I'm afraid it's pretty hopeless."

 

[Kemrain]

Sighing, Ashley nods.
"That sounds about right for the NID. If there's a key disk we haven't found they probably still have it. I don't remember running by any crypto-keys in Area 51, unfortunately. If there's a key, it's probably off world, waiting to be found." She sighs again, shaking her head in disapointment and frustration.

 

[Jaeden]

Sighing, Ashley nods.
"That sounds about right for the NID. If there's a key disk we haven't found they probably still have it. I don't remember running by any crypto-keys in Area 51, unfortunately. If there's a key, it's probably off world, waiting to be found." She sighs again, shaking her head in disapointment and frustration.

"I might be able to get somewhere with another NID key disk, to use as a sample. Does SGC know where the people who wrote this disk are? Maybe they could get it out of them, if they could track them down in the Stargate."

"And just out of curiosity... You said Earth's DHD isn't "plugged in" to our gate. But the other gate was destroyed. So where's the DHD?"

 

[Kemrain]

"I might be able to get somewhere with another NID key disk, to use as a sample. Does SGC know where the people who wrote this disk are? Maybe they could get it out of them, if they could track them down in the Stargate."

"Oh, I doubt we'll be getting much more out of them. We know where they are, in fact, they're on base. However, I don't think they'll talk much, even if we take them out of their body bags," she says with a smirk.

"And just out of curiosity... You said Earth's DHD isn't "plugged in" to our gate. But the other gate was destroyed. So where's the DHD?"

"I'm pretty sure it's in Nellis, but I'm not positive. I never got to play with it, though I asked a few times. It's more broken than the Venus de Milo, and not even all of the NID's horses and men have been able to fix it. Right now it's probably getting dusty at Groom Lake. Such a pity."

 

[Jaeden]

"I'm pretty sure it's in Nellis, but I'm not positive. I never got to play with it, though I asked a few times. It's more broken than the Venus de Milo, and not even all of the NID's horses and men have been able to fix it. Right now it's probably getting dusty at Groom Lake. Such a pity."

"Well.. You seem to know a lot about the Stargate tech... Do you think with your knowledge, and mine, we'd have a chance to fix the DHD? Assuming we could get hold of it, of course? I'm sure that there's DHDs all over on other worlds, so a team could examine a few and see how they're supposed to work... I bet we could do it."

 

[Kemrain]

"It's more a matter of parts than knowhow. What we need is replacements, not repairs. Unless you know how the Ancients built the things, you're in the same boat as the rest of us. We probably could scavenge parts from other DHD's, but that would render the gate it's attached to inoperable. We could always manually operate the gate, with a local power supply, but that's dangerous. As far as I know, if a MALP goes through and doesn't find a working DHD, the mission is scrapped and a team isn't sent. We're not in the business of stranding people offworld. Given how well our dialing computer has served us, though, I doubt there's much drive to get the DHD fixed."

 

[Jaeden]

"It's more a matter of parts than knowhow. What we need is replacements, not repairs. Unless you know how the Ancients built the things, you're in the same boat as the rest of us. We probably could scavenge parts from other DHD's, but that would render the gate it's attached to inoperable. We could always manually operate the gate, with a local power supply, but that's dangerous. As far as I know, if a MALP goes through and doesn't find a working DHD, the mission is scrapped and a team isn't sent. We're not in the business of stranding people offworld. Given how well our dialing computer has served us, though, I doubt there's much drive to get the DHD fixed."

"If we had enough of the materials, and we could examine a working model, we could stand a shot at it. And in my estimation, repairing the DHD would be a bigger deal from a knowledge standpoint than a usability one. Sure, we have Dr. Carter's computer. But if we could examine how the DHD works, rebuilding ours as a practical exercise, we could learn a lot about how the gate works... Maybe even what the 8th and 9th chevrons are for.

Alternatively, fi we did have an alternate power source like you suggested, we could deal our enemies off-world a blow. We could gate to their worlds, take their DHDs, and either destroy them or bring them back here, rendering their gates useless and making travel more difficult.

Plus, if we could come up with a portable way to power a gate... It could be feasible to miniaturize Dr. Carter's dialing apparatus, and the software could easily run on a laptop. Then we could go to any world we wanted, DHD or no DHD. The only challenge would be uncovering the point of origin symbol for the world. The dialing software we have now is capable of randomly generating combinations. In this case, we know the six-symbol address of Earth, so all we'd need to do is randomly test the 7th symbols until the gate opens."

 

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

While it might be an interesting excersize, there isn't much of a need to fix the DHD right now. I'm sure that Ms. Wolfe and Major Carter could explain it better than I could, but our dialing computer performs most of the functions of the DHD. Connecting to other Stargates, overcoming interspacial drift, that sort of thing."

The Major shakes his head as he requests 3 new cards.

"As for other worlds, we don't need it. The Stargate has a safety build in to it. Assuming you provide it with a large enough power supply, it can be dialed manually, without a DHD. SG1's done that a number of times," Major Davis offers, "including Hadante."

The Major will bet conservatively on this hand before folding, spending most of it talking with Hinda, and trying to convince Ashley to bet into the pot against the Colonel. He seems to think Johnson's got a good hand, but the odds favor staying in.

After the hands are layed down, and Colonel Johnson takes the pot, he'll offer "Nicely played. I'm going to get a mug of coffee while it's still hot. Mind joining me for a second?"

 

[Kemrain]

Ashley grins, pleased to see the new guy getting into things so quickly, and glad that she has the answers to most of his questions.
"I don't know how much we could stand to learn from it, but I agree with you. I think it's definately something the SGC should be doing. Maybe SG-14 will do those things, waddaya think, Colonel?" She smiles at Johnson, her face consealing her anxiety over her placement on an SG Team. She quickly folds from each hand she's dealt, frowning a little, but finding the conversation more interesting thas the game.
"We know the 8th chevron is used as some sort of distance imput, for inter-galactic gate travel. It just uses up more energy than we can get to the Stargate, meaning we can't do it until we find a better power source. And don't think we're not trying, it just takes enough power to make one of Major Carter's Naquada Generators look like an Easy Bake Oven. As of yet, however, we have no idea what the 9th chevron does. It's probably something physics-breaking like time travel or intradimentional portals or alternate realities. We'll figure it out, it'll just take more time than we've put into the program so far."
"Major Davis is right, though. Taking the DHD would only slow the Goa'uld down. They have more than enough power to work the gate. It's a big superconductor, anyway, lightning or even enough radiation would be used to power the thing. One of Major Carter's reactors would work, and they're pretty damn portable. The thing is, anyone advanced enough to threaten us significantly has access to energy, and probably more than us. We power the thing off of DC, I'm sure the Goa'uld have something more impressive."