The Cheyenne Mountain Irregulars: A Stargate Story Hour. Updated 7/20

[Ladybird]

Episode 1: Closer to Fine. Part 10 - In the Can

The basement of Yusupov Castle was abuzz with people and equipment, as SG-17 went through the process of packing up the artifacts to bring back to the SGC. Kathleen, directing traffic with one hand and holding her secure satellite phone with the other, was switching back and forth between Russian and English as she alternated between talking to the Russian soldiers and the General back at the SGC.

“No, put that there! Yes, sir, we’re all set. We’ve got Rasputin in a jar. No, sir, that’s not like Prince Albert in a can. We’ve actually got Rasputin, in a jar.”

Ked’rec clambered out of the tunnel, moving nimbly even though one hand was full, and was followed by Reinhart. “We found these in the same chamber as the canopic jar,” the Jaffa explained, holding his hand out to Kathleen to show her what he held: a few old coins, a gold cross, and a disc attached to a ring that she immediately recognized as a Goa’uld healing device. She nodded, and mouthed “In a sec!” to Ked’rec before she turned back to the phone.

“We’d also like to bring back a person, sir. A Dr. Hramov, who’s been involved in the first stage of the excavation, and is…very attached to the project.” Kathleen hoped that the General could hear the ironic twist in her voice, and was pretty sure that Hramov couldn’t. “We think that things would go more smoothly if he were to come back with us.”

With a promise from the General to fast-track Hramov’s security clearance, Kathleen hung up just as the Russian soldiers were starting to load the canopic jar into a crate. “No!” she cried, and broke into rapid-fire Russian, emphatically pointing out to the startled young soldier the right way to handle the canopic jar. “That is dangerous! Don’t let it tip like that! Do you have any idea what might happen if it broke! You leave it upright, and put it gently down into the crate!”

The rest of SG-17 couldn’t understand her, but her tone was unmistakable. Do you ever feel like a biohazard? Orieth thought glumly.

Can’t say that I have, no, Joe replied.

Ked’rec, still hovering nearby, cleared his throat when Kathleen was done. “What about these objects?” he asked again.

Kathleen glanced around at the others. “These, I guess we can leave with the Russians. The cross and the coins are historically interesting, but they don’t have much to do with our research, and we’ve got plenty of access to healing devices of our own to study.”

General Andreyev, when he arrived an hour later to do the final survey of the site before SG-17’s departure, was gratified at the decision. “It is good that you recognized the historical significance of these artifacts. I must admit,” he added grudgingly, “that I would rather not have the canopic jar and its contents leave, but you do have more resources available to study it at the SGC.”

“We’ll give you a complete report on all our findings,” Kathleen promised. “And we’re looking forward to being able to study the stone tablet, too.”

Andreyev’s good-natured expression darkened a little. “We were planning to keep that here,” he stated. “Certainly you will be able to analyze it well enough with the photographs that you have taken?”

Now it was Kathleen’s turn to frown. “Well, we can make some progress, yes, but it won’t be nearly as good as having the tablet itself. I’m sure our archaeological team would appreciate the chance to look at it themselves. In person.”

“We shall see,” said Andreyev. He sounded remarkably like a parent negotiating his children’s bedtime. And when a parent said ‘we’ll see’ like that, it almost always meant ‘no.’

--
Aboard the military plane once more, with the canopic jar in its crate but without the stone tablet, Reinhart dropped off to sleep almost immediately. Kathleen, restless as always, paced around the cabin – only to find Ked’rec, also awake, sitting next to the canopic jar. “Keeping watch?” she commented.

“In a manner of speaking,” Ked’rec replied, as serene as always. “I do not wish to let an enemy go unwatched. Even an enemy who has been…so thoroughly demobilized.”

Kathleen grinned tiredly. “I can’t say that I blame you.”

Orieth’s reverberant voice sounded from the other side of the cabin. “Major? I think you may wish to see this.” He held the Goa’uld tablet reader in his hands, and lifted his eyebrows in an expression of mild understatement that looked oddly incongruous on Joe’s weathered, sardonic face.

Kathleen headed over towards the Tok’ra, and leaned over the back of his seat to peer over his shoulder at the tablet reader. “What have you got?”

“I have had an opportunity to examine these ship schematics more closely. Most of them still appear unfamiliar to me, but I have also found these.” He turned the screen towards Kathleen, showing her the sketchy diagram. At first glance, it looked like a Goa’uld ha’tak – the standard pyramid-shaped mothership. But as Kathleen leaned closer, she saw that it actually had five sides on its base.

“A five-sided ship? They could land that thing on the Pentagon!” Kathleen gasped. Joe’s disdainful skepticism found its way out through Orieth’s serenity as he looked up at Kathleen, who just looked back with a shrug. “Well, all right, the Pentagon wasn’t built in 1916. But if it had been. . .” She let her sentence trail off, finishing it only with another shrug. “Is there any indication that that ship was ever built? Or is it just a speculative drawing – maybe an adaptation of the ha’tak that they were considering, but never actually made.”

Orieth scrolled quickly through the tablet reader for a moment, then shook his head. “No, it doesn’t seem to have been built. I wonder if it may not have been reversed, though – that this was the basis for the ha’tak design, rather than a later adaptation. The other ship schematics are unfamiliar – they could have been taken from the same race of aliens from whom the Goa’uld scavenged their design for the ha’tak.”

“That’s also a possibility,” Kathleen agreed. “We’ll have to cross-check those designs with the other things we have on file when we get back to the SGC. They really don’t look like anything I’ve seen before, but you never know what we’ve got tucked away in our computer files.

Orieth nodded. “One more thing that I thought you should see – and one more thing that you might want to check in your computer files.” He called up another screen on the tablet reader – this one filled with what looked like a string of numbers written in Goa’uld characters, grouped in sets of six. “They appear to be star coordinates, but. . .”

“In sets of six,” Kathleen finished for him. “As if they were Stargate addresses, but missing the point-of-origin glyph. I’ll run them through when we get back – if the point of origin is a planet we’ve got in our system, then we should be able to extrapolate which one it is, based on these other coordinates.”

--
December 21, 2010

I guess the good thing about being back at the SGC, Kathleen thought, as she made her way wearily back to her on-base room, is that you can’t really tell what time it is when you’re underground. How long was I on that plane? What time is it…?

Without even looking at the clock, she unbuttoned her jacket with exhausted, shaky fingers and tossed it on the bed, pulling her dark-blue on-base uniform out of the closet to replace her fatigues. Appropriate name for them, she thought. Now, I’ve got half an hour till the General wants to see us. I can get a shower and still have time to get some of those images from the tablet reader ready for the projector. Right. Gotta remember to do that… She picked up her PDA, ready to write down the note reminding herself to do it – but a violent tremor shook her hand, sending the stylus spinning out of her fingers and down to the ground.

Her face crumpled with frustration as she watched her shaking hands. No. Please no. Not now. Not now.

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 1: Closer to Fine. Part 11 - More than One Answer To These Questions

“I’ve got to say, I’ve never had a team capture a Goa’uld on its first mission.”

“Well, sir, he didn’t exactly put up much of a fight.” Able to relax now – well, as much as Orieth ever did – and let his true voice out, the resonant tones filled the briefing room.

The General grinned at the Tok’ra’s reply, and leaned back in his chair. “So Rasputin is definitely in there?”

“That’s right, sir,” Kathleen replied. Her hands, tightly twined together to suppress the tremors that still ran through them, were neatly tucked under the rim of the table. “Or, rather, Kresnik is.”

“And he was working for…that other Goa’uld?” the General asked.

Slowly and carefully, Kathleen unfolded her hands and clicked the button on the remote, calling up the picture of the unfamiliar symbol that had been on the stone blocking off the tunnel network. “This one, yes, sir. We’re not sure what this means – it’s not a symbol we’ve seen before.”

“Looks like ‘pa’ to me,” Joe grunted. “See? The sticky-down part of the ‘p’ on that side, and then the tail of the ‘a’ on the other side of the loop?”

“Could that stand for ‘Ra’?” The General was looking mostly at Joe, but glanced at the others briefly.

Orieth answered, shaking his head, “That’s very unlikely. First of all, Ra had a very distinct set of symbols associated with him. Second, we have no other indication that his influence ever reached that far north. And third, this inscription clearly refers to a female. Yes, gender may be flexible at times, depending on the gender of the host, but for all of Ra’s time here, his host was male. This inscription appears to be associated with a Goa’uld who strongly identified with a female host – all the gender markers are definitely female.”

“That bit there, sir,” Kathleen offered, hitting the zoom button to focus the slide on a different area of the inscription. “Those are all of the gender markers. You see that line? That means - “ She cut off, seeing the General’s eyes starting to glaze over already. “Um. Right.”

“And what about those ships?” the General asked, glancing back towards Joe and Orieth. “The ones on the tablet reader?”

On cue, Kathleen called up the slide of the ship schematics that they had taken from the Goa’uld tablet reader. “They don’t match any known Goa’uld ships that we’ve got in our records. This one is similar – you can see that it bears a strong resemblance to the ha’tak, but with a pentagonal base. I’ll run the checks again, but on the first pass through, they don’t look anything that we’ve already seen.”

“So does this mean that this woman who Kresnik was working for wasn’t a Goa’uld?”

“Well…” Kathleen hesitated, with a skeptical frown. “I mean, it’s got to be a possibility, but I’m not sure what else she could have been. I don’t know who else besides another Goa’uld could have had influence over a Goa’uld like Kresnik. And the rest of the inscriptions – worship her, traitors will be struck down – that sounds a lot like something a Goa’uld would say. On the other hand, we don’t know what kind of ships those are, so it could very well be another group of aliens that we haven’t met before.”

The General frowned too. “I don’t like all of that not-knowing, Major.”

“Neither do I, sir,” Kathleen admitted. “We’ll get on it.”

“I will examine the ship schematics again,” Orieth said. “Perhaps when I have a chance to look at them more closely, I will be able to determine more about their origins.”

Kathleen nodded, adding, “And I’ll have my people – I mean, Chen and his people - run some more computer analysis on those ship schematics. And they’ve just started to work through the translation of the stone tablet. I’m going to work with them on that, so we might get some more information from that when we finish, but it’s going to take a while.”

“All right.” The General nodded decisively. “Good work, SG-17. You’re dismissed. And I’m off to call the President again. She’s going to want to hear about this.”

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 1 - Coordination

December 22, 2010

When the members of SG-17 awoke, the SGC was even busier than when they had left. The booted feet of uniformed SG teams pounded through the corridors on their way to and from missions and meetings; technicians rushed to and fro with blue-covered reports; and every few minutes, the looping blare of the siren that signaled an off-world gate activation from some team returning or checking in.

Kathleen, coffee mug in hand, dodged and weaved through the crowds as she made her way towards the Think Tank. She could tell, as she looked at the straight back and squared shoulders of the man who sat at one of the computers, that Orieth was in control even before he spoke. “Ah. Major. I believe I have successfully transferred the coordinates from the tablet reader.”

“Good,” Kathleen nodded, taking another long sip of coffee before she rolled over a chair next to Orieth and sat down. “What have you got?”

“Well, they seem to match up to a sector of the galaxy where the Tok’ra have been active in the past, but I haven’t been able to confirm it.”

Kathleen blinked. “Tok’ra? Really?” She leaned forward, reaching out – with steady hands, to her great relief – to type in a series of commands. “Hm. It looks like that matches up with P2X-721.” She pushed one last key, and the array of stars and planets on the screen tilted, zoomed, and refocused. “There – does that look familiar?”

Orieth leaned in, studying the screen intently. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, it does. I have never been there myself, but I believe that that is a Tok’ra base.”

“Then what was he doing with those coordinates?” Kathleen muttered, shaking her head at the screen.

“Ahem. Excuse me, Major Fitzgerald?” Airman Williams, young, bespectacled, and slightly nervous-looking, was hovering by the door.

“Yes, Airman?”

“There’s a guest here for you, ma’am. A Dr…Ramov?”

“Hramov,” Kathleen sighed heavily, exchanging a glance with Orieth as she stood up. “I’ll go deal with him. I’m sure I can get one of the archaeologists to babysit him while we’re working on other things.” She reached down to get her coffee mug, and sighed again. “And while I’m getting more coffee.”

**
“HIKE!”

The thunderous voice of a Marine echoed around the SGC’s gym, and ten large, beefy men sprang into action. Well, technically, five men and five male Jaffa. It was the weekly Jaffa-versus-Marines football game – as soon as there were enough Jaffa on the SGC staff, the Marines had immediately started teaching them the rules of American football.

Ked’rec took it in stride, as he did everything else, filing the complex rules away in his mind, and diligently going about his assigned duties as a running back.

Today’s scrimmage, however, was broken up by the voice of Airman Williams, straining to be heard over the shouting and scuffling. “Ked’rec? Er…Ked’rec, sir?”

Ked’rec untangled himself and straightened up as the gym gradually fell silent. “Yes?”

“SG-17 is wanted in the briefing room, sir. At 1600 hours. You’re getting another mission.”

“I shall be present,” Ked’rec replied. “My apologies,” he added to the others, with a courteous nod, and started to head back to his quarters.

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 2 - Out of Touch

Reinhart, of course, was already in the briefing room by the time that Kathleen and the Tok’ra got there, and so was Ked’rec. So was the General, although he looked as if he had just arrived – and as if he had just woken up. But being rumpled and frazzled seemed to be a constant state of affairs for the General these days, with the SGC so busy, and so many teams dealing with off-world situations.

“Have a seat, SG-17,” said the General, with a harried version of his usual grin. “Sorry to send you out so soon after getting back from Russia, but we’ve got a situation.” Kathleen was instantly alert, exchanging a worried glance with Reinhart. The Tok’ra slouched into a seat, Joe’s bored expression quickly taking over his face.

The General clicked the button of the remote, and a grainy black-and-white picture, clearly taken by a MALP, appeared on the projection screen. It was a barren, sandy landscape, dotted by scrubby trees. “This is P2X-435. Temperate but on the warm and dry side, sandy, with sort of evergreeny trees, as you can see. It looks like most of the habitation is near the coast, which is about 20 kilometers south of the gate, although there’s what looks like a single village ten kilometers north.

“SG-14 arrived there yesterday, and we’ve lost radio contact with them. There isn’t any environmental reason for it – no atmospheric conditions or odd magnetic fields that would disrupt things. And they checked in on their arrival, so we know they got there safely. But they missed their next scheduled check-in, which was supposed to be twelve hours after that. That was eight hours ago, and we haven’t heard from them since.”

“What were they doing there, sir?” Kathleen asked, with a worried frown.

“General survey and exploration. They’re an experienced team; they went in fully equipped with safety and survival gear, and they’re very reliable. That’s why I’m concerned that they haven’t checked in.” The General clicked the remote again, and a copy of an SGC personnel file appeared on the screen. “This is the team leader, Major Susan McNair.” Click. “Lieutenant Leo Gershwin.” Click. “Master Sergeant Wesley Gatwick.”

Click. “And this is Dr. Janice Haas, the scientist on the team. She’s a botanist, but she’s also been taking samples of the local soil and water. That’s one of the few things they said before we lost contact with them – there’s a stream close by the gate, and there’s something funny with the water there. It’s all right to drink, she said, but it’s brown, and it’s got some weird chemical in it. Sort of like tannin, the stuff that’s in tea.”

The General leaned forward, looking intently at SG-17. Kathleen and Reinhart met his eyes directly, worried and eager respectively. Ked’rec was as impassive as ever. Joe was staring off into space, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Your job is to find out what happened,” the General said soberly. “It was just luck of the draw that you’re getting this mission, but we’re lucky – Reinhart, you’re one of the best field medics we’ve got. If SG-14 needs medical assistance, they’ll be in good hands with you. And if they’ve fallen into the hands of hostiles, do not engage. Call us for backup, and we’ll get an extraction team in there to back you up. That’s what the Marines are for.”

The General stood up, and SG-17 followed suit. (Although Joe was, as usual, a beat or two behind the others in coming to attention.) “Check in every six hours. Good luck.”

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 3 - New World

December 23, 2010

A rush of sound and a tunnel of shimmering light burst forth from the Stargate on P2X-435. It was nighttime, and chilly enough that Kathleen was briefly grateful for the heavy fabric of their standard combat fatigues. Boots crunched on sand, sounding oddly loud in the still, eerie quiet of another world. The moon – if this planet even had one – was dark, revealing countless stars, scattered in unfamiliar patterns across the deep black of the sky.

Ked’rec flipped his staff weapon up, holding it deftly in one hand as he flicked on his flashlight with the other. “The immediate area appears to be deserted.” The thin bright beam illuminated a clearing surrounded by scraggly bushes planted in sandy soil, and scrubby evergreen trees just at the edge of the flashlight’s range.

Kathleen squinted along the beam of the light, and nodded. “That’s good, at least.” She reached down for her radio and flicked it on, tuning to the standard SG team communication frequency. “SG-14?” she said into it. “SG-14, this is SG-17. Do you copy?” The only response was the faint crackling of static, and one of Joe’s universal snorts. “It was worth a try,” Kathleen said mildly. “All right. The last known location for SG-14 was that stream that they said was near the gate.”

“I believe that I can navigate towards the nearest source of water,” Ked’rec declared, at the same time that Joe muttered, “Gotta be some tracks around here…” as he trained his flashlight beam on the ground.

“Go ahead, then,” Kathleen nodded.

“I’ll take point,” said Joe, already moving off to take the lead.

Ked’rec glanced back at Kathleen, faint confusion registering on his stoic face. “No, Mr. Healy,” Kathleen said. “Ked’rec should go first. You’ll be second, and Reinhart, you bring up the rear.” There was a brief grumbling from Joe, but after a moment, he fell into line behind Ked’rec.

The Jaffa led the way down a slight incline, away from the gate and into the loose forest of scrubby trees. “Like evergreens,” Reinhart murmured, running his hand along a slender branch. “Except with thin leaves instead of needles.”

“Could that be what’s turning the water brown?” Kathleen suggested. “Pine needles do that sometimes.”

“Guess so,” Joe shrugged.

Ked’rec halted the group with a silent, upraised hand, then pointed down another small hill. “There is the source of water.” He shone his flashlight down, illuminating a rippling stream that appeared oddly dark, even in the direct light. “And it appears to be brown, in the manner that SG-14 described.”

“Good,” said Kathleen. “Ked’rec, can you get a sample? I want the SGC to test it to see what’s going on with it.”

“And don’t drink it!” Reinhart added.

Joe snorted again, but Kathleen gave him a look. “Yes, Dr. Haas said it was all right to drink, but we don’t know if it stayed all right. It could have some effect that didn’t kick in for a while. Reinhart’s right. Nobody drinks it until the SGC has said it’s safe.”

“Indeed.” The Jaffa picked his way nimbly down the bank towards the streambed, and although he wobbled slightly on the edge, he was able to scoop up a vial of the dark water with very little problem.

There are the tracks! Orieth thought. Joe had the disconcerting sensation of his eyes being focused for him. He spoke up quickly, shaking his head to get rid of the feeling. “There. They milled around here for a while. Then they went upstream.”

“All right. Ked’rec, do you have that sample?” The Jaffa nodded in response to Kathleen’s question. “Good. Let’s get that back to the SGC. Ked’rec, Mr. Healy, you can run that back to the gate – you’ll have the best chance of navigating back here. Reinhart, you stay here with me.”

“Right,” Joe grunted. “Go to IR,” he advised Ked’rec, and turned off his flashlight, flipping down his infrared goggles instead.

The forest went silent as the Jaffa and Tok’ra moved back up the hill, leaving Kathleen and Reinhart alone in the dark. Kathleen tried her radio once more, but all she got was Joe’s grunted, “Nobody here but us” in response. She sighed, but kept her radio on, hearing the strange double echoes of Ked’rec and Joe’s footsteps, and an occasional snort from Joe.

Stop messing with those! he thought at Orieth as they trudged up the path, scrunching his eyes in a futile attempt to push the symbiote’s presence away from him.

But infrared technology is fascinating! Orieth briefly took control again, turning Joe’s head from side to side in an intrigued test of his IR goggles. It operates on such a simple principle, yet it is very effective for what it does. Truly, this is an area in which the Tau’ri could advise others. Such simplicity could be very instructive indeed.

Yeah, yeah, Joe thought back. You never used them before? They’re not that special.

Back at the stream, there was a sudden rustling in the trees on the opposite bank. “Kill the flashlight!” Kathleen hissed, immediately following her own order.

“But don’t you want to see what that is?” Reinhart sounded slightly disappointed, although he managed to hold his tone back from petulance. “It just sounds like a deer or something, and we haven’t seen any wildlife…”

“And if it’s not a deer, we don’t want it to see us,” Kathleen replied firmly. “Lights out.”

Reinhart’s flashlight beam winked out. The light, careful footsteps on the other side of the stream rustled around for a few more minutes, and then the sound diminished, fading off into the distance, leaving only silence and darkness in its wake.

A few minutes later, there was another set of footsteps – two of them, heavier and quicker, as the Jaffa and Tok’ra returned from the gate.

“Sent the sample through,” Joe grunted.

Ked’rec inclined his head once in a serene nod. “And the Stargate Command has offered the use of a surveillance aircraft, if we so desire. Once it is light, of course.”

“Good,” Kathleen nodded. “Good job. We’ll stay here for now, then – it’s only a few hours till sunrise, probably, and we don’t want to wander off in the dark and not be able to find our way back to the gate. Then when it’s light out, we can get our UAV and see what’s around here.”

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 4 - Time, Space, and Blueberries

Dawn was dim and chilly when it finally broke over P2X-435, casting gray light over the barren landscape.

“You know, this sort of looks like Cape Cod,” Kathleen mused, as she looked around at the sandy hills and scrubby evergreens.

“I was thinking Jersey pine barrens,” Joe grunted. “Hey – blueberries.” He pointed at one of the bushes near the spot where the group had camped, which was covered with what looked very much like blueberries. Joe clambered to his feet and started poking through the thin branches.

“Don’t eat them!” Reinhart cried. Joe, his hand poised to pick one of the berries, gave the lieutenant a hard look and a sardonic quirk of a smile.

“Look, maybe you won’t have any ill effects from eating them,” Kathleen conceded. “But I’m not going to do it until I’m sure they’re safe. And I still don’t recommend it, even for you. But you get to be the one to take the samples to send back to the SGC,” she added, passing the Tok’ra a small plastic vial. Joe stared at the vial, then at Kathleen, then shrugged and popped a blueberry in his mouth before dropping one into the vial. Kathleen rolled her eyes and turned away with a sigh. “Right. It’s almost light enough to get the UAV, I think.”

“Will you need the assistance of everyone?” Ked’rec spoke up, from where he was sitting cross-legged and straight-backed.

“No, I think Reinhart and I can get it. Ked’rec, you and Mr. Healy can scout out the area downstream while we’re running the UAV.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, with a shrug of a salute.

Kathleen shot him a look. With Joe, the line between serious and sarcastic was so thin that it was sometimes hard to tell which was which. Was he following the trend of the newer recruits, who often called everyone ‘sir’ regardless of gender? Had something gotten lost in translation from Orieth? Or was he mocking her? All that Kathleen could find to say in response was “It’s ‘ma’am.’”

Joe just grunted, and moved off to follow Ked’rec downstream along the bank of the brown river.

**

Half an hour later, both the ground and aerial surveys were completed. The UAV, sent upstream in the direction that SG-14 was believed to have gone, returned images of a village about twelve kilometers north of the gate on the other side of the river - a small cluster of houses, surrounded by agricultural fields – and a few kilometers beyond that, a swampy wetland area. But it was a spot closer to the gate that caught Kathleen’s attention.

“What’s up with those trees?” she asked, pointing to a roughly oval-shaped region, spanning both sides of the river, where the trees appeared to be of a different texture.

Reinhart squinted down at it. “I’m not sure, ma’am. But it’s on the way to the village, so we’ll run into it if we go there. It doesn’t look dangerous or anything, just…different.”

Joe had his hands full of blueberries when he returned, and tossed one ostentatiously into his mouth. Kathleen noted, unhappily, that they smelled like very good blueberries. While Joe chewed, Ked’rec reported, “The water becomes lighter as it goes downstream. There are several other streams that join it along the way – they contain clear water, and therefore dilute the concentration of whatever is making this stream brown. Other than that, there are no notable features in the distance that we traveled.”

“Right.” Kathleen nodded. “It’s more likely that SG-14 went upstream, then, towards that village. Let’s go north.”

**

The sun rose higher as Ked’rec led SG-17 north on a path through the scrubby evergreen forest that he followed with confidence at every turn, but which none of the others could even begin to guess at.

We should mark our trail, Orieth thought, with the beginnings of anxiety rising at the idea of moving into unfamiliar territory. We must make sure that we will be able to find our way back!

Joe shrugged off the feeling as best he could, but the uneasiness lingered. Fine. Wouldn’t hurt. As he tore the ragged strips of cloth to make trail markers, he found himself meticulously writing the time on each. What’s that for?

We must keep track of the time, as well. If we find ourselves circling back upon our path, it will be helpful to know when we passed this way, in order to reorient ourselves. And if we take that, calculated with the average speed at which we walk…

Shut up.

About six kilometers north of the gate, the early-morning sun suddenly broke through with surprising strength. Ked’rec, still in the lead, was startled to find himself towering over the tops of the trees. “This is most unusual,” he observed, placid and understated as ever.

“I think this is your weird spot on the UAV photos, ma’am,” Reinhart offered.

The group was standing on the edge of a large space, irregularly oval in shape and about half a mile across, filled with tiny trees. They looked exactly like the evergreens that had lined the edges of the stream the whole way up the river, except they were only four feet tall.

“All right,” Kathleen said. “We need to send back samples of these trees – needles, wood, pinecones, everything.”

“They aren’t pinecones, ma’am,” Reinhart replied, already starting to pluck a branch off of one of the little trees. “More like seed pods.”

“Well, get those then. And the soil, too. We need to figure out what happened here.”

“Looks like scorch marks on those trees.” Joe pointed to a few of the larger trees at the edge of the clearing. Kathleen shaded her eyes against the sun, squinting to follow his gaze as he continued, “Old ones, though.”

“Could a spaceship have caused it?” Kathleen asked. “It’s an awfully big diameter, but the Goa’uld have some that are big enough to fit this footprint. If a ship landed here, maybe it released some chemical into the soil that stunted the trees.”

Joe closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, Orieth was speaking. “That would be unusual, but certainly possible, I suppose. Perhaps it was not a chemical, but simply the effects from having the ship burning the soil and resting on it for an extended period of time?”

No matter how hard they looked, though, there were no more clues to be found. In the end, Reinhart just stashed the samples in his pack, saving them to be sent back to the SGC later on, and the group kept moving north.

It was just after 0900 hours local time, by Orieth’s meticulous timekeeping, when the trees cleared away again to reveal a large meadow filled with blueberry bushes, and they saw the man picking blueberries.

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 5 - Outstanding In His Field

SG-17 held a quick, whispered conference at the edge of the meadow.

“He does not appear to be armed,” Ked’rec observed, peering over at the man. He seemed entirely peaceful – human, as were the inhabitants of most planets with Stargates; and dressed in rough homespun clothes and sandals, carrying nothing but a basket, into which he was casually dropping blueberries as he strolled among the bushes.

”Still, we should be on our guard,” Orieth said uneasily. “We have still not determined when the last Goa’uld contact with this world was, nor what caused the trees to be stunted. Nor what happened to SG-14.”

Ked’rec nodded. “We should do our best not to appear hostile, then, so that we do not provoke an attack. We should not approach in force – one at a time, only.”

Kathleen looked around at the rest of the team: the huge Jaffa; the scruffy, erratic Tok’ra; and the earnest, young, but strongly-built lieutenant. “I’ll go,” she offered. “I’ll probably look the least threatening.” Ked’rec agreed with a solemn nod; Joe shrugged. Reinhart added, “Plus, you’ll probably have the best chance of understanding the language, ma’am.”

Slowly, Kathleen slipped her rifle off of her shoulder. If I’m trying to look non-threatening, it’s better to leave this behind… Then she straightened up, and stepped out into the meadow. “Hello?” she called. Why not try English first? Sometimes you get lucky.

The man in the field straightened up. He was about the same height as Kathleen, with sandy brown hair, fair skin, and light-colored eyes. For a moment he studied Kathleen, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. She resisted the urge to do the same – the sun was getting pretty warm, but she didn’t want to make any sudden moves. Finally, the man shrugged and called back, “Gut marg!”

German? Or Scandinavian? Kathleen’s mind raced. Of course it would be one of the language families I don’t know. “Uh…gud marg,” she replied, imitating his pronunciation as best she could. “We’re looking for some other people dressed like us?” She motioned down at her uniform and combat boots. The man stared back blankly. “We all came through the Stargate.” She did her best approximation of miming the action of a Stargate – sweeping her arm around in a wide circle, then motioning forward with a “Whoosh!” sound.

“Ah!” The man’s eyes lit up. “Vremdelingen!”

“Right! We came through the vremdelingen.” Kathleen struggled to piece together what little she could. “Can you tell us where they went?”

The man let loose with a stream of Germanic-sounding words that Kathleen could barely even catch the shape of – she thought she heard something that sounded like “dorp” and “bosbessen”. Fortunately, he also pointed upstream, along a well-trodden path that led through the trees. Kathleen nodded. “Right. Thank you very much. Er. Danke schön?” she ventured.

The man shook his head. “Ik begrip niet.”

Kathleen sighed, with a good-natured shrug. “Yeah, me neither.” Even if she didn’t really speak German – or whatever variant of it was spoken here - ‘I don’t understand’ was a useful phrase to know in multiple languages.

--
An hour later, SG-17 arrived in the village. It was little more than a small cluster of thatched-roofed houses – fifteen, Joe noted, as they walked across the sturdy wooden bridge that spanned the brown stream. The stream had gotten browner as they moved up it – from a faint tea-stain at near the gate, its color had deepened into something approaching a coffee color. The water still hadn’t lost any of its clarity; it was just darker.

There were a few children playing on the dusty path that appeared to serve as the village’s main street, lazily tossing a ball around while their younger siblings watched from the sidelines. Rough post-and-beam fences formed a barrier between each house’s front yard and the street, and women wearing simple homespun smocks bent over small garden patches in a few of the yards. Farther down the path stood a larger building, clearly the focal point of the town: a town hall, or place of worship, Kathleen guessed. Or maybe both.

SG-17 hung back at the edge of the village, looking at each other uncertainly. “I guess I’ll try again,” Kathleen offered, and broke off to approach one of the women. “Gut marg,” she began, offering a hopeful smile and friendly wave over the top of the fence, then gestured to herself, adding, “Uh, my name is Kathleen.” No use trying to go into rank structure before we know what we’re dealing with. And if they do know what’s happened to SG-14, they might know McNair as ‘Major’.

The woman replied with something far too fast and elaborate to catch beyond “Marka,” which Kathleen hoped was her name, and as soon as she stopped, Kathleen continued, “We came through the vremdelingen…”

Before Kathleen had a chance to go through her Stargate mime again, Marka brightened. “Ah! Vremdelingen!” She immediately bustled out from behind the fence, and started to tug Kathleen down the street, chattering cheerfully in the same incomprehensible Germanic-sounding language the whole way. Kathleen gave the rest of her team a slightly desperate glance over her shoulder, beckoning them along after her, and allowed herself to be pulled.

As they passed the playing children, one of them looked up from the game, blinked a few times at the strangers, and went back to tossing the ball. “That’s odd,” Kathleen muttered, as the rest of the team caught up with her. “Kids, not being curious about these funny-dressed strangers who just walked into the middle of their town?”

Marka’s destination was the large building at the center of the village. She tugged Kathleen through the double doors at the front, into a large, square, room with bare wooden walls. Two large barrels of the brownish water stood near the back, and long straight benches filled most of the floor. It was vaguely reminiscent of an old New England church, except with nothing that resembled any religious symbols, just a speaker’s podium on a low platform at the front. Town hall, then, Kathleen thought.

There were also several people inside: a woman spinning on a distaff, an older man talking to her…and Sergeant Gatwick, of SG-14.

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 6 - No Really, We Mean It

“Sergeant!” Kathleen cried, breaking away from Marka to rush towards him. “Are you all right? Where are the others?”

“Huh?” Gatwick looked up in surprise, blinking blearily as he struggled to focus on Kathleen. He was sitting slouched on one of the benches, still dressed in his standard field uniform of fatigues, but his shirt was unbuttoned, his hat was off, and the tops of his boots were unlaced. “Oh, hey!” Recognition dawned slowly across his face. “It’s Major Fitzgerald, right?” It took another moment for the idea to make it through Gatwick’s head that the proper response to the appearance of a superior officer was to stand up, and he did so slowly. “Good to see you! Uh…hey, what are you doing here?”

“At ease,” Kathleen replied, slightly unnecessarily, considering Gatwick’s thoroughly easy manner, even as her own tone was growing sharper in response. Gatwick drooped back down, and reached down to pick up a wooden cup, filled with something that looked like the brownish river water. He took a long drink as Kathleen continued, “You missed check-in. You’ve been out of contact for almost 24 hours now. We came here to find you. Where are the others?”

“Oh, we did?” Gatwick sounded honestly surprised. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. Well…uh…let’s see, hey, where are the others? I dunno where exactly Dr. Haas is, but she’s off looking at flowers and stuff. I think the major is picking blueberries? Have you tried the blueberries? They’re awesome. And – oh yeah, Gershwin is taking a nap.”

Kathleen let him finish his rambling speech, even though she could sense Reinhart growing increasingly agitated behind her. When Gatwick finally came to a stopping point, Kathleen fixed him with a sharp glare and asked, “How much of that water have you drunk?”

“Huh? Oh, a bunch! It’s really good stuff!” Gatwick sounded more enthusiastic than he had in the rest of the previous conversation. “Here, do you want some? And did you try the blueberries?”

“Next you’ll be telling me that all the cool kids are doing it,” Kathleen retorted.

“Well…uh…everyone here does drink it. And it tastes great! You sure you don’t want any?”

“Positive,” Kathleen stated.

“Oh well. Suit yourself. Hey, do you understand any of what these folks are saying?” Gatwick waved a lazy hand around at the others in the room – Marka was now deep in conversation with the older man, while the woman with the distaff looked on with vague interest. Joe narrowed his eyes at the villagers – all of them had the same glazed, distracted look as Gatwick, although their speech didn’t seem quite as slurred as his. “Dr. Haas said that she could,” Gatwick continued. “Sounds like Dutch, and she knows some from her grandmother. ‘Gut marg’ means ‘good morning’!” he announced proudly.

“Yeah, I got that bit,” Kathleen replied. Now that the immediate relief of discovering that SG-14 wasn’t in danger was wearing off, she was starting to lose patience with Gatwick’s foggy good cheer.

He reeled off several more words, all of which Kathleen had already figured out for herself, until he got to “And…uh…oh, yeah, they’ve been calling us vremdelingen. That means ‘foreigners.’”

“Ah. Hm. I thought that meant Stargate.” Interested despite her exasperation with Gatwick, Kathleen nodded, and filed away this piece of information, then turned back to the rest of her team. “Well, it looks like SG-14 isn’t in any danger,” she observed, with a slight ironic bite to her words. “Let’s keep looking around, then. Ked’rec, Mr. Healy – why don’t you continue to scout upstream. If the water – or, rather, that brown stain in the water – is what’s been having this effect on everyone, I want to figure out what the source is. Reinhart, you and I can stay in town and wait for the rest of SG-14 to come back – especially if Dr. Haas comes back and can translate, so we can get some more information. It’s about time for our check-in, too, and we need to tell the General that everyone is safe.”

Joe and Ked’rec started to troop out of the door again, followed by the slurred words of Sergeant Gatwick. “You sure you don’t want a drink of water before you go?”

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 7 - More Aliens, Less Talking

Ked’rec and Joe followed the winding path of the river upstream, their feet crunching softly against the sandy soil.

They didn’t say anything.

The sun rose higher as the morning wore on, burning away the faint misty fog that rose from the dark-brown stream and beating down with bright heat through the two men’s hats.

They didn’t say anything.

With a silent step and sharply upraised arm, Ked’rec stopped abruptly, pointing off to the right. There, leading up a hill, was a side trail, winding its way through the scrubby trees.

Joe didn’t say anything.

The Jaffa kept his arm up, head cocked to listen. There was the sound again – a tiny, barely-audible rustling. And then Joe saw it: rooting through the dusty sand at the foot of an evergreen bush, was a small animal that bore a general resemblance to a chipmunk, except that its face was wrinkled and flattened like that of a bat. Joe let out a snort as he caught sight of the decidedly non-threatening creature. “Ugly little sucker,” he muttered, and started to push around the Jaffa to continue heading up the path.

“What about the trail that goes up the hill?” Ked’rec asked, raising his eyebrows mildly in response to Joe’s scornful reaction.

“Later,” Joe shrugged. “Let’s follow this path to the end before we look at that one.”

The path narrowed as the stream dwindled smaller and darker on the way to its source, and the evergreens gathered more thickly together until both river and trail faded into a large, forested boggy area. The water was the color of strong coffee, but it had none of the brackish or decayed smell that Joe would have expected. “Guess we found where the brown was coming from,” he grunted.

Inside his head, Orieth was buzzing with intellectual curiosity. We must get samples of all of it! Water, grass, trees, soil – if there is any sediment in the water, we must get that as well.

Shut up, Joe thought back automatically.

Isn’t that what we’re here to do? Orieth sounded vaguely hurt, and Joe wasn’t sure if it was his own remorse or his sensation of the symbiote’s wounded feelings that made his next thought a little gentler. Yeah, all right.

Joe spent a few minutes gathering samples, with much more care than he had originally planned, then looked up to see where the Jaffa was. He saw Ked’rec on the other side of the bog, holding the video camera that they had brought with them, diligently filming the bog and the surrounding trees. “Guess we’d better report,” Joe muttered grudgingly, and reached for his radio.

Kathleen answered Joe’s call almost immediately, her voice crackly over the radio but bright with interest after he finished his brief outline of what they had found along the way. “Have you found any feeder streams? Or springs?” she asked. “Or is the bog fed by groundwater coming up?”

Joe paced slowly along the edge of the bog, circling around on the opposite side from Ked’rec. “Yeah. Got a little spring. And it looks clear, too. Weird.” He lifted an arm to wave to Ked’rec. The Jaffa, intent on videoing another one of the little bat-chipmunks, didn’t notice Joe’s gesture for a few moments, but then came over to turn his camera on the tiny bubbling spring.

“So if the water is clear,” Kathleen was saying, thinking aloud in the long silences between Joe’s laconic statements, “then whatever’s turning the water brown must be in the bog, not the water. Maybe there’s a source of fresh, non-contaminated water around, then.”

“Yeah,” Joe agreed noncommittally. “You know, the water doesn’t smell bad…” He could hear Reinhart shouting frantically in the background, “Don’t drink it! I know it won’t hurt you, but still, don’t!”

Joe rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll check in later. Over and out.”

Laden with samples and video, the Tok’ra and the Jaffa wound their way back down the trail towards the village. Ked’rec stopped at the intersection with the side path again, checking warily around the corner through the trees (to Orieth’s approval) before leading the way up the hill.

“Footprints,” Joe grunted.

Ked’rec leaned over, narrowing his eyes at the faint tracks in the sandy soil. “Mostly animal,” he observed. “Although there are a few human tracks as well.”

The human footprints grew more plentiful and more distinct as they went further along the path and up a hill, until they reached a clearing – in which stood a small cabin. It looked like a single room, made of logs from the trees whose weathered stumps still stood around the edges of the open field, surrounded by an area of flat ground and a small but neatly-cultivated garden. Farther back, the trees thickened, growing more closely together to form a leafy barrier to whatever lay behind the cabin – close enough to indicate a river, perhaps, down behind the crest of the hill.

“Should we approach?” Ked’rec asked softly.

“Yeah.” Joe replied, his voice just as subdued. “Quiet. But not sneaky.”

They edged carefully into the clearing, skirting around the edge of the trees at first, and then venturing out onto open ground towards the cabin. After a few yards, Ked’rec halted, with another one of his wordless raised-hand gestures to bring Joe to a stop too. There was a man behind the cabin, bent over as he worked in the garden. He was dressed similarly to the people in the village, but his clothes were slightly rougher and more patched, and a fur wrap lay over a stump next to him, discarded in the rising morning heat.

The Tok’ra and Jaffa stood motionless for a moment, watching, until the man stood up, stretching his back – and caught sight of them. Without a word and without a second look, the man lay down his hoe and walked straight off into the trees.

“That was most curious,” Ked’rec observed, after a moment of confused silence.

“I dunno,” Joe grunted. “He saw strangers, and walked away. Probably the most sensible thing I’ve seen all day.”

 

[Ladybird]

Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 8 - Lost in Translation

Back in the village, Kathleen was doing her best to investigate the possibility of recent Goa’uld activity on the planet without speaking more than a few words of the language. Somehow, knowing the local words for “blueberries” and “good morning” wasn’t helping much. Marka – apparently the most extroverted of the villagers, despite the glazed and distracted look that she shared with all of the others – was listening with eager encouragement, but the village headman, Geert, had only mild confusion on his passive face as he watched Kathleen’s struggle to make herself understood.

“Do you know anything about the little trees? Um…kleine baumen?” Kathleen tried what she thought was an approximation of the phrase in German, holding her hand a few inches above the ground to mime ‘small.’ Geert and Marka turned to each other, puzzled, and discussed it amongst themselves for a few moments, trying to figure out what she meant. Finally they turned back to Kathleen, shaking their heads. Geert looked slightly surprised that she would ask such a question, as if nobody had ever thought to wonder about the strangely stunted trees. Doesn’t anyone on this planet have any curiosity?

“Okay….um…has anyone else come through the Stargate?” Kathleen tried the same motion that she had done before, waving her arm in a wide circle, then sweeping forward while making a ‘whoosh!’ sound, in her best imitation of a Stargate. Marka nodded enthusiastically, and started a discourse on ‘vremdelingen,’ but Kathleen shook her head. “No, besides us. Not me, not him.” She pointed to herself and Gatwick in turn, shaking her head emphatically after each.

Geert and Marka stared. Kathleen sighed heavily, and tried again. “No, not us. People with flashing eyes? Deep voices?” She made fists near her eyes, then opened her hands swiftly, miming the flash of a Goa’uld’s eyes. Geert and Marka stared.

Fortunately for all of them, a distraction arrived in the form of Reinhart, fresh back from checking in with the SGC. “They’re happy to hear that everyone’s all right, ma’am,” he reported. “We’re supposed to stay here until SG-14 is all rounded up, and until we’re sure that there isn’t any health risk from that stuff they drank. They’ve got some preliminary reports from the samples we sent back – there’s definitely some kind of mind-affecting chemical in the water. There’s also another chemical that’s similar to the ones used in some preservatives.”

“Well, they do seem to be fairly pickled,” Kathleen muttered. “Anything else?”

“I think Dr. Haas might be on her way back, ma’am. I saw a group of locals coming up the road, and there was someone with them who looked like she was wearing an SGC uniform.”

“Finally!” Kathleen let out a sigh of profound relief. “Look, I’ll be back in a second,” she said quickly, turning back to the others. Gatwick gave her a mellow wave; Geert and Marka blinked in their usual incomprehension.

“Dr. Haas!” Kathleen called, hurrying out of the town hall and into the brightening sunshine. Ugh. It’s getting hot. That’s not going to be fun…

A smallish figure, dressed in fatigues, split off from the group of villagers making their way down the path towards the village. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes as she squinted into the sun. “Is that…Major Fitzgerald? What are you doing here?”

Even from a distance, Kathleen could hear the slow pace and vague, distracted tone of Dr. Haas’s words, and she sighed again. She’s drunk it too. “We’re here looking for you,” Kathleen began.

Kathleen went through the entire situation with Dr. Haas, repeating herself a few times when the botanist’s attention wandered off towards the flowers that she carried in her arms. “Sergeant Gatwick tells me that you understand the language?” Kathleen asked, when she was done.

“Oh, yes. My grandmother was born in the Netherlands. This language isn’t exactly like Dutch, but it’s close enough that I can understand the locals, and they can understand me.”

“Oh, thank goodness! Look, can you help me out with some translation. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s been any Goa’uld presence on this planet, and I’m getting nowhere.”

“I’d be happy to,” Dr. Haas replied. And then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, “Good idea, finding out if there have been any Goa’uld here.”

It’s only one of our central missions, Kathleen grumbled inwardly, as she led the way back into the town hall. She sat, slightly impatiently, while Dr. Haas translated her questions about the Stargate, then again while Geert and Marka discussed it, again looking confused that anyone would be asking such questions. Finally, Dr. Haas turned back to Kathleen. “It sounds like we’re the first people to have come through the Stargate in a very long time. They don’t have any idea what it’s for, and until today they didn’t even have any idea that people could travel through it.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess,” Kathleen replied. “What about the local religion – any indications of Goa’uld influence there?” She looked around at the sparse walls of the town hall – if it did serve as a place of worship, there weren’t any Goa’uld symbols that she could see.

Once again, Dr. Haas translated, and once again she returned with a negative answer. “As far as I can tell, their religion centers around ancestral spirits – nothing that would even suggest Goa’uld influence.”

“All right. That’s definitely good. What about – “

“Got a bunch more samples for you.” Joe’s laconic grunt broke in – he and Ked’rec had returned. “Found some weird guy living out in the woods, too.” It didn’t take very long at all for Joe to make a complete report on the strange reclusive man that they had encountered at the cabin.

Through Dr. Haas, they asked the locals for more information – surprisingly, this received a stronger reaction from Marka than anything that they had asked before. The young woman’s expression darkened into a disapproving frown as she answered. “His name is Joost,” Dr. Haas translated. “He doesn’t like other people very much. I gather that he’s lived off by himself for several years.”

Suddenly, Ked’rec held up a hand, his head cocked to listen. The others fell silent, following his lead – and a few seconds later, they heard it too. Shouting, and then, running feet, approaching quickly from outside.

“Hagadis!” it sounded like someone was yelling. “Hagadis!”

Kathleen looked quickly to Dr. Haas for translation, even as she was getting to her feet and hurrying towards the door, hand on her gun and eyes alert.

“I don’t know.” Dr. Haas shook her head helplessly. “It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure exactly what it means.”

By the time they got outside, the shouting was louder, and the people had nearly reached the town hall: two locals, and Major McNair of SG-14, all flushed and out of breath. “What is it?” Kathleen pressed. “A person? An animal?”

Dr. Haas carried on a hurried conversation with the locals. “An animal. Big? Er – not hairy. Scaly?”

“What, is it a dinosaur?” Kathleen tossed off the question half-jokingly, but Dr. Haas’s eyes widened.

“Er. Actually…I think ‘hagadis’ does mean ‘lizard.’ It might be a dinosaur.”