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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ladybird" data-source="post: 2215788" data-attributes="member: 10689">Mission 1: Closer to Fine. Part 1 - Coffee and BriefingIn order to avoid spoilers for the TV series, I've answered Green Armadillo's question about the original SG-17 in a private message - they're not mentioned until one of the later seasons. Thanks for all your interest and positive feedback - now, on with the show!---December 18, 2010RING! RING!Kathleen rolled over, squinting blearily over at the clock. 5:00 AM. Oh-dark-thirty, as they’d called this kind of ghastly early-morning time back at the Academy. And she’d just barely managed to get to sleep, too…RING! RING!She fumbled for the phone. “Hello?” “Major Fitzgerald? It’s Airman Williams, from the SGC.”Kathleen sat up, instantly awake. “What is it? Is everything all right?”“Yes, ma’am. Well, mostly. The General wants to meet with SG-17 at 0700 hours. He says not to worry – there’ll be plenty of coffee.”**“Is not our first mission due to depart two days hence?” Ked’rec asked, his voice as neutral and calm as it ever was, despite the early hour. If the phone call had woken him up, there was no indication of it in his voice or manner.“Yes…sir.” Even after two years of working with Ked’rec at the SGC, Airman Williams was still uncertain as to where the Jaffa fit into the rank structure. When in doubt, though, call him “sir.”  “SG-17 was set to start on the 20th. But there’s been a change of plans. Something’s come up, and the General needs you to start earlier.”**Joe reached over to pick up the clock from where it lay on the floor, nearly knocking over an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts. “It’s five in the morning,” he grumbled. The television screen flickered with black-and-white images – the all-night zombie movie marathon that Joe had been watching when he fell asleep in his chair was still running.“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. But the General wouldn’t have asked me to call you in if it weren’t urgent. He needs you at 0700 – “**Airman Williams stared at the phone in his hand. Joe had hung up on him. Oh well, Williams thought with a shrug. I made the call – I’ve done my part of the job. I can’t make him come in.**Ked’rec reached the conference room first. It had only taken about twenty minutes to get ready for the meeting, and he lived on the base in Cheyenne Mountain, so his travel time involved nothing more than getting on the elevator to travel from the living quarters to the briefing room. Joe slouched in a few minutes later, in a cigarette-scented haze, his dusty graying hair sticking out in several unpredictable directions. He went straight to the coffeepot, poured himself a cup, drank it in one gulp, poured another, and sat down without even pausing to acknowledge the Jaffa already seated at the table.It took Kathleen a bit longer to drive to the base from her house in town, but she still arrived with several minutes to spare, and with her uniform and hair in crisp, spotless order. She glanced around the room with a weary but cheerful smile, offering a quick “Good morning,” to the other members of her team as she too headed for the coffeepot. She got a silent nod from Ked’rec in return, and a grunt from Joe. Through the briefing room’s wide window, she could see through to the General’s office, where he was having an animated conversation on the phone. Uh-oh? she thought. Then she saw that it was the red phone. Definitely uh-oh.“Uh-oh,” spoke a voice behind Kathleen. It was Lt. AK Reinhart, the junior member of SG-17, a young man barely out of the Air Force Academy. Even when he hadn’t just been dragged out of his quarters, his broad good-natured face always looked freshly scrubbed. He too was looking through the window at the General on the red phone, and he exchanged an apprehensive glance with Kathleen as he slipped past her to take a seat at the table. “Good morning, ma’am,” he added.“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Kathleen replied, as she poured herself a cup of coffee and headed for the conference table.“SG-17! Good to see you” the General called from the doorway, the forced cheerfulness in his voice belied by the dark circles under his eyes. No matter how early the team had had to wake up, he’d probably been up earlier. If he’d been to sleep at all. “No, no, don’t get up,” he said, waving a hand pre-emptively at Kathleen and Reinhart. “Good morning, sir,” said Kathleen, sinking back in her chair, but keeping her posture at-attention straight. “Is everything all right?”“Well, I hope so. And I hope you all brought your parkas. There’s been a change in plans – you’re going to start your first mission a bit early. You’re going to St. Petersburg – and I don’t mean the one in Florida.”“Russia?” Kathleen asked, with a sinking feeling. St. Petersburg, Russia, in December?“Got it in one, Major,” the General replied. “The Russians are doing some naquadah research at St. Petersburg State University, and their instruments started picking up indications that there was some source of naquadah around that wasn’t in their lab. They tracked the readings to a museum down the street, and in the basement of the museum, they found an underground passage, sealed with a stone that had this inscription on it.”The General reached for a remote-control and clicked a button. Onto the conference room projection screen flashed a grainy picture: the corner of a sandstone block, into which were carved symbols that looked like a variation on Egyptian hieroglyphics.Kathleen’s sinking feeling sank deeper. “It’s in Goa’uld.”“Excuse me, sir.” The voice was coming from Joe’s mouth, but it was deeper and smoother – Orieth was talking now. “My previous understanding had been that there was little, if any, Goa’uld presence as far north as Russia.” “That’s what we thought too,” answered the General, with no sign of confusion or discomfort at the sound of Orieth's reverberant voice. Reinhart gave a brief double-take, but did his best to cover it up as quickly as possible. “And that’s why we – and the Russians – would like you to investigate. We want you to find out where this inscription came from, how long it’s been there, what it means, and what else is down there.” He looked around the table at the bleary, confused faces of SG-17. “Any questions?”“Yes, sir.” Kathleen spoke up first. “What’s the museum that the stone was found in? Could the stone have been some Egyptian antiquity that was brought in without the Russians realizing what it was?”“Not very likely, Major. The museum used to be some old Czarist palace, and now it’s full of Russian antiquities, art, things like that. Oh, and a waxworks, if you want to be even more creeped out. But nothing from Egypt. Also, the stone wasn’t in the part of the basement where they stored museum artifacts – it was part of the wall in a different section of the building.”“Who are we supposed to report to when we get there, sir?” asked Reinhart.“You’ll be meeting with General Andreyev. He’s my counterpart there. Yes, this is pretty big,” the General added, in response to the raised eyebrows and surprised looks that he received from the team. “Not only could it be an important archaeological find, but…well, things have been kind of tense with the Russians lately, so we need to handle this carefully. The President’s been on the phone with me and with General Andreyev, and she’s assured him that we won’t be looting Russia’s national treasures or anything like that. Their archaeologists are kind of anxious about having an American SG team come in.”“If that’s the case, sir…”“…why isn’t the Russian team going?” The General finished Kathleen’s question for her. “They’re off-world right now, in a situation that we can’t pull them out of. You’re the next-best thing.”“Understood, sir,” Kathleen said with a decisive nod. “We’ll be careful.”“Good. Then go ahead and get packed – we’ll have a transport plane ready for you as soon as you can make it back to the base. Good luck, SG-17.”</blockquote>

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