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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ladybird" data-source="post: 2818133" data-attributes="member: 10689">Episode 1: Closer to Fine. Part 10 - In the CanThe 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, 2010I 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.</blockquote>

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