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magibrainChapter Summary: Fortifications are requested, oblique threats appear, and Carter and Daniel find that something is a little unusual about this place they've found themselves in.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index
Hammond's approval came quickly. After conversing with his superiors at the Pentagon, he'd come back with good news: authorization to send additional personnel and equipment through to further assess the planet. The first batch, readied overnight, comprised what Jack labelled "the good stuff": two rail guns. They were emblematic of a victory for Carter, odd as it seemed, because the first logistical difference between a research site and a permanent offworld base was that in a base, the 'gate was guarded at all times. With gun emplacements, '542 gained legitimacy.
(Sooner or later,) Jack thought, (we may have to name it something other than '542.)
This time Teal'c met him in the gate closet, dispatching one of the guards to drag Carter away from whatever she was doing – provided it wasn't something that would explode in her absence. "I see you bring good news," Teal'c said, taking in the payload.
"Yeah," Jack said, gesturing at the techs who had accompanied the rail guns. "Siler couldn't make it. Electrical burns from his latest calamity. But these fine fellas are going to help us lock the front door around here."
"General Hammond has approved the building of an iris," Teal'c surmised.
"Not yet. He wants to make sure everything really is all right here before we take down the 'gate for upgrades." He turned back to the Stargate, eyeing the otherwise featureless room. "And I can see his point. I don't want anyone trapped here if things do go wrong, not that I think they will." (Not that I think they won't, but not that I think they will.)
"A wise plan," Teal'c approved.
"So I guess by 'lock' I mean like 'lock and load,'" Jack mused, turning back to the hallway as he heard footsteps. "Carter! Good news! You can move in."
Carter's face lit up to at least the luminosity of PSR. "Really?"
"Not you personally," Jack said, dusting off his hands. "You are going to have to come back to SG-1 sometime. But Hammond's approved a probationary base."
"That's wonderful news, sir," she said, glancing past him at the armament.
"Yeah, I thought you'd like that." He tried to keep a poker face on, but Carter's enthusiasm was infectious and could probably start small epidemics. "So now that you're sanctioned – and guarded," he waved at the gun batteries, "what's next?"
Sam paused to think about that. She hadn't honestly doubted that Hammond and the Pentagon would ignore the opportunity for a secure base in a place like this, but she'd tried not to count her requisitions before they'd hatched. "Lt. Menard and Lt. Yanacek want soil samples to test for trinium and naqahdah," she said. "If there's naqahdah it's possible that the pulsar may have turned some into naqahdriah, though so far we haven't seen any indication of either. They're just deciding on which floor to drill through, seeing as they can't go outside."
"Radiation," O'Neill supplied.
"Well, that and..." Sam indicated the walls. "No doors. Or atmosphere."
"Two useful things to have." O'Neill quirked his head, and changed subjects. "How's Daniel?"
The question caught Sam by surprise. "...I haven't seen him," she realized. "Last I checked, he was still working on translating the records with Dr. Daggart."
"He has slept sometime recently, hasn't he?"
"I had Major Lorne show him to the quarters we've set up," Sam said.
"That wasn't what I asked, Major."
Sam stifled a chuckle. No – it really hadn't been. "We haven't set up a coffee pot yet," she said. "I'm sure he got some sleep."
"Good." O'Neill stepped around the rail gun. "...no coffee? You've been here for, what, two weeks?"
"Pretty much."
The Colonel gave her a suspicious look. "...I don't think you're really scientists."
"Not civilians," she said. "We offered him some of the instant stuff. We've just been too busy to set up a mess."
"Now that sounds like you scientists." O'Neill snorted. "Daniel on instant coffee? And here he thought he was getting all the luxuries of home."
"He protested," Sam said. "We offered to let him set up a kitchen, and he almost did."
"Until he figured out it would take time away from his precious alien squiggles?"
"More or less."
"Well, why don't you go check on him," O'Neill suggested. "I'm going to make sure the techies know how to bolt a gun to the floor."
Sam nodded. "I'll do that. Should I have him check in with you?"
"Not unless he has something fascinating to share. And I mean really fascinating, not Daniel-fascinating."
Sam chuckled. "Yes, sir."
The Colonel waved, and she headed off.
-
Daniel was, as expected, still eye-deep in the records bank. He'd forged through thirty pages in his journal, complete with three or four different tentative sentence-parsing schemas, and was just getting into the rhythm of the written language when Sam walked in. He cleared his throat experimentally. "Hey, Sam."
Sam strolled over, glancing at his journal. "Hey."
"How normal is this solar system?" Daniel asked.
Sam blinked. If she'd taken the time to rank in probability all the questions she expected to hear from him, that wouldn't have made the top half. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, is there anything weird here about the planet or the sun? Anything like that?"
"Well," Carter said, "we don't have a whole lot of first-hand observations of pulsars, but from what I know of PSR-PV1 the only odd things about it are the ranges into which the emissions fall. It's got a fairly slow period, but nothing too far out of the ordinary."
"Okay... emissions." Daniel looked up from his translation. "I have no idea what that means."
Sam nodded. "Okay. Um... electromagnetic radiation covers a wide, wide range of different things depending on its wavelength. Some examples are radio waves, X-rays, visible light, electrical energy, gamma rays... so on. Now, the pulsars we've observed tend to emit radiation in the radio wavebands, X-rays and gamma rays, as well as light. This pulsar produces an incredible amount of gamma radiation and electrical energy, with much less light and radio than a pulsar like this should be producing. And we have no explanation for that."
"Oookay," Daniel said. "What about the planet?"
"The planet," Sam said. "The planet is weird. For one, it's unusually close to PSR-PV1. For another, it's almost directly in the path of its jets – pulsars release streams of charged particles called 'jets', but only along a single axis. The likelihood of a planet naturally coming to exist inside one is... slim, to say the least. Thirdly, there's the fact that this planet is tidally locked – this side always faces the sun. Forth, it's not on the same orbital plane as any of the three other planetary bodies – and in a system as old as this one, that's highly irregular. And then of course there's the question of how this complex was built in the first place, given that anyone coming here to try to set up safeguards would be killed before the safeguards could be activated."
"Okay," Daniel said, more confident this time. "Well, that explains some things."
Sam blinked. "It does?"
"There's a word in here – don't ask me what it is, I can't even guess at the phonetic equivalent – but the only translations I could come up with were... a bit intimidating," he admitted.
"What does it say?"
"That this system was – and I can't pin down the exact meaning – constructed. Possibly 'assembled.' It goes on to talk about how it was 'optimized' or maybe just 'altered,' but I think it's using technical terms after that and I don't have the slightest idea on how to translate them."
Sam sucked in her lower lip. "That would explain a lot," she said. "But that would mean whatever race made this city – this system – was capable of feats of stellar engineering we haven't seen in any other race. Including the Ancients," she said, a trace of wonder in her tone.
Daniel looked up. "A race more advanced than the Ancients?" he asked.
"...not necessarily," Sam said, nonetheless looking around the room with renewed admiration. "Keep in mind, the Ancients experimented with time manipulation, wormhole physics, things that take place on levels of reality so fundamental that – what is that?"
Daniel took a moment to follow, during which time she'd shot over to the other side of the room. "Huh?" he managed.
"Proximity alarm," Sam said, hitting buttons on one of the control panels. A light at the top of the screen blinked a frantic red. "Daniel, can you come here?"
Daniel set down his journal, grabbed it as an afterthought, and made his way around the consoles. "What's wrong?"
Sam jabbed at a symbol that didn't appear on the taped-up cheat sheet. "Can you read that?"
"Er... 'ship,' as far as I know. Singular. The ones next to it are 'big,' 'moderate,' and 'three.'"
Sam grabbed a radio. "Colonel O'Neill, Colonel Edwards, could you report to the comm room?"
"Sam?" Daniel asked.
"We're either in trouble or about to prove what a find this planet is," Sam not-quite-explained, bringing up four fluctuating graphs he couldn't make heads or tails of. "Either way, they should be here."
"On my way," Colonel Edwards said through the radio.
"Yeah. What's up?" O'Neill chimed in.
Sam hit the talk button again. "Sensors are picking up a ship approaching us in hyperspace. If we're reading this right, it's fairly large."
A pause. Then Colonel O'Neill's voice came through. "Roger that."
"Out of curiosity, how big?" Daniel asked.
"Three points of magnitude larger than moderately large," Sam said, pointing to the symbols.
"Meaning?"
"Got me."
Daniel stepped aside as Sam attacked the graphs, trying to catch the symbols she entered to have some idea what she was doing. He didn't have much luck. (How is it they can identify all the key commands to run these things without knowing how to read "big?") he wondered.
Jack and Edwards jogged into the room, each with a hand on their P-90 as if they were ready to shoot the ship down. "Major?" Jack asked, skipping the formalities.
"ETA about two minutes," Sam said. "Definitely a ship – we're picking up energy signals even this far out. Some of them look Goa'uld."
"D'oh," Jack said. "And here I thought this was a secret base."
"We haven't had any missions recently where we could have leaked that information to the Goa'uld," Edwards said darkly. "How the hell did they know anything was here?"
A new graph came up, and Sam turned her attention to it. "Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh?" Jack asked.
"Like I said, only some of the energy signals were typical Goa'uld," Sam repeated. "Some of these look Ancient."
"Anubis?" Daniel filled in.
"Well," Edwards said, "I guess now we see if this star of yours is all it's cracked up to be."
"Yes sir," Carter said through her distraction.
Sensing a few free seconds, Jack glanced over at the forth person in the room. "Daniel," he greeted.
"Jack," Daniel answered.
"Find anything earth-shattering yet?"
"Well, it turns out this planet and star may have been constructed," Daniel said. "Then there's some bits about efficiency design, internal politics, pretty dry stuff, mostly–"
Jack's eyebrows hopped up. "Constructed, you say?"
"Apparently."
"I didn't think that possible."
"Neither did I," Daniel said, and Sam cleared her throat.
"It's dropping out of hyperspace."
One of the larger screens near the centre of the room blinked on, displaying a visual of a ship emerging. Definitely Goa'uld – definitely Anubis. Edwards sucked in breath. "That's one of 'is big ones."
"It's approaching the planet," Sam said. "It's scanning and transmitting–"
The ha'tak's engines cut out, leaving it to drift on momentum. Carter blinked, and visibly relaxed.
"Sir, the ship is disabled."
O'Neill grinned savagely at the screen. "Nice."
"It did transmit something out of the system before it was taken out," Sam said–
"–but it won't do them much good if they can't come within a stone's throw of the planet," Daniel finished for her.
O'Neill turned to Edwards. "Colonel Edwards," he said with mock-gravity. "I believe we have a defensible position."
"I'll say," Edwards snorted. "Major, I have to hand it to you. When you pick a planet..."
"Thank you, sirs," Carter said. "But I'm not the one who made it."
"Yes, speaking of which, how exactly does one go about constructing a sun?" Jack asked.
"Well, generally one begins with a molecular cloud and waits for it to coalesce," Carter said. "If you have the right kind of star, after it novas it will turn into a neutron star and maybe a pulsar. On this scale, in this application, I have no idea."
"Mark the time and date, folks," Jack said. "Daniel?"
"Yeah?"
"Constructed?"
"Or 'assembled.' Don't look at me. That's what it says."
"How about you make that translation a priority for a bit, okay?" Jack said it in jest – though Daniel took it seriously, nodding and slipping back to his work. How he'd manage to make it more of a priority would be interesting to see.
"Carter?" Jack asked. "Call me if any other punks feel lucky."
The tenth of her brain that wasn't engrossed in analyzing every last scrap of data took control long enough to smile quickly. "Yes, sir."
"I'm going to go help Teal'c with the gun emplacements," Jack said, hiking his thumb back at the hall and leaving his scientists to work.
-
Three hours later Jack had managed to chase off most of the techs, earning Teal'c and himself total creative license to mount the guns wherever they chose. To that end Jack had been exploiting the chance to test-sit each of them to determine ideal placement. He'd been tempted to test-fire them as well, but that would have been irresponsible, and weapons were among the few things he could be counted on to be deathly responsible with.
"How about now, O'Neill?"
"Another three degrees counterclockwise," Jack said, slipping out of the seat. "And about a foot and a half this way. That'll give us some cover behind the wall, but it won't take too much of a chunk out of the range."
A few of the techs had expressed their confusion over Jack's perfectionism, and Jack could see why. After all, these guns did have functional arcs large enough to cover the 'gate and the second doorway if he'd just pointed them in its general direction. But when he did a job, he took pride in doing it well, thank you, and it wasn't his fault that his skill in interior decorating tended toward placing railguns in crowded labs.
And hell, it wasn't as if he had anything better to do.
Three hours was not, as strategic situations went, a long time. The SGC's active personnel had the advantage of being organized into small teams, any of which could be dispatched with ten or fifteen minutes' notice. The Goa'uld were ponderous by comparison.
So he really didn't expect Carter to call in when she did. "Colonel, we've got another ship incoming."
He let go of the gun, fumbled for his radio. "What? Already?"
"Yes, sir. Coming in at a steep angle, which is probably why we didn't catch it until now. It seems to be smaller than the last one, but we're still getting Goa'uld and Ancient signals from it."
"That guy does not give up, does he?" Jack asked at Teal'c. He hit the talk button. "How far out?"
"ETA three zero minutes."
"Three zero. Copy that." Jack swung his legs out of the chair, helping Teal'c to adjust it with one hand while responding with the other. "Anything interesting going to happen before then?"
"Probably not, but I'd like to monitor this in any case. Lorne, Yanacek, Heismann, Trobee, if you're following this, can you come up to the comm room?" Carter asked over the radio. Jack looked at Teal'c.
"I think I'll head up in about half an hour," he said.
"Major Carter sounded concerned," Teal'c observed, wresting the gun around.
"Cautious, I'd say," Jack said over the tinny rights and on my ways from the radio. "Hey, Teal'c. You have any idea how Anubis might have figured out we were here?"
"As part of our alliance," Teal'c said, "we shared many plans with the Tok'ra. It is possible that this planet was originally one proposed for a joint mission of some kind."
"And then the Tok'ra got infiltrated or something?" Jack shook his head. "Damn. Even when they're gone, they're still trouble."
Teal'c simply nodded. He was too polite to get into a discussion of what, from Jack's point of view, were numerous failings from their erstwhile partners, and he'd much rather have Colonel O'Neill in a mood for lighthearted griping than serious recrimination. Any discussion would inevitably lead to recrimination.
"It always has to be Anubis, too," O'Neill went on.
"Anubis is the dominant power among the Goa'uld," Teal'c said. That fact alone was enough to make him dangerous – because the dominant powers, if they were strong enough to become dominant powers, had the leisure of going after people who weren't their immediate enemies. It was how Ra had thrived for so long before his sudden defeat at the hands of the Tau'ri; he had assaulted his enemies with just enough force to keep their armies engaged, while the slim remainders of his fleets had conquered anywhere of value before his rivals could lay claim. Anubis didn't need to know why they were there, or even who they were. This planet could represent an advantage to him, and he would want it.
"Yeah," O'Neill said. "That's our luck."
The conversation died.
-
Not long after, as Jack put the final touches on one of the gun mounts with an electric screwdriver, Daniel wandered into the lab. Jack looked up, doing the math (Daniel minus pet project equalled intervention) in his head. "Comm room getting crowded?"
"Yeah, Sam chased me out. Something about scanning algorithms and sensor alignment." Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets, looking around for something to do. "I don't suppose you have anything you need translated. I can't access the main records from any of these terminals."
"The stuff I'm working with is from Earth," Jack apologized, hefting the screwdriver. "I think some of the instructions might be in Chinese, though."
"Traditional or simplified?" Daniel asked, with what sounded suspiciously like genuine interest. Jack looked up, only to catch the far-too-innocent look on his friend's face.
"...the one with all the little pictures?" he offered.
Daniel laughed. "Can I help you set that thing up? I'm not entirely horrible at following directions. Chinese or otherwise."
"Daniel," Jack said, crawling under one of the seats to tighten some screws, "it took five years before I'd trust you with a rifle on a regular basis. I anticipate it'll be at least another six or seven before I want to see you messing around with these things."
"Thanks."
"Teal'c might need some help."
Teal'c looked up from where he crouched, methodically putting away the heavy bolting equipment. "I am fine."
Daniel nodded, and checked back with Jack again.
"If you want, you can organize all that lab stuff we had to move," Jack offered. "That might deflect some of the Wrath of Carter when she finds out we messed up her lab."
"Right." Daniel stepped over to one of the tables, shifting through the devices. "You know, I have no idea what kind of organizational scheme Sam uses."
"Neither does anyone else," Jack said over the screwdriver's whirr. "But I'm due up in the comm room in about five minutes. Assuming the world's not going to end, I can ask."
"Right. In the mean time, I'll just... organize."
Jack slid out from under the seat, tossing the screwdriver to Teal'c. "Have fun," he said.
-
"Carter!" Jack called as soon as he walked into the comm room. Which was crowded – despite its size, the combination of scientists and panels overpowered it. He had to dodge Lorne and Yanacek just to get to Carter's station, never mind the fact that it was less than ten steps from the door. "We have visitors?"
"Yes, sir," Sam said. "What we thought was one hyperspace signal was actually two. Two ha'taks. One just dropped out of hyperspace, and the other came out a bit ago. The second one is sitting still, but the first has been moving around."
"What's it up to?"
"Not much," Carter said. "It came out of hyperspace at a safe distance from the sun, and it hasn't gotten within disabling range. I can only speculate at the strength of their sensors that far out, but they've been edging up on us at a snail's pace for a while now."
"But they can't actually get close," Jack checked. "No matter how sneaky they are."
"No, sir. If anything, slowing their approach would expose them to more cumulative radiation. I think they're just trying to see how close they can come."
(I want to stick my tongue at them,) Jack thought. (Or would that be tempting fate?) "So, they're – what? Testing the waters?"
Carter shrugged. "I guess."
Jack folded his arms. "Question. How far away can we track these things?"
"These sensors are pretty advanced," Carter said. "Depending on where the ships enter hyperspace and the angle at which they approach, we can catch them between thirty-six hours and fifteen minutes away." She tapped one of the screens, and then paused, reading over something.
"That's quite a range," Jack said, looking at the graph which had commandeered her attention. It was a fluctuating line with a bunch of jumping bars, which made about as much sense to him as an ink blot.
"Well, it only detects hyperspace distortions, and only along the scan axis." Carter's expression grew more intense, and she focused down on the bars. "There are a lot of variables."
"So it's possible with some tricky maneuvering, Anubis could come up completely under our radar."
"Yyyyyeah. Until he entered the system."
Jack exhaled. "This planet is great and all, don't get me wrong. But I'm really starting to wish for some space guns."
Carter nodded absently.
"But as long as they can't actually do anything to us," Jack said. "Right?"
"Right," Carter replied.
"Can't snipe us from the edge of the system or anything."
"No, sir, their weapons don't have the range."
"So we're safe."
"Yes, sir." She didn't sound as if she was listening to what he was saying, and that unnerved him.
"Very safe."
"Very, sir."
"Safer than Earth."
Carter's distracted look had morphed into a full frown, complete with furrowed brow. "'scuse me," she said, slipping away. "I need to run some simulations..."
"You do that," Jack called after her. He grimaced, biting at the inside of his lip. As much as he'd like to believe everything they'd just agreed to... well, Carter apparently didn't. And Carter was usually right about these things.
That in mind, he headed off in search of his counterpart. The search didn't take long – all activity centered itself around the comm room, and Edwards was just close enough to soak in all the news without disturbing the scientists finding it.
"Edwards!"
Edwards tilted his head in acknowledgment, waiting as Jack approached him.
"Have your men ready to evacuate," Jack said.
Edwards looked at him incredulously. "You want us to pack up?"
"No," Jack said. "Just be ready to go. Just in case."
"Colonel," Edwards said, "unless you want to shut down operations here, we're as ready to leave as we'll ever be. Evaccing will take us upwards of twelve minutes, but it's the best we can do unless we tell the scientists they can't do their jobs. And if you want to try that, be my guest."
Jack groaned, though it couldn't express the distress he really felt. "What I said about having a defensible position? Forget all that."
"Is there something wrong here?" Edwards asked.
"There are two Goa'uld ships camping out in space watching us," Jack said. "Carter's nervous, and Carter doesn't usually get nervous. That makes me nervous. Twelve minutes?"
"Yeah, something about the labs being all spread out," Edwards said. "Jack."
"Yeah?"
"You ever considered she might just be flighty because she doesn't know what's going on?"
Jack looked at him – a strong disapproval that wasn't quite a glare. "Martin, Major Carter is the most competent scientist you're ever going to have the pleasure of working with," he said. "If she's worried, there's good reason to worry. General Hammond trusts that. You can too."
"I trust her. You think I didn't learn my lesson about trusting your team?" Edwards turned to one of the windows, staring out. The ha'tak was too far away to be visible against the stars, but the pulsar above them counted like a slow metronome. "This is enough to get anyone jumping at ghosts."
"I just want to make sure we're raring to go. If we need to," Jack said.
Edwards turned back, crossing his arms over his P-90. "Here. I'll tell the eggheads to focus on the stuff by the gate for now. Might cut down evac time another minute or two."
"Thanks," Jack said.
"Yeah." Edwards scrutinized him for a moment longer. "You know, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this."
"Sure enough to bet?"
Edwards didn't answer.
Jack nodded. "Go talk to your team."
-
Up in one of the smaller labs adjunct to the comm room, Sam was burning through readouts as fast as they were delivered. Far from being absorbed by them as she usually might be, though, she was on edge and watching for developments or new news; she noticed immediately when a shadow fell across her door. "Teal'c?"
"Major Carter," Teal'c said. "You appear distressed."
"Yeah," Sam said, motioning him to a seat. "...I don't know, Teal'c. I shouldn't be surprised that they're camping out there, and it shouldn't bother me that they're watching us. From that distance, they can't get any useful information, unless they're confirming our location, but they've had more than enough time to do that. Maybe Anubis has the ability to calculate Stargate addresses based on stellar coordinates, but if so, he'd have no reason to keep a ship here. Do you have any idea what he may be planning?"
Teal'c looked at the screen, silent for several seconds. "Each attempt he has made to approach has failed," he said. "I do not believe we are in danger of an aerial attack. Were I to speculate on the ha'tak's presence, I would say that we are simply being monitored. Anubis likely does not know who occupies this base, or for what purpose. If we do not present a threat to him or reveal our association with the Tau'ri in any way, he may decide that this system is of no immediate threat or use to him." It wouldn't keep him from coming back, but at least they wouldn't be a priority.
"I'd like to believe that," Sam said. "It's not that I doubt your judgement, Teal'c–"
"As I have said," Teal'c interrupted. "It is only speculation."
Sam nodded. Speculations. For someone who lived and worked as far inside the theoretical as she did, they should have been comfortable. But this was no theory. It was a very real situation, and if she couldn't place what was bothering her the repercussions could be very concrete indeed. "I guess it's all we have to go on," she said.