STARGATE SG-1 STARGATE ATLANTIS: Points of Origin - Volume Two of the Travelers' Tales (SGX-03) (STARGATE EXTRA (SGX-03)) Read online

  Points of

  Origin

  Volume Two of The Travelers’ Tales

  Sally malcolm (editor)

  An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.

  Fandemonium Books, PO Box 795A, Surbiton, Surrey KT5 8YB, United Kingdom

  Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com

  STARGATE SG-1 is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. ©1997-2015 MGM Television Entertainment Inc. and MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  STARGATE ATLANTIS is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

  ©2004-2015 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion Corp. ©2015 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  Photography and cover art: Copyright © 2015 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  WWW.MGM.COM

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Contents

  Editor’s Foreword

  Stargate SG-1

  Precognition

  Jo Graham

  Stargate Atlantis

  Cotermino(us)

  Peter J Evans

  Stargate SG-1

  A Woman’s Army

  Geonn Cannon

  Stargate Atlantis

  Iron Horse

  Amy Griswold

  Stargate SG-1

  Dude, Where’s My Spaceship?

  Suzanne Wood

  Stargate Atlantis

  Kill Switch

  Aaron Rosenberg

  Stargate SG-1

  Aftermath

  Karen Miller

  Stargate Atlantis

  Hermiod’s Last Mission

  T. Fox Dunham

  Stargate SG-1

  Piper’s Song

  Laura Harper

  Stargate Atlantis

  Dislocation

  Sally Malcolm

  Our authors

  Editor’s Foreword

  Last year we published our first collection of short stories, STARGATE: Far Horizons. It was so well received by Stargate fans that we decided to publish another volume this year.

  STARGATE: Points of Origin looks at beginnings of all sorts — from General Hammond’s first encounter with SG-1 back in 1969 to Dr. Janet Fraiser’s decision to join the USAF, from Ronon Dex’s first days as a soldier on Sateda to Sam Carter’s first days in command of Atlantis.

  And, as you’d expect from our dedicated authors, the stories range from exciting, to creepy, to humorous but all capture that sense of adventure and esprit de corps that we so love about STARGATE SG-1 and STARGATE ATLANTIS.

  Thank you for reading — and I hope you’ll enjoy stepping through the gate with us again for ten brand new adventures…

  Sally Malcolm

  Commissioning Editor

  November 2015

  Stargate SG-1

  Precognition

  Jo Graham

  Cheyenne Mountain, July 10, 1997

  The project was called Stairway to Heaven but it was a gate that went nowhere. George Hammond looked out the conference room window at the shape shrouded in drop cloths, dimly lit by a few hanging lights. The main power wasn’t on. There wasn’t any reason for it to be.

  He put the briefing binders down on the scratched conference table and sat down thoughtfully in a rump-sprung chair. The whole installation was a little run down, a little out of date, just like him. He was less than a year from retirement, and this was the ideal job to conclude his career, winding down a project that had seemed like a good idea but had gone nowhere. It was a nice, quiet coda to thirty years of service, an end not with trumpets but with teeny, tiny violins.

  General George Hammond snorted. He was feeling sorry for himself, and that was unworthy. He’d had a good run. He’d done a hell of a lot of interesting and useful things in his career, even if none of them had been historic. Thinking you’re going to make history is a young man’s dream. In real life, if you’re lucky you do more good than harm and leave the place in better shape than you found it. He’d done some damn useful things, and that was more than you could say about this place.

  He flipped open the blue binder again. A piece of alien technology discovered by an archaeological dig in Egypt that created a stable wormhole to another world. Impossible, unlikely, amazing, extraordinary — and ultimately a dead end. There was a house he’d visited once with his wife, on vacation sometime in the seventies, a folly of some kind, built with stairs that led up to ceilings and doors that opened onto walls. No reason for it. Just the kind of thing an owner with too much money thought was clever. The Stargate was the same thing, General West had told him when he handed over the metaphorical keys. It was a door that opened on a wall, stairs that led to the ceiling. A door that opened on a world rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear explosion, a gate to a destroyed gate. George was welcome to it.

  He put the binder carefully on the table and went down the metal stairs to the control room, then around and out to the floor of the room that held the Stargate, the chamber that had once been a missile silo twenty-eight years earlier.

  The drop cloths that shrouded the ring moved faintly in the breeze from the air conditioning, swaying slightly as though they concealed something other than the wall behind it. But of course there wasn’t anything. It was just a concrete wall. And still he had to see.

  “Take that thing off,” he said, and the Airman ran to pull on the ropes that held the drop cloths.

  They cascaded to the floor with a susurrating sound. It gleamed in the scant fluorescents, dark and quiet with the sheen of alien metal. A ring. A gate. A door with no key. George stood and looked at it for a long time.

  Then he went in his office and sat down at the battered general issue desk. There was the promised pile of folders on his desk, and a copy of his orders. Clean up. Get everything in order. Make sure the thing is really useless. Arrange for its study just in case there’s anything more to be read in its carvings. Pack it up and put it away.

  George read through the memo three times.

  Make sure the thing is really useless.

  He called the lieutenant in, a boy who clearly wished he were somewhere much more exciting than underground in Colorado. “What’s this pile of personnel folders for?”

  “General West said there were some routine transfers, sir. He’s taking Major Wright with him, so there needs to be a new research team head. Also Sgt. Devry is about to finish his enlistment and has declined to reenlist, so he needs to be replaced too. That’s a couple of possible replacements for Devry, and someone who used to be with the research team who’s asking to come back.”

  George snorted. “Doesn’t he know we’re shutting down?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Captain Carter is pretty persistent, sir.
”

  George spread the folders out. “That’s all then, son.”

  A replacement for a sergeant. An ambitious young man who would need to be told he was barking up the wrong tree. A dead end, a door to the heavens draped in drop cloths, a promise unfulfilled.

  George flipped the first folder open and froze.

  Twenty five years and more had passed since he’d seen that face, but he had not forgotten it. The same wide blue eyes and pointed chin, the same cropped hair that should have been unattractive but wasn’t, the same determined look straight at the camera without the slightest hint of a smile. Captain Samantha Carter.

  Cheyenne Mountain, August 3-4, 1969

  “Foreign agents in the base?” Lieutenant George Hammond shook his head in disbelief. “How did they get in?”

  “We don’t know that, sir,” the sergeant said, unlocking the door of the storage room. “The major just said that you were supposed to catalog all of their equipment and do it fast because he’s sending them out in the morning.”

  “Ok,” George glanced at the things spread out on one of the long folding tables — jackets and boots, patches and packs, four very lethal looking automatic weapons of a variety unfamiliar to him. “Who are these people?”

  “The scuttlebutt is that the leader says he’s an American named Luke Skywalker.” The sergeant flipped over a very ordinary looking dog tag with silencers on it. “His tags say different.”

  George picked them up. “O’Neill, Jonathan J. 799-36-6412 AF.” He looked up. “What the hell?”

  “He’s a spy,” the sergeant said. “He’s pretending to be American.”

  “Why would a spy wear tags with one fake name and then give another fake name?” George asked. “Doesn’t that make it clear one of them is fake?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “They’re Commies. They don’t think like that.”

  “They didn’t launch Sputnik by being stupid,” George said. Something was weird here. Something didn’t fit. He looked down the table, picking out pieces. Uniforms, certainly. But if they were trying to look like American uniforms they weren’t, not quite. The color was off, the style of the patches. And that was something that anybody would know. You could buy a jacket in any surplus store. There was nothing secret about it. There was no reason that anyone with half a brain wouldn’t get the color right. Any spy who wanted one could just buy the right jacket. If you’d already infiltrated the United States, you could go downtown to Buddy’s Army and Navy rather than sneaking around in something that wouldn’t convince anyone that it was modern General Issue for two seconds. And that thing — a flat panel with a tiny screen and nine number buttons, straps to hold it onto your arm like a watch — what was that supposed to be?

  And then he saw it, a bulbous pistol with an elaborate grip, surprisingly light in his hand when he lifted it, with no lever or handle for the chamber, just a tiny round port like you’d plug in a telephone or something. “A ray gun?” He turned it around in his hands, keeping it pointed well away from himself and the sergeant.

  “The major wants all this stowed for transport, sir.”

  Some sleek, cool metal he’d never seen before… “What is it?”

  “My orders are to forget I ever saw it, sir, so I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the sergeant replied unhelpfully.

  George nodded. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He lay the ray gun down with the other things as the door closed behind the sergeant, letting his hands stray over the equipment. Pistols — those were obvious in their use, though once again not the right ones, not the .38 M41 that the Air Force used. He picked one up, examining it. This was a 9mm Beretta. Why would you carry the wrong handguns when you could buy a used .38 Special anywhere? Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t fit.

  There was a cardboard box full of tactical vests and he picked one up. A small yellow piece of paper fell out, an ordinary piece of lined paper torn neatly from a legal pad. Written on the outside was one word, “George.” He unfolded it and for a moment he froze, disbelieving. “Help them,” it said. “August 10th 9:15 am, August 11th, 6:03 pm.” In his own handwriting.

  For a moment he toyed with the idea that he had misread it. But no. That was what it said. Then perhaps he had written it himself. Perhaps he’d written it just a few moments ago for some unknown reason. But why? But why would he do that and how would he forget it? He wasn’t so lightly convinced of his own insanity as that.

  Which meant the note was real. Impossible as that was, it was real. And the only people he could get any answers from were the spies.

  “Help them.” His instructions to himself were unequivocal.

  Arranging to blow a tire on the truck they were being transported in wasn’t as hard as it ought to be. First he volunteered to be in charge of the three-man detachment. Easy. Nobody particularly wanted to go — it was boring. Second, since he was going, it was easy to stand around by the front of the truck waiting for people. When nobody was looking, it took thirty seconds to bend over and drive a nail into a front tire, and two more seconds to pull it out and plug the hole with a wad of chewing gum. That was a patch that wouldn’t last long — just enough to get out on the road away from the base. Third, it was easy to tell the driver to pull over when the tire blew, easy to tell the two Airmen to take care of the tire while he got in the back and guarded the prisoners. After all, that was what he was supposed to be doing.

  George climbed in the back of the truck, drawing his pistol. The handcuffed prisoners sat two to each side, the black man and the woman to his left, the young man and the older man, the one who was either O’Neill or Skywalker, to his right. He pulled the door shut behind him.

  “Flat tire?” the older man asked mildly, a tone that might have been sarcasm or just curiosity.

  “I’m the one who arranged it,” George said. “But before I can even think about doing what’s asked of me in the note, I need to know who you are and who gave it to you.”

  The older man looked blank, like he had no idea what George was talking about. It was the woman whose wide blue eyes fixed at a point on his shirt front. “Oh my God,” she said. She swallowed. “My name is Samantha Carter,” she said. “And you gave me the note, sir.”

  “What?” the older man said, still looking completely confused.

  She looked at him in turn, and it didn’t escape George that she addressed him as sir as well. “Sir, before we left, General Hammond gave me a note and told me to keep it in my vest pocket until I got to the other side.”

  “It’s addressed to me,” George said to her. “In my handwriting.”

  “What’s it say?” the older man asked.

  “Help them,” George said. “And seeing as helping you will undoubtedly lead to a court martial, I’d like to know why I would do that.”

  “Because it’s your idea,” Samantha Carter said brightly. She’d been taken aback a moment only, and now she was the first one to have a grip on the situation, whatever the hell it was.

  The older man wasn’t far behind. “Albeit one you won’t have for thirty years,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I know this is hard to understand,” Carter said, “but that’s roughly how far back in time we’ve traveled.”

  And that was a bullshit answer if he’d ever heard one. Just because he read writers like Heinlein and Bradbury didn’t mean he thought that time travel was real. Sure, it was a wonderful idea to play with. Sure, there were lots of amazing things that happened in science fiction, but they didn’t happen in real life. Real space exploration was about boosters and physics, and it was happening in Florida, a long way from Colorado where he’d wound up in a completely boring posting that wouldn’t lead anywhere. He’d joined up to go to the moon, inspired by Kennedy’s call to go into space, and it was dawning on him that he was no close
r than he’d been as a space crazy high school student. This had to be some kind of joke, some practical joke that people who knew him were playing — let’s see what George will do when he thinks he’s got some for-real time travelers! It’ll be hilarious! Only not.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and turned to go. “I can’t help you.”

  “Wait, wait,” the younger man said. “We can prove it.”

  Everybody looked at him.

  “What’s the date?” the older man asked.

  “August 4,” George said. “1969.”

  “’69,” the older man said, turning to his right. “What happened in ’69?”

  “The moon landing,” the younger man said. “That was just a couple of weeks ago, right?”

  Of all the stupid… “The entire world knows that.”

  “Not too many people know you watched it from your father’s bedside in his hospital room just two days after his first heart attack,” the older man said quietly.

  George swallowed, his eyes never leaving the man’s face. He hadn’t told anybody about that. Not any of his friends in Colorado, not even his girlfriend long distance to Atlanta. He hadn’t even told his mother. She’d gone home to get some rest. His dad was supposed to be resting. “Turn on the set, Georgie,” he’d begged. “I gotta see this. I’ve got to know if it works.” They all had to know if it worked. Was this going to be a triumph, or a terrible disaster? Would this end in a crackle and Walter Cronkite solemnly taking his glasses off and asking people to remember these brave men? He’d watched from the bedside chair, his hands knotted in his lap for the last few seconds. When Armstrong had said, “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” he’d been unable to stop grinning, tried not to glance at his father and see the tears creeping from the corners of his eyes. His father would never forgive him for seeing him crying. And so he’d kept his eyes glued to the screen instead, his heart in his throat.