03 - The First Amendment (5 page)

That trust had been tested and forged in battle. There had been occasions
when one or another of them, separated from the others, had had to depend on it
for life itself. They had come to accept that it could not be broken, not by
outside forces or even by themselves.

But for Jack O’Neill, the issue had nothing to do with trust and everything
to do with responsibility.

“Morley ran into a trap,” he said angrily. “They used some kind of force
field on the team, he says. But he managed to break free and get at least some
of his guys back.”

“But not all of them,” Jackson said softly.

“No. Not all of them.”

“What about SG-4?” Carter asked, recalling the group SG-2 had been sent
after.

“All dead, apparently.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“There may indeed be a type of force field available to the Jaffa,” Teal’C
said thoughtfully. “Such a device was being developed. It may have been
perfected by now.”

“I don’t understand how we could have been so wrong about Etaa,” Carter said.
“I
thought Shostoka’an was being straight with us. She said they’d never
encountered the Jaffa.”

“It is possible they had not,” Teal’C reminded her. “The Goa’uld could have
decided only recently to harvest that world.”

There was a small silence at his choice of words.

“I don’t know,” O’Neill said. “I don’t like the whole story. It just doesn’t
sound right. There’s just something screwy about it, and I can’t put my finger
on it.” The colonel was profoundly dissatisfied.

“Etaa doesn’t deserve to be just abandoned,” Jackson said. “Those are still
human beings there.”

“
If
there are still human beings there,” Carter pointed out. “It sounds
like they were pretty thoroughly cleaned out.”

Uncomfortable, Jackson changed the subject. “What about our next mission?” It
felt strange, not being able to find the right words to mourn dead comrades,
focusing instead on their own upcoming assignment. The archaeologist wondered if O’Neill’s pragmatism was catching.

O’Neill cheered up slightly at the prospect of a new world. “Rusalka says
she’s got something, maybe, but no details yet. The one we thought we had turns
out to be in the middle of a volcano or something.”

“Nothing like a little pyroclastic flow to get your juices going.”

O’Neill glared at him. “Daniel, you’re stealing my lines. I’ve told you about
that before.”

The archaeologist shrugged. “I told her we weren’t going to use that Gate as
soon as I saw the probe data. I’m just surprised it hasn’t been buried under
tons of molten mud by now.”

Carter glanced at Teal’C, who was observing the byplay with his customary
lack of expression. While O’Neill and Jackson might displace their grief, at
least publicly, about the loss of colleagues with sharp-edged banter about
volcanoes, Teal’C remained silent, as if the well-defined muscles of his face
were set in stone. The only sign of emotional connection the Jaffa had made to
the discussion of the dead was a momentary closing of his massive hand when he
mentioned the development of the force field. That would have been a reference
to the days when Teal’C was Jaffa First to Apophis, Lord of the Goa’uld and
deadly enemy to all that was human.

“So she’s still looking for a good set of coordinates?” Carter asked. It felt
like an inane effort to keep the conversation going, to add to the discussion,
but it served its purpose.

“She said she thought she had something,” O’Neill admitted. “I suppose we’d
better be ready to get together and look at the probe data.” He pushed himself
away from the desk and circled behind it to sit in the swivel chair. “Look, I’ve
got some paperwork to do, and I’m sure you all have full social calendars too. I’ll page you if
something comes up.”

“So they’re just going to forget Etaa? That’s not right. Those people might
still be alive.” Jackson was surprised, sometimes, by how firmly he identified
with the whole of Stargate Command.

“No, Daniel, we’re not,” O’Neill said evenly. “But we’re not going to do
anything about it right now. I don’t like it any better than anybody else, but
that’s the decision.”

The archaeologist sighed and followed the other two out of the office,
leaving a discontented colonel behind, staring at the poster showing the field
of stars.

Austin Pace, CinC Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, was a medium man:
medium height, medium weight, medium gray hair. He’d been a pilot, served in Nam
and the Gulf War, had a chestful of decorations that he usually didn’t bother
with. He commanded both NORAD and USSPACECOM, the heart of U.S. and Canadian air
and space defenses. His first appointment of the day, Brigadier Ed Cassidy, was
his deputy commander in chief for NORAD and represented the interests of the
Canadian government. Cassidy was always the first person he saw every day, and
the last.

“Understand we’re having some visitors today,” Cassidy said, pouring himself
a cup of coffee.

“We always have visitors on Friday.”

Cassidy smiled, added milk to his coffee, and sat down. “The Visitors Center
always has visitors on Friday, Austin.” He patted gently at the neat gray
mustache that trimmed his upper lip. “But
we
hardly ever do. Wonderful
coffee you get here.”

“They’re from the Senate office, Ed. We’ll just shoo them in and out again.”
Pace leaned back in his swivel chair. Unlike the offices in the lower sections of the complex, the commander’s office was paneled in softly burnished
medium-light maple. An American flag, and a Canadian flag flanked the NORAD logo
that graced the wall behind his impressively large desk, also in maple. The
floor was carpeted in a businesslike blue that was vacuumed every night. A
circular table, surrounded by comfortable chairs, served for conferences. At the
moment it held a rather nice tea service, a coffeepot, and a covered plate of
scones. Pace got up and removed the cloth, inspecting the offerings.

“Oh, naturally. I’m not objecting, of course. You were quite decent about all
the disruption last year with HRH’s visit. One does rather wonder, though, how
our shaky friends downstairs will like the idea.” Cassidy carefully brushed a
bit of pastry out of his mustache.

“They won’t like it at all, but it isn’t their problem. The visitors will
never get that far.”

“No, of course not. But you’re going to tell them?”

“Yes, of course. This morning.” Restless, Pace moved away from the table and
stalked behind his desk, shoving a precisely aligned telephone out of the way to
get to the keyboard of his computer terminal.

“George isn’t going to be happy about it,” Cassidy observed. “Kinsey—he’s
been here before, hasn’t he?”

“No, that was his father.”

“So not the senator himself.”

“No, thank God.”

Cassidy drained his coffee cup and set it down gently with every evidence of
satisfaction. “Well, it’s your worry, Austin. I myself plan to be fully occupied
with the upgrade of the Survivable Communications Integration System. I’ll let
you worry about actually surviving your communications with your Blue Book
fellow.”

Pace snorted, bringing a document up on the screen. “Thank you for the fraternal cooperation of Her Majesty’s
Commonwealth of Canada.”

Cassidy chuckled. “Any time, old man. Come to think of it, perhaps I’ll stay
and watch. You Americans always have such interesting fireworks displays.”

“Hammond doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Pace repeated irritably. “I’m
having my staff notify his. No surprises.”

“No, of course not. Never any surprises around here.”

Marie Rusalka shared an office with Devorah Randolph, O’Neill’s logistics
officer. The two of them also shared recipes, child care tips, and the
occasional wicked speculation about various members of Hammond’s command team.
It was a convenient arrangement, because Rusalka’s analysis of probe data
provided Randolph with a head start on assembling the most likely support that
SG-1 would need on each new mission. Rusalka’s desk was covered with computer
components; Randolph’s was covered with lists.

The probe data came back in sound, pictures, and line after line of
electronic code, providing reams of environmental data. Sometimes the data flow
was abruptly terminated, leaving Rusalka with just enough information to
determine that the hapless machine had toppled out of the destination Stargate
and splashed directly into a pool of molten lava, or that it had been almost
instantly destroyed by hostile activity. Those were, she admitted to herself,
the ones she liked best, because puzzling out what had happened in the few
seconds’ worth of transmission was a lot like solving a crossword puzzle:
filling in bits and pieces here and there until suddenly what had been a large
gap in their information became a solid, or mostly solid, conclusion.

She was hunched over one of those gaps, her lips moving silently as she
considered and rejected possible explanations, when Randolph came in and flung
herself into her chair, spinning around to glare at the bulletin board fixed to
the wall behind her desk.

Attached to the board were various official pronouncements, Orders of the
Day, schedules, and pictures of her six-year-old identical twin girls. “I am
supposed to throw a birthday party,” she announced grimly. “At school. They want
home-baked cookies for thirty. On a Saturday!”

“Furr’s,” Rusalka said absently, naming a local grocery store.

Randolph spun around and began digging through the papers that covered her
desk like the aftermath of a pulp avalanche. “Well, of course Furr’s. C-4,
environmental—no, wrong one, although come to think of it those environmental
suits might come in handy—have you ever tried cleaning up after thirty
six-year-olds? Napkins—oh, here it is—and party hats, and noise-makers—why on
earth
do they think six-year-olds need to make
more
noise?—and
spoons—why couldn’t they have given me more lead time…”

“You’ve got a whole day. Who’s doing the punch?” Rusalka still hadn’t looked
up.

“Not me. I draw the line at punch. I ought to make Jesse do all this stuff.
He
doesn’t have to stick to eight-till-whenever.”

Jesse Randolph was a farrier. He was perfectly happy to follow his wife from
duty assignment to duty assignment, able to find work anywhere there were horses
to shoe. The only time they’d ever had problems with career conflicts was
Devorah’s tour on Kwadjalein Island, and that had only lasted thirty months. It
had also resulted in the birth of the twins. Randolph made sure there were
horses at their next duty station. It was very important to keep her husband occupied. And tired.

“So tell him to do it.” Rusalka was single. She kept goldfish,
unsuccessfully.

“No, I should do it. Be Mom for a change.” Randolph sighed, spun around again
in a 360-degree circle to end up facing her colleague, and changed the subject
to something she obviously considered much more pleasant. “Sometimes I lose
track of who I am, you know? Mom at home, supersecret support here. I can’t
decide which role deserves the superhero costume.” She brandished an imaginary
cape. “So whaddaya have? Anything good?”

“Just what I was wondering myself.” The two women looked up to see Jack
O’Neill standing in the doorway. “I vote for SuperMom, by the way; you’ve
already got a costume for this job.” He shifted his attention to Rusalka. “You
mentioned some possibles in the briefing.”

Reluctantly, Rusalka pulled her attention away from her beloved data and
nodded to her superior officer. O’Neill entered the room, claimed the one
visitor’s chair that was normally wedged between the two desks, and sat down,
sprawling, his long legs effectively taking up the rest of the room between the
desks. “Well?” he prompted. “You said you had three possibles.”

“We’re still evaluating,” she said with an air of protest. “The air looks
crappy, I said so in the briefing.”

“Well, since Harriman thinks we’ve hit a snag on deciphering coordinates,
and
we’re running low on probes, we’d better get
something
out of
it.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“You really
like
this job, don’t you?” Rusalka groused. “Okay, okay.
One probe is just transmitting dark. Some of the research department think it’s
in a cave or possibly underground. It’s still operating, but we’re just not getting anything. That’s one of the bad-air ones.”

“Maybe somebody threw a rug over it.”

Rusalka gave him a Look. He returned it blandly.

“We have another probe that’s transmitting steadily, but it seems to be in
the middle of—” She hesitated, as if reluctant to put the concept into words.
“It looks like all hell broke out all around it. There seems to be a pitched
battle going on.”

“And nobody’s plastered it yet?”

“I don’t think anybody’s even noticed the Gate activated,” she said, shaking
her head, “much less one Earth probe. I keep expecting it to go splat. But so
far it’s operating perfectly.”

“Have you gotten a look at the combatants? Are they Goa’uld?”

“We have no idea. All we see is dust and explosions. All we hear is noise—we
had to turn down the volume on it, and the techs are trying to separate out the
inputs but so far haven’t had any luck.”

“Where is it? I want to take a look at it.” O’Neill pulled himself up, got up
and turned the chair around, sitting in it backward. It made a little more room
in the room, at least.

Rusalka gave him an exasperated look. “It’s in the lab. We’re still working
on it, trying to get better resolution, to see if we can actually
see
anything on it yet.”

“Oh.” O’Neill was disappointed but not discouraged. “And the third probe?”

“The third probe doesn’t show any sign of human life anywhere.” She bit her
lip. “At least, no surviving human life. I don’t think people
can
survive
there. The atmosphere seems to be mostly methane.”