Chapter 21: Rose
December 26
Daniel's Office, Aboard the Gaia
Colonel Rose MacFarland had an impeccable military record. Daniel read through her digital file, examining the commendations and declassified information on the woman Jack had sent to look after him. She had a degree in computer science and another in aeronautical engineering. She also spoke Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese -- three difficult but much in demand languages for the United States military, when there had still been an Earth.
There were several pictures included in the file Daniel had received from Alpha, and one photograph in particular caught his attention.
She'd had a son, Christopher, who had been an Air Force Major, killed in action in Desert Storm. Even Daniel could see the man's strong resemblance to himself; he suspected that had been why she'd given him such a long look when they first met on the transport deck a few days earlier. He also had an idea that was why Jack had picked her for the job, depending on her maternal instinct to kick in and engage her natural protectiveness of someone who seemed familiar and loved.
He was still viewing the record when the Colonel knocked on the open doorframe to announce herself. "You wanted to see me, Doctor?"
"Just Daniel," he corrected with a smile. "Please, sit down." He gestured to the guest chair on the other side of his desk.
"Thanks." She gazed wonderingly around the fabulous room as she settled into her seat. "This is some ship, huh?"
"The Furlings never go halfway with anything," he agreed. "Can I get you something to drink?"
"Nah, I'm good. I suppose this is where we have our getting-to-know-you chat, seein' as you've got my service record up." She nodded at the hologram, her eyes fixing on the image of her late son. Self-conscious, she turned away to study the amazing room instead, taking in the beautiful details, then glanced back at the display of her file. She met Daniel's gaze through the floating photograph and lifted her chin in silent pride.
"This... your late son.... that's why Jack sent you, isn't it?" Daniel asked directly.
"I reckon' so. Heard a lot aboutcha, but didn't know whatcha looked like till I came on board. The resemblance..." She shrugged and gave him a wry grin, fond memories softening the flintiness of her gaze. "You don't sound or act like Chris, though. He was a lively son of a gun, always crackin' jokes."
"I just want to make sure this isn't going to be a problem for you." Daniel studied her, the ease in her posture, the lines in her face, finding serenity in her expression.
"I'm fine with it, Dan'l. I know how important y'are, and the Gen'ral's smart to want someone to look out for ya. I'm honored to've been chosen, but..." She shook her head. "Your resemblance to my boy isn't the only reason he picked me, y'know. I'm too old to be very useful for the other stuff they're concentratin' on right now. Never was much good at construction work or babysitting."
"You're babysitting me," he teased gently.
"Yeah, but you're potty trained and can handle yourself, from what I've heard." She gave him a full-fledged grin and a wink. " 'Course, Jack talked my ear off 'bout some of the shit, pardon my French, you've gotten yourself into, and I think I've got my work cut out for me."
Daniel shook his head. "I guess some things I'll never live down." He sighed and stood up, extending his hand across the desk to her. "Well, as long as you don't expect too much in the way of... um, actual obedience... I suppose we'll get along, Colonel."
"Rose." She shook his hand firmly, then they both resumed their seats. "Just don't call me Rosie, unless you want your ass kicked seven ways to Sunday."
"Rose it is, then." He nodded in acknowledgment. "Well, since you're gonna be here a while, maybe you can help me with something."
Colonel MacFarland leaned her elbows on the desk. "Sure thing, hon. Whatcha need?"
He cleared her service record from the holographic desktop and pulled up a visual display of the Furlings' stargate database. "Since you know a thing or two about computer science... There are 39 glyphs on the stargate," he began. "How many possible addresses does that allow?"
"One-point-nine billion," she answered, her lazy drawl suddenly disappearing as the subject changed from casual conversation to serious information exchange, "if the addresses are seven-digit. Add a ZPM and eight-digit addresses with extra distance calculations, and you've got 63 billion possible worlds. I hear the Furlings can make those high-powered batteries with no problem."
"Yes, they can," said Daniel with a nod and a sigh. "Okay, so that's a lot of places to explore. What I was looking at is this."
He typed in search parameters and brought up a star chart showing every possible stargate location in four colors. He pointed to several locations as he continued, "This is information from the SGC database. The purple ones are from the Abydos cartouche. In blue are the ones Jack added manually to the SGC system when he had the Ancients' database downloaded into his brain a few years back. These in yellow are ones Sam's random dialing program had located and were set for exploration or already visited by the SGC. The red ones are addresses that we locked out for security reasons or couldn't get to engage."
"My, my. That still leaves a lot of places left to check out."
Daniel pointed to a yellow dot at the edge of the Milky Way, right beside a vast area of open space. "This is Furdani, P9X-1017."
"Okay."
"It was one of the random dialing destinations," Daniel told her, "which means it wasn't in either the Goa'uld's or the Ancients' databases. It was completely off the map."
"And?"
"The Ancients knew about it. They'd been there and set up a stargate. Why wasn't it in their database?" He sat back in his chair and studied her, waiting to see if she came to the same conclusion he had.
Rose frowned, staring at the dot. "Good question. You've compared this to the Furlings' star charts, too, right? Anything interesting in there?"
"Unfortunately, no. When they were left to die on Furdani, they lost all the locations of their homeworld and colonies. All they have is astronomical data they've amassed by watching the heavens from their new world. These are just stars and planets to them."
"What about the Asgard database?" asked Rose, studying the yellow dot that was Furdani a little longer before raising her gaze to meet Daniel's. "Any other histories or mythologies that might point to worlds not listed in the intel we have?"
Daniel's eyes widened as a thought struck him, but he quickly shuttled the idea away, as if she might see it in his head. He smiled. "I'll check on that. The Asgard had very detailed star maps, but we haven't been able to study all the data yet. That would take centuries. We can send a message to Alpha to request that information while we're traveling through subspace, but in order to do 'conference calls,' so to speak, we'd have to go to full stop and send a signal through the wormhole."
Rose shrugged. "I dunno, Dan'l. These Furlings have some pretty damned impressive computers. The amount of data they can collate in the short-term is..." She chuckled. "...astronomical. Let me contact the General and see if he'll send us the Asgard star map download in a data burst."
She rose from her seat and eyed him as he sat back in his chair. "I get a sense that you're looking for something in particular. Wanna share?"
"I want to know where the Furlings came from," he returned quietly, steepling his fingers. "If we can find some of their colonies, maybe we'll be able to find traces of why this happened to them."
Rose put her hands on her hips and sighed. "I know of at least one place of theirs that we've already been."
Daniel's eyebrows shot upward and he leaned forward in his chair. "Really?"
"Thought you read all of SG-1's mission reports from when you were dead?" she shot back with a lazy roll of her brown eyes. "Musta missed one."
"I wasn't exactly dead," he corrected.
"Was. I read the reports and heard eyewitness accounts."
"Wasn't. But that's beside the point. Which planet are you talking about? I don't remember any references to discoveries of Furling culture."
She leaned over the holographic star chart, bracing her palms on the desktop, and studied it. "There was this temple with an invitation written in Furling script to come join them in their utopia, more or less. O'Neill and that scoundrel, Harry Maybourne, got stranded there and had a steady diet of some psychedelic alien jimson weed for a while. Right about there, I believe." She poked at an area with a small yellow sun well distant from known Furling space, holding her fingertip in the middle of a tiny star system.
Daniel marked the area where she was pointing. "I'll check it out. You'll request the information from Jack, right?"
"Right." She cocked her head, her gaze narrowing as she studied him, and put both palms flat on the desk again. "And how does this affect your vendetta against Zeus?"
His mouth dropped open in surprise. He glanced away for a moment to gather his wits. Jack must have told her all the details of his debriefing, warning her what Daniel would be thinking. "It's not a vendetta," he snapped.
"Does it change anything?"
"Maybe. The People are already out there exploring, but they don't have any archaeologists, and Alpha can't spare any. If the Furlings find traces of their past, they'll need my help."
"Meanwhile, we look for Zeus?" The Colonel straightened and stood at parade rest, her wrists clasped behind her back.
"That's the plan."
Her expression hardened, and she nodded, her smile grim and determined, eyes hooded. Her head came up and she looked every inch a soldier, the gentle matronly exterior suddenly gone. "Count me in, Dan'l. I want to see the sumbitch pay for what he did to Earth."
"Nobody wants that more than me," he assured her. "Meanwhile, you'll send that message to Jack?"
"On it," she shot back, pivoted on her heel and left with a purposeful stride.
He liked her already, and thought they'd get along just fine.
Rose had given him an idea, but he'd needed to wait till she was gone to follow up on it. From a drawer to his left, he retrieved the PDHD and set it on his desk.
"Now, how do I interface this thing...?" he mused to himself. He fiddled with the little round device until he gave up and pushed it aside with a huff of frustration. Suddenly, as it slid to the center of the desktop, the characters on the screen flashed simultaneously onto the holographic display, integrated into the star map.
He smiled a little and leaned forward, studying the placement so he'd remember how to access the system next time. "Oh. I guess it just had to be in the right place."
He used the PDHD to search the Alpha database, looking for any gate addresses in the area Rose had indicated, and found one. The address had a footnote added in Ancient: Colony of Three. His pulse quickened with growing excitement as he glanced up at the three-dimensional map. The planet's location had been calculated by Sam Carter's cold-dialing program, but nowhere else in the SGC's system. Its discovery had been a lucky mathematical combination, a sheer accident that the site had even been explored at all.
Like Furdani, the address of that world had been intended by the Ancients to remain a secret.
This was important, the first link to unraveling the Furlings' past. He needed to go there, to take a look at whatever had been found, because no one had done much digging into it, or he'd have heard about the results.
Daniel synchronized the PDHD with the Furling database and ran additional comparisons.
Green dots began to appear on the map, scattered all over the galaxy. Two of them had yellow halos, along with an alphanumeric designation from the SGC, marking them as explored. Daniel was almost beside himself with excitement, because there had to be more information than he'd seen. Teams from Earth had been to two of these worlds and missed the fact that they were once Furling colonies.
The PDHD carried the "Colony of Three" designations for all of the hidden worlds, verifying their locations and the Furling connection, but the most important one was missing. He tried a search by keyword, by notation, by every possible combination he could conceive, but nowhere in the PDHD could he find the location of the Furling homeworld. That, he knew, would be the most important place of all in this quest for the Furlings' past.
If it even still existed.
He touched the communication device attached to his left ear. "Claire, Scout, Captain, I have something I need you all to see. Please come to my office."
The trio listened to his dissertation on the discovery of possible Furling colonies with subdued excitement. As Daniel explained their significance and potential value, they began to discuss plans for reconnaissance, which ships might be closest to the newly located worlds, and what they would do when they arrived.
Once that was done, all eyes turned to Daniel to determine Gaia's course. "We are already headed for a world under the rule of Zeus," Captain reminded him. "Do you wish to continue, or to avert course for one of these worlds?"
Daniel considered how selfish it might be for him to choose to continue to their current destination. He studied the star chart, pulling up Gaia's location, and compared it to the nearest of the green dots. Then he recalled what Rose had told him, and knew he needed more information.
"I have to wait to hear from Alpha," he told them with a trace of genuine regret. "I have to know what the SGC found on the possible Furling colonies they've already explored. That will affect whether we should re-visit one of those two planets, or try for an unexplored one in our vicinity. Until I know all that, we should probably maintain our present heading and see what we can find out about Zeus. What do you think?"
Captain nodded. "We will maintain present course."
"And you will continue your training, so you'll be prepared for possible combat when we arrive," added Scout.
Claire floated into the star map, her tiny wings a busy blur. She stared at one of the green-and-yellow dots with interest, the light coloring her face with surreal shadows. "I will be interested to see one of the far lands of our ancestors, whenever we arrive, el-Dani. Thank you for finding this for us. You are a true friend."
She beamed at him, zoomed in close and placed a miniature kiss on his cheek, then buzzed out of the office.
Daniel was a little shocked at her unexpected display of gratitude.
"Sky Clan are impulsive, are they not?" asked Captain with a little chuckle.
"Their energy leaves one breathless," agreed Scout. He grinned at Daniel. "If only she weren't so small."
"Oh, come on!" Daniel carped, suddenly embarrassed for what they were obviously thinking. "That's not how she feels about me at all! She's just..." His hands flailed around as he searched for some appropriate word to describe her interest in Furling history.
"Enchanting?" Scout finished for him enthusiastically. "We all feel that way about Sky Clan. They're just so... interesting."
"Passionate." Mountain sighed dreamily, his eyes rolling skyward.
"Stop." Daniel held up both hands, finally catching on that his friends were teasing him. Furling humor was a little obtuse for him, but he was getting it at last. "You guys set me up, right?"
"Not everything we do is planned," said Scout with a wink, rising from his seat. "Only the important things."
"But we are not ones to pass up a valuable opportunity," agreed Captain, who had been standing during the meeting rather than sit on one of the small chairs. "You make it so easy with your many inhibitions, and we are enjoying learning how to... what is the expression? Manipulate your controls?" He glanced at Scout.
"Push his buttons," the elder corrected with a little chuckle.
Daniel scratched at his cheek with one fingertip, trying to maintain a façade of irritation. "Thanks, guys." He was secretly charmed by his new friends and their little conspiracy. "Expect payment in kind."
"I'll see you in the training room at the usual time tomorrow morning," said Scout as he strolled out of the office. "Unless Sky Clan has other plans for you."
"Knock it off, Scout," Daniel shot back with mock gruffness through a smile. "Be there with bells on."
"That would defeat the purpose of learning to be stealthy."
Daniel just chuckled and shook his head as his alien friends left him to his work.
End Chapter 21