Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 2

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Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.

Previously: Ch 1

Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 2

Stargate Command, October 2008

Cam watched as Sam gave Jonas Quinn and Kianna Cyr a quick hug each as they walked down the ramp from the Stargate. He shook hands with the former leaders of the Kelownan Resistance to the Ori, welcoming them back to the SGC for the first time in more than four years. They had dialled in from Langara with intelligence they'd gleaned from the memory banks of Ba'al's cargo ship, which they'd appropriated after the System Lord's capture on Langara by SG-1 several months before. Now the Goa'uld was dead and his host was rebuilding his life under the guidance of the Tok'ra. Jonas handed Sam a crystal which she took back to her lab so as to extract the data from it for Daniel.

"So, Jonas, you think this artifact Ba'al was looking for could be dangerous?" Cam asked as they followed behind Sam. He watched her turning the crystal over in her hand as she chatted with Kianna. She'd been back from Atlantis for nearly four months and it was like she'd never left, the team just gelled around her again. He smiled happily, not for the first time.

"When is anything a Goa'uld wants not dangerous Colonel?" asked Jonas with a grin and Cam had to shrug his shoulders with a sheepish smile of acknowledgement. "I couldn't get much off the crystal myself, which is why I brought it here. I figure Dr. Jackson and Sam will be able to piece together what we need to know."

Sam succeeded in extracting the databanks stored within the crystal and went over it with Daniel for several hours until it became clear there was no longer anything technical she could help him with, which left the archaeologist in his element. Poring over the references brought up in myths and legends. Ba'al was looking for a device, something known as the Seal of the Eternal Moment. They each tried to help him search, but he was always happiest looking through dusty books on his own. As it was they had time to kill until Daniel came back with something. A few days to kill in fact.

"Colonel Mitchell, Colonel Carter, you must be victorious!" Teal'c declared fiercely from his seat next to Kianna. Vala rounded on him in dismay as she held the ball away from Sam.

"Muscles! You're betraying us? For these Tau'ri?" her voice was all astonishment and he merely smirked.

"Indeed, Vala Mal Doran." he intoned, and Cam laughed from his position marking Jonas, who was also grinning.

"I'll cheer for you Vala! Us former hosts have to stick together! Go Vala! Go Jonas! Whooo!" cried Kiana, waving her arms over her head and clapping loudly. Vala beamed and sent a pass in Jonas' direction which he deftly plucked from the air. He wasn't able to make much forward progress before Cam's quick steps had him covering the angle. He saw Vala making an end run around Sam, who spun in the opposite direction, and floated a pass her way, only to have the Air Force officer's height and reach advantage over the former smuggler pay dividends as she tipped the pass up into the air, then flicked it towards Cam as it bobbled. Vala cursed and quickly got into a defensive position as Cam picked up the ball on the run while Jonas tried to make up ground. He took a running jump but instead of laying up over Jonas' outstretched hand he drifted off a pass back to Sam at the top of the key who bounced the ball through her legs, to Teal'c's appreciative call and Cam's grin, before faking out Vala into a leap with flick of her head and a turn of her wrists. She then leapt up and sent a shot sailing through the air to swish through the hoop. Jonas chuckled in amusement as he patted Vala on the back and Cam exchanged high fives with Sam.

"Cameron! You brought in a stringer!" Vala cried accusingly, pointing at a mirthful Sam. He frowned slightly in confusion before grinning.

"You mean 'ringer', and no, Sam's a human from Earth, and a member of SG-1." He pointed at Jonas. "I let you have the former member." he pointed out cheerfully. Vala glared at him with her hands on her hips as Jonas bounced the ball at his feet with a smile. She turned her gaze to Sam.

"Samantha, you've been hiding these abilities for just such a moment, haven't you?" she accused and Sam laughed.

"Oh, Vala, I'm a soldier, remember?" She bumped shoulders with Cam who smiled at her. "I love doing soldiery things... running, jumping, climbing trees. Waving around large calibre weaponry. For a long time my idea of formal evening wear was black fatigues and low visibility greasepaint. I've never been the prototypical girly girl." She walked up and rubbed Vala's arm soothingly. "Sorry I'm so much better at this than Daniel." Cam laughed and Vala glowered at him from around Sam. As if summoned by mention of his name Daniel walked into the gym with his head stuck in an open notebook, his green BDU shirt billowing behind him in his rush.

"Guys! I think I've found something." He looked between all of them as they stared at him when he brought his head up. "What?"

"Daniel, aren't you the least bit upset, as a man, that Samantha is so much more athletic than you?" Vala cocked her hip and jutted out her chin as she spoke. Daniel blinked, nonplussed and glanced at Sam who shrugged.

"If I cared about that sort of stuff, Vala, do you think I'd have been going through the 'gate for eleven years with a woman who knows eighteen different ways of killing me with a toothbrush?" he replied impassively while Jonas grinned behind Vala.

"She's smarter than you too." Vala flicked her hair at him as she looked away. Daniel bristled.

"We specialise in different fields. Completely different fields!" he fumed and everyone laughed.

"Have you made a discovery, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c stood up from his seat by the wall and walked towards the archaeologist with his hands clasped behind his back, neatly bringing the conversation back to something serious. Daniel blinked at him before catching on and launching into his explanation.

"Yes, thank you, Teal'c. The artifact that Ba'al was searching for, I think it may be some sort of time manipulation device." He turned and walked back out of the gym the way he came. They all stared after him in silence, Cam looked over to Sam who shrugged her shoulders at him. Daniel came back and looked at them expectantly. "Are you coming?" He walked off again. Soon they were all crowded in his lab, watching a large screen connected to his computer, where he was showing them several web pages and scanned images from old manuscripts.

"None of this stuff mentions Ba'al or the device, Jackson." Cam pointed out to Daniel's irritation.

"Well no, it wouldn't, Ba'al is only interested in it now." He raised his finger. "The device, however, maybe does see a mention here, perhaps, in these stories having to do with Herne the Hunter." He pressed a key on his laptop and a painted scene appeared on the screen, of a band of men on horseback, the one in the lead seemed to have antlers growing from his head. "Herne the Hunter is more of a figure of folklore, legends in England speak of a ghostly hunter who stalks Windsor Forest, as mentioned by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor." Everyone looked at Daniel with varying looks of incredulity. He carried on regardless. "However, some cultural scholars associate the figure with earlier pagan deities, gods of the hunt from various cultures such as the Gaulish deity, Cernunnos, or the Greco-Roman god Pan. These figures often have associations in their cultures with a widespread phenomenon known as the Wild Hunt, where a lone individual, usually some creature of magic variously described as an elf or troll, is harried and chased by a host of demonic or magical hunters, usually lead by the local god of the hunt. In fact in England that figure is quite often Herne." He frowned for a moment. "Strangely, in proto-Germanic cultures the Wild Hunt is most often associated with Wodan or Odin. Though I find it hard to see an Asgard leading a hunting host." He blinked for a moment, then flipped his arms over each other as he rambled on. "Unless it's a reversal of the typical legend and the one being chased is a creature of evil." He plucked at his lip until he realised everyone was waiting for him to continue. "Oh, sorry. Where was I?"

"Herne the Hunter." supplied Jonas, sharing a smile with Kianna.

"Right! Herne. Well, other stories associated with him have him taking away the prey of his hunt to be stalked 'in a distant land, where the span of years may take but a moment' which made me think time manipulation. What if," Daniel held up his hands, "he could speed up time in a localised area? You know, like a reversed time dilation field." He pointed at Sam.

"The same as what we used on Odyssey?" she asked and Daniel nodded, biting his lip with a small smile. Sam's eyes glazed over for a second as she quirked her eyebrows and crossed her arms. "It's a possibility. The Asgard technology could manipulate the flow of time either way, and we know I managed to reverse time completely within a localised field. It's possible, probable even, the Ancients could do the same."

"What good would speeding up time do Ba'al?" Cam asked with a frown.

"Well he could use it to quickly develop technology for one." Sam replied. "That's assuming the only way the device manipulates time is to speed it up in the local area. We don't know that." Cam nodded.

"Alright, a good point, well made." Cam conceded "I'm glad Ba'al isn't around to take advantage of it anymore. I also agree such a thing probably shouldn't be left lying around for other bad guys to get their hands on it." He looked at Daniel again. "We'd still have to find it."

"Oh, Ba'al knew where it was, at least, he knew who had it." Daniel's smile was a little sheepish. Cam lifted his eyebrows enquiringly. "The Tok'ra knew of a Goa'uld by the name of Herian, which, by the way, is a name associated with Herne. Herian was an... atypical Goa'uld." Daniel elaborated, Sam tilted her head with a small frown. "He eschewed the usual trappings of the Goa'uld, you know, the armies of Jaffa, the thousands of slaves, fleets of vessels and stellar empires. He was most often accompanied by a small retinue of humans who hunted alongside him. He lived with them and travelled with them in a single Ha'tak, and they spent their time hunting for sport instead of demanding tribute. He was known to hold one small moon, uninhabited mind, except for animals which he would hunt for food. He would also bring back choice specimens to this moon, to hunt at his leisure." His eyebrows rose as he looked at them, his reference wasn't lost on them. "The other Goa'uld mostly ignored him, he claimed no territory and only travelled through their domains to conduct his hunts. They considered him a sort of... eccentric cousin." He shrugged. "That is until his hunt caught up a favoured slave of Svarog, one of the System Lords." Cam snapped his fingers at Sam.

"P2A-018, Latona, early 2000, NID operatives attempting to covertly study a defensive weapon called the Sentinel, which eliminated threats to the Latonans, disabled it by killing the Caretaker of the machine. Two years later, Svarog came to claim the planet and you guys managed to reactivate the Sentinel, with the help of the NID operatives, which you used on Svarog and his Ha'tak and, in the words of Marul, the leader of the Latonans, 'sent it away'." he recited from memory.

"This guy is way worse than I ever was." Jonas stared at Cam with a little bit of awe.

"I can tell you Qetesh was glad when you killed Svarog, pig of a man." muttered Vala. Daniel quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, anyways, Svarog is said to have destroyed Herian and claimed all his holdings as his own, namely the moon." Daniel continued "He had little interest in it however, it being known to be uninhabited and having no mineral resources worth speaking of, he never even bothered to go there. When Svarog went away none of the other Goa'uld much cared for it either. Until Ba'al. Except according to the data in your crystal, he couldn't find it. His notes mentioned that he wondered if Svarog even knew where it was."

"Tell me you know where it is, Jackson." Cam pleaded.

"I know where it is." Daniel grinned, pointing at the screen and the image of the Wild Hunt, he worked on his laptop and zoomed in on a banner being carried by one of the huntsmen. Clearly emblazoned on the rippling cloth were six symbols painted in gold.

"Holy Hannah!" cried Sam. "You have got to be kidding me! Do you know how crazy that is?" Daniel nodded manically, grinning like a lunatic.

Selenis, Luna, July 2010

Cam sat at a swivelling seat attached to an arm which hung down from one of the control consoles in Command as he watched Sam working at the station beside him. She'd braided her hair today, letting it hang down her back in a long sandy brown tail. Watching her work was one of his guilty pleasures. Guilty only because it usually meant he was idle. He was otherwise unrepentant about it all. He leaned on an elbow against the console and played his fingers across the control display, letting a small schematic of Selenis' deeper levels spin around beside his arm. He looked up to find Sam smiling indulgently at him from her console, he lifted his eyebrow at her and she shook her head lightly, pushing her glasses back up her nose. She wore them a lot more often since she retired her eagles. Cam had to admit it did things for him. He recalled that time when multiple SG-1s had come through the Stargate several years ago. One or two of the alternate Carters sported the slightly geeky look. Sam knew exactly how it affected him too. She enjoyed looking straight at him when she adjusted them, and when she wore a ponytail she took great delight in retying it every once in a while as he watched. The woman had him whipped alright.

"~Dr. Carter, may I ask you a question?~" They both looked up as Selenis' voice sounded from around them.

"~Of course, Selenis. Feel free.~" Sam replied, clasping her hands on her knees as she crossed them and swivelled in her own seat to face Cam.

"~My neural connection with yourself is especially weak, but I sense your genetic expression sites are well developed.~" Sam smiled ruefully and nodded slightly. "~I am puzzled as to why this would be.~"

"~Can you sense the heavy metal in my blood, the naquadah?~" Sam asked.

"~I have noticed the same thing with Vala.~" Selenis confirmed. Sam nodded.

"~Both of us were hosts to symbiotic lifeforms which nestled at the base of our skulls.~" Sam explained. "~When this symbiote is removed from a host it leaves behind a protein marker in our genetic code, it is fairly unique.~"

"~I believe I have detected it.~" A hologram flashed above her console beside her arm, displaying strands of DNA with several lengthy chains of base-pairs highlighted, with boxes of information floating nearby. Sam nodded.

"~That's it. To the best of our medical knowledge, these markers somehow interfere with the proper function of the Alteran gene.~" She ran a finger through the highlighted nucleotides in the hologram and looked wistfully at Cam. He inclined his head sadly.

"~This is very interesting, Dr. Carter. It seems likely that this protein marker stimulates the production of several enzymes which bond with and neutralise the main enzymatic catalysts produced by the Alteran gene.~" Sam sighed and nodded. "~Perhaps some of the treatices in my medical database could provide a solution. Another enzyme which would bond more readily with those produced by the protein marker, allowing the catalysts for the Alteran enzymes to function properly.~" Sam's eyes widened in surprise and she looked at Cam.

"~Are you serious, Selenis?~" she asked while looking up at the ceiling. "~Could that work?~"

"~Your Alteran gene expression is the result of genetic therapy is it not, Dr. Carter?~" asked the AI.

"~Yes, as is Cameron's.~" she replied. They'd explained to the base how the Alteran gene was still vanishingly rare among humans naturally, but that they'd developed a retroviral gene therapy treatment which introduced it into the genetic make-up of an individual with around a one in two success rate, although the strength of expression was variable.

"~Then it seems possible. As would improving the success rate and efficacy of the gene therapy you have developed.~" answered the AI matter-of-factly. Sam blinked at Cam who motioned at her with his hands. She broke out into a hopeful smile.

"~Could you package up any information you might think is relevent, Selenis? We're going to give Atlantus a call.~" Her smile broadened into a grin.

"~Atlantus? I have not spoken to him for a very long time. How is he?~" Sam's hand came up to her mouth in surprise.

"~I'm not sure, Selenis, I was on Atlantus for a year but I never noticed an AI of any kind.~" she looked at Cam and he shrugged helplessly. The few times he'd been to Atlantis during the time he was now certain he could understand Ancient had never resulted a voice in his head except from the puddle jumpers.

"~He was a relatively early incarnation, several thousand years older than I.~" Selenis began. "~His behavioural core functions were especially power hungry. I imagine they would only be allowed to function when fully powered. Has Atlantus been in low power mode as well.~"

"~Well the city has been running for a long time on one Potentia instead of three. The one time it briefly had a full complement was when some Lanteans returned and asked us to leave. We brought two of them back to Earth fairly quickly after we retook the city from the Asurans, though Dr. Weir never mentioned anything like an AI during that time.~" Sam explained, Selenis burbled an acknowledging sound.

"~His personality engrams could be charitably described as... unrefined... it is also possible he was simply switched off.~" offered Selenis and Cam burst out laughing. "~I will sort through and package the relevant portions of my database, Dr. Carter, it will be ready for transmission in approximately 3.21 days. It may require several minutes to transmit fully.~"

"~Dr. Beckett will be giddy as a school girl, I'm sure.~ It's about time we took a couple of new ZPMs to Atlantis isn't it, Cam?" She looked at him eagerly and he grinned.

"Oh, I can't wait to see the look on McKay's face when we tell him about Selenis." He rubbed his hands together in barely disguised glee. "Let's get on the line to General Landry."

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Miami, October 2008 (alternate timeline)

Cam took the sandwich Sam offered him and kissed her gently in gratitude. She smiled and rubbed his back for a moment as she walked past him and took Daniel's sandwich to him. Cam took a big bite of the crusty baguette, filled with roast beef and chewed happily, waving Sam back over after his first mouthful was done. She came to stand by him with a questioning look and he leaned close to her.

"I love you." he whispered, smiling. She grinned and happily accepted another kiss from him before going to sit down to eat her own sandwich. He turned back to face the vast expanse of the Atlantic ahead of their chartered cruiser and navigated out further eastwards, out towards Port Royale on South Bimini Island, where they were spending a long weekend. They were staying at one of the smaller summer homes of a British aristocrat, the loan of which was a gift to Daniel.

"These are very good, Sam." Daniel complimented and she burbled happily while taking a bite of her own baguette. "Is that tomato salad I spy?" She nodded.

"With apple and petit pois." she elaborated and he grinned, leaning into the hamper to take the bowl of salad and helping himself to several large spoonfuls into a smaller bowl for himself.

"Don't eat all of it yourself, Jackson, or I'll throw ya overboard." warned Cam, looking at the archaeologist over his sunglasses. Daniel smirked evilly in return, but left plenty of salad in the bowl. "What about Merlin's stash. Did they ask you about that?" Daniel looked up, reminded of what they had been talking about before the tangential discussion on the Zombie Apocalypse had begun. Turns out Cam was a rank amateur to Daniel when it came to his plan for survival.

"Uh, yeah, though the only access to the place being transport rings presents a problem." Daniel replied. "As far as we know Ba'al came and cleared the place out long ago, though I suppose Truth of Spirit would be a problem for him." he chuckled softly. "However, they did fly me to go visit that British lord with the library full of Merlin apocrypha, hence our lovely little jaunt this week. I managed to get my hands on several of the books I hadn't read the first time around." Cam continued eating his sandwich, happy that Daniel was allowed some measure of latitude to do the things he loved the most. "Most interesting was a passage which I've never encountered in any other tale of Merlin." Sam nodded for him to continue while she spooned out some salad for herself. "About how his most hated enemies were not those that he most feared, which would have been the Ori, but those that had betrayed the hopes of his kith. The passage describes how 'Myrddin walked to the lands where dwelt the Sons of Thule in Exile. Men who above all others, honoured the lords of the Desdamendi. Those who left nothing. And there, on the Plains of Ar Domûn, he waged a magical battle against them for they did release a voracious scourge upon the land.' Thule is one of those lost islands like Atlantis, supposedly situated in the 'seas far north of the land of the Picts, where the Sun rises and sets but once a year.'" Sam's eyebrows rose and Cam paused in his chewing to stare at Daniel. "I know! What if, just as a hypothetical here, Atlantis wasn't the only city-ship that left Earth millions of years ago. Can you imagine that?" Sam stood and opened the cooler, grabbing a bottle of beer and a coke. She handed the beer to Daniel and the coke to Cam, who thanked her with a kiss, she went back to the hamper and prepared a bowl of salad, then grabbed a beer for herself from the cooler when she was done.

"Another city-ship? Sounds far-fetched, Jackson. Especially if it's that far north." Cam posited, but Daniel shook his head after taking a swig of his beer.

"Not so much." he explained. "Apparently these men of Thule shared the precepts of their mythical forebears who considered the Southern Pole to be the source of all material evil in the world. Believing that their Golden Age had come and gone." Sam tilted her head as she handed Cam the bowl of salad, which he dug into, and took a drink of her beer. "If you think about what they're saying, of the South Pole as the source of evil, you might just imagine they're talking about the Stargate." Both Sam and Cam paused mid-drink and mid-chew to look at Daniel with raised eyebrows.

"So you're saying that these 'Desdamendi' could have been another group of Alterans?" Sam asked.

"Yes." Daniel nodded.

"Who left Earth in a different city-ship?" asked Cam.

"Yes." Daniel nodded again.

"A ship called Thule." Sam posited.

"Yes." Daniel was smiling now.

"But sent back some of their own, who Merlin considered his most hated enemies?" Cam offered.

"Exactly." Daniel grinned. Cam began chewing his salad again and Sam turned to look at him before gazing at Daniel once more.

"Isn't Thule the name of that air base in Greenland?" asked Cam. Daniel passed his hand over his eyes in exasperation.

Stargate Command, August 2010

"You have no idea how crazy this is." Dr. Bill Lee's voice filled with wonder as he held a mini-SD card by a pair of tweezers. "This is flash memory that's been around since before World War II," he laughed giddily, "it's unbelievable." Sam gave the scientist a long-suffering look, while Cam tilted his head in bemusement.

"Not so much, Doc." Cam said, pointing to himself, "flew Spitfires against the Luftwaffe." Sam joined in, pointing at Cam as well.

"Saw me being born. Held my Mom's hand through the whole thing." she grinned when Cam smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, I met Catherine Langford when she was eight. Top that!" he pointed at Sam with both hands. Sam raised an eyebrow and smiled. She reached into her jacket and produced a folded piece of paper which Cam instantly recognised. He blinked, nonplussed.

"You carry that with you?" he asked breathlessly.

"Most of the time. Right over my heart." she replied with a gentle smile. He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her.

"You win." he whispered as he pulled back.

"Don't you forget it." She grinned.

"What's that?" Bill asked as he pointed at the piece of paper. Sam smiled and slipped it back into her jacket.

"An IOU for one temporal paradox, paid in full." she replied to which Cam chuckled. Bill's eyebrows rose momentarily as he was about to speak, then he faltered, shaking his head.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Bill chuckled. "Anyway, I should be able to run some recovery software over these, if there's any hardware issues I should be able to do something about that as well." He picked up the micro-SD card with the tweezers, but was startled when Daniel came into his lab and called out his arrival. His fingers slipped on the tweezers which made them twist around releasing the SD card, which saw it flipping through the air across the table into the midst of his lunch.

"Doc! Be careful!" Cam cried and dug his fingers through Dr. Lee's as yet uneaten lemon chicken, gingerly pulling out the tiny sliver of plastic, now covered in lemon sauce. He glared at the scientist as Daniel sidled up to the table. "You must never ever take your eyes off one of these things. They're too damn small!" He looked at the memory card. "Whoever thought about making removable storage smaller than the nail on my pinkie should be shot." he grumbled.

"Lost a few have you, Mitchell?" Daniel asked in amusement and Cam glowered at him. Sam stifled a smirk behind her hand.

"I didn't lose one with half a year's worth of research on Merlin's weapon." Cam shot back. Daniel frowned and pointed at Cam in warning.

"I found it again!" he rebutted.

"I found it, Daniel." Vala said as she walked in. Sam laughed out loud. Daniel sighed in defeat. Vala held the back of her hand up to hide her mouth from Daniel's gaze. "He left it in my quarters." she said in a mock-whisper as an aside to Cam and Sam. Daniel whirled to face her and she smiled innocently. Dr. Lee missed it all, simply staring at his plate of chicken.

"I was looking forward to that." he said glumly. Cam followed the scientist's gaze then looked at his fingers slick with lemon sauce.

"Sorry about that, Bill."

Selenis, Luna, August 2010

"~Dr. Carter, Colonel Mitchell, I do not like this.~" Selenis murmured unhappily. Sam looked up to the ceiling of the Chair Room and sighed softly. She stood by Cameron with her arms crossed across her chest as she supervised the installation of a small naquadah bomb inside the Control Chair dais. One large enough to destroy the room without taking out the rest of the facility. It was a front line defense against the possibility of losing the Chair Room as they so nearly had just over a week previously.

"~Neither do we, Selenis. We hate it.~" she tried for a soothing tone but she couldn't quite manage it. "~It is our intention to never use this device. Please believe that.~" she pleaded while glancing to Cameron for support. He watched her, equally unhappy.

"~We must prepare for any eventuality, Selenis.~" muttered Cam as he glared at the bomb being lowered into the recess they'd cleared for it. "~Something we have learned is an absolute necessity. Foothold scenarios are unfortunately a possibility we have first hand experience of.~" He scratched at his chin. "~It's the last resort of last resorts.~" The distressed burble the AI sounded made Sam's brows crease in dismay.

"~Selenis, please trust us.~" she pleaded and Cam rubbed her lower back.

"~We'll do everything in our power to guard and defend you, Selenis. You have my word.~" he murmured solemnly.

"~Mine too.~" added Sam.

"~I trust you.~" replied the AI. The technicians connecting the bomb to it's activation triggers looked up at the ceiling. Clearly just as upset as everyone else.

"~Thank you, Selenis.~" Sam whispered.

"~Dr. Carter, Colonel Mitchell, there is an incoming subspace communication from Homeworld Command.~" Selenis intoned quietly. "~Shall I patch it through?~"

"~Please do, Selenis.~" Cam turned around and began to walk to the transporter, Sam following along behind. "Homeworld Command, this is Selenis, we read you."

"Mitchell? O'Neill here. I need you and Carter to go to Nevada." came Jack's voice over their comms. Sam looked at Cam in confusion.

"General, what is this about?" she asked. They transitioned to the transporter closest to the 'gate room and came to stand between the stairs, Selenis projected the video feed on the transparent wall before them.

"Oh, there you are." Jack blinked as they walked up, then frowned slightly. "That's a weird angle I'm looking at." Sam turned and waved to the camera she knew would be recording them. "Hunh."

"We'll have a camera put on this wall at some point, sir." Cam offered and O'Neill thought about it for a second then nodded before continuing.

"Well, turns out one of the Lucian Alliance geeks you brought back claims to have some intel, but will only talk to you two." Jack explained. "Something about Mitchell pulling her off the surface at the last second." Cam turned to Sam and reminded her of the scientist he pulled up when Sam beamed him back to the Hammond.

"We'll be there as soon as we can General, should we have one of the ships beam us or..." Sam raised her eyebrows and he waved them away, nonchalantly.

"No rush, O'Neill out." the connection winked out before they could reply.

On to Chapter 3