Fic: A Finite Number of Monkeys

[melyanna]

Title: A Finite Number of Monkeys
Author: Melyanna
Rating: Kid-friendly
Characters: Kate Harper, Cameron Mitchell, Vala Mal Doran, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, Will Bailey, John Sheppard, Bill Lee, Walter Harriman
Summary: Admiral Kate Harper's first day as commander of the SGC is anything but smooth.
Notes: With apologies to the Bard, and thanks to sache8 and freifraufischer. This one introduces several new characters to the crossover.


“Kate, just try not to get in too far over your head, okay?” Will Bailey was saying over the phone. “The SGC can be kind of scary the first day.”

Kate Harper rolled her eyes as she drove toward the Cheyenne Mountain complex. Two weeks earlier she’d returned from Norway only to be summoned to the White House, put through the fastest and most unconventional interview in the history of bureaucracy, and landed herself the most coveted (or feared) job in the armed forces. Of course, before that meeting, she and her husband Will had planned to hit a beach in Hawaii. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You were at the SGC for what, two days?” she asked.

“Two really weird days.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for joining the JAG corps.” Kate sighed. “Besides, the personnel’s changed over a lot since then. A lot of the wackiness may be gone.”

“I don’t know,” Will replied. “You’re talking about people who are living and breathing science fiction. Some measure of insanity is probably a coping mechanism for all the weird stuff that happens there.”

“Like people coming back from the dead?”

“Like people coming back from the dead. Hey, you in service dress today?”

“Yes. No, I’m not taking pictures for you.”

“Damn.” Will paused. “Well, I’ve got a bill in conference that I need to see to and you’ve got a galaxy to run, so I’ll let you go. See you soon.”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

She’d reached the gate by then, where she showed her identification and the guard saluted and waved her in. There was a parking space with her name on it. She could get used to this kind of treatment.

As Kate was getting out of her car, a tall man walked in front of the line of cars and saluted. Kate saluted him back and said, “At ease, airman.”

“Good morning, Admiral Harper,” he said, walking closer.

“Good morning. . . Colonel,” she said, adding the rank once she was close enough to see it. There was only one full colonel on the base, so this had to be the commander of SG-1.

“Cameron Mitchell,” the man said, coming up to offer his hand.

Kate picked up her bag and closed the car door before shaking his hand. “Kate Harper.”

“Want me to take that?”

It took Kate a moment to start walking after he’d asked that. “No, Colonel, I’m fine.”

He held up his hands and walked next to her. “Hey, it’s your first day. Just trying to be a gentleman.”

“So I take it I won’t be greeted at the car after today?”

“I just happened to be walking by when you drove up.”

Kate gave him a disbelieving look, and he put his hands in his pockets. “Okay, I drew the short straw.”

She shook her head, exhaling slowly. “Will tried to warn me about this,” she said under her breath.

“Will?” Mitchell said.

“My husband, Will Bailey,” she clarified. “He’s a Congressman from Oregon. He came here a few years ago for reserve duty.”

“They send people here for reserve duty? That’s got to be one hell of a weekend up.”

“Yeah, and he’s a lawyer.”

That confused Mitchell enough that he didn’t say anything else until they’d gotten into the base, passed through sterile concrete corridors, and entered the elevator. “So,” he said, “your husband is an elected official from Oregon and spends some amount of time in Washington, and you’re in Colorado. . .”

“We’re both from military families,” Kate replied. “We’re both well acquainted with the lifestyle.”

“Yeah, I grew up with that too,” Mitchell said. They were both staring at the numbers above the door. “Dad was always off on a boat somewhere.”

“Your father was Navy?” she asked.

“Navy pilot.” He smirked. “I joined the Air Force to rebel.”

Kate looked at him, and they nodded to each other. This was an odd way to start off a new posting.

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out to see a door with Kate’s name on it. “Well, here we are, Admiral,” Mitchell said. “Welcome to your new office.”

He opened the door for her, and she walked into the rather austere room. “A bit on the small side,” she said.

“Well, I don’t think you’ve been serving on cruise ships.”

“I haven’t been serving on ships at all,” Kate replied. “Until a few months ago I was Commandant of Midshipmen at Annapolis. Before that I was Deputy National Security Advisor and worked in the White House.”

“Okay, so it’s a bit on the small side,” he said. “Still, you step out there,” he added, pointing to the window into the next room, “and you’ve got the best view in the house.”

Looking out, Kate set her bag down in her chair and walked through the open door into the next room. Mitchell was following her. Two sergeants on the other end of a long conference table snapped to attention as she entered, but what caught her eye was the large window that took up most of the wall to her right. It looked out over yet another concrete room, but her attention was captured by the Stargate down below.

She shook her head. “I’ve known about this place for years,” she said softly. “Longer than it’s been public. I honestly never thought I’d see it.”

Mitchell turned away from the window. “Aha! The welcoming committee’s here. Jackson, where’s the fruit basket for the lovely admiral?”

Kate gave the man incredulous look, and he smiled awkwardly. “Well, let me introduce the rest of SG-1,” he said.

Three people had walked in, an imposing black man with a strange tattoo on his forehead, a smaller, dark-haired man with glasses, and a rather beautiful dark-haired woman. “Teal’c, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and Vala Mal Doran. It’s nice to meet you all,” Kate said. She looked at Mitchell, who seemed impressed. “Yes, I’ve done some reading, Colonel.”

“Okay,” Mitchell replied. “Jackson, you said you had something?”

“Yeah, remember that vial that we acquired on P69-8X3 last week?” Jackson asked. “The lab finished its analysis. Seems it lowers inhibitions and makes people very receptive to advances of others.”

Kate shook her head a little. “So it’s just alcohol?”

“No, it targets specific centers in the brain related to. . . well, sex,” Daniel replied. “The effects are pretty much immediate, too, and seem to be targetable, though that capacity seems to be a bit crude.”

Blinking, Kate put her hand on top of one of the leather chairs at the table and leaned against it. “Are you saying this is some kind of. . .”

“Love potion?” Mitchell suggested.

“‘The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees,’” Vala said.

After a pause, Teal’c said, “Vala has been reading Shakespeare.”

“We’ve been trying to discourage her,” Mitchell said.

“Not very successfully,” Kate remarked. “Well, obviously this is something we don’t want getting out of the lab. I’ll want to see the report and get this chemical secured. Possibly not in that order.”

“I can take care of that,” Vala offered.

“No, you can’t,” Daniel said.

“Of course I can.”

“Of course you can’t!”

“Children,” Mitchell interrupted. “Teal’c, take care of the thing.”

Teal’c nodded and left, and Vala said, “He’ll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.”

“All right, Puck,” Kate replied, “you and Doctor Jackson are dismissed.”

The pair left, and Kate crossed her arms under her chest. Mitchell mirrored her as she said, “This operation picks up some interesting strays.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

She was about to respond, but suddenly an alarm went off and lights started flashing. Down below the gate was activating, and Kate suddenly realized that she didn’t know where to go. Mitchell might or might not have known this, but he gestured to the spiral staircase that descended from the other end of the room. “After you, ma’am.”

It was going to be a long day.

The unscheduled activation, as Kate learned it was called, turned out to be a team coming back with a botanist who’d broken his leg. Down in the control room, she was introduced to Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman, who took over her base tour.

It took until almost lunchtime to get through the highlights of the base, mostly because Kate stopped to talk to people when they weren’t busy. Harriman ended her tour in the mess, where she got food and took it back to her office so she could get busy on the mountain of paperwork on her desk. She figured she needed to work on that for a couple hours before starting her meetings with team leaders. She was planning on finishing those up the next morning and then starting into the civilian staff.

But Kate was barely through her salad when Harriman burst into her office. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, “but something’s happened.”

Alarmed, Kate got to her feet. “What is is, Sergeant?”

He opened and closed his mouth a couple times before getting words out. “Something’s happened to Colonel Mitchell.”

She followed him out as quickly as she could in heels and a straight skirt, getting into the elevator as the door was starting to close. Harriman hit the button for Level 22, and Kate frowned. That was level the mess was on.

When the elevator stopped, she got out before the door had opened completely. Immediately she heard someone who sounded a lot like Colonel Mitchell singing something from South Pacific. “This isn’t happening,” she said to herself.

Cautiously, Kate walked down the hallway and came into the mess. Next to her was Daniel Jackson, and the lunchtime crowd had pushed to the edges of the room, but what captured her attention was Mitchell and Vala. He was staggering a little as he chased her through the room, singing off-key, “Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. . .”

Kate winced when he tried and failed to hit the high notes in that line. “Doctor,” she said to Jackson, “mind filling me in?”

“It seems Vala swiped some of the - do we really have to call it a love potion?”

“You can call it rum and coke for all I care.”

“Okay, she swiped the rum and coke,” Daniel replied. “Probably when we were on the planet. She was just waiting to confirm what it was.”

“And she drugged Colonel Mitchell with it?” Kate asked. Vala had climbed onto a table and was running down it in her effort to escape Mitchell.

“No, she tried to drug me with it, I suspect. Seems there was a mix-up.”

“Once you have found her, never let her go,” Mitchell was singing. Vala was cornered. “Once you have found her, never let her go!”

As his voice cracked on the high notes again, he lunged at his quarry, pinning her to the wall and kissing her passionately. At first Vala was pounding her fists against him, but before long she seemed to go limp as Mitchell continued kissing her rather thoroughly. Kate (and everyone else in the room, it seemed) watched with jaw dropped until his hand slid under her shirt and her fingers dragged through his hair. But that was the breaking point for Kate.

“Okay,” she said, loudly, startling several of the civilians near her. Without further ado, she marched up, grabbed Mitchell with an arm around his shoulder and neck and the other under his arm, and yanked him back. For once in her life, she was grateful for the extra couple inches that her shoes gave her.

Mitchell started to struggle, and Vala was slow to open her eyes, a dazed expression on her face. “Vala, go!” Kate shouted, and a moment later Vala was climbing over the table again.

Kate looked over her shoulder to see that the horrible singing seemed to have attracted quite the crowd. “Teal’c, help me,” she ordered, though the Jaffa was already on his way over. A few seconds later, Mitchell was face-down on the ground and Kate was adjusting her uniform.

On the other side of the table, Vala squatted down and looked at Mitchell. “That seemed very familiar,” she said. “Are you sure we haven’t done that before?”

“My darling!” he exclaimed, trying to crawl toward her. Teal’c, however, put a stop to that by planting one foot on Mitchell’s back.

“Show’s over,” Kate announced, and the crowd started filing out. “Teal’c, please take the colonel to the infirmary. They should feel free to restrain him if necessary. Or even if they just want to. Vala, don’t even think about leaving.”

The woman had been hastening toward one of the exits, but stopped when Kate ordered her to. She was slow to turn around however, a sheepish look on her face. Kate waited until the room had cleared out before saying anything. “Vala,” she said, “what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I’d get some ice cream before heading out,” Vala replied. “They’ve got sprinkles and hot fudge today. Would you like some?”

“Vala,” Kate repeated, feeling like she was back at Annapolis again.

“Well, I wasn’t intending to drug Mitchell!” she said. “Daniel must have switched the glasses while I wasn’t looking.”

“All right, I can’t believe no one’s told you this before,” Kate said, “but we don’t drug people, all right?”

“You drug people all the time here,” Vala retorted. “What do you think the people in the infirmary are up to?”

“We don’t drug people to seduce them!”

Vala was nonplussed. “You Earthlings are a strange breed. How do you manage to get men if you rule out extraordinary measures?”

Kate had to fight the overwhelming urge to send Vala to her room like she was five years old. “All right, give me the drug,” she said, holding out her hand.

Vala looked like she was going to resist, but she reached into her pocket and placed a vial in Kate’s hand. Kate kept her hand out, though, and a few seconds later a vial came out of Vala’s other pocket. Finally, a third came out of a pocket in her jacket, and Vala said, “That’s all! I swear.”

“If it’s not, you’re spending a month in the brig,” Kate replied. “You’re dismissed.”

Pouting, Vala walked away, and Kate followed her a few moments later, heading back down to her office. She still had a lot to do before her meetings with team leaders began. But as she walked past the entrance to the conference room, Sergeant Harriman came around the corner and said, “Admiral, Atlantis is scheduled to make contact in about a minute.”

“Why didn’t you give me more warning than this?” she asked, turning around to head into the conference room and down to the control room.

The sergeant followed her. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, “but you were up in the mess.”

Kate rolled her eyes as she reached the bottom of the spiral stairs. “Is there anything in particular that I’m supposed to do?”

“I thought you might want the opportunity to talk to Colonel Sheppard and personally notify him of the change in command.”

“Yeah.”

The gate fired up, and the klaxons went off again. Within a few seconds, the wormhole had established, the ICD was confirmed, and Harriman nodded to Kate. “Atlantis, this is Stargate Command,” she said.

It took a moment before she got a response. “SGC, this is Colonel Sheppard,” said a man with a bit of a drawl.

“Colonel,” Kate replied, “this is Admiral Kate Harper. The new commanding officer at the SGC.”

“Oh,” Sheppard said. “I knew Keating was retiring, but I didn’t think it’d be this fast.”

“Yes, it was rather quick,” she said. “You’ve got about four days till the Daedalus arrives. Believe me, Doctor Weir was looking forward to getting back.”

He laughed. “Eighteen days with two kids on a spaceship?” he said. “Yeah, I’d be looking forward to getting back too. As quickly as possible.”

“She told me some of the Europeans were planning on teaching your sons how to play soccer on the way back.”

“Oh, no,” Sheppard replied. “That’s just what we need.”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” she said. “I trust you’ve sent full reports?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Anything else?”

Kate smiled, remembering her contact with two of the military members of the expedition on her trip to Norway. “Please convey my greetings to Colonel Lorne and Captain Cadman when the Daedalus arrives,” she said. “Tell them I look forward to working with them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sheppard said, though Kate could hear the confusion in his voice. “Atlantis out.”

The gate shut down, and Kate headed back up the stairs and across the conference room. But when she came up to the open door of her office, she was confronted with a somewhat unconventional sight. There was a monkey sitting in her chair and smearing Jello all over her desk.

“Admiral Harper!” someone called. Kate turned to see a balding man in a lab coat running toward her. “Admiral Harper. Hi.”

“Hello,” she said, eyes narrowed.

“I’m Bill Lee,” he said, out of breath. “I’m on the research staff here. I wanted to introduce myself and-”

“This isn’t a good time-”

“-ask if you’ve seen any monkeys around here.”

Kate blinked several times, and the monkey at her desk screeched. “There’s a monkey in my office.”

“Oh dear.” Lee pushed his glasses up. “That’s probably my fault.”

“Probably?”

“Almost certainly?” He laughed nervously. “See, I was in the monkey room-”

“Why are there monkeys on this base at all?” Kate demanded.

“They’re used in tests and experiments from time to time,” Lee explained. “Usually in the infirmary. They’re kept on that floor.”

The monkey screeched again, and Lee turned his attention away from Kate. “Jojo!” he said, and the monkey looked at him. “Jojo, come here.”

The monkey obliged, hopping down and letting Doctor Lee pick him up. “So, you were in the monkey room?” Kate prompted.

“Yes. I was in the monkey room, and the darnedest thing happened,” he replied. “You may want to walk as we talk.”

He gestured to the open door on the other side, and they headed that way toward the elevator. Once inside, Lee hit the button for the twenty-first level. “Someone came in to tell me that Colonel Mitchell had gone crazy in the mess, and it seems that in my hurry to get down there, I may have tripped the release on all the cage doors.”

The monkey swatted at Kate, and she backed into the elevator wall to avoid being hit by it. “Jojo, that’s very bad manners,” Lee said. “How would you feel if - never mind.”

The elevator door opened, and they stepped out not far from the infirmary. “So all the cage doors opened, and now there are monkeys loose on the base,” Kate said.

“That’s the long and the short of it, yes,” Lee replied. “I’m going to put Jojo back in his cage now.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

As Lee walked off, Mitchell came running out of the infirmary. “Colonel!” she exclaimed. “You’re not supposed to-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll explain later, ma’am,” he said. “There’s a bit of a situation.”

“We’re talking about a finite number of monkeys, right?” She resisted the urge to smack her forehead. That was not the kind of phrase she had ever imagined using in any situation.

Three zoomed past them as they headed into the infirmary. “Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell replied. “Forty.”

“Forty monkeys loose on an Air Force base with alien technology all around,” Kate said, grabbing a telephone off the wall. “Admiral Harper to the control room,” she said into it. Once Harriman had answered, she said, “Shut down the elevators. And I need someone to bring tranquilizer guns and darts up through the emergency access shafts as quickly as possible. Send a team up to the infirmary. Tell them to bring extras.”

By the time all the monkeys were locked in their cages again, it was time for a briefing with SG-1. “Someone tell me something that doesn’t have to do with monkeys or love potions,” Kate said, coming into the conference room.

“We could postpone this meeting until tomorrow,” Daniel suggested. “We’re not scheduled to leave until tomorrow afternoon, so we could do it in the morning.”

“No, I’d rather get it over with,” Kate replied.

Mitchell and Daniel moved through the briefing material rapidly, pausing only when Kate had questions. They were heading out to a planet SG-1 had first visited ten years earlier, one with whom they still had excellent relations. This was just a friendly visit to make sure everything was still all right.

At the end of the meeting Kate stood up, the others following. “Anything else?” she asked.

“I have one question,” Vala said, half raising her hand. “That drug was supposed to have a much longer effect on a person. Why is Colonel Mitchell fine?”

“Yes, Colonel,” Kate said, “why aren’t you trying to jump Vala when she’s right next to you?”

He chuckled. “You thought I was actually drugged?” he asked, looking at Vala. “I must be a better actor than I thought.”

Vala opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Kate raised a brow. “Colonel, that little show up in the mess was an act?” she said.

“Jackson and I had a suspicion that the drug was an attempt at a love potion when we acquired it,” Mitchell explained. “And we figured Vala guessed so too, so there was no way we were letting her near Jackson’s drinks for a while.”

“And then Colonel Mitchell decided that it might be an opportunity to have some fun,” Jackson said. “We just didn’t know it was going to be your first day.”

“You were most impressive in overpowering Colonel Mitchell, Admiral,” Teal’c said.

“Yeah, that really hurt,” Mitchell added, rubbing his shoulder.

“The last time I had to do that was on a midshipman half my age,” she replied. “The Academy did me some good, it seems.”

Vala looked quite put out, but then she turned her attention on Daniel. “I think I’ve been wasting my time,” she said. “Colonel Mitchell is a much better kisser.”

With that she walked off, leaving a rather stunned Daniel behind. “Okay, the last time she kissed me, she was trying to steal a spaceship from me,” he protested.

“Doctor, I really don’t care.” Kate shook her head. “Colonel, if you’ll come with me?”

He followed after her obediently, but she waited until the cleaning guy was gone and the doors were shut. “Was this some sort of hazing?” she asked.

“The monkeys? The love potion? No, ma’am,” he said. “This was actually a pretty light day, though I’ll admit it was weirder than most days.”

Kate shook her head. “I had you pegged for the sane one around here, you know.”

“Me? Aww, that’s almost insulting.” He smiled. “I’m sorry to have caused you trouble, but man, you’ve got some good moves. You could teach our civilians’ basic training class.”

She smiled back. “I’m not convinced you weren’t involved somehow in the monkeys escaping, you know.”

“Hey, I have a pretty good alibi.”

“True.” She sobered a bit. “I do need to order you never to do that again.”

Mitchell nodded once. “Understood.”

“But off the record,” she added, “this has been one of the more interesting first days I’ve ever had on any job.”

Mitchell smiled again. “Well, if you need anything,” he began.

“I’ll let you know,” she finished. “Dismissed.”

He exited, and Kate brushed her chair off before sitting down and getting back to work. At least she’d have something interesting to report when she called Will that evening. It wasn’t every day that she got to break up an amorous pair (even if it was a practical joke) or monkeys got loose in her office.

But as the klaxons started blaring again, Kate had to sigh. If this was a light day. . .