Stargate Command Gate room level 28

SGC Monday February 4th 2013.

Mission ends soon came to be. Ba’al was eventually found, bound and taken out of our collective minds. The Goa’uld had the audacity to try and pass himself off as some South American President, having disposed of the former in the usual way. Once it was confirmed by Stargate Command exactly who he was 100%, a few subtle leaks to the press soon had tongues wagging, suspicions being thrown up without someone blatantly saying he was an Alien.  The combined mission by SG1 and 4 turned out to be nothing to be overly concerned about; they did however encourage the locals into revolt and with a little help from the two teams, the Trust goons and their lackeys were soon taken out.

SG9 and 22’s mission to the Alpha site was slightly more productive. The fake SG teams were engaged full on once the advantage was in our hands with Heckman and Hart managed to gain control of all communications and mainframes; it was then only a matter of attrition. The worst or perhaps closest call came when the base self destruct was set off from the gate room. While it took longer than necessary to reach that area, with the support of base Marines, Colonel Bixby managed to get to the main control room to disengage the self destruct from that position with just ten seconds to spare. The entire mission from beginning to end took just over 24 heart rendering hours. Thankfully with few casualties and injuries incurred.  As Colonel Reynolds pushed inwards with the remainder of his team and the Marines he had commandeered, Captain Amir and Lieutenant Donovan clambered into the facility through a vent shaft, cutting off any thoughts the enemy had in coming at their rear. It was over in less than 30 minutes, such was the pace the Colonel had set. The staff at the base wasn’t out of it either. Once set free, or having joined SG-9, they took out their vengeance in return for the comrades they had lost. Commander Renner, along with the flight teams, turned soldier for the day excelled themselves. Pilots became warriors as did mechanics on that day.

With SG1 and 4 now free, they were quickly recalled. Getting back up from elements of the ousted former Venezuelan Government, while the SGC did the diplomatic thing in assuring those countries Ba’al had somehow managed to ally himself to that all was well; President ‘Alvaro Gutierrez’ was taken in hand only small engagements. He was exposed as a fraud, without the world yet knowing what he really was, then taken back to the SGC for the usual lengthy interrogations.  Surprisingly the Goa’uld this time around wanted nothing to do with him, not even to take him in hand for execution. Finally after some discussion with allies, the El’Dari agreed to ‘look after him’. What that entailed no one wanted to know, but Jack O’Neill was fairly certain it may well be something along the lines of re-educating the snake. If any race could pull that off, they could.

With all this going on one might be forgiven for thinking we had enough on our hands. As usual that wasn’t the case. The Trust, whom we had always expected was in Ba’al’s pocket, did their best to get at morale within Stargate Command; they felt that by a direct threat to known personnel’s loved ones with give them leverage to more easily infiltrate the SGC. The Trust was severely mistaken. Captain Elle McFearson’s father had been infected with a deadly parasite, which Mike Jaworski quickly realised was familiar and it was; being the same bug that had infected Doctor Rodney McKay some years earlier. From there it was much easier to formulate a cure, with the only hiccup being that Elle’s parents and indeed her brothers had to be informed about Stargate Command, since in the end old Arthur had to be transferred to the SGC medical facility for treatment, with the only other suitable place being the Alpha Site. All worked out well in the end; the elder McFearson’s taking their new found responsibility much more seriously than some might think for people of their age.

The Goa’uld hadn’t been entirely quiet either. Rumor was rife they had been developing new ships in parallel with Earth’s own advances; primarily in the mid-size destroyer class. Treaties were signed between them, technology transfers and most surprisingly a trade treaty with Earth (there was of course a number of caveats in those treaties). For them as well, 2012 was relatively peaceful thus far.

A matter of the heart also occurred during this time; when Elle’s own morale was starting to wane at one point, Mike soon found a way to bring her around. On the trip back to the SGC (by USAF C-5 in fact) with Elle at her most impatient best looking at her Dad on his gurney, Mike proposed at 35,000 feet. A quick stopover in LA (90 minutes to be sure) while they waited for their transfer flight to Colorado Springs, Mike in one of his usual mad moments grabbed Elle, called a cab (he paid the driver extra to go faster, much faster), into LA itself and with just 7 minutes to spare they were back at the Airport lounge with Elle sporting a gorgeous new solitaire diamond ring. She insisted that it was a token of love and not how much money he could spend. Still even at 0.6 CT, it was a sparkler and that nearly 2.5 grand wasn’t to be sneezed at.

By that time the biggest announcement the world had ever known had been made. As agreed to some 12 months earlier in the UN, the Stargate Program was to be made fully public; it turned out in the end to be something of a fizzer, excitement wise. Folks did protest, nations protested and hollered loud. In the end though there were far more pressing concerns for everyone; 2011-2012 was one of the worst storm seasons experienced, couple with a fairly wide famine situation across mid Africa and the Indian region. The world still hadn’t quite gotten over the 2008 GFC, so for the average Mr. and Mrs. across the globe foremost in their minds was putting a meal on the table and paying off their bills. The furor of the Stargate Program had died down by July of that year, the same month Promotions were being handed out for Stargate Personnel and the same month the now Major Jaworski returned to full duties, extending his leave a little further to get his head around some new circumstances. (That promotion didn’t really sit well with him until the Missus gave him the eye).

Earlier in late December the Dreadnought and her escorts returned home to be replaced by the Apollo along with the new City class Corvettes, Glasgow, Denver, Prague and Goteborg. With the return of the Dread, she along with the Victory were placed in long term refit to address many of their short comings found during combat. The Dread having suffered the worst. Colonels Radovic and Ovrachenko were assigned to command one of the brand spanking new D-100 class destroyers coming on line in early March-April, along with Captain McFearson.The Chekov II going to Colonel Radovic by request, with Elena Ovrachenko giving no protest as she happily took command of the Mercury. Elle got command of the Invincible, for her that was sentimental, as one of her Uncles served aboard that RN ship during WW2. Most of the former crew from the Dreadnought went to the Invincible, to keep a well drilled team intact, with few exceptions.  It should be noted here that initially Major Jaworski was going to remain at the SGC for some time to work alongside Carrie Svensson; that is until Jack O’Neill intervened on Elle’s behalf, getting his way over Anne MacGregor’s protests. He joined his new ship and his wife to be in August of 2012.

As for the day to day activities of the SGC, things soon settled down to a peaceful routine. Even the Goa’uld had gone quiet for most of the year apart from one or two diplomatic meetings to shore up a few treaties and boundaries; life in some ways for the SG teams in particular had become almost boring.  Generally it was back to the good old days of teams heading out through the gate, catching up with old allies and in some cases meeting new ones. There were of course the odd moments of levity in all of this, one standout was when SG22 and SG1 returned from a joint mission adorned in flowers, head to foot more or less. With Mitchell telling General Chalmers that perhaps he was getting too old for visiting hippy planets; for it turned out that PKY-99U was nothing much less than that, inhabited by humans for the most part and for the most part 99% of them on some kind of local pot. Since they were peaceful, lacked any strategic value, the planet was marked down as ‘visit only when necessary’. Other than that, with more international teams being formed there were a few frictions, yet in the most part the majority of any angst that might be present was aimed at whichever IOA representative who had the misfortune to be posted to the SGC at the time. They were taking a much more active role in the happenings of the operation and that inevitably brought them into conflict with everyone with their mindset being far removed from that of the old hands for the most part. Carrie Svensson was the first, SG team members soon followed when the IOA tried to more or less try as hard as they could to assert their influence on how things should be run in their eyes. One hapless rep had to endure an hour of lecture from Carrie when she told them in no uncertain terms that when they had several medical degrees such as she and Anne held, they could come back and tell her how to organize med bay; she was backed up by both the full Nursing staff and General Chalmers. Both Cam Mitchell and Cate MacGregor found themselves in Lucille’s office being somewhat dressed down for threatening to deck another rep when they had the audacity to tell both of them the IOA wanted to see a full rearrangement of teams and the personnel roster. Suffice to say by September of 012, any IOA rep at the base kept as much to themselves as possible.

The only really decent thing to come from the IOA was in December 012. With the relative peace it was thought that it be given consideration to seek out the fate of all those MIA’s Stargate Command had endured over the years and there were quite a few of them.

By the very nature of humanity when the announcement was made by the base CO that indeed nearly all teams will be involved in these searches to come, a great deal of soul searching was done; with many of the old hands wondering if they could have in the past done more to account for those MIA’s, or even find them. Yet such was the frantic pace of activity of the SGC over the last decade it seemed that it was always going to be ‘the next thing we do’, yet never happened.  Now they had their chance to make good on some of the inner promises many of them had made over the years.

On the 4th of February General Chalmers and General O’Neill addressed all SG teams either directly as they gathered in the largest space available (the basement car park), or via video link. SG26 was already out at that time doing a survey on one lead the Tok’ra had provided the SGC with. It was barely 0700 and both knew some of their people had spent to evening in town, celebrating the awards nearly to this very hour.