New Age (Backpost)

Posted on Fri Aug 19th, 2022 @ 8:57am by Lieutenant Ralph Brennan & Lieutenant Colonel Jonathon Raynor & Major General Richard Lockhart (Raynor)

Mission: The Rise of the Valkyrie
Location: McMurdo Station
2804 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

ON

Luggage in hand, Ralph was ushered off the C-130 with great haste. Bidding the bucket the passengers aboard the transport had been using as a bathroom for a the past 24 hours a fond farewell, the jetsetters dodged forklifts and crews busily emptying the aircraft's cargohold of supplies and vehicles. A young marine met the group of around ten military and civilian personnel at the base of the loading ramp. The Private, whose identity was obscured by a mask and other clothing protecting him from the cold, stood next to an idling truck as he rubbed his gloved hands together to stave off the cold. Something told Ralph, as he donned a pair of arctic goggles, that wasn't going to do the kid any good.

As senior officer in the party, Ralph led the way onto the blanched tundra, giving the Private a curt nod as he set foot on Antarctica. "Top of the morning to ya, Private."

The young man saluted Brennan, "Welcome to Antarctica, sir. "

Brennan returned the Private's salute. "Thanks."

"Sir, if you'll follow me to the truck we'll drive out to McMurdo. It's about 7 miles from here," The Private reported.

Ralph gestured for the group to head off into the back of the truck as one of the throng stopped by Ralph and the Private. A civilian. He eyed the two. "So... this isn't McMurdo."

"No." The marine and sailor said in unison.

"This is Williams Field, sir." The Private replied. The civilian, an engineer going by the designation on the ID badge he'd been issued with provisionally, let out a huff and climbed into the truck.

"Seven miles, huh?" Brennan remarked as he jumped in the back of the transport with the rest of the group. "I don't know if my ass can take it."

The truck travelled across the Antarctic roadways for another fifteen minutes. It was genuinely unusual to travel such a desolate, though beautiful area, the occasional road sign being the only indicator of civilisation. Eventually, the truck pulled into a tunnel, descending into a parking lot.

"Much warmer in here," the engineer muttered as he joined a queue with the offloading passengers.

Ralph and the Private disregarded the stuffy man's complaints as Ralph himself lined up for a security check, and to receive a renewed ID badge for access to the base. As the line progressed, the Private struck up a conversation with the Lieutenant.

"How was the flight over, sir?"

"Uneventful, generally. More stopovers than I could imagine though. New Zealand was nice though."

"See Mount Cook, sir?"

"No, no," Ralph sighed. He shrugged. "There was an earthquake while we were refueling."

"Oh."

"Mmm."

"No good."

"Wasn't pleasant."

"Next please," A security officer, a grizzled Air Force Sergeant called. "ID on the table. Please place your feet on the outline."

Ralph submitted to a body scan, a retinal scan, "Not the rectal scan then?" Ralph joked.

The security officer wasn't impressed. She was even less impressed that the Private's phone had rung while the newcomers were being scanned through. The leather-skinned non-com slapped Brennan's new badge down on the desk and scowled. "Next."

"Okay." Ralph nodded, picking up his bag from an x-ray machine.

"Uh, Lieutenant," The Private stopped him before Ralph could begin his orientation with the others. "General Lockhart has requested to see you."

"Oh, okay, well," Ralph gestured off thataway, "Take me to your leader, Private."

|General's Office, McMurdo Station - SGC
|Subsequently

The trip down the elevator to sublevels of the underground base seemed to fly by before they found the corridor level in question. After making their way down a hallway, the Private knocked on the office door. Allowed inside, he stood to attention before the base's leading officers. "General, Colonel. Lieutenant Brennan, as you requested."

In the office sat two men on either side of a large oak desk with a couple stacks of folders, and a computer with dual monitor set up which was on a locked screen. Behind the desk sat an older man, average height and build with little signs of health issues. He did have a receeding hair line in which was only noticeable due to him not just straight up shaving what hair was growing in. His uniform was a semi casual black black video like uniform His uniform was a semi casual black black video like uniform just like the younger officer across from him. But this man's uniform had the silver stars of his major general rank rank song directly into the uniform on the collar.

The younger officer crossed from the general Didn't seem to hold himself in the same regards as the general. This younger man was more built with dirty blonde hair was sitting in a similar black bdu like uniform. He seemed more relaxed and showed it as he slouched in his chair rested one arm over the back of his head and the other hand holding onto the other arm. It was obvious the man also was relaxed in his shaving as he had a five o'clock shadow which seem to have been growing in.

As the two new arrivals walked in, with the private snapping to attention, the General stood up and nodded to the enlisted member before looking at the navel officer. "Thank you, Private. We will take it from here. Lieutenant, welcome to the SGC. I hope your travel was uneventful," General Lockhart smiled slightly with his weathered looking eyes as he reached out to shake the officer's hand.

"Mostly, thanks, General. Nothing we couldn't handle," Brennan replied with a smile as he shook the flag officer's hand. "Great to be here."

The colonel looked up at the officer and nodded to him before leaning over a bit and reached out to shake the man's hand. "Welcome, sailer! Glad you could join us," the lieutenant colonel said with a slight sarcastic tone before offering the empty chair next to him. "We were just going over the debriefing you missed from earlier and what we should expect in the field... Wait... Does he have clearance?"

The general sat down and nodded. "Yes, John, he has been given clearance. But how deep he knows of this program, that is up in the air."

"I see..." the colonel nodded before looking over at the naval officer. "I guess we could just start off that way. Spill it, seaman... Tell us about yourself and how you wound up on good terms with U.E.O. so quickly to get assigned to us."

"Well, Colonel, I was with the office of the naval IG. It's hard to get on good terms with anyone really, it definitely came as a shock to me, too." Brennan laughed. "I guess it's got something to do with Lu'car, the Jaffa you're holding down here. I, uh, came across him while doing a house call for an officer wrapped up in an investigation with uh, a lot of the locals feeling like he might've been wanting to start a siege. Long story short, I managed to get him out of there without the local MPs blowing his head off. Apparently, I've got some customer satisfaction. Lu'car won't speak to anyone but me, hence the temporary assignment here. Though, I've been read in on the situation here by Colonel Kawalsky. I'll be honest, I'm still trying to work out if he's pulling me leg. Is it really true about the transportation device?"

The colonel and general both looked at one another and with a simple nod from the general, John took a deep breath as he dropped his feet to the ground and stood up. "Alrighty... come with me, Farva." They all stood and the colonel took lead as he walked out the opposite side of the general's office into a large conference room with two large oak tables and tables. Off to one side was large monitors which could easily display meeting items in which they would brief teams and base personal. On the opposite side, were blast glass windows. on the other side of the glass was a long hanger like room, which hat torrents, MALPs and other mobile equipment. down the center was a long ramp which allowed for vehicles to roll up to the grand prize, the reason for the whole base. The round alien technology called the Stargate, in all its splendor with cables and clamps in place to help hold the device in a vertical stance.

"How is that leg, Lieutenant?"

"Consider it firmly unpulled, sirs," Ralph said with astonishment. He stepped closer to the window slowly as he examined the large metallic ring, "Has anyone tried it out yet?"

"To my knowledge, not sense the attack thirteen years ago," John replied as he arrested his hands in his pockets and took in the view. "We will be the first group to go through that thing here soon. Going to be a hell of a rush, to say the least. Neil Armstong would be jealous."

"That's a hell of a thing," Brennan said a little breathless. He looked to the two men and grinned just a little, "Where's it taking us?"

A slight grin grew on the colonel face as he simply shrugged. "To be honest, from what we understand, depending on the power provided and the ancient dialing system, it could go to many

"Fascinating," Ralph replied with a grin. He looked between the men and the gate. "Any chance I could have a look up close?"

"Go ahead, the technicians are running final diagnostics before tomorrow's activation window," General Lockhart spoke up as he looked over the younger officer's shoulders. "Colonel, go ahead, give him the tour. Gives me a chance to take care of some paperwork and emails. The excitement of being in command of a military base."

"Will do," John nodded before looking over at the naval officer. "Shall we?"

"This is incredible!" Ralph gasped, down in the gate room with one of the base's leaders. The Lieutenant maintained a respectful distance and healthy fear of the currently inert device down. He did, however, examine it curiously, ducking around it, inspecting it as if it held the answers to life, the universe and everything. He looked at every surface, every texture, anything he could to get a read on ths majestic method of transport. "I've never seen anything like this before. Interesting, though, that our buddy Lu'car didn't come through a device like this and instead arrived by space vessel. Is there any worry someone could come through it?"

"Now, no. But one of the first shots was this base. The Navy had a whole year to do their testing and were almost ready to launch an expedition through the gate. The attack only berried the gate, but killed several sailors," the colonel explained as he walked up the ramp of closer to the alien device. It was almost overwhelming, but in the end, they now had much more of an understanding for the technology and its capability. "After the assault, and the retreats, the Russian stargate was destroyed but we had this one. We uncovered it almost three months after the assault and found dead Jaffa frozen next to the gate.

"It had been suggested to the Naval group to install an iris over where the event horizon would settle. But it wasn't activated at that time. Once we recovered it, the iris was still in workable order, so it was activated for the time being until here recently when we chose to activate the program once again."

"I see. Probably a good idea, those Goa'ulds don't sound like good news." Ralph continued to examine the closed gate, it was an item that ignited his curiosity. "How many of these gates do they theorise there are?"

"Psshhh," the former fighter pilot shrugged as he looked at the man. "You talking about just in our galaxy or the universe as a whole?"

"Both, I guess," Ralph shrugged. He was guessing it was going to be a lot.

"Pretty much the same answer. They apotheosis at least tens of thousands in our galaxy alone. And times that by all other galaxies that have stargates. As far as we know, there are two other galaxies for sure. But rumor has it, there are others out there," John answered simply as he patted the ancient device with his bare hands.

When the Colonel touched the device, Ralph felt a little more at ease to touch the gate himself. The metal had a interesting feel to it, perhaps it owed to being a rare and unusual piece of ancient history. Ralph let the gate be for a moment and looked over at the senior airman. "Colonel, the Jaffa, do you think he'll be sent back?"

"Sent back where?" the colonel asked as he looked at the naval officer. He stepped back enough for the technicians to get back to their work as he waved for the lieutenant to follow him. "Last I knew, the U.E.O. had him transferred here to be questioned and get some real time information for upcoming possible missions."

"I didn't catch where he was from when I had my encounter with the kid," Ralph said, walking in step with the Colonel, "But what else do we do with him? If he doesn't go to his homeworld, does he go out into the community? Does he go and get a job and live amongst the human race like nothing happened? I'm guessing he's not the first extraterrestrial who has found themselves on Earth, so what do we do with them?"

"That I am unsure of. But until then, you get to be his liaison. I'd expect that the UEO and leadership will want to get as much information out of him before determining that he isn't a threat to our planet and security of what we are now able to do.

"Liaison," Ralph tugged on his collar for a moment before letting out a quiet laugh as they walked through the corridor of the base. "First they pull me off sea duty, then I'm playing private eye, next thing I'm playing dad and interrogator to Pleskit the sixth grade alien."

"Yeah, you are going up in the world these days. But what really matters is, what do you want to be when you grow up?" John asked half jokingly as they came up to an elevator and pressed the up button.

"My place is in the thick of it. On the bridge of a ship or the battlefield, not examining line items or carting the Nuclear Football around Pyongyang, I'll tell you that much, Colonel." The two officers stepped inside the elevator, the Colonel setting it's destination as Ralph continued. "When I encountered this Lu'car guy last week, it was the first time I've felt alive in three years."

"Speaking of which, where did you find this Lu'Car you found? I won't lie, I only heard bits and pieces. Sue me, kind of planning my field trip to another planetary body," the colonel shrugged with a slight smirk. The thought of an alien attack was one thing now a days, but to now go out into the galaxy and walk on a completely different planet?

"In the on-base residence of a navy officer of all places," Ralph recalled with a grin. "Seems to crash landed in the desert and walked in into town. I was there investigating their ties to a situation of misconduct and found him using an acoustic guitar to hold a family at siege. It was really something."

"Huh..." John remarked as he took it in as the doors to the elevator slid open and the two walked out. "That ain't random at all. Did he explain how his shuttle went down and why he was here?"

"Apparently he was an escapee from a slave ring run by a brutal man named Chek'nac. From what he told me, he stole a shuttle as it was being refueled when he was being transported to another world. He set what he called a hyperdrive in this direction and crashed his ship on Earth. That said, knowing what I know now about our history with extraterrestrials, I find it coincidental that his ship landed here. Something tells me that his slave ship may have been here before, perhaps Earth's coordinates were locked into a database. I guess he's nothing more than a refugee."

"Yeah I don't know about refugee. Not a lot of people on this planet, let alone around here, lie his kind. But at his age, I guess its plausible," John remarked. "But I guess time will tell. How about we go chat with this kid?"

Ralph nodded. "Sounds good. Let's see what our mute has to say for himself."

OFF