We have moved to new forum software and posting here is closed!

PLEASE BOOKMARK THE NEW FORUMS

Posted By: Nomad Jun 21, 2002 - 07:18 pm

O'Neills Report: POSSIBLE DISCUSSION SPOILERS


REPORT 603: DESCENT

Report by Colonel Jack O'Neill

Not all SG missions involve the use of the Stargate. Here's a perfect example:
It isn't every day you see a Goa'uld mothership in Earth's orbit with its shields and weapons down, but that's what Carter's scans showed as we approached the vessel in our cargo ship. Carter is always on the money with these techie things. She lives for science. Her dad, Jacob, was right with her at the helm, the two them analyzing and theorizing away.

We were about 100 kilometers from the vessel when Carter guessed that this was the same ship Anubis had used to kidnap our Asgard ally, Thor. We'd saved Thor, but he remains in a coma after Anubis sucked the knowledge out of Thor's brain and into the ship's computers. Carter and Jacob also said that the ship was in perfect condition, power and life-support fully functioning, but totally abandoned with all the escape pods jettisoned.

This mission was that alien eager-beaver Jonas Quinn's initial one with us, and he had that first-time-at-Disneyland smile on his face. He'd never been in space before and waxed poetic about how thrilling it was. Teal'c agreed. So did I. Space travel is thrilling — until something goes horribly wrong. They probably didn't mention that in the Stargate sales pitch.

I took a team comprised of Carter, Jacob, Dr. Friesen and Nolan onboard the mothership to see if we could salvage it. Our standing orders are to recover any technology that can help us defend against the Goa'uld. This vessel definitely fell into that category. I ordered Teal'c and Jonas to stay in our cargo ship. Jonas didn't like that. He wanted to go with us and prove he could be of help. He's still trying to fill Daniel's shoes. But he hadn't earned his stripes yet as far I was concerned, so I told him that as his commander, I always have a reason I'm not required to explain. It's a military thing.

Jacob and Carter theorized that the ship belonged to Anubis himself. Excellent! Claiming it for Earth really oughta piss him off, I thought. Jacob warned me it might be some Trojan horse, but if it was, they did it wrong. Nobody was home. But I should have known, and let this be a lesson to you, that not everything is what it seems.

Onboard the mothership, Jacob discovered that the self-destruct had been set but it was stuck in mid-countdown and there was this weird electronic whispering that was emanating from the ship's intercom system.

Carter and Davis went to the computer core to do a diagnostic and try to shut down the self-destruct while Jacob stayed at the helm to do a systems check and Dr. Friesen and I went to see if the hyperdrive was intact.

The engine checked out, but Friesen wanted to check out the shield generators. Not a priority, according to Jacob. My priority (and favorite perk of this job) was to blow up the door to the computer core that was fused shut and that Carter and Nolan had to get through to find a way to disable the self-destruct.

What we didn't know was that three Jaffa warriors were trapped on the computer-core level and escaped when Jacob opened the door to let Carter and Nolan in. Jacob later told me that they didn't show up on our life scanners because they were able to hibernate and slow their heartbeats. He called it "kelnoreem." Who trapped them in there was still a mystery. Carter supposed that Thor had infected the ship with a virus while he was linked with it. That screwed up the systems, causing Anubis and crew to abandon ship, then ceased the self-destruct and sent the ship to Earth. The three Jaffas were just unlucky.

But now the Jaffas were out and they went straight to the shield-generator room where Dr. Friesen had gone even though I ordered him not to. You should always follow orders from your commander.

Dr. Friesen didn't and it got him killed. I found his body in the room. Then the Jaffa went up to the bridge and knocked out Jacob. They also disabled the drive controls and we started towards Earth's atmosphere fast. I called Teal'c and told him to ring us out. But when he activated the transport rings, the Jaffas appeared on our cargo ship. Teal'c took out all three in seconds, but during the battle, the ring-transmission crystals had been destroyed. We were stuck on the mothership about to crash into the North Pacific.

Meanwhile, Teal'c and Jonas had returned to SG Command. General Hammond ordered an undersea rescue via a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle. Teal'c and Jonas joined the effort. Jacob had us raise the shields and set inertial dampening to maximum so when we splashed down, the ship and us survived in one piece. But we were under the sea. And to make matters worse, the impact weakened the hull and the ship's lower levels were flooding, including the engineering level where Carter and I were. Suddenly, the security protocols locked the door on us and we were going to drown.

Jacob tried to override the system, but no luck. Just when I was experiencing major shrinkage, not to mention lack of air, the doors opened and we were free.

Carter now surmised that the virus she thought Thor left behind was Thor himself. It was his garbled voice coming over the intercom all this time. His mind took over the vessel, made the Jaffa abandon ship, stopped the self-destruct and sent Earth the mothership. Way to go, Thor! While not all you newbies will have access to an ancient, noble and powerful alien species, the point is, you need friends when you're out Stargating around the galaxy.

Teal'c and Jonas arrived in the DSRV and were ready to get us out using the escape-pod tubes, but we had a big decision to make. Thor's mind was the only thing halting the self-destruct. If we separated him from the ship's mainframe so the Asgard could put his consciousness into a newly cloned body, the ship would explode. In the end, I decided that having the Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet owe me one was better than a mothership that would never fly again. But the next mothership we come across is definitely mine. I mean SG Command's.

But we weren't out of the water yet. The tubes Teal'c and Jonas used to get in through were now flooded. And now that we'd removed the computer drive containing Thor's mind, the self-destruct was counting down. Our only hope was to take a couple of Goa'uld gliders and hope they were sea worthy. But now there was another problem. You'll learn in time that's always the case. The force field that prevents space or in this case, water from flooding the Glider bay after the hanger doors were opened was not operating. And Jacob couldn't fix it.

Well, guess what? Jonas, who's always going on about how he's read every detail about our missions, Goa'uld technology. etc., finally proved his mettle by diving into a flooded deck to a relay panel and bypassing the circuits controlling the force field. It was on! Jonas joined us and we all got out of there, just before the ship went up.

Lord, I miss Daniel. But it looks like Jonas is going to work out after all.


Carmen Argenziano . . . . . . Jacob Carter / Selmak
Colin Cunningham . . . . . . Major Davis
Gary Jones . . . . . . Technician

Writers . . . . . . Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
Director . . . . . . Peter DeLuise

Posted By: Gizmo_Goddard Aug 02, 2002 - 01:46 pm

Nice report!

__!_!__
Gizmo