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Chapter 2
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Southern Wales, United Kingdom
It was a small thing, the hangers were old, built in the Second World War, and whilst they had been refitted several times, one small section of wire had been missed repeatedly. Barely a meter long, in the normal run of things it would perhaps not have mattered. After all, despite their large size, these buildings were mostly empty space, meant to simply cover aircraft whilst engineers worked on them.
True, several of the hangers contained full workshops to allow the engineers to repair or even build some parts if necessary, but not this one.
Then, Admiral Thompson arrived, and with him came extra staff, tool and die sets, more offices and the hangers were turned swiftly into an assembly plant for perhaps the most classified aircraft construction project in British history.
For a time, perhaps longer then could be expected, the old section of wire held.
Until one day, it didn't.
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Outwardly calm and confident the young Lieutenant Peters strode into the cluttered office, every surface, every wall covered with schematics, plans and classified blueprints, all the paraphernalia of a new force being founded, created from scratch.
An office that was very definitely a security nightmare, just 30 seconds with a camera and half the classified weapons projects in the UK would be blown. Still, that was why there was a guard on the door.
Standing a respectful distance from the desk, her body at parade rest Peters addressed the commanding presence of the man hunched over a warship blueprint on the heavy polished oak desk.
“Sir, Airhead 's 9, 8 & 7 are now on route to Mars with hull segments, numbers 6 & 5 have lifted the Shunter 's to orbit and are on re-entry, Airhead 3 is boosting with another hull section, 1 is delayed and 4 has been declared an engineering causality, the fire caused more damage than was initially anticipated.”
“Damn!” Thompson cursed, shoving his chair backwards from the desk, the sun from the window to his right glinting off the four gold stars attached with military precision to his uniform “that's 2 down already! And we can't afford to replace any, not now, it's too soon.”
“Admiral, I have started a new schedule to compensate, but the loss of two of our cargo birds will cause delays regardless of scheduling, Engineering is breaking up number 4 for spare parts now, but it's doubtful anything will be salvageable from 2 sir, she was at the centre of the fire and suffered accordingly.”
“Replacements?”
With a grimace, she replied, “not practical at the moment sir. We're over budget as it is, and with construction having started on the station, all our resources have been diverted there. It would take at the very least three months and more likely five to crash build more airheads and the diversion of effort would only slow down the construction of Thundersdawn and put us further over budget.”
“Okay,” grunting reluctant agreement, the Admiral ran his right hand through his hair in an unconscious gesture of frustration “get the updated schedule to me by 2100 hours please, good work Lieutenant.”
Nodding, Peters turned and briskly left the room leaving the admiral to his thoughts and his work.
Inside the office, Thompson had turned to the window behind his desk overlooking the main hanger where about 20 of the best brains in the Queens Armed Forces had were being shown the new craft, by the children who had developed them.
‘A 5 billion pound budget in the hands of some kids', he turned from the window, a tight, wry grin lighting his face for a moment before with a iggh, he reached once more for the paperwork on his desk.
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SGC
Hammond stepped through his office door into the briefing room, and almost stopped in sheer shock. All of SG-1 was there, on time, no waiting for Daniel to be dragged from a translation or Carter to be pulled from some new device or theory. He hid a small smile as his mind began to play “that's great it starts with an earthquake….”
Shaking his head slightly, he moved to his chair quickly and sat down.
“So…” O'Neill asked expectantly.
“NORAD says at least 7 of these unidentified craft have left RAF St Athan so far, 2 of which are now re-entering our atmosphere having left a pair of what appear to be tugs behind” Hammond paused, “the CIA are not happy, they had an agent on the base, but she turned up unconscious at the US embassy in London, with ‘better luck next time' tattooed on her forehead.”
O'Neill smirked at that, trading a grin with Carter, they could imagine at how impressed the CIA was with that.
“The President got in contact with the British Prime Minister, who claimed ownership of the craft, and then told the President that they would share as much technology with us as we have with them, nothing, or damn near it.”
“In somewhat politer terms I bet,” O'Neill grumbled.
Nodding agreement, the General glanced around the room, “ideas people.”
“Well, we definitely need to take a look,” Carter stated, “first we need to determine how they managed to build spaceworthy craft… How far exactly are they taking these craft?”
“So far, they have made five return trips to Mars.”
“In less then a day?” Daniel asked surprised.
Teal'c nodded agreement, “then they are likely not using rockets.”
“That appears to be a given,” Hammond replied.
“So either we have a breech…”
Carter nodded, finishing the Colonels sentence, “or they had outside assistance.”
“I may just be playing devils advocate here,” Daniel shrugged, “but isn't it possible that this is something they cooked up on their own.”
“Not likely,” O'Neill replied, “Carter?”
“Agreed,” she shrugged, “but not impossible. I would have thought some indications would have shown up in the science papers I've been following but given how tight security has apparently been on this operation…”
“We need to know either way,” Hammond sighed, “but have our own security to consider and we are talking about an allied nation.”
“Plus we evidently do have a breech,” Daniel noted, “given the Prime Ministers comments to the President.”
There was a slight pause as this was considered, then O'Neill spoke, “great… so do they know the details or just the general idea?”
“We don't know,” the General replied, “CIA is scrambling as we speak but their operation in the UK is evidently compromised.”
“I'm somewhat surprised we actually have a genuine operation in the UK ,” Carter shrugged, “beyond the absolute basics and the embassies I mean.”
Nodding reluctant agreement, Hammond took a long look around the briefing room table, making eye contact with each member of SG-1, StarGate command's premier team in turn before speaking; “I don't see that we have much of a choice. SG-1, you are going to Wales , recon RAF St Athan but don't do anything that might cause any kind of incident, understood?”
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RAF St Athan
Peters knocked once at the door then followed the knock swiftly into the room, “Sir, according to ‘Murielle', SG-1 just boarded a plane to Cardiff-Wales International”
He looked up from the paperwork and raised a sardonic eyebrow “Cutting it a bit fine aren't they? I would have landed a bit farther away.”
Peters grinned as she looked out of the corner window, a 747 descending to Cardiff-Wales clearly in view “Like outside of visual range, sir?” her voice and expression would have fooled a Angel into thinking she was an innocent, the admiral smiled, he wasn't fooled, he knew she occasionally displayed a mischievous streak a mile wide. “ London perhaps?”
The admiral just shook his head amused, but continued seriously “This will have to be handled very carefully. Right now the Yanks could shut us down without too much trouble and if Kinsley and the NID have any say in the matter we will either become subservient to them or we will be shut down, by any means necessary”
Peters nodded, “They could just park a ship in orbit, shoot anything we try to launch into orbit, and laugh at us because we can't complain due to the secrecy of this project. Our only real answer would be to threaten the security of their project but they would have to be willing to bet we wouldn't want to have to deal with any of the fallout from Stargate Command being forced into the public domain.”
“End result would still be the same, the Americans would retain control and Thundersdawn will never get built.” Thompson said, agreeing, “and taking control of alien technology out of the hands of a single nation is certainly a primary goal.”
“Well, what is the plan then?”
“Simple really, they need to be kept of balance, reactive” Thompson shrugged, “So I will have to overwhelm them, dominate the situation and keep them from thinking too much.”
Peters nodded, agreeing, “What do you need sir?”
“Get me a RA Corporals uniform and have a squad ready, let's start as soon as they arrive shall we? I think a reception might just be in order”