Chapter 6 : THE SURVEY
[Briefing Room — Level 27 — Day 5, 1100 Hours]
The projection screen showed a topographic map of P3X-797 rendered from SG-5's orbital relay data — green and brown contours overlaid with geological survey markers in red. Naquadah concentration zones glowed amber, clustered in a ridge formation four kilometers from the Stargate's surface position.
I stood beside the screen with a laser pointer and the twelve-page proposal printed in triplicate, two copies already distributed. Hammond sat at the head of the briefing table, hands folded. O'Neill occupied his usual chair with the studied boredom of a man who'd rather be anywhere else. Carter and Jackson flanked him — Carter's attention on the geological data with genuine interest, Jackson's politely divided between the briefing and whatever Ancient text he'd been translating before being summoned.
Kawalsky sat at the far end of the table.
He'd been released from medical yesterday — forty-eight hours post-surgery, neural function confirmed nominal, the scar on the back of his neck hidden by his collar. He moved carefully, the way people moved when they'd been opened up and put back together and were still waiting to see if everything held. His eyes found mine when I looked up from the proposal, and something passed between us that wasn't gratitude — it was assessment. He was measuring whether the man who'd saved his life was worth the risk of trusting.
"P3X-797," I said, clicking the pointer to the geological overlay. "Abandoned Goa'uld mining operation, last active approximately forty to sixty years ago based on infrastructure decay analysis. SG-5 surveyed the site six months ago and confirmed no hostile presence, intact extraction infrastructure, and naquadah concentrations rated at category three — that's commercially significant by any standard."
"Commercially significant." O'Neill's tone could strip paint. "We're the Air Force, not a mining company."
"With respect, Colonel, you're the Air Force with alien technology, alien enemies, and no budget line that covers 'building defenses against galactic threats.' Naquadah powers your gate, your weapons research, and every piece of alien technology Captain Carter's lab is trying to reverse-engineer. Right now, your entire supply comes from what SG teams bring back in their pockets. P3X-797 could provide a sustained extraction pipeline."
Carter leaned forward.
"The naquadah concentrations are legitimate. I reviewed Ramsey's geological analysis this morning — the methodology is sound, and the yield projections are conservative if anything. If even half the ridge formation contains viable deposits, we're looking at more refined naquadah in six months than we've acquired in the past year."
"The question isn't whether the resource is valuable." Hammond's voice cut through the crosstalk. "The question is whether we have the personnel and security capability to establish an ongoing operation on an alien planet."
"Sir, I'm not proposing a permanent base." I advanced the slide to a mission timeline. "Phase one is a forty-eight-hour reconnaissance survey. One team, standard equipment, geological sampling kit. We confirm the deposits match the remote data, assess the condition of the existing infrastructure, and evaluate security requirements for a longer-term presence. If the survey doesn't support further operations, we pack up and come home. Total cost: one team, two days, minimal resource expenditure."
"And if it does support further operations?"
"Then we have the data to make an informed decision about phase two. But that's a conversation for after the survey, not before."
Hammond considered. O'Neill opened his mouth—
"I'll volunteer SG-2."
Kawalsky's voice was quiet, but it stopped the room. He sat straight in his chair, one hand resting on the table, the other absently touching the back of his neck where the scar tissue was still fresh.
"Major, you were released from medical yesterday," Hammond said. "Are you cleared for gate travel?"
"Dr. Fraiser cleared me this morning, sir. Light duty, non-combat role. A survey mission qualifies." He glanced at me. "The consultant saved my life. I'd like to see what he can do with a planet."
The room recalibrated. O'Neill's expression shifted from reflexive opposition to something more complicated — he couldn't argue against a man he'd served with for years volunteering for a mission the man had literally died to be available for. Carter gave a small nod. Jackson looked between Kawalsky and me with the particular expression of an archaeologist who recognized a narrative forming in real time.
"Approved." Hammond closed his copy of the proposal. "Forty-eight hours, standard survey protocol, SG-2 provides security. Mr. Ramsey, you're authorized as resource assessment specialist for this mission. First contact protocols apply — any sign of hostile presence, you abort and return."
"Understood, sir."
"Wheels up at 0600 tomorrow. Dismissed."
---
[Quartermaster Station — Level 26 — Day 5, 1400 Hours]
The field pack weighed thirty-two pounds.
I knew because I weighed it twice, standing on the quartermaster's scale like a grocery shopper checking produce. The supply sergeant — a barrel-chested master sergeant named Hendricks who clearly had opinions about civilians going offworld — watched with unconcealed judgment.
"Standard forty-eight-hour field kit. MREs, water purification, first aid, comm unit, survival blanket, flashlight, multitool." He ticked items off a checklist. "Sidearm?"
"I'm not weapons-qualified."
His eyebrows communicated entire paragraphs of disapproval.
"Flare gun, then. And a radio. You stay with SG-2 at all times. If Major Kawalsky tells you to move, you move. If he tells you to run, you run. If he tells you to shut up and hide behind a rock—"
"I hide behind a rock. Understood, Sergeant."
He grunted and handed me the pack. I slung it over my shoulders and staggered — thirty-two pounds distributed across a frame designed for someone who'd completed basic training, which I had not. The straps bit into my shoulders. The hip belt needed adjusting. The chest buckle didn't click on the first try, or the second.
"Andrew Callahan's idea of heavy lifting was carrying two laptops through an airport."
I adjusted the straps until the weight settled somewhere survivable and walked the corridor twice to test the fit. My lower back protested by the second lap. The boots — issued that morning, still stiff, not yet broken in — rubbed against my right heel with the persistent promise of a blister.
Kawalsky found me in the equipment staging area, repacking my kit for the third time.
"You've never done this before." It wasn't a question.
"The pack, the gate, or the alien planet?"
"Any of it." He sat on the bench across from me and watched my hands fumble with the compression straps. "Here." He reached over and adjusted the hip belt, shifting the weight distribution to my pelvis. The shoulder pressure eased immediately. "Hips carry the load, not shoulders. Basic infantry knowledge."
"I appreciate it."
"Don't appreciate it yet. I haven't decided if I'm babysitting or backing up." He straightened and studied me the way he had in the briefing room — that measuring look, the calculation of debt against risk. "Ramsey, I need to ask you something, and I need a straight answer."
"Ask."
"How did you know about the snake?"
The same question, from the third person in three days. Janet. Hammond. Now Kawalsky. Each asking from a different angle — Janet from medical precision, Hammond from command authority, Kawalsky from the raw, personal urgency of a man who'd had an alien parasite extracted from his spine.
"I recognized the risk pattern," I said. "Alien contact, hostile environment, parasitic species. The Goa'uld reproduce through infestation — that's not classified anymore, not after yesterday. The logical conclusion was that returning personnel needed screening for exactly that vector."
"Logical conclusion." He rolled the words around his mouth like he was tasting them for poison. "You know, most people's logical conclusions don't save lives."
"Most people don't pay attention to the right details."
He stood. The movement was careful — the surgery scar pulled when he turned too fast, and he compensated with a slight rotation of his shoulders that he probably thought was invisible.
"I owe you my life, Ramsey. I take debts seriously. But I also take my team's safety seriously, and right now you're an unknown variable walking into a potentially hostile environment with four soldiers who depend on each other." He met my eyes. "Don't make me regret paying this debt."
"I won't."
"Then be ready at 0500. We run pre-mission checks before breakfast, and we don't wait for stragglers."
He left. I sat with the pack on my lap and the weight of his conditional trust pressing harder than the thirty-two pounds.
---
[Gate Room — Level 28 — Day 6, 0600 Hours]
The Stargate stood dormant in its cradle, and I stood at the base of the ramp trying to convince my legs to carry me up it.
SG-2 flanked me in tactical formation — Kawalsky on point, Lieutenant Greer and Sergeant Warren at the sides, Corporal Mendez bringing up the rear. They wore full combat loadout: tactical vests, P-90 submachine guns, sidearms, enough ammunition to fight a small war. I wore contractor blues with a field pack and a flare gun I hadn't fired since a safety demonstration at a Raytheon team-building retreat in 2014. A lifetime ago. Someone else's lifetime.
The dialing computer hummed. Walter Harriman — the gate technician I'd seen working the controls during the Apophis attack — called the chevron sequence in a calm monotone that belied the impossibility of what he was doing.
"Chevron one, encoded."
The inner ring spun, each symbol passing through the alignment track with a mechanical chunk that resonated in my chest.
"Chevron two, encoded."
I flexed my hands inside the work gloves the quartermaster had issued. The right one still had the bandage from the stairwell scrape underneath, the adhesive pulling against healing skin.
"Chevron three, encoded."
Kawalsky looked back at me.
"First time?"
"That obvious?"
"You're standing like a man waiting for a bus that might explode." He adjusted his weapon. "It's disorienting. The transit feels like being pulled apart and put back together. Lasts about three seconds. Don't fight it."
"Chevron four, encoded."
"What if I throw up?"
"Point away from me."
"Chevron five, encoded."
"Chevron six, encoded."
My hands were shaking again. I pressed them against the straps of my pack and gripped until the tremor became invisible. The system text flickered:
[STARGATE ACTIVATION: P3X-797 — TRANSIT CALCULATION: SAFE — ESTIMATED JOURNEY TIME: 3.2 SECONDS]
[NOTE: HOST MAY EXPERIENCE DISORIENTATION, NAUSEA, AND SENSORY DISTURBANCE DURING INITIAL TRANSITS]
"Chevron seven — locked."
The event horizon erupted.
There was no other word for it. The unstable vortex punched forward from the ring — a column of superheated plasma that would vaporize anything in its path — then collapsed backward into the shimmering blue-silver surface that the show had never quite captured. On television, it looked like a pool of light. In reality, it looked like a hole in the world — a window into somewhere that existed at a distance you couldn't comprehend, held open by technology so far beyond human understanding that standing in front of it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff that went sideways instead of down.
The event horizon hummed. A low, subsonic vibration that I didn't hear so much as feel — in my teeth, my joints, the hollow of my chest. The air temperature dropped three degrees.
"Move out," Kawalsky said.
SG-2 walked up the ramp. Greer first, then Warren, then Kawalsky waved me forward. I put one foot on the metal grating. Then the other. Each step rang against the ramp like a bell tolling countdown.
At the top, the event horizon filled my entire field of vision. Close enough to touch. The surface rippled like disturbed water, patterns forming and dissolving in ways that suggested geometry that didn't belong to three-dimensional space.
"This is where it starts. Everything after this — the territories, the alliances, the fleet, all of it — starts with this step."
I walked into the light.
The universe came apart.
Three point two seconds of dissolution — my body ceased to exist as a physical object and became information, streaming through a subspace conduit at speeds that made light look stationary. No sensation. No thought. Just a gap between one existence and the next, like the pause between heartbeats stretched into eternity.
Then gravity grabbed me and slammed me back into reality.
I stumbled out of the event horizon on P3X-797 and dropped to one knee on alien soil. Red dirt, hard-packed, scattered with gravel that had a faint metallic sheen. The sky was amber — not blue, amber, like the inside of a whiskey bottle held up to the sun. Twin shadows stretched from my knees, cast by a star that was brighter and more orange than Sol.
My stomach heaved. I swallowed it down, pressed one hand into the dirt, and pushed myself upright.
"You good?" Kawalsky's voice, behind me.
"I'm good."
"You don't look good."
"I'll be good in a minute."
SG-2 fanned out in a security perimeter, scanning the terrain with trained efficiency. The Stargate stood behind us on a stone platform — Ancient construction, weathered but solid, surrounded by scrub vegetation and low rock formations. Ahead, a dirt track led toward the ridge formation visible on the geological survey — dark stone striped with veins of something that caught the amber light and threw it back in dull gold.
The system bloomed into activity:
[LOCATION: P3X-797 — DESIGNATION: UNCLAIMED — GOULD INFRASTRUCTURE DETECTED: 4.2 KM NORTHEAST]
[NAQUADAH DEPOSITS CONFIRMED — CATEGORY 3 — EXTRACTION VIABLE]
[TERRITORY CLAIM AVAILABLE — HOST AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED]
[HOSTILE PRESENCE: NONE DETECTED WITHIN SENSOR RANGE]
I breathed alien air that tasted like dust and copper and something faintly sweet, like distant wildflowers. The orange star warmed my face. Red dirt stained my knees.
"First alien world. First step toward building something real."
I stood up straight, shouldered my pack, and followed SG-2 toward the ridge.
Forty-eight hours. One survey. One chance to prove that a dead project manager with an alien AI in his head could turn an abandoned mining world into the foundation of something that would keep Earth alive.
The ridge waited, dark stone and golden veins, four point two kilometers of alien landscape between me and the beginning of everything.
Kawalsky set the pace. I matched it, ignoring the blister forming on my right heel.
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