Chapter 7 : THE FIRST CLAIM
[P3X-797 — Ridge Approach — Day 5, 1230 Hours]
The blister on my right heel burst somewhere around the two-kilometer mark.
I kept walking. SG-2 moved in a loose diamond formation around me — Kawalsky on point, Greer and Warren on the flanks, Mendez covering our six. They covered ground like it was something they'd been born doing, boots finding purchase on the red-packed earth with an economy of movement that made my own stumbling progress look exactly like what it was: a desk jockey pretending to belong outdoors.
The terrain rose steadily toward the ridge. Rust-colored stone broke through the soil in jagged shelves, and the vegetation — scrubby, low-growing things with thick waxy leaves — thinned as altitude increased. The abandoned Goa'uld infrastructure appeared in fragments: a toppled relay tower, its gold-and-obsidian plating dulled by decades of weather. A drainage channel cut into rock, dry now, stained with chemical residue. Sections of conduit running parallel to the dirt track, half-buried, their insulation cracked and peeling.
The system catalogued each piece automatically. Text scrolled at the edge of my vision:
[INFRASTRUCTURE ELEMENT: GOA'ULD POWER RELAY — STATUS: NONFUNCTIONAL — SALVAGE VALUE: LOW]
[INFRASTRUCTURE ELEMENT: EXTRACTION DRAINAGE — STATUS: STRUCTURAL INTACT — REPAIR ESTIMATE: 40 HOURS LABOR]
[INFRASTRUCTURE ELEMENT: MATERIAL TRANSPORT CONDUIT — STATUS: 60% INTACT — REPAIR ESTIMATE: 120 HOURS LABOR]
I recorded each assessment in the survey notebook, translating system data into civilian geological shorthand that would survive scrutiny from Carter's lab. The trick was attribution — every observation needed a plausible source. Naquadah concentration estimates came from "portable spectrometry readings." Infrastructure condition assessments came from "visual inspection and structural analysis." Nothing came from the alien AI feeding data directly into my visual cortex.
"Ramsey." Kawalsky's voice, low, from ten meters ahead. He held up a fist — the universal military signal for stop.
I stopped.
He crouched beside a patch of disturbed soil at the track's edge. Deep gouges in the packed earth, four parallel lines, each groove wider than my thumb.
"Claw marks," he said. "Something heavy. Three, four hundred pounds minimum, judging by the depth." He touched the edge of the nearest gouge. "Fresh. Within the last day or two."
Warren moved to cover the uphill approach, P-90 sweeping the rock formations above us. Greer mirrored him on the downhill side.
[WILDLIFE DETECTED: UNIDENTIFIED PREDATOR — ESTIMATED MASS: 150-200 KG — CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN — THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE TO HIGH]
"How close to the mining complex?" I asked.
"We're about a klick out." Kawalsky stood and adjusted his weapon. "Could be territorial markings. Could be a game trail. Either way, we move tight and keep noise down."
We moved tight. The last kilometer took thirty minutes — careful, deliberate progress through increasingly dense rock formations that narrowed the track to a corridor barely wide enough for two abreast. My pack straps dug into my shoulders. The burst blister sent a hot wire of pain up my ankle with each step. The amber sky pressed down, heavy and warm, and the alien air tasted like copper and ozone as the naquadah concentrations intensified.
The mining complex appeared around a blind turn in the rock.
---
[P3X-797 Mining Complex — Day 5, 1400 Hours]
Goa'uld architecture had a specific aesthetic — gold-trimmed, vaguely Egyptian, built to impress slaves into obedience. The mining complex on P3X-797 had been stripped of its decorative elements decades ago, leaving bare functional structure: processing chambers carved into the ridgeline, reinforced with a dark alloy the system identified as trinium-steel composite. Extraction machinery squatted in open-air bays, heavy drill assemblies and conveyor systems locked in their last operating positions, coated in red dust. A barracks block — rectangular, windowless, utilitarian — sat adjacent to the main processing facility.
The whole site covered roughly two acres. Abandoned but intact. Like a factory that had closed for the weekend and nobody came back Monday.
SG-2 cleared the buildings by teams while I stood at the complex entrance and let the system work.
[SCANNING TERRITORY... AREA: 18.4 SQUARE KILOMETERS (CLAIM RADIUS FROM STARGATE) — HOSTILE PRESENCE: NONE WITHIN SCAN RANGE — TERRITORY CLAIM: AVAILABLE]
[TERRITORY CLASSIFICATION: TIER 1 — RESOURCE NODE — NAQUADAH PRIMARY, TRINIUM SECONDARY]
[INITIATE CLAIM? Y/N]
"Yes."
[TERRITORY CLAIM INITIATED — INTEGRATION PERIOD: 6 HOURS — HOST MUST REMAIN WITHIN CLAIM RADIUS — COST: 50 NQ (DEFERRED UNTIL FIRST PRODUCTION CYCLE)]
[INTEGRATION PROGRESS: 0%... 1%... 2%...]
The process was invisible to anyone but me. No lights, no sounds, no visible energy field. The system simply began... mapping. I could feel it like a low hum at the base of my skull — the AI extending its awareness outward, cataloguing terrain features, resource deposits, structural elements, biological signatures. Building a model of the territory in the same quantum space where it lived inside my neural architecture.
Six hours. I needed to stay within the claim radius — roughly eighteen kilometers from the gate, plenty of room — while the integration completed. That meant sleeping on-site. Kawalsky would need a reason.
"Major." I crossed to where he stood reviewing the barracks interior. "The survey's going to take longer than expected. The infrastructure condition data alone is worth a thorough catalogue. I'd like to request we stay overnight — the barracks look structurally sound."
Kawalsky swept his flashlight across the interior. Rows of stone bunks, Goa'uld design, built for durability rather than comfort. A water reclamation unit — dead, but the piping was intact. Storage alcoves empty of everything except dust.
"Twenty-four-hour survey was within mission parameters." He checked his watch. "We'll establish a perimeter, set watch rotation, and be back at the gate by 0800 tomorrow. Your geological assessment better be worth the overtime."
"It will be."
I spent the next two hours walking the complex with my survey notebook open and the system feeding me data I couldn't have acquired any other way. Naquadah veins ran through the ridge in three primary seams — the deepest at forty meters, accessible through the existing shaft infrastructure. Trinium deposits clustered near the surface in a secondary formation east of the main complex. The extraction machinery was repairable — heavy maintenance, maybe two hundred labor-hours, but functional once restored.
I sketched it all down, filling pages with geological notations and infrastructure diagrams. The system provided the data; I provided the human-readable translation. Two versions of the same truth, one invisible and one that would survive a Carter-level audit.
A piece of refined naquadah sat on a workbench in the processing facility — a cylinder the size of a battery, left behind when the Goa'uld operation shut down. I picked it up. Warm. Not body-temperature warm, but intrinsically warm, like the material itself generated heat at a molecular level. Heavy for its size, dense, with a faint metallic sheen that caught the amber light from the open bay doors.
"This is what powers the gate. This is what powers everything. And there's a mountain of it under my feet."
I pocketed the sample and kept writing.
Kawalsky found me in the processing facility at dusk, hunched over the workbench with my notebook and a headlamp the quartermaster had packed.
"Sun's down in thirty minutes." He glanced at the pages of notes spread across the bench. "You've been at this for four hours."
"There's a lot to document."
"There's also something with claws out there that we need to prepare for." He set a field ration on the bench beside my notebook. "Eat. Then help Warren set up the motion sensors."
The ration was chicken something. It tasted like salt and regret. But it was hot — the chemical heating element worked on the first pull, which felt like a minor miracle — and after seven hours of walking, climbing, and cataloguing on an alien planet, my body accepted whatever calories it could get.
"Andrew Callahan's last meal was a microwaved pad thai eaten alone in a condo he couldn't afford. Drew Ramsey's first meal on another world is military chicken something eaten on a workbench while an alien AI maps the territory around him."
The irony was sharp enough to cut.
I ate. Then I helped Warren with the motion sensors.
---
[P3X-797 Mining Complex — Perimeter — Day 5, 2100 Hours]
The eyes appeared at nightfall.
Four sets, reflecting the chemical glow sticks SG-2 had placed at the perimeter — green light bouncing off retinas designed for a different spectrum, throwing back flat amber discs that tracked our movements from thirty meters beyond the sensor line.
"Contact," Warren said, voice flat. "Four signatures. Large quadrupeds. Holding position."
Kawalsky raised binoculars. In the green-tinged darkness, the predators resolved into shapes — low-slung, muscular, covered in plates of something that might have been scale or might have been armor. Heads broad and flat, jaws disproportionately large. Built for ambush in rocky terrain.
[FAUNA CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN — PREDATORY BEHAVIOR PATTERN — PACK HUNTERS — ESTIMATED INDIVIDUAL THREAT: MODERATE — PACK THREAT: HIGH]
"They're not charging," Kawalsky said. "Holding at the edge. Testing us."
"New predator encounter behavior," Mendez offered from his position at the barracks entrance. "They don't know what we are yet."
"Let's keep it that way." Kawalsky lowered the binoculars. "Nobody fires unless they breach the thirty-meter line. Ramsey, you're inside the barracks. Non-negotiable."
I didn't argue.
The integration timer ticked forward in my peripheral vision: 34%... 35%... 36%...
It was going to be a long night.
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