30 days later
Atlantis Project
When they had stood up the `Atlantis Project´ Sara Sinclair hadn’t been sure if she should be happy or sad. That was until someone somewhere in the command structure had put her in charge of the military contribution to the thing. Taylor and his ship would have to make do without her for a while - or maybe even forever.
Lots of things had changed in the last month. Sara had built the mission's military command center in one hall of what they had dubbed the capitol. The enormous building with the rings in it had become something of a symbol for their expedition. Over the last weeks, more and more scientists from dozens of countries had been vetted and then sent here to find out anything they could about the island, this ancient city and the mysterious system in the capitol's arrival hall. To her dislike, Julian Greer had been put in charge of the scientific portion of their operation. In the first days, one of the new scientists had deciphered some of the writing that had been engraved on many of the walls. Even though she herself had gotten a degree in linguistics at the military University, she had a hard time understanding what that language was and how it worked.
At least at first. After a few weeks of living in the city she felt as if she slowly got better at understanding it. Which was weird, because she had had little time or reason to learn any of it. It almost felt like the city had a soul? And it wanted her to understand it.
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She sighed as she threw off her military issue cot’s scratchy sheet. Today was going to be a long day, and reminiscing about the things they had already accomplished wouldn’t make it any better. She would have to lead the politicians from many of the states behinds their little operation through the city and get them to support them even more and longer. The day before Julian, herself and Evelyn Astor, the civilian bureaucrat put in charge of the Atlantis Project, had taken to drawing straws, or in their case pencils, on who would get the honor of showing their visitors around. Naturally, she had drawn the short one. She didn’t like, but it had to be done.
There were some forces who hated the thought of the military being involved in what was essentially an archaeological expedition. Although even they had to admit that it wasn’t exactly a regular archaeological dig site. For a change, she had to admit to herself, that her own government was probably not the one pushing the hardest for a completely civilian mission. She suspected one of the European member states.
She slipped out of her cot and grabbed the uniform and towel she had laid out last night for today, before she headed for a quick shower and a light breakfast. The politicians should arrive in about one hour, just enough time for one last update from her second in command. After breakfast, of course.
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Sara straightened her uniform one last time as she hurried down the large stone pier of what they had determined to be the city's passenger port. The small ship with her visitors was about to arrive. She gave her best to plaster a pleasant smile on her face as she saluted every single the representatives and briefly shook their hands.
“Welcome to Atlantis!” She welcomed the politicians on the island and led them towards the city. “I’m Commander Sara Sinclair and in command of the military component of this operation. I intend to give you a brief tour through the city, ending with what we have called the capitol.” She gave a conspiratorial smirk to everyone in the delegation. “We will have snacks there and the highlight of this tour: the arrival room.” “Arrival room?” One delegate, a tall blonde man, asked. “Well. Yes, that’s what we believe the inhabitants of this city called it.” Sinclair answered. “Intriguing”, he whispered more to the surrounding delegates than to her as they continued with the tour. It took the party almost two hours to finish their sightseeing tour of the old city. They met several work parties busy searching through buildings, streets and stores along the way, and all the delegates feigned at least a passing interest in their work. All except one. The tall blonde man seemed to be only interested in the highlight of their tour.
When Sarah finally led her little posse up the marble stairs of the capitol building and through the hall of statues, the relaxed atmosphere in their group suddenly changed. She could almost feel all the eyes behind her focus on the statue of the uniformed woman next to the doorway on the opposite side of the hall.
One delegate, a blonde woman, wearing black thick-rimmed glasses that reminded Sara of her high school teacher, tugged Sara's arm as she stepped up to her.
“Don’t you think such pranks are sacrilegious?” Sara was a bit surprised, but also slightly amused at the thought of them building a fake statue to prank the delegates.
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“Excuse me?” She got her face back under her command as she turned around to the woman.” We found it like this. There is no ‘prank’ here. I’m not in the business of pranking people.” The woman took a half step back at the outburst. But Sara felt like she hadn’t really persuaded her. And that could be a problem. If more of the delegates concluded that the military was trying to scam them for more funding, they might just decide to put the project into civilian hands. And she didn’t think that would be safe. Considering the nature of this entire city and especially the next room.
Apparently, the delegate had found her footing again: “Be that as it may. Show us to the ‘arrival room’, please. So that we can be finally done with this.” She pronounced the arrival room like she had added imaginary quotation marks, making fun of this mission. Sara was a completely stumped by the entire affair. She had never thought that someone could willfully close their eyes to the truth like that. How cemented in your beliefs do you have to be to accuse your own military of constructing such an elaborate ruse just to stay in control?
She couldn’t wait to get these people off her island again.
And she would have to make sure that the next time they drew straws, the game was rigged in her favor.
She did her best to not show her disgust with the delegates, especially the blonde woman, outwardly as she led them into the next room. “This is what we believe to be the heart of the building, maybe even the entire city.”
She was greeted by silence. And probably not the stunned kind she had to admit to herself. She sighed inwardly as she led them further into the room.
“What you can see in front of you is what we call the arrival room.” She pointed at writing in a foreign language on the wall above the enormous doorway they had entered the hall through. “Or at least that’s what we think the writing over the door means.” She continued walking over to the middle of the room. “As you can see, this room is dominated by the three rings you can see behind me. We aren’t exactly sure of their purpose yet.” She pointed at the metal rails built into the ground before her. “This puzzles us the most. Rails leading up to each of the rings. As you can see, when you turn around, the rails lead out through this gate at the side of the hall, right next to what we believe is some kind of command center.” She turned to her right and pointed at the large gate. “Our working theory, and believe me when I tell you I know how it sounds, is that the rails were used to bring trains through the city into this room. As you may have noticed, the rails lead down to the dockyards. There are also three lines leading to other parts of the island.”
When she had finished, the mysterious tall blonde man, who had not taken her eyes off her, contrary to the other delegates who had been busy taking in the room, talked. “And what would these people have done with all these trains in this hall?” Sara had been prepared for that question, although she had to admit that it didn’t make her answer sound any more believable.
She harrumphed as she started again. “We have actually spent considerable time with that question. And we have come to the tentative conclusion that these rings are actually gates. Gates that lead to another planet. At least that’s what the controls on the dais in the back lead us to believe. We activated most of them and even though we only understand part of what they do, one of them shows star charts and the other shows a kind of network.”
Before she could continue any further, she was interrupted by her blonde adversary again. She laughed out loud. “This is preposterous! Do you think we are that stupid? How could you think anyone could believe that ridiculous tale?”
Sara was really annoyed by that woman. She only hoped that the others weren’t that stupid. She had to know that there would have been better ways to scam the government out of more money for the military.
“So, when will you open the gates?” The mysterious blonde man asked, ignoring his colleague's outburst. Interesting, Sara thought to herself. He doesn’t seem very shocked or even surprised by the entire revelation.
“We will first…” Sara couldn’t end her sentence as the entire hall shook and the gate at the farthest wall turned. The delegation irrupted into chaos as the politicians fled the room, probably believing the entire building was about to come down on their heads. Only the mysterious man remained behind. Looking at the opening gate with a mixture of intrigue and… anticipation? Before Sara could think any more about him, she tore her mind away from him and ordered the marines that came running into the room from one of the side doors to take up a position between the control area and the gate.
The marines, who had arrived on the island shortly after the initial landing to provide her with an experienced security force, barely got into anything resembling a firing line before the gate stop moving and a bright purple shine erupted inside the ring and stabilized to a water like surface suspended inside the ring in the middle. When saw the gate stabilize it came back to her: Stargate! That was the name of the show she had watched in her childhood.
The resemblance was almost ridiculous! But only almost. She was pretty sure that there were no rails leading through gates in Stargate and the purple sheen of the event horizon made her relatively sure that no Goa’uld would come waltzing through the Gate. Thank god for that. She chuckled to herself a bit, before she could stop herself, earning her a curious look from the mystery man.
Before any of them could wonder what to do next, human schemes appeared in the gates' event horizon only to be replaced by human beings tumbling out of the gate seconds later. In the next seconds, 23 people arrived in front of the shocked marines. And then the gate closed and silence returned to the arrival room as fast as it had been torn apart only about 45 seconds before.
The human arrivals huddled together as they looked about the room, obviously scared by the armed marines pointing their assault rifles at them. The arrivals wore clothes in brown and beige colors, most of them looking to be almost toga-like. Not entirely unlike the statues in the entrance hall, even though it looked just wrong enough to make her doubt the connection. But she was especially interested in three of the new arrivals: They looked different. The three humans at the back of the group. One woman and two men wore uniforms in mottled grey with body armor above them. And they carried what looked a lot like guns. Soldiers, Sinclair thought to herself.
After a few seconds, the woman soldier stepped forward. Keeping her gun down the entire time and said something in a language that sounded almost familiar, but still completely strange. Like some kind of protolanguage. Sara motioned for one marine to get Dr. Greer.
This is going to be interesting.
Sara hadn’t noticed the recognition and excitement in the blonde mans eyes as he saw the arrivals.