Chapter 1
Ancient Outpost, Antarctica
Present Day
Two kilometres under the surface of Antarctica’s ice, Brigadier General Jack O’Neill sat with his elbows propped on the Plexiglas star map table in a room filled with computer paraphernalia and a whiteboard covered with ’gate glyphs. He was listening to Dr Daniel Jackson PhD tell him how the Ancients had left five and ten million years ago. The other individuals present in the computer-filled room were Doctors Elizabeth Weir and Rodney McKay.
“In their… flying city?” Jack stated dryly when Daniel stopped speaking for a moment. Jack knew he’d told the man to skip to the part where he started talking fast upon getting off the elevator with Major Sheppard but had to admit that Daniel was talking fast even for Daniel. And making less sense than usual.
“Well,” Daniel mentally scrambled for an answer that would satisfy his friend, “keeping in mind this is the race that built the stargates. They did everything big.”
“So, why did they leave?” Jack asked logically.
“Why’d they leave? Um, who knows? We know the Ancients on Earth were suffering from a plague. Um, maybe some of them were trying to start over, seeding life in a new galaxy. Maybe that’s what Ancients do.” Daniel fumbled through his answer before earnestly stressing his point again. “The point is; we know where they went.”
“Pegasus,” Jack repeated what Daniel had said in the beginning of the debriefing.
“Yes, it’s—it’s the name of a dwarf galaxy in the local group,” Daniel detailed.
Jack shot the archaeologist an annoyed look, saying in the same dry tone that he’d first said ‘flying city’: “I know what Peg DIG is and where it is Daniel.”
“Right,” Daniel acknowledged the reminder of his friend’s love of astronomy sheepishly. “Of course.”
“You say Atlantis is in Pegasus?” Jack straightened from his seated position and beckoned a sergeant passing by the open doorway.
“Yes. Jack, what are you doing?” Daniel inquired in confusion. His confusion was shared by Weir and McKay.
The three people’s confusion mounted as they listened to Jack ask the sergeant if the computers in the room had regular Internet connection. After being assured they did the general instructed the sergeant to connect to CNN’s International YouTube channel. The sergeant did so and soon the page was loaded.
Directing the three doctorates in the room to the video currently playing on the homepage, Jack said pointedly, “In Pegasus you say?”
All three watched wide-eyed as the almost breathless reporter reported on the massive, gleaming silvery structure with spindle towers spearing towards the sky that had risen from the Atlantic Ocean’s Horseshoe Seamounts just hours before. Scientists from European nations had already been on the structure and announced this dubbed ‘alien city’ was fabricated of an element never before found on Earth. Its already identified alien origins had alien conspirators and supporters of the ancient astronaut hypotheses, like Erich von Däniken, in seventh heaven as they loudly and triumphantly proclaimed the evidence of their claims.
“If Atlantis is in Pegasus,” Jack repeated as he pointed a finger at the image of the alien snowflake-shaped structure floating on the Atlantic Ocean outside the Strait of Gibraltar in the broadcast. “Then what’s that?”
. . .
Almost a full week later Daniel and the scientific individuals of Weir’s proposed Atlantis Expedition could tell General O’Neill, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President of the United States, and the nations of the International Oversight Advisory exactly what ‘that’ was.
Gadarus was a scientific research colony of the highly advanced Ancients. It was also half the size of Atlantus’s—what the Greeks had dubbed Atlantis—schematics in Antarctica’s outpost and significantly larger than the outpost buried in the ice.
They had learned the name after deciphering the lettered staircase—disputing the claims that the alien city was Plato’s Atlantis—but there was little doubt about affiliation between them to the people of Earth. ‘Gadarus’ was remarkably similar to ‘Gadeirus,’ the name of Atlas’s twin in Plato’s dialogues. For those in the know about the Stargate Program, there had never been any doubt it belonged to the Ancients.
That it was a research colony had been learned through more herculean efforts on the parts of Lt Colonel Samantha Carter and Dr Rodney McKay to interface Earth technology with Ancient. While that had had success, the last purpose of the outpost and project that was still active, was grim news.
Daniel and the scientists were just glad that they were telling this news via videoconference and not delivering it to President Hayes and company directly!
“You mean to tell us,” Richard Woolsey the IOA’s liaison with SGC said forebodingly, “that Gadarus is going to bring about the end of the world?”
“Not necessarily,” Daniel hastily said as he looked uncomfortable onscreen. “I know that the Ancient project name ‘Ahrmuhgedn,’ when said fast sounds like the English ‘Armageddon,’ but that does not mean it means the end of the world.”
“Correct me if I am mistaken Doctor,” Hayes interjected. “But did the scientists not say that this project has geo-tagged all humans on this planet and set their status to be: active, terminate, and exempt? And that with initialisation of the program, those people marked ‘terminate’ will be terminated someway by the program?”
“That is correct Sir,” Colonel Carter spoke. “But we are confident that we can halt the program before it ‘goes online,’ so to speak.”
“How much time before the program is fully powered?” Colonel Chekov inquired.
“The program is currently at ninety-three percent Sir,” Carter replied, “and Dr McKay and I agree that at the current rate it will be a minimum of thirteen days before it is at one hundred percent.”
Chekov inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“Correct me if I am mistaken, but is not this Project Ahrmuhgedn,” Xiaoyi Shen the Chinese IOA representative was careful to pronounce the Ancient term, “an ethnic cleansing?”
“No,” Daniel was quick to deny. “While it seems to be ‘ethnically’ based on certain geographical concentrations of individuals marked for ‘termination’ like China, Africa and aboriginal groups, we have been able to determine positively that it is physical health—extreme poor health and malnutrition and things like a terminal illness—or insulin depended diabetes, HIV, etc—or genetic predisposition towards a terminal illness that is the reason for the status. China has such a high population that the numbers seem concentrated and unfortunately, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS are rampant in Africa as is diabetes in most aboriginal communities. Those Project Ahrmuhgedn has designated as being genetically propositioned to terminal illnesses, like cancers, seem evenly distributed throughout the world.”
“And those that are exempt are the ones with the genetic characteristic that Dr Beckett identified while working at the Antarctica outpost?” Andrew Chapman the British IOA representative affirmed.
“Yes,” Daniel confirmed with a nod of his head. “All other individuals are active and healthy in every way.”
“Considering what we have been told and the length of time that we have been discussing this,” Jean La Pierre the French representative member of the IOA spoke up, “I move we have a recess.”
The other IOA members, senators, and military officers present nodded their heads in agreement, reluctant to interrupt the current session but all needing to get up after hours of sitting. The individuals on Gadarus murmured their assent and soon the two conference rooms had cleared of all but two individuals, Jack O’Neill on Gadarus and George Hammond in the White House.
“Well Jack, you’ve been very quiet during this talk, what do you think?” Hammond asked casually.
Jack looked hesitant for a long time before his troubled eyes met Hammond’s. “I’m worried Sir.”
A touch concerned, George positioned himself closer to the video screen. “In what way?”
“Something in my gut says we should be thinking worst case scenario. Not this blasé treatment the world is giving Gadarus and the fact that disclosure of the program is a current wait-and-see policy.”
“I see,” Hammond took a steadying breath. He had never ignored his gut instincts, or those of his former second-in-command. “Worst case scenario, what do you recommend?”
“Operation Adam Sir.”
Hammond sucked his breath in with shock.
If the evacuation operations were on the same scale as DEFCON, the evacuation performed during Apohpis’ fleet invasion of military personal and contracted civilians with top-secret clearance to the Alpha Site was a DEFCON 5. Operation Adam was the equivalent of DEFCON 1 and involved shoving as quickly and as many people through the stargate as long as possible to as many planets as possible, secrecy be damned.