Beyond the Iris: A Stargate Story

Chapter 13

Eleanor

The next month winter brought with her blizzards and ice storms. There was something so nostalgic about waking up and seeing the snow piled on the lawn every morning. I had grown up in Kansas City and remembered long muggy summers and equally long frozen winters. As much as I didn't love scraping the driveway clean every morning, I had evenings with a hot mug of tea watching it come down to look forward to. I contemplated paying a neighbor boy to shovel it for me, but when I saw his mom slip on the ice in front of her own house the day prior when he shoveled, I realized my money was best spent elsewhere.

Daniel came home the night prior and was already off-world to help with the finalizing of a new free Jaffa settlement. He had left a paper bag filled with my chocolate oranges, a collection of postcards from a Heathrow gift shop underneath, and one of my request forms filled out simply for Dinner tomorrow at 7.
I gleefully unwrapped the foil and placed the small chocolate piece on my tongue, lavishing in the silky smooth texture and combination of orange zest with chocolate.

"Someone looks pleased that their bff across the hall is home." Lonnie smirked walking into my office. "I filled out a request for a few gate scheduling information slots and recent mission reports last night and never got anything in return. But you obviously seem busy with your snackies."

"Yes I am," I mocked back, "and emailed what I was permitted." I placed another segment of the candy onto my tongue like a giddy child on Halloween night gorging on sweets before bed. "But most of the information is restricted now, because of the informant leak investigation. I'm not even allowed to know about jumps until the day of."

"Everything I needed was all redacted."

I shrugged, "sorry but there isn't much I can do."

"Right." He looked around awkwardly and I cracked a piece of the chocolate off gesturing for him to take it. As he declined the sirens started going off in the halls. He ran out the door to the stair shaft where I was assuming he would go to the gate room. Usually the alarm like this meant it was best for me to lock my door from the inside and stay out of the way. It made me nervous knowing that Daniel was currently off-world, but whoever was being affected by the alarms didn't need me to get in the way.

Jack

"Hey world traveler!" Sam shouted across the campsite as Daniel came from over the hill ledge pack in hand. We had been out here for two days now, but he had just returned from his hopefully successful trip to find any information regarding Atlantis.

The rocky landscape would provide good tactical training for the new free Jaffa troops as they practiced warfare drills in their own structured settlements. Teal'c had been monitoring the formation of the camp for months now, making this his personal project alongside Bra'tac. His hopes would be that a fruitful union of free Jaffa and Tauri would unite here and share in brotherhood, or something like that.

Daniel came up the path and dropped his pack on the ground reaching for his canteen. "You guys really chose to set up the tents quite the hike away." He took a swig of water and put it back. "Always a mile at least walk from the gate. Never right outside for convenience sake."

"Anything useful on your mini vacation?" I asked pointedly.

"Yes, but not what I was actually looking for." He pulled out his field notebook and thumbed through the overstuffed pages. "Here, I cross referenced three gate addresses that I had in reference to the remote device McKay is helping Sam with."

"Not helping with." She muttered back.

"And I found that one of the gate addresses is referenced in a text not only with Ancient's number coding but also in a text that had multiple mentions of traveling during solar eclipses, seasonal shifts, decades even of time passing between jumps."