03 - The First Amendment

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  Teal’C followed O’Neill into the Officers’ Club like a large silent shadow. A few men sitting at one of the round tables, noshing down on chicken sandwiches and chips and the occasional lite beer, waved acknowledgment to the two of them. O’Neill waved back; Teal’C nodded briefly. The two of them scanned the rest of the place, and O’Neill’s eyes lit up at the sight of the other occupant of the place.

  Morley was seated at the bar, glumly picking at a bowl of peanuts. He flinched when Teal’C appeared beside him, only to find O’Neill sliding onto the stool on the other side. The major looked at the two of them and closed his eyes in misery.

  “So, Dave,” O’Neill began, not bothering with preliminaries. “Tough mission. But you know, I was thinking, we need a little bit more information. These Jaffa you ran into, and that force field you say they had—”

  Morley spun around on his barstool, nearly knocking the colonel down. “You weren’t there!”

  O’Neill paused, then carefully moved the glass bowl of peanuts to the middle of the polished surface of the bar, his sharp brown eyes never leaving Morley’s. The glass made a scraping sound against the wood. “No,” he said quietly. He dropped all vestiges of casual hail-fellow-well-met, and his voice became serious, his manner intent. “I wasn’t there. Not this time, at least.

  “So tell me about it. You had no reason to expect trouble. You didn’t see anything? No hints at all?” His tone was conversational. On the other side, Teal’C somehow managed to give the man more room without perceptibly moving.

  “They pulled us in. They flanked us. How was I supposed to know they were there?”

  “The Jaffa have set traps before.” Teal’C’s voice was a rumble.

  O’Neill barely flicked a glance at his teammate, and the Jaffa subsided. “That’s the thing about traps,” he agreed. “You don’t know they’re there.”

  “We saw the stuff originally reported,” Morley went on. “The buildings. The towers. But no sign of Jaffa. Not even in the, the, the compound where they rounded everybody up. We thought we could—”

  “They’re beginning to expect us,” O’Neill interrupted Morley’s rising, increasingly agitated rant. “We’re moving to a new level now. They figure when we come through we’ll come through again. They’re setting traps for us.”

  He shifted his gaze to Teal’C. “Do you think this is a general plan? Or do we have one bright Jaffa on P7X-924? Whaddaya think, Teal’C?”

  Teal’C frowned even more deeply than usual. “It is possible that this is an innovation by a single squad leader,” he said. “We have not seen this response before. Usually, a compound is emptied quickly and the Jaffa leave.”

  “They trapped us,” Morley said. “They know how to beat us. Every time we go through the Gate they’re going to kill us.” He gripped his glass hard, his fingers white and red against the glass. “We’ve got to stop. We have to shut it down.”

  “No can do, Major,” O’Neill said, still using the calm, uninflected tone with which he might address a frightened animal or an irrational officer. “We’ve got orders.”

  “Fuck orders!”

  “Now that wouldn’t be any fun at all,” O’Neill said evenly. “Besides, Morley, we’ve got people back there. And we don’t leave people behind.”

  The officers across the room were watching them openly now, attracted by Morley’s raised voice.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, even louder. “They were my people. The ones we went in there to save, they were all gone already. So it’s my people—they were my—Not yours! And they’re dead. They’re all dead by now. And you know we can’t win. We can’t possibly win.” Rivers of tar. Beating of wings. The Jaffa screamed too, like human beings. “People need to know. They’re going to come and kill us all—”

  “That’s defeatism, son,” O’Neill said mildly. “And besides, I don’t believe it.” The glass bowl rotated against the bar, scraping gently against the wood. Morley jerked at the sound, and O’Neill’s long fingers paused in response.

  “I don’t care what you believe!” the major snapped. “I’m telling you the truth. We’ve got no choice.” He made as if to get up. The colonel rose more quickly, forestalling him.

  “Major”—there was a razor edge to O’Neill’s voice now—“you’d better care. I’m putting you under house arrest. Report to your quarters until further notice.”

  “You can’t—”

  O’Neill smiled without humor and lifted one hand to tap the silver eagle perched on his right shoulder. “Yes, I can. Colonel, see?” He pointed at the gold oak leaves that adorned Morley’s. “Major.”

  Morley stared at him, licked his lips, and glanced at Teal’C. “You. You’re one of them. You’re part of it.”

  “That will be enough, Major!” O’Neill’s voice was a whiplash. The officers across the room decided that elsewhere was a very good place to be.

  “Well, that’s settled,” O’Neill said as the two men walked out of the club.

  “What is settled?”

  “Where we’re going next. We’re going to finish the job.” O’Neill’s tone was still quiet and conversational. Teal’C thought he detected a layer of seething rage beneath it.

  “You do not believe, then, that the members of SG-2 left behind are all dead.” The two men walked shoulder to shoulder down the hall, taking up most of the space between the walls.

  “I believe that Dave Morley isn’t giving us the whole story, and if there’s more to Jaffa tactics, we’d better know about it.”

  “Do you think General Hammond will approve such a mission for SG-1?”

  “I think he might, yeah.”

  And if he didn’t? Teal’C wondered. He decided to prepare himself for travel anyway, just in case.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dad thought that shock of white hair reminded his constituents of Edward Everett Dirksen. He didn’t care whether they’d liked Dirksen or not; the name and the white hair were famous, and had clout, and that was all he cared about.

  They were in the study of the Georgetown place, sharing brandy and cigars after a good meal. Mother had rolled her eyes and gone elsewhere when Dad had suggested “a little postprandial treat.”

  It wasn’t a bad cigar. Not Cuban, but not bad. Frank leaned back in his leather chair and looked up through the cloud of aromatic smoke to the shelves of books behind his father. At least they weren’t all the same color and size—Mother probably had something to do with that—but he was willing to bet that his father the senator hadn’t opened one since his parents had moved in three terms ago. Strictly for show, strictly to impress the voters. He’d become resigned to knowing that about his father long ago.

  “So, boy, I read your little piece in the Post,” his father grinned, swirling dark amber liquid around in the globe glass. “Taking your old dad to task again, are you?”

  He smiled to disguise his sigh. It was always like this. He kept coming to dinner to please Mother, and every time, Dad tried to bait him about something.

  “It wasn’t directed specifically at you,” he pointed out. “I just think this whole isolationist trend is damaging in the long run.”

  “Humph.” Senator Kinsey sipped, holding the liquor in his mouth, savoring it. “Keeps our boys from getting killed.”

  “While a lot of other people die.”

  “They don’t pay taxes here.”

  And they don’t vote, Frank added mentally.

  “Well, be that as it may.” A billow of smoke issued from the old man’s mouth, on either side of the cigar he held between his teeth. “There are some things you just don’t want following you home, boy. There are limits.”

  “Refusing to open our borders to people in need—”

  “We’ve got enough problems right here! Those folks will come in and take our jobs, use our resources—”

  “Like Grandpa did when he came over from England?”

  A moment later he was sorry he’d snapped at the old man. The senator
was staring at him almost malevolently. He’d have to apologize to Mother before he left. Again. The leather of his chair squeaked as he shifted his weight to place the snifter on an end table.

  “What would it take to convince you, boy?”

  “Convince me of what, sir?” He still called his father sir, even when he was on the verge of walking out on him. Old habits were hard to break.

  “That some doors need to be shut—” The old man’s jaws clamped hard on the cigar, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Well,” he resumed after a moment, “I don’t suppose it’s worth fighting about. You had a pretty rough time on that last assignment, didn’t you?”

  “Tough enough.” Frank sat back warily. This was the first time his father had voluntarily given up a fight, beaten or not, and they hadn’t even reached the shouting stage yet.

  “Got anything else lined up just now?”

  He shook his head. “I’m thinking of just taking it easy for a while.”

  Senator Kinsey chortled. “Another one of your unpaid vacations, eh? Well, I had an idea.”

  Alarm bells rang in the back of the journalist’s head. “What kind of idea?”

  “Now don’t get your back hair up, boy. I was just talking the other day to the editor of the Washington Observer, and he mentioned he wanted some kind of article about NORAD. You know about NORAD, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard of it.” He tried hard to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

  “Well, it’s based out there in Colorado, in the mountains. Good air. Relaxing place. I said I thought I might be able to talk you into doing a little something for him on your break. I know some of those folks out there, y’know.” The Senator grinned complacently and set the stub of his cigar aside in an ashtray. A thin line of smoke continued to rise from it, as if from a tube of incense. “Seems that Dale Terwilliger, that’s the editor, he was downright impressed that a ‘writer of your stature’—that’s what he called it, ‘stature’. When did you get yourself stature, boy?—might be willing to do a few words for him on Space Defense.”

  The Observer paid a decent word rate, as he recalled. It also reached an audience that was more aligned with his own philosophy than his father’s. He wondered just how his father had come to have this conversation with Terwilliger.

  “How does he want it slanted?” he asked cynically.

  “Why, he didn’t say a thing about that. I think he just wants your view of the place. Your mother thinks it’s a fine idea—I can even get you inside. Hardly anybody gets inside that mountain anymore, you know.”

  His father knew all his buttons. But still—maybe it would be interesting. He doubted it, but a paid vacation was always better than an unpaid one. “I’ll call him and see what he wants. I’m not in the business of doing party propaganda for you, Dad.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of asking you to, boy. I just think, well, now, my boy’s a good investigative reporter. Everybody says so. So why not have him look at NORAD? It’s a nice change of pace. Besides, you never know what you might find there.”

  “Most of that stuff’s classified.”

  “I thought you believed in the people’s right to know.”

  Or maybe it was the people’s right to be bored. Terwilliger was enthusiastic about a study of NORAD. Dad had made arrangements. So here he was, still feeling thoroughly manipulated and not at all sure why. Of course, his mother had been delighted that he’d finally allowed his father to “help” him. The fact that he’d probably have been able to swing this article all by himself never occurred to her. Or if it did, she didn’t let that bother her.

  Frank Kinsey sat back in the contoured chair and looked openly around at the room and its other occupants. The Visitors Center of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex was a small building outside the barbed wire fence, with a circular driveway in front of a polished white portico. The front lobby was filled with models and pictures, and opposite the entrance were two doors leading into the small amphitheatre that served as the Main Briefing room. The chairs for the audience were arranged in descending tiers, facing a small stage with a podium. They were, Kinsey had to admit, remarkably comfortable and well padded, not obviously brand-new but definitely not shabby either. The walls were half-paneled in oak, while the photographs, mounted above the paneling on dry board, were vivid splashes of color, dark and mysterious. The podium was off to one side, allowing plenty of space and a good line of sight to the screen behind it.

  The amphitheater, done in colors of blue and gray with soft cream-white walls, could hold perhaps fifty people. Today it was perhaps two-thirds full. It was nicer, he thought, than similar briefing rooms in the Pentagon, but then those weren’t generally available to the public. It was miles better than the tents and hotel rooms in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but not quite as nice as the press room in the White House. Here, though, there were no scraps of paper on the floor or burned-out cigarette butts. The place was obsessively clean, as if a master sergeant had made the place his life’s work.

  He amused himself by speculating about the reasons some of his fellows might have for visiting this rather esoteric tourist spot.

  All right, even if he’d been able to swing the article by himself, the senatorial intercession didn’t hurt. He didn’t like asking his father to use his clout that way, but then, he rationalized, he hadn’t asked.

  Even the military escort helped a little, he had to admit. It got him in the door, and he was used to working around restrictions. After all, this wasn’t the sort of place one came to on the spur of the moment. It took at least two months’ advance notice to arrange one of these dog-and-pony shows. So that group of grade-school boys in Cub Scout uniforms, being herded about by a frazzled adult doing a good imitation of a stressed-out Border collie, was most likely here as a field trip. That was no challenge at all.

  The couple billing and cooing in the corner had no earthly reason to be here that he could see. They were obviously on a honeymoon, and Frank could think of lots more interesting places to be than here. So… maybe they were really spies in deep cover? Russia still had an intelligence service. They could be Chinese recruits. Hmmm. Possible. He wondered how they’d been recruited. They’d have secret meetings with faceless controls. That passion must hide a desperate fear of being discovered.

  Sometimes he thought he really ought to try his hand at fiction.

  The coterie of middle-aged to elderly men sitting in the front row, all leaning forward with their hands on their knees, had to be either UFO buffs or retired military. Maybe both. The room was cool—air-conditioning hadn’t yet been changed over to heat—and the men were still wearing their coats, as if ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice. If he listened hard, he could hear the click-click-click of loose dentures tapping.

  The balance seemed to be just basically curious folks, although the three middle-aged women walking up and down the levels, looking at the pictures on the walls and occasionally whispering to each other and taking notes as they pointed to one detail or another, had to be writers doing research. They had that Look about them.

  The pictures were standard public relations scenes. The entrance to the Complex—the fence topped with rolls of razor-sharp barbed wire, the dozen or so tall light poles, the roof of the guard station, and the short road leading to the incongruous semicircle in the mountain. The actual entry to the facility looked as if it could have been painted by Wile E. Coyote for the Roadrunner, it was such a perfect, bland hole.

  Above and to the right of that black entrance was an ancient fissure in the rock, complete with straggling trees clinging desperately to the vertical edges. The picture must have been taken in the springtime, because there were still traces of snow here and there. Kinsey wondered if the crack was part of the geological fault present in the mountain.

  Other photographs purported to show scenes inside the actual complex. Intent men and women seated at computers, their faces underlit by green and red illumination, looking up at a gian
t display of unintelligible graphics on the wall. A tunnel carved out of raw rock, with a forklift proceeding on its mysterious way. The obligatory “We Track Santa Claus Every Christmas” display—the Cub Scouts were very superior about that one. And of course, the photographs of the current command, with U.S. and Canadian generals posed pointedly beneath their respective flags.

  Beside Kinsey, Bert Samuels sat with his fingers laced over his belly and a smirk on his face.

  The audience was beginning to get restless; the Border collie had herded her charges into the second row of seats, behind the intent men, and they were beginning to pop up and down again. She was starting to get angry with them when a tall young man in uniform stepped onto the stage. This managed to attract the kids’ attention. He favored them with a small smile. One of the boys yipped, “Captain! He’s a captain, see he has those bars on his shoulder.”

  The captain cleared his throat, and if by magic, the audience calmed down. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “I’m a captain in the United States Air Force. My name is Dave Weikman, and I’m here to tell you all about Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, or as we call it, CMOC. CMOC contains elements from NORAD, USSPACECOM, and AFSPC. You may have noticed that the military tends to talk in alphabet soup.”

  The Cub Scouts giggled. The cooing-and-billing couple in the corner had taken a break and were listening, too—definitely spies. The coterie frowned. Definitely former military, Kinsey thought. No sense of humor at all.

  “What all those letters mean is ‘North American Aerospace Defense’, ‘United States Space Command’, and ‘Air Force Space Command’. Of course there’s a Navy and Army Space Command too that’s part of USSPACECOM. All of us together exist to give the President early warning of missile attacks—”

  “Space aliens like in Star Wars?” one of the Cub Scouts asked. “Cool!”