SGA-22 Unascended by Jo Graham & Amy Griswold

Author:Jo Graham & Amy Griswold [Graham, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781905586653
Publisher: Fandemonium Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Lorne strolled out of the Stargate and looked around the barren plateau. “So, this is our potential alpha site. What are we looking at here?”

“Nothing. Nada,” Sgt. Anthony said. “The science team’s survey report checks out. You got your cactus, your little lizards—”

Lorne squinted at the bushes. “Poisonous lizards?”

“Sir, I have to ask, why does everybody assume they’re poisonous lizards? Why is it that when we report that we’ve seen foot-high cactus, everyone asks ‘but does it have poisonous spines that kill you if you touch them’?”

“Actually, those would be venomous lizards,” PFC Harper said, tugging at one corner of the tent that she and two of the other Marines were setting up. “Poisonous is when it kills you if you eat them. Venomous is when it kills you if it bites you.”

Anthony gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know that?”

“I listened to the briefing when we got here, Sergeant.”

“You also probably heard in the briefing when you got here that planets with Stargates that aren’t inhabited are usually uninhabited for a reason,” Lorne pointed out.

“We’re in the middle of a desert,” Sgt. Anthony said. “Plus the Stargate is on top of a big shelf of rock, and if you want to go anywhere else, you have to rappel down a cliff and then hike across several more klicks of desert before you get to – wait for it – more desert.”

“It can’t all be desert,” Harper said.

“Actually, it is,” Lorne said. “Up near the poles, it’s colder desert.”

“We took a jumper up and scanned for life signs. We didn’t find anything bigger than your shoe. The only sign anyone’s ever been here is some carvings in the rocks up here. We took pictures of them for the archaeologists, and we’re not going to set up the alpha site on top of them.”

“Show me the carvings,” Lorne said.

Anthony led him some distance across the rocky tableland to a spot where several large boulders might – or might not – have originally been dragged together into an intentional grouping. Several of them were chiseled with a series of crosses or X’s above with what was probably lettering. It wasn’t any Pegasus alphabet he recognized, and he’d seen a lot of them by now.

“Anything on the lettering?”

Anthony shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard. They’re going to run it through the computers in case it turns out to be just another phonetic alphabet for writing Ancient.”

“All right,” Lorne said. He turned around again, looking out at the distant horizon. The only sign of movement from this distance were some large black birds riding the thermals over the desert. “Those birds giving you any trouble?”

“They’re just big birds, sir.”

“Team Sheppard ran into big birds that set a grass fire and then chased them with nets,” Lorne said. “The Pegasus galaxy is like that.”

“Noted, sir,” Anthony said after a moment. “These birds appear to be… big birds, sir. I think they’re hunting some little mouse things. We’ve seen a couple of those. They were running away.

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