03 - The First Amendment Read online

  THE FIRST

  AMENDMENT

  Stargate SG-1 - 03

  Ashley McConnell

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  This book is dedicated

  …to Ed Cassidy, for whom I had the privilege of working for six years. He’s not Canadian, he’s not a Brigadier, but he’s gleefully Tuckerized herein. Thank you, Ed, for everything…

  …and to SG-1.net, whose comprehensive site helped tremendously in the details. The stuff I got wrong is All My Fault, naturally.

  And I’d like to acknowledge tremendous moral support from Dori, Jenn, Jennifer, OzK, and an unbelievably patient meerkat. Thanks, guys.

  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

  —First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

  “The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theater and causing a panic.

  The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

  —Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Schenck v. United States (1919)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Command, George Hammond often thought, just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

  Things were coming through the Gate.

  Apophis, wearing the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, but the uraeus, the Sacred Serpent on his crown, was alive, with venom dripping from its fangs. His eyes glowed, and beams of light flashed from the palms of his avatar’s hands, and where the light touched, man and metal melted.

  Monsters. Crystals that walked. Giant lizards from Earth’s Jurassic past, fangs gaping, saliva dripping. Floods of wormlike larvae that wriggled and hissed and devoured whatever they touched. Poisonous fog the color and consistency of cotton candy, wrapping itself around his people and smothering them where they stood.

  And his people, dying of the very air they breathed. Their faces twisting, changing as he watched, foreheads flattening, brow ridges and jaws thickening, becoming coarse. And the running sores and pestilence, at first only tiny disfigurations and barely noticeable marks, but then growing, widening, covering flesh, leaving holes you could see bone through, weeping yellow pus, and nothing could stop them.

  His people, fighting.

  Fighting the best they knew how, with guns and explosives and what science they could muster; fighting and dying to defend their site, their nation, their world.

  His people were the only ones standing between the horror and the rest of the planet.

  Jack O’Neill firing steadily, using one of the Jaffa energy staffs. It was having a marginally better effect on the cotton candy than the Earth weapons were. Teal’C, beside him, using a zat gun.

  Janet Frasier was using a Supersoaker to spray antibiotics in a nauseating yellow-green mist.

  Daniel Jackson was reading aloud, very seriously, from the Book of the Dead.

  Samantha Carter kept yelling, “I’ll show you guts!” and kicking a blob of… something.

  Dozens of others from the various teams were using machine guns, offworld weapons, sticks, clubs, anything at all to defend themselves. They were beating the invasion back, forcing Apophis to reopen the Gate to retreat.

  And then they all stopped what they were doing, every one of them, Apophis included, and turned around and looked at him, waiting to be told what to do next.

  He woke up feeling very annoyed about it.

  Most people his age got up on Fridays looking forward to a relaxing weekend, maybe a little golf, some work in the yard, going to church, watching the games. Or at least they were close enough to retirement to think about what a nice day Friday would be, sometime soon. That was nice and normal and made sense.

  Of course, in this man’s Air Force, that would be tooooo easy. Particularly in this particular man’s Air Force.

  So instead, he got up at 0400 hours and did a brisk couple of miles on the treadmill while watching the latest world crises on CNN, looked over some paperwork, made a few phone calls to Washington, and by the time his driver showed up he had half a day’s work done before he’d even gone into the office. You could do that when the house was spacious and empty, and you were the only one rattling around in it.

  And besides, keeping busy kept him from thinking about how very quiet the house was. He and Margaret had bought it planning to retire at the end of this last tour of duty: the first house the two of them had ever owned. It was a simple three-bedroom brick ranch style in the suburbs of Colorado Springs, with a swimming pool, drained now for the winter, and a study with all of George’s citations and recommendations lovingly framed, and a fireplace they could sit in front of and share a glass of white wine. She’d been so happy with it, planning a garden of perennials, planting trees in the backyard and talking about watching Tessa and Kayla, their granddaughters, climbing them one day.

  It was almost like a brand-new start to their marriage, a new beginning after thirty years of transfers from one assignment to the next, ever upward on the promotion ladder. They’d had a daughter who grew up a typical military brat, learning how to blend in to every new situation, knowing that it never lasted long and the next duty station would always be new schools, new friends. When she left to go to college, and then to get married, it was almost as if she’d just had yet another transfer.

  But the house in Colorado was going to be the very last time they moved, the very first time they could finally unpack all the knicknacks and souvenirs they’d picked up from the tours in Turkey, Germany, England, Japan. Finally, Margaret Hammond could be something other than the perfect officer’s lady.

  Then the cancer had gotten her. She hadn’t even had a chance to see him retire. It had been quick and shocking and even now it hurt terribly to think about.

  And of course, once she was gone there was no point in quitting. He wasn’t a quitter. He might write a book about all their travels, all his assignments—if only to dedicate it to her.

  He tugged the visor of his cap down hard and nodded abruptly to the wedding portrait that graced the front hall. Hard to remember he’d ever been that young. Hard to imagine Margaret had ever been anything other than that beautiful. The train of her wedding gown, a froth of lace, swirled around her feet, and her arm curled around his as she looked up at him, smiling with such incredible happiness, while he looked straight into the camera, awkward and stiff in his second lieutenant’s uniform, ridiculously happy too. At the end, frail and bald from chemotherapy and radiation, Margaret still smiled when their daughter came home to help them both through her mother’s last days.

  Stepping out his front door, he tugged it shut and locked the portrait and the empty house away, and turned his attention to the dark blue sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the house. The neighbor’s dog barked sharply, and Hammond nodded to it as well.

  The driver, a stolid sergeant who never said anything except “Yes sir,” handed him a selection of newspapers and held the door of the staff car for him. Hammond returned the salute and got in, skimming the headlines even as he fastened his seat belt. They were a varied bunch: the Washington Post. The Times of London. The Wall Street Journal. The Los Angeles Times. Margaret had enjoyed discussing current events with him, and he’d had to keep sharp to keep up with her. She would have loved his curren
t assignment.

  But even if Margaret were still alive he couldn’t have told her anything about his work. He’d rarely been able to. She wouldn’t have minded—all career military spouses got used to not knowing things—but he would have, knowing how she would have loved hearing about the wonders, the possibilities that lay so close at hand.

  He wouldn’t have told her, either, about the threat that lay equally close. Scanning the headlines, absently noting information about the wobbling economy, the latest isolationist edicts from Washington, the threats of terrorism and the anguish of natural disasters, he couldn’t find anything at all about the increased activity at Cheyenne Mountain, home of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. That was just fine with him, and it would be just fine with General Austin Pace, Commanding, too.

  One of the less wonderful things about Friday was his regular meeting with Austin Pace. Another skirmish in the turf war. Not his favorite thing, though he had to sympathize with the other general. The Mountain was supposed to be Pace’s baby, and no commander worth his salt appreciated being saddled with some mysterious black project smack in the middle of his very own base, and then being told he didn’t have a high enough clearance or a Need to Know to be briefed on it, but keep those supplies coming and that infrastructure steady, thank you very much. “Project Blue Book.” Was anyone really fooled by that?

  It was a relatively long drive out to the Mountain from Colorado Springs, through the south end of town and Fort Carson, but at least it hadn’t snowed yet. The trees were beginning to turn; aspens were slender white columns crowned with gold, brilliant against the bright-blue mountain sky. There was a snap in the air; there would be snow by the end of the month. Margaret had liked snow, talking about going on sleigh rides like the ones she’d gone on as a child in New Hampshire. Once, before she’d gone, he’d found someone who gave rides, and with the first snow that year he had taken her out, wrapped in yards upon yards of Polarfleece blankets, and they had ridden in the snow behind a pair of big black horses in red harness with jingling bells. She’d had that look again, that incredible happiness as she tried to catch snowflakes on her tongue.

  His driver had slowed down, as if to give him a chance to savor the view and the memories, but in truth it was the traffic that was holding them up. As they came off State Road 115 onto NORAD Road, a white van up ahead of them, bristling with antennae, was listing heavily to one side with a flat rear tire; there was no place for it to go on the narrow, curving mountain road. Hammond’s sedan jolted as the van veered wildly across the narrow road and then back into its own lane, scraping antennae against pine branches as it did so.

  “Sir, please ensure your seat belt is fastened,” the sergeant said flatly, slowing down to a crawl. Hammond’s eyes narrowed. As they came around one more curve, the road straightened and the shoulder broadened, and the van limped over immediately to take advantage of the room and shudder to a relieved halt. The sedan growled and leaped past, leaving the other vehicle well behind. It looked as if it belonged to the local news media—he caught sight of a local station’s logo as they passed.

  “Inform the state police that there’s a driver in trouble,” Hammond said, pleased that his voice was steady. He had been in situations before where a “crippled” van on a remote road could have been real trouble. Ranking American military personnel had been kidnapped and killed by terrorists. Even though this was Colorado, U.S. of A. and definitely not Izmir, Turkey, or Palermo, Italy, the lessons learned about potential ambushes and kidnappings could never be unlearned. A news van had no place on a military reservation, and they were on Fort Carson property here.

  He let go a deep breath and thought again, yearningly, about retirement. Once he finally retired, he wouldn’t have to worry about such things anymore.

  All he’d have to do is stay home and remember.

  Active duty was still better than that.

  “Yes sir,” the sergeant acknowledged. Before he could pick up the car phone, however, it rang, causing both men to jump, then settle back self-consciously.

  “Hammond.”

  The voice at the other end of the line was instantly recognizable as his latest right-hand man, Major Marie Rusalka. Right-hand woman, he amended. Rusalka served as his command team coordinator, and worked remarkably well with his ADC, who was a noncommissioned officer. “General, you asked me to remind you about the tourist briefing scheduled for 1000 hours today.”

  “Thank you, Major.”

  As the command center for North American air and space defense, Cheyenne Mountain was a popular destination for visitors, who invariably thought they would get a guided tour of the guts of the mountain, an up-close-and-personal look at the Operations Center, Space Control, Systems, and the other centers of activity that provided surveillance and protection for the U.S. and Canada. The fact that they had to book their visits well in advance probably enhanced their expectations of all the highly technical, highly classified Stuff they were going to get to see.

  Invariably, the guests were disappointed to discover that all they were really going to get was a presentation in the Visitors Center. They could have saved themselves the feeling if they’d only read the information handed out ahead of time, or investigated the extensive Website that the Air Force Space Command provided, but no. Every single time someone would stick his hand up in the air and ask the ever-patient officer of the day, “When do we get to go inside and see everything?”

  As if, Hammond thought, borrowing one of his granddaughters’ favorite phrases.

  The blue sedan pulled up at the gatehouse to the complex, and the sentry carefully verified the driver’s identity and then the general’s, despite having seen them at least four times a week for the past three years. As they passed the Visitors Center, Hammond looked to see if the tourists were already lined up to go inside. It was too early, of course. The Friday morning briefing was always scheduled for 1000 hours, and it was only 0700. The buses wouldn’t arrive for at least another three hours.

  Satisfied, the sentry waved them through to the next checkpoint.

  The sergeant parked the sedan, got the door—it was amazing how fast that man moved, Hammond thought; he never managed to beat his driver to opening the door—and escorted the general into the Mountain, where the real checkpoints began.

  Palm scans, retina scans, visual comparisons. The “Detect” part of the holy Security triad of “Detect Delay Respond” was so much a part of his daily life, and had been for so long, he barely noticed it. He had gone through at least three layers of obvious identification systems (and two more not so obvious) by the time he got to the first set of elevators.

  The Mountain had been hollowed out starting in 1961 as the very biggest and best bomb shelter ever. It went fully operational in 1966. All through the Cold War, Cheyenne Mountain had focused intently on the possibility that thermonuclear bombs launched from somewhere in the Communist bloc might rain down on North America. When the sky grew increasingly more crowded with satellites, they kept an eye on those, too, monitoring the other side’s spy eyes, tracking the possibility that death might come from space. They continued their job with unrelaxed vigilance when the Cold War was declared “over,” well aware that traffic in near space was increasing yearly and that the economic chaos that succeeded the fall of the Berlin Wall had made nuclear weapons available to countries and organizations that previously would have had little chance of obtaining them.

  And it wasn’t just the U.S. that kept its eyes on the skies. One of the side benefits of having a special relationship with Canada was that the northern country was as deeply involved in NORAD as was the U.S. itself. Command rotated between the two countries. This year it happened to be the U.S. commanding.

  The focus for NORAD, always, was on the threat from other countries. It was the responsibility of their highly trained personnel to coordinate the response to any threat to North America coming from within the atmosphere or outside it. It didn’t matter whether they b
elieved in a Chinese nuclear threat or little green men from Mars; their job was to Respond and wipe them out of North American skies. Army, Navy, and Air Force Space Command all had a role here.

  And none of it was George Hammond’s concern.

  Hammond passed the first set of elevators, and the second.

  He was not accountable to the U.S. Air Force Space Command, or the U.S. Space Command, or NORAD. His name appeared nowhere on their Table of Organization, and he was not in their chain of command. General George Hammond and his personnel had their offices even deeper in the hollowed-out mountain than that. They weren’t concerned with the thermonuclear threat or the satellites in near space.

  George Hammond commanded the Stargate Complex, and his concerns were literally light-years away from NORAD’s and those of NORAD’s commanding generals.

  Light-years away and far more immediate. Hammond could only imagine how annoyed they’d be to know that the biggest alien threat to North America, or even to the whole planet, wasn’t going to appear in the air; it had already materialized twenty-seven stories underneath their feet, in the very deepest guts of Cheyenne Mountain.

  And if the tourists at the Visitors’ Center had any idea what lay beneath their feet as they sat squirming in hard plastic chairs through the droning hour-and-a-half presentation complete with multimedia show and interactive exhibits, they’d run screaming, he was certain.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hammond liked to go first to the briefing room, overlooking the Gate, rather than to his office. His first priority upon arrival at the Complex was reviewing the reports of the various teams currently exploring the worlds of possibility that were accessible through the Gate in the depths of the mountain. In that sense, at least, Hammond’s project echoed USSPACECOM; he had Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine units reporting to him. Hardly anything else was the same.