Title: Beginning
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: Gen, all ages
Length: 3,000 words
Content notes: n/a
Author notes: Challenge - Deck. I know it’s not a strong link to the prompt, but the prompt did inspire the story.
Summary: Janet Fraiser’s first day at the SGC.



The helicopter descended over the deck, its whirling blades generating a powerful wind that pulled strands of Janet’s hair out of her neat style and ruffled her uniform. Even so, she instinctively turned her face into the wind, enjoying the cooling breeze. Even out at sea, the temperature in the Gulf was soaring.

Janet put on sunglasses and raised her hand to keep the cap on her head as the wind intensified. The helicopter touched the deck and the whirling blades began to slow.

She turned to the naval captain at her side. “That’s my ride,” she said, unnecessarily.

“It is. Thank you for your help, Doctor. I’ve very grateful.” He offered a crisp salute.

She returned the salute. “My pleasure, Captain.” She glanced down at her bag, but before she could bend down to pick it up the captain beat her to it.

She appreciated the gesture and allowed him to carry the bag for her as she headed for the helicopter, still holding her cap in place. An airman inside flung its door open for her. She needed no help getting on board and turned quickly to take her bag from the captain. She offered him a quick smile.

He nodded in return and slammed the door closed. Janet stuffed the bag under her seat and strapped in. The airman offered her a headset and she put on the ear protection gratefully. Helicopters were loud.

As the helicopter took off again, she glanced down at the deck of the ship she was leaving. She would probably never know for sure if her remaining patients recovered, but she was confident the ship’s doctor could handle it now they were over the worst.

“What’s an Air Force doc doing on a navy ship?” the airman asked with a friendly grin as they flew over the water.

Janet shook her head. “I’m not allowed to discuss it,” she answered. It was a half-truth. She had been instructed not to discuss how the disease got aboard, but in theory was free to talk about it in general terms. With so many details either classified or medically confidential, however, Janet found it best to say nothing at all.

One of her patients died before she got there but once she arrived there had been no more deaths. The ship’s CMO was competent, even skilled, but the disease was rare and virulent enough that he quickly requested specialised help. Janet, it turned out, had been the closest infectious disease specialist with adequate clearance and she was pulled off her assignment and flown to the ship, which was already under quarantine.

It was her intent to stay until everyone was fully recovered, but for some reason her brief but intensive assignment had been cut short by new orders from the Air Force.

And they were strange orders.

The next hours were all travel, with very little rest. A helicopter to the mainland, where a troop carrier took her to the airstrip. Then a C17 across the ocean. It was dark when they landed and she was swiftly transferred to another plane. This time she managed to nap a little on the flight. When she landed at Peterson, the sun was just coming up and she knew the jet lag was going to be hell. She still didn’t know where she was going or why.

After so many hours of travel, Janet’s uniform was creased, her hair limp and her stomach growling. She straightened her uniform as best she could, smoothing out creases with her hands, picked up her bag and tried to look awake as she disembarked. She hoped she would be allowed enough time to freshen up and maybe even change before the next leg of her journey. What she really wanted was twelve hours sleep.

Two officers approached from the hanger. Both wore Air Force blues: a major and a lieutenant who looked young enough to be fresh from the academy. The major waved a greeting.

“Captain Fraiser!” he called.

Sighing inwardly, Janet quickened her pace as she crossed the tarmac to meet him.

“Captain Fraiser?” His eyes met hers briefly then dropped, scanning her from head to toe. He glanced at the lieutenant.

“Yes, sir, though I prefer Doctor.” It was an effort to keep her tone even. She knew he had judged her and fixed his opinion in less than three seconds. This happened frequently enough that she recognised it, and it infuriated her every time. Men took in her petite frame, her pretty face and mentally tagged her as “girl”. She was an Air Force officer and had earned her rank as well as her qualifications. None of it mattered to him. She was just a girl.

“Doctor,” he repeated agreeably. “I’m Major Samuels. You made good time; we weren’t expecting you until mid-morning.”

And yet he was here, waiting. Why? She wasn’t a VIP. “I’m told we had a good tail wind over the Atlantic, sir.”

“General Hammond is waiting for you, Ca- Doctor. If you’ll come with me. It’s a bit of a drive.”

So, no sleep, then. If she complained now, or even pointed out how long she had been travelling, she would confirm his assumptions about her.

Janet kept her feelings to herself. “Ready when you are, sir,” she lied.

Hammond. The name was familiar and after a moment she placed the memory; they met briefly some years before when he had visited the base where she was stationed. She had treated him for something innocuous. A headache. Her memory served an image of the general: a balding man who wore his years like a badge of honour and whose disarming Texas charm hid a no-nonsense determination.

She began to feel a bit better about this mysterious new assignment.

Major Samuels had a car, not a troop carrier, so the journey was comfortable, at least. It was tempting to try to catch a little more sleep, but she didn’t want to meet the general even more rumpled than she was, so Janet made an effort to stay awake. She watched the landscape go by instead, scattered buildings giving way to the open countryside and jagged peaks of the Rockies. Abruptly, she understood where they were headed. But Cheyenne Mountain wasn’t an Air Force base. It was NASA. Wasn’t it?

The mystery deepened when they reached the base and she found herself travelling in an elevator deep into the earth under the mountain. Major Samuels had her sign in and she was given a temporary ID bearing her photograph to wear on a lanyard. They were already underground, but he led her to yet another elevator which carried her deeper.

“Just how far down are we going?” Janet asked, unable to contain the question. She hadn’t even known it was possible to excavate twenty storeys underneath a mountain.

Major Samuels offered a brief, patronising smile. “The General’s office is on sub-level twenty seven,” he answered.

The elevator doors opened to a grey concrete corridor with 27 stencilled in white paint on the wall. Okay, then. Curious and a little apprehensive, she followed the major.

The general hadn’t changed at all. He greeted her with a smile and a handshake, waving off her attempt to follow formal protocol. “Come in, Doctor. Sorry to pull you off assignment so abruptly.”

The apology surprised her. “The assignment was finished, sir, but I was confused by my orders.”

The general sat behind his desk. “Have a seat, Doctor.” He waited for her to obey. “A few years ago, I had the privilege of watching you work while I was a little unwell. You may not recall…”

“I remember treating you, sir.”

“Do you remember treating another patient at the same time?”

Janet remembered all of her patients, but she compartmentalised. She couldn’t say who she had been working on at the same time as the general. She made a vague gesture. “I’m not sure, General.”

“Well, I remember you and your boss disagreeing about how to treat a young man who was badly mangled.”

The prompt was all she needed. “Yes. Doctor Sanford wanted to amputate.”

“And I remember how hard you fought for him. Did you manage to save his leg?”

Janet nodded. “We did, yes.” But not his career. The injury had been bad enough to earn the patient a medical discharge from the service, although if he kept up the PT he would have eventually regained full use.

“That’s good.” The general nodded. “I find myself in need of a Chief Medical Officer and I want someone who fights for her patients with that kind of tenacity.”

Janet’s heart sank.

“You don’t seem keen,” the general observed shrewdly. “Speak freely, Doctor.”

Janet took a deep breath. “General Hammond, we’re underground. I’m a trauma and infectious disease specialist. My skills aren’t what you need in a place like this.” CMO sounded like a good job, but CMO of a hole in the ground sounded like a job treating minor bruises and head colds. She would be bored to death within a week. But she had been given orders…

The general nodded. “Give me twenty-four hours. If you still think you’re not the right fit, I’ll make sure you get a post that will suit you. Deal?”

Janet wasn’t sure why he would offer her that kind of accommodation, but she nodded. “Yes, sir. Deal.”

“Our infirmary is well supplied and fully staffed, but you’ll have the freedom to expand the facilities and requisition any equipment you feel is necessary once you’ve had time to settle in and understand what we’re doing here.” He slid a beige folder across the table toward her. “Tell me what you make of this.”

Curious, Janet opened the folder. She saw a printout of what looked like an MRI image of a man’s head and neck. There was something wound around his spine. She picked up the image and studied it more closely.

“Is this…some sort of parasite? It looks like it’s attached to the brain stem and C-spine.” When he didn’t reply she glanced at him. He had asked for her opinion and she was asking questions. She turned her gaze back to the image. “I have never seen anything like this. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“Would you attempt to remove it?”

“No,” she said instantly. “I’m not a neurosurgeon. I wouldn’t know where to begin, if removing this is even possible. If it’s as embedded in the brain as this appears, I think removing it would probably kill the patient.” She looked up with concern. It didn’t make sense that she had been flown halfway around the world for this. There must be better doctors. “I do know some surgeons I could consult. Where is the patient?”

“He’s dead, Doctor. Our medical team shared your concerns, but the patient wanted to risk the surgery and there were good reasons to proceed. It was not successful.”

“I see.” She wasn’t sure what kind of a doctor would operate against their own better judgement. “Then why…?”

As she spoke an alarm blared through the room. The general was expecting it, because he stood at once. “Come with me, Doctor. Some things are better seen than explained.”

Baffled, she followed him. The general led her through a conference room to a control room of some sort, with a window overlooking a much larger room below. She barely had time to take in the sight below before a powerful vortex that looked like – but couldn’t possibly be – water exploded from the peculiar circle below.

“What?” she blurted out, unable to stop herself. Eerie blue light filled the room below and a metal shield contracted within the circle, covering the water-like stuff. It couldn’t be water. Water obeyed gravity.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it, Doctor?” the general asked, and without giving her a chance to answer, he snapped, “Report!” to the sergeant seated at the console.

“SG-1 IDC, sir,” he reported.

“Open the iris,” the general ordered.

Janet watched as the shield below retracted again, revealing the strange shimmering substance within the ring. “That can’t be water,” she said aloud.

“It’s not,” the general agreed.

“What you see,” the sergeant volunteered, “is the event horizon of – ”

Two men appeared in the middle of the circle. Both in green battle-dress uniforms, one man was leaning heavily on the other.

“Medic!” the younger man called. The man he was half-carrying fell, his heavy gun clattering onto the metal ramp. Janet saw the shoulder of his uniform was burned away, exposing raw and bloody skin below.

Two others appeared but Janet barely noticed. The exhaustion and jet-lag vanished. “How do I get down there?” she asked urgently.

“Through there and down,” the general directed.

She took off at a run.

Behind her, she heard him say, “Medical team to the gate room, stat.”

Janet noticed the armed men at the base of the ramp and the four who had appeared in the strange circle, but her attention was all on the injured man. She had no idea how long it would take a medical team to respond. She crouched beside him and touched his neck to check his pulse, watching for his breath at the same time. Pulse strong, breathing steady. Good. She turned her attention to the shoulder. She could smell the burned flesh and fabric.

“Third degree burn,” she said aloud, but there was blood, too. Burns didn’t bleed. “What did this?”

“Staff weapon,” a woman’s voice answered her.

The words meant nothing. Janet shouted over her shoulder, “I need a gurney!”

Seconds later the medical team arrived.

“I need a gurney!” Janet ordered again. She saw the white-coated man leading the team hesitate for half a second, probably wondering who she was. Then he moved, coming forward with the folded gurney under his arm and a medkit in his hand.

“Help me,” Janet instructed.

The injured man mumbled, “…can walk…”

Janet, accustomed to this, shook her head. “I’m sure you can, sir, but you’re not going to. Now relax and let us help you.”

His uniform bore no visible name or rank insignia, only a patch with a logo she didn’t recognise, but he was clearly an officer. As Janet and the medic lifted him onto the gurney in spite of his protests, the dog-tags around his neck slipped into view. Her sharp eyes caught the name: O’Neill, but she had no time for more. She nodded to the medic and they lifted the gurney so its wheels dropped and locked into place.

“Where’s your medical unit?” she demanded.

“This way, ma’am,” the medic answered, leading the way.

The gurney rolled into the elevator. As the medic punched for the level they needed, Janet held up her hand to prevent the rest of his team crowding in. She knew none of them, but registered their concerned faces as the doors closed: a blonde woman, her eyes locked on O’Neill; a white man with hair too long for the military, glasses askew on his nose; and the bigger man, dark-skinned and grim, with a strange gold symbol on his brow. Then the elevator was on the move.

“It’s nothing,” O’Neill insisted. His voice was stronger that it had been.

Janet laid her hand on his uninjured shoulder to pre-empt his struggle to sit up. “It’s a third degree burn and you appeared to lose consciousness on the ramp which suggests there’s more going on. Let us take care of you, sir.”

He frowned. “Who are you?”

It was a fair question. She smiled. “Apparently, I’m your new CMO.”

There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye that made her like him. “Who did you piss off to get assigned to this madhouse, Doc?”

She smiled back. “I’m honestly not sure.”

“Well, you’re not meeting me at my best, Captain. Colonel O’Neill.”

“Good to meet you, Colonel. Doctor Janet Fraiser.”

The elevator doors opened and the medic – she really needed to learn his name – took the lead, pulling the gurney. Janet followed, acutely aware that she had no idea what the medical facility looked like.

She was shouting orders as they entered the room.

O’Neill winced when she pulled the fabric away from his burn and yelled when she began debridement. She ordered pain meds, which he said he didn’t want, and continued work.

“Your colleague said this was a staff weapon?”

“Captain Carter. Yes.” He looked at her. “You haven’t been briefed yet, have you?”

“Colonel, I was aboard a ship in the Gulf less than twenty-four hours ago. I had been here about twenty minutes when you fell on the ramp, and ten of those were spent in the elevator. So, what’s a staff weapon?”

He winced again. “Ow! Energy weapon. I was lucky. A body hit usually kills.”

“Energy weapon?” Janet repeated, but though questions filled her mind she tabled them for another time. “What about this?” She indicated the blood now dry on his arm before wiping it clean.

O’Neill looked down. “Oh. That’s not mine.” His tone told her not to ask.

She met his eyes for a moment, then nodded, accepting his answer. She reached for a sterile dressing. “The biggest danger with this kind of burn is infection, so keep it clean and dry and check in with me tomorrow. Sooner if you need to. It will take some time to heal but I don’t need to keep you here.” She sealed the dressing in place. “Come and see me if you need something for the pain.”

“It’s not bad,” he said.

“No, with third degree burns the nerve damage means there isn’t much pain at first. It will hurt like hell as it starts healing. Ask if you need something.”

“Thanks, Doc.” He peered at the dressing as if judging her skill, gave a nod and reached for his shirt. “Welcome to Stargate Command.”