Part 2: The Mess You Leave Behind Keeping the Stargate secret is bordering on the impossible. Thousands are involved, from the leader of SG-1 to the janitor that cleans the SGC's toilets. Some of them are security risks, liabilities, loose ends. There is a team even blacker than the SGC that cleans up those loose ends. This is their story. * * * It's our job to make sure no one knows. “You know that it's going to get out eventually. You can't keep a secret like that forever. Sooner or later, it's going to get out. Everyone will know.” Julia Donovan, female, 41, reporter. Burned in studio fire caused by faulty lighting equipment, suspected but unconfirmed terrorist attack. He remembered that one well, a little too well. That case was one of the easier ones to justify. The reporter was sticking her nose in where it didn't belong, despite repeated blocks and warnings. She knew about Prometheus, the Trust, the Asgard, the SGC. She had been helpful in the past, delivering cover stories in lieu of the real ones. But one day, they decided that her usefulness had reached its end, and she went on the list. It was a messy kill. A month of preparation, to do it quick and clean, when the reporter suddenly sold her car and bought a new one. Someone else was probably smashed in a car crash caused by mechanical failure, but he didn't have time to dwell on that. They had to think fast and improvise. One maintenance worker outfit, a chain across the doors, and a frayed wire later, the deed was done. The investigation was stalled as a matter of national security. The reporter did a piece on Al-Qaida a week earlier, so it worked out. But there was collateral damage, and though inevitable, it was never something he was proud of. It was dirty. Unprofessional. “I guess after all that it was just an act, wasn't it? I was trying to do good, but I didn't know what was at stake. You intended to dispose of me all along, but you had to destroy me first. I'd rather have died at the hands of the Trust. I'd rather take my own life.” Alec Colson, male, 52, executive. Assassinated by organized criminal elements over past illicit business. As soon as he had shown the Asgard clone on live TV, the executive was marked for death. The SGC was able to discredit him, though it involved revealing working holographic technology in the process. Colson Industries was failing and his right-hand man was working with the Trust to keep him afloat. After being shown what was really at stake, he relented, and the SGC hid him offworld after the Trust made an attempt on his life. He disappeared from the public eye- hiding on another planet- and the sensation quickly died down. Years later, the executive returned to Earth, disgraced. Though his situation was messy, his death was clean. He took care of this one personally, waiting in the woods outside the disgraced executive's home with a Remington 700 and a magazine full of Hornady V-Max. After Agent Harris drew the executive out, he fired three times in quick succession. One bullet missed, the other two found their mark. It was deer hunting season, and nobody thought much of the gunshots until it was too late. They revealed that the man was dirty, various agencies theorized he had been offed because of it, and despite the previous ruckus, everybody forgot about him within a month. “I swore to uphold the law. Protect the innocent, put the criminals behind bars. Criminals like you. But that doesn't matter, does it? You're above the law. I knew Samantha was black, but I didn't think she was this black. Killing me to protect your secrets.” Pete Shanahan, male, 39, detective. Shot by drug dealer after blown working undercover in Denver. Though he tried to steel himself against such things, he still didn't like thinking about the cop. Being romantically involved with a member of SG-1 wasn't grounds for removal, not on its own. If he was still involved, things might have been different. If Colonel Carter hadn't revealed everything, it might have been different. But it wasn't, and he knew too much, so he had to go. He was a good man, not bad or even in the moral grey, and that only made things harder. The cop's situation both made things easier and it made them harder. The death of an officer would be thoroughly investigated, the death of an officer once engaged to an Air Force Colonel working on top-secret projects even more so. On the other hand, cops died. He kept things as simple as possible, working through underground channels to blow the cop's cover without blowing his own. It worked. When a local drug dealer found out the “dirty cop” wasn't as dirty as he thought he was, he whipped out his Glock and shot him, seven .40 S&W rounds, three through the chest, one through the neck, two through the left shoulder. In the minute it had taken to plant the evidence and confirm the kill, he had already figured it out, but it didn't matter in the end. The investigation turned up nothing, except that one Detective Pete Shanahan was carrying a single piece of ID that a gangster had noticed, a mix of bad judgement and bad luck. “So this is how it ends. Shot in the back by my own people. I know you black ops types do a lot of morally questionable shit, but I didn't think killing your own people was one of them. Guess I'm a liability the government can't afford. Well, come at me.” Martin Edwards, male, 44, USAF. Fatally shot by an unknown home invader, who was never caught. Killing a fellow soldier was probably the hardest thing he'd had to do. Even to his suppressed moral compass, it still felt wrong. But it was absolutely necessary, and he understood that. The colonel had been a problem even when he was serving with the SGC. He lead the naquadah mining operation on P3X-403, and ended up in a confrontation with the local population of Unas instead of working with them. Daniel Jackson had managed to defuse the situation, but the colonel ended up with more than a black mark on his record. He ended up marked as unreliable, a liability that had to be eliminated. The job was one of his messier ones, not one that he was particularly proud of. The colonel was usually working, deployed somewhere. An attempt to sabotage a transport plane failed when the faulty engine was spooled up on the ground for testing and exploded, killing two of the wrong people. He elected to go in quick and silent, doing the deed up close and personal. It hadn't worked. The colonel noticed him breaking in to his house, even though the utmost care had been taken. The two ended up confronting each other, a gun in each of their hand. The support team was always ready, however, and throwing a rock through a window provided a long enough distraction for him to fire without getting hit. The investigation went nowhere and the killer was never found. “You're killing me? As if disrespecting me and ruining my academic reputation wasn't bad enough. I was starting to gain some respect for the military during my time on Atlantis, but it seems the only method you know to deal with a problem is to blow it up.” Peter Kavanagh, male, 36, scientist. Severely injured by an accident in a high-energy physics experiment, died in hospital. His hit list probably wasn't the only one the scientist was on. A former member of the Atlantis expedition, the scientist wasn't well liked. He constantly complained, formally and informally, that his work was not respected and disagreed with the military involvement in the program. He was usually more concerned with himself than others and had a tendency to pass out when threatened. The reasons for eliminating him were twofold. The scientist had spoken out against various elements of the program before and might do so publicly. If pressed or forced, he would probably give up classified information. That could not be allowed happen. Most of the experiments the scientist carried out were relatively safe if proper procedures were followed, but could be extremely dangerous if they were not, or if certain protective features were removed. The experiment that killed the scientist was one involving particles in a small scale accelerator. Immense amounts of power had to be tightly regulated to keep the particles moving, and replacing a power regulator module with a faulty one was all that was needed to dangerously overload the coils. Blocking the flow of the cooling system and disabling the safety switch completed the sabotage. Doctoring the security camera footage erased some of the evidence, the fiery explosion completed the rest. After that, he visited the scientist in the hospital and slipped him a small amount of poison, just enough to kill the weakened man without being detected. There was collateral damage, of course, there always was. Six others ended up dead from the accident. It was unfortunate, but this was determined the best way to remove the scientist. “What did I do? I don't even know what the Stargate is! I designed the waste management system- the damn toilets! Sure, I started putting the pieces together, but it's not like I had any hard evidence. This... I mean, well, you're covering something up. You've only confirmed what I suspected!” Jessica Branton, female, 36, engineer. Currently kneeling with her head against the muzzle of his gun. The engineer was a nobody, but an inevitable casualty of the scale of the program. An immense amount of engineering work was put into the construction of Earth's starships. Such work required thousands of engineers, draftspersons, architects, and designers. The very secret parts- shields, inertial dampeners, hyperdrive- were done in house, as was the overall design, but it was simply too large in scope to engineer every little component. Outside firms, most already having high levels of clearance, were hired to do work that was either purely theoretical, cleverly disguised, or both. Of course, someone was going to put together the pieces, and there was a simple protocol in place for that. When they got close, they quietly disappeared. For one reason or another, it had been the engineer that designed the high-tech toilets on the Prometheus that started figuring things out, starting to seek out and put together all the hypothetical and cryptic projects. He tracked her to her house, a small apartment in Chicago. It wasn't a very nice neighbourhood, and people got murdered all the time. A simple shooting would be sufficient. But when he had his finger on the trigger, he hesitated. It wasn't because he had to kill a woman- he'd shot plenty of members of the opposite gender. It wasn't because of the pleading look in her eyes- he'd learned to ignore that long ago. It wasn't because it was an unfair fight- a fair fight was a stupid one. In fact, he found himself unable to place the hesitation. Maybe it was the sheer absurdity of it all. A toilet designer, finding out about a massive conspiracy, hunting down the clues, and ultimately ending up dead for it. She had a mundane but steady career, two children which she no longer had custody over, and a small dog that now lay on the floor in a pool of its own blood. Barely involved in the program, not even by her own choice, really, and now she was on the other end of his gun. Maybe it was the crushing weight of every person he had killed. He tried to push out the faces, the names, the personal details. Round, asian, brown eyes. Angular, pale, crooked nose, blue eyes. Jared. Harper. Emily. Ryan. Lost only son in car accident. Liked shooting as a sport. Restoring a 1967 Corvette Sting Ray. No. He couldn't afford to lie awake at night. Couldn't afford to have regrets, doubts. The mission had to come first. Didn't it? “Fuck it.” Slowly, he took his finger off the trigger, flipped the safety on, and holstered his handgun. “Get the hell out of here.” He had barely finished the sentence when there were two loud bangs, quickly identified as gunshots. The woman before him collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from a hole in her forehead. He turned around searching for the shooter before noticing that his chest hurt. When he touched it, his gloved hand came away wet and sticky. He tried to bring up his own pistol, but his arms failed him, followed by the rest of his body, and he collapsed to the ground. A lone figure stood in the doorway, wearing the same black BDUs and bullet-resistant vest that had ultimately done no good against the armour piercing ammo they used. She lowered the gun and spoke a few words quietly into a throat mic. Make sure no one knows it's our job.
Interesting. I assume this will remain a one-shot. I would recommend that everybody who wants to write fics about stargate in genres like fluff/hurt/comfort/angst/etc. read this first. Hopefully it will help some of them.
Thats definitely one of the more interesting SG fics I'v read. Great writing, but the story almost makes me debate whether or want I actually want this to be more than a one shot
Well, to be fair, more like how a real classified project would be kept secret. And honestly, if you want to reveal crap like that to the public AFTER being warned off, you kinda deserve it. Not the cop or engineer though.
Not really. Conspiracy theories aside, the U.S. isn't involved in that many assassinations and killing U.S. citizens to protect secrets is even less likely.
Or how about all the rest of the "collateral damage"? Like the flight crew that would have gone down with the transport? Not too mention the psychological damage that such operations cause to the people carrying out the orders. How do you re-socialize someone like that? Is it even really possible? I wouldn't categorically deny that there was a need for "Rough men ready to do violence", and I have every respect for those that serve their Nations. Ultimately though, the argument that such "wetwork ops" are necessary so as to spare "the public/citizens/masses/etc" from things they "don't want to/need to know" is self-destructive to the society such operations are supposed to "protect". It means there's a problem, and rather than attack it at the root, it would be prefered to pretend it never existed. Which means of course, those men (and women) who accept those kinds of orders as portrayed in the original post, don't even get what recogintion they'd deserve for taking on such a burden. Such operations by they're very nature are hard to control, no too mention the way just about any organization tries expand or sustain its existance, even if that reason (or especially if) for its existance disappears.
Um... guys, you do realize that there is evidence CIA assassinated American citizens during the Cold War right?
GeshronTyler: There is collateral damage, but one way or another, that's covered up. Accidents happen. Keeping massive secrets is Stargate canon- this oneshot offers one intepretation of how they keep a program of such a massive magnitude secret. Though I didn't mention it, if there are rumours (unconfirmed, of course) of people disappearing, it might help keep the others in line. Still, being part of the Stargate program is kind of like the Hotel California- you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Yes, I know it's rather dark, but I think one of the questions I was trying to raise was something like "How far are you willing to go to keep a secret?" I'm not going to argue the psychological damage thing, because it's the whole point of the story. Killing all these people has left the unnamed protagonist rather, well, fucked up. When he decides he's had enough, his second-in-command finishes the job and shoots him. It is not unlikely that she will repeat the pattern. If disclosure ever happens, this group will likely disappear, or be exposed and imprisoned or executed for their crimes. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm in no way condoning the protagonist's actions. Much the opposite.
Yep they did,and yes they still do.All countries make folks disappear including the Vatican. It just depends on if they deem it worth the trouble and risk.Its normally a black op and several times removed from the major players and involves lots of Plausible deniability and people ready to take the blame/fall on their sword.
Vatican Black Ops? Have not heard of that outside Hellsing fiction. Perhaps they should make a Call of Duty game focusing on Vatican's SFs/Special Agents.
Damn that was dark. I like. Surprised you didn't include Burt Samuels, the first season PITA, and Hammonds aide.
yep ,I did a paper a number of years ago(30) on the OSI in WW2 and they worked with the vatican on a number of things.It was really the first time I realized the Vatican is a country on its own.
My comment was aimed more generally at those people that like to harp on how necessary secrecy and black-ops are, ostensibly to keep us "safe". I'm not naive enough to believe that such things aren't necessary, and in the scope of the situation as presented in SG, I think a case could be made for necessity, the lesser of evils (as opposed to quite possible anarchy and civilization collapse). Those people just tend to brush off the "collateral damage" as "making omelets", which is very likely because they (or people they knew) were never "eggs" . The kind of operations your post describes is more focused on keeping "the people" ignorant, rather than safe. Really, finding it necessary to resort to such methods points out that the society in question has a great weakness, that it isn't able to collectively face up to fundamental challenges. Ultimately, its a failure of leadership in the government, for failing to keep the public informed of even the unpleasant truths, and the necessary actions to deal with them. I'm well aware that it's very difficult really for any society to think "out of the box" collectively, and plan ahead even for natural disasters that occur often- Hurricans, floods, Wild/Forrest fires, but in essence, one of the vitally important duties a (proper) government has, is dishing out bitter medicine when necessary. (Even if would cost them the next election... )
Your quite right,but unfortunatly all countries fall way short of that standerd from time to time and some fall below it all of the time.examples go from the red scare in the USA,to certain middle eastern countries supporting terrorist activitys,Argentina and the nazi's.The list goes on and on.
That was pretty messed up. Especially Colson; the guy had no more family and no reason to return to Earth anyway. I'd imagine an aerospace designer like himself would prefer to stay on another planet and work on spaceships. Kavanagh was unstable and would have never passed a TS/SCI clearance either, so I could see him trying to blow the program even more wide open. Also, I'm a bit confused why the Daedalus would need a special toilet, but then again, I'm not engineer.... This story could be even more fucked up if the clean-up crew guys, after years of resigning themselves to cold-blooded murder, suddenly look up one day and see the GIANT ORBITAL BATTLE that was the SGA finale (which should have been visible to the naked eye), and realize everything they did was for nothing.
Except knowing the SGC and IOA they'd say that they used a nuke to destroy a rogue asteroid and probably reprogram the Ark of Truth to make everyone believe it. This story is dark but it does fit in somewhat with the arrogant, condescending attitude the SGC/IOA and USAF has regarding disclosure. The attitude that 'its for your own good' when the real reason is they don't want anyone to know so they don't have to share all their cool toys and use the advanced tech they've gotten from the Stargate to better life on Earth instead of building warships and going around the galaxies causing mayhem as they interfere in things that are not their concern. It would be interesting at somepoint to see a fic where the SGC's nightmare happens and they cannot hide what's really been going on. How they deal with it would be interesting. Though if some of the AU stories are anything to go by they'll use martial law and the threat of plasma beams from space to keep everyone in line.
Reprogramming the Ark was proven impossible by the Ori so I doubt the SGC is going to have any luck in the matter.
That would be an absolute deal-breaker, given that the Ori are essentially what Kinsey expected to become when he died. Except the Ori could reprogram the Ark to spread their beliefs - it's just that belief created by the Ark doesn't carry spiritual power, making it useless to them. The Ori could reprogram it, and the IOA refused to destroy it, so them using it to brainwash the human race into loving Big Brother is possible. The likelihood is debatable, but the existence of the possibility is not.
I actually read a story where the Tau'ri used the Ark of Truth not to cover things up but to smooth out disclosure. They used it not to instill specific thoughts but a general concept, an idea. The kicker? That idea was one of liberty. So they brainwashed people into believing in freedom. The story is called A New Dawn by AlexanderD (not sure if it's the same one on this site) and despite undertones of manifest destiny it's actually quite good. Regarding disclosure, yeah, it's pretty much inevitable, and it actually should have happened several times throughout the series. The first (I think) is Lost City, where Anubis destroys key infrastructure from orbit and annihilates an entire carrier battle group. I'm still not sure how the hell they kept that covered up. And then there's the stream of glowing yellow things, although that might not be visible from anywhere but Antarctica, but the series of colossal explosions in orbit sure as hell is. And then there's the SGA finale. Disclosure not only would have made sense but also would have made it a lot more satisfying as an ending. Stargate Earth must be really used to having hugely destructive meteor showers by now.
I guess I'm too cynical to buy that. Heh. I can believe in faster than light travel and psychic powers and Ascension, but not authority figures who care about liberty.
That's what always gets me. The SGC and the IOA must think the rest of the world is stupid given some of the excuses they come up with to hide events - though for once it would be nice if something happened that the SGC couldn't cover up as a convenient 'meteor' shower or rogue asteroid. Indeed disclosure would have made a better and more satisfying ending - I've read some AU fics where that happened - but it really wouldn't have improved Enemy at the Gate that much as the whole episode was extremely rushed and very poorly thought out. Which isn't surprising as the shows directors were fed up of Atlantis - despite the fact that it easily had the potential to do one or two more seasons - and wanted to focus of the spectacular flop that Universe became.
