Stargate SG1 - Roswell by Jennifer Fallon, Sonny Whitelaw Read Free Book Online

helicopter, a trip that Vala was certain could equally have been accomplished in a car. Then they'd climbed into a somewhat more comfortable winged vehicle called a C-21, where there'd been lots of boring chitchat that these people justified by calling it briefing —and there was a misnomer if ever she'd heard one—about O'Neill sticking to flight paths to avoid the alarming amount of litter orbiting Earth; a fact that Vala found intriguing since they apparently hadn't had that many space battles.
     
    Watching General Carter install the Asgard transport device into the jumper had been an exercise in sheer frustration. If anyone had asked her—but of course no one had—Vala was absolutely certain she could have gotten things up and running hours ago. She'd encountered the odd piece of Asgard technology in her dealings with her prior business associates and on principle made a point of learning what she could about anynew equipment that came her way. One never knew when these things would come in handy, after all. Still, observing Carter and Lee at work had given her some insight into the more recent Ancient developments, so the day hadn't been entirely wasted.
     
    “Y'know,” Dr. Lee said, glancing around to make certain Carter was still outside talking to O'Neill, “I still don't see why we have to stick with 'puddle jumper' just because that's what the Atlantis expedition calls them. Since when have we referred to the event horizon as a puddle? Gateship just seems more appropriate.” He returned to examining the readout on the datapad in his hand.
     
    “What about timeship?” Vala ran her fingers along the flat, glassycrystals of the DHD mounted behind the jumper's control panel. As design ideas went, it offered a decidedly improved tactical advantage over the big, lumbering and not very portable standard model DHD. “After all, we will be flying around in a time machine.”
     
    “How 'bout Tempus Fugit?”
     
    She turned to face the balding scientist. “There's absolutely no cause to be rude.”
     
    Smiling, Lee glanced up from the panel he was working on. “It's Latin for 'time flies'.” He waved the datapad around in one hand and the stylus in the other as he explained. “I just thought, you know, since it's a common expression and because Latin is related to Ancient...” Seeing the look on her face he took a deep breath, exhaled forcefully and returned to checking the array of crystals in the overhead compartment. “Forget I mentioned it.”
     
    “Obscure cultural references notwithstanding, I still haven't entirely grasped this need to wave one's arms around when explaining something. Daniel does it a great deal and I find it quite distracting.” Even if, in Daniel's case, it was also somewhat endearing.
     
    “We...ell,” Lee countered, repositioning something he referred to as an alligator clip on one of the Ancient crystals. “You do the same thing with your...urn...body.”
     
    “Ah, yes, but that serves a very practical purpose.” Ignoring the flush of color that came to his cheeks, Vala gently tapped two of the furthermost crystals with her index finger. “Just as I think you'll find that moving these over here—” She indicated two slots at the rear— “will finish the job nicely.”
     
    Gaze darting between the panel and his datapad, Lee repositioned the crystals, shook his head in wonder and then offered her a grateful smile. “Y'know, that really is a gift.”
     
    Although she didn't know a huge amount about the more recent Ancient devices, the placement of the crystals was pretty obvious. “Comes with having had Qetesh inside my head all those years.”
     
    That insipid little man who'd worked for Athena hadn't helped, either. In attempting to extract some utterly worthless knowledge about a non-existent treasure map, he'd bequeathed Vala with the entire set of Goa'uld memoirs, something she could happily have done without.
     
    So much for her primitive human