stringertheory: (Three Fries)
[personal profile] stringertheory
Title: The Right Tools For the Job
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: General Hammond - guest appearances by Walter, Siler, Jack, various SGC personnel
Word Count: 2512
Categories: humor
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Summary: A call-for-prompts unintentional prompt of CRACK. [personal profile] magibrain threw out: "GENERAL HAMMOND. IN THE MALP BAY. WITH A WRENCH." And I said: Challenge accepted.


Siler strode into the MALP bay, clipboard in hand. Humming to himself, he quickly made a sweep of the room, checking off inventory and testing the power supply on each module in storage. As he turned to the last one, he was startled by someone popping up from behind it.

“Gen-General Hammond!” Siler quickly went to attention. “Sorry, sir. I didn't see you there.”

Hammond gave him a queer look. “Uh, that's fine... son. Just checking on things.” He waved the wrench he held.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't mind me, carry on.”

Siler gave a curt nod and hurried from the room.

He was a floor below the control room when the klaxons started blaring. Taking the stairs two at a time, he burst into the room just as the klaxons were silenced. Red lights were still flashing though, and the scurry in the room told him things had not yet been fixed.

“What's going on?” he asked Walter.

“Someone's—hacked—the—system—” Walter poked furiously at his keyboard. “The Gate went crazy and then the system locked us out and now the security system has completely shut down.” He pressed a few more buttons with unnecessary force. When the monitor simply continued to flash a warning, he hit it.

An aide flew by in the background. “Have you seen the general?” she squawked. “No one knows where the general is! He isn't in his office or the mess or the locker rooms or the three labs I searched or the elevator or—”

“I know where he is,” Siler said. “I just saw him in the MALP bay.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing. Red light flashed across every face, and they were all pointing in his direction. In the hallway, a group of stoic Marines trooped past. Siler felt a quiver of unease.

“You saw General Hammond?” Walter eyed him. “Where?”

Siler rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. His voice slowed with every word. “He's in the MALP bay... with a... wrench...?”

Everyone blinked at him. Then they sprang into action. The klaxons that had been silenced were suddenly blaring again.

“We have a foothold situation!” Walter yelled into the comm. “I repeat—a foothold situation! This is not a drill! If you see General Hammond, subdue him immediately!”

-00000-

Like cats, like space warriors, like completely green new recruits, the group of four sneaked through the SGC. Lupo, the team leader, guided them toward the nearest doorway, keeping everyone close to the wall as they tracked silently down the hall.

A few feet from the door, Lupo knelt and held up a fist. With a swift look over her shoulder and only the slightest hesitation, she signaled to her team and felt them prepare themselves. Taking a breath, she rose to a crouch and darted through the Funnel of Death, gun and eyes sweeping the room within. She met her second's eyes across the doorway and gave a nod. The room was clear.

Lupo continued down the hall, the team falling into formation behind her. At a junction, she brought them to a halt and pulled a mirror from her vest pocket. Carefully, she peered around the corner to the connecting hallway. One MP prowled the corridor, MP5 held in his hands. Lupo turned and once again threw signals to her teammates. They gave her nods, and she pivoted back to face the junction, gripping her gun tightly. Edging around the corner, she took aim and shot.

With a red flash, the shot hit its mark and the MP hit the floor. Lupo allowed herself a smile before quickly adopting a stern expression again. Another signal, and the team rounded the corner, making for the room the MP had been guarding. The door was shut, and the team surrounded it.

Lupo, on point, gestured to Marcus, nearest the door handle. He turned the knob and pushed in one fluid motion, and the door open with a soft squeak. Lupo swept in, the rest of the team in her wake, and held the solitary figure in her sights.

General Hammond pushed off of the MALP he was leaning on and dropped the wrench he had been examining.

“Well, well.” Hammond beamed at the group and checked his watch. “Three hours and nineteen minutes. That's the best time so far.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lupo grinned and glanced around at the others, who looked pleased as punch to a person.

“I suppose we should go finish off the game, then?” Hammond said.

“Yes, sir,” the team chorus.

Hammond held up his hands and Lupo took position behind him, gun pointed at his back. “Let's go,” she barked. Then a bit sheepishly, “Sir.”

Hammond headed out in to the hall and the team, sharing grins, followed.

-00000-

“That isn't how you play the game.”

The tone was overly prim, especially delivered in the deep baritone George recognized as belonging to one of his senior Marines, and it made him stop in his tracks. He had just passed the doors leading into the mess hall, on his way to consult with a science team about a recent discovery that had them giddy with delight, when he heard the voice. Doubling back, he peered through the window into the room.

Gathered around one of the central tables was Major Hawkins, Corporal Flannery, Drs. Alvez and Heinburg, and Airman Ellis. There was a boardgame of some sort on the table between them, though George couldn't make out which one. As he watched, Dr. Heinburg poked something on the middle of the board.

“You make guesses to determine the killer, yes?” she asked, her faint accent coloring the words.

“Yes,” Hawkins answered, “but—”

“And then you make an accusation, yes?”

“Yes, but—”

“And that is what I wish to do.” Heinburg gave Hawkins a look of confusion. “Why will you not let me do this?”

Hawkins sighed, and George suspected that this argument had been going on for some time—or was repeated on a regular basis.

“We just started the game,” he said, in a patient-but-losing-it-quickly tone. “The point of the game is to collect clues and use them to eliminate rooms, suspects, and murder weapons. We've only had two rolls each; there is no way you could know whodunit.”

“Of course there is,” Heinburg replied, somewhat haughtily.

“Oh, is there?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

Hawkins shot an exasperated look at the other players. Flannery was grinning good-naturedly and Dr. Alvez gave him a shrug. Ellis—who had only been at the SGC for two weeks and looked terrified of the present company—just alternated his gaze from one face to another. Hawkins sighed again, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned back in his chair.

“Go ahead, then,” he told Heinburg. “Accuse away.”

Heinburg gave him a nod. She took a few pieces from the board and moved them to a specific space as she spoke. “General Hammond, in the MALP bay, with the wrench.”

Hammond frowned in surprise at the accusation. What the devil, he thought. The other players quickly consulted their game cards, scribbling away with pencil, pen, and—in Corporal Flannery's case—a neon blue crayon, while Heinburg pulled something from the center of the board. When she opened it, George could tell it was a small envelope, and she removed what looked like cards from inside.

Everyone was quiet for a moment as Heinburg consulted the cards. Then she smiled in a self-satisfied way and lay them on the table for the others to see.

“I win,” she said.

Flannery started laughing. Hawkins stared at the cards in disbelief before turning the stare on Heinburg.

“How did you—?”

Dr. Heinburg just smiled. Dr. Alvez had picked up the cards and was examining them with extreme scrutiny. He also plucked up the envelope and stared inside as if expecting something else to be in it.

“It was quite simple,” Dr Heinburg said. “It's all a matter of probability.”

“Oh no it isn't,” Alvez said. “Not this early in the game. You cheated!”

“It's a matter of probability,” Heinburg repeated. She grinned again, and this time it had a wicked edge to it. “And being able to read people.”

George chuckled to himself. Just then, he heard someone approaching and looked over to see Colonel O'Neill arrive. The colonel glanced inside the hall as well and smiled.

“Ah, Clue. A traditional SGC pastime.”

“I'm a bit surprised to find that I'm now a suspect in the game, and that the MALP bay is a location.” Hammond said, giving the colonel a pointed look.

O'Neill waved a hand. “Oh, some of the folks decided to spice things up a little bit, that's all.”

“Spice things up?” Hammond repeated.

“Yeah, you know. Make the game more true to life.”

George gave him a wry look.

“In generalities, sir,” O'Neill added, pushing open the door to the mess hall. “No one suspects that you've killed someone in the MALP bay.”

George shook his head and watched through the window as O'Neill joined the game crowd. Chuckling, George headed for the labs.

-00000-

It was a Thursday. A typical spring Thursday. Outside, the weather was beautiful: a cool seventy two degrees, lots of sunshine, fluffy clouds. Under the mountain, things were quiet. Too quiet.

Walter cast a discerning eye around the control room. His fellow technicians plugged along at their various tasks, turned dull in the relative calmness of the mid-morning. Information scrolled across monitors as it should, lights blinked on the blinky light units as they should, and Mary from accounting had just passed through with a stack of doughnuts as was her wont.

Walter frowned at the half-eaten bear claw in his hand. Something felt off. Polishing off the pastry, he ran through a mental checklist.

SGs 4, 7, 12, and 23 were off-world. SG-7 had barely been gone an hour, SG-12 had checked in on time at 0600, SG-4 were due back at 1300, and SG-23 were on a long-distance trip and wouldn't be checking in for another two days. There had been a small fire earlier in the day in one of the engineering labs, but it had quickly been contained without so much as a singed eyebrow. One of the specimens from PJ7-393 had escaped on Tuesday. They found the poor thing curled up in the corner of one of the ladies' lockers Wednesday afternoon. Or, rather, Sergeant Jacobs had seen eyes staring at her from her locker and ran out of the room in a blind panic, leaving Siler to rescue the creature. And what they all thought had been an infiltration of the base had merely been one of the new recruits not firmly securing one of the outer access doors.

All told, things were far too quiet, far too calm for Walter's nerves. He glanced around the room again—nothing out of the ordinary. The idea of checking in with the general crossed his mind, and he paused.

“Abraham, have you seen General Hammond since we sent off SG-7?”

Abraham shook her head. “No. Why?”

Walter raised his eyes to look at the ceiling, his unease growing.

Just then, someone stumbled up the stairs from the hallway. Walter recognized him as Corporal Zachary. The corporal was huffing as if he had just run a marathon and paused at the top of the stairs to catch his breath, leaning over with his hands on his knees.

“Corporal?” Walter prompted.

“They clubbed—General Hammond—wrench—the MALP bay—!” Zachary panted, pointing wildly back over his shoulder.

“They?”

Zachary jerked a shoulder. “Not one of us,” he huffed. “Human,” he added as an afterthought.

Walter shared a dark look with Abraham.

“Round up the troops,” he said, reaching for the phone.

-00000-

“The Vikings? You're crazy!” Lukas shook his head.

“Naw, man,” Robertson countered. “They got a chance this year!”

“Yeah, a chance of utter humiliation.”

Carefully, they maneuvered the MALP down the hallway.

“They've bulked up their defensive line and scored a first draft QB, not to mention the fact that they traded what was basically baggage for two of the top receivers in the league.”

Lukas scoffed. “The top two in 2002, maybe. You know as well as I do that they're both past their prime.”

Robertson opened the door to the bay and stood aside for Lukas to drive the MALP inside. “There's still fight left in the old boys,” he joked. “Markum was second in TD passes last year, and Jeffrey was fifth in yards.”

“And then he spent the off-season nursing more injuries than SG-1 gets in an entire year,” Lukas joked. “Face it, Robertson: they got no game.”

The MALP parked in its spot, Lukas turned off the power. In the sudden quiet, he and Robertson could hear the subtle scrape of metal on metal. They both spun around to find General Hammond himself tinkering with one of the MALPs across the room. They immediately sprang to attention.

“General Hammond, sir!”

Hammond glanced up from his work. “At ease, gentlemen,” he said kindly.

Lukas relaxed a fraction and shared a look with Robertson. “Ah, did you need something, sir?” he asked the general.

“No, no, just fixing this thing,” Hammond replied, tapping the camera module with the wrench he held.

Lukas looked at Robertson in uncertainty. Robertson raised an eyebrow and jerked his head at the general. Lukas cleared his throat.

“Uh, fixing what, exactly, sir?”

“The camera base,” Hammond answered as he worked at some part of the module they couldn't see.

“And what's wrong with the camera base, sir?” Lukas asked.

Hammond gave one last turn of the wrench and stepped back, a satisfied look on his face. “It was squeaky,” he said, coming around the MALP. “About drove me crazy every time we had to use it. I figured it was a silly thing to send a request for, so I decided to just drop by and take care of it myself.”

He held out the wrench, and Robertson automatically extended his hand to take it.

“I should get back up to the office,” Hammond said with a glance at his watch. “I'm expecting a call from the Joint Chiefs at 1500.”

And with a smile, he was gone. Lukas and Robertson wore identical confused, surprised expressions. They stared at each other for a long minute.

“So,” Lukas finally said. “The Vikings, huh?”





on 2011-12-14 01:37 am (UTC)
green_grrl: (SG1_JDWhat)
Posted by [personal profile] green_grrl
HEE! These are awesome! I love a good SGC war games story, and the Clue game was obviously irresistible. :D

on 2011-12-14 02:56 am (UTC)
green_grrl: (SG1_TealcGroovy)
Posted by [personal profile] green_grrl
Everyone would always pick Siler in the MALP bay with the wrench. Janet in the infirmary with the needle. Daniel in the archeology lab with the artifact. Sam in the physics lab with the doohickey. (Jack wrote the game.) Jack in the commissary with the steak knife. Teal'c in the gym with the zat. And General Hammond in the briefing room with the coffee urn. :DDD

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