SGC - Grab A Broom - [Murphy]
David Klecha
Simon trotted down the emergency stairs holding his left arm carefully. He wore a sling over his last remaining clean uniform shirt and the camouflage-swathed cast on his left arm itched with the pain of bone healing and of skin trapped too long under plaster. It had been a little over a week since the attack and only five days since he’d gotten the bone properly set and immobilized. The whole rest of the SGC trotted up and down the stairs, and a couple of junior airmen were still busy dividing them into “Up” and “Down” lanes with yellow floor tape. They said the elevators would be back in general use soon, but the working ones were being restricted to priority use right now.
He stepped out on his level, crossing the “Up” traffic, and headed along the corridor toward the archives. Inside, his three staffers had managed to clear a reasonable path to his office and their cubes, along the innermost wall, but otherwise everything was still chaos and disarray. Equipment had been destroyed, shelves knocked over, papers strewn and items thrown around. They had fought to keep the invaders out, but eventually he’d had to pull his people back, through the emergency exit, and temporarily cede the archives to them. The damage they had done in an hour would require months to clean up and reorganize.
Never mind figuring out what they might have taken.
“Hey listen up,” he said, getting his troops’ attention. The three of them—all now combat veterans after the incursion—finished what they were doing and gathered around him. Two sailors and an airwoman, who came through the fight with no more than cuts and nicks, unlike their boss, stood just before them, their fatigues soaked with sweat.
“Good news,” he said. “We should be getting major ventilation back this evening, and we’re off of MREs. They’ve got a field kitchen set up on 17. It’s rubber eggs and shit on a shingle, but better than mystery meat older than your parents.” They all laughed at that—wearily. He would make them quit soon and go get some of that hot canned food upstairs, and then off to the cots for much-needed rest.
“Bad news,” he said and sighed. “The rumors are confirmed. General Hammond is headed to Washington.”
“Any idea who’s going to replace him?” asked PO2 Harkins, then grumbled under her breath, “It better not be—“
“It’s not,” Murphy replied, holding up a hand. “Word is, and it seems like good word, that Colonel O’Neill is getting his star and Hammond’s chair.”
Smiles met that news. The day was, in fact, looking up, after seven fairly gloomy ones. Now he just had to hope that O’Neill had some of Hammond’s patience for the work of his unconventional archivist.
Capt. Simon Murphy
Base Archivist
SGC