Free 03 - The First Amendment by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead) Page A

he was holding back about
Etaa. Maybe he could change the general’s mind about going back, and he could find out what really happened to the tall, gentle people who lived
there.
    It was a plan. More important, it was something to do.
    The first stop, of course, was the research office again. Randolph didn’t
even look up as he came in, and Rusalka gave him an annoyed glare and shake of
the head when he demanded, “Either of you know where Dave Morley is?”
    Outside the office, Dave Morley, on his way to Medical, heard his name
mentioned and paused to eavesdrop, trying to hear what the infamous O’Neill had
to say about him.
    Shamelessly, the infamous O’Neill looked over Randolph’s shoulder at the pile
of paper her printer was spitting out in a steady stream. “What’s this all
about?”
    He picked up the pile of paper and began shuffling through it. “Articles? Post. NewsWorld. LA Times. ‘Secrets and the Public’s Right to Know.’ Op-ed?
They’re all by Frank Kinsey. That’s interesting…”
    “That’s for General Hammond,” Randolph growled, still bending over a hot
keyboard as she searched for more articles through an international library
database.
    “And why is General Hammond so interested in Frank Kinsey, modern
journalist?” he wanted to know. “And what relation is he to our not-so-loved
Senator Kinsey?”
    “His son, and he’s coming out to the complex today. Not to visit us,”
Rusalka forestalled the colonel’s reaction with a hastily raised hand.
“Apparently just being a tourist.”
    “Apparently just jerking our chain, more like it.” O’Neill growled. “Is he
coming here?”
    “Not supposed to,” Rusalka reiterated patiently. “If you don’t mind, Colonel,
we’re putting together a background briefing, just in case. And no,” she added as he opened his mouth, “I haven’t the faintest idea where Major Morley
is. It wasn’t my turn to watch him.”
    Outside the office, Major Morley stood indecisively for a moment, and then
turned away—away from the conversation in the staff office, which wasn’t about
him after all, and away from Medical and his appointment with Janet Frasier.
     
    A sudden emergency claimed Dr. Frasier’s attention. One of the survivors of
the incident on Etaa went into full cardiac arrest, and it took all the skills
she and Dr. Warner and a full complement of surgical staff could muster to get
the man’s heart back into a steady rhythm. Then they had to determine how they’d
missed the problem to begin with. The man was one of several who had injuries
not consistent with Jaffa weaponry. She’d told Hammond—she’d told the
airman—that they were all going to live, and they would if she had anything to
say about it. So it was considerably more than twenty minutes later when she
glanced up at the wall clock and realized that David Morley had never reported
in as ordered.
    She considered having him paged and decided against it. The man was under
stress as it was, and he obviously felt that he had screwed up, that everyone in
the complex was accusing him.
    Time, perhaps, for her to take a break anyway and go looking for him. She
peeled off the last set of gloves and untied her surgical mask, and then paused.
She could at least ask Security if he’d left the complex, and if not, she could
go enlist Sam to help her. He’d probably consider two women less threatening
than one determined doctor by herself, and maybe they could just talk to him
over lunch. Or listen to him over lunch. Whatever it took to get him to come
down to Medical and get meds.
    Samantha Carter was neck-deep in fifth-order mathematics and utterly happy.
One of her duties, or perhaps her obsessions, was trying to figure out how the
Stargate actually worked—what triggered the opening of the wormhole, why waves
and photons could go both ways through it but nothing else could, the
back-calculation of where worlds had been when the table of coordinates had been