((Ok... So, what do the scientists need to do? I am hopelessly lost. I hope I'm not being too much of an idiot.))

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You may (or may not) know me elsewhere as Elfpen

((the scientist have probably been working on the details of the portal, getting bumps smoothed out and all))

Carson jumped to his feet as the lights went off. "What in the world?" He turned on his speaker (which had a power source separate from the electricity). "What's going on?" he asked.

Michele started as well, sending her mostly-empty coffee cup onto the floor. She got up, and then heard he remains of her latte trickling onto the floor.

"Oh dear..." Getting up, she groped around her desk for her small flashlight, and soon found it. IT was small and silver, and did not use batteries, as a new science -one that she had assisted in devolping- had exposed of the need for batteries, Well,for things such as a flashlight anyway. Turning it on, she did what she could to clean up the mess. Then, she turned towards Carson as he spoke into the intercom, waiting for a reply from the other end.

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Alanna sighed. She had a half-moment of peace to close her eyes and begin thinking about the problem, before calls from almost all of the labs on the base started filling the channels, demanding an explanation. She flipped over to the emergency public address system, which ran on an auxilary power generator.

"This is Alanna Yeh with CSEA. Please remain calm. The secondary generators should be coming online very shortly to restore full power. We apologize for any inconvenience."

"Inconvenience" was an understatement, to put it mildly. An irritated biologist would probably break down the door of the lab to complain about his sensitive cell incubation process. Fortunately the computers shouldn't have lost any data.

There was a brief flicker, and then the lights remained on. So they had power back - time to see what damage had been done to the Portal itself.

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

Carson frowned a bit. "She was testing the Portal." he said to Michele. "I'm going to go see what went wrong." He tossed his empty coffee cup in the trash can. "Want to come along?"

Michele shrugged as she straightened her lab coat and pulled at her blond ponytail.

"Sure. I wonder if that thing overloaded the #2 genorator... That thing blows all the time. Or it could just be an over-loaded cable, but I don't think so." she got up and started walking before continuing, "As far as I know, all of the mother cables around here have overload alarms and power divisions..." He voice trailed off as she listed all of the posible problems. Obviously, she had worked inventory, and helped set up the station.

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*shuffles in* I'll post, I'll post.

----

Winter glared at the Sergeant, jostled by yet another jolt as the ranking officer took them over a rather bumpy stretch of road. All of the occupants of the vehicle had donned their helmets after having their skulls smashed into the frame of the Puma several times. Winter's head was still ringing, so he was still glaring at Cortez. "Did you ever," he asked, "take driving lessons?"

At this point, the answer seemed like it was going to be a negative. Before he got an answer, though, he swore. The station was visible in the distance, and more importantly, so was the enormous spaceship settling down on it.

"What the heck are the Greys doing that kind of fool move for?!?" he asked, not realizing that the structure of the ship was far different from what the Greys themself normally used.

"That's not normal docking procedure, is it, Sarge?" he asked, his jaw dropping lower and lower as the alien ship continued its unorthodox landing procedure.

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Sitting in the back of the Puma and shielding his eyes against the glare of the ship's landing lights, Riley Thanfield squinted at the spacecraft that'd just wrapped its eight mechanical limbs around the station like a giant arachnid.

One hell of an arachnid.

As the terrain-specialized vehicle bumped over the edge of yet another crater, he happily cracked his head on the roof for the third time. Recovering from the jolt, he performed a weapons check as was procedure before entering unknown territory. He glanced at Sergeant Cortez. It really wasn't his place to speak, but he spoke anyway. "Before we blow this party up, sir, shouldn't we open communications with the station first? There are civilian scientists in there."

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Holly dodged around her desk, charging into the hallway to pass Carson and Michele. As soon as the power had restarted her computer there had been indication of a radio signature entering their docking zone, one she'd never seen before. Though as a scientist Holly wasn't strictly supposed to have access to the docking information, she'd hacked into her first hard drive at the age of eight and things had progressed from there.

"Unknown ship docking - " she started, and then the station shuddered, throwing her against a wall. This only served to quicken her pace and in a moment Holly burst through the doors of the cafeteria to see what looked like a giant mechanical arm reaching down across the floor-to-ceiling windows. "What in the name of - ?"

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Michele was rather urgently marching through the halls alongside Carson when the ship jolted, as if hit by some unseen wall. With a high-pitched, but otherwise rather quiet yelp, Michele knocked into Carson, then into the wall.

"What the heck is going on?!" She was now more than confused, as well as mad. Marching through the halls that were now swarming with people, she stopped at the nearest window, just to see a large mechanical arm getting ready to clamp agianst the ship.

"Of for the love of-" The ship hit another jolt. She plucked her intercom off her belt rather sharply and tried to contact communications.

"Michael Ericson you will tell me this instant what in the name of goodness is going on around here!" She raged into the speaker at the communications officer, who seemed quite shocked to say the least, and in a panic.

"Deriecho, we're doing all we can. Just cool it for a sec and we'll get 'er up and running. Apparently someone has accesed the ships communications computer and is trying to open the network, but there not having much luck; that power out is still lingering in the major computers." Michele calmed slightly, and replied.

"Alright, Michael... Just tell me if anything changes in the situation or something like that, okay?"

"Gotcha. Once we get 'er wires straightened up to fly right, you'll be the first to know. Mike out." With that the intercom made a pop, then started to fizz with static. Sighing, Michele looked out the window, trying to study the metal arm, but soon was thrown against the wall as the ship rocked again.

((Well, so he's a new charrie. I'll just play 'im without a bio, unless you want one... Hey, I just now realized that 'Michele' and 'Michael' are really similar.... *sigh* Oh well.))

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As the base rocked, Carson steadied himself against a wall. Peering out a window, he was able to see part of one metal arm. "What is that bloody thing?" he shouted into his intercom. He didn't recieve any response-that seemed to be the question of choice at the moment.

(SG, we're on a station. There's a ship on top of us. btw I don't know what this portal looks like so I'm winging it.)


"Well, how does it look?"

"Not too bad. Fuses and circuit breakers gone, but those won't be problems." Morris knelt on the circular platform that was the Portal, checking out the innards that were exposed by opened panels. When the portal itself was activated, the time-warping singularity was generated directly over the platform, a green cloud of scintillating light that swallowed whatever was put through it. The intensity of the color was an indicator of the magnitude of the time difference - the darker the color, the further back in time it extended.

"Anything else?" Alanna sat at her console, meticulously going through the logs generated by the curtailed test.

"Yeah," one of the other techies spoke up. "It's a little crispy on the ..." Something thudded overhead, and everyone in the lab looked up. "What..." Another thud. "I didn't know we had anything scheduled to be installed on the roof."

"We didn't," said Alanna tersely, trying to ignore the prickling on the back of her spine. She hit the intercom line. "Ops, what's going on upstairs?"

No answer.

"Ops? This is the CSEA lab."

"Sit tight, CSEA. We're kinda busy."

"Thanks for nothing," she muttered. "Let's keep going, folks. We're working against a deadline."

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

(( I was just going from what Meldawen posted... Sorry...))

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You may (or may not) know me elsewhere as Elfpen

Carson listened to the general clamor over his speaker for a moment, then switched to a different channel. "Alanna, Michele and I are on our way down. Be there in a minute." He started down the hall again after one last glance out the window, steadying himself against the wall.

The engineer started at the voice, then looked at the comm to ID the speaker. Reid, C. Oh. She vaguely recognized the name - she'd met him socially, but had no idea what his occupation was. And Michele? And why on earth would they be "on their way down"?

It was giving her a headache, so she decided not to think about it anymore. Back to the logs - and there were lots of them.

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

Winter raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"Aren't they Greys, Sarge?" he asked, even as he powered up his Auto-rifle. If they got into a firefight--for whatever reason--it wouldn't be good to run out ammo, so he grabbed a handful of ammo clips and stuffed them into the few relatively empty pockets he had left on his person. As he looked up again, the Puma hit a bump hard enough that they left their seats. Right before his seatbelt jerked his lower half to a halt, the top of Winter's upper half--namely, the head--smacked into the frame of the vehicle, hard. Again.

"Could you take it a little easier on these bumps, maybe?" he complained, tentatively tapping the area on his helmet that had hit, and grimacing at the pain it incited on the corresponding area of his scalp. "If I hadn't had my helmet on, that last one would have cracked my skull, and then who would you have to back you up, Sarge?" he asked. "Them?" he threw a glance over his shoulder at the Privates and gave a derisive--yet joking--laugh.

If he understood just what a strange alien ship docking on a first-class research facility meant, he made no sign. That meant, more or less, that he still didn't realize what was going on, because when he figured something out, he broadcasted it in his booming voice, so that everyone knew about it in minutes.

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