Colonel Davis arrived in a black government SUV to pick up Sister Helena from the monastery a day later, with permission of the Bishop of Fargo, to take her to Stargate Command. Except for Sister Marie Evangeline, the sisters were concerned, but Mother Superior remained calm and reassured them that Sister Helena was not in any trouble but was just attending a conference. The sisters gathered at the door of the enclosure and wished her good luck and gave her hugs and kisses. They watched from a window as Sister Helena entered the SUV. She gave them one final wave and they were off.

  On their way to Stargate Command, Colonel Davis asked Sister Helena about her visions. She described them to him in vivid detail of what she saw. She handed Colonel Davis her notebook and told him of the special code she used to keep her visions a secret from the other nuns. He was skeptical and suspicious. He gave her a cold stare, his eyes steely.

  “Sister Helena, your days as a Rogue NID agent make this hard to swallow. But if there’s truth to your visions, we can’t ignore it,” he said. “When we get to Stargate command, I will speak to General Carter. She’ll want to hear what you have to say.”

  They arrived at Stargate Command. Sister Helena had to sign a non-disclosure form and was given a visitor badge. She was shown to guest quarters while Colonel Davis spoke to General Carter. While she waited, Sister Helena spent the time in prayer and rehearsed what she would say to the general. “Please, Lord, give me the grace and wisdom to say what I need to say and that my words would not fall on deaf ears. Amen.” As she finished, there was a knock at the door. It was Colonel Davis.

  “General Carter will see you now in the briefing room.” Sister Helena went with him they were shown to the briefing room by Sergeant Abell. When General Carter entered the room, the two stood. Instinctively, Sister Helena saluted when Colonel Davis did so.

  “Sister, you don’t have to salute. You’re not in the military anymore,” said General Carter.

  “My apologies, General. Old habit,” replied Sister Helena.

  General Carter smiled. “That’s alright.” She extended her hand. “I’m Lieutenant General Samantha Carter.”

  “Sister Helena of the Cross,” said Sister Helena as she shook General Carter’s hand.

  “You look familiar. Have we met before?”

  “We have, ma’am. We met in battle. My name in secular life is Victoria Burney. I was formerly an agent with the Rogue NID. I was captured by General O’Neill and the rest of SG-1 in the raid on the NID warehouse in Montana. And I saw you in one of my visions.”

  “I see.” General Carter was taken back a bit by this news; she recalled that day when she undertook that mission with General O’Neill. “Colonel Davis tells me you’ve been having visions involving the stargate.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It started several weeks ago, one night when I was sleeping.” Sister Helena described at length what she had seen: the medieval village and the little girl, the festival and the stargate, SG-1’s visit to the planet years ago, and the mysterious woman who Sister Helena believed to be a Goa’uld. General Carter nodded the entire time as she took notes; she was surprised when Sister Helena described SG-1’s mission to the planet.

  “I remember that mission,” said General Carter. “We went to P4X-937. We told Simon and Mary to bury the gate.”

  “I understand,” said Sister Helena, “But they seemed to have unburied it. For what reasons I do not know why.”

  “At what times did you have your visions?” General Carter asked.

  “At various times, ma’am,” Sister Helena replied. “I’ve listed them here.” She handed General Carter a paper of all the times she had her visions. General Carter was surprised.

  “These are the exact times we were having strange occurrences with the stargate. How…” But before she could complete her sentence, a klaxon rang out through the base and red lights began to flash.

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  “Unscheduled offworld activation!” Announced Sergeant Crow over the intercom.

  “Stay here,” said General Carter. She went downstairs to the control room. “Report, Sergeant.”

  "Unscheduled offworld activation, ma’am. No SG teams are scheduled to return currently or check in. Defense teams are responding.” As the Stargate kawooshed behind the iris, it for some reason began to open.

  “Sergeant Crow?” General Carter asked.

  “It wasn’t me, I haven’t touched anything,” he replied, referring to the palm scanner that opened the iris.

  “Get down to manual iris control.” As Sergeant Crow dashed to the Gate Room, General Carter shut the blast doors to the window that looked out into the Gate Room. She then went to the panel to the left of the control panel. She flipped several switches, which activated a pulsing klaxon and the words “BASE ALERT CODE 9” appeared in red letters on all monitors. She grabbed the phone on the panel and spoke:

  “This is General Carter. Code 9! Code 9! This is not a drill! I repeat not a drill!” All personnel scrambled to defensive stations and extra security took up position in the gate room, their weapons drawn.

  Up in the briefing room, Colonel Davis and Sister Helena heard General Carter’s words on the intercom. Colonel Davis motioned for Sister Helena to follow him.

  “What’s going on?” Sister Helena asked.

  “There’s an emergency on the base,” Colonel Davis explained. “I need to take you back to your quarters for the time being.”

  “I understand. Lead the way.” He took her back to her quarters and ordered several SF’s to guard her. Sister Helena fell to her knees and prayed.

  Back in the Gate Room Sergeant Crow worked on the manual controls for the iris with defense teams covering him. Just as Sergeant Crow got the iris closed an arrow was shot through the gate, impaling itself on the gate room wall. Then the gate deactivated. Not taking any chances, the defense teams evacuated the Gate Room.

  “Send in a bomb squad in hazmat on the double,” said General Carter. She and the rest of the control room staff watched from a monitor as the bomb squad safely dislodged the arrow, which contained a piece of parchment, and placed it into a containment vessel and took it to a quarantine lab. With the threat secured, General Carter canceled the Code 9 alert. After several hours, she then called for Colonel Davis to retrieve Sister Helena. He went and got her, and they returned to the Briefing Room.

  “I’m sorry for the interruption, Sister Helena,” said General Carter. “But we had an emergency to deal with.”

  “Totally understandable, General,” Sister Helena said.

  “Before we were interrupted, I was about to ask you this: how exactly were having these visions?”

  “That I do not know,” Sister Helena replied as she pulled out the stone to help her say a prayer.

  General Carter noticed the stone in Sister Helena’s hands and was intrigued, especially by the engraving on it.

  “That's a pretty stone you have,” said General Carter. “May I see it?”

  “Thank you, ma’am. You may look at it. It's just a prayer aid of mine.” Sister Helena handed the stone to General Carter. She looked at the engraving and was surprised, though she became suspicious.

  “Where did you get this?” General Carter asked, her eyes steely.

  “I found it in the garden at the monastery. Is it important?” Sister Helena asked.

  “Indeed!” General Carter exclaimed. “Sister, this is an Ancient long range communication device. Where did you actually get this?”

  “I told you, ma'am. I found it in the garden in our monastery earlier this year.”

  “I want to believe you,” said General Carter. “But the fact is that you were a member of the Rogue NID, an organization that steals technology from our allies. You helped to murder four members of an SG team that were trying to bring you in. And to this day the rest of your team has not been caught. Why should we trust you?”

  “General, if I may,” put in Colonel Davis. “Sister Helena's track record after her arrest and imprisonment has been commendable. She has been spending the past several years in seclusion in the monastery in prayer. She's even taken some initiatives in the monastery to help with things there. What is most at stake here is that Sister Helena has vital information about a possible Goa’uld invasion of a planet that we, yourself included, helped liberate from the Goa’uld twenty-five years ago. I believe it's our duty to help these people, even if their methods of contacting us are a bit unorthodox.”

  “General Carter,” said Sister Helena, “I heartly regret my actions of my past life to the greatest degree possible, including the murder of those more people. I was swayed by a corrupt man who wanted power for himself.” She paused for a second to recollect her thoughts. “If it would help things I would consent to taking a lie detector test.” Just then Sergeant Abel came up to General Carter. She was carrying the piece of parchment.

  “Beg pardon, General, but lab results have come back on the parchment. There were no detectable pathogens on it.” She handed the parchment to General Carter and went back to her desk. General Carter looked at the parchment and was shocked at what she saw.