Female of the Species

by Geonn Cannon

  Carolyn nervously rubbed her hands together. “Okay, the truth. The truth… the truth is that we need passage on a supply ship. Any supply ship that’s going to Viaxeiro.”

  Another pause. Then: “You have failed to identify yourself.”

  “Your continued evasion will result in expulsion from these chambers.”

  “Identify yourselves.”

  “This is your final warning.”

  Teal’c had been listening carefully to each statement, and he believed he had discerned what was peculiar about them. He paused beside Carolyn and touched her arm. “Do not tell them who we are,” he whispered. “But continue to speak. Do not pause, do not give them an opportunity to respond.”

  “O-okay.” She cleared her throat and began reciting. “We… we are Yankee doodle dandies. Y-Yankee doodle, do or die. We’re… we’re real live nephews of our Uncle Sam. We were born on the Fourth of July. We came to town riding on… a… pony. We stuck feathers in our caps and called it macaroni.”

  Teal’c strolled forward at a casual pace. He kept his hands behind his back and didn’t address the beings standing on the stage.

  “Buddy?” Mitchell said under his breath as Carolyn continued her recitation.

  “I believe the phrase is ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’.” He stopped at the base of the stage and examined it carefully.

  “Yankee doodle, keep it up,” Carolyn said, her voice now halting. “I’ll keep it up as long as I can, but I’m running out of lyrics. Mind the music and the step…”

  Teal’c removed the panel to reveal a complex array of electronics. He wished Colonel Carter were there. She would be able to make much more sense of what he was seeing but, as he’d hoped, he could confirm a few things just on sight. He had seen several versions of long-distance communicators when he served the Goa’uld. Since joining SG-1 he had also seen Asgard technology which served the same purpose. What he saw now was nothing like any of those. The fact that none of the figures had responded to his actions was further proof of his theory. All five were still listening to Carolyn’s gibberish and waiting for a chance to respond.

  He reached into the panel and found something that seemed important. He twisted it until it came free in his hand. One of the columns of light flickered and vanished. The other four seemed unconcerned. Carolyn stopped her recitation and raised her eyebrows at the apparent magic trick.

  Mitchell said, “What the hell just happened?”

  “It’s like Cimmeria again,” Daniel said. “Old technology. The people thought they were speaking directly to Thor, but it was just a holographic projection.”

  Teal’c said, “Indeed.”

  Mitchell stepped forward. “So… the Overseers are really just holograms.”

  “Programmed with generic responses,” Teal’c said. “They process what is being asked and choose any one of several pre-set responses.”

  “It would explain how they’ve managed to keep the prison up and running for so long while maintaining the secret,” Carolyn said. “No need to recruit more people when one of the Overseers dies or worry about the next generation giving away the secret.”

  “So we’re sitting here talking to the alien equivalent of a Magic 8-Ball?” Mitchell said.

  One of the voices spoke again, obviously registering a question. “Your request is not possible at this time. Leave this chamber at once, and you will find the transport waiting to return you to the common level.”

  “Teal’c, do you see a reset button on that thing?”

  An Overseer said, “Expediency is required. Please leave at once or we shall be forced to — ”

  The four remaining columns suddenly vanished.

  “Well done, Teal’c,” Mitchell said.

  “It was not my doing, Colonel Mitchell.”

  The lights in the room flashed red. The door through which they’d entered slammed shut. Mitchell jogged a few steps toward it then stopped. The entire room was bathed in the red light now, and the alarm was echoing loudly enough that they could hear it even through the walls. Mitchell drew his gun but kept it by his side with nothing to aim at.

  “Jackson?”

  Daniel stared at him. “Mitchell?”

  “Come on, man, this is a classic SG-1 death trap. No exit, alarms blaring. Guards are going to be here any second. You’ve been in this situation a hundred times!”

  “So have you,” Daniel pointed out.

  “But stuff like this is why I went to so much trouble to get the band back together! This is the sort of thing SG-1 lives for!”

  “Or dies from,” Carolyn said. She was trying very hard not to panic, but Teal’c could tell she was extremely anxious about what was going to happen next.

  Daniel put one hand to his forehead. “This is usually the part where Sam would either do something brilliant or Jack would say something deceptively simple and it would trigger an idea. Neither one of those options is available to us. And unless you see something to translate or, or a puzzle to figure out, or someone to talk sense to…”

  Carolyn began to pace. “I can’t believe one of my last living acts is going to be singing Yankee Doodle Dandy to a bunch of holograms.”

  Mitchell looked toward the stage, then at the closed door. “We were brought here by a robot.”

  “Yeah?” Daniel said.

  “We were brought by a robot to a room with holographic Overseers. How much of this place do you think is automated? And if there are flesh and blood people working here, do you think they know their bosses are just big columns of light? They keep everything else secret, so why not this?”

  Daniel looked at the stage as well. “You’re right. Teal’c, can you get those projections back up and running?” While Teal’c turned to work, Daniel touched Carolyn’s arm and they started toward the stage. Mitchell followed them. “Dr. Lam, come on.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Hopefully we’re going to hide in plain sight.”

  Mitchell, Carolyn, and Daniel climbed onto the stage. Teal’c finished replacing what he’d disconnected and the five Overseers reappeared. They seemed unconcerned by the alarm and resorted to what was obviously their standard response.

  “Identify yourselves.”

  “State your purpose here.”

  Daniel waved his hand through the torso of one, then stepped up onto its platform. He turned slowly and made sure to keep his arms tight to his sides. “How does it look?”

  “No overlap,” Mitchell said. “Everyone inside.”

  Carolyn was completely enveloped by the Overseer she chose. Teal’c stepped into a beam and looked down to make sure his size didn’t give him away. He crossed his wrists in front of himself and tried to remain as still as possible. He could see through the veil of the Overseer which turned the rest of the room into a hazy blue-yellow fog. When glanced to his left from the corner of his eye, he only saw the Overseers with no hint of anyone hiding inside of them. He took slow, shallow breaths, keeping his shoulders straight and his head up.

  “You know,” Mitchell eventually said, “we’re going to look pretty silly if that door opens and it’s a just bunch of robots.”

  “If that’s the case, you better hope they don’t have infrared or heat sensors,” Daniel said.

  “Crap,” Mitchell muttered.

  The doors slid open and, to Teal’c’s relief, a pair of human security guards entered. They swept the area with their weapons before advancing slowly toward the tables in the center of the room. The younger one tapped a gauntlet on his wrist and the alarm fell silent.

  “Identify yourselves,” one of the Overseers said.

  “State your purpose here.”

  The guard who spoke was older, with gray at his temples. “Our apologies, Auloi. We received an urgent alarm that you were under assault.”

  “The intruders stand before you.”

  The older guard glanced at the other, then turned and slowly examined the rest of the room. “Apol
ogies, Kiunsu, but we do not see them. Perhaps they found a way to slip past you unseen.”

  “The intruders stand before you even now!”

  The guards moved apart, scanning the far edges of the room. The younger one moved closer to the stage and glanced toward the panel Teal’c had pulled off. He frowned and turned to face it fully.

  “Hey… something happened here.”

  He approached the stage and lowered his weapon. He reached out with one hand, pulled the panel open, and peered inside. “Your Eminences, did the intruders damage this?”

  A bolt of blue light from Teal’c’s zat hit the man, seemingly coming from the center of the Overseer’s torso. Once his cover was blown, he stepped forward and fired again. The older guard was raising his weapon but clearly unwilling to aim at one of the Overseers even though it was obvious something unusual was happening. He was hit in the chest and collapsed without firing a shot.

  The team emerged from cover. Teal’c ran to the door and placed himself in the frame, his foot planted against one edge to prevent it from sliding shut again. Mitchell and Daniel each went to one of the guards. The uniform was made up of jackets, padded vests, heavy belts, boots, and caps without brims. Mitchell began undoing buttons on the older guard’s uniform with a look of regret.

  “Sorry, pal. You were just doing your job. But if it’s any consolation, I’ve also lost my pants in the line of duty. More than once, actually.”

  Carolyn looked up at the Overseers, who were still looming above them on the stage. “What are we going to do about them?”

  Daniel was transferring his things from his pouches to the guard’s clothes. “What do you have in mind? If we disable the projectors, either people will still get sent to Viaxeiro or the whole system will come crashing down. We could be looking at an entire planet full of criminals being loosed on the galaxy. It would be a huge boost to Lucian Alliance’s recruitment numbers.”

  She gestured at the stage. “But look at this. Women have been sent to this Viaxeiro place for centuries based on some algorithm? Who knows how many innocent people were condemned to life without parole because someone at the dawn of time decided what they did was a crime?”

  “I don’t think that’s a possibility.” Daniel had finished trading his clothes for the guard’s. Mitchell was still fastening the last catches of his. “The Overseers just keep the prison running and make sure no one knows where it is. The individual worlds determine who is sent to Viaxeiro.”

  Mitchell said, “Like the separation between judges and wardens.”

  “I still don’t like the idea of this process being automated,” Carolyn said. “It’s like these women are just being swept under the rug. Forgotten. No one deserves that, regardless of what crime they may or may not have committed.”

  “I agree,” Daniel said. “But right now we need to focus on getting ourselves to Viaxeiro.”

  “And out again,” Mitchell amended.

  “Right.”

  Daniel and Mitchell dragged the guards behind the Overseers’ platform and secured their wrists and ankles with zip-ties for when the zat blasts wore off.

  “Major Hagman isn’t going to be very happy when we come back without these clothes,” Daniel said. “Have you ever seen the records he keeps?”

  Mitchell said, “Yeah, he’s just gonna have to get over it. We’re going to look suspicious enough wandering through the halls without carrying luggage. Besides, it’ll give these guys something to wear when they wake up. They deserve a little dignity, right?”

  Teal’c started to follow but then looked back at the panel which concealed the controls. A thought occurred to him and he ran back to the panel.

  “Teal’c?”

  “If we do reach Viaxeiro, our chances of success would be greatly increased if any pursuit was delayed.”

  Mitchell said, “Or messing with the Overseers’ program will tip someone off and we’ll have people on our asses before we even get to the rock.”

  Teal’c hesitated. “I defer to your judgement on the matter, Colonel Mitchell.”

  Mitchell looked at the panel, looked at the Overseers platforms, and then down at the guards. Finally he came to a decision.

  “All right, screw it. An extra monkey wrench in the works can’t hurt. Knock ‘em out, big guy.”

  Teal’c reached into the panel and ripped out as many of the chips and connectors as he could reach. There was a blinding array of sparks, followed by the light on the stage growing dim. He had no idea if he’d bought them an hour or cost them precious seconds. Either way, he hoped it would be enough to make the difference.

  “All right, that should do it,” Mitchell said. “Now let’s get the heck out of Dodge.”

  Carolyn followed Daniel and Mitchell from the room. Teal’c let the door slide shut and jogged ahead of them. He checked the door for any way to force it open, but it didn’t seem possible. Daniel had caught up and examined his gauntlet. Teal’c could see a small screen embedded in it glowing with small icons which Daniel scrolled through, clearly trying to make sense of them. “Hopefully one of these will…” The elevator doors opened. “Ah. Lucky.”

  “Very,” Mitchell agreed. “Let’s hope these uniforms have some weight when it comes to getting onto a supply ship.”

  They boarded the elevator and left the Overseers behind, silently waiting for their next visitor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE FIFTEEN hour cycle of darkness had ended, so the city was in full brightness when they left the cold-water. People were moving about the streets much as they had the day before. Sam watched them and tried to determine where they were going. A young woman brought a bag of laundry to a building where an older woman took it from her. She didn’t expect a women-behind-bars type of scenario, but she had to admit she was surprised by how domestic the whole city had become. It was easy to forget they were in a prison.

  Shein came outside and stood next to Sam. She squinted up at the barrier, then took a pair of goggles out of her bag. The goggles were oval, with glass blinders which would protect them from blowing sand. They reminded Sam of the goggles General O’Neill used to wear on missions and she became so homesick she had to look away.

  Back in the cold-water when they were formulating their plan, Sam had asked Shein if she had any special skills they could use. “My eyes,” she’d said.

  She looked back at Shein and saw herself reflected in the convex lenses.

  “What?” Shein asked.

  “Just looking forward to getting out of here. I’m surprised you and Tanis aren’t.”

  Shein sighed heavily. “That’s because you came from somewhere nice. Hell, even I’ve heard of the Tau’ri. The Goa’uld had flying palaces of gold and they still couldn’t leave you alone. Me, I came from a little nothing planet out on the far reaches. Goa’uld came there a long time before I was born, took everything worth taking, and then left the survivors to rot. We weren’t even worthy to be hosts for them. By the time I was a little girl, the Tok’ra had shown up. They might have been more polite than the Goa’uld, but they were making the same pitch. Come with us. Let us put a snake in your head. Use your body like a damn puppet until you get killed.”

  Sam wanted to defend the Tok’ra, but she could understand how it could look. And they weren’t entirely the most upfront people in the universe.

  “I said yes just to get out,” Shein continued. “I watched how the Stargate worked when they took me through to their planet. Once we were there, I knocked them out, took their weapons, and had one of them punch in an address where I could start fresh. The people I ran into tended to see me as a victim. It didn’t take long for me to start proving them wrong. My planet made me a survivor, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “I can respect that.”

  “Even though I’m a thief?” Shein said. “I’ve been a sniper. I’ve killed people for money, and I didn’t much care if they were good or bad. I know you’re judging us. Me, Tanis… even Vala. You think you�
��re better than we are because you’ve never had to resort to a life of crime.”

  Sam started to refute the claim, but Shein kept going.

  “You’re behind our eyes, Tau’ri. Seeing the same thing we’ve always seen. No one is coming to save you in time. You can’t jump through the Stargate and bury it behind you to keep the bad guys from following. If you want to get home, you’re going to have to come down in the gutter with the rest of us.”

  “I understand,” Sam said.

  “I hope so.”

  A woman came around the corner with a cart loaded down with what looked like broken mechanical devices. Sam watched the woman as she passed, then looked back at Shein.

  “They let you have tech? Aren’t they worried someone will rig some kind of communicator or call for help?”

  Shein pushed her hair back out of her face. It was too short to tie back, just barely long enough to tuck behind her ear, and she seemed annoyed by its length. “They let us play with broken tech,” she said. “It gives us something to do. Plus water purification and food prep would be impossible without it. But they don’t let us have anything that can send or receive signals.”

  Tanis brushed past them. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “And tried,” Shein said, “and tried, and tried.”

  “No offense, Carter,” Tanis said, “but if I can’t figure it out, it’s probably not something that can be figured out.”

  Shein said, “Tanis is the best techie I’ve ever seen. She may not have managed to make a beacon, but she did figure out how to repurpose a radio into a static-noise machine to help me get to sleep.”

  Tanis was turned away, letting her hair cover her face, but Sam saw a quick flash of a smile. She was pleased with her girlfriend’s praise, but bashful of it at the same time. It was a completely unguarded moment of humanity and, for the first time since meeting the woman, Sam thought she could understand why she and Vala had become friends.

  Shein continued, unaware of Sam’s epiphany. “The barrier is too strong, so any radio signals sent from the ground just bounce back. Plus we have no idea where we are at any given moment or how fast we’re moving, so we don’t know where to aim a message even if we could get one out.”