Transitions
Sabine C. Bauer
An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.
Fandemonium Books
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Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents
RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON
in
STARGATE SG-1™
AMANDA TAPPING CHRISTOPHER JUDGE
and MICHAEL SHANKS as Daniel Jackson
ExecutiveProducers ROBERT C. COOPER & BRAD WRIGHT
MICHAEL GREENBURG RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON
Developed for Television by BRAD WRIGHT & JONATHAN GLASSNER
STARGATE SG-1 is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. ©1997-2011 MGM Television Entertainment Inc. and MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. STARGATE ATLANTIS is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. ©2004-2011 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion Corp. ©2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Photography and cover art: Copyright ©2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
To Mouse—for providing the most unexpected insights into the mind of Rodney McKay.
CONTENTS
Prolog
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilog
Prolog
Amara stared at the tiny glass vial that lay snugly in the palm of her hand. Such a delicate thing. So seemingly innocuous. So deadly.
Her mother had named her appropriately. Amara, the bitter one. Amara, seventh of seven daughters instead of the longed-for son. Hence the name. Of course, her mother would never know just how appropriate the choice had been, for her mother’s acrimony couldn’t begin to compete with that of Amara herself. She had seen more injustice and cruelty than anyone ought to see, enough to fill a mind and heart with a glut of bitterness. And she would be the bringer of bitterness, too. She had begged to be chosen for the task, and the Teacher had heard her.
Looking across a rose-tinted evening sea, breathing in the scents of salt and olive and lemon that drifted across the water, she wondered if the Teacher knew, somehow, that she was here, was ready.
Her gaze returned to the vial.
How a little thing could be so all-important.
Take her name.
Exchange one single letter, and she would have been Amata, the loved one. Would her life have taken a different course? Perhaps. Perhaps not. All she knew for certain was that she never had been the loved one. Nor would she ever be. Some would walk in awe of her and the deed she had committed, others— many, many others— would hate her for it while they still could.
“Amara!”
She recognized the voice. It belonged to Pelas, and Pelas was a friend. This she had not counted on. In retrospect, she should have, because it was only natural. One cannot live among people, blend into the midst of them, without forming at least a few personal connections. Some, such as Pelas, close enough for that person to know one’s secret hideouts— all but one— and to seek one out even when one didn’t wish to be found. Perhaps those who had sent her had never considered a warning to that respect, perhaps they had deliberately omitted it. After all, the prospect of destroying one’s friends was daunting. Too daunting for most.
“Amara! You were going to join me for the evening meal, don’t you remember?”
Gently her fingers closed around the vial and slipped it back into the hidden pocket in her robe. A last meal, a last glass of wine, then it would be time. After this she would never see Pelas again. Pelas, who would learn to despise her when he might have been converted and brought into the flock. His heart was good. He suffered with the course his people had chosen. He could have been saved.
Not for the first time she wished the Teacher hadn’t expressly forbidden her to proselytize. Doing so would have endangered both her and her mission. Yet withholding the wisdom of origin was the vilest sin of all, and though she had been absolved in advance, she felt she was no better than those among whom she had lived all these years. They, the denizens of the crystal-bright, many-spired city behind her, would look on from a godlike distance while those poor, ignorant-as-newborns people on the mainland dwelled in filthy hovels, succumbed to blights a child could have cured, fought senseless, violent wars with weapons that left them horribly maimed and disfigured if not dead. And still the Lanteans, as they called themselves now, did nothing where they could have taught, improved, pacified, and healed. With great knowledge came great responsibility, they’d profess, and the highest and most painful duty of all was to leave lesser folk to make their own mistakes, for only there lay the roots of true enlightenment.
Vicious heresy.
What good was knowledge if it wasn’t shared with new generations everywhere and of every race? How long would it last if there were none left to carry it forward?
It occurred to Amara that she could answer this last question almost to the day.
These Lanteans had weathered the first onslaught of the plague the Teacher had brought upon them. The goal had been to utterly destroy them and their heresy. Still, a few hundred Lanteans had survived and although they realized that they now were immune, they had built this city on an isolated island in the Middle Sea and were intending to leave the planet before another fatal epidemic struck them down.
So the Teacher had taken the virus and modified it. Then he had sent her, and there would be no immunity this time. The little vial in her pocket contained certain death, and she would install it deep within the city, within the device the Teacher had instructed her to build. There the virus would slumber for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, until such time when it was certain that everyone in the city had awakened, had started their lives anew, felt safe and once more took stealthy pleasure in the plight of the unenlightened. Vengeance would come upon them when they least expected it, and the heresy would be eradicated. Amara would stay behind, within the protection of her own stasis chamber deep beneath the island, and she would sleep until the day when the Teacher came to waken and reward her.
Pelas’s hand touched her shoulder. “Amara? Didn’t you hear me?”
“I did.” She turned to him, studied him, the golden-haired, golden-eyed one, with his smile full of trust. And she smiled back at him. “I merely wanted to watch the sunset. It will be our last one here. We will leave tonight.”
Following the direction of her gaze, he drank in the pink and scarlet swaths of light the sun had painted on ocean and sky. “You’re right,” he said. “I had almost forgotten.”
She took his hand, gently, sadly, knowing that with this simple gesture she was leading him to his death. “Let us go, Pelas. It is time.”
Chapter 1
Michael Webber’s guests were an odd couple. Dr. Stavros Dimitriades; short, stubby, temperamental, with a wild halo of gray hair and in a suit that might have benefited from a dry-clean or, at the very least, a steam iron. And his companion, a Ms. Graves from some cultural foundation down in the States; thin, immaculate, humorless, but with all the right credentials. Heaps of them.
She wasn’t the sort of person Michael normally would have considered dealing with, but if Stavros had finagled the help of her outfit, bully for him. Michael wasn’t going to spoil it. After all, Stavros had— for the umpteenth time and counting— definitely discovered Atlantis.
This time it lay at the end of a manmade tunnel that a recent earthquake had exposed on an island off Santorini. Which, unlike most of Stavros’s previous attempts, at least had the novelty of corresponding with one of the leading theories regarding the location of the fabled city.
Anyway, Stavros and his cohort had shown up in Michael’s office half an hour ago and unannounced, and the goal of their mission was obvious.
“I am absolutely certain this time, my friend. There can’t be any doubt! Atlantis at last!” Stavros had leaped from his chair like Zorba the Greek, and for a moment he looked as if he was going to break into a spontaneous dance routine, complete with plate smashing and shouts of Oppa! Then he crumpled and collapsed back into the chair. “But, alas! You know how little interest there is in the world today for things of culture. Nobody wants to invest in it. I very much fear that the city of marvels must remain buried for all times.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if to drive back tears and heaved a stormy sigh.
The performance had class, and Michael bit back a grin. It wasn’t the first time Stavros had hit him up for funding, probably wouldn’t be the last. They’d been friends forever, ever since Michael and Jenny had discovered Santorini on their honeymoon a few decades ago, and being Stavros’s friend carried certain responsibilities, at least from Stavros’s point of view.
Well aware of it, Michael didn’t even argue. Besides, he could afford it, and there always was that nagging bit of conscience that said he owed karma a good deed or ten. He’d escaped a war that had killed thousands of his generation. And he’d turned a tiny renewable energy business into one of the best bets on the TSX, thus becoming the kind of people he’d protested against once upon a time and in another life. At least the start-up capital had been derived in style, from a couple of homegrown bumper crops of British Columbia’s main agricultural product. So, no, he wasn’t going to argue.
He opened a drawer, took out his check book, wrote a check for a sum that should keep Stavros happy for a while. Especially since Ms. Graves’s foundation had promised to match the amount. Michael signed it in an awkward scrawl that said he wasn’t bred to be a businessman, and handed the slip of paper to Stavros.
Who stared at it and went pale. Then he went red. Then he leaped from the chair again, rounded the table, grabbed Michael’s shoulders and soundly kissed him on both cheeks. “Evcharisto poli, my friend! Thank you so very much! You mark my words, you shall go down in history as one of the great spirits in the sacred world of classical antiquity!”
Michael wasn’t entirely sure that this was what he’d been dreaming of, but thought it best not to mention any reservations. Stavros’s eyes looked suspiciously shiny, and he seemed to be planning an encore to that Levantine kissing thing.
Mercifully, Ms. Graves interrupted. She’d rescued the check, which had fluttered from Stavros’s grasp in all the excitement, and now stared at Michael as if seeing him for the first time. “This is extremely generous, Mr. Webber. I didn’t expect this at all.”
The smile she forced would have scared a shark, so Michael merely shrugged. He was spared from coming up with an appropriate platitude by his PA.
“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Webber,” the PA chirped over the intercom. “Your two o’clock has arrived.”
“Ah, well,” said Ms. Graves, extracting herself from the chair. “We’d better be going then. Thank you again, Mr. Webber.”
Stavros looked inconsolable all of a sudden, and Michael had a good idea why. In Stavros’s world, an occasion such as this needed to be celebrated with copious quantities of ouzo and enough Greek food to sabotage the healthiest of digestive tracts. Certainly not Ms. Graves’s scene. He wrapped Michael in one last bear hug.
“I shall keep you updated on everything we find, my friend. You shall see, it’s the discovery of a lifetime.”
“And I’ll be looking forward to it,” Michael said, surprising himself by meaning it.
It felt odd, coming back. A little like returning to your parents’ house on weekend leave and discovering that your den had been remodeled and turned into a guestroom. Your posters— baseball and country music stars— and sports trophies were gone, and the interesting purple accent wall once draped with the Lone Star flag had been painted beige, a color that perfectly summed up a space which had lost all trace of its previous resident (admittedly of doubtful taste).
Though that wasn’t quite right, was it?
Well, Major General George Hammond hoped it wasn’t. He hoped that he’d left some lasting impression on this particular space, a legacy that couldn’t be eliminated by a coat of paint. That aside, beige was just about the last color anyone would associate with the current occupant.
That triggered a grin, and he spent the elevator ride into the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain trying to find color matches for Jack O’Neill. By the time the car came to a halt on Level 28, he’d decided that a single color— even Day-Glo— simply wouldn’t do. The O’Neill experience was just a tad more psychedelic than that.
In the hallway he passed several new faces and garnered bemused and anxious looks from folks who’d been posted here after his time and didn’t recognize him by sight.
Odd man out.
Before he had a chance of— God forbid!— waxing melancholy about that one, an enthusiastic shout rolled down the hall and barreled into him like a ball into the bowling pins.
“General!” The shouter was Sergeant Siler who picked up his pace just enough to make Hammond worry about the possibility of a non-regulation hug. Luckily the sergeant, a little shy and awkward by nature, knew when to put on the brakes. “Good to see you, sir,” he said after foregoing the hug, executing a smart turn, and falling in alongside Hammond instead. “What brings you back?”
“Nothing drastic, Sergeant,” Hammond replied, knowing full well that this wasn’t entirely true. Chances were that most everyone at Stargate Command, and three people in particular, would find it very drastic. “Just here to discuss a few things with General O’Neill.”
“Uhuh,” said Siler, managing to squeeze a world of doubt into those two syllables, but otherwise refraining from comment.
Hammond grinned and briefly put his hand on Siler’s shoulder. “Good to see you, too, Sergeant.”
With that he headed up into the control room, had a quick chat with duty staff, all of whom were still familiar, and then climbed the stairs to the briefing room and his… General O’Neill’s office beyond.
The door stood open, and George Hammond liked to think that this was a tradition he’d established. His door had always been open, to anyone. Jack sat behind the desk, looking a little unkempt for a CO— but then, what else was new?— and balefully contemplated the mountain of paperwork in his in-tray.
Biting back a smile, Hammond brisk
ly rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb. “Permission to enter?”
The answer was a preoccupied grunt, followed by a double take, and then Jack shot from the chair and to attention. “General! That’s a surprise! I didn’t know you were coming.”
This time there was no biting back anything. Hammond grinned. “At ease, Jack, for Pete’s sake! And it’s George, remember? I thought we’d discussed this.”
“We have. And I’ve been practicing in front of the mirror every morning. Still doesn’t quite sit right.” Smiling, Jack swung around the desk, hand outstretched, and they shook. “Good to see you… George. Come on in. Have a seat. Have your seat.”
“Visitor’s chair’ll do just fine, Jack. Don’t give me any ideas.” Hammond sat down, actually quite enjoying the view from the other side of the table. He missed the place, to be sure. What he didn’t miss was the price you had to pay. Too many lives lost, and every one of them still haunted him.
Jack returned to his chair— his chair— and contrived to look like a kid who’d stolen into the principal’s office to sit behind the man’s desk for a dare. “So, what brings you here, sir… George? Routine inspection?” He was only half joking. The other half, well, that had been obvious in his emails.
“Hardly.” Hammond chuckled. “I know full well that you’re filling my— how did you put it?— very big, very shiny shoes just fine, Jack.” The chuckle died. “As a matter of fact, I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“Oh?” Curiosity and suspicion just about balanced out in that little question. And the suspicion wasn’t misplaced, either. Jack wouldn’t like it. Much. At first.
Leaning forward, Hammond plucked the name sign off the desk and flicked his index finger at the single star on it. “You’ll need a new one, Jack. That’s the headliner. You’ll be bumped up to major general, and I’m genuinely thrilled to be the one telling you.”
Of course he’d known better than to expect a victory dance. Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s the snag?”
STARGATE SG-1: Transitions Page 1
