STARGATE SG-1: Transitions

by Sabine C. Bauer

  The pencil pusher adjusted his bowtie and cleared his throat, sparking an animated reaction from his Adam’s apple. Then he continued to hold forth to the approving nods of everyone else gathered around the conference table. Five gentlemen who looked as though they’d bleed dust if you stabbed them, and one lady— Jack was applying the term loosely— with the build and subtle charm of a broomstick. Together they represented the International Oversight Advisory.

  The IOA had its own ideas regarding the replacement of General O’Neill as commanding officer of the SGC. Which was the reason for this lively get-together. While everyone acknowledged that Jack’s first choice, Hank Landry, was eminently qualified, the IOA wished for a command structure more representative of its own tenets, especially as any strategic threat from the Goa’uld had been eliminated once and for all. In order to examine such options, the IOA had proceeded to appoint a committee, headed up by the pencil pusher who’d spent the past two hours divulging— in stultifying detail— the pearls of wisdom he and his fellow boredom-mongers had excreted in the course of five months.

  Halfway through the synopsis of month two, Jack had begun to lose the will to live. The whole thing was uncannily like sitting in a cartoon classroom and listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher making those weird, underwater blah-blah-blah noises.

  “So, to come to the conclusion,” bleated the pencil pusher.

  Conclusion?

  Jack didn’t for a second believe that the guy actually meant it. They always did that. Lulled you into a false sense of security and then hit you with the announcement of the four-hour sequel, which was going to follow a three-minute coffee break. He frowned at the paperclip. It didn’t look like Homer at all. More like a rabbit that suffered from a tragic birth defect.

  “There remains little doubt,” bleated the pencil pusher, “that the new leadership requirements of Stargate Command would best be met by a steering committee, composed of—”

  “A what?”

  Oops. That had come out loud. Very loud, in fact. You’d have thought that the acoustic ceiling tiles prevented an echo.

  Six heads swiveled toward Jack, and the pencil pusher’s Adam’s apple did a handspring.

  “General, if you could save your queries till later? There’ll be a question and answer session at the end of the presentation,” the broomstick, whose name was Miz Graves, pointed out in the tones of someone pushed to the limits of her endurance.

  Jack knew the feeling. “It wasn’t a query, really. More of a comment.”

  “Comments, too, can wait till—”

  “Just out of idle curiosity…” Jack peered at the pencil pusher, trying hard to ignore the laryngeal acrobatics. “What would be the average response time of this steering committee of yours to an emergency?”

  Up. Down. Handspring. “General, I know where you’re going with this, but if you’ve been following my argument, you’ll know that the Air Force will of course be adequately represented on the committee. However—”

  “Let’s save the discussion of your definition of adequate for the question and answer session. Response time?”

  “Any response would follow a thorough prior examination by the committee and the final decision would be determined by majority vote.”

  “Defense by democracy. Cute. I hope we’ll all live to enjoy the benefits.”

  “General,” the broomstick piped up again. “Weren’t you the one who assured us that the threat posed by the Goa’uld has been eliminated?”

  “And I stand by that. By the same token, what makes you think that the Goa’uld are the only bad guys out there?”

  “See, that’s precisely the kind of military paranoia the International Oversight Advisory is seeking to curb! If it were up to me, I’d put the SGC into civilian hands entirely.”

  “And who exactly, do you suggest, is going to deal with the pesky hands-on aspect of our hypothetical emergency? Another committee? Of course that’d be after the first committee has wasted three days to come up with a pile of—”

  Raised voices, muffled to a blur by the padding of the conference room door, interrupted Jack before he could say something utterly undiplomatic. Better yet, the blurs, bass and tenor respectively, sounded kinda familiar. Jack felt like a prisoner knowing that the hostage rescue team was underway.

  “Can somebody just tell those people out there to keep it down?” the broomstick demanded. “We’re trying to work here!”

  One of the suits somehow conceived the impression that she’d been talking to him and rose to inquire.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Jack murmured.

  Nobody heard him.

  The guy barely missed getting nailed by the door as it flew open. He took a leap back, collided with a chair, and cleared the view on the scene outside the door. One imposingly tall Jaffa in a wide-brimmed hat, towering over a Marine guard, puffed-chested and rosy-faced with fury. Next to them, one archeologist who looked as though he’d start talking a mile a minute any second now. That look changed to one of apology when he realized that his door action had almost flattened a guy.

  “Uh… sorry,” Dr. Daniel Jackson muttered. Then his gaze found his quarry’s. “Hi, Jack.”

  “O’Neill.” Teal’c unobtrusively squeezed the Marine against the wall.

  “Mmph,” said the Marine. It sounded unhappy.

  “Daniel, T.” Jack rose. “Come on in, meet everybody. Everybody, this is Dr. Jackson and Teal’c.” He smiled winningly at the broomstick. “You’ll like them. They’re civilians. Though T here is something of a recent convert… Seems we’re having us a little emergency. I’d suggest you form a committee and discuss it, while I go and sort it out.”

  “Now, wait a minute! We’re not finished here!”

  “Oh yes, we are! Sorry to miss the question and answer session.” With that, Jack grabbed Daniel and Teal’c by the shoulders, turned them around, and marched them out of the room and down an institutional green hallway. Behind them a door fell shut, telling Jack that the Marine was back on his guard post. At the far end of the hall, well out of earshot, he finally stopped. “Okay, kids. Thanks for the rescue. Timing was really sweet. But before we all go for a friendly beer at the local chapter of O’Malley’s… What the hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter 7

  The screen showed a series of power usage diagrams, and they, in turn, showed a massive fluctuation at the precise moment when the last pod had been opened. The spike had drawn enough power from the flood protection shields to disable them.

  Dr. Elizabeth Weir stared at the evidence and tried hard not to think about what might have happened. It hadn’t happened, and that really was all that counted. John, Teyla, Ronon, Rodney, Carson— all of them were currently installed on various perches around McKay’s lab, and all of them were unharmed, if a little damp around the edges. By John’s account there had been swimming involved…

  “So, what exactly caused this?” she asked, pointing at the diagrams.

  Radek Zelenka, who sat in front of the computer, peered up at her and sighed. “We don’t know yet. We might never know.”

  “Oh, you mean to tell us that the opening of the pod and the surge were a coincidence?” Rodney cast him a black look, one index finger busily exploring his left ear. “God, I’ll probably get an ear infection too!” he mumbled and stated, for the twenty-ninth time since Elizabeth had entered the lab, “I hate getting wet, just so you know!”

  “Yes, I believe you mentioned it,” John observed mildly. The tone didn’t go with the threat in his eyes. He’d heard it one too many times, too. “How about some lemon with that water?”

  “Ha-ha! The colonel made a funny. This is how I look when I’m shaken by paroxysms of laughter.”

  “Stop it. The pair of you,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little like a preschool teacher. “What about the crystal Carson found?”

  The crystal in question lay beside a second workstation, connected to a USB port.

  “Uh,” said John.
“Teyla and I have been trying, but we can’t get the computer to read it.”

  “Rodney?”

  “Probably something basic.” He sighed, walked over, motioned Teyla out of the chair, and attacked the keyboard. Ten seconds later he turned around. “Elementary, my dear Colonel. I don’t suppose it occurred to either of you that this backup unit generally isn’t required to read Ancient data? Which is the reason why you’re well advised to link into the mainframe, where, thanks to the untiring efforts of yours truly, you’ll find the wherewithal to decrypt crystals.”

  “Thank you, Rodney.” Teyla smiled at him.

  Elizabeth joined them. “So what have we got?”

  As soon as Rodney hit ‘Enter,’ the image popped up on the screen, pixilated and dull in contrast and colors. By the looks of it, the information on the crystal was designed to be displayed on a holo unit, and didn’t show up too well on an LCD monitor. But it would do for now.

  Frowning a little, Elizabeth leaned forward. The man in the picture was in his thirties, though it always was tricky to tell with the Lanteans. Dark hair, blue eyes, good-looking, with a superior smirk. Along the lines of I know something you don’t know.

  And that too was a common phenomenon.

  Beneath the image a new frame opened, rapidly filling with Ancient script.

  “What’s it say?” Ronon had relinquished his perch by the door and wandered over to lurk.

  “Looks like it’s the guy’s record,” John mused.

  “His name is… was Damass,” said Rodney. “Date of birth, 12,031 Ancient reckoning. That’s somewhere in the ninth millennium BC. He was some kind of hydroponics engineer.”

  “A gardener,” Ronon paraphrased.

  “If you insist on applying the lowest common denominator, yes.”

  “That’s weird.” John scratched his head, which, following hard upon the heels of the soaking he’d taken, did his hairstyle a world of good. “Why is somebody like that in stasis? Growing food for the crew flying the city would come under essential services.”

  “Perhaps they took shifts, rotated personnel in and out of stasis.” Teyla had a point.

  “Hmph,” said John. “No. See here? It says that he was a… How would you translate that, McKay?”

  “Uh… rickety facet?” He glanced up at them, shrugging. “Well, that’s what it says, literally. Looking at the context and the fact that this seems to be the Ancient equivalent of bureaucrat speak, I’d go with unstable element.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nutcase,” Ronon grunted.

  “Saboteur,” Teyla said at the same time.

  “Hang on,” John murmured. “It does make sense. Going by what else it says, I think dissident is closest. He was disputing the validity of several council dictates. There’s nothing here about him acting crazy or maliciously ripping out tomato plants. Basically, the guy had an opinion.”

  “And this explains his being in stasis how?” Rodney asked.

  “From all we’ve learned, the Lantean council wasn’t too keen on people with opinions. And look here.” John’s index finger poked at a sentence right at the bottom of the screen. “Unless I got my wires crossed completely that means something along the lines of preventative custody. And there.” The finger moved. “That’s pending trial, right?”

  Rodney nodded emphatically. “Looks as if we’ve discovered the city’s penal colony. I mean, it stands to reason that the Lanteans must have had something like that, but—”

  “You’re telling me they just put people in stasis on spec?” Call her naïve, but Elizabeth hadn’t expected to be confronted with the Ancients’ version of Guantanamo Bay.

  “Considering some of the alternatives, this is fairly humane. Besides, it’s not as if they would have noticed how long they were in there.”

  “Then how come they’re all dead?” inquired Ronon.

  “As I’ve said all along,” Rodney replied as if to an exceptionally slow kindergartner. “The system malfunctioned.”

  The way Elizabeth saw it, the discussion would continue to go around in circles if she let it. They’d squeezed out some information, but huge chunks of what she felt she ought to know were missing. “Keep at it,” she finally said. “If there was a malfunction, I’d like to know what caused it, and I’d also like to know what caused the power surge earlier.”

  It had not been a coincidence, though Drs. McKay and Zelenka wouldn’t be able to prove it. When the lid on that last pod slid open, a small, innocuous crystal that had never been designed to be part of the stasis system received a data burst, camouflaged by the power surge. Inert for millennia, no one even guessing its existence, the crystal had waited for this signal, and now a shimmer of light— photons whose binary particle states carried information— slithered across its surface and splintered into unsteady flickering in four separate areas of the lattice structure.

  The program a woman called Amara had installed thousands of years ago was becoming active at last, thousands of years too late. In cosmic terms a delay such as this was a mere blink of an eye. In human terms it would make all the difference.

  Though the effects remained largely unnoticeable and unnoticed in the initial stages, the program was performing perfectly. Hidden away in a ventilation duct above the entrance to the mess, a device that looked like a mesh ball of jewel beads and silver, no larger than a child’s fist, responded to the crystal’s command. It began to contract, the silvery filaments thickening and gaining strength as they shrank. For a long, long time they had protected the delicate glass vial sitting at the center of the sphere from accidental destruction. Now they tightened around it, a glistening vise, until the vial burst and released its contents. The invisible cloud of viral dust was swept up by the air current passing through the ventilation duct, and ghosted through a metal grid to rain down into the corridor near the mess.

  At the same time that it instructed the dispersal device to destroy the vial, the crystal had activated a second program. This one embedded itself in Atlantis’s mainframe and quietly and unobtrusively began to rewrite vital sections of the operational protocol. The first alteration that took effect was the disabling of the city’s automated quarantine procedures.

  On his way to lunch, Salvador Rodriguez, a talented young biogenetics engineer, inhaled some two thousand particles, never realizing that the very thing he was investigating for a living had just turned him into Patient Zero. He entered the mess, joined the food line— today you had a choice between vegetable stew with fried tofu and spaghetti with meatballs— and chatted with a couple of Marines in front of him while he waited to be served. The Marines, predictably, went for the meatballs and, on close-up inspection of the tofu deal, Rodriguez decided to follow suit. Leave the healthy stuff to the archivists and the environmental sciences crowd.

  Across the mess he spotted a handful of lab colleagues who’d claimed a table, piled a bowlful of ice cream and a medium coke on his tray, and made his way over to them. The ice cream he shared with a cute redhead who was new to the biogenetics section. With any kind of luck the bonding experience would result in a date.

  Salvador Rodriguez couldn’t possibly anticipate that their only date— if you could call it that— would begin and end in adjoining cots in Dr. Beckett’s infirmary.

  Chapter 8

  You tell O’Neill, she dies.

  It had taken Daniel less than two seconds to decide that not telling Jack wasn’t an option. If Cassie was to have any chance at all, Jack was the one to provide it.

  And so he’d told.

  Jack had gone pale as a ghost, looked as if someone had kicked him in the gut. Then he’d started to make things happen. In the first instance that meant scaring up a flight from Andrews AFB to Nellis. Juggling urgency with secrecy, their choice of conveyance had been strictly limited, and they’d ended up on a C130 normally used for troop transports. There were no windows, cabin service sucked only marginally less than on the commercial flight Daniel
and Teal’c had taken to DC, the noise was incredible, and the seats had been designed by an alien entity with a sadistic bent and without any concept of the human anatomy.

  Out of the three of them, Teal’c was taking the wisest course of action. He slept, ensuring that he, at least, would be ready and alert when they finally got there. Jack, who’d shed his uniform for jeans, sweatshirt, and leather jacket, was well on his way to pacing a hole in the fuselage. At times he gave the distinct impression that he was about to step outside and push to make the plane go faster.

  Daniel himself was bone-tired but, accommodation aside, he’d shelved the whole notion of luxuries such as sleep as soon as he’d gotten the second phone call from Sam— within fifteen minutes of the kidnappers’ message. As soon as he’d hung up on her, he’d been on his way to the control room, sending a prayer of thanks to whom it may concern for the current power vacuum at the SGC. Not having to explain to some unknown and potentially recalcitrant quantity-in-charge why Dr. Jackson felt a sudden, urgent need to communicate with a Jaffa on Dakara had sped things up considerably. Especially as Walter Harriman happened to be the duty tech, and Walter always was game for the odd extracurricular activity.

  On hearing the news, Teal’c had arrived on Earth by return wormhole. Other than Walter and Daniel and a stray member of SG-11 they’d run into on the way to Teal’c’s old quarters, no one at the SGC knew he was back. Just as well, really. Once they found out, people were bound to ask why he was back, and Sam and Daniel had decided that, for the time being, it was best to keep as large a lid as possible on Cassie’s disappearance. If the IOA found out, chances were that SG-1’s freedom to operate would be seriously curtailed.

  SG-1… Daniel smiled at his automatic use of the moniker; they’d always be SG-1.

  Jack gave up on his marathon and flung himself into a seat across the aisle for a round of brooding. Daniel slid a sharp glance at him, levered himself to a stand and hop-skipped to the forward end of the cabin. Conditions were bouncy, to say the least, which turned Jack’s pacing into something of an achievement. But the prize stashed in the starboard storage compartment was worth being tossed around a little. A whole urn full of Air Force Special; coffee thick enough to keep your spoon standing up in the mug. Or, in this case, plastic stirrer and Styrofoam cup. Which amounted to sacrilege in Daniel’s book, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.