STARGATE SG-1: Transitions

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Roughly at this point the Pentagon had contacted Landry, begging him on its collective knees to take temporary command of the SGC and hold the fort until the situation was resolved one way or another. This was coupled with a promise that the Pentagon would exert all due pressure with a view to making his posting permanent.

  Landry would believe that when he saw it, and it wasn’t the reason why he’d accepted at once. Something fishy was going on, and he’d do his damndest to find out what. Command of the SGC put him in a better position than most to do just that. He owed it to Jack.

  Another bing, another corridor. Difference being, this one was populated. At a hunch, the guards on Level 11 had put through an alert call to spare the folks downstairs the same embarrassment they’d suffered. Good for them.

  A dozen or so people loitered near the elevator, their faces grim, suggesting they’d heard the rumors about O’Neill and his former team. Maybe half of those faces he recognized from personnel files. Names were a little more nebulous, but then he’d always been better with faces than names. Guessing that roughly eighty percent of the gathered crowd were here purely for curiosity purposes and to sniff at the new CO— however short-lived he might be— Landry zeroed in on the one person who was both a face and a name to him.

  “Sergeant Harriman, right? Care to show me what’s what? We’ll leave the official speechmaking till after I know where I’m going.”

  “Yessir!” The sergeant, who bore an uncanny resemblance to a slightly podgy Jack Russell in specs, blushed, gained roughly two and a quarter inches in height, and snapped to attention. “This way, General! Oh, and welcome to Stargate Command!”

  Harriman slugged along one step behind Landry’s left shoulder, and you could practically sense him build up steam until, at last, the valve gave and question came whistling out. “Sir? We heard… Is it true? About the explosion? General O’Neill and—”

  “Sergeant, you probably know them a lot better than I do, but I for one am not going to believe it until somebody shows me the bodies.”

  “My thoughts precisely, sir!” Sheer relief drove up his pitch by at least an octave, and Harriman’s step lightened abruptly. “Next left, sir, and up the steps. That’ll be the control room. You can see it from there.”

  No need to ask what precisely Landry would be able to see. Without consciously intending to, he picked up his pace and barreled up into the dimly lit room two steps at a time. He’d been waiting a long time for this!

  A couple of technicians manning the computer workstations beneath a massive panoramic window shot from their chairs and to attention. Landry gave a somewhat perfunctory nod and stared past them and down into the room beyond the window. His first thought was that the gate looked smaller than he’d expected. Then again, who said that size mattered? It was awesome, pure and simple.

  “So this is it, huh?” he murmured to no one in particular.

  “This is it, sir,” the sergeant confirmed from behind him, pride spiking through his voice. “If you want to hang around a few minutes, SG-11 is due to—”

  Commotion from a doorway opposite cut off Harriman. A couple seconds later, a short, balding guy in a lab coat stormed into the control room; the pug to Harriman’s Jack Russell. “I don’t care who’s missing or why,” the pug barked. “I need to talk to someone who at least looks like they’re in charge!” He braked barely soon enough to avoid slamming into Landry. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’d be the guy who’s in charge,” Landry said dryly. “Occasionally I even contrive to look like it.”

  Going by the expression on the pug’s face as he took in the jeans, T-shirt, and bomber jacket, he seemed to doubt the latter. Then he decided to take his chances anyway. “Bill Lee,” he introduced himself. “We’ve got a security breach.”

  So this was the geek O’Neill had warned him about. Loose cannon around any type of plant. Landry raised an eyebrow. “Those alien legumes got away from you again, Dr. Lee?”

  Lee blinked, confused rather than offended, shook his head. “No, no, no. Someone remote-accessed Colonel Carter’s computer and is futzing around in the mainframe.”

  Nothing like being thrown right in, though Landry was thinking that, maybe, alien plants on steroids might have been preferable. Then again, he hadn’t actually met the species that had made Jack O’Neill’s life a misery.

  “What’s it doing?” he asked. “Show me.”

  “Well, funnily,” Lee said as he swerved around one of the techs and threw himself into his chair, “so far it’s not interfering with any of the critical systems.” He struck a number of keys in quick succession. “There!” It sounded almost accusing, as if he believed that anyone smart enough to hack into the SGC’s mainframe should at least have the sense and decency to wreak havoc. “See that? They’re using it as a fast lane into other government systems.”

  Interesting. Really interesting. Not to mention pretty elegant. Landry cocked his head. “Any ideas on who might possess the know-how to pull a stunt like this, Doctor?”

  “Obviously Colonel Carter, though even she shouldn’t have gotten remote access. Besides… well, you’ve heard, I presume…” He peered up at Landry, looking wretched.

  “I’ve heard, but then I don’t believe everything I hear. Can you trace where this is coming from?”

  “Huh… Sure… I think…” Lee cracked his fingers and attacked the keyboard again, making a jumble of entirely cryptic stuff stream across the monitor. Five minutes into this, a new window popped up this one showing a map. “Gotcha!” shouted Lee as the map image zoomed into a maze of urban streets somewhere. “IP address”— he pointed at a sequence of numbers showing in the original window— “belongs to a motel on the outskirts of Reno.”

  “Reno, Nevada?” Sergeant Harriman yelped. Evidently he’d put two and two together.

  Rechecking the map as if to make sure, Lee grunted, “Uhuh.”

  Harriman spun around. “Sir! Sir, that’s right next door to—”

  “I’m aware of it, Sergeant.” Landry stifled a grin. Killed in an explosion, his highly decorated butt! “Dr. Lee, you think you could set this up so we can send them a message?”

  “What do you want to do that for?”

  “Can you?”

  “Yeah, sure, I can use a Trojan to feed them a messaging program, but—”

  “Do it!”

  “But, sir—”

  “That’s an order, Doctor. Remember, you’re the one wanted to talk to the guy in charge.”

  The messaging window opened with a soft ‘ping’.

  “What the hell?”

  “Carter?”

  Sam resisted the impulse to simply swat him away. You didn’t swat generals, not even this one, not even when he was being more than usually pushy. That aside, he probably ought to see this, given that it was addressed to him. Sort of.

  She’d been halfway to tracking the owner of Air Services International, well hidden though he was, when the messaging window popped up in the middle of her screen. Right now she couldn’t say what surprised her more, the fact that it had happened at all or that the author had dug into the emoticons with teenage abandon.

  “You might want to have a look at this, sir,” she said.

  “Who? Me?” He sounded baffled. “Carter, you know that computer problems aren’t really my thing.”

  “You’ve got a pen pal, sir. So to speak.”

  “Come again?” He launched himself from the bed, where he and Teal’c and Daniel had been watching the news, and trotted over to her.

  “A pen pal. There.” Sam pointed at the message window.

  Hi, Jack.

  Looks like you’re not toast after all. I’ve got your back, so drop me a line.

  Twinkletoes.

  Daniel had snuck in behind General O’Neill, read, gave a soft snort. “Twinkletoes? Anything you’d like to tell us, Jack?”

  “Oh yes.” The general grinned. “How about: miracles do happen.”

  “In w
hat way, O’Neill?” Teal’c sounded less than convinced.

  He ignored the question. “Where does this originate, Carter?”

  “I can’t be a hundred percent sure without tracing it, sir, but in all probability it’s coming from someone at the SGC.” She frowned. “At a guess I’d say that Bill Lee was working on my computer. He’d have noticed that someone was remote-accessing it. I just can’t figure out why he’d be calling himself Twinkletoes…”

  “He isn’t.” General O’Neill nudged her out of the chair, sat down in front of the laptop and started typing.

  How are those salsa classes coming, Hank?

  “Hank? You’re saying that General Landry is Twinkletoes, sir?”

  He looked up briefly. “Hank Landry and I go back a ways. Twinkletoes used to be his call sign. Seeing as he wouldn’t thank me for telling you why, I’m not going to burden you with classified information, kids.”

  “Landry’s at the SGC?” spluttered Daniel. “But he wasn’t even confirmed yet when we—”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Daniel.”

  You leave your big feet out of my salsa classes, O’Neill. What the hell is going on? They’re telling us you’re dead.

  “Word gets round, doesn’t it?” Muttering, General O’Neill typed his reply.

  Reports of SG-1’s demise are exaggerated, as usual, but I’d prefer if you didn’t correct the mistake for the time being.

  The next question was brief, predictably so:

  Why?

  “It may be unwise to mention the disappearance of Cassandra Fraiser,” Teal’c cautioned.

  “We can’t keep a lid on it any longer, T. Things have gone just a tad too far for that.” He typed a brief sit rep for Landry.

  Moments later, the reply came:

  What do you need?

  “See? I like this guy.”

  We need the owner and address for a Delaware corporation.

  Then he added the details.

  This time it took a little longer. When the answer arrived, Daniel gave a surprised gasp. “Now, why the hell would they do that?”

  Air Services International belonged to the man who’d contacted Daniel at the behest of the late Dr. Dimitriades, and its corporate headquarters were in Vancouver.

  “Guess we’ll take a trip to the sunny Pacific Northwest,” murmured Daniel.

  “Sir?” asked Sam, staring at General O’Neill’s back. He seemed frozen in place.

  “Yeah,” he said at last, absently. “Organize a car.” Then he started typing again.

  Gotta go, Hank. We’ll be in touch.

  Chapter 11

  Salvador Rodriguez had been thrilled when his posting to Atlantis was confirmed. That was before he’d found out that even a plum assignment in the Pegasus Galaxy had its drawbacks. Nobody had warned him that his lab supervisor was going to be Cruella DeVille.

  “Hey, Sunshine? We gonna get those cultures this side of Christmas?” The supervisor sounded her usual irritable self as she strode into the room. “Lemme guess. We’ve been having us a little midweek bender. Hangover’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  Maybe, but it was worth it, Salvador didn’t say. You had to hand it to the Marines, they threw a mean party. Though, apparently, they handled their liquor better than he.

  “I’ll have them in ten minutes,” he ground out between clenched teeth. The simple act of speaking instantly brought on a new wave of nausea.

  “Yeah. Right. Jesus, it’s freezing in here,” she muttered, and then, louder, “I’ll be timing you, make no mistake!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mercifully, Cruella left instead of parking herself behind him and looming over his shoulder as she had a habit of doing. Controlling the tremor of his hands was difficult enough without being under scrutiny. Freezing? She should get her metabolism checked, he thought, squirming uncomfortably when he felt another bead of sweat roll down his back. Once he was finished with the cultures, he’d raise hell with maintenance. He’d already turned the thermostat all the way down, but the room temperature stubbornly remained tropical.

  At least the heaves slowly subsided, as if his stomach were fully aware that by now he’d puked up a week’s worth of meals and his system was running on empty. Or maybe he actually was starting to get over it… Coaxing his fingers into steadiness, he picked up a Petri dish and turned to set it onto the waiting tray.

  The room tilted and looped into a sickening spin. His hands shot out, so he could brace himself against the lab bench, and the Petri dish slipped from his grasp and hit the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces slick with agar gel. He ground out an oath and immediately regretted it. On cue, his gorge rose again. Salvador doubled over, retched up bile.

  Hangover, his butt!

  He hadn’t been drinking that much last night, had he?

  Or maybe he had…

  Groaning, he promised himself to go see Dr. Beckett just as soon as he’d delivered the cultures. First he’d have to clean up the mess and get a new batch of the… damn, what was it? Never mind, get a new batch of the thingy virus started. Else Cruella would have his manhood on a platter. Or worse, send him back Earthside.

  Still bracing himself, easing down the leg of the lab bench hand over hand, Salvador lowered himself to all fours and blearily stared at the glass-and-gunk jigsaw on the floor.

  Of course. He needed something to clean it up with, didn’t he? Should have thought of that while he was still standing.

  God, it was hot in here!

  Reluctantly— where had that hideous muscle ache come from all of a sudden?— he craned his neck to peer up at the work surface that now seemed light-years away. The movement of his head caused the room to spin some more, and he scrunched his eyes shut in a futile effort to stop the gyrations.

  He didn’t need to see anything to get up, he decided. Ignoring the maddening tingle that began to crawl from his fingertips through his hands and into his arms, Salvador clutched the leg of the bench tighter and tried to pull himself up. No joy. He didn’t think he’d even moved. He tried again, barely feeling his fingers anymore.

  Were they still holding on to the bench?

  He couldn’t tell, so he would have to look, wouldn’t he?

  Opening his eyes required an effort that left him damp with sweat. No more spinning, which was a relief, but the overhead lights stabbed down with searing brightness. He slammed his lids shut again, unable to tolerate the glare.

  The brief moment of vision had told him one thing, though. Far from making his way back to a stand, he was lying curled up on the floor, fingers reaching for the leg of the bench. He decided to stay there. Simply stay there, until he felt better.

  A small voice in his head— a voice he didn’t like to listen to at all— knew that he wasn’t going to get better any time soon, certainly not soon enough to meet the deadline for the cultures. That voice also told him to use his brain and experience and insisted, absurdly, that this was a pathogen.

  Uhuh.

  A computer-savvy pathogen that had somehow hacked its way past the city’s automated quarantine program.

  Funny.

  Salvador wanted to laugh, coughed instead, and winced at the coppery taste in his mouth.

  See? said the voice as he slipped toward unconsciousness.

  Chapter 12

  A mechanical drone. Humming, but louder. A lot louder. Question was if the drone was happening inside her head or outside. Outside, Cassie decided after a moment of deliberation that felt like a slow-motion rollercoaster. The thing happening inside her head was more along the lines of pounding. Heavy and unrelenting, as close to a migraine as you could get without actually throwing up. Though that might come. Going by the taste in her mouth, a small furry animal with dubious personal hygiene had died in there and was beginning to decompose. Even with her eyes shut, she could have sworn that someone had dumped a truckload of sand under her lids.

  Despite the horrible scratchy feeling, she blinked, forced he
r eyes open, waited for the blurry mess of colors and outlines to shiver into something recognizable.

  Well, that explained the drone.

  She was on a plane. Business jet. Across from her sat a man. Graying hair, long enough to brush his collar and tied into a sloppy ponytail, a long, narrow hangdog face whose lines put him in the early to mid forties bracket, a pair of round metal-framed specs.

  She’d seen him before, Cassie was sure of it.

  Two thuds of headache later, realization struck. He was one of the two over-aged geeks at the Italian restaurant; the pair who’d shown such an avid interest in Sam and her. With the realization, memory started tumbling back like an avalanche.

  He’d come over less than a minute after Sam had left to take Daniel’s call. He’d sat down, smiling.

  Please, don’t say anything and, more importantly, please don’t make a scene, Miss Fraiser. I’ve got a gun pointed at you under the table, and I truly have no wish to use it. We’ll pay, and we’ll leave.

  They’d done just that. He’d picked up the check— his idea of a joke, Cassie supposed— and herded her out the back, through a fire exit by the toilets. They’d ended up in a claustrophobic courtyard, surrounded by cinderblock walls and blind windows. The car, some kind of banged-up, nondescript sedan, had been parked at the far end, the other man behind the wheel. Her kidnapper had shoved her into the backseat, climbed in after her, and grabbed the syringe his partner handed him…

  “You drugged me,” Cassie mumbled.

  The man peered at her owlishly, smiled. “Ah, we’re awake. Good. And yes, I’m afraid we had to sedate you for a while. It won’t leave any lasting damage,” he added soothingly. “We have no intention of harming you. At present. Though I imagine you’re feeling pretty rough. As a matter of fact…” He fished a small plastic cylinder from his back pocket, shook out a pill and turned to his counterpart who’d suddenly materialized from the cockpit. “Get Miss Fraiser a glass of water, please.”