Another.
O’Neill was there, firing steadily at his side, waiting for him to hit the last symbol. He took a deep breath to try to clear his head and staggered.
“Okay, Daniel,” the colonel said. “Let’s get this done and clear out of here. C’mon, buddy. Almost home.”
Almost.
Smoke still danced, shifting as if being pulled back and forth by ostrich feather fans, and his eyes were watering, so he wasn’t sure what he saw, standing behind the line of Guards. It might have been his imagination.
It might have been a woman dressed in white, wearing a golden tiara, her eyes for one instant warm once more, her hand lifted as if reaching for him.
His useless hand lay on the last symbol, and he blinked and looked up again as a last veil of smoke swirled. Yes. She was definitely there.
He propped himself in place and pushed.
The Gate spun.
O’Neill yelled, grabbed his good arm, and began dragging him to the edge of the alcove.
The signal. He had to send the signal, otherwise they’d be smashed against the iris on the other side of the worm-hole. Falling to his knees, he triggered the device. O’Neill grabbed his arm and began half-lifting him to the Gate, firing randomly with the energy staff as he did so.
Teal’C and Carter redoubled their fire, never glancing back at the plasma wash of unspace billowing through the gate as the wormhole to Earth opened.
He tried to help. Tried to walk, at least, if not run, to the welcoming silvery shimmer. The blue mosaic beneath his feet ran together like water. He stared coughing, a deep, hard rattle from his guts.
The other two rose into a crouch and began scuttling, backing them to the Gate.
He nearly slipped to the floor as O’Neill shifted, trying to fire the energy staff and discard it at the same time, and took a last look back toward the hall of the Throne Room.
She was there. Watching.
He lost consciousness then anyway, so it didn’t matter if he called to her.
There does not appear to be any military or economic advantage to pursuing any further relationship with the people of the world called M’kwethet. Their government is vested in sustaining a subservient relationship with the Goa’uld. They demonstrated no interest in exploring areas of mutual assistance or defense.
O’Neill sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. They didn’t even have coordinates for Saqqara. They’d gotten exactly nothing out of this mission, nothing at all. Not even the portable DHD. He was going to have a hell of a time explaining that one to Hammond in the morning.
They couldn’t win them all, he tried to tell himself. They were lucky not to have lost everything.
Some, perhaps, had lost everything all over again.
Carter had learned one more time the hard lesson of losing someone under her care.
Teal’C had fired on his former friends and comrades, killing as many as he could.
Daniel Jackson wept through a drugged sleep in Medical.
He himself had accomplished nothing, not even a glimpse of his foster son.
On M’kwethet, the ones not Chosen for the tribute slept safe in their own homes, comfortable, secure—at least until the next Choosing.
And at least one young woman now held the keys to the universe.
O’Neill stared blindly at the neatly blocked report, and thought of all that, and wondered:
Was it worth it?
Scanning, formatting and basic
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