Stargate SG-1 30 - Insurrection

by Sally Malcolm

  The sigil these Jaffa wore was devastatingly familiar: a horned circle with a cross beneath it.

  And, suddenly, everything made horrible sense. She lowered the monocular, caught the colonel’s grim gaze. “Hecate,” she whispered. “They’re Hecate’s Jaffa. Maybourne was working with Hecate?”

  The colonel passed his hand over his mouth, leaned in close to murmur. “To kill us?”

  “No.” That couldn’t be right; that’s not what they were doing here. “To drive us into the wormhole at a specific time.” She sat back a little, so she could see his face when she said, “To send us into the future.”

  “She’s been playing us this whole damn time. Maybourne, that son-of-lousy—” He broke off as his voice rose, clamped his jaw shut. After a silent moment he leaned in again and whispered, “Does it change anything?”

  Sam shook her head. “No. We can still end it here. In fact—” She smiled and wished it didn’t feel so shaky. “In fact it makes the decision easier. Hecate’s already meddled with the past. We’re just correcting what she already changed, putting it right.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and for a moment there was something else in his expression. “So everything that’s happened here, everything since we stepped through the wormhole that night, is… a mistake. A dead end.”

  “Not entirely,” she said. “I mean, we’re here and we’re going to change it, so I guess that has meaning. In a convoluted, circular kind of way.”

  He nodded and looked away. “So the one consequential thing we do is set the past right, everything else is meaningless.”

  Thinking of Sting and Earthborn, of Elspeth and Aedan—of the hundred years of struggle and life and death that had happened as a consequence of Hecate’s meddling—she said, “Not meaningless, sir. Just… short-lived, I guess.”

  “Short lived.” He glanced down at the scant space between them, and said, “Sounds about right.”

  “Sir—”

  A bark of command echoed through the trees. The Jaffa jumped to their feet, moving into formation. She put her hand on the colonel’s arm to draw his attention and nodded toward the Jaffa position.

  His focus lingered on her for a moment, then he nodded and said, “Let’s go change history, Major.”

  Arbella — 2098

  They didn’t head for the upper level. Instead, Hanna led them away from the cells where they’d been held, down a narrow corridor along which ran large pipes. The noise was deafening and the heat was stifling. Teal’c felt the sweat collect on the back of his neck and soak into the collar of his shirt. Though he knew it was futile, his mind kept returning to the image of Lana Jones’ twisted body lying on the floor, the ugly red wound gaping on the side of her head. There was a time when he would have accepted such a death as the unavoidable outcome of battle; he had witnessed the lifeblood bleeding from countless innocents before.

  But he had lived too long among the Tau’ri—too long as part of SG-1—to allow such mindless killing to take place, and only stand by and do nothing. He had made his choice on Chulak when O’Neill had given him the chance to rebel against the false god Apophis. Despite his opinion of this world, of the abomination of the timeline, he must see that Lana Jones’ did not die in vain. Teal’c knew that he would encounter no opposition from Daniel Jackson. The pressing matter of the moment, though, was getting to safety away from the threat that lay within the walls of the Stargate base. Officer Hayden had held Yuma at gunpoint, but Teal’c had witnessed how his hand shook; the young man was inexperienced and could not be relied on to hold Yuma and those who would follow her at bay for much longer.

  “Where are you taking us, Hanna?” he asked.

  “The pipes run the heat and air conditioning system for the complex,” yelled Hanna above the din. “It’s too dangerous to try and get out through the base, but there are vents down here that’ll take us out on to the cliff side.”

  “Uh… the cliff side? As in, the side of the cliff?” asked Daniel, with a worried glance back at Teal’c.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” replied Hanna. “We use them all the time to get into the base under the radar.”

  “We?”

  “The CMF. Or, rather, those of us who are part of the movement.”

  It was from the way she said ‘movement’ that Teal’c inferred something grander than a sudden reactionary measure. “To what movement do you refer?”

  Hanna grinned back at him. “We’ve been planning this for a long time, Teal’c. With or without SG-1’s arrival, we would have made our move sooner or later.”

  “You plan to rise up against those who seek to rule you,” he said, unsure whether he thought them foolish or admired their valor. Perhaps both.

  “Wait, what?” Daniel called after Hanna as she moved quickly through the tunnel. But his words were lost as the noise from the pipes was overlaid by another sound, uncontained and wild. As they turned a corner, they were struck by a ferocious blast of air that almost blew them back against the wall. Teal’c squinted into the wind, while Daniel shielded his face in the crook of both elbows. Up ahead, Teal’c saw that a large grate was leaning against the tunnel’s wall, leaving a gaping hole around six feet wide by four tall beyond which stretched the dark expanse of Arbella. Night had fallen while they had been held, a bright moon painting the landscape in colorless shades of silver.

  “Through here,” shouted Hanna, ducking out of the opening, followed by her two men. Teal’c crouched down and stepped through, reaching back to grasp Daniel by the arm and help him out.

  “Whoa!” cried Daniel, teetering backward against the rock wall, as they found themselves on a broad ledge that fell away steeply to the shadowy plains below. Out here, the noise was not so loud, but the wind still whipped at them, as if threatening to pluck them from their ledge and fling them down to their deaths.

  “Dr. Jackson, Teal’c—well met,” said a familiar voice.

  Teal’c turned to see a woman much changed since they had left the planet through the Stargate just weeks before. “General Bailey,” he said, with a nod. “Please accept our thanks for your aid in freeing us.”

  The general smiled through thin lips. She looked pale in the stark moonlight, her unruly hair escaping from the beanie hat she wore to be whipped about her face by the wind. “I just pushed the button. If it hadn’t been for these guys, you’d still be in there.”

  Teal’c did not miss the chill in her voice, nor the banked anger in her tight expression.

  “General, what’s going on?” said Daniel, pushing forward. “I thought we were friends when we left.”

  “No one knew what you were looking for in the data center when you left, Daniel,” she said, with a look that proved her anger was a barely controlled thing. “Even I didn’t know.”

  Teal’c felt no shame in their actions. They had been searching for a way to save more than those people who lived on Arbella—they had been searching for a way to save everything. But that did not stop him from regretting the secret they had kept from the woman who had been their only ally on this planet. Daniel Jackson, it seemed, felt the same.

  “General, I—”

  “Save it, Jackson. We don’t have time for recriminations. You can explain it to Jones when you see him and hope that bringing Lana—” At that she cut off and looked over both their shoulders and then around at Hanna and her colleagues. “Where is Lana?”

  Daniel frowned and squeezed his eyes closed, but Teal’c knew the truth had to be faced. “She is dead, General Bailey. Agent Yuma killed her.”

  The general’s face barely moved bar a tightening of her jaw. “Hanna?” she said, not taking her eyes from Teal’c.

  “It’s true, ma’am,” said Hanna, without intonation. “I’m sorry. The mission didn’t go as planned.”

  General Bailey took a moment before speaking. “This…” She looked away across the Arbellan plains and rubbed her hands over her face, cursing under her breath. “How am I supposed to tell him?”

 
“You aren’t,” said Daniel. “We’ll tell him.”

  Bailey shook her head. “You can’t. We need to get you through the gate. If he finds out what’s happened from you, then it’s you he’ll blame. Hell, thanks to Yuma, he already thinks you’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Well, we’re about a hundred years too late for that. And if he needs someone to blame, then let it be Yuma. But he at least…” He cleared his throat and Teal’c heard raw pain there still. It was pain to which he himself could not grant a foothold; in his heart, Drey’auc would always be on Chulak, awaiting his return. “Jones needs to know the truth from us, General,” finished Daniel. “Regardless of what he thinks of SG-1, he has the right to know what happened to his wife.”

  Bailey cocked her head as if taking stock of Daniel and Teal’c, before saying, “Alright, have it your way. But if you end up back in the cells upstairs, there’s nothing more I can do for you.” She turned and led the way down the cliff side and, as Teal’c followed, he hoped O’Neill’s plan was not reliant on their return.

  P5X-104 — 2000

  Three hours after sundown, the attack began. Jack and Carter were ready for it.

  The Jaffa advanced in three squads of four, one down each flank and one down the middle. He and Carter took a flank each, following them through the drenched forest. It was lucky he wasn’t getting out of this alive, Jack thought, because didn’t think he’d ever be dry again. Everything he was wearing was wet and cold.

  But his discomfort was forgotten when the first shot was fired, sizzling through the drizzly air to impact at the edge of SG-1’s camp.

  “Sir! Incoming!” he heard Carter—past-Carter—yell.

  There was a scrabble, the golden flicker of their campfire disappeared and he could hear himself barking orders as his team dived for cover behind the stone monoliths.

  Meanwhile, Jack moved silently through the trees toward the Jaffa squad. They were moving in poor formation, a strung out line in order to cover as much territory as possible and to keep SG-1 from breaking in the wrong direction, away from the Stargate. It probably made sense to risk being so far from their unit when they thought SG-1 was the only threat on the planet.

  But of course things were different this time around, and, besides, any good soldier should know to expect the unexpected.

  The Jaffa at the head of their rambling line moved further ahead, circling around the side of the camp while his comrades hung back. All were shadows amid the trees and the guy in the lead had left himself vulnerable.

  Jack made himself a shadow too, moving slow enough to be silent, keeping his quarry in sight.

  “I thought you said this rock was uninhabited, Carter,” he heard the other version of himself hiss.

  “Well the UAV survey—”

  “Was wrong. Again.” And, yeah, that was him playing the jerk.

  Ahead of him, the Jaffa had settled behind a tree and was taking aim. It was point-blank. He could have taken any of SG-1 out at that range. But he hadn’t. Jack moved closer, lifted his stunner as the Jaffa raised his staff weapon.

  Jack fired, the blue bolt lighting up the forest and sending the Jaffa face down and twitching into the dirt.

  “What was that?” Daniel barked, as Jack ran forward and snatched the staff weapon from the Jaffa’s hands.

  “That wasn’t a Goa’uld weapon,” Carter said, nervous.

  “Okay, we’re pulling back to the gate now. Teal’c, take point. I’ll cover our six. Let’s move. Double time.”

  To his right, Jack heard movement and melted deeper into the forest before the rest of the Jaffa could catch up. He knew the route back to the gate, so doubled back around and came in closer to where SG-1 was retreating. He’d bought them a little breathing space—and gotten himself a staff weapon. Now he just had to keep his eye on them and hope that Carter had been equally successful.

  * * *

  Sam remembered their midnight flight to the gate in a series of stark images, and it was strange to be watching it as an outsider, jogging through the forest to the right of her team.

  The Jaffa were harrying them, but it was clear from her new perspective that they were simply chasing them back to the gate. Her head was still full of the fact that these were Hecate’s Jaffa, that they had a purpose here she’d never imagined that dark night so many months (decades) earlier. Why and how Hecate had engineered this, however, was impossible to understand. And maybe she’d never know—if they succeeded in getting this team home, then the hows and wherefores were all moot.

  Still, it niggled at her, not understanding.

  They’d been making good progress and been moving for a couple hours when things began to look starkly familiar. The trees gave way to a scrubby clearing—there was little cover for SG-1, who found themselves backing out into the open. The Jaffa, meanwhile, slowed and stayed in the trees.

  Her heart rate kicked up. This was where it happened; this was where Daniel got shot. And this was where they could change everything.

  “Stay low,” she heard the colonel say. Then, “Crap, we’re sitting ducks here.”

  A staff blast shot out from the other side of the clearing, detonating against a fallen tree and sending rotting wood flying up into the air.

  Her team dived for cover. “Down!” The colonel barked. “Daniel, get down.”

  He dropped. Sam remembered that too. He’d dropped to the ground, they’d edged back. She remembered wondering if the Jaffa were going to slaughter them there, just encircle them and take them out one by one.

  “Keep moving,” her own voice yelled out. “We can’t let them surround us.”

  But a couple more staff blasts kept the team pinned down.

  Sam could see Jaffa in the trees ahead of her. Secure in the false knowledge that they were alone on the planet, their attention was fixed on SG-1 and they hadn’t noticed her presence yet. She was pretty light on her feet, but knew she lacked the colonel’s special ops experience. Still, so far so good—she crept closer.

  Their voices were urgent and they were debating something intensely, but the only word Sam understood was Chappa’ai. No help there. But then one of them gestured to the sky in the pretty universal signal for aerial backup and she got the picture. SG-1 were moving too fast, they were slowing them down here and calling for backup to do it—which confirmed her suspicion that they needed the team to go through the gate at a specific moment. Perhaps to interact with a solar flare? Although the data she’d gleaned from the Earth gate, back when they’d first returned from Hecate’s Ha’tak, suggested something different had caused their jump through time.

  Either way, it meant that she had to get SG-1 home before whatever Hecate had planned came to pass.

  Through the trees she could see the shadowy shapes of her team start moving again, creeping backward through the clearing, keeping low. She let her mind go back to the first time this had happened, picturing the moment Daniel was hit. The staff blast had come from the opposite side of the clearing—the colonel’s side. It had happened when he’d stood up to scramble backward over a fallen tree trunk, looking for cover.

  Any time now… Mouth dry she watched, keeping slow pace with her team, as they made their way back through the silent clearing.

  The blast of a staff weapon scorched through the trees. Sam’s heart leaped into her throat, but the blast was going the wrong way, sideways across the clearing. It didn’t hit Daniel; it hit something—someone—in the tree line.

  The colonel had made his play.

  There was a cry, and then more shots fired within the forest. The Jaffa ahead of her turned toward the ruckus with a guttural mutter of confusion. Sam added to it by opening fire with her stunner, putting two Jaffa down in quick succession. From the clearing she heard the familiar rattle of an MP5 and the colonel yelling orders to his team, “Fall back, fall back!”

  SG-1 were on their feet, vaulting the log behind which, in her memory, they’d sought shelter while the
colonel patched Daniel up, and disappeared back into the trees. Sam moved too, loping along through the woods, out of sight in the dark but keeping pace.

  They’d done it. They’d saved Daniel and history was unfolding along a new path. But Sam was still there—which meant there was still a chance, a probability, that Hecate would succeed.

  She remembered the Death Gliders that had strafed them at the gate and ran on, getting ahead of SG-1 to secure the Stargate. The ball was still very much in play.

  * * *

  Whoever had the dumb idea of planting a Stargate on the top of a hill should be forced to run up the damn thing with a platoon of Jaffa on their ass.

  So said Colonel Jack O’Neill.

  His team—as was—wasn’t far behind him. Daniel wasn’t wounded and this time they were outstripping the Jaffa, which meant they should have a straight shot at the gate.

  Except for the gliders.

  He’d considered ignoring Carter’s advice and going back for the gate-ship, but on balance she was probably right about the danger of exposing their past selves to alien technology from a galaxy far, far away.

  Still, the muscles in his legs were regretting the decision.

  There was no sign of Carter yet, either. He tried not to be concerned; the plan had been to rendezvous at the gate and make sure the team got through without any last minute hitches. There was no reason to suppose she wouldn’t make it, and even if she didn’t, he could handle it alone and then they’d both be gone anyway.

  Lights out, game over.

  But if, or rather when, that happened he’d rather not face it alone. He’d rather have Carter at his side at the end.

  The crest of the hill was in sight and above it the arc of the Stargate ghosted against the black sky. Unlike last time they were here, dawn hadn’t broken yet. He could barely see the DHD where it crouched next to the stone steps. Slowing, Jack dropped to a crouch and caught his breath. Listening. Mostly what he could hear was rain hammering through the leaves and their wet windblown rustle, occasionally the rattle of MP5 fire and hiss of a zat or the solid blast of a staff weapon.