“Thank you, Phillips.” Hartkans turned to Jack. “Stand by for transport, sir.”
“Transport? Where are we — ?”
The fall of Goa’uld transport rings cut off the question and in a flare of white light he was somewhere else. Dropping into a defensive crouch, he had to blink several times to make sense of what he saw. He was on a Goa’uld ship, but the people standing looking at him were no Jaffa. They were human, most dressed in the mishmash of leather and sackcloth he associated with off-world populations. Some, though, were in uniform — USAF uniform — and one of them stepped forward.
“Colonel O’Neill,” he said. “Relax, you’re among friends.”
Straightening, but not lowering his guard, Jack took in the stars on the man’s shoulder. “General… ?”
“Turner. We haven’t met.” He gave a thin smile. “That is, I’ve only met General O’Neill.”
“You’re kidding,” Jack said, surprised. “He took a desk job?”
Turner spread his hands, declining to comment. “Let’s find you a uniform,” he said. “We have a lot to do.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jack said, glancing around and trying to get a feel for what the hell was going on. “I can’t help noticing we’re on a Goa’uld mothership.”
The general smiled again. “Former Goa’uld mothership,” he said, gesturing for Jack to walk with him as Hartkans led the way through the corridors of the ha’tak. “We got hold of a number of them after the fall of the System Lords.”
“Excuse me?” Jack almost missed a step. “It sounded like you said ‘the fall of the System Lords’.”
“Yes, Colonel, that’s exactly what I said.”
“As in… all of them?”
Turner smiled again. “Every last one — even Ba’al, in the end.”
“Okay,” he said, blindsided. They’d won the war and no one had told him. No one had told him Ba’al was dead. “I guess I didn’t get the memo.”
“In here, Colonel.” Hartkans stopped in front of an open door, through which Jack could see a neatly folded uniform sitting on top of a narrow cot. “These are your quarters, sir.”
Jack didn’t enter. “Nine years,” he said to Turner. “I’ve been out in the cold for nine years. No one told me George Hammond died. No one told me we won the war against the Goa’uld. No one told me that Ba’al —” He bit that off, uncomfortable with the way it made his voice tighten. There was an awkward silence. Turner clearly didn’t know what to say, and Jack guessed this wasn’t really his fault. He threw him a bone. “All these years, and nothing — why should I help you now?”
It was Hartkans who answered. “Because you’re Colonel Jack O’Neill, sir, and your team needs you.”
He turned back to the doorway, to the uniform that lay beyond. He could see the patch on the jacket sleeve: SG-1. “What about the other guy?” he said. “It’s his team, not mine.”
“General O’Neill left the SGC a number of years ago,” Hartkans said. “He’s now head of Homeworld Security.”
Jack almost laughed. “Well that’s ridiculous. I’d never —”
“Colonel,” Turner snapped, “put the uniform on and consider yourself recalled to active duty.” He looked at Hartkans. “Bring him to the briefing as soon as he’s ready.”
With that, he stalked away leaving Jack hovering on the threshold. This was what he’d longed for: a recall to active duty, to the life that had been taken from him. And yet. And yet…
“Sir?” Hartkans said. “We don’t have much time.”
And I don’t have much choice. There was no way he would pass up this chance.
At first glance the Ancient outpost looked like a ruin, weathered and crumbling where it perched like a gothic dream on the cliff edge. Its melancholy air appealed to the romantic in Daniel, but, as usual, he didn’t have time to relish it or to absorb the architectural wonders on display. The way Ancient structures seemed to defy physics was something he’d often considered, in passing, but had never had time to really pursue. Perhaps one day, when they were all too old to do this anymore, he’d sit down with Sam and figure out exactly how they whisked up the confections of spires and turrets that marked so much of their architecture.
The thought made him smile — a smile that was nudged off his face by Vala elbowing him in the ribs. “Wake up,” she said. “We’re here.”
‘Here’ was the entrance they’d discovered on their first recon of the planet: a doorway that led down into the preserved lower half of the structure. Carved — again, he’d have to ask Sam how they’d done it — into the solid stone of the cliff, the rooms below were shielded from the elements and remained intact. And it was somewhere in this labyrinth of tunnels and stairways that the device they were searching for lay hidden. At least, that’s what Vala’s map, and the scan run by the Daedalus, told them.
Cam pulled off his sunglasses and peered into the darkness. “We’ll need a flashlight,” he said.
Daniel smiled at the understatement. “You know,” he said, as he reached into his vest for his headlamp, “even if the Oranians do find the device, they won’t be able to use it. And, most likely, neither will the Lucian Alliance.”
“All they need is someone with the ATA gene,” Cam said. “And they’re not so hard to find these days.”
“Maybe.” Daniel switched on his lamp, turning his head so as not to blind the others. “But for a device capable of exterminating an entire species? The Ancients were careful. I’d be surprised if a weakly or artificially expressed ATA gene would be enough to activate it. And there aren’t so many Ancients in the Milky Way these days.”
“Either way,” Cam said, “I’d rather blow the thing up. Just in case.”
Daniel didn’t argue with that. Ancient or not, some things didn’t deserve preservation.
“I’ll take point.” Cam switched on his weapon’s tactical flashlight, sweeping it across the staircase leading down into the dark. “Vala, show me the map.”
“Right here,” she said, with the childlike enthusiasm Daniel somehow found both captivating and infuriating. He wanted to tell her that this wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a treasure hunt… but of course she knew that as well as any of them. This was just her way of dealing. He’d found Jack’s irreverence in the face of certain doom equally exasperating.
“Okay,” Cam said, looking up from the map. “Vala, stick with me. Teal’c — watch our six. I don’t want those Oranians creeping up on us.” He glanced at Daniel. “Let’s go.”
Like everything on the ship, the briefing room was a kaleidoscopic mix of different people, technologies and cultures. A table that might have been lifted from a Pentagon meeting room dominated the space, at odds with the gaudy Goa’uld décor, and around it sat a group of hard-faced people much like those he’d passed in the corridors on the way from his quarters.
When Jack arrived, Turner was in close conversation with another man, tall and lanky. He wasn’t in uniform, but his clothes looked like they came from Earth and not the Leather Emporium that seemed to outfit the rest of the galaxy. They turned when Jack and Hartkans entered, and Jack recognized the stranger immediately as the cop who’d pulled him over that night.
“Small world,” Jack said.
He got an apologetic smile in response. “Sorry, Colonel, but we needed visual confirmation that you were who we thought you were.”
“Take a seat, Jack,” Turner said, cutting through the small talk.
He did, keeping a wary eye on the disreputable-looking people opposite. None of them appeared friendly.
“You’re the Asgard clone?” a woman said abruptly. She was strongly built, with hard eyes and hair pulled back from an angular face.
“Among other things,” Jack said. “And you are…?”
“Balen Tark. This is my ship.”
She gave him a brazen, appreciative look. “What do you call yourself?”
He hesitated over his first name, like he often did, and settled on, “O’Neill. You can call me O’Neill.”
She tossed him a smile, full of teeth. “And what do you want to call me?”
It felt like a loaded question and he had no idea how to respond. Luckily, Turner interrupted.
“Let’s get this started,” he said, and gestured toward Jack. “As you can see, we’ve located the —” He cut himself off. “That is, Colonel O’Neill has agreed to help us.” He turned to the fake cop. “Devon, give us the rundown, please.”
Devon, it turned out, was the Daniel Jackson of the outfit — complete with PowerPoint presentation. “Colonel,” he said, addressing Jack directly, “what you probably don’t know about yourself is that you possess what we call the Ancient Technology Activation gene, or the ATA gene.”
“Catchy name.”
Devon smiled, but didn’t miss a beat. “The gene — which is very strongly expressed in you — allows you to activate a number of technologies left behind by the Ancients. Now, we’ve developed a retrovirus that can activate —”
“Devon?” Turner interrupted. “Cut to the chase, will you?”
Devon cleared his throat, frowned, and said, “Yes sir. We’ve recently discovered an Ancient device that’s capable of exterminating an entire species. However, it’s clear that the Ancients didn’t want this to fall into general use. We think, perhaps, that it was an attempt to find a weapon to combat the Wraith.”
“The what?” Jack said.
Turner waved the question away. “Not pertinent to this mission, Colonel.”
“The point is,” Devon continued, “that we believe only someone with a very strong, naturally expressed ATA gene can make the device work. And we think that’s you, Colonel.”
“And why would I want to activate a device that can exterminate anything?” he said. “Except maybe mosquitoes. We’re not talking about mosquitoes, are we?”
Turner leaned forward, hands braced on the table; he wasn’t blessed with a great sense of humor, Jack decided. “You want to activate it, Colonel,” he said, “because it’s the only way to save your team.”
Jack took a moment to absorb that assertion, but kept his face neutral. “By exterminating an entire species?”
“Colonel,” Turner said, “the creatures holding SG-1 are vicious. They will kill them, eventually. But before that…”
He left it hanging and Jack didn’t need to imagine the rest. He shifted, feeling uncomfortable — and not just because the seat was hard. “You’re gonna need to explain this, General.”
Irritation flickered across Turner’s face. “SG-1 was sent on a mission to destroy the device, but an Oranian faction got there first and captured them. They’re using them as a bargaining chip to leave the planet with the device. Our mission is to stop them.”
“With extreme prejudice, I assume?”
“A conventional incursion wouldn’t stand a chance, Jack. They’d kill SG-1 as soon as the offensive began. But if a small team could infiltrate the outpost and activate the device…” He gave a quick, nasty smile. “They’re all dead and SG-1 walk free.”
“How does it work?”
Devon brightened up. “That’s a good question, sir. We think that it —”
“It uses DNA,” Turner said, talking right over him. “We’ve calibrated it to Oranian DNA, but the Ancients designed the device so that only one of them — someone with the ATA gene — could initiate the weapon.”
Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair, considering the story. “Why me?” he said eventually. “Why not him? The other O’Neill.” The real one.
Devon and Turner exchanged a furtive look. “Okay,” Turner said after a moment, “I’ll level with you, Jack.”
“Well, that would be nice.”
“This isn’t exactly official,” Turner admitted. “We’ve been authorized to operate below the radar.”
Jack sat back in his chair, tension tight down the length of his spine. It wasn’t that he’d completely trusted these people in the first place, but he couldn’t deny that he’d really wanted to believe that this was the call he’d been hoping for. He swallowed his disappointment and tried not to look like he was on full alert. “So who are you?” he said, looking around the table. “NID? Is Kinsey behind this?”
Turner shook his head. “Kinsey’s dead.”
“Convenient. Seems like everyone I know is either dead or missing.”
“It’s been a long nine years,” Turner said. “And if we’d had a choice, we wouldn’t have recalled you. But we don’t. You’re no stranger to covert operations, Colonel. Sometimes it’s the only way.”
He couldn’t argue with that, but something still didn’t sit right. He caught a tense glance between Turner and the woman, Balen Tark. “And what do you get out of this?” he asked her.
“The Oranians have killed many of our people,” she said, leaning back in her chair as if she were about to prop her feet on the table. “My ship isn’t called the Avenger for nothing, O’Neill.”
“You’re talking about a weapon of mass destruction.”
“By any means necessary, Colonel,” Turner said. “You know that.”
He did know that, but he also wished he had Daniel here to argue the other corner. Daniel wasn’t here, though; he was being held prisoner along with the rest of his team. Apparently.
“Look,” Turner said, “how do you think we tracked you down?”
“Facebook?”
Turner’s lips pressed into an unamused line. “General O’Neill told us where to find you. He’d be here himself, if he could, but in his position…” He spread his hands. “Jack, look around you. The galaxy’s changed. It’s not as simple as it was when the Goa’uld had everything locked down. In many ways, it’s even more dangerous out here.”
In truth, Jack had no way of knowing whether Turner was on the level. He wasn’t sure he bought the story that his alter ego was the Big Man in DC. In fact, he wasn’t sure he bought a lot of what they were selling him. He was out of his depth and he didn’t like it. But he wasn’t about to let on, so all he said was, “After we do this, what happens to the device?”
“We destroy it.” Perhaps Turner said it a little too fast, or perhaps it was the way his gaze flickered toward Balen Tark, but Jack wasn’t sure he believed that either.
He looked at the woman, but her expression was opaque. Jack didn’t miss the tense line of her shoulders, however, or the fact that the whole room was holding its breath. He made himself lean back in his chair, look relaxed. “What if I won’t do it?”
Turner’s expression was flinty. “Then you’d be disobeying a direct order, Colonel.”
“I’m not him,” he said. “I’m not ‘Colonel O’Neill’. You can’t give me orders.”
“I thought you’d have more loyalty to your team, Jack.”
“The SG-1 I knew wouldn’t want me to commit mass murder on their behalf. In fact, the Jack O’Neill I knew wouldn’t be too happy about it either.”
Turner steepled his fingers on the table, letting a moment pass. “You want to go back to drinking alone in seedy bars, Jack? Getting your kicks from riding too fast on the interstate? Because I can send you back there. If you don’t have the stomach for this, I can send you back to that life.”
Jack held his gaze, trying to get the measure of the man. He wasn’t having much luck.
“Or you can stay and help,” Turner said. “You can get back into the action, make a difference again. Save your team. Save Earth.”
“And then what? Back on the scrap heap?”
Turner shook his head. “We’ll find a place for you. The Stargate Program’s gotten a whole lot bigger than just the SGC. Th
ere are plenty of places where a man of your talents and experience could make himself useful. Hell, there are whole new galaxies to explore.”
“Is that so?”
“You wouldn’t believe what’s out here, Jack.”
And that was exactly the problem. Hammond and Kinsey were dead? SG-1 was in trouble? The Goa’uld had been destroyed? He — the real Jack O’Neill — was heading up the whole operation from DC? How the hell was he supposed to know what to believe?
He didn’t trust Balen Tark, or Devon, or any of them. But Turner was right about one thing: this was a chance to get back into the game, to reclaim something of the life he’d lost. So maybe these guys were NID, or something else shadowy, but maybe that didn’t matter. He’d lived as a shadow for a decade anyway, a ghost of himself. Maybe it was time he started salvaging what he could of his life.
He fixed Turner with a hard look, trying not to hear Daniel’s warning voice in the back of his head as he said, “So where do we find this doomsday machine?”
“Damn,” Cam said, crouching low against the wall and releasing a precise burst of weapons fire up the staircase. “They got here fast.”
“You’d be amazed what Oranians can do when they smell profit,” Vala said.
“We cannot hold them here.” Teal’c was farther down the narrow stairway, wielding his flashlight to try and see into the darkness. “There appears to be a room to the left, less than a hundred meters away.”
“We don’t want to get trapped,” Cam warned.
“Better than dead,” Vala said.
Daniel stood up, staying flat against the wall. “Teal’c and I can check it out, see if there’s a back door.”
Cam nodded, not taking his eyes off the Oranians further up the stairs. “Be quick, or we’ll be falling back anyway.”
Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons Page 29
