07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  This time Bra’tac had no cautionary tales to offer.

  “Right. Teal’c, you still have your IDC transmitter. Hit it!”

  Teal’c stepped forward, already keying the ID code into the device on his wrist. Sam watched, breath bated, but there was no indication that the gate wasn’t functioning normally.

  Finally she released a sigh. “Let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Termination Codon: Nucleotide sequence that signals the end of a growing chain.

  “Notify me the second M3D 335 makes contact!”

  The balding nerd at the dialing computer uttered a grunt that might or might not have been a response. What it did manage to convey quite clearly, though, was resentment. It carried, and Simmons thought he sensed a barrage of sniggers wanting to erupt all around him.

  “Am I inconveniencing you, Sergeant!” he hissed.

  “Oh no!” Harriman looked up at him, blue eyes behind those nerdy glasses brimming with innocence. “I just thought you didn’t need it confirmed for the fifth time. Sir.”

  “I hope you like cold places, Sergeant,” whispered Simmons.

  Through the semi-darkness of the control room he felt the crew’s stares boring into his back, their amusement souring, the air growing thick with hatred. He didn’t care. If they hated him, it meant they feared him. Simmons was fully determined to make them understand why, above and beyond any cause for fear they thought they had now.

  He’d have his army of healthy and fully functional Jaffa, and then, finally, the White House would appreciate what a detached civilian perspective could achieve. They’d be kissing his feet. They’d put the NID in charge of the SGC and the base on ’335, and—

  The klaxons blared the rest of the daydream from his mind.

  “Incoming wormhole, sir,” Harriman announced mechanically.

  At last!

  A world of tension drained from Simmons’ body. Van Leyden should have reported back hours ago, and he would hear a word or two about the value of promptness, but the main thing was the news Simmons fully expected to receive now. Alpha platoon had returned, hopefully with the Jaffa, Teal’c, and the rest of SG-1 was a thing of the past. He was looking forward to the funeral ceremony. “Scramble the transmission and put it through to the monitoring station on Level 16.”

  “Yessir.”

  This time Harriman’s reply came loud and clear, and Simmons fancied he heard a hint of disappointment in the sergeant’s voice. Too bad, but it probably would wear off by the time the good sergeant arrived at his next posting in McMurdo. Simmons grinned and headed for the stairs.

  “Uh,” said Harriman. “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “Receiving SG-l’s iris code. You still want me to put it through to Level 16?”

  For an endless moment his next breath refused to come, frozen inside his lungs. Then Simmons took control of himself, forced his body to turn around, the man’s insolence barely even registering. “Do not open the iris,” he ordered calmly.

  “But, sir, they—”

  “You heard me, Sergeant. SG-1 has been compromised. Anybody could be using their code.” Simmons didn’t like what he saw in the sergeant’s eyes. More than insolence—pure contempt. Contempt and defiance. “You’re relieved, Mister.”

  It was the last thing the man had expected. You could tell by the way he heaved his pudgy frame from the seat in front of the computer and, red-faced and flustered, tripped over a chair leg as he moved aside. Groping for support, his right hand slammed down, hit the palm scanner. Simmons heard his own yell of annoyance, but it was too late. Suddenly not clumsy anymore, Harriman reached across the chair, the fingers of his left tapping out a sequence on the keyboard.

  “Oops,” he said.

  Through the control room window, Simmons saw the iris open on the shimmering blue surface of the event horizon. He grabbed the sergeant’s arm, yanked him back into his chair. “Close it! That’s an order!”

  “Sorry, sir.” The sergeant’s look of imbecilic innocence reasserted itself. “I’m not authorized to do that. I’ve been relieved of duty.”

  Below, black-clad SFs took their positions in the gate room, USAS leveled at the ramp. Simmons grabbed the microphone. “You’re green-lighted to fire—”

  The traveler, stocky and in filthy BDUs, dropped from the event horizon at an odd angle, as if he’d been physically flung into the wormhole. He landed heavily, sending a rattle through the ramp, but the metal clanking was drowned out by his shout. “Stand down!”

  It might not have worked for anyone else, but the airmen had obeyed that voice for years. To a man they lowered their weapons. For a second, Simmons was tempted to countermand the order, then he noticed the cheers behind him in the control room and below, among the SFs. Murder was all very well as long as nobody could prove it, but now there would be evidence as well as witnesses. Knowing that he was looking at the explanation for that bogus gate calibration test, he fumbled for an expression that might or might not pass for relief—in actual fact it felt like indigestion. He should have trusted his instincts. Down on the ramp, George Hammond picked himself up, clearing the way for whatever or whoever was to come. Simmons had a pretty good idea and damn near choked on it.

  “Medical team to the gate room!” Hammond hollered.

  “Ah, excuse me, sir!” That epic idiot Harriman pushed past Simmons and dived for the intercom—evidently he considered himself authorized again—to parrot his fearless leader. “Medical team to the gate room!”

  With considerably more grace than Hammond, a cloaked, skull-capped figure appeared from the event horizon; a Jaffa, getting on in years. Close behind followed Major Carter in an outfit—or lack thereof—that left every male in the embarkation room standing slack-jawed in a puddle of drool. In her wake arrived Teal’c—walking confirmation that Simmons’ Jaffa had failed on an unimaginable scale.

  “I’d better go and see what’s going on,” Simmons announced.

  It sounded lame even to his own ears, and he didn’t wait for the sniggers to resurge. He left the control room, already trying to think past the acrid taste of failure in his mouth. Damage control was the main thing now. The exact magnitude of the disaster was difficult to assess as yet, because he had no idea what was happening or had happened on M3D 335 and how much SG-1 and Hammond really knew. Ultimately the goal would be for Colonel Frank Simmons to climb out of this manure pit smelling of roses. In order to do this he needed a bargaining chip weighty enough to offset anything Hammond might have to contribute to the matter.

  George Hammond was reasonably certain that the metal grid of the ramp had left a tattoo on his six. Not that this was any kind of priority. Bracing his not inconsiderable bulk against the impact, he just about managed to catch Jack O’Neill who came flopping from the event horizon like a rag doll.

  “I can walk,” the Colonel muttered as his legs folded under him. “Sir.”

  “Sure you can.” Dr. Jackson, looking only marginally more fit than his CO, had popped from the wormhole and threaded one of Jack’s arms across his shoulders. “Let’s get you to the infirmary so you can show Dr Warner.”

  Thankfully that didn’t become necessary. Over by the blast door a crew of SFs flocked apart, allowing a couple of medics, a stretcher, and Dr Warner to pass. Though Warner’s experience wasn’t quite as comprehensive as Janet Fraiser’s, he immediately zeroed in on the usual suspect. Inside a minute, Jack O’Neill was on his way to the infirmary, clucked over by the medics.

  The rest of his team remained stranded on the ramp in front of an idle Stargate, looking lost and, above all, exhausted. On the floor, the SFs were still milling around, as was a bunch of bystanders who had no real business of being in the gate room. The SGC was a small command and close-knit; word traveled fast, and the return of a team missing in action, together with the base commander who nobody’d known was missing, presumably rated a degree of curiosity and excitement. Sergeant Harriman was peering down from the
control room window, a little green around the gills and gesticulating frantically. Hammond tried not to think Now what? and failed. He nodded a brief acknowledgement in Harriman’s direction, letting him know he’d get to him. Eventually.

  “Sir?” Major Carter, he was relieved to see, had requisitioned a BDU jacket from one of the SFs. She still was clutching her grenade launcher as though she expected those boars to come charging through the closed iris. “Permission to go take a shower, sir?”

  “Permission granted, Major. In fact, I—”

  “I know, General.” She smiled. “You insist.”

  “How did you guess?” Hammond grinned back at her, slowly surrendering to a sense of relief and the realization that he had, in fact, brought his people home. “Have that shower and then report to the infirmary for a full medical, Major. Same goes for Teal’c and Dr. Jackson. We’ll debrief once things have quieted down a bit.”

  “Yessir.”

  Hammond watched her round up her team mates and herd them through the blast door. One by one, the audience trickled back to their posts, and the gate room returned to its normal state of quiet readiness. With one exception. An unpleasant one at that. So that was what Harriman had wanted him to know.

  The man had been leaning against the wall beneath the control room window, observing, biding his time. Now he pushed himself off, started ambling over, a faint echo of his entrance after the exercise. As he came within smelling distance of Hammond an expression of distaste stole across his face. Apparently Colonel Simmons had issues with eau de hog. Well, that was just too bad! George Hammond half wished he’d had the time or the foresight to roll around in a pile of boar dung. Not that it would have kept Simmons away.

  “A word, General,” the NID Colonel said, picking an imaginary speck of lint from a sleeve by Armani and trying to look genial. It lacked conviction. Close up, you could see droplets of sweat beading on the man’s upper lip, a small muscle working nervously in his cheek. Simmons was scared, which made a refreshing change.

  “Get out of my way,” Hammond snapped. “Better yet, get the hell off my base and don’t come back.”

  “When we’ve talked.” He grabbed Hammond’s arm.

  A mistake. Behind him, Hammond heard the characteristic noise of a staff weapon being primed, and then Bra’tac announced, “I recommend you cede to the wishes of Hammond of Texas.”

  Simmons let go, frowned. “Who is he?”

  “A witness.” Hammond never took his eyes off Simmons’ face, searching for even the smallest hint of insecurity, unease, perhaps even guilt, though that would imply the bastard was human. “Together with SG-1, Dr. Fraiser, and thirteen Marines we’re expecting back in, oh, about four hours. You’re finished, Colonel.” He hadn’t mentioned the ten Marine “Jaffa”, deciding it was smarter to keep that trump card up his sleeve. And he would need it, by the look of things. The reaction wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

  “Witnesses to what? The misconduct of a high-ranking USMC officer? You know, for a moment there I thought you might have something tangible. But alas, hearsay won’t fly.” Simmons actually contrived to sound concerned. “All I want is to talk to you.”

  Try as he might, Hammond couldn’t suppress a snort. “Right. Keep it for someone who might believe you.”

  “You’d better believe me, General. I’m trying to stop you from making a mistake. Because, unlike you, I wasn’t seen engaging in any potentially criminal activity. I’ve got three words for you—aiding and abetting.”

  “What?”

  The question was purely rhetorical, nothing but a reflex that might or might not buy him some time. George Hammond knew only too well what—or rather, whom—Simmons was talking about.

  I could get court-martialed just for being seen with you.

  The words, not an exaggeration but hard, cold fact, had come back to bite him on the ass. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it out loud. He had been seen with Harry Maybourne. Not just by the NID agents, but by any number of independent witnesses; the waitress in the truck stop, airline personnel, the cabbie in Seattle, a goddamn state trooper, of all things. He never doubted that the NID would dig up all of them and more, up to and including the guy at the hot dog stand.

  “Do you wish me to kill this man, Hammond of Texas?” Coal-chip eyes hard and unforgiving, Bra’tac had kept his bead on Simmons. If Hammond asked, he would fire, without hesitation, without even knowing his victim—all because he trusted one fallible general. It’d be easy. Unprovable, in fact: an alien ally misinterpreting an exchange between humans and committing a grievous error; Harriman and everybody else in the control room would unaccountably be struck deaf, dumb, and blind—and Simmons would cease to be a problem.

  “Unfortunately, at this moment what I wish and what is right are two very different things,” Hammond said softly. “Thank you, Master Bra’tac. I’m afraid I’ll have to deal with this on my own.”

  “I see.” With a long, measuring gaze at Hammond, the old warrior closed and raised his staff weapon. Suddenly he grinned. “You are correct, Hammond of Texas. It shall be more satisfying to wait for an opportunity to disembowel him.”

  That last sentence had been directed at Simmons, who had the good sense of backing up a step or two. “He’s kidding, right?”

  “No,” said Hammond and watched Bra’tac leave the gate room, likely as not in search of Teal’c to discuss Hammond of Texas’ imprudent scruples. “I’m listening, Simmons.”

  “Not here.”

  “Fine. My office then.”

  Imprudent scruples, indeed. Hammond thought he could hear Jack O’Neill’s voice.

  One day I may ask you to buy back my soul.

  One day Jack might just have to return the favor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “What are you doing here, Colonel? I thought I’d sent you home.”

  Dr Warner had the look of a person whose carefully husbanded patience was about to snap into psychosis. You couldn’t really blame him. Having both Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Fraiser as patients was enough to make Mother Teresa run amok. Rumor had it that Warner’s esteemed colleague had attempted to assist in the debridement of her own wound. Rumor also had it that Warner had put said colleague under in a last-ditch effort to save his sanity.

  “Morning, Doctor.” Grinning, Jack pointed at the door Warner had just slammed behind him. “How’s the patient?”

  “Active.” Loaded with a world of connotations, Warner’s reply hung there for a moment. Then he said, “On the off-chance that you’re here to visit Dr. Fraiser rather than add to my problems, you might want to try and impress on her the importance of rest.”

  “You want me to do what?”

  “I want you to—”

  “I heard you. It’s just that…” Jack cleared his throat. “It’s like inviting Ted Kennedy to lecture on the benefits of temperance.”

  “Consider it a challenge, Colonel.” Warner was already heading down the corridor, mumbling something about needing a drink.

  “As I was saying. Temperance,” muttered Colonel O’Neill and opened the door to the infirmary.

  “What are you doing here, Colonel?”

  “Sweet.” Jack slapped on his best insulted face. “You’d really think it’d kill people to try something along the lines of Hey, sir, nice to see you up and about.”

  It didn’t work. Janet still glared at him, past a nurse who’d just changed the dressing on Dr. Fraiser’s wound and now cleared the battlefield at best possible speed. “Warner had no business releasing you without consulting me first.” Even the doc’s righteous indignation couldn’t bring any color to her face. Her complexion rivaled the bed sheets, which didn’t stop her from pushing herself up. Going by the wince, it was less than comfortable.

  “Janet, I’m—”

  “Peachy. Yeah.”

  Déjà vu all over again. Jack didn’t bother to swallow the sigh. “I know. I’m not peachy until you say I am.”

  She wasn’t playing. “Wa
rner didn’t even show me your chart. He didn’t tell me anything.”

  “That’s because you’re the patient, Doctor!”

  “I’m still—”

  “Look, Doc. They did a stress ECG on me yesterday afternoon. Twenty minutes on the treadmill, maximum pulse of a hundred and five, nice and steady. BP no higher than one-thirty over eighty, which, Warner informs me, is nothing short of spectacular for a guy my age. After that, he admitted he’d run out of stuff to examine me for.”

  As a matter of fact, in the two days since his return Jack O’Neill had undergone every single test modem medicine could throw at a patient while still leaving him alive, and the distinction between Nirrti’s lab and the infirmary had become disconcertingly blurry.

  Fraiser leaned back against the cushions, satisfied or exhausted, Jack couldn’t tell. At last she said, “Do they know what caused it?”

  “Nope.” Shaking his head, he wandered closer to her bed. “She—Nirrti—was trying to get me to twirl chess pieces in thin air. Something was blocking the process, though Warner and his merry men can’t say what or how, apart from the fact that it knocked me sideways when Nirrti kept insisting.”

  “You mean when I kept insisting?” Fraiser’s fingers clenched in the bedspread, twisting it savagely.

  “I don’t remember that. What I do remember is the reason for this.” He reached out, lightly brushing her shoulder. “Carter also told me about the epinephrine. Stupid, Doc. Real stupid, but thanks.”

  The bedspread was enjoying something of a respite. “Sam talks too much.”

  “Probably. But she did it all without techno-babble this time. Even I could understand it.” Finally Jack saw what he’d been hoping to see. Fraiser smiled. A little. Then it vanished again, like an old memory, and he wondered if it’d ever been there or if he’d simply wanted to see it too much.

  She looked distant, miles—light-years—away. “We watched it from the tel’tac,” she whispered. “The fortress and the city just melted, sagged in on themselves. They’re dead, aren’t they, sir? Those I didn’t kill before.”