Alliances

by Stargate

  After parting company with Martouf at the next corridor intersection, Jacob headed for his quarters. The time difference between Vorash and the continental USA meant he had nearly four hours to kill before he could ’gate through to the SGC. Which wasn’t a bad thing. It gave him more time to refine his approach to George, who was going to need some careful handling over this one. George, not entirely without reason, wasn’t who you’d ask to be president of the Tok’ra Fan Club just now. And of course Jack, who’d need to sign off on Sam’s temporary re-assignment, wasn’t likely to be sympathetic to the cause either. He could barely stand to be in the same zip code with a mature symbiote. Tok’ra or Goa’uld, it made no difference to Jack. They were all slimy snakeheads to him.

  And given that he’d come within a mouse’s fart of being Goa’ulded himself, by Hathor, well… you couldn’t really blame him.

  So. Lots of refining to do.

  Hope you’re okay to amuse yourself for a while, he said to Selmak. I’ve got some serious thinking ahead of me.

  As have I, said Selmak, amusement glimmering in his voice. About chocolate.

  It had just gone seven-thirty in the morning, and George Hammond was reviewing the first of the latest round of SG team psych evaluations when the alarm sounded in the ’gate room.

  “Unscheduled off-world activation! General Hammond report to the control room, we have an unscheduled off-world activation!”

  He tossed aside Dr. McKenzie’s acerbic assessment of Major Kasselman and hurried out of his office, pulling the door shut behind him. In the control room all the red alert lights were flashing, the ’gate room was crawling with marines like ants at a picnic and Sergeant Harriman was staring at the inbound computer as though everyone’s lives depended on it. Which, he supposed, they did, when you got right down to it. Before he could catch himself he looked for Jack and the rest of SG-1, who were always first on the scene of a potential disaster. But of course Jack wasn’t there, he was slowly but surely going out of his mind at home under virtual house arrest, and the rest of his team was scattered around the galaxy.

  It didn’t feel right, not having them there. Even when the control room was crammed to standing room only, if SG-1 wasn’t there the place felt… empty.

  “Report, Sergeant,” he said, burying distress inside sharpness.

  Harriman glanced at him. “No teams due back at this time, General. We’re receiving a GDO signal…” He frowned at the computer screen, fingers tense on the keyboard. Then his face relaxed into a smile. “It’s the Tok’ra.”

  “Fine,” said Hammond. Hell’s bells. What do they want now? “Open the iris.” Then he hit the ’gate room intercom. “Stand down, people. It’s a friendly.”

  The enormous iris guarding the Stargate contracted, spilling the wormhole’s blue-white light onto every surface. A moment later the rippling energy of the event horizon parted, spitting out a spare, familiar figure in the odd-looking uniform Hammond thought he’d never get used to seeing. Not after nearly three decades of Air Force blue.

  Despite his myriad worries, he grinned and waved. “Good morning, Jacob,” he said into the intercom, as his old friend greeted those marines he knew who were still on standby around the ’gate ramp. “Come on up to my office. Shall I send to the commissary for some blueberry pancakes?”

  Still chatting, Jacob gave him the thumbs up. Curiosity warring with shameful suspicion, leavened with simple pleasure at the chance of catching up with a friend he missed more than he liked to admit even to himself, Hammond returned to his office, tidied away the psych reports, asked the commissary to send him two servings of blueberry pancakes with extra maple syrup, and waited for that friend to join him… which Jacob did, some five minutes later, all boundless energy and breathtaking intensity.

  Jacob greeted him with a swift hug. That much was immediately different about him, since he’d become… what he now was. The old—yes, say it, admit it—human Jacob Carter had resisted physical expressions of affection as though he—or everyone he met—was a second Typhoid Mary. To be embraced by him now with such casual ease was… unsettling. Not that Jacob loosening his armor was a bad thing, far from it. Just look at the difference it had made to Sam. But it was… creepy… knowing Jacob had changed because he’d, well, changed.

  “How are you, Jacob?” he asked, waving his friend into a chair. “You look well. Better than well. Have the Tok’ra discovered the fountain of youth? Every time I see you it seems you look younger and younger.”

  “And every time I see you, George, you’re a little bit balder and a whole lot more worried,” replied Jacob, comfortably sprawling and blunt as ever. Nice to know that becoming a Tok’ra hadn’t changed everything about him. “What’s eating you this time? And don’t say nothing because I’m the oldest wisest Tok’ra of them all and I see everything.”

  Hammond hid a sigh. The temptation to spill his guts was almost overwhelming. He had no-one else to talk to. Usually when he was facing SGC-related crises what he could say he said to Jack. Now, with that option eliminated… with Jack himself the cause of such concern…

  But no. Maybe later, if Jacob had time to stay, he’d run this latest Kinsey encounter past him. For now it was more important to learn what had brought the Tok’ra back to Earth.

  He flipped a dismissive hand. “No, Jacob, it’s not nothing. Just politics. It can keep for a little while. I’m more interested to know why you’re here. Not that I’m sorry to see you,” he added hastily. “We don’t see each other often enough as far as I’m concerned. But…”

  Jacob grinned. “But you’re wondering if it’s a social call or if I’ve come waving the Tok’ra flag. Well, I’m sorry to say it’s the latter, George. I’ve got a proposition for you, that I hope will end up doing both our people a whole lot of good. I—”

  The office door opened, revealing an airman bearing a tray stacked with two covered plates, cutlery, napkins and a large bottle of maple syrup.

  “On the desk is fine, Phillips,” said Hammond. “Thank you.” He hurriedly made more space. “I take it you haven’t had breakfast yet, Jacob?”

  “Actually I have,” said his friend. “But you know me. I never say so no to blueberry pancakes.”

  As the door closed behind Phillips, Hammond grinned and passed over a plate. “I remember. I may be bald and worried, Jacob, but I’m not quite senile yet.” Then he felt his grin fade, and he stared in alarm as Jacob suddenly stiffened, his expression frozen. “Jacob? Jacob, what’s wrong? Are you in pain? Should I call the infirmary?”

  “I know, but it’s still my turn,” said Jacob, his gaze somehow inwardly directed. Hammond relaxed; his friend was talking to the symbiote. The process never ceased to unsettle him. “I know I’ve already had blueberry pancakes today,” said Jacob, sounding irritated. “But that was breakfast. And anyway, I never promised not to eat the same thing twice in one day. No, I didn’t. Selmak, thanks to you I now have perfect recall, I’d remember if I promised—oh, God.” His gaze had shifted outwards again. He shook his head. “George, I apologize. Talking to one’s symbiote aloud is a beginner’s mistake, I thought I’d beaten that bad habit.” He pulled a face. “Selmak doesn’t like blueberry pancakes. Or coffee. I’ve given up the coffee but I’ll be damned if I give up blueberry pancakes too!”

  Hammond chuckled. “Seems to me there’s a whole lot about being a Tok’ra you haven’t seen fit to tell me, Jacob Carter.”

  Like a defiant child Jacob slopped maple syrup all over one of his cooling pancakes, folded it in half, stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed. “George,” he said, smearing stickiness from his chin with a napkin, “you have no damned idea!”

  “Then one of these days you can fill me in. But right now I’m guessing you didn’t come all this way to tell me Selmak doesn’t care for pancakes and coffee. So. What is it you need?”

  Chapter Five

  “What I’m about to divulge, George, is our highest priority secret and most sensitive information,” Jaco
b began, after a considerable pause. All traces of mischief and rueful embarrassment had vanished from his face.

  “It won’t leave this office, you have my word,” Hammond replied. “I take it the Tok’ra need our help?”

  Try as he might he couldn’t quite keep a touch of sarcasm from his tone; clearly, he’d been spending too much time around Jack O’Neill.

  Hearing it, Jacob frowned but didn’t let himself be distracted. “We do,” he said. “It nearly kills us to admit it—most of us still won’t—but yes. We do.”

  We. Us. They were the wrong pronouns. Could Jacob really divide his loyalties so neatly? Hammond wondered. Successfully compartmentalise what was no longer his singular life?

  With an effort he dispelled the discomfiting thought. “What kind of help?”

  “When Earth joined the fight against the Goa’uld, it irrevocably altered the existing status-quo,” said Jacob. “Unlike the Tok’ra, you attack the system lords head-on, killing them whenever you can. You foment rebellion amongst the Jaffa, turning them against their lords and masters. You’ve achieved results, but your gung-ho tactics are creating difficulties for us. There are consequences.”

  Hammond wasn’t in the mood for being lectured. “War always has consequences, Jacob. Are you suggesting we should back down? Just when we’re starting to make a serious dent in the system lords’ stranglehold on the galaxy? Let’s not forget the Tok’ra have benefited from our victories.”

  “I know,” Jacob said quickly. “But your actions, your attitudes, are forcing the Tok’ra to re-evaluate how we do business.”

  “Really? Good,” he retorted. “Because the sooner the galaxy is rid of the Goa’uld, the better off we’ll all be.”

  Jacob nodded. “True. Except there’s this old Earth saying, George, maybe you’ve heard of it? Softly, softly, catchee monkey. Since you’ve upped the ante in the war against the Goa’uld, and we’ve jumped on board for the ride, we’ve lost more people than in the previous twenty years, easily.”

  Stung, Hammond leaned across his desk. “And you know damned well I regret those dead Tok’ra as keenly as any lost member of the SGC!”

  “George, please,” sighed Jacob. “This isn’t about who cares most for which fallen warrior. Or blaming you for the escalation in hostilities.”

  “No?” To his mind it was exactly what this was about. But getting into a fight with Jacob wouldn’t help anybody. So he took a deep breath, throttled his temper, and said, reasonably, “Then why don’t you cut to the chase, Jacob, and tell me what it is about.”

  With an impatient grunt Jacob pushed to his feet and began roaming the small office, vigorous and vital as a man in his twenties. “It’s about survival, George. Our survival, as we wage war with the Goa’uld. A war that we started, remember, and have been waging for millennia. Bottom line? We can’t sustain our current level of casualties indefinitely. Even the Tok’ra who aren’t killed outright are dying sooner than necessary because of the strain of constantly healing their wounded hosts.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jacob,” Hammond said, meaning it. “You know that wasn’t our intention when we took the fight to the system lords.”

  “Yes, but to be brutally frank, George, your intentions, good or bad, are fast becoming irrelevant.” Jacob stopped roaming to stare at one of the framed purple heart commendations hanging on the wall. Over one shoulder he said, sounding pressured, “Elements of the Tok’ra Council are holding you responsible. If something isn’t done soon I’m afraid our fragile alliance might not survive a hell of a lot longer.”

  Lord, lord. As if he didn’t have enough to contend with. Folding his hands on the desk, mustering years of military discipline, Hammond said calmly, “All right. I’m listening. What is it you want me to do?”

  Jacob turned, his expression strained. “We need the war to end, George, with victory for our side. To achieve that objective we have to finish what the SGC has started. We need more operatives in the field, helping to gather intel and destabilise the system lords. And we need to find more potential Tok’ra hosts.”

  Hammond sat back again, guts churning. The first point was something he could help with, maybe, but—”Hosts? Jacob, you know I can’t—”

  “Give me some credit. I’m not asking you to,” said Jacob, still impatient. “At least not directly.”

  “Then how? Because there is no way I can go to the President and ask him—”

  “It’s true you can’t supply the Tok’ra with humans from Earth willing to blend and strengthen our numbers,” Jacob interrupted. “But you can help us find humans on other worlds who’d be willing to do it. You can help us convince them to join us in the fight for freedom from Goa’uld domination.”

  “By giving up their bodies to you for implantation?”

  Jacob stared. “You make it sound like a fate worse than death.”

  Damn. With an effort, Hammond crushed his instinctive horror. “I thought the Tok’ra only recruited hosts from amongst the dying?”

  “We did, George! And we were managing okay, too. But that was before Jack O’Neill killed Ra!”

  “Ha! So you do blame us!”

  Jacob’s head lowered, and when he looked up again his face was subtly different. Jacob, but not Jacob. “General Hammond,” he said, his voice thrumming with strange harmonics. “Please. Do not take this as a personal attack. We of the Tok’ra are aware of the debts owed to you and the warriors of Earth.”

  The symbiote, Selmak. Hammond couldn’t hate the creature, not after it saved Jacob’s life. But, like Jack, he couldn’t bring himself to embrace it, either. Some things were just… unnatural. And two sentient beings sharing the same body, willingly or not, was one of them.

  “Selmak, I appreciate the sentiment, but forgive me if I say that so far we haven’t seen too much repayment of those debts. From where I sit, the Tok’ra are quick to ask for our help but very slow in returning the favor. Getting intelligence out of you is worse than getting blood from a stone.”

  “I will not argue the point with you, General,” Selmak replied. “At least not today. Today we are here to talk of a specific way we can work together to hasten the downfall of the Goa’uld.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What Jacob began to say is this: the humans we wish to recruit to our cause as hosts have no lives, if you define living as being free to choose your own path without fear of torture and death. You are aware that the system lords breed humans as humans breed cattle, for their ease and convenience?”

  He nodded. “Yes, of course we are. It’s an abomination.”

  “Indeed it is,” Selmak agreed. “One that with your help we hope to end. With that goal in mind, some of us have formulated a plan. We wish to infiltrate the slave populations of the system lords’ breeding farms. To recruit not only young, strong Tok’ra hosts who will help prevent the dwindling of our numbers, but also human spies to work alongside Tok’ra operatives who have infiltrated Goa’uld strongholds. To sow dissent and discord amongst those upon whom the Goa’uld rely for their domination.”

  “That,” he said, after a moment, “is a very ambitious plan. Some might even call it aggressive.”

  Selmak’s smile wasn’t the same as Jacob’s. It was thinner. More guarded. For Hammond, it was just another unwelcome reminder that life as he’d known it was dead and buried.

  “More suited to the Tauri, you mean?” Selmak asked. “Perhaps. But desperate times call for desperate measures, do they not?”

  It was one of Jacob’s favorite sayings. Like Jack, he’d been one of the Air Force’s mavericks. Getting the job done, but not always in the orthodox way. Suddenly suspicious, Hammond said, “Exactly who came up with this idea in the first place, Selmak? You? Another Tok’ra?”

  “No. It was Jacob,” said Selmak. “But I agree with it, as do Martouf and Lantash, and our new High Councillor Per’sus. As much as many of our number might wish you Tauri had never involved yourselves in this fight, we cannot t
urn back the clock. Instead we must cut our suit to fit our cloth, and fight the war as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

  “You say your new High Councillor is in favor of the plan? What of the rest of the Tok’ra Council?”

  Selmak looked uncomfortable. “They… can be convinced.”

  “Forgive me, Selmak, but you don’t sound too confident of that.”

  “The Council isn’t the problem, George,” said Jacob, abruptly returning. “We can handle the Council. The problem is that the breeding farms we’re talking about are guarded by Jaffa, who can sense the presence of a symbiote. Which frankly makes it too dangerous for any of us to blend in with the human population.”

  But not too dangerous for us, Hammond thought sourly. “Then why not choose an easier target?”

  “Because the farms we’ve got in mind breed the most valuable slaves,” said Jacob. “The most beautiful, physically perfect human specimens to be found outside of Hollywood. You know the Goa’uld. Big on appearances. They like to be surrounded by the best of the best. These humans are bred to be lotars, trusted system lord body slaves and other important personal attendants. There’s no point infiltrating a bunch of farmers, they never get anywhere near the likes of Apophis or Heru’ur or Ba’al.”

  “That’s true,” Hammond conceded. “But why would any Goa’uld slave agree to do it? What you’ll be asking of them is insanely dangerous.”

  “Yes,” said Selmak. “But it is my observation that humans, even those born into slavery, have a desire for freedom that transcends fear for personal safety. I believe that, given the chance, these unfortunate men and women will gladly fight to be rid of the monsters who enslave them.”

  Also true. Hammond sat back. “And when you’ve found your recruits? What then?”

  “Then we take them back to Vorash and, like Selmak said, we train them as operatives,” said Jacob. He grinned, briefly. “Think of it as our version of the French Resistance.”