That got her to smile. “I suppose. Thank you, Daniel — you’ve given me a lot to think about. Including whether or not I want to stay here.”
“You’re thinking of quitting?”
“Perhaps. That’s what I need to ponder. My first CO said something to me that I’ve always held onto. ‘Focus on the job while you’re doing it. Think about what it means after it’s done.’ Well, it’s done, and I’m thinking about it, and — well, I know that I most assuredly to not want to go back through the gate. I don’t think I could face going with another team.”
“Well, I can’t tell you what you should do, but I can tell you what you shouldn’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“The worst thing you can do right now is make a major life decision when your emotions are all churned up. At the very least, sleep on it.”
“That’s good advice.” She smiled, though the smile didn’t make it all the way to her eyes. “Again, thank you, Daniel. If you’ll excuse me, I want to head to the mess before the debrief, see if they have any popsicles.”
“Uhm, okay,” Daniel said, watching her leave.
For his part, Daniel wasn’t in the least bit hungry. He was more curious about what happened to Kali and the Reetou after the bomb went off — if they had survived.
Not enough to go back to P3X-418 or anything, but he did wonder what might have transpired between them…
EPILOGUE
Stargate Command — two weeks later
“UNSCHEDULED off-world activation!”
Hammond looked up from his desk. He’d been hoping for a quiet day catching up on his perpetually overdue paperwork. But he supposed that Major Davis at the Pentagon was just going to have to wait for the latest reports from SG-3, SG-9, and SG-13.
By the time he came down to the control room, Sergeant O’Brien said, “Reading Tok’ra IDC, sir.”
“Open the iris.” Hammond immediately went down the next flight of stairs to the gate room. He hoped it was simply Jacob coming to visit his daughter — there was still enough of the day left for it to remain quiet.
When he’d first been assigned to Cheyenne, it had been intended to be Hammond’s last post before retiring. But now his originally planned date of retirement had come and gone and he was still here. Back then, when he’d relieved W.O. West, the outgoing general told him that the tedium would only be relieved by the boredom. Sure enough, he’d spent a lot of days wishing for a bit of excitement.
Then Apophis had attacked and excitement — if that was the right word — became an everyday occurrence. Now he prayed for a little boredom now and again.
Entering the gate room he saw, not Jacob Carter, but rather a young man he’d last seen on the base three years earlier. He’d grown considerably since then, though he still was completely hairless.
“Charlie! Welcome back to Earth.”
The young man who’d been genetically engineered by the Reetou as a facilitator between the out-of-phase aliens and the humans had been taken by the Tok’ra. Last Hammond had heard, he’d been blended with a symbiote, thus healing him of the many illnesses that his hastily constructed human body was ill-equipped to handle on its own.
“It is good to see you again, General. I actually bear news regarding the Reetou. Is Jack here?”
Hammond nodded, and looked up at O’Brien through the window. “Have Colonel O’Neill report to the briefing room.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied.
Within minutes, O’Neill had joined Hammond and Charlie at the table upstairs. “Good to see you, kiddo. My, how you’ve grown.”
“My growth is consistent with human growth, Jack.”
“Of course it is. Still — how you been?”
“I am well. I was blended with a symbiote named Jentol.” Charlie lowered his head, and then his voice deepened and distorted in a manner that Hammond had gotten depressingly used to these past five years. “Charlie has proven an excellent host, though it took some time for me to heal his many ailments. The Reetou’s work was — slipshod.”
“Hey, cut them some slack, they were desperate,” O’Neill snapped.
“Colonel.” Hammond spoke the word in his best calm down voice.
To his credit, O’Neill nodded and relaxed in his chair.
Jentol lowered his head again, and then Charlie’s voice returned. “For obvious reasons, the Tok’ra High Council assigned me to keep track of Reetou activity. After Ramprasad made his report, I was able to contact the government-in-exile. The campaign against Kali resulted in many lost lives. The change in tactics was due to a change in power in the rebellion’s leadership, but those alterations had too many casualties for the Reetou to be comfortable with, given their stated goal of preserving their species.”
“Funny, that,” O’Neill muttered.
Hammond asked, “What was the final result of their fight against Kali?”
“The five Reetou who went to negotiate with Kali were trapped on Imphal. All the vessels on the world had been destroyed, and the Reetou’s attempts to traverse the icy waters failed. Kali herself was badly injured by the explosive provided by Belos, but her Jaffa summoned another ha’tak to Imphal, and she was healed by her sarcophagus. However, her forces have been badly weakened by both the Reetou and you Tau’ri. Olokun and Ba’al have already taken several systems on the outer edges of her territory, which she ceded without a fight.”
“Darn,” O’Neill deadpanned.
There was a phrase Charlie had used that piqued Hammond’s interest. “You said ‘government-in-exile’?”
“Yes, General.” Charlie actually smiled, something he hadn’t done the entire time he was at the SGC during the previous Reetou attack. “The reason why I was not present when Ramprasad made his report is because I was busy relocating several key members of the Reetou Hierarchy to a distant world. They are attempting to rebuild Reetou society away from the Goa’uld. It is our hope that they succeed.”
Hammond nodded. “Major Carter has been working to duplicate the technology she created that brought the Reetou temporarily into phase with us — she’s also trying to eliminate the side effects to Goa’uld, Tok’ra, and Jaffa. If she’s able to, perhaps our people will be able to properly communicate.”
“That is my hope as well, General. In fact, I would like to see the major’s work, if I may.”
O’Neill rose to his feet. “Carter’s in her lab now, sir. I’ll be happy to escort Chucky-boy here.”
Again, Charlie smiled. “I would like that.”
“Dismissed, Colonel.”
“Thank you, General.” O’Neill smiled. “So the Reetou are getting their acts together and a System Lord’s been royally screwed. I’ve had worse days.”
Hammond watched as O’Neill and Charlie left the briefing room, the latter asking how Dr. Fraiser was doing.
The general had to agree with the colonel. He’d had worse days. It would’ve been better if the mission had been accomplished without the loss of SG-7 — and with more actual additions to the Jaffa rebellion. While the Thakka had died, one of the three Jaffa they’d brought back from P3X-418 had signed on. The other two claimed that they were interested in joining the rebellion, but in truth they were attempting to infiltrate it in order to curry favor with Kali, at which they failed, badly. Teal’c had the pair of them sent back to Aizawl, each unconscious from a zat strike.
Still, in their ongoing war with the Goa’uld, this had to count as a victory. Even better, it might have been the last they saw of the renegade Reetou.
He got up and went back to his office. There were still reports to be read on this nice, quiet day.
Tomorrow, he was sure, would go back to exciting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith R.A. DeCandido received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers in 2009, which means he never needs to achieve anything ever again. Somehow, he managed not to write any Stargate fiction until 2014, when his short st
ory “Time Keeps on Slippin’” was published in Fandemonium’s Far Horizons anthology.
He’s very pleased to add SG-1 to the many other TV shows he’s written fiction based on, also including Star Trek, Sleepy Hollow, Supernatural, Doctor Who, Farscape, Heroes Reborn, The X-Files, and many others. He’s also done fiction based on games, movies, and comic books, most recently the Marvel’s Tales of Asgard trilogy of novels.
His original fiction includes the fantasy police procedural series that started with Dragon Precinct in 2004 and has continued to several novels and short stories, as well as a cycle of urban fantasy short stories set in Key West, Florida, and a series of urban fantasy novels taking place in New York City that will debut in 2016 with A Furnace Sealed. Dark Quest Books recently published his short-story collection Without a License: The Fantastic Worlds of Keith R.A. DeCandido.
Keith is also a second-degree black belt in karate (he not only trains but also teaches several classes a week to both kids and adults), a prolific blogger (he has been doing rewatches of shows in both the Stargate and Star Trek franchises for Tor.com since 2011, in addition to his own blog at kradical.livejournal.com), the percussionist for the parody band Boogie Knights, and probably some other stuff too, which he can’t remember due to the lack of sleep.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STARGATE SG-1: Kali's Wrath (SG1-28) Page 21
