You Tokra fools. You cannot separate us, for this is my body. I am Qetesh—nothing of the host remains! “It's not the General's blood—”
No! Don't listen to Qetesh; I'm still here! Please, by all that is merciful in the universe, give me back my life!
“ — it's Vala's!” I am your god and I will always possess you.
Voices called through the haze, pulling her away, separating them, taking her baby from her. Pearls of dark red clouded her vision, suffocating the light, and a cold stygian blackness took her soul.
You will never be free of me, Qetesh warned her from the darkness where she always lingered, for you have become me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We got maybe two hundred thousand feet to play with here, people!” Cam announced.
“Almost ready.” Sam couldn't be entirely certain because they were heading into the night side shadow of the planet, but from her glances through the windscreen when they'd been beamed aboard the jumper, it appeared that a section of Asgard ship—Loki's presumably, since the discredited scientist was currently lying on the floor of the jumper—had been damaged in some sort of accident.
With the General critically injured, Sam could only assume that Vala had picked up Loki's signal and beamed him aboard immediately she'd retrieved SG-1, which meant they'd already altered whatever time they were in. Dammit!
Being transported aboard the jumper while they'd been literally gasping their last breath had come as no great surprise to Sam. In the few minutes they'd been inside the cavern beneath Cheyenne Mountain, she'd figured once the SGC analyzed the data from the incoming wormhole, someone—as much as she was loath to admit it, probably McKay—would eventually work out what had happened. It wouldn't matter if they'd taken a week or a year to develop a solution, because McKay would also have known the only way that SG-1 could be rescued was by installing Asgard transport technology in the time-machine enhanced Ancient puddle jumper.
How McKay, or maybe Lee, had pinpointed exactly when they'd been sent was an entirely different matter. And while Sam was deeply grateful not to be pulling her last stench-filled breath inside a readymade tomb, the fact that something catastrophic had occurred as a result of the rescue attempt vindicated her argument that use of the Ancient time machine was dangerous under any circumstances.
Although she'd read McKay and Zelenka's reports on the jumper's systems, and spent hours going over the schematics, Sam wasn't personally as familiar with the Ancient ship as she would have liked. No one at Area 51 was, for that matter. This lack was due entirely to the limited number of Ancient gene bearers with the necessary security clearance and time to work with engineers in analyzing the ship's wide range of capabilities.
With O'Neill currently unconscious, she had no idea why the inertial dampeners and HUD were operational, but she doubted they would offer much protection when the ship impacted.
This had to have been McKay's bright idea, she decided. Only he would have been so conceited. “I'm going to beam us down well away from the crash site. We have to do everything possible to minimize our impact on this time.”
“Oh, we're gonna impact, all right,” Cam yelled back. “In about one hundred and fifty thousand feet!”
“C'mon Jack, snap out of it!” Daniel implored.
Sam glanced aft. Teal'c was applying a pressure bandage to a ragged gash on Vala's thigh. Her BDUs were stained dark with blood, but it wasn't enough to have caused her to pass out like that. It must have been the cumulative effort of her own wounds and dealing with the General's injury. Sam knew from personal experience how draining using a handheld healing device could be. If Teal'c could wake her, Vala may yet be able to bring O'Neill around. “How is she?”
“Unresponsive,” Teal'c replied, tying off the bandage.
“Coming up on one hundred thousand feet.” Cam was scrambling to collect additional items that had floated out of the First Aid kit. Every one of them, even Teal'c, needed medical attention as soon as possible.
Assuming they weren't dead in the next few minutes, or so.
Sam glanced outside, but the jumper's spin was still erratic. Lightning bolts and watery sheets fanning out across the windshield told her that they were coming down in the middle of a storm, while data from the HUD confirmed they were now over New Mexico, thankfully well clear of any major towns. Abandoning the jumper would maroon them in this time, but they were fast running out of options. She reluctantly turned to the Asgard transport controls and locked onto their signals.
And then a not-so muted curse alerted her to the fact that the General was coming around.
“Jack!” Daniel patted him on the cheek none-too gently, adding green gunk to blood already there. “Listen to me. You have to think about getting us out of here.”
Glazed eyes half opened. “Where...?”
“Not where, sir. When” Sam amended. “You came back in time to get us but something went wrong. I think you ran into an Asgard ship.”
“Carter?” O'Neill's face screwed up. His voice was slurred. “Distinctly recall you being against time travel.”
“Jack!” Daniel shook the General's shoulders in frustration. “We don't have time for a discussion. Just get us out of here!”
“Fifty thousand,” Cam called, grabbing Sam's discarded pack and the P-90s. Cam was getting ready bail. He obviously didn't share Daniel's optimism that the General would recover in time to save them from crashing.
Cam was wrong, however. The jumper's flight systems suddenly powered up, the HUD flickered into full color and a remarkably well-rendered set of images appeared. Sundry floating debris dropped to the floor as the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity both kicked in.
“That's it, Jack,” Daniel said encouragingly. “You're doing it.”
“Woulda been a great game,” O'Neill mumbled.
“Ten thousand,” Cam announced. “Plus or minus, but the minuses are catchin' up real fast.”
“Yes, yes, I'm sure it would have been a wonderful game.” The words tumbled out of Daniel's mouth. “Jack... listen to me. Can you concentrate on getting us into orbit?”
“Eight thousand!” Cam grabbed the back of her seat. “Sam? It's time to get outta here!”
“Just a minute. He's doing it.” Sam scanned the controls, hoping she wasn't imagining things. She really, really did not want to abandon the jumper.
“We don't have a minute!”
O'Neill blinked again and shook his head as if to clear it.. “Carter said...gotta go back four hundred years, first.”
“Five thousand feet and that ground is coming up damned fast—Sam!”
“Or was it three hundred, then forward two hundred?”
From the cargo bay she heard the time machine's consol hum to life, and something rippled over them. Surprised that the General had actually read her report on the jumper's log and time travel capabilities, Sam looked around in wonder at the stars. “It's working!”
She barely had time to register the relief on the faces of her companions before another ripple passed over them—and the jumper slammed sideways and began tumbling again, this time, end over end.
The inertial dampeners compensated a moment too late, throwing Sam out of the copilot's seat and into Cam. Bright blue, early morning sky filled the windscreen before the ground spun into view long enough to tell her that they were now at least fifty thousand feet above a densely forested landscape. The HUD flicked wildly through a dozen images, but O'Neill seemed coherent enough to straighten out the jumper's erratic flight path. As they leveled off, Sam glanced up to discover a Ha'tak plummeting toward the ground, a fiery tail in its wake.
Sam's head reeled with the implications. Two time jumps and five seconds earlier it had been the wreckage from an Asgard ship, and the jumper had been less than five thousand feet from impact. Now they were at fifty thousand feet, looking at a damaged Ha'tak?
“We must have hit the Ha'tak when we jumped forward to our time!” Cam remarked unnecessarily.
Ignoring the pain from the dozens of stinging slices down her legs and arms, Sam disentangled herself from him, grabbed her chair and awkwardly pulled herself upright relative to the Asgard transport device. They were not out of danger, yet.
“Oh, that's bad,” Daniel declared. “That's going to upset the Jaffa.”
Although he still appeared to be half-out of it, the General was struggling to bring the jumper under control, but at least the inertial dampeners and gravity were working at maximum efficiency, giving them a considerably more stable ride.
“Like they're not already pissed enough.” Apparently satisfied they were no longer in imminent peril of crashing, Cam pushed past the still unconscious Vala to check on Loki, who'd been all but squashed beneath Teal'c's considerable bulk.
“That's the least of our problems. When the Ha'tak hits, it's going to explode with the force of a mid-yield nuke.” Sam glanced at O'Neill. He was blinking and shaking his head, trying to focus. “Sir, are you okay?”
“What the hell was a Ha'tak doin' skulking around the place, anyway?”
“The mere fact that it did not reveal itself,” Teal'c observed with a scowl, “indicates it should not have been there.”
“Got a point, there, T.” With Daniel's help, Jack pulled himself upright and grabbed the controls. “Base, this is Jumper One, do you copy?”
There was no response.
“Base, this is Jumper One. We've recovered SG-1, but we've got a little problem, here.”
The jumper continued to fly erratically. Sam peered at the HUD. The detail was exceptional, and somewhat reassuring. The region they were flying over was sparsely populated, which meant casualties from the impact of the Ha'tak would be minimal. A glance at the map coordinates confirmed why: 60°55N 101°57E. They were over Siberia.
But that Ha'tak was going in fast and she hadn't been exaggerating when she'd predicted the result of the explosion. Intending to beam the ships' crew to safety, she turned to the Asgard transport controls, but the screen was dead. One look inside the access panel beside her, told her why. She stared in dismay at the shattered crystals. “Sir, we—”
Without warning, the interior of the jumper was flooded with a searing light. Sam caught a glimpse of O'Neill lifting his hands to shield his face, but the photosensitive windscreen had already compensated, protecting them from a burst of light as intense as the sun. Had it got through to their eyes, it would have burned through their corneas and blinded them permanently. The Ha'tak had either self-destructed or the engines had blown moments before impact.
“General!” Cam called in a voice that indicated he clearly understood the danger. “We have to get—”
“Doing it!” O'Neill was already angling the jumper into a near vertical climb. “Hang on.”
Even at maximum power, Sam wasn't confident the shields could deal with such a close proximity to the equivalent of a nuclear detonation. A high-pitched whine diverted her attention to the cargo bay. Sparks were arcing out of the time machine.
The Shockwave hit the jumper with the force of a giant fist slamming her back into the seat, momentarily overriding the inertial dampeners. She'd lost count how many times that morning her vision had started graying out from erratic g-forces, but surprisingly, the dampeners rapidly compensated.
Something else from inside the jumper wasn't faring so well, though, because acrid smoke was billowing into the cockpit. She heard a fire extinguisher, and, trusting her teammates to do whatever was necessary, blinked away the white spots before her eyes and turned her attention back to the Asgard transport scanner.
They may yet need to abandon the jumper.
“Don't waste your time, Carter, it's cactus.” O'Neill's voice was surprisingly steady. He continued to angle the jumper upward, attempting to gain as much altitude as possible which, under the circumstances, was their safest option. “Base, this is Jumper One. Carter!”
“Sir?”
Rolling his eyes, he snapped, “Not you, Carter. Base, I may have understated the little part of that problem. Those time-space coordinates you gave me? Not so good.”
She worried he was hallucinating. What he was yelling into the radio was making no sense. The sprinkling of stars thickened as they headed into what Sam hoped would be a stable orbit. She needed time to assess the damage and consider their options. Glancing over her shoulder she saw that Teal'c had the fire under control and Vala, who was on the deck just in front of the time machine, was beginning to come around.
“Loki?” Sam asked. Cam was bending over the Asgard, who was crumpled up against the bulkhead between the cockpit and the cargo bay.
Abandoning his attempt to make contact with the ground, O'Neill abruptly turned in his seat, and, eyeing the Asgard demanded, “What the hell is he doing here?”
Sam met his incredulous look. “I assume Vala beamed him aboard after his ship was damaged.”
“He's pretty banged up,” Cam reported. “Cuts and burns. I'm not exactly an expert in Asgard first aid but I'd say we better think about getting him some help real soon.”
“Carter! Dammit, respond!” O'Neill demanded tersely.
Exchanging a worried look with her, Daniel said soothingly, “Jack? You don't have to shout. Sam's sitting right beside you.”
“Ewww,” Vala moaned and sat up. “What is that horrible pong?”
“Eau de Bayou.” Cam let out a low whistle as he turned from Loki to help Vala into the seat behind Sam and caught sight of the damage the exploding Ha'tak had left in its wake. “Man, take a look at that.”
The enlarged images on the HUD confirmed Sam's first thoughts regarding the impact site. “The Ha'tak exploded before impact. Only an airburst could have caused that much damage over such a large area.”
“Reminds me of the forest around Mount Saint Helens after it blew,” Cam said. '“Cept a whole lot bigger. The Russian government is gonna be mighty pissed about this.”
And a lot of Jaffa had probably died in that crash, too. Sam felt the full weight of that responsibility. Wiping a filthy sleeve across her face, she looked at O'Neill. “Sir, you shouldn't have come back for us.” The diplomatic aftermath of this alone could shred what little remained of their alliance with the Jaffa.
An odd expression crossed his face. “That's what she said you'd say.”
“Who?” The images on the HUD altered to show the jumper's low orbital track, southwest across the Ural Mountains.
He shot her a somewhat jaundiced look. “You.”
“General you, in fact,” Vala spoke up, easing her wounded leg into a more comfortable position. “You know, with those little stars on her elderly shoulders and a remote time-traveling DHD device that apparently you will later bequeath to someone named Cassandra? She came back in time and told us when to find you.”
Comprehension hit Sam with the force of a bolt from a zat gun. Brushing aside a momentary twinge of guilt for assuming that this was McKay's fault, she rapidly processed the information. While she had often wondered about Cassie's hand device, the only circumstance in which she could envisage using a time machine was because something so catastrophic had occurred that the risk of fracturing, possibly even looping the timeline, paled by comparison.
Elizabeth Weir's inadvertent journey back in time ten thousand years had unquestionably saved Atlantis and the entire expeditionary force. That alone had proved that not all time travel ended badly—at least for the future. Still, it was a decision Sam doubted she would ever take lightly. This trip through time had to be incredibly important.
“Ah... Jack?” Daniel leaned forward and gently clasped his shoulder, thinking—as Sam was a moment ago—that O'Neill was hallucinating. “Your head didn't look so good when we got here.”
The General turned in his seat, pointedly eyed Daniel up and down, and sniffed loudly. “Nothing wrong with my nose.”
“It's okay, Daniel. I...think I understand.” Sam said, still trying to grapple with the thought that future problems would dema
nd such drastic measures.
Breaking into the uncertain silence that followed, O'Neill looked around at them. “Anyone's radio working?”
Daniel tapped his com unit. “Testing.”
“Mine is functioning,” Teal'c confirmed.
“Same here,” Cam added.
So was Sam's, but when she flicked through the other main frequencies, she was met with nothing but unremitting static. “I don't think the lack of response problem is our units.” The images on the HUD offered no immediate answers. “Sir, can you think about detecting satellites currently in orbit?”
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