Relativity

by Stargate

  Hammond frowned. “And this is why you planted a fake bomb. You wanted to disrupt the agreement, prevent it from ever taking place.”

  “But we stopped you,” said Daniel. “Your Re’tu friend escaped, but you failed in your mission. The meeting is going on right now.”

  O’Neill’s hands knit together. “Why… Why the hell didn’t you just tell us all this at the start?”

  She shot him a look. “And you’d have accepted it right off the bat, would you?” Jade snorted. “You didn’t the first time we tried. Or the second. And when I did get you to believe me, Kinsey overruled your decision not to meet the Pack and it all happened anyway. We couldn’t afford to risk any more failures and I couldn’t take the chance you wouldn’t believe me. This is the last shot.”

  Daniel chewed his lip. “That has an awfully fatal sound to it.”

  “This is why we have to go to Kytos,” said Jade. “It wasn’t just me and Ite-kh that came back this time, the Commander was with us too. He had a fall-back contingency, and I know he must have initiated it by now. He’s on Kytos, with a naqadria-fusion device. Unless we stop him, he’ll wipe out any chance of Mirris’s plan succeeding by nuking the meeting site.”

  “That’s pretty damn drastic,” Jack retorted. “You, bug-guy, your pop… Don’t any of you folks from the future go for the subtle approach?”

  “Why do you think I tried so hard to make my plan succeed?” Jade snapped. “If I hadn’t failed in my assignment, the charge would have gone off, nobody would have been hurt, the Pack would have left and all you’d be left with was the fallout from a failed diplomatic mission. I wanted to do this without hurting anyone.”

  “Kill a few dozen people on Kytos and save billions of lives in the future,” said Daniel. “It’s very logical, in a cold kind of way.”

  “I’m not letting anyone get nuked,” growled O’Neill. “Not even Kinsey.” He shot a look at his senior officer. “General?”

  “You have a go, Colonel,” said the general. “I want this mess untangled.”

  They were making for the door when Warner held up a hand. “Wait,” he said, “there’s just one other thing that I don’t understand.”

  “Only one?” said Daniel.

  “The results of the bio-scan I completed,” said the doctor. “If she’s from a future time period, why does Jade’s DNA profile match the colonel’s?”

  Jade frowned. “I guess I get that from my father.”

  Warner blinked. “Your father?”

  She nodded. “The last surviving officer of Stargate Command, leader of the Earth resistance… Commander-in-Chief Jack O’Neill.”

  The colonel felt the color drain from his face. “Say what now?”

  Jade gave him a wan smile. “Hey, dad.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “And this is what, exactly?” Kinsey held up the clear crystal cube between his thumb and forefinger. Sam could see a small green shoot in the matrix of the block, like a tiny sprig of plant life frozen in ice. All eyes in the long tent went to the politician, which was just the way he liked it.

  “A dormant meladni flower,” explained Suj. “It is a symbolic gesture. The plant comes from Calai, the original home of the Wanderer, and every ship in our flotilla has at least one growing aboard it.”

  “Meladni is the only growth that resists the blight,” said Vix grimly, “although we do not know why. It has come to be a symbol of our culture.”

  Sam suddenly understood; the plant had star-shaped petals, like the discreet tribal tattoos worn by the Pack.

  “It’s hermetically sealed for the moment, but the flower will bloom on exposure to the air of your planet,” Koe concluded. “And thus, a small part of the Pack will live on your world, cementing our alliance.”

  “That’s a very quaint custom,” noted Kinsey, handing the cube to one of his aides. “Thank you.”

  “It was Ryn’s suggestion,” noted Koe.

  Carter glanced around and noticed that the other Pack member was no longer in the meeting tent. She hadn’t seen him slip out.

  Suj saw the expression on her face and answered her unspoken question. “A matter required his attention. A communication from Ryn’s clan-branch, as I understand it.”

  Sam was slightly surprised. Here they were, about to put ink on the document that would cement a formal agreement between the Pack and Earth, and one of their senior leaders had snuck out to make a phone call? The thought nagged at her until she heard the shouts, and then abruptly she had something else to think about.

  Carter caught cries of alarm from outside the tent, voices from men of both factions. She heard someone say the words “Jaffa” and “Re’tu” and the major was immediately on her feet. Colonel Reynolds was doing the same, shooting her a warning look.

  “What’s going on?” demanded Kinsey.

  As if in reply, the flap of the long tent snapped open and there was Sergeant Albrechtsen. “We got a situation,” said the airman, his face pale, “It’s Teal’c…”

  Sam looked back at Reynolds and he nodded before she had to ask. “Go, Major. I want a sitrep, ASAP.”

  “Sir,” Carter bolted out after Albrechtsen and the sergeant led the way. Her blood ran cold as the non-com took her straight to the infirmary tent.

  She pushed her way inside and the smell hit her first. The stink was, as disgusting as it was to admit it, horribly familiar to Sam Carter. She’d lost count of the number of times that seared-flesh odor had struck her. All the people she’d seen die under alien energy weapons, and they all left that same stench hanging in the air— a stinging mixture of ozone and burned meat. It brought back a moment of awful sense-memory, flashing to the front of her thoughts, undimmed by the passage of months.

  Janet’s body on the stretcher as we run with it toward the gate. Her face, slack and empty. The smell, on my hands, in my hair, my clothes.

  It took effort to shut the memory out. A medical corpsman was working on the figure lying on the gurney in front of her. Parts of the Jaffa’s uniform tunic lay on the ground in wet, sticky tatters where they had been cut away to give access to his wound. Teal’c’s ebony features had an unhealthy pallor to them, and his mouth and nose were hidden under the cowl of an oxygen mask.

  Albrectsen pointed to a second gurney on the other side of the medical tent. A blue-black shape made up of too many limbs and strange bony curves lay underneath a sheath of thick plastic. “The bug was already dead when we got to it,” he explained. “Big man was still breathing, though.”

  “What happened?” she husked.

  “Near as we can figure, the bug was screwing around inside one of the Pack ships and Teal’c caught him off-guard. They shot each other.” He smiled mirthlessly. “But the Jaffa are tough mothers.”

  “Whose ship?”

  “The skinny one. Ryn. He found them, came running.”

  “Teal’c would have died if not for him,” said the corpsman. “Hell, for a second we all thought he was dead. But the Sergeant’s right. Even without a symbiote’s healing abilities, a Jaffa body can take a lot of punishment…”

  “Will he make it?”

  The corpsman’s face darkened. “I’m not going to lie to you, Major, he’s hurt real bad. It’s too dangerous to move him again, so we can’t gate him back to the SGC. I stabilized him. If we let Teal’c’s natural physiology do its thing, we might be able to send him through in an hour or two. Right now, he has to stay put.” He sighed. “I’ll do everything I can. Lucky for him, the vice president insisted on having a full emergency medical unit brought through to the encampment, although I doubt he had Teal’c’s welfare in mind at the time.”

  “Lucky, yeah,” Sam said quietly. She reached out and squeezed the Jaffa’s hand. His loose grip felt clammy.

  “I’ll let you know the moment his condition changes,” said the medic.

  Carter nodded, drawing down her leadership face and putting aside her personal fears. She crossed to the dead Re’tu. “How did this thing g
et here?” Sam ran a practiced eye over the corpse and found the limb that Teal’c had reported he’d broken during the fight at Cheyenne Mountain. “It’s definitely the same Re’tu that invaded the SGC.”

  Albrechtsen’s face twisted. The dead alien’s body reeked with strange scents. “Had to have come through the gate with us.”

  She shook her head. “We had TERs set up on the Earth side. If it had been inside the SGC, we would have detected it.” Carter thought it through. “It used a beaming device… It could have beamed itself through the open gate, right down the wormhole.”

  “Is that possible, ma’am?”

  “It’s here, and Teal’c’s in critical condition because of it, so yeah, I’d say it’s possible, Sergeant.” Her reply was sharper than she’d have liked. “Where’s Ryn now?”

  “Last I saw, he was giving his ship the once-over, making sure there were no surprises left behind.”

  Sam nodded. “We should do the same. Get Lieutenant Everitt, tell him to sweep the whole area and make sure it’s secure.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The sergeant saluted and ran out through the tent flap.

  She followed, giving Teal’c a last look before she exited. As the major strode back to the long tent, her radio crackled. “This is Carter.”

  “Major, Captain Grant here. We have activity at the Stargate. Chevrons are lighting up. We got an incoming wormhole.”

  Sam grimaced. “Copy that, Captain. Nothing’s scheduled to come through, so I want all guns and TERs on it.”

  “Will do. Grant out.”

  She glared up at the ridgeline where, out of sight behind the thick trunks of the rainforest, the Kytos gate stood. “Now what?” she asked the air.

  It took all of Sub-Director Geddel’s self-control not to flinch in surprise when the door to the control nexus opened and Administrator Mirris strode purposefully into the vessel’s command center. Operators on all the systems consoles did their best to look busy, but he knew that every one of them was just as shocked as he was. Mirris had ventured into the nexus on no more than two occasions during the entirety of this cycles-long mission, preferring to stay in her chambers and govern the ship from there. Geddel composed himself rapidly, wondering if perhaps her poor self-control had finally slipped away. He hoped so; it would mean that he was free to relive her of her posting and take it for himself. While he had a degree of respect for the woman’s academic and scientific skills, he had long harbored a belief that she was poorly suited to be placed in command of an operation such as this one. Her obvious desire for revenge was quite distasteful, and behind her back some of the junior intendants showed disrespect that bordered on insubordination. Geddel had turned a blind eye to such things because he, in truth, felt the same way. Of course, when he took governance of the ship, such lenience would be a thing of the past.

  He snapped back to the moment as Mirris advanced through the ranks of operations cubicles. “Main display,” she ordered. “Planetary sweep.”

  Amid the flat walls of gray plastic and metal, the holographic table in the center of the nexus opened out of itself to produce the virtual images she had demanded. Geddel saw a topographic scan of the local geography on Kytos. There were the crude shapes of temporary shelters, the darts of fighter craft from the migrant fleet, dots of light indicating the motion of life. He failed to see what she was interested in, and remarked on this to the administrator.

  Mirris shot him a glare that was loaded with naked emotion. “The Stargate has opened, depositing three more humanoids on the surface of the planet,” she spat, gesturing angrily at a time-indexed long-range replay of the event. “No others were supposed to travel to this location during the treaty session. Something is wrong.”

  “Administrator,” he began, attempting to mollify her with a neutral tone, “we have no evidence of that. You are…” He found the word distasteful to say aloud. “Over-reacting.”

  “And you are being deliberately obstructive,” she retorted. “The prosecution of this mission depends upon the correct unfolding of key events, and as we proceed, more and more of those events have been disrupted.” She peered into the hologram. “We must take steps, sub-director. Immediately.”

  “What do you propose?” He showed her a placid, blank expression.

  “Deploy a stealth lander with an inspection unit and have them make planetfall. Their orders are to set up a teleportation terminus on the surface and maintain a closer surveillance on the Pack and the Tau’ri.”

  Geddel sighed. “That runs the risk of detection—”

  “That was not a request,” she interrupted. “That was an order. Once we have a beaming terminal established on the planet, we will be free to transport more units to the surface if they are required. Contact the hangar and have them prepare a force of combat drones.”

  He blinked. “Is that necessary? This is a clandestine mission.”

  “You were the one who first voiced the option of armed response,” Mirris replied. “I would think you would be pleased I am finally listening to your suggestions.”

  “As an alternative,” Geddel insisted. “Only that.”

  She glared at him. “Carry out my orders and they may not be needed.” She looked away. “Do it now.” When Geddel didn’t immediately move to implement Mirris’s commands, the administrator’s lip curled in a open expression of annoyance. “Was there something else, sub-director?” Her words were acid.

  Inwardly, Geddel sneered. “I had been planning to mention this matter at our next scheduled meeting, administrator, but perhaps it is best if I bypass protocol for the moment.”

  “Yes?” She loomed up before him, and he could see she was thinking of striking him.

  He manipulated his portable display. “Signals received a directive message from Confederation Central on Aschen Prime. It was an explicit order in your name, requesting an immediate situation report and progress determination on the operation.” Geddel allowed himself a moment of smugness as Mirris’s ire cooled in the face of his statement. Central doubtless had a morality monitor operative aboard the ship and he imagined word of Mirris’s overtly emotional behavior had reached their homeworld. He knew as well as she did that the order to report in was a pretext. At best she would be ordered to disengage and return home; at worst she would be cashiered and relieved of duty.

  A sneer threatened to emerge on Geddel’s lips. The Aschen were a superior species because they had learned to master their baser natures and become detached and passionless. The longer he served under Mirris, the more Geddel came to think of her as a throwback, wallowing in the crudity of her sentiment over the death of her mate, Mollem. Geddel had known of Senior Administrator Mollem; the man was a fine example of Aschen aloofness and a great loss to their race. He would have been disgusted to think that his bond-partner would be so open about her feelings in front of her subordinates.

  But as he watched, a wall of wintry calm descended on Mirris’s expression. “Thank you, sub-director, for bringing that to my attention. I will address the directive when a moment permits me.”

  “It is a prime classification message,” he insisted. “Your first duty is to answer it.”

  “Do not presume to tell me what my duty is, Geddel,” she kept her voice low, and devoid of any sign of emotional timbre. “For your own sake, do not presume.” The threat, with its icy power, was more disturbing to him than any of the small tantrums and rages he had seen the woman exhibit.

  Geddel nodded slowly. “As you order, administrator.”

  “Whoa!” Daniel had barely made it two steps out of the gate before he threw up his hands and skidded to a halt. Four men, one pair with assault rifles cocked and ready, one pair with transphase rods humming, trained their weapons on the figures exiting the wormhole with swift, lethal intent.

  Jack strode past him, apparently unruffled by the display of force. “There’s only three of us. Stand down, Captain,” he demanded, and the officer leading the group waved the weapons away. “Or did Kin
sey tell you to shoot me?”

  The captain saluted. “Colonel, sir. I’m sorry, but you weren’t expected, and we’ve just had an incident.”

  Jack shot him a hard look. “And that means?”

  “I don’t know the full details, sir, but Major Carter just ordered security up to Threat Red.”

  “Oh no,” Jade was at Daniel’s shoulder. It seemed strange to see her in a regular SG team outfit after the bright orange of the prisoner jumpsuit. “We might be too late.”

  O’Neill considered this for a moment as the wormhole hissed out of existence behind them. “Captain, keep your post here. Jackson!”

  “Uh, yes?” Daniel blinked.

  “You get down into the encampment, find Carter, find out what’s happening, give her the skinny on…” He glanced reluctantly at Jade. “Well, the main points.”

  Daniel looked at the woman, who was self-consciously fingering her hair, making the henna-red tresses turn purple-black. “Does that include the, uh, daddy-daughter thing?”

  The colonel’s eyes flashed with anger. “Will you just get?”

  Jackson did as he was told, and broke into a swift jog. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised by O’Neill’s bad mood. Time travel, bio-war, covert operatives, fusion bombs, future incarnations of people. It was enough to ruin anyone’s calm.

  After Jackson was gone, O’Neill left Captain Grant and his men behind and followed Jade into the tree line. For a moment, he’d considered co-opting some of Grant’s team for the search, but if Carter had turned up the dial on security then there had to be a good reason for it, and leaving the gate undermanned was a bad idea.

  And besides, if the girl was on the level about this situation, then Jack wasn’t really sure he wanted anyone else coming into contact with… with him.

  He looked at her from out of the corner of his eye, thinking back to those moments in the SGC, when he’d had that feeling, that weird kinda familiarity with her. Was that because he’d been seeing something of himself in her, some tiny fragment of his own face reflected in Jade’s? The more he looked, the more he found himself believing it. She had a quality of Jack’s mother about her, in the way she carried herself. As a boy, O’Neill had found a shoebox full of faded old photographs from the youth of his parents. He remembered a shot of his mom at a bridge game, taken with her unawares, her face fixed in thought over some hand she was about to play. Jade had that look, the same focus. Stakes are a lot higher here, though.