by Stargate
He moved carefully through the tree trunks, one hand gripping a zat and the other a pocket scanner. Jade had one as well, although Hammond had not been willing to give her a weapon.
“I think I have something,” she whispered. “Over there.”
Jack looked at his scanner. “I got nothin’.”
She nodded. “The pods generate a faint jamming field. The scanner won’t read it.”
“Then how do you know where to look?”
Jade tapped the screen. “Easy. Look for the place where there isn’t anything.” She smiled briefly. “You taught me that.”
O’Neill’s reaction was sudden and strong. “Don’t talk to me that way. I’m not… Just don’t, okay?” He was surprised by the potency of the feeling. Jade’s face darkened and she nodded, moving on again.
He sighed. This damn job, Jack told himself, just when you think it can’t screw with you any more, the game goes up to a whole new level of screwitude. Jack thought briefly about the guys who had graduated from the Air Force Academy the same year that he had. He was willing to bet good money that the worst they had to deal with were wives who didn’t understand them and uniforms that didn’t fit as well as they’d used to. And here’s me, crawling through the jungle on some planet a million billion light years from Earth, looking for an eighty-year-old version of myself and staring at the curvatious backside of someone who may actually be my daughter. O’Neill shuddered. All that talk about promotions, about stepping back a little, now it sounded better than it ever had before…
“Snap out of it,” he grumbled under his breath, getting angry with himself. He had to focus. This was mission time now, and that was the priority.
“I see the Commander,” husked the woman. “No sign of Ite-kh. I’d be able to find him, even if he was fully shrouded.”
Jack was looking where she was looking but he saw nothing but trees. Jade never blinked, and in the moonlight there was an odd quality about her eyes that he found slightly creepy. “You got a night sight built right into your head, don’t you?”
She nodded vaguely.
“Other parent’s kids just get a tongue stud.”
“Come on.” Jade stood up and walked brazenly out of cover.
A shape that Jack had thought to be nothing more than a heap of wind-touched leaves against the bole of a tall tree changed shape and elongated. Suddenly he realized it was a man in a cloak, moving in the shadows. The figure turned in place and the cloak parted, the colors streaming off it until it became a neutral green.
“Dad,” she began as she approached.
O’Neill saw a lined but familiar face in the dimness, saw it twist in sudden fury. “Why?” The demand was strident and full of anger and disappointment. “I told you to stay away! Why don’t you ever listen to me?” He knew the emotions behind the voice immediately. It was his grandfather’s voice when Jack had been a troublesome boy; it was his father’s when he had been a rebellious teenager; it was his voice, thirty years from now.
He moved out of his cover and the other figure went deadly silent. It took a long moment for Jack to find his words. “You and me, old man,” he said finally. “We gotta talk.”
The stealth lander settled into the trees on silent repulsor-field generators, shedding the last flickers of energy from re-entry as thin waves of shimmering air. As planned, the ship had come down completely undetected by either the migrants or the Tau’ri force. Four landing legs folded out of the egg-shaped craft and from the flat ventral surface a panel slid open to allow an object to drop the last few feet to the jungle floor. The device landed hard and metal grippers snapped open, digging into the spongy loam to steady it. By the time the two Aschen crewmen had disembarked, the unit was showing a circuit of softly glowing power indicators.
The senior crewman left his subordinate to keep watch and crossed to the device. It was a disc two meters in diameter with an arc of metal folding up before it, like a lectern. He ran a quick diagnostic and the unit chimed in return. “Carrier wave established,” he said quietly. “Final checks in progress.”
Aschen science, while impressive in its scope and capability, had still not mastered the intricacies of point-to-point matter transmission technology. While far more advanced than the comparatively crude ‘ring transporters’ used by the Goa’uld and their subject races, the Aschen teleporters were still bound by the requirement of having a receiving platform at their destination. Such a requirement made the mission of the stealth lander of paramount importance; however, now it was complete and the beaming conduit established, the Aschen would be free to deposit whatever they wanted on the surface of Kytos in the blink of an eye.
There was another set of chimes. “Transit stream parity is acceptable.” The senior crewman pressed a device on his wrist that sent an encoded burst signal to the ship hidden in high orbit. “Sub-Director? Forward terminal has been established. Ready to proceed.”
Geddel’s voice was tinny over the comlink. “Confirmed. Standby by to receive support units.”
He stepped away as a glittering column of energy began to form on the small dais. When it faded there was a brass automaton standing on the platform, with hoop-shaped wheels where a man would have had legs. The blank-faced drone rolled off the terminus and the energy reformed, bringing a second machine with it. In a few moments, there were five of them, waiting patiently in the shadow of the lander.
The subordinate glanced at his scanner unit. “Indeterminate life sign readings several metrics from the Earther encampment.” He pointed. “That way.”
The senior scout accepted this with a nod. “Take three drones and investigate.”
“You brought him with you?” The disappointment was thick in the old man’s words. “Are you deliberately trying to make this mission fail?”
“Hey!” Jack broke in, feeling a sudden urge to defend the girl. “Ease up on her. It’s been tough all round.”
The other man ignored him. “You shouldn’t have come here, Jade. You have to get a ship, get away.” His face became an angry snarl. “Just go, while there’s still a chance!”
“No-one is going anywhere,” Jack retorted, coming closer. He kept up a good front of calm, but behind it his thoughts were racing. Until this moment, O’Neill had entertained some kind of vague hope that there would be another, easier explanation for all the shenanigans— but now he was looking the old man in the eye and he knew that all of it, every damn bit of that future crap Jade had told him, was true. “She says there’s a bomb somewhere around here. Why don’t you save us all a lot of trouble, pops, and show us where it is?”
The other man— the Commander— shot Jack a hard look. He was hard-faced, grim and he sure as hell didn’t look like he was pushing eighty-something. “Pops?” he repeated, with withering scorn. “And to think, I used to imagine that glib joker stuff was clever.”
“And to think, I used to imagine that I would be fishing and writing my memoirs at your age. I guess we’re both disillusioned.” O’Neill stepped forward, feeling his temper building. “I mean, come on. Tell me she was wrong about all this. Tell me that Jade made a mistake. Tell me that you… That Jack O’Neill is not about to detonate a nuke that’ll wipe out innocent people, people who are my friends!”
The old man looked away, his face turning to shadow in the folds of the cloak. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, pal.”
Jack’s hands bunched into fists, and he straightened. “Fine. You wanna be a hard-ass? Your choice, grandpa.” He snatched up his radio. “I’m calling Grant. I’ll get him to gate to the SGC and come back with enough men to go through this jungle with tweezers.”
“Bad idea,” growled the other man, and he said it with such certainty that O’Neill paused with the walkie-talkie at his lips. “The device has a sensor trip switch keyed to the Stargate’s DHD. Anyone who dials out will automatically trigger it.”
Jack pressed the ‘talk’ switch and spoke in a steady, clear voice. “Grant, t
his is O’Neill. You are not, under any circumstances, to dial the gate. This countermands all other orders.”
“Uh, roger that, Colonel,” said the officer. “Sir, are you all right?”
“I’ll get back to you on that, captain. O’Neill out.” He glared at the old man. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
“Or what?” growled his elder self. “You think there’s anything you could do, anything you could say that would threaten me, change my mind? After all I’ve been through?” He glanced at Jade. “Did you show him? Earth, the war?”
She nodded.
It took a physical effort for Jack to moderate the fury he felt inside him. “I understand what you’re trying to do,” he began.
“Sure you do,” said the old man. “It was all your idea. My idea.”
“But you have to know it’s wrong! For cryin’ out loud, man, you’re talking about killing men and women you’ve served with, who trusted you… Us… Whoever!” He shook his head, barely able to take it in. “Teal’c, Daniel, Sam!” Jack stabbed a finger at Jade. “Your own daughter, and hell, me too!” He tapped his chest. “How’s that gonna work out for you? Kill me now and you’ll never live to be doing this in the first place!”
“I never listened to that time paradox crap,” grated the old soldier. “I only care about stopping the Aschen.”
“Like this?” Jack retorted. “I could never condone this insanity! You can’t be me. I’d never agree to do it.”
“But you did,” snarled the Commander. “You did, you will! Because it’s worth the price, Jack! Billions of lives, thousands of planets, more deaths than the Goa’uld and the Replicators caused combined…”
Jack met his own gaze and he felt sick inside. He saw something of the man he had once been, in those dark months after his son had died in the accident that nearly broke his spirit. He remembered being in Charlie’s room, catching sight of his own reflection in the window. That coldness, that same dislocation… He saw it in the old man now. “What happened to you?” The question slipped from his mouth.
“The war happened to me.” Every word was a razor. “The famine and the pain and the death happened to me. Every one of them, gone…” He fixed Jack with a chilling glare. “Bonner, Dixon and Whitman. Sheppard. Everitt and Allan. Ellis. Mitchell. And hundreds of others. Nothing left of them now except names on a wall in the Holdfast.” He snarled. “I’m doing this for them!”
“It’s revenge…” whispered Jade.
“That’s all this fight has ever been about,” said the old man.
But Jack wasn’t listening any more. There was something at the tree line, shapes that were moving too fast to be human. “Company!” he snapped.
“Life signs located, three humans,” Mirris stood behind Geddel as the sub-director’s fingers danced lightly over the control console in his cubicle, following the communication from the scout on the planet. “Confirming tribal identifiers as Earth origin, not Pack.”
“A patrol,” said Geddel. “They must not be allowed to report your presence. Terminate them, immediately.”
Mirris’s gaze swept the cubes of holographic imagery relaying from the optical sensor bands of the drones. The view bobbed as they trundled over the ground towards the three figures, tracking for a kill shot from their particle weapons. Energy fire was zipping past the viewpoint; the leading drone saw an immediate threat and turned its focus to the Tau’ri firing a Goa’uld pistol at the Aschen machines. With its low-light scanners, the view of the small jungle glade was rendered in bright green and white; target cues leapt out and framed the man with the gun as the drone took careful aim.
Mirris saw the face of the shooter as clearly as if he were in the command nexus with them, and she let out a wild hiss of shock. It’s him!
Geddel flinched at her outburst and jerked around. “Administrator? What is it?”
She ignored him and snarled into the comlink. “Orders rescinded!” Immediately, the drones hesitated. As mission leader, any command from Mirris overrode all others. “I want him alive!”
“And the others?”
“Make the attempt!” Her teeth bared in a feral grimace as the drones began moving again, weaving into hand-to-hand range.
“Administrator, I do not understand,” said Geddel. “Why did you countermand me?”
In one of the holo-cubes, a female came into view and fired at a drone, blinding it. In a second, the display from another of the machines homed in on her. Before the woman could react, the second drone clubbed her with the heavy gun pod on its arm. Mirris saw the unconscious female spin away, tumbling down a steep incline in a cloud of fallen leaves and debris. The drone’s audio monitors caught the sounds of the other men crying out in dismay. Mirris grinned. She was causing him pain. Good. It was just the beginning.
“Administrator,” Geddel began again.
She silenced him with an acid glare. “It’s him, Geddel. The war criminal.” Mirris tapped a keypad and the view from the drone folded into the front of the hologram. A human male wearing a cap, face set in determination. “Colonel O’Neill. The man who murdered my bondmate.”
The sub-director was lost for words for a moment, his jaw working. When he finally spoke, it was with mild surprise. “Of course. It was a high probability that he might be on site… But I did not assume we would encounter him.” Beam fire tailed off over the open channel. “A very high-value target indeed,” Geddel concluded.
“The Confederation can have what remains after I have finished with him.” A strangled cry issued out of the comlink. Her fingers formed into fists as she saw, at last, O’Neill and the cloaked figure go down. “Take them to the terminus. I want them transported aboard immediately.” She turned on her heel and strode towards the nexus’s door. “I’m going to the beaming chamber.”
“The… The female,” Geddel added, attempting to take some control of what had just happened. “Should I have her body recovered?”
“Don’t waste my time with trivia,” Mirris snapped, working her hands. A strong and long-nurtured hate was streaming to the surface, and the Aschen woman realized she had not felt so alive in months.
Sam slumped back in the folding chair and looked past Daniel to the rest of the operations tent. Jackson had asked her to empty it for the duration of their conversation, and now the half-dozen computers and monitor units ranged around the room were unmanned, with Boyce and the other operators standing outside in a grumbling, wary knot.
She shook her head again. Carter had been doing that for so long, it seemed like it would fall off her neck. If she had to use a single word to describe her mindset right now, it would be incredulous. “Are you really Daniel Jackson?” she asked, half-joking. “Are you sure you’re not some shape-changing alien from the Ancient’s version of Candid Camera? Because that’s pretty wild stuff.”
“Sam,” the scientist’s face was fixed. “I couldn’t be more serious.”
“This is a lot to assimilate all at once,” she retorted. “Individually, I buy it. The Aschen on a revenge kick, yeah, because they dropped off the radar after Volia and I’d been wondering when we’d run into them again. Time travel, well…”
“Been there,” said Daniel, “done that.”
“I remember the kaftans.”
Jackson frowned. “What I don’t get is, after that jaunt back to the Sixties, when we overshot on our way back and ended up in the future, there was no sign of any epidemic apocalypse having happened.”
Sam nodded. “True. But from our point of view, that’s only one possible future. Timelines branch at every decision point we make. That wasteland future you saw is just as likely to occur as the one where we met Cassandra as an older woman.”
“Ugh.” Daniel looked at the floor. “Jack was right. It’s giving me a migraine.”
Carter turned Jackson’s earlier words over in her mind. “It’s not difficult to imagine something like this happening. Members of a future SGC trying to retroactively alter their own past to negat
e an incorrect timeline. We’d probably do the same thing if it happened to us.” She sighed. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“One thing that boggles my mind.” She eyed him. “Jack has a daughter?”
“Will have. Her name’s Jade.” He paused. “And no, I don’t know the answer to the obvious question.”
Sam felt a little color rising in her cheeks. “Oh. Okay. It’s just that the colonel’s separated from his wife and… Well, he doesn’t, uh…” She trailed off into a sigh. “Anyway, that’s not important right now. What do we do about the Pack?”
“Jade said they don’t know who the Aschen agent is. It could be any one of them. We let on we know there’s a rotten apple, and we run the risk of alerting the person we’re looking for.”
“So what do we do? We can’t gate home on the colonel’s orders, Kinsey’s climbing the walls, the Pack are sharpening their knives and now you tell me there are likely to be Aschen and time-travelers running around out there as well.” She gestured to the jungle outside, her manner turning brusque. “Any input, Daniel, would be welcomed.”
Jackson, as usual, was perceptive enough to see through to what was really gnawing at her. “Any news on Teal’c?”
Sam shook her head. “Koe offered to take a look at him, did what he could. But there’s been no change.”
“He’s tough,” said Daniel. “He’ll make it.”
