Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.
Previously: Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4
Voices from a Lost Time - Chapter 5
Derelict ship, above P1X-011, July 2006
They walked slowly through the corridors of the ship, the lighting flickering intermittently in some sections, dimming and surging in others, completely disabled in a few, such as along their present route. Cam shone the flash light of his P90 from side to side ahead of them while Sam kept hers trained on the ground in front of their feet to keep from stumbling in any of the strewn debris. Teal'c, Vala and Daniel were heading towards the bridge while Cam was taking Sam to find engineering. None of them had ever seen a ship like this. It had something similar to a ring transporter which they'd used to board it from some strange looking temple on the planet's surface, but the rest of the design was completely unfamiliar. All through the ship, a material that looked and felt like stone lined the walls, and it was all slick, as if it exuded moisture constantly. It was in orbit over the planet, they'd managed to find an exterior viewport to confirm that, and the ship obviously still had power, but it seemed completely abandoned.
"Cam, the people on the planet below have been using this ship for their rite of passage for generations. How long do you think it's been here?" she breathed the question while running a hand along a wall, feeling the slightly rough texture with raised ridges and recesses, like slate.
"Sam, part of my brain is thinking 'face-huggers around the next corner', another part is thinking 'a floating ball of condensed evil is gonna make us crazy', and another is thinking 'this is so cool!' I'm not the best person to ask for rational hypotheses right now." he muttered while he stopped and shone his light through the open door of a room on Sam's side of the corridor. She hid her smile by sticking her head inside to have a look around. Unfortunately it would probably have been better to stand her ground and just smirk at him because a sudden groan of metal with an accompanying lurch from the derelict sent her stumbling into the room while all the lights in the section blinked and flickered into life. The door slid shut and a metal arm spun around and slammed into place while lights on a panel by the door flickered and changed from blue to a rather ugly orange. She dashed for the doorway when she recovered her balance to see Cam through a large round window in the door, moving his lips, she could hear nothing and indicated as much. She grabbed the arm and tried to lift it, but it wouldn't budge. She shifted her attentions to the panel and the lights and spotted several buttons and pressed the one that was next to the blue light which had winked out. Nothing happened. She pressed the one next to the ugly orange light to a similar effect. Her radio crackled and Cam's voice came over it. "Sam, you okay? I can't get the door open."
"I'm fine, there's a panel on this side, but I don't think it's working." she said into her radio. She ran her fingers over the wall the panel was in, it seemed to be completely sealed in the wall, with no way for her to open it. She gritted her teeth in frustration, breathing in rapidly.
"Sam, there's a panel and a display on this side and there's a bar moving across the screen." he said with a hint of urgency in his voice. Her eyes widened.
"Mitchell? What's going on? Are you guys alright?" Daniel's voice cut in on the comms.
"Jackson, did you guys do anything? The whole ship lurched and Sam's stuck in a room that I'm starting to think is an airlock." He slammed his shoulder into the door and she could see him straining for several moments with something, there was probably another metal arm on his side.
"No, we were just walking down a corridor, when we were all thrown into the bulkhead." Daniel replied and she could hear the sound of booted feet running over his comm.
"Get your asses over here and help me! Or find the damn bridge!" Cam cried into his radio. "Sam, can you open the panel on your side?" She shook her head and he cursed she stuck her head against the glass and saw him fumbling in his tac vest until he produced a swiss army knife. "I'm gonna open the panel on this side, you gotta take me through what I need to do." he declared. She blinked, feeling fuzzy. Cam looked up at her through the glass and his eyes grew concerned. He opened his mouth yelling something. His mouth, sometimes she'd just stare at his mouth, his lips. The way he smiled made her feel weak, especially when he smiled only for her. There was a smile, just one that she'd never seen him smile for anyone else. Her forehead bumped against the glass and she felt thumps through it, she pulled back to see him banging on the door and the glass and yelling, his eyes were wild. Oh, his eyes were even better than his mouth. She could stare at his eyes all day. She lifted her hand up to the glass, laying it flat on the surface, she met his gaze, feeling dizzy. Her knees were shaking. He put his hand over hers on the glass, but his eyes were angry, she shook her head, she liked to see him smiling. How could she make him smile? Tell him how she feels? Yeah, that will do it.
"Cameron," she breathed into the thin atmosphere with a slight smile, "I love you so much." Her knees gave way just as her eyelids fell heavily over her eyes.
Derelict ship, above P1X-011, July 2006
He stared as she smiled slightly through the glass at him and her lips moved as she spoke, then she collapsed after her eyes fluttered closed. He banged on the door.
"SAM!" He grabbed the arm and yanked at it with all his might, but it wouldn't move. He cursed and moved to the panel, ripping the fascia off with his bare hands and prying a backing plate up with his swiss army knife. He really needed her help with this. He knew his way around electronics for the most part, but he was out of his depth with alien doohickeys. He pulled the backing plate away and flung it down the corridor, revealing a nest of wires and boards and machinery, the purpose of which he didn't even want to hazard a guess. He frantically pulled out as much as he could without disconnecting anything so he could get a look at it all, the boards revealed nothing and the wire connections ran everywhere, there were over a dozen wires. What the Hell? He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, dislodging his patrol cap and setting it askew. She was dying in there and he was staring at the insides of an alien airlock control panel. He laughed hysterically before punching the wall next to the panel several times. Focus, damn it! Get it together, Mitchell! He pulled the wires apart one by one to try to visualise the connections between the boards, yellow wire, red wire, blue wire, green wire, ugly orange wire, black wire... he stopped.
His mind flew back to the control room at the SGC, staring at an open wormhole as the alternate SG-1, which had attempted to steal the ZPM from Atlantis to power their Ancient weapons platform, trudged away through the Stargate back to their reality. Their Carter gave their Mitchell a look and he stopped and turned to face them before going through. Cam blinked, staring at the control panel wiring in his hands. He ground his teeth and screwed his eyes shut.
"Oh, you better not be from the mirror universe, you son of a bitch!" he muttered and lifted out the green wire out from among the rest with his knife, then yanked the knife back, severing the wire. Nothing happened for an instant and he blinked in horror until he heard a deep metallic clunk from the door and he dropped everything. He wrapped his hands around the metal arm and pulled with all his strength, feeling it resist until it gave way and lifted, spinning out of his grip, pushing the door open slightly to the sound of rushing air entering the room beyond through the gap. He pulled at the door, wedging his foot against the door frame for leverage and opened it enough for him to get his body in and force the door open further. He rushed to Sam and grabbed the collar of her tac vest, lifting her up. "Sam? Baby, please don't do this to me." there was no response and he pulled and turned her and dragged her through the doorway into the corridor as Teal'c, Daniel and Vala arrived.
"Colonel Mitchell, what can we do?" asked the Jaffa with an edge to his voice. Daniel and Vala both cursed when they saw Sam, her lips blue from hypoxia, the lock hadn't completely depressurised or she'd be in far worse shape.
"Teal'c," Cam rasped as he positioned her in the corridor and lay her head back gently, "close that door, the atmosphere is still venting." The Jaffa looked at the open door and began pulling at it, Daniel moved in to help, until they had the door shut, Teal'c pulled the arm over with his great strength, securing it. As they did that Cam was feeling for a pulse on Sam's neck, finding something very faint and thready, he unzipped her tac vest and put his ear to her chest, hearing a faint beat. He moved his ear to over her mouth, but felt nothing, so he lifted her neck and tilted her head back to begin resuscitation. He pressed his lips to hers and blew air into her lungs twice before shifting to chest compressions for a count of thirty. He did it again and again, shrugging off Vala's hand on his shoulder until he felt Sam convulse under him and gasp, arching her back and throwing up her arms. Cam grabbed the front of her BDUs and pulled her up, as she hacked and coughed and took in great lungfuls of air just to cough harder. He wrapped his arms around her getting a leg under her to support her as she laid her head on his shoulder and gasped. "I've got you, Sam. I've got you."
Urdijina, M3R-921, December 2007
Sam looked nervously towards the rock wall which separated the alcove in which she stood from the area beyond. How did she get herself into this? Cameron always managed to turn her world upside down whenever he showed up. As if that was his mission in life. She unzipped the jacket of her jumpsuit and slipped out of it, arranging it in the area which seemed to be specially set up for it along the wall. She grimaced in frustration as her heart beat a little faster, imagining what was happening on the other side of that rock wall and shook her head. She would kill him. She really would. Somehow this was all his fault. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and sighed. Of course it wasn't. The same would have happened if it had been John who came with her. Except it would be him on the other side of that wall. Maybe that wouldn't be as bad as it being Cam. She ran her hand through her hair. Cam always seemed to flummox her attempts to keep things normal. It was a pain in the ass. She undid her belt and the clasps of her trousers, slipping them off and hanging them up over her discarded boots. Taking off her shirt and underwear and storing them, she stepped around the protective wall inside the alcove which guarded the disrobing area from the spray and sluices of the cataract flowing from a jagged fissure in the rock over head.
The water was warm and smelled of rich loamy soil. She let it run over her face as she closed her eyes, then through her hair as it draped over her shoulders and down her back. She passed her hands along her arms and over the skin of her chest, stomach and legs. Just as the Aleri admonished her to do as they guided them to the Caverns. This was as much a ritual as everything else with the Urdijine. They weren't strict about it, and in fact seemed to enjoy teaching others of their ways more than watching them attempt to replicate them. However, one thing she'd learned from Dr. Elizabeth Weir during her short tenure as the head of Stargate Command was that everyone appreciated effort expended in good will. She intended to follow the example of her predecessor as much as possible to the best of her ability. She had to admit the water felt very pleasant. Warm, but not hot, as it flowed smoothly over her head, running down her back and legs, she rubbed her face gently and cupped her hand to take a swallow of the water, which was the last step of this part of the ritual. It tasted like earth, but she'd had worse. Smiling she stepped out from under the cataract and around another protective wall, behind which hung a long white robe similar to those worn by the Aleri. She quickly found the ties she'd been shown earlier and looped the robe around her shoulder, slipping her arms through the folds made for them, tying it at her neck and looping the cords around her waist and under her breasts. She blushed deeply when she looked down at herself. God she hated Cameron sometimes. She pulled her hair from the collar of the robe and let it drape down her shoulders before stepping out into the main cavern. She spotted outcroppings of rock which ran past a line of lit torches on stands and into the turbid water of a large underground lake. Steam rose gently from the surface in wisps and hung for a moment in the stillness above the milky water before evaporating away. She stopped and gasped lightly at the sight. Entranced by the unnerving beauty of it all. She heard the sound of water lapping and turned her head to look, seeing Cameron already in the water, leaning back against the lip of rock holding in the warm lake and glancing over his shoulder at her. The look in his eyes held her entranced for a moment until she realised why it was there, he was watching her.
"Eyes front, Mitchell!" Sam cried and he grinned and turned his head forward again. She glanced down and noticed her robe clinging to her still wet form like a second skin. She blushed furiously and strode towards the edge of the pool, past the torches. "Don't you dare say anything!" She stepped in beside him and quickly submerged herself, glaring at Cameron when he turned to look at her. She cupped her hands in front of her and let the water she captured and lifted out flow through her hands while she watched the sediment slip through her fingers. She sighed deeply. The water felt amazing. Blinking in surprise she looked over at Cam. "You've been to places like this before?" He looked over to her and shrugged a shoulder with a tilt of his head.
"Not like this, but I've been to a few hot springs. The Japanese love 'em. You figure out why pretty quickly." He smiled warmly and she returned it, sliding over to sit by him, stretching her legs out along the warm rock underneath her. "This is fairly spectacular actually." He ran a hand through the water, ripples spreading away into the darkness beyond the reach of the torches lit behind them. "There are many onsen with cloudy water of some variety, but this smells... almost florid, you know?" He was right. There was a distinctly flowery scent. "I'd have expected an onsen in a cave to smell more earthy, at best." She nodded in understanding then frowned when she caught the sparkle in his eye, he twisted around to reach behind his left shoulder and she looked at him in curiosity, he turned back and held a small box to her. Flat and square and made of soft, purple-shaded leather. "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, Sam." he said softly and she smiled happily, taking the box from him, careful to keep it mostly dry.
"Thank you, Cameron." She opened the box to see a pair of silver hair clips, engraved with a subtle filigree which formed the stems of flowered vines and curling around them a bracelet, also made of silver, sharing the same motifs. They made her smile broadly and she didn't know why. They seemed familiar somehow, but she was certain she'd never seen anything like them. "They're beautiful, Cam. Thank you!" She leaned over and kissed his cheek gently, noticing how he smiled and the way his eyes glittered when she did so. She reached over her right shoulder and took her time laying the box somewhere dry, giving herself time to cool down the heat in her cheeks which she wasn't sure was caused by the water.
"I'm glad you like them." He looked down into the cloudy pool ahead of him and nodded. They were quiet for several minutes, enjoying the warmth of the water reaching down deep into their bones. Sam found her head tilting to the side and resting on Cam's shoulder and just smiled when she felt him lay his atop hers. She never imagined her birthday would be like this, and was now distinctly glad Cam was here.
"This has been a good day, a good birthday. Thank you, Cam." she breathed into the stillness and he lifted a hand out of the water and pressed a finger to her nose for a second. She grinned.
"You work too hard, Sam. You know you do. I'm just glad when I can lift some of your burdens." he said softly. She closed her eyes and nodded against his shoulder. After several more quiet, comfortable minutes, she felt him shift, raising his head from hers and turning slightly towards her. She lifted her head and looked up at him, and was stunned into stillness by the look in his eyes. For several moments she just stared into the intent gaze he pierced her with, unable to breathe, his lips were drawn tight and his brow furrowed while his blue eyes burned through her. The spell was only broken when he closed his eyes and the tension in his shoulders slipped away into the milky water. "We should get out soon. It's not good to be in the water for too long and your cheeks look to be getting a bit flushed. He stood, the water running down his soaked robes which hung straight down from his shoulders and over his toned chest. He held his hand out and she reached up to take it, letting him help her up out of the water. She held on to his hand after getting to her feet and found her other hand gripping his arm, she leaned against him for a few seconds as she felt suddenly light-headed. His arm slid down to hold her lower back and her forehead fell against his chest as she breathed in the scent of the water on his robes, which only added to his own scent without masking it. "See, you're a bit dizzy." She nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, unsure what was happening. Suddenly a bright flash against her closed eyelids had her grimacing. "What the-!" She glanced up at Cam's exclamation and looked around, surprised to see a floating wall of glittering glyphs in front of them over the water.
USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 2,314 days relative
"Sit still and don't move, Cameron!" admonished Vala as she slapped the top of his head. She adjusted the markers and points around his face, making sure they were aligned with the tracks the high resolution scanner would use as it recorded his features while he displayed various emotions for Vala's use in her film. "You don't want Commander Cain Lockhammer to look wonko, do you?"
"Have I mentioned yet that that's a ridiculous name?" he jibed and she flicked his forehead.
"Have I mentioned yet that I don't care?" she grinned and pinched his cheeks for good measure.
"Hey! Don't abuse the volunteer just 'cause he's stuck in this contraption of yours." he groused, glaring at her.
"Ooh, that's good! Let me switch on the recorder and then do it again." She tapped various keys on her keyboard. That was easy for him. He glared at her some more. "Brilliant! More of that please." He chuckled in spite of himself and smiled.
"You know I can't believe you've managed to learn all this stuff and figured out how to put it all together to make a film." his mouth movements were also important to capture so she seemed happy to let him talk, letting him go with just a glare. "I'm proud of you, Vala, you've taken this situation we're in and you've run with it." She smiled softly and reached over to ruffle his hair. "You did better than I did at the beginning too." Her look turned slightly sad. "I'll be honest and tell you I thought you'd be the first one of us to snap, but you rolled with the punches and came out stronger." He glanced down with a look of pain and distress. "I'm not proud of how I dealt with it." He was surprised when Vala reached out and tilted his chin up with her fingers.
"Cameron, don't you dare. Do you hear me? Don't you dare." She tilted her head to the side and smiled slightly. "This is an impossible situation. In every sense of the word. You tore yourself apart trying to hold on to something very important to you. Your only mistake was thinking that thing was more important than what you were denying." He blinked and tried to look down, but Vala pulled his head back up. "Do you understand?" He nodded slowly. "Good." She stroked his cheek with her thumb. "You're far too good a man to deny yourself something so simple and so right. You were an idiot for doing it for so long. And so was Samantha." At the mention of her name Cam's mind drifted to thoughts of her and a small smile flitted across his face. "Okay, I can't use that." He blinked in surprise.
"Can't use what? Why?" he asked, looking at the monitor at a replay of the smile which drifted across his lips.
"Because only Samantha should ever see that smile." she said with an indulgent smirk.
P4S-891, August 2010
"Dix owes us big time for this." Cameron stamped his feet at the mouth of the small cave they were using to shield their equipment from the torrential downpour that fell into the ravine below, where stood the Stargate for the planet SG-1 had been assigned to stake out. Teal'c was in orbit in a cloaked Tel'tak as he surveilled the typical hyperspace entry points into the system. Daniel and Vala were stationed in the small village, beyond the ravine at the edge of the local peat bogs, posing as off-world traders interested in the high quality soil, just in case the Lucian Alliance went off-script and decided to leave the immediate vicinity of the 'gate for any reason. Sam and Cam had pulled the actual surveillance detail on the Stargate and spent the previous day setting up a small array of cameras on the 'gate and around the clearing and making sure to conceal them as well as possible. They'd found this small cave during their reconnaissance of the Stargate clearing and decided to use it to keep their equipment out of the elements. It also provided excellent cover from the ravine below for visual surveillance. Setting up a small blind to mimic the surrounding rocks beyond the entrance was simple enough. It wasn't a water-proof blind however, much to Cameron's discomfort. "Begged to trade with us 'cause he doesn't like boggy areas, but I think he meant he doesn't like rainy areas." Cam was not happy.
"Cam, he traded for jungle terrain. Which means he must really hate bogs and rain." Sam muttered as Cam came to stand over her and scrutinised the camera feeds. "Don't get the computers wet!" She pointed away from her and he huffed, shambling off a little further away. "Anyway, I thought you liked the rain."
"I like warm, tropical rain, not cold, temperate rain." he groused and sat down by their packs against the far wall. Sam got up and came to sit next to him. He smiled at her and thanked the universe again for letting him be with a woman who could accept him and stand to be near him even when he was soaking wet in a dank cave. "Anything I need to check on at the last minute? We don't have a lot of time according to the rendezvous schedule." Sam shook her head. They were ready, should they be called upon. Masim used a number of planets to conduct these clandestine meetings with his third-party connections. All of them out of the way, hardly trafficked, utterly unremarkable. He met with his contacts at least once every month or so, the planet chosen was usually random, at least from the perspective of someone not involved in the choice such as Uliria Heidal. She could only provide them with a schedule of the meetings and a list of the planets she'd seen them take place on. She'd been to several of the meetings herself, as she was Kiva's preferred engineer and technician and was frequently crewing her ships whether she took a Tel'tak or an Al'kesh. However she had no experience with Ancient systems and was not slated to go to Destiny, they had acquired the services of some others who had a little knowledge of Alteran technology instead. Cam supposed it was poetic justice that Uliria was about to get a crash course on Alteran technology under Rodney McKay on Atlantis. As it was the SGC had six teams conducting similar surveillance all over the galaxy right at that moment. One in six wasn't great odds. Especially since they couldn't afford not to cover all the possible planets.
"Just waiting on word from Teal'c now, he'll get first sighting of any Lucian Alliance ships." Sam took off her patrol cap and stuffed it in her jacket, running a hand through her sandy brown hair. She turned her head to glance at Cam for just an instant before looking back to the computers. She had that nervous look which usually set him off. Not because it was something dangerous or vitally important, but because it was something she was worrying about which she really didn't need to be worrying about.
"What's on your mind, Sam?" he asked softly and she looked at him with a slight blush before looking down again. He reached up and ran a finger against her cheek and under her chin, lifting it so she would look at him.
"It's really nothing, just something stupid." she whispered and he lifted an eyebrow. "Well I'm... thinking of... well, for when we get married..." She clenched her jaw and chuckled ruefully. "It really is something stupid."
"You just want my opinion on something, right? Something simple? And you're feeling a bit weird bringing it up during a mission, am I right?" he asked and she nodded to each question. He smiled. "We have time, that's the thing about our work and our lives." he murmured, stroking her cheek. "They are so enmeshed in each other that it can be difficult separating the personal from the professional sometimes. Hell, it's virtually impossible. It's why you work at least twelve hours a day. We're the sort of people who have trouble switching off." She looked down and sighed sadly. He knew this was something of a sore point for her. She loved her work. To her it wasn't a question of switching on or off. Her work is what she'd enjoy doing on her time off as well. It was what she did on her time off before Cam came to the SGC and made sure she spent a greater portion of her off hours outside of her lab than she had previously. "That's not a bad thing, as long as you and I both agree, that when the need to do something personal, something private, something for us, when the need comes up we make the time for it." She looked up and smiled softly, her blue eyes shining. "So we have time, sweetness. What do you want to ask?"
"You're scary sometimes. How well you know me." She lifted her hand and took a hold of his against her cheek. "It's like you can see things the way I see them without even trying." He tilted his head to the side. "I've seen you do something similar with others sometimes, little moments when you just know exactly what someone wants or needs." He frowned slightly in confusion. "That's a gift, Cameron." She turned her head slightly to kiss his fingers, then looked at him once more, slightly embarrassed. "What I wanted to ask, was what you would think if I dyed my hair blond again." She looked away while holding his fingers to her lips, but her gaze flicked over to watch him from the corner of her eye and back. He grinned broadly and slowly. He reached towards her with his other hand, taking the lock of hair which would slip from behind her ear to rest against her cheek most of the time and let it run through his fingers. To see it shining in gold once more, yes he'd like that very much. He leaned in close to her ear.
"I loved that sandy blond shade you switched to before you left for Atlantis." He whispered softly and he felt her shiver slightly when he leaned in a little closer still. "It did things for me which were highly unprofessional." When he pulled back he saw her smiling from behind his fingers as she held them still over her mouth, and the decidedly dusky shade of rose to which her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes flicked over to his once more and they were glittering. He smiled.
"Cam..." she breathed against his fingertips, but her thoughts were stolen away by the warning buzz of an incoming scrambled burst transmission. She frowned then sighed and he groaned. He pursed her lips between his fingers and she spluttered and scowled at him before getting up to play Teal'c's message.
"Colonel Mitchell, Samantha Carter, I have detected vessels emerging from hyperspace. It is likely they are our quarry. I will now maintain radio silence and monitor the situation from orbit. Teal'c out." Sam glanced at Cam and he nodded, getting up to slip into the blind outside. Sam began gathering up the small relay they would be using inside the blind and stuffed it into a sealable plastic bag which would help keep it dry. A low tech solution for a high tech problem. Cam's favourite. She grabbed the small ear pieces which would let them hear the audio and had a very short range to keep it from being detected. She slipped into the blind alongside him where they lay flat on an overhang with some optical equipment to surveil the Stargate clearing visually. She handed the ear bug to him and he slipped it into the ear on the other side from her, to make sure he could hear anything she said. She keyed the little relay monitor inside its plastic bag to link into the feeds from her equipment in the cave behind them. They saw the Tel'tak flying in from the east and landing lightly in the center of the clearing. Personnel exited and soon had the clearing secure, allowing a second Tel'tak to come in to land, presumably with Masim inside. An hour later the Stargate activated, but before they could see who came through from their position behind the event horizon, they saw a field of some kind expanding from just in front of the Stargate. It climbed over the Stargate to encompass it, the steps to the 'gate and a large portion of the clearing. It had the effect of distorting their optical surveillance and also of interrupting the transmission feeds from the cameras within the field. They had no video whatsoever. Cam turned his head to look at Sam questioningly and she looked back apologetically.
"Sorry, Cam," she whispered, "whatever that field is it's interfering with the frequencies our cameras are transmitting to our equipment on. The back-up recorders embedded in the devices will still work though. We'll just have to wait." He grumbled and gritted his teeth. "We still have audio, though." He whipped his head around and she smiled broadly, as she closed the lid of the relay inside its plastic bag, not needing its monitor anymore. "Different frequencies." she explained. Cam smiled as well and made sure his ear bug was working. Looking through the eyepiece of the scope ahead of him he saw Masim coming out of his Tel'tak and moving into the field.
"Damn thing is probably there just to keep them dry." Cam muttered, but fell silent when the two parties began greeting each other. They used no names, instead relying on euphemisms and double-talk, except that it obviously seemed to make sense in context to the two men. They also came to agreement on various things the nature of which was indecipherable to Cameron. They avoided speaking of anything in specifics until it was getting obvious the other man was preparing to leave.
"I am aware of our failure in the operation. I assure you we do not hold you or your men at fault, the telemetry indicates they accomplished their assigned tasks faultlessly and for that you have our admiration." Quite the concession. "It would seem the failure was ours. We underestimated the resourcefulness of our foes. Strategically, we were lacking."
"Do you intend on a second attack?" asked Masim.
"Our plans, and beyond that our pride, requires it." replied the stranger. "When the time comes we will seek your assistance once more, should you be willing to provide it."
"Of course, but I do not understand, why do you hold such enmity towards them, have you had contact with the Tau'ri in the past?" Masim speaking the name which identified the humans of Earth out among the stars had Cameron looking hard at Sam. "What could they have done which would require such an end for their homeworld?" Alarm bells went off in his head and he saw Sam's eyes widen in surprise and anger.
"We owe the Tau'ri a debt. A world for a world."
On to Chapter 6