Diplomacy (25/27)
Title: Diplomacy ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5a-- 5b Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11a-- 11b Chapter12 Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b Chapter16 Chapter17a-- 17b Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26 Epilogue
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Unity, Part I
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3 May 1999; SGC, Earth; 0800 hrs
Daniel and Carter were already geeking out happily when Jack walked into the ready room. He heard 'no water?' and 'signs of organic life' and 'ugh, sandy planet' and 'yes! sandy planet,' and he quickly decided he should put an end to it.
"Okay, people," he said to get both of their attention. "P3X-562. No signs of current life, but signs of possible past life. Carter wants to check it out, Daniel wants to check it out, so we'll check it out, and if we can't find anything interesting, we head back. Any questions? No? Good."
The MALP sensors had picked up a brief, weak energy spike of some kind. The UAV had gone out again--as if to prove that they could, in fact, use UAVs without losing them--but its sensors hadn't picked anything up again, and Carter thought it had been a fluke. What the UAV had seen, though, was a few pits of crystals that everyone was interested in.
He caught Daniel's sleeve before he could follow Carter and Teal'c to the 'gate room. Daniel blinked up at him. "Jack?"
Daniel knew what he was doing with off-world gear by now, but Jack ran a quick eye over him anyway, just to make sure that his zat was strapped on securely and not caught on anything and that everything else was in place. "You stay within sight of me the entire time, understand?"
"Jack..."
"Teal'c will be guarding Carter. No one wanders off alone, not even if the only thing we see is shiny blue crystals. Anyone gives a command, and that includes Carter or Teal'c, you don't ask; you obey. Is that understood?"
"Jack," Daniel repeated, "I know--"
"I haven't forgotten Cimmeria last year," Jack reminded him, feeling a little bad because he knew Daniel hadn't forgotten, either, but off-world was dangerous no matter how safe it looked. "Anything like that happens this time, we won't be lenient."
"Yes, sir," Daniel finally said, more subdued, but there was a confident set to his jaw, and Jack decided not to push it before he was pushed all the way from confident to defiant.
"Good. Let's go, we're gonna be late."
When the Stargate started dialing, Carter smiled at Daniel. "So, what do you think? What might a bunch of crystals have been used for?"
"You're sure it's not Goa'uld technology?"
"I do not believe so," Teal'c offered.
"Neither do I. They're all the same color, for one," Carter said. "That's a bit superficial, but usually, delmak crystals are colored differently according to the purpose they serve."
"Because they're made of different minerals?" Daniel asked.
"Actually, they're usually all a kind of silica, with structural differences that encode their programming and rate of decay. The difference in color seems to be artificially caused by specific doping that has minimal effects other than the color, possibly as a way of standardization. A planet full of blue control crystals would be like...like a lot of batteries with nothing to plug them into. What about you? Historical references?"
"Chevron five encoded," Harriman announced.
"The problem," Daniel said, "is that crystals were used in many cultures, but their relevance to this planet would also depend on the environment and the resources available."
"Make a few guesses," Jack told him.
"Well, crystals have used for decorative purposes. Also, for, uh, healing, worship, divining...oh, hey, Sam!"
"Chevron seven--locked. Wormhole established."
"What?" Carter asked, starting up the ramp and maneuvering the FRED with her remote until it was through the wormhole.
Jack couldn't tell whether Daniel was walking up automatically to keep talking to her, or if he just didn't notice Jack and Teal'c herding him toward the wormhole. "What if alien crystal technology is the basis for people's belief in the supernatural properties of crystals? Or--oh! Oh! What about light sabers?"
As Jack stared at the back of his head and an airman in the 'gate room coughed, Teal'c said, "There is an energy core of crystals within light sabers."
"Don't start," Carter warned both of them, and Daniel grinned cheekily at her. "But that's an interesting thought--not the light sabers; the...the historical rituals," she said, waiting for him to catch up before walking through. "In fact, it would be great if we could--"
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3 May 1999; P3X-562; 0810 hrs
She was still talking when Jack stepped onto the planet.
"--or if some of the crystals found by archaeologists are actually active delmak," she was saying thoughtfully. "It would be an incredible find."
"Well, someone might have noticed by now if that were commonly the case," Daniel countered. "They do a lot of tests on those kinds of things...but it could easily have provided historical basis for the legends."
Jack shook his foot unhappily. He'd stepped wrong coming out of the wormhole, and now there was a small pile of sand in his left boot. Carter grimaced a little at the prospect of trudging through sand for the next few hours, but Daniel's eyes lit up.
"How far away were the crystals supposed to be?" Daniel asked, hovering a few steps in front of them, as if he wanted to run ahead but knew he wasn't supposed to.
"Not far," Jack said. "The UAV saw a pit full of them just over that dune." Speaking of UAV, he turned back, dialed Earth again, and sent the probe back through right away--they weren't losing another probe under his watch. When he finished and rejoined them, he added, "There're at least two groupings of crystals, one of them a little farther out. We'll start at the closer one. Teal'c, any sign of life?"
"None," Teal'c said succinctly, and they were off.
"Wow," Carter said when they arrived at the top of the first dune, from where they could see the pit of broken, blue crystals. She moved to take point, already pulling a handheld sensor out of her belt and fiddling with it. Teal'c stationed himself at the top of the dune, where he could see as far as they'd need to.
"Wow," Daniel agreed, shading his eyes with a hand. "I've never seen or read about anything like this. Jack, can I...?"
"Yeah, go ahead." By the time the first word was out of his mouth, Daniel was running lightly down to join Carter in ooh-ing and ahh-ing. "Teal'c, you mind keeping watch?"
Teal'c took a look down at the other two. "I do not, O'Neill." Jack clapped him on the shoulder and started down after them.
"--understand why so many of them are broken," Daniel was saying by the time Jack was close enough to hear them. He picked up a shard of transparent blue rock.
"I'm amazed that there's so much of this material," Carter said, using a fingernail to tap on the piece in Daniel's hand. "I wonder what it's made of."
"Is it real crystal, not glass?"
"I'd need to do some X-ray analysis, but do you see how regular the shape is? That's likely the result of a crystalline lattice at the molecular level. If someone tried to carve this so precisely, I'd expect some trace of the tools used."
"And if someone carved them," Daniel said, "why were they left here, and broken--and where are the tools or traces of people? Buried over time in sand? Well, no, then why aren't these buried?"
"For that matter," Carter pointed out, "if they were grown and found somewhere, I'd expect them to be even more valuable, so why were they left here?"
Daniel shook his head. "Jack, you said the UAV saw another group of crystals farther out. Maybe there's another clue there--something else people left behind."
"I'm going to wrap up some of these samples to take back, sir," Carter added. "And I'd like to get some video of this place so we can look back on it later."
"All right," Jack said. "Carter, stick around here and finish whatever you need. Daniel and I'll head over that way. Radio us when you're done."
"Yes, sir," she said, then pulled open her pack to start rummaging through again.
Daniel replaced his shard of crystal on the ground and accepted Jack's hand to pull himself to his feet, then started toward the next field of stones with Jack. "So, what do you think it is?"
"Not a clue," Jack said.
"There must have been people at some point, right? Someone gathered them all there for a reason. There are cultures that thought crystals had very specific abilities and that many of them together could magnify the effects. Or it could have been for some kind of ritual."
Jack was starting to think they were grasping at straws now. It was just rocks left lying around in the sand. "Seriously?"
"I'm just trying to think of whatever possibilities I can," Daniel said, grinning and gesturing expansively with his arms as he spoke. Jack shook his head but couldn't help smiling a little himself to see him so enthusiastic about something and not brooding about anything at the moment. A nice, relaxing research mission with no one trying to kill them--it was nice for all of them, for a change, and Daniel had literally leapt, at least an inch or so off the ground, at the offer to go with them.
They reached the crest of a small sand dune, and, still grinning, Daniel ran down the other side, then turned and waited for Jack to follow.
"What're you so happy about today?" Jack asked, amused.
"Well, I passed the GEDs, and Robert's happy with the scores--mostly--so he's not constantly trying to make me study something irrelevant to our work," Daniel explained. "And..."
"Mostly?" Jack echoed.
Daniel shrugged. "He's annoyed that I did better on math than social studies. It wasn't that bad," he defended when Jack smirked. "Only ten points' difference, and they were both easily passing. And I did a lot better on the language sections, of course."
"Of course," Jack said, patting Daniel condescendingly on the head and receiving a swat at his own head for his efforts.
"Anyway, now that Robert's off-world with SG-11 a lot, there are more projects I get to work on. And it's nice to go off-world with you all for once...even if people on base call me your jinx."
"What?" Jack said sharply, wondering why he hadn't heard that moniker. He'd nipped a few in the bud--SG-1's Orphan had been shot down immediately with threats of violence--but Daniel was bound to have heard some he'd missed. "They do? Who calls you that?"
"It's just a joke. I heard the linguists say it once," Daniel said. "Like: 'Jackson's with SG-1, you know that one's not going to go as planned.' That kind of thing. And then that starts a debate about the etymology of the word 'jinx.' Did you know there's a bird that can turn its head all the way around and hiss like a snake?"
Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm not even going to ask how that relates."
"It's called the iynx."
"Like I said, not asking." Jack considered. "You know, it's true--we've practically never had a straight-forward mission with you on board."
Instead of taking offense, Daniel pointed out, "They've all been considered successful, though. Wildly successful, some might say. Maybe I'm your good-luck charm, and you need to take me with you more."
"Is that a hint?"
Daniel flashed him a quick smile and ran down the side of the next sand dune, and Jack would be teasing about childish enthusiasm brought on by alien deserts, except he was so glad to see it that he couldn't bring himself to say anything.
The second grouping of crystals didn't seem very different from the first once they reached it. There was nothing that looked like a 'we were here' sign, but Daniel was walking slowly among the crystals anyway, bending over them to take a closer look. There was a reason why Jack had decided the mission would end when Carter was done--Daniel would probably never be done here unless he was dragged away.
Jack glanced back, saw Teal'c's figure as a speck in the distance still standing guard over Carter, and followed Daniel down the side of the dune until the rest of the team was out of sight.
"Oh, look, Jack," Daniel said, pointing eagerly. "Here's one that's not broken."
Jack crouched next to him and peered at the intact bundle of crystals. "So," he said.
"Hello?" Daniel said to the crystal.
Jack snorted. "Daniel."
"Nayuyu?"
"Daniel," Jack repeated. "It's a rock."
"Robert's been playing around in the lab with a device that's sensitive to sound," Daniel said. "There was one that opened when he said the word 'friend.' Well, it was 'friend' in a fictional language, so he said it as a joke, but it actually meant 'what is your name' in an Egyptian dialect. And we've seen technology that responds to voices or words."
"It's not technology," Jack said; "it's a rock."
Ignoring him, Daniel leaned closer. "Look, take a look at this group here, the intact ones. Do you see something moving inside the crystals?"
Jack rolled his eyes but acquiesced, circling to the other side of the bunch of crystals Daniel was talking to and leaning in close to study them better.
Daniel shifted forward until his nose was almost touching the crystal. "Hey, Jack, I thi--Ahh!"
Just as Jack looked up to see Daniel fly back into the side of the sand dune, something slammed into him, and he only had time to hope there weren't any shards of crystal behind him before he faded away and felt nothing more.
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3 May 1999; P3X-562; 1000 hrs
Sam turned to follow Teal'c to the Stargate, then stopped and picked up that flake Daniel had been playing with before. She'd found a wonderfully (mostly) intact piece of crystal, and if she needed a bit for material analysis, she might as well bring back a few pieces that were already broken instead of chipping away at the whole one.
Actually...
"Teal'c," she said, gesturing to him with a hand while rubbing over the smooth, broken face of the crystal with the other. "Can you come and take a look at this?" She handed the shard to him. "Does this side look more glassy to you? Like it was heated and then cooled quickly?"
"Perhaps it was melted," he said, handing it back, but his expression confirmed her suspicion.
"We've seen these marks before, haven't we."
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "Jaffa staff weapons cause this kind of damage."
"Exactly. But there haven't been any Jaffa around here in a while?" she said.
"I do not believe so. However, tracks are quickly obscured in sand."
"Yeah. Maybe it's time to get back home until we know more." When Teal'c inclined his head, Sam reached up to her radio and said, "Sir, we've loaded up the FRED, and we're seeing signs of what might be past Jaffa activity. We're ready to go when you are."
No answer.
"Colonel O'Neill, this is Carter. Please respond, over."
"Daniel, can you hear me? Over."
"Huh," she said, frowning. "Not answering. Teal'c, you wanna try--"
"Captain Carter," Teal'c said, pointing.
"Colonel, Daniel!" she called when she finally saw the two figures walking toward them. "Why didn't you answer?"
Aaand... still not answering.
"Oh, great," she said to Teal'c, warily eyeing the stiffness in their gait. "You think they got on each other's nerves sometime in the last half an hour?"
Teal'c watched the approaching figures carefully. "That appears to be the case."
Sam sighed. "And just when we'd finally found a happy, safe little planet..."
"Indeed."
The thing was, Daniel and the colonel argued. Not all the time, of course, but they'd started once the colonel had gotten used to the SGC and Daniel had gotten used to Earth and had kept going on and off after that. Really, Daniel the only one who could have a full-scale argument with the colonel without tripping over any chain of command; most of the other civilians tried not to get in O'Neill's way.
But whether it was about the meaning of life, about family, about what Daniel was and wasn't allowed to do, or just teenage moodiness that collided with sarcastic grouchiness, it usually ended with Daniel not talking any more than he had to, and then the colonel so annoyed after a while that he stopped trying to talk back.
Now, neither of them even gave Sam or Teal'c more than a look to acknowledge their presence: no sarcastic comment about a yellow-brick road leading home, and no questions about the crystal samples or suggestions about what kind of rituals they might have been used for.
"Anything interesting?" she asked Daniel, who looked at her, then shook his head.
"No."
Okay. Awkward. Sam cleared her throat. "I have what I needed, sir. Should we head back?"
The colonel gave her a long look, then tilted his head, like he was thinking of something witty to say, but then only said flatly, "Yes."
Exchanging a glance with Teal'c, Sam passed by both of them on her way to the DHD, close enough to be certain they hadn't somehow been Goa'ulded--a long shot, maybe, but she wasn't taking any chances--but, apparently, they were just pissed off at something. She dialed, sent her IDC, and steered the FRED carefully through before following her team back.
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3 May 1999; SGC, Earth; 1030 hrs
"No, sir, we couldn't determine for certain what the purpose was," Sam said, keeping an eye on her two teammates and still not sure exactly what their problem was. She paused, expecting Daniel to jump in with the ideas he'd been so excited about before, but, when he continued to sit in silence, she said, "Possibilities range from superstition to advanced crystal technology, but I'd rather wait for analysis on the crystals I brought back before trying to draw any conclusions."
"Mr. Jackson," General Hammond said, "do you have anything to add?"
Daniel looked up from the table he'd been staring at and said, "No." Teal'c raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.
"Colonel O'Neill?"
The colonel turned away from where he'd been staring out the window into the 'gate room, then said simply, "No."
Sam exchanged another glance with Teal'c, then met the general's frown and shrugged slightly to say she didn't know, either. "Teal'c and I noticed that some of the crystals seemed to have been broken by some kind of energy weapon, sir," she offered, "possibly staff weapons."
"Staff weapons?" the general repeated. "You're sure about that?"
"No, not sure," she conceded. "I can do some tests, but they were definitely deliberately broken by something that generated heat and a lot of shear."
"Then where are the people who did it?"
"They could have left," she suggested. "The people may have been attacked by Jaffa. However, the fact that those crystals were so thoroughly destroyed makes me think they must have served some purpose to begin with."
"All right," General Hammond finally said. "Go and get cleaned up. I want to know if anything comes up about those crystals."
"Yes, sir," she said, grateful both for the end of an awkward debriefing and for the chance to get the sand out of her...well. Out of her uniform.
The general hesitated another moment, narrowing his eyes at the colonel and Daniel, then said pointedly, "And make sure all of you get your post-mission medical exams done before leaving the base today." He nodded to them all and returned to his office.
The SGC had finally realized that there were, in fact, women on base, and there were now separate showers for each gender, rather than just the one on a rotating schedule. They did have to stop by SG-1's locker room first, however, just to grab their belongings, except Daniel, who wandered off on his own to the public lockers.
Usually, she tried not to pay attention to her teammates' after-mission routines. Modesty wasn't something they really thought about when they spent half their time trying to save each other's lives, but there were lines when they weren't in the field. Still, the mission today felt off, somehow, so she peeked over her shoulder at Colonel O'Neill when he stalled an extra minute in front of his locker.
He was shuffling through something. There was a photo in his hand of a little boy. Sam thought of the tiny bits she'd heard about the colonel's son from the alternate Dr. Jackson last year--
("...suicide mission...Jack said no one should have to outlive his own son. That's why he was willing to...")
--and hastily turned away and headed for the showers.
When she got to her lab, she almost expected to find Daniel, considering how interested he'd been in the crystals, but the lab was buzzing with various scientists and technicians and no Abydonian linguists. He'd probably gone to find Dr. Rothman and the other archaeologists to discuss historical uses of crystals, and when Sam saw him next, he'd have cooled off from whatever he was mad about and would be buzzing with new ideas again. At the very least, he was usually able to put that kind of thing aside for work.
"What have you got?" she asked the technician she'd asked to look at the crystal.
"Passed all decontamination protocols," the scientist said, "but I was able to pick up a low-level EM field."
Maybe they were technology of some sort, just not the types of Goa'uld crystals they were used to seeing. "Okay," she told the other woman. "Thank you; I'll take over from here."
...x...
Teal'c walked in some time later, looking around self-consciously--her lab wasn't a usual haunt for the two of them. "Hey, come on in," she said, standing and pushing her laptop to one side when she saw him.
"Captain Carter," Teal'c said, "I am concerned. O'Neill did not meet me in the gymnasium at our appointed time. He is at none of his usual locations."
Sam checked her watch and frowned. "Really? Maybe he's busy with something else and forgot."
"Then you do not believe something is wrong," he checked, his tone saying he disagreed but was willing to be persuaded.
The problem was, she wasn't sure enough to persuade anyone of anything. "I...well, I don't really know," she said. "He and Daniel have both been a little weird since we got back, don't you think? Do you know if they ever showed up for their exams in the infirma--"
She was cut off as Robert Rothman stormed into the lab. "Captain Carter! What the heck happened out there?"
"Uh...excuse me?" she said, glancing at Teal'c.
"That mission you were just on, P3X, uh, 5...whatever. What happened to Daniel?" the archaeologist demanded.
"Dr. Rothman, what are you talking about?"
"How did he seem this morning before you left?"
"He was...bouncing off the walls," Sam said. "Um, excited, happy. Why? I assumed he was in your office."
"Oh," Rothman said, "he's in our office, all right. And you know what he just asked me?"
"What?" Sam asked apprehensively.
He noticed the other scientists staring at their loud conversation and lowered his voice to something less than a shout. "He asked me if Skaara was around somewhere. Like I was maybe hiding him under my desk or something."
That made so little logical sense that the only response Sam could think of was, "He...what?"
"I know! He had that Goa'uld dictionary you gave him a year ago, and he actually pointed at the picture in it and asked where his brother was, and...Captain, I don't--we don't talk about, you know, stuff like that. We argue about our job and his education, but this stuff? This is your territory," he said, waving a hand in Teal'c and her general direction. "I'm not--look, just, was someone keeping an eye on him out there? Because that's not normal, and whatever happened to him..."
"But the colonel was with him the entire..." she started, then stopped.
Uh-oh.
Rothman looked between her and Teal'c. "What? Are they pissed at each other again? 'Cause this goes way beyond that."
Sam didn't have time to be amused that even Rothman, who didn't always seem to notice social interaction, had the same first thought that she had had, before Teal'c told him, "Colonel O'Neill has also been behaving abnormally."
"Well, there! I'm telling you, something must've happened!"
Logic later; act now. "Where is he now?" Sam asked urgently. "Is he acting like..."
"Honestly," Rothman said, "at first I thought he having some sort of insane, like, post-traumatic flashback, but now I'm thinking that's not it, either." Sam raised her eyebrows, exchanging another concerned look with Teal'c. "Guys, you don't understand! I know what he's like when he's upset, but this is... Captain, something happened to him. It's like he's a completely different person. Who looks like Daniel. And, you know, knows everything Daniel knows, but still."
And that...sounded like a Goa'uld. It still felt wrong, but Sam gave Teal'c a firm nod. Whatever was going on, at best their team was in danger; at worst, they had a deadly security breach.
"Unscheduled off-world activation!"
Sam looked reflexively toward the speakers. With Colonel O'Neill acting oddly, too, she and Teal'c needed to be in the control room in case something was up. "We need to see what this is about and have someone track down Colonel O'Neill," she said, her brain whirring through options and starting to discard bad ones one by one. "Dr. Rothman, do not approach Daniel yourself. Call security and have them bring him to the infirmary, under guard."
"Wh--wait, what?" the archaeologist asked incredulously. "Captain!"
"Look, if something has happened to him, it's for his safety, too. Tell them not to hurt him, but we can't take any chances until we know what's going on. Bring a zat," she added and ignored the way his eyes bugged out. "Teal'c, let's go."
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3 May 1999; P3X-562; 1300 hrs
"--you copy? Teal'c, can you hear me? Yi shay, Teal'c, Sam, this is Daniel; I need your help, please. Do you copy?"
Pain stabbed into Jack's head as he woke. Ow. What the hell?
Stop. Don't let them know you're awake.
Wait--there was no 'them.' Was there?
As he tried to figure out what had happened before opening his eyes, the pain spiked higher when someone shook him.
"Jack." Something pressed lightly against the side of his neck. "Jack, wake up, please, wake up."
Now that was a familiar voice.
Jack opened his eyes and found himself staring at some part of Daniel's head. Daniel's ear was right over his mouth--checking for breathing, he recognized with approval--and he spoke directly into it. "Daniel?"
Daniel yelped and jerked away. "Jack! Oh. Jack? You weren't waking up, and I didn't know what to do, so I've been trying to radio Sam and Teal'c, but they aren't answering, and I didn't want to leave in case...in case...are you okay?"
"Easy, easy," he said, sitting up cautiously as the throbbing faded a little, leaving the ache in the rest of his muscles to take center stage. A look around them showed no one but them. That helped not at all, so... "What happened?"
"Are you okay?" Daniel repeated anxiously as he knelt next to Jack. He was shivering, too, though it was hard to say if it was from nerves or what felt like odd little electrical jitters in Jack's own limbs.
"Little headache," Jack said, catching a hand as it tried to explore the back of his head. "I'm fine. Daniel--Daniel, stop! Listen to me. What happened?"
Exhaling shakily, Daniel reclaimed his hand and raked it through his already mussed and sand-streaked hair. "I don't know. I just woke up, maybe five minutes ago." He checked his watch. "Six minutes."
"You were knocked out?" Jack said, shifting to a more comfortable position where he could grab hold of Daniel's chin. Pupils a little big--easily from adrenaline alone--but even. Pulse fast, but strong and steady. "Did you hit your head or..."
"Jack, no, I'm okay--"
"Well, something knocked you out!"
"Well, I woke up first!" Daniel twisted away, and if he winced and rubbed his head, well, he had a point, and Jack had a pretty monstrous headache, too. "And I don't know. I didn't see whatever it was that hit us."
Jack reached for his weapon.
"Your MP5 is gone."
"I can see that," Jack said. He started to ask for an inventory of their things, then thought again. Carter or Teal'c would've done that, but--
"They left your sidearm," Daniel said anyway, as if he'd asked, "and mine, and our radios. My pack is gone, and my glasses. I don't think they took anything from our vests."
Okay, then. "GDO?"
"I have mine. I didn't see yours, but I don't know where you keep it."
"All right," Jack said, checking the pocket inside his jacket to find with relief that his GDO was there, after all. Why would their attackers have taken some things but left others?
"Your hat's gone, too."
Jack raised a hand to his head and felt only hair. "Of course it is," he muttered. "Carter and Teal'c?"
"I told you," Daniel replied tensely, "I tried to reach them by radio, but they aren't answering!"
Jack held out a hand. "Okay. It's okay. You followed all the right procedures. Now let me try." Daniel sat back on his heels. Jack keyed his radio. "This is O'Neill. Carter, Teal'c, do you copy?" No answer. "Captain Carter, please respond."
"See?" Daniel said when only silence and static greeted them. "Do you think something happened to them?"
"They might be perfectly fine, so no panicking yet. Now...we're going to go back to where they just were and if they're not where we left them, we'll check at the 'gate. If something was just wrong with the radios, they might have decided to rendezvous there."
"If there were something wrong with the radios, they would have come to find us," Daniel said, but he pushed unsteadily to his feet, grimacing, and watched until Jack had staggered his way up as well. "And remember the crystals we were looking at before? I think they're missing."
Jack took a quick glance back at where Daniel was pointing and said, "You think someone attacked us to grab a couple of these things?" What the hell kind of weapon had they used, anyway? It was like being zatted or electrocuted or something. He checked his watch, noted the time that had passed, and felt a sudden, grateful lurch that he hadn't woken up to find Daniel with his heart stopped, or the other way around.
"Maybe it's taboo to touch the crystals and we broke their laws," Daniel suggested. "I don't know. But there are no tracks--just ours."
"Good catch," Jack said absently, pulling his pistol and thumbing off the safety. Taking that cue, Daniel drew his zat gun, too, but didn't prime it. "One thing at a time--we find the others and report back to base if we can't. Keep an eye out as we go. If you see or hear anything, or you think someone's trying to sneak up on us, get down and tell me. Okay?"
Daniel nodded.
Once more, Jack asked, "You all right?"
"Yes. Fine." As if to prove it, he straightened slightly, his zat held loosely at his side.
Jack hesitated a second longer, then nodded, taking care not to react when his head protested. "Good. Stay close."
It didn't take long to find that neither his astrophysicist nor his favorite Jaffa was in that first crystal pit.
"Don't worry," Jack said calmly, then pointed at the ground. "See the tracks?"
"Uh...yes," Daniel said, squinting at the boot prints that were still clear in the ground. "In the direction of the Stargate." He took a breath and visibly relaxed a little.
"Exactly," Jack said, starting off. "No big deal. They probably didn't come find us because they just...didn't want to get lost, and they knew we'd find them at the 'gate. Right?"
Daniel looked at him indignantly at the tone but kindly didn't comment on the fact that Carter didn't tend to get lost, not at this short a distance, and that Teal'c never did. "Yes, sir, Colonel Jack, sir," he patronized right back as he readjusted his grip on his zat. "No big deal."
Jack snorted. "That's the spirit, Mr. Jackson."
When no one was at the Stargate, though, it became harder to pretend everything was all right.
"I can't see that far without my glasses," Daniel whispered as they crouched some distance away. "Are the footprints...?"
"Right up to the...Stargate," Jack replied softly, frowning. "What the..."
"Someone forced them to leave?" Daniel suggested. "The general ordered them back to base?"
"Maybe. Or they're hurt and didn't have a chance to contact us." Daniel's head whipped toward him in alarm, and he amended, "Or something. Here's the plan. We'll 'gate back to the SGC--you go first, I'll make sure you get through, and--"
"Wait."
"Daniel, there are still hostiles somewh--"
"Jack, wait. Where's the FRED?"
Upon second glance, he could see tracks--no doubt from the FRED being wheeled forward--and other sets of footprints that went from the crystal pit to the DHD and disappeared at the Stargate. It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked like just a couple of sets of tracks, and not dragged or struggling. So they'd had time to take the FRED, which meant...
"You've gotta be kidding me," Jack said, standing in disbelief. "They left?"
"No," Daniel protested. "They wouldn't have... You don't really think they went back to the SGC? Without us?"
"They wouldn't." But annoyance began to war with apprehension, because it was really starting to look that way.
"Jack?"
Shaking his head angrily, Jack gestured toward the DHD. "Dial home, Daniel. We'll get this sorted out once we get there." And, oh, was someone in for a lashing.
"But--"
"Daniel! Dial. Home."
With another confused look that bordered on hurt, Daniel put his zat away as they made their way to the DHD. Jack kept his gun out, since, whatever Carter and Teal'c were doing with this disappearing act--what the hell was that!--they'd still been unconscious for almost three hours with no explanation, which meant someone around here had attacked them, and he refused to believe it had nothing to do with half his team going AWOL.
Once the wormhole was established, Jack stalked angrily toward the Stargate, only to hear Daniel's urgent, "Jack, no!" Jack whirled, looking for a target, but Daniel only shook his head and said, "My IDC hasn't been accepted. The iris--"
"Did you dial the right--"
"Of course, I did, Jack, look at the glyphs!"
"Then...they locked you out?"
"I don't think so," Daniel said, staring at his GDO. "The code wasn't rejected. It's like they're just waiting and trying to decide whether--"
"Dammit," he muttered, punching in the SG-1 code as well. "Just let us in!"
It was another good seven, eight, nine seconds--enough time to scramble the security teams--before his GDO gave him the green light, just as Daniel called in relief, "Accepted. We can go."
"Yeah. C'mon."
Daniel hesitated at the event horizon. "You think...?"
"Come on," Jack repeated, leaving his gun down at his side but ready. "We'll go through at the same time." He hesitated, then added, "First sign of something wrong--"
"Get down and get out of the way," Daniel finished, and though his fingers were clenched again around his zat, Jack decided there was nothing else for it and stepped through.
XXXXX
3 May 1999; SGC, Earth; 1330 hrs
"Hey!" Jack shouted when they stepped into the SGC. His eyes sought the control room and immediately found Carter and Teal'c standing next to Hammond. "What do you think you're doing, leaving without us?"
"Uh, Jack," Daniel said nervously from next to him. "I think maybe you should...not wave your gun around."
"I'm not waving..." he started, then trailed off when he noticed the weapons pointed at them. At him, mostly, because...well, there was the gun in his hand, while Daniel's zat was lowered and pointing at the ground, finger held obviously away from the trigger. "What's with all the ordinance?"
"Airman, relieve them of their weapons," Hammond's voice said.
"Oh, c'mon," Jack complained, angry now that he could clearly see the rest of his team watching and doing nothing. They were the ones who'd goddamned left, after all, and what was that about, anyway? If they'd been hurt or something, he could understand, but this?
Except there was a big security force there and a wide-eyed civilian standing next to him, so... He carefully turned his weapon away and held up his hands.
"Uh, what's...?" Daniel said, tensing as someone approached him.
"It's okay," Jack lied. "There must be some misunderstanding." A coolly efficient marine took the pistol out of his hand, the bayonet from his belt, and a few more explosive toys from various pockets.
"Teal'c, Sam," Daniel called, standing frozen as someone took his zat and searched him. "What happened?"
"Daniel, shut up a minute," Jack asked as calmly as he could while restraining himself from attempting to slap searching hands away from his person.
Carter gave Teal'c a meaningful look, covering the microphone with her hand as Teal'c said something to her and Hammond.
The general nodded, looking supremely annoyed--what the hell was he doing looking annoyed, anyway?--and ordered, "Take them to holding cells."
"What?" Daniel said as he was steered toward the door while Jack was still being patted down on the ramp. "Wait, wait, but..."
"For crying out loud!" Jack yelled at the window. "At least let us stay together! It's the least you could do after that stunt you pulled out there. You don't think he's scared enough already?"
"I'm not scared," Daniel snapped back immediately.
"Okay," Jack said.
"I'm not!"
"Do as he says," Hammond said into the microphone.
...x...
"I've been thinking," Daniel said after someone had tossed them into MRIs, taken blood samples, and locked them into a room.
"Yeah?" Jack said.
"Maybe something affected Sam and Teal'c's minds, and that's why they left and didn't come back. Maybe they attacked us."
"None of the weapons we were carrying would've felt like that," Jack said, really hoping his team hadn't been possessed by any alien something. "And a lot of stuff wouldn't even affect Teal'c, and Fraiser would've found something, and there were still no tracks but ours."
"They could have walked in our tracks from where they were to where we were and back," Daniel suggested.
"Wrong weapons," Jack reminded him. "And wrong shoe size. And why would anyone do that?"
"Okay," Daniel said, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. "Then maybe the crystals did something to us."
Jack stopped pacing at looked at him. "You're sitting on the floor again."
Daniel blinked upward at him. "You're speaking in non sequiturs again."
Throwing his hand into the air, he said, "You're the one suggesting that a rock attacked us."
"I didn't see anyone else around."
"So it was obviously the rock."
Daniel sighed. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes instead of answering.
"Hey," Jack said, bending over him and suddenly very aware of his own still-present headache and the shivering that hadn't quite subsided yet in his muscles, which he was thinking now was not from adrenaline but rather from whatever had shocked them and knocked them out. "You okay?"
"I'm okay!" Daniel said exasperatedly, eyes snapping open. "Stop asking me that."
"I just want to make sure your brain's not scrambled. More than it already was, I mean."
"Well, it's not," he grumbled, then scowled at Jack's snort.
The cell was nice and neat in that bare, don't-give-them-anything-that-could-be-a-weapon sort of way. It was like the room where Teal'c used to stay, when they'd thought the Jaffa was a dangerous enemy. There was a chair in the room, but Jack really preferred being on his feet right now and Daniel was alternating between staring at his feet and coming up with wild theories that were rapidly becoming tinged with alarm.
"Jinx," Jack said, regaining Daniel's attention. "My own personal jinx."
"Oh, come on," Daniel complained, but he looked annoyed now instead of mildly panicked.
"I'm just saying, look at the record yourself."
"This wasn't my fault! Maybe SG-1 is a jinx for me," he retorted. "I take most of my missions with other teams, and they always turn out perfectly normal. And I've been thinking."
"Will you give it a rest?" Jack said.
"What should I do, then, just sit here?" Daniel's posture was casual and his expression annoyed, but he was watching Jack like a hawk, as he often did when he was unsure about something.
"Fine. What are you thinking this time?"
"Do you remember when you went to P3R-233?"
It took a second--because not everyone kept a copy of the Stargate database in his head--and then Jack frowned. "Yeah," he said slowly. "With the mirror thing."
"And the person from the alternate reality came through it. Maybe--"
"Ah!" Jack raised a hand. "No."
"I'm just saying, maybe we're in--"
Jack pointed a warning finger at him. "Don't say it."
"Alternate reality," he said mulishly.
Jinxed. "Dammit, Daniel!"
"What?"
"We're not in an alternate reality," Jack said.
Daniel looked at the camera, too, then lowered his voice, even though Jack knew whoever was watching could probably still hear. "Jack, they put us in a cell. Why would they do that if they're...you know. The real them? Our them?"
"No."
"Jack!"
"Daniel, listen to me. Our IDCs worked, so there's a me and a you in this reality, and if this were an alternate reality, then where are the other we? No. Nuh-uh. We are exactly where we belong. Well, not in a cell," he amended. "You know what I mean."
Daniel huffed loudly but slumped back grumpily in concession. "Okay, then how about this." Jack sighed. Daniel ignored him and went on. "Something attacked us, but it also attacked Sam and Teal'c, and when they woke up, we didn't answer them, so they left, thinking we weren't there anymore, and went to find backup."
"It attacked us?" Jack repeated.
"Sorry for not assigning a gender to my pronouns," Daniel grumbled. "I thought I saw something in the crystal just before I got hit, remember? Maybe it was an automatic defense...system...thing. I don't know. But we know there are a lot of technologies that crystals are essential for."
Jack didn't really want to try to argue that, so he said instead, "You just ended your sentence with a preposition."
Daniel's eyebrows crunched down in irritation and he snapped, "Well, why shouldn't I?"
"Because...you're not supposed to."
"See, see, there, you see!" Daniel said, leaping to his feet and glaring now. "You just ripped apart an infinitive and threw away the half of it with any lexical information! And I'm not making fun of you, am I, because it's not grammatically incorrect in English, just like ending sentences with prepositions isn't always grammatically incorrect in English. That's just the, the...the stuffy grammar that some people prescribe, without taking into account the--"
"Oh, God," Jack groaned, horrified that he'd actually been driven bored and stupid enough to instigate an argument about grammar with Daniel. He dragged the chair into the corner so he could stand on it and yell into the camera, "Get us the hell out of here!"
The door opened.
"Fast service," he said from on top of the chair.
"Colonel?" General Hammond said.
"General?" Jack replied, stepping down.
The general gave each of them a hard look, then nodded to the men guarding the door. "There's something you need to see."
Carter was behind Hammond, and, once they'd walked out, Jack saw Teal'c waiting, as well. She wore a confused, guilty expression on her face as they passed her; Teal'c's expression was hard, though, and both of them took up the rear, like guards.
"If you are who you say you are," Hammond said, "then I apologize."
Nothing good ever followed sentences like that.
As the time they were marched to the briefing room, the monitor on the table didn't register until Daniel said, "When was that? I've never been in one of the cells before with Robert."
Jack nudged him aside enough to see the monitor, too, where a Daniel was sitting on the floor of a holding cell, Dr. Rothman standing inside the door with an armed airman next to him. "This is a live feed," he said, seeing the timestamp before turning to the others in the room. "All due respect, sir...who the hell is that?"
"We came back through the 'gate with you and Daniel, sir," Carter said, then winced. "Well, obviously not you two...but that person you're watching right now is one of the people who came back with us. We thought they were you."
"Maybe this is an alternate reality," Daniel mused. "Wait, but then, how do you know we're who we say we are? Maybe you brought back the right people, and we might be the imposters."
Jack ground his teeth together. "Daniel!"
"It's a valid question," he defended.
"Well, that's why we took so long to let you out," Carter admitted. "Not the...alternate reality thing--that doesn't make any sense"--Jack shot Daniel a smug look--"but we had to be sure you were you. Now we know that whatever that is..."--she pointed at the monitor--"it isn't human. It's showing up as a big, amorphous splotch on all the scans we could perform on it. We stopped, because it seemed to be in pain, and we figured that knowing it wasn't human was good enough to let you out, at least."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "We also observed the manner of your interaction while in the holding cell. It conformed with our expectations."
Since they'd spent most of their stay in the cell arguing about grammar and militant rocks, Jack thought there was probably an insult in there somewhere, but he decided not to touch it. They weren't locked up anymore, so he was going to take that and keep quiet.
Carter shook her head. "We did think that you...that the other 'O'Neill' and 'Daniel' were acting strangely. Dr. Rothman expressed similar concerns, and I sent security up to contain this guy just before you came back from the planet. Dr. Rothman just went there now to try to figure out what he wants." She fiddled with a remote until they could hear what was happening inside the cell.
"...they here?" Not-Daniel said. "I was looking for my family."
"Who are you," Rothman answered, "and why are you impersonating--"
"Skaara!" Not-Daniel called from the monitor, standing up and trying to look out the door as the real Daniel in the briefing room flinched in surprise. "Tano'ta, sinu'ai? Sha'uri!"
"Stop it," Rothman snapped. "Dan--whatever you are. What did you do to him?"
"To Skaara? I saw him on a ship. But there was a bomb. Sha'uri said he--"
"No, I'm talking about Daniel Jackson. And Colonel O'Neill. What did you do to them?" Rothman asked. Not-Daniel shook his head, as if confused, and backed away.
"We did not wish to hurt them."
Rothman looked at the camera and shrugged.
Carter turned the sound back off. "Wow," Daniel said into the following quiet. He cleared his throat. "Okay."
"At least he's not denying he's an imposter," she commented.
"Where's...the other guy that you thought was me?" Jack said. "Why isn't he locked up?"
"I've just sent someone to find him," Hammond said. "I want to know how they got onto this base. Captain, I thought you said there was no sign of life on that planet."
Daniel held up a finger. "Well..."
"Don't start about homicidal crystals," Jack told him.
"There was nothing else there," he insisted. "And they disappeared just as we got attacked."
"General," Carter said, "those crystals give off energy in some form, and they were all we saw on the planet. It's possible that they're more than they seem. I'd like to take another look at them, and maybe it would be a good idea for someone to help question...him." She nodded at Not-Daniel on the monitor, where Rothman was making a valiant effort but being generally unsuccessful in extracting useful information.
The general nodded. "All right. Teal'c, I'd like you and Colonel O'Neill to find out what that being is doing here. Captain Carter, tell us immediately if you discover anything with those crystals. Mr. Jackson, perhaps you can assist her."
"Yes, sir," she said, immediately starting for her lab and filling Daniel in as they went. "All we've been able to determine is that the crystals were destroyed by high-energy blasts. Now..."
Jack glanced at Teal'c, then led the way to the holding cell.
Next chapter: " Unity, Part II"