Brotherhood (2a/27)
Title: Brotherhood ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1 Chapter2a-- 2b
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Jacob
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25 August 1999; Archaeology Office, SGC; 0800 hrs
"Well," Jack said once Lieutenants Barber and Astor had gone, leaving Teal'c, General Carter, and Jack alone in the room with Daniel. "Good first impression."
Daniel tried not to look annoyed, because it wasn't the first time someone hadn't taken him seriously, and looking annoyed wouldn't help convince anyone to start doing so. Instead, he sat down behind his desk, making sure his body language made it clear that this was, in fact, his desk in what was his office in Robert's absence. "Sam mentioned Setesh, General Carter?"
Sam's father was still looking at him oddly, but he answered, "I don't usually go by 'General' these days. Jacob's fine."
Daniel nodded politely behind a sip of coffee, because the man was Sam's father, and that certainly deserved some politeness. "Jacob. Can I help with Setesh somehow?"
"The Tok'ra are seeking his current location," Teal'c said. Jacob didn't say anything more and seemed to be waiting, as if to see whether Daniel at least recognized the name.
Daniel tapped a pen idly against his hand, stopping only when he hit the cut he'd carelessly gotten in that morning's scenario. He'd done some research on Setesh almost a year ago, when he'd been looking for mentions of Kheb or the gods involved in the myth--bits of information had caught his attention, though not enough to warrant following up. Still... "I'll bet no one ever looked on Earth," he finally said.
Jack raised his eyebrows, and Daniel knew he'd guessed right.
"Are you just saying that?" General Carter--Jacob--asked, looking more interested now. "Or is there an actual reason to believe he might be here?"
"Well, I had a theory last year," Daniel started, then amended, "Not a theory. An impression, at best. Anyway, we were busy with Kheb at the time, and we didn't have any solid evidence of a murderous tyrant trying to take over, so we never pursued it further. I still have the research, though."
"The Tok'ra believe Setesh never left Earth when the Stargate closed behind Ra after the uprising in Giza," Jacob told him. "The problem was, I figured looking for a Goa'uld on Earth, among six billion humans, would be like..."
"Looking for a needle in a haystack," Jack said. Daniel knew him well enough to recognize a hint of pride in his voice and knew the military environment well enough not to let the recognition show. He had to prove competence now and not let overconfidence color Jacob's already-questionable opinion of him. "But if you have a clue, that haystack might've just gotten a bit smaller."
"Why do the Tok'ra believe he's on Earth?" Daniel asked.
"The Tok'ra's record of Setesh ends when the Earth's Stargate was buried about five thousand years ago," Jacob said. "So..."
"Wait," Daniel said in surprise, coming quickly to his feet. "The Tok'ra's record? What record?"
"The Tok'ra council has been taking a Goa'uld census of sorts throughout the galaxy," Jacob explained. "They've been doing it basically as long as they've been fighting the System Lords."
"You keep track of the Goa'uld? You know where each one is at a given time, or, or at least which planets he or she rules? So you could...if we asked, you could tell us--"
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c interrupted, and Daniel shifted his gaze from Jacob's confused expression to his friend. "The Tok'ra keep a record of the Goa'uld System Lords."
Oh, he thought, but demanded, "Only the System Lords?"
"Pretty much," Jacob said, his brow furrowed. "There are thousands of Goa'uld--too many to try to keep up with. If we can take out the System Lords, the rest should be, more or less, easy pickings. What, don't tell me you guys are actively looking for one of the minor Goa'uld?"
But Jack knew what he was thinking now, too, and asked, "You wouldn't happen to know of one named Klorel, would you? Or Amaunet?"
Jacob dipped his head, and when he raised it again, his eyes glowed.
Daniel sucked in a breath--he'd had a nightmare like this once--but forced himself not to step back. "You're Selmak," he said.
"Yes," Selmak said. Daniel shivered slightly and tried to hide it, but he was certain the sharp eyes saw it. "You are very interested in Apophis."
"You know who they are, then," Daniel said, daring to hope, just a little. "Klorel and Amaunet?"
There was a long silence in which Daniel knew he should really just start looking for Setesh, because the entire SGC was going insane with stress these days, and if there was a Goa'uld on Earth, they had to focus, but... He pushed back the chill that Selmak's voice gave him and stood still while the Tok'ra assessed him. "You are the Tau'ri of whom Lantash spoke," Selmak finally said. "The boy who prayed for Apophis as he died."
Interesting--and perhaps shrewd--that Martouf tended to speak when dealing with the Tau'ri, while Lantash, though more rash, took the lead among other Tok'ra. Did Jacob and Selmak do the same? How much of the trust between them was a careful game meant to appease while still holding something back?
But they could discuss Tok'ra-human politics later. "I prayed for his host," Daniel corrected stiffly. "And I ask now for my brother and sister, the hosts of Klorel and Amaunet."
Selmak lowered his gaze, and Jacob Carter resurfaced. "Sorry to hear that," Jacob said, after a pause. "Unfortunately, we haven't been able to keep tabs on them, except as they're pertinent to Apophis. We haven't heard of either of them in over a year."
"You don't know where they are now," Daniel said, nodding, looking down and sitting again.
"No, 'fraid not," Jacob said, but solemn now, not joking or scornful anymore. "Klorel seems to be on his own, and last we heard, Amaunet was still with Heru-ur. Our operatives in his army were killed on a planet called Cimmeria, and we haven't been able to get someone else on the inside yet."
Jack grimaced behind Jacob's back. That had been their fault, albeit accidentally.
"Okay." Daniel cleared his throat and logged into his computer. "Sorry for the interruption. Um. Right, Setesh." A silence met him, and he said, "Do you want me to show you what we found?"
"Yeah, how d'you figure he's on Earth?" Jack said, coming around the desk to look over his shoulder.
"I don't remember how I got to it last time, but let me see if I can..."
Daniel pushed away from the desk again and crouched to reach a lower shelf, where there were binders full of things they'd found at some point and thought interesting but hadn't been able to follow up. He extracted the correct binder and paged through until the word Setesh caught his eye, then returned to his desk.
"Here," he said, opening to the information they'd printed out from an obscure site.
"Cult of Setesh," Jack read off the page. "Sweet."
"You see," Daniel explained, "last year, I found that there have been religious groups revolving around a mysterious figure named Seth. Or Setesh. Or Sutekh, Sut, Seti--"
"Yadda," Jack said, motioning with a hand for him to go on.
Daniel made a face but went on, "For a long time, since at least 1000 B.C., and probably before that, this religion has existed in some form or another. This cult"--he flipped to the first page in the set--"lasted about a hundred and fifty years. And then this one for only a couple of decades, and this one almost three hundred years...it goes on like that over three thousand years. But the last trace I found was a cult around Stonehenge whose leader was named Seth, and it was ended in 1822."
Jack pointed at the last page he'd stopped on. "What is that?"
"The symbol used by the cult, I suppose," Daniel said, tilting his head at the animal. "Tau'ri Egyptologists think it's imaginary--they call it the typhonic beast. Apparently, it never existed on Earth, but it definitely exists on parts of Abydos. Well, it doesn't look exactly like this, but we call it ron n'sutekh, Setesh's animal, and it looks reasonably similar."
"The animal exists on certain desert planets, and that does looks a little like Setesh's brand," Jacob said, coming around as well to look. Then he blinked and looked at Daniel. "Did you say 'Abydos'?"
Daniel nodded but didn't elaborate. "Anyway, I remember something odd...um...here. The members of the last cult were killed, not by the Christians who had been attacking them but rather by themselves. They slit their own throats as they came under more suspicion, but no one ever found Seth's body. Now, this account is probably second-hand, at least, and sensationalized, but since these cults seem to have been secret organizations, we probably won't get anything more reliable. It might be what you're looking for."
"That sounds possible," Jacob acknowledged. "The MO's right: false religion, devout followers, leaves bodies behind..."
Sam walked back in then, looking surprised to hear her father's words. "Don't tell me you found something? Already?"
"Not sure," Jacob said. "But I think maybe we have, Sam."
"But see, I'm not so sure about that," Daniel said, swiveling around in his chair to face them. "If Setesh has been on Earth for the last five thousand years, why hasn't he tried to take over, or at least looked for the Stargate?"
"Setesh attempted to overthrow Ra," Teal'c said. "He did not succeed."
"Came pretty close, though," Jacob added. "Setesh was high on the food chain, but when Ra won, the other System Lords sided with him and put a price on Setesh's head. Then, the Tok'ra and the other System Lords all wanted to kill him."
"So he's not trying to take over Earth," Daniel said; "he's hiding here among the humans. And that's why he hasn't..." He trailed off, thinking. "But I lost track of him after the early 1800s. Surely he's done something since then."
"No more cults floating around?" Jack asked.
"Not that I found," he said, skimming through the page again and trying another quick search. "I can keep looking, now that I know it's worth trying to find. But..."
"What?"
"The last cult was thought of as being full of extreme zealots. People were wary of them, and then they all killed themselves. That's kind of...aberrant, right?"
"Y'think?" Jack said.
Jacob was frowning at him again. "Which means they might've caught someone's attention. You want to use records from Earth's law enforcement agencies."
"Uh...sure," Daniel said, guessing that law enforcement would probably be involved if people were killing themselves. "I've never dealt with other government organizations besides us. Can we ask the law enforcement, uh, agencies, or... How does that work?"
Sam shrugged. "We can get a look at US federal agencies' work from here, to some extent, so we can see if anyone's caught the scent."
"What if he's not in the US?"
"We've got to start somewhere," Jack pointed out. "If there's an investigation going on that has anything to do with this country, the CIA will probably know, and we can find it."
"Huh," Daniel said, impressed. "That's...chel nak. How do I do that?"
"I'll show you how to get onto the classified net, and you can go through the search yourself," Sam offered. "I need to configure this unit to get on the network, though. You mind?"
Daniel stood to leave her the chair and full access to the laptop. "No, of course not."
"This'll only take a few minutes," she said as she began to work.
"There's something else," Jack was saying to Jacob. "In fact, this would explain a lot. You know how we had Hathor's sarcophagus at Area 51?"
"Yeah, George told me it got stolen," Jacob said grimly. "How the hell do you lose a sarcophagus?"
"It wasn't us," Jack pointed out. "It was the NID and the idiots stationed at Nellis."
"But now you think that was Setesh," Daniel said in interest. SG-1 had been put in charge of that investigation; Daniel wasn't an active part of that, so what he knew extended just barely beyond the rumors circulating around base.
"Why don't you tell me what happened," Jacob said.
Jack sighed. "Two weeks ago, an unauthorized, unmarked aircraft landed at Nellis Base. About thirty minutes later, an alarm sounded in the area where the sarcophagus was being kept. Long story short, there were a few explosions that left fragments of what Teal'c says could be Goa'uld bombs, and the sarcophagus disappeared. It looks like all witnesses or persons involved are dead. The plane itself was later found in the middle of the Pacific; it was probably destroyed before it hit the water. We've been looking for weeks, but we had nothing to go on, short of scouring the world for a giant box."
Daniel heard Sam's frustrated huff from where she sat. Even with Jack's instincts, Sam's ability to pull information from just about anything electronic, and Teal'c's familiarity with Goa'uld devices, whoever had taken the sarcophagus had been careful to destroy everything--and everyone--that could possibly be a clue of any kind. Of course, knowing that there was a Goa'uld somewhere on Earth put everything in a different light.
"Does this happen often?" Jacob asked incredulously. "Unauthorized people getting into Area 51 without even being stopped by security?"
"Now, that's where it gets more interesting," Jack said. "Not only did the security forces let the attackers through, the guards' bodies were later found in the sarcophagus room, still holding their weapons. In fact, a few of the personnel inside were killed by those weapons."
There was a pause as Jacob took that in, and then he said, "You think it was an inside job--the NID was in on it."
"That was our assumption," Teal'c said. "It would not have been the first time that some members of the NID were involved in illicit activities."
"It would've explained the use of Goa'uld technology, too," Sam put in, not looking up. "No one has access to more Goa'uld devices than the NID, and the sarcophagus was right there. We've been thinking that it was probably a rogue operation and that that was why there was such a delay in sounding a proper alert."
"But now, if Setesh was involved..." Jacob said.
"It still doesn't explain how they got the NID to help them," Jack said. "Those guys were clean--they could've been rogue agents, I guess, but I doubt they had contact with a Goa'uld without anyone noticing. And if Setesh tried the steal the sarcophagus, how did he know it was there in the first place?"
"Unless someone inside Nellis was helping them," Jacob said.
"But if that's the case, there's another question," Sam added. "Why now, after the NID's had the sarcophagus for over a year?"
"Perhaps Setesh has been aware of that the entire time," Teal'c said, "and has simply waited until he was able to execute such an elaborate plan."
Jacob nodded in agreement. "And he would've needed someone who knew where things were kept," he continued. "He was using the people at the facility. You guys took out Hathor, right? You know there are Goa'uld substances that exert some degree of mind control."
Jack grimaced. "So now there's a Goa'uld out there who can control NID agents' minds and got his hands on a working sarcophagus. You know, I kind of liked it better when we thought it was just dirty NID guys."
"If it was Setesh, we need to shut him down as soon as possible and get that sarcophagus back," Sam said, standing. "Okay, Daniel, I'm done."
"What is... Is this like a normal search engine?" Daniel asked, looking over the window on his screen.
"Basically. You should be able to see current and past cases, keeping in mind that other agencies also keep some--or a lot--of their work under wraps," she said. "Especially for open investigations, sometimes it's hard to get all the information, but if we get a lead, we can go right to the source agency and try to get more facts. So, uh...are you good here?"
"Hm?" he said absently, trying to decide what keywords would be most likely to lead to Seth/Setesh/Sutekh... He saw Sam glance at her father out of the corner of her eye and said, "Oh, yes, of course. I'll start looking--thank you, Sam."
"Thank you, kiddo," Jacob said, ruffling Daniel's hair as he left to catch up with his daughter. No one ever did that, so Daniel was too surprised to do more than blink in confusion before Jacob disappeared out the door. Jack smirked at him, and he could have sworn Teal'c was laughing a little, too, silently.
"Look at this. I leave you alone for half an hour and you're drinking coffee," Jack said, making Daniel stop with his mug halfway to his lips.
"If you hadn't scheduled those two lieutenants' testing for 0600, maybe I'd be more awake right now," Daniel said, grimacing when he saw the results of his first search attempt. Okay, so 'SETH' might have been a little too broad as a search query.
"Excuses," Jack said, but he took a cup from the shelf and poured some coffee for himself, too. Teal'c raised a disdainful eyebrow at them both.
...x...
"Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives," Daniel said when he'd finally found the connection he'd been looking for. He skimmed over the rest of the information. "That's really the name of an agency?" It seemed an unnecessarily unwieldy name.
"That's your friendly neighborhood ATF," Jack confirmed, reading over his shoulder. "You're sure this is our Goa'uld?"
"Not sure, but I think I've gone as far as I can go from here."
"Airman," Jack called out the door. "Get the Carters up here, would you?"
"Um, Jack," Daniel said, chewing his lip.
"Daniel?"
"This Seth has nearly fifty followers, according to their intelligence. And if it's the same Seth, then they'll probably respond to a threat with violence. His previous cults committed mass suicide when threatened, and his people weren't afraid to die when they stole the sarcophagus."
Jack was giving him a look now but said, "Fanatics in secret cults are complicated that way."
"Well, you'll need something subtle."
"Daniel, just...what are you talking about?"
"I think sneaking in would be the best way," he said. "Attack Seth himself before he can do anything in return, instead of storming his...his compound or camp or...whatever stronghold he has."
"Would've been my plan," Jack agreed, narrowing his eyes. "And...?"
Sam and Jacob walked in then as Daniel said, "I'm just... You have to be careful, that's all."
"What's going on?" Sam asked.
Teal'c answered, "Daniel Jackson believes we should infiltrate Seth's group of religious followers in order to eliminate him without harming his followers."
"Sounds like a plan to me," Jacob said, and then, "Wait, you found him?"
"There's a cult around Seattle," Jack said. "Seth Fargough."
"...who is said to have magical powers and healing abilities," Daniel added, "and who sometimes kills members of the cult in front of the group, and who has his followers heavily armed and guarding him. Oh, and his eyes glow."
"Nice," Jacob said, looking reluctantly satisfied. "So...is there a problem?"
"No, no problem," Daniel said, only slightly lying. "Uh, who's going in? Of the people in this room, Teal'c and Jacob can't blend in because Seth will sense their symbiotes..."
"Me and Carter," Jack said.
"Even I can sense Sam's residual naquadah if I'm close enough," Daniel pointed out, ignoring the curious look that drew from Jacob. To turn attention away from the statement--it wasn't important just now--he added, "Selmak can too, right?"
Jacob gave his daughter a sideways glance. "Yeah, it's not that hard to tell if we're standing like this. It's not strong, but if Seth gets close, it's a dead giveaway that she's involved with something that has to do with Goa'uld."
"So Sam, Teal'c, and Jacob can't go, which leaves Jack, and..." He cut himself off before he could say 'the report says the average new recruit is at least ten or twenty years younger than you, Jack,' and settled on, "...you're only one person. It might be good to have an extra person with you to...what's the word...brainstorm. Make sure whoever sneaks in has the best chance."
"I say we take a look and see what we're dealing with," Jacob cut in. "Let's make sure this guy is even our Goa'uld, and then we'll decide who's sneaking into what."
"'We' meaning 'not you,'" Jack said, pointing at Daniel.
"Jack, my research found him," he said, indignant, and while he was aware that he'd often looked things up for other people to complete in the field, he had been doing a lot more than sitting behind a desk for months now.
"This isn't a research trip," Jack said, as if he might not know that.
"I'm already approved for some fieldwork, and I'm a few assessments away from being approved for first contact," Daniel retorted. "I'm better trained and more experienced than any other civilian here. If this is done right, no one needs to get hurt."
Jack shook his head. "When's the last time we went on a mission that went right?"
Frustrated, Daniel pointed out, "When Robert's out, I'm supposed to make sure the teams have the right cultural specialists when needed, and I don't have anyone else I can send with you right now who's as familiar with the mythology and the information pertaining to--"
"I want to be out of here and on the way to find Seth in two hours," Jack cut him off. "You want to come, you'd better convince General Hammond by then."
"Fine," Daniel said, and left for the general's office.
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"I can't believe you convinced Hammond," Jack grumbled once they were on the plane.
"Colonel, he's just here to help provide insight," Sam said placatingly. Daniel might have complained about being talked about in the third person, but he wasn't going to push his luck if General Hammond was willing to let him join them, just in case mythology became useful.
To Daniel, Jack said, "Once we land, we're dealing with people outside the program."
"I know, Jack."
"So that means Jacob is General Carter, no one mentions the word 'symbiote,' you say you're Air Force and nothing more, and you do not speak in Goa'uld or Abydonian or any language that people don't speak today on Earth. In fact, stick entirely to English. Got it?"
"Yes," he said, suppressing the urge to ask if it was all right to speak a modern Earth language like Dutch.
"And listen to Teal'c."
Daniel blinked. "To...Teal'c? Okay. Then do I have to listen to you?"
"Yes," Jack said. "And to General Carter."
Daniel looked at Sam. "Uh. What about...Captain Carter?"
"Listen to her, too."
"Then why didn't you just say--?"
"Daniel...!"
"Okay!" Affronted, he added, "I wouldn't do anything to endanger all those innocent people in there. You know that, Jack."
Jack nodded curtly. "Just don't endanger yourself, either."
Jacob--General Carter out loud now, not Jacob--spoke up sharply, in the voice that made clear who was the general. "Is this gonna be a problem?" He pointed between the two of them. "Because I will find a couple of feds to sit on you if there's gonna be a problem, Daniel."
"No, sir," Daniel said, deciding to err on the side of deference to avoid having anyone sit on him. "I understand the stakes when we're in the field."
General Carter raised his eyebrows at Jack, who said, "He does. He's good--we're good."
"All right, then," Jacob said. "We need to know how Seth is controlling his followers."
"Mind-control, you said," Jack said. "The reports from people who've been deprogrammed make it seem like they were under the influence of something more than just head games." Daniel nodded in agreement and looked back over the notes he'd brought with him.
"We need a closer look," Jacob said, "but the Goa'uld have developed a number of substances that could do that."
"Such as the substance that Hathor used on the people at Area 51," Teal'c suggested.
Sam shook her head. "That wasn't particularly strong. It only worked on people who responded to female pheromones, for one, and there's a reason such a small strike force was able to overtake them all while they were dazed. No, whatever Seth's using, it's more than that."
"There were some 'deprogrammed,'" Jacob said. "Do we know how?"
Daniel skimmed over the notes. "Apparently, psychotherapy alone wasn't enough. One thing that helped was...ECT? I don't, uh...I don't know what that is."
"Electroconvulsive therapy," Sam provided. "Interesting."
Daniel felt his eyebrows rise, remembering that he'd just spent the morning pretending to be injured from electric shock. "Electro-what? They use that for therapy here?"
"Apparently, it works," Jack pointed out, tapping his notes.
"It can be done under controlled conditions," she explained, "but it's possible that the followers were implanted with some kind of technology that burned out with enough current while the shock wasn't enough to kill the human victim."
Jack made a face but said, "I think someone would've noticed a machine inside them. Even stuff as small as nanites shows up in your blood."
"Nish'ta?" Jacob said.
"Bless," Jack said.
Jacob gave him a look. "Nish'ta is an organism that infects the tissues of the body, like a virus. It can be aerosolized and inhaled, and it makes the mind pliable. While it's very strong, it can be killed by enough electrical current without permanently harming the victim."
"Well, what if it's not that?" Daniel asked. "We don't want to...shock people half to death and then find out that's not the cure at all." He tried not to shiver at the thought--electric shock seemed like something that should come out of a weapon, not a doctor's tool. Still, he'd learned enough to keep an open mind--Tau'ri medical technology was advanced beyond what he understood. If Sam said it was legitimate, it probably was.
"That's why we do recon first. We wait and see before we jump the gun," Jacob said.
Daniel nodded, not wanting to say anything else that might make him look less competent than he already probably seemed to someone like Sam's father.
A moment later, looking curious, Jacob asked him, "You're from a naquadah-rich planet? You mentioned Abydos. That's Ra's planet, isn't it?"
"That's where Ra fell," he answered, lifting his chin. "We Abydons are tok Ra, perhaps even more than the Tok'ra are."
"Cute," Jacob said, but he looked satisfied with the answer. "Well, okay, then."
Daniel watched him curiously, almost expecting him to do something odd to show he wasn't completely only human anymore, then blurted, "What is it like?"
Jacob raised his eyebrows. "What is what... You mean being a Tok'ra?" Daniel nodded. "Well, physically, I'm a lot healthier than I was."
"Your cancer is gone," Daniel said, because Sam had told him that. "Did it hurt?"
"The blending?" Jacob asked. "Well, there's the whole...burrowing into soft tissue thing, and Selmak and I were both in pretty sorry shape at the time. But Selmak made everything as easy as possible. And that's the cool part--you heal fast." He paused, his gaze becoming unfocused, then smirked. "One of the cool parts. I'm smarter than Sam, now, too."
"Oh, please," Sam muttered, but Daniel could see her hiding a smile.
Daniel nodded, tapping his fingers against his armrest. "Okay. But it can hurt, if the...the symbiote isn't trying to make it easy on the host? Like...if the host were unwilling?"
Jacob's smirk faded. "Yeah. The Tok'ra don't like to take unwilling hosts, but it's harder if you resist. Yeah, Danny, it can be painful."
Before he could respond to the childhood nickname that no one used anymore, the plane touched ground with a small bump, and Jack took over. "Okay, kids--and General--let's go."
"We'll go to the local authorities first," Jacob said. "They'll know where this guy is, at least, even if they aren't the ones taking point on the investigation. And we need to make sure no one's gonna be stepping on our toes while we're here."
Continued in Part b...