Archaeology (16b/30)
Title: Archaeology ( 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 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7a-- 7b Chapter8 Chapter9a-- 9b Chapter10 Chapter11 Chapter12a-- 12b Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b Chapter16a
23 January 2001; Indoor Shooting Range, SGC; 1300 hrs
"I don't know if I feel comfortable with this," Daniel said.
Jack snorted. "Neither do I, but we're not going to '888 without it. Come on, load up again." Daniel glanced to either side at Teal'c and Carter's lanes, then obeyed. Even Teal'c, who still preferred his staff weapon most of the time, was going in with a gun this time. "We've practiced with MP5s."
"Yeah," Daniel said, slotting the magazine into his gun and pushing it into place. "Done."
"Again," Jack said. While he repeated the process, he continued, "The P90 will give you a little more range than what you got with an MP5, but what we're most interested in is the armor-piercing rounds. You'll get higher velocity with these, higher rate of fire, and less recoil than with the MP5's rounds... Now, obviously, that's still more recoil than you're used to with an M9, but you've got your shoulder to brace it against, too, so you've got to make sure you're steady and balanced."
"Right."
"Are you on single-shot?" Jack asked.
"I..." Daniel said. "Where's the, uh..."
Yeah. This was going to be interesting. There was a reason why civilians weren't usually supposed to carry anything more than a sidearm. Then again, civilians didn't usually do what SGC field personnel did, either.
"Here it is," Daniel added, his fingers on the dial under the trigger. "Um, it's on safety now, but I don't know which position is single-shot."
Jack sighed. "Okay," he said slowly. "Then look at it. While it's on safety."
Daniel looked nervously at him, then tilted his head cautiously to bring it level to the trigger.
Frustrated, Jack clapped a restraining hand on the gun. "For cryin' out loud! What is it today?"
Daniel flinched. "Naturu," he muttered, taking a breath and looking quickly at the dial.
"You've never been this jumpy around guns before," Jack said, exasperated, signaling Carter and Teal'c to lower their aim for a moment. "Come on, I've seen you do target practice with submachine guns, and there's no way this is about MP5s versus P90s. What the hell's wrong?"
"Well," Daniel said, twisting the dial firmly to single-shot, "usually I'm not distracted by the image of wounding or killing a friend with armor-piercing rounds from an automatic weapon."
Jack forced himself to lower his voice. "You're not going to shoot one of us. No one's even remotely in your way, and you're better than--"
"I'm talking about Chaka!"
"No one here wants to shoot your friend," Jack lied. "But you're going to learn how to defend yourself against an Unas, or you're not going to '888 at all."
Daniel nodded and carefully considered the floor. "Okay," he finally said, raising his gun and setting it against his shoulder.
"Feet," Jack said. Daniel widened his stance automatically and stilled, staring at the target. His body knew how to stand and hold a gun even if his brain didn't want to, and given the places Daniel's brain went sometimes, Jack was okay with that. It was possible to think too much sometimes. "All right--ready!" Carter and Teal'c raised their guns again. "Single shots. Fire!"
...x...
29 January 2001; Briefing Room, SGC; 1600 hrs
"We know for certain that your P90s are able to penetrate the skin of an Unas at short range," Jack said, looking around the table at his team and the newly formed SG-11. "We also know that not all of our bullets did penetrate, and, even bleeding from about ten bullet wounds to the chest, a strong male Unas at full health was still alive enough to keep fighting."
"If you shoot," Carter added, "and the Unas doesn't stop coming at you, try to put distance between it and yourself, or you might not get a chance to try again. They're faster than we are, but you have a better chance if you don't stand around and wait for them to bowl you over."
"Do we know anything about their vulnerable points, sir?" asked Captain Lorne, second-in-command on the new team.
"Not a whole lot," Jack said. "So aim for whatever you can hit--like I said, the chest is armored but not invulnerable. The neck is apparently soft enough for Goa'uld penetration, but it's a smaller target, too, and a target that the Unas tend to guard. If nothing else, with enough injuries, an Unas will die eventually."
"But don't shoot unless you have to," Daniel said.
"Daniel," Jack said, "if an Unas tries to harm anyone, we will defend ourselves."
"And what happens when you kill one member of the clan?" Daniel said. "Kill one Unas and have fifteen more running after you?"
"So if one of those things is about to kill one of my men, I should stand by and do nothing to avoid aggravating them?" Edwards said.
"We don't anticipate that'll happen, Colonel," Carter said.
"And you could ask them not to kill you," Daniel added. "They're not amoral beasts."
Edwards looked like he wanted to snap something back but instead turned uncertainly to Jack. "You think he's joking," Jack said. "He's not joking."
"Daniel will provide a list of words and phrases he was able to learn during his...stay with the Unas," Carter said. "We recommend you read his report carefully and memorize how to say 'don't kill,' if nothing else."
"For the purposes of Unas relations," Jack said, "Daniel will, obviously, take point. If he says something that sounds stupid, remember that he survived a ritual that was supposed to end with him as dinner and ended instead with his being invited back as a guest."
"Uh-huh," Edwards said, not looking convinced of the wisdom of this. Jack suspected that only the knowledge that SG-11 had never seen anything off-world before and had no idea what to expect was keeping them from protesting more.
"I'll call it off if anything gets out of hand," Jack said. He gave Daniel a stern look and received annoyed raised eyebrows in return. "But until then, take his advice."
Nodding, Daniel said, "Colonel Edwards, if we can convince Chaka not to hurt us, he's the clan's leader now and will help protect us from the others. Perhaps more importantly, he might be willing to help protect us from the Goa'uld."
"And that brings us to the next part of this briefing," Jack said, "because, as big and scary as the Unas are, what we're really worried about on P3X-888 is the Goa'uld."
"As you've probably been told by now," Carter said for SG-11's benefit, "most of the Goa'uld we've met carry naquadah as part of their physiology. This allows them to use certain types of naquadah-based technology, but it also allows people with naquadah in their own bodies to sense their presence. Normally, this means that Teal'c or I can detect a Goa'uld. Daniel or anyone with an artificial naquadah detector can, too, if they get very close. Unfortunately, the Goa'uld symbiotes on P3X-888 are completely devoid of naquadah as far as we can tell."
"So how do we detect them, ma'am?" Lieutenant Devon asked.
"You don't," Carter said, "not without an MRI or an ultrasound. The good thing is that symbiotes can't survive out of water without a host. Stay away from the water, and you should be safe."
"From the symbiotes," Jack clarified. "Safe...from the symbiotes."
"The problem," Daniel continued, "is that one of the other reasons for going to P3X-888 is to examine the bodies of water in order to find out what it is that allows a symbiote to survive outside a host or Jaffa. Anyone within a few paces from the water's edge is in danger of being taken by a Goa'uld, which poses a threat to that person, obviously, and to everyone else."
"A few paces?" Lorne said, looking like he was trying to convert that into more conventional measurement. "So they can crawl out that far?"
"They can leap that far, Captain Lorne," Teal'c corrected. "They will aim for your neck."
"Luckily," Carter said, "a Jaffa carrying a symbiote can't be taken as a host, so we'll have one person who will always be himself. If at any time Teal'c becomes suspicious, command of the mission will be turned over to him immediately. At that point, anyone who refuses to comply with his orders, including Colonel O'Neill, will be assumed to be compromised."
"Also," Daniel added, holding up a finger, "the Unas are proficient at, uh...catching and killing symbiotes. If we can establish successful contact with Chaka's clan first and make it clear that we're working with them against the Goa'uld, I believe they'd be willing to help us, either by providing information about the Goa'uld or by guarding us at the water."
"Even if we end up being able to count on that," Jack said, "anyone who needs to approach the water to refill a canteen or collect a sample will be accompanied by at least one other person, who will stand on guard from out of range with a zat gun. If someone gets Goa'ulded, he'll be zatted and restrained without hesitation, and the mission is over. From there, we head straight to Cimmeria and then call base. Anyone who doesn't know the address for Cimmeria, memorize it today. That's one of the addresses you never want to forget."
"When someone turns into a Goa'uld, there's no way to tell?" Edwards said.
"If their eyes glow or their voice changes, you'll know," Jack said. "When we take you to the Alpha Site tomorrow, we'll show you what the voice change sounds like with some of our artificial voice-change doohickeys."
"Or you can talk to Lantash upstairs and see how it sounds," Carter added.
"But the fact is, they can hide all that and act like normal humans," Jack said. "They gain all the memories and knowledge of the host as soon as they blend. Sometimes there are differences in behavior that can clue you in, but sometimes...they can act so similar that they fool even their own teammates."
"Since the Goa'uld on '888 are more primitive," Daniel said, flipping to a new page in his briefing notes, "we're not sure how adept they are at imitating a host. SG-1 and -2 observed two apparently conflicting examples from our own men, but there wasn't enough evidence to support any hypothesis fully." One of the new lieutenants looked a little creeped out by the notion of seeing their own dead men as evidence. Daniel didn't react and went on, "Another hope for long-term studies on '888 is that we'll better understand the development of the Goa'uld mind, though that would need long-term studies with more experts, which we can't commit to yet."
"If we capture some live symbiotes, we can experiment on them here," Lorne suggested.
Daniel exchanged a glance with Carter. "We're...still debating that possibility," he said.
"We're discussing the ethical implications with Dr. Fraiser and General Hammond," Carter clarified. "But yes, we're considering that option."
Edwards, looked at the two of them askance. "People do experiments on rats and monkeys, and you're worried about experimenting on parasitical snakes who want to kill us?"
"Like we said," Daniel said, with another look at Carter, "that option hasn't been taken off the table yet."
"And the concern, Colonel," Carter said, returning Daniel's look, "is the ethics of conducting experiments--of torturing enemy prisoners whom we know to be sentient and highly intelligent."
"On the other hand..." Daniel said. "Teal'c and other rebel Jaffa might not have easy access to larval Goa'uld in the future, right? If we can have our own...planet full of Goa'uld living in the water, we'd never run out."
Carter seemed interested. "That's an idea, but we'll have to figure out all safety precautions for that before we go fishing for symbiotes. You said they don't seem to swim into the shallows unless they think there's a potential host there, which means they're mature."
"How is catching and enslaving larval Goa'uld to be killed later when they're adults any better than experimenting on them?" Daniel said.
"It would save Jaffa lives and decrease Jaffa dependence on the System Lords," Teal'c said.
"You can't say that symbiotes are animals with no rights for one purpose and are...are prisoners of war for other purposes," Daniel said. "Experimentation could save just as many lives--"
"It's still in discussion," Carter cut him off. "It's not just up to the two of us, and it won't be decided at this table. We'll know more soon."
"Anything else?" Jack said, looking around the table. "Carter, Teal'c, Daniel?"
"Nothing," Teal'c said.
Daniel looked at Carter, then tilted his head in concession. "No, sir," she answered for them both.
"Colonel Edwards?" Jack said.
Edwards shook his head. "We've got it."
"Then get ready. We leave for your training session at the Alpha Site at 0700 tomorrow," Jack said, "and we'll go to '888 once we're done there."
XXXXX
30 January 2001; Alpha Site, P3X-984; 0900 hrs
"...and this," Sam said with the voice distorter on, "is what a Goa'uld might sound like." She switched it off and put it back down on the table. "We believe the symbiote's position in the host causes it to interfere with the host's vocal apparatus in a way that alters the normal timing of human speech. As we said before, however, they're able to speak normally if they make the effort to do so. The Tok'ra, for example, use that as a way to demarcate the difference between host and symbiote."
"So it's not a physical thing that makes happen with the Tok'ra?" Lieutenant Stemler asked.
"Nope," she answered. "It's a...an artificial method they developed to help the host and symbiote keep their separate identities straight after the blending, and now it's become a custom."
SG-11 was listening intently to Sam's lectures, in between looking around the Alpha Site. Jack and Teal'c were off somewhere else with SG-13. Daniel had never heard Sam talk about the equipment here before, so he was happy to follow along with the tour.
"As an engineering and research support team," she continued, moving on to the next building, "this is something SG-11 will become familiar with: a naquadah reactor. Not only is this one of the most powerful portable tools when we need energy, but it's also powerful as a weapon. Lieutenants Devon and Stemler, I understand Sergeant Siler explained to you how to create an explosive from one of these?"
"Yes, ma'am," Devon said.
She nodded. "Obviously, it also means you need to take extra care whenever you're using a reactor. If this one went critical, it could take out the entire Alpha Site and all of our personnel."
As they continued past and into the main control center, Daniel dropped back to tighten his shoelaces and was yanked away by a familiar hand before he could enter behind SG-11.
"What are you doing?" Daniel hissed, shaking Jack's hand off his arm.
"Got an idea," Jack whispered. "Come with me."
He found himself back at the voice modulators. "Jack, I'm actually in training this time," Daniel pointed out. "I'm not supposed to jump out and scare people; that's your job."
"Then think of this as training in following my orders," Jack advised, clipping one of the modulators to collar of his shirt and motioning for Daniel to do the same. "I want to see how the new team reacts to the sound of a Goa'uld voice. Here's the scenario: one of us is Goa'uld and the other is Tok'ra, but they don't know which one."
Daniel paused in the midst of putting his on. "Uh, Jack," he said, "if they do the smart thing, both of us are going to get shot."
Jack gave him a bright smile. "Full marks, Mr. Jackson. Don't worry--Alpha Site training procedures are in effect the entire time we're here. They're only carrying intars."
"Those still hurt, you know," Daniel said as he picked up an intar. Sam and SG-11 were at the other side of the Site by now. Jack picked up another intar, unconcerned.
"Dixon's team is giving us some cover," Jack said. "Wait until Carter takes them into a building and watch for them just outside. When they come out, I'm going to jump you, and we'll be at a standoff--weapons ready, voice modulators on. Both of us claim to be Tok'ra, see what they do. If they screw up, you have permission to shoot as many of them as possible. Got it?"
"So I'm the Goa'uld," Daniel clarified, because hopefully, a Tok'ra wouldn't shoot SG personnel.
"Sure," Jack said. "You should hope they don't shoot you--get in some target practice."
"One day," Daniel said, watching Jack tap the voice modulator as if to make sure it worked, "I'd like to be involved in a training scenario with you guys that doesn't involve my being shot, or electrocuted, or--"
"Let's go," Jack interrupted gleefully, and took off into the nearest bushes.
With a sigh, Daniel joined Cameron Balinsky where he was talking to Dixon. "Hi," he said. "I'm supposed to stand here so I don't look suspicious." He glanced at Sam's group again, where it looked like she was explaining one of the security lockdown protocols. "Am I interrupting?"
"Nah," Dixon said, then reached out and rougly grabbed Daniel's jacket.
"Whoa, sir, uh...what--" Dixon flicked the switch to turn on his voice modulator. "Right," Daniel said, surprising himself with his own distorted voice. "Thanks."
"Go get 'em, kid," Dixon said, pushing him in the right direction as soon as the last member of SG-11 disappeared inside another building.
Daniel made his way to the building and found a half-built fence where he could crouch and not be too obviously in sight. He could hear Sam's voice inside explaining the operations of some of their main computers. A glance across, past the entrance to the building, showed Jack with crouched in the same position.
'Ready?' Jack mouthed at him.
'Guess so,' Daniel mouthed back.
'What?' Jack answered.
'Never mind,' Daniel said.
'What?' Jack repeated, furrowing his brows.
Daniel rolled his eyes. Jack raised his eyebrows. Daniel shrugged in return and adjusted his grip on his intar instead of trying to answer. Jack shrugged back and adjusted the settings on his gun.
The sound of footsteps inside made Daniel shrink back behind fence post.
"...needs two officers to set," Sam was saying as she walked out. Colonel Edwards followed closely behind. Daniel held still and let the others pass his position--
Dry grass crunched behind him. "Goa'uld, kree!" Teal'c's voice yelled.
Daniel whirled around to see an intar staff weapon pointed at him. He raised his own intar and fired before he could be hit and barely registered Teal'c falling to the ground as something heavy hit him from behind, knocking him down. He twisted sharply onto his back, raising his gun--
Jack was standing over him, intar aimed at Daniel while Daniel held his own intar steady on Jack. "Drop your weapon!" Jack demanded, his voice modulator active.
Glancing past him, Daniel could see Sam and SG-11 all aiming intars at the two of them. "Shoot him!" Daniel yelled, looking at Colonel Edwards. "He's a Goa'uld!"
"I'm Tok'ra!" Jack insisted. "Daniel's become a Goa'uld."
"Sir, your orders?" Sam asked. "Colonel Edwards?"
"I'm the Tok'ra," Daniel protested.
"Daniel shot Teal'c," Jack called. "He's gotta be the Goa'uld."
"That was self-defense," Daniel said, thinking fast and silently cursing Jack for omitting Teal'c's involvement in this game. "Teal'c...must have sensed a symbiote and attacked without realizing who I was. But Colonel O'Neill would never agree to be a Tok'ra! He must be a Goa'uld!"
Someone fired. Jack jerked and tumbled to the ground.
"What the hell was that!" Edwards barked, starting to aim his gun at Daniel.
Daniel rolled away and managed a shot at Edwards. He hit Sam and Lieutenant Stemler, too, and clipped Lieutenant Devon's shoulder, before he turned to see the barrel of someone's gun--
...x...
"Ow," Daniel said when he woke. Jack was facing SG-11, his back to Daniel.
"Turn that thing off," Jack said, turning to him as Sam grimaced and picked herself up, too.
Daniel switched his voice modulator off. "You didn't tell me about Teal'c."
"Part of the scenario. You're being tested, too. The point is," Jack said, turning back to SG-11, "no one knew who was the Goa'uld and who was the Tok'ra. But Lieutenant Stemler shot me. Right, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir," Stemler said unhappily.
"Why'd you shoot me?"
Stemler glanced at Edwards. "Your...distaste for the Tok'ra is well known, sir," he said. "I thought it was unlikely that you could be a Tok'ra, since they only take willing hosts. Jackson's story seemed to make more sense."
Jack turned around and glared at Daniel. "That's not my fault," Daniel said.
"Don't start," Jack warned him. "You had a clear shot--you only got Carter because she had orders not to shoot, and you left yourself wide open for someone to take you out. Was there something wrong with the fence one foot away from you that you couldn't take cover there?"
Daniel gulped and looked to his left at the fence one foot away from him. "No, sir."
"Colonel O'Neill could have been implanted with a Tok'ra symbiote out of necessity," Sam said. "If, for example, he'd been injured too badly and a symbiote could cure him."
"Over my dead body," Jack muttered. Sam gave him a look. "Unless," he amended for the purposes of the exercise, "it would actually be over my dead body, in which case...it might be possible. To prevent the dead body."
"How sure were you of the identity of the Goa'uld, Lieutenant Stemler?" Teal'c said.
Stemler swallowed. "Not very, sir."
"Colonel Edwards?" Teal'c said.
"If I'd been sure," Edwards said, "I wouldn't've waited."
"For what, exactly, were you waiting?" Jack said. "For one of your men to shoot the Tok'ra and let the Goa'uld start killing people? Because my seventeen-year-old civilian translator took out most your team. If he'd actually been a Goa'uld, he probably would've gotten the rest, maybe even before the captain here had been able to put him down. And an armed Goa'uld loose on the Alpha Site with a Tok'ra ally dead--anyone else have a problem with that?"
Daniel wrinkled his nose, pulling off his voice modulator and not sure whether to be unhappy that everyone was being yelled at or insulted that being seventeen and a civilian translator was supposed to make him a bad shot. Sam held up her hand, and he tossed the device to her.
"Captain Lorne," Jack said. "Why did you shoot Daniel?"
Lorne cleared his throat. "It was clear by then that he was an enemy, sir."
Jack nodded. "So you only start shooting when the rest of your team's dead. Who can tell me what you should've been doing instead of waiting around or shooting friends?"
"Incapacitate them both," Edwards said. "Then contact the Tok'ra and find out who's lying."
"Thank you!" Jack said. Turning again, he added unexpectedly, "And Teal'c, what the hell happened to you?"
"I expected Daniel Jackson to hesitate upon seeing me," Teal'c said. "He has never been trained to fight against me in such circumstances."
"Well, next time," Jack snapped, "shoot him faster."
Daniel decided to keep his mouth shut. Jack was still holding his intar.
"You're dismissed," Jack said. "Everyone be less stupid next time."
...x...
10 February 2001; Alpha Site, P3X-984; 1400 hrs
"SG-13 is guarding the 'gate, and there's nothing but open space in front of them," Edwards whispered. "We need a distraction if we're gonna get past them."
"Set the naquadah reactor to explode," Daniel suggested.
"Hell of a distraction," Lorne said, "'cept being dead is an obstacle to completing a mission."
"There's an alarm, right, when the reactor gets close to overload?" Daniel said. "SG-13 will think it's part of the test, and SG-1 will have to go to fix it and see who tampered because they'll think it's a real alarm."
"And then we'll all blow up," Lieutenant Devon said.
"Are you crazy, Jackson?" Lorne hissed.
"Sam won't let it blow up," Daniel said. "I wouldn't have suggested it if I thought there was any...significant risk of that."
"No," Edwards said, cutting off their discussion. "I don't care how much confidence you have in Major Carter; we are not putting the lives of everyone on this base in danger."
"On the other hand," Stemler said, "we could rig the alarm to go off without sabotaging the reactor. The internal mechanism's just a thermal sensor--as long as there's enough heat on it..."
"How much heat?" Lorne said, rooting through their supplies. He extracted an MRE.
Devon raised his eyebrows. "That would probably do it if I tweak the sensor's settings," he said.
"Do we want heat near a reactor?" Edwards said.
"This can't generate enough heat to detonate the core, sir," Devon said, pulling out the flameless heater. "But I should be able to rig it so the sensor will go off when I set this to heat--I can even get it to cut non-essential power at the same time to make it more chaotic."
"Do it," Edwards said. "Lorne, go with him. Jackson, get close to the 'gate. When the alarm goes off, you're going to run right into them and make a scene, Lorne will double back to make more noise, Stemler and I'll take care of SG-13, and Jackson runs through the 'gate with our artifact. We'll join you once it's clear."
Stemler slapped the fake amulet into Daniel's hand. "Go freak out," the man said.
"Fre--" Daniel sighed as the others took off in their respective directions. "Yes, sir," he said and left their setup to prepare to do his part.
He could just barely hear Edwards and Stemler behind him as they moved into position, too. A soft click came over his radio, and he looked down at his watch. The reactor was set.
He crept closer, closer, slowly, until Dixon's men were in view but just out of earshot, standing in front of the Stargate and guarding the open space in front of it. Daniel stopped there--he wasn't good enough to be as quiet as he'd need to be to keep them from noticing if he went any further.
The alarms blared. The few lights around the Alpha Site flickered and died.
As SG-13 turned in alarm toward the building where the reactor was housed and hurriedly turned on their flashlights, and Daniel stood suddenly, drawing the attention of their guns. "Ah--don't shoot!" he said frantically, looking over his shoulder. "What's going on?"
"Daniel?" Cameron said, lowering his gun. "Was that you guys?"
"No, of course not! Oh, gods, is that the security system? But I thought this planet's location was supposed to be secret," Daniel said, injecting as much panic into his voice as he could.
"No, it's the naquadah reactor's alarm," Captain Martin said.
"Naquadah reactor?" Daniel yelled. "What?"
"Colonel Dixon?" the captain said.
Making his way forward, Daniel called, "Sam! Sam! Who--where's--"
The sound of someone crashing through the underbrush announced Lorne's arrival. "Jackson, where's Devon?" Lorne yelled.
"I don't know!" Daniel yelled back, inching toward their target 'Stargate' in the confusion.
"Martin, let's go," Dixon said, and he and the SG-13 engineer ran toward the reactor.
"Shit," Lorne said. He reached up to his radio. "Devon, where are you?"
"The reactor's overloading, sir!" Devon answered through the radio. "I'm going to see if I can help!"
"This is Edwards," Edwards added. "Abort scenario. I repeat, get down!"
Daniel dropped to the ground and heard the sound of intar fire over his head. As Cameron fell, he crawled quickly toward the 'gate SG-13 was guarding and stepped through to mark their victory.
"I'm through, Colonel!" he announced, turning around to see Cameron and Captain Whall of SG-13 on the ground with Edwards, Stemler, and Lorne holding their guns in their hands. "The amulet has been retrieved and taken to...well, we win, anyway."
Just then, Devon emerged from the other side. "Whew," he said. "Thought they were going to find me. Are we done?"
The alarm stopped. All available lights turned back on.
Jack was stomping toward them. Teal'c and Sam were close behind, the latter holding the ration heater in her hand. Dixon was on his way back, too, and he looked rather angry.
"Uh-oh," Daniel said. SG-11 straightened and stood at attention.
"Do you know how much panic you just caused throughout the entire Alpha Site?" Jack barked.
"Jack--" Daniel started.
"And the worst part," Jack continued, turning to him, "was that we actually believed some of you might be stupid enough to set the reactor to take out the entire Alpha Site, Daniel!"
Defensive and chagrinned at once--because that had been his first idea--Daniel tried to think of a way to answer that without sounding too insubordinate in front of the other teams. "Colonel Edwards wouldn't have allowed a plan that stupid to be implemented," he said.
"So that was the original plan," Jack said.
"Due respect, Colonel," Edwards said, "we didn't set the reactor to do anything but make noise, and if we'd actually been in an enemy stronghold, it's what we would have done."
Jack stared at them a little longer, then, apparently finding nothing else to yell at them about, turned to SG-13. "And that brings us to you," he said. "You're more experienced than SG-11, and you allowed yourselves to be distracted. Maybe the reactor was going to blow--doesn't matter. You shoot the enemy soldier sneaking up on you before you go fix it, no matter how old or how upset he seems to be--it might be a trap!"
"Yes, sir," Dixon said.
"Tomorrow," Jack said, "Daniel's joining SG-13. See if having the extra man advantage helps you as much as it helped SG-11. Dismissed!"
...x...
15 February 2001; Alpha Site, P3X-984; 1000 hrs
"No games today," Jack declared at sunrise one morning when SG-11, SG-13, and Daniel all assembled and waited for the day's assignments. "Conditioning this morning, drills this afternoon. Good thing we got rain yesterday--river's nice and high. We're gonna take a little run, and it'll cut through the river, so you'll get a little swim, too."
Daniel didn't think he'd shown anything outwardly, because he knew that showing nerves in situations like this was the worst way to try to earn respect from a team that still wasn't sure what to think of him. Jack was looking directly as him as he mentioned swimming, though, so he raised his chin and said, "Yes, sir," with everyone else and didn't say another word.
He'd practiced with Jack, of course, between '888 and now. He was a better swimmer than he had been. He'd just never done it at a river like this, the way he'd done with Chaka...
They ran and ran, in a long line that put several paces between each person, and by the time they'd reached the river, Daniel was tired enough to be a little scared, too, because this was what had happened before, wasn't it? He'd been tired from running and maybe a little concussed and bound, and he'd almost drowned--
"Go!" Jack barked, and Daniel realized he was standing at the riverbank, holding his hands in front of him as if they were tied together at the wrist. Jack's eyes met his briefly and then flicked past him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the half of SG-13 not yet in the water, along with Teal'c, who was watching them from the rear.
Jack was watching from the front of the line, Sam was at the bank on the other side, and Teal'c was behind. Taking a breath, Daniel separated his arms from their awkward, unconscious position and jumped.
Daniel still wasn't the fastest swimmer, but the point was that he reached the other side without drowning or swallowing water or even lagging behind, and when he touched the ground again with his hand, he was breathing hard from the run and the swim...and that was it. He'd made it with the others, and he was fine.
Sam's hand reached down to him, and he grasped it to help pull himself out of the water and onto the shore on the other side. Teal'c emerged just behind him, and even Jack, running on at the head of the SG-11 and -13 pack, turned to check that he'd surfaced.
"Let's go!" Jack ordered, turning back around. Daniel pushed himself to his feet and followed.
From the next chapter ("Personnel"):
"Hold your fire!" Jack shouted.
"Ka keka!" Daniel yelled, lowering his gun and pushing past SG-1. "Unas ka keka!"