Masquerade - Ch 3
Title: Masquerade - Chapter 3
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: adult
Summary: SG-1 make the horrifying discovery that Janet Fraiser has been host to a Goa’uld for the past three years.
This chapter: SG-1 are all killed horribly. Not like it’s the first time that’s happened
Daniel opened a file on his computer knowing that if Sam weren’t ordered to help him she wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder, a position he found particularly intimate given the distance she liked to put between them in recent years.
He swallowed and spoke cautiously. “From the initial data we received a few years ago from the Tok’ra, Teal’c and Vala were helping catalogue the planetary domains of each of the System Lords. Since so many have fallen, there hasn’t been a great need for us to be so mindful of the regions the planets we visit fall under.”
He clicked on Cronus and brought up a list of addresses. Sam straightened and folded her arms. There was a texture to her exhaled breath that suggested disappointment.
Daniel sighed inwardly and opened a companion file. “These are the addresses for planets that, as far as we know, never came under the rule of any System Lord.”
“That’s over two hundred addresses,” Sam said. Daniel heard her sigh and pictured her frowning as her footsteps travelled away from him.
Daniel twirled his thumbs helplessly. “Look. I know you never wanted me to pursue this.”
“Nephthys would need to be able to guarantee that no one was ever going to find her planet.”
Daniel blinked and swivelled on his chair to look up at her. Sam was pacing thoughtfully, gears spinning inside the perfect machine of her brain.
“She would have used cloaking technology or...” Daniel checked off with his fingers.
Sam shook her head. “No. That wouldn’t be enough. To guarantee something can’t be found, you’d have to put it somewhere no one could look.”
When she turned to him, the brilliant blue of her eyes ignited the same spark of inspiration in him that had overcome her. Daniel sat up. “Somewhere no Goa’uld could look, at least.”
Sam smiled at him. “We should look in Asgard protected space.”
They quickly went to recover the digital documentation provided to them by Thor of all the planets that fell under Asgard protection. The SGC were given this information in the hopes that they could avoid damaging the defences left on those planets, or accidentally revealing too much about a galaxy some people were just not ready to know.
The SGC were supposed to be careful when travelling to any of these planets. It didn’t really stop them messing something up. But the Asgard were a patient race, and it was normally a simple matter of beaming down a new Thor’s Hammer, or the timely re-regulation of an unstable star.
Daniel finished typing in ‘Sekhem’ and hit search.
The file popped up immediately. Sam chuffed smugly, and Daniel smiled.
Reassembling in the briefing room, Sam explained to everyone how she’d been able to find Sekhem so easily.
“The Goa’uld feared the superior technology of the Asgard ships. If Nephthys really wanted to keep her planet safe from them, negotiating a treaty with the Asgard was the perfect way.”
Daniel sat at the end of the table, watching her with mixed feelings of pride and sadness. He was grateful that this research was distracting her, but he knew that once their mission was over, and everything returned to normal, she would remember the heartbreaking way he had let her down.
“So we’re going, right?” Cam asked, drumming his hands on the table eagerly.
“We’re going to waltz into Sekhem and what, ask Nephthys for a ZPM or two?” Vala asked doubtfully.
“Well, no,” Daniel said, turning around in his chair. “I assumed there would be a bit of...thievery involved.”
“Ooo!” Vala grinned, “I like it.”
“Stealing from Nephthys?” Sam grimaced.
Cam waved his hand dismissively. “She’s a Goa’uld. She’d old hat.”
Vala turned to him, and pinched the air delicately with her fingers to emphasise her point. “Goa’uld, yes. Old, yes. Very much not a hat.”
“I assure you Colonel Mitchell,” Teal’c said, his low voice wrought in warning. “Nephthys will prove a formidable adversary.”
“Well we know she has a soft spot for Vala,” Daniel said.
Vala looked at him suddenly, but he was looking at his own nails and smiling to himself as if he’d made a very clever joke.
Sam looked down at her from in front of the table. “It is unusual for a Goa’uld to make good on their deals.”
Vala shimmied uncomfortably on her seat. “Yes, well. Let it not be said Vala Mal Doran couldn’t talk herself out of any situation.”
And it couldn’t be said Vala Mal Doran wouldn’t waste an opportunity to glorify herself. Sam made a face at her and went on. “We might consider that Nephthys doesn’t have any ZPMs at all.”
Daniel looked up then. “We do know that she has something of worth. Something Ba’al wanted. Something he risked reviving a very dangerous Goa’uld for.”
“Well, I for one would like to know what it is,” Landry said from the other end of the table. He was standing up from his chair even before he said, “Mission granted.”
All Daniel remembered was holding that camera, watching the little LCD screen flipped out from its side and Simon Wells’ frantic face. He remembered Janet’s voice. Crouched there on the dirt slope. The leaves. Dull reds, yellows and browns. Mostly dark, dismal browns. He actually remembered them being grey, but he knew they weren’t.
All he could distinctly remember was holding the camera. He was watching that tiny little screen when Janet leaned over Wells to soothe his nerves, to reassure him he was going to be alright. He was watching that small inch by inch and a half picture of a woman telling a man he was going to live.
And then she was dead.
It happened that quickly that she was dead before Daniel even saw it happen. Those LCD screens showed the recorded image with a small delay. It wasn’t even a second. Janet was dead the moment the blast impacted her chest. She was dead as she was flung backwards into the dirt.
Daniel remembered her eyes. He remembered reaching for her, a cold stuck through him like a spear of ice lodged down his spine. When he reached for her he realized. He was still holding that damn camera.
He shook it away. He held Janet properly, hands on her shoulders. Her head flopped lifelessly, eyes still dark and empty. Daniel shuddered and screamed again for help. He remembered his head felt like it was burning from the inside out. That was panic. That was the irrational belief that if he wasn’t careful, that if he moved her even slightly, then there was no chance of helping her.
The chance to help her had been before he’d taken out that stupid camera. He knew that. Really. He knew she was gone. His gut knew. He wanted to throw up.
The medics arrived with a gurney. Only one. They’d been sent to pick up Wells. More Jaffa were coming from the tree line. “Dr Jackson! We have to go! You have to leave her! Now! Let’s go! Go!”
Daniel remembered screaming at a dead body. Then the crackling heat of a staff blast screeched past his ear.
He ducked, afraid. He looked down. He touched Janet’s cheek. He flung himself away but paused. He reached back, fished for the camera and ran.
“Daniel Jackson.”
Daniel looked up, sniffing heavily and quickly dabbed at his eyes. Teal’c walked into the room and stood on the opposite side of the console.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said, smiling quickly. The gentle hum of the ship bridged a brief silence.
“You must be relieved,” Teal’c said warmly.
Daniel tried to keep his own smile from quivering in confusion.
“Colonel Carter was telling me that you wished to know what Dr Fraiser died for. Now you know.” From anyone else they would seem words too harsh and too grating for the sincerity and sensitivity Teal’c implied.
His stringent manner of language was imbued with emotions as tightly bound to each word as to not exist without them. His words were his feelings, his soul. Daniel began to crumble under the weight of anyone being so willing to expose their soul to him.
He looked down. “Even if we find ZPMs on Sekhem...it’s not like it would mean she didn’t die for nothing.”
Teal’c took slow and gentle steps from around the console. “Janet Fraiser would not believe she died for nothing. She died in the service of Earth, in the service of this whole galaxy. She died saving one of you, so you could save countless more.”
The low tones of Teal’c’s voice stirred every unshed tear out of Daniel. His words sputtered out in the moments his body were not buffeted by emotion. He looked up at one of his dearest and loyal friends saying, “She died...because I wasn’t protecting her. I should have been watching. Instead I was...that stupid camera! What kind of cover is that? We were under heavy fire from an army of Jaffa and I was...making a movie!”
His head hung low in shame and despair. “She was depending on me to keep her safe while...God, Teal’c. It’s my fault! It’s my fault and...Sam...Sam knows it.”
The man was already sinking to the floor and Teal’c reached out, catching him, holding him, keeping him together.
Teal’c couldn’t tell Daniel that he was wrong about Sam. He had seen the hurt and betrayal in her eyes as sure as he saw the blue of the sky. It pained him every day knowing that two people he cared for so deeply, loved so strongly, had been torn apart by the actions of his misguided people.
It had fuelled, more than anything else, his determination and resolve for the freedom of Jaffa. But he knew that there was nothing he could do to mend the hearts of Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter. All he could do was be there for them, be strong for them, and be there to gather the broken pieces so they could mend themselves.
Every hour in hyperspace brought them closer to Sekhem. Vala was all for tempting fate, but voluntarily seeking out Nephthys was not so much tempting fate as it was handing fate the knife. And the Goa’uld could do some nasty things with a small blade. Vala had seen it first hand. She’d even been a part of it. Not that she was a willing participant.
The last time she encountered Nephthys she was lucky to get away with her life. She never liked to admit when she was scared but she was glad that this time her friends would be with her. For what little good it would do. They seemed to have a knack for getting out of trouble.
Sitting around on the Odyssey letting her anxiety fester was making her feel sick. Cam was being an adequate distraction with his silly card game but he was too easy to beat.
“Uno,” she said again, placing down her second last card.
Cam frantically scanned his full hand of cards and glared at her over the top of them. Cautiously he picked one of them out and slowly set it down. Vala slapped her last card down on top of it and Cam burst with disappointment.
“Alright. I’m totally going to win this next round.” He hastily gathered the cards together and began to shuffle.
Vala released a long, suspended sigh. She perched her cheek on her upright palm. “So who was this Janet woman anyway?”
“She was the Chief Medical Officer at the SGC for seven years,” Cam said, separating the deck into halves and flipping them back together.
“You ever meet her?”
“No. But she was close to Daniel and Sam and Teal’c. And General O’Neill too. She saved their lives several times over.”
“Extraordinary woman,” Vala reflected.
“She was.” Sam swung her leg over the seat next to Vala and sat beside her. Vala turned her head on her palm to face her.
“What was she like?” she asked.
Sam neatly folded her arms across the table. “Kind. Confident. Nurturing.”
Vala pouted. “I feel like I’ve known her all my life.”
Cam hissed at her from across the table and glared warningly.
Far from taking offence, Sam smiled in appreciation and looked at her hands. “Janet had a way of making you feel safe in the most frightening situation. No matter what was happening you believed her when she said you were going to be okay, that she was going to help you. You didn’t have to worry.”
Vala watched light glimmer in Sam’s eyes, feeling something sharp in her throat. “It would appear the universe lost a very special person.”
The smile on Sam’s face grew slightly and then her lips came together, a gentle hum of grief uttering on her breath. Vala felt compelled to touch her shoulder, but Cam intersected her gesture by dealing out cards.
“Come on. I’m gonna beat you both.” He grinned and Sam chuckled.
At the moment the Odyssey came out of hyperspace SG-1 were gathered on the bridge. The vast reach of darkness they saw beyond the shield was not what any of them had expected.
Daniel grinned ear to ear. “She’s cloaked the planet.”
Sam snapped her gaze on him. “Do you have any idea how much power that would take? Cloaking Atlantis alone drains masses of power from a single ZPM. Nephthys would have to have...”
Sam’s brow creased in a mental race to calculate the answer.
“Hundreds.” Daniel edged towards the shield in fascination.
Cam snorted. “You’re saying there’s a hundred ZPMs down there?...Thereish?” Cam gestured vaguely to the empty black.
“It wouldn’t exactly take hundreds of ZPMs to cloak a whole planet,” Sam insisted cautiously. “But a dozen maybe.”
“Good enough for me,” Cam said, rubbing his hands.
There was a flash of colour and suddenly the tawny glow of a giant sphere hovered majestically in the darkness.
“Whoa.” Cam blinked.
“I-I ran a scan for the planet,” Major Womack stammered.
“Nephthys must have decided there was no point hiding from someone who knew she was there,” Daniel said.
Colonel Davidson leaned over in his captain’s seat. “She’s not attacking?”
“The terms of the treaty were clear,” Daniel explained. “She can’t fire on a non Goa’uld ship. Besides it would be in her best interest not to attack us. Doing so would only invite more people to come out here in retaliation and that would expose her planet to the rest of the galaxy, not to mention the Asgard would be well within their rights to eliminate her as a threat.”
Sam scoffed. “The Goa’uld have an annoying habit of finding ways around treaties.”
Daniel countered. “If what Vala says is true then Nephthys only wants to live the rest of her life in peace. We have our greatest leverage. She lets us go or she’ll have to defend her formerly secret planet from every race in the galaxy.”
Teal’c stood between them, his voice grave. “Let us hope she values her privacy above our demise.”
Vala picked and twisted her fingers. It was only a small comfort to know that the Asgard treaty protected them as much as it protected Nephthys.
“Alright,” said Cam, “Beam us down somewhere safe near the most heavily populated area.”
Womack activated the Asgard beam and SG-1 disappeared in a soft sheen of light. Colonel Davidson relaxed into his chair and tapped a finger to the edge of his mouth. If there was any trouble with the beaming destination, Colonel Mitchell would radio.
“Sir.” Major Marks frowned at his console and looked up at the shield. “Sir a second ship just appeared on our scanners.”
Davidson looked up, trying to spot the ship. He had been afraid of an attack. The Goa’uld weren’t likely to just sit back while a willing target hovered above them.
“We have an incoming transmission,” Marks reported. Davidson nodded to him and Marks played the message on the main screen. The oil black eyes of an Asgard blinked at them.
“This is Hod of the Asgard. You are in protected space. I must ask you to leave immediately or I will forcibly escort you through hyperspace.”
Marks and Womack and others on his crew eyed Davidson warily.
“Send a message to SG-1, and open a channel.”
While Marks opened a channel for Davidson to respond, Womack radioed SG-1. Davidson only hoped that their team wouldn’t need his help while they worked this out with the Asgard.
For that matter, he hoped that the Asgard could be reasoned with.
There was light, and everything washed to white. Vala felt her feet sinking and pale colours swam into the glowing haze. She was looking out across a vast desert, pale sand and sky. Sam walked past her, checking the screen of her tablet, and Vala looked around for the others.
They were at the base of a huge red rock formation. It jutted out of the ground like the nose of a sunken Tau’ri cruiser. There was nothing else around for miles and miles.
“It looks like there might be a city on the other side of this rock,” Sam said, looking up at it.
Hands resting on his gun, Cam trudged up to her side, looking up at the peak, and then at the wide girth of its base.
“They had to beam us down behind a big ass rock, didn’t they?” he grumbled. “Oh well. Let’s get going.”
Their boots left a wide trail of divots in which Vala walked. There was even something about the air that seemed insidious. She cast squinting eyes at the white sky and reminded herself that the Odyssey was there, and could beam them to safety if anything went wrong.
“Yep,” Cam was saying into his radio, alerting Vala to whatever was in progress. “Copy that. We’ll proceed down here. Try and hurry back.”
Vala launched into a half jog to catch up with him. “What was that about?”
“The Asgard showed up and told the Odyssey to scat. They’ll be back though. They’ll sort it out,” Cam assured her with the confident bump of his fist to the air.
Vala peered about anxiously. “Brilliant.”
As they rounded the edge of the rock, the horizon opened into more glimmering sand. But perched on that quivering line between ground and sky was a long stone wall.
Cam swayed dejectedly, and tilted his spine to yell into space. “Close. I said close to the heavily populated area!”
“Well,” Daniel said, sweeping his sleeve across his sweating brow, “We won’t get any closer standing here all day.”
Cam glared at him contemptuously and then spat air as he stumbled into a trudging gait.
As they encroached closer and closer on the stone wall, parts of a gleaming city began to poke up from behind it. Sam monitored their progress on her tablet, though found that the glare from the sunlight made it difficult to read.
“Is something wrong, Colonel Carter?” Teal’c asked her.
Sam tilted the tablet and then tried to bend over it to provide some shadow. “I think...”
Cam suddenly looked up, gaze darting left and right. “Guys. Do you hear that?”
Daniel stopped and looked around, and Teal’c, altogether still, tuned his keen senses to anything reverberating on the atmosphere.
“We’ve got life signs coming toward us,” Sam reported. “Fast.”
Cam spun. “Where?”
Sam turned around to face the way they had come. Cam didn’t like the way her body twitched back on her heels.
“There,” she said.
They all turned around and saw, appearing from around the giant rock they had left behind, fast approaching vehicles. They were far enough away to look like tiny beetles, scuttling across the sand, but they could hear the escalating hum of engines.
As Sam edged backward, Teal’c took the single stride to put himself in front of her, weapon raised. They all readied their P-90s, apprehensive of the approaching strangers. The narrow brown vehicles looked like jagged rocks on two large wheels. If Cam were going to name them, they were some sort of alien motorbike.
Sunlight flashed off the metal plates protecting the drivers. There was little point in running.
“Okay,” Cam said, as the group edged back to back, “Maybe they’re just our friendly welcoming party.”
A sound like a gatling gun kicked sand in a line right by their feet.
“Only if part of the friendly welcome is killing us,” Daniel quipped, hefting his gun.
They all fired at once, and nothing could be heard for the frenzied exchange of bullets. The bikes came charging towards them, splitting at the middle of their line and firing close enough to whip sand into a blinding, consuming cloud.
Daniel spluttered, firing blind. He was breathing in hot sand. He could feel the ground shake with each bullet. There was a shout behind him, and something struck him in the head.
He turned and looked down. The vague shape of a body had fallen behind him. Visible through the spinning dust was a growing red stain.
Daniel felt that crippling bolt of ice crash down his spine through his skull. He couldn’t even tell who it was until he heard Sam shout.
“Cameron!”
She had to look up again, down the black shaft of her gun. Daniel saw her arms and shoulders shaking from the gunfire, and over the top of her weapon he saw one of the bikers hoist an arm. He didn’t hesitate. Daniel took one bracing step and pulled back on the trigger.
The biker slumped and his vehicle roared from beneath him. A second bike crushed the fallen man’s body, but Daniel’s gaze was frozen on Vala, her body jolting with every ribbon of blood that sprayed thickly into the air.
Teal’c caught her in one arm, and extended his weapon outward with the other. In the next second they both slumped to the ground. And Sam turned, her electric eyes locking Daniel in an eternal moment.
Her arms were slack at her sides, her weapon hanging from the buckle on her vest, pointless. Her mouth opened and Daniel strained, his every sense tuned desperately to one sound he would never hear.
Dark red stains bloomed wetly across Sam’s chest. It was only then that Daniel realized the frantic look in her eyes was not pain or shock, but horror. He looked down, suddenly aware of a hotness pulsing in his body.
He felt something else tear through him, jerking him to his knees. He looked up and wanted to see Sam. But she was gone. He looked for her, and saw a body lying face down next to another. Maybe they were people he knew. Maybe he’d never met them.
All Daniel knew was that it was hot. And something really hurt. He felt himself fall and roll onto his back, and sounds bubbled in his head. Drifting across the pale sky was some enormous dark Angel. The span of her glorious wings cooled him from the unrelenting sun. She opened her mouth and sang to him and in a flash of light, he succumbed to her embrace.
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: adult
Summary: SG-1 make the horrifying discovery that Janet Fraiser has been host to a Goa’uld for the past three years.
This chapter: SG-1 are all killed horribly. Not like it’s the first time that’s happened
Daniel opened a file on his computer knowing that if Sam weren’t ordered to help him she wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder, a position he found particularly intimate given the distance she liked to put between them in recent years.
He swallowed and spoke cautiously. “From the initial data we received a few years ago from the Tok’ra, Teal’c and Vala were helping catalogue the planetary domains of each of the System Lords. Since so many have fallen, there hasn’t been a great need for us to be so mindful of the regions the planets we visit fall under.”
He clicked on Cronus and brought up a list of addresses. Sam straightened and folded her arms. There was a texture to her exhaled breath that suggested disappointment.
Daniel sighed inwardly and opened a companion file. “These are the addresses for planets that, as far as we know, never came under the rule of any System Lord.”
“That’s over two hundred addresses,” Sam said. Daniel heard her sigh and pictured her frowning as her footsteps travelled away from him.
Daniel twirled his thumbs helplessly. “Look. I know you never wanted me to pursue this.”
“Nephthys would need to be able to guarantee that no one was ever going to find her planet.”
Daniel blinked and swivelled on his chair to look up at her. Sam was pacing thoughtfully, gears spinning inside the perfect machine of her brain.
“She would have used cloaking technology or...” Daniel checked off with his fingers.
Sam shook her head. “No. That wouldn’t be enough. To guarantee something can’t be found, you’d have to put it somewhere no one could look.”
When she turned to him, the brilliant blue of her eyes ignited the same spark of inspiration in him that had overcome her. Daniel sat up. “Somewhere no Goa’uld could look, at least.”
Sam smiled at him. “We should look in Asgard protected space.”
They quickly went to recover the digital documentation provided to them by Thor of all the planets that fell under Asgard protection. The SGC were given this information in the hopes that they could avoid damaging the defences left on those planets, or accidentally revealing too much about a galaxy some people were just not ready to know.
The SGC were supposed to be careful when travelling to any of these planets. It didn’t really stop them messing something up. But the Asgard were a patient race, and it was normally a simple matter of beaming down a new Thor’s Hammer, or the timely re-regulation of an unstable star.
Daniel finished typing in ‘Sekhem’ and hit search.
The file popped up immediately. Sam chuffed smugly, and Daniel smiled.
Reassembling in the briefing room, Sam explained to everyone how she’d been able to find Sekhem so easily.
“The Goa’uld feared the superior technology of the Asgard ships. If Nephthys really wanted to keep her planet safe from them, negotiating a treaty with the Asgard was the perfect way.”
Daniel sat at the end of the table, watching her with mixed feelings of pride and sadness. He was grateful that this research was distracting her, but he knew that once their mission was over, and everything returned to normal, she would remember the heartbreaking way he had let her down.
“So we’re going, right?” Cam asked, drumming his hands on the table eagerly.
“We’re going to waltz into Sekhem and what, ask Nephthys for a ZPM or two?” Vala asked doubtfully.
“Well, no,” Daniel said, turning around in his chair. “I assumed there would be a bit of...thievery involved.”
“Ooo!” Vala grinned, “I like it.”
“Stealing from Nephthys?” Sam grimaced.
Cam waved his hand dismissively. “She’s a Goa’uld. She’d old hat.”
Vala turned to him, and pinched the air delicately with her fingers to emphasise her point. “Goa’uld, yes. Old, yes. Very much not a hat.”
“I assure you Colonel Mitchell,” Teal’c said, his low voice wrought in warning. “Nephthys will prove a formidable adversary.”
“Well we know she has a soft spot for Vala,” Daniel said.
Vala looked at him suddenly, but he was looking at his own nails and smiling to himself as if he’d made a very clever joke.
Sam looked down at her from in front of the table. “It is unusual for a Goa’uld to make good on their deals.”
Vala shimmied uncomfortably on her seat. “Yes, well. Let it not be said Vala Mal Doran couldn’t talk herself out of any situation.”
And it couldn’t be said Vala Mal Doran wouldn’t waste an opportunity to glorify herself. Sam made a face at her and went on. “We might consider that Nephthys doesn’t have any ZPMs at all.”
Daniel looked up then. “We do know that she has something of worth. Something Ba’al wanted. Something he risked reviving a very dangerous Goa’uld for.”
“Well, I for one would like to know what it is,” Landry said from the other end of the table. He was standing up from his chair even before he said, “Mission granted.”
All Daniel remembered was holding that camera, watching the little LCD screen flipped out from its side and Simon Wells’ frantic face. He remembered Janet’s voice. Crouched there on the dirt slope. The leaves. Dull reds, yellows and browns. Mostly dark, dismal browns. He actually remembered them being grey, but he knew they weren’t.
All he could distinctly remember was holding the camera. He was watching that tiny little screen when Janet leaned over Wells to soothe his nerves, to reassure him he was going to be alright. He was watching that small inch by inch and a half picture of a woman telling a man he was going to live.
And then she was dead.
It happened that quickly that she was dead before Daniel even saw it happen. Those LCD screens showed the recorded image with a small delay. It wasn’t even a second. Janet was dead the moment the blast impacted her chest. She was dead as she was flung backwards into the dirt.
Daniel remembered her eyes. He remembered reaching for her, a cold stuck through him like a spear of ice lodged down his spine. When he reached for her he realized. He was still holding that damn camera.
He shook it away. He held Janet properly, hands on her shoulders. Her head flopped lifelessly, eyes still dark and empty. Daniel shuddered and screamed again for help. He remembered his head felt like it was burning from the inside out. That was panic. That was the irrational belief that if he wasn’t careful, that if he moved her even slightly, then there was no chance of helping her.
The chance to help her had been before he’d taken out that stupid camera. He knew that. Really. He knew she was gone. His gut knew. He wanted to throw up.
The medics arrived with a gurney. Only one. They’d been sent to pick up Wells. More Jaffa were coming from the tree line. “Dr Jackson! We have to go! You have to leave her! Now! Let’s go! Go!”
Daniel remembered screaming at a dead body. Then the crackling heat of a staff blast screeched past his ear.
He ducked, afraid. He looked down. He touched Janet’s cheek. He flung himself away but paused. He reached back, fished for the camera and ran.
“Daniel Jackson.”
Daniel looked up, sniffing heavily and quickly dabbed at his eyes. Teal’c walked into the room and stood on the opposite side of the console.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said, smiling quickly. The gentle hum of the ship bridged a brief silence.
“You must be relieved,” Teal’c said warmly.
Daniel tried to keep his own smile from quivering in confusion.
“Colonel Carter was telling me that you wished to know what Dr Fraiser died for. Now you know.” From anyone else they would seem words too harsh and too grating for the sincerity and sensitivity Teal’c implied.
His stringent manner of language was imbued with emotions as tightly bound to each word as to not exist without them. His words were his feelings, his soul. Daniel began to crumble under the weight of anyone being so willing to expose their soul to him.
He looked down. “Even if we find ZPMs on Sekhem...it’s not like it would mean she didn’t die for nothing.”
Teal’c took slow and gentle steps from around the console. “Janet Fraiser would not believe she died for nothing. She died in the service of Earth, in the service of this whole galaxy. She died saving one of you, so you could save countless more.”
The low tones of Teal’c’s voice stirred every unshed tear out of Daniel. His words sputtered out in the moments his body were not buffeted by emotion. He looked up at one of his dearest and loyal friends saying, “She died...because I wasn’t protecting her. I should have been watching. Instead I was...that stupid camera! What kind of cover is that? We were under heavy fire from an army of Jaffa and I was...making a movie!”
His head hung low in shame and despair. “She was depending on me to keep her safe while...God, Teal’c. It’s my fault! It’s my fault and...Sam...Sam knows it.”
The man was already sinking to the floor and Teal’c reached out, catching him, holding him, keeping him together.
Teal’c couldn’t tell Daniel that he was wrong about Sam. He had seen the hurt and betrayal in her eyes as sure as he saw the blue of the sky. It pained him every day knowing that two people he cared for so deeply, loved so strongly, had been torn apart by the actions of his misguided people.
It had fuelled, more than anything else, his determination and resolve for the freedom of Jaffa. But he knew that there was nothing he could do to mend the hearts of Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter. All he could do was be there for them, be strong for them, and be there to gather the broken pieces so they could mend themselves.
Every hour in hyperspace brought them closer to Sekhem. Vala was all for tempting fate, but voluntarily seeking out Nephthys was not so much tempting fate as it was handing fate the knife. And the Goa’uld could do some nasty things with a small blade. Vala had seen it first hand. She’d even been a part of it. Not that she was a willing participant.
The last time she encountered Nephthys she was lucky to get away with her life. She never liked to admit when she was scared but she was glad that this time her friends would be with her. For what little good it would do. They seemed to have a knack for getting out of trouble.
Sitting around on the Odyssey letting her anxiety fester was making her feel sick. Cam was being an adequate distraction with his silly card game but he was too easy to beat.
“Uno,” she said again, placing down her second last card.
Cam frantically scanned his full hand of cards and glared at her over the top of them. Cautiously he picked one of them out and slowly set it down. Vala slapped her last card down on top of it and Cam burst with disappointment.
“Alright. I’m totally going to win this next round.” He hastily gathered the cards together and began to shuffle.
Vala released a long, suspended sigh. She perched her cheek on her upright palm. “So who was this Janet woman anyway?”
“She was the Chief Medical Officer at the SGC for seven years,” Cam said, separating the deck into halves and flipping them back together.
“You ever meet her?”
“No. But she was close to Daniel and Sam and Teal’c. And General O’Neill too. She saved their lives several times over.”
“Extraordinary woman,” Vala reflected.
“She was.” Sam swung her leg over the seat next to Vala and sat beside her. Vala turned her head on her palm to face her.
“What was she like?” she asked.
Sam neatly folded her arms across the table. “Kind. Confident. Nurturing.”
Vala pouted. “I feel like I’ve known her all my life.”
Cam hissed at her from across the table and glared warningly.
Far from taking offence, Sam smiled in appreciation and looked at her hands. “Janet had a way of making you feel safe in the most frightening situation. No matter what was happening you believed her when she said you were going to be okay, that she was going to help you. You didn’t have to worry.”
Vala watched light glimmer in Sam’s eyes, feeling something sharp in her throat. “It would appear the universe lost a very special person.”
The smile on Sam’s face grew slightly and then her lips came together, a gentle hum of grief uttering on her breath. Vala felt compelled to touch her shoulder, but Cam intersected her gesture by dealing out cards.
“Come on. I’m gonna beat you both.” He grinned and Sam chuckled.
At the moment the Odyssey came out of hyperspace SG-1 were gathered on the bridge. The vast reach of darkness they saw beyond the shield was not what any of them had expected.
Daniel grinned ear to ear. “She’s cloaked the planet.”
Sam snapped her gaze on him. “Do you have any idea how much power that would take? Cloaking Atlantis alone drains masses of power from a single ZPM. Nephthys would have to have...”
Sam’s brow creased in a mental race to calculate the answer.
“Hundreds.” Daniel edged towards the shield in fascination.
Cam snorted. “You’re saying there’s a hundred ZPMs down there?...Thereish?” Cam gestured vaguely to the empty black.
“It wouldn’t exactly take hundreds of ZPMs to cloak a whole planet,” Sam insisted cautiously. “But a dozen maybe.”
“Good enough for me,” Cam said, rubbing his hands.
There was a flash of colour and suddenly the tawny glow of a giant sphere hovered majestically in the darkness.
“Whoa.” Cam blinked.
“I-I ran a scan for the planet,” Major Womack stammered.
“Nephthys must have decided there was no point hiding from someone who knew she was there,” Daniel said.
Colonel Davidson leaned over in his captain’s seat. “She’s not attacking?”
“The terms of the treaty were clear,” Daniel explained. “She can’t fire on a non Goa’uld ship. Besides it would be in her best interest not to attack us. Doing so would only invite more people to come out here in retaliation and that would expose her planet to the rest of the galaxy, not to mention the Asgard would be well within their rights to eliminate her as a threat.”
Sam scoffed. “The Goa’uld have an annoying habit of finding ways around treaties.”
Daniel countered. “If what Vala says is true then Nephthys only wants to live the rest of her life in peace. We have our greatest leverage. She lets us go or she’ll have to defend her formerly secret planet from every race in the galaxy.”
Teal’c stood between them, his voice grave. “Let us hope she values her privacy above our demise.”
Vala picked and twisted her fingers. It was only a small comfort to know that the Asgard treaty protected them as much as it protected Nephthys.
“Alright,” said Cam, “Beam us down somewhere safe near the most heavily populated area.”
Womack activated the Asgard beam and SG-1 disappeared in a soft sheen of light. Colonel Davidson relaxed into his chair and tapped a finger to the edge of his mouth. If there was any trouble with the beaming destination, Colonel Mitchell would radio.
“Sir.” Major Marks frowned at his console and looked up at the shield. “Sir a second ship just appeared on our scanners.”
Davidson looked up, trying to spot the ship. He had been afraid of an attack. The Goa’uld weren’t likely to just sit back while a willing target hovered above them.
“We have an incoming transmission,” Marks reported. Davidson nodded to him and Marks played the message on the main screen. The oil black eyes of an Asgard blinked at them.
“This is Hod of the Asgard. You are in protected space. I must ask you to leave immediately or I will forcibly escort you through hyperspace.”
Marks and Womack and others on his crew eyed Davidson warily.
“Send a message to SG-1, and open a channel.”
While Marks opened a channel for Davidson to respond, Womack radioed SG-1. Davidson only hoped that their team wouldn’t need his help while they worked this out with the Asgard.
For that matter, he hoped that the Asgard could be reasoned with.
There was light, and everything washed to white. Vala felt her feet sinking and pale colours swam into the glowing haze. She was looking out across a vast desert, pale sand and sky. Sam walked past her, checking the screen of her tablet, and Vala looked around for the others.
They were at the base of a huge red rock formation. It jutted out of the ground like the nose of a sunken Tau’ri cruiser. There was nothing else around for miles and miles.
“It looks like there might be a city on the other side of this rock,” Sam said, looking up at it.
Hands resting on his gun, Cam trudged up to her side, looking up at the peak, and then at the wide girth of its base.
“They had to beam us down behind a big ass rock, didn’t they?” he grumbled. “Oh well. Let’s get going.”
Their boots left a wide trail of divots in which Vala walked. There was even something about the air that seemed insidious. She cast squinting eyes at the white sky and reminded herself that the Odyssey was there, and could beam them to safety if anything went wrong.
“Yep,” Cam was saying into his radio, alerting Vala to whatever was in progress. “Copy that. We’ll proceed down here. Try and hurry back.”
Vala launched into a half jog to catch up with him. “What was that about?”
“The Asgard showed up and told the Odyssey to scat. They’ll be back though. They’ll sort it out,” Cam assured her with the confident bump of his fist to the air.
Vala peered about anxiously. “Brilliant.”
As they rounded the edge of the rock, the horizon opened into more glimmering sand. But perched on that quivering line between ground and sky was a long stone wall.
Cam swayed dejectedly, and tilted his spine to yell into space. “Close. I said close to the heavily populated area!”
“Well,” Daniel said, sweeping his sleeve across his sweating brow, “We won’t get any closer standing here all day.”
Cam glared at him contemptuously and then spat air as he stumbled into a trudging gait.
As they encroached closer and closer on the stone wall, parts of a gleaming city began to poke up from behind it. Sam monitored their progress on her tablet, though found that the glare from the sunlight made it difficult to read.
“Is something wrong, Colonel Carter?” Teal’c asked her.
Sam tilted the tablet and then tried to bend over it to provide some shadow. “I think...”
Cam suddenly looked up, gaze darting left and right. “Guys. Do you hear that?”
Daniel stopped and looked around, and Teal’c, altogether still, tuned his keen senses to anything reverberating on the atmosphere.
“We’ve got life signs coming toward us,” Sam reported. “Fast.”
Cam spun. “Where?”
Sam turned around to face the way they had come. Cam didn’t like the way her body twitched back on her heels.
“There,” she said.
They all turned around and saw, appearing from around the giant rock they had left behind, fast approaching vehicles. They were far enough away to look like tiny beetles, scuttling across the sand, but they could hear the escalating hum of engines.
As Sam edged backward, Teal’c took the single stride to put himself in front of her, weapon raised. They all readied their P-90s, apprehensive of the approaching strangers. The narrow brown vehicles looked like jagged rocks on two large wheels. If Cam were going to name them, they were some sort of alien motorbike.
Sunlight flashed off the metal plates protecting the drivers. There was little point in running.
“Okay,” Cam said, as the group edged back to back, “Maybe they’re just our friendly welcoming party.”
A sound like a gatling gun kicked sand in a line right by their feet.
“Only if part of the friendly welcome is killing us,” Daniel quipped, hefting his gun.
They all fired at once, and nothing could be heard for the frenzied exchange of bullets. The bikes came charging towards them, splitting at the middle of their line and firing close enough to whip sand into a blinding, consuming cloud.
Daniel spluttered, firing blind. He was breathing in hot sand. He could feel the ground shake with each bullet. There was a shout behind him, and something struck him in the head.
He turned and looked down. The vague shape of a body had fallen behind him. Visible through the spinning dust was a growing red stain.
Daniel felt that crippling bolt of ice crash down his spine through his skull. He couldn’t even tell who it was until he heard Sam shout.
“Cameron!”
She had to look up again, down the black shaft of her gun. Daniel saw her arms and shoulders shaking from the gunfire, and over the top of her weapon he saw one of the bikers hoist an arm. He didn’t hesitate. Daniel took one bracing step and pulled back on the trigger.
The biker slumped and his vehicle roared from beneath him. A second bike crushed the fallen man’s body, but Daniel’s gaze was frozen on Vala, her body jolting with every ribbon of blood that sprayed thickly into the air.
Teal’c caught her in one arm, and extended his weapon outward with the other. In the next second they both slumped to the ground. And Sam turned, her electric eyes locking Daniel in an eternal moment.
Her arms were slack at her sides, her weapon hanging from the buckle on her vest, pointless. Her mouth opened and Daniel strained, his every sense tuned desperately to one sound he would never hear.
Dark red stains bloomed wetly across Sam’s chest. It was only then that Daniel realized the frantic look in her eyes was not pain or shock, but horror. He looked down, suddenly aware of a hotness pulsing in his body.
He felt something else tear through him, jerking him to his knees. He looked up and wanted to see Sam. But she was gone. He looked for her, and saw a body lying face down next to another. Maybe they were people he knew. Maybe he’d never met them.
All Daniel knew was that it was hot. And something really hurt. He felt himself fall and roll onto his back, and sounds bubbled in his head. Drifting across the pale sky was some enormous dark Angel. The span of her glorious wings cooled him from the unrelenting sun. She opened her mouth and sang to him and in a flash of light, he succumbed to her embrace.