As Long As It's You (2/8)
Part 1
They spent the night uncomfortably wedged against the cargo bay walls-their sleeping bags kept sliding down the tilted deck plating-but Daniel woke the next morning almost eager to begin exploring his new home. Today's explorations, he decided, needed to be focused on locating edible plant-life and determining an ideal place to build a shelter. Squeezing a few eyedrops into his eyes and hoping he could wait to remove his contacts until after he had a more plentiful supply of clean water available, he considered what little he had seen of the far side of the lake. The higher ground would be preferable for building a shelter, and the presence of the waterfall meant they might be able to build a sluice to carry fresh water straight to their door.
"At least we have nice dishes," Vala joked, interrupting his reverie. Looking up, Daniel saw that she'd opened the other four cargo boxes and was assessing their contents. The one immediately in front of her contained assorted gold, silver, and jewel-encrusted treasures, including boxes, bowls, chalices, and plates.
"Oh, good," Daniel remarked drily, "we might go hungry, but at least we'll go hungry in style."
The second crate was mostly useless, as it contained various restraints and torture implements both Daniel and Vala were grateful had not been used upon them during their brief captivity. Among these items, however, were a few lengths of sturdy rope, a large knife, and a spool of strong, light-weight cable. A heavy sledge and a number of metal spikes were also in the same box, which brought forth a disturbing mental image given the context. Regardless of the Oranians' original intentions for the tools, Daniel was certain they could be used for tent pegs or for splitting logs.
The third container was full of kassa, and though it was technically food, neither Daniel nor Vala were interested in risking an addiction to the colorful grain. Unwilling to risk contaminating anything else with the "space corn", Vala zatted the crate and its contents into oblivion.
They fared much better with the final box, discovering in it a number of common trade goods. There were three bolts of cloth dyed in patterns only a Goa'uld could love, a small cask full of salt, several jars of various spices, and an assortment of cheap trinkets. A folded tarp helped pad the contents, but the force of the ship's collision had broken open a number of the spice jars, spilling their contents to the bottom of the container.
"Good haul," Vala nodded in satisfaction, slipping a dangle-bedecked bracelet onto her wrist and giving it an appreciative shake which caused the metal bits to jingle cheerfully.
Daniel nodded absent-mindedly, rubbing at his forehead as he tried to recall what he knew about wilderness survival. Unfortunately, most of his training had involved "what to do until you are rescued or can find your way back to civilization", and he was unsure how what he'd learned while living on Abydos would translate to the current situation. Abydos was a less-hospitable environment, of course, but it also had a well-established society in which many of the staple needs were provided by different members of the community: the mastadge herders provided milk and cheese, the hunters brought in sand boars and cave lizards for meat, and a whole slew of specialists made pots, cloth, and other household items. As for fruits, vegetables, and grains, everyone pitched in to grow food during the all-too brief rainy season, and what couldn't be grown in that time had to be brought in by caravan from distant oases.
Out here in the untracked wilderness, Daniel knew he and Vala would be forced to take on all necessary roles until they could be rescued. Fortunately, they had a small but useful collection of supplies with which to begin, but already he could think of several items they would still lack: a wood saw or hatchet, a hammer, and a shovel, for starters. Of course, if he and Vala had been packed for a standard field recon, they would have had a machete and a collapsible shovel, at the least, plus a compact "survival kit" full of a number of useful items, tents, sleeping bags, and extra sets of BDUs. Sleeping bags and uniforms they had, tents they did not, but the tarp might serve as a decent tent if it was waterproof. As for tools...
Digging into the heavy duffle again, Daniel prayed the SGC's supply sergeants had done their usual stellar job of anticipating a field team's needs. His faith in the supply office's prescience was rewarded when he located the plastic-encased survival kit, a sheathed machete, and a rubber-sleeved shovel, neatly packed into the bottom of the bag. The kit's razor saw would come in handy for felling trees if necessary, while the machete could be used for more precise cuts or on smaller pieces of wood. And while the shovel wouldn't stand up to strenuous use, it was certainly better than nothing at all.
Besides, he reflected with a small smile, it wasn't as though they needed to dig a latrine.
"What's that look about?" Vala asked, planting her hands on her hips. The motion rattled the various bits of jewelry she wore, giving Daniel the impression his friend had become a human wind chime.
"Nothing, really," he replied, kneeling to re-pack his duffle. "You, uh, wearing enough jewelry?"
"What this?" She waved her hand dismissively, setting the bracelets to rattling again. "Oh, it's a start. Besides, there aren't any earrings or hair clips, and while I can understand the Oranians forgetting the hair clips, they do have ears."
"How thoughtless of them," Daniel replied flatly. "Okay, so we have a lot of work to do, and I'm not entirely sure where to begin. I guess our next priority should be finding food sources."
"Roast goose?" Vala asked.
That was the second time she'd brought that up, leaving Daniel wondering if Vala had some unresolved issues with large waterfowl. "Well, that's one option, but there's also the chance of finding their nests, in which case we'll have eggs. Beyond that, there are probably fish in the lake, but proteins alone won't be enough. To put it simply, we're going to have to forage for edibles... nuts, berries, roots, and the like."
"So we get to do the whole hunter-gatherer thing," Vala mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "How do we know if something's edible or not?"
Daniel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose while he concentrated. "We don't... not to begin with, anyway. Jack tried to teach me all this stuff ages ago, and I'm not sure how much of it I remember. I'm pretty sure we have to gather anything that looks edible and go through a long, meticulous process to make sure it's safe. That's why it's best to start trying stuff as soon as possible, so that we know what's good to eat before we're out of MREs."
"Long and meticulous? Darling, that sounds exactly like your sort of thing," Vala smirked.
He gave her an expression which was more sneer than smile. "Then, darling, it's going to be your job to clean up after me when I accidentally poison myself."
* * *
"It looks like a purple strawberry."
Vala rolled her eyes. "Stop being so Earth-centric, Daniel. I'm telling you, it looks exactly like bodwa berry. My mother and I used to eat them with sponge bread and a dollop of sweet cream. It was one of my favorites."
"Funny, the Earth-centric term for that dish is 'strawberry shortcake'," the linguist replied, returning to his careful sketch of the plant. As he'd promised Vala earlier, he was being incredibly thorough in documenting the plants they took and the environment around the plants. While he worked, Vala used the collapsible shovel and her glove-covered hands to dig around the targeted plant, exposing its roots. Then, when Daniel had recorded everything he could think of in his journal, the plant was extracted from the ground-roots and all-and dumped onto a square of the cloth they'd cut from one of the garish bolts from the Oranians' cargo.
Of course, Daniel wasn't satisfied with just one complete plant, but rather insisted they find at least two more of the same type and dig those out, too. The bodwa berry-look-alike was the fourth such plant they'd investigated, and Vala was beginning to get terribly bored. She'd tried to ask Daniel the reasoning behind his quick rejection of several other plants-including one little shrub with sweet-smelling pink flowers-but his explanations were always something different and seemingly random, like "it smells like almonds" or "it has three-leaf clusters". He'd also given her a mortified look when she'd suggested gathering a few samples of an abundant mushroom, which she found particularly odd since she knew he liked them on his pizza.
Vala had always known Daniel had his head crammed full of knowledge, and she'd been witness to the application of that knowledge on more than one occasion. Usually, there seemed to be a method to his madness, but his single-minded attention to a bunch of scrawny plants seemed more madness than method. Letting out a small sigh of frustration, she wondered just how much longer he could spend pulling parts off of the plant, cutting them open, and squeezing them for juices.
"Vala... I know you're bored, but we can't rush this."
"You said that already."
He cast her a look of exasperation, one which would have been leveled over the rims of his glasses had he not been wearing his contact lenses still. "Well it sounds like it needed repeating. We don't know what parts of these plants might be edible-if any-so we have to test them all. The berries might be poisonous, for example, while the leaves and roots could be edible. Something we can't eat raw might be okay boiled or roasted. We won't know until we try them, and then we'll know which plants we can eat and which we should avoid."
Vala smeared her hair back from her face with the back of her gloved hand. "Yes, yes, I know that already... it just seems like an awful lot of effort for nothing."
"It's not nothing, it's food."
"Well, then I'm sure it will look marvelous in your report when we get back to Earth."
His mouth fell open. "Vala, where are we?"
"In the middle of a forest."
He rolled his eyes. "And where is that forest?"
"On a planet in-" Here, her intended flippancy faltered, confounded by the sudden realization she didn't know exactly where the planet was. "Um, well, we can't be more than a few hours' hyperspace travel from Laetia."
"In which direction?"
"Okay, so we don't know where we are, fine. We just wait here until our friends find us, yes?"
"And how will they find us?"
Vala exhaled heavily. "I imagine they'll start with Laetia, since we've missed our last two check-ins already, and when they find out we were grabbed, they'll follow the cargo ship's flight path, which will lead them here."
"Right. Assuming they can find out who grabbed us and that they left Laetia with us in tow, then they'll have to try to find out where the cargo ship was headed. Presumably, that will be some sort of Lucian stronghold, in which case they'll have to find some way to infiltrate the place. They may eventually discover we never made it there at all, at which point they'll then have to backtrack from that planet to Laetia. That's probably a lot of territory to cover, and they'll have to go slow scanning each planet and moon along the way to even have a chance of picking up our locator beacons."
"All right, so it won't be quite as simple as I put it, but they will find us." Vala glared at him, daring him to challenge her. "'We don't leave our people behind.' You've told me that time and time again, and I breathed it every day Adria had you. Our friends will find us."
Daniel's shoulders slumped and he rubbed at his temples. "Yes, they will, but we don't know how long that will take. Days? Weeks? Months? Years?" He met her gaze, his own eyes suddenly tired and dull. "It's our job to stay alive for as long as it takes for them to find us. What if Sam, Teal'c, and Mitchell show up one day, only to find we killed ourselves eating something poisonous or tainted? Or died of starvation when there were hundreds of edible plants nearby?"
Vala's jaw hung open for a moment before shutting with a snap. "You're... you're not just being this... picky... just to annoy me, are you?"
"Vala, if I screw this up, we might both be dead, so no... I'm not doing this just to annoy you."
She had become so accustomed to seeing Daniel so confident, so self-assured, that it struck her as somehow wrong to see the look of fear on his face. Even when facing down the Ori and their followers, his expression tended more toward "grim determination" than anything resembling true fear.
Actually... she had seen a similar look on Daniel's face, just once: when the followers of the Ori chained her to the ara at Ver Eger and set a cauldron of oil ablaze...
"You don't have to do this alone, you know," she began, lightly laying her hand on his arm. "I... I realize that you're trying to protect me-and it's sweet of you, really-but you don't have to take all the risks. Let me help."
"Actually, I do have to take the risks. Besides the fact you may be able to use the healing device to keep me from having a severe or fatal reaction to something, you may also have some sort of immunity leftover from Qetesh. I know for a fact both you and Sam metabolize alcohol and sedatives faster than regular humans, so if it's safe for me, it's probably safe for you, but not necessarily the other way around."
"Except if it's something I'm allergic to," she pointed out, only half-jokingly. "Okay, then the least you can do it is teach me what you know so that I know what to expect. If, by some unfortunate chance, you're incapacitated in some way, I'd like to know that I'm not going to accidentally kill us both by doing something you would've known not to do. Fair?"
His lips pressed thin for a moment, but some of the life returned to his eyes. "Fair." He hesitated, looked at the ground for a moment, then looked back up at her again. "And Vala? I'm glad you're here. I mean, I'm not glad that we're both trapped on some forgotten planet in the middle of nowhere, but I'm glad I'm not... you know... alone."
Vala smiled, patting his arm again before reaching out to yank the would-be bodwa berry plant out of the loosened ground. She shook it a little to free some of the dirt from the roots, then pitched it onto the pile of plants in the center of the cloth. "The feeling's very much mutual, Daniel. I did the 'stranded' thing a few years ago, remember, but at least there were other people on Ver Isca to talk to... or rather, I could talk to Tomin and Denya, but I always had to watch what I said around them. And even if I wasn't always worried about accidentally saying something blasphemous, there wasn't really a whole lot I could talk to either of them about that they'd actually understand."
Daniel nodded, shuffling over to the cloth to tie the corners up as a makeshift-bag. "It was that way when I stayed on Abydos. I mean, I loved being there-and there were so many things I could teach them and they could teach me-but... How do you explain snow to a person born to a desert world? Or an ocean? Or something you've always taken for granted, like a hot shower?"
Rising and brushing the dirt and grass off her BDU pants, Vala added, "Or free will, to someone from a world where a little creative thinking gets you burned?"
"Yeah," he grimaced, stuffing his journal back into his pack and standing. "Okay, the bag's almost full, and four plants should be enough for now anyway... any more than that, and they might start to spoil before I can test them."
"Come on, Daniel, don't leave me in the dark. How do you plan to test each plant?"
Warming to the topic-or perhaps appreciating an attentive audience-Daniel began to describe what Jack O'Neill had taught him was the "Universal Edibility Test". He made a small joke about getting to see how truly "universal" the test was so far away from Earth, then went on to relate some of the indicators of poisonous plants, including the almond scent-possibly contains cyanide-and the three-leaf clusters-possibly related to the poison ivy family. Since some types of mushrooms could cause neurological damage that might not be evident for several days, under no circumstances were they to attempt to eat any of those.
He was midway into describing the steps required for field-testing a plant for toxicity when he suddenly noticed Vala smiling at him. "What?"
"Oh, nothing really," she laughed, slinging the bag of plants over her shoulder. "It's just that I'm always amazed how much stuff is in that head of yours."
"Ah, well, it's kinda what I do." Daniel shrugged, looking around to get his bearings before leading the way back through the woods. "Jack used to gripe all the time about me being a 'Font of Useless Knowledge', especially when he'd be trying to teach me how to defend myself and I went off on a tangent about-oh-combat training in the Zhou Dynasty or something."
"Was it relevant?"
"Oh, definitely... but I was definitely stalling, and he knew it."
Vala laughed, enjoying the glimpse at a younger Daniel Jackson the story presented. "My, my, and you say I'm difficult."
"Don't sell yourself short, Vala, you're supremely difficult," he teased.
* * *
With Daniel leading the way, they soon emerged from the tree line at the lake's edge and settled their supplies down in order to take a break before returning to the wrecked ship. While Vala got a fire started and began to heat two MREs, Daniel removed his boots and unfolded the heavy tarp they'd found that morning. He threaded a rope through the grommets around its perimeter, waded a few steps into the lake, and laid the tarp down and let the sun-warmed water start to cover it. He then pulled the tarp back out of the water, splashing himself considerably, but nevertheless exiting the lake with another makeshift bag, this time partially-filled with water.
"Here's hoping this thing doesn't leak," he grunted, slinging the free end of the bag's tie-off over a tree branch and hauling the water into the air.
While they ate, Daniel continued to relate what he remembered of the crash-course he'd received in wilderness survival, surprising himself with how much he actually retained. Of course, some of it had been put to good use throughout the decade he'd been travelling the stars, and he broke from the lecture to share with Vala an anecdote from the team's early days.
"-Not a one of us thought anything about all the pollen flying up every time we took a step. My antihistamines were keeping me from sneezing, so it didn't seem like that big of a deal. About a half mile later, though, we all started to feel a bit itchy, except Teal'c, who still had a symbiote back then. A few minutes later, it really hit us. Jack, Sam, and I started scratching like crazy, rolling around on the grass to try to get to everything, and in the process, releasing even more pollen and making the situation even worse. Teal'c stood there looking at us like we'd completely lost our minds until Jack yelled at him to get a haz-mat team. When the medical team came through, they had to sedate us to get us back through the 'Gate."
"Ow!" Vala exclaimed sympathetically. "I can imagine how much that hurt."
"Yeah, it felt like we were on fire." He froze, kicking himself for what he'd just said. "Oh, uh-"
She winced. "Okay, then I suppose I don't have to imagine how much that hurt. So what happened next?"
"Uh, well, we were taken back to Earth, scrubbed down and our scratches debrided-thankfully, we were already unconscious for that part-and restrained and put into isolation. Janet-Doctor Fraiser-put us all on cocktail of antibiotics and antihistamines, and eventually, we were allowed to wake up and have the restraints taken off if we promised not to scratch. The rash was so bad, some of the other teams got to calling us 'Red Team', which Jack liked because he thought that made him 'Red Leader'."
"As in-?"
"Star Wars, yes, which is when he introduced Teal'c to the first movie. Of course, Teal'c didn't quite get the concept of 'science-fiction' at the time, and he began to ask why the SGC wasn't using X-wings and lightsabers to battle the Goa'uld."
Vala laughed, easily able to imagine their friend requesting the use of the fictional weaponry. "You know, that was one of the first ways I realized I could easily come to like staying on Earth."
"What, Star Wars?"
"Not specifically, no, but movies... TV shows, books, et cetera. Most places in the galaxy, there's little time for creative expression, and most writing is reserved for history, trade, or for boosting a System Lord's already over-inflated ego. My mother used to make up stories for me when I was a little girl, and our village actually had a small thespian group. I always loved seeing their plays, and I missed them greatly after I grew up and left the planet."
"Azdak's play," Daniel thought aloud, recalling the small production the people of P8X-412 had put on for their "goddess".
"Azdak's play," Vala smiled wistfully. "I'm not proud of taking advantage of those people like I did, but I am glad I gave them the freedom to express themselves, even if they thought they were only doing it for Qetesh."
They lapsed into silence while they finished eating. For his part, Daniel was reflecting on how far Vala had come from the flighty, avaricious woman who'd barged her way into the SGC and practically held him hostage under the Air Force's collective noses. She was still impetuous and frustrating, of course, but many of her less-endearing mannerisms had long-since disappeared. Daniel suspected what he saw now was mostly the "real" Vala, the one long-hidden behind a carefully constructed façade of a larcenous vixen.
"So," Vala drew out, "after you test for a skin reaction, what's next? Eating it?"
Daniel shook his head. "Not quite. Next, I'll have to let the raw plant touch my lips, to make sure there's no reaction there, either. If that turns out okay, I have to take a small piece of it and chew it. If there's no reaction again, then I can swallow it. Unfortunately, I then have to wait several hours before trying a larger portion of it, then wait several hours again before repeating all that with the same plant, but this time boiled or roasted."
Vala arched an eyebrow. "Long and meticulous indeed. But, the sooner we get back to our little home-away-from-home, the sooner you can get started, hmm?"
Nodding his agreement, Daniel rose to check on the suspended tarp, pleased to see that it appeared to be holding water. It wasn't going to be easy-going using the crude bag to lug approximately five gallons of water back to the cargo ship, but it would surely be easier than making the forty minute round-trip multiple times with smaller containers. Once they had a shelter closer to the lake, transporting water would become less of an issue, though they still needed a more efficient water purification method than boiling.
Sighing, Daniel realized that, for all he and Vala had accomplished today, they still had a long way to go.
* * *
The next few days went by slowly, as Daniel started each morning with a "new" food, and Vala stuck close to him with her healing device at the ready. Fortunately, only one of the gathered plants had produced any overt reaction-a sharp tingling sensation when Daniel stuck a pinch of "fuzz-leaf" root in his mouth. The small green fruits gathered from the fuzz-leaf-which Vala christened fuzzberries-proved surprisingly tasty, and by the end of the week, they were supplementing their MREs with fuzzberries and leaves from a plant they both agreed looked and tasted like broad-leaf spinach. The purple bodwa berries-which they decided to call "stradwa" berries-were disappointingly sour when raw, but became somewhat palatable when cooked.
So far, it wasn't much of a diet, but it was a start.
To pass the time between food tests and to familiarize themselves with their new-though hopefully only temporary-home, Daniel and Vala spent one afternoon scouting the cliffs on the far side of the lake, which required some careful climbing. What appeared to be a long range of hills from the lake shore turned out to be deep terraces, and Daniel speculated aloud that maybe their lake was all that remained of what had once been a sea or ocean.
To that end, they set about exploring the first level of the terrace, and in the process, surprised a large deer-like animal which had been drinking from a broad but shallow creek. Knowing that the downstream side ended in a fifteen-foot plunge to the lake below, they scouted upstream, where they discovered the source of the flow was an inch-wide gap in the cliff wall of the second terrace. This spring, Daniel declared, would be their best choice for drinking water since the rock served as a natural filter.
"We should bottle it and make a fortune," Vala joked, letting the cool water flow over her fingers.
A hundred yards from the spring, the explorers came across a wide cave entrance. Though they hoped to make their battery-operated equipment last as long as possible, Daniel deemed it worth their while to switch on one of the flashlights and scout out the cavity. As it turned out, the cave extended no more than twenty feet into the mountain before becoming too narrow to explore further.
Vala stood in front of the gap and shone her light into it to see if it ended there, but the walls appeared to curve to the left, leaving her without an answer. Just as she turned away, a breeze ruffled her hair, and it took her only a moment to realize the soft gust had come from the gap.
"Seems to me like this little crack ends up back outside," she announced, then explained her reasoning. Daniel looked pleased with this discovery, and the "nice work" he offered her left her toes curling with joy. Despite not having his experience with outdoorsy stuff, Vala was making herself useful, and that made her happy.
"Looks like we now have water, food, and shelter," she recited, counting them off on her fingers. "So what now?"
Daniel adjusted his glasses, having removed his contacts after they'd gotten their first batch of water boiled clean. "Uh, well we need to make sure this cave stays dry when it rains. If it does, then we can start moving our supplies in and building a front wall to keep wild animals out, and keep the heat from a fire in during cold weather."
"It feels like late spring or early summer out there now," Vala remarked. "You think we'll be here that long?"
"Better to be safe than shivering."
"Good point. Say... what if we can scavenge the lights and environmental systems from the cargo ship?"
Daniel looked thoughtful. "I suppose it's worth a shot, but I'll have to leave that up to you. I know only a few basic things about repairing and modifying Goa'uld technology."
Vala arched an eyebrow. "'A few basic things'?" she echoed. "Just like you don't remember 'much' about foraging, right?"
"Um... no. Pretty much everything I know about cargo ships I learned from watching or helping Sam, and since I've never seen her dismantle a crashed ship and reuse the parts for a shelter..."
"I've never done it either, so this should be interesting. Well, I have dismantled-" A low rumble caught her ear, and she cocked her head sideways. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
A second rumble sounded, this time louder. "That."
"I did that time." Daniel frowned, walking back toward the cave entrance. "It sounded like thunder."
Venturing out of the shelter, Vala threaded through the sheltering trees to the edge of terrace, and looked out across the lake. From here, she could see the beginnings of the trench the cargo ship had cut into the valley floor, but the ship itself could not be seen for the forest on the other side of the lake. In the distance, more tree-covered hills rose, and above them loomed dark clouds. As she watched, lightning flashed, and from the corner of her eye, she noted Daniel looking at his watch. Since they'd already determined this planet's days were longer than Earth's, she wondered what he was doing.
Thunder rumbled, and Daniel lifted a finger in the air in a familiar "just a moment" gesture. "Twenty-four seconds... a little less than five miles."
"Oh!" Vala exclaimed, understanding. "We used to do something like that when I was little girl, only we had different measurements, of course."
"Sometimes, it's the simplest things that work the best," he smiled. Lightning flashed again, and this time Vala joined him in counting.
"Twenty-two, that time," she announced. "What's the formula?"
"Divide by five."
"Oh." Her brow furrowed. "It was about thirty seconds between lightning strikes, so that storm's moving this way at about... fifty miles an hour?"
Daniel stared. "Really?"
She re-checked her figures. "Forty-eight. I'm not very good at math."
"Better than I am... I would have needed a calculator for that." He looked back out across the lake, and a gust of wind tugged at the fringe of his hair. "That's a fast-moving storm, then, so we're definitely not going to make it back to the ship before it hits. We're going to need firewood to wait out the storm in the cave."
"Oh, goody, and you were just hoping to find out if the cave stayed dry when it rained."
Daniel leveled a look of amused exasperation at her. "Vala..."
She gave him a jaunty salute. "Aye-aye, Captain, firewood it is!"
* * *
It started to rain not long after they piled their last load of dry sticks against the back wall of the cave, but Daniel made a final dash outside to fill one of their silver urns at the spring. Vala fussed at him for getting soaked when there was plenty of other water to be had if he'd just stuck the pot out in the rain, but Daniel reminded her that it was never a good idea to try to handle metal objects during a lightning storm.
They soon discovered the wide-mouthed cave didn't do much for keeping wind-driven rain out, but the shelter otherwise protected them from the elements. The addition of a front wall would likely keep the cave perfectly dry, but for now, they huddled behind the unfolded tarp and attempted to wait out the storm. Eventually, the winds subsided, and they were able to emerge from their flimsy shelter and stretch cramping muscles.
While walking around inside the fire-lit cavern, Daniel examined the walls to determine what kind of rock they were composed of, and decided they were largely limestone. Though he hadn't brought the Oranians' mallet and metal pegs on this trip, he figured he could create a temporary wall by driving the stakes into the walls and tying the tarp's edges to the stakes.
"Ugh," Vala grunted, stretching in a very cat-like manner. "Blowing rain, definitely not our friend! I guess building that wall's going to be a top priority?"
"That's just what I was thinking," Daniel replied, walking to the entrance of the cave to watch the rain. Though he could still see lightning flashes and hear thunder, the worst of the storm seemed to be past. Unfortunately, there was no way to know how much longer the rain would last. As rapidly as the sky was darkening, he guessed he and Vala would have to spend the rest of the night in the cave.
"Storm letting up?" Vala asked, coming to stand beside him.
"Mostly just rain now," he reported. "Good thing we packed our bags for an overnight trip."
"You know me, I just love camping," she answered sarcastically. "That's why I joined SG-1, you know... for the camping."
"I thought it was for the MREs," Daniel joked, eliciting a theatrical shudder from his teammate. "Speaking of which, we might as well start supper... such that it is. At least we have fuzzberries for dessert."
"Tastiest fuzzberries I've ever had," she agreed with a grin. "Let's just order pizza this time, shall we?"
"Wouldn't that be nice?" Exchanging a wistful look with Vala, Daniel turned back to the cave and approached the fire. Digging into their dwindling stock of MREs, he realized they would soon need to switch to eating solely what they could gather. They would probably have to rely heavily on meat for the first few weeks, but as their knowledge of edible native plants expanded, they could supplement their diet with more fruits, roots, leaves, and vegetables.
"I think I should go fishing tomorrow," Vala announced, reading his mind. "Much as I love MREs-"
"-They won't last forever," Daniel finished. "Yeah, I was just thinking the same. We should probably be saving these things for emergencies. I also need to finish testing the last plant we gathered, and get started on moving supplies up here."
"Shouldn't we get a wall up first... to keep things dry?"
"I was thinking about that, too." He outlined his plan involving the tarp, adding that they could just untie the corners when it wasn't raining. Vala suggested leaving the upper two corners attached at all times and fastening a loose loop of rope all the way around the middle of the panel.
"One tug on the rope and zip! Instant V-shaped doorway. Or two loops, one on each end, and just roll the whole thing up like Roman shades." She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw something like that on a re-run of Trading Spaces."
Daniel nodded, impressed again by Vala's quick thinking. "Who knew reality shows could be useful for anything?"
Their food was ready by then, and they tucked into their meals, devouring the entrees and side dishes, and by mutual assent, setting the desserts, snack crackers, and powdered drink mixes aside for another time.
"I've been thinking," Vala began as she polished off the last of her beef stew. "It's been nearly a week since our ship got shot down, and while I know for certain the communications array was completely trashed, I wonder if I can use one of our radios as a substitute."
"You can do that?"
She grimaced. "Well, I don't know. It's something I'd like to try, anyway. Of course, I have no way to know how far the signal reaches, and no way to keep just anyone from receiving it. If whomever shot us down is still in the neighborhood, we might be giving them a reason to come back and finish the job."
"Or they might not have realized the Oranians had prisoners aboard, and come back to rescue us."
Vala tilted her head sideways. "Does the sun always shine in your world?"
"Huh?"
"And Mitchell calls me Pollyanna..."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "Okay, so it's a long-shot, but it's also pretty unlikely anybody's hanging around. Still, a radio signal boosted enough to be detected from orbit-which would be a hell of a boost-might help the SGC pinpoint our location faster... get them looking on the right part of the planet for our locator beacons."
"Right," Vala agreed, unconsciously rubbing the part of her arm where her subcutaneous transmitter had been implanted. "So you like my idea?"
"It's a great idea. We make a good team."
"But we make a great team when we have Samantha, Mitchell, and Muscles along."
"And Jack."
Vala frowned. "I haven't gotten to work with Jack much, but the way you talk about him, I just know I'll love spending time with him. What say we drop in on the good general when we get back to Earth?"
"Vala, the last time I took you to Washington, you nearly got the Stargate Program shut down."
"It was a minor misunderstanding!"
He snorted. "No, I'm pretty sure it was very deliberate on your part. Not the consequences of what you said and did, mind you, but certainly the words and actions themselves."
Vala's nose crinkled. "That senator deserved every word for dismissing you the way he did."
"Oh, so you did it for me, huh?"
"Well... partly, yes. I mean, it was terribly fun, but I just got so mad when he wouldn't listen to you and Muscles... pretending like he was so important and informed when really he was, well, clueless!"
Daniel nodded, pulling his glasses off and running a hand tiredly over his face. "Your timing sucked, but you have no idea how many times I've wanted to tell some politician or another off for dickering about with budget requests when-clichéd or not-the fate of the galaxy was at stake."
Vala batted her eyes. "If you take me to Washington again, I hereby swear to tell off any politician you choose."
He laughed softly, easily able to imagine Vala striding up to Capitol Hill and giving an earful to anyone with shouting distance. "I'll start a list."
Part 3