Masquerade - Ch 2

[theastolat]

Title: Masquerade - Chapter 2
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: The Ombosians declare war on Earth if the SGC do not hand over Sam. Vala reveals just what, or who, was hidden on P3X-666.


Daniel didn’t know what he was doing. He felt as if every atom in his body were shifting. He was moving at the speed of light when he was standing on the spot. A spot outside Sam’s lab. He was fidgeting and shuffling enough outside the door that Sam had to know he was there.

He clapped his hands behind his head and spat air between his teeth. Then he ducked inside. Sam sat at her desk, referring to schematics as she examined a mechanical device in front of her. It looked alien and broken.

Sam stretched her back, sighed, and set her hands on her lap. “I’m listening,” she said finally, because Daniel had been standing there for too long without saying a word. “Daniel, if you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I have work to do.”

Daniel winced. She wasn’t usually so harsh. Sometimes they still smiled at each other and meant it. Most of the time, they worked together, and they counted on each other. It was only in those moments when they stopped being intergalactic explorers and were just Lt. Colonel Carter and Dr Daniel Jackson that Sam was miles away.

“Okay I’m just gonna...yup.” Daniel held his hands together in prayer and information streamed behind his eyes like reels of data. Sam leaned back on the stool and tipped her head.
Daniel thrust his hands outward, “The only thing on that whole planet were those ruins, right?”
Sam didn’t answer, but Daniel didn’t need her to. He began to pace.

“There had to be a reason Setesh told his people to stay away from it. He had to be hiding something there. Something important.”
“Maybe the ruins themselves,” Sam suggested with a listless shrug.
“That’s what I thought, too, at first. We speculate the planet was a sort of holy land for the Ancients, as a kind of stopping place on the way to ascension. Presumably, Setesh wouldn’t understand the significance of this, and yet he had enough interest in the planet to waste resources defending it.”

After following Daniel moving about the room Sam closed her eyes, feeling them sting from strain.

“Now, the other System Lords would have no interest in it either. There were no people to rule, there was no naquadah to mine. But since Setesh’s death someone obviously learned that there was something of worth to be found there and went to recover it.” Daniel held an expectant line on his lips and waited for Sam’s reaction.

She shook her head, and Daniel could feel the disappointment she had in him.
“I’m not going to support your request to go back there. General Landry denied it and I agree with that decision,” she turned back to her work, picking up some tool he couldn’t identify and probing the device’s outer shell.

Daniel’s heart pounded. “We owe it to Janet to find out what she died for.”
There was a metallic clack of the tool hitting the desk as Sam sat straight up on her stool. “She died because she was saving a man’s life and didn’t see the attack coming.” Her eyes were pale, but still shone with light that almost brought Daniel to tears right then and there.

“No. That’s how she died, not why she died,” he insisted.
“Why?” Sam breathed, barely strong enough to carry her voice. She looked down into her lap. “Why can’t you let this go?”
There was a quake to Daniel’s voice when he said, “Because she wouldn’t.”
Confusion knitted across Sam’s brow and she shook her head. “What?”

“She wouldn’t let me go, Sam. Even when my death was inevitable. And I’m not going to let her go.” He chewed his lip, fighting to keep tears from falling. “Not without learning why those ruins were so important.”

Sam stood up and rounded the desk. She was tall enough that her eyes came almost level with Daniel’s, and she glared at him from somewhere so dark he felt himself freeze all over.
“They...” Sam’s hushed voice cracked. “Dragged her body...back to the Stargate...knowing we’d come back for her.” Her lips tensed, her eyes shimmering, searching Daniel for something. He couldn’t decide if he was afraid she would find it or afraid it wasn’t there to be found.

“And set her alight.”
Daniel wouldn’t look away from her. “I know.”
“I’m not going back there.”
Daniel couldn’t help but relish this closeness. He couldn’t help but savour looking into Sam’s eyes and seeing her, really seeing her, and not the person she’d stitched together out of broken pieces just to be in the same room as him.

When she turned away Daniel closed his eyes, trapping the moment inside them. He heard her return to her desk and start working. If he didn’t open his eyes again he wouldn’t be able to see his way out. Sensing Sam’s rising impatience Daniel reluctantly took himself from the room and quickly down the narrow corridors.

He stopped, nowhere in particular, a surge of emotion spluttering out of him all at once. When he caught his breath the sirens blared signalling an unscheduled offworld activation.

Cam met Landry in his office and was told to stand at ease. The old General stood from his chair and put his hands on the desk.
“The Ombos representative, I think his name was Refu, said we had five moon cycles to hand you and your team over to them or they will launch an attack against our planet. Now, I have people telling me that five moon cycles on their planet equates to just under a week on Earth.”

“They drive a hard bargain,” Cam said. Landry snickered.
“They have a whole armada of ships. We have one. Two on a good day. And the Antarctic outpost is without a ZPM.” The General paced from behind his desk and came to stand at a short distance to Cam.

“We could borrow one from Atlantis. Just for the time of the attack,” Cam suggested.
“We’re not sure how many ships those Setesh worshippers are going to send. Your own report stated there were nearly a hundred in that one city alone. We’re not even sure there are enough drones in the outpost to contend with so many enemy ships.” Landry turned his hands outwards at his sides. “The free Jaffa can’t help us because the Ori attack on Dakara has left them fragmented and vulnerable. We’re lucky enough Teal’c is willing to stay with us until we can work this crisis out.”

No matter what Landry was saying, there was a beat to his voice that was always cheerful, and gave Cam a sense of optimism regardless of what he was hearing.
“You could always just hand us over,” Cam smirked.
“Ready to give up that easily, huh?” Landry smiled and uttered a soft hum of reflection.

Cam frowned and folded his arms. “Sir, I hate to say it, but we’d have a better chance of finding ZPMs in the Pegasus galaxy.”
Landry gave a nod of consent. “And we’ve sent in a request for Atlantis to send us anything they can spare. Just as we would do for them. The problem is that their whole base of operations runs off the power of those things, and they need them just to function as a unit from day to day.”

“So,” Cam pouted and drew a small curve in the air with his finger, pointing at the door, “I should go tell my team to pack for the slaughterhouse?”
Landry’s chuckles came deep. “Not just yet. When we’re really desperate we have allies and some favors to call in. Until then, I want to see if we can’t resolve this issue before it leads to an all out war.”

“What do you suggest?” Cam asked, readjusting his folded arms more bracingly.
Landry slipped behind his desk and pulled out his chair. “We’ll send in another team to determine our chances of mounting a viable diplomatic defence. Refu claims you are to stand trial, but only as accessories to murder. They want to execute Colonel Carter on the spot.”

Cam could only laugh grimly. After seeing how those people planned to sacrifice a poor young woman in the middle of town, he could only imagine their sick and medieval methods of execution.
“In the meantime,” Landry said, easing down on his chair and settling comfortably, “I have Dr Lee working on Athur’s Mantle to see if we can’t find some more practical uses for that phasing power it has. I’ve yet to ask Carter if she wouldn’t mind helping him out. Perhaps you could deliver that message for me.”

Cam hoped his apprehension didn’t show too clearly on his face. “Yes Sir.”
“Dismissed.”

Vala hated to wind down after missions, especially ones that ended in a daring rescue, a hand to hand brawl in the middle of a crowded city square, and a desperate race to escape with their lives. Her body wouldn’t allow it. Her blood pumped hotly, senses on alert and her nerves drawn so tightly she could probably catch a bullet with her teeth, or catch flies with little eating sticks like that old man in that movie she watched with Cam.

She stomped into Daniel’s lab, swinging her arms and moaning in dissatisfaction. She stretched herself across his desk and rolled her head onto an outstretched arm. Daniel’s eyes never lifted from his books, of which he appeared to be reading from all at once.

She watched him silently until Daniel heaved a sigh and collected the tension of his brow into his hand. He ran his palm over his face, covered his mouth and peeped up at Vala. She smiled empathetically, hoping he appreciated that she wasn’t exactly bothering him.

She looked down and turned one of the open books to read it. “You’re reading about Setesh?”
Daniel leaned fully back in his chair. “Re-reading. This is mostly all the research I gathered the first time we encountered Setesh.”
“The first and only time,” Vala said, awe or incredulity marking her voice.

Daniel paused to examine her, wondering where that tone had come from. He supposed the level of victory SG-1 had over the Goa’uld inside a short decade made some mockery of the hundreds and thousands of years other far superior races had fought against them, and the unimaginable number of lives lost. SG-1 had never lost a single member. Well. Not permanently. And it was not as if Earth had not suffered causalities.

Daniel decided he could buffer his research off Vala if she insisted on being around him.
“I don’t exactly have a lot of information on his activity during his time as a System Lord. All I know is that he stripped Isis and Osiris from their hosts, and he got himself stranded on Earth after Ra left.”

Vala continued to read silently from the book. Daniel frowned, her silence unexpected.
“Uhh...” he stammered, distracted by her uncharacteristic focus on the book, “There is nothing in Earth’s writings about his time here, other than the somewhat mangled version of events between Seth and Osiris and Isis.”

Daniel scrolled down a web page containing artistic representations of Seth as a mighty ruler. “There are a few obscure references to Nephthys, the Goddess of the Death experience, that she and Setesh might have once ruled together, but...what?”

Vala had suddenly looked up from the book in his hands, features tense on the verge of some revelation.
“What is it?” Daniel probed her again.

Sam only agreed to show up at the briefing because Teal’c assured her it would be worthwhile. It didn’t matter that it was an order, she would have found a way to avoid it.
“There may be more to this than either of us first assumed,” Teal’c told her gently, receiving all the hurt and exhaustion Sam was projecting and carrying it for her.

She sat next to him and only smiled out of reflex because that was how Cam greeted her when he sat opposite her at the table.

“Now,” Landry said, taking his seat. “I only agreed to listen to this because Vala assured me it was relevant to our problem with the Ombosians. So let’s hear it.”

“Okay,” Vala began, hands out across the table. “I think I know what, or more accurately, who was hidden on P3X-666.”
She scanned each of their faces in turn, apparently disappointed at the subdued response.
“Well?” Landry said, impatiently.

“We believe it is where Setesh hid a Goa’uld symbiote named Nephthys,” Teal’c spoke up as Vala opened her mouth to reply. Her shoulders sank into a slant.
Sam looked up at him in surprise. “Who...”
“Setesh stripped her of her host like he did to Osiris and Isis, and trapped her in a canopic jar!” Vala explained quickly before Teal’c stole the spotlight again. “At least, those were the rumours.”

“No one could find her,” Teal’c said, “Nephthys was not a System Lord. No one concerned themselves over her sudden disappearance.”
Sam looked from Teal’c to Vala, expecting her to butt in with more information, but she was chewing her lip.

“Well, who was this Memphis?” Cam asked.
“Nephthys,” Daniel corrected.
“Neph...thys...Nephthys. Neph...Gee, kinda hard to say without spitting.” Their leader grinned and glanced about the table but no one was smiling with him so he cleared his throat and asked, “So why do you think she’s who was hidden on P3...that planet?”

“As I said, Nephthys was not a System Lord,” Teal’c began, “But she was able to gain certain influence over other, low ranking Goa’uld who inexplicably rose to great power.”

“Such as?” Landry asked.
“Marduk,” Vala said, and then pointed enthusiastically, “Anubis.”
The shock she had expected earlier was finally presented at this announcement.
“Anubis?” Landry frowned, sitting back in his seat.
“Wait a minute. You’re telling me, Nephthys is the woman behind Anubis?” Cam asked.

“Before his exile and ascension,” Teal’c said.
“Taught him everything she knew, huh?” Daniel said, “There’s a scary thought.”

“Nephthys was known for her interest in and the collecting of technology of other races. Specifically, Ancient technology. As Daniel Jackson says, she was, presumably, the one who encouraged Anubis to conduct his research into ascension.” Teal’c closed his hands together on the table.

“Yes, yes, that bit is unimportant. Well,” Vala shrugged, “Less important than the fact that Nephthys would often boast of a planet where she had hidden all these wondrous technologies. It used to drive the System Lords mad.”

Cam chuffed, picturing a gang of exasperated System Lords rioting like out of control hockey fans. “Why didn’t they just, I don’t know, torture the location of this planet out of her?” he asked.
“She possessed technology that made such attempts impossible,” Teal’c explained, turning to him.

“Or at least very difficult,” Vala interjected. “Eventually they saw her as more of a nuisance than a threat. The other Goa’uld stopped believing her.”
“I assume Setesh was not one of them,” Daniel spoke up suddenly. Light flashed on his glasses as he looked up, and for a brief moment Sam was drawn to him. She looked down quickly when she realized he was returning her gaze.

“Setesh became interested in her. Whether he believed her claims or not was beside the point,” Vala explained. Daniel cocked his head, watching her pick at her fingers.
“It is believed that she denied him,” Teal’c said, and paused before speaking again. His eyes were especially severe. “But that he beat her into submission.”

Sam was surprised at the way her skin crawled. The Goa’uld were monsters. They were murderous, merciless, soulless monsters and no horrific act they committed on one of their own should surprise her. Yet she had definitely felt that initial surge of rage wash over her, or at least scuttle beneath her skin, and it was uncomfortable to think she’d felt any empathy at all towards one.

“In fact,” Vala said, with a mirthless smile, “If there was one thing Setesh was praised for by the System Lords it was his control over Nephthys.”
“So what happened?” Landry prompted.
Vala shrugged. “We can only assume he grew tired of her resistance. He stripped her symbiote from its host and hid her away somewhere.”

“P3X-666,” Daniel said. “I’m sure of it. And someone else was too.”
“Who?” Landry asked.
Daniel sat forward in his chair as though he’d been bursting for someone to ask that very question. “It would have to be Ba’al. I mean think about it. Anubis was in power at that point and Ba’al was in his service. Nephthys’ treasure trove of Ancient technology must have been his last desperate attempt to overthrow him.”

Sam shook her head against the rising echo of firing staff weapons. They ceased to be real memories. Just haunting impressions of terror. “No. The only reason Jaffa showed up on the planet was because that probe sent off a transmission before SG-13 destroyed it.”

“And what was the probe doing there?” Daniel asked her. Sam tightened her lips. Daniel wouldn’t be deterred. “It was sent there to search the ruins. To locate Nephthys. And when Ba’al believed that we might find her first he sent everything he had to stop us.”

Sam shuddered. She didn’t know what she believed or how she felt. If what Daniel said was true then Janet was killed because a vile and sinister Goa’uld wanted to teach a reluctant lover a lesson by locking her away in a small dark place for hundreds of years. Janet was killed because Ba’al wanted power over Anubis.

Sam took in a slow breath and closed her eyes. After all this time consoling herself in the fact that even if there was a reason it wouldn’t change the fact that she would never hear Janet’s voice again, never hear her laugh or cry, never see her smile. Sam would never reach out to dry her tears, never hold her in her embrace and feel Janet’s heart beating against her chest or her warm breath tickling her neck. Now Sam was confronted by a new truth that upturned the past three years of painstaking emotional recovery.

“Assuming you’re right,” she said, managing somehow to keep her voice steady. “There’s no way Ba’al would risk reviving a potential rival without having some insurance.”
“Oh,” Vala laughed, and the noise was so unexpected everyone looked at her, “The only insurance he needed was the fact that he revived her with nothing. He had all the power. All she had was her new host and, through his small mercy, the clothes on her back.”

“Assuming,” Sam said again, “That Ba’al actually found her and managed to provide her with a new host.”
Vala leaned over the table to see her around Teal’c. “That’s exactly what he did.”
Cam blinked. “How do you know that?”
“Well...because she found me.”

Daniel scrunched his lips together. “And you were going to tell us this...when exactly?”
Vala’s eyes shifted and her fingers rapped. “Now?” She looked in turn at each one of their expectant faces.

“You met this Nephthys,” Landry said, trying not to let impatience get the better of him.
“It was a little while before I met you, actually, Daniel,” Vala said, pointing at him across the table. “I was minding my own business, you know...”
“Scheming something,” Cam offered.

“Right,” Vala flippantly agreed, “And this woman comes up to me, calls me Qetesh. Well. I play along for a while, just to find out who she is, and then I realize. And of course she knew I wasn’t Qetesh anymore. Anyway, she buys me a drink and tells me all about how Ba’al found her and dug her out of some old temple and gave her a host and wrongly assumed how grateful she would be and that she would just reward him with the location of Sekhem.”

Everyone in the room squinted trying to follow Vala’s story. It was only slightly easier to follow than the time she told them about how she got married and was impregnated by the Ori.
“Wait, what’s Sekhem?” Cam interrupted.
“The name Nephthys gave to her planet,” Teal’c said.

“The planet where she hid all those alien and Ancient technologies,” Cam validated.
“Yes, Mitchell, bravo for keeping up. May I continue?” Vala said, making figure eights with her hands.
Cam held out his hand. “Please.”

“She was a little vague on the details. She only told me she escaped on a Tel’tak but that the hyperdrive was damaged. She wanted to employ me,” Vala said, emphasising herself with a helpful indicative gesture, “to find her a new ship.”

Daniel glared. “You don’t mean the Prometheus.”
Vala frowned. “What? No. I stole that for someone else, you know that. No this was before I met you.”
“She paid you?” Cam asked, lifting an ankle onto his knee.

“Handsomely,” Vala said, then she pouted regrettably. “Really wish I still had it too.”
“Had what?” Cam asked.
“That Kull Warrior Suit.”

“You got that from Nephthys?” Daniel asked. It was not entirely implausible. Nephthys could have procured it during her time in Anubis’s fleet. It was then that Sam gave his scepticism a voice.
“And she just...gave it to you. For finding her a ship,” she said.
“How else do you think I could get something like that off one of those things? I’m good, I grant you, but...”

Sam shook her head. “She didn’t just try to kill you?”
Vala paused and rapped her nails on the table again. “I must admit it was touch and go there for a while. She’s a very scary lady. Even with the new host.”
Landry sighed impatiently. He felt like he had been having a conversation with a child. “So this secret planet. Sekhem. Do you think Nephthys could have found any ZPMs?”

“It is possible,” Teal’c said.
“But no one has been able to find it,” Landry said, issuing the challenge to the room.
“I’ll find it, Sir,” Daniel piped up immediately, just as Landry knew he would. The General regarded Sam briefly, because conversely, her silence was unexpected.

“Good,” he said finally. “And Colonel Carter can help you.”
The woman looked up, objection on the tip of her tongue. Instead she said, “Yes, Sir,” and Daniel looked strangely nervous.