Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world
A/N: Here is another side story / companion piece to my series of SG-1 tales. This one will be different to the others in that I plan to keep adding to it little by little. It may spur me to add on to the other Ripple Effects later on.
Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 1
They arrived alone, one having lost his heart, the other her home. Being thrown together by an unprecedented twist of fate may just herald a second chance for both of them.
The multiverse turns in on itself and spits out two broken, solitary travellers on a distant shore to encounter one another in the midst of impossibility. Staking their fates and their futures they decide to step forward together to start over and rebuild what they've both lost.
P3R-278, January 2006 (alternate reality)
Cameron looked around at the mountainous terrain all around them as they walked up the escarpment back to the Stargate. Teal'c and Daniel were walking ahead of him while he took up the rear and let his gaze flow up the rocky face of the cliff overhanging their trail and into the cloudless sky above them, the deep blue in contrast to the almost iridescent reds and ochres of the large gas giant taking up a fifth of the sky. Sam would have loved to have seen those rings. The angle was oblique, but he could see the clearly delineated divisions created by the smaller inner moons of the brown dwarf they orbited, a failed star. He chuckled ruefully and bit his lip. Sam might have been a little proud of him for knowing that. He pushed the thought away, sealed it in its box and buried it once more. It had been over two months, but the wound was still raw, and even though Orlin and the Asgard and the Tok'ra had helped them save Earth from the Prior's plague, the price had been too high as far as he was concerned.
He passed a hand over his eyes and pushed it back to swipe the slate grey patrol cap off his head. He avoided looking back up into the sky until they were finally on the plateau that held the Stargate and its platform. He followed on slowly behind his friends and scanned the wide open space once more. If it weren't for the natives who lived in the vertically arranged tiers behind intricately detailed façades carved out of the cliff face, this place would be considered worthless. Unfortunately they could offer nothing in the struggle against the Ori, he just hoped they wouldn't be discovered by the extra-galactic crusaders.
Daniel was dialling home as Teal'c turned to look back at him. He nodded his head once and Cam returned the small gesture. The Jaffa was worried for him, Cam could tell that much now that he'd known the big guy for over two years and worked every day with him for nearly six months. Teal'c had been the one who finally pulled him away from her side after she'd passed. Cam had almost cursed his own immunity to the plague, granted to him after another Prior had cured him of his own bout on P8X-412. Although it had allowed him to stay at her side through the whole thing, it also meant he'd have to remain behind without her afterwards. An ugly thought. He pushed it away as well. Teal'c would be disappointed. Daniel would be angry. The wormhole sprang into existence inside the Stargate and Cam motioned his friends onwards while still some distance away himself. They nodded and climbed the shallow steps to walk through the event horizon. Cam continued on towards the metal ring and turned around to walk backwards so as to get one final look at the massive planet in the sky behind him. Sam would have loved that view.
He heard a sputtering sound and turned his head to see the event horizon twisting and sparking. He frowned heavily and stopped in his tracks, then blinked when the wormhole disrupted and dissolved away into nothingness. He walked back down the platform towards the DHD, but grew tense when the 'gate's inner track began spinning as chevrons lit up. He gripped at his P90 and took a ready stance behind the cover of the DHD pedestal. To say he was relieved when he heard General Landry's voice calling him over the radio when the wormhole established would be a slight understatement.
"Colonel Mitchell, this is Stargate Command. Do you copy?" intoned the General's gruff drawl.
"SGC, this is Mitchell, I copy. The wormhole just kinda fizzled out before I got to it, sir. I was about to redial and head on through." Cam said with a hand up to the radio attached to his tac vest.
"Hold off on that, Colonel. We got a lot of weird feedback telemetry over the connection just before it went and we want to know what's going on before you try coming through." Cam grimaced and stared around him at the rock-strewn desolation of the high mountain pass. He raised a hand to the radio.
"Copy that, Stargate Command, will start at a nine hundred and ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall and await further instructions." he grumbled and moved over to the platform to find somewhere semi-comfortable to sit as General Landry signed off with a little jibe at his lack of faith in them. He got to a hundred and forty-eight before he heard them. Whipping his head around to the south he saw the arrow-shaped Ori fighters and quickly got up to dash for the DHD. He was completely exposed up here. He immediately began dialling Earth, knowing the ships would head straight for the Stargate and drop ring platforms to secure it as a top priority. He slapped down the symbols of Earth's address with both hands as quickly as he ever had and then bobbed his head from side to side, waiting for the 'gate itself to finish all its spinning. As soon as the wormhole established he was on the radio.
"Stargate Command, this is Colonel Mitchell, I am about twenty seconds from being up to my eyeballs in Ori footsoldiers." As if to punctuate his statement he heard one of the fighters make a strafing run at him and quickly ducked behind the DHD while dirt and rocky debris showered over him and the control pedestal after several close impacts from its energy cannons. He quickly punched his IDC into the GDO and saw the green flag as it was accepted. "They're already using me for air-to-ground target practice. Open the iris so I can make a dash for the 'gate!" It took far longer than he would have liked for a reply to come through, what the hell was going on back there?
"Copy that, Colonel Mitchell, opening the iris." He checked his GDO for all greens as he sprinted for the 'gate and ran through, only to freeze when he met a wall of guns pointed at him.
"Um, hi guys, it's just me. You can close the iris now." he said with an incredulous smile on his lips as he took a step forward and every single gun made tiny compensating movements to follow him while their owners all began to narrow down their sights. He froze again and very slowly held his arms out wide, his right hand empty with fingers spread while his left held on to the stock of his P90. "What's going on?"
"Where's the rest of your team, Colonel?" asked Landry from the control room. He shook his head in confusion when he spotted Daniel and Teal'c standing right next to him.
"They're right next to you, sir. They came through over two hours ago." He looked around the room in astonishment while a Marine walked up to him slowly and took the P90 he held out wide to his left and reached for his Beretta against his leg, then walked around to take his combat knife from the back of his vest. "What is all this, General?" The klaxons and lights began flashing as Chief Harriman's voice came out over the base-wide comm.
"Unscheduled off-world activation!" The Marine put a hand on his shoulder and began leading him down the ramp mumbling in frustration under his breath.
"Here we go again."
USS Prometheus, above P7Y-195, January 2006 (alternate reality)
Sam hunkered down against her console as another blast just barely grazed the Tau'ri starship's shields. Grazed, but still took it down to nearly nothing. She cursed at the power behind the beam weapons on those Ori motherships. She felt Prometheus shift to port as Cameron swung them around wide trying to evade and realised inertial dampening must be failing. She was about to call for repair teams only to choke down on the words. It was only the two of them left on the ship now. The crew had been evacuated while Colonel Pendergast and SG-1 drew the Ori back into hyperspace. It hadn't been a long chase.
She glanced to her side quickly, only once, to see the Colonel's body still impaled in the command chair. She let her eyes drift past that to see Cameron still wrestling with the flight controls. She refused to look behind her because she knew it only meant she'd see Daniel and Teal'c in what was left of the rest of the bridge after the explosions. She didn't want to see that.
"Shields down to thirteen percent, Cam, we won't survive another hit." she warned as her fingers flew over the systems console in front of her, trying to coax a little more power out of the engines, a little more life from the shields.
"I know, Sam, I know." he replied and she whipped her head around to him at his tone. That was not a good tone.
"Cameron..." she called in warning, only for him to furiously whip his hands around his board as Prometheus abruptly lurched downwards. Sam felt another grazing shot pass over them as screams of tearing metal and explosions sounded all around them. Shields were gone, only his piloting skills had kept them from being vaporised and even that wouldn't be enough next time. She looked over at him with wide eyes as she suddenly realised what he was planning. "It won't even be a drain on their shields, Cam." He just smiled sadly at her before pressing several buttons on his board and looking at her mournfully.
"I know, Sam, good-bye." he said softly with tears filling his blue eyes. She was up out of her seat even before she saw the white shimmering, knowing exactly what he was going to do.
"No! Cameron!" she called into the empty air in the middle of a circle of standing stones with a Stargate at its center. She looked up quickly as tears filled her vision and cried out in despair when she spotted a brief flash in the night sky almost directly above her head. That selfish son of a bitch! She was going to kill him! When she realised what had just passed through her head she pitched down onto her knees with her hands over her eyes and cried out again in anger and defeat. She hunched over into a ball and pressed her head down against the ground as she shuddered with violent spasms and the tears flowed freely from her eyes, through her fingers and into the hard scrabbled earth under her. What did he expect her to do now? He never thought that far ahead! He never thought that maybe she would want to be with him at the end, did he?. The asshole! Where was she going to go? The Alpha and Beta Sites were gone, the Tok'ra and the Jaffa were nearly wiped out. The SGC was the last holdout on Earth after the Ori ships had arrived in orbit. She shuddered and screwed her eyes shut with a grimace. She'd go there. If she was going to die and it couldn't be with him then she'd die at home. Damn him.
She clutched at the dirt under her and pushed herself up and back on to her knees. She should be quick about it. The Ori would send ships down soon. She got to her feet and walked over to the DHD, rubbing at her face with the slate grey sleeves of her BDU jacket. She began putting in Earth's address into the pedestal and fished in her pocket for her radio, switching it from a shipboard frequency to one used at Stargate Command. She fished in her other pocket for a GDO and grinned ruefully to herself when she heard the arrival of the Ori fighters. As expected. When the wormhole formed she punched in her IDC and brought up the radio to her lips.
"Stargate Command, this is Colonel Carter. I'm alone and about to get swamped under by Ori fighters any second. I need that iris open on the double." she ordered into the radio. She waited and waited, wondering whether the green flag marking her IDC as good was only the automatic reply of the computers still working after everyone at the base was already dead. She looked up at the wormhole and shook her head, deciding she didn't care any more. She began walking towards the event horizon even as the GDO reported the iris was closed.
"Confirmed, Colonel, opening the iris." came Walter's reply and she nearly sighed in relief as she stepped through only to be faced with several squads of Marines pointing machine guns at her and one very shocked looking Cameron Mitchell at the foot of the ramp in his grey BDUs, though she wondered at his tac vest. The iris closed behind her and she blinked rapidly as her brow knit in surprise. How had he gotten off the ship and back to Earth? Had he gone into hyperspace? They were nowhere near any other planets. Why was he looking at her like that? Like he was seeing a ghost. Well, that was his own damn fault anyway. She began striding down the ramp right for him as the Marines wavered and backed up before her.
"You son of a bitch! Don't you ever do something like that again, do you understand?" she cried as she walked up to Cameron and punched him in the chest before wrapping her arms around him and holding him tightly. "I thought you had died, Cam. What would I do if you had died?" she murmured into his neck as she clutched tightly at the back of his tac vest and he hesitantly put his arms around her shoulders.
"Sam? You're not dead? What-? Why-?" he said in an increasingly broken voice. "How can you not be dead? I saw you die! I held your hand when you died!" He was crushing her to him now, painfully so, but she didn't care. She also didn't care that he was babbling nonsense.
"And whose fault is that? Beaming me off the ship when you're about to ram theirs. How could you, Cam? How could you even think that?" She shook him lightly as her voice also broke with her own pain. "You're all I have left, you bastard." she breathed.
"I'm really sorry about this." came a familiar drawl from behind her and she stiffened, just as Cameron stiffened as well. That was Cam's voice, but he hadn't spoken.
"It's quite possible neither of you is who the other thinks they are." came a melodious voice from the same direction which was just impossible. Impossible because it was her own voice. She whipped around in Cameron's arms to see herself, just standing there in green BDUs, with a similarly attired Cameron, and both looking rather apologetic.
On to Chapter 2