[Stargate: Fiction] "Our Charge Is Not to Do" [SG-22, G]
Title: Our Charge Is Not to Do
Author: Ami Ven
Word Count: 1,989
Rating: G
Fandom: Stargate SG-1 ( SG-22, original characters)
Setting: tag for one of the episodes when the SGC temporarily shuts down
Summary When SG-22 gets stuck off-world, they leave a forwarding address.
Our Charge Is Not to Do
“Levi, dial the gate!” yelled Gryff, half-turning to fire her stolen staff weapon back at the Jaffa chasing them.
This planet wasn’t the one they’d originally travelled to - the people PX9-1134 apparently hadn’t mentioned to SG-12 on either of their prior visits that they were about due for a visit from their local minor Goa’uld, Priapus, collecting slaves for his naquadah mine. His Jaffa had quickly searched the village, rounding up five strong local men along with SG-22.
Fighting back wasn’t an option - they were outnumbered three-to-one, even before taking into account all of the civilians around, so SG-22 allowed themselves to be captured and taken through the gate to Priapus’s naquadah mine.
After that, it had taken two weeks for them to escape.
SG-22 had done a good job of it, though. They’d collapsed part of the mine, set fire to the Jaffa camp, rescued all fifty-or-so slaves - all men from a handful of sparcely-populated worlds controlled by Priapus - and were now fighting their way back to the stargate.
Gryff continued to fire back at the Jaffa, only about a dozen of them, the rest all dealing with the fires. She listened to the chevrons clinking into place, then the kawoosh of an establishing wormhole, then -
“Uh, Gryff?” called Levi.
“Little busy!” she called back.
“Gryff, we got the answering machine!”
“We got what!?”
“Come listen!”
Gryff passed her staff weapon to the man beside her and headed for the DHD. The stargate on this planet had once been inside a building, which had since collapsed, but there were enough gaudy gold walls to provide cover for her to lean in next to Levi.
He had their only working radio, and through it, she could hear General Hammond’s voice, “- to Earth. I repeat: do not return to Earth.” There was a pause. “SGC personnel, this is General Hammond. By order of the President of the United States, all operations of the Stargate Program have been suspended, indefinitely. The base will remain on lockdown and the iris covering our stargate will not be opened. All outstanding iris codes have been locked.” There was another pause. “Any military personnel still off-world will be officially classified as missing in action. I give you my word that we are not giving up on you, on any of you, and I will do everything in my power to bring you home. But until then, you must not return to earth. I repeat: do not-”
Gryff reached over to shut off the radio. “Oh, hell.”
“What now?” Levi asked.
“Uh, sir?” called Jason. “We’ve got company!”
Beyond the wall, more Jaffa were jogging down the path to join the others.
“Dial up…uh, P1X-9112,” Gryff told Levi. “They were testing that as an Alpha Site, they might have left some supplies left behind.”
“Good thinking,” Levi said, and began to dial.
When the second wormhole shimmered to life, Gryff yelled, “Levi, go! Toby-”
“On it!” her second-in-command replied.
As Gryff took back her staff weapon from the man she’d given it to earlier, she could hear Toby calling the newly-freed miners through the gate. Jason had taken a position opposite hers, half-concealed behind crumbling stone walls, and they were able to keep up cover fire until Toby yelled, “You’re the last two left.”
Gryff nodded at Jason and they moved together, aiming at the ground rather than the enemy Jaffa, to keep up a wall of dust and flame so they could break for the stargate.
On the other side, everything was quiet.
Most of the men they’d just rescued had plopped right down on the grass in front of the gate platform, and over their heads, Gryff could see the pre-fab mobile buildings and tents of a standard Earth military base.
“Gryff, look at this!” called Levi.
There were three standard-issue duffel bags at the base of the DHD, each with an SG-22 unit patch pinned to it.
“They knew we were still out here,” said Toby, kneeling to open one of the duffels. “It’s spare uniforms, MREs, ammo…”
“The general said he wouldn’t forget us,” Gryff smiled, then said more seriously, “Now, we need to get these people organized. Toby, Levi, see what condition the mess tent is in. Find out if we have any wounded, try to get a head count of everyone. Jason and I will check the rest of the camp.”
Toby nodded. “On it, Gryff.”
The potential Alpha Site had clearly been evacuated in an orderly fashion. All of the electronic equipment had been packed up and removed, but much more of the other supplies had been left behind than was procedure.
A little shed marked with a red cross had an empty space on the desk where a computer had been, but the cabinets were still full of bandages and medications. The barracks building still had mattresses and bed linens, wrapped in plastic for safekeeping. Another shed, clearly set up to be an armory, now held a variety of tools - for gardening, in addition to the usual household assortment.
“This is way more than should have been left behind,” said Jason. “You think this is the general looking out for us, too, sir?”
“I know it is,” said Gryff. “Let’s see how the others are doing.”
Toby and Levi had found the mess tend in the same condition - chairs and tables still in place, pots and pans in boxes in the kitchen, a pantry full of non-perishable food.
“But there were only twelve people assigned here,” said Toby. “I’m sure they left everything they could, and it’d be more than enough for the four of us, for a couple of months, but there are over fifty of us now.”
“And more than that,” said Gryff. “Priapus will be pissed that we stole all his slaves, and he’ll probably go back to where he got them from, either to get more or to punish the others there.”
“There are at least a hundred of people on PX9-1134,” said Toby. “And probably about the same for the other few planets these people are from.”
“We definitely don’t have the resources for all of them to stay here,” said Gryff. “So, we’ll have to go somewhere else. Somewhere that can take in a few hundred people and isn’t controlled by a Goa’uld.”
There was silence for a long moment. Then, Jason said, “I know.”
And when he told them, his teammates all smiled.
“Jase, that’s brilliant,” said Gryff.
Levi frowned. “But if - when - the SGC comes back for us, how will they know where we’ve gone? They’ll be expecting us to stay here.”
Gryff smiled. “We’ll have to leave a note.”
*
Daniel stepped through the wormhole to the Alpha Site, almost afraid of what they would find.
The SGC had been shut down for four entire weeks, thirty-two full Earth days, and SG-22 had already been missing before that. Despite their growing reputation as naquadah miners-turned-escape artists, there was every possibility that they were still being held wherever they had been taken - if they were still alive at all.
SG-1 had tried their original destination, PX9-1134, first, but it had been deserted. It didn’t have the usual loot-and-burn look of a Goa’uld attack, but it was still worrying. But if SG-22 had escaped and had gotten Hammond’s warning not to go back to Erath, they should have gone to the Alpha Site next.
They weren’t there.
Beside him, Daniel could feel Jack trying not to jump to conclusions.
“Spread out,” he ordered. “Look around.”
All of the supplies had been taken, and even some of the furniture. Nothing seemed damaged, which did suggest that SG-22 had done the taking, rather than the Jaffa or random looters. But if SG-22 had come here, why hadn’t they stayed? And where had they gone?
“O’Neill!” called Teal’c’s voice. “I have found something!”
There was a little pre-fab shed that had been used as the base commander’s office. Daniel didn’t know if it had been this bare to begin with, but he was sure there hadn’t been any writing on the wall over the desk.
“That’s Gryff’s handwriting,” said Daniel, squinting at the loops of Catholic school cursive in permanent marker. “Alfred, Dylan, our Charge is not to do. X-X-I-I.”
“Roman numerals,” added Sam. “Twenty-two, so we know it was them. But what does the rest of it mean?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel admitted. “Do we know anyone named Alfred or Dylan?”
“I think there’s an airman who works in the mess named Al,” she suggested.
“Wow,” said Jack, from behind them. “Is this how you eggheads feel all the time?”
Sam frowned. “Sir?”
“Gryff told us exactly where they were going.”
“She did?” asked Daniel.
“It’s right there, Danny,” said Jack. “You’re just not asking the right questions. Gryff wrote this note.”
“Right,” the archaeologist agreed.
“To tell us where her team was going.”
“So you say.”
“To tell us where her team was going. Us. Not anyone else.”
Daniel blinked. “It’s an Earth-centric code, then.”
“Or, perhaps, a reference to Earth literature,” said Teal’c. “Captain-Gryffydd regularly speaks of it.”
Daniel and Sam both looked at the writing again, then turned back to Jack.
“Okay, sir,” said Sam. “I still don’t get it.”
He grinned. “High school English class just ain’t what it used to be, I guess. Why else would she capitalize that one word in the middle? Charge? As in, Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.”
“Wait, that’s familiar,” said Daniel. “Why is that familiar?”
“Half a league,” Jack continued. “Half a league, half a league onward. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
“Yes! The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Sam frowned. “Then who’s Dylan?”
Jack grinned again. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
“Dylan Thomas,” said Daniel. “Oh, that’s brilliant. You have to put all the layers together to get that they went to… the Land of Light.”
“Yep,” Jack agreed.
“Then they’re okay,” said Sam.
He shrugged. “One way to find out.”
*
“General Hammond,” said Tuplo. “You honor us with your presence.”
Hammond had joined SG-1 before they came to the Land of Light, dressed in the same green BDUs, and he smiled at the other man.
“I’m pretty sure it’s you who honor us,” the general said. “I believe one of our teams is currently enjoying your hospitality.”
“Yes, your SG-22 arrived several weeks ago. They spoke of a conflict within your government - has it now been resolved?”
“It has,” said Hammond. “We’ve come to bring SG-22 home.”
“Their good fortune is our loss,” said Tuplo, then called for an aide to go and find SG-22.
They arrived a few minutes later, looking whole and healthy, and Gryff smiled. “Hello, sir, guys.”
Hammond rose from where Tuplo had offered them seats. “Captain Gryffydd, you have my sincerest apologies.”
“For what, sir?” she asked, frowning.
“Maybe for calling off the search and locking the door behind you?” said Jack.
The general nodded. “It’s not our policy to leave our people behind.”
“But you didn’t, sir,” said Toby. “The recording, the uniforms, everything at the Alpha Site… We knew you were looking out for us, sir.”
“Thank you, son. But the last we knew, you were a week overdue from PX9-1134. The place was deserted, you weren’t at the Alpha Site…”
“It’s a long story, sir,” said Gryff. “But I take it you got my note?”
“That was a nice touch,” put in Jack. “I think we might have to put some Earth-based cultural codes into our bag of tricks.” He grinned. “Our two eggheads didn’t get it.”
Sam and Daniel both looked embarrassed, but Teal’c said solemnly, “I would be interested to read the full account of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Is one available?”
“We’ve got a copy of Tennyson in the library,” Gryff said.
He nodded, and Hammond smiled at them. “Let’s go home.”
THE END
Current Mood:
busy
Author: Ami Ven
Word Count: 1,989
Rating: G
Fandom: Stargate SG-1 ( SG-22, original characters)
Setting: tag for one of the episodes when the SGC temporarily shuts down
Summary When SG-22 gets stuck off-world, they leave a forwarding address.
Our Charge Is Not to Do
“Levi, dial the gate!” yelled Gryff, half-turning to fire her stolen staff weapon back at the Jaffa chasing them.
This planet wasn’t the one they’d originally travelled to - the people PX9-1134 apparently hadn’t mentioned to SG-12 on either of their prior visits that they were about due for a visit from their local minor Goa’uld, Priapus, collecting slaves for his naquadah mine. His Jaffa had quickly searched the village, rounding up five strong local men along with SG-22.
Fighting back wasn’t an option - they were outnumbered three-to-one, even before taking into account all of the civilians around, so SG-22 allowed themselves to be captured and taken through the gate to Priapus’s naquadah mine.
After that, it had taken two weeks for them to escape.
SG-22 had done a good job of it, though. They’d collapsed part of the mine, set fire to the Jaffa camp, rescued all fifty-or-so slaves - all men from a handful of sparcely-populated worlds controlled by Priapus - and were now fighting their way back to the stargate.
Gryff continued to fire back at the Jaffa, only about a dozen of them, the rest all dealing with the fires. She listened to the chevrons clinking into place, then the kawoosh of an establishing wormhole, then -
“Uh, Gryff?” called Levi.
“Little busy!” she called back.
“Gryff, we got the answering machine!”
“We got what!?”
“Come listen!”
Gryff passed her staff weapon to the man beside her and headed for the DHD. The stargate on this planet had once been inside a building, which had since collapsed, but there were enough gaudy gold walls to provide cover for her to lean in next to Levi.
He had their only working radio, and through it, she could hear General Hammond’s voice, “- to Earth. I repeat: do not return to Earth.” There was a pause. “SGC personnel, this is General Hammond. By order of the President of the United States, all operations of the Stargate Program have been suspended, indefinitely. The base will remain on lockdown and the iris covering our stargate will not be opened. All outstanding iris codes have been locked.” There was another pause. “Any military personnel still off-world will be officially classified as missing in action. I give you my word that we are not giving up on you, on any of you, and I will do everything in my power to bring you home. But until then, you must not return to earth. I repeat: do not-”
Gryff reached over to shut off the radio. “Oh, hell.”
“What now?” Levi asked.
“Uh, sir?” called Jason. “We’ve got company!”
Beyond the wall, more Jaffa were jogging down the path to join the others.
“Dial up…uh, P1X-9112,” Gryff told Levi. “They were testing that as an Alpha Site, they might have left some supplies left behind.”
“Good thinking,” Levi said, and began to dial.
When the second wormhole shimmered to life, Gryff yelled, “Levi, go! Toby-”
“On it!” her second-in-command replied.
As Gryff took back her staff weapon from the man she’d given it to earlier, she could hear Toby calling the newly-freed miners through the gate. Jason had taken a position opposite hers, half-concealed behind crumbling stone walls, and they were able to keep up cover fire until Toby yelled, “You’re the last two left.”
Gryff nodded at Jason and they moved together, aiming at the ground rather than the enemy Jaffa, to keep up a wall of dust and flame so they could break for the stargate.
On the other side, everything was quiet.
Most of the men they’d just rescued had plopped right down on the grass in front of the gate platform, and over their heads, Gryff could see the pre-fab mobile buildings and tents of a standard Earth military base.
“Gryff, look at this!” called Levi.
There were three standard-issue duffel bags at the base of the DHD, each with an SG-22 unit patch pinned to it.
“They knew we were still out here,” said Toby, kneeling to open one of the duffels. “It’s spare uniforms, MREs, ammo…”
“The general said he wouldn’t forget us,” Gryff smiled, then said more seriously, “Now, we need to get these people organized. Toby, Levi, see what condition the mess tent is in. Find out if we have any wounded, try to get a head count of everyone. Jason and I will check the rest of the camp.”
Toby nodded. “On it, Gryff.”
The potential Alpha Site had clearly been evacuated in an orderly fashion. All of the electronic equipment had been packed up and removed, but much more of the other supplies had been left behind than was procedure.
A little shed marked with a red cross had an empty space on the desk where a computer had been, but the cabinets were still full of bandages and medications. The barracks building still had mattresses and bed linens, wrapped in plastic for safekeeping. Another shed, clearly set up to be an armory, now held a variety of tools - for gardening, in addition to the usual household assortment.
“This is way more than should have been left behind,” said Jason. “You think this is the general looking out for us, too, sir?”
“I know it is,” said Gryff. “Let’s see how the others are doing.”
Toby and Levi had found the mess tend in the same condition - chairs and tables still in place, pots and pans in boxes in the kitchen, a pantry full of non-perishable food.
“But there were only twelve people assigned here,” said Toby. “I’m sure they left everything they could, and it’d be more than enough for the four of us, for a couple of months, but there are over fifty of us now.”
“And more than that,” said Gryff. “Priapus will be pissed that we stole all his slaves, and he’ll probably go back to where he got them from, either to get more or to punish the others there.”
“There are at least a hundred of people on PX9-1134,” said Toby. “And probably about the same for the other few planets these people are from.”
“We definitely don’t have the resources for all of them to stay here,” said Gryff. “So, we’ll have to go somewhere else. Somewhere that can take in a few hundred people and isn’t controlled by a Goa’uld.”
There was silence for a long moment. Then, Jason said, “I know.”
And when he told them, his teammates all smiled.
“Jase, that’s brilliant,” said Gryff.
Levi frowned. “But if - when - the SGC comes back for us, how will they know where we’ve gone? They’ll be expecting us to stay here.”
Gryff smiled. “We’ll have to leave a note.”
*
Daniel stepped through the wormhole to the Alpha Site, almost afraid of what they would find.
The SGC had been shut down for four entire weeks, thirty-two full Earth days, and SG-22 had already been missing before that. Despite their growing reputation as naquadah miners-turned-escape artists, there was every possibility that they were still being held wherever they had been taken - if they were still alive at all.
SG-1 had tried their original destination, PX9-1134, first, but it had been deserted. It didn’t have the usual loot-and-burn look of a Goa’uld attack, but it was still worrying. But if SG-22 had escaped and had gotten Hammond’s warning not to go back to Erath, they should have gone to the Alpha Site next.
They weren’t there.
Beside him, Daniel could feel Jack trying not to jump to conclusions.
“Spread out,” he ordered. “Look around.”
All of the supplies had been taken, and even some of the furniture. Nothing seemed damaged, which did suggest that SG-22 had done the taking, rather than the Jaffa or random looters. But if SG-22 had come here, why hadn’t they stayed? And where had they gone?
“O’Neill!” called Teal’c’s voice. “I have found something!”
There was a little pre-fab shed that had been used as the base commander’s office. Daniel didn’t know if it had been this bare to begin with, but he was sure there hadn’t been any writing on the wall over the desk.
“That’s Gryff’s handwriting,” said Daniel, squinting at the loops of Catholic school cursive in permanent marker. “Alfred, Dylan, our Charge is not to do. X-X-I-I.”
“Roman numerals,” added Sam. “Twenty-two, so we know it was them. But what does the rest of it mean?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel admitted. “Do we know anyone named Alfred or Dylan?”
“I think there’s an airman who works in the mess named Al,” she suggested.
“Wow,” said Jack, from behind them. “Is this how you eggheads feel all the time?”
Sam frowned. “Sir?”
“Gryff told us exactly where they were going.”
“She did?” asked Daniel.
“It’s right there, Danny,” said Jack. “You’re just not asking the right questions. Gryff wrote this note.”
“Right,” the archaeologist agreed.
“To tell us where her team was going.”
“So you say.”
“To tell us where her team was going. Us. Not anyone else.”
Daniel blinked. “It’s an Earth-centric code, then.”
“Or, perhaps, a reference to Earth literature,” said Teal’c. “Captain-Gryffydd regularly speaks of it.”
Daniel and Sam both looked at the writing again, then turned back to Jack.
“Okay, sir,” said Sam. “I still don’t get it.”
He grinned. “High school English class just ain’t what it used to be, I guess. Why else would she capitalize that one word in the middle? Charge? As in, Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.”
“Wait, that’s familiar,” said Daniel. “Why is that familiar?”
“Half a league,” Jack continued. “Half a league, half a league onward. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
“Yes! The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Sam frowned. “Then who’s Dylan?”
Jack grinned again. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
“Dylan Thomas,” said Daniel. “Oh, that’s brilliant. You have to put all the layers together to get that they went to… the Land of Light.”
“Yep,” Jack agreed.
“Then they’re okay,” said Sam.
He shrugged. “One way to find out.”
*
“General Hammond,” said Tuplo. “You honor us with your presence.”
Hammond had joined SG-1 before they came to the Land of Light, dressed in the same green BDUs, and he smiled at the other man.
“I’m pretty sure it’s you who honor us,” the general said. “I believe one of our teams is currently enjoying your hospitality.”
“Yes, your SG-22 arrived several weeks ago. They spoke of a conflict within your government - has it now been resolved?”
“It has,” said Hammond. “We’ve come to bring SG-22 home.”
“Their good fortune is our loss,” said Tuplo, then called for an aide to go and find SG-22.
They arrived a few minutes later, looking whole and healthy, and Gryff smiled. “Hello, sir, guys.”
Hammond rose from where Tuplo had offered them seats. “Captain Gryffydd, you have my sincerest apologies.”
“For what, sir?” she asked, frowning.
“Maybe for calling off the search and locking the door behind you?” said Jack.
The general nodded. “It’s not our policy to leave our people behind.”
“But you didn’t, sir,” said Toby. “The recording, the uniforms, everything at the Alpha Site… We knew you were looking out for us, sir.”
“Thank you, son. But the last we knew, you were a week overdue from PX9-1134. The place was deserted, you weren’t at the Alpha Site…”
“It’s a long story, sir,” said Gryff. “But I take it you got my note?”
“That was a nice touch,” put in Jack. “I think we might have to put some Earth-based cultural codes into our bag of tricks.” He grinned. “Our two eggheads didn’t get it.”
Sam and Daniel both looked embarrassed, but Teal’c said solemnly, “I would be interested to read the full account of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Is one available?”
“We’ve got a copy of Tennyson in the library,” Gryff said.
He nodded, and Hammond smiled at them. “Let’s go home.”
THE END
Current Mood:
busy