dark_gate fic: Mine Eyes Have Seen by Eve11
Title: Mine Eyes Have Seen
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Meridian"
Author: eve11
Recipient: randomfreshink
Summary: They were three days out of Restia when news filtered down the line that Zeph's company had caught themselves a Black Rat.
Details: Team goes dark for a Meridian fix/AU. Gen. Many thanks to auntiemeesh for a patient beta on an impatient writer ;), and to _minxy_ for a very informative science consult.
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"Tek shal'ma tek bo shol'ma haktor."
"Friends don't let friends die drunk?"
"An interesting translation."
"I was guessing."
"You were not."
"So I picked up a few words over the years. What's it really mean?"
"'There is no greater sin against God than a brother dying for a brother'."
----------------------
They were three days out of Restia when news filtered down the line that Zeph's company had caught themselves a Black Rat. When the word finally reached Jack, he was holed up-- literally, in a four-foot ditch that gave misery a bad name-- fifty feet from the east supply road into Calidan, trying to get a look at the retreating Kelownan troops entering the city. It took him a full minute to register Carter's signal from the far trees, and by the time awareness hit him again there was a line of unfamiliar trucks on the road.
He made a note of the last figure he was sure of, answered the signal, and shimmied out of the ditch. Thirty minutes of carefully timed crawling found him sliding downhill into a heap at Carter's side.
"God, who's idea was it to maintain radio silence?" He rolled onto his back, flinging his arms onto the ground, staring up through the ever-present mist at a tangle of bare branches and the gray sky beyond.
"Sir." Carter kept her voice low. "It was your--"
"--Because whoever it was, they should be forced to belly-crawl across a field of mud to check in."
"You could've left the surveillance to Xanto."
"Xanto's a screw-up. I'd rather have intel I trust." Jack sat up, unclipping his belt and shrugging out of his pack, and sighed as his shoulders unknotted. "This had better be good. You made me lose count."
Carter didn't miss a beat. "Fifteen trucks since I signaled, estimating thirty-five troops per truck and some stragglers, plus three arc cannon, two ammunition convoys, and a partridge in a pear tree." At his upturned eyebrow she almost smiled. "Sir."
"You were always better at numbers. I assume you're taking over for me?" He nodded toward the road.
"Yes, sir. We got word from Sallan at Bravo Base. Victory company was out last night after the re-deployment--"
"Oh, for crying out loud." Jack wet his lips, tasting grit and algae. "Not another one?"
"You said you wanted to be informed--"
"I know what I said. I was just hoping the rats had jumped ship." Zeph had lost six men to rat handiwork coming into Restia. And rat catching didn't mean the Andari gave up on dressing their dead; it just pissed them off. "Don't suppose Sallan wants to do anything about it?"
"He did report it." She paused, fingering her weapon, before snapping her head up to meet his gaze. "Sir?"
He knew what was coming, but he forced a curt nod. "Major?"
"I know we're not exactly under the Geneva convention. But that rat is a prisoner of war."
"Don't worry. I'm sure Sallan gave orders not to maim."
"No one deserves that. Zeph, Leni, the other Andari, they listen to you--"
A twin ear-splitting hiss of hydraulic brakes shook the silence, burying their words. Jack eyed the crest of the hill and re-clipped his belt.
"That's two turtle doves," he said.
The abandoned argument was still evident in Carter's frown, but she just hefted her pack. "There's a few patrols roaming around. Stay alert."
"Got it covered. Keep counting." He watched her start a slow creep up the hill, and then slipped away from the rendezvous point toward Bravo base.
**
It was a long three miles. Too many Kelownan patrols on the road meant he had to stick to cover in what passed for countryside. Muck sucked at his boots as he hugged crumbling stone walls and the occasional stripe of trees that separated one dead hayfield from another. Give it another year, Carter had said, and the fields would recover. The war had played hell with the weather. She even suspected mild radioactive fallout, long dissipated, but she didn't have enough data to tell him anything about the first contact point, or the gate.
At the coalition front line, Jack flipped on his radio and signaled the advance scouts, then switched over to the road. He exchanged a few greetings at the Andari checkpoint, but few of them would meet his eyes. They knew why he was there. He could feel their stares as he headed for the base, a large, mostly intact manufacturing complex half a mile down the road.
The closer he got, the more tension he could feel radiating from the buildings at Bravo. It was the kind of feeling he used to get offworld, right before the inevitable betrayal by smiling natives and descent of pyramid ships from the sky. Andari gangs roamed the earthen paths, or hung out on rooftops near the knifewire gates, hands hovering at their rifles. Jack could make out a few Tirani trying to blend in; but their height, fair skin, and general unease always gave them away. He saw Sallan pacing and smoking qatta, alone, outside one of the low office structures in front of the main plant. The dark-eyed man caught sight of Jack as he approached and stopped, taking in his mud-caked figure with the smallest hint of Tirani disdain.
"You look a mess," he said, grinding the end of his cigar under his heel.
"War's hell on the dry cleaning bills. Are they inside?"
Sallan nodded. "Three hours ago. I told them, wait for a Commander."
A shout rang out from inside the building. Jack narrowed his eyes. Sallan smoothed his jacket.
"There were seven of them. You know Andari. So I told them to go slow."
"Next time, try letting a few of them hit you before you back down." Jack pulled open the door and headed down the corridor. Once inside, he could make out more voices. Angry shouts echoed clearly off the stark walls.
"--think you are better than us, don't you? Artemi mou, you Kelownan slice open your own dead--"
He heard a reply, a low, intense cadence, followed by more jeers and swift movement. It was the usual contingent; Zeph and Leni for sure, probably also Grego, Pavlo, and whoever Pavlo was hanging out with these days.
"What souls did you defile, neithia? How many bombs did you plant?"
A new voice flared up with a snatch of words-- "Then feteyo! Then tou fe--!", cut short by another punch.
It was something in the rat's voice that set Jack running. Before his mind had time to figure out why, some long-dormant combination of synapses had fired in his brain, and he made it down the hall before the next punch could fall. "All right, all right!" he said, pushing his way into the interrogation room. "That's enough! What the hell is going on here?"
Leni stepped back from the chair in the middle of the room, straightening to attention with the rest of them. "He say he's a medic, but we found no gear, only those." He pointed to a folding table in the corner holding a bulky pair of night vision goggles, a canteen and a laser communicator. He added a quick, "Commander, Sir," his body language giving off a big fuck you at Jack's frown.
"What about his buddies?" Jack asked, meeting the eyes of each fidgeting Andari in the room.
"We found no one," Zeph spoke up. "He say he's alone."
"Kannei--," the rat said, earning a cuff from Grego. Jack ignored them and pointed to the laser communicator.
"He's lying. Those things are crap, they're only good over a short range in sightlines. We probably cut them off, surrounded them before they realized it."
"But sir--" Zeph started. Jack rounded on him, using his height to press the man toward the wall.
"You think it's easy for a bunch of Kelownan rats to make it past us? Then take these guys," he waved a hand at the room, "and do a sweep. Every house, every wall, every hole, every brick on the west battlefield, from Bravo to the front line. Catch'em, then we'll see about the trying and hanging part." He held his ground without a flinch as each Andari filed past him, following their exit with a final command shouted down the hallway before he closed the door. "And stay away from the stiffs!"
The silence and the soft 'click' of the latch made him suddenly aware of how close the walls were at his back. He was pushing his luck; this truce was only going to last so long. He took a breath, palm pressed against the cool metal of the door, and then stepped out into the sallow light in the middle of the room.
For his part, the rat was finally speechless. He squinted at the figure in front of him, agape, eventually managing a single word.
"Jack?"
It wasn't so much of a surprise. There was only one person Jack knew who would take a three hour beating and still sound annoyed by it, still keep arguing with his captors, in Andari, like it was some kind of academic exercise.
"Hello, Daniel. Long time no see."
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"That's sweet. It's like Jaffa Shoebox Greetings."
"On the contrary, it is ruthless."
"We really need to work on your sarcasm."
"The Jaffa is the instrument of the Goa'uld. He lives and dies only for his God. He must let his kin do the same, to serve his God's will and not his own."
----------------------
Daniel's face was pale under the bruises, and his forehead looked creased in a permanent scowl. His Kelownan uniform sported a bloody gash in the sleeve along his right arm, and his boots looked like they were the only pair he'd owned in ten months of a grueling ground war. His eyes were the same as Jack remembered, starkly blue without the glint of his glasses to hide behind, scrutinizing every inch of the man in front of him.
For a while, they just stared at each other. Daniel, looking ready to leap out of the chair as though he'd forgotten his hands were tied behind his back. Jack, standing stock still in the middle of the room like he'd forgotten how to move after that first step.
"I thought you were dead," Daniel finally said.
"That's been going around." Jack retrieved his folding field knife from his belt. He took a step toward the chair, and Daniel couldn't hide a sharp intake of breath. Jack held his hands back, knife pointed downward, before moving behind the chair. "Relax. It's for your hands."
At the release of his wrists, Daniel gingerly gained his feet and limped to the table, favoring his right leg. He propped himself between the edge of the table and the wall, grabbed his canteen and produced a dingy kerchief from a pocket.
"Did they. . .?" Jack asked as Daniel wiped down his face. Daniel paused, looking up from the cloth. Jack indicated his bum leg with a nod of his head, but Daniel just blinked and stared right past the motion.
"Did they what?" he asked, impatient.
"Your leg," Jack said. "Did the Andari do that?"
"No, it's old. Infection. A night tied to a chair did that. Your boys stuck with sharp blows to the head."
"Does that explain the blurred vision, or is your prescription getting worse?"
Daniel took a swig from the canteen. "I had radiation sickness, it's not exactly a panacea. I can see fine."
"Yeah? Then how many--?"
"One finger. The middle one."
"You cheated. You weren't even looking."
"I can see. Fine." Daniel coughed, shook the canteen and upended it, draining the last few drops. "Jack, what . . ." he started but trailed off, his eyes travelling the walls like he hadn't spent the last ten hours staring at them, his body tense with frustration and confusion. "What happened? They said you were in the capital when it got hit."
"They lied." The field knife snapped closed with a loud 'click' and disappeared back in Jack's gear. "It's apparently a habit with them. Unless we were supposed to believe all that crap about you sabotaging their precious bomb factories."
He didn't mean for it to sound like an accusation, but Daniel's head came sharply up. "I wouldn't. I didn't."
"Well, obviously." Jack indicated Daniel's infantry uniform with a wave of his hand. "You know their spooks never even heard of the gate? They tried for two weeks to get me and Carter to admit we were all Tirani spies."
"Sam? She's--"
"Alive and kicking. For a while at the beginning, there was also a lot of screaming."
"So that's my fault?" Restless hands clipped the canteen to his belt. "Nice to see you too, Jack. How've you been? Enjoying this little war?"
Jack ignored the comment and started pacing. "The Kelownans told us you emptied a clip at their scientists."
"One of their experiments went critical. I shot the glass to get through to stop it."
"Then they arrested us and drove us out to some prison God knows where, where they told us you were good as dead."
"I would have been, but before I could get into the room the other scientist, Jonas, pushed me down and went after it himself."
"Magnanimous of him. He didn't bother to clear your name?"
Daniel let out a frustrated sigh. "He died. I stayed alive. I don't know what more you want."
Jack casually flicked some dried mud off his fingernails. "The Stargate's near Katstania, right? Kelowna's capital city? The first contact point?"
"What's left of it." Daniel checked a dial on the goggles and then reached for the laser communicator. "We can't--"
"Leave that where it is," Jack said softly.
Daniel stopped as if he'd taken a blow. At Jack's stare, he gave a mirthless laugh, and brought his head to his hands. "I don't believe this."
"Allow me to give you a cultural briefing--"
"Good cop, bad cop?" He pounded the table. "Finally got a good angle on one of the enemy?"
Jack stepped forward, gripping the back of the chair with one hand. "You can fill in the sections I miss. The Goa'uld who controlled this place thousands of years ago was Artemis. Greek, Goddess of the hunt. She liked people to bury their dead."
"I'm not--!"
"Piki taximi, the journey of the soul to the underworld, can only happen if the body is 'dressed' properly, by one of the faithful, before it starts showing signs of rot. At least according to the Andari."
Daniel closed his eyes, thumb pressed to the bridge of his nose. "All those years, and now you start paying attention."
"I know this," Jack shoved the chair, which rocked and rattled against the locks holding it to the floor, earning a glare from across the room. "Because the Andari remind me every time one of them gets blown up trying to sprinkle some dirt on a corpse and close its eyes."
"Can I opt for more beatings?" Daniel waved a hand. "Because this is just disturbing."
"Damn it, Daniel--"
"What, Jack!?" He sprang up from the table, starting a hobbling pace back and forth across the room. "What do you want me to say? I'm sorry Kelowna isn't rolling over to the Great Coalition Force? I'm sorry they're fighting back? I'm not. If you think that means I'd--"
"I don't. Desecration of sacred rituals really isn't your style."
"Yeah, well, you did a great job convincing your posse--"
Jack pointed an accusatory finger. "Sacrificing yourself for a bunch of undeserving assholes, on the other hand? Totally you."
Daniel stopped pacing and looked Jack square in the eye. "I'm a medic. I was looking for Kelownan wounded, I got trapped alone behind the enemy line. How the hell did you get here?"
"If you're a medic, where's your gear?"
"I lost it. Why are you fighting for them?"
"The communicator?"
"Standard issue. What did they promise?"
He shook his head. "This has nothing to do with promises--"
"Really?" Daniel stepped forward, the bruises on his face standing out yellow-green and purple under the light. "Because here's another one you should be familiar with. 'Enchroto epeiati, then dedomi boyeto'. That's Andari, isn't it? If your enemy falls--"
"--You don't help him back up, Daniel!" Jack exploded back from the chair, avoiding a punch to the wall through sheer force of will, before turning on the other man. "They railroaded you. For all I knew, they executed you."
"Half a million people were executed in Tyri when the Tirani firebombed it, what's one more?"
"--And now here you are, enlisting on the Kelownan front lines when you've had the Stargate in your backyard for months--"
"Jack, the gate's gone!" Daniel was no Andari; he matched his former CO inch for inch without backing down, and those words struck a blow. Jack blinked in the silence.
"The Tirani set off a store of naquadriah when they bombed Katstania," Daniel continued. "Even if the gate's still intact, it's going to be irradiated for the next two hundred years. No one can get near it."
There was a wordless stretch of a second before Jack answered. "So that's it? You just give up on Earth? On us? Pack it in, maybe go get married again--"
Daniel's right hook was a lot better than Jack remembered. It caught him on the chin and sent him sprawling. He found a corner and sat up, eyeing the yellow strip lights in the ceiling and massaging the sting out of his jaw. "Yeah, that was out of line."
"You never answered my question." Daniel hovered in the far corner, fingers pressed against the gash in his sleeve. "Why them?"
"Because they're going to win. Because it's the best chance of going home."
"No one's going anywhere." He sank down against the wall, scrubbing his free hand across his eyes. The pause brought sounds of a commotion from the hallway and Jack grimaced, gaining his feet.
"Don't be so sure about that." He crossed the room in two strides, and gathered the communicator and goggles from the table. Genuine fear flickered across Daniel's face as Jack headed for the door.
"What's going on?"
"Just sit tight." He rattled the chair in its locks on his way out.
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"Sounds very Jaffa. Probably had some special Jaffa name for it too."
"The Rite of Mal'shak. As you have guessed, we embraced it. For Jaffa, it was the most sacred way to honor one's kin."
"You still believe that?"
"There is no value in life when you serve a false god, O'Neill. We thought we understood family, honor, kinship, but we did not."
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In the hallway, Jack was met by four drunk Andari and one Tirani nursing a shiner. He took the hides off the Andari easily; somehow they had missed the news that a Commander was anywhere near Bravo base. As soon as they saw him step out of the interrogation room, most of their bravado left their bodies in the form of unpleasant smells. He sent the four of them packing, then turned to face the last man.
"You are a bastard," Sallan said, rubbing his eye.
"You're a coward. As far as vices go, I like mine better."
Sallan stiffened in a terribly Tirani way. "There's a war, if you notice, and I'm still alive. In some pain, now."
Most Tirani were awful soldiers. As far as Jack was concerned, Tirana was lucky they had some naquadah on their hands to hold over Andar's head, otherwise the armies of the faithful would just bowl them over right after stomping on Kelowna. Andar had the numbers, and Tirana was like a country full of wheedling Maybournes. Sallan was no different, but at least he didn't apologize for it. Jack left the man no time for cultural indignation and started walking the length of the corridor, focusing on the building's entrance.
"This could get ugly. Get Harvan, Ekkie, and Tandal, and any Andari you trust-- the less religious ones. We need some security here. Is this the only door?"
Sallan hurried to catch up, catching the door as Jack went through. "Don't you think it better if we don't cause strife?"
Jack took off his hat and squinted in the diffuse light, surveying the base. He was suddenly bone tired. "I like you, Leiutenant. Don't make me think too hard about why, or I'll change my mind."
Where any of the Andari under Zeph would've straightened at the call of his rank, Sallan slouched like a petulant child. "Sir--"
"Now, I know you don't like Kelownans. But as I recall, you don't like cleaning up what's left of them either."
"There is another door around the corner," Sallan finally mumbled. He lit a cigar and took a long drag, eyeing the walkways. "I will set two groups of guards."
"What are you waiting for, a medal?" Jack shooed him toward the main barracks.
"The war's nearly over, you know," Sallan said, flicking his ash and starting up the path.
"Then it's time we started acting like winners," Jack called back.
**
He made sure Sallan's guard were well-armed and that each one's rations over the next week depended upon how well his buddies watched the door. In the interior of the building he found a secluded room with tiny, high-set frosted windows looking out on an enclosed courtyard. It might have been something like a powder room in a previous life; there was a small alcove to the side with what looked like working facilities. Everything was bolted down, and there was just the one door, so it did very well as a makeshift detention cell.
"They really want you dead," Jack said as he escorted Daniel down the empty corridor.
"Great." Daniel raised his eyebrows.
"I've got a base full of Andari chomping at the bit to get in here. The only reason they haven't broken down the door is because no-one's been blown up yet."
"I told you--"
"Yeah, fine. Medic, I got it. The Tirani want you dead because it makes life easier for them."
"Jack, you've got to get me out of here."
"Working on it."
"And I don't mean back to Restia, or Minos or Tirana."
"You'll never make it past the front line."
"You're too invested in this carnage to turn around?"
Jack stopped. "If I try to take you, they'll turn on us both."
"You could give me a uniform. Most of them don't know what I look like."
"Do they know you limp?"
Daniel frowned and kept limping down the corridor.
"Look, I can control the Andari." Jack said as they reached the cell.
That got a headshake and a snort that deteriorated into a harsh cough. Daniel unclipped his canteen but it was still empty. Jack eyed the door and ushered him through.
"Behind the lines is the best we can do. There's fresh water in the corner. I have to go."
He set Sallan on hallway duty and headed back to the main base.
**
He wasn't avoiding the outlying building and its new improved security guard; there was just too much to do. Zeph's men were still picking through the battlefield, but there were three other Andari companies to corral, which turned into four remote sit-reps, two strategy sessions, and a spat turned ugly over a game of stones. He wasn't avoiding Carter either, but she looked haggard and annoyed when she finally tracked him down.
They found an empty room off of one of the larger machine shops. Carter's eyes lingered briefly on some of the more exotic-looking equipment as they walked through the dormant shop, but she didn't slow her steps.
"Sir--" Carter started as they sat down, but Jack cut her off.
"Naquadriah," he said. "What do we know about it?"
She blinked with the change of topic, but switched gear. "It's what Kelowna was working with when we first came here. Supercharged, and orders of magnitude more powerful than the conventional naquadah you'd see from Tirana's mines."
"It was only in the Kelownan research lab, right?"
"I don't know, sir. They probably would have stored it off-site for safety."
"Would a naquadah bomb be able to start a bigger chain reaction, if it detonated on naquadriah?"
"It might." She sat back, eyes tracking some internal thought process. "But unless the naquadriah was prepped to go supercritical, and organized carefully, it wouldn't be sustainable beyond a few discrete explosions--"
"English."
"A lot would have to align for free naquadriah in a lab to attain the force of a naquadriah-grade weapon, even if it was hit with a conventional weapon blast as strong as a naquadah bomb. But we're talking planet-altering force here. We'd know if something like that happened."
"So, safe to say no?"
She nodded. "On a smaller scale, though, it would definitely enhance the effects of a naquadah explosion. It would certainly add ambient radiation, like a dirty bomb. Did intel come in from the capital?"
"If it hit the gate--"
"Are you going to tell me or not?" she interrupted.
He looked up from the stylus he'd been twirling through his fingers. "Carter?"
"I heard the talk around the base. They said he spoke like us, with our accent."
"Look--"
"They also said you were arguing with him."
He stood up. "It's not a good idea--"
"Colonel, they're going to kill him!"
Jack rubbed his forehead. "I was going to talk to you about this. We need to find a good idea. Fast."
"Did you talk to him about it?"
There was no easy way to say it, and Jack watched Sam's face fall with his words.
"He wants to go back to the front."
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"The Goa'uld haven't been here for centuries."
"Do you believe it is only a Goa'uld that could be unworthy of your faith?"
"Hey-- Andar, Tirana, Kelowna-- you think I give two craps about any of them, one way or the other?"
"I believe--"
"It was a rhetorical question."
----------------------
Kelowna was on a large planet with a slow spin, so sunsets took hours. The constant cloud cover made it feel like days, but dusk was creeping resolutely into the small cell when the door next opened. Light faded from the windows lining the ceiling, casting everything dim and grainy in leiu of shadows. The pall seemed to heighten the sound of the sighing hinges. Settled against the back wall, Daniel lifted his head from its cradle of knees and elbows.
"Hi, Sam."
She was thinner, leaner. She wasn't in full uniform, only the knitted brown sleeveless shirt peculiar to Tirani tastes, and a pair of fatigues. The muscles stood out on her upper arms. There was casual power in her stance, and her long hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail at the nape of her neck. He wouldn't have recognized her by this silhouette, but he had heard her arguing with the guard outside. Bright tone, logical cadence, long vowels. It was easy to hear the scientist in her voice, even if her frame was pure soldier.
"I. . ." she started, and swiped a hand at her face before stepping into the room. She always hated to cry in front of anyone.
Daniel braced an arm against the wall to stand. "Hey, it's not that bad. . ." But his voice caught, and the next thing he knew they were in the middle of the room. She had those wiry arms wrapped around him and was hugging him fiercely, and he held on to her smaller frame, head bowed, the stubble on his chin pulling errant strands away from her hair band.
Shadows tinged the corners of the room when they finally parted. Sam ran a finger under each eye and stepped back, looking Daniel over from head to toe.
"You look like a soldier," she said, a little laugh covering the last of her tears.
"You should talk." There was a teasing spark in his eyes. Somehow they had silently agreed to give each other this small amount of time, to smile without the burden of ten months of separate history, and to forget the press of present events. Already, it was slipping away.
"I've always been one. It's my job." She straightened her hair, corralling the flyaways and flipping them back in line under the hair band with effortless grace.
"Jack didn't tell you I was here, did he?"
"I guessed. He's right, though--"
Daniel let out a breath. "You don't have to defend him, you know."
"He wasn't right for not telling me, he's right that I shouldn't be here. There's every reason for him to visit prisoners. I'll raise suspicions. But I just. . ." She held out a hand, but drew it back this time. "I can't believe it's really you."
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "Jack, um, wouldn't tell me everything that happened, right after we got separated. He said--"
"Whoa, yeah. That was a rough two weeks." It sounded like it was a tough problem to crack or it was a killer exam. She smoothed her hair again. She didn't have any visible scars.
"Think NID, but blunter," she added. "In all forms of the word."
"You've been spending too much time with Jack."
"Someone has to."
"How--?"
"Teal'c got us out," she said quietly. "Right when the Tirani started the campaign against Kelowna. He escaped, he found a line of advancing ground troops and steered them our way. It's how we ended up in Tirana, too."
"Did he . . . I mean, is he here?"
"Colonel O'Neill didn't say?" At Daniel's crushed expression, she backpedaled. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. He's okay. He's just. . . he's probably still in Tirana, teaching them about honor in combat."
Daniel sank against the wall. "Probably? You don't know?"
"He and the colonel argued for hours before we left." She looked down at her hands. "I don't know everything they discussed, but in the end he wouldn't come with us."
Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. "You don't think he might have been on to something? I know Kelowna hurt you. They hurt all of us--"
"Don't take this the wrong way, Daniel, but you don't know what you're talking about."
Daniel recognized the tone. It wasn't a personal dig; it was academic.
"Sam, this is crazy. The Andari are ruthless, Tirana's feeding them naquadah, and you're at the head of the storm telling them what to flatten."
"And Kelowna is better?" Sam asked, but she waved off Daniel's reply. "No, don't. That's not the point. The coalition was invading whether we joined or not. The gate is out there--"
"The gate's buried."
"Even if it is, we might still be able to access it remotely and get communications through to the SGC. If they get a sit-rep, they'll send a ship." She looked at him earnestly.
Daniel sighed. "I know we've faced long odds before, but this is different."
"It's no different," she said. "You trusted Colonel O'Neill before. You trusted me. Why won't you do it now?"
"Because you're asking me to condone genocide." He met her gaze, unflinching, but she didn't bend.
"I'm asking you to accept my security escort back to Tirana. We'll find Teal'c and you can wait it out with him until we get a rescue mounted from Earth."
"I can't do that." Daniel pressed his fingers to his temples.
"Where else can you go? Back to the front? Restia's ours, Tyri is destroyed, and Calidan . . ." Sam hesitated for a moment, but if she noticed the sharp turn of Daniel's head, it didn't deter her. "It isn't going to be safe for long," she chose her words carefully. "Tirana's the only place left."
"You don't understand. It's not going to work." Desperation edged his voice but she just frowned, stepping back and crossing her arms.
"I'm sorry--"
At that moment a massive crack of ordnance rung the room like a bell. It came from the direction of the battlefield, and Sam's eyes snapped to the high windows as she instinctively turned toward the source. It was only for a fraction of a second, but she rounded back toward the door and jumped; Daniel had moved quickly and was inches from her face-- regret, sadness, determination all etched across his features.
"Me too," he said.
Her momentum carried her into the blow and she crumpled to the floor.
----------------------
"A man must know what it is he serves, before he can measure what it is worth. I have served false gods in many forms. I will not do so again."
"Teal'c, we're just trying to get home."
----------------------
Hiss. Crackle. Hiss-hiss-hiss.
Turns out it was Pavlo who couldn't stay away from the stiffs. Daniel's friends had done a job on a fresh-faced recruit who used to bum qatta cigars off him and play stones better than he should have, for a teenager without so much as a whisker on his face. This Jack got from Zeph, before packing him off to the infirmary one eye short of what he'd started with. Pavlo and Grego didn't make it that far; they were still scattered across the field in front of him. Jack figured most of them were concentrated around the middle of the four blackened craters that weren't there yesterday.
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.
He shifted his weight and continued meticulously scanning back and forth with the small device in his hand, hearing nothing except static. The rats had been busy. Pavlo's ex-stones partner had set off three neighbors in quick succession, and there was no telling how many more were down there, or where. It was the perfect escape route, and the chaos of the blasts was the perfect diversion.
Hiss. Hiss. Tick.
Jack stopped, zeroing in on the spot with shorter and shorter sweeps.
Tick-tick-tick.
He tried to follow the sightline, but it was too far. The device's twin was somewhere near the northern edge of the field. Keeping his hand still to maintain the signal, he carefully hit the silver button under his thumb.
"Daniel?"
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
"Don't bother searching," came the tinny reply. "It's a relay. We're already past the front."
"I was right." The communicator spat parts of his words back at him as he spoke. "These things are crap."
"Sam's okay? I didn't hurt her?"
It had been like a shot in the gut, coming upon the cell. With Sallan lying coatless across the doorway, his head cocked too far to the side, and only Carter's legs visible, splayed out on the floor in the room beyond. He wasn't sure what happened first-- her moving and groaning, or him remembering how to suck in a breath.
"You gave her one hell of an egg, but she's up and about." You killed a friend of mine, he tried to say. You're probably wearing his clothes right now.
Instead his arm twitched and he lost the signal.
Tick-tick-ti--"--ish it could be different, but it's not."
"Save the heart-to-heart. Stay alive."
After Carter regained consciousness, they had improvised. The Andari were going to be out for blood. They needed a body, a dead rat, and Sallan. . . most of the Andari couldn't tell one Tirani from the next, or one from a Kelownan if he was wearing the uniform. He'd sent Carter out of the room before roughing up the face, then scrubbed his hands raw at the corner sink while the Andari dragged his handiwork through the streets instead of manning their posts.
"I won't stop fighting. You kill them, you kill me."
"We'll talk again," Jack said. He was answered only by the hiss of static and the wind under the brim of his cap.
"Calidan," came a voice. Jack turned as Carter stepped up to his side, staring across the field.
"Were you listening?" he asked, and she gave a slight nod.
"He'll be heading for Calidan."
"You're sure?"
She met his gaze, her expression resolute but terribly sad. "I told him that's where we were taking the fight. In case he got past us."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You always have a Plan B?"
Carter smiled thinly. "Always, sir. Though," she rubbed the back of her head, "I didn't expect to use it."
"So, Calidan. How many did you count?"
"We estimate most of the remaining battalions from Restia, Minos and Alaine are regrouping there. They think we need the river for supply routes."
"And Xanto?"
"They've been placing charges for days. All the roads and bridges leading out."
"Good. We'll set them off at dawn. Let them sit there and cool their heels until they see reason."
"Yes, sir."
In a few hours, they would be answering the rat blasts with some explosions of their own. Calidan would be cut off, with the mountains at its back and nowhere left to go. All they needed to do was surround them with the trailing reinforcements and wait, while Jack took the bulk of the Andari front line and made a straight shot for Katstania.
Carter shook the rain off her cap and started down the hill. Jack turned around and hurled the laser communicator out into the field, watching as it turned end over end before disappearing into the chaos of brown and gray.
"We're coming back for you, Daniel. As soon as we get to the gate."
----------------------
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Meridian"
Author: eve11
Recipient: randomfreshink
Summary: They were three days out of Restia when news filtered down the line that Zeph's company had caught themselves a Black Rat.
Details: Team goes dark for a Meridian fix/AU. Gen. Many thanks to auntiemeesh for a patient beta on an impatient writer ;), and to _minxy_ for a very informative science consult.
----------------------
"Tek shal'ma tek bo shol'ma haktor."
"Friends don't let friends die drunk?"
"An interesting translation."
"I was guessing."
"You were not."
"So I picked up a few words over the years. What's it really mean?"
"'There is no greater sin against God than a brother dying for a brother'."
----------------------
They were three days out of Restia when news filtered down the line that Zeph's company had caught themselves a Black Rat. When the word finally reached Jack, he was holed up-- literally, in a four-foot ditch that gave misery a bad name-- fifty feet from the east supply road into Calidan, trying to get a look at the retreating Kelownan troops entering the city. It took him a full minute to register Carter's signal from the far trees, and by the time awareness hit him again there was a line of unfamiliar trucks on the road.
He made a note of the last figure he was sure of, answered the signal, and shimmied out of the ditch. Thirty minutes of carefully timed crawling found him sliding downhill into a heap at Carter's side.
"God, who's idea was it to maintain radio silence?" He rolled onto his back, flinging his arms onto the ground, staring up through the ever-present mist at a tangle of bare branches and the gray sky beyond.
"Sir." Carter kept her voice low. "It was your--"
"--Because whoever it was, they should be forced to belly-crawl across a field of mud to check in."
"You could've left the surveillance to Xanto."
"Xanto's a screw-up. I'd rather have intel I trust." Jack sat up, unclipping his belt and shrugging out of his pack, and sighed as his shoulders unknotted. "This had better be good. You made me lose count."
Carter didn't miss a beat. "Fifteen trucks since I signaled, estimating thirty-five troops per truck and some stragglers, plus three arc cannon, two ammunition convoys, and a partridge in a pear tree." At his upturned eyebrow she almost smiled. "Sir."
"You were always better at numbers. I assume you're taking over for me?" He nodded toward the road.
"Yes, sir. We got word from Sallan at Bravo Base. Victory company was out last night after the re-deployment--"
"Oh, for crying out loud." Jack wet his lips, tasting grit and algae. "Not another one?"
"You said you wanted to be informed--"
"I know what I said. I was just hoping the rats had jumped ship." Zeph had lost six men to rat handiwork coming into Restia. And rat catching didn't mean the Andari gave up on dressing their dead; it just pissed them off. "Don't suppose Sallan wants to do anything about it?"
"He did report it." She paused, fingering her weapon, before snapping her head up to meet his gaze. "Sir?"
He knew what was coming, but he forced a curt nod. "Major?"
"I know we're not exactly under the Geneva convention. But that rat is a prisoner of war."
"Don't worry. I'm sure Sallan gave orders not to maim."
"No one deserves that. Zeph, Leni, the other Andari, they listen to you--"
A twin ear-splitting hiss of hydraulic brakes shook the silence, burying their words. Jack eyed the crest of the hill and re-clipped his belt.
"That's two turtle doves," he said.
The abandoned argument was still evident in Carter's frown, but she just hefted her pack. "There's a few patrols roaming around. Stay alert."
"Got it covered. Keep counting." He watched her start a slow creep up the hill, and then slipped away from the rendezvous point toward Bravo base.
**
It was a long three miles. Too many Kelownan patrols on the road meant he had to stick to cover in what passed for countryside. Muck sucked at his boots as he hugged crumbling stone walls and the occasional stripe of trees that separated one dead hayfield from another. Give it another year, Carter had said, and the fields would recover. The war had played hell with the weather. She even suspected mild radioactive fallout, long dissipated, but she didn't have enough data to tell him anything about the first contact point, or the gate.
At the coalition front line, Jack flipped on his radio and signaled the advance scouts, then switched over to the road. He exchanged a few greetings at the Andari checkpoint, but few of them would meet his eyes. They knew why he was there. He could feel their stares as he headed for the base, a large, mostly intact manufacturing complex half a mile down the road.
The closer he got, the more tension he could feel radiating from the buildings at Bravo. It was the kind of feeling he used to get offworld, right before the inevitable betrayal by smiling natives and descent of pyramid ships from the sky. Andari gangs roamed the earthen paths, or hung out on rooftops near the knifewire gates, hands hovering at their rifles. Jack could make out a few Tirani trying to blend in; but their height, fair skin, and general unease always gave them away. He saw Sallan pacing and smoking qatta, alone, outside one of the low office structures in front of the main plant. The dark-eyed man caught sight of Jack as he approached and stopped, taking in his mud-caked figure with the smallest hint of Tirani disdain.
"You look a mess," he said, grinding the end of his cigar under his heel.
"War's hell on the dry cleaning bills. Are they inside?"
Sallan nodded. "Three hours ago. I told them, wait for a Commander."
A shout rang out from inside the building. Jack narrowed his eyes. Sallan smoothed his jacket.
"There were seven of them. You know Andari. So I told them to go slow."
"Next time, try letting a few of them hit you before you back down." Jack pulled open the door and headed down the corridor. Once inside, he could make out more voices. Angry shouts echoed clearly off the stark walls.
"--think you are better than us, don't you? Artemi mou, you Kelownan slice open your own dead--"
He heard a reply, a low, intense cadence, followed by more jeers and swift movement. It was the usual contingent; Zeph and Leni for sure, probably also Grego, Pavlo, and whoever Pavlo was hanging out with these days.
"What souls did you defile, neithia? How many bombs did you plant?"
A new voice flared up with a snatch of words-- "Then feteyo! Then tou fe--!", cut short by another punch.
It was something in the rat's voice that set Jack running. Before his mind had time to figure out why, some long-dormant combination of synapses had fired in his brain, and he made it down the hall before the next punch could fall. "All right, all right!" he said, pushing his way into the interrogation room. "That's enough! What the hell is going on here?"
Leni stepped back from the chair in the middle of the room, straightening to attention with the rest of them. "He say he's a medic, but we found no gear, only those." He pointed to a folding table in the corner holding a bulky pair of night vision goggles, a canteen and a laser communicator. He added a quick, "Commander, Sir," his body language giving off a big fuck you at Jack's frown.
"What about his buddies?" Jack asked, meeting the eyes of each fidgeting Andari in the room.
"We found no one," Zeph spoke up. "He say he's alone."
"Kannei--," the rat said, earning a cuff from Grego. Jack ignored them and pointed to the laser communicator.
"He's lying. Those things are crap, they're only good over a short range in sightlines. We probably cut them off, surrounded them before they realized it."
"But sir--" Zeph started. Jack rounded on him, using his height to press the man toward the wall.
"You think it's easy for a bunch of Kelownan rats to make it past us? Then take these guys," he waved a hand at the room, "and do a sweep. Every house, every wall, every hole, every brick on the west battlefield, from Bravo to the front line. Catch'em, then we'll see about the trying and hanging part." He held his ground without a flinch as each Andari filed past him, following their exit with a final command shouted down the hallway before he closed the door. "And stay away from the stiffs!"
The silence and the soft 'click' of the latch made him suddenly aware of how close the walls were at his back. He was pushing his luck; this truce was only going to last so long. He took a breath, palm pressed against the cool metal of the door, and then stepped out into the sallow light in the middle of the room.
For his part, the rat was finally speechless. He squinted at the figure in front of him, agape, eventually managing a single word.
"Jack?"
It wasn't so much of a surprise. There was only one person Jack knew who would take a three hour beating and still sound annoyed by it, still keep arguing with his captors, in Andari, like it was some kind of academic exercise.
"Hello, Daniel. Long time no see."
----------------------
"That's sweet. It's like Jaffa Shoebox Greetings."
"On the contrary, it is ruthless."
"We really need to work on your sarcasm."
"The Jaffa is the instrument of the Goa'uld. He lives and dies only for his God. He must let his kin do the same, to serve his God's will and not his own."
----------------------
Daniel's face was pale under the bruises, and his forehead looked creased in a permanent scowl. His Kelownan uniform sported a bloody gash in the sleeve along his right arm, and his boots looked like they were the only pair he'd owned in ten months of a grueling ground war. His eyes were the same as Jack remembered, starkly blue without the glint of his glasses to hide behind, scrutinizing every inch of the man in front of him.
For a while, they just stared at each other. Daniel, looking ready to leap out of the chair as though he'd forgotten his hands were tied behind his back. Jack, standing stock still in the middle of the room like he'd forgotten how to move after that first step.
"I thought you were dead," Daniel finally said.
"That's been going around." Jack retrieved his folding field knife from his belt. He took a step toward the chair, and Daniel couldn't hide a sharp intake of breath. Jack held his hands back, knife pointed downward, before moving behind the chair. "Relax. It's for your hands."
At the release of his wrists, Daniel gingerly gained his feet and limped to the table, favoring his right leg. He propped himself between the edge of the table and the wall, grabbed his canteen and produced a dingy kerchief from a pocket.
"Did they. . .?" Jack asked as Daniel wiped down his face. Daniel paused, looking up from the cloth. Jack indicated his bum leg with a nod of his head, but Daniel just blinked and stared right past the motion.
"Did they what?" he asked, impatient.
"Your leg," Jack said. "Did the Andari do that?"
"No, it's old. Infection. A night tied to a chair did that. Your boys stuck with sharp blows to the head."
"Does that explain the blurred vision, or is your prescription getting worse?"
Daniel took a swig from the canteen. "I had radiation sickness, it's not exactly a panacea. I can see fine."
"Yeah? Then how many--?"
"One finger. The middle one."
"You cheated. You weren't even looking."
"I can see. Fine." Daniel coughed, shook the canteen and upended it, draining the last few drops. "Jack, what . . ." he started but trailed off, his eyes travelling the walls like he hadn't spent the last ten hours staring at them, his body tense with frustration and confusion. "What happened? They said you were in the capital when it got hit."
"They lied." The field knife snapped closed with a loud 'click' and disappeared back in Jack's gear. "It's apparently a habit with them. Unless we were supposed to believe all that crap about you sabotaging their precious bomb factories."
He didn't mean for it to sound like an accusation, but Daniel's head came sharply up. "I wouldn't. I didn't."
"Well, obviously." Jack indicated Daniel's infantry uniform with a wave of his hand. "You know their spooks never even heard of the gate? They tried for two weeks to get me and Carter to admit we were all Tirani spies."
"Sam? She's--"
"Alive and kicking. For a while at the beginning, there was also a lot of screaming."
"So that's my fault?" Restless hands clipped the canteen to his belt. "Nice to see you too, Jack. How've you been? Enjoying this little war?"
Jack ignored the comment and started pacing. "The Kelownans told us you emptied a clip at their scientists."
"One of their experiments went critical. I shot the glass to get through to stop it."
"Then they arrested us and drove us out to some prison God knows where, where they told us you were good as dead."
"I would have been, but before I could get into the room the other scientist, Jonas, pushed me down and went after it himself."
"Magnanimous of him. He didn't bother to clear your name?"
Daniel let out a frustrated sigh. "He died. I stayed alive. I don't know what more you want."
Jack casually flicked some dried mud off his fingernails. "The Stargate's near Katstania, right? Kelowna's capital city? The first contact point?"
"What's left of it." Daniel checked a dial on the goggles and then reached for the laser communicator. "We can't--"
"Leave that where it is," Jack said softly.
Daniel stopped as if he'd taken a blow. At Jack's stare, he gave a mirthless laugh, and brought his head to his hands. "I don't believe this."
"Allow me to give you a cultural briefing--"
"Good cop, bad cop?" He pounded the table. "Finally got a good angle on one of the enemy?"
Jack stepped forward, gripping the back of the chair with one hand. "You can fill in the sections I miss. The Goa'uld who controlled this place thousands of years ago was Artemis. Greek, Goddess of the hunt. She liked people to bury their dead."
"I'm not--!"
"Piki taximi, the journey of the soul to the underworld, can only happen if the body is 'dressed' properly, by one of the faithful, before it starts showing signs of rot. At least according to the Andari."
Daniel closed his eyes, thumb pressed to the bridge of his nose. "All those years, and now you start paying attention."
"I know this," Jack shoved the chair, which rocked and rattled against the locks holding it to the floor, earning a glare from across the room. "Because the Andari remind me every time one of them gets blown up trying to sprinkle some dirt on a corpse and close its eyes."
"Can I opt for more beatings?" Daniel waved a hand. "Because this is just disturbing."
"Damn it, Daniel--"
"What, Jack!?" He sprang up from the table, starting a hobbling pace back and forth across the room. "What do you want me to say? I'm sorry Kelowna isn't rolling over to the Great Coalition Force? I'm sorry they're fighting back? I'm not. If you think that means I'd--"
"I don't. Desecration of sacred rituals really isn't your style."
"Yeah, well, you did a great job convincing your posse--"
Jack pointed an accusatory finger. "Sacrificing yourself for a bunch of undeserving assholes, on the other hand? Totally you."
Daniel stopped pacing and looked Jack square in the eye. "I'm a medic. I was looking for Kelownan wounded, I got trapped alone behind the enemy line. How the hell did you get here?"
"If you're a medic, where's your gear?"
"I lost it. Why are you fighting for them?"
"The communicator?"
"Standard issue. What did they promise?"
He shook his head. "This has nothing to do with promises--"
"Really?" Daniel stepped forward, the bruises on his face standing out yellow-green and purple under the light. "Because here's another one you should be familiar with. 'Enchroto epeiati, then dedomi boyeto'. That's Andari, isn't it? If your enemy falls--"
"--You don't help him back up, Daniel!" Jack exploded back from the chair, avoiding a punch to the wall through sheer force of will, before turning on the other man. "They railroaded you. For all I knew, they executed you."
"Half a million people were executed in Tyri when the Tirani firebombed it, what's one more?"
"--And now here you are, enlisting on the Kelownan front lines when you've had the Stargate in your backyard for months--"
"Jack, the gate's gone!" Daniel was no Andari; he matched his former CO inch for inch without backing down, and those words struck a blow. Jack blinked in the silence.
"The Tirani set off a store of naquadriah when they bombed Katstania," Daniel continued. "Even if the gate's still intact, it's going to be irradiated for the next two hundred years. No one can get near it."
There was a wordless stretch of a second before Jack answered. "So that's it? You just give up on Earth? On us? Pack it in, maybe go get married again--"
Daniel's right hook was a lot better than Jack remembered. It caught him on the chin and sent him sprawling. He found a corner and sat up, eyeing the yellow strip lights in the ceiling and massaging the sting out of his jaw. "Yeah, that was out of line."
"You never answered my question." Daniel hovered in the far corner, fingers pressed against the gash in his sleeve. "Why them?"
"Because they're going to win. Because it's the best chance of going home."
"No one's going anywhere." He sank down against the wall, scrubbing his free hand across his eyes. The pause brought sounds of a commotion from the hallway and Jack grimaced, gaining his feet.
"Don't be so sure about that." He crossed the room in two strides, and gathered the communicator and goggles from the table. Genuine fear flickered across Daniel's face as Jack headed for the door.
"What's going on?"
"Just sit tight." He rattled the chair in its locks on his way out.
----------------------
"Sounds very Jaffa. Probably had some special Jaffa name for it too."
"The Rite of Mal'shak. As you have guessed, we embraced it. For Jaffa, it was the most sacred way to honor one's kin."
"You still believe that?"
"There is no value in life when you serve a false god, O'Neill. We thought we understood family, honor, kinship, but we did not."
----------------------
In the hallway, Jack was met by four drunk Andari and one Tirani nursing a shiner. He took the hides off the Andari easily; somehow they had missed the news that a Commander was anywhere near Bravo base. As soon as they saw him step out of the interrogation room, most of their bravado left their bodies in the form of unpleasant smells. He sent the four of them packing, then turned to face the last man.
"You are a bastard," Sallan said, rubbing his eye.
"You're a coward. As far as vices go, I like mine better."
Sallan stiffened in a terribly Tirani way. "There's a war, if you notice, and I'm still alive. In some pain, now."
Most Tirani were awful soldiers. As far as Jack was concerned, Tirana was lucky they had some naquadah on their hands to hold over Andar's head, otherwise the armies of the faithful would just bowl them over right after stomping on Kelowna. Andar had the numbers, and Tirana was like a country full of wheedling Maybournes. Sallan was no different, but at least he didn't apologize for it. Jack left the man no time for cultural indignation and started walking the length of the corridor, focusing on the building's entrance.
"This could get ugly. Get Harvan, Ekkie, and Tandal, and any Andari you trust-- the less religious ones. We need some security here. Is this the only door?"
Sallan hurried to catch up, catching the door as Jack went through. "Don't you think it better if we don't cause strife?"
Jack took off his hat and squinted in the diffuse light, surveying the base. He was suddenly bone tired. "I like you, Leiutenant. Don't make me think too hard about why, or I'll change my mind."
Where any of the Andari under Zeph would've straightened at the call of his rank, Sallan slouched like a petulant child. "Sir--"
"Now, I know you don't like Kelownans. But as I recall, you don't like cleaning up what's left of them either."
"There is another door around the corner," Sallan finally mumbled. He lit a cigar and took a long drag, eyeing the walkways. "I will set two groups of guards."
"What are you waiting for, a medal?" Jack shooed him toward the main barracks.
"The war's nearly over, you know," Sallan said, flicking his ash and starting up the path.
"Then it's time we started acting like winners," Jack called back.
**
He made sure Sallan's guard were well-armed and that each one's rations over the next week depended upon how well his buddies watched the door. In the interior of the building he found a secluded room with tiny, high-set frosted windows looking out on an enclosed courtyard. It might have been something like a powder room in a previous life; there was a small alcove to the side with what looked like working facilities. Everything was bolted down, and there was just the one door, so it did very well as a makeshift detention cell.
"They really want you dead," Jack said as he escorted Daniel down the empty corridor.
"Great." Daniel raised his eyebrows.
"I've got a base full of Andari chomping at the bit to get in here. The only reason they haven't broken down the door is because no-one's been blown up yet."
"I told you--"
"Yeah, fine. Medic, I got it. The Tirani want you dead because it makes life easier for them."
"Jack, you've got to get me out of here."
"Working on it."
"And I don't mean back to Restia, or Minos or Tirana."
"You'll never make it past the front line."
"You're too invested in this carnage to turn around?"
Jack stopped. "If I try to take you, they'll turn on us both."
"You could give me a uniform. Most of them don't know what I look like."
"Do they know you limp?"
Daniel frowned and kept limping down the corridor.
"Look, I can control the Andari." Jack said as they reached the cell.
That got a headshake and a snort that deteriorated into a harsh cough. Daniel unclipped his canteen but it was still empty. Jack eyed the door and ushered him through.
"Behind the lines is the best we can do. There's fresh water in the corner. I have to go."
He set Sallan on hallway duty and headed back to the main base.
**
He wasn't avoiding the outlying building and its new improved security guard; there was just too much to do. Zeph's men were still picking through the battlefield, but there were three other Andari companies to corral, which turned into four remote sit-reps, two strategy sessions, and a spat turned ugly over a game of stones. He wasn't avoiding Carter either, but she looked haggard and annoyed when she finally tracked him down.
They found an empty room off of one of the larger machine shops. Carter's eyes lingered briefly on some of the more exotic-looking equipment as they walked through the dormant shop, but she didn't slow her steps.
"Sir--" Carter started as they sat down, but Jack cut her off.
"Naquadriah," he said. "What do we know about it?"
She blinked with the change of topic, but switched gear. "It's what Kelowna was working with when we first came here. Supercharged, and orders of magnitude more powerful than the conventional naquadah you'd see from Tirana's mines."
"It was only in the Kelownan research lab, right?"
"I don't know, sir. They probably would have stored it off-site for safety."
"Would a naquadah bomb be able to start a bigger chain reaction, if it detonated on naquadriah?"
"It might." She sat back, eyes tracking some internal thought process. "But unless the naquadriah was prepped to go supercritical, and organized carefully, it wouldn't be sustainable beyond a few discrete explosions--"
"English."
"A lot would have to align for free naquadriah in a lab to attain the force of a naquadriah-grade weapon, even if it was hit with a conventional weapon blast as strong as a naquadah bomb. But we're talking planet-altering force here. We'd know if something like that happened."
"So, safe to say no?"
She nodded. "On a smaller scale, though, it would definitely enhance the effects of a naquadah explosion. It would certainly add ambient radiation, like a dirty bomb. Did intel come in from the capital?"
"If it hit the gate--"
"Are you going to tell me or not?" she interrupted.
He looked up from the stylus he'd been twirling through his fingers. "Carter?"
"I heard the talk around the base. They said he spoke like us, with our accent."
"Look--"
"They also said you were arguing with him."
He stood up. "It's not a good idea--"
"Colonel, they're going to kill him!"
Jack rubbed his forehead. "I was going to talk to you about this. We need to find a good idea. Fast."
"Did you talk to him about it?"
There was no easy way to say it, and Jack watched Sam's face fall with his words.
"He wants to go back to the front."
----------------------
"The Goa'uld haven't been here for centuries."
"Do you believe it is only a Goa'uld that could be unworthy of your faith?"
"Hey-- Andar, Tirana, Kelowna-- you think I give two craps about any of them, one way or the other?"
"I believe--"
"It was a rhetorical question."
----------------------
Kelowna was on a large planet with a slow spin, so sunsets took hours. The constant cloud cover made it feel like days, but dusk was creeping resolutely into the small cell when the door next opened. Light faded from the windows lining the ceiling, casting everything dim and grainy in leiu of shadows. The pall seemed to heighten the sound of the sighing hinges. Settled against the back wall, Daniel lifted his head from its cradle of knees and elbows.
"Hi, Sam."
She was thinner, leaner. She wasn't in full uniform, only the knitted brown sleeveless shirt peculiar to Tirani tastes, and a pair of fatigues. The muscles stood out on her upper arms. There was casual power in her stance, and her long hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail at the nape of her neck. He wouldn't have recognized her by this silhouette, but he had heard her arguing with the guard outside. Bright tone, logical cadence, long vowels. It was easy to hear the scientist in her voice, even if her frame was pure soldier.
"I. . ." she started, and swiped a hand at her face before stepping into the room. She always hated to cry in front of anyone.
Daniel braced an arm against the wall to stand. "Hey, it's not that bad. . ." But his voice caught, and the next thing he knew they were in the middle of the room. She had those wiry arms wrapped around him and was hugging him fiercely, and he held on to her smaller frame, head bowed, the stubble on his chin pulling errant strands away from her hair band.
Shadows tinged the corners of the room when they finally parted. Sam ran a finger under each eye and stepped back, looking Daniel over from head to toe.
"You look like a soldier," she said, a little laugh covering the last of her tears.
"You should talk." There was a teasing spark in his eyes. Somehow they had silently agreed to give each other this small amount of time, to smile without the burden of ten months of separate history, and to forget the press of present events. Already, it was slipping away.
"I've always been one. It's my job." She straightened her hair, corralling the flyaways and flipping them back in line under the hair band with effortless grace.
"Jack didn't tell you I was here, did he?"
"I guessed. He's right, though--"
Daniel let out a breath. "You don't have to defend him, you know."
"He wasn't right for not telling me, he's right that I shouldn't be here. There's every reason for him to visit prisoners. I'll raise suspicions. But I just. . ." She held out a hand, but drew it back this time. "I can't believe it's really you."
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "Jack, um, wouldn't tell me everything that happened, right after we got separated. He said--"
"Whoa, yeah. That was a rough two weeks." It sounded like it was a tough problem to crack or it was a killer exam. She smoothed her hair again. She didn't have any visible scars.
"Think NID, but blunter," she added. "In all forms of the word."
"You've been spending too much time with Jack."
"Someone has to."
"How--?"
"Teal'c got us out," she said quietly. "Right when the Tirani started the campaign against Kelowna. He escaped, he found a line of advancing ground troops and steered them our way. It's how we ended up in Tirana, too."
"Did he . . . I mean, is he here?"
"Colonel O'Neill didn't say?" At Daniel's crushed expression, she backpedaled. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. He's okay. He's just. . . he's probably still in Tirana, teaching them about honor in combat."
Daniel sank against the wall. "Probably? You don't know?"
"He and the colonel argued for hours before we left." She looked down at her hands. "I don't know everything they discussed, but in the end he wouldn't come with us."
Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. "You don't think he might have been on to something? I know Kelowna hurt you. They hurt all of us--"
"Don't take this the wrong way, Daniel, but you don't know what you're talking about."
Daniel recognized the tone. It wasn't a personal dig; it was academic.
"Sam, this is crazy. The Andari are ruthless, Tirana's feeding them naquadah, and you're at the head of the storm telling them what to flatten."
"And Kelowna is better?" Sam asked, but she waved off Daniel's reply. "No, don't. That's not the point. The coalition was invading whether we joined or not. The gate is out there--"
"The gate's buried."
"Even if it is, we might still be able to access it remotely and get communications through to the SGC. If they get a sit-rep, they'll send a ship." She looked at him earnestly.
Daniel sighed. "I know we've faced long odds before, but this is different."
"It's no different," she said. "You trusted Colonel O'Neill before. You trusted me. Why won't you do it now?"
"Because you're asking me to condone genocide." He met her gaze, unflinching, but she didn't bend.
"I'm asking you to accept my security escort back to Tirana. We'll find Teal'c and you can wait it out with him until we get a rescue mounted from Earth."
"I can't do that." Daniel pressed his fingers to his temples.
"Where else can you go? Back to the front? Restia's ours, Tyri is destroyed, and Calidan . . ." Sam hesitated for a moment, but if she noticed the sharp turn of Daniel's head, it didn't deter her. "It isn't going to be safe for long," she chose her words carefully. "Tirana's the only place left."
"You don't understand. It's not going to work." Desperation edged his voice but she just frowned, stepping back and crossing her arms.
"I'm sorry--"
At that moment a massive crack of ordnance rung the room like a bell. It came from the direction of the battlefield, and Sam's eyes snapped to the high windows as she instinctively turned toward the source. It was only for a fraction of a second, but she rounded back toward the door and jumped; Daniel had moved quickly and was inches from her face-- regret, sadness, determination all etched across his features.
"Me too," he said.
Her momentum carried her into the blow and she crumpled to the floor.
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"A man must know what it is he serves, before he can measure what it is worth. I have served false gods in many forms. I will not do so again."
"Teal'c, we're just trying to get home."
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Hiss. Crackle. Hiss-hiss-hiss.
Turns out it was Pavlo who couldn't stay away from the stiffs. Daniel's friends had done a job on a fresh-faced recruit who used to bum qatta cigars off him and play stones better than he should have, for a teenager without so much as a whisker on his face. This Jack got from Zeph, before packing him off to the infirmary one eye short of what he'd started with. Pavlo and Grego didn't make it that far; they were still scattered across the field in front of him. Jack figured most of them were concentrated around the middle of the four blackened craters that weren't there yesterday.
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.
He shifted his weight and continued meticulously scanning back and forth with the small device in his hand, hearing nothing except static. The rats had been busy. Pavlo's ex-stones partner had set off three neighbors in quick succession, and there was no telling how many more were down there, or where. It was the perfect escape route, and the chaos of the blasts was the perfect diversion.
Hiss. Hiss. Tick.
Jack stopped, zeroing in on the spot with shorter and shorter sweeps.
Tick-tick-tick.
He tried to follow the sightline, but it was too far. The device's twin was somewhere near the northern edge of the field. Keeping his hand still to maintain the signal, he carefully hit the silver button under his thumb.
"Daniel?"
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
"Don't bother searching," came the tinny reply. "It's a relay. We're already past the front."
"I was right." The communicator spat parts of his words back at him as he spoke. "These things are crap."
"Sam's okay? I didn't hurt her?"
It had been like a shot in the gut, coming upon the cell. With Sallan lying coatless across the doorway, his head cocked too far to the side, and only Carter's legs visible, splayed out on the floor in the room beyond. He wasn't sure what happened first-- her moving and groaning, or him remembering how to suck in a breath.
"You gave her one hell of an egg, but she's up and about." You killed a friend of mine, he tried to say. You're probably wearing his clothes right now.
Instead his arm twitched and he lost the signal.
Tick-tick-ti--"--ish it could be different, but it's not."
"Save the heart-to-heart. Stay alive."
After Carter regained consciousness, they had improvised. The Andari were going to be out for blood. They needed a body, a dead rat, and Sallan. . . most of the Andari couldn't tell one Tirani from the next, or one from a Kelownan if he was wearing the uniform. He'd sent Carter out of the room before roughing up the face, then scrubbed his hands raw at the corner sink while the Andari dragged his handiwork through the streets instead of manning their posts.
"I won't stop fighting. You kill them, you kill me."
"We'll talk again," Jack said. He was answered only by the hiss of static and the wind under the brim of his cap.
"Calidan," came a voice. Jack turned as Carter stepped up to his side, staring across the field.
"Were you listening?" he asked, and she gave a slight nod.
"He'll be heading for Calidan."
"You're sure?"
She met his gaze, her expression resolute but terribly sad. "I told him that's where we were taking the fight. In case he got past us."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You always have a Plan B?"
Carter smiled thinly. "Always, sir. Though," she rubbed the back of her head, "I didn't expect to use it."
"So, Calidan. How many did you count?"
"We estimate most of the remaining battalions from Restia, Minos and Alaine are regrouping there. They think we need the river for supply routes."
"And Xanto?"
"They've been placing charges for days. All the roads and bridges leading out."
"Good. We'll set them off at dawn. Let them sit there and cool their heels until they see reason."
"Yes, sir."
In a few hours, they would be answering the rat blasts with some explosions of their own. Calidan would be cut off, with the mountains at its back and nowhere left to go. All they needed to do was surround them with the trailing reinforcements and wait, while Jack took the bulk of the Andari front line and made a straight shot for Katstania.
Carter shook the rain off her cap and started down the hill. Jack turned around and hurled the laser communicator out into the field, watching as it turned end over end before disappearing into the chaos of brown and gray.
"We're coming back for you, Daniel. As soon as we get to the gate."
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