triumvirate - chapter seven - for blood and empire
part three - farther from familiar
Sam nervously adjusts her watch and stares at the increasing numbers on the elevator. Daniel’s hand on her shoulder startles her.
“You okay?”
She nods quickly, even though she really isn’t and he knows it. After they’d disconnected with the Venkati, she’d made a beeline for her lab, taking a detour to throw up in the nearest bathroom. She hadn’t been prepared for that. Daniel had followed and sat with her in her dark, quiet lab while she calmed down.
“Hammond said you don’t have to be there for this,” he reminds her.
Sam nods again and bites the inside of her lip. “I know. But it would be weird if a third of the group didn’t show.”
Daniel squeezes her shoulder and drops his hand as the elevator doors open. He follows her out into the hallway and up to the briefing room. Sam goes on guard, but plasters a smile on her face and continues walking, taking a seat across from Jack. Daniel sits next to her, noticing how controlled her breathing has suddenly become.
She okay?
I think so.
Sam looks up from studying the grain of the table, annoyed. I can hear both of you.
Jack clears his throat. “Shall we get started?”
K’Tara smiles and introduces the rest of her group. Jai, a petite - even for a Venkati - woman will be doing the actual procedure, and Doran, who isn’t given a job description but is big enough to make everyone in the room assume he’s there for security reasons. “I heard you ran into a bit of trouble with the Hokari.”
Not for the first time, Jack wonders how the galactic rumor mill works. Everyone seems to hear things about them without them ever talking to anybody else.
“Actually,” Sam says, “the Hokari were fine. The problem was with you.” Before she left, feeling the bottom drop out of her stomach, she’d made it clear to General Hammond that, short of locking her out of the room, there would be no guarantee that she would not yell at these people. He had smiled warmly, placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and said that he understood but asked that she at least please try to keep it civil.
K’Tara squirms in her chair. “Yes, about that. You were, unfortunately, caught up in a raid on one of the Hokari government buildings.” She holds up her hand, silencing Daniel’s question. “Once our operatives realized you were not Hokari, they should have released you. Immediately. Driva and his cohorts were acting far beyond the purview of our agenda. Those whom your friends did not…eliminate in your rescue have been dealt with accordingly. We have no interest in angering you or your people and our argument is not with Earth. I apologize deeply for what you went through, Major Carter.”
Sam clenches her jaw and swallows. The entire room remains tensely silent while she considers the apology. She knows that everyone would back her up if she chooses to reject it; they’d kick out the Venkati and finish the conversation in Hammond’s office and be reassigned. “Thank you,” she says.
General Hammond smiles softly at her before turning his attention to the Venkati woman, who looks quite a bit more relieved than she should be. “Three of my people,” he gestures, “became telepathically linked while visiting Hokari Prime. Your…raid occurred while Hokari doctors were trying to determine cause and solution.”
K’Tara nods. “Yes. The Hokari have a reset protocol at all of their space ports and the Stargate. I’m sure they explained it to you as a way to ‘mentally cleanse’ themselves after visiting ‘mentally hostile’ worlds.” She rolls her eyes. “This is not true. The reset protocol is designed to re-activate the telepathic abilities of anyone who had them deactivated by us.”
Daniel blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Hokari telepathy is not like yours, Doctor Jackson,” Jai speaks up. “They can hear thoughts of everyone, regardless of species. We deactivate the telepathy of our prisoners as a matter of security so they cannot hear anything other than what we allow them. On the chance that they should escape, they leave with only what spoken words they have overheard. Not classified plans.”
Jack shakes his head and holds up his hand. “Hold on a minute. What the hell is going on here?”
“Jack, Ito mentioned this and we heard about it when Sam was first taken. Something about the Venkati thinking the prices are too high for being part of the Collective.” Daniel turns to the K’Tara, encouraging her to elaborate.
“The protection they provide is genuine, true. But there has been no need for their protection for several hundred years. The Goa’uld leave protected planets alone as a matter of course now and there has been no other threat. We are giving the Hokari between half and three-fourths of our planet’s natural resources annually in exchange for essentially nothing. Because they’ve taken almost everything, we have had no way of advancing on our own. We have nothing to trade, no way to become sovereign and independent in the galaxy.”
Sam’s eyebrows furrow. “You flew a ship here.”
“Stolen.”
General Hammond clears his throat. “This is fascinating. But can you fix this?”
Jai nods. “Absolutely.”
K’Tara holds up her hand. “However.”
“Here it comes,” Jack mutters.
“One of our operatives was captured by the Hokari. She is being held in a prison complex on one of the outer planets of their solar system. She has vital information which she was unable to relay before she was captured. We need to get her out. In exchange for your assistance in that matter, we will gladly solve your telepathy problem.”
With the Venkati safely back up in their ship, promising to call in a few hours with a decision, General Hammond turns to the members of SG-1. “Well?”
“This is insane, General,” Jack says. “Not to mention, these are the people that kidnapped Carter.”
I don’t think anyone forgot about that, Jack.
Well after you accepted their little apology…
What the hell was I supposed to do? Say ‘no,’ and we get split up?
You could’ve made her squirm a bit more.
Sam huffs and crosses her arms, giving him a stern look as soon as his attention is back on General Hammond.
Teal’c tilts his head. He would be excluded from any potential mission - the other three have the benefit of being able to communicate silently and the Venkati have a device that can block the signal from the Hokari - but still feels that his opinion is worth voicing. “Is it prudent to potentially become involved in whatever disagreement is occurring with a society that is clearly more advanced than yours?”
“See, Teal’c agrees with me.”
I didn’t not agree with you.
You didn’t agree with me, either.
What…you can’t seriously be against this just because some people who are now very dead roughed me up a little bit.
They didn’t just rough you up, Carter, they…
I know. I was there. And if I’m considering that this might - MIGHT - be a viable option, you need to stop trying to defend my honor or whatever the hell it is you’re doing right now.
I’m not defending your…whatever. I’m just saying we might want to think about who we’re dealing with, here.
“Speak out loud, please,” General Hammond interrupts, exasperated watching the two of them argue silently.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Doctor Jackson?”
Daniel winces, hoping that he’d somehow melted into the background and no one would notice him. He wants the telepathy gone, but he agrees with both Jack and Teal’c. “We could always go back to the Hokari for help,” he suggests, lamely.
Sam shakes her head. “I think that they were genuinely confused by us. If the reset protocol was designed specifically to reactivate previously active but now deactivated -”
How many times can she say ‘active’ in one sentence?
“Shut up!” Sam yells. It takes her a second to realize she said it out loud. It takes another second to realize that it wasn’t Jack being ornery, but Jack being himself and thinking what he normally thinks when she talks about science. She swallows. “Sorry, sir.” Jack, I…
Take a deep breath there, Carter.
“I believe that agreeing with the Venkati plan is the only wise course of action,” Teal’c says, breaking the stunned silence.
“Very well,” Hammond says, secretly relieved. “We’ll bring the Venkati back down here to figure out the plan. Provided it doesn’t involve anything too objectionable, you have a go.”
Jack sets his boots next to Daniel’s and hangs up his coat. “I still think this is a bad idea.”
Daniel mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “nobody asked you,” and heads for the kitchen to start dinner. They leave in the morning.
Sam, however, whirls around. “Do you want me to punch you?”
Stunned, Jack blinks. “No.”
“Then shut the hell up about it,” she says, fuming.
Jack watches her chest heave with labored breathing, angrier than he’s seen her in a while, if ever. “Sam, honestly, I…” he trails off.
She closes her eyes and debates, just for a moment, about kicking them both out and having a quiet night to herself. She wouldn’t sleep at all, but she thinks that might be a decent price to pay for having some silence and not having to control her mind. “In the briefing room,” she says, opening her eyes again, “that’s not going to stop if we don’t fix this. Even if Hammond splits us up, I think we’re going to drive each other insane.”
“Sam.” Her palm on his chest silences anything more he might say.
“I know you don’t like it,” she says quietly. “And if there were another option, I’d tell them to take their apology and their plan and shove it up their asses. But there isn’t. You asked me to tell you if anything was going to make me go off the deep end. Staying like this definitely will.” She lightly grasps the fabric of his shirt in her fingertips before dropping her hand away.
Jack watches her disappear into the kitchen to help Daniel and he takes a deep breath. He hates this plan. Even if it were with some other species, one that hadn’t nearly raped and killed one of the most important people in his life, he’d hate it. He sighs and follows the other two and wonders when the hell the universe will realize that it needs to do its own damn dirty work.
The ship is thankfully an al’kesh, affording them enough space to fit six people for a four-day flight without anyone getting a black eye. After ten hours, they relax somewhat, not quite trusting their new friends but not quite distrusting them either.
“Why don’t you just leave the Collective?” Daniel asks. It seems like the easier, and less violent, solution. “I mean, you’re still a sovereign, independent world.”
Jai smiles tightly. “Unfortunately, the Venkati government doesn’t see things the way we do. They still cling to the old theory that the Goa’uld are lingering at the edges of our solar system ready to attack.”
“Then overthrow your own government,” Jack suggests from across the room. He’d been listening to Carter read silently, but feels obligated to point out the obvious. She looks up from the book and nods in agreement before returning to the paragraph.
“We have reason to believe that most of the government is being paid off by the Hokari. Our system is rich in minerals the Hokari need for their transport network; they can’t get the quantities they need from other species. Without us, their supply chain would break down completely within a matter of months.”
Jack pays enough attention to the next few minutes of Daniel’s conversation to know that this is not something they should really be sticking their noses into and pulls a deck of cards out of the side pocket of his pack. He waves the deck in front of Carter’s face.
How is this going to be at all successful? Despite her tone, she folds down the corner of the page and sets her book aside.
Well, we’re not playing Go Fish.
Sam laughs at that, remembering an early offworld trip when they tried to explain the children’s game to Teal’c and thought that they might have accidentally convinced him that his faith in humanity was greatly misplaced. She glances over at Daniel; normally she’d suggest some variant of poker and invite him in, but he’s engrossed in a conversation whose details she’d really rather not know about. Gin?
You’re on. Jack dumps out the cards and shuffles.
It takes Daniel several rounds of hearing lay down the ace of diamonds already countered with I don’t have it (followed by liar) before he realizes what the other two are doing. “Uh, you guys? How is cards possible with this?” He gestures from his head to theirs.
Jack simply shrugs and lays down his cards - complete with the ace of diamonds, much to Sam’s chagrin - and proclaims gin.
“This is an extremely bad idea,” Daniel says after dinner when they’ve excused themselves for bed and found a set of sleeping quarters.
Sam looks over her shoulder, momentarily distracted from digging through her pack for a pillow.
“Do tell,” Jack says, leaning back against the bulkhead, legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He’s silently pleased that Daniel’s finally coming around to the same conclusion he had two days ago.
Daniel ignores Jack’s smugness. “Their operative is being held in a maximum security prison on a planet in the outskirts of the Hokari system. If we manage to make it out of there undetected, there won’t be a problem. But that’s unlikely.”
“We knew this,” Sam says, rolling out her sleeping bag next to Daniel’s. They have the blueprints of the prison and know where the Venkati is being held, but based on K’Tara’s overview of the security systems, getting out without tripping any alarms will be a long shot.
“According to Jai, the Hokari government has about had it with the stunts the Venkati are pulling. The raid that took Sam also picked up several mid-level government officials who turned up very publicly dead a few days later. There’s also been a recent attack on a manufacturing plant which killed a hundred Hokari workers, and I guess they’ve just found a couple dozen of their people in offworld Venkati-run brothels. The most recent Venkati intelligence has the Hokari gearing up for war.”
“The Venkati don’t stand a chance. Even if they have managed to scavenge a few ships and some weapons, the Hokari can wipe them out pretty quickly.” Sam sits down and starts unlacing her boots.
Daniel frowns. “They have to have friends. People who they sell to, who will give them weapons. If they can’t master space travel, they definitely didn’t invent that laser ray that knocked you out or this anti-telepathy…thing.”
“But still…” Sam trails off, recalling the weapons system that nearly blew up their UAV.
“I think the point,” Jack says, “is let’s not get caught.”
Three and a half days later, Daniel owes Jack about a year’s worth of wages in lost gin games, Sam has finished her book twice, and they have a plan they think should work.
K’Tara expertly lands the al’kesh a few miles from the prison, hiding them in a small mountain range. There’s a pass within half a mile, ensuring they won’t have to rappel or climb.
Sam’s amazed that the planet has any breathable atmosphere whatsoever. The solar system’s sun is merely an overly-bright pinprick in the sky and she knows that they’re far enough away to make the moon even colder than Pluto. She spies some abnormal energy readings on the navigation display and realizes that the atmosphere must be artificial. “Did they notice us?”
K’Tara shakes her head. “I matched our trajectory to that of a meteorite.” She gestures out the window, where two streaks of light cross their view and then disappear. “They’re not going to check it out.”
The planet itself is gorgeous, bathed in cool blue-silver light reflected from the moons orbiting above, and full of craggy mountains and deep ravines. The mountain shadows contrast sharply with shimmers of what Sam suspects is ice. Even this far off, she can spy the prison; hulking and boxy, it almost looks like a castle in the distance. She knows it’s just as protected, though they probably left off the moat full of crocodiles. She hopes.
“Alright, kids,” Jack says from the back of the room where they’ve stashed the gear they’ll need. He shrugs on his parka and gestures for the other two to do the same. They’ll ditch the cold weather gear when they get to the prison, favoring the black clothing they’re wearing underneath; the plan is to be able to pick it up on the way back, but given everything they’ve learned about the prison, his assumption is that they’ll be too busy running.
“I’ve modified these to your exact telepathic frequency,” Jai says, holding out her palm with three small, round, black devices. The entire plan hinges on these: they can block telepathy from the Hokari, but not from anyone else plugged into the frequency.
Jack really hopes they work. He takes one and sticks it behind his ear like Jai mimes. He winces; it stings a bit as it attaches.
Once they’re all into their cold weather gear with their weapons loaded and strapped on, Jack gives the final nod to K’Tara. “Radio silence. If something goes wrong, we’ll call you.” The Venkati had promised that they could transmit on a secure frequency, but Jack thinks that they’re taking enough risks as it is.
K’Tara nods. “Good luck.”
Jack coughs, his lungs and throat shocked at the unexpectedly frigid and dry air outside of the ship. He’d thought Sam was being over-reactive when she’d recommended deep winter gear, but he’s thankful for the face mask he pulls up over his nose and mouth. Even with the artificial atmosphere raising the core temperature of the planet, it’s cold enough to make his eyelashes freeze. There’s enough ambient light - which Sam muses must be a result of the atmosphere - that they haven’t bothered with headlights. He gestures for the other two to follow him out, Sam bringing up the rear, and he looks back as the al’kesh shimmers out of sight, cloaked just in case. He takes a moment to build a pile of rocks that would look inconspicuous to anyone else, but will mark it as the location of the ship.
Despite the cold, it’s an easy, albeit eerie, walk. The planet is silent, without even a gust of wind to distract them from their thoughts. When Daniel accidentally kicks a small rock, the skittering noise it makes across the ice and dust is almost deafening. Sam explains the lack of movement as the planet being completely barren until the Hokari got here and put up their artificial atmosphere; since it’s used only as a prison, there wasn’t any point in bringing animals or plants. Jack wonders where food comes from.
A mile away from the prison, they duck behind a large boulder to avoid being noticed by two guards.
Hey, we’re back here!
Jack!
What? Might as well test it when there’s just the two of them.
The guards walk past, silent and clearly bored with their jobs, and do not notice the trio.
Good to know that works.
They wait until the guards are out of sight before continuing.
There isn’t much in the way of external defenses. It’s a prison on a remote, frozen moon. Getting inside is easy. Getting out is the problem.
“Right,” Jack says, staring up at the smooth rock walls. There are four guards stationed out front and a watchtower they managed to avoid that looks mostly for show. But inside is a maze of life signs detectors and rigid guard formations and locked doors whose combinations they only partly know. He thinks he may have heard someone mention lasers. “This will end well.”
[navigation: forward to Chapter Eight (the midnight organ fight) // return to index]