“We literally can’t,” she said. “Entropic cascade failure means that we can’t remain within what has essentially become an alternate timeline for more than a day or so.”
In the end, they decided that the only thing Jack could do was think the date as they knew it and hope the Ancients’ technology would be able to figure it out. “So that would be February 7th 2000, then,” Jack said. He pressed his palms down onto his knees, wiped the sweat off on his BDUs. “You know, as far as Hail Mary passes go, Carter, this is a doozy.”
She was silent and he glanced over at her, saw the taut line of her shoulders, the tension in her eyes. But all she said was, “Yes sir.”
He let his eyes linger for a beat, then another. Then he said, “If we do this… What happens to us?”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line and she frowned down at the deck. “To you and me, sir? ‘Now’ us?”
“Yeah. You and me.”
He could see she had an answer, but it took a couple moments for her to put it into words. “We would just—If we do it right and end this future, then we won’t exist.”
Which, of course, he’d known. “I mean it’s just… pop. We’re gone?”
A nod. “Yes sir. It’s not like dying; we’d never have existed at all.”
“Yeah, I get that. It’s just—It kinda feels like dying.”
Her eyes lifted to his and for a moment neither said anything. “Thing is, sir,” Carter said eventually, “as I’ve been saying all along, none of this is real. Nothing that’s happened here since we came through the gate all those weeks ago, matters. Not if we go back and fix it.”
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and turned to stare out at the tree line encroaching on the clearing around the Stargate. The gate itself, just visible out the corner of his eye, swept up and out of sight to their right. “I—” He blew out a breath. “Carter, I can’t tell if this is right or wrong,” he said. “All the people we’ve met here…”
“It can’t be wrong to try and save Earth, sir. You heard General Hammond’s last message. We owe it to him to try—to him and to Janet. To Cassie. To everyone we knew at Stargate Command.”
He understood; he did. He could feel every one of those lives weighing on his shoulders, but still… Did it give him the right? “If we went back further,” he said, keeping his eyes on the forest, “we could save your mom. Charlie. Daniel’s parents… The list goes on, Carter. Where do we stop?”
Carter sucked in a sharp breath, but her answer was steady. “We stop here, sir. This is the one thing we change because this is where it went wrong. We weren’t meant to be sent into the future. It was just some freak accident—”
“So was what happened to Charlie. And to your mom.”
“Sir—”
“I know.” He took a breath, cut her off. “I know, Carter. I get it. But… There’s no right and wrong here.”
After a moment’s silence, she said, “This machine, sir… If it works, it’s incredibly dangerous. I know that. And I’d never suggest using it if the future wasn’t so devastating. I’d never use it to save my mom. That would be reckless and selfish. But what we’re trying, sir? It’s neither of those things. We’re trying to save Earth—and who knows how many other planets the Wraith have attacked? Or will attack if they’re not stopped. Sir, we have to try.”
He looked over at her. “Whatever the consequences?”
“Truth is, sir, we won’t know what the consequences are…”
“Doesn’t that make it worse?”
She was silent for a beat, looked out the window. “Like you said, sir, it’s a Hail Mary pass. The alternative is doing nothing.”
The alternative, he thought, was to try and help the world in which they found themselves. But as much as he felt that they had a duty here, he couldn’t deny that their first duty—the one they’d sworn to when they joined the SGC—was to keep their home safe from her enemies. They’d failed in that the first time around, and maybe this machine gave them a second chance.
It wasn’t perfect, but he knew that he couldn’t walk away from the chance to save the Earth he knew and loved. Taking a breath, he turned back to face the window. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”
“So we’re doing this?”
He gave a nod. “Let’s go change history, Carter.”
The time travel, it turned out, was easy. He thought February 7th 2000, Monday, very loudly. There was a shimmer, a kind of molecular shiver down deep in his bones as reality shifted, and then he was staring out at a different set of trees with the arc of the gate in his peripheral vision and a larger clearing around the Stargate.
“Did it work?” he said.
Carter was on her feet, peering out the window. “Sir, there. Look.” She pointed at the muddy ground leading away from the three stone steps at the foot of the gate. “MALP tracks.”
He leaned in to see and, yeah, she was right. He remembered shoving the darn thing back up those steps when they’d sent it home after checking in with the SGC. The last time he’d ever spoken to Hammond. “So we’re here then.”
It was a strange feeling, to be back. Home, almost. Back at a time before any of the crap they’d witness had occurred. And it was tempting—it was so tempting—to just head over to that DHD standing there in the rain and dial home. They could do it, they could step through the gate and back to the SGC as it had been: strong, secure, inviolate. Hammond and Fraiser would be there, going about their business. The whole world they knew would be right there for the taking.
“Sir?”
Shaking himself, he pulled his eyes from the Stargate. That wasn’t his world to take; it belonged to the other O’Neill, the one slogging his guts out, trekking through the rain and mud on this pissant planet. “Yeah,” he said. “So now what?”
“Now we get SG-1 home so they can stop Maybourne, sir.”
“And how do we do that?”
She sat back down, fixed him with one of those steady looks of hers. “By helping them get to the Stargate faster.”
“If I recall, things were kinda hairy, Carter. How are we gonna help them without giving ourselves away?”
She gave him a confident smile. “What if Daniel never got shot?”
“That would speed things along,” he conceded. Not to mention, he didn’t relish the idea of watching Daniel go through that again.
Carter looked at her watch. “If we assume we arrived at the same time of day we left the future, which we did, going by the position of the sun.” She glanced up at the dirty gray sky. “The estimated position of the sun, anyway. Then SG-1 arrived here about five hours ago, sir.” She looked at him, expression tense. “The Jaffa attacked overnight, so if we take the gate-ship and follow the path we took we should be able to locate them before the assault.”
It sounded like a reasonable plan. “I’ll find someplace to set down and we can recon the campsite, try to come in behind the Jaffa.”
“Yes sir. We can’t risk letting SG-1 see us—and definitely not the gate-ship. That would raise far too many questions.”
Jack slid her an amused glance. “Yeah, past-you wouldn’t let it go until you found the answer and who knows what kinda trouble that would get them into?”
She smiled. “Yes, I think it’s best for everyone if we keep ourselves hidden, sir.”
It wasn’t difficult to find their campsite—it was right next to the old stones Daniel had brought them here to look at in the first place—and Jack flew over it low, getting a good look. There was no sign of any Jaffa. SG-1 hadn’t arrived yet, either; they’d passed them en route, keeping high enough that their cloaked ship went unnoticed. But it was weird—freaky—to look down and watch his team, himself, tramping through the scattered forest.
He remembered it well, how they’d been strung out and tense, how he’d been working to alienate them ahead of his mission to bust Maybourne. And part of him hated that, for these guys, that hostility wouldn’t end. For this team, if Hammond’s p
lan worked, it would reach the point where Jack was dismissed from the Air Force and his people wouldn’t understand why he’d betrayed their trust.
They’d think he’d let them down, abandoned them.
Messed up future notwithstanding, Jack found he was glad that he’d never had to go through that in the end. But this guy slogging through the mud would have to face it; if they were successful here today, this other O’Neill would have to betray his team’s trust. Despite everything they’d been through since leaving this planet, Jack found himself pitying the guy.
He looked around, scanning ahead for a suitable landing site. The trees were sparse enough that he could set down half a klick from the camp, and he was pleased to discover that the cloak stayed engaged even after he left the ship. “Let’s hope the battery doesn’t go flat,” he said as they headed out through the rain.
Carter gave him a sad kind of look and then fixed her eyes on the muddy terrain ahead. “With luck, sir, we won’t need the ship again.”
“Right,” he said with a sigh. “With luck.”
As it went, this was a surreal kind of suicide mission.
Chapter 11
P5X-104 — 2000
It was a slow and steady rain, just like last time they’d been on this world. Sam remembered it well, and without one iota of fondness. The only difference was that, then, she’d had the right foul weather gear with her. This time, she only had her BDUs and tac vest.
“I prefer the future version of this planet,” the colonel groused as he walked alongside her. “It’s drier.”
Up ahead, Sam caught sight of the ancient stones Daniel had brought them here to investigate. They were visible now through the trees, giant monoliths erected by some lost civilization in worship of indifferent gods, glistening dark and heavy in the rain.
Despite the noise of the rain on the sparse leaf canopy, she could make out the sound of voices coming from close to the stones. The UAV survey of the planet had shown it to be uninhabited, so the team hadn’t taken any pains to mask their presence during the mission. That’s why she could hear Daniel’s voice, the pitch and roll of it rather than actual words, drifting out through the trees. From the banked excitement in his tone, she imagined he was telling them about the writing he’d found on the stones.
At her side, the colonel stopped. His expression was unreadable, eyes slightly narrowed beneath the bill of his cap. Then he nodded to their right, leading her off around in a loop away from the camp. When they were further back, he stopped and in a low voice said, “What do you remember about the Jaffa attack?”
Sam had been on watch. Even on uninhabited worlds they set a watch; there were plenty of indigenous species on most planets that could do the unwary traveler harm.
“Think back,” the colonel prompted. “Direction of attack, angle…”
In her memory, it was something of a blur: the solid blast of a staff weapon detonating at the edge of their camp, the scramble for cover. She closed her eyes to visualize it better. They’d made camp with the stones to their left—she remembered their blocky shapes in the dark—and the attack had come from the tree line. “About two o’clock,” she said, opening her eyes and gesturing to the right. “The first attack came from that position, relative to the camp, sir.”
He nodded, squinted through the rain back toward the stones, then up at the dripping sky. “You think the Jaffa came through the gate or from a Ha’tak in orbit?”
It wasn’t a question Sam had considered; the disastrous fallout of their escape had pretty much wiped the attack from Sam’s mind, overwriting it with more pressing concerns. She thought back. “They had air support, but the gliders could have come through the gate. On the other hand, if ground forces had come through the gate we’d have seen tracks when we arrived. It was muddy enough.”
“Yeah.”
“So they must have ringed down from orbit.”
The colonel snatched off his cap, squeezed rainwater out of it, and settled it back on his head. “Kind of begs the question, why?”
“Why?”
“Why’s a snake-head in orbit, waiting to send its Jaffa down to stop us from looking at a bunch of old rocks? If they weren’t already here for their own reasons, why were they here at all?”
“You think it was a deliberate ambush?”
“I’m not a big believer in coincidence, Carter.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Sir, if you’re right, that means someone at the SGC must have leaked the mission rota.”
“Yeah.” His expressing was tight, mouth a thin line of banked anger. “Well, Hammond was looking for a mole…”
Sam took a breath, blew it out. She felt cold all of a sudden, pieces dropping together in her mind. “So this mole—whoever they were—leaked the mission to a Goa’uld? Why?”
“To get me out of the way, stop me from uncovering the mole and taking down Maybourne’s operation.”
But something about that wasn’t making sense. “If that’s the case, sir, why didn’t they just bomb the site from orbit? I mean, we almost escaped. Why risk a ground assault when they could easily have killed us?”
“You know the Goa’uld, Carter,” he said. “They’re always over-confident.”
He had a point, but she couldn’t shake the feeling they were missing something.
“C’mon,” the colonel said, “let’s dig in and wait for the bad guys to show up.”
There was a rise of land behind them, and the colonel led them up to the military crest and dropped down onto his belly to peer over the top. Sam joined him, wincing as the damp sunk into her pants.
“If I was a Jaffa,” the colonel said, “this is where I’d zap in.” He squinted at the sky. “How long until sundown, do you reckon?”
The light was already failing. “Less than an hour,” she guessed. “You think we should take them out as they arrive, sir?”
“If we had our MP5s, maybe,” he said, pulling out his Wraith stunner. “But not with these popguns. We’ll have to take a more strategic approach. Harry them from behind.”
“We were less than a klick from the gate when Daniel was shot,” Sam reminded him. “And it was dawn by that point. I remember it was light.”
“They’ll move faster with us running interference,” the colonel said. “We got pinned down a couple times, remember?”
She did, but now she came to think about it that felt off. “Sir, why did they even let us run? They could have encircled us to start with; they knew exactly where we were and they had air support. We wouldn’t have stood a chance against those gliders if they’d kept us corralled by the stones.”
The colonel rubbed a hand over his jaw. It was a little stubbly; he needed a shave. “You think they were driving us back to the gate.”
“Yes sir. I think that’s exactly what they were doing.”
“Question is, why?”
Sam didn’t have a ready answer and she didn’t have time to consider it further. A bolt of golden light shot down behind the shallow rise and Sam dropped, pressing herself into the dirt.
“They’re early,” O’Neill grumbled, working his way backward and behind the crest of the hill as two more ring transporters deposited Jaffa behind the slope. Sam didn’t wait to watch.
“Daylight makes sense,” she said, squirming back down the hill. “Explains why we didn’t notice the ring transporters last time.”
The colonel was on his feet now, jogging toward cover in a low swathe of brush. His stunner was drawn, held loose in his hand. “This is good. Gives us time to find a position. We know they won’t attack until dark.”
He wormed his way through the brush, and then settled. Carter followed, crouching at his side. “Yes, sir, but why not? There’s four of us. They don’t need to wait until dark to attack.”
“Does it matter?” the colonel said. “We already know what happens—and what we have to stop happening.”
Sam shifted, easing the pressure on her legs. “I don’t know, sir. I gue
ss I’ve just got a feeling that there’s more to it than we’re seeing.”
“A feeling?” He breathed out a sigh.
“Sir—”
“No,” he said. “I trust your ‘feelings,’ Carter. What do you want to do?”
She shrugged, pleased by his faith in her but keeping that pleasure to herself. She wasn’t even sure why she did that anymore, especially not here and now; it had simply become a necessary habit, over the years, to lock everything down when it came to the colonel. And she couldn’t seem to break it. “I want to take a closer look,” she said. “See if we can figure out anything more than we already know.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll do a little recon, see if we can’t figure out what’s going on first. What else would we do with our last night on Earth?”
Sam lifted an eyebrow. “We’re not actually on Earth, sir.”
With an exasperated shake of his head, he moved out, keeping low. “Pedant.”
It took a half hour and they were starting to lose the light by the time they’d circled around and behind the Jaffa position. Moving silently, they crept through the trees, making use of the poor visibility and the endless rain to hide their approach. The tree cover was a little thicker here, and the colonel dropped into a crouch about thirty meters out behind a knotty tree trunk where two spreading pines butted together. He signaled for Carter to stop and she crowded in next to him behind the trees.
The Jaffa were waiting where they’d arrived. There were twelve men in total, well armored and apparently indifferent to the steady rain. Some sat on the incline of the hill, others stood and talked quietly. Sam couldn’t make out anything they were saying, heard nothing more than the rise and fall of their voices. Whatever they were doing here, it was obvious they were waiting for something.
Pulling out his monocular, the colonel edged forward and took a closer look.
She noticed the moment he stopped stock still, felt the tension spreading from his shoulders to hers where they touched. After a beat, he handed her the monocular and tapped his forehead. Taking the glass from him, she looked. A couple of the Jaffa had their backs to her and it took a moment for her to see what the colonel had noticed.
Stargate SG-1 30 - Insurrection Page 15