by Jo Graham
And in the meantime, he would back himself out of Ember’s systems, shut everything down very carefully. He frowned at the keys, suiting action to thought, watching the file fade, the empty subsystem reappear. He would pretend he had never found any of this, never doubted what he was told. And when Ember returned… His feeding hand flexed. He would get answers this time.
Chapter Five
Rain
The IOA preferred to meet at Homeworld Command rather than at the SGC. There were many more five star restaurants in Washington, Jack thought cynically. And besides, it was the least he could do for Hank Landry. Keeping the IOA firmly in DC and out from under the feet of the Stargate program was worth a good deal.
Also, when you met at the SGC something unexpected might happen. And it was almost never good.
The downside was that in DC they tended to meet and meet and meet. Their meetings in Colorado Springs were shorter. They were all in a hurry to blow this taco stand and get home. In DC there was no reason not to just go on meeting and meeting.
Especially when there was fun to be had. Crucifying Dick Woolsey was a blood sport.
He’d been their darling and he’d disappointed them. It wasn’t enough to fire him. They were going to get their full money’s worth out of seeing him fight hopelessly for his job first. Clausewitz, or whoever it was, was right. Politics was crueler than war.
They sat around Homeworld Command’s tidy conference table, coffee and tea and water continually resupplied by a nearly invisible lieutenant with enough security clearance to go to the moon, in their fifth hour today of savaging Woolsey. Lesser men would have already resigned. It kind of made Jack O’Neill feel sorry for the poor bastard, for all that Woolsey had been a thorn in his side enough times.
Roy Martin, the new American representative, wanted to go over everything in tortuous detail and wanted hard copies of everything, ‘not these fancy electronic files.’ Another job for the highly cleared lieutenant, running out to the printer like the model of twenty four year old efficiency. Next month she’d be training to be on an SG team. If she didn’t wash out, she’d be past getting the coffee. But as it was, Anderson (he thought her name was Anderson, he’d look when she came back in) was taking the opportunity to impress rather than sulking about being a glorified copy girl. There was something about her ramrod straight posture and the quick click of her heels that reminded him of somebody.
“Is that not the case, General?”
Everybody was looking at him. And he had no idea what the question was. “It might be,” Jack said.
Woolsey looked exasperated. “It might be that it is our policy to require an IDC before we drop the shield or open the iris on the Stargate? Hasn’t that been hard and fast for the last thirteen years?”
“It is absolutely our policy,” Jack said decisively. “But there are always exceptions. For example, if the incoming traveler sends a video message providing positive identification in the absence of the equipment to transmit an IDC properly.”
Woolsey looked at him like he was needlessly muddying the waters. Which he was. Jack shut up.
“And so we did not lower the shield when the message came in from New Athos. We responded by radio with assurances that a team would be on the way until the transmission ceased on the other end,” Woolsey said.
“And why did you provide them with the vital information that we were about to send men through the Stargate?” Shen asked.
Woolsey’s mouth twitched. “Because,” he began.
S.R. Desai, the Indian representative, folded his hands on the table before him. “I don’t believe that our new colleague, Mr. Martin, has actually heard the message in question. Perhaps it would be instructive to play it for him so that he can better understand the decisions that were before Mr. Woolsey in the moment.”
Shen pursed her lips. “We all have a transcript,” she said shortly. “I don’t see that we need to waste…”
“It’s a proper request,” Desai said mildly.
“I’m happy to provide that if it’s necessary,” Jack said, not looking at Desai. He thought he understood what he was up to. He glanced at the officer at the back of the room. “Colonel Davis, would you play the sound file in question?”
It only took Davis a minute. He was good.
“Atlantis, you have to help us!” A panicked voice, a young man, his voice breaking on the edge of terror. “We have Darts… I don’t know how many! They’re… “ A sob, a scream as though someone in the background cried out in mortal terror. It echoed through the gray and white conference room, cutting like the stench of blood. LaPierre’s hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and Anderson, silent beside the coffee service, raised her chin. “Please! You have to help us! Atlantis…” It faded in a burst of static. The Atlantis controller’s calm voice could still be heard. “New Athos? New Athos? Can you hear us? New Athos? We are sending a team with all possible dispatch. Can you hear us?” An accented voice, quiet behind hers, Dr. Zelenka. “I do not think they can. Bùh jim pomoz.”
Davis turned off the recording.
“Perhaps that answers your question, madam?” Desai asked Shen. “I think it is helpful, do you not, Mr. Martin?”
“Very helpful,” Martin said. He frowned down at his briefing book as Anderson silently refilled his coffee, decaf, as he’d said.
Nechayev’s eyes met Jack’s, a flash of amusement there. “So now that we have established why New Athos was informed that our gate team was coming, let us move to what happened when they arrived…”
Lt. Colonel Davis was doing a good job of showing the IOA members out, and Jack smiled and let him do it. That was what they paid Davis for. Woolsey was last, his leather briefcase in hand, raincoat over his arm, hanging back. Outside the full glass windows the evening rush hour traffic crept up Massachusetts Avenue toward Columbus Circle, red tail lights bright in the gathering dark.
“You ok?” Jack asked Woolsey quietly.
Woolsey gave him a sideways glance. “I think I’d rather be interrogated by Replicators again, frankly.”
“I hear you.” Jack looked at the retreating backs of S.R. Desai and Aurelia Dixon-Smythe as Davis herded them past the security desk.
Woolsey took a deep breath as they disappeared around the corner. “I was thinking… Do you want to go across the street to Capital City Brewery and get some dinner?”
Which translated as let’s spend three hours with you holding my hand while we rehash every word of the hearing. Jack thought another fifteen minutes would have him screaming in a decidedly un-Air Force way.
“Actually, I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up,” he said. “This has eaten my whole day. I should probably just take the laptop home and nuke something rather than go out, Dick.”
“Sure,” Woolsey said. He looked kind of crestfallen, and for a moment Jack almost said to hell with it. But three more hours of how the IOA sucked?
“Another time,” Jack compromised. “They’ve got good steaks.”
“Yeah.” Woolsey nodded and squared his shoulders. “I should be getting home too. Not that I’ve got paperwork from Atlantis…”
Before they started another round of speculation there, Jack headed for the glass conference room doors. “I’ve got to run by my office and get my laptop.”
“Ok. See you later.” Woolsey looked out the window. “It’s stopped raining.”
“Good,” Jack said.
There was the distant rumble of thunder off to the west as Jack left the building, putting on his cover absently while glancing up at the sky with a lifetime’s force of habit. Thunderclouds building again to the northwest, catching the updrafts over the edge of the Appalachian front beyond the horizon, away from the microclimate of the river. Thirty minutes, forty. Plenty of time.
It was only eight blocks to his apartment, two rooms whose rent at three times the price of his mortgage in Colorado Springs was supposedly justified by granite countertops. He wouldn’t miss this when it was time
to retire. Eight blocks, enough to provide a little aerobic exercise. Something he got less of now that he ended fewer reports with ‘we retreated to the Stargate under fire.’
He changed clothes and put some random dinner something in the microwave, then opened the fridge again. Why not? He pulled out a beer and popped it open just as there was a huge crash of thunder and the lights went out.
“Aw, crap.”
He went over to the floor to ceiling windows in the alcove with the dinette table and looked out just as the first spray of rain dashed against them, the fall thunderstorm he’d seen coming breaking over the city. Horns honked eight stories below, the swirling raindrops illuminated by the bright headlights of a big red Circulator bus, opening doors between stops to let two dashing women with their purses over their heads onboard. The traffic lights were out, and the lights across the street, but up toward the Hill the lights were on, streetlights two blocks away. Just the local transformer then. Well, he could wait for dinner.
Jack sat down at the dinette table with his laptop and opened it, behind glass as microdrafts threw rain horizontally against the window.
September 22, 2009
Hey, Carter…
…you’ve been missing for twenty six days now. Well, not missing missing. Not MIA. Just disappeared. You’re probably perfectly fine. You, and your ship and Atlantis. Everybody’s perfectly fine. It’s probably just something wrong with the Atlantis gate or something, so that you can’t dial in and send a databurst.
It’s probably not that it’s been destroyed. That the Hammond’s been destroyed. I’m sure everybody’s ok.
We had Woolsey’s second hearing today.
And there wasn’t much to say about that. There wasn’t much he could tell her that wouldn’t look like stuff above her grade level when it went through Landry and Caldwell and everybody else, wasn’t stuff Walter needed to know for water cooler gossip at the SGC. And if she never read it…
He wasn’t going there.
It was pretty interesting. Don’t know how it will all come out.
Translation: it sucked, and they’re probably going to sack him. Jack took a long drink of his beer. Probably he should have gone to dinner with Woolsey. He’d get some dinner that way.
But he might also kill him, which would be bad. He wasn’t sure who he could really stand to see right now.
It’s raining here, a hell of a thunderstorm. The power’s out, but I’m on the laptop. Dick says to give you his best.
Well, he would say it. Although he’d probably say something like “Do you think they’re all right?” and Jack would have to say, “Sure, of course they are. Just because they disappear for a month or so doesn’t mean a thing. This is Carter and Sheppard. They’re fine.”
We’ve recalled Odyssey and Mitchell is champing at the bit to dial in when they get back to Earth with their ZPM.
As soon as they could dial Atlantis, they would. And Mitchell would be the first one through the gate, Mitchell and Teal’c and Daniel and Vala…
There was a loud pounding on the apartment door, and Jack reached for the sidearm that of course he wasn’t wearing. This was Earth. Not that it was always safe. And usually people rang the bell. Of course the power was out, so they probably couldn’t.
He was nearly at the door when a familiar voice called through it. “Jack? You there?”
“Oh for crying out loud.” He opened the door on the tall, hooded and dripping wet specter outside.
“Hi, Jack,” Daniel said.
“Hi, Daniel.”
Daniel pushed back the hood of his rain jacket and shook his wet hair like a dog. “The power’s out,” he said.
“I know.”
“I walked up eight flights.”
“Good for you,” Jack said.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Daniel said. Fifteen hundred miles from Colorado Springs. “What are you up to?”
Jack glanced back at the glowing laptop, the only light in the apartment. “Oh. I was just emailing Carter.”
“That’s what I figured,” Daniel said, his head to the side. “But it’s dark in here. Come get some dinner with me. There’s an Irish pub up by Columbus Circle that’s really good, and we won’t have to catch a cab in this haywire traffic.”
“We’ll get soaked,” Jack said.
“I’m already soaked.” Daniel said. “Hot boxties. Guinness.”
“Ok.” Jack went back in to look for a jacket that wasn’t his uniform overcoat while Daniel prowled over to the window, looking out at the traffic while carefully not glancing at the laptop screen.
“They probably blew their gate up again,” Daniel said. “That happens.”
“Yeah.”
Daniel looked at him squarely. “We’d know. This isn’t it.”
“It never feels like it,” Jack said. “It likes to catch you like a gut punch. It never plays fair.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that, so Daniel just shrugged. “I thought I’d stay until Odyssey gets in.”
Jack let out a long breath. “I’ve got a flight to Peterson the day before.”
“I’ll come back with you then. Mitchell will kill me if I’m not there the second Odyssey arrives.”
“Right.” For a second he thought Daniel was going to say something. He’d probably rather not hear it. So he put on his jacket instead. “Pub by Columbus Circle, huh?”
“Yeah.” Daniel smiled. “It’s good.”
Jack made sure his keys were in his pocket, came out and pulled the door shut. “Woolsey got massacred today.”
“Tell me about it,” Daniel said, and he did, for eight flights down.
Chapter Six
Disguises
Jennifer shook her head. “Teyla, I don’t know. Are you sure about this?” The cup of coffee she’d brought back to her desk was going cold, and the file she’d just opened on her computer was sitting untouched. When Teyla had come in, she’d expected — well, she didn’t quite know what she’d expected. A request for aspirin, maybe. God knew the last few weeks had been one big headache. But not this.
“It is the only way,” Teyla said seriously. “I cannot attack a hive ship with a cruiser. I must persuade Waterlight that Colonel Sheppard is not worth winning the anger of Steelflower, and sway her with the Gift if she will not see reason. For that, I must be able to speak with her as an equal. As a Wraith.”
Jennifer nodded. “I can’t say I love it, but it makes sense,” she said. “I just wish I knew the long-term effects of doing this to you again. If there are any. When we first came up with this procedure — ”
“You assured me before then the procedure is completely safe, and completely reversible,” Teyla said, sounding a little frustrated. “Is that not still true?”
“Yeah, but at the time I thought it was a one-time thing. I didn’t think I’d be turning you into the Michael Jackson of the Pegasus galaxy.” At Teyla’s puzzled look, she winced. “Really famous singer with a lot of plastic surgery. Who died recently, so that was a pretty terrible thing of me to say, actually — ”
“Will you not help me?” Teyla asked. “I do not wish you to do things that you believe to be wrong, but time is limited, and Colonel Sheppard’s life is at stake.”
Jennifer raised her coffee cup to hide her frown. She knew Colonel Sheppard would say he wasn’t worth what she was about to do, but she also knew that it was Teyla’s job to put herself in harm’s way. She was getting used to patching up soldiers so that they could go out and get hurt again the next day, treating their wounds and their symptoms until they’d used their bodies so hard that she had to send them home.
And if she was starting to have doubts about whether that was what she’d taken the Hippocratic Oath in order to do, this wasn’t the moment for them. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s get busy turning you into a Wraith.”
The anesthetic looked like water as it dripped down the tube, colorless and harmless. But then, vodka looked like water, too, and Jennife
r had had enough bad hangovers in college to know that appearances were deceptive. Too many drinks at too many frat parties she’d been way too young for, all in the name of trying to fit in when she was a junior in college at sixteen. If she’d known she’d end up standing here in an alien city in another galaxy about to turn one of her friends green, maybe she wouldn’t have bothered trying so hard to be normal. Maybe she would’ve been friends with guys like Rodney, like Dr. Zelenka, the ones in the anime club, who’d hung around the science hall wearing superhero t-shirts.
It was all too easy to imagine Rodney as he must have been at eighteen, pudgy and unshowered in a faded Batman shirt, and she closed her eyes as pain pricked, sharp as the hypodermic in her hand. She couldn’t afford thoughts like that now, not in surgical scrubs and mask with Teyla unconscious on the operating table. Not with so much at stake.
Jennifer took a deep breath and counted slowly as she exhaled, grounding herself firmly in the present, feeling the weight and pull of her hair fastened into a bun at the base of her skull, the slight pressure of the elastic holding her cap and mask in place. This wasn’t the time for anything else. Not her life outside. Not her feelings. Not even her patient, because you can’t operate on your friend or a five-year-old or a man who looks like your father or a young mother of two. There was only the procedure. Only each precise action in the silence.
It was harder working without Todd’s input, but she had extensive notes and photos from last time. The facial surgery was first, and, like last time, it made Jennifer wish she’d paid more attention during her plastic surgery rotation. She’d done well, but at the time, she’d hated the idea of spending her life doing nose jobs and facelifts instead of actually saving lives. She hadn’t imagined she’d wind up needing the same skills to turn beauty into a beast.