Alliances

by Stargate

  “Thank you, Major.”

  They made the short walk in silence. Davis stood aside to let him enter, then closed and locked the door after them.

  “Relax, Major,” he said. “I’m not going to chase after Kinsey and finish the job.”

  Davis pulled a face. “Wouldn’t blame you if you tried, sir.” Then he straightened. “Sorry. I just thought you might like some privacy.”

  “That would involve you standing on the other side of the door, Davis.”

  “Ah. Yes. Sorry, Colonel.”

  He sighed. “It’s all right.”

  The staff room was neat. Almost Spartan, as befitted a building crammed roof to basement with career military types. A sagging couch was pushed against the wall opposite the door. Suddenly very tired, O’Neill skirted the table and chairs and collapsed onto it. His head ached fiercely, and the last moments of his confrontation with Kinsey were rapidly taking on the unreal blurriness of a trip through the Stargate.

  Davis cleared his throat. “Would you like a coffee, sir? Or a tea? There’s some juice here too, if you’d prefer that.”

  He was standing at the open refrigerator, looking helpful. Looking nervous. Poor bastard. Bet the last thing he’d expected to do today was baby-sit a homicidal superior officer.

  God Almighty. He’d tried to throttle Kinsey. Which meant, put bluntly, his checkered career was over. Kinsey had won. Maybe there’d be a court martial and maybe there wouldn’t, but that didn’t seem to matter much now. Either way, it was over.

  The bastard brought up Charlie. Charlie. He’d deserved to have his windpipe crushed.

  “Sir?”

  O’Neill looked up. “I don’t care. Whatever you’re having, Major.”

  “Right. I’ll make us some coffee, then,” said Davis, looking relieved. “Would you prefer cream or milk with that?”

  Hammond watched as Admiral Belweather nodded to the remaining personnel in the conference room. “That’ll be all, people.”

  They left, quickly.

  Belweather moved to the window, twitched aside the curtain and looked down to the gardens below. “That was unforgivable, General.”

  Hammond felt his stomach turn over. “Admiral—you need to understand—Colonel O’Neill isn’t the easiest officer I’ve ever commanded but he’s probably the best. And Senator Kinsey—”

  “It’s Kinsey I’m talking about, George,” said Belweather, and turned back from the window. “Using O’Neill’s son like that, to score a cheap point.” He shook his head, pink face creased with displeasure. “Unforgivable.”

  He perched on the edge of the table. “I did try to warn you, Reggie.”

  “Yes. You did. And it’s not that I disbelieved you,” said Belweather, grimacing. “But the President insisted that Kinsey head the investigation which meant my hands were tied. These days, George, I’m more politician than sailor.”

  “Serves you right for being a military genius, Mr. Chairman.”

  They exchanged swift, appreciative, self-mocking smiles. Then Belweather sobered. “But George. Unforgivably provoked or not, O’Neill’s conduct is a court martial offence. I’m not sure we can save his bacon this time.”

  That had him on his feet. “Reggie, we have to. I owe Jack more than my life. If I stand by and let him be destroyed by pond scum like Kinsey I’ll never be able to meet my own eyes in the mirror again.”

  Belweather didn’t reply. Just nodded, frowning, and stared at the drab carpet. Then he said, his voice soft, “Do you think this Alar’s death was murder?”

  It was the one question he’d prayed no-one would ask him. Jack O’Neill had never asked it. He folded his arms across his chest. “Reggie…”

  But Reggie Belweather wasn’t a man to back down. “Do you think O’Neill made the wrong call?” he persisted. “Should we have done business with the Eurondan equivalent of the Third Reich?”

  Another appallingly difficult question. One Hammond could, with extreme reluctance and no small measure of angst, answer. “Yes, Reggie. I think O’Neill was wrong. The United States does business daily with governments who hardly measure up to our standards of ethics and morality. It may be distasteful, but we don’t have the luxury of looking too closely at the politics of the people who are willing to help us destroy the Goa’uld. We’re at war. It’s six billion of us… or them. I want it to be us.”

  “And so do I, George,” said Belweather soberly. “So does the President. It’s what Kinsey wants, too, though it kills me to say it.”

  Hammond shook his head. “Kinsey may well want that, Reggie, but it’s not all he wants and it’s not what he wants first. You can’t trust him. You mustn’t trust him, or give him what he wants more than anything: Jack O’Neill’s scalp.”

  “George, George, don’t you understand?” said Belweather, despairing. “I might not have a choice! Let’s not forget O’Neill did physically attack the bastard.”

  Hammond slid off the edge of the table and squared his shoulders. “Admiral Belweather, I’m not the only one who owes Jack O’Neill his life. We all owe him our lives. Hell, we owe him the planet!”

  “I know we do, General. And for that he will always be honored,” said Belweather. His expression was sympathetic, but sympathy only stretched so far. “However he’s still just a man, and he’s still accountable, like Kinsey says. And George, by your own admission—this time, O’Neill made a mistake. What if it turns out he’s guaranteed our destruction at the hands of the Goa’uld just because he had an inconvenient attack of conscience? What am I supposed to do about that? Or the fact he assaulted a United States Senator in front of witnesses? What am I supposed to do, George? What would you do, if you were me?”

  Hammond sighed, and turned away. “I don’t know, Reggie. God give me strength… but I just don’t know.”

  After that, there wasn’t much else to say. They parted company with assurances to keep in constant communication, and Hammond went to collect his errant subordinate.

  “Thank you, Major,” he said to Davis, dismissing the man.

  Davis nodded, cast a final glance at Jack, and withdrew from the staff room. The door closed quietly behind him.

  Standing at uneasy attention, hands behind his back, Jack stared without expression just past his weary general’s left shoulder.

  “Well, Colonel,” Hammond said, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “For a smart man, that was a very, very dumb move.”

  A small nerve ticked beside Jack’s eye. “Yes, sir.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “That I should dust off my résumé, sir?”

  Humor, humor, always humor. But this wasn’t a laughing matter. Hammond closed the distance between them. “It may yet come to that, Colonel!” he barked. Then, relenting, added more kindly, “But not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

  Beneath Jack’s practised, polished mask, some deep emotion swirled and shifted. “General, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, I—”

  “Hell, I do,” he retorted. “Kinsey pushed your buttons and you went off like a damned Exocet missile.” Despite all his best intentions, in the face of his maverick colonel’s refusal to take a crisis seriously, just once, he felt his temper escape him. “Dammit, Jack! You just gave the bastard everything he’s prayed for these last two years! On a silver platter, no less! What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t,” said Jack, scowling. “And that would be the problem, wouldn’t it?” He turned away, the heel of one hand pressed to his forehead as though attempting to contain some terrible pain. “I let him get to me. How did that happen? I spent four months in an Iraqi prison and I didn’t tell them squat. Not about anything that mattered. How the hell did I let a weasel like Kinsey under my guard?”

  It was a measure of the man’s distress that he not only admitted the weakness, but that he’d voluntarily refer to one of the most brutal, sordid chapters of his pre-SGC career.

  Clearly, any further dissection of t
his current debacle would have to wait.

  Righteous anger extinguished, Hammond stepped closer. “Because you’re tired, Jack,” he said gently. “And what happened on Euronda has upset you more than you realize. This is my fault. I should’ve known something like this would happen.”

  Jack spun around. “Your fault? Bull! Sir. I’m the one who took a swing at Kinsey. I’m the one who lost control.”

  “And I’m the one who exposed you to his amoral machinations knowing—well. That you were still bothered by what happened on Euronda.” He held up a hand, forestalling a furious protest. “Jack, please. It’s just us here. There’s no need for pretence. And I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that killing Alar—allowing him to die or however you want to phrase it—isn’t sitting well with you. Hell, it isn’t sitting well with me, either. And before too long, it’s something we’re going to have to deal with properly. But for now—for right now—let’s just get back home and see what we can do about saving your ass before Kinsey flushes it down the toilet, hmm? Can we do that, Jack?”

  Rigid, resisting, bitterly resentful, Jack glared at the scuffed linoleum floor. Hating to be this vulnerable. Hating the need for a helping hand. Then he looked up. His eyes were unutterably tired.

  “Yes, sir. We can do that.”

  Hammond nodded and smiled, offering a show of confidence he was far from feeling. “Good man. Then let’s go.”

  Chapter Three

  “Oh my God,” said Daniel blankly into the phone. “Uh—thanks, Paul. Really. I appreciate the heads-up. Bye.”

  Feeling totally thrown, he hung up the receiver and sat for a moment, just staring into space. Then he headed out of his office for Sam’s lab. The doctor was in, doing something incomprehensible with an electron microscope and what looked like a sample of the weird green soil SG-8 had brought back from its exploration of P7G-112. There was no sign of Teal’c. Sometimes, for reasons known only to him, he lurked on the fringes of Sam’s experiments. According to Sam he hardly said anything, just focused his powerful concentration on her and the task at hand. Apparently he’d said he was a wise warrior and an ignorant man and he owed it to his people to redress the imbalance in anticipation of the freedom to come.

  Teal’c never stopped believing that one day, the Jaffa would be free. Doubt wasn’t found in his dictionary—even though a lot of other, much longer words definitely were; sometimes he talked like a university professor. Once, when Jack complained, Teal’c had just smiled then said, “Enslaved Jaffa speak with their false god’s tongue and utter only the words pleasing to it. Now I am free I speak with my own tongue the words that please me, and me alone.”

  Too often it was easy to forget that Teal’c was twice Jack’s age, and then some. Jack had never complained again.

  Daniel regretted the Jaffa’s absence keenly; this wasn’t the kind of news he wanted to announce twice.

  Standing in Sam’s open doorway, unnoticed, he took a moment just to enjoy her immersion in the work. Putting off the evil moment, true, but still…

  Like him, she was a scientist at heart. It meant he understood her in a way he’d never, with all the good will in the world, understand Jack. She was as passionately in love with learning, with knowledge and the challenges of the unknown as he was himself and it bonded them as closely as any obscure warrior blood rites. Sam knew how it felt to be consumed by curiosity, overwhelmed with wonder, swallowed alive by the need to know. She understood that knowledge for its own sake was important. That not everything needed to relate to the concrete and touchable, the immediacy of the moment, the raw fundamentals of life and death.

  Sure, in the grand scheme of things those matters were important. But they weren’t the most important. They were, in fact, only important in that they allowed you to continue the journey of discovering the answers to life’s infinite mysteries.

  Mysteries that to him didn’t include questions and answers like: Will it kill me? If it will, I’ll kill it first. If it won’t, it doesn’t matter.

  He’d more or less given up trying to expand Jack’s intellectual horizons. The man was a far, far cry from dumb but he did redefine the concept of ‘narrow focus’ in a whole new and intimidating way.

  And speaking of Jack… much as he wanted to, he couldn’t put this off forever. “Hey, Sam,” he said, stepping into the lab. “You got a minute?”

  Eyes glued to the microscope viewer, she held up a finger. “Wait—wait—yes!” Then she straightened, her face alight with excitement and triumph. “I knew it! I knew my hunch was right.”

  Despite the grinding ache in his belly, Daniel had to grin. “Right about what?”

  She flapped an indiscriminate, excited hand. “This!”

  “And what is this? What are you doing, exactly?”

  “What am I doing?” she echoed. She was close to dancing on the spot, something you didn’t see every day. “I’m stealing Area 51’s thunder… and I don’t care.” She snatched up the sealed beaker containing the green soil sample and waved it aloft like an Olympic gold medal. “This is not ordinary dirt, Daniel. This dirt contains traces of naquadah and an element not defined on the Periodic Table. In fact—and here’s where things get really interesting—the only other reference to it in existence, as far as I know, is in the repository of knowledge we found on Earnest’s planet. How do you like them apples?”

  “Well—ah—”

  “That’s why the soil’s green!” she crowed. “Because the naquadah and the—the—other stuff—have combined to create a brand new element! An element that has the most incredible potential properties! I can’t wait to tell General Hammond when he gets back. He can tell those—those—weasels at the White House to stuff this in their pipes and smoke it.” She paused. “Although if they did, I suspect it might blow them into a million pieces. So possibly not. But at least they won’t be able to accuse us of not achieving anything! This could be one of the most significant discoveries the Stargate program has ever—”

  Daniel swallowed an interruption. He wasn’t Jack. He didn’t have the heart to run roughshod over her enthusiasm. After a moment, though, Sam noticed he wasn’t grabbing hold of her to dance a polka round the lab. She stopped burbling, put down the container of soil and crossed her arms.

  “Okay. I know that face. What’s wrong?”

  He closed the lab door. “We have a problem.”

  “What kind of a problem?”

  “Ah… a big one.”

  “Daniel!” She came round the front of her workbench. “Stop futzing and spit it out!”

  He didn’t want to spit it out. Once he said it, the problem became really real.

  “Daniel.”

  Hands shoved in his pockets, Daniel chewed at his lip then sighed. “Okay. So here’s the thing. Jack… assaulted Kinsey.”

  Her face went blank. “No way.”

  “Yes, way.”

  “No way. He’s not that stupid!”

  “No. Not stupid. Angry. Apparently Kinsey made a crack about Charlie.”

  “A crack?” she said, incredulous. “What kind of a crack?”

  He grimaced. “Something along the lines of your son’s dead and it’s all your fault.”

  Sam looked as disbelievingly shocked as he felt. “Kinsey said that? No. Surely not even Kinsey— but why? And how do you know? Daniel, where are you getting this? Who’s your source?”

  “Major Davis,” he said. “From the Office of the Joint Chiefs, remember?”

  She turned away, still grappling with the enormity of the news. “Yes. Of course I remember. Oh my God.”

  “The good news is he’s not in prison. He and Hammond are on their way back to the SGC now. But there’ll be fallout, Sam. I doubt even Jack can attack a United States Senator and get away with it. Even if it is Kinsey.”

  She groaned. “Especially if it’s Kinsey. The man’s a Portuguese Man of War, he has tentacles that reach for miles. Anyone else’s career would’ve been finished after that screw-up over
Apophis—but Kinsey? He’s just gone from strength to strength. I don’t think I want to know how.”

  “Neither do I. Sam—I think this is bad. For Jack.”

  “No, really?” she snapped, then held up a hand. “Sorry. You’re right. It is bad. It’s very bad.” Then she looked at him, her expression curious. “And Davis phoned you direct with a heads-up? I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

  “We’re not,” said Daniel. “Not exactly.”

  Vivid memory assailed him: Jack, on the brink of gruesome death in a submarine over-run with Replicators, ordering him to fire the missiles. To kill him quickly. Cleanly. He’d hesitated, and Jack had told Davis to do it. But Davis held off, waiting for his okay. Between them, their hesitations had saved Jack and Teal’c. If they’d blown the sub five seconds sooner, Thor and Sam would’ve arrived too late to transport them out. Afterwards, he and Davis had exchanged complicated looks, and smiled, and gone their separate ways. Some moments—some connections—couldn’t be put into words.

  Sam said, “Well, whatever you are, thank God for it. At least we’ve got some warning.”

  “Yes, but—what can we do, Sam?” he said, collapsing onto the nearest stool. “If Jack really did attack Kinsey then his career is over, isn’t it? Kinsey’s not going to let it go. He’s not the forgive and forget type.”

  Sam started pacing. “Hammond’ll fight for him. He hates Kinsey too. And he’s got a good relationship with the President. God.” She spun about. “The bastard actually threw Charlie’s death in the colonel’s face? Unbelievable!”

  “And not to mention irrelevant. They were supposed to be talking about Euronda.”

  “For all it’s any of Kinsey’s business,” she retorted, and fetched up against the bench. “He wasn’t there, it wasn’t his call. Damned Monday morning quarter backer, that’s all Kinsey is. The man couldn’t begin to understand the complexities of that mission if you gave him a textbook and a dictionary.”

  Euronda, Euronda. A topic that redefined the term ‘minefield’ in new and unpleasant ways. Daniel crossed his arms and looked away. “Sam… about Euronda…”