Alliances

by Stargate

  It didn’t matter. They were the best of the best, gathered here to rescue the colonel and Daniel, and with that goal in mind squabbles and conflicts and personal differences were gladly set aside.

  “So,” she said, “thanks to Tok’ra intelligence, here’s where we’re up to. Lord Anatapas—” She flavoured the name with heavy irony. “— is an extremely minor Goa’uld in Heru’ur’s hierarchy. Probably that’s why he staged the raid on Yu’s slave farm: he’s bucking for promotion and he wanted to show Heru’ur what he could do. Anyway. His home base is the planet Elekba. It has a single small continent on which are sited a Stargate, his fortress and a gold mine. The mining operation won’t impact on us. Elekba is the only inhabited planet in that sun’s system and the nearest heavily occupied Goa’uld world is—” She glanced at her father, who was standing off to her left with General Hammond, Teal’c and Martouf.

  “Forty-six light years away,” he supplied, then smiled grimly at the gathered SG teams. “When the Major says ‘minor’, she isn’t joking.”

  “Which of course works in our favor,” Sam continued. “Anatapas has three al’kesh at his disposal and no access to a mother ship unless Heru’ur pays him a visit. So far we’ve seen no indication that a visit is on the cards; he’s got his hands full with Cronos.”

  Sally Raismith from SG-4 raised her hand. “What are the chances of him anticipating our rescue mission?”

  “It’s possible, Captain,” she admitted. “But remember, we don’t know if he knows Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson are among the stolen slave population. Or that Dr. Jackson’s in possession of a Tok’ra communicator and has made contact.”

  Teal’c said, “Even if they have been identified as members of the SGC and Heru’ur learns we have been alerted to their location, he will not believe any rescue mission could succeed. Of all the Goa’uld system lords he is one of the most arrogant. I have known him many years and can assure you, he thinks himself and his servants entirely safe from attack by petty humans.”

  “That’s pretty freakin’ dumb,” said SG-5’s Lt. Jim McRafferty, the SGC’s class clown. “You’d think the Goa’uld would know us by now.”

  A ripple of laughter, of ‘hell yeahs’ and ‘you can say that again, Raffs’ ran through the gathered strike force. Sam allowed them a moment to blow off some steam, then gently reined them in.

  “And it gives us a possible advantage, but let’s not get complacent,” she pointed out. “So. We know that Anatapas has a garrison of Jaffa stationed in his fortress. We need to eliminate them for this mission to succeed.”

  “Don’t we get to kill Anatapas? And any other Goa’uld he’s hanging around with?” said Mike Rodriguez, sounding plaintive.

  “Killing Goa’uld will be a bonus, Major,” she said, repressing a smile. “I know SG-11’s got a rep to maintain but we can’t lose sight of our primary objective: getting Colonel O’Neill, Dr. Jackson and the Tok’ra operative Leith out of the fortress and off Elekba alive.”

  Another ripple through the assembled personnel, this time of determination and agreement. In all their faces, keen focus and an iron-willed commitment. For SG-5, this was a replay of events from the other side of the looking glass. Last time they’d been the ones in trouble and SG-1 had saved their asses. Now they were returning the favor.

  “Our attack will be two-pronged,” she announced. “Teal’c, myself, my father and Martouf will be going in via a cloaked tel’tac, leaving from Vorash as soon we finish this briefing. All of you, led by Major Zammit and SG-2—” She nodded at Paul, who nodded unsmilingly back. “— will reach Elekba by Stargate from here. The good news is the Elekba ’gate has no iris or defensive armory of any kind. Once we’re in synchronous orbit around the planet we’ll subspace the ‘go’ back to you in a triple-coded burst and the mission will green-light. You’ll have a head start on us in order to create a very loud, very messy diversion, disabling their al’kesh and anything else you can find that’s a danger. This will draw the fortress’s Jaffa towards your position and away from ours. When you give us the signal it’s safe to proceed, we’ll ring into the fortress complex itself and extract our guys. Thanks to one of Leith’s previous reports we’ve got a detailed plan of the fortress’s layout, including the al’kesh hangar location. You’ll get copies at the end of the briefing.”

  Another raised hand. Megan Kostolitz, Jim’s 2IC. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “What’s the transit time from Vorash to Elekba?” Megan asked. Her voice was taut, her eyes narrowed; she had all the leashed nervous energy of a greyhound in the starting gate.

  “Ordinarily it’s a 19 hour hyperspace journey,” Sam replied. Then added, flicking a smile sideways, “But Martouf and I have taken some liberties with our tel’tac’s hyperdrive. We estimate the transit time will be cut to six hours.” As her audience muttered and nodded, impressed, she pulled a face. “Unfortunately, that pretty much guarantees the hyperdrive will be cooked by the time we reach Elekba, so we’ll be ‘gating out with the rest of you.”

  “Arrogant or not, Anatapas and his Jaffa aren’t going to sit on their asses while we pay them a visit,” said Rodriguez. “What’s the distance from the Elekba ’gate to the fortress?”

  “Three hundred metres,” said Selmak.

  “Basically, Mike,” Sam added, “just start lobbing mortars as soon as you step through. You won’t be lonely for long.”

  Muted chuckles. Knowing nods and elbow-digs. The adrenaline was starting to pump now. Heart-rates were accelerating. Pulses picking up speed. Anticipation was in the air.

  “Anyone else have a query? No?” Sam breathed out, hard. “Good. Then I’ll hand over to General Hammond for some last words. Sir?”

  She stepped aside, allowing Hammond to take her place at the base of the ’gate ramp. Her father gave her a nod, the smallest of smiles curving his lips. You done good, kid. The unspoken compliment warmed her.

  Hammond clasped his hands behind his back. “Thank you, Major,” he said, his expression sombre. “People, there’s not much more I can add to that. As soon as we’re done here the ordnance crew will start bringing in the fireworks. When the time comes, go in hard and fast and teach these damned Goa’uld a lesson they won’t soon forget. Dismissed.”

  Sam nodded. Trust the general to finish on the perfect note. As the strike team withdrew to wait out the next six hours or so in temporary quarters, she smiled at Hammond. “Thank you, sir.”

  Hammond snorted. “Don’t thank me, thank your father and Selmak. I don’t know what you two said to Per’sus, Jacob, but it did the trick nicely.”

  Her father exchanged an inscrutable look with Martouf, whose expression was equally unreadable. “Nothing we’d care to repeat, George, if it’s all the same to you. I just hope you had the same sort of success dealing with your political masters.”

  The general pursed his lips. “Success might be too strong a word. Let’s just say I’ve got them corralled, at least for the moment.” He nodded to the technician currently on ’gate duty. “You’d best be on your way,” he added, as behind them the Stargate began its ponderous, powerful dance. “It goes without saying that I wish you luck.”

  “Say it anyway,” her father replied, holding out his hand. “There’s no such thing as too much luck.”

  Hammond grasped her father’s hand hard. “Find them, Jacob,” he said. His voice was rough now. A trifle unsteady. “Bring them home. And your operative too. Bring them all home. We can’t do without them.”

  “Yes sir,” her father said softly. “That would be the plan.”

  With a roar and a whoosh the wormhole connected. Sam looked at the general. “See you soon, sir. All of us.”

  “I’m holding you to that, Major,” said Hammond, self-control re-established. “Teal’c.”

  Teal’c nodded. “General.”

  There was nothing more to say after that. So they gave General Hammond a final nod and stepped through the wormhole to Vorash, leaving him behind… and bereft.r />
  “Right,” said her father, as they exited the Vorash ’gate into scouring, wind-blown sand. “What say we get this show on the road?”

  Damn, thought Daniel, and propped himself against a different bit of prison wall. Sleep was proving stubbornly elusive. His wrist ached all the way to his shoulder, vibrating with a remembered agony, and unresolved issues pricked him like needles.

  Curled uncomfortably on the cold floor, Jack released an irritated sigh and let his forearm drop from over his eyes. “For God’s sake, Daniel, I’m trying to sleep, here. Whatever the hell is bugging you just spit it out.”

  “What makes you think there’s something bugging me?”

  “How long have I known you?”

  Oh. Right. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll spit.” He laced his fingers together and tried to pretend he wasn’t just a little bit nervous. “Before. Earlier. You know.”

  “And people say my communication skills are lacking,” Jack remarked.

  “Before, in between them putting us in here and you coming to, you were dreaming. Okay? You were having a dream. Actually, I think it was more like a nightmare. About Alar.”

  And suddenly the cell was a whole lot colder. Jack’s forearm returned to cover his eyes. “Yeah. Okay. You can stop now.”

  No, he couldn’t. “Did you kill him for me, Jack? I have to know.”

  “Daniel—”

  “No! You started this, Jack, you said you killed Alar so he wouldn’t make deals I couldn’t live with. I never asked you to do that. I never—”

  “No, you never,” said Jack. “It was a poor choice of words and I take them back.”

  “You can’t un-ring a bell, Jack. Why did you say them at all? Because you were royally pissed at me and you wanted to score a point?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, gee. That’s great.”

  “Sorry.”

  Daniel frowned and scrubbed at a mud stain on his trousers. “Because that’s not something I want on my conscience, Jack.”

  “I know. And it shouldn’t be. What I did had nothing to do with you. I killed Alar because—” Jack fell silent, his breathing strained. “It doesn’t matter why. He’s dead. It’s done. Now drop it.”

  But it did matter. “I can’t drop it. I meant what I said back on Panotek. This is eating you alive, Jack. God, if you’d seen your face while you were dreaming.”

  Jack didn’t reply. Just breathed harshly with his forearm over his eyes.

  Softly, Daniel said, “Jack. It wasn’t murder.”

  For a passing ice age, Jack still didn’t speak. Then: “Wasn’t it?”

  “You told him not to follow you. It was his choice to risk the wormhole. He knew we had an iris.”

  “And I knew he’d ignore me,” Jack retorted. For whatever reason, deciding—for once—to share. “The bastard was desperate. The complex was coming down on top of him. It was stay and be crushed, or follow me. I knew he’d follow. And I closed the iris.”

  Daniel let that truth sit for a while, then said, feeling like a blind man in a minefield, “Is it because you hated him? Is that why it feels like murder?”

  Another long silence. Then: “Yeah. I hated him.”

  “I can understand that. He had some pretty hateful ideas.”

  Jack snorted. “But you don’t understand why I closed the iris instead of letting him through.” He lowered his forearm. “Do you?”

  “No,” said Daniel, after a painful pause. “No, I don’t. Alar could’ve been taken into custody as soon as he—”

  “Custody? How?” demanded Jack, scathing. “We had no jurisdiction over him.”

  “Then we could’ve sent him away, sent him—”

  “Where? To which unsuspecting planet?”

  “I don’t know, somewhere he—”

  “Somewhere he could pick up where he’d left off on Euronda, fulfilling his father’s dream of an Aryan nation?”

  “No. Of course not,” Daniel said reluctantly. “All right. We’d have been stuck with him. But I can’t help thinking, maybe if we’d given him some time, talked to him, let him see how wrong he was, how misguided, maybe—”

  “Daniel!” Jack rolled over and sat up, wincing. “Alar was a fanatic. You’d have had more chance convincing Apophis to renounce Goa’uldhood than of getting Alar to recant his belief in racial purity. And I closed the iris because I knew someone like Kinsey would ignore what he was and give Alar anything he wanted in return for his knowledge and what he could build us. I was afraid Alar would score an all-access pass to Earth… and we’ve already had one Hitler.”

  Daniel let out a deep, painful breath. Let it out. “Maybe you’re right, Jack. Maybe there was no other way to resolve the problem. I regret not having the chance to try, but… probably if Alar had ended up in the SGC Kinsey would’ve auctioned off his first-born child and put his grandmother in hock if it meant getting his hands on the Eurondan technologies. His anger at our failure to procure them suggests we screwed up some big plan.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Jack, very dry. “He was angry all right.”

  “So why is this haunting you? It’s not like you haven’t killed in the line of duty before. And don’t tell me you’re sorry you stopped Alar from getting his hands on that all-access pass. I know you better than that.”

  Jack lay down again, his forearm returning to his eyes. “For God’s sake, Daniel, I’m not haunted.”

  “Then what word would you prefer? What do you want me to say?”

  “Daniel, I don’t want you to say anything,” Jack retorted, scathing. “You’re the one who started this conversation. I was trying to sleep.”

  “Fine,” he said, unclenching his gritted teeth. “Forget I even brought it up. I was an idiot to think that my opinion would make any difference to how you feel about what happened.”

  More silence. Then Jack sighed again. “Try me.”

  Daniel cleared his throat. Waited for the moment when his voice could be trusted. “Okay. Alar was a war criminal, no question. To be fair, he was a victim of his father’s psychosis but instead of acting like an adult and questioning the truths he’d been given he blindly accepted them, infecting a whole new generation with his sickness. And he had to be stopped from spreading that sickness even further. So you stopped him, the only way you thought you could. If that was all this was about, there’d be no problem. You wouldn’t be… haunted. But it isn’t.”

  Jack was staring at the ceiling. “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. See, you didn’t only hate Alar for his bigotry or attempted genocide. You hated him because he deceived you.” Daniel shook his head, groping for the right words. For any words, to give his thoughts a voice. “No. More than that. Alar seduced you—with fancy toys and clever killing machines. He convinced you, only for a moment, but a moment’s long enough, that the ends really can justify the means and that no smart person looks a gift horse in the mouth. And the only way he managed that was because you wanted to be convinced. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough… he used you, manipulated you, tricked you into slaughtering innocent people for him. You found that unforgivable. Yes, you ordered the iris closed to stop him getting access to Earth, doing God knows what kind of damage to us. But it’s not the whole reason. Alar injured your sense of honor—and you wanted to punish him for that.”

  Still, Jack said nothing.

  “I guess the question is, does that make you a murderer? Being angry when you killed him. Being… hurt.” Daniel shrugged. “I guess, in the end, only you know the answer. But for what it’s worth… for the little that my opinion counts… no. You’re not a murderer, Jack.”

  He sat back then, wishing he had a glass of water. Wishing he knew what was going on behind Jack’s half-closed eyes, glittering in the smoky torchlight. The silence this time stretched on so long he actually started to drowse.

  And then Jack spoke. Not looking at him, no. Still looking at the ceiling, his face an unreadable mask.

  “I wish
it hadn’t happened. I wish there’d been another way.”

  “I know you do. I do too. But it is what it is. Like I said: you can’t un-ring the bell.”

  Jack snorted. “Get some sleep, Sigmund. Dollars to donuts we’re getting rescued in the morning… and we don’t want to keep Teal’c waiting. You know how tetchy he gets when people keep him waiting.”

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Yeah. I had noticed.”

  And that, it seemed, was that.

  Then, a little time later, just as the cell’s single burning torch flickered and died, Jack said, quietly, “Thank you, Daniel.”

  In the sudden darkness, Daniel smiled. “You’re welcome, Jack.

  Twenty minutes after stepping through the SGC Stargate to Vorash, Sam and her team were rocketing through hyperspace like a cat with a lit firecracker tied to its tail. Beyond the tel’tac’s main viewport window hyperspeed’s familiar patterns, surreal like blue oil on shifting water, smeared and ran, unable to keep up.

  “God,” she said, and looked around the flight deck. “Is it my imagination or are the walls vibrating?”

  “They’re vibrating,” said her father. “But don’t worry. Everything’s operating within tolerance levels.”

  “How neatly within?”

  He pulled a face. “We may be coloring outside the lines here and there.”

  “Great.”

  “Relax, Samantha,” said Martouf. “This ship can withstand the drive system modifications we made, at least for a journey of our intended duration. I would not have agreed to them if I thought we would explode into a million pieces halfway to Elekba.”

  She looked at him. “Oh. Well. That’s very reassuring, Martouf. Thank you.”

  A sly smile touched his lips. “You are quite welcome.”

  Grinning, her father took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Stop being a backseat driver, kiddo. I get enough of that from Selmak. Why don’t you go take a nap in the cargo hold? You need to conserve your energy. We’ll wake you when we’re nearly there.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Are you sure?”