Stargate SG1 - Roswell
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The Asgard's instructions were interrupted by a loud explosion nearby, followed by an even closer grinding noise directly overhead. “Be a few moments yet, Sam,” Daniel shouted. “We're having...technical issues.”
“What sort of technical issues?” she asked wondering if it had anything to do with the noise. That's when she heard something behind her and realized Cancer Man was standing there.
“General, huh?” he said, tearing the smock from her shoulder to reveal the radio. “Is that your boss's rank in the MGB, Olga?”
Oh...great. The MGB was soon to be better known as the KGB. Daniel had landed them all in it quite comprehensively last time this had happened, which had resulted in hours of laborious questions, bright lights and more cigarette smoke than a DC nightclub.
Cancer Man called out and within moments, the room was swarming with MPs. Haynes was on their heels, with Brylcreem right behind. Sam raised her hands to show she was unarmed, but someone pushed her to her knees and pressed the barrel of a Springfield against the side of her head. Another half dozen MPs surrounded An on the bed, pointing their weapons at him.
“What's going on?” the doctor, Johnson, demanded, pushing his way past the MPs. “Get away from that bed!”
“Caught ourselves a spy,” Cancer Man said, pulling a pistol from his own shoulder holster. He pushed the barrel of a German Luger—probably a souvenir of the war that he'd pilfered from an actual combatant—into Sam's forehead. “And she's going to tell us her real name, and where her Commie pals are. Right now.”
“Hey!” Johnson objected. “You can't do that!”
“You think so?” Cancer Man said. “She's got a radio. I heard her talking to her boss, a general, no less. They were planning to take that...thing outta here. I'm betting it's some Russian experimental monster and that ship is one of their secret weapons.” He pushed the barrel into Sam's forehead even further. She could feel the foresight cutting into her skin.
Sam stared up at Cancer Man. She could see it in his eyes; the ruthless, opportunistic nature that would drive the NID.
“Where's the general you're talking to on this?” Brylcreem snatched the radio from her breast pocket. His face screwed up and he peered at the slim wire. “This another one of your Commie gadgets? Where's the rest of it?” He reached down and roughly pulled her shirt aside, searching for something that didn't exist. “I don't know what's going on, but your Commie pals will never get away with it.”
“Got away with the flying saucer, didn't they?” Johnson interrupted. “And if you don't get that gun out of her face—”
“Search her locker,” Brylcreem snarled at the MP. “Every inch of it. There has to be more of the radio around here someplace.”
Johnson's glower shifted from Cancer Man to Brylcreem and then Haynes. “This contravenes all military protocol when it comes to dealing with prisoners. And you're crazy if you think that bit of wire is some sort of radio.”
Cancer Man cocked the Luger. His finger, which was level with Sam's eyes, slowly pulled back on the trigger. “Maybe I am a little crazy at that. Tell me who you are or you're gonna get a bullet, you hear me? I ain't muckin' around.”
“Dana Scully.”
“Same last name as one of the guys who attacked us at the diner,” an MP interrupted.
“Where's your pals, now? What are they doing with that ship?”
“Go to hell.”
His face turned an entertaining shade of puce, but she knew he'd never shoot her. For one thing, she was the only one who might have any answers.
“Agent,” snapped Johnson, “you pull that trigger and so help me I'll have you hauled up in front of a military court and shot!”
The puce was just turning an interesting shade of beet red when a familiar beam of light filled the room, and An vanished. The Luger swung around, but the bullet Cancer Man squeezed off plowed harmlessly into the empty bed. The butt end of the Springfield swung around hard and slammed into her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Cramped was such an understated word, Daniel decided. Compacted was probably more accurate, but with an NID agent holding a gun to Sam's head, he understood why Jack had tried to beam her and An into the pod.
The sound of a gunshot rang out from their radios at the same moment as An materialized beside him. “Where's Sam?” Daniel demanded, trying to suppress the sense of panic clenching his guts when the transmission from Sam's radio abruptly cut off.
Leveling a round of curses at the Asgard transport, Jack snarled, “That sonofabitch is as good as dead!”
A spotlight with the candlepower of a small sun illuminated the inside of the escape pod. The Asgard cried out in pain and raised his arms in a futile attempt to protect his photosensitive eyes.
Daniel wasn't an expert in the mechanics of Asgard escape pods, but the damage it had sustained when Loki had shot An out of the sky, Jack's failed attempt to tunnel their way out of Roswell plus bumping into the Air Field control tower and what looked to be a section of the hospital roof probably contributed to the failure of the external sensors to compensate for the light.
“O'Neill,” Teal'c called over the radio. “You are visible.”
“Got that,” Jack replied, twisting the control stones around.
They abruptly sped off in the direction of...actually, Daniel wasn't entirely certain of their direction, because they were upside down. Again. “An—” He tried to be gentle as he grasped the Asgard by the arm and helped him untangle himself. “We have to get back there.”
Eyes firmly shut against the blinding spotlights that followed them around the sky, An reached out for the control panel and made a few subtle alterations to the stones. The inside of the pod instantly darkened until only the muted lights of the stars appeared. Correction. Traffic lights.
“Oops,” Daniel observed. “I think we're in downtown Roswell. And judging by the way people are pointing at us, I don't think we're cloaked.”
Jack shot him an odd look. “Tell me you're not worried about people seeing a flying saucer over Roswell?”
“No. I'm worried about getting close enough to the hospital so we can get Sam out of there.”
“That will no longer be possible,” An said, redirecting the craft, which wasn't exactly flying in a straight line, in the approximate direction of the base. “There is considerably more damage to the flight systems and transport of this unit than I expected. It could take several hours to effect repairs.”
“What do you mean, several hours?” Jack demanded.
The Asgard cringed away from Jack, prompting Daniel to say, “Jack, give him a break. He's not the one who busted the thing. And Sam's not dead, she couldn't be, otherwise she could never send us here to this time.”
“Weren't you the one who pointed out that this timeline is different?”
“They won't have shot her,” he said determinedly. “You know that, Jack. It was a bluff to get her to talk.”
“I am responsible.” The Asgard's shoulders slumped. “I am sorry.”
Jack met Daniel's look over An's head. This was an Asgard? “Okay, An,” Jack said, the restraint in his tone obviously forced. “How about we stick to plan A. You land this thing, get the transport out and repaired, install it in the jumper and then we beam Carter out of there.”
An stared at him. “Jumper?”
“Our ship,” Daniel clarified.
“Parked at the northern end of the main runway,” Jack added. “We cloaked yet?”
“I believe so but the systems are not fully operational so I cannot be certain.”
An tweaked the stones again and a thermal image appeared on the HUD, showing the deployment of soldiers—a lot of soldiers, which was to be expected, Daniel supposed, given the nukes currently stored on the base, but it was impossible to distinguish the hundreds of individuals, all of whom seemed to be running, inside the base. Scanning wider, the thermal image then revealed a solitary person sitting alone on top of a void in a pile of junk.
He had to have been bluffing.
An was still fiddling with the controls. Despite the jumper's cloaking mechanism, some of the components became visible on the pod's HUD. An's eyes narrowed, and then widened. “That is an Ancient vessel.” His voice was incredulous and he turned to Daniel. “You are the pilot?”
“Nope.”
The Asgard's gaze took in Jack.
“Don't get me started.” With a glance in Daniel's direction, Jack added, “Besides, he's the one who Ascended. Twice.”
“Oh, and in case Sam didn't mention it,” Daniel said, offering An a reassuring smile, “Thor and Heimdall passed on their regards, and we have some green food for you.”
An's eyelids batted furiously. “You have come so far in just sixty Earth years? How is this possible?”
“We're fast learners,” Jack replied, as Daniel braced himself for what was bound to be a bumpy landing.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I can't believe they gave Davis's concession to Carter!” Vala ripped off her straw hat and tossed it onto the table. It slipped across the glass surface like a Frisbee, barely missing the pitcher of iced tea, and landed among the collection of potted baby date palms lining the hotel room balcony. “That rat-faced fez-headed pompous bureaucrat promised me that the Department of Antiquities would never give him and Carnarvon another concession.”
A light breeze ruffled the surface of the Nile waters a few hundred yards away, filling the sails of several feluccas. On the far side, the not-so enigmatic Giza pyramids, the decrepit landing pads of a parasitic race, were turning from gold to bronze in the setting sun.
“Calm down.” Cam batted away at the squadron of mosquitoes that had zeroed in on them. It had taken them six years to get to this point, and he wasn't about to let Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon's acquisition of Davis's concession to the Valley of the Kings put him off his stride. “We knew there was a possibility they'd get it first. It just means you're going to have to go back to Highclere Castle and make nice with Almina.”
Vala shot him a poisonous look. “Berkshire in winter. Thank you ever so much for that thought.”
“Well, you could always raid Glastonbury Tor while you're in the area. It's not as if anyone will notice any missing treasure.”
She flopped into the cane chair beside him, and reached for the iced tea. “If you'd been sensible enough to have studied your people's history instead of baseball scores, we might have found Tutankhamen's tomb by now.”
Cam pulled a cigar from his pocket and took his time lighting it. He'd never much liked the things, but the lazy blue coils of smoke proved an effective deterrent to the ever-present whining insects currently trying to feast on his neck.
A shrill crooning drew his eyes upward. He suppressed a momentary spasm of envy for the falcons' freedom to soar across the cloudless Egyptian sky. The temptation to abandon their search for the second half of the remote DHD, climb into a flimsy cockpit and engage in slow motion dogfights over the bloody battlefields of France and Belgium, just for the chance to fly again, was short lived. His duty lay elsewhere, and Cam knew, as evidenced by her outburst, that Vala was entirely with him in this.
Watching the falcon in hot pursuit of a smaller bird, he said, “Think of it as a chance to hunt through that pile of treasure they've got stashed away. You said yourself you sensed traces of naquadah last time we were there, and Lady Carnarvon did invite you back for Christmas.”
Vala spooned out the mint leaves and tossed them into the palms, before downing an entire glass of tea. For a moment the only sound was that of the overhead fan in the bedroom behind, beating futilely at the relentless heat.
“How long did you say this war is going to last?” she said, refilling her glass.
“I guess that depends on who else died in the fire, doesn't it?”
He felt her hand on his arm before he'd finished speaking. “I've had considerably more experience than you in living with regret, Cam. You really need let it go, you know.”
Sure. Let it go.
Every morning for the first six months after he and Vala had landed in 1908, he'd convinced himself that was the day that Sam would beam them into the puddle jumper. She was just being cautious, he'd assured himself. Couldn't have the jumper bumping into itself coming and going through time. And it wasn't as if he and Vala were the first members of an SG team to be stuck someplace while every member of Stargate Command worked day and night to get them back home. Hell, General O'Neill had put his career—and a whole lot more—on the line to rescue Major Boyd's team, and no way would Sam Carter risk messing up history by leaving anyone in the past for a moment longer than she had to.
Then one fine day in the Fall of 1908, Cam had learned that there would be no rescue. And there'd been no ifs, buts or maybes about it.
Howard had by then convinced his mother that they needed to take in borders to pay the bills, and old Mrs. Lovecraft, not exactly firing on all cylinders, had accepted Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell without question. Despite Vala's pleading to have Cam use his knowledge of history to rake in a fortune, he'd cautiously restricted his betting on ball games so that it barely covered the cost of their upkeep. Good thing, as it had turned out, because on October 10, Howard had come home without the expected winnings from the Chicago versus Detroit baseball game. The Cubs had lost to Detroit by four points.
They should have won ten to six.
The wrenching sensation Cam had felt at that moment had been infinitely worse than the day the doctors had told him he'd never walk again. A busted back and legs were a small price to pay for the knowledge that his actions had helped defend Earth from Anubis.
Learning that he had single-handedly altered Earth's history was a whole different ballgame—no pun intended.
A sports editorial in the newspaper had lamented the fact that if Cubs ace, Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown, had still been alive, he would have won the game for the Cubs. Sadly, 'Three Finger' had died in the Brown University fire while rescuing a valuable racehorse named Wintergreen from the burning coach house.
For four days, Cam had held out a vague hope that his memory was somehow flawed, but on October 14, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series.'
That one moment of distraction, when he hadn't taken the right precautions before entering the tack room, had changed everything. It took very little imagination to guess the consequences. SG-1 —and right at that moment, Cam no longer considered himself a member of SG-1 —had not come back for him and Vala because he'd altered the future. With SG-1 missing in time, or worse, dead, Earth was as good as lost, if not to Ra or some other Goa'uld, then to the Ori.
Which—as Vala had pointed out almost immediately—left them with no option but to go back to that day in 1908 and sort out the mess.
Sure. Simple. No problem...well, actually, several dozen problems, beginning with the fact that the remote DHD device Vala had plucked from the tea chest months earlier had been missing a few vital components, specifically, the functioning part of the cuff that wrapped around the palm and wrist.
SG-1 had faced slimmer odds in the past, and Cam at least had an idea in what country the rest of the device might be found. History had already been altered, which meant all bets were off when it came to using every resource available to locate the thing.
Naturally, Vala had almost fallen over herself agreeing to his plan. While Cam's knowledge of the early twentieth century was limited to generalities, he'd known enough to restore the Lovecraft estate to its former opulence by investing in the fledgling Persian oil fields and technologically innovative industries.
Every six months or so, Cam stumbled across events that didn't quite ring true, and inevitably it could be traced back to that fateful nigh
t in Rhode Island and the death of Three Finger. But for the most part, history repeated itself with sufficient predictability so that by the time WWI had broken out, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell had become embarrassingly wealthy.
More importantly, Vala had spent those years and a good portion of that wealth tracking down and scouring old documents and papyri in search of the missing component to the hand device, while Cam invested his spare time in becoming something of an expert in Egyptology.
Their eureka moment had come in the summer of 1913. While Cam hadn't been able to recall every detail of Daniel Jackson's reports (despite what he'd told Vala), combined with his research, he remembered enough to make a point of befriending the Carnarvons, something relatively easy to achieve when you were a filthy rich Rhode Island industrial magnate with a penchant for Egyptology.