Relativity

by Stargate

  But she didn’t seem to need it; the woman appeared to know exactly where she was going. Jackson paused and self-consciously rubbed a hand over his face in case there were any apple bits clinging to his stubble. He did it without thinking, reacting automatically to the fact that, well, she was cute. The major met his gaze and a peculiar flash of emotions crossed her face. A shock of recognition, the ghost of a smile, there and then gone. Daniel blinked, suddenly certain that this woman knew him, even if he couldn’t place her. His mind raced. Have we met before? She had a familiar air about her, something that he found difficult to articulate.

  “Doctor,” said Siler, with a nod.

  “Sergeant,” he replied. He offered the woman a smile. “I’m—”

  “Doctor Jackson, of team SG-1,” she smiled back. “It’s nice to see you—” She caught herself and blinked. “It’s nice to meet you. I found your monograph on the Peñasco Blanco ruins very interesting.”

  He was a little taken aback. “You read that? Are you an archaeologist? I’m sorry, I saw your uniform and I just assumed…”

  “Major Wells has rotated in to join the medical team,” explained Siler. “I’m giving her the ten-cent tour.”

  “I like to read,” said Wells, by way of explanation. “In my line of work it’s important to keep a broad spectrum of interests.”

  “Right, sure.” Daniel nodded slowly. The more he looked at her, the more he felt like he recognized this person, but on some weird, tangential level. And, he had to admit, she had gorgeous eyes, dark hazel and deep enough to drown in. “I, uh—”

  Whatever he had been about to say was interrupted by a rough crackle from a repeater speaker up on the wall of the corridor. Walter Harriman’s voice issued out and brought with it the words Daniel had been hoping not to hear. “Doctor Jackson, report to briefing room. Doctor Jackson to the briefing room.”

  “Oh.” That was it; Kinsey had finally decided to yank his leash, and at the most inopportune time. “Well. Duty calls. Nice to meet you, Major Wells. I hope I’ll see you around base.”

  “Call me Hannah,” said the woman. “It was good to meet you too, Daniel.”

  It was only when he was going up in the elevator that Jackson realized she reminded him of Sha’re.

  “Can I see your clearance?” The Secret Service agent tried his best to be imposing, but Teal’c found the man’s manner somewhat trying. When he didn’t answer straight away, the agent blinked and spoke again. “We’re conducting spot-checks because of the vice president’s presence on the base.”

  Teal’c just looked at him and waited. He had no intention of complying with any minor fiat laid down by a man as offensive to him as Kinsey. All this he showed to the agent without moving his expression the smallest iota. The security operative had halted him in the middle of the corridor, blocking the Jaffa’s path.

  “The Vice President?” repeated the agent.

  Teal’c remained silent. He had learned from a very early age that stillness had a disturbing effect on many people. When faced with it, most would find themselves compelled to say something just to fill the quiet, and frequently they would incriminate themselves or weaken their own positions.

  “Ah. I guess you, um, probably have clearance though, right?” The agent blinked. “I mean, you wouldn’t be here unless you didn’t…”

  And still he just looked, and said nothing.

  Eventually, the agent coughed self-consciously and stepped aside. “I guess you’re probably busy. I’ll just, uh, I’ll check you next time, okay?”

  Teal’c resumed walking. He often found the Tau’ri’s web of tactical and judiciary organizations to be confusing and overly segmented. The American nation, for example, had separate military forces for waging war on ground, at sea and in airborne environments, as well as groups dedicated to specific elements of overt and covert security for their citizens and national interests; for the System Lords, there were only Jaffa. They were warriors, law enforcers, whatever authority or military was needed. He glanced back at the agent. Why, for example, was Kinsey’s personal guard known as ‘the Secret Service’ when their identities were clearly visible for anyone to see? He decided he would use the Tau’ri mechanism known as ‘Google’ to learn more about this apparent dichotomy.

  The Jaffa’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt as a tingle caught him in the torso. It was just the smallest ghost of a physical reaction, but it brought him up sharply. Teal’c held his breath and froze in place, listening. Like the last traces of a faint aroma pulled on the wind, the warrior’s ingrained battle sense made him go tense. Something was not right. Carefully, he looked about the corridor, along the walls and the floor, up to the concrete ceiling over his head and down again. The reaction subsided slowly, leaving him disturbed in its wake.

  It was hard for him to frame the sensation; Teal’c did not deal in absolutes, but often in what he had heard O’Neill describe as ‘gut feelings’. For Jaffa, their greatest weapon was their instincts, honed by years of training and deadly battle. To some it might have seemed like a preternatural sense, but for Teal’c, it was simply the wisdom of experience— and now that experience was warning him that something was wrong.

  He braced for a blow that never came. Whatever it was had passed. Another Tau’ri aphorism crossed his mind: like someone walking over your grave. Teal’c had failed to grasp the concept behind those words when he first heard them, but all at once he found himself understanding them perfectly.

  The Jaffa became aware he was staring at an access well leading to the maintenance tiers below the level he was on. Without questioning it, letting his instincts take full reign, Teal’c grasped the ladder and followed it downwards.

  “On behalf of the people of America, the President of the United States and the planet Earth, welcome to our world.” The man proffered his hand and Suj looked at it for a long moment before she understood that he wanted her to mirror the gesture. It was clearly some sort of formal Tau’ri greeting, no doubt a simple way of showing a stranger that one was unarmed— and yet the historian noticed that this Kinsey kept his other hand out of sight behind his back. Suj gingerly shook his hand and found his palm to be distastefully sweaty. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Suj.”

  “Just Suj,” she explained. “Thank you for your greeting, Kinsey.” She took her seat again behind the large wooden table.

  “Vice President Kinsey,” he replied, with a slight edge to the words. Clearly, rank and status was important to this one. She considered his clothes. Her theory about the colors of the Tau’ri’s dress seemed to be baring out. Kinsey and the men who accompanied him all wore dark tunics open at the chest with a strange dangling piece of cloth knotted at their throats. Perhaps that was another signifier of their caste structure? She glanced across the briefing room at Jackson and made a mental note to question him about it at a later time.

  “You greet me in the name of all Tau’ri?”

  Kinsey threw a bemused look at one of his adjutants. “Tau-what?”

  “Earth-folks,” supplied O’Neill dourly. “It’s what they call us.”

  His smile snapped back on. “I do.”

  “Forgive me, but what guarantee do I have of that? So far, I have seen only the walls of this facility and nothing of your homeworld. For all I know, we may not even be on your planet.”

  Kinsey arched his fingers and leaned forward. “Politics is about trust, Suj. We’ve trusted you by bringing you to Earth. You have to trust us by accepting my word.”

  O’Neill made a strangled coughing noise and reached for a glass of water. “Sorry,” he husked. “Don’t mind me.”

  Suj thought for a moment; even a blind person would have been able to pick up on the tension between O’Neill, Jackson and this ‘vice president’, and the fact that she was being allowed to see it heartened her. Her initial impression of O’Neill and his cadre was one of honesty. They seemed to be very close to the surface in thought and deed, traits that were valued by ev
ery clan of the Pack. Kinsey, on the other hand, struck her immediately as enclosed and ruled by artifice. “We have little use for what you might call politics,” she told him.

  Kinsey blinked. “I’m sorry, I thought you were an ambassador? Is that not a political position?”

  “I am a historian,” she explained, “a student of cultures and social sciences.”

  The man’s face darkened and he shot a brief but venomous look at O’Neill. “It seems there was a miscommunication.” When Kinsey looked back at Suj, his expression was patronizing. “Of course, it’s delightful to meet a scientific mind from another world, but I think it might be best if we adjourn until your leaders arrive.” He stood up and brushed a hand down his tunic in a dismissive manner.

  “Suj is here as an official representative of the Pack,” said Jackson. “She’s not a tourist.”

  “Of course,” he allowed, “but there are matters of state which I’m sure can only be discussed leader to leader.”

  “What do you do?” said Suj, studying Kinsey.

  “Do?” He paused. “I’m a politician. I’m an official of the United States Government, elected by a majority to be their representative.”

  “And what about the minority who did not elect you? Do you speak for them?” Suj leaned forward. “Is that all that you do? Speak?”

  Kinsey bristled. “It’s a very important role. I don’t know how things are in your culture, but—”

  “In the Pack, every adult serves several roles in order to keep our fleet alive. I am a historian, but I am also an engineer, a pilot and a tutor.”

  The other man sniffed. “How do you keep order without a government? How do your people know what to do?” He turned away. “Even the most primitive societies have some kind of law.”

  Suj smiled a little, ignoring the implied slight. “We trust our people to do what is right. We don’t impose upon them. That is the Goa’uld way, and we rejected them.”

  Kinsey eyed her. “That sounds like anarchism.”

  “I would call it freedom.”

  O’Neill glanced at Jackson and threw a nod in Suj’s direction. “I’m liking these guys more and more.”

  Airman Fong backed out of the maintenance room and kicked the door closed with his foot, being careful to keep his cargo of boxes level. They were piled, three-high, from his waist to his neck, full of equipment and too damn heavy. He puffed and turned around, walking stiffly into the corridor. The light levels in this part of the base were lower than those on the upper tiers where there were more active areas and passageways in constant use. It was some energy-saving initiative dreamed up by bean-counters at the Air Force accountancy offices, invented by men who’d never had to lug boxes of obsolete 1950s vintage hardware back and forth, running the risk of tripping over and falling flat on their faces because it was too dim to see places where the floor was uneven. Fong’s knees still ached from the last time he’d done it.

  The airman blew out a breath and started to make his way toward the elevator at the far end of the corridor. He got about ten feet before he saw the figure.

  It was a guy, a big guy in a crouch, peering into one of the floor-level air vent ducts. Fong picked out standard-issue olive drab trousers, boots, a black t-shirt and thick, tawny arms. “Hey, uh, what’s up?” he managed, pressing his chin to the lip of the top-most box.

  The figure turned and spared him a glance. Fong saw the glitter of a gold-colored brand in the middle of the man’s forehead. The airman came to a halt when the man locked eyes with him. He had steel in his gaze; it was a look that told him to shut the hell up and stay where he was.

  Fong hesitated. You couldn’t serve at the SGC, even as a lowly airman first class like he was, and not know who the Big T was. Not that anyone ever would have dared to say that to his face. Fong had only seen the man— well, alien actually, if what he heard was true— now and again, mostly moving through the corridors with cool purpose or sitting in the mess chowing down on enough food for six guys. Richardson over in corrosion maintenance told him that there was a pool run by Master Sergeant Riley down in the quartermaster’s office, where the guys could bet on him. Like, if he’d say ‘indeed’ to someone, or for the big payout, if he’d actually crack a smile. To be honest, Fong never went in for that sort of thing, partly because he was never very lucky, but mostly because he suspected the big man would not be pleased if he found out he was the subject of such activity.

  Quietly, the guy got to his feet and ran his fingers over the wall stanchions. Fong could swear that the man was actually sniffing the air, like a hunting dog. The boxes in his hands were getting heavier by the second, and despite his better judgment, the airman felt compelled to speak. “Uh, sir? Is there a problem?” Technically, Fong didn’t have to call the man ‘sir’ as he was classified as an allied civilian auxiliary, but he wanted to stay on his good side.

  “Airman,” came the reply. “Have you witnessed anything unusual in this area?”

  “Unusual?” repeated Fong. You mean, aside from you skulking around down here? “Nothing, sir. I’ve been in and out a whole bunch of times.” The airman shifted his load. Was this a drill, maybe? Or worse, the real thing? Richardson had all these stories about how weird stuff happened on this base almost every week, like time warps or alien invasions or intelligent computer viruses, but Fong hadn’t seriously believed him. I mean, come on. Folks say this guy is from another planet, but he just looks like a linebacker with expensive taste in tattoos.

  “Curious,” said the big man, more to himself than to the airman. “For a moment, I thought I sensed…” Then he shook it off and came quickly to his feet.

  “Is anything wrong?” The guy looked pissed, to be sure, and Fong wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything that he’d done.

  “I was mistaken,” he replied, and walked away. “There is nothing down here.”

  “You got that right,” said Fong, breaking into a run to follow him into the elevator. He made it, panting, and let the boxes down on the floor as the doors closed after them. The car began to move, and the airman rubbed at his hands. “So. You’re from, uh, outer space, right?”

  Teal’c eyed the small man. “Indeed.”

  She waited a full five minutes until after the airman and the Jaffa warrior had departed before she moved from her concealment. As the Commander had warned, Teal’c was the most serious threat to the operation she was likely to encounter, and for long moments she was afraid to move in case he returned without warning. Finally, she slipped from the cover of one of the other storage rooms and returned to her mission. She was surprised how easy it had been to get this far without encountering any serious challenges.

  Jade had imagined Stargate Command as some kind of impregnable fortress, unassailable by any intruder or spy intent on doing harm. But the truth was rather less impressive. To be sure, they did have state-of-the-art security systems, monitoring devices, even scanners like the detector up above that used non-terrestrial elements of technology to search out the more exotic threats; but even these were overcome by the equipment she had brought with her.

  In many ways, she had an unfair advantage. Most infiltrators would not have had the same encyclopedic knowledge of the SGC’s layout that she did. Detailed maps of the corridors and service access channels of Cheyenne Mountain were all there in her implant’s data buffer, imposing themselves gently on to her visual cortex. They showed her fields of vision from internal security cameras, the operational ranges of radiation sensors, even the structure of the latching pins in the mechanical locks. She could have found her way around blindfolded.

  If anyone had been watching her, they would have seen Major Hannah Wells, now dressed in a more basic duty uniform, batting at the air as if she were swatting at a nagging insect; from Jade’s point of view, the space before her was filled with oval display windows, which she could move or manipulate like icons on the primitive computer screens throughout the base. She paused to layer them closed and then walked br
iskly under the dull eye of a camera. Like the dozen other monitors she had passed to get from the infirmary to the maintenance levels, Jade waited until the sweep pattern turned the camera the other way before she slipped beneath it. The woman planted her fingertips to a data cable feeding from the unit and released a small paste of pre-programmed nanites. There was a faint fizzing noise as the micromachines merged through the plastic sheathing and into the fiber-optic beneath. They would layer a ghost image over the live feed from the camera that would make the corridor seem completely empty.

  At the far end she found the open access grille waiting for her. Even with her enhancements, Jade would not have been strong enough to be able to shift it on her own. “Thanks,” she said to the air. “This won’t take long.”

  She shrugged off her lab coat, dropped down and slid into the shaft. A warm breeze that smelled of stale machine oil billowed past her, on its way up toward the vents that dotted the sides of the mountain. It was poorly lit inside, but a tensing of her eye muscles made Jade’s optic nerves reconfigure themselves to give her a monochrome, low-light view of things.

  Working quickly, she opened her shirt and removed the flexible device that she had concealed there. It unfolded into a five-petalled flower, each segment inflating slightly. The five sections were spongy with the fluids inside them. In isolation, the liquids were inert, but in a mixture they became a horribly lethal thermochemical explosive. When triggered, the liquid payload would detonate with the power of a small tactical nuclear charge; this was largely due to the energy-enhancing capacity of a naquadria vial in the center of the device. The refined form of the alien super-metal was quite deadly when applied with care and precision.

  Molecular adhesives on the back of the bomb secured it to the inside of the vent shaft. If the specifications of the base were correct— and of course they were— the full detonation of the device would turn an area maybe a quarter of a mile wide into a sphere of boiling gaseous plasma. The resultant thermal shockwave and implosion would then cause the core of Cheyenne Mountain to collapse in on itself, most certainly destroying the SGC and everyone in it. She tapped a touch-sensitive spot on the surface of one panel and it illuminated with a soft white light. A string of Goa’uld alphanumeric symbols appeared, blinking and changing. Jade had a wristwatch but she didn’t need to look at it— the implant gave her an innate and always accurate sense of time. She had just over nine hours before the countdown reached zero.