Relativity

by Stargate

  “Okay,” she ventured, “Now we’re successful.” She sniffed. Her nostrils were full of the stink of the chemicals. “Ugh.”

  “Carter?” Jack’s voice emerged from her radio, wary and concerned. “Sam, do you read me? The clock’s at zero. Tell me you got it.”

  “We got it, sir,” she replied, a rush of fatigue rolling over her.

  “Outstanding, Major. Get back up here, we’ll have tea and medals.”

  Sam studied her shirt and her face wrinkled. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’m going to go find the base laundry.”

  The tingling rush of the wormhole transition washed over him and Daniel found himself descending the stone steps of P5X-404 all over again. Little seemed to have altered from the first time he had arrived there; it was still raining, still overcast and dreary. Only the presence of a parked Tel’tak cargo ship in Pack colors marked the change in circumstances. A couple of Vix’s men emerged from the ship’s open hatch and the warrior-leader threw a brisk gesture in their direction.

  “Um.” Jackson struggled to find something to say that wasn’t a repetition of the apologies he’d been making since they gated from Earth. “I hope this incident hasn’t turned you away from the idea of a treaty.”

  Vix grunted and kept walking toward the Tel’tak. Daniel glanced at Suj, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. It was only Koe who halted to speak to him, as Ryn hovered close by. “Daniel Jackson,” said the older man, “put yourself in our position. We hear these grandiose claims of the power of the Tau’ri, of their abilities to wage deadly war upon the System Lords… And then we visit your homeworld and what do we find?” He snorted with mild derision. “An underwhelming edifice as your home base, staffed by an army of ordinary men. Your leader patronizing us. And then you announce that your sanctuary is so poorly defended that your enemies have hidden a weapon in it that could have killed us all.” He eyed him. “I ask you. What would you think if our positions were reversed?”

  “Okay, I see how this might look bad,” Daniel began. “But we don’t go in for that ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’ kind of stuff. We are an army of ordinary men…and women. If anything, that makes what we’ve done even more impressive.”

  “A good point,” said Suj quietly.

  “If you think for one second we intended to put you in harm’s way, you’re absolutely mistaken.” He sighed. “The truth is, the Tau’ri have many enemies. Not just the Goa’uld, but threats from several quarters.” Jackson knew that O’Neill would be ticked off if he realized that Daniel was being this blunt, this brutally honest, but he could feel the Pack’s trust slipping away and suddenly all he could think of were those fields of dead crops, of famine and starvation. “My team neutralized the bomb, and they’ll find out who put it there and why. I’m sure we’ll discover it was one of the many people we’ve annoyed over the past few years… But this is precisely why we can’t let a chance for friendship between us fall by the wayside! We both know, Tau’ri and Pack, what a hostile galaxy it is out there, right? And if there’s anything that my people have learned, it’s that with allies we are stronger.”

  Vix returned from the Tel’tak as the ship’s engines whined into life. “Words. Words and words, that is all we have seen from you, Jackson. I begin to doubt the stories I have heard of your warriors. Perhaps you are not as strong as they say, perhaps Apophis, Sokar, the others, perhaps they killed each other and you have merely taken credit for it!”

  “I believe him,” said Suj.

  Vix did not appear to hear her. “We were promised samples, where are they?”

  “You cannot blame the Tau’ri for that,” insisted Ryn. “We were forced to evacuate before they could transfer them here.”

  “How convenient,” sneered Vix.

  Daniel held up a hand. “If you wait here, I’ll have the supplies sent through as soon as I get back to the SGC.”

  “Wait?” snapped the leader. “We have dallied at this world too long as it is!”

  Ryn grimaced. “Then what is one more day, Vix?”

  “Don’t throw this away!” Daniel’s voice tightened. “Your people will suffer without our help, and you know it. Don’t let your pride get in the way of that.”

  “Listen to him!” insisted Ryn. “We must go ahead with this treaty! We must! The future of the Pack depends upon it!”

  Koe gave Ryn a curious look. “It seems at least one of our kinsmen is convinced.”

  “So it would appear,” Vix agreed. “Quite a change from your more typical stance on things, Ryn.”

  The other man’s eyes narrowed. “I see the logic in this alliance, that is all. Daniel Jackson is correct. We would be fools to throw this chance away.”

  “I stand with Ryn,” added Suj.

  “You do?” Koe smiled. “Then this is a day for the unusual.”

  Vix’s hands were clenched, and for long moments Daniel thought the man would turn away and leave him behind, go back to the ship and not look back; but then he gave the scientist a hard-eyed glare. “Very well. The Wanderer and the Pack flotilla will remain in orbit over Golla IX for the time being. You will return to your world and have the items Major Carter promised sent through the Chaapa’ai.”

  “And we’ll reschedule the meeting to formalize the treaty at the SGC.”

  “No.” Vix shook his head. “I must think of my kinsmen and their safety. You have proven, even if it was through no fault of your own, that you cannot guarantee the security of your base.”

  Ryn snorted. “Could we make any better claim? Is the Wanderer any more secure than their world is?”

  “No,” repeated Vix, “and so we will choose a third place for the meeting. A neutral location, a world far from any of our mutual foes.”

  “Okay,” Daniel nodded. “That’s fair.”

  “We will communicate the ring symbols to you when we have made our choice.” Vix turned away and left him there on the steps. Ryn and Koe followed, leaving Suj to linger a moment.

  “Daniel Jackson,” she began, “do not judge Vix harshly. He has only the best interests of the Pack at heart. His position is being challenged by some, and this treaty will affect the way that many people will see his leadership.”

  “Challenged,” he repeated, glancing after Ryn. “I got that. Seems like government on the Wanderer has its similarities to the same thing on Earth.”

  She nodded. “I imagine so. And I think we will probably both agree, this is too serious a matter to be left in the hands of politicians.” Suj inclined her head in a gesture of farewell and made for the Tel’tak, leaving him to dial his way home.

  As a child, Mirris had been given an aquarium by her crèche-parents and for a time she had watched it with rapt fascination, observing the motion and behavior patterns of the fish inside the small biosphere module. At first she had opened a file on her datapad and made notes. She came up with schedules of feeding and a day-night cycle for the animals, but they refused to operate to the plan she set for them. They did not eat when she fed them. They fought. Sometimes they would gorge themselves until they perished. After a while, Mirris tried more invasive methods of control. She altered the water temperature, she shifted the dimensions of the environment, each small change designed to impose her will on the fish. These actions did not bring forth the reactions she wanted either. Eventually, an emotional response took root in her, and in a single afternoon she systematically removed each of the fish from the tank, laid them upon the floor of her room and watched them die, one by one. When one of her crèche-fathers asked her to explain why she had done it, Mirris told him the truth. The fish had refused to embrace order, and so she had been forced to impose the only kind of order upon them that she could: death.

  She could still remember the smile upon his face at her cool, clinical conclusion. She had done well that day. She had passed some kind of test.

  Mirris stared into the holographic cube and saw the slow, languid motion of the nomad fleet, and thought of the fish in the aquarium.
They were not that different, really. Crude, unsophisticated things that reacted only to stimuli, swimming away each time a predator came close, coming together into a shoal with the foolish notion that it would somehow protect them. How very wrong of them to think that. Out there they moved and went about their small lives, utterly unaware of how Mirris was imposing her will upon them. The nomads were, after a fashion, just tools. Just the means by which she would be able to bring order to those who so richly needed it.

  The holograph chimed and rippled. A signal from the command center demanded her attention, and with a faint sigh she tapped the sensor spot on her desk. The image faded into a view of Geddel, his pinched face staring up at her from the ghostly cube of light. “Administrator, a signal has been received.”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “Confederation Central again? They have nothing to say I wish to hear.”

  “No, Administrator. The communication comes from the migrant fleet. Audio only, and heavily encrypted. Your operative, I believe.”

  Mirris leaned forward. This was unexpected, and she did not like the unexpected. “Route the channel to this terminal, sub-director.”

  “As you wish,” he began.

  “A closed line, Geddel,” she added. “No transcripts or records to be made of the signal, do you understand?”

  “That is highly irregular—”

  “Yes,” Mirris sniffed, “It is.”

  After a moment, Geddel’s face faded away to be replaced by a writhing field of shifting wavebands, the visual representation of the signal itself.

  “Mirris?” The voice was hushed and urgent, as if the speaker were trying to avoid being overheard.

  “This is not a scheduled communications window,” she replied. “You have broken protocol. Why?”

  “Circumstances have changed. There was… An incident.”

  Mirris felt the old, animal anger coiling inside her. The woman’s fingers drew into her palms. “You were supposed to ensure an agreement with the Tau’ri. If you have not succeeded in this, then you have no value to me and I will not assist you with your personal circumstances.”

  “I had no hand in it! It was beyond my control!” She heard anxiety bubbling beneath the words.

  “Elucidate, then.” Her fingernails bit into her skin, and the small pain helped her to focus, to maintain an outward air of dispassion.

  “On the Tau’ri planet, there was a security alert, an emergency. We were forced to abandon the accord summit and evacuate through the Chaapa’ai.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “An explosive device was discovered.” There was a pause. “I believe that someone may have planted it in a deliberate attempt to derail the summit!”

  “That is one possible conclusion,” Mirris allowed, her thoughts racing along the same lines. “One of your people, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. I will investigate further.”

  A cold fury was building inside her. “Do so, if you wish. All that matters to me is the outcome, is that clear? Nothing must be allowed to interfere with the creation of a treaty with the Tau’ri, do you understand?” Her voice was becoming louder, more strident. “Nothing!”

  “I understand, but—”

  “No excuses,” snapped Mirris. “No other outcome is acceptable. Your future, and the future of your Pack, lives or dies on this.” She stabbed the control surface and the holograph flickered back to the exterior view once again, the teeming shift of the nomad ships.

  Mirris watched the vessels for a long time, cupping the hate and fury inside her, letting it burn, basking in the chill fire of it. She thought of the distaste she would see if Geddel were in the room with her now, imagining how he would recoil at such a blatant display of passion. Her face twisted in the uncommon scar of a smile, and she remembered the fish upon the water-spattered floor of a young girl’s bedroom, their silent pain as they lay gasping and dying.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She flashed Sergeant Siler a polite smile as he walked past her with a tray of food. Jade turned slightly toward the payphone to make it seem as if she were having a conversation with someone on the other end of the line. In reality, all that was coming through the earpiece was a dial tone. The voice she heard was emanating from the implant’s communications matrix, resonating directly into her mastoid bone through the molecule-thin bio-alloy channels created by the nanite colonies inside her body. There was nothing better than hiding in plain sight; if she’d been sitting in a room somewhere, having a conversation with thin air would have been a lot harder to explain away if she were discovered.

  “Hey Darlene, how are you?” she asked. Darlene was the sister of the real Doctor Hannah Wells, a portly woman who lived in Oregon with a husband, four kids and some cats. She was currently on vacation in Canada, which meant that she wouldn’t be calling Hannah anytime soon and risk blowing Jade’s cover.

  Status? The Commander’s voice was terse.

  “Oh, fine.” Jade kept her tone light. “I’m settling in okay. Thanks for the flowers. Everybody loved them.” There was the code phrase that signaled phase one of the operation was complete.

  Any complications? Have they figured out where the weapon came from yet?

  “Not yet. Soon, though, probably. I’ll keep an eye on it.” She hesitated. “How are the boys?”

  Fine, came the gruff reply. I’m fine.

  “Oh. Okay.” She swallowed, thinking of the youth from the warehouse. “How about, uh, Tyke?”

  Him? The conditioning is holding. He thinks I’m his uncle. And before you ask, our other guest is stable.

  “Good.” She glanced across the cafeteria and saw Jackson enter. He caught her eye and gave a weary smile.

  If things play out the way they should, they’ll relocate the meet. You know what we need.

  “Sure. I’ll get it for you.”

  Jade. The voice in her head became firm and hard-edged. I want you to listen to me. The operation is at a critical point now. I know what you must be going through in there, the people you are seeing, the memories they’re bringing up for you… But you can’t let yourself be distracted, do you understand?

  Jackson was coming closer, and he had two cups of coffee in his hands. She smiled weakly back at him.

  The mission is all that matters. You have to do whatever is necessary to complete it. Do not get emotionally involved, you hear me? There are millions of lives at stake. If you have to sacrifice someone for the security of the operation, you can’t hesitate. This is beyond us. It’s more important than our lives.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice catching. “Okay.”

  Don’t fail again. Initiate radio silence from this point forward. And then he was gone.

  “I won’t,” she told the dead handset. “It’ll work out. ‘Bye.” Jade put down the phone and blinked. She tried to cover her reaction, but Jackson saw straight through it.

  “Are you all right?” He had kind eyes.

  “I’m fine,” she replied, forcing the lie back into place. “It’s just… My sister, you know? Family can be very demanding.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he nodded, and offered her one of the drinks. “I was just going to take a break, do you want to join me?”

  She should have said no, right then and right there. It would have been simple to give Jackson a polite refusal and go on her way; but instead she told herself that it would be helpful to the mission if she made a friend of him, that it might make things flow better if she could stay close. It was a thin falsehood, but if Jade didn’t let herself think too hard about it, she could almost believe it was true.

  Jade took the coffee and they sat and talked, and she tried not to stare at him.

  The sadness in her eyes gradually faded away, and Daniel found a smile pulling at his lips each time Hannah laughed. It made him feel better to draw a grin from her. He was trying to keep things on an even, professional level, but there was something about her that made it hard for him not to let his thoughts wander. She was whip-smart an
d funny in a kind of understated sort of way, and it seemed like she knew more about him than he could even begin to guess about her.

  They talked, and he found out she liked the same kind of music as he did, she thought the same way about the same books, she even chimed with his take on contemporary archaeological theory. He felt like the woman was a breath of fresh air, and after the near-botching of the Pack summit that was just what he needed to lighten his mood. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that Daniel realized he’d been largely talking about himself and he gave a crooked smile. “So, how did you get recruited into the Stargate program?”

  “I’ve got a very eclectic skill set,” she told him. “Mostly thanks to my father. He was Air Force and I wanted to make him proud of me, so I joined up… But it turned out I was a better, uh, doctor than anything else. And when I was growing up I had plenty of interesting adult company who opened my eyes to a lot of amazing things. We moved around a lot and things were tough, but…” She looked away, a shadow passing over her face, and suddenly Daniel felt like he had crossed a line.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she replied. “It’s funny. When I was a girl I knew someone a lot like you. I learnt a lot from him.”

  “He was a teacher?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Kinda. Actually, I had sort of a crush on him. He was quite dashing, in his own way.”

  “Oh.” Jackson swallowed, unsure of where the conversation was heading. “All my teachers were plump, balding men with poor taste in suits.”

  She laughed, and brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. Daniel was struck by a moment of dislocation, the same sense of not-quite recognition. The gesture reminded him of Sha’re again. He blinked and shook off the disquieting thought, the bittersweet pain of his wife’s memory there and then gone.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, and forced a smile. “It’s just, you know, I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with someone from my own planet that was actually this normal. I mean, talking about ordinary people stuff instead of space aliens.”