SG1-17 Sunrise (3 page)

“No.” Hammond rested his hands on the table, caught the glint of triumph in the colonel’s eyes and promptly squashed it. “But I agree with Dr. Jackson that the opportunity presented by this shield is worth investigation, despite the passage of years. Major Carter has successfully restored Ancient technology that is tens of thousands of years old, Colonel, and I have every faith that she will be able to fix this ‘Shield of the Gods’ should you discover the device.”

O’Neill looked like he might respond, but Hammond quashed his rebellion with a look not even Jack O’Neill could defy. “Yes, sir.”

“General,” Carter said, looking somewhat alarmed, “you understand that there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to—”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said, offering a small smile. He hadn’t intended to place such a weight of expectation on her shoulders, but he didn’t doubt she could handle it. At least, he wouldn’t have doubted it before she came back unsure of her own name… Dismissing thoughts of Fraiser’s report, he rose to his feet. “SG-1, the mission’s a go. We’ll send a MALP through to Ierna in three hours.”

The team stood, still tense and ill at ease. “Yes, sir.”

As Daniel gathered his papers and closed down his laptop, Carter headed for the door with Teal’c close behind. Across the table, Hammond met Jack’s eye. “A word, Colonel,” he said, nodding toward his office.

With a glance at Daniel, O’Neill preceded Hammond into the office and stood in front of the desk while the general closed the door. Taking a seat, Hammond waited until Daniel had left the briefing room before he said, “What the hell was that, Colonel?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t play the fool with me, Jack. What the hell’s going on between you and Dr. Jackson?”

O’Neill’s gaze slid sideways, evasive. “Nothing, just a disagreement.”

On the desk Fraiser’s report sat waiting, silent as a time bomb. Hammond placed his hand on the manila folder. “Take a seat, Jack.”

He did so, perching uncomfortably in the edge of the chair. “Look, sir, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“No,” Hammond agreed, “it won’t.” He let out a breath and leaned back. “Off the record, Jack, your first mission since P3R-118… What’s your assessment?”

His face turned blank, unreadable. “Fine, sir.”

“Fine?”

“What d’you want me to say? There were no problems, it went fine.”

“It didn’t look fine just now.”

“Come on, that’s just Daniel being Daniel. We always go to the mattresses over stuff like this.” He hesitated. “Don’t we?”

“Dr. Fraiser thinks—”

“I know what Fraiser thinks.”

Hammond laced his fingers over his belly. “Need I remind you that, if she had her way, you’d all be benched and talking to Dr. McKenzie?”

“No, sir. And I appreciate what you did about that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Look—okay, I admit the whole memory stamp thing was… disconcerting. We were all a little freaked out for a while, but that was weeks ago.”

A whole three weeks ago, to be precise. “And now?”

“And now we’re fine.”

“Major Carter seemed distracted in the briefing.”

“She’s fine.”

“You know that?”

He took a breath, considered, then leaned forward with his arms braced on his knees and his face serious. “Sir, if I thought my team was compromised in
any way
do you think I’d send them out there? If I thought any of them weren’t mission-ready I’d tell you. You know that.”

“Then why the opposition to the mission, Jack?”

“I…” He shook his head, as if he genuinely couldn’t explain himself. “It just feels like a wild goose chase, I guess.”

“You said it was too big of a risk.”

Jack frowned. “I meant too big of a risk for some trashed technology, that’s all. But you’re right; we should probably check it out.”

“I could always send SG-2, if you think—”

“No. No, we’re good to go.”

Hammond met and held his gaze, trying to assess the truth behind those inscrutable eyes. Yes, he trusted O’Neill to make the right call for his team. But listening to Jack argue against taking a risk for potentially the most useful piece of defensive technology they’d yet stumbled across rang discordant alarm bells in his head. On the other hand, was he about to rule the colonel unfit for duty based on one—and not the first—squabble with Dr. Jackson? It was pretty far from probable cause. All the same, he couldn’t shake the feeling that SG-1 weren’t quite themselves.

“Truth is, we need to get out there,” O’Neill said, fingers clasping together so tight Hammond could see his knuckles whiten. “If—and I’m not saying there are—but if there were any lingering effects from the stamp, the best way to get rid of them is to get back to doing what we do. Get back to being SG-1, not Jonah and Karlan and—” He looked up. “This is how we deal with crap, sir. We just get back on the horse.”

And God knew the memory stamp wasn’t the worst thing SG-1 had dealt with over the past four years. They’d dug themselves out of some pretty dark places. Hammond figured they’d probably earned a little latitude, but he was only willing to go so far.

“Okay,” he said at last, “you can make the call on this, Jack. But don’t give me a reason to doubt that you made the right one.”

“Thank you.” O’Neill’s relief was restrained, but evident. “And I won’t, sir.”

“I mean it, Jack.” He tapped the closed report on his desk. “Any sign that SG-1 is adversely affected by the stamp and I want to know about it—and by SG-1 I mean you too. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

Hammond nodded a dismissal. “Get back to work, Colonel. Your team has a mission to prep.”

Silver-blue
light rippled through the room, the frisson of static and ozone stirring the hairs at the back of Jack O’Neill’s neck. But for once his attention was not on the open Stargate at the top of the ramp. Instead it was stuck firmly in Hammond’s office, going over and over their last conversation.

It wasn’t that he’d lied to his CO. Not exactly.

It was just that there were some things best kept to yourself, some things that you needed to work out in your own time, and not under the spotlight of the head-shrinks who thought they knew best but really knew nothing about it at all. How could they, locked away in their neon-lit offices far, far behind the line?

No, those guys didn’t have a clue. But Jack did. He knew what it was like to find yourself in pieces. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt that jarring sensation in his mind, as if he’d been broken and reassembled by inexpert hands, all the fracture lines showing and tiny fragments missing; important fragments that no one but he could see. He’d been there before, done that before, and worn the t-shirt out.

So he figured he knew the drill, knew how to get his head back together. You just kept moving. One foot in front of another, one mission after another, until you started to recognize yourself in the mirror again.

That’s how it worked.

That’s how it usually worked.

But this time… This time he didn’t even own all the pieces in his head, he was trying to make fragments fit that had no damn right being there in the first place. He had memories he couldn’t be sure were his own, and he had memories he knew were his own, but that he wished he could forget. And when he looked in the mirror, he could still see Jonah.

Not that he was telling Hammond that. Or Fraiser. Or, God forbid, McKenzie.

That last thing he wanted was to ‘talk about it’.

And neither did his team, no matter what Fraiser thought. They just needed to get back to doing what they did best; going out and saving the world.

He risked a glance at Daniel as they stood side by side at the foot of the ramp, his short hair looking too much like Karlan’s. Daniel didn’t look back, his gaze fixed on the event horizon settling into place after the MALP lumbered through the gate.

Jack had a bad feeling about this mission, he’d had it since the moment they set foot on that godforsaken research outpost and found the bodies in the snow. It felt wrong, it stank. His gut twisted into an uneasy knot and he wanted to pull the plug right now. Only… Did he?

Hammond had called him on it, and maybe he was right.

Maybe his doubts weren’t his at all; maybe they were Jonah’s. Jonah, who’d been happy to shuffle along in the shadows without causing trouble, accepting the bullshit they were being fed, until Daniel and Carter had forced him to start thinking. Or maybe it was some post-traumatic crap that would have him pinned down on McKenzie’s couch before he could spit? Either way, he was ignoring that voice. This was SG-1. Taking risks was what they did. They stepped into the unknown and, if necessary, kicked ass when they got there. Nothing had changed that, not really. They had never really been those other people.

On his right he sensed Carter shifting her weapon, impatient. He hated it too, this waiting. Especially now, when he wanted to be moving. He didn’t look at Carter. Jonah would have, but he wasn’t Jonah. And she wasn’t Thera. And that was that.

“O’Neill,” Teal’c said, from the far side of Carter. “We should proceed with caution. The bodies on P4X-66Q were killed by projectile weapons. If there are any surviving inhabitant of this world it is likely that they will also possess such weapons.”

“I hear you,” he said, hands already on his P90.

“We can’t automatically assume that they’re hostile,” Daniel said, looking away from the wormhole at last. “That shouldn’t be our default position.”

“It’s not,” Jack snapped, without meaning to. Then, conscious of Hammond in the control room, he said, “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes open.”

“SG-1.” The voice was Harriman’s. “MALP telemetry checks out.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Jack saw Hammond watching, hands behind his back. Solid as a rock. Their eyes met and, after a heartbeat, the general said, “You have a go, SG-1. God’s speed.”

Without looking to left or right, Jack started up the ramp. He could feel his team fall in beside him, footsteps ringing out through the gate room. This was what they did, this felt right. And then the tug of the wormhole tore him apart and pieced him back together in a wild, disorienting ride that was both familiar and endlessly strange.

When his boots hit the stone step on the other side of the gate, he had a fleeting moment of confusion, as if all the pieces hadn’t quite been put back right, and then he was out and dazzled by an opalescent glare.

“Bright,” Carter said at his side.

Jack grunted his agreement and tugged on his shades, taking a step down. He could see the MALP parked a couple yards from the gate, and beyond it rose a stately building of white stone that glistened against a bright white sky. The gate itself was in some kind of grassy courtyard, surrounded on all sides by a colonnade.

“Interesting,” Daniel said. “It looks like a cloister, maybe. A place of worship.”

“Or of ambush.” Teal’c’s staff weapon hissed open as he raised it. “O’Neill—there.”

Jack turned, his own weapon coming up as a half dozen armed men emerged from the shadows of the cloister. Their wild-eyed panic was clear, but they were disciplined enough to hold their line. That, Jack figured, was a good sign.

“Looks like someone survived,” Daniel observed, casting half a glance at Jack. “So much for two hundred year old refugees…”

Jack ignored him and, to his right, he heard Carter unsafe her weapon. His fingers itched to do the same but, conscious of Jonah’s fears, he made himself lift his hands away from the gun and say, “Hi, how’s it going?”

From between the soldiers another man appeared, shorter and more fleshy. His balding head gleamed with a sheen of sweat but his voice was even, despite the alarm in his eyes. “I am Ennis Channon, Pastor of the Ark. In the name of the Elect, I demand to know who you are.” His gaze shifted between Jack and Daniel, looking for a leader. “And what you want here.”

“We’re explorers,” Daniel said, taking Jack’s silence as a cue to speak; always wise to keep people guessing about who was the boss. “My name is Daniel Jackson, this is Colonel O’Neill, Major Carter, and Teal’c. We only want to talk to you.”

“You have come from
Acarsaid Dorch
?”

Jack recognized the name and the naked fear in the man’s eyes. “No,” he said. “But we’ve been there.”

Behind them the wormhole abruptly closed, leaving silence in its wake. He could hear the rapid breathing of the soldiers, taste their fear. It was a good bet they’d never seen the Stargate open before.

“We come from a planet called Earth,” Daniel said. “We’re explorers.”

The stranger frowned, his brow creasing. “Then the Sungate reaches places other than
Acarsaid Dorch
?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “A whole bunch of other great destinations.”

“That’s information we can share with you,” Daniel said. “Other gate addresses, friendly worlds.”

“
Trade
with you,” Jack amended, taking another step down from the gate. A ripple of tension flowed through the soldiers, but they didn’t back up. “That’s information we can trade with you.”