STARGATE SG-1: Do No Harm (5 page)

He gave her a mock salute. “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

She gave him yet another pointed look, turned to go, then turned back. “I’m sure they’re fine, Colonel,” she said quietly.
“Sam, Daniel and Teal’c are the best. And given everything that’s
gone wrong around here lately it’s easy to spook ourselves, or start believing that off-world missions can’t be anything but dramatic and dangerous. That’s not the case.” She nodded at his paperwork. “You’re not dragging your heels on those reports because you’re inefficient or undisciplined. You’re dragging them because the missions aren’t any fun to write about. They were
boring
. We can do boring here, too. Don’t forget that.”

He watched her leave the commissary, his jaw metaphorically dropped. She had the most uncanny knack for sticking her finger right on a pulse…

Suddenly he was exhausted. Home. Home and pizza. Home and Chinese. Home and anything not cooked by the Air Force or himself. Home and something mindless on the idiot box. And beer. Cold beer.

After calling ahead to place a late order with the Dragon Palace he changed into civilian camouflage of jeans and sweat
shirt, signed himself off-base and escaped into the normal world.
Sometimes it made him feel like the alien. All those people with no idea what was happening in the great big scary, incredible, amazing galaxy. Tonight, though, all he could feel was relieved beyond measure that the regular world was there, still there, and bumbling along in its glorious innocent ignorance.

Just as he was diving headfirst into sauce-soaked potstickers someone uninvited knocked on his front door.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” he muttered, and went to see who’d so lost interest in living that they were on his doorstep harassing him at 2207. PM. At night.

“Sorry, Jack,” said General Hammond. “I know it’s late, but can you spare a few minutes?”

Oh crap. Oh crap
. “SG-1, are they — ”

“No!” said Hammond, lifting his hands. “I’m sorry. The team’s fine. Major Carter radioed in before I left the base to say they were staying a few more hours to get soil and plant samples. Everything’s fine. The mission’s going to plan.”

As the potstickers stopped doing the rumba in his stomach, he stepped back. “Oh. Good. Then — come in, sir. Want Chinese?”

“Chinese?” said Hammond vaguely, as though he wasn’t entirely familiar with the concept.

O’Neill waved the general down the stairs into the living room.
God, he looks beat
. “Yes, sir,” he said, heading for the kitchen. “You’d better. I always order too much. Carter’s renamed my fridge the The O’Neill Laboratory. She says I should apply for funding.”

“Ha,” said Hammond, wearily amused, and lowered himself into an armchair, still in uniform but looking crumpled. Not a good sign. Hammond was Old School; probably he really did spit on his shoes when he polished them.

O’Neill shoved a bit of everything into a bowl, finished it off with a splosh of dipping sauce, shoved a fork in it and joined Hammond.

“Here you go, sir. Dig in. Did you want a beer to wash it down?”

“Thanks,” said Hammond. “And yes. A beer would be appreciated.”

They ate in companionable silence, with a re-run of Cheers droning in the background. Eventually Hammond put his emptied bowl to one side and relaxed against his armchair’s cushions.

O’Neill considered him. “Better?”

“Better,” Hammond acknowledged. Then he balanced his beer bottle on his knee and sighed. “Jack, the SGC is in a tight spot.”

“We’re going through a rough patch, sir, yes,” he said, chasing the last stubborn grains of fried rice with his chopsticks. “But we’ll survive. We always do.”

“We might not this time,” said Hammond. “Not without taking a few drastic steps.”

To hell with the fried rice. He put aside his bowl. “What kind of drastic steps, sir?”

Instead of answering, Hammond took refuge in his beer. O’Neill felt his skin prickle.
Oh, crap. I’m not going to like this
.

Hammond put down the emptied beer bottle. “Have you ever crossed paths with a Colonel David Dixon?”

He thought for a moment then shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t think so. Why?”

“Colonel Dixon was Frank Cromwell’s second in command at the time of the black hole incident,” the general said at last.
His blue eyes were steady and promised no compromises. “After
Cromwell’s death he took over the Pentagon strike team.”

Frank Cromwell
. A name that could punch a hole right through him, if he let it. A memory he’d buried fathoms deep, and for good.
Frank’s face as the wormhole swallowed him. Fear and disbelief and shocking, endless pain
…

“No, sir,” he said. “I’ve never met Dixon.”

And I
don’t want to. Cromwell. The black hole. Iraq. Don’t you make me dig it all up again, George. I’m too old for that crap
.

If Hammond could read his mind this time, as he read it so often, he didn’t show it. “Dixon was on emergency leave when Cromwell and his men were deployed here. There was no need for him, the rest of the team was available, so he wasn’t recalled. Not until Cromwell was killed and he had to assume the strike team’s leadership.”

Yeah. You said. And this is my problem because…?

“Jack,” said Hammond, “Doctor Fraiser is adamant it’ll be a minimum of six weeks before Riley, Adams and Keffler are fit to return to full field duty. In the meantime I’ve got to find acting replacements for them and plug the holes in their teams. I’ve got to permanently replace Jake Andrews, Natalie Larke and Manny Dominguez. There’s going to be a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul around the SGC and the upshot is we lose team numbers overall.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. He’d eaten too much moo shu pork. His guts were rebelling. “I know. But six weeks isn’t that long.”

Hammond pulled a face. “Jack, in politics six weeks is a lifetime. The midterms are coming up and the President’s approval ratings are flat. He’s vulnerable to the kind of backroom manouverings that make Washington such a cesspool.”

“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with us?”

“More than you realize,” said Hammond. “More than I like. I’ve heard whispers there’s a push for a Stargate oversight committee, designed to monitor the risk and expenditure versus rewards of the program. Our recent losses are not going to look good on a balance sheet. Every person on this base represents a substantial investment of government money… and in the last few weeks we’ve seen a lot of money lost.”

O’Neill watched his hands clench into fists. “Yeah. Because that’s what’s
really
important, here. The loss of government money. Screw the individuals, screw the fact Jake Andrews just got engaged and Natalie Larke was awarded her doctorate last month, screw — ”

“
Jack
!”

He let out a harsh breath. “Sorry, sir. I know. It’s the politicians, not you.”

“And it’s the politicians I answer to,” Hammond said, his voice still sharp. “Which means sucking up my personal feelings and remembering this is a game for pragmatists. However distasteful we may find it, Colonel, the reality is we need consistently good results from the field in order to justify our expensive existence. And without strong SGC teams out there our quota of good results will be significantly decreased.”

“Yes, sir. But you said there were only whispers of an oversight committee, so — ”

“Whispers from a source that mean they’re the same as orders
in triplicate,” said Hammond flatly. “It’s happening, Jack. It’s not just the financial angle, although that’s significant. The foothold scenario we experienced earlier this year — ”

“A scenario we sorted out
on our own
,” he pointed out. “No need for any Pentagon strike teams.”

“Only because Carter contacted Maybourne,” said Hammond,
wryly. “And he was playing his own brand of politics. Trust me, Jack — if she’d called anyone else the strike team would’ve been deployed.”

And that was true enough, dammit. “But even so, sir — ”

“Jack, people were spooked. Hell,
I
was spooked. It was a damn close thing and you know it. This whole business of an oversight committee — it was only ever going to be a matter of
time. To be honest with you I’m surprised it’s taken Washington
this long.” With a grunt Hammond pushed out of the armchair to restlessly roam the carpeted space between steps and curtained French doors. “The Stargate program has snowballed. Before our eyes it’s turned into something huge and complex with political ramifications that frankly scare me to death. I can’t control them. I don’t think I even understand them all. What I
do
understand is we have to perform at peak proficiency. We no longer have the luxury of taking six weeks off while we lick our wounds. Our profile’s grown too big. Week in and week out, regular as clockwork, we have to provide tangible results to our political masters… or we will be in serious trouble.”

O’Neill sighed. Hammond was right, but it made him sick. “Maybe we should just save the planet from annihilation a couple more times, sir,” he said, picking at a torn spot in the knee of his Levis. “I’m free this weekend, the team and I could — ”

“Jack,” said Hammond, and rested his fists on his hips. “That’s not helping.”

He subsided. “Sorry.”

“Anyway,” Hammond added, and returned to his chair, “in light of this and our current personnel crisis, I have to do whatever’s necessary to protect the viability of the SGC. Which brings us back to the question of the strike team and Colonel Dixon.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “You want to bring them in to plug the holes in our roster?”

Hammond nodded. “Exactly. As it happens I was already in discussions to do something like this before our people started dropping like flies.”

He was? He’d never mentioned it. “The Pentagon wants to send the strike team on field trips? How very… enterprising of them. Sir.”
Because hey, we’ve got nothing bette
r to do than take amateurs sight-seeing
.

“Nobody knows better than you, Jack, that reading about the
SGC and living it are two very different things,” said Hammond,
frowning. “I wasn’t happy that Frank Cromwell could come in and take over in an emergency having never set foot on the base, let alone through the Stargate. As I recall you weren’t too happy about it either.”

No. He wasn’t. But since the black hole incident he’d been able to shove the fact of the strike team’s existence to one side and pretty much forget about them. Forget about Frank. Nostalgia was way over-rated.

“There’s more,” said Hammond, watching him carefully. “Even though Dixon and his men are up-to-date with what’s
been happening in the SGC, and even though they are top-notch
Special Forces operatives with all the necessary security clearances, I’m not going to turn them loose the moment they get here. They’ll be going out as observers with established teams first, one mission each, on their own, so I can assess them and their value to the SGC.”

Okay. I should’ve seen that one coming
. “And you want me babysitting Dixon.”

Hammond’s eyebrows lifted. “Of course. Assuming he makes the grade — and I imagine he will, his record’s impressive — your assessment will help determine which SGC team to give him.”

“That still only gets us one team back in rotation, General.”

“I know. But Dixon’s second in command, Major Logan, is another possibility as a temporary team leader. If he agrees to the secondment, that is. We’ll have to play it by ear, Jack. Who knows? Fraiser could be wrong, our own people could be back on deck faster than she anticipates.”

Not likely. They could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Janet Fraiser had been wrong, and the general knew it.

“Jack…” Now Hammond’s voice was gentle. “We never really talked about you and Frank Cromwell.”

He kept his gaze firmly fixed on the rip in his jeans. “No, sir, we didn’t.”

“I’m not interested in prying,” Hammond continued. “Your
private life is private and I respect that. But allow me to say this:
I realize Cromwell’s death was very hard for you. And I understand having Colonel Dixon on base might well be uncomfortable, even after so long. That’s why I came over here tonight, so we could talk about this… unofficially. As friends.”

As friends
. O’Neill looked up, surprised and moved. Hammond had never been so blunt before. He really must be desperate. “I appreciate that, General.”

“I have every confidence the SGC will weather this latest storm,” said Hammond. “If the last three years have taught me anything it’s never to underestimate the courage, strength and resourcefulness of the people under my command. But if bringing in this Pentagon strike team means we weather the storm faster, with less collateral damage, then I don’t have a choice. I have to do it. Even if that means putting you in a difficult position.”

He nodded. “Of course you do, sir. The SGC comes first. What, you think I don’t know that?”

Hammond’s smile was gently wry. “No. But I didn’t want you to think I was taking you for granted.”

“Okay,” he said, after a moment. “For the record, I would never think that. But also for the record? If taking me for granted is what you need to do to get the job done, then take away. With my blessing.”