Stargate SG1 - Roswell (5 page)

“Nice try, Jack,” she replied, sliding into her seat.

Fast, but not fast enough. Her hesitation told him that she hadn't had the time to prepare for questions that could trip her up, which pegged this as a last minute operation from... when?

For some reason he was reminded of the day that she'd strode into this same room almost ten years earlier; cocky and ambitious and determined to prove that being a scientist didn't make her a liability. The edges had been rounded and the cockiness had been wiped away her very first trip through the 'gate. As for the assuredness, it was now tacked in place by the three stars, an additional thirty years of living and...something else that he couldn't quite put a finger on. He was definitely not imagining the unnerving feeling that she could see straight through him; into places he'd worked hard to keep hidden, even from himself.

“My dear chap,” Herbert asked Walter. “Would a cup of tea be out of the question?”

The sergeant turned. In his hand was a cup and saucer that looked like escapees from Great Aunt Gertrude's tea set. A sliver of lemon bobbed around the surface of the clear, dark fluid.

While Walter's mind reading capabilities were well known, Jack suspected that in this instance General Carter had given the sergeant a heads up.

Walter placed the tea on the table then followed through with two coffees and a platter of Danish, before quietly leaving via Landry's—Jack had never thought of it as his, even when it had been—office.

“Well.” He rubbed his hands together the moment the door behind him had closed. “This is cozy. You were saying about the mess, Herbert...?”

“Oh. Yes, of course, I'm sorry,” Carter said without the slightest hint of apology. “Major General Jack O'Neill, this is Herbert George.”

Herbert offered him an outstretched hand. Parchment skin and fine-boned fingers didn't detract from the old man's firm grip. “We've met before, of course,” he supplied.

“Ah...not yet,” Carter corrected, sending Jack a slightly uneasy look which, he was certain, was designed to have him second guessing his uncertainty about her motivations. “It's a time travel thing. It can get a little confusing.”

Jack sat down at the head of the table, where Walter had left his coffee waiting for him. He inhaled the caffeine fumes, hoping they'd exorcise the damned woodpeckers. “No. Really?”

If Herbert was in any way put out by Jack's brand of sarcasm, he didn't show it, while Carter said simply, “You know, you haven't changed a bit.”

“This is why I gave up all this adventuring this some years back.” Herbert patted his pocket absently. “Lost track of when I'd met people. But duty called in this instance, and what's a fellow to do?” He withdrew a chestnut colored pipe with a heavily chewed stem and placed it on the table by his tea. A few powdery tobacco cinders spilled onto the table.

“Now, Herbert, we discussed this before we left,” Carter admonished. There was something else in her voice Jack now recognized, a tone half remembered from a past life that tagged him like a shadow. Sarah had spoken like that. Maternal.

“Oh, don't fuss, my dear Samantha.” Herbert unfastened the hand device and placed it on the table beside his pipe. “You're as bad as that son of yours. I don't intend to ignite it.”

Carter's nostrils flared in annoyance. “Herbert!”

Allowing that piece of information to wash over him, Jack leaned back in his chair in the hope of finding a position that didn't make his chest feel like it'd been kicked by a mule. “Fascinating as these little glimpses of the future are, can we get back to the part where you were apologizing for the mess?”

“The Priors attacked SG-1 on Bayou with a form of energy weapon,” Carter said, turning her attention from Herbert. “Their attack missed SG-1 but the beams from their staffs combined, entering the 'gate just ahead of them. The energy burst destabilized the wormhole and—”

A knock on the outer door was followed by the appearance of a guard. Jack caught a glimpse of large dark eyes and a Cheshire cat grin peeking over the Marine's shoulder.

“What have I missed so far?” Vala called. “Anything interesting?”

“It's all right, Jack.” Carter waved her in. “As a member of SG-1, Vala should hear this.”

“What was that you were saying about protocol?” Jack frowned, dismissing the Marine with a nod. Vala had not been an accepted member of SG-1 for very long, which told Jack that contrary to his first impression, General Carter had indeed done her homework. Any hesitation or slip of the tongue on her behalf was deliberate.

“Thanks, guys.” Dialing back the wattage on her smile, Vala tossed a pair of thick ponytails oyer her shoulders, strode in like she owned the place and scooped up a Danish before pulling back the chair opposite Carter. Then she perched—literally—on the edge of the seat, brought her BDU-covered knees to her chest and wrapped one arm around her legs. “This is all very exciting.” Gaze fixed on Herbert's gold hand device, she leaned forward. “Ooooh. What's that?”

Fumbling in his rush to snatch the thing out of her reach, Herbert glared at her.

“What?”
Vala's tone was so poignantly innocent that Jack had to remind himself that she wasn't a perky teenager with an attention span just short of his, but the resident expert in mendacity.

Herbert's hangdog expression would have put a bloodhound to shame. “You stole it from me.”

“Did not!” she shot back indignantly.

“Yes, but you will. Oh, my dear Vala, the trouble you caused me.” Herbert's features abruptly softened and he offered her a sleazy little smile. “But, of course, I forgave you. After all, you were the only woman who truly managed to satisfy my—”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Looking like she'd swallowed a lemon, Vala dumped the Danish on the table, dropped her legs, pushed her chair back and crossed her arms. “I do have some standards, I'll have you know. And I certainly didn't come here to be insulted.”

Jack's patience was even shorter than his attention span. Turning to Carter, he loaded his voice with the minimum of restraint necessary when addressing a three star. “General?”

“Herbert.” Carter grasped the older man's arm in warning. “We agreed you'd leave the recriminations at home, and the explanations to me.”

Preempting any further distractions, Jack simultaneously fixed Vala with a stern look. “Not another word.”

She shrugged and, one eye on the abandoned pastry, began rocking on the back legs of the chair. Herbert sighed and contented himself with his tea, while Carter continued her interrupted explanation. “The destabilized wormhole would have collapsed, killing SG-1, but Herbert managed to divert it.”

Processing that information, Jack said, “Thank you. To where?”

“More accurately,
when.”
The rocking stopped.

“Ah!” Jack informed Vala with a cautionary finger. “Not a word.”

“This—” Carter tapped Herbert's gold doohickey— “well, the simplest description is that it's a remote control DHD. It's what Cassandra will use to send SG-1 back to the correct time when she meets them after they jump too far forward in time from 1969.”

While Jack now recognized the device, there was absolutely no way he was going to try and fathom the tenses in that statement. “I thought Cassie just opened the 'gate with it?”

“It's more involved than that. As you know, after you came back from the first Abydos mission, the Pentagon had me researching the Stargate for other applications including time travel. The problem with that line of research—and one of the reasons I abandoned it—is that the Ancients never meant for the Stargates to be used for time travel. Consequently the DHDs were only programmed to compensate for stellar drift in three dimensions, not four—the fourth being time.”

“Well, that's hardly a revelation.” The Danish had reappeared in Vala's hand. Mostly. Some of it was bunched up inside her left cheek. “Matter is moving through space at several thousand miles a second, so unless you get all the coordinates right, you could find yourself in the right time at the wrong place.”

Jack pinned her with a glare. “What did I just say?”

“It was a perfectly legitimate observation.” She swallowed and stared right back at him. “Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean you have to be such a grouch about it.”

“Hasn't General Landry ever given you a run down on the meaning of the word, 'sir'?”

A thoughtful frown put in a brief appearance before the chair rocking started up again. “He might have mentioned something about it, but only in passing.” She took another huge bite out of the pastry and chewed noisily, and then grinned at him. “I'm pretty choosy about who I let discipline me, you know.”

“Forgetting to take stellar drift into account during time travel is a most unpleasant experience, I can assure, you.” Herbert's words were at odds with his censorious tone. The look he gave Vala before he fixed his attention on Jack, spoke of more than a passing acquaintance. “As Vala pointed out, it can mean arriving millions of miles out in the void of space. Very nasty.”

“Getting the right time-space co-ordinates still doesn't guarantee a safe arrival,” Carter added, “because there are elements you can't always factor into your equations, like a tree or a building being in the way. Even if you eliminate that possibility by arriving well above the ground, there's still the danger of something transient like a flock of birds. And the result is...explosive.”

Despite himself, Jack actually followed what she was saying. “So how come nothing blew up when we arrived in 1969?”

“One reason we considered Stargates as time travel devices was because the unstable vortex disintegrates all matter ahead of an incoming traveler. While the time-shifted vortex creates the hole, the 'gate remains anchored to its own time. The downside, of course is it's a one-way trip. But with no matter in the way, there's no explosion. We arrived at 1969 into a void that existed directly beneath the engines of a Titan missile. In fact that void was not carved out when the Cheyenne Mountain complex was constructed, but by the 'gate vortex to
when
Herbert sent SG-1.”

Eyeing the gold hand device, Vala said, “That would explain why you can't use that and the Stargate to retrieve SG-1. They're inside the cavern created by that vortex.”

“Exactly.” Carter nodded and wrapped her fingers around her cup. “A second vortex would disintegrate them. Which means that before you can recover SG-1 —”

“As in,
we?”
Eyebrows lifting hopefully, Vala glanced at Jack.

“Couldn't have done it without you.” Carter smiled and sipped her coffee.

Vala leaned forward and slapped Jack's arm with excitement. “Oh goodie!”

Examining the flakes of sticky pastry and icing sugar now glued to his shirt, Jack wondered if there was something to all that bad karmic stuff that Daniel had been jabbering on about. “Can we skip to the how—” he glanced at Vala, who snatched up a second Danish— “we, recover SG-1?”

“I assume you've read Dr. Weir's reports from the Atlantis expedition?” Carter didn't wait for his affirmation before adding, “In which case you'll be aware that prior to their evacuation to Earth ten thousand years ago, an Ancient named Janus built a temporal device and, presumably to avoid the risk of encountering solid matter during time travel by operating in orbit, installed it in one of the Atlantis jumpers. The head of the Council, Moros, had the machine dismantled, but Janus brought his research to Earth and either he or another Ancient built a second device and jumper.