The Forge
First a word about the word forge.
The word forge, like many English words, has the delightful capacity to hold within them many meanings.
It can mean to move ahead with great speed or to progress slowly and steadily.
It means to create something new through careful effort a friendship or a treaty. Or the creation can occur through heat and beating something metallic into shape. Here it can be both verb and noun fore the very place this is done is called a forge.
It can mean imitating something with the purpose to deceive – a forgery.
Prologue
When Jacob Carter was offered a second chance at life he took it; what choice did he have, he was staring death in the face. Sure the concept of alien symbiotes seemed nuts but compared to a painful death attached to tubes and wire, flat on you back while being gawked at and pitied, maybe it wasn't so bad. So when they told him that cock and bull story he went with it. He thought they were giving an old man a thrill before he died. When he saw his daughter and Jack O'Neill geared up for combat and the explosion of the plasma from the Stargate he actually had a chill of fear run through him – 'Could the line of BS they fed me be real?' He had read Ian Fleming and later John LeCarre; he liked stories about international spies but an interplanetary, galactic spy – who'd thunk.
His life changed so rapidly from dying old man to ageless rebel. He felt young again with the renewal of his vitality and ancient with two thousand years of experience. This second chance he would not waste. And even if death was still waiting in the wings he would savor every moment of this shared life: a life of adventure, a life of purpose, a chance again to make a difference. If he had one regret, it was the emotional distance from his children. This distance he had imposed on them on Earth was magnified by the vastness of space. Selmak deep in the recesses of his mind chipped away at that stubbornness so that Jacob Carter not only regained his life but regained his family.
Jacob Carter was an unsung hero to the inhabitances of his favorite planet. But to a chosen few, most especially his daughter, his life would be remembered and cherished and ultimately, too, his death. Jacob Carter gave in death as he gave in life. This warrior chose to give of himself to save the galaxy and so was left with only a few weeks to live. This warrior was frail of body now; his last gift was of the spirit. He gave his daughter the freedom to love, the freedom to follow her heart without restrictions.