"Here you go, Carter," Colonel Jack O'Neill offered with a gentle smile, holding out a steaming mug of hot coffee to the groggy woman who was still cocooned in her sleeping bag.
"Yes sir," Major Samantha Carter slurred through her sleep-soaked consciousness. She sat up and took the cup with uncoordinated hands, almost spilling it.
"S'good," Sam mumbled.
"Well, I'll leave you to get ready, Carter. We're heading back to the Gate in 30."
Sam nodded, making eye contact with the Colonel for the first time since he had entered her tent a few minutes before, bringing her coffee like he usually did when SG1 had to overnight in the field. There it was again, glittering in his dark eyes.
He'd been treating her differently, not in any way she could explain or categorize, but it was unmistakably different, for the last few months. She didn't even know if she liked it or was irritated by it, the change was so subtle.
"Okay, I'll be ready, sir."
"Okay, Major." Another long look in which his warm brown eyes caught hers for a moment, and she saw it.
Yep, definitely different.
He'd been different ever since she'd had her consciousness returned to her body, ever since she'd almost died and thus almost been left to face an eternity as a disembodied awareness inside a computer.
She still had nightmares in which she was back in that void, without physical body or senses, floating in nothingness. But as frightening as those flashbacks were for Sam, she was beginning to suspect that the whole episode with the Entity had affected the Colonel even more. The Colonel had nightmares locked away deep inside him from a past Sam knew of only vaguely, a past full of raging, jabbering demons which he mostly kept at bay.
Mostly.
But lately, she could see their shadows in his eyes. And something else too, only there when he looked at her.
Despair? Fear? Guilt?
No, she couldn't put a name to it yet.
But it was something she hadn't ever seen in his face before, through all the years of dangers and difficulties.
Feeling more human after drinking most of the coffee, Sam emerged from the tent into the clearing where the three men sat silently eating breakfast. Daniel was busily jotting something in his journal while balancing a roll and a data recorder in the other hand. Teal'C stood while he ate, his eyes trained intently on the horizon. His stance said he didn't feel comfortable on this planet, an observation that caused Sam to adopt a more alert pose herself. Jack was methodically packing away their equipment.
"Daniel, can you break down that tent?"
The two men made short work of the familiar process of breaking camp while Sam idly chewed on an apple and reviewed her geological and environmental findings of the past few days. No naquada, no trinium, nothing to attract the Goa'uld, just lots of minerals very common to Earth. No signs of habitation or higher life forms. The poles were encased in ice caps twice the size of Earth's. Although scans had shown very little flowing water on the planet's surface, the water captured by the ice caps implied that water was available.
Although the cold, stormy planet seemed somewhat inhospitable, it was worth further exploration to determine its suitability for an off-world base. Hammond wouldn't be thrilled with their report and the lack of significant minerals, but it was still worth something that the planet could adequately support life and yet would probably not be of interest to the Goa'uld.
"Okay, we're due back in ten. Ready to move out?" It sounded like a question, but Sam knew it was an order in disguise. The four shouldered their packs and began the arduous process of picking their way through a jagged rock field. Their destination was just over the next ridge, but they would be breathing hard by the time they made the Gate.
"O'Neill." Teal'C broke the silence of their slow procession.
"What, T?"
"There is something..." he stopped and looked behind them, agitated. This got Jack's full attention, and he turned and went up to Teal'C.
"What is it?"
"It is something I have sensed before, something familiar that I can't... maybe Re'tu? It is very faint, but I feel a sense that there are Re'tu here. And yet...not Re'tu. Something like them. It is very faint." Teal'C continued to sharply scan the horizons in every direction as he spoke.
Jack waited a few minutes, watching Teal'C scan the surrounding rock field.
"Still there?" Jack finally queried.
"Yes, O'Neill. No stronger, no weaker."
"Let's get back to the Gate," Jack answered. "We have no way of detecting them unless we get some of those...ray gun things...T.E.R.'s... back on base. Let's go."
The Gate was just visible to them now, and they each instinctively picked up the pace. Jack and Teal'C were behind Sam and Daniel, anxiously watching in every direction as they jogged along even though they knew they would see nothing if there really were Re'tu out there.
Daniel had reached the DVD and begun dialing, much to Jack's relief, when bolts of energy began flying out of nowhere towards the team, hitting like small explosions in the dirt all around them. Daniel slammed his hand down forcefully on the red orb in the middle of the DHD and the Stargate whooshed open.
"Go, go!" Jack shouted at the others, taking up a defensive posture and firing blindly back in the direction the shots had come from. None of the four had yet made a move toward the Gate, angering and terrifying O'Neill.
"Carter! Daniel! Get out of here!" The two were further from the wormhole than he and Teal'C.
What happened next was beyond any of their experience with aliens thus far. A group of ten or eleven creatures slowly materialized in front of them, while two materialized right in front of the Gate, so that SG1 was sandwiched between them. The creatures had a faint resemblance to Re'tu, but the differences were pronounced enough that SG1 immediately recognized they were dealing with a completely new race.
One of them stepped out from the larger group, making odd rasping noises, apparently trying to communicate, but he took only two or three steps before Teal'C, the presence of the Re'tu-like aliens still agitating him greatly, shouldered his staff weapon and blew the alien into grisly bits.
"NO!" Daniel screamed, sure that they had just sealed their fate. Enraged, the now visible aliens advanced on the four humans, and wild shooting began on all sides. When the melee came to an eventual lull, all but four of the aliens had vanished or were dead on the ground. The remaining visible creatures had Daniel and Sam in their clutches, creating a stand-off as Teal'C and Jack tried to evaluate the situation. One of the aliens again made an effort to communicate, this time holding a device to his face that made his guttural noises understandable to the humans.
"Leave and do not return."
"Give back my people, and we will do as you ask," Jack responded, his eyes darting back and forth from Daniel to Sam to the creature addressing him. The alien seemed to understand.
"We will keep one of these with us. Go and do not return." Sam and Daniel now looked terrified. Jack and Teal'C, right next to the shimmering event horizon, stood still, unsure what to do next. The alien soon spoke again, giving them a nightmarish choice.
"Choose which of these you will take with you, and go."
"I'll stay," Daniel quickly cried out.
"Unacceptable," Jack growled and took a step towards the captured pair, The aliens immediately pulled their arms back in a painful grip and stepped away from Jack's advance. He stopped, fearing he might provoke them into killing their hostages.
"Let us all go. We will not return to your world, you have my word. We didn't know this world was inhabited."
"We meant no harm," Daniel added. "We were defending ourselves."
"You invaded our world. You have harmed us," the alien responded, looking at the bodies of his comrades on the ground around them. "One of you will pay for their lives."
Okay, Jack didn't like the sound of that. Without hesitation or reply, he signaled Teal'C and they shot at the heads of the remaining aliens. Daniel and Sam were much shorter than the creatures, but were ducking desperately anyway.
It was over in a few seconds, and the four now lay dead and Daniel and Sam lay unmoving, trapped beneath them.
"Quick, Teal'C, dial us out of here again before their friends show up," Jack barked. The unattended Stargate had shut down at some point during the firefight.
Jack rolled the dead bodies of the aliens off his teammates and grabbed Daniel in a fireman's hold. Teal'C picked up Sam and they were through the Gate as fast as they could drag themselves and their added burdens into the wormhole.
On the other side, Jack immediately ordered the iris closed and deposited Daniel gently on the ramp, next to Sam. Both were alive and conscious, Jack noted, facts he hadn't been too sure of when they had grabbed the two and made their retreat.
"You okay?" Jack panted.
"Yeah, just a few pulled muscles," Daniel answered, still sitting.
"Carter?"
"Okay, sir." She was up on her feet, shakily brushing herself off. Hammond entered the Gateroom and came up to the team with concern written on his face.
"What happened?"
"We encountered a race similar to the Re'tu, sir. I suggest we get some T.E.R.'s and sweep this room and the base, just to be sure we don't have any unwanted guests. And that planet should probably go on the 'no way' list. I'd say we blew this diplomatic opportunity." The Colonel looked at Teal'C but made no further comment.
"Done, Colonel." Hammond gave the order and waved the medical team over to the newly returned team. "Get yourselves to the infirmary and get checked out."
Jack was sullenly silent through the whole infirmary routine, so much so that Janet was concerned. As the other three were cleared and left, she motioned Jack to stay behind.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Janet looked worried.
"Fine," Jack answered in his most intimidating, 'I don't want to talk about it,' tone.
"Well, it seems to me this one bothered you more than usual," Janet persisted, her concerned gaze locked on him.
Jack softened a little. "Yeah, I guess it did." He stared at his restless hands as he fiddled with the hem of his shirt. But after a minute, Jack straightened up and looked right at Janet.
"He gave me a choice," Jack began.
"Who?"
"The creature holding Sam and Daniel hostage, he gave me a choice. He wanted me to take one of them with me and leave the other one with them."
Janet was shocked into silence, trying to imagine how awful she would have felt given the same choice.
"But you got them both back safely," Janet pointed out, wondering why this was bothering the Colonel so much.
"We got lucky. The choice I made put the two of them at greater risk than if I'd just brought one of them back without a fight."
"But you couldn't make that choice."
"Of course not. But I almost did. That's what's bothering me." Jack stood with mercurial swiftness, grabbed his jacket and strode out of the infirmary. Janet got a glimpse of his face as he brushed past her, and saw anger, fear, and guilt mixed on his features.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what he had meant, Janet mused to herself. She had wondered for years now when Jack and Sam's unaddressed feelings for each other would become too unmanageable to be ignored any longer. Janet's friendship with both of them was close, and her added persona as a doctor had allowed her to discuss topics with both of them that they would probably never have voiced to anyone else. But neither had ever admitted to her what Jack had just intimated, that he was doubting his objectivity in the field because of his feelings for Sam.
She wondered whether Jack would quickly submerge this incident into the depths of his subconscious, or if a door had been opened that would eventually prove impossible to close.
Sam was very happy to be home again. As soon as she got in the door, she flopped limply on the couch, not even bothering to remove her boots, and closed her eyes deliciously. Today had almost been her last. A shudder erupted down her spine as she congratulated herself on having escaped another brush with death.
The situation on the planet came abruptly to her mind as she rested, and she imagined herself back there, being held by the arms in the painful vice of the alien, hearing the creature asking Jack to choose between Daniel and her. She of all people knew what agony such a request would have been to the Colonel. She knew how it had tortured him to have shot her a month ago when she had been taken over by the Entity. And she suspected he hadn't yet come to terms with it. Today's events would have only heaped more pain on his already burdened conscience.
A sharp series of knocks at her front door awakened her from a light doze. She was surprised to find she had been asleep. As she rose and stretched, the knocking echoed again and she recognized the Colonel's distinct pattern in the rapping. Not really surprised that he had come to see her after the events of the day, she went to the door and opened it to him.
"Carter," he greeted her. His voice sounded unutterably weary.
"Hello, sir, come on in. Is everything okay?" She knew it wasn't, judging from his distraught features.
"I need to talk to you about what happened today," Jack admitted.
"You do?" Sam was searching her memory banks for a precedent for such a statement coming out of Jack's mouth. "Uh, do you need anything? Want something to drink?"
Jack sat down and leaned his head on his hands. "Beer, if you've got it."
She walked back to the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the refrigerator, proceeding slowly in order to prepare herself for what was probably going to be a difficult and even painful conversation.
"Thanks," Jack said quietly, not sure how to proceed.
Sam decided to kickstart it. "You mean talk about what happened today on the planet? When Daniel and I were held hostage?"
"Yes. I made a choice on that planet that endangered you both, and that was wrong."
"We were already endangered, sir. Your choice gave us a fighting chance to all leave the planet together."
"The most likely outcome of that decision was that you would have both been killed."
"But that's not what's really bothering you, is it, sir? We've been in that situation plenty of times, having to put ourselves at risk to succeed at our mission, having to choose between two courses of action without knowing what the outcome would be."
"You're right, Carter." He nodded, but then fell morosely silent again, sipping at his beer.
"When that thing wanted you to choose who stayed and who left with you, what were you thinking?"
Jack looked up with stricken eyes.
"I wanted to choose you, because I couldn't condemn you to death. Not again. After I shot you a few weeks ago, I made the decision I would never let myself be put in that situation again. But then I thought, it had to be Daniel, because otherwise I was making a military decision based on my personal feelings. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't face losing you. I would have rather watched you both die, hell, all of us die, than leave you behind to die on that planet, alone."
Jack shifted in his seat, so that Sam could only see his face in profile now. "Sam, I'm going to resign. I can't do my job any more, not in the way it needs to be done. I've lost objectivity, I've lost the ability to command."
Sam stared at him, shocked. Jack stood up to leave.
"I thought you should know first."
Sam jumped to her feet, following him to the door and preventing him from leaving by standing between the door and Jack.
"You can't resign! We need you out there! We trust you with our lives, sir, and you've never let us down. Not once!"
"But I did let you down, Sam. I shot you twice with a zat. You should be dead right now."
"But I'm not. You did what any of us would have done to protect the base. Besides, I'm still here!"
"You need a CO capable of making objective command decisions. I can't do it anymore."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm afraid I'm going to make a life or death decision out there based on my own personal feelings, without even realizing it."
"Sir, your decisions are always-"
"You need a CO who isn't personally involved with his second-in-command."
Sam stared at him, both terrified and thrilled by his admission. She watched his face for any clue as to where this was going, but he wouldn't look at her.
"We're not personally involved, sir. It's against regulations." Her voice was soft, hesitant; wistful.
"I am."
Jack did look up then, his face revealing to Sam his self-reproach, guilt and despair. Her heart clenched inside her and she began to tremble. This conversation had to stop, now, while they were still Colonel and Major, while their integrity was still intact.
"No, you're not," she challenged him, knowing he should leave, now, but not wanting to end their interchange. She reached out for him, wanting only to offer comfort, but he took a rapid step away.
"Don't touch me," he begged, and she jerked her hand away as if stung. Tears sprang to her eyes, unleashed by his harsh tone.
"Sam," he started again, more gently this time. "I am resigning. I'm not going to drag your career under, too. Now, let me go. Please."
She stepped out of the way and he opened the door.
"Goodbye, Carter."
Something about the finality with which he said the words filled her with foreboding and fear. She stepped through the door after him, but caught herself almost immediately, mindful of neighbor's prying eyes and passersby.
"Jack, please don't leave like this," she begged.
He turned his head to gaze back at her, and there Sam saw indecision warring with self-incrimination. Without a word, he turned and got in his truck and left, never looking back.
Sam, confused and heartsick, turned and went back inside.
Hammond called Sam, Teal'C and Daniel into his office around noon the next day and shut the door to insure privacy.
"Well, Colonel O'Neill informs me that he has already told all of you about his resignation. He turned it in this morning, first thing, and I want you people to know I refused to accept it until he'd had more time to think about it. So I'm giving SG1 two weeks of leave. One question though. Did something happen on that planet I need to know about, something that could have that precipitated all this?" Sam thought she saw him glance in her direction with a sharpness she wasn't accustomed to seeing in the General, but it was gone in a second.
"He just said this one was too close this time, and that he didn't want to risk anyone else's life," Daniel reported.
"O'Neill said he had endangered the team by making a bad command decision. He feels this makes him unfit for further command. I do not think his order was wrong, however." Teal'C looked troubled and deeply sad.
"He told me the same," Sam added tersely. "Where is he, General?"
"He didn't say, Major, but I wouldn't be surprised if he goes to his cabin to get away."
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed, SG1. Enjoy your time off."
"Sam," Hammond stopped her before she left the room. "Is there anything further you can tell me?"
"Yes, sir."
She turned and went back to sit at the table, and Hammond joined her. "Colonel O'Neill is still angry and upset over the situation with the Entity a few weeks ago. He said he never wants to be put in a position again where he has to make a choice like the one he made to kill me."
"Life and death decisions are part of what he's done for years. Why is it different now?" Hammond sounded almost like he was asking himself rather than Sam, but she answered him anyway, as honestly as she could.
"He told me his personal feelings make it impossible for him to be objective."
"Feelings of being very attached to a team he's been working with for eight years? Of course he has personal feelings, as do all of you for him!"
"No sir, it's not just our bond as a team. We are very close, sir, and any one of us would balk at making a command decision that put another of us in harm's way. No, the Colonel meant he has feelings for...for me."
Hammond was silent as he regarded Sam's earnest expression. He realized how much she was risking to tell him all this, but was proud of her commitment to honesty. As well as he knew all of the team members, he knew Sam the best, having known her since childhood, and he trusted that she was giving him the whole story to the best of her knowledge.
"For you, Major? What has he told you about his feelings?"
"Just that he has feelings for me that he believes are interfering with the proper execution of his job, sir."
"Do you believe that?"
"No, sir." Her answer seemed vague.
Hammond probed further. "I see. And you and Jack have never acted on these-"
"No, sir," Sam interrupted fervently.
"Thank you, Major. I will take your comments under consideration with the utmost confidentiality. Dismissed, Sam. Enjoy your downtime."
Sam found herself growing more and more agitated as she left the mountain. She could understand why Jack was unsettled by their recent near-misses, particularly by the incident in which he'd shot and thought he'd killed her a few weeks ago, but she couldn't believe he would actually resign. This wasn't the Colonel O'Neill she thought she knew. That man was a soldier, an air force officer, not a quitter. The more she mulled it over in her mind, the angrier she got, and that anger gave her the push she needed to turn her car in the direction of Jack's house.
Sam screeched up to the curb in front of Jack's house and jumped out, slamming the door. Her determined approach to his door was cut short, however, by the sight of him in the driveway, half hidden behind the open back door of his truck, loading a duffle bag. He stood up straight and faced her rather uncomfortably, having heard the slam of the car door.
"Carter?" It was more of a challenge than a greeting.
"Sir." Sam slowed her pace and stopped on the other side of the open door. "Are you going away?"
"Astute," he observed coolly.
"Well, you're not going anywhere until you explain all this, because what you're doing doesn't make any sense."
"I told you why yesterday, Major Carter, and that's all the explanation I owe you."
He shut the car door and turned to head back to the house, but Sam grabbed him by the arm and stopped him, her fingers hard and angry.
"Maybe that's all the explanation you owe Major Carter, but you owe me a whole lot more," Sam said in a shaky voice.
She couldn't believe that had come out of her mouth. Her stomach felt like she was in free fall. She let go of his arm and stepped back, waiting apprehensively for his response, not at all sure what his reaction would be to her unusual frontal attack.
He stared back at her, frozen for a minute, then sighed and closed his eyes momentarily. "Come on in, Carter, I was going to make myself a sandwich before I left anyway. Are you hungry?"
She followed him through the foyer into his kitchen, spotless and bare in preparation for his absence.
"A little," she allowed as she slid onto a stool at the counter. She watched him as he assembled two ham sandwiches, still waiting for him to answer her.
"Hammond told you I resigned?"
"Hammond told us that he hasn't yet accepted your resignation, and won't for two weeks while you're thinking it through again."
"There's nothing more to think through. I've been thinking about it for months now. This last mission just made me realize I needed to go ahead with it."
"I don't understand. What was different about the situation on the planet two days ago from countless situations where you've had to put one or more of your team at risk in order to achieve an objective? That's the military. So why now?"
Jack hesitated, then looked over at her with an expression so vulnerable, so defenseless, that Sam knew that he had allowed himself to cross the line between 'Colonel' and 'Jack'.
"What?" She encouraged him quietly.
"I've been having nightmares. Actually, just one nightmare, but over and over. It started the night I zatted you in the SGC and thought I'd killed you. And lately it's there in my mind at the wierdest times during the day. I saw it again when those aliens were holding you and Daniel. I would have done anything, right then, to make sure it didn't come true right in front of me. I don't even remember telling Teal'C to fire at those aliens, I just... reacted. I was in that nightmare more than I was on the planet."
"Tell me."
"Uhh." Jack sighed nervously and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Okay. You and I are in a strong current in a river or something. I think maybe we're being sucked towards a waterfall or a whirlpool, I don't know which. It's just us; we're alone. I've got my hands locked around you, and I'm pretty sure that we are going to die. I see a branch over my head and I reach up and grab it with one arm, holding onto you with the other. I can't pull you to safety, and I can't move us both towards the bank with only one hand. And we hang there, while my hand is slowly slipping, and I realize I'm about to lose my grip on the branch. Without meaning to, without conscious thought, I release my hold on you and pull myself up onto the branch to safety, while you're swept away. I can hear you screaming, and it hits me what I've done. That's usually when I wake up, with your screams echoing in my head."
Jack paused for a minute, then continued. "It's not the feeling of guilt over letting you die that is the hardest. It's the feeling that my heart is being ripped out. I don't think I can ever again bring myself to put you at risk off-world, and I'm afraid that a decision based on that will end up hurting Daniel or Teal'C, or someone else. I'm afraid I'll get one of them killed because I was trying to protect you more than I was trying to look out for the well-being of the team."
Sam looked like her mind was working overtime as she considered his explanation. Her sandwich lay untouched on her plate.
"Usually a recurring dream indicates an unresolved issue that you aren't dealing with in your conscious mind, so it comes out in your subconscious."
"Undergrad psych course?" Jack grinned.
"The very one. You have to admit, it's a plausible theory."
Jack nodded. "I know what the issue is, but I admit I don't know how to deal with it." He got up, washed his plate and stuck it in the dish drainer.
"So, you're just going to avoid it, just not deal with it? If I did that, or Daniel or Teal'C, you'd call us on it."
"I should get going." Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for her to reply, kicking distractedly at the corner of the table leg.
"We've got two weeks of leave. You could stay a few more days. Maybe we could figure out how to deal with the...issue...together?" Sam watched him hopefully. He stood there with a trapped expression for almost a minute before turning and walking out the door to his car.
Sam's heart fell inside her chest like a stone when she heard the car door open, but the engine didn't start up like she had dreaded. The next thing she knew, the car door had slammed closed and Jack was entering the house again, shouldering his duffel. He dropped it in the hallway with a thud.
Sam didn't give him time to reconsider. She closed the distance between them and threw her arms around him with a small cry of joy.
"Carter, you're proving my point here," O'Neill growled, although he was hugging her back in spite of his warning.
"This doesn't mean I've changed my mind either, about resigning." He did finally manage to step back and distance himself from her.
"I know," Sam agreed. "Can we talk some more now?" Her smile melted any resistance he still held and he allowed her to lead him to the couch, where, to Sam's relief, they sat down to talk some more.
It was after midnight before they finally ran out of steam, too exhausted to make sense of what the other was saying, much less answer coherently. But they'd said a lot that needed to be aired out between them.
Jack had been genuinely surprised to discover that Sam felt the same about him as he felt for her. He was amazed that someone so brilliant, beautiful and so much younger was in love with him, but that's what she'd told him.
In turn, Sam's eyes teared up with joy and unbelief when he gave her his definition of what it meant to be 'personally involved.' And she'd blushed self-consciously when he'd let her know very honestly how much more personally involved he wanted to be. He described how he'd thought him leaving was the only way to protect her career, and how proud of her he was.
Jack listened in amazement while Sam gave a recitation of all the things that made him a great commanding officer, starting from the day they'd met right up to their most recent mission, which she told him she thought he'd handled magnificently, in spite of his personal misgivings. How irreplaceable he was to the Stargate program and the fight against their enemies in the Galaxy. She pointed out all the times he'd saved Earth from imminent doom and all the times his leadership had made the difference between life and death for their team.
She'd switched gears at some point and begun to talk about them on a more personal level, their friendship, their bond, and finally, her realization that she was in love with him. How just being in his presence constantly reminded her of those feelings she tried to keep stuffed inside. Of all the instances on missions when she secretly watched him as he slept. How hard she'd worked to maintain her own professional objectivity where he was concerned for years now.
"Really? You've watched me sleep?" Jack was absurdly pleased with that new tidbit of information.
"Once or twice," Sam hedged, hesitant to feed his ego too much, but with a smile that gave her away.
"I'm glad we're finally talking about all this stuff," she continued. " But I guess it isn't exactly convincing you to reconsider your resignation."
"It just confirms my decision," Jack stated rather glumly.
The ringing of the phone in the stillness of the dark house startled them both. Jack went to the kitchen to answer the call.
"Hello?" Jack listened for a long while. The expression on his face grew more alarmed as the seconds ticked by. He looked over at Sam a few times, his expression letting her know that something was very wrong, and she moved towards him as he listened, her arms crossed anxiously across her chest.
"Yes, sir. I understand, I'm on my way. Yes, sir. Got it." Jack hung up.
"Leave is cancelled. SG1's being recalled to base immediately. There's been an incident. I'll tell you what going on in the car."
"Let's go," Sam agreed grimly.
Thor was waiting regally in the SGC briefing room when Jack, Sam, Daniel, and Teal'C converged on his location and rushed in to see Hammond and Davis sitting with Thor.
Jack had told Sam what he had learned while they had sped to the mountain. Thor had shown up unannounced about an hour ago with the news that the Goa'uld were attacking an Asgard protected planet where the Asgard defensive weapon had somehow failed in its function to stop them. The Stargate was under enemy control, so Thor would fly them to the planet and remain in cloaked orbit while they carried out his instructions for repair, dressed to blend in with the natives in the event they encountered any.
Thor wanted the T'auri, namely Jack O'Neill, to go to the planet and attempt to repair the defensive device. Thor didn't immediately explain why it had to be SG1, but it seemed to be understood that that was the case.
"Why SG1, Thor?" O'Neill finally asked.
"The device that defends this planet is not Asgard. We discovered it on the planet when we first explored this world long ago and put it to use. It is of Ancient design. You, O'Neill, once possessed the knowledge of the Ancients."
"But you, Thor, removed all that stuff from my head," Jack countered.
"Even so, you are changed, O'Neill. We also know you possess a gene, found only in the T'auri and that only rarely, that is directly of Ancient origin."
"I really don't want to know how you know that," O'Neill commented distastefully.
Ignoring him, Thor continued. "You amd your team have the knowledge, experiences and physical compatibility with the technology needed to repair the device. This makes SG1 uniquely suited for this task."
Jack sighed at that, resigning himself to the need for his participation in this one, final mission.
"When do we leave?"
"Now," they heard Thor's authoritative voice declare as they were simultaneously engulfed in an explosion of light.