Season/Spoiler: Between 8 and 9
Pairing, Warnings: None
Note: Writen for the 2005 Jackfic-a-thon. Special thanks to Kat for the plot bunny, and Lori for the beta. As a special aside, I'll say that this story touches on some thorny ethical issues that are well worth exploring in depth -- but it won't be here.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and all of its characters are copyright to MGM. But if they're not going to tell me where Jack went after Season 8, then they should realize someone's going to make it up. It might as well be me.
The Illusion of Justice
Jack still wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to get himself into this situation. Usually he could smell a trap from miles away, but this time, it had clamped on his foot before he even knew it was there. Did President Hayes and Hammond hate him that much? Didn't they realize how completely unsuited he was to the back-slapping and ass-kissing of Pentagon Politics? Apparently not, since Hayes had said that Jack was perfect for it. Clearly his only options had been accepting the promotion or retirement, and given the president's enthusiasm, Jack hadn't been certain that even retirement would have worked. Hayes could be charming and friendly, but he was also a pit bull when he wanted something. And he wanted Jack in Washington.
So now Jack was packing his office for the dreaded transfer to the Pentagon. Not that there was much to pack. Unlike Hammond, his butt had warmed this chair for barely a year. But the changeover wasn't due for another week, so he was still The Man.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, Jack was not really paying attention to what he was doing. Half of his brain was focused on the absurdity of him trying to make politicians understand the dangers of space, while the other half was trying to squish his old, exciting life into a square box. The rest of him was gathering the file folders for his upcoming briefing. Unfortunately the handle of his nine-iron had other ideas.
Out in the briefing room, where SG-13 was waiting for him, they heard a crash.
"General?" Dixon shouted in concern, and ran to the door. His eyes widened, he said a word he'd never say in front of his kids, and he shouted for a medical team.
O'Neill was lying in a heap next to his desk, his silvering hair showing the red starkly.
"Wake up, Jack."
The voice sounded familiar, so Jack decided he ought to open his eyes. But when he did, his surroundings made him sit up immediately, alert and tense. Because he was not where he should be.
Instead he was sitting in a restaurant booth, upholstered in a truly despicable shade of olive, and the table in front of him was the sort of faux-wood plastic popular in the 70's. He looked up to see a familiar face sitting across from him.
"Jake?" he asked in disbelief. The man certainly looked like Jacob Carter, right down to the brown Tok'ra uniform he was wearing. But the former general couldn't be here because -- well, because there was no here for one thing, and Jacob was dead, for another. "Aren't you dead?" he asked, feeling quite suspicious.
Carter just smiled a little. "Some might think so. But we're not here because of me."
Jack got that funny, bad feeling in his stomach, and he knew what Jacob was saying. "I'm dead, aren't I?"
"Well, no," Carter corrected him. "But your body is currently comatose in the infirmary from a concussion and the question is whether you will wake up again."
So, not dead. But since this was the late Jacob Carter speaking to him, he was likely dreaming or hallucinating. Or, given his track record, it was even more likely that some advanced race was playing with his mind again.
Maybe there was something to be said for going to the Pentagon, after all. He was getting too old for this crap.
Jack bent his head and scrubbed his hands through his hair. It didn't feel different from any other time, which only said that the simulation was pretty good. He looked up at Jacob and asked, "What happened? Last thing I remember, I was in my office getting ready for a briefing with Dixon…"
Carter chuckled slightly. "Now you know the reason I don't play golf. Those clubs are hazardous to your health."
Jack stared at him. He'd gotten beaned in the head by his own club? "You're kidding me."
"Nope. And it gets better," Jacob warned.
Rolling his eyes, Jack let out an aggrieved sigh and folded his arms. "All right. Give me the rest. You are of the glowing jellyfish people now, I take it?"
Jacob snorted with a laugh. "Only you, Jack, would sit in a place full of Ascendants and call them that." He took a sip from the coffee cup in front of him and his face grew more serious as he leaned forward. "I'm afraid the rest isn't funny. There's been, shall we say, a challenge. A certain very powerful member of the Others has demanded that you stand iudaca, a form of trial, in order to win the choice of your destiny."
At this point in his Stargate career, Jack couldn't even be bothered to get mad. For a people who claimed not to interfere, the ascended really did poke around in mortal affairs a lot. He settled for rolling his eyes again. "Trial for what?" he asked.
Carter's mouth was tight as though he could scarcely get out the words. "Genocide of the Goa'uld."
Jack couldn't have heard him correctly. He blinked and stared at Jacob, and finally spoke very slowly, with no more sarcasm than necessary, "I'm sorry -- I thought I heard you say the word 'genocide' and the Goa'uld in the same sentence. I must have missed something, like how killing the Goa'uld was a bad thing."
Despite his intention, his voice rose on the last few words. Jacob rose partly out of his chair, leaning over the table with his hand outstretched. "Jack!" he exclaimed loudly and then abruptly lowered his voice to a hiss. "Hush. This is serious."
"I am serious," Jack protested, nevertheless quieting. He felt rather ridiculous actually, since as far as he could tell, no one had even looked up from their newspapers at his outburst.
Jacob sat back down, but was still leaning forward, intensely meeting his eyes. "No, you're not," he corrected. "Jack, you live or die by this trial, you have to understand that. This is not for show, and it's most definitely not a game."
"I'm certainly not having any fun," Jack muttered. He rubbed at his forehead, wondering if he was feeling a phantom pain from getting whacked on the head or this situation was just that absurd.
But when Jacob didn't say anything for a long moment, Jack finally heaved a sigh. "Okay, fine. I'll play." He looked up and fixed Jacob with a glare. "Since it seems like I don't have any choice."
Jacob just returned it, level and unintimidated. "Hey, don't shoot the messenger. You almost didn't get one at all."
Waving one hand in a sort of apology, Jack said, "Okay. So what the hell is this trial? Is it like the Tollan triad thing?"
Jacob gave a little sympathetic smile and folded his hands back around his cup. "Sort of. But more like one of our regular trials. Each side has representation. There's a jury, and also a judge."
"A glowing jellyfish judge?" Jack asked, imagining all the ways this could go horribly wrong. Annoying, stupid, arrogant, pretentious, interfering …
"No. But they will be watching," Jacob interrupted his inner rant, catching Jack by surprise.
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Then who? Lya? Thor? All right, c'mon, tell me it's Thor -- " he prompted eagerly.
Carter laughed. "No. The judge isn't Thor. The Asgard and Nox aren't involved at all."
"Then who?"
Jacob smiled. "It's a surprise."
"I hate surprises. Told you that, time and time again, you know."
"You'll like this one," Jacob promised, and his smile shifted to something darker and more ominous. "It'll be the last good one we get for awhile."
"Damn Tok'ra," Jack muttered, and with that, realized something and looked up sharply, "Haven't heard from Selmak yet."
"No. And you won't." Jacob drained his coffee cup and set it down with a thump, to end to the discussion. "Come on. Let's get this show on the road, Jack. Your brain's not going to heal up on its own."
Jack grimaced at the pointed reminder. But he made a mental note to ask Jacob about Selmak at some point. Something was wrong there and he intended to find out what. He reluctantly followed Jacob toward the diner's door.
When the Tok'ra pushed the swinging doors open, a blinding flash of white light washed over his eyes.
When he could see again, they were somewhere else. Jack was tempted to laugh. It really was a courtroom. It looked almost exactly like the room in Colorado Springs where he had spent four excruciating hours of sheer boredom being not selected for jury duty two years ago. Same wooden panels, same limp flags, same audience seating area separated from the court itself by a short wooden railing. The judge's box was straight ahead, raised up a few steps, but the chair was empty. In fact, all the chairs were vacant. There was no one in the whole room.
To the left side was the witness stand, and the chairs for the jury were along the wall. Directly in front of the judge were two rectangular tables, one for the prosecution and one for the defense.
Jacob held open the flimsy wooden gate -- the actual attorney's bar in a real courtroom -- and allowed Jack to pass inside.
"So, Jake, what's your position in all this?" Jack wandered idly up to the defense table, but didn't sit down. "You're my defense lawyer?"
"No," Carter shook his head once. "I'm the bailiff."
"What?" Jack asked, confused. The bailiff? The bailiff was usually the guy who brought in the prisoner, all right, but he wasn't usually the prisoner's friend.
Jacob explained, "This was the only way I could come get you beforehand and try to explain at least a little what this is about. So try to behave yourself, Jack. If you get in trouble, I get in trouble, and I've got enough."
Before Jack could ask him to elaborate, Jacob looked around as if he heard something, then said, "They're coming."
Jack turned around as the door opened. He didn't quite gape like a fish, but he realized he was staring, as Janet Frasier smiled at him, and Charlie Kawalsky shook his head with a grin. "Hey, Jack. Long time no see."
"Janet? Charlie? Is it really you?" he asked, confused and wary. Because while it was good to see them, he'd been pretty sure that neither had Ascended. Hell, Charlie had died before they'd even known there was such a thing as Glowy People, and he doubted that Oma'd been taking vacations from Kheb to visit Earth back in the day.
Janet came close and put her hand on his arm. Her touch felt real. Her smile looked just a touch mischievous and she tilted her head back to meet his eyes. "We are the Janet and Charlie you knew. Whether we're real or only in your mind, I can't tell you."
"Can't or won't?" he challenged.
"Can't," she answered. "Because I don't know."
"I feel like me," Charlie declared with a shrug. The familiar casual attitude gave Jack a pang and he thought that whether it was "really" Charlie or not, wasn't important. Charlie and Janet were here, somehow, and that was the important part.
"So you're my crack defense team?" Jack asked.
"Who else?" Janet replied. "We both know the evil of the Goa'uld and we know you."
"And we weren't gonna let you do it alone," Charlie added. He pulled out a chair for Janet and when Jack stood back to give Charlie room to pull out the next chair for Jack, Charlie just snorted and moved to the third chair to claim for himself.
Jack sat down between his two friends. He was about to ask how long they'd have to wait for something to happen, when there was a flash of light to his left. He turned quickly, to find a man he didn't know standing behind the prosecutor's sole chair. He was wearing a suit over his bulky frame and waist gone to fat that made him look even bigger than he was. Between his thinning grey hair and round, cheerful face, he looked like a public servant who spent a lot of time behind a desk.
Jack leaned closer to Janet and asked in a murmur, "Who's that?"
She tensed and didn't take her eyes from the other. "He's called Jim."
"Jim …" Jack gestured for her to keep going and finish the name, but she said nothing more, only watched Jim.
Jim turned with a smile toward the defense table, and Jack immediately felt a cold prickle against the back of his neck. The smile was bright, almost sunny, but… something … wasn't quite right.
"Jack O'Neill," he greeted jovially, "good to meet you at last. I've heard so much about you. Pity about your head and all."
Jack eyed him, made wary by the friendliness. "Right. Thanks. Aren't you, y'know, on the other side?" he asked, waving toward the other table.
"It's just my job," Jim said with an expansive shrug. "No hard feelings, right?"
Behind Jack, Charlie muttered in as hostile a tone Jack had ever heard from his friend, "Sure. 'Jim.'"
Looking into Jim's eyes, Jack felt that prickle turn into a full blown case of the creeps. The eyes were black as empty space, and as cold. Evil. And suddenly he knew who "Jim" had to be and who had wanted this stupid trial in the first place.
Jack sat back abruptly in his chair, eyes widening as his heart leaped for the ceiling. "Anubis!"
Jim's smile changed to something more feral and gloating. It was chilling to see the affable mask of "Jim" fall away and reveal the malice beneath. "Very good, Jack."
"But you're supposed to be fighting Oma," Jack protested. "That's what Daniel said."
Anubis laughed. "Ah, dear little Oma… How much power do you really think I need to spare for this little farce, O'Neill? By the rules the Others themselves set up, you can't win. So enjoy yourself, I certainly will." He chuckled again and addressed the empty courtroom, raising his left hand high. "I call the jury to attend."
He snapped his fingers. More lights flashed, as the jury arrived and took up their seats.
Jack watched them arrive, and felt his heart sink down somewhere past his feet. This certainly wasn't a pleasant surprise.
His jury was largely made up of people who had no reason to feel even slightly positive toward him. There was Alar from Euronda, Reese the Replicator girl, Fifth, two Unas, the really condescending guy from Tollana, and the creepy guy from the Aschen world. There was also one of the bug-like Reetou, which was so freaky to look at Jack wished it would've stayed invisible. The last one in the far chair was one of the weird aliens who had nearly taken over the SGC.
"How can they do this?" Jack pulled the near shoulders of his supposed defense team together into a huddle, and spoke in a loud whisper, "I mean, all of them hate me, and hell, I killed most of them. The Tollan is the only one who might even side with me. How fair is that?"
"Fair? Who said this was supposed to be fair?" Charlie retorted with a snort, and then, after Janet glared at him, he got serious and apologetic, "Sorry. There was only so much we could do under the rules."
Janet added in a whisper. "You're right; they don't like you very much. But that doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter --?" he burst out incredulously, and she hushed him.
"No, it doesn't," she insisted. "Listen. We only need to sway a majority. The issue is whether you must answer for the deaths of … " she made a face and imitated Teal'c, "'the false gods." Take another look at the jury, Jack. How many of them are friends with the Goa'uld either?"
He looked again and thought about it. The Tollan wasn't going to be sympathetic to the Goa'uld, was he, not after Tollana was destroyed by Tanith. The Reetou were the Goa'uld's enemy even more than humans'. The Unas had been hosts to the Goa'uld, long before humans came on the scene. And the replicators had been, in the end, destroyed by Anubis, not by humans.
The alien mimic invaders had been defeated, but the SGC had never discovered where they came from and nor had the aliens tried again. Besides, they were alien aliens -- could never know what they thought anyway. That one was definitely a wildcard.
That left the Eurondan and the Aschen, who were both so convinced of their own superiority they'd accept genocide without blinking. They shouldn't have a problem with his actions against the Goa'uld, at least not from a moral standpoint. But his actions against them meant he probably couldn't expect a lot of love from them, no matter what he said here. But if he only needed a majority, they didn't matter.
Jacob took steps forward and stiffened, nearly to attention, "Rise. The iuda comes."
Beside him Charlie and Janet immediately stood up, and Jack followed their lead, watching the large chair for the judge curiously. He wondered who it was going to be. Someone dead or Ascended, it seemed. Maybe Shifu? Or Skaara. Skaara would be cool. Or Skaara's dad.
Even with his eyes on the chair, he didn't see the change. There was a flash and when it was gone, someone was sitting there.
Jack took a step backward in pure shock. The judge was himself. Jack O'Neill. The same guy who looked at him in the mirror every morning. Except that Jack had never worn black judge's robes.
Judge Jack glanced at him and his smile was really a smirk, enjoying Jack's confusion. "This iudiaca. iudicaca," he corrected himself, wrongly, and smirked again at Anubis' irritation, "will start now. You can all sit down." He waved a hand vaguely toward the tables, and the three defense team members took their seats again. Anubis didn't.
Jack leaned into Janet's shoulder again and whispered, "Me? Can't be. What's going on?"
"It's not you," she answered, then frowned, "Well, I guess it is. Mostly. He's the Harlan clone."
"Oh," Jack leaned back, now getting it. He'd been there when his robot double had died in that mess with the robot team and Cronus. It had been extremely unsettling to watch the life drain out of his own eyes.
The robot Jack had all of Jack's knowledge up until the point of his creation, so in that sense he was Jack. Of course if this whole thing was in his head, then they were all Jack, but this one would be the real, inside Jack. And that was probably not a good thing, since innermost Jack was neither forgiving nor innocent.
There was silence in the courtroom and the judge glanced at Anubis, and raised his eyebrows. "Well? This is your show, Anubis, you wanna get going?"
Anubis' lip curled and he glared hatefully at Judge Jack, before getting back to his feet. He said, with enviable smoothness, "As you wish, iuda. The prosecution calls the System Lord Ra."
Jack leaned forward at that, curious in spite of himself. Ra had, after all, started this whole adventure. He'd always felt just a teeny bit sorry for some of the kids on the later teams, who'd only gotten to see losers like Moloc and Mot, not the more impressive and actually frightening snakeheads.
The usual flash of light and Ra arrived, sitting grandly in the small wooden chair of the witness box. He was in the same host, the pretty young man with the long, black hair and black-lined eyes. His formal looking outfit, complete with a golden cloak or robe across his shoulders, had a wide gold and red pectoral in the shape of a flying bird across his bare chest.
"I am Amun-Ra," he stated in that deceptively soft but still Goa'uldish voice of his. "Lord of the sun and the waters, the wind and the sand, father of the gods, and --"
"Yes, we know who you are," Anubis interrupted. "A Goa'uld system lord."
But Ra didn't seem to take offense. He just stopped and gave a very small smile, as if pleased that he'd irritated Anubis. Jack remembered that Ra had been one of those who'd forced Anubis into exile long ago.
Jack was amused. Not even in the afterlife did the old Goa'uld rivalries die.
"Are you acquainted with the accused, Jack O'Neill of the Tau'ri?" Anubis asked.
Ra's gaze seemed to slide over to him languidly, and when he was looking at Jack, it was with the mildly annoyed expression of seeing gum on the bottom of his shoe. "Of course. He came to Abydos, one of my worlds, several years ago. He raised a rebellion against me, inspired my workers to give their lives in a futile bid for independence, and destroyed my ha'tak with a nuclear weapon. It was only by my own foresight that the people of Abydos were not instantly killed by the explosion."
"You were fleeing, you mean," Charlie interrupted scornfully.
"Kawalsky," Judge Jack warned, "You'll get your chance. Quiet."
Anubis ignored the exchange. "And you?"
Ra lifted his chin and now his gaze wasn't mild at all, as he nailed Jack with it. Oh yes, Ra was not happy with him. "He killed me."
"Were you the only Goa'uld killed by O'Neill or those under his command?" Anubis asked.
"No, I was not."
"Objection!" Janet stood, and slapped her hand on the table. "Ra was already dead before any of these … incidents took place. How is he supposed to speak about incidents he took no part in?"
Anubis turned to face the judge. "In the same way that Doctor Frasier and anyone else on this plane of existence can know of events that occur in the mortal plane: by observation. Ra is prepared to speak of the murders of his children and other Goa'uld as a witness to those events. This will save the court time and effort in procuring each individual Goa'uld victim."
Janet opened her mouth to protest the characterization of the Goa'uld as victims, but shut it again when Judge O'Neill lifted his hand to stop her. "Well, I'm all about saving time and effort," he said, but looked toward the jury, "So I will allow it. But you must all keep in mind that Ra knows no more about these events than anyone else who watched it. His perceptions may not be accurate. But then, I'm sure the good guys -- " he bit his lip as if he'd let it slip accidentally, and corrected himself, "I mean, the defense will correct any… mis-statements that Ra might make. He can't lie -- the Others won't let him -- but he doesn't have to tell the truth either. If you get the difference," that was said looking straight at Jack, who took it as the warning he meant it to be.
Jack leaned back, folding his arms, and prepared to listen to Ra and Anubis twist the truth beyond recognition. He wasn't disappointed either.
"I was only the first of many of my brothers and children to fall to O'Neill and his Tau'ri," Ra said. "My mate and queen Hathor died when O'Neill forced her into a vat of liquid nitrogen. The Tau'ri at O'Neill's command exploded two entire planets, which killed both Sokar and Apophis as well as their Goa'uld attendants and hundreds of Jaffa. O'Neill also killed Ares with the weapons of the Ancients. And there was my son Heru'ur --"
Kawalsky stood up. "Now that is a lie!" he pointed at Ra. "Heru'ur was killed by Apophis. Jack had nothing to do with it."
"Heru'ur would never have been seeking a treaty with Apophis at all, if not for the actions of the Tau'ri in destabilizing the entire Goa'uld alliance," Ra answered, with an expression on his youthful face as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
"That's irrelevant," Kawalsky shot back. "Goa'uld betray and stab each other in the back all the time, system lords die and others rise, that's just the way it was." He looked at Robot Jack. "We request the witness confine himself for Goa'uld deaths that Jack could at least theoretically be responsible for, not every one that happened to die in the last eight years."
"But it is not merely O'Neill's responsibility at issue, is it?" Anubis asked smoothly. "It is his culpability. As we all know, O'Neill was nearby at Heru'ur's death. Had Apophis not moved so quickly, O'Neill's plan was in fact to kill both Apophis and Heru'ur."
"Tok'ra plan," Jack muttered and turned to look at Jacob, who was doing a pretty good imitation of a statue. Jacob shrugged a little.
Jack, feeling rather disgruntled, turned his head back to his robot double, who was looking none too happy himself. "All right," he said after a moment. "Anubis is correct, this isn't just about direct kills, but about intentions, whether they were carried out or not. But," he pointed at Anubis, "that doesn't mean you get to drag in Goa'uld like Bastet. She died because she crossed Baal, no other reason. So keep the questions and your witness' answers on the topic at hand."
Anubis nodded once shortly, but didn't bother to hide his triumphant expression. "Of course. Please, lord Ra, continue. So far, we have you, Hathor, Sokar, Apophis, Ares, and Heru'ur added to the list of O'Neill's crimes. Are there more?"
"O'Neill is responsible for the actions of the shol'va Teal'c as Teal'c's master," Ra said, with a disgusted twist to his lips as he pronounced the Goa'uld word for traitor. "And Teal'c caused many Goa'uld deaths as well, including Apophis' queen Amaunet, their children Klorel and Tanith, and the system lord Cronus, whom Teal'c shot in the back. Tau'ri under O'Neill's command also murdered the Goa'uld lords Moloc, Mot, and the system lord Nurrti. O'Neill's subordinate, Samantha Carter, killed my brother Seth by her own hand."
Both Janet and Kawalsky squirmed with eagerness to challenge the list, but held their silence. Jack nearly had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something inappropriately gleeful. It was a pretty impressive list when put like that.
"I see," Anubis said slowly and very thoughtfully. Jack snorted. Once a drama queen, always a drama queen.
"But then," Anubis turned his bulky frame back to Ra, "these are all individuals. Individuals may be enemies. But as the other side is sure to point out, killing individual enemies is not the same as desiring the death of an entire race. How can you or any of us know that Jack O'Neill wished the entire Goa'uld race dead?"
"Because," Ra glanced at Jack, slyly, "he made alliances with the Tok'ra and the Rebel Jaffa, who wished nothing more than the death of all Goa'uld. Because the Tau'ri manufactured a poison invented by the vermin Tok'ra in sufficient quantities to kill all the Goa'uld, even larva in their Jaffa pouches, through the entire galaxy."
He paused, to allow that one time to sink in and then added, "But more importantly I know this, because O'Neill himself has said so."
Crap.
Jack fell back in his chair, realizing he was in trouble. Because Ra was absolutely correct. He was sure he'd spouted off "the only good snakehead is a dead snakehead" at least once, and he'd certainly thought it more than a few times. He had also put his approving signature on the request to develop and manufacture large quantities of the Goa'uld poison.
He'd do it all again, of course, because the Goa'uld were evil and deserved to die. But for the first time in a very long while, his conscience piped up from the back of his mind and asked very quietly whether that wasn't exactly what people who committed genocide thought about their victims?
"Don't listen to him," Janet whispered fiercely, her hand grabbing his sleeve. "You were defending us. You are not the bad guy here -- Anubis and Ra are."
Kawalsky leaned in on the other side. "Yeah. What she said."
The pep talk made Jack feel better, at least until he looked over at the jury box. Most were looking inscrutable or just downright alien, but Alar and Fifth looked disgusted, Reese looked horrified, and the Aschen -- well, he just looked smug. Omoc the Tollan seemed bored, and yet maybe also sad when his droopy-eyed gaze crossed Jack's briefly.
"Nothing further," Anubis said and sat down.
Charlie stood up and moved around to the front of the table to go near Ra. "First question, who activated the nuclear device on Abydos that ended up killing you?"
Ra hesitated and wrinkled his nose a little as if smelling something bad, before reluctantly deigning to speak to the human, "O'Neill did. In order to destroy me."
"But you modified the device, didn't you?" Charlie asked. "You added naquadah to it, to enhance the yield, knowing that it would either completely destroy the people of Abydos or fifty square miles around the Stargate on Earth -- over one million people -- if your plan of sending it through the Stargate had worked. Isn't that true?"
Ra fixed him with a proud stare. "You Tau'ri attacked me first. I could have done much worse in retaliation."
Charlie affected surprise. "Really? Worse than a naquadah-enhanced fission bomb?"
"Of course." He sneered, the calm and elegant façade cracking. "I allowed your primitive race to survive after the first rebellion, did I not? And we all see how my mercy has been repaid. I should have destroyed your entire planet."
Charlie let that sit in the silence for a moment, before glancing up at Judge Jack with a barely hidden smile. "No further questions."
Ra disappeared. Charlie returned to the table and sat down. "That got him," he muttered to Jack.
Jack wasn't so sure. He knew that Kawalsky was making the point that the Goa'uld were dangerous and that Jack had merely been defending himself and his planet, which was important. But Jack wasn't sure that it went entirely to the point. Couldn't Anubis just argue that Jack's actions had gone beyond the need of self-defense into revenge-motivated genocide? There were certainly plenty of real-world examples of that sort of thing.
"What now?" he whispered to Janet.
The Judge version of him seemed to be wondering the same thing. He looked to Anubis. "So? What now?"
Anubis looked at the jury, seemed pleased, and stood up behind his table. His voice dripped arrogant sarcasm. "O'Neill's defenders are doing my work so splendidly, I think they should continue. Let them call their witnesses."
Judge Jack frowned at him a little before giving a shrug. "Okay, if that's what you want. Janet and Charlie, apparently Anubis is done airing the dirty laundry. Your turn."
Janet stood up. "Yes, of course. Our first witness is Martouf."
Flash
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