A/N:Beta'd by the wonderful Azar Darkstar.
Every trip was like a little death, and Jack O'Neill was so sick of death.
Almost losing one of his own could do that.
He stumbled slightly as he emerged from the event horizon; he would never grow completely accustomed to gate travel. One moment he was standing at the base of a giant sand dune, the heat beating down like a living thing bent on domination, then a step into the wavering event horizon, and he simply ceased to be.
From the snippets of conversation overhead between Carter and the base eggheads, he knew that the gates destroyed his physical body and allowed his essence to stream between them, making a new O'Neill on the other end. It wasn't as if he felt any different. There was no tale-tell sign that he was not the original copy of his parents' making.
'If I don't feel any different, is there really a difference?' God knew it would take bigger brains than his to answer that question.
He felt, rather than heard, the arrival of his team appearing on the ramp behind him. The 'wall o' water', as Kawalski had christened the visible event horizon, was a jealous mistress, reluctant to free the bodies which travelled within. Those scientists who have never experienced the gate denied that the SG teams could feel it, but Jack knew the sensation of leaving the horizon was akin to swimming through Jell-O.
'Breaking from a cocoon,' Carter had once tried to describe it to a fellow physicist. Daniel Jackson, leaning a bit on the mystical side, insisted it was a rebirth.
The voice of an unseen vengeful deity blared throughout the cavernous embarkation room. "Welcome home, SG-1. Report for debriefing at 08:00."
He heard a groan from his 2IC. "Why can't we ever go to a planet that's on the same time zone?"
"You know, I've suggested at the last few briefings to hang a clock right there, showing local time." Daniel Jackson waved vaguely in the direction of the glassed in Command and Control deck that overlooked the gate area. "Right now if you asked me what time it was, I couldn't even guess."
The two moved past their CO, oblivious to the fact he was still standing off to the side of the large metal ring.
"Teal'c, what time do you think it is?" Daniel turned to the fourth member of their team.
"It is time to prepare for the briefing with General Hammond," he answered matter-of-factly.
Daniel snorted, clasping Teal'c on the back. "Come on, let's hit the showers before they do." He gestured toward the members of SG-3, who had literally stepped through minutes before SG-1's appearance. The team was still in the process of handing over their weapons and sample packs to the decon and munitions techs.
"It's 06:30," O'Neill whispered softly to himself. Years of standing watch posts at all hours had gifted him with an unerring sense of time. He did not need to glance at a nearby computer monitor as most of the other travellers did in order to orient to what has become known as 'SGC Standard Time.'
"Sir, are you all right?" Carter has heard the barely audible reply from her CO, and she turned to see a far-away look in his eyes.
She waited for him to catch up, and drop his gear at the collection station before pivoting and walking with him toward the main hallway. Unlike SG-3, their team routinely skipped the queue at the decon/munitions station.
Just one of the perks of being the best.
Snapping out of his reverie, O'Neill flashed a grimace at Carter. "Yeah, just need some coffee," he grumbled, "...and aspirin, Carter, lots of aspirin..."
Their voices trailed off as the heavy metal blast door swung into the closed position in their wake.
Murphy, the Patron Saint of SG-1, was in full force as Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c descended upon the locker room. As per O'Neill's unofficial standing orders, Daniel Jackson and Teal'c bided their time in the corridor opposite the entrance to the shower and dressing facility. It made far more sense to allow Captain Carter first access to the showers for ten minutes than to make her wait on the male members of SG-1 plus any other SG teams who arrived after them.
Daniel slouched against the concrete wall, the welcome cold leaching through his beige jacket and cotton tee shirt. Looking straight through the locker room's open archway, he could see Carter's open locker, the shampoo/body wash missing. Across the way, Teal'c was staring off into space.
If today's events had affected the stalwart man, he gave no outward sign. Daniel, on the other hand was under no such self-restraint.
Removing his salt-splashed glasses and running a hand through the damp spikes of sweat-caked hair, Daniel reflected on a mission gone horribly wrong.
For too long their luck had held. They were SG-1, the flagship team operating under the legendary Irish luck of Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill. They were the best, the brightest, and invincible. And today they had almost paid for that arrogance with blood.
Breathing deeply of the crisp, recycled and scrubbed air, he allowed it to cleanse away the acrid grit as he recalled the last six hours.
He christened the planet 'Dune', after Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel. His caution to beware of sand worms drew a blank look from O'Neill, and Teal'c querried, "Daniel Jackson, we have only just arrived. Have you knowledge of this world?"
Daniel's look of mild annoyance vanished as Sam Carter chimed in with, "The beginning is such a delicate time..." drawing a delighted grin from him.
Throughout the long hours spent exploring the sun baked ruins, they continued to trade lines from the movie in rapid exchanges until O'Neill called for a cease-fire.
Shouldering his pack, preparing to move out to the last set of ruins in the vicinity, Daniel couldn't resist a final call, "The spice must flow."
He saw Sam suppress a brief smile, which even a quick glance over at her Commanding Officer standing on the reed walkway couldn't eradicate completely.
Then it happened. One minute he could see her blue eyes dancing in barely concealed merriment, her lips parting to reply to him as she moved to regroup with others, then she was gone.
"Major Carter!" Teal'c called out, levelling his staff weapon at the unseen enemy.
"The sand – she's in the sand!" Daniel yelled shrilly, plunging off the woven reed walkway and into the sand drifts. He promptly sunk up to his chest in blisteringly hot sand and gravel, before his boots rested against solid ground once more.
"Daniel, don't move!" O'Neill's command rang out with the force of a rifle crack, as he slipped out of his backpack. "Teal'c… with me," he panted, stretching out prone and wriggling away from the reed matting on his belly.
Teal'c, also realising what had befallen his team-mate, did the same, trying to disperse his weight as evenly against the surface as possible. Daniel was surprised when Teal'c tossed his staff weapon toward him.
"Daniel Jackson, mark her position as precisely as possible. And do not come any closer," he emphasised just then his arm plunged through the brittle sand and salt crust, a sand funnel forming quickly under his chest and shoulders. Teal'c recoiled in surprise, and began to cautiously skirt the air pocket.
"Where, Daniel?" O'Neill's voice was deceptively calm as his eyes scanned the unblemished expanse of sand extending outward from the temple walls to the horizon.
"About eight feet to your right," Daniel panted, "just about... there!" He carefully hefted the staff weapon and tossed it a few feet beyond O'Neill. He heard the muted thud as it hit.
O'Neill reached the area indicated by the staff weapon, but there was no sign of Carter, no tale-tell depression to mark the boundaries of the pitfall. Sand from the dunes above had filled the void, burying Carter without a trace.
He began to dig frantically with his bare hands, thrusting his arms down into the blistering sand hoping to feel her body under the surface.
Daniel unconsciously held his breath, visualising the weight compressing her chest. In sharp contrast to the world above, Sam would be entombed in darkness, sound muffled, the heat of the sand burning even through the thick cloth of her BDU. Despite the incredible heat of the afternoon sun, he shivered thinking about what Sam was experiencing. She had literally been buried alive.
A spasm of terror raced through his body as he saw O'Neill stop digging, his hands clasped as if in prayer atop the sand. Fearing the worst, Daniel choked back the impulse to scream at him to keep trying. This couldn't be happening, not to them.
He stared in shock, as Jack O'Neill raised his gaze skyward for a moment that seemed to last an eternity. Whether in anger or supplication, Daniel could not tell. Then, remarkably, he saw the Colonel resume digging at an even more frenetic pace. Carter's hand was sticking out of the sand.
When she had felt the ground give way beneath her boots, she'd managed to raise her right arm above her head before the dune had come down to seal the pit. Her left arm was helplessly plastered to her side, no chance on reaching across to key her radio. They'd never find her in time. Already the small amount of air around her was dissipating, being absorbed into the mix of sand and pebbles throughout the drift.
Carter's mind raced – 'They don't know where I am.' She replayed the last seconds in her mind's eye.
The Colonel had been off by the temple wall. She remembered his back being toward her, the dusty black field pack in contrast to the beige and olive BDU favoured by her Commanding Officer.
Teal'c had been somewhere off to her left, maybe even still around the corner of the western wall. He would not have seen her.
'Daniel saw me, I know he was looking at me,' she prayed fervently. Her thoughts were cut off by a sudden coughing fit. 'Bad move, Captain,' she chastised hysterically, as she struggled to suck in the last of the usable air.
Fine grains of dust coated her nose and throat. It was so hard to draw a breath, even as her stomach rebelled from the grit and the feeling of nausea compelled the air in her lungs to be expelled. The retching made her light headed. In desperation she worked her head a few inches downward, and gripped the cotton collar of her jacket between her teeth. Allowing the fabric to become wet with spit she was able to filter out the larger of the dust particles. Slowly she felt the black edges of unconsciousness recede as she fought to draw air through the MacGyvered filter.
'Okay... just bought a few more minutes... need to let them know where to look...' The sand gave way as she tried to move her extended right arm. 'Good,' she breathed silently against the cotton bit in her mouth. Exerting as much as possible without the faintness returning, her arm began to move.
'Small circles... small circles...' she chanted silently. There was no way to tell how far down the collapsing sand had carried her. Risking the intense pain of the sand, through slitted eyes she saw a dark orange glow. 'Must be closer to the top than I thought. What the--?' her hand was clasped hard in a familiar grip.
Hands followed her arm downward, shoving aside huge handfuls of sand. His fingernails felt as if they were gouging strips of flesh from her arm. Carter realised that it was the air kissing the friction burns as he worked to free her. The light became stronger; suddenly O'Neill's hands were roughly caressing her face and neck as he cleared the clinging soil from around her head.