Better go ahead and blow this thing.
Daniel flicked his eyes up toward Jack's monitor and then back, studying the plans in front of him and looking for the other option.
"That's not exactly a positive attitude, Jack," he said. The words came out just a little too loud, a little too quickly. There's always another option, he thought. He just had to find it.
The video feed flipped and spun for a moment as Jack pulled his helmet off and turned it around, staring into the camera.
"Listen to me. We are not getting out of here, mission accomplished, blow it!"
The clipped, exasperated words struck Daniel like the bullets he could hear Teal'c firing in the background, gathering in the space just under his sternum and weighing him down.
"Jack?!" he cried, the word half a question, half a plea. The brown eyes of his friend bored into him even through the video link, as though somehow Jack could see him.
"Daniel, PLEASE." Static mangled the words 'do as I ask,' but Daniel heard them, and they drove another projectile into the ache that was stealing his breath. "...before I get eaten alive by these...DAMN BUGS!"
Daniel pulled his lower lip through his teeth, ripping his eyes away from the monitor, grimacing as he stared down at the diagram of the sub. Where is it, there has to be a way, where is it, where is it?! Unable to find it, he couldn't resist looking at Jack, part of him knowing that each glance could be his last.
"Davis, give the order!" Jack shouted, throwing the helmet to the floor. The feed swirled again, the sound of machine gun fire doubling. Davis placed the phone on his heaving shoulder, looking with indecision at Daniel, just as unwilling to kill O'Neill as the other man, but ready to make the call. Daniel's brows were furrowed, his eyes anguished and his frowning mouth working slightly, as though desperate to find some combination of words that would change what he was seeing as he stared at Jack's boots in the monitor.
And then he was looking at Jack's knee, surrounded by replicators. Daniel shook his head in helpless denial, struggling to breathe as the machines swarmed his friends.
No, he mouthed silently as the replicators surrounded Jack, who couldn't fight off the ones dropping down from above and those encroaching along the floor at the same time.
Daniel broke.
"Okay," he breathed, slapping his hands down on the table and looking over at Davis, refusing to meet the man's eyes. "Okay." He flicked a glance back to the monitor, then down, feeling ashamed.
"Fire on target," Davis said, his face drawn with resignation.
"Dallas is firing torpedoes. Eight seconds to impact." Daniel listens to Siler in horror, his eyes burning. Taking a deep breath, he raises the stinging orbs to the radar screen, watching the torpedoes bore their way through the water toward his teammates, his friends; his friend and his best friend. The two men he just personally condemned to death.
His gaze flutters back and forth from the radar to Jack's video feed, watching death approach Jack and Teal'c from two separate directions.
"Blackbird attempting evasive maneuver," Siler said. Daniel's heart skipped, and for a moment he caught himself hoping the replicators evaded the missiles. No such luck.
"Torpedoes still on target. Two seconds." How could Siler be so calm about this? Jack was the man's friend; Siler was probably the only person who agreed with Jack on his crazy Burns-as-a-Goa'uld theory with the Simpsons.
Siler's expression didn't change as the torpedoes found their mark.
"Direct hit," he said. Daniel stopped breathing, his eyes rooted to the screen displaying Jack's video feed. The two men fell to the floor when the sub jolted from the force of the impacts and the water flooding into the compartments. Jack pulled himself up, facing the camera, his eyes widening and his face taking on a look of horror as he stared at it. He scrambled forward, ignoring the replicators crawling over his body, and reached for the device. His fingers skittered across the lens and suddenly the screen went dark.
"What-?!" Several someones shouted. Daniel jerked his head up, looking at Teal'c's feed, seeing replicators get picked up and carted off by the incoming water. Teal'c's camera was still on his helmet, still on his head, and as it shorted out someone groaned. The two men were trapped underwater; if the replicators hadn't killed them yet, Jack and Teal'c were about to drown.
Daniel just looked at the monitors, tears pooling in his eyes, the creases in his forehead smoothed away as shock and sadness took the place of panic and desperation. He shouldn't be shocked, he knew – his friends had been dying for the past several minutes and Daniel himself had ordered them killed – but somehow having the feeds cut off rendered him numb and speechless.
And lost.
And angry.
He hung his head for a moment, and then threw himself to his feet, pulling the microphone from his head and throwing it down to the table. Davis lifted his head out of his hand, watching Daniel with concern as the young man strode past the SGC personnel and out of the room.
