Title: Objects at Rest
Author: DizzyDrea
Summary: Jack O'Neill decides to retire because there are more important things in his life than the Air Force. But he just can't stay away from the Stargate Program, no matter how hard he tries. And in truth, he hasn't tried very hard.
Notes: This is part two of a two part story. The first part is titled "Objects in Motion." I began to think about how this show should end when, after ten years on the air, it was announced that the tenth year would be the last. But as with all things, this story changed over time. Instead of this being the end of the series, it represents a possible ending sometime in the future. These stories were inspired by the Babylon 5 episodes "Objects in Motion"/"Objects at Rest." I've borrowed the episode names, but not the details of the plots.
Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 belongs to MGM and Gekko Productions, and anyone else who owns a piece of this thing. Fellas, you've done a bang-up job on this roller coaster ride. I salute you.

~o~

"Take cover!" Mitchell yelled. He didn't like this, not one bit. They were all exposed, taking fire from all sides. The two scientists weren't armed, and had dropped where they stood behind a column. It wasn't the best protection, but it was all they had.

Around him, the GO-Team, Daniel, Carter, Vala, Teal'c and Jack were returning fire, but without a clear idea of what—or who—they were firing at, it was just a waste of ammunition.

"Cease fire!" Cam called out.

The world around him went silent as both the weapons of the Stargate teams and the unseen enemy stopped. That was odd.

"Is everyone undamaged?" Teal'c called to the group.

Murmurs of "I'm okay" rippled around the group. The most severe injuries seemed to be to pride. That was better than the alternative.

Jack, having been near the rear of the group, was taking cover among the outermost circle of columns. He stuck his head out to take stock of the situation. A blast to the column he was hiding behind made him think better of that idea.

Vala, who had been watching the rear of the group, was hiding behind the column next to his. "We need to get out of here," she told him, holding her gun at her side, unsure where to fire since the weapons blasts seemed to be coming from all sides.

"We're gonna hafta run for it if we want to get to cover closer to the middle," he informed her. "You ready?"

At Vala's nod, Jack called out to the rest of the group. "Okay, everyone stay down," he called out. "We're gonna see if we can work in closer to you."

He didn't like being so far out on the edge of the columns. They were large, nearly three feet in diameter at the base, but being on the outer edge, it was too easy for weapons fire to reach them.

As soon as he rose and started moving in towards the rest of the group, the mystery weapons started firing again. Ducking down to make himself as small a target as possible, he and Vala made their way over to Teal'c's position, nearer the center of the columns.

Vala dove behind the column next to Teal'c, joining Daniel, while O'Neill crouched down behind his large friend. They were all still too spread out, but his first concern was to identify and then neutralize the enemy.

"What do you think, Teal'c?" Jack wanted to know. "Taks? Angry Jaffa?"

"I do not believe that we are being fired upon by Jaffa, O'Neill," Teal'c informed his friend.

"Must be some kind of automated system," Vala put in. "We must have triggered it somehow."

"Yeah, but how?" Daniel remarked. "This didn't happen when I came here with SG-7."

"Well, we need to find out for sure," Jack said, trying to come up with a plan. "Think we can sneak around to that hillside and see what's going on?" he asked Teal'c.

"It will be difficult, but we appear to have no choice," Teal'c returned solemnly.

Jack tossed a glance at Vala who just rolled her eyes. "Okay, Teal'c, Vala, you're with me. Carter," he called out, turning to look behind him, finding her crouched behind a column a few feet away. "See if you can get the rest of the team closer to the center of the colonnade. The cover should be better."

"Got it," she replied with a nod, a familiar sense of confidence rippling through her. This was just like old times, and she knew from long experience that there wasn't a situation they'd faced yet that they couldn't find a way out of.

Jack turned and nodded to Vala and Teal'c. Vala dropped her hand to Daniel's shoulder, giving him a reassuring squeeze. "I'll be back in a few, Darling," she told him as she prepared to move away.

"Thanks for the warning," Daniel replied cheekily, tossing her a smile for luck.

"Since when is he in charge?" Mitchell called out, watching Jack, Teal'c and Vala get ready to move out.

"Since we started getting shot at," came Carter's crisp reply.

Mitchell nodded his head. "Good to know."

~o~

Jack, Teal'c and Vala watched as Sam and Mitchell, with the GO team covering them, moved the science team closer to the room at the center of the colonnade. When the weapons fire died down, and it appeared that the rest of the team was safe for the moment, Jack gave the order to move out.

Columns exploded all around them as they moved further out towards the edge of the courtyard. When they'd reached the path leading away from the structure, they began to make a run for it, only to notice that the firing had stopped.

"That's odd," Vala observed, looking at her two companions.

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

"Okay," Jack said, wanting to take advantage of the relative quiet while they could. "Let's move up the hillside and see if we can tell where the blasts are coming from."

As one they set off for the rise leading back the way they came, running along the crest until they reached the cover of the trees.

"Keep any eye out for anything suspicious," Jack directed.

"At this point, anything is suspicious," Vala returned with a smirk.

They made their way among the trees, staying in the interior to remain hidden. Teal'c suddenly stopped and raised his hand, the others dropping where they stood.

"O'Neill," he called in a low voice.

Both Jack and Vala moved to flank Teal'c, following his pointing finger until they both saw what had caught his attention. Pulling his scope out of his vest, Jack looked at the object with interest.

"What is it?" Vala inquired.

"Looks like some kind of small cannon. I don't recognize the design," Jack said, eyes still focused on his target. "T, think you can hit it?"

"You sure that's wise?" Vala put in.

"Only one way to find out," Jack returned, tucking his scope back into his vest. Nodding at Teal'c, he gave the go-ahead.

Teal'c raised his staff weapon and primed it. Taking a deep breath, eyes focused, he pulled the trigger, letting loose a blast of his own. The staff blast impacted the cannon, causing a shimmering effect as its shields absorbed the energy. Immediately, the cannon swiveled around and fired two shots directly at them.

Jack and Vala dove for cover, while Teal'c merely crouched down further in an attempt to make himself smaller.

"Great, now it's firing on us up here!" Vala called out.

"I do not believe so, Vala Mal Doran," came Teal'c's sedate reply.

Indeed, after firing the two shots at the intruders, the cannon swiveled back to point at the colonnade below and fell silent.

"You guys okay up there?" came Mitchell's tense voice over the radio.

Jack grabbed his radio through his vest and snapped off a reply. "Just peachy," he snarked. "We're heading back, so stay under cover," he ordered.

"Roger," came Mitchell's confirmation.

Looking at his two companions, Jack shrugged. "So they're only dangerous while we're down there," he observed.

"Or while we're shooting at them up here," Vala observed wryly.

"It would seem so," Teal'c agreed with both his companions.

Scrubbing his hand over his face and readjusting his favorite hat, Jack cocked his head in the direction they had come. "Shall we?"

~o~

When they reached the bottom of the rise, they stopped at the FRED and regrouped. Amazingly, it hadn't suffered any damage in the chaos that had erupted as the cannons fired at the team.

"We've got to find better cover," Jack said, eyeing the colonnade critically.

"Maybe we should have the others pull back here," Vala suggested. "The FRED seems to be outside the kill zone."

"That would require exposing the science team to weapons fire once again," Teal'c pointed out. "Daniel Jackson has experience with this. The others do not."

Jack nodded his head in agreement. "They're safer where they are." At Vala's smirk, he amended his statement. "As long as they don't move."

"Well, we've got to do something," she said. "Every time one of us sticks their head out, we risk getting it blown off."

"And you thought this was going to be a boring mission," Jack returned, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

Vala smirked once more, then turned to survey the area, hoping for some inspiration.

Jack, meanwhile, reached for the radio on his vest. "Carter, you copy?" he called out.

"Yes, sir," he could hear over the radio. He chuckled a little. Funny how people reverted to their comfort zone when things went bad. She probably didn't even know she was doing it.

"Got any ideas?" he asked, knowing she would have been thinking about this while they were gone.

"Matter of fact, I do," she confirmed.

"Let's have it."

"I think we'd be better off inside the room, sir," she said.

Jack turned and met Teal'c's eyes, surprise reflecting in both sets. Remembering the briefing, he asked the only important question there was. "Can you even get inside without the combination?"

"We think so," she said.

"Who's we?" Jack wanted to know.

"Dr. Phelan and I have been talking it over. We think the door controls are standard issue, so it may be possible to hotwire them."

"May be?" Vala asked Jack with a raised eyebrow that reminded him of Teal'c.

Jack smirked and keyed his radio once more, echoing Vala's question. "May be?"

"We haven't gotten a good look at the controls yet, Jack," Daniel put in, "but from what I remember of the last time I was here, we should be able to pry the control panel off and reprogram it to let us in."

Jack considered this for a moment, then asked the next relevant question. "And we'll be safer inside the room than outside?"

There was silence on the other end for a few moments. Jack could just picture Sam and Daniel discussing whether or not they would all get killed the second they stepped into the room.

The radio crackled to life, and Sam's voice floated out over the air. "We think there's a control panel inside the room as well. Probably a console where you can access the database and control the security system. If we can figure out how it works, we should be able to disable the cannons."

"As well as any other security protocols inside the room," Daniel added.

Jack sighed. That was a lot of ifs, shoulds and maybes. But if there was one thing he had learned in the years he'd been involved with this team, it was that those words were more of a guarantee than most people's definitely.

"Okay, we're gonna work our way back to your position," Jack informed the team. "Carter, wait until we get back and then you, Phelan and Daniel see if you can't bust the door down."

"Roger that," Sam confirmed over the radio.

Jack looked at Teal'c and Vala, who were both looking back at him with speculative expressions. "We've got to try something," Jack said, as much to convince them as himself.

"Indeed," Teal'c returned with a nod of his head.

Vala merely shrugged. In her time with the SGC, she'd seen crazier plans work, so she wasn't about to question this one. "Let's go," she said instead, turning to head off for the columns ahead of them.

~o~

By the time they reached the center of the colonnade, Sam and Daniel had already pried off the cover on the front of the control console and were up to their elbows in control crystals. Dr. Phelan appeared to be examining each crystal as it was removed, and he and Daniel were speculating about what order to replace the crystals to disable the door controls.

"It's got to be reverse order, Daniel," Phelan said.

"Not necessarily," Sam put in. Daniel looked at her, confused. "Jonas Quinn and I spent some time working on an Ancient device a few years ago," she explained. "The order for the crystals to reverse the effect of the device wasn't the exact reverse. We may have to try a few combinations to get the right one."

"Great," Phelan interjected. "An Ancient jigsaw puzzle."

Daniel smiled at the metaphor. This might have been an interesting puzzle to figure out, but doing it under fire wasn't his idea of fun either. "So let's just start trying combinations and see where it gets us." He paused for a moment, then a thought occurred to him. "Unless that's going to get us shot at some more?"

Sam turned to him, a sour expression on her face. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Daniel."

He hefted a couple of crystals in his hands, smiling at Sam. "You're welcome," came his sarcastic reply.

The first combination didn't work. Neither did the next two. They ran through several more, with similar results. All three were starting to get frustrated.

"Anybody give any consideration to what we do if this doesn't work?" Mitchell put in from his position behind the innermost column, nearest the console.

"We make a run for it back to the FRED?" Vala suggested.

"Why didn't we do that anyway?" he wanted to know.

Teal'c, from his position beside O'Neill behind the next column over, gave the answer. "Doctor Phelan and Doctor Lin are not experienced warriors. It would be a risk to allow them to return the way we came without disabling the defensive weapons first."

"Ah," Mitchell said, "good point."

"I think we've got it," Daniel called out over the banter.

"Everybody stay down in case this doesn't work," Sam advised.

Sam slid the last crystal in place, and behind her, the door to the room slid silently open. She picked up her P-90 and moved to the opening, Daniel following with his 9mm in his hand. Lopez and Tait from the GO Team had taken positions near the door at Jack's suggestion. They now flanked Sam and Daniel, ready to follow them into the room.

Sam stuck her head quickly around the corner, testing to see if anything would fire at her from inside the room. When nothing happened, she turned to Daniel and the GO Team guys and indicated that she wanted them to follow her into the room, each covering a different corner of the room.

As one they moved, fanning out into the room, checking for anything suspicious. When they found nothing, Sam keyed her radio.

"All clear in here," she reported to Jack.

"Roger. Stay put, Carter," he advised her. "I'm going to send the science geeks in. The rest of us will follow in a minute, so keep everyone away from the doors."

Jack turned and nodded at Morgan, who urged Dr. Phelan and his wife to head for the door. Blasts impacted the columns, causing stone fragments to pelt those still taking cover behind them. Vala and Leander, who was crouched behind her on the opposite side of the control console from Jack, ducked to avoid the worst of it.

Jack looked to Vala and Leander next, sending them, as well as Morgan, into the room. That left Mitchell, Teal'c and himself. By mutual, unspoken agreement, they each moved towards the door, Jack slipping through last of all.

As soon as he was through the door, it slid shut behind him, finally putting an end to the cannon blasts.

...continued...