Echoes
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of MGM Television, Sony Television, Double Secret Productions and Gekko Film Production. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. No profit is intended or wanted for this story.
Note: 1) The events here take place sometime before Daniel's ascension.
2) Aspects are loosely inspired by the Pink Floyd piece Echoes from their 1972 album Meddle.
Teaser
They could've been on some coastal plain common to the temperate regions of the Earth. There were only two real indications that they weren't. First was the ancient Stargate, the only construct of any kind within the area they'd explored, roughly forty square miles with the airborne MALP adjunct.
The second, definitive indicator was the triple moon pattern in the sky. Not visible now in the daylight. Not for this time of year or month or… It depended on the orbital rates of the moons and their relative distances from the planet.
The Gate sat in the middle of a large clearing surrounded on three sides by trees and on the fourth by the sea. Before the Gate stood a DHD with a standard MALP nearby. Standing next to the MALP was the leader of this group of offworld humans, Colonel Jack O'Neill. He was staring out to sea.
"C'mon people. That front is getting closer and I'd rather be home warm and dry than stuck here in some freaking thunderstorm," Jack announced.
Teal'c walked up to the MALP carrying two large cases, one over his right shoulder and the other in his left hand. "We have only a few of these sample cases to load, O'Neill."
"Great. I get home in time to see the Vikings and the Broncos. Hey, Doc? Need a hand?"
Janet Fraiser had already set her case on the MALP and was securing it when Jack asked his question. She shook her head, "No thanks, Colonel. I think I got it."
Sam Carter, O'Neill's second in command, came up behind the other woman. Patting her shoulder, she whispered something which caused the doctor to smile.
"Hey, no whispering. It's in the rule book. Somewhere under respecting your superior officer," Jack grumbled.
A low rumble was heard. Everyone cast their eyes towards the approaching storm. Then Janet's face screwed up, followed quickly by Sam's.
The doctor fanned the air in front of her face, "Damn Colonel! What did you eat?"
"Hey, that wasn't me... Well, yeah, it was but..."
Another rumble, louder this time. Daniel Jackson set the last case on the MALP and said, "Jesus Jack, get a grip on your colon!"
"Now that wasn't me!"
"O'Neill, DanielJackson and I both recommended you not eat that chili last evening."
"Hey, c'mon! Okay, so I farted. Once! That last was not..."
Jack's mini-rant was interrupted by a louder rumbling coming in from the sea. The storm front was much, much closer.
"Jack, we better get outta here. That storm'll be here pretty soon," Daniel said.
"Yeah. I think you're right." Jack looked at the rapidly moving cloud front and shouted over his shoulder, "Teal'c! Dial us home!"
Teal'c punched the appropriate symbols on the DHD and the Gate was activated. Almost simultaneously, the wind picked up drastically, whipping around the five people from Earth. Thunder echoed off the distant hills and lightning could be seen out over the roiling surf.
"Daniel? You and Teal'c go. I've got the MALP. Carter! You take the Doc and..." Jack stopped and looked at the MALP controller, "Goddamnit! Stupid good-for-nothing piece of crap!"
Rain started to fall in large drops. With every second, the rainfall intensified.
"Colonel?" Sam yelled from the ramp.
"The damned MALP control is busted!" Jack tossed the controller aside and headed for the Stargate.
Meanwhile Janet jumped down from the ramp and ran towards the MALP. Sam followed.
"Janet! Wait! We gotta get outta here," Sam called.
"I'm not leaving these samples!"
"Doc! Carter!" O'Neill yelled over the rising storm, half of him already swallowed by the liquid mercury of the horizon.
"Go, Colonel. I'll bring Janet. We're right behind you!"
Sam grabbed Janet, "We can come back. They aren't going anywhere."
Lightning crashed nearby. The smell of ozone was strong even through the driving rain.
Janet nodded. She and Sam raced up the ramp. Just as they hit the watery shimmer of the event horizon, a jagged bolt of lightning hit the Gate. The flash was bright followed by darkness.
Act I
Pain. Pain and wetness. The entire world was sopping wet pain.
Sam struggled to open her eyes, they felt like they were fused closed. Finally, she opened them and saw...nothing!
Blind?! Oh God, please, not that! Anything but that! she prayed.
Suddenly the world exploded in momentary brightness. The sound of an explosion followed immediately after. Lightning. Thunder. Sam practically whimpered in relief.
Slowly, she became aware where she was and who she was. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she lifted her head looked to her left and saw something smoldering, trails of smoke drifting up to be smothered by the rain. Beyond that was a silvery object. The MALP? Then the smoking thing was...
Sam was almost afraid to find out. She pushed up with her arms, pain exploding in her ribs. "Ooh!"
Trying to ignore the pain, Sam managed to slowly get to her hands and knees. This was an improvement, at least she wasn't laying in the muddy grass. She slowly, painfully made it to her feet.
The lightning was less frequent than when she came to but it was still adding a strobe effect to her immediate area. In one long flash, Sam saw a small figure curled on the sodden grass several feet away.
"Janet?" she said, more groan than voice. But relief filled that moan anyway.
She went and slowly knelt by the figure. It was Janet. She turned the young doctor onto her back and checked for a pulse. Sam realized she had been holding her breath and let it out when she discovered, to her immense relief, that the other woman had a strong, steady pulse.
Sam sat back on her heels, the pain in her ribs somewhat muted now. What should she do? Slap Janet's cheeks like in the movies? If they did it in the movies, it probably wasn't a good idea. Bath her face in cool water? The rain was doing that. Wait? But if there was something like a concussion...
A groan escaped Janet's lips. "Janet!?"
"S-sam? Wh-where..."
"It's okay. We're still on the planet. Um, P…P4X-206. Remember?"
"Yeah," Janet slowly sat up, rubbing the back of her neck. "It's raining."
Sam bit down on a smartass comeback. Instead she merely said, "Yeah."
"Is anyone else here?"
"I don't think so. The colonel was the last one through before us. I think he made it alright.
"C'mon, let's go home," Sam stood and held out her hand to help Janet up.
"Ooh!" Sam said as Janet stood.
"You alright?"
"I think it's my ribs." Janet started to move towards Sam who held out her hands, "It's okay. Let's get in out of the rain first."
They walked to the DHD, Sam feeling something was drastically wrong. Her heart fell into her stomach when she saw the central dome had shattered, the inside full of small dying embers and wisps of smoke.
"The control crystal..." she moaned.
"Sam?" Janet could almost feel the sudden panic in her friend and it's echo in her. "What's... What's going on?"
Sam looked at Janet and whispered, "It's gone. The control crystal is gone."
"And...?" The doctor knew the answer before she asked.
"Without that crystal, we're stuck here."
The stunned silence that followed Sam's simple, if horrifying statement lasted for several long minutes.
Soon the rain began to let up. The clouds began to break up and some of the brighter stars were visible overhead.
Towards planetary east, the star that P4X-206 orbited was beginning to rise, washing out the stars. Soon the sea lit up with the refracted rays of the rising sun.
As day banished night, Sam finally stirred herself and looked more closely at the DHD. She discovered she was wrong, the control crystal was still there beneath the shattered central dome. But it had been broken into hundreds of shards.
She slowly made her way to the Gate. It looked intact but for some scorching where the lightning had impacted at the chevron to the left of the central, locking chevron.
'Why haven't they dialed back here? Even with the DHD gone, they can still dial here. We could get them to send a naqada reactor to power the Gate,' Sam mused.
Then she saw it. The inner ring was fused to the outer ring where the bolt had impacted. The inner ring was frozen in place.
"Sam?" Janet came up and stood by her. "What's going on?"
"The DHD is useless and the damned Gate is fused!" Sam said sharply. Then, in a softer voice, "I'm sorry, Janet."
"It's okay. What can we do?"
"The DHD is hopeless. Without a control crystal, I can't do anything there. The inner ring may work and we could try to manually dial it."
"What about power to activate the wormhole?"
"There may be enough in the DHD base to help us. We could open a wormhole to the Tollan homeworld and..."
"Why not Earth?"
"My GDO is fried. Along with my watch."
Janet looked at the device on her wrist, tried to activate it and sighed resignedly, "Mine too."
"Hey, we'll be alright. Just give me a hand with the ring..."
Both women heaved at the cold inner ring. It didn't budge. Sam stood on one side of the Gate pushing down and Janet stood across from her, pushing up. It didn't budge. Sam and Janet stood next to each other on either side of the ring, pushing in tandem. It didn't budge. Finally, Sam kicked it in frustration.
"Goddammit!"
Janet stood back, fighting to hold on. She was not going to break down. She'd seen and been through much worse.
"Maybe if my side didn't hurt so much..." Sam muttered.
Janet perked up. She'd almost forgotten. Now she had something she could do. "Sam, come over here. Let me see to those ribs of yours."
The smaller woman led her friend over and sat her down on the MALP, after moving some of the sample crates. She pulled off her still wet jacket and spread it out to dry, doing the same with Sam's.
Slowly, she peeled Sam's black t-shirt up to her bra and saw a nasty bruise along the major's right side. Gently prodding, she heard Sam moan. Nothing soft that shouldn't be. That was good. But the ribs definitely were sensitive.
"I think you'll be okay. No broken bones, just bruised. They'll hurt like hell for a while but you'll be fine." Janet opened a box emblazoned with a red cross. "Here, let me wrap this around you."
After tightly wrapping the elastic bandage around Sam, she asked, "How's that? Too tight?"
"No, thanks. Feels a little better."
"Okay. Next, we need to get out of these wet clothes. They should dry in no time."
Janet peeled her black t-shirt off, revealing a simple cotton bra. Bending over, she unlaced her combat boots and pulled those off before removing her olive-drab pants, leaving her plain white panties on.
She stood up and noticed Sam hadn't made a move. "What's wrong?"
Sam looked at Janet, snickered and said, "If the colonel could only see you now..."
Janet laughed and shook her head, "He has no idea what he's missing. Now, let's go. Out of those wet clothes."
Sam winced, "Actually, I...uh, well, I need a hand."
"Okay. No problem."
Janet knelt at Sam's feet and unlaced her boots, pulling those and her socks off.
Sam found her eyes wandering to the doctor's cleavage. When Janet looked up, she quickly looked away.
Standing, Janet pulled the bundled t-shirt over Sam's head, getting a groan from the major as she lifted her right arm.
"Sorry."
"It's okay."
Sam stood and dropped her pants then sat and lifted her feet, allowing Janet to pull them off. The doctor then took the wet clothes and spread them across the MALP, the scattered cases nearby, and the DHD to dry in the bright morning light.
"Now what?"
Sam shrugged her left shoulder, "I dunno. Guess we should see what we have here."
The sample cases held plant cuttings from the surrounding forest as well as some rock, soil and water samples.
"God, we must have half the forest in here!" Sam exclaimed.
"HEY! Look!" Janet shouted from the MALP.
Sam came over and looked. Janet had opened a compartment near the back to find some bundled survival equipment.
"Wow. That must've been put there for some other mission and forgotten about." Sam shook her head and smiled, "Must've been a day when Siler came back from leave. He's a little sloppier when he's still a bit hung over."
"Never thought I'd say this but thank God for hangovers," Janet laughed.
On opening one of the packs, they found:
- one .45 caliber automatic
- two boxes of ammunition
- four days' concentrated emergency rations
- one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
- one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
- one hundred dollars in rubles
- one hundred dollars in gold
- nine packs of chewing gum
- one issue of prophylactics ("Don't think we'll be needing these any time soon," Janet joked.)
- three lipsticks
- three pair of nylon stockings
"Hell, we could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all this," Sam quipped. Janet simply glared at her.
"Okay, okay. Anyway, with this and the MREs, we won't starve. At least not right away," Sam said. "We'll stash the stuff we don't use here in the MALP. I don't know how common storms are here but, just in case..."
"Why the Russian book and the rubles?" Janet asked.
Sam shrugged, "In case we have to go to the Siberian site again? I don't know. You know the Air Force, probably a holdover from the Cold War."
"Hey! There's a small tent back here too," Janet called from inside a MALP bin.
"Great. Let's get the tent up and then I'll go get us some water," Sam replied.
The tent's aluminum frame went up quickly and easily. The interior was roomier than they had expected.
"I don't think this is standard issue," Sam suggested.
"You know, it does look like one I saw at Walmart when Cassie and I..." Janet stopped, looking stricken. "Cassie..."
Sam hugged Janet, "Hey, she's okay. The guys'll make sure of that. Janet, don't..."
Sam stopped when she felt hot tears on her chest. Her own dribbled down her cheeks as she held Janet tightly.
Pulling back, sniffing, Janet muttered, "I'm sorry, Sam. I just..."
Sam sniffled as well, "It's okay. And don't worry, we'll get outta this. We always do."
While not as extreme, Sam felt the same pain as Janet. After all, she was the one who 'saved' Cassandra on Hanka when Nirrti killed off all the rest of the population of the planet. While, the boobytrap that was a young girl failed, Sam was the one who stayed with her and later recommended Janet adopt her. Thanks to the friendship between the two women, Sam became a de facto second mother to the alien orphan.
"Okay, thanks Sam," Janet said quietly. However, she remembered too many who didn't make it back to the Stargate Command.
Later, they pulled on damp socks and boots, then Janet helped Sam haul water from a clear stream near the northern tree line. Then they gathered what semi-dry wood they could find.
Sam's injury slowed them and it was a few hours before they got a small fire going.
In the meantime, Janet declared their clothes dry enough and they pulled on pants and t-shirts. Spreading out, they managed to get some dry tinder and enough wood to get a small fire going.
"The day here is close to an Earth day. If it was late afternoon when the storm hit, we must've been out for..."
"So we've been here for almost a day and a half?"
"Yeah. And I think we're relatively safe. SG3 didn't report anything dangerous when they were first here. I don't even remember seeing any ground animals, just those birds over there," Sam nodded towards the forest.
"Yeah, and those plants they brought back," Janet muttered. SG3 had brought back the usual assortment of plants from here. Janet was curious as always and helped with the initial evaluation of the cuttings. What she saw intrigued her. She requested a special trip to collect more samples of the local fauna. Hammond agreed and decided SG1 needed a 'soft' mission for a break.
"I'm sorry, Sam. It's my fault we're stuck here. If I hadn't insisted on getting more samples..."
"Hey, quiet! It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It was just, I don't know...fate? I don't want to hear you blaming yourself. From what you said, someone would've had to come back here for those fern-looking plants. It was just rotten timing and crappy weather."
"Thanks Sam." Janet shook her head, "I seem to be saying that a lot lately."
"Well, a few thousand more times and we'll be even."
They sat in silence as the sun dipped behind the tree line to the west. The brightness of day gave way slowly to twilight.
"What do you want to eat? Steak and potatoes or lasagna?" Sam asked holding the foil MRE packs.
"Hmm, I had Italian last night, I mean the other night, so I guess I'll have the steak."
"Good, 'cause those are the only entrees available except for omelets and pancakes."
As they ate, Janet asked, "Sam, how far are we from home? Can we see the sun?"
"We couldn't see the sun from here. We're too far away. At least four hundred light years."
"Oh," Janet replied in a very small voice.
"Hey, it'll be okay. Look," Sam pointed out to sea. "One of the moons is rising."
On the far horizon, the mid-sized of the three moons was just rising, seemingly out of the ocean. It's reflection on the waves was fragmented, the water often acting as a prism and breaking the light into the colors of the rainbow.
Once the moon was five degrees above the horizon, Sam shouted and pointed again. The smallest moon was coming up over the horizon. Only a few degrees seemed to separate the two globes.
"How far are they?" Janet asked.
"I'm not sure exactly. SG3's prelim put the largest at about four hundred thousand miles, the middle one about two hundred and fifty thousand - roughly the same as our moon, and the smallest between them."
"Won't they collide? I mean, I know not tonight or anything but..."
"Depends on the orbital dynamics. For instance, our moon is slowly moving away from Earth, something like an inch a century. If that's true of these, and their orbits are different - which they really have to be - then, I don't think so. They'll get further from the planet and each other over the millennia.
"However, if their distance is static or they are moving closer, then the likelihood of collision is much higher. Or just their gravitational force could affect each other. And, if that's the case, the smaller body will most likely fragment. Those fragments could decimate the planet.
"But, like you said, I don't think we have to worry about that anytime soon," Sam concluded. She had deliberately avoided being too technical in her explanations. And she was glad Janet didn't ask about the tidal influence of three large moons. It had to be pretty stable but the atmospheric effects would be drastically different from Earth.
Still, both were momentarily distracted by the wonder they were seeing. All thought of where they were and why was temporarily lost by the beauty of the three moons.
Finally, they decided to call it a night. Before retiring to the tent, Janet asked, "How's your side?"
"When I lay flat, I'm okay."
"But, you're still sore?"
"Yes'm," Sam replied, trying to be lighthearted.
"Hold on. I think I can help." Janet got up and went to examine the packing cases in the dim firelight. With a small "eureka" she grabbed one and pulled it closer. Searching inside, she finally pulled a small Tupperware container out.
"The leaves act as a natural analgesic when you boil them and drink the 'tea'."
"How's it taste?" Sam asked doubtfully.
"Uh, not so good," Janet admitted. "But, it works like a charm. The original samples, once I was sure they were safe, helped cure everything from Siler's hangover to my PMS."
"Okay. I'll give it a try."
"I'd trust this more than the morphine in the kit. Especially since I'm not sure how old it is."
Shortly, Sam held the tin cup and sniffed the contents. Her sole comment, "Smells like something died in there."
"I'll have marketing work on that," Janet joked.
Sam held her nose and drained the cup. "Tastes worse!"
"Remind me to call R&D first thing in the morning."
In the small, domed tent, silence reigned for a time until Sam heard Janet's quiet sobbing.
"Hey, Jan? You okay?"
The doctor turned to Sam, "No. I'm scared. Scared that we're never going to go home. Scared that I'll...that we'll never see Cassandra again. Scared that she'll hate me for abandoning her."
"Janet, I promise. We'll get home. We'll see our little girl again. Believe me," Sam told her.
Janet felt Sam's arms wrap around her. She had to think of the last time anyone had to hold her and console her. Since she had become a doctor, it had always been the other way around.
"Thanks. I hope Cass felt half as safe when I held shortly after she came..." Janet couldn't finish. She never thought she'd really love the girl she was parenting when Cassandra was first foisted on her but very soon after she had come to love the girl. Now the chance that she might never see her daughter again...
Janet was soon dozing, resting on Sam's uninjured side. Sam for her part, liked the feeling of the woman in her arms, liked the role of comforter.
As she lay there, she heard the distance calls of the local birds. There was an eerie, echoey aspect to the calls. She felt a frisson of apprehension.
A louder call echoed over the small campsite. Janet jerked awake.
"Wha...?"
"It's just the birds. Nothing to worry about."
"They sound...creepy. Supernatural almost."
"Yeah," Sam admitted. "Go back to sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if someone popped up tomorrow to bring us home. Maybe even Dad."
While neither tried to get their hopes up, they were both quietly disappointed the next day.
And the day after.
Note: This was written many years ago when Stargate SG-1 was still in the middle of the long, ten-year run - originally posted from 2/18/03 thru 2/21/03. I have since updated this from the original posting fifteen years ago – mainly to explain SG1 references that may not be familiar to new readers. Even after all these years, I still love the show and the characters. And Sam and Janet still have a special place in my heart – without them, there'd probably be no Victorious femslash – or any of the other stuff I've written. And I'm still in love with Teryl (Janet Fraiser) Rothery!