Sam came to with a moan, resisting the urge to rub at the pain in her eyes. It was flash burn, sure as if she'd been welding without a helmet. And it would probably be worse tomorrow.
Though, to be fair, she thought, it could already be tomorrow. The last thing she remembered....
A figure beside her groaned and rolled up to sitting, rubbing at his eyes. Yeah, his would be worse. She should probably tell him not to do that.
"What was that you were saying, sir? Something about not touching things?" she growled.
The colonel cleared his throat and lied, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Right. "Yes, sir. What the hell just happened?"
"Carter!" he protested. "Now, you know damn well that I was just about to ask you that. Where do you get off stealin' my thunder?"
Several smart-ass answers came to mind, but the officer in her opted out of using them. Instead, she pushed to her feet and helped him up, his free hand moving to his eyes again. "Don't rub it, sir," she told him absently as she looked around.
As far as she could tell, nothing had changed. The steep cliff before her was exactly the same, engravings and all. The same scrubby green grass stretched across the valleys for as far as the eye could see, and the path that curved around the enormous rock structure toward the gate looked just as rough and overgrown as it had... however long ago that was.
She checked her watch.
Oh. Two minutes. Well, then.
"Seriously, Carter, what do you think that was?"
Why did they always think she knew? "Seriously, sir," she shot back earnestly, "I have no idea."
"Huh." His fingers touched his radio to confer with Daniel and Teal'c, to see if anything had changed on their end.
Before he could hit the talk button, however, familiar gunfire ripped through the air from down the path, and both officers instinctively crouched, looking around for the danger.
"Daniel, Teal'c, report!" the colonel yelled into his radio. When he got no answer, there was no need for additional orders – Sam fell in behind him as he sprinted down the path, her fingers tight around her P90. She wished to God they were closer to the gate.
Something was terribly wrong. There were too many weapons – multiple P90s on top of a contingent of staff weapons. With Daniel and Teal'c as the only other people on the planet, there should have been only one automatic weapon besides the two they carried.
But Sam felt bad for even thinking that as they ran, as the number of Earth weapons she heard diminished again and again. If the general had sent more teams through the gate while they were unconscious, they weren't faring well. And the fact that Colonel O'Neill's repeated inquiries through the radio got no response at all didn't ease the feeling in her gut.
They rounded the last corner just in time to see the stargate shut down, the glowing blue puddle dissolving into nothing. There were only Jaffa in sight. "Cover," the colonel ordered quickly, and they ducked behind some of the taller stones.
The plain between them and the stargate stretched wide, four distinct, small groups of Jaffa searching their surroundings. None of them had come far enough across the valley to be a threat to them, but still they kept an eye on their escape path, back toward the odd device they'd found.
"Jaffa, kree!" one of the aliens yelled, drawing all of their attention as he leveled his staff at a smaller boab tree off to Sam's left, over a hundred wide open yards from the gate.
An arm appeared from behind the tree holding a Beretta that was all too familiar, and the first Jaffa fell. The dozen behind that one, though, only became more interested.
"That's our cue," the colonel said, kneeling to brace his weapon against the stone that covered them as he fired, quickly drawing their attention from the man behind the tree. Sam's weapon reinforced his within seconds.
Between the Jaffa's complete lack of cover and the superiority of the P90s, it wasn't a long fight. The two were on their feet and moving even as the last of the alien soldiers stumbled to his knees and hit the ground in slow motion.
"Daniel?" Sam cried loudly, feet pounding across the dirt at full speed toward the twisted tree and the two camouflaged legs sticking out from behind it. Why wasn't he moving? And where was Teal'c?
She rounded the thick trunk mere seconds before the colonel and skidded to a halt at the sight she found there. His own vision blocked, he nearly rammed into her for the second time that day.
And then he saw what had brought her up so short. "What the...."
The man slumped against the tree was in sore need of medical attention – a staff wound to the ribs had left the front of his uniform blackened and torn, and his knee didn't look much better. And when he looked up at her, his pained gaze read only confusion and a little bit of alarm. "Sammie? What are you doing out here?"
It wasn't Daniel by a long shot. Sam knelt beside the man – a colonel, his uniform said, and that made as little sense as the rest of it – and gently touched his cheek. "Uncle George?"