Daniel shoved his glasses further up his nose and turned the light to shine more fully on the parchment in front of him. He had been struggling with this particular translation on and off for days and was determined to beat it, he just needed a few hours of uninterrupted peace...

"Danny boy!" Daniel let his head hit the desk with an audible thump. Ah well, maybe tomorrow...

"Jack"

"How's it goin'?" Jack leaned against the bench opposite the desk, absentmindedly picking up a vase and turning it in his hands

"It's not. Please put that down"

He didn't.

Daniel sighed and took off his glasses. "Bored?"

"Yup. Paperwork sucks"

"One of the privileges of command"

"Yeah, well, Landry can enjoy it. I'm on paper-strike"

Daniel opened his mouth, considered it for a moment then decided it wasn't worth the effort. Jack grinned.

"When is Landry starting?"

"Few weeks. Then Lam soon after. Then Mitchell." That was about as specific as Jack was likely to get in this mood.

Daniel winced. While the future base commanders relationship with the future CMO wasn't well known, there wasn't much that didn't get back to Daniel at some point. Plus, Sam had once lived on the same base as the then Colonel Landry and his young daughter.

"Did you really think through hiring both of them?" he asked

"They are the best. The SGC should have no less than the best. Especially with Atlantis poaching"

Daniel ignored the dig at his imminent departure and studied Jacks face. It was too blank for total innocence. When Jack O'Neill looked that innocent you could be sure he wasn't. Someone, somewhere was getting played, set up or manipulated. Knowing that fathers and their children were a sensitive topic Daniel decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that the situation worked out in a peaceful way. Having the CMO murder the commander would not look good in a report to the President, and would create whole mountains of paperwork for Jack himself, so he must be pretty confident of a good outcome. Or of Lam's ability to cover up her tracks.

"When's the other scientist starting?"

"Dr Magnus? Three weeks."

"I'm sure I recognise that name" Daniel muttered

Jack put the vase down and started making a paper aeroplane out of a post-it note. "Probably seen it in Carter's office" he said

"Why would Sam have the name of a xenobiologist in her office?"

"Dr Helen Magnus" Jack paused for effect "is Carter's aunt. Dr Tegan Magnus is her daughter. We get Magnus junior. Carter has a book on extrapolations of potential evolutionary paths outside this solar system written by Magnus senior in her lab. Possibly a Christmas present."

Daniel blinked at him. "Really?"

"Are you referring to the fact that Carter has relatives, that said relatives sound as technobabbly as she does or that I got all those big words out in one sentence?"

"The third one"

Jack tossed his miniature plane at Daniel and turned to leave. "Oh, you get to show Lam around when she starts. I'm not getting Landry to do that, he will probably still be getting lost as it is."

"Yeah, and the base might explode if you did" Daniel muttered, reaching for his glasses again.