Part 3. Holding.
No one was more surprised than J.C. that their first night passed uneventfully, no entropic cascade failure, no torturous sensation of anyone being pulled apart. Then another day passed. And, shockingly, another.
With the general's permission, the two Carters remained focused on the problem in Samantha's lab, working on base in tandem. This time, they pulled data from NASA, from NORAD, from other scientists on the base, from Area 51, sending requests to the Tok'ra and the Asgard; before it was all said and done, Hammond was pretty sure they might have even polled the psychic hotline.
Letting the Carters work together wasn't just generosity on the general's part. He learned quickly that whatever simulations the two ran or questions they asked, whatever challenges they threw at each other and others benefited his program. If nothing else, they made everyone around them better. Hell, in that first week, when the pair of them focused solely on the gate diagnostics, his teams identified 53 more safety parameters previously ignored by Carter's original dialing program, and had notes on what a half dozen others might be.
In the meantime, Dr. Jackson graciously accepted Danielle's further offer of help, and their time together was equally productive. While he double-checked everything she did, Danielle helped him get caught up on surveys from other science units, and they even got around to the backlog of consultation requests that were always clogging his in-boxes.
On the other hand, it took that entire first week for the two colonels to stop pacing around each other like twitchy predatory cats.
As it seemed she was not about to disappear, J.C. was willing to spend more time going over any discrepencies in their stargate travel history that she and Jack could find—which were precious few, and yet, as Hammond quickly discovered, pertinent. Their coordinated efforts took about four hours making notes before Jack handed off the responsibility of research to the appropriate people, and then they had little more to do between them.
Despite his reputation and his denial that he had an office, Colonel Jonathan O'Neill actually kept up with his paperwork. Of course, unlike Daniel and Carter, he wasn't off writing brilliant top secret papers, either. Once he and Hammond had caught up on personnel files, he had nothing better to do than review security recordings and, for lack of a better word, lurk.
He was not particularly good at idle lurking.
Neither, it was obvious, was J.C.
From the security records, Jack knew she spent a great deal of time pacing the hallway between her VIP quarters and Carter's lab or Jackson's office. It wasn't, he had to admit, as if she had anywhere else to go. He helped her out by suggesting that Hammond lift the edges of the visitors' confinement a little. Their guests couldn't leave base, and there were still restrictions on where they could wander even with their marine escort, but that innate O'Neill restlessness was relieved somewhat by being allowed to seek out the recreation rooms, the commissary, and even observe departures and arrivals from the briefing room level.
In some ways, Jack came to quickly regret the small kindness. Because he and his counterpart thought so much alike, they were often turning up in the same places around the same time of the day. Even more annoying, because she actually lived on base, he often found himself arriving somewhere after she had already been there. And when he opened his mouth to share some particularly clever wit or observation with base personnel, he got the distinct impression that whomever he was talking to had already heard it.
It didn't help his mood that, whenever they actually crossed paths, whenever they opened their mouths, he and J.C. tended to say the exact same thing—at first, followed by the old quote, "bread and butter," or a playful, "Jinks!" In fact, it quickly became something of a competition to see who could pull out the most obscure, unlikely thing to say in an attempt not to be saying the same thing at the same time.
Unfortunately, that effort backfired. Somewhere between both of them quoting, "Luke, I am your father," and breaking out in the Oscar Meyer Weiner song, their own inability to think differently began to get on their nerves. So much so that, by the third morning, when they saw each other, they shut their mouths and reversed directions.
On one night's recording, Jack viewed J.C. express her growing frustration on a particularly vicious late night boxing match with the rec-room punching bag. Once again, he knew exactly what had to be going through her mind: that she had to take it out somewhere, and better to have sore shoulders and aching hands in the morning than inappropriately snipe at her team.
In fact, as he watched his counterpart work herself through a hard sweat, after she paced off her workout, when she finally lost it and threw the gloves in a bit of temper that he seldom let his own team see, venting his own private string of favorite expletives—twice, just for the satisfaction the second time around—he had to admit, he kind of liked her.
Even if she was a certifiable nut job.
Hell, he should know: he was a certifiable nut job.
The next morning, he found her down in Jackson's lab. She looked much more relaxed after last night's workout, although he suspected she was stiff as hell. He deliberately placed the chess box in front of her on the end of Daniel's desk.
He was rewarded with a reluctant O'Neill smile. She knew what he was up to, and, if she accepted the gesture grudgingly, it was only because she resented the fact that she needed the distraction at all.
And there was, Jack thought, something to be said for someone knowing you well enough not to have to ask. They could circumvent all those touchy feeling conversations and go straight to the comfortable silences.
He liked her even better when he saw the security film from the fifth night. After spending a few hours together companionably during the day, Jack felt more like a voyeur than ever as he turned up the volume to catch the soft spoken, heads down exchange that took place between J.C. and Samuel when they were alone in their quarters.
Samuel Carter's shoulders were taut with frustration. "There may not be a way home, ma'am."
"There, you're wrong, Carter," J.C. told him. "What can be done can be undone."
"I just—I can't see it."
"It may be that we just don't have the right tools."
"I don't even know what I'm looking for!"
"Look, Major, you're not the only one responsible for this. Our people have to be working on it from their end, too. If it happened to us, it could happen to anyone, and even this reality's Hammond isn't one to sit back and let something he knows about bite him in the butt. We just may need to step back from the problem for a little bit, let someone else tinker with it."
"Step back? For how long?"
"As long as we need to, Carter."
"Great. I could be home by the time my kids graduate from college."
Kids? Jack had to reverse the recording and listen to that part again, just to be sure he hadn't misheard. J.C.'s Carter had kids. Plural. That was different.
"Hey." Jacqueline put a hand on Samuel's shoulder, gave a little shake. "What the hell was that?"
Warning, Jack thought, that the younger man was skating an uncharacteristic pity party.
Samuel grimaced, ducked his head.
No, Jack translated the embarrassed gesture, Samuel didn't indulge in such things any more than Samantha did. That single question had hit him more harshly than a slap in the face.
J.C. let the silence hang for just a moment. Then, "We have the two best minds in two realities working on this thing. It's going to happen. You will find out how to get the job done, even if you have to build the tools from the ground up to do it. Understood?"
An exhale. A nod. "Yes ma'am."
"You better, Major, because that's an order."
With more certainty, "Yes ma'am."
His own Carter, Jack knew, had been riddled with self doubt when he first met her. That was why she tended to over-explain things—not to baffle her superiors with bullshit, but because she respected their intelligence and expected them to understand and be able to follow how she arrived at a theory. As her self confidence grew, so did belief in her own ability to determine whether she could pull something off or not, and her need to get completely-informed consent from her CO had waned.
But as bright as she was, Major Samantha Carter tended to get answers quickly, too. From their stint in Antarctica, Jack knew how frustrated she could get if trapped somewhere and she couldn't come up with some functional answers quickly enough. They had been in tight spots with only a minimum of equipment for longer than this, but to be stuck somewhere with the very best equipment and the best minds to work with, and to keep coming up with zilch? Jack could only feel pride in his own team mate that she so often performed admirably under such screwy conditions.
As if hearing his thoughts, the recorded J.C. slapped Sam's shoulder and said, "At least no one has any broken bones this time, Carter. Hell, we're in a tropical paradise. Tomorrow, why don't you join me down on the beach?"
Samuel gave her one of those patented Carter looks, the one where the major was refraining from asking his CO if she were out of her mind. "Um, no thank you, ma'am. We've got some seismography coming in the morning I wanted to take a look at."
"If you change your mind, I'm sure it won't take long for Sergeant Siler to scare you up some Speedos."
"I'll . . . keep that in mind, ma'am."
It took another week before the Carters admitted they had run out of things to do or try. They tossed out the hypotheses that there could have been a supernova, or another wormhole crossing the other, or some other astronomical anomaly that they could neither measure nor reproduce even if they figured it out.
"Even if we find a way to override the safety protocols and induce a red-shift in the gate," Samuel explained to General Hammond, "the odds of being returned to our own reality are astronomical. We could just as easily be kicked off into a hundred, or a thousand others."
Samantha agreed. "We need a way to test and control the results."
"Understood Majors," Hammond said. "Thank you for keeping me appraised."
Hammond also understood from Dr. Frasier that, even after a week, none of the three visitors were exhibiting any symptoms of paradox. The two astrophysicists and Frasier had presented him with their x-y factor hypothesis, that the singular difference in gene was keeping the three from experiencing the paradox effect at all. Whether that was correct, or how long the difference would protect them, was anybody's guess.
"I got better things to do," J.C. had said when informed, "than sit around worrying about getting pulled around like some cosmic yo-yo. Who's up for some cake?"
"I like cake," Jack said, thus complimenting the skilled application of the consummate O'Neill tactic: Distract and Avoid.
Distract everyone from the real question: what were the stranded people going to do now?
Hammond summoned J.C. to his office to discuss it. "Looks like you and your people are going to be here a while, Colonel."
"Looks that way, sir. May I be a little bold, here, sir?"
"By all means."
"To be direct, sir, as we discussed before, this feels like home. I don't see any conflict in serving this SGC. In fact, I think it's in both our interests if you take operational command, sir."
Operational command: one of the oldest military traditions. It meant he could absorb her unit while recognizing its identity as an entity of a foreign government; as with other diplomatic units, he could, with the president's permission, recognize her rank as well as authorize support units.
Her suggestion, Hammond knew, was no short-term survival strategy. She couldn't let her people sit idle, and they both knew that if he didn't find a place for them, the paranoids in his government would remove them from the SGC entirely. Outside of Cheyenne Mountain, they were never going to get home.
The question he was going to have to answer on behalf of his superiors was, could he trust them? He and his 2IC still kept cameras on them and reviewed security records, but it had become a thing done more out of habit than out of the suspicion that J.C. and her people were secretly sabotaging the base at night. And he had certainly garnered far more information from the visiting O'Neill than she had asked him to give up. From the teams he had already sent to investigate her info, he was seeing some good results. Useful, including the location of a planet with a rich trinium vein. In some ways, J.C.'s info was more useful than he had gotten from allies in almost three years.
There had to be some point when he finally admitted it and went with his gut. And his gut—the same one that had told him that Teal'c would make a good addition to his program—was telling him that these people were exactly who and what they said they were.
And, as if he needed anything else to tip the scale in their favor, people with their abilities didn't just fall into his lap on a daily basis. While he had limited support resources and an almost unlimited pool of qualified applicants, you just couldn't beat field experience. In his opinion, simply giving them new names and relocating them in some kind of confidential witness protection program would have been a colossal waste. "That's a hell of an offer, Colonel."
"Well, Sammy isn't going to give up on finding a way home, and the best place for him to work is here."
True. In fact, they both knew, the Majors Carter had already started spending a little time working on other things. "When we were taking a break, sir," Samantha had quickly explained, as if the general had caught her with a hand in the cookie jar. Samuel had drawn up some plans for sensor modifications Samantha admitted she had only had time to think about. He'd also written a few research papers, unprompted, and without access to confidential files, that Samantha had not gotten around to finishing.
Out of boredom, the general realized. "That is one officer who was not used to sitting idle."
J.C. shook her head. "No, sir."
"And Dr. Jackson?" Who wasn't USAF, for whom the visiting colonel had limited right to make decisions.
"Oh, I'm sure Dani would be content to just live in Daniel Jackson's office. Maybe we could put a shoebox with a blanket under the desk for her."
Being familiar with Jack humor translated that for him. "They seem to get along quite well, don't they?"
"That's just the way they are, sir." Lonely for a peer, J.C. thought, although she scrunched her face and shoulders and said, "So civilized."
"I confess, I would be delighted to have a second consultant of her caliber."
"General," she mock scolded, "are you poaching talent from my team?"
"Of course."
"She'll be delighted. Please, feel free to take it up with her, sir. On one condition."
"What would that be?"
"If you send her off world, I go with her."
"I see," he said, not quite sure he did.
"I'm responsible for her, sir," J.C. explained. "I feel very strongly about that."
Ah. Now he really did see. Of course his own Jack felt a higher sense of responsibility toward their Jackson; the civilian didn't have the background and survival training the military members of his team had. "I appreciate your candor."
"Helping you helps us, sir."
"I'll let you know what I decide."
After she departed, Hammond sat at his desk and thought carefully about what he needed to do, and how it would be done. And then he picked up the red phone and waited for the man on the other end to answer. By the end of the day, he had what he wanted.
When Hammond summoned them up to the briefing room, at last he acknowledged J.C.'s rank. "Colonel, I have authorization to put you to work."
Although he knew none of them had discussed it between them, neither of her team members looked at all surprised.
In fact, Danielle slid a file across his desk. "That's a list of resources we could use. As they're a bit obscure, I've included the sources where I was able to find them back home."
If there was one thing Hammond had learned about their civilian consultant, it was that in some things, he was usually a half step ahead of everyone else. "Anything else you need, Doctor?"
"My own office," she was saying. "Adjacent to Dr. Jackson's, if you don't mind. I don't want to have to go far to consult with him."
"I'll see what I can do."
When told that she and her people were expected to recertify weapons proficiency by USAF standards, J.C. suggested, "Can't we just play paint ball? You know, like, me and my Carter verses your O'Neill and Carter? It'll be fun."
Jack perked, giving his CO a look to let him know he was up for it.
But the suggestion was nixed, almost as if Hammond anticipated the appeal it held for his own colonel. "No. At 0800 tomorrow morning, you'll be bussed over to the training facility where Colonel O'Neill will supervise your certifications."
Thinking of the fresh list of consultation requests in his in-box, Daniel said, "Guess that means the rest of us have a little time."
"They do," Jack nodded toward Teal'c and his Carter.
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "I can think of nothing needing my attention, Colonel O'Neill."
Jack ignored the comment. To Daniel, "You, on the other hand, will be joining our merry band of adventurers."
"Jack." Do I have to?
The O'Neill head tilt. "Daniel?" Yes, yes you do.
Weakly, "Jack."
"Buck up, Danny boy. You and your evil twin can compete for the lowest passing scores."
Dani cast him a sympathetic look. "He makes you do it over and over until you pass, doesn't he?"
Daniel let out a long suffering sigh, thinking back to the last training session he had eked through.
The next morning, Jack picked up a thermos of USAF paint thinner from the coffee dispenser and got the kids on the bus. Samuel Carter looked a little rumpled and sleep deprived, but Jack suspected now that Hammond had granted him full access to the Carter lab, it would have proven too tempting not to burn a little midnight oil.
Daniel gave Dani a leather bound journal as they boarded. "I thought you might like to look at this."
Pleasantly surprised, she recognized, "Your notes on P3X-229." One of the interesting planets her team hadn't visited. "Thank you, Daniel. I wish I had something to loan you in return." All of her journals were, of course, back home.
"That's okay." He held up a binder. "I've got a few notes from SG-12's visit to P5Y-772 to catch up on."
"Oh, do share later. I was wondering how that was going."
Sixteen seats on the bus, J.C. thought, and the pair of them took the same one, scrunched together over their reading.
Not so with her and Jack. She was sitting as far from that man as she could. Of course, sitting in the back seat when he took the front was purely tactical habit. That, and it was too goddamn early in the morning to listen to her own thoughts come out of his mouth.
Jack had to take the binders out of the Jacksons' hands at the range.
Daniel gave a resigned sigh. He knew this was all necessary, that his carrying a weapon was vital to their survival, but he wasn't good at it. Not good like Jack or Sam. Yes, it was a matter of training and practice and he wasn't afraid of work. But there were few things that didn't come easily or naturally to Daniel Jackson, and this, he was afraid, was going to forever be one of them.
He exchanged a few reassuring smiles with Dani. Yes, she was as uncomfortable as he was. The least they could do for each other was provide moral support.
He thought he did okay, raising dust behind his paper target at least as many times as Dani did. It must have been good enough, because Jack didn't make him redo the handgun part this time. He could feel good about that, at least.
Nothing to compare to Samuel or J.C.'s tidy killing clusters on the fixed target range. Daniel's eyes were drawn to J.C.'s hands, the smooth gestures, her relaxed grip. She had big, certain hands, like Jack's, but, strangely, the hard metal weapon made hers look softer, more feminine, very different from the way the same device looked in his friend's. She was firing almost twice as fast as Daniel, but she made it look slower, unrushed, with that silent, practiced patience Jack exuded under fire.
Much different from Jack, and yet, in some ways, so very much the same.
"Good job, Danny boy," Jack told him when he finished up the urban assault course. "Turn in your gear and head back to the bus."
Good job. Daniel sighed in relief, collecting his things. He took back his binders and had time to dig into them before Dani showed up. "How'd you do?" he asked her.
"I don't think I embarrassed anyone," she said, taking the seat next to him when he made space. "Although there were a few wince-worthy moments."
"Congratulations."
"Thanks. To you, too. I noticed you didn't have to do anything twice."
It was a little while before Carter joined them, stretching across the back seats to prop up his feet, draw cap down over his eyes, and fall asleep. Quite a while more before the two O'Neill's finally showed up and the bus took them back to base.
From the rumors that made the base rounds later that day, Daniel realized he should have paid a bit more attention to the time lag between Carter and the O'Neills' returns. This was one of those times when he missed the obvious simply by being a bit too engrossed in his work.
The next morning, Jacqueline O'Neill knocked on the door frame to General Hammond's office. "You wanted to see me, sir?"
"Yes, Colonel. Why don't you have a seat."
"Thank you, sir."
"I've been looking over the reports for you and your team from yesterday's exercises at the training facility. You may be happy to know that your team members passed." As had Daniel Jackson. In fact, both Jackson's had scored nearly identically. "You, on the other hand, flunked. Which is amazing to me, considering that your accuracy scores at the stationary range were at the top of the charts." He had to admit, hers were slightly better than his own O'Neill's. "Frankly, I'm at a loss here, Colonel, over your test results from the Urban Assault Course. Did you not take our little training exercises seriously?"
"I'm not sure what you mean, sir."
"Perhaps you could explain this to me."
She leaned forward in the chair. "I'll do my best, sir."
Hammond could see from the marks she had started off well enough. On the first five pop ups, she passed over shooting the two friendlies, and hit hostile targets 1, 3, and 4. Not only that, but she did neat double taps, either to the head or chest regions. But, "On target 6, was it really necessary to unload forty rounds into a single standee?"
"Forty-two, sir," she corrected.
As if the exact count mattered. "What possessed you to do that, Colonel?"
"It was a Goa'uld, sir."
"What?"
"Apophis."
Hammond blinked.
J.C. held up a hand. "I know what you're thinking, General."
He couldn't imagine how she could.
"You can't penetrate one of their personal shields with bullets. But," she held up a finger, "maintaining a steady rate of fire was the only means I had at my disposal to distract him. If I had team mates to coordinate with, it would have given them the opportunity to flank and close on his blind side. Given that I was on my own, emptying the rest of my clip kept him focused on maintaining his shield so that I could get in close enough for my knife. In this case, the tactic seemed to have worked."
If by "worked" she meant she had been able to approach a paper target on foot, yes it had. Which explained why, after all that, she had pulled a knife and cut its tattered remains in half. A bullet shredded paper target, as much as one had remained. Time to point out the fallacy in that thinking. "While you were doing that," he said, "you let five more targets go unanswered."
"I considered Apophis the greater threat, sir. In addition, I kept him between me and his own people, giving me partial cover with his personal shield. At least until I finished him off."
A paper target giving her cover from other paper targets. Okay. "At which time you deemed it necessary to reload your magazine with armor piercing rounds?"
"No, sir. I reloaded with a standard magazine, sir, until target fifteen came up. When I saw it was Teal'c, that's when I switched to AP rounds."
"It didn't occur to you that target fifteen was a friendly, Colonel?"
"Oh, that was pretty tricky, I admit, to present a friendly face, but he was targeting me with an zat gun, sir. That isn't our T'ealc's weapon of choice, so I had to assume he had reverted. And why use a zat gun, unless he intended to try to take me alive? As Apophis' Prime, he was a far more serious threat than some thug off the street. I'm not so vain to think that one shot will take him down, or that he would leave cover unarmored, so I changed clips."
"Perhaps you could explain to me why armor piercing rounds were not enough for target twenty-one."
"That target was you, sir."
"Me."
"Yes, sir. That was when I knew that in this scenario, the entire Stargate Command was compromised, and that I needed to contain the situation immediately. As I had no access to a self-destruct function, I had to extemporize."
"So you used C-4 on my urban assault course."
"As the marines say, peace through superior firepower, sir."
Hammond's frown did not fade. It was just like O'Neill to get up to something cute. A destructive sort of cute. Let's see how cute he thinks it is having to spend another afternoon at the training facility. "Walter, get me Jack O'Neill!"
"Yes, sir," the sergeant called from his desk, "Colonel O'Neill is on his way, sir."
Obviously just waiting for the summons, Jack popped into the doorway. "You wanted to see me, sir?"
"Colonel," Hammond scowled at his officer, "I want you take our visitor back down to the UAC and retest. And this time," voice rising, "no armor piercing rounds, no goa'ould faces, and no C-4!"
Placing a file on top of the other, Jack noted, "It's on your desk, sir."
So this was planned. General Hammond scowled at the pair of them. And I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Jack hesitated. "Anything else, sir?"
Hammond took a slow breath. "Dismissed." He was beginning to wonder if having two O'Neills around was a good idea.
The paintball incident pretty much proved it wasn't. In a lesser general, it might have taken a third such incident to convince him, but he wasn't the dimmest light bulb in the shed, not by a long shot. No, the final straw was the paintball game. On his base.
He had overheard most of the conversation, but he reviewed the security tapes later to fill in the rest.
"Good lord!" Dani exclaimed on the recording. "Who won?"
The Carters came out of the basketball court after their COs, the two majors sporting singular neat paint splots on their vests. "I think we did," Samantha replied.
"You're supposed to wait until we get in position," J.C. was telling Jack.
"You started it," he returned.
"Did not."
"Did too."
"Not."
"Did."
J.C. lowered the muzzle of her paintball gun and shot him point blank. He returned the favor, adding yet more color to her equally brightly blotched BDUs.
"Aren't there rules for this game?" Daniel frowned at them, stepping back to keep his folder out of splatter range.
"I think they're supposed to go in one team at a time," Dani suggested. "Or go in separate doors, or something."
The Jacks blinked at each other through safety glasses. As one, they pointed paintball guns at the Jacksons, hitting each one square in the chest.
"Ow!" Daniel jumped. "Innocent bystanders, here!"
Dani held up hands. "Switzerland! Switzerland!"
Which was the point when General George Hammond had stepped around the corner. He had paused, looking from one paint splattered O'Neill to the other, then down at the colored droplets on his base floor. In one long, drawn out moment of silence, his face reddened. Then reddened some more. "Sergeant Harriman," he said, voice low and even.
"Sir!" Wise enough to know the general made a pretty good shield, Walter reluctantly stepped up to his elbow.
"Get these people out of my sight." Hammond glared at one Jack, then the other. "Better still, make arrangements to get them off my planet. Before I shoot them myself. With a real gun," he added as he stepped around the duo.
"Yes, sir." Harriman glanced from one to the other.
When the general was safely around the corner and out of sight, Dani noted, "I don't think you've managed to turn him that particular shade of red before."
J.C. pushed her safety glasses up and asked Jack, "Do you think the paintball was a little over the top?"
Jack wrinkled his nose, then shook his head. Together they said, "Nah."
54
"You," Dani said disdainfully, "are sinking to new depths of incorrigibility."54
