R1

It was not a fact widely known, but Jack O'Neill could, on occasion, appreciate a morning. There was something exceedingly satisfying about being up before everyone else, wandering the familiarly noisy places when they were silent. Streets without cars, parks without kids… he'd taken quite a liking to going for walks at an hour others might call ungodly.

He wondered vaguely if it might be a sign of senility.

Here, though, on P49-whatever it was, there weren't really any mornings. Or at least, he'd yet to see one. 0500 his time was the equivalent of about 1900 in an immortal's day, a seemingly never ending barrage of daylight – or now, sunset. The sun was just below the tops of the trees, visible only in patches, and the sky was a steady orange. Thirty-four hours 'til dark, Carter had said, though that had been a while ago… he paused, debating counting. Deciding accuracy wasn't, for the moment, worthy of the effort, he made a rough guess of somewhere around twenty-eight hours. He could ask her when she got up. For now, he was going to enjoy his walk, and neither science nor math was going to impinge.

He shifted his gun, glancing around at the surrounding jungle. No movement. Didn't mean there was nothing out there…

Pulling a bit of a face, he gave in and counted. Twenty-seven hours. He'd been close. Not bad for a guess.

"Colonel."

Jack turned. Carter was coming up behind him, dressed in her normal casual uniformity. Her hair was wet, and she was smiling. "Carter," he greeted her pleasantly. "You're up early."

"So are you, sir," she returned, falling into step beside him.

"Oh," he said, "just enjoying the morning air." He paused, glancing up at the orange sky. "As it were." She nodded, still smiling. What had her so cheerful? Didn't she know they were facing imminent danger? "How's the leg? The doc got you on painkillers or something?"

She laughed. "It's doing fine, sir," she assured him. "I heard you get up and thought I'd join you." She looked up at him quickly, radiant smile fading slightly. "I hope you don't mind."

"Course not, Carter," he said crisply. "You know how I love having someone vastly smarter than me around."

Somehow, she looked only half-reassured by this response.

"No, Carter," he clarified, stopping. "I don't mind." Shaking his head, he continued on, leaving her staring after him with that delightful little frown of amused confusion on her face.

A few steps later, she was back at his side, her smile back on her face. Back the way it should be, he thought absently.

They returned to the outpost as the rest of the group were just sitting down to breakfast. Daniel nodded a good morning on his way past with his tray, his nose already buried in a book. The others were still arriving, and the only one to give them a second glance was Carey. She looked at Sam with what might've been a wink, and though Jack's attention shot immediately to his companion for her reaction, she was already turning away from him towards the serving counter. Frowning, he followed suit.

After breakfast, they trouped out to the main yard. Higgs, holding a pencil and clipboard, was at the centre of their clump, and they sketched out a rough idea of what they wanted for a defence perimeter. The creatures wouldn't be too much of a threat, they thought. Floodlights around the edges of the camp should be enough to repel them, and just in case, they would set up two guns, one at each end of the compound. That done, the scientists wandered off to get in a bit of last minute sample-gathering, and the two SG teams moved off to find what they'd need.

It was Dawson, from SG-16, who came back with the news. "Colonel," he said, blunt as always, "the Gate's not working."

Jack spun. "Excuse me?"

"It's just… not working," Dawson repeated. "I tried to send through for the stationary guns, but I couldn't get any sort of response."

Jack didn't have to think twice. "Where's Carter?"

Carter was, it turned out, changing. Cullins had accidentally overturned a rack of potted samples while freeing the cord for the floodlight, and the soppy load had landed on Carter, who was at present not at all a happy camper. Being intruded upon, apparently, while covered by nothing but mud and panties, did not help matters. Neither did telling her that the Stargate was broken, and that she'd have to fix it.

She didn't grumble. She didn't rant. She didn't even protest, other than a request for thirty seconds to put some clothes on. She did, however, glare. Cullins wisely hung back, and she stalked ahead of the pack, silent and still covered in mud, despite the change of clothes. Jack resisted the temptation to comment on the small, leafed stem she had protruding from her hair.

Her frustration changed vents as she milled about the Gate, inspecting it. "I don't get it, sir," she said at last, giving one of the DHD's keys another push. "There's just… nothing. The only explanation I can think of is either that something's happened to subspace, or… the power's been cut." She looked around at the several faces assembled. "We didn't do anything to it, did we?"

Jack peered at Higgs. "Did you?"

The SG-16 commander bristled. "No, of course not."

Sam glanced between the two. "Well, sirs," she interjected, verbally stepping between them, "if we didn't cause it, I don't see any reason that it shouldn't fix itself."

"And if it doesn't?"

"There isn't anything I can do."

Jack squinted at her. Well that's helpful. Genius must be overrated. "Did you know you have a plant in your hair?"

She glared. And when they got back to camp, she disappeared into the building to shower and didn't appear again until lunch. He set his plate down with a deliberate clatter next to hers. "I see you got it out," he said brightly, making a small show of peering at her head.

She spared him a raised eyebrow. He sighed and sat down. "Have you been avoiding me, Carter?" he asked around a bite of sandwich.

She blinked at him, and when she spoke, she was surprisingly cheerful. "I've been helping reinforce the doors, sir," she said. "I've been inside all morning."

"Oh." He nudged a grape with one finger. "That… would explain it."

She chuckled. "What have you been working on, sir?"

"Flood lights," he replied. "Outside."

"How are they coming?" she inquired, sipping her apple juice.

"Oh, good," he said ambiguously. "How many doors have you got done?"

She looked up at him over the rim of her glass. "There ­are only three, sir."

He opened his mouth to reply, pausing. "Right."

It was several more bites before either of them spoke again. "What's your opinion on the creatures, Carter?"

"My opinion?" she looked up, mildly surprised. "Well, sir… I don't really know. I'd say they're dangerous, that's for sure, but I don't know if we have to be too worried. I mean, my leg's fine. The main problem is the sedative in their bites. It could make retreating a lot harder."

Jack nodded. While it could be mildly unnerving at times, he liked it when he was of the same opinion as Carter. "I'll take the first watch, starting around 1900 tonight."

"But, sir," she began to protest, "I should—"

"I want you to get some sleep," he interrupted. "You're cranky enough already."

"Cranky?" she echoed, blinking once. "I'm not cranky, sir. When was I cranky?"

He shrugged evasively.

She shook her head, smiling a bit. "Is this about the accident with Cullins? You try having a load of plants dumped on you, sir. Stinging plants, too!"

"Okay," he agreed, "Fine. I would be damn cranky. I assume you managed to get all the… stingers off you?"

"Pretty much," she nodded. "There's a bit of it left on the back of my neck…" Pensively, she ran a hand down from the base of her skull and beneath her collar. Jack's eyes followed it, stuck like glue. "Just a small rash," she confirmed. "I'll put some cream on it later if it's still there."

Jack swallowed, and took another bite of his sandwich.

The first watch was remarkably silent. With the others inside enjoying a bit of downtime, however they chose to do that, Jack, Daniel, and Carey were outside, slouched on the kitchen chairs they'd brought out. The sun was well below the tree tops by now, far past the pleasant long-shadow stage and into the buggy half-light of a painfully long evening. Feet up on a nearby box, Jack swatted at a small flying insect by his head.

"Daniel," he said into his radio.

"Jack," came the reply.

"We didn't bring any bug spray with us, did we?"

"Um, no, I don't think we did."

Jack's expression twitched in lazy irritation. "Of course we didn't." He let his hand fall back onto his gun, looking absently up at the grey-pink sky. Muffled and distorted by the layers of the outpost's corrugated metal walls, the sounds of an action flick filtered through to his ears. "Listen to them," he muttered to himself, "watching movies. Kids these days…"

He scanned over the edges of the jungle. No movement. It was getting awfully dark out there, though. Jack yawned.

Time crawled by. He would've killed for some real company, Teal'c for example, but everyone was either busy having fun, sleeping, or on watch on the other side of the complex. He hummed. Aimlessly at first, just a tune—if it could be called that—as it floated through his mind, and then more purposefully, he began to make his way through the Simpsons' theme.

There was a tap behind him. He turned, startled, his feet tumbling from their perch. "Sir?"

"Carter?"

That was definitely Carter's voice, but from where? "I'm at the window, sir," she informed him, a slightly long-suffering note in her voice.

His gaze shifted to the slatted window, open to the cooling air and unremarkable with the lights within off. "Carter?" he repeated.

"Um, the others are…" she paused, and the faint sound of fabric rustling filtered through to him. She whispered something to someone else, then turned back to the window. "Well, sir, the others are trying to sleep, and these walls let sound through pretty clearly…" She cleared her throat. "We were wondering if you could, uh… hum a little quieter. Sir."

"Carter. Just close the window."

There was another pause. "Yes, sir." And then the slats spun shut. Jack turned back around in his chair, feet going back up on the box. He tapped his fingers on his gun, taking a moment to find himself in his song again.

He'd just started up the first notes when a faint but distinctive sound reached him. He broke off, listening. It was coming from within the outpost, that was for sure. It was humming, that was for sure. Carter's characteristically out-of-tune contribution was in there, that was for sure. Boy, was she gonna get it. That was for sure.

And when the trees exploded into a burst of movement and Jack opened fire without a second thought, the people within the outpost took a moment longer than usual to respond. That was for sure.

"So what're we gonna do?"

Everyone was thinking it. Cullins just happened to be the first to voice it.

"I don't see that there's much we can do," Higgs said after a moment. "I mean, we can put the floodlights on and keep a guard, but it's not like we can go out hunting these things. The rest of us should try to get a bit more sleep."

"He's right," Jenson agreed. "They're going to get more common the later it gets. We should take advantage of the time we've got now."

Jack looked around at the assembled faces. "Sure. We'll keep the same watch until midnight. Everyone else, bed."

They dispersed with various murmurs of 'yes, sir'. Jack adjusted his gun, heading back for his seat. Daniel caught up to him. "Jack."

"Daniel," Jack echoed, stopping.

"I was thinking. A lot of those scientists don't know a whole lot about gun-handling. If this is going to get worse, it might be a good idea to give them a refresher course."

Jack eyeballed him. "Is this some backhanded way of telling me you've been skipping your marksmanship classes again?"

Daniel shrugged. "Just saying."

Jack chuckled, breaking off to retake his position on watch. "See you at midnight, Dannyboy."