Stargate/Sentinel crossover
Beta: Terri... sorry for not thinking to thank you before!
Author's Note: Since I'm a long-time fan of the works of Cindy Combs, I obtained permission to use her idea of MacGyver as Blair's father for my stories. Since MacGyver and Jack O'Neill were both played by Richard Dean Anderson, there will obviously be a physical resemblance between the characters that I have included in the story. I assume a familiarity with the Stargate premise and characters.
Timeline: This story takes place a couple of years after the last episode of the Sentinel, with Blair working as a detective in the Major Crimes unit as Jim's partner. In the Stargate universe, it takes place in the fourth season. The year is 2001.
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Chapter Ten
As noon approached, Daniel put aside his work and headed to the locker room to gear up for the mission. Though only the scouts would be going through the gate if the MALP showed all clear, the entire team had to be ready. Once he was finished, he grabbed his laptop and headed up to the control room, finding General Hammond, Sam, and the Cascade group ready and waiting. Sam nodded as he entered the room.
"We're ready, sir," Sam said, looking at the General.
"Dial it up," Hammond ordered, giving Sam the go-ahead.
Daniel moved to stand next to Blair, Megan and Katie, who were staring at the gate in awe. "Impressive, isn't it?" he asked quietly.
"I've never seen anything like it," Blair responded. "Man, what you must have thought the first time you laid eyes on that thing. It's everything you searched for your whole career. Proof positive that your theories were right, and so much more." They watched the gate as each chevron lit up, and as the last chevron locked into place, Daniel watched their guests. Blair and Katie jumped when the first rush of the wormhole surged into the room, then collapsed back and stabilized. "Oh, wow," Blair breathed out, reaching forward as if to try to touch it through the glass separating the control room from the gate room. Megan stared through the glass as if she could burn a hole through it with her gaze, and Katie reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. Daniel was about to ask what they were doing when he was distracted by the General's voice.
"Send the MALP," Hammond said into the microphone. One of the marines used the remote he held to maneuver the MALP through the open wormhole. Daniel moved over and gestured for Blair, Megan and Katie to watch the monitor. The infrared camera on the MALP panned around the gate platform, showing a densely wooded area with no humanoid forms present. It also did not pick up signs of other machinery nearby. After a three hundred-sixty degree scan showed no trace of enemies, General Hammond nodded to Colonel O'Neill in the gate room. "You have a go, Colonel."
Colonel O'Neill gave a jaunty salute, then strode quickly up the ramp and through the gate, gun at the ready, followed closely by Teal'c and Major Tyler. Daniel and the others watched tensely on the monitor as they crossed in front of the MALP's camera and spread out. The rest of the teams stood ready to charge through the gate if it turned out to be a trap and the scouts needed help to hold their position long enough to dial back home. After a quick perimeter search, Jack circled back around to the camera. "It's clear here. We'll report back in three hours. Requesting radio silence until then."
"Of course, Colonel," Hammond said. "Godspeed."
As the wormhole blinked out, Hammond spoke into the microphone again. "SG teams stand down, but be ready to head out at a moment's notice."
Daniel gestured up the stairs with his laptop. "Care to join me in the briefing room to wait? You don't want to get too far away now in case we need to head out quickly."
"That's fine," Blair answered for all of them. They followed him upstairs to the briefing room where Daniel opened his laptop and got back to work. Sam soon joined them, setting up her laptop across the table.
Blair, Katie and Megan all stood at the window that had been closed the other times they were in the conference room and watched the gate in silence. Katie reached out and lightly touched Megan's shoulder, reminding Daniel of the moment in the control room. "Hey, what were you doing in the control room earlier?" Daniel asked.
"What?" Blair asked, turning reluctantly away from the window to face Daniel, Megan and Katie following suit.
"When the wormhole was established, Megan looked like she was focusing pretty hard on the gate," Daniel pointed out. He looked at Katie. "And you reached out and touched Megan like you just did. What were you doing?" He looked back and forth between the women.
Megan sighed and shrugged. "We were trying to see if we could reach Jim through the wormhole. You said radio and other wavelengths on the spectrum will travel through the wormhole, so we thought it was worth a shot."
Sam looked up in interest at the turn the conversation was taking. "Do you know if your abilities operate on a specific wavelength? Have you ever done any tests to see if it shows up on any kind of brain scan or MRI?"
Megan shook her head and gave a short laugh. "An MRI? We've been trying to keep our abilities secret, not use expensive equipment for no obvious reason to lead people to us." She shrugged. "Though, we have used some of the labs at the Phoenix Foundation to run a few simple tests. We've never been able to isolate a wavelength that it seems to work on. So we really don't have any idea how it works." Turning back to Daniel, she answered the question he had been about to ask. "And no, we didn't get anything from Jim. I didn't get anything through the wormhole at all. It was like being on a phone line, there was no sense of anyone living. My abilities are limited by distance, as you know, and another star system is far outside those abilities. The wormhole connecting us doesn't seem to make a difference."
"Would you allow me to run some tests and see if we can pinpoint how your abilities work?" Sam asked.
Megan flinched, and her eyes widened in panic. "NO!" she said emphatically before lowering her voice to a near whisper. "No tests." She rubbed her arms briskly, her arms tight around her body.
Sam's eyes widened in horror as she realized what she had just asked Megan. "Sorry, no, I didn't mean that. Forget it. Forget I said anything about it."
Megan shook her head. "No, sorry, knee-jerk reaction. I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me. I just…" she didn't finish her sentence, turning back to the window to stare out at the gate. Blair gave Daniel and Sam an inscrutable glance, then turned, placing an arm around Megan's shoulders. He rubbed a hand up and down her arm in a soothing gesture, and she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder, the tension easing out of her body slowly.
Sam gave Daniel a helpless look, which he returned with a shrug before returning to his computer, giving the people at the window what privacy could be afforded. Daniel tried to ignore the tension in the room caused by the inadvertent comment, and was stunned when he heard Megan suddenly snicker and Blair laugh out loud. He turned to see Megan swat Katie lightly on the arm.
"Katie!" Megan protested, the chuckles escaping her as she shook her head. "I'm going to have that in my head for the rest of the day now. If I start humming when we're doing surveillance, it's all your fault."
"What's going on?" Daniel asked, leaning back in his chair, turning to face them with a bemused look on his face. As far as he could tell, Katie hadn't done anything, but then, with this particular group of people, that didn't mean anything.
"You know how you can get a song stuck in your head and can't get rid of it?" Megan asked him. When he nodded, she continued. "Well, Katie just had to share the song that was driving her crazy so it could do the same for us."
Sam cocked her head in curiosity. "What song is it?"
"'I'm too sexy', by Right Said Fred," Megan answered. When both Sam and Daniel stared at her blankly, Megan shook her head in amazement. "Neither of you know it? It came out when we were in high school. My mother thought it was hilarious and loved it." When they indicated they hadn't heard it, Megan sang a line from the lyrics. "On the catwalk, on the catwalk, yeah I do a little turn on the catwalk…" As she sang, she bounced a little to the music she could hear in her head. Daniel couldn't help but grin at how young she seemed at that moment.
She looked back and forth between him and Sam. "No recognition, huh?"
"No, but you certainly seem to enjoy the song," Daniel commented, provoking a faint blush across her face.
"Oh, come on," she protested. "Don't you ever revert to an earlier time in your life when you hear a song that brings it all back?"
Sam grinned at her. "Yeah, I have to admit that I do at times."
Megan smiled easily back at her, everything forgiven. Daniel glanced at Megan's guide. It was obvious that she knew just how to break the tension in her friends. It would have to be difficult for her, though, since it was her husband they were attempting to rescue. Daniel shook his head as he thought about what all of them were going through. It seemed they handled the stress of difficult situations with humor, or at least as much as they could. They reminded him of Jack in that way.
"Oh, wow, I'm wound far too tightly," Megan said with a wry grin. "Does anyone mind if I do a little tai chi in the corner to relax?"
"No, go ahead," Sam said, waving toward an open corner.
Megan tilted her head toward the corner. "Want to join me?" she asked Katie.
"Sure," Katie said, walking with Megan over to an open area near the door. They faced each other and without exchanging a word, started in on a kata of slow, flowing movements.
Daniel watched them for a moment, seeing how they mirrored each other's movements perfectly; most of the time, anyway. Megan kept adding odd moves here and there that Daniel thought resembled a dance move more than a martial arts move. He glanced over at Blair and raised an eyebrow in question. Blair just chuckled. "She still has that song stuck in her head. She's always tended to pull her music into her exercise routines." He shrugged and pulled up a chair next to Daniel. "So, what are you working on?"
Daniel brought up some stills of the alien writing he'd recorded on the walls of the temple in which they'd found Megan. Blair leaned in to get a closer look. "It looks like a derivative of a language used by the Ticuna tribe in Peru. Have you heard of the Yuri language? It's extinct, and there's not much known about it, but some of those symbols are similar to what I've seen hypothesized as the written form of the Ticuna-Yuri language."
Daniel glanced aside at Blair and back to the screen, getting drawn into a discussion of ancient and near-extinct languages. He barely noticed when Megan and Katie finished their exercise and settled into chairs across the table. Deep in conversation with his old friend, Daniel was surprised when the alarm on his computer beeped at him. "Oh." He checked his watch. "Fifteen minutes till Jack's check-in time. We should get ready to head out." Daniel quickly closed down his computer as Sam did the same.
They all followed Sam down to a prep room nearby to load up their gear and grab their weapons. Once everyone was ready, they joined the other two SG teams waiting in the gate room. A silence fell over the group as they waited, each person wondering what was happening to the scouts, whether they would be able to make contact as scheduled, and what would await them when it came their turn to proceed through the gate. Daniel glanced over to see how the newcomers were handling the wait. There was no sign of the earlier teasing now, nor of the tension he had seen in them. In fact, they seemed calm, collected, still and alert, much like the experienced military personnel surrounding them. Daniel nodded to himself. They'd do just fine.
When the gate activated on schedule, Daniel released a soft sigh of relief, prompting a glance from Megan. She nodded at him, then turned her attention to the control room, her eyes un-focusing as she concentrated. After a moment she turned back to Blair and Katie, speaking just loud enough for Daniel and Sam to hear as well. "Colonel O'Neill and the others are fine. They're ready for the rest of the team to come through." The gate shut down as she spoke, and immediately started spinning again as Walter started dialing out again to send the teams through.
As soon as she finished speaking, General Hammond's voice came over the speakers. "SG's one, five and seven, you have a go."
With a salute, Colonel Harris led SG-5 up the ramp and through the wormhole. They were quickly followed by SG-7, and Daniel and Sam ushered the civilians toward the gate. As they approached the gate, Katie held up a hand. "Give us a moment."
Katie turned to Megan. "I need you to dial everything down as low as you can go and still be functioning. You didn't react so well the last time you went through, and we want to avoid a repeat of that."
Megan didn't respond verbally, but gazed off into the distance, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. She finally nodded at Katie. "I'm as ready as I'm going to be."
Blair gently took Megan's arm in his, took a deep breath, and gazed up at the gate. The determination in his bearing and expression could not hide the excitement and wonder in his eyes at what he was about to do. "Here we go." Putting his shoulders back, Blair led Megan into the wormhole. Katie closed her eyes and stepped quickly through. Daniel glanced at Sam and shrugged. Daniel gestured for Sam to precede him through the gate, then followed her through.
When Daniel stepped out of the gate on the other end, he nearly tripped over Blair, Katie and Megan. The two guides were supporting Megan between them, moving her slumped form over to the side of the gate in an effort to get out of the way. "Whoa," he exclaimed, stopping short and sidestepping to avoid running into them. "What's wrong?" He crouched down beside them as they lowered Megan to the ground. She immediately curled into a ball, her hands moving to cover her ears, eyes clenched shut. At least it was enough to reassure him that she was conscious, which was better than her last trip through the gate.
"Apparently Sentinels and wormhole travel don't mix," Blair commented worriedly, his voice soft as he watched Katie murmur to Megan.
"Oh, just great!" Jack said, walking over to join them. "I knew this was a bad idea!" He looked down at Megan and back to the gate. "Will she be able to handle another trip through the gate? Because I'm sending you both home right now."
Katie glanced up at Jack and fixed him with a glare. "Will you please shut up and let me work here?" Though it was obvious that Katie was irate with Jack, she kept her voice quiet to avoid irritating Megan's senses any further. "She'll be fine if everyone will just back off and let us work through this." She muttered under her breath, and Daniel didn't think her last comment was meant to be heard. "And that includes you, Jim."
Jack's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline and he looked as if he was going to yell, but he held his tongue and just hovered over them, glowering down at Katie. She ignored him and focused on helping Megan recover from the sensory overload. After a couple of minutes, Megan relaxed and lowered her hands. Rolling over onto her back, she cracked her eyes open and looked up at the night sky. Finding that the light didn't bother her, she opened her eyes fully and sat up, looking up and meeting Jack's glare. The light from the two moons was weak, but it was enough to show Daniel that there were still lines of strain on Megan's face. She wasn't quite recovered from the shock.
"Sorry for this. I wasn't expecting it to bother me quite so much. But I'm fine now and we're ready to continue with the mission."
"Continue?" Jack asked in amazement. "Oh, hell no. You're heading back right now."
"Don't you want to talk to Jim?" Megan asked, her eyes wide in an innocent expression. "He's aware we're here. In fact, he was nearly yelling in my head from the moment I stepped through the gate. Quite annoying, actually, but he's apparently not too happy I came along."
"That makes two of us," Jack muttered, glancing back at the rest of the rescue team. Since they were unaware of Megan's unusual abilities, he directed them to secure a perimeter while he spoke to Megan. Crouching down next to Megan, he ran a hand over his head, sweeping his hat off and re-settling it back into place. "So, how do we do this?"
"We'll relay your questions to Jim and then repeat his responses so you can hear them," Blair said. "To start off with, Jim has reported that he's being held in a small room made of a material he's never seen before. He's heard some kind of engine noise on occasion, and had a faint sense of movement when he first woke up. Based on what we know, I would assume that he's being held in the cargo ship. When you were scouting, did you see the ship?"
Jack nodded. "The intel was accurate. There is a metal shed building in a clearing a couple of miles from here. The ship is parked about a hundred meters from the shed. We've disabled all of the traps and alarms we found between here and the clearing. We spotted two teams of two guards each on patrol of the area. Ask Jim how many men he's seen, what he's seen of their patterns, what weapons they might have on hand."
Megan relayed the questions to Jim and his responses to Jack. In this way, Jack was able to question Jim and find out all the information the captive had on his prison and captors. Once the questions were finished, Megan looked at Jack. "Jim wants to help. As you know, he's an ex-Army Ranger, and a police detective. Having him on the inside could be a great help to us. He just doesn't know how to get out of the cell. The technology is unfamiliar to him, and he won't likely have a chance to jump a guard before you arrive. He hasn't been subjected to the same things I was, with no scientists here to experiment on him, so he's in good fighting shape."
Sam glanced to Jack and got a brief nod in response. Sitting down next to Megan, Sam started questioning Jim on what he saw in the room, then talked him through the procedure to get into the door controls in the wall and override the lock. Since they didn't want him out roaming the halls until they were a little closer to provide back-up, Sam just told him the final step, but asked him to hold off until Megan gave him the signal. Nodding to Jack, Sam indicated that Jim would be ready when they needed him to start working his way out to meet them. Deciding that they had all of the information they needed, Jack stood up, gesturing for everyone to gather together.
Jack went over the layout of the clearing for everyone, pointing out what they'd seen and going over the details once more of who was supposed to be where. He made eye contact with Megan. "The outcropping is right where we were told, at the southwestern corner of the clearing. I want you there watching for us before we move in." Megan gave a brisk nod, her gratitude at being allowed to stay clear in her eyes. Jack looked around at the team, meeting their eyes one at a time, making sure each person was clear on their role and ready to do the job they had come to do. When he was satisfied, he clapped his hands together. "OK. Let's move out." Once everyone put on their night vision goggles, Jack and Teal'c took point, leading the teams into the woods around the gate.
They were all careful to follow exactly where Jack led, and at his hand signal, Daniel, Megan and Katie peeled off toward the outcropping. Megan took off her night vision goggles, explaining that she had better peripheral vision without them, and could see well enough in the light provided by the two moons. Daniel found himself following Megan, rather than taking the lead, but if one of them were going to find any trip wires in the dark, it would be the Sentinel in the group. He couldn't help but notice how easily the two women moved in the dark. For being civilians, they certainly seemed to know what they were doing. It occurred to him that their training and experience might very well have honed them into soldiers the same way his experiences made him comfortable in this situation. They reached the outcropping with no difficulty and stretched out on the top, overlooking the clearing.
The ease Megan showed in setting up her sniper rifle on its tripod surprised Daniel. "Are you sure you've never done this before?" he asked quietly, glancing aside at her as she watched over the clearing below.
"I've been very well trained in how to use the weapons. I can honestly say that I've never done the whole sniper thing before, though," Megan responded absently. Her attention was focused on keeping an eye out for any movement, not on Daniel. "It's not usually in my job description." She tilted her head to look briefly at him. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention that to the colonel, though. I don't want him thinking he has a novice on the team."
Daniel chuckled and couldn't help thinking that Jack knew very well they weren't experienced soldiers, no matter what they claimed, and that's why they were up here on the bluff and not part of the team in the clearing. Megan shifted her eyes to glance at him and a brief grin flickered across her face before she turned her attention back to the clearing before them. Her features tightened and she nodded down toward the tree line. "Movement. It's our guys."
Daniel turned his attention back to the mission as well, using his night vision goggles to watch as the SG teams went to work. Since their people were beginning to move on the clearing, it meant that they had already neutralized the guards on patrol. He watched as two separate groups moved into the clearing, one heading toward the metal building and the smaller group toward the cargo ship.
"Jim's out of his cell and on the move," Megan reported. "I gave him the go-ahead as soon as I saw Colonel O'Neill's signal." Her eyes kept moving, scanning the clearing, and watching as the two teams moved forward.
When both women suddenly stiffened, Daniel's eyes darted around the clearing, searching for signs of trouble. When he didn't see anything out of the expected, he glanced aside at them. "What's wrong?"
Katie answered while Megan kept watch. "Jim has encountered one of the guards. They're fighting." She shrugged, trying not to show how worried she was. "We're all kind of tuned into each other right now."
"No, Jim!" Megan hissed suddenly. "Don't shoot him more than once!" She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. "Because a second shot kills, and I didn't think you wanted him dead… Tie him up or something… I don't know, find something. I'd suggest your shoelaces, but having your shoes fall off and trip you in the middle of a rescue would be undignified, at the very least."
Daniel glanced aside at Megan, then over to Katie, who was grinning. "They act like siblings most of the time," Katie explained.
Shaking his head, Daniel spoke again. "It's not so much what she's saying, as the fact that he's still in that cargo ship and you guys aren't using radios. It's a bit odd, that's all."
Katie seemed to be having a hard time holding back laughter. "A bit odd. Well, we've been called worse."
"I didn't mean it that way," Daniel protested, keeping an eye fixed on the progress of the mission as they spoke.
"Jim's at the door, Daniel, and needs to know how to operate the controls." Megan had ignored the byplay between Katie and Daniel, doing her best to follow both the teams that she could see and Jim's progress. Daniel did his best to talk Jim through the process with Megan and Katie relaying messages back and forth. "OK, he's out," she finally said, "and Blair is on his way." She glanced over to the team just entering the building.
She tilted her head to the side and stared hard into the trees on the other side of the building. "Movement," she murmured. "There shouldn't be anyone there." A second after she spoke, the radios burst to life.
"The building is empty," Sam's voice reported. "Repeat, there are no hostiles inside."
Megan grabbed the thermal night vision goggles and hurriedly put them on, looking to where she had seen the movement. Grabbing her radio, she spoke to warn the teams. "Six hostiles in the woods ten degrees East of North." She scanned the rest of the clearing. "Three more closing in on the cargo ship, due straight West."
"It's an ambush," Jack's voice came over the radio. "We have the hostage. All teams fall back. Fall back."
Megan let the radio fall to her side and put her eye to the scope of the rifle. Daniel switched his goggles to a thermal view and tried to watch both of their teams retreat back toward the gate. It was harder to tell in the infrared who was who, but reckoned that the forms moving out of the woods were the hostiles. He saw one of the forms draw an arm back as if to throw something, and grabbed his radio in order to warn Sam and her team.
Before he could get a word out, however, the object was sailing through the air toward Sam, Teal'c and SG-7. Megan pulled the trigger of the rifle, and a second later, a bullet impacted the object in mid-air. The result was a flash of light as bright as day and a horrible screeching that had everyone in the vicinity on the ground with their hands over their ears.
Daniel let out a whistle. "Nice shot," he said admiringly. The bluff was far enough away that the Goa'uld stun grenade was merely an impressive explosion, but not enough to bother him. He turned to find Megan curled up with her hands over her ears. "Uh, oh," Daniel said, reaching out a hand toward Megan as Katie put a hand on Megan's shoulder.
"Dammit," Megan said, uncurling herself and pulling off the goggles, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I wasn't expecting that." She reached for the rifle as gunfire echoed from the clearing. "I'm all right," she insisted, brushing Daniel's hand away as she peered through the scope. Daniel looked back at the enemy soldiers, knowing he was too far away to trust his aim. He watched as Megan fired once, twice, and three times. For each shot, one of the soldiers fell, but Daniel noticed that they were moving after hitting the ground, so she didn't seem to be shooting to kill.
After that, the SG members took control, taking out one of the hostiles before the other two surrendered. Seeing that the teams by the building had things under control, Daniel looked over to check on Jack and the team by the ship. He could see three figures sitting on the ground, presumably tied up, with three others standing guard. "Uh, oh. That doesn't look good," he said, seeing another figure lying on the ground with two others hunched over him.
Hearing his comment, Megan and Katie turned their attention to where he was looking. Megan's brow crinkled in concern as she focused her vision across the clearing. "Blair?" she asked. "Who's hurt?" Her eyes widened at the response, and she gave the clearing another look. "Yeah, everything seems to be under control. I'm on my way." She quickly set about packing up and switching on the safety of her rifle, then swung the equipment easily over her shoulder as she stood. She grabbed her handgun from her leg holster and held it in a two handed grip. "Come on," she gestured for Katie and Daniel to join her, and they scrambled quickly to their feet, hurrying to keep up with her as she set off down the rise at a rapid pace.