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Part XI
The infirmary door slid open, revealing pandemonium. Of the team that had been on the planet, only the 2IC, Captain Kyle Grey, was completely unharmed. Hailey had numerous small cuts on her face and hands, and Bra'tac's left arm was burned, and he limped slightly as he backed away from a nurse, insisting Bryant be seen to first, even though Lieutenant Bryant already had a crowd of nurse and two doctors gathered around him.
Although they had been able to radio Athena-1 and Athena-3 and both teams had returned safely, Sam had been unable to leave the bridge to check on her people until now.
With Kaímar, as always, immediately behind her, the first person Sam approached was Dr. Brightman, who was leaning over a console studying scans detailing Bryant's injuries. Sam's throat felt awfully dry as she asked, "How bad is it?"
Brightman was clearly worried, a deep frown slapped firmly across her face. "Bad," she spat. "The weapon seems to have been some sort of hybrid. Superheated plasma and lightweight metal. Went right through him, except for this." She indicated a small specimen jar beside her. A small, disheveled piece of dark metal lay within. "Melted, then cooled. We found it embedded in the exit wound. The round – I'm guessing about the size of a twelve-gauge shotgun shell – must've been traveling very quickly, for something this light and that hot to go through him like that. At the speed of a bullet, the whole thing would be deep inside the wound. It would have liquidated his right lung before cooling. As it is, the sheer force collapsed his lung, shattered several bones including his collarbone, and dislocated his right shoulder. He was out from the shock before he even hit the ground, according to Captain Grey. I'm surprised the shock didn't kill him right away."
Derek Bryant was twenty-six years old, and had joined the United States Air Force for the free tuition. Excited by his training and surprised by his abilities, he had stayed in the service after his mandatory two years were up, but soon began thinking he had made a mistake, and had been considering leaving and putting his engineering studies to better use in private sector R&D, when an SGC officer, a family friend, had placed his file on General Landry's desk for consideration. He'd just recently completed his training for assignment at the SGC, but the reports from his instructors had been so positive Sam had approved him for service on Athena without even meeting him. Sam couldn't even see him now, with all the medics flocking around him, but she could picture the ruined young officer all-too-clearly, and smell the charred flesh. Working hard to keep her last meal down, reminding herself that it was her job to maintain order on the ship, she almost croaked, "Is he going to live?"
Brightman surprised her by nodding slightly. "It looks that way, but I don't know if he'll fully recover." The bed was now being wheeled away into the O.R. "He'll need a lot of grafting. This rib is gone. We can't assess any possible spinal damage accurately until we open him up. His arm… I don't know if we can save it."
Bryant was being moved into an O.R., and Brightman rose to follow. "Keep me posted," Sam told her, then moved across the room to Bra'tac, who was finally allowing his wound to be checked, though he didn't seem very concerned about it. Looking at it herself, Sam didn't think it looked too bad – or at least, it was nothing that would bother a Jaffa. "Are you okay?"
The Jaffa master spoke without looking at her. He never took his eyes off Bryant, who could now be seen in the next room through the thick Perspex screen. "This is my doing," he stated flatly. "The boy was wounded defending me from one of the enemy foot soldiers. I was unaware of his presence until he fired. Lt. Bryant was attempting to pull me out of the path of the blast." He went silent for a moment, before looking into her eyes and repeating, "This is my doing."
"I doubt that," Sam told him. She knew that Jaffa in general were hard on themselves, and Bra'tac was worse than most in that regard. "Dr. Brightman said they should be able to help him. With a little luck, he'll make a full recovery. We'll debrief in an hour." She was about to turn and leave when she paused for a moment. "This wasn't your fault."
"No." Again he looked away, and his words fell like hammer-strokes. "This old man has suffered too many failures. There will be no more."
"Do not speak of such things!" Sam jumped at the words, and almost did again when she turned and saw the look on Teal'c's face. He was eyeing his mentor furiously, and Sam wondered briefly if he even noticed her standing between them.
Bra'tac, for his part, stiffened as a result of his pupil's outrage, his knuckles turning white with the grip on his staff. For a moment he seemed ready to lash out at the larger man – something Sam did not want to be in the middle of – but the rage left him quickly, and he turned back to his observation of the O.R.
Sam stood frozen as Teal'c took a moment to calm himself. "Colonel Carter, can I speak to you in private?" Without waiting for her reply, he turned and left.
Sam walked over to Hailey. Apart from the cuts – caused by exploding debris, Sam imagined, and not all that serious, she seemed fine, but Sam asked anyway. "You okay?" The diminutive younger woman nodded, wincing slightly as the nurse dabbed her cheek with an antiseptic. "We'll debrief in one hour. You may need to remind Bra'tac."
"Yes ma'am," she responded quietly. She looked as worried as Sam felt, her eyes moving between Bra'tac and Bryant.
Outside, Sam rounded on Teal'c angrily. "What the hell is going with him?" Teal'c appeared to considering his response, but what Sam didn't want to hear right now was a prepared answer to preserve his master's dignity. "The truth, Teal'c. The whole story."
He regarded her silently for a moment. "Master Bra'tac is dying."
It took Sam a moment to find her voice again. "Wh… what are you talking about?"
"Tretonin has begun to fail him. The process seems much the same as if his symbiote had matured, though it appears to be happening more slowly. He is frequently in a great deal of pain, and he tires easily of late." Looking past Sam, he saw Kaímar emerging from the medical bay, and gesturing for her to follow him, made his way down the corridor. Before doing so, she gestured to the Unas to hang back.
"How slowly," she asked as she caught up with Teal'c. "How long has this been going on?"
"A little over a year," he said at last, "though he has been growing worse in recent months."
Sam couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Dammit, Teal'c!" Ferretti was right, it occurred to her for an instant. She was hanging around Jack too much. Forcing herself back to the present, she asked him "Why haven't you said anything about this before?"
"It was not my place. Master Bra'tac did not want to die an old man in his bed. That is not how old warriors pass."
"So you asked me to let him lead one of my teams? If his symptoms hit him down there he could have gotten the whole team killed!"
Another brief moment of silence. Then - "I have been monitoring him closely. If his symptoms had advanced to the point where he could no longer function as a warrior, I would have informed you, against his wishes, as it were."
Over the past ten years, Sam had put up with more than her fair share of the problems caused by Jaffa pride, but this was ridiculous. "He can't lead a team in this condition, Teal'c. And I have to inform Dr. Brightman. Don't!" she almost yelled as Teal'c began to argue. Working hard to calm herself, she continued. "You should have told me about this a long time ago. You should have told General O'Neill, if you didn't want to talk to me about it." Seeing him drop his eyes, she relented. "I'm sorry, Teal'c. But now, more than ever, you can't keep things like this from me. We're all alone out here. I have to know what's going on with my crew."
Turning to go back to the bridge, she spoke over her shoulder. "I want you at the briefing."
Everybody was already in the briefing room when Sam got there. Pouring herself a glass of water as she sat down, she turned to Bra'tac. "Alright, from the start. What happened down there?"
The old Jaffa seemed to have gotten hold of himself by now, though she noticed him eyeing Teal'c angrily before he spoke. Apparently he knew the truth was out. "Less than a mile from the Chapp'ai was a large market place. As we approached, a boy crossed our path and offered to introduce us to some of the traders, a few of whom lived in the area, while most of the others came from nearby village, and a handful came through the Chapp'ai from a nearby system. Most seemed human, though a handful were of a species I had not encountered before."
"The first trader we spoke to commented on our attire and equipment. Naturally, he was curious about where we had come from, and suggested we find him in a nearby tavern in the evening. It was not long after this meeting was arranged that the attack began. A ship appeared overhead and immediately began firing on the marketplace. The bombardment lasted barely a minute, but was sufficient to destroy many of the buildings in the area. I do not know how many were killed, but I saw dozens of bodies, and this was before the ground troops appeared among the rubble."
"The ground troops, Sam stopped him. "Were they human?"
"Yes. The moment they appeared they began firing in every direction, cutting down everyone they saw."
"That was it? They just showed up and started blasting everyone?"
"They didn't seem interested in taking prisoners," Captain Grey put in. "Geran – the kid who was showing us around before it started – said there were places to hide." The whole team shifted somewhat uncomfortably now. "He was shot before he could lead us away," Grey told her with his eyes lowered. "There wasn't much left."
"We managed to find a way out of the marketplace towards a forest grove, but not before Bryant was hit. It took us awhile to get him clear. That done, Lieutenant Hailey went to take a look at the gate."
"Two dozen ground troops were waiting there," Hailey told her, "so I dialed in by remote. They were pretty surprised when the DHD lit up. I think they figured somebody was standing there using some sort of cloak. Started firing over and around it, then started checking the immediate area, but it was getting a little dark, and I was far enough away that there was no chance of them seeing me. After that, we pretty much just sat tight until Athena arrived.
Not much else we could do. They cut through that place pretty quickly."
"Well, I've already sent a message to Earth, and CC'd Atlantis, too. They're not all that far from this galaxy, and this mess could spill into Pegasus. We've already seen these guys in our own galaxy," she told them all, much to their wide-eyed surprise.
"Colonel?" Ferretti asked.
"About three years ago, the Prometheus was attacked on its return to Earth after being left on P3X-744. I got a good look at the ship in orbit over the planet. It was the same ship, or at least the same model."
"I don't think I've heard about that," Jonas commented. "Haven't had a chance to catch up on things I missed."
"Well, there's not a lot to tell," Sam said. "They kicked our asses. We tried using a short hyperspace jump to hide in a nearby nebula, but the whole crew was abducted before we got there. They missed me because I'd taken a knock to the head. I was out cold, and when I woke up, I was alone on the Prometheus."
"Did you manage to get the crew back?" Jonas queried.
"It took some doing, but yeah. The Prometheus was trapped inside the nebula, and so was the enemy ship. After I found a way out, I bartered with the enemy ship for the release of the crew in order for me getting them out of there. They never actually responded to my communication, but they sent the crew back, then left once we were all out of the nebula."
"And you're sure these are the same guys?" Ferretti asked her.
"No mistaking those ships. And the M.O. is the same. Both seem to have a penchant for unprovoked assaults. I don't know why they weren't taking prisoners on the planet, but whoever these guys are they're dangerous."
"So what are we gonna do?" Ferretti asked. "After we heard what was happening, we asked the people where we were if they knew anything about any local threats. They came up blank. We don't know anything about these guys except they like killing."
"I mentioned all this in my message to the SGC. For now, we don't have a leg to stand on. We don't even have a full crew compliment yet. We're going back to Earth."
TBC
Authors' Note: The new SG-1 will be making an appearance in the not too distant future, and Athena will be returning to combat this new enemy. In the meantime, please review.
