Chapter 11 – Off-Base, Part 3

April 29, 2002

"So, someone's trying to kidnap John, they likely have at least one informant at the Pentagon, we're in public with an alien, and we think this is a good time to have a vacation?"

Sands shrugged at Bell's comment. "I'm not going to object. I've never been to New York before."

Raythe trailed a little behind his two teammates. They walked through a busy street, where everyone moved quickly and purposefully, as if an unscheduled off-world activation was occurring all the time. Raythe constantly had people brushing his shoulder as they moved past him. No one seemed bothered by this closeness, but it was giving Raythe a powerful headache. He growled lowly and rubbed at his temples, which earned him an odd look from a man in a long coat that was walking in the opposite direction.

"And naturally, you want to see the Empire State Building." Bell said this with some derision that Raythe didn't understand. While looking at his teammates from behind, it took him a moment to figure out why Sands looked so odd. He had never see her with her hair down. It hung to her mid-back and was dark brown and wavy, probably from being tied so tight all the time.

Bell looked pretty much the same.

"It is an icon of our country and this city. Plus, I've never been that high up without being in a plane."

"It's a cliché tourist attraction."

"And at the moment, we are tourists."

Raythe caught up to him teammates. "So why did Ma - Gr - Michael take off on his own?" Raythe asked.

Bell shrugged. "Said he had some contacts in town that he wanted to meet."

"And we couldn't meet them too?"

"Maybe he's embarrassed by us," Sands suggested. "And by 'us', I mean the two of you."

Raythe nodded in understanding, apparently not realizing that he was being teased.

A few minutes later, the trio found themselves waiting in line at the Empire State Building's lobby. Raythe looked around at the architecture of the building, his headache forgotten in the sharp angles and spinning designs on the walls. The ceiling was particularly interesting. The golden images reminded him of suns and old star maps. It was nice. He didn't even notice the crowded line until he heard a small voice ask him, "Are you a monster?"

He looked down. A young female was in front of him, standing near her mother. The mother turned and looked down when she heard her daughter speak and said, "Trecia, that's very rude. He's not - Oh!" The woman started when she actually looked up at Raythe.

Raythe grinned widely at her. "I am a monster, actually. See this," he held up his right hand and pointed to the slit in his palm. "I use it suck out people's brains."

"Ewww, John," Bell said. Then he addressed the woman. "Sorry about him. Clearly I should never have introduced him to zombie movies. I'm pretty sure he dresses like this purely to scare small children."

"Not small children exclusively."

Behind them, Sands sighed. "And you guys wonder why Michael might be embarrassed by you."

Elsewhere...

Griff sat down outside the coffee shop, enjoying the rare good New York weather. He watched the people walk by until a woman sat down at his table. She was in her forties, was about Griff's height, and had dark hair. She smiled as she sat. "Morning, Michael."

Griff smiled. "Hey Marie. Thanks for coming. I know you're busy."

Mariana Martinez laughed a little and rolled her eyes. "When your ex-husband shows up with his super soldiers in tow and asks for breakfast, usually there's something interesting going on. Is it true that one of your team is an alien?"

Griff scanned around to make sure there was no one within earshot of that alien comment. "I wouldn't call them super soldiers. But yes to the alien thing. How'd you find out about that?"

"I keep tabs on you. Plus there's only a handful of aliens that live on base. It's kind of a big deal when it happens. Congratulations on it happening to you."

"Thanks, I think. He's mostly a pain in the ass. Like yesterday, for example."

"What's going on, Michael?"

Griff rubbed the back of his neck. "You heard of the rogue NID agents that have been stealing alien tech?"

"And manipulating politicians into positions to control the stargate? Politicians that know about the SGC, like Congresswoman Michaels, the woman I work for? Yeah, I might have heard about them. They're something of a concern to those of us that are usually Earth-side."

"Do you really talk this casually in public all the time? It's starting to worry me."

"Michael," Martinez said with warning in her voice. "I'm worried now. What's going on? Why aren't you in Colorado?"

Griff sighed. "My team was traveling in DC for a debrief. We got attacked. They tried to kidnap Raythe. We're fine, but Lieutenant Sands, one of mine, ID'ed one of the attackers as NID."

Martinez shook her head. "So why are you here instead of back in Colorado? Or at the nearest Air Force base?"

"Well, I couldn't exactly walk onto any old base and say I needed security for my alien, now could I? But I realized that the rogues that attacked us had to have details about where we were going to be. Only a few people at the Pentagon could've known that. I have a list of those I about." He slid a folded paper over to her. "There's a mole there, and if we retreat and bring accusations to my superiors, the mole will just bury the evidence. We have to find the informant before that happens."

"What makes you think it hasn't happened already? If this mole even exists, and he has any sense at all, he'd have severed all communication with the former NID agents and destroyed any evidence the second the objective failed."

"I guess I don't know for sure, but I know Raythe, and anyone around him, isn't safe until we stop whoever wants him."

"And this is why you've come to me? To start an investigation into the Pentagon?" Martinez picked up the paper and waved it around for emphasis. "Michael, you must realize that I don't have anywhere near that kind of authority. I'm a congresswoman's chief of staff; I'm a glorified secretary."

"But you've worked with the Pentagon before. I mean, Congresswoman Michaels has. You must have developed some contacts."

"Sure, with other secretaries. I don't have any actual pull. At most, I could make a few phone calls, ask some questions, but that would definitely let the mole know where you are."

Griff smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Well, about those phone calls…"

Eighty-six stories up and on the balcony of one of the tallest buildings in the world, Raythe was stunned by the city before him. It was massive. It must be the size of a hive ship, but it was much more crowded. It was noisy. Nearly one thousand feet up, and he could still hear car horns and shouts from below.

There was so much noise. It was a constant hum of voices that pressed in on him, on his head and chest. He couldn't focus on any one sound, and he lost track of where Sands and Bell were on the balcony. He moved away from the others milling around the telescopes and pulled his hood up, hoping to dull some of the sound. It didn't work. The sound wasn't coming in through his ears.

He looked down and was struck by a sense of vertigo that had nothing to do with the height. This shouldn't be able to happen. They shouldn't be able to push into his mind. Humans couldn't. At best, Raythe could sense those he was in very close proximity to in times of heightened emotion. But this, this was impossible. They were overwhelming his senses.

There were just so many people.

And there was no way they would all stay here forever. These Earth humans were adventurous and creative. They would make it to his home galaxy eventually, and they would go to war with his people. It was inevitable.

He felt a hand on his elbow. It took a second for him to focus on it among so many distractions, but he came back to himself and realized it was Sands.

"Are you alright?"

Raythe shook his head. "We're going to lose."

"Don't say that. We have options yet."

"There are so many people, Kylie. They're practically suffocating each other. How can you survive like this? You can't possibly have the resources or patience to see to everyone."

Sands seemed confused by the apparent subject change but didn't push the issue. "No, not really. We're overpopulated, and we fight with each other more than we fight with the Goa'uld. We talked about this, remember?"

"No, you don't understand. How could you? You can't feel each other, how are you expected to see the magnitude of this? This planet has more people on it than are likely in my entire galaxy. Yet you argue and fret over every life lost to the Goa'uld. Do you realize that had you simply made a treaty with the system lords to give them slaves and hosts, you probably could have avoided a war?"

"That's not an option for us, John. We value all human life, even all intelligent life."

"The Goa'uld are intelligent."

"Yes, and we don't kill them cavalierly."

"I know. Major Griff told me that SG-1 once saved the life of Apophis simply because he asked. But I can't understand why."

"It worries me a little when you say things like this, John. I know we can't judge others by our standards - alien people have alien ways - but it worries me about how you must have interacted with humans in your galaxy. You didn't use them as slaves, did you, like the Goa'uld do?"

Raythe looked down at Sands. The noise below didn't seem so overwhelming now. "No, why would we? We use technology to our advantage, not mass labor. And we avoid humans in general. In our experience, humans are primitive and superstitious. Interacting with them usually just causes problems."

"You look down on them. But you work with us. You treat the officers with respect and follow their authority. You don't see the double standard there?"

"The people of Earth are unlike any humans I know of. I think, if our people were to meet, it would be as peers, not superiors. And I don't really know how that would change things, how our leaders would react, if we would see humans the same. I wonder if it would change how we... how we live," he trailed off, unwilling to voice what he actually meant. He looked back at Sands, a human that was his colleague and friend. "You're different, is all I mean."

Sands must have sensed that he was uncomfortable, because she shifted the conversation to a more academic track. "Are there really no advanced human civilizations in your galaxy?"

Raythe shrugged. "I have heard of humans that live in ships in space, like us, but I have never seen any. The most advanced humans I've ever seen personally were what you might call pre-industrial."

But it seemed as though Sands could not quite let the previous subject drop. She looked over the edge of the balcony at the masses below. "Do you really think we should just make a deal with the Goa'uld for the lives of those we can't support?"

"Not at all."

"But you said -."

"I said that there was once a point where that might have been the better option. But you are long past that point. The days of the system lords' rule is coming to an end, and the SGC is directly responsible for that. Even if you had let them be, the Goa'uld have one glaring weakness that would have led to their downfall eventually."

"Really? Is it their overconfidence? Their lack of creativity? Oh oh, their bad fashion sense!"

Raythe frowned. "I kind of like the ones with the flowing cloaks."

Sands snorted. "You would."

"But no, it's their dependence on the Jaffa. They have built their regimes by subjugating sentient, free-thinking warriors. Admittedly, they've done it very well. Portraying themselves as gods and genetically altering the Jaffa to be dependent on young symbiotes was brilliant, but it only delayed the inevitable. No species would take that kind of abuse forever. Eventually, the Jaffa would have risen up against their 'gods', and the Goa'uld would have fallen. Teal'c and the SGC only sped up the process."

Sands seemed pleased with this (for some reason), and she leaned her shoulder against his briefly before leaning to look over the edge again.

"It's good to know the good guys always win."

That evening, everyone came back to the motel tired but otherwise feeling much better than the night previous. Bell was particularly happy to see that Griff brought several hundred dollars in cash with him since it meant he wouldn't have to pay for the motel room. It was a double room, so Bell and Raythe had to share one bed while Griff took the couch and Sands got her own bed. Bell was less than thrilled that he had to share with Raythe, who was by far the largest of the four.

"It's only for a little while," Griff assured them. "I've put out some feelers. Hopefully we'll have more information in a few days."

In an attempt to mollify Bell and Raythe, Griff let them pick out the station on the TV. Then he promptly took the remote back when they chose an airplane-edited version of Dawn of the Dead.

"I hate B horror movies."

Eventually, the group settled on Law & Order, though they could only stand to watch one episode because Raythe frequently interrupted with questions. Mostly about the commercials. Finally, Griff called lights out and everyone went to sleep, anxious for some news that would let them all go home.