A/Ramble: I'm soo sorry for the lateness! Unfortunately RL got the better of me! Now I'm free-styling again. Sort of. Adi and I had only plotted up til the last chapter (I never expected this story to continue as it did, and will). So, to reiterate, back to free-styling. Thank you for the kind words, and patience, I appreciated them a lot :) Oh, go to my profile page for the link to the MYOTOS and 'Vodka and Red Wine' banners I've posted on DeviantArt. I'm kinda proud of them. Enjoy!

~ 21 ~

"Captain, I see one syringe and this could get ugly," Jack growled as he sat on a gurney, arms folded over his chest. Sam had to pretend her attention was elsewhere before she got caught up in this argument.

She exchanged a knowing look with Janet, who stood her ground.

"Then I expect you to close your eyes, Sir," Janet rebutted confidently. She hadn't been awarded her position as Chief Medical Officer by being easily pushed around by grumpy officers. In this case, Jack. "Don't worry, I don't see any great need to run any blood tests. For the moment. If there was a need, you would both be in far greater trouble." She threw her clipboard on the bed across from Jack and pulling her stethoscope from the pocket of her white lab coat. "However, I understand the desire to leave the base. I assume you're both feeling better today? There's no shame in needing a little time off. In fact, I recommend it." She made this last comment to Sam over her shoulder.

"Oh, we're fine." Jack sat up straighter for Janet as she pressed the chestpiece under his shirt. "Just needed to get out of there." Janet flicked her hand to silence him. Jack duly shut up.

"Mm hm..." Janet pulled the chestpiece away and wrote something on her clipboard. Next, she stuck her hand up the back of Jack's shirt and pressed it to his back.

Jack flinched.

Sam's eyes widened. Her eyes connected with Jack's and Janet witnessed the exchange. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She removed her hand and placed a fisted hand on her hip.

"General, would you be so kind as to remove your shirt."

Jack knew an order when he heard one. He looked to Sam again, who was beginning to blush.

"Don't make me get the scissors, Sir," Janet added seriously.

Jack let out an "Oi..." and removed his shirt. Sam would have laughed at the way Janet's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and her eyebrows raised high on her forehead if not for her own embarrassment. Janet only had to glance at Sam to work out what the long, red marks on Jack's back were.

"We'd appreciate your discretion, Janet," Jack requested as nicely as he could. Janet practically glared at him, but nodded slowly.

"In our defense, we really did leave quickly to get away from everything. Not for... that," Sam explained awkwardly, her face cooling. Janet tipped her head once in understanding but pointed a finger at Jack, then at Sam.

"Get cleared by medical next time before running home to play house, Got it?" Sam and Jack sheepishly agreed when the finger was pointed to each of them. She looked over her shoulder to one of the nurses passing through the infirmary. When they were alone again, she sighed.

"Go. Before I break out the needles and decide to do a blood test." She flicked her wrist dismissively. Jack was off the bed and buttoning up his BDU shirt before Sam's feet touched the ground. She spared Jack a longing look as he disappeared.

"We were going to tell you guys. We decided to keep it to ourselves while everything was still new. Last night... we kind of got caught in the moment." Sam rubbed the side of her neck. Janet just shrugged a shoulder.

"It was fun to watch you squirm," she smiled. Sam dropped her hand and scowled at her friend. In the end, she couldn't help but chuckle and feel glad Janet wasn't as mortified as she pretended to be. "You'll be good for him. There is only so much that Charlie, George and I can do for him." Janet reached for her clipboard. "Charlie thinks the General has been more relaxed over the last few weeks. I haven't seen a change but that doesn't mean anything. The General is very good at keeping business and..." Janet smirked, "...pleasure, separate."

"Stop it," Sam joked with a frown. Janet chuckled and dismissed Sam with a tilt of her head towards the door.

"Go play with your 'doohickeys'. I've heard that alien was packing a lot of gadgets and the Engineering Department was getting antsy waiting for their boss to arrive."

"'Doohickeys'?" Sam lifted an eyebrow. 'Gadgets' she could handle, but 'doohickeys'?

"Hey, I don't know what they do. That's your field. I just wave a needle in front of the General and watch him sweat."

"He really doesn't like them, does he?"

Janet looked to the roof, trying to carefully select her phrasing. "I think it brings up bad memories for him. Another thing you may have to ask him about."

The way she said that made Sam wonder if Jack's dislike of needles was another effect of a traumatic experience. So far, talking appeared to have a positive effect on Jack, so she may need to ask him about this one too.

~ SJ ~

"Send those up to Doctor Carter and the engineers. See what they can make of them," Jack nodded towards the door, ushering a lieutenant out with a tray of alien objects. Two, already identified as weapons, remained on a bare gurney. Four articles had been collected from the deceased and Jack hoped the devices would tell them more about the intruder and - just maybe - prove to be useful in their search for new technology.

He turned a blood smattered United States Air Force patch in his hand.

"You sure this came off of Wells?" Jack tapped it against his palm, lifting his eyes to his second in command. George and Janet, who was still adorned in scrubs, stood on the other side of the body.

"No one reported a patch missing when they returned from Abydos," George shook his head, eyeing the covered body. "The bomb was sent through over twelve hours after we returned. Is it possible they collected intel and left the planet before it went off?"

Jack twisted the circular material between two fingers.

"Even if that was the case, this alien didn't look like the ones that attacked our people," Janet pointed to the body with a gloved hand.

"A bounty hunter, maybe?" George wondered, turning his attention to the younger Captain.

"That doesn't make sense. They ran us off the planet. Why would they want to hunt us down?" Jack tossed the patch onto the body and leaned on the side of the gurney, carefully avoiding contact with the corpse.

"The bomb might have gone off. It would have attracted some attention," George reasoned with a shrug.

"Then how did our friend end up with this?" Janet picked up the patch and slapped it down again, looking between her superiors.

"Coulda set the bounty before it blew. We took out a few of theirs before bugging out. Might have pissed someone off enough to find a head-hunter. The bomb blew, took out the ship and someone's going for revenge." Jack was only speculating at this stage, but it was a theory he could run with.

"Well," George ran a hand over his balding head, "if they've decided we're a threat, we may have a problem, Sir."

"Get onto Myers and Catherine; see if we've got any new addresses to check out." Jack planted his hands on his hips. He turned to George, "Even if someone is looking for us, there's nothing we can do about it. Increase the security details from six to eight. We'll continue as normal. We need to start bringing in the goods or the Chiefs will bury the program."

"Yes Sir," George nodded obediently.

~ SJ ~

"Found anything Doctor?" George had to scan the room to find Sam, but he spotted her behind a computer on the far side of the room, hidden among the bustling engineers.

Sam sat up higher in her chair, peering over the top of the screen. "Come on in, Colonel."

George wove through the tables and chairs. He was sure there was some kind of organisation to this chaotic state of the lab, which only Sam and her scientists understood. He certainly wasn't going to try and comprehend the pages of data covering the computer screen. Sam swivelled in her seat to face him, one of the alien devices in her hand.

"We're still working on the other devices, but we've been able activate this one. It seems very similar to a hand-held computer."

She offered the gun-metal grey device to George. He took it with uncharacteristic hesitancy. It was heavy and apparently made of an unknown metallic substance. He's sure Sam had samples sent to Doctor Midler for a chemical analysis. One side had a square outline, probably a panel, and a white sticker on it bearing its various details and article number. The obverse was smooth and highly polished; he ran his thumb over the surface and flinched when it lit up like a screen.

He didn't recognise the alien text, but upon touching the screen again, the image changed.

"We've taken more than one hundred and thirty photos of the writing and sent it up to Doctor Myers. There was one image, however..." Sam stood up and leaned over the device, touching it several times until a distorted photograph appeared, "...that may present a problem."

The image was of Senior Airman Jason Wells, dead on the ground in the Abydos pyramid. A morbid silence hung between them.

"I've already spoken to the General about this," George grumbled, stabbing the screen to remove the image. "The alien had an article of Wells' clothing. We believe he was sent to find us after the bomb was sent to Abydos."

Sam's expression didn't change much; she'd known about the patch since Jack told her this morning. She resumed her seat gracefully, holding out a hand for the tablet.

"We've been advised to continue our exploration. Consider this our first lot of alien technology." He tried to smile, but only received an equally forced one in return. "Are you alright? I mean... after yesterday..."

Sam's sigh ended his questioning.

"Yeah, I am... It's just terrifying... to find myself in that situation. I thought we were safe here."

George nodded, silently understanding since he'd felt that false sense of security himself.

"Well, I'm here if you want to talk."

Sam's smile was genuine this time. "Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate that."

George wasn't a fool; he knew Sam had already come to terms with the incident and she had left the base with the General. What happened between last night and this morning that has offered her so much composure, he isn't willing to guess. He had an idea, but wasn't the kind to pry. The General would look after her, of that George had no doubt.

~ SJ ~

As predicted, Jack had a mountain of paperwork waiting on his desk in response to the prior day's activities. Incident, medical and logistic reports needed to be reviewed and signed. He had to power through almost a dozen forms to get around his and Sam's early retreat. A small price to pay, in hindsight. They'd come miles in the space of one night, so who was he to complain? The further into this relationship he went, the better he felt about life in general.

As he scratched his signature at the bottom of a form, Jack heard a knock at the door. He was pleased to see Sam, but schooled his expression when he saw George appear behind her.

"Found something new, Doc?" Jack tossed his pen onto the desk, quite ready for a break.

The way Sam almost bounced into the room augmented his curiosity. Surely nothing that exciting had come out of the dead alien's inventory? Sam held out a manila folder, which Jack received with a questioning glance.

"P3X-593, General." Sam smiled proudly, her hand clasping behind her back. And that was supposed to mean something to him? Jack averted his gaze to George, who picked up on his confusion quickly.

"It's the first address Doctor Carter's program has produced..." George explained.

Jack mouthed an "Ahh" and opened the file. Pictures taken from the Abydos walls, computer coding and way too much mathematics nearly fell out of the thin folder. They expected the program to produce a few Stargate addresses each month. Catherine's department had been working overtime to figure out the endless lines of symbols found in one of the rooms on the planet, but had concluded the symbols were addresses. Sam had performed her usual magic and created a lengthy program to find the points in space for each address and then compensate for interstellar drift. Having the original program to help them dial from Earth to Abydos had helped in that venture, but it still took a few supercomputers to get the new program working.

As well as the documented findings of one astrophysicist - and his assistant in the later years - who had been working on the program for nearly fifteen years. Sam was loath to acknowledge, since she'd come to realise that she had inadvertently helped said assistant for six years. Nor the information about Earnest Littlefield that she had found out from Rodney. She was sure that even Jack and more importantly, Catherine were still in the dark about that.

But short of Rodney McKay walking through the doors of the SGA, nothing would compel Sam to dig up that horrible part of her personal history... Or Jack asking, though she doubted he would. Or really, reallyhoped...

"We'll get it scheduled for tomorrow morning, then." Jack smiled politely to Sam, who returned it with a professional composition. This would be perfect for Kawalsky; he'd get at least one mission in before transferring to the armory. Jack turned to George, "Let Colonel Kawalsky know he's got a mission in the morning."

~ SJ ~

We're off to Simarka! I'm going to go through some of the season one adventures, though not all of them. Obviously events will be different. I still have a lot to do for the end of this tale, but it'd be a shame to waste all those storylines. Besides: Caveman Sam and Jack :) How can I resist? Flames for my poor punctuality are... sort of... welcome.