Sam knew all the doctor was thinking. She thought the same. But as well as
the feeling of disbelief at how far they had fallen, there was also a
feeling of pride. The room around her, the people in it – they were her
doing. They had fallen far, but they were doing their best to rise again.
And she was at the forefront of it.
"Janet?" Daniel said sharply, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Sam guessed he thought this could be a dream – if her theories panned out, he had spent most of the last few days in a terrible deep sleep.
"Daniel!" Janet responded. "What happened to you?"
"I don't remember…"
"Daniel!" Janet's instincts came into play. "What happened to you? What did they do to you?"
"You can't help him," Jack said shortly.
One look at Daniel confirmed this. Only he and his two remaining team members really knew the nature of the beast. The drug coursing through his veins was highly advanced, and designed with the most horrifying intentions in mind.
Sam decided suddenly not to hide the truth from her friend. "Daniel was taken by the Jaffa, Janet," she said. "Jack rescued him, but not until it was too late."
"Too late? What do you mean? Why was he taken?"
"The idea is to remain as inconspicuous as possible," Jack said, successfully avoiding the sordid details. "Unfortunately, Daniel here has never been very good at that. He has this idea we can persuade everyone that…"
"The Goa'uld are not gods," Sam finished. "Obviously, the Jaffa heard him saying this. And so they took him. Not because they thought he was any threat, you understand. They took him to teach him a lesson. They gave him something like a date-rape drug."
The silence that followed was loaded with unspoken words. Janet realised she had entered an organization quite as complicated as Stargate Command had been.
"Tell me, where have you all been? What have you done?" she said, struggling slightly to get the words out.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"Just tell me everything that's happened so far," she said. "You never know, it might help."
"All right," Sam said slowly.
"It's story time, kids!" Jack proclaimed. The others in the room turned to face the one-time astrophysicist, and now she could see their faces, Janet recognised many of them. They were all people from the SGC, long ago… There was Sergeant Siler, Sergeant Harriman, the man who had always shouted "Chevron Seven… locked!" and Robert Rothman, Jennifer Hailey, Lieutenant Sadurfield, the Bedrosian scientist Nyan, Ferretti and his team… There were people from every Stargate team, but, Janet noticed, there were no complete teams. Even SG-1, the flagship team, were missing a member.
"It began…" said Sam slowly, "on the fourteenth of September."
There was a blank silence. Not one of them knew what date it was, and not many knew what month it was. Time was measured by days and nights, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the seasons. There was no need for anything else. After a point, everything began to blend together, past, present and future all becoming one, the monotonous, never-ending life of a slave.
"It began with Anubis and his arrival on Earth," Sam said, and this time there were nods of agreement. Jack grimaced at the sound of the name.
"He found us an easy target," Sam continued, ignoring this completely. "However, I don't think the Goa'uld quite realised what they could do with this world before now. For the first time, they've realised the benefits of combining our technology with what they already have. So, our cities have become their cities. This place used to be someone's house. Someone used to live here, in Colorado Springs, in this house."
"And he or she is either a host, a slave, or dead by now," Jack cut in.
"In one way, we were lucky…" Sam mused, almost talking to herself.
"Lucky?" Janet demanded. "How were we lucky?"
"It was Anubis," Sam said. "Anubis doesn't know us."
"You have to know someone before you invade them," the general put in. He barely spoke nowadays, and besides, military regulations had gone out of the window. Sam and Jack were the leaders, not by rank, but by force of personality alone.
"I didn't mean Earth in general," Sam explained. "I meant us, the Stargate teams and the SGC. If Apophis had attacked us, he would have known to capture us first and get information from us by making us hosts. Anubis has been in exile for so long, he doesn't know us and what we've done in the past."
"So he made us slaves," Jack said. "Figures."
"Some people were made hosts," Sam reminded him. "But you're right, most people are slaves. And again, we're lucky."
"How? How are we lucky?" Jack demanded. "Stop saying that!"
Again, Sam ignored him. "The Goa'uld claim they are gods. And almost everyone on Earth believes this. They have seen what they can do and they think it could be magic. And the most enquiring minds have been stifled – the Goa'uld were quick to make them hosts."
"Almost everyone?" Janet repeated.
"Everyone except us," Sam declared. "The people who were once part of Stargate Command. Only we know what the Goa'uld really are, and only we know they can be defeated. The other slaves fear them so much, they are tractable and timid and do exactly as they are ordered without realising how little supervision they actually receive."
"But what can we do?" Janet asked.
"Alone, not very much," Sam said honestly. "But I plan to change that. I've planned it since I met Colonel O'Neill. I'll tell you about it."
On a warm, starry night, the Goa'uld had come to Earth. Anubis had taken over Cheyenne Mountain more easily than even he expected. The SGC tried to fight, but the Jaffa were only emboldened by their slaughter of every human being in NORAD, and they had stridden through, killing everything in their path. The SGC was scarred with energy blasts and littered with corpses when the survivors realised this was a fight they could not win. Climbing the ladders to the surface, they scattered into the night.
When morning came, the Jaffa were already rounding up the humans. The days of human technology were over. Because of the knowledge of Osiris' host, the Goa'uld knew what to do to utterly disable humans. They knew that to deprive the humans of their electricity supply was to remove from them all means of defence. The Goa'uld could sense the naquadah from the Stargate – they knew where was the best place to rule from. The mothership was firmly ensconced on the mountain, and its human inhabitants were thrown to the wolves.
They were farm slaves, made to work on the land. Even gods needed to eat. The town of Colorado Springs was transformed into a base for the lesser Goa'ulds, Osiris and Nefertum. They and their Jaffa tyrannised the human slaves. Or so they thought.
The Resistance was born out of a chance meeting, one sunny morning not long after the fall of Earth.
The city had once been a thriving modern American city. But where there had been steel, glass and concrete, there was stone and bronze and gold. In places, the human architecture showed through the Goa'uld veneer, and the resulting combination was oddly grotesque. Where people had rushed through the streets, slaves plodded along on their way. Where there had been happiness, there was despair, where there had been people looking to their future, there were slaves looking at the ground, and where there had been rebellion, it had been crushed.
She was just another slave, dressed in a curious mixture of green fatigues and a rough sand coloured cape, thrown at her by passing Jaffa who knew how long ago. She looked at the ground like they all did, staring at her own bare feet and clutching at the fruit basket she held. The Goa'uld had taken everything from her. The Goa'uld were gods. The Goa'uld were…
"Carter!"
He was another slave. He was unimportant. He was just another slave. He was…
"Colonel O'Neill!"
For a moment, Sam felt bitterly ashamed of herself. She was a soldier, dammit! She wasn't supposed to get almost tearful at the simple sight of a friendly face.
"Oh, God, Carter…" He led her away from the main street, away from the people and the noise, to what would have been called a blind alley were this still a human city.
"Where have you been?" they asked simultaneously. Sam laughed. It had been a long time since she'd laughed.
"Looking for you," he said seriously.
"Sir?" she said carefully. "What can we do?"
It was a loaded question. What could they do, now, later, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year? For mere slaves to become rebels, there was so much to be done, so many choices to be made.
"We can do our best," he replied. "Come with me…"
They left. The slaves had masters, but neither of them were missed. With an entire world rich with slaves, no Goa'uld master missed one or two. After two days, Sam knew they had begun to rise again.
Daniel appeared on the third day. He was breathless and ragged and looked like he was in pain, but he refused to say where he'd been. He only said he had seen Jack in the street, and followed him. The Jaffa did not even think to watch for rebels. Humans could not rebel. Humans were slaves and vessels, nothing more. They could never rise against their gods. So Daniel said, and Sam trusted him.
And it began from there. Daniel never lost his sense of whimsy, and gave the operation its name – 'the Resistance.' Jack always felt it reminded him of World War One, or perhaps the French Revolution, but he was at a loss to explain why. He was asked to explain it many times, as the three humans began a search for the survivors of the massacre in Stargate Command. Day by day, the Resistance grew. Sam sat day by day, trying to make plans. She wondered how on Earth they could reclaim the world. She only knew that they needed everything they could get, so she sent out search parties, searching for people they knew, for what technology was left, for what they could scavenge from the Goa'uld. Mostly, they were sent for food. Slaves without masters were not fed, and so many people hid here on a permanent basis. It would seem that freedom and starvation tasted better than slavery. Sam never felt she had enough food, but she knew the risks that were taken every day by the scavengers, and she tried not to complain.
Daniel was sure the quest for freedom should not be limited to the remnants of Stargate Command. While Sam agreed with this in principle, she knew better than the idealistic archaeologist when it came to preaching freedom to slaves. Daniel tried his best. But no mere human slave could ever believe the Goa'uld were anything less than gods. Daniel's eloquence and utter disregard for his own safety had finally got him captured. Jack had rescued him from the Jaffa, with some inside help, but he feared he couldn't pull off the trick again.
"But I don't understand," Janet said at this point. "Well, I do… you're gathering together people and technology here… but what's the plan?"
"Up until now, there hasn't been a plan," Sam answered. "Our original idea was just to gather together as many people as we could, and by that I mean the people we knew in the SGC, because they're the only ones who could possibly help us defeat the Goa'uld."
"I understand that," Janet replied. "But after that?"
"I'm getting there!" Sam exclaimed. "The truth is, we've been gathering together everything we can get our hands on for quite some time. We've also got many more people… Jack and I used to go hunting for them, and every time we found someone, we'd bring them back here. But now, I feel I've made some breakthroughs. I think we may have a chance to save ourselves."
Janet said, "I'm not trying to play down what you've done, Sam – honestly, I think this is amazing given the circumstances."
"It's not that bad," Sam said. "There are so many slaves, the Goa'uld don't miss the ones who aren't there. We've been relying on that. Sorry… you were saying?"
"It's just…" Janet began. "There are so few of us, and we're trying to win back the whole world. It just seems… impossible."
"I thought so," Sam said. "But I try not to think that. Neither does Daniel, for that matter."
Daniel was deeply asleep again. Janet wished, not for the first time, for her clean, orderly infirmary, her nurses, her equipment. Sam saw her looking at him, and whispered, "Nothing we can do."
"Doc!" It was Jack, calling to her from the other side of the room. "Where have you been?"
"I have been a wheat-thresher," Janet declared. "You'd think, with all their advanced technology, the Goa'uld would think up a better way than humans to thresh wheat! Anyway, yesterday, I saw Lieutenant Hailey in the Slave Quarter, but it was from a distance so she didn't see me. I saw her come in this direction. So early this morning, I gave the Jaffa the slip and came here, hoping to find her again and maybe even some of you. I wasn't sure exactly where you were, so I just looked everywhere. I was just about to give up, when I saw Colonel O'Neill come to this door, carrying Daniel. So I followed."
Hailey had heard her name; she came over to see the petite doctor. "I'm glad you saw me, Doctor," she said seriously.
Janet looked like she agreed with her.
There came the habitual three knocks at the door, and Hailey grinned. "That's what you were meant to do, Doctor."
Janet smiled – and when the door was opened, the smile became an expression of pure and utter delight.
"Cassie?"
Cassandra stopped dead. She had been on an errand, specifically, to steal some fruit from a Goa'uld orchard harvest. She had a full basket of fruit, which promptly went flying into the air. "Mom?"
Sam watched the reunion with a smile of her own. She had been waiting for this moment. And as she looked on, she was reminded of what they were planning. They might no longer have what they once had, but they were still the same people, with the same responsibility. Somehow, they must continue to save the world.
"Janet?" Daniel said sharply, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Sam guessed he thought this could be a dream – if her theories panned out, he had spent most of the last few days in a terrible deep sleep.
"Daniel!" Janet responded. "What happened to you?"
"I don't remember…"
"Daniel!" Janet's instincts came into play. "What happened to you? What did they do to you?"
"You can't help him," Jack said shortly.
One look at Daniel confirmed this. Only he and his two remaining team members really knew the nature of the beast. The drug coursing through his veins was highly advanced, and designed with the most horrifying intentions in mind.
Sam decided suddenly not to hide the truth from her friend. "Daniel was taken by the Jaffa, Janet," she said. "Jack rescued him, but not until it was too late."
"Too late? What do you mean? Why was he taken?"
"The idea is to remain as inconspicuous as possible," Jack said, successfully avoiding the sordid details. "Unfortunately, Daniel here has never been very good at that. He has this idea we can persuade everyone that…"
"The Goa'uld are not gods," Sam finished. "Obviously, the Jaffa heard him saying this. And so they took him. Not because they thought he was any threat, you understand. They took him to teach him a lesson. They gave him something like a date-rape drug."
The silence that followed was loaded with unspoken words. Janet realised she had entered an organization quite as complicated as Stargate Command had been.
"Tell me, where have you all been? What have you done?" she said, struggling slightly to get the words out.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"Just tell me everything that's happened so far," she said. "You never know, it might help."
"All right," Sam said slowly.
"It's story time, kids!" Jack proclaimed. The others in the room turned to face the one-time astrophysicist, and now she could see their faces, Janet recognised many of them. They were all people from the SGC, long ago… There was Sergeant Siler, Sergeant Harriman, the man who had always shouted "Chevron Seven… locked!" and Robert Rothman, Jennifer Hailey, Lieutenant Sadurfield, the Bedrosian scientist Nyan, Ferretti and his team… There were people from every Stargate team, but, Janet noticed, there were no complete teams. Even SG-1, the flagship team, were missing a member.
"It began…" said Sam slowly, "on the fourteenth of September."
There was a blank silence. Not one of them knew what date it was, and not many knew what month it was. Time was measured by days and nights, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the seasons. There was no need for anything else. After a point, everything began to blend together, past, present and future all becoming one, the monotonous, never-ending life of a slave.
"It began with Anubis and his arrival on Earth," Sam said, and this time there were nods of agreement. Jack grimaced at the sound of the name.
"He found us an easy target," Sam continued, ignoring this completely. "However, I don't think the Goa'uld quite realised what they could do with this world before now. For the first time, they've realised the benefits of combining our technology with what they already have. So, our cities have become their cities. This place used to be someone's house. Someone used to live here, in Colorado Springs, in this house."
"And he or she is either a host, a slave, or dead by now," Jack cut in.
"In one way, we were lucky…" Sam mused, almost talking to herself.
"Lucky?" Janet demanded. "How were we lucky?"
"It was Anubis," Sam said. "Anubis doesn't know us."
"You have to know someone before you invade them," the general put in. He barely spoke nowadays, and besides, military regulations had gone out of the window. Sam and Jack were the leaders, not by rank, but by force of personality alone.
"I didn't mean Earth in general," Sam explained. "I meant us, the Stargate teams and the SGC. If Apophis had attacked us, he would have known to capture us first and get information from us by making us hosts. Anubis has been in exile for so long, he doesn't know us and what we've done in the past."
"So he made us slaves," Jack said. "Figures."
"Some people were made hosts," Sam reminded him. "But you're right, most people are slaves. And again, we're lucky."
"How? How are we lucky?" Jack demanded. "Stop saying that!"
Again, Sam ignored him. "The Goa'uld claim they are gods. And almost everyone on Earth believes this. They have seen what they can do and they think it could be magic. And the most enquiring minds have been stifled – the Goa'uld were quick to make them hosts."
"Almost everyone?" Janet repeated.
"Everyone except us," Sam declared. "The people who were once part of Stargate Command. Only we know what the Goa'uld really are, and only we know they can be defeated. The other slaves fear them so much, they are tractable and timid and do exactly as they are ordered without realising how little supervision they actually receive."
"But what can we do?" Janet asked.
"Alone, not very much," Sam said honestly. "But I plan to change that. I've planned it since I met Colonel O'Neill. I'll tell you about it."
On a warm, starry night, the Goa'uld had come to Earth. Anubis had taken over Cheyenne Mountain more easily than even he expected. The SGC tried to fight, but the Jaffa were only emboldened by their slaughter of every human being in NORAD, and they had stridden through, killing everything in their path. The SGC was scarred with energy blasts and littered with corpses when the survivors realised this was a fight they could not win. Climbing the ladders to the surface, they scattered into the night.
When morning came, the Jaffa were already rounding up the humans. The days of human technology were over. Because of the knowledge of Osiris' host, the Goa'uld knew what to do to utterly disable humans. They knew that to deprive the humans of their electricity supply was to remove from them all means of defence. The Goa'uld could sense the naquadah from the Stargate – they knew where was the best place to rule from. The mothership was firmly ensconced on the mountain, and its human inhabitants were thrown to the wolves.
They were farm slaves, made to work on the land. Even gods needed to eat. The town of Colorado Springs was transformed into a base for the lesser Goa'ulds, Osiris and Nefertum. They and their Jaffa tyrannised the human slaves. Or so they thought.
The Resistance was born out of a chance meeting, one sunny morning not long after the fall of Earth.
The city had once been a thriving modern American city. But where there had been steel, glass and concrete, there was stone and bronze and gold. In places, the human architecture showed through the Goa'uld veneer, and the resulting combination was oddly grotesque. Where people had rushed through the streets, slaves plodded along on their way. Where there had been happiness, there was despair, where there had been people looking to their future, there were slaves looking at the ground, and where there had been rebellion, it had been crushed.
She was just another slave, dressed in a curious mixture of green fatigues and a rough sand coloured cape, thrown at her by passing Jaffa who knew how long ago. She looked at the ground like they all did, staring at her own bare feet and clutching at the fruit basket she held. The Goa'uld had taken everything from her. The Goa'uld were gods. The Goa'uld were…
"Carter!"
He was another slave. He was unimportant. He was just another slave. He was…
"Colonel O'Neill!"
For a moment, Sam felt bitterly ashamed of herself. She was a soldier, dammit! She wasn't supposed to get almost tearful at the simple sight of a friendly face.
"Oh, God, Carter…" He led her away from the main street, away from the people and the noise, to what would have been called a blind alley were this still a human city.
"Where have you been?" they asked simultaneously. Sam laughed. It had been a long time since she'd laughed.
"Looking for you," he said seriously.
"Sir?" she said carefully. "What can we do?"
It was a loaded question. What could they do, now, later, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year? For mere slaves to become rebels, there was so much to be done, so many choices to be made.
"We can do our best," he replied. "Come with me…"
They left. The slaves had masters, but neither of them were missed. With an entire world rich with slaves, no Goa'uld master missed one or two. After two days, Sam knew they had begun to rise again.
Daniel appeared on the third day. He was breathless and ragged and looked like he was in pain, but he refused to say where he'd been. He only said he had seen Jack in the street, and followed him. The Jaffa did not even think to watch for rebels. Humans could not rebel. Humans were slaves and vessels, nothing more. They could never rise against their gods. So Daniel said, and Sam trusted him.
And it began from there. Daniel never lost his sense of whimsy, and gave the operation its name – 'the Resistance.' Jack always felt it reminded him of World War One, or perhaps the French Revolution, but he was at a loss to explain why. He was asked to explain it many times, as the three humans began a search for the survivors of the massacre in Stargate Command. Day by day, the Resistance grew. Sam sat day by day, trying to make plans. She wondered how on Earth they could reclaim the world. She only knew that they needed everything they could get, so she sent out search parties, searching for people they knew, for what technology was left, for what they could scavenge from the Goa'uld. Mostly, they were sent for food. Slaves without masters were not fed, and so many people hid here on a permanent basis. It would seem that freedom and starvation tasted better than slavery. Sam never felt she had enough food, but she knew the risks that were taken every day by the scavengers, and she tried not to complain.
Daniel was sure the quest for freedom should not be limited to the remnants of Stargate Command. While Sam agreed with this in principle, she knew better than the idealistic archaeologist when it came to preaching freedom to slaves. Daniel tried his best. But no mere human slave could ever believe the Goa'uld were anything less than gods. Daniel's eloquence and utter disregard for his own safety had finally got him captured. Jack had rescued him from the Jaffa, with some inside help, but he feared he couldn't pull off the trick again.
"But I don't understand," Janet said at this point. "Well, I do… you're gathering together people and technology here… but what's the plan?"
"Up until now, there hasn't been a plan," Sam answered. "Our original idea was just to gather together as many people as we could, and by that I mean the people we knew in the SGC, because they're the only ones who could possibly help us defeat the Goa'uld."
"I understand that," Janet replied. "But after that?"
"I'm getting there!" Sam exclaimed. "The truth is, we've been gathering together everything we can get our hands on for quite some time. We've also got many more people… Jack and I used to go hunting for them, and every time we found someone, we'd bring them back here. But now, I feel I've made some breakthroughs. I think we may have a chance to save ourselves."
Janet said, "I'm not trying to play down what you've done, Sam – honestly, I think this is amazing given the circumstances."
"It's not that bad," Sam said. "There are so many slaves, the Goa'uld don't miss the ones who aren't there. We've been relying on that. Sorry… you were saying?"
"It's just…" Janet began. "There are so few of us, and we're trying to win back the whole world. It just seems… impossible."
"I thought so," Sam said. "But I try not to think that. Neither does Daniel, for that matter."
Daniel was deeply asleep again. Janet wished, not for the first time, for her clean, orderly infirmary, her nurses, her equipment. Sam saw her looking at him, and whispered, "Nothing we can do."
"Doc!" It was Jack, calling to her from the other side of the room. "Where have you been?"
"I have been a wheat-thresher," Janet declared. "You'd think, with all their advanced technology, the Goa'uld would think up a better way than humans to thresh wheat! Anyway, yesterday, I saw Lieutenant Hailey in the Slave Quarter, but it was from a distance so she didn't see me. I saw her come in this direction. So early this morning, I gave the Jaffa the slip and came here, hoping to find her again and maybe even some of you. I wasn't sure exactly where you were, so I just looked everywhere. I was just about to give up, when I saw Colonel O'Neill come to this door, carrying Daniel. So I followed."
Hailey had heard her name; she came over to see the petite doctor. "I'm glad you saw me, Doctor," she said seriously.
Janet looked like she agreed with her.
There came the habitual three knocks at the door, and Hailey grinned. "That's what you were meant to do, Doctor."
Janet smiled – and when the door was opened, the smile became an expression of pure and utter delight.
"Cassie?"
Cassandra stopped dead. She had been on an errand, specifically, to steal some fruit from a Goa'uld orchard harvest. She had a full basket of fruit, which promptly went flying into the air. "Mom?"
Sam watched the reunion with a smile of her own. She had been waiting for this moment. And as she looked on, she was reminded of what they were planning. They might no longer have what they once had, but they were still the same people, with the same responsibility. Somehow, they must continue to save the world.