Disclaimer: See Part One.
Author's note: I hope no one was mad because of the cliffhanger, but this will be very long, and I thought I'd send it out in pieces instead of waiting until I got the whole thing finished. Enjoy!
Colonel Maybourne stared at the nurse as she related the strange story to him. The pilot of the glider had been brought in unconscious, accompanied by a couple of cops who apparently knew her. That meant the person was either a lost member of the SG-C or host to a Goa'uld. The danger factor just heightened here. That the person had refused to either be X-rayed or scanned pretty much indicated to him that this was a Goa'uld, and that she went home with them promised to make this retrieval a problematic one. They would try to protect her, not knowing that she was no longer the person she had been. He and his men would, therefore, be faced with not only a hostile alien with possible dangerous hi-tech weaponry, but two pissed off cops, as well.
He tried to get the address off the nurse, but she flat refused to give it to him, stating that she had no reason to believe that they were who they said they were. She said, "If you have a valid reason for knowing, then just talk to their boss at the Police Department. Captain Simon Banks, Major Crimes. If he thinks you should have the address he'll give it to you and he'll probably go with you. If not, I wouldn't try to cross him if I were you. That entire division is the most protective group of people I've ever met, and if they think any of their people are in trouble from you, you're life won't be worth much."
The paranoid colonel snorted. Like he was worried about some keystone cops. The two in the house he'd have to worry about because they were there, but their department? No problem. And he didn't have to deal with them to get the address anyway. He called headquarters to get the information he needed. A condo loft apartment. 852 Prospect, #307. He ordered his men to move out.
Jim looked at his guest, who was just waking up. She didn't look injured at all, now. He wondered how she could be doing so well so quickly. She'd slept a lot, for sure, but now she seemed fully alert and wasn't showing any signs of pain. It was probably classified. Blair came out of his room, still groggy from his night's sleep. The anthropologist and police detective had never been a morning person. Jim said, "Get your shower, Chief. Breakfast in twenty." Blair grumbled something about evil drill-sergeant detectives and proceeded into the bathroom. Jim grinned and continued to make enough eggs, bacon and toast for all three of them. He turned to Erica and said, "You'll probably want to wait for your shower until after breakfast. That way there's plenty of hot water."
Erica grinned. "He still can't take a fast shower, hmm? Although you seem to have pared down his time. He used to take more than forty minutes, and nothing I could say would get him to quit it."
Jim snorted. "Coffee?"
"Sure. Where I've been it was impossible to get a good cup of coffee."
"Can you say where that is?"
She looked at him, her face suddenly clouded. "No, I can't. I hope you guys don't plan on grilling me about my assignment. This stuff is so classified, you either have to be in the project or a General to get the clearance."
Jim nodded. "I understand. I used to be covert ops myself. Blair shouldn't press, but he'll ask questions anyway. Sometimes he even figures out a way around the restrictions, at least with me. He'll get all he can and then figure out the rest on his own. Maybe not the details, but enough."
Erica sighed. Maricet spoke up within her. [What is it about you that attracts the persistent ones?]
Just lucky I guess.
Blair soon came out of the bathroom and they all sat down to eat the excellent breakfast Jim had made. Blair joked about the fat content of the bacon, but Jim popped back with the fact that it was turkey bacon, so there wasn't near as much as he was insinuating. Erica grinned. "Have you ever had Egyptian yeast bread? Authentic, the way they made it in ancient times?"
Blair nodded. "Yeah! One of my students, an anthropology major, found a recipe for it on an expedition to Thebes. The only thing they couldn't authentically reproduce was the small amount of lotus that was supposed to be added to the mix. It's extinct. So he substituted unprocessed coca leaves, just dried them and ground them up. It's closely enough related to lotus that it worked, and there's such a small amount that you don't get the side effects."
"Yeah. A friend of mine used that same recipe and gave me some just before I went under cover. Man, that stuff is good!" What she didn't way, of course, was that the batch Daniel Jackson had whipped up had been his wife's recipe and had used real lotus, which was not extinct on every world, only this one. Ra had enjoyed the recreational properties of the cocaine-like substance and had made sure that it was planted on any planet that could support it.
Jim chuckled. "And just how did this student get the coca leaves, Chief?" He wouldn't make a fuss over it if there had been so little of it involved, but it would be a good way to tease the heck out of his Guide.
Blair, however was well aware of his Sentinel's intentions. He grinned. "It was on the last expedition I took before I met you, Jim. We were in South America and it was a wild plant. It's not like we imported the stuff. We didn't even bring back any of the bread."
Once they finished their breakfast, they all sat in the living room. Blair wanted to know more about her life after she left him. "So, how long have you been undercover?"
Erica sighed. She knew Blair wouldn't be able to contain his curiosity. She kept it short. "A little more than a year."
Looking at her face as she answered, Blair saw her put up a wall. He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask."
She smiled. "That's all right. Just don't be surprised if I don't answer something."
Colonel Maybourne got out of the black sedan and stood for just a moment. He looked up at the window of the apartment he was about to invade. He hoped that the two cops that lived there would hesitate long enough for them to be neutralized without harming them. He would, of course, do what was necessary, but it would not be their fault if they were fooled by a Goa'uld, and he couldn't blame them if they resisted. They would be protecting their friend.
He turned to his men. "All right. Once we get up there, let me do the talking. We give the cops one chance to cooperate. If they don't, then shoot to disable. Try not to kill them. They don't know what they're dealing with. Take every precaution with the Goa'uld. As this is a female, we want to make certain it isn't a queen. If the cops are reacting to her like that, take her out immediately. We can dissect what's left later. Move out."
Jim was standing in front of the glass door that led to the balcony. He heard car doors slamming and turned to investigate. He saw three men in black and gray army fatigues and one man in a charcoal suit. The one in the suit looked up at his balcony for a moment, seemingly thoughtful, then gave his men instructions. Jim heard every word, and cursed in a whisper. He turned to Erica quickly. "Expecting guests?"
Alarmed at Jim's tone, both Erica and Blair stood to see what he was talking about. Erica swore loudly in a language that neither man understood. "That's Colonel Maybourne, NID. He's been a thorn in the side of the project I'm on for years! He...Damn. I don't know how to tell you two any of this without revealing classified information."
Jim said, "Are the people on your project likely to pull a kidnap for any reason?"
"What? No! We're trying to fix things, not make more messes! Why'd you ask something like that?"
"If you trust your people not to take off with us if you give us information necessary to defend you and us, then I'll agree to the debrief. Chief?"
Blair nodded without hesitation. "Yeah, me too."
She flashed them both a grin. "All right. We don't have much time. One of the things I'm carrying is a weapon. It's not like anything on this world. I'll be using it to stop Maybourne. He likes to jump to conclusions. He's going to assume I'm one of the bad guys. He'd love nothing more than to get me into a little top secret bunker and remove the other secret I'm carrying from my head. I'll explain things in a little more detail after we're through dealing with him, but I can tell you one thing. He was given explicit instructions regarding the capture of suspected enemies the last time he pulled this stunt and he's not following those instructions. That gives any agency in the country the right to arrest his ass if he were to break into a private residence."
Jim grinned. "Good. Sandburg, call for backup. Ms. Long, are you sure you don't need my backup gun?"
She snorted and reached into her pocket. "I'm sure." She drew out a very strange object. It was kind of like a glove, but not quite, metallic, with a watery gem that sat in the palm. The symbol that comprised the back of the device was Egyptian.
Blair had already called for backup and looked at the device. "Hey, isn't that the symbol of the Egyptian god, Heru'ur?"
Focusing more on the door than on the former anthropologist, she said, "Yes, it is." The way she said it, Blair knew that fact was part of the secret. She didn't like it, but she was willing to use it. Whatever it was.
Jim stood in front of the entertainment center, gun out. Blair stood just behind the phone table, his own weapon aimed at the door. Erica leaned against the arm of the sofa, her arms and ankles crossed, a pissed off smirk on her face. Blair grinned. He had seen her act this way once before when several kids at Rainier had tried to attack him for turning in one of their friends for dealing crack. She had beaten four of the six and Blair had taken out the other two with his backpack. This was what she did when she was in the mood to cause pain in the name of justice.
The door broke in, and with military efficiency, all four men were in the room within seconds. But they were surprised when Jim suddenly shouted, "Freeze! Cascade PD! Drop your weapons!"
Maybourne was shocked, to say the least, but he always recovered quickly. "All right, officers, I know you think you're doing the right thing, but this woman is not who you think she is. I'm with the government and I've been instructed to apprehend her."
Erica grinned. "Yeah, right. You were ordered to let the SG-C handle all matters regarding the Goa'uld within the United States. Even if I were exactly what you fear the most, which I am not, you would have no jurisdiction in this matter. Your first response should have been to call General Hammond. Now, since we all know you're disobeying orders and committing a felony while doing so, you shouldn't be surprised that you are about to be arrested."
The NID agent glared at her. "What would you know about it?"
"My name is Erica Long. I am a Captain in the US Air Force. I am also a liaison to the Tok'ra and host to Maricet. Now I'd suggest that if you don't want to endanger the treaty between the United States and the Tok'ra, you don't attempt anything foolish."
Maybourne stared at her. Could he have miscalculated that badly? "What would a Tok'ra be doing in a Goa'uld attack glider?"
She snorted. "Getting the hell out of Dodge. I was undercover in Heru'ur's court. I was caught making a communique to Selmak and had to steal a glider to get away. I didn't make it unscathed. That's why I crashed. They hit the fuel tank."
Having thought that she was fully distracted by answering him, the agent went for his gun. Jim and Blair had their hands full keeping the other three men covered. But Erica wasn't caught unawares. She lifted her hand, aimed at Maybourne, and fired the ribbon device. It wasn't set very high, but it blew him into the other men and into the door facing.
Blair spared a glance in her direction, just in time to see her eyes suddenly glow. As she spoke, her body language changed subtly, and her voice changed, resonating strangely. "You should feel fortunate that I am not Goa'uld, Colonel. A Goa'uld would have killed you."
Maricet dropped her hand just as the police came around the corner. She slipped her hand into her pocket to prevent the cops from seeing the ribbon device and then lowered her head in the characteristic stance of a Tok'ra symbiote returning control of their body to their host. Erica turned slightly to the right and braced her hand inside her pocket between her leg and the arm of the couch, using the pressure to hold the ribbon device in place so she could slip it off. Then she removed her hand from her pocket.
The four men were handcuffed and removed from the premisis as Simon Banks came into the corridor. "What the hell happened in here?"
Captain Banks sat in the armchair while Jim and Blair sat on the sofa, all having a cup of coffee in their hands. Erica stood in front of the fireplace. "I'll tell you the entire story. It's pretty long, so bear with me. Blair, how old does conventional wisdom say the pyramid at Giza is?"
Not sure what that had to do with any thing, Blair answered her, "About eight thousand years."
"What would you say if I told you that conventional wisdom was about two millennia short?" Blair raised an eyebrow at her. "Ten thousand years ago, when humans were still mostly tribal and had yet to form many large civilizations, this world received a visitor, an alien parasite of a race called the Goa'uld who was looking for a new race of hosts. You see, the beings that his race were using were adapted to them. They could keep their symbiote from taking over their minds. Humans, of course, had no such defense.
"The Goa'uld took the body of a boy who approached the ship from curiosity. He learned from his new host that, not only could the Goa'uld easily dominate the minds of humans, but with his technology, he could maintain their bodies into immortality. He also learned the boy's religion, and decided that he could take advantage of it and set himself up as its head. He took on the identity of Ra and took the entire human race into his servitude.
"Other Goa'uld soon followed, and they set up one of the ancient Stargates on Earth, joining this world to the network of artificial wormholes that were created by a different, more ancient race of beings. They infiltrated every pantheon in the old world, setting themselves up as the gods of Egypt, Rome, Greece, and several others. They transplanted entire villages to other worlds. There are intact groups out there, examples of Earth cultures that are now extinct or evolved on this world.
"Then, about seven thousand years ago, a small group of human warriors made an unprecedented move on the Goa'uld. One of these warriors could tell by their scent alone that they were at least partially human, though there was another scent overlaying it. He could also hear the infant Goa'uld within the Jaffa's pouches, as they move around before they are bonded to a host. It was said that he had the eyes of Horus, could tell when the pyramid ships were coming by the vibrations in the air and the ground, and could tellby the smallest taste if a well had been poisoned. They captured a minor Goa'uld as he bathed in the Nile, having gone out without an escort. They killed him, and the parasite tried to take one of them, but the warrior who was called a Guardian caught it as it leapt and crushed its head.
"The Guardian and those with him displayed the two corpses to their people and word quickly spread throughout Egypt that the Goa'uld were false gods and the people revolted. They kicked Ra and all his company off of Earth, though they missed at least one that we know about, Seth. They buried the Stargate to prevent the Goa'uld from returning through it. Ra decided that he didn't want to deal with Earth any longer. He had all the humans he needed on other worlds, so he just left us alone.
"The Stargate remained buried until the 1920s, when an archaeologist's team unearthed it. No one could figure the thing out. The military eventually took over the project once speculation that the thing was a transport device to other worlds, but no one could figure out the mechanism. They found a single gate address and had been trying to dial the thing, but they couldn't find the seventh symbol that would activate the gate. They eventually contacted a Dr. Daniel Jackson."
Blair broke in. "Hey, I know him! He gave a linguistics seminar when I was still attending Rainier."
Erica nodded. "Yes, he had a double doctorate in Egyptology and Linguistics. He had a theory that Giza was older than previously thought and that it had been built by someone other than the Egyptians, but he was laughed out of the profession.
"The military took him on, and the minute he walked into the room with the inscriptions that adorned the coverstones of the Stargate, he corrected their translations, and within two weeks had cracked the address. He went with a military team to a world called Abydos. Long story short, they found out a lot of what I just told you and started another rebellion, only they had better technology than ancient Egypt, of course.
"The military being as paranoid as it is, they sent a nuclear warhead with the team, just in case they found hostiles on the other side. The team leader, Colonel Jack O'Neil, was supposed to use it to blow up the Stargate, but instead, they used Ra's technology to beam the bomb onto his ship and took him out.
"Earth continued to explore with the gates, but a year later, they discovered that Ra had not been the only threat. Apophis made a move on Abydos, taking more hosts from the people, including Jackson's wife and brother-in-law. Earth has been at war with the Goa'uld ever since."
Erica's audience had not missed that the warrior responsible for starting the first revolution had been a Sentinel. She knew about them, but she didn't know that she was in front of one. Jim was, therefore, careful in how he phrased his question. "I assume from your conversation with Maybourne that you have one of those things in you, but it said that it was not one of these Goa'uld."
She smiled. "That's right. About two thousand years ago, one queen Goa'uld broke away from the other system lords. She and all her descendents became Tok'ra, the resistance. There is a slight genetic difference, though not much. More like a separate ethnicity than a different race, though they do all they can to separate themselves from the Goa'uld. They don't use the healing sarcophagus that keeps the hosts of the Goa'uld alive for millennia, as it changes the thought patterns of both the host and the symbiote. They never take a host against their will unless it is an emergency, and that thankfully happens only rarely. They treat unblended humans that work with them as equals, not slaves. They have been at war with the Goa'uld for centuries. I think that it's a very good thing for them that they met Earth, though. They needed some fresh perspective."
Blair said, "So how do you fit into all this?" He couldn't see the woman he remembered allowing another presence into her mind like that, knowing that it was a permanent arrangement as it seemed to be. She wouldn't even commit to a normal human relationship, and now she was a life partner to an alien being.
She looked at him, remembering sadly their parting words and guessing what was going through his mind. "I know I wasn't exactly commitment girl when I knew you, Blair. When I left Rainier, I joined the Air Force. I love to fly, and I ended up a Tomcat pilot. I flew in the Gulf War, mostly strafing runs. I started getting headaches, though, in high Gs, so I was grounded until they could figure out what was causing it. I still wanted to be involved in helping people, though, so when the chance came to join a small covert ops force based in the States, I took it. That was the Stargate Project. I joined one of the SG teams.
"But soon the headaches started coming back, and I was standing on the ground when they came, so it couldn't be blamed on the Gs any more. The base doctor did an MRI and found a tumor in my head the size of an egg." She paused, remembering that day's fear with perfect clarity.
Blair's heart rate spiked. Simon said, "Cancer? I don't suppose these Tok'ra actually have a cure for that, do they? And if they do, why hasn't the rest of the planet heard about it?"
She shook her head. "No they don't, but a symbiote serves as the immune system of their host. They have to wipe out the natural immune system or they would be attacked by it, so they have to provide for that immunity, and they can do a much better job of it. They can clean out any ailments in their host, even including terminal illnesses like cancer and AIDS. But they don't have independent cures for these things."
Jim said, "So you signed up."
She nodded. "The Tok'ra are often in need of new hosts. They double a human's normal lifespan just by being there, but eventually the host will die. As it should be. There aren't enough Tok'ra symbiotes for them to follow the same rules and die with their host. The queen who started the Tok'ra is dead, so there can be no more, unless they actually defect, and it's not wise to trust such defectors. Too often, they've betrayed us.
"I joined the Tok'ra, and Maricet's prior host was reaching the end of her life. I got to know them both over the course of a month, and then Maricet blended with me. Of course, Rasha died, but it was her time."
Jim frowned. "How old was she?"
"Two hundred and fifteen years old. Nothing could have kept her alive much longer except the sarcophagus, and that's no solution." She paused for a moment, then said, "After we'd been blended for about a year, we were assigned to go undercover in Heru'ur's court. There had been a build up of people on his palace world, and we thought it would be a good idea to see what he was up to. As far as we were able to determine, he's not actually building military strength, at least not on that world, just people. He's actually granting bonuses for those Jaffa who become parents. He's after a population explosion, and I'm not sure why. Before we could find out, we were caught, and we had to get the hell out of there."
Jim said, "You've said a lot of pretty outrageous things, Ms. Long, and you haven't said a lot to back it up. Maybourne's loud mouth and that weapon of yours give you some credence, but don't you think we deserve a little more proof than that?" It wasn't that he didn't believe her. He just wanted to be able to tell the difference between a human and a Goa'uld. If the Sentinel in her story had been able to tell the difference, then so should he, so he wanted to observe her change, to see what she looked like when Maricet was in charge, and that would be the best proof she could give him.
She grinned at him. Then her head suddenly went limp, dropping to her chest. Jim trained his senses on her, determined to imprint the Goa'uld "pattern" into his mind. Her head suddenly snapped up, her eyes glowed momentarily, and the scent that Jim had been detecting from her suddenly intensified. He remembered that it had done so earlier, when the entity had spoken to Maybourne. He made certain to catalogue that scent so that he would always remember it, and it would always catch his attention.
Maricet just looked at him for a moment. Simon's quiet curse had gone mostly unnoticed by the other three in the room. She smiled gently at her challenger. "A Guardian should know a Goa'uld or a Tok'ra on scent, but then, that was the point, wasn't it?"
Deep in the caves of his compound, a god sat in rule over his timy empire of chaos. His servants were few, but his warrior strength was increasing daily. Taken both from the existing street armies and from the sports pride of the local University, they would soon be ready to help him start a war to rival every other in the history of this miserable world.
The first audio-visual radio transmission that Earth had ever sent out was an address of Adolf Hitler. The war god thought that a being like that would make the perfect host, and he had come to Earth in a camoflaged ship, hoping to take Hitler and use him to take over the world of the Tau'ri. He would be able to use the huge population as cannon fodder and take over the Empire.
Unfortunately, by the time he arrived on Earth, the Allies had won the war and Hitler was presumed dead. His ship had been dammaged on reentry, thanks to a traitorous Tok'ra opperative, so not only was he unable to complete his plans for Earth, he was also stranded.
Now, as he watched the news footage of the falling object entering the waters of Cascade Harbor in Washington, he knew that this was his chance. He would be able to get off this miserable little world, the planet that held his humblest beginnings, and reclaim his place amongst the System Lords.
One of his soldiers came into the room and bowed quickly on one knee. "Lord Ares, I have news of the pilot of the glider."
Ares voice resonated with the tones of his parasitic presence. "What have you found?"
"The NID traced her to a private residence. Apparantly she was known by one of the cops on the scene, and rather than allow her to be X-rayed, he took her home with him. When the NID tried to aprehend her, they were arrested. Apparantly the CO of the group was disobeying orders. Some other agency is supposed to handle all Goa'uld matters on Earth, probably the same ones that took out Setesh in Seatle."
Ares thought about it for a moment. She had to be Tok'ra. No other from off world would know the situation with the NID. "Go to the policeman's house tomorrow. Bring the pilot and her friend to me. They will be the perfect hostages to prevent the police from interfering with my plans." And they will also be the perfect vessles to provide me with a new host if they can be persuaded to mate.
End Part Two
Well, that's part two. Sorry it took so long. I kinda got sidetracked with the Beginnings Series and the plotbunnies that insisted on breeding in the attic. Hopefully the next segment won't take so long to come out with.