Chapter 2 - Target

Jack briefly caught sight of the three boats heading towards the mainland as the small craft he was crouched in sped away on a course parallel to the coastline. It rolled and tossed in the heavy sea swell and he hung on tight to the gunwale. He made sure that his rucksack and rifle were tucked safely under the seat - no point in wearing those if he lost his balance! The burly, taciturn Andan guiding the tiller and controlling the surprisingly small outboard motor had said nothing to him, having merely looked him up and down when Jack arrived.

As time passed and the bow smacked into wave after wave, Jack frequently checked the shore, looking for recognisable features such as headlands or river inlets. Every half hour by his watch he observed the position of the star that was this planet's Sun - smaller to the naked eye and somewhat bluer in tone than the Earth's. He calculated the rate at which it was approaching the horizon, and estimated that dusk would commence in around six hours. He checked his miniature prismatic compass to determine where magnetic north was on this world: it would be of limited use without a map. He smiled at the realisation that the 'Sun' would set in the magnetic East, and he added this planet to his mental list of those he'd visited which had retrograde axial rotation compared to Earth.

He'd given up trying to start a conversation with the native, even though the man had accepted a piece of chocolate that Jack had broken off the bar taken from his rucksack pocket. He'd merely looked at it suspiciously and then taken a tentative bite before deciding that he wasn't being poisoned, and briefly nodded his head in thanks.

As soon as they slowed down and turned towards an inlet on the shore, Jack felt the sub-tropical heat build up in contrast to the fresh breeze out at sea. By the time the Andan beached the craft some way up a river under plentiful tree cover, Jack was beginning to sweat. As he disembarked his gear, the boatman immediately pushed off and was quickly gone back towards the sea. The Colonel knew that he was to be met at this point, but taking the usual precautions, he picked out a vantage point and took up residence there, waiting silently out of sight. As a further precaution he took pencil and paper and made a crude sketch map of the coast on the route they had traversed as he remembered it. He estimated that if no-one turned up, it would take him over two days walk to get back to the point of land opposite Stargate Island, as he was beginning to call their arrival spot, as no road had been visible from the boat.

At long last two men clad in green and brown patterned loose clothes appeared, looking around the clearing. One saw the marks where the boat had pulled up and indicated them to the other.

"He was here." said the younger one. "Has he left the area?"

"No. He is watching us." replied the older man. "O'Neill! You may approach. It is safe."

"Keep your hands where I can see them!" called Jack, covering them with his Beretta. He didn't move, and only watched them out of the corner of his eye, paying more attention to the trail from where they had emerged. After a few seconds his vigilance was rewarded when a distinct movement in the trees occurred. "Tell your friend back there to come out into the open. Do it now!"

"Lev, come to us." called the older man again. The third man soon joined his colleagues, but Jack still didn't move. "O'Neill! We three are all here. There is no-one else. Your leader Hammond said that you were careful and knowing."

Jack waited a few more moments, and satisfied that it was safe enough to take a chance, he approached the group. "Keep your hands in view." he warned, but lowered his pistol. "Well, you know my name, and hello, Lev. Who are you two?"

"I am Unit Leader Klint and this is T'Nevaraka. We will escort you and assist in your attack on the criminal Soray. This is the task agreed with Leader Hammond, is it not?"

"It is." replied Jack. "How far do we need to travel? Are we walking all the way?"

"A little more than a quarter-day from here. There are only narrow ways through the trees and hills, with no room for large transports." Klint explained. "But Hammond said you would bring a weapon of great power to eliminate Soray from a distance many chains beyond the kill-range of our own guns. Is that the instrument?" he asked, indicating Jack's pistol.

"No, it's back there." said Jack. "And the ammunition supply is too heavy for me to carry that distance on my own. I need to divide it between us for speed-walking." 'And because this goddamned climate is already making my knee ache' he mused to himself.

They accompanied him to where his gun and pack lay in the bushes, and made short work of dividing the rounds between them. Then they soon set off in file, Jack taking second position behind Lev, for the many hours of walking that lay ahead.

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The nine others from Earth were meanwhile approaching the Andan city known as Reha in a much more *civilised* form of transport. The electric motor- driven minibus-like vehicle that carried all of them was comfortable and quiet, and both Carter and Hailey were intrigued by the ample power that the small motor provided.

Sam was also mulling over, with no small degree of alarm, the information she had gleaned by listening to the conversation between Lieutenant Grogan and another member of SG-13.

"I wonder what kind of weapon the Colonel is carrying." Grogan had asked. "I wonder why?"

"There's only one rifle that needs a cover that size." replied Master Sergeant Sciortino. "It's an M-82. No wonder that pack he's carrying is heavy. There must be well over one hundred rounds in there. No disrespect to the Colonel, but even I couldn't carry that amount too far."

"A hundred rounds isn't that heavy!" exclaimed Grogan. "What's an M-82 anyway? Not something I'm familiar with."

"An army engineer unit's anti-sniper rifle. Not something that the Air Force comes into contact with much." replied Sam before the Master Sergeant could respond. "And it fires 50-calibre rounds, not the much lighter 762 standard ammunition."

"That's right, Ma'am!" exclaimed Sciortino, as his respect for Sam went up a notch. "Accurate to 1500 metres in the hands of a professional. Someone or something's sure going to know it's been hit, right enough!"

"Change the subject, Sergeant." said Sam quietly. "The driver has ears too." But her mind went into overdrive thinking of the reasons why Jack was setting out on such a destructive path in parallel to their delicate negotiations, and she wasn't happy with any of the scenarios. She made a mental note to discuss it with Teal'c and Daniel as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

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Jack was more than grateful when Klint called a halt at what must have passed for midnight on this part of Andar, when the second moon had set and it was no longer possible to see even the faintest glimmer through the trees. They huddled under a stone outcropping in the hillside and he politely refused their offer of food, choosing a ration bar that he knew stood no chance of upsetting his system before the action against the target began. Klint whispered that the three of them would take turns on guard so that Jack could consolidate his strength for the day ahead. Making sure that no-one could take his equipment or side-arm without wakening or incapacitating him, he dozed lightly until the first glow of daylight appeared through the tree canopy. They set off after taking further food and water, the cool air of dawn soon losing out to the fetid atmosphere of another jungle day.

As he blanked out the pain of his bad knee now nagging more constantly at him, Jack maintained his professional focus on the surroundings and remained as alert as he had ever been in his younger days. But he knew with more certainty than ever that his body was not going to take much more of this level of sustained effort. His insistence on undertaking a harrowing, distasteful and quite possibly terminal mission himself instead of asking a more junior SGC member to volunteer was quite possibly the last call of an old warrior who didn't know when to stop. When he got back - *if* he got back, he reminded himself, it would be time to call it a day. Find a way to steel himself against the mental backlash of living with yet another planned assassination, no matter that it was a government-backed mission and no matter how much benefit it was bringing to the SGC and Earth. Time to close the shutters against more hurt and get on with his inner self as best as he could in retirement, until the will to overcome or to finally give in made itself known.

'No wonder Carter went with a younger man.' he suddenly found himself thinking. And then, 'Crap! Where did that come from? O'Neill, you weak- minded SOB! You've put all this behind you! Don't drag others - least of all *her* - down with you. Get a grip! Concentrate on the target.'

But the rivulets of sweat running down his neck and the effort of putting one foot in front of the other didn't take away his melancholy. Not then, and not later.

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The same fingers of dawn light across the sky found Sam still awake, her world having been turned upside down by the late-night conversation she'd had with Teal'c and Daniel in the ornate gardens of their Andan residence. Snippets of the conversation had been running through her head all night, driving sleep firmly away.

Early on they had worked out that the destruction of something, or more probably *someone* was part of the price that the Andans were asking as a secret part of the trade negotiations. No wonder Jack had been so vocal during the briefing, and Hammond so reluctant to give the go-ahead.

"Why of all people would the Colonel be recalled from his current post to undertake a mission like this, though?" she had asked. "Surely someone in the SGC could..."

"There are few in the SGC who can match his long-range marksmanship and none with his experience of cold-blooded assassination." Teal'c had stated simply. "O'Neill would not ask another to undertake the task." He had gazed at her shocked expression until she could not look back at him any longer.

"So the next day or two of negotiation is a facade, more or less." she eventually replied. "If the Colonel succeeds, we get the technology, and if he fails, we don't."

"That's a pretty fair summary, yes." said Daniel. "We've been saying these past weeks that the Andans are more or less at the same stage of evolutionary development as humanity. I guess that includes duplicity and ruthlessness as well. I'm not denying that the prize in this case is of inestimable value to us, but Jack's the one who'll have the blood on his hands on behalf of us all." He thought about his relationship with his great friend. "If he survives this, he'll be more or less in the same state of mind as the time we first went to Abydos. We've seen him slowly losing his self-respect these last few months and this could well drive the nail into the coffin."

Sam was doubly shocked. Firstly by agreeing with Daniel's statement that Jack's personal burden would indeed be huge. The second was a different kind of surprise. "But we haven't seen him for four months!" Then she paused as the realisation struck home. "You have, haven't you? Daniel?"

Daniel looked down nervously. "Yes, Sam, I have. If you have to know, several times, in fact."

"I too have been in O'Neill's company, Samantha." added Teal'c.

"Is that why you kept telling me that you were too busy to spend any downtime with me? Answer me, damn you!" she blazed at them. "I suppose he's been keeping tabs on how well I'm doing in his old job?"

"On the contrary. O'Neill has never mentioned nor asked about you once." said Teal'c, knowing how upset this would make her but feeling a bigger loyalty to the truth and the man he regarded as much as his own family. "Except at the beginning to inquire whether you were happy with your new partner. We told him that you were and he never returned to the subject."

"And it wasn't just a question of spending downtime with you, Sam." added Daniel. "We'd happily do that any time. It's just that you always asked us to join you *and* your boyfriend. Well, to be honest, I don't get on with him and more than that, I couldn't stand seeing the two of you all over each other on those nights out, knowing what it's done to Jack."

"That's not fair!" she retorted. "As my CO we could never pursue how we felt about each other and he said he understood when I met Pete. I needed someone to look out for me outside work, to belong to. I deserve a life too!"

"O'Neill did indeed understand that." said Teal'c. "And as I said, he never spoke of it. I believe however that he was referring to the lost hope of being with you at some future date when he said to me 'There's no fool like an old fool. And right now, I feel ancient.' We have a similar saying on Chulak, and also the same understanding that sleeping with another is the end of any previous relationship. As to your abilities as leader of SG-1, he never had any doubts that you would excel in the job, and so you have."

And so she had retired for the night, dazed and miserable. And now here she was, rising to face two days of pretence that what they were doing was the significant part of the mission. If ever leadership qualities and the need to lock away personal desires were called for, now as the time. After all, she'd had an excellent teacher.

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