Our Shabby Game
Disclaimer: Just like the rest of the writers around here, I don't own any proper (or improper, for that matter) nouns. Characters, the Stargate… no, they're not mine. But I want 'em…
Setting: sometime after Metamorphosis (season 7), same planet.
Spoilers: I don't think there's anything, but it probably makes no sense if you haven't seen Metamorphosis.
"Well, SG-1, it seems that I've once again beat you at your own shabby game." Nirrti's coy smile came from in back of three Jaffa, each pointing a staff weapon at a member of the team.
"Hey! Just because we don't wear tight, shiny leather doesn't mean we're shabby," responded Jack. A moment later, he turned to Daniel. "Does it?" he asked, mockingly afraid of committing a fashion faux pas. Daniel could only raise his eyebrows... he wasn't quite sure he wanted to see any of his friends in Nirrti's idea of a suitable outfit, and absolutely sure he wouldn't be caught dead in one.
More guards came out of adjoining hallways, and bound and gagged their prisoners. "Well, this sucks," said Jack through a mouthful of cloth. "Carter, next time I try to take Daniel's advice about an attack plan, zat both of us and use your own idea."
"Yes, sir," she responded, her face a mixture of irritation, amusement, and disappointment. Daniel felt a little miffed that Jack was so quick to condemn his idea, which happened to be based on old information. We would have won "our shabby game," if you hadn't changed your guard positions! Daniel thought angrily at the It would have worked if Jack had known that Nirrti had recently changed the guard station configurations, but that was impossible for any of them to know. He was probably kidding, anyway, though. At least Teal'c was still free and clear. He was supposed to meet them along the way, after collecting certain control crystals to operate Nirrti's lab.
"I've already caught your fourth," Nirrti said gleefully, as if she had read the archeologist's mind. "Your new rendezvous point will be in a dungeon cell, I'm afraid." Her liquid eyes betrayed no sympathy, and suddenly, looking into those eyes, Daniel wondered what Nirrti's host was like. A flash of light from those eyes quickly brought the man back to the present as he was bumped in the back with a staff and led down a staircase with the others.
* * *
"I blame one of you for not making sure she was dead," O'Neill informed his team in their cells.
Carter was smart enough not to comment, and also had something of an excuse—she had been operated on twice by the genetic processor machine, and was quite out of it at the time. Daniel was unusually silent, probably unhappy that such a seemingly easy mission had gone so wrong. All they'd originally been sent to do was disengage anything left of the technology from the building and cart it back home. There were many uses for such a manipulator on Earth, but at the top of the list was a permanent change of Jaffa DNA—to keep them from ever needing symbiotes again in their lives, and to keep them from passing on the genes that made Goa'uld larvae necessary. The only problem with that was that no one on Earth would be know how to operate the apparatus, and certainly no one would want to be a test subject. Carter knew that much from just being in the thing for a few minutes. The changing was like nothing else: trillions of wounds tearing open as her very DNA twisted, ripped apart, and tried to patch themselves together in wrong, unnatural sequences. The thought suddenly struck her: since she had been changed and reverted by the machine, Nirrti would be most scientifically interested in her. She muttered an expletive. She'd rather be enveloped in an opening wormhole's bubbly wave than go back into the machine… at least there would be no pain.
Of course, if it came to that, she would have no choice. Her duty to the Air Force was to find out how the thing worked and bring it back, and there was little room in the organization for cowardice. She would go back in if that was her fate.
By the time they got to the cell, she was resigned to entering the device immediately. She was at once pleasantly surprised and also dismayed that Jack was chosen first. Colonel O'Neill, she reminded herself. A fellow officer, not what her heart wanted him to be to her.
"No," she whispered as the Jaffa led him away. "No," she said louder and clutched at the bars of the same cages they were held in before, then by a telekinetic alien. "Take me instead," she said—but the Jaffa with their prize were already gone.
Daniel and Teal'c sat nearby, doing their best to ignore Sam's outbursts. They knew as well as she and Jack that relationships between officers were forbidden. That didn't mean that they didn't exist, though.
* * *