Author's notes: For those of you who don't recognize the references to tribbles, go watch Star Trek Deep Space 9's, Trials and Tribble-ations (Season 5), a brilliant episode that both spoofs and pays homage to the original series. It's worth watching (again) even if you aren't a DS9 fan!
Also, the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan is an operetta (light comic opera) nominally set in feudal Japan - the full words of the song (which describes various punishments appropriate to assorted crimes) can be found online at several sites.
Thanks to Jezowen, Village Mystic and Teri for the beta. Remaining errors are my own creation...
Revised 4.24.2004
*********
Chapter 13: Saving Cheyenne Mountain
Louis Ferretti wasn't merely irritated or annoyed. He wasn't just mad. He was plain out ornery by now.
He ran his hands across the itching stubble on his chin and face.
It seemed like he had been doing this task now for days, but in fact it was only a little over twenty-four hours. The few hours sack-out time he'd taken along the way seemed as if it had been weeks ago, and his normal good humor had evaporated hours previously with his last cup of coffee.
Ferretti had stood around waiting to get into more buildings, crannies, and burrows in the rock of the Mountain than could possibly exist. And, of course, they all worked on a top secret, need-to-know basis. So even though he had a top security clearance, it wasn't like he could just wander in, unsupervised, and play on their computer to see what screensavers they had stored on them. He had been repeatedly informed that he simply did NOT need to know.
As a result, he had missed out on all of the excitement of the first real test of the F-302s. Moreover, he still had a long way to go before he could say he had completed his task. And he was really missing the eight golden hours of real sleep that should have been his, oh, twelve or so hours ago.
When Jack had ordered him to clean up all the Mountain's computers, he had thought it a fair thing. Oh, he hadn't constructed the damn screensaver himself, but he hadn't called them on it when he should have.
Of course, he hadn't realized then just how many computers there were on the base. He bet Jack knew though - Jack possessed a surprising treasure of odd knowledge. And even if he didn't exactly know, Lou realized he could probably have made an educated guess as to the magnitude of the task - after all, six thousand workers, even if scattered across five shifts, added up to a hell of a lot of computers.
And Jack, he knew from long experience, was firmly in the 'punishment should fit the crime' school of thought. Must be all that opera he listens to, he thought. Or did Gilbert and Sullivan really count as opera? He stopped himself as he automatically started humming the appropriate little ditty: "My object all sublime I will achieve in time - To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime."
He cut off his humming as he thought back grimly over some of Jack's previous efforts and shuddered. It could be worse, Ferretti reminded himself, at least there isn't a Lord High Executioner lurking about trying to cut off my head.
It wasn't even like he could justify calling off his screensaver hunt after looking in a few locations and say it hadn't escaped from Space Control.
Truth was, it was everywhere. The screensaver - in various versions - had bred like tribbles. So much for the Mountain's IT security procedures. Worse, it seemed to have acquired considerable genetic diversity, making it harder to detect and destroy. Hah, he was on the great screensaver hunt - though he doubted anyone would be raising statues to the hero of this hunt.
Some people - the Harrison Ford fans no doubt - had stuck with the original screen capture from Air Force One.
Then someone had thought of swapping the plane for a spaceship. The Enterprise looked just great with Jean-Luc Picard doing the 'get off my ship' routine. Somewhat less so with a little cartoon pot-bellied General Hammond. He resolved to make sure the General never saw that one - it didn't exactly enhance the command aura of the head of the SGC.
His personal favorite was General Jacob Carter on the Red Dwarf. Although he did wonder why the Space Weather people had been the ones cherishing that particular version. Had someone there been on the receiving end of the General's wit at some point? Or was this evidence of yet another security leak - albeit a less publicly compromising one - as well as a rather pointed political commentary on the quality of their dubious ally, the Tok'ra's, ships? In the end he had just added it to his report for someone else to worry about.
His main problem, after all, was the Goa'uld space ship image. It had clearly been just a matter of unhappy serendipity that Daniel Jackson had happened to put that shot of the mothership SG-1 had captured on his own computer around this time, and that it had been so easy to copy and substitute in to the screensaver.
So here he was, 250 down, 5,000 to go.
He racked his brains to think of a way of short-cutting this process. If his solution was creative enough, Jack might let him get away with it - provided he had suffered enough first.
He decided to head on down to the SGC and tackle its computers next. At the very least he could get more sympathy there - and maybe find some 'volunteers' to help. Or maybe he could get Siler or someone to certify the wretched things as virus-free, and then he could try and persuade Jack to let him off for the night?
It was worth a try at least.
*******************************************
Jack O'Neill stared out at the vista, puzzled. He really couldn't remember where he was, or how he had gotten there.
He was standing on bare rock, looking out across the world, literally, seemingly on top of a Mountain. A precipice on a very tall Mountain. So tall in fact, that it seemed to pierce the atmosphere, giving him a view of the Earth as if he was in orbit.
He looked around at the desolate landscape. Nothing grew.
Miniature continents and islands were rotating slowly, as if he were on one of those revolving restaurant tracks. He recognized the effect - it was the view he had seen from Thor's ship, the first time Thor had beamed him up.
Yet he wasn't actually on a ship this time. He wondered briefly how he could be breathing in the thin upper atmosphere, but dismissed it as irrelevant. He was obviously dreaming.
In the distance he could see bolts of electric blue lighting up the darkness. The storm seemed to be moving towards him. He began to get alarmed as the sizzling bolts echoed around him, with occasional ear-shattering bangs as the bolts shattered the nearby rocks.
Alright, he thought, that's enough. End dream. Now.
He struggled to wake up.
Nothing happened.
Suddenly, one of the lightning bolts hit him, and he was ripped into the air and flung over the side of the precipice. He tried to grab at the rock as he fell, but the wind pulled him further and further away.
Automatically, he maneuvered himself into the position he had been trained to assume when jumping, and he felt the gentle sensation of freefall rise up to support him. He floated, only the slight pressure of the air telling him he was in fact falling. He reached automatically to locate his parachute's ripcord.
Ah, he thought, no parachute this time. Still, it's only a dream isn't it?
He looked down, and saw that the Earth continued to rush towards him. It looked very real.
Regret poured through him for all the things undone, all the things unknown. He wished he hadn't lost his temper with Sam - he really should have managed the whole situation better. And Teal'c - how badly injured had he been, had he survived?
Charlie, he thought mournfully, and turned a lonely somersault.
He tried to shed his regret with the wind, but failed, gripped still in nightmare.
The lightning bolts were coming closer again, chasing him to the ground. He raced to beat them, only to feel the tingling sensation of an Asgard transporter.
He blinked, expecting to find himself transported onto an Asgard mother ship, but instead, when the tingling sensation stopped, found himself inside a death glider. The lightning bolts were still searching for him, shaking the craft uncontrollably. It started doing wild loop the loops, then switched to a nose dive. "Teal'c," he called out to the pilot, "Can't you regain control?"
"I regret O'Neill, that you are only a clone. It is therefore better that you die."
Jack flung himself desperately at the instrument panel, trying to seize control. It was too late, however, and in his last moment of consciousness, he screamed a lonely Nooooooooooooooo.
*********************************
Dr Janet Fraiser watched anxiously as Jack O'Neill writhed and screamed, twisting from side to side in the infirmary bed. She contemplated the scene: Jack O'Neill ill, and none of his team here to keep watch. It was almost a first. The SGC grapevine was clearly failing. Or else things were even worse than she had realized with SG-1.
Even as she thought it though, she heard footsteps in the corridor, and a saw Sam peek cautiously in. Janet hastily pretended to be marking observations on Jack's chart.
"I heard you'd dragged him down here, Janet, but what's wrong with him? Shouldn't you wake him up?" Sam said, eyes locked on the figure in the bed.
Janet took in Sam's appearance. Her face was tense, hard even, but her eyes looked ashamed, guilty. Janet watched as Sam's fists curled then uncurled compulsively.
"No," Janet replied. "At this stage it would actually make him worse. He's already got too many drugs in his system, combined with too little sleep. To wake him, I'd have to give him more. The dreams should start to wear off fairly soon, and he really needs the sleep, disturbed or otherwise. He'll be fine, Sam, really."
Janet put the chart back in its place at the end of the bed, and reached out to touch Sam's shoulder. Sam shook her off angrily.
"I should get his test results soon," Janet said, trying again to build a bridge between them, "but my guess is that he hasn't been sleeping at all for several days. Do it for long enough, and you get rapidly accelerated ageing, coupled with diabetes. Sleep deprivation can have pretty serious effects."
Janet watched as Sam nodded her head, her pinched face turning a little paler. She turned away from the bed and stalked towards Janet, finally lifting her eyes to glare at her.
"So can't you do anything about it? He looks like he's having a bad nightmare," Sam said tersely.
Janet took a step backwards, guilt at her failure to diagnose the Colonel's problems before he collapsed fuelling her need to get away from Sam's anger. "I've done what I can to counter the symptoms, but in the end he really just needs to sleep," she said. She waved her hands, pointing at the IV pushing fluids into Jack's veins, and started to walk towards the door. "Look I've really got to go and do rounds. Not much more we can do now anyway."
"No, but we should have been there for him, should have stopped him before he collapsed," Sam whispered.
Yes we should, Janet thought as she left the room, leaving Sam watching over him.
Janet sagged against the wall in the corridor outside Jack's room to pull herself together. It was bad enough that she had failed the Colonel, without Sam attacking her as well. Guilt manifesting itself, Janet reminded herself, she'll get over it.
As she recollected herself, trying to breath slowly and deeply, she was startled to hear the soft murmur of Sam's voice waft through the doorway. Janet twisted her head back around the doorway, and her eyes softened as she saw Sam gently stroking Jack's hand as she spoke.
Janet hastily withdrew, and crept off down the corridor to give her privacy.
**********************
As he walked past Carter's office, Lou Ferretti saw that the lights were on. His bad temper dissolved at the prospect of someone he could share his gripes with. He poked his head in, to find Sam no place in sight.
Instead, Daniel Jackson was lounging, with his nose in a book, while the new wunderkind from upstairs, Adams, played at Sam's computer.
Typical Jack, he thought, picking up the bright young things and grabbing them before they woke up and could run away. He thought back fondly to his own recruitment to Jack's Spec Ops team.
He wondered though, why Daniel was babysitting. "Hi, guys, " he said. "How are things?"
"Hi, Ferretti," Daniel replied, "Have you met Lt Adams?"
Lou turned to the Lieutenant, who wasn't looking much better than Lou himself. Adams' eyes blinked out of dark-ringed circles from too much screen reading and too little sleep, the effect accentuated by his fair complexion and reddish-colored hair.
"Certainly have, " Lou said, nodding politely, "We've worked together briefly in NORAD. How did they capture you kid?"
The young man's eyes crinkled together for a moment, tensing along with his body, then relaxing again almost as abruptly. "I'm working on a project for Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter, Sir," Adams replied.
Lou wondered what Jack had done to him to make Adams react so strongly to the notion of being captured - of course, being dragged down to the mysterious SGC and told goodness knew what probably felt pretty overwhelming for someone straight out of school.
"Lucky you, " Lou replied. "Where is Jack anyway?" He turned to Daniel. "I need to find him and see if he'll let me off the great screensaver hunt for the night. " Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adams turn back to the computer, and hit a few more keys.
"I thought he was still upstairs, doing his King Under the Mountain routine," Daniel replied.
"Nah, the elevator guard told me the General was back, " Ferretti replied. "Apparently Jack came down with Dr Fraiser a few hours ago."
"Really? " said Daniel alarmed. "I wonder why he didn't come and see how we were doing? I hope he's ok. Perhaps we had better go and see how he is?"
"I'm sure he's fine or Janet would have let us know," he replied.
As they talked, Lou could hear industrious tapping on the keyboard, as Adams continued his work.
Suddenly, the noise stopped, as the lights in the room flickered then died.
The hum of the air conditioning rapidly following suit.
After a second, they could see the red emergency lights in the corridor turn on through the still-open door.
Lou quickly ran to the phone to find out more, but it was dead. In the flickering half-light of the emergency lighting from the corridor, he could see that Daniel was searching in a drawer. The slim beam of a flashlight flicked on, illuminating a frozen Lieutenant Adams, standing like a deer in front of headlights. Daniel thrust the flashlight at the Lieutenant, making sure he grabbed it, even as he kept moving towards the door.
"Stay here, Lieutenant, " Daniel instructed over his shoulder. "We'll be back as soon as this emergency is over, but we've got to get to our posts."
Daniel rapidly left the room, with Ferretti hard on his heels.
**************************
Methos stared out the door at the departing figures with satisfaction. The 'I'm as surprised as anyone, I'm totally innocent' routine had worked. Finally, he had the lab to himself. He doubted whether the systems crash he had initiated would hold up for long: it wasn't that sophisticated a virus. All it really did once activated was to tell a computer to close down any system it controlled. Of course, if it controlled something fairly vital, well then, he was in luck.
At least it had given him the diversion he needed so he could set his bomb. He thanked again the boredom that Space Control shifts obviously engendered, and which had allowed him to subvert their harmless little games into something far more deadly, something that gave him this window of opportunity.
He wondered again whether he was doing the right thing. Hundreds, perhaps thousands would die, entombed in this Mountain, if he succeeded. He hardened his heart. It was for the good of the many, he reminded himself. Earth must not be enslaved again by the Goa'uld.
Once he would have been confident that the little gray alien Asgard would be watching, protecting the Earth, providing a safety net. No longer. He thought back to the events that had led him here, and let himself be absorbed by the flashback.
*************
THREE YEARS EARLIER
The increasing swell of the waves throbbed beneath him, rocking up against the boat. The gathering dark warmth of the breezes of the Pacific made the sails flap, adding to the creaks and groans of the boat. Clouds raced in front of the sparkling stars, signs of the gathering storm.
Methos liked the sea. True, he liked it a lot more nowadays, with all the comforts a modern ocean-going yacht offered. But whatever he might publicly claim, he had always been willing to climb on board any vessel that offered the lure of the sometimes soothing, sometimes roaring, never-safe seas.
Still, he thought, these days there were no undiscovered lands to find, no 'here be dragons' warnings on the map. This was just a pleasant interlude, a temporary escape from the pressures of immortal life. And there was no point in enduring a storm unnecessarily.
Reluctantly, Methos reached to turn the wheel to start heading back to land. California, he guessed, was two or three hundred miles away. The yacht edged around, then jumped as it turned into the wind. He ducked to avoid the boom as it swung around, and the yacht commenced its inward tack.
Abruptly, the waves worsened, surging over the deck, and trying to take him with them as a loud, fiery ball burst across the sky above him, its tail illuminating the ocean all around him. The wind around it tried to suck the boat into the sky, then dropped it down, hard. He could hear plopping sounds as debris entered the water all around him.
Was it a plane crash, he wondered, or perhaps a meteorite? One of the pieces dropped heavily onto the deck of the yacht. The Alexa bucked for a moment, before settling back into the rhythm of the ocean's swells. The bombardment ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
Scrambling across the rolling deck to investigate, Methos felt the distinctive hum of the metal before he touched it. Asgard, he realized, horrified, as he stared at the twisted hunk of obviously alien metal in front of him. An Asgard ship had fallen out of the sky.
He stared, frozen, until a rhythmic thumping sound alerted him to approaching helicopters.
Pushed to action, he grabbed the crystals embedded in the fused mechanism that sat accusingly on his deck, and heaved the machinery over the edge of the yacht, into the deep water below.
The foam-flicked waves thrown up by the helicopter's blades faded from Methos' vision as the memory released him.
He had waved off the helicopters, but when he'd arrived at last in port, military officers claiming to be searching for parts of a downed satellite had questioned him carefully. Methos had admitted seeing the descent of the craft, but nothing more. The yacht had been thoroughly searched, but no one had thought to search the carefully constructed inner lining of his coat, home to his sword, and for a time, a few rocks.
*************
CURRENT TIME
Yes, Methos told himself, he had no choice but to destroy this nest of Goa'uld vipers here and now, along with the Gate that had let them establish this foothold on the Earth. If they could destroy an Asgard ship; had already, probably destroyed Earth's ancient guardians, there was no deus ex machina ready to step in at the last moment, no hope of rescue for the Earth except for that which he could effect.
Grim-faced, he clenched his teeth and moved quickly over to the lab bench, and pulled out the equipment he had assembled. Turning a naquadah reactor into a bomb was an easy task: it required little more than changing the power settings, taking the modulation controls offline, and setting the timer.
He suppressed the sense of elation that flooded through him, that had always buoyed him as he went on a raid, or plotted death for hundreds, nay thousands.
The hardest part of the operation was deciding how long to set the timer for. How long to death and destruction?
**********************
Do please review, and tell me what you like or dislike.....
Also, the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan is an operetta (light comic opera) nominally set in feudal Japan - the full words of the song (which describes various punishments appropriate to assorted crimes) can be found online at several sites.
Thanks to Jezowen, Village Mystic and Teri for the beta. Remaining errors are my own creation...
Revised 4.24.2004
*********
Chapter 13: Saving Cheyenne Mountain
Louis Ferretti wasn't merely irritated or annoyed. He wasn't just mad. He was plain out ornery by now.
He ran his hands across the itching stubble on his chin and face.
It seemed like he had been doing this task now for days, but in fact it was only a little over twenty-four hours. The few hours sack-out time he'd taken along the way seemed as if it had been weeks ago, and his normal good humor had evaporated hours previously with his last cup of coffee.
Ferretti had stood around waiting to get into more buildings, crannies, and burrows in the rock of the Mountain than could possibly exist. And, of course, they all worked on a top secret, need-to-know basis. So even though he had a top security clearance, it wasn't like he could just wander in, unsupervised, and play on their computer to see what screensavers they had stored on them. He had been repeatedly informed that he simply did NOT need to know.
As a result, he had missed out on all of the excitement of the first real test of the F-302s. Moreover, he still had a long way to go before he could say he had completed his task. And he was really missing the eight golden hours of real sleep that should have been his, oh, twelve or so hours ago.
When Jack had ordered him to clean up all the Mountain's computers, he had thought it a fair thing. Oh, he hadn't constructed the damn screensaver himself, but he hadn't called them on it when he should have.
Of course, he hadn't realized then just how many computers there were on the base. He bet Jack knew though - Jack possessed a surprising treasure of odd knowledge. And even if he didn't exactly know, Lou realized he could probably have made an educated guess as to the magnitude of the task - after all, six thousand workers, even if scattered across five shifts, added up to a hell of a lot of computers.
And Jack, he knew from long experience, was firmly in the 'punishment should fit the crime' school of thought. Must be all that opera he listens to, he thought. Or did Gilbert and Sullivan really count as opera? He stopped himself as he automatically started humming the appropriate little ditty: "My object all sublime I will achieve in time - To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime."
He cut off his humming as he thought back grimly over some of Jack's previous efforts and shuddered. It could be worse, Ferretti reminded himself, at least there isn't a Lord High Executioner lurking about trying to cut off my head.
It wasn't even like he could justify calling off his screensaver hunt after looking in a few locations and say it hadn't escaped from Space Control.
Truth was, it was everywhere. The screensaver - in various versions - had bred like tribbles. So much for the Mountain's IT security procedures. Worse, it seemed to have acquired considerable genetic diversity, making it harder to detect and destroy. Hah, he was on the great screensaver hunt - though he doubted anyone would be raising statues to the hero of this hunt.
Some people - the Harrison Ford fans no doubt - had stuck with the original screen capture from Air Force One.
Then someone had thought of swapping the plane for a spaceship. The Enterprise looked just great with Jean-Luc Picard doing the 'get off my ship' routine. Somewhat less so with a little cartoon pot-bellied General Hammond. He resolved to make sure the General never saw that one - it didn't exactly enhance the command aura of the head of the SGC.
His personal favorite was General Jacob Carter on the Red Dwarf. Although he did wonder why the Space Weather people had been the ones cherishing that particular version. Had someone there been on the receiving end of the General's wit at some point? Or was this evidence of yet another security leak - albeit a less publicly compromising one - as well as a rather pointed political commentary on the quality of their dubious ally, the Tok'ra's, ships? In the end he had just added it to his report for someone else to worry about.
His main problem, after all, was the Goa'uld space ship image. It had clearly been just a matter of unhappy serendipity that Daniel Jackson had happened to put that shot of the mothership SG-1 had captured on his own computer around this time, and that it had been so easy to copy and substitute in to the screensaver.
So here he was, 250 down, 5,000 to go.
He racked his brains to think of a way of short-cutting this process. If his solution was creative enough, Jack might let him get away with it - provided he had suffered enough first.
He decided to head on down to the SGC and tackle its computers next. At the very least he could get more sympathy there - and maybe find some 'volunteers' to help. Or maybe he could get Siler or someone to certify the wretched things as virus-free, and then he could try and persuade Jack to let him off for the night?
It was worth a try at least.
*******************************************
Jack O'Neill stared out at the vista, puzzled. He really couldn't remember where he was, or how he had gotten there.
He was standing on bare rock, looking out across the world, literally, seemingly on top of a Mountain. A precipice on a very tall Mountain. So tall in fact, that it seemed to pierce the atmosphere, giving him a view of the Earth as if he was in orbit.
He looked around at the desolate landscape. Nothing grew.
Miniature continents and islands were rotating slowly, as if he were on one of those revolving restaurant tracks. He recognized the effect - it was the view he had seen from Thor's ship, the first time Thor had beamed him up.
Yet he wasn't actually on a ship this time. He wondered briefly how he could be breathing in the thin upper atmosphere, but dismissed it as irrelevant. He was obviously dreaming.
In the distance he could see bolts of electric blue lighting up the darkness. The storm seemed to be moving towards him. He began to get alarmed as the sizzling bolts echoed around him, with occasional ear-shattering bangs as the bolts shattered the nearby rocks.
Alright, he thought, that's enough. End dream. Now.
He struggled to wake up.
Nothing happened.
Suddenly, one of the lightning bolts hit him, and he was ripped into the air and flung over the side of the precipice. He tried to grab at the rock as he fell, but the wind pulled him further and further away.
Automatically, he maneuvered himself into the position he had been trained to assume when jumping, and he felt the gentle sensation of freefall rise up to support him. He floated, only the slight pressure of the air telling him he was in fact falling. He reached automatically to locate his parachute's ripcord.
Ah, he thought, no parachute this time. Still, it's only a dream isn't it?
He looked down, and saw that the Earth continued to rush towards him. It looked very real.
Regret poured through him for all the things undone, all the things unknown. He wished he hadn't lost his temper with Sam - he really should have managed the whole situation better. And Teal'c - how badly injured had he been, had he survived?
Charlie, he thought mournfully, and turned a lonely somersault.
He tried to shed his regret with the wind, but failed, gripped still in nightmare.
The lightning bolts were coming closer again, chasing him to the ground. He raced to beat them, only to feel the tingling sensation of an Asgard transporter.
He blinked, expecting to find himself transported onto an Asgard mother ship, but instead, when the tingling sensation stopped, found himself inside a death glider. The lightning bolts were still searching for him, shaking the craft uncontrollably. It started doing wild loop the loops, then switched to a nose dive. "Teal'c," he called out to the pilot, "Can't you regain control?"
"I regret O'Neill, that you are only a clone. It is therefore better that you die."
Jack flung himself desperately at the instrument panel, trying to seize control. It was too late, however, and in his last moment of consciousness, he screamed a lonely Nooooooooooooooo.
*********************************
Dr Janet Fraiser watched anxiously as Jack O'Neill writhed and screamed, twisting from side to side in the infirmary bed. She contemplated the scene: Jack O'Neill ill, and none of his team here to keep watch. It was almost a first. The SGC grapevine was clearly failing. Or else things were even worse than she had realized with SG-1.
Even as she thought it though, she heard footsteps in the corridor, and a saw Sam peek cautiously in. Janet hastily pretended to be marking observations on Jack's chart.
"I heard you'd dragged him down here, Janet, but what's wrong with him? Shouldn't you wake him up?" Sam said, eyes locked on the figure in the bed.
Janet took in Sam's appearance. Her face was tense, hard even, but her eyes looked ashamed, guilty. Janet watched as Sam's fists curled then uncurled compulsively.
"No," Janet replied. "At this stage it would actually make him worse. He's already got too many drugs in his system, combined with too little sleep. To wake him, I'd have to give him more. The dreams should start to wear off fairly soon, and he really needs the sleep, disturbed or otherwise. He'll be fine, Sam, really."
Janet put the chart back in its place at the end of the bed, and reached out to touch Sam's shoulder. Sam shook her off angrily.
"I should get his test results soon," Janet said, trying again to build a bridge between them, "but my guess is that he hasn't been sleeping at all for several days. Do it for long enough, and you get rapidly accelerated ageing, coupled with diabetes. Sleep deprivation can have pretty serious effects."
Janet watched as Sam nodded her head, her pinched face turning a little paler. She turned away from the bed and stalked towards Janet, finally lifting her eyes to glare at her.
"So can't you do anything about it? He looks like he's having a bad nightmare," Sam said tersely.
Janet took a step backwards, guilt at her failure to diagnose the Colonel's problems before he collapsed fuelling her need to get away from Sam's anger. "I've done what I can to counter the symptoms, but in the end he really just needs to sleep," she said. She waved her hands, pointing at the IV pushing fluids into Jack's veins, and started to walk towards the door. "Look I've really got to go and do rounds. Not much more we can do now anyway."
"No, but we should have been there for him, should have stopped him before he collapsed," Sam whispered.
Yes we should, Janet thought as she left the room, leaving Sam watching over him.
Janet sagged against the wall in the corridor outside Jack's room to pull herself together. It was bad enough that she had failed the Colonel, without Sam attacking her as well. Guilt manifesting itself, Janet reminded herself, she'll get over it.
As she recollected herself, trying to breath slowly and deeply, she was startled to hear the soft murmur of Sam's voice waft through the doorway. Janet twisted her head back around the doorway, and her eyes softened as she saw Sam gently stroking Jack's hand as she spoke.
Janet hastily withdrew, and crept off down the corridor to give her privacy.
**********************
As he walked past Carter's office, Lou Ferretti saw that the lights were on. His bad temper dissolved at the prospect of someone he could share his gripes with. He poked his head in, to find Sam no place in sight.
Instead, Daniel Jackson was lounging, with his nose in a book, while the new wunderkind from upstairs, Adams, played at Sam's computer.
Typical Jack, he thought, picking up the bright young things and grabbing them before they woke up and could run away. He thought back fondly to his own recruitment to Jack's Spec Ops team.
He wondered though, why Daniel was babysitting. "Hi, guys, " he said. "How are things?"
"Hi, Ferretti," Daniel replied, "Have you met Lt Adams?"
Lou turned to the Lieutenant, who wasn't looking much better than Lou himself. Adams' eyes blinked out of dark-ringed circles from too much screen reading and too little sleep, the effect accentuated by his fair complexion and reddish-colored hair.
"Certainly have, " Lou said, nodding politely, "We've worked together briefly in NORAD. How did they capture you kid?"
The young man's eyes crinkled together for a moment, tensing along with his body, then relaxing again almost as abruptly. "I'm working on a project for Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter, Sir," Adams replied.
Lou wondered what Jack had done to him to make Adams react so strongly to the notion of being captured - of course, being dragged down to the mysterious SGC and told goodness knew what probably felt pretty overwhelming for someone straight out of school.
"Lucky you, " Lou replied. "Where is Jack anyway?" He turned to Daniel. "I need to find him and see if he'll let me off the great screensaver hunt for the night. " Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adams turn back to the computer, and hit a few more keys.
"I thought he was still upstairs, doing his King Under the Mountain routine," Daniel replied.
"Nah, the elevator guard told me the General was back, " Ferretti replied. "Apparently Jack came down with Dr Fraiser a few hours ago."
"Really? " said Daniel alarmed. "I wonder why he didn't come and see how we were doing? I hope he's ok. Perhaps we had better go and see how he is?"
"I'm sure he's fine or Janet would have let us know," he replied.
As they talked, Lou could hear industrious tapping on the keyboard, as Adams continued his work.
Suddenly, the noise stopped, as the lights in the room flickered then died.
The hum of the air conditioning rapidly following suit.
After a second, they could see the red emergency lights in the corridor turn on through the still-open door.
Lou quickly ran to the phone to find out more, but it was dead. In the flickering half-light of the emergency lighting from the corridor, he could see that Daniel was searching in a drawer. The slim beam of a flashlight flicked on, illuminating a frozen Lieutenant Adams, standing like a deer in front of headlights. Daniel thrust the flashlight at the Lieutenant, making sure he grabbed it, even as he kept moving towards the door.
"Stay here, Lieutenant, " Daniel instructed over his shoulder. "We'll be back as soon as this emergency is over, but we've got to get to our posts."
Daniel rapidly left the room, with Ferretti hard on his heels.
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Methos stared out the door at the departing figures with satisfaction. The 'I'm as surprised as anyone, I'm totally innocent' routine had worked. Finally, he had the lab to himself. He doubted whether the systems crash he had initiated would hold up for long: it wasn't that sophisticated a virus. All it really did once activated was to tell a computer to close down any system it controlled. Of course, if it controlled something fairly vital, well then, he was in luck.
At least it had given him the diversion he needed so he could set his bomb. He thanked again the boredom that Space Control shifts obviously engendered, and which had allowed him to subvert their harmless little games into something far more deadly, something that gave him this window of opportunity.
He wondered again whether he was doing the right thing. Hundreds, perhaps thousands would die, entombed in this Mountain, if he succeeded. He hardened his heart. It was for the good of the many, he reminded himself. Earth must not be enslaved again by the Goa'uld.
Once he would have been confident that the little gray alien Asgard would be watching, protecting the Earth, providing a safety net. No longer. He thought back to the events that had led him here, and let himself be absorbed by the flashback.
*************
THREE YEARS EARLIER
The increasing swell of the waves throbbed beneath him, rocking up against the boat. The gathering dark warmth of the breezes of the Pacific made the sails flap, adding to the creaks and groans of the boat. Clouds raced in front of the sparkling stars, signs of the gathering storm.
Methos liked the sea. True, he liked it a lot more nowadays, with all the comforts a modern ocean-going yacht offered. But whatever he might publicly claim, he had always been willing to climb on board any vessel that offered the lure of the sometimes soothing, sometimes roaring, never-safe seas.
Still, he thought, these days there were no undiscovered lands to find, no 'here be dragons' warnings on the map. This was just a pleasant interlude, a temporary escape from the pressures of immortal life. And there was no point in enduring a storm unnecessarily.
Reluctantly, Methos reached to turn the wheel to start heading back to land. California, he guessed, was two or three hundred miles away. The yacht edged around, then jumped as it turned into the wind. He ducked to avoid the boom as it swung around, and the yacht commenced its inward tack.
Abruptly, the waves worsened, surging over the deck, and trying to take him with them as a loud, fiery ball burst across the sky above him, its tail illuminating the ocean all around him. The wind around it tried to suck the boat into the sky, then dropped it down, hard. He could hear plopping sounds as debris entered the water all around him.
Was it a plane crash, he wondered, or perhaps a meteorite? One of the pieces dropped heavily onto the deck of the yacht. The Alexa bucked for a moment, before settling back into the rhythm of the ocean's swells. The bombardment ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
Scrambling across the rolling deck to investigate, Methos felt the distinctive hum of the metal before he touched it. Asgard, he realized, horrified, as he stared at the twisted hunk of obviously alien metal in front of him. An Asgard ship had fallen out of the sky.
He stared, frozen, until a rhythmic thumping sound alerted him to approaching helicopters.
Pushed to action, he grabbed the crystals embedded in the fused mechanism that sat accusingly on his deck, and heaved the machinery over the edge of the yacht, into the deep water below.
The foam-flicked waves thrown up by the helicopter's blades faded from Methos' vision as the memory released him.
He had waved off the helicopters, but when he'd arrived at last in port, military officers claiming to be searching for parts of a downed satellite had questioned him carefully. Methos had admitted seeing the descent of the craft, but nothing more. The yacht had been thoroughly searched, but no one had thought to search the carefully constructed inner lining of his coat, home to his sword, and for a time, a few rocks.
*************
CURRENT TIME
Yes, Methos told himself, he had no choice but to destroy this nest of Goa'uld vipers here and now, along with the Gate that had let them establish this foothold on the Earth. If they could destroy an Asgard ship; had already, probably destroyed Earth's ancient guardians, there was no deus ex machina ready to step in at the last moment, no hope of rescue for the Earth except for that which he could effect.
Grim-faced, he clenched his teeth and moved quickly over to the lab bench, and pulled out the equipment he had assembled. Turning a naquadah reactor into a bomb was an easy task: it required little more than changing the power settings, taking the modulation controls offline, and setting the timer.
He suppressed the sense of elation that flooded through him, that had always buoyed him as he went on a raid, or plotted death for hundreds, nay thousands.
The hardest part of the operation was deciding how long to set the timer for. How long to death and destruction?
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