46
A Thing
Samantha Carter set the last of the timers and placed the charge on the final crate, all of which were stacked in the exact middle of the ring array. The plan was not to merely jettison the cargo, but to send it as close as possible to the source of the tractor beam.
With any luck, they'd destroy the emitter. On the other hand, luck was something that was running in short supply for them today.
Since there was no one to see her, it taking both Teal'c and Jacob to try to keep the ship stabilized, Sam crossed her fingers as she hit the button to send her explosive surprise out to meet the tractor beam.
&&&&&&
"Excuse me, I'm cutting in." Jack insinuated himself between Evree and her current dance partner, not an easy task, and deftly whirled her away before the man could protest.
"I thought you said that you didn't dance," Evree pointed out. She was starting to look sulky. "And yet here you are, dancing. So it must be me."
"Can we not do this now?" Jack suggested, and mentally added, or ever. He danced his charge across the floor and deposited her back on her bar stool with a thump.
"You wanted to come out and drink," O'Neill stated. "So either sit there and drink, or we'll go back to the base."
If he didn't know better, he could swear he heard Evree sniff. "You disapprove of me enjoying myself," she accused.
"No one's saying you're not entitled to have any fun, Evree," Daniel put in quickly, before Jack worked himself up into a stroke. "But we're supposed to be keeping you safe. That's hard to do when you're in the middle of a crowd and we can't see you."
Evree was not entirely mollified. "O'Neill can dance quite well," she commented. Then, she beckoned to the bartender. "Which of these potions will make me forget the quickest?"
&&&&&
Sam was back in the cockpit, staring at her watch. When the countdown started getting close, she called it off. If her explosion didn't destroy the beam's source, the disruption, if there was one, might only give them a window of a few moments. Teal'c and Jacob had to know when the explosion hit so they would be ready to act on those hypothetical moments.
"Five, four, three, two, one," Sam intoned. The view screen lit up as the C-4 detonated.
The ship made an abrupt and unscheduled maneuver as whatever the two men had been doing to try to keep them from being pulled in became no longer necessary. Sam nearly lost her footing before they could get it back under control.
Jacob immediately took the ship out to a safe distance. "It worked," he crowed. "That was good thinking, honey. Now, how are we going to find out why they have that tractor beam there in the first place?"
Teal'c was reading the sensors again. "I do not believe that the beam was rendered inoperable," he informed his companions. "Merely disrupted long enough for us to make our escape."
"Do you think there's one on the other side of the moon?" Sam asked. Other considerations aside, she was dying with curiosity.
"Do you want to find out the hard way that they do?" Jacob asked. "You used all your C-4 on that one. If we got caught again, I don't think we have anything left that we could blow our way out with."
"Much though I dislike to say it," Teal'c rumbled. "Perhaps now would be an opportune time to make a tactical retreat. And, to restock supplies." Both men looked at Sam.
"You're right," she sighed. "I just hate having to leave like this with the job unfinished."
"One way or another, kiddo," Jacob promised. "We'll finish it."
&&&&&
O'Neill walked slowly back to the bar with Evree clinging to his arm and stumbling every few steps. If she wasn't so obviously drunk, it would have looked a little.., strange, him standing and waiting outside the ladies for her. He hadn't taken bodily functions into account. Or maybe he'd thought that Goa'uld didn't have them. It just seemed a little incongruous to him, the thought of a Goa'uld using the john.
When they rejoined the third member of their party, Evree blinked and regarded Daniel owlishly. "I had not realized that humans had perfected the art of cloning," she murmured. Her speech was still quite clear, but had slowed down quite a bit, as if she were having to carefully think out each word.
"Cloning?" Jack felt the breeze from that one whooshing over the top of his head.
Daniel caught it, though. "Evree, how many of me do you see?" he asked gently.
Evree shook her head and would have fallen if it weren't for the fact that she was still clinging to Jack's arm. "I don't feel like counting that high," she answered with a giggle.
"Oh boy," Daniel muttered, shaking his head. "She's..,"
"Tanked," O'Neill finished helpfully. "Come on, Evree. I think it's high time that we took you back to base and poured you into bed."
Evree gave him an impish look. Or at least, it seemed like that was what she was attempting to do. The effect was somewhat marred by the fact that she was having trouble focusing. "Are you going to tuck me in, O'Neill?"
"Only under direct orders," Jack muttered. He started guiding the Goa'uld out of the building into the parking lot. Evree began stumbling again, and then, her feet slid out from under her completely. With a sigh, O'Neill picked her up. It wasn't like she was heavy, or anything, but he was beginning to think longingly of the day when he would no longer have Evree in his life. It seemed that he had been stuck with her for a lot longer than just a little over a day.
&&&&&&&
"I don't like this moving box, O'Neill," Evree muttered. Come to that, she was starting to look a little green around the gills.
"It's an elevator," Jack corrected her. "And you've been in them dozens of times since you've got there."
"Then why do I feel the movement so much more acutely now?" Evree mumbled, half to herself. "I really do not enjoy the sensation."
"Jack," Daniel said warningly. "I think maybe she's..,"
"Don't say it," O'Neill cautioned. "I know. That's why I've been trying to avoid the subject. If we started talking about the possibility, it would probably become reality very, very fast."
"So speaks the voice of experience," Jackson remarked. "We're almost there, Evree. Then, you can lie down in your nice, soft, non-moving bed."
"I think I would like that," Evree replied, miserably. She tried to lift her head from where she'd been staring at her feet, but it was too much effort. "Why did you say that humans do this to themselves, Dr. Jackson?"
"To forget their troubles," Daniel answered with a sigh. He could see that he was probably going to take the rap for her hangover tomorrow, and judging by the way she was behaving, it was going to be a doozy.
"Oh, that's right." Evree stumbled between the two men as the elevator came to a halt. "What troubles did I want to forget?"
"The ones that you can't remember right now," O'Neill put in. "Why don't you enjoy it while you can. Because I really don't think that you're going to be enjoying much of anything in the morning."
Evree made the supreme effort and managed to look up at him. "O'Neill." There was a long pause, as though she'd forgotten that she was in the middle of a sentence. Then, she seemed to remember. "Have I ever told you that you're an attractive man?"
&&&&&
"Well, we're back in one piece," Sam said, trying, and failing, to inject a cheery note into her voice. "I guess that's something."
"It is indeed," Teal'c replied. He sounded no happier than Sam did. "Perhaps they have had better luck getting information from Evree." His tones suggested that he didn't place any hopes on that score either.
Sam checked the time. "It's getting late," she observed. "But someone may still be up."
"I would suggest that we try the area where Evree is quartered to start with," Teal'c said.
"Lead the way," Sam responded.
&&&&&
"I know that you hate me, O'Neill," Evree insisted. She had reached the maudlin, self-pitying stage, and was doing it quite well. "I don't blame you. I hate me too."
"I don't hate you," Jack hedged. Okay, so they'd never be bosom buddies, and he regretted even thinking of the word 'bosom' in context with Evree. But he was finding it difficult to be actively hostile to her. At least, not all the time. Or even most of the time. "I just.., don't play well with others."
"I think if that were the case, you would not have risen as high as you have done in your military," Evree remarked. An incredibly lucid comment for someone as drunk as she was. "The rest of SG-1 thinks you are a god. So it must be me."
"They don't think I'm a god," O'Neill snapped. "You are, without a doubt, the craziest woman I've ever met, drunk or sober."
"Did you say drunk?" Sam and Teal'c hove into view. "Oh my god, she is drunk. What have you guys been doing while we were gone?"
"Getting to know the enemy," Jack said dryly.
"The Jaffa," Evree said so abruptly that everyone jumped. "He hates me too." Tears were evident in her voice if not on her face. "No one wants to be friends with a Goa'uld."
"She's not a happy drunk," Jack explained needlessly.
"She's not a cheap one, either," Daniel added. "I'd probably be down with alcohol poisoning if I drank as much as she did."
"Which still does not answer the question, why?" Teal'c pointed out.
"Because I was being 'a giant-sized pain in the ass' about it," Evree informed them. "Wasn't that how you put it, O'Neill?"
"I didn't say it to you," O'Neill muttered, looking more than a bit embarrassed.
Evree had already turned away from him. "Are you my friend, Daniel?"
&&&&&
"Incompetent fools, you let them get away," Ahriman raged.
"We awaited your orders, Lord," one of the Jaffa said, pointing out, without actually saying it, that Ahriman had witnessed the whole thing and hadn't thought to give any orders.
It was the last thing the Jaffa said in this life.
"Shall we track them down, Lord?" another Jaffa ventured, attempting to soothe Ahriman's wrath.
The Goa'uld considered. That the Tok'ra ship had escaped from his tractor beam proved that his enemies were not short of resources, material or mental. And he did not have an unlimited number of Jaffa, he thought, conveniently forgetting that he himself took a higher toll on their numbers than any mission he ever sent them on. Compared to most Goa'uld, he had a relatively modest force.
"Can you reach the ship with a tracking device?" he inquired.
"If we dispatch a ship immediately, Lord."
"Then do so," Ahriman rumbled. "Find out where those curious Tok'ra originate."
&&&&&&
Evree came out of medical the next morning rubbing her backside ostentatiously. But with no sign whatsoever of a hangover, now.
"Dr. Frasier stuck a needle in me," she complained. "If you treat someone in so barbaric a manner to make them well, I shudder to think what you would do to cause them harm."
"But you do feel better, don't you?" Sam asked. She had volunteered to take over Goa'uld sitting for the time being. Until such a time as she, her father and Teal'c could go and finish what they had started on PX549's third moon. "And with the current state of medical science on this planet, sticking a needle in you is the quickest way to get medication into your system."
"Where is O'Neill?" Evree asked, changing tack suddenly. "I have not seen him since I have arisen, and I have not gone such a long time without seeing him since I arrived here."
"He is a Colonel," Sam pointed out. "He has duties to attend to, Evree. Duties that don't include you." Actually, Jack hadn't so much ordered Sam to take his place for a while as he'd begged her.
"He doesn't like me," Evree said, matter-of-factly. "Nor do I blame him. I know some of the things Goa'uld have done to your people. But he also confuses me."
"How so?" Sam was curious in the extreme to see what would come out of the Goa'uld's mouth.
"He.., protects me," Evree replied musingly. "At times, he seems most solicitous of my welfare. He allows himself to be talked into doing things that he does not wish to do on my account. I do not understand why he would do this when he hates everything that I am."
"I think you're overstating the case," Carter rejoined. Then, a thought struck her. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but she was pretty sure that she knew how Jack would react to it. "Do you have a thing for Jack?"
"A thing?" Evree repeated, mystified.
"He's all that you've talked about since we met for breakfast," Sam pointed out. "And last night when you were drunk I could have sworn that you were trying to make the moves on him. You like him, don't you?"
"That is what 'a thing' is?" Evree queried. "I do not know whether or not I like O'Neill. But in the short time I have known him, I find that I feel.., incomplete without his company."
"Oh brother," Sam muttered. She knew without a doubt that Jack was most definitely not going to like this. "You've got it all right. And you've got it bad."
"And O'Neill will not be pleased about it, will he?" Evree observed.
"I won't be pleased about what?" Jack inquired, coming around the corner to meet them. True, he had asked Sam to fill in for a while to give him a break from Evree. But after a couple of hours, he started getting antsy, not knowing what she was up to. "What have you done now, Evree?"