STARGATE SG-1: Operation Checkmate

Summary: When General O'Neill is incapacitated, Carter finds herself in over her head as the helpless puppet to a madman! ...

Season: 8

Pairing: Jack/Sam (suggested)

Spoilers: New Order, Lockdown

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in Stargate SG-1. Please don't sue me for this story!

Author's Note: Sorry about the long wait for this chapter. Christmas was supposed to be my time to get a few fanfics updated… That clearly didn't happen, so here we are! Please R&R as always! Thanx. Enjoy!

WARNING: Strong Language!

Dedication: This chapter is for Shona. You'll see why, luv!...

Operation Checkmate: Chapter 7 – Stalemate

Two hours later, Barrett came barrelling through her motel room door, expecting to find a scene of destruction and decimation. Or at least some sign of a struggle.

He stopped dead just over the threshold. Gun drawn. Eyes and ears alert to any danger.

What he saw was perfectly normal. The bed stood at a right angle to the main supporting wall. On one side was a bed side table with lamp and phone sat neatly on top. Opposite the bed was the chest of draws with a mirror hung on the wall above it. Over the other side of the room was the entrance to the en-suite bathroom, the wall of which was about a foot and a half away from the far side of the bed.

In that gap, curled into a seated foetal position was Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter. She was rocking gently backwards and forwards; her eyes gazing, unfocused, on a patch of carpet about two feet away from her. Her face and hands were pale in shock and exhaustion. Her skin still harboured a sheen of cold sweat that – along with her pale complexion – made her look decidedly ill, if not ghost-like.

She didn't move or even flinch when Barrett had entered; and seemed to be completely oblivious to his presence as he slowly, cautiously, made his way around to the side of the bed where she sat.

"Colonel?" he said uncertainly, trying to provoke some sort of acknowledgement of his presence.

She didn't react.

By now he was standing right over the spot she was staring at – or more accurately, through.

"Colonel," he said again, he crouched down in front of her, trying to assess what could have possibly evoked such a state. There was no sign of injury on her that he could see and no sign in the room that suggested there had been some sort of struggle here.

All the time, Sam was just sitting there; rocking and staring. Rocking and staring. She wasn't even crying.

"Sam?" Barrett whispered, placing his hand over hers.

The instant he made contact with her skin, she jumped. Suddenly, her eyes had life in them. She looked at Barrett, confused for a moment, then she recognised him and her eyes filled with tears. She threw her arms around him.

"Oh thank god!" she sobbed, her entire body shaking in shock and grief.

Unsure of himself, Barrett returned the embrace. He let her cry out what she needed to.

Sam didn't care how out of character her behaviour seemed to him. These were extraordinary circumstances. And no will power in the world would have been able to maintain her usual composure. An annoying voice in her head kept asking her; 'What would you rather, him or O'Neill?'

She tried her hardest to block it out but it kept repeating; 'Him or O'Neill?'

Eventually, Barrett's soothing voice brought her back from the brink of insanity.

"Hey," he said quietly, prising her away from his body. He looked at her tear stained face for a moment, trying to catch her eye. She refused to look at him, so he tipped her chin with his finger, forcing her gaze into his.

"What happened?" he asked gently.

It took a few tear soaked attempts for her to actually answer, but she began to explain how The Bishop had phoned her at the hospital. She just managed to keep from retching when she told him how had caved to his demands and ended up here.

"Did you do it?" Barrett asked, already fairly sure of the answer.

The look she gave him was answer enough. It basically said 'What the hell do you think?!' with a few more expletives thrown in for emphasis. It didn't last long though, as another wave of tears swept through.

He pulled her back into his arms.

"C'mon. It's alright. It's over. You're gonna be fine," he said while all the time worrying about what the consequences for her actions would be.

"No!" she said suddenly. "It's not alright! That's not even the worst of it!"

"There's more?!" he said in disbelief. What could 'he' possibly have gotten her to do that was worse than that?!

Sam took in a few deep breaths before she answered.

"I knew him."

Barrett took a while to register what she was saying.

"The man you shot?"

Sam winced. It was only just beginning to hit home what she had done.

"Well, who was it?!" Barrett demanded.

"He was my old CO from the Gulf War. General David Gibson. He was the one who recommended me for the Stargate Project in the first place."

Barrett froze when she said the victim's name. It couldn't have been! There was no way! They take months to decode, he thought.

Sam noticed the look on his face – somewhere between horror and denial.

"What?" she said. "Barrett, what is it?"

He didn't say anything. He was still trying to work it all through in his own head.

"Barrett!"

He jumped at the sudden edge in her voice.

"Gibson was under NID protection," he said plainly.

"What?!" Sam didn't understand what she was being told.

"The files you – The Bishop got you to steal from the mainframe were witness protection files. Gibson's was one of them."

Sam stared in disbelief. Gibson was under protection? Why?!

"But it doesn't make sense!" Barrett said standing to his feet. He began to pace the area of floor between the bed and chest of drawers. "Those files were so heavily encrypted, it would take anyone months to break into them. He's had them for less than two weeks!"

"Well maybe he's got some other inside source in the NID who did that part for him," Sam queried.

"Then why go to all that trouble to get you to steal them in the first place?"

Sam couldn't answer that. She flatly refused to think that this asshole was just messing with her head because he got a kick out of it. All along the way, there had been something in what he said to her that suggested a method to his madness. He had an agenda in mind and she was merely his tool.

"I take it the search of the NID itself brought up nothing, right?" she asked.

Barrett shook his head.

Sam sighed. "It was a long shot anyway… Look, why was Gibson under protection in the first place?"

"Someone tried to kill him," he answered with a hint of irony in his voice.

Sam didn't react to it. She was too concerned with why her old friend had been hiding.

"Who was it?" she asked.

"Who was what?"

"The person trying to kill him."

"An Air Force officer who used to be under his command. A Simon Carnall. He'd been tormenting him and another A.F General for some time, because… What?" He looked at the dumbfounded expression on Sam's face. As if the ground had just been pulled out from under her.

"Simon was my co-pilot in the Gulf," she said quietly.

A thick silence descended over the room, only broken at last by Sam's determined effort to stand up.

"That's impossible!" she said, thumping the wall with her balled fist. "It can't have been him! Simon died in Iraq, back in '91!"

Barrett shook his head emphatically.

"No he didn't. he was brought up on charges for some botched mission and was dishonourably discharged. He blamed Gibson for what happened, so went after him."

"But he told me!…" Sam said in a daze of incomprehension. "He told me he died in trying to get me out!"

"Who told you?"

"Gibson!" She sank down onto the bed and shoved her hands through her short blond hair, trying to clear her mind.

Barrett looked at her. He didn't need to ask her to explain. She had to anyway.

"The mission was called Operation Checkmate. I was part of the team heading the first attack that was meant to severely weaken an enemy base. Then the second team was to go in and take it out completely."

She paused a moment to make sure Barrett was following what she was saying.

"But it went wrong. Somehow the base had found out about the attack and was ready for us… We lost most of our team in the assault and my plane was shot down. I woke up three weeks later in hospital with Gibson standing over me, saying my co-pilot had been killed trying to get me to safety." She tried her hardest to hold back the next wave of tears threatening to break through.

Barrett sat next to her on the bed.

"What happened to the second team?" he asked.

"I don't know. No-one ever told me."

"And you never wondered why?!"

Sam snapped round to look at him, her eyes hard set with anger but glistening with tears. "It's called Chain of Command, Barrett! I was only a Lieutenant then. I only got told what I needed to know. Nothing more. I didn't even know who was heading the second team or what their codename was, let alone what happened to them!"

Barrett nodded in understanding and silently apologised for provoking her.

"So what was your codename?" he asked trying to move on.

"Victoria-four," she told him with a hint of amusement in her voice.

"What's so funny about that?"

"Nothing," she replied, still smiling. "It's just something Simon said one time about our codenames… Our team was Victoria because with the whole Chess analogy out commanders had given the op, we were deemed the most important player, like the Queen on a chess board. Hence, Queen Victoria. The base we were taking out was like the King – the thing that had to be captured. It was code-named Albert – after Victoria's husband. Only Simon kept pointing out that Albert wasn't technically a king. He –"

Sam stopped dead in her tracks, thinking over what she had just said.

"Barrett," she said eventually. "Why was Simon dishonourably discharged?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he said honestly. "I think it was something to do with they had evidence that he had been conspiring with the Iraqis."

Sam closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged a little.

"Why?" Barrett asked in all curiosity.

"Albert," she said plainly. "When The Bishop first contacted me, he pretended to he was just a wrong number looking for someone called Albert."

Silence drifted back between them for a moment.

"It's him," Sam said, almost in defeat. "He's The Bishop."

She was furious. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. Mind you, thinking he had been dead for thirteen years hadn't helped, but still! She was just about ready to throw something at the far wall, when the phone by the bed began to ring.

Sam sprang away from the bed and flattened herself against the wall.

"Oh god! It's him! He said he'd call now!" she said, panicked.

"You should answer it."

Sam looked at Barrett as if he was nuts. She did not want to talk to him in this state. With her luck, she'd end up saying something to really get Jack killed!

"You might be able to turn this around! Now that you know who he is!"

Sam thought for a moment as the phone continued to ring. Turn this around. That's all she had to do. Hold something over him that would put her ahead. But what did she have, other than his identity?

She had a pretty decent poker face and not a lot else! Maybe she could bluff her way through…

Reluctantly, she reached across the bed for the receiver.

"Hello?" she said quietly.

"Is it done?" There was no mocking humour in his voice. He was serious. As serious now as Sam could remember Simon ever being.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"Good. I've something else for you –"

Before he could go further, Sam interrupted him.

"Simon, why are you doing this to me?!"

The line was quiet.

"You figured it out?" he said quietly.

Sam was close to tears again. How could this be him? He was dead!

"Honestly, I thought you'd have got it a little sooner," he told her.

"I would have," she answered, her voice wavering slightly. "But Gibson told me you were dead."

Simon sucked a breath in through his teeth. "He did, eh?"

"Look, what are you doing?"

He didn't reply.

"Whatever they did to you… It can't be worth all of this!" She was trying to keep him on the line and it had nothing to do with getting the upper hand. Just hearing him – knowing it was him – made it impossible for her to hate him anymore. This was her friend!

"Simon?"

Nothing.

"Simon, I want to meet with you. Where are you?"

The line went dead.

Sam stood with the receiver to her ear for a little while, as if it were suddenly going to start transmitting his voice again. But it didn't. She placed it gently in its cradle again and looked at Barrett.

"It was him," she said as if saying it out loud would mean it finally hit home to her that he was alive.

"What did he say?" Barrett asked, alright figuring it hadn't quite gone as he had hoped.

Sam shook her head. She knew Barrett would be disappointed with the out come. This was his chance to finally nail the guy that had been terrorising Air Force Generals for the last decade or so. But it was Simon! She couldn't hand him over! They'd been through too much together. He saved her life, for crying out loud!… Or had that been a lie too? Maybe he was the man Barrett had told her he was. What if he had sold them out?

She had to know what had really happened for the last thirteen years. And the only person who could tell her had just hung up on her with no indication that he would ever be in contact again.

And the worst part? She didn't know what effect all this would have on Jack!

Author's Note: Only two chapters to go now! Hopefully won't be too long before I update next (but then I always say that, don't I!). Don't forget to review! Thanx.