Chapter 16 – Assassination
Cilghal muttered a very un-Jedi like curse in her native language as she felt the life seeping out of the man who had fought for so long against the injustices that had been dealt to him.
She had known when she put him into a healing trance that the risks were high, which was why she had saved it as a last resort and she had also not known what she would do once he was in the trance. The damage to his body had been caused by genetic manipulation; it was now written into his genes, nothing like a disease, or even a virus, or injury that could be fought off or healed by the Force.
Feeling her connection with the Force weakening as she let her despair distract her, she strengthened it and turned every last piece of her concentration to the task at hand, even as she sensed the lack of a heartbeat. Her concentration so full that her unconscious mind did not even register the ominous drone of the two-one-bee's ECG monitor.
She ran her Force-sense over his cells again, feeling the inherent wrong-ness in them that lit up where the cells had been changed, tricked into believing that they had no need for an immune system. Realisation dawned a fraction of a second later.
If these Goa'uld could trick it into believing that it didn't need an immune system, then what was to stop her from tricking it into thinking that it did? It would be difficult, to say the least, but if it would save his life, then it was more than worth the risk.
Locating a cell that had just begun cell division by Mitosis, she reached into it with the Force, trying to coax it into repairing the anomalous sections of the chromosomes. It didn't work. The cell divided as it had countless times before, so she moved onto another one and tried again. This time, she succeeded, and the cells produced were two glowing examples of what they should have been.
Wasting no more time than it took to mentally smile at her success, she moved on to another cell in another key area of his body. It would be a slow process and she would start with one cell in each of the major areas before concentrating on others, but her success gave her renewed energy.
Only a small portion of her mind was not focused in what she was doing, and that part was concentrating on keeping his body alive for long enough to let him move onto keeping himself alive. It was mostly just an extension of her own subconscious continuance of bodily functions, brought about by the Force.
"No," Jack informed them, his face pained. "She can help him." He gestured to Cilghal, his voice cracking slightly. Sam and Daniel's eyes were full of tears, and they had their arms around each other, supporting each other through their bond.
"Jack," Daniel began, reaching out a hand to put it on his friend's shoulder. For a minute, they thought that he would shrug it off, as he usually did when they offered comfort, but he left it there, silently acknowledging it but neither accepting, nor rejecting it.
"Jedi Tekli," the mechanical, emotionless voice of the medical droid cut through the air harshly. "I am getting anomalous readings from the patient. There is no heartbeat, but normal bodily functions continue and blood continues to flow."
Tekli gave a Chadra-fan frown and reached a hand across to rest on Cilghal's arm for a moment, her eyes closed in concentration. When she opened them again, she was smiling.
"Master Cilghal thinks she may have found a way to help him, though it is still early days yet. She has taken control of his body functions to keep him alive while she does this. There is still hope." The three humans broke into relieved grins, breathing a sigh of relief into the tense room.
"She can do that?" Jack asked, mostly to break the silence.
"She can, but she risks her own life, too," Tekli replied, somewhat unhappily. "If it were anyone but Master Cilghal, I would not allow them to do it, because if she fails now, then she will die with Teal'c."
"Oh," Daniel seemed rather dumbstruck. "She'd do that for a relative stranger?"
"Jedi are keepers of the peace and preservers of life."
"Talk about a job and a half," Jack quipped, glancing at Sam, who muttered something unintelligible.
"It will be a long, long time before they awaken, if they do at all," Tekli said to them. "You will be best off continuing as you have been previously." Sam mentally translated it as Doctor-speak for 'Get out of here and stop cluttering the room before I get annoyed'.
"Right, sorry." Jack had apparently come to the same conclusion. "But there's no way I'm gonna let him wake up alone, so Daniel, you wanna carry on here for a while?" The younger man had only just started his part of their 'rotation' when Teal'c had, essentially, died.
"Sure, I'll be good for a while now," he replied, gesturing datapads full of information on anything that may refer to the Stargate in this galaxy. "You go learn starship mechanics," he added, struggling to keep a smirk from his face.
"Funny." Jack narrowed his eyes at Daniel. "Just because you don't know that to maximise the efficiency of a working hyperdrive unit, you have to wire in a power-flux capacitator, which works by refining the flow of electrons into the unit, therefore making it more stable and capable of nearly .5 past lightspeed." Daniel glanced at Sam, who nodded imperceptibly before his jaw dropped to the floor. Jack smirked smugly before turning on his heel and walking off. Sam shot Daniel a grin and a wave before catching up to Jack.
"That was right, wasn't it?" he asked, once they were well out of earshot.
"Almost. It's a capacitor…a capacitator is a Gand vegetable, and it will only increase it to .4 past lightspeed, for .5, you need to include a flux capacitor-amplifier."
"Damn, I always have trouble with the names. I know what it is, what it looks like, and how it does it; I can just never remember the names."
"Yeah, I noticed that." Sam glanced at her wrist chrono. "I've got to go train with Corran; you be okay to finish off working on that seflar unit with Dentralla?"
"Sure, I'll find a translator unit, though."
"Right, see you later." Sam headed off to the training room where she and Corran usually trained to find him already there, sitting cross-legged in front of him.
"Sorry I'm late." She offered no explanation for her tardiness as she sat in front of him, mirroring his position.
"Not a problem. Ready?" Sam nodded. "Okay, we're going to work on sensory enhancement. I want you to stand in the middle of the room, close your eyes, and focus on hearing. I want you to point towards the place where the noise is coming from." Following his orders with her usual trace bemusement at his no-nonsense commanding tone that reminded her of the Academy teachers, she ran through the Sense Enhancement routine. Eyes closed, she could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears and Corran's breathing over the other side of the room. An ant (well, the Yavin equivalent) scurried noisily across the floor in one corner and the slight click of a control being pressed. Within seconds, a soft noise sounded to her right and she reached out and pointed directly at it. This was followed by several more noises, which she located effortlessly.
"Well done. You won't necessarily be standing in a silent room when you have to use this technique, so I'm going to talk over the noises for a while…." Corran continued to speak, his voice almost painfully loud in her ears and she continued to point out sounds, with more difficulty, but still exactly on each time.
"Excellent, now, as I'm sure you're aware, you won't always be able to concentrate entirely, so I'm going to talk to you and ask you questions, to which you will answer and try not to raise suspicions to your lack of concentration, okay?"
"S'ok with me." She pointed to her left, aiming on target and continued as he spoke.
"Good, so I hear you've been training a new helper with the tech work. How's he doing?"
"Great, he finds it a little diffi-" point, "-cult at times. He's been pretending to be dumb for the last thirty odd years, so," point, "he needs a little reminding about a lo-" point "-t of things."
"Why was it you decided to teach him again?" Point.
"There's a chance that we may never get to go back through the 'gate," point, "and he needed something to do."
"That the only reason?"
"Yeah," point, "why would there be another reason?"
"Maybe because you wanted to spend a little more time with him?"
"What?"
"Sam, I'm not blind; it's obvious how much you care for him." A belated point.
"I used to," point, "I'm a different person now, and so is he."
"And I'm a son of a Hutt."
"Wondered what the smell was."
"You don't have to be afraid of it, Sam."
"I'm not afraid."
"Of course not." His reply, amplified by the Force, was scathing and disbelieving.
"Just because I don't want to get attached to someone who may go home when I don't even know whether I would rather be here does not mean I'm afraid." Was her vehement reply.
"Don't jump to conclusions. How do you know he wouldn't stay here if you asked him? I'd just like to see you really happy for once." He let his comment hang for a moment before telling her to drop the sensory enhancement. "Not bad, but you were late with quite a few, and more were off target on that last bit. Towards the end, you missed them all. You can't let your emotions distract you, even though you won't forbid them entirely."
Sam grunted a reply, grudgingly admitting that he had a point about distraction.
"Now, how about a duel? Haven't practised in a while, and I could do with the exercise."
"Sure."
It had been two weeks and still Teal'c and Cilghal had not yet awakened, or even twitched a finger. Tekli continued to assure them that everything was going well. This was compounded when the ECG suddenly flared into a weak bleeping, announcing that Teal'c's body had once again taken over for itself a few days ago.
All three of them had been ordered out in order for the two beings to be cleaned up and checked over and were now sitting in the Mess hall, drinking hot drinks.
"…Anyway I haven't been able to find anything much on the Stargate, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any, because most of the records were destroyed during the Clone Wars and Emperor Palpatine's rule." Daniel stopped his explanation to let Luke, who had just walked up, talk.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I just got off the Holo with Leia, and you've been granted audience with the inner council in a week's time."
"Sweet." Luke smiled at Jack's comment before continuing.
"Unfortunately, I can't go with you, but Leia and Han are going to put two of you and Dentralla up, as one of you will undoubtedly want to stay here with Teal'c. The rest of the information is on here," he presented Sam with a Data chip.
"Thanks, Luke, you off to meet Mara?" Sam could sense the anticipation in the Jedi Master and knew that Mara was due back after one of her trips to sort out loose ends for her former employer Talon Karrde. The two Skywalkers rarely got much time together, so they made the most of what they did get.
"Yeah, she's landing at the moment."
"Well then, don't let us keep you." Jack grinned and waved him off with silent thanks.
"See you soon then; may the Force be with you."
"You too." Luke headed of at a brisk pace that was only just this side of a run.
"So which two?" Daniel asked, "obviously you, Sam, because we have no clue what we're dealing with; who else?"
"That'll be you, Danny boy, you're the diplomat."
Sam frowned at them, thinking it over, "I'm not so sure."
"You're not?" Jack questioned, surprised.
"No." She was getting the feeling that it should be Jack, who went, though she didn't know why. She put it down to the Force in the end. "It'll be me, Dentralla and Jack, Daniel should stay with Teal'c."
"You sure you want me in front of all these councillors with you?" Jack still couldn't understand it and even Daniel was a little puzzled.
"Yeah."
"Why?" Jack's eyebrows were creeping into his hairline.
"I don't know, I just know. Call it a Jedi's intuition."
"Ookay…if you're sure. That okay with you, Spacemonkey?"
"Yeah, sure." Daniel paused a second before continuing, "Jack the not-quite-so-dumb, I can handle but…Jack the Diplomat?"
Bringing them steadily down on the platform that Coruscant Control had told them was designated landing Pad IP-9, Sam and Dentralla quickly shut the Peacemaker down before grabbing her gear and following Jack down the ramp. She was surprised to see two figures walking through the doors at the end of the pad. One was tall, with brown hair and rather scruffy clothes; the other was an even taller Wookie, with a shock of tan and black hair.
"Han, Chewie, good to see you again!" she called out, meeting them halfway. "This is Jack O'Neill, a friend from my home planet." The two had obviously been briefed on the significance of this as they nodded knowingly. "Jack, this is Han Solo and Chewbacca." The two men greeted each other with a handshake as the two Wookies yowled a greeting at each other.
"Leia wanted to be here to meet you, but she got held up in another of her endless meetings," Han explained somewhat bitterly. "But if you want to come back and dump your stuff, she should be back soon, and then we can see about getting some food."
"Sounds great. How are the kids?"
Han grimaced, "just starting to get good with some of that Jedi stuff Luke's been teaching them so…they're a handful. I just hope Threepio will still be in one piece when we get back."
"Winter not there?"
"Yeah, but Jacen and Jaina have all but perfected the art of breaking things quietly." Sam bit her lip to stop herself from laughing but Chewie and Dentralla made no effort to hide their laughter. Han just barked his usual retort of 'Laugh it up, fuzzball' as he led them through the never-ending corridors of the Imperial Palace.
When they reached the apartment, Han keyed the door open and was greeted by three cries of 'Daddy!' as the children hurled themselves at him.
"Oomph, hey, I was only gone a half hour."
"SAM!" Jaina suddenly noticed that Sam stood behind him and threw herself towards the crouched blonde, giving her a hug. Jaina had developed an attachment to Sam since she had saved her from the pirates, strengthened by their shared skill with technology.
"Hey, Jaina, not causing trouble are you?"
"Nope, I never do." Sam raised an eyebrow but said nothing about it. "Who's that?" the ten-year-old girl whispered loudly in her ear.
"This is my friend Jack, Jack this is Jaina and Jacen-"
"We're twins!" Jacen cut in proudly.
"And this is Anakin." Jack crouched down next to them so that he was on their level and reached out a hand to each of them, a twinkle in his eye. All three kids puffed out their chests and returned the handshake and greeting, pleased at being able to behave like a grown-up.
"Children…where's Threepio?" a tall, stately looking woman with long, white hair strode into the room, seemingly surprised at seeing the people gathered there. "Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't hear you come in."
"That's okay, Winter, you remember Sam?" Han knew the question was pointless…Winter was once known as Targeter, an essential spy in that she never forgot a thing, but he asked anyway.
Winter smiled winningly. "Of course. I'm sorry I haven't seen you since then, you're looking well."
"Thanks, so are you." Sam quickly introduced Jack before Han suddenly frowned.
"Where is Threepio?" The twins looked around in mock surprise as Anakin shrugged. Sam concentrated for a moment, stretching out with the Force.
"Try the cupboard next to the 'fresher." Winter obligingly did so and returned a couple of seconds later with the tall, humanoid protocol droid.
"It was Jacen and Jaina!" Anakin immediately exclaimed, receiving irritated glares from the twins.
"Only 'cause you messed with his voice modulator."
"I tell you, I am quite offended, I insist that you return my voice to normal at once!" The droid's demand was made somewhat more difficult to take seriously by the fact that his spoke in absurdly high pitched tones.
"Anakin, change it back at once," Winter ordered him her outwardly angry appearance at odds with her internal mirth.
"You better do it, kids; you know what Winter's like when she gets mad." Winter ushered the kids off, along with Threepio, who was still exclaiming about the indignity of it all.
Sitting down with drinks in the tastefully decorated sitting room, Han, Sam, and the two Wookies chatted for a while. They brought Jack into it when they could, but he was left mostly lost as they talked about things he didn't know or because he understood one word in about 30 of Shyrriwook.
Leia arrived a half hour later, greeting them warmly before heading to change out of her stately robes and into some much more practical and comfortable pants, boots, blouse, and jacket, which she rarely got to wear anymore. That done, they headed out of the Imperial Palace and into another, upper-class area of Coruscant, heading toward a local restaurant with the unusual difference of having a casual dress code.
As they stepped onto the slideway of the bridge, Sam tensed, feeling Jack automatically tense beside her, reacting to her sudden nervousness.
"What is it?" he asked quietly.
"I don't know…something's not right…DUCK!" the last word was yelled as a command and the people around her, all of them experienced in the field of being shot at, ducked to the floor as Sam whipped her Sabre out and deflected the shot that came flying at her. Tracking its trajectory, she switched her aim and sent the next bolt back at the dark figure she could see standing at the far end of a balcony across the way. Beside her, Jack stood to kneel; his blaster aimed in the same place as Sam's defected bolt had gone. He pulsed out two shots and the dark shape slumped forwards, falling off the edge of the balcony and sailing down into oblivion. If he hadn't been killed by the shots, then he would be by his eventual impact with the ground around 30 or 40 kilometres down. Her Force danger sense abating, Sam relaxed and shut her Lightsaber down, motioning for everyone to stand up. Several civilian pedestrians around them were whimpering and crying, but there were only a handful and none close enough to have really been in any danger.
"Nice shooting," Han told Jack.
"Thanks," Jack replied tersely.
"Any idea what that was about?" Leia asked, the two Wookies falling into front and rear guard positions.
"Not really," Sam continued to scan the area around her, but she was pretty sure they were out of danger now. "But I have kinda made a few enemies recently. Add those to your list of enemies and it's most probably a bounty hunter down on his luck and ready to risk shooting in broad daylight with a whole crowd of onlookers. Wish we could look at his body though, might give us a clue."
"Sorry," Jack mumbled but Sam shook her head to indicate that it wasn't his fault.
"Looks like it's a home-cooked meal then," Han told them with a lopsided grin as they remounted the slideway back towards the Palace and the apartment. "Who's up for traditional Correllian?"
Leia, Chewie, and Dentralla groaned.
"Stop fidgeting," Sam reached over and grasped Jack's hands, stilling the nervous movements.
Jack shot her a murderous look. "How can you stay calm? Whether or not we go home is dependent on this."
Sam grinned impishly back at him. "Jedi calming technique." She didn't tell him that on the inwardly, her insides were writhing like a pit of snakes, topped off with a bellyful of butterflies.
"Jedi Apprentice Carter and Jack O'Neill," an aide called them forward and announced them as they entered the fairly large room. They were running a few minutes early, Sam noted as they entered.
Seated on the chairs were a handful of senators for various key planets. The only ones that Sam recognised were those for Kashyyyk, Correllia, Alderaan (the Alderaanian survivor colonies) and, of course, Borsk Fey'lya for Bothawui.
Walking across to the small podium, Sam and Jack stood side-by-side, dressed in smart clothes, Sam's topped with her brown robe.
The layout of the room, Sam immediately noticed, was designed to make the speaker feel intimidated, placing Chief of State Fey'lya in the highest position, looking down on them. Sam guessed that Jack had noticed this too as his nervousness was replaced by annoyance at the superiority of the senators. Sam started by re-introducing the data that they had already been given on the Stargate.
"We're honestly expected to believe that you two are from another galaxy when we all know that the distance between galaxies is too far for one ship to cross in hundreds of years, let alone a few seconds. You're not even alien…you're human," one disbelieving senator called out.
"Yes," she pushed a holochip into the display projector, pulling up the digital image of the 'gate that she had made. "The Stargate is a device created by an extinct race of aliens known as the Ancients. It works by creating a stable wormhole between two gates in different places. When you step into the 'gate, you are particlised and passed down the matter stream, only to be re-integrated at the other end. By boosting the power, it can be made to travel further and further, even to encompass other galaxies."
"So you say that you cannot travel between galaxies by ship?" another asked.
"No, you can…or rather a race called the Asgard can, in a matter of seconds."
"And, supposing we were to help you, these Asguard would be willing to give us their technology?"
"I don't know."
"Then what reason have we for helping you?" Fey'lya asked, the fur on his head bristling in some unknown Bothan gesture. "You ask us to risk our men and ships for what? So that four of you may return home with knowledge of our technology to steal?"
"No," Sam relied, trying to ignore her frustration. "I ask you because at the moment, a criminal organisation has control of it, and is using it to capture people as slaves."
"And we are to take this on the word of someone mysteriously disappeared ten months ago, only to reappear with three mysterious friends who claim that they are from another galaxy?" Of the senators gathered, there seemed to be a select few who were asking the questions. The rest remained contemplatively silent, willing to hear all of the evidence before they asked questions.
"There were other witnesses to the activation of the 'gate and the appearance of SG-1, one of whom died before they even got halfway across the room."
"That still does not explain what it was you disappeared for."
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Jack cut in, "Whoever you got this from, they obviously failed to mention that she spent most of that time planet-hopping to save no fewer than…twenty-seven planets from a virus that would have left the galaxy in serious trouble."
"A virus that was brought through this…Stargate."
"Exactly…if it had been in your control, then it would never have got any further than the building the 'gate was in," Jack retorted quickly. "Look, its open now and nothing is going to stop it, but do you really want to be the ones that everybody looks to and says 'well, they're the ones that let the galaxy get taken over by the Goa'uld'."
"The what?"
Sam opened her mouth to reply but paused, and stepped back to let Jack talk, a frown creasing her face.
She quickly ran through a sensory-enhancement routine and listened intently. Bip. This time she took a few deep breaths, an occasional Bip sounding in the background. There it was: the unmistakable tang of explosives. Letting the sensory enhancements drop, she burst into motion.
"Everyone out! There are explosives rigged in here."
"What? This is preposterous!" someone began to protest, only Triebakk, the Wookie representative moving, trying to usher others out. Sam pulled her Lightsaber out and yelled at Jack to get people out. Within seconds, she had sliced into the floor and carefully opened a metre square in the floor, revealing a hollow space filled with a large amount of explosives and wiring. The display read '2:34' and was counting down steadily.
Kneeling on the floor, Sam looked at the wiring, tracing where each piece started and finished; coming to the conclusion that this was made by a specialist and wired so that almost anything would trigger it to blow.
"Sam, we gotta go!" Jack yelled to her, having got everyone out of the room and running for the emergency escape routes.
"Just a minute!" 1:47
"Now! Sam, or we're never going to get clear." She was tracing the wires with the Force, trying to sense which one to cut. Jack waited for a while, getting increasing worried, and feeling a desperate urge to get out of there. He knew that they had to go.
"We don't have a minute!" 1:13
"I can disarm it!" She was concentrating on the bomb and didn't hear Jack run up to her.
"Not this time, you can't." He grabbed her around the waist and heaved her away, much to her annoyance. She stumbled to her feet and ran alongside him, legs pumping for all they were worth. They had barely made it to the doors when the explosion ripped through the chamber. They grabbed hold of each other, trying to make themselves as small as possible as the force of it tore at them, flinging them against the wall. Sam put up a barrier to suck all of the energy out of the fire that followed. The barrier didn't, however, account for the debris thrown at them, though it did slow much of it down, sucking the kinetic energy out of it.
She barely registered that Jack's hand was still clasped in hers, as they lay crumpled on the floor in front of the wall. Jack had borne the brunt of most of the impact against the wall and Sam had received the worst of the pelting rain of debris.
Only when she knew that the fire was gone did she allow herself to slip into darkness.
