Daniel was dying.
There was nothing anyone could do to prevent it. The amount of radiation he'd been exposed to was lethal. He knew Janet had done all she could, and that Jack, Sam and Teal'c had tried contacting all possible allies, searching for any healing technology, anything. They had come back empty-handed. Even Sam's attempt with the Goa'uld healing device had failed.
He did not blame them. Of course he did not want to die, but it had been his choice, and he accepted it. He'd die knowing he had done the right thing. His life in exchange for the lives of all the people on Kelowna. If he hadn't stepped in and stopped that device before it went off, the would all be dead now.
In a way, he thought Jack and Teal'c and Sam had more trouble dealing with this than he did. They were both angry at him for doing what he'd done, and grief-stricken by what would happen to him. He could offer them no relief. Even if he could find the right words, he was far past the point of being able to speak.
He was sick and tired beyond anything he had ever experienced in his life. All he hoped was that he could just fall asleep or unconscious and stop feeling it all, and still, he fought hard not to let that happen. He didn't want to waste his last moments unfeeling and oblivious to the world. Though he wasn't much more than that right now, he could still hear the voices speaking, knew there were people around him, his team, his friends, those who cared about him. The people who would be there until the end.
Carter turned her back to the DHD, to face the others.
"As much as I hate being a killjoy, I'm really not so surprised that the gate doesn't work. I mean, even though we've got the remains of an alternate SG-1 on the floor in this room, it doesn't mean anything. Daniel explained earlier that the Veraeda can send people back or forth in time, so we might be a thousand years away from ours. We might not even be anywhere near to our own universe. Since our General O'Neill has the Ancient gene, maybe this one here had it as well, and was able to activate the Veraeda, and this is not their universe at all..."
"But there's got to be a way out of here, no matter whatever time and universe we're in," Mitchell said.
"And whatever that way is, we need to find it right now, or it'll be too late," Galen muttered, his words far less clearly and carefully formed than usual. He had walked to the nearest table, and now he was leaning on it with both hands, his head bowed.
Mitchell didn't like that. It looked like Galen was about to give up on Jackson. "Galen?" he asked.
"I've done all I can, but it's not enough. I can't fight it, it's far too complicated, too overwhelming--his blood vessels are leaking all around, his liver and kidneys are about to fail, his blood pressure is too low and soon he'll go into shock, and there's no way I can stop it all--it's beyond the abilities of any of my kind... What he really needs is transfusions, lots of them, and fluids, which I cannot just create out of thin air," he shook his head, and went on with a wavering voice. "And so, I fail once again--I fail to save a life when it really matters, like every other time, except for Matthew..."
Galen had his own personal demons like everyone else, it seemed. And whatever he actually was, human or cyborg, someone with a huge bunch of spare technology in his body or an ordinary man, it seemed that the dehydration, the imprisonment and the hopelessness of their situation were getting to him as well. Not to mention the possible aftereffects of powering up the Veraeda.
"But he's not dead yet, and I've no intention of letting him die, either," Mitchell declared. "So, we'll start searching the rooms-"
"The ship!" Carter suddenly exclaimed, out of nowhere.
"Ship? What ship?" Mitchell had no idea what she was talking about.
She pointed at something behind him, and he turned around to look. There, in one of the rooms, waited the Ancient gateship.
"That ship. The gateship. If we can't use the gate, at least we can try to fly, well, somewhere. Anywhere, away from the Dodecagon, maybe to a world where we'll find some help..." she explained. Just flying out into deep space in an unknown universe didn't sound like much of a great plan, but at least it was something. Possibly better than a broken gate.
"Or perhaps, if it has a time-travel device, and we are not in our time, we can use it to return to that time in this universe, and then dial Earth," Teal'c suggested. Mitchell figured that sounded really good.
"Let's go and take a look. But I want someone to stay with Jackson." Someone to make sure that he really stayed alive long enough for them to find the way out.
"Keep in mind that, although none of us have started showing any symptoms of this disease so far, if the virus is contagious, anyone doing rescue breathing will certainly become infected. As for chest compressions, any bruising they could cause, let alone broken ribs, would probably lead to severe internal bleeding," Galen warned, still not sounding hopeful.
"I shall watch over him," Teal'c answered resolutely. "My knowledge of the gate vessels is not extensive."
Mitchell didn't know a lot about them either, he thought, as he walked into the room that was pretty much filled by the ship. Carter, Galen and Eilerson followed him. Carter hit some controls at the end of the ship, and a ramp opened to let them in.
Mitchell had only read about a ship like this in the mission files concerning a planet where Harry Maybourne had been king. SG-1, officially lead by Carter, but accompanied by General O'Neill, had found an Ancient ship on that planet, and it had had what'd seemed like a time travel device in it. That ship was in Area 51 right now, in their universe, and they still didn't understand a whole lot about how it worked. It was designed to fit through the stargate, and even had a DHD built inside it.
"This is... This looks different. There are things in here that weren't there in the ship we found," Carter said as soon as they were in. So, this was new to her as well.
The inside of the ship felt and looked crammed. The walls were covered with complex clusters of Ancient technology, and several large devices of some sort stood up from the floor as well, or maybe they were just the different parts of one big device.
"So, you think this can do time travel?" Mitchell asked.
"I don't know what it can do, really, but at least it's probably able to do more than just fly through the gate. Though if some of this technology adds up to a time travel device, then it's completely different in design than the one we've seen."
"The really important question is, can we fly it at all."
Mitchell walked through all the contraptions to the cockpit of the vessel. It didn't look as crammed as the rest of the ship. Instead, it had four seats and a strange set of controls, just like what O'Neill had explained in his mission report.
Mitchell sat down on the seat at the controls and put his palms on the pads. Nothing happened, of course.
"Just one little problem. We've got no one with the Ancient gene around."
Galen had appeared at his side. "Perhaps I could try," he offered, and Mitchell let him. He'd done pretty good with the Veraeda, so maybe he could deal with a gateship as well.
Galen placed his hands on the controls. Still nothing. "I can interface with the surface of it, but it won't grant further access without a certain DNA sequence," he noted.
"Yeah--as I said, the Ancient gene, which we don't have, but Jack O'Neill-" Mitchell got an idea as he was speaking.
He walked out of the ship, back to that twelve-sided room where they'd spent so much time. Teal'c looked up from Jackson's side and nodded to him. Still alive.
Mitchell went straight to the skeletal remains with the O'Neill -dog tags. Feeling like a grave robber, he picked up a few finger bones.
When he returned to the cockpit with them, Carter cast an appalled look at him.
"If it helps us out, I don't think O'Neill would've had a problem with it," he shrugged, and offered them to Galen. "O'Neill's bones. O'Neill's DNA. Ancient gene. Anything you can do?"
Galen picked up the bones, placed one on each control pad, and laid his hands on them. He closed his eyes in concentration.
It occurred to Mitchell that the combination of gateship and Galen might be just as bad as Galen and the Veraeda had been. He was half-expecting for Galen to fall unconscious and topple off the chair.
Instead, Galen opened his eyes, wide with wonder, his entire expression lit up with awe.
"This ship is amazing," he said, sounding slightly breathless. "Incredible."
"And, believe me, if Galen says that, it's really something, considering that his own ship is easily the most advanced spacecraft I've ever seen," Eilerson added.
It really didn't matter however fine and fancy the ship was. Mitchell was only interested in one thing. "So, can you get us out?"
"More than that. Much more than that, I think," Galen replied. "Get everyone and everything in."
He stayed in his place, hands on the controls, his gaze wandering, looking at things no one else could see. Everyone else rushed out, to grab the most important of their belongings. Packs and guns were in, blankets and sleeping bags could just stay where they were, in a pile in front of the Veraeda. They'd give a soft landing to the next people to come through it.
"What about..." Carter asked, motioning vaguely at the alternate SG-1. Mitchell shook his head. They wouldn't waste time on those who were already dead.
As for those who were hopefully not dead yet, Teal'c had already lifted Jackson from the floor, and carried him all the way to the gateship.
When they were all in, Eilerson and Carter in the cockpit with Galen, and Teal'c, Mitchell and a barely breathing Jackson among the odd bits and parts of Ancient technology, Teal'c reached for the ramp controls. Before he'd touched anything, the ramp closed on its own.
"All in? Fasten your seatbelts and hang on to your hats. It's going to be the ride of a lifetime. More than one lifetime, actually," Galen called out from the controls. "Oh, and enjoy the view."
Huge windows unfolded in the walls on both sides. Or maybe, more likely, they were just screens showing the outside, which looked like windows. All Mitchell could see through them were the dark stone walls of the surrounding room.
The walls started to move, to slide downwards. In a second, he realized that the walls weren't moving at all. The gateship was rising slowly, but its inertial dampers, or whatever they were called, prevented them from feeling it.
Mitchell remembered perfectly well that the rooms weren't particularly high. "Galen, are you nuts? We're going to hit the ceiling!" he shouted.
But they went on rising, and they didn't hit a thing. There was a break in the walls, a long, thin dark line, some more wall, and then, complete darkness, sprinkled with a few dim stars, far away.
The ship tilted slightly, or then Galen had turned the displays, the outside cameras, or whatever, to show a different angle. They showed an odd, dark-gray formation, like a star with a lot of rays. Mitchell couldn't see all of them, but he knew there were twelve. The outside of the Dodecagon. It was covered all over with patches of Ancient technology, just like the inside of the ship around them.
They were flying above it, across it. The image changed again, to show the ray they'd left behind. Its surface had split along the middle and opened up like a pair of triangular doors when they'd come out. Now, it was closing slowly behind them.