Name: Better Ways To Self Destruct (aka 'Politics...Oy')
Pairing: Sam/Jack in later parts
Summary: Something smells bad, and it isn't Daniel Jackson's feet... (sorry, couldn't resist -g-)
Feedback: Please respond – I need to know if people are reading :)
Disclaimer: Stargate SG1 and the characters are the property of MGM. There is no infringement intended and no profit made.
–Part 2–
Toxic Shelter
They had been walking for the best part of an hour when Colonel O'Neill stopped them. The sun was climbing behind them, bringing with it a muggy heat. Jack turned as the rest of his team took the opportunity to rest.
"So Daniel," he said, drumming his fingers impatiently upon the side of his gun, "where's this great civilisation you keep going on about? Are they invisible?"
Daniel cast his gaze over the featureless curve of the horizon. "I don't know, Jack," he said evenly.
"I don't think they're invisible, sir," Carter offered, assessing the possibility by reading the measurements on her hand-held probe. "There are no energy signatures strong enough to be attributed to any technologically advanced settlement."
"Maybe the main city is further on," Daniel suggested, excitement animating his face once again, "and we're passing villages, instead."
"I'm not sure, Daniel," Sam answered: "even if the villages weren't generating their own power, they would need a huge energy supply to remain artificially invisible."
"There are races that we can't see," Daniel persisted, "like… like the ree'tou."
"In another phase," Sam added thoughtfully.
"I was being sarcastic!" O'Neill exclaimed loudly, waving his hands to stop them. "There's nothing here."
"There's a road," Daniel pointed out.
"O'Neill."
Jack turned as the stoic Teal'c called for his attention. In the distance, the opaque mist was lifting, and Teal'c extended his arm to indicate what he saw. A great, billowing mass was rising, forming an immense blanket they had mistaken for cloud. The wind was picking up, dragging the thick smoke through the air towards them with a heavy sense of foreboding.
"Stay alert," Jack muttered, and cautiously they advanced.
They followed the road, a sight of destruction gradually revealing itself before them. Piles of rubble were heaped against once-strong walls, marking out where tall structures once stood. Daniel drew a camcorder out of his bag and began filming; Carter kept a concerned eye on her instruments; Teal'c surveyed the scene with deep eyes. Jack kept a firm grip on his P-90.
Sam looked up from her probe as they halted at the entrance of the city.
"Colonel?"
"I know Carter – I smell it too."
Daniel's glance moved worriedly between them. "Smell what? What do you smell?"
"Death." Teal'c's monosyllabic response invoked a chill of dread in the archaeologist. O'Neill gestured for silence and directed Carter to the other side of the road. She approached the collapsed wall carefully and crouched, ready. Daniel ducked down behind her and from the road Teal'c raised his staff weapon.
Now.
Carter responded to her CO's signal and slipped inside the wall, trained eyes combing the charred terrain. O'Neill was finding cover a few feet away, stooped behind a pile of shattered bricks. Teal'c edged forward; Daniel followed, cursing softly as his camera caught the scale of the destruction. The whole city had been reduced to rubble.
O'Neill determined there was no immediate threat but warned his team to continue with caution. Once the area around them was secured, O'Neill turned to Carter.
"Report, Major?"
"Background levels of radiation are higher than they should be," she told him. "There's no real threat of heightened exposure but we shouldn't hang around too long if we can help it."
Jack nodded. "Daniel?"
"I don't know what you want me to say, Jack," Daniel replied, still preoccupied with the destroyed city around him. "Whoever did this didn't want anyone to survive it."
"And yet, no bodies," O'Neill observed.
"It's possible that they're buried beneath the rubble, sir," Carter replied, "or if the blast was strong enough…" Jack's look was enough to make her abandon the rest of her sentence.
"Alright," the Colonel said, "let's sweep for survivors. Teal'c, Daniel, follow the road. Carter, with me."
They moved through the city slowly, methodically, increasingly repulsed by the sickening stench that rose from all around. O'Neill and Carter conducted their search in mutual silence, whilst Daniel kept an intermittent commentary for his recordings. When he radioed through to Jack just over an hour later, the two Air Force officers jumped at the sound. It seemed wrong to hear a living voice amongst such desolation.
"Jack?"
"Go ahead, Daniel."
"We've found something."
"Care to elaborate on that?"
"Well, so far it just looks like a big hole in the ground," Daniel replied, "but Teal'c seems to think it might have been some kind of shelter."
"Stand by, we're on our way."
Some minutes later, the team was assembled at the entrance of the tunnel. Daniel was eyeing the deep darkness warily, whilst the others kept their weapons ready. They all knew the grim reality they could be met with if Teal'c's assessment of the place was right.
After a long moment, O'Neill said, "Let's find out what's down Alice's rabbit hole, shall we?"
And so they descended, one by one, O'Neill leading and Teal'c guarding the rear. They were forced to stoop, but as Carter observed, it had to have been designed for human passage.
"There must be some kind of hidden structure providing support," she said, mostly to herself; "otherwise this tunnel would have collapsed along with everything else."
They continued ever downwards, the smell of charred flesh rising towards them. Daniel pressed his sleeve over his mouth and nose; before long the others had done the same, unable to bear the malodour of suffering. Then their boots met with even ground.
"Oh, man!" O'Neill whispered. A beam from Carter's P-90 joined the light from his own weapon as she stepped down beside him. She uttered a slight gasp.
"What? What is it?" Daniel asked, hearing the reactions of his team mates. "Is it what Teal'c—oh no."
He and Teal'c were now beside the others, but Daniel turned away, appalled. The cavern that stretched out in front of them was filled with rows of bodies…and the smell to go with it.
"They must have thought they could escape the destruction down here," Sam breathed, the beam of her torch eerily illuminating the disfigured bodies of the burnt victims.
"A bomb shelter," Jack muttered.
"Wait." Daniel had turned back, though his camcorder was lowered. He was gazing at the orderly rows of corpses, stepping among them to catch a glimpse of how they had died. He would have frowned thoughtfully, but for his involuntary grimace at the sights and smells around him.
"Careful, Danny."
Daniel didn't reply to Jack's warning, instead leaning down towards two of the bodies. They were huddled together in a perfectly natural embrace. The archaeologist's mind reconstructed the scene of their demise, noticing the way her head rested so calmly on his shoulder, as if to sleep. Daniel moved along the line. The next man's arms were crossed over his chest. The woman beside him had done the same.
"It's a mass grave," Daniel mumbled, horrified. "Jack, they didn't come here for shelter. They came here expecting to die."
There was a disturbed silence. "Let's get out of here," O'Neill said at last. They did so with no will to argue.
Their minds reconstructed possibilities as they climbed, intensifying their perceptions, and by the time they reached the surface, they were fighting back waves of nausea. They took a moment to recover and though O'Neill and Teal'c refused to betray any sign of it, the dizziness they all felt was getting worse.
"It's too polluted," Sam said, breaking the silence out of necessity. "We have to leave now, sir. The smoke is releasing toxins and the radiation is climbing."
"We can't leave," Jack said after a moment. "Not yet."
"Can't leave?" Daniel repeated. "Jack, as much as I'd like to think there might be survivors…"
"Colonel." Sam resumed where Daniel had given up. "No-one could have survived. Not here. Ordinary bombs weren't used to destroy this city and the effects were uncompromising." She repeated, firmly: "Radiation is climbing. The air is getting worse. If we stay here much longer we risk getting poisoned."
Jack pursed his lips as he looked round his team. He already knew that he wouldn't expose them to that much risk, but it was a difficult thing to do if it meant abandoning hope for any survivors. He didn't like to leave people behind. His eyes came back to rest in Sam's gaze and he knew the gravity of the situation.
"What about outside the perimeter?"
"Still too close, Colonel. I'm sorry."
"Don't be, Carter." He was surprised by his own soft tone. "Let's head back to the Gate."
----------------------------
It should have ended after we left the city, Colonel O'Neill later wrote in his official mission report. If we had headed straight back to the Stargate, it would have done. Instead Daniel found a path into the woods. Teal'c saw tracks. Carter said we were far enough away from the city for it to be safe so I made the decision to continue our search for survivors.
"How are those readings, Carter?"
"Getting better, sir: the risk is reducing as we get further away from the city."
Jack had been checking every few minutes, adamant that the moment there was a radiation increase they would be back at the Stargate, dialling home. Yet the other half of his mind was still desperate to find life on this post-war planet. There was a psychology to it that the others could only guess at as they walked along the winding forest path. On any other day the rationality of his military mind might have won – but as Sam watched him stride on ahead, she knew his thoughts were still fixed on Merniva.
It was this knowledge that meant she was making a conscious effort to keep herself totally alert. It wasn't that she didn't trust Colonel O'Neill's perceptions – his soldier instincts were rivalled only by those of Teal'c – but the nature of this mission was making her uneasy. There was something seriously wrong about the way those people had died.
Still, it wasn't her call and she refused to question Jack's decision.
A metallic clicking; the sweep of fabric on fabric.
Sam heard the sounds at the same moment Jack did and was already crouching by the time he gestured for the team to get down. Behind Sam, Daniel and Teal'c sank to the level of the brush on either side of the trail. They waited.
It was a good few minutes before any of them moved. Then Daniel, who had been waging a vicious war on the cramp in his knees, shifted for fear of toppling over into the sharp spikes on his right. The bare bush seemed to be just waiting for an opportunity to turn him into a human pincushion and the archaeologist had no choice but to shuffle to a better position.
The glare O'Neill sent back was deadly, but the movement seemed to reawaken his own desire to move. His hand-gestures instructed the others to stay put while he scouted ahead. Sam gave a quick nod and Jack, keeping low, followed the path out of sight.
There was that clicking sound again. Sam tensed; that couldn't be good.
Then Jack O'Neill yelped. That definitely wasn't good.
With a sharp gesture that was a silent yell for other two to stay back, Sam took off down the trail.
He had kept low. He had kept quiet. He had employed every method known to him to tread undetected, but he couldn't have known the sensors were able to lock onto his body heat. Suddenly the clicking had begun again, gaining speed, powering up; a curious sensation of being unable to move his neck; then a strike of lightening straight into his eyes, causing him to cry out with pain and sheer surprise.
The numbness was spreading down from his neck along his spine…
He couldn't move, he couldn't think…
It was getting more and more difficult to breathe…
Sam kept running until Jack came into sight: his back to her, she was alarmed to find him gasping for breath. His ruggedly handsome features were contorted in pain and he was slowly sinking to his knees. A blinding energy beam bombarded his eyes, penetrating his forehead.
"Colonel!"
No response, none at all. With a sickening lurch in her stomach, Sam realised that thing was killing him.
Daniel and Teal'c rounded the corner just in time to see her make the dive. A scorching flash obscured the outcome; but after that, both Colonel and Major were gone from sight and sound.
"Woah, woah, what just happened? Where'd they go?"
Daniel was staring at the scene in alarm. Only seconds before his friends and team mates had been present in the clearing; then Sam had launched herself at Jack's sunken form and…
"They are no longer here with us," Teal'c observed, frowning deeply.
Daniel opened a radio channel – "Jack, Sam, come in!" – but with no response.
Teal'c was surveying the area warily. "It would be unwise to remain here, Daniel Jackson. It is unsafe. We must return to Earth immediately."
Daniel wasn't going to argue with that. His friends had just disappeared from in front of him and he was pretty certain that whatever had just beamed them up wasn't a benevolent force. If the look on Sam's face was anything to go by, Jack had been in serious trouble. They would need reinforcements for this: one of the search and rescue units, a UAV, some extra supplies. A doctor.
"You can't get through, you know."
Daniel jumped violently. He span on his heel to find a gaunt young girl gazing mournfully up at him. She had been so light-footed that Teal'c had turned only a second before she had spoken. His weapon was trained on her but she was ignoring it.
"Can't get through?" Daniel repeated carefully, frowning his confusion.
"The cosmic circle," she murmured dreamily.
"We have to," Daniel responded and explained: "we have to go home. Our friends—"
"You can't follow them, either," the girl sighed, staring at her bare, bony feet. "You'll die if you get any closer to the guard."
"Guard? What guard? Is there someone else here, someone else with you?"
Teal'c answered quietly: "I believe she speaks of the device that abducted Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter."
"Do you know what happened to our friends?" Daniel asked the native. "It's really important we find them, we think they're injured."
"You cannot follow them," the girl replied, looking away to hide a fearful tear. "If you do, you will surely die."
"Are you saying…" Daniel swallowed. "Are you saying they were killed by that guard device?"
"I've been sent for you," the girl said, emotionless now. "You must come."
"We cannot," Teal'c responded instantly. "We must retrieve our friends."
"How?"
"We shall find a way," the Jaffa asserted. Daniel looked less certain, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.
"Teal'c, maybe she can help us," he said. "If there are other survivors, maybe they can tell us where to search."
Teal'c gazed thoughtfully into mid-distance then gave the slightest nod. Daniel eagerly prompted the girl to lead the way and, with a certain air of reluctance, Teal'c followed.