Chapter 9: Doom and Hope
Subconsciously Jack was partly glad he was on this mission. He had his hang-ups about the Tok'ra getting them to do their dirty work (as usual, he muttered to himself), he had enough on his mind anyway, and his glaring lack of a fourth member just made him dwell. Yet, in spite of that, he enjoyed the opportunity to blow stuff up instead of going on survey, archaeological or scientific missions.
The mission had been suggested by the Tok'ra. They had received word that Deimos had annexed the power and resources of a roughly equally strong Goa'uld, but they had no free agents to report on exactly what that entailed, as many of the Tok'ra operatives had been assigned to other posts (including Turam/Benedict) or were still undercover in Deimos' domain.
The mission was to scout out the planet of the usurped Goa'uld, and if possible disrupt or destroy supplies they came across. Hammond had agreed too readily for Jack's liking, but the senior of the two officers stamped down on the protest with the reasoning that the information would be valuable to Earth as well as the Tok'ra.
Jack had awkwardly ceased his protesting and grabbed the nearest C4, hoping the prospect of blasting valuable Goa'uld supplies into nothingness would cheer him up a bit.
With Carter and Teal'c, they'd scoped out several patrols and some well hidden buildings containing stockpiles of crates and weapons. In silence, they'd planted their C4 and moved on, still making a mental list of everything they could see. It was when they'd cleared the treeline and found the edge of an ancient crater that his despair began to kick in.
Inside the crater, and thus hidden from prying eyes until then, was an ideal spot to build a Hatak mothership.
The giant vessel was still under construction – they could see the skeletal framework near the apex of the pyramid ship – but it wouldn't be long until it was. Along with what the Tok'ra had already told them of Deimos' progress, that made three motherships to worry about.
It got worse. Teal'c handed the field binoculars to Jack, gesturing to a smattering of dots gathered by the distant shapes of some cargo vessels. Peering through them himself, he spied what Teal'c had spotted. Jaffa were herding groups of Innarim into the cargo ships. It was easier to see the radiation induced scarring and mutation on the wolf-like creatures outside in the daylight.
As a military man and part of the SGC, he'd seen gruesome things before, but this appalled him more deeply than normal. He inwardly cursed the alien influence mingled into his personality. Jack's internal struggle to re-establish his own identity wasn't aided by the additional indignation he felt as the snarling Innarim were jabbed and prodded into the cargo holds with pain sticks, yellow light spearing agonisingly from their eyes and jaws.
There was no way they could sneak into the crater, either to do anything about the Stoneheim Innarim or the mothership. With a sharp wave of his hand, Jack ordered the others to fall back to the gate. Displaying skills from years of experience, they slipped by the patrols they'd marked earlier.
Jack was the last to step through the event horizon. Holding the detonator to set off the C4 explosive, he momentarily let the simmering anger override his inner conflict, forgetting why he was so incensed, and pressed the detonator with grim satisfaction. He turned to depart, a dark smile twitching at his lips at the distant sound of explosions.
"This is really bad news," Sam said. "Three motherships… if even one of them attacked…"
"Is the Prometheus not a possible option to defend Earth, MajorCarter," Teal'c observed.
"It's not completed yet. It won't be for months, and judging by how fast Deimos has been acting we'd be attacked long before then. The President ordered more manpower and resources to be assigned to the Prometheus project to reduced the building time, but according to predictions it'd be cutting it close."
"Still no word from our buddy Thor?" Jack quizzed.
"Not yet," Sam replied. "My guess is things are going bad for them with the Replicators if they haven't been able to reply to us yet. I don't think we can rely on them this time, sir."
"So, we're doomed?" her CO asked wearily.
"Unless something unexpected happens that helps…"
The conversation was interrupted by the klaxons going off, and Walter's familiar voice over the tannoy signalled unauthorised offworld activation. The three of them jogged down to the control room, curious as to what news was coming this time.
"No signal yet, sir," Walter was saying to General Hammond. "No messages are… no, wait… there is a signal, but nothing the computer is recognising – it doesn't match any known IDC sequence, either SG or Tok'ra."
Carter grabbed one of the free chairs, bringing up an analysis of the signal on the monitor, "Well, it's not random. It looks like some kind of shorter sequence, repeated a few times. Walter, run it through any encryption decoders we have."
As Walter worked away, the gate deactivated, and Carter confirmed that nothing had come through – there had been nothing recorded hitting the iris. Yet, it was barely a minute until the gate had reactivated and the repeated signal had been sent through again.
"Got it, Major," Walter said. "The code translates to a morse code message. It says… 'Hail Caesar'…"
"Open the iris!"
Everyone turned to Jack.
"Trust me."
Hammond nodded dubiously, but gave the Colonel the benefit of the doubt. He ordered Walter to obey. The iris slid easily open, revealing the watery, fluctuating surface of the event horizon. For a few minutes nothing happened.
Then Jonas stumbled through, looking tired and worn as he cradled his arm in a makeshift sling. As the others watched in surprise, Jonas gazed up at them in a moment of relief, before nervously stepping down the ramp as he started staring at the gate over his shoulder.
Jonas' concern was soon apparent. A badly scarred Innarim stepped through the gate before it deactivated. It stopped immediately as the security personnel trained their weapons on it, keen ears picking up the clicking of readied weapons. With a sombre expression, it simply looked up at the control room window, regarding SG-1 and the General silently.
"Look who's back in Rome," Jack commented to his second-in-command. "Unexpected enough for you?"
Note to feb04: you were right about Jonas in your review for chapter 7! Am I too predictable with this kind of thing?
Sorry again about the delay in updating... RL and such. And sorry its shorter than usual - it was just better to cut off at this point. Don't worry, it's not that I'm stuck for plot ideas; I just need to organise what I plan to happen into a coherent plan. Well, I hope you enjoyed this next part! Keep an eye out for the next part (no promises about when that'll be though, given my poor track record lately).