A/N:Thanks so much to all those who have reviewed, you have completely made my week. I apologize for the delay in posting, but real life kinda butted in for a while. Early British history and Machiavelli and More are not conductive to writing fanfiction, really not conductive. Anyway, here's chapter 13, it's short, I know, but 14 is written just not typed yet. Please remember to review, reviews make me happy.
Chapter 13
Two days later when SG-1 stepped through the Stargate to explore PQX-924, Jack still hadn't had those two conversations. He was going to, he had never broken a promise to his daughter and he refused to start now, but paperwork that had to be completed before the team left unfortunately had priority over fulfilling his promise.
Still, if he'd had those conversations before there had been the major chance that SG-1 wouldn't be going on this little excursion down the yellow brick road. And he knew his daughter, knew her limits, her strengths, her weaknesses. He knew that she needed a break from Teal'c and from the stress of guarding her patient, the only one not yet on the road to recovery, from him. With Teal'c off-world for the next five days, he hoped that she would finally be able to get some sleep, because even if she could survive for months on little sleep before her work started to suffer, she still hadn't had time to recover from her 4 year sojourn in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Glancing around PQX-924, Jack saw the usual. Trees, grass, DHD, Daniel jabbering excitedly over the ruins they were hiking a day and a half to see. Yup, nothing new, but too many years of experience had taught him that it was the average, normal looking places that ended up being the god-awful hell-holes that he and his team now practically specialized in getting off of. Course, they usually got captured first, and then had to break out of the cliché dungeon, that the cliché bad guy had dumped them in, and then either fight their way back to the Gate or make a mad dash for the Gate. Usually it was both. Jack didn't know when his life had turned into a cliché, but he was pretty sure he was living the biggest cliché of all.
Even though this mission was meant to be a cakewalk, a team re-bonding exercise justified "officially" by Daniel' need to see the ruins, Jack was still as alert as he was on any other mission. Even Hammond knew that SG-1 needed an easy mission to get back into the swing of things after all the revelations and adjustments of the last two weeks.
SGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGCSGC
Two days later Jack was positive his life was a cliché. Not only had Daniel's "rocks" been a waste of time, they had run into the bad guys. The only part that had Jack worried though, was that these Jaffa worked for his old buddy Ba'al. The part he was trying not to let himself worry about was the fact that they were no longer on the planet, and the Jaffa had left ni trace of the captured SG-1 on PQX-924. The SGC wasn't expecting an update for another two days, when, of course, they were supposed to be on their way back to the Gate. They would have no clue as to what had happened, all they would know was that SG-1 had vanished into thin air.
Jack fought to keep his thoughts from wandering to Katie. It didn't do him any good to wonder what her reaction would be when they told her. The feelings of guilt for leaving her all alone once again wouldn't do him any good either. Taking deep breaths, he concentrated on fortifying the walls he had built in his mind when he had first begun his career in Black Ops. He buried information about the Stargate and Earth's defenses. He buried everything that could potentially be used against him. Charlie, Katie, Sam. Even Daniel and Teal'c, to a degree could be used against him. Once the mental barriers were up, he concentrated on his team.
Teal'c would be fine. He had been trained for a lot longer than Jack had been alive to withstand torture. Besides this wasn't the first time he had been captured, though Jack really tried to avoiding thinking about the one time that they had thought Teal'c to be safe on Chulak when he was actually being tortured.
Sam, no Carter, he had to think of her as Carter, she couldn't be anything more than Carter, had been train well, and this wasn't the first time she'd been captured either. Yeah, Carter might be okay, Ba'al was a sadist and Jack didn't think he was also a misogynist. He hoped the snake wasn't one, Carter usually got singled out anyway just for being the only woman, he didn't want her torturer to also be a misogynist; sadists were bad enough.
And Daniel, well the Spacemonkey was a lot tougher than he'd been on that first mission to Abydos, years ago. He'd been tortured, been addicted, hell, the Spacemonkey had died more times than anyone else in the SGC and he was still fine.
Yeah, they might just get out of this alive, but with Ba'al's penchant for using the sarcophagus, he didn't know if they would come out of hid with sanity and soul intact.
