It wasn't the worst day of Jack's life, but if it kept going the way it was going, it might be his last day. His head throbbed where it had hit the concrete wall a few moments before, and his ankle wasn't particularly pleased about the drop that had come after. Getting flung by angry Goa'uld was pretty high up on the list of things Jack hated. But he'd fared better than Hammond, who slumped at the base of the wall across the Gate Room, cradling his knee. Daniel was on the floor next to him. And he wasn't moving at all.
The two blurry Jacob Carters in Jack's screwed-up vision stood at the base of the ramp, Sergeant Gonzales' shirt held firm in his left hand while his right reared back and slammed into the young airman's face. The Tok'ra was bleeding, red oozing from the two bullet wounds in his chest, but they hadn't slowed him down at all. In fact, Jack thought, they had probably just pissed him off. The Colonel hoped reinforcements were on the way, because the other Security Forces weren't faring any better. One curled around a leg that was bent in a place it wasn't meant to bend; the airman ten feet to his right was coughing blood onto the floor. Sergeant Dawes had been flung toward the Gate but hadn't cleared the railing, leaving his legs twisted in the handrails while the rest of him had flopped head first onto the steel grates, and Jack wondered if his neck was intact. If he was even still alive.
Gonzales wouldn't be for much longer. The guy had put up a good fight, but he was no match for a superhuman host. Especially when Jacob reached into the bag over his shoulder and emerged with a palm device. "Crap," Jack muttered. Squinting to make the two versions of his world merge, he pushed to his feet and stumbled toward the fighting men – and two of the rifles on the concrete floor.
Jack really didn't want to be the one to kill Carter's father, but Jacob wasn't giving any of them much of a choice. At the edges of the room, the blast doors began their slow slide to contain the threat until reinforcements could arrive to remove it. It was the right call for the base… but it left the seven men inside at the mercy of an alien madman. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Goa'uld device light up red, and Jack was still ten feet from a weapon. The only immediate solution was distraction. "Jacob, don't!"
Unfortunately, his plan worked. The Tok'ra's eyes flashed as he spun in Jack's direction, and the unmitigated ice there made the colonel's chest clench. He double-timed it for the rifle. But Jacob was faster, and three hands landed on the weapon simultaneously. The symbiotic human was stronger, too, of course, and Jack's cheek screamed in pain as the butt of the rifle slammed into his face. Still, he tried to grab it again. It was kill or be killed. "Jacob, stop!"
The Tok'ra's fist slammed into his stomach, making him hunch just in time for another fist to slam up into his jaw and send him stumbling. Jack landed a good blow of his own, but Jacob didn't even flinch before swinging the rifle again – into Jack's temple this time. The impact set his vision spinning and knocked him to his knees. The fifth hit sent him to his back.
And then Jacob Carter was crouching over him, one hand extended and the device in it glowing red, and Jack sucked in a deep breath in preparation to meet his maker.
"No!"
Five seconds prior, Jack had thought the situation couldn't get worse. But he'd been so wrong. Because that voice belonged to Major Doctor Samantha Carter, who darted sideways through the closing blast doors at the last possible second and joined them in lockdown. She fell to her knees, sliding the remaining distance until her leg slammed into Jack's arm and her torso shielded his, wrapping her arms over him to protect him from the Goa'uld weapon. "Dad, no."
Her face was a mere six inches from Jack's, her expression pure fear.
But however terrified she was, it wasn't enough. "Don't," he warned her, certain that Jacob would mow her down as soon as the rest of them. He didn't even have time to put the rest of the thought into words before her father wrapped a hand in her blonde hair and flung her away, over Jack's head and to the floor. She'd been a crappy diversion, earning only maybe half a second, but Jack took it eagerly, rolling left to snatch the rifle from the floor again. His fingers had just brushed the metal when he felt himself lifted, as though a hook had the back of his shirt and his belt loop.
And then Jacob slammed him to the floor again. Instinctively, Jack's arms flew out to break his fall… but that was a terrible decision, because in the half-second before his vision blacked from the pain, he watched the bones in his own forearm snap and ram their way through his skin. The alien did it again, lifting him and slamming him to the floor, and all Jack could do was curl into the agony of his shattered limb to try and protect it. His knees and shoulder and forehead hit hard.
There were quick footsteps beyond his head, then a grunt above him that could only come from a woman as something flew past the edges of his vision. The younger Carter had tackled her father, Jack realized, putting herself in the line of fire again. He wanted to help her, but pushing himself to his knees sent waves through his vision and unbearable, nauseating pain down his arm, and he vomited on the concrete instead.
"Dad, please. Dad -"
The sound that followed could only be the impact of flesh on flesh, and bile rose in Jack's throat again for a completely different reason.
"This isn't you. Dad, listen -"
And that was the sound of a skull hitting concrete. Still, despite her moan of pain, she tried to get to her feet. "Dad."
Jack couldn't blame her for trying. Unless something drastic happened, the situation would end with Jacob Carter dead on the Gate Room floor. The only question was how many people he could kill first. She was trying to save them – to save all of them.
But she couldn't save herself. Thirty feet away, George Hammond dragged himself toward a rifle, his wrecked knee sliding uselessly along the floor as he moved. Daniel was ten feet further but moving the same direction. Closer to the Stargate, Airman Johnson was going for one, as well, crawling one-armed as the other tightly held his ribs and blood dripped from his mouth. The third rifle was against the wall near the other blast door and too far to be of use to anyone, but the fourth was only a few feet from Jack.
He really didn't want to be the one to kill Carter's father right in front of her. But if he didn't, he'd get to watch his second in command die at the hands of her own flesh and blood.
No, it wasn't the worst day of Jack's life, but it was climbing the ranks fast. Still on his stomach on the concrete, his right arm useless, he pulled the weapon into his non-dominant shoulder and tried to make the world stop spinning. Carter Junior was on the floor, bloody, and before he could manage a shot, the Tok'ra picked her up by the throat and slammed her into the wall beneath the Control Room window.
And that was a problem, because it put Jacob directly between Jack and his second. It meant any bullet that went through the alien was likely to end up buried in her. Airman Johnson was beyond Jack's feet at almost the same angle, rendering both of them useless. "No shot!" the Colonel called, catching Daniel's eye as he set the rifle on the concrete and sent it sliding hard in the other man's direction.
Jacob's hands came up, sliding his daughter further up the wall as the device in his palm glowed red.
Her time was up.
Hammond knew it, bracing himself on his elbows as he leveled a rifle on his oldest friend.
Jack knew it, too, stumbling/crawling toward gun number four and a better shooting angle.
Daniel knew it, blinking hard as he pushed upright and tried to make the weapon in his hands stop wavering.
Worst of all, Sam Carter knew it. The single word she managed cut clear across the Gate Room, anguished and terrified and heartbroken as her hand reached out to touch his cheek.
"Daddy."
It took Jack another few seconds – an eternity – to reach the rifle. Praying for a clean shot, he snagged it with his good left hand and spun around.
The palm device still hovered in front of Sam Carter, but it was dark. A moment later, Jacob snatched his other hand back, sending his daughter hurtling to the floor. Her knees buckled briefly before the muscles caught and she managed to stay upright, leaning hard into the wall. Anxious, afraid, waiting to be hit again, she stared at him.
So did four men with rifles.
The Tok'ra turned his head, taking in Daniel and Hammond and probably Gonzalez' limp body on the floor. Then he turned the other way, to Jack and Airman Johnson and the two SFs unconscious near the Gate. His face, as he finished surveying the damage he'd done and turned back to his daughter, was sheet white. His shoulders crumpled. And he let out a sob.
"Shh. It's okay. Daddy, you're gonna be okay. Shh," she pressed through tears of her own. Pulling him tight as his knees gave out, the two sank gracelessly to the floor.
"Hold your fire," Hammond ordered as the blast doors slid open and reinforcements finally surged through. Janet Fraiser was with them, and Carter murmured something to her father and earned a nod before the doctor put a needle into the alien's arm and pushed the plunger. Within seconds, he slumped in his daughter's arms.
Fraiser ran for the ramp and Sergeant Dawes – the man obviously most in need of her services. The medical staff that followed fanned out, assisted by all but the four airmen who stood guard over the unconscious Tok'ra and the woman who held him. The adrenaline drop as it all settled left Jack weak and dizzy and nauseous, and he slid to the floor, his cheek against the cool concrete. He couldn't hold himself upright for another second.
But he wished he could. Because through the din of triage and medical orders and moving personnel, he could hear his second in command quietly sobbing.
