Chapter 36. The Quest
Sam checked and rechecked the readings on her tablet. She paused, glancing up at the giant stone obelisk that she now knew was the reason they had been jumping from world to world every hour. "This is the command override! I can't believe we actually found it."
She didn't look up at where Ba'al was standing next to her, but she could feel the smugness radiating off him in waves. She heard Teal'c's footsteps crunching over the fallen forest leaves as he approached, hovering over her shoulder. "Clearly, you work well together." She glanced back at the Jaffa in stunned horror, but he only paced calmly away from them, the slightest upturn to his lips. She'd get him later for that.
She briefly met Ba'al's gaze as she turned back to her tablet; his uncomfortable expression mirroring her own. There was still blood smeared across the left side of his face from where she had clocked him one earlier. Teal'c had looked rather impressed. "Well, now that we've identified the program, it should be a simple matter to shut it down."
She tapped at the screen, quickly identifying and disabling the correct command codes. Suddenly, the sharp zing of the Stargate chevrons engaging echoed through the overgrown clearing.
"Incoming wormhole!" She shouted, shoving the tablet into Ba'al's hands and wrenched her P-90 up to her shoulder. She moved to take cover around the other side of the obelisk, sighting down the barrel as the wormhole's blue vortex exploded out of the giant ring.
She squeezed on the trigger as soon as the Ori soldiers materialised through the Gate, knowing that if she could keep them bottlenecked, she might be able to protect the others – to give Daniel a little more time. The rapid-fire shots echoed in her ears, deafening, and bolstered by Teal'c's line of fire from somewhere behind her.
More and more soldiers charged through, and she cursed herself for the ones she missed. They took cover behind fallen stone ruins and in the trees behind the Stargate, returning fire when they could and sending Sam ducking back behind the obelisk.
"Hold them here! I'll get help!" She heard Ba'al yell behind her, and turned just in time to see him shot by a bright blue blast as he ran from his cover behind the DHD. She turned back to the fighting – she couldn't help him now, even if she wanted to.
She moved quickly, with precision; the adrenalin coursing through her veins familiar enough that it did not make her jittery, but rather calm, focussed. Her heart thundered rapidly in her chest, but her hands were steady, her trigger finger gradually becoming numb as she kept up the hailstorm of bullets.
Sam's gun clicked over an empty barrel, and she swore, pressing her back to the obelisk while she changed out her spent clip with quick and practiced hands. A blast clipped the stone by her ear and she flinched away as shards of the shattered stone glanced off her cheek. A second and third barrage of gunfire reinforced Teal'c's, and she realised the rest of her team must have joined them. She took up her position once again and fired off several more rounds with careful aim, knowing now her team were at her back.
A sudden storm brewed overhead, dark clouds roiling and blacking out the sky, moving too fast to be natural. They gathered overhead like iron filings to a magnet, spewing white-hot lighting. All of a sudden, lightning rained down, like nothing she had ever seen before, striking all the Ori soldiers.
They fell as one; dead.
Sam peered around cautiously, lowering her weapon to half-mast. She frowned a silent question at Teal'c, who only raised an incredulous eyebrow in response. Mitchell and Vala popped up from the large boulders they had been taking cover behind.
"What was that?" Mitchell squeaked, still shocked by all things weird and unnatural. Nothing much surprised Sam anymore, and she moved on to the task at hand without skipping a beat.
"I don't know, but I say we don't stick around to find out." She ran to the DHD, jabbing at the familiar symbols that she knew would get them home. "Let's dial out of here before anyone else can dial in." She looked up halfway through the sequence, scanning the area. "Where's Daniel?"
As if he'd heard her, Daniel came flying through the air, flung from the mouth of the cave, and landed in a heap near her feet. As the Stargate whooshed to life, she took a knee beside him at the same time as Vala did, the tiny girl bent almost double at his side. Sam touched the back of his head, smoothing her fingers through his hair with one hand, keeping her gun trained on the cave's entrance with the other.
"Daniel?" She murmured softly but urgently. He groaned in reply, struggling to get his knees under him.
Adria sauntered out of the cave, a smug smile curving across her dark features. Sam shot to her feet and took aim, but even the combined firepower of her, Teal'c and Mitchell could not penetrate the priestess' energy shield. The bullets bounced right off, and Sam and her team halted their fire. Vala stood, stalking towards Adria, her shoulders set.
"Adria, I want you to stop this right now!" She demanded in her most stern, motherly voice.
"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Mother." Adria shook her head, her soft-spoken words in direct conflict with the glowing fireball of energy she conjured into her hand. It grew, growing brighter until it shot out in a beam of orange light, heading straight for Vala.
Daniel stumbled to his feet, his hands outstretched, and countered her with his own beam of pure, white energy. "Get through the Gate – now!" He grunted, his voice strained as he pushed back against Adria's attack.
"I'm not leaving you!" Her eyes bore into the side of his head, her teeth set. She refused.
She caught sight of Mitchell shoving Vala through the open Stargate, pausing to look back for a moment before following her through.
"I'll be right behind you!" He turned his head towards her, briefly breaking his gaze from his opponent to meet her desperate eyes. "I'll find my way back to you." He murmured, trying to reassure her, but she saw the resignation in his eyes, and her heart caught in her throat.
Suddenly Teal'c's hand was pulling at her, yanking on her tactile vest and dragging her up the stone steps towards the shimmering wormhole. "Daniel!" She cried out, and he glanced over his shoulder, his cerulean gaze meeting hers one last time before Teal'c pulled her through the event horizon and the entire scene before her disappeared, accompanied by the sickening, sucking feeling of falling through a vacuum.
Sam's feet landed on the Gate ramp with a dull, metallic clang, Teal'c's steadying hand still resting on her shoulder. She heard the Stargate shut down behind her, and closed her eyes, sucking in a breath to steel herself.
"Colonel Carter, are you alright?" Teal'c's deep voice queried from her right. She ignored him, shrugging off his hand as she clattered down the Gate ramp.
"Sam..." Mitchell started, but she brushed by him, nodding at Landry as she swept out of the room.
"Well," the General broke the deathly silence that had fallen over the room, "someone wanna fill me in?"
O - O - O - O - O
After debriefing Landry, Cameron found Sam in her office, typing madly away at her laptop as if it had personally offended her. "Hey, you wanna take it easy there, Carter?" He joked, plastering on a lopsided grin. When she didn't respond to his attempt at humour, he dropped the façade. He moved towards her desk to set down the coffee he had brought as a peace offering. "Sam, I'm sorry."
Sam only shook her head. She didn't tear her gaze from her computer screen, but she did reach out to drag the cup of coffee closer, so Cam took that as a good sign. "A DHD buffer typically holds the last fifty Gate addresses that were dialled, and we went through three Gates before the last one. I've got a lot of planets to check."
Cam couldn't help but grin. Of course Sam was already working on a way to save Jackson. He'd read every mission report. He knew there was no way she'd ever give up on him. Especially not now. Cam had seen something in those reports, even before the couple had announced their surprise engagement. The news had been shocking to many, and upsetting to a few – namely Vala. But those two were always drawn back together, like a pig to mud; inseparable. No matter how dire the circumstance, when one was missing, the other waded through hell and high water to find them and bring them home.
Cam glanced up to see Teal'c and Vala hovering in the doorway; the alien giant dwarfing the tiny ex-Goa'uld host. A smile drew across his face and he turned back to Sam. "Well, luckily you got plenty of help." That did make Sam pause, and she looked up as her team gathered around her, dragging over chairs and an extra table to expand her workspace. Cam settled at the end of her desk, booting up her spare laptop to help with the program load, while Teal'c and Vala began leafing through the heavy tomes on the table.
Sam went back to work, the barest of smiles inching along her face – the first smile he had seen on her all day, and the strangest sense of pride filled him as his little rag-tag crew set to work.
Daniel, buddy, wherever you are, you better know that she's comin' to get ya. We all are.