Till We Run Out of Road
Chapter Two
There was no time to dwell, or even to talk, so Sam didn't question her body's self-satisfied hum until they'd met with Landry and she'd been whisked through a wormhole, with Walter and Daniel, her fingers brushing Jack's as she left him behind to plan and take care of everyone else.
It was on the other side, when the heat from the new planet's midday sun hit her in the face as she exited the 'gate, that Sam panicked. She stumbled down the steps, Daniel looking over his shoulder at her, worried. He and Walter seemed small against the bleak landscape, and Sam repressed an edge of hysteria as she hefted her pack and adjusted her grip on her weapon. She nodded at Daniel, and they continued, the Odyssey clearly visible in the distance.
What had she been thinking?
The ground on the planet was largely barren stone, a red color that made everything look hotter than it already was, with occasional breaks where Sam supposed there must be underground streams. Short, stunted bushed and a rare tree made up the entirety of the plant life here. Even better, the path was treacherous, with cracks and crevices running alongside the path and then suddenly crossing it, almost invisible in the noon sun until one was right on top of them.
Near the Odyssey, Sam could see the ruins that Daniel was here to examine. The other team that had found the ship hadn't had a linguist with them, but they had reported writing of some kind, possibly Ancient. Whatever it was, he was going to have to figure it out himself, and soon--SG-1 was supposed to go on another mission in just three days, and that had to take precedence. Still, it was possible there was something here, maybe even a clue to a weapon they could use.
Sam hefted her P-90 as they reached the ship. The other team had already buried the bodies, she knew--back-breaking work in an environment like this. She spared a glance for Walter, whose mouth was tight, his fingers near the zat they'd recovered from another stash. Daniel already held his own gun, so she only gave him a brief nod before they climbed up to the open hatch and entered the ship.
It was cool and dark inside, and Sam knew immediately that the crash itself would be the main cause of damage. Still, she looked around, seeing almost everything eerily intact for yards at a time and then a twisted bulkhead where the ship couldn't quite take the strain.
She found very little weapons damage, and started wondering if the ship had come out of hyperspace too close to the planet and been unable to avoid going down. Finally, they had searched every inch of the ship and found nothing unusual or suspicious. Sam sent Daniel to the ruins to take advantage of the remaining daylight, and she and Walter started work on reconstructing the database to find out what had happened.
Power was the first obstacle, and she and Walter worked the rest of that day just getting the lights to turn on. By the time they accomplished that, Daniel had returned, bearing rubbings and his camera, and they spent the early evening muttering over their various projects, Sam reconnecting wires and Walter patching systems together to try to make them work again.
The day after was much the same--there were problems with having the central database not on the bridge, and Sam knew if it were even possible to salvage the ship, they'd need to reconnect the whole thing anyway, so she didn't bother patching it up halfway. She made Daniel come back during the noon hour, knowing that otherwise he'd be too distracted to drink enough water.
Still, they spent their lunch working, not bothering to explain or apologize when Walter took his own lunch somewhere else.
After an hour, Daniel looked up, reluctant.
"I need more time here," he said.
Sam said, "We all need more time." It was one or many things they didn't have.
He said, "I know, I know. But there's some fascinating stuff here. It is Ancient, or a variant of it, and I keep thinking that there's more here that I'm not seeing. Something important..." he trailed off.
Sam looked at him, with the papers he had strewn around him in a wide circle, and suddenly felt the weight of impossibility stacked against them. She sagged, and Daniel, normally so oblivious to the people around him, looked up with sharp eyes.
"Sam...," he said, and she just shook her head.
"I'm okay. Just tired. I thought we'd be done here by now."
Still with that uncanny perception in his gaze, Daniel said, "Yeah. Me, too," and Sam knew he wasn't referring to this specific planet at all. After a minute, he straightened and stood, brushing off his pants without accomplishing anything.
"I'm going to go back one more time. Maybe something will hit me," he said, gathering his papers together and shoving them into his bag.
Sam nodded, and Daniel moved toward the hatch and was gone.
Walter and Sam were in the middle of a particularly nasty and delicate re-wiring when Sam's radio crackled. Sam jumped, thinking she'd gotten so involved that she'd missed another check-in with the base camp, but it was Daniel's voice.
"--have to see this."
Sam grabbed the radio. "Daniel? What's going on?"
"I was thinking about the--oh, just come here, Sam. There's not much time left, and you need to see this."
Worried, Sam asked, "Are you at the ruins?" She stood up, exchanging a look with Walter, who was carefully holding two wires away from each other.
"No. I'm on the hill behind the ship. Really, Sam, this is amazing. You--well, just trust me. You'll want to see it."
Shaking her head, Sam clicked on the radio. "I'll be there as soon as I can." She turned to Walter, giving the wires a wry glance. "Guess we'll have to do that later." She took one of the wires, and Walter flipped off the power with a sigh.
"At least we weren't trying to connect them yet," he said, helpfully.
Sam grinned. "Good thing. You want to come with?"
Walter shook his head. "I'll stay here and clean up."
Sam nodded, already distracted by wondering what Daniel could have found. Maybe something--
No, she couldn't afford to get her hopes up.
She climbed down from the hatch, walked around the ship, and started climbing up the hill. It was late afternoon, the sun more than halfway down the sky. By the time she could see Daniel, the shadows had lengthened even further. On this planet, noon seemed to last hours, but evening and morning went fast.
Daniel gave her his hand for the last little bit of the climb, and he pulled her to the top with an ease she knew hadn't come quickly.
He said, "Sorry to get you out here, but I was thinking about the inscriptions--one of them said something about "protecting the earth," or about the land being secure, and I had this idea. You know about the Nazca lines? The ones that you can only see from the air?"
Sam nodded, accustomed to the way Daniel tended to come at an explanation from the side. And then she thought about the weird way the ground was cracked and her eyes widened. Daniel grinned. She turned around and after her eyes adjusted to the way the shadows fell, she saw it.
She drew in a breath. There were definite patterns to the lines, now that she could see them properly.
"Daniel," she said softly, "That looks like--"
"Ancient," he said. "It is. It's the same as the writing at the ruins, anyway."
Sam looked again. From here, she could see that the Odyssey was sitting in the middle of a valley, surrounded by hills, with the Stargate to one side. The whole valley floor was covered in the writing, slashed through where the Odyssey had plowed through the ground before coming to rest here, at the base of this hill.
"It could be a ward of protection against enemies or false gods," Daniel said. "Some cultures on Earth built features into the land to honor gods or to keep evil spirits away."
"Can you read it?" she asked, turning back to Daniel.
He shook his head. "I think we're looking at it from the side," he said, and grinned. "I'm good, but I'm not that good."
Sam chuckled and looked again. The shadows were now so long they were completely obscuring the lines, and so she looked back at the sun. It was just over the horizon. Daniel would have to leave in the morning so he could be back in time to prep for the mission. Suddenly, Sam didn't want him to leave, didn't want the uncertainty of not having her team around her.
Daniel said, "I don't think there's anything else here. There's too little vegetation for a sustained civilization. This might have been a place of ritual for a god, though."
Sam shivered. She'd had enough of gods.
Daniel didn't miss her reaction. He took her hand, and she clutched at his hand, so he pulled her closer. "Sam--we'll find something. Maybe not here, but somewhere there's a weapon that will destroy them. We'll find it."
She leaned into him for a minute before they started back down the hill, using the remaining daylight to find the safest way down.
At the bottom, Daniel took her hand, and they walked back to the hatch silently. Before they entered, Sam hesitated.
"Daniel," she said, then grimaced. "I don't--it's about the General."
"Jack?" Daniel said, and something in his tone made Sam look up at him. He didn't look surprised.
Sam blushed, looked away.
"Sam, I've known you both for a long time. It's not exactly surprising."
Sam shook her head. "I don't think I--we should--"
"You deserve to be happy," Daniel interrupted. "There hasn't been much reason to be, lately."
Sam worked well into the night and crashed early in the morning. When she woke up, Daniel had left and Walter was running diagnostics.
He looked up and blinked, "We've got it."
Sam brought up the display near her and watched a few lines of text scroll by. She sighed and shut it down. "Get the generals."
General Landry and General O'Neill arrived within two hours--barely enough time for Walter to travel from the ship to the 'gate, dial out, wait for a response, and come back. Sam greeted them with a nod, but skipped the other formalities. Jack gave her a curious look, a smile that faded when she didn't return it.
"We recovered the data. It's a little rough, still, but...," she shrugged. She figured it would be faster to explain as they went than try to edit for brevity.
General Landry nodded. "Go ahead."
Sam cued it up. They watched as lines of text scrolled by.
"These are normal operations. It looks like the Odyssey came out of hyperspace in another system for some repairs, but you can see here that they were spotted by an Ori vessel. The Odyssey got out of there as fast as she could, sir, but the Ori managed to damage her. When they went into hyperspace, their systems started failing. They dropped out here, in this system, and tried to land. That's all we found, in the record."
"We guessed that already," General Landry said. Jack arched an eyebrow.
Sam acknowledged Landry's comment. "Yes, and if that's all we'd found, I wouldn't have called you both here."
She cued up another section of the database. The screen in front of them went blank, and then a still of an officer appeared.
Sam said, "We found this video. It was flagged to your attention, sir," she said, nodding toward General Landry. "We haven't watched it yet."
General Landry said, "Play it."
Sam swallowed. "Yes, sir." She keyed it in, and the video started playing.
"--Harris of the Odyssey. I'm creating this message in the hopes that either you or General O'Neill will find it."
They could hear shouting in the background of the video. Harris flinched as an explosion sounded behind him, but continued,
"We sustained significant damage in an encounter with an Ori ship, but you probably know that. I am making this video to let you know what happened to Earth. I wish I had better news, but when we reported back after our last mission, we received an urgent message from the Secretary of Defense."
Harris looked directly into the camera.
"We don't know who started it, but someone pushed the red button. A nuclear strike. One of the first targets was Cheyenne Mountain."
Someone gasped--Sam thought it might have been her--but the video continued.
"There is nothing left--most of the major cities have been leveled, and the rest--the radiation...Jean tells me there's nothing we could do. We were on our way to the Alpha site. You know the rest. I'm making this video now because I'm told it's unlikely we'll make it. I'm sorry to have to pass this on, and sorry I couldn't do it in person."
Another voice from off-camera announced, "We're dropping out of hyperspace, sir."
Harris looked back at the camera. "Good luck to us all. Harris out."
The screen went blank. There was absolute quiet on the bridge.
Jack broke the silence first. "Those sons of bitches."
"Oh, my God," Sam said quietly. She looked over at Jack, whose jaw was clenched. He looked away, pounded his fist into an already-broken console.
"Ten years saving their asses, and they go and fuck themselves--"
"Jack!" General Landry interrupted.
Jack closed his mouth, looked over at Sam, and gave a bitter laugh. Sam tried not to think about the connection between the two actions, or the irony of timing.
She said, "What are we going to do?"
General Landry spoke. "This doesn't change our situation. We still have to find someplace for our people, and there's still the Ori to consider."
"Why?"
Sam and General Landry turned to Jack.
He shrugged. "Why bother? At least if we don't do anything, they'll keep us from blowing our own asses off."
Sam winced at his words. General Landry frowned, but stayed quiet.
Finally, Sam spoke, softly. "Sir--we have to keep trying."
"Again: why?"
Sam just gave him a look and held his gaze until he looked away.
Sam said, "I guess the only thing to do now is figure out what we can do."
General Landry said, "We're waiting for SG-1 to return from their latest mission. Hopefully they'll--"
Sam's radio crackled. Walter's voice came from the device. "Colonel Carter, come in." He sounded panicked.
Sam grabbed the radio. "What is it, Walter?"
"It's SG-1. Are General O'Neill and General Landry with you?"
Sam glanced at the two men. "Yes. Walter--what is going on?"
"They came back, but Daniel--" he paused for a long, horrible moment. "Daniel's dead."