Drowning in Oxygen - A "Stargate" Fanfiction, By Kaizoku-Taii
Chapter two – Old stories
Jack was the last to walk through the stargate and ran strait into a tree, rather hard. He swore and rubbed his nose
"Was that there before?" He asked
"No sir, these seemed to have grown since SG-7 retreated"
"It appears that the trees, or the civilisation that controls them, see the Stargate as a threat." Teal'c said, inspecting the trees. Jack nodded.
"Daniel, Your with me. Sam, Teal'c you look for the source of those readings."
"Where are you going sir?"
"That way" Jack pointed. The team all looked at the trees.
"O'Niel. I believe that staying together would be the most sensible option, as-"
"Ah Teal'c" Jack said "You watch too much Scooby Doo." Daniel grinned, and Teal'c raised an eyebrow, silently. A moment limped by
"You know, the dog, they split up, they get chased..." Jack rolled his fingers around each other. Teal'c kept up his stony demeanour. "Well then!" Jack said, clapping his hands. "There is a natural path that way – normally, I'd say it was the lie of the trees – but when the trees can move for themselves, i assume there is a reason. Keep in radio contact, and don't go miles away. If we've found nothing in an hour, we'll cut across to find you and follow your" He made speech marks in the air around his head ""Peculiar energy signatures"." He grinned and set off with Daniel, while Sam and Teal'c began to follow the energy signatures that Sam was picking up on her hand held device.
*_*_*
"Carter, how are you doing?"
"Not very quickly sir. We keep getting throw off – its as if the source of the energy is moving, somehow."
"Moving?"
"Yes sir." Daniel reached for his radio
"Maybe it swaps between signal generators to put people like us off the scent" He commented
"We thought that, and we tried triangulating a point, but it didn't work."
"Didnt work?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows.
"No sir – there seems to be no pattern to its movement. However, we do think were very close now."
"Well, now seems as good a time as ever to meet up again. What's your position?"
"Were south-south east of the gate sir, about three miles off." Jack paused for a moment, then looked at Daniel, who nodded. "Sir?" Sam asked
"Were practically on top of you, Carter. We'll be there in thirty minutes. What's your direction?"
"East, sir."
"We'll be right there." Jack nodded at Daniel and they moved off. For about ten minutes, they moved in silence, carefully stepping over roots and around trees, unsure of what would be seen as a threat to the trees. Suddenly, Daniel tripped and fell to the floor with a "whumph" of air. Jack turned round and said
"Daniel, try and be a bit mor-" Jack stopped in mid sentence, looking beyond Daniel. Daniel looks up, adjusting his glasses. He catches Jacks expression and turns around himself. HE catches his breath.
Stood infront of him, hiding behind a tree, was a girl of about fifteen years old. She was wearing apair of trousers at her hip, made of some sort of synthetic material. His was mirrored in her top half, where a beige material is wrapped around her chest. Short sleeves cling to her arms, hugging the toned muscles that stand out all over her body. The synthetic material looked out of place in the wooded back ground, despite the dappled green and brown colourings. Her entire outfit was made to help her in the forest – her camouflaged, tight fitting clothes must help her to blend into the forest. The only free flowing thing was her hair, which was deep brown. It fell hap-hazardly around her face, the bulk of it collected together in a ponytail. Her feet were bare.
There was a moment of silence as she cowered behind a tree, watching the two of them with wide, scared eyes.
"Hello" Daniel ventured, holding out his hand. She retreated back and the trees seems to shift around them. Jack and Daniel looked around for a moment, then back at the child.
"We don't want to hurt you" Daniel said, holding out his hand once more. The girl krept forward, the tree infront of her shifting out of her way, almost. Jack eyed the trees carfully. The girl walked up to Daniel and took his hand, inspecting it. She got out a knife and holds it above Daniels hand
"Hey" Jack said, holding his gun warningly.
"Dont be scared" The girl said. Daniel and Jack were taken aback by how well she talked – she hadn't seemed intelligent moments before, but now she stood differently, and her face had that glimmer of knowledge. She made a tiny cut on Daniels palm and let the blood seep out for a moment. After it had, she took a droplet onto her finger. She inspected it for a moment, then put her finger in her mouth. Daniel and Jack shared a freaked out glance.
"Your alive" The girl announced. Daniel looked at her again
"Yes." He said "aren't you?" The girl smiled
"In a way" She chuckles.
"My name is Daniel Jackson" Daniel said "what's yours?"
"My name is..." The girl puts a hand on her forehead. A few moments and another puzzled glance between the two members later, she sighed annoyedly "I forget. It will come to me, later."
"Who are you?"
"A girl, Daniel Jackson. A child." She sighed, sadly.
"Can you take us to your home town? Or where you live?"
"My Home town?" She smiled "You have obviously not explored much of my planet." She rasied her arms "This is my home town. There is no one but me and my trees." Daniel raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Your the only person who lives here? How old are you?"
"My civilisation died five hundred or so years ago. At that point, i was 16" Jack and Daniel didnt comment for a moment.
"Your civilisation...died? all of it?" Jack asked. The girl nodded. She was trying to be strong, but her pain was obvious.
Daniel put a hand on her shoulder. "How did it die?"
"We thought it was a disease, at first. It plagued thae capital and spread to the outer villages. Every living cell in the human body just died. We quarantined it, but it only slowed it down. It took every body. Everybody i loved. My sister. My lover."
"How did you survive?" Daniel asked. The girl ignored him, continuing with the story
"In time, we noticed that it wasn't just the humans that were dying. Every living thing." She looked up to the sky "Everything that is alive, will die". It was a message that mad men and prophets had ben predicting for hundreds of years. "Everything that is alive, will die, and everything that stil lives will not be alive.". That was our fate.
"Everything that still lives will not be alive?" Daniel tried again "What does that mean?"
"We set out on a project of such a huge scale that almost every one of my race was involved in some way. The council of lords set out to create ways of surviving this disease. We created bodies." She held out her hand and ran the knife across it. Behind it, the skin opened up and left a gash that should have been spilling blood. Instead, all that could be seen was a black substance underneath the surface of the skin, like a metal casing of some sort. Jack raised an eyebrow "My body is not my original. My consciousness was transplanted into this body, so that i was immune to the disease. Few bodies could be created in time – only a few hundred were created before the disease struck our outpost. Once i had got a body, i was given a new task. I was to creat trees. Ones to replace the ones killed by the disease. They had to create oxygen and take in carbon dioxide, just as real ones did. I worked for days on end, and finally built the prototype. We installed it, and we were able to survive again. I had saved my race." Daniel and Jack glanced at eachother
"that still doesn't answer the question 'why are you the only one left?" Jack said. The girl glanced at him. Daniel sighed.
"Sonia" The girl said, suddenly
"What?"
"My name is Sonia." Daniel nodded.
"Pleased to meet you" He said.
"ou were saying?" Jack asked. Daniel glared at him pointedly. Sonia looked down and continued her story.
"I had saved my civilisation. I was a hero. But we were too busy burying the dead to celebrate our heroes. We were a race of mere hundreds, and we were alone. We found the gate of worlds soon after. It had been hidden in a forest, a real forest, which had rotted when the disease had spread. We tried to unlock its secrets, but so many of our great minds had died in the plague. Only i remained."
"No offence, but you don't strike me as a "great mind"." Jack interjected "You said you were 16 at the time."
"Indeed" Sonia said "I was a child genius. I was destined for great things. However, they needed me to be perfect immediately. When my consciousness was moved to this body, they inserted knowledge and understanding beyond my years. I was more than i ever could have dreamed. It was a burden to carry, however. A heavy burden. For twenty years we worked to rebuild our civilisation, one peice at a time. However, with no true bodies, we were unable to reproduce. It was only a matter of time before our cynthetic bodies would shut down. It was with little heart that we went by our daily lives. Then, one day, we received the threat of invasion. They believed they were gods, and they would take our civilisation and use our technology. We were a peaceful race, Daniel Jackson. Never before had we created a weapon of our technology."
"You had created machine bodies and machine trees but you had never made a gun?"
"We had had no need. But suddenly, we did." Her eyes began to really look tired and pained as she told her story "we needed a weapon big enough to take their palace out of the sky. We began to create one. It was a slow process. But we had to make it, and that necessity drove us forward. We pushed, but we hadn't even made a small handheld weapon. Something was bound to go wrong. When it was finished, everyone gathered together to see it unveiled. A few hundred of us. But not me. I was in the forest. I knew it would go wrong, but they wouldn't listen to me. I got as far away as i could. It blew up. Killed them all." The girl looked down."I should have saved them. But i didn't. The invaders came, but they coulnt land on a world with only trees. I connected the forest up to my self and gained control over all of my creations. I flooded every clear area with trees, and buried the dead under the tangle of roots. Wherever you see a tree bearing a tree with red fruit, you see the resting place of one of my people." The girl sat down heavily on the floor. She rubbed her eye, but no tear fell. Daniel wondered if she could cry. In the midst of a plague, would they bother to install little things like that?
There was a silence that seemed to last for a few hours, but could only have been a few seconds. The a crackling of Jack's radio brought them all out of their reveries. Sonia jumped. Daniel shushed her, a hand n her shoulder.
"Its just a communication device" He said, his hand on her shoulder. Jack began to talk to Sam, and Daniel sat down next to Sonia.
"Daniel Jackson" She said
"Just Daniel"
"...Daniel."
"Yes?"
"Are there other alive things on your planet?"
"...Yes"
"Are there flowers?" She asked, looking up, her eyes shining.
"yes"
"I remember flowers" Sonia's eyes welled up again. "I used to pick them for my lover. She liked red ones the most. And oranges." Daniel blanched at the word 'she', but made no comment.
"We have a lot of flowers. If you want, you can come and see them." Sonia looked at her hands, sadness on her face.
"I always dreamed that i could put real flowers on their graves. I would love to be able to do that. Can I do that, Daniel?"
"Of course you can." They looked at each other for a few minutes. After a while, Sonia closes her eyes, as if listening to something that no one else can hear.
"Someone is coming"
"Just a few friends" Jack said, smiling in his trademark way. Sonia nodded, and the trees parted in a strait line. Daniel looked down it to see Sam and Teal'c standing very still, looking around them. Sonia did not choose to look, instead watching the canopy absently. Jack waved happily at his two team members down the passageway in the trees. The two of them began to clamber their way over the roots to where Jack and Daniel were. Once they are quite close, Sonia turned around to greet them.
Suddenly, She screamed. She pointed at Teal'c, and suddenly the very vines around them seemed to come to life and wrap themselves around the throats and chests of the team.
"You're one of them!" She shouted, pointing at Teal'c "You have their weapon! It was because of your race that they all died! Are you hear to taunt me, bringer of death?" She shouts bitterly.
"I do not fight along side the race you are connecting me to, child"
"Lies!" Sonia shouted.
"Sonia, wait" Daniel said, and Sonia whipped round violently
"Shut up!" The vines around Daneil's throat tighten dangerously. "You tricked me!" she shouted. Daniel began to choke.
"Let him go!" Jack shouted, angrily, reaching for his gun.
"Shut up!" She shouted "I just want to die in peace! Why cant bad fate leave my planet alone?!"
"Sonia..." Daniel croaked. He reached into his jacket and took out the small gun. He dropped it on the floor. It landed with a clatter, and all the tree roots around it retreated. Daniel, fading fast, looked into Sonia's eyes. Then he looked to his friends, who all dropped their weapons, after a few moments of grating silence. Daniel looked back at Sonia.
"You have to..." Daniel tried to cough. "You have to... trust me..."
I hope you like it!! Its so much longer than normal, for me – don't expect most chapters to be this extensive. Or for me to update this often. I was on a role... Anyway. PLEASE review, and i will update as soon as i can.
Thanks, Kaizoku xxx