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PART SIX
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5:18pm
"What's their progress?" Doctor Fraiser asked as she walked towards him.
"Faster than we thought," Walter admitted, sitting back in his chair and rubbing at his face. "I've been checking the reports filed on the Defence Board."
"How long before they reach us?" she asked.
"Twenty four hours, maximum. The mountains will hold them up for a while, but the reports I'm seeing... it doesn't look good at all, Ma'am."
Fraiser sighed, and to Walter's surprise, she seated herself on his desk. "What else can you tell me, Walter?"
"They're swarming," he offered. "In the two days since the first cases were reported, over 600 people have been stung. In almost half of those the victims have all died and the bugs emerged, which makes us think the first bugs were released about a week ago. There's... there's a lot of bugs out there already."
"There would be," she acknowledged softly. "Any report on a vaccine maybe? Or something that helps?"
"No, Ma'am."
"Is there any mention of them being attracted to anything? Avoiding anything?" she asked.
"No, Ma'am," Walter said again, shaking his head. "Nothing. The reports are just that they're fast and fatal, the swarms are getting bigger. They're recommending that anyone who gets stung and dies should be burnt, before the new bugs have time to emerge."
"That's probably the best course of action," she agreed softly.
"Keep me posted, Walter."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Oh, and have you seen Major Carter or Colonel O'Neill?"
"No, Ma'am. Would you like me to find them?"
"No, that's okay."
He nodded and sighed as she left the room. Even if they got rid of the Goa'uld, they'd still be left with the very big and very real problem of the bugs.
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7:47pm
"This waiting... it's driving me insane," Bek complained. "I'm going outside, Cass."
Cass looked up from where she was reading reports Sergeant Davis had let them have. "Have you even looked at these, Bek?" Cass asked.
"I don't want to," Bek said firmly. "Come on, Cass, we've been inside all day. Let's go get some fresh air before the bugs get here and we can't go outside anymore."
Cass sighed and put the sheets of paper on the table in front of her, rising reluctantly to her feet, and Bek nodded in approval.
"It's disgusting out here," Cass muttered.
"Stop complaining," Bek said. "Tomorrow you'll be complaining because we can't go outside."
"No," Cass disagreed, a gleam in her eye. "We won't be here tomorrow. Well, I won't be anyway."
Bek stared at Cassie. "What are you up to now?"
"They'll never do it on their own, Bek."
"Do what?"
"Break into the SGC."
Bek opened her mouth to comment, but words failed her.
"We have to help them, Bek. They'll need some help."
"How, Cass? We don't have that sort of training, or that sort of experience. God, to them we're just kids!"
"No, we're not. Where I grew up, when you were about fifteen, you were an adult. You got married and had your own family. You had to look after yourself then, even though your parents were still there."
"Where did you grow up then?" Bek asked pointedly.
"Hanka."
"Hanka?" Bek repeated. "No you didn't, you grew up in Toronto."
Cassandra shifted guiltily from where she'd seated herself, casting her gaze to the dark sky between the trees. "No, I grew up on a planet called Hanka. My entire world was wiped out by the Goa'uld, Bek."
Bek stared at Cassandra. "But... Funny, Cass, very funny."
"I'm serious, Bek!" Cassandra snapped. "Ask my Mom. Ask Janet. She's not my real mom; she adopted me after Sam, Jack, Teal'c and Daniel saved me."
"You're serious?"
"Yes!" Cassandra nodded. "How else would I know about the Stargate, Bek? You think that's something the people who work there are allowed to tell their children?" Cass' voice was breaking now. "God, Bek, they killed my family. I'm not going to sit here and let it happen again. I'm going to help them!"
Bek was quiet, staring at her friend. "You should have told me," she said softly.
Cass smiled, but the tears on her cheeks glistened. "I couldn't, Bek. You wouldn't have believed me anyway."
Yes, that was probably true.
Cass chuckled ruefully. "You still don't believe me."
"No, I do," Bek shook her head. "I do, it's just... It's so unreal," she whispered. "In one day everything I've ever thought I knew was true has been turned upside down. Our own government is involved with wiping us out. There are aliens. On Earth. God, you're an alien!"
"If you think I'm alien, you would have loved Teal'c," Cass said dryly.
"Teal'c?" Bek questioned.
"Yeah. Big guy. Called a Jaffa. Now he was alien."
"Cass?" Bek said softly.
"Yeah?"
"I'll help too," she whispered. "I... I want to."
Cass nodded. "Okay. We'll figure something out then, as soon as they've decided what they're going to do."
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10:04pm
"How's it going?" Sam asked as Janet walked into the small room acting as their kitchen.
"Tiring," Janet answered, smiling wearily.
"Coffee?" the Colonel offered.
"That," Janet said, "would be fantastic."
"Are you making any progress?" Sam asked as Janet sat herself at the table, groaning as she stretched her feet out in front of her.
"I think so, yes. Timothy is miles ahead of me with this, Sam, I'm nothing here but a glorified lab assistant."
"I'm sure that's not true," Sam said, offering a smile.
Janet smiled back, running a hand through her hair. "Oh, but it is. The most complicated thing I've done in the last two and a half years is perform an emergency intubation. The field has advanced so much... I'm learning more than helping, to be honest."
"Samuels did mention you weren't military anymore."
"Yeah, I work in a small practice with another doctor," Janet said softly.
"Here you go," O'Neill interrupted, placing a steaming cup of coffee in front of Janet. "It was white and one, right?"
She nodded. "I'm surprised you remembered."
O'Neill shrugged and seated himself at the table. "So," he said.
"So," Janet echoed, sipping her coffee.
"Fill us in," Sam said.
"On what?"
"What happened while we were dead."
Janet sighed and placed the mug on the table. "The short story is Bauer got command, and you remember Bauer."
"He had his head so far up his ass, I'm surprised he could even breathe," O'Neill said darkly.
"Well," Janet said dryly, "his biggest concern was weapons. The bigger the better. All our research was focused on gaining new technologies. Then Kinsey started breathing down his neck because of the expenses and lack of turnover, and they started cutting corners. I got thrown out when I offered up objection against their changes to post-mission procedures."
"What kind of changes?" Sam asked curiously.
"Ultrasounds and scans, basically," Janet said, sighing. "I should have realised then, you know? Should have known there was a reason they specifically wanted the Ultrasounds to stop. I didn't even think that the Goa'uld could have infiltrated."
"They infiltrated a long time ago," O'Neill inserted quietly. "Years ago. Even before the Asgard Treaty."
"Oh, yeah, there's that too," Janet remembered. "Bauer's attitude was not received very well by the Asgard, and when Kinsey got Presidency and ignored several stipulations carefully spelled out by the Asgard, well... from what Walter's told me, the Asgard have pretty much left us to our own devices."
"The Goa'uld are going to bring out a vaccine," O'Neill said, breaking the silence that had settled over them. "Once they feel the population is small enough and subdued enough to accept their rule, they'll bring out the vaccine and save them. By the time they do that, there won't be enough of us left to even consider making a stand."
"Then we'll have to make our stand now," Sam said darkly.
"Even a vaccine doesn't completely solve the problem. Every living creature on this planet will be destroyed by those bugs; for the Goa'uld to gain anything of value from this plan worth their while – other than destroying Earth – they would have to have some way of efficiently and effectively destroying the bugs," Janet pointed out.
"If that's the case, how would they destroy the bugs in a way that won't destroy every other living creature?"
Janet sighed and shrugged. "I don't know. But unless the Goa'uld MO has changed – which I doubt – everything we need to know, everything of importance to this invasion is going to be kept under lock and key at their headquarters, so to speak."
"The SGC?" O'Neill theorised.
"Quite possibly. If it is infiltrated, they'd want to set up there because of the Stargate."
"That settles it then," Sam said, "we're going to have to get in and see what they have."
"I'm going to go with you," Janet told them.
"You can't," O'Neill disagreed. "They need you here, with the vaccine in case our theories are completely wrong."
"I just told you, Timothy is more than capable of doing this by himself. They only brought me in because they were worried that they couldn't ship Timothy here in time. And I think it had something to do with you, Colonel."
"What?" O'Neill raised his eyebrows.
"They're not stupid. You wouldn't have co-operated with Timothy. I doubt you even would have co-operated with Maybourne unless he had a good reason for you to be here," Janet pointed out.
The speed with which O'Neill's eyes flicked to Sam and then back to Janet was faster than Janet had thought possible, and she smiled.
"But you're both dumber than I gave you credit for if you think the two of you can go in there, guns blazing by yourselves, to save the planet. Neither of you are in any state to even think about it."
Sam sighed. "I don't see us as having much choice, Janet."
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