From Here to Alternity: Paging Dudley Do-Right
MAJOR Spoilers for "Smoke and Mirrors" from Season Six.
Disclaimer in previous chapters. Just for the heck of it - I don't own Stargate. At all.
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Downtime Day 14
Late Afternoon
Colorado Springs Airport
Agent Malcolm Barrett was really pissed off. Not that one could tell by watching his impersonal expression and measured strides. One of the first rules of delousing the National Intelligence Directorate was 'never let them see you sweat', and he didn't. But if anyone caught the full weight of his gaze they'd have no problem seeing the frustration stewing just behind his eyes. He was going to find Major Samantha Carter if it was the last thing he did.
Actually, he reflected as he left the Colorado Springs airport, finding Sam Carter would have to be the next to last thing he ever did, because as soon as he found her he was gonna kick her ass! The little part of his brain that kept him out of bar fights poked him in the ego until he relented slightly. Well, okay, actual ass-kicking might not happen; when they'd taken down the rotten core of the NID, he'd seen her handle herself with a lethal grace he knew better than to challenge. But he was certainly going to lecture her firmly, at length!
Agent Barrett exchanged a sharp nod with his military driver as he slid past the courteously held door and closed it himself in one swift motion. The absence of a salute was perfectly correct, but Barrett saw the young airman's eyes widening at that uncontrollably impatient door-slam before scurrying around to dump the NID agent's bags in the trunk. Barrett overheard the airman's brief report to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex before the young man slid into the driver's seat and pulled into the rush-hour traffic. The agent's subconscious absently noted the discreet surveillance the driver kept on the back seat and the cars behind them, but Barrett had been too busy to arrange a tail for this short drive and too agitated to consider that his enemies might have assigned one. Hell, let them wonder.
Agent Barrett kept a firm hand on his briefcase as he silently fumed, struggling all the while to curb his incipient scowl. This was all Major. Samantha. Carter's. Fault! She'd made friends with him, helped him take down the corrupters tainting his agency, and then refused to accept his solemn offer of a security detail. And then, then she had had the absolute gall to get kidnapped! As if he hadn't warned her that the Committee's minions wouldn't give up even after the money men were indicted. As if he hadn't argued that her military training might not be enough to protect her unless she was willing to be alert every single moment until the last Committee henchman was safely behind bars. As if he hadn't emailed her faithfully twice a week just to make sure she was okay ever since she left him in Washington with that damnable megawatt smile and a stinking goodbye hug!
Malcolm's eyes widened briefly as he heard his own internal monologue. Now he was officially losing his mind, and all his 80-hour work weeks and tense interrogations of former colleagues couldn't excuse a mental rant at his absent friend. Because as strange as it seemed, Sam was more than a convenient acquaintance. In between the depositions, debriefings and disassembly of the Committee's supply chain, NID Agent Malcolm Barrett and Major Samantha Carter, USAF had gone past the cordial cooperation of their sting operation to actually become… friends. It had taken the better part of two weeks to get the investigation wrapped up, the legal wrangling settled and all the evidence chains safely classified or released to the courts. At which point Sam's CO, Colonel O'Neill, had been officially released with an apology from the District Attorney's office moments after indictments were filed against the members of the Committee. Senator Kinsey had been medically cleared for a press conference not long after that, and Sam and her boss had returned to Colorado within the day.
Those hectic two weeks after the Committee bosses went down had cemented Sam and Malcolm's back-to-back stance against all the lawyers and bureaucrats who wanted to nitpick at the details of their impromptu sting operation. Both the major and the agent had been on the edge of making a career-ending comment more than once, but his dry wit and her subtly satirical matter-of-fact-ness had each saved the other. If all else had failed, they'd gotten take-out food at whatever ungodly hour they were finally released and raked their interrogators over the coals of Malcolm's living room fireplace. They'd argued strategy for the next day's interviews and co-ordinated exactly what they could and could not say to those without the 'need to know' about the Stargate program and the inner workings of the NID.
But it wasn't just an endless rehashing of their operation, however important those details became. They'd also made significant inroads into the connections between the Committee and Area 51 by combining her knowledge of the scientists and his of the money trail. Her technological creativity and his paranoia had come up with some revolutionary strategies for tracking and bringing down the bad guys. And somehow, over the course of those two weeks, they'd become friends. He'd teased her by assuring the dedicated officer that she was giving his department of workaholics an inferiority complex. She'd retaliated by inviting him to take a break and spar with her in the agency gym. Somehow the colonel's order to 'get a life' had made it into her NID file, which Malcolm let Sam read in exchange for a triple batch of her homemade chocolate chip cookies – baked once the case gave her time to commandeer his kitchen. They lamented having beloved jobs that kept them from having personal lives, with no mention of her CO or his gorgeous, whip-smart deputy and the NID's official policy on interoffice romance.
It had been… nice to have a friend with whom they could share the classified aspects of their jobs, and before she met the colonel for his official release, they'd promised to stay in touch. Sam's email on arrival in Colorado had been a masterfully subordinate rant about whatever Kinsey had said to her team leader to put him in the foul mood that dominated their flight back to the SGC. Malcolm had printed it and offered to have it framed. Her response was eminently unsuitable for the government servers that carried their correspondence. As time passed and he grew frustrated with the sheer massiveness of his quest, she'd reminded him of the many people who would benefit from a cleaner, gentler NID. He'd tried to be supportive when her team leader went missing and had told her to take the vacation time the general was offering once Colonel O'Neill returned home.
And now, in the middle of the vacation he'd pushed her to take, she'd been kidnapped by members of his own organization!
He closed his eyes in shame as the courtesy car neared Cheyenne Mountain. He could – and did – yell at Sam all he wanted within the privacy of his own mind and call her seven different kinds of idiot for not taking his offer of security backup. But the nasty, practical part of his brain whispered irrepressibly into the silence of his thoughts. Maybe she didn't take the security because she trusted you to take down the guys gunning for her.
He growled silently at the whisper he'd never been able to suppress. It could recede, as it did when he needed to lie, cheat, steal or stonewall on the job, but part of the reason the President had chosen Malcolm Barrett as his hatchet man in the NID was the agent's bedrock honesty. Even Sam had seen it, according to her (supposedly secret) mission report, when she forced him to face the uncomfortable truth that the 'assassin' they were tracking was NID. Malcolm had grunted, turned away, and then taken the fingerprints from the rifle to run through his computer system even when he had every reason to accept the evidence of Colonel O'Neill's guilt.
Of course, that stubborn sense of honor hadn't meant that he'd immediately confessed all his secrets to her. As he'd told her, sometimes you had to cross an ethical line to stay in the game – the trick was knowing when to step back. Even now he had a plan by which his crusade to cleanse the NID could benefit from her kidnapping. Another reason the President had chosen Barrett was his shrewd dispassion; Malcolm had had no part in Sam's abduction, but once it happened he was willing to use his search for her to flesh out the illicit connections between the rogue cell responsible and his organization. He refused to consider whether Sam would have approved or not; the trick was to call it 'compromise' instead of 'being torn apart at the seams.'
She knew you had her back, the voice continued relentlessly. He sighed and let the rest of it wash over him. He was who he was and didn't have the luxury of undivided loyalties even in this. She's a decorated officer. You know she didn't go down without a fight and you know your guys are responsible for abducting her. Maybe if you had been quicker to eliminate them, she wouldn't be missing right now. He twitched in his seat and squeezed the handle of his briefcase, but otherwise allowed his conscience to lash him without a visible reaction. You're getting mad so you don't have to be afraid for the one person you actually like at the SGC.
Malcolm sighed as the car reached the first checkpoint and opened his eyes. The hell of being an honorable man was that you couldn't lie forever when it mattered, not even to yourself.
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Downtime Day 14
Late Afternoon
Cheyenne Mountain Levels 11-28
Agent Barrett walked briskly down the sterile hall to the last SGC security checkpoint within the mountain. His escort, a young, blond linebacker of a lieutenant, had retrieved him from the car and whisked him through regular NORAD security and the first line of the SGC's defenses, then ushered him through the first eleven floors of the complex. Barrett had been photographed, fingerprinted, palm-scanned and tagged with a visitor's badge before the first patdown and briefcase inspection. Luckily, his escort, Lt. Alex Jablon, was experienced in the ways of interagency rivalries and had quickly quashed the mention of a strip search even though the security officer had mumbled something about 'O'Neill's orders'. Barrett had had a sudden vision of descending like Dante through an Inferno peopled with BDU-wearing tormentors. Was it just him or had it gotten colder the closer he got to the bottom?
Barrett banished all thought of temperature and watched absently as the airman swiped his access card through the elevator's security scanner, mentally reviewing the men he was here to meet. He'HHHhe'd d never met Sam's General, but from the files he had read on the SGC… O'Neill was far more likely to be at the center of the chill he felt as he was escorted past base personnel. The scientists and soldiers peopling the halls had glanced at his suit and tie and either gave him a cool nod or ignored him completely. He remembered pre-treasonous Colonel Maybourne's estimation that Col. Jonathan J. 'Jack' O'Neill 'wouldn't piss on an NID agent on fire in front of him'. Not that Jonas Quinn or Teal'c were likely to be pushovers; from Sam's stories and his own research Barrett knew each member of SG-1 was uniquely skilled and tempered by experience, even the newest addition. But O'Neill seemed most likely to annihilate Barrett first and ask questions a few years from now. Cooperation would be… a challenge.
Of course, the first challenge would be convincing the base CO that the President knew what he was doing in putting Barrett on the investigation. Malcolm Barrett took a deep breath and firmed up his professional expression as the lieutenant walked him out of the elevator on Level 28. Without really registering the bland gray décor, Barrett noted the right turn just past the Air Force seal and a left after some generic posters of planes in flight. Not that he expected to have to make a run for it, exactly, but he did note the access card slot on the outside of the briefing room door. As the lieutenant settled him at a large conference table and cordially deserted the NID agent to the SGC's tender mercies, Agent Barrett idly recalled his escape and evade training in defeating locks just like that one.
Barrett folded his hands genteelly on the synthetic portion of the wood-and-black-composite table and calmly surveyed his new surroundings. His seat was at the right hand of the 'head' of the table closest to the general's office. Vague moving shapes visible behind the odd ringed markings on the office window indicated that someone was aware of the agent's arrival despite the stillness of the briefing room. Barrett glanced at the 'foot' of the table and took in the open, circular staircase leading down to the control room and up to a storage area if his study of the SGC's schematics was correct. The blank video screen mounted on the wall opposite the general's office might bear the contents of his briefcase by the end of the day, but only if they were very, very unlucky. Behind him, Barrett knew there were multiple LCDs displaying life forms and chemicals used in the morning's briefings. He had no idea what they were and no interest in finding out. His attention was fixed on the uncovered window across from him.
The view from this angle was of a vast gray chamber constructed of the concrete that dominated the entire installation. He couldn't see the metal ring at the heart of the base or the accompanying ramp and stabilizers. It was a rare visitor to the SGC who could sit in Malcolm's position without at least subconsciously straining for a better view of the best kept secret of the past decade. Agent Malcolm Barrett was one of them.
He smiled faintly as he remembered Sam's squawk of indignation when they'd discussed his blasé response.
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Several days post-"Smoke and Mirrors"
Washington, D.C. – Northern Virginia Suburbs
"Seriously, Malcolm, you've got to be kidding me!" Sam's wide eyes and horrified expression wouldn't have looked out of place if they were discussing serial killers or natural disasters or kitten soufflé. Her chopsticks were suspended over the steaming white waxed cardboard of the Chinese take out container in mid-pounce.
Agent Barrett, his black tie rakishly loosened over the unbuttoned collar of his trademark white shirt, calmly snaked his bare forearm into Sam's personal space and ruthlessly speared the last steamed pork dumpling. The cuffs of his dress shirt were haphazardly rolled nearly to his elbow, which was a good thing as his uniformed companion broke her stillness in time to snatch the soy vinegar dipping sauce out of his reach. The dark liquid sloshed onto his coffee table as he gave her the evil eye and snatched up a pile of napkins from the floor between them.
"Why?" he intoned with his usual lack of expression as he blotted the spill.
"Because no one, I mean, nobody can pass up their first chance to gawk at the Stargate. Senators, scientists, military personnel – everybody who goes into the conference room for the first time steps up to see the 'gate room first thing." She carefully put down the hostage condiment before stabbing an errant piece of General Tso's chicken and eating it. Her friend raised his eyebrows, inspiring her to wave her now-clean utensils in a broad gesture of emphasis. As Barrett opened his mouth to object, she qualified, "As long as they know what they're looking for."
He humphed in discontent and gently snagged the sauce back. They were distressingly low on napkins and his beige carpet was practically begging for a stain or three. "I can imagine that most people are eager to see it, and I grant that it's the main attraction of the SGC. But at least some people must put it in its proper perspective."
Sam snorted and gathered a clump of white rice from another container, certain that he was joking. But his deadpan gaze lacked the lively twinkle she had come to identify as the surefire signal of his sense of humor. It was hard to tell sometimes if Agent Malcolm Barrett was joking or not, as the man possessed the driest wit imaginable and a formidable poker face. But they'd been colleagues and friends for ten days now and Major Samantha Carter was as observant as one would expect of a scientist of her caliber.
"Proper. Perspective. And what would that perspective be, Agent Barrett?" Her challenge was somewhere between amused and affronted. The Stargate was the focus of Sam's all-consuming professional life, granted, but it was also an amazing tool for exploration and exchange and a scientific phenomenon by anyone's standards. "It's the most incredible discovery of the last century, scientifically as well as archaeologically! It allows us to explore worlds we'd never even contemplate without it. It's linked us to people and cultures beyond our wildest imagination. It's… It's… There's not another discovery or advancement I can even compare it to!"
"And yet, it hasn't changed the lives of the average citizen materially even in the country which runs the only functioning Stargate program on this planet." Malcolm swallowed a splash of jasmine tea as he saw the light of battle enter Sam's eyes. This would require some fast talking, and he couldn't allow a dry mouth to rob him of even a single point he wanted to make. "I know, I know, it's kept us all from being slaves to the Goa'uld. But we wouldn't even be in danger of invasion in the first place if the 'gate had never been used. And no, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have opened it or haven't done wonderful things with it," he assured her as her grip on her chopsticks shifted subconsciously from eating mode to weapon readiness. "And I'm not like those Kinsey-fied idiots who want to shut it down. But think about it, Sam. What has the 'gate done for John Q. Public lately? You've discovered naqahdah reactors, but his car still runs on gas. You've made contact with the Tok'ra and the Asgard, but he still doesn't know more about little gray men than the average X-Files fan. You have healing devices and staff weapons, but he still goes to the emergency room after his neighbor shoots him with a bullet-firing handgun. You know the chemical composition of worlds of water where that liquid is actually a concentration of sentient microorganisms, but the coral reefs which are the basic building block of our oceans' ecosystems will still be –"
"- dead by 2075. You read me the article." Sam interrupted, chewing over his argument as thoroughly as the last of the snow pea pods. "You can't possibly mean that because the discoveries we've made through the 'gate aren't in general circulation already that the 'gate is… meaningless. Right? I mean, it took years for technology developed for the space program to filter down to the American public, but it's still one of the most common sources for technological advances available in people's daily lives, at least peripherally. For goodness' sake, the Internet does how much business every year? That whole idea started off as a DARPA-developed communications tool."
"No, not meaningless. Just… the Stargate is impressive and unique and I'm sure that we'll all appreciate it someday," he admitted in a stolid monotone, "but it's still just one secret program. And one day we'll all marvel that all these discoveries, all this technology came from the rest of the universe and we never knew it was out there. But it's…" he shrugged helplessly and snagged the last bite of orange beef. "There are more amazing things on Earth than the Doorway to Heaven."
"Oh, yeah?" Sam demanded as she snapped open her fortune cookie. "Like what?"
"Like lots of things. Like… coral reefs and their endless renewal of the marine ecosystem. Like the disappearing rain forest and all the uncatalogued species and biomedical discoveries coming out of it. Like the thousands of things that had to go just right for sentient life to develop here, or any life for that matter." He could see that she wanted to argue, or at least explain the way the Stargate had contributed to each of his examples. So he took a breath and dug into deeper, more personal wonders. "Like… like the look on a man's face when he holds his child for the first time. Watching someone grow from that moment until they have the exact same experience. Traveling all over the world to find that no matter what their cultural trappings, people want and need the same things… the same sense of family, of permanence, despite the fact that we won't live for even a hundred years."
He sneaked a glance upwards, almost abashed at his unexpected sentimentality. Sam's mouth was hanging slightly open and her eyes were as wide as he'd ever seen them. "The… the fact that my parents have been married for nearly fifty years and neither one of them has killed the other yet," he finished with a crooked smile, deliberately lightening the tone of the discussion while his memory was flooded with examples. He could still see the awe in his brother-in-law's face the moment his long-awaited niece had touched down in scrub-clothed arms. Janie had seven ear piercings and a string of disreputable boyfriends to her credit by now, but not even the quickest intergalactic travel could top the wonder shining from Darryl's face at that moment. Malcolm sucked in a breath and looked back up through the meager shelter of his short brown bangs. "Seeing the Stargate's an amazing experience, I'm sure, but it's not the end-all and be-all of human experience. I have to think I'd keep it in the … proper perspective."
There was a long, not-quite-awkward pause as Sam studied her friend's abashed gray eyes. "I'll make you a deal," she offered firmly. "You come to the SGC and do whatever seems right to you when you enter the briefing room. I'll be there and you can prove to me what you think the proper perspective is. I'm not saying either one of us is right, but I want you let go for just a little bit and have whatever reaction seems most natural to you at that moment. Deal?" She wiped her well-used fingers on her last napkin and held her hand out to him.
Malcolm stared at her familiar face and weighed his options as she waited patiently. Ten days of developing their own rhythm let her know that he rarely leapt into anything without considering the ramifications, even a pseudo-bet like this. He wiped his own hand and shook hers firmly. "Deal," he confirmed.
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And here he was, sitting in front of the biggest secret on or under the face of the planet… and he refused to look. Not because he didn't want to, he admitted to himself, but because his desire to save the experience to share with his friend was greater than his curiosity. He sighed and looked down at his folded hands resting on the tabletop.
Lecturing. Firmly. At length.
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Author's Note: An Especially Enormous Thank You to my betas (betae?) technetium and PKgirl for being willing to weather the world's worst writer's block whining! Oh, yeah, and reading and improving my writing and keeping the faith, yadda. ;-)
An outsized happy dance for the people who reviewed the last chapter – this one is out primarily because you let me know you were still reading. Everyone - Please Read and Review! I love knowing what you loved/hated and especially that you're still there. Those of you lurking, sincere thanks for reading. Now type!
I know I've been gone for a while and people thought this fic was/would be abandoned, but I promise it isn't and won't be. I'll finish it… eventually. The spirit is willing but the pen is weak. Or slow. Whichever.
Happy Winter Holiday of Your Choice to Everyone!!!