NOTE: A little bit of a change of course with this but I very much like this bit.
Chapter 12 – Chest
Cam knocked on the door of Daniel's Lab. "Can I come in?"
Sam and Daniel looked up from their work. "Sure." said Sam.
"Where have you been?" Cam asked Sam and Daniel returned to rooting through boxes, "You missed quite the interesting scene."
"I heard, Daniel just finished telling me."
Cam craned his neck to see Daniel, "What ya doing there Jackson?" he called.
"Looking for something!" came the frustrated and slightly muted reply.
"Like he never left." Cam muttered under his breath.
"What was that?" called a muffled Daniel.
"Nothing!" called back Cam and Sam together.
"So," Cam rubbed his hands together, "what's up?"
"Well, I've been going through this." She indicated a chest on the table in front of her. "It's what Teal'c and I found up in that tower."
"This is the thing that when you took it out the tunnel collapsed, sending Vala and me down that tunnel and getting us into this whole mess?"
"I wouldn't be so quick to call it a mess." said Carter challengingly.
"Why, what you got in there?" asked Cam as he leaned across to look at the contents that was spread over the work bench among many of Daniel's other artefacts.
"Most obviously there was this." Sam pointed to a goa'uld ribbon device. "It's basically the same construction that we've seen before. All the same components and principals of working with a few minor exceptions but the mettle used is a bit different."
"Yeah I see." said Cam as he peered at it, not really wanting to touch it. "It's kind of ready. I thought it was rust for a second."
"I've sent a scraping of it to be analysed." Sam continued, "It could alter the way the device functions or it could just have been the fashion at the time."
"Goa'uld disco, I hear ya." Cam nodded, "What's next?"
"Well this is really Daniel's area but he was, and now is again, indisposed."
"There must be something."
"Well I'm having a lot of this carbon dated." Sam said looking over everything. "It just strikes me that this all seems not very goa'uld."
"How d'ya mean?" Cam asked.
"Well look here." She handed him a bracelet made out of different wooden beads. None of them seemed to match the others and the end was a massive knot that looked like it had tangled until it had stayed.
Cam looked at it closely. "It looks like it was made by a child…" he muttered.
"So does this." She showed his a small, flat, tablet of wood with just enough room on it for the single rune like symbol just visible on it. "I asked Daniel and he says that it was a good luck charm given by Jaffa to members of their family that are going off to battle."
"Okay…" sad Cam, thinking carefully through all of this, "What about all of these?" he motioned towards some bits of tattered parchment.
"Well, I com nowhere near being able to translate them." She pushed a few of them towards Cam. "But if you just look at them, what do you see?"
Cam leaned over them to look closer. "They look kind 'a like letters." He moved his finger from one to the next. His instincts from years in the field let his eyes quickly compare them. "There's always the same symbols at the end of each, same sender." he half murmured to himself.
"I asked Daniel to glance at them. There all from a Jaffa named Jas'ak." Cam worked his mouth silently around the name as Sam went on. "Some of its business, allocation of resources, planes for something, intelligence reports, but it's all just referred to. Mainly they're just letters between two friends, maybe more. Between this Jas'ak and Giya."
Cam thought for a moment, "Why would a snake keep all of this, the gifts from children, the personal letters, all locked up safe with a hand device?"
"That's it! I've got it!" Daniel practically jumped up holding a large piece of ornate parchment. "Could you make a space?"
Sam and Cam carefully shifted the contents of the chest and Daniel spread out the parchment on the bench, weighing down the corners with some books that were lying around.
"What's this?" Sam asked. This beautifully and intractably made parchment made the hand written letters look tatty and yellowed in comparison.
"This is what I've been looking for since I left the isolation room. I know I recognised that name. I mean, the name Gaea is found all over the place, she was the Greek goddess of nature, Mother Earth if you will, but Giya is slight different. At first I thought it was just a variation but now I'm not so sure." Daniel paused for a breath for a moment and then went on. "She said that she was named for Gaea, so Giya is a different person altogether. It's her."
"Wow there Jackson, slow up." Cam put a hand on Daniel's shoulder to stop him talking. "Now," he said slowly, "what is this?"
"Well," Daniel said, still brimming with excitement for what he had to tell, "this was found in one of Yu's more charming torture facilities from around the time that Anubis was murdered." He grimaced at the thought, "Most artefacts of this kind have now been handed over to the Jaffa nation. I've been hold onto this for a bit longer because some of it just doesn't make much sense. I suppose the Jaffa have bigger things to worry about now though."
"Jackson!" Cam interrupted again, "what…is…this?!"
"I'm getting there." said Daniel, a bit annoyed. "For some more high profile prisoners had their last thoughts recorded as a sort of evidence to their crimes. This is the last thoughts of the Jaffa, Jas'ak."
NOTE: Next bit coming soon. Pretty please review.