Chapter 4

Jack stood in the control room, clutching the edge of the table as the chevrons locked into place. "Chevron three encoded," Walter said, maintaining his usual calm tone, despite the tension in the room.

The Polistians had kept their first wormhole engaged for the full thirty-eight minutes and then had dialed in again before the SGC was ready to dial out. If they'd learned that trick from someone on SG-9, Jack thought now, there'd be hell to pay. Fifty-eight f***ing minutes since he'd been thrown through the Gate, fifty-eight minutes since he'd last seen Daniel, curled in agony in the dirt, and almost ninety since Daniel and Sam had been poisoned. Too goddam long. At least this time they'd started dialing as soon as the last wormhole had collapsed. The Polistians would have to be damn fast with the DHD to beat the computer.

"Chevron four encoded."

Jack looked down into the Gateroom as SGs-3, 7, 8 and 12 stood ready to go, with Major Adul keeping them steady and reminding them of their roles. Adul was a good man, had done a fine job with SG-8, and today had not hesitated when they'd gotten nothing from the MALP—no picture, no sound—as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over the thing. Adul, all of them, were ready and willing to face the unknown, risk their lives to bring Daniel—and the antidote, if there really was one—home; all of them were good people, good soldiers. And damn it to hell, he should be the one leading them through.

He'd marched to the briefing room, Halas, the med tech kid in tow, certain Hammond would relent and let him go through the Gate. There was no other choice; this was his team that had been attacked, his people who were suffering, and his whole body thrummed with the need to go back and pull Daniel out and then blow the bastards to. . . . But Hammond had remained firm, had not even engaged in the argument Jack was spoiling to have, had just said, "We're wasting time, Colonel. Please tell the major and his people what to expect."

So he had, knowing all the while, even through his anger, that he was lucky Hammond had even agreed to send a rescue party through, given the risk and everything they didn't know.

And then they'd waited.

"Chevron six encoded," Walter intoned as the Gate continued to spin. C'mon! Jack pleaded silently. C'mon!

"Chev. . . ."

No, dammit, no! Jack slammed his hand against the console as the telltale sound and sight of an incoming wormhole burst into the room, and without waiting for the order, Walter hit the button closing the iris. The sound of Adul's curse carried through the safety glass as the iris spun shut.

"Unauthorized off-world activation," Walter announced, unnecessarily, over the intercom. "Unauthorized off-world activation. . . ." He turned toward Jack and Hammond: "PX0-4593, sirs."

Polistia.

Hammond nodded and with a weary sigh gestured toward the control panel, and Walter pushed the transmit button and slid out of his way.

"This is General Hammond of Stargate Command. I need to speak with Minister Gahry, Marshal Lioss or someone else in authority immediately. Please respond."

As before, there was only silence.

Another goddam thirty-eight minutes. Jack lowered himself slowly into the chair behind him and put his head in his hands. Carter's screams still echoed in his head, and he could swear, somewhere, he heard Daniel wailing in pain. Alone.

Hammond shook his head and reached for the mike, ready to tell the teams to stand down once again, but before he could speak, a burst of static came from the speaker in front of them, and the previously blank viewscreen suddenly showed a bright, metallic-gray sky. Jack's head shot up, and he got to his feet, staring intently at the image. A moment later, the smug face of Marshal Lioss appeared.

"This is Marshal Lioss of the Polistian Empire. Whom am I addressing?"

Polistian Empire, my ass,Jack thought, and he opened his mouth to say just that, but Hammond held up his hand and, with steel in his voice, said, "This is General George Hammond of the U.S. Air Force, Earth Stargate Command. You are holding one of our people, Marshal. I demand that Dr. Jackson be returned to us, in good health, immediately."

Lioss smiled. "You demand," he said. "You demand." He pretended to muse this over for a moment, then dropped his smile and sneered into the MALP camera as if he could see them where they stood. "Apparently, the arrogance of your people knows no bounds. You are in no position to make demands. We will contact you when we see fit. If you attempt to send a rescue party through or even activate the Great Circle, Dr. Jackson will be immediately executed, as will ten of our less loyal citizens and their families."

Lioss stood back from the MALP, and someone they couldn't see turned the camera lens to face the area immediately behind the DHD. On their knees, with soldiers surrounding them, were maybe thirty Polistians, old and young, men, women and children, even babies clutched in the arms of parents and grandparents. Some of the prisoners were weeping, but most had the glazed look in their eyes of people who couldn't quite comprehend what was happening to them.

Jack felt the bile rise again but held it back. From the moment he'd set eyes on that bastard Lioss, he'd known what kind of man he was, but seeing this. . . .

"You would murder your own people?" Hammond snapped.

The camera turned back, and Lioss bent in front of it, his face filling the screen again. "They are traitors who would die for the greater glory of the Polistian people, a cause far greater than their worthless lives. In fact, General, should you decide to act out of vengeance and send a weapon through that would, as your Colonel O'Neill put it, 'blow our planet into the next galaxy,' "—Hammond threw Jack a sideways glance and he winced, remembering his words—"we would all rejoice in the opportunity to die martyrs to the Empire."

Then Lioss smiled again. "Tell O'Neill, however, it was useful to discover that Earth possesses weapons of such power."

Jack practically growled then and jumped up, ignoring the spike slamming his head, and leaned toward the console, but Hammond gave a quick shake of his head, and Jack closed his mouth and made himself sit back in the chair. He realized his hands were shaking, and he balled them into fists to hold them still.

"What is it exactly that you want?" Hammond said, barely restraining his own anger.

"Right now? Right now, I want you to wait. I want you to wait as you watch your Major scream in pain. I want you to wait as you imagine the unbearable suffering of Dr. Jackson. We will contact you with our demands when we feel you have had sufficient time to contemplate the consequences of refusal. Goodbye, General."

And before Hammond could respond, there was a wooshing sound, and the wormhole blinked out.

There was dead silence in the control room as they all stared at the blank screen. In the Gateroom, obviously aware that the wormhole had disengaged but unaware of the drama that had just unfolded above them, Major Adul and the rest of the rescue party, still carrying their full gear, shuffled their feet and looked up toward the window, awaiting their orders.

General Hammond, uncharacteristically, appeared frozen with indecision, but a split second later he shook his head quickly as if coming out of a trance, then took the microphone. "Gentlemen, have your teams stand down. Team leaders, briefing room, now." He let go of the mike and ordered, "Sergeant, contact SG-14 and tell them to come on home, and then contact our other off-world teams and make sure they haven't been trying to reach us."

"Yes, sir," Walter affirmed, and started punching addresses into the computer.

Hammond turned to Jack then, who was slumped in his chair and still staring at the blank screen. "Colonel?" he asked more quietly. "Briefing room?"

Jack looked up tiredly and nodded. "Yes, sir," he said.

Hammond hesitated, and Jack knew the general was sizing him up, trying to decide if he should order him to the infirmary instead, so, despite the pounding in his head and the exhaustion that was making his limbs feel like hundred-pound weights, he straightened up and looked his CO in the eye. "I'm fine, General. I'll be right behind you."

It looked as if the general wanted to say something else, but instead he just nodded, put a hand on Jack's shoulder for a moment that said more than any words would have, and turned and left the room.

Jack slumped again in the chair, despair threatening to overwhelm him.

So.

No rescue mission. No antidote. No way to get to Daniel. No way to help Carter.

What the hell were they going to do? And how the hell had this happened?

He closed his eyes and shook his head. Oh, he knew how this had happened, knew exactly who was responsible for this fiasco. The memory was there, had been there, buzzing about his brain ever since everything had started to go to hell on the planet: Daniel, at another briefing, pacing back and forth, hands flailing as he argued, "How can we sign a treaty based on what we know about these people, or, more accurately, what we don't know? Isn't anyone else concerned that the Polistians are hiding something so basic, that they're lying to us?"

And Jack remembered, just as clearly, shooting Daniel down. "Everyone lies in negotiations," he'd said, as if talking to a child. "And everyone knows it. . . . Well, almost everyone." Then he'd gone on to make some joke about what the Polistians could do with their farm equipment.

And Daniel had stopped talking.

Oh, yeah, he knew exactly where the responsibility lay for this one.

Waving off Halas, who was still hovering, Jack pushed himself out of the chair and headed for the briefing room. There had to be a Plan B.

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Pain.

It had started inside his stomach and spread outward, up his chest, into his neck and head, into his very eyes, down his torso, out his limbs through his hands and feet, across his skin, as if someone had scraped it away, leaving his nerves raw and exposed.

Pain, god-awful pain.

But he thought he could control it. Teal'c had taught him. If he focused, let himself move toward a state of Kel'no'reem. . . . Daniel closed his eyes, shutting out the tiny, dark cell, too small to even stretch to his full length, and tried, again, to slow his breathing. He just needed a little more time before the next spasms started, that horrible twisting of muscles and limbs. . . .

Breathe, Daniel, breathe, he told himself. Slow it down. You can do this. In . . . out . . . in . . . out. . . . Teal'c had taught him well. Minutes passed, and his long shaky breaths grew calmer, and he breathed—in . . . out . . . in . . . out—until he felt himself floating, floating, almost, above the pain. It was still agonizing, like molten lava in his veins, like some wild animal ripping at his guts, but it was growing farther away, just far enough, he thought, that he might not lose his mind. In . . . out . . . in . . . out. . . .

Somewhere, almost beyond his conscious mind, he heard them coming, the demand to open the outer gate, the tromping of heavy feet on the ground, but he wouldn't let go. He couldn't. It was working. . . .

The door banged violently open, and Daniel started, loosing his concentration, and fell back into his tortured body with a crash. He cried out, despite his best intentions, then bit off the sob that tried to escape him.

Oh, God, it hurts.

The laughter, close, derisive and cruel, drew his attention outward, and, still curled on his side on the dirt floor where he'd been dumped who knows how long ago, Daniel turned his head toward the door and saw three sets of legs, one in robes, mere feet away. He raised head further, straining his sore neck and back, to see the faces.

Two . . . thugs, he thought, for lack of a better word. Twin thugs. Two large men dressed in black uniforms with no insignia, gray, close-cropped hair, square faces, hands on the clubs at their waists. As if he might attack them. If he could have, Daniel would have laughed at the absurdity. Behind the twins, stood Gahry, still dressed in his colorful, ceremonial robes, a feral grin on his face. Bastard, Daniel thought. He'd never liked the man, and he be damned if he was going to let him see how much pain he was in, how afraid he was. Clenching his jaw with the effort, Daniel raised himself slowly until he was sitting, then, back against the wall, pushed up till he was standing. His limbs trembled almost uncontrollably, but he managed not to collapse, and he tried to put all the contempt he was feeling into his face.

Gahry laughed again and stepped in front of his guards. "Why Dr. Jackson," he said, almost jovially, in that same false voice he'd used throughout the negotiations, "you seem angry." Then his smile dropped and he took another step forward until he was so close Daniel could feel the man's stale breath on his face. Daniel drew his head back against the wall, but otherwise didn't move.

"I knew from the beginning you'd be trouble," he whispered, naked hatred showing in his eyes. "So many questions, so many doubts. Such superiority. Such confidence. How confident are you now, Doctor?"

Daniel tried to think of an intelligent response, something to show he wasn't intimidated by the repulsive little man, but between the searing pain and the lack of oxygen caused by Gahry's too close proximity, it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

"Well, Doctor? Gahry persisted. "How confident are you now?

The words came out, but Daniel was pretty sure they weren't his. A weird time to be channeling Jack, but what the hell.

"Fu** you, you pompous ass."

Gahry's eyes went black, and Daniel braced himself internally for an assault, a part of him wondering almost abstractly if he would even feel a punch through all the other pain. But the punch didn't come. Instead, Gahry's face cleared, and he stepped back. He was smiling again.

God, what now? Daniel thought, gritting his teeth against a new surge of burning. He could swear it was growing stronger, and it scared him. Please just leave me alone so I can curl up and cry.

"Marshal Lioss has granted my request that I be the one to interrogate you."

"Oh," Daniel said.

"You have information we require if we are to return the Polistian regime to its time of glory. That and the weapons your people will provide to save your life will guarantee our empire shall last a millennium and beyond. It shall dwarf all others that have come before it."

"Right," Daniel said.

"We can make your pain go away, or we can make it a thousand times worse."

Daniel blinked. He didn't think there could be a thousand times worse. Could there?

"You will give us the coordinates to every inhabited world you know, starting with the more primitive."

Oh, of course.

Daniel slid down the wall until he was sitting again and closed his eyes. Maybe if he just ignored Gahry and the thugs, they'd go away. Pain swirled around him, inside, outside, everywhere, and it took all his effort now just to keep from moaning. He needed to breathe; he didn't think he could take. . . .

The boot crashed into his side, knocking him over, and Daniel cried out. Oh, yes, he could feel that. Damn. As if in response to the new stimulus, his nerve endings seemed to go wild with pain. Oh, Jesus, he thought, more of a prayer than anything else. Conscious of Gahry standing above him, he struggled to stay quiet, to not give them the satisfaction of hearing him yell, and after a few moments, the pain started to subside again, to the merely unbearable.

Gahry knelt by his side, spreading his robe around him, and put one of Daniel's notebooks and a pen on the floor next to him. "Give us the symbols, Dr. Jackson. Let's start with one planet. There must be a world you don't care about, a world in need of a new order. For just one, I can make the pain go away for as long as I wish. A minute, an hour. . . ."

"Don't know any," Daniel mumbled, closing his eyes again against the pain.

"But you do," Gahry said. "One of your colleagues on SG-9 told us. Gilbert? I believe the young man idolizes you, Dr. Jackson. He says you know more 'Gate addresses,' as you call them, than anyone else possibly in the universe. His words, not mine."

"Not me," Daniel said, his voice little more than a whisper. "He must. . . ." Daniel felt a twitch in his leg, and another in his arm, and his eyes popped open. Oh, god, no. It was starting again. No, not again.

He heard Gahry's voice as if through a haze—"He must, what, Dr. Jackson?"—but he ignored him. Breathe, he thought, breathe. Maybe I can stop it this time. And he tried. In . . . out . . . in . . . out. . . . Another twinge, and another, and his breath came faster. In, out, in, out, and he knew he was gasping. The first spasm hit, twisting him sideways, then the second, in his neck, jerking his head against the floor, and a third in his chest, and another in his leg, and he heard himself grunting, inhuman, animal-like sounds, but he wasn't going to scream, he wasn't. . . .

Daniel screamed.