Chapter 27
Early the next morning the team awoke to the patter of light rain. Sam lay awake for a while, looking up to the thin canvas diverting the droplets falling from the sky towards her. She imagined how they would be free-falling several hundred meters before being rudely interrupted in their path, slamming into the green smooth material and led down the steep hill of the tent to land outside of her protective bubble. She was dry. For now.
It wasn't long before that was over. After a quick breakfast she, her CO and her alien friend were put to the tedious work of moving rocks the size of basketballs from a pile outside the cave into the tent of white canvas that shielded the x-ray machinery from the elements. The light rain soon decided to turn into a pour, and within the hour they were uncomfortably moist in every spot that wasn't inadequately covered by their rain ponchos. Jack muttered, Teal'c was stoic. Daniel made notes, sorted and catalogued. At the work station he felt like he was tending a kind of bizarre airport security check, heaving alien rocks onto the short conveyor belt that led them through the x-ray machine suspiciously similar to the ones he had watched his luggage pass through a thousand times. Some of the rocks had clear markings on them, some of them none – but he didn't want to take any chances and miss one of the components enclosed and ran them all through the x-ray. They were all from the same collection of strangely regular rocks found sitting in a suspiciously organized way in the cave, and so far all the ones he had examined had had one foreign object or another inside of them. What an intriguing story this was, when you thought about it. He wondered who the people were that made these devices, and what they were for. Why had they chosen to hide them away and preserve them this way? Had there been a war, a cataclysm? They apparantly wanted to save this technology for coming generations, camouflaging it in a way only someone who was advanced enough would be able to see through. Noli would have been immensly curious. He could see her running around between rocks, making excited sqeeky noises and patting things. "Get this one... and this one... Oh, this one's nice... No, leave it, there's nothing in it, I just thought it was pretty..." He smiled to himself. It was going to be interesting to go back and see what she had to say about this whole ordeal. A colorful array of swears, no doubt.
"Daniel Jackson."
Daniel jumped and realised he had been staring blankly at the same image for a while now.
"Hey, Teal'c", he said and straightened in his chair, looking a bit disoriented before he found the button to push and let the rock of the moment out of its holding.
Teal'c was standing in the doorway, almost filling the whole opening with his large frame. His face remained expressionless while he studied his friend for a moment. Then he decided to enter the small tent and have a moment's refuge from the foul weather. Not that it was much use, he was already so wet standing in the rain or not made no difference, but it was a bit warmer in there with the machines. He grunted silently at how his time with the Tau'ri had made him soft.
Daniel rubbed some sand out of his eye and continued scribbling in one of his notebooks. "How you doing, buddy?"
"I am well", Teal'c thanked him. "How are you?"
Daniel looked up. That sounded unfamiliar coming from Teal'c. "I'm good, I guess..." His face squinted up a bit. "So... did you want something?"
Teal'c's face lightened into almost a smile. There was something satisfied about his voice when he spoke. "You seem distracted. Were you thinking about anything in particular when I entered?"
Daniel didn't bother acting coy since there was nothing to be coy about. "I was just thinking it's a shame Peanut's missing all this. Think she would have loved it", he said and swept his eyes across the considerable collection of mysterious-device-hiding rocks that lay labeled and ready to go in the other end of the tent. Teal'c stepped closer, dripping water on the ground.
"You miss her", he stated.
"No more than usual."
Daniel paused for a second and wondered why these people kept tricking him into confessing his, very normal and friendly, affection for Peanut. The smug look on Teal'c's face annoyed him. Before he had the time to say anything more Teal'c changed the subject.
"Doctors Johnstone and Wendon just arrived from the SGC. They are ready to begin first transport."
Daniel immediately cheered up. "Oh! Ok, well, just tell them to get in here and get started." Teal'c nodded and disappeared. Daniel's colleagues appeared shortly and they opened up the tent in the other end to move their bounty onto an awaiting MALP.
Daniel left them to it, there wasn't much room to maneuver in anyway and they would only get in the way of each other. He stayed at the primitive desk, looking through page after page of copied symbols and tried to find a pattern or a familiar line. Scattered drops of rain blew in through the opening and landed on the floor and his desk. One suddenly landed on the back of Daniel's hand, and he was surprised at how cold it felt on his skin. He held his hand up and looked at the tiny splatter of water, and then slowly turned his wrist and watched the waterdrop run across the ridge of his hand, down along his thumb. It hung onto the edge of his thumbnail for a moment before losing its grip and falling down on the desk. It landed in his notebook. It soaked the ink of a small symbol and made it bleed out into the paper. The watered down ink spread in a circle with spidery veins stretching out from the centre along the fibres of the paper. Daniel stared at the inkblot. Gears in his head turned, clicked into place and he knocked the chair over backwards when he shot out of his seat and ran out. "Jack!" he bellowed, then spun around and stuck in his track when he couldn't decide on who to stop first, the people bringing the rocks away from the cave or the people taking the rocks off the planet. After the eternity of a second he managed to tear his feet off the ground and continued towards the cave, shouting to the people behind him to stop what they were doing.
Jack, bored and soggy, contemplated just dropping the rock he was holding straight onto the ground when Daniel came running, shouting at him. He was probably going to reveal that the stupid rocks were completely useless and they had been doing con labor for nothing. Or that they were on the wrong planet. However, he calculated the levels of scolding he would recieve if anything broke and opted to set it down nice and gently. He also wondered why, with all the resources of the Base, they couldn't summon one wheelbarrow.
"Jack!" panted Daniel after his sprint.
"What? We're on the wrong planet?"
Daniel gave him a bewildered look. "Wha..? Jack! Put them back!" He waved towards the rock collection on the ground. "We need to put them back in the cave."
Jack sqeezed his eyes shut and pinched the base of his nose.
"Excuse me?"
Daniel sighed and tried to find the words to express the intuitive insight he had just had. After a minute of studdering and gesturing he had made it clear: He suspected that the order in which the pieces of machinery had been placed in the cave was not completely haphazard. He had had a strange feeling when he first saw them, lying on the ground covered by a footprint-ridden layer of dust. The feeling was small and unimportant, hidden among a hundred other thoughts, and he had forgotten about it until the inblot in his notebook had reminded him of it again: The rocks had been laying in a pattern. An organic, irregular pattern that one wouldn't notice at a first glance or even at a more thorough survey, but somewhere in him it had registered and now he needed it back as it was. There was a meaning to it, and he wouldn't know exactly what until he could see it.
It would take Daniel and his little helpers quite some time to get the disguised alien devices back in place. They thanked whatever gods available that doctor Conrad and his exploration team had documented the cave fairly well before they went back to tell SGC about it, and that Daniel was somewhat anal about labelling things. Once they had the rocks back where they had found them, more or less, Daniel loitered around the cave and tried to make sense of things while his colleagues in archaeology patiently waited for him outside. They tried cautiosly to help him, which would have been easier if it hadn't been for the fact that they had no idea what he was looking for. And for the fact that he seemed even less suceptible to any kind of social interacting than usual at the moment. He would often forget to be curtious to other people when ingulfed by some interesting problem, and they knew this, but this time he seemed uncharacteristically brooding and they opted to stay out of his way.
Jack had promptly refused to have the rest of the team keep assisting Daniel on this, as he put it, "God damn waste of resources and it's boring" and decided to go back to the SGC. Hopefully there would be some nice scouting missions to spend their time on while Daniel was figuring out rocks and patterns and life and whatever.
When they stepped through the gate general Hammond was already approaching them.
"Colonel!" Hammond seemed surprised, but also pleased to see the team arrive ahead of schedule. "I was just about to summon you when we recieved your IDC."
"Oh?" The colonel was apprehensive. Had there been some sort of crisis while they were gone?
It could be interesting. Or very much not interesting.
"There has been a... situation. The people of Aldera request for your mediation in a difficult dispute."
Oh, definitely interesting.
The little planet of PKT-314, known by its inhabitants as Aldera, was one of Jack's personal favourites. For reasons no one was quite sure of the people had taken a liking to him and his surly, impatient ways and now welcomed him and his team with open arms. The SGC's main concern with the otherwise peaceful Alderans was the underlying conflicts between some of the tribes that threatened to disturb their valuable trade – medical knowledge for naquadah. SG1, led by the otherwise not known for his diplomatic skills Colonel O'Neill, had soon become the mediators of choice. It was like keeping a bunch of kids quarreling over a puppy away from getting the animal hurt in the process, and before, during and after negotiations Jack was always sure to be treated to some good food and exotic fermented beverages.
"Sir, what happened?" Sam asked with concern. The general waved avertingly.
"It seems someone is about to wage war upon someone, I'm not sure what it was all about, they were a little hazy on the details. But cheif Anden sounded quite desperate."
"Doesn't he always."
Hammond gave Jack tired look. "Yes, well. You are to depart immediately."
Jack turned to the others.
"Alright guys, you know the drill. Let's go."
Sam made the smallest of winces. She knew the drill, and the drill in this case involved donning the strange rural outfit the locals loaned them every time they visited because keeping their own clothes was somehow slightly offensive. Albeit they had done their best to make one that fitted well and felt comfortable enough, but it still threw her off her game to be out of uniform on official business. With a quick glance at Teal'c, who she knew harbored similar feelings when it came to some of the Alderans' stubborn formalities, she turned as the wormhole opened towards the new destination and followed her teammates through.
Anden, the middle-aged man with his beard slightly askew who functioned as the chief politician to the largest grouping of people on Aldera, met them with arms wide open. He carried the Ceremonial Staff of Faraway Guests and Peacekeepers – or VIP-stick – in front of them as he led the group into town. He paraded them through the main gates and down a few dusty streets where people turned their heads and smiled as they passed. They arrived at the Well-Adorned Building of Meetings and History – or town hall – where a pleasant official quickly shooed them off to the changing rooms before they were allowed into the main halls.
Jack pulled uneasily on his lent collar as they waited for Sam in the large, wood panelled Negotiation Chamber. It always took her so long to change into that weird outfit and he wasn't willfully trying to think of her pulling her t-shirt over her head, tousling her playfully short blonde hair, or supple suade tightened around her form with laces; it just happened all by itself. He couldn't help it.
They all wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, so when they heard Sam's footsteps finally approaching from a hallway on the side some of the impatient atmosphere lightened. The door opened and Jack just about caught a sight of a bare, slender arm and the curve of a suede-covered hip before they were all startled by the awful sound of seams ripping.
Sam stumbled into the room. One of the softly flowing lower sections of the dress had caught on a splinter and as she had stepped forward, a big tear had opened along her thigh.
"Oh!" Sam stared at the hole with eyes wide open. "I'm so sorry!" She saught eyecontact with Teal'c for support before daring to face chief Anden and his secretary; the team knew that damaging the painstakingly put together and very holy ceremonial clothes was a diplomatic disaster.
Chief Anden had his eyes shut tight. His fists were clenched at his sides, and Sam was pretty sure he was holding his breath as well. His secretary on the other hand had eyes the size of satellite dishes, and they were pointed at her in barefaced horror. After three seconds of painful silence the man approached her in a few quick strides.
"Chief Relyon will be here any minute!" he hissed, and then stared at her as if she knew exactly what this meant. "If he sees the Meeting Gown in this condition-"
He was interrupted by a horn toot and the main doors were flung open. A succession of men and women dressed in the same kind of rural, yet finely crafted, brown leather clothes begun marching in to gather along the walls of the room. Sam did a swooping half-turn, moving the torn side away from the people coming in, and did her best to gracefully cover the hole with her hands. Swiftly, awoken from his reverie around Sam's thigh by the horn, Jack moved to her side and positioned himself as close to Sam's side as possible without pushing her over, to help cover up the torn bit of her dress. They smiled awkwardly as the tall frame of chief Relyon entered and stopped in front of them, looking loud and authoritative as always. Chief Andens secretary quickly approached him with soothing words.
"All the well wishes for you and your pe- "
"Greetings of honour and respect, and so on", chief Relyon rumbled. "General!" A woman with a remarkably strict ponytail stepped out from the line and slapped a scroll down into the chief's held out palm. He unrolled it and started reading from the Official Document of Meetings and Negotiation necessary to begin any official business. Jack and Sam discretely backed away in small steps.
"From the beginnings of time our different peoples have gathered in chambers such as this to make valuable connections, to discuss and to find resolve." Chief Relyon deeply cleared his throat, looking impatient and slightly uncomfortable with the formalities. "And so it has been th-"
Suddenly Jack was on the floor. The deafening boom that had accompanied the blinding explosion left him momentarily disoriented and blinking with the dust covering his face. All of the windows and a large part of the wall were now in bits and pieces on the floor, on the table and on the people in various states of panic in the room. He looked up to his right and stared into the wild looking face of Chief Relyon, who had landed next to him.
"Get to your feet, son!" he roared through the commotion. "It's the Rage of the Gods!"
Jack took a moment to ponder on where this reliably grumpy and pragmatic, and to him always oddly familiar man, had suddenly found religion. Then he jumped to his feet only to be knocked over again by the man with the big staff coming in through the blasted windows. The man elegantly jumped up onto the table, knocked the staff loudly on it two times, and then shouted: "The Rage of the Gods has fallen upon you! You are all our prisoners until our demands have been met by the Counsil!"