Chapter 55 - Steps
Martouf and Lantash first checked in on Dorieth a couple days later, dropping to the planet in a cloaked cargo ship.
"What are the risks of this?" Jolinar asked immediately, as she met them outside the settlement in the dark.
"Nothing extreme," Martouf said, his voice quiet in the humid evening.
"Your mission?" Jolinar asked next, as they drew out of the way into the dark shelter of a small grove. Even the stars couldn't see them, if the clouds had been drawn back for the stars to have sight.
Martouf sighed, his stance loosening, and Jolinar realized that it had been a little tense. It was not relaxed now, though, only weary.
Jolinar sighed in answer. "You were not prepared."
"The mission goes as planned," said Martouf. "But you are correct, I did not expect the toll." He grimaced.
~He isn't really spy material, I'm thinking?~ Sam asked, sensing from him a frustration with injustice that only Jolinar's experience had soothed in Sam.
*His integrity is more reliant on what he does than who he is, than most Tok'ra operatives. We have had to make ourselves more than the role, simply because the role is—*
~Yeah, I know that by now.~
"I have already achieved some level of trust," Martouf continued. "But not enough. It is to be expected, because I can say for a fact now that Quetesh is no fool—but I wonder if we will ever succeed far enough in that area."
Jolinar shrugged. "As long as you are in a steady position, we may work around any other difficulties."
"Such is Lantash's reasoning," said Martouf with a nod. He sighed, his hands falling to his sides, almost clenching, his gaze dropping slightly. "I have found some of Sha're's people."
Sam perked up, and Jolinar tried not to show that she was very interested in this. As far as Martouf and Lantash knew, she only cared about them due to her friendship with Sha're. He still hadn't guessed the rescue mission. "And?" Jolinar asked.
Martouf's look darkened, and he didn't look them in the eye. Sam felt unsure for a moment if she wanted to know why. "Even when, or if, Quetesh is eventually defeated, it may be too late for some. Their treatment at the hands of Jaffa is nothing compared to the pleasures Quetesh forces upon them."
"Too late?" Jolinar asked, as her stomach twisted with the same emotion that gripped Sam.
"I fear that Quetesh knows how to damage the mind too deeply," Martouf said, barely able to form the words. A burning anger lit his eyes, something that was usually Lantash's, and his jaw clenched. "At times her flagship seems but a brothel to her perversions."
Jolinar's anger broiled, and she nodded sharply. "We must accomplish this mission, Martouf. I have known this for some time."
"As I do now," he said, nodding. "I should not have doubted you ever." He managed a weak smile. "And do not worry, for I can see that you do—Lantash and I will maintain our cover."
"I had not truly doubted it," Jolinar said.
With one last glance to make sure that the darkness still covered them, Martouf stooped to plant a quick kiss on Jolinar's lips, and then the two parted. The ship cloaked and disappeared in the night, and no one saw Sam and Jolinar return to their dwelling.
ooooooo
"It could have been you," Sha're whispered, worried for them both when Daniel returned to her side. It seemed like only had a few minutes to contemplate that he had a similar fear, and hold Sha're close and wish that they all weren't playing luck too many times.
But when he looked at the clock, it had almost been an hour. Even though Janet's message told him that Jack was awake and fine, Daniel couldn't help but say gingerly as he walked to O'Neill's bedside, "Jack?"
The man groaned, sitting on the edge of the bed, still in his rumpled BDUs.
"His pupils are fine," said Janet, more to Daniel than Jack, something that always pissed Jack off a little. "As is his pulse, and frankly, everything else. Now that he's conscious and himself, he's fine."
"Yes, 'he' is great," said Jack shortly. "Don't remember a thing, but that may be great too."
Daniel breathed out, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. "So it wasn't a weapon." He scratched his head. "Mckay and I were going over the data, but we can't figure anything out."
"Still," came Mckay's voice. Daniel turned, and saw Dixon and Mckay coming in together.
"You found anything yet?" Daniel asked Mckay curiously.
"In the ten minutes since you last checked up?" Mckay said, one eyebrow rising Teal'cishly. "No."
"We're trying to figure out what that thing was," Daniel explained to Jack. "So far...not so great."
"Does it matter?" Jack asked, getting off the bed.
Daniel frowned. "Well, yes."
"Don't you want to know why it grabbed your head?" Dixon asked, arms crossed as they walked toward the door.
"I am more intrigued by my escape from it," Teal'c said from behind.
"Yeah, what he said," Mckay added.
"Can we please just get the briefing over with?" Jack asked, slightly irritated.
So, he didn't want to talk. Mckay shrugged, and Daniel followed them out, knowing that Jack couldn't keep him from being curious.
ooooooo
"The insubordination is insanity!" hissed Sheryen, one of the Jaffa who patrolled the fields below the temple.
The Abydonians had not fallen into line, and Jolinar and Sam tried slowly to make that less dangerous for them. Sheryen, one of the most volatile, something which had prompted Sam to promote him for her own safety, was the first obstacle.
"As is my continual tolerance of your behavior," Sam answered, letting one eye glare at him. They stood alone, a few steps off from the nearest path, the Abydonians he had been ready to strike already back at their work by her command. "You do not seem to understand that it would take time and effort to beat them into submission, and given that they are beings who would not appreciate it, the success might not be complete."
"I did not expect you to give up," Sheryen said, bordering on insubordinate, but his surprise genuine.
Sam stood a little closer, staring him down. Her words were quiet and slow. "Do not be foolish and waste all that has been accomplished here. If they think they are worthy beings, treat them so, but do not hold back on their expected workload."
"Jaffa do not degrade ourselves such with slaves," Sheryen answered, spitting the last word out even as his voice sunk to her level.
Sam let her eyes almost drift past him, coldly observing the work of the people he was bound to watch. "Jaffa do what their god demands of them," she said icily, staring him full on in the eyes again. "No matter the costs."
"And if they realize that we are becoming soft?" Sheryen demanded.
Jolinar almost gave Sam a hint that Sheryen was pushing it, but one look had the Jaffa backing down his posture just a little. No, they didn't need to be drastic with him yet. "If you are so incompetent as to let them see your foolishness in believing that this is weakness, then I will have no choice but to remove your position from you."
And Sheryen turned away first, breaking the contact. Submitting himself, maybe with a little doubt about his own opinion being right. It was a first step.
ooooooo
Daniel groaned and rubbed at his eyes. After Jack's nervous behavior at the briefing, which made sense given that no one had any clue what had happened to him after being 'head-sucked' by the alien device, he'd been sent to some down time. And Daniel had been sent to work.
He already had a general understanding of the Alteran language, thanks to the translations he and Dr. Jordan had made using the Asgard as cipher back on the world with the killer trees. Daniel paused at that thought, remembering for the first time in a while that Sam would know the exact designation, but he'd been around Mckay for weeks, and of all the areas of science that were important to Mckay, nomenclature wasn't one of them. And 'killer-tree-planet' was just as functional, in the end. Anyways, while there was so much he didn't understand, basic translation was well within his grasp.
Except translation only worked when you had a context for the results, and Daniel wasn't sure he did. Advanced cultures didn't think of things in terms of "device that sucks heads", nor did they talk about them in terms of a society that couldn't even understand how or why the device distinguished between Teal'c, Mckay, and Jack. If, after all, that ring on the floor had been completely tied to the device.
With that in mind, Daniel knew he needed an intuitive mind for science to guess about the minds of an advanced culture. Mckay was the first on his list, possibly unsurprisingly.
"This is not working," Mckay said from across the desk, enunciating each word clearly. "I don't understand linguistics. I don't care to. You're supposed to tell me what it means, not the other way around."
Daniel groaned again. He downed a gulp of coffee, even though he knew it wouldn't help. "Just—just try to think of your theories about the device, what words might be used to describe them, any words at all."
"It might help if I had theories, if I'd been given enough time to come up with them," Mckay said, looking away from Daniel's notes.
"You always have theories; that's why you work here," Daniel said with a pointed look. "Now come on, Mckay, 'place of our legacy'..."
"All right, what the hell is going on with me?"
Both men jumped as Jack stormed into the lab, arms crossed, eyes alight with fear and anger. Teal'c was close behind.
"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, adjusting his glasses and frowning.
"Well, apparently I have lost the falatus to speak properly," Jack declared. "That wasn't a joke, I didn't mean to say that."
"ColonelO'Neill has several times now used strange words in place of common ones," Teal'c added.
"Oh," Daniel said, his mind spinning. This was odd, weird, but it was something solid. "Okay, so, what was that word you just used?"
"I believe it was falatus," said Teal'c.
"Okay, so fitting with the almost Latin-like structure of Alteran," Daniel mused, making sure he wasn't jumping too quickly to the conclusion, "and that faculatus is Latin for 'ability', I think you're speaking Alteran, Jack."
Jack wasn't looking at him. He stared at the monitor where the circle of symbols was displayed. "Nou ani anquietas."
Daniel blinked. "Wait, what?"
Jack said again, "Nou ani anquietas. Hic qua videum."
A strange worry and excitement filled Daniel. "You're reading that?"
"I don't know, you tell me!" Jack demanded, looking very uncomfortable.
"This has got to mean something," Daniel said, looking to Mckay.
"Okay, okay," said Mckay, snapping his fingers. "So, it's like a translator?"
"Maybe," Daniel said, glancing back to Jack and the monitor. "Yeah, actually, that would make a lot of sense. But why just Jack?"
"That can wait," Mckay said, waving it off. "First we figure out the results, then the why."
"I believe ColonelO'Neill should visit DoctorFrasier again," Teal'c advised.
"That's probably a good idea, Jack," said Daniel. "Especially if we're right." Jack wasn't looking at him, for the second time. "Jack?"
In two short steps, Jack had crossed the floor to Daniel's blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and begun scribbling numbers and lines.
"Wait—whoa," Mckay said. "That's—"
Jack was writing math, of some sort. And without any pause to think, he was just doing it. A few seconds later, he paused.
"So, infirmary," Daniel confirmed, nodding.
Jack, putting the chalk back with a nervous gesture, nodded. He didn't look back as Teal'c led him out of the room.
"That doesn't make any sense," Mckay said, once the room was his and Daniel's again. "Look at that, Jackson—it's a mess."
"Okay, maybe," said Daniel. "I don't really understand normal math, but it's Jack, and he doesn't either as far as I know. So why would he write that?"
"I'm guessing, not a translator," said Mckay. "Unless the Alterans never watched Star Trek and have no clue what a translator is."
"What was that old thing about math being a universal language?" Daniel quipped. Mckay barely gave a sign that he'd heard, and the two went back to work. "Okay, so what did that mean for Jack?"
ooooooo
Daniel knew for sure that time was running short for Jack. First Janet revealed that his brain was operating at a higher rate than normal, then the staff weapon, then the new gate addresses he'd added to the base computer, and now he couldn't even speak except in Alteran.
Or was it Ancient? Daniel had been translating like mad, just as Mckay tried to figure out what Jack was doing with the math and the staff weapon, and apparently the Alterans at some point had called themselves the Ancients. Which nearly blew Daniel's mind, and Dixon, the only one there at the moment of discovery, couldn't understand.
"The Ancient ones, mentioned by the Romans," Daniel said, gesticulating in a wide sweep. "The ones that taught them to build roads. Roads, gates, Stargates, doesn't that make sense?"
"Maybe," Dixon said cautiously. He let the information absorb a few seconds, and Daniel tried to formulate what he could say next. "Whoa—you think they made the Stargates?"
"It could easily be that," Daniel said assuredly. "They definitely have the intelligence—had, I think. That device was their legacy, according to the description. I think Jack downloaded a lot of their knowledge that they left behind."
"Damn," Dixon said, appreciatively.
Daniel only wished the excitement could have stayed. Mckay too, apparently, now that Jack had told him that the math was in base 8, and made so much more sense. But after Janet's announcement that Jack's brain was going to overload with all the data, Daniel was stuck. So was Jack, apparently.
I have to go through the Stargate, he had written, but provided no explanation.
Hammond had finally given permission for Mckay to go back to the original planet and examine the device further. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that from Mckay's point of view he was taking a big risk. With Jack's life at stake, though, none of them questioned the value of that risk.
He came back with almost nothing, and as Daniel monitored Jack's progress, Mckay worried away at the data.
"The Gate Builders?" he burst out, after several minutes of silence. "Are idiots."
Daniel was too worried to find that amusingly ironic. "Hmm?"
"First with the gate, now this—would it hurt to make the mechanics of their devices a little more obvious?" Mckay clicked out of a window on the monitor with more force than the mouse called for. "The science almost disappears in the streamlining. Which is impressive, yes, and I'm sure their egos deserved it, but is absolutely idiotic if this is their 'legacy'!"
"So, nothing yet?" Dixon asked, standing at the door.
Daniel frowned, more at what Jack was doing than anything else. "Where's Teal'c?" he asked.
"With Sha're," Dixon said. "He said he thought he would be better suited there, since neither of them offer anything for the Colonel."
Daniel nodded. Sometimes he hated being the one who was supposed to figure out the answers.
"So, you've got nothing," Dixon repeated, looking away from Daniel.
"This science is way beyond what we know," Mckay said with a sigh. "They understood how the brain works, at least enough to get the information in. If I can't even figure out how they did that, there's no way I can get it out."
"No way," Daniel repeated, stomach still sinking low.
"For being technological geniuses, they left a lot of messes," Mckay added. He paused, becoming distracted. "What's he doing?"
Daniel's focus came back to Jack. "Oh," he said. Jack had the pieces of...something...over the table, and was assembling them in a way that Daniel couldn't quite determine. "He's building something."
Mckay snapped his fingers. "That could be good."
"Right, 'cause he's the smartest one here," Dixon said, catching on.
"That's debatable," Mckay said. "But no, the Ancients could have downloaded something that could solve this—give him the cure and the gift, if it was a gift, though I assume they meant it to be."
"Maybe," said Daniel. Just then, Jack stopped working and grabbed his notepad. The team all glanced at each other, and then Jack handed a note to Daniel and went back to work.
"Are we right?" Mckay asked quickly.
Daniel honestly wasn't sure, but it gave him some hope—Jack was there. "I don't know. It says 'shut up and go away'."
"Oookay," Dixon said. "That's probably a good idea, then."
Sighing, Daniel knew that this was probably the only way. In spite of Mckay's genius, Jack might just be the only one who could save himself.
ooooooo
Things finally reached a head.
"Dr. Jackson!" an airman called, walking past him in the hall. "Colonel O'Neill is missing, along with the device."
"Oh shoot," Daniel muttered. No one, not even Jack maybe, had known what he'd created, just that it was cylindrical and probably a power source, given the materials. But he'd demanded to be left alone again, so Daniel was just going to report to Sha're, make sure she was all right. He'd expected that someone would watch Jack. But apparently not.
"He was last seen headed down to the power grid," the airman added, before running past him up towards the control room.
Daniel had another place to go. Hoping Jack knew anything of what he was doing now, he took the last few halls, darted down a couple flights of stairs, and finally found what he was looking for.
"Jack?" he called, seeing the man with his device by the main grid.
"Euge," Jack said without looking at him.
"Good?" Daniel asked, translating.
"Euge."
Daniel was not at all so sure. "Jack, I don't know if this is a good thing." He didn't turn around. "You don't understand me anymore, do you?" It was a rhetorical question, and Daniel just rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
Jack had the device attached, roughly, to the main power. With a switch, he flipped it on, and it began to both hum and glow. Daniel should have been worried, but at this point, he couldn't help but wonder—Jack hadn't done anything that turned out bad so far. This might prove to be similar.
Something compelled Jack, and he ignored Daniel as he ran past. Daniel, heart in a knot but trusting that the Ancients didn't seem to be a malicious race, followed.
"There you are!" called Mckay as they entered the control room. "Do you know what he did?"
"Hooked up some sort of energy device," Daniel said, glancing out the window. The Stargate was spinning, several chevrons already locked. Jack just stood, staring.
"It just started dialing on its own," said Dixon.
"We need to stop this," said Hammond. "Can we turn off the power?"
"Well, yes," said Mckay. "But that may not be a wise choice, given that we have no idea how much energy is being—the gate could overload."
Daniel looked to Jack, but there was nothing to read in his face. Still, though, he wasn't getting a bad feeling yet. "Sir, Jack hasn't done us any harm yet," he said, turning to Hammond. "Can't we trust him on this?"
"Chevron seven..." Dixon said.
"Not encoded," Mckay said, a bit of awe in his tone.
Daniel turned to him. "What?"
"It's dialing another symbol," said Mckay. "And locking. What could possibly—whoa, whoa, whoa!"
Daniel leaned in over the computer, as Mckay swiftly brought up the screen that tracked the address of the gate. "Is that another galaxy?" he asked.
"Yes, yes it is," said Mckay, eyes wide. "And of course, that would require energy, plus another point for distance calculation."
Daniel quickly turned to Hammond, who looked unsure. He decided to let his theory loose; at this point, there was no time for extra thought. "Sir, Jack said he needed to go through the gate earlier, but he didn't say why. Maybe all that he's been doing has been for this purpose—maybe it's what he needs to do."
"You don't know that," said Hammond.
Daniel glanced over to where Jack was heading out of the control room. "Well, I don't have time to know that. Sir, I don't think we have much of a choice."
One of the guards had stopped Jack in his tracks. Hammond nodded, and they let Jack past. Teal'c was waiting in the gate room, staff in hand.
"We think he needs to go through the gate, Teal'c," Daniel called as they followed Jack down.
"Then I will go with him," Teal'c said.
Daniel put up a hand, watching Jack approach the ramp and the shimmering wormhole. "I think he needs to do this alone," he said.
"This had better be the right thing to do," muttered Hammond.
"Wait, without a GDO, he can't come back," said Dixon suddenly.
Daniel looked back at Jack. He stopped, looking Daniel straight in the eye. "He knows he may not be able to come back," said Daniel. There was nothing else to do but take the gamble.
SG-1 and Hammond stood in the gate room, and Daniel watched as Jack walked through the gate to a completely unknown destination.
"We've lost the traveler!" called a gate tech from the control room.
"Godspeed," sighed Hammond.
Daniel wondered if this had been what it was like for Jack, leaving Daniel on Abydos. He hoped it would be a better outcome.