Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)

Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course

AN: As always, what you don't see took place the same way that it did originally

AN 2: Thanks are due to Elgin for volunteering a few interesting suggestions about the Scoobies' activities in this universe; hope you like what we've come up with so far when the time comes for those questions to be answered

The Ghost in the Team

As Sam sat in the interrogation room alongside Spike- getting them to agree to his presence had been difficult at first, but when Sam had pointed out that she and Spike were both in the same position and weren't likely to tell anyone outside the SGC what was happening to them anyway they'd conceded to her request-, she had to wonder who she'd end up talking to when the base commander finally came to meet her; would it be someone she knew in some other role, or would it be a complete stranger?

As long as it wasn't this world's General Bauer or some variation on Frank Simmons, she supposed that she could cope with anyone else they might have posted into this role over the years, but that still left a great deal of leeway for things to go wrong; she still didn't even know where this world had diverged from her own...

Then the door opened and a familiar form walked into the room alongside Major Lorne, leaving Sam feeling like she was about to collapse from relief; even if he wasn't the man she knew, at least this man was familiar to her.

"General Hammond!" she said, automatically getting to her feet.

"Colonel," Hammond replied, his gaze moving curiously over to where Spike stood in corner before he settled for giving the vampire a brief nod.

"You're in command here?" Sam continued, grateful for some additional evidence of where this world and hers had diverged; so far it looked like anything that happened before they found Atlantis was at least provisionally intact, but after that she wouldn't like to make any more guesses without more information.

"That's right," Hammond replied, his tone giving no indication about how he felt about that last statement.

"I'm sorry, sir," she added, suddenly realising how she must have sounded; if he didn't know the context of the query, it might have sounded like she was implying that he shouldn't be here. "It's just a little strange; the General Hammond I know is retired from active service."

"Well then, he's a lucky man," Hammond said, smiling slightly at her before he indicated the chair that she'd just vacated. "Please, sit."

As Sam sat back down in her chair while Lorne took one of the chairs opposite her, Hammond glanced over at Spike in a pointed manner, prompting the vampire to role his eyes and walk over to take the other chair on Sam's side of the desk; he might be comfortable standing, but antagonising the boss of this place probably wouldn't get them anywhere as far as trying to get home was concerned.

"I know this must be difficult for you, Colonel, Mr... Spike," Hammond said, looking slightly sceptically at the vampire before he continued (Sam briefly hoped that this General Hammond hadn't managed to find anything out about Spike's counterpart in this world, assuming that Spike existed over here; so far she'd been able to pass Spike's initial reaction to his now-solid body by explaining that he'd fallen victim to a strange experiment in her world that had only been reversed when he came to this one, but it was only a matter of time before Spike found himself in a situation where his vampire status would have to be revealed, even if people didn't question how someone with his attitude and appearance could have been hired to join the SGC under normal circumstances, to say nothing of why he would have been involved in an experiment dressed like that). "It's difficult for us as well. In fact, the timing couldn't be worse."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"Three weeks ago, the Ori attempted an attack on Earth," Major Lorne explained.

"And you survived it?" Spike said, looking slightly incredulously at the two men, clearly remembering what he'd seen the Ori ships do during their last encounter. "I mean, OK, I did manage to save Dakara from one of their ships back home, but that was only due to a very lucky fluke..."

"His intangibility meant that he was able to take out the ship's pilot without them being able to hurt him in return when he ended up on board the attacking vessel; it's... complicated," Sam said, noting Hammond and Lorne's contemplative expressions as they looked at Spike; she didn't think that either of the men she knew would have tried to use Spike against his will, but it would still be best to make sure that they knew they couldn't expect Spike to pull off a similar feat here.

"I... see," Hammond said, looking between the two in slight confusion- Sam doubted anyone without her experience with this man's counterpart could have seen it- before he continued. "We... weren't that fortunate here, anyway; we fought the single ship they sent after us off with the Ancient chair, but our ZPM was nearly depleted in the process."

"That's why our Major Carter was running that experiment," Lorne explained. "She was trying to bolster our power reserves with captured energy from other universes."

"And, of course, you only have the one ZPM, because you've never been able to find records of new ones in Atlantis..." Sam said, nodding in understanding (Their ZPM resources from Atlantis might be limited, but what they'd discovered in the city's databanks had at least helped them improve the naquadah generator's output levels to a certain degree).

The looks that Hammond and Lorne exchanged at that comment at least confirmed that her provisional theory about this timeline's divergence point was correct; whatever had taken place had happened before they had discovered Atlantis.

"Atlantis," Major Lorne said, looking curiously at her. "You've mentioned them before; where is that?"

"It's a city of the Ancients in the Pegasus Galaxy," Sam said (She contemplated and rejected the idea of mentioning the recent handover of the city to the crew of the Tria; she doubted this Earth was in any position to attempt that kind of rescue, even if there was any chance of them coming with a convincing argument to persuade the Tria crew to help them on Earth rather than just re-establishing themselves in Atlantis). "In my reality, we have an international contingent there."

"I don't know about your reality, Colonel, but in this world, there isn't much in the way of international cooperation," Hammond said, his tone and expression grim as he looked solemnly at her. "Three years ago, the Goa'uld system lord Anubis launched an attack on Earth. We had no choice but to reveal the existence of the Stargate program to the world."

Sam tried not to show her relief that her theory about when this world had diverged from hers had been correct, but that relief quickly faded as she processed what she'd just learned.

It was possible that Anubis had just decided to attack this Earth earlier than he had back in her world, but since Lorne had mentioned Mitchell being shot down during a fight in Antarctica, the obvious explanation was that, in this reality, Anubis's attack on Earth while she and the rest of SG-1 had tried to acquire their first ZPM using the Ancient knowledge that Jack had downloaded into his mind hadn't gone according to plan. Either they'd been too late getting back or something else had done wrong, but the end result was fairly clear; they hadn't arrived back in time to keep Anubis's attack on Earth contained to a degree that would have allowed them to deny that anything had happened in the aftermath, and things hadn't gone well.

If they'd been too late getting back to Earth in this world...

Somehow, she wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Jack O'Neill of this world had died after they'd defeated Anubis- or at least destroyed his ship- in this reality; he'd been on the brink of dying from the Ancient knowledge he'd downloaded before they managed to put him into stasis, and if it had taken too long for them to get back, he'd probably have collapsed before they could get him into the pods...

"People panicked," Lorne continued, bringing Sam's attention back to the present, his tone grim as he looked at her. "There was rioting in the streets. The President had to declare martial law."

"The diplomatic fallout was even worse," Hammond said, after giving Sam a moment of silence to process that information (A part of her wanted to believe that things would have improved since then, but she wouldn't like to count on it if this reality had faced anything like the dangers she'd encountered back in her world). "You can imagine how the world's governments reacted when they realized the kind of technology being employed by the United States military."

"We barely got the chair out of Antarctica before the Russians moved in," Lorne said.

"Now it's at Area 51," Hammond said, his voice low and reflective as he looked firmly at Sam. "But it isn't going to do us much good unless we can find a way to power it. And that's where you come in."

"You want me to complete your Carter's research," Sam said, as understanding dawned on her.

"Major Lorne tells me you've been conducting similar research in your own universe," Hammond said.

"Well, yes sir," Sam replied; she thought about clarifying that she'd only played a peripheral role in the experiments back in her world, but this wasn't the time to argue about the smaller details like that. "But, with all due respect, we're facing a very real threat in my universe; I need to start thinking about how Spike and I are going to get back there."

"Let's say we agreed to help you get back, and gave you full access to the resources of this base," Hammond said, looking contemplatively at her. "How long would it take?"

"I don't know," Sam replied with an awkward shrug, wishing that she had a better answer. "I don't even have a working theory yet."

"Well, are we talking weeks?" Hammond asked, shrugging slightly as he looked at her. "Or maybe even months?"

"Yeah, it's possible," Sam confirmed; if this Hammond knew her other self as well as the Hammond of her universe knew her, trying to lie wouldn't get her anywhere useful. "That's why I need to get started right away."

"I'm sorry, Colonel, but the fact is, we don't have that kind of time," Hammond replied, shaking his head slightly. "Our intelligence indicates that having consolidated their position in this part of the galaxy, the Ori are assembling a fleet for a full scale attack on Earth. We expect them within five days."

A fleet? Spike thought, looking over at Sam in shock.

He was aware that 'fleet' could mean anything in this situation- given how big those Ori things were, it wouldn't take that many ships to bring together enough firepower to count as a fleet by anyone's standards even if they didn't have much in the way of numbers-, but the implications of a statement like that were not encouraging...

He thought it was probably safe to say that they weren't going to be getting home any time soon with a threat like that.

"Damnit..." Sam muttered as she slammed another pad of paper down on the desk in front of her, looking in exasperation up at the ceiling.

"Things OK, Sammy?" Spike asked, looking curiously over at the astrophysicist. Given that nobody had yet asked what Spike's specific role was back in her world, Sam had managed to bluff Hammond and Lorne into allowing Spike to help her analyse her other self's work by claiming that he'd been helping her in her research back in her reality in order to ensure that they weren't kept apart- given the obviously tense situation in this reality and the potentially unknown agenda of the rest of this world's SGC, neither of them felt comfortable being split up unless they had to be-, but they'd both known before they started this research that Spike's main goal at this point would have been to find what he could about the other Sam's life in her office while Sam looked over her counterpart's work, even if he hadn't found much of interest at this point.

"Not really," Sam sighed, shaking her head in exasperation as she looked at the papers in front of her. "The other me at least kept her work in the same filing system that I use- I've encountered some alternate versions of myself who never even joined the military; I'd probably never know enough about how their minds work to pull this off if I was dealing with them-, so I can follow her line of reasoning most of the time, but so much of this is branching out into areas that I haven't really considered myself that I'm not sure if I'll ever manage to catch up before the Ori get here..."

"Didn't you design those 'naquadah generator' things I heard about?" Spike asked, sitting down opposite Sam and looking curiously at her. "I mean, OK, from what I heard you got the idea from another planet, but maybe you could modify-"

"There's only so much that I can do with those generators before the power being generated surpasses design safety limits; it took five years for me to perfect the second generation of naquadah generator, it took two of them operating in a state of barely-controlled overload to serve as any kind of substitute for just one ZPM, which is what we're looking for here, and even then we only had enough power for a few moments before they burned out," Sam explained, shaking her head in frustration as she stared at the equations before her. "I helped the team we assigned to Atlantis draw up some of the final drafts of this theory back in our world, but cross-dimensional theory isn't something I've covered on my own, and I can't recall every detail of everything we learned from Atlantis that I used to improve my research; every problem we've had involving this kind of situation back home always gave me access to additional resources that we just don't have right now..."

"Ah," Spike said, sighing in frustration as he opened a drawer in the other Sam's desk, only for his eyes to widen and a slight smile to spread across his face as he looked at the contents. "Well, I'll be..."

"What?" Sam asked, looking up at him with a slightly eager curiosity. "Good news?"

"Just... something interesting; not what you're looking for, anyway," Spike said, picking up the object in question and showing it to Sam. She was only partly surprised to see that it was a CD- she'd been known to keep a couple of CDs available if she ever wanted to relax while working; if the music wasn't too loud, it could help her relax-, but she didn't recall any musician named 'Daniel 'Oz'' back in their reality.

"You know him?" she asked, taking the disc container from Spike and examining it.

"Manner of speaking," Spike replied with a shrug. "I nearly ate his girlfriend a couple of times before I got the chip."

"Oh," Sam said, uncertain what else she could say in response to that kind of statement; given when his encounters with Daniel 'Oz'- it was probably a shortened form of his surname or something like that- would have taken place, she could hardly fault Spike for acting like any other vampire when he'd had no reason to be anything but another vampire...

"He was an associate of those... vampire hunters you mentioned?" she asked at last, looking curiously at him.

"Joined the team during my first year in Sunnydale- didn't actually meet him much, though-; dude was also a werewolf," her strange new teammate added.

"A werewolf?" Sam repeated, looking at the man on the cover of the case in her hands in shock.

Spike had mentioned that werewolves existed, and it wasn't like she couldn't work them into her world-view with greater ease than she could accept vampires- the need for one werewolf to bite another to create more of its kind certainly suggested the existence of some kind of virus, and the moon's gravitational pull could have kind of impact on the water in the human body that triggered the mutation-, but knowing about them as a concept and knowing that the man she was now looking at was one of them...

"They kept him locked up in a cage on the full moon for the first couple of years that it happened- best way to stop him hurting anyone, really-, but last I heard he'd gone off to Tibet to make contact with some bunch of shamans to learn how to control the wolf rather than just locking it up after he had a fling with this female 'wolf who'd come to town," Spike said, shrugging casually as he studied the CD. "Heard that he came back for a brief visit but left when it turned out Red could still bring out the beast in him, and I didn't exactly meet him at that point so I don't know where he went next anyway, but timing-wise it would've been just a few months before this world stopped being ours..."

"I... see..." Sam said, nodding slightly uncertainly as she took the CD from Spike, studying it for a few moments before she looked back at the vampire. "Well, I'm no expert on this field, but judging by the lack of copyright information here, and given the basic nature of the discs themselves, he must privately distribute it; if society's in the kind of shape General Hammond implied, he probably has to design the CDs and everything else himself..."

"Fits what I heard 'bout him, anyway; guy was apparently a bit of a brain as well as a musician- guitar-player in his spare time for some local group-, even if he didn't really apply himself to his tests," Spike said, shrugging slightly.

"Apply..." Sam repeated, a suddenly thoughtful expression on her face as she looked over at Spike, a smile slowly but surely spreading across her face as she looked at him. "That's it!"

"What's it?" Spike asked.

"I think I have an idea," Sam said, standing up and pushing the papers she'd just been studying to the side. "Working out my other self's equations in the time we've got would take too long and there's no guarantee it would work anyway, but we do have the technology that we've been working on back in our reality; Merlin's device."

"Uh... you're saying we put the SGC out of phase?" Spike asked, looking uncertainly at her. "I get that I don't know much about this kind of fighting, but if the Ori take over the rest of the planet-"

"Which is why we don't put the SGC out of phase; we put Earth out of phase," Sam said, smiling at Spike.

The vampire didn't even bother hiding the shocked expression on his face at that suggestion.

"Earth?" he repeated. "We turn the entire sodding planetintangible?"

"Why not?" Sam asked with a casual shrug. "I've already been working on expanding the range of the device; all I need to do is work out how much power we'll need to do it- it shouldn't be that much; the drone-chair requires a constant amount of activity while the device generally operates at a lower power level except when it's being turned on and off-, and it should be possible..."

"In the time we've got?" Spike asked.

"It's better than the alternative," Sam replied resolutely. "At least this uses technology I already understand."

It might only be a temporary solution to the Ori threat facing this world, but at least she could buy them more time to find additional resources and contacts to continue the fight if they could convince the Ori that this Earth wasn't a threat...