AU: General Jack O'Neill has an interesting first day as commander of the SGC until he receives a phone call he didn't want to get...
Chapter 44: Jack Jack Attack
Monday, 5th July 2004 – Stargate Command – General Jack O'Neill
The day had started with the kind of joviality expected when someone returns after being lost for so long. Back slaps, smiling faces, handshakes, and the like. Not even the emergency phone call from some official at NASA asking for an explanation on an apparent UFO seen streaking past Saturn the week before managed to dampen my spirits. Until the inevitable question was raised.
Where is General Carter?
Dixon had been the first to ask because he was keen to hand the reins back. The Goa'uld diplomatic party had not arrived when Doctor Weir – Elizabeth – expected, and he was only too happy to not be the ranking officer when they did finally show up, and I found myself wondering how different it had been on Sam's first run through.
Then Elizabeth asked.
After that, the question seemed to repeat like a set of dominoes falling. Walter, Siler, Reynolds, Felger…
I had been able to hold my gaze firm and keep everything inside when they asked the question because I had practiced keeping it together while saying nothing, so that I didn't affect everyone's mental state with the dark cloud that seemed to manifest whenever I let the pain of her loss take hold. It seemed that the download had some lingering effects when I allowed my emotions to surface.
And take over they had. For 36 hours. Where pain and grief collided with happiness and elation creating a storm of emotion that Samantha had to deal with on a whim. From a raging storm of choking grey black clouded with anger at Fifth and myself right through to the happiness of being home and the desire I felt when I looked at my wife pregnant with our child – Sam's and mine – and the bright golden glow that filled the room in the wake of those feelings.
My inability to keep it under control in those first hours had been so great that George contacted Thor to arrange for us to beam to the Daniel Jackson where my promotion ceremony had been as swift and as informal as they could make it. No national anthems, no audience, just the swearing in speech and my response. George pinning my stars on in Thor's presence. All done before morning coffee before we beamed back to the SGC.
The announcement of Sam's death by George in the decorated gate room moments before introducing them to me as their new base commander caused a hushed din of disbelief and sadness to fill the room making it even harder for me to keep things under control. Not even Charlie's official promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and instalment as SG-1's permanent new team leader lightened the mood.
Even though she had been General for two weeks with less than one of those present on base, she had become as beloved by everyone who had the privilege of working with her. The brasses plan for Sam to stay a month had blown up in their faces all because of their hidden agenda for John. They reactivated her for a month and gave him three weeks to report for duty. Only they underestimated the determination of the woman they put in charge. They expected her to stay put and ask no questions.
As if.
Carter had never been one to blindly follow orders, not even as a Captain in the newly minted SG-1. Our first argument being on the ground at Avnil when she refused to leave the planet and insisted on being the one to confront Jonas.
"It's your chair now, son." The familiar Texan twang of George Hammond said from the doorway leading onto the briefing room as I leaned against the cupboard just looking at the desk.
"I know." I replied listlessly as I stared at the deep red of the leather. I didn't have to wonder if it was comfortable. I had been George's 2IC long enough to have sat in it from time to time. Except now that my hopes and dreams for Carter had come true, it felt wrong for me to be here when she wasn't. My grief wasn't as profound as when I lost my Major, but I still felt her loss keenly. "It feels wrong to be here, in her place. She earned this spot." I added while clenching my fists because I could feel the encroaching shadow making itself known.
"So have you." He responded earning a snorting sigh of dismissal from me.
"What… by being frozen for four months." I replied, casually ignoring everything that I had endured which earned me the position. I had just been doing my job, nothing more. Sam had been flung into this life by accident. She deserved to sit in that chair.
"All we can do now is honour her memory by moving on and finishing the job. For both of them." George said with a circumspect breath.
"Did you know?" I asked without looking in his direction because he knew damned well what I was talking about. The whole reason why she came chasing me early. Well… earlier, based on the information gleaned from her by Daniel, Teal'c, John, Jacob and to some respect Charlie. Three of them piecing together the information they had on our journey home while I kept a watch on John. SG-1 and Samantha were on round the clock suicide watch for the kid since we returned, none of us convinced he wouldn't try anything stupid since his attempts to reset our timeline failed.
When he didn't answer, I turned and looked at my former CO, an action which made him take half a step back. If he hadn't been as formidable as I knew him to be, he would have crossed himself.
"Did you? Sir." I said, adding the honorific for old times' sake.
"To some respect, yes. But nothing like what was in that letter, son. They had always planned for him to join the SGC. Never Area 51 and never as…" He disagreed vehemently without giving a voice to the atrocities revealed in her letter to me. A letter that I had flung at George after my promotion before we left the Daniel Jackson.
"Join the SGC. Join the…" I took a deep shuddering breath and clenched my fist until my untrimmed nails threatened to break the skin of my palm. "He just wanted to fly." I ended as I opened my hands to find several half-moon shaped indents. It seemed that not everything was dormant in stasis. My hair was a little greyer, and my nails a little longer.
"That was the agreement, son. The Academy, flight school, then the SGC. At least, that was the agreement I brokered. The early acceptance was… unexpected." George admitted. "That other stuff…" His voice petered out.
"Why would she lie? Sam Carter was an exemplary human being. She tried to tell her me and I wouldn't listen. And now she's dead and John…" I choked out a sick sounding laugh, "…John hasn't risen from his bed in days. Not even Grace can rouse him, which is saying something." I growled, the anger growing once again.
"As the SGC Commander, it's your decision when he reports here." He said and I knew by his tone that if I didn't bring him here, that he would not be safe. George Hammond had experienced first-hand the depths that certain bureaucrats would delve to get what they wanted. "I'll leave you now." He added, then turned and left my office silently.
My office. With my chair.
Finally, I left my position against the shelves, walked around the desk and tentatively took my seat. The chair was still just as soft, just as comfortable but now it was almost as if it were too big. That I didn't have what it took to fill the role that this chair required.
Even though the desk is sparse, with nothing but a neat column of paper, and an empty out tray, the space still felt like hers.
The one thing that was different was the F4 Phantom sitting in the right corner beside the red phone, its wing obviously reglued where it came away. Out of habit, my hands found the small aircraft, meticulously painted and stickered with the USAF insignia that I had built for Merrin. Her query about why one would construct such an illogical object being the reason why I built it for her in the first place. It couldn't fly or defend anything, so why make it. Despite my explanation and her eventual understanding, it never went home with her.
Turning it in my hands as I did so often when visiting the General, I thought back to that day where I had played hooky with girl not much older than my son when he died and the near end to my career it caused. The General never said a word when I placed it on his shelf the day that Merrin was sent home, its purpose to remind him every day that his decision essentially ended the life of a girl. We never discussed it again though my hands always found the plastic aircraft every time I visited for longer than a few minutes. I couldn't help but wonder why Sam had it on her desk rather than the bookshelf. As I ran my fingers across the underside of the wings, something moved, so I turned the jet over to find a small rolled up piece of paper jammed between the landing gear and wheels. Pulling it out, I carefully unrolled it to find Sam's familiar scrawl in pencil.
'Sir. All kids deserve fun, even if they used to be an old Colonel. Time to play hooky. Carter.'
The words hit me harder than I was expecting, and not the comment about my clone – and by extension me – being 'old', especially not when she was older than me. There were no between the lines in her message. Nothing to decipher. She wanted me to get the kid out of dodge. Which meant she didn't trust that they – whomever 'they' were – weren't going to come after him. By my calculation, I had a week to make that happen and I knew just what to do.
Even though she wasn't completely ready. I knew that even if a small part of her survived, she would understand why I didn't want to take the chance. She thought I could keep him safe, but the truth was, she had a much better chance of that.
The sound of the klaxons stole my attention from the note and the small grey aircraft moments before Walter's announcement of an unscheduled activation that we had been expecting for days. Between Daniel and Dr Weir, they managed to convince Dixon that Sam's order to kill the Goa'uld diplomatic party on sight was a bad idea.
They weren't wrong.
As I stood and made my way to the control room, I considered not opening the iris. It would solve three problems and create an even bigger one. If that problem didn't start with a B and sound like a child's plaything, I would seriously consider it. Unfortunately, aside from being someone I wanted to kick, or failing that, bounce off a wall, Ba'al was a cunning and relentless son of a bitch… and she really had been a bitch. I met her, so I should know. The last thing we needed was to bolster his ego and his Jaffa army with the troop remnants of three other System Lords.
"Open the iris." I ordered Walter as I adjusted the cuffs then the collar of the horse blanket I was forced to wear.
That was one of the first things I would change since there was no way on God's green Earth that I would be wearing this every day regardless of how much Samantha liked me wearing it. A small smile graced my face when I remembered Major Sam's reaction one night during our magical three-week fling when I wore it just for her. If I had of known, I'd have worn it to work more often.
"Yes, Sir." Walter replied, then extended his hand to cover the imprint reader that Carter fashioned a few years ago.
"Is it them?" Daniel asked as he appeared from behind me.
"Yes, Sir." Walter replied on my behalf as the man who had received the communique from Alpha site a few hours ago with the time of their arrival.
"Put me down for $20 on five minutes, Sergeant." I requested as I placed my cover on my head and turned to walk down the stairs.
"Yes, Sir. I have $20 says you only need three minutes, General." He replied as I hopped down the two steps with a broad smile on my face and a happy appreciation for the levity that George created during his reign despite the numerous regulations we broke on a daily basis.
"You're on Sergeant." I said just before walking around the corner, pressing the few buttons on my watch to select the stopwatch function.
"Ye gods!" Daniel muttered from behind me making the smile even broader.
As I strolled into the Gate Room, I was greeted by three snakeheads and one Jaffa walking down the ramp seeing the concrete jungle with such an air of superiority that my uniform didn't feel as blue as it was. Blue was superior, or so Bill Lee explained one fine day when I gave him a conversational string to chase… and something about purple being epic. Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about but for some reason that conversation stuck with me.
The three of them stared agog. With a smile, I thumbed the start button on the timer.
"You!" Yu said and I resisted pointing out the double entendre or was it perhaps illeism. Daniel would be able to tell me if he weren't grinding his teeth with pure frustration from his position behind me.
"No. I'm Jack, you are Yu." I replied because not pointing it out was one thing, making fun of it was something entirely different.
"We were informed of your death." Camulus stated cautiously while looking me up and down as if trying to determine my realism.
"Yeah well, it didn't stick. I got bored." I replied, wondering how that little piece of fake news managed to get circulated.
"Perhaps you displeased your god." Amaterasu said with a look of pure distaste down the lines of her long thin nose.
"Perhaps. Which one of you is that exactly? I stopped counting after I killed the sixth – or was it the seventh – god who tried curtailing me. Though I think we are up to fifteen now."
"Fourteen." Daniel muttered making me look over my shoulder and raise my eyebrows in a silent question. "Isis was already dead." He added.
"Ah." I turned back to the assembled baddies. "My esteemed colleague informs me it is actually fourteen." I corrected with a smug smile. The look she gave me was easily nine parts condescension and one part contempt, which meant the same thing. Though I noted that neither of them attempted to claim me as their subject.
"We are here to discuss a peace treaty." She replied, the sneer of disgust still etched on the face of the human she stole however many years ago.
"Sure." I agreed wholehearted, then clapped my hands together. "You release all the humans across the galaxy, go back to where you came from, and we will leave you in peace. Deal?" I offered immediately hearing Daniel sigh audibly from behind me.
"No deal. We are your..."
"Uh-uh-uh… careful." I waggled my finger from side to side at Amaterasu without letting her finish the same diatribe we had been listening to for years. "Fourteen remember, we can easily make that seventeen."
"Weak fools." Yu spat. "No deal!"
"OK. How about you reveal your true form to your faithful flocks. Then see how long they stay loyal." I counteroffered because perhaps my first offer was a little too much for these narcissistic parasites to accept.
"Insolence!" Amaterasu growled then threateningly held up her ribbon device in my direction.
"Ah-ah-ah…" I replied with a waggle of my finger again knowing it would make her even angrier, "Big nasty space glow bugs… remember?" I reminded them then took a surreptitious glance of my watch seeing it tick up to one minute and forty-six seconds.
"We do not believe you have such a weapon." Camulus countered calmly, his eyes casting over the Japanese pseudo goddess as she brought herself back under control.
"Do ya want to find out?" I tested their resolve a little further even though I had no idea if I could ever make the weapon work again.
"Perhaps you would show us the weapon." Camulus suggested, his hands folding together in front of him. "As a show of… cooperation between us."
Although I knew I should have responded diplomatically and without any stupid jokes or comments. Unfortunately the part of my brain that handled initial reactions did not get the memo and I snorted out a condescending trumpet of laughter at the mere suggestion that I would be showing them anything let alone the weapon we used to kick their ass. Camulus' face contorted unpleasantly, though he continued.
"We seek an alliance against Ba'al." He said and immediately, my face dropped, and I returned to all business at the mere mention of the asshole who made my life a living hell for years after my holiday in his house of tricks.
"You mean you want us to kill him for you." I growled in his direction. He straightened a little and flicked his eyes to Amaterasu, then back to me. Looking at her, I saw a momentary lapse of carefulness, an admission in her eyes that she couldn't hide. A sudden flash of realisation speared through my brain unbidden, and I knew exactly what their game was here. Ba'al was nearby. He was waiting for them to report the location of the weapon so that he could seize it or destroy it. Looking back at Camulus just in time to see him smirk and nod in her direction was the only notice I received of their deception. Amaterasu's hand came back up, the red centre of her karakesh glowing as time seemed to slow around me, or rather I could see everything that was happening in a step-by-step sequence.
"J-aaa-ckkkk…" Daniel called out, my name sounding long and drawn out as the karakesh let loose its fatal beam so slowly that I merely side stepped the red slash of light, watching as it travelled past my body and towards the concrete wall.
Turning back towards the primped goa'uld, I saw the angry sneer on her face highlighting her complete distain for these proceedings. Then all at once, time returned to normal, or rather whatever it was that gave me the stepped opportunity to avoid injury dissipated, the sound of the blast hitting the wall echoing around the room.
"How?" Amaterasu howled angrily as she aimed her ribbon device once again. Rather than let her lay waste to this base, I surged forward with a large step.
"Praesido!" The word came out without any conscious thought as I flung my hands towards her in a sweeping arc, creating a shield of golden light just as she fired a second time, the shield absorbing the red flash, dissipating its energy across the surface. Dropping the shield, I stepped forward again, my hand reaching out to grip the soft skin of her throat just as the Astria Porta came to life with nothing more than a wave of my free hand.
"Leave. You are not welcome here." I growled at the woman wearing fear across her face then shoved her backwards towards Yu and Camulus, her robes singed and smoking in places. All three of them turned as one and scrambled through the gate.
"What was that?" I turned to find Daniel looking at me with worry etched in his face.
"I dunno, Space Monkey." I replied, then looked at my hands back and front to find not an ounce of burnt skin or other damage before casting my eyes back to Daniel knowing that my face wore a similar mask of concern that his did.
"Did you know you could do that?" He asked, then tentatively – almost cautiously – put his hand on my shoulder. All I could do was shake my head and look at my hands again. It had been surreal to be able to see everything play out and react in such a way that sent the Goa'uld running.
And it was dangerous. If I couldn't control this, then I could become a liability rather than an asset.
"Sir! Lieutenant Colonel Kawalsky is on the line." Walter called out over the intercom making me look up towards the control room to see my Chief Master Sergeant wearing a veil of concern. Except it wasn't concern for what he witnessed. It was something else.
Striding with purpose and taking the steps to the control room in two large paces, I reached the outstretched arm of Walter, retrieving the receiver from his hand.
"O'Neill."
"Jack. Sir! It's John. He needs a medic." Charlie said down the line while I could hear Samantha's frantic demands in the background of the phone call.
"Hang tight. Walter." I said snapping my fingers in his direction, though his fingers were already clasped around the Asgard communication device we kept in the control room.
"On it, Sir!" He responded quickly as he handed me the smooth stone.
"Thor! You there, buddy?" I asked into the device as I turned and flew up the stairs intent on leaving my cover and jacket behind. "Dammit John." I muttered, "Why couldn't you wait. Just one more day." The curse disappearing along with me, my cover and my jacket in a sea of white light.