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The whole damn thing was ridiculous. Barbaric. Torturous. Oh, he hated the dress blues enough as it was but combined with the penetrating glare of the lights, he was ready to tear the damn things off and parade right in front of the cameras in his Homer Simpson boxer shorts. Sweat was pooling in the back of his collar.
He fought the urge to roll his eyes again.
“Not good for the cameras, Jack!” Hank had joked.
He should have fired him. Even better, he should have the guy standing here. Ba’al’s stupidest clone would have made a more entertaining inquisitor. Why him?
“You have a face people trust.” Cassie.
“Well, you’re probably the most qualified for the job. If you look at it from their perspective…” Daniel.
“Sucks to be you...Sir.” Cameron.
“The Jaffa High Council has placed their confidence in you for this task, General O’Neill.” No pressure, Teal’c!
“Break an arm, General! Wait, do you think they’d want to interview me too? I am an alien, after all. A fine specimen. Just ask Daniel. One time when I went to the grocery store the kind man at the counter told me I have a face for radio and a voice for television… are you going on radio or television?” Vala.
“I’ve got enough on my damn plate, General. You’re the only that’s saved everyone’s asses. Besides, you’ve got one of those faces. One that says ‘I punched an alien for the U.S.A’. They’ll eat it up.” The President.
But, as always, only one opinion mattered. “They should hear it from us, Jack. Someone who was there. Not someone who wants the glory. Someone who’s had to pick up that red phone, someone who’s had to seal off the iris to save a whole planet. Someone’s who’s been on the ground, buried under it. It has to be you.”
Oh god, and that smile.
“Besides,” that Samantha Carter grin, “your ass does look good in your dress blues.”
The woman was rarely wrong. However, he should have known that the entirety of SG-1 would be called away on an urgent mission and the esteemed Colonel Carter would be halfway across the galaxy when General Jack O’Neill was doing the media circus.
Last man standing.
“Isn’t that what declassification means, General O’Neill?”
He snapped back to the present dilemma. This idiot in front of him. The idiot next to him. Oh, and those idiots behind the cameras. His idiot I.O.A babysitter and the other brass to the left. Damage control. Not rolling his eyes. Simpsons boxer shorts.
“Declassification,” he said slowly, fearing the average idiot was also tuning into whatever stupid channels were broadcasting this press conference might miss what he was about to say, “means that the Stargate Program and subsequently, information regarding the generalised mission of the Stargate Program have now been revealed to the public. Specific missions are still highly classified and property of the…”
Another camera flashed in the back and he tried to remember why this was so important.
“When will the Stargate Program become available to the public?”
“Are there plans to involve other nations into the I.O.A?”
“Will the program be privatised?”
“Specific missions must be released into the public domain, how else can the public determine the effectiveness of these so-called SG teams?”
Well, he knew that it wouldn’t take too long to piss him off. “These ‘so-called’ SG teams have single-handedly saved the entire planet. All missions have adequate reviews and the most impressively excessive amounts of paperwork, which I loved to complete, by the way. Let’s just say that if that any of the SG teams screwed up, you’d know about it already.”
“General O’Neill,” an annoyingly authoritative voice cut in. “You can’t expect any of us to just take it at face value that the entirety of Stargate Command-- an organisation that has existed solely to hide the existence of a teleportation device that takes people to other planets-- wouldn’t have at least a few corrupt individuals? The public has a right to know.”
Oh, the eye rolls were coming now. And the anger. The anger was there too.
There was a cheer amongst the audience, juxtaposed by the pressed lips and soft grunts from the brass on the left.
One of the higher-ups was shaking his head at Jack. God, he hated politics. Politics and the media were a goddamn nightmare. He thought back to the good old days when all he had to worry about was Apophis or whether Ba’al was going to torture him again. That had been preferable to this media circus.
“The I.O.A,” he began, teeth gritted and forehead scrunched, “have had an extremely detailed vetting process.” That was diplomatic, right?
One of the red-faced men at the front scoffed and Jack was sure he was about to explode himself. “Who’s to say they aren’t biased?”
“Y’know, the ‘I’ does stand for independent,” Jack pointed out gruffly.
Oh good, the I.O.A babysitter was cringing now too. Excellent.
“When will Stargate Command assign some of the other, ah, more active officers to talk to the media?” a voice from the back shouted. He looked down at his notes. “SG-1, perhaps? Flagship team?”
Maintaining a neutral tone and facial expressions was easier said than done in this exact moment. Woolsey was literally made for the job! It was a right pity that they were saving that particular declassification conversation for another time.
“General O’Neill, care to comment on the status of SG-1 currently?” the same idiot from the back enquired.
“Sure. I know ‘em. Colonel Mitchell makes a mean macaroon. Grandma’s recipe I believe.”
The man was starting to look exasperated and it filled Jack with a certain joy that men who no longer did field world could only enjoy. He wasn’t usually one for schadenfreude when it came to his own species, but SG-1 were clearly a no-go zone.
“Why haven’t our ‘saviours’ considered it important to even show their faces to the same public they answer to, General?” The same idiot looked down at his notes. “Goa’uld, Ori, Replicators...if our best and brightest can’t even show up to face the people that pay their wages, General, what does that say about the credibility about this program?”
“They won’t show us mission reports, they won’t show us their officers, their contractors, hell, their aliens!. What is the US Government afraid of?”
Again with the prepositions.
“For all intents and purposes, this team comprises individuals that have startingly suspicious career moves. Air Force officers just don’t get promoted this quickly in the real world. What’s to say that the integrity in the US Air Force even exists--” the idiot paused and mimicked quotation marks with his fingers-- “out there. Lawless. Has there been one example of a court-martial, Colonel O’Neill? You yourself were not only the leader of this team, information that was some of the first to be released, but you have had unprecedented control of the only line of defence for the entirety of this planet…”
There was robust shuffling in the sidelines from the brass and the I.O.A alike. In his periphery, he could see the White House officials in his left typing furiously on their phones...like the President wasn’t watching his every move already.
And as for Jack...well, he had survived worse. But here he was, in his dress blues, failing to keep a neutral expression on his face, and he was pissed. Most people had gone quiet, hoping to see the stoic (ha! How times had changed), unflappable Face of Stargate Command respond.
The years behind a desk might have softened the General, but the Colonel was never far from the surface, never too far from defending his team. He hadn’t let a snake make such outrageous suggestions about his team and damn these people to hell, he wasn’t going to let them take even a damn thank you away from those people.
He felt his blood pressure rise but before he could open his mouth, he felt a familiar tingle envelop his body and in an instant, he was gone.
“Integrity?” the shouted word exited his mouth long before he could negotiate his surroundings. Gone were the offensive journalists, the wheezing cameramen and his stern colleagues and the dreary walls designed to keep speakers from having an original thought.
Instead, all he was greeted with a familiar sight of space, stars and that big blue and green thing he was just standing on.
A smirk appeared on his face because he just knew someone was going to get in a lot of trouble for this, and it would probably be him, but he didn’t give one tiny damn at this moment.
“As always, your timing is impeccable, Colonel. Especially since the Hammond wasn’t due--”
He spun around and was greeted by the only other sight that could ever compare with all that he had ever seen and done in two galaxies. Colonel Samantha Carter grinned and stood. “Welcome aboard, General O’Neill.”
“Colonel Carter,” he responded, years of conditioning and the fact they were surrounded by Sam’s crew being the only thing stopping him from closing the cavernous difference between them. He put his hands in his pockets and looked around. It had been a while since he had had the pleasure of being on the Hammond. It was then he noticed the giant television on the bridge. It was so large it even made a small dent in the viewing screen, incongruous with its surroundings.
And then he saw what was on the screen. Chaos.
Ah.
A member of the crew hurriedly switched off the stream. “Y’know, I’m pretty sure there’s a Simpsons marathon on. Much better watching. Early seasons.”
“Dwyer?” Sam called out and her CO took her spot. “General?”
He gestured for her to lead the way. “Dwyer,” he nodded as they passed. He raised his eyebrow as Dwyer snuck a thumbs up on their way out.
He had a fair understanding of the way the ship was set out but he saw everything in a new light as its Captain wove them through the officers. He nodded to a number of new people, their faces in awe as both he and Sam, conveying their easy camaraderie and authority as they walked.
They were just about at Sam’s office when she clearly couldn’t help herself any longer. “Rough day?” she grinned as the door opened. He stepped into her office, removing his hat and loosening his tie.
“Since when did state-of-the-art spaceships enjoy television privileges?”
Sam laughed and sat at the desk. “We got it when we heard about who was running the press conference. Paid for itself, really.”
Jack brightened. “Does that mean you get reception on other planets?”
Sam didn’t respond and softened her features. “Jack…”
He waved her off. “Did you hear the absolute crap that guy was spinning? This whole thing has been bullshit from start to finish. I miss the good old days when all you had to worry about was a red phone and a bald General.”
“A System Lord or two,” Sam added. “Body switching, Jaffa attacks...”
“Urgo. Urgo would have killed that press conference.”
For a moment there was silence, the air thick with memory and reminiscing. “Colonel, not that I’m not absolutely thrilled to be kidnapped on-air by yours truly, but…”
Not for the first time in his career, he was interrupted by the spaceship version of a ringing telephone. He winced as Sam was replaced by Colonel Carter.
“Sir,” she answered, shocking Jack with the informal, familiar tone. “Yep, without a hitch. He’s…” she threw him a look and one of her smiles, her eyes lighting up mischievously as if there was some private joke being played on him that he was not quite privy to. “He’s here. I’ll fill him in. We’ll both be there at 13:00.”
Another pause and a “You’re welcome, Sir.”
“That was…”
Sam nogged vigorously. “The President.”
He motioned with his finger around in circles. “So that whole monkey show was...”
“All planned.” She laughed. “Why else would they ask you to do it? You hate public speaking.”
She stood and sat on the front of her desk, looking down at him. This was another favourite view of his, but he would keep that to himself for the moment. He wanted to be annoyed, really, but the woman just beamed him up out of a room full of idiots and now they were alone and he hadn’t seen her for weeks.
“I was handling it,” he responded petulantly, shifting slightly in his chair. “They were insulting your honour.”
Sam raised an eyebrow.
“And you weren’t there to yell at them yourself,” he added. “Whose bright idea was it to declassify us anyway?”
“We were all there, Jack.”
“Yeah well, next time remind me to leave Pandora’s Box unopened. Ribbon-cutting and meetings and press conferences. Next thing they’ll have me escorting Kardashians through the Stargate. I’m a four-star General, you know.”
Sam made her way around him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “That’s probably a way off. We’re back for a while, by the way. We’re due for repairs and the brass thought now was a good a time as any to do a few rounds of interviews on the ship.”
He brightened considerably. “How long’s a while?”
Sam slipped her cool hand underneath his slightly loosened collar and followed through with the tiniest kiss on the back of his neck. “Longer than a week, less than a month.”
He grabbed her hand and turned her back into his full view, standing from the leather visitor’s chair. “And what’s at 13:00?”
Now Sam had brightened considerably. “SG-1 is back. The President’s invited us all along to a luncheon, probably with some new idiot to schmooze. Gotta have the flagship team. Not the reunion we were hoping for but considering…”
“Hold up. Vala’s gonna be there? They’re letting Vala Mal Doran into a meeting with the President and other notable dignitaries, with the public knowing full well she is an alien.”
“Yep.”
“And we have until 13:00 to make an appearance.”
A feral grin appeared on her face. “I was formally requested to keep you occupied on the Hammond until the luncheon. I think they thought you’d be more annoyed with the monkey show.”
“And I suppose nobody told you how exactly you were supposed to keep your old four-star General husband occupied for at least four hours?”
Sam’s ring caught his eye as she pulled him in for a kiss. “Everyone loves a love story, General.”