Chapter Text
May 2006
Sam clenched her fists and bit back a curse as she found another wrong connection. Unfortunately, every wrong connection meant this blasted door shocked her with enough electricity to make her fingers numb.
“No luck?” Cameron asked.
“No,” Sam said as she leaned back on her heels and shook her hands out. “Clearly this world knew a little more about wiring than the average medieval society.”
“Not medieval,” Daniel said absent-mindedly, but he was focused on reading the list of charges the Devits had given them upon their arrest. Sam would have assumed that Daniel’s power of negotiation could get them out of this, but the document had an Ori symbol on it, so they were pretty much screwed.
“Teal’c’s going to be sorry he missed the party,” Cameron said as he leaned against the small barred window and studied the outside.
“He can come along for the next one,” Sam said. She studied the wiring behind the panel she’d finally exposed and started sorting through wires again. One of these held the latch in place, and if she didn’t save her team, there might not be a next time. It felt like Earth was alone on an island of sanity and the rest of the world was losing their minds. Even the Jaffa had started to turn to the Ori, and Sam honestly didn’t know how any of this would end up.
Jack never talked to her anymore, but she could see the way his eyes were haunted, and Daniel had turned back into the man she’d known that first year—always with his head in a book desperate to find one last answer. Except now Jack wasn’t as young or as sarcastic, and Daniel wasn’t half as idealistic. In ten years, Sam wondered if she was going to be one more refugee on Atlantis or maybe she’d be an engineer on some smuggling ship that tried to dodge around Ori space.
It had never felt this hopeless in the past.
But back then, they’d had allies. Or maybe back then she’d been younger and more idealistic. Who knew.
“So, is it hanging at noon or immolation at dawn?” Cameron asked. Daniel made a confused little noise and looked up, and for a half second, he seemed almost startled to see Cameron there.
“What?”
“The charges. What are we looking at?”
Daniel sighed. “Nothing good.” He looked over, and Sam felt the weight of it all fall on her shoulders again.
“I’m working on it,” she said, and ignoring her arms that ached from too many electrical jolts and her broken nails and numb fingertips, she went back to work. Then someone tapped “shave and a haircut” against the prison door, and all three of them froze.
“Is that…” Daniel stopped.
Yeah, Sam didn’t know how to end that question either. Who would know that pattern out here? She tapped back twice and then the cell went silent.
“Friendlies?” Cameron asked. He looked at Daniel like he was supposed to have some sort of magic decoder ring for all things remotely connected to communication. Daniel gave him a wide shrug. As much as Sam loved Cameron like a brother, sometimes he was an idiot. Worse, he as an idiot who had read too damn many reports that suggested that somehow SG1 was supposed to fix anything. Then again, every team needed an optimist, and he was it at this point. The rest of them were too worn down to believe in good triumphing over evil anymore. If it did, the Ori would have died thousands of years ago.
There was a thump at the door, and then it slid back on metal rails. An unfamiliar man with dark hair and a gaunt face grinned at them. “Fancy meeting you here. I don’t suppose anyone told you that these folks were hard-core Ori lovers before you came and did your meet and greet thing, huh?”
Cameron took a step forward. “Actually, we’d been here before and gotten a warm welcome.”
“Pre-Ori,” the new guy said. “Post-Ori, they’re not so much fun.” He wrinkled his nose, and Sam’s brain screamed that she knew him. However, she sure as hell couldn’t place him.
“And you are?” Cameron asked.
“Aadi. I’m not from around here.”
“Yeah. I got that,” Cameron said. “I’m Colonel Cameron Mitchell, this is Colonel Sam Carter, and Dr. Daniel Jackson.”
“SG1?” Aadi made a production out of looking at Cameron’s arm patch. “Yep, or at least part of it. I thought you guys had more members… a Jaffa maybe?”
Sam looked over at Daniel, and he looked as confused and alarmed as she felt. But meet and greet was his thing, and he stepped forward. “Teal’c is on another mission right now.”
Aadi nodded.
“And we would appreciate any help you could offer. Do you know where they put our packs and weapons?”
“Nope,” Aadi said fairly cheerfully. “But I know if we don’t get moving, we’re all going to get caught. There’s a service access up to the roof and from there I can get you out to the forest.”
Aadi turned to leave, but Cameron caught his arm. “We need to get to the Stargate.”
Aadi gave him an incredulous look. “The Stargate that’s surrounded by crazy praying lunatics? That Stargate?”
“Do you have another way off the planet?” Cameron asked with an edge of frustration in his voice. Sam inched closer to offer some tacit support.
The grin Aadi gave Cameron was really creepy. “I don’t know. I thought we might take the tel’tak I parked near the river and cloaked.” With that, he turned and hurried down the corridor.
Cameron turned and looked at Sam and then Daniel. “Is it just me or is that guy kinda weird.”
“More than kinda,” Daniel said. “Do we follow him.”
Cameron made eye contact with Sam, but she wasn’t going to second guess him command decision. She saw advantage and danger in following Aadi, even though her gut was saying to follow. After several seconds, Cameron sighed. “I guess we follow him or move the countryside and settle down because he’s probably right about the Gate. Come on.”
And then they were all three following Aadi down the corridor. “Keep your eyes peeled for our stuff,” Cameron told Daniel. One glance back and Sam knew that was a lost cause. Daniel had his puzzle-face on, the one that meant he planned to ignore everything including his own need to pee in favor of trying to figure out a mystery. Sure enough, he didn’t even answer.
Cameron rolled his eyes and then they reached a storage room with Aadi waiting at the open door. He was watching the hall nervously, his hand resting near a bag on his hip, so Sam was guessing he was armed. When Aadi gave them a perfectly executed military signal to move ahead, Sam knew something was seriously wrong. She looked at Cameron, and he had a concerned look, but he went into the room and up a ladder. Sam ushered Daniel up the ladder and the followed with Aadi coming up on her rear.
The sun was just coming up, and Sam could hear the calls to morning prayer. The sound never failed to make her sick at her stomach. All these people were sacrificing their lives to provide Ori with worship to power their egos. It was disgusting. Sam would rather die, and the horrible truth was that Earth might face that very choice.
Aadi kept low and led them across several roofs, leaping lightly from one to another. Sometimes he dropped to a knee and signaled for them to hold position, and Sam’s memory kept flashing to another. As they worked their way farther out from the center of town, the houses were farther apart until finally none of them dared to follow Aadi when he leapt across the alley below.
Cameron stood gesturing for Aadi, and he looked confused for a moment before he jumped back, not even out of breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“We can’t make that jump,” Cameron said as he gestured toward the gap.
Aadi looked at the next roof. “Well, crap. Okay, we can move to the ground. They should all be happily worshipping at this point. Just be prepared to run like hell, and try to avoid being seen. My mission requires stealth, and that generally means not getting caught by the locals.”
“Your mission?” Daniel asked.
Aadi smiled. “Dirty pictures. I have the best job in the whole fucking universe.” It was something so completely incongruous with his image as a wiry and poor farmer that Sam didn’t even process his words right way. But then he was climbing over the wall of the house and sliding or climbing down—all because he needed to find a path where they could follow. This was going down on her list of twenty strangest rescues. It wasn’t in the top ten, but it was moving up past Mahg Mar and their toxic environment.
Again, Cameron went first, leaving Daniel the middle position. With the villagers at prayer, they moved quickly through abandoned back alleys, stopping behind a three story public building of some sort. Aadi was leaning against the gray wall with a rather smug expression. Carter frowned when she spotted the graffiti.
“Seriously?” Cameron asked. “That’s your mission?”
Daniel snickered, and Aari’s grin got wider.
Yep, that was a dirty picture. A crude drawing of an Ori prior with a penis larger than his arm was splashed across the wall with red paint. It even had little drops to suggest ejaculation.
“I put an even better one near the center of town,” Aadi said, and I was going to get creative on the mayor’s house, but then I heard they had you and I figured getting you three out would annoy the priors even more than a few drawings. So, you ready to make the final run?” Aadi asked, and his gaze went straight to Daniel.
He did look a little out of breath, but Sam was surprised a stranger would notice.
Daniel gave a thumbs up.
“Good man,” Aadi said. “I’ll cover from the rear. Head west and keep quiet. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I make sure our retreat is clear… or until I clear it.”
“Splitting up could be dangerous,” Cameron said.
“For you, sure. Me? I’m indestructible,” Aadi said. “Go. Keep low.” He gave the gesture to move out, and ignoring all protocol and ignoring Cameron’s subtle gesture to hold position, Daniel took off running.
Cameron spared him a frustrated glare and then took off after him.
“I will find you, Colonel,” Aadi promised, and Sam felt sure that he would. She nodded before she followed her team in running for the forest.
The debriefing back at SGC was interesting. Landry had been less than pleased that Daniel had followed Aadi’s orders in the field, but as Daniel explained, he’d been following Jack’s orders for a hell of a lot of years and it had generally worked out in the end. The fact that this was a Jack symbiote in a host didn’t really change the fact that he was going to trust Jack. And leave it to Daniel to figure out what impossible thing was going on before the rest of them had even bought a vowel.
Cameron had explained that he had not known Aadi was a host to a goa’uld until the host had caught up with them in the woods. Aadi had explained that Colonel O’Neill’s symbiote on the Unas homewold had, in fact, been killed. However, queens took the memories from the DNA of the symbiote. So, the symbiote that had been in Jack’s head during the mission where they’d recovered Gibbs, Samas, and DiNozzo had managed to pass on Jack’s memories, even if it had died. Aadi himself was unfamiliar with SG1, so he’d allowed the Jack symbiote to take the lead with his team.
And the Jack symbiote had been gleeful as he explained the tactical advantage of dirty pictures. If Jack had succeeded in killing a prior, the Ori would have wiped out the planet—a quick and simple maneuver that would leave them plenty of time to do other damage in the universe.
Instead, the dirty pictures left the Ori wondering why the prior’s message had failed with someone. The prior had to investigate the people and try and find the non-believer. The ships slowed as they tried to find the flaw in their recruitment program that left so many unbelieving youth on planets they thought they’d converted to the worship of the Ori.
“So, they’re trying to defeat the Ori with graffiti,” Landry said, still not sounding convinced. “That seems like trying to kill someone with paper cuts.”
“Sir,” Sam said, “Aadi and the other hosts that are conducting this guerrilla war know they can’t win, but this distracts the Ori. It distracts them from us.” Sam was more than a little thrilled to hear that her own symbiote children and grandchildren liked to infiltrate strongholds and set booby traps. Sometimes her symbiote kids paired up with Tony’s for long-term intel gathering missions. Jack’s symbiotes sometimes paired with her, but a lot of times he either did solo missions or went with Daniel’s symbiotes as they tried to undo the actual preaching.
Daniel nodded. He’d been equally as amused. “It’s brilliant. Kali and Yu know they can’t fight, so they just try to keep the Ori off our doorstep as long as possible.”
“And when we win, those two are going to have armies of young, strong goa’uld with the memories of SG1.” Landry clearly hated the idea.
“The Jack snake seemed to want to get back to the water, sir,” Cameron said. “I’m not sure he’s going to want to help Yu and Kali with any plans for universal domination.”
“That’s what he wants now.”
Sam thought about Samas and all the reports from Atlantis. He’d never once tried to take over, even when the leadership of the city had seemed a little weak. Hell, after their disastrous run of bad military leaders, Samas probably could have had his own rebellion, and he hadn’t. From the stories Sam had heard from her friends on the city, Samas swam under the city about as often as he lived in the gunny’s head.
“Sir, since we don’t control the onac symbiotes, I don’t think we can do anything except take advantage of the time they’re buying us, them and the hosts who are risking their lives to carry this war to Ori worlds.”
Landry looked around at the table. “Could we send symbiote poison to the unas home world?”
Sam felt that suggestion like a kick to the guts. Landry was suggesting genocide against a people who were, at least for the moment, on their side. Cameron sat up straighter, and Sam could see her horror reflected in his expression. It was Daniel who answered.
“That won’t do anything except piss them off,” Daniel said firmly. “I’ve known Jack for ten years, and he only pretends to be stupid. The second he took a host, he ordered the entire population either off planet or far enough away from the gate to neutralize the risk of symbiote poison.”
Landry wasn’t that easily distracted. “How can you know? Was the poison even developed at the time of the mission where you were all compromised?”
“There was talk of it,” Daniel said, “and I know because I know Jack. He took steps to make sure his own people were safe before he revealed himself. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go call our Jack before he hears about this through the grapevine. General.” Daniel gave Landry a polite nod, but then he got up and walked out without permission. That would be Daniel’s pissy mood.
Sam made a few conciliatory noises in Daniel’s wake, but General Landry quickly ended the meeting and dismissed them, leaving Sam and Cameron headed for the elevators. Sam played with the idea of calling Jack herself. Sometimes Daniel wound him up more than he calmed the general down.
Cameron gave a dramatic sigh. “I miss all the fun stuff. I’m an officially member of SG1, but no one is offering to have little Cameron snakes running around screwing with the Ori.”
Sam gave him an incredulous look. “I dare you to say that around the general.”
“He’s not going to be amused, huh?”
“Oh no. Not even a little,” Sam said. “But on the good side, this means that there are a whole bunch of Jacks out there making the Ori miserable.” For the first time in a long, damn time, Sam felt a spark of hope.
“And a whole bunch of Daniel Jacksons, Tony DiNozzos and Sam Carters.” Cameron nodded. “I’m almost feeling sorry for the Ori now.” He grinned at her and started whistling as he walked off the elevator.