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“Remind me why we're not on P4J-698?” Daniel asked, his boots squelching in thick, oozing mud. The noxious odour reached his nose again, making him turn his face in a futile attempt to avoid the offensive smell.
Jack scanned the horizon, alert for danger despite the MALP and probe readings showing no sign of humanoid life. “SG5 pulled that planet instead.”
Strangely enough, Daniel knew that. And not what Daniel had asked.
“SG5 were supposed to come here.” They had an entomologist on the team that had been talking a mile a minute in the canteen yesterday about the indigenous species.
Daniel himself had been doing the same, just not about indigenous fauna. The buildings visible from the original probe footage of P4J-698 had borne a remarkable resemblance to Minoan ruins. He'd been brushing up on his Minoan in preparation for translating whatever writing remained.
“General Hammond decided to switch it up, send us here instead. Okay, Daniel?”
Daniel recognised that evasiveness. The not quite meeting Daniel's eyes through his sunglasses. The stop talking, Daniel tone.
He sighed, squelched another step and wished he wasn't rationing his tissues in case the smell got worse en route to their campsite.
“What did you do, Jack?”
Jack decided not to elaborate, moving further towards the campsite the UAV had picked out.
Teal'c, fortunately, had no such compunctions. “He distracted Major Carter when she was piloting a UAV.”
Jack did that at least twice a week. It was his way of showing affection, which was why he was down in Daniel's office bothering him at least twice a day. (It bothered Daniel about as much as it bothered Jack that Daniel was at his house most nights.)
Yet, it didn't explain why they'd pulled what amounted to punishment duty. Two weeks on a planet that was going to leave Daniel soaking in a bath for at least a week.
“And?”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck, swatting at the indigenous form of mosquito (bigger, hungrier and far more irritating than on Earth). “And we may have inadvertently crashed it into a large, pointy stone thing.”
Sam looked up from some readings she was taking. “Obelisk, sir.”
Jack nodded, tossing a glance at Sam. “Obelisk.”
Teal'c hummed agreement. “It produced a very satisfying explosion.”
Yikes.
Really, Hammond could have done a lot worse than giving them a time out on an unpleasantly muddy planet. The amount of valuable military equipment SG1 either damaged, broke, lost or left behind probably amounted to a hefty chunk of the SGC's equipment budget.
Jack probably didn't need Daniel giving him a hard time about missing the maybe-Minoan buildings. And maybe SG5 would come up empty and SG1 would find an important discovery.
In proto mud goo and insect life.
Well, stranger things had happened to the SGC.
Daniel tromped over to Jack, complaints turning to their equally familiar but more enjoyable teasing. “So smelly mud planet?”
Jack sighed tiredly, hitching his P90 up his shoulder. “Smelly mud planet.”
Sam offered them all a bracing smile, seemingly oblivious to the sulfuric smell of the mud. “Cheer up, sir, it's only two weeks.”
Too professional to grumble to himself, Jack just picked up the pace, fighting against the sucking ooze towards the rocky plateau the UAV had pinpointed.
“Two weeks,” Daniel heard Jack mutter. “Swell.”
Daniel grinned, pushing his sliding glasses back up his nose. “Won't be the worst vacation we've ever taken.”
Two weeks sharing a tent. No one shooting at them, no Goa'uld. The biggest danger the large mosquitoes or falling face first in mud collecting the samples. Honestly, for him and Jack, it practically classified as a romantic getaway.