Chapter Text
SGC Briefing Room, 2051 Hours on 13 February 1997 (Day 2 of the SGC):
“Well that’s just great, Doctor . My sergeants love it when their clandestine insertion vehicles glow in the dark. ”
Sam looks past the jab into the Gate Room flashing blue with another failed dial. They’ve been working nonstop since Abydos, but she still doesn’t like repeatedly tearing apart space-time. “If the receiving Gate was clear, we think that connection could hold for up to thirty minutes. Appendix R details wormhole visibility distances by planet diameter and atmospheric composition.”
“So you geeks called us in here to fight a war through a gigantic glow-in-the-dark bulls-eye?” It’s the same guy again, their senior Army captain and self-appointed thorn in Sam’s side.
She steps away from the window to address the rest of the Army-element leaders wedged around the table. “We’re working on fire support technologies, but unfortunately neither Earth nor Goa’uld manned aircraft can operate through the Gate. Project Giza has extensive research in Gate-compliant UAVs and insect drones.”
“Fantastic.” The captain rolls his eyes yet again. “I’ve always wanted to bet my guys’ lives on some geek UAV taking out a Mach one-thousand alien fighter jet.”
“Thirteen hundred.” Sam walks past him to the podium. “Regardless, they’re well out of our league, and Jaffa use them almost like we use cars. We’ll eventually retrofit flight simulators, but flying off-world will still require stealing ships in-situ.”
That gets her more than a few slack jaws. “Doctor, we’re special ops commandos, not Batman. You’ll notice there’s no room for pilot wings on our uniforms.” The Army captain takes this opportunity to leer at her decidedly emptier chest.
Sam stares back flatly. She’s long since learned that combat won’t decorate her with much more than blood and broken bones. “Jaffa pilots spend decades in the cockpit, but most teenagers can fly basic maneuvers. I’m hoping we can all live up to some alien teenagers once there’s no cause to practice helicopter insertions and combat jumps.” She may have tilted her head too theatrically there.
Captain Reid scowls angrily. “I’m sorry, we ? Someone’s taking you out there?”
Jack rolls his eyes and finally leans into the complainer’s vision. “That’s really not your problem, Captain. But I promise if a science team ever needs another officer on the ground, you’re now my first choice.”
Sam drops her own frown into the podium automatically. “So the first planet you’re all likely to actually visit is wherever I set up DHD training. We’ll have about a week of battlefield repair and scenario training at first so that you can start other off-world workup, but plan on six-plus months total as we discover other important systems and weapons.”
Reid keeps his frown but does slightly better with his attitude. “And how exactly do we secure a planet in a galaxy full of Death Gliders and wormholes?”
Sam tries not to be annoyed at that annoyingly reasonable question. “We’re finishing an expeditionary Iris, and Project Giza has a lot of work in long-term surveillance. I’m also convinced we can use the Abydos Cartouche to refit Doppler, stellar, Stark, Zeeman, recoil, and phase shifts even for addresses Ra didn’t record. Those planets are more likely to be abandoned. And of course Jaffa are susceptible to our artillery and other arms.”
“And we’re susceptible to plasma blasts.” Reid renews his scowl. “We have seven dead bodies that prove that already, and we’re gonna trust you to fix it based on the nothing you’ve managed so far?”
Sam white-knuckles the wobbling podium. If one more person whines about how Project Giza hasn’t saved Earth in the fifty-one hours since O’Neill came clean, she’s going to start a fistfight she can’t win. “I’m confident we can outmaneuver the Goa’uld engineers. It’ll be an arms race, but we’ll chiefly need—”
“Prescient leadership?” Reid snorts. “I’d love to shack up in your cute little Ivory Tower and read my way into a job, Doctor. But unfortunately, some of us have to lead and die down in the real world. You know, where it takes relevant experience to make important decisions. You’ve heard of it?”
The podium wobbles as Sam blows past it. “ Captain Reid, your men are not the only ones getting smashed in the blind side.” She stops flat against the briefing room table. “I have a hundred scientists and technicians outside who haven’t slept in two days trying to reestablish what they were fired for doing correctly . If you don’t like how things are going down here, try harder.” Her right knee wavers as she stops, but Sam’s pretty sure no one can see it. Thank God for dress trousers. She lets the table waver between amusement and impress as she goes back to her spot.
She seems to win the standoff, though, and Captain Reid’s own boss decides he’s seen enough to call it. “I’d like to assure everyone here that any man with a green beret is absolutely the cooperative soldier-diplomat he’s trained to be.” The Army colonel levels a look at Reid and his counterparts. “And if he’s not, I’m happy to rip the Special Forces tab off his uniform.”
Jack chokes back his smirk quickly. “You know, Captain Carter, I think that’s enough for now.” He nudges Daniel as Carter does the closest thing she ever does to relaxing. Jack’s glad she doesn’t need the babysitting, though. Not that he wouldn’t be just as upset as these guys are about some hotshot from a totally different career field coming in to watch his men’s backs. But Carter’s useful, and at least Jack would handle it privately. …Except for that one time when he didn’t. About her. Like two days ago. Jack drops a hand onto Daniel’s notes to make him stop stalling and get up.
Daniel stands nervously and unfolds his well-stuffed binder on the podium. And then pretends to read off it. “Ahem. So my name is Doctor Daniel Jackson, and my doctorates are in archeology, anthropology, and linguistics. I also became a citizen of the first planet we reached, Abydos.” He fiddles with the slide deck for too long before convincing himself to look up.
Jack offers him something like a supportive look from a sea of surprisingly attentive black suits and scattered uniforms.
Daniel coughs nervously. “So the Abydonians—the denizens of Abydos who number approximately five hundred thousand—were transplanted from pre-dynastic Ancient Egypt approximately eight thousand years before the Common Era.” He starts gesturing at the sketched map. “The planet remains in the Bronze Age technologically, but is self-sustaining despite severely limited habitability. Only eight million hectares around the naquadah mines were ever terraformed, and only the river valley is cultivable. This may make its social structures appear artificially similar to the Nile River Valley, but in fact the centrality of the naquadah mines results in vastly different power relationships. Nonetheless, the planet’s liturgical lingua franca is largely inter-intelligible with Coptic, though the vernaculars have evolved somewhat from Archaic Egyptian and exhibit significant phonetic and phonological changes including devoicing and tonogenesis.”
Someone fakes a quiet snore.
The Army colonel glares at his senior captain. Again. “Doctor Jackson, thank you very much, but unfortunately we’re under a serious time crunch right now. Do you have anything that’s more…applicable?”
Daniel stutters to a stop. “Uh, sure. Colonel…Lange.” He pushes up his glasses at the man Sam just won over. “We’ve learned a lot from the Abydonians, but I can’t say I know yet how to replicate what they did against Ra. It’s not going to be an easy process.”
The table stares at him skeptically. “Doctor Jackson…” The colonel steals a look at O’Neill, who’s apparently decided not to speak up. He puffs. “Look, Doctor. More Abydos-style rebellions is exactly what we do not want. I trust you see now how destabilizing it was last time. Our entire career track exists to prevent that on Earth.”
Daniel shifts under the correction. “Right, Colonel. But the Goa’uld are really nothing like what you’ve fought before. They’re genetically programmed to enslave humans, and Earth is the motherlode. We can’t just persuade them away.”
The soldier frowns sharply. “Doctor, I’m not going to sit here while you tell me to exterminate an entire species you’ve barely met. You certainly didn’t get Master Teal’c here like that. For all you know there are good Goa’uld out there!”
Daniel makes himself breathe slowly. He still can’t even look at Teal’c. “Goa’uld are not Jaffa, Colonel. But as long as we deal with Apophis and stay under the radar, you should have some time to figure out more.”
The older man thumps the table, fully losing patience. “ Under the radar? An alien god-king just showed up on our doorstep for the first time in seventy years looking for his new queen, and you think we’re still under the radar ?”
Daniel stumbles from frustrated into confused with a furrowed brow. “I’m sorry, what—”
“He’s saying someone on your ungrateful rock told Apophis who killed Ra!” The tension in the room finally explodes as Captain Reid slams the table next to his CO.
Daniel’s mouth flaps. “You-you don’t know that. Our guards were always ready; no one came through when our Gate was unburied.”
Captain Reid physically launches at him. “ Your guards were ready?! There are four folded flags three feet from your snot-nosed face because you didn’t to tell us how to handle that!”
Daniel grips the podium to keep it between them. “I had nothing to do with that.”
Reid reaches for him. “You buried that Gate. You knew about spaceships, plasma weapons. You were willing to risk Earth on the assumption no one else would fly to where Ra died?! And now that we’ve been attacked, you cut us off again anyway?!”
“ Captain Reid! ” Jack stops waiting for Daniel to weasel out and moves to separate them both.
“No, Jack, it’s fine.” Daniel’s knuckles turn white against the podium. “We have no idea why Apophis came to Earth. Maybe it was luck, or maybe Goa’uld can track Gate addresses; maybe Ra relayed it somewhere before he died. Abydos might have a few bad eggs, but—”
“Doesn’t any of that sound important to figure out?!” Reid jerks the podium off the floor. “My men are going to die for that, you jagoff! You’re claiming to’ve started the largest war of succession in the history of the known universe!”
“ Captain Reid! ” Now the soldier has both colonels on him. “Sit. Down.” His Army boss yanks him sideways and takes his place, blocking Jackson and addressing the whole room of pissed-off commandos. “My guys. We have a rescue mission to work up. We’re missing three airmen’s bodies, and at least one of them Apophis would be an idiot not to revive and question about Teal’c’s escape. That’s still your wheelhouse, right, Captain Reid?”
Reid plops down at an irate attention. “Yes. Sir.”
“Good. Take your SG-5 and whoever else you need. And take Carter.” The Army colonel sizes up the youngest officer in the room again. “She just volunteered as planning lead.”
Sam tries not to gape at the number of special ops captains that just pissed off. “Sir, of course I need to be deeply involved in this, but surely you have others senior and—”
“And yet you seem to be the only person who has any idea what the hell is going on.” Lange bounces a quick look off O’Neill. “Decision’s made. Everybody work together or resign.”
Nobody tries to answer that.
Daniel is still staring at the back of the colonel’s green Army service jacket. He finally taps the man on the shoulder. “That rescue mission.” He clears the grit from his throat. “There are more than just two dead airmen. People who are definitely alive.”
The colonel turns around to study him. “Doctor. My people are about to rehearse sending some very good, very mortal men out on the most dangerous rescue mission in the history of humanity. Do you understand how good a reason I need to do that? A servicemember likely being repeatedly tortured to death for information that could destroy our entire planet might do it. A half-cocked kidnapping of the new hegemon’s wife with no idea of the fallout definitely does not. I should hope you’ve learned not to wantonly provoke unknown superpowers by this point.”
Daniel stares back blankly until his head jerks away. He ends up squinting at eight folded flags.