Notes to Self
(Or How I came to owe the U.S. Government Seven Gazillion Dollars)
Author: BadgerGater
Email: [email protected]
Category: Thoughts, Missing & tag scene for Enemies
Season: Five
Summary: Jack is thinking, okay, I know that's dangerous, but bear with me....
Pairing: None
Spoilers: Enemies and Exodus, obviously; nothing else specific
Warnings: None yet, except Jack's thinking, so watch the language
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the property of the author and may not be posted without the author's consent
Author's Note: Epilogue to Exodus/Enemies. With special thanks to Carol, without whom I wouldn't even have seen those eps yet.
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So, what do you think a Goa'uld Mother Ship is worth on the open market these days, huh?
Lord, I think I'm in trouble.
I know there's some Air Force regulation about the senior officer being responsible for government owned equipment checked out to his/her team; failure to return such equipment means the officer in charge will be charged with repaying to the government the cost of said equipment.
Eight gazillion, seventeen patrillion, nine hundred eighty four bazillion....
And change.
Wow. A little hard to pay back that debt, even on a Colonel's salary. Let's see, if I live to be 180, and pass all my fitness tests to stay in the Air Force that long, my great-great-great-great-great grandchildren will still be making interest payments.
Then again, maybe I can pass this off on the Carter family. After all, Jacob, or at least his host Selmac, did claim to be in command. And Jacob does outrank me. Sort of, but then, since he's a retired general... And sometimes he's not really Jacob...
That would be a nasty thing to do to Major Carter, of course...
As if I didn't have enough to worry about all the way back to Earth.
Hell, actually, like I told Jacob, I'm not the negative type. Paranoid, yup, that's how one gets to be an old soldier in my line of undercover/special ops/weird beyond all weirdness assignments, like the Stargate program. A healthy dose of paranoia keeps a man alive long enough to acquire the bad back, worse knees, scars, and gray hair that plague me these days.
But at least I'm still alive to complain about them.
Whew.
Now, in all honesty, that staying alive thing didn't seem likely for most of this cruise. I mean, geez, between me and Teal'c crashing the glider into that planet, Tanith's troops trying to kill us, Apophis trying to shoot our ship down, the Carters sending that sun into supernova (it was some pretty spectacular fireworks, if I have to say so myself) and the shock wave sending us out beyond the known universe with a 125 year flight delay (and people complain about the airlines), playing shooting gallery with the replicators, and, oh yeah, my former buddy and now brainwashed enemy Teal'c thumping me about and locking me up, I hardly had time to breathe, let alone worry about not breathing.
The slow trip home in that tel'tac vessel was giving me plenty of time to worry, though.
Worry about how I was going to tell the General how I, we, Selmac, General and Major Carter, had lost that irreplaceable ship. Damn. And after we went to all that trouble to steal it fair and square.
Worry about how we were going to de-program Teal'c.
Worry about whether Apophis was really and truly and 100% dead this time. The guy's got more lives than a whole herd of cats.
Lots of questions to think about. Not many answers, or at least not many good answers.
"Hi General, sorry we lost that nice little ship. Put it on my credit card." Hmmmph. Don't think that will work. I have a feeling it might put me just a bit over my credit limit.
"Hi General, Selmac lost your ship." Oops, that won't work either, Hammond left me in charge, and while Jacob outranks me, sort of, Selmac doesn't. I'd have to explain how an alien parasite, an allied alien enemy parasite it's true, but an alien parasite nonetheless, came to be in charge of my, err, our ship.
"Hi, General, sorry about that, we let a few hungry replicators eat your ship."
"Hi, General, didn't mean to lose the ship. You can pick up what's left of it on Apophis' old planet. If you don't get all squicky about electronic gizmo replicator bugs."
Oh, I soooo don't want to write this report.
***(Note to self-- File bankruptcy as soon as I get home. Not even the Air Force can get blood out of a dead broke turnip.)
And speaking of squicky.
Teal'c's little statement seems stuck in the forefront of my brain. No, not the one about me not being his friend and the whole last four years being nothing but an undercover assignment on his part. I understand that was the brainwashed part of him talking. (And why did that statement seem vaguely familiar? Oh yeah. Words sort of like that popped out of my mouth at Daniel, um, a year or so ago. And they weren't real either.)
Nope, the squicky part was the thing about his symbiote being meant for me.
Sorry, can't help it, just the thought gives me chills worse than being barefoot in the middle of a Minnesota blizzard.
I hate those little snakes. Can't even stand to look at one. Had one inside me once for a few endless hours and I'd rather be eaten alive by replicators, frozen into an Antarctic popsickle, or just plain old fashioned boiled in oil. Anything but that.
Now, I must admit I'd sort of come to appreciate Junior over the years, not that I could even look at the slimy little fellah without getting the shivers. But he'd saved Teal'c a couple of times, so that made me think a little more kindly toward him. Hey, I'd even done that body swap thing, thanks to Machello's machine, and actually managed to live with the snakelet for a few days. Maybe, through all that had happened, I'd sort of forgotten what the little mite was going to grow up to be someday.
I don't think I will now. For me. Oooh, lucky me.
This is one present I'm *not* looking forward to finding under my Christmas tree.
Shit. Stop rubbing the back of your neck, O'Neill. Nasty nervous habit I get whenever snakelets are mentioned. Can't help it, the nerves just react, the neck itches and aches and the hand just goes there, of it's own accord.
***(Note to self-- Remind Carter, Daniel, Hammond, Fraiser, Siler, Simmons, Coburn, Major Davis, Sgt. Davis and every person now assigned, ever assigned or likely to ever be assigned to the SGC that they are to shoot me *before* letting snakelet get me again, okay??)
One thing I learned on this little trip, however, was that I'm not cut out for space travel, at least in one of those measly low tech little teltac ships.
Space travel isn't at all thrilling and romantic and heroic, like you'd think from watching Buck Rogers or Luke Skywalker or even Captain Janeway (okay, so I only watched because of that Seven of Nine character, but a man has eyes, you know?).
It's boring.
B-O-R-I-N-G.
Let me tell you about the boredom. You just go through space, glide, slide, ride, about as exciting as sitting on a bus. At least on a bus, though, you might get a glimpse or two of the scenery. No such thing in a tel'tac. Sure, you can see out the cockpit window, into space.
But you know what space is?
Really really big.
And really, really empty.
Sorry to let you down, but that's the truth.
Space is lots and lots and lots of nothing.
Sure there are stars and stuff out there, but they're so freakin' far apart that you never see one and even if you did, you couldn't or wouldn't want to get close.
So outside the windows, it's mostly just really, really dark.
Exciting, huh?
Meanwhile, inside, it's cramped.
We were crowded. I've lived in cells with more leg room than there was inside that tel'tac. Of course, it didn't help that we'd had to close off two of the large cargo holds to conserve oxygen and keep the maximum amount of energy for travel rather than wasting it on unnecessary interior life support for rooms we didn't absolutely need. Or so Jacob said and Carter agreed.
There's just plain not much space on one of these things. Did you know there's 4,867 tiles on the walls and 784 on the ceiling? Did you know that it takes 28 steps to make a complete circuit around the cockpit? That it's 14 steps from one side of the cargo hold to the other? Leaving space, of course to step around a restrained and highly pissed off alien who insists on gleefully explaining just *exactly* how his larval gould baby snakelet god will soon burrow its way into the back of your neck in the most excruciatingly painful way it can.
I have a pretty vivid imagination when it comes to pain, unfortunately. Not to mention a bit of experience.
And tel'tac travel doesn't offer much in the way of distractions.
Tel'tacs are not made for comfort, and they aren't designed for a crew of five. There aren't any amenities. Oh, sure there are facilities, you know, but not a real bathroom, meaning there's no bath. No shower, either- there's another wonderful facet of tel'tac travel. There's also no TV, no VCR, no videogames, no books or magazines, no CD player, not even one of those old fashioned dinosaur 8-track players. And these space faring alien races think they're civilized. Sheesh.
Next, time, I'm bringing my own entertainment.
***(Note to self-- Add deck of playing cards to required items in SG personnel basic off world travel kit.)
I spent a lot of the time worrying about Teal'c.
I hope we can find a way to get him back. I know, physically he's here, but we've had to keep him tied up for the whole six days on our way home. Not nice, not nice at all. I don't much like the way he glares at me, the anger, the sneer. I can just about hear little Junior squeaking. Ewwww.
I'd been so relieved when Teal'c had showed up. I'd been kicking myself around pretty good when I thought he'd gotten killed. Sure, I'd been mad at him for taking off after Tanith, dragging me along as an unwilling sidekick, and getting us both crashlanded on that doomed planet, but I guess I understood his reasoning. I didn't like it, but I understood it.
He'd been shot in the back and fallen dead into my arms. Believe you me, I know a dead man when I see one, I've seen enough, and Teal'c was plain old dead. Getting him back was damn good. But not like this, not back as Teal'c the First Prime of Apophis, worshipping the freakin' gould snakehead, instead of our Teal'c: teammate, ally and friend.
We need Teal'c. His knowledge of our enemy, his abilities as a warrior, and his friendship, they're all irreplacable to SG-1 and to me. We wouldn't be here without him. We'd have been dead in that dungeon on Chulak four years ago without the Big Guy stepping up and defying his god Apophis.
See, despite what Teal'c's been brainwashed to believe, I know there was no way that could have been planned, anticipated or turned into an opportunity to infiltrate us because back then Apophis didn't have a clue who we were. Logic dictates that Teal'c's beliefs are false and misguided, brainwashed nonsense.
Besides, there's no way I misread him that completely. I'm good at people stuff, it's one of my natural talents, something you can't do without in the line of work I've pursued for the last decade and more. Teal'c meant it, that time, back on the glider, when he called me "brother."
Now if I could just figure out a way to convince him of that.
If we can't, I don't know what we can do. We can't just turn him loose, even if Apophis is dead. Teal'c knows too much about Earth and it's defenses, about SG-1 and the SGC, and about our allies the Asgard, Nox, the Tok'ra and the Tollan.
Shit.
There's got to be a better way than turning him over to McKenzie for de-programming, but I'm afraid that's just what the Air Force is going to do. I can't stop it, what they'll do to Teal'c, just like I couldn't stop them that time when they turned him over to Maybourne, back after that big honkin' mosquito thingy bit him. If that's what the brass decides, I'm as helpless as Teal'c is. I'm just one expendable, nobody colonel fighting to keep an enemy soldier alive.
Shit shit shit.
And Junior. Ewwww.
I don't like this at all.
That 125 years stranded in space option is beginning to look better and better. Of course, 125 years lost in space with a pissed off Jaffa isn't exactly a fun prospect either.
Can't win for losing, huh, O'Neill?
Something will happen. I've got to believe that. We've got a couple of days yet. We'll find help. Maybe the Nox, those wonderful gentle sweet people. They've helped us before, as long as it's strictly non-military. The Tollan? Well, even though Teal'c saved their butts from Ziplock and his buddies, they never want to help anyone. The Tok'ra? Sorry, I just can't bring myself to trust them. Sure, they'll say they're gonna help Teal'c, but will they? Really? I don't think so. The Asgard? Never around when you need them. The Ancients? Long gone. Hummph. All these wonderful advanced alien spacefaring races have proven to be pretty disappointing so far.
McKenzie. I flat out hate the man. I'll never forgive him for what he did to Daniel, okay, yeah, what we let him do to Daniel. Damn. I'd never liked the guy before that, but I hadn't any reason to believe he was like that, that he'd drug Daniel into insensibility. His answer to everything is drugs. How that would help Teal'c, I don't know. Didn't anyone ever tell McKenzie to just say no and look for some other treatment? Huh?
***(Note to self: Remind everyone never to let McKenzie get his hands on me. He'll never let me out of that padded room. Order Carter to just shoot me first.)
So, my thoughts have been running circles around my brain for six days now, and getting me no where, except dizzy and tired. We have to find a way to help Teal'c.
Bra'tak.
If anyone knows, it will be Bra'tak. He's a good guy, he is, yup, even if he has that annoying habit of calling me 'Human' in that condescending tone of voice. But I'll get over it, if he can help Teal'c.
***(Note to self- Phone Bra'tak as soon as we get home.)
FINISH