Thirty-nine Dead
Author: Badgergater
E-mail: [email protected]
Season: 9
Episode: Ethon (But you can read this even if you didn't watch this episode, or other S9 episodes.)
Spoilers: S9 Ethon
Pairing: None
Rating: Teens and above
Warnings: Dark, and a couple of swear words
Category: Missing scene
Summary: Deaths are felt by those in command, who must watch and wait and mourn from afar. (The show just glibly floated right on by the repercussions of this event.)
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of MGM, SciFi, Showtime, and probably a whole bunch of other rich and important folks that definitely don't include me. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and no money was involved, only appreciation for the characters.
Author’s Note: The real Jack O'Neill, presented with honest, accurate information about the fic so that the potential reader may make an informed decision on whether or not to read.
Note: This fic uses the statements made in regards to S9 that General O’Neill became head of Homeworld Security, despite the fact that this was never confirmed on-air and thus, is not cannon. Hopefully, we’ll find out in S10.
This fic is based on one fact about a S9 episode, and I freely admit I didn't watch the whole episode, as well as having not watched most of the rest of S9. So it's entirely possible that this doesn’t exactly follow S9-cannon. And you don't have to have watched the episode to read and understand the fic.
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I was her commander once, and now she’s gone.
And took dozens of lives into oblivion with her.
Damn it.
x-----x-----x
The phone call had seemed ordinary enough.
The tones rang in an entirely normal way.
I picked up the phone as though it were any other call. "O’Neill."
My aide’s voice announcing who was on the line carried no clue. "General Landry for you, Sir."
The minute I heard Hank’s voice, though, I knew something awful had happened. I knew it was hard for him to tell me whatever it was he had to tell me. I wished he’d hurry up and just get it the hell over with.
Hank sort of cleared his throat and then he said, "The mission to Tegalus didn’t go well."
I waited for him to finish, my heart dropping.
"We lost a lot of people today."
Damn.
"The Prometheus," for a moment, he couldn’t go on. "Jack, we lost the Prometheus. She was destroyed."
Son of a bitch. The Prometheus, Earth’s first space ship, half of our fleet, half of our defenses; well, not quite half anymore, now that Emerson had the Odyssey out and the Russians were running test flights with the Kovalev. But still, a huge part of our defenses, a full one-fourth of our fleet, and our most veteran space crew. Damn it. Just when it seemed like we were making progress toward having adequate defenses—this was a huge blow, devastating even.
"They did manage to get most of the crew off, there are at least 76 who survived," Hank added.
Which meant 39 hadn’t.
"And SG-1’s all back intact."
So my old team was still alive, but at a damn high cost.
"Who did we lose?" I asked, not really wanting to know.
"Pendergast was still on board, trying to evacuate the rest of his crew."
Colonel Lionel Pendergast, a damn good officer. He’d be a footnote in history now, the first space captain in Earth’s history to go down with his ship.
"And the situation?" I knew that we’d stepped into the middle of Tagalong’s civil war, but the damned Ori were involved, that was our reason for being there.
"We’ve got our people back, but the natives are still fighting."
Great.
Failed mission, in addition to losing a ship and nearly one-third of her crew.
"Jack, I--"
I rubbed a hand wearily over my eyes, suddenly feeling washed out and worn out. "I know."
"I’ve just been talking with the President," Hank continued. "He’s called a meeting for later today, if you haven’t already gotten the word."
No, I hadn’t, but that mattered little now.
"So, I guess then I’ll see you later, Jack," Hank sounded as drawn out as I felt.
"Yeah, later," I hung up the phone, and spun my chair around to look out my window. It was snowing, large fluffy flakes drifting down, their perfect whiteness hiding the ugliness of the city’s gritty reality.
x-----x-----x
Thirty nine dead.
No matter how long you command, it doesn’t get easier, to know your orders, your words, your decisions, have killed your own people.
When I took this job in Washington, I’d thought command would be easier because I didn't know the people I sent to their deaths. If I had no face to put with the name, no image of youthful eagerness or cynical world-weariness to associate with the name, it wouldn’t seem real, right?
Wrong.
The faces I don’t know, I find myself imagining.
I never thought I had such a vivid imagination.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
If I still believed in a benevolent God, I could, I suppose, pray for their souls, and for my own, plead for comfort or solace or forgiveness.
But I don’t, and I can’t.
All I can think of are the faces of the survivors: the wives, the husbands, the children, the brothers and sisters, the lovers, the friends, the comrades. The parents, who should never have to outlive their child—it brought back a far too familiar pain.
I had done to them what I had done to Sara, and to myself.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
I wondered how many of the dead that I did know.
I’d ridden the Prometheus first on that unexpected trip when it was hijacked, and then Thor sent us on out to Halle. I was in command but it was only SG-1 rattling around in all that half-finished space that time. It wasn’t exactly a fun trip, what with the hijackers, the gould, the lost in space thing, and then meeting the human-copycat Replicators. So all in all, despite the ice cream and getting to sit in the captain’s chair, it hadn’t exactly been a carefree holiday cruise that I’d care to repeat.
Then I’d traveled aboard Prometheus once more, under Bill Ronson, superfluous cargo on the shakedown trip where we’d very nearly ended up stranded on that President Aswan’s planet.
George Hammond had commanded her when she’d saved our skins from Anubis’ fleet, though I don’t remember that, being distracted as I was under the influence of the Ancients’ knowledge at the time.
So, yeah, I’d flown her, and ridden aboard her, and been saved by her, so ol’ Prometheus was familiar.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
Think of the ship, Jack, don’t think of the people.
Think of cold steel and hard metal. Think of techno-gizmos whose names you couldn’t pronounce, even if you knew them. Think of the wiring and the computers, of the engines and the weapons, of the hallways and cargo holds, of cold, inanimate unfeeling things.
Don’t think about the dead.
But I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how many of the names and faces I would recognize once we tallied up our losses.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
It shouldn’t seem worse, just because so many died all at once. Far more than 39 had died during my tenure with the SGC. Maybe it seemed easier to deal with the loss when it was one person at a time to mourn. Certainly it was less overwhelming.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
Outside my window, the snow had stopped falling. The sky had turned a bluish gray that looked as bruised as I felt.
Thirty-nine families destroyed.
No one should outlive their child, not if their son or daughter was 10 or 20 or 30 or 40.
It was inhuman.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
There would be memorial services and I would have to go to them.
And tell lies.
Thirty-nine families wouldn’t get an honest answer, just half-truths and all-out fabrications. They wouldn’t know the importance of what their loved ones had done. They couldn’t be told the amazing truth of their work or the magnitude of their accomplishments. They would not hear of the wonders and the terrors of serving aboard Earth’s first spaceship.
Only my own empathy and compassion would be real.
And, as I knew all too well, it would be totally inadequate to assuage even the smallest part of their grief.
x-----x-----x
Thirty-nine dead.
A small number, really. I have killed so many more, up close and personal; with my guns, my knives, my bare hands. Rarely have they haunted me the way I know these distant deaths will invade my dreams.
Today, the cost of duty was far too high for my merely mortal soul.
x-----x-----x
The phone rang.
I picked it up and answered, "O’Neill."
"Sir, the President requests your presence at a meeting at 1600 hours, in the oval office," my aide informed me.
"Yes. I’ll be there."
Silently I hung up the phone and wished, for the thousandths time since I’d accepted this assignment, that rather than sitting in a neat, clean, safe office, instead I were worlds away, out there, risking my own life instead of putting the lives of others in peril.
With a world-weary sigh, I stood, retrieving my jacket from its hanger and my hat from the shelf above. I pulled on the blue jacket, the mantle of duty, and left to do what had to be done.
Carrying with me the weight of thirty-nine dead.
--The End--