06 - Siren Song

For our mothers

Jaimie and Holly would like to thank: Katie and ML Hull for their valuable
insight and suggestions; Lori Goldman for offering encouragement at a critical
time; Sally Malcolm and Tom Reeve at Fandemonium Books for giving us the
opportunity to publish the book; and Sabine Bauer for her assistance during the
editing process. Special thanks to our fellow
Stargate
fans (especially
the LJ crew), who share our love of the show and the team, and who have brought
us both so much joy over the last few years.

Colonel Jack O’Neill staked out his vantage point beside the meeting hall and
eased down onto a strategically located bench. The village nearest P43-912’s
Stargate was pretty enough, with lots of tidy homes and flower gardens, and
friendly folks everywhere. So far, this had been a completely uneventful
mission: meet, greet, smile, exchange pleasantries, ignore the Relosians’ awed
and frightened stares at Teal’c, send Major Samantha Carter off in search of
valuable things like trinium and technology, and let Dr. Daniel Jackson get busy
with the negotiating.

In fact, it was always like this lately. A new planet, peaceful exploration,
mundane trade stuff, and then SG-1 was on its way to the next mission. It was
all so… routine. Which explained why Jack was bored out of his skull. This
struck him as being pretty ironic, given the fact that many times in the past
year, he’d wanted nothing more than a few hours of down time for a hot shower
and a nap. But even so, a spectacularly loud explosion or a few firing matches
with Jaffa wouldn’t be completely unwelcome.

There were days he didn’t mind the slow pace—days when they sat around
drinking homemade barley wine, eating stews full of unidentified meat and
vegetables, and accepting the gratitude of people they’d actually been able to
help. On those days, Jack could forget that everything had changed around him
while he was standing still and that his equilibrium was not yet restored.
Daniel’s return from the ascended state had removed that awkward off-kilter
feeling he’d had the entire time Jonas had been with them, and now they were
finding their old rhythm again as a team. The thought made Jack smile; their
rhythm was a combination of staccato call-and-response, with a dash of
shout-and-pointed-silence. It worked for them.

The missions were coming faster now that Daniel was back to his old self—almost at the pace of the second year the team had been together, after they’d
figured out enough destinations to keep everyone busy and still have some left over. Jack reminded himself that he
had the universe for a workplace. A little boredom was a small price to pay for
that.

“Sir, there’s enough trinium here to justify setting up a mining operation.
Not a huge amount, but my preliminary guess would be two deposits, maybe three.”
Carter sat down on the bench next to him and handed him a hunk of unrefined ore.
Her face was smeared with dirt, as though she’d been down there clawing it up
with her own hands. He wouldn’t put it past her. “It’s a quality vein, extending
about one mile beneath the surface.”

Jack took the rock and tossed it in the air a few times, like a lumpy
baseball. It was so light it might as well have been hollow. “Daniel thinks
they’ll give this to us for free.”

“Really?” Carter snatched the rock mid-toss and began waving a scanner over
it. “Maybe they’ve got no use for it.”

“Or any interest in why it’s useful to us.” Jack tilted his head and watched
Daniel in animated conversation with two of the Relosians, whose purple robes
shimmered in the sunlight. They were wearing some of the craziest headgear Jack
had ever seen, puffy red towers with rows of shiny beads dangling off the ends.
Daniel accepted yet another ceremonial cup full of what passed for beer in the
village. It wasn’t bad stuff, although it made Jack’s eyeballs burn whenever he
inhaled too close to the cup. “Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“Not really. They’re pre-industrial, so it wouldn’t occur to them that we
plan to make weapons with this.”

“Lucky us.” Jack flipped open his chronometer and glanced at the time. Teal’c
had left for the ’gate to report in to Hammond half an hour ago, and it was less
than a ten minute walk. “Carter, did you pass Teal’c on your way in from the
quarry?”

“No, sir.” She stopped fiddling with the rock.

Wrapping his fingers around the watch, Jack tapped the wristband a couple of
times. He had seven years of experience with this team, and Teal’c always
reported back to him when he returned from completing a task.

Unless something was wrong.

Jack keyed the radio. “Teal’c.” A short burst of static, then silence. “Teal’c, do you read me?” After a moment, he nodded to Carter, who
gave it a try on her own radio. Still nothing. Jack straightened and shifted the
weight of his vest around, to make it sit more comfortably on his shoulders.
“I’m going to take a walk,” he said quietly. “Stay here with Daniel.”

“You think something has happened to Teal’c?”

He looked out toward the forest, then back at the cluster of huts near the
center of the village. “Just keep an eye out.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, as one hand came up to cover her P90. Jack rose
from the bench and moved off toward Daniel, who was surrounded by a group of
elders and two pretty young women serving drinks. They were still talking.
Amazingly, Daniel never seemed to run out of alien conversation starters.
Sometimes Jack could barely think of subjects for small talk with people of his
own planet; he supposed Daniel’s fluency was a gift. Or a curse, for the person
on the receiving end of all that curiosity.

“Jack!” Daniel gestured to the Relosians, some kind of interstellar sign
language for ‘hang on a second’, and said, “I’ve made some progress. They want
to trade us for these beans.”

“Beans?” Jack looked down at the shriveled grey things Daniel was holding in
the palm of his hand.

“Not just any beans, Jack.” Daniel curled his hand closed to protect his
prize. “These are sacred ancestral beans, handed down by their forefathers. Each
year at planting, these are buried in the first row plowed.”

“And then a beanstalk grows, and they live happily ever after.”

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “Jack, be serious. They are offering these to us as
a gesture of lasting friendship.”

“Right,” Jack said. “Of course they are.” He fluttered three fingers at the
Relosians, a halfhearted “be right with you” wave. They nodded their approval
and turned to each other, their conversation escalating in a wave of excited
chatter as their red-beaded hats clattered with movement. “Wrap it up, then.”

“There’s still some points to work out, and I don’t—”

“SG-9 can do the detail work, like always.”

Daniel nodded, though a troubled frown briefly appeared on his face. Jack knew this was one of those moments—the missing details of
Daniel’s life that were hiding in the cracks of his post-descension memory,
rising to the surface one by one. SG-9 would come in to clean up the offworld
bargains and treaties; as a member of Stargate Command’s flagship team, Daniel
wouldn’t have the time to spend weeks hammering out interstellar trade
agreements. Now that he’d been reminded, he wouldn’t forget again. Jack was
never sure whether these kinds of details were recovered memories or something
learned all over again. It didn’t really matter, since Daniel was a quick
learner.

“Start packing,” he said, watching as Carter took up a position near the head
of the trail. Without waiting for Daniel to pepper him with questions, Jack
turned and set out toward the valley path.

The village sat atop a small green hill overlooking the forested valley
below. The Stargate was hidden deep in the forest and invisible from the
settlement. Jack followed the trail to the edge of the cultivated gardens and
stood in the middle of the path, his gaze tracing its faint edges down the hill,
across a short stretch of open plain, and right to the forest perimeter. He
pulled open his front jacket pocket and withdrew field binoculars, then enhanced
the focus and scanned quickly over the area. No sign of Teal’c.

After a moment, he lowered the binoculars, but his sense of alarm notched up
a peg. He reached for his radio, and after a moment’s hesitation, he keyed it.
“Daniel, Carter.”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, followed by Daniel’s static-overlaid, “Go ahead,
Jack.”

“Gather up anything you don’t want to leave behind—day packs only—and
meet me on the trail.”

“Jack, I need to—”

“Daniel, that’s an order. Do it now.”

“Trouble, sir?”

“Not yet,” Jack said. There was no reply from Daniel; Jack knew Daniel’s
thousand-yard glare was currently burning a hole in the back of his vest, but he
also knew Daniel was already three-quarters packed. There were some things
Daniel didn’t question—very few, but a direct order was one of them. That, at
least, hadn’t changed at all.

It took less than a minute for Carter and Daniel to make their way up the
hill. Daniel was stuffing items into his pack as they approached, but he stopped
long enough to hoist it on. Carter fastened the straps for him. “Did you say our
goodbyes?” Jack asked Daniel over his shoulder.

“Not exactly, no. But I gave the beans back, until we could seal the
agreement. Are we leaving?” Daniel asked.

“Maybe. Keep your eyes on the trail,” Jack said. Carter raised her weapon in
tandem with his own.

“I don’t think these people are any threat to us,” Daniel protested.

“Teal’c is late,” Jack said, and that was all he needed to say; Daniel cut
the commentary.

The canopy of trees shielded an unsettling kind of gloom, broken randomly by
shafts of sunlight shooting through the thick overgrowth of leaves and moss. Too
much contrast, and the light seemed as impenetrable as the darkness. It made
Jack wary; too many ghosts in his peripheral vision, which wasn’t quite as sharp
or discerning as it used to be. He reached out with one hand and signaled
quickly
—fan out, keep a watchful eye forward, quiet.
Carter and Daniel
immediately dropped behind him to obey. With a distance of only a few paces
between them, they continued moving down the faint trail.

Jack listened to the sounds around them, even as his gaze swept across the
trail looking for shapes, dark masses, things that were out of place. They could
have used Teal’c’s tracking skills. His own couldn’t compare. Anyway, it was
possible he was wrong, that nothing had happened, that Teal’c had simply
encountered a friendly local and—

“Ouch,” Daniel said behind him.

Jack whipped around, his P90 leveled in the direction of that mild complaint.
Daniel was holding his nose with one hand, looking pissed off, and Carter’s face
registered sharp wariness. Daniel reached out with one finger and touched the
air in front of him. It shimmered red for a moment before the color died away.

“Force field,” Carter said. She moved to the side, testing the boundaries;
Jack moved with her, a mirror image. It took six paces for him to reach a firm
barrier, but Carter continued on past that point. Carter met his eyes. “You’re
inside, sir; we’re outside.”

“I gathered that,” Jack said tightly. All around him, the forest was alive
with sound. He turned slowly, tracking stray noises he couldn’t identify, and
asked, “Doesn’t this feel a little familiar?”

“Deja vu,” Daniel murmured, rubbing his nose. “We’ve seen this before.”

“Several times,” Sam said, poking experimentally at it. “Goa’uld design.”

“Last time we saw it in a forest, though…” Daniel met Jack’s eyes. “It was
because of Aris Boch.”

Jack’s face twisted into a grimace. Four years had passed since their last
encounter, but for Jack, the capture of his entire team by the bounty hunter,
Aris Boch, had been a memorable event. All the details were fresh in his mind,
from the force field Boch initially used to contain them, to the
shield-penetrating weapons, to the way he’d held them all hostage to ensure each
would cooperate for fear he’d harm the others.

Can you take him?
Jack had asked Teal’c, because he really wasn’t sure
himself, and because he’d needed to know if they had a chance of rescuing Carter
by force.

I can.
Teal’c had seemed certain. Maybe he’d been wrong.

Jack backed away from the force field. Carter and Daniel didn’t even need to
be told what was coming next. They crouched and waited out of the line of fire
as he raised his weapon and loosed a few experimental, useless bursts toward the
shield. He didn’t want to assume anything—some version of force field
technology was available on half the planets they’d explored to date. That
didn’t mean Aris Boch was behind it. What were the odds?