06 - Siren Song (45 page)

A moment’s silence, and then, behind a burst of static, a familiar voice:
“Jacob? Jacob, what the hell are you doing here?”

Jacob grinned, and Selmak mirrored his elation. “Jack! I could ask you the
same question. Is Sam there with you?”

“I’m here, Dad.” At the sound of her voice, the tension Jacob had been
carrying released, like a knot unwinding from the base of his spine, and he took
a deep breath. “Your timing couldn’t be better,” Sam said.

“We’ve got damage, Jacob.” Jack was all business. “And we’ve got wounded.”

“Stand by to ring over. I’ll de-cloak.”

“No, wait,” Jack said. There was a period of silence, then Jack came back
online. “Teal’c’s going to ram this thing right down Yu’s throat. Can you grab
us out of here in time?”

“You bet.”

He watched Teal’c take out one of the gliders, then lined up behind him until
the second glider had been blown out of space. Teal’c had probably never met a
death glider he hadn’t dreamed of destroying. Jacob matched their speed and got
into position below the other ship. It was a tricky maneuver, and he immediately
ceded control to Selmak, who had the experience to get it right the first and
only chance they’d have.

“Stand by,” Selmak told them, and then Jacob was up and moving, toward the
ring controls. A press of a few buttons and the rings activated. No time to spare to make sure he had them all. He caught sight of
people within the rings and ran back to the pilot’s seat to cloak and move away.

The
tel’tak
above accelerated suddenly as the autopilot kicked in,
headed straight for the command bridge of Yu’s ship. Selmak handed Jacob back
control as he sped away, putting safe distance between them and the imminent
collision.

Jack’s hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed hard. “I don’t know how you
knew we were here, but I’m damned glad you showed up,” he said, and Jacob
grinned.

“You should be glad. I saved your ass. What the hell were you thinking,
attacking a mothership?”

“It was his idea,” Jack said, jerking a thumb at Teal’c, who was claiming the
navigator’s seat as his own. “Thinks he’s invincible.”

“Unlike the rest of us,” Sam said. She leaned forward to kiss Jacob’s cheek.
He raised an arm and hugged her, pulling her closer.

“It’s good to see you, kid,” he said softly, taking in the dirt and blood all
over her. She shook her head, answering his unspoken question.

“You too,” she said, with a smile that told him she knew exactly why he was
here.

“Carter,” Jack said, calling her attention forward and Jacob’s with it. The
tel’tak
-turned-missile slammed into Yu’s ship, creating a spectacular light show
that died within moments, only to reveal Yu’s ship mostly intact, although there
was a satisfyingly ugly scar on the pyramid below the command decks. Still, he’d
hoped for better. “Crap,” Jack said.

“Considerable damage has been done,” Teal’c reported. “All weapons systems
are non-operational. Yu’s shields are down.”

“He’ll retreat now,” Jacob said.

“It’s enough to give them a fighting chance, sir,” Sam said.

“Well, that’s nice,” Jack said, and his sarcasm alone told Jacob there was a
long story behind it. “Glad we were there to help.” Jack crouched behind Daniel,
who was unconscious on the floor. His face and arms were covered in fresh and
dried blood. “I think it’s time we took care of our own now.”

“The closest planet is Relos,” Jacob said, and Jack’s head snapped up. The
score he planned to settle was written all over his face, but Daniel stirred,
and Jacob could see Jack setting that account aside for now. “I have a GDO. We
can gate in from there. George’ll be anxious to see you.”

“It’ll be good to be home,” Sam said, taking Jacob’s hand.

Janet glanced up from her charts and slipped off her stool to meet Sam in the
doorway of the infirmary. Her smile was bright, but her eyes were dulled with
fatigue. She’d spent the night clucking over them, as the Colonel would put it,
running tests and doing meticulous examinations of all their wounds, asking
questions and patting each one of her wayward SG-1 gently with warm, firm hands
in that way that was somehow both admonition and comfort. She took it personally
when they came back broken.

“Right on time,” she said to Sam and nodded her toward a bed on the other
side of Teal’c’s.

Teal’c’s eyes followed Sam as if he were in prison and pleading for a
jailbreak, but he followed orders and stayed in bed, resting, aiming his eyes
again at the ceiling when she shrugged helplessly at him. Sam grinned, even
though that pulled at the bruises on the side of her face. It was the good kind
of pain.

The Colonel wasn’t in bed; he’d claimed the only chair in the room, at the
head of Daniel’s bed, and had tipped it back precariously on two legs, using the
wall behind him for support. He was still in surgical scrubs and slippers, which
probably were his only concession to medical protocol, and Sam was sure he and
Janet had argued about that, too. His hands were laced over his stomach, and his
eyes were closed. Sam was amazed he could sleep that way and not break his neck.

Daniel was awake, though, and sitting up in bed in the circle of lamplight,
the lamp angled so that the Colonel’s face was in shadow. Across Daniel’s lap
lay a heavy, battered book, open to the middle. His head was bowed, his gaze
intent on the text, and his brow furrowed. The fingers of his left hand rubbed
his throat absently.

Janet flicked her penlight into Sam’s eyes. “Any blurred vision? Dizziness?
Ringing in the ears?”

The list of questions went on, and Sam answered them mechanically as she
watched Daniel over Janet’s shoulder. When Janet paused to probe Sam’s black eye again, Sam took the opportunity to ask in a
half-whisper, “How are they?” She could feel the Colonel’s attention turn their
way, even though he didn’t move at all. Daniel kept poring over the book,
oblivious.

Janet followed her gaze and then looked back at her, taking a moment to grasp
the ends of the stethoscope around her neck, as if considering how much to tell
and how much to tell by not telling.
“Physically”
she began, pausing to
let the question of psychological wellbeing hang like a question mark between
them, “they’re not in bad shape. Daniel’s mouth is pretty cut up from the
symbiote’s exit, but his throat is in better shape than I expected.” She
shrugged with her face. “I’m sure the Goa’uld—” Her eyebrows raised with the
question.

“Sebek.”

“—Sebek—wasn’t concerned with being gentle when he left, but all Goa’uld
secrete enzymes to aid with host transfer and… well, we don’t really know how
exactly, but the enzymes do the trick, regardless. At least they closed the
wound well enough for healing to begin, and Daniel’s body will do the rest.” She
looked at Daniel again, a half-smile dimpling her cheek. “Lucky for him. He
might have bled to death otherwise.”

“What about the protein marker?”

Janet shook her head. “No, nothing. Not even trace amounts of naquadah. It
may be because the symbiote was having trouble with the blending. He won’t be
operating any ribbon devices, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Sam didn’t bother hiding her uncomfortable response to that image. The legs
of the Colonel’s chair cracked down onto the concrete with a sharp
clank.
He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them, his
head bowed. Daniel dragged himself out of his book to. touch him on the
shoulder, and he sat back again, slumped for a moment, then pulled himself up
straighter to make a show of looking at Daniel’s book.

Teal’c gave up contemplating the lighting fixtures and gazed at Sam instead.
As she slid off of her bed, he pushed himself up on his elbows. Janet helped Sam
stuff an extra pillow behind his head and raise the bed so he could sit upright.

“Aren’t you supposed to be resting, Carter?” the Colonel asked without
looking at her. He made as if to turn the page of Daniel’s book, but Daniel
flattened his hand against it, refusing.

“I’m rested, sir. Just checking in with Janet.” She tucked her fingers into
her pockets and came to lean her hip on the rail of Daniel’s bed.

The Colonel made another attempt at turning the page, and this time Daniel
slapped his fingers. “Hey, commanding officer here,” the Colonel protested,
shaking the sting out of his hand. Daniel snorted. O’Neill rolled his eyes.
“Civilians.” Sam’s smile offered no sympathy, but the Colonel graciously
overlooked the insubordination, asking, “You eat?”

She nodded. “Meatloaf.”

“Ah. Jell-o?”

She made a face. “Green.”

“Bastards.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Our Jell-o was red,” Teal’c added, smugly.

Sam grinned at him before turning to aim her chin at Daniel’s book. “What’s
this?” She angled her head so that she could see the picture more or less
right-side-up. It was a row of eyeless stone faces against a backdrop of long,
wind-bowed grasses, and, at the upper margin, a sliver of ocean, a turbulent
sky.

The Colonel tapped one of the faces with his knuckles, his little finger in
its splint held up delicately to ward off Daniel. “Easter Island,” he answered.
“Daniel’s obsessing.”

“Ah.” Of course he was. Sam didn’t divulge the fact that she’d spent most of
her “resting” time poring over databases trying to find something equivalent to
the technology they’d found in that mountain, something that could scour
thoughts from a subject’s head, record and communicate them to others. The
Tok’ra memory recall devices seemed to function on a similar principle and were
maybe some nth generation adaptation of technology scavenged in the distant
past, but they used nowhere near the same level of destructive invasiveness. She
wondered if that aspect was part of the nominal operation of the library system, or if it had been the result of some
kind of malfunction. The former option was pretty creepy to contemplate, and she
was glad that, whoever they were, the library builders seemed to be long gone.

“Did you know that those statues on Easter Island had eyes?” the Colonel was
saying. “Big, blank, white eyes.” This time, Daniel let him page back and angle
the book up a bit so she could see an example. The effect was chillingly
familiar. She suppressed a shudder, and ran her hands over her arms to soothe
the sudden pricking of gooseflesh.

“Yeah, my reaction exactly.” He flipped back to the centerfold.

“Do you believe that these people are descendants of those who built the
library, Daniel Jackson?” Teal’c was leaning on one elbow so that he could see
the book over the Colonel’s head.

In answer, Daniel shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, but it came out as a
wisp of voice. He winced and swallowed carefully, his tongue running across the
inside of his cheek. The Colonel leaned back and snagged a cup of ice chips from
the table beside him, waited while Daniel shook a few into his mouth, and then
put it back again. Daniel was quiet while the ice melted, his fingers tracing
the outline of the stem stone face. “But they met them,” he finished finally.

“Too bad for them,” the Colonel observed flatly.

“Maybe—” Daniel began and paused to accept another offering of ice chips,
this time twisting the cup into a fold of blanket by his side. “Maybe the
memories of their ancestors were in there somewhere, in the walls.”

The Colonel sat back in his chair and rolled his head, left and right. Sam
could actually hear the crackle in his neck. “Gone now,” he concluded, and
wasn’t at all upset about that, it seemed.

“Yeah. I guess so.” Daniel looked about as disappointed as Sam would expect,
but there was a faint tremor of relief in his voice.

“And no snake is running around with all that stuff either, or sucking
people’s brains out of their heads.” The Colonel punched Daniel lightly on the
shoulder with his good hand. “Consolation prize.”

Daniel nodded, but he still looked pained.

Sam contemplated the figures in the photograph. “Seems strange, though, to
put up monuments to something like that. If it was so terrible.” Her eyes met
Daniel’s long enough to see that “terrible” didn’t come close, and she looked
away. The Colonel’s face betrayed nothing.

Teal’c grunted his agreement but added, “Perhaps it was a reminder, so that
they would not be tempted to greet them again.”

Sam thought of that ribbon knotted under her ribs, the way it had dragged her
forward, how much she’d
wanted-whatever
was at the other end of it. Her
fingers kneaded her sternum restlessly as if she could untangle that tether. She
caught herself, closed her hand into a fist and let it drop to bounce a few
times on the top of the bed rail.

“Smart folks,” the Colonel said and tipped his chair back to look wistfully
up at the ceiling. “In other news, I’m bored enough to eat Jell-o. Even green.”

Sam straightened. “Yes, sir.” Somehow it seemed like a tremendous relief to
go on a quest for something as mundane as Jell-o. “Anything else?”

“I have some journals I need—”

“Shut up, Daniel,” the Colonel ordered.

“Or,” Daniel amended with as sidelong glance at him. “A chessboard.”

“Cards.”

“Or cards.”

“Or, Major…” Colonel O’Neill’s chair clanked down again. He leaned forward
to scope out the room and the fierce doctor filling out charts at her desk by
the door. “You could stage a jailbreak. You’re good at that. So Teal’c says.” He
raised his eyebrows hopefully at her. “We could find steaks.”

A plan was already taking shape in Sam’s head when there was a pointed “ahem”
from the corner and Janet impaled them each in turn with a glare.

Sam looked from Janet to her CO. “Yeah, sir, but those were only Jaffa.”

“Wuss,” he muttered and sat back glumly.

Teal’c also leaned back against his pillows and resumed his perusal of the
ceiling. Sam grinned at his quiet, “Indeed.”