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CHAPTER 12: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
Catherine Langford's smile of greeting fading as Jack followed Daniel into
her kitchen. "I told you that you were not welcome here," she snapped. The
remains of her breakfast were on the table, a newspaper folded open at the
crossword, a fresh cup of coffee in her hand. She walked over to the table, put
down the cup, and when she looked up, she was composed again.
"You'll change your mind when you hear what we have to tell you," Jack countered
confidently.
"We're here to bring you back to the Stargate Programme," Daniel explained
hurriedly, fixing his studiously attentive gaze on Catherine.
Wuss! Jack thought, wishing he was capable of being as annoyed with
Daniel as he deserved for pushing his luck and exceeding their orders yet again.
Catherine's cool brown eyes narrowed and Jack uncomfortably recalled she played
this game at least as well as he did, while Daniel was...Daniel...
Oy.
"There's something you don't know, Catherine," Daniel told her, his tone, his
whole body, earnest and persuasive.
"Clearly," she snorted with dry amusement.
"Sit down," Jack instructed her.
"Catherine, please," Daniel urged her. "Sit."
Too smart for childish gestures of defiance, Catherine looked measuringly at
each of them. Then she sat composedly in the place set for her at the kitchen
table, her face softening slightly when Daniel sat close by her side. She rather
liked having him hover attentively over her and Jack guessed he knew why. There
was a lot in Daniel that would remind her of Ernest. A whole lot.
"Tell me what it is I don't know," Catherine ordered Daniel.
"They opened the Stargate in 1945."
"What?" Catherine reeled back, her mouth slack with shock.
"Your father and Professor Littlefield, they succeeded in their experiments,"
Daniel explained with the greatest economy. "They found a viable address,
dialled the Stargate and Ernest went through."
"He died," Catherine argued, struggling to comprehend. "My father told me Ernest
had died. There was an accident, an explosion."
"Your father lied," Jack corrected her with cool precision. She disliked him so
much he hardly knew what else to do for her other than give her the unalloyed
truth. There was nothing else she would accept from him.
"Ernest..." She sounded terrible, worse than afraid, hardly understanding when
Daniel took her hand in his.
"Ernest is alive," Daniel told her with more sensitivity than Jack could have
managed. "We're here to take you to him."
He glanced up at Jack as if for guidance when all Catherine did was clamp onto
his hand and breathe as if she were going into labour. Her face was clenched and
grey, her tightly compressed lips bloodless.
"If you'll come with us." Daniel stroked her hand, demanding nothing, only
letting her know he was with her. "Please, Catherine," he pleaded. "Please come
with us."
They waited out the worst of the shock with her in the quiet, cosy kitchen, the
rich breakfast smells fading, the minutes stretching out. There was only the
sound of her harsh, panting breaths and her stricken eyes.
For the first time, Jack saw that she was old.
"Catherine, this is General George Hammond, replacing General West," Daniel
explained as he shepherded her into the general's office.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Langford." Hammond seemed to be sincere in his
warm greeting.
"He's a teddy bear," Jack told Catherine, prepared to enjoy this particular
clash of the titans. Hammond was a foe much more worthy of Catherine's steel
than West ever was.
Looking more her sceptical self, Catherine shook the general's hand with her
customary dignity and accepted his offer of a seat.
"Dr. Fraiser is bringing Professor Littlefield down to join us," Hammond
informed her, picking his words with great care.
It struck Jack that given the spiking discomfort levels in the room, Dr. Fraiser
was going to find herself flying strictly solo when it came time to play
chaperone to their two ageing lovebirds. Even their ever-supportive Daniel was
eyeing the doorway in search of an escape route.
And then Ernest was there and no one was ready for him, least of all Catherine.
She surged up from her chair, trembling visibly. She could hardly bear to look
at him, at this frail stranger who'd been alone for the whole of what should
have been their life together, who had left her alone, her gaze skittering away
from his age-spotted face again and again.
"You don't recognise me, do you?" she asked at last, sounding as lost and shaky
as she looked.
Ernest, practically backed into Fraiser's waiting arms, reacted to the sound of
her voice, his rheumy eyes seeming to focus. He stared and stared at her, and
then his expression changed, charged with some emotion Jack couldn't quantify.
"C-Catherine?"
She nodded, melting into a smile, a dazzling smile that left her terribly
exposed. Young.
"You look different," Ernest faltered.
"Fifty years!" Her eyes tracked his face minutely, looking for anything in him
she recognised. "I'm old, Ernest, and so are you. I don't even know you."
This distressed Ernest visibly, Fraiser watchfully starting forward to
discreetly steady him as he tottered.
"We had a wonderful life together." He was begging Catherine to help him
preserve the dream that had kept him alive for so long, unable to let it go, to
trust he was finally free of that terrible solitude.
"I couldn't imagine you, Ernest." What Catherine was feeling was too intimate
for anger or even regret; it was her innate reaction to the lie she'd had to
live with. Instinctively, she was fighting back with truth, with reality as she
knew it. "In my mind, we didn't have a wonderful life. I thought you were dead.
My father told me you were dead. He lied to me."
Perhaps only Ernest understood her. "Forgave. You forgave me long ago."
"No. I didn't."
This seemed so cold, so unfeeling, hitting the old man hard, but Catherine's
hands were quickest to help Ernest when he needed to sit and she exchanged a
complicated look with Janet Fraiser, who smiled suddenly, took Daniel by the
elbow and pulled him neatly out of the room with her.
Taking this as their cue, Jack and the general thankfully exited to sit – not
quite out of earshot – in the briefing room. Within seconds, Fraiser appeared,
herding a worried Daniel in their direction. She looked extremely smug and
self-satisfied.
Daniel, taking refuge behind someone who made sense to him, i.e., Jack,
gratifyingly joined the united front of pure masculine bafflement. "That did not
go well!" he said fretfully to Fraiser. "I honestly thought meeting Catherine
would be the best thing for Ernest."
"You're not wrong," Fraiser approved his foresight. "They're in love."
Jack, Daniel and General Hammond turned as one man to watch the clearly
continuing confrontation in the office. Then they looked back at Fraiser.
"It takes a great man to recognise what he has holds the greatest value." This
was Ernest, his voice rising, passionately pleading. "I didn't. I was a fool."
"Ernest, you've suffered enough." And this was Catherine, getting all feminine
on his ass. "No sense wasting time in the past. Right?"
"Who's winning?" Jack whispered to Daniel, way out of his emotional league.
Catherine and Ernest embraced.
Fraiser's dotingly romantic expression was absolutely insufferable.
"Janet." Daniel at least showed the good sense to admit it when he was licked.
"Sam, this is amazing!" Daniel was doing his Snoopy dance of joy.
Jack, critically surveying what a really motivated astrophysicist could achieve
by way of extreme makeover in less than twenty-four hours, with only the aid of
a large and thoroughly cowed construction team, was forced to agree.
There was no marble here, only concrete, but the secondary power grid on Level
23 had both the required height and the space for the thin partition walls Sgt.
Siler appeared to have magically grown from his beanstalk overnight. Men were
still working, shoring up the walls from the outside and making something solid
of them.
Inside, though, the repository device stood waiting on its rough but sturdy
central platform, the alien text was being projected against the right places on
the surrounding walls, and Carter had rigged up an array of cameras linked to
several computer terminals placed on wide tables set in roughly the spot Ernest
would have slept in the original chamber.
"Good job, Carter," Jack gave her due credit as the general nodded approvingly.
"Thank you!" Daniel called out sunnily to her.
"We're ready, Sir," Carter said brightly, sharing a quick, greedy grin with
Daniel as she ran a final check on her computers.
"Touch it," Ernest invited Catherine.
Looking almost as little-kid-at-Christmas as Daniel, Catherine put both hands on
the orange blob, her mouth falling open in sheer wonder as the air lit to
translucence above them.
"The graphical representation of these elements is the basis for what I believe
to be a true universal language," Daniel explained happily, engagingly sure of
the complete attention of his very sympathetic audience.
"It's beautiful!" Catherine crowed triumphantly to Ernest, finally enjoying her
very personal reward for a lifetime of work on her Stargate.
"Isn't it?" Positively bushy-tailed, Carter jumped up to stand by Catherine and
Ernest.
"Sam!" Daniel said urgently.
"We're recording everything," Carter reassured him, translating his anxiety
without difficulty.
Daniel relaxed and decided it was okay for her to play too.
"But we're currently most interested in the astronomy data contained within the
device," the general prompted, duty-bound to at least try to rein in the
enthusiasts among them.
"Maybe we have to turn every page in sequence before we reach that data." Daniel
sounded as if he were praying this would prove to be the case.
"I've found no other way," Ernest confirmed.
Daniel had the grace not to gloat too obviously. He did at least refrain from
doing his Snoopy dance right in front of the general's face.
"You do know what we're looking for?" Hammond naturally wanted to make sure
before they wasted an awful lot of time making Daniel very, very happy.
"Yes," Daniel answered before Ernest could, opening up one of the manila folders
he was carrying so he could fan out several photographs of chevrons in evidence.
"I have not seen symbols like those except on the Stargate and on the device you
call the DHD," Ernest confirmed.
"But you also told me you hadn't managed to read to the end of the book," Daniel
blatantly fed Ernest his line.
"Not in fifty years," Ernest agreed sorrowfully.
Catherine slipped her hand comfortingly into his, her expression a peculiar
mixture of pride and grief. The qualities that had attracted her to Ernest in
the first place, the reasons she loved him as much as she did, those were the
self-same reasons they were forced apart.
Pretty goddamned certain his own equally obsessive honey could spin this latest
exploration out for at least fifty years, Jack gave the repository an
investigative prod, ignoring Daniel's distressed bleat at his unfeeling
barbarism.
"Are you sure this thing doesn't come with speed-dial?" he demanded.
"I don't know what that is," Ernest replied politely.
"Okay, an index," Jack amended. "Basically, some short-cut way to look up
astronomy. Star charts. Something." He gave the blob another prod, then became
aware of a certain quality to the silence... He looked up into a blazing night
sky, thick with stars and raging colour. "Wow," he said, quite inadequately.
Then he looked around at the sea of astonished faces. "Er, did I do that?"
"I think so," Daniel and Carter said together.
"Is that a..."
"Three-dimensional map of the galaxy?" Carter fortunately finished for him
before he had to get specific. "I think so, Sir."
"We are getting this, aren't we?" Daniel stage-whispered to her.
"God, I hope so!" she said sincerely.
Daniel immediately took Jack's hands and with extreme care, put them back on the
orange blob. Then he planted himself directly on the other side of the
repository and smiled hearteningly.
"Where are we on that map, Jack?" he enquired.
It sounded more as if he were talking Jack down from a ledge than asking him a
question.
"How should I know?" Jack asked reasonably.
"There!" Carter yelped as the stars wheeled and focused on a small blue planet,
unmistakeably their own.
"I never saw anything like this," Ernest told them. "I could never do anything
but turn each page and read – try to read," he corrected himself painfully,
"What was already there."
Carter looked up alertly, then reached out to put her own hands on the
repository. She closed her eyes, concentrated...
"Nothing," Daniel said quickly.
Carter's face fell.
Daniel shrugged as they turned questioningly to him. "If it worked for me, the
universal language would be up there, not stars, and we'd be reading it in
English."
"I hope that's not a hint!" Jack panicked, snatching his hands to safety.
"We can work up to it," Daniel told him with a certain austere determination.
"Can you show us where Ra's world is on this map, Colonel?" Catherine asked him
in a warmer tone than any she'd yet used on him.
Jack dutifully thought about pyramids and sand and stuff, but nothing noticeably
happened. The map stayed focused on Earth and their own solar system.
"I don't think that's specific enough," Carter judged.
"No, not when the landmarks from Ra's world were modelled so exactly on the
Great Pyramids here," Daniel agreed. "Try thinking about the address, Jack, the
symbols for that world."
It was probably very sweet, Daniel's inexplicable confidence in Jack's ability
to recall the tiniest of utterly insignificant details.
Sweet, but damned inconvenient.
Grasping her colonel's difficulty, Carter took Daniel's notebook, rapidly jotted
something into it, tore out the page and then passed it over for him to read.
She'd written out the seven symbols of the address in perfect order of
alignment. From memory.
And clearly Jack's work was already done, because everyone else was looking up
again, their mouths open.
He was starting to feel like a seeing-eye dog, or something, that knew it was
supposed to plant its furry ass on the sidewalk when the light was on red but
couldn't have told you why.
The stars were different. Another solar system, focused on a smaller planet of
yellow-gold, circled by three moons.
Carter was scribbling again. She handed over a second address and this one he
remembered. They were there only the day before. Heliopolis. Jack hardly had to
look up to know the stars were wheeling just for him.
"How is this possible?" Hammond sensibly wanted to know.
"I hope that's not directed at me," Jack modestly demurred.
"Some kind of mind control?" Carter hazarded uncertainly. "The technology
appears to be intuitively extrapolating the appropriate data from Colonel
O'Neill's thought processes, his concepts of space."
"It responds best to specific stimuli," Daniel mused. "Like the gate addresses.
Those symbols are recognised by the technology and by Jack. Which means, if we
ask Jack the right questions, we should be able to prompt the repository to give
us the right answers."
"Why me?" Jack complained, feeling more than ever that this was a case of See
Jack Run. Run, Jack, Run! He had about that level of control over the process.
Now Daniel was scribbling something down. Another sheet of torn paper was shoved
under Jack's nose.
"Show us all of these planets on the map, Jack," Daniel urged excitedly. "All at
the same time, all these worlds with Stargates."
"I'm not a performing seal," Jack stated. Not unless he got some kind of
major-league interactive treat later, in which case he would waggle his flipper
and balance a ball on his nose with the best of them.
"Just focus on the addresses, Jack," Daniel crooned with the hypnotic intensity
of a self-help tape, spreading out each of the addresses across the top of the
orange blob where Jack could see them. "Close your eyes and picture the
Stargate. Picture those symbols and the worlds where we'll find them."
Jack closed his eyes and thought about the Stargate. He wasn't aware of anything
in particular happening, but then he hadn't any of the other times either.
"That's good, Jack, that's right," Daniel sang to him. "Show me the addresses,
the seven symbols that take us to each of them."
"Yeah, like that's gonna happen!" Jack sneered. He couldn't even remember the
addresses in front of him.
"Just think about the seven symbols, how Earth is always the last one locked,"
Daniel cajoled.
Earth's symbol. Jack knew that one for sure. The pyramid with the circle
sticking out of it and the two funny little guys, one either side...He smiled at
the memory, at Daniel sketching out those six co-ordinates in space, the
archaeologist lecturing the Air Force, the frickin' Space Command for cryin' out
loud, on the need for the seventh, the point of origin to plot a course.
"Oh! My! God!" Carter sounded like she was having a heart-attack.
Jack's eyes snapped open. Star after star was burning red, seven symbols glowing
by the side of each. He swallowed. "We are getting all of this, right?" he asked
with commendable casualness. "Right?"
"Daniel, is this where the stars are now?" Carter asked urgently.
"Ask Jack," he advised her, looking taken aback. "He's right there."
"Sir, this planet." She pointed to an address at random, a world with relatively
little else in the space around it. "This one. Memorise this address."
"And? So?"
"Show me that planet where it was, Colonel, not where it is. We need to see
where that world was when this device was built, when the Stargate was built."
"Maybe that's too vague a concept," Daniel fretted. "Remember, the repository is
extrapolating data from Jack's concepts of time and space, from his thought
processes."
In that case, it liked things simple.
Jack thought about time.
What he knew right off the top of his head about time was there were sixty
seconds in one minute, sixty minutes in one hour, twenty-four hours in one day,
three hundred and sixty-five days in one year, one year for the Earth to orbit
the sun, ten years in a decade, one hundred years in a century, one thousand
years in a millennium.
Simple.
The Stargate had to be at least ten thousand years old because his reports had
said the cover stone was that old. Now was 1995, ten thousand years before now
was 8005 BC, shit, he forgot that part...
"Starting again," he muttered, scowling.
"We've got all the time there is." The awful pun, unfortunately, came from
Hammond, so Jack couldn't call him on mocking the afflicted.
"What exactly are you doing?" And this was Daniel, sounding much closer than he
had a minute or so ago, close enough now for his breath to tickle Jack's cheek,
which was quite nice.
"I'm thinking ten thousand years ago, are there Stargates?"
"We know there are."
"Daniel!"
"Um, okay, sorry. You're right. Sorry about that."
"Daniel."
"Shutting up now."
Twenty-thousand years.
Jack looked up and there were Stargates.
Same at thirty-thousand years, and at forty.
Fifty-thousand years.
No Stargates. No red planets, no symbols.
So he made sure. He thought about fifty-one thousand years, he thought about the
year 49,005 BC and Stargates. He verified, and then he thought about the year
47,0005 BC and Stargates. And then, only then, was he sure.
"If that thing is to believed, and my math adds up, we're looking at
compensating for fifty-thousand years of stellar drift," he reported sleekly.
The address of the world she'd picked at random ready in her hand, Carter barely
waited for the general's okay before she practically ran out of their makeshift
repository room, her mind already in those interminable computer models of hers.
Jack was feeling good and thinking about possible major-league treats to request
later until he saw the clear, brilliant expression in Daniel's eyes and that
just rocked his world.
Events moved so quickly then, Daniel was almost as battered and bewildered as
Ernest and Catherine were. His universal language was as frustratingly out of
reach as before while every effort of the Air Force was bent on extracting the
last byte of astronomical data out of the repository.
The map of the Stargate network Jack had conjured up had been filmed from every
conceivable angle, the addresses computer-enhanced and despatched off to Sgt.
Harriman and the control room techs to input into the dialling computer.
A second team was feverishly mapping the map. Or modelling the map. Something
like that.
Throw in Sam modelling the addresses Jack had mapped to factor in fifty-thousand
years of stellar drift, and honestly, Daniel was losing track.
Hero of the hour, Jack had been banned from the vicinity of the repository in
case he accidentally thought things at it, something General Hammond had taken
immediate advantage of. They were closeted in the general's office talking
tactics for this new Stargate Command. With the President.
Daniel had work, responsibilities of his own, but Ernest and Catherine hadn't
been able to bring themselves to leave the repository, and Daniel couldn't bring
himself to leave them.
"Thousands of Stargates," Catherine said dreamily.
"Alien races, visitors to Earth." Ernest was equally overwhelmed.
"Fifty-thousand years." Daniel shook his head over it, hardly able to conceive
of that timescale for this level of technology. Compared to human history... "We
have the first evidence of cave paintings as a way of documenting and passing on
information."
He sat on the platform in front of the chairs Ernest and Catherine were resting
in, leaning forward to balance his elbows on his knees.
"Everything we know," he confided seriously, "Everything we thought we knew
about history, about language, about mythology..."
"Science and technology," Ernest said sympathetically.
"Religion and culture," Catherine suggested.
"Our whole existence changed irrevocably by the Stargate." Daniel smiled at
them, certain enough of their comprehension and their compassion to risk
speaking so freely of his feelings to them. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be
celebrating or mourning that we're not alone in the universe, not when it so
fundamentally changes who and what we think we are. There's no true certainty in
history, in modern interpretation of the archaeological record, but how in the
world am I supposed to judge the body of evidence knowing now that the sun god
Ra is no myth, but a reality, and an alien one at that? Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Norse runes, the written and spoken language that are fundamental to the
development of our civilisation, our humanity, and we can't ever know how much
of that came from us, and how much was imposed by aliens so advanced we'll never
wholly comprehend them."
Catherine almost laughed, and then she almost cried, fumbling blindly for
Ernest's hand. "So much like you used to be," she said waveringly. "So much
passion."
"Have I changed so very much?" Ernest asked her softly, and then she did cry.
Feeling decidedly guilty for upsetting them, Daniel eased himself to his feet
and tried discreetly to edge away. Catherine caught at his hand too, so he
hunkered down and stayed with her while she let go of what she couldn't change,
the three of them caught up in the same contradictions.
The briefing room was packed out when George Hammond took his place at the
head of the table. Catherine Langford and Ernest Littlefield sat at his right,
with Dr. Jackson and Colonel O'Neill next to them. At his left, Captain Carter
and Dr. Fraiser were breaking off another of their friendly rivalries with Major
Kawalsky and Captain Ferretti. Key technical personnel and NCOs lined the walls.
Within seconds of George's arrival, disciplined, attentive silence had fallen.
"People," he began, as sober now as he had ever been in his life. "Let's not
fool ourselves here. This thing," he gestured out towards the Stargate that
dominated his base and his command. "Is both vast and dangerous and we are in so
far over our heads we can barely see daylight. We would all be much better off
if the Stargate had been left in the ground."
Somehow, it was no surprise to him that the only faces showing true
comprehension and agreement with his position were those of the two scientists
who'd spent their lives on this technology and paid the dearest personal price
for attaining it.
"With respect, Sir, we can't bury our heads in the sand!" Carter protested, the
first to find her voice. "I mean, think of how much we could learn, think of
what we could bring back!" She looked to Dr. Jackson for support.
"What you could bring back is precisely what I'm afraid of, Captain," George
spoke before Dr. Jackson could answer Carter.
"We're doing pretty well so far," Catherine Langford commented, a purely
personal observation on her part, directed to the keen, watchful old man at her
side. "I applaud your patience, General, and the support you've shown your
people. I owe you my thanks for bringing Ernest home." She straightened up then,
showing her steel. "I've also lived with Stargate all of my life. I see its
potential, its wonders, and I see its terrors. Two worlds explored, just two out
of an entire galaxy, and already we've found humans taken from Earth and
enslaved by an alien tyrant. Proof of the existence of four more alien races
found on the second world. At least three of those alien races have visited
Earth, impacted on the development of our species in ways we cannot begin to
fathom. Their assumption of godlike personas, their incredibly advanced
technology and weaponry?" She looked slowly around the table, making fleeting
eye contact with each of them in turn. "I won't be sleeping nights for a very
long time to come."
"Thank you," George told her sincerely. "I thank you for that very cogent
analysis, Dr. Langford. The gate is open. The aliens are out there and not only
aware of our existence, but from the evidence discovered by Dr. Jackson and
Professor Littlefield, seeking to directly influence our development. At least
one of those alien races has demonstrated clear hostile intent and we have no
assurance that Ra was the last of his kind. Our own mythology suggests he was
far from alone."
The silence held.
"Captain Carter, with this new information, the map of destinations provided by
Colonel O'Neill, you're confident the Stargate will take us where we want to
go?" George enquired.
"Sgt. Harriman's team are feeding the new co-ordinates from the repository into
the dialling computer now, Sir," Carter reported, at her stiffest and most
professional, clearly uncertain which way George was leading them. "It will take
time to calculate the requisite compensation for stellar drift for each
individual address but I'm confident it will spit out two or three destinations
a month."
"The President of the United States sees both the innate potential and the
inherent threat posed by the Stargate," George informed them in his most
reasoned, measured tones. "So confident is he in the personnel assembled here,
he has ordered the formation of nine teams, whose duties will be to perform
reconnaissance, determine threats and if possible, make peaceful contact with
any peoples we may encounter on these worlds we'll be exploring, be they human
or alien in origin."
And for much of this, he had Jack O'Neill to thank, not just for his tactical
brilliance, but because it turned out he went way back with Air Force One.
"These teams will operate on a covert, Top Secret basis. No one outside of
Stargate Command will know of their existence except for the President and the
Joint Chiefs." He smiled now at Jack. "Colonel O'Neill?"
"General?"
"Your team will be designated SG-1. The team will consist of yourself, Dr.
Jackson and Captain Carter." George was almost amused at their reactions to
this. Carter blushed to the roots of her hair with incredulous delight while Dr.
Jackson, braced for a fight, was visibly having difficulty changing mental
gears.
"The expertise each of you possesses is invaluable," he assured them. "But
Colonel O'Neill has convinced me your expertise will be best deployed in the
field."
This wasn't strictly accurate, of course. O'Neill was adamant his team had to
include Dr. Jackson. So immovable was he on this, Captain Carter's assignment
was the price O'Neill was willing to pay to get him.
"With their wealth of experience with the technology and its history, Dr.
Langford and Professor Littlefield will take up the advisory duties here at
Stargate Command that would otherwise have fallen to you."
"Thank you," Dr. Jackson said at once and inclusively, almost stammering in his
gratitude to them, smiling dazzlingly at O'Neill.
"Major Kawalsky?"
"Sir?" The major straightened up consciously.
"You will head SG-2."
"I will?" Kawalsky looked astonished.
"Colonel O'Neill keeps telling me it's about time you had a command."
"He does?"
"I had a moment of weakness," O'Neill blithely disclaimed responsibility.
"You did?"
"Your team will consist of yourself, Captain Ferretti and Sgt. Brown."
"Cool!" Ferretti enthused inappropriately. "Sir!"
"SG-4 will consist of combat-trained medical personnel reporting directly to Dr.
Fraiser and Dr. Warner, her surgical colleague. We’re waiting on the Joint
Chiefs to appoint suitable leaders and personnel to the remaining SG teams as
well as the support staff to be assigned here on base."
George's key people were showing him they had a clear understanding of the
massive scale and the risks of this unique undertaking. He was pleased with them
all and chose to let this show.
"Dismissed," he said proudly, smiling broadly at them all.
Jack wasn't surprised when Kawalsky cut him out of the herd stampeding from
the briefing room and asked for a word in private. It wasn't a moment of
weakness that made Jack say yes so much as it was Daniel, Carter and Fraiser
carrying Ernest and Catherine off in triumph for some kind of calorie-laden
celebration in the Commissary, to which Jack was pointedly not invited.
He would be discussing this exclusion, specifically how Daniel could make it up
to him, later. Anticipation of how he might be coming later made it tricky to
concentrate on the conversation Kawalsky was trying to have with him now.
Missing five words in ten as they picked their way through the maze of hallways
that led to his cramped office, he lost patience, ducked into an empty room and
told Kawalsky to spit it out.
Kawalsky hauled off and punched him in the nose.
"What the hell was that?" Jack hollered, clutching himself. He was more
astonished than angry.
"That was for Daniel."
"For Daniel?"
Being bounced off a wall was hardly conducive to clear thinking, but Jack wised
up real fast when Kawalsky grimly asked him about strange new worlds...and gift
shops.
"I thought I heard something," Jack noted inconsequentially.
"You heard Ferretti."
"Ferretti?" Jack was horrified. Was the end of your career and life as
you knew it supposed to be such a goddamned farce?
"You're lucky Lou likes Daniel so damn much," Kawalsky argued pugnaciously,
balling his fists. "You're lucky we both like Daniel a helluva lot more than
either one of us likes you."
It was harder than Jack expected to take his hands away from his face,
straighten himself up and look Kawalsky in the eye. Harder than he expected to
have anyone know he was sleeping with a man. He hadn’t wanted to know this about
himself, that he minded so much about labels. Respect. What was owed him.
For a frightening moment, he had no idea what he was feeling or which way he was
going to jump.
His back against the wall, literally and figuratively, what he found about
himself was that he couldn't deny Daniel.
That was his instinct, what he felt most clearly, most strongly of all.
He wouldn't deny Daniel.
When he could focus enough to do something about this, he saw how Kawalsky was
shit-scared and going at him anyway, and being a contrary bastard, he found this
funny.
"You're lucky I like Daniel too," he said softly.
Kawalsky appeared to know this. "We talked it over, Lou and me. We talked and we
agreed."
"Yes?"
"We agreed maybe you were after Daniel from the start. It, er, it played that
way. Only, Lou figures, he, er, he figures this is you, y'know? The
Almighty O'Neill." Kawalsky explained painfully. "So maybe you didn't know it."
The Almighty O'Neill was about that level of blind, yes. Dumb, also.
Kawalsky swallowed hard, finding this about as easy to say as Jack was finding
it to hear. "It's done, I guess. And the way the team thing played out, Colonel,
that's probably for the best. You don't need to worry now about looking out for
Daniel."
They'd worked together ten years, off and on. There was a whole history there, a
level of understanding no one who hadn't been through it with them could ever
quite touch. Kawalsky knew at least as well as Jack how deep those words cut. He
knew how compromised Jack was. He also knew that protecting a civilian in the
field gave Jack every excuse, the credibility he needed for his partiality.
"And so long as you're looking out for Daniel, you don't need to worry about
Ferretti and me."
There it was. The humiliation of getting caught with his pants down was there,
beating at Jack, but for all he'd lost here, he found he could deal. For so long
as he had Daniel, he would deal. The way they got together, he guessed he knew
he couldn't get away with that. Something had to balance that up, some time.
"Daniel never hears about this," he said flatly.
"Not from us."
They understood each other pretty well.
"If I hadn't just got you promoted?"
"I'd have hit you harder. Sir."
Daniel sort of bit Jack's chin, then kissed it better.
"Yes, Daniel," Jack conceded with sing-song, indulgent patience. "I'll take a
look at the meaning of life stuff and try to think those English thoughts for
you."
"Good." His work done, Daniel rolled off of Jack and snuggled the quilt up
around his shoulders, making a show of nuzzling into his pillows.
There was a suspicion of a laugh behind him. "What the hell did I do to deserve
you?" Jack groaned theatrically.
"Pursued me relentlessly from the moment you first laid eyes on me?"
"Pretty much."
Another laugh ghosted, but this one Daniel felt on his skin. He smiled and
shifted position, letting Jack's arms find comfortable places to be on him.
"You want to make love?" Jack mumbled around a pleasant mouthful of Daniel,
enjoying some biting and kissing of his own.
"A lot of the time," Daniel agreed teasingly, idly tracing the veins in the back
of Jack's hands. "And, you know, I've been thinking. About that."
"Mm-hm?"
"Thinking we could do...more."
"Specifically?"
"More."
"More?"
"I've been thinking about that, yes."
"Not easy to talk about, is it?" Jack murmured sympathetically, giving Daniel's
shoulder a lingering, consoling kiss.
"Desperate," Daniel agreed stoically. "Especially the whole thing about, um..."
He hesitated. "Positions."
"Want to hear what specials we have on the board this evening?"
"Yes?"
"Whatever makes you feel good is what we'll do."
"That's nice." Daniel patted Jack's hands. "Not terribly informative, but nice."
"Do you want to see me? Do you want me to see you?"
"That's an interesting question," Daniel admitted. "I haven't thought about it."
Jack brushed fingers over his cheek. "Whatever's comfortable."
"What do you think?"
"I think we could stay like this. Spooning. I can hold you."
Daniel turned his head, found Jack waiting. They could kiss.
"Take it as slow and easy as you like."
Oh, yes.
Jack held him more closely still, rubbing his cheek affectionately over
Daniel's. "Want to try?"
"Please."
"Gimme a minute."
Jack rolled away and went into the bathroom, rifling through the drug cabinet
while Daniel hugged the quilt and tried to analyse how he was feeling. He
guessed he was okay about this because now the worst was over, now the talking
was done, he felt a pleasant buzz, a certain tingling anticipation. Mostly, he
was curious. He was fortunate Jack loved how curious he was, let him do and try
and touch anything. Anything was good for Jack, anything Daniel wanted. He
wanted this, reaching down to finger his cock.
The bed dipped and Jack cuddled up with him again, hot and hard already.
"I see you're, er, fully behind me on this one," Daniel joked.
"And I see you started without me." Jack kissed Daniel's shoulder and put a fat
tube into his hands. "Hold that, would you?"
"Anything else? Fluff your pillows?" Grinning, Daniel tossed the tube behind him
and put his selfish hands back where he wanted them.
"You don't get to just lie there and enjoy it, you know."
"If this was movie sex I would."
"If this was movie sex, you wouldn't keep forgetting to take your socks off."
"All part of the foreplay," Daniel said defiantly.
"Taking socks off those feet?"
"Just do your thing."
"What thing?"
"That thing." Cool, shivery stroking... "That's niiice."
Daniel's belly began to jump, the way it always did when Jack's hands were on
him. Slow and easy was such a dim possibility when Jack made him feel like this.
He pushed back, demanding more.
"There's a rhythm to this, you know!" Jack snorted. "A natural build-up in
pace."
Since his hands felt very good exactly where they were, fully occupied with his
cock, Daniel expressed his opinion of natural build-up by banging his butt off
Jack's hip. Jack's whole body rocked with silent laughter but he got the point
and gave Daniel the finger.
Uncertain quite what he was supposed to be feeling, Daniel gave an experimental
shimmy. There wasn't a whole lot of sensation but it was okay, nothing hurt. He
glanced around enquiringly, kissed Jack while he was in the vicinity and
suggested they get on with it.
Jack meekly obliged and Daniel decided rather quickly two fingers were better
than one.
Two, he could work with.
Two made him squirm and shake and want to pull all of Jack inside him.
He was strained, uncoordinated, couldn't keep all of these necessary sensations
going at once, stuttering relief when Jack took it deeper, further, harder.
Pushing back against plunging, plundering fingers wasn't enough, but trying to
push forward into his own fisting hands at the exact same time made him crazy.
He tried to make sense of it to Jack, but all he could hear was a low, husking
voice that didn’t sound like him, almost crying how good this was.
When hands took his hips, when he felt a slick, snub touch where he most needed
it to be, he knew Jack was hearing him just fine. Jack pushed for them both and
it was all as easy as he'd said it would be. He stroked right in, almost as
hungry for it as Daniel.
What Daniel was feeling for Jack, he could only communicate with his mouth, hot
and greedy and hard, tongues sharing the deliberate rhythm of their bodies.
In and out and deep and slow, Jack touching him every place he could be touched,
stroking him inside and out, patient and steady, stroke after stroke of slow
pleasure.
Daniel felt the truth of it. He felt Jack love him, opening him up from the
inside, steady and smooth and on and on.
He gave himself up to it, let himself go under, trusting, demanding Jack do
everything they wanted until he was shot through, ripples of sweet, unbearable
sensation spreading, widening and deepening, pulsing in his head and his belly,
his balls and his cock all at once.
Jack lost his rhythm, lost his head, grabbing Daniel back against him with a
low, desperate growl, shoving hard and deep, fused with him, bucking and rigid,
coming inside him.
Daniel could hardly grasp what a rush that was when Jack's hot hands found his
cock and squeezed. In one crazed, spasming second his clenched, ravaged body was
wrenched, twisted with pleasure, and he was coming.
They found their voices then, rushed, rising, merging into something bright and
strong, a language they shared.
Chapters: | WEAT novel home
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3 | 4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
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10 |
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12 |
13 | 14 |
15 |
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