The Allies by Alli Snow

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Story Notes: Title: The Allies

Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)

Rating: PG

Category: Future story, SJR, angst

Archive: SJA and Heliopolis

The Andromeda Series http://www.geocities.com/rainrobinson/andromeda.html
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist
11. The Absence
12. The Advance
13. The Adversary
14. The Ability
15. The Allies

* * * * *

|| Samantha Carter ||

I was talking to a young woman with plaited hair.

I was in the car with Daniel, who was stonily silent. He was either mad at me, or contemplating the things I had said... maybe both.

I was home, staring into the mirror. Two tired brown eyes, set in a worn face, stared back at me dispassionately.

Then it all changed, and I wasn't him anymore, I was me. I was standing behind him, watching as he scrutinized himself in the reflective surface, every scar, every crease, every gray hair. I scrutinized him as well, every muscular curve, every hard line, every revealing flicker in those tired eyes.

When he saw my reflection in the mirror he stood and turned towards me, face full of apprehension and longing both. Everything in my heart and soul told me to go to him but I couldn't; I remained strangely rooted to the spot, knowing that he'd have to make the first move, that it would be harder for him to accept this than it was for me.

I'd almost given up on him speaking at all when he licked nervous lips and asked me "Are you dead?"

I smiled at the question; it seemed so characteristic of everything he was. "I don't think so."

"Where are you?"

"Here."

He shook his head. "No, you can't be. You're in my head, you're not actually standing here."

"It doesn't matter," I explained. "I don't know where I am, actually, but it doesn't matter because I DO know that I'm here with you. That's the important part."

He sighed shakily, staring down at the floor for a long while before answering. "Sam, I'm--"

"Don't say it. You don't have to; we both know."

"I want to."

"Wait." I licked my lips apprehensively. "When I hear it, I want to hear you say it. I want to hear it with my ears, not in my head."

"I miss you."

I opened my mouth to answer, but what came out wasn't words; it was noise. Noise from above, I thought, tilting my head up to where the ceiling should have been and seeing only darkness. When I looked back down the room, once brightly lit, was only dimly illuminated. "I miss you, too."

He wasn't standing meters away, like he had been. He was right there, right in front of me, with me more than he ever had been. It could have been like this before, I realized, as the blackness grew and I could no longer see him standing there, could only feel his hands as they touched my face. It could have been like this, but we hadn't let it. We'd denied this, denied what could have been the greatest thing in both of our lives, and too late we had comprehended what it all meant.

Not too late, I prayed.

The darkness arcing above us split as though down a seam, a sharp crack, a triangle of light searing down upon us. And though I could see where Jack O'Neill should have been, where I could feel him, he wasn't there. There was only darkness and light. When he kissed me, his lips barely brushing against mine, I could feel it. I couldn't see it. Too short a time, I wanted to say, watching the light above me grow and getting the distinct impression that whatever was happening up there was moving slower than what was happening down here.

And what WAS happening? A connection? A visitation?

A goodbye?

I opened my eyes.

So did he.

* * * * *

|| Jack O'Neill ||

"So let me get this straight. Last we heard, the Tok'ra claim that Colonel Carter and Martouf are either dead or prisoners of the Gou'ald. In either case, they've given up on retrieving them. We've had no contact with Jadae or Garshaw, only a representative speaking through the Stargate who claims to be a speaker for the Council. Other than that, all correspondence has had to do with the Gou'ald armada, which, according to them, is approximately seventeen days away. All attempts to contact Jacob have failed; the Tok'ra tell us that out of 'concern for his well being' as well as 'security reasons' they cannot divulge his whereabouts. We're not even sure if he knows that his daughter is currently listed as MIA."

"That sums it up pretty well," I muttered.

"On top of that, we've got a malfunctioning Stargate which we're unable to disengage for reasons presently unknown. And we've got you, Colonel. Admitted only hours ago to the SGC infirmary for internal bleeding among numerous but ALSO unknown injuries. You now have a clean bill of health from the lips of our very own Chief Medical Officer, and you also maintain that not only is Sam Carter very much alive, she's safe, possibly in the company of others."

"That's right."

With a heavy sigh, Hammond collapsed into the chair on the other side of his desk. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother getting up in the morning."

"Well, sir, think of all the fun you'd miss," I quipped, forcing myself to concentrate on what the General was saying. If I let my mind wander even the smallest bit, I could feel her. I could remember the dream that wasn't a dream, Sam's visit, our conversation. I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, not Hammond or Janet, but I'd seen Julie Piper earlier in the halls... and I'd gotten the distant impression that she knew. That she'd been expecting it.

"Jack," began Hammond, and I snapped back into the present moment. "I'm sending you on a little errand."

"Errand, sir?"

* * * * *

"We haven't made a formal report to the White House in some time, and needless to say the President's getting a little nervous. He wants me to come down to Washington and debrief him personally."

"I see, sir."

"I'm not going."

I narrowed my eyes. It wasn't like Hammond to snub the White House, and he actually LIKED this President. "Sir?"

"You are."

Despite myself, I took a step closer, as though a shorter distance would help me discern whether or not the general was serious. "Are you serious?"

Sometimes the direct way was the best way.

"I'm not leaving with the Stargate in this condition. The planet it's locked onto IS uninhabited, according to the report, but I don't want to take any chances. Besides," he paused. "Jack, how do I say this without sounding like your father? I want you to take on more responsibility. That doesn't just mean being the first into a dangerous situation and the last one out. That means dealing with people you don't like dealing with. That means having to respect red tape and answer the red phone."

I wrinkled my nose. "With due respect, I've never looked forward to flying a desk, sir."

"You think I enjoy it? You think a day doesn't go by when all I want to do is pick up an HK and join one of those teams? The fact is that we're human, and that means we get old. You'll reach a point in your life where you have to make a choice: get out while the getting's good or stick around and fly a desk for the good of your country. I chose the latter, but I can't keep this up forever. I hope you make the same decision I did."

I cleared my throat. "Sir--"

"No, Jack. For once, I want you to shut up and listen. We ARE going to beat the Gou'ald, and after we do I'm retiring. Plan on sitting down and writing that book we talked about." He smiled, but only briefly. "Maybourne has people who've been looking forward to that for a long time, two- and three-star Generals who'd like very much to be sitting in this chair. I don't want that. I haven't been putting up with you for all these days to see my base go to hell."

I resisted the urge to laugh. "Sir, I'm just a Colonel. A flyboy... half my career is off the record. Not even the President's going to turn the SGC over to me just like that."

"I beg to differ. Especially once he's met you." Hammond stood, his posture still so ramrod straight that I could imagine him retiring, couldn't imagine him in anything that wasn't that uniform. "I'm sending you to Washington to brief the President on our current situation, and as for your first argument, I don't think that's going to be a problem either, General."

"Huh?"

"We don't exactly have time for ceremony," Hammond explained, nearly beaming. "But I will say that I'm proud to be sending General Jack O'Neill to the White House on my behalf. You'll remain team leader of SG-1, of course, and the rest... the rest we can figure out at a later date."

I found it impossible to not smile back. "Politics, sir?"

He gave a little shrug of mock reluctance. "Something like that."

* * * * *

|| Daniel Jackson ||

When I arrived at the SGC the next morning, I found a note taped to my office door.

"Daniel--

They're sending me out to Washington tomorrow to talk to the Prez. Yeah, it's stupid, but Hammond is refusing to leave until we can get the SG disengaged and lucky me, I’m next in command. The Tok’ra are coming through tomorrow 0700 hours and since I’m not going to be there I need you to talk to them for me. I don’t buy the story. Sam’s out there somewhere, and you’ve got to find out where..."

I scanned the rest of the note and then shoved it into my pocket.

* * * * *

|| Samantha Carter ||

"We used this planet as a base, long ago, years before Ra was even defeated. It's not a pleasant place on the surface, but it fit our needs. Because of certain geological peculiarities, we began the tunnels some distance from the Stargate; the only way to reach them is through the rings. As soon as we heard rumor that the Gou'ald had discovered this place, or at least obtained knowledge of it, we abandoned it, hoping that if we fled quickly enough the planet wouldn't be thoroughly searched. It was a risk, especially leaving the tunnels intact, but we wanted to keep some sort of hideaway in place, in the case that one was ever needed."

"Was this supposed to be the jump point?" I asked weakly, lifting the small metal canteen to my lips and taking another shaky sip. When I'd woken, not even an hour ago, dazed and disoriented, Martouf had given me the container of water and demanded that I rest a while longer. I'd accepted the drink but had sat up, making a demand of my own: to know what the hell had happened. Somehow, this involved a history of the blue crystal maze the two of us - and only the two of us, it seemed - now occupied.

"No. As I said, conditions on the surface are unstable." His face twitched imperceptibly. "For a time the area was desert, then swamp... now the area is almost totally flooded."

That sounded bad.

"What happened?" I pressed, my voice raspy. "On Deault's planet?"

He looked concerned. "Don't you remember?"

For a second, all I could feel were my injures. A deep bruise above my solar plexus, a negligible burn on my head... no wounds of a particularly deadly sort, nothing I wouldn't recover from completely, and yet as Martouf asked his question they BURNED. I remembered the glyphs, cold cutting stone under my fingertips. I remembered a hot bright flash in my chest. I remembered a voice - "Sam!" - and then blackness, and then nothing at all.

Then I shook my head, as though to ward off an exceptionally nasty dream, and remembered none of it. "The Tok'ra boy was killed trying to dial the Gate, and I was going to finish the job for him, but you pulled me back. I laid cover fire while you dialed the Stargate for Earth... for some reason you'd brought the GDO."

"Habit," said Martouf, looking relieved.

"The rest of the group went through," I remembered. "I was following them, but then I looked back and you'd stopped to see if the boy at the DHD was still alive. He wasn't, but when you stopped you made yourself a perfect target for one of the Jaffa. I tried to push you out of the way..."

"He aimed at you instead," continued Martouf, putting voice to what I could now recall quite perfectly. "You didn't see, and I had to knock you down. You fell rather hard against the Dial Home Device, I'm afraid, but you only took a glancing blow to your forehead. Somehow you were knocked unconscious."

I nodded, remembering the inky, impenetrable blackness of the coma all too well.

"Several of the Jaffa were able to follow our people through the Stargate before it disengaged," Martouf went on, his voice strangely heavy now, as though it was no longer comprised of sound waves but instead rippling molten mercury. "I knew we couldn't go there, that the Tau'ri would consider my code untrustworthy. I didn't dare dial the base or the jump point, for without our army the Jaffa could easily follow us through. But I remembered this place. The Gate itself was half-submerged, and the DHD is several feet underwater. I was able to keep your head above the surface long enough to reach land. The Jaffa who came after us never had a chance; with all of their armor, they sank directly to the bottom."

A bit of macabre laughter bubbled in me as I imagined a horde of Jaffa, helmets and all, standing at parade rest underwater beside a pink castle, a waving mermaid, and other fishtank ornaments. "Smart," I commended him. "Then what?"

* * * * *

Martouf's expression was still much too grim for my liking. "I didn't want to have to make the journey to the rings with you still unconscious. I found shelter on the beach and waited for you to wake, and for the rain to stop. While I waited... the Stargate opened again."

I frowned. "More Jaffa."

"No. Jadae. She'd gone back to Earth with the others and..." He shifted on his hard crystal seat. "Samantha, there is no easy way to tell you this. General Hammond closed the iris, but not soon enough. Three Jaffa made it through your Stargate, and opened fire. Seven of our people were killed, and five humans."

My vision wobbled, and my first thought was that the tunnels were collapsing around us, that the flooded surface above was caving in the ceiling and walls, resulting in earthquake-like tremors. Then I realized that I was the one shaking, not the ground.

"Directly after, Jadae convinced the General to send her here; she remembered that I had told her about this planet, although it was abandoned long before her time. The rain had continued, and the Stargate had become even more unsteady. Jadae had no sooner swum away from it than it broke from its moorings... and sank."

Beyond my closed lids, I could see it all so perfectly that I began to wonder if I hadn't been conscious for at least some of the time. Black rain again a gray sky, the Stargate only a more solid semicircle protruding from ebony water, filled in with brighter blue. The sprouting event horizon caused ripples but no waves, because of course the molecules of the water were disintegrated just as any other matter would have been. A slim figure paddling furiously towards a muddy shore even as the great stone circle tottered and fell with a terrific splash, sinking like a coin or bottlecap, casting a blue glow onto the inky liquid until the energy was cut off and it disconnected. Like hanging up the phone.

"Jadae's here," said Martouf quietly. "She's trying to locate the supply of food left behind. If we can't find that we have no chance. The General knows where she is, and surely told the Council. They'll send a vessel for us, but it may take some time. It may take a great deal of time."

It seemed to me that my shivers had subsided, but it was possible that I'd merely become accustomed to them. "How long was I out?" I asked, refusing to look up, to meet his eyes. I knew exactly what I'd see there.

"Only a day or two. Jadae was able to help me carry you--"

There was compassion in his voice, but not pity, and that small shift gave me the strength to lift my head and interrupt him. "Who was killed?"

Now it was Martouf's turn to study the glossy floor. "Three Jadae did not recognize. One was a man she'd seen before. He was a technician, and wore glass circles, like those Doctor Jackson wears."

"Siler," I mumbled miserably, unable to think of another bespeckled techie. God, Siler had been a good man.

"The fifth killed was Colonel O'Neill," Martouf said, almost whispering now.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the tears to come, waiting for the anguish and impotent rage to barrel down upon me. But somehow, this pronouncement failed to reduce me to a quivering, weeping mess, as I'd expected. Maybe I'd known, maybe I'd expected it somehow. Maybe it was even was I deserved. In any case, it left me feeling only predictably cold and numb, physically sunken inside. A Halloween pumpkin, shoveled and scraped hollow, carved with a pretentious expression of mirth or malignancy, an expression that meant nothing, that had nothing behind it but a flickering candle that would soon be snuffed out by the wind.

"I'm sorry," said Martouf. "I know he was... special to you."

"He wasn't special," I rebuked, eyes still shut.

He was more than that.

* * * * *

|| Daniel Jackson ||

"Four days," said Colonel Jack O'Neill.

GENERAL Jack O'Neill, I corrected myself, and with no small sense of pride. I remembered the happiness I had felt for Sam when she'd become a Major, and then later, hearing about her hasty and even token promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. She'd deserved the honor, just as Jack did now, but I couldn't help but feel that I'd had some small, even insignificant part in their successes.

There was nothing physically different about Jack; this was simply another perfunctory promotion and he hadn't even bothered to change his uniform insignia. But it was a advancement, even if it was just for show, and he wore the new authority well. Even now, he'd taken control of the briefing from Hammond with uncharacteristic grace. Strange, when you knew that he was still half-mad, desperate, bent on finding and recovering Sam. Odd, how he could put that aside so fluidly. Bizarre, how... mature he was acting.

"Those are the latest numbers from the Tok'ra, and the deep-space radar we got from the Tollan seem to confirm it. The Gou'ald are gonna be here a little sooner than we expected."

"We're ready for them," professed Tony Warren enthusiastically. "The bombs are set to go as soon as we know where to send them."

That was the key -- the lynch pin as it was. We had to trust that the Tok'ra had spies on the motherships, and that those spies would be able to communicate the addresses of the vessels to either us or Garshaw. We had to TRUST the TOK'RA. That was not something that was going to be easy for Jack, who firmly believed that Martouf and Jadae and perhaps others had kidnapped Sam and had stashed her someplace, either perfectly healthy, thanks to a sarcophagus, or... or a new host.

But I was happy to see that Jack made no mention of his speculation, which was starting to sound more like a bona fide conspiracy theory every time I heard it. Maybe I would have dinner with Janet again tonight; maybe I'd mention it to her.

Though I was likely to forget...

If anybody on base knew about my relationship with the doctor, they were keeping quiet about it. For that exact reason I felt certain that NO ONE on base knew about it; the SGC was a breading ground for gossip. Whisper a rumor to someone on floor 28, and it would be working its way up through NORAD before you could reach the elevator. I'm not sure why Janet and I were being so circumspect; seeing how I was a civilian, it wasn't against any regulations we knew of. At the same time, we kept to ourselves at work, restricting extracurricular activities to my place or hers, and not telling ANYONE. Not Jack or Teal'c or Tony, and not because I was afraid of 'getting in trouble'. No, there was simply something strange about ending up in Janet's bed after all this time. We'd known each other for years, and she'd seen more of my body than I had. Something about that should have seemed unromantic or at the very least too comfortable for a romantic, sexual relationship. I should have felt like I was sleeping with my sister.

No way, José.

* * * * *

|| Jack O'Neill ||

Hammond left, Danny left, Teal'c and Tony left. I remained. And went to the window.

Below me, the Stargate was silent and inactive. Siler and some of the others had figured out what the Gate had been drawing power from, and had disconnected it, and the Stargate had been easily shut down. Crisis averted, and we'd even learned a new trick, how to keep the gate open longer than 38 minutes. Cut wires HERE, cross wires THERE, and you've got yourself a super-wormhole. It turned out there were some advantages to have a half dozen supercomputers in place of a DHD.

Of course, Carter would have figured it out much sooner.

Sighing, I rested my forehead against the glass.

The trip to see the President had been a nice change of pace, but otherwise fruitless. As far as the SGC program was concerned, this chief exec was a lot more agreeable than the last one: he appreciated the program and what it could bring back, how it could help all mankind... but when you came down to basic facts he was just another stuffed shirt sitting in a big house in Washington D.C. He'd needed a face to put with the reports, reassurance that this wasn't some kind of elaborate hoax. Which is what it sounded like.

While I'd been gone, the gate had been fixed, and the Tok'ra had come through on schedule. As far as Danny had 'reported' to me when I returned, our allies had refused to speak on Sam - or Martouf - at all, merely professing deep sympathies for our loss and a half-hearted apology for their damned lies. They were STILL lying; I could feel it in my bones and in my heart... but it seemed that no one had time for those feelings any longer. The needs of the many and the needs of the one, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Four days.

On top of the new timetable, there were rumors that the fleet was larger than a mere sixteen vessels. The satellite the Tollan had helped up construct was markedly advanced compared to Earth technology, but even those hi-tech cameras had trouble making out definite shapes. Possibly the Gou'ald had planned it, possibly not, but the fact remained that the entire convoy was backlit by M31, a spiral galaxy, the closest and one of the most familiar -

- also known as the Andromeda Galaxy -

- and getting a clear picture would be next to impossible until the ships were right on top of us, and as a result several more bombs were being shipped in.

The whole thing hinged on the Tok'ra. That bothered the hell out of me, and I started feeling grateful that Marty had spirited Sam away somewhere.

At least she'd be safe if it all went to hell.

I sighed again. The place where my forehead met the glass no longer felt as cool as it did warm, hot even, like a burn. But the momentary pain was fast and fleeting, even more brief than my mysterious vanishing chest trauma, which Janet all but refused to acknowledge. I couldn't believe that this was all some coincidence. I couldn't believe that all this weird stuff didn't have its roots somewhere else.

With someone else.

Be safe, Sam, I prayed.

* * * * *

Coming soon... The Aberration

The more feedback I get, the more I write... it's a vicious cycle

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