Title: Black Ops - Redefining Outnumbered (Episode One) ©

Wordsmith: mor_tru

Email: mor_ag2001@yahoo.com

Category: GEN/Action/Adventure/Angst/Humor/H/C

Archived: On our website. Heliopolis, JackFic, Stargate Fanfiction. Please ask before linking to this story.

Status: Complete (Episode 1)

Pairings: None

Spoilers: None

Season/Sequel: Episode 1 of The Black Ops Series.

Ratings: R

Content Warning: Language and violence because the story gets rough where it needs to be and so does Jack O’Neill.

Summary: It was a clandestine infiltration that just went wrong from the get-go and O’Neill’s Special Ops training was the only resource he had to get his sorry ass home in one piece – unfortunately, it just didn’t quite happen that way.

Author’s Notes: Betas are essential – please don’t leave home without them. Nancy (aka momoftoad) is extraordinary. Katherine and Irene – you guys are two of the best. As for Tru, my co-author and Mr. Alpha-Beta Man - he just plain rocks!

Disclaimers: There’s a real fine line between what’s theirs and what’s ours, and although the characters belong to them, its our imagination that makes this story ours.

Date: Updated 04/02/05

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~~~~oOo~~~~

Black Ops - Redefining Outnumbered

(Episode 1)

mor_tru

~~~~oOo~~~~

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

Edmond Burke

~~~~oOo~~~~

He was waiting, as it reconciled into a shimmer, just as it had always done at the end of its roar, the pool of vertical tranquility bathing him in the watery light of a billion stars.

He was waiting, vigilantly at the foot of the ramp with his hands clasped tightly behind his back, holding onto his reserve of inner calm in a room flooding with urgent noise.

He was waiting, with the quiet deliberate patience of a man of deep conscience, resolute in his need to be there to witness the safe return of the teams he’d sent out into the void.

George Hammond was waiting for Jack O’Neill, and the General was not a happy man.

It had been nine days since the Colonel had stepped through the gate. His mission was a clandestine infiltration to track down a missing Tok’Ra agent and retrieve a stolen GDO. The circumstances’ surrounding their mysterious disappearance had been suspicious, and the explanations offered by the Tok’Ra had left Hammond with serious doubts as to the true nature of their alien allies’ involvement. It seemed that the Tok’Ra had once again deceived him by creating the very situation where someone’s life had to be put on the line to save not only their collective Tok’Ra hides, but to prevent a major security breach at the SGC.

It was those thoughts that churned through Hammond’s mind as he continued to wait for O’Neill - steadfast in his resolve to unearth the extent of the Tok’Ra deception, and confident that the Colonel would bring himself safely home with the answer.

Then suddenly, Colonel Jack O’Neill appeared at the top of the ramp, covered in blood from head to toe and holding onto a grisly piece of jawbone with a tusk curling out from it in a menacing six-inch spiral.

“Heya George!” O’Neill shouted casually to the astounded Hammond, waving the bloody mass cockily in the air. “It followed me home. Can I keep it?” A broad grin punctuated the Colonel’s words as they drifted out into the now eerie silence of the gateroom. Seconds later, O’Neill was face-down and out cold.

Hammond ran up the ramp, his anger replaced by a sick knot in his gut. The uneasy apprehension that had hung over his wait now confirmed by the sight of an unconscious and seriously wounded O’Neill.

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Thank you for the update Doctor Fraiser. Good night.” Hammond hung up the phone and stared out into the dimness of his office.

The hour was late and the report from Fraiser on Colonel O’Neill’s condition was encouraging. The Colonel’s transfer to the Military Hospital in nearby Colorado Springs had enabled her to lead the team of surgeons in repairing his injuries. It was reassuring to hear that all had gone well and the prognosis on O’Neill’s recovery was excellent. Good news, he thought, and reigned in a moment of impatience, knowing it would be several hours before O’Neill regained consciousness and many hours, maybe a day or more, before the Colonel would be able to report exactly what had happened.

Hammond stared at the wall, tapping his fingers on the desktop - the slow deliberate action reflecting the series of thoughts drilling through his mind on the events that had led to this situation. He seethed in silence, his anger suppressed to a grim expression.

It had been approximately three weeks since Anise had appeared requesting Tau’ri assistance, approaching him in her usual arrogant way. Her canned tone insisting they needed O’Neill’s help because Jacob Carter had assured the Tok’Ra High Council that Colonel O’Neill knew exactly how to handle this kind of clandestine operation - that he had the right kind of experience and the deadly capabilities to pull the move.

Hammond hadn’t argued that point because O’Neill’s service record was a two inch thick dossier of classified missions, all of which had been completed under extreme conditions. So there was no question in his mind that if anyone could be entrusted to retrieve the missing GDO it was certainly Jack O’Neill.

But the real truth behind Hammond’s anger was centered on the irrefutable fact that he had been forced to agree to a mission brought about solely through Tok’Ra irresponsibility. The consequences of their carelessness in misplacing one of their assigned GDO’s had initially been an irritating but recoverable mishap. But adding insult to injury, it was later disclosed by a reluctant Anise, that ‘unfortunately’ an illegally procured copy of the IDC Assignment Codebook was also missing. And hadn’t that piece of information set him off on a rampage when the outcome of the subsequent investigation revealed the presence of a Tok’Ra mole in the form of a sergeant who thought that living forever with a snake in his head was a good way to supplement his retirement package. Hammond didn’t even want to address the whole ‘infatuated with Freya excuse’ the airman had tried to give in his defense. Disgusted didn’t quiet cover how Hammond felt, because his disappointment in the airman was greatly overshadowed by a growing sense of distrust in the Tok’Ra and their possible ulterior motives for requesting O’Neill’s services.

What had followed Anise’s appearance had been twenty-four hours of scrambling to bring home all off-world personnel to issue new IDC’s codes. It was a mess, and he’d spent most of those first few days in Washington explaining to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff why the Tok’Ra should still be considered important, albeit infuriatingly inconsistent, allies.

Subsequent discussions with the representatives of the Tok’Ra High Council had set his blood to boil when it was finally revealed that the misguided sergeant had been approached by a subgroup that existed within the Tok’Ra society – dissidents, who hadn’t bought into the whole Ra Résistance plan. The leading Tok’Ra member had then stated dismissively that they had felt no compulsion to reveal the existence of the Ra’Saftir, who, according to the translation provided by Doctor Jackson, identified themselves as ‘distant cousins’ of Ra.

‘Kissin’?’ Was how O’Neill had punctuated that revelation and what had struck Hammond so inauspiciously at that moment was the eerie coolness in O’Neill’s tone. The colonel had remained dangerously quiet throughout most of the meeting and his calmness in light of the Tok’Ra disclosures was perhaps an omen of things to come. It soon became glaringly obvious to everyone that the Tok’Ra incident had escalated into a genuine threat to the security of the SGC. A threat that would ultimately require someone to go out there and retrieve the lost items and for some troublesome reason the Tok’Ra had come looking specifically for O’Neill.

Hammond hadn’t quite identified the root of uneasiness he felt by their request, but O’Neill had agreed to go and the Colonel had backed up his rationale with solid arguments on the necessity of retrieving the missing GDO. Keeping the technology from getting into the wrong hands had no sound counter arguments and Hammond eventually sanctioned the go-out, conditional on the Tok’Ra providing O’Neill with at least three of their agents as backup.

They had left that same day and it was a day George Hammond now regretted as he sat in the quiet of his office. He stood up and walked into the briefing room and looked down on the silent Stargate, the image of O’Neill, dressed in native clothing and standing at the foot of the ramp was still a very clear picture haunting his mind. He had watched the Colonel prepare to leave while his three Tok’Ra escorts had waited at the top of the ramp, stoic and patient as Doctor Jackson and Major Carter spoke with the ready to depart O’Neill.

//

“Nice ..uhm... uhm ---” Daniel searched for the right wordss as he pointed to the loose fitting jacket and leggings O’Neill was wearing.

“Clandestine Daniel. I’m goin’ in undercover.” O’Neill grinned broadly and held out the hem of the jacket. “We’re being sneaky,” he whispered loudly, and jerked his thumb in the direction of the Tok’Ra agents behind him. “That’s what clandestine means. Sneak in sneak out without anyone knowing your ass has been there.”

“No P90 either then, sir?” Carter shook her head.

“Nope!” O’Neill stated emphatically then suddenly pulled a handgun out from behind his back and held it up. “But not stupid either,” he added and jerked his thumb again in the direction of the waiting Tok’Ra. “The Boyz-from-Oz figure this op to be a quick run down the yellow-brick road. But lemme tellya I haven’t been on a black-op mission yet that hasn’t ended with flying monkeys chewing on my ass.”

“Flying monkeys, Jack?”

“Yup, flying monkeys Daniel. Because that’s what happens when you find you’re not in Kansas anymore.” And he shoved the weapon into the holster strapped across the small of his back. “Looks like my tornado’s here,” he quipped with a sweeping wave at the active wormhole and slapped the surface with a ‘this-way’ gesture to the Tok’Ra agents, urging them to step on through the Stargate.

“Take care sir,” Carter called out.

“Yeah Jack,” Daniel held up a hand that didn’t quite make it into a wave. “Be safe out there, okay?”

“Ooh ya! Yeahsureyabetcha!” echoed around the gate-room as the event horizon embraced O’Neill, and he disappeared.

//

‘Yeahsureyabetcha’ mouthed Hammond reliving that memory, comforted only by the relief he felt at the safe homecoming of Colonel O’Neill. But his thoughts soon returned to the Tok’Ra and why these alleged allies had become so mysteriously unreachable almost from the moment O’Neill had left on the mission. Nine days of silence and supposition had fostered an uneasy mixture of anger and disgust, because once again the Tok’Ra had shown their fundamental indifference to the fragile alliance that existed between them. It was puzzling to Hammond how this supposedly more advanced race could sometimes dissolve so spectacularly into complete incompetence. He found it difficult to digest the level of their ineptitude because even he was now beginning to agree with O’Neill’s gut-driven assessment on their wavering capabilities. The Tok’Ra may have been fighting the Goa’uld for a thousand years but they just seemed to lack some good old Texas-style common sense.

Hammond shook his head in troubled thought and glanced at his watch. ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ Another night was slipping by and still no communication from Jacob Carter.

He headed down to the control room.

~~~~oOo~~~~

O’Neill opened his eyes slowly and stared groggily at the cream-colored wall, the drab paint standard décor of all Military Hospitals. He squinted at the bright slats of sunlight slicing in from a blind-covered window and he knew exactly where he was and he wasn’t in the least bit happy about it - confined to bed and hurting real bad.

The last couple of days had been one long blur of vague sounds and soft lights with drugs the major player in keeping pain just out of his reach. Those days had gone by while he was sleeping and sleeping with only the occasional lucid moments fragmenting around the sight of a strange face here and there – unknown images of concern staring down at him. He didn’t know exactly when being awake increased from a few minutes to hours or when the sharpness of pain had turned to a constant dull and annoying ache. He only knew that when awake took over for anything more than a few minutes it was always accompanied by an urgent and unrelenting lemme-the-fuck-outta-here boredom. Jack O’Neill was far from the ideal patient, and now that the blur of heavy medication was gone, so was his patience. Being in pain just naturally pissed him off and being in pain and confined to a hospital bed defied all polite definition.

It had been almost four days since his return from PX5-039 and he was cranky as all get out. His body felt like he’d been thrown over Niagara Falls and even muscles that weren‘t bruised or torn were stiff and tender. He hadn't found exactly where 'comfortable' was; still black-and-blue front and back, ribs aching like a sonnovabitch, both hands stitched, splinted and thickly bandaged, and confined to laying only on one side because of the railroad track of staples trailing across his leg - a honkin' black zipper currently holding the muscles of his right thigh together.

Pain definitely made him cranky.

Drugs to dull pain made him crankier.

“You fell over a pig, huh?” Daniel’s voice was there in the room, his familiar silhouette suddenly in view as he walked around to the side of the bed Jack was facing. “Tripped on a pig? Huh?” There was an obvious trace of amusement in his tone as he dragged a chair close to the bed and sat down. He leaned in, bringing his face into full view of a Jack O’Neill who was badly in need of a shave – a Jack O’Neill who felt like shit both inside and out.

“It was a boar!” O’Neill hissed grouchily into his pillow, “a wild boar!”

“Aah...” Daniel’s sigh was long and insightful. “So you tripped over a wild boar,’ then?”

“Didn’t trip! It was an attack!” O’Neill was in defense-mode because embarrassment always made him really cranky. “I hurt an’ I’m pissed off.” He shifted his body slowly, painfully, to glare back at Daniel who had the barest of smiles spreading like a slow sunrise across his face. “So don’t go lookin’ for much in the way social niceties. Not in the mood!”

“Know that.” There was a level of resignation in Daniel’s response as he held up a Band-Aid covered finger for Jack to view.

“Wha-at?” O’Neill squinted at the raised finger. “Wanna compare booboos or somethin’?”

“No,” came the quick reply and Daniel’s obtrusive middle digit was quickly transformed from a single bird into one with wings. “Sorry. No,” he coughed through his embarrassment and wiggled all of his fingers. “It’s razor sharp.”

“What is?”

“That tusk.” Daniel carefully reached into a bag, pulled out the cleaned jawbone, and placed it ceremoniously on the blanket. “Hammond said you wanted to keep this so I boiled it. Bleached it too,” he added with pride. But his amusement was slowly dissipating in the face of Jack’s obvious black mood. “It’s a procedure to prepare bone specimens for display.” He ran his fingertips cautiously along the edge of the bone, tracing the curve of the jaw to its ragged, broken end. Then he looked up over the tops of his glasses and frowned severely. “Just how the hell did you manage to get this, Jack?”

“It was a gift,” Jack half-smiled. He was making an attempt to reign in his grumpiness. “Besides... the boar insisted. An’ seein’ as I was kinda out of my head at the time, I didn’t say no.” There was a flawless tone of mischievous defiance in his voice.

Daniel pushed his glasses back from where they’d slid to the end of his nose. Always the skeptic when it came to gauging the level of Jack’s humor, he cleared his throat and continued on in the safety of encyclopedic mode. “It’s somewhat similar to the Korpé-Da’gha boar we found on PX four-eight-six-eight.” He picked up the jaw to display the razor-sharp edge of the tusk in the streams of sunlight filtering in from the window. “And you’re damned lucky it didn’t kill you.”

“Damn near did.” O’Neill conceded the point through clenched teeth as he once again tried to shift his body weight. But the very act of it pulled at the staples in his leg and rewarded him with a don’t-do-that wave of pain. “Ssshhhit!”

“Okay?” Daniel winced in sympathy.

“Just hunky dory,” he lied, willing himself to ignore the pain that had now settled into a heavy throb and was a constant reminder of the weeks of agonizing physical therapy he’d have to face before getting back on his feet. O’Neill could never tolerate the wait.

“Want me to call Janet? Need something for the pain?”

“S’ok,” Jack shook his head and offered up another brief smile. “A carpet dawg boar huh?” O’Neill deliberately mangled Daniel’s carefully worded definition. He was baiting the archaeologist, but not to be mean. It was just to take his mind off the solid ache and get back to feeling like normal.

“Kor-pé Da’-gha.” Daniel repeated each syllable distinctly while he swiveled the bone in the sunlight, squinting with his scrutiny. “It’s genetically related to the indigenous species found here on Earth. Central Asia to be exact.”

“Know the area well,” Jack replied dryly and cringed at the sight of Daniel playfully slicing the tusk through the air. “And willya please quit doin’ that?” The memory was too fresh. The slash of the tusk had kicked in a flashback and O’Neill could feel an unwelcome spasm knife through his gut.

“Sorry.” Daniel hung his head embarrassed, and promptly placed the jawbone back on the blanket. “Then you’ll know that the boar’s name is derived from the mountain range running across parts of that region? The Kopet Dagh in northern Iran?”

“Yup.”

“Then the eh... the eh... carpet dawg remark?” Daniel narrowed his eyes in suspicion, his forehead furrowing into an all too familiar I’ve-been-had frown.

“Yup!”

“Smart-ass?”

“Yup!”

“So feeling better, right?”

“Nope!” Jack stubbornly shifted his weight around to move the bad leg a little, unable to stand lying in the same position for any longer. “But not feelin’ any worse right now either,” he confessed and let out a grunt from this efforts. He was beginning to feel just a little sleepy from the last round of painkillers but he also wasn’t about to give in to them either, at least not just yet. He settled himself with another grunt and pulled the blanket up over his exposed knee. Daniel helped, gingerly tucking a corner under the edge of the mattress.

“Went north...y’know... to the Kopet Dagh range a coupla times.” Jack looked up and caught Daniel’s eye. “Lotta Iraq... some missions to Iran. But that was earlier though... eighties... early nineties.” His voice trailed off and his mind drifted a little as fragments of images began splicing themselves together into a mosaic of his past, mapping out long-held secrets beneath the blanket of drugs. Unexpected glimpses into an earlier life that he rarely revealed.

“Stayed out of the Stans mostly,’ O’Neill went on. “‘Cept for a few sorties into Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.” Then he frowned, caught up short by some lingering memory. “Got my ass pulled outta there more than once. An’ lemme tellya that was no day at the beach. But that was ’nother place, ‘nother time, ‘nother life.” He trailed off again, lost in thought.

“You okay?”

“Yeah... just... just remembering some of that shit. Some of it so damn close to what... to what’s happening now on PX-whatever. Felt like... y’know... felt like back then. Like in Iraq.... A’stan. Just a mess, just one violent mess.” Jack let his head tilt back against the pillows and he sighed audibly, caving to the loose feeling that always came from the medication when it finally lifted away the sharp edges of pain. His leg continued to throb quietly in the distance as his mind fought the dark memories of violent silhouettes.

“Jack?” Daniel reached out and touched O’Neill’s arm. “I’ll leave... let you get some sleep.”

“Nah. S’okay. Just thinking.” Jack ran the tips of his bandaged fingers over the bone. He was trying hard not to relive that particular memory right then. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon because there was still a full report to write up and debriefings to happen somewhere in his near future. Every detail had to be regurgitated. It was part of doing the job and Jack really wasn’t looking forward to that eventuality because some parts of the mission had left that all too familiar raw taste in his mouth.

“Jack?” Daniel’s voice once again broke into O’Neill’s thoughts. “What went wrong?”

O’Neill stared up at the ceiling. “Sheesh!” he hissed quietly. “What didn’t go wrong? The damned Tok’Ra---”

“The damned Tok’Ra?”

“Yeah,” Jack shook his head in disgust. “You’d think those anal little bastards would’ve had some intel worth a shit. Not!”

“Not?”

“Yes. Not!” Jack confirmed harshly. “This mission was a total FUBAR from start to finish.”

“I don’t understand?” Daniel took off his glasses and cleaned them against his shirt. “The mission was to track down the Tok’Ra agent Mirshet and the lost GDO--”

“Lost GDO? Ha! Hell no, it wasn’t lost. The Tok’Ra knew exactly where it was.”

Daniel frowned. “They knew? Then what was the purpose of you going if they knew? That’s not the information they gave us in the initial meeting.”

“Dunno, but Jacob Carter does. What’d he have to say?” Jack scowled, but his expression wasn’t meant for Daniel.

“We haven’t heard from Jacob or the Tok’Ra since---”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, not one word.” Daniel shook his head. “They--”

“What the hell’s goin’ on Daniel?”

“We don’t know yet, but the General made contacting them an A-one priority from the moment you fell through the gate.”

“Didn’t fall!” O’Neill grumped. “Walked... then fell,” he begrudgingly conceded at the signs of a smile creasing the corners of Daniel’s mouth.

“O-kay... walked, then fell.” Daniel agreed and tapped thoughtfully on the edge of the boars jaw. “Jack... you did know that zero-three-nine is an Asgaard protected planet?”

“Nope!” And O’Neill made to sit up but was immediately reminded by the leg and the staples in it that moving it again wasn’t in his best interest right then. “Not surprised to hear it though,” he confessed. “They had to have known it goin’ in.”

“No Thor’s hammer at the Stargate huh?”

“Nope.”

“What about the native population?”

“The locals?” Jack shook his head. “They were way too busy just trying to stay alive to worry about who or what was coming through their gate. Besides, the gate was almost a thirty hour hike to the nearest city.”

“Thirty hours? Hmm... that’s quite a ways away.”

“Yeah...tell me about. It was in a meadow up in the mountains. Looked like it had been moved though because there weren’t any other structures around it and the stone base had no weathering. Looked a little strange.... outta place maybe.”

“Hmm... I agree, that’s odd,” murmured Daniel thoughtfully. “Stargates normally play such an integral role in the cultural development of a planet’s civilization... it’s unusual to have it so remote.” He rubbed his eyes and once again pushed the errant glasses back up along the bridge of his nose. “So how’d you end up on zero-three-nine?”

“Gated to nine-three and then they... our so-called Tok’Ra allies... got some coded transmission and the next thing I know they’re all making noises like they’re suddenly dyslexic. That’s when Kheyln became my new bestest pal and we headed out to zero-three-nine while the rest of the boyz-from-Oz continued on down the yellow brick road. That shoulda been a warning, but retrieving the GDO was still the mission and I figured they were just being... y’know... Tok’Ra. Spaced Cadets.”

“Wait a second Jack... you mean only you and Kheyln went on?”

“Yup. They said the mission was uncomplicated. A two-man job. Sneak in, track and find Mirshet and the GDO and beat feet back through the Stargate. Piece of cake walk in the park day at the beach.” Restraining disgust was never one of O’Neill’s tactical attributes.

“So who and what were on zero-three-nine?”

Jack stared a long minute while he sorted out his thoughts. He tried to move his leg but then changed his mind with a question instead. “Know what a MOUT is Daniel?” He let his gaze drift towards the window behind Daniel’s head, hearing the echoes of not too distant memories.

“MOUT?” Daniel the expert linguist asked clueless, military jargon was not his forte. “Acronym?”

“Yup. Military Ops/Urban Terrain,” Jack explained, pulling his gaze away from the sunlit leaves shading the window with bright green freshness. His mind was remembering only the blanket of gray dust covering everything in that distant city. He stared at Daniel a long thought-filled moment then said knowingly. “MOUTs. Door-to-door. Hairy shit... full of innocents, non-combatants, wolves in sheep's clothing, traps, funnels, multiple threats. And y’know the funny thing about that? A MOUT’s a MOUT even on PX whatever. Here... out there... it doesn’t matter where you are... it’s all the same kinda hell.”

“Jeesuz Jack... what happened out there?”

Jack closed his eyes, sifting back through the last several days of drug-induced apathy, separating himself from the immediacy of the mission and allowing distance to be there in his voice as he went on. It was always easier not to remember all the rough events in his life - better to put them away in that safe-box in the back of his mind and pretend someone else had actually lived through them. But until he had gone through the series of official debriefings, Colonel Jack O’Neill knew every detail had to be saved. Only later could he tidy them away safely with all the other memories.

“Everything happened.” And the images of the mission came flooding back and all of a sudden O’Neill was somewhere else. “So there I was... right... jogging. And y’know what that did for the knees, right?” He sunk deeper into the pillows, memories distracting him from the ache. “Jogging fer chrissake!” he hissed in contempt. “Right in the middle of someone else’s fuckin’ civil war. Ooh ya!”

~~~~oOo~~~~

Ooh ya!

So there I was, right, jogging along in the dark, alone, totally disgusted and three days into completely pissed-off. The missing Tok’Ra agent I was supposed to find I didn't, and the city I was supposed to find the moron in had been shelled almost non-stop from the moment I got there by the local alien edition of what was passing for a Mafioso-type warlord.

All in all it had been a stellar week of one fuck-up after another and the disappearance of my Tok’Ra pal Kheyln on day two hadn’t added to the overall comfort level that was needed to assure me this mission was on its way to a success. But what really added to the week was when the idiot never showed up at the pre-arranged set point, which left me in the middle of an alien city with no leads no contacts and pretty much holding nothing but my dick. The only thing I had was a receiver to track down the GDO and even that wasn’t working too hot right then. The signal relied on a direct line of feedback but it kept cutting out because of the buildings and structures, and just my luck, there’s no satellites orbiting this world to bounce the damn signal off. Then to cap off the day it started raining and I was soaked right through, which was a sure guarantee that misery was in the near future. Correction - misery had already arrived.

WHUMP!

The sound of the incoming shell landing in the distance prompted me to get my sorry ass off the street. So I dove into a nearby building and hunkered down for shelter behind a broken wall. I huddled against the crumbling plaster and at the same time systematically coded the room because taking in the remnants of someone’s life was something I’d been trained to do. Acute observation had always been part of the job and was so ingrained that it couldn’t be turned off no matter where I was. So I found myself querying in that second why a chair looked the same no matter where my butt was in the damned universe. And I knew too, by the hollow feeling in my gut, why the sight of discarded clothing lying in lifeless heaps always seemed to signal absolute abandonment by all that was living. Those shapeless mounds of emptiness lying in the corner made me wonder if I was still alive because there I was in the midst of all this chaos, all this devastation, when everyone else seemed to have chosen to move on.

WHUMP!

So I hugged the wall closer, aware that a part of me was just plain disgusted, thinking – here I am in this alien city on the other side of the universe and there’s something unbelievably familiar to the scenes of senseless destruction filling the air. The numbing waste of it was just a nauseating reminder of all the shelled-out cities I’d run through in places like Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan.

WHUMP!

And I pressed up tighter to the wall just trying to stay alive in the shelling and the death and the smells that clung to everything in a morbid grayness all around me. A pervasiveness that hung heavily in the air like a polluted river of death so when I moved I felt like I was swimming upstream just trying to get through it.

WHUMP!

Oh fuck! That’s when something bright caught my eye and in that same instant I saw the ‘little’ - the child - move into my field of vision and I gut-reacted in that flash and smoothed out through the doorway to scoop it up in my arms. I held it close to my body, protecting it from the concussion just as the next shell – WHUMP! - rocked the skeleton of the building across the street and the blast sent a cloud of debris swirling in after me as I rushed back through the doorway into what was serving as my safety zone.

The noise was deafening, and as the debris filled the room all I could feel was its tiny hands clutching at my chest and I could sense the beat of its heart, a rapid flutter in stark contrast to the steadiness of my own. It didn’t cry out and I didn’t know why but I thought maybe it couldn’t or it had used up all its cries. Then the wall was at my back and I leaned hard against it and slid to the floor, wrapping the child in the fold of my arms, wondering where the hell it had come from and what was I going to do with it now. That’s when the debris cloud cleared a little and the glint of light I’d seen previously became visible - a white crystal orb that sparked through the gray mist, dangling at the end of a gold-colored chain. It moved in slow motion towards me, swinging as if it was living in another time. At the other end of it was a young girl with old eyes who reached out her hands for the child and I willingly gave it up. Then at the same time, I scrambled to my feet sweeping them both with me as I headed to the back of the building.

WHUMP!

The next shell hit and the blast wave that came through the front of the building sent me careening across the floor and into the wall. When I looked around for the girl, she and the little were standing quietly in the center of the room staring at me with big gray eyes and seemingly untouched by the concussion. In her hand she held onto the crystal - it had somehow morphed from white to green, and was generating a misty sphere of light that enveloped them both.

WHUMP!

The shelling was getting a hell of a lot closer and before I could get to my feet again, they were there at my side. That’s when the room turned eerily quiet just as the touch of her hand became a wisp of air on my arm, and her presence brought me into the fold of the sphere and all I could see was white light.

WHUMP!

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Jack?” Daniel spoke softly into the ensuing stillness. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” The response was a whisper as O’Neill gave up his wrist to a nurse who had appeared at his bedside. “Am I still alive?” He watched her glance from her watch to his eyes and back to her watch again.

“Yes, Colonel.” Her smile was broad and friendly. “Very much so.” She reached across the bed and checked the drain-tube on his leg, well aware of his wince at her touch. “Pain?” she queried.

“No thanks, got more than I need.”

“More meds then?” She gave him one of those special ‘assessment’ looks; one reserved for patients who don’t always tell their care-givers the truth.

“Cutting back to one pack a day.” He managed to smart-ass around a grimace brought on by an unintentional movement of the offending leg.

“Sure?” There was a gentleness in her voice that was there to reassure O’Neill it was okay to ask for more if he chose to. She checked the drip from his antibiotics bag and jotted down a note on his chart.

“Sure,” he confirmed and threw a wave as she left the room.

“What happened to Kheyln?” asked Daniel.

“Absolutely no idea,” Jack admitted. “We got separated in the first night’s shelling and he never showed up at our pre-arranged set-point.”

“What about the girl and the child? And that crystal she was wearing... what was that all about?” Daniel poured a little water into a glass and held the straw up to Jack’s mouth.

“Thanks,” O’Neill smiled and drank a long sip. “Dunno, Daniel. Dunno what happened. Came to and they were gone. The blasts from the shells must’ve come in real close because the front of the building had caved and all I had was a real bad headache, a loud buzz in my ears and my brain screamin’ at me to get the hell outta there.”

“They survived? Right?” Apprehension was not an emotion Daniel hid well.

“My gut says they did. Can’t explain it though. The crystal she was wearing appeared to cover them both in some sort of energy field. Felt weird being inside it.” Jack sipped more of the proffered water. “But I don’t remember anything after that... not until I came to.”

“So what happened after you left the building?” Daniel prompted and refilled the glass. He placed it within Jack’s reach and then dragged his chair in closer to the side of the bed.

“Aah...,” sighed Jack. “That’s when the trip to Oz took on a whole ‘nother meaning. Cause not only did I still need to track down the GDO... but now I’m playing evasion games with the local gun-bunnies. An’ lemme tellya, those boys were nothin’ if not consistent in the randomness of their fire. Couldn’t figure out where the hell to run and be safe. It was all just one deafening chaotic mess.”

“So... you...?”

“Hauled ass,” Jack smiled cockily. “Decided then and there that fuck-the-Tok’Ra was the new exit strategy and shelved any thoughts on the whereabouts of my long lost pal Kheyln. He was on his own, because finding that GDO was now the sole focus of the mission. So... yeah... headed off A-sap to the west side of the city trying to get better feedback on the damn GDO signal.”

~~~~oOo~~~~

Ooh ya!

So there I was, after two long days of rabbiting here and there, ducking from place to place, still trying to get a clear signal on the GDO until eventually I found a hidey-hole in the basement of a shelled-out building and figured the gun-bunnies couldn’t do any more damage to it than was already done. For now, at least, it had been relatively quiet on the side of town I was trying to move through. And besides, the shelling wasn't particularly targeted; it was strictly for softening purposes because I knew any smart commander would’ve done light shelling at the center of the city to drive out all the runners and then he would’ve concentrated his targeting on all the routes out. But this guy, this alien warlord, whoever the fuck he was, wasn't real smart; he was just acting stupid and pissed-off. Doing a hellova lot more damage to the city but really not making that many kills with the randomness of his fire.

Dumbass!

Morons, it seemed, were another one of those universal commodities and not in real short supply either as it turned out.

So it was dark when I finally slipped into this building and found a secure place to rest up for couple of hours. This was the fourth day of a miserable week and exactly two days after the unexpected disappearance of my gate-pal. Up until then there’d been no sleep in increments of more than an hour mainly because I never could find a safe place to hide out in. Most of the civilian residences, apartment buildings, and what looked like government buildings had all taken hits. I’d been too close to parts of the city where most of the shelling was happening and that easily translated into almost twenty-four hours of constant movement just trying to keep my ass out of their line of fire. The building I was in was taller than most in the area and I figured that maybe going to the roof would help secure a solid signal from the GDO. Because it became real clear real fast that the receiver wasn’t working worth a damn at ground level and too much time had gone by for me to keep screwing around. The longer I stayed the more it upped the chances some of the locals would want to know exactly who the fuck I was and right then, I wasn’t prepared to answer that question. They don’t call it Black Ops for nothing – because according to Kheyln these people weren’t supposed to know about either of us. And as he’d conveniently disappeared, I didn’t know who the real enemy was in this play so all I could do was assume everyone fit that descriptor. The only positive note about that assumption was I knew no one here was a friend.

By then, exhaustion was winning and going on effectively for much longer wasn’t a sane option - not without at least some consecutive hours of sleep. So I hunkered down in a corner and literally passed out, coming-to several hours later, sweating, feeling hot, like I had a fever, only to discover a couple of weird looking dogs pressed up against me, trembling and warm. The heavy feeling in my chest turned out to be a fuzzy, floppy-eared puppy lying across my belly with its sleepy head planted under my chin and its hot breath fanning my neck. I figured they were someone’s pets, abandoned during all the shelling and they’d been running scared through the streets and somehow found me. They stared at me with big sad eyes and an all encompassing trust, like ‘we don’t know who the fuck you are... but you’re a Man... get us out of here... turn back time... we just wanna go home’.

Christ! I knew exactly how they felt because ‘getting my sorry ass home in one piece’ had been second on my to-do list for the last two days. Jeesuz! Y’know - it felt like a week, felt like a month!

Then it struck me, dogs were another universal normalizer; because here I was, a galaxy away, in the midst of someone else’s civil war and I’d woken to their warmth and the gentle and trusting licks of their tongues on my face. It took a moment to realize just where the hell I really was. Then a distance muffled WHUMP was a quick reminder that the shelling hadn’t stopped and why I was there in this alien hellhole took precedence over the achingly familiar neutrality of that gentle moment.

That urgent sound refocused my thoughts to staying alive and to the Sig-Sauer handgun conveniently snuggled in the small of my back. I wasn’t supposed to have needed a weapon because hell, I was supposed to have been somewhere else and the P90, much to my regret, was back at the SGC. ‘These people are non-hostile.’ Kheyln had assured me of that.

‘Yeah, right!’

‘Non-hostile?’ That haunted. I’d seen nothing but hostile activity since I’d hit the city limits. So I pulled back the action to check the Sig and the click of it prompted the dogs to suddenly sit up, their ears at attention with some kind of recognition glowing in their dark eyes. Knew then they’d heard that sound or something like it before. The pup hunkered down at my knee and whimpered, its head pulled back into its shoulders real afraid of that sound and I’m hoping it’s not afraid of me. ‘S’ok’ - and they seemed to settle back down too the reassurance in my voice, nervously resting their heads on crossed paws. All the while, they kept watching my every movement with those trusting dark eyes. Black orbs beneath a cocked eyebrow was all it took to remind me of a certain Jaffa, and I wished like hell he’d been there instead of another galaxy away fighting in his own personal hellhole.

The dogs looked up expectantly and the pup gave another soft whine - they knew I was preparing to leave and like dogs everywhere, they just wanted to go too, hoping for the normalcy of play.

Play?

WTFO?

Sure, I thought - play – and checked my pockets for the two extra magazines. I was traveling way too light this go-out, but the concealed Sig fit in the small of my back a hellova a lot better than a Howitzer. I knew it was going to be another long day; there was still a lot of ground to cover, and the intermittent signal from the GDO kept coming back real weak. If weak meant distance, then the odds shot up dramatically that some sort interdiction would inevitably occur whether I wanted it to or not, because those odds were definitely not on my side.

So I ruffled their fuzzy heads and scratched behind the ears of the three trusting souls who’d been watching over me while I slept. Then I shared my last snack bar with them, knowing they were just three more innocents caught up in this unbelievable madness, unable to comprehend why all things in their simple lives had changed. If the time and the place had been different I’d have taken them home, but the reality of it was, I couldn’t. Couldn’t help feeling a little regret, remembering the dog I’d given Cassie - safe and well-fed, and back there on Earth. Then I was on my feet and moving. I wanted to go home too, so I petted them one last time before slipping out into the rubble-strewn hallway, moving silently, fast and up.

Smart dogs - they didn’t follow.

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Dogs, Jack?”

“Yeah. Looked like any other dogs. Hell the pup even looked like the one I gave Cassie. They were just looking for a backyard and ball and maybe a kid to play with... dunno. Hated leaving them,” he admitted and held out his arm to Daniel. “Help me sit up willya. Gotta move this leg a little more otherwise Doc Fraiser’s gonna keep me in here until hell freezes over or I go insane... which is gettin’ real close.”

Daniel grabbed Jack’s arm and gently helped him to sit forward. “What was happening with the GDO signal?” Daniel shook out a couple of the pillows, wedged them behind the Colonel’s back, and then pulled another couple off the neighboring empty bed to add to the cushiony pile.

“Damn buildings.” Jack hissed in irritation and pain as he slowly maneuvered the heavily bandaged limb, letting out a Gah! when he accidentally snagged the drain-tube protruding from the bandage. “I couldn’t get a steady signal so couldn’t pinpoint the exact direction. The only option left was to go high and maybe by-pass all the interferences.” Exhausted, he fell back against the pillows just as Doctor Janet Fraiser walked into the room.

“Colonel?” She looked at her patient questioningly and then gave a nod to Daniel on her way around the bed. “You’re looking a little flushed Sir,” she observed and reached for O’Neill’s wrist, which he grumpily refused to surrender.

“Colonel?” she repeated with a soft scowl and held out her hand to him, patiently waiting until he finally complied. “Thank you.” There was a no-nonsense firmness to her as she checked his pulse.

“Already gave today,” he frowned then demanded impatiently. “When do I get outta here?”

“When I give the release and not before,” she stated bluntly, and placed a thermometer in his mouth. “And don’t bite down otherwise you’ll be in here for a lot longer.”

“How long without the ‘lot longer’ part?” Daniel took up the cause and received an appreciative grin from a silenced Jack.

“It depends on the infection and how well it drains.” She looked at her watch. “That boar’s mouth was a nest of bacteria and unfortunately that added a few more days to his confinement.” Janet removed the thermometer, noted the reading and shook it out with her firm flick of her wrist.

“What! A few more days! Gimme a break Doc, willya!” O’Neill pleaded. “Just lemme go home and I promise I’ll be good.”

Fraiser shook her head. “Sorry Colonel, but no parole for good behavior under these circumstances. You need to rest and heal a little more.” She continued to write notes on his chart, and before he could complain further she shut him down with her final order. “Rest!” Then she left the room.

“Rest,” reiterated Daniel with a conciliatory shrug.

“Hate resting,” Jack grouched. “Got time to rest when I’m dead and not before!” He shouted his defiance after the departed Fraiser, and then sank back into the pillows to grump some more.

“O-kaay.” Daniel picked up the boar’s jaw and placed it on his lap. “So you went to the roof? What happened then?”

“Something I wasn’t expecting.”

~~~~oOo~~~~

I was in luck because the building was deserted and I made it to the roof fast, keeping away from the edges, back flat against a section of wall, breathing calmly and blending in with the night shadows. Off to the right I could make out the silhouettes of rooftops. Several of them were in crazy shapes and at odd angles because they’d taken hits from the shelling. Plumes of dark smoke rose from their emptiness, snaking up against the night sky, and standing out like wavering, ethereal fingers. Far off to the left an occasional brightness signaled where parts of the city were still under bombardment. Every so often a fresh fire would break the night sky and dull out the canopy of alien stars. I glanced up once and saw nothing familiar in the star pattern and once again, the disgust of that reality settled uneasily in my chest. Sure enough, I wasn’t near to home no matter how much the dark silhouettes of this city resembled some of those I’d fought in back on Earth.

Then the receiver eventually honed in on the GDO and brought my thoughts back immediately to why I was on the roof. I could see from the strength of the signal that the GDO was closer than I’d thought. The intensity of it led off to the right in a northeast line of the slowly disintegrating skyline. From the shapes of the roofs, the area appeared more residential and even though there was still a lot of unknown ground between me and the signal, at least now I had a better idea of the direction. The closer I got, the easier it would be to zero in. Completing my mission and getting home seemed a lot more tangible just then and it was that thought that kept me warm while I stood in the cool night air. When I shut down the receiver and pocketed it, a sound hit my ears and I knew instantly I was no longer alone. I breathed against the wall and watched - controlling the adrenalin rush building in the center of my chest as everything except my training dropped away and my mind came alive - body primed.

There were two of them, one tall and lean, and the other with some definite bulk. Mentally I tagged them as Bert and Ernie, and coded that neither appeared armed from my vantage point. But I knew it would’ve been stupid to have assumed they weren’t packing some kind of hardware.

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not stupid.

I didn’t know who they were except gut-instinct told me their stance wasn’t friendly. So here was the choice I was faced with - wait in the meager cover of the shadows until they left or go offensive and reveal my presence to them on my terms. They were between me and the exit, making that choice an obvious one because the reality was, they could’ve turned at any moment to see me standing there hovering in the darkness.

That choice was made for me.

They were within ten feet, close enough to smell their sweat, which hung heavily in the air. It would only be a matter of a second before one or both of them turned and registered my presence – a shadow, quiet and ready to pounce. The scene played itself out in my head because in the next breath one started to turn and I did the only sane thing given the situation - I charged.

It took two running strides in about one second, tackling the heavier one full force because he just happened to be the closest and with his bulk, I needed surprise on my side. Coming out of the shadows at full speed, I just ran like a freight train straight into him, sledgehammering into his throat with a stiffened forearm. I knew at the very least I would bruise him badly but I was really aiming to crush the cartilage just to make sure I’d shut him up. And from the gurgling noises he was making I figured I’d nailed an A in that class. He took a half hearted swing as he was falling, but his punch had no power behind it and his fist just kind of slid off my face and chest and didn’t even register. He went down hard.

Then everything around me became even sharper – Ernie, on the ground, was rolling away in slow motion, both hands occupied with clutching at his throat. I could see Bert, standing next to me beginning to recover from his astonishment at my sudden appearance. At the same time, I saw the movement of his hand as he reached inside his jacket. In the next breath, I knew the surprise element was over and I had the rest of the fight on my hands. Bert was pulling out some kind of weapon, which at five feet meant I was at point-blank range and even an idiot could hit me from that close no matter what he was packing. He pulled what looked like a gun from his waistband and he came up with it at me but I was faster and I grabbed his arm, twisting it sideways and down with both of my hands. He was predictable though, and slow, and I knew my move had enough force to make him instinctively bend forward. So I let go with one hand so I could slam the heel of my palm upwards against his nose. The force of the blow split his upper lip against his teeth, and the gush of blood was enough to distract him because it loosened his hold on the weapon so that with one more wrench at his captured arm, his grip gave way and the gun hit the ground. Without even thinking, I kicked at it and it slithered away across the roof with a hollow scraping sound and clattered against the wall, leaving a strange echo hanging in the quiet air around me. In the next breath, I slammed him up against the wall, brought my knee up hard into his groin, and then followed through with another hard left to his mouth, dropping him to the ground in a sagging heap. Meanwhile, I came away from the discussion shaking a fist with a coupla split knuckles stinging for all my effort.

They were both down; I was breathing real hard and in my head I knew what I had to do next. Survival rule number one dictates that they aren’t allowed to get up too soon. If they do then they can raise the alarm or give a description, which means only one thing – I can end up being screwed, which means being dead. So the Sig was in my hand and I dragged Bert up by his collar and kicked him over on his stomach, connecting down hard on the back of his head with the butt of the gun. Ernie, in the meantime was struggling with one hand, trying to reach for his weapon, which caught in the flap of his jacket. He was tugging at it, almost comically, as he tried to roll away, and it suddenly came loose with the barrel pointing at me. But one kick at his hand and the weapon spun away. Then my boot connected again with his arm and he mouthed like he wanted to shout but he couldn’t because he knew and I knew his larynx was gone. The butt of my Sig met his jaw and the force flipped him over so he wasn’t going anywhere either.

That’s when something oddly familiar caught my eye. Ernie had come to rest with his face at a weird angle; lying sideways towards me. I couldn’t quite make out what it was because it was dark, so I pushed him over onto his back and all of a sudden this flash of cold recognition hit me square in the gut and I found myself staring unbelieving at the black emblem tattooed on his forehead. ‘What the fuck?’ So I yanked at his shirt and checked his belly. Sure enough, there it was, X marked the spot – Ernie was a damned Jaffa.

Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph!

~~~~oOo~~~~

“A Jaffa!” Daniel questioned in disbelief. “What the hell was a Jaffa doing there? Did you recognize the symbol on his forehead?”

“Nope. Dunno. No clue. Surprised the hell outta me though. Was not expecting that. Figured they were just a couple of local goons.”

“Remember what the symbol looked like?” Daniel patted down his pockets, searching for something to write on. “Maybe Teal’c or Bra’tac can tell us something?”

Jack held out his bandaged hands accompanied by a pitiful expression. “Don’t know if I can draw it too well but can try,” he offered up hopefully.

“Here, can you hold this?” Daniel slipped the found pen in between Jack’s bandaged fingers, and held the notepad steady as O’Neill shakily traced out the symbol on the piece of paper.

“Whaddaya think?” Jack was triumphant, proud of his efforts and smiling up expectantly at a frowning Daniel. The archaeologist meanwhile held up the piece of paper squinting at it in analytical assessment.

“Looks like giraffe, Jack,” he observed a moment later, critically turning the page sideways and then upside down.

“Nah... it’s one of those dog-head things.”

“Sphinx?” Daniel peered skeptically at the picture.

“Sure... yeah... one o’ them,” Jack smiled and lowered himself slowly back on the pillows as more images flooded his mind.

~~~~oOo~~~~

So there I was, right in the middle of another oh-shit situation and what I really needed then was the time to just breathe, to let this all sink in. I was gasping for air, my lungs were feeling like they were on fire, and I was fighting to get my breathing back to normal. Because at the same time, my mind’s yelling at me to get my ass moving.

Lemme tellya - grappling like that, struggling, no matter how briefly, over a weapon, is harder than anything you can ever imagine. It takes half strength and half psychology to pull it off without getting hurt or getting dead. Because there's always – always - this moment where it feels like one off those wildly swinging rides out at Ocean City on the boardwalk, where the pendulum is almost out of control and there's no way of knowing which way it's going to tip. At that point, just for a second, if you allow any doubt in at all, your muscles loosen and the tip goes against you. And if he’s got the gun or the knife and you're breathing his breath and you look up at him, you'll see yourself in his eyes.

So you don’t - because those who fight monsters sometimes become monsters if they let themselves look into that abyss. Because what they’ll see is the evil staring back at them, trying its damnedest to suck them in. And the only reason I don’t get sucked in too is because somewhere in me I hold on to this belief that what I’ve been asked to do, what I’ve done from day one was done solely to keep that evil from straying into the path of the innocents.

So I kept my head down, focused on the job, got it done and kept moving. Because believe me, fighting close like that is so fuckin’ tiring and stopping afterwards is dangerous. There’s no time to realize what hurts or what just happened or worse what almost just happened. The brain just loves playing games on you with that kind of shit; like making you feel really high or like giving you this 'two-at-one-blow' feeling that makes you feel lighter, like something's behind you. But the real truth is, hand-to-hand is just plain scary shit to do and the reality of it is, it could’ve been me on the ground.

I knew I couldn’t make any mistakes. I couldn’t overlook anything. And what had looked like just an encounter with a couple of native goons had now turned into something else; something way more serious and I had to decide real fast what to do next – and lemme tellya, hauling-ass just shot right to the top of that list.

Man! Just pulling in a breath was tough, but I scrambled over to Bert and grabbed at his jaw, turning his face roughly. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t feel relieved to discover he wasn’t Jaffa too because that just meant a whole ‘nother fuckin’ mystery to solve on who the hell he was and why was he running with this Jaffa? But maybe more importantly I was thinking which System Lord was holding the leash this time out because the brand on Ernie wasn’t one I’d ever seen before and - oh yeah! – he’d gone native too and was wearing clothes almost identical to mine. Ernie wasn’t breathing too well, and the blood coming from his mouth told me his trachea was probably gone. Bert had an expression on his face that said maybe he’d spend the rest of his days sitting in a corner somewhere dribbling over his bottom lip. But right then I really didn’t give a damn about these two goons, because the mission had changed dramatically with the realization that the Tok’Ra had knowingly dropped my ass into a hot zone.

Disgusted didn’t quite cover how I felt, not only with them but with myself because the split knuckles were beginning to throb badly, reminding me just what a careless combination of moves kneeing Bert in the groin then hitting him in the mouth had been. Doh! There he was sucking air and here comes my flesh and bone conveniently hitting his teeth at roughly 40 fps. It’d probably be only a few hours before the infection set in and I was out here with no Doc Fraiser in the immediate neighborhood to give me another shot in the ass - a dumb ass at that!

That’s when I heard another sound behind me and smoothed against the wall and slipped silently into the stairwell, aware of the dark shapes climbing the stairs a few floors below. I knew right then putting some distance between me and them and what they were about to discover on the roof was a no-brainer, because the truth was I really wasn’t interested in taking on anyone else. Finding the GDO was still the mission and getting to where it was had now taken on a whole new set of challenges because Jaffa never travel alone. Bert was a new player and I figured he had to have someone looking out for him too.

The big question was who?

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Who was this guy... this Bert?”

“Dunno... didn’t have time to stop and find out either. Too busy haulin’ me and what was left of my ass outta there to give a damn at that particular moment. Ernie was close to dead and Bert was probably gonna wish he was. Either way, what was done was done and I had to move on fast... real fast.”

“The knuckles?” Daniel held up his hand and tapped at his own fist.

“Healin’,” came the quiet response.

~~~~oOo~~~~

So there I was, navigating down through the building, avoiding the roaming Jaffa who were obviously looking for the elusive ‘shetan’ who’d just planted a less than affectionate shut-the-fuck-up on their pals on the roof. The streets had suddenly become impassible because of an increased number of patrols, so moving anywhere away from there was a decision already made and going underground seemed like the only choice I had left.

Going underground in any MOUT situation meant one thing. Twenty minutes later – whaddayaknow – I was in the FRIGGIN’ sewer.

Lemme tellya, this was one of those ‘the-show-must-go-on-times’ where I had to work real hard to convince myself that what I was about to do really was the only way I could get my sorry ass out of this mess.

Yeah right! Outta what mess?

Going into sewers had never been my first choice for evasion and all the go-out vaccinations and booster shots in the world never left me with a good feeling once I was actually down there. So I made a mental note wading through the swill, to thank good old Doc Fraiser for those three just-in-case shots she’d given me right before leaving. Right then I was wondering if any of them had a snowball’s chance in hell of doing one bit of good in this cesspool. Meanwhile, my bloodied fist was beginning to throb like a sonnovabitch.

Yup! Sewers, I was not surprised to discover, were just another one of those universal standards.

Rusty.

Drippy.

Slimed with schtuff.

The one sure place where the air hung heavily with that all too familiar God-knows-what-died-down-here-last-week stench and so overwhelmingly potent it kept my stomach turning with every breath I took.

So there I was, feeling my way along in the dark, taking the time to curse the Tok’Ra because they’d sunk me into this gawdawful mess and I was thinking, there was no possible way that it could get any worse. Wrong again! Because that’s when I hit the one place where it actually did get worse. Yup, worse! And I found myself wading thigh deep in swill. An’ lemme tellya, the boyz, the twins, y'know, the best part of O’Neill, they were wishing for their own hazmat container right about then.

That feeling pretty much nailed it for me, and getmethefuckouttahere-so-I can- kick-Tok’Ra-ass turned into a burning need. The slimy wetness was seeping through the fabric of my pants and all I could do was raise up on my toes for the clearance.

Oh yeah! Drop kick Tok’Ra ass into the next county became the new mantra as I headed off down the tunnel.

I could tell that the sun was coming up because of the shafts of light slicing down through the traps. Night was turning into a real bright day and navigating my way through the dark passages was a trick. The contrasts, the extremes, between those shafts of light and the blackness of the tunnels screwed with my eyes so they didn't have a shot at adjusting one way or the other. I was constantly struggling to focus, which generally just made moving around down there a real hazardous bitch.

Things like wall ladders were erratically placed. The ones I tried were mostly old and fragile, and worse yet, sometimes they just didn't go anywhere. When I moved from one to another, I discovered some of the traps overhead were either rusted or nailed shut or just seemed to have something built over them. I knew I was basically a sitting duck down there with no choice but to stay put. The place was just a warren of dead ends, flooded areas and mantraps, and the reality was, I wasn’t going anywhere until dark.

Then at one point, while I was trying desperately to cover my mouth and breathe through the sleeve of my jacket, I stumbled against the wall, and caught myself with my hand. That hand! Felt the immediate sting as it came away covered in what just had to be some kind of alien version of the black plague. That convinced me for sure that my hand was gonna fall off before I made it back to the Stargate.

Kick-Tok’Ra ass?

Yeahsureyabetcha!

This just wasn’t a good day to go tiptoeing through a sewer; this wasn’t a good place to have to hang out for any length of time; and this definitely wasn’t a good time to be there. Because being cold, wet, and confined is my own personal idea of hell and here it was all wrapped up in one nauseating tunnel that stretched out endlessly before me.

So finally, I found this spot, this nook, this wedge in the wall and hunkered down, the boots still sloshing around in the swill. The nearby overhead trap appeared to be free moving but it was too light for me to suddenly pop out of there unexpectedly, at least not before dark.

But here’s where the whole situation just got downright scary, because all I knew was, that Down There it was nothing but a morass of hazardous waste and volatile flammables just dying for any excuse to, y’know, flam. So I was thinking, as I sat with my butt squashed into my little ledge - if the opposition showed up any time soon and the situation degraded into a firefight, my ass would literally be up for grabs. The Sig snuggled in the small of my back didn’t come with a wet suppressor and the cloud of vapors around me was a sure bet to ignite with one shot from it or from a staff weapon. Even if it didn’t go up with the first shot, there was always the potential sparks off of a ricochet - and oops, I reminded myself as I looked around - where the hell was I anyway? Ricochet heaven.

So there I was, butt wedged into a makeshift seat, sitting in the almost pitch black, up to my ‘nads in sewage and the one thought – the one damn thought! – going through my mind right then, was; ‘Christ! What would George say during the eulogy?’

It’s funny how pride can show up in the strangest of places. Even though I knew there wouldn’t be any official story or explanation as to what really happened to my sorry ass - I just knew – knew – there would have to be a cause of death listed somewhere in the files and that one thought just gave going-out-with-a-bang a whole ‘nother meaning. Because - oh-shit - wouldn’t thatt just completely obliterate the whole Badass reputation I’d worked so hard for if the O’Neill legend was to exit the play in a fiery ball of sewer gas.

Christ! I’d rather eat a bullet.

~~~~oOo~~~~

Jack looked at Daniel and raised a bandaged covered hand in warning. “Don’t say it!” he commanded at the slowly spreading grin.

“Fiery ball of sewer gas... huh?” Daniel challenged.

“Ah!” cautioned Jack.

“Badass reputation.. huh?” Daniel mocked.

“Don’t go there Daniel. I mean it. You know I hate sewers and tunnels. And lemme tellya... the vapors down there were a real kicker.”

Daniel nodded slowly and knowingly. “Sure, Jack, sure.” His smile betraying his lingering amusement.

“Hate sewers,” stated Jack emphatically.

“Uh huh.”

~~~~oOo~~~~

So it was dusk and pissing down with rain when I finally popped out of the sewer. Felt pretty much like a wet and filthy gopher as I shook the words Jack-in-the-box from my head. It seemed my uncanny sense of it’s-gotta-be-this-way-dumbass had managed to steer me in the right direction. Seemed too, the dumbass luck had stayed with me; the street was deserted and my sudden appearance went unnoticed, which when I thought about it, was just as well - I figured they didn’t need to see me, they could’ve inhaled me from at least a half block off.

This was probably the only time in my life when I ever felt positive about being drenched, because at least it would rinse off some of the stench and I’d rather be wet through and through than smell bad. Getting out of the sewer was just an all round relief and I slipped through the near dark, doggedly pushing the Snoopy image of Pigpen way to the back of my mind. Meanwhile I checked the signal on the receiver and headed off down a street lined along the center with dying trees.

I wasn’t real surprised to see the hit and miss destruction, thinking - if this city had a personality, it could’ve easily been described as spiraling into schizophrenia. One street would be lined with pristine old brick townhouses, and then I’d make a turn into the next and find myself entering what looked like a sniper zone or worse, standing in a series of bomb craters looking at the smoking remains of a hundred lives. For one second, I let myself wonder about the people who lived there, all those who probably wanted nothing more than to fill their Sunday afternoons eating something like strawberry shortcake while sitting on their porches. Instead, they found themselves dying in the crossfire of someone else’s argument.

My luck held when I hit the end of the street and the tracking signal suddenly kicked in real strong and pulled my awareness towards an old stone house standing lonely and dark on the opposite side of the road. I blended into a doorway and surveyed the building. It was three levels high and old enough so that the porte-cochere out front was mossed over and shaped by the shadows. S’funny, but it looked like a large panther draping over the edges, breathing quietly in the starlight. I swore I could see its eyes watching me with a calmness that warned of danger.

The windows of the house were all darkened, some of them appeared as though they’d been painted black, at least those still with glass did. On either side of this building, there were piles of rubble and pits that marked where the neighbors houses hadn’t made it. It was obvious that their destruction had left the signature pockmarks in the stones of the house I was looking at, marring the surface like a skin-eating disease. In a way, the house looked raggedly grandiose and maybe a long time ago it had stood as a statement to someone’s prosperity, but now, in the dark, it loomed like a specter of evil, forbidding and isolated in the destruction all around it.

It made me suspicious.

It was too easy, it was too quiet, which meant something wasn’t right.

But the signal from the GDO tracker was insistent and steadily blinked at me with a this-is-it-stupid urgency. I coded the street, scrutinizing it in all directions. My night vision was acute by then and I warily searched for other shadows within shadows. The rain had abruptly stopped and nothing was moving - even the air had gone still as I leaned against the wall and watched. My body went still too, breathing gets real slow, regulated, so as not to disturb anything in the sudden night calm.

Slipping in through an unlocked window was the easy part.

~~~~oOo~~~~

The room was dark except for a strip of soft yellow light at the foot of an inner door – a candle most likely by the way it flickered and moved shadows. Someone was home – oh joy!

There wasn’t much choice about what had to happen next and I dropped to the floor and peered under the door. The gap was just wide enough so I could make out some vague shapes and the side of a boot - more joy!

The Sig was in my hand when I slowly opened the door and came face to face with a very large man - a mouth-breather with wet lips, wet eyes, and a gut full of sausages and bread. He sat heavily on the edge of a sturdy wooden chair with a weapon of some kind shoved tightly in the waistband of his pants. Both of his hands were resting on his beefy thighs, palms up in a gesture meant to say he wasn’t a threat. However, I knew differently. Been there, done that, had my ass kicked too.

‘Colonel O’Neill,’ he wheezed to my sudden appearance. But I ignored him while I coded the room, the Sig centered on his massive belly as my eyes instantly recorded and processed my surroundings.

Behind Fatman and off to my right there were two doors, and to the left of him there was an open stairway that led up and led down. To Fatman’s far right, in the front hall of the house, there was a stack of what looked real similar to AK's and plenty of ammo belts to back them up. On the first stair landing, an RPG sat prominently aimed towards a window overlooking the street. On the other side of the hall was a dark archway leading off to other parts of the house. On my left, there were a set of tall windows that loomed into the room. They stood covered behind dusty and fading black drapes; the material was thinning and worn along the top edges. On the table were three glasses, one still half filled with a clear liquid, all of them sitting next to a plate, which was empty except for a few crumbs. The fireplace behind Fatman was smoldering with a poker lying in the hearth and its handle facing towards me. The house was gloomy, dark and uneasily quiet except for Fatman’s continual wheeze. I could detect a strange odor that hung in the air – it wasn’t me – but a mixture of stale food and Fatman’s sweat and maybe some kind of fusel oil. I hadn’t eaten much in the last several days and the combined stench was acrid it made me swallow hard.

‘Colonel O’Neill.’ It was obvious to me that he had been expecting me.

His smile was broad but his eyes were vacant when he said my name. ‘Colonel O’Neill, I presume?’ he said it again with an air of expectancy in his voice. He eased his bulk up from the chair and his belly folds rippled as he moved, the expanse of his pants billowing outwards as he walked. He was sweating badly, and there were wet rings on his shirt which hung like big soggy loops from his armpits and from around his neck. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’ He said it for a third time and extended a hand, which I didn’t take. He was too nervous and there was a note of fear hanging around him. I could smell it on him – it was coppery, tangy, like a handful of pennies and I knew instantly that he was afraid. He was afraid of something and it wasn’t me.

‘Please, Colonel. I’ve been waiting for you.’ There was a mild pleading tone to his voice; his hands were still face up with palms out. ‘Mirshet is here. He’s badly hurt.’ And didn’t the sound of that name bring me up short - the Tok’Ra agent I was sent to look for and who was supposed to be carrying the missing GDO. By then I was even more suspicious and my wariness ramped.

I uttered one word, ‘Where?’ And Fatman pivoted to my question, watching me, and pointing to the cellar. Cellar! Christ I hated cellars! Cellars reminded me of something else and my head just didn’t want to go there because I knew it was a trap, but the GDO signal was insistent and my not going down there wasn’t an option. I moved slowly around him towards the stairway, keeping my back to the walls and his bulk in my peripheral vision while I checked out the dark hallway.

I looked at the three glasses on the table again and I just knew instinctively that he wasn’t alone. I knew too he wasn’t about to tell me who else was there – not willingly anyway.

‘Move!’ I hissed at him and gestured with a shrug of the Sig. I took the weapon from his waistband and placed it quietly on the table. He was going down first – that was for damn sure.

Fatman picked up a lantern and lit it with a shaky hand. It was old and covered in dust and oil and the flame flickered as he moved his bulk past me. He was almost too big to fit through the narrow opening at the top of the stairs. He hesitated at the edge of the steps and turned, holding up the lamp so that the glow of it caught the beads of sweat running down his face. The liquid fear was ponding in the folds at his neck. He looked at me and I could see his fear had ramped even more – it was there in his eyes, pooling behind the reflected light from the lantern. We both knew in that second what was down there waiting. ‘Move it!’ was all I said.

Showtime!

The stairs were old stone and led down into the earth. They looked older than the current house and the rock of the foundation was seepy wet. The crooked, loosening mortar shook under his weight as I followed him. Fatman held the lantern in front of him, talking constantly around his nervousness - like a dam had sprung a leak. Meanwhile I stayed quietly and in close behind him, my thoughts bent to using him as a shield. The lantern bobbed drunkenly with his gait and I caught glimpses of lumps at the edges of its beam, thinking from the shapes that they were maybe provisions, broken furniture, or more weapons. Dunno for sure.

Then he stopped at a heavy wooden door.

Fatman was shaking - like that game show where the host is about to pull the curtain back, and he wants his audience even more psyched up before he does. I was listening warily. The Sig was in my hand and I checked the knife sheathed to my forearm. I was as ready as I was gonna get.

The lantern hissed and he held it up, wavering as he leaned his bulk in to push the wooden door. I stood in the doorway behind him as he brought up the lantern and the walls suddenly caught fire – a brilliant color that reflected the light.

The wall straight ahead was imbedded in crystals. Each one of the gems caught the beam from the lantern and bounced it back in blinding rainbows. Crystals that looked just like the one the young girl with the child had; only these were in a myriad of shapes and sizes.

Fatman shuffled into the room, his breathing even noisier. He was practically whuffling through his puffy lips and he stood in the center of the dirt room circling the walls with his eyes like a caress. In that moment, I was forgotten to him and so was his fear. But on the floor in the corner lay a body, bound and still. I figured it had to be Mirshet.

Oh shit! - went through my head in the nanosecond of distraction it took to register that Fatman had stopped dead in his tracks and was looking past me out the door, and the look in his eyes said it all.

I took out two with the Sig before two others crushed me against the wall, the impact knocking me senseless. The imbedded crystals tore through my jacket and into my back, and the pain from each point was immediate and cold. The next thing I knew I was on the floor, shaking my head trying to get rid of the flashing lights so I could get my ass back in the fight. But they’d dragged me to my feet and a couple of sets of beefy hands held my arms tightly from behind.

The lantern was on the floor and so was Fatman; lying like a beached whale, he wallowed in the corner, his gut trembling beneath the spread of oozing blood, a bright pattern of color moving across his massive belly. He was on his way to death and he looked at me like he had something to say then his eyes drifted away to the crystal wall and mine went to the ominous figure now standing in front of me.

There was no tattoo on this man’s forehead, so I figured he wasn’t a Jaffa, but the two goons holding me certainly were – both branded by the same mark I’d seen on their pal, the Ernie I’d taken out earlier on the roof.

And here’s another universal standard - getting caught by the other side anywhere is just the same, the consequences are always the same, and as I’d been caught once before in Iraq I swore then I’d never let myself be caught like that again.

Because the thing about being held against your will is that it’s a real crap feeling. It's like being thrown from a galloping horse, you and the horse going down hard at 30 mph with the same inevitability of knowing you‘re gonna hit the ground and there’s nothing you can do about it but wait for the impact and hopefully roll with it. There’s just something about having your arms held behind you, about being bound that way that is totally demoralizing. It can make it real easy for a situation to degrade fast and take the fight right out of you.

I was trying for cocky, and greeted the goon with a cheery, ‘What took you fuckers so long?’ and my mouthing-off was immediately answered with a single blow that opened my cheekbone and left me feeling dizzy and sick.

He was wearing a ring that looked like the crystals, only it had a setting surrounded with sharp spikes. And didn’t the feel of that just set things straight for me. The hot-wetness on my cheek told me one blow was pretty much all I was gonna take and any more from it and I would’ve looked like hamburger. I was pretty sure his next blow would’ve been an eye and I’d have been blinded – then after that he could really take his time. Because morons like that tend to deal out beatings in a certain way – they want their punching bags held, which meant he liked to hit and he didn’t want hitting back to interfere with his pleasure. This wasn’t the first time I’d come up against this kind of sadistic mentality. Sadists, it seemed, were yet another universal equalizer. Go figure!

So what did I do? I fought even more.

They weren't real smart, but there were three of them, and that's sometimes all it’ll take to get that initial upper hand - at least temporarily. Getting it back was a no-brainer because I was much more desperate and had a lot more to lose right at that moment. So I leaned into the two goons holding my arms and braced against them and then brought both my feet up into Ringman’s gut. After that it just got crazier’n shit because I’d decided nothing else was going to happen to me willingly. It was a go for broke, shoot the fuckin’ moon, almost out of control situation, where I was either walking out of that room on my own two feet or I’d be dead.

Lesson number one in Survival School – carry a knife and survive.

The GDO was still with the body - with Mirshet. Hidden in the pocket of his corpse’s jacket where it had obviously been planted to pull me in. I took it and walked away - closed the door, because no one else was leaving that room of color and light but me.

The GDO was safe but my ass surely wasn’t, and booking it to the Stargate just overshot the top of my to-do list.

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Don’t ask Daniel... okay?” Jack’s request was in a quiet but commanding voice as he took a sip of water Daniel held for him.

“Wasn’t going to,” Daniel replied seriously. “Getting out alive is all that mattered.”

“Y’know...” Jack added thoughtfully, “can’t get the image of that wall outta my head. It was just a wash of color and light... like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

“Any idea why it was there?”

“Nope. No clue. It was something Fatman was obviously concealing... maybe hording for later. Dunno. He seemed like your typical black-marketeer.... greedy and lonely.”

“What about Mirshet?”

“Dead,” stated Jack cryptically. “And I don’t know exactly how... but judging by the goons that were there I’d say they most likely whisked his ass off to Oz within twenty four hours of me showing up. Messy. Real messy.” Jack sank further back into the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, relegating the memories of what had happened in that room to the back of his mind. Some memories were just better off being confined, stored away with all the other violent events that had happened to him in his life. Because even though violence was a tool he had to carry, it wasn’t a part of who he really was. Jack O’Neill was not a violent man.

“Need to rest for a while?” Daniel nudged Jack gently.

“Nah. S’okay. Just tidying away some of that crap that’s not worth thinking about anymore. ‘Sides... not got to the good parts yet!”

“The good parts?” repeated Daniel skeptically. “There’s good parts?”

“Hell yeah! Hauled ass outta there and headed back towards the mountains and the Stargate. Took me about three hours to nav my way through the streets to the edge of city. Luckily it was dark and I didn’t meet up with anyone else. Least ways not anyone who was interested in kickin’ my butt.... which by the way was feeling pretty damn ragged by then.”

“Ooh ya?” offered Daniel hesitantly.

“You got it... Ooh ya!”

~~~~oOo~~~~

Ooh ya!

So there I was jogging – again - along a flat plain on what looked and felt like a nicely paved road, the way lit by a pair of alien moons that hung low in the night sky. The larger of the two was a soft half crescent, the shine of it stretching my shadow so that it trailed after me like a faceless, ethereal companion, dogging me down the road.

The smaller moon was a bright orb, backlighting the ragged mountain range that stretched like a large bite across the horizon. Their silhouette reminded me of mountain ranges I’d walked across on Earth - places where I’d had to hide to evade the enemy; places where I’d tracked them down; places where I’d caught them; one place where they’d caught me.

My cheek had stopped bleeding but was throbbing almost as badly as the open wound on my fist that had taken yet another beating in the cellar. My back felt tight, the cuts from the crystals opening and closing at random with every movement in my run. But I pushed all the pain to the back of my mind – I was breathing, I had the GDO, I was enjoying a moment to plan some kick-Tok’Ra-ass strategy and I was finally heading towards the Stargate and home. All in all not too bad of a situation considering what my ass had just gone through. So quit whining, I told myself, it could’ve been worse.

But I still had a ways to go; the Stargate was parked in a meadow high up in those mountains, in a place covered in blue tulips. Or at least I thought they were tulips because botany wasn’t one of my strong points. They were blue and I remembered a field of them greeting me when I first emerged and for a fleeting moment back then I thought I was looking at a lake. ‘Take a few back’, I thought, because they were unusual enough that Fraiser and Daniel would appreciate them. They both had this thing about ethno-botany and blue tulips just sounded like something they’d want to study.

Some day I’d tell them what I knew on that particular subject and the things I’d learned from an old Bruja woman who’d taken care of my sorry ass in a FUBAR situation go way the hell wrong back there in the Stans. She’d taught me a few things about plants that had saved my life on more than one occasion, because healing a broken body isn’t always just about another shot of antibiotics to the ass, especially when said ass was miles away from the nearest field hospital and a medico with a sterile first-aid kit.

I kept joggin’ - the city was nothing but a faint glow miles behind me and it was now coming up on day six of this marathon go-out, and by now I was getting real hungry - did I mention that - really hungry. It was maybe 40 degreess; I was sweating lightly from the jog and maybe fighting a fever. I was trying real hard to ignore my hunger and focus instead on the looming silhouette of the mountains - when up ahead, could be a mile or more, I spotted a faint light. A flare, I thought initially, then figured again, because flares like to hang in the sky and linger in the dark like unwelcome accusations. This light was too low to be a flare and too bright in the night to be a flashlight. I knew that flares and flashlights were normally search tools because I’d evaded enough of them in my life. But this low quiet hanging light in the distance meant maybe what was up ahead was something or someone who probably didn’t know I was around.

So I followed my instincts, which meant ‘get off the road now dumbass’ and I slid into the ditch running alongside the road. Just my luck, it was filled with water, and once again my sorry ass was submerged in something cold and wet. I hugged the dirt for a long while, watching the pinpoint of light flicker in the distance before I guessed it wasn’t moving, which meant it wasn’t coming towards me either. So I did the real smart thing and moved towards it, one because I was curious, two because it was between me and the mountain range and where I needed to go.

I kept low, slipped out of the ditch, and ran along the karsts on the ridge that paralleled the road, until I eventually got close enough to the light. Then I slapped down flat on the rock and crawled the last fifty yards on my belly.

Whoa, Dorothy! Just when I thought I was catching the next tornado back to Kansas, Oz did it to me again. Life was just getting more interesting by the minute.

They weren’t tanks – not the way I knew tanks. They looked like mini versions of a Tolan Ion Cannon and they were mounted on treads that were familiar. Someone, it seemed, had been combining Tolan technology with Earth military hardware, looking to add mobility to an already deadly weapon. I got excited because these were new, there was no Intel on them – there was no nuthin’ on them that I knew about.

There were three of them, all pointed towards the city and hanging with what looked like halogen trouble lights – this was the light I’d seen up the roadway, the light that had caught my eye. Then all of a sudden, everything began to make a little sense. I knew the Ion Canon had the range to go off planet so I figured these mini-versions could very easily reach up to several miles. Doh! Now I knew for sure who the gun-bunnies were who’d been pounding my ass for the last few days as I nav’d around the city.

Then one of the lights went into motion as a shadowy figure picked it up and walked around the tank. In that flash of movement I saw what looked like Goa’uld script on the side of the cannon and thought - damn! – the final confirmation I needed to piece it all together that some System Lord was trying to take control of this world.

The big question was why?

I still had to figure that one out and if Mirshet and the GDO had been in Goa’uld hands then there was more at stake than the device’s simple retrieval. Some System Lord was here and had already infiltrated the local population. He or she wasn’t taking over the planet overtly and there had to be a real good reason why they were choosing to remain covert in their activities within the city, because the Goa’uld didn’t normally operate that way. But whatever they were up to, these cannon were the continual source of misery that was laying to waste the city I’d just escaped from. That’s when doing something about them seemed like a real good idea. A little preventative countermeasure on behalf of the local population could prove very important to negotiations further down the diplomatic yellow brick road. Besides, not taking the opportunity to kick Goa’uld ass when it was presented would have been a cryin’ shame. Being proactive had always been the guiding part of the job – it was part of preventing something evil today growing into something cancerous tomorrow.

So there I was, on my belly looking down at these three tanks parked in the middle of the road and I started counting silhouettes. All the hatches were up - the one on the right apparently had some repair issue on its ass end, judging by the cluster of shadowy men. I couldn’t tell if it was a tread or a cooling problem – it was just too vague and too dark and my knowledge on tank mechanics was limited. But my silhouette-count said it was possible everyone, or almost everyone, was outside either leaning or flopped down, and most of them looked bored. At least they were acting as though there were no clear threats and I couldn’t see any other one either - except me. I figured no one would stay inside the cannon-base without a good reason, so I started separating sounds, and finally figured the two on the left were still idling and the one with the issues, and furthest away from me, was silent. I thought maybe a cooling problem was the most likely reason and if they were using Earth based tank hardware to transport a Tolan ion canon then overheating was a sure bet. It was a honkin’ big gun and impressive enough that I knew the Goa’uld hadn’t pulled it all together because, who’d want to reverse-engineer an Ion Cannon and put it on the tread-base of what looked like a US Army tank?

The Tolan? The Tok’Ra? NID? Christ, who?

Nothing really made much sense, but I couldn’t shake those thoughts as I moved closer across the rough grass and stretched out again on the rocks, watching them from a different angle. I was anything but bored now, looking for who moved, how fast, and keeping count. One Jaffa was up top, lying back against the cannon nose and pointing his staff weapon up at the stars, extending his arm out, like he was miming shooting - obviously totally bored and sleepy. Three other Jaffa were doing the actual work. Five were sacked out, draped over the treads like seals flopped on rocks, sunning in the moonlight. Three were kibitzing and eating. I could hear small murmurings, some laughter, and minor arguments. Then I slid back down the other side, away from the edge of the ridge and sat back against the cold stone and thought.

Twelve?

I was redefining 'outnumbered.’

They were sitting right on the edge of the mountain, the Stargate was just on the other side, and I wanted to go home. I had two arrows in my quiver - they didn’t know I was there, and they were clustered around their cannons, bunched like sleepy suckling pigs to a sow. I didn’t need to rationalize my thoughts – they were Goa’uld and they were here turning a city into a pile of smoking rubble and pretty much bent on annihilating all those who lived there. I didn’t know why, but I sure as hell could put a stop to it for a while. Correction - I wanted to put a stop to it for while, so I chose to put a stop to it.

So there I was, sitting in the moonlight turning the Sig over in my hand formulating plan-A, which was coming up way short until another tiny light in the distance caught the corner of my eye. A small disturbance in the pattern of darkness, which added up to the possibility of a building and that sight made me realize I was probably sitting on top of a veritable kitchen of possibilities.

Never mind that my head was pounding, my throat was raw and my body was beginning to nag at me about a fever. Plan-A had to be formulated and that required explosives – correction – Plan-A always required explosives. And because I wasn’t a boy scout I knew exactly what was needed to make a big bang happen. I was betting that the building in the distance had just what I needed because I hadn’t earned extra credit for resourcefulness in Explosives 101, Lesson 1: How to Blow Up Anything But Your Own Sorry Ass, for nothing!

~~~~oOo~~~~

”Ahem!” Daniel cleared his throat and looked at O’Neill skeptically, a smile shadowing his growing amusement. “Jack?” He removed his glasses to rub at his eyes. “How to ...uhm... blow up anything but your own sorry ass?”

“Yup!” O’Neill grinned broadly once again. “Aced that class too,” he added proudly and then the grin suddenly disappeared. “But y’know something Daniel.” There was an added seriousness to his tone. “It was just part of the job...okay? Just part of the Special Ops training. Part of knowing what to do to get your ass out of a bad situation.” O’Neill’s words trailed off and he stared up at the ceiling, allowing those memories to linger in his mind. Then he looked at Daniel and said fiercely, “the training’s what I knew and it always brought me home... okay? It brought me home every goddamn time.”

~~~~oOo~~~~

So there I was, about three hundred yards away from a building – a farmhouse - I thought, so I headed off towards it.

There was a house, with some shed-like structures sitting on the edge of a small fenced area, all clustered around the main building. Christ! It could’ve been Minnesota and my grandparent’s old farm except this one was rundown - looked like its care had been forgotten. But it wasn’t abandoned, someone was still calling it home – at least that’s what the light in the window told me.

There was a close cover of trees skirting around the rear of the house and they half mooned outwards into the nearby field. I couldn’t make out what the crop was, but whatever it was it was sparse and neglected in the moonlight. At the forest edge, a low wall of dense fog clung to the ground and spread upwards into a light mist that wisped around the treetops.

When I silently approached the fence, I heard rustlings in the dark and a distinct tang of dung and maybe something like lanolin. The shadows looked like sheep, and they sure as hell smelled like sheep, too, but the really big bonus was, no dog to announce my presence.

I hugged the fence and moved in close to one of the sheds where I caught a faint smell hanging in the air and realized the main ingredient for the big bang was close by – gasoline. I couldn’t see any vehicle out in the open, but I approached the shed and peered in. In one corner loomed a silhouette that reminded me of a tractor, at least that’s what I thought it was as I groped around in the dark, feeling the shape of it under my hands. I could smell the gasoline or at least the distinct odor of some kind of fusel oil on my hands and I traced the wetness to the tank located on the underbelly of the machine. The cap on the side of the tank was tight but there was a slow drip of the fluid that seeped from one seam and the splash of the droplets hitting the ground was an eerie soft echo in the quiet of the alien night.

Siphoning was another activity I didn’t do happily, but the hose lying in a coiled heap next to the tire and the bucket off to my left dictated that that was the only way I was going to get at the fuel silently. The critter that came out of the hose and into my mouth when I sucked on the line, reminded me that eating bugs was going to be on the menu real soon if my stomach had any say about it. But I spat it out and watched it slither away, glad I hadn’t swallowed it because I really did prefer my food not to crawl down my throat. Then a memory from survival school flashed, and reminded me that Meals On The Go 103 - Gourmet Dining While Taking Hostile Fire got me an B-minus for throwing up a roach. In the second of regret at not eating while the meal was available, I consoled myself only with the thought that I preferred maggots anyway because they were easier to catch and at least they looked like rice. Ooh ya! Piped through my mind as what could’ve been dinner burrowed into the dirt at my knee.

Not hungry enough for bugs yet, I figured, either that or the fever was telling me that kind of food would’ve worked against me. I wiped the taste of the fusel oil from my mouth and went looking for another bucket or can. I found both stacked in the corner, the can empty and the bucket containing grains - probably for the sheep that were grazing around outside in the dark.

The night was quiet and so was I, so the sharp sound that came from the main house traveled through the air like a spear and stole my attention. It wasn’t a sound I liked – the pitch in the woman’s voice pulled me immediately away from what I was doing because I needed to know right then what was behind her scream.

There were two windows and one door on the front of the house and as I approached it, I could hear the sounds of a man’s voice. It had an edge to it that set the hair on the back of my neck to bristle. I could hear her, hear the woman and she was crying in a sound I recognized as pleading. The pitch of it gave me this sick feeling because I knew instinctively what was happening even before I looked through the window to confirm it.

The door was on leather hinges and it kicked open easily, and half a second later I was staring into the face of a Jaffa who had one hand grasping the terrified woman’s wrist while the other was reaching out for his discarded staff weapon.

She pleaded to me with her eyes and that’s when I saw the two littles huddled in the corner by the fire, eyes wide and wet with tears, witnessing this horror about to unfold. I didn’t want them to see what I was about to do but I had no choice because the knife was in my hand and in the next instant it was skewering the Jaffa and his symbiote, driving the knife up through his gut and into his lungs to make sure the end was final and quick.

I turned in that next second; she was covering her children with her body, and I hoped to hell they hadn’t seen what was done as I dragged the limpness of the attacker out into the yard – dragged him off to the edge of the field and kicked him into a ditch. The body sank in the mud and I took time to throw some dead branches over him, knowing he’d begin to rot in a few days. I’d be gone way before then.

When I returned to the house, she opened her mouth to scream – she was startled, she and the littles were frightened even of me. So I ended up with an index finger to my lips, shaking my head gently, telling her in a reassuring voice, ‘It’s okay’. She nodded back at me; she seemed to understand why I needed them to remain quiet; quiet because of the nearby danger just an echo away; quiet because of the possibility that other Jaffa maybe headed that way too. ‘Please, ma'am. Keep the littles quiet. Please.’ I asked her softly and she knelt down and gathered them up in the fold of her arms and pressed her fingers to their lips with a ‘shush’. They both looked up, and the younger one repeated the gesture to be quiet to me.

I told her I needed a few things, that the man who’d invaded her home wasn’t alone. She knew this and said that the cannons had arrived about four days before; that the monsters had killed her husband while she and the littles had been hiding in the woods. She’d returned only to pack her belongings before heading off to a safe village on the other side of the forest - to the Qizilbash Kor.

Hell if I knew what that meant, but she said it was a safe village. I didn’t tell her there was no such thing as a safe place when snake-heads were part of the play, that the sanctity of what had been her life on this planet was now gone and the presence of those ‘monsters’ meant fear and terror would become the norm.

No - I didn’t telll her that.

I told her I had to look around; that I needed some other items to make plan-A do what I needed it to do; that I was only there to make the nearby cannon and the monsters disappear. She understood and pointed to the far wall, to a doorway covered by a blanket. It was her pantry and there were sacks of what I guessed were flour, salt, sugar, maybe grains of some kind and jugs of oil. I needed something for texture, to make the gasoline gel and the flour was the obvious choice. In the corner on the floor were several empty bottles that clanked noisily in the stillness when I grabbed them. She and littles watched me and I told her to ‘please stay quiet’, and she nodded and held my gaze for a moment before I headed back out the door to the shed.

Now I could do what had to be done because one cup of gasoline roughly equals five sticks of dynamite – it wasn’t C4, but it sure would do. The siphon was down to a trickle and the bucket under the tractor was about a third full – enough for what I needed. I took it and the empty can out to the yard by the fence, out to where the sheep were sleepy and docile shadows. They made no noise in the quiet when I grabbed one and quickly cut its throat while it stood in the yard with its pals. I draped its body across the fence and started collecting the flow of its blood while the others moved a few feet away, nervously looking round at me. It wasn’t long before they all went right back to being placid.

Short memories, sheep - even alien sheep.

The second moon had risen higher in the sky and was casting a bluish light over the farm that gave the black edges of night a silvery hue. I took off my shirt, shivering in the cold night air, and covered the can with its layers, then slowly poured the blood through it, filtering out the serum. When it was done, I mixed it with the gasoline and the flour to gel, because there’s no secret in knowing how to make a facsimile of ‘napalm’ - that particular knowledge had come with the job too. Explosives 101, Lesson 5: BBQing With Napalm was one of my all time favorite this-will-save-my-ass-in-a-pinch lessons learned. Gelled gasoline is as effective as napalm and as nasty as shit because it sticks where it splashes and wherever it sticks it burns and burns and burns until nothing's left. All you do is pour it into glass bottles, light the rag, and throw. Not all that impressive on its own, but if I got it inside a closed space, it would do a whole lot better.

Black Ops – not just an adventure, but a real education.

Making the stuff was all a matter of hurry-up-and-wait. As I stood silently in the night air, I felt cold and hot at the same time because the fever was definitely rising and the back of my throat was raw. It didn’t help that I’d been moving almost non-stop for a week, little to no sleep, not much food, soaked through most of that time and just generally feeling like shit. The fist was biting but I ignored it too and wrapped my arms close, trying to keep the jacket's heat in. The whole time, I listened for the low-frequency rumble of the engines, but no sound came through the night. The serum trickled slowly through the shirt as the sheep continued to graze, and everything else remained quiet.

I checked inside the house intermittently. The last time I went in, her littles had fallen asleep and she hesitantly stepped forward and offered me a plate with some food. She still carried some fear in her eyes, but behind it, I saw maybe a glint of gratitude for the horror I’d stopped. She was saying thank you, timidly, as she pushed the plate towards me. Her eyes were steady points of light in the shadows, like twin stars, encouraging me to eat. There was no smile – I guess she couldn’t afford to give me that and to be honest, I didn’t feel like I deserved it either.

The bread looked incredible and my stomach was empty – correction, it had been gnawing at me for days - so I accepted the slab of rough-grained bread and covered it with the hot grease she’d also offered. I tried to eat slowly - savoring it - because I couldn’t remember the last time food had tasted this good. She then offered me hot water spiced with red leaves and I drank it down willingly, the heat leaving a soothing pool of warmth in my belly.

I never sat down and she didn’t invite it of me either, and when I was done the ‘thank you’ was given. I retreated back out of her home to resume my task of filling the empty bottles with the gel. Stuffed three of them under my coat, into the inside pockets, two more carried in one hand, and started trotting up the karst to the top of the ridge.

Ooh ya!

~~~~oOo~~~~

Black Ops Rule No. 1: ‘Don't just know how you're gonna get in, know how you're gonna get out.’ It’s called an exit strategy and you’d be surprised how many guys never make it to step two. They get excited, jump the wire or panic, and the result is always the same – if you panic, you don’t get out, and you don’t get to go home. One thing was for damn sure - I was going home. So my exit strategy was real important, it took a lot of thought and planning to optimize what was going to be a successful escape. I’d spent the time and surveyed the whole area, evaluated all the possible scenarios that could go wrong as well as those that would go right. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly so I knew as I stood on the top of that ridge exactly what my exit strategy was going to be – throw the fuckin’ bottles and run like hell.

If I was lucky, I would take out their communication devices. If I was really lucky, I would at least incapacitate all the cannons and any pursuit would have to be done on foot. I was willing to bet I'd be a lot more motivated to get away than these campers would be to catch me. Because there’s nothing like running for your life to concentrate your energy, and the bread and hot tea had given me an additional boost so I was ready to book.

If I’d guessed right, and their cargo was hot, proximity-blows were a good possibility. I figured the worst-case scenario - which didn't include failure, by the way - was that I'd have to hot foot it across the mountains in another direction and hold up until another window opened for me to circle back to the Stargate. I figured even hurt I still had a few more days of walking left in me. And shouldn’t that thought have given me an idea of what an optimistic idiot I could be? No mention in my impending plans to kick Goa’uld ass, of the likelihood of them having patrols crawling the area. Which considering the big Roman candle I was about to light it was a distinct possibility that they would be searching for my ass soon after.

I figured I would take out the first one for sure, because I could take my own sweet time on that one and if nothing else, I had one hell of a good arm for throwing. After that, I reckoned there was going be a lot of staff-fire coming my way, and that distraction was bound to make my aim suffer. So, my attack strategy for going in was to aim for clusters. Because it’s typically instinctive for men under attack to run towards each other and not to scatter. So I knew that by exploiting typical behaviors they would move towards the 'safety' of their vehicles and not away from them.

So there it was, the great plan - run and throw. Run over and across the karst and down the ridge towards the road. Go in towards them, because with each connect the chaos was guaranteed to be exponential, and that lowered my personal risk and increased the damage with each additional throw. This was basically a wildass maneuver that no sane bastard would do anyway – except maybe me. Anyone not stunned by the initial blast waves would be reasonably looking for the threat up on the crest of the ridge, and not up close right in their face.

I took off and threw the first bottle towards one of the lamps hanging on the side of the cannon. The one idling blew on cue and took the one with the engine issues out with it. By the time I’d thrown all five bottles there was a thick, black plume of smoke spiraling straight up into the sky like a fuck-you punctuating the dark.

I still had two advantages; they didn't know exactly where I was or how many of me there were. They were lost in the smoke, probably deaf and halfway concussed, and terrified. From the diminishing returned fire, I figured they were either wounded or on their way out. Meanwhile I vacated the play-zone and could feel the rise of the ridge under my boots guiding me out and away from the road. All I had to do was head up until I fell over the crest and discovered where 'down' the other side was.

I headed back to the farmhouse, wanting to check on the woman and the littles, to reassure them the immediate threat was gone but another bigger threat was definitely on the way. I arrived back at her door and she had already packed some of their things into a blanket. The littles were still sitting by the fire holding onto each other, looking like they hadn't moved, all wide awake and terrified. She looked startled when I reappeared, like she wasn’t expecting me to return and then resumed her task, rolling her things away before dragging the makeshift bag off the table.

I helped, she didn’t object, and she led me out to behind the house to where a scrawny donkey waited for her load. The littles trailed after her, hanging onto her skirts, the smallest one staring up at me with wide eyes as I picked it up and placed it on the back of the donkey. ‘Come with us,’ she said, ‘You’ll be safe.’ She pointed to a path that led into the forest and beckoned me to go with them, but I shook my head and told her that I needed to go the other way. She seemed to understand when I drew the circle in the air, said the word Stargate, and indicated up towards the mountain range. Then she moved off silently, dragging the donkey behind her, the two littles on its back and the sheep wandering in tow. The younger child turned and stared at me a long while, its eyes filled with curiosity and light. Then it held out its hand, slowly unrolling its fingers to reveal the sparkle of a tiny crystal in its palm. The crystal shone in the gathering mist like a single point of starlight peeking through a cloud covered night sky. That’s when the older child enclosed its hand around the little’s and they all just disappeared in a ball of soft green light.

It took a moment for my night vision to return and all I could see was the swirling mist that hugged the edge of the forest and the trail. Everything was beginning to ache - my head was pounding, the cheek and the fist were throbbing insistently and the cuts across my back let me know pain was still there.

I had two hours until dawn and I needed to put as much distance between me and the plume before first light. I figured I could make it to the Stargate just before sunup if I got moving. So I started running, counting on no Goa’uld patrols nearby. I was happy and confused; happy because I’d just belted one out of the park and kicked Goa’uld ass but good; confused because I didn’t know why they were there, didn’t know why both they and the Tok’Ra were interested in this world.

So there I was, in a hurry to cross unknown terrain because this wasn’t the way I’d come in with Kheyln. My mindset was in multiple-focus - I wanted to go home badly. I wanted to discuss the mission with the Tok’Ra. I wanted to talk to Daniel and have him explain what the hell was going on with the people of this planet. I wanted to know what the crystal did and where it took the littles. I just wanted to know it all.

A bad combination because I was thinking about something else when I should’ve been fully focused on getting back to the Stargate.

Was this a recipe for disaster, campers?

Yeahsureyabetcha!

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Yeahsureyabetcha?” Carter was suddenly in the room. “How’re you feeling, sir?” She stood at the end of his bed, her hands on the foot-rail.

“Still here,” Jack replied in mild disgust. “And if you must know, getting a little cranky.”

Daniel shook his head in disagreement. “A lot crankier,” he corrected and handed the jawbone to Carter. “Take a seat,” he suggested and pulled another chair close to the bed. “Jack’s ...uhm... explaining how he got that.”

~~~~oOo~~~~

Yeahsureyabetcha!

So there I was, headed back over the ridge, across the wash, and up the first foothills of the mountain to a rocky jut on the other side. From there, I ran down the rain shadow side trying to put as much distance between me and the fireworks display I’d left behind.

At that hour of the morning, the world was moving slowly towards first light. It was that pre-dawn time when the sky pearls. Not real light at all, just vague shadows and a slow awareness that trees were looking clearer, rocks were more visible, that the river glowed below. I was trying to move faster, which was difficult because I had to constantly adjust my stride for obstacles and rough footing. There was another jut, maybe two miles ahead and I knew the Stargate was just beyond in a sprawling valley, and it was that thought that made me keep moving. I tried to increase my speed because the light was getting better. Heading along nicely and overall pretty damned pleased with myself. No sign of any Jaffa patrols, no signs that my ass could be whisked back to Oz, no signs that anyone was about to change the game plan on me.

So I thought, instead of dodging through the woods, there was a meadow off to my right, invitingly clear and a probable shortcut. I decided to throw the dice one more time; forget about being tired, forget about all the hurts, forget about ‘this-is-the-last-fuckin’-thing-I-would-ever-do-if-I-were-thinking-clearly’ and that was to cut across an open meadow. So I took off, loping steadily through the waist-high sharp-grass, internally whooping like a freed parrot because getting out of this alien Oz and back to Kansas was only a meadow away.

I let my guard down.

All of a sudden I was eating dirt, down hard and rolling, and the world was nothing but screaming and kicking, and I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on because none of it was making any sense. It was like I fell into a Cuisinart – I was being simultaneously crushed and kicked. I was scrambling, and at the same time, I instinctively seized the knife sheathed to my forearm and slashed blindly sideways, and the screaming got worse. Something heavy and fleshy slammed me down and trapped me while I was trying to roll away. I was choking on thick, hot blood. The next second - all this is one second, maybe, who the hell knows, but it felt like ten minutes – the next second it was like an audible click, everything from the past two or three seconds fell into place, and I realized I'd done another oh-shit!

Doh!

‘There’s boars in them thar hills.’ I suddenly remembered that important piece of information from a discussion with Kheyln on the walk in. I’d seen a panther and he’d told me about them and the other dangers.

Just my luck, I’d fallen over a sleeping boar. It was coddled down in the grass and snoozing off his latest fight or whatever it is that lone boars do to stay busy. Here I was in the middle of a two acre clearing, and I’d managed to stumble my way through the grass straight into a wild porker. What were the odds of that? Three hundred men could’ve jogged across the field and every one would’ve missed the ham, but just my luck, I’d gone straight for it like an arrow. And as boars are omnivorous, this meant I went from annoying aggressor to menu item in about a nanosecond.

He'd uncoiled like a striking snake, got his bulk up, and there it was, me and maybe three hundred pounds of righteously-pissed-off-pork. He’d whipped at least one six inch tusk into my thigh - had four of them, each curved like a white kris, so getting nailed was inevitable. Hooked the muscle, and pretty much lifted me off the ground with it. It was like being dragged by a malevolent car. I twisted myself off the tusk and dropped like a rock to the ground and he lunged forward and landed on me so hard I felt my chest cave like cloth. His sharp hooves were rooting around in my body - that was the kicking I’d felt – while I kept slashing wildly at him with one hand and trying to blindly grab at the tusks with the other. Trying everything I knew how to fend them off.

He had skin like body armor and none of my slashes slowed him down but I couldn’t reach his neck because of his tusks and shit. My hands were bleeding. The knife was slipping around when he body-slammed me back down again, hard, mouth open wide and teeth bared, squealing in rage. Then he hooked my leg again. I thought, ‘Shit, I’m losing.' Then suddenly I got lucky and just jammed the knife into his eye and then into his mouth.

It turned into a fair fight right about there; I was half his weight but twice as motivated to survive. His scream was deafening in my ears and carried a payload of blood and mucous. He yanked back, tearing the muscle in my leg for the third time and that was when his throat finally got into position and I plunged and sawed. When he finally collapsed in a great heap of weight across my hips, I was drowning in stinking gouts of his blood, gasping for breath, ribs and chest aching and my first thought was, 'Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, they're never gonna believe this'.

I pulled myself out from under his bulk and just kinda passed out for a minute, flat on my back in the grass with this roaring going on in my head. That’s when autopilot kicked in, and on this trip to Oz her name’s Dorothy and she’s clicking her heels and whispering in my ear to get my ass up and moving. ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,’ was buzzing monotone through my head. She was standing there in a blue dress, all petticoats and pigtails, yelling in my ear as I sat up and kicked the boar’s head off my leg. Sick to my stomach, I coughed out a mouthful of its blood – at least I was hoping it was his blood.

Then the air got suddenly ice cold. The steam coming from the boar’s body was a cloud of noxious vapor and the stench hung in the stillness around me. My head was fogged over – I was basically out of it. And there was Dorothy, standing in the red mist, red shoes tapping in the blood drenched grass. Toto was in her arms, she and the dog were pointing to the boar, and she’s telling me she wants a piece of the sonnovabitch - a bone for Toto.

Out of it? Yeahsureyabetcha!

Seemed like a real good idea at the time, the knife was in my hand and I started sawing away at the jaw. It was a completely insane move considering where I was. But by then I’d handed over my brain to autopilot and Dorothy was in the driver’s seat and there was no damn way I was going home without that bone. That girl was insistent. I sawed down to the gristle, but the jaw was still firmly attached so I finally just quit hacking and jammed a boot on the boar’s skull and the other on its chest and pulled at it with all I had left. The bone splintered and it came away clean. It and me flopped back in the grass exhausted, me clutching the bloody mass to my chest, hugging it like a brother. Then Dorothy was suddenly standing over me again – maybe a second had gone by, maybe it was an hour - but I had most of the jaw in my hand, with one whole tusk attached.

‘Get your ass moving O’Neill!” And there was Dorothy in my face with sweetness and curses, and suddenly I remembered where the hell I was and what I was doing in that meadow.

‘Get the fuck up O’Neill!’ she cooed and I stood up and fell down instantly. I was still gasping for breath and funnily enough, that adrenalin thing had left me feeling no pain at all. My leg didn't look that bad, it looked mostly like the boar’s blood on my clothes. Later, I realized there was no way to tell the difference, but that was the kind of idiot thing I was saying to reassure myself I was okay. There was a long tear in my pants but nothing was actually flopping out through it except some blood. I was okay - a scratch maybe – I thought.

‘Haul it Colonel!’ She and Toto were getting really insistent. The clearing all of a sudden felt like a big fat target, and the grass was trampled and bright red for ten feet in either direction - a big here-I-am bulls-eye with me staked out in the middle ring. Then that song thing started in my brain – Follow the yellow brick road – repeating over and over, blaring in my ears and it made me want to start running.

I staggered upright and got moving. This works – I thought. This’ll work for a while - I had no idea how many steps I went before the last bit of adrenalin got sweated out and the leg announced with a mighty roar IAMGOD, LISTEN TO ME AND FEAR. Oh, yeah! Best thing I could do was pretend to not hear it and keep moving. Because Dorothy was telling me not to listen, she was singing and I was just humming along. ‘Hi Ho, follow the yellow brick road....’

I thought, from the way the leg felt, that maybe the muscle was a little torn, because it wanted to do an odd sort of wiggle every time I landed, and picking it up and shoving off just kept getting harder and harder. It was a good thing I was headed downhill. I sure wasn’t thinking too clearly and I'd probably lost a fair amount of blood. Not to mention that my ribs really didn’t like that jerky diaphragm-spasming thing I could feel in my chest. By that time, the roaring in my ears had gotten worse and I was doing this weird lunge through the long grass, still just vaguely aware that my leg wasn't cooperating fulltime with the overall plan of getting back to Kansas. 'Bruised, maybe', I thought and just kept running – at least I thought it was running, because my leg decided to go on strike and suddenly it turned to dead weight. Dorothy was marching my ass to Kansas to the tune of 'home/home/home', and I was clutching half a boar's skull, trying real hard to figure out what the hell she meant by the Stargate.

Gate address?

WTFO?

I didn't know it, but I was basically soaked in blood by then, a mix of the boars up top and mine down below. The reality was I looked like shit, the leg was dragging behind me and I was sort of lurching sideways, but I thought I had it all together. All that sticky wet warmth didn’t even register, and strangely, except for my chest, I really didn't hurt at all. The senses were ca-ca, perception was off, but otherwise, as far as I was concerned everything was A-Okay as I marched towards this gigantic gray fruit loop looming up ahead.

I dragged the leg through the field of blue flowers and found myself standing in front of the fruit loop, looking up and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do next. I remembered vaguely, something about the flowers and picked one and stood there staring at it, trying to figure out why it was covered in blood and who the hell I was going to give it too.

Familiar names flashed through my mind - Fraiser? Carter? Daniel? - and then something kicked in and I was staring at the DHD, hitting the symbols, dialing in a gate address. I looked at the grisly jaw in one hand and the tulip in the other and then it suddenly hit me why I had it and what I wanted to tell them. ‘Look what happened - this is a great story! What an addition to the O’Neill legend! A boar, f’chrissake, and got the tusk to prove it. Top that!’

So I stepped through the fruit loop and a long second later I was at the top of the ramp and George was looking at me like there was a problem.

Just then that click came together again and all the senses began to cooperate in an overloaded rush to reconstruct the last jumbled collage of sensations and my body said 'nope, I've lost a leettle too much blood a leettle too fast, I’ve had enough.’

Ah. Pain-like-a-freight-train, pain-like-a-big-wind.

Came-to for a moment and looked up to see Doc Fraiser. Someone was sticking a line in my arm, and a mask got strapped on. The oxygen smelled canned and cool. George’s voice came through the fog saying, 'Jack, we're not going to keep it, we just want to look at it’ until finally I let go of the jawbone but refused absolutely to loosen my death grip on the fading blue tulip. Fraiser stepped into my field of vision and I held up the flower – it had drooped over the edge of my fist. I said something to her about giving it to Daniel and then rolled over, ripped off the mask and threw up on her shoes.

After that, things fragmented...

~~~~oOo~~~~

“Daniel?” Jack called out hoarsely and opened his eyes, emerging from a deep sleep to a room now filled with the warm glow of a sun fading into the evening hours. It was quiet except for a stray echo filtering in from the hallway – the sound of a muffled squeak from shoes walking on the linoleum floor. “Daniel?” he called out again.

“Hey,” and Daniel’s voice was there, filling the room with his presence as Jack came back fully to the here and now.

“Hey,” O’Neill struggled to keep his eyes open. “Passed out... huh?” he coughed with a craggy voice, his throat burning and dry.

“Yeah... kinda,” smiled Daniel. “Dropped off after the... eh....the fragmented part.” He reached over to get Jack some water and guided the straw to O’Neill’s mouth. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Better,” Jack admitted. “Carter still here?” He looked around the room.

“She left after you fell asleep. Went back to the SGC.” There was hesitancy in Daniel’s voice as he continued. “She’s worried about Jacob, Jack. The Tok’Ra continue to be elusive. What happened to you on this mission didn’t sit too well with her... didn’t sit too well with any of us to be truthful,” he admitted.

“Made it back though,” Jack grinned weakly. “Always make it back, Daniel. Always.”

“That’s a good thing, Jack.” Daniel smiled and picked up the glass of water again. “Want more?”

O’Neill shook his head, “No thanks. Just want outta here. Want to know what the Tok’Ra are hiding. Want to know why they put my ass on the line and didn’t reel it back in.”

“Don’t know Jack. The General is doing everything he can to--”

“Colonel O’Neill.” The voice of Selmak echoed as Jacob Carter walked into the hospital room, his expression grim. “We need to talk,” he commanded in a serious tone. General Hammond stood at the Tok’Ra’s shoulder and gave a solemn nod of agreement.

‘Kick Tok’Ra ass’ slowly marqueed across Jack’s eyes and the look on his face pretty much summed up exactly where he was planning to take the conversation. “Is Jacob home?” he asked, his tone flat and hostile.

End of Episode One.

~~~~oOo~~~~

© mor_tru 2003

For Humpty, and a promise to write him as ‘real’.