A Matter of Honor Read online

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  STARGATE

  S G • 1-

  A MATTER OF HONOR

  "Senator Kinsey has told me a lot about you and your team, Colonel." Crawford's voice was thin and nasal. It suited him. "I look forward to giving him a full report on your methods."

  "You haven't written it already?"

  The ambassador's lips compressed into a humorless smile and the silence stretched taut. Daniel rubbed at a sudden knot in the back of his neck and saw Sam's eyes flitting carefully between the two men. Like him, she smelled trouble.

  Sergeant Davis broke the moment, his voice crackling over the PA system, "Chevron seven, locked."

  Jack didn't move, holding Crawford's gaze. Waiting. Daniel stepped back in anticipation, but Jack was barely in the safe-zone. He always had to push it to the limit. And then, like an undersea volcano, the silver-blue event horizon mushroomed into the `gate room, hitting an invisible wall mere inches from Jack's motionless head. Crawford yelped and stumbled backward in shock, his helmet flying free and clunking heavily onto the concrete floor.

  "Holy crap!" he gasped, struggling for balance and composure as the wormhole sucked back in on itself and eventually came to rest, shimmering brightly inside the Stargate.

  Daniel smiled; that just never got old.

  Turning his back on Crawford's alarmed face, Jack settled his weapon firmly in his hands. "Let's go," he barked, striding up the ramp. "Carter, with me. Daniel, Teal'c - bring the newbie. And Crawfish? Don't forget your hat."

  A MATTER OF

  HONOR

  BOOK ONE OF TWO

  SALLY MALCOLM

  For Jessica and Ben, with love.

  Many thanks to

  Sabine, TL and their red pens.

  Erika and Linz, for always keeping the glass half-full.

  Marcy, for the idea I twisted out of all recognition.

  And Tom, who made it happen.

  CHAPTER ONE

  he winter sun didn't linger on the low gray wall; its flat marbled surface absorbed the light as easily as the names of the dead.

  From the mountains a cold wind whipped down through the Academy cemetery, tugging at the black coats and sharp-lined uniforms of the men and women who gathered solemnly before the memorial. Standing toward the back of the small group of mourners, Colonel Jack O'Neill felt the icy breeze stir the short hairs at the nape of his neck. He shivered, but not from the cold; he felt as though they were burying the living. Again.

  The minute's silence was broken by the soothing tones of Chaplain Captain William Zaremski. "We shall remember them," he promised, and Jack found his eyes fixed on the paper fluttering wildly in the man's hands as he read the names. "Lieutenant Jessica McLeod, Lieutenant Jonathan Reed, Captain Roger J. Watts, Major Henry Boyd."

  Henry Boyd. O'Neill's mental image of the man - smart, eager and ready for command - was shattered by the stifled sob of the woman standing not ten feet in front of him. Heather, Boyd's wife - his young wife. Even now, five years later, her pale skin was smooth and supple. At her side stood a young girl, staring at the Memorial Wall with serious eyes. She couldn't be more than nine, Jack guessed. Old enough to know she should be sad, but too young to remember much about her father. He looked away, back at the small plaque on the wall. Killed in action, it read. And they might as well be dead, although he knew they might not be. Not yet. But it was coming, a slow, rending death that would be over in seconds and yet would last an eternity. It was enough to send a shiver down his spine colder than any mountain breeze.

  After the chaplain had finished speaking, a lone bugler sounded Taps. The mournful notes were snatched by the wind and fell flat. They weren't dead yet. Five years on and they were still dying. His thoughts drifted and he wondered how long it would take for them to-

  "Colonel O'Neill?" The voice startled him. He glanced around to see the group breaking up and Heather Boyd standing before him. She was barely thirty, he guessed, blond and gray-eyed. But seeing her up close he realized that her face bore the weight of loss; there was something of himself in her shadowed eyes, damp with tears. "Thank you for coming," she said. "Henry would have been honored. He respected you a great deal."

  Jack winced at the irony. "No. I'm honored. Really." And so far from deserving her thanks it wasn't funny. He'd all but sent the man to his death, and then cut off his only way home. The guilt nagged at him, a familiar pain, reminding him of something buried deep. Something he didn't want to contemplate.

  Heather glanced over at her daughter, who stood with a silverhaired woman - her grandmother? They were reading the plaque carefully and, as he watched, the girl reached out and touched one of the names.

  "I don't know how much she remembers him," Heather said quietly. "Sometimes I think she deliberately tries to forget. She was only four when it happened."

  O'Neill cleared the emotion from his throat with a quiet cough. "She looks like a good kid." His words, as always, felt heavy and inadequate.

  Heather smiled and nodded, her lips a thin line of restraint. "She has Henry's eyes." She took a step closer. "Colonel O'Neill, would you walk me back to the car?"

  Uneasy this close to so much overt emotion, the cowardly part of him wanted to run. He ignored it and swiped the formal dress uniform cap from his head. Even he could tell the damn thing made him look unapproachable. "Sure," he said, running a hand through his hair. Probably didn't help much. "So, how've you been-"

  "How did it happen?" Heather kept her eyes facing forward as the wind tugged at her blond hair and her black shoes tapped out a steady rhythm on the frozen path. "I've been trying for five years to get some answers, but you know the military. All they'll say is he was `killed in action on a covert mission."' She paused, and in a soft voice added, "I know you were there, Colonel. You know how he died."

  O'Neill sucked in a cold breath. It was an impossible question to answer. What the hell was he supposed to say? Your husband traveled through something called a Stargate to a planet in a binary system, just in time to see one of its twin suns implode and become a black hole. Timing sucks, huh? The gravitational field created by the black hole contracted time to the point at which it became impossible for him to reopen the Stargate for more than a second. And so I'm afraid your husband and his team are trapped there, slowly being ripped apart by extreme gravitational forces. Oh, and by the way, when he was trying to get home I slammed the door in his face to stop the black hole from sucking the whole damn planet through the `gate!

  Great answer, O'Neill.

  Fact was, she'd never believe the truth, even if it weren't bound and gagged with Top Secret red tape. He glanced at her as they walked, knowledge hanging heavily around his shoulders. She wasn't looking at him and slowly her head sank. "I understand about national security," she said, tears rounding the edges of her words, "but he was my husband. Don't I have some right to know how he-" She shook her head angrily and swiped at her eyes.

  "I wish I could, Heather. I'm sorry."

  Anger sharpened her tone. "He's dead," she hissed, keeping her voice low enough not to be heard by her daughter. "What difference does it make?"

  O'Neill shook his head, torn. The truth was impossible to tell, and in this case maybe better not heard. How do you tell a woman that her husband is still fleeing in terror, that to him mere minutes have passed since he first tried to get home? His voice was gruff when he spoke again. "It's not that easy."

  "Nothing in the military ever is."

  She had a point there. "Look, if there's anything I can do-"

  "You can tell me how my husband died!" she insisted. "At least tell me where he died! Can't you even do that? Make it so that he didn't just leave home one morning and disappear from the face of the Earth. Give me something to tell my daught
er, Colonel!"

  O'Neill looked out across the green field full of headstones; an entire Air Force of dead men and women. "He died far away," he said quietly. "He died trying to save his team." He turned back to her. "I'm sorry, I wish there was more I could do."

  "Do you?" There was a challenge in the words, mirrored in her disbelieving eyes. It drilled right through him.

  "I

  She cut off his excuses with a flick of her head, stopped walking and held out a hand toward her daughter. "Hey, Lucy," she said, with the determined smile parents reserve for the protection of their children. "You ready for that pizza and ice cream?"

  Lucy nodded, glancing suspiciously at O'Neill as her eyes brushed over his starched uniform. "Can we see a movie after, Mom?"

  Heather took her hand, drawing her closer. "Sure, why not? It's our special day, right?" Over the child's head her accusatory eyes met Jack's. "Thanks for your help, Colonel."

  He flinched. "If you ever need anything-"

  "I'll be sure to call the Society of Military Widows." With that she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving O'Neill alone with his memories and regrets. I wish there was more I could do...

  And suddenly he was back there, in the control room, staring at the frozen, terrified face of Henry Boyd on the monitor and waiting to destroy, forever, his only chance of getting home. But he hadn't been alone in that room, someone else had been with him waiting to set the self-destruct: Colonel Frank Cromwell - a man he'd learned to hate over the weeks and months of his imprisonment in Iraq.

  "We used to befriends, Jack. " Cromwell 's words surprised and aggravated him. But they were the truth. They had been friends, the best. Brothers-in-arms. A team.

  "Yep, " was all he said, and he refused to say more.

  "I was sick to my stomach when I found out you were still alive, " Cromwell pressed, butting valiantly against O'Neill 's intransigence. "I wanted to go back for you. "

  He couldn't hear this, not now "Why don't we just do this and get the hell out of here, all right? "

  Cromwell wouldn't let it rest. Maybe he considered this his deathbed confession. "Someone dropped a dime on the incursion. You got hit, you went down. I made a judgment call to save the rest of the team. "

  O'Neill scowled. "And I saw you take off." He didn't believe in absolution; he believed in duty and loyalty to the end. He remembered the helicopter his lifeline, spiraling up into the hot, blue sky as the thud of booted feet and gunfire rose behind him on a wave of terror. He swallowed, diverting the remembered fear into anger "And then I saw four months of my life disappear in some stinking Iraqi prison. "

  "I thought you were dead. "

  "You thought wrong!" He stopped, slamming down hard on his angel. It was a distraction, a danger, especially now They had a job to do. "What do you want? You want me to forgive you, is that it? "

  "Yeah, I guess I do. " Cromwell said it quietly, humbly. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

  "Well, that's tough, " O'Neill retorted. "What happened to `nobody gets left behind'? "

  Cromwell glanced over his shoulder at the frozen image of Henry Boyd 's face on the monitor. "Well, what about him? "

  Guilt hammered like a fist into O Neill c gut, but he buried the pain instantly. He had no choice, there was no other way. "That's an entirely different scenario. "

  "That is the exact same damn thing, Jack. "

  The exact same damn thing.

  He shivered in the cold winter air as the truth slid home, unsettling as snow in summertime. He'd left him behind. He'd left Henry Boyd and his team behind.

  And nobody gets left behind.

  Cheyenne Mountain had been cast into shadow. Daylight fled before a premature evening, dark beneath a brooding sky heavy with snow. A storm was brewing.

  Deep beneath the mountain, at the very heart of a military command that didn't officially exist, General George Hammond felt the weight of foreboding pressing down hard on his shoulders. The threat he faced didn't come from anything as innocent as storm clouds, however; it came from the kind of politicking and Machiavellian double-dealing that tied his guts into queasy knots and left a distinctly foul taste in his mouth.

  Sitting at his desk, fingers laced across his ample belly, he stared at the report in front of him and considered his options. In truth they were limited. When the politicians said jump he had no choice but to ask how high. Although - and the thought drew a smile across his lips - the politicians hadn't actually stipulated who was going to be jumping. The Devil, and in this case the angels, were in the detail.

  A brisk rap on the door drew him from his musing. It opened before he had time to answer and a familiar face peered inside. "You rang, sir?"

  Hammond rose to his feet. "Come in, Colonel. How was the service this morning?"

  O'Neill stepped into his office with a shrug that hid everything. "Fine, sir."

  With a nod, Hammond acknowledged the subject was closed. Jack O'Neill was a man who liked his emotional privacy and the general certainly had no desire to intrude. Instead he picked up the report he'd been studying, coming around to the front of his desk. The colonel watched him carefully, suspicious eyes fixed on the bland manila cover.

  "Trouble, sir?"

  With a heavy sigh, he handed the report over. "Senator Kinsey will be paying us a visit."

  O'Neill scowled, opened the report and started reading. After a moment his brow knitted in confusion. "This is SG-2's initial report on P4X-481." He looked up. "This is why Kinsey's here?"

  "Apparently so," Hammond replied. "SG-9 was scheduled to return to the planet this week, to open trade negotiations with the local people - the Kinahhi. But Senator Kinsey wants to send his own man instead. He's on his way from the Pentagon as we speak."

  The colonel was silent for a moment, dropping the report back onto the desk in disgust. "We can't let Kinsey's mook run around out there." He paused for a beat. "Can we?"

  "On that we have little choice, Colonel. I wish we did."

  O'Neill blew out an angry sigh. "What does he want? What the hell does Kinsey care about `481?"

  "That I don't know," Hammond admitted, picking up the folder and handing it back to him. "Which is why SG-1 will be escorting him."

  "Us? Sir, is that wise...?"

  "Jack, I need our best team on this. Heaven knows we have no reason to trust Kinsey or his people. I need to know what's going on. I need to know why he's so interested in P4X-481."

  O'Neill nodded irritably and swallowed the rest of his objections. From the look on his face, they tasted sour. "Kinsey won't like it," he warned. "For some reason he doesn't like me." There was a pause. "It's a kinda mutual loathing thing, actually."

  Hammond bit back a dry smile. "I'm aware of that, Colonel. Get your team together; briefing in one hour."

  With a grim face O'Neill headed toward the door, rolling up the report and tapping it thoughtfully against his thigh. At the last moment he stopped and turned back, dark eyes meeting the general's with a serious look. "Sir?" he said, in a voice unusually somber. "You know - I've got a bad feeling about this."

  Hammond nodded, his earlier foreboding returning. "Me too, son. Me too."

  Dr Daniel Jackson shifted his pack awkwardly as he stood waiting in the `gate room and wondered if bringing all four hundred pages of The Cypro-Phoenician Pottery of the Iron Age (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East) had been an indulgence too far. But, given that they'd be off-world for a week, he considered it worth the effort. He had to have something to pass the time in the evenings, other than listening to Jack O'Neill complaining. Something which he'd been doing non-stop for the past four hours.

  "I'm just saying," Jack groused, on cue, from where he stood fidgeting on the foot of the ramp, "that it stinks. This whole thing stinks."

  Daniel grimaced and squeezed out another drop of patience. "I'm not arguing with you, Jack," he pointed out, still trying to settle the heavy pack more comfortably on his shoulders. "All I'm saying is that since
we have to baby-sit Ambassador Crawford, there's no use in carrying on about it."

  There was a pause. And then, "I'm not `carrying on about it', Daniel. I'm just making a point."

  Behind them Teal'c shifted, the butt of his staff weapon thudding softly against the concrete floor. "I believe your point was wellmade in the briefing, O'Neill. And in the corridor. And in the locker room. Several times."

  Daniel turned and caught the Jaffa's eye. Teal'c rarely smiled, but that didn't mean his humor was lacking. "So," Daniel said into the irritable silence. "Where's Sam?"

  "Briefing Kinsey's lapdog on `gate travel." Jack glanced up at the control room and Daniel followed his line of sight. General Hammond was up there, his solid presence as reassuring as Cheyenne Mountain itself. Yet, even from this distance Daniel could see the uneasy set of the man's shoulders. There was a tension there that they all felt, and its source stood right next to the general - Senator Kinsey, possibly Stargate Command's most intractable enemy outside the ranks of the Goa'uld.

  His crown of white hair lent the Senator a genial look that entirely belied his predatory nature; Kinsey was all about what he could get, and his eyes were constantly fixed on the prize. The prize, in his case, having less to do with the defense of planet Earth and everything to do with his presidential ambitions.

  In front of the general and the Senator, Sam Carter sat talking earnestly to another man -Ambassador Bill Crawford, Daniel guessed. He was younger than Kinsey, his hair black and sleek. And although he was dressed in standard military battle dress uniform, he wore it with the sort of awkwardness Daniel remembered from his first days at the S GC. Crawford was a civilian, a diplomat and, in the immortal words of Jack O'Neill, 'Kinsey's creeping toady-spy.'

  Daniel wondered how the ambassador would get along with the Kinahhi. He'd read SG-2's initial report, and by their account the Kinahhi were a reserved people, technologically advanced to a level slightly beyond Earth, but reticent about sharing their knowledge.