Hydra Read online

  “Sir,” Carter said, “I’m confident that no one from the SGC has visited any world matching that basic description in months. It’s rare for the Goa’uld to have chosen very cold worlds to settle slaves.”

  “The cold disturbs the symbiotes,” Teal’c said.

  Jack had a flashback to being half-frozen while one of those things was squirming around in his head a couple of years back, thanks to Hathor, and a shiver ran down his spine. “Gear up and be ready for departure in half an hour,” he said. “We’ve got name-clearing to do.” As Carter passed him, he told her, “If this is one of your time-travel conundrum paradox things, I’m going to get cranky.”

  Daniel was third out of the gate behind Jack and Bra’tac, Reynolds and the other marines still behind him, so the scream of dismay and warning was shrill in his ears as he cleared the event horizon. Not the first time people had run screaming when they showed up. Usually a little diplomacy meant SG-1 could talk their way into a friendship even with people who’d become accustomed to getting nothing but pain from the visitors stepping through the gate.

  He shouldered his way past Jack, ready to perform the dance of meeting, greeting, and getting information, and caught sight of a girl running fast back toward the village, slipping in the mud as she scrambled down the hill. She half-ran, half-slid down slope but left her shoe behind. She was still shrieking. Nothing intelligible Daniel could pick out, just panicked noise.

  “Well,” Jack said, “that was quite the welcome.”

  Daniel turned his attention to the village. The houses had steeply tilted roofs, much like Alpine chalets but a bit less sturdy and whole lot sadder than the average tourist resort. Mountains surrounded the village. Glaciers and snowfields dimmed to purple shadow against the blue of the sky, barely gleaming in the weak light of a distant sun. A few trees marked the wide skyline here, and farther down slope the forest proper was a dark swath of unbroken green. The air was thin, but the voice of the girl carried clearly, sharp with fear.

  “Yeah,” Daniel said, meeting Bra’tac’s stern, accusing gaze before stepping down off the gate platform. He turned and gestured to Jack, who thinned his lips and stepped down beside him.

  “Carter,” Jack said. “Take point.” Bra’tac stepped in front of them all and began striding toward the narrow path. “Dammit,” Jack said, and Daniel and Sam exchanged a quick smile as they followed.

  Then Daniel looked up.

  “Uh, I think we could just wait here,” he said, pointing. A group of men streamed up the hill from the village, half of them Jaffa in armor. Jack and Sam lifted their weapons and shifted into covering positions, while Teal’c moved sideways to cover their flank. Behind them, Reynolds and his guys fanned out, crouching and looking vulnerable in the absence of good cover. Daniel didn’t move. If there was any chance of making sense of the accusations Bra’tac leveled, he’d need to be as conciliatory and open as possible.

  “Stay mellow, kids,” Jack said, elbow braced to level his weapon.

  “Jack,” Daniel said. “Let me take the lead.”

  The group of men was closer now, and they were running. Never a good sign. Daniel counted twelve, maybe fourteen. The girl lagged behind them. She slowed down and stopped in the middle of the road, watching the spectacle up the hill.

  “You!” one of the men shouted, and pointed a long ax at Jack. “You will surrender your weapons to us now and step away from the kreis!”

  To Daniel, it sounded like a German variant. “Circle,” he told Jack, who didn’t acknowledge him. The men — five Jaffa among them who leveled staff weapons at SG-1, Jack in particular — surrounded them. Daniel wasn’t surprised, but he did note that the DHD was cut off as well as the gate. Not a huge problem, and he knew Jack was already thinking them through it, but Daniel couldn’t imagine a way that wouldn’t involve a lot of bullets. He’d have to find a way to prevent that.

  “We mean you no harm,” he said to the man who had spoken. “There’s been some kind of mistake.”

  “The mistake was yours for returning to this place. After what you have done.” The man’s voice cracked with horror, and Daniel processed that, the utter finality in it. The man stared at Jack with haunted eyes. “On this day of all days, when we bury those you took from us. You, with your hands and your knives.”

  Jack said, “Daniel, you’ve got about ten seconds to — ”

  “I can see you believe we’ve wronged you, but it wasn’t us,” Daniel said urgently, stepping forward, hands outstretched. “We haven’t — ”

  “You dare,” the Jaffa nearest him said. “You, whose crime was worst of all. You stood by and did nothing.”

  “That’s it,” Jack said. Voice pitched just for his team, he said, “Daniel, stop talking and be ready to dial.” He raised his voice to normal speaking levels for the benefit of the villagers, and Daniel glanced to his left. They were slowly encroaching on the team, backing them away from the gate. “Listen, folks, you’ve made the mistake, and we’re going to go now. We’d rather do that without a fight, but — ”

  “Do not let them leave!” The girl’s voice, high-pitched and plaintive, wavered like a bird’s cry.

  “Oh, crap,” Jack said.

  They all moved at the same time, different directions in order of priorities: Jack, Bra’tac, and Teal’c for cover; Carter and Daniel for the DHD. Jack rolled to the side and crouched behind the gate’s stone pedestal. The first staff blast passed so close to Daniel he could feel the heat of it on the side of his face, and he dived for cover, groping for his Beretta.

  So much for negotiation skills.

  Daniel scrambled into a low ditch, clumps of grass clinging to his face and hair like wet seaweed. He brushed them off and straightened his glasses. A staff blast shattered the ground not ten feet away, raising the smell of boggy peat on a bonfire.

  “Defend your positions,” Jack’s voice said, crackling out of Daniel’s radio.

  “Some position,” Daniel muttered, as he scooped out a miniature trench for his arm to rest in, the better to aim at angry Jaffa. Goopy mud trickled down from the channel. He hunkered down against the shallow wall of the ditch, waiting for a chance to rise up and return fire.

  Another staff blast gouged a hole in the dirt right next to Daniel’s head, and he threw himself into the brackish standing water in the bottom of the ditch to protect his face from the debris. Gravel and mud pattered down around him, sounding almost like rain. He took a moment to wish he’d worn his helmet instead of the boonie.

  He was inching his head up to ground level to get a look at the battlefield when a fresh cascade of gravel clattered down on his back, followed by the thud and splash of a body hitting the bottom of the ditch beside him.

  Completely covered in the thick, gray mud, Jack rolled onto his knees, and straightened long enough to send a short burst of P90 fire over the edge of the shelter before hunkering down with his back against the sloping side of the ditch. “Clip,” he ordered, trying to wipe mud from his eyes with a gloved hand and instead leaving more mud behind. “I’m out.”

  Daniel was, for once, grateful that Jack forced him to go into the field with extra ammo. He lifted a magazine from his vest pocket and tossed it to Jack, who slapped it into place.

  “What the hell is going on with these people?” Daniel demanded, slouching down and wincing up at the darkening sky. “I don’t get it.”

  O’Neill grunted and pulled out a telescoping mirror so he could get a look over the edge of the ditch. He grunted again and passed the mirror over. “See for yourself.”

  The field was churned mud. On the other side of it, Sam was strafing the treeline from the shelter of a blast crater — the Jaffa had a cannon. Fabulous. Teal’c was beside her, reloading. A new clip in place, he popped up and neatly dispatched a Jaffa creeping up on their right flank. But there were more Jaffa coming. Many more. And that wasn’t even counting the ax-swinging villagers. Daniel had only one more clip himself, and he wasn’t feeling too great about
using them on civilians.

  “This doesn’t look good.”

  “Oh, cheer up, Daniel,” Jack answered. “I’d say we’re about two steps past terrible. Far cry from hopeless.” He got off two quick spurts of fire and then ducked down with a whoop as another staff blast sent up a fan of debris two feet away. Jack’s teeth were white in his dirty face when he grinned. The grin had no amusement in it.

  Daniel’s radio let out a burst of static. “Daniel! What’s your position?”

  Jack’s grin disappeared quickly.

  Daniel’s mouth fell open and he lifted a hand to point at Jack, like he could pin him to the dirt with the gesture. Then with the other hand he keyed the radio. “Uh, hi. Who is this?”

  “What? This is your commander, who is currently getting his ass shot to hell south of the Stargate!” Jack’s voice was fuzzy with static but recognizable. “Reynolds is in position. We’re gonna make a push for the gate, so be ready!”

  In the ditch beside Daniel, not-Jack gave Daniel a one-shouldered shrug. His mouth twitched up, and this time the grin was embarrassed. “Oops,” he said, and in a second he had clambered over the edge of the ditch and onto the field. By the time Daniel had dodged another blast and the debris had cleared, Jack — or whatever was passing for him — had disappeared into the chaos of battle.

  Between them, Jack and Reynolds managed to get both teams rallied and through the gate without having to take out more than a few of the locals. The Jaffa…well, to Jack’s mind, they were well armed and capable, and they had started it. Whatever had gone down on Eshet before, there was no telling how much of today’s fight was opportunistic on the Jaffa’s part. SG-1 had done its fair share to tick them off in the past, and maybe the Jaffa weren’t above a little collateral payback. But, no matter how Jack turned it in his head, it looked bad and smelled worse.

  In the end, the SGC personnel scrambled through the gate less than elegantly, but, according to the head count Jack did from the top of the ramp, more or less intact. Reynolds was hopping down the stairs between two of his men, holding up what was probably a broken foot. Carter, who was now moving under her own steam, had let go of Teal’c and Daniel and was shaking her head vigorously and twisting her finger in her ear.

  “Carter! You okay?”

  “What?” she shouted over the bells that were probably still ringing in her head. “Oh. Yes, sir. Fine.” Fine for somebody who’d gotten up close and personal with a Goa’uld grenade. Her face was smeared with mud and soot, her eyes bloodshot but both spinning in the same direction.

  On the whole, they didn’t look fine. They looked like a bunch of sorry cases, all of them covered in gray mud so he could tell them apart mostly by shape and stature. But they were all standing, so he was going to count that part, at least, a win. He’d be happier about that if he had any clue what the heck they were fighting about. Even standing in a nonthreatening way in front of the gate and shouting, “Hey, you guys! We’re on the same side!” hadn’t made much of an impression on the Jaffa, and Jack had the bruises and the mild concussion to prove it. In short, it sucked. He scowled accusingly at the gate before stomping down the ramp, and saved a little bit of the scowl to aim at Bra’tac’s turned back.

  “Infirmary. Showers. Briefing,” Jack ordered, and waved them all away. Bra’tac paused, opened his mouth to say something, but apparently thought better of it. Good call. They’d have an opportunity to get into it soon enough.

  Daniel stood at the bottom of the ramp and looked past Jack at the empty circle of the gate, chewing his lip, eyebrows furrowed with worry. He’d lost his glasses somewhere and he looked naked without them. As Jack stepped around him, he put a hand on Jack’s arm. “Wait. Jack — ”

  The alarm sounded and Harriman announced an unscheduled wormhole activation. The iris wheeled shut. Everyone waited.

  “SG-1 IDC, sir,” Harriman said over the intercom.

  Jack did another head count. All present and accounted for. “Anyone missing a GDO?”

  His team members shook their heads.

  Up in the control room, Hammond was frowning. Teal’c and Carter raised weapons, and Reynolds’s men followed suit as the gate-room squad moved quietly into position. It had to be a trick.

  Soon there’d be a thump on the back of the iris.

  “Open it,” Daniel said urgently, just loud enough to be heard over the ripple of the event horizon. He met Jack’s eyes. “Open it now, Jack.”

  Another second for consideration, while Jack pondered whether Daniel had lost his mind completely. It violated a million different protocols. “Daniel,” Jack said tightly, but Daniel shook his head hard, stepped closer to Jack. His eyes were an intense, unearthly blue in the gate light.

  “I’ll explain later. There’s no time. You have to open it.”

  Despite his unease, Jack nodded up at the control room and Hammond nodded back. The iris swirled open. A second later, Daniel — another one — stumbled through the event horizon and, with his first Earthly breath, shouted in that wounded, exasperated, wallpaper-peeling tone only Daniel could achieve, “Whatever happened to not leaving people behind?”

  Jack got that feeling. That one that told him he should’ve stayed retired.

  “We did not leave anyone behind,” Teal’c said as he swung his P90 around to aim at the Daniel beside him.

  Carter’s aim wavered between the two Daniels and then returned to the mud-spattered Daniel on the ramp. She shot Jack a quick look that clearly communicated her regret at not taking up that job at NASA.

  Barely missing a beat, which said a lot about what a guy could get used to in this job, the new Daniel yanked off his boonie and used it to point at his double. “Okay,” he said, “that is not me.”

  “Maybe you’re not you,” Jack said.

  “I am. You can tell.”

  “How?” Jack put his hands in his pockets, cocked his head and added his best narrow-eyed quizzical expression for good measure.

  “I have glasses. He doesn’t.”

  “Ah, yes,” the other Daniel said. “My clever disguise.” He pulled off his bandanna and fluffed his hair so it fell over his eyes.

  Jack put his fists to his temples and groaned.

  Daniel had assumed the old “I’m fine, really, so stop looking at me” pose — namely, the one where he folded his arms around his chest and stared stonily at some spot halfway between himself and whatever it was that should be freaking him out. It was the pose that made Jack think of the academy, the Wall of Hell he’d hoisted himself over a hundred times, wearing out the toes of his boots scrambling against the worn wood of the planks. Fort Daniel. Guy might as well have a moat, Jack thought. With moat sharks.

  It did not help one bit that the other Daniel was sitting on the edge of the bed in Quarantine 1 with precisely the same look on his face — a younger face with that scruffy Daniel hair and no glasses. Even with those slight but significant differences, there was a weirdly familiar fatalism there in the slump of his shoulders that made Jack feel tired. He’d seen that slump a thousand times in his long career, when things went FUBAR and the adrenaline had peaked and left a guy still two days behind enemy lines running on nothing but duty. Jack looked at his Daniel — the Real Daniel — reflected in the glass of the observation window and couldn’t blame him for taking a time-out behind the battlements. But Jack was not at all happy with the way Daniel’s shoulders were slumping.

  He nudged him with an elbow.

  “Yeah,” Daniel said.

  “‘Yeah’ what?”

  In the reflection, Daniel eyes were focused now on the scene in the quarantine bay. “Yeah, it’s freaky. And no, I’m not excited to have someone around who might be able to beat me at chess.” He unfolded his arms and stuffed his hands in his pockets instead. “Maybe he doesn’t even play chess.”

  Below them in the quarantine room, Fraiser was shuffling back and forth in her vacuum bag suit, stepping around the marine stationed at the end of the bed in his super-sized
vacuum bag suit. The other Daniel watched her as she assembled her instruments on her tray.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, tilting his head toward the marine. “Really.” His mouth twitched up in an ironic grin. “I come in peace. And I have an explanation for everything.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Fraiser said with that same professionally soothing tone she used on all her patients, even the really bad ones, and motioned for him to take off his shirt.

  “Oh, yes,” Jack replied into the microphone. “I’m sure you have a wonderful explanation for everything. Especially the dead bodies.”

  Beside him, Daniel shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Maybe he does.”

  Jack’s grunt was noncommittal.

  Before Daniel could go on, Teal’c came in and stood behind them. His reflected frown looked like the scary, suspicious Jaffa equivalent of “Hmmm.” Then, before the door had even latched, Carter stuck her head in and shouted, “So, what’s the verdict?” Clearly it would be a little while longer before her hearing recovered. Otherwise, she looked scrubbed and none the worse for the wear. Coming up beside Daniel, she put a comforting hand on his arm for a second, then dropped stiffly onto the stool in front of the window.

  “We’re taking bets,” Jack said. “Daniel’s thinking parallel universe. Teal’c is abstaining.” He twisted a little to give Teal’c a withering look. “Abstainer.”

  Carter was nodding thoughtfully. “Could be. If so, we’ll have to consider cascade failure, which won’t be very comfortable for you, or him.” She waved a hand to indicate the second Daniel, who was now looking up at them. He lifted a hand to wave back, and she quickly dropped her own and caught it between her knees. Then, because Carter was Carter, she gave the guy a little wave after all and finished with the flash of a guilty smile for Daniel’s reflection.