Relativity Read online

  The Commander jerked his head. “Shut him up.”

  Tyke scrambled backward on his hands and tried to get back to his feet, but the icy wash of terror that hit made his legs turn to water. These weren’t any Grove Street bangers out to make points— hell, he didn’t know what they were! Some old dude and a weird-looking girl, acting like it ain’t nothing, and then suddenly they’re popping these freak-ass Star Trek laser guns… He’d seen stuff like that on TV, but that wasn’t what sent him panicking like some grade school punk; it was that thing.

  Tyke’s mind was screaming that it couldn’t be real even as he replayed the moment over and over, struggling to make sense of it. He’d broke along with Mag once the shooting started and tried to get away, get some backup. Made it to the stairs, almost out of there. Then he hit something, something big and fleshy, solid as a wall. Something he could see right through; or at least, it was see-through some of the time. Where he hit it, a patch of color spread out like an ink stain and for long, horrible seconds, Tyke saw the shape of a something that had way too many legs to be human. He caught glimmers of a fanged mouth, of mandibles, dark eyespots, claws and shiny skin like a cockroach had. Only there weren’t any cockroaches that stood eight feet tall and could make themselves invisible.

  The youth scrambled backwards and felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and there was the girl with the blonde hair, holstering that freaky pistol and staring into him with cool, serious eyes. “Don’t be afraid,” she soothed, “he won’t hurt you.” Tyke opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “Shh. Just listen. We need your help.”

  “What?” he managed, fear making his voice tight and high.

  The girl brought up her hand and on the tips of her fingers he saw the flicker of light on metal. She had steel pads beneath the skin. “This will feel a bit strange,” she told him gently. “Don’t fight it.”

  “But—”

  Then she touched him on his neck and Tyke felt his world evaporate around him.

  “I have contact,” said Jade. She cradled the youth’s head with her free hand, his baseball cap falling away to the floor. The receptor plates in her fingers found the nerve clusters in his neck and set to work. In the half-light, small trails of blood glittered on his skin where the nanite injectors entered his body. She studied him. He was young, still in his mid-teens, and with his breathing turned shallow and his eyes unfocussed, the ganger looked every inch the child he really was. “I’m searching.”

  “Hurry,” said the Commander. “If he doesn’t have what we want, we may have to wake up one of the others.”

  Jade shot him a look. “If I go too fast, I could cause neurological damage.”

  He snorted. “Kid’s probably a crack-head. You couldn’t mess him up any worse.”

  She grimaced and turned her attention back to the boy. Jade let the implant feed her thoughts through the link to the nanites she’d injected into his bloodstream. What’s your name? Her lips never moved, but the boy heard her as well as if she had spoken aloud.

  “Tuh. Tyke.”

  I won’t hurt you, Tyke. I just need your help. My friends and I. We need your help.

  “Friends?” Raw fear stuttered down the link and back into her mind, a black backwash of cold sensation. Tyke’s eyes flicked to where a shape shimmered in the gloom.

  That’s just Ite-kh. He’s with us.

  “Spider!” Bits of Tyke’s memories pushed at the implant link, dark and crawling sensations that threatened to overwhelm her. The alien had terrified the boy more than she had realized.

  No. He’s a Re’tu. I know he looks scary, but he’s not a monster. He’s been my friend for years. He’s not from this planet, which is why we can’t see him most of the time. She could have explained about the alien’s unique physiology, how his kind existed in a dimensional phase-shift that rendered them invisible to humans, but there was no sense in burdening the boy with information that he wouldn’t be able to process. Jade could see Ite-kh as a glassy haze thanks to the implant’s connection to her visual cortex, but she chose to block those images from reaching Tyke’s mind. He was already on the edge of panic.

  “No,” Tyke was starting to slip away from her, falling into a murky pit of fear. “Mom…” Jade felt a sharp dart of sympathetic emotion, of razor-edged loss.

  “You’re losing him,” snapped the Commander. “Disengage.”

  “No!” She said it aloud, and Tyke whimpered. “I’ve got it.” Jade blinked back a sob in her throat and concentrated. Your mother’s gone, Tyke? I’m sorry. I lost my mom too. She pressed gently into the boy’s surface thoughts, sifting through them. Jade saw blurry images of an untidy house, the smells of cooking, stale cigarette smoke. Is that where she lived?

  “Belongs to my sister, now. Keesha.” he mumbled. “We live there. But Keesha… Never around. She works. Gotta boyfriend.”

  We need a place to stay, Tyke. Just for a little while. Jade threaded the nanites deeper, guiding them by thought. The microscopic machines resonated on the same subspace frequencies as the mechanism of her implant, and with care she made them block certain receptor sites in the boy’s brain, cutting off the production of neurochemicals that induced fear and encouraging those that relaxed him, that made him more suggestible. We can be friends, Tyke. Will you help us?

  “Oh. Okay.” His breathing was even now. “Yeah. I’ll help you.” Slowly, Tyke got to his feet and blinked dreamily.

  The Commander peered owlishly at the youth. “How long is that going to last?”

  It was a moment before Jade answered. Direct contact, adjusting brain chemistry on so finite a scale… It took a lot out of her. She could already feel the beginnings of a tension headache at the back of her skull. “As long as he doesn’t suffer any shock or serious trauma, it will be a couple of weeks before he snaps out of it.”

  “We won’t need weeks.” He glanced up as Ite-kh crossed the room, the Re’tu’s invisible claws pattering quietly on the wooden floorboards. “We don’t have the luxury of that much time.”

  Jade frowned. “He’ll have nightmares for months after we’ve gone. It’s not a precise science, messing with people’s brains.”

  “My heart bleeds,” said the Commander, brandishing his zat. “Now we have him, we don’t need these three.” He took aim, and Jade’s face fell as she realized what he was intending.

  “You’re going to disintegrate them?”

  He eyed her coldly. “They would have killed us without even breaking a sweat. Look at them. You think they’re innocents? You never grew up seeing people like them on the streets, dealing drugs and peddling death. Trust me, I’m doing the State of Colorado a favor.”

  “No.” She stood in front of him, and Jade heard Ite-kh rumble a warning noise in his thorax. “Just give me a few minutes. I can use the nanites to unspool some of their RNA, destroy an hour or so of their short-term memories. They’ll forget they ever saw us.”

  “We don’t have time—”

  “For what?” she demanded. “We don’t have time to behave like human beings? Is that what you were going to say?”

  The zat retracted and the old man tucked it in a pocket. “Fine. Whatever.” He turned and strode away. “Ite-kh!” He called. “With me. Let’s take our new pal for a walk.”

  She watched the old man push Tyke toward the stairs, and felt the faint pressure of air as the Re’tu moved past her. She tuned her sight to make the insectoid visible again and saw him pause, cocking his head. Ite-kh’s mouthparts released a series of clicks and hisses.

  “I know,” she replied quietly. “It’s just… I wasn’t expecting this. I thought he might be different when we got back here. Back to Earth.”

  The Re’tu made a rustling sound that signified sympathy and compassion in its native language. Ite-kh had been a fighter in the Commander’s service for a long time, and he knew Jade’s father as well as any of the men and women in the Holdfast.

  “This was a mistake,” she admitted. “He shoul
d never have come with us.”

  The alien crossed his arms in a gesture of sign-language that Jade had seen many times before, and she knew the meaning full well. There’s no turning back now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The elevator deposited O’Neill on the main level of the SGC and he wandered out into the tube-like concrete corridor. He felt a little tired, truth be told. Jack had been up since oh-dark-thirty that morning, not because of years of ingrained Air Force training, but because he’d been unable to stop turning the matter of the Pack over in his mind. It was like one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons where he had an angel perched on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each one whispering things in his ears. In this case, on one side Jack had confidence and on the other mistrust. Commit to the Pack or hold them off, be friends or show them the door: the choice rolled around and around. It was a simple thing, really, but it seemed so complicated. It all came down to a question of conviction.

  From Ra and Abydos and everything onwards, there were days when it felt like the entire universe was out to get humanity— and even the people they made buddies with were still a bit sniffy, like the Tok’ra. Out of all of the alien folks out there, it was only the Jaffa that Jack felt he could call friends, in any true sense of the word. If only more people were like Teal’c and Bra’tac. He blinked in mild surprise at his own conclusion. Well, okay, not exactly like them. Maybe keep the honorable and trusty parts, but add a better sense of humor.

  O’Neill walked on, throwing nods to other officers as they passed him. Seven years, he told himself. After seven years, am I actually starting to get tired of this? The idea sat uncomfortably in his mind, and he felt worse about it when he realized that he was taking it seriously. A woman in a white coat— Warner’s nurse, that girl called Cathy— crossed in front of him and Jack’s thoughts slipped back to Janet Fraiser. It still seemed strange to him to walk into the medical bay after a sortie and not find her there with a clipboard, ready to give them the regulation post-mission exam. Jack missed her quiet, steady presence, and he knew that everyone else on the base felt the same way. Is that why I’m feeling worn out with it all? They had lost Fraiser months ago now, but the sense of it was still just there, below the surface. So much of what they did here at the SGC was seat-of-the-pants stuff, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat with barely seconds to spare… It was no wonder they felt like they were bullet-proof. An embattled team of people forming the thin khaki line between freedom and alien invasion, winning at all costs— and then Janet’s death had shown them that they were all on a clock that could hit zero at any time. Jack frowned. Where could he go from here? Hammond and the rear echelon big hats at Space Command had been gently pressing him to accept a promotion for some time, and O’Neill’s resistance to taking a higher rank felt more like inertia than it did any rational objection— but there was also the unwillingness to step back and leave his people to go into harm’s way without him. Then again… Yeah, on some level he was fatigued; Janet had brought that into sharp focus for him. If he got a star pinned to his epaulets, he might actually get the chance to spend some real time on his favorite planet— this one. And maybe he could even think about other things, like prospects beyond the Air Force and the Stargate Program. A normal life, with a family, that kinda stuff.

  Geez, listen to me. I sound like my grandmother. He took a deep breath and shook it off. Now was not the time to be dwelling on the future; he had a job to do, here and now. The Pack were still an unknown quantity, and they had to make certain of them.

  The smell of fresh-brewed coffee caught his nostrils and drew Jack’s attention toward a figure in the corridor. “Siler!” he snapped, forcing the sergeant to halt. Siler had a cardboard tray with two cups on it. “Coffee.”

  “Observant as ever, Colonel,” replied the non-com. “I just came from the mess.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack nodded. O’Neill hadn’t had the chance to get a drink on the way in, and the scent of caffeine promised to jolt him out of the funk he was on the verge of slipping into. “I’m thinking I ought to take one of those for, uh, inspection.”

  Siler’s face fell. “Sir, not again. You do this to me every morning.”

  Jack held out his hand. “C’mon, give it up.”

  “But Colonel…”

  “Do you want me to order you to do laps around the base on one leg?”

  He grimaced. “Sir, I checked the Air Force regulations handbook. You’re not allowed to make me do that any more.”

  O’Neill gave him a look and finally Siler relented. Jack took the cup and sipped from it. “Mmm. Arabica blend, nice. Carry on.” He walked on, then turned to call after the airman. “Hey, who’s the other cup for?”

  “Me,” said Siler. “I got two because I knew you were gonna take one.”

  Jack smirked. “That’s good, sergeant. That shows initiative, forward thinking. You ever think about taking officer training?”

  “No sir,” Siler replied, “I prefer to work for a living.”

  O’Neill took another sip. “Wiseass.”

  “Besides,” added the sergeant as he stepped into the elevator, “you’re gonna want a stiff drink.”

  “Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked, but the doors had shut and Siler was gone.

  The answer to Jack’s question wasn’t long in coming. He turned into the corridor to the briefing room and found himself face-to-face with two hard-eyed men, each with near-identical buzz-cuts, the same sharply pressed dark blue suits, coiled wires from their collars leading to discreet radio earpieces and an obvious bulge beneath their jackets that indicated the presence of a service automatic. He didn’t need to see the small pin on their lapels to know these guys were United States Secret Service; and the expressions on their faces were enough for O’Neill to know that they recognized him. He gave them a level look. “You boys going to do that ‘talking into your cufflink’ thing now?”

  The two men exchanged glances. “Yes,” said the nearest one, and he whispered into a microphone concealed at his wrist. Jack covered his irritation with another sip of coffee and barged past them, into the briefing room. General Hammond was there, still in his blues from the Washington jaunt, and there were two more Secret Service bodyguards who looked like they came from the same mould as the ones in the corridor; but what made O’Neill’s heart sink was the sight of the man sitting at the table— and in his chair— with a supercilious smile on his face.

  No matter how many times he’d tried to shut down Stargate Command, discredit the people who served there, and outright ruin the lives of Jack and his friends, this man still managed to walk away without anything sticking to him; and each time he came back, he acted like he owned the damn place. It was a real effort to resist the urge to plant a fist right in the middle of his face.

  “Kinsey,” O’Neill said the name like it rhymed with ‘scumbag’.

  “Hello, Jack,” The utterly false bonhomie in the man’s voice set O’Neill’s teeth on edge.

  “Aw, crap.” Siler had been right after all.

  “Colonel,” warned Hammond. “After my briefing to the Commander-in-Chief, Vice President Kinsey decided that it would expedite matters if he took a more direct hand in the treaty negotiations with the Pack’s representatives.”

  “That’s just great, General…” Jack attempted to cover his initial reaction with a half-hearted lie, but it collapsed miserably. “Aw, crap,” he repeated.

  “After consultation with the International Oversight Advisory, the President has decided that we should proceed toward forming ties with these people,” Kinsey spoke without looking at him. “These Pack folks are in dire need of our help and we have a God-given duty to provide whatever humanitarian assistance we can.” He paused. “Obviously, given previous situations of a similar nature and the manner in which they were handled by the SGC, you can understand the President’s reluctance to have this potential diplomatic endeavor go the same way.”

  “I ha
ve full confidence in SG-1’s abilities, Mr. Vice President,” said Hammond, “as should you.”

  “Of course,” Kinsey sniffed. “but politics and affairs of state are hardly the responsibility of our military.” He gave Jack a look. “That’s the job of our duly elected officials.”

  “Yeah, that reminds me,” said O’Neill, “whatever happened to that thing about a re-count on your vote ballot?”

  Kinsey ignored the jibe. “I’ll put it simply, Colonel O’Neill, so there’s no room for misinterpretation. I am here, with the full support of the President and the IOA, to keep an eye on you. I know that you people do good work here—”

  “We like to call it saving the planet,” Jack retorted.

  Kinsey kept talking as if he had never spoken. “— But you don’t make national policy and you certainly don’t speak for the United States of America, or for the planet Earth. I, on the other hand, am equipped to carry all those responsibilities.”

  “That’s real big of you,” noted O’Neill. “But here’s my take on it. I know you, Kinsey. You don’t give a damn about providing any ‘humanitarian assistance’. You can smell the opportunity the Pack represent, so you want to get your fingerprints all over it. Hell, I’m willing to bet that you’ve already had a secret briefing with your monkeys over at the NID, to evaluate the possibility of taking the Pack’s resources by force instead of trading for them.” Jack saw a fractional twitch on Kinsey’s face that confirmed he was right. “But mostly you’re here because you think that your name on an interplanetary trade agreement would do a lot for your future aspirations. Oval Office, Big Chair aspirations, I mean.”

  “My fellow Americans have always understood the value of strong and compassionate leadership.”