STARGATE SG-1: Do No Harm (20 page)

But somewhere in three thousand years of isolation the physical truth of the Jaffa must have been lost because Lotar showed no fear at all. Instead she gravely inspected each new man’s face, one after the other.

Dixon smiled, his eyes warm. “Hey, Lotar. Nice to meet you.”

Teal’c said nothing, but inclined his head with great dignity.

“Friends of Daniel, you are welcome to Adjo,” said Lotar. “The gods have blessed me in my passing time.”

“The gods, eh?” said Jack. “Well, yippee for them.”

“Jack,” Daniel said warningly, as Sam skewered their colonel with a sharp glance.

Oblivious to both warning and glare, Jack dusted his hands together. “So boys and girls, now we’re all friends and there’s been lots and lots and
lots
of chitchat, what say we get our gear and make tracks? I’ll bet Lotar’s just dying to show us off to her pals.”

Bewildered, Lotar turned. “Daniel?”

He sighed. “What Jack means, Lotar, is that we need to speak with the leaders of your village. Can you take us to them?”

She nodded. “Oh. Of course. When I have completed my passing time I will take you to the Elders.”

As Jack opened his mouth, Daniel turned, forestalling. “It’s an important ritual. It’ll be finished in a week.”

“A week? You want us to wait a week? Out here?” said Jack. “Ah — I don’t think so, Daniel.”

Daniel swallowed another sigh, smiled at Lotar, then took Jack by the sleeve and tugged him aside. “Jack, please. Do you want to spook her?”

“No, I want you to tell her we’re not twiddling our thumbs out here for a week while she picks flowers for a pair of dead snakeheads!”

Oh boy
. “Jack, listen. I — ”

“No, Daniel,
you
listen,” Jack said, snapped right back into uncompromising mode. “I’ve given you all the latitude I can. We’ve got our orders. Make contact with the locals and establish the ground rules for preliminary mineral surveys ASAP.”

Sometimes it was so hard, keeping his temper with Jack. “Yes, I know, but — ”

Jack’s glare was incendiary. “
Enough
, Daniel. We’re heading for Lotar’s village. Now do you want to tell her she’s been hired as our native guide, or shall I?”

“All right. I’ll
talk
to her. I’ll ask if her she’ll come with us. But if she doesn’t want to I have to respect her wishes. And so do you.”

Scowling, Jack nodded. “Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

His philosophy in a nutshell. “Okay then. Give me a few minutes and some privacy and I’ll do my best.”

Another nod. “A few minutes.”

Feeling so guilty his stomach hurt, Daniel took the young girl aside. “I know it’s a big thing to ask, Lotar, and I
wouldn’t
ask… except it’s so important. Not just to us, but to your people too. Please, take us to your Elders. We’ll make sure they don’t punish you.”

She was silent for a long time, staring at the rocky red ground. Then she looked up. “All right, Daniel.”

He could’ve shouted with relief. “Great. That’s great. Thank you, Lotar. I promise you won’t regret it.” Turning, he nodded to Jack.

“Okay!” Jack announced, turning to the rest of the team. “Time to get this show on the road.”

Teal’c heard one of his team mates stir as Adjo’s sun broke free of the distant horizon. He did not have to look to know it was O’Neill. SG-1’s leader was always the first to wake.

“O’Neill,” he said quietly, as his friend joined him after retreating a discreet distance from the camp to empty his bladder. It was a constant wonder to him how humans so often prevailed against their adversaries, given the fragility of their physiology. Such frequent thirst and hunger, the constant need for bodily eliminations, the way they had to sleep so often and for so long. Their fragile bones that broke so easily, how swiftly they succumbed to disease and pain. They were not what anyone could call a robust species.

But it was easy to see why the Goa’uld had abandoned the Unas to make humans their new, preferred hosts. The Unas were hardier, there was no question of that. But the Goa’uld worshipped beauty and the Unas were not beautiful.

And after all, the Goa’uld had their Jaffa to do — what did O’Neill call it? Ah, yes. Their
heavy lifting
.

In his belly the incubating Goa’uld larva twisted, dreaming its dreams of galactic domination. Perhaps sensing its helpless caretaker’s despair and laughing to feel it.

Indeed they were a pitiless race.

Standing in silent companionship, O’Neill watched with him as Adjo’s sun chased the night’s shadows out of the wide, shallow valley they camped above. On the valley floor below squatted Lotar’s village, one hundred and eight-four dwellings spread along the banks of the river winding down from the opposite side of the valley.

He knew how many dwellings there were because he had counted. First rule of engagement: know all you can know about a potential enemy, as swiftly as you are able to know it.

At this distance he could not see the entrance to the abandoned mine the UAV had captured on film but that was unimportant. It was there, the cause of this mission. The cause of trouble, perhaps, if he had been right.

For
the sake of us all I hope I am wrong.

But he feared he was not. To borrow one of O’Neill’s favorite phrases, he had a bad feeling about this.

I wish there was a god I could believe in so I might ask it for help. For protection. I am one Jaffa. I fear I wi
ll not be strong enough to protect my people this time
.

Sensing his disquiet, as he so often sensed many things, O’Neill glanced sideways. “If I can put up with Dixon, you can put up with being here.”

“Colonel Dixon has done nothing to challenge or disturb your authority.”

O’Neill pulled a face. “Not yet. But he will.”

“You have no evidence on which to base that assertion.”

“I don’t need evidence.”

Teal’c let his lips curve, just a little. “Because you have your gut?”

“Damn right I’ve got my gut.”

He nodded. “As I have mine, O’Neill.”

“Yeah,” O’Neill sighed. “Dammit.”

With his booted toes O’Neill scuffed at the leaf litter they stood on. High overhead a v-shape formation of wide-winged birds arrowed through the blushing sky. Closer, in the surrounding trees, smaller birds trilled a welcome to the dawn. Buzzing
beneath that a soft drone, as behind them Daniel Jackson snored
in his sleeping bag.

“Y’know, Teal’c,” he added, his half-lidded gaze brooding upon the village below them, “I could be imagining things… but does that village look a bit small? Smaller than it needs to be, I mean?”

Teal’c considered the distant collection of dwellings. “It is not large,” he conceded. “But many of the villages we have encountered have not been large.”

“Yeah, but that’s because they get culled by the Goa’uld on a regular basis. These people have been out of the loop a hell of a time. And without TV as a distraction human beings tend to breed like rabbits.”

He permitted himself another small smile. “If Earth’s current population is any guide, O’Neill, even with the distraction of popular entertainment human beings breed like rabbits.”

O’Neill snorted softly. “Yeah.”

“You could ask Lotar,” he suggested. “She might possess an explanation.”

Another soft snort. “Yeah.
That’
s
likely.”

“It is your choice, O’Neill,” he said, shrugging.

“Yeah,” said O’Neill, and once more lapsed into silence.

Shadow by shadow, the sun climbed above the far lip of the valley’s ridgetop. Three more arrowheads of birds flew overhead. A soft breeze rose, rustling leaves, stirring scents from hidden wildflowers. New birdsong drifted from the branches above them, descant to the already trilling soprano.

O’Neill shoved his hands in his pockets. “Daniel better not keep us hanging round for half the day while he goes through his elaborate meet-and-greet routine with the locals. We burned enough daylight yesterday going slow for Lotar’s sake.”

He sounded aggrieved. Ready to find fault even though Daniel Jackson had not yet woken. “You may find his methods tedious, O’Neill, but it is unlikely that any of us could have persuaded Lotar to abandon her passing time ritual in favor of leading us the fastest way to her village. In doing so he has saved us much time.”

O’Neill twitched one shoulder. “He’s letting his personal mission objective go to his head. We’re here to establish mining rights, not research a book about these people’s life story.”

Teal’c lifted an eyebrow. “Is it not possible for us to do both?”

“Possible? Sure. Desirable? No way. Come on, Teal’c. If I don’t ride herd on Daniel, keep him focused, we’ll still be here this time next month. And I don’t intend being here any longer than I have to.”

“Because until this mission is completed you are forced to continue your association with Colonel Dixon. Do you truly believe he is a Pentagon spy… or is he unwelcome because he blames you for Frank Cromwell’s death?”

Birdsong filled the sharp silence. “What the hell kind of question is that?” O’Neill said at last, his gaze rigidly trained on the slumbering village below them.

“I think a fair one, O’Neill,” he replied carefully. “You blame yourself even though it was not your fault. Just as you blame yourself for the loss of Hank Boyd and his team, even though their deaths were not your fault either.”

“Crap,” O’Neill muttered. “You been buying psychology books off Amazon?”

“I do not need to purchase textbooks to understand your heart
in this, O’Neill,” he said. “Cromwell was your friend. He perished because of it. You would not be yourself if you did not feel guilt.”

They had never before spoken of the black hole incident, at least not beyond the required debriefings. O’Neill rarely spoke of personal things, revealing only what he wanted others to know.
And unlike Daniel Jackson, I am content with that. To demand
more is… disrespectful
. But now, given the current circumstances, he was prepared to be rude.

O’Neill folded his arms again. “Cromwell and I weren’t friends when he died. We were — ” He shook his head. “I have no idea what we were.”

“To me you did not sound like enemies.”

“Yeah. Like I said. I don’t know what we were at the end.”

“But you are afraid Colonel Dixon will want to know? You are afraid he has come here to complete unfinished business?”

O’Neill slid another look sideways. “Me? Afraid. Surely you jest.”

No, he did not. And O’Neill was aware of that. But if he was reluctant or unable to elucidate his feelings on the matter of Frank Cromwell or David Dixon then the conversation would end here and now.

Unlike Daniel Jackson I kn
ow when not to push. But I suspect this time he is in the right. O’Neill is haunted by Cromwell. Though much time has passed his heart has yet to heal. What Daniel fails to realize, however, is that only O’Neill can heal it. And to do that he must first gi
ve himself permission to release his pain
.

And that was very much more easily said than done. Did he not know it, with his precious wife and child still paying the price for his impulsive decision in the prison on Chulak?

“You should cut Daniel Jackson some slack, O’Neill,” he said, turning away from the light-washed valley before them. “You know as well as I that he is among the best at what he does. Warriors are important, but we are not always the
most
important.”

O’Neill’s eyebrows were up. “’Cut him some slack’?” he echoed, his eyes bright with derisive humor. “Forget the psychobabble books, you’ve been watching The Simpsons!”

“I have no need to watch The Simpsons, O’Neill,” he replied, letting his own lurking sense of humor reveal itself. “You are quite adept at re-enacting each episode.”

Which was precisely the wrong thing to say. Until recently O’Neill had done so with Jake Andrews. Like a cloud crossing the sun the amusement in O’Neill’s face was blotted out by rewoken grief, leaving it grim, and his eyes chilled to bleakness with memory.

He had erred, and where O’Neill was concerned there were rarely second chances. Before he could speak, make tentative amends, O’Neill was turning away.

“Hey!” he said sharply to the rest of his team, still asleep and oblivious. “Where do you guys think we are, on a dude ranch vacation? Sun’s up! Time to go!”

Major Carter was the first to react, sitting up with her sidearm in her hand. “What? What?”

“Relax, Carter,” said O’Neill. “It’s reveille, not a call to arms.”

Colonel Dixon sat up next, more slowly. Not because he was any less prepared but because he’d taken a moment to assess the situation while pretending he still slept.

He was a canny warrior. O’Neill was right to be wary.

“Jack, what are you trying to do?” Daniel Jackson demanded from the depths of his sleeping bag. “Give us all a heart attack?” With a groan he emerged, and looked to where the Adjoan girl Lotar had chosen to sleep for the night. “Lotar? It’s all right. Don’t be frightened. Jack’s playing a joke on us. He has a poor — sorry, a
different
— sense of humor.”