Stargate SG1 - Roswell (10 page)

A feeble voice, what little remained of her true self, perhaps, reminded
her that she had no such experiences as a child. The rich
memories were from a different host, compounded with those
of countless others hosts taken by Qetesh long before the Goa'uld had set her sights on Vala.

You Tokra fools. You cannot separate us, for this is
my
body. I
am Qetesh
—
nothing of the host remains!
“It's not the General's blood—”

No! Don't listen to Qetesh; I'm still here! Please, by all that is
merciful in the universe, give me back my life!

“ — it's
Vala's!”
I
am your god and I will always possess you.

Voices called through the haze, pulling her away, separating them, taking her baby from her. Pearls of dark red clouded her vision, suffocating the light, and a cold stygian blackness took her soul.

You will never be free of me,
Qetesh warned her from the darkness where she always lingered,
for
you
have
become
me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“We
got maybe two hundred thousand feet to play with here, people!” Cam announced.

“Almost ready.” Sam couldn't be entirely certain because they were heading into the night side shadow of the planet, but from her glances through the windscreen when they'd been beamed aboard the jumper, it appeared that a section of Asgard ship—Loki's presumably, since the discredited scientist was currently lying on the floor of the jumper—had been damaged in some sort of accident.

With the General critically injured, Sam could only assume that Vala had picked up Loki's signal and beamed him aboard immediately she'd retrieved SG-1, which meant they'd already altered whatever time they were in. Dammit!

Being transported aboard the jumper while they'd been literally gasping their last breath had come as no great surprise to Sam. In the few minutes they'd been inside the cavern beneath Cheyenne Mountain, she'd figured once the SGC analyzed the data from the incoming wormhole, someone—as much as she was loath to admit it, probably McKay—would eventually work out what had happened. It wouldn't matter if they'd taken a week or a year to develop a solution, because McKay would also have known the only way that SG-1 could be rescued was by installing Asgard transport technology in the time-machine enhanced Ancient puddle jumper.

How McKay, or maybe Lee, had pinpointed exactly
when
they'd been sent was an entirely different matter. And while Sam was deeply grateful not to be pulling her last stench-filled breath inside a readymade tomb, the fact that something catastrophic had occurred as a result of the rescue attempt vindicated her argument that use of the Ancient time machine was dangerous under
any
circumstances.

Although she'd read McKay and Zelenka's reports on the jumper's systems, and spent hours going over the schematics, Sam wasn't personally as familiar with the Ancient ship as she would have liked. No one at Area 51 was, for that matter. This lack was due entirely to the limited number of Ancient gene bearers with the necessary security clearance and time to work with engineers in analyzing the ship's wide range of capabilities.

With O'Neill currently unconscious, she had no idea why the inertial dampeners and HUD were operational, but she doubted they would offer much protection when the ship impacted.

This had to have been McKay's bright idea, she decided. Only he would have been so conceited. “I'm going to beam us down well away from the crash site. We have to do everything possible to minimize our impact on this time.”

“Oh, we're gonna impact, all right,” Cam yelled back. “In about
one hundred and fifty thousand feet!”

“C'mon Jack, snap out of it!” Daniel implored.

Sam glanced aft. Teal'c was applying a pressure bandage to
a ragged gash on Vala's
thigh. Her BDUs were stained dark with blood, but it wasn't enough to have caused her to pass out like that. It must have been the cumulative effort of her own wounds and dealing with the General's injury. Sam knew from personal experience how draining using a handheld healing device could be. If Teal'c could wake her, Vala may yet be able to bring O'Neill around. “How is she?”

“Unresponsive,” Teal'c replied, tying off the bandage.

“Coming up on one hundred thousand feet.” Cam was scrambling
to collect additional items that had floated out of the
First Aid kit. Every one of them, even Teal'c, needed medical attention as soon as possible.

Assuming they weren't dead in the next few minutes, or so.

Sam glanced outside, but the jumper's spin was still erratic. Lightning bolts and watery sheets fanning out across the windshield told her that they were coming down in the middle of a storm, while data from the HUD confirmed they were now over New Mexico, thankfully well clear of any major towns. Abandoning the jumper would maroon them in this time, but they were fast running out of options. She reluctantly turned to the Asgard transport controls and locked onto their signals.

And then a not-so muted curse alerted her to the fact that the General was coming around.

“Jack!” Daniel patted him on the cheek none-too gently, adding green gunk to blood already there. “Listen to me. You have to think about getting us out of here.”

Glazed eyes half opened. “Where...?”

“Not where, sir.
When”
Sam amended. “You came back in time to get us but something went wrong. I think you ran into an Asgard ship.”

“Carter?” O'Neill's face screwed up. His voice was slurred. “Distinctly recall you being against time travel.”

“Jack!” Daniel shook the General's shoulders in frustration. “We don't have time for a discussion. Just get us out of here!”

“Fifty thousand,” Cam called, grabbing Sam's discarded pack and the P-90s. Cam was getting ready bail. He obviously didn't share Daniel's optimism that the General would recover in time to save them from crashing.

Cam was wrong, however. The jumper's flight systems suddenly powered up, the HUD flickered into full color and a remarkably well-rendered set of images appeared. Sundry floating debris dropped to the floor as the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity both kicked in.

“That's it, Jack,” Daniel said encouragingly. “You're doing it.”

“Woulda been a great game,” O'Neill mumbled.

“Ten thousand,” Cam announced. “Plus or minus, but the minuses are catchin' up real fast.”

“Yes, yes, I'm sure it would have been a wonderful game.” The words tumbled out of Daniel's mouth. “Jack... listen to me. Can you concentrate on getting us into orbit?”

“Eight thousand!” Cam grabbed the back of her seat. “Sam? It's time to get outta here!”

“Just a minute. He's doing it.” Sam scanned the controls, hoping she wasn't imagining things. She really,
really
did not want to abandon the jumper.

“We don't
have
a minute!”

O'Neill blinked again and shook his head as if to clear it.. “Carter said...gotta go back four hundred years, first.”

“Five thousand feet and that ground is coming up
damned
fast—
Sam!”

“Or was it three hundred, then forward two hundred?”

From the cargo bay she heard the time machine's consol hum to life, and something rippled over them. Surprised that the General had actually read her report on the jumper's log and time travel capabilities, Sam looked around in wonder at the stars. “It's working!”

She barely had time to register the relief on the faces of her companions before another ripple passed over them—and the jumper slammed sideways and began tumbling again, this time, end over end.

The inertial dampeners compensated a moment too late, throwing Sam out of the copilot's seat and into Cam. Bright blue, early morning sky filled the windscreen before the ground spun into view long enough to tell her that they were now at least fifty thousand feet above a densely forested landscape. The HUD flicked wildly through a dozen images, but O'Neill seemed coherent enough to straighten out the jumper's erratic flight path. As they leveled off, Sam glanced up to discover a Ha'tak plummeting toward the ground, a fiery tail in its wake.

Sam's head reeled with the implications. Two time jumps and five seconds earlier it had been the wreckage from an Asgard ship, and the jumper had been less than five thousand feet from impact. Now they were at fifty thousand feet, looking at a damaged
Ha'tak?

“We must have hit the Ha'tak when we jumped forward to our time!” Cam remarked unnecessarily.

Ignoring the pain from the dozens of stinging slices down her legs and arms, Sam disentangled herself from him, grabbed her chair and awkwardly pulled herself upright relative to the Asgard transport device. They were not out of danger, yet.

“Oh, that's bad,” Daniel declared. “That's going to upset the Jaffa.”

Although he still appeared to be half-out of it, the General was struggling to bring the jumper under control, but at least the inertial dampeners and gravity were working at maximum efficiency, giving them a considerably more stable ride.

“Like they're not already pissed enough.” Apparently satisfied they were no longer in imminent peril of crashing, Cam pushed past the still unconscious Vala to check on Loki, who'd been all but squashed beneath Teal'c's considerable bulk.

“That's the least of our problems. When the Ha'tak hits, it's going to explode with the force of a mid-yield nuke.” Sam glanced at O'Neill. He was blinking and shaking his head, trying to focus. “Sir, are you okay?”

“What the hell was a Ha'tak doin' skulking around the place, anyway?”

“The mere fact that it did not reveal itself,” Teal'c observed with a scowl, “indicates it should not have been there.”

“Got a point, there, T.” With Daniel's help, Jack pulled himself upright and grabbed the controls. “Base, this is Jumper One, do you copy?”

There was no response.

“Base, this is Jumper One. We've recovered SG-1, but we've got a little problem, here.”

The jumper continued to fly erratically. Sam peered at the HUD. The detail was exceptional, and somewhat reassuring. The region they were flying over was sparsely populated, which meant casualties from the impact of the Ha'tak would be minimal. A glance at the map coordinates confirmed why: 60°55N 101°57E. They were over Siberia.

But that Ha'tak was going in fast and she hadn't been exaggerating when she'd predicted the result of the explosion. Intending to beam the ships' crew to safety, she turned to the Asgard transport controls, but the screen was dead. One look inside the access panel beside her, told her why. She stared in dismay at the shattered crystals. “Sir, we—”

Without warning, the interior of the jumper was flooded with a searing light. Sam caught a glimpse of O'Neill lifting his hands to shield his face, but the photosensitive windscreen had already compensated, protecting them from a burst of light as intense as the sun. Had it got through to their eyes, it would have burned through their corneas and blinded them permanently. The Ha'tak had either self-destructed or the engines had blown moments before impact.