Reading Time: 148 Minutes
Title: Finding Perspectives
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 7
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds; JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Established Relationship, Family, Kid!fic, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Paula Cassidy/Anthony DiNozzo – present, Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran, Jack O’Neill/Sarah O’Neill – past, Anthony DiNozzo/Paula Cassidy – past.
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Author Note: British Spelling
Word Count: 140,984
Summary: With Sahar finally neutralised, Ziva decides it’s time to take her daughter back to Israel and sets out to track her down, but it may be far harder than she thought. Penelope sets their plan in motion, hoping to eradicate the Trust once and for all, calling in some old hacker friends to assist Home World in thwarting her search and identifying and tracking down Trust personnel. Meanwhile, Home World Commands program to produce vaccines to inoculate Planet Earth and their Allies continues feverishly when a group of interdimensional travellers arrive at Area 51, requesting asylum, warning them that they could face grave danger. Members of this group profoundly affect some personnel when they find their worlds turned upside down. Will they take the unexpected chance at happiness, or will their duty force them to sacrifice a chance of a happy ending?
Artist: Angelicinsanity
“It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say, ’It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” But how much of the nose on your face can you see unless someone holds a mirror up to you? “
—Isaac Asimov
Chapter 1
Ziva David kicked the tyre of the car she’d acquired last night, swapping out the plates with one of the other vehicles she ‘borrowed’ over the last 23 days since she began her search for Tony DiNozzo and her daughter Tali David. She was getting extremely frustrated – it was like chasing a ghost, one that seemed to delight in taking her on an exasperating dance all over the most irritating small towns in the US. Towns where people were highly suspicious of strangers and Ziva, with her accent stuck out like a stubbed toe.
It was difficult to make people talk about Tali and Tony, she was lucky if she succeeded in getting confirmation that they’d passed through town, and she was constantly tempted to force these people to talk to her. She had been a gifted interrogator during her time at Mossad, but she managed to restrain herself with great difficulty. Ziva honestly believed that Anthony DiNozzo had no idea that she was alive and had returned to the US to retrieve her daughter from the Meatball… and she wanted to keep it that way.
In one regard, it was fortunate that Tony had resigned from NCIS and cut ties with everyone there, so there was little chance that he would hear about her miraculous rise from the dead from any of his old teammates. However, it did leave her trying to track him down like a suspect, as he dragged her daughter around, visiting a bunch of hick towns and they were slowly driving her up the hall. Ziva was certain that if she didn’t find them soon, she was liable to blow her sack.
Although if she was honest, which granted was an overrated trait, especially for a spy or a Mossad operative like herself, she’d never envisage he would resign from NCIS after he took custody of Tali. The man had remained as the 2IC of Gibbs team for fifteen years, which was rather pathetic when you stopped to think about it. He was content to be mediocre rather than rising through the ranks. His lack of ambition alternately puzzled and exasperated her because even if she found herself attracted to him at times and wouldn’t have minded being friends with fringed benefits, she couldn’t respect someone with zero ambition like Tony. She’d been puzzled about why he lacked the drive to better himself until she’d finally figured it out not long after she’d decided to return home to Israel.
Only after her return home did she have enough distance and the perspective she needed to figure out that Gibbs had managed very effectively to tether his team members to him. He’d created an environment where it was seen as disloyal to want to leave the MCRT. Equally, he’d made a habit of picking out people for his team who weren’t trained investigators – the exception being Tony of course, but everyone who’d followed had not been a trained investigator. All were skilled in their own way: a Secret Service protection agent, a computer-savvy geek, a highly trained officer of Mossad who was also an assassin, a data analyst, an undercover specialist, a trainer from FLETC, a psychologist and an MI6 liaison, but no experienced investigators. She figured that it was because Gibbs didn’t want to be challenged the way that Tony had done when they were partners before the MCRT became a team.
As to why he’d hired a detective, she did not know and despite her contempt for the ’mere cop’ on the team while she was on the MCRT, Adam Eshel had set her straight when she’d disparaged Tony. Adam claimed that DiNozzo was renowned as a gifted investigator, pointing to his discovery that Rivkin had killed the ICE agent and the terrorist cell in DC, despite the director’s decree that the case was closed. Rivkin being a sore point, she’d not been predisposed to consider his case in a good light but then Adam had quoted other cases he’d solved, even during his time as a cop and made her re-evaluate her opinion of him. And yes, a lot of her attitude had been formed while she’d been actively attempting to drive him off the team so she could become Gibbs’ second in charge, but the damned fool just wouldn’t take the hint.
By the time she’d joined NCIS as an American citizen and a full-blown special agent, Ziva was still so filled with rage at him over Michael’s death and her incarceration that she’d tried to get him killed (best case) or at least leave the team but he’d done neither. Nor had he reported the attempts, which she realised later was extremely lucky for her since as a probationary agent, she would have been terminated. Yet despite feeling grateful for his loyalty and forgiving nature, she despised him for his weakness in neither leaving the MCRT nor reporting the breach, all the while marvelling at the man’s luck. Walking around a residential area for several hours where they rightly suspected that the suspects lived, collecting voice prints with no backup was a highly risky mission and yet the worst injury he incurred had been strained vocal cords. He had the luck of a cat with multiple lives, which at that time had pissed Ziva off no end, although she’d found a use for him as Tali’s sperm donor, so she was glad now he hadn’t died that day. She conceded that he was easy on the eye and combined with her genes, Ziva’s daughter couldn’t be born ugly.
Now that she had years to think it over, she had concluded that Gibbs regretted hiring DiNozzo, probably because he felt challenged by him since he was not as well credentialed as an investigator as Tony was. This was no doubt why he’d decided to pick only untrained people to join the team and make Tony responsible for training them. It would keep him nice and busy, too busy to have time to challenge him, especially when he told his untrained agents that they only had to obey him and not DiNozzo. That ensured that they would barely listen to him when he tried to teach them investigative skills.
It served rather effectively to keep Tony under control and also prevented any of them from becoming as skilled as DiNozzo, therefore they wouldn’t threaten his leadership. Alternatively, Gibbs had decided he’d made a mistake in hiring him but couldn’t bring himself to get rid of Tony as he increased their solve rate according to Adam Eshel. Tony tried to keep them within the law so that cases didn’t fall apart, and he did a fair wham of Gibbs’ paperwork. Gibbs spent a lot of time at the office but near as Ziva could tell, apart from interrogating suspects or interviewing witnesses at crime scenes, he mostly drank coffee and yelled like a drilling sergeant.
Over the years away from the team she’d come to see that he manipulated his team, creating a co-dependency so that it became extremely difficult to apply for a transfer or promotion. Between him and his co-dependence and Abby promulgating the fiction that the MCRT was a big happy family, it created the perfect environment to chain his people to him, Gibbs taking on a screwed-up patriarchal role. Of course, since everyone except Tony had been hired based on Gibbs’ gut intuition about their potential rather than merit, Adam had argued that it created an additional level of loyalty to Gibbs and made them feel special. That feeling made it more difficult to envisage working on another team and became an additional anchor keeping them tethered to him.
And yet, Ziva mused, when faced with his imminent demise at the hands of the Department of Justice, he allowed his team to sacrifice their careers to save his, after ordering them not to defend themselves. At the time when she realised Leon and Gibbs didn’t even try to stop them, she’d been pissed but over the months that intervened when she finally decided to go home to Israel, she’d come full circle. She’d ended up feeling gratitude for them letting them carry the cake for him. Ziva David had finally reached the painful conclusion that while she’d been playing Gibbs all these years, filling his need to replace his dead daughter with herself as Kelly’s surrogate, he’d just as skilfully been able to create an interdependence on him as her surrogate father, just as he had with McGee, Abby and DiNozzo. Even Ducky was not free from his charismatic ensnarement; Ziva noted that the medical examiner became increasingly sycophantic and less objective about the team during the years that Ziva spent there.
Ziva sighed and wondered if there was a fable about the ensnarement of a predator who had sought to ensnare its prey before the predator became trapped by the prey. Tony would likely recall a movie if he were here, which was silly because if he were here, then Ziva would have no need to be. Still, she did wonder what had finally prompted Tony to leave Gibbs’ warm womb – surely it was more than having to look after Tali. Would Gibbs’ harsh treatment of him after the Lost Boys fandango or was it a farrago, make Tony act so terribly out of character? Then to virtually cut all ties with his former teammates was even more unbelievable. As near as she could judge, even Ducky and Jimmy barely heard from him and even then it was more often than not just a postcard. What could have happened to have made him stop talking to Palmer? The two men had been good friends, or so she thought.
Sighing, she refocused on her objective. Abba would be very disappointed in her gathering wood. It was certainly not how he trained her. It was an indulgence that could easily get you killed if you weren’t careful. It was time to get back on the task.
Of course, life would have been a lot simpler if she’d had Adam to help her search but the yutzi shmendrik had gone undercover when she had ‘died’ in the firebombing of her Abba’s farmhouse to help Ziva work out who was coming after her. The Shin Bet officer must have blown his cover after she’d been held in detention for entering the US on a false passport and he was deported. Somehow, he’d managed to re-enter the country, but he had given himself away since Sahar had killed him.
Although she regretted the loss, mainly because Adam had been an extra pair of hands who would do whatever she asked of him as he was in love with her, he had never been a Michael Rivkin. Yes, they were intimate, but she never loved him, not like Michael. Eshel simply wasn’t up to the standard of a Kidon-trained operative nor did Eshel have the training and skills of the Mossad either, which was probably why Sahar got suspicious of him.
Plus, she had to give credit where credit was owed, Sahar had been an extremely wily operator. Taking her down had been tricky because she was smart and slippery as a seal. Not only had she used a proxy to lull everyone, herself and Adam included, into believing that they’d killed her when it was a fake Sahar, but she’d played Gibbs like a piano, using her cute son Phineas to get close to Gibbs. Too close to him, but then it was a variation on a musical theme that Abba and herself had composed – poor little Jewish assassin, trained by a coldly ambitious Mossad assistant director. Forced to shoot down in cold blood her own half-brother when he went rogue and tried to kill Gibbs.
Abba had been quick to profile Gibbs as a team leader who went out of his way to recruit agents who had deeply fucked up relationships with their fathers. At first, Ziva had argued with him, pointing out that Abby didn’t fit that profile and yet she was his favourite. Eli had shaken his head and admonished her for being superficial. First, he pointed out that Abby had been given up for adoption which meant she would have feelings of abandonment and now as an adult, her adoptive parents were both deceased, heightening her abandonment issues even more. Since her adoptive parents were both deaf and she’d been raised in the deaf community, it had created further feelings of isolation that would have pushed all of Gibbs’ triggers of needing to be a surrogate father to the young Goth forensic genius. Ziva had conceded that what her father said had made sense, but she had argued that the profile he’d created hadn’t fit the ex-Secret Service agent, Caitlin Teresa Todd, who was from a typical nuclear family. Her parents were still married even, and that was increasingly a rarity, especially in the US.
Once again, Eli displayed his impressive grasp of interpersonal relationships and psychological profiling. He explained that she was the youngest of three brothers with a highly successful elder sister and Caitlin’s profile was that of the baby of the family who was overshadowed by her siblings’ successes, most particularly her sister. In her career, Todd was ruthlessly ambitious, driven to achieve a much sought-after position in the Secret Service as a protection agent in the presidential detail. Her career trajectory was considered something of a rarity in a male-dominated area, but instead of resting on her laurels, she strove to compete with her sister (a respected psychologist) seeking to be a psychological profiler to best her sister. But unfortunately, Cate’s sister Rachel had a secret weapon that made her the apple of her daddy’s eye – a successful career, happy marriage and she’d give Henry Angus Todd three precious grandchildren. To the deeply devout Roman Catholic, nothing was more important than procreation.
Abba had asserted that Todd’s feelings of invisibility concerning paternal attention, McGee’s failure to live up to his Admiral father’s expectations and DiNozzo’s abandonment, neglect, and abuse by his father, culminating in his disownment when he was twelve, was key to their plan. To imbed the Mossad operative into the agency of a foreign nation’ federal agency, specifically the MCRT led by Leroy Jethro Gibbs, her father insisted that Ziva needed to fill a highly specific role – that of an emotionally wounded individual in a dysfunctional relationship with her father. It was easy for her to play up her father’s flaws because to some extent he hadn’t been the world’s best father, but Ziva in following his orders had exaggerated Abba’s faults.
Gibbs took the bait, treating her as a surrogate daughter. Something which had amused her father greatly, since Ari, her half-brother was the one who killed Todd, another surrogate for his dead daughter. He’d also sniped Abby Sciuto in her lab, and she was also Gibbs’ surrogate daughter and his favourite.
And then there was the whole situation with the Lost Boys who had been recruited by The Calling headed by the now defunct terrorist, Daniel Bud. Using her father’s tactic, he’d deliberately inserted the emotionally damaged young Luke Harris into Gibbs’ path because Bud had also sussed out his weakness. Gibbs Achilles’ heel was that he was unable to see Luke as a threat to himself and that had proved to be a fatal flaw. It almost cost him his life when he froze in Iraq after Luke Harris shot him multiple times. It was nothing short of miraculous that Jethro survived, although he paid an enormous price for his survival. While seemingly recovered, in truth, his own emotional fault lines were apparent to those who knew him best, such as Tony. That no doubt was why he pushed him violently aside, resenting that his former protégé had been witness to his freezing like a probie agent and even after he recovered physically, did not have his head in the game.
It had certainly thrown a monkey wrench in her plans to send Tali to DC after her ‘tragic demise.’ She figured that Tony would freak out when he needed to care for a child and since he would know that they had never slept together – well not that he would remember – she’d expected Gibbs would step up and become a surrogate father to her daughter too. Unfortunately, Ziva hadn’t realised just how fractured Gibbs and Tony’s relationship had become after the incident with Luke and The Calling. Certainly, she’d never reckoned on Tony resigning from NCIS and pulling up steaks, although what meat had to do with it, she still wasn’t entirely clear about. But it put a very serious crimp in her plans when Tony had disappeared and now that she’d dealt with Sahar (hopefully for the final time) Tony had forced her into hunting for her daughter in a whole lot of forgettable towns in flypast states, filled with hicks when all she wanted to do was return to Israel with Tali. It was most irritating, and Ziva David was hardly the most patient person, to begin with. Why on earth DiNozzo hadn’t stayed put in Paris she didn’t know – it was almost as if he was trying to piss her off.
Weary from searching, Ziva decided to stop for the night at the only motel in the town. While it was basic, she needed to stop and rest in a real bed and eat a home-cooked meal. She had never been a fan of fast food and hated it even more after this fruitless search. If she never ate another hamburger when she returned to Tel Aviv with Tali she would be wildly happy. Why oh, why Americans thought anything edible needed to be cooked by deep frying it she didn’t know. Who thought that a chocolate bar needed to be engulfed in dough and deep-fried, other than in America? Still, what would one expect from a nation that had passionately embraced the amalgamation of the greasy doughnut and the light and buttery French delicacy and called it a cronut? It was a crime of palate in the Israeli’s opinion. So, she would search out a diner and hope for the best, a hearty but home-style menu item or two that wasn’t deep fried.
Yes, tonight, she would stop and tune off, maybe watch an old movie on the TV. She had developed a certain fondness for old black-and-white Hollywood movies following that course she had taken back when she was at NCIS. The course had been a joke to piss off DiNozzo after he’d pulled that year-long undercover mission as a film studies lecturer off right under their noses. She, to this day, couldn’t understand why Jenny hadn’t come to her, rather than Tony but as they say, it was all liquid under the bridge now. The irony was that the course she took as a joke had given her a new appreciation for old movies, especially Bogart and Bacall and Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. She absolutely loved their elegance and grace.
Checking into the motel, she paid by cash, using a fake driver’s license and asked about anywhere she might find an establishment that provided home-cooked meals. The gruff proprietor told her that the café two block over had simple but hearty food, which his cousin owned and managed. He told her if she hurried she still had time to get served so Ziva dropped her bag in the small but passably clean room and set off down the street to Joy’s Café. Although she was not expecting anything gourmet, she was happy to find a hearty beef and vegetable stew with home-baked bread that fulfilled her desire for home cooking. She even indulged herself with a slice of deep-dish apple pie that tasted as good as it looked and was not disappointed. Simple but honest fare and Ziva felt some of her irritation dropping away as the real food nourished her senses.
Since she was the last one in the café, Joy chatted to Ziva as she set about closing up for the day. Using this chance to double-check the sighting of Tony and her daughter since Ziva David knew better than to accept unverified data, she told the proprietor the story she came up with. She had suffered badly from post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter but since it was their first child, neither she nor her husband had realised that. After struggling to bond with her for almost two years, she’d finally decided to leave, thinking that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. After a further eighteen months, she decided that life held no purpose for her, and she tried to end it with an overdose of sleeping pills but woke up in a hospital where a doctor diagnosed her with post-partum depression. Now that she was fully recovered, she had decided to go searching for her husband and daughter who were travelling around the country as he researched small towns in middle America for a book he was writing. Her tragic tale of woe culminated in a photo of Tali and DiNozzo that she’d acquired of them when they were living in Paris and Joy had recognised it immediately.
“Oh yes, I remember those two. They were here in Coopers Creek a couple of weeks ago,” Joy exclaimed, her weather-beaten features relaxing into a beaming smile. “Such a little cutie she was, with her father’s green eyes and cheeky grin.”
Looking pathetic, Ziva told her, “This is the last photo I have of her before I tried to kill myself. When I recovered, they’d left where they were living and now that I’m better, I’m trying to find them. I hope Tony will agree to try again.”
Joy patted her hand sympathetically. “I’m sure it will all work out, Dearie. Your daughter adores her daddy, and anyone can see how besotted he is with her too.”
Ziva was not happy to hear this, she wanted her daughter back. Tali was hers! But she let the foolish old woman prattle on about their touching devotion to each other, before seizing an opportunity when she drew breath to ask, “Did Tony mention where he was going next, Joy?”
“Now that you mention it, your extremely charming and debonair husband was asking me about places to stay, I think. It was in Crystal Springs,” the café owner said, thoughtfully. “I told him that the motel had been sold and was closed for renovations, but that Kitty O’Hanlon ran a cosy little B&B if he was in that neck of the woods, Hon.”
~o0o~
After Ziva left Joy’s café, Joy Booker contacted Colonel Davis. “Target was here and asking about the package.”
“I trust you gave them the info,” the calm male voice asked.
“Affirmative, Colonel,” she said.
“Excellent. General Jack’s thanks, OJOB,” he said and ended the call.
When Colonel Davis from a shadowy intelligence agency approached her with what seemed like a harmless request, the former Marine had been chary of getting involved, even though it seemed harmless enough. Have her cousin Marvin who ran Coopers Creek Motel direct a woman whose photo they would receive, to eat a meal at Joy’s Café, so she, Joy Booker could pass on her information which they wanted her to know, had seemed pretty harmless but having served two tours in the Marines, she was very wary of spooks and their shenanigans. So, she’d said no, and then she’d received a call from General Jack O’Neill, now some hotshot at the Pentagon, from scuttlebutt doing the rounds.
“Hey there OJOB. How ya been,” he greeted her, and she was transported back through time, more than twenty years when she was still a serving Marine sergeant. OJOB was his special name for her after he found out her first name was Joy. Initially, he started calling her Oh Joy Oh Bliss, which was rather a mouthful that he’d soon shortened to OJOB. He’d been a true friend when she desperately needed one, far from home and her life hanging by a thread. Back when Joy knew him, he was a dashing young Air Force major, a real hellion, with a smart mouth and an allergy to authority figures who were by the book. Frankly, it had shocked her that he’d become a three-star.
When Joy was serving in the Corps she’d been captured by a group of violent Iraqi insurgents when she was stationed in Baghdad as an interpreter. A black ops team was tasked with infiltrating the terrorists’ camp but by the time they infiltrated, she was close to death. The colonel leading the mission was sure Joy wasn’t going make it and seriously considered giving her an overdose of morphine so she could die comfortably but Jack argued fiercely that they didn’t leave anyone behind. She didn’t know it, but he’d previously been captured and tortured for four long months when his superior saw him get shot down and assumed he was dead, which was why Captain O’Neill refused to give up on her.
Jack had stolen an ancient jeep from the insurgents, getting shot in the shoulder in the process before he’d loaded her up and had hightailed it out of the insurgents’ camp with the team exchanging fire, as they were chased all the way back to their base. For months she struggled to recover, in the process, losing a leg, kidney and spleen but she was grateful every day to still be alive. So, when he explained that Colonel Paul Davis worked for him, that he was one of the good guys, she’d taken less than sixty seconds to change her mind. She owed Jack O’Neill her life and she’d even recruited her cousin Marvin to participate. Although he was prone to grumpiness, when she told him she was doing a favour for Jack O’Neill he’d been happy to help.
And Joy and Marvin, like many of Jack O’Neill’s former service members and contacts had welcomed the opportunity to repay a favour for all that he’d done for them, including past members of the Stargate Program or those who served with him pre-SCG in Special Forces. Thus, with Ziva searching for Tali and Tony, Homeworld command was able to identify previously unidentified employees of the Trust. Their plan to flush them out was working fine.
~o0o~
Colin Chaos Mason was kicking back in his apartment watching a countdown of the best-ever episodes across the Star Trek franchise, drinking Cherry Crush Soda, and eating popcorn. He used to drink Squeeze Cherry Soda, but… well Cherry Crush was better, much better. With a glass of it in his hand, he was savouring his solitude when he received an encrypted message from Alec Hardison.
Hardison wanted to know if he was interested in a job, but he was just coming off a month-long job. A heist of art, stolen by the Nazis during WWII before the Russians had stolen it from them in the dying days of the war. A rich and far from reputable art collector had hired Mason to put together a crew and lift the twenty works of art out from under the nose of the famed Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Things had gotten exceptionally hairy for the team and Colin and half of his crew had been arrested while the rest of the team had managed to get clear with half of the paintings and sculpture, including an early Rodin. Chaos had been forced to bribe several Russians in the government to get him and the remainder of his crew out of the damned country.
He’d ended up barely breaking even on the job after the bribes he’d incurred and not just to get the crew out of jail and Russia, but he’d also incurred a penalty per his contract with the client for only managing to hoist half of the collection. Now he was essentially out of pocket and out of sorts and just wanted to chill in front of his massive screen home movie theatre and watch his favourite Sci-Fi shows.
So, he sent back an encrypted reply but added another layer of encryption to piss off Hardison, saying, ‘Sorry, other plans.’
Quick as lightning Hardison replied, adding an additional layer of encryption on top of Chaos’. He opened the reply with a surprised emoji. ‘Funny! Heard you had liquidity issues, thought I’d sling ya some work as a fav. Was looking forward to working with yours truly and the Kobayashi Maru. My bad! Oh well, I’m sure I won’t have any trouble recruiting a hacker to work for the MOABAH. CU L8R!’
And he’d added one more encryption level to his message before going dark.
Damn it, Hardison had heard about the Russian job and now Mason would never hear the end of it. Annoyingly, Alec wasn’t responding when he tried to ask what the fuck MOABAH was.
That infuriatingly smug bastard ignored him for almost ten hours before finally responding with a casual message saying, ‘Oh MOABAH stood for mother of all bad-ass hackers.’ Mason could only think of one person who would fit that description. The Black Queen who legend had it, suddenly went dark more than 15 years ago. Conventional wisdom was that she’d been neutralised by the feds and buried in some shit hole somewhere. Colin reckoned she’d probably just retired to have babies.
The only other female hacker that Chaos could think of that might fit the MOABAH descriptor had been given the nom de guerre The Dirty Dozen by a bunch of badass assassins on the dark web, pissed off to be under investigation by a Fed hacker whose process involved 12 botnets to cover her investigations while she was investigating them. Their testament to this hacker’s next-level skills made her a worthy adversary.
If either of these hackers was Hardison’s MOABAHs then Colin really wanted to meet them or at least work with them. He urgently tried to reach out to Hardison to tell him Chaos wanted in, but the fucker had gone dark, and Mason was beside himself!
Notes:
Yutzi ~Yiddish for stupid
Shmendrik ~ Yiddish for jerk
Chapter 2
The head of Homeworld Command was in his office in DC, having arrived back to Earth last night to prepare for a briefing with the JCS later today. General O’Neill was expected at the White House by the POTUS to deliver a SitRep on the progress Homeworld and their allies were making on the War on Happy Zombies. WOHZ was their mammoth project to manufacture enough doses of vaccines to render the mind control compound MCD –238β harmless. The drug had first been discovered during a foothold situation on Atlantis 6 years ago. Unfortunately, the foothold situation hadn’t been shared with all of the members of the IOA or Homeworld because Ambassador Shen covered up the entire incident, aided and abetted by the first CO of Atlantis, Dr Elizabeth Weir. General O’Neill had no real evidence as to what motivated Weir to cover up the situation, although he reckoned that the psychological profile Alex Paddington had developed was probably reasonably close to the truth.
But to understand the politics of the appointment of Dr Weir to the post it was necessary to go back to the inauguration of the then-newly elected POTUS Henry Hayes. After being read in by the Pentagon, he’d initially thought it was some sort of joke. Once assured that it was true, he’d been pressured by the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Francis Maynard, the then NID agent, Richard Woolsey and last but definitely not least, his Vice President Robert Kinsey, to demilitarise the SGC. He’d agreed, removing General Hammond, and replacing him with a more friendly civilian face, one who he felt would make the inevitable declassification of the program more palatable to the general public. Initially, Kinsey (that rat bastard) who’d been a constant thorn in the SGC’s side for years and was a personal nemesis of Jack’s ever since he’d first learnt about the program as a congressional senator who’d done his best to have them shut down. Kinsey assumed that finally as the VP, he would be able to gain control of SGC. Sadly, his attempt to subvert Elisabeth Weir came to naught when Richard Woolsey uncovered his corrupt dealings and financial shenanigans, prompting President Hayes to demand Kinsey’s resignation during the horrific attack on Earth by Anubis.
The partially Ascended Goa’uld had been a huge wake-up call to the newly elected POTUS on the threat that the Earth faced and he came to realise that having a civilian in charge of the SCG was not such a brilliant idea after all. Anubis attacked his fellow Goa’ulds, annihilating an entire fleet of mother ships belonging to the Goa’uld System Lords using the Eye of Ra, a weapon he learnt of during his time as an Ascended being before the Ancients tried to Descend him when they realised the threat he posed. It was a process that was only partially successful and unfortunately, it still left him with all of the terrifying knowledge of the Ancients that the Descended usually wiped from their memories after exiling others. When Anubis attacked the Earth, he sent a holograph of himself into the Oval Office to threaten Hayes, ordering the POTUS to surrender, but Jack had to give Hayes his due. Despite being newly elected and only recently briefed on the Goa’ulds, he stood his ground, ordering the woefully under-matched SGC to fight back.
Fortunately, Jack was able to access the drone chair down in the Antarctic, firing off the Ancients’ weapons and destroying Anubis in the process, or so they all believed. Regrettably, it seemed that while they had killed his part-Descended physical body, they did not eradicate his life force aka his energy. This turned out to be one giant pain in the ass, as Anubis went all Thomas Riddle aka Lord Voldemort after he failed to kill the popular fictional character Harry Potter and spent the rest of the six books acting like a demented body snatcher steeling other peoples’ bodies before he came up with a way of creating one of his own.
Meanwhile, Anubis, the freakily dangerous and evilly vindictive asswipe that he was, using the weapon known as the Eye of Ra, had already destroyed the entire planet of Abydos, because the people of Abydos had tried to prevent him from gaining access to the weapon. Fortuitously, an Ascended being had managed to help every last Abydonian to Ascend seconds before their home planet ceased to exist. Jack wondered if the Ascended being formerly known as Daniel Jackson was responsible for that casual act of higher powers, but he’d been summarily kicked off the list of the Ascended beings, leaving him on some distant planet, buck naked and not knowing who he was or how he got there. The simple folk on Vis Uban who found him deposited there had ended up naming him Arrom, which they informed SG1 meant naked one.
Anyway, the upshot was that they ended up running into Anubis far too many times over the next few years for comfort. It was Oma Desala who finally put her hand up, admitting she had helped Anubis to Ascend before the Ancients tried to Descend him because of the knowledge and power he possessed and wasn’t shy about using for his own evil ends. Jack reckoned it was kind of a no-brainer with anyone who had a passing knowledge of the megalomaniac Goa’ulds who considered themselves to be Gods. Allowing them to Ascend was analogic to letting Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs loose on a stranded cruise ship – sort of all you can eat buffet! Oma finally realised there was no other option sacrificed herself, locking Anubis in an eternal battle that would save untold lives.
Anyway, after Hayes served two terms as POTUS, the newest President, Isiah Walsh, the first person of colour to hold the office of President was elected and had some not-so-complimentary things to say about his predecessor and dropping the ball on how critical the SGC and Homeworld Command were to the National Security of the country, indeed the planet. POTUS was particularly concerned about the Trust – the internecine and seemingly impossible-to-destroy shadow organisation. Its members consisted of a hotch-potch of outwardly wildly disparate groups who had radically different agendas, yet apparently were willing to work together for their common good which translated into very bad for everyone else. The Trust was a truly odd mix of rogue intelligence operatives, foreign and domestic renegade elements of the military, dishonest criminal masterminds and obscenely rich and highly unscrupulous financiers and CEOs of Multinational Conglomerates, all of them narcissistic enough to want to rule not just the Earth but certainly craven enough to aspire to be oligarchs of the entire universe.
Jack could certainly see where the new President was coming from. The Trust was like a cockroach, nigh near impossible to kill. Sighing, he got stuck into his report for the meeting with President Walsh. The good news was that a lot of progress had been made since their last update. Following the Tribunals in which the Allies of Earth had been appointed to hear the cases against Porteus Kolya, Deuter Maden and Lucius Lavin, a great deal of progress had been made in the production of the MCD –238β vaccine. Initially, Jack had picked Jonas Quinn of Langara, Kalan from Orban and Ishta from the Free Jaffa States because he was downright paranoid about any intel regarding Lavin’s mind control plant getting into the wrong hands.
Right now, he wanted Ambassador Shen of the IOA to believe that Homeworld Command remained totally clueless about her desire to get hold of it and use it to control the people of Earth in the short term and to conquer the rest of the universe in the longer term. He knew all three allies personally and that they would completely understand the need for discretion. What he hadn’t anticipated was that for the Venerabiles Sodales who were hearing the trials and witnessing through the eyes of the victims, just how devastating the effects could be on a micro level and were all leaders amongst their own people. They’d quailed at the thought of what MCD –238β could do in the wrong hands which was to be expected, everyone having so recently survived the bruising war with the Goa’ulds. Then when they had finally been defeated. suddenly the Milky Way was facing the very real threat of annihilation or surrender to the Ori and Jonas, Kalan and Ishta were keen to help pre-empt the terrifying threat the drug posed.
Kalen had proposed sending an Urrone to study the process of manufacturing vaccines so they could supply nanites to the other Orbanians and would be able to swing into a massed manufacturing program to produce large quantities of vaccine. While Jack was still not comfortable with the technique of using children and then sacrificing them for the rest of the Orbanians to learn new technology, he was reconciled that this was the way the Orbans had evolved. At least now he knew that the Urrones weren’t just viewed as perennial babies, incapable of learning anything for the rest of their lives. Tomin and Merrin were wonderful examples of what could be achieved by good old fashion didactic learning.
Jonas, who had demonstrated time and again what a quick study he was (and by extension, the rest of his people) was also eager to learn as much as possible about the chemical compound and how to produce the vaccine. Both civilisations were advanced enough for Homeworld command to be able to provide them with the basics to get started. With three planets cooperating, they could easily triple their output of the vaccine and help come up with ways to mass administer it rather than giving single vaccinations which was where they were at currently. It was also difficult with the Trust, military and IOA spies being sent to Atlantis for Homeworld to dramatically ramp up production for the rest of the universe with huge increases in personnel without raising suspicions. To have Langara and Orban making their own vaccine – would not be noticed by their pesky spies reporting back to Earth.
Meanwhile, Ishta, Bra’tac and Teal’c had pledged to help the T’auri to distribute the vaccine to other planets and provide extra personnel to assist in guarding the manufacturing facility and help search for other planets where the plants might grow. Jack certainly welcomed the extra assistance. While some people felt his all-out assumption that Ambassador Shen’s faction had as a long-term goal of the subjugation of other planets aside from Earth was nothing more than paranoia, Jack had long ago learnt never to underestimate your enemy. He’d also seen how power, or the lure of future world domination could so easily corrupt the seemingly sanest of humans. Besides, as he’d told the President, if the worst should happen and the majority of the Earth’s population should fall under the thrall of MCD –238β before they could complete the vaccination program, Orban and Langara would be in a position to save their butts. It made good sense to share their research, technology, and production with their allies.
Now, exactly two months after the conclusion of the trials, which had included the appeal by the Winyan females found guilty of adultery and a slew of other sexual morality charges which had seen them sentenced to death by stoning, and thankfully overturned by the Tribunal, Jack had just returned from a tour of Orban and New Langara. Honestly, he was pretty damned impressed by the progress they’d made in such a short time. Orban had already managed to vaccinate their entire population and even though their inhabitants were small in number, by Earth’s eight billion residents’ standards, it was still a great feat. Plus, from this point on, every vaccine they produced on Orban could be directed to other populations, reducing the strain on Carolyn Lam’s Atlantis group because it could focus for the immediate future on producing enough vaccine to be able to inoculate Earth’s entire population. Once they hit the magic 8 billion, they would start assisting Orban and Langara in producing enough for the rest of the Milky Way galaxy.
As he emphasized these stunning achievements in his written report to the President, his second in charge, Lt Col Paul Davis knocked and hurried into his office. Since Paul was an absolute stickler for protocol, not waiting to be invited to enter Jack’s office was monumental. It meant that there was a massive problem and he hoped it was not Ambassador Shen and the MCD –238β drug. They just weren’t ready for it yet.
“General O’Neill, we have an emergency at Area 51. Brig Gen Isaac Goldstein is most insistent for you to go there asap.”
“Did he say why?”
“There is a group of children and adults who appeared out of thin air, demanding to see Dr Carter or Jack O’Neill.”
Jack groaned. “Oh no, I thought we’d destroyed the damned mirror to stop people dropping in from alternate realities,” he growled.
Paul frowned. “We did. I was there when General Hammond did it ”
“Well, maybe the mirror was a fake. The IOA and the NID are not above pulling a switch. Did you say, women? It isn’t another Carter Alternate is it?”
“No, she says she is from Naval Criminal Services, Special Agent in Charge DiNozzo and it’s urgent she speaks to someone in authority immediately.”
Sighing, he saved his report and shut down his computer. “When can we beam me to Area 51? And do we know if this Agent DiNozzo is related to our one? Is Anthony DiNozzo a female in an alternate reality,” he wondered aloud.
“The Zephyrus is currently in orbit and will beam you up on your command. As to Special Agent DiNozzo, it’s not a feminine version of Anthony DiNozzo. She says she’s his wife and she’s brought their two children with her.”
“Please tell me her first name isn’t Ziva?” he begged his 2IC. That would complicate things beyond belief.
Paul gave him a tight smile. “No General. Her name is Paula and she’s a blonde with blue eyes..”
“Oh, thank goodness for small mercies,” Jack griped in exasperation. “Hang on, why was she specifically looking for me? You said she was wanting to talk to someone in authority, so her request to see me was a separate matter.”
Paul Davis, who was normally the essence of unflustered even in the direst of circumstances looked momentarily panicked. “Perhaps it would be better to wait until we get there, General,” he temporised.
Jack who could be pretty laid back for a three-star general knew that there was going to be something explosive, and he had no intention of waiting until he reached Area 51 to find out what the devil it was. He scowled at his subordinate, “That was not a suggestion, Colonel.
Davis grimaced. “Yes Sir. Agent DiNozzo requested your presence asap because she has your granddaughter Sarah Lauren O’Neill with her, along with her son and daughter. Sarah’s father, Major Charlie O’Neill requested that Agent DiNozzo bring Sarah to safety and be delivered into your custody, General. He wants you to bring her up.”
~o0o~
Two Ascended beings stared out at the black infinity of space, knowing that there were eight Asurans including Elizabeth Weir, floating around somewhere nearby, frozen and inert but still very much capable of being reanimated should any carbon-based lifeforms be unfortunate enough to stumble upon them. The Ascended male formerly known as Vetus and the Ascended female previously known as Melia recognised that this was a wholly unsatisfactory means of dealing with the extremely dangerous last vestiges of the Asurans. And if anyone was qualified to make such an assessment it was the Ascended Ancients since they were the ones who’d come up with the brilliant idea to create the nanite-based lifeforms in their foolish attempt to destroy the Wraith.
Unfortunately, their attempt had spectacularly backfired on the Ancients, and they were left with a lifeform they created in their own image, who instead of going to attack the Wraith, was intent on replicating using the sophisticated nanite technology that made them almost indestructible. They wanted to be the offspring of the Ancients and inherit their legacy but when the Ancients looked at them and realised that for all they were a remarkable feat of scientific and engineering endeavour, the Asurans were a tawdry failure in achieving what they set out to create. That was when they tried to deactivate them. Unfortunately, the Asurans had other ideas, wanting to replicate and take over the galaxy being uppermost on their agenda, including attacking and assimilating the race that they viewed as their creators. And the Asurans weren’t exactly easy to kill so the Ancients decided to do the only thing that was open to them and rewrite parts of the digitally based life forces code to not harm Ancients. They also ensured that the Asurans’ dreams of empire-building and taking over the Pegasus galaxy, would remain a distant and fond dream, just as their other fervent hope – Ascension would remain purely theoretical.
Frankly, Vetus wasn’t convinced that it was even possible for the Asurans to Ascend. There was a lot more to the process than simply releasing one’s burdens as the Asuran/human Elizabeth Weir seemed to believe. She had such a simplistic view of a complex process. But unfortunately, her own obsession with Ascension had apparently fuelled the small group of rebel Asurans’ desire to Ascend exponentially, feeding their unquenchable desire to join the Ancients on a higher plane of existence. As such they were beyond reasoning, just like when they’d invaded Atlantis to try to regain corporeality, after impulsively and foolishly destroying their previous bodies, thinking that was all that was required to let them Ascend.
The former Vetus believed that if unfrozen, they would stop at nothing to achieve their ends. The terrible travesty was that if Vetus was correct, they were simply incapable of attaining Ascension, but they posed an ongoing existential threat to anyone they came into contact with, since none of them would accept the truth.
This gave the Ascended one many disquieting times since the humans from Earth had decided to leave them floating around in space, like weapons that were temporarily made inert but could easily be reactivated. Although they had moved on from the Pegasus galaxy a long time ago, it didn’t mean that the Ascended One, who in his previous life was known as Vetus did regret the way they’d run away from their burdens, particularly the two that they’d deliberated created – the Wraith and the Asurans.
The Ascended One, who was in her past life known as Melia had remained silent as her companion pondered but feeling like he was done, she spoke. “They are still here.”
“Yes they are, but for how long. Anyone who stumbles across them will in all likelihood rescue them and we know how dangerous they will be. It will be even less likely that they will permit themselves to be entrapped a second time and they will be even more dangerous than they were.”
“I agree. But what can we do? We are not permitted to interfere with the affairs of the carbon-based life forms on the physical plane. You yourself helped write our immutable laws. We have no intention of turning into what our brethren became in their interfering in the worlds that they left behind when they Ascended. It is out of our hands,” she told him firmly.
“And what of those who Ascended who released their burdens but had no right to do so before fixing what they had broken? What then? Should our laws remain immutable and thus reward their reprehensible behaviour?
The Ascended being’s diaphanous ribbons of energy glowed brightly as she considered her companion’s question momentarily. As the one who used to answer to Melia before she released her burdens (including her previous identity in her corporeal life) to Ascend to the higher plane of existence in search of further enlightenment, she felt sorrow for the one who’d been previously known as Vetus.
“Our laws were not created for the benefit of the Ascended, as you well know. Their purpose is to protect us from interfering in the business of corporeal beings lest we become like the Ori and want to subjugate the physical plane for our amusement. If some Ascended have been rewarded for their bad choices and action prior to Ascension that is unfortunate, but it is hardly reason enough to interfere on the physical plain of existence, surely?”
Her friend was silent, his ribbons of energy looked murky, not the pure white energy that he normally exuded and the former Ancient known as Melia felt sorrow for her companion. It was a sign that he was deeply troubled, and she hoped he didn’t do anything foolish that he might later have cause to regret.
“Come, my friend, let us return to the higher plane of existence,” she urged him worriedly. “There is nothing more we can do here. We have checked and the Asurans are still here, deactivated. They may be so for a very long time. This corner of the galaxy is very sparsely populated and none of the inhabitants has access to spaceships, she comforted the Ascended being previously known as Vetus. “We must hope for the best.”
Reluctantly he followed her back to their own plane of existence, not at all mollified by her words which had been uttered to quell his concerns. Ever since Atlantis had begged for their help to create a virtual reality prison in which to house a heinous sociopath which would keep him alive for eternity, it had started Vetus thinking about how much they had washed their hands of their responsibilities when they ran away from the Pegasus galaxy before finally figuring out the last steps and Ascending. Still, he could ponder what to do just as easily back in the higher plane as he could do here. Perhaps even better.
The Ascended being had the germ of an idea but it would bear further meditating upon it before he was ready to enact the plan.
~o0o~
Rodney came bolting into Dr Aoife O’Shea’s office looking positively green. Pushing the rubbish bin at the scientist she sat and waited until he managed to gain control over his stomach content. Shaking her head in disgust she thought, if she hadn’t offered him her trash can as the Yanks liked to call a rubbish bin, then Rodney would have proceeded to puke up his guts all over her office. Maybe even all over herself. “Murphy’s law,” she grumbled under her breath.
Not quietly enough it would seem. McKay heard her.
“Murphy’s law is whatever can go wrong will go wrong,” he told her waspishly. “Kinda sums up my life right now,” he whined. But you know that Murphy’s Law isn’t just an old wives tale, it actually has a natural phenomenon in thermodynamics known as entropy which states that systems tend to fall into disorder and disarray.
He forgot all about entropy – glaring fiercely at Aoife. “But enough about that. You have to help me. Tell me what to say. John wants to talk!”
She just stared at him. “I’m sorry, what are you blathering on about, Rodney. I thought you and John spoke every day – multiple times a day.”
“Well, yes…yes we do…but that is talking. John wants to…you know…TALK! And I don’t know what to tell him to make him stop it. You have to make him stop!”
“Rodney you aren’t making any sense.”
“I often don’t make any sense to people of normal intelligence but in this matter, it is perfectly simple. Even you should be able to comprehend what I said,” he told her snippily. “After all, all you do all day is talk, so I don’t think that you should be calling me out for blathering on, Dr O’Shea. And I use the term doctor out of politeness since you know my opinion on psychology.
“Yes, that we are a bunch of witch doctors,” she said dryly.
“Exactly,” he said smugly. “Now tell me what to say to John so he won’t be mad at me anymore,” he said in a whiny tone.
“What is John pissed at you for? What have you done?”
“Done? I’ve done nothing. Someone’s been getting inside his head about the stupid joke of ours regarding his Kirking around the Pegasus galaxy. They’ve been telling him that it was my fault he was kidnapped.” He stopped and considered her carefully. “It wasn’t YOU was it. You haven’t got into his head and made him all messed up. He was fine before that but suddenly he’s all like, ‘Why would you do that to me, Rodney. I thought we were friends,’ acting like a complete girl about it. IT WAS A JOKE!” he yelled at her.
He stood up and began to pace, muttering to himself histrionically as he gave her the hairy eyeball.
She left him to rant and when he finally wound down from his diatribe about her stabbing him in the back, she pounced, “You don’t think you’re overreacting just a tad, Rodney? Maybe John having to relive some truly shitty experiences during the four trials might have stirred up a lot of things he’s been repressing. He wasn’t ready to face some difficult topics before but maybe he needs answers to help him process his abduction.”
And that left him gaping like a fish, unable to craft a reply.
Deciding to take advantage of a rare tactical breach to his defences she followed up with, “To be honest, I’m not surprised he’s confronted you about the matter. I’m more surprised that it took him so bloody long. If I’d been abducted because someone believed all the tosh one of my good friends had been sprouting about me for eight fecking years, I’d be keen as mustard to know why my friend kept flogging a dead horse and wouldn’t let it rest.”
“So are you saying that you have been putting thoughts inside his head, then,” he demanded of her furiously.”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying I’m not going to tell you what John and I discuss in our counselling sessions, just as I afford you the same privilege of confidentiality,” she told him firmly. “I won’t tell John what you and I discuss when we have counselling,” she explained to the supposedly most brilliant individual in the Pegasus, Ida, and Milky Way galaxies.
“Tell me this, did you never stop to think that for eight years of you essentially calling Col Sheppard a man-slut who would go after any female in with a pulse, that there might be some people who’d think that one of his teammates who knows him so well might be telling the truth?”
“But I was joking,” he argued.
“I know you believe that, but it isn’t really the issue, is it. How are other people supposed to know that Rodney? You’re always ranting and raving about something. Are you joking about the idiots in the when they blow something up accidentally and you have to fix it?”
“Are you stupid? Of course, I’m not joking,” he snorted irately.
“So how are people supposed to tell the difference, especially people who don’t know you all that well. What about people who are pathologically jealous and suspect their partner of cheating on them. When they hear you saying that John beds every attractive female in the galaxy is it such a surprise that the jealous violent partner believes you and thinks that Col Sheppard is cheating with his girlfriend and decides to make him pay”
“But I was JOKING!”
“Sometimes people say things they really think but hide behind the excuse that they were just joking. Eight years is a fecking long time to be flogging the same tired old joke around, Rodney.”
“OH, MY GOD! You are trying to say that I’m passive-aggressive! I can’t believe it. When someone pisses me off I yell. I tell them how monumentally incalculably massively stupid they are. I don’t try to hide my feelings.”
Aoife privately begged to differ on that score. Rodney used his rants to avoid having to confront people face to face, as most reasonable and mature individuals chose to handle conflicts or situations that occurred, at least in the average work situation. The circumstances were somewhat different in Atlantis in her opinion because of the toxic work environment that occurred due to McKay being a passive aggressor. Most of the scientific community tippy-toed around, feeling like they were walking on eggs shells, wanting to avoid setting off one of his epic screaming episodes. The irony is that they then acted impetuously, hastily or failed to consider ramifications that a more collaborative and collegial approach might have avoided in the first place.
Plus, Rodney’s constant bragging about himself and his achievements while downplaying his team members’ abilities and contributions tended to fester (or foster if you wanted to be polite) a super competitive cut-throat and resentful workplace. Little wonder why there were so many incidents of people going off half-cocked in the pressure cooker environment Rodney engendered. However, that was definitely a topic of conversation for another day. ‘Baby steps, O’Shea,’ she reminded herself patiently.
“Not when it comes to dealing with your responsibilities to minions perhaps, particularly when you don’t give a fly feck about what they think of you. However, you do care when it comes to interpersonal relationships which people who you care about, or at the very least, you care about what they think about you. In those situations, you generally resort to sarcasm, denial, and withdrawal of your attention,. Or you use silence, pouting, making barbed remarks and when challenged, you will walk them back as joking, to avoid having to engage in a confrontation.”
From McKay’s lack of protest, Aoife knew she’d landed a blow but given enough time, the obstreperous CSO would be sure to come back with a rebuttal, so she decided to go a little further. “You did those things to your sister Jeannie when she agreed to come to a joint counselling session with you because she cares about you. During and after the session.”
“No, I didn’t,” he denied immediately. Seeing she didn’t call him, merely sent him a sardonic look, quirking one of her immaculately groomed eyebrows, he backpedalled.
“Look, that’s just how I’ve always treated Jeannie. She knows I care about her.”
“She cares about you too, a great deal. She travelled to another galaxy to see you when you were dying, from the mission reports I’ve read. She stood up for you against your girlfriend who was the CMO and therefore should have recused herself from treating you by-the-by, and it was because of Jeannie’s strength of character taking a hard decision that you got a shot at survival. You owe her a lot but I’m not sure I’d have fought like that in her shoes, Rodney. Frankly, if my brother treated me like you do, I’d kick him in the nads.”
“She’s used to me, it’s just my way. I don’t mean anything by it. Jeannie knows I love her, really.”
“Yes she probably does, but just because you’ve always done it, it doesn’t mean it’s an effective or even nice way to treat another person. What is one of your biggest pet hates.” Seeing where his mind immediately went, she cut him off. “Excluding your suspension as CSO or your exclusion from the Homeworld Command secret project taking place somewhere in Pegasus. What is your chief peeve? Come on, don’t think about it, just respond”
“FINE!” Rodney shouted at her. “Everyone takes me for granted but they don’t acknowledge how brilliant I am,” he seethed.
“And… C’mon… I know there’s something more that you just self-censured. What did you NOT say, Dr McKay?”
“People hurt my feelings when they make jokes about me,” he practically screeched at her before he collapsed, panting furiously. Divining that he was on the verge of a panic attack at having admitted to something which he spent an entire lifetime trying to avoid confronting, Aoife began to speak in a softly lilting tone, her Irish brogue almost as effective as a baby’s dummy for a fractious infant.
“Rodney, you probably haven’t ever considered this, but that is an almost universal experience to feel undervalued by friends, family, workmates, and even the world sometimes. The caveat is if the individual is totally selfless and pathologically forgiving, or else they are masochists who endue abuse willingly. I guess one could include those people who have decided to live a hermitical lifestyle The rest of us have our feelings hurt on occasion when people joke at our expense. Some people deal with those emotions by confronting the situation head-on and explaining its impact. Telling the person how their joke has impacted on them may not solve the situation because interpersonal relationships are complicated, but it does give both sides an opportunity at resolving the situation.”
O’Shea paused. “Let’s put that into terms that might make it more relatable to you. “Say Dr Zelenka was trying to figure out why a piece of Ancient technology isn’t working, and you can see it is because there’s a minuscule fault in the crystal that has rendered it useless, but he hasn’t noticed. Do you decide to hint about it, or make a joke about how he might have dropped the crystal, hoping he’ll understand what you are trying to tell him in a round-about way, just so you don’t have to confront him and maybe make him mad at you or embarrass him and make him feel bad?”
She could see him calming down as he listened to her, but she didn’t wait for him to respond, merely continued on with her monologue. “Of course, you wouldn’t because he might not understand your hints, or he might find your jokes hurtful and lose sight of the goal of trying to fix the piece of tech. No, the only logical approach is to be straight up with him and tell him what you think or observe to be the problem.”
Again, Aoife paused just long enough to see he was still listening before she smiled. “Will it fix the problem? Maybe, maybe not. Dr Zelenka might disagree with your opinion and disregard it and you can’t force him to agree with you. Even if you can order him to obey, he can still privately disagree,” she pointed out logically.
“He might replace the crystal and discover that the tech still doesn’t work because the crystal wasn’t defective, it was something else that was preventing the tech from functioning, but it still wasn’t a bad outcome. In diagnosing what a problem is, sometimes you need to rule out what isn’t causing the problem until you are only left with a single variable that is.”
“That would never happen to me,” McKay objected. “I’m never wrong.”
Aoife gave him the evil eye. “No one is infallible, Dr McKay. No one.” When he went to deny her statement she said, “Two examples, “Ordering Capt. Cadman to not search the system command logs when she discovered deletion points when Atlantis was almost blown up by a Goa’uld saboteur. You told her you knew more about deletion points than a tap-dancing explosives expert. Good feckin job she didn’t listen to you or take your insults to heart since she found the real saboteur barely in time to save the city.”
Seeing his look of hurt, she steeled herself because she needed to make a point to smash through his intractability and arrogance. “Then there was your refusal to listen to your 2IC when Zelenka warned you about the Ancient’s abandoned space weapon Project Arcturus on Doranda. Dr Collins’ death was an extremely tragic accident but failing to learn from his death and destroying a solar system, plus almost losing your life and Col Sheppard’s is I’d say, a pretty good example that you like everyone else is far from infallible. Also, I’m willing to lay odds that they are the only times you’ve been wrong!
Watching him slump in on himself, she told him gently, “I realise these are extremely painful examples of you messing up and I understand why you want to pretend like they never happened, but Rodney, you have to understand this. If you brag about never being wrong, you really can’t complain about getting your feelings hurt when people push back on your demonstrably incorrect claims that you don’t ever make a mistake.”
Shaking her head at his hubris she told him, “The only people who don’t make mistakes are dead people or people in a state of catatonia or coma. But let’s return to our imaginary example, confronting Dr Zelenka about the crystal may not achieve your objective but the direct approach is by far the most likely method to be a success.”
Rodney who had recovered some of his swagger, shrugged. “Obviously, it’s common sense though I can’t see how it pertains to me.”
“Really?” Aoife asked incredulously. “Yet you claim to be the smartest person in three galaxies, Einstein,” she said dryly.
“Einstein! Oh please! I’m way smarter than he was!” he boasted
“I was trying to highlight how avoiding confronting situations is not a terribly effective approach to a problem using analogical reasoning.
Aoife looked at her watch and said, ”Our time is nearly up,” knowing that it would take the last ten minutes to ease him out the door of her office.
“Okay your homework – I want you to ponder on what we have talked about for our next session and to consider this so we can begin again where we left off,” she said.
“WAIT! You haven’t told me what to say to Sheppard.”
“Rodney, I can’t tell you what to say. What do you want to say?”
“That it was just a joke but he’s not gonna accept that. I can tell.”
“Then tell him the truth!”
“I don’t know why, alright? You have to tell me why I did it. That’s your job.”
“No, Rodney, it isn’t. My job is to help you figure out why you did it,” O’Shea told him firmly and emphatically.
“So, what will I say to him?” Rodney paced the room, throwing his hands up in the air in his typically histrionic fashion.
Tell him you don’t know why but that you value his friendship enough to try to figure it out with my help. I think that Colonel Sheppard will accept that, at least for now if he realises that you do mean it.”
Chapter 3
Tony was still feeling pleasantly tired after his nap, trying to catch up on lost sleep from last night’s mission. Although he managed a few hours catch up, he knew that he’d still be able to sleep tonight, and not wreck his sleep cycle. Which was a good thing. The last thing he needed was for all his female friends and colleagues to decide there was something serious he was hiding from them, like when he decided to drop some weight and disguise himself when the JAGs came to Atlantis. He knew they all meant well but after a lifetime of looking after himself, he hadn’t known how to deal with their concern about him.
This had been a busy week for him, culminating with the departure of the Apollo on a routine supply run, heading back to Earth to pick up more supplies and then it would return in approximately six weeks tops. Their schedule, unless there were any unforeseen crises on the horizon was usually ten days on Atlantis three weeks back home and another ten days on stand-down while engineers carried out maintenance and repairs and loaded up supplies. And just as Zephyrus’ return would herald a raft of arrivals of new civilian and military personnel – oftentimes with returning personnel who’d signed up for another tour of duty in the city of several thousand, departures also occurred with people heading home. Sometimes it was on leave, sometimes it was permanent but people on Atlantis had been conditioned to expect a steady inflow of new or returning civilians and military. Just as the residents of Atlantis were equally accustomed to the inevitable outflow of personnel headed back to Earth.
Tony, Fornell, and the head of Base Security, the newly minted Major Cadman had used the general chaos of the routine departure of the Apollo back to Earth with its outbound exodus of people as cover for rounding up and detaining five civilians and nine military personnel from various countries suspected of spying either for the Trust or various factions in the AOA. They’d arrested them late in the evening the night before Zephyrus’ departure and commandeer several puddle jumpers to fly them covertly to Belara where they could be interrogated, Then a decision would be made about what to do with them, options being turning them and using them to feedback misinformation or even disinformation or try them under secret military trials as spies. A decision that was above Tony’s pay grade although he could make recommendations.
Although they had arrested them last night, they had been under surveillance for weeks now. If anyone enquired too closely into the disappearance of the spies, it could be claimed that said individuals returned to Earth on the Zephyrus. Indeed, half a dozen had been scheduled to ship out in a few hours anyway. And having returned from Belara, Tony, Tobias and Cadman had finished up early enough to grab a few hours of sleep to make up for their mostly sleepless night rounding up spies. He knew that Tali was hosting the Friday family movie night which these days usually took place in the recreation area with the huge TV screen, but she had wanted to have a sleepover with Kazumi, Madison and Ara Heke, a young Athosian child whose family had come to stay on Atlantis last month after her mother had been recruited to work with Anne Teldy’s team as a guide.
More and more, field teams were adding Athosian guides to their team as permanent team members, particularly now Atlantis had a family-friendly wing for accommodating families. It was a far cry from those early days when the Athosians had sought refuge in the city after the expeditionary force first occupied the Ancients’ city, left abandoned for ten thousand years. Fortunately, there was nothing creepy or dangerous in the area designated as being for Atlantis personnel and their families. While they were mostly families, a few single people also lived in the family quarters: Cassie Fraiser, Umwali Nkusi and Nikki Bates lived there too, but Nikki didn’t count as far as Tony was concerned. At seven months into her pregnancy, she would soon qualify officially when her daughter Erica Leigh made her way into the world.
And Monique and Felix Girard were back in the family wing, albeit in a new apartment that had an extra bedroom, bathroom and small sitting room that was actually overall, larger than most of the single resident’s quarters for scientists and military. Dr Ilsa Meier and her deceased lover Dr Sofie Danziger had a longstanding friendship with Monique and Ilsa had joined Monique and Felix in the family wing to help out her friend. Ilsa had initially offered her a place to stay when Monique was finally deemed safe to release from the infirmary after she attempted suicide. When Monique decided she wanted to try to rebuild her relationship with her son, conceived as the result of Lucius Lavin’s rapes, Ilsa offered to move in too, to help support them both.
Atlantis had created their apartment specifically for their unique situation; while Ilsa was bisexual, Monique was straight and their relationship was purely platonic. It had partly developed as a result of the three women Ilsa, Sofie and Monique) working together and also being former neighbours during the Lavin Foothold situation. But after Felix had been born, Monique’s quarters were relocated near Teyla Emmagan and Kanaan, and Miko and Radek had moved in as well with baby Kazumi. This was right about the time that Monique had started closing herself off from social contact with others, earning her the nickname the Ice Queen, until Alex Paddington had moved in with his daughter Belle, changing everything. Including bringing to light what had taken place while Lavin occupied the city and shattering her hard-won control. Now, she and Ilsa had been drawn back together by the mutual grief that they shared over Lavin being the catalyst for Sofie’s murder. Since there was still a real fear that Ilsa could be a target for what she knew – it seemed an elegant solution for both women for Meier to move in with Monique. At least temporarily while she tried to make a go of being a mother to Felix again, although she had told Tony that she wanted to be a much better one than she was before her breakdown.
Having Ilsa around offering support, even if it was spending time with Felix when Monique found herself overwhelmed, was definitely a huge help, as was the fact that Colonel Sheppard was extremely supportive of her intentions too. After the Foothold Trial, as most people referred to it, unaware that the foothold situation had only been a part of Lucius Lavin’s second trial, John Sheppard had been a rock in his own laconic and emotionally awkward way. Not only did he have her back, but he had somewhat diffidently asked her if it would be alright to spend one-on-one time with Felix. He wanted to be a positive male role model for the young boy, who was having difficulty in dealing with yet another change in his young life.
At this point in time, Felix and Torren would remain ignorant of their biological father and how they were created. At some stage when they were more emotionally ready to understand their conception, Teyla and Monique had promised each other they would sit them both down and explain but not yet. They had also resolved to let Torren and Felix spend time with their other half-siblings who were all now living in New Athos, having acquired a surrogate grandfather in Yas Yeeps who was more than happy to extend that surrogacy to Torren and Felix too. So, Monique had confided in Alex, who was also being a strong support for her, that John’s offer had seemed like a godsend. And yes, she knew that Alex, Kanaan and even Radek who was away a lot on Balara, combing the mountain complex and the other Ancient cities for technology, did their best to be there for her son and she appreciated it.
Yet as she explained to Tony, Felix viewed John as belonging to him and it made him feel special to have a guy of his own. And Tony had nodded, telling her he got it, that it was the same with Belle, who didn’t have a mother. Monique, Teyla and Miko were incredibly kind and loving to her and he could never thank them for the love they gave her, but they were still her friends’ mothers. Laura, Amelia, Vala and Aoife had all rallied around her, mothering her too and all became her aunties and went some way to filling the void of not having her mother anymore, although she still missed her.
A lot of people were shocked when the newly reinstated commanding officer decided to move to the family wing and occupy a small apartment, so he could be close at hand to the Girards, supporting them both. It had certainly set tongues wagging and caused everyone’s favourite gate room technician Chuck Lyons to set up a pool that Tony had personally nixed by the rather effective conversation with the enterprising fellow about the betting pool Tony planned to set up. It would bet on how long Chuck could last against Ronon Dex in a session on the mats and voila, the Atlantis pool speculating how long before Col Sheppard and Dr Monique Girard did the nasty with each other was quickly shelved. Oh, he and Tobias, who knew about what both individuals had been through, had to stomp on half a dozen or so other imprudent individuals who’d attempted to step in and fill the niche, but word quickly passed around that Alex would not tolerate anyone betting on their CO’s love life.
While Tony was not only concerned about Sheppard, he was even more concerned about Monique, since he carried the scar from her knife, incurred the night she’d tried to commit death-by-military-police. He figured that the message would slowly get out to Lanteans when other pools about lovesick or libidinous residents were cracked down on by the ISBI. And to emphasise that he wasn’t just being a spoilsport, Tony demonstrated that he wasn’t against harmless betting pools by putting in a couple of bids on the pool to guess the ETA and the date of Nikki’s baby.
Still, you would have to be blind not to see that John and Monique cared a great deal about each other. Tony figured they might not be ready for a romantic or even a purely physical relationship, given their intimacy issues, to say nothing of the whole seeming embargo that Col Sheppard had self-imposed on him having sex, let alone the idea of having a permanent relationship with anyone on Atlantis. Plus that was aside from the humongous elephant in the room named Felix standing in the way of them getting together. The soon to be soon to be six- year old’s relationship with his mother was fraught and the last thing he needed was a father figure who would leave if things went south. Given how fragile both of them were right now, it was still a distinct possibility. So, at this point, John opted for a supportive friend to Monique and a doting uncle to Felix, not wishing to put undue pressure on the precarious family dynamic was wise.
Nonetheless, with the apartment just a few doors down from the Girards, John seemed happy and he seemed to appreciate the community vibe of the family wing. John was often found hanging out with Jack Hotchner and J.P. or playing computer games with the burgeoning group of teens. And Teyla was happy having John close at hand where she could indulge her mother hen instincts, having figured out pretty much everything he’d endured during his captivity. Not that she said anything about her suspicions to John she confided to Tony; she was content for him to tell her when or if he was comfortable enough, which was probable never. She’d relayed a terribly awkward conversation she had had with Sheppard when Ronon had fallen back into the hands of the Wraith who tortured him for seven long years after making him into a runner. It had been about how much he cared for his team as family and she’d needed to put words in his mouth, so Teyla really didn’t expect that John would be able to confide about what the Genii had done to him.
As he stretched out on the couch where he’d grabbed roughly three-hour sleep letting his vertebrae pop, Tony decided it was time to get up and take a quick shower. Tali would be home soon from school, excited about her sleepover with the three other girls. If she had a single friend sleep over they slept in her room using the trundle bed that lived under her own but with the four of them, they would spend the night on blow-up mattresses in the living area. Nikki was going to help chaperone the foursome, not that Jeannie and Kaleb Miller or Miko and Radek didn’t trust the single man with their daughters, but Tony didn’t know Ara Heke’s parents very well and he thought they would feel more comfortable with her spending the night if there was a female on hand.
He’d been going to ask Laura to act as chaperone since she often had sleepovers with his daughter – to the point where people mistakenly believed that she and he were together, but Nikki had volunteered and Tony accepted his friend’s offer, mentally preparing for the rumours about him and Nikki to step up a notch. The truth was that whenever he spent time with another adult, be they female or not, people began speculating that he was FINALLY with someone. It was more than a little bit irksome, and he wished people would drop it. There was no way that he was ready to be with anyone even if there wasn’t his daughter to consider. His own miserable existence with a constant parade of stepmothers, almost stepmothers and Senior’s girlfriends and one-night stands after his mother died was a nightmare for the son still grieving his far from-perfect mother. He was not going there with Belle.
Still, he and Nikki were spending a lot of time together lately, but that was only to be expected. They had been workmates before Atlantis, and she knew his true identity. Plus, they had a fair bit in common, they were both hiding out on Atlantis, he from Ziva who was Tali’s mother and the Trust and Nikki from her former lover and father of her child, Mason Peters. They were both single parents or would be once Erica made her grand entrance into the world. Nikki like him believed in law enforcement and was honest, extremely loyal to family and they both possessed a somewhat quirky albeit sick sense of humour. Any wonder they were good friends and even better, Nikki was wonderful with Tali and had promised his daughter that she could help her with Erica after she was born.
Although she hadn’t been hugely into dolls, at least not as obsessed with them as Kazumi Zelenka was, Tali was utterly totally besotted with real babies, often hinting that he should get one so she could have a sibling to play with.
When he commiserated as one only child to another, he also pointed out that to have a baby, you needed a mother, she’d nodded sadly and said, “Okay Papa, maybe next year,” patting him on the cheek consolingly like he was the one who desperate for a baby. Kids!
Well, soon enough she would be able to play with Nikki’s baby, even if she wasn’t a sibling. Really, it was a win-win situation all around. Nikki got a second pair of hands, and a second set of eyes and Tali got a real live baby to play house with without having to share her stuff with a peeing, pooping, puking sibling.
As Tony stepped out of the shower, wishing it was just a little bit bigger for his six foot two stature, but recognising that, unlike most people, the family apartments also came with a bath for the kids, he thought about the fact that a few weeks ago he’d decided to tell Nikki the truth, that yes they were here because of the Trust’s two failed attempts to kidnap Tali but he was also hiding from Ziva and why. Partly because he was becoming close to her and didn’t want her to think he was anything like Mason and trying to punish Ziva because she didn’t tell him about Tali. He wanted her to know that it was because she didn’t give him a choice about being a father and then without warning, dumped Tali on him when she faked her own death, then assuming he’d just meekly hand his daughter over to her and fade to black.
She informed him that she’d never liked Ziva, finding her ruthless and quite cruel. She pointed out how she’d tried to use psy-ops to make Nikki step aside after volunteering to go to Baghdad back in 2007 to investigate the dead Marine reservist.
“Still, her trying to psych me out over the magnitude of germs that I’d encounter over there if I went, versus the cruelty of using you as an unknowing sperm donor when you went looking to warn her she was in danger really can’t be compared,” she commiserated.
She looked at him sadly. “I’m sorry she did that to you. No one deserves to have that happen but you least of all and for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re anything like Mason Peters. You are a great guy, and you took way too much shit from not just Ziva but the rest of the team too.”
“Yeah, Aoife is helping me to finally figure that out,” he admitted to her.
“Does she know what Ziva did?” she asked gently.
“Yeah, apart from you and one other person, she was the first person I ever told,” he admitted awkwardly. “It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Had the mother of all panic attacks,” he said shamefaced, having tried his whole life to hide the fact he had panic attacks, seeing it as an example of how weak he was.
Instead, she nodded matter-of-factly, “Well at least you managed to tell her, that must have taken enormous courage,” Nikki looked proud and it surprised him. “So, I can’t believe I’m only the third person you’ve ever told, what about Gibbs? You used to be so close to him,” she observed.
Tony shook his head. “That was a very long time ago, Nik. Our friendship…our working relationship… both of them started to deteriorate years ago and I don’t really know what I did wrong. In the last year before I resigned it was so damned bad that if someone had set me on fire I have serious doubts he would have pissed on me to put it out. I reckon he’d have been pouring on gasoline to inflame the fire,” he said sadly.
Of course, he would be even more of a dirtbag in Gibbs’ eyes when Ziva figured out he’d gone to ground with Tali. She would play the surrogate daughter grieving for her missing daughter card and remind him he was as good as her grandpa and Tony had stolen Tali away from them. Good thing none of them knew where they were nor had the means to get here even if they did.
Shaking her head, Nikki told him, “Alex, I never said anything to you because in the past you had such a massive case of hero-worship for the guy, but Gibbs never impressed me like he did a lot of others. In my opinion, he was always a bully, cruel and manipulative and got off on playing mind games with his team so that they never realised he was little more than the guy behind the curtain pretending to be the Wizard of Oz. He couldn’t afford for you to realise that without your investigative skills, he was pretty damned mediocre. In my opinion, without your skills plus McGee’s hacking skills he couldn’t really justify being the lead agent of the MCRT.
Tony still found it hard to listen when people he knew trash-talked Gibbs, questioning his abilities even if a part of him had begun to feel the same way. It seemed horribly disloyal but after fifteen years of unquestioning loyalty, even compromising his own ethics a few times which made him feel like he’d prostituted himself. Yet by the time he walked out the door of NCIS for the very last time, he was empty, having given the man who’d been his mentor everything he had and then some, and all he got in return had been Gibbs’ loathing and revulsion.
Anyway, the main thing he chose to focus on was that Nikki didn’t despise him for sending Ziva off on a wild goose chase looking for him and Tali, In fact, she thought that Homeworld Command sending her off on a series of false trails, hoping that the Trust would follow her and reveal themselves in the process was Machiavellian but brilliant. When he mentioned that he thought she might take Ziva’s side since he was hiding Tali from her, she’d hugged him and that would never get old (neat nut Nikki as Abby had nicknamed her) initiating physical contact. Although he knew intellectually that her germ phobia had a real-life basis; her fear that she would bring an opportunistic infection into the hospital where her brother Erica was a long-term coma patient had been very real and driven by love. Tragically, Eric died without regaining consciousness after a routine catheter change had introduced a bacteriological infection known as golden staph into his system.
After thoroughly and comprehensively hugging him to within an inch of his life, which would have left him gasping for breath before Vala had used the Goa’uld healing device to fix his lungs, Nikki snuggled in next to him on the sofa to watch The Princess Bride, he wondered what might have happened between them after Baghdad, if she hadn’t been so focused on Eric. Tony worked with her and admired her mettle. Before that, the little he’d seen of her convinced him that Nikki was more than a little loopy but learning about her brother and how she was naturally a bit of a slob, had given him another perspective on who she really was. Plus, she’d cut into a cadaver to take the guy’s temperature because they didn’t have a liver probe and that made her pretty damned badass not to mention he’d noticed she was also gorgeous.
Of course, back then, there was all the fallout from the business with Jenny Sheppard, La Grenouille, and his daughter, Jeanne who Tony fell helpless in love with like a total idiot. All of that on top of losing Paula Cassidy, his old girlfriend who he’d genuinely cared about to a suicide bomber when she saved his life had left his truly struggling to cope with no help from the team. But he wondered if he’d been in a better emotional place back then, would he have made a move and asked Jardine to go out with him. Well, it was all water under the bridge – and that chance had come and gone. Both of them had eventually moved on, she married NID Special Agent Rick Bates, and he’d dated E.J. Barrett briefly, defying Gibbs who loathed E.J. and adding to the conflict between them and then after she dumped him, started seeing Zoe Keates, his former partner from Philly PD.
Probably it was for the best, at least they were still friends and the friendship had deepened a lot since Nikki arrived on Atlantis. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was looking forward to the arrival of Erica Leigh in a couple of months; he couldn’t believe he was excited at the prospect of holding a tiny little baby, but it was bittersweet too. He couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to hold Tali when she was a newborn, but Ziva had robbed him of that experience, and he’d never get that back. There were times when he hated her so much and he forced him to remember she was Tali’s mother, but his hatred burnt white hot, for all that she’d stolen from him.
Most nights they snuggled up with Tali between them to watch a family-friendly movie and Nikki let them feel Erica Leigh kicking like a Tai Kwando master. Tony couldn’t help pondering sometimes what life would be like if Nikki was pregnant with his baby, which was dumb because he missed out on any possible chance a long time ago. Besides, he was her boss.
Realising that if he didn’t get a move on, the surprise he’d intended to give Tali wouldn’t eventuate, he slipped into his boots and headed out to pick her up from school. He was going to head down with her to the Mess for her afternoon snack, hopefully, someone who would make them a milkshake since he’d slept through lunch and was feeling a tad empty. He was fairly sure Tali, who’d inherited her sweet tooth from him would seize the opportunity of afternoon snack time in the Mess to finagle her way into getting a slice of cake. Honestly, her Uncle Jack O’Neill with his cake obsession was a bad influence on her but he supposed that the sugar rush wouldn’t hurt just this once since he tried to ensure her afterschool snacks were reasonably healthy ones.
Tony hoped the options would be healthier ones, rather than the lurid confectionary creations so loved by the general. But with Jack back at Homeworld Command to confer with the politicians and the Pentagon over Operation War on Happy Zombies the mess would have more prosaic desert options in his absence. Honestly, he wondered if it was such a good thing for the catering services staff to be enabling the general’s cake fixation although he understood that it was their way of acknowledging all that he’d done for the planet and the SGC. Until or if the program was declassified, it would remain one of the small ways they could express their gratitude and respect for his service.
As he made his way out of the family wing, Tony heard the mellow tone of the baby grand piano coming from the music room. It was Rodney McKay who often picked this time to play, assuming that during school hours he would be unlikely to run into Tony or Belle. While he was still not cleared to resume his position as CSO he was permitted to do some work on non-classified projects under the supervision of Miko, Radek or his sister, Jeannie but that still left him with a lot of hours in the day to fill and he often spent an hour playing. Tony conceded that he was technically very good but the music he produced was somehow rather too clinical for his tastes. Too perfect or it was after he worked on any phrasing or fingering that wasn’t absolutely spot on – like it was a science experiment or a complicated gastronomic dish.
The only time he ever heard anything approaching humanity in Rodney’s music was when McKay was furiously angry – too angry to care if he played everything perfectly. Then his music made you feel something real, other than that, listening to it was like listening to something a computer might generate – or Janae Progenius. It was pleasant enough to listen to, but it didn’t reach out to touch your soul. Like a painting that was impossible to tell from a photograph – it lacked soul. However, to each his own and if it made McKay happy or at least less stressed out, that had to be a good thing. And something seemed to be working. Just last week he’d requested a meeting with Tony, apologising for his outburst that night at the Hotchner’s welcome to Atlantis and for frightening Belle and hurting her feelings.
It was progress, although Tony was extremely doubtful they’d ever be anything more than scrupulously cordial to each other. For one thing, he could forgive most things but hurt his kid and all bets were off. Besides, with his bullying of his underlings and explosive and angry ranting, Rodney had too much in common with Gibbs for Tony to think of him as anything more than a colleague. But he was pleased to see after weeks of fucking around and whinging about his lot, which had been entirely self-inflicted, Dr McKay had finally decided to pull his head out of his ass.
As he approached Belle’s classroom, he saw he was almost five minutes early, so he settled in to wait until Cassie dismissed them. While he was waiting, his thought turned to the latest residents to join them in the family wing, arriving literally days after the Athosian family, the Hekes had settled in. He grinned evilly at the thought of A.J. and Aoife, after more than three months of sneaking around right under people’s noses conducting a torrid love affair, who’d been outed by one of Dr O’Shea’s nosy neighbours. Although at this point both of them saw it as something a lot more serious than an affair. They were committed to trying to make it a permanent relationship but found it stressful trying to build a relationship under the spotlight of everyone’s preoccupation with their sex lives. This was when Tony had jokingly suggested that the pair move into their wing where everyone was far too busy with their own families to be watching their every move. Plus, with a lot of empty apartments, they could choose one in the sparsely occupied hallways but still be part of the village vibe, Plus Aoife was close to the baby grand which she loved to play and it helped her deal with her own stress. Everyone had thought having the older pair move in was a great idea for the kids and teens to have a pair of surrogate grandparents on hand if required, adding to the village-like atmosphere that the family wing was now generating.
After Cassie has dismissed her students with a merry directive to have a great weekend, Tali came out of the classroom, at first only seeing Radek who was the parent rostered on to escort the kids home today. Poor Zelenka had only just made it in time, having forgotten all about it until Miko reminded him, and when he saw Tony, thought he’d gotten their roster mixed up. Once Tony explained that he’d worked an all-nighter and he’d skipped lunch, deciding to pick Belle up and head down to the Mess for an afternoon snack, they chatted ‘til class was out. When Tali realised he’d come to pick her up, she’d thrown herself at him, immediately jumping to the wrong conclusion.
Catching her effortlessly in his arms, thanks to his new fitter physique, he grinned at her as she gave him an enthusiastic hug.
“Has Erica Leigh arrived, Papa,” asked the kid with the one-track mind.
“Not yet,” he gave her his stock answer, noting her obvious disgruntlement. “Going be a while yet,” he reminded her.
Pouting and looking a lot like Ziva, she demanded, “Why is it taking so long?”
“It isn’t,” he told her again for what seemed to be the hundredth time. It takes nine months to grow a baby that is healthy enough to be born, kiddo. Baby Erica Leigh has only been growing inside her mother for seven months. She needs to spend two more months growing big and strong so she will be healthy when it’s time for her to be born,” he said with patience that was often feigned since he had been through this with her many times already.
“But Papa,” she argued, “ I think Erica Leigh is already big enough, to get borned.”
He gently corrected her. “To be born, sweet pea. And how do you figure that? I didn’t know you were a doctor,” he teased her gently as he noted her teacher making her way over to say hi.
“Because Nikola showed me the baby sonic picture that Dr Biro took for her last week and Erica Leigh is pretty squashed up in there, and asides from that, Papa I don’t see how she will fit when it’s time to be born. How can she even fit into Nikola’s angina? I know Dr Aoife said that’s how most babies get born but I think she must have been confused. I think Baby Erica Leigh is gonna get stuck in her birth corral and then I’m never gonna get to play with her.”
Tony flashed a quick glance at Cassie Fraiser and mouthed a ‘sorry’ to her as she seemed gobsmacked before he took charge of the situation.“ Dr Aoife is correct about how most babies are born, Belle,” he told her deciding now was not the time or place to start having a discussion about C-sections right outside her classroom in public. Man, he couldn’t wait ‘til Nikki had her bub and then perhaps Tali’s obsession with all things prenatal might subside for a while. At least until someone else was pregnant, which might happen sooner than he liked since Radek had mentioned he and Miko had decided after the trial that they were hoping to have a sibling for Kazumi.
Tali had her mule-headed look on her face – oh he was well acquainted with that look! The apple sure hadn’t fallen far from the maternal tree when it came to stubbornness – she left him for dead and would probably give her mother a decent run for her money, too.
“But Papa,” she practically whined. “how does the baby fit? And I still say that Dr Biro doesn’t take good pictures, you should take them acause your ones are much better.”
Rolling his eyes at Cassie, he said, “C’mon to the Mess, Missy where we can get a caramel shake and a snack and we’ll talk about it there,” he said firmly. This time of the day he reckoned it would be pretty quiet – he’d be able to have a reasonably private conversation and try to mansplain to his daughter how babies fit through the birth canal. Oh, joy!
He heard Radek mutter something under his breath in Czech that Tony chose to interpret as either, ‘ You poor sod,’ but could equally well have been, ‘hah, sux to be you!’ with as much dignity he could muster.
Either way, he grabbed Tali’s backpack, scooping it up with his forefinger before effecting as dignified a retreat as he could under the circumstances, conscious of Cassie and Radek chuckling at his expense. He’d get even, he’d send Tali to them for answers the next time she had some embarrassing sex question she wanted answers for and stand there laughing his damned ass off at them. And there would definitely be a next time, knowing his daughter the way he did and that Miko and he had decided to have a sibling for Kazumi.
As they strode down the corridor, it seemed that the news of their destination had temporarily derailed Tali’s thoughts as he’d hoped it would. Hmm, he should have deployed that particular Big Bertha of a gun a whole lot sooner and saved himself some moments of mortification. He’d have to remember it the next time!
“But Papa, you KNOW that I always have a chocolate shake, not caramel,” she told him sternly.
“Huh? You do? I must have forgotten that. Well perhaps we should both try a strawberry shake for a change,” he suggested as she pulled a face. “What? You love strawberries.”
“Not in a shake,” she said regally as if it should have been perfectly obvious to him.
Trying to squelch his grin as he put her down on the ground and led the way into the transporter, he said, “But how do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it?”
“Papa,” she said with great seriousness, “I just do, alright?”
Chuckling, he told her, “That is not a good answer, Miss. You didn’t think you’d like kiwifruit before your Auntie Lavinia made you try it, or sushi either but you love them both now that you’ve eaten them.”
Papa, you can be very sasperating when you do that,” his daughter scowled at him.
“I think you mean exasperating. Poppet,” he said with a laugh, “and when I do what? When I’m right?”
She just huffed at him and as they were approaching the Mess, she said in a small sad voice, “I still miss Auntie Lavinia and Aiden and Skye and even grumpy Uncle Cris.”
He grew serious, “I know you do, Sweetie, I do too.”
As they sat out on the balcony drinking their shakes, caramel hazelnut for him and chocolate for her, and he grabbed a turkey salad sandwich for himself and a slice of strawberry shortcake for Tali, she said, “When is Uncle Jack coming back to Atlantis, I miss him.”
Tony frowned because Jack was supposed to be returning today, but when he was on Belara today after rounding up the crop of spies, he’d run into Caro who informed him that she’d received word that the General was delayed. Something had happened on Earth, and he needed to deal with it. He’d promised to stay in touch but hadn’t mentioned when he’d be back to interrogate the gang they rounded up. Oh well, looked like they were going to have stew in their own juices until the general returned since Tony didn’t want to have to interrogate them. Not unless it was absolutely necessary.
He said, “Something happened back on Earth and Uncle Jack will be back when he can,” he told Tali.
“But we’re meant to be watching Shrek tonight and it’s his favourite.”
“Yeah, baby it is, but General Jack has a very important job. You can watch it together just the two of you when he comes back,” he suggested as Tali smiled, mollified by his suggestion as she forked up more cake.
Which left him worried about why his boss was delayed. Had something gone wrong with their Ninja wild goose hunt? Penny had sent through the specs for the group she wanted to hire part in the weekly data burst several days ago. There’d been no mention from Jack that he wouldn’t be returning as scheduled and Tony felt concerned, wishing he knew what was going on. If Ziva had hurt anyone that they had keeping watch on her he would feel terribly guilty about it.
He thought about the personnel files of the company known as LEVERAGE which was partially owned by a black hat hacker who was a fan of Penelope’s previous activities in her own prior incarnation as the Black Queen before Aaron arrested her and made her go straight. It seemed that this computer genius known as Alec Hardison was a partner with two others and they had set up international teams made up of a hacker, grifter, hitter/enforcer, a thief and a team leader/ mastermind running cons to help people who were ripped off, threatened by the rich and powerful, often who law enforcement couldn’t touch. Basically, the owners of the company were three highly successful and extremely wealthy thieves, with very specific skillsets, who had decided to use their illegal gifts to help others.
One of the principles, Eliot Spencer, a reputed Green Beret, and a mercenary rumoured to have worked as an assassin for Damien Moreau who was an infamous financial mastermind and was supposedly behind the central bank of international crime. Spencer used proceeds from his share of LEVERAGE to start up a company, named Bricks and Basil, running an international fleet of food trucks, selling genuine New Orleans cuisine to the public and providing much-needed employment prospects for vets soon after leaving the military. Plus, the food trucks served as camouflage for LEVERAGE’s Mobile HQs, highly sophisticated monitor centres for the team and gave them a base of operations wherever they happened to be operating, decked out with the latest in whizz-bang technology.
It made sense in a way to contract out this lot to scam Ziva and the Trust since none of these people was the sort that would be suspected of working for a federal government agency by their targets. All three principles in the company had multiple warrants and prices on their heads under their various legends so you’d have to be crazy to think they were working for Homeworld Command. But while this group had some serious skills particularly, Spenser who rivalled or even surpassed Ziva’s supposed skills as a Kidon-trained assassin, she had skin in this game that made her even more dangerous.
Chapter 4
General Jack O’Neill wished that his good buddy Thor was still around so he could kiss the little grey guy right about now. He was waiting impatiently for the Zephyrus to get into position so they could beam him up, thanks to the Asgard technology which enabled him to make the trip from DC on the east coast of the United States to the west coast. Or should you be feeling pedantic about it, since Nellis Air Force Base in Southern Nevada was a way in from the coast, near the west coast in terms of spaceship travel and transport beams. It meant that hours of travel by air could be achieved with Asgard beaming tech in literally minutes, which was a good thing because Jack wasn’t sure he could wait.
When a dead federal agent or one from another reality dropped in with a passel of kids, including one who she claimed was his granddaughter in an alternate reality, he didn’t want to wait around for hours to find out if she was on the up and up, a spy or someone requiring a padded room. But what if she really was who she said she was and she really did have his granddaughter here from her reality for him to raise? This wasn’t the first time they’d encountered folk from an alternate reality, it happen quite a few times, both here and in Atlantis. Although he knew that those alternate realities were all variations on this one and those variations differed from subtle variances to sometimes very large changes, it had somehow never occurred to him that in some or even one alternate realities, his son Charlie O’Neill might still be alive. Not just alive but he had a child of his own.
He hoped that this wasn’t some sort of trick, even as Jack pondered why Charlie would make the choice to send his daughter to stay with her grandfather in a different reality. He was almost afraid to find out, but first thing first, he must ascertain if this woman claiming to be Paula DiNozzo was who she claimed to be. As he glanced impatiently at his wristwatch, Lieutenant Colonel Davis bustled in.
“Colonel Zikowski reports that the ETA for beaming you aboard is two minutes, General O’Neill.”
When Jack nodded his acknowledgement, Paul Davis added, speaking rapidly “I ran a background check on Paula Cassidy in our reality. Both she and Anthony DiNozzo worked for NCIS and worked on some cases together. She and DiNozzo had an affair and remained good friends until her death when she died by a suicide bomber on the last case she worked on. Coincidentally it was with DiNozzo, and he was reportedly devastated by her death,” he reported bleakly.
Jack grimaced, knowing her death would not have been pretty.
I’ve managed to access her personnel file,” Paul handed it over with two others to Jack to study when he had time.
“And the others?”
“The other two files belong to the two women accompanying her and the children. I haven’t had a chance to run background on the kids and see if they exist in our reality, in fact aside from Sarah O’Neill and Paula DiNozzo’s two offspring, I’ve yet to receive IDs for the other kids in the party.”
Jack nodded. “Understood. So, the women?”
“A Lieutenant Heather Murphy, a registered nurse who worked at the SGC in our reality but was killed during the plague that the Ori engineered to wipe us out,” he said. Her file is there too.
“And the last one,” Jack asked glancing at his watch a second time. If Zephyrus was on time, they had roughly fifty seconds.
“An older female, a teacher in her mid-fifties – who’d worked at Nellis with many of the scientist kids at Area 51, Thora Edmunds. She was also killed in our reality when the Wraith attacked Nellis, targeting the drone chair after the IOA made us move it Stateside,” he managed to get out before Jack felt the customary tingling as he was beamed aboard the 304. The Asgard transporters used an energy beam to dematerialize Jack and send their energy signal speeding through space at near-light speed before reconstituting the individual back into physical matter, a sort of high-tech superspeed reassembly of a living entity somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle or that’s how it seemed to Jack.
He just hoped that everything found its way back to its rightful place. Sure, the Asgard were way smarter than humans but as smart as those asexual little grey beings had been, they hadn’t been smart enough not to clone themselves right out of existence. And that should serve as an abject lesson to those scientists such as Dr McKay and Dr Kavanaugh, plus some noteworthy others who were prone to extreme bouts of arrogance that would leave the egotistical Ascended gate builders of the Stargate system looking like a bunch of rank amateurs by comparison.
After a short interim where Colonel Zikowski manoeuvred the Zephyrus into position to be able to beam Jack into Area 51, with his trusty 2IC having previously notified the powers that be he’d be arriving via transporter beam and the Commander of the Zephyrus was now requesting permission to beam him down, Jack took a deep breath and tried to still his rapidly pounding heart. Not due to the transporter beam, he was fairly blasé about it to tell you the truth. But what General O’Neill found impossible to appear nonchalant about was the very real prospect that he might soon be holding his son’s baby daughter in his arms, albeit one who didn’t exist in this universe. In this universe, his beloved eight-year-old son had shot and killed himself in a tragic accident when he got hold of Jack’s service revolver, one year before he travelled through the Stargate with a floppy-haired archaeologist named Dr Daniel Jackson. Thankfully, Zikowski received permission almost immediately.
Jack was then beamed directly into the office of General Goldman, a brigadier general as arranged by the scarily efficient Lt Col Davis. The General snapped off a salute to O’Neill smartly, before welcoming the Head of Homeworld Command back to Area 51. Saluting in return, Jack then smiled tensely at the commander of Area 51.
“Hi Isaac, what have you got for me?”
“Not a lot, Sir but fortunately since all three women worked either for the SGC or in Ms DiNozzo’s case, the federal government, they all have DNA samples on file. As soon as they appeared out of nowhere with ten kids in tow, we took DNA swabs from the adults and children and are still awaiting tests, Sir.”
“ I trust they were marked urgent, Isaac?”
Goldman pursed his lips. “Of course, they were. And we didn’t call you in straight away, Sir. We should have the test back within the next two hours.”
Zeroing in on Isaac’s previous comment, Jack sought clarification. “You said they turned up accompanied by ten children? That wasn’t a joke was it?”
Looking affronted, the Brig General glared at his superior. “There is nothing to joke about when three dead women and TEN kids appear out of thin air at Area 51, General.”
Despite how tense he was feeling, Jack couldn’t help feeling a little bit amused that this departure from routine seemed to have well and truly upset Goldman’s sense of decorum. Area 51 was one of the most secret facilities in the US and no one got in there unauthorised, except it seemed for a group of kids and three females. He snorted mentally.
“Teens, tweens, middle schoolers, prep school, pre-schoolers, or toddlers,” he inquired.
“Yes to all of the above, plus two babes in arms,” Isaac countered in amusement. “A real mixed bag.”
“And the babies,” O’Neill inquired anxiously as he tried to picture the ensuing chaos with a bunch of kids running around Area 51.
“One that almost eleven-month-old that Agent DiNozzo says is her child. She does seem to be still weaning the baby according to the Doc and a six-month-old, who she claims is your grandchild, or at least she is in their reality.”
“And you swabbed her?” Of course, he knew that Goldman was a capable, competent officer and would have done it. Maybe he was more of an administrator than a down-and-dirty field officer like Jack had been, but he also led a team of over 200 top scientists, military, and civilians, all possessing very healthy egos and a killer desire to get more than their fair share of the funding dollars, convinced that their research was more critical to the survival of the species than anyone else’s.
Isaac looked at him with tolerance. “Actually, Sarah’s was the first I had the geneticists run, Jack, he said addressing his superior informally since they were alone, and Jonathon O’Neill wasn’t one to stand on ceremony.
Jack wasn’t sure he could wait two hours to find out if these people were from an alternate reality or not. He wanted to see this child that was supposed to be his granddaughter, but he remembered how hard it had been reliving Charlie’s death several times over the years. First when the crystal Alien had tried to heal him and when Anubis had forced him to swallow the Blood of Sokar that manipulated his memory and made it seem like Charlie was still alive. He’d been tortured many times by the Goa’uld, but nothing had prepared him for the terrible anguish he’d experienced on Ne’tu when they had gone to rescue Jacob Carter and his Tok’ra symbiote, Selmack and he’d seen Charlie again.
He looked at his watch,. It was barely ten minutes since he’d beamed down. Jack looked at Goldman who took the hint and picked up his phone to check. Hanging up, he shook his head regretfully. “Dr Winters says at least another hour and three quarters. Sorry Jack!”
Making up his mind, he said, “Hang it, I’m going in to talk to her.”
Goldman to his credit, didn’t try to argue with him. He shrugged and showed him out of his office, entered an elevator that took them down two floors, into a large room full of rambunctious kids who seemed on tenterhooks and if they had come from another reality then chances were, it was because it hadn’t all been sunshine and unicorns, either. The three women seemed to be trying hard to keep everyone calm but with eight traumatised kids and two babies – it was a big ask. As he sought out Paula DiNozzo, an attractive blonde with shoulder-length hair worn loose and a trim figure, he noted she had an infant discreetly attached to her breast. Seems she hadn’t been kidding when she said that she was still weaning her daughter,
He looked around and noted that the older lady was holding onto a younger infant one who was sleeping, although amidst the other children’s chaos, he wasn’t sure how that was possible. Trying to ignore the younger one, he walked over to Agent DiNozzo with General Goldman, her eyes showing she recognised him immediately. While he was still trying to reserve judgement in case this was some massive plot by the Trust, even if in his gut, he knew these people were from a different reality but he needed to be cautious.
After all, George Hammond, rest his soul had ordered the quantum mirror that Daniel had discovered back in SG1’s early days to be destroyed after people had used it to come through into their reality several times and created havoc. And he reminded himself, even after the Quantum Mirror had been destroyed, it didn’t stop their alternate worlds from intersecting. There was the Black SG1 team after Jack had transferred to the Pentagon that had deliberately made use of the Ori beachhead they’d opened up to travel from their galaxy into their own so that they could travel to an alternate Earth and steal Atlantis’ ZPM to power their own Drone chair in their reality. What a shitstorm that had been, them inadvertently causing 15 alternate SG1s to be diverted into their reality. Including one where Janet Fraiser and the Tok’ra Martouf had been on SG1.
Jack was glad Cassie had been in DC with him attending college. It would have been too difficult for her to deal with meeting and saying goodbye to another version of her dead mother. Then there was the alternate reality Rodney McKay that appeared in that interdimensional gravity collector he built with his sister to tell them they were destroying his reality that had ended up draining the whole ZPM that had to send the alt-reality McKay back to his world. And last but not least there was the Alt reality Daedalus that had popped up over Atlantis, confusing the crap out of them and trapping Sheppard’s team aboard with the ship that had been fitted with an alternate reality drive capacitator thingamajig that malfunctioned, constantly jumping to alternate universes and the AR-1 alt team couldn’t shut it down, perishing aboard and nearly getting their Sheppard and his team killed too.
Maybe Agent DiNozzo thought he was trying to psyche her out but in truth, he’d been giving himself a major headache while he waited for her to finish feeding the youngster, although, from his oblique observations, the child was nursing more for comfort than sustenance. When he finally thought she’d redressed and was burping the infant, he turned back to her.
“Agent DiNozzo, we need to talk.”
She smiled at him in a watery fashion before freaking him out by pushing her baby into his arms, tossing a sick cloth over his shoulder. “Here, can you hold Mikelle for a moment while I get Sarah so we can feed her? Her bottle should be ready by now,: she walked over to the older woman and scooped the smaller infant up out of the brunette’s arms. The woman went to some sort of device and Jack realised it was a bottle warmer, although a type he’d never seen before. They must have brought it with them, he realised, along with some tins of formula. He couldn’t help staring at the baby, if this wasn’t some elaborate hoax, then in an alternate reality this was his granddaughter.
As she walked back towards him, cradling the little one in her arms with practised ease, slipping the bottle into her mouth she asked, “Do you want to have this conversation someplace more private? I’d prefer not to do it in front of the little ones or the older kids either. They’ve been through enough,” she said firmly. “We can take these two, they’ll nap soon,” she predicted. “Interdimensional travel is exhausting!”
Still carrying Baby DiNozzo in his arms and thinking how weird was it that it seemed only yesterday that Charlie had been this small, he led her out of the room with her behind him and General Goldman bringing up the rear. Outside, the Area 51 Commander lead them into an empty office and invited them all to sit down.
“As you know Agent DiNozzo, we took DNA swabs of everyone in your party when you arrived here last evening. Those results while still pending should be back in approximately 90 minutes. Perhaps you’d care to tell us your story now that General O’Neill is here,” he invited her to talk. Apparently, she had been somewhat reluctant to speak up until now.
Looking stubborn, she smiled at them. Although she looked strained and tired, she was still very attractive, No doubt under less trying circumstances she must be a knockout, Jack surmised as he patted her daughter soothingly on the back until she let out a burp. He glanced at the agent and saw her small smile as she watched her daughter. “Gentlemen, that is my daughter Mikelle Lily DiNozzo in the General’s arms and this one in mine as you have probably figured out by now is Charlie’s daughter, Sarah Lauren O’Neill.”
Seeing Jack’s reaction she said, “Look, let’s swap and you can feed Sarah.”
Part of him wanted to, but until they had the DNA results back he was loathe to have his heart broken again so he temporised, “But she should finish her bottle and clearly she knows you.”
Looking sad, she replied, “She knows you too, or she knows your alternate reality you. You mind her,” she argued before she took the decision out of his hands and slid the baby and the bottle onto his lap and collected her own daughter back.
Holding Sarah as he looked down at the infant, Jack could barely breathe. Oh God, she looked so much like Charlie did at that age. Even the greedy little sounds she made as she suckled the bottle were exactly like his son used to do and the pain was overwhelming. He inclined the bottle a fraction higher, changing the angle a tiny bit and her little rosebud mouth suckled, happy to not have to work so hard to get nourishment. Her eyes opened and locked onto his, green not brown like his or Charlie’s. She watched him calmly and continued to feed like she was well accustomed to being held by him as she fed.
“Right,” General Goldman prefaced, “Shall we get started?”
“General, I thought I’d explained already that I have vital intel for the head of the Star Gate Program, extremely sensitive data that I was ordered to make sure got into the right hands, Sir,” Paula said respectfully.
Looking a bit disgruntled, Goldman nodded. “Oh yes, you explained that when you turned up here on a top-secret research base out of the blue. And I think that I’ve been pretty patient, all things considered – I even got General O’Neill here asap, so I think I’m entitled to know how you and two other adults, and ten kids snuck onto one of the most secure facilities in the whole goddamned country.”
Sighing, she told him wearily, “I told you we were from another reality. Drs McKay, Zelenka, Carter, Lee and Kusanagi when it became obvious that we were facing a dire threat to our world, all worked day and night to build a portal to be able to bring the children here to safety and I come with a warning, hoping to stop your world falling as our has. Hopefully, there will still be time to save yours. This is what our people sacrificed their own freedom for.”
Jack was looking at Paula contemplatively. “If it is the Ori or the Wraith, Agent DiNozzo, then you can rest easy,” he told her as she shook her head.
“No, isn’t them but I need to meet with the head of the program, if not the US President, General O’Neill.”
Jack had a fairly good idea of what she might be about to say, and she was right, it was above the pay grade of a brigadier general. He glanced at Goldman, “ Think you could chase up those DNA results, General. If we are going to be making a trip to DC to meet the President, we’d better make good and sure these people are who they say they are.
Goldman looked mutinous. Working at Area 51, Jack knew that his security clearance was extremely high, but if DiNozzo was going to tell him what he suspected she was, it was need-to-know and Isaac didn’t.
“Could your very capable aide Sgt Quartermain have someone bring in a pot of coffee when they get a chance,” he said, then looked at Paula. “Do you want some decaf if they have any, “he figured if she was still feeding baby DiNozzo, she probably wasn’t drinking caffeine. “Although, we are talking hordes of sleep-deprived scientists here, so maybe not.”
“When we were all hiding out here… well my here – Area 52- Dr Welling and Dr Wong kept a pretty large stash of decaf coffee in their desks and were gracious enough to share. Do they work here?
Jack looked across at Goldman who nodded reluctantly. “I’ll get my aide to ask them he said, half-heartedly.
Jack said, “Excellent, if I thought I’d get away with it, I’d poach Sgt Quartermain right out from under you, Isaac” he said half-joking.
Slightly mollified the Brigadier General mock scowled at his superior. “Hey, hands off, Sir. You already swiped MSgt Harriman right out from under General Landry’s nose last year,” he said incredulously. “He’s still right pissed off about that, excuse the language Agent DiNozzo,” he said, flashing her an apologetic look.
She acknowledged him with a smirk, “I’ve served as Agent Afloat on aircraft carriers with Marines and Sailors, Sir. It certainly isn’t the worst I’ve heard.
Jack was still taking offence at the crack about filching MSgt Walter Harriman. “Hey, Walter was mine before Hank inherited him, and I don’t know what he’s been bitching about, I didn’t take Sgt Siler when I first went to Homeworld.”
DiNozzo gave a doubletake “Hang on, General O’Neill, you work for Homeworld?”
“Director of Homeworld Command, at your service,” he nodded his head as Sarah finished her bottle, and he slipped it out of her mouth so that she wasn’t gulping in air. He slipped her expertly up over his shoulder, glad that he still had the sick cloth draped strategically across his shoulder, knowing the chances were high that she would puke at least a little formula up, he noted Paula looking at him.
“What,” he asked.
The blonde smiled at him. “You are good with her. Charlie would be pleased if he knew,” she said softly.
After he’d sent General Goldstein on his way, very reluctantly, Jack took a breath, as he tried to focus. “What did you come here to warn us about?” He realised with a start that he no longer thought she was part of some elaborate hoax.
He thought he knew what she wanted to warn him about, but a new thought suddenly occurred to him. This isn’t about the Aschen and their damned infertility vaccine, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I think that we had trade talks with them some time ago, but we couldn’t reach an agreement,” Paula said. “What vaccine are you talking about?”
Jack scowled in thought. “Not sure about the Aschen in your world but in ours, they were conquers, they just went about it a little differently, took a longer view. The Aschen offered less developed worlds a chance to share their technologies, including a bunch of health breakthroughs that eradicated a lot of diseases but for a very high price. One of the vaccines they administered rendered everyone infertile who received it. In a few generations, there was no one left to resist, and they were able to take over the planet without a drop of Aschen blood split. It was a pure war of attrition.
The honey-blonde-haired woman closed her eyes for several seconds and when she opened them, her blue eyes were filled with misery and pain.
Seeing his look of alarm, she said, “I’ve had my own battle with infertility you see. We had Josh only after I had several miscarriages. Then, when we decided to have another baby we ended up having to have IVF treatment to conceive Hannah Rose. We lost her to a rare type of cancer when she was barely three. After we grieved her death, we resigned ourselves to just having our son, but then I fell pregnant two years ago. We were shocked because we’d given up trying a very long time ago. But although I was almost forty-two at the time, Mikelle was born safe and healthy. Her name means a blessing because that’s what she is to us.”
She lightly traced the baby’s brow and cheekbones with a shapely finger as she continued. “Dr Fraiser at the SGC thought that it was because I’d been badly injured trying to capture a Baal clone who was running around on Earth fomenting trouble. A Tok’ra called Martouf treated me with a Goa’uld hand-healing device. Dr Fraiser thinks he somehow healed my infertility issue inadvertently, but we think it is a miracle,” she said smilingly lovingly at her baby.
“The thought of those monsters knowingly inflicting so much pain and suffering on hundreds of thousands of people for their imperialistic ambitions infuriates me,” she said tearily.
Having lost his own child, Jack had some understanding of what this woman had been through. They sat silently for several minutes until Agent DiNozzo started speaking.
“At first all they were, were rumours that the Chinese and Korean Democratic Republics had some terrifying new weapon that they were using against the dissidents, but we weren’t able to verify it and by the time we did, we didn’t understand what it was or how it worked. And then they started massive mobilisation of their militaries and started taking over smaller countries. General Shen Xiaoyi…”
“Wait, you mean Ambassador Shen Xiaoyi, the Chinese representative to the International Oversite Advisory…that Shen Xiaoyi,” Jack interjected, unable to stop himself.
Paula looked surprised, “Um, I guess. She was on the board of the IBO the International Board of Oversight which administered the Stargate Program.”
“Not Atlantis?”
She shook her head. “Well, yes, they administered Atlantis until the city was blown up after the Daedalus rescued an Ancient Aurora class spaceship named…”
“The Tria, captained by an Ancient called Helia?”
“Yes. How did you…you encountered her too?”
“Yeah, you could say that. So, what happened after the Daedalus saved their ungrateful asses?”
“After they set foot on Atlantis, Helia took control and politely thanked us for rescuing them and equally politely kicked us out. The SGC tried to warn them about the Asurans, but they simply refused to listen, they said they’d inserted a code in their programming that made it impossible for them to ever harm an Ancient. So, they failed to take them seriously and Oberoth made them pay. As near as we can tell during our last communication with the delegation from the IOB, comprising of Richard Woolsey and James Merrick, the Asurans were attacking Atlantis and then we couldn’t raise them. We learnt later after we sent out a 304 to investigate that Atlantis was obliterated.”
Jack felt shaken, since in their reality, he’d been the one to stay behind with Woolsey. Luckily, the Asurans wanted to occupy Atlantis and after killing the Ancients who were so damned arrogant they refused to listen to Earth’s warnings they’d taken over the city. Luckily he and Woolsey escaped detection while the replicators rebuilt the city, powering it with a replicator while Sheppard and his ragtag group defied Landry’s orders and came back for Jack and Woolsey and in the process had managed to destroy the Asurans occupying the city.
“I interrupted.” O’Neill apologised, “You were saying that General Shen Xiaoyi started taking over smaller countries,” he said watching the baby in his arms as she began to blink sleepily. He ghosted a battle-scarred back of his hand against her pristine cheek, marvelling at how soft her skin was.
“At first it was countries in South East Asia but then the Asia Pacific countries fell and then slowly it spread all over the globe until the Russian Federation of States all fell one after each other and suddenly the was only the US. A group of scientists from the SGC realising that this was a war we could never win, took to the secret underground tunnels and bunkers under Area 52 – your Area 51,” she said, looking around. “It is almost identical.”
“What were you doing down there?”
“Building a time travel device based on the one we found in a puddle jumper which didn’t work, although I must tell you, Dr Carter was not happy about it, she predicted all manner of dire consequences and refused to help the others. Said that even with the Earth’s population becoming billions of mindless zombies, that time travel could mess it up even worse,”
Jack chuckled. “Seems like your Carter has scarily similar ideas to our own Col Carter. What did she work on,” he asked, knowing she would have some plan to save them. It was what she did!
Paula gave him a sad smile. “Using the data that SG-5 gathered from a ghost ship Daedalus that turned up one day out of the blue when they were visiting Chulak and which almost got them killed because someone had built an alternate reality drive into the engine that enabled it to leap from on reality to another, but it was flawed and killed the crew.”
“And she obviously succeeded in building one which worked, since you’re here,” Jack said.
“Well, she had help.” She persuaded Dr Kusanagi, plus her young protégé, Dr Jennifer Halley to help her because messing with time might make everything worse.” Paula shrugged philosophically. “Most people couldn’t see how things could be worse but she thought we should stay and fight but send the children to another reality so they could live out their lives in safety.”
Before he could ask another question there was a knock on the door and General Goldman entered with a swathe of papers. “I have some interim test results, General O’Neill.
Jack pointed his finger at a seat and waited until Isaac’s ass was poised over the chair before demanding impatiently,” Status report.”
“Agent DiNozzo’s identity was fairly simple to confirm since we have her DNA still on file and Former Agent Anthony DiNozzo’s on file too.”
“Tony isn’t an agent,” Paula blurted out as Jack shushed her.
“The two children are their biological children, “ Goldman reported.
“As to the child, Sarah O’Neill, this is more problematic since we don’t have Charles O’Neill’s DNA on record.”
Jack knew that there was probably still evidence from the investigation into his death by the Medical Examiner which would yield DNA that could be tested.
“What about comparing it to mine?”
Goldman nodded. That’s what the geneticist Dr Gerd did, Sir. The child is not your biological offspring, but she is a very close relative. Of course, to be one hundred per cent certain, we could compare the baby’s DNA to your former wife Sarah. The geneticist tells me that Mitochondrial DNA would be necessary to conclusive isolate her relationship…”
“Okay, for the moment, suffice to say that she is a close relative and I’ll organise a sample of Charlie’s DNA,” Jack said.
“Yes General,” Goldman replied, probably figuring that they’d kept a lock of his hair from babyhood as many parents do.
“And for the rest of the entourage, have we positively identified any of them?”
“Two, General,” Goldman replied promptly. “Heather Murphy, a nurse who worked at the SGC infirmary, although she died from the Ori plague some years ago. And the eldest of the kids, 14-year-old Davinia Dixon. We’ve confirmed that she is the biological daughter of Colonel David Dixon, of SG-13.”
Jack chuckled, Dave who was the proud father of four boys might end up with a teenage daughter if they ended up forever stuck in this reality.
“Okay, who are the others we haven’t been able to ID conclusively yet,” he inquired impatiently. Jack wondered faintly about what they were going to do with a pack of kids from an alternate reality. It had been complicated enough when they brought an orphaned Cassandra home with them from Hanka.
Well, Dr Gerd has promised we should have the IDs soon for seven-year-old fraternal twins. According to Agent DiNozzo, their parents are Dr Daniel Jackson and Dr Sarah Gardiner, although apparently Dr Jackson has custody or he had custody, he said grimly.
“Sarah Gardiner is…lost,” Paula said diplomatically with an apologetic look at Goldman who tried not to scowl.
“Oh shit,” Jack said, wondering how Danny would react to this news. Once when Jack had gotten his friend pie-eyed on a couple of beers because Daniel was a cheap drunk, the archaeologist had confessed that he didn’t think he wanted any kids after he lost Sha’re.
He felt like when he was living with the Abydonians that they would have made up for all the things he’d missed out on growing up in foster homes since it takes a village to raise a child, but now that his Abydonian family had Ascended, he couldn’t do it alone. However, Jack knew Danny better than he knew himself. If these two children belonged to him in another reality, Daniel would not let them go to strangers in this one.
Jack suddenly realised that he needed to call Daniel and get him back here on Earth to help him deal with this debacle. Apart from the connection he apparently had with two of the children who’d arrived, O’Neill needed someone like Daniel, a people person to stay here on the base with this group while he went and briefed the POTUS and the JCS on the intel that Paula DiNozzo had brought to warn them, although thank goodness, they were already preparing for this very eventuality. Plus, there was the whole issue of what they were going to do with a group from another reality – it was a mess.
And finally, O’Neill considered the situation that he stubbornly refused to so far, instead trying to take one step at a time and first ascertain if baby Sarah really was his son’s daughter. While absolute definitive proof remain infuriatingly, elusively out of reach, he knew in his heart at this point that Sarah was his granddaughter. Which left him with a massive quandary regarding Sarah O’Neill and her little namesake. What to do? What to do? He needed a friend…he needed Daniel.
He quickly excused himself from the office after requesting the use of General Goldman’s secure line to contact Colonel Davis, saying he wanted to get Charlie’s blood sample delivered to Nellis Airforce Base ASAP. Isaac’s aide escorted him back to Goldman’s office looking at Jack strangely.
Finally, he asked hesitantly, Would you like me to hold the baby for you while you make your call, General.”
Jack reacted in surprise, totally unaware that he still held Sarah in the crook of his left arm as she slumbered peacefully. So much for situational awareness; this whole debacle had shaken the battle-hardened warrior in a way he never anticipated.
“Shaking his head, he thanked Sgt Quartermain. “ I appreciate the offer but she’s fine while she’s sleeping,” he said as the sergeant took the hint and withdrew discreetly.
After Jack set both actions in motion but told him not to tell Daniel why he was needed back on Earth, he made his own way back to the private office where he was interviewing Agent DiNozzo. And didn’t that open up a whole minefield of its own, particularly since Tony and Tali were in the securest form of WitSec they could come up with. But would he want to see Paula Cassidy, who to all intents and purposes he’d cared for, before her death if not been in love with her when she died? It was a right mess and he really needed to talk this through with Daniel before he made any decisions.
Chapter 5
Slipping into the office unnoticed, he heard Goldman ask Paula why three dead females had been chosen to bring the children to this reality.
A fair bit pissed that Isaac was exceeding his authority to ask questions that were above his paygrade, now that Jack had assumed command, he drawled, “That’s a great question General.
Isaac gulped, knowing he’d been caught out. Paula gave him a bright smile that he took to mean that the answer wasn’t classified so he nodded at her to answer it.
“It was sort of a coincidence if that’s what you were wondering. We knew about Lieutenant Murphy during the plague because the simple truth is that one of our teams was here in this reality once before.” Seeing the recognition on Jack’s face she said, “I believe that there was an anomaly caused by the Ori and exploited by one of the 16 SGC teams from other realities that turned up in your gate room, determined to get to Atlantis to steal their power module to take back home to their reality.”
“Was it your people?” Goldman asked.
“Who wanted to steal the power module? No, it wasn’t us. Our team was the one that comprised of Dr Janet Fraiser and the Tok’ra Martouf,” Paula relied, looking at Jack. “But you already figured that out, didn’t you General?”
He inclined his head, “I had my suspicions.”
“Yeah, Janet said she was the only Janet and Martouf on an SG-1 Team. And while she was visiting in the infirmary, she happened to ask where Heather was since they worked together for years in our reality. That’s when Janet learnt she had died during the plague. When we decided to send the kids here, hoping it was safe and we could return the favour for you giving us the cure, Lieutenant Murphy was the obvious one to bring the children.”
“Then how come you and Thora Edmunds came too,” Goldman asked sceptically.
“Exigent circumstances,” Paula shrugged. I have two very precious children, one who is just starting to crawl, General,” she said with a steely eyed look at the brigadier general. Plus, there was Lieutenant Major O’Neill’s six-month-old baby as well as my own. My husband has probably died defending us so we could save the children and I’m a trained federal agent who would sacrifice my life to save someone I don’t even know. How could I worry about the risk of entropic cascade failure- to save my own flesh and blood and the lives of my friends and colleagues who make this trip possible.
Goldman looked confused, “What is entropic cascade failure?”
Paula looked at Jack and shrugged, “I’m a fed, General O’Neill, not a scientist.”
He wanted to act stupid and pretend he was clueless but as much as he liked to pretend he was dumb as a box of rocks, he was far from it. He might not be a Samantha Carter or a Rodney McKay, but he knew the basics – it was a part of being head of Homeworld Command.
With a put-upon sigh, he explained, “It’s a strange side effect that develops after a day or so of having identical living matter such as humans, in this case, being together within the same reality. It manifests in violent and extremely painful seizures because according to the eggheads, the foreign matter is rejected by the host reality. But it doesn’t occur if a person’s other self is in another dimension, or they are deceased.”
“But hang on, General Goldman frowned. “Didn’t Agent DiNozzo say that there were seventeen different SG1 teams running around the SGC after the Ori Beachhead? How come they weren’t suffering from entropic cascade failure then,” he wanted to know which was a good question
And damnit, Jack was pretty damned curious about it too. But he was supposed to be answering questions, not asking them so he shrugged in a hell if I know manner.
“Look, all I can tell you is what the eggheads tell me. Dr Lee’s theory was that the proximity of various universes to one another made it less likely for entropic cascade failure to happen – that the more similar the universes were to each other in the metaverse the less likely they are to suffer from the phenomenon. He felt that it was more that they were so different than that they were in the same universe at the same time when it happened to the two Samantha Carters.”
He saw the other two trying to wrap their heads around it. “Me…I gotta wonder if it could have been because all those other teams weren’t there long enough for rejection to occur, or else the metaverse was too damned confused by having sixteen Carters running around trying to fix something.
“Hang on, didn’t you say there were seventeen SG-1s,” the brigadier objected.
Yes, but our Dr Carter wasn’t on the SG-1, she was on maternity leave,” Paula responded. “If your doctor Lee’s theory of dissimilar attracting entropic cascade failure is correct, it’s lucky that our Dr Carter wasn’t with us because our team was the most radically different one there, having both Janet and Martouf in it.”
Jack nodded. “Good point, Agent DiNozzo.”
“Anyway, we were discussing why I and Thora Edmunds insisted on making the trip to accompany Heather and the children. Thora was our children’s teacher at Area 52, and she felt she would be useful in keeping them calm and also be useful in highlighting what our children had learned in school, particularly world history which we theorized would have some similarities but also some differences.”
O’Neill nodded, “Well yes, we’ve already discovered some points of difference and I’m sure there will be others,” he said musingly. “Probably not in hard sciences but as you say, world history is going to be sometimes very different. Having Thora come along was a good idea and luckily, or unluckily for our Thora Edmunds, she was one of those killed during the attack on Area 51 by the Wraith to destroyed our weapons chair.”
“What was it doing at Nellis? Wasn’t it in Antarctic?”
“The IOA made us move it – said it was against the Antarctic non-proliferation treaty and made us move it.”
“But we didn’t put it down there, it’s been down at the Ancient outpost for long before we ever went there,” she objected fiercely.
“Preaching to the choir, DiNozzo. Those idiots at the IOA nearly got the planet taken over by Wraiths,” he said scathingly, “And lost us our last best defence against unfriendlies.”
“Okay, thank goodness our IOB wasn’t quite that dumb assed. We lucked out since we are both dead in this reality, but the only one who we knew for sure would be safe here is Heather. So, ya see, coincidence and not coincidence,” she shrugged.
Jack sighed, looking at Paula DiNozzo with obvious admiration. She was prepared to give up her own life to save her children and her friend’s children. She said her husband was probably dead. He wanted to know what happened to Charlie, but Goldman was hanging around and he didn’t want to talk about anything to do with Operation WOHZ. The plot to control the population while seemingly phantasmagorical was all too real with the arrival of the visitors and even more critical that it stayed classified.
He looked at Goldman.” Any chance we can get a porta-cot for these babies asap. And we’ll need some camping cots and sleeping bags for the older kids.”
He looked at Paula, “What are the ages of the rest of the kids?”
She thought for a moment, “Gia Kawalsky is ten, Riley Faxon is six and Kelvin Austen-McKay is four,” she replied.
“I don’t suppose Gia Kawalsky might happen to be related to a Major Charles Kawalsky is she,” he said with a sinking feeling, thinking of his old friend.
“She is General Kawalsky’s niece or actually his grandniece. He adopted her after her parents were killed in a car crash with a drunk driver when she was three,” she told him.
“And the other two,” he asked, thinking their names seemed awfully familiar as well. “What about Riley Faxon?”
Paula side-eyed him. “We sort of talked about him before,” she said with a smile. “US Ambassador Joe Faxon? He was negotiating that trade deal with the Aschen but right at the last minute he pulled out saying that there was something about them that he just didn’t trust,” Paula told him. “I wish I could tell him his intuition was right. Mikelle would never have been born,’ she said looking down at her sleeping infant.
“And Riley’s mom? Is she still alive?”
“She was, not sure about Joe though. And not sure if she is now for that matter,” Paula frowned.
“Dr Carter, I presume?”
“How did you know,” her blue eyes widened in surprise.
“Just my intuition,” Jack muttered not truly understanding why himself. Oh boy, this kept getting better!
And the last one…hit me, I can take it,” he said dramatically. Who belongs to Kelvin? I don’t believe we have anyone named Austen-McKay working in the SGC program, he said, looking at Goldman to see if he could place the name either.”
“Probably not,” she agreed. Neither do we but we do have a Jake Austen and a Dr Rodney McKay. Kelvin James is their son!”
At the same time as Jack yelped, “Rodney McKay has a kid?” General Goldman exclaimed, “Rodney McKay is GAY!
The combined noise started both children who were sleeping and the mother scowled the thoughtless males who woke them up, although mercifully in the ensuing silence both babies settled down again.
DiNozzo regarded both men curiously before answering Jack. “Yeah he does. Although technically if you want to split hairs, his sister donated an egg and was their surrogate. Jake supplied the sperm. After Kelvin was born, Rodney adopted him so yeah, Rodney is his father,” she said, watching his astonishment curiously.
She turned to Goldman, “Rodney is Bi, not gay. Jake is gay and what’s the issue? There’s nothing wrong with being gay or bi. Are you one of those people who think only straight people should be able to have kids,” she demanded of the brigadier, her blue eyes bursting with icy disapproval.
Isaac backpedalled. “Um er no, that wasn’t what I meant. I was just surprised is all, because our Rodney is living with the Atlantis base’s chief medical officer and has been for the last four years. Before that he was always chasing Col. Carter,” he explained.
And what’s with your shocked look when I said Rodney had a kid,” she quizzed Jack.
Jack thought about how they’d had to impose an protection order of Tali DiNozzo a few months ago and his vitriolic reaction when children annoyed him, which to be fair was pretty easy to do. Raising his eyebrows expressively, he said, “Let’s just say the Rodney McKay in our reality has zero tolerance for children, unless they are at least twenty-five,” he said in all seriousness. “And even then he yells at them.”
Daniel where are you, he thought longingly. I wish we could beam people here straight from the Pegasus galaxy
It would likely to be a while before Jack would have his old friend and former team mate to help him deal with this unholy mess but luckily, his trusted second in command had done the next best thing. Knowing that their latest recruit, Special Agent Dave Rossi was taking some time out on the west coast to spend time with his daughter and grandson, Paul Davis had called him right after he’d ordered followed up on O’Neill’s orders to locate Charlie’s blood and have it routed to Nellis asap for comparative purposes and ordered Dr Daniel Jackson back to the SGC immediately. Rossi was now in transit and in lieu of his family time being interrupted, Col Davis offered him an extra week of family time with pay to compensate him and his family.
In the next few hours help would be arriving at Area 51 in the shape of a calm under pressure Special Agent David Rossi.
~o0o~
“Damn it Hardison, what did you want to go and do that for,” Eliot Spenser growled at his business partner and friend. “I know I can’t stand the guy. Do I need to remind you that he tried to blow up Sophie,” he pointed out as Parker scowled too.
“Yeah Alec, and you know how he’s always undressing me with his eyes. Eliot’s right, I hate working with that creep,” she told her partner, giving a look that would curdle milk fresh from the cow’s udder. “You should have discussed it with us before you went ahead and offered him a job on this one,” she told Alec grimly.
Eliot stifled a malicious grin. If Hardison expected to be getting any nookie on this job, he’d have another thing coming. As much as he hate Colin Chaos Mason because hallo he was a computer geek/hacker with a abhorrent personality, and an arrogance that made Alec look like Andy Griffiths with his aw-shucks mien, he’d hurt one of their team. And that was simply not forgivable. Parker had always been super close to Sophie so even without the jerk sleazing all over their resident thief- extraordinaire, she would never be able to forget or forgive him for hurting Sophie the way he did because he was deeply threatened by her skills.
That yellow-bellied scum-sucking cowardly coyote’s bunghole had sent their former grifter on the team, Sophie Devereaux a bomb hidden in a bunch of flowers that she’d assumed was sent to from their leader Nathan Ford. Sure, she’d managed to survive the blast with hardly a scratch, (because the team had each other’s backs) but to keep her safe they faked her death and inadvertently kicked off an existential crisis that set her off on a doomed journey of discovery. As a grifter who really had no equal and a multitude of different characters in her arsenal, trying to figure out who you were was little short of a locating the ending of a mobius loop. Eliot as the team hitter, was fond of Sophie, in a big sister big brother sort of relationship and when someone hurt the four members of his team, he didn’t take kindly to it. They’d all struggled in her absence but none more than Nate whose inebriation kicked it a a notch or dozen and Parker struggled to try to figure out anything remotely connected with emotions and social mores.
Yep and Colin Chaos Mason was to blame and all these years later even after Nate and Sophie left Leverage Eliot hadn’t forgiven him. By the looks of it, neither had Parker. They shared a fist bump as they tore strips of Hardison, something that Parker wouldn’t have got back in the beginning.
“But c’mon guys, we worked with him again on the Last Dam Job and he did try to blow any of us up,” he protested.
Damnit Hardison,” Elliot exclaimed again. “That was because we were in a bind – our targets knew everything about us and we needed to bring them down,” he said, referring to the fact that they killed Nate’s father and while the old fella was a two-bit gangster, he was still Nate’s father, and he was family.
“And Alec, we all agreed together to bring Colin in, Nate didn’t do it before consulting with us all,” she told him sharply. “High handed much?”
Realising in his eagerness to toy with Chaos, he might had acted unilaterally and that he’d made a severe error of judgement he tried to backtrack. Parker was wearing her if you think we’re going to be having naughty nights, think again, Bucko, expression and that was very bad news for him. Seems like Eliot had reached the same conclusion because he sent him a text saying:
You’ll need to pack a lotta lube for hand jobs, my friend.
Hardison sent back a reply – a middle finger!
“Look you two, I offered him a job, but I haven’t hired him yet. I’m letting him sweat. His last job went south, and he ended up arrested with part of his crew in Russia and had to bribe their way out. Plus,” he chortled gleefully, “Colin lost over half the fee since he only managed to steal half the art he was hired to purloin, so I thought I’d have some fun at his expense and torture him that I was hired by the Black Queen to pull a job.”
Unfortunately, neither his girlfriend nor Eliot looked particularly mollified. Hardison was a brilliant hacker and inventor of technology, gadgets, and an engineer but he also had a very real tendency to overcomplicate cons or else make them too simplistic but fail to see the flaws. Which was why Eliot was so pissed at the younger man going off half-cocked before consulting with them.
“Yeah, about that. Who is this Black Queen that’s got you in a tizzy and why should we take the job”
Hardison grinned like the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “Eliot, my man, I’m so glad you asked me that,” and he was off with his audio-visual presentation, waxing lyrical about another damned hacker who was so famous they were according to him, like hacker royalty or some dumbass shit like that.
Frankly that didn’t make Eliot keen to take this job, it made him less incline to do so. Part way through his fanboying this chick – at least he assumed it was a chick but perhaps he shouldn’t, Hardison looked over at his bemused business partners and seemed to read the room. Apparently Parker wasn’t busting her buns to work for the Black Queen either.
Looking back and forth between the hitter and the thief, he implored them, “Seriously you two, don’t you get what a massive thrill this is?”
Shaking his head, Eliot said as patiently as possible, “I guess ya have to be a hacker to appreciate it. So why don’t you cut to the chase about the job. Who is our target?”
Hardison looked disgusted at their apathy in the client, but he got with the program, perhaps realising that Eliot was fast running out of patience. Putting up a photo of a dark haired – dark eyed beauty – not seeing Spencer flinch, he said. “The target is an Israeli, Ziva Rivka David…”
“Officer of Mossad, Kidon trained assassin and spy. Daughter of Eli David, former Director of Mossad before he was shunted out and assassinated while working on a supposed peace deal with his opposite number in the Palestine government. The assassins were sloppy and the Director of NCIS’s wife died as well as David,” Eliot interrupted, reeling off a bunch of facts about her.
Parker sized Eliot up carefully. “You know her?”
“I know of her,” he replied. Anyone who had dealings with Mossad during her father’s reign knew of her. Word was that she killed her own brother when he went rogue during a mission because Eli ordered her to.”
He looked at the others who looked shocked and disgusted and said, “If we do decide to take this one and I’m not sure that we should, then we’re going to need to recruit Mikel Dayan for this one and definitely need Quinn too. David is lethal and has an extremely short fuse. Normally she wouldn’t have passed Mossad’s stringent psych tests but, can anyone say nepotism. And her old man was ambitious to the point of having bats in his belfry and at the same time, was also the most ruthless son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”
Parker asked gently, “More ruthless than Damien Moreau?”
“Fuck yes,” he cursed. Seeing the curiosity in their faces he said, “ He seduced a young Palestinian doctor working on the West Bank and made certain he impregnated her so he’d have a half Palestinian son who could infiltrate Hamas. He educated him and recruited him to Mossad. He was a Doctor like his mama and qualified as a doctor before Kidon trained him as a spy and assassin. Ari Haswari was filled with rage at his sperm donor for arranging for his mother to die in a bombing and he decided to strike back at his father and Israel, so Ziva was ordered to kill him.”
The pair looked at him in horror. “Plenty more of that that I could share but the point is that you can’t take your eye off her for a minute. Anyone who thought it was a good ideal to give lethal skills training to the crazy assed chick was a fool, so if we do this I’m going to need some serious help to keep y’all safe.”
Seeing Alec sitting open mouthed, just staring at the daughter of the former director of Israel’s feared and respected national intelligence agency of Israel, she gave him a more or less gentle kick on the leg. “What does this Black Queen want us to do?”
Picking up his ever-present bottle of Squeeze Orange Soda, he chugged several mouthfuls, oblivious to the dribble that ran out the side of his mouth. He clicked onto another still photo of a handsome man in his forties with a small child in his arms. Both were smiling, looking at something as the camera took a candid shot. A second picture showed an ID with the same male bearing the logo of a federal agency – NCIS.
“This is Anthony DiNozzo and his daughter Tali David DiNozzo,” he said. “He was a federal agent working for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service for 15 years before resigning.”
“Navy cop,” Eliot commented.
“Also spent six years in a number of police departments before joining NCIS,” Hardison replied. “My intel is that he is a top-notch investigator and one of the best undercover agents in the US.”
“And he had a kid with Eli David’s daughter, so maybe not such a hot shot,” Eliot observed sardonically.
According to the Black Queen he had no idea of her existence until Mossad notified them that Ziva had been killed by an firebombing that destroyed her childhood home and was supposed to be hiding Eli David’s secret dirt files he’d collected through his four decades in intelligence. Ziva’s 20-month-old child somehow survived, and the Mossad director brought her to Tony and told him he was the baby daddy. He promptly resigned and left the US to rear his daughter.”
“But David wasn’t dead. And now at a guess I’d say she’s back and want’s custody of her poor kid. Damnit Hardison, Ya know we don’t do custody disputes, especially ones involving crazy-assed Kidon assassins.”
Alec held up his hand. “Hang on Eliot, there a bit more to it than that. It seems that while she was running around playing dead these last three years and trying to catch her nemesis, someone has been stalking Tail DiNozzo and it ain’t her loving mother. Have either of you two heard of the Trust,” he asked looking at his partners.
He never in a million years expecting them to or if they had, to have heard the same nebulous intel he had…well until this job. If they took it and Hardison was determined that Leverage would take the job since he couldn’t let the chance of working with the Black Queen slip through his fingers. So, Alec got the shock of his life when both Parker and Eliot indicated quite casually that they had.
“When? How?” he sputtered and had to quaff several big mouthfuls of Squeeze Orange soda.
Parker seemed utterly nonchalant. “Some guy from the Trust contacted me, wanted me to steal a hard drive from some scientist at some place called Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada but I told him I’m not a traitor, I don’t steal NatSec intel, “ she said shrugging.
Hardison looked at Eliot. “Someone from the Trust contacted me roughly a year ago I guess. Wanted me to retrieve an abducted five-year-old and return her to her custodial parent after the father took off with her. Like Parker, I refused. Like I said, we don’t do custody cases – they are just too messy for my liking. Not to mention why was the Trust bothering about a simple custody case, anyway?”
He looked at Alec and the pieces all fell into place. “Oh fuck!” he cursed, horrified Are you telling me that the Trust was trying to get me to abduct Tali David DiNozzo? Damnit Hardison!”
“Well, you are a reputed retrieval specialist. Our client informs me that they made two very serious attempts, but thanks to the skills of her father, he managed to thwart them both times. She wasn’t harmed but very traumatised and developed an anxiety disorder. When the powers that be offered Anthony DiNozzo the opportunity to go into WitSec he accepted. Now Ziva David is done playing with her prey, flushing out her nemesis who tried to kill her after Ziva killed her lover (and Ziva’s brother, Ari) and by the by, getting her latest fuck toy dead in their deadly game of cat and mouse. So, she’s turns up alive and wants Tali back.”
Eliot cursed roundly before observing, ”That crazy ass bitch! If she doesn’t stop looking, she’ll lead the Trust right to them and as much as David is bad news, that crime syndicate is a fuckton more dangerous. That little girl and her father don’t stand a chance!”
Parker asked diffidently, “Not that it matters, but do we know why the Trust is desperate to get hold of Tali?”
“Need to know, just that she has a medical anomaly that the Trust learned about when they were involved in a hit and run. The prevailing wisdom is they want her for medical research,” he said shrugging.
Parker became incensed, just as she did when children were made to suffer or placed in danger. “They want to use her for medical experiments,” she railed dangerously.
“So why does the Black Queen want to hire us,” Eliot asked, “Does she want us to take David out? I’m pretty sure that would solve one huge problem. Mikel Dayan would love to shoot her or kill her with a paperclip,” he said in total seriousness. “Pretty sure she’d pay us for the privilege!”
If he was expecting howls of protest at killing Ziva then he was sadly disappointed.
Parker shrugged. “Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. Seeing Eliot’s look of surprise, she said, “ This Mossad person. If we told her that they were in WitSec would she give up her dubious claim to Tali and go home to Israel?”
Eliot shook his head. “I can’t say for sure, but I don’t buy it. She pretended to be dead for three years to trap her prey, so do you see her giving up on the daughter? According to this intel of Hardison’s she didn’t even tell Tali’s father she existed. If this Sahar terrorist hadn’t come after her, it’s pretty doubtful he’d have ever known. Plus, she is so crazy, not to mention overconfident and arrogant, she’d probably convince herself she could take down the Trust single handed,” he said scornfully.
Hardison cocked an eyebrow, “And can she, do you reckon?”
Eliot had been perusing the intel that the hacker had sent to their personal tablets. He laughed nastily. “According to the data that you sent us which, I’m assuming your Black Queen hacker buddy sent you, I’d say, not a chance in Hell. She had to go crawling back to her old boss at NCIS to get help to bring down this terrorist Sahar after three years of trying, he said mockingly. “ He was the one who took her out. Nope, the Trust would eat her for dinner,” he predicted unaware how prescient he was being.
“But what does our employer expect us to do if the Black Queen won’t let us shoot David,” Parker whined at Hardison.
“She wants Ziva to be bird dog and flush out as many Trust operatives as possible. If necessary, she wants us to help set up a con, faking the death of DiNozzo and his daughter but first she’s hoping to ID as many Trust personnel as possible, then when they are good and ready, arrest their asses, and use them to find the higher ups. Best case scenario – bring down the Trust,”
“I sure as hell hope that this shadowy government group she’s working with have DiNozzo and his kid stashed someplace damned secure, not that WitSec is ever completely safe, Eliot said with steely authority since he’d gotten to targets who were in witness protection back in the bad old days when he’d done stuff he was mighty ashamed of.”
“What do you mean a shadowy government group? The Black Queen is anti-establishment, she wouldn’t work for a bunch of spooks, Eliot. Wash your mouth out with soap for suggesting such heresy,” Hardison howled him down, unable to entertain such a thought.
Eliot stared at him, “Maybe not normally,” he said although he was dubious, “but trust me, this has Black Ops written all over it. And it’s a military organisation but one I’m not familiar with. And one thing I’m certain of, we are going to need their backup to take on the Trust and Ziva David. They need us because the targets won’t see us coming so we can hook ‘em but we’ll need the military’s might to take them down.
And while Alec was not happy about the possibility of the Black Queen selling out her principles to The Man, if Eliot said they needed this Black Ops military group then he pretty much knew all there was to know on that score as former Delta Spec Ops, and there were very few military organisations he couldn’t identify in his sleep. And if he said they needed military muscle then Hardison trusted him to keep them all safe.
Parker had a slightly feral air about her as she made eye contact with both men. “So, what are we saying? Does Leverage Consulting and Associates take on this case?”
Hardison nodded, “ I say yeah, let’s take these people down.”
She gave a predatory smile. “Eliot, what do you say?”
“ I say not just yeah, Parker but HELL YEAH! Let’s do this!”
Hardison looked deep into his girlfriend’s eyes and asked, “And what does Parker think?”
“I’m not going to let the Trust steal Tali DiNozzo and treat her like some lab rat that they dissect. And Ziva David can kiss my grits because she isn’t fit to be that little one’s mama. Leave the Trust to the shadowy military organisation but I say David is ours and we will kick her ass.”
“Hear! Hear!,” Eliot seconded her motion, figuring that Parker would stab her with a fork or taser the shit out of her, she’d done it before, and he was all up for that.
“But seriously guys, this is a big job – were gonna need resources and by that, I mean people. More than just that little pissant Colin Chaos Mason too.” Eliot said, his softly spoken voice dripping with distain. “Are we going to be bankrolled by the Black Queen sufficiently to pull this off, so they don’t see us coming,” he enquired of Hardison.
“The BQ said that money wouldn’t be a problem, we could get whatever we need. And if we can pull of the scam, successfully convincing Ziva David that Anthony and Tali DiNozzo are dead, so she stops searching for them, then the BQ said we’d get a three million bonus. Three mill each, he emphasized.
Parker thought of all the non-sequentially numbered cash and how it would smell and feel and how much cereal that three million would buy her and felt momentarily woozy. She could even get a brand spanking new state of the art pearl handle taser for the job and she would call it the crazy assed bitch!
Hardison thought about a brand-new prototype Lucille with all the absolutely must have techno bells and whistles. Gadgets and equipment that even someone as wealthy as he was, might fantasize over. His heart rate started racing in anticipation.
Meanwhile Eliot thought about how many more food trucks, three million dollars would let his company, Bricks and Basil purchase so he could provide employment to recently discharged military vets and he figured it would be quite a few.
After spending a couple of minutes in pleasant daydreams, Parker as Leverage’s mastermind called them to order.
“Okay. As Eliot says, we are going to need a lot of resources on this one, any wish lists, apart from Quinn and Mikel Dayan?”
Hardison opened his mouth and Eliot beat him to it, “Yes okay, you can have that cretin Colin but if he tries to blow any of us up, I’ll be castrating the little asswipe and make it last for several hours,” he said, as Parker looked psychotically gleeful at the thought.
Parker said, “I think we should reach out and see if Nate and Sophie might be interested in lending a hand,” and Alec and Eliot nodded their agreement.
“I reckon a grifter who also has bona fide contacts with the FBI might come in handy too, Spencer said. Seeing Parker pouting, he backtracked, “ And I meant no disrespect to Special Agents Hagen and Thomas,” he said hurriedly, referring to Parker and Hardison’s false FBI identities where they mingled with agents in a number of jobs with the fibbies being none the wiser. “But if Sophie and Nate aren’t in, then we are going to need a top-notch grifter. Tara Cole is one of the best and we work well together,” he argued as his partners nodded slowly.
The rest of the meeting they were tossing up names of potential individuals they’d need. Parker suggested Archie Leach, her mentor and surrogate father. As she said, he was too old and urbane for people to pick him as the master thief he was, and he’d fill an important niche in their ongoing con.
As they broke up to go and grab a meal together, Eliot was already reaching out to a contact of his in Mossad, and an old girlfriend Liat Tuvia to ask her to pass over his burner cell number to her former colleague Mikel Dayan. “Tell her we have a job if she’d interested, one that involves bringing down the crazy-assed handler who got her former Kidon partner killed when she didn’t pull his drunken tuchus out of the field when he screwed up.”
After making contact with the former Mossad assassin, the lovely and deadly Officer Liat texted him back with the message: Done. Dayan interested. If you’re going after Ziva, count me in too!”
According to the intel Hardison had sent him, Ziva David was responsible for getting an Shin Bet officer, Adam Eshel tortured and killed in her amateurish attempt to bring down Mira Sahar Azam, a member of her half-brother’s terrorist cell who wanted vengeance for Ziva killing Ari. Elliot wouldn’t be all that surprised if a few more of Liat and Dayan’s crowd turned up, wanting to help out.
David had made a real mess of what should have been a pretty simple operation. Eli David’s daughter who was supposed to be his heir apparent, couldn’t even kill Sahar after three years trying – her old NCIS boss had to do the deed. What a pity she hadn’t just asked for their help three years before and saved a lot of anguish all round in faking her death and letting people who were close to her believe she’d died. Plus, Eshel might have survived!
Chapter 6
Dave Rossi had been surprised when Col Davis contacted him out of the blue while he was vacationing on the west coast. As per his plan, having made the decision to work for the BAU and the ISBI on a fifty-fifty basis, he’d spent three months on Atlantis and then returned back to Earth, for another three months. As part of his new working arrangement, he was spending two weeks with his journalist daughter, Joy Struthers, his son-in-law Shawn, and his precious grandson Kai before he was due to ship back out to Atlantis again in ten days. When he was tracked down by some silent Air Force types and handed a heavily encrypted phone and found himself fielding an urgent request to head to Nellis Air Base in South Nevada he rapidly put two and two together He figured it had something to do with Area 51 which was under the auspice of SGC or maybe Homeworld Command – he was still a little bit hazy on where the demarcation between the two stopped.
While Colonel Davis was suitably cryptic despite the encrypted phone, he asked very politely if Rossi could assist them with an urgent situation. He’d assured Dave that he would not only get any time he missed out on with his family made up for, but Paul would authorise an additional ten days of leave to make up for interrupting his vacation. Of course, Rossi had said he’d be there as soon as he could – he was bursting with curiosity to see Area 51 and also felt more than a little trepidation knowing that he knew exactly what was out there in the Milky Way and beyond. Were they under attack?
Davis was waiting for him at the security office at Nellis looking unflappable as usual, but Rossi knew he hadn’t been pulled away from his family for a routine matter. As the highly efficient bureaucrat smoothed the way for him to gain entry to the base and then go through a separate process to be admitted to Area 51, he talked quite amiably about Dave’s vacation so far, which surprised Rossi since he’d never pegged the lieutenant colonel as a chatty Cathy. He promised to organise something special to help make up for the interruption, suggesting that his son-in-law and grandson might like a ride in a fighter jet. Rossi chuckled and said that his daughter would be first in line and Davis had barely batted an eyelid, saying it wouldn’t be a problem.
Even with Col Davis’ clout, it had still been an exercise in bureaucratic jumping through hoops in triplicate but finally, they were being escorted to an office and he was briefed on the reason for his presence on the super-secret base. At first, he thought that this was an enormous joke – an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of them containing different versions of himself and his friends and family.
“Like that Star Trek episode where Mr Spock had a goatee and was evil,” he asked mostly serious if a tad facetious.
Davis lifted his eyebrow a millimetre, the equivalent of the emotionally stitched-up career military guy rolling his eyes like a teenager. “Theoretically it is possible, but mostly the changes are a lot less dramatic than out and out good Rossi, Evil Rossi dichotomy. Think more like Dave Rossi never returned to the BAU after he retired in one reality or that he might have stayed in the Corps after the Vietnam War, marrying his high school sweetheart and what effect would something like that have on his life.”
“Okay,” he said, deciding to think about that later on and focus on the task at hand. “So, you say that three females and nine children just appeared in the middle of Area 51, claiming to be from another reality. How do you know that this isn’t some sort of trap?”
We didn’t, which was why the first thing we did was to collect DNA profiles of the adult and the children,” He said seriously. “The three adults’ DNA profiles are a perfect match for three individuals who, in our reality are deceased.”
“Are we sure that their deaths weren’t faked?” Rossi asked somewhat sceptically, thinking of Prentice and her death when she was in WitSec
“As much as anyone can be,” he shrugged. “Lieutenant Heather Murphy was a nurse who died at the SGC from the Ori pandemic a few years back when they tried to wipe us out. She caught it nursing the SGC team that inadvertently brought it through the stargate. Thora Edmunds was a teacher stationed here in Area 51 tutoring students of many of the scientists who work here, she had a PhD. in educating gifted children. She died when the Wraith super spaceship made it to Earth and destroyed the Ancients’ drone chair when the IOA forced us to move it from the base from Atlantis. As for NCS Special Agent Paula Cassidy, she died in the performance of her duties saving civilians and fellow agents from a suicide bomber in 2008,” he said gravely.
“What about the children?”
“They are all offspring of SGC scientists or military personnel in their alternate reality, but none of them exists in this one. We already know that the convergence between our reality and the one they came from is minimal in some regards although the bigger picture stuff seems quite similar – which creates a rather unique dilemma.”
Rossi raised his eyebrow inquisitively. “In what way?”
“People married to folk in their world and having kids who aren’t married in ours. It complicates matters, especially for people who aren’t a part of the program,” he grimaced. Paul hated messiness and this was a gigantic pile of shit.
“Can you give me an example?”
“General O’Neill and his wife lost their son when he was eight, approximately six months before Colonel O’Neill and Dr Jackson first went to Abydos and destroyed Ra. His son Charlie shot himself accidentally with the General’s service revolver and Colonel O’Neill’s marriage didn’t survive,” Paul said.
“Hardly surprising,” Rossi commented feeling a rush of sympathy for O’Neill since he had lost his own son.
“One of the children who appeared here from the other reality is Charlie O’Neill’s six-month-old daughter. Charlie survived in that reality, and instead of shooting himself, he killed his mother Sarah accidently when she tried to take the gun away from him. The General was caught quite off guard by the infant’s appearance,” he said, understatedly.
“My God!” Rossi exclaimed. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through. But why did the Alternate Reality Charlie send his infant daughter here to our world?”
“Their universe was under threat, I can’t give you details at this point, but the outlook was extremely grim,. They didn’t expect to survive, so he sent his baby here for Jack O’Neill in this world to protect her.”
“That’s just…I have no words. I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah, I agree. Anyway, the General sent for Dr Jackson but he’s not on Atlantis and it will take a couple of days to get him back here, so I thought of you.”
“Dear Lord, don’t tell me that I have offspring from another reality waiting here,” he said, half in jest.
“No Agent Rossi, not you, but Dr Jackson has fraternal twins here in the group of ten children,” Paul said seriously.
“Oh wow. Does he have any children already?”
“No – he planned on having a family with his Abydonian wife Sha’re before she was taken as a host to a Goa’uld and later killed. I don’t think he ever recovered from her loss,” he said grimly. “So, you see, while this isn’t your normal ISBI case, it needs someone who’s read in on the program with some psychological and people skills. The fact you have a grandson of a similar age to these refugees made me think that you could be very useful in the next few days,” he explained.
Dave shook his head. “Well… I’ll certainly do what I can, Colonel Davis, but I think this is a situation that is well out of my area of expertise,” he said honestly.
Davis gave a small smile. “Agent Rossi, the truth is this situation is outside all of our areas of expertise, but we’ll just have to do the best we can. There is no other option.”
He handed over a bunch of files that they’d compiled on each of the adult females – mostly from this reality – vital statistics with a lot less data on the still-living versions from an alternate reality. He was suddenly wishing that Spencer was here right now, the genius would probably be handling this mindfuck quantum reality stuff a lot better than Dave could ever hope to.
He flicked through the three profiles – NCIS Special Agent Paula Cassidy (dec) in this world versus a decade older version, NCI Paula DiNozzo (nee Cassidy) from an alternate universe who had a 12 y/o son, Joshua DiNozzo and an 11-month-old daughter Mikelle DiNozzo. She and her husband were recruited for the program through the then NCI Director Tom Morrow just before he left NCS to head up Homeworld Protectorate and formed a small team in charge of the security at Cheyenne Mountain and Area 52 at Nellis.
Lieutenant Heather Murphy had worked at the United States Airforce Academy Hospital base as a nurse where the then CMO of the SGC, Dr Janet Fraiser also had a second office. Janet had recruited her to work at the SGC after she’d impressed Fraiser with her bedside manner when dealing with the Nassyan refugees, saved by SG1 and one of the team was temporarily an unwilling host to a Tok’ra. By contrast, the alt/reality version of Lieutenant Murphy hadn’t died when the Ori released the Ori plague because she had been on a six-month sabbatical. Murphy had been nursing her father who was dying of lung cancer. She came with her daughter, Justine who was seven years old.
The last file of the three Paul had given was that of the educator Dr Thora Edmunds, who in both realities was educating the offspring of the SCG’s most brilliant scientists. It would seem in both worlds that the powers that be had deemed the risk of them attending regular schools was deemed far too dangerous given the rogue elements of the SCG and the impossible to eradicate multi conglomerate/crim cartel known as the Trust. He started at the very beautiful teacher who had died trying to protect her young students when the Wraith had attacked and destroyed the Ancient’s Drone chair at Area 51, having received the coordinates of it and Earth’s location after receiving a message sent by a Wraith from another reality. Oh, and wasn’t that a terrifying thought!
Curious, he checked out Thora’s DOB and was stunned to learn the teacher had been born in 1966 which put the alt/reality Thora in her mid-fifties, but she looked much younger than that. However, as the father of a biracial African American, he also knew it wasn’t that uncommon. Although it wasn’t the time or the place, Dave felt a flicker of attraction for Dr Edmunds, before he swiftly tamped down on his emotions.
The Colonel passed over a much smaller file with a list of the ten children from the alt/reality. Mostly it consisted of the names and ages of the children and who their parents were. He looked at the list not recognising many names apart from Daniel Jackson and General Jack O’Neil. He also recognised Paula DiNozzo and her two children of course, but the veteran profiler’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw Kelvin Max Austen-McKay who was listed as the son of Dr Jake Austen and Dr Rodney McKay.
“Kelvin Austen-McKay? Is he the child of Atlantis’ Rodney McKay,” he inquired faintly. To be honest he was having trouble seeing the man as a parent.
“Biologically speaking, he is the boy’s uncle, as his sister Jeannie donated an egg and her uterus to be the surrogate for Kelvin since she already had a boy and a girl with her husband in that reality. Her brother’s husband provided the sperm but in this reality, the Austen who is a quantum theorist lives in Denmark and has never met McKay at least, not that we are aware of. Frankly, the parentage is something of an ethical nightmare,” he confided. “Austen has no knowledge of the Stargate program – at least we don’t think he has, but he did once work for Henry Wallace who was the former President of Devlin Medical Technologies.”
He saw Rossi looking confused. “What would a quantum physicist work for a medical technology company?”
“He didn’t. Wallace had many companies before he died but he did manage to gain knowledge of the SGC that he shouldn’t have access to – it almost cost Dr Miller her life.”
~o0o~
After a break for a meal, so Paula DiNozzo could spend time with her son and the other children who were here without their parents, Jack discovered that his 2IC was here and while he was working on getting Daniel Jackson back to Earth, it seemed that he’d gone off with Vala and Dr Beckett to treat a group of hybrids from Michael’s horrific experiments who lived in a remote region on an otherwise uninhabited planet on top of a mountain range. Hiking in was the only option and every six months, clone Carson would make the arduous hike to carry out basic medical check-ups.
It was his way of trying to atone for the shocking decisions his counterpart had made by assisting the Hoff and the genetic experiments that had created Michael Kenmore. Considering the hundreds of thousands lost directly through the Hoff virus and indirectly through the Wraith slaughtering anyone who’d had the virus and survived, only to pose a real existential threat to the Wraith, Clone Carson would probably never find salvation from the knowledge that his predecessor (his carbon copy genetically) had unleashed untold suffering on the people of Pegasus. Sure, the original Carson Beckett had been trying to defeat the Wraith because the expedition had been responsible for their premature awakening and like any hibernating creature, they woke up hungry and pissed off, since there was not enough food to go around.
So, the bottom line was it was going to be a while before they could establish contact with Dr Jackson and that sucked but really, Jack had to hand it to Paul, he had called in reinforcements. When he and Paula returned to the large gym where they were housing the refugees they discovered the kids were chowing down to a massive meal brought in by the food services staff. Jack discovered Special Agent David Rossi was there too, seated across the table from Thora Edmunds and making moo-moo eyes at the extremely attractive teacher. When he greeted Rossi and introduced him to Paula, her eyes lit up.
David noticed and asked, “Do you know my alternate identity in your world?”
Paula shook her head. “No, I never had the good fortune to meet you personally but I’m a very big fan of your books, Mr Rossi. Although the non-fiction criminal ones were definitely my favourites, you’re a massive celebrity due to the seventeen murder mysteries you’ve written and ten of them have been made into movies,” she told him, a little star struck.
“Actually, it’s Agent Rossi,” he told her. “After I’d retired to write criminal non-fiction books I returned to the FBI after a ten-year absence. In this world I’ve thought about a foray into fiction writing but never seemed to get around to it,” he admitted with a laugh. “Although I have to say, alternate realities would make one heck of a series,” he said musingly.
After the meal, O’Neill had a brief word with Davis and Rossi, Paul explaining that he knew that the General would need to brief the POTUS and the JCS, but that Daniel was going to take some locating, so he brought in Agent Rossi to hang out with the kids. Jack agreed that he was a good choice since Daniel was off exploring the Pegasus galaxy – the man had an insatiable appetite when it came to learning about alien cultures and societies. He thanked Dave for interrupting his family time and backed up Colonel Davis’ offer to make it up to his family.
A short time later, Jack disappeared with Agent Cassidy and the two infants who needed feeding and changing. Paul had brought a stack of baby stuff with him and while Paula fed Mikelle, Jack occupied himself bathing Baby Sarah, diapering and dressing her in a clean onesie, amazed that after all this time, the skills he’d acquired with Charlie so many years before were still there. By the time Paula had finished feeding Mikelle and preparing Sarah’s formula, he took the bottle and sat down to feed his alt-reality granddaughter. The NCS agent swiftly washed and changed her daughter and they popped the pair down to sleep, dimming the lights as they watch the babies drift off to sleep.
Jack looked at the agent and said, “Right, tell me what happened. When did you realise that there was something wrong?”
“Not until it was too late, and even then when we realised there was a systematic plot, it took us way too long to work out how people were seemingly becoming radicalised. Oh sure, our NatSec agencies figured out that various countries were being attacked but it seemed to be occurring within countries by their own people. We were concerned when one by one, member countries of the Asian Union started to fall to dictatorships but no one for a moment ever considered that it was all part of a cohesive plot to control the Earth.”
Paula sighed heavily. “ Some people likened it to a worldwide cult that spread first from Asia, across every single African nation before Southern European countries one after another were falling. At first, it was a slow process, dictators stood in elections and were elected with huge majorities, the likes of which had never been seen before. And the truly bizarre thing was that these dictators were elected without declaring their intentions, just that it was time for people to unite. Then as the ‘United’ as they called themselves grew in ever-increasing numbers, they didn’t wait for their countries’ elections to fall due, the ‘United’ simply used force to seize control of their governments and then to impose a dictator to rule over them,” Paula told him soberly, shaking her head at the memories.
“By this point, the deniers and appeasers were finally starting to concede that this was something serious, but they spoke of cyclical changes that were organic and rose out of changes that were anxiety-inducing and made people long for strong leaders to take charge and tell them what to do. Most historians said that it was an evolutionary change and would recorrect itself in a century or two as the pendulum swung back the other way. “It was just a political course correction, in part brought on by technological burnout – having too much change occur too swiftly.”
Paula looked ill as she told him, “They said that the people hungered for a return to a simpler time when there weren’t so many choices to be made. Where just like children needed structure and firm parenting, people wanted leaders to lead and for them to follow,” she said. “From what we could see in the States of United America however, it seemed that everywhere the ‘United” wanted to follow the dictators blindly.”
Jack thought about how what Agent Cassidy described bore superficialities to what their Earth was experiencing when it came to the uprising of extremism of right-wing groups and messianic individuals. Of how many people did indeed hanker for a simpler lifestyle, dreaming of a sea change or a tree change, leaving the big metropolises behind and surviving with less. He thought of the rise in the number of people who were attracted by cults based on whack-a-doodle conspiracy theories and he could see how academics might confuse what happened in Paula’s world to his and dismiss it. Lord knows it was happening here too but via very different means.
“And the ‘United’, were they aggressive and angry?”
Shaking her blonde tresses violently, she replied. “No, definitely not. They were euphoric and proselytising, wanting to spread the word of their conversion to the ‘Truth’ so everyone could become a part of the United.”
“And what if they felt threatened, or people resisted them?”
“Then they became menacing and if the people who they revered gave them an order to kill anyone who refused to conform, then they carried it out ruthlessly without compunction. It was as if they were mindless robots, incapable of thinking independent thoughts.”
Jack nodded. “That’s a very insightful observation, Agent DiNozzo.”
Paula nodded grimly and continued, “As countries tried to resist, the ‘United’ formed into massive armies, swarming into countries who were still self-governing, overwhelming their populations by the sheer weight of numbers in their zombie armies – destroying anything or individual who tried to stop them. At last, the States of United America and the Republic of Canada were the last two significant countries left standing in the face of the “United” armies of billions and we knew that capitulation was only a matter of time. Some of us fled off-world while most of the scientists decided to stay at Area 52 in the bunkers down underneath the base and try to figure out what was causing the entire population to turn into mindless automatons.”
“And did you figure it out?”
Paula shook her head, “ There were competing theories but most of the scientists believed that it must have been some sort of alien technology. Something that rendered the victims’ incapable of independent thought, probably caused by some sort of beam technology that was able to target and destroyed or at least damaged the prefrontal cortex, rendering those who were targeted powerless of engaging in critical thought.”
“They were right about the victims being incapable of performing independent thought, but it was not beaming tech that was causing it. It was a plant from the Pegasus galaxy, and it sounds like Ambassador Chen (or whoever was in her place on your IOA) managed to figure out a way to weaponize it to enable it to drug people in massive numbers. We’ve so far been focused entirely on manufacturing enough batches of the antidote and we’re hoping to prevent her taking over Earth and the rest of the Milky Way planets,”
“A drug? Why didn’t any of our scientists realise that was what we were faced with, she said angrily. So many of our troops have died fighting against it and the infrastructure of much of the country and the Republic of Canada has been obliterated,” she raged angrily.
O’Neill grimaced at the news but there was no way that they could have warned the other realities. Okay, Paula’s reality had sent her to warn them but still, how many more realities were out there facing this same threat. According to Carter, an infinite amount and the only reason that Agent DiNozzo’s group had fled here was that they knew that any convergence with their own reality was not terribly likely, hopefully increasing the odds that they were not encountering the same threat.
Finally, he said carefully, “Because the way it works isn’t like normal drugs that need to be ingested. In Atlantis, the base was overcome by one person who discovered the herb and experimented with it to find the best way to disperse it was for him to ingest it. Dr Lam believes that the active ingredient which we call MCD –238β produces pheromones that are excreted and affect the ability of people exposed to them to think rationally.”
Seeing Paula’s somewhat sceptical expression he elaborated. “It’s true, although it certainly sounds bizarre, it isn’t the first time we’ve seen something similar. There was a drug that the Goa’uld used to control us. Hathor had something called Nik’ta that affected every male in Cheyenne Mountain when she breathed on us,” he shuddered at the memory of being turned into a Jaffa.
“And when we were chasing down a Goa’uld hiding here on Earth for thousands of years from his fellow System Lords, we found him presiding over a cult of worshipers that used a variant on Hathor’s pheromones, but it worked on anyone regardless of their gender. We know it could be rendered inert by delivering a small electrical shock to those affected but electrical shocks have no effect on the MCD –238β. The only choice is to detox by removing oneself from exposure or to take this vaccine to counteract it.”
“That sounds like a weakness you can exploit,” the federal agent commented.
“It is, but having to produce billions of doses for not just Earth but for our Allies in the Pegasus galaxy has had our total focus. We need to get our butts into gear and figure out a better means of dispersal, and I’ll be getting the POTUS to authorise a new program to kick start it asap.”
“And you believe that this MCD –238β is what caused our world to implode?”
“Yeah, I do. It is the euphoria you described that makes me fairly certain that MCD –238β took down your planet and we are going to take your warning very seriously. I can see why initially, the powers that be in your reality didn’t realise how serious the situation was. The people behind the plot were fiendishly clever. It is a wake-up call for us for sure.
~o0o~
General O’Neill and Agent DiNozzo had travelled to DC to meet with the White House and after a great deal of debate, they ended up bringing Agent DiNozzo’s two children and baby Sarah O’Neill along with them. Paula didn’t want to be separated from her children especially after her son Joshua had had to leave his father behind and was trying his best to cope but was barely having on by a thread. Jack got it, he had always had a lot of trouble coping with the whole alternate realities phenomenon and he was an adult and this whole business with Sarah being his dead son’s child who wasn’t dead in the other reality was difficult to cope with. It was enough to make his head explode.
While he left Dave Rossi holding down the fort, hanging out with the other seven kids and two adults, they were beamed up onto the Zephyrus which thrilled young Josh but did not thrill either of the two infants. They decided to give the babies some time to acclimate while they gave the young DiNozzo a short tour around the spaceship before ordering the crew to beam them down to his office at Homeworld Command.
After resettling the children Jack had Sgt Harriman contact the POTUS’ Chief of Staff to arrange an urgent briefing. Walter also organised for him to meet with the JCS to update them on the latest information about the refugees from an alternate reality and the news Agent DiNozzo brought with her. Meanwhile, Walter and Captain Sparks (who was the eldest of seven siblings) were nominated to watch the kids during the Presidential briefing and drive them and Agent DiNozzo back to Homeworld Command while O’Neill went straight on to the Pentagon to brief the JCS. It was going to be a long night!
What Paula DiNozzo had to say to President Walsh was of deep concern, even if the still relatively inexperienced leader of the free world was having a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with the SCG and everything that it entailed: aliens, aliens who were allies, aliens who were enemies and wanted to wipe them out of existence, alien technology which had enabled them to build spaceships, alien technology which enabled the people of Earth to travel to distant planets and yes to distant galaxies via wormholes. It was a lot for Isiah Walsh to wrap his head around and then to be thrown a curveball – the whole quantum theory of an infinite number of alternate realities to their one – it was enough to give him a whopping big migraine.
Forced to take medication before the start of the briefing, he was feeling more than a little woozy, the president wasn’t sure if it was the ludicrous situation, the drugs, or the scary story Agent DiNozzo had to relay from her world which was on the brink of collapse and slavery when she and the two other females had spirited ten children away to safety. Her account which she shared once already with Lieutenant General O’Neill who was head of Homeworld Security and was looking equally as grim-faced as Walsh was feeling, was highly disturbing. Not that there was anything they could do about what had happened in Agent DiNozzo’s world. But they could take serious heed of her warnings to ensure a similar fate did not befall this world.
“Well, it would seem that not only do we owe Agent DiNozzo and her world immeasurable gratitude for the intel she had provided and the risk to her person if what you say about Entropic Cascade Failure is correct but we also are even more indebted to Special Agent Paddington…” at which point he paused to give O’Neill an interrogative look as Jack gave an imperceptible shake of his head.
Paula, whose situational awareness and her observational skill were clearly top-notch, and more than likely she was also in a state of hypervigilance, was on it like fleas on a hound. “What?”
Ignoring her, Jack answered his Commander in Chief. “No Mr President, I have not had time to explain to Agent DiNozzo how SAIC Paddington stumbled across the plot to overthrow democracy and turn the people of this reality into willing slaves. We’ve been fairly busy, but I’ll be bringing her up to speed asap,” he said, letting President Walsh know she hadn’t been briefed on the true identity of Alexander Paddington.
Potus frowned. Well, that was certainly awkward! As was the situation with all of the children from Agent DiNozzo’s reality who were connected to personnel in the SGC in some capacity and now they were here in this reality. It was going to be very awkward going forward, there was no two ways about it.
“Right, well, have you had a chance to think about what to do with the children?” he asked O’Neill.”
“Yeah, somewhat. I think that ideally, we don’t want word leaking out about their arrival if that is humanly possible and the longer we can keep this classified the better off we’ll be. If Shen and her backers think we know what they have planned then they’ll push up their timeline and hope that we don’t have the resources to resist.”
DiNozzo was nodding in agreement and Walsh agreed that it was a sensible tactic. “Okay, so where are we going to hide them for now where it won’t leak to the IOA and therefore Ambassador Shen?”
Pursing his lips and he formulated an answer, he said, “Look, Sir, nowhere is going to be leakproof on Earth so I think our best option right now is to hide them all on Atlantis. Paddington’s agents have cleared out the latest batch of spies last week,” he told POTUS, “so it should be safe for the time being.”
“How many did they find this time,” the president asked wearily.
“Fourteen,” Jack said with a satisfied smirk.
“How many all up have they uncovered,” he asked.
“Sixty-three in total, although some of those spooks were going back to the early days of the expedition. They tracked down the IOA spy who was in Ambassador Shen’s pocket and tipped her off over the Lucius Lavin situation. We’ve managed to round them all up and incarcerate them off-world. So, Atlantis is the best option that I can see right now.”
“A number of the people who are parents or their alternate selves are parents to the children are in Atlantis right now, aren’t they?”
“Some Sir. Colonel Dixon is still serving at the SGC as you know he is the acting commander of the SGC,” he said, reminding him that General Hank Landry of currently suspended while he was under suspension for sending unauthorised personnel to spy on what his daughter was doing in the Pegasus galaxy.
President Walsh nodded looking grave. “Remind me about Colonel Dixon
His alt-identity had a daughter who is fourteen and could theoretically be placed in his custody. He and his wife Susy already have four boys and it would be easy enough to say that Davinia is his niece, but I have to wonder she would cope with being thrown into their family. My second concern is how she would deal with being separated from the other children from her reality. I think it would be very hard on her.”
President Walsh noted that Agent DiNozzo seemed to agree so he said, “What do you want to do?
I think we need a psych consult and get some expert advice on how these kids and adolescents are going to cope with what has happened to them and their world before we make decisions about where to place them,” Jack said.
President Walsh gave a sardonic chuckle. “Not sure that we’re going to find anyone who’s dealt with anything like this before, Jack. Who did you have in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking of the psychology team on Atlantis. Dr Alain Heng is a child psychologist who is well qualified and has been doing good work with the children who were fathered by Lucius Lavin, and he’s made a strong connection with Jack Hotchner too. I’ve had Colonel Davis arrange for him to return to Earth asap and also Aoife O’Shea if she can get away. I think that in this situation, two heads are probably better than one and she is the Head of Atlantis’ psychology services,” he shrugged.
“Remind me again, what is Dr Heng’s background?”
“He’s from France, originally a Cambodian refugee whose family spent nearly a decade in a refugee camp just inside the Thai border before they were resettled in France where they had family. He completed undergrad and postgraduate psychology degrees at the University of Strasbourg and he is very well regarded by his peers,” Jack replied.
“Alright, get some advice from the experts and we’ll discuss it again,” Walsh told him before moving on to the vaccines. “Where are we at, re the production of vaccines for MCD –238β?”
“All up Project WoHZ has produced almost 5 billion vaccines in the four and a half months we’ve been mass producing them. Orban has produced 1.2 billion in the seven weeks they have been producing it. All of their people are now vaccinated and they are stepping up production and will be manufacturing vaccines for the Free Nations of Jaffa who, once vaccinated are happy to help us distribute the vaccine if it comes to it.”
“And the Langarans, weren’t they keen to manufacture the vaccine too?”
“Yes, Mr President but their facilities are not as sophisticated as they were on the old planet. After the war with the Ori and settling on New Langara it will take them a while to return to the technological levels they used to enjoy. But we’ve given them a lot of our obsolete equipment and anything new that we can spare and some of the SGC teams have been helping them rebuild laboratories out of prefab buildings and they’ve been motoring along in the last three weeks. They’ve produced nearly two million doses and they should be on track to have enough for all their people in another week or two. After that, they’ll start producing surplus doses that we can start distributing on other planets,” he said.
Glancing at Paula, the President frowned. “And while I understand humanitarian aid, why are we focusing on producing vaccines for other planets in the Milky Way General O’Neill?”
Jack maintained his poker face which he called upon when a superior asked a blatantly dumbass question. “As you say, Mr President, apart from the basic tenets of humanitarian ideals, many of those planets are our Allies and while they may not have our level of weapons or technology, they have stood ready to help fight against our enemies. But from a purely pragmatic stance, these less advanced races would be a valuable resource for Chen and her cronies. Once under the control of MCD –238β individuals are incapable of thinking rationally, their only thought is to please the one who is in control,” he explained.
“Unlike our preconception of a mindless drone, the victims of MCD –238β drugging, have all reported knowing what they are doing but are more than willing to do anything they are told to, even if sent on a suicide mission or are ordered to harm one of their own. In fact, Dr Jackson has put together a rather impassioned proposal that at the top of our list of races to be vaccinated should be the Unas. As he argued in his submission, the Goa’uld originally chose them to be hosts because they were physically strong and very hard to kill. Having fought one who was chasing myself and Teal’c in an underground prison on Cimmerian, I can attest to how damned difficult they are to kill. If Chen had them under her control it would not be pretty,” Jack predicted with grim finality.”
President Walsh looked several shades paler by the time O’Neill was done outlining that very disturbing scenario. “Point taken, General. By all means, let’s take away the resource that these various peoples could pose if Shen decided to utilise them against us. Vaccinate as many as we can in the time we have left before she strikes. Although I do have a question about the Unas. How the devil do you expect to vaccinate them?
And wasn’t that a really pertinent question from the POTUS!
At some point, I’m going back to comment on the earlier parts, but let’s stick with this one for now.
Brilliant move to have friends and contacts of Jack help out sending Ziva on this wild goose chase. I think my favorite part when you’re writing Ziva’s thoughts it that you have me trying to find all the idioms she’s mangling. As a not native English speaker, it’s fun to see if I can spot them and/or if I know the correct one.
I think the thing that probably irritated me the most with McKay here is that he didn’t stop pointing out that it was “just a joke”. He’s totally allowed to make a bad joke, sometimes stuff just comes out the wrong way. But that he’s not backing down, not finally can say that he was wrong, even if it wasn’t his intention (although I’m still unsure about that). He’s just very annoying (to me at least).
Oh, travelers from another reality. That sounds like lots of trouble and fun. I’m very curious to see where all the kids end up. Especially McKay’s, to be honest.