Reading Time: 133 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
Chapter 13
Daniel and Jack had resumed their discussion of the refugees after their late lunch. Although before they finished the discussion regarding the rest of the children, he asked Col. Davis to organise for Agent DiNozzo to be transported from Area 51 to Homeworld with Sarah, Mikelle, and Josh. He also asked Sparkes to organise dinner for them all. That done, he settled in to share the rest of the news about the composition of the refugees. As he told him about Riley whose mother was Dr Samantha Carter Daniel’s eyes grew as big as saucers.
“Wait, are you Riley’s father,” Daniel blurted out, being one of the few trusted friends who knew that Jack and Sam were in a relationship, albeit one that had been a long-distance one for years. For a year when Sam had been the Commander on Atlantis, they hadn’t spent any time together and now that she was commander of the George Hammond and spent months in space, they once again had long periods where the only contact they had was encrypted emails.
“No, I’m not. In that reality, Carter is with Ambassador Joseph Faxon. It seemed that they found the Aschen to be way too creepy and recommended that they not sign an alliance with them,” he said with a grimace. “Faxon is his father.”
“But in our reality, Faxon is presumed KIA,” Daniel pointed out. “What does Sam have to say? Do you think she’s going to adopt him?”
Jack shook his head. “She doesn’t know yet. They are out of video conferencing range, and it doesn’t seem like the sort of information to share in an encrypted email.”
“Jaaaaack! Sam needs to know, even if it is in an encrypted email. She would want to know,” he averred.
Jack looked at his friend, glad he could talk about this with him. “Does she, Danny? You of all people know how long she’s waited to get a command like this one? What is she supposed to do if? She loves being in command of the Hammond, it’s her dream job. Is she supposed to give it up and what then? What would she do on Atlantis, which is where the refugees are going to be stuck for the foreseeable future? And if she decided not to resign her commission, what then?”
“You really think that she’d do that? Sam loves children, she really wanted to adopt Cassie, you know.”
“Yeah, I do know, Daniel. She adores her brother’s two kids, but no matter which way she decides, she is going to miss out. After she left SG-1 and Mitchell conned her into going back, she was far more experienced in terms of the Stargate than he was, yet she was stuck as his second in command. And even when she finally was offered the job of Commander of Atlantis, the IOA made sure that no matter what she did, she could never succeed. She was crushed when they pulled the rug out from under her,” Jack said.
Daniel knew he spoke the truth. Sam should have been given her own command a long time ago and now for a pilot, commanding the Daedalus – class deep space carrier, it was nothing short of a dream come true. But realistically, being on missions in deep space, she was gone for sometimes months at a time. Frankly, he was in awe that Jack and Sam had made their long-distance relationship work but there was no way that Sam could be a mother to six-year-old Riley long distance. He could see Jack’s point, the situation sucked. Finally, when all of her hard work, sacrifice and priceless contribution to saving the universe seemed to be finally paying off for her, destiny had thrown her a curve ball.
“So, you think she might decide not to adopt him,” Daniel pressed Jack.
“Hell, if I know, Danny. She’s damned, no matter what she does.”
“You’re right, but I know if it were me, I’d still want to know about Riley,” he said gently.
“I know that, but I just think that it isn’t the sort of thing you want to find out in an email. She can’t do anything once she reads it. She’ll have a heap of questions and no way to get answers. I just think it’s better to wait until she can ask questions and receive answers,” Jack said sadly.
Daniel thought of the sacrifices they had both been forced to make to be in a relationship. It was far from a normal situation, all because of fraternisation regulations that had prevented them from acting on their feelings for years, forcing them to wait until they were no longer in the same chain of command. And even now when they could be in a relationship, they still never got to spend very much time together due to the nature of their jobs. While Jack wasn’t enamoured with his own job and would have preferred to have retired from the Air Force, it wasn’t that simple.
The truth was that they had needed him heading up Homeworld Command maybe even more than they had needed him leading SG-1 and saving the universe. Jack heading up Homeworld was something he did out of duty, not because he wanted to, and once again, his private life had taken a back seat to his sense of duty. And because Jack felt like he couldn’t retire, he also felt compelled to keep their relationship a secret. It wasn’t as if Jack and Sam were doing anything wrong, but Jack was also loathed for there to be even the slightest whiff of favouritism. The truth was that he had never tried to influence Sam’s career. He’d always maintained that Carter didn’t need his help and it was demeaning to even allude to nepotism, it was highly insulting and disrespectful to her, and he’d wanted to protect her from all that shit. She was a brilliant scientist and an equally capable officer who already faced the difficulties of being a stunningly beautiful female officer and General Carter’s daughter. He didn’t want anyone to try to argue that he had pulled strings to get her promotions or commissions – hence the fact that only Daniel and Teal’c had been told the truth, although he suspected that Paul Davis and Walter Harriman suspected, as did Vala.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. And it is a crappy situation all around, he said before changing the subject. “So that’s seven of the children: Riley, Clare, Nicholas, Baby Sarah, Mikelle and Joshua DiNozzo and Justine Murphy. That leaves three more,” he said showing an admirable grasp of math.
“You’re right. Davinia Dixon is the only child of Colonel David Dixon in the alt-reality,” Jack said. “She’s fourteen, the oldest of the kids. Our Dave Dixon has four boys, all under twelve so the psychologists are concerned that even if the Dixons want to adopt her, it might be a really difficult fit for her, plus there’s the tricky detail that Dave’s stationed at the SGC. He’s even been touted as a possible leader for the mountain if Hank doesn’t survive the inquiry,” Jack revealed, knowing Danny knew how to keep his lips sealed.
“Yeah, I can see how a teenage girl, grieving her parents and her world, might find it hard to fit into a family with people who look like her mom and dad but aren’t. Plus have to suddenly live with four rambunctious boys who are her brothers,” Daniel said musingly. “It isn’t the best fit,” he conceded thoughtfully. “What’s the alternative?”
“Possibly put out feelers to see if someone on Atlantis might be prepared to act as her guardian,” Jack shrugged thinking that Aoife had seemed open to becoming a guardian if required but now she was in a relationship with Chegwidden, that was something they both would need to agree to.
“And by the by, what do you think will happen with General Landry, Jack? What was he thinking?”
“To be honest, I think that he is a shitload of trouble. And it isn’t as if the Air Force can afford to court martial him either. If they find him guilty, then he is going to disappear somewhere, if he’s lucky.”
“How is that lucky?”
“Well spending years in some classified prison is still better than a firing squad,” Jack said grimly.
Daniel wasn’t entirely sure if he agreed with Jack’s statement, but he wasn’t going to argue with him. Landry was an old friend of Jack’s, although the two men were as alike as chalk and cheese. Oh, Daniel had gotten on with him okay, but Hank Landry sure wasn’t Jack, and he didn’t have the experience in the field that O’Neill had acquired over the years, gaining priceless skills along the way.
“And the other two kids,” he prompted curiously.
“Gia Kawalsky – ten years old and the grandniece of General Kawalsky. He adopted her after her parents were killed in a car crash when she was three,” Jack told him. “She’s another one who is effectively orphaned,” he said sadly.
“Kawalsky? Are we talking about Charles Kawalsky who came with us and Ferretti to Abydos to kill Ra?”
“Yep, but in that reality, he never went to Chulak as backup, so he never picked up the symbiote who ended up killing him.”
Daniel knew that Kawalsky had been a good friend to Jack. They’d served together in at least one black ops mission before ending up serving at the SCG together on what had looked to be a suicide mission.
“And the last child,” he quizzed Jack, who looked exceedingly pained.
“Four-year-old Kelvin Max Austen-McKay,” Jack told him, looking like he found the idea preposterous.
“Do we have anyone called Austen-McKay in our Stargate program,” Daniel wanted to know. “I can’t recall that name.”
That’s because the kid has a double-barrelled hyphen of a name,” Jack said with a none too small measure of disgust. “He is the son of Dr Jacob Austen and Dr Rodney McKay,” he said as Daniel’s eyes bulged in surprise.
“Atlantis’s Dr Rodney McKay, the guy who bitches and moans when Dr Miller makes her brother spend quality time with his niece? That Dr Rodney McKay,” he asked incredulously.
“I know, but in his reality, there is a lot of differences. Remember that Martouf was on the SCG.”
Daniel nodded with a pensive expression. “True, and Janet Fraiser too,” he said wistfully.
Jack sometimes wished that he had seen alt-reality Janet, but he also thought it had to have been bittersweet seeing her again, knowing it wasn’t their Janet and that she would be returning to her own reality.
Later on, it occurred to him that while Daniel had been visibly surprised at the staggering news that Rodney McKay had a child in an alternate reality, he hadn’t even batted an eyelid at the news that he was bi-sexual or that he’d married a man. Although he knew that Daniel was not homophobic, Jack wondered if he’d suspected that McKay was not as straight as he made out or perhaps during one of his numerous and ultimately short-lived Ascensions, he’d learnt that such issues as gender and sexual orientation, were in the bigger picture, utterly unimportant.
~o0o~
In a far-off galaxy known to the inhabitants of their planet as the Naoise Galaxy, named as a tribute for one of their own who was lost to them while on their long journey to find their new home, four females had gathered in a clearing in a lush green forest on the planet they called Mo Bhaile. The four individuals were seated on the ground, within a circle of rocks that they brought with them from their former home back in the Milky Way Galaxy. They were meditating, which was something that they did every day, if possible. Ceridwen who was the leader of these meditation sessions was renowned as a shapeshifter, a gift that had seen her branded as a sorceress by other people, not of their race. Her people understood that her ability was a skill she had developed over many years. The second of their group was Epona who had an almost magical affinity to gentle four-footed beasts, in particular those who could be ridden, although Epona never sought to break the spirits of any beast she rode. She would always ask permission from the animal first to determine if it was willing to take her where she wanted to go, although she would gracefully accept with no hint of malice should a beast refuse her request. Although, to be fair, refusals were quite a rarity since the four-footed beasts that inhabited Mo Bhaile were enamoured by her gentle manner.
The third female of their group was Badb, long considered by the people of their prior home to be the Goddess of War and was a staunch defender of those individuals who were unable to defend themselves. Badb was a fairly recent convert to their meditation group and last there was Cailleach. Back on Taraa, she was considered by the local people to be the Goddess of thunder and mountains as like her distant cousin Thor, she had an affinity for thunder. She could call upon it at will when in danger to frighten off her foes. Plus, Cailleach was a skilled mountaineer and trekker at home at high altitudes whatever the weather. She had often rescued stranded climbers, able to find them when others failed.
Now having finally made their home on this beautiful planet they called Mo Bhaile which simply meant Home, they were determined to take good care of this world of theirs having lost their previous one, which had left them all grievously homesick. Thus, they were determined not to take their new one for granted. After finding Mo Bhaile, a beautiful paradise they felt a strong need to connect themselves to their new home world which was why they gathered each day to meditate having learnt much from their close allies, the Nox who had shared much of their wisdom with them over the millennia that they spent as firm allies. The Nox had always been generous with their knowledge, unlike the Ancients who were much more guarded.
Now as the Nox had shown them, the four females dutifully opened up their consciousness, connecting first with each other and then trying to become one with the earth, the sky, the mountains, the rivers, lakes and seas, the trees, flowers, and plants and the animals that inhabited this planet. The Nox had guided them into respecting the planet which they believed to be a living entity, which require love and veneration. The Nox also believed that the planet should even be feared a little because when it was ignored or abused it would react in kind, inflicting terrible damage upon inhabitants.
A deceptively simple race, the Nox unadorned appearance and way of living belied just how advanced this civilization truly was and also how kind and generous. When Ceridwen and her people had parted way with her brother and kin which had been rather acrimonious, the Nox had welcomed them into their world, happy to share the bounties that they harvested on their woodland planet. While some of the Nox chose to live in their super city that hovered above the planet, most of the Nox lived on the planet in simple dwellings hidden amongst the woodlands, believing that this helped to keep them connected to the planet and its life force. They believed that their strong ties with nature help them to live long and happy lives and even extended the lifespan of the Nox. Certainly, they were exceptionally long-lived for a humanoid race, many Nox lived on average, between 400 to 500 years. It was not unheard of for Nox who were especially in tune with their surroundings to live to be 600 years old. Although Ceridwen’s people had a far longer lifespan than the Nox, in part due to genetic manipulation by their race, Ceridwen believed that their longevity had come at great cost, and she eagerly embraced the knowledge of the woodland people.
It was the belief in the inevitable cost that they would be forced to play, that for Ceridwen and other like-minded individuals, that had contributed to the profound schism which developed between those who believed that the direction they had chosen would doom their race and others of their race who remained far more optimistic for their future. In the end, the deep schism between the two perspectives widened, becoming so profoundly entrenched, finally, both groups recognised that a compromise could not be reached between two such diametrically opposed perspectives. At this point they had reluctantly split into two discrete groups, eventually becoming distinct races as their physical morphology continued to diverge. At first, Ceridwen’s people resided almost side by side, yet separated from her brother’s people on the Taraan’s planet. The Asgards lived amongst the local indigenous humans as they tried to assist them to rebuild their world after the Goa’uld had been repelled when the Taraans revolted against their brutal warlords who purported to be Gods but were not.
After almost a millennia of living under the yoke of Goa’uld brutality, existing as slaves, the people of Taraan had eventually risen up in protest. They’d violently rebelled against the barbaric parasitical race of beings who stole the bodies of their unwitting victims, forcing them to endure unspeakable horrors as hosts or else to become Jaffa who were incubators for the Goa’uld young. And over time, as the rift between the two factions led by Thor and his sibling Ceridwen had become increasingly untenable the two now separate groups had inevitably drifted further and further apart until their paths seldom crossed. Although both groups continued to work with the local indigenous tribes still struggling to throw off the shackles of their slavery, the Asgard slowly drifted away from the Stargate which was buried during the uprising.
After the locals finally rose up in rebellion and buried the Stargate to make travel to their world more difficult, the Goa’ulds turned their attention to other planets in the Milky Way where they had already abducted and relocated many hundreds of thousands of Taraans, wanting to seed the galaxy with slaves who would worship them. The Goa’uld System Lords with their innate desire to colonise and create vast kingdoms over which they could rule their unfortunate slave populations caused much angst for the three Great Races, the Ancients, the Nox and the Asgard. The most advanced races in the solar system decided to establish a protectorate although by this point the Ancients began to turn their attention towards Ascension. They had forced the Goa’uld System Lords into a treaty with the Triad (which in time came to also include Ceridwen’s people) with the treaty protecting entire planets such as Cimmeria, Galar and K’Tau from being attacked and enslaved, unlike a great many other planets they’d already conquered, claiming as their own.
The Great Races did not like ceding so many planets filled with humans to the Goa’uld, nor did they possess an appetite for outright war with them either. Especially the Nox who were a peace-loving people who’d argued fiercely for using peaceful means of resolving disputes. In the end, the Treaty of the Protected Planets ended up protecting twenty-five planets that consisted mostly of technologically primitive societies, fortunate enough to have been considered thus to be too unimportant for the Goa’uld to claim. Although, given enough time, Ceridwen knew that the egoistic race would have gotten around to claiming them as well. Thor and Ceridwen had also argued voraciously for Taraa also be included in the Protected Planets Treaty, but the Goa’uld refused to countenance its inclusion under any circumstances. It seemed that they held a mighty big grudge against the primitive slaves who had managed to somehow rout the mighty Gods and the arrogant Goa’ulds hungered for retribution.
While at the time of the signing of the treaty, Ceridwen’s people and her brother, Thor’s followers were still one race, it was not long afterwards that they began to diverge over reproductive issues. Thor had always ardently believed that cloning was the only logical way to reproduce themselves and he considered sexual reproduction to be highly inefficient. He felt that cloning allowed the Asgard to bypass the whole rearing of the young, which he thought was extremely flawed because each Asgard offspring would remain biologically vulnerable for a significant period. He argued that they would be unable to make any significant contributions to Asgard society until they’d matured. Thor and their cousin Freya had maintained that if their offspring were to spend an average of twenty biological years maturing into adulthood and there were ten thousand of their kind then it meant that the Asgard were sacrificing 200,000 years of unproductivity for their people. If they could eliminate that massive wastage of resources by cloning as opposed to giving birth, then it would enable their race to make incredible evolutionary progress.
It had certainly been a compelling argument and for several centuries the Asgards had enthusiastically embraced cloning as a method of reproducing its population. Although it must be said that not everyone was happy. Some Asgards spoke longingly about the days of meiosis, which they pointed out had been extremely enjoyable, while others were filled with an indescribable longing for young ones to nurture. However, it wasn’t so much a biological imperative that made a small but powerful group of Asgards question the wisdom of cloning, it was the fact that cloning had a direct impact on Asgards’ creativity as time went by and it was becoming more and more obvious. Cloning only reproduced copies of what had gone before while sexual reproduction between individuals created a unique new individual who has fresh ways of looking at situations and intellectual ideas.
Of course, there was the extremely serious and significant issue that in cloning themselves multiple times, clones being a copy of a copy, degradation was the inevitable outcome whereas Asgard babies created through syngenesis would have far more biological vigour and would prolong the viability of their race. Although Thor acknowledged that eventually, cloning would pose a serious threat to the Asgard race, he felt that they had many more centuries before this would come to pass. And with the extra productivity that cloning brought to the Asgards, this would enable them to solve the issue well before they cloned themselves into extinction. Freya and many of the other Asgards agreed with him and they were happy to go on their merry way, cloning their race so they could become one of the most advanced races in existence.
Ceridwen vehemently disagreed with her brother and her cousin. She believed that in time if they continue to clone themselves, the Asgard would lose the ability to reproduce sexually, at which point it would become too late for them to turn back and they would have no choice but to proceed along their chosen path which would lead them to extinction. So, she and her like-minded Asgards, decided that it was now or never for them to take a stand, splitting with their kin, and ditching cloning to return to the old ways of reproducing. At first Thor and Freya tried to dissuade them but when that proved unsuccessful, they’d become bitter and disparaging. Freya particularly thought their desire to reproduce sexually was an affront to the Asgards’ remarkable evolution and achievements that had been attained thanks to cloning. In the end, the parting was so rancorous that Ceridwen and her people ended up never returning to the Asgard home world of Orilla. Instead, they decided to find a new home world where they could finally get on with the business of refusing the damage they believed that cloning had done to their race, free from the pejorative and highly judgemental influences of their former kin.
The rebel Asgards had grieved for the loss of Orilla, but although they were bereft, the Rebels decided to seek out their allies, the Nox. With their love of nature and their reverence for their young, plus their longevity, the Asgard Rebels realised that the Nox had much to teach them, and the Nox were happy to help them as they turned their backs on the technology of mitosis in favour of sexual reproduction and equally important, how to raise their young. And in their time with the Nox, they a lot from them and the Rebel Asgard slowly began to produce offspring. Ceridwen had a son who she called Talieson, and the Nox taught them how to nurture and rear offspring to bring out their full potential as individuals, Ceridwen and her fellow Rebels were surprised at how much they had to teach them. They learnt how to increase their longevity and perhaps of most surprise to the Rebels, the Nox taught them the subtle art of deception and illusion.
The Nox were a non-violent species, which made them vulnerable to being attacked or controlled by more war-like species, such as the Goa’uld, and it was the Nox ability to cloak themselves or indeed other living things through the use of illusion had helped to keep them safe from harm over many millennia. Even when the Goa’uld sent Jaffa to their hunting for the creature on the Nox home world that they believed to possess the power of invisibility, they had no clue that it was the Nox that protected the winged creature from capture by rendering them invisible. While many of her fellow rebels considered that the Nox ability to raise their fellow Nox from the dead was the most valuable knowledge they had learned, Ceridwen was not so sure. Their ability to create illusions seemed incredibly invaluable and over the millennia she was able to expand on their illusionary skills to the point where she could change her appearance at will, earning a reputation as a shape-shifter when in reality it was all a trick of the mind, an illusion.
These days, her skills in deception were put to use protecting their beautiful home world from marauders and pirates who from time to time, visit Mo Bhaile, thinking to claim it as their own. Since the Rebel Asgards had by osmosis, taken on some of the values of the Nox including peace-loving and non-violent unless they had no other choice, they avoided strangers rather than confronting or repelling them. But it was the art of deception and illusion that the former Rebel Asgard used to protect themselves and in particular their priceless offspring, Ceridwen had turned her talents to more ambitious projects over the years. With a great deal of practice and harnessing the mental powers of her people, she was able to camouflage the paradise that was Mo Bhaile, making it appear to be a barren planet, sparsely vegetated with spiky plants, and bereft of potable water reserves on its surface. Her optical illusion was so effective that few intrepid explorers bothered to land on their surface and if they did, never stayed long enough to learn their secret- that Mo Bhaile was a lush, bountiful paradise.
Ceridwen had learnt her lessons from the masters of illusion well and one of their invaluable lessons that she had really taken to heart, was how crucial it was to live in harmony with their environment, which was why she always tried to maintain a daily meditation, deep in the forest trying to become one with her surroundings. But today, she was struggling to achieve the deep level of meditativeness necessary to reach symbiosis. Connected as she was to her people, she could feel someone was nearby, and they were deeply troubled, and their session was not as successful as it usually was. After struggling to make a connection with Mo Bhaile before finally latching on Ceridwen had ended their meditation session prematurely, somehow feeling that she would be receiving an unexpected visit from someone sooner rather than later.
So, while Badb, Cailleach and Epona expressed their surprise at the curtailed session, she was not at all startled when a greatly distressed and dishevelled Nehalennia had burst into the clearing in the forest where they always gathered for their meditation ritual.
“Ceridwen my apologies for disturbing you,” she began, sounding troubled. “But I had to warn you at once. I had a most distressing vision. I knew that you would wish to know immediately,”
Ceridwen laid her grey-skinned hand on Nehalennia’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, then tell us about your vision,” she said, looking at the other females who, like herself also belonged to the High Council who were looking bemused and worried.
“Is this to do with your vision about a spacecraft full of humans exploding, Nehalennia?”
“Yes, it is, Ceridwen.”
Badb interjected. “But you’ve had that vision many times before Nehal.”
“Yes I know but this time there was more, much more. Their leader is a daughter of Taraan. She had golden hair,” she emphasised, her black eyes expressing her alarm.
Epona gasped as Ceridwen shot her a cautionary look.
“Did your vision show you anything else,” she asked Nehalennia calmly, knowing that there must be more to it than what she had revealed to them for her to seem so distressed.
“Yes,” she said, almost reluctant to continue. “In this vision, there were two explosions that occurred almost simultaneously, and their power created a space voritum. It sucked the spacecraft into it,” she said fearfully.
Ceridwen looked grave. “Were there survivors?”
“Most survived, but two perished. Others were injured including the golden-haired leader. She was encased by metal as was their engineer. I do not know if they will survive.” Nehalennia said nervously.
Knowing that was not all, Ceridwen said, “Please Nehalennia, tell us the rest. Where did the Voritum take them?”
“It brought them into the Naoise galaxy, Ceridwen, just like the prophecy foretold. Their spacecraft was but a week away from Mo Bhaile.” Looking at her fellow Furlings with fear in her eyes, Nehalennia wrung her long grey hands in distress. “ What should we do?”
Cailleach acted decisively. “We must convene the High Council and apprise every one of the situation,” she said firmly.
Ceridwen nodded. “Yes, we must be prepared. Do you know when this will occur, Nehalennia?”
“No, I cannot say but I feel it is imminent, Ceridwen.”
“Then we best be prepared,” she countered calmly before sending the others on their way.
As she thought about Nehalennia’s vision that she had been experiencing for many years now, Ceridwen wondered why she continued to experience solely this vision. It was curious and she thought about what her connection might possibly be to the daughter of Taraan if anything. Back on Taraa when the rebel Asgard had migrated from the area surrounding Egypt westwards, eventually ending up in Albion, spreading out and helping the Celts to heal from their slavery, Thor’s group gradually drifted up to north. Nehalennia had always been enamoured by all things to do with the sea, on Albion she became an extremely gifted sailor, navigating her way around the main island with ease, as well as journeying to the smaller isles travelling in sailing vessels that were powered by the wind.
Indeed, it was during her time at sea in Celtic sailing ships that the new name for their group evolved. Although, when they lived among the Celts on Taraa, they still clung fiercely to their identity as Asgards, foolishly optimistic that Thor’s group would see the error of their ways. When finally, they realised that they needed to accept that they would never again be one race, the Rebel Asgard reluctantly decided it was time to leave Taraa and find a new home world as far from Orilla as they could get. While it took nearly a millennia for them to finally end up in the Naoise galaxy and discover the paradise that was Mo Bhaile, it was Nehalennia who had come up with the name the Furlings when they were trying to decide what to call their new race.
The Rebels had liked the sound and the feeling that the word evoked and when asked what the word meant, she had explained that it meant to roll, curl or fold something close. It often referred to a sail that was rolled close to the mast but since Nehalennia was keen to have a young one, she imagined what it would be like to furl or fold a child close into her and to nurture them. When they heard her reason for suggesting it as the name of their new race, the other Rebel Asgards agreed that it was a fine name, and it was unanimously accepted.
By the time they had discovered Mo Bhaile, they had travelled to many planets in numerous galaxies searching for their new home and the Furlings, while lacking a home planet had become well-known as an advanced race of beings. As they adopted syngenesis with a passion and the Asgard continued down the path of mitosis, their physical appearances continued to diverge until most individuals never even remembered that the Furlings had once belonged to the Asgard race. While the Furlings, after finding Mo Bhaile were content to take to heart the lessons of the Nox and to live quietly amidst the natural wonders which were abundant on their home world and mind their own business which was nurturing their offspring to become creative and productive members of their society.
The question was, if Nehalennia’s vision came to pass would this threaten the legacy which the Furling had been creating for centuries. Making her way toward the town centre, Ceridwen decided it was time to inform the rest of the High Council and decide what course of action they should take, if any.
Notes
Naoise – Pron. ~ Nee sha – The name the Furlings gave to the galaxy in which they found their home world Mo Bhaile
Mo Bhaile – Gaelic meaning My Home
Chapter 14
General O’Neill was exhausted. Not physically, but definitely emotionally and mentally. Having to tell Daniel about his alternate self who had conceived twins with Sarah Gardiner had not been an easy task. He knew that Danny would immediately want to meet the twins and he was almost positive that he would decide to adopt them, despite his previous statements that he didn’t want to be a father. Since a lot of his self-doubt was attached to his grief over not just lo losing Sha’re but the entirety of the Abydonian race, which he considered his kin, Jack understood his reluctance. Lord knows he had decided after Charlie’s death that he wasn’t fit to raise a child, although somehow by default he had become a surrogate dad to Cassie over the years and she’d helped a little to dispel his self-doubts.
But when the refugees from an alternate reality turned up, and he learnt not just about Sarah O’Neill and Claire and Nicholas Jackson, he’d instinctively felt that Daniel wouldn’t turn his back on them as his grandfather had done to him. Even now, after finally somewhat redeeming himself by helping to save his grandson who was out of phase because Danny couldn’t keep his mitts off a crystal skull they found on P7X-377 Jack felt Ballard was a poor excuse for family. Selfish to the end when he had an opportunity to spend his last years with his grandson, Nicholas Ballard elected to spend it with the giant alien beings on P7X-377 rather than Daniel which must have hurt him greatly. Every so often someone went back there to check on him, but he refused to leave, happy as Larry, and what really bugged Jack about him was that Nick never bothered to inquire about how his grandson was.
As the head of Homeworld, it was his responsibility to check on the old buzzard and he would send him basic rations on the regular. After all, Ballard was a US citizen, as well as Daniel’s grandfather but after the first couple of times when Daniel had gone to visit him and returned downcast because the old reprobate practically ignored him, too full of what he’d learnt from the Giants to pay any attention to his grandson, Jack had enough. He’d started sending others to drop off supplies when Daniel was off-world and he’d stopped requesting to go. It seemed like Nicholas had been correct, he wasn’t cut out to bring up a kid.
However, Jack had no doubts about Daniel’s suitability to take care of the twins and he would be pretty damn surprised if he ran away from the pair who were effectively orphans. Daniel, despite his expressed fears of being unprepared for parenting thanks to his time in the foster care system while he might not purposefully conceive a child, he was also not the sort of man to walk away once they were here. In fact, Jack reckoned that his biggest problem would be convincing him not to go racing in and scooping up the seven-year-olds and taking them home that very minute. And he was right, Daniel had immediately put his hand up to adopt the two kids and was all for heading straight to Area 51. He managed to talk him down by explaining Dr Heng and Dr O’Shea’s recommendations to let the children grieve and acclimate to their new reality with the least amount of trauma.
Fortunately, Daniel could see that it would be terribly confusing to turn up looking like their father when he wasn’t actually him. He had settled on being able to watch the kids via video for the time being and he was eagerly awaiting Paula DiNozzo’s arrival with her brood and Sarah so she could brief him on the twins and everything she knew about them and their parents. Jack had asked Paula to come back to DC because Vala Mal Doran had come back from Atlantis with Daniel and he was hoping to persuade Sarah that her namesake gave her a reason not to give up. Baby Sarah had lost all of her real family – mother, father, and grandfather, and so, if in this reality, she gained a grandmother Jack reckoned it would be a win-win for both Sarahs.
He was grateful that Paula DiNozzo was willing to help him try to persuade his ex-wife not to give up on life just yet. He’d been the first person to admit that Sarah’s life had not been an easy one. She’d lost her own mother before he’d met and married her. Then there was all of his black ops and their constant moving around over the years they’d been married but when Charlie was born, any difficulties they’d faced, up to that point were insignificant. For nine years, they’d enjoyed a charmed life together. Until the terrible day that Charlie had found his service revolver and despite being told not to touch it, the little boy couldn’t resist picking it up and playing with it… and the result was a nightmare that neither he nor Sarah ever woke up from. It was partly due to a floppy-haired archaeologist that he’d met on the suicide mission to Abydos that Jack had managed to pull himself together and stopped hoping for death to take him.
Jack understood why Sarah had stopped wanting to live – she felt like she had nothing left to live for after her father died. Jack was hoping that Baby Sarah would shake up his ex-wife’s state of melancholia because Baby Sarah badly needed a family.
Capt. Sparkes had organised for the safe house to have more beds made up for Daniel and Vala and it turned out that his aide was an excellent cook. She magicked up a hearty stew with cornbread and picked up a white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake for dessert from the local bakery because she remembered that Daniel had raved about it the last time he visited Homeworld in DC. Jack had noticed that his friend often had that effect on females of his acquaintance who somehow seemed to have sussed out that he was a wounded kid or still grieving widower and tried to mother hen him. Although, in this instance, he suspected that the captain rightly suspected that Daniel would be suffering a lot of mental angst because he was being kept away from Claire and Nicholas, even though it was for their benefit.
Jack looked at Sparkes when she announced that she was cooking and asked, “In-laws wanting the pleasure of your company, Captain?”
“No but Ian had to work late tonight and I figured Dr Jackson could do with some cheering up,” she admitted with a tiny touch of awkwardness.
While O’Neill was amused to have correctly identified her motives, he didn’t embarrass her. Her merely nodded, “You’re probably right about that,” he agreed. “But still, this is going above and beyond, and I appreciate it,” he told her gratefully.
She gave him a bright smile before Vala surprised them, saying, “I’m grateful too, Rachel. This is hard for him, even if he understands why he isn’t the person Nicholas and Clare need to be around right now. He’s always been the one to handle the people side of the crises we find ourselves involved in, but this situation is so foreign to him. He is the last person these two need to see right now and he understands it, but his heart wanted to go to them and hug them tight.”
Jack threw her a quizzical look that she rightly interpreted. “ Daniel’s having a shower. We came straight from Trosis after trekking up Mount Poon to see some statuary and writing that my Daniel wanted to see while Carson ministered to his mutants. We didn’t stop on the way back and I might have pointed out he was a bit ripe,” she smirked.
Grinning Jack said, “And what about you, Ms Mal Doran, are you a little bit ripe too,” he teased her.
“I may have been, but I jumped straight into the shower as soon as we arrived, it was blissful feeling clean again,” she told them with a sensuous smile.
A short time later Daniel joined them, rather downcast but that changed when Colonel Davis arrived with Paula DiNozzo and the three children in tow. Master Sergeant Walter Harriman had been co-opted to help cart the considerable amount of baby paraphernalia needed to care for infants under one year of age. Luckily Rachel had already factored in both of the Homeworld personnel when she was preparing dinner and they all sat down to eat what everyone agreed was a fabulous dinner. The captain had even bought a small apple pie and ice cream in case twelve-year-old Josh DiNozzo was not a fan of cheesecake, which earned her a shy smile that Jack realised must have been inherited from his father since he’d noticed Alex smile like that a few times. Mostly when he was around Belle.
And now that he’d had time to read the letter from Dr O’Shea that she’d asked Daniel to hand deliver, Jack knew it was time to have a serious talk to Paula about the situation that their Anthony DiNozzo had found himself in. Dr O’Shea informed him that both Agent Paddington and Dr McKay had been notified about the refugees. She reported that Alex had been not surprisingly shocked but welcoming the idea of the trio coming to Atlantis, even going so far as to want Paula to join the ISBI if she wanted to, Rodney had not been as blasé. According to Aoife, he’d had a physical and mental meltdown, needing to be sedated for a short time and at this stage was adamant that he didn’t want physical custody of Kelvin Austen-McKay. However, he’d offered to contribute to the boy’s future financially, so perhaps in the fullness of time, he might change his mind or at least agree to have non-custodial contact with the little boy, who unsurprisingly, Dr Heng had already identified as highly gifted.
At the time Aoife penned the letter, she was yet to discuss the matter with Dr Miller but would do so at the earliest possible moment and let him know the outcome asap. If Jeannie wasn’t interested in fostering Kelvin, then they need to start thinking about other individuals who might be willing to assume guardianship, although Jack was fairly confident that Jeannie and Kaleb would take in the youngster since her alternate-self had been his surrogate mother, donating an egg so her brother and husband could have a child. Having met Jeannie Miller and her husband in this world, he thought that they weren’t too different to the alt-Jeannie and her husband who’d been willing to give such a massive gift to her big brother. He doubted she’d turn her back on a child that shared half of her DNA.
Meanwhile, he knew that he needed to broach the topic of Paula and the children needing to drop the DiNozzo name – it would totally blow Alex and Belle’s cover on the base and as they could attest, the AIO and the Trust were still sending spies to Atlantis to try to pick up valuable intel. Alex had suggested it would be better for the family to use Cassidy, Paula’s maiden name which had no connection to Paddington or if Alex was going to acknowledge their connection and it sounded as if that was the case, in the letter, then perhaps they should use Paddington too. Either way, it was time for him to inform her about her children and the Ancient genes, that’s if she didn’t already know and explain that in this reality, it effectively put a giant target on their backs, as it did for Baby Sarah too. Although right now, it was clear that Daniel was keen to monopolise Paula’s attention, debriefing her with an efficiency that rivalled even the brutal one’s he’d been forced to undergo after his various Ascensions and returns to Earth again.
While she was filling him in on the information that was directly related to the twins, describing their personalities, likes and dislikes and how they related to each other, Daniel sat at the table listening entranced. From time to time, Joshua would chime in with his own observations or knowledge of Claire and Nicholas, telling stories that Paula wasn’t aware of. But as the dinner wore on, it was clear that he was becoming increasingly frustrated, and Jack had an idea what might be making him antsy. But it wasn’t a topic that was suitable for Josh to take part in so when the boy had scoffed down two slices of apple pie ably abetted by M. Sergeant Harriman who wasn’t a fan of cheesecake either, he suggested they adjourn to the living room for coffee. Walter, with that incredible prescience that had made him so indispensable to various commanders at Stargate before he joined Jack in DC, challenged Josh to a computer game in the small den where there was also a DVD hooked up to the television.
As Rachel, Vala and Daniel made coffees for everyone, Jack and Paula changed Sarah and Mikelle. Since both babies were hungry again, they decided to feed them while people were drinking coffee. Jack had discovered that caring for Sarah had awakened a lot of memories from his time looking after Charlie, while some were painful there were a lot of happy times too. He could definitely see signs of his Charlie in the little girl. He desperately hoped she would have a similar effect on Sarah tomorrow and that Vala could heal her, although she warned him that it might already be too late.
Since Paula was still breastfeeding Mikelle, Daniel managed to hold off until the eleven-month-old had eaten, but it was a struggle, despite him having watched several hours of Claire and Nicholas at Area 51, interacting with the other children and Heather Murphy, Thora Edwards and Dr Heng, the child psychologist. Meanwhile, everyone else discreetly averted their eyes as she fed her daughter, focusing instead on the extraordinary sight of the Lieutenant General expertly feeding, burping, and catching the inevitable milky reflux of the baby Sarah with a practised ease that surprised them, even those who knew about Charlie. It was obvious that he’d been a very hands-on father by the confident way he handle the much smaller baby and Vala had a wistful gleam in her eye, no doubt thinking about Adria and what she was cheated out of.
Paula must have noticed her yearning because when Mikelle was done feeding and she’d burped her she passed the obliging social baby to Vala, adjusting her clothing before turning to Daniel and smiling.
“I’m not sure that I can tell you much more about Nick and Claire. They’re missing their father very much.”
“What about Sarah? Don’t they miss their mother too? He asked frowning.
“Oh yes I’m sure that they miss her, but Sarah was never what you’d call a particularly hands-on mother. She was often going off on archaeological digs on other worlds and Daniel agreed to do most of the childrearing. He said he’d had his fill of digging up other people’s history- he wanted to create his own family history. So, you see, the twins are really grieving his loss much more, I suspect, but he knew that you were still alive, or you were when Dr Fraiser brought back the cure to the Ori plague. That’s why he refused to come; he said if entropic cascade failure occurred that he didn’t want the twins to see him die like that.”
Everyone was moved as they contemplated the degree of his self-sacrifice and the love he’d obviously felt for his children, and they were silent, aware that Paula’s husband had made a similar decision to remain behind to protect the children.
Jack who had a fair idea of the information that his friend was searching for but unsure how to find it, decided to change the topic slightly. “What do you know about the people who supported Daniel in looking after the twins. Did he or Sarah have any family?”
Paula got a little furrow between her eyebrows as she thought. “I think I might have met a cousin of hers, at one of the twin’s birthday parties…maybe their fourth birthday.
Daphne… Delilah…no it was Delia, but she was the only one I ever met but Daniel’s family was around. His father-in-law Kasuf and his brother-in-law Skaara visited all the time, or he’d take the twins back to Abydos,” she said, unaware of the sensation she caused.
“Kasuf and Skaara were alive in your universe,” Daniel gasped.
“Of course. And even though Sha’re died, Kasuf insisted you would always be a part of his family. Well obviously not you, our world’s Daniel, she said, apologetically. “Why? Are they both dead,” she asked mystified by his reaction – by everyone’s reactions.
O’Neill, knowing how painful it was for Daniel decided to answer the question. “Not dead, Ascended to a higher plane of existence, as the saying goes,” he said irreverently. “And not just Daniel’s brother and father-in-law but every last child and adult on Abydos Ascended quite literally moments before Anubis destroyed the planet and everything on it,” he said miserably. He’d always had a soft spot for Skaara – like he’d told Maj Kowalski, Skaara had reminded him of his son and Jack really missed the young Abydonian a lot over the years, even if he wasn’t dead.
“Oh, my condolences, Dr Jackson,” Paula told him, still looking shocked. “Kasuf and Skaara were good people. They doted on the twins from what I could see, and they were kind to Sarah too when she was around.”
“Please call me Daniel,” he said. “You were obviously close to ME in your reality if you knew Kasuf and Skaara. And Claire and Nicholas, so I’m hoping that we can be friends too. I think the twins will appreciate still being able to see you and your kids,” he told her.
“Deal. If you call me Paula,” she smiled at him. “Josh loves spending time with the twins, by the way. After we lost Hannah, they helped to fill the gap she left for Josh and then when Mikelle was born, they treated her as a sibling, so it would be good to keep up the friendship between them,” she said.
They continued to talk for over an hour, sharing and comparing all the differences between the two universes and Jack was struck again by how different they were. Eventually, with Sarah getting fussy, he opted to put her to bed and retired too. Tomorrow was going to be a very full day and he wanted to be on form when he tried to convince Sarah she did have a very important person to fight for. Paula said she was going to put Mikelle down too and have a hot shower and pack Josh off to bed before hitting the rack herself. Reluctantly, Daniel acknowledged that she must be exhausted, especially as she was still grieving the loss of her husband and all of her colleagues and friends, but he wished he could talk to her some more.
As if guessing what was on his mind, Paula patted him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Daniel. We’ll talk more before I go back to Area 52.”
~o0o~
When Sarah O’Neill lost her father unexpectedly, Mike had been caring for her after her Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis several years ago. She called Jack to inform him that she was planning on selling the house and going into a nursing home. He’d immediately objected, offering to pay for a private around-the-clock caregiver to help her out and drive her to all of her therapy appointments. Initially, after her initial diagnosis, she’d embarked on an exhausting range of alternative therapy and conventional therapies such as meditation, yoga and physical therapy and hydrotherapy to try to maintain as much function, reduce stress and maintain as much mobility as possible. But Sarah had turned down Jack’s offer, having effectively given up fighting against her disease. Sarah was grieving and depressed after Mike’s death, and according to several psychologists O’Neill talked to, a contributing factor was likely to be the stirring up of her grief over Charlie’s death.
Unable to change her mind about going into a nursing home where she would be significantly younger than most of the residents, he’d managed to score a win in that he’d persuaded her to go into a nursing home close to DC so he could visit her and keep an eye on the standards of care there. And he’d picked the best one he could find, since she told him he could find somewhere, she didn’t care. Naturally, he’d chosen one that had exceptional food, and therapy facilities such as an indoor pool and outdoor garden areas including a Japanese Garden, but he still felt guilty he’d been unable to persuade her to try the Goa’uld healing device.
He arrived with Paula and Sarah at the facility, and Daniel and Vala offered to wait outside in the gardens with Joshua and Mikelle. Entering the foyer of the upmarket facility, which despite its fancy exterior was essentially a place for its residents to await their deaths, he marvelled at how nervous he felt. A Lieutenant General who routinely briefed the JCS, the POTUS and even heads of other Governments around the world on serious even apocalyptical situations, yet he never felt as anxious as he did today in confronting his ex-wife. He asked Paula to wait outside of Sarah’s suite while he went in and prepared her. In his pocket, he had a jamming device that Janae Progenius had developed for Alex’s use and when Jack had sighted it he’d requested one for his own use. J.P. had been delighted to supply him with one.
He knocked and when Sarah called, “Come in,” he took a deep breath and opened the door as Paula softly wished him luck.
When she saw who it was, Sarah looked surprised. “Jack, What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in DC at the Pentagon,” she asked him confused.
“I’ve come to tell you about something that happened at work this week,” he said as he slipped the anti-bugging device out of his pocket which like all Ancient technology had no visible on or off switch since they were activated by mental commands and most people didn’t have the necessary gene. As he switched it on so that they could speak without fear of being spied upon, Sarah looked confused.
“Jack, you’re acting very mysterious,” she said.
“I am but there’s a really good reason for it, “ he assured her, drawing up a straight-back chair from the small dining table so he was sitting next to the easy chair where she sat. “You know about the Stargate, Sarah and that we aren’t alone in the universe,” he said by way of a preamble.
“I remember,” she said with a wry smile. “He posed as you and then Charlie, I’m not likely to forget,” she said.
“True, you also said the crystal guy had more emotional depth than me,” he said teasingly.
She shrugged. “It’s true. You’re not the most emotional guy,” she said.
He shrugged. Maybe you’re right.” He said. “But there is more than just Aliens, Sarah. There’s a branch of science called quantum physics and one of its theories is that there isn’t just one reality- there are an infinite number of realities existing at the same time in alternate universes. Some realities are similar to each other with minor variations while other realities diverge dramatically so that almost nothing is the same.”
Sarah O’Neill looked fascinated. “And these quantum scientists haven’t been smoking weed when they came up with this infinite alternate realities theory, she said quizzically.
Jack laughed. “I’ll admit I thought the same thing when Carter told me about it in a team briefing,” he admitted sheepishly. “But see, the thing is, that I’ve met an alternate Carter from a parallel universe and one of my men who died in this universe but was still very much alive in his. We helped them save their planet and before that, Daniel was accidentally transported to another parallel universe where the Earth was destroyed by Aliens, but he managed to find out the gate address so that we could travel there and stop them.”
His ex-wife looked at him as if he might have more than a few screws loose and wondered if he was a danger to himself or her.
He chuckled. “Trust me, I know it sounds absolutely nuts, but alternate realities are real. A few years ago, after I left SG1 and went to DC, sixteen SG1 teams turned up at the SGC because of some anomaly which is too complicated to go into but essentially, one team wanted to steal a piece of critical and complex technology from us and they somehow opened up the floodgates and pulled fifteen other alternate universes here too.”
Jack, you have to know how crazy that sounds, don’t you,” she said as he pulled a face. “But even if I believe all of this stuff about parallel universes, which I don’t because it’s just it’s too fantastic, why are you telling me this? Isn’t this incredibly classified?”
Jack said with a wince, “ Because several days ago, a group of ten children and three adults turned up at Area 51, one of the most secure facilities on the planet.”
“So how did they manage to get in there,” she asked, curious despite her determination not to care. She knew what Jack was up to, her ex-husband was trying to get her to engage in life while she was letting go. Still, the mystery of ten children and three adults just managing to get onto a super-secret military base was certainly highly intriguing, even for someone who was trying not to give a damn.
“They claimed to have come through a portal from a parallel reality to ours to warn us of a terrible danger to the Earth and to seek sanctuary for the children of the Stargate scientists and personnel,” he said as Baby Sarah began to cry outside.
“Jack O’Neill why is there a baby crying outside my door,” she asked him sharply.
“Because she is from a parallel universe, her name is Sarah O’Neill and her father, Charlie O’Neill sent her to our Universe where she could grow up safe and happy. In her reality, the world has all been taken over by a mind control drug that turns everyone into mindless automatons who do only what they’re told by their masters. Charlie and the other Stargate personnel wanted their kids to grow up happy and free to think their own thoughts. Charlie sent Sarah here so I could keep her safe.”
Sarah’s eyes were as big as saucers but when he said their son in an alternated reality – their son who died when he was eight years old, it was too fantastic to contemplate. And she wasn’t able to hide the overwhelming hurt she felt when he said that Charlie wanted Jack to raise his daughter.
“Charlie didn’t want me to raise his daughter. Was I a terrible mother to him,” she asked in a wounded voice.
“On the contrary, I think it was a case of him assuming that in this universe you were dead, like in his.”
“The me in his universe is dead. How did that me die?”
Looking shattered, her ex-husband told her, “Charlie killed you with my service revolver when you tried to take it off him.”
“Oh, my poor Charlie. That must have devastated him,” she exclaimed, immediately empathising with the Charlie from another universe. Suddenly, she was finding it easy to believe in alternate realities.
“Him and his father, I’d imagine,” Jack opined before pulling himself together as he could hear Sarah fussing probably she wanted to be fed. “So, are you ready to meet your alternate reality granddaughter? I think she’s overdue for a feed.”
Suddenly overcome with a wave of emotion that she never expected to feel again, love, tenderness, excitement, a desire to connect emotionally with another human and fear too, of loss. But as strong as her desire to avoid the crushing feelings of grief and loss which she’d experienced after losing Charlie and then Jack and her marriage and finally her Dad, Mike, the crying baby outside awoke a part of her she’d desperately sought to suppress.
“Yes, I’m ready,” Sarah told him tremulously.
Ducking outside he returned with a younger blonde woman who looked to be in her early forties or late thirties who was holding a young baby, maybe five or six months old. “Are you Sarah’s mother?”
Paula smiled at the older woman who despite the ravages of her illness was still attractive. “No, I’m just a friend who came through to your universe with my own son and baby daughter and Charlie asked me to care for her until Jack could assume guardianship. I must say it was quite a shock to learn that you were alive in this world and Charlie had died.” Paula winced. I’m sorry, that was really tactless of me, It’s hard getting used to this whole alternate reality stuff, she said sheepishly.
“But aren’t you a scientist with the Stargate program in your reality,” Sarah asked her.
“What? No, I’m a federal agent assigned to the Stargate investigating military-based crimes,” she said. “I’m Paula DiNozzo. How would you like to help me change Charlie’s daughter and feed her?”
Sarah looked defeated. “I’d really like that Paula, but I have MS and I don’t know if I can lift her or handle zips and fastenings,” she said feeling disappointed.
Paul smiled. “No problem. I’ll change her, Jack can get her formula and bottle ready and then we’ll prop her up on pillows so at the least you can feed her and give her a cuddle,”
After Baby Sarah had been fed and cuddled, she dozed off in a milk-blissed state as Sarah stroked her baby-soft cheeks and examined each tiny finger with the sort of awe that babies tend to inspire in most people. Jack could see how the granddaughter of their alternate-adult son had pretty much shattered her previous resolve to give up on living. She was asking Paula about Sarah and the agent explained that generally, she was a fairly easy-going baby to deal with. Although she clearly missed her parents, Paula had been helping to look after her before they left their world.
“What about her mother?” she asked.
“Marta was diagnosed with lymphoma 9 weeks into her pregnancy and the doctors advised her to have a termination so she could start treatment immediately. Marta refused, she said that it might be her only chance to have a baby. Marta was growing weaker in the last few months before Sarah was born but she refused to give up on her. The doctors ended up delivering Sarah at 36 weeks which was the earliest that Marta would consent to having her delivered when her lungs had fully developed. As a medical researcher, she’d done all the research and knew that the later she delayed treatment the longer the odds were for remission but no one, not even Charlie could talk her out of it.”
Sarah was obviously empathising with Baby Sarah’s mother, the wife of her alt-son and she asked reluctantly. “So, Marta is dead?”
Paula shook her head. “We don’t know. By the time she had Sarah, Emperor General Shen Xiaoyi had managed to gain a foothold in the United American States – the last country that she didn’t rule. It was like some sort of massive cult where people flocked to join her. Dr Miriam, an anthropologist working with Stargate Agency said it was almost like some sort of mass religious conversion, but no one resisted.”
Jack interceded to fill Sarah in. “We know what caused it and my people are working on a cure. It is chemical brainwashing, and we have a vaccine that renders the drug harmless. We’re working to produce enough doses that everyone on Earth and our allies on other planets will also be protected but it takes time, he said as Sarah looked relieved.
“And you came here to warn us,” she asked Paula.
“Yes, because when our SG1 team was dragged into this reality some years ago, they gave us the vaccine for a Plague that was wiping out our population. And we hoped that they’d let our children stay here and hopefully grow up free and safe,” she said wistfully.
Sarah’s eyes were wet with tears. “Since we have a vaccine, why can’t you take it back to your world and cure everyone?”
“Because as soon as we escaped with the children, Charlie, Tony and Jack were going to destroy the drive that Dr Carter and Dr Kusanagi built and any plans and blow up Area 52 to stop them following us through.”
“But what’s to stop the Emperor General from using this chemical that Jack talked about to force them to rebuild it,” Sarah asked.
Paula’s lips quivered slightly as she fought for self-control. “Nothing, which is why unless she managed to catch them before it could be detonated, they were planning on blowing Area 52 and themselves up to protect that knowledge from falling into her hands.”
Sarah looked shell-shocked. “So, Charlie and Jack were planning on killing themselves to avoid falling into the hands of this monster and she’s here right now plotting to do the same thing to us?”
Jack stepped in. “We suspect that she is, but we can’t be sure until she tries it. And Paula’s husband was one of the personnel protecting Area 52 while Carter and Kusanagi were building the interdimensional drive, while Rodney and his cohorts were trying to build a time machine.”
Sarah immediately read between the lines – that to the best of her knowledge, Paula’s husband and father of her children was also either dead or under the mind control of an evil dictator.
Clearly, this woman was a fighter, and she had helped save the lives of her children and her colleagues’ children, but she did wonder why Charlie and her husband, and the rest of the resistors hadn’t used the interdimensional portal and set a timer to blow up the drive after they left. Still looking at Paula who was fighting for self-control, Sarah decided such questions would wait until she and Jack were alone.
Staring down at the sleeping baby who was effectively an orphan, her heart clenched. “Is there any chance that we could build an interdimensional drive and go to Paula’s reality and deliver a cure?”
Jack frowned. “It’s possible, but the POTUS would have to approve it and interdimensional travel can open up a hornets’ nest of catastrophes. We also don’t know if the mind control drug that Paula’s reality used to control the population is exactly the same as ours or if she may have done something to it that would render our vaccine ineffective or not. It is something I’ll raise but right now, having confirmation that Ambassador Shen is probably planning to use the mind control drug found in Pegasus on Earth’s population and possibly move on to infect our Allies. It means we have to ramp up our production.
Jack looked at Paula as he spoke, “ We already have two of our Allies manufacturing their own supplies of the vaccine. Orban has already produced enough of the vaccine to inoculate their entire population and Langara had vaccinated almost one-third of their population. Daniel and Vala will visit both planets to brief them on the need to crank up manufacturing even more and the POTUS has informed me he’s found several scientists he’s placed in charge of developing a mass dispersal mechanism for the vaccine. Some of the online conspiracy sites have been ramping up the anti-vax rhetoric ever since the Ori tried to wipe us out with the plague they sent back to Earth. It won’t be enough to have doses of the MCD –238β vaccine for everyone, we need an effective way to distribute it.”
Sarah looked shocked, “You’d administer it to people without their knowledge or consent. Isn’t that unethical?”
Jack shrugged, ”As opposed to what Shen would do, infect every last person, even children to turn them into mindless drones, willing to do her bidding despite their moral or ethical beliefs?”
Paula agreed with Jack. “Trust me, Sarah. If you could have seen what happened in my reality, you wouldn’t have concerns about making sure that every person on this earth is protected from that drug and that evil lunatic.”
When Daniel knocked on the door and he pooped his head in, he looked at Paula. “Sorry to disturb you, but Vala said that Mikelle is getting fussy. She thinks she wants a feed,” he informed her mother.
He greeted Jack’s former wife politely, not sure if she remembered him before smiling joyfully at the sight of Sarah O’Neill who was holding the sleeping baby. Baby Sarah was propped up on pillows as her sort of grandmother reverently ran her hand over the sleeping baby’s wispy hair and head.
Sarah frowned, “Where are they?”
‘They’re outside, in the gardens,” he told her.
“Well, tell them to come in, Dr Jackson,” she said firmly
As Daniel went to fetch Vala and the kids, Sarah frowned. “Vala? Isn’t she the one who you wanted to try to heal me last year, Jack? Why is she here now,” she asked, and Jack couldn’t tell if Sarah realised he was hoping to persuade her or not.
Choosing to be obtuse, he went with the truth, at least partially. “Well, I called Danny back to Earth because two of the refugee children belong to his alternate self in Paula’s reality. Seven-year-old fraternal twins and I was hoping that he’d agree to become their legal guardians,” he said with a pleased smile.
“Vala tagged along with him because she’d been trying to win his affections for many years but after his wife died, he hasn’t been interested in forming another partnership, but Vala’s stubborn. She refuses to give up. Anyway, Paula’s been filling him in on the twins and they offered to mind her two when she brought Sarah to meet you.”
Sarah had listened carefully when Jack had explained why Daniel and Vala were here and she said perceptively, “You are still close to Daniel, even though you aren’t on SG1 anymore?”
“Yeah, despite our differences he and I are good friends, maybe best friends even if we drive each other crazy sometimes,” he said.
Paula chuckled. “Walter said there was plenty of speculation over the years that you and he would get together.”
Jack nodded with a smirk. “Yeah I know about that, but there was also speculation about me and Carter, and Carter and Daniel, some people even gossiped that Carter and Teal’c were a couple,” he said. “As for Daniel, Vala’s tried to win him over but I’m not sure that anyone will ever be able to live up to Sha’re.”
Sarah shook her head. “Maybe now he has the twins to focus on it things might change. He might be less obsessed with what he lost and Vala’s persistence will pay off. Like yours, Jack,” she said with a coy little smile. “Do you think Vala might still be willing to try to heal me?”
Jack smiled. “Seeing she agreed last year, I don’t see why not,” he said ignoring the tiny sob that escaped Paula’s lips. “What changed your mind?”
“Sarah did,” she told him tartly. “She is an orphan and while she isn’t of this universe, I’d like to think that if the shoe was on the other foot the me in her universe would look after our grandchild if we had one. And since I can’t help you care for her when I’m like this, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. But you already knew that didn’t you?”
Jack shrugged. “No Sarah, I hoped you would feel that way, but I know that Mike’s death on top of the diagnosis and losing Charlie had knocked the stuffing out of you. So, I wasn’t sure, but I am grateful that you’ve changed your mind about the healing device.
Chapter 15
They headed back to the safe house, promising to return soon and plot Sarah’s escape. While Vala, Jack and Sarah were all deeply disappointed that she hadn’t been able to effect a complete cure of Sarah’s MS, Vala was still very confident that she’d bought Sarah quite a bit more time. Years more time, plus she’d been able to send the disorder back into remission, giving her much more mobility again. Sarah was grateful for the extra freedom, and although disappointed that she wasn’t completely cured, was also quite philosophical about it. She expressed the possibility that the partial success could have been because she’d waited too long before asking Vala to heal her and since Vala hadn’t expressly disagreed, Jack figured that it could have contributed.
As much as he wanted to beat himself up for not being able to persuade her to try the healing device sooner, a part of him knew he’d honestly done everything he could think of. The reality was that the knowledge that Baby Sarah needed a family was the only reason that his ex-wife had finally agreed to let Vala use the Goa’uld healing device on her. He’d had no way of predicting that she was going to turn up, all he could do was be grateful that she had been the kick in the pants that Sarah needed to start to fight back. With her MS in remission, she was going to start back on her therapies and try to keep herself in as good shape as possible now she had someone to live for.
The next step was breaking her out of the nursing home without attracting too much attention. Anyone spying on Jack, and he was in no doubt that the IOA and the Trust would have eyes on him if no one else did, so they would need a credible story about why she was leaving the facility and that she was going to be disappearing into the blue. Jack did not want anyone to know where she had gone so he told Sarah he would put his team on it to come up with a story about her entering an experimental treatment program overseas or somewhere remote in the US. He really didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to the refugees’ arrival from their alternate reality and since one of those refugees was Baby Sarah, her grandmother was in complete agreement. This was why they’d decided that Sarah needed to remain in the nursing home and not reveal that she was in remission for at least a few more days so as not to alert suspicions of the Trust or the IOA. In the meantime, they would work on an exit strategy to keep the kids safe and Ambassador Shen in the dark about what they knew.
Sarah had been sad at having to be parted from her granddaughter as she was already referring to her – alternate reality distinctions be damned – and Jack reckoned that it was probably time for him to drop the alternate reality tag too and just acknowledge her as his granddaughter. He wished he was in a position to simply resign from Homeworld and raise the little one on Atlantis, which was Charlie’s request but with the very real threat of Shen trying to take over the world and even the universe, like some tritely clichéd evil super-villain in a DCM movie franchise, retirement was simply not an option just yet. As much as he wished it was and was why he’d hoped that Sarah would agree for Vala to try to heal her. He just wished it had been a complete success for Sarah’s sake and their granddaughter.
Now, while Paula and her kids, Baby Sarah, Daniel and Vala were all hanging out together at the DHS safe house, Jack headed off to the White House for a meeting with President Walsh who was focused on finding a way to disperse the MCD –238ß en masse. President Walsh’s aide Tanya Joyner had contacted Homeworld Command while he was visiting Sarah, to request Jack’s presence and after a short wait he was ushered into the Oval Office. President Walsh informed him that he’d found two people who he thought could solve the issue of how to mass dispense the vaccine. They both worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the DoD that was focused on advanced technology. Its directive was to try out new technologies and ideally make them operational and to reach beyond current military tech to create novel technologies, and that sounded exactly what they needed.
“I’m seconded two scientists from our most top secret teams, its leader, Dr Holly Martens and Doctor Douglas Fargo, who is also her lover,” he informed Jack handing over two files for Dr Martens and for Dr Fargo to the Homeworld director.
He opened Dr Marten’s first file, scanning it rapidly. Aside from information on her education which unsurprisingly featured several PhDs, it was mostly redacted during the period when she was working for Global Dynamics in Eureka, Oregon. Apart from her initial visit to GD, sent there by former Senator Wen the then head of the Senate’s Technology Appropriations Committee to evaluate if GDs should be awarded a twenty-million-dollar grant to fund a mission to Titan (a moon of Saturn). After recommending that they received it, she joined GD and ended up on the mission, which Jack felt on the surface seemed highly unethical, even if she had to undergo the same rigorous selection process. But it was about the appearance of impropriety as opposed to actual acts of impropriety that mattered. Of course, O’Neill already knew that the Astraeus Mission was a bust with a group known as the Consortium hi-jacking the Astraeus and her crew to hook them up to a virtual world. They intended to use the scientists’ minds to come up with technology they could financially profit off, but the crew had been rescued, so he was unsure why Dr Marten’s file was so heavily redacted. He would read the much larger file later when he returned to his office.
O’Neill turned to Dr Fargo’s file, and aside from his stint as the Director of Global Dynamics, he noted that while Fargo had been assigned to the Astraeus mission too, his file was nowhere near as redacted as Dr Martens was. As he scanned it quickly, he noted the usual child prodigy profile, socially awkward, bullied at school, abrasive personality and poor social skills etc., along with the obligatory PhDs but the things that interested him were the skills that observed that he was an excellent problem solver, and created MARAs and something called a Bioelectric Reality Augmentation Interactive Device for his business venture FARGAMES. Also, he had skills in advanced software programming with an emphasis on artificial intelligence. Apparently, he’d programmed a smart house and had created an A.I. for his car. (Jack snorted out loud when he read that. Clearly, the man had watched too much Knight Rider as a kid.)
But while Jack wasn’t interested in A.I. for cars, he was definitely interested in A.I. since they had one on Atlantis and Dr Fargo had designed much of the programming for his FARGAMES virtual reality game Fortress 13. They still needed to figure out a permanent solution for Dr Weir and her frozen fellow Asuran friends. Frozen popsicles floating around in space weren’t any sort of sensible solution and they needed to get onto it asap but Dr Lee, who had dealt with Ava, was tied up with project managing WOHZ right now and Jack adjudged it to be a much more immediate threat. That said, if he was sending ten more youngsters, (his granddaughter and his ex-wife amongst them to Atlantis) he needed to get right on it.
Finishing perusing Fargo’s file which had much more to peruse since it was only lightly reacted (around the time that the Astraeus crew had been located and brought home to Eureka) he noticed something else that caught his interest. Fargo had some pretty useful skills in robotics and had helped design and repair a robot that served briefly as Eureka’s sheriff before becoming deputy sheriff and he’d built several other robots. He could be useful on Atlantis and Jack wondered if, at the end of the secondment, he might be able to recruit the guy. If nothing else, he and Rodney would tick each other off he suspected – it might be fun spectating! Of course, if he and Dr Marten were together, he’d probably have to take her too, but not before he knew a lot more about the mysterious Dr Martens. If worst came to worst, maybe he could offer them a timeshare arrangement similar to the one that Alex had going with Dave Rossi.
Putting down Fargo’s file he said, “Well I’m happy to approve Dr Fargo working on Atlantis – with the usual caveats that he passes our security checks but I’m not approving Dr Martens until I read her unredacted file. There are civilians and children on Atlantis, including Athosians and I’m not prepared to grant her clearance based on the scant data in her file,” he said firmly.
The president frowned. “You won’t just accept my word that she isn’t a security threat?”
“Sorry President Walsh but I’d be derelict in my duty as head of Homeworld Command if I did that. Besides, I have the highest level of top-secret clearance imaginable, so if I can’t see her file, I’m going to assume she poses a real danger and I’m not letting her anywhere near theSstargate.”
The POTUS’ frown was replaced by a look of chagrin. “Tanya and I had a bet going,” he said referring to his presidential aide, Tanya Joyner. “She reckoned you wouldn’t accept my recommendation for Dr Martens based on her redacted file, but I bet her two tickets to a monster car rally that you would. I should have known, your profile describes you as resistant to authority and I guess even as a lieutenant general, that’s not gonna change,” he said with a sigh.
Jack smirked, “I’m loyal but I don’t blindly trust anyone.” He gestured to the file, “With the likes of the Trust and the Consortium I happen to think that’s not a bad thing. Look at Ambassador Shen – or as she is known in their alternate reality – the Emperor General. Power is an addictive drug, and she is well and truly hooked. In both our realities!”
The POTUS nodded. “Fair enough,” he handed over Dr Holly Marten’s redacted file.
Jack opened it and studied it intently before closing it. Sitting there, he appeared to be lost for words.
Isiah Walsh chuckled mirthlessly. “Go on. Say it.”
Jack who was not one to casually curse, particularly around his commander-in-chief, shook his head. “Holy fuck! Is that for real? Martens died but her consciousness was trapped in the computer matrix (okay that bit he believed, since it wasn’t all that different to what happened to Carter) and then a bunch of mad scientists decided to use a printer to make her a new body,” he said incredulously. “And then Martens set about creating human copies of the Astraeus crew so that the consortium could hook the real ones back up to their virtual reality and create weapons while the doubles occupied Eureka?”
The POTUS grimaced. “I know. That was my reaction too when I was briefed on it after I was sworn in. It is terrifying!”
“Why the HELL is this the first time I’m hearing about this,” Jack demanded outraged.
“Well, I wasn’t POTUS but at a guess, I’d say they didn’t see how it could affect the SGC,” President Walsh responded.
“That was fucking stupid of them,” Jack fumed, and the implication included the current commander-in-chief after he was read in on the debacle, although O’Neill didn’t come right out and say so. He was not that insubordinate nor that stupid.
“If, as I’m beginning to suspect, the Consortium and the Trust have an overlap of personnel, then the Trust has this knowledge and could kidnap the individuals who carried it off. Maybe they already have, and Baal has grown a new body instead of being cloned!”
“Fuck! I never even thought of that,” Walsh groaned.
Jack still absolutely livid said tightly. “You might want to investigate whoever was responsible for not advising you to read in the Director of Homeworld Command about this massive security breach. They need to be looked at very closely to determine if they have ties to the Consortium or the Trust. I’m dubious that someone in such a position could be so incredibly incompetent and clueless, but do it on the down-low,” was his advice to the President who agreed wholeheartedly.
“Damn it, I dropped the ball. Apologies, General. It never even entered my head that there might be an overlap between the two groups. When you have an opportunity, I want your people to audit all of the files from Global Dynamics to see if there are other security risks, we aren’t aware of.”
Jack nodded. “Agreed. I’ll talk to Paul and get back to you asap. And as long as Dr Marten’s background check is clear, then I’ll authorise her to come to Atlantis with Dr Fargo. How soon can you get them here so Paul can force them to sign a tonne of paperwork?”
“They should be here in DC in ten hours, and I’ll be telling them that I’m personally seconding them to work on a project for Homeworld Command.”
“Sweet! I’ll have Paul schedule them in for the usual security stuff and briefing at 0830 tomorrow,” Jack said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I love it when a plan comes together,” he quipped as President Walsh chuckled.
Jack, getting ready to take his departure suddenly turned serious. “This might seem like a case of shutting the stable door too late, he said, deliberately mangling the metaphor, “but is there any way that you can discreetly check out of the scientists who created Dr Marten’s new body are still themselves and not doubles without tipping off your mole, or their masters? And if they haven’t been switched, it might be wise to put security on them to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Isiah Walsh winced. “I see what you’re saying. I’ll kibbutz with Tanya and see what we can come up with. General O’Neill, I know that our first priority is the MCD –238ß vaccine and the WOHZ program but once that’s been attended to, I’ll be ordering you to through every last resource at your disposal at bringing down the Trust, once and for all. Then we can focus on doing the same with the Consortium. I’ll give you whatever you need but I want them gone for good.”
~o0o~
Jack headed back to Homeworld, after calling Daniel and determining that everything was fine at the safe house. His former teammate had received more footage of the twins from Area 51 and he was going to sit down and watch it as soon as he got off the phone. Meanwhile, Joshua was playing some computer games and Vala was resting after her lengthy healing session with Sarah. Jack took the hint and ended the conversation so his friend could watch the footage of the kids who Dr Heng was working with to assess their short-term, medium-term, and long-term needs. Leaving the refugee situation for the moment, Jack called Colonel Davis into his office and briefed him on what had gone on with Sarah and that they would need to design an exit strategy for her, so they didn’t tip off the Trust that something was afoot.
While ostensibly the IOA (and in particular Ambassador Shen) were not in league with the Trust, anything was possible when it came to the Trust, which had started out as a bunch of disaffected NID agents, wanting to get hold of weapons to defend against the Goa’uld. It had somehow morphed into a behemoth of a crime organisation focused on dominating the world and its allies and had been ruled by one of the most barbarous and bloodthirsty Goa’ulds he’d encountered – which said a lot about Baal. Experience had taught Jack the hard way that the Trust must never be underestimated. Therefore, he would assume the worst and prepare accordingly, which meant coming up with a plausible reason for Sarah leaving the nursing home suddenly. He figured at the joint organisational skills of Paul and Penelope shouldn’t have too much difficulty in coming up with something believable.
Jack moved on to the news of the two scientists from DARPA who the president had assigned to Homeworld temporarily to work on the dispersal problem. He gave Colonel Davis a quick rundown on each of the scientists and their qualifications because although he didn’t go around advertising it, O’Neill possessed almost perfect recall.
Paul looked impressed, “Sounds like they are perfectly suited to the project,” he said with a measured smile.
Jack shook his head while shrugging his shoulders, indicating his ambivalence.” I sure hope so,” he replied, “but wait, I left out the best bit.”
He went on to tell Colonel Davis about the whole catastrophic hijacking of the Astraeus on take-off, and how a shadowy organisation known as the Consortium had abducted the entire flight crew and hooked them up into a neural virtual reality. In this VR the Astraeus crew believed that they had completed their mission to Titan and were back Home again in Eureka four years after they went missing. The Consortium planned to use the crew to create technologies that they could profit from and were aided and abetted by a former senator in gaining access to the spaceship. When Dr Martens realised they were trapped in virtual reality, Senator Wen murdered her, not realising that her consciousness remained trapped inside the virtual reality. It wasn’t until after the Astraeus crew had been rescued, that someone notice that she was trapped in the matrix memory they set up to save her.
Colonel Davis’ eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he listened to Jack’s account, although his amazement was nothing in comparison to his reaction when his boss explained how they had saved Dr Martens.
“They built her a new body. So…what… she’s like a robot, an android,” he gaped.
The general shook his head. “No. I think Dr Martens is more human than an android, although I could be wrong about that. But I still haven’t got to the really good part, yet.”
Colonel Davis groaned, “It gets worse, General?”
“Oh yeah,” Jack grinned sardonically. “It gets much much worse.” He went on to explain how Dr Martens’ memories had been hijacked and she had been forced to use the technology which had created her physical body and use it to make doubles of the entire Astraeus Flight crew. The consortium had intended on replacing the real scientists so that they could complete big plans with the real scientists. However, they hadn’t just replicated the flight crew they’d also copied significant figures in Eureka such as deputy sheriff Andy who was a robot and the chef from the local café to help sell the switch.
“Holy hell,” the Colonel exclaimed furiously. “How could we not be informed about this when it happened!”
Exactly what I wanted to know,” Jack agreed with him. I also asked the president to look into who was supposedly advising him and why they didn’t urge him to read Homeworld in on the situation.”
Davis scowled, “Are you thinking that there’s a mole in the White House?”
When Jack raised his eyebrows in reply, the Colonel asked, “The Consortium or the Trust,” he asked quizzically.
“Yeah,” Jack responded monosyllabically.
Used to such cryptic responses from his boss, Paul Davis smirked. “You saying you think that they are one and the same?”
The general shrugged noncommittally. “Not sure yet. But I want you and Ms Garcia to start looking into that possibility. One thing I’m pretty sure of, it would be extremely coincidental to have two such shadowy and internecine organisations operating in the US with almost parallel agendas without there being some sort of crossover between the two. I’d bet my pension that many of the people involved in the trust have a finger in the pie of the consortium too…that’s if they are actually separate entities.”
The Colonel nodded, “That seems like a completely reasonable assumption, Sir.”
O’Neill gave him a nasty predatorial grin. “When the war on happy zombies is done and dusted, POTUS told me we have carte blanche on whatever resources we require to get rid of the Trust once and for all. I’m betting that we’ll end up having to crush the consortium too. A lot of wealthy and influential people will probably end up with their reputations in tatters when that happens,” he said in grim satisfaction.
Colonel Paul Davis gave him an evil grin and said, ”I can hardly wait!”
~o0o~
When Jack arrived at the safe house it was right before dinner and he was going to order some takeout for dinner, only to find that Paula, Vala, Daniel and Capt. Sparks cooking dinner. Paula was apparently the head chef, Sparks was delegated as sous chef and Daniel and Vala, were her kitchen hands. According to Joshua, the lasagne and Torta di Ricotta e Polenta for dessert was one of his father’s favourite meals which he’d taught his mom and him how to cook it too. Missing his dad, his mother decided to cook a family favourite to cheer everyone up.
As they all sat down to eat, Daniel asked if these were family recipes passed down through the generations.
Paula chuckled. “A Marchetti family recipe, not a DiNozzo family recipe.” Seeing his look of confusion, she explained, Elena Marchetti was the DiNozzo’s chef and Tony spend most of his time when he was at home, hanging out with her in the kitchen. She taught him to cook.”
Jack reckoned that at least in that regard, her husband’s childhood sounded somewhat similar to Alex’s childhood, which could be summed up with two words, abuse, and neglect but he wasn’t going to draw attention to it. Although, if he read Vala right with her protective air, she’d somehow sussed it out.
Trying to distract the diners onto less sensitive topics, he asked if Joshua if he played any musical instruments music and wasn’t surprised to learn that his father had taught him to play the guitar and the mandolin. Daniel asked if the boy spoke Italian and Josh answered him in fluent Italian that he’d done so since he learnt to talk, even his Mom spoke it, although she wasn’t as fluent and couldn’t read it, either.
Daniel, Paula, and Josh continue to chatter away in Italian and Jack followed most of the conversation. Hanging around with Lou Ferretti and now the Atlantis Mafia of Fornell, Rossi and Alex all speaking it and Daniel and A.J. Chegwidden, whose daughter was Italian, he’d had to learn at least basic conversational Italian in self-defence.
When Paula brought in the Torta di Ricotta e Polenta cake and Rachel brought in the plates and flatware, Josh disappeared briefly, returning with some vanilla ice cream to accompany it. Now Jack was something of a cake expert and although it had toasted almonds adorning the top, the cake looked almost too plain for him to get too excited about but of course, being Jack, he wasn’t about to refuse it. Partly because he had manners and recognised it would be very impolite but also because even plain old boring cake was better than no cake. He reckoned the ice cream would help jazz it up a bit, so when he took a mouthful of the lemony almond and the creamy rich, moist and honey-sweetened cake which exploded in his mouth, he couldn’t help moaning in appreciation.
Paula and Josh grinned. “It’s good, isn’t it,” the federal agent said. “I remember the first time Tony made it for me, I thought it looked pretty uninspiring. I was hoping for a cheesecake, which he told me that technically, this cake is, but it was nothing like the average cheesecakes that I’d tried. Tony made it with ricotta cheese made from sheep’s milk, food snob that he was, but I had to settle for the cows’ milk variety that Rachel got at the market, but it’s still pretty awesome,” she said.
Jack agreed, polishing off the cake in double quick time and noted that everyone else was equally enthusiastic about the dessert too – there weren’t any leftovers. Elena Marchetti’s cheesecake was a real hit.
After dinner, while Paula and Jack, with Vala who volunteered to help, bathed Sarah and Mikelle and dressed them in sleep clothes, before feeding them and putting them into bed, the rest of the contingent was on cleanup duties. They cleaned up the kitchen and stacked all the plates and pots in the dishwasher. By the time the two babies had been put into bed for the night, coffee and tea had been made and Vala challenged Daniel, Josh, and Rachel to a game of Monopoly. With a sigh of relief, Jack motioned to Paula that he wanted to speak to her alone. They went out into the kitchen to drink their coffee – in Paula’s case, hers was decaffeinated as she was still feeding Mikelle and she magicked a couple of store-bought biscotti biscuits out of thin air.
Jack was amazed, “You made these two?”
Chuckling she said, “Not hardly. Rachel picked them up at a bakery when she went shopping for the ingredients we needed.”
Making a mental note to thank the Captain later, he took a sip of coffee, wondering how to start. While he was thinking, Paula took the bull by the horns.
“Vala told us she wasn’t able to fully heal Sarah. I’m sorry, I know you were hoping she could.”
Jack shrugged philosophically even though he was bitterly disappointed. “At least she was able to fix some of the damage caused by the MS and kick it back into remission, hopefully for a few years. And she might be able to buy her some more time again. She just isn’t sure.”
Vala had indicated that if they had access to a Goa’uld sarcophagus it would be able to cure her and although he hated those damned things with a passion, he decided to start searching for one asap. Maybe the scientist could figure out how to reverse engineer it and lose the whole turning the user into a paranoid egomaniac feature or if that failed, well Holly Martens had created bodies for a lot of people in Oregon. He wasn’t giving up on Sarah just yet. He wished he could remember how the hell he healed Teal’c when he had the Ancients repository of knowledge downloaded into his fron, but he would keep practising using the hand device. He wasn’t anywhere near as proficient as Vala, or even Carter but they say practice makes perfect and now he had a damned good motivation to keep trying. Maybe he could unlock that part of the Ancient’s knowledge that the Asgard had locked up.
Lost in his own thoughts, he was surprised when Paula said, “I must say that you two seem pretty close for a couple who got a divorce.”
For the second time in their nascent conversation, he shrugged. “After Charlie’s death, it was just too painful for us to be together. Maybe if we’d lost him to a disease or some other type of accident, say a car crash, we might still have made it. Sarah’s an amazing person and I still love her but there were just too many painful memories for us to work anymore.”
Paula nodded. “After we lost Hannah, we nearly didn’t make it. We had to fight like hell to stay together because Josh was struggling too. After I was injured and nearly died and then I fell pregnant with Mikelle, I think it was enough of a wake-up call and we got really serious about saving our marriage. It ended up stronger than ever.”
She took a bite of the almond biscotti and pulled a face. “Not as good as Elena’s but it’s more than edible,” she pronounced critically. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“About what happens next. “You know that we plan to move you and the kids to Atlantis for the medium term. Dr Heng and Dr O’Shea recommended that initially we break the kids up into three groups and house them in large family quarters. We already have a family wing set up that is separate from the single and married quarters. There are a few individuals living there too who don’t have children and aren’t comfortable with the younger crowd, who are good with kids and I’m sure they’ll be happy to help out with your kids too. Plus, some Athosian families live there too when they are on base and not spending time on New Athos visiting kin.”
“When you say split the kids up into three groups, how would that work? They are pretty tight-knit.”
“We gathered, but that’s only to be expected since they’ve been living together for months underground at Area 51 er 52. So, while we need to transition them back into family units with foster parent/s or hopefully permanent guardians, like Daniel, we don’t want to cause them any more grief. So, the psychologists recommended that we set up some bigger quarters which would be right next door to each other and initially split them up between you, Thora, and Heather. They would still get to see each other but it would also enable us to gradually introduce their new caregivers, especially, if like Daniel, they are the alternate reality people of their real parents..”
Paula nodded. “That sounds like a really good plan. What about school?”
“There is a school there. A small one. We only started it up about five months ago, but we have two teachers. Cassie Fraiser teaches the younger kids and Russel Spears teaches the older kids in Josh’s cohort. But the scientists and military personnel who have specialised expertise also lend a hand. We have a professor of English Literature visiting at the moment and we also have an artificial intelligence who has built a holographic body that teaches robotics. The older kids love Janae Progenius or P.G. as it’s called.”
“So could Thora still teach?” she asked anxiously.
“Absolutely,” he declared. Obviously, she knows the kids academically and they are all comfortable with her. We’ll be grateful for her expertise.”
“And Heather?”
Jack decided this would lead nicely to what he wanted to talk about. “We have a well-equipped Infirmary. Probably better than the SCG since Atlantis is far from Earth and needs to be able to treat a lot more accidents and illnesses. If Lieutenant Murphy wants to continue nursing, they’ll welcome her too.”
Paula looked pleased. “I know she was hoping to continue nursing, at least while Justine was at school,” she said. “She’ll be relieved.
“As for you, Alex who you call Tony sent me a letter via Daniel and he said to tell you that there’s a job waiting for you in the Interstellar Bureau of Investigations on Atlantis as a Special Agent.”
Paula looked thrilled but then her face fell. “But I have Mikelle to care for. I can’t exactly work until she goes to school,” she said. “I was off on maternity leave back home,” she said.
“Oh well, he also said to tell you that his head intelligence and information analyst is due to give birth soon and he already has plans to set up a creche so Bates can still work part-time and suggested that you might want to do the same. He was planning on hiring an older Athosian mother to run the creche,” Jack told her.
Paula looked ecstatic. “After you told me that we would need to hide out in another galaxy, I wasn’t expecting that I’d be able to work. Not that I don’t love being a mother to my kids,” she said. “But I do love my job too, but how come you call Tony Alex. I’ve noticed that most of the time Vala and Daniel do too.”
Jack smiled. “It’s actually why I wanted to talk to you, Paula. As you know, there are a lot of similarities between our worlds, but there are also a lot of differences. One of the biggies is that our Atlantis wasn’t destroyed by the Asurans. Because of that, we tend to use a lot more of the Ancient tech and the ATA gene has become increasingly important in this reality.”
Paula DiNozzo nodded. “You told me after they did the DNA tests at Area 52 to confirm we were who we said we were, that Mikelle and Joshua both have it. And Sarah does too.”
“Yes, she obviously inherited it from me and in all probability, Charlie possessed it too. Hers is equally as strong as mine, as near as we can judge and Josh and Mikell seem on par with Alex and Belle’s ATA strength too. This puts Sarah, Mikelle, and Josh at risk, just like Alex…Tony’s daughter, Belle is.”
He briefly explained how Tony came to be assigned to Atlantis due to the Trust learning about their ATA gene and trying to abduct her twice. “So, you see, if they learn about Sarah or your kids, they will be at risk too. We don’t know exactly why they want Belle as opposed to taking Alex, but we don’t want to find out the hard way either, so he decided to go into witness protection with her. He told me at the time that he was half expecting that one of her grandfather’s cronies might try to make a grab for her, which was why he was on guard the first time they tried to snatch her.”
“But why send him to Atlantis, most witness protection subjects don’t travel to another galaxy?”
“Several reasons, including the fact that his gene compares to mine and John Sheppard, the military commander on Atlantis, plus he is a renowned investigator. So, let’s just say we were in dire need of his talents, both innate and professional and it seemed like the safest place to stash a five-year-old that had the Trust wanting to get hold of her for her ability to operate Ancient technology. Bear in mind, this is all classified. Most of his fellow Lanteans know none or very little of this.”
Paula nodded, “Okay, that makes sense. Sorry but I’m a bit like Tony, incurably nosy,” she said apologetically.
“No, not at all. While it is most definitely classified, Alex told me that I could tell you, but I wanted to talk about something important. In fact, even though I had already intended to discuss it with you, he requested in the letter he sent for me to ask you, so I wanted to get it out of the way asap.”
Looking curious, if not a little alarmed, Paula said, “Okay, what is it?”
“You asked me before why Alex uses the identity Alexander Paddington and his daughter who is Tali David DiNozzo goes by the name Annabelle Paddington. It is because even on Atlantis, there are spies constantly being assigned there who we keep weeding out and we don’t want anyone to know that Tony DiNozzo is there. The Trust is currently chasing Tony DiNozzo and Tali around a bunch of towns in the Midwest of the US where they believe he’s travelling and spending an inheritance. Homeworld Command set up the sting to identify as many of the Trust as possible. Ultimately, I’m going to take them down, but my most immediate focus is mostly on saving the world and this galaxy from Ambassador Shen’s megalomanic plans for world domination.”
“Yeah, I of all people would endorse your prioritisation of dealing with Shen first and then the Trust. If there’s anything I can do to help, count me in, since clearly, my two could be targets as well. And I think I can guess what you wanted to ask me. You want me to stop using DiNozzo when we go to Atlantis, so we don’t endanger your Tony and his daughter.”
Jack looked relieved and pleased. Paula was obviously very cluey. She would make a great addition to Alex’s agents.
“Well, Josh is old enough to understand why DiNozzo is too dangerous for us to use right now, even though it is an important link to his heritage. We can use Cassidy, my old name before I took Tony’s,” she said philosophically.
Jack looked uneasy. “I’ll admit that was my first inclination too, but Alex ruled it out as being too easy to connect back to him. He said that you and he worked together in this reality and that it was common knowledge that you had a brief affair but remained friends. He suggested that you either use Paddington too since people already know you were married to his alt-reality self, and we can’t ask Josh to pretend that Alex is a perfect stranger. The other alternative is to pick a totally different name that can’t be connected to DiNozzo.”
Paula nodded. “He was always a talented undercover operative, although after we got married and had Josh, he stopped going undercover. Trained and handled other agents but I know he missed it sometimes,” she said wistfully.
Jack agreed. “He’s the best. He fooled several people who went to Atlantis from the JAG corps a few months ago, he said in admiration. “Plus his reputation speaks for itself.”
“Did Alex say if he was okay playing a part in Josh and Mikelle’s lives,” she asked cautiously.
“He said that as long Belle and Josh got on together he was more than happy to help out as a male figure in your children’s lives. He said Belle has been nagging at him because she wanted a younger sibling and that she adores Jack who is fourteen and perhaps not quite as enamoured about her, but that might have something to do with her calling him Petit Jack.”
When Paula said, “Why Petit Jack?”
“It means little Jack in French and he doesn’t appreciate being called little. The problem is that because I’m kind of her surrogate uncle of sorts and I’m big, as in grown-up, by her logic, that makes Jack Hotchner, the son of our prosecutor, Little Jack.
But there isn’t any other Joshua’s as far as I know, so I think we’ll be fine,” he joked.
“Belle speaks French?” she asked in surprise.
“After he found out that he had a daughter, Alex resigned from NCIS and went looking for Belle’s mother in Israel because he didn’t believe she was dead, before finally going to France to live with Tali. She speaks French, Italian, Hebrew and English and her best friend on Atlantis, Kazumi is half Japanese, so Belle is learning Japanese too. I think she is picking up Athosian too because one of her classmates is Athosian.”
“Wow, she’s very gifted with languages,” Paula commented admiringly.
“One other thing, about the Ancient genes,” Jack said. “A few months ago, I met an Ancient called Chaya Sar who told us that not only is there an ATA gene that allows individuals who have it to operate Ancient technology but there are four others that have been passed on. One, she said that I had was the ability to heal, and I have limited ability to use the Goa’uld healing device. Plus, I once healed Teal’c when I had the knowledge of the Ancient database downloaded into my head. All up there are five Ancient genes, and the other Ancient genes are communication including the ability to read other people’s minds, telekinesis, and super sensory perception. And Chaya informed us that Alex also possesses the communication gene which also gives him the ability to understand Ancient language and it explains why he can speak other Earth languages too.”
“Does this mean that Tony can read other people’s minds?”
“No, I don’t believe so. Chaya Sar told him that it was because he was emotionally and physically neglected as a child. That said, I suspect having the gene, would help explain why he is so adept undercover and can read people’s body cues.”
Paula looked at Jack, destined to become her ultimate boss as the ISIB fell under the authority of Homeworld, from what Daniel and Vala had said, and asked him speculatively, “Why are you telling me this now? Are you insinuating that Belle has the Ancient communication gene like her father?”
Jack shook his head. “Absolutely not! I haven’t asked if she has it, and he definitely hasn’t said she does, and I’d like it to stay that way. She already has a bullseye on her back as it is. I’m just saying that since our Alex has two Ancient genes, it isn’t beyond the bounds of probability that your husband did too and he could also have passed on more than just the ATA gene. I just wanted you to be prepared, is all,” he told her meaningfully.
Chapter 16
Jeannie Miller left Dr O’Shea’s office feeling rather shell-shocked by the news that Aoife had shared. On one level she knew all about the alternate realities because, on her first trip to Atlantis, she had come up close and personal with one of Rodney’s alternate realities when Rodney came through to their reality. It had made for a completely unexpected and very sharp learning curve to meet her alt-reality brother.
She’d been on Atlantis because of a physics proof that she’d come up with while playing with her then four-year-old daughter, Madison. Colonel Carter had recognised it could be applied to their endeavour in drawing draw zero point energy from a parallel space-time without the potential threat of creating dangerous exotic particles in their own space-time (which had been why Rodney had blown up a solar system on his first he attempt). Jeanne had objected that they were potentially sending the dangerous exotic particles to an alternate reality, but Colonel Carter and Rodney had brushed her off, saying that with the infinite number of realities, the possibility of choosing a random inhabited one was exceedingly slim, and yet that was exactly what happened.
The Alt-reality Rodney (who went by the name Rod) had managed to beam into their reality using an Ancient personal shield forcefield to cross the space-time bridge. He’d volunteered to make the dangerous trip to inform alert them that the exotic particles weren’t obeying the laws of physics in their space-time. Catastrophically for Rod’s reality, they had created a tear in their universe, threatening to destroy their entire universe, and was a lot bigger than a mere solar system. Although they’d eventually managed to shut down the space-time bridge between Rod’s reality and theirs, the cost had been high. It had drained all of the power in their ZPM to do it and the Commander, Dr Elizabeth Weir had not been pleased.
So, Jeannie was in a position to know better than most people that infinite parallel universes were not just theoretically possible, but they really existed. However, never in her wildest of dreams did she expect to have a four-year-old child turn up, who in an alternate reality was her biological child. Her alts-self had donated an egg for his conception and carried the child for her brother and his spouse but equally mind-blowing was the news that the alt Rodney in that reality was bi-sexual and married to a man. She remembered a comment that Kaleb had made once when she wondered when Meredith and Jennifer Keller were going to get hitched, and he’d asked if she was sure that her brother was straight.
Of course, up until that point, it had never entered her head, but she’d also thought about their father, who was always sending not-so-subtle messages to Meredith about not being manly enough. Playing piano was disparaged and when her twelve-year-old brother had stopped playing, their dad had been approving. Plus, while he liked to foster competitiveness between the siblings in terms of academic achievement, he’d also expressed regret that her brother wasn’t more manly, preferring cerebral outlets like chess over physical pursuits such as sports. It was entirely possible that Mer had internalised her father’s homophobic opinions and now she was wondering if Kaleb had been right, and her brother was bi-sexual or gay and in deep denial over his orientation.
While Dr O’Shea had been suitably discreet, she did say that the news of Kelvin’s appearance had been a massive shock to Mer, and he’d had a panic attack. He’d also ruled out becoming the child’s guardian, although he’d indicated that he would be willing to support the little boy financially, so she guessed that was something. Not a lot, but it was something. While Aoife didn’t offer any insights as to what had caused her brother’s meltdown, Jeannie thought that it was probably the revelation that he had a husband and was openly bi-sexual that panicked him. Even though Mer hated children and had to have a gun held to his head to spend time with Madison, she didn’t think that would cause a panic attack, although when it came to Mer and his dislike of kids, she supposed it was possible.
However, that was not her biggest concern right now. Aoife indicated that Rodney had been offered the opportunity to adopt the child of his alt-reality self and he had categorically ruled it out. Aoife said that his biological father in the Alt-reality would not be informed of his existence, because in this reality, Dr Jake Austen wasn’t read in on the Stargate program. Austen was working for some Think-Tank in Switzerland but because Alt Jeannie had given birth to him, General O’Neill had authorised her and Kaleb to be given a chance to foster the four-year-old.
Yet there were factors that they needed to consider, including whether the children would have to remain on Atlantis because that could be a deal breaker for them. Sure, Kaleb was pretty excited to be helping the Orbans set up their rehabilitation centre for the adult Urrones and also help out in the fledgling high school for the Urrones who weren’t capable of nanite learning. However, he hadn’t signed up to remain here indefinitely, he had put his own career on the backburner so they could come here for twelve months. Would he be willing to commit to a longer tenure…would she? It was something they needed to discuss together, and Dr O’Shea had certainly agreed that was mandatory before Jeannie could give her an answer.
Jeannie was already weighing the pros and cons in anticipation of the talk she would have with her husband tonight after Madison was in bed. It was a massive decision, although in theory she and Kaleb had discussed having more children. Especially when Rod had told her on her first trip to Atlantis that in his reality, she had two boys in addition to Madison called, Bradley, and Robbie. Yet they’d tried over the years to conceive but it never happened. Now here was a child who biologically shared her DNA and whose loving fathers had sent him to this reality to save his life and issue a warning of the threat that was devouring their world. Moreover, they sacrificed themselves to save their child and she was incredibly proud of her alt-reality brother and his husband.
Aside from the fact that this little boy shared her DNA, she did feel like she owed his parents for surrendering their lives so Kelvin could live but there were other factors to consider. Would the little boy be able to accept living in a new family where he had an older sister, and would Madison accept him? Could Kaleb accept a child who was biologically hers, but conceived with someone else’s sperm even if he was from a totally different reality? Who in their right mind would think that such a thing was possible? For the average person in the street, such a situation was truly incomprehensible but then again, most people thought the lost city of Atlantis was only a legend and here they were living in it.
Deciding that she’d better go and check on Mer, see how he was doing after suffering his panic attack, although Jeannie had enough sense not to mention him flipping out, she found him banging away on the upright piano, not far from the main mess. He was playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and it probably wasn’t the first time either since people were looking murderously in the direction of the music room and speaking loudly about not being able to hear themselves think. Grabbing a couple of cups of coffee and some cake to try to appease Mer, who had a sweet tooth as well as being addicted to coffee, she took a deep breath before bearding the lion (aka her brother) in his den.
At first, when he caught sight of her, he’d been less than happy but when he realised she had brought cake and coffee, his attitude thawed somewhat.
“What’s the occasion,” he said suspiciously.
Deciding that honesty (just not complete honesty) was the best policy, she grimaced. “Just checking in to see how you’re doing Mer,” she told him.
“Why would you do that,” he demanded bull-headedly as he eyed off the cake she’d brought with her.
Waving the cup of coffee enticingly before him and then retreated to a pair of chairs several feet away from the piano, because while she didn’t play, she knew enough to know that pianos, food, and hot drinks didn’t mix. Reluctantly he was lured away from the upright, and it might well be fanciful, but Jeannie could swear she heard a collective sigh of relief from the mess.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but having just learnt that an alternate me gave birth to a child that was not my husband’s so that an Alt-Meredith and his partner could have a child, was pretty earth-shattering. So, I wanted to check in on my big brother to see how you were doing. I’m guessing you must have been gobsmacked like me,” she told him.
“OH MY GOD!” he screeched, and she winced at the volume. “I can’t believe that the WITCHDOCTOR told you. Is she planning on announcing it to the whole damned base, I wonder?”
“I’m hardly the whole damned base, Meredith,” she told him archly. “Besides, if we decide to become his guardians, we kinda need to know about his existence, don’t you agree?”
“YOU, become his guardians? No, I forbid it!”
Jeannie laughed in his face, initially thinking he was pulling her leg. “Yes me, but it’s not just up to me, it will be a family decision,” she told him.
Well then I vote no,” her brother said crossly.
Jeannie hadn’t intended to ask Meredith, he’d already had an opportunity to step up for the child and declined, so why would she give him a second vote about something that wasn’t really any of his business?
“Oh really? Well, I was thinking that I should talk to Kaleb about it and maybe Maddy. I hadn’t really thought about consulting you?”
“Why not? I’m his father,” he demanded. ”I think I get to have a say, “ he said, outraged.
“Technically, in the alt-reality you adopted him. The Alt me was his biological mother, so when you declined to be his guardian, Homeworld asked if I would consider it before they went to someone who wasn’t biologically related.”
“So, this is a pathetic attempt to make me feel guilty, is it?”
Jeannie slapped her brother lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t be a jackass, Mer. I think you were smart to turn down the request to foster him. What would you do with a four-year-old? You break out in a nervous rash when we make you mind Madison for a few hours.”
“Well, you must have thought I was capable of being a father because you agreed to be a surrogate,” Rodney told her snidely.
“Not ME, Mer! An alternate-me and an alt-you who was married. You aren’t married and I can’t see you managing to rear a child on your own,” she said mildly.
“I’m not on my own,” he objected, “I have Jennifer.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “But does Jennifer want to raise someone else’s child and even if she did, she works crazy hours and so do you. No, I think you’ve made a wise decision in turning down the request to be Kelvin’s guardian. Losing both his parents he’s probably going to be quite needy. I’ll need to make sure that we factor it in when I talk to Kaleb tonight,” she said musingly.
“I don’t see why a bunch of kids have to come here, anyway,” he said grumpily. Why can’t they go someplace else.”
“Aoife said that they don’t want some Ambassador to know that they are here in our reality or that we know about her plan to try to turn everyone into mindless slaves. Besides, where else are they going to put them when they have come from an alternate reality? I think this is a pretty good place for them, at least as a short-term measure,” she told him.
“But everyone will know that the Alt-Rodney McKay is married to another man,” he argued.
“And so,” she said sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Mer.”
“Well, I know that! I made Miko, third in charge of the science department even though, at the time I thought she was a lesbian.”
“Mer, you can’t say that. It isn’t the LGBTQI endorsement statement that you seem to think that it is, So stop it,” she admonished her older brother who looked mystified.
“Why not. She acted like a lesbian – she wore big ugly glasses and didn’t have a boyfriend!
Jeannie put her head in her hands and groaned in frustration.
~o0o~
Jack thought about his conversation with Paula DiNozzo. It had gone really well and she was agreeable to ditching the DiNozzo name – not just to protect Alex and Belle but also because she could see the danger that existed for Mikelle and Joshua too. She was going to think about if she was going to go with Paddington or use her mother’s maiden name which was Muir. She decided to sleep on it and talk to Josh who would need to cooperate too.
As he mentally crossed Alex off the list of people who had to be informed, he thought about the fact that McKay and Jeannie Miller had been notified, along with Daniel. That just left Dave Dixon and his wife and Carter to be informed about the children born to their alt-selves in the alternate realities. He would call Dave and organise a meeting with him and his wife Kelly, but that was still the problem with Carter. He knew she’d kill him if he deliberately kept this from her, but the awful thing was that no matter what she opted to do about the situation it was a no-win situation. If she decided to adopt Reilly she would in all likelihood, give up her command and possibly even resign from the Air Force and take a job as a civilian working on Atlantis. The alternative was to turn her back on the child who an alt-Carter had given birth to with Joseph Faxon as his father, to continue commanding the George Hammond. But the thing was that he knew that she wanted to be a mother – she was a terrific aunt to her brother’s two kids, and she’d been great with Cassie when they found her on Hanka and brought her back to Earth. Especially when Cass had been a troubled teen and Nirrti had totally messed with the teenager’s head and then when her adopted mom Dr Janet Frasier had died she’d been Cassie’s rock.
Jack often pretended to be dumb, but he knew full well that as soon as Sam knew about Riley Faxon she would be forced to make a decision. She could choose her career, or she could choose to become a mother to a child she hadn’t given birth to, her alt-identity had, with a man who she’d definitely been attracted to in this reality but had sacrificed himself to save her life. Like he had been pretty sure which way Daniel would jump when it came to the seven-year-old twins, Nicholas, and Claire, he was also reasonably certain that Carter’s guilt over what happened to Ambassador Faxon in this life would colour the choice she made about Riley. And yet Sam had worked so damned hard to get where she was and was on track to being granted a promotion to brigadier general – maybe even given command of Cheyenne Mountain, and she’d had to work so much harder than less worthy men. All because her reproductive organs were on the inside.
Plus, there was the whole issue that she was not only an excellent pilot, and outstanding Air Force officer and leader, along with being utterly brilliant and saving the world on any given day that ended in an ‘ay’ but she was drop dead gorgeous and that unfortunately had been a giant albatross around her neck. Men regularly underestimated her at their peril but unfortunately, she paid the price too. She had to be twice, no she needed to be three times as good as a guy to get the promotion, and for a long time, people assumed that she’d got where she had because Gen George Hammond was an old family friend, and her father was an Air Force General. It was chauvinistic and ignorant but then a lot of the powers that be tended to be ill-informed misogynistic dumbasses. Now finally, she was on track to achieving her dreams after being bitterly disappointed getting the job as Atlantis’ commander and having it pulled out from under her due to damned petty politicking by the asshats on the IOA, and now this happened.
Still, as much as he wished that Riley Faxon hadn’t appeared in Area 51 with the other kids, the truth was he was here and there was no way around it. If Jack didn’t notify Carter and found someone else to take care of him, she would find out about it as soon as she got home and spoke to Daniel. Besides, if he made the decision not to give her the same opportunity that he’d given McKay and Daniel and was soon going to offer to Dave Dixon, then wasn’t he just as bad as the chauvinistic jackasses who underestimated Sam Carter because of her gender? It wasn’t his decision to make, not just because she was his friend and former teammate, not because he had been her CO before they deliberately ensured that they were no longer within the same career structure and therefore weren’t in the same chain of command. And definitely not because they were ’together’ although it was hardly a normal relationship with them hardly ever being together or even in the same galaxy.
Sighing, Jack decided that the best way he could think of to broach the news was to make a video message and send it off to her so she could watch it in private. It was not news he wanted her to hit with while she was on duty in front of her crew. Even so, he knew that he needed to maintain a professional mien when he made the notification, he didn’t want her to feel like he was trying to influence her decision either way.
To be perfectly honest, he wouldn’t want to have to make her decision, his own one with what he should do about Baby Sarah was hard enough. He wanted nothing more than to retire from the Air Force and raise her himself but there were some obstacles to that daydream. He had retired once before and tried to retire when Jacob Carter and his symbiote Selmak died but TPTB and ultimately Gen Hammond had talked him out of it. Now having spent time around his alt-granddaughter he desperately wanted to be with her and keep her safe. To be there for every little milestone, every smile, every tantrum, every poopy diaper, but until they had the situation with Shen and the MCD –238β successfully contained and he’d gutted the Trust, he couldn’t resign. Keeping the world safe also meant protecting his alt-son’s baby daughter and he wasn’t about to let adult Charlie down like he had with his own boy.
So General O’Neill, no Jack in sight, and especially no significant other of Colonel Carter, prepared a succinct and unemotional video message to the CO of the George Hammond, informing her of the events of the last few days and hinting at the reason for their appearance having to do with the same project which he was currently supervising. It would be enough of a clue since she had investigated the whole shebang between Dr Weir and Ambassador Shen regarding the foothold situation on Atlantis. It may seem overly cautious with the level of encryption but the MCD –238β was still highly classified and their circumspection seemed even more necessary in light of everything that Agent DiNozzo had reported. His intuition was telling him that time was critical, and President Walsh reported he’d been getting pressure from the Chinese government over the delivery time of the Sun Tzu. The final fit-out was besieged with various issues that were delaying the final stages and launch of the Daedalus -class 304, which was very unfortunate. Not! But the go-slow could only be dragged out so long before they got suspicious.
Finishing up his video message informing Colonel Carter about Riley Faxon, he also penned a short but also highly encrypted email which was from Jack to Sam. However, even though it was a personal message, O’Neill scrupulously avoided giving her advice, only saying it was a difficult decision and he’d support her, no matter which way she decided to go. He also mentioned that Rodney at this stage had ruled out the possibility of raising the child of his alt-reality self and they were going to ask his sister if she wanted to raise him. Plus, he was dubious about Dave Dixon – already having four boys, he couldn’t see Dixon being able to uproot the family and live on Atlantis. He pointed out that it would likely be a difficult ask of Davina, an only child in her reality to adapt to living with a bunch of strange siblings, so he was half prepared to have to find alternative arrangements for the youngster.
Finally, he told her about Daniel and the twins, Claire, and Nicholas, before explaining that his alt-reality self, had a granddaughter who also turned up with the group of refugees, and had knocked him on his ass. He’d never considered the possibility that in other timelines, Charlie might have survived the accident or that it might never have happened in the first place.
He passed on the news that his ex-wife was going to go to Atlantis and help look after baby Sarah but although she’d agreed to Vala trying to heal her it had only been partially successful. And he confessed that he wished he could retire but he had a couple of problems to deal with before he could do so. Or before the powers that be would agree to let him go, he suspected although he didn’t mention it because it sounded incredibly arrogant. He signed off with their coded phrases that expressed his true feelings about her and wondered sadly if their incredibly unorthodox relationship would survive the arrival of the alt-reality children. He hoped so but he feared not.
~o0o~
Jeannie sat down and snuggled up to Kaleb after supervising her daughter’s bedtime rituals. Now with the nine-year-old in bed, she picked up the cup of coffee that her husband had made her and took a sip.
“What’s on your mind,” Kaleb asked her with a knowing look. Honestly, even if she wanted to keep a secret from him, she doubted she’d be able to. The guy was incredibly perceptive – it was sometimes spooky!
“Something important that I learnt about today, but I need to wait until Maddy is asleep before I tell you,” she said.
“Sounds serious,” he said. “Should I be worried?”
She laughed. “I don’t think so, but it could cause your brain to melt. Stop fishing for details. You’ll find out soon enough!”
“So, do you want to hear about my day? P.J. showed me some plays that the Ancients performed before they returned to Earth. He’s going to translate them into English for me. We figured we could maybe perform one… you know form a dramatic society. Not just perform Ancient dramas, but maybe find out if the Athosians perform plays or perhaps Sateda did. It sounds like it was a pretty advanced society before it was destroyed. We could maybe check out Belara too,” he enthused.
Jeannie marvelled at this conversation she was having with her husband about drama on alien planets in a far-distant galaxy and she knew that while this knowledge may not be available to the people of Earth in their lifetime, it was still an important legacy that Kaleb was accruing for future generations, including those in this galaxy. The emphasis on Atlantis had been on pure scientists but with the threat from the Wraith greatly diminished, more and more, academics from other disciplines would arrive here and start exploring the cultural heritage of the peoples of Pegasus. She was proud that Kaleb was leading the way, in addition to helping out with the nascent schooling programs on Atlantis. With ten more children flooding into Pegasus in the next few weeks, it would certainly put some strain on Cassie and Russell but at least they brought along their own educator from that reality. This made her sit up as she realised that Kaleb was going to be super excited to quiz the educator about the similarities and differences between the schooling systems. It would give a whole new meaning to that old essay topic of compare and contrast, she thought, unable to stifle a giggle.
Kaleb looked at her oddly, “Something you’d care to share with the class, Dr Miller,” he asked her.
Jeannie smiled at him, Just thinking about how much fun you are having, here. I never imagined you’d be cosying up to a holographic artificial intelligence program, Darling,” she giggled.
He smirked at her playfully. “Sure, you’re not jealous, B’Elanna Torres is kind of hot,” he said in mock innocence.”
Having heard the watercooler gossip that J.P. was prone to changing its holographic image on a pretty regular basis and there was a betting pool being run by Chuck Lyons, one of the gate room technicians on which gender and character from the Star Trek Voyager series the AI might choose next, she knew that the most popular choices were males. Neelix and Chakotay were odds-on favourites, with Tom Parish and Harry Kim as long shots. Someone had bet the maximum $500 amount permitted that J.P. would choose Kez, but seeing that Janae Progenius was trying out the part of Klingon chief engineer Torres, Jeannie thought it would probably be a male gender and had put a fifty-dollar bet down on Neelix.
Looking innocent, she said, “No darling, not at all,” but she really hoped her bet paid off so she could tease her husband. Diverting his attention, she said, “What about poetry? Do you think the Ancients wrote any, and what about the other planets? Maybe we could have poetry readings sometimes.”
Kaleb looked surprised. “I never thought about poetry, but you’re right, they probably did. And then there are myths and legends. I don’t know about the Ancients – they were so focused on scientific exploration but surely the Athosians and other peoples of Pegasus must have had stories that encompass their histories. I must talk to Dr Jackson when he gets back. I’m sure he’d know. Perhaps we could start compiling them in book form,” he said, as Jeannie finished the last of her coffee and stood up and carried her cup and Kaleb’s to the kitchenette to rinse them out. On the way back to the sofa, she detoured, checking on their daughter who was now asleep. It was time to tell Kaleb about Kelvin Max Austen-McKay.
“Maddy asleep,” her husband enquired as she returned and sat down a little ways from him rather than snuggling up as she’d done earlier.
She smiled at him. “Dead to the world. I think Major Cadman wore her out with her tap dancing, today.”
Kaleb nodded. “I’m glad that she hasn’t had to sacrifice her extra-curricular activities coming to Atlantis, but I think that we might need to find another piano teacher for her. I don’t think the lessons with her Uncle Rodney are working out,” he said, exhibiting a decided gift for understatement, judging from the number of tears that had been shed during the first four lessons. I hear that Special Agent Alex Paddington is qualified to teach. He is a Royal Conservatory of Music certified teacher and he holds a Licentiate Diploma (LRCM) in Piano performance,” he told his wife who visibly winced.
“Yeah, Babe but Meredith hates Alex with a passion. It could be because he is obviously an extremely talented pianist, but I feel there is more to it.” Jeannie wondered idly if her brother was attracted to Alex who was a very good-looking guy. Even if Jeannie married, she wasn’t blind.
“Well, that’s a shame, because Jack Hotchner studies under him and he was singing his praises. Jack mentioned he was a very good teacher. Does anyone else give lessons, I wonder?”
“I think that Miko mentioned that Kazumi has lessons with Dr O’Shea, and Dennis Hall might have mentioned the piano tuner who also taught. I’ll ask around, tomorrow,” she promised.
“Okay, so what is it that you wanted to talk about that was so serious, Jeannie?”
After Jeannie explained about parallel universes and he had gawped at her like a fish out of water, she went on to explain about the ten children and three adults who had accompanied them through the dimensional drive device into this reality, Kaleb started laughing. At this point, Jeannie thought perhaps he was hysterical from the shock, and she slapped him.
He stopped laughing and said crossly, “Jeannie why did you just hit me?”
I didn’t hit you, it was a slap because I thought you were hysterical from the shock,” she disputed firmly.
Looking at her incredulously, he said, “I was laughing because I thought you were pulling my leg,” he said grumpily. “Are you trying to tell me that it wasn’t some massive prank?”
Looking exasperated, she replied huffily, “Kaleb, look around at where you are. Do you really think I’d joke about something like this? Remember I told you about an Alt-Rod who I met on my first trip to Atlantis.”
He said, “ He told you we were going to have three children, two boys,” he said. “Guess he was wrong.”
“Maybe he was, at least about the ‘me’ in this universe. I might have three children in other universes I suppose, there’s no way to know. Every reality has differences and this one with the thirteen people from a different reality apparently has quite a few differences to ours, but some things are similar.”
“How so,” he asked her curiously.
Remember how when we came to Atlantis we were given a vaccine which rendered us immune to the effects of a mind control drug MCD –238β?”
“Yeah, General O’Neill told us that the entire Atlantis base, apart from Colonel Sheppard was under the control of an alien who’d infiltrated the base. He went through all their classified intel and made them go on dangerous missions.”
“Well, the refugees’ Earth was taken over by someone using MCD –238β. They didn’t realise what was happening because their Atlantis was blown up more than five years ago. Because of that, Agent Paddington didn’t go to Atlantis and so no one identified the threat posed by the drug.”
“Wow, I guess we’re lucky our Atlantis didn’t get blown up so Alex could come here,” Kaleb said, flippantly.
Jeannie grimaced at his jokiness. “Ambassador Shen’s people turned their entire eight billion or so population on Earth into mindless zombies,” she said in admonishment.
Kaleb ducked his head in embarrassment. “Sorry. Hon. That was tasteless of me.”
Jeannie nodded her agreement. “Yeah kinda.”
She went on to tell him how the personnel of their SGC – military and scientists had set out to build a time machine but failed and then all through their efforts behind building a dimensional drive that permitted them to travel to other dimensions. “They’d decided to send their children to this universe because we had helped them before, and they hoped we’d look after their children. They also wanted to warn us about the threat of being turned into zombies.”
“Why didn’t more adults come with them? Did they run out of time?”
Jeannie went on to explain how a previous visit from two people from an alternate dimension had started to exhibit signs of entropic cascade failure, “The scientists were afraid if they went through into another dimension and their alt reality selves existed here that they would experience entropic cascade failure. They decided to stay and blow up the dimension drive to stop Shen and her minions from figuring out where they’d gone and trying to follow them.
Kaleb looked suddenly a lot more sombre. “They knew they were doomed and chose to make sure their kids were safe, that’s damned brave of them,” he said thoughtfully. ”What’s going to happen to them?”
“They are trying to find family members to adopt them,” she said.
Kaleb nodded. “That seems like a sensible solution. Wait…did your alt-self send through an alt-Maddison or another child, what did Rod say their names were?”
“Rod said they were Bradley and Robbie and no, not exactly. But alt Meredith did. He and his husband, Jake Austen sent their son, four-year-old Kelvin Max Austen-McKay through to our reality.”
“Holy shit!” Kaleb exclaimed in astonishment. “ Rodney has a husband in that reality?”
“Yes he does, and I think that you might be right about him being gay in our reality too, or at least bisexual, which he apparently is in that reality.”
Kaleb nodded. “He’s like a lot of gay guys I’ve gone to school with who are in deep denial about their orientation. How did he react when he learnt that his alt-self was married to a guy?”
Jeannie rolled her eyes in exaggeration. “He went totally batshit crazy about it, saying people would assume he was gay too.”
Kaleb nodded, “Sounds about right. So, is Rodney seriously thinking of taking the boy? He breaks out in hives when he has to spend time with Maddy!”
Jeannie tittered nervously. “Oh no, quite the opposite, he’s emphatic that he won’t take him, but he says he’ll support him financially so Kelvin won’t want for anything and will get a good education.”
“That’s sad. Any idea who will raise him?”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to take to you about. They asked me if we’d consider adopting him,” his wife said, watching Kaleb’s reaction.
He nodded contemplatively. “Because you’re his alt-aunt?”
“No, because the ‘me’ in that alt-reality gave Mer and his husband one of my eggs and Jake Austen supplied the sperm and I had the embryo artificially inseminated into my uterus. I carried and delivered Kelvin for them and the alt-Mer adopted him. So technically, in that universe I was biologically his mother,” she said, side-eyeing Kaleb who was looking quite shocked but not angry or jealous.
“Wow! You said that the reality these refugees come from is a lot divergent from ours. You weren’t kidding. I mean I know that surrogacy and donating eggs is something that families do in certain situations but somehow I can’t see you doing that for your brother.”
Jeannie agreed. “Neither can I but then, there is no need. He and Jennifer as far as I know have never broached the subject of procreation and if they have, they certainly haven’t brought it up with me. If he was in a relationship with a male and they wanted a family, I might think about it, but then again we’ve been hoping that we’d have another child, so maybe not.”
Turning to more critical matters, Kaleb asked her, What did you say when they asked you about adopting Kelvin.”
“I said that it was something I would need to talk to you about. It’s a big commitment, adopting or even just fostering someone else’s child,” she said. Plus, there is the issue that for the medium term, they want to keep the kids on Atlantis. Partly because they don’t want the Trust or Ambassador Shen to get wind of them being here but also because they come from a different reality, and it is easier to keep them somewhere where people understand their origins and won’t diagnose them as delusional or schizophrenic.”
Kaleb nodded. “Okay, I can see that, but if we took him on, we’d have to commit to staying here? Would that be permanent?”
“I’m not really sure about that,” Jeannie answered honestly. I don’t think they know either, but maybe.”
Kaleb nodded. “I mean, that isn’t the deal breaker I’ would have thought it would be. At least not since I agreed to come here for a twelve-month assignment. I thought I’d be playing the dutiful house husband and I was perfectly happy to do that but since I’ve been here, I got to travel to Orban and act as a consultant to help put together an adult education program for their long-term Urrones and hang around with a ten-thousand-year-old artificial intelligence entity and delve into the Ancients literature. And maybe there’s a lot more for me to explore as you pointed out. That’s pretty damned exciting, so if we stayed here, I’d have some pretty important work that I could do too,” he said thoughtfully.
“What are you saying, Hon? That we should take Kelvin,” she asked him, trying to clarify.
“Well, he is your alt-self’s biological son, Jeannie. And I can’t stop thinking of the sacrifice that his parents made for him so he could live free and happy. If the shoe were on the other foot and we had to send Maddy off alone to a different reality, I’d like to think that our alt-selves or your alt-brother would take her in. What, don’t you think that we should?”
“No…I’m not saying that. But what if we do and then further down the track Rodney changes his mind,” Jeannie said.
“Do you really think that is a possibility, Darling? I know he’s your brother and you love him, but this Rodney is a bit of a pompous jerk, I can’t see him getting his head out of his ass and realising what a gift he’s giving up,” he said candidly.
Jeannie felt rather surprised. Normally Kaleb was careful not to disparage her brother, even when Meredith was rude and cutting when they interacted. “Yeah, that’s true, but what if this is a wake-up call about his sexuality and some years down the track he meets someone, and they want kids?”
“Well, if your brother is bi or gay, I rather hope that he comes to his senses because I wouldn’t wish that sort of self-deception and fear of being outed on anyone, least of all a family member. As to changing his mind, I’ll have a talk with one of the lawyers about drawing up an ironclad contract that if we adopted Kelvin, he wouldn’t be able to sue us for custody.”
Jeannie winced but knew that she would be more comfortable changing their whole life by committing to live on Atlantis – at least in the medium term if they did adopt him. “We always said we wanted to have more kids, so Maddy wasn’t an only child,” she said.
“Besides, if Rodney is worried about people knowing he’s bi in an alt-reality, we can always tell people your alt-you is Kelvin’s biological mother, which is the truth and skip the whole surrogate thing.”
“That’s true,” she said, twisting he hair into a knot to pull her hair off her face, as she thought about it. And that way he could be Kelvin’s uncle which is what Dr Heng recommends doing with all the alt-reality parents so that the kids are confused. They are going to tell them that while they may look identical to their parents, they are aunties and uncles of their real parents.”
Kaleb nodded, “Yeah I can see how confusing that is going to be for the younger kids, especially if they look the same but have very different personalities. So, Darling, what do you think? If we can get Rodney to agree, are we going to adopt a four-year-old?”
“Well, I think we need to talk to Maddy before we decide,” she said contemplatively.
Her husband chortled. “Are you kidding? You know Maddi has been pestering us for ages about having a sibling, she’d be thrilled.”
Chapter 17
General O’Neill was scheduled to beam into Cheyenne Mountain at 1130 hours and he knew that the SCG was on tenterhooks, wondering if this was to do with the General Landry situation. It had been over three weeks since Hank had been stood down after the ISBI on Atlantis had discovered two spies on the Ancient’s city, sent by Landry to try to find out about the secret project Homeworld was involved in on Atlantis. It seemed that he was intensely curious about why his daughter, Dr Carolyn Lam had taken a sabbatical from her job at the SCG to work for Homeworld and took it upon himself to find out. There weren’t many people who had any idea that Dr Lam was General Landry’s daughter (because she went to great pains not to advertise the fact) and could understand that as a father, he might be concerned about what his daughter was doing. However, as the commanding officer of the SGC – the highly classified program that most of the Earth’s inhabitants had no idea about – he of all people should respect the dictum of need to know.
Now he was under investigation and Jack knew that the Pentagon really wanted to know if he had just got a bee in his bonnet because he was concerned about his daughter’s career or welfare or was it something entirely more sinister. Had someone like the IOA, Ambassador Shen or the Trust placed the bee in Hank’s bonnet in the first place. Jack didn’t know and Hank certainly wasn’t talking so the President had asked Homeworld to delve into any links there might be between Hank and any of the usual suspects. Garcia was looking into it and suggested that they might want to recruit an old crony of hers from her Black Queen days, called Zane Donovan.
At first, when she mentioned him and started to give Jack the highlights of the computer hacker extraordinaire, O’Neill had very nearly blown a gasket. Donovan had a rap sheet that had admittedly been expunged, but he’d crashed the New York Stock Exchange (although that had never been proven sufficiently for him to be charged) and he had multiple counts of identity fraud. He’d attended MIT when he was only thirteen but was later expelled before going to other top schools including Columbia and Yale when he was fifteen, managing to get kicked out of them too.
Garcia also told him that he once stole 3.1 million dollars from the US War on Drugs Fund, but he ended up working for a DARPA company called Global Dynamics in Oregon before marrying the head of security at GD who was Special Ops and she’d ended up working for the US Secret Service on the POTUS’ security detail and Donavan had been working for the Department of Defence. So, Jack had decided to have Colonel Davis check Zane Donovan out with the view to seconding him to work on bringing down the Trust per the POTUS’ orders.
After all, President Walsh had told him he could requisition whatever resources he needed to do it. And Paul after a cursory search of the man’s official jacket and found he’d managed to get past the Department of Defence firewalls to check out someone’s file, so he was evidently a top-notch hacker as Garcia contended. Paul was going to conduct a deep digital dive into his time working at GD and Jack decided he’d also interrogate the pair from DARPA who POTUS was sending to Balar to help come up with a way to mass administer the MCD –238β vaccine so that they could successfully block any attempts to take over the world by Shen Xiaoyi.
Paul entered his office to tell him that the Odyssey was in the position to beam him up. Several minutes later he was beamed back down to Cheyenne Mountain, and he was going through security before he took the elevator to the COs office which normally housed Hank Landry. Of course, before that, it had been Jack’s office. At the moment Colonel Dixon was occupying the office as acting CO of the SGC and Jack was there, not to discuss what was happening with the leadership of Stargate Command, but to inform Dave Dixon about the appearance of Davinia Dixon, the only child of his alt-reality identity in this reality.
He began briefing Dixon about the children being sent her from the reality that had been here some years ago after the incident with the beachhead black hole enabled sixteen SG1s from parallel universes to be pulled into their reality. Specifically, the kids who’d arrived from the alt-reality were from the same dimension as the SG1 team that had consisted of the Tok’ra Martouf and Janet Fraiser, both of whom were dead in this reality. Since it wasn’t their first encounter with counterparts coming from parallel universes, Dave had been pretty chill when Jack started briefing him, but by the time he’d completed his notification, Dixon was gobsmacked.
“I have a fourteen-year-old daughter called Davinia and she is an only child in the parallel universe where Dr Fraiser comes from. It’s weird, you know because Suzy and I always hoped we’d have a girl, but we just kept having boys. Once we got to four, we decided we’d better stop before we ended up with a basketball team. Suze’s is gonna be shocked. When can we meet her?”
Jack grimaced. “Not yet, Dave. Look it’s complicated. They brought knowledge of an imminent threat to Earth and our Allies with them. Although we already had sussed out the very real possibility of a threat existing and working on a solution to defend ourselves from the threat that would see everyone on the planet subject to mind control, we still need to buy time to iron out some wrinkles. We need to hide the kids on Atlantis until after we have the solution fully operational.”
“So, if we adopt Davinia into our family then we’d need to move to Atlantis,” the colonel said, catching on quickly.
“At least temporarily,” Jack agreed. “I know that is a huge ask, to uproot Suzy and the boys. Plus, there is your job here as acting CO,” he said.
“Yeah, that too. Do you know what’s gonna happen with General Landry, General”
“Honestly, I’m not sure, but in my opinion, even if Hank isn’t thrown into some super-secret military prison, I’d say it’s highly unlikely he’ll be back at the SCG. But don’t ask me who’s going to replace him because I haven’t been told. The new POTUS might bow to pressure and appoint another civilian or they might promote you or Colonel Carter since either one of you would be a logical choice,” he said.
Colonel Dixon looked pained. “It would be really useful to know if I was giving up a job promotion before Suzy and I make a decision to uproot our family, Sir.”
“Yeah, I know, but the people who are investigating General Landry haven’t been read in on the threat we’re potentially facing, and I don’t want them to know. The fewer people that know the better and because you’re doing a damned fine job holding everything together they don’t see a reason to rush what will probably result in a highly decorated and well-connected brigadier general incarcerated for espionage. They are being cautious, and you can’t exactly blame them.”
“What will happen to Davinia if we don’t take her,” Dixon inquired looking troubled. “I know that it’s likely to be the first question that Suzy will ask me,” he said.
Jack nodded, knowing what a big heart Suzy Dixon had when it came to children, including other kids whose parents worked at the SCG.
“We’ll try to find someone on Atlantis who would be prepared to be her guardian and when it was safe, maybe she could spend holidays with you guys. I would have to find someone willing to become a guardian for Gia Kawalsky too. In her reality, her parents were killed and Major Kawalsky who was her great uncle, adopted her. I’d willingly do it, but until this threat to Earth has been put to bed and I finish another mission for President Walsh, I can’t in good conscious retire and move to Atlantis to raise my alt self’s granddaughter or Gia.”
~o0o~
Dr Jennifer Keller found herself going through the motions of getting herself ready to start her day in the Atlantis Infirmary. Although she wasn’t actually rostered on until later today, she had a ton of paperwork to get through and besides, she really wanted an excuse to get away from Rodney right now. He was acting like a paranoid jerk, and she needed time to think. No, to be honest, she needed time to process the surprising news that he’d had a child in an alternate universe, which in itself was rather shocking since he was not good with children. Any time she tried to bring up the topic of them having a child together he’d also managed to change the subject, or something would come up which would necessitate his immediate attention and the topic would die a natural death until the next time she broached it.
And yet, Jennifer mused, that earth-shattering piece of information that the alt-reality Rodney McKay had wanted a child so much that he’d done it via a surrogate paled into insignificance compared to the other piece of news that he let slip during an epic rant. She’d gone to see him after she hadn’t heard from him all day and while they weren’t married or living together and they still kept separate quarters, she still considered them to be partners. When she tracked him down to his quarters, he’d been having a fairly major tantrum, ranting and raving, throwing his possessions around the room, clearly raging about something that was upsetting him.
Still, her partner was someone who vented about stuff frequently, as in at least a couple of times a day, which was not exactly great for his blood pressure but what could you do? This was why instead of minding her business and walking away she’d niggled at him until he told her what was making him so feral. She hadn’t seen him so outraged in a while, particularly since Dr O’Shea and her minions refused to sign him off as being fit to return to duty. Jennifer as CMO had tried to do it herself because as far as she could see, he was perfectly fine to go back to work but General O’Neill and Ambassador AuClair had refused to accept her recommendation, saying that she wasn’t qualified to make assessments about individual’s mental status and even if she was, she was professionally compromised since she was sleeping with the individual she was trying to sign off on.
Knowing how desperate Rodney was to return to work, Jennifer was pissed off, but she hadn’t given up. She’d gone to the Chief of Medicine at the SGC who’d agreed to investigate the situation. Granted that was a couple of weeks ago but she figured that the guy who was temporarily assigned to replace Carolyn Lam was probably pretty busy. In the meantime, she’d tried putting pressure on O’Shea, but her department wasn’t under her any longer and with two additional psychologists assigned to Atlantis, Aoife was now promoted to the Head of the Mental Health Department.
However, if she’d had any clue of the information that she’d learned last night when she kept prodding Rodney to tell her what was making him so distressed, she would have turned tail and run away from his quarters (which incidentally looked like a bomb had gone off in it) and never stopped. Yet she hadn’t done that and she’d tried to be a supportive partner and find out what had her lover in such a precarious state of mind and therein learnt something that she really wished she hadn’t.
Sure, the news that an alt-reality Rodney had a kid was a definite shock, but it wasn’t the information that left her shell-shocked. It wasn’t even the revelation that the Rodney in a parallel world wasn’t afraid of making a commitment and was married, although Jennifer had to admit that she really wanted to get married and the fact that they weren’t even living together often made her question if she should cut her losses and move on. She’d had Ronon on a string when she first went after Rodney in case it didn’t work out, but he quickly moved on. Now he was with that stupid little technician Amelia, and they’d moved in together about six months after they started seeing each other. But if she was to break up with Rodney, perhaps he’d break up with Amelia when he realised she was available.
Jennifer’s cynical side scoffed at that notion. Ronon might not be anywhere near as smart as Rodney, few people were, but he also wasn’t as dumb as he pretended to be either and Keller reckoned, he wasn’t going to break up with the kick-boxing tech although rumour had it that she was going back to Earth in just a few weeks to train as a federal agent, which Jennifer thought was rather ludicrous. But maybe if Ronon was lonely in her absence…well these things sometimes just happened. If she was also lonely and upset about her breakup with Rodney, then perhaps hormones might get the better of them and they could end up together. And Ronon had already proved he was looking for a full-on relationship, maybe even kids since they spent a lot of time socialising with the families who had children.
As she entered her office, Dr Keller forced herself to calmly and logically examine the piece of news which had rocked her universe to its core. She could rationalise the fact that a parallel Rodney had a child and was married…maybe. But what she was unable to reconcile was who parallel Rodney McKay was married to. He was married to another man – a scientist who in this reality had no link to or knowledge of the Stargate program but what if that changed and he and Rodney met? Would she lose him to another man?
To lose him to another female would be highly embarrassing but she knew that it would be a million times more mortifying to lose him to a man. She was a geneticist at heart, and she couldn’t help feeling that homosexuals were genetically flawed, To know that in an alternate reality, Rodney was gay or bi was deeply disturbing to her. If he was a homosexual in a parallel reality, who’s to say that he wasn’t attracted to men in this reality too, even if he denied it voraciously. In fact, his strenuous denial only served to arouse her suspicions – to bastardise Shakespeare, it was a case of ‘me thinks he doth protest too much.’
As she stared unseeingly at the mountainous pile of paperwork on her desk which consisted of requests for leave, several more requests for a permanent transfer back home, requisition forms, reports on injured military personnel and a couple of scientists who were injured doing fieldwork on the New Lantean mainland, she pulled out Lieutenant Marcy O’Grady’s leave form. She was requesting a month’s leave to get married to a scientist in the bioengineering department and they wanted to return home to be married amongst their family and friends and then take several weeks honeymooning in Vetuscco and Madagascar. Keller reread the request and her eyes filled with tears of rage and mortification. She was tempted to rip up the leave request and tell O’Grady she couldn’t be spared – maybe just cancel all leave but that would just lead to rumours and innuendo which she definitely did not want.
Grudgingly she wrote approved in the supervisor’s box and signed and dated it before filing it angrily into her out tray. O’Grady was ten years older than Jennifer and she was definitely rather average in the looks department, yet she was getting married and going on an amazing honeymoon. It wasn’t fair. And yes she was jealous of some irrelevant little nurse who would never achieve the kind of greatness that Jenner had or have someone of the calibre of Rodney McKay with his multiple PhDs and genius and she shouldn’t be green with envy. She told herself she had no reason to be jealous.
Except that the man who was her lover was married to a MAN in a parallel universe and in that dimension clearly didn’t have one iota of embarrassment in declaring he was bi-sexual. She couldn’t help but wonder about her Rodney in this universe and what it meant for her. Unbidden a memory she had tried extremely hard to forget pushed its way back into her consciousness. It was months ago while Colonel Sheppard had been missing, and he’d been presumed dead. That uppity federal agent Alexander Paddington who had somehow gotten the POTUS on his side, giving him unprecedented powers on Atlantis to investigate anyone and everything, had been interrogating her. Questioning her, like she was a common suspect in the disappearance of the military CO and not caring that he humiliated her.
Flashback:
“Jealous? Why would I be jealous,” she’d challenged him.
Paddington had cocked his eyebrow at her in a patronising fashion that made her long to slap his incredibly handsome face and leave a mark.
“Well, some people think that Rodney has a thing for Colonel Sheppard,” he told her with a hint of pity.
Keller had felt both furious and incredulous. “Rodney and John? Don’t be ludicrous,” she’d protested vehemently. “Rodney and I are in a committed relationship,” she’d insisted.
Paddington had smiled condescendingly at her, his perfectly white teeth grating on her nerves as he proceeded to fake apologise to her. “Oh, my bad. I thought you were just dating!”
Infuriated, she replied, “We’ve been together for almost four years, I’d hardly call that dating.”
He’d counter that with, “But you don’t live together. You two still aren’t married, Dr Keller. See…me, I’d call that dating,” he concluded.
Feeling impelled to justify their relationship, Jennifer had replied, “Rodney is a private person who likes his own space. It works for us. And as for not being married, he’s just a little gun shy that’s all,” she told Paddington angrily.
Paddington had been quick to counter her arguments. “Maybe he likes having his own space so he can see other people on the side,” he paused delicately before saying, “like Colonel Sheppard.”
Jennifer had been trying to keep her cool, but the man was so smug. “That’s ridiculous. Rodney’s not into guys,” she protested heatedly. How dare he suggest it!
He’d grinned at her and said, “Perhaps you’re right, but people wonder why he’s always ranting about Colonel Sheppard acting like that fictional character, Captain Kirk who sleeps his way across galaxies, bedding every attractive female who had a pulse. It seems like Rodney’s jealous. Maybe he doesn’t like sharing.”
She’d vehemently denied Paddington’s assertion that McKay had a sexual relationship with Sheppard or anyone else but her.
At that point, the federal agent asked her, “If that is the case, then why is the chief scientific officer constantly berating Colonel Sheppard for his so-called Kirking behaviour?”
Impulsively because by now Jennifer was so angry with him that she just blurted out without thinking, “He probably thinks that whoring his way across the galaxy isn’t a good look for the commanding officer and he needs to behave with more decorum. Rodney isn’t jealous.”
Paddington kept prodding at her. “Okay, maybe Dr McKay isn’t jealous of the Colonel, but I think you might be. I think you were afraid that something was going on between them or else that it was some sort of unrequited love on Rodney’s part, and you decided to get rid of your competition,” the hateful agent challenged her.
“Rodney loves me, how dare you insinuate that he’s having an affair with a man. He’s straight. Ask anyone -they’ll tell you what a great couple we are. Intellectually, I’m his match. Even if he were bisexual -and he’s not,” she was quick to insist, “He doesn’t even like sex all that much. Rodney wouldn’t want to be with a soldier who is all brains and limited intellect,” she told Paddington firmly.
She’d gone on to try to plant suspicion on Kanaan instead, suggesting that he might have been jealous that John was Torren’s biological father. Not that she thought that Rodney was guilty or anything. Yet despite her attempts to divert him, she knew that he’d still gone on to question Rodney, asking the same questions and he’d been furious, too.
Now as she thought back to that conversation, she wondered what Alex Paddington might have seen that she didn’t. Had he been right about Rodney lusting after John Sheppard? Was the fact that he’d called off his relationship with Dr Katie Brown not because he’d panicked and gotten cold feet as he claimed but because he was gay or bisexual? Was that smug federal agent correct and he was ‘dating’ her as a way of not dealing with his real sexuality. Was Rodney so deep in denial that he had a relationship with her because he was too afraid to face the truth?
Maybe in light of the revelations from the parallel universe, she should face the truth. It wasn’t as if he was an especially generous lover. While he was obsessed with sex, he was impatient with what he termed her needing stupid foreplay just because she couldn’t have an orgasm or get horny when he snapped his fingers. It wasn’t her fault that she needed time to get in the mood.
~o0o~
Colonel Carter had been waiting for a chance to watch the video message and the accompanying email, both of which had been highly encrypted and marked confidential and personal. She’d been dying to know what information they contained but unfortunately, there had been various disruptions that prevented her from finding out what was on the message. Now after dealing with a couple of squabbling junior crew who had been gambling for money (which was strictly against regs) and were accusing each other of cheating, she finally entered her office and sank down into her office chair. Powering up her computer, she entered the alphanumeric encryption key to decrypt the data and decided to read Jack’s email first.
Dear Carter,
I know this will come as a shock to you, believe me, it certainly did when I was notified of it and then had to notify Daniel and you. If you are reading my email before watching the video…which knowing you is very likely, then go and watch the video and then we’ll talk.
Jack
Sam sighed. Jack knew her too well, although having been her commanding officer for so many years before he moved to Homeworld Command, it wasn’t that surprising.
Moving the cursor to click on the video file to open it, she drew in a breath as Jack sat behind his desk in DC, handsome as always in his dress blues looking incredibly official. What the hell did Jack – no this was Lieutenant General O’Neill – need to tell her?
Fearing the worst, Sam clicked on the file, freezing it as she contemplated why he was sending her this message. Her imagination took flight as she pictured the worst possible scenarios. Maybe something had happened to her brother, Mark or his wife and children. She briefly thought that she’d been accused of something serious and briefly, she’d flashed upon the unauthorised hacking she’d done into the IOA and Ambassador Shen Xiaoyi. She’d also snooped in Richard Woolsey and Elizabeth Weir’s confidential command logs while they were in charge of Atlantis using a back door entry portal that she’d set up within an hour of Woolsey relieving her of her command of Atlantis.
Admittedly she shouldn’t have done it but she was angry and hurt about being told she was being recalled to witness the removal of the last Baal clone, only to be hi-jacked by the news that he was relieving her of her command and replacing her. She probably would never have used the back door into the Atlantis database when Jack asked her to nose around and see if she could find something. Being a normally law-abiding person, she was worried that someone had found out about her spying before rationality set in. If they’d been caught, it was hardly likely that General O’Neill would be the one to notify her since he requested her help in the first place.
After running through a bunch of awful scenarios including that Xiaoyi had already started turning innocent people into mindless zombies, she admonished herself not to jump to any hasty conclusions. Just watch the damned video, Carter she heard Jack saying in her ear and so after her hand trembled for a couple of seconds, she pointed the cursor at the file, which was cryptically named Riley, and clicked to unfreeze Jack. She proceeded to watch as her partner, who wasn’t speaking to her as such, but in his capacity as the director of Homeworld Command, outlined how a group of refugees turned up at Area 51 a few days before. They had requested asylum and had a warning about a terrible plague in their reality which was turning nation after nation into armies of mindless slaves who would do whatever the supreme commander Emperor General Shen Xiaoyi told them to do.
General O’Neill explained that the group had claimed to be from a parallel universe – specifically the one which turned up at the SCG a few years ago and was radically different to the other fifteen teams that had been dragged into their parallel universe, thanks to the Ori’s beachhead created black holes. Momentarily, Carter stopped to appreciate the irony of the encryption key she’d used to unlock the data on these files. She and Jack had agreed upon the phrase ‘accretion discs’ when she had assumed command of the George Hammond Daedalus class 304 warship last year for any data they wanted to send which nosy parkers might try to read.
The truth was that while they were together now, theirs was an unorthodox and oftentimes long-distance relationship. So long distance at times, that they frequently weren’t even in the same galaxy. And although they weren’t breaking any regs, since she was under the auspices of the SGC and the Air Force and Jack was the head of Homeworld Command and therefore not part of her chain of command, Jack felt it was prudent to keep the fact that they were in a relationship to a select few people, which included Daniel and Teal’c. Jack had informed the POTUS (Henry Hayes and the incumbent, Isiah Walsh) so there was no impropriety, but as Jack said, people would talk and jump to conclusions. He worried that people would claim that she hadn’t earned her position based on merit.
The accretion discs alphanumeric encryption key was something of a running joke between them both. It was the first time that Jack had let the team see just a sliver of his true intellectual capabilities, much to Daniel’s bemusement. Even then, it was clear that Daniel was quite clueless that Jack had a PhD in astronomy, so it was only natural that they’d picked that specific phrase to use as their personal encryption key.
General O’Neill informed her that the claims of the group who just appeared in the middle of the Area 51 complex, out of the blue, had checked out. They’d also learnt that the group had come from the same universe as the SG1 team which had Janet Fraiser and Martouf on it, and Carter felt a pang of guilt and sorrow when she heard Martouf’s name since in their reality she’d been forced to kill him after he’s been turned into a za’tarc to assassinate the Tok’ra High Chancellor and the POTUS at a treaty signing ceremony at the SCG. She’d been very fond of Martouf, and she knew that he had romantic feelings for her after she had been the host of his partner Jolinar for a short while before she was killed.
Forcing herself to concentrate on the notification, the Homeworld Director finally got around to the crux of the matter. Ten of the thirteen refugees were children aged fourteen years and under, and one of the boys was the child of her alt-reality, Dr Samantha Carter, and Ambassador Joseph Faxon. And Sam was exceedingly glad she was sitting down in the privacy of her office when Jack dropped that particular bombshell because learning she was a mom in a parallel universe and had a child with Joe Faxon and not Jack was quite a shock!
He spoke about how Daniel insisted that she’d want to know about Riley, but she knew that Jack understood that it wasn’t as black and white as Daniel seemed to think it was. For someone as smart as Daniel was, sometimes he could be surprisingly naïve, seeing the world through the eyes of a child. He saw things as either black or white, right, or wrong, good, or bad but many things in life were a great deal more complex and complicated than a simple yes/no dichotomy, and this news certainly fell into that category unfortunately.
However, it was what it was and as much as she had wanted to have children when she was younger and less naïve, Sam also knew that she was fiercely ambitious, and she wasn’t about to apologise for that. She had worked hard at her career, and perhaps she’d been an overachiever, but she was still that little girl who wanted to make her Daddy proud. But for her, that meant succeeding in two spheres – as an officer and as a top-notch scientist and she was finally getting the command experience that one day would hopefully see her promoted to general and given command of the SCG. Yet with her future all mapped out and coming together, this bump in the road happened, rubbing it in her face that she hadn’t been able to have the family she’d dreamed of when she was younger.
Sighing, Sam finished watching General O’Neill’s official notification where he stated dispassionately that personnel whose alt-realty counterparts were being given the option of fostering or becoming guardians of the children from the other dimension before Homeworld Command sought out other alternatives. He also explained the need to keep their arrival on the down low so as not to tip off anyone before WOHZ had achieved its objectives to safeguard Earth and her Allies, so they didn’t bring forward any future plans. For that reason, the children would be hidden in Atlantis for the foreseeable future, since it was going to be difficult to explain their sudden appearance- as would the fact that the three adults accompanying them all were deceased in this reality.
Sam knew that if she decided to become four-year-old Riley Faxon’s guardian it meant that she would need to give up her commission as the commander of the George Hammond. There was also the issue of who would get the position of CO of the SCG if the scuttlebutt was right and General Landry was out. She figured he was likely to be calling in every last marker and being a career officer from way back. Landry probably had plenty, but she wasn’t sure he could come back from this. To be honest, Carter really couldn’t understand why he’d made such a dumbass choice and she wondered if there was more to it than simply filial concern for his daughter, misplaced as that may have been. Shrugging because it was pure conjecture, Carter returned to the matter at hand.
If she were to become Riley’s caregiver and/or his legal guardian, that would necessitate her moving back to Atlantis, which career-wise would be damaging, not to say humiliating as she would not be the Commander, nor would she take Colonel Sheppard’s job from him just as he was finally just getting back on his feet after an incredibly long rehabilitation process. She couldn’t even lead an Atlantis team because if she took responsibility for Riley, it would be incredibly irresponsible if she got hurt or killed. Sure, she could always work in the science department, but she would have to answer to Rodney, and she wasn’t sure she could stomach having him as her boss. Although maybe she could cooperate with DARPA on certain research projects, they were always trying to lure her into working on special projects for her.
Deciding to finish reading Jack’s email, she clicked on part 2 of his email, curious what he was going to say.
Hey Sam,
If you’re reading this, hopefully, you’ve watched the video file I sent you. I’m sorry that I’ve had to drop this in your lap and not informed you personally as I have done to the others so affected. And I recognise that you find yourself in an impossible position right now – I believe it’s what’s called a Hobson’s choice, but I also knew if I didn’t tell you, you’d be pissed off when you found out and you would be entitled to be. Whatever you decide on, you’ll have my unqualified support and if there is the remotest chance that you were expecting me to give you the benefit of some sage advice, I must disappoint you. The fact is that I’m in no position to offer advice, sage or otherwise.
He went on to explain about the rest of the child refugees, including Daniel’s twins and his own alternate-reality granddaughter. Carter was almost as shocked to learn about the rest of the children, particularly that alt-Charlie O’Neill was still alive, or at least he had been, and he’d had a baby he’d named after his mom who’d died saving his life. Sam understood exactly how painful that must be for Jack and Sarah. She realised that he was feeling terrible because once the baby had been identified as a grandchild, Jack O’Neill was faced with a real Hobson’s choice just as impossible as was she. She finished reading the rest of the email, her eyes blurred somewhat by tears as she pictured Jack’s heartache.
I’m still grappling with the fact that Charlie sent a message via Agent DiNozzo who has been helping look after baby Sarah, requesting that I look after his daughter but with the whole WOHZ project, it isn’t that simple – although I wish it was. Plus, the POTUS has told me that after we stop the WOHZ he wants the Trust smashed once and for all. Hey, I know… it is not that simple but if we can do it, then I’m hoping that they’ll let me retire. FINALLY!
By the way, the president has handpicked two scientists that work for DARPA, team leader, Dr Holly Marten and her partner, Dr Douglas Fargo to try to solve our mass dispersal solution. Have you heard of them? According to their jackets which have huge bits redacted FYI, they’ve both worked for a mob called Global Dynamics in Eureka Oregon. I hope they are as good as everyone thinks they are. With the appearance of the refugees, I can’t help feeling like we are running out of time.
Well, take care out there. Miss you as always.
Jack.
P.S.
Daniel says I should send you a picture of Riley, but I decided that was too much like emotional blackmail for my tastes. If you want one, I’ll send it to you but in this instance, I’m going to ignore Daniel and listen to my own gut.
Sam was in the process of encrypting the files, not wanting anyone to spy on her and they had suspicions that there was a spy on board, although, exhaustive investigations had so far turned up nothing. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to take any chances with the information about the refugee children. She wondered how her alt-self had been able to send Riley into another dimension, knowing that in all likelihood it would be forever. That must have been so heartbreaking, and it gave Carter some clue how bad the mass infection of MCD –238β must have been for a parent to sacrifice themselves so they could save their young offspring and send them into an unknown future.
This in turn also reminded Sam about how Joseph Faxon had sacrificed his own life when they were trying to escape from the Aschen during diplomatic talks into Earth joining the Aschen Alliance because they were at least a century ahead of Earth and the powers that be felt they would be useful allies against the Goa’uld, which they might have been, Carter mused. The only problem was that anyone joining the Aschen Alliance was surreptitiously conquered using a biological weapon to sterilise members of the population, affecting their ability to reproduce and dramatically affecting the birth rate over time. Eventually the Aschen would have wiped out a race of people with a shot being fired in aggression.
Daniel and Teal’c had discovered that the Aschen would terraform over the top of the conquered cities, converting the planets into landscapes suitable for agricultural purposes and conveniently burying traces of the previous advanced civilisations from nosy visitors (such as Daniel and Teal’c). Except that Daniel and Teal’c had been particularly tenacious and had found the previous now underground city that pointed to the prior inhabitants being much more advanced than the Volian’s agrarian society. Daniel had even found a newspaper which Daniel was able to translate much of, warning that the Aschen were not what they seem. After she tricked them into revealing their agenda, the Aschen were intent on preventing them from returning to Earth since they were hoping to get Stargate addresses from Earth, presumably to continue in their colonisation attempts.
Joseph Faxon, who’d previously asked her out, fought with the Aschen diplomat called Borren, allowing her to escape and telling her to go without him. He’d sacrificed himself to save her so she could return to Earth and warn them not to enter into an Alliance with the Aschen, who in the space of a few generations would have conquered the Earth. And now Joe’s alt-identity had, along with her own alternate-self been driven to send their son to a parallel universe. Did they hope that their parallel selves would adopt their son and give him a good life?
How could she be so petty as to hesitate because she might be in line for promotion to Brigadier General and offered the command of the SCG? If it wasn’t for Joe Faxon, Sam wouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t have been promoted to lieutenant colonel then full bird colonel and given the chance to command Atlantis and eventually command the George Hammond. Was she really that capable of being so damned selfish when there was a little boy who was effectively an orphan and his alt-reality double had saved her life? Surely it was time she paid it forward.
She was just about to fire off a reply, telling Jack she had decided to become Riley’s guardian, when Major Lily Wang radioed her, asking her to report to engineering asap. Swiftly re-encrypting the two files, she dashed out of her office.
“Sit rep, Lieutenant,” she ordered, halfway to engineering.
“I’ve found what appears to be a suspicious device attached to the hyperdrive engine and a secondary device planted in the sub light engine. They look to be of Lucian Alliance origins,” she said sounding ever so slightly panicked.
“Send a SOS to the SCG, Lieutenant Gage,” she ordered the young communications officer over her comms, knowing that she might be jumping the gun but if it was a false alarm, they could always send a second message to that effect. She just had a really bad feeling and felt that if the worst occurred, at least Earth would know what happened to them all. There was nothing worse than family members being told their loved ones were MIA. Just as Colonel Carter reached the engineering deck, the two devices detonated and she felt a shock wave knock her off her feet, a rush of heat and then the feeling like all of her internal organs were being squeezed in a giant voice before she lost consciousness along with the rest of the crew.
