Multiplicity, a Stargate SG-1 adventure by Glacis. Rated NC17 for graphic violence and alternate
realities. No copyright infringement intended. Previously
published in the zine Chevron One Encoded
under a different pseudonym. Minor changes from that
version.
Another day at the office. This particular day, the office was P3F872, one of the lovely unknown
gates he's somehow managed to input while under the influence of the Ancients.
Maybe, if they got real lucky, there'd be something on this one the Goa'uld hadn't met yet, something they could make friends
with, something that could kick some royal snakehead
butt.
He could hope.
Colonel Jack O'Neill stared up at the event horizon, AKA the whooshie, and swallowed the nerves nobody else on
The only other body who really knew him.
He smiled, slipped on his sunglasses, and stepped through the gate, the
mental image of the one he loved held safe in the back of his mind, warming him
for the cold journey through the wormhole. We'll be back, babe, and the
post-mission sex will blow us both away, he grinned to himself. Aloud, he
merely growled, "Move it out!"
Disorientation.
Disintegration.
Suffocation.
Cessation of reality.
All the usual stuff.
A spike of pain ripping through his head, his skull
trying to escape his skin, his spine threatening to snap and curl up into a
little ball under the tension.
Not the usual stuff.
He stumbled and rolled as he came through the other side, also not
usual. Tumbling down the steps, he stared up at the gate for a bare moment
through eyes blurry with pain-tears. It had the weirdest glow.
Before Jack had the chance to do more than mutter a
single "cool," the ground less than a meter from his head exploded,
impacted by a bolt of orange fire. He rolled in the
opposite direction and screamed at his team to scatter, as death gliders
swooped down on them from the sky the MALP had only moments before declared
threat-free. Scrabbling for cover, he tasted dirt, blood from a bitten lip, and
sweat.
He didn't see a fucking thing but incoming fire.
NO!
The mental scream shook him to the core. His eyes scanned the trees.
The rocks.
The bush.
For his team.
For Sam.
For Daniel.
Ignoring the brutal headache tying his brain stem into a knot, the
commander of SG-1 began to move.
Jack fell back into the bush, keeping his head down and his ass covered
as concussions from the surface-to-air blasts scorched the ground not far from
him. He rolled over and felt his heart jump clear past his throat and up into
his ears before he recognized the warm body he'd fetched up against.
"God, Jackson, give a guy a little warning, why don't you-"
He couldn't finish the minor bitch session, because Daniel Jackson, team
dweeb and resident pain in the ass, did the unthinkable. A thoroughly relieved
look on his face, he reached over, grabbed Jack by the face, pulled him
forward, and stuffed his tongue halfway down Jack's throat.
Jack's stomach turned, and for an instant he was so shocked he sat there
and let
"Jack?" Complete incomprehension written across
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Jack spat in disgust. Not
giving
Served him fucking right. Assaulting a man like that.
Crazy bastard.
The crackle of automatic fire brought his attention back to the Goa'uld attack.
Jack rolled from the steps of the Gate, firing from the hip as he
scrambled behind some nearby rocks for cover. From where he was pinned, he
couldn't see much. Moving carefully, darting from rock to rock, he found
himself overlooking a deep ravine. He was about to climb down when he saw
motion.
Flinging himself silently to the side, he peered around his covering
rock. What he saw froze him in place.
Daniel. And Teal'c.
They were lying scrunched together behind a stand of rocks, out of sight from
the squad of guards tromping along on the way to a big mother of a ship on the
plain beyond. It wasn't the guards that rooted Jack's feet to the ground and
made him feel like his belly had turned to lead.
Teal'c was lying half
over Daniel, shielding him. Covering him.
Kissing him.
Daniel was holding on to the
Kissing him back.
How? Why? How long had this been going on?
How long had he been sharing Daniel with Teal'c?
Why hadn't he been enough?
Melting back into the rocks, Jack slid down in the shadows, arms curled
around his middle, rifle angled up in case he'd need it.
He hoped he wouldn't need it any time soon.
Shock really fucked up his aim.
Jack made a sharp left and headed for the tree-line. Maybe he'd get
lucky, and they'd find some Tok'ra tunnels. Hey, it
had happened before. Just because lightning seldom struck twice didn't mean
tunnel-burrowing crystals couldn't be more common than one might think.
Somewhat comforted by yet another mangled metaphor, he clamped down on
his wayward sense of humor and threw himself into the dense growth of trees.
Peeking over a handy tree limb, he inched along the stand of trees, eyes
searching restlessly for any signs of his team. Coming around a particularly
large tree, his rifle swung up instinctively as a body came into view.
Relief swept over him, and he lowered the rifle immediately.
"Sam!" he half-cried, half-hissed, mindful of the danger but so
relieved he couldn't stay completely quiet. Reaching out with his free hand, he
gathered his wife to him and kissed her thoroughly, celebrating her safety the
best way he knew how.
The world exploded in sparkles behind his eyes, and after the remains of
the world stopped spinning he pried his eyes open to see a white-faced,
wild-eyed Samantha staring down at him, her rifle aimed at his belly button.
"I don't know what the hell you're trying to pull, Colonel, but do
that one more time and I won't bother to report you to the General. I'll shoot
you where you lay."
Before he could get his jaw back into working order enough to ask her
how bad the blow to her head had been, the trees around them splintered from
death glider weapon fire. Jack rolled one way. Sam dove
the other.
They could figure out where the pods were later. Right now there was a
war on.
It took awhile for the shakes to calm down, but Jack had been thrown
curves before, and knew how to ignore all the extraneous shit until after the
firing stop. Extraneous shit like, oh, his lover and his best friend making out
in the rocks when there was a battle on.
Or any other time, for that matter.
Gritting his teeth and yelling at himself to get over it and get on with
it, Jack slid out of the shadows and down into the ravine. Teal'c
swung his staff over to cover him, then immediately drew it back when he saw
who it was.
"Colonel O'Neill," he whispered. Jack just nodded. Daniel
smiled at him, that half-nervous tic the kid got when all hell was breaking
loose. One of the things Jack loved the most about Daniel was his balls.
Literally and figuratively speaking. "Shit," Jack ground out, then nodded curtly at both team
members. "Any sign of Captain Carter?" he managed to ask, pushing it
past the raw spot in his throat that was threatening to make it impossible to
speak.
"Right here, Colonel, and what's this Carter stuff? Early
Alzheimer's setting in?"
Sam's voice was breathless with effort, but determinedly cheerful. Jack
turned to see her scrabbling down from a different clump of rocks, close at
hand. He opened his mouth to ask her what on earth she was talking about, when
she reached up and kissed him.
His first instinct was to put her behind him so Daniel wouldn't punch
her. Or him. His second instinct was to throw up his
hands and plead ignorance. Which was more than Daniel could claim, the way he'd
been slurping all over Teal'c. Happily, he followed
his third instinct, the one that was foremost when Sam unsealed her mouth from
his and let him get a word out.
He kept his mouth shut.
Sam grinned over at him and waved her hand under his nose. The hand with a bright, shiny, wide gold band on it. A gold
band that hadn't been there when they'd left Earth not twenty minutes ago.
A wedding band that, judging by Sam's actions, had
his name all over it.
Very happily, the Goa'uld
starting firing again before he had to try to figure out how the hell he'd
managed to lose a lover and gain a wife all in the same half hour, in the
middle of running for his life from a bunch of snakeheads.
It was going to be one hell of a day.
It didn't get any better.
Jack avoided close proximity with Sam for the rest of the afternoon, a
task made much easier by the cat and mouse hunt the SG-1 team was playing with
the Goa'uld Jaffa. None of
his people was seriously injured, several Goa'uld
guard were taken out of the picture, and nobody had time to kiss anybody. Under
the circumstances, this was a good thing.
Nightfall found them about eight klicks from
the Gate, at a stalemate with the Goa'uld, back in a
really dark cave with a very small fire. Jack settled down, staring at the
flames, wondering what rabbit hole he'd fallen down and who had the bottle with
the note in it to get him back to
He looked over at Daniel.
Who was looking at Teal'c.
An invisible knife, and a dull fucker at that, gutted him. He couldn't
move, even to shake off Sam's intrusive hand, much less grab Daniel by the
shoulders and shake some sense back into him. He swallowed, trying to get
enough spit worked up to say something, even though he didn't have a clue what
it was he should be saying. While he was trying to figure it out, Teal'c got up.
Not looking directly at anyone else, he announced, "I will
reconnoiter the surrounding caves."
Jack nodded, still not able to think of anything to say. Sam didn't
move. Daniel stared at the fire. Jack concentrated on breathing. The theme from
the Twilight Zone played in his head.
A few minutes, or several years, later, Daniel hoisted himself up.
"Think I'll go get some air." Jack opened his mouth, and Daniel hurried
on, grinning down at him. "I won't leave the caves, and I'll be
careful." He loped off. Jack stared after him.
Sam's finger came up under his chin and shut his mouth for him.
"What say we get a little shut-eye?" she asked. A reasonable enough
suggestion, he figured, except that her tone of voice and body language made it
real clear what she actually was saying was 'drop trou,
flyboy, I'm gonna screw you silly.'
Jack panicked.
"Perimeter check," he blurted out, then
fled from the cave to the relative safety of the darkness outside. What the
hell was going on with Sam? And Teal'c?
With Daniel, for crying out loud?
Decades of ingrained military experience kicked in, and he faded back
into the maze of caves, seeking cover even as his brain cranked into overdrive
on the tangled knot his personal life had somehow become. He wandered the caves
for nearly an hour, automatically checking for hostiles, escape routes, weak
spots, natural hazards. It would truly suck to escape
the snakeheads only to get eaten by this world's equivalent of a bear.
A soft moaning sound caught his attention, and he flattened himself
against the wall of the rock corridor. Listening as hard as he could, he
identified other sounds, strange sounds under the circumstances. Harsh breathing, groaning, shifting sand, skin and wet and light
pounding. It sounded a hell of a lot like somebody was jacking off.
Slinking around the corner, staying well into the shadows, his eyes
widened and his mouth dropped open again. Somebody was jacking off. And doing one damned fine job of it.
Daniel.
His Daniel, naked as a jaybird, sweat glistening
off him. There was a small fire lit beyond him in the cave,
throwing the creamy skin into relief, showing off the muscles of his chest, his
arm, his thighs. He was sprawled on his back, leaning against a smooth boulder,
his head thrown back. His right arm was moving rhythmically, his hand sliding
over the wet skin of his cock, pinkish purple in the grip of those long
fingers. His left hand roamed his chest, plucking at his nipples, standing out
at attention, just a few shades lighter than his leaking cock.
Jack nearly groaned himself. He licked his lips, tasting in memory the
wetness glistening off Daniel's knuckles, the salt of the sweat trickling over
Daniel's balls down between his thighs, the trail of moisture running from the
straining muscles of his throat down the center of his chest to the sweat-slick
hair at the base of his cock. Jack's hands twitched, feeling soft skin and firm
muscle, fine bones and thick hair. Daniel's mouth was open, the tip of his
tongue wetting his lips, easing the parching his panting was causing.
Jack wanted to suck that tongue into his own mouth. Pet the long muscles
of Daniel's back and butt, hold him close and rock against him. Bite the side
of his throat. Lick it better. Kiss him until neither one of them could
breathe. Come all over him and rub it into that fine-grained skin.
Climax caught Jack by surprise, and from the glazed look in those wide
blue eyes, Daniel wasn't much better prepared for his own. The long pale body
convulsed, strong shoulders shuddering, his head thrashing against the rock
behind him. At least he had sense enough to come quietly, given that he was
doing all this in the middle of a combat zone.
With no clear plan in mind, driven by the need to touch Daniel, Jack
started forward. Then stopped as if he'd hit a brick wall.
A brick wall called Teal'c.
A large, dark hand had reached out from the shadowed side of the cave,
hidden from Jack's sight. A broad palm curved over Daniel's where it rested
now, gently petting his cock, calming himself. Then Teal'c
leaned forward, coming completely into Jack's field of vision, and he nuzzled
Daniel's crotch, tongue flicking out to clean Daniel's semen from where it had
splattered.
After the skin along Daniel's thighs and stomach was thoroughly licked, Teal'c brought Daniel's hand up to his mouth, cleaning the
fingers Daniel had used to bring himself off. One finger at a
time.
Jack thought, for just an instant, that he would gladly shoot both of
them.
Ending his clean-up job with a kiss to the center of Daniel's palm, Teal'c pulled him close, murmuring something too softly for
Jack to hear. Not that he needed to. It was pretty damned plain.
These were not his people. That was not his Daniel. He sure as
hell wasn't married to Sam. And as for Teal'c
... nope. Not the
Somehow, some way, he'd managed to land in an alternate reality. Now he
just had to figure out how the hell to get home. Without his
'wife.'
Back to his love.
Tuck. Roll. Fire. Duck.
Back into the shadows. The bush didn't offer a hell of a lot of cover, but as night fell and
the illumination from the Goa'uld version of mortars
got spottier, Jack was able to keep both himself and Jackson alive. The fires
sparked by the missiles drove the men deeper into the bush, not allowing them
rest, and Jack couldn't find it in himself to mind.
Exhaustion and battle fatigue he could deal with. Having Doctor Jackson
morph from a deeply grieving widower to somebody who enthusiastically kissed
guys was a little too twisted to think about.
Wasn't just that he didn't like guys touching him
like that. Wasn't even the shock -- far as he knew,
Aim. Fire.
Scuttle. Point. Fire.
When he was dodging and shooting, he wasn't remembering. And that was
just fucking fine with him. Too busy staying alive to remember the way
Too busy diving and weaving to remember that his
body hadn't shied away. The way it was supposed to. When
Too busy ducking and running to remember the way other men had touched
him. Dark men with dark eyes, in a hot sandy place,
suffocating darkness. Hard hands. Hard laughter.
You didn't want to be seen as weak in prison.
Especially in an Iraqi prison.
Where the guards had a taste for white meat.
He shook the memories off, all of them, and rolled.
Fired.
Ran.
Daybreak brought a lull in the fighting, and he found himself deep in
the bush.
All of his men.
A sound further into the bush drew his attention and he melted into the
undergrowth. Shortly into deeper cover, he stopped. There was a break in the
brush. Trained eyes mapped out the terrain, searching for threat, egress and
ingress, Goa'uld,
The man was hopeless in a military situation. He'd stripped down to his
skin and was splashing in a small pool, washing filth from himself. Muck Jack
had been responsible for, pushing the bastard off him.
Past slammed into present with the force of an out-of-control freight
train. The sun shifted in his mind's eye, and he wasn't on an alien world under
an alien sky. He was in an alien world right there on Earth. The sun burned
him, and the scrub gave him no shelter. His mind rebelled when his body couldn't,
and this time he had a weapon.
This time when he said no they would goddamned well
listen.
His rifle was raised and he was squinting through the sight before he
thought about it. The target shifted, blurred, settled into recognizable lines.
Too recognizable.
Too pale. Too
big. Too ... too ... Daniel.
His finger froze on the trigger. His thoughts turned in on themselves,
present stomping on the past, caught up in the differences and finally getting
past the similarities.
He began to lower the rifle when a flash of light, almost imperceptible,
caught his attention. He swung the barrel to the side, sighting the new threat,
and shivered.
Captain Carter was staring at him from the far side of the clearing, her
own rifle trained on him, as his had been trained on
Did she really think he would kill one of his own men? Even one who did that
to him?
Jack lost sight of her face as she brought her weapon up. Holy Hannah. She meant it. He tucked and rolled, just in
time, as it turned out. Not from Carter.
From the Goa'uld.
Cease-fire over. Must have had their coffee, or whatever the hell it was snakeheads used
to crank up in the morning. Back to war they went.
Oddly enough, Jack only felt relieved.
Jack took a breather for a bare moment, ducking behind a huge old tree
and trying to stay as small as possible so the damned death gliders would give
him a break. At least long enough to figure out what the hell was going on.
He stared down at his wedding ring, wondering what had happened to Sam,
why she was acting so damned weird. Grateful for a few minutes of quiet to try
to think, he wondered where Daniel and Teal'c had
gotten to, and spared a prayer to a God he'd stopped believing in somewhere
between Charlie and Iraq that the two men were safe. If they had to die in this
shithole of an alien world, at least one couple would
die together.
Shaking off the morbid thoughts, his natural pragmatism reasserted
itself. He stopped thinking about love and went back to concentrating on war.
Dawn was breaking through the trees, and with the light the air attack
intensified. He was feeling his way around the huge tree and infiltrating
further into the forest when a flash of light caught his eye.
Sam's hair, glinting in a stripe of sunlight
between the trees. She looked like she was following someone. Jack
checked his clip, crammed his hat further onto his head, and followed her.
The rocks had given way to a relatively thick forest, and Jack allowed
himself the first sigh of relief he'd managed since Sam tossed herself at him
and kissed him. He was taking point, with Teal'c and
Daniel, odd couple that they were, in the cradle, and Sam as far away as Jack
could get her, bringing up the rear. Even thought they weren't his team,
they were a team, and as their CO he was responsible for them. He had to
concentrate on that right now.
It was all he could concentrate on. Everything else confused him
too much, and hurt, although he was trying real hard not to think about that.
Pushing his way through a barrier of tree limbs, he was startled to come
face to face with Sam. He dropped his rifle, brought up automatically, and
started to ask her how the hell she'd gotten in front of him.
She pointed her .38 at him and fired.
He was so shocked he couldn't move.
Thankfully, someone else could.
Daniel flew out of nowhere and knocked Jack on his ass, grunting with
pain from more than the impact. Jack reached out instinctively, his hand
catching in wet hair, his other arm wrapping around Daniel and pulling him as
far away from Crazy Sam as possible. When had Daniel gotten wet? The slickness
of warm blood on his hand at Daniel's waist stopped him cold.
"Daniel!" Sam's voice. Her hands, scrabbling at Daniel, trying to pull the wounded man
away from Jack. Jack didn't know if the crazy bitch was doing it so she
could get a better shot at him, or so she could kill both of them, but he
wasn't about to let her have Daniel now that he finally had the man back in his
arms where he belonged.
"Back off, Carter!" he barked, twenty years of command behind
it. "He's wounded! BACK OFF!"
She didn't. He took a breath and prepared to kick her away before she
did even more damage to Daniel.
"Colonel?!"
"Jack?!"
"Ouch."
"Colonel O'Neill!"
"D-d-daniel??"
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god ..."
It took Jack a few seconds to realize the obvious. The doppelgangers
making up his team had caught up with them.
There were two Sams.
And there were two Daniels.
One of whom was bleeding all over him.
The thought galvanized him into action, and he barked more orders.
"Everybody shut up! Teal'c! Daniel!" The man
in his arms stirred. "Not you, the other Daniel! Grab her and hold
her!"
The two lovers from his makeshift team reacted immediately, stepping
forward on either side of the Sam who'd shot Daniel. She didn't struggle,
merely stood there, staring wildly from Daniel to Jack to the Daniel holding on
to her to her double staring back at her from the side of the melee.
Jack would sympathize, if he hadn't been ready to strangle her for
hurting Daniel.
Supporting the man in his arms, Jack rolled them to a sitting position
and concentrated on the basics. Knife to the sleeve, pressure to the shallow
furrow the bullet had made, no entry or exit, just a
nice bloody gash to bind up. He did, working through the slight shake in his
hands. When he was done, he patted the field bandage gently and forced himself
to look over into bright blue eyes staring back at him.
Full of love.
His own eyes shut, and something cold that had been eating at his gut
since he'd seen Teal'c and Daniel kissing yesterday
cracked open. This was his Daniel. Finally.
"You okay, Jack?" Daniel asked. The question was loud in the
unnatural silence of the trees. The only other noise was the distant thud of
ordinance striking the ground far from where they were. Whatever had drawn the Goa'uld's attention, Jack could only be thankful. This
whole situation was totally fucked up, and they couldn't figure it out if they
were fighting for their lives in the middle of it.
"Time to make camp, happy campers. We'll figure out ..." he looked around. Sam and Sam were staring
at each other. Daniel and Teal'c were standing very
close together, holding the one Sam, staring at him and Daniel. "Whatever
the hell is going on here."
Daniel didn't seem to need help walking, but Jack was grateful to be
leaned on anyway. The one constant in a royally screwed up universe, and he was
happy to have it. They settled in a small clearing hidden by dense growth. The
other Daniel and Teal'c sat the murderous Sam between
them and for an instant they all stared at each other.
"I do not understand."
"Did you feel anything weird when we came through the gate?"
"It must be another alternate universe! I wonder if it was sun
flares, no, that would have done something different. We actually made it
through to P3F872, so we couldn't-"
"Are you okay, Jack?"
"Who's been messing with the magic mirror again?"
Voices were overlapping as five people began talking at once. Jack
stared around the circle.
"Why did you shoot me, Sam?"
"What on Earth is going on here?"
"Everybody just SHUT UP." Jack roared softly. They were still
in a battle zone, after all, even if the battle seemed to be going off in a
corner without them. "Now, Sam." Both women looked up. "Not
you," he told the one who'd tried to kill him. "You," he pointed
at the one with the wedding ring. "Got any idea what the hell's going
on?"
She looked at him seriously, then stared down
at his ringless left hand. "You're not my
husband." Daniel jolted against his side, and he patted the tensed thigh
next to his absently.
"No. So where'd you come from? Or me for that
matter? Got any ideas on it, Captain?"
She launched into a torrent of technobabble,
and he winced. "Small words?"
"Alternate universes. Serendipity. Multiple originating gates, by
chance, all dialed into the same destination gate. Wormholes
coexisting, funneling into one opening, spitting everyone out fractions of a
phase apart from one another. We would have noticed immediately, but we
were under fire from the moment we came through."
"So we all scattered, and no one noticed that there were too many
of us," the Daniel sitting next to Teal'c filled
in. The Daniel beside him was muttering "wife?" under his breath.
Jack tried to concentrate on the situation. It was giving him a headache.
"There's another complication," the second Sam chimed in.
"You gonna shoot at me again?" Jack
cut in. She shook her head.
"You're not who I thought you were."
He grimaced at her, then nodded at the men
holding her arms. "Let her go. If you promise not to try
to kill any of us."
She actually looked around the group before she nodded. "I
promise."
Jack wondered what the hell had happened in her universe to make her
want to kill his counterpart. Shaking off that thought, too, he asked her,
"What other complication?"
"We're under a time limit here. We have forty eight hours to
resolve this and return to our own universes."
"Or what, we turn into pumpkins?" He couldn't quite keep the
sarcasm out of his voice.
"We die," his Daniel joined in. Jack stared at him.
"Huh?"
"Of course," married Sam said. "Entropic
cascade failure. The longer we all stay sharing this same universe, the
further out of phase we'll get, until we literally break apart."
"Except me and Teal'c,
right?" Jack asked.
"It would be reasonable to assume that our own doubles exist in
this world as well, O'Neill," Teal'c answered
him.
"Great," Jack sighed. "Think this could happen
again?"
Both Sams shook their heads. "No, the
odds are astronomical on it happening even once," one of them said.
"There's no way this could have been predicted to happen at all," the
other one piped up. "Happening twice is so far beyond the probabilities
that it's statistically impossible."
"Which means doing it once was a miracle and
doing it twice ain't gonna
happen. So, any ideas on how the hell we get back where we belong?"
Sam looked at Sam. Daniel looked at Daniel. Teal'c
stared impassively at nothing in particular. Jack looked around at everyone.
Nobody said a word.
"Sweet. Well, until
then, let's try to get back to the Stargate. On the way ..." He glanced
over at the Sams. "Think of something."
The battle was intensifying. Jack had lost sight of Sam, which was just
as well, given that he wasn't sure at this point whether she'd shoot the
He wasn't alone.
Pinned by
It wasn't getting them anywhere. "Fall back!" he commanded,
preparing to do so.
Teal'c didn't move. Didn't even seem to have heard him.
Jack stared at him for a heartbeat before resuming firing. What the holy
hell was going on with his people? First Daniel tried to fuck him, then Sam tried to kill him, now Teal'c
ignored his orders. He'd always prided himself on the extreme professionalism
of SG-1, and now they were all acting like other people, strangers he'd never
met.
He didn't like it. "Fall back NOW!" he yelled.
Teal'c barely glanced at
him. "If I am to die," he growled back between bursts from his staff,
"I shall take as many of Apophis' soldiers with
me as I can." Teal'c turned back fully to the
battle, firing continuously now. The staff gave an ominous whine, and Jack was
irresistibly reminded of a phaser on overload.
"Son of a bitch," he whispered to himself. They might just die
there after all. As the thought occurred to him, sudden unexpected support came
from the trees behind them. Automatic weapon fire, zats,
and a staff weapon were all firing over their heads, laying down quite an
effective cover. Jack didn't stop to think. He grabbed Teal'c's
staff, pulling Teal'c off balance, and screamed
directly into Teal'c's face, "WE ARE NOT GOING
TO DIE HERE AND NOW. MOVE YOUR ASS, MISTER!"
This time, Teal'c moved.
They practically stumbled over one another falling back into the cover
of the trees. Helping hands grabbed them and hauled them further in, and Jack
found himself running in the middle of a pack of SG personnel. They were moving
too fast for him to identify anything but the patches on their sleeves. After
at least two klicks, they piled into a small clearing
and collapsed, weapons at the ready in case the Goa'uld Jaffa had tracked them.
Jack got a good look at their rescuers.
Just about peed himself.
Looked like there was a good reason he hadn't recognized his team. The Teal'c he'd joined in the crossfire was clasping hands with
Jackson and a guy who looked one hell of a lot like Jack himself.
There was something about the way that Jack and Jackson were standing ...
before he could figure out what was bothering him, Sam Carter grabbed hold of
him and kissed him.
Sheer shock kept him immobile. First she's trying to kill him, then she's kissing him like he's the last man on earth. She
drew back, smiling at him, and he saw another Sam over her shoulder. This Sam
looked like she'd happily gut him with a dull butter knife and watch him bleed
out.
Okay.
Jack kept his mouth shut, smiled at the Sam who was beaming at him, and
tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He also made damned sure the
Sam who was glad to see him was between himself and the Sam who wanted to kill
him. At least that way if she tried to kill him again, she'd have to kill herself
first. He didn't see her doing that any time soon.
Keeping his protective Sam at his side, he went forward to face his
double. "Colonel O'Neill, I presume?" His own grin greeted him. "Any idea how to get out of this mess?"
"Not at the moment," the other Jack responded. "But
they" he pointed at both women, "are thinking about it."
"And until then?"
"We head for the gate."
Jack followed the beacon that was his wife's hair deeper into the trees.
She moved with direct purpose and he didn't catch up with her until she finally
stopped, staring intently ahead at something he couldn't see. Moving
cautiously, angling in to the side so he didn't startle her into accidentally
shooting him, he stopped about six feet from her and whistled.
"Captain Carter," he said very softly. She looked at him
briefly, acknowledging but not welcoming his presence. He moved forward
carefully. She didn't shoot him, so he kept coming until he stopped at her
side. She pointed to her eyes then to the minimal path ahead of them. Jack
followed her direction, and searched the area.
He didn't have far to look.
Teal'c was inching up
behind Daniel Jackson, who was completely unaware of his approach. Before
anyone knew to cry warning, much less do it, Teal'c
hit Daniel with the butt end of his staff and pressed a button on a cuff hidden
under his sleeve. Rings dropped over the
"Shit," Jack breathed.
In the distance they could hear a phalanx of
Very soon, they were out of the deeper forest and into the sparse trees
where the plains began. In the distance, Jack saw a Goa'uld
scout ship. His gut clenched as he recognized Apophis'
marking on the side. A hiss beside him alerted him to Sam's presence. She
wasn't looking at him. She signaled him to look directly to the southeast of
their position. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
Himself. And
Sam.
He stared at the Sam crouching next to him, who was staring back at him.
They looked at their doubles.
"Cool." Only it wasn't. This could explain why his wife was
threatening to report him for sexual harassment. It also made things a tad more
complicated. He could do without more complications at the moment, thank you
very much.
He signaled for her to follow him down to join the other pair, when more
figures began to filter from the trees. He stopped her with a light hand on her
elbow, and pointed. Then he counted.
Two other Jacks. Two other Sams. Two Teal'cs. Two
Daniels. With themselves and the Teal'c who'd
taken Daniel prisoner for the Goa'uld, that made
three SG1 teams all on the same planet at the same time. SG1 cubed.
No damned wonder his head hurt.
Jack reached down, patted Sam's shoulder, and said quietly, "Let's
go join the party, Captain."
It had been weird enough when everybody else had a double, but when his
own joined the party, Jack had been ready to scream. Run away. Shoot something.
Of course, he did none of those things.
He just cussed under his breath, stayed as close to his Daniel as he
could get, and led the way back to the Stargate.
The fighting had tapered off. Apparently the Goa'uld
Jaffa were still looking for
them back at the trees. As his odd combined team reached the end of the tree
line and crept up to stare down at the plain before them, Jack upped the
fluidity of his internal cussing.
Apophis.
Of course.
The worst mission of his life, up to and including the ones where he'd
had snakes put in him and been turned into a robot, and who had to show up to
make things interesting? Apophis, snakebutt extraordinaire. This
just wasn't Jack's day.
It quickly got more interesting.
Both Teal'cs turned in place and pointed their
staffs at incoming hostiles behind the group. Except they
weren't hostiles.
They were yet another Sam. And yet another Jack.
Jack felt his head begin to pound. Maybe having more than one
version of somebody in the same universe made the entropic phase whatchamacallit go to hell faster than usual. He'd have to
ask Sam, any Sam, all the Sams, when they got the
chance to debrief after all this was over.
If it would ever be over. If they got the chance to debrief. And if he
could figure out what the hell she was talking about when she did explain it.
Whichever 'she' did the explaining.
No wonder his brain hurt.
"Colonel O'Neill," he said to the newest Jack, not sure if he
was introducing himself, asking for ID, or making a joke. From the look on the
new guy's face, he wasn't sure either.
"Three of us?" the new guy asked.
"Three of all of us," the newest Sam answered.
"Not quite," answered the Daniel who was paired up with Teal'c.
"There are only two of us," chimed in his Daniel. "And two of Teal'c."
"Actually, that's not quite right," the new Sam said,
obviously trying not to stare at the other two Sams,
and not managing very well.
"We had a Jackson and a Teal'c as
well," the new Jack said quietly. He was obviously pissed about something.
"What became of them?" the Teal'c
standing next to the other Daniel asked.
"Our Teal'c whacked our Daniel over the
noggin, dumped him into a set of rings, and took him off as a present to Apophis," the newly arrived Jack said bluntly.
"Impossible," both remaining Teal'cs
said in unison.
"We're not carbon copies of each other, you know," the Jack
standing next to Sam said. "There are real differences between all of
us."
"You've got that right," the Sam who'd tried to kill him
growled.
"Jack?" the first Sam said, very softly. She was staring at
the left hand of the Jack who'd just joined them. On the third finger was a
wide gold band, the match to the one on her own hand. She pushed away from the
Jack she'd been standing beside, shooting him a wild
look, and came forward to stand directly in front of the newest Jack.
"Jack?" she asked again, almost a whisper.
"Hey, babe," he whispered back. This time when she kissed a
Jack, he kissed her back, and their left hands twined together. The newest Sam
took a step away from the husband and wife and stared around the group.
"This is all well and good, but it's not getting Daniel back."
Two Daniels stared at her. "The one who was kidnapped.
By the Teal'c who's working for Apophis."
One of the Teal'cs looked disturbed at this
statement, but the other actually roared and powered up his weapon. Jack
started forward, but the other Teal'c and both
Daniels surrounded the enraged Jaffa. Jack could
barely make out the words the angry Teal'c was
grinding out through clenched teeth. "Never. Apophis must die. He is the enslaver of souls, the plague
of worlds, the false god, the bringer of death. I would never willingly enter
his service again. He killed my family, killed my world, killed my teacher, killed my hopes for freedom. He must die!"
The other three managed to get him calm enough to actually power down
his weapon. The second Jack, who'd been standing to the side, stepped forward.
"We'll split into two teams. One will strike the ship, neutralize
the rogue Teal'c and rescue the Daniel there if they
can. The second will take the gate. We'll hold it open for as long as possible,
then go through--"
"Like hell we will," Jack broke in. "That may be the way
it works in your universe, buster, but not in mine."
"Mine either," the third Jack added. He'd finally stopped
kissing his Sam and looked ready to return to what passed for reality.
"Half of us won't be enough to take on a whole ship of Goa'uld,
and we're not leaving any of our people behind."
"All of us come home, or none of us does," Jack affirmed.
The second Jack started to say something, then
stopped, with an odd look on his face. One of the Sams
was standing very closely behind him, whispering in his ear. He folded his arms
over his chest and said quietly, "Okay. Whatever."
"We've got to get the Daniel who's a prisoner back, stop the Teal'c who's helping Apophis,
stop whatever shit Apophis has planned, and try to
find a way home. In that order." Jack looked
around. This time, nobody backtalked
him. "Let's make some plans, people."
He and his married counterpart hunkered down, drawing the rest of the
teams around them, tossing ideas around for the assault. The wormhole craziness
they'd leave up to Sam, or all the Sams, and fate.
First things first.
"Don't get in the way. We're going to rescue Daniel. If you try to
screw it up, I'll kill you."
Jack felt the snub barrel of the .38 in the small of his back and knew
that Carter would do exactly what she said she'd do. Closing his mouth against
further arguments, he folded his arms across his chest and addressed his two
doubles. "Okay. Whatever."
Behind him, Sam relaxed, but not by much. When the rest of them started
to brainstorm, he moved forward, and Sam moved with him. The other four
scientists in the group started tossing around ideas he couldn't begin to
follow, so he listened in on the other two O'Neills'
plans for the assault.
They weren't going to make it.
An unusual calm settled over Jack, as he came to terms with the fact
that he was going to die. He'd always been a maverick, in his own by-the-book
way. It wasn't the first time he'd volunteered for a suicide run. This time, he
wasn't going to make it. He wasn't going to go home.
It didn't bother him. Home hadn't been much of one, since his wife had
left, his kid was dead. Since Cromwell had left him to die in the desert. There
were times when he wondered if something inside him had died back in
His honor wouldn't allow him to have a traitor in his ranks, no matter
if the traitor had been on his team or not. And past experience made it
impossible for him to leave a loyal man in the hands of the enemy. The plan
wouldn't work, the traitor would survive, and the loyal man would die. It
wasn't acceptable.
A word drifted up from the battle conference, and he smiled.
They needed a diversion.
He could do that.
The teams were too busy laying plans for their respective tasks to
notice when Jack slipped into the shadows. He trailed along the perimeter of
the ship, waiting for his chance, and when a small squad of
He was in. Now to find the men.
It was easy, actually. For all the worst reasons.
The closer he got to the center of the maze that was the Goa'uld
ship, the louder the screams became. High, wavering,
breaking. Familiar. Plastering his back against
the wall, he took out his scope and very carefully extended it. He could hear
what was going on in the torture chamber, but he had to see it, too. Had to get
the lay of the land and see what his chances were.
His heart dropped into his stomach at what he saw through the scope.
Apophis lay back against a
couch, eyes glowing, an inhuman smile on his face. He
was laughing, saying something in Goa'uld, joking
with his servant.
Teal'c.
Who was taking what looked one hell of a lot like red hot pokers, and
laying them up against Daniel Jackson's bare skin.
The smell was godawful. The screams were
weakening. Jack could hear the flesh bubbling under the glowing metal.
From the looks of
It brought back too many memories.
Something deep inside him snapped, and all the hatred he'd been fighting
for years surged out. Apophis waved one hand. Teal'c impaled
All hell broke loose with the sound of gunfire and screaming.
Thunder.
Death.
Deep in discussion of ways to storm the ship, Jack was interrupted by
Sam tapping his shoulder. Looking up at her, he smiled. She wasn't his Sam, but
any Sam would make him smile.
She didn't return it. "Sir, I believe the Daniel taken aboard the Goa'uld ship is ... the one from my team. There's bad blood
between ... him and my commander. And sir," she paused and took a deep
breath, "my commander has 'left the building.' I think he's done something
really stupid, and gone in on his own."
"Sweet," Jack spat, not meaning it in the least. "Thanks,
Captain." Turning back to his counterpart, he said, "We've got a
problem."
Everyone looked at him. "Seems the other
O'Neill's gone in solo."
"Shit!" his co-commander hissed. Before anyone else could
respond, one of the Teal'cs pointed to the ship.
"Something is happening!"
"Full force recall. There must be an attack on Apophis in
progress," the second Teal'c added. From the
half-smile on his face, the thought of someone attacking Apophis
was the best thing he'd heard all day. Jack didn't have time to worry about it.
"Move out!" he ordered, and the others fell into formation.
Fanning out and flying low, they came in hard and fast. Energy weapons
and bullets began to fly and controlled chaos took them over too soon. Forcing
their way into the great hall of the ship, Jack saw Sam throw herself in the
way of weapon-fire that would have cut Daniel in half. Acting on instinct,
neither knowing nor caring which Sam it was, Jack threw himself after her. He
took the full force of the staff weapon blast directly to his chest.
The world was fire.
His muscles twitched uncontrollably. He felt his bowels go, could
literally feel the blood boiling in his veins. Barely aware, he saw the woman
he had saved lurch further into the hall, following Daniel, unaware of his
sacrifice. His hand tried to reach out to her.
His fingertips brushed leather.
A woman's body was straddling his, booted feet planted to either side of
his waist. Her entire body shook with the force of the assault rifle she was
firing at the guards. It took him a minute to realize that she was screaming,
too.
There was a gold band on the third finger of her left hand.
He tried to tell her to run, to save herself. He was dead and he knew
it, but there was no reason for her to die as well. No call for that waste.
Too late.
He heard the click as her magazine emptied.
Felt her fall across him. The weight of her body, the flow of her blood,
burned across the electricity still coursing through the holes in his chest. Crushed his lungs. He didn't feel it.
All he felt was the softness of her hair across his face. All he saw was
the endless depths of blue in her eyes. All he heard was her voice, her breath
against his cheek. "Jack."
The light faded from her eyes. The world went white.
It was all going to hell in a handbasket,
pretty typical when Apophis was involved. Jack yelled
orders, direction, tried to keep them moving, keep the press on.
He didn't know how it worked, but it did. They dodged and shot
guards out of the way until they managed to blast their way into the central
chamber. Somehow, one of the Daniels fell through the doorway first, and Jack
screamed as a blast of energy slammed his body against the far wall. He slid
down to land on the floor in a heap, and didn't move again.
"You are dead!" bellowed Teal'c,
standing in the center of the room. Hanging beside him, covered in blood and
other things Jack really didn't want to think about, was another Daniel. That
one didn't move, either. Jack was caught between throwing up and killing
everybody in the place.
Then two large bodies pushed past him, with two smaller ones pushing him
through the narrow door. A hand at his back centered him.
"Hang on, babe." Daniel.
Returning fire from the other guards in the room, trying to fight his
way further in, Jack saw one of the Sams literally
throw herself at the Daniel hanging from the rack in the center of the room.
The Teal'c who had killed him raised his weapon, but
before he could discharge it, a wild yell in Chulak
caused him to turn toward the door.
His last move, as one of the Teal'cs gutted
him through the pouch with the end of his staff weapon, then
discharged it directly into the impaled body. Even Jack could understand the
"This is how traitors die!" that Teal'c
screamed.
"Behind you!" yelled Jack, as Apophis raised a glowing palm and directed a burst of
energy at the Teal'c currently killing his loyal
servant. The look on the Goa'uld's
face was priceless. Jack wished he had the time to enjoy it. As it was, he couldn't
get away from the crossfire of the fucking
The third Teal'c threw himself at Apophis, getting tossed against the side wall for his
efforts. The second Teal'c turned toward Apophis, using the dead body of the traitor Teal'c as a shield, and advanced on the Goa'uld.
The electric charge from the ribbon device skittered around both of them, but Teal'c kept coming.
Not for long.
Guards from another corridor were joining the fray, and the deluge of
charges caught the two Teal'cs. The avenger joined
the traitor in death. Apophis laughed.
Gurgled.
From behind him, one of the Sams, a maniacal
look on her face, finished severing Apophis' head
from his neck with her Bowie knife. She was screaming something in Chulak, but the only word Jack recognized was Teal'c's name. As the serrated blade sank through the Goa'uld twisted around the spinal column, a huge discharge
of energy shot from the dying larva into the Human.
Jack shuddered. For a moment, he could see Sam's skull, the skin blasted
away, soft tissue boiled away in an instant. Sam screamed, and kept cutting
even as she died. Her body fell away from the remains of Apophis'
host. One hand still held the knife. The other held the severed head.
The abrupt death of their god disoriented the remainder of the royal
guard. Jack looked at the ruins of the rescue operation and did the only thing
he could do.
"Fall back!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.
They had to get to the gate while there was still somebody alive to go
through it.
Jack lifted himself painfully from the heap he'd fallen into when Apophis had attacked him. He could feel broken bones deep
inside, knew from the curious numbness spreading through his body that his back
was broken, and he was nearly dead from blood loss and shock. His skin was
burnt completely off in places, and the raw, abraded flesh should have hurt. It
didn't.
Made it real clear he wasn't coming back from this one.
He heard his own voice coming from somebody else, calling for retreat,
and knew that one way or another it was over. As the ragtag remains of their
combined teams fell back through the door, he made an extreme effort and lifted
his rifle. Cradling it in the crook of his still-functioning arm, he sighted
directly behind the fleeing SG1 personnel and took out a guard.
His double stopped and stared at him for the space of a heartbeat. He
nodded, or thought he did, then deliberately looked
back to the open doorway, squeezing the trigger. Laying down
covering fire.
Get the hint, Jack. Get 'em the fuck out of
here.
Bring 'em home.
Whatever was left of 'em, anyway.
He didn't see them leave, but knew they'd accepted his sacrifice. It
made him smile, as the edges of the world slowly grayed into black.
The scramble for the Stargate was almost anticlimactic. Jack knew
himself well enough to know it was a combination of adrenaline, shock and
exhaustion, plus god knew what kind of weird shit the multiple universe crap
was doing to his brain, that made time slow down.
Still, it took too damned long.
Daniel skidded to a stop at the DHD and slapped in the coordinates. Sam
and Teal'c, holding each other up, swayed by the
steps. Jack punched in the signal so they wouldn't all end up bug dust on the
wrong side of the iris, and they dove into the swirling eye of the gate.
He didn't know whose team he'd brought home. He didn't know which home
they were going to end up in. But goddamnit, he was
bringing his people home.
The gate flared.
The signal was accepted.
The iris opened.
Anxious eyes watched, wondering why the mission was cut short, wondering
what the debriefing would bring. Hoping everybody was all right.