“I guess we wait then,” said Jack.
As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait long and she returned within minutes.
“Will Dix see us?” asked Jack.
“Dix is here,” she replied. It was only then that Jack noticed a figure standing in the shadows of the doorway behind her, watching them.
They stood in silence for a few moments, but, when it seemed clear this guy wasn’t going to break the ice, Jack cleared his throat and said, “Hey there. Dix, I presume? I’m Colonel Jack O’Neill and this is —”
“I know who you are, Colonel O’Neill,” said Dix.
“Well that makes a change…”
Dix walked into the light of the lanterns, revealing a tall, broad-shouldered Jaffa, perhaps just older than Teal’c, with a dusting of gray in his black hair — and the mark of Apophis on his brow.
Jack frowned as a flicker of recognition passed through his mind, as if he’d seen this guy somewhere before. “Do we know each other?” he asked.
But Dix wasn’t looking at him. He was watching Teal’c, and to Jack’s astonishment he saw a film of tears in the man’s eyes. “I knew you would return,” Dix said. “I knew you were not dead.”
Teal’c stepped forward, almost stumbling.
Beside him, Jack heard Daniel mutter, “Oh my God.”
“Am I missing something here?” said Jack, looking around, but Carter too was staring open-mouthed at the scene unfolding between Teal’c and this strange Jaffa.
“No,” whispered Teal’c. “No, it cannot be.”
“I always had faith that you would return to us, father.”
And then, of course, Jack understood. But understanding set off a clamor of denial in his head because somehow, impossibly, this man, this soldier, was Rya’c — the young boy he’d last seen only a few months ago in the Land of Light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It should have been the best and the brightest, Hammond thought as he stood in the gate room and watched the frightened, tearful procession tramping up the ramp and through the event horizon. But instead they could only evacuate those who had reached the base before the attack began: mostly military, some civilians, a few bewildered children. Politicians, inevitably.
There were plenty on the list who’d refused to go, for whom the dual revelations of extra-terrestrial invasions and Stargates were simply too much to process, and there were others who didn’t have the damn right but were going anyway. Maybourne was top of that list, though the wrongness of it almost choked Hammond. But then, if the colonel hadn’t appeared on the base, sniveling and cowed and all too ready to give up the Alpha Site address, it was doubtful that they’d have been able to save even this many. Hammond took a grim satisfaction in the fact that the man’s hubris had been knocked from him by whatever he’d witnessed topside. There had been no triumph, no I-told-you-so, just a small man desperate to escape. But the sight had offered little real solace.
As for the rest of the politicians, Hammond reserved judgment. They’d better damn well learn to fight or farm, because partisan politicking was the last thing this fragile human outpost would need. It was exactly that kind of scheming that had gotten them here in the first place.
He was still having a hard time accepting that it had been Makepeace all along. The man who had sat in his briefing room and listened to Hammond deliver the bleak sit-rep, knowing the precariousness of their situation in the galaxy and yet saying nothing. He was gone now, a last gasp attempt at redemption perhaps. By Jefferson’s account, it was thanks to the colonel’s sacrifice that Jaffa weren’t swarming through the SGC’s corridors already. Makepeace had bought them time to evacuate, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow and Hammond didn’t think he was ready to forgive him yet.
Far above, something impacted the mountain and the whole base shook. Frightened faces lifted to the ceiling and the pace of the evacuation picked up a notch.
Stargate Command’s power and communications had been knocked out in the first wave; they were operating blind now, limping along on generators. It was barely enough to power the gate. Dust sifted down from the ceiling as the assault on the mountain continued and the dull rumbles and thuds penetrated even into the gate room.
What the state of the surface was like, he dared not imagine. He just prayed that the enemy were concentrating their assault on the mountain, because he had one final role of the dice to make if he could find someone brave enough to take a risk on his last gambit.
All around him, the men and women of Stargate Command prepared to leave, dragging as much kit as they could find into the gate room. Dr. Fraiser was marshalling her own people and it looked like she was trying to send every nut and bolt from the infirmary through to the Alpha Site — God knew, they’d need it all and more. She caught his eye from the opposite side of the gate room and lifted a hand to wave. He nodded, but didn’t disrupt her work. Every second counted. Once the gate shut down there would be no guarantee they could redial fast enough to prevent the Goa’uld from dialing in. They’d been lucky twice; he just prayed their luck would hold a little longer.