SG1-25 Hostile Ground(13)

“Um, not the greatest I’ve ever felt, if I’m being honest.” His throat was dry and his voice a croak.

Jack dropped to one knee by Daniel and started to unzip one side of the sleeping bag into which they’d bundled him before propping him against this rock. “Tent should be up in a few minutes and we’ll get you where it’s warmer. Let me take a look.”

Daniel raised his arm and immediately regretted it, as waves of pain and nausea gripped him. He sucked in a breath and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to throw up as Jack peeled back his dressing.

“The bleeding’s stopped at least,” he said, though Daniel could tell from his tone that there was still plenty to worry about.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just need some sleep.”

Jack caught his eye and nodded, both of them complicit in the lie. “Think you can handle another shot?” Jack asked, pulling a sealed hypo from one of the pockets of his BDUs.

“If it’s something to take even the edge off, then you jab away.”

As Jack stuck the needle in his side, Daniel took the opportunity to have a look at their surroundings, something he’d been too out of it to notice on the climb up. “Do you think we’re safe here?”

Jack shrugged. “As safe as we can be, I guess. I haven’t seen any sign of life at all. If Carter’s right, and there was some sort of nuclear strike here, then it could be we’re the only things breathing on this entire planet.”

Truth be told, it was the lack of life that spooked Daniel the most. There wasn’t even a wind blowing, just this interminable mist and the occasional snowfall that drifted, listless, from a bleak monochrome sky. This whole world had the feel of something spent, used up.

And Jack’s current mood did nothing to alleviate that feeling.

“Tent’s ready, sir,” called Sam, and Jack acknowledged her with a brusque jerk of his chin. She turned away, but not before Daniel caught the look on her face.

“It wasn’t her fault, you know,” he said, as Jack helped him out of the sleeping bag and to his feet.

Jack didn’t look at him. “She misdialed.”

“You know she didn’t.”

“Well, the SGC sure needs a paintjob, don’t ya think?”

Daniel swallowed against the rasp in his throat. He’d done too much talking, too much thinking. He wasn’t up for an argument and the shot had started to kick in, dulling his senses. Sleep, that was what he needed, just let his eyes close for a little while. As Jack half carried him across the craggy hillside towards the tent, he could feel his mind swimming again. “It wasn’t her fault,” he repeated, though his words had started to sound a little slurred. “Something’s… gone wrong. We’re somewhere else… somewhere bad.”

He was vaguely aware now of being inside the tent, Teal’c by his side re-zipping his sleeping bag, Jack’s frowning face by the opening. And just before he lost consciousness once more, he looked beyond Jack, further down the hillside. There, cloaked by mist and drifting snow, he was sure he saw something: the silhouette of a silent, solitary figure. Watching.

Then his eyes closed and, for a while, he saw no more.





CHAPTER FIVE




It was late and the base was quiet. Well, quieter. The SGC never slept, but the bustle of the day’s duty shifts were over and only those who watched and waited through the night remained.

Hammond should have been long gone, but leaving the base when any of his people were in trouble was always impossible and, somehow, more so when it was SG-1. He admired all the officers and teams he had the privilege to command, but he couldn’t deny that Colonel O’Neill’s team held a special place in his heart. Maybe it was because they’d been the first to step through the gate; maybe it was because they’d given the most in service to the planet. Or maybe he just liked them. Whatever the reason, the thought of going home to his safe and comfortable house while his people were in trouble was anathema to everything he held dear. He simply couldn’t do it.

SG-3 had reported back a couple of hours earlier, but with no good news. All Colonel Makepeace’s team had found on P5X-104 were dead Jaffa, spent ammunition cartridges, and a bloody field dressing. Things weren’t looking good for SG-1, but O’Neill’s team had come back from worse than this and Hammond had learned over the past three years never to count them out. Not unless he saw the bodies, and sometimes not even then.

So he watched, waited and prayed for another SG-1 miracle.

He wasn’t lacking work to keep him occupied during his long vigil — his in-tray was always glad of a little extra attention — but there was another pressing matter keeping him awake tonight, and it wasn’t unrelated to the most recent disappearance of Colonel O’Neill.