SG1-25 Hostile Ground(43)

Come on, Jack. He sent the message out silently into the cosmos. Get your team home. But there was no response and the Stargate remained still and mute.

“SG-3 is due out at 1800 hours, sir,” Harriman reported, interrupting his thoughts. “No scheduled activations until then.”

“Thank you, son.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Would you ask Colonel Makepeace to report to my office before he gears up?”

“Yes sir.”

Leaving Harriman to his work, Hammond trudged up the steps to the briefing room. For the first time since SG-1 had gone missing he was starting to contemplate the idea that they might not be coming back, that they hadn’t simply fallen victim to a glitch in the Stargate network and that something nasty, something deliberate, had befallen them.

Jacob’s warning was still fresh in his mind: there were a lot of Goa’uld looking at Earth with hungry eyes. And if any one of them knew that their relationship with the Asgard was hanging by a thread — and that that thread was in the person of Jack O’Neill — then wouldn’t it be in their interest to get him and his whole team out of the picture?

There was another option that was even darker, in its own way. But if Maybourne had somehow gotten wind of their plan, then what better way to sow the seeds of distrust between Earth and her allies than to abduct SG-1 and continue to steal from their friends? With the SGC’s flagship team implicated in the collapse of their alliance system, the Pentagon would be more inclined than ever to adopt the aggressive policy toward off-world relations for which Maybourne and his ilk had long been pushing. The whole situation would play right into their hands.

Stomping across the briefing room into his office he shut the door and slumped down into his chair, letting it rock back under his weight. Truth was, if that happened, General Hammond wasn’t sure he could continue to serve, because that policy would ultimately lead to destruction — not just of Stargate Command, but potentially of the whole planet. They had enough enemies out there without making enemies of their friends and, to put it bluntly, there was no amount of military hardware they could steal that would protect them better than the alliances they had spent almost three years forging.

Someone rapped on his door and he looked up to see Makepeace standing there.

“Come,” he said, switching on his desk lamp to alleviate the gloom.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Makepeace said as he stepped inside.

Hammond nodded. “Shut the door, Colonel, and take a seat.”

A muscle in Makepeace’s jaw tightened, a spike of anxiety, as he closed the door and perched tensely on the chair in front of Hammond’s desk. Very different from O’Neill’s studied nonchalance, he couldn’t help noting. Makepeace managed to be at once hard and tense, like iron under stress. It was his strength, no doubt, but also a weakness. Hammond had always suspected that O’Neill’s flexibility, his propensity to bend — the rules, his ideas, and his strategy — was at the core of his talent for leadership. But, that be as it may, O’Neill wasn’t there and Makepeace was.

“Colonel,” Hammond said, picking his way through the conversation carefully, “there is something I need to brief you about regarding SG-1.”

“Sir?” His hands were fists, resting on his knees.

“Regarding the need to bring them home.” Makepeace’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t say anything and Hammond continued. “You may have noticed that we are in close contact with the Tollan at the present time.”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s because our alliances, both with the Tollan and the Asgard, are in a fragile state. We are trying to rebuild them, but it’s proving difficult — especially without Colonel O’Neill. As you know, he is a particular friend of the Asgard.”

Makepeace gave a curt nod. “Yes sir, I understand.” A beat, then “Can I ask why our alliances are so fragile?”

Hammond spread his hands flat on the desk and tried to decide how much he could reveal. It made him angry, furious, that he should be forced to doubt his own people, that the treachery of one of their own had driven his allies to demand this secrecy. He looked across the desk at Makepeace, fixed him with a searching look, and made his decision: he couldn’t keep his teams working in the dark any longer. “There have been some thefts, Colonel. Technology and weapons, stolen from our allies by a rogue off-world team operated by Colonel Maybourne.”

Makepeace’s face was like granite. “I see.”

“The disappearance of SG-1 has only exacerbated the situation,” Hammond continued. “Some among our allies suspect them of complicity, and they’re using that against us, to justify ending their alliances with us.”