SG1-25 Hostile Ground(90)

General Hammond nodded. “I’ve told my family to head into the mountains. They’ve got a cabin up there.”

There was silence in the room, because they all knew that if the Goa’uld came there’d be no hiding — in the mountains or anywhere else. Hammond’s expression darkened, his mouth making a hard line of anger. “We have no Alpha Site,” he said, as if to himself. “The Pentagon shut down Colonel O’Neill’s plan and now we have no Alpha Site.”

“Bureaucrats,” Makepeace growled. “They’ve hamstrung this operation from the start.”

The colonel’s bluster wasn’t exactly helpful so Janet ignored him and said, “I’m guessing the Tollan won’t take us in?”

Hammond made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. “They have ‘no capacity’, apparently, to house refugees from ‘non-allied worlds’.”

Janet just shook her head — how could you even answer an attitude like that? “The Asgard?”

“Out of contact. And the Tok’ra certainly won’t give us the address to their secret base with a fleet of Goa’uld ships parked overhead.” He slammed his fist on the table, once — a controlled measure of anger that sent ripples over the cold coffee sitting in a mug next to his keyboard. “I should have fought harder for the Alpha Site,” he said. “Colonel O’Neill knew —”

“Colonel O’Neill isn’t here,” Janet said, and then added a hasty, “sir.” She considered Hammond for a moment, took in the lines furrowed in his brow and the tense set of shoulders that bore the weight — almost literally — of the world. “And if he was, General,” she said in a softer tone, “I think he’d tell you there’s no point in dwelling on should-haves or could-haves.”

Hammond gave a tight smile. “You’re right, doctor.”

Sitting forward in her chair, hands folded on Hammond’s desk, she said, “Sir, there must be another world we can evacuate to? A safe world, somewhere we can regroup.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, “there are plenty of worlds. But we’ll have nothing, doctor — only what we can carry with us through the Stargate. We’ll be a rootless, homeless people with no way to resupply and no back-up.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure it will save us, doctor. It might save a handful of individual lives, but I doubt it will save our civilization.”

“General Hammond?” Makepeace got to his feet, his hard face intent and serious. “There is another option.”

Hammond frowned up at him and, from the taut look on his face, Janet suspected he knew what was coming. “Which is what, Colonel?”

Makepeace shifted on his feet, scratched at his jaw. “Colonel Maybourne’s off-world base, sir.”

“No.” Angry, Hammond got up from his desk and paced to the other side of his office. Through the window, he gazed out past the briefing room toward the Stargate and Janet watched the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders as he struggled to rein in his temper. “That man is why we’re here, Colonel,” he said at last. “His greed, his paranoia and lack of faith in our allies — that’s why we’ve found ourselves friendless in a hostile galaxy. And I won’t let him —”

He broke off, chewing on his words, and Janet could almost hear his inner conflict. To accept help from Maybourne’s shadow operation, the very people who’d brought this disaster down upon them, left a bitter taste indeed. But… “General,” she said quietly, “do we have a choice?”

He turned on her, leveling an angry finger. “That base, doctor, represents everything which I oppose — on a military, moral, and personal level. If we evacuate there, then God help us.”

“It doesn’t mean we have to become like them, sir,” she said. “Maybourne won’t be in command.”

“Won’t he? Do you think he’d give us the address on any other terms?”

“Sir, we’d be evacuating the President and the Joint Chiefs — not even Maybourne has that much chutzpah.”

“Don’t count on it, doctor,” Hammond said darkly.

Silence fell again and Janet felt a cold, sinking sensation. The general was making a mistake, he was letting his anger get in the way of the only pragmatic choice, and she didn’t know how to change his mind.

“For what it’s worth, General,” Makepeace said, “I think we have to go with Maybourne’s base. At this point, it’s our only option.”

Hammond continued to glare out at the Stargate and Makepeace watched him with a forbidding, unreadable expression on his face. Carved out of stone, that man, Janet thought. It wasn’t really fair to compare him to Colonel O’Neill, because O’Neill was a one-off, but nevertheless the contrast was stark. There was a hardness about Makepeace that she didn’t like. He was too austere, too bleak, unable to see hope in dark places and, given their current circumstances, they could do with a dose of O’Neill’s spirited optimism rather than Makepeace’s grim practicality. But on this point, at least, Makepeace was right — and Colonel O’Neill, had he been there, would probably have backed him up.