Characters: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, Teal’c
Themes: Action/Adventure, Semi-angst, Humor, UST/RST, First Time(s), Friendships, Jack/Daniel, Sam/Teal’c, shades of OT4

Author’s Notes: Written for J/D Ficathon 2006, hosted by Live Journal’s Greensilver.

Prompted by Live Journal’s faerie_mistress who wanted:

Requirements: majority of fic set offworld, action/adventure genre.
Optional Requests: angst, first time
Restrictions: mpreg, Sam-bashing

ESRB Ratings: Mature: Strong Language, Sexual Themes
Season: 4-5esque
Spoilers: Nothing specific, though oblique references to season 1-5 episodes.

Alpha/Beta: Alphaed by He Who Holds My Hand, Thededine Von Crankengeshteitmeyer, and Betaed by the Delectably Delicious Sorcha Gaia.

Written: June 06

“Carter!” Her name was laced with panic-fueled irritation.

Jack thought once again how they should really put a few more seats in these things. And some seat belts. Maybe a lap bar or eight. Gripping the central casing of the bridge’s computer unit, he did everything he could to stay standing, but it wasn’t easy. They had lost the ship’s gravitational stabilizers early on when Carter had started to do her thing.

Teal’c was in the cargo ship’s pilot seat, Sam his copilot. Daniel was practically draped over her shoulder as he clung to the back of her seat, his effort to remain vertical just as challenged as Jacks.

For a ship that was bobbing and weaving like the very best a roller coaster could offer, Sam’s fingers worked the controls with a smooth and calm efficiency. “Working on it, sir!”

“Work faster! I’m about to puke here!” Which wasn’t exactly true, but just standing there helplessly did terrible things to Jack. Losing his lunch could very well be on the agenda, right after a nervous breakdown and several more gray hairs.

“Now, Teal’c!” Sam’s attention spun quickly from her screen to the Jaffa as he punched the ship into hyperspace. The front monitor lost its sweep of stars and was folded into the exotic landscape of the inner workings of the universe. Brilliant white and lavender streaks raced past them as the ship threaded its way like a needle.

Predictably, the Replicators followed suit and were still right behind them.

“Ready, sir!” Again Sam’s fingers were confidant and sure. They simply awaited the final order.

Jack didn’t let her down. “Do it!”

In one last flurry of activity, Sam ejected the ship’s overloading hyperspace engine. She had just enough time to watch the engine’s outline collide with the Replicator’s red triangle on her monitor before their own ship was forcibly thrown from hyperspace back into normal space.

She and Teal’c both crashed forward against the control console, Daniel cracking his head on the back of Sam’s seat before inertia whiplashed him backwards onto the floor. Jack had just enough presence of mind to wrap himself around the central casing before he lost his legs completely and flew forward into who-knew-what instrumentation. As it was, the console’s corner nailed the O’Neill Family Jewels for his troubles when the ship lurched to its dead halt.

Jack’s eyes crossed. He didn’t have it in him to swear - or cry. Yet. Breathing alone was something of a struggle. He slid off the piece of machinery and flopped onto the floor like a dying fish.

“Everyone— oh, oh, sir.” Carter was trying to lever herself up out of her seat, a trickle of blood already running from a cut in her eyebrow as she watched Jack draw his knees up and clutch himself. He could only return a wide-eyed glare before rolling over and giving the rest of SG-1 his back. He didn’t have much of his pride left — he was pretty sure it’d been shoved up somewhere around his liver — but he’d salvage what he could manage.

“Get ‘em?” It was all Jack could grind out without sounding too much like a choir boy.

“I think so. I’m pretty sure. We’ll… we’ll know soon enough.” Sam respectfully gave the Colonel’s whimpering and mewling some space while she helped Daniel up. He looked dazed and a little glassy eyed, but nothing overly serious. Sam made eye contact with him to double check, holding his attention for a split second before his matter-of-fact nod and wave let her know he was status quo. Reaching out, she rested a hand on Teal’c’s shoulder and earned herself a controlled nod. Teal’c was still flying the ship, now relegated to sublight power. Some minor… injuries… aside, SG-1 seemed to have come through mostly unscathed.

Her duty as field medic completed, Sam turned back to the ship’s systems and began a broad sweep for the Replicators. “Nothing yet,” she let them know.

Daniel was holding his head. Nothing was bleeding or felt broken, but little men with jackhammers were already taking up position between his temples. “So it worked?”

“It would appear so.” The solid foundation of Teal’c’s baritone made the statement true enough for everyone to believe.

“Great,” Jack snarled, sweat standing out fresh and slick across his face. “So then, if you’ll excuse me,” and he lurched to his feet. “I have to go die in a corner now.”

Sam caught Daniel’s eye again. Jack needed… treatment, but she really couldn’t give it to him. “Yeah,” Daniel sighed, already moving to follow their fearless leader.

Wrapping a long arm around Jack’s shoulders, Daniel shifted some of O’Neill’s weight onto himself while maneuvering the man back into the cargo area. “How, uh. How bad is it?”

Jack shot him a squirrelly look and just clenched his lips together.

“Okay,” Daniel tried again. “Do you need ice?”

“Yes, and maybe one of those drinks with a little umbrella in it!” Even at the best of times Jack could be difficult, but when he was in pain, the world suffered right along beside him.

Daniel positioned him as best he could on one of the storage units that was currently doubling as a bed. “Sit here. Lie down if you want. I’ll be right back.” Before he could turn away completely though, Jack snatched at his sleeve and hauled him back. Daniel practically stumbled, face first, into Jack’s chest.

“The Asgard owe us so big.” The Colonel’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

If Jack could still make threats, then Daniel figured no lasting damage had been wrought. Giving him a nod, Daniel awkwardly patted Jack’s shoulder before heading for their supplies.

Coming around the corner, Carter was holding the edge of her sleeve against her brow, meeting Daniel at the first-aid kit. “How is he?”

“So, so big! Huge!” Jack’s indignation rang crystal clear.

Samantha Carter was a brilliant and experienced officer and scientist, but there wasn’t enough tea in China or naquadah in the multiverse for her to touch that one. So to speak. Her pursed mouth and arched eyebrows studiously sought out the first-aid kit and nothing more.

A sly smile spread across Daniel’s face as he momentarily rested his chin against his chest, then reached down to fish out an antiseptic pad for Sam’s cut. “How much the Asgard owe us.”

“Ah,” was where Sam decided to leave it.

They held the polite silence between them, each reassuring the other as they went about their individual tasks. Until a giggle bubbled out of Daniel. It burst past his lips in an abrupt sound, catching both he and Sam off guard. Biting her bottom lip, Sam did her best to avoid joining him, but it was a worthless struggle as her grin shone brilliantly.

Soon enough, Sam and Daniel both were snickering downwards, their hands busy with medical tape and aspirin packets. Avoiding eye contact kept things from blowing up into out right guffaws.

They weren’t laughing at Jack, not really. They were laughing at the fact that yet again, despite the odds, they’d come out on top. Made the impossible possible. Lived, when by all rights, they shouldn’t have. The soft sound filled the cargo area.

“Dying man here!” In a better frame of mind, Jack probably would have recognized the difference, that subtle line between laughing at and laughing with, the very human relief Carter and Daniel were sharing. But as it was, he was pretty sure he was serious about the dying thing.

Band-Aids applied, aspirin taken and Jack’s ego attended to, the team collected loosely in the cargo area. Teal’c loomed in the door frame, ready to bolt back to the pilot’s seat at the first alarm, while Carter had hauled her laptop along with her and was quickly working through ship diagnostics. Jack gave up the pretense of polite company and sat on the storage unit with his fly unbuttoned and an instant ice pack shoved down between his BVDs and BDUs. He made the effort to remain decent by pulling his tee-shirt down, but Sam still thought it prudent to keep her back to him anyway. Daniel was slouching against the wall pinching the bridge of his nose, waiting for the pain killers to give the jackhammers the rest of the afternoon off.

Making a motion she couldn’t see but was certainly familiar with, Jack asked, “So?” Everyone knew he was directing the question at Sam.

“So,” Carter began with a practiced tone. “I can probably repair the sublight engines to at least eighty-percent capacity; shielding is intact and there’s no discernible hull damage. We have enough supplies to last two weeks, five if we go immediately to rations. Still, our best chance is to find a planet with a working Stargate, abandon the ship there, and gate home.”

Jack frowned in suspicion. “We flew out here. Why can’t we just fly back home?”

“Well sir…” Sam was reluctant to say whatever it might be. Jack balanced his Need to Know against his Want to Know.

“Out with it,” he demanded.

“By my rough calculations… it’d take us fifteen years to do that. Give or take. Sir, no hyperspace engine, no hyperspace travel. Among other… things.”

“Among other things?” Jack’s mood had only improved marginally with the application of ice. His sarcasm was still in peak condition.

Daniel’s quiet “Jack” was filled with its usual admonishment while Carter incrementally rolled her neck and worked her jaw. The man was in serious pain, so she was willing to cut him some slack. Taking a breath and steeling herself, Sam went on.

“Hyperspace travel is the bridging of Point A to Point B outside of normal space/time.” Jack thumped his head against the wall; it was shaping up to be one of those explanations, he could just tell. But he suffered in silence. Oh, what he did for these people. Never mind he’d asked for it.

“With the ejecting of our hyperspace engine while it was engaged, and the subsequent force from the exploding Replicator ship…” Sam’s hands arced though the air. “It didn’t just ‘pop’ us out from one area into the other. It was like… it was like hitting a wall at a dead run. That energy had to go somewhere. And it went…” Her hand slid through the air. “Sideways.”

Teal’c weighed in with a heavy frown. “Sideways?”

“Is that a technical term, Major?” Unable to resist, Jack’s acerbic tones rang in the confined space. Daniel gave him another chastising frown.

“It’s a kinetic energy thing,” she tried to explain with another roll of her hand. “It literally had to go somewhere.” Jack made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. Yeah, he could tell her where it went. He had this lovely souvenir ice pack for his troubles. “Instead of just coming to a stop along the path between A and B, we sort of shot out along the Y axis. It was that, or be crushed by the collecting mass of our own molecular structure.”

“Which would’ve been bad,” Daniel supplied.

“Which would’ve been bad,” Sam confirmed.

Raising both his voice and his fist, Jack began a proclamation. “The next time anyone — anyone! — comes asking us to do them a favor—”

But Daniel cut him off at the knees. “We volunteered. In fact,” and he made a tetchy motion with a pointed finger, “if I remember correctly, you said ‘no problem, Thor buddy, we’d be glad to help’.”

Civilian and solider shot dirty looks at one another. “Well, why the hell did you listen to me?” Jack concluded, turning away and refolding his hands gingerly in his lap. Daniel won this round. “I never know what I’m talking about.”

Rolling a droll look in Jack’s direction, Daniel just sighed against his victory and shook his head towards Sam and Teal’c. Can’t live with him, can’t hide the body well enough. Sam had half a smirk in place as her fingers continued to work. Teal’c simply tilted his face up, diplomatically silent.

“Alright,” Jack said, taking control of the situation. “Carter, you get on those repairs. Teal’c and Daniel, help where you can, but someone keep an eye on the wheel. Won’t do us any good if we’re pulled over for crossing the double yellow. I’ll, uh. Delegate for a bit longer, if no one minds. Privileges of rank and all.” He shifted uncomfortably to illustrate his point.

Sam gave a muted “Yes, sir” while Daniel nodded and Teal’c dipped his chin. Jack closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall again.

It took them eleven days to find a planet where Sam thought there might be a working Stargate. “Sir, long range scanners detect the presence of naquadah, but we’ll have to be at least in orbit before I can be sure and then locate it.”

“Make it so,” Jack had said with a glib flip of his wrist, earning an indulgent smile from Sam and an incriminating frown from Teal’c.

Eleven very long days in which Carter had made all the repairs she could, Teal’c had had time to show each of them the basics of Goa’uld ship flight, Sam and Daniel had played a word association game until Jack thought he might ring them both out into open space, Jack had demanded enough games of Eye Spy until Daniel was ready to ring him out into open space, Sam had explained the science behind finding an inhabited planet from deep space to a genuinely interested Teal’c, and Teal’c had done a lot of kel’no’reeming. A lot. Sponge baths had been issued, but they could have used real showers — and real washing machines — after day five. Everyone was just a bit punchy, so Sam’s news came down on grateful ears.

Entering the solar system, Sam raced through various files, looking for the ones she wanted. “Well, the planet’s location is noted on the Abydos Cartouche, so that means a pretty good chance of there at least being a gate. In operation or not….”

“Yeah, well.” Daniel answered with a squint. They all knew how to fix that.

Jack rocked on his feet, tucking his hands into his pockets. “And, if it turns bust, we can at least resupply.” And bathe. Because, whoa.

Sam nodded unconsciously in acknowledgment while she fed Teal’c coordinates. Her CO said something, she acknowledged. The fact they were thinking the exact same thing was just coincidence.

In their view screen, a predominately lush green world was coming up fast. If Jack had to guess, he’d say something like sixty-percent land mass to forty-percent ocean, but there seemed to be an abundance of wide open rivers checker-boarding the continent they faced. “Mmmm, treeeees.”

Teal’c and Carter each frowned independently at their individual readings seconds before red warning lights lit the board. A proximity alarm trilled shrilly.

“Carter?” Homer Simpson tossed away, O’Neill came to stand firmly between pilot and copilot, hands to his hips.

“I’m not sure, sir. We’re being—”

“Entry code?” Daniel read over Sam’s shoulder, interrupting as he leaned over. “Entry code for what?”

Sam’s tone was as confused as it was concerned. “I don’t know.”

Jack didn’t want any of this. He could grab a bath later. “T, get us out of here.” Undoubtedly anticipating the request, Teal’c was already maneuvering the ship back around.

“Sir!” But Carter didn’t need to draw Jack’s attention. First off the port and then starboard side, what could only be weapon platforms came shimmering into view. The cannons were already training on the cargo ship.

“Teal’c!” Jack’s raised voice didn’t need to elucidate further as he braced a hand each on the back of the two seats. Teal’c was already taking evasive actions. “And how did we miss the big honking space guns again?”

Sam tensed against the question but refused to be cowed by it. “Sir, they were cloaked.” She was only this side of checking her temper: she enjoyed surprises like these about as much as the Colonel did. “They didn’t show up on any radar, any scan. We only knew they existed when they asked for an entry code.” An entry code they didn’t know, couldn’t have, and now they were being shot at because of it. She could see the first bright burst of energy heading towards them. “Hold on!” Which was easier for her to say than for them to do.

The ship rocked hard as Teal’c sent it zigging and zagging, shuddering along its seams as it was struck. “Shielding at sixty—” Another direct hit. Sam grimaced with a shake of her head. “Forty-percent!” Several more batteries decloaked, barrels already swinging in their direction.

A third shot hit something that sent sparks flying from the central computer casing, the one that had so offended Jack the week before. Daniel threw his arms up and turned his head away, avoiding the fiery shower by a hair’s breadth.

Everything dipped dramatically to the right, Daniel staggering while Jack clutched the pilot and copilot seats. Teal’c’s voice was strained when he called out: “Entering atmosphere! Brace for impact!”

Jack had learned his lesson and learned it well. Turning, he fisted a handful of Daniel’s shirt and yanked the man down with him. He tried to throw himself over Daniel, military bravado demanding he protect the civilian, but Daniel shrugged him off. He knew how to do this on his own after almost five years, thanks the same, Colonel O’Neill.

Carter was frantically working her side of the control station, motioning quickly towards Teal’c. “There, there, there!”

Daniel lifted his head enough to see the sickening sight of the ground not only approaching rapidly, but lazily spinning counter-clockwise as well.

“So big,” Jack reiterated before clamping his elbows over his ears and lacing his fingers behind his neck.

Teal’c managed to get the ship mostly parallel to the earth with liberal application of reverse thrusters, graciously supplied by Sam’s quick rerouting of power. But they were still crashing and it was mostly an uncontrolled crash, the lazy spin making them nauseous. Sam did what she could to boost the shielding, but another shower of sparks from circuitry let her know how unlikely that was going to be in time. One last parting shot from the orbital platforms spun them head over heels before Teal’c could regain control.

Tree tops snapped as they skimmed the forest line, the contrail of the ship thick and tattletale behind them. It was moments like these that Teal’c actually preferred Tau’ri design. The joystick of a jet was eminently more rewarding to clutch than the more advanced sensor devices of Goa’uld technology. He had to keep his fingers light and sure, letting them dance instead of grind against the controls. It required a great deal of concentration, concentration he didn’t know if he could maintain.

They were coming in too fast and he knew they needed more time, more room, if they were to survive this. Angling the ship best he could, Teal’c pointed it towards the setting sun. Light flooded the cockpit, midmorning to afternoon until finally twilight as they circumnavigated halfway around the globe.

“Shielding at fifty-eight percent!” It was the best Carter could do from where she sat. Getting up to physically reroute power by crystal swapping was currently out of the question. She darted a look over her shoulder towards the Colonel and Daniel. Both men were sprawled on the floor, having slid around somewhat from the hard descent, but for the moment they seemed safe. Sam resolved she and Teal’c would keep it that way.

Snapping her attention to him, Sam gave Teal’c a sharp twist of her chin. “If we’re going to do this, we’re as good as we’re going to get!” He gave her an equally sharp nod back. Curling herself inward, bracing for impact at his command, Sam tried to assure herself she’d done everything she possibly could. She’d shut down failing systems, rerouted power to those still active, boosted shielding and squeezed auxiliary thrusters back to life. She’d tried to give Teal’c as much of a fighting chance as possible. But if any of them died, she knew who she’d blame first.

The first skip against solid ground bounced Daniel up off the floor a good two feet into the air. He had just enough time to cry out in surprise before he slammed back down, the wind knocked from him. Jack rolled into his side as the ship skipped a second time, this time Daniel accepting the arm flung over him. Sam made a soft sound above them, but every inch of it had been laced with pain. On the third skip, she slid out of the seat into a boneless heap. Daniel tried to scrabble forward to reach her but the snubbed nose of the cargo ship dug into the soft loam and sent everything into a series of violent three-sixties.

Jack clung to Daniel and Daniel snatched out and grabbed Sam’s unconscious body by the waist as all three of them were thrown to the walls. Teal’c’s howling battle cry just added yet another layer to the sounds ricocheting through-out the ship.

Around and around they spun, the field of grain giving way to a shallow creek, then again back to farmland. Teal’c could see they were closing in fast on a tree line. He began to time intermittent bursts of the thrusters, counter-clockwise to the ship’s clockwise spins, finally slowing them down. It required a delicate touch and absolute focus.

Once, twice more the ship spun before finally leveling out into a piercing grind of earth against metal. A splintering crack of trees heralded their full and complete stop.

No one moved for a moment, small, quiet sounds filling the space where only seconds before had been the shriek and rattling of their unexpected fall from grace. Super heated metal pinged, branches outside gave up the fight to slap against the roof. Jack could hear his own harsh breathing and feel Daniel’s against his chest as the archaeologist pressed back against him. For a brief, fleeting second, Jack indulged in that knowledge. No matter what, Daniel was alive, breathing against him.

Daniel Jackson had a nasty habit of getting seriously wounded and/or dying. Jack could take a measure of comfort that this wasn’t one of those times.

The human chain that was Jack to Daniel to Sam lay crumpled against the eastern wall. They’d started on the western. It’d been one hell of a ride. Over Daniel’s head, Jack asked, “Are we alive?”

“I believe so, O’Neill.” Sweat ran rivers off Teal’c smooth brow as he stiffly turned in his seat. The dark man regarded them anxiously, his eyes casting over each of them for injury.

“Sam? Sam!” Lurching out of Jack’s grasp, Daniel crawled up beside the woman, carefully rolling her all the way flat onto her back. Jack was trying to stand by shoving himself up against a wall, but his attention was too divided between Daniel and Sam and his missing equilibrium. It ended up being more of a crooked slouch as he looked on anxiously.

“No blood,” Daniel declared with a heart felt relief. “But a hell of a goose egg already on the back of her head.” Laying his fingers against her throat, he nodded softly. “Strong and steady.” His smile was brilliant and dizzying when he looked up, something in which both Jack and Teal’c could share. And did. Holy crap, they were alive.

“We gotta get out of here.” Jack tried again to stand and actually managed it for all of four steps. “Whoever owns those space guns is undoubtedly going to be looking for whoever just crashed through their front door.” Then he staggered and came up sharply against the back of Teal’c’s seat.

“Good flying, by the way,” the Colonel said with a slap of his hand against the big man’s shoulder. Teal’c inclined his head and gracefully stood. Jack decided to hate him just a little bit for that, but kept it to himself.

Teal’c moved beyond him, leaving Jack to crane his neck and look out the view port. Broken trees and about nine billion miles of broken wheat fields. Yeah, they weren’t going to be hard to find if they didn’t get a move on. Jack made a decisive hand gesture while he turned, his other finding his hip. “Daniel, you get the stuff. Teal’c, get Carter.” Teal’c was helping Daniel up, a quick look passing between them — You okay? I’m okay. We’re okay? Okay. — before they moved on to their assignments.

Jack had a job for himself too, and it involved the last of the C4 they brought for the Replicator problem. Loping into the cargo area, he snagged that particular bag before Daniel could scoop it up in his consolidation.

“Is that necessary?” Undoubtedly, Daniel was thinking of the farmland and surrounding trees. He had that look in his eyes.

“If they think we’re dead, we’ll have a better chance of finding that Stargate.” Jack slapped a square of C4 plastique onto the control panel of the rings. He figured there had to be some juice still left in there to accelerate an explosion.

“And if we’re caught in a forest fire, we will be dead.”

“Oh Daniel, we’ve come much too far by this point to get snuffed out by anything so benign as a forest fire.” Setting the timer for ten minutes, Jack slapped Daniel in the arm before heading back out. Daniel could only shake his head and gather the necessities.

Teal’c had taken the time to pack Carter’s laptop and stood waiting with bag and woman slung over his arms. His staff weapon dangled at a rakish angle, somehow secured in his jacket. He flicked an eyebrow when Jack slapped three charges onto the ship’s front control panel and one with a flourish onto the central computer casing. “Eight minutes, Daniel!”

“Done,” said a somewhat breathless archaeologist, joining Teal’c as Jack popped the emergency door open. Crisp, cool air slapped them in the face. It’d been fifteen days total since they’d had anything that wasn’t recycled in one way or another. Early evening light cast dappled shadows through the leaves above them as they stepped out.

“We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s move it.” Somewhere in the middle of exacting his revenge against the ship, Jack had clipped a P90 onto his TAC vest. He motioned with it now, breaking into his long legged run. Teal’c pulled Sam closer against himself and Daniel hefted their bags tighter against his back. All of them had trained for just this scenario; it was, however, something else to actually execute it.

Dashing out into the open field, they ran and ran hard. Jack began shouting the final count down. “Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE!”

Teal’c went down on “Three!”, curling himself around Sam and cradling her to him.

Daniel dove at “Two!”

Jack at “ONE!”

He could have wanted a bit more oomph as the shock waves rolled over them, but Jack suspected Daniel was onto something with the whole forest fire thing. The long, fibrous stalks bent under him as he rolled to his shoulder and looked back towards his handiwork.

The diabolical orange of wicked jack-o-lanterns, a giant fire ball coiled up into the air, its puffy edges rimmed with black and all the more sinister for it. Jack gave it an approving nod before pushing himself back up to his feet. It’d do. “Everyone okay?”

“I think I got dirt up my nose,” Daniel complained, rolling onto his back and grabbing lungfulls of air. Teal’c was easing himself off Carter and regarding her as one might a fragile piece of cut crystal. Jack had to grin, but kept as much of it to himself as he could. If she could see that look, she’d belt Teal’c and him and Daniel — all for good measure. But Jack knew where Teal’c was coming from: as solider as Carter was, she was also SG-1’s “girl”. And Jack, Teal’c and Daniel all liked “their” girl in absolutely one lovely, pristine, unbroken piece. Saw it as something of a shared, if albeit secret, duty to keep her that way.

Jack caught Teal’c’s eye as the man surged to his feet, burden safely cradled in his thick arms. “You good?” And by “you”, they both knew Jack meant Sam.

“Indeed,” Teal’c said with enough gravitates to let the Colonel know how serious he took his Carter-watching duties.

“Good, good.” That done, he turned back to the business at hand. “C’mon, Daniel.” Toeing the prone man’s shoulder, Jack urged the good doctor up. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Well.” And he darted a quick look around and rolled a pensive shrug. “Yes, we are, but we’ve still got to keep moving.”

Daniel would have liked to have had the luxury to complain, but he knew the truth of the matter. So what if his head was splitting, his side was burning, his throat dry and least of all the absolute orchestra of blood roaring between his ears as who knew how many gallons of adrenaline was being dumped into his system.

But someone had shot them down, from space, and Sam was hurt. They didn’t have an immediate way home and their resources were limited to the two backpacks and one bag Daniel had been able to pack. This is what it meant to be on a front line SG team and this was Jack’s territory, one-hundred percent. And Daniel trusted the Colonel explicitly. When it came to stuff like this. For the most part.

“Yeah,” he said, voice muffled by his own shoulder as he rolled up onto it and then pushed himself from all fours onto his feet. When Daniel was giving himself a quick brush off, Jack was digging into the duffel bag and pulling out a second P90. There were five in there total, along with all the ammunition. They’d gone on this mission to face Replicators, so they had quite a bit of ammunition.

Slapping a cartridge into its railing, Jack handed the loaded weapon to Daniel who checked the safety before clipping it against his own TAC vest. It wasn’t with practiced ease yet, but it was getting there. The idea might have given Daniel pause if he’d allowed it enough time to take root. But there wasn’t time for ideas like that and then Jack was taking the second backpack and shouldering it himself.

Looping the strap of the duffel over his head, and making sure it was clear of the gun, Daniel declared himself ready with a nod.

Jack acknowledged the gesture with a nod of his own. “Right.” Giving Teal’c and Carter one last assessing once-over, he motioned them back towards the tree line but angled away from the burning ship. “Keep an eye out for… you know. The usual.” He took point, sandwiching Teal’c and his burden between himself and Daniel who took the rear.

They weren’t making the time Jack really wanted them to be making, and when they heard the whistle and whine of gliders, he knew they had to go to ground fast.

“Crap,” Jack muttered, casting his eyes around the darkening forest floor. It was all old growth. Light was patchy from the setting sun and rising moon overhead, advantage and disadvantage both. “Keep your eyes and ears open, people.”

“O’Neill,” Teal’c whispered after a few more steps, jutting his chin. “There.”

Jack didn’t see whatever it was. He raised his weapon, crooked finger light on the trigger while he swept the area.

“The tree, Jack.” Daniel pointed out, raising his hand to guide the Colonel. Really, it was more ‘what’s left of the tree, Jack.’ It was huge and had clearly toppled over a long, long time ago. Maybe from a lightning strike. Whatever had caused it to crash to the forest floor, Jack saw what Teal’c saw: the earth beneath it had partially eroded away, making something of a trench. With a little work, the opening could be disguised and they could hide inside, the fallen tree giving them further coverage.

“Alright then,” Jack said with another sweeping look around the area. “Daniel, take Carter and get the inside situated. Teal’c, you’re with me.”

The three men worked with the precision of long practice, of knowing exactly how the other would move, think, anticipating actions and needs they themselves didn’t know they had or wanted until someone was holding it out for them to take and use. It made for easy work in a timely fashion. Which was good, because who knew how much time they really had.

When they were each sitting inside, cradled by the powerful smell of fresh soil and dense vegetation, O’Neill took a moment to evaluate their situation and poll the others for options. “How long do you think they’ll keep looking, Teal’c?”

“It’s hard to say. It would depend on whether or not they fell for your ruse.” Teal’c sat with his feet braced, P90 loose in his hands but still at the ready. Jack sat likewise, bookending Daniel and Sam between them. Daniel was still fussing with the hat meant to disguise Carter’s bright hair lest an errant search light catch it.

Jack took a moment from scanning the area to watch. “How is she?” He was doing what he could to stay professional, in command, but a certain amount of concern couldn’t be stopped from creeping into his voice.

Sam’s eyes fluttered as if on cue, an inarticulate moan escaping past her dry lips. “Daniel?” Or, she thought it was Daniel. The man was swimming just inside her line of vision and everything was dark and muddled. “Daniel?” Her second attempt was a bit stronger.

“Hey,” the man said softly, his smile gentle as he reached out to touch her cheek. Yes. This was Daniel. She felt his cool hand brush across her brow momentarily. “How do you feel?” Looking across her, Daniel made a motion towards Teal’c for his water canteen. The Jaffa obliged.

“Like maybe we crash landed on an alien planet and didn’t die after all.” Licking her lips, Sam tried to sit up, or at least push herself into a better position. Daniel and Teal’c both helped her as best they could in the confined space before Daniel was pressing the water on her. She was leaning against Teal’c heavily to keep from slumping over. The entire world felt like it was tilted to a 45° angle inside her head.

“Welcome back, Major.” Jack quipped with a two-fingered salute off the bill of his cap. “That was some fancy, uh. Button pushing, or whatever. You and Teal’c got us down here in one piece. Good work.” The words were light, even flip, but the sincerity was genuine.

Wiping at her mouth with a sleeve, Sam nodded gingerly. Under normal circumstances, she might have bustled a bit under the weight of such honest praise, but right now, she just wanted to get off the Tilt-a-Whirl. “Thank you, sir. How long have I been out?”

“About three hours,” Teal’c supplied, already handing over two pain killers he’d taken from a pocket. She swallowed them with a grimace before handing the water back to Daniel and settling against the pressed earth of their retreat.

“You probably have a bit of a concussion,” Daniel noted with the weight of experience, capping the canteen and tucking it between them. “Any dizziness? Nausea?” Dr. Jackson didn’t need to be their field medic to know what to look for — he’d been in the infirmary enough times to know what questions to ask.

Sam was nodding gently, a subtle movement that wouldn’t rock her head too much. “Some dizziness, no nausea, and my vision’s unblurring. What’s the situation?” Jack puffed a bit with commanding officer pride. Carter might go down, but she was never out.

Squinting out into the moonlit forest, Jack sketched out the situation. “I counted maybe five, six Deathgliders. Possibly an Al’kesh.” Teal’c nodded his agreement across the two scientists between them. “No foot patrol yet, but we might have fooled them into thinking we’re dead.”

“The C4?” Because Sam knew how each of them thought and worked just as well as they did.

“The C4,” nodded Jack. Sam nodded again, her brow crinkling against the lacework of pain laying over her. She knew she was in no shape to take a watch or a weapon, so she had to resign herself to sitting this one out. Next to her, Daniel was picking his own P90 up and peering out into the darkness. Knowing she sat in a makeshift bunker with three armed men made her feel marginally better about things.

“Get some rest, Carter. Everyone else—”

“O’Neill.” Teal’c interrupted in a threaded whisper, the subtle shift of metal echoing in the trench as he brought his weapon up. Daniel and Jack’s followed suit as each man trained their attention towards Teal’c’s. Lit by incandescent torches, a cadre of Jaffa came up from the southeast, clearly moving in a search pattern.

“Guess they didn’t fall for it,” Daniel whispered, tongue darting out to run over his top lip before he settled his shoulder better against the weapon.

Jack’s retort was like dry kindling. “Guess not.” Despite his orders, Jack saw Carter unholster the zat from Teal’c’s thigh and ready herself from the corner of his eye. Can’t blame her for not wanting to be empty handed, Jack figured.

They held their positions, breathing shallow but muscles taunt, ready to spring and uncoil if necessary. The Jaffa moved in straight lines, a dragnet of bodies meant to overlap and catch. Lights were flashed around, thickets were thrashed, low hanging branches were shook. Once a light sailed over their hiding place, forcing them to sink and crouch into their shadows, but SG-1’s luck held.

Eventually the Jaffa moved on, moved further into the forest, but the continuous barking of orders and ransacking of foliage made them easy enough to keep track of.

Jack turned expectantly towards Daniel, his voice still low. “Anyone we know?” But Daniel’s head was already shaking.

“I didn’t recognize anything, but I didn’t get all that good a look either. Teal’c?” It was Daniel’s turn to look towards someone with expectation.

Teal’c kept his attention out on the darkened landscape. “I did not see anything familiar either, Daniel Jackson.”

Jack wiped at his forehead with the back of his wrist, his ball cap forced up a few inches. “Alright, well. We’re safest here. We’ll wait for them to either sweep back on their way home or move on to where ever else. Daybreak, though, we’re going to have to move on ourselves. I don’t think this place will look quite as good come morning.” Their hiding place was based on shadows and the trick of moonlight, so no, come the brilliance of sunrise, they’d look like four kids hiding in a dug out under a tree playing war.

They didn’t bother to set up a watch, knowing the situation for what it was. They each had to remain alert, watchful. At a moment’s notice, SG-1 could be forced to run for its life. They were deep behind enemy lines. An unknown enemy.

The Jaffa eventually swept through again, but their formations were more orderly the second time. Less a search party and more of the usual forced march. It didn’t take long to hear the retreating whine of the ships. Which was just as well, the shadows growing shorter as morning approached.

Jack shifted from a sit to a crouch, knees popping in a dramatic fashion. He was gratified in the most juvenile of fashions to hear a similar snap, crackle, and pop from Daniel as he moved around besides him. “Would they leave someone behind to keep watch?”

“That is unlikely,” Teal’c answered, moving with that same fluidity that made Jack secretly hate him. Carter was still clumsier than her usual, but the way she held on to the zat let Jack know she was still far more in control of her facilities then anyone had the right to be with a crack to the head like she’d taken. His team, always top notch. The best of the best of the best, sir.

“Distribute the supplies. I’ll take point, Teal’c rear. Daniel, grab Carter’s six and Carter grab mine.” It buried their weakest links while keeping a clear line of sight for their strongest shots. Jack might not know how to fix a Stargate trapped in a blackhole, translate long dead languages, or every Ewok’s name, but this — this he knew how to do. This is what he did best.

False dawn and a light mist gave everything the fuzzy, deceptively tranquil glow of a Thomas Kinkade picture. All hazy pinks and blured blues, folding themselves against the dark green of the landscape. Their progress was even slower then the night before, but each of them was running on something like thirty-six hours of being awake with more than one life-threatening notch on their belts in the same time frame. The fact they were moving at all was a miracle.

They walked on for another few hours before coming up onto a river. The sandy banks were wide and remarkably smooth, signs of a regular flooding. “Probably snow run off,” Daniel commented absently, Jack nodding just as absently in agreement.

“Sir.” Sam’s voice was urgently quiet as she immediately dropped into a crouch. Teal’c followed suit with Daniel and Jack seconds behind him. All four raised their weapons. Far, far down the bank, far enough down that they all had to squint, several bodies hovered near the water’s edge. What they were doing couldn’t be seen, but it didn’t look like the team had been noticed.

Pulling his scope from an inside pocket, Jack snapped it open for a better look. A man, two teenagers and a kid seemed to be checking traps. The youngest kept causing trouble for one of the older boys, earning some stern words from the adult. Carter was shouldering up besides him, her own binoculars in place.

“They don’t look like Jaffa,” Sam murmured, she and Jack watching as the two adolescents each took up a half of the youngest and threatened to swing her out into the river. The adult, their father? Started laughing. Sam handed her binoculars off to Teal’c who was at her shoulder. Daniel had slithered up Jack’s side so Jack handed his scope off too. Professional courtesy and all.

Jack’s attention wandered across the expanse of Daniel’s shoulders as the man squinted through the small instrument. It couldn’t be helped, Jack forgetting and remembering in the same breath how scrawny Daniel used to be and how very much he wasn’t anymore. Daniel didn’t even really wear the boonie much now days, not like in the beginning, when TAC vests had confused him and he’d made disparaging remarks about the chain of command. It was bandanas now, if anything. Hell, his hair was shorter than Carter’s if that was possible. Though the sideburns, those were all classic Jackson, thumbing his nose at USAF protocol. And, Jack guessed, Daniel still made disparaging remarks about the chain of command, so maybe it wasn’t all that different. But still, when had his geek grown up into—

“Anything?” O’Neill pulled his cap down sharply to distract himself. This was hardly the time or place for such… Things.

Daniel made some half-sound, more thinking out loud to himself then making an actual comment. Teal’c, however, had something constructive to say. “They bear no markings I would identify with Jaffa.” Which jump started Daniel.

“No, they don’t, but can you see the man’s wrist? What’s that on his wrist.” Daniel’s eyebrows crashed together over the bridge of his glasses as he tried to pull a sharper focus from Jack’s scope. It was designed for quick and dirty recon, not work with Jane Goodall.

Teal’c adjusted the focus on Carter’s binoculars. “A bracelet?”

“No, a tattoo.” Despite everything, Daniel’s voice held a thread of excited interest. “Look, the two boys have something too.”

“Daniel?” Jack’s voice was solicitous and distinctly saccharine, his best “is this really all that important?” tone.

Handing the scope back quickly, Daniel looked marginally chagrined but far from apologetic. “Yeah, sorry. Don’t recognize the markings.”

The damp sand was cold against his chest, even through his jacket, as Jack sighed. “Carter, can we find the Stargate on our own?”

She really, really wanted to say that they could. It was right there on her face, in the way her blue eyes winced earnestly, in the twist of her mouth as she pressed her lips together. But that wasn’t the reality of the situation. Eventually Sam had to say, “No, sir. We never had the chance to do a full sweep of the planet, and even if we had, we’re so far off our original course….”

Yeah, that’s what he thought. Because that was Murphy’s law and SG-1’s usual luck with such things. Scratching his ear more out of habit then an actual itch, Jack sighed again. It could be a trap, or fanatics that’d haul them right up to the local Jaffa constable for their troubles. Or maybe something even worse. Who knew? Jack certainly didn’t, and it was little things like that that he did like to know before just waltzing on in.

Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Jack turned his head to see Daniel giving him a reassuring nod. “We can’t hide forever, Jack. We’re going to need some sort of help.” His blue eyes, a cobalt to Carter’s summer sky, spoke of a humbling amount of confidence in Jack. It made the Colonel scowl in return for so much faith thrust in his direction.

Teal’c threw his hat into the ring, too. “There are only four of them, one a child. I did not see any significant weaponry or reinforcements.” If it all went to crap, they’d still have the upper hand. For the moment.

SG-1 lay that way, four abreast, in the damp sand and early morning sun while Jack weighed everything together. Bracketing him, Sam and Daniel watched and waited. From Carter’s shoulder, Teal’c looked out serenely towards the strangers, confident O’Neill would make the correct decision.

“Fine! Fine. Since you all seem so hell bent on ending up in a holding cell before noon, why not.” Jack knew they all had valid points, but Jack wouldn’t be Jack if he didn’t act marginally cantankerous at being railroaded by reason and logic. There was very little room for a man of action like himself inside reason and logic. There was also that still large and looming question of who exactly they might be dealing with.