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Chapter Sixteen: One Last Jaunt?

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"Now, this ain't to say I don't appreciate the rescue, as I surely do. But where in the hell is my ship?"

It was just as well they hadn't taken bets on it, as Jack would have lost. He was sure Reynolds would have started complaining about his missing ship before they even broke atmo. Somehow the man actually made it until they were all the way off the planet, though. Of course, it might have had something to do with the fact that by the time they'd made it into the ship, Serenity's captain had looked very close to passing out.

Zoe was the one who finally answered, "We left her parked back near their Stargate, sir." She continued on, speaking faster to talk over the objection he opened his mouth to make as a line of dismay etched its way between his brows, "This ship has stealth, speed, and shield capabilities Serenity lacks. I doubt we'd have gotten ourselves anywhere near here without it."

Reynolds grumbled something under his breath in Chinese, and everyone pretty much pointedly ignored it. The rest of them were all far more concerned with the question Jayne asked, "Now what?"

"We head to the nearest Tok'ra base," Jacob replied.

"Uh, shouldn't we maybe discuss it first?" Daniel asked.

"Look, we have no idea how big this operation is, but we might be able to figure that out once we've gone over the information we got from their data system. The Tok'ra are the best qualified to do that, and they can take care of the Goa'uld," he gestured at Simon's trussed form, "which we want to do before it has a chance to get loose and cause trouble."

It didn't help that Kaylee kept sneaking sympathetic glances at the doctor. The girl wasn't stupid, but with a Goa'uld being able to impersonate the person it was controlling and her being so attached to Simon, it would be prudent to get the snake out as soon as possible. She'd already asked if it was really necessary they have him tied and gagged before they'd even started up the hyperdrive to leave the system. As little as he wanted to go and make nice with the Tok'ra, well, ever, what Jacob said made a great deal of sense, so Jack didn't object. Taking Jack's lack of comment for the assent it was in conjunction with Jacob's perfectly sensible reasons, Daniel subsided. Carter hadn't even looked up from where she was probing Reynold's injuries to determine their severity, and Teal'c was silent while keeping a forbidding eye on the Goa'uld.

It was a long seven days to get them to the nearest Tok'ra outpost Jacob could be certain was both open to outsiders and had the equipment for the extraction procedure on-site. They'd ended up forbidding Kaylee being anywhere near Simon halfway through the trip. The Goa'uld had taken advantage of Teal'c leaving to kel'noreem and tried impersonating Simon to the sympathetic mechanic when he was left ungagged after a meal. Luckily, River had been awake and come running in to stop her before she'd been able to actually untie him. Most of the rest of the crew, even when they were obviously uncomfortable with seeing the doctor tied up, were willing to let it go without objection because of how vehemently River insisted upon it. Things had also run smoother after that point when they'd taken Selmak's suggestion of sedating the Go'auld. It wasn't a great plan for Simon's health in the short term, but would keep them from having to worry about the snake escaping or killing its host.

Similarly, they took their cue from River when they ringed down into the Tok'ra base. She didn't object when a pair of Tok'ra half-escorted, half-carried Simon away after a short conversation in Goa'uld with Selmak, so neither did they. The crew made more exclamation over the ring technology and finding themselves surrounded by Tok'ra than Simon's being ushered off out of sight. It obviously bothered them, though, as Inara and Book both sent unconcealed concerned looks off that way, and Kaylee's exclamation over the crystalline structure of the Tok'ra tunnels was brief and muted compared to her usual enthusiasm.

Carter and Jacob parted from the group headed in a different direction, the latter saying they were going to work on trying to unencrypt and sort the information from the data crystal they had retrieved from the compound. Carter had already been working on it off and on during the trip here, but while a great deal of the general information seemed to be easily readable, if too voluminous to easily sort through, any actual information about the ultimate purpose of the facility or the Goa'uld's plans was encoded. The Tok'ra, having spent centuries spying on various Goa'uld, had a better idea of the kinds of codes they used, and Selmak was hopeful that with their facilities and references to past codes they would be able to make progress much faster.

Simon and the information in the hands of those best equipped to deal with them, the rest of the group was left at mostly loose ends. Some of them more than others, of course. Daniel could always find someone to talk the ear off of, and despite their general arrogance, there were a couple of Tok'ra researchers willing to talk rocks and Goa'uld politics with the archaeologist. Likewise, Book, who had been bothered by what they'd said about the sarcophagus and souls ever since SG-1 had first mentioned the devices, voiced his concerns to their escorts. The result had been finding out the Tok'ra had philosophers, and Jack was happy to tune out the very long discussions on the nature of souls and higher beings that followed. He'd half expected River might join the Carters working on decryption, but he never saw her even go near that part of the complex. Instead she seemed to mostly spend her time trailing behind Kaylee chatting up various Tok'ra to distract herself and training with Teal'c down in the Tok'ra version of a rec center.

For his part, Jack just wandered the tunnels, bored. There was a little bit of excitement in the avoidance of Freya/Anise. That particular Tok'ra still creeped him out in the worst way. Perhaps it wasn't very nice of him, but he attempted to foist her off on both Reynolds and Jayne, but apparently neither one fit her criteria for prospective Lo'machen-ing for snake or host. It did provide a further bit of amusement when the big mercenary was interested, and took to following the scientist snake around for a while, to her imperfectly suppressed irritation. Apparently the man had gotten some strange ideas about her job among the Tok'ra from her choice of outfits, a debacle that ended in some outraged shrieking and Reynolds having to apologize repeatedly to the snakeheads for his gunhand's behavior.

All together, it was another four days of waiting before one of the Tok'ra who'd been in the party to take the Goa'uld inhabited doctor away came looking for them. The whole group was escorted down to a portion of the tunnels that had been noted as off-limits by their guides before now, and were lead into a room where Serenity's doctor was clad in beige Tok'ra garb looking pale and sickly.

As they entered the room, Kaylee nervously looked to River first, still stinging over the multiple angry scoldings she'd gotten for the incident on the ship. River, however, paid her no mind, already rushing into the room with a cry of, "Simon!" to throw herself into her brother's arms. He stood up to catch the girl, and Kaylee was only moments behind in joining in on the group hug.

When the doctor's face became visible again over their shoulders, he was clearly crying. Even if Jack hadn't caught that glimpse of his face, it would have been obvious in the choked note of his voice when he began speaking. "River, I, I'm just so sorry. So sorry," his eyes, which had been squeezed tightly shut, popped open and sought out Mal. "Captain, I didn't mean … I'm sorry!"

Jack half expected the next voice to be Jayne's making some nasty crack at Simon's expense, but the big man surprised him yet again. When O'Neill looked in his direction, the merc was pointedly staring at the wall and not saying a word. Huh. O'Neill was turning back, in the process of trying to figure out what to say to the young man to convince him what the Goa'uld had done wasn't his fault, when Reynolds beat him to it.

"Weren't yourself, way I understand it," the captain said gruffly. "Ain't no need for feeling guiltful on account of what some snake-thing did wearin' your face."

River, whose face he couldn't see, was likely also crying from the sound of her voice when she added shortly after, "Don't be a boob, Simon."

"I'd think you would have figured out by now I can't help it, mei mei," the doctor replied in a slightly more even tone.

The work of the two Carters on the data crystals only took a couple of days longer. It didn't tell them everything they could want to know about the Goa'uld's plans and exactly how far they were spread through the Alliance, but it did answer a few of the most pressing questions. Like Nirrti, Aditi was attempting to engineer the perfect hoktaur host for herself, and somewhere along the line the two snakeheads had come together in working on that mutual goal. Where Nirrti had approached it from the angle of manipulating the genetics and hoping for a good result, Aditi had opted to try and achieve the results she wanted through surgeries - with the intention of figuring out how to accomplish the same changes genetically later if necessary. A few of the more scattered notes they'd found referred in part to some kind of breeding program implemented over time, so the two Goa'ulds were probably not working entirely separate plans. Unfortunately there wasn't much information on the crystal about the details, with the few references that did exist having referrals to a project archive on Sihnon. There was also a small mention of shipments of naquadah coming from locations on both Persephone and Bellerophon, confirming the similar readings from those two outposts meant similar functions.

What was there did make it clear the Goa'uld had been behind the Academy River had been sent off to, where they'd done those terrible experiments on her. However, while they'd gathered little information from the site about those experiments themselves, this particular data repository had contained a lot of information on how the Academy had been set up through shady deals with third parties and nudges given to various scientists in the Alliance on better methods of accomplishing goals they were already looking into. Again, it was all unusually subtle and hands off for a Goa'uld. Of course it wasn't entirely unprecedented. On Hanka, so far as the people living there had known, Nirrti had been an absent goddess. It was only some time after she'd killed them all after the arrival of the SGC that anyone realized she'd been floating above the planet in her ship, manipulating and experimenting on the populace all along.

Of course, trying to find the best quality hosts wasn't new territory for the Goa'uld, and even attempting to manufacture them to specification was something SG-1 had come across. It also neatly explained why the Goa'uld wanted the most diverse group of humans Aditi could discreetly get her hands on to start off the project. Before the event the Tok'ra had thought killed her, Aditi had more than a handful of planets under her control, and she had chosen "colonists" from that pool and additional "stock" she traded for with other Goa'uld and – importantly - a few bounty hunters offering in bulk.

Although the Tau'ri homeworld had remained generally unknown to the Goa'uld, SG-1 had run across previous instances of populations moved from Earth after the Stargate had been buried. The people of the Alliance having some spotty knowledge of Earth's history made it a pretty solid conclusion at least one of the bounty hunters selling to Aditi had been using the planet as their own private stock supplier. It was disappointing, but not surprising that her notes on her purchases this far after the fact could not be used to trace those lost Earth people or whoever kidnapped them. Although anyone trying that now would have a much harder time trying to get to Earth undetected.

How they'd gotten from including some people of Earth to believing they were colonists from a destroyed Earth was a little less clear. The why of that particular story being chosen was not detailed in any of the material at hand, but the how had been documented as part of the overall experiment. In the days when they'd both been bigger powers in the Goa'uld hierarchy, Aditi and Setesh had been allies to the extent of having worked on developing more potent forms of nishta together. From Selmak's recollection, they'd had a falling out over Aditi being unwilling to share her more successful efforts with her ally. A whole set of notes early in the project were about potential side effects of the heavy doses she'd used, and went into enough attendant detail to make it clear she'd used her formula liberally on the fake colonists, leaving them to wake up on ships headed into a handpicked out-of-the-way system flown by her hand selected and non-tattooed Jaffa. Said Jaffa explained the chosen story and the nishta made everyone believe it. Had those from Earth remembered just enough to twist a more vague original story to fit their own memories? Had Aditi chosen the name of a previous homeworld of some of her new slaves at random?

It ultimately wasn't important, and it still didn't explain the size of the Alliance or why they'd been allowed to become so technologically advanced compared to other populations under snakey thumbs. Nor did it explain why Aditi had chosen to allow most of the actual manipulations to be done by her Jaffa or unknowing human rubes thinking they were working to their own ends. The parts of the project they had details for showed very little involvement of the Jaffa, and there were only the barest hints of the involvement of lesser Goa'uld, mostly inferred from the Tok'ra's general knowledge of Goa'uld shorthand. The best the Carters could come up with were some vague references to additional parts of the project noting that details were to be found in other archives. Unfortunately, their scan of the system had only turned up one other site that was currently unaccounted for. Whether bases on Sihnon and elsewhere were simply not using enough Goa'uld technology to be detected or had more advanced shields than the Tok'ra were currently familiar with ultimately didn't matter much. Either way left SG-1 with an unmanageably large haystack.

Even so, on the short list of things Jack actually liked about the Goa'uld, their predictability ranked right up with their arrogance. Both were things that it was good to see in an enemy. The fact Aditi had gone so far out of their usual patterns of behavior and there was no clear indication of why did not sit well.

It didn't sit too terribly well with the Tok'ra either, Jack could tell, though of course they didn't come right out and say so. The Tok'ra were long term planners, though, and secretive on top of it. Considering their usual M.O., they'd try to infiltrate the place and it'd take ages before anything actually came of it. Still, even if he wasn't all that fond of their methods, it was clear this was far more the kind of operation the Tok'ra were suited to.

SG-1, on the other hand, didn't know if they should do anything. Trying to go back to the Alliance system a third time, they'd either be dealing with the same secure compound in the heart of the Alliance or they'd have to suss out the Goa'uld's location all over again. The Alliance was big, most of it wasn't made up of Goa'uld, and the SGC did not make it a habit of interfering with other government's politics if they could help it. The Alliance didn't have FTL drives now, but the Goa'uld could easily give them the technology and point them towards Earth. There were other ugly possibilities, too. Nirrti had killed every living person on Hanka save one when the SGC had set up a research base there, and their further involvement here could make something like that more likely.

No decision they made could be made lightly, considering all of that. Furthermore those in charge of the SGC's finances weren't likely to be too in favor of spending so much time and resources on a Goa'uld who had yet to show any interest in Earth. Unfortunately that left them with a bit of an issue. The Serenity crew was all back together again, and Jack knew without asking that they wanted to go home. Yet if they went back with the Alliance as it was without SG-1 doing anything, it would only be a matter of time before the Goa'uld, or those working for them, tracked the ship and its crew down again. Jack knew exactly how he'd feel if someone tried to tell him he couldn't go back home. He was pretty sure Reynolds was not going to deal with it any better.

Jack considered trying to put off telling the crew until after the Tok'ra had given them the scoop on what their plans would be. At least until he realized that once again, the Tok'ra weren't necessarily going to actually tell SG-1 what their plans were. They'd dealt with the snakeheads enough to know that just because they had been the ones to bring the Tok'ra in, it didn't necessarily mean the Tok'ra would let them in on anything. The odds were significantly higher than normal since they were working with Jacob on this one, but even that wasn't a guarantee.

As it turned out, waiting wouldn't have worked anyway. With the Tok'ra returning Simon sans Goa'uld, Reynolds approached him looking for somebody with a plan. As much as he was half-tempted to stall the man, because he didn't want to hear the complaints about getting back to the ship, Reynolds wasn't an idiot. Well, at least not always.

So Jack laid it out. The Tok'ra worked by their own agenda, the SGC was grossly outmatched by the whole of the Alliance. Even if they tried to separate out the Goa'uld influence, it was not that simple. Supposing they could again find and then get rid of Aditi, they didn't know how many Jaffa there were or how many minion Goa'ulds. Even if they got all the Jaffa, they didn't know how many perfectly normal people in the government were following the Goa'uld's directives without even knowing there was someone else pulling their strings. Any of the above likely knew about or could find out about Serenity and wouldn't have any reason to be less willing to come after them again.

Despite the fact that he was pretty sure Reynolds already knew all of this, and his lack of surprise bore that out, the man still asked, "So where does that leave me and mine?"

"We could probably fit most of you in at the SGC somewhere, I suppose," Jack began, and Reynolds grimaced. Stopping, Jack just gave the man the ol' Teal'c eyebrow raise.

"Don't think I'm not grateful to your people, Colonel. That ain't it at all. I was just stupid enough to hope after all that go tsao de with Miranda they'd leave us alone. Ever since we met, it's been nothing but one big downhill rush after another. All I wanted was to have my ship, keep a good crew on it, and live my life."

"Well, the Goa'uld are right bastards for messing up everybody else's plans for peaceful living," Jack acknowledged.

"We couldn't at least go back for my ship?" Reynolds asked, trying to sound offhand about it.

"Sorry. If we had a mothership, we could. Captured one once. Had to blow it up."

"Huh. Your friendly little alien fella Thor couldn't..." Reynolds started hopefully.

"Thor pretty much comes and goes as he pleases. We could ask, but all the Asgard are pretty busy with the Replicators, and to be frank? With the SGC program still a big secret to the public, there's nowhere to put your ship anyway. Even then, the NID or someone like them would probably try to take it and there's really nothing we would be able to do."

Reynolds finally gave up at that, frowning pensively and giving him a distracted nod before stalking off down the tunnels. By the time they all gathered together again for the evening meal that night, it was clear the rest of the crew had been informed about their inability to go back, as all of them looked quite down. O'Neill didn't take it personally, he knew most of them liked the SGC well enough, but it wasn't their home. He thought about how he'd feel if the Goa'uld invaded Earth and he survived and had to take refuge somewhere else. Just thinking about it made it feel like there was a gaping hole in his chest, but his sympathy didn't lend itself to generating any new solutions to the underlying problems.

Jacob approached the two groups as the rest of the Tok'ra were heading off on their own various errands after the meal, his face set in that way that meant business. "I think we've gotten all we're going to get out of the crystals and the Goa'uld we took from the doctor. The High Council is reluctant to do anything immediate. Since Aditi doesn't seem to have more than a handful of lesser Goa'uld minions, attempting to infiltrate her operation would be very tricky for us. We are agreed that it's necessary to keep an eye out to make sure they don't develop hyperdrive technology and come calling with millions of people at their disposal, but …"

"We're pretty much done here?" Jack finished for him.

Jacob nodded. "The High Council wants me to extend our thanks for bringing this matter to their attention. They promise to keep you informed of any important developments, should they arise, and do not want to delay your return to the SGC any longer."

"So, thanks, get lost, don't call us, we'll call you?" O'Neill quipped.

Jacob smirked. "If you wanna put it that way. Sam?" The father/daughter pair stepped away from the rest of them to have a short conversation. O'Neill took the opportunity to check with his team and Reynolds to make sure they'd packed up anything they'd brought here with them. Since the Tok'ra were planning on moving this base in short order, they were allowing the use of their Gate for the return to the SGC rather than the group having to take the tel'tak back to some random planet to gate back home.

Unsurprisingly, the somber mood of the Serenity crew hung on through their journey back through the Stargate and the briefing with General Hammond that followed. They didn't really add much to the conversation, just sat in silence as SG-1 related what had happened in their system and at the Tok'ra base. Sam, who had been doing a great deal of the talking, since she had done the most work with the Tok'ra on decoding the information they'd found, finally came to her conclusion stating it was clearly not safe to return the Serenity crew back to the Alliance's system.

General Hammond cleared his throat and turned to Captain Reynolds. "Now, son, I can't imagine you're pleased with this turn of events. I wish we could do more for you. We just don't have the resources or the approval to remove the Goa'uld from your government. If you decide to return home, the SGC cannot come to your aid again. If you don't, we have some options to discuss."

"Options?" Inara asked, when the captain didn't speak up immediately.

Hammond inclined his head in a short, sharp nod. "We have a number of allies across this galaxy that would be willing to take you in. Staying here on Earth is also an option, and we would possibly be able to offer several of you positions within the SGC, if you wanted."

"Oh," she replied. "I – I think we'd want to know more about our other options before we agree to anything? Right now I think we're all just a little too upset to make any decisions."

Reynolds gave a peculiar little half grimace and finally spoke. "Inara's not wrong."

"Very well," the General said. "We'll see you settled into quarters here for the interim, and talk about this again in a few days. You're dismissed, SG-1."

It wasn't the first time the SGC had fielded refugees of one stripe or another, by any means. One of the geek departments had a list of allied planets that had agreed they would take people already written up. It listed characteristics of the societies and planets and any restrictions on who they were willing to accept, and Jack gave the Serenity crew a copy of the list later that day.

He wasn't really surprised only some of the crew showed any particular interest in looking it over. Kaylee, for one. The one thing they all seemed to be agreed on was that they wanted to stick together. One of the problems was nearly all of the allies the SGC had that were willing to take people in tended to be the ones who were vastly technologically inferior. Considering the crew of the Firefly consisted of an engineer, a pilot, a surgeon, and a gun enthusiast among others, living someplace like the Land of Light wasn't really going to have too much appeal for them.

Jack kept an ear out for their discussions, and knew there was some talk about a few of the options. After all, the vast majority of the planets in the Alliance that a ship like Serenity could sit down on were often little nicer than arid deserts. The idea of settling down on a beach planet, or one with rich forests, had a certain amount of appeal O'Neill could understand. Still, the crew was smart enough to figure the novelty of such a thing would only last so long.

Meanwhile, the SGC was making its own pitches to several of the crew. Kaylee, with all her intricate knowledge of the ship engines of her civilization – even if they weren't hyperdrives, was certainly of use to them. The medical staff was courting Simon. By the same token as Kaylee had advanced mechanical knowledge, the doctor knew all kinds of things that might be of use in their field. Wash was a brilliant pilot who claimed to be able to fly anything. Even without anyone mentioning anything about River's more specialized abilities, the girl was brilliant and could certainly find a place with any of the departments that appealed to her.

The rest of the crew was a little bit more of a question mark. It wasn't that Mal, Zoe, and Jayne didn't have useful skills. It was a matter of those skills generally already being covered by the military contingent of the base. The SGC was a military operation, and those in charge liked it that way because of the clarity it gave in terms of responsibilities and duties of the people holding the weapons. The SGC had made an exception for Teal'c on Jack's word, but that was an unusual circumstance. First of all, he had irreplaceable insider knowledge of the Goa'uld and Jaffa, and on top of that, Teal'c was certainly more disciplined than pretty much anybody, which helped his case quite a bit and wasn't exactly true of the trio from Serenity. Even beyond that little snag, Mal and Zoe weren't exactly comfortable with the idea of getting re-involved in the military, and Jayne. Well, Jayne. O'Neill was absolutely certain the one thing they didn't want was Jayne running amok without Reynolds to keep him in check.

In theory, though, they could find a place on the teams. Considering the teams operated elsewhere from Earth, it wasn't an impossible thought. Then there was Inara. On the surface, her profession back in their home system had centered around the nuances of a single culture and the sex trade that was pretty much illegal or shameful amongst all their allies. Still, a great deal of her training, at least from what Daniel had learned from all his questioning, had revolved around learning how to read and placate people. Those were talents that could be of use to an organization which spent a lot of time meeting new people and negotiating treaties. She had also shown a great deal of interest in Daniel's work of cataloging cultures and items. She was no River, by any means, but if the archeology department had managed to absorb Nyan, they would have a place for her there, too.

Although they continued to discuss various planets, it was clear that none of the crew's hearts were really in it. Word came several months later from the Tok'ra that they'd gone back to Alliance space and found Aditi's compound, as well as the other sites they'd detected, completely deserted with no obvious traces of where they'd moved. The Tok'ra were still keeping an eye on that corner of space, but clearly nothing was going to be resolved there anytime soon. By that point, the crew accepted the news with disappointment, but no real surprise or protest.

As time continued to pass, the various crew members volunteered to do more and more random odd jobs around the base most related to their own interests and fields of expertise. It was less that they ever made a definitive decision to stay with the SGC, and more they just gradually blended their way into the structure there. As much as they found purpose for themselves in Earth's missions of exploring and defending the galaxy, and even seemed relatively content most of the time, none of them were ready to give up on someday finding their way home. And despite the time that passed, home was still a dinky old firefly class transport ship, left abandoned and rusting on a desolate moon in the middle of nowhere.

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A/N: I now understand in excruciatingly painful detail why so many crossover stories in particular wind up abandoned. It doesn't help that I have problems with endings to begin with. I know some of the characters were oddly quiet at points despite my best efforts to juggle them all in somewhere, and there were a few bits I felt dragged excessively, but after sitting on this for two years it was time to call it done. I hope the stopping point I chose wasn't too terrible, and I hope everyone who read all the way down to this enjoyed it at least a little bit. I also want to generally thank anyone who has taken or will take the time to leave feedback. So saying, this is definitively the end of this story - no sequels will appear.