DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book III, part 10 of 10
Written by Nick Midian

Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan

English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general
corrections by Theo

French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash

French slang by Alan


EMAIL: [email protected]

SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow
kissing and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial,
Land of 'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline
to accommodate it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy'
happened a lot later than it did, around the first days of February, OK?

For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are
only tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of
Highlander-style immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole
'Immortals have no parents and are found in a little basket' is a... um,
the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada', so let's just ignore it, OK?

KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.

RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.

DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit,
merely for the pleasure of writing and sharing it.

The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander,
Willow, Oz, Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle
Gorch, Quentin Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property
of Joss Whedon, Warner Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of
Highlander and the characters mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda
Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the Society of Watchers) are the
property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.

Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the
World Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.

All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are
copyright of their respective rights owners.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language,
so any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my
wonderful beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please
be kind with me. I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child,
believe me.

SUMMARY: Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike,
when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish
between Slayerettes and Archangels. It's right when you think things
couldn't get worse that they get worse.

And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen,
because it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...

~~~~~~

The cast for Book III

Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself

Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith

Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura

Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as The Sergeant
Benjamin Bratt as Santero
Trevor Goddar as Backlash
Dolph Lundgren as Havoc
Rob Rowland as Chopper
Jake Busey as Sniper
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Matthew Ferguson as Chip

Bill Paxton as Major Stephen Marsden, USAF
Tom Sizemore as Master Sergeant Ricky Perkins, USAF
John Leguizamo as Airman First Class Charlie Martinelli, USAF
Mario Lopez as Airman First Class Alonso 'Bear' Vasquez, USAF
Patrick Labyorteaux as Sergeant Edwin Walters, USAF

Richard Dean Anderson as Col. Jack O'Neill, USAF
Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
Amanda Tapping as Maj. Samantha Carter, USAF
Christopher Judge as Teal'c
Don S. Davis as Gen. George Hammond, USAF
Teryl Rothery as Dr. Janet Fraiser
Tom McBeath as Col. Harry Mayborne, USAF
Peter Deluise as Airman Shepard, USAF

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls

and

Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red


~~~~~~



Incise: Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, 0905 hours Zulu.



"How is it that you always come up with the worst case scenario?"

"I practice."

Dr. Daniel Jackson & Col. Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill



Cheyenne Mountain had for years not only been the most secure site in the
whole U.S. nation, but also one of its best-kept secrets.

There, the men and women of the NORAD (the North American Aerospace
Defense Command) oversaw 24 hours a day the safety and integrity of the
air space of North America and its allies overseas.

Since 1966, when all the operations were transferred from the old Ent Air
Force Base at Colorado, Cheyenne Mountain sustained a constant vigil over
the North American continent, guarding it against attacks from land, sea,
air, and space.

And still in those early years of the 21st Century, the mountain continued
evolving in an ever-changing environment effectively and efficiently,
supporting not only critical national defense missions for the U.S. and
Canada, but also space support and theater defense missions worldwide.

By definition, as the more than 1100 military and civilian personnel
working in the complex liked to think, the security of all humankind was
in their hands.

Excavated from the rock of the Rocky Mountains near Colorado Springs, only
accessible by helicopter and by a unique road that led directly to the
armored and constantly guarded pneumatic main gate on the end of the
slope, the mountain was a fortress of rocks, steel and ferroconcrete.

Something that would survive the impact of low-range thermonuclear weapon,
and a heavy attack with conventional armament. All that, plus the armed
security squads of the US Air Force guarding it, made the complex a
formidable and impregnable construction.

There was also fact that the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center comprised
the largest and most complex command and control network in the world,
with a system that used satellites, microwave radio routes, and fiber
optic links to transmit and receive vital communications from the
worldwide space surveillance and warning network.

It also had redundant and survivable communications hot lines connected to
the Pentagon, White House, U.S. Strategic Command, and Canadian Forces
Headquarters in Ottawa, other aerospace defense system command posts, and
major military centers around the world.

Thus all this turned the complex into the most adequate site, to house
what probably was the most secret military project of the world.

The SGC. Maybe humanity's last line of defense against an enemy that was
more powerful, more ancient and more advanced than what any Earth
civilization had ever been. Maybe its last hope.

The Stargate Command.

Few in the mountain really knew what happened in the last two levels of
the complex, the deepest and most secure ones. Few knew what were the
mission parameters of the military and civilian personnel working there.

Nobody, not in the Air Defense Operations, Missile Warning or Space
Control Centers could even suggest what really happened there.

It was too secret. Too dangerous for them to know.

If the mountain's Command Center, the now worldwide famous Crystal Palace,
was the heart of the mountain, on a reduced scale the Gate Room and the
adjacent Control Command were the SGC's one.

There, standing thanks to a series of hydraulic branches on top of a
metallic access ramp, the real soul of the project reigned like an ancient
religious symbol. Which, from a certain point of view, was exactly what it
was.

Ancient beyond belief, with the dark and slightly rough appearance of the
alien mineral from which it was constructed and the undecipherable, mystic
symbols engraved all over its perfectly round surface, the Stargate was a
mystery by itself.

Nobody really knew who had made it; which race, civilization or species in
the universe. What had been its real purpose or intention? Had it been a
peaceful one, directed to shorten the distance between different worlds,
to make them closer for their people and cultures?

Or had it been a darker, more dangerous one? Had it been made for conquest
or for friendship?

Now, centuries, maybe millennia after its creation, the Stargate's real
definition depended very much on the person that looked at it.

For some it meant the only chance of survival and victory; for others, a
threat that had to be neutralized at any cost. Some saw it as a unique way
of learning, of discovering; others saw it as a means of conquest. What it
inspired, depended only on each person's experience, intelligence and,
basically, soul.

Looking at it through the armored windows of the Command Room, Sergeant
Tom Halloran, USAF, thought that what the large metallic circle inspired
him in that very moment... was total and absolute boredom.

Stifling a yawn with his fist, the young non-com stretched his stiff limbs
and back and took a short look at his wristwatch, checking that only five
minutes had actually passed since the last time he had done the same
thing.

Shaking his head and sighing with resignation, Halloran did a fast
run-over of the diverse screens and monitors around him and checked that
nothing was out of the ordinary.

Then, sighing once again and cursing whoever was responsible for assigning
him to night watch, the young man stood up from his comfortable wheeled
chair. And, after giving a soft nod as the only salute to the two airmen
under his command that night, walked to the nearby Mr. Coffee.

The sergeant served himself a good dose of the black and bitter brew,
wishing it would be enough to keep him wide-awake for the remaining hour
of his shift.

The last thing he wanted was to get caught asleep in front of the controls
by a superior officer, now that the list of promotions was due to come out
any day.

"Everything alright, sergeant?" said a voice behind him with a deep Texan
accent, and Halloran had to make an effort not to exclaim 'speak of the
devil' out loud.

Turning around, and wondering how it had been possible for the man now in
front of him to sneak into the room without being heard, Sergeant Halloran
adopted the straightest posture he could and nodded his head.

"Yes, General, everything is normal," he said after clearing his throat,
not getting any response at all as the man in front of him wasn't even
looking at him and, obviously not really giving him this attention.

=Doesn't this man ever sleep?= Halloran thought. =And what the hell is he
even doing here anyway?=

Abstaining very much from saying this aloud, Halloran decided on a more
ordinary approach and lifted his cup of coffee. "I was just having a cup
to stay awake, er... do you want one, sir?"

Once again, he got no response from his superior officer. "Sir?" Halloran
insisted with a somewhat stronger voice, finally gaining the General's
attention. "Are you alright, sir?"

Truthfully, General George Hammond's appearance wasn't that impressive. So
short that he had joined the Air Force passing the height requirements by
the barest minimum, with a waist more rounded than what was recommendable
for a man of his age and practically as bald as a cue ball, with only the
last remains of what once had been a glorious red mane on the back and
sides of his head, he didn't offer the image of authority that one would
expect from a two-star General of the US Air Force. He looked more like a
granddad or a bald Santa Claus.

No, there was something different what made him one of the most respected,
and in some circles even feared, superior officers of the USAF - it was
the severe air of authority, of control that seemed to emanate from his
short figure.

Tom Halloran, as did the rest of the military and civilian personnel
serving under General Hammond, could feel it. He knew that it didn't
matter how wrong could things go, as long as that man was in command, they
would always have a chance of victory.

"Sergeant," the General said with his usual short and no-nonsense tone,
completely ignoring his question and pointing with his extended finger to
one of the monitors, "could you tell me what this means?"

Halloran arched his brow in confusion. The general knew which was the
function and purpose of each one of the screens, monitors and different
devices in the room, most of which were constantly scrolling down with
information gathered by a thousand different sources. Why was he asking,
then?

The sergeant sent a helpless look towards his two subordinates, but they
chose to step aside the incoming storm and leave him on his own.
=Cowards.=

"Uh, sir, that's the status report of the situation of each one of the
different SG-teams. But you already know that, sir."

The balding short man nodded slowly and, coming closer to the screen,
leaned his extended index finger on the name of one of the teams, the only
one that was marked in red. "I know that, sergeant," he practically
growled, pinning him with his blazing blue eyes, "what I don't know is why
the one for SG-4 is glowing red, could you explain me that?"

=Uh, oh,= Halloran thought, =trap-question incoming.=

General Hammond wasn't famous because of his sense of humor or his
tolerance towards his subordinates, with very well known and few
exceptions. And, last time he had checked, Halloran hadn't a colonel's oak
leafs on the neck of his shirt or a tag-name saying 'O'Neill' on his
chest.

"Sir, that means that SG-4 is on duty," he said simply, choosing a
straight and safe answer.

"SG-4... is... on duty..." Hammond said, spacing the words and looking at
him with amazement as he tasted them.

Halloran gulped down, knowing that was the moment of the explosion.
Surprisingly, it never came.

"Sergeant, SG-4 had its return scheduled for 2300 hours, yesterday. That
was..." Hammond lifted his whole ten fingers and showed them to his
subordinate, "...ten hours ago! Why haven't I been informed of this
delay?"

Halloran exhaled a long and pained breath, gulping down a thick knot and
feeling a cold sweat drenching his body under his light blue uniform. "Uh,
sir, the mission parameters stated that..."

"To the hell with the mission parameters!" the superior officer finally
exploded, making Halloran and the rest of the present ones flinch under
the thunder of his voice. "I expect to be informed of the developments of
every mission on a 24/7 basis. Am I understood, sergeant?!?"

Before Halloran could answer him, and as he waved goodbye the
possibilities of getting a promotion any time soon, the whole control room
was suddenly submerged into a flashing red ocean of light and the wailing
sound of a siren deafened all those present, making them jump in surprise.

In the adjacent room, the Stargate came to life as the nine locks, called
'chevrons', around its circular surface lightened with a reddish glow.

The interior of the metallic circumference that was the main part of the
Stargate blinked for the infinitesimal part of a second, as if a thin veil
was covering it. And then the space inside it combed inwards first and
then exploded in a water-like cascade that erupted several meters into the
room, before retreating back into the circular gate. Then, all that
remained was a vertical pool that looked like shining water but wasn't.

The galactic vortex was activated.

A metallic, computerized voice imposed over the noise of the alarm,
speaking with cold and soulless calm.



ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL. STARGATE ACTIVATED. INBOUND TRAVELER. ATTENTION
ALL PERSONNEL...



"Alien activation of the Stargate!" one of the airmen standing guard on
the controls exclaimed, his eyes quickly running over the data scrolling
down the screens and monitors. Turning his head to look at Gen. Hammond,
he licked his lips nervously. "We're not receiving any GDO signal, sir."

Hammond nodded sharply, his lower jaw locked into an unreadable
expression. GDO stood for 'Garage Door Opener', and meant that the person
(or persons, or even beings) activating the Stargate on the other side of
the portal were not sending a recognizable signal of alert telling they
were members of a SG team and, therefore, had to be treated as hostile.

"Close the iris immediately, sergeant, and get a security squad in the
room," the General ordered without looking at his subordinate. As Halloran
did as he was told, frantically pushing the keys of his computer, Hammond
turned his head towards one of the airmen. "Which team is standing guard
tonight, Airman Jenkins?"

The young man took a short look at his monitor's screen, and released a
breath of relief. When he turned back to his commanding officer, Jenkins
couldn't hide a half-smile. "SG-1, sir."

In the Stargate room, the iris closed over the activated portal,
effectively and soundlessly blocking it. It was made of an alloy of
titanium and naquada, the alien quartzite metal the Stargate was made of,
and was supposedly indestructible.

But Hammond had seen its integrity compromised too many times to trust
only in it for the safety of the installation, and the men working in it.
So, he mirrored his subordinate's expression for a brief second at hearing
the on duty team's name.

At least, he would have his best team by his side in case things went
really wrong.

"Call Colonel O'Neill," he commanded. "Have him and his team come to the
Command Room ASAP."

Airman Jenkins nodded and grabbed his phone's speaker as Hammond,
centering his blue gaze on the closed surface of the iris, half-closed his
eyes and watched how the security squad flooded into the adjacent room and
took positions around the closed gate, aiming at it with their automatic
weapons.

The Air Force general crossed his arms over his chest and sighed tiredly,
wondering what was going on and how would they manage to get out of it
this time with their skins intact.

That is, if they managed it.



~~~~~~



It was barely five minutes later that an incomplete representation of the
SG-1 team came into the Command Room, still putting on their uniforms and
generally looking like they had been woken up in the middle of a good
sleep.

"General Hammond," the man leading the three-person group acknowledged the
superior officer with a soft nod of his ruffled head. "What bring us here
on this lovely night, sir? I suppose I'm hoping for too much if I say a
surprise party."

He was a man in his mid-forties, with deep gray and short, military-length
hair, and a severe expression that was betrayed only by the gleam of dry
humor shining on his deep brown eyes. He was wearing a green-brown
camouflage uniform with combat boots and, under the still opened jacket, a
tight black T-shirt over which his metallic dog tags stood out
dramatically.

Hammond ignored the man's sleepy attempt at humor and shook his head
towards the Stargate, on the other side of the room's armored windows.
Seeing the closed iris and the security squad with their weapons drawn and
ready, Colonel Jack O'Neill arched his brow and sighed with resignation.

"I said it was too much to hope for," he concluded dryly.

The remaining two members of his group, a man and a woman, gave him
similar short looks of resignation before turning to the older man. The
woman, an attractive blonde on her mid-thirties and the same military air
around her as the two men she was addressing, was the first one to speak
up.

"What's going on, sir?" Major Samantha Carter inquired with her usual tone
of gentle worry. "A Goa'uld attack?"

"I don't know, Major," the General told her, his seemingly eternal
expression of authority and hardness never leaving his face. "Truth be
told, we still don't know very much. The Stargate was activated from the
other side some minutes ago, without any GDO signal sent in our direction.
We've closed the iris as a measure of precaution, but the truth is that
nothing has tried to cross the vortex yet."

"And if they had tried by now they would be a paste of organic tissue
smashed against the interior side of the iris," the remaining member of
the team observed, his spectacled eyes already running over the different
data offered by the screens around them.

Dr. Daniel Jackson was the only non-military member of the team, and one
of the very few civilians that knew and worked on the Stargate project.
Still in his very early thirties, his boyish features took at least five
years off his face. And his brown hair, a little too long for military
standards, his expressive green eyes behind his small rounded spectacles
and the eternal lovely pout on his lips, turned him into a more than fine
male specimen.

Of course, of those present, only Major Carter was conscious of that fact
and then, only in a 'cute-little-brother' sort of way.

The anthropologist and Egyptologist, not conscious of this himself,
centered his attention on the glowing screens, adjusting his small rounded
spectacles over his nose. "Ah, I may be wrong in this," he said pointing
at the screen, "but doesn't this mean that SG-4 is out on a mission?"

At hearing this, O'Neill looked at the General with a frown. "There wasn't
any mission scheduled till tomorrow," he recollected, half-closing his
eyes. "There's something we should know, sir?"

The older man shifted uncomfortably under his younger subordinate's gaze,
feeling as bad as usual when he had to navigate between two oceans, his
loyalty towards the people under his command, most of which he considered
friends, and the responsibilities of his charge. "SG-4 was sent on a
non-scheduled mission requested by Intelligence to P3X254, they should
have returned ten hours ago but we've still not gotten any transmission
from them. Frankly, I'm starting to be worried about them."

"Ten hours?!" O'Neill asked in amazement. "That's almost half a day! With
all due respect, sir, why haven't you sent a retrieval team?"

"And P3X254?" Major Carter asked, before the General could answer. "Didn't
the MALP exploration show that it was a deserted and desolated planet?"

"Not to mention that it has a toxic atmosphere," Daniel added.

"That's an important clarification, thank you Daniel," O'Neill told him
with a deep tone of sarcasm that passed right over the Egyptologist's
head, who just smiled and nodded with a pleased expression.

"Anyway, sir," the Colonel said, turning back to the older man, "that
place is like New Jersey during a heat-wave, why would Intelligence send a
team there?"

"They wanted something from that planet," Carter guessed, getting ahead of
her superior's answer. "And they didn't want us to interfere. Let me
guess... some kind of weapon, maybe?"

Crossing his arms behind his back, Hammond nodded sharply. "You're close
enough, Major. It seems that they believe there was something valuable on
P3X254, and they used their privileged command to sent SG-4 on a Tango
mission."

"Tango mission?" a clueless Daniel asked out loud. For a person that was
able to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as if he had been born
speaking them, he was surprisingly obtuse for any kind of military slang.
"What is that?"

"A black operation," Carter told him, with a worried face. Obviously it
wasn't good news. "Top secret and deniable."

"Yeah," O'Neill agreed with a grimace of distaste, "no info, no
reinforcements, no rescue party and, in case you fail, no name for your
grave. The good old military way."

Daniel arched his brow, and pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his
nose. "Nice to know that you can count on the people you work for in case
of necessity."

"Let me remind you that this is not a Boy-Scouts camp, gentlemen," Hammond
said sternly, "this is the U.S. Air Force, and all of you knew what that
meant when you signed in. Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices."

Daniel was about to remind him that actually he wasn't a member of the Air
Force, but O'Neill silenced him with a sideways stare and the Egyptologist
decided to remain silent.

"Then what?" the colonel asked. "If that activation is SG-4 trying to come
back home, aren't we going to open the door for them?"

"You know the rules, Colonel," Hammond faced him with a hard stare,
"without GDO signal the iris will stay closed. Period."

"But what if they've had some complication with theirs?" Daniel protested,
puzzled as always with the rigidity of the military way of thinking. "If
they're indeed in a Tango mission they know that there won't be any rescue
team, what if they..."

"I've told you before but I'll say it again, Dr. Jackson," Hammond cut him
off, "this is the U.S. Air Force, we do not work here with 'what ifs', we
work with reality."

Daniel rolled his eyes, passing a hand through his brown hair, but the
General ignored his expression. "Anyway, I'll follow your example. What if
it's a Goa'uld attack? Or maybe other kind of alien threat we still don't
know about? We can't run the risk of leaving the door open for them."

"But-"

Before Daniel could complete his objection to the General's logic, which
was in any case a lost battle and both of them knew it, Carter stopped
him, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him softly. "Let it be, Daniel..."
she whispered absent-mindedly. "That doesn't matter now."

"How can you say that?" he insisted again, turning to her. "They're our-"

This time, however, it was himself the one to stop his tirade. Carter
wasn't looking at him and, truth be told, neither was O'Neill, Hammond or
any of those present. All of them but him were looking at the adjacent
room, through the armored windows separating them.

"What...?"

Following the direction of their glances with his eyes, Daniel settled
them on the perfect circle of the Stargate and saw immediately what had
rendered them speechless.

The iris was opening.

"Sergeant!" Hammond exploded suddenly, making all of them flinch. "What
the hell are you doing?"

"It's not me!" Halloran exclaimed with a high-pitched voice, his fingers
running over the keyboard. "I don't know who's doing it, sir, but some
external force is opening the iris!"

"You mean external as in from outside of the mountain?" O'Neill inquired
with a frown.

"No, sir," Halloran said with darkened expression, "external as in from
the other side of the Stargate."

As one, all of their eyes turned back to the galactic portal and the
reflecting pool, already visible through the slowly opening iris.

Releasing a sigh, O'Neill muted a curse under his breath. "I was afraid
you'd say that."



~~~~~~



Aside from the portal itself, the only exit of the Stargate room was an
armored pneumatic double door leading to the bowels of that level. That
door usually remained open, and guarded by a small group of special
operations commandos; but in case an emergency was declared, as was the
case right then, it closed and locked automatically, sealing the room.

The only way to open it and enter into the Stargate room then was
introducing an eight-cipher alphanumeric code on the security panel beside
the door, a code that was changed every day with a complicated algorithm
that rendered it almost undecipherable.

So, when the members of the security squad felt the armored door opening
at their backs, they were more than surprised and, instinctively, turned
their heads as one to look over their shoulders at the incoming and
unexpected guest.

When they saw his impressive figure coming out of the darkness of the web
of corridors, some of them felt reassured by his presence; whereas others,
seeing only the hard and emotionless expression on his face and the golden
symbol on his forehead, felt that things were getting even worse.

His skin was as dark as ebony and his chest and muscled arms so broad that
the black T-shirt he was wearing seemed to be about to rip apart, so
stretched it was. The expression on his face was more stoic than cold.

His eyes, hard and dark like twin pieces of coal, were fixed on the
opening iris as if the reflecting pool behind it was the most important
thing on this planet he had come to call 'home'.

The only trace of color in his shaven head was the egg-shaped golden
symbol on his forehead, a snake trapped inside an oval identifying him as
Apophis' Jaffa.

Teal'c, the Jaffa, walked calmly between the members of the security
squad, not a single feature of his face moving to show the inner turmoil
he was experiencing.

At the very end of the ramp leading to the Stargate, he straightened up to
his full height, lifted the long spear he carried in his hands and aimed
it at the opening of the portal. He pushed the hidden activation button of
the launcher and the case of beetle-shaped point of the spear opened, a
golden electric glow running all over it.

If this was indeed the beginning of a Goa'uld invasion, he would be the
first one to receive it, and he would show the false gods how expensive a
free Jaffa's life was.

The iris opened completely and, for a second as everybody inside the
Stargate room and the adjacent Command center held their breaths, nothing
happened.

Then, without any further warning a slight wave ran over the whole surface
of the reflecting pool and a figure came through the Stargate. First an
arm, clad in black, followed by a shoulder, a torso and a head and finally
the rest of a humanoid body that, without uttering a word, stood up at the
top of the structure holding up the metallic circle of the portal.

An humanoid body, because with the heavy and large black robe it was
wearing and the way its shape outlined against the reflecting surface of
the vortex, it was impossible to be assured that it was a human being.

Actually, the figure's only visible part were its hands, coming out the
heavy sleeves of the robe. The fingers were too long and thin to be human,
pale to the point of being white and with its joints swollen like wooden
knots. The nails were long and yellowed like old vellum, and they were
broken and splintered but their rough edges seemed sharp enough to cut
glass.

Whatever it was, it wasn't human - but, at least, it wasn't a Goa'uld
either.

The Stargate was finally deactivated, the reflecting pool vanishing in the
air with a hiss of lost energy as, all along the room, the heavy silence
was broken by the noise coming from the automatic weapons being cocked and
their safeties being taken off.

Raising his energy launcher until it was firmly leaned under his arm,
Teal'c spoke to the figure with a firm and loud voice. "You are invading a
military installation. I command you to identify yourself immediately!"

The figure remained speechless but its left arm began to move slowly, so
slowly in fact that no one considered the action a threat, and sunk his
hand into his black robes. Never increasing the speed of its movements,
the figure extracted something from the dark interior of its clothing,
keeping it hidden inside its closed fist.

"Stay alert!" General Hammond warned through the speakers of the
communications system. "Open fire at the first suspicion of an attack!"

"What is that?" Major Carter asked, looking at the figure with half-closed
eyes.

Neither Daniel nor the General was able to answer her, but O'Neill shook
his head with a shocked grimace on his face. "Whoever he is looks
surprisingly like Vincent Price!"

Carter looked at him sideways, but abstained from making any commentary at
his remark.

In the Stargate room, the figure raised its arm until its hand was in
front of its hooded face and opened its long fingers, showing what it kept
in them.

The glass sphere floated up from its hand, stopping a couple of inches
from its open palm and began to glow, the golden shine coming from its
interior twisting and swirling in an endless maelstrom. Then, the cloaked
figure started speaking, its voice male but with a resonant and vibrating
quality that made it completely inhuman, resounding on the concrete walls
of the room.

His voice, like an unsynchronized organ, spoke in an unknown language that
would be difficult to be pronounced by any human throat and that even a
respected linguist like Daniel Jackson had never heard before.

A grimace of pain crossed the Jaffa's cold features and Teal'c doubled
over with a groan, leaning his long spear on the floor not to fall down.
The Goa'uld larvae lurking inside his belly twisted and rolled around,
scared as he had never felt it before.

As the rest of those present began to be mesmerized by the tone and the
voice of the cloaked stranger, inside the darkness of his hood twin red
suns started to glow with an evil shine. Then he brought his left hand up,
grabbing the fabric of the hood and pulled it off his head.

O'Neill's voice was the only sound heard inside the Command Room as all
those present looked at the figure's face with wide open eyes. "Oh, my
God..."

The rotten face of a corpse looked straight at them through the armored
windows, a wide grin full of pointed fangs reaching from ear to ear and
twin reddish glows shining where his non-existent eyes once resided.

His head was missing a good chunk of its upper right skull, displaying the
interior with the sticky remains of its brain, pulsating with a rhythmic
beat as if it was a living heart. Seeing this, Sergeant Halloran could do
nothing more than to cover his mouth with his hand and break his eyes away
from the figure, fighting the surge of nausea that rocked his stomach.

Its voice increased in volume until its speech turned into a screaming
gale, the corpse lifted the glowing sphere over its head, and the shining,
spinning, shape-shifting light inside the orb began to increase in its
intensity until it began to blind them all.

"Fire!" General Hammond shouted through the intercom, feeling unnaturally
more afraid than he had ever felt before. "Open fire, kill that thing!"

Feeling nothing more than relief at their superior's command, the members
of the security squad pulled the triggers of their guns.

The corpse's yelling speech was cut off by a sudden thunderstorm of
gunshots, as the stench and the smoke of the burnt cordite filled the air.
The flashes erupting from the muzzles of the M4 carbines and the MP-5
submachine guns, and the falling of the empty shells coming out the
chambers.

The cloaked corpse shook like a puppet in the middle of a storm under the
endless wave of impacts hitting it. The black robe was torn away by the
projectiles, strips of dark fabric floating like feathers as coagulated
blood and chunks of flesh splattered the walls and the floor around the
body.

Still, as the gunfire finally subdued and the weapons remained silent, the
cloaked corpse remained standing up on his feet, stubbornly refusing to
fall. The face turned slowly from one side to the other, looking at the
soldiers with its glowing red orbs and the too-wide grin stretching out
its lips with a malignity that was palpable.

He, whoever he was, raised the glowing sphere and started to chant again,
even though a large part of his ribcage and lungs were now exposed to the
charged air of the room.

With an unreadable mask of determination hiding his bewildered thoughts,
Teal'c took a step forward towards the zombie-like creature and fired his
energy launcher. The alien weapon recoiled back in his sure grasp as a
bolt of pure golden energy came out of the pole at the speed of light and
hit the creature in the middle of its chest with a explosion of fire,
smoke and flying organic remains.

Launched backwards by the force of the bolt's impact, the creature left a
trail of smoke coming from his burnt chest as it flew through the Stargate
before finally crashing against the wall behind it with a sickening sound
of splintered bones.

The glowing orb, now out of his hand, fell freely to the floor and bounced
inoffensively on the metallic ramp, rolling down it until it made contact
with the point of Teal'c's combat boot and remained quiet.

After giving a short look at the orb and noticing the glow vanishing in
its interior, the Jaffa quickly walked up the ramp, all the time covering
the zombie's slumped figure with his spear.

The creature was quiet, immobile, all life or energy apparently having
abandoned its body. Holding his breath, and never moving a single muscle
of his face, Teal'c advanced towards it with short and slow steps followed
by the small group of guards, the pole of his spear never wavering from
the zombie's head.

He was barely a meter away from the creature when its head jerked up
without any warning, making the few members of the security squad around
him flinch in surprise and tense their fingers over the triggers of their
guns, ready to open fire.

Fixing the red shine of his empty eye-sockets on Teal'c's eyes, the
creature's lips stretched out in a fanged smile. "Jaffa," it intoned with
that inhuman and vibrating voice, "ne jakkar erremus, te herrus."

For the first time in the years they had known him, those who saw Teal'c's
face in that moment, noticed something close to real emotions crossing his
usually controlled features. First, it was fear; then, a hatred and a
loathing as no one of them had witnessed before.

Without uttering a word, doing nothing more than stretch out his thick
lips in a grimace of hatred, the Jaffa fired his weapon, sending a bolt of
energy point-blank into the creature's head. Blasting it into a thousand
fragments of bone and a cloud of gore, which splattered the wall behind
it.

The headless body fell to one side, drawing a reddish arch on the wall and
remained motionless; not even a death rattle shaking it, as Teal'c lowered
his staff weapon and leaned it on the floor, supporting his massive figure
on it.

He felt breathless, and that was something he wasn't accustomed to.

"Clear the way!" General Hammond's voice came from behind the group of
guards crowding around the corpse as he, and the rest of the SG-1 team
behind him, broke through them. "Come on people, that's an order!"

The foursome finally made their way to the Jaffa and the slumped, bloodied
and headless body at his side. And, when they had a real good view of it,
not one of them was able to hold back an expression of disgust and
repugnance.

"I think the question has been already asked," O'Neill said, cleaning his
lips with the back of his hand to erase the taste of nausea that assaulted
his mouth, "but what the hell is that?"

"I do not know, O'Neill," Teal'c said, breaking his dark eyes apart from
the corpse to look at the Colonel. "In all my years serving Apophis, I
have never before seen anything like this."

"You mean nothing like somebody not dying after receiving more than one
hundred gunshots, or nothing like this..." O'Neill struggled to find a
suitable word to describe the headless creature at his feet, "thing?"

The Jaffa looked at him in silence for a brief moment, before answering.
"Both of them."

Sighing, the Colonel turned around and looked over the crowd of security
guards with half-closed eyes. He finally spotted what he was looking for,
the sphere the creature had been holding, lying now forgotten by everybody
at the end of the metallic ramp.

By everybody except the guard standing beside it, who was now kneeling
down to retrieve it.

"Hey!" O'Neill exclaimed, struggling to make his way through the crowd of
soldiers around him. "Don't touch that!"

Making deaf ears at him, the soldier grabbed the sphere with his gloved
hand and stood up.

=There's something strange about him,= O'Neill thought. Maybe the
blankness of his expression or the way his eyes seemed to be lost in the
interior or the orb, or maybe the stiffness of his back when he stood up,
he wasn't sure, but his sixth sense told him there was something wrong
about him.

When he finally was close enough to him, O'Neill read the nametag on his
chest. =Shepard.=

"Airman Shepard! Didn't you hear me?" he called his attention. "I told you
not to touch that thing!"

The young man finally broke his eyes away from the reflecting surface of
the sphere, now completely opaque as if its interior was full of nothing
more than darkness, and looked back at his superior.

"Sir?" he asked, blinking repeatedly. "I didn't... I mean I..." he shook
his head in confusion and offered the orb to O'Neill. "I'm sorry, sir, I
didn't hear you."

Grimly looking at the offered orb, O'Neill gave a forced smile to the
young man and lifted his hands. "Leave it on the floor, Airman. Just leave
it and don't touch it again, we still don't know what that thing can do."

Shrugging, Shepard did as told and left it on the floor. "Looks pretty
inoffensive to me, sir."

"Yeah, well," O'Neill gave him a hard stare, "let's hope it stays like
that, OK?"

The Colonel turned around and, as he indicated a couple of guards more to
help Shepard guarding the orb, walked back to the rest of his team, who
was gathered around the headless corpse laying on the floor.

"Any idea where does this thing came from?" he heard General Hammond
asking.

"I can tell you it's not from Kansas," O'Neill offered, with a slight rise
of his brow.

Teal'c gave him his usual look of perplexity. "Kansas?"

O'Neill nodded seriously. "That's it, Toto."

"I doubt it's of Goa'uld origin, sir. This doesn't look like their style,"
Carter said, as she opened the creature's bloodied robes to have a better
look at his body. "We'll have to do an autopsy, but I don't think we..."

Her voice faded away suddenly, and O'Neill looked at her with a frown.

"Carter?" he inquired gently as he laid a hand on her shoulder, noticing
the sudden stiffness of her back. "What's wrong, Sam?"

She flinched under the unexpected contact of his hand, but couldn't make
herself turn to look at him. Instead it was Daniel, the other one knelt by
the creature's side, who moved himself away so they could have a better
view of the headless zombie.

"We know where this thing came from," he announced with quivering voice,
taking off his glasses to wipe the layer of cold sweat from his forehead.
His pale expression was a ghastly one. "P3X254."

"Oh, holy God," Hammond muttered under his breath.

Under the torn and blood-drenched robe, the creature was wearing an
equally shredded shirt with the usual brown-ochre pattern of the U.S.
Armed Forces for desert camouflage. Some of the darker spots, they
noticed, were in fact dried blood.

And the name-strip sewed at the height of the creature's left breast read
only 'MARSDEN'.



~~~~~~



"You can't actually believe that thing was Steve Marsden!" O'Neill
exclaimed, nervously walking around the large table that occupied the
center of the Briefing Room. "I mean, I knew Marsden and yes, he was a
jerk, but that... that thing was totally hellish!"

Sitting at the head of the table as usual, Hammond gave him a patient
glance before turning his head to Teal'c who, with his back straight as a
board, was sitting beside Daniel at one of the sides of the table.

"Teal'c," the General asked the Jaffa, crossing his hands over the table,
"the creature told you something before dying-"

"He means before you blew his head off," Daniel clarified unnecessarily,
at which Teal'c only nodded in affirmation.

Ignoring the interruption, something he had grown accustomed to within the
past few years, Hammond finished his question. "Anyway, I would like to
know what he told you."

"He spoke in Goa'uld, General," the Jaffa said sternly, after a moment of
silence. "He told me he would see me in Hell. Me... and all my loved
ones."

"He spoke in Goa'uld?" Daniel asked with incredulity.

Teal'c looked at him as if what he had just said was pretty obvious. "Yes,
Daniel Jackson, he used my native tongue."

"But you affirmed he wasn't a Goa'uld," the Egyptologist insisted with a
puzzled stare.

"Effectively, I..." the Jaffa remained suddenly silent and his hard,
indecipherable stare was lost in the void. "...I felt that creature inside
my mind, reading it. I think he... it had just learned the tongue from
me."

Daniel looked at Teal'c with wide-open eyes, before turning to settle them
on O'Neill. The colonel, whose brow was arched to the very limit of its
possibilities, just shrugged and released a groan. "Don't look at me like
that, Daniel, I have even less idea of what he's talking about than you."

The double-door of the room opened and Major Carter entered, passing a
tired hand over her short blonde mane. Following her, the shorter form of
another woman was visible.

She had short brown hair and an easy, smiling, if not tired, expression on
her face. Under a white medical lab coat, she wore the light blue uniform
of the U.S. Air Force.

Dr. Janet Fraiser gave a soft nod as a salute to the gathered men and took
a seat beside General Hammond, who greeted her with a similar gesture.
"What do we have, doctor?"

"Well, sir, we've just finished a preliminary autopsy of the body. It
presented many malformations and certain, ah... excrescencies all along
its backbone and bone joints. And, although we have disposed of the head,
the DNA analysis offers no doubt about it. I'm sorry to say that the body
belonged to Major Marsden."

"Fuck," O'Neill cursed succinctly.

"Watch your language, Colonel," Hammond warned his subordinate without
looking at him.

"Yes, sir," he grunted, letting himself fall heavily on a chair. "It's
just that I don't like seeing my friends turned into nasty things, sir."
Without uttering a word, Teal'c gave a look to him with an eyebrow neatly
raised and O'Neill gave him a doubtful smile. "Present company excluded,
of course."

"There's more, sir," Dr. Fraiser told the General, "all the tests we've
done shows that the death of the body took place at least ten hours ago."

"What?" the commanding officer exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"That it was already dead even before it crossed the Stargate, sir." The
military doctor released a sigh, and shook her head with an expression of
confusion. "Now, don't ask me to explain how that was possible - because I
can't."

"At least that would explain why he wasn't killed by the more than one
hundred bullets that hit him," O'Neill said with admiration, "he was
already dead. Amazing. In a gross way, of course."

Hammond shook his bald head, and closed his eyes for a second. "Anything
else, Dr. Fraiser?"

The military doctor broke her eyes away from Hammond's face, unable to
hold his glare as she played nervously. "Truthfully, sir, yes."

"Oh!" O'Neill exclaimed. "Do you have anything that can top this?"

Fraiser gave him a blank look. "The analysis of the contents of Major
Marsden's stomach, indicates that he had ingested human flesh and blood
recently."

The Colonel blinked, and closed his eyes. "That serves me right for
asking."

"Major Carter?" Hammond asked the blonde woman then. "Do you have anything
to add?"

Carter then produced a small metallic briefcase, and placed it on the
table - opening it so everybody could see what was kept in its interior.
Lying on a cut-off bed of foam rubber, the glass sphere shone under the
illumination of the fluorescent lights.

"Looks like a paperweight," O'Neill observed, making an unimpressed face.

"I've examined this orb with all the instruments I have at my disposal,"
Carter said with a sigh, ignoring Jack's remark. "Spectrographs, X-rays...
everything. I've exposed it to all kinds of radiation: infrared,
ultraviolet, electromagnetic impulses..."

"And?" Hammond arched his reddish brow. "What is it?"

Carter sighed and gave her superior a shy look. "A ball of glass."

After a short but tense silence, in which no one seemed to find the least
trace of levity in Carter's short report, the General sighed and crossed
his hands over the table. "Is that all, Major?"

"Actually, sir, yes," she confirmed. "I've tried to reproduce the glowing
effect we saw happening by the Stargate, but it's been impossible. The orb
has remained inert."

"I may have had more luck in that aspect," Daniel said, gaining
everybody's attention. "But first, I would like to show you one thing. We
taped this in the Stargate room." The Egyptologist took out a pocket-size
recorder from the interior of his jacket and fumbled with the controls for
a brief moment, before managing to activate it.

As Daniel left the recorder on the center of the table, the eyes of the
whole group turned to it and the silent room was filled with the
creature's voice as its chant rose and fell, raising goose bumps on their
skins. Still, now that they thought about it, Major Stephen Marsden's
voice was faintly recognizable in that senseless tirade.

"It's blood-chilling," Carter whispered, when the tape finally reached its
end and Daniel disconnected the recorder. "What is it saying?"

Daniel sighed and shook his head. "Running the risk of following this
morning's humor, I have no idea. It's not Goa'uld, we know that much, and
it is not any language that I know either. And what's stranger, I can't
find any resemblance with any language ever spoken. From, ah, Babylonian
to Greek, or Persian or..."

"We get the point, Daniel," O'Neill cut him off before the Egyptologist
could start an endless rambling. "Why don't you tell us what you have
discovered about the orb?"

"The orb?" Daniel asked with puzzled expression, adjusting his rounded
spectacles on his nose. "Uh, oh yeah!"

He turned around and leaned down beside the table, opening his old and
ragged backpack and taking an ancient-looking book from its interior.
"When I saw it glowing near the Stargate it rang a bell inside my head,
but I couldn't remember what it was about until I tried to discover what
language the, er... creature was speaking in."

"Please, Dr. Jackson," Hammond cut him off, "get to the heart of the
matter."

Flipping through the yellowed pages of the book, Daniel nodded eagerly.
"Yes, yes, of course. The case is that when I finished my doctorate, I was
invited by Oxford University to give a series of lectures for a course on
ancient civilizations they were offering."

O'Neill gave him an exasperated look, and the Egyptologist rushed his
explanation. "There, I met this man, ah, he was also giving some lectures
on ancient folklore. And, in one of them, he talked about this..." he
said, finally finding the page he was looking for and turning the book so
the rest could see the black and white engraving drawn on it.

In it, what appeared to be a group of gypsies were assembled around a
campfire, some of them sitting and others kneeling. All they had in common
were expressions of physical suffering, as if they were making an inhuman
effort.

Between them, a glowing orb, very similar to the one that occupied the
center of the table right then, floated several inches over the crackling
flames of the campfire.

And, above it, a twisted and semi-blurred humanoid figure, barely more
than a naked torso with a bent-down head and twisted muscular arms. Its
hands were clawed, and there were long fangs exposed from under its open
lips.

"They called it an Orb of Thesulah," Daniel said with a low and reverent
voice, while the rest examined the picture closely. "It was supposed to,
ah, attract and retain a... misplaced spirit and store it, till it could
be returned to its earthly shell."

Leaning back on his chair, O'Neill grabbed the small recorder from the
table and started playing with it as he frowned deeply. "So, this Orb
of..."

"Thesulah."

"Whatever," Jack grunted, his eyes still fixed on the recorder, "is
actually what? Magic? Pfft, the only magic balls I know are black, have an
eight drawn on them and if you make a question and shake them, they give
you a vague answer." Fumbling with the controls, the Colonel pushed the
'play' button and Marsden's voice came again from the tiny speaker. "Oh,
damn it."

'...and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.'

"What?" Daniel exclaimed, jumping on him and retrieving the recorder from
his hands. "What have you done?"

"I don't know!" O'Neill exclaimed back, with a shrug and an innocent look.
"I just... touched it!"

The Egyptologist stopped the reproduction and examined the controls with a
frown on his handsome face. "You were just playing it backwards," he
whispered with amazement and then slapped his forehead. "I just can't
believe I didn't think of that! It's in English, but it's spoken
backwards!"

"You mean like in 'The Exorcist'?" Carter asked with a puzzled frown.

"The Exorcist?" Teal'c inquired, with his usual look of perplexity.

O'Neill nodded. "Yes, it was... well, it doesn't matter. Just play it,
Daniel. Let's find what Stevie was telling us."

With sharp nod, the Egyptologist rewound the tape, or fast-forwarded it to
the end, depending on the point of view and played it again. This time,
when it played, Marsden's voice was clearly understandable, but its tone
was even more hair-raising and chilling. It was like a fork scratching the
surface of a china dish.

'Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his
clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.

Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is
called Armageddon.

The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple
came a loud voice from the throne, saying, 'It is done!'

Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a
severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has
been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.

The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations
collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great, and gave her the cup filled
with the wine of the fury of his wrath...'

Marsden's voice, or the one of the creature he had turned into, faded away
and Daniel stopped the recording. For a long minute, no one dared to speak
in the room until, finally, Carter spoke up.

"I've always been more a scientist than a religious woman," she whispered,
not daring to raise her voice a fraction more than was necessary to make
herself be heard, "but isn't that a Biblical quote?"

"Yes, Major, it is," Hammond confirmed, shaking his head. "From the Book
of Revelations, chapter 16, verses 15 to 19. Was Major Marsden a religious
man, Colonel?"

O'Neill shook his head in denial. "Not that I know, sir. His only
religions were the Air Force, the NFL and Baywatch, not necessary in that
order."

Hammond entangled his fingers and leaned his chin in his hands, frowning
and meditating for a brief moment. "What do you think that should be our
next step, Colonel?"

Licking his dry lips, O'Neill released a long breath as he scratched his
forehead pensively. "Truthfully, sir, I don't know what to tell you. My
first impulse is to send a rescue team to P3X254, to see if there are any
more survivors from SG-4. But I'd be lying to you if I said that, in light
of what happened to Major Marsden, I'm dying to be a part of that party."

"Understood, Colonel," the General nodded. "Anyway, I would want to
prepare a contingency plan, in case we decide..."

"I'm afraid that won't be necessary," a voice said from the room's door
and, as one, all those present turned to look at its origin.

Standing under the open frame of the door, a man in his early fifties,
dressed in an immaculate blue uniform with its cap tucked under his right
arm was looking at them with a snide half-grin crossing his lips.

"Mayborne! What a non-pleasure to see you again!" O'Neill greeted the
fellow colonel with a deep expression of loathing. "What brings you here
all the way from Nevada? Nothing good, I guess."

Colonel Mayborne returned his expression of distaste, any resemblance of
humor disappearing from his face. "It's good to see you too, Jack."

The tension between the two men was palpable in the air, along with the
hostility that all the present ones felt towards the man in the blue
uniform.

=It's an understandable reaction,= Hammond thought, considering the number
of times in which this man had been directly responsible for making the
team trip in their job and had put their lives in danger.

But the truth was that, from the smug smirk of superiority of his mouth to
his unfriendly and arrogant personality, there was very little to like in
Colonel Mayborne.

It was different with O'Neill, Hammond also knew that. The rest hated
Mayborne because of the things he had directly done to them, the
betrayals, the lies and the deceit.

O'Neill and Mayborne, besides that, hated each other because they were
opposite poles of the same thing, like positive and negative and both of
them knew it. They wore the same uniform and had sworn loyalty to the same
flag, but they served interests that couldn't be further apart from each
other.

Jack O'Neill was a soldier that used words like honor, loyalty and
courage; Harry Mayborne was an agent of intelligence that only knew of
shadow games, lies and power struggles.

Ignoring O'Neill's hard scornful state, and the ones given to the newcomer
by the rest of his people, General Hammond stood up and waved at the
intelligence official to join them. "Would you care to explain yourself,
Colonel? Why did you say a rescue party won't be necessary?"

Mayborne walked closer to the briefing table but didn't took a seat,
instead, he offered a bundle of official papers to the superior officer.
"This is an official request for you to hand over to me all objects
obtained by the mission sent to P3X254, sir. I'll be taking them with me
on my return to Nellis AFB."

"You can't do that," Major Carter objected, "it's not safe to move the
sphere until we have run all necessary tests on it."

"And we still have to do a complete autopsy of Major Marsden's body," Dr.
Fraiser agreed with her. "The last one wasn't conclusive."

As Hammond examined the papers, Mayborne just gave them a condescending
smile. "You don't have to worry about that; we've imported a group of the
best Navy pathologists from Bethesda Hospital at Maryland, they'll take
care of everything. And Major Carter, I severely doubt that you can do a
better job here than we can at Nellis."

Carter was about to answer him when Hammond cut her off with a hard stare
and a quick shake of his bald head. The blonde officer closed her mouth,
and pinned Mayborne with her intense blue eyes.

"Everything seems to be in order, Colonel. You can take charge of Major
Marsden's remains and the sphere," Hammond said, offering the bundle of
papers back to Mayborne. He grabbed them with a satisfied smile but, when
he tried to take them out of Hammond's hand, the General hardened his
grasp on them, holding onto them.

When Mayborne raised his eyes to the older man's, he couldn't help but
flinch at the hardness shining in them. "I've lost a group of my best men
on this mission, Colonel Mayborne, and if I learn that you knew how
dangerous it was going to be and you did nothing to warn us about it...
you will be very sorry."

With a hard yank, Mayborne finally snatched the papers from Hammond's
hand. "My conscience is clear, sir."

O'Neill snorted, with faked amusement. "Do you even know what that word
means?"

The intelligence officer stabbed him with his eyes, but Jack just gave him
a saccharine sweet smile. Mayborne leaned over the table and retrieved the
small briefcase holding the orb. Closing it, he grinned sideways.

"I guess this is mine. General, I would appreciate it if you could gather
a security squad to escort me to Nellis. I wouldn't like to have any
trouble on my way." Hammond nodded, but said nothing and the Colonel put
on his cap, giving a final smile of superiority to the rest. "Ladies,
gentlemen, it's been a pleasure as always. General."

With a nod, Hammond dismissed him and Mayborne went out of the room,
taking the briefcase in his hand.

"Jerk," O'Neill growled under his breath, when he was completely out of
earshot.

"I second your opinion, sir," Carter whispered with a smile.

Hammond sighed and sat down, crossing his arms over his chest. "I have no
intention of leaving things like this. Dr. Jackson, do you remember the
name of that man? I mean the one that gave that series of conferences, we
could ask his input on this... discreetly, of course."

"Well, I'd have to consult my diary," Daniel murmured, frowning as he
tried to remember. "If I remember correctly he was a curator at the
British Museum, Robert... ah, no!" he snapped his fingers with a smile of
triumph. "Rupert! Rupert Giles!" He shrugged. "I guess I could try to
locate him."

"Do it, then," Hammond nodded and checked his wristwatch, before turning
to the rest. "Meanwhile, we all have duties to attend tomorrow, so I
suggest you have all the rest you can tonight. You're all dismissed."

"Do you know something?" O'Neill whispered to Teal'c, as all stood up and
walked out of the briefing room.

The Jaffa arched his brow coolly at him. "I know many things, O'Neill," he
said succinctly.

Jack sighed, and shook his head. Patting his stomach, the Colonel gave his
friend a look as he grimaced with distaste. "Something inside here is
telling me, that we're not gonna like what is going to come out of all
this."

Teal'c looked at his with confusion on his stone-carved features. "Inside
you? You don't have a Goa'uld as I do, O'Neill - what are you talking
about?"

Rolling his eyes, Jack scratched his head. "I wasn't speaking literally,
Teal'c, I meant my sixth sense."

"Sixth? Humans only have five senses."

Releasing a long and resigned breath, O'Neill shook his head. "Just forget
about it, OK?" he said, turning around and starting to walk along the
narrow hallway towards his small room.

Looking at his back, Teal'c tilted his head slightly to one side and,
without uttering a word or changing his expression in the least, followed
him.



~~~~~~



Barely half an hour later, the small security caravan was finally ready
outside the mountain's installation, and the men composing it were being
given their final instructions.

A group of these men were walking towards the exit of the garage when a
dark figure approached them by their rear. And, without warning, grabbed
the shoulder of the last man in the row. Airman Bobby Sands jumped in
surprise and turned around, raising his weapon ready to open fire.

"Hey, hey, hey!" the figure exclaimed, raising his arms in defeat, "don't
kill me, mister! I'm just a poor, scared old woman!"

Recognizing the voice, and the humorous tone in it, Sands lowered the gun
and released a sigh of relief. "Shepard!" he growled at his old friend.
"You scared the living daylights outta me! What do you want?"

Looking over his comrade's shoulder and checking that they had been left
behind the group and were alone, their figures almost invisible between
two of the largest trucks parked in the garage, Shepard gave Sands a
smile. "I need you to do me a favor."

Sands frowned and rolled his eyes, knowing what would come next. Twenty
bucks, maybe more. Wouldn't Shepard ever learn that he couldn't play
poker, if he always danced on the spot any time he got a good deal?

"Couldn't this wait till later? I got an assignment, and if the Sarge
catches me coming in later than expected, he'll want my ass."

Shepard smiled even more widely. *Too* widely for his friend's liking.
"Actually..."

Moving faster than Sands had thought possible, Shepard grabbed his friend
by the throat and lifted him from the floor, smashing his back against the
near truck. With his windpipe crushed by the mighty strength of his
friend's hands and his eyes wide open in shock, Sands gurgled in pain and
brought his rifle up, hitting him with its muzzle.

The sharp metallic sight of the M-16 opened a short cut on Shepard's
cheek, but the airman ignored the pain caused by it, concentrated only in
increasing the pressure of his hands on his friend's neck until it finally
snapped with a deaf sound of splintered bones.

When released, the lifeless body slid to the floor with its vacant eyes
lost in the void. Shepard took a short look around, checking that nobody
had witnessed what had happened and leaned down, grabbing Sands' corpse by
the chest of his uniform and lifting him effortlessly from the floor.

With a blank expression on his face, as if he wasn't really aware of what
he had done, Shepard dumped his friend's lifeless form in the back of one
of the trucks and hid it under a plastic blanket.

After that, he took Sands' M-16 from the floor, hung it from his shoulder,
checked his appearance on the exterior rear-view mirror of the truck and
smoothed any wrinkle that the struggle may have produced on his uniform.

"Shepard!" a voice said behind him, making him turn around. The company's
sergeant was standing behind him, with a frown on his face. "Have you seen
Sands?"

"Ah, yes sir. He felt suddenly indisposed and went to the infirmary," he
said with a sly smile. "I told him I would do his watch, if you haven't
any objections, sir."

The Sergeant shook his head, and grunted under his breath. "OK, we're
running out of time, so just get in the back of the damn truck. I'll read
the riot act to Sands once we're back. Move out!"

"Sir, yes sir!" the airman saluted, before running out of the garage
towards the short line of vehicles expecting outside. Quickly walking to
the last vehicle, a green-brown camouflaged Humvee, he opened one of the
rear doors and jumped inside.

"Hey, Shepard!" greeted one of the soldiers inside. "What are you doing
here, and where's Sands?"

"Got sick," he said succinctly, "I'm replacing him."

"OK," the soldier said with a twisted smile, "I've never liked that
straight-ass dummy anyway. By the way, you have a cut." Shepard touched
his cheek and brought his fingertips to his eyes, seeing the red blood
staining them. "You should change the blade of your shaving machine more
often, dude."

He gave a small smile to the soldier and, noticing some movement out of
the corner of his eye, he turned his head to look through the window.
Outside, Colonel Mayborne walked out of the garage and towards his
official blue Crown Victoria waiting for him.

Immediately, the small metallic briefcase the officer carried with his
left hand magnetically attracted Shepard's eyes. For a second, the world
vanished around him, and the only things remaining were himself and that
briefcase. Or, more precisely, what was inside it.

Which was chanting to him like a siren.

"Hey, Shepard," the fellow soldier called him. "You seem a little out of
it, are you alright?"

Smiling, and without breaking his eyes apart from the shining surface of
briefcase, Shepard nodded absent-mindedly. "Never been better," he
whispered, bringing his bloodstained fingertips to his lips and licking
them clean.

Nobody saw it but, when the coppery taste of his own blood inflamed his
tastebuds, his eyes flashed with a reddish glow.

"Never better," he repeated, licking his lips.



~~~~~~




To be continued in DR2 - The Cross of Changes, Book IV: Foul Play