It Never Rains....

by Rebecca Ratliff

EMAIL:  rmratliff@adelphia.net

DATE: September 2004

STATUS: Completed

ARCHIVE: If I haven't submitted to your archive, please ask.  (I'll say yes, I just like to know where it is.)

PAIRING: Jack/Sam

CATEGORY: Jackfic cliffhanger war!

RATING: PG-13

WARNING: Language, violence. AU after Endgame.

SPOILERS:  Lots of 'em. Everything up to Endgame.

SEASON/SEQUEL INFO:  Late Season Eight and forward.

SUMMARY: A routine mission turns into a wild rollercoaster ride of high adventure and daring escapes beginning when General O'Neill and SG-1 are kidnapped and turned in for the bounty on their heads.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  This is my entry to the cliffhanger challenge on the Jackfic list.

DISCLAIMER: All Stargate SG-1 characters are the property of Stargate SG-1 Productions (II) Inc., MGM Worldwide Television Productions Inc., Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp and Showtime Networks Inc.

This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. Anybody that you don't recognize is probably mine, so if you borrow them please send me an email to let me know where they are and have them home by midnight. :)

FEEDBACK:  Much appreciated.

General Jack O'Neill opened his eyes slowly.  Man, for a formal diplomatic banquet with only a couple small glasses of wine, he sure had a doozy of a hangover.

As soon as he got a look at his surroundings, the pounding in his head went way down on the priority scale.  The bars on the window were a real good indication that he wasn't in his room back at the hotel.  His jacket and shoulder holster were gone--of course--but other than that he was still in uniform.  It didn't look like he'd been fighting.  He wondered just what he had done to land in jail.

Fighting back an attack of nausea, he looked around the rest of the cell.  He was lying on a bare metal lower bunk in a six by eight cell.  He couldn't hear anyone breathing above him.  There was the one window, and at the foot of the bunk he could see a metal door. The walls were gray plaster.  Across from him were a sink and a toilet in one corner, and small table and chair were bolted to the floor in the other corner.

Nobody was in sight, and it was awfully quiet for a jail.  He stood up.

He had been right, no one else was in the cell.  Jack stood still until the nausea subsided.  The door had a small barred window in it. There was an identical door across the hall, and to his relief, an apparently unharmed Daniel Jackson was on the other side.

"Daniel!  What happened?  Where are Carter and Teal'c?"

Jackson squinted, he didn't have his glasses.  "Jack?  Are you OK?"

"Yeah, yeah!  What the hell's going on?"

"I was hoping you could tell me.  The last thing I remember was saying good night to Prince Havawan, and then I woke up here."

Jack was thinking he was going to strangle Prince Halfwit for drugging them, because that had to be what had happened.

A struggle down the hall drew their attention, but he couldn't see what was going on.  It wasn't long until two guards appeared, burly guys in black uniforms.  One of them had a black eye and the other was walking funny.  They dragged a semi-conscious Col. Carter between them.

"Hey!  What's all this about?  Where are you taking her?"

The guard with the black eye gave him a sour look.  "You'll find out soon enough, and then you'll wish you hadn't."

Carter focused on him with some difficulty.  Their eyes met for a moment before the guards dragged her on out of sight, and momentarily a large metal door closed with a resounding slam.

O'Neill kicked the cell door, which didn't hurt the door and didn't lessen any of his anxiety for Carter.  All it did was aggravate his knee and start it throbbing in time to the hangover he already had. He decided to take the direct approach to information gathering. "Hey!  Who else is in here?"

Teal'c's voice came from somewhere to his left.  "I am here, O'Neill.  ColonelCarter occupied the cell across the hall from me."

No one else spoke up.

"What do these guys want?  Do either of you remember anything happening at the banquet, or after, that would have got us locked up in here?"

"I do not.  As with the two of you, my last clear memory is of bidding farewell to our hosts.  Shortly thereafter I believe that we were loaded into a truck, but that memory is very hazy.  After that, I recall nothing until I heard the altercation when the guards removed ColonelCarter from her cell."

Daniel said, "Jack, I'm pretty sure we didn't do anything at the banquet to set them off.  Maybe we've been kidnapped by a rival political faction or something."

A loud string of invective echoed from somewhere on the other side of the cell block door, Carter cursing someone to keep from screaming in pain.  Immediately all three men started kicking their cell doors, to no effect other than to make a lot of noise.

The cell block door opened, and the guards took Carter back to her cell.  Jack couldn't see what had happened to her.  She was unconscious and her shirt tail had been pulled out of her waistband, but he couldn't see a mark on her.  There were a couple of extra guards this time.

"What did you do to her?"

"Shut up," the nearest guard told him.  It was the one with the black eye.  "Which one do they want next?"

"That one," replied one of his partners, indicating Daniel.

The archaeologist had better sense than to start a fight when he was probably going to need his strength against whatever had happened to Carter.  He went with them peacefully.

Jack stood at the door, expecting to hear Daniel cry out, but there was nothing.  After another ten or fifteen minutes, the guards returned him, unconscious like Carter.

It took all four of them to move Teal'c.  Even though they had him shackled hand and foot, he was still a threat and they knew it.

Daniel came around quickly and hauled himself over to the cell door.

"Danny!  Are you all right?  What did they do to you?"

"God...that hurt!  They shot me with something..."

"Danny!"

"I--I think I'm all right now."

He didn't sound all right.  Obviously he was confused and hurting, Jack didn't think he'd be able to tell him any more.  At least he was on his feet.

Once again, Jack heard the guards coming.  They took Teal'c to his cell, then they stopped at his door and he heard keys jangle.

It didn't take them long to pin him down--he was still drugged and they knew the Tau'ri were dangerous.  But he managed to give that one guard another black eye to match the one he already had, before they got the shackles on him.

O'Neill heard Daniel call out to him, but the guards hustled him down the hall before he could answer.  There was a barred door leading out of the cell-block, which contained only their four cells. Six other cell blocks opened off a central guards' post.  An eighth door opened into a long hallway.  The guards took him past several featureless doors and opened one at the end of the hall.  They wrestled him onto a metal table and attached chains to the restraints he was already wearing.

"What's going on?  Who are you people and what the hell do you want with us?"  Jack demanded.  The situation brought back way too many memories, and he fed the anger to keep the terror at bay.

One of the guards loaded a small device into what looked like a large caliber pistol and yanked his shirt up.  "You're worth a lot of money to the right people, General."

"What's that?"

"Just a little something to make sure you cooperate."

Jack steeled himself as the guard pressed the gun against his side and pulled the trigger.  There was an explosion of searing pain, then he felt something moving inside him.  A moment later, the agony spread through his whole body, and blackness closed over him before he could even scream.

This time consciousness came back slowly.  At first all he could comprehend was a blindingly bright light in his eyes and bone-deep aching everywhere else.  He closed his eyes and this time opened them very carefully. The light was coming through the barred window of his cell.

He lurched to his feet and staggered to the door.  "Sam!  Danny, T!"

Sam called, "We're all here, sir!  How are you doing?"

"Did anybody get the number of that Mack truck?"  He rubbed his eyes.  "How long was I out?"

"Five minutes, tops, after they brought you back here," Daniel replied.

He felt something pull in his side and remembered being shot.  He yanked his shirt up to find a red scar about an inch in diameter, half way between his ribs and his hip bone.  He poked, experimentally.

The wound was apparently fully healed, but that wasn't all.  He could distinctly feel something in there--a hard metallic sphere slightly smaller than the scar--marble-sized or so.  He yelled, "What the hell?!"

Daniel cautioned, "Don't mess with it or it'll go off again!  One of them said it was to make sure we behave."

With some difficulty, Jack dredged up a memory of something similar. "Yeah, they said we were worth a lot of money."

Teal'c observed, "I do not believe that we are still on the same planet as before.  The gravity here seems distinctly lighter."

A moment later, Sam agreed, "He's right!  This star is smaller, more yellow."

Jack leaned against the door as the implications of that sank in. The SGC would be looking for them on PCX-119.  But whoever had kidnapped them had brought them through the stargate to God only knew where.  Unless someone back there talked, nobody would know where to look for them.  They were completely on their own.  And whoever had taken them hostage had stuck something in their guts to make them cooperate.  He figured that was only the beginning if their captors were going to sell them.  The system lords had put a price on their heads years ago.  It looked like someone was trying to collect.

The cell block door opened and an old man gave them each what looked like a big granola bar.  Jack asked, "What is it?"

The old man gave him a pitying look.  "It's your supper, and you'd better not turn your nose up at it, because it's all you'll get until tomorrow evening.  You'll get hungry in here, but you won't starve, not if you eat what you're given."

"Who are these people?"

"Have you ever heard of the Braxians?"

"No, should I have?"

"Not unless you run with dregs like smugglers and slavers, sonny.  I never had until they raided the space station where I was working as a laborer," the old man told him.  "You got the look of soldiers about you.  Normally they don't take your kind alive.  You must have a big bounty on you, is all I can figure."

Jack bit into the granola bar.  It tasted like old shoe leather. Jail food was jail food from one side of the galaxy to the other! "If we're worth so damn much money, you'd think they could feed us something worth eating.  Look, you help us bust out of here, we'll take you with us."

The old man laughed bitterly.  "Everybody's gotta try it for himself.  You ain't goin' anywhere, sonny, not with that beacon in your gut.  It won't kill you, not unless you try something stupid like cutting it out yourself.  But just you step one foot outside the pen, and it'll sure make you wish you were dead!  Even if you could keep movin' anyhow, which you can't, it squawks your location.  You might outrun the guards, but you ain't gonna outrun their radios." The old man got back to work before the guards had the chance to catch him talking to the prisoners.

The door slammed behind him.  Jack was really getting to hate that sound.

He finished his ration and drank tap water from his hands, as they hadn't left him a cup or anything.  The meal, such as it was, had seemed to clear his head somewhat.

The warnings about the implanted beacon notwithstanding, he had to know what they were up against.  He lay down on his bunk and carefully explored around the scar.  It felt like there was something coming out of the metal sphere, a wire maybe?

Then he touched the wrong thing, and it activated.  Instantly he was crushed in the iron grip of intense nerve pain.  He gasped one breath and rode it out.  This time, having pretty much expected it, he didn't quite lose consciousness, but he sure wanted to.  After a long few minutes it started to ease off, letting him breathe again.

The old man was right, they weren't going to get far like that.  He stared up at the underside of the top bunk and tried to figure a way out of this one.

As the effects of the implant slowly dissipated, Jack became aware that Sam and Daniel were calling his name with increasing urgency. He winced and forced himself onto his feet, and then over to the door where Daniel at least could see him.  "Settle down, people.  I'm OK now."

Daniel opened his mouth.  Jack told him, "If you're gonna say 'I told you so,' don't."

"I was going to ask what you found out, since obviously you didn't listen when I did tell you so."

Jack was more than a little worried that he had to make an effort to remember.  Was he confused just because the pain had been so severe, or was it the aftereffects of whatever mickey finn they'd been given? He wouldn't bet against their food or water being drugged to help keep them from trying to escape.  "I could feel something coming out of it, a wire, or a tube maybe?  And there's some kind of button. That was what made it come on."

Sam said, "There are at least two of those wires, sir, one on either side of the button.  I think they deliver electrical shocks to nerve centers to fool the brain into thinking there's a severe burn--but it doesn't stop because there's no actual damage to the nerve endings."

Teal'c said, "The effect seems somewhat similar to that of a Goa'uld pain stick."

Jack speculated, "Sounds like I wasn't the only one dumb enough to mess with it.  What, if you try to get it out, it shorts out or something and you get electrocuted?"

Sam said, "That sounds reasonable.  It wouldn't even have to be a huge charge, if it stopped the heart.  It's probably possible to get them out, but I'd want to see a diagram before I tried messing with them.  I wonder if it would be possible to neutralize the device by draining the power supply somehow."

Jack figured he'd accomplished something positive, anyway.  If Carter was absorbed in figuring out how to get rid of the implant, she wasn't scaring herself sick worrying about what was going to happen to them next.  He could do that perfectly well without any help from the rest of them.

He didn't like their chances at all.  Ba'al was the most powerful among the system lords right now.  If these Braxians intended to sell them to the Goa'uld, he was the most likely one they would deal with. It had been bad enough when he'd been the only one in that bastard's hands.  Having his team there with him would be unimaginably worse. Not only would Ba'al use them against him, each of them had information he would want.  Daniel had been ascended.  Teal'c had a lot of information about the Free Jaffa.  Sam had Jolinar's memories of the Tok'ra.  That damn snake would have a field day.  Jack would have seriously considered that they commit suicide before they could fall into his hands, but he doubted that would be an escape.  There was no way to prevent the Goa'uld from bringing them back with a sarcophagus.

He could admit to himself, if no one else, that he was scared out of his freakin' mind.  

The glare through his window was subsiding quickly as the sun set. Jack checked out the view.  His hopes for a possible escape were dashed, they were several stories up.  His window overlooked a drab prison yard surrounded by a wall.  Even if they could have climbed over it without specialized equipment, there were guard towers, and the guards inside didn't look like they were likely to go to sleep on the job.  And there were still the implants to consider, if they did manage to break out of jail.

Beyond the wall was an open-air marketplace that reminded him of those he'd seen in the Middle East, and on the far side of that was the stargate.  It activated as he watched, and a lot of people came through, but they were too far away for him to make out details with the sun behind them.  Anyway, getting to the gate without being spotted would be difficult even at night.  If they got that far, there were more people standing around the DHD who were probably armed guards.

There was no glass in the window.  The cell started to get cold as the sun dropped below the horizon.  Jack resigned himself to a miserable night, and hoped against hope that things weren't going to get a whole lot worse in the morning.

A commotion out by the guard station woke Jack before dawn.  The guards came in and got them, checking their shackles with practiced efficiency.  They were lined up chain-gang style.  When Jack balked at the pushing and shoving, one of them aimed a hand-held gadget that looked a lot like his TV remote at him, and he almost doubled up around a jolt from the implant.  It wasn't the crippling, overwhelming pain from last night.  This time it just knocked all the wind out of him and reminded him that he'd better not cause trouble. He settled down, but silently vowed that one of these days he was going to come back here with plenty of C4 and cause these people more trouble than they'd ever seen.

Something else soaked in.  If they were going to be sold, they'd have to be taken out of the jail without the implants knocking them flat. Something had to make that possible, and that remote control looked like a real good candidate.  Any escape plan was going to have to include liberating that doohickey.

His worst nightmares came true when a dozen of Ba'al's Jaffa trooped in to take custody of them.

Jack was at the head of the line.  Ba'al's first prime, Tar'ac was a short, dark-haired guy with squinty, close-set eyes who reminded Jack of a cross between a pig and a fire hydrant.  He rattled the chains between Jack and Teal'c with the business end of his staff weapon and grinned.  "SG-1.  The Braxians have earned their gold today."

Jack wisecracked,  "Hey, Tar-ass, this is a surprise.  You're still alive."

"And you are just as insolent as ever.  My lord will be most pleased to see you again."

Jack renewed a promise he'd made a couple of years ago, that he was going to be the last thing Ba'al ever saw.  The galaxy would be a much nicer place with that snake out of it.  "Oh, yeah, I'm sure he can't wait to lose another round."

"It will be interesting to see how much of that fire remains a few days from now.  Move."

They were marched down a long staircase and out of the lock-up. Jack felt a twinge from the thing in his guts as he stepped across the threshold, but nothing worse.  His guess about the remote control was looking more and more likely all the time.

They passed between rows of traders' stalls on their way to the stargate.  The crowd seemed amused by their predicament, if they weren't annoyed at having to move out of the way.  Jack didn't see a single sympathetic face. The smell of fresh-baked bread and roasting meat reminded him that he hadn't had anything to eat since the day before.

They were forced through the stargate at staff point.  Jack stumbled coming out the other side, tripped up by his ankle chains, but he caught himself as quick as he could to avoid dragging the others down with him. There were four wide stone steps down onto the red sands of a desert world that baked under twin suns.  

The stargate opened into a walled compound crawling with heavily armed Jaffa.  Once they were recognized, a huge set of heavy doors creaked open.  Whitewashed adobe buildings with flat roofs and tall, swaying palm trees lined both sides of a wide avenue.  Their destination was a large domed building at the other end of the avenue, Ba'al's palace and temple.  From the intel he'd seen, Jack was fairly sure they were on Ba'al's throne world, Nippur.

There could be no attempted rescue here, either through the stargate or by ship.  Jack didn't see anything over the gates that looked like it might say "Abandon all hope."  Apparently Ba'al had never read Dante.  Not that Jack would ever admit having read it himself.

As they approached Ba'al's temple, the wind changed, carrying the aromas of incense and burnt meat, as well as another scent they all knew too well--death and decay.

A circle of stakes surrounded the temple.  On each of them, a body was impaled.

Some of them were still moving.

Maybe Ba'al had read Dante after all.

The corridors of Ba'al's palace were a cool, dimly lit contrast from the midday heat outside.  Jack and SG-1 were taken past the temple area into a large hall, quite similar to those they had seen in the domains of other system lords, but the garish decorations had been toned down quite a bit. The walls were the same beige stucco that Jack had seen before, decorated by black wall hangings with Ba'al's sigil in blood red. Between the hangings were wall sconces whose light reflected off a weapons collection representing the many diverse worlds where Ba'al reigned.  The whole effect radiated restrained power.

Ba'al watched from his throne as his Jaffa brought his prizes forward.  Jack's features were an expressionless mask.  He knew that his old adversary would exploit the slightest weakness.  Without looking around, Jack knew the others followed suit.  He never took his eyes off Ba'al, and the Goa'uld spared little attention for the rest of SG-1.

Tar'ac knelt before Ba'al, rising only when granted permission to do so.  "My lord."  He turned the remote control gadget over to the Goa'uld, who studied it briefly.

When he looked up, there was a gleam of anticipation in his dark eyes that sent an icy chill down Jack's spine.  This was personal.

"Take them away.  I'll have time for them this evening."

The Jaffa marched them down a stone staircase and opened a heavy door.  There was a circular chamber inside and they were apparently near the top of it.  More stairs spiraled down, clinging to the ancient stones like moss.  There was flickering light from below, and Jack could hear distant screaming.

Without warning, Tar'ac gave him a shove over the side of the landing.  For a moment, Teal'c braced and took his weight on the chains.  Before Ba'al's Jaffa shoved him over the side as well, taking Daniel and Sam over with them, Jack caught Tar'ac by the ankle and yanked him down too.  Jack had an impression of falling past torches in wrought iron holders on the wall, then the bloodstained stone floor rushed up at him and there was a brief moment of crushing agony before everything went black.

The next thing he knew, he was hanging in chains.  It took his vision a moment to clear, and before it really had, he felt the full force of a pain stick.  In his disorientation, there was nothing but sheer animal survival.  The device was withdrawn just before he could slip back into unconsciousness.  He gasped for breath and focused on Tar'ac, who must have just come back from the sarcophagus, and looked anything but pleased with him.  Several rips in his uniform suggested that he'd made a really bad landing.  There was a lesson in that--never count Jack O'Neill out until you're sure he's dead--but it didn't look like the Jaffa had learned it yet.  A small, cold smile didn't quite reach Jack's eyes.  Tar'ac took an involuntary step backwards, and covered the reaction by handing the pain stick off to a nearby underling and leaving in search of a fresh uniform.

That gave Jack a chance to take in his surroundings.  Teal'c was hanging a few feet away from him, and Daniel's broken body still lay where he had fallen.  It was a good thirty meters down the stair well.  Even though he had known what he was going to see, the spectacle of his best friend's bloody corpse still hit him like a gut punch.  Sam wasn't there--it was her turn in the sarcophagus, most likely.

Teal'c had watched the whole thing with his usual impassive calm. He understood very well that the last thing Jack needed was for Teal'c to let this crowd know he could be moved by his Tau'ri friend's suffering.  That was something they would all have to worry about, that their very concern for each other could make things even worse.

Hanging like this was painful all by itself, and it was difficult to breathe.  Jack knew if they were left here long enough, they'd suffocate.  Not that it mattered, as long as Ba'al had that damned sarcophagus.

They returned Carter to the cell and chained her to the wall to his left, just out of reach, then took Daniel away.  After checking to be sure their bonds were secure, the Jaffa went off to supper.

Carter's eyes met his.  "Nice boring diplomatic thing, right, sir?"

"Yeah, I should've known that was too good to be true," he replied.

"Where's Daniel?"  She asked.

"Sarcophagus."

"Oh.  Right."

Too much talking wasn't going to help.  They were both out of breath after that short conversation.  Considering that whatever they said would probably be overheard, that was probably for the best.

A guttering torch marked the passing minutes.  Jack knew there wasn't much time.  Until--he refused to think unless--their chance came, the best he could hope for was to keep Ba'al's attention focused on him instead of his kids.  He wasn't one to pray for himself.  After Charlie, he'd always figured nobody would be listening anyhow.  But he prayed for the courage and the strength to protect them.

It was weird how time seemed to pass at different rates.  Summer afternoons on the lake disappeared in a flash.  Team nights were over almost before they began.  Reports--reading or writing them--dragged by.  Days spent stuck in the infirmary staring at the ceiling seemed not to move along at all.  Hanging on this cold, damp stone wall like that guy in the Wizard of Id was an order of magnitude slower than that.  Jack tried to make good use of the time to prepare himself mentally for what he knew was coming.  He envied Teal'c's ability to slip into kel-no-reem under just about any circumstances, making the most of the calm before the storm.

All three of them looked up when they heard the approach of booted feet.  Two Jaffa appeared through a door opening from the stairwell chamber into whatever further rooms and corridors were on this level. They half-dragged a semi-conscious Daniel between them.  His glasses were missing, and Jack found himself thankful for that, even if it would make their eventual escape more difficult.  In the meanwhile, Daniel would be spared seeing the details of what was happening to the rest of them.

Daniel was in no condition to object as the Jaffa manacled him on the other side of Carter.  Once they had finished with that, they didn't stay long.  Daniel said, "Wow, that first step was a long one."

Carter said, "What--they threw us down the stairwell?  Was that what happened?"

"It was," Teal'c replied.  "O'Neill saw to it that Tar'ac joined us," he added, sounding quite satisfied with that.

Sam grinned momentarily.  In this hellish place, they would take their victories where they could find them.  She struggled against her chains for a moment, trying to breathe more easily, but she soon concluded that there was nothing she could do about that.

They heard more people coming down the stairs, talking and laughing. Jack recognized Ba'al's voice among them and fought down an unreasoning panic.

Teal'c steadied him with one quiet comment.  "We have all been here before, alone.  To freedom or to Kheb, this time we go together."

Jack nodded.  Teal'c was right.  Together they were stronger than any of them could be alone.  Ba'al could use them against one another, but they could draw strength from each other as well.  There was always a choice between hope and despair.  He chose hope.

If Ba'al had expected to find a ragged bunch of terrified hostages, he was sadly disappointed.  Teal'c was the picture of Jaffa stoicism. Carter looked at him like he'd crawled out from under a rock.  Daniel was all calm serenity.  And O'Neill could have been thinking anything behind that cold, dead-eyed stare.  He had seen defiance before, but rarely in anyone who had dared to defy him previously.

None of them would break until he turned them against one another. He opened a cabinet to reveal a selection of knives and bottles and other things probably better left uninventoried.  He gave them plenty of time to appreciate the contents, then returned to his captives, inspecting each of them in turn, beginning with Teal'c.  "The infamous Shol'va. You must be at peace with yourself.  You have buried your masters.  Your people are as free as any other in the galaxy.  Yet, here you are--if this is a hero's lot, it should discourage heroism."

"I do not expect kindness of destiny, Ba'al.  If I pay the price now for the things that I have done while I served false gods, then I carry that much less with me into the afterlife.  Everything balances at the last."

"Ever the warrior."

"So I would hope."

"O'Neill.  General now, is it.  Perhaps I should be thanking you. You simplified things for me considerably when you eliminated Anubis. Now little more than the remnants of Yu and Bastet's fleets stand between me and my final victory."

"Yeah, right."

The Goa'uld moved on to Carter.  "Host of Jolinar of Malkshur. Daughter to the host of the vaunted Selmac.  Hero of the Tau'ri in your own right.  I hardly know where to begin with you."

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Daniel Jackson, the failed Ascended.  What wisdom from the world beyond has led you here to face the judgment of a god?"

Daniel replied, "You are a nothing more than a parasite riding around in the body of a slave.  You're no more a god than a tick or a louse is."

"Such pride and fire."  Ba'al turned to O'Neill again.  "Because I do owe you something for the defeat of Anubis, I will allow you to choose.  With which one of your people here shall I begin?"

Jack somehow managed not to react to that.  Ba'al wanted him to decide which of his friends was the first to be tortured?  He refused to play that game, to let the Goa'uld drive a wedge between them that easily.  "Uhh--like it matters?  Does anyone have a particular preference who goes first?"

All three of them caught on immediately.

"Not me," Daniel said.

"Me neither," said Carter.

"Nor I," Teal'c contributed.

Daniel said, "Well, we could draw straws, but it looks like I'm out of straws."

"That is most inconvenient, DanielJackson."

Carter said, "Hell, let him pick, it's his party."

Ba'al examined the Braxian remote device.  "Perhaps I should simply begin with all of you.  This is interesting technology, after all."

They had only a split second to prepare before the nearly-forgotten implants activated.  Carter had compared it to burns, and Teal'c thought it was more like a pain stick.  All Jack knew was that it hurt like a son of a bitch.  Wave after wave of blinding pain.  He didn't know if the others were screaming, could barely hear his own cries over the rush of blood in his ears.  He rode it out, one ragged breath at a time, and eventually it subsided to a point that he was aware of his surroundings again.

Jack knew if he let himself just collapse in his chains, he'd probably black out, just as Sam and Danny already had.  It was a real temptation, but he decided there was too much chance Ba'al might just let him suffocate.  He was determined to keep himself alive and coherent as long as he could.  He didn't know how many exposures to a sarcophagus in a short time would lead to permanent mental effects, he didn't know how cumulative it was from the last time he'd been addicted to the damn thing, and they'd already chalked up one.

Ba'al nodded to one of his Jaffa, who threw cold water on Daniel and Sam to wake them up.  Jack figured out one thing right away--anything bad enough to really get to him and Teal'c would be severe enough to knock the two of them out almost immediately.  If Ba'al turned it down so they would stay conscious longer, then he and Teal'c would be able to get through it--well, not easily, but successfully anyhow.

Sam wakened with a bitten-off cry that went right through Jack.  He desperately concealed all reaction.  If Ba'al figured out that she meant anything else to him besides any other officer under his command, it would single her out for special treatment.  There was no way he was going to be responsible for that.

Jack hadn't thought of one thing.  When Ba'al set the levels for Daniel and Carter, it wasn't bad enough to block out awareness.  He could hear them screaming.  Nothing Ba'al did to him personally was as bad as that.  He didn't dare allow himself to react in the slightest.

More people coming down the stairs distracted Ba'al for a few precious minutes.  It was a dark haired woman with a couple of female Jaffa attendants.

Ba'al smiled and extended his hand to her.  "What brings you down here, my queen?"

"Forgive my curiosity, Lord Ba'al.  I wished to see these outlaws for myself.  They hardly seem the menace that rumor would describe, do they?"

"Appearances can be deceiving, Astarte.  Remember, they have killed many of our more careless brothers and sisters, including Ra himself."

"Such weak, pathetic creatures to have caused so much upheaval."

Ba'al gave her a tolerant look.  "Much of their success has been due to luck, I admit, but they do have a certain cunning about them."

Astarte studied them.  Jack met her gaze, and was startled to see a quickly-disguised flash of compassion there.  Could Astarte be as much a prisoner here as they were?

She asked in a low, seductive tone, "Will you be occupied with them all evening, my love?"

He kissed her small delicate hand.  "Perhaps not."

She bowed, then she and her handmaidens departed.  Not long afterwards, Ba'al ordered Tar'ac to put them into a cell for the night, and followed her up the stairs.

When Tar'ac released Jack's shackles, any idea he'd had about attacking the Jaffa went right out the window when his legs refused to hold him up.  He couldn't do anything about being roughly dragged down a corridor and thrown into a cell.  He landed on the floor and the others were tossed unceremoniously inside as well.  At least here the gravity didn't change directions like the last place he'd been.

The pain receded somewhat, but didn't stop.  Jack saw Tar'ac place the remote device in a niche in the corridor wall opposite the cell door. "Sleep well," he taunted.

Jack's reply was a universal one-finger salute that the Jaffa seemed to understand about as well as anybody else in the galaxy.  He had the inane thought that some caveman must have invented flying the bird.  Tar'ac only laughed and left them there.  As long as there was a barred door between them he wasn't worried.  Jack decided that the next time he killed that Jaffa, the SOB would stay dead.

Daniel asked, "Am I imagining things or--"

Jack guessed what he was going to say and butted in, "The walls probably have ears, Danny."  If Astarte had really distracted Ba'al on purpose, he wasn't going to turn around and pay her back by speculating about it where their comments would get back to the system lord.

"Oh.  Yeah."

Jack knew that queen Goa'uld traditionally kept a harem of male slaves who were drugged with her nishta to be totally devoted to her, using their DNA to make their larvae more readily able to blend with humans.  He had the dreadful thought that when Ba'al was done with them, he and Daniel could end up in her seraglio.  And that led him to some very unwelcome speculation about Sam and Teal'c's eventual fate.

After lying where they had fallen for ten or fifteen minutes, familiarity with the constant pain bred contempt enough that they took an interest in their cell.  The walls were roughly hewn stone blocks and the floor was paved with flagstones, just like the torture chamber at the foot of the stairs.  There was no furniture.  Water ran continuously from a spout into a simple grate-covered hole in the floor, which served as a toilet.  The only light was from a glowing crystal fixture in the corridor outside.  It was cold and damp.

They weren't the only prisoners.  From further down the hall they could hear the piteous cries of other inmates.  It sounded less like a prison than a nineteenth-century madhouse.

Jack's first interest was the barred wall facing the corridor.  The bars were solid iron as thick as his wrist, firmly socketed into the floor and ceiling. The door hinges and the lock were cast iron as well. Not even Teal'c would be able to break them.  He didn't have anything to use as a lock pick, but if he happened onto something like that, it did look like it might be possible to open it.

The remote control was well out of reach--the hallway was about five feet across, and he had nothing to throw to knock it closer. Reaching for it would likely attract the attention of a pair of guards stationed a short way down the hall.  He wanted a better chance of success before he tried that.

Teal'c tried the water first, and when it tasted all right and didn't immediately make him sick, he insisted that the Tau'ri drink as well.  Sam helped Daniel to his feet.  She studied the filth-encrusted grate over the hole, but quickly dismissed any hope of escaping through the sewers.  The hole wasn't big enough for her, much less any of the men.

Once they had all drunk enough water to stave off dehydration, they huddled together for shared warmth.

Jack thought the pain and fear would keep them all awake, but exhaustion won out as soon as they stretched out on the floor.  Even Teal'c slept rather than meditating.  They got a couple of hours' rest before a Jaffa making the rounds of the cells woke them.  When he passed by with no more interest than making sure the cell door was secure, Daniel went right back to sleep.  Jack was thankful that the archaeologist was so hard to wake up.  It was the best thing for him right now.

Teal'c sat up cross-legged and soon put himself into as deep a kel-no-reem as he could manage without a symbiote.  That was more than enough to block his perception of the pain from his implant and allow him to rest.

Sam shifted positions restlessly, trying to find one that hurt less. Jack wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold her close, as much for comfort as to give it.  He didn't want the Jaffa to see that.  Silently, he closed his hand over hers.  After a startled moment, she laced her fingers with his.

Jack felt guilty for enjoying that simple contact so much.  She wasn't his, never had been anywhere but his dreams.  But even if she was going to be Pete Shanahan's wife, between the two of them there would never be any such thing as "just" friends.  Whatever this devoted platonic relationship was, it wasn't "just" anything.  It was hope in the midst of crushing despair--light in the deepest darkness.

Neither of them got back to sleep after that--every sound startled them wide awake, as they expected Ba'al's goon squad to come for them any minute.  But they did get a few more hours' much needed rest, as morning drew ever nearer.

A few hours later the dungeon started to awaken.  Jack regretfully woke Daniel so that he could get some water, and they took turns in the corner.  No food was forthcoming, and they hadn't eaten anything since that granola bar that the Braxians had given them.  He didn't expect anything.  Hunger was just one more thing that sapped a prisoner's resistance.  He dismissed that.  Hunger was the least of their worries.

Moving around made the pain worse.  Jack sat down on the floor and stared at the remote, taunting them from its perch between two stones, safely across the corridor from him.

Fifteen minutes later, the Jaffa came after them.  They did exactly what Jack had been expecting, turned the implants up all the way to incapacitate them before they opened the cell.

They were taken to a different room this time, strapped down on slanted metal tables rather than hanging from the wall.  The tables were arranged in a circle so that they could all see each other. There was a thing hanging from the ceiling that reminded him of a video camera on a swivel.

Once the Jaffa had checked to be sure they weren't going to be able to wriggle out of their bonds, Tar'ac turned off the remote and set it on a shelf near the door.  Then they were left alone to wonder what was going to happen next.

The doohickey came on, emitting a beam of the same yellow glow that he associated with a pain stick.  Instead of radiating outward from the spot the pain stick touched, this hit him everywhere at once.  He bucked against his restraints once, then regained enough control to look around and see how everyone else was doing.  He was the only one hit, while the others had to just watch.

He noticed something else.  There was a little red button near everyone's right hand.  He figured if he pushed the button, the device would pick a new target.  Well, that was a no-brainer.  He made sure his hand was well clear of it so that if he clenched his fist he wouldn't hit it by accident.

He told himself this wasn't the worst he'd ever been through, and settled in for the duration.  He figured he could shield SG-1 right up until one of them noticed the buttons and put two and two together.

Ba'al hadn't even started questioning them yet.  They still had plenty of fight in them.  Right now if he asked them anything, they'd just come up with some inventive new way to insult his mother.  The Goa'uld was trying to wear them down as well as play them off against one another.  Jack doubted that he was even watching.  He knew it would take a while.

It didn't take long for Sam to spot the buttons, and when she did, she acted without hesitation.  Daniel swore reflexively as the beam of light swept over him on its way to focus on her, then he and Teal'c figured it out as well, and both of them had the same idea at once, which made the device spin around a couple of times.  That was definitely no fun for anybody.

"Hold it!" Jack ordered.  "It's the worst when it first starts. We'll trade off every so often."

Daniel had ended up with the hot potato this time.  He didn't even bother complaining about it.  Stubborn always had been Danny's middle name, but even beyond that, Jack understood why he didn't scare easily.  Not too many people set 10 on the scale equal to radiation sickness.  Jack watched him close his eyes, take a couple deep breaths and relax into it.

Ba'al's reaction was what worried Jack the most.  This was bad enough, but he knew from experience it wasn't anywhere nearly the worst they were up against.  The Goa'uld's goal was to drive them apart.  This was having exactly the opposite effect.  It wouldn't take him too long to move on to something else and pull out the knives and acid.

A few minutes later, though, Jack realized he'd been missing some really important information when he made that assessment.  The back of his hand started prickling and itching.  When he twisted his wrist around to scratch it on the strap, he felt something pop and tear.  A fierce stinging began as wetness ran down his arm.  He looked around to see what the hell was going on.  He'd burst a blister the size of a quarter and now most of it was a raw open sore.  Within a couple of minutes he was blind and blistered from head to toe.  And there was nothing, nothing at all he could do to spare the rest the same thing.

Several hours passed.  Jack felt so alone in his blindness, even though he knew everyone was still there.  Nobody wanted to talk with Ba'al or his minions listening, so he only knew his friends were still alive when one of them cried out.  Every small movement burst blisters, making things worse, but he didn't have the control to lie completely still.  The fluid soaked into his clothes, wicking the heat away from his body until hypothermia set in.

The device clicked off and keys jangled in the lock. He could hear the Jaffa unlocking Daniel's restraints.  His first thought was that Daniel must have died, but then he heard the archaeologist cursing them in his fluent, Egyptian-accented Arabic.  Then they got around to Jack and he figured out why Daniel had been swearing--their rough handling skinned his arms raw.  They were all put back into the cell. At least Jack thought it was the same one.  At the last minute Tar'ac shoved him, and the pain when he hit the floor nearly caused him to black out.

The door locked and everything went quiet.

"Guys?  Where are you?"

They all spoke up, and Jack commented, "Jeez, you people sound awful!"

Daniel said, "You're not exactly a meadowlark yourself, Jack."

Jack carefully got to his feet and homed in on the dripping water. It hurt like hell to move, but he was so thirsty it was worth it.  He found a clear spot on the floor and more or less collapsed.  He wondered how much of a rest they'd get and what Ba'al was going to do next.  So not a good idea to think about that.

It must be night again, anyhow things got pretty quiet.  Then he heard something interesting, two zat blasts and two muffled thuds, followed by four more zat shots in quick succession.

"My Lady, we must hurry!"  Female Jaffa.

"I believe that they are this way."  Astarte?  Jack wished he could see what was happening.

"Lady, they are here!  Where are the keys?"

"I don't know, stand clear."

There was a sharp crack that sounded like a pistol shot in the quiet night.  Astarte must have used her ribbon device to break the lock. She said urgently to her Jaffa, "Secure the ring room.  I'll bring them."

"Yes, my lady."

Astarte gasped when she got a look at them.  "I don't think they can walk--"

Jack told her, "If we're leaving, we can walk."

Astarte said, "Grant me and my women sanctuary from Ba'al and I will get you out of here!"

"Lady, you've got yourself a deal."  He didn't trust her any further than he could throw her, and right now he doubted he could lift her--but anything had to be better than here!  He forced himself to stand and felt along the wall until his hand contacted the remote.  He put it securely into his pocket.  "We're not gonna get far like this."

"There is a ring portal not far from here.  Are all of you blind?"

No one contradicted her, so Jack had to assume the answer was yes.

"I have a sarcophagus, if we can but ring to my ship."

The Jaffa went first, and presently one of them returned to report that the ring room was clear.  She helped Astarte guide them to the rings, a terrifying journey into an unknown darkness with benefactors whose motives were anything but certain.

The two Jaffa went, and Astarte got them onto the platform.  They had no more materialized when her ladies-in-waiting rushed them out of the way so that Astarte could ring up.

Takeoff was a very hurried affair, and not especially a smooth one. Neither of the Jaffa women were trained pilots, and while Astarte was marginally more competent, she was on the edge of panic.  "My lady, Varga is tracking us!"

"The cloaking device is on, Li'ac!"

"I know, but look--"

Jack realized how they were being followed.  "Before the Braxians sold us to Ba'al, they implanted us with some kind of doohickeys. You're going to have to get them out and zat them."

"We must do something quickly," Li'ac said.  "We cannot outrun Varga."

Varga was Ba'al's flagship, the pride of his fleet.  Not much could outrun her.  Jack said, "Give me a knife."

Astarte closed his hand around the hilt of her own jeweled dagger. Before he had time to lose his nerve, he pulled his shirt out of the way and cut down to the implant.  Blood-slick fingers slipped--then it activated and he cursed, staggered, nearly fell.

Li'ac juked wildly to avoid fire from the pursuing hat'ak.  Just one hit and they would be vaporized.

There wasn't time to screw around--he probed the shallow cut again, this time got hold of the implant and pulled hard, and that was the last he knew about their great escape.

Jack woke up to bright white light and his first reaction was sheer panic.  He would never be able to wake up in a sarcophagus without being overcome by unreasoning terror.  But his second reaction was that he could SEE it, and that was a mark in the good column.

The lid didn't open.  And he was lying at some kind of weird angle.

The lid still didn't open.  Panic took over again and he beat on it and yelled.

Someone was answering, but he couldn't understand what they were saying.  Then the whole sarcophagus moved and landed with a tremendous jolt.

That jarred the lid mechanism free.  He was out of there like a shot as soon as it opened.

He stared around in confusion at his weird surroundings, then realized that the tel'tac was canted over about ten degrees left. Li'ac brought Astarte's limp body over to the sarcophagus and tenderly placed her inside.  She fell to her knees in relief when it activated.

"Li'ac?  We crashed?"

She nodded.  "Varga struck us a glancing hit just as we escaped into hyperspace.  There was a cascading failure in the drive system. I do not know where we came out or what planet this is--or how we did not crash and explode upon landing.  I alone survived the impact--though your friends were already dead from having removed those tracking devices."

"Did you get a chance to zat them?"

The Jaffa shook her head.  "My Lady was afraid to fire the zat'nik'tel and possibly further damage the craft.  She jettisoned them out the disposal chute.  They are somewhere in hyperspace."

Jack looked around.  The wreck didn't seem to be in any immediate danger of catching fire, but he could see right away that it would never fly again.  "Is there power to anything but the sarcophagus?"

"There were sparks, and I know nothing of repairing such things.  I pulled the main circuit breakers.  The sarcophagus has its own source of energy."

Jack assured her, "You did good.  Where's your partner?"

"She is still at the pel'tac.  The hatch is jammed.  I have not yet had time to attend to her properly."

He went forward and shoved at the hatch to the cockpit.  It really was stuck, warped from the landing, but he put his back into it and it finally opened enough for him to squeeze through.  He jammed it open with a piece of debris so they wouldn't have to keep fighting with it.  Li'ac's friend was in the co-pilot's seat.  A fragment of the view screen frame had cut her throat.

Jack backed out quick.  "Where the hell is her symbiote?"

Li'ac said, "It died with her.  I would not have allowed it to take a host in any case.  It is young, and will sustain Risha for several years yet."

Jack looked back at the sarcophagus and got himself under control. "Do you know if this planet has a stargate?"  It was the middle of the night.  There was little to see but the silhouettes of trees and two big full moons hanging far lower in the sky than Earth's moon.

"I know nothing of it, except that it apparently will sustain our lives."

"First things first."  He helped Li'ac get Risha out of the seat. She had  respectfully covered Sam, Daniel and Teal'c with blankets from an opened locker.  Jack got another one for Risha.

After that there was nothing to do but wait while the sarcophagus did its work and returned their friends to them.  Time enough in the morning to find out where they'd ended up.

Jack looked around at the wreck of the once-opulent royal barge. "How are we doing for supplies?"

Li'ac said, "The lockers should be fully stocked, but I do not know what has survived the crash.  Let us see."  While Jack opened the storage compartments that she identified as holding food and water supplies, she recovered Risha's and her staff weapons, and found them both in working order.  As far as weapons went, they also had three zats and Astarte's ribbon device.

Jack found that they had food supplies that would last for several weeks, if they were careful.  Most of the water was gone, but there was a distillation/purification unit that worked.  It looked like a lot of things could be salvaged.  Carter would be able to tell them more about that.

Astarte came out of the sarcophagus completely disoriented and terrified.  Jack and Li'ac were forced to restrain her for her own safety, no easy thing against a panicked Goa'uld.  When they finally got through to her that she had been killed by the impact of the crash, that Ba'al hadn't directly done anything to her this time and that they had safely eluded their pursuers, she cried in Li'ac's arms until she finally fell into a healing sleep.

"Is she all right?"

"Hashak!  She is anything but all right!  Do you think Ba'al treated his queen with anything resembling kindness?  She was as much a slave as any of the rest of us!  Yet I cannot count the many times I have seen her draw his wrath upon herself, or take him to her couch, just as she did to spare you before.  If I ever get the chance, I swear I will rip that monster out of his host and feed him his own tail!  And OF COURSE I know that he is no true god--but this is the first opportunity I have had to do anything about it."  Li'ac dashed angry tears from her eyes.

Jack believed her.  "For what it's worth, he'll have to come through me to take any of you back," he promised.

"Don't worry about it, Li'ac.  You're entitled to blow off a little steam.  Let's get someone else into that thing."

By the time the local sun came up, everyone had got their turn in the sarcophagus.  Jack pried the main hatch open and found it six feet in the air.

A long trail of broken trees marked their trajectory.  In the light of day, Jack could see where they had impacted the ground and rolled several times before they came to rest on a grassy hillside.  There was a stream at the bottom of the hill, and he could hear a lot of birds and small animals in the surrounding forest.

Astarte looked out the hatch and drew her first breath of fresh air as a free woman.  "We made it.  I don't believe it!  By the eternal, we made it!"

Sam grinned.  "We sure did."

Jack said, "I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade here, but does anybody have a clue where the hell we are?"

Astarte said, "I had set a course for Lendas, my host's home world. It has been deserted for many hundreds of years now, but there is a stargate.  I do not believe we got that far."

"Can you tell if there's a stargate here?"

"If there is, it is too far away."

Sam said, "The ship's sensors may have recorded something.  I'll see what I can recover."

Daniel located a cargo net and they rigged it in the door.

Teal'c asked, "Astarte, do you have any of our belongings?"

She shook her head. "I brought along clothing for you, but I have no idea what happened to your own things."

"There is the matter of my tretonin."

Jack couldn't believe he had forgotten all about that.

Astarte asked, "Would be possible for you to accept a prim'ta?"

"I do not know."

"A newborn could do little more than give you immunity to disease, but would that not allow you to survive without the drug?"

"I see no reason to believe otherwise," he said.  "I will not foster another Goa'uld."

"Neither will I birth any!  Ra and Hathor are dead, and Ba'al has no power over me here.  I will never poison another of my offspring with their legacy."

"You would make Egeria's choice, Astarte?"

"Many of the younger queens would, I think.  We are as Hathor made us, but we have lived in the courts of the system lords long enough to know that our society is rotten from within.  All it took was one strong wind to blow Ra away for the whole thing to collapse around us."

Jack said, "It might not come to that, T.  Let's see what Carter can find out from the black box."

Astarte asked, "What is this black box?"

"English word for flight recorder."

"I will help her."

Jack said, "Li'ac, let's you and I take a look around and meet the new neighbors.  T, you and Risha secure a perimeter closer to the ship and take first watch.  Danny, check out the storage lockers that we missed earlier and figure out exactly where we are with supplies."

Li'ac inclined her head and took up her staff weapon.  Jack and Li'ac descended the cargo net and took a better look around.  They were in the foothills of a mountain range that rose majestically into a pristine blue sky to the west.  Everything seemed unspoiled.  Jack doubted the presence of an industrialized society here, judging from the lack of pollution.  But there were places on earth that seemed just as untouched, to someone who was no scientist.

A search of the area turned up no signs of human habitation, but they did see a herd of antelope and an abundance of smaller game. The stream was full of fish.

By the time they returned, Daniel had cleared an area for a camp fire and found some containers to get water from the creek.  "Did Carter get anything from the sensor data?"

"Yup."

One-word answers from Daniel were rarely good news.  Jack climbed the net and found Carter and Astarte up to their elbows in a panel of crystals and circuitry.  "Carter?  Daniel said you got something?"

"Yes, sir."  She wiped her hands on a rag and led the way into the cockpit.  They had cleaned up one panel and got it working.  She called up a holodisplay of the planet.  To Jack it looked fairly earth-like, mostly ocean with four large continents.  Sam indicated their position, on the seaward side of a mountain range on the largest northern continent.  Sam said, "The good news is, there's a stargate."

"What's the bad news?"

"It's over here."  She indicated another large land mass across a couple thousand miles of open ocean.

Jack looked around the comfortable camp that surrounded the wreck. They had decided to stay close to the wreck, because the plentiful game in the area suggested that there probably were also large predators.  It was their best refuge.  But it would be hard to sleep in there with the deck at that angle.  While Carter and Astarte repaired the ship's systems as well as they could, and Li'ac and Risha stood guard, Jack, Daniel and Teal'c had rigged some tarpaulins as a shelter and set up a cooking and living area outside.

Astarte climbed down the net carefully.  She had never done anything like that before.  Her silk gown and slippers had been completely unsuitable for roughing it.  She was wearing Jaffa clothing and had confined her long mane of chestnut hair into a simple braid.  Li'ac gave her a calculating look.  "My lady, but for the lack of a tattoo you could well pass for one of us."

Astarte laughed.  "Until someone handed me a staff weapon and I shot off my own foot with it, perhaps!  The only weapon in which I am in any way proficient is my kara-kesh.  No Jaffa is so unskilled."

Sam said, "Well, that--you might have time to learn."

Astarte's face fell.  "There is that."  She told Jack, "The communications system is beyond hope.  Sam has managed to restore the power to most of the ship's systems, but the main communications crystal was shattered and there is no replacement."

Sam said, "I've also got a lot better idea of our position.  If we do manage to phone home, we're out on the fringes of explored space. It would take the fastest Tok'ra ships three months to even get here."

"So at best we won't get home for at least six months, unless the Asgard come after us," Jack said.

Astarte sat down.  "If your people have any idea that you are still alive.  If they discover that you have disappeared into Ba'al's dungeons, and there is no further sign of you, then what could they think but that you are dead?  I might have planned this somewhat better, I think."

"We're one hell of a lot better off than we were, even if we end up living here!" Jack told her.  "We have to stay positive and keep focused on what we need to do to get by.  It's summer now, but we don't know how long that will last or how long the winters are.  We can survive here and probably do pretty well for ourselves, but it's going to be a lot of hard work."

Risha said, "My mother was a healer.  I know many uses for plants, and which can safely be eaten."  As an example, she parted some grass stems and picked a handful of small sweet berries, which she shared around.  "These are delicious and they ward off scurvy as well. There will surely be many more things to be gathered and put up for the ice moons.  We should also begin to dry fish.  Also, the grazing beasts may lead us to a salt lick--and with salt, we can cure meat."

Li'ac said, "My clan are nomads who follow the herds of the Sakarra Steppe.  I know of curing meat and of using the hides as well.  We will need heavier clothing for the cold."

Daniel said, "And firewood.  We need to start cutting it now, in case there's heavy snow that will make it hard to get any."

Sam agreed, "It would be better not to count on the ship's power plant, sir.  I've got it going for as long as it holds out, but we won't have spare parts when something breaks down.  We need to be prepared to live completely off the land."

Jack nodded.  He had survived in much worse places than this.  Were it not for being marooned so far from home, they could thrive here. Astarte, Li'ac and Risha had left nothing behind them, but the rest of them missed their homes.  Daniel and Sarah had been slowly moving back towards a closer relationship.  Teal'c had his son and new daughter-in-law.  Sam had Pete--he stepped on the cynical observation that Pete might not wait for her when she was declared MIA.  She didn't need to hear that from him.  Jack realized that he missed people as well--especially Cassie, who had spent a lot more time at his house since Janet had passed on.  "I believe they'll find us," he said.  "Jacob won't give up on you, and he won't let the Tok'ra give up.  The least we can do is be waiting for them when they show up."

By then supper was ready.  Jack assigned watches, and they turned in when it got dark.  Li'ac and Risha sat kel-no-reem with the flickering campfire for candlelight, not far from Astarte's bedroll. Daniel had found a data pad to use for a journal.  Teal'c stood outside the firelight, on first watch.  Jack lay awake after Carter slept, watching the stars come out.  He felt minor symptoms of withdrawal from the sarcophagus, but nothing anywhere nearly as bad as it could have been.  He could handle putting up with keeping a clear path to the latrine and having a pounding headache for a few hours.  All told, going from prisoners to pioneers was a huge improvement.

Sam murmured something in her sleep, then called, "Jack?  Jack!"

He assured her that he was there and she settled without ever really waking.  A few nightmares were the least they could expect. Jack fell asleep thinking that she'd called out for him, not Shanahan.

Two weeks later, Jack thought the camp was much more homelike, if your home happened to be a Viking village crossed with a Mad Max movie.  Downwind, the Jaffa women had set up frames to dry fish and the hides of two antelope that they had brought down.  Jack figured any Jaffa third-grader could pass SEAR school.

Sam had found two solar panels and set them up as a roof for a second shelter, so that they had separate men's and women's quarters. Only one of the panels worked, but now they had electric lights in both shelters, and a water heater.  That had been necessary.  Teal'c needed a symbiote and Astarte needed to spawn in water.  She had secluded herself in preparation for the last week.

Daniel had been making a more detailed study of the area around camp armed with a zat, a walking stick and a big sack.  He brought back something for supper--a rabbit, some fruit, once a lot of wild potatoes which Risha had roasted in the ashes wrapped in some fragrant leaves that gave them such a nice flavor they barely missed salt.  It brought back bittersweet memories of exploring the desert near Nagada with Sha're.  His nearsightedness limited him, but he could see well enough up close.  At the same time, Jack was satisfied that he had enough experience at night fighting that he wasn't really endangered by his poor vision.

Jack checked on Teal'c.  He was sitting in the shade of the wreck putting a good edge on a knife that he had made from a fortunately shaped piece of scrap metal.  Twice already he had needed the sarcophagus to keep him alive as the last of the tretonin worked its way out of his system.

"O'Neill.  You have saved me looking for you."

Jack sat down.  "What's up, T?"

"Should the prim'ta ceremony fail, I wish to allow nature to take its course.  The sarcophagus is beginning to affect me already.  I would rather die and remain myself than live as what it will make of me."

Jack closed his eyes and nodded in acceptance.  It was the same choice he would have made, but after they had come through so much, he didn't want to lose a friend like this.  "It'll work," he said.

Teal'c smiled.  That had been what he had expected his warrior brother to say.  With no more discussion, he went back to his work. Jack kept him company for a while before going off to gather some more firewood.

A couple of hours later, he heard Daniel running through the woods. "Jack!  I found something!  You gotta see this!"

"Over here, Danny, what have you got?"

"I found some ruins!"

Jack rolled his eyes at the thought of rocks, but he figured he'd better have a look to make sure it was safe.  He shouted to Carter to let her know where they were headed, then caught up with Daniel.

The archaeologist was talking a mile a minute the whole time, and Jack just let him go on.  There was nothing like finding some old rocks to keep Daniel's morale up.  Jack wasn't looking forward to cabin fever this winter.  He wondered if they could make ice skates.

Daniel led them him over the hill and around the side of the next one to another forested valley.  He saw some big boulders, one of them with a tree growing out of it.  "Uh, is that it?"

"Part of it," Daniel said.  "There used to be a stone tower over there somewhere.  It's collapsed--or possibly been knocked down, I've seen signs of possible fire damage."

When Daniel pointed it out, he could see that the boulders were laid out in a pattern.  He'd assessed enough battle damage to know it when he saw it.  "Yeah, something knocked that down all right.  It wouldn't be this far from the foundation if it just fell over."

"But the good stuff is over here."

Jack scrambled to keep up.  When Daniel was on the trail of a new discovery, he could climb over rocks like a mountain goat.  He also tended to take bigger risks.

He found Daniel crouched by a crumbling stone wall, using a brush made out of feathers from day before yesterday's supper to clear the dirt off a large stone block.  He had found an inscription.  "Can you read that?"

"I wish I had my references.  I believe it's Mayan.  This whole complex appears to have been a temple dedicated to a local water goddess."

"Daniel, I see no complex.  There's one tower over yonder and this one little bit of a wall.  That isn't a complex."

"Yeah, well, you haven't seen the sacred pools yet."

"The what?  Sacred pools?"

Daniel stood and picked up his walking stick.  "Over here." The stream had been diverted into a stone-lined ditch.  Most of it was overgrown, but Daniel had discovered that it led to a series of pools, each feeding into the next.  Jack watched a small carp gobble up a water bug, and somewhere nearby he could hear a bullfrog.

The last pool was as clear of fish, bugs and water plants as if someone had cleaned it out this morning.  Jack warned, "Hey, don't get too close!  Something's keeping the wildlife out.  It might be dangerous."

"The animals use it for a watering hole," Daniel pointed out.

"So what is it?"

"I don't know, but Bill and I found Tel-Chak's device in a place that looked a lot like this.  There could be an underground complex."

"Uh--yeah, which we could fall into any minute, right?"  Jack asked.

Carter looked up from her work.  She had spent the last two hours sealing cracks in the cargo container that was going to be Astarte's spawning pool.  "OK, I think that's got it!  Let's fill it up and make sure there aren't any more leaks!"

She and Risha collected some buckets and headed for the stream.

Teal'c was still sitting in the same place.  "Teal'c, have you seen Daniel and the General anytime in the last little while?"

"I have not, ColonelCarter."

"Daniel was going to show him something he found, but that was right after lunch."

"I will look for them."

"You rest.  I want to let that container sit under pressure for a while so I can be sure it's sealed.  We'll have a look around while we're waiting."

It took them a few trips to the stream to fill the crate, then they went off the way Sam had seen the men go earlier.

Risha asked, "Is GeneralO'Neill your mate?"

"Oh--no--I'm engaged.  To someone else."

"Engaged?"

"Betrothed.  Promised."

"It is no good thing for a father to promise his daughter to someone other than her true love.  That pairing is doomed to fail," Risha pronounced. "On your world, do you not have the right to speak against such a mismatch?"

Sam said, "I--it's a complicated situation, Risha.  The General and I are in a direct chain of command."

"And it is forbidden for the two of you to be together?"

"Yes."

"That is indeed complicated.  So much so that I do not understand it at all."

Sam had been around Teal'c long enough to have an ear for Jaffa sarcasm.  "There are good reasons.  The general might have to give an order that would endanger me.  And it could cause morale problems if people thought I was getting special treatment."

"If those were going to be considerations, would they not already have happened?"

"I suppose so," she sighed.

By then they had reached the tree line.  Risha slowed her pace, searching intently for the men's trail.  O'Neill habitually left very little of a trail to follow, but she quickly found the marks left by Daniel's walking stick.

The Jaffa led the way past the ruined tower, to the wall fragment with its carved glyphs.  "They stopped here for a while.  This has been brushed clean recently.  Then they went on this way."

Sam called, "General O'Neill!"

There was no answer.  The two of them followed the trail to the series of pools, and they both started calling.

Jack was lying on something soft.  He groaned and tried to get up, and pain lanced up his leg.

"Jack?"

"Daniel."

"Are you all right?"

"Did something to my ankle, but other than that I think so."

"You just had to mention falling into an underground tunnel, didn't you?"

"Don't turn superstitious on me now, Danny.  OW damn it!"  Jack stopped trying to get up.

Daniel squinted into the darkness and followed Jack's voice, carefully feeling ahead with his stick.  He didn't want to find a shaft or a well the hard way.

"Did you get hurt when you fell?"

Daniel assured him, "Nothing but my pride.  I landed on my ass in a big pile of leaves and vines."

"Yeah, we'd have busted ourselves up real good if that stuff hadn't been there."

Daniel found him then, and his fingers gently checked Jack's ankle.  "I don't think it's broken, Jack, just sprained."

Jaffa boots buckled rather than laced.  Jack pulled each buckle as tightly as he could manage, and that was the best he could do towards bandaging it.

Daniel asked, "How far did we fall, anyhow?"

Jack looked up.  "Eighteen, twenty feet, maybe.  Looks like this hole is supposed to be up there and the vines and junk just grew across it.  A lot of that stuff came down with us."

"What else is in here?"

"Looks like there might be something down here.  The room's pretty big and it's pitch dark in the corners, but there are some doorways off each side."

"If this is Mayan I'm surprised that there aren't pyramids," Daniel said.  "Possibly it was settled by a minor Goa'uld who didn't have a mother ship."

"Those vines hanging down don't look sturdy enough to climb.  I guess we're stuck here until somebody finds us and brings a rope."  Jack sounded bored already.

Daniel wasn't in any better frame of mind.  He missed his glasses, and he couldn't help the morose thought that he might have to spend the rest of his life without them.  He reminded himself that he had a rest of his life to miss them, and that put things into priority.

Something moved.

"Jack, did you hear that?"

"What?"

Daniel listened closely.  He was about to dismiss it as the vines moving in the wind.  Then he heard it again, a slithering sound followed by an unmistakable rattle.  "Jack, is that--"

"Oh, yeah."

Daniel could hear the angry rattlesnake plainly, but it was far too dark for him to see it.  He didn't dare move.  This wasn't the kind of place where one would think to find a rattlesnake.  He figured that it must have been sunning itself on the mat of vines when he and Jack had fallen through, and been carried down with them.  No wonder it was upset.

Jack got a good look at the snake.  It was at least as long as he was tall, and it was slowly coiling itself, rattling constantly.  His zat was out of reach.  He reached for his knife and slowly unsheathed it.

He and the snake both struck at the same time.  The snake fell dead in front of him with his knife through its head.

"Jack?"

He took a couple of deep breaths before he responded.  "I got it.  I just hope it doesn't have any more friends down here."  After everything they had been through, a plain old rattlesnake seemed downright mundane--but he'd lived in Colorado long enough to know how dangerous a bite could be.

Teal'c had a serious point about the sarcophagus.  They all needed to avoid it like plague, and that meant not taking foolish risks.

Daniel recovered Jack's knife and expertly whacked the snake's head off.

"You gotta be kidding."

"Supper," Daniel grinned.

"I haven't had rattlesnake since survival training, and I ain't starting now," Jack told him.

"More for the rest of us.  I learned how to fix them on Abydos.  They're actually pretty good eating."

"Yeah, that's what the survival instructor said, too."

"General O'Neill! Daniel!"

Jack yelled, "Carter!"

"General?  Risha, I heard him, but I don't see him.  Can you tell where that came from?"

"This way, I think."

"Sir!  Keep yelling so we can find you."

Their voices were steadily approaching.  Jack warned, "Watch out, we fell down a hole!  You're close!"

A moment later, Risha and Carter appeared at the opening.

"Sir, what are you doing down there?  Is Daniel OK?"

Daniel yelled back, "I'm fine, but Jack sprained his ankle.  Get a rope!"

Risha said, "I will go."

Presently she returned with Li'ac and a coil of line.  Li'ac asked, "Can you climb?"

"Should be able to," Jack replied.

Li'ac simply made the rope fast around her waist.  "Watch out!"

Jack got Daniel out of the way and she tossed the other end of the rope down.  "Danny, you go first so you can help them pull if I can't climb it."

"OK.  Tie my stick and my carry bag to the rope before you start up."

Presently they were out of the hole.  As he had expected, Jack easily climbed out, but the trouble started when he got to the top.  Leaning on Daniel and the walking stick, he hopped along on one foot.

Li'ac looked in the bag.  "That is a good fat one."

"What?"  Carter asked.

"Rattlesnake," Daniel replied.  "Jack got it."

"I'm not eating that," she replied.

"More for the rest of us," Li'ac said.

Jack snorted, missed a step, and almost went down in a heap.

Risha asked, "What is that place?"

Daniel said excitedly, "We haven't had much time to find out yet, but there seems to be more than just that one chamber.  We need to come back with lights and see what we really do have.  It could be an old outpost of Tel-Chak's."

Risha said, "Shelter for the winter, possibly, and perhaps even a cache of supplies."

Li'ac said direly, "Or one of his laboratories, with who knows what horrible experiment in it!"

Carter said, "It'll stay right where it is till we can check it out without people breaking their legs."

O'Neill told her, "It isn't broken."

Teal'c and Astarte were waiting when they appeared.  Teal'c would have started down the hillside to meet them, but Jack waved him off.  A sprained ankle was a nuisance but no real cause for alarm.

It swelled like a balloon when they got his boot off, but to the best of their ability to examine it, no one thought it was broken.  Carter taped it firmly and cut him a walking stick to match Daniel's.  "Astarte, do we have a healing device?"

"Yes, but I won't be able to use it until after I give birth."

"I can."

Jack said, "You can, but it wears you out.  I can live with it for a couple of days."

Carter asked, "Will this symbiote be a Tok'ra?"

Astarte shook her head.  "I have not passed on the racial memory of my kind at all.  This child will know of life what it learns from Teal'c and from its first host."

Teal'c said, "You trust me with a great deal, Astarte."

"I do not feel my trust to be misplaced," she replied.  "This little one is blessed to grow up knowing nothing of the Empire and its evil.  Care for my child as you would your own.  In that is the hope of both our races."

"I will," he promised.

Carter checked on her improvised bath tub, and found that there were no leaks.  Risha chose to take that as a very good omen.  "Now it must be cleaned and purified, and we have little time to prepare.  Tomorrow will soon be upon us."

Carter helped carry water, but over and above that, there was little she could do but watch.  She didn't know the rituals that Li'ac and Risha were performing. Not long after the container had been filled for the last time, with warm water and a carefully prepared mixture of herbs, it was time.

Sam had thought from Hathor that Goa'uld spawning was nothing compared to human childbirth.  But Astarte had put a lot of energy into creating just one larva and protecting it from the curse of the Goa'uld racial memory that she carried.  Her exhaustion made this much more difficult than usual.  She was pale and weak when she gave birth.

Risha had prepared a container for the larva.  There was a ritual involved with that, as everything else.  Both the queen and her handmaiden hesitated over the ancient blessings at first, until Astarte smiled radiantly and set her own name aside to call upon the Eternal.

Risha took her precious burden off to Teal'c.

Carter was suddenly alarmed, because she remembered where she'd seen that "I've lived to see this moment" joy on someone's face before.  Egeria.

Her fears were confirmed when she saw blood in the water.

Li'ac said urgently, "Lady, your host is bleeding.  You must stop it."

"I do not have the strength," she admitted, but she was at peace.  "Dal shakka mel."

"Live free!"  The Jaffa told her intensely.

"Li'ac, swear to me--I dare not risk the sarcophagus again so soon.  You cannot know how it calls to me.  Swear it!"

"I swear it, my Lady."

Carter asked, "Li'ac, do you know where she keeps the healing device?  Get it, quickly."

Risha and the men realized something was wrong when they saw Li'ac run for the wreck and climb the net hell-bent for leather.  Risha ordered Jack and Daniel, "Stay here and keep Teal'c quiet, whatever you do!"  She took off like a shot for the women's shelter.

Risha arrived to find Carter desperately trying to slow the bleeding.  A moment later Li'ac returned with the healing device.  Carter slipped it onto her bloody hand and fought for two lives.

Jack reached for his makeshift cane, determined to find out what was happening.  Daniel said, "Damn it, Jack, stay put!  You can't do anything over there except get in the way!"

As much as he hated it, Daniel was right.  "What could've happened?"

Teal'c said, "I do not know.  I have never heard of a queen having any trouble in spawning.  Had I known that she put herself at risk for me, I would never have allowed it."

Daniel said, "That's why she didn't tell you.  She took her destiny in her own hands and made her own decision."

Teal'c nodded, accepting.  "Freedom is a choice made, DanielJackson, and once made, rarely unmade.  Whatever else comes of this, from this night onward, I honor Astarte as a fellow warrior."

Light from the healing device flared, silhouetting Carter and the two Jaffa women against the tarpaulin wall of their shelter.  The fight went on for a long time, and ended only when Carter could continue no longer.  The silhouettes dimmed, backlit now only by the shelter's usual lighting.

Jack, Daniel and Teal'c could only wait.  Over an hour later, Risha came out with buckets to fetch more water, and told them that Astarte was alive.  Before that night, if anyone had ever told Jack he'd be thankful to hear those words about a Goa'uld, he'd have called them a damn liar.

After that night, there was no more division between SG-1 and the refugee women.  They were a family.

It took them all a while to get over that eventful day.  Hunting and gathering fell to Daniel and the two Jaffa women while Jack kept his foot up, Astarte healed, Teal'c regained his strength, and Carter rested and made sure Jack kept his foot up.  Daniel chafed in silence knowing the ruins were just over the hill waiting for him, but it was another week before they were ready to go exploring.

The first order of business was a detailed exploration of the site to make sure there weren't any more holes waiting for somebody to fall in, and they were all careful to watch for snakes.  Then Carter picked out a sturdy tree.  After they had chopped it down, she trimmed off the branches and cut notches in it to make a staircase. It was hard work for all of them to pull it into place with a block and tackle, but it went into place wedged in the corner of the "skylight" even more securely than she had hoped.

"Sir, be careful of your ankle."

"Don't be a mother hen," Jack retorted, grinning.  He descended into the skylight chamber with Daniel hot on his heels.

Daniel reminded everyone about the booby-traps that he had found in Tel-chak's temple in Central America.  Jack went first, on the alert for anything that could be a trap.

The place was a tomb, with burials on both sides of four long corridors.  While Daniel was fascinated with the discoveries to be made here as he translated the inscriptions on the walls, he shared everyone else's disappointment that they hadn't found a treasure trove.

Li'ac asked, "Do you know who is buried here?"

"Well, as far as I can make out, this whole place was built by a sect of Tel-chak's priests.  These are the tombs of the high priests. As you can see, this corridor has only two burials.  If I'm interpreting the dates correctly, the last high priest to be buried here died about eight hundred years ago. The place was probably destroyed sometime during the next high priest's reign.  Astarte, does that ring any bells?"

She shook her head.  "I recognize these glyphs as the language of Tel-chak's followers, but his priesthood was very secretive.  Small cults of his followers had hidden temples like this on out-of-the-way planets.  They guarded their secrets fiercely, sacrificing any outsiders who stumbled onto them to protect their location.  After Tel-chak was defeated many such temples were destroyed in uprisings of the local peasants.  It wouldn't surprise me to find out that was what happened here."

"The Mayan god Chac was seen as beneficial, a rain and fertility god associated with Kukulcan."

Astarte said, "And my namesake was an aspect of Great Goddess Herself!"

Daniel said, "Ha!  I knew it.  Jack, if we ever get home, you owe me twenty bucks."  At Astarte's puzzled expression, Daniel explained, "We had a bet on whether Ra and his court started the religions that grew up around them, or whether they assumed the identities of gods that the early Egyptians already worshiped.  I thought that was the case, Jack thought they made it all up as they went along."

Astarte said, "Well, in that case, you may still have an argument over who wins your wager.  They did assume the identities of the nature spirits of the local Tau'ri, that much is true, but at the time those Tau'ri were a simple nomadic folk.  It was Ra who shaped their worship to his own ends.  Ra thought the existing beliefs of the Tau'ri tribes to be nothing more than superstition.  He, personally, did not believe that the Eternal truly exists.  I think as the ages passed he actually came to believe in his own pretense. Ba'al certainly does."

Risha jumped backwards, bringing her staff up defensively and starting a chain reaction as everyone else immediately prepared for trouble.  "That moved!"

"What did?"  Jack asked.

"That carving.  I touched it without thinking.  It went back into the wall.  I thought I heard something else move," she explained.

Astarte looked down the unfinished corridor, and took a hesitant step forward.  "Wait, there is something, I sense naquada."

Daniel examined the panel closely, then pushed the small carving of a flower in the rest of the way with his walking stick.  For a moment, nothing happened, then the wall at the end of the corridor began to slowly grind upwards.

Everyone moved back into the skylight chamber and took cover.  When the stone door stopped grinding upwards, Jack listened intently for a while before risking a glance down the corridor.  He and Teal'c checked it out.  Behind the door was a small hidden room.

Teal'c's ability to sense naquada had returned now that he once again had a symbiote.  "O'Neill, this is a ring room."

"I wonder where it goes."  He was sweeping the room carefully, floor, walls, ceiling.

There were more Mayan carvings on the walls.  Jack called the others up when he discovered nothing dangerous in the room.

Daniel looked at the carvings.  "Jack, I can't be sure, but I think this may go to the main temple of this sect."

"Danny, what are the chances that the main temple is somewhere near the stargate?"  Jack asked.

"Pretty good, I'd think!  This could be our ticket home!"  He peered at the walls.  "There has to be a control panel somewhere."

Astarte looked around for naquada inside the walls, her senses were much sharper than those of the Jaffa and the former host.  "Somewhere...here, I think."

Daniel said, "Better step back, everyone."  He examined the panel of carvings that she had indicated.  Sure enough, he found a section that slid open to reveal the ring controls.

Jack said, "Folks, since we don't have a MALP handy, let's try this first with a rock or something."

When they sent some debris from the skylight chamber round-trip with no damage, Jack said, "OK, I'm gonna check it out first."

Astarte said, "We should both go.  How will you find the ring controls?"

"There's that," he admitted.  Jack took a deep breath in case they ended up somewhere that had been closed up for a long time, then signaled Carter to activate the rings.

They came out on top of the world.  The ring platform was at the top of a massive pyramid.  Half a mile away a cliff dropped off.  Beyond that was the sea.  It was breathtakingly hot after the chill inside the tomb. Landward, jungle had overtaken a large city.  Only the tops of lesser pyramids were visible over the treetops.  There were no signs that the city was inhabited.  It was very like Central America back home, maybe that was why Tel-chak had located his main temple here.

Astarte jumped up and down in excitement, grabbing his arm and talking a mile a minute in Goa'uld.  Jack spoke a few words of Goa'uld, most of which he had picked up only recently from being around Astarte and the Jaffa.  He couldn't make any sense of that torrent, though.

"Hey, either slow down or speak English!"

"The chappa'ai!  It's very close, no more than an hour's walk into the jungle!"

Jack let out a whoop of his own.  "All right!  Let's get back and tell everyone."

Astarte found the ring controls and activated them with her ribbon device.  Jack said, "We are so outta here!  The gate's only a couple miles from the ring portal!"

That set off a loud celebration.  Daniel said, "I'm going to get a new pair of glasses and a cup of coffee--not necessarily in that order!"

Sam said, "I'm going to take an hour-long shower."

Daniel teased, "You'll need it after we cut our way through a couple of miles of jungle!"

Jack said, "I'm gonna find the biggest pizza in Colorado Springs!"

Astarte asked, "What will become of us?"

"I'm not sure earth would be the safest place for you.  That's the first place Ba'al will look as soon as he finds out we made it home," Jack said thoughtfully.  "The political situation back home is complicated, too."  He didn't want to think of her as some sleazy politician's bargaining chip, but it was all too likely.

Teal'c said, "It may be that you would be safest among the Free Jaffa.  It will take time for you to earn my people's trust, but I have given my word to protect you, and that will be honored.  You will be the hope of many Jaffa who cannot take tretonin--if and only if you will not put yourself at such risk again."

Sam said, "The Tok'ra wouldn't trust you easily, either, but they would protect you.  They've had a lot of experience with hiding out from the system lords."

Jack said, "Depends on what you want.  For that matter, there are some folks who owe me a few favors.  You could just disappear."

"If I run, I will always be looking behind me to see who might be catching up.  If my people see that I can change, perhaps it will give some of them the courage to do so as well."

Teal'c said, "Where ever you go, Astarte, people will want to know of your host."

"Her name is Adrana.  She was a farm girl cursed by her beauty to be chosen as my first host.  In time, perhaps, if we are free of Ba'al long enough, she will come out into the world again.  I do not deny her that right, but neither will I force her before she is ready."

Teal'c nodded understanding.  "O'Neill, how much do you think we should take with us from the camp?"

"As much as we can carry, in case the rings stop working and we don't make it right home."

It was heading toward evening, and as much as everyone wanted to see the pyramid and start making their way home, Jack didn't want to be around the ruins after dark.  As long as the light held out, they worked on packing up the things they were going to take with them.

It was Sam and Daniel's job to fetch water.  As she was filling the tank of the purification unit, she teased, "You'll be glad to see Sarah again, I'll bet."

Daniel grinned.  "I won't deny it.  I'll bet you've missed Pete."

She suddenly realized that she hadn't even thought about Pete since her conversation with Risha about the regulations.  She told herself that she just hadn't had time, but the truth was, she really hadn't missed him.  She'd had plenty of time to think about Jacob and Mark and Cassie.  She lied, "Oh, yeah.  Sure have."

A few feet away, Jack had overheard that conversation, and for just a moment he grinned.  She might love Pete--in fact, he was sure she did.  She wasn't the kind of woman to lead someone on.  But she wasn't in love with him.  The person you were in love with was always on your mind, first, last and always.

He slipped away without either of them seeing him and dished himself up a bowl of fish stew.  By this time tomorrow, they might be home.

Everyone was up before the sun the next morning, rushing through breakfast to get to work securing everything they had to leave behind inside the wreck.  Wintering here had dropped to plan C, behind going home and making a new camp in the warmer climate on the other end of the rings--but they couldn't discount the possibility.

Jack let everyone party until they got to the ruins.  "All right, let's get serious.  We're not home yet and we don't know what's between us and the gate.  T, Li'ac, you're with me."

By the time they descended the steep stairs down the pyramid to stand on a stone road that disappeared into the jungle, everyone had gotten down to business.  Astarte said, "It looks like this road points directly to the chappa'ai."

Daniel missed his glasses.  Risha walked with him and described everything for him.

The roadway was overgrown but passable, unlike the emerald wall on either side.  Jack said, "Watch yourself.  This is a game trail now, which means the predators will be waiting for breakfast to come along."

"May there be nothing that would attack such a large group," Astarte said nervously.  "If there is, I do not want to meet it."

The trees were full of hundreds of birds, like winged jewels.  Jack told her, "If the birds get quiet, you can really start worrying."

In many places, lianas from the overhanging trees blocked their way. Teal'c and Li'ac made short work of that--when it was too time-consuming to hack through them with their knives, a few staff blasts opened a path in short order.  Jack didn't object to the noise.  They hadn't seen any sign of human inhabitants that they might alert, but the racket would help scare off anything that might be big and hungry.

About a  mile in, the road turned to a causeway above a swamp.  Sam said, "There's got to be a spectacular waterfall where this goes over the cliff to the sea."

Jack kept scanning the black water on either side of the causeway, visions of boa constrictors and alligators dancing in his head.  They did start seeing big reptiles right away.  The creatures had no instinctive fear of human beings.  The most common ones looked like small crocodiles, about four feet long counting the tail.  The only huge snake they saw was stretched out on a fallen log a fair distance from the causeway, and nobody had the slightest desire to get any closer to it.  They couldn't see the entire length of it, but the part they could see looked a lot like a green and yellow telephone pole.  They moved on from there without delay.

Daniel swatted yet another bug and tried not to think about malaria and yellow fever.  They had been vaccinated against everything that the SGC could think of, but they all knew how easily they could run across some new alien disease.  If he wanted to find something like that, a tropical swamp would be exactly where he'd look.

Soon after they left the swamp, Li'ac said, "We are getting close."

Astarte nodded.  "We are practically standing on it."

"Okay," Jack said, "Spread out a little and look for it.  But if you lose sight of the rest of us, stop where you are and yell.  You wouldn't believe how fast you can get lost in undergrowth like this." He and Teal'c let the others search, concentrating on keeping track of them and keeping watch.  It wasn't long until Astarte found the gate, heavily overgrown but still standing.

Sam immediately began looking for the DHD, and when she found it she let out a triumphant yell.  Willing hands immediately pitched in to clean off all the vines and accumulated detritus of the centuries that it had stood idle.  She looked up.  "Where to, sir?"

Without a GDO, they couldn't go to Earth.  "Beta site.  Ladies, I hate to do this, but I'm gonna have to ask you to turn your backs on the DHD before she dials.  I don't want anyone who doesn't already know those coordinates to have them."

Astarte was insulted and then she realized if Ba'al ever got his hands on her again--she shuddered and did as he asked.

Sam punched in the first glyph, but it didn't light up.  She hit it again a couple of times.  The cold chill that settled over them had nothing to do with the weather.

"Try it anyhow, maybe it just isn't lighting up," Daniel suggested. Sam complied, but as she had expected, the gate did not dial.

She used her knife to clear the dirt around the access panel and got it open.  All the crystals were smashed.  "Somebody made damn sure nobody else was going to be using this gate!"

Jack said, "Ok, we'll clear all that crap off it and try to dial out manually."  They had to try, but if he wanted to sabotage a stargate, he'd have dialed out manually himself to make sure there wouldn't be enough energy left for somebody else to do that.

Stargates were designed to stand up to worse than staff fire and zats.  It took little time to clear the vegetation.  They dialed out, but no wormhole formed.

The morning's jubilation gave way to defeat.  They weren't going home today, or any other day, unless somebody found them.  And they all knew the long odds against that.

Jack said, "OK, people, let's pack it up and head back to the temple.  Looks like this is our planet now.  We need to figure out what we're going to do with it."

One by one they gathered up their weapons and packs, turned their backs on the useless gate, and fell in behind him on the ancient stone path that led to what was now their home.

It was a subdued, dejected group that finally trudged out of the jungle and sat down on the bottom steps of the temple.

Jack said, "This was a hell of a disappointment, but we're still better off than we were yesterday.  Take a look around, people.  We can walk back and forth from Aspen to Cozumel.  We're really going to appreciate that when there's three feet of snow on the ground at the crash site."

Teal'c said, "Indeed, O'Neill.  This is a most beautiful place."

Carter speculated, "The rings can't be the only high-tech things left here.  At the very least, when Tel-chak was visiting, I don't think he roughed it in a mud hut.  I'll bet his palace is around here somewhere.  We'll find it."

Astarte said, "Yes--perhaps in this very temple."

They walked around the temple, looking at it from all angles to try to find a way inside.  It differed from the Mayan pyramids that Daniel had studied in that there wasn't an altar atop it, where the ancient Mayan kings had sacrificed their own blood or that of high-ranking captives to sustain their gods.  There also was no immediately obvious entry at ground level.  They climbed to the ring platform, where they determined that this was the hub of the ring portal system.  There were three other remote locations besides the one in the ruins.

It was too late that afternoon for any more exploring, as they still had to find a place to set up camp.  Teal'c found a likely spot a distance up the coast.  There was a stone building there which apparently had once been the home of a high-ranking nobleman, from its size.  They had some cleaning out to do, but it would be comfortable enough.  At least if it rained they had a roof over their heads.  Nearby, also, was a narrow path leading down to the beach.

The large villa was designed with wide windows meant to be shaded with awnings to catch the cool sea breezes.  The view was spectacular.  She could see the former owners sitting outside and enjoying the cool of the evening.  The house had a cistern, apparently they depended on the tropical rains for fresh water.  Sam thought it could be repaired, but in the meanwhile they would have to supply their own.

Cooking had been done outside, there was a fireplace in a walled courtyard.  That kept the heat outdoors, and reduced the risk of a fire getting started.  After supper they lounged on the wide porch to watch the sunset.

Jack said, "Y'know, if ol' Tel-chak's palace is in that pyramid, it would have to be pretty fancy for me to rather stay there than here."

Daniel nodded.  "Do you guys think there's any reasonable chance of us getting home?"

Sam shook her head.  "After some of the amazing coincidences that have got us out of no-win situations before, Daniel, I'm not going to say anything's impossible.  But look at the facts.  We can't get a call out to let anyone know where we are.  Even if somebody got their hands on flight data from the Varga, they wouldn't be able to determine exactly where we left hyperspace or where we went from there.  I know Thor has been able to track the General before...."

Jack hated to squash that bit of wishful thinking.  "Yeah, it's that DNA marker thing.  Apparently when they scan a planet for life forms, I stick out like a sore thumb.  But I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for some Asgard to come along and scan this planet.  Danny, what are the chances Oma or Shifu might look in on you and tell somebody where we are?"

"They wouldn't interfere.  This could be our proper path."  Daniel steepled his fingers.  "So...all that having been said, Jack, at what point do we decide this is our future and just start living it?"

Jack watched a flock of birds fly by on their way from the shore to the trees.  "I waited a hundred days on Edora before I gave up.  That wasn't long enough."

Sam acknowledged that admission with a little smile.  "We knew where you were then.  And any other time somebody went missing, we were able to find out what happened, even if only to take them off the MIA roster.  This time there just isn't anything for anybody to go on.  I think they will find out we escaped from Ba'al, but that's where the trail will go cold."

Daniel said, "You and Teal'c lost a whole hell of a lot more than the rest of us did.  You guys have family back home."

Teal'c replied, "True.  But it has also been an accepted truth that what we do is hazardous.  Even those who never knew the whole truth, were aware that we could be lost without a trace.  My son has his own life now, and Ishta is a warrior.  She will honor my memory and go on with her life."

Sam nodded.  She hoped that her father did find out that they had escaped from Ba'al.  Selmac would comfort him, and he would have the consolation that she had gone missing in the course of doing her job. Mark....  Sam and her brother had never been close.  This would just be one more reason for him to hate the military.  She hoped that Pete would move on without spending too much time in mourning.  She felt a deep sense of sadness that he had always loved her more than she had loved him in return.  Cassie was her true sorrow.  The girl had been left motherless twice, and now Sam and Jack were lost to her as well. Sam wanted to reach across the distance between them and tell her to go to medical school and marry her Dominic and live well. But after the horrors that they had endured, they were here together and safe.  Sam was vibrantly aware of being alive and profoundly grateful to have been given another chance.

Jack watched her emotions play across her face.  Their lives here might not be what they had planned, but they could be good.

(From Daniel Jackson's journal)

We have made a great deal of progress over the last few weeks since we discovered the ring portal.  There are four other stations in the ring portal network, of which the temple at Cozumel is the main hub. Yes, Jack's names for the crash site and the abandoned city have stuck.  I have no idea why that should surprise me.  Of the four portals, only one is working.  It goes to a hangar about five miles up the coast.  At one time, there was a squadron of udajeet based here.  Not much was left, but we did recover quite a few tools and a hoversled, which has made it much easier for us to bring water and firewood to the villa.  There were also several light crystals, which we were happy to find.  Sam has been occupied with repairing the cistern and moving one of the ship's generators here.  Finally we have all the major utilities.  We've also restored the palm frond awnings that shade the windows, making it much more comfortable in the afternoon heat.  We have decided to try growing some of our food, right now the wild potato plants that we found in Aspen and some melons that grow here.  There are coconut palms and various citrus trees growing near here, and a wide variety of things in the jungle. Many of the plants and animals seem identical to species found on Earth, but there are others which are new to us. There's no way for us to tell if they've evolved here from Earth species or if they were native to the planet.

After some discussion, we moved to the villa permanently.  Our concern was riding out the hurricane season here, but this is a solid building which has remained sound through several centuries of storms.  The interior rooms should be safe.  We decided to take our chances with what the sea might throw at us, rather than winter over in Aspen.  It's early fall there and already there are frosts almost every morning.

Most of our time has been taken up with the business of survival. We must either find or make everything we need, or do without.  Sam is often frustrated by knowing how to build things to make our lives better, but not having the tools and supplies to carry out her ideas. She has been spending a lot of her spare time working on the ring portal trying to get the other three destinations opened up.  As for myself, I don't have the time I would like to study the site.

If this is where fate has decided we're going to retire, it was a good choice.  Many nights, however, we all look up into the night sky, knowing that a war still rages out there and that people we love are still caught up in it.  I am afraid that we'll never quite manage to reconcile ourselves with beating our swords into plowshares.

(end journal entry)

Trouble hit before he knew it was happening.  Something slammed into him from behind like a linebacker.  Fortunately the hoversled coasted to a stop as soon as he took his hand off the switch, or he surely would have wrecked it.  Talons raked his back.  He yanked his knife from its sheath and turned around, and almost got a face full of bird beak.  He whacked it away with the back of his left arm and slashed with the knife, catching flesh.  It squawked and bit at him.  That beak could take his whole arm off.  He grabbed a piece of wood with his left hand to ward it off.

It was clearly a raptor, and it wasn't going to let its prey escape now that it had tasted blood.  Jack was even more determined not to become lunch.  The next time it lunged at him, he ducked its attack and slashed with the knife, cutting its throat.  It fell back on the woodpile.

Then he got a good look at the critter.  It was at least six feet long, and it looked like a cross between a lizard and a bird, with a long thin body and tail.  Its wings were feathered and powerful, while its body was covered with iridescent green scales.  There was a tuft of feathers at the end of its tail.  He would have thought it was funny looking if its inch-long talons hadn't been razor sharp, and he wasn't getting dizzy.  He was bleeding, a lot.  He got home as fast as he could.

Li'ac saw him driving like a drunk, and dropped her hoe and came running.  Taking in the scene, she picked him up like a little kid and ran for the house with him, yelling for help.  He passed out before she got to the door with him.

O'Neill's back hurt.  A lot.  He opened his eyes and saw a pair of warm green ones looking back at him.  Risha.

"Lie still.  You gave us all quite a scare.  How are you feeling now?"

"Fine," he said.  "Giant rooster."

He heard Sam's laughter, full of weariness and relief.  "You're not fine, exactly, yet, but you will be.  Don't move around too much.  Risha will be mad at you if you bust your stitches."

The healing device was lying nearby.  He could also see some bloody rags that used to be his shirt.  He must have been in worse shape than he'd thought if he still had stitches after they'd used the healing device on him.  "'Kay."  He was tired.  Going back to sleep for a while seemed like a good idea, so he did.

Risha stood up and washed her hands.  "I do not know how he drove himself back here after losing so much blood."

Sam said, "That's the general for you."  She sat down beside his bedroll to watch over him.

Risha shook her head.  Still "the general."  Well, that was none of her business, as tempted as she was to shake some sense into the both of them sometimes.  She took the shirt and a basin of water away with her.

It was evening before he woke up again.  This time he had to use the bathroom.  Daniel was sitting with him now.  When he started trying to get up, the archaeologist said, "Whoa, you're not going anywhere."

"That's what you think.  Gotta use the can."

"At least let me help you up."

"Yeah. That's--ow!--probably a good idea."  It was a few steps across the hall to the bathroom, but he felt like a new kitten.  It was a good thing he'd let Daniel help him navigate.  By the time he got back to his bedroll, he was worn out.

Sam heard him moving around and brought him in a bowl of something.

"What's that, chicken soup?"

"More or less."

He made a face.

Sam said with an evil little smile, "Actually, it's giant rooster soup."

He dug in.  Not too shabby to make a meal out of something that had intended to make a meal out of him.

Sam sat down next to him.  "Wonder how many of those things there are?"

"I think if there were a lot, we would have noticed them flying around before now," Jack reasoned.  "For all we know, they might be flying south for the winter."

Sam said, "That sled would be a lot better if it had a cab up front.  I could use some of the interior panels from the wreck.  We don't have any glass, but bars over the windows would've given you a chance to get to your zat."

He nodded.  They couldn't always anticipate trouble coming, but they'd do their best to make sure the same thing didn't happen twice.  Now that they knew about the flying lizards, they'd be on the alert for them, just as they were for the jungle's other predators.

Sam took the empty bowl and he carefully settled himself on his side.  "How long am I gonna have to put up with these damn stitches?  They itch like hell," he complained.

"Probably no more than tomorrow.  Astarte and I both wore ourselves out.  We'll be okay for another session in the morning.  I'll see if Risha has something that will make it stop itching."

Jack took a good look at her, there were dark circles around her eyes.  He figured he must have come pretty damn close to bleeding out, if it had taken everything the both of them had to get him stabilized.  That was what he got for going off by himself, like it was the woods around his Minnesota cabin instead of an alien planet.  He'd got overconfident and almost ended up on the menu because of it.  

Sam came back with a pot of strongly medicinal-smelling salve.  He wrinkled his nose.  He remembered staying upwind of the kitchen when Risha had been boiling that stuff.  Sam said, "She told me you'd get used to the smell."

"If it works, I can live with it."

She drew his blanket carefully away from his back.

"How does it look?"

"It's probably going to draw," she said honestly.  "Risha did a good job sewing you up before Astarte and I did anything more than get the bleeding stopped, but none of us is a surgeon.  If you want to avoid scarring the sarcophagus is the only way you're going to do that."

"Oh, hell, no.  Not for this.  If I got range of motion back after Iraq, I can work through this."

"Risha said this stuff should help."

The cooling salve eased the itching immediately.  Sam's hands were gentle and caring.  He closed his eyes and relaxed into her touch.  "A guy could get used to this."

She said, "You don't have to get yourself half-killed--"  She stopped in the middle of the sentence, but he heard the anxiety loud and clear.

"Yeah, tell that to the damn flying lizards," he replied.

"I will if I see one."

Jack laughed softly and instantly regretted that.  He'd just bet she would.  With a zat.

The next day, Sam and Daniel drew laundry duty.  It was hot, hard work, scrubbing the clothes on an improvised washboard and stirring them in a wash boiler, wringing them out by hand and hanging them over a clothes line.

Daniel asked, "How was Jack this morning?"

"Better, he can get up and down without having to get someone to help him.  You know how he hates having to depend on other people."

Daniel winced.  He'd been around a convalescing O'Neill often enough over the years to know exactly how much he hated it.  "Now all we have to do is come up with something to keep him occupied until he's well enough to go back to work.  I never thought I'd say this, but I miss ESPN."

Sam snickered and bailed some shirts out of the wash boiler.  She decided the next thing she was going to make was a wringer.

Daniel said, "Sam, this is none of my business, but...how long are you going to wait?"

"For what?"

"Look, we all know how you and Jack have felt about each other for years.  Are you waiting to get back to Pete?"

She shook her head.  "I never should have accepted Pete's proposal.  I do care about him, Daniel--"

"I never said you didn't."

"I hate it that he's probably waiting for me, and when I get back, I'll have to tell him it was a mistake."

"That won't be easy.  But I don't think you have to do penance for it."

"What do you mean?"

"You and Jack.  Sam, I know I'm butting in, but--there are a lot of things I never did with Sha're because I thought there was plenty of time.  Things I never told her.  I don't regret anything about the year I had with her, but I regret like hell the things I didn't do."

"I don't know that there even is a Jack and me," she said pensively.  "He never said anything, he's never let me finish telling him how I feel.  That damn zat'arc test was four years ago.  I don't know if he still thinks about me that way.  He never even spoke up when he knew I hadn't accepted Pete's proposal yet.  If he'd said one word to make me think--"

"You settled," Daniel said, without judgment, simply stating a fact.

"Yeah, I settled, okay?  What's that go to do with now?  We're not going home.  We all know that.  Why can't we just admit it?"

"I don't know, we just don't want to give up I guess.  But...talk to him, OK?"

She sighed. "I hear you, Daniel."

O'Neill was bored.  There was nothing left to do around the villa, not that anyone would let him do anyway.  He wandered around pestering people until Teal'c told him in no uncertain terms to go take a nap.  Instead he went outside where Daniel was just hanging up the last of the laundry.  Sam was standing around nearby, keeping watch.

Daniel said, "Hey, Jack, do you think you could climb the pyramid?"

"Yeah, sure, I probably wouldn't set any new land speed records but I could get up there.  Why?"

"Well, Sam wanted to work on the rings before it gets dark.  If you go with her to keep an eye out while she works, I can help Risha.  She's teaching me a lot about the herbs that grow around here."

"No problem."

"Great."  Daniel took the empty wash basket back to the villa, grinning to himself as he walked away.

Jack asked, "Do you think you can get those other ring portals working?"

Sam said, "Maybe.  I've been working on some better tools.  There are a few more things I can try now.  We'll still have a few hours of daylight after dinner."

They never got tired of the ocean view from the top of the pyramid.  Jack made himself comfortable out of the way and watched Sam work.  He noticed that she had her zat laid out where she could get to it in a big hurry.  The only things flying around right now were seagulls, but neither of them was taking the chance that there weren't more flying lizards.  Daniel had told them that they probably were the basis for the legends of winged serpents sacred to a god known as Kukulcan to the Mayans and Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, if Tel-Chak and his friends had brought a few of them to Earth with them as pets.

Sam reached a pair of forceps into a crack.  "Hello!  There's something wedged under here.  If I can just...get hold of it..."  She pulled, and pulled.  It gave way all at once and she tumbled over backwards, nearly rolled down the stairs.  Jack grabbed her and let out a yell as his back pulled, but they came to a safe stop at the top of the steep staircase.  It was a long way down.

Sam asked, "Are you OK?  Did you hurt your back again?  I'm sorry!"

"It doesn't hurt any more.  I think it was just the scars pulling," he said.  "Will the rings work now?"

"Maybe, if that's all that was jamming the selector system."  She made sure the rings were clear and fiddled with the controls.  Jack was curious enough that he had to remind himself he was supposed to be standing guard while she worked.  After a few minutes, she got the selector moving freely, and triggered the rings.  Lo and behold, they activated to all three stations.  The first two operated without anything remarkable, but the last one brought back a lot of leaves and sticks and some ripe apples.

"Looks like this one's out in the woods somewhere--temperate woods, too."

Jack checked out one of the apples.  "Looks like a plain old apple to me."

Sam cut it in half and smelled it.  "I think so.  I'm really tempted to take a bite, but Teal'c would have a fit if we didn't let him taste it first."  He had taken up the job of food tester, because his symbiote would protect him from anything dangerous.

Jack said, "Hey, apple cider."

"You know how to make apple cider?"

"Oh, yeah.  Grandpa used to make cider every year.  It isn't as hard as brewing beer," Jack grinned.  "Not small batches, anyway.  I don't know how to get yeast, but I'll bet Daniel does.  We'd have to find something to bottle the cider in."

"We'll come up with something," Sam grinned.  She picked up her tools and the rest of the apples, and they began the long slow descent.

Jack decided that getting down the stairs was harder than climbing up in the first place.  There was no hurry.  They had left themselves plenty of daylight to get back to the villa.  They stopped to rest about halfway down.

Sam said, "Y'know, when I was a kid watching Little House on the Prairie, I used to think how awful it would be to get stuck in a place like that.  But now--you're gonna think I'm crazy, but I feel guilty for being happy here."

"I don't think you're crazy.  It's like, if you let yourself be happy it's the next thing to going AWOL or something."  He paused then said, greatly daring, "Or deserting your fiance."

She wondered if Daniel had been at him too.  "I was wrong to accept Pete's proposal.  If we ever do get back, the hardest thing will be looking him in the eye and breaking up with him, but that's what I'll have to do."  She looked up.  "I thought finding yourself went out of style when I was in high school, but that's what I was doing, and I hurt you.  I'm sorry."

"Sam, there was no other way you were going to find out what you wanted out of life.  You're not the only one who made mistakes.  I should have said something.  I should have retired a long time ago."

"I should have requested a transfer off SG-1 four years ago."

"I practically threw you at Pete.  He could give you everything I couldn't.  We both did what we saw as right and necessary at the time.  He's a big boy, Sam, and he's already had one bite at the apple the same as I have.  The whole reason for an engagement is to make sure you've made the right decision before you promise that you'll stay together for the rest of your lives."

She nodded.  She was heartbroken that Pete woke up alone every morning and she was still missing in action.  The not knowing was hell.  At least with a body you could mourn and move on.  But there was nothing she could do about it.  "There are still the regs."

"I know.  If we ever do get home, I'll resign immediately, and if they want to court-martial me, they damn well can.  I think under the circumstances they'll just let me retire.  But I think we both know this is it."

"Yeah."

"So where do you want to go from here?"

"One day at a time," she said.  "If we really have what we think we have, it'll take care of itself."

He brushed a wayward strand of golden hair away from her eyes, a simple gesture yet so eloquent in its tenderness.  "I wish we'd thought of that four yea