magibrain | [fic] Beneath a Beating Sun

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.13: Redux
Chapter Summary: Sometimes all you can do is order your people out to die.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

SG-1, plus Satya, convened in '542's control room grim and desperate. "Right," Jack said. "We need an advantage. Anything. What do we have?"

Daniel looked to Satya. Jack looked to McKay.

McKay made an unhappy noise toward the console. "We've got power. Lots of it. It's not all distributing evenly over the base thanks to Anubis' last attack, but it's there."

"All right. And?"

McKay inhaled. "What, every operational system on the base? We have lights, we have life support, we have computers, we have a handful of safeguards, we have the Stargate. If you're thinking about weapons, we don't have them."

"Not conventional weapons," Daniel said. "What about unconventional ones? A way to disable, or... or take control of a ship from a distance? The base has a long-range transmitter," he began.

"Yes, and if we wanted to send him a petition, that would be worth something," McKay shot back. "It's not the same as an uplink."

"All right, what about jamming?" Jack asked. "He can't attack us if he can't see us."

"If he can't see the planet?" McKay scoffed.

"If he can't target this base," Jack said. "Can we blind his weapons? Screw up his ships' navigation?"

McKay thought. "Maybe," he said.

"How long?" Jack asked.

"Well, without knowing anything about the transmitter's configuration, without knowing anything about Anubis' ship–"

"Doctor," Jack said.

"Look, I don't know!" McKay stalked to a console, calling up long lists that Jack couldn't read. "Hours. Hours and hours of trial and error."

"Okay. That won't work."

"No," McKay shot back. "Probably not. We'd have better luck with these safeguards. Keeping in mind that 'better' is a relative term."

Jack looked around. "Come on. Anyone got a brilliant idea? Anyone?"

Daniel looked to Satya. Satya stared at McKay.

"Wait a minute," McKay said, hands poised above the console.

"Brilliant idea?" Jack asked.

"Maybe." He keyed something up. "There's something in here about a diagnostic shield. A backup system. It hasn't been used in some time, but–"

"Doctor."

"It catches and routes radiation back up into space," McKay said. "Probably something left over from when this system was constructed. Now, naturally they wouldn't want to use it now, because the less radiation gets through to the planet the less energy they can harvest, but–"

"Doctor!" Jack said again.

He turned around. "Look. It'll take a lot of the energy stored in the batteries, and I may not be able to reconfigure it in time, but if I can set this up over our working safeguards and reprogram it so it uses the radiation to blast away incoming matter, I might be able to get us a shield."

"Do it," Jack said.

McKay was already facing the panel again. "Of course, I'll need to pull the data of the previous attack," he said, "and I don't think anything was keeping tabs on it, so this'll be interesting. Dr. Jackson, I'll need you to go through some logs for me."

"Right," Daniel said, approaching the nearest console. "What do you need?"

"Records. Recent. Everything you can get your hands on – power logs, fluctuation reports–"

"Okay." He brought up the screens, and they set to work.

Half an hour in, scarce progress had been made. While Jack went to check in with Hammond – keeping his radio on a different channel so as not to distract them – Daniel, McKay and Satya had stayed behind to scrape a plan together out of a theory, a handful of possibilities and systems none of them fully understood.

McKay had been tying together everything he could into a control node, which wasn't easy because the system had never been designed to be reprogrammed. "We'll need a massive initialization pulse to reset the shield," he said. "Not to mention the problem of bringing it online in the first place. Now, it'll draw power from the batteries, but reconfiguring it will have to take place from here." He patted the central control pylon. "Satya. Can you bring this on?"

Satya stared at its nearest panel for a moment. "This would be easier were I not physical," she said.

"Well, that shouldn't be a problem, should it?" McKay asked, circling around the console. "I mean, you can change back at any time, right?"

"No," Satya said.

McKay paused. "No?"

"I can't move objects unless I'm like this," Satya said. "But I don't like changing. It's hard. It... hurts."

Daniel looked up. "You can feel pain?"

"Pain?" She shook her head. "Analogous."

"I don't understand," Daniel said.

She raised her hands as if in demonstration. "I'm afraid?" she said. "I think. I recognize danger. I don't want it to happen. To use most systems, I have to allow the possibility."

"Danger?" Daniel asked. "You mean from Anubis, or–"

"From things. I'm – stuck," she said, dissatisfaction with the word showing in her tone. Daniel felt irrationally proud that she could convey that. "So I can approximate this shape. Static. That's what I can control. If something interrupts me, I might fly apart. That's – reaction time?" She shook her head, edging between gesture and vibration. "Then there wouldn't be me, just energy."

McKay looked up. "Wait, wait wait wait. Are you saying you can be injured like that?" he asked. "Injured or killed?"

(Is that death?) she asked over her words. "Yes. I could dissipate, while trying to... hold together." (This is hard!) she protested, and for a moment Daniel thought she meant remaining physical. (So few words!) "It takes energy to change. And concentration. And–"

"We understand," Daniel said, glancing at McKay. "We won't make you change."

McKay didn't look happy with that promise, but he didn't object. "Right. Well, can you push buttons, or–"

Satya pried off the terminal casing, blunt fingers seeking through the wiring to isolate a cluster of crystals. Her eyes dimmed for a moment, her hand sparked, and the connected terminals lit up.

"Crystal technology," McKay realized aloud. "Integrated instead of mainline. Huh."

"Is that significant?" Daniel asked.

"To this problem? Not at all."

"This doesn't have much power," Satya said. "It broke when things hit the lines that bring power in from the pulsar. It will stop working."

"Then let's go fast, shall we?" McKay said. "Dr. Jackson, if you could help me with some of these readouts–"

Satya pointed to one of the central banks. "It keeps power in there," she said. I can give it more, but if I do that while they're accessing data, it will flood and all the data will be gone."

McKay pulled back. "So what do you want to do?"

"Make it inactive. Then I can charge it. That will be better."

"And how long will that take?" McKay asked.

Satya stared.

"She doesn't–" Daniel started.

"Right. Of course. Silly me." McKay waved a hand. "Fine!"

Satya wandered over to the bank, pulling off the casing. "Deactivate this," she said.

Daniel reached over, tapping his best guess as to the power button. The consoles flashed amiably, and powered down. "You're good."

"Thank you?" Satya asked.

"Good to go," McKay clarified. "Charge it."

Satya reached in, finding a net of interlinked crystals and twining her fingers into it. She shifted and dimmed, light moving through her and into the battery.

"Satya?" Daniel asked.

Satya continued fading, draining more and more energy into the network.

"Satya!" Daniel yelled. She flickered. He crossed the distance, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Hey!"

She let go of the network, staring at him from dim eyes. (Did I do something wrong?)

Daniel released her. His hand tingled, pins and needles from his palm to his wrist. "Are you all right?"

She wasn't nearly so luminous. She moved her hands. "I'm fine."

"You're an energy being," Daniel said. "I should have asked if it would hurt you to power this up."

(I would have stopped before I risked dissipation,) Satya said. "I can obtain more energy. Shouldn't this be done?"

"She obviously knows what she's doing," McKay broke in. "We've got just about enough to try this, I think."

Daniel shot him a glare, but they didn't have time to debate. "So you can turn it on?"

"No, I can probably reprogram it once it's up," McKay said. "Look, this hasn't been on in a few thousand years. It was so far buried in the programming that if I hadn't been studying this thing since I got the reports on it I wouldn't know what it was. Does the word 'mothballed' mean anything to you?"

Daniel had never met anyone with the same ability to gripe in the face of danger as Dr. McKay, and hoped not to meet many more. "What do you want me to do?"

"For the moment, shut up," McKay said.

Daniel resisted the urge to retort, and walked over to one of the consoles. At the very least, he could read up.

His radio clicked. "Daniel, McKay, what's your status?"

Daniel responded without thinking, beating McKay to it. "It's going to take a while."

The radio clicked off.

Daniel frowned. "Jack?"

No answer.

"You're not on this channel any more, are you?"

Nothing.

Daniel let go of the radio and turned to the terminal again. "Shouldn't he be listening in case we need help, or something?" McKay asked.

"He's probably talking with Hammond," Daniel said. "He'll switch back to this channel–"

"All right, guys, no good news," Jack said. "CAIRN II lost Anubis' ha'tak on its way here. The Prometheus is heading out to intercept the al'kesh, hopefully take out a few before they make it to Earth."

Daniel stopped. McKay did, too. "Can it do that?" he asked, looking to Daniel but keying his radio.

Half a second too much passed. "It doesn't look good."

"Anything we can do?" Daniel asked.

"The best thing you can do is get that shield up," Jack said. "The Alpha List is assembled, but they have nowhere to go. Get us a defensible position."

This time, McKay didn't bite back. Daniel paused a moment, waiting for the retort, but McKay only blanched and bent over his console. "We're trying."

"I'll pass that along."

McKay turned to them. "Look, we need to turn this on," he said.

"All right. What do you want me to do?" Daniel asked.

"I need someone to finish powering it up," McKay said. "Satya!"

"How much more do you need?"

McKay muttered something and moved his laptop from one terminal to another, managing the wires with uncharacteristic dexterity. "About – percents. You understand percents?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Another thirty or so percent more than you just gave me."

Satya shook her head. "I can't give you that much."

McKay's expression crashed through disbelief and terror on its way to frustration. "Well–"

"We'll find another way," Daniel interrupted.

"There is no other way," McKay said, turning back to his computer. "Power is power. If we want to bring up the shield–"

"I can bring more power in," Satya said. "It's more complex."

"Re-route it, you mean," McKay said.

She nodded. "Some of the systems are less difficult to repair."

"Go! Go!" McKay said, waving her out the door. Satya nodded, and wandered off.

Daniel cast him a look. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to be polite."

"Being polite takes time, which we don't have. So technically, it could," McKay said, performing inscrutable operations on his console.

"Right," Daniel muttered. No use talking to some people.

He looked over the console, brushing off the engraved symbols, killing time by running through all the writing systems he knew. He'd just decided that the script was closer to Linear B script than anything, even while it showed strong runic influence, when there was a noise from the hall.

Jack stepped back in, looking over the room as if there'd be some visual indication of how far they'd come. Daniel could see him biting back the question, and answered it anyway. "Not much progress."

"I guessed that." Jack walked around the room's circumference, looking over consoles he couldn't operate. "So, your friend is–"

McKay vanished underneath one of the terminals. "Satya went to re-route power," he said.

Jack raised an eyebrow at the two shins he could see. "And you're–?"

"Being distracted by you," the associated head responded. "Making absolutely sure I can alter the frequency of this thing."

"Aha," Jack said, and looked to Daniel. Daniel shrugged. Once again, they were auxiliaries here. There was nothing they could do.

"I think we've just about got the sensors back on line," McKay said. "So anytime Satya wants to power them up–"

The screens fuzzed on.

McKay poked his head out from under the console. "Nice timing."

The panel warbled.

Jack tilted his head at it. "You gonna get that?"

Daniel turned, blinking at the red light. He frowned. "I recognize this," he said, hands on the console. "...uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?"

"Three al'kesh," Daniel said.

Jack scanned the screen. "Anubis is paying us another visit."

"Looks like it."

"Who keeps tipping him off?" Jack asked. "This trip was the definition of unplanned. Nobody knows we're here."

"Except the entities," McKay said, looking up.

"I don't think they'd go out of their way to tell anyone anything," Daniel said.

"Okay. At the moment, who called him here is probably the least of our problems," McKay broke in. "Now, the ha'tak is probably still an hour off, but if Anubis crashes one of those al'kesh here..."

"Yeah." Jack nodded. "Yeah. We're leaving. Grab your gear."

"What about Satya?" Daniel asked.

Jack looked at the sky. "Right. This place have a PA?"

"Not that I've found," McKay said.

Jack bit at the inside of his lip. "Leave a note," he said. "She knows how to follow us home."

"Jack," Daniel said.

"Daniel, we leave, or we're dead," Jack said. He had a hand on his P-90, for all the good it wouldn't do. "You don't know where she is, we don't have the time or manpower for a hunt."

Daniel hesitated.

Jack grit his teeth, eyes burning. "She'll survive."

"How do you know?" Daniel asked, but grabbed his pack. They were leaving people behind again, but Satya belonged here in a way they didn't. And Jack would make the case that she wasn't their people anyway.

They made it to the 'gateroom at a jog, and Daniel went to the DHD to dial. Picking out the constellations was second-nature by now; he'd learned to touch-type his way across the galaxy. The last time he'd mis-dialled was before his Ascension, sometime in his second year.

So when the 'gate didn't open, it took barely half a second before they knew something was wrong.

"Maybe the Earth gate is open?" Daniel suggested.

"Yeah," Jack said, utterly unconvinced. "That's probably it."

"Okay." Daniel's hand hovered over the DHD. "And the Beta Site is out. So...?"

"Tok'ra base," Jack said.

Daniel nodded, scanning the symbols. As soon as his memory jogged, he dialed.

No response.

"So maybe the Tok'ra are evacuating to Earth?" Daniel said, clearly reaching.

"Sounds like them," Jack agreed. "Land of Light."

"Land of Light," Daniel said, hitting the symbols at doubletime. Still, the 'gate refused to open.

"Anubis has probably taken or destroyed a number of inhabited planets through the galaxy," McKay pointed out, jabbing a finger at the DHD. "You might have more luck with an uninhabited world, one closer to the galactic core, if I remember his attack plan–"

"Problem with that," Jack said. "My galactic geography isn't up to par so I really don't know what planets you're talking about, but the majority of uninhabited worlds we've found are uninhabited for good reason."

"One of the old Tok'ra planets," Daniel said. "They're of no strategic importance, and–"

"Right, right." Jack stepped up, punching in the coordinates. Nothing happened.

McKay looked to Daniel. "...this is seeming less and less like a coincidence," he said.

Daniel looked to Jack. Jack looked to the 'gate, unconcealed unease written in the lines of his face. "This is a problem," he said.

"Anubis has a way to shut down 'gates from a distance," Daniel surmised. "Which means we're stuck here."

(Stuck.) Trapped like – there were too many similes, all too apt. Like Carter behind the Iris, behind the distance, behind the time that was just minutes not long enough. Trapped with no weapons, no means of escape, and a sky that would kill them as readily as weapons would. More readily, even. "Satya," Jack said. "See if it knows what to about this. It can work the stuff around here."

"And the 'gate," Daniel agreed, already backing toward the door. "Yeah. I'll find her."

"Now," Jack suggested. "McKay, we're going to need that shield up, really fast."

"I understand that," McKay said. "But you can't just ignore the laws of computational mechanics whenever it's convenient for you!"

"Right now I'm not listening to anything that comes after a 'but,'" Jack said. "If Anubis shows up and we can't get out of here, that shield is going to be the only things keeping us from joining Carter in the Heavenly Choir."

McKay's mouth worked, but no sound came out. "...right," he said at length.

"I'll keep trying to dial Earth," Jack said, aware that it would do no good. "If I call you back, don't waste any time."

"I won't," McKay said, hesitating anyway. "...right. I'll be in the auxiliary systems mainframe."

Jack nodded and McKay jogged off.

He turned to the DHD, punching in the address again. This was like throwing sand at a tank, hoping to stop its onslaught.

Jack didn't want to die on '542. And he didn't want Daniel to die there – and, hell, he didn't want McKay to die there either. Sometimes there were no choices.

The 'gate didn't come on, Anubis didn't leave, and the sun counted down like a timer. Jack tried not to realize that there was no way out of this one.

It was odd, Daniel thought. Their entire plan had hinged on getting Satya to help them, but no one had thought far enough ahead to outfit her as a member of the team. And, since no one had given her a radio, he had no recourse in finding her but running through the hallways hollering "Satya!" at the top of his lungs.

Come to think of it, odd was a kind word for what he thought of the affair.

He found Satya in a side hall, working through a bundle of crystal-optical cables. Energy flowed out of them, through her hands, and back in; she looked stronger, if only nominally. "Satya," he said, and she looked up.

"This is wrong," Satya said.

Daniel looked over the conduit. Their only plan breaking would not be good. "What is?"

"This," Satya said, and her voice wavered. (Everything. He's changing the application of physics in this region. I'm uncomfortable.)

Daniel shook his head. "What? He's jamming the Stargate, is that what you mean?"

(That would be an effect. He's rendered things nonfunctional.)

("Things." That's specific.) "Satya, we need your help."

She looked up at him. "I'm helping."

"–yes, yes you are." He pointed back down the hallway. "Can you make the Stargate work again?"

"No," she said. "He's making it not. I can't change what he's doing." She tilted her head. "I'm helping Dr. McKay. Is that still useful?"

"It'll have to be," he said. "Are you done here?"

"I can be."

"Okay," he said, and keyed his radio. "I found Satya."

"Well, get it down here!" Jack yelled over the line.

"She can't fix the 'gate," Daniel said. "She might be able to help with the shield, but–"

"Well, that's better than nothing," McKay broke in. "Could you get her over here? I need some help with this program!"

"We're on our way," Daniel said, putting a hand on Satya's back and pulling her toward the door.

"No – Dr. Jackson, I need you to go up to the main control room and access the computers there. There's information I can't get from here."

Daniel glanced down the hall. "Yeah. What do you need?"

"I'll relay info to you once you're there," McKay said. "Readings, settings – I don't know enough about how these are set up to reprogram them from scratch."

"Right. On my way." He looked to Satya. "Help–"

"I'll help Dr. McKay." She regarded him. "You're afraid."

(Not now!) "Yes, I am, and we can discuss that at length if we get out of here," Daniel said. "But–"

"It's an issue of duration," she said.

His heart skipped. "You understand?"

"No. I recognize." She turned and clomped off. For an instant Daniel wanted to follow her, but his own sense of time kicked in. He ran for the main control room.

The displays were online when he got there, familiar and threatening. He could read the positions of Anubis' ships on the map, and the proximity alarm was a strobing red.

On the map, something large was drawing toward the planet.

Daniel fumbled his radio on. "Jack, the ha'tak is moving into orbit," he said. "It doesn't look like the star is going to stop it."

"Yeah, didn't guess it would this time," Jack said. "No luck here on the 'gate."

(Didn't think there would be,) Daniel thought. "McKay, I'm in the control room. What do you–"

"All right, access the main logs and call up everything you can about the last attack – and I mean everything," McKay ordered. "Bring up every record that was made or modified during the time Anubis was here."

He entered the appropriate commands. "I'm getting several million records."

"Good," McKay said. "Now let's narrow them down."

The next minutes were a blur of radio traffic – McKay goading him to subroutine logs and sensor logs and error logs and whose function eluded Daniel entirely, weeding out one set of data in favor of another. The transition between words spoken and written vanished entirely, and until the first blast hit he blanked out everything but the transfer.

A rising whine came from one of the computers. The walls cracked, a netting of hairline fractures lacing through the composite.

(You should not be standing!)

Satya hit him, sending a shock like static through his entire body. He could feel his heart spasm and reset itself and he hit the floor with Satya crouched over him, and the console two terminals down exploded. "What was that!"

Satya turned to the display. "Anubis is attacking."

Daniel picked himself up, rushing back to the panel. "I know. –I thought you were helping McKay!"

"I was." She blinked. "I can't help unless he specifies. He doesn't know what to do. Do you?"

Daniel scanned the screen. He didn't know the language nearly well enough to make sense of it, except that pulses of energy were tearing through the thin atmosphere, hitting the ground around them. "No. I don't."

"But you're moving. You're doing."

"We don't just sit around and wait to be killed," Daniel explained. "It's not our way. Satya, this really isn't the time–"

"And you may die. It's a risk you take."

Daniel grit his teeth. Satya understood position in time if not duration; she had to understand that the moment wasn't opportune. Or maybe she didn't know how little time they had. "We may."

Satya looked at the screen, and turned her head away. "Do you know what I should do?"

"You would know better than I do."

"I don't. How do you know to do what you do?"

"One sec." He hit his radio. "McKay, the second reading is three-nine-decimal-one-one. Is that it?"

"Maybe," McKay said. "Hold on. Let me check."

Daniel had already scrolled past it. "Sometimes it's instinct," he said, hunting out the equations and constants. "Sometimes it's orders."

"And McKay gives you orders?"

"Jack gives the orders," Daniel explained. "He's the only tactician here. But McKay is our best bet, if you don't know what to do."

"I understand," Satya said. "The Colonel will know what to do."

"I didn't say that," Daniel said.

"What do we do?"

"We try to give him some idea."

Satya nodded. "Okay."

"So if you have anything," Daniel said, furiously scrolling past status reports. "If you have any idea how to defend us–"

Satya didn't answer. Daniel made it through another three pages, waiting with half an ear, before he looked up.

Satya was gone.

Jack was hanging onto the DHD, trying another futile dial and waiting for vacuum or radiation to rush in around him. The irony didn't escape him – they'd come here looking for a way to fight back, but were more easily picked off here than Earth.

"Colonel!"

He looked up as Satya slid into position beside him, eyes luminous. "What?" he demanded, fighting to be heard over the shocks going through the ground.

"You should tell me what to do," it said.

"What?" he demanded. "What makes you think I know?"

"I agreed to help you. I want to help you. What do you need me to do?"

(Oh, I literally can't believe this,) Jack thought. "Are you strong enough to take that thing out?" he yelled, jamming a finger at the sky.

"No," Satya said. "There's too much energy."

"Well, does this place have any weapons?"

"No."

"Does it have anything that you could make a weapon?"

It stared.

Jack shook his head. A small avalanche of dust and debris fell down around his ears. "Look! All we need is to make that thing stop working. Can we do that? Can anything here do that?" (It figures,) he thought, (that I'd get stuck on this damn planet with a glowing alien who has the brain of a six-year-old. This is not how I wanted to die!)

Somewhere, locked in the entity's brain, was knowledge they had to be able to use. It'd worked the Stargate. It'd stopped Anubis' earlier attack. It'd fixed this entire facility. And now it was staring at him because it didn't know what a weapon was. This was the definition of absurdly unfair.

"Look, Daniel trusts you," Jack yelled. The lights novaed, went out, and spasmed back on. "He believes in you. You're supposed to have this great intuition that can see us out of this. Do you?"

"I don't know–"

"No! Stop that!" (We have so little time here.) "It isn't about knowing something, it's about taking a chance. We didn't know we should come here, and I don't know you can help. But we came, and I'm asking. Get it?" He couldn't tell if it did. "Instinct! Do you know what instinct is?"

"I should take a leap," Satya said.

"Something like that."

"It could be wrong."

"I know that." Debris hailed down on the window outside. Jack steeled himself. "But it might not. Things will be worse if you do nothing."

"I understand," Satya said, and its voice changed. Jack couldn't quite place how – it gained confidence, yes, but there was something more. "The shield," Satya said.

His world hiccuped. "What?"

"The fold shield can be changed," Satya said, never breaking eye contact. "It moves power from the pulsar to the batteries. I can move it back into space. Maybe I could focus it. I could make it a weapon. Maybe the ship would break."

Jack didn't hear any words after "pulsar". He heard the cadence, the competence, the absolute certainty in the value of the gamble. For a moment after she finished he couldn't twist his mind back to the issue at hand.

It wasn't anything she had said. Her scattershot competence impressed but had never surprised him. For a split second some ineffable quality in her report had shone through, something impossible to describe or simply mimic. Something he wouldn't ever have thought of as a mark of identification, something he'd taken for granted – something familiar.

(Carter.)

"Risks?" he choked out, trying to keep his mind on the attack.

She threw them at him, mind to mind. The shield could fluctuate, flooding them with radiation. The other safeguards could fail, leaving them exposed. The blast out might be too large, tearing the installation apart. "It's better than inaction."

Jack nodded. "And you?"

She seemed taken aback, but only for a moment. "I'll let go of this form. Noncorporeal, radiation won't hurt me."

"And if it goes off while you're fiddling with it?"

"I could permanently lose cohesion. Is there another choice?"

Maybe it was sick irony that it had taken this long for something undeniably Carter to emerge. Maybe it was no irony at all – the situation had triggered it, and the instant she stopped wondering who she was and let her instincts take over was the instant she regained her identity. Maybe the irony was that in all this time of waiting and watching and hoping and fearing, the instant all his doubts were destroyed came at a moment where there was no time for anything but staying alive. "Do it," he ordered.

She nodded and slid away.

"Major!" he called, and she turned – he thought she turned on instinct. "If you die here again," he yelled, "I'm gonna kill you!"

Her eyes glowed as she stood there, watching with surprise on inscrutable features. Then she turned and ran, fluid and bright down the hall.

Jack felt suddenly, intensely sick as the world lurched and the lights went out for good. This time it wasn't radiation. Still, all he could do was hold on.

Another hit to the outskirts sent the installation shaking, klaxons howling to the beat of the tremors. His radio crackled. "Jack! Has Satya come by there?"

Jack hit talk. "Yeah. Yeah, she's been and gone."

Daniel caught the nuance faster than anyone should have. "Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

From far away Jack could hear something changing, something shifting, something powering up. "Look out a window," he advised.

Outside, Anubis' ha'tak glowered over the installation, still firing into the outskirts. Debris leapt up over them, raining down like fallout. And he stood under it all, still ordering his people out to die.

"What did you tell her?" Daniel asked, voice suspended. Jack didn't have the words to answer him, staring up instead into the flashing sky.

Satya arrived in the control room certain for the first time on what she had to do, and absolutely lost on everything else. She ran to the controls, making adjustments as fast as she could.

(He has no established interest in lying to me. Not about this.)

She couldn't read the symbols on the panels – didn't know what they were intended to do, what each represented. But she knew how they would change the flow of energy in the banks, configurations so delicate and specific that she couldn't touch them directly.

(I don't know why he changed his mind.)

She entered the commands, realizing that, were she faced with the situation again, she should really go to the trouble of synthesizing additional digits and limbs.

(I can't think about this now.)

Around her, she could sense the fold shield changing. The space around the installation shifted and twisted, energy humming through the walls. She hit the final sequence – and let go.

The world flashed and fuzzed, threatening to tear her apart as physical cohesion gave way to energetic. As she did the station burst out in minor explosions, then a much greater one – a pulse of energy rivaling any single pulse from the star, which caught her up and sent her soaring through space and matter into the empty sky above.

She spread out, reveling in the power around her, and turned, and the blast turned with her. Above, the ship moved to avoid the fire. (No,) she thought wordlessly. Anubis was in there – the damager, the destroyer, the one who even now was trying to kill Daniel, kill the scientist, kill the Colonel. Anubis had to leave, but he wouldn't leave. So Anubis had to cease.

The pulse hit the ship, tearing apart the energy inside, shredding itself on shields and batteries and losing direction in explosions. It travelled in a wave through conduits and bulkheads, a dancing storm through the systems. The ship shuddered and jerked as engines went into death throes, plunging the craft at an angle into the planet's gravity.

Satya raced through the chaos, striking and directing, reveling in choice and chance and effect. And then, like a beacon, like any other pattern, she felt another being on the ship with her.

She'd become used to the luminous fields of the other entities, of the dim, matter-bound flickers of the humans. Anubis was unlike either – a knot of static energy, neither natural nor impossible, angry and powerful. This, then, was the destroyer – the primary cause.

Anubis turned to regard her. And as she blasted at him, full force of her energy aimed at dissipating his, she realized how outclassed she was – his power closed down around her, and for the first time in her memory she felt cold, and heavy, and solid.

Nothingness followed.

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[fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - ch.13: Redux