[Fic][SG1] U is for Unheimlich
Feb. 10th, 2014 02:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magibrainTitle: U is for Unheimlich
Author: magistrate (magibrain)
Rating: T.
Genre: Character study, ghost story
Beta: Walked away.
Continuity: Canon-compliant.
Prerequisities: Doesn't really relate to any specific episode.
Summary: It's all ghost stories, sir.
Disclaimer: Stories told to certain audiences may have unanticipated results. Hear that, MGM? The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters and not of R. L. Stine. The door is open. Questions, comments and creepypasta can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!
Author's Notes: This is 9,000 words. I don't know why it's 9,000 words. All I know is that I started out writing this the day I got the prompt, and yet somehow I still found myself finishing in a desperate throw-words-at-the-page rush at 2 AM the day it was due. WHY.
I'm sorry if this is absolutely incoherent.
The SGC was different when an SG team was out.
Well. Not quantifiably; there was no special change in the facility's operation when a team was out. (Medical and security staff were always at full compliment, because trouble didn't need to follow a team home to make itself known in the SGC.) The quarters which stood empty would stand just as empty when a team was on-world but off-duty. There weren't any faithful dogs sitting at the foot of the Stargate and waiting for their masters to come home.
Nothing so obvious.
Still, there was something different, and Hammond could feel it with every step he took. He knew it was probably a trick of his mind, but he swore that even if a team snuck away, he'd know it implicitly: it was a strange kind of proprioception, as though he'd put a hand out through the Stargate and was left uneasy until it was drawn back in again.
And SG-1 was late.
-
They showed up like a loosed breath three days overdue, looking somewhat sheepish for the concern that greeted them in the Gateroom, but otherwise untroubled.
Which was, all things considered, the best result Hammond could have hoped for after they blew past the initial check-in and their reconnaissance deadline without so much as a radio whisper. He waved them on to get themselves cleared by the infirmary and cleaned up, with orders to reassemble in the briefing room as soon as that was done. Where, after a brief inward reassurance that the ground was solid and all his limbs were where they should be, and a few minor tasks to pass the intervening time, Hammond joined them. "I expect there's a good reason you've been keeping us all up at night."
"Well," Colonel O'Neill said, with a tone that in one syllable told Hammond it would be a quip, "there's definitely a reason. Not sure if I would call it a good one."
"We couldn't open the Stargate," Dr. Jackson said.
Hammond nodded; he'd expected something similar. "When you missed your check-in, we tried to dial out to the planet to make contact," he said. "We weren't able to make a connection, either." He turned to Jack, weighing the implications in Not sure if I would call it a good one. "I take it you don't know why this happened?"
"Not... exactly," Major Carter said, and Hammond turned his attention to her. "When we tried to dial in, the event horizon wouldn't form," she said. "There was some kind of energy field which interrupted it."
"Replaced it," Jack said, with an arch of his eyebrow. "Looked like a soapbubble, sir. Stretched entirely across the 'gate. Nothing we could do got rid of it."
Hammond was curious to read the details of that Nothing we could do in his report; he imagined at least one rock had been thrown through. "Well, obviously something happened, or you wouldn't be here now. How did you manage to get through?"
"It vanished on its own, actually," Dr. Jackson said. "During Teal'c's watch."
Teal'c inclined his head. "Indeed. It occurred at a moment when I was facing the forest. When I turned back to observe the region surrounding the Stargate, the energy had vanished. I immediately woke Major Carter."
Who shrugged. "I looked at the readings from our MALP, but there wasn't much. Its energy signature held constant for the three days we were there, and then just dwindled away to nothing over the course of seventeen seconds at the end. Nothing indicated a precipitating event."
"Anything that warrants further study?" Hammond asked.
Carter shook her head. "It's interesting, definitely, but I don't see an immediate strategic benefit," she said. Perhaps a little wistfully. Hammond took that at face value, and turned to the other scientist who might have a stake in the place.
"I don't imagine the ruins were extensive enough to occupy your entire time there."
"Well, I did–" Dr. Jackson started, and a noise from Jack brought him up short. He cleared his throat. "No, we... actually, for the most part, we just camped out in a clearing. A lot of the food plants the early slaves brought with them were growing wild."
"Nuts, berries and apples, General," Jack said. "And Teal'c managed to take down a boar-thing."
Hammond had to chuckle. "Sounds like your kind of vacation, Colonel."
"Teal'c told ghost stories," Dr. Jackson volunteered. A strange look passed over Jack's face, as though he'd just tasted something bitter.
"A single story," Teal'c corrected, smoothly. "And the Jaffa do not have an entirely compatible genre to the traditional ghost stories Daniel Jackson described."
No one seemed inclined to expand on that.
"So," Hammond said, trying to sum it all up in his head. "If I'm hearing you correctly, the ruins were no more expansive than the UAV showed, there were no signs of recent activity, no signs of technology, and the only thing out of the ordinary was the field which prevented you from returning home. Does that sound like an accurate assessment?"
"That's about it, sir," Jack said. "Cross that planet off; move on to the next."
Hammond nodded. "Well," he said, "I'm glad your delay was nothing serious. We were all getting pretty worried, here."
"Nothing serious at all," Jack said. "Just one of the unexplained mysteries of the cosmos."
His tone suggested that he'd put it out of mind for now, but didn't entirely buy that this was the end of the matter. And, glancing across the table, Hammond could see that Carter's mind was already halfway to somewhere else, teasing at the edges of the mystery and working out how best she could get to the middle of it. Dr. Jackson was jotting something down on the corner of the legal pads they stocked the briefing room with, and Teal'c sat, as ever, implacably.
Every team had its own particular repose, and this was SG-1's. It was subliminally reassuring, like a heartbeat: so present that it didn't call attention to itself, but immediately noticeable when something changed.
"I'll look forward to reading the reports," Hammond said, and stood up to dismiss them.
-
It was late that night, past the time when sensible day-shift folk would have headed off to bed, that Hammond found himself in the commissary, holding a cup of decaf coffee. But the SGC didn't self-select for the common sensibility. He found Teal'c there as well, enjoying a solitary evening meal.
Teal'c had a vast quantity of food on his plate, which still rang in Hammond's mind as somewhat odd, but which no longer startled him these days. While Teal'c wasn't precisely evasive about a Jaffa's caloric requirements, Janet hadn't ever been able to pin down precise guidelines on them, and Hammond had long ago made a note to allocate twice the usual quantity of rations to Teal'c's pack for missions. Teal'c had neither requested nor acknowledged the change. Hammond suspected that if he ever did feel underfed on a mission, he'd either stoically endure it or quietly supplement it.
A part of him wished he could have been a silent observer at SG-1's on-world boar feast.
"Teal'c," he said, drawing up to the table and raising his mug by way of explanation. "Do you mind if I join you?"
Teal'c raised an eyebrow at him, and said "Please."
Hammond sat. Teal'c had mentioned, once, that a commander among the Jaffa was never required to ask permission of his subordinates to take any seat he pleased. Hammond had made a decent effort to explain the forms of politeness in human – or at least American – social situations, an had kept to himself that he wasn't sure how much he bought into the idea that Teal'c was a subordinate, or how unsure he was whether Teal'c had meant that as a gentle corrective or an aside. Teal'c deferred to him, and acted as an exemplary soldier, respecting the need for a chain of command and executing directives with admirable focus. Still, he'd been a First Prime – a general in his own right – and probably had more combat experience than any two other members of the SGC put together, Hammond and Colonel O'Neill included.
Hammond always had the sense that Teal'c's willingness to work with the SGC was absolute, so long as their ultimate goals remained aligned. Should those goals diverge...
Well. Best to worry about that when the war was over.
Teal'c continued eating, evidently accepting Hammond's presence as he might a change in the weather, and Hammond drank his coffee. If Teal'c was relieved to be in a place with a wealth of food at his fingertips, he didn't show it. Hammond didn't expect him to. He wasn't precisely a demonstrative man.
"I have to admit," Hammond said, "I'm curious about the ghost story you told."
Teal'c turned his attention to Hammond, a kind of reflected curiosity in his eyes. "Are you a collector of ghost stories, General Hammond?"
That was an odd question, which Hammond thought probably traced back to some conversation on the planet he hadn't been privy to. Probably the same one where Dr. Jackson had been describing traditional ghost stories, so that Teal'c could compare his own against that mold. "Not exactly," Hammond said. "But I appreciate a good ghost story, now and then." Maybe later he'd find a way to explain how he was at least sure it was American, and how he suspected it was human, to want to gather at odd hours and hear stories that balanced you between fear and incredulity. To want to test those waters, that no-man's land.
"I would be pleased to tell it, if you have no pressing engagements," Teal'c said.
The night shift commander had charge of the SGC, and Hammond was just lingering, enjoying the everything-in-its-place feeling of having all his teams home at once. It'd disappear, replaced by the not-quite-anxiety, tomorrow morning, when SG-10 went out. "I've got nothing but time."
"Very well," Teal'c said.
-
"The story I told was the story of The Boy Who Walked Away And Turned His Back," Teal'c said, his hands coming around to cradle his commissary mug as though it were a ceremonial relic. "It concerns events which happened on the world of Inmeshe, many generations ago, in the time when Ra cast down Utu. It concerns a warrior, Macana'c, one of my ancestors."
That surprised Hammond. "Is it a true story?" he asked. The Jaffa had their own words for most things, and even with a fluent translator on the team, nuances got lost. Daniel had said ghost story, and Teal'c had said the Jaffa do not have an entirely compatible genre. He didn't entirely know what to expect.
Then again, the best ghost stories here on Earth were the ones that began, This happened to my uncle when he was out on a hunting trip, or this happened to my sister when she got her first apartment. The best stories began with an assertion of truth.
But Teal'c only raised an eyebrow, and regarded him evenly. "The quality of its truth has been lost to the forgetfulness of time," he said, with perhaps a hint of reproach. Still, a moment later, his tone softened. "When my father told tales..." A brief pause, there; an imperceptible pang. "He told us, 'all stories benefit from being treated as truth. If only in the telling.'"
Hammond nodded, and motioned him on.
"It was the case," Teal'c began, "that Macana'c had a single son when these events occurred, though he did not know his wife carried another. The living son's name was Jana'c, which meant 'dancer'. He was fleet of leg, like his father, and had the strength of his mother, who could throw down a mastadge colt if it should charge her. But quite unlike either of his parents, he had a willful streak, and was not mindful of either tradition or custom.
"In the year before his prim'ta, six warriors came to Jana'c's village. They were ash'kree'ta – those who fought on their own word. In those days, a warrior could gain glory and fame by attacking the enemy of his god, before his god had given the word."
That was a strange thing to hear Teal'c say, and Hammond blinked. His god. Teal'c was often so careful in his terms, so reluctant to give the Goa'uld that term of recognition. Then, Hammond could see something in Teal'c's expression, hear it in his tone – something like his old friends, leaning back with a beer in hand, rehashing an old story told by rote. An oral tradition, as Daniel would likely point out. An old, well-worn tale.
"A child before his prim'ta is no warrior," Teal'c went on. "He does not possess the endurance of an adult, nor the capacity to heal from any but the most minor of injuries. But Jana'c was willful, and eager for glory, and the ash'kree'ta who had come to his village were full of laughter and high blood. They said to Macana'c, 'Let the boy come, if he will taste battle. If he can spill blood before his prim'ta, surely his courage is greater than those who would wait.' Macana'c cast their words aside, and forbade his son to go." A pause, and then something added, as though for the benefit of a human audience. "The Jaffa know that death comes when it pleases, and there is no guarantee that a son will outlive his father. But it is still a knife near the heart when a child is lost, and Macana'c was afraid of that particular pain."
Hammond was beginning to understand Jack's bitter look at the briefing table.
"It is a great offense to disobey one's elders before one is of age," Teal'c said. "But Jana'c was willful. As the ash'kree'ta left through the Chappa'ai, he dodged his father's hand and ran after them. He showed his father his back before the portal swallowed him, and because Macana'c had not thought to ask the ash'kree'ta where they were going, he could not follow. He was left with the image of his son's turned back.
"Many days passed without word, and Macana'c was troubled. His rest was disturbed, and in the third day, he began to dream of his son's turned back. He confided in his wife, who advised him to cast out all thoughts of his troublesome boy." Another pause. "In Jaffa society, it is the men who do battle and their wives who steward their strength. When a Jaffa warrior comes home and shows his doubts, his wife reminds him of his strength, of the demands of his god, of his honor. The wife beats at his resolve like a carpenter driving a spike through a join. So, Macana'c's wife berated him until he put aside the thought of his son, and when the call came that his god bade an army to do battle, he went with them.
"It was a fierce battle, as well, but they triumphed amidst blood and the fire of their staves. Then, as the warriors around him gave voice to their victory, Macana'c saw something he could not set aside. He had been haunted by his son's turned back for so long that there was no mistaking it here, and he ran through the chaos which follows battle. He cried out, 'Jana'c!' But Jana'c did not turn, and Macana'c was swept up in the revelry, though his heart and mind were distracted from it.
"When the Primes of each band felt that enough paeans had been raised, they sounded the horns to call their bands back to Inmeshe. Macana'c concealed himself and remained behind. Soon enough, when all the other warriors had gone home, he spied Jana'c walking along the crest of a hill, his back turned. Macana'c pursued his son and soon caught up to him, and Macana'c threw his arms around his son. It was in his heart to ask for Jana'c's forgiveness, though he himself had done no wrong. He hardly noticed that his son's body was cold.
"'I would do many things to have you return to me,' Macana'c said. 'Tell me how I may bring you back to my household. I would petition the priests to give you your prim'ta at once, that you might be a warrior in name and renown as well as action.' But his son did not move, and gave no indication of hearing. So Macana'c stepped back and put his hand on Jana'c's shoulder, to turn him around – and in fact he thought he had turned his son around to face him, but his son's back was still turned.
"At this, Macana'c should have been angry. His son, not yet a warrior for all his acts, had defied him and continued to defy him. But Macana'c was motivated by softness and regret, not by discipline. He put his hands on his son's shoulders.
"'Show me what I am to do,' Macana'c said. Jana'c began walking, and Macana'c followed him."
Teal'c paused.
"My father, when he told me this tale, told me that the Prime of Macana'c's band had noted his departure and stayed behind, well concealed, to discover if Macana'c was up to any treachery or cowardice. That is how this tale survived to be told to his second-born son. When Macana'c began to follow Jana'c, his Prime leapt from his hiding place and called, 'Macana'c! Return or be cast down with deserters or traitors.' And Macana'c did hesitate in his stride. But in the end, his son had commanded him; he put his back to his Prime and his duty and walked away.
"Now, some have said that Macana'c was never seen again. But those who say it show disdain for the word of women, who may not fight in the great battles but who hold the home territory in a grasp like the jaws of a jedze. For it was the case that Macana'c's wife saw him again many times, on nights when clouds obscured the light of moons and stars: he would stand in the door of their compound with his back turned to her. But her feet had the strong roots of duty and wisdom, and she acted as Macana'c should have done: she turned her back to the one who had abandoned her, and when she deigned to look again, he was gone."
-
Some time later he and Teal'c parted ways, Teal'c to his meditation and Hammond to walk the halls of the SGC one last time before going out to his truck. It was his own little ritual, one he always thought of as putting the SGC to bed – even when he knew, with the presence of the night shift, with the galaxy that didn't hold itself to office hours or Mountain time, that the SGC never slept. He passed the infirmary – quiet, thank God – and the labs with their usual smattering of scientists choosing science over sleep for at least a few more hours, yet. He passed the guards at their stations and the empty offices of the deskbound, passed the briefing table waiting for a new mission to begin or a mature one to end, passed his own office.
Finally, he resolved his rounds in the embarkation room, standing before the Stargate, which glowered like an opened eye. He nodded to it as he turned to go.
It wasn't until he'd seated himself behind the wheel of his truck that he thought: in all the time since he'd settled into this post, since he'd started to think of it as home, he'd never thought of the Stargate as glowering. He didn't know why it had looked like an opened eye.
-
The next morning dawned bright and patchy, strong sun beaming down through ragged clouds. Hammond returned to the SGC as he always did; went past the security checkpoints, down the corridors and the long gullet of the elevator, and nothing seemed strange. That was, he couldn't shake the strangeness of the previous night, but it felt more like a fear that the strangeness would recur than a fear springing from the fact that it had.
He went to the control room just in time to see Major Carter slipping in, with a nod for him and a greeting for the 'gate technicians as she took one of the empty terminals and logged herself in. Hammond considered leaving her to whatever she was doing, trusting that she'd tell him if anything interesting came up, but curiosity prodded him over.
"Following up on the mission, Major?"
She nodded. "While we were on the planet, we observed some kind of energy field within the Stargate," she said. "But we didn't have any equipment sophisticated enough to really dig into it. But our logs showed an anomalous energy fluctuation in our 'gate when we returned; I'm trying to put that data together with what we got from the MALP and see if I can learn anything."
A screen sprang up, replete with graphs and equations that Hammond didn't try too hard to untangle. "Anything that might have an impact on SG-10's departure?"
"I don't believe so," Carter said, and Hammond almost smiled in recognition. Most of his scientists shared that disinclination to give an absolute yes or no. "I'll alert you if I think there's any cause for concern."
"Appreciated," Hammond said, and noticed motion down on the Gateroom's floor. Colonel O'Neill, apparently; he walked in ten steps or so from the door, and then just stood there, staring at the great stone circle.
If Major Carter knew what he was doing or found it relevant, she didn't show it. Her attention was fixed on the screen, and more than likely unless her commanding officer was ordering her to do something or messing with the readings coming out of the Stargate, she was perfectly content just not to divert any of her attention his way.
Hammond had to maintain a much broader consciousness, in his position. He headed down the stairs to join him.
-
Down here, the presence of the Stargate was almost palpable: august and aged, and impenetrably alien. But standing before it today, the feeling that had been only a wary premonition earlier was strange as it had been last night. It felt as though an alien intelligence had turned on them.
"You feel it," Hammond said, and Colonel O'Neill glanced over at him.
"Thought it was just me," he said.
The confirmation was reassuring. Better, it saved Hammond from having to explain what "it" was. The closest he could come was one of those days when a summer thunderstorm rolled in between the start of the shift and the end of it; you couldn't see or hear anything, twentysome stories underground, but there were days when you would swear you could feel in the air that when you got up to the surface, a storm would be waiting for you.
"I had Teal'c tell me that ghost story of his, last night," Hammond said. "I just thought that listening to ghost stories that close to bed might have been a mistake." A small joke; a bit of self-deprecation that the Colonel seemed to miss in favor of wherever his own thoughts were going.
"It's all ghost stories, sir," Jack said, though the sharp, pensive look on his face didn't go away.
That sounded like an odd phrasing. Hammond didn't always put much stock in what things sounded like.
"According to Daniel," Jack went on, "these guys – the ones on the planet – went absolutely nuts on writing their ghost stories down."
Superstition and myth were rarely just superstition and myth, in this line of work. "Think there's anything to them?"
Jack shrugged. "Wouldn't put it past... it," he said, with it standing in for some unnamable aspect of the situation. The planet, the energy distortion, the universe's crooked sense of humor. There was very little Hammond would put past that.
"Well, have him come up and brief me," Hammond said. Jack nodded, and walked away.
Hammond was about to follow him when a flicker of light caught the corner of his eye, familiar and utterly out of place.
The Stargate stood still and empty. Or it feigned emptiness. Hammond turned; if he kept it in his peripheral vision, he could almost see the event horizon; could see the light which scattered across the walls. But when he faced it, the great Naqahdah circle was dead.
With Jack gone the only person in the Gateroom was the custodian, sweeping a mop across the space at the foot of the ramp with a kind of meditative evenness. Hammond walked up to stand beside him, trying to put his finger on what was out of place, here; the Stargate took up his attention, smoothing it away from anything else. He could turn away, look at something: no, the custodian was on his schedule; no, the lights were all on; no, the window to the control room was visible as it should have been, as the blast doors had no reason to be down.
No reason to be down. It was a strange hiccup in his thinking, as though noticing an absence wasn't something he was accustomed to.
He turned, though a strange pressure along his spine warned him not to turn his back to the Stargate, and made a slow examination of the room.
–he was left with the image of his son's turned back–
Hammond turned to the the control room's window. "Sergeant Harriman!"
The sergeant looked up, then reached to his station's mic. "General?"
"Where's the response team?" Hammond asked.
A look of confusion crossed Harriman's face.
"Our standing orders are to keep this room guarded at all times," Hammond said. "There should be men on the emplacements, at minimum."
The look of confusion deepened, and Harriman turned to look at each of the mounted guns. The guns were where they should be. As they should be. Hammond could almost see the sergeant working through to the realization that there was something conceptually wrong in what he was seeing.
"I didn't–," he admitted. "I didn't notice them leave, sir."
"Find out who's on duty," Hammond said. "Order them to report to the Gateroom immediately."
"Of course," Harriman said.
"And get me the status of the Stargate," Hammond said, and started moving for the stairs.
The image of his son's turned back.
Hammond didn't back out of the Gateroom, but he was strong enough to admit that he was tempted.
-
The sense of muted menace wasn't as strong in the control room, but Hammond still felt it, ghosting along the edge of his awareness like a figure at the corner of his eye. He looked at the 'gate technicians, trying to gauge their reactions, but there was no way to winnow out the confusion generated by the odd disappearance from this, more abstract unease.
"Stargate systems are reporting normally," Harriman said. "We're still getting an anomaly in the energy readings, but no errors."
"Humor me," Hammond said, "and tell me whether or not the Stargate is active."
Harriman looked up at the Stargate, but either shared Hammond's misgivings or was too inured to the nonsensical having some hidden sense in the SGC to comment. "Due to the anomaly, the Stargate is drawing more power than it should at standby," he said. "But it's still drawing less than three percent of the power it would need to form an event horizon."
"Of course," Hammond said. "Where's Major Carter?"
"I think she went back to her lab," Harriman said. "Should I call her back up here?"
Yes, Hammond's mind said, instantly. he wanted everyone he had seen here to remain in his line of sight, but that wasn't practical for any of them getting things done. The 'gate technicians excepted. "Just confirm her location for me," he said.
Harriman nodded, and glanced over to make eye contact with another tech. The other tech nodded in turn, and Hammond could almost feel the seamless delegation which had taken place. That, at least, was working as it should; the human brain of the SGC hadn't faltered.
Something else had.
Harriman was bringing up the security feed already, playing it backwards from the moment Hammond had walked into the Gateroom. The defense team hadn't been there, then; that was both troubling and reassuring. Hammond didn't want to think of them vanishing, like ghosts, unnoticed in the corners of his eye.
Though it felt like that had happened, anyway.
The video scrolled back through a long shot of an empty room, only the timestamp in the corner admitting any change. Then, with a suddenness that almost made Hammond jump, the four airmen stationed in the room popped back into existence, and Hammond stopped the rewind and started a playback at normal speed.
It showed the four of them: standing at their stations, with the occasional shift of their weight or turn of their head, and then after a minute they moved as one.
"They... walked through the Stargate, sir," Harriman said.
"When?" Hammond asked, though he was already looking to the timestamp. Harriman confirmed what he could see.
"About forty-seven minutes ago." Harriman paused the video, leaving an image of one of the guards, half-dissolved into nothingness in the great, empty circle of the Stargate.
Hammond was trying to work out something to say when Dr. Jackson poked his head into the control room, an overstuffed manilla folder under one arm. "General?"
"Dr. Jackson, come in," Hammond said, slightly too distracted to realize that was a greeting usually reserved for his office. But Dr. Jackson walked in, glancing at the security feed with interest.
"What's going on?"
"Almost an hour ago, without the Stargate technically activating, the stationed response team walked through it and disappeared," Hammond said. "And none of us noticed it until just now." Obliging an unspoken request, Harriman rewound the video again, and played it for its new audience.
There was silence in the control room while the scene played out again, and then Dr. Jackson nudged the bridge of his glasses. "Wait – go back," he said. "Right when they... decide, I guess."
Harriman cued back the video, and the three of them watched as every guard in the Gateroom turned at once, as though motion at the corner of their vision had commanded their attention.
"They saw something," Dr. Jackson said, and his gaze shifted to the image of the Stargate on the screen. "But whatever it was, our cameras didn't pick it up."
"There's a flicker in the Stargate's energy use at that timestamp," Harriman said, his attention caught by another screen, replete with graphs and numbers. "Our systems didn't mark it as anything dangerous."
"It seems our systems need refinement," Hammond said. That was the problem with working here: common sense got shot out the window, not that there were windows, and no one knew how to adapt to the new sense required until they were shown the error in their suppositions. From what he understood, physics suggested that there was a minimum amount of energy that had to be expended for the Stargate to take people and disappear them. Then again, their sense of physics had been proved incorrect or incomplete before. He turned to the other technician. "Did you–?"
"Major Carter is in her lab, sir," the tech said. "Should I have all this new information sent down to her?"
"Please do," Hammond said, and turned to Dr. Jackson. "Colonel O'Neill said you might have some insight." Into this situation, he didn't say; Jack hadn't much more than implied that. Still, insight was a surprisingly malleable currency, here.
"Well, I've been going over the inscriptions we found in the ruins," Dr. Jackson said. "There's actually a surprising density of information, if you include the steles – turns out they're not just boundary markers. Looks like they might have had some sort of ritual significance, which would mean that the ruins we found probably weren't just a 'gate-monitoring outpost. They seem to have been significant in their own right."
"Significant in what way?"
"That's what I'm trying to extrapolate," Dr. Jackson said.
After a moment, Hammond prompted, "Colonel O'Neill mentioned something about ghost stories."
"Yeah," Dr. Jackson said, that one word oddly clipped. As though he was loathe to bow to the inevitable relevance of that particular detail. "Most of the inscriptions concern ghosts, either explicitly or obliquely. They also contain some very stern injunctions against discussing any of this out loud."
A quiet supposition – one which felt like a realization, which felt like dread – crept in under Hammond's stomach. "What happens if you're to discuss it out loud?"
But he already knew the answer. It was the answer to whispering Bloody Mary in a dark room with a mirror on the wall.
"From what I've translated, the texts either disagree or offer multiple consequences," Dr. Jackson said. "Some say you'll call attention to yourself. There's one line that says you'll give birth to a ghost – give rise to it, make it manifest."
What kind of a ghost lures four airmen through a closed Stargate? Hammond wondered. "Did they mention any way to exorcise the ghost afterward?"
Dr. Jackson exchanged a look with Hammond, both of them balanced on the same edge of half-understanding. "Not that I've encountered."
"Think it would do any good to ask Teal'c to un-tell that story of his?" Hammond asked.
That garnered a small noise of amusement, at least. "If he knows how to un-tell a story," Dr. Jackson said. "Though that might be a philosophical impossibility."
Indeed, Hammond thought, and his mind gave the word Teal'c's inflection. It was probably as good as a response from the man. "Maybe you should continue translating those steles," he suggested.
"I was just about to go do that," Dr. Jackson agreed, as though Hammond's dismissal would have been just a formality. And while Hammond suspected that that was pretty near the truth, he nodded for the Doctor to go, anyway.
-
Three hours passed, with a roll call of SGC personnel and diligent silence from the scientists, before Hammond walked into the control room again and saw light stretching like a soapbubble across the eye of the Stargate.
"Do you see that?" Hammond asked.
At his station, Harriman looked up, and frowned. "What, sir?"
Hammond paused. The question had been more of a statement, as he'd intended it. Look at that. Harriman's answer raised questions of its own.
"What's the status of the Stargate?" Hammond asked, and Harriman turned back to his screen with a frown.
"...we're picking up the same fluctuation as earlier," Harriman said, and turned his attention back to the vast circle. To him, it must have stood empty. "Do you–?"
Hammond turned and headed for the stairs. It seemed like a good idea to walk down to the Stargate, take a closer look at it. It seemed the only good idea.
"General!" Harriman called. Hammond ignored him. There was no answer to the implied question, anyway.
Walking through the entrance to the Gateroom, under the Damocles sword of the blast door, it felt as though the room opened up like a pair of arms, the Stargate like an emperor at the center. Like the air of the room was holding back the walls as a courtesy, and if that courtesy was rebuffed, the walls would clap in like a curtain falling.
It didn't feel like a particularly safe room to be in.
Hammond walked forward anyway, pausing at a sudden equipoise halfway between the entrance and the base of the ramp. He'd gone through the Stargate before, but infrequently. Now, he was disturbed to realize, he wanted to walk through it again; see if the coruscating light felt different on his skin than the cool crackling nothing of the event horizon. Warm, his mind supplied. The field looked silken and warm, and probably provided an adequate refuge from the confusion out here.
Motion at his elbow startled his attention away, and he turned to see Jack standing there, attention fixed on the Stargate like a dog considering a bird.
"You can see that," Hammond said.
Jack nodded. "Looks just like it did on the planet," he said. Then, somewhat dryly, "What do you think would happen if someone walked through it?"
A cold, quiet certainty rolled in like a late fog. It pushed Hammond's mind back to that uncompromising space a general had to learn to develop, where he could give an order without being sure it was the right one, without, in the moment, being cowed by the consequence of wrongness. Worry was a paralytic. He stepped around it, and said "Colonel, I'm relieving you of duty. Report to your quarters and remain there until further notice."
Beside him, Jack blinked at that, and turned to look at him like he wasn't entirely sure this wasn't some kind of injoke he was missing. "It was just rhetorical, sir."
Under other circumstances, Hammond would have been predisposed to believe that. Now, though, with the light of the Stargate like a whisper at the edge of his mind, he wasn't inclined to take chances. "That was an order, Colonel."
There was another moment, when Hammond both tried to find a way to explain and tried not to explain, and the Colonel looked as though he was trying not to look vaguely offended. Then Jack pushed back any recalcitrance, said a very clipped "Yes, sir," and turned to walk out of the Gateroom.
Hammond watched him go, and fought down the niggling thought that he'd made the exact wrong decision. Then again, if the last thing he saw was Jack's retreating back, surely it would be better if he was retreating into the SGC and not through the Stargate.
Surely.
He turned and followed the Colonel to the Gateroom entrance, or thought he did. A moment later, standing at the base of the Stargate ramp, he caught himself.
He could almost see his reflection – or a distorted echo of his form, a shadowy silhouette which could be facing him or facing away – in the center of the Stargate, as though waiting for him to join it. It would have been very simple to join it.
He curled his fists.
"I don't know what you are," Hammond said, "but you're not welcome here," he said, softly. "And we'll find a way to get rid of you, if you don't leave us alone."
Then, focusing on every minute movement of his body, he turned and walked out of the Gate room. Kept his eyes fixed on the doors and counted his steps until he was safely in the hall.
He went back into the controlroom and refused to look at the Stargate. "Seal off the Gateroom," he said. "Lockdown. No one in or out."
Harriman, who was keeping his own opinion of the interchange in the Gateroom firmly behind a mask of professionalism, nodded. "Yes, sir."
-
Hammond was heading out through the briefing room toward the officers' mess – hoping to walk out his thoughts, get coffee, maybe clear his mind – when he found himself cornered by the three members of SG-1 he hadn't confined to quarters. He stopped short, half-expecting them to remonstrate with him.
Fortunately, the one inclined to remonstration was confined to his quarters. If he'd liked them all less, Hammond might have found that a particularly clever bit of forethought.
"Tell me you have something," Hammond said.
Teal'c was the one who inclined his head, and said "We have something." At that, Carter shifted uneasily.
"We have hypotheses," she corrected.
"I'll take them," Hammond said, and motioned them along to his office.
They shuffled in and let him sit, settling into positions in front of his desk as though they'd flowed there like water. "We're working from the assumption that whatever this is, it followed us from PG3-235," Dr. Jackson said. "We're also operating under the assumption that it's altered its behavior in response to our actions."
The first seemed like a logical jump. The second...
"I'm inclined to believe you," Hammond said. "Still, mind telling me what evidence supports that conclusion?"
"The readings we've taken since its arrival here have been consistent with the readings the MALP took planetside," Carter said. "And..."
There was a moment's silence before Dr. Jackson exhaled, and said "The timing of its disappearance, on the planet. It disappeared on the night of Teal'c's ghost story."
"It exhibited none of its current behavior on the planet," Teal'c said.
"So, you think–" Hammond began. He was loathe to say, Discussing a ghost story makes it true.
"We may have accidentally taught a non-corporeal entity how to act like a ghost," Daniel agreed. It took Hammond a moment to work out what he was agreeing with, but he supposed that it was only one or two logical leaps past where his own mind had gone.
"You think this is an entity? Not some sort of natural phenomenon?" Even as he said, it, he knew how unlikely that sounded.
Daniel shrugged. "Well, it's interpreting our language, or some other aspect of our communication or mental processing, and it's applying that to its own behavior. That's – correct me if I'm wrong, but that's something an alien intelligence would have an easier time with than a natural phenomenon."
"I'd agree," Major Carter said. "Even artificial intelligence – intelligence designed by species which approach logic like we do, anyway – would have a more difficult time than an evolved intelligence. It's not impossible, but–"
"Occam's razor," Hammond said. Both of the scientists nodded.
Only SG-1. The rest of the teams might come back with bizarre mining treaties or ancient mind-altering strategy games or the occasional alien incursion, but somehow there was still a whole class of trouble only SG-1 ever found themselves in.
"Does this inform, in any way, how we're meant to address this situation?"
There was silence, and Hammond felt as though every member of SG-1 was quietly looking at one another. Without actually performing the actions of looking. Then Dr. Jackson tried, "Metaphorically?"
"We're still working on some projections," Carter said.
Hammond politely refrained from noting how much of an answer that wasn't. He knew it was scientist-speak for We're trying to figure out what the right questions are; he was fairly sure Carter knew that he knew that; there was little he could do about it.
"But it would help if we had access to the Stargate," Carter said.
"No." The word was out of his mouth before he'd considered the proposal. "I'm afraid that's out of the question."
This time, there actually was a flurry of glances exchanged.
"General," Carter began.
"We've already lost four men to the anomaly," Hammond said. "The entity. Whatever it is. We don't even know where to begin in trying to retrieve them. And from what I can tell, the entity can be rather persuasive about getting people to join them."
Halfway across the 'Gateroom, thinking with every step that he was walking away from danger. Hammond didn't shudder, but he came close.
"General," Dr. Jackson said. "If we can't analyze or interact with the entity, we might as well be sitting in our labs theorizing. We can't do any practical work."
"Unless you can give me some guarantee of your stability when it comes to the entity, it's not an acceptable risk," Hammond said.
A moment passed.
"...you could cuff us to the emplacements," Carter offered, reluctantly.
Everyone in the room turned to look at her: Hammond in surprise, Daniel with a speculative look, and Teal'c with an arch of the eyebrow that seemed, perhaps, almost approving. Carter shifted under their gazes.
"...we'd need a fairly long chain to let us do the work we needed to," she added.
"I'd be willing to work under those restrictions," Dr. Jackson said.
Another moment.
"I have no need to access the Stargate," Teal'c put in.
Hammond let out a breath shaped a little like a chuckle. "Fine," he said. "I'll allow you access to the Gateroom, under restraint, and with a defense team standing by to extract you. And I don't care if I have to give them blinders and stop up their ears like Odysseus's men: if I believe you're in trouble, I will have you dragged out of the Gateroom."
"Thank you," Dr. Jackson said, quickly. "We'll go gather the materials we need."
Then he and Major Carter vanished, as though getting out of earshot before he could change his mind.
Teal'c remained.
"I take it you have something to add," Hammond said.
Teal'c inclined his head. "You were able to resist the influence of the entity," he said.
Hammond grimaced. It was all to easy to imagine not coming back to himself at the base of the ramp. Would he have come to his senses at all? Just in front of the strange, bright field, maybe. And if he'd blinked and found himself there, would his reflection have reached out to grab him?
Or maybe he would have reached out. Put his hand on his reflection's shoulder.
–and in fact he thought he had turned his son around to face him.
"Believe me, I wish I knew how," Hammond said. The response team hadn't been able to. He had, and he hadn't given Jack the chance to find out whether or not he could. If it was just a matter of knowing that the Stargate would lure you, being aware enough to fight that inclination, he should probably let the Colonel out of his quarters. But it was rarely a good idea to let everyone know you were second-guessing your own orders.
If he'd expected Teal'c to have light to cast on that particular dilemma, he was disappointed. Teal'c simply nodded, and followed the rest of SG-1 out.
-
It actually took some time to locate appropriate restraints in the SGC: most of the restraints on hand weren't designed to allow for any significant degree of movement. Fortunately, one of the botanists on level 19 had a number of high-load chains, for reasons Hammond couldn't immediately recall and wasn't inclined to ask. A quick weld job later, and two sets of extremely long handcuffs had been produced.
Which meant that it wasn't too long before Hammond got to watch an odd procession – two of the SGC's finest, both chained to a MALP controlled by a 'gate technician, entering the Gateroom with wary, mistrusting looks for the great stone circle they travelled through without hesitation on most days.
Then, not too close, they settled in to work.
Hammond wasn't entirely certain what the substance of their investigations entailed. Major Carter bent to the MALP, and Dr. Jackson spread out a dizzying array of materials – glossy images of the steles on the planet, books, and his own journals, replete with notes. Their work was punctuated by the intermittent susurration of speech, not quite loud enough for the Gateroom microphones to pick it up.
It would have been eerie, if Hammond had let it be. As it was, this, at least, seemed right.
Until inevitably, something made it wrong.
Dr. Jackson noticed it first, so Hammond noticed his noticing first: a turn of his head, as if something had caught the corner of his eye. Rather, from Hammond's perspective, as though he'd suddenly seen something which had already been there.
Hammond took the microphone. "What do you see?" he asked.
With apparent difficulty, Dr. Jackson turned to look at Major Carter for confirmation, then said, with a distracted carefulness, "it looks like what we saw on the planet. But this – I don't think this is interested in keeping us here. I think it's inviting us."
Inviting them to where, he didn't say. Hammond suspected it was irrelevant; he felt that it was irrelevant. The invitation was all that mattered. "It's an invitation you'll have to decline."
Dr. Jackson shot an unexpectedly sharp look up at the control room. And also unexpectedly, it was Major Carter who spoke up. "General, I know that finding out what it wants is outside of the scope of this investigation, but..."
"'But,' Major?" Hammond asked. He hoped the question was answerless.
He could hear the tension of the question rasping like a hacksaw along the atmosphere down below. And Teal'c reacted noticeably at Hammond's side.
"I think it would be best if I were to join them, General Hammond," he said.
Hammond turned to him, ready to object, but Teal'c pre-empted him.
"I believe I have a solution – if not to bring home those who have already vanished, at least to end the extant threat."
"Care to share your insights?" Hammond asked.
Teal'c nodded. "Ghost stories, to the Jaffa, are merely cautionary," he explained. "When Daniel Jackson first proposed that the entity was playacting the story I told, I was suspicious. Its actions mimicked the story on only a basic level; the fact that it remained to tempt us, rather than sending back specters of the lost guards, was a clear discrepancy. Now I believe it has modeled itself not on the story but the story's intent."
"Its intent," Hammond said, not quite willing to gamble Teal'c on a chain of reasoning he couldn't follow."
"To teach that one must sometimes repudiate adventure and the unknown for duties which would keep one home," Teal'c said. "While all of our energies are focused on the anomaly, it cannot help but call to us."
"So you're saying we should cease our investigations," Hammond said.
Teal'c nodded. "We must turn our backs on it."
That, Hammond was happy to agree to. "I'll send in the MPs to bring them out," he said.
Teal'c shook his head. "If I am correct, it must be their choice," he said. "Not an effect of force or circumstance."
"And you've already made that choice?"
"My duty is not toward adventure or the exploration of knowledge," Teal'c said. "It is toward the overthrow of the Goa'uld. I know that the entity cannot offer me what I need."
It seemed as reasonable as anything else in this situation had. Hammond hoped that that seeming could be trusted.
"Go," Hammond said.
Teal'c walked down and into the Gateroom.
Hammond watched him, measuring the length of his stride and the path it took over the concrete floor. He approached the MALP and not the 'Gate; his pace was steady and not coerced.
Teal'c reached out, and put his hand on Daniel's shoulder.
Hammond tensed, but Teal'c did not try to turn Dr. Jackson back. Instead, he moved to interrupt the line of sight between Dr. Jackson and the Stargate, and bent down to explain.
A charge came to the air, or Hammond perceived one. He watched the faces of the three in the Gateroom: Teal'c's ever-impassive façade, the slow shift of consideration across Dr. Jackson's face as a new theory was presented to him, the gradual slip of Major Carter's attention from the readouts she was working on to the conversation going on across the MALP from her.
He had the feeling that being told the answer to a problem lay in not investigating it offended Major Carter's religion, or whatever beliefs she held as true as one.
Without thinking, Hammond walked out of the control room and down past the blast doors, past the defense team waiting in the hall.
Major Carter turned to look at him as he came in, with palpable reluctance. "We'll cease investigating," she said, and Hammond could imagine what it cost her to say – and mean – those words. "Daniel thinks it would be a good idea to destroy the data we have."
"Burn the ships," Dr. Jackson murmured, in a kind of rueful agreement.
Hammond looked to Teal'c. It was a great deal of faith they were all putting in him.
But there was certainty in every angle of his expression, and faith was as central to the SGC as the Stargate itself.
Beside him, Dr. Jackson was carefully pulling pages out of his journal, with a look that suggested it physically pained him. Carter was punching in commands to the MALP – clearing its memory, no doubt.
"Here," Dr. Jackson said, and held out a sheaf of pages.
Hammond took them. "I appreciate the sacrifice you're making," he said.
"Hopefully it's worth it," Daniel said, and the film across the Stargate snapped into nothingness like a dispelled dream.
All of them turned, as one, as though noticing its first glimmers. But the air was different, now; Hammond could look at the Stargate without feeling its allure or its dread.
Something pale and shining glimmered briefly in the center of the circle.
"What–," Hammond began. Then, "It worked."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. Hammond could hear it in his tone. "All stories benefit from being treated as truth," he said. "I would advise you to open the Stargate back to PG3-235. It is possible the entity will wish to return home."
"To follow some other poor adventurer home," Hammond said, but he turned to the control room window and gave a curt nod. Harriman caught his nod, nodded back, and began dialing.
"Notice can be sent to the Free Jaffa, the Asgard, and the Tok'ra," Teal'c said. "As for the Goa'uld, should they stumble upon the world, I have no doubt they are deserving of any trouble it may cause them."
Hammond could agree with that assessment. He couldn't quite believe it would be that simple, but if Teal'c's point was that there was only so much they could do...
Well. That was the story of their lives, SG-1's tendency to whip up miracles notwithstanding.
"Any idea how we can retrieve the missing?"
A look of regret crossed Teal'c's face. Maybe. Or maybe it was Hammond's imagination. "If I have any theories, I shall surely bring them to your attention."
"Please do," Hammond said, and glanced at SG-1's scientists, still cuffed to the MALP and likely smarting over the resolution. He glanced down at the papers in his hand.
...time enough to return those later. Once they were certain the danger was past.
"Let's unlock these people," Hammond said, and turned to leave the Gateroom as the defense team rushed in.
-
And when she deigned to look again, he was gone.
The stargate flashed open, waited like an open eye, and then closed again in its own time. Hammond, standing in the control room, took a breath.
Things felt right again, or mostly so. There was still the faint aftertaste of unease, and a niggling awareness of the defense team who had yet to come home. But the air of the SGC was as it should be, and the Stargate stood august and empty. Not precisely dead, but no longer possessed.
It was a start, if nothing else. A place that they could work from.
Hammond turned away from the Stargate, and went to update his log of the events. There would be one note at least, he thought, mentioning the stories brought back from the planet; reiterating the old taboos about things not to be discussed aloud.
Author: magistrate (
magibrain)Rating: T.
Genre: Character study, ghost story
Beta: Walked away.
Continuity: Canon-compliant.
Prerequisities: Doesn't really relate to any specific episode.
Summary: It's all ghost stories, sir.
Disclaimer: Stories told to certain audiences may have unanticipated results. Hear that, MGM? The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters and not of R. L. Stine. The door is open. Questions, comments and creepypasta can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!
Author's Notes: This is 9,000 words. I don't know why it's 9,000 words. All I know is that I started out writing this the day I got the prompt, and yet somehow I still found myself finishing in a desperate throw-words-at-the-page rush at 2 AM the day it was due. WHY.
I'm sorry if this is absolutely incoherent.
The SGC was different when an SG team was out.
Well. Not quantifiably; there was no special change in the facility's operation when a team was out. (Medical and security staff were always at full compliment, because trouble didn't need to follow a team home to make itself known in the SGC.) The quarters which stood empty would stand just as empty when a team was on-world but off-duty. There weren't any faithful dogs sitting at the foot of the Stargate and waiting for their masters to come home.
Nothing so obvious.
Still, there was something different, and Hammond could feel it with every step he took. He knew it was probably a trick of his mind, but he swore that even if a team snuck away, he'd know it implicitly: it was a strange kind of proprioception, as though he'd put a hand out through the Stargate and was left uneasy until it was drawn back in again.
And SG-1 was late.
-
They showed up like a loosed breath three days overdue, looking somewhat sheepish for the concern that greeted them in the Gateroom, but otherwise untroubled.
Which was, all things considered, the best result Hammond could have hoped for after they blew past the initial check-in and their reconnaissance deadline without so much as a radio whisper. He waved them on to get themselves cleared by the infirmary and cleaned up, with orders to reassemble in the briefing room as soon as that was done. Where, after a brief inward reassurance that the ground was solid and all his limbs were where they should be, and a few minor tasks to pass the intervening time, Hammond joined them. "I expect there's a good reason you've been keeping us all up at night."
"Well," Colonel O'Neill said, with a tone that in one syllable told Hammond it would be a quip, "there's definitely a reason. Not sure if I would call it a good one."
"We couldn't open the Stargate," Dr. Jackson said.
Hammond nodded; he'd expected something similar. "When you missed your check-in, we tried to dial out to the planet to make contact," he said. "We weren't able to make a connection, either." He turned to Jack, weighing the implications in Not sure if I would call it a good one. "I take it you don't know why this happened?"
"Not... exactly," Major Carter said, and Hammond turned his attention to her. "When we tried to dial in, the event horizon wouldn't form," she said. "There was some kind of energy field which interrupted it."
"Replaced it," Jack said, with an arch of his eyebrow. "Looked like a soapbubble, sir. Stretched entirely across the 'gate. Nothing we could do got rid of it."
Hammond was curious to read the details of that Nothing we could do in his report; he imagined at least one rock had been thrown through. "Well, obviously something happened, or you wouldn't be here now. How did you manage to get through?"
"It vanished on its own, actually," Dr. Jackson said. "During Teal'c's watch."
Teal'c inclined his head. "Indeed. It occurred at a moment when I was facing the forest. When I turned back to observe the region surrounding the Stargate, the energy had vanished. I immediately woke Major Carter."
Who shrugged. "I looked at the readings from our MALP, but there wasn't much. Its energy signature held constant for the three days we were there, and then just dwindled away to nothing over the course of seventeen seconds at the end. Nothing indicated a precipitating event."
"Anything that warrants further study?" Hammond asked.
Carter shook her head. "It's interesting, definitely, but I don't see an immediate strategic benefit," she said. Perhaps a little wistfully. Hammond took that at face value, and turned to the other scientist who might have a stake in the place.
"I don't imagine the ruins were extensive enough to occupy your entire time there."
"Well, I did–" Dr. Jackson started, and a noise from Jack brought him up short. He cleared his throat. "No, we... actually, for the most part, we just camped out in a clearing. A lot of the food plants the early slaves brought with them were growing wild."
"Nuts, berries and apples, General," Jack said. "And Teal'c managed to take down a boar-thing."
Hammond had to chuckle. "Sounds like your kind of vacation, Colonel."
"Teal'c told ghost stories," Dr. Jackson volunteered. A strange look passed over Jack's face, as though he'd just tasted something bitter.
"A single story," Teal'c corrected, smoothly. "And the Jaffa do not have an entirely compatible genre to the traditional ghost stories Daniel Jackson described."
No one seemed inclined to expand on that.
"So," Hammond said, trying to sum it all up in his head. "If I'm hearing you correctly, the ruins were no more expansive than the UAV showed, there were no signs of recent activity, no signs of technology, and the only thing out of the ordinary was the field which prevented you from returning home. Does that sound like an accurate assessment?"
"That's about it, sir," Jack said. "Cross that planet off; move on to the next."
Hammond nodded. "Well," he said, "I'm glad your delay was nothing serious. We were all getting pretty worried, here."
"Nothing serious at all," Jack said. "Just one of the unexplained mysteries of the cosmos."
His tone suggested that he'd put it out of mind for now, but didn't entirely buy that this was the end of the matter. And, glancing across the table, Hammond could see that Carter's mind was already halfway to somewhere else, teasing at the edges of the mystery and working out how best she could get to the middle of it. Dr. Jackson was jotting something down on the corner of the legal pads they stocked the briefing room with, and Teal'c sat, as ever, implacably.
Every team had its own particular repose, and this was SG-1's. It was subliminally reassuring, like a heartbeat: so present that it didn't call attention to itself, but immediately noticeable when something changed.
"I'll look forward to reading the reports," Hammond said, and stood up to dismiss them.
-
It was late that night, past the time when sensible day-shift folk would have headed off to bed, that Hammond found himself in the commissary, holding a cup of decaf coffee. But the SGC didn't self-select for the common sensibility. He found Teal'c there as well, enjoying a solitary evening meal.
Teal'c had a vast quantity of food on his plate, which still rang in Hammond's mind as somewhat odd, but which no longer startled him these days. While Teal'c wasn't precisely evasive about a Jaffa's caloric requirements, Janet hadn't ever been able to pin down precise guidelines on them, and Hammond had long ago made a note to allocate twice the usual quantity of rations to Teal'c's pack for missions. Teal'c had neither requested nor acknowledged the change. Hammond suspected that if he ever did feel underfed on a mission, he'd either stoically endure it or quietly supplement it.
A part of him wished he could have been a silent observer at SG-1's on-world boar feast.
"Teal'c," he said, drawing up to the table and raising his mug by way of explanation. "Do you mind if I join you?"
Teal'c raised an eyebrow at him, and said "Please."
Hammond sat. Teal'c had mentioned, once, that a commander among the Jaffa was never required to ask permission of his subordinates to take any seat he pleased. Hammond had made a decent effort to explain the forms of politeness in human – or at least American – social situations, an had kept to himself that he wasn't sure how much he bought into the idea that Teal'c was a subordinate, or how unsure he was whether Teal'c had meant that as a gentle corrective or an aside. Teal'c deferred to him, and acted as an exemplary soldier, respecting the need for a chain of command and executing directives with admirable focus. Still, he'd been a First Prime – a general in his own right – and probably had more combat experience than any two other members of the SGC put together, Hammond and Colonel O'Neill included.
Hammond always had the sense that Teal'c's willingness to work with the SGC was absolute, so long as their ultimate goals remained aligned. Should those goals diverge...
Well. Best to worry about that when the war was over.
Teal'c continued eating, evidently accepting Hammond's presence as he might a change in the weather, and Hammond drank his coffee. If Teal'c was relieved to be in a place with a wealth of food at his fingertips, he didn't show it. Hammond didn't expect him to. He wasn't precisely a demonstrative man.
"I have to admit," Hammond said, "I'm curious about the ghost story you told."
Teal'c turned his attention to Hammond, a kind of reflected curiosity in his eyes. "Are you a collector of ghost stories, General Hammond?"
That was an odd question, which Hammond thought probably traced back to some conversation on the planet he hadn't been privy to. Probably the same one where Dr. Jackson had been describing traditional ghost stories, so that Teal'c could compare his own against that mold. "Not exactly," Hammond said. "But I appreciate a good ghost story, now and then." Maybe later he'd find a way to explain how he was at least sure it was American, and how he suspected it was human, to want to gather at odd hours and hear stories that balanced you between fear and incredulity. To want to test those waters, that no-man's land.
"I would be pleased to tell it, if you have no pressing engagements," Teal'c said.
The night shift commander had charge of the SGC, and Hammond was just lingering, enjoying the everything-in-its-place feeling of having all his teams home at once. It'd disappear, replaced by the not-quite-anxiety, tomorrow morning, when SG-10 went out. "I've got nothing but time."
"Very well," Teal'c said.
-
"The story I told was the story of The Boy Who Walked Away And Turned His Back," Teal'c said, his hands coming around to cradle his commissary mug as though it were a ceremonial relic. "It concerns events which happened on the world of Inmeshe, many generations ago, in the time when Ra cast down Utu. It concerns a warrior, Macana'c, one of my ancestors."
That surprised Hammond. "Is it a true story?" he asked. The Jaffa had their own words for most things, and even with a fluent translator on the team, nuances got lost. Daniel had said ghost story, and Teal'c had said the Jaffa do not have an entirely compatible genre. He didn't entirely know what to expect.
Then again, the best ghost stories here on Earth were the ones that began, This happened to my uncle when he was out on a hunting trip, or this happened to my sister when she got her first apartment. The best stories began with an assertion of truth.
But Teal'c only raised an eyebrow, and regarded him evenly. "The quality of its truth has been lost to the forgetfulness of time," he said, with perhaps a hint of reproach. Still, a moment later, his tone softened. "When my father told tales..." A brief pause, there; an imperceptible pang. "He told us, 'all stories benefit from being treated as truth. If only in the telling.'"
Hammond nodded, and motioned him on.
"It was the case," Teal'c began, "that Macana'c had a single son when these events occurred, though he did not know his wife carried another. The living son's name was Jana'c, which meant 'dancer'. He was fleet of leg, like his father, and had the strength of his mother, who could throw down a mastadge colt if it should charge her. But quite unlike either of his parents, he had a willful streak, and was not mindful of either tradition or custom.
"In the year before his prim'ta, six warriors came to Jana'c's village. They were ash'kree'ta – those who fought on their own word. In those days, a warrior could gain glory and fame by attacking the enemy of his god, before his god had given the word."
That was a strange thing to hear Teal'c say, and Hammond blinked. His god. Teal'c was often so careful in his terms, so reluctant to give the Goa'uld that term of recognition. Then, Hammond could see something in Teal'c's expression, hear it in his tone – something like his old friends, leaning back with a beer in hand, rehashing an old story told by rote. An oral tradition, as Daniel would likely point out. An old, well-worn tale.
"A child before his prim'ta is no warrior," Teal'c went on. "He does not possess the endurance of an adult, nor the capacity to heal from any but the most minor of injuries. But Jana'c was willful, and eager for glory, and the ash'kree'ta who had come to his village were full of laughter and high blood. They said to Macana'c, 'Let the boy come, if he will taste battle. If he can spill blood before his prim'ta, surely his courage is greater than those who would wait.' Macana'c cast their words aside, and forbade his son to go." A pause, and then something added, as though for the benefit of a human audience. "The Jaffa know that death comes when it pleases, and there is no guarantee that a son will outlive his father. But it is still a knife near the heart when a child is lost, and Macana'c was afraid of that particular pain."
Hammond was beginning to understand Jack's bitter look at the briefing table.
"It is a great offense to disobey one's elders before one is of age," Teal'c said. "But Jana'c was willful. As the ash'kree'ta left through the Chappa'ai, he dodged his father's hand and ran after them. He showed his father his back before the portal swallowed him, and because Macana'c had not thought to ask the ash'kree'ta where they were going, he could not follow. He was left with the image of his son's turned back.
"Many days passed without word, and Macana'c was troubled. His rest was disturbed, and in the third day, he began to dream of his son's turned back. He confided in his wife, who advised him to cast out all thoughts of his troublesome boy." Another pause. "In Jaffa society, it is the men who do battle and their wives who steward their strength. When a Jaffa warrior comes home and shows his doubts, his wife reminds him of his strength, of the demands of his god, of his honor. The wife beats at his resolve like a carpenter driving a spike through a join. So, Macana'c's wife berated him until he put aside the thought of his son, and when the call came that his god bade an army to do battle, he went with them.
"It was a fierce battle, as well, but they triumphed amidst blood and the fire of their staves. Then, as the warriors around him gave voice to their victory, Macana'c saw something he could not set aside. He had been haunted by his son's turned back for so long that there was no mistaking it here, and he ran through the chaos which follows battle. He cried out, 'Jana'c!' But Jana'c did not turn, and Macana'c was swept up in the revelry, though his heart and mind were distracted from it.
"When the Primes of each band felt that enough paeans had been raised, they sounded the horns to call their bands back to Inmeshe. Macana'c concealed himself and remained behind. Soon enough, when all the other warriors had gone home, he spied Jana'c walking along the crest of a hill, his back turned. Macana'c pursued his son and soon caught up to him, and Macana'c threw his arms around his son. It was in his heart to ask for Jana'c's forgiveness, though he himself had done no wrong. He hardly noticed that his son's body was cold.
"'I would do many things to have you return to me,' Macana'c said. 'Tell me how I may bring you back to my household. I would petition the priests to give you your prim'ta at once, that you might be a warrior in name and renown as well as action.' But his son did not move, and gave no indication of hearing. So Macana'c stepped back and put his hand on Jana'c's shoulder, to turn him around – and in fact he thought he had turned his son around to face him, but his son's back was still turned.
"At this, Macana'c should have been angry. His son, not yet a warrior for all his acts, had defied him and continued to defy him. But Macana'c was motivated by softness and regret, not by discipline. He put his hands on his son's shoulders.
"'Show me what I am to do,' Macana'c said. Jana'c began walking, and Macana'c followed him."
Teal'c paused.
"My father, when he told me this tale, told me that the Prime of Macana'c's band had noted his departure and stayed behind, well concealed, to discover if Macana'c was up to any treachery or cowardice. That is how this tale survived to be told to his second-born son. When Macana'c began to follow Jana'c, his Prime leapt from his hiding place and called, 'Macana'c! Return or be cast down with deserters or traitors.' And Macana'c did hesitate in his stride. But in the end, his son had commanded him; he put his back to his Prime and his duty and walked away.
"Now, some have said that Macana'c was never seen again. But those who say it show disdain for the word of women, who may not fight in the great battles but who hold the home territory in a grasp like the jaws of a jedze. For it was the case that Macana'c's wife saw him again many times, on nights when clouds obscured the light of moons and stars: he would stand in the door of their compound with his back turned to her. But her feet had the strong roots of duty and wisdom, and she acted as Macana'c should have done: she turned her back to the one who had abandoned her, and when she deigned to look again, he was gone."
-
Some time later he and Teal'c parted ways, Teal'c to his meditation and Hammond to walk the halls of the SGC one last time before going out to his truck. It was his own little ritual, one he always thought of as putting the SGC to bed – even when he knew, with the presence of the night shift, with the galaxy that didn't hold itself to office hours or Mountain time, that the SGC never slept. He passed the infirmary – quiet, thank God – and the labs with their usual smattering of scientists choosing science over sleep for at least a few more hours, yet. He passed the guards at their stations and the empty offices of the deskbound, passed the briefing table waiting for a new mission to begin or a mature one to end, passed his own office.
Finally, he resolved his rounds in the embarkation room, standing before the Stargate, which glowered like an opened eye. He nodded to it as he turned to go.
It wasn't until he'd seated himself behind the wheel of his truck that he thought: in all the time since he'd settled into this post, since he'd started to think of it as home, he'd never thought of the Stargate as glowering. He didn't know why it had looked like an opened eye.
-
The next morning dawned bright and patchy, strong sun beaming down through ragged clouds. Hammond returned to the SGC as he always did; went past the security checkpoints, down the corridors and the long gullet of the elevator, and nothing seemed strange. That was, he couldn't shake the strangeness of the previous night, but it felt more like a fear that the strangeness would recur than a fear springing from the fact that it had.
He went to the control room just in time to see Major Carter slipping in, with a nod for him and a greeting for the 'gate technicians as she took one of the empty terminals and logged herself in. Hammond considered leaving her to whatever she was doing, trusting that she'd tell him if anything interesting came up, but curiosity prodded him over.
"Following up on the mission, Major?"
She nodded. "While we were on the planet, we observed some kind of energy field within the Stargate," she said. "But we didn't have any equipment sophisticated enough to really dig into it. But our logs showed an anomalous energy fluctuation in our 'gate when we returned; I'm trying to put that data together with what we got from the MALP and see if I can learn anything."
A screen sprang up, replete with graphs and equations that Hammond didn't try too hard to untangle. "Anything that might have an impact on SG-10's departure?"
"I don't believe so," Carter said, and Hammond almost smiled in recognition. Most of his scientists shared that disinclination to give an absolute yes or no. "I'll alert you if I think there's any cause for concern."
"Appreciated," Hammond said, and noticed motion down on the Gateroom's floor. Colonel O'Neill, apparently; he walked in ten steps or so from the door, and then just stood there, staring at the great stone circle.
If Major Carter knew what he was doing or found it relevant, she didn't show it. Her attention was fixed on the screen, and more than likely unless her commanding officer was ordering her to do something or messing with the readings coming out of the Stargate, she was perfectly content just not to divert any of her attention his way.
Hammond had to maintain a much broader consciousness, in his position. He headed down the stairs to join him.
-
Down here, the presence of the Stargate was almost palpable: august and aged, and impenetrably alien. But standing before it today, the feeling that had been only a wary premonition earlier was strange as it had been last night. It felt as though an alien intelligence had turned on them.
"You feel it," Hammond said, and Colonel O'Neill glanced over at him.
"Thought it was just me," he said.
The confirmation was reassuring. Better, it saved Hammond from having to explain what "it" was. The closest he could come was one of those days when a summer thunderstorm rolled in between the start of the shift and the end of it; you couldn't see or hear anything, twentysome stories underground, but there were days when you would swear you could feel in the air that when you got up to the surface, a storm would be waiting for you.
"I had Teal'c tell me that ghost story of his, last night," Hammond said. "I just thought that listening to ghost stories that close to bed might have been a mistake." A small joke; a bit of self-deprecation that the Colonel seemed to miss in favor of wherever his own thoughts were going.
"It's all ghost stories, sir," Jack said, though the sharp, pensive look on his face didn't go away.
That sounded like an odd phrasing. Hammond didn't always put much stock in what things sounded like.
"According to Daniel," Jack went on, "these guys – the ones on the planet – went absolutely nuts on writing their ghost stories down."
Superstition and myth were rarely just superstition and myth, in this line of work. "Think there's anything to them?"
Jack shrugged. "Wouldn't put it past... it," he said, with it standing in for some unnamable aspect of the situation. The planet, the energy distortion, the universe's crooked sense of humor. There was very little Hammond would put past that.
"Well, have him come up and brief me," Hammond said. Jack nodded, and walked away.
Hammond was about to follow him when a flicker of light caught the corner of his eye, familiar and utterly out of place.
The Stargate stood still and empty. Or it feigned emptiness. Hammond turned; if he kept it in his peripheral vision, he could almost see the event horizon; could see the light which scattered across the walls. But when he faced it, the great Naqahdah circle was dead.
With Jack gone the only person in the Gateroom was the custodian, sweeping a mop across the space at the foot of the ramp with a kind of meditative evenness. Hammond walked up to stand beside him, trying to put his finger on what was out of place, here; the Stargate took up his attention, smoothing it away from anything else. He could turn away, look at something: no, the custodian was on his schedule; no, the lights were all on; no, the window to the control room was visible as it should have been, as the blast doors had no reason to be down.
No reason to be down. It was a strange hiccup in his thinking, as though noticing an absence wasn't something he was accustomed to.
He turned, though a strange pressure along his spine warned him not to turn his back to the Stargate, and made a slow examination of the room.
–he was left with the image of his son's turned back–
Hammond turned to the the control room's window. "Sergeant Harriman!"
The sergeant looked up, then reached to his station's mic. "General?"
"Where's the response team?" Hammond asked.
A look of confusion crossed Harriman's face.
"Our standing orders are to keep this room guarded at all times," Hammond said. "There should be men on the emplacements, at minimum."
The look of confusion deepened, and Harriman turned to look at each of the mounted guns. The guns were where they should be. As they should be. Hammond could almost see the sergeant working through to the realization that there was something conceptually wrong in what he was seeing.
"I didn't–," he admitted. "I didn't notice them leave, sir."
"Find out who's on duty," Hammond said. "Order them to report to the Gateroom immediately."
"Of course," Harriman said.
"And get me the status of the Stargate," Hammond said, and started moving for the stairs.
The image of his son's turned back.
Hammond didn't back out of the Gateroom, but he was strong enough to admit that he was tempted.
-
The sense of muted menace wasn't as strong in the control room, but Hammond still felt it, ghosting along the edge of his awareness like a figure at the corner of his eye. He looked at the 'gate technicians, trying to gauge their reactions, but there was no way to winnow out the confusion generated by the odd disappearance from this, more abstract unease.
"Stargate systems are reporting normally," Harriman said. "We're still getting an anomaly in the energy readings, but no errors."
"Humor me," Hammond said, "and tell me whether or not the Stargate is active."
Harriman looked up at the Stargate, but either shared Hammond's misgivings or was too inured to the nonsensical having some hidden sense in the SGC to comment. "Due to the anomaly, the Stargate is drawing more power than it should at standby," he said. "But it's still drawing less than three percent of the power it would need to form an event horizon."
"Of course," Hammond said. "Where's Major Carter?"
"I think she went back to her lab," Harriman said. "Should I call her back up here?"
Yes, Hammond's mind said, instantly. he wanted everyone he had seen here to remain in his line of sight, but that wasn't practical for any of them getting things done. The 'gate technicians excepted. "Just confirm her location for me," he said.
Harriman nodded, and glanced over to make eye contact with another tech. The other tech nodded in turn, and Hammond could almost feel the seamless delegation which had taken place. That, at least, was working as it should; the human brain of the SGC hadn't faltered.
Something else had.
Harriman was bringing up the security feed already, playing it backwards from the moment Hammond had walked into the Gateroom. The defense team hadn't been there, then; that was both troubling and reassuring. Hammond didn't want to think of them vanishing, like ghosts, unnoticed in the corners of his eye.
Though it felt like that had happened, anyway.
The video scrolled back through a long shot of an empty room, only the timestamp in the corner admitting any change. Then, with a suddenness that almost made Hammond jump, the four airmen stationed in the room popped back into existence, and Hammond stopped the rewind and started a playback at normal speed.
It showed the four of them: standing at their stations, with the occasional shift of their weight or turn of their head, and then after a minute they moved as one.
"They... walked through the Stargate, sir," Harriman said.
"When?" Hammond asked, though he was already looking to the timestamp. Harriman confirmed what he could see.
"About forty-seven minutes ago." Harriman paused the video, leaving an image of one of the guards, half-dissolved into nothingness in the great, empty circle of the Stargate.
Hammond was trying to work out something to say when Dr. Jackson poked his head into the control room, an overstuffed manilla folder under one arm. "General?"
"Dr. Jackson, come in," Hammond said, slightly too distracted to realize that was a greeting usually reserved for his office. But Dr. Jackson walked in, glancing at the security feed with interest.
"What's going on?"
"Almost an hour ago, without the Stargate technically activating, the stationed response team walked through it and disappeared," Hammond said. "And none of us noticed it until just now." Obliging an unspoken request, Harriman rewound the video again, and played it for its new audience.
There was silence in the control room while the scene played out again, and then Dr. Jackson nudged the bridge of his glasses. "Wait – go back," he said. "Right when they... decide, I guess."
Harriman cued back the video, and the three of them watched as every guard in the Gateroom turned at once, as though motion at the corner of their vision had commanded their attention.
"They saw something," Dr. Jackson said, and his gaze shifted to the image of the Stargate on the screen. "But whatever it was, our cameras didn't pick it up."
"There's a flicker in the Stargate's energy use at that timestamp," Harriman said, his attention caught by another screen, replete with graphs and numbers. "Our systems didn't mark it as anything dangerous."
"It seems our systems need refinement," Hammond said. That was the problem with working here: common sense got shot out the window, not that there were windows, and no one knew how to adapt to the new sense required until they were shown the error in their suppositions. From what he understood, physics suggested that there was a minimum amount of energy that had to be expended for the Stargate to take people and disappear them. Then again, their sense of physics had been proved incorrect or incomplete before. He turned to the other technician. "Did you–?"
"Major Carter is in her lab, sir," the tech said. "Should I have all this new information sent down to her?"
"Please do," Hammond said, and turned to Dr. Jackson. "Colonel O'Neill said you might have some insight." Into this situation, he didn't say; Jack hadn't much more than implied that. Still, insight was a surprisingly malleable currency, here.
"Well, I've been going over the inscriptions we found in the ruins," Dr. Jackson said. "There's actually a surprising density of information, if you include the steles – turns out they're not just boundary markers. Looks like they might have had some sort of ritual significance, which would mean that the ruins we found probably weren't just a 'gate-monitoring outpost. They seem to have been significant in their own right."
"Significant in what way?"
"That's what I'm trying to extrapolate," Dr. Jackson said.
After a moment, Hammond prompted, "Colonel O'Neill mentioned something about ghost stories."
"Yeah," Dr. Jackson said, that one word oddly clipped. As though he was loathe to bow to the inevitable relevance of that particular detail. "Most of the inscriptions concern ghosts, either explicitly or obliquely. They also contain some very stern injunctions against discussing any of this out loud."
A quiet supposition – one which felt like a realization, which felt like dread – crept in under Hammond's stomach. "What happens if you're to discuss it out loud?"
But he already knew the answer. It was the answer to whispering Bloody Mary in a dark room with a mirror on the wall.
"From what I've translated, the texts either disagree or offer multiple consequences," Dr. Jackson said. "Some say you'll call attention to yourself. There's one line that says you'll give birth to a ghost – give rise to it, make it manifest."
What kind of a ghost lures four airmen through a closed Stargate? Hammond wondered. "Did they mention any way to exorcise the ghost afterward?"
Dr. Jackson exchanged a look with Hammond, both of them balanced on the same edge of half-understanding. "Not that I've encountered."
"Think it would do any good to ask Teal'c to un-tell that story of his?" Hammond asked.
That garnered a small noise of amusement, at least. "If he knows how to un-tell a story," Dr. Jackson said. "Though that might be a philosophical impossibility."
Indeed, Hammond thought, and his mind gave the word Teal'c's inflection. It was probably as good as a response from the man. "Maybe you should continue translating those steles," he suggested.
"I was just about to go do that," Dr. Jackson agreed, as though Hammond's dismissal would have been just a formality. And while Hammond suspected that that was pretty near the truth, he nodded for the Doctor to go, anyway.
-
Three hours passed, with a roll call of SGC personnel and diligent silence from the scientists, before Hammond walked into the control room again and saw light stretching like a soapbubble across the eye of the Stargate.
"Do you see that?" Hammond asked.
At his station, Harriman looked up, and frowned. "What, sir?"
Hammond paused. The question had been more of a statement, as he'd intended it. Look at that. Harriman's answer raised questions of its own.
"What's the status of the Stargate?" Hammond asked, and Harriman turned back to his screen with a frown.
"...we're picking up the same fluctuation as earlier," Harriman said, and turned his attention back to the vast circle. To him, it must have stood empty. "Do you–?"
Hammond turned and headed for the stairs. It seemed like a good idea to walk down to the Stargate, take a closer look at it. It seemed the only good idea.
"General!" Harriman called. Hammond ignored him. There was no answer to the implied question, anyway.
Walking through the entrance to the Gateroom, under the Damocles sword of the blast door, it felt as though the room opened up like a pair of arms, the Stargate like an emperor at the center. Like the air of the room was holding back the walls as a courtesy, and if that courtesy was rebuffed, the walls would clap in like a curtain falling.
It didn't feel like a particularly safe room to be in.
Hammond walked forward anyway, pausing at a sudden equipoise halfway between the entrance and the base of the ramp. He'd gone through the Stargate before, but infrequently. Now, he was disturbed to realize, he wanted to walk through it again; see if the coruscating light felt different on his skin than the cool crackling nothing of the event horizon. Warm, his mind supplied. The field looked silken and warm, and probably provided an adequate refuge from the confusion out here.
Motion at his elbow startled his attention away, and he turned to see Jack standing there, attention fixed on the Stargate like a dog considering a bird.
"You can see that," Hammond said.
Jack nodded. "Looks just like it did on the planet," he said. Then, somewhat dryly, "What do you think would happen if someone walked through it?"
A cold, quiet certainty rolled in like a late fog. It pushed Hammond's mind back to that uncompromising space a general had to learn to develop, where he could give an order without being sure it was the right one, without, in the moment, being cowed by the consequence of wrongness. Worry was a paralytic. He stepped around it, and said "Colonel, I'm relieving you of duty. Report to your quarters and remain there until further notice."
Beside him, Jack blinked at that, and turned to look at him like he wasn't entirely sure this wasn't some kind of injoke he was missing. "It was just rhetorical, sir."
Under other circumstances, Hammond would have been predisposed to believe that. Now, though, with the light of the Stargate like a whisper at the edge of his mind, he wasn't inclined to take chances. "That was an order, Colonel."
There was another moment, when Hammond both tried to find a way to explain and tried not to explain, and the Colonel looked as though he was trying not to look vaguely offended. Then Jack pushed back any recalcitrance, said a very clipped "Yes, sir," and turned to walk out of the Gateroom.
Hammond watched him go, and fought down the niggling thought that he'd made the exact wrong decision. Then again, if the last thing he saw was Jack's retreating back, surely it would be better if he was retreating into the SGC and not through the Stargate.
Surely.
He turned and followed the Colonel to the Gateroom entrance, or thought he did. A moment later, standing at the base of the Stargate ramp, he caught himself.
He could almost see his reflection – or a distorted echo of his form, a shadowy silhouette which could be facing him or facing away – in the center of the Stargate, as though waiting for him to join it. It would have been very simple to join it.
He curled his fists.
"I don't know what you are," Hammond said, "but you're not welcome here," he said, softly. "And we'll find a way to get rid of you, if you don't leave us alone."
Then, focusing on every minute movement of his body, he turned and walked out of the Gate room. Kept his eyes fixed on the doors and counted his steps until he was safely in the hall.
He went back into the controlroom and refused to look at the Stargate. "Seal off the Gateroom," he said. "Lockdown. No one in or out."
Harriman, who was keeping his own opinion of the interchange in the Gateroom firmly behind a mask of professionalism, nodded. "Yes, sir."
-
Hammond was heading out through the briefing room toward the officers' mess – hoping to walk out his thoughts, get coffee, maybe clear his mind – when he found himself cornered by the three members of SG-1 he hadn't confined to quarters. He stopped short, half-expecting them to remonstrate with him.
Fortunately, the one inclined to remonstration was confined to his quarters. If he'd liked them all less, Hammond might have found that a particularly clever bit of forethought.
"Tell me you have something," Hammond said.
Teal'c was the one who inclined his head, and said "We have something." At that, Carter shifted uneasily.
"We have hypotheses," she corrected.
"I'll take them," Hammond said, and motioned them along to his office.
They shuffled in and let him sit, settling into positions in front of his desk as though they'd flowed there like water. "We're working from the assumption that whatever this is, it followed us from PG3-235," Dr. Jackson said. "We're also operating under the assumption that it's altered its behavior in response to our actions."
The first seemed like a logical jump. The second...
"I'm inclined to believe you," Hammond said. "Still, mind telling me what evidence supports that conclusion?"
"The readings we've taken since its arrival here have been consistent with the readings the MALP took planetside," Carter said. "And..."
There was a moment's silence before Dr. Jackson exhaled, and said "The timing of its disappearance, on the planet. It disappeared on the night of Teal'c's ghost story."
"It exhibited none of its current behavior on the planet," Teal'c said.
"So, you think–" Hammond began. He was loathe to say, Discussing a ghost story makes it true.
"We may have accidentally taught a non-corporeal entity how to act like a ghost," Daniel agreed. It took Hammond a moment to work out what he was agreeing with, but he supposed that it was only one or two logical leaps past where his own mind had gone.
"You think this is an entity? Not some sort of natural phenomenon?" Even as he said, it, he knew how unlikely that sounded.
Daniel shrugged. "Well, it's interpreting our language, or some other aspect of our communication or mental processing, and it's applying that to its own behavior. That's – correct me if I'm wrong, but that's something an alien intelligence would have an easier time with than a natural phenomenon."
"I'd agree," Major Carter said. "Even artificial intelligence – intelligence designed by species which approach logic like we do, anyway – would have a more difficult time than an evolved intelligence. It's not impossible, but–"
"Occam's razor," Hammond said. Both of the scientists nodded.
Only SG-1. The rest of the teams might come back with bizarre mining treaties or ancient mind-altering strategy games or the occasional alien incursion, but somehow there was still a whole class of trouble only SG-1 ever found themselves in.
"Does this inform, in any way, how we're meant to address this situation?"
There was silence, and Hammond felt as though every member of SG-1 was quietly looking at one another. Without actually performing the actions of looking. Then Dr. Jackson tried, "Metaphorically?"
"We're still working on some projections," Carter said.
Hammond politely refrained from noting how much of an answer that wasn't. He knew it was scientist-speak for We're trying to figure out what the right questions are; he was fairly sure Carter knew that he knew that; there was little he could do about it.
"But it would help if we had access to the Stargate," Carter said.
"No." The word was out of his mouth before he'd considered the proposal. "I'm afraid that's out of the question."
This time, there actually was a flurry of glances exchanged.
"General," Carter began.
"We've already lost four men to the anomaly," Hammond said. "The entity. Whatever it is. We don't even know where to begin in trying to retrieve them. And from what I can tell, the entity can be rather persuasive about getting people to join them."
Halfway across the 'Gateroom, thinking with every step that he was walking away from danger. Hammond didn't shudder, but he came close.
"General," Dr. Jackson said. "If we can't analyze or interact with the entity, we might as well be sitting in our labs theorizing. We can't do any practical work."
"Unless you can give me some guarantee of your stability when it comes to the entity, it's not an acceptable risk," Hammond said.
A moment passed.
"...you could cuff us to the emplacements," Carter offered, reluctantly.
Everyone in the room turned to look at her: Hammond in surprise, Daniel with a speculative look, and Teal'c with an arch of the eyebrow that seemed, perhaps, almost approving. Carter shifted under their gazes.
"...we'd need a fairly long chain to let us do the work we needed to," she added.
"I'd be willing to work under those restrictions," Dr. Jackson said.
Another moment.
"I have no need to access the Stargate," Teal'c put in.
Hammond let out a breath shaped a little like a chuckle. "Fine," he said. "I'll allow you access to the Gateroom, under restraint, and with a defense team standing by to extract you. And I don't care if I have to give them blinders and stop up their ears like Odysseus's men: if I believe you're in trouble, I will have you dragged out of the Gateroom."
"Thank you," Dr. Jackson said, quickly. "We'll go gather the materials we need."
Then he and Major Carter vanished, as though getting out of earshot before he could change his mind.
Teal'c remained.
"I take it you have something to add," Hammond said.
Teal'c inclined his head. "You were able to resist the influence of the entity," he said.
Hammond grimaced. It was all to easy to imagine not coming back to himself at the base of the ramp. Would he have come to his senses at all? Just in front of the strange, bright field, maybe. And if he'd blinked and found himself there, would his reflection have reached out to grab him?
Or maybe he would have reached out. Put his hand on his reflection's shoulder.
–and in fact he thought he had turned his son around to face him.
"Believe me, I wish I knew how," Hammond said. The response team hadn't been able to. He had, and he hadn't given Jack the chance to find out whether or not he could. If it was just a matter of knowing that the Stargate would lure you, being aware enough to fight that inclination, he should probably let the Colonel out of his quarters. But it was rarely a good idea to let everyone know you were second-guessing your own orders.
If he'd expected Teal'c to have light to cast on that particular dilemma, he was disappointed. Teal'c simply nodded, and followed the rest of SG-1 out.
-
It actually took some time to locate appropriate restraints in the SGC: most of the restraints on hand weren't designed to allow for any significant degree of movement. Fortunately, one of the botanists on level 19 had a number of high-load chains, for reasons Hammond couldn't immediately recall and wasn't inclined to ask. A quick weld job later, and two sets of extremely long handcuffs had been produced.
Which meant that it wasn't too long before Hammond got to watch an odd procession – two of the SGC's finest, both chained to a MALP controlled by a 'gate technician, entering the Gateroom with wary, mistrusting looks for the great stone circle they travelled through without hesitation on most days.
Then, not too close, they settled in to work.
Hammond wasn't entirely certain what the substance of their investigations entailed. Major Carter bent to the MALP, and Dr. Jackson spread out a dizzying array of materials – glossy images of the steles on the planet, books, and his own journals, replete with notes. Their work was punctuated by the intermittent susurration of speech, not quite loud enough for the Gateroom microphones to pick it up.
It would have been eerie, if Hammond had let it be. As it was, this, at least, seemed right.
Until inevitably, something made it wrong.
Dr. Jackson noticed it first, so Hammond noticed his noticing first: a turn of his head, as if something had caught the corner of his eye. Rather, from Hammond's perspective, as though he'd suddenly seen something which had already been there.
Hammond took the microphone. "What do you see?" he asked.
With apparent difficulty, Dr. Jackson turned to look at Major Carter for confirmation, then said, with a distracted carefulness, "it looks like what we saw on the planet. But this – I don't think this is interested in keeping us here. I think it's inviting us."
Inviting them to where, he didn't say. Hammond suspected it was irrelevant; he felt that it was irrelevant. The invitation was all that mattered. "It's an invitation you'll have to decline."
Dr. Jackson shot an unexpectedly sharp look up at the control room. And also unexpectedly, it was Major Carter who spoke up. "General, I know that finding out what it wants is outside of the scope of this investigation, but..."
"'But,' Major?" Hammond asked. He hoped the question was answerless.
He could hear the tension of the question rasping like a hacksaw along the atmosphere down below. And Teal'c reacted noticeably at Hammond's side.
"I think it would be best if I were to join them, General Hammond," he said.
Hammond turned to him, ready to object, but Teal'c pre-empted him.
"I believe I have a solution – if not to bring home those who have already vanished, at least to end the extant threat."
"Care to share your insights?" Hammond asked.
Teal'c nodded. "Ghost stories, to the Jaffa, are merely cautionary," he explained. "When Daniel Jackson first proposed that the entity was playacting the story I told, I was suspicious. Its actions mimicked the story on only a basic level; the fact that it remained to tempt us, rather than sending back specters of the lost guards, was a clear discrepancy. Now I believe it has modeled itself not on the story but the story's intent."
"Its intent," Hammond said, not quite willing to gamble Teal'c on a chain of reasoning he couldn't follow."
"To teach that one must sometimes repudiate adventure and the unknown for duties which would keep one home," Teal'c said. "While all of our energies are focused on the anomaly, it cannot help but call to us."
"So you're saying we should cease our investigations," Hammond said.
Teal'c nodded. "We must turn our backs on it."
That, Hammond was happy to agree to. "I'll send in the MPs to bring them out," he said.
Teal'c shook his head. "If I am correct, it must be their choice," he said. "Not an effect of force or circumstance."
"And you've already made that choice?"
"My duty is not toward adventure or the exploration of knowledge," Teal'c said. "It is toward the overthrow of the Goa'uld. I know that the entity cannot offer me what I need."
It seemed as reasonable as anything else in this situation had. Hammond hoped that that seeming could be trusted.
"Go," Hammond said.
Teal'c walked down and into the Gateroom.
Hammond watched him, measuring the length of his stride and the path it took over the concrete floor. He approached the MALP and not the 'Gate; his pace was steady and not coerced.
Teal'c reached out, and put his hand on Daniel's shoulder.
Hammond tensed, but Teal'c did not try to turn Dr. Jackson back. Instead, he moved to interrupt the line of sight between Dr. Jackson and the Stargate, and bent down to explain.
A charge came to the air, or Hammond perceived one. He watched the faces of the three in the Gateroom: Teal'c's ever-impassive façade, the slow shift of consideration across Dr. Jackson's face as a new theory was presented to him, the gradual slip of Major Carter's attention from the readouts she was working on to the conversation going on across the MALP from her.
He had the feeling that being told the answer to a problem lay in not investigating it offended Major Carter's religion, or whatever beliefs she held as true as one.
Without thinking, Hammond walked out of the control room and down past the blast doors, past the defense team waiting in the hall.
Major Carter turned to look at him as he came in, with palpable reluctance. "We'll cease investigating," she said, and Hammond could imagine what it cost her to say – and mean – those words. "Daniel thinks it would be a good idea to destroy the data we have."
"Burn the ships," Dr. Jackson murmured, in a kind of rueful agreement.
Hammond looked to Teal'c. It was a great deal of faith they were all putting in him.
But there was certainty in every angle of his expression, and faith was as central to the SGC as the Stargate itself.
Beside him, Dr. Jackson was carefully pulling pages out of his journal, with a look that suggested it physically pained him. Carter was punching in commands to the MALP – clearing its memory, no doubt.
"Here," Dr. Jackson said, and held out a sheaf of pages.
Hammond took them. "I appreciate the sacrifice you're making," he said.
"Hopefully it's worth it," Daniel said, and the film across the Stargate snapped into nothingness like a dispelled dream.
All of them turned, as one, as though noticing its first glimmers. But the air was different, now; Hammond could look at the Stargate without feeling its allure or its dread.
Something pale and shining glimmered briefly in the center of the circle.
"What–," Hammond began. Then, "It worked."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. Hammond could hear it in his tone. "All stories benefit from being treated as truth," he said. "I would advise you to open the Stargate back to PG3-235. It is possible the entity will wish to return home."
"To follow some other poor adventurer home," Hammond said, but he turned to the control room window and gave a curt nod. Harriman caught his nod, nodded back, and began dialing.
"Notice can be sent to the Free Jaffa, the Asgard, and the Tok'ra," Teal'c said. "As for the Goa'uld, should they stumble upon the world, I have no doubt they are deserving of any trouble it may cause them."
Hammond could agree with that assessment. He couldn't quite believe it would be that simple, but if Teal'c's point was that there was only so much they could do...
Well. That was the story of their lives, SG-1's tendency to whip up miracles notwithstanding.
"Any idea how we can retrieve the missing?"
A look of regret crossed Teal'c's face. Maybe. Or maybe it was Hammond's imagination. "If I have any theories, I shall surely bring them to your attention."
"Please do," Hammond said, and glanced at SG-1's scientists, still cuffed to the MALP and likely smarting over the resolution. He glanced down at the papers in his hand.
...time enough to return those later. Once they were certain the danger was past.
"Let's unlock these people," Hammond said, and turned to leave the Gateroom as the defense team rushed in.
-
And when she deigned to look again, he was gone.
The stargate flashed open, waited like an open eye, and then closed again in its own time. Hammond, standing in the control room, took a breath.
Things felt right again, or mostly so. There was still the faint aftertaste of unease, and a niggling awareness of the defense team who had yet to come home. But the air of the SGC was as it should be, and the Stargate stood august and empty. Not precisely dead, but no longer possessed.
It was a start, if nothing else. A place that they could work from.
Hammond turned away from the Stargate, and went to update his log of the events. There would be one note at least, he thought, mentioning the stories brought back from the planet; reiterating the old taboos about things not to be discussed aloud.
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Date: 2014-02-10 11:54 am (UTC)Wow.
Just...wow.
This is A REALLY CREEPY STORY YOU KNOW.
(and good!)
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Date: 2014-02-10 10:06 pm (UTC)...I actually didn't have a chance to read this through, beginning-to-end, before I posted it, so I'm also glad to hear that it works as a story. (Though I suppose in a way, rough edges could actually contribute to an atmosphere of creepiness. Maybe I'll just go with that.)
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Date: 2014-02-11 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-02-12 11:08 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2014-02-15 04:10 pm (UTC)Wonderful!!
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Date: 2014-02-16 12:50 am (UTC)Hopefully your reading place at least has windows, even in the dark silent nighttime. Though, given traditional horror tropes, I suppose windows in the night are not actually that reassuring.
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Date: 2014-03-20 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-20 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 06:22 am (UTC)You wrote fabulous GEORGE. Squee!
I love this - Hammond's sense of responsibility for his people, his personal inner strength, his rapport with Teal'c, his understanding of how each member of the team will react. And what a great spooky ghost story! And the way he trusts them all... ::sighs happily::
Wonder Twins. Teal'c Teal'c Teal'c. Glorious.
Every time you write something, you teach me new words. In this case, proprioception and equipoise. Who says fanfic isn't educational?
Thank you so much for contributing this wonderful, fabulous story. I love the competence of everyone involved, the thought processes, the mutual respect. And the creepiness of the unknown.
One last question: did you remove Jack from the equation to have Hammond as the sole commander, so to speak, or was there another reason?
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Date: 2014-03-27 07:39 am (UTC)[Every time you write something, you teach me new words. In this case, proprioception and equipoise. Who says fanfic isn't educational?]
XD You should see what happens when I'm compelled to write sex scenes. The last one involved discussion of topography and ethology, and also sculling. (This is one of many, many reasons why I do not write sex scenes.)
[One last question: did you remove Jack from the equation to have Hammond as the sole commander, so to speak, or was there another reason?]
You know, I'm not sure what my exact thought process there was. I think it had more to do with indicating the degree to which Hammond was creeped out by the thing in the 'gate, though, and the degree to which he could intuit how other people would be affected by it.
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