DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment purposes and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author. Not to be archived without permission of the author(s).
Jack was glaring at him.
Again.
"Well," Daniel asked, "you didn't think you had the only dangerous job in the world, did you?"
But from the look on Jack's face, he probably had thought exactly that. That Daniel had spent all his time in universities and libraries and conferences. That the first dangerous thing he did was step through the Stargate with one Jack O'Neill.
'Don't flatter yourself, Colonel.'
Granted, archaeology wasn't all Indiana Jones--full of booby traps and giant rolling boulders. But what Jack didn't realize was that life as an archaeologist wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries, either. Simple things like years of stiff necks and sore legs from alternately walking and crouching for miles at a time. Blisters, twisted ankles, heatstroke. A few more problematic worries, too. The occasional riot over remains or sacred artifacts. Sunburns that left him unable to move. Several obscure jungles diseases here and there. Broken-down trucks in the middle of vast desert wastelands. Not to mention being bashed on the head more than once by rickety buildings crumbling down on unsuspecting diggers.
It was the last one that Jack had just discovered. The hard way.
Sure, a little time spent excavating the temple they'd found on 889 had all the earmarks of a break from their usual danger-lurking-around-every-corner missions. But dangerous jobs come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they came in fairly obvious forms like a suicide mission to stop an alien tyrant from taking over your planet. But today, it had come in the form of a four-hundred-year-old wall that chose to collapse on Sam.
And, unfortunately for Daniel, it also came in the form of being left alone for the next several hours with one very, very annoyed Air Force colonel.
Technically, it wasn't anyone's fault. And the resulting gash she was sporting in her left thigh wasn't even all that bad as injuries went. Not by SG-1's standards, anyway. But anyone or anything even remotely responsible for damaging his team was automatically on Jack's black list. And since he'd gotten no response from glaring at the broken wall, Daniel--as their archaeologist--was getting the remainder of patented Jack O'Neill Irritated Glances.
"Fine," Jack finally responded to Daniel's very hypothetical--and not a little bit sarcastic--question. "Let's just get this done so I can go home and explain yet another team injury to Hammond, okay? Because I am just really looking forward to that."
Well, Daniel supposed Jack had his fair share of dangerous tasks, too.
As he headed back into the excavated tunnel, mumbling about being stuck digging in the rocks, Daniel checked his watch. Teal'c was due to drop Sam off at the SGC and be back in maybe six hours. If he could just stay out of Jack's line of fire until then, he could let Teal'c deal with him. He could defuse Jack better than any of the rest of them. There was a ton of artifacts to be packed up while Jack worked inside the temple, anyway.
Because while Daniel wasn't afraid of dangerous jobs, he certainly didn't seek them out either.
"Oh, Daniel...?" Jack called, voicing it deliberately casual. Although he was more than a little...concerned by what he had found.
After several minutes, he heard Daniel making his way around the wood and stone barrier created by his efforts in the last hour to clear the cramped passage after Carter's little mishap. He had been trying to get back their lost access to some burial chamber that had Daniel in hog heaven for the last three days.
Now, it looked like that hadn't been the big find on this little planet.
Daniel came up beside him, puffing slightly from the effort of climbing over the debris blocking the way. "Yeah?"
Jack pointed into the large hole in the wall created by the collapse. "Tell me--is that what I think it is?"
Daniel moved closer to the hole, bracing himself against a jagged edge and bending over to peer inside the room now apparent beyond it. He looked sharply back at Jack, his eyes wide with confusion and a good portion of worry.
"Well, I'll take that as a 'yes.'"
"Jack, that's a sarcophagus! Do you know what this means?"
Oh yeah, Jack knew what that meant. "Goa'uld."
As if on cue, a low droning filtered into Jack's consciousness. He focused on it, running through a mental tally of known noises. It grew louder, filling his ears with a dreaded sound. He looked over at Daniel, whose eyes were raised toward the sky as well.
The both came to the same conclusion at the same time.
"Death gliders."
Daniel burst out of the temple at a dead run, sticking to Jack's heels for all he was worth. Jack had pushed him out of the temple, mumbling something about not getting pinned in.
He nearly plowed into Jack when he suddenly stopped, grabbing Daniel's vest and pulling him to the ground behind a fallen tree just outside their small camp. Looking up to the north, opposite the temple, he spotted the outlines of three fast-approaching gliders. They were flying low, as if looking for something.
"Shit! I knew this mission was gonna be a pain in the ass!" Jack peeked over the log to look around their campsite. "Okay, listen. You stay here. I'm gonna go get our weapons," he gestured toward the pile of supply boxes sitting untouched across the site, "and then we're gonna haul ass to the Gate."
Daniel nodded, not wanting to break Jack's concentration.
"And you wonder why I stay armed," Jack chided. Taking one more look at the gliders on the horizon, he ran out of their hiding place and across the campsite toward the boxes stacked up near the little ravine behind the clearing. Daniel waited impatiently, staying out of sight.
And then without warning, movement appeared behind the temple. He swung around just in time to see another glider streak up from behind the building, weapons blasting out fire and death as it came.
"JACK!!"
He ducked back behind the log as energy blasts raked across the camp, filling his world with screaming noise and smoke and fire. Pulling himself up, he tried to peer through it towards where Jack was running.
A blast of energy engulfed the spot Jack had been.
"Jack!" Daniel screamed his name again in a knee-jerk reaction, not even able to hear his own shout above the blasts from the gliders. As the smoke cleared, Jack was nowhere in sight.
As the glider began an arc to come around again, Daniel took his chance. He scrambled across the camp toward where Jack had been until a second ago. The glider reduced to background noise as he could only focus on that smoking, charred spot. He skidded to a stop behind the largest crate and crouched down behind it as far as he could go. The glider was coming around again.
"Shit."
Well, Jack certainly would have been proud of having further shared his vocabulary with Daniel. Daniel risked another look. Stood up farther to get a better view, hoping he wasn't making himself too good of a target. "Oh, jeez." Just behind the gouged-out ground was an incline. Rocks and dirt had formed a slide pattern that disappeared down it.
He ducked back down as the glider flew directly over him. Its energy weapons strafed the ground. He tried to think. Jack wasn't there. There wasn't even any...well, anything where he would have been. Which meant he was probably down that incline.
A blast right behind him made him wince instinctively. Too close. Way too close.
Immediately after that, though, there was a brief, blessed silence. Daniel knew it was time.
Time to do something incredibly stupid.
"Dammit!" He ran in a crouched position as fast as he could toward the incline, the glider looming over him. Knowing this was gonna hurt like hell, he threw himself over the edge just as another blast carved out a hole where he had been standing.
He rolled and tumbled, rocks digging into him and weeds slapping at his face and hands. Everything faded into nothingness as the ground came around and around to pummel him. Over and over again. He didn't even realize he had stopped until his brain caught up a couple of turns later. His stomach continued to churn and roil, and he responded by sucking in a few deep breaths, eyes closed.
"Well, that was fun." He pulled himself up onto all fours, pulling a stick out of his jacket collar.
Two more blasts roared from the ridge above him, and he ducked instinctively again. "I get the point!" He looked around, trying to orient himself. Trees, bushes, dirt, more trees....
Jack.
Daniel scrambled the ten yards over to where Jack lay sprawled face-up in the dirt. Face all dirt-streaked, marred red in a few small, jagged lines, he was the best thing Daniel had seen in...well, about the last five minutes at least.
"Jack?" Getting no response, he tried again. "Jack? C'mon, I could use some help here." Nothing a second time, which began to worry him. He slapped at Jack's face a couple of times, still with no response.
But his fingertips came away stained red, shocking him for a moment. He leaned down to find the source, horrified to find a long line of red running down behind Jack's ear near the base of his skull. It could barely be seen, hidden in the gray.
When had Jack gone so gray?
More blasts rained on the campsite above, throwing dirt and tiny rocks over the edge on them. Daniel leaned over Jack to shield him. 'Okay, first things first--let's get out of here before they finish the job.' Moving to Jack's head, he grabbed him up by the shoulders to pull him. Then stopped when something in the dirt a few feet way caught his eye.
Jack's gun.
Some deep, insistent part of his brain urged him to go get it. As he did so, he wondered where exactly he had picked up that new instinct. There was a time when he wouldn't probably have even noticed the damn thing.
He slung the strap of the MP-5 around his shoulder and started the long process of dragging him away from the rockslide and its distinct lack of cover. "Ooof. Jeez, Jack, try working out some, huh? No wonder you make us carry the packs."
As they moved away from the hill, trees overhead made short work of the remaining daylight. 'At least we won't be visible from above.' It wasn't a lot, but it was an upside to this mess they were in. That was exactly what Jack would have done--found the only good points to the mess, or the only bad points.
The new darkness, combined with his awkward position and load, made him trip several times on rocks and holes he couldn't see, each time barely catching himself in time to prevent going down while holding Jack. The fifth time it happened, he decided it was time to regroup. He was probably doing more harm than good here for Jack anyway. Step one was done, though. He'd gotten Jack out of the line of fire. Next was to locate a safe place to stick them both.
He looked around. Trees and more trees. Endless green and brown. The base of the hill they'd been on wound around to his right, disappearing in the darkness. In front of him, nothing but forest. Left, the same.
"Well, this doesn't look promising."
Considering the three choices again, it finally came down to the sheer fact that only one choice had any difference from the other two. "Okay. So, right it is." He hefted Jack up again and made their way around the rocks toward the hillside he could barely see in the darkness.