That earned him a glare. “A lot of people need treatment, Daniel.”
Ah. Yes. Okay, backing right away from that one… “Yeah. Especially you.”
Another glare. “I’m fine.”
“Oh, please. You’re not fine. If Janet was here she’d have you in a bed and on an i/v so fast your feet wouldn’t touch the floor.”
The air wheezed in and out of Jack’s chest. Beneath the blisters his face was pale. Sweaty. “Well, lucky for her she’s not here to try it.
Daniel
— ”
“Look, I’m
worried
about you, okay? What, you’re going to bite my head off because I’m
worried
about you?”
Jack scowled. “No.”
“At least we’ve got Dixon.”
“
Meaning
?”
“Meaning if you fall over it won’t just be me and Teal’c trying to keep this mess under control,” he snapped. “It’s going to be bedlam at the gate, Jack, with all those villagers sick, needing help, and no backup coming in from the SGC. Look, I know you don’t like him, I know
why
you don’t like him, but does any of that matter now? With what we’re facing, are you saying it
matters
?”
“Jesus,” Jack muttered, and pressed his fingers to his eyes. “No. It doesn’t matter.”
Okay. Okay. Now they were getting somewhere. “Jack…”
Jack lowered his hand and looked at him. “What?”
“How sick are you, really?”
Silence. Then Jack breathed out slowly. Carefully. “I’m sick.”
Daniel felt a flash of fear scorch his skin. Because though he and Jack argued a lot, though they saw eye-to-eye on so very little, the bedrock of their difficult friendship was truth. Stark, harsh, uncompromising truth.
“Will you need a stretcher to make it to the gate?”
A muscle leapt along Jack’s jaw. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Oh God
. “Jack — ”
“If I need one I’ll ask for it,” Jack said brusquely. “Daniel, enough. We don’t have time for this. Get back down to the village. Do what you can to keep those people on their toes. Don’t leave it to Bhuiku, he’s just a kid. Go on. I’m not hanging around here a minute longer than we have to.”
He wanted to say,
Okay, if yo
u lie down
. He wanted to say,
Jack, we’ll get through this
. He wanted to say,
I’m sorry
. Even if he wasn’t sure exactly for what.
He didn’t. He followed orders. It was the kindest thing to do.
The trek back to the Stargate was hellish, but they made it. With five hundred and fifty-four villagers in tow, walking or on stretchers or being carried, babies and infants, they reached the Adjo gate with almost an hour of sunlight to spare. A quarter mile out, Dixon called a halt to the expedition.
He and Teal’c were carrying O’Neill’s makeshift stretcher.
Carefully they put it down. O’Neill didn’t so much as twitch a finger. He’d lasted a little over the half the distance on his feet — man, he was one stubborn sonofabitch — but now he was out cold, his breathing shallow and too fast. Beside them, Jackson and the villager who was helping him stretcher Carter lowered her to the ground. Like O’Neill, she didn’t react.
“Okay, you two,” he said to Jackson and Teal’c. “This is a US military operation and I’m the only conscious US military officer we’ve got right now. Am I going to get any grief if I start calling the shots until our fearless leader’s
compos mentis
again?”
Teal’c shook his head. “No, Colonel Dixon. Provided you step back when O’Neill is once more well enough to resume command.”
If he’s well enough to resume command
. “That’s a given. Jackson?”
Jackson shrugged. “No. I’m good.”
“Okay. Teal’c, stay here and keep the folks calm. Jackson and I’ll go ahead, touch base with the SGC, get a handle on how we’re going to cope tonight. If O’Neill wakes, you can bring him up to speed.”
“Very well,” said Teal’c.
“Okay. Let’s go,” he said, and headed for the gate at a slow jog.
“Running?” Jackson panted beside him, incredulous. “How can you be
running
? This is
obscene
.”
He slid a smile sideways. “I’m on the US Military triathlon team, Jackson. As far as I’m concerned, today’s been a warm up.” Which okay, wasn’t
entirely
true, but he figured he was owed just a
little
bit of payback.
“Triathlon,” said Jackson, faintly. “I was right. You Special
Forces types
are
insane.”
He just laughed, and kept on jogging.
At the gate they found piles and piles of equipment waiting for them. It wasn’t nearly enough, but at least it was a start.
“Oh my God,” said Jackson, sounding dismayed. “How are we going to do this? We have to build a whole new
village
.”
Dixon looked up from checking the first inventory list that had been attached to a stack of camp beds. “Easy. It’s just like eating an elephant. One mouthful at a time. Call the SGC, will you? Let them know we’re here, and that we need lights and generators pronto. I’m going to scope out the area, draw up a rough plan.”
That took him almost half an hour. Thank God the terrain round the gate was reasonably clear and open. They’d be squashed in pretty tight, though. Not a lot of space between the tents.
And with a bunch of contagious sick people that’s not exactly ideal. But I guess things could be worse. We could be in the middle of a damned forest. Or a swamp. Or a glacier. A lava field.
Pity there wasn’t a source of water handy, but the base could ship them through what they required. Or maybe they could just send through a hose and leave it on. Pulling a pencil from his pocket, he sketched a rough plan of their temporary village’s layout on the back of the inventory sheet. A command and control center. Separate quarters for SG-1. Medical tents, an ICU and quarantine area, general barracks, a crèche, mess tents, field kitchens, laundries.
Crap. I’m a soldier, not a town planner.
When he was done he showed it to Jackson, who examined it carefully then nodded. “I think that about covers it,” he said. With the SGC’s generators running and the lights plugged in and switched on, he’d busied himself sorting out which equipment was what. “Except…”
“Yeah,” Dixon said quietly, reading his mind. “The thing is, if anyone dies we’re going to have to cremate them, so we don’t need a mortuary.”
“No,” said Jackson. “No, I guess we don’t.” He kicked the nearest pile of gear. “God, I
hate
this.”
After reading all those mission reports he’d always suspected Jackson was emotionally volatile. Temperamental. The kind of guy who was swinging from the rafters one minute, crying into his beer the next. Not a headcase, not exactly, just… prone to moods. So, with that in mind…
“Yeah, it sucks, it blows, life stinks, we’re screwed,” he said briskly. “And so on and so forth, aiee aiee aiee, woe is us. Let’s head back to the others. We’ve got some serious organizing to do.”
Which stopped Jackson cold, at least for the moment.
They found the silent, exhausted villagers huddled in family groups and O’Neill awake and on his feet. Swaying a little, but upright. In his eyes a fierce gleam. Daring anyone to comment on his precarious state. “Report.”
“We’re good to go,” Dixon said easily, at his most relaxed and unthreatening. “We’ve got lights and power. First delivery of equipment’s there waiting, and I’ve done a rough layout of the village.”
O’Neill held out his hand. “Show me.”
He handed over his sketch. Watched O’Neill’s swift, keen appraisal. Saw the approval, quickly dismissed.
“Okay,” O’Neill said, and handed back the sketch. “Let’s do this. I want the basics set up at least before we call it quits for the night.”
Like the trek from Mennufer the task of creating their tent village was daunting but, with gathering momentum, the miracle happened.
The sick villagers were made comfortable, then the women designated as child-minders got the little ones fed and settled for the night. Another group of villagers took care of feeding everyone else with the MREs the SGC shipped through the gate. Those who weren’t children or manning the chow line were organized into teams and shown how to put up the military-issue tents. Sunset didn’t stop them; more arc lights and generators sent through from Earth turned night into day.
Stubborn to the last, O’Neill refused to rest. He insisted on being a team leader, nearly taking Jackson’s head off when the archeologist tried to object. Not even Teacl’c could convince him to sit this one out.
Dixon took the
Jaffa
aside. “Don’t bother,” he said quietly. “He’ll fall over soon and then you can stick him on a camp bed out of the way. But until then he’s going to work like there’s no tomorrow and nothing anyone says is going to stop him.”
“Indeed,” said Teal’c, after a thoughtful moment. “You understand O’Neill well, Colonel Dixon.”
No. But he was a good observer… and he remembered everything Frank had ever said about the man.
Tent by tent, a village grew in the wilderness.
“God, it’s incredible,” said Jackson, pausing to slake his thirst with a beer that Siler had snuck into the last crate of supplies. “These people…
look
at them.”
In silence they considered the Adjoans: afflicted, afraid, their leaders dead, far from home and surrounded by evidence of a world they’d never even imagined could exist. And yet they
were building a tent village. Had overcome their fear of the gate,
of all the strangeness, and just… got on with life. Doggedly did what had to be done, to survive, to win, to make a tomorrow for their children.
Dixon swallowed the last of his beer and dangled the empty bottle loosely from his fingers. “Yeah. The human spirit. Just when you think it’s been trampled to death in the mud.”
Jackson looked at him. “I guess you’ve seen a lot of that.”
Oh yeah. Somalia. Afghanistan. Bosnia. Iraq. Manmade hell-holes, each and every one. “I’ve seen my share.” He shoved his empty bottle in a crate already half-full of rubbish and glanced at the pile of folded tables Jackson was unfolding. “You good to keep going? I’ll sleep better if we finish this up tonight.”
Jackson was sweaty, dirty, stinking and exhausted, but he nodded. “Sure.”
Dixon smiled.
Yeah. The human spirit
. “Cool.”
Snaring the last cold beer, he wandered off to find O’Neill. It took him a few minutes; the stupid bastard had wandered off the reservation and was puking his guts up into some handy shadows at the village’s most distant edge.
When he was done Dixon held out the beer. “You want this?”
O’Neill hesitated, then took the bottle. “Where’d you get it?”
“Siler.”
“God bless him,” said O’Neill, unscrewed the cap and swallowed deep. It hadn’t been in his belly more than thirty seconds before it came straight back up again. “Crap,” he said, when he was finished retching. “Oh well. It’s the thought that counts.”
Dixon, light-headed with fatigue, every muscle aching, leaned against a handy tree. “So. You done proving to Adjo that you’re a mighty man? Think you might like to call it quits now?”
The question earned him a searing glare.
“I’m fine,” O’Neill muttered.
“No, you’re just stubborn.” He scrubbed his fingers through his filthy, sweat-damp hair. “I looked in on Carter a few minutes ago. No change.”
There was just enough drifting illumination from the powerful arc lights to reveal O’Neill’s face. Beneath the blood-black blisters and the silvery stubble, the dregs of color left to him had drained away completely. He looked almost… fragile.
And that’s the scariest damn thing I’ve seen since I got here.
“She’ll make it,” said O’Neill. “If she can survive a snake in her head she can survive anything.”
“What about you, Jack?” he asked. “What can you survive?”
Another searing glare. “This conversation. But not by much.” Then he turned. Tried to walk away. But his legs buckled, and he nearly fell.
“Hell,” said Dixon, and grabbed him by one arm. “Okay. You’re done.”
“Hammond,” said O’Neill, his voice slurring. “Need to — ”
“I’ll do it.”
“No, Dixon,
I’ll
do it,” said O’Neill, rallying. “I’m still in charge around — ”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “You’re also dead on your feet. You really want Hammond to watch you pass out or barf your guts up? What if he’s eating breakfast? One look at your face, he’ll lose his appetite for life.”