Reaching for the Stars - A Stargate Quest

Despite two suns glaring down on them from above, the heat was bearable. Dry air and a constant light wind made sure of that. But that also meant sand was flying everywhere in addition to having to trudge through the loose sand of the dunes. They had decent kit for the circumstances, but that just meant the sand went into most places instead of all of them. Both teams would have happily killed for a dune buggy and yet Master Sergeant Walt had kept the worst part of it firmly for herself.

As they reached the crest of another of the titanic dunes of Abydos, she dropped down right before the top while stuffing half the desert down her collar and then took off her goggles to use the binoculars while the wind blasted more sand into her face. She really had no fond memories of Afghanistan, but after two hours of Abydos, the parched highlands seemed like a vacation spot in comparison. Maybe it was divine punishment for having complained about two cold and miserable days of rain in Colorado.

Looking from the top of the huge dune, she could finally see something that was not sand, but it was not a welcome sight either. For one, there was supposed to be just more desert there and then a city. Instead, Tonya saw for the first time something truly alien. Giant pillars of solid rock rose from the desert sands, each the size of a skyscraper and their sides a mix of jagged cliffs and smooth stone polished by the wind. 'That's not supposed to be here.' she thought while frantically checking the rough sketch that passed for a map they had gotten. There should have been just more sand for another three hours of march before they reached a settlement.

At least they had found people. Thousands of them even. Makeshift looking tents were all around the bases of the pillars and people could be seen walking up and down thin walkways cut into the rock or on wooden platforms attached to it. They were breaking apart the stone with pickaxes and in some places, they seemed to be trying to quarry stone blocks out of them.

On top of the highest of the rock formations, familiar figures watched over the milling Abydonians and Walt saw behind them made her swear under her breath. People bound onto logs were raised above the peak, circling around a large tent that looked far more ornate than those at the bottom. It was hard to make out details as they ware caked in dirt from hanging in the wind, but she was certain that two of them were wearing Space Force uniforms.

While she was still trying to make out any details on the uniforms to identify the people, her radio buzzed twice. The sergeant slid back down the dune to get back into cover and looked at SG-2 and SG-3 behind her, but they all shook their heads or waved off. "Identify yourself," she curtly spoke into her radio.

"Major O'Neill here, and you would be?"

She could not read the faces of her soldiers behind the masks, but Walt could tell by how they relaxed the tiniest bit that they were all just as happy to hear that as herself. "Master Sergeant Walt, leading SG-2 and SG-3 to get you back home. How is the status of SG-1?"

"Oh, we got a team name? Nice. I think you already saw Captain Kawalski and Specialist Bashir. They are still alive, but they are getting hung out to dry each day. The rest of us is short on ammo, but otherwise just some nicks, bruises, and sore everything from the weather."

"I can relate, sir," she laughed briefly. "Any chance we can exfiltrate your team?" Unspoken went that she meant the whole team if there was any way to do so.

"Negative. The guards have a twitchy trigger finger, and they will chase you down in the dunes if you try to leave the camp. Stay where you are until nightfall then we will send someone down to get you in here."

"Sir?"

"We've got a plan. It's a bit risky, but if it works, we will get everyone out safe. All our teams and the Abydonians on top."

"We are here on orders to retrieve you, not to reinforce you on… whatever you are planning."

"What about 'no man left behind', sergeant?"


Walt waited for a moment, trying to gauge the reaction of the teams who had been hearing the whole exchange. A few nods. No dissent. "I'll obey your orders as given, sir," she finally replied.

"Alright. Then get comfy, since it's about four hours until sunsdown. And don't read the Yelp reviews of this place while you wait. It's way worse than they make it sound."

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Once the last of the suns had disappeared behind the horizon, Abydos became a truly dark place. Without a moon to shed some light, the desert became nothing but a sea of blacks and dark blues beneath the endless, star filled sky. It was a marvellous view that you could find only in a few places on Earth these days. Many of the stars and even constellations were familiar and yet ever so slightly off, making it ever so slightly haunting to contemplate how far away from Earth he now. O'Neill almost regretted that he did not pack his telescope. It would have been a good distraction at least.

He had taken the night watch on purpose. It was supposed to distract him. Sitting at the entrance of the small mine shaft system they had commandeered as their base of operations and wrapped in a wide robe to his uniform, he looked like any other Abydonian. Beneath, he kept an MP5 hidden, having left his bulky rifle with the others. He had a clear and easy goal. Keep the bad guys from poking their snake heads into the cave or alert the others if he could not. Simple. Straightforward.

Instead he kept running through the plan for tomorrow while waiting for the other teams to arrive, checking his watch obsessively for any sign of a delay and thus potentially trouble. Footsteps came closer from within and it was easy to guess who it was. There was only one person capable of talking to him that didn't wear combat boots. "Don't you have a wife and kid to tend to?" The major called behind himself, weary of his presence.

Daniel stopped in his tracks. "Actually," he began after an awkward pause, "I feel it's more important right now to make sure you don't brood here all evening on your own."

"I like my brooding time," he lied.

"I thought you had gotten better about this," Daniel noted while coming closer and leaning against the cave entrance next to Jack. "If I had known that seeing Sha're and my son would get to you like this…"

The major waved him off. "No. It's fine. It's not that." He paused a moment. "Well, maybe it is, but it's not just that."

"If you need someone to talk, Jack…"

"Daniel. I have a therapist back on Earth, but I'll come back to you when I need a few holes dug in my yard." More awkward silence followed. "Sorry. That was uncalled for."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was."

"It's just… we've been here before, haven't we? Except it's even worse this time. We killed Ra, freed these people and two years later, the new guy can still just move in and carry on as if nothing has happened. It's as if nothing we did mattered."

"You are very wrong there," Daniel told him as he took a seat right next to O'Neill. "The people of Abydos could actually live the last two years. No more tithes. No watching the sky for signs of Ra's ship coming for slaves. You should have seen how much the city had changed since then…"

"But I won't. That's the thing, Daniel. There is no city anymore. Abydos couldn't defend itself and we weren't much of a help either. Instead, we hid in that pyramid for a few days and then came out here to watch as everyone gets forced to mine again and how they sun-dry my team up there."

They sat in silence for a while, O'Neill stewing in his own regrets while Daniel waited for him to calm down. "You don't really believe that Jack. If you thought everything was that hopeless, you wouldn't have talked those other teams into helping us."

"It's a lot of people that will die if we fuck this up again, Daniel. What if I get your son killed? Will you still think this was a good idea?"

"If I had doubts, I would be on my way to the gate and hoping General Harrison grants my family asylum." As footsteps became audible on the path leading up to the cave, Daniel rose again. "I'll leave you to your war council. In the meantime, I'm going to get some last-minute staff weapon lessons from Skaara."

They did not go straight for a war council though. When the other SG teams finally arrived, they were well out of breath and quite eager to get some rest in a place that was not just sand covered by a tarp to keep the suns out. Ferreti took over guard duty while O'Neill showed them around the mineshafts, and it took about an hour until the team leaders returned to the main cavern. They all congregated on a few worn pillows that had been thrown into one nook of the shaft and were all that passed for creature comforts in the camp.

"Alright, now that everyone is fed and watered, let's get to business." O'Neill announced as he stepped in front of the assembled soldiers and a few Abydonians that wanted to enjoy the spectacle, even though they didn't understand a single word. "Before I explain what we intend to do, I have one question. Was there an attack on Stargate Command in the last three days?"

"There was," Sergeant Yi piped up from the back row. "About 60 to 70 alien warriors. Marched out of the gate in parade formation and got cut down by the base defences."

"Awesome!" O'Neill called out while pointing at Yi, leaving everyone surprised. "Well, not awesome that we got attacked, but this is a good sign."

"How is that a good sign, sir?"

"I'll explain. When we had to fall back from the gate room on Abydos, we retreated into some chambers beneath the pyramid. We hid there for three days until one of the Jaffa found us. Snake helmet people. Those are called Jaffa," he quickly added at the questioning looks he got at the word.

"Anyway, that Jaffa came to us unarmed and proposed a deal. His people are treated only marginally better than the slaves and get sent to die for the whims of their gods all the time. He is some kind of general for Apophis, and he wanted our help to kill his boss. The offer was that he would sabotage any attempts to attack Earth as well as he could and in return, we would help him ambush Apophis here on Abydos."

One of the specialists raised his hand nervously and only began to speak when O'Neill pointed at him. "And you trust this… Jaffa?"

"If he wanted us dead, he could have come down into the pyramid with those sixty soldiers that got killed on Earth. The fact that he didn't and that it sounds as if he really did sabotage their attack makes inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The worst that can happen is that we have to fight him too."

"The plan is simple," he began as he kneeled down and sketched some rough shapes into the rough dirt. "Apophis was really pissed that the Abydonians shot at his Jaffa and had stopped working in the mines as they were supposed to. He razed their city, drove everyone here and gave them an ultimatum. They got one week to build him a palace 'worthy of a god' on the tallest spire here or he would have them pay in blood."

"Tomorrow, he will return, get up on that spire to get a report from this Apepi guy he put in charge in his absence and see that there is no palace. Big speech. Divine wrath. He will be busy stroking his own ego. We will hide among the Abydonians that are delivering stone to the build site and wait for the locals to cause some chaos that distracts the guards, then overwhelm those on the plateau and take out Apophis and Apepi. In theory, our friend is supposed to help us in this step, but if he doesn't, the risk is pretty low."

"You want to fight upwards on one of those spires, probably outnumbered, and with the risk of the enemy knowing to expect us?" Master Sergeant Walt asked incredulously. "Sir, this is…"

"The only chance we got to get Captain Kawalski and Specialist Bashir back. And the only chance for the Abydonians." He sombrely told her. "The alternative is that we leave everyone here to their fate. Our comrades will die and the Abydonians will be slaves again."

He got back up and paced along the cave. "Look. I know this isn't a great plan, but it's the best we got. I'd be very happy to have an F-35 come over and make the bad guys explode for us, but that won't happen. My team talked about this already and we were willing to risk it with just the four of us."

As he looked over the cave, he saw that all members of his team had come to look in on the meeting. One after another nodded at him, still willing to go through with it. When her turned to SG-2 and SG-3 though, they seemed far less certain. "Listen," he finally said with a note of defeat in his voice. "If you really believe this is a suicide mission, then just turn around. Go back to Earth and fill General Harrison in on what we learned here. Daniel made some notes you can take with you. Just do me one small favour and take along a few refugees on the way out."

"If you have a better plan, then I'm all ears. If not," he looked pointedly at his watch. "You have about three hours to rest before you have to make your way back to the gate. If you are not gone by then, I'll assume you will help with the attack. That is all, ladies and gentlemen."

How do the team leaders react?

[] Agree with the plan. Taking out the enemy leader is worth the risk.

[] Reject the plan and return to Earth with anyone willing to follow.

[] Write-In

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AN: Before you ask, nobody on the reinforcement teams has the diplomacy skill to talk O'Neill or SG-1 out of this. They will be going at this with the usual SG-1 can do attitude, no matter the odds.