The Aberration by Alli Snow

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Story Notes: Title: The Aberration

Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)

Rating: PG-13 (language)

Category: Future story, SJR, angst

Archive: SJA and Heliopolis

The Andromeda Series
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist
11. The Absence
12. The Advance
13. The Adversary
14. The Ability
15. The Allies
16. The Aberration

* * * * *

|| Janet Frasier ||

"We're receiving the data stream."

A small, breathless cheer went up from those assembled in the control room at Mya Coakley's words, and the technician allowed herself a small smile before turning back to her computer. "The Tok'ra are sending the coordinates to the Tollan vessel, and they're transmitting it to the satellite in orbit."

"Is the satellite --"

"It's on other side of the planet, more than a one-hundred degree deviation," Mya assured General Hammond. "Even if the Gou'ald do pick up the transmissions, they'll have trouble locatting the source."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack O'Neill nod to himself. "How many coordinates so far?"

Siler fielded that one, checking the readout of the monitor beside him. "Six."

Mya glanced up over her shoulder. "Still no word on how many ships we're looking at here; there's still too much interference from M31, which the Gou'ald are probably using to their advantage, if not boosting. Mathematically, though, there can't be more than twenty-five, and we've got plenty of explosives for that number."

"M31?" asked Daniel, looking around at the others in the room, expecting an explanation. Smiling, I opened my mouth to tell him, but Jack beat me to it.

"M31, Andromeda Galaxy," he said distractedly, bending to look at the screen over Mya Coakley's shoulder. "The Gou'ald are managing to keep themselves between it and the Tollan satellite, to make it harder for us to get a head count."

"Ah," commented Daniel, looking slightly surprised and edging closer to me. "I thought Andromeda was a constellation."

"It is," I murmured. "The galaxy's part of it."

He shook his head. "Space never really was my thing."

I smiled.

"The question remains," said Hammond as the seventh set of coordinates, the symbols for the approaching ships, filtered in. "Do we wait until we have all the information from the Tok'ra, or do we start sending the bombs through now, with the glyphs we already have?"

"If we start sending bombs through now, it'll put the Gou'ald on the defensive," I felt compelled to point out.

"Isn't that what we want?" asked Daniel.

"Not if their idea of a defensive strategy is dialing US up," reminded Jack, watching the computers intently. Eight glyphs now. "If they tie up our gate we're helpless. 38 minutes is more than enough time to cause major damage. On the other hand, if the Tok'ra don't send through coordinates for all the ships, we're equally screwed."

"Why wouldn't the Tok'ra keep their end of the bargain?" asked Daniel, flinching already in anticipation of irritated backlash.

O'Neill narrowed his eyes in annoyance. "I don't know," he shot back.

Hammond sighed at the less-than-friendly sparring. "Sounds to me like we'd better start evening the score while we have the chance. As soon as the ships are in range, start dialing," he instructed Mya, and reached for the mike, which was patched into the Gate room P.A. "Teal'c, Captain Warren, we're looking good to go."

The Jaffa and the Captain, standing in full view at the ramp, surrounded by a forest of cylindrical, shoulder-high naqueda-enchanced warheads, nodded mutely. Tony gave a confident thumbs up.

"We're in range," announced Siler. "The Earth glyph can now be used for the ships' point of origin."

I shoved one hand into my pocket and crossed my fingers, still unable to shake the feeling that our luck was all but depleted. I'd never been a pessimist, exactly, but I simply had a bad feeling about all of this.

Mya squared her shoulders. "Chevron one engaged."

I found myself watching Jack, noting the set of his jaw and the anticipatory glimmer in his eyes. He was ready for this, I told myself. We all were.

"Let's get this show on the road," said O'Neill.

* * * * *

|| Samantha Carter ||

We had no sense of time in the tunnels, so deep underground that we didn't even have to worry about the flood that ravaged the surface, far above our heads. There was nothing but the clockwork-like workings of my body to tell me that the hours and days were in fact passing, that I hadn't found myself in some sort of stasis.

The remaining corridors were more sprawling than I had expected, and in no time the three of us had designated bedrooms and such. Jadae had been successful in locating the storeroom, which housed not only food but raw materials, blankets, even a few Zat guns.

My claustrophobia had already returned full-force, and I expected a good bout of cabin fever any time now. There wasn't much to do except talk and worry about our situation... so we did both.

"How much food?" I asked Jadae.

She stretched toward me, handing me a canteen of water and a hermetically sealed packet of some indistinguishable foodstuffs -- Tok'ra rations. "Plenty," she assured me, leaning back against the wall. "With only three of us it should last for quite a while. Maybe even a year."

"I sincerely hope we can expect a rescue before then," said Martouf grimly. Like Jadae and me, he sat on the floor, backed up against the wall and picking suspiciously at dinner.

"Like I said, I'm certain General Hammond will tell the Council where I went. This planet isn't all that far away; surely they would send a ship to see if this place was occupied."

I found myself smiling. "You're more of an optimist than you let on."

She smiled back.

Martouf merely fidgeted. "Are you certain you were unable to find any means of communications in the storeroom?" he asked, for the fifth time at least. I wondered if perhaps he was feeling the claustrophobia as well, if the closed space and the notion of a possibly long stay were starting to get to him.

"I'm certain," replied Jadae, watching with some amusement as Martouf set down his food and stood. "Where are you going?"

"To check again," he said intently, nodding to me politely before leaving. Jadae shook her head as she watched him leave.

"I understand how he feels," she said, looking after him thoughtfully. "Trapped here, not knowing what the Gou'ald are planning, not being able to stand beside our comrades and fight the vile ones... to be so far away from my friends and..."

Her voice trailed off and she looked over at me, dark eyes wide and guilty. It was only then that I realized what had tripped her up, what had stopped her. Jack. I immediately looked away from her, afraid that her evident sympathy would be my undoing, and unleash the tears that had yet to fall. Rather than leave myself open for such a display, I clenched my hands into a single fist and stared down at it, imagining that I held the guilty Jaffa in my hands and was slowly crushing the life out of them.

It was a long while before Jadae spoke again, and when she did, I had the distinct impression that the very words were hard for her to say. "If it makes you feel better... they did not catch him unawares." She paused. "I came through the Stargate and was barely halfway down the ramp with the Jaffa followed, hard on our heels; there was no time to close the iris. They started to fire, and I saw people falling, ours and the humans. Only a handful tried to fight back; most went for cover, trying to avoid the Jaffa's notice. I'm shamed to admit I did exactly that. But I saw Colonel O'Neill take a weapon from one of the bodies, and he fired at the guards... he killed all but one of them before he was taken down. Many more would have been killed if not for his bravery." She touched my shoulder. "Samantha, he died well."

"That does make me feel better," I answered softly, surprised by the strength in my voice as much as the sentiment itself. "That's what he would have wanted." To go out doing what he did best, fighting. To take as many of those bastards with him as possible. To never give up, even if it meant his own life. It was so bold and so noble and so idiosyncratic of him that it was a physical blow, a sharp impact to my stomach and my conscience. How far away, how absolutely trivial all of our problems seemed now. How utterly pointless. How CHILDISH, for me to have left, for me to have even considered it. Wrath rose again, like bile in the back of my throat, aimed not at the Jaffa but at myself and my idiotic actions. "I should have been there," I told Jadae, slightly awed how clear and obvious it now was. "I should have been in that room, with him, with everybody. But I didn't. I came here, with you; I ran away. I told myself I couldn't take it anymore and I just LEFT. How could I just leave? Those people are my friends, my family, and I just took off on them. I didn't even try. This was easier, so I just..." I shook my head, incredulous and disgusted. "I just left."

Jadae's hand still rested on my shoulder, a warm and comforting weight. "Samantha, sometimes the best option IS to leave. Sometimes there IS no other option. There is a saying, a proverb on Earth. Tony Warren taught it to me, about it being better to 'run away' in order to 'fight another day'."

"I don't believe that," I brooded. "I've never lived by that philosophy, and Jack doesn't either, because otherwise he'd still be alive!"

We lapsed into silence for a while longer, and I ignored my little snack in favor of staring sullenly at the cold ground. Maybe Jack would be buried at Arlington, I pondered, where they put heroes. Or maybe he'd put in his will that he wanted to be placed near his son. Maybe he wanted his body taken somewhere off world, or maybe cremated and the ashes spread across a hockey arena. I repressed a smile because it already seemed that I had been much to cheerful already, that I'd been smiling more than was warranted. After all, here I was marooned on some unknown planet with only two - or would that be four? - other souls for company, and burdened with the knowledge that the only man I'd ever loved was dead.

"He loves you," said Jadae.

I looked up at her, brow knitted in confusion, wondering why she was talking about Jack in the present tense, and then I realized with an embarrassing kind of shock that she wasn't talking about him at all. "Yeah," I said casually. "I know."

"Back at the base, he would talk about you constantly. Nearly gave me a complex." I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the mirth in her voice. "Both Maretne and I know what you're afraid of, that it's only Jolinar he loves, and you ARE similar... but Martouf is in love with you... YOU. You should be flattered."

"I am."

"He saved your life on Deault's planet. He brought you here."

"I know."

I kept my focus on the ground, contemplating every grain of sand and speck of dust rather than lift my hanging head and confront what I imagined was a challenging stare. Was Jadae or Maretne jealous, I wondered? And oh, God, how long would we be stuck under here, two women and one man... it was like some nightmare version of Three's Company...

I heard Jadae stand, saw her shoes and legs at the fringes of my vision as she paused, and I felt her eyes upon me.

And then she left.

* * * * *

|| Jack O'Neill ||

My hands were sweating, and I blotted them on my pants. "How're we doing?" I asked Mya Coakley, looking down over her shoulder and then up again, through the large glass window into the embarkation room. It had gone perfectly well the first three times: dial out, send the bomb, and hope that the Tok'ra spy or spies that had gotten us the information would be able to gate safely to a planet. One of the vessels had tried to establish a wormhole of their own only a moment or two ago, but we had Carter's speed-dial; we'd beaten them out.

Only ten minutes had passed since the first ship had been dialed. Only ten minutes. Christ. I checked my watch for the hundredth time... make that eleven. The warheads had been set to go off fifteen minutes after being sent through, enough time for the Tok'ra to abandon ship but hopefully not enough for the Gou'ald to figure out we were using their own stolen technology against them.

There was always the worry that the Gou'ald would try to send the bomb back through, which would effectively make today a bad day, if they could dial fast enough. And there was the worry that the device would be ejected harmlessly into space, beyond the ships' sheilds. And, oh yeah, there was also the worry that Gou'ald ships had dampening fields within the vessels, like Asgard ships.

Not to mention the domestic factor. Two brilliant flashes in the night sky was no big thing. But sixteen? Or twenty-five? That would cause a bit of notice.

"The President's aboard Air Force One," declared Davis, wilting a bit in relief.

"About damn time," barked Hammond. "Tell the pilot to get the hell out of D.C. God forbid one of those behemoths makes it through, they're going to target major cities first. They might be able to pinpoint the seat of government."

I forced a laugh. "The snakeheads blow up Washington, they might actually make a few fans."

As usual, I was ignored. I comforted myself by remembering that Sam would have smiled.

"We've just received an update from the Tollan vessel," proclaimed Mya, who seemed to be doing a few dozen things all at once. "Their new ETA is thirty-one minutes."

"That's great... that's good," said Daniel nervously, pacing. "We just keep blowing things up and wait for them to show up and..."

I grinned.

"Chevron seven locked," Coakley informed us. "Wormhole established to the fourth vessel."

In the Gate room, Tony and Teal'c fed the fourth bomb into the glistening event horizon. Four down, who knew how many to go. As long as we had time--

Time--

"Sir, one minute until that first warhead goes!"

* * * * *

|| Teal'c ||

I wished that I could witness it, personally. A Gou'ald mothership imploding, erupting from the inside out, splintering into inconsequential shards of technology and tissue. Perhaps it was immoral, perhaps it was not 'politically correct', but I gleaned a sense of... of triumph from it.

"We've got feed from the satellites!" called O'Neill from the control room, and as the Stargate disengaged for the forth time and began dialing for the fifth, Captain Warren and I turned towards the glass partition. "Whoa... big boom... hey, are we recording this? Okay, looks like the ship's shields is containing the explosion... good thing for the satellites. Looks like the whole convoy's slowing down, just above orbit. The ship... it's veering towards one of its buddies, looks like... ouch, shit. Well, that's one less bomb we'll need."

Warren grinned. I felt somewhat relieved. If I WAS immoral, at least I was not alone.

* * * * *

|| Daniel Jackson ||

"Sir," said Mya. "We just received the end of the data stream from the Tollan. Twenty sets of coordinates."

"Twenty... okay, good round number," quipped Jack, and I could tell simply from the set of his shoulders that he was enjoying this tremendously. "Wait." He grabbed the microphone. "Teal'c, Tony, reset those counters. Fifteen minutes is gonna be too long; make it ten. No, wait. Eight."

"Eight minutes?" I asked when I saw that neither General Hammond or Davis said anything. "Isn't that cutting it a little close? The Tok'ra--"

"Eight," repeated Jack darkly.

I looked to Hammond for appeal, but he was already shaking his head. "Eight minutes is plenty of time," he assured me.

"Twenty-five minutes until the Tollan arrive," said Siler.

* * * * *

|| Samantha Carter ||

My bedroom had a leak.

Not water from the surface, but sand from somewhere in the planet's crust. The crystal-carved room I'd chosen sported a small crack near the wall of the curving ceiling, and tiny grains had shifted through over the years, into a tiny pile on the floor. Ignoring my bed - thank God for the blankets Jadae had found; it could get damned cold in here - I went to the small mound of dirt, and scattered it, spreading it over a small area. Memories of being at the beach with my mother and brother flashed across my mind, being chased by the salty waves, throwing seaweed at Mark, writing in the wet, compacted sand. I smiled at the recollection, and wrote something in the sand here, just the first thing that came to mind.

Then I looked at what I had written, and I frowned.

'M31'.

* * * * *

|| Jack O'Neill ||

I wanted to cheer.

We weren't out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. With each successive explosion, the video feed got progressively worse; the same with the craft tracking the ships. But the ships WERE exploding, and it was happening faster than I had imagined. Boom, smash, boom, boom, smash. Either the Gou'ald hadn't noticed that their fleet was being decimated from out of nowhere, or they were simply hoping to... tough it out. They had started moving into orbit again, but a factor on our side was that they were on the light side of the planet. The flash of an shattering spaceship wouldn't be as noticeable as it would have been on the dark.

However, from their current position they'd be able to get a clear shot at just about anywhere in the US.

Boom, boom, smash.

Thirteen minutes until the Tollan showed up.

We were going to do it, goddamn it.

Nineteen bombs set now, the last four set at only five minutes. Five minutes was plenty of time. Plenty.

Daniel stared at the frizzing, fuzzy image from the satellite. "No beta site this time," he muttered. "No plan to warn the population." I glared at him and his optimism, and Janet glared at ME for glaring at DANIEL. Sometimes I wondered about those two.

Eleven minutes. I smiled.

"The ships must have been travelling quite close together, to be able to mask their numbers by M31," said Mya. "And then when they explode they--"

"Crash," I finished happily.

She nodded enthusiastically, and spoke into the microphone. "Chevron seven engaged for vessel twenty. Boys, do your thing."

The Tok'ra were right about one thing, I thought, stepping away from the panels of flashing lights and stats. Overconfidence was what royally screwed the Gou'ald. God forbid there was ever a humble System Lord. I turned towards the doorway, and, illuminated by the klaxons, I saw Julie Piper, the intern, the one with the... weird ideas. She smiled at me knowingly and pulled back into the doorway. I scowled.

"Doc?"

Frasier still stood near Danny, transfixed by the static-plagued monitors. "What?"

"How well do you know Julie Piper?"

She frowned, and looked over at me, distinctly confused by the question. "Um... I know her father works at Quantico and her mother at Berekley. She was assigned here, well, months ago. That's all." She grimaced. "Well, that and she leaves her Star Trek books lying all over the infirmary. Why?"

"Never mind," I told her, smiling again. See, I told myself smugly. An overactive imagination and a penchant for sci-fi. Nothing else. I'm not telepathic, I'm not connected in Sam to any way that could affect me so deeply that it could cause and repair injuries.

Myself was not convinced.

Two minutes until the last warhead detonated. With any luck at all, the debris would burn up in the atmosphere or bounce back out into space. Just five minutes until the Tollan arrived to help clean up the neighborhood.

One minute and fifty-nine seconds later, I relaxed. Crisis averted, I thought, making an announcement to the heavily-populated Gate room and listening to their jubilant cheers. Mya bounced out of her seat and gave both Davis and Siler a friendly kiss, grinning all the while. Daniel gave Janet a slightly more than friendly kiss, and I did a double take.

Heh.

I was so busy congratulating Hammond and Davis and then Samuels - crap, where had HE been hiding? - that I didn't notice Mya drop back into her seat. The klaxons were still flashing merrily away, so bright that I didn't see the woman's deep complexion go pale. But I did hear what she said.

"Oh, shit."

The breath left my lungs, all rational thoughts evaporated from my mind, and in a sudden panicked fog I could hardly make out Hammond's words. "What is it?"

Mya's words, careful and concise, drilled into my skull.

"Sir... we received twenty set of coordinates.

But there seem to have been twenty-ONE vessels."

* * * * *

Coming soon... The Ardor

The more feedback I get, the more I write... it's a vicious cycle... gimmegimmegimme!!

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