#4 in the Life's Little Problems Series
Color Outside the Lines
A Little!Danny fic by: Maj. Cliffhanger
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Part 12
"...It's little wonder they were having trouble with the decryption," Sam explained, glancing up from her notes concerning the files the NID had sent them. "Ancient is hard enough to read without tossing a cypher into the mix. Probably a little trick he picked up from Anubis. I've recruited two of Daniel's top translators in the linguistics department to help."
"Take whoever you need, Colonel." Landry nodded and glanced down at his own notes.
The sudden sound of the gate activating carried up to them from below. Across from Cam, Dixon offered a pensive frown and turned to the conference room window.
Landry glanced at his watch. "That'll be SG-3 heading out," he answered the unasked question. "The Tok'ra were able to give us a couple of old addresses for Ba'al to check out. 'Used to be secret bases; 'might still be useful to him." He offered a shrug by way of admitting it was a long shot without saying it aloud. Secret bases the Tok'ra were willing to admit knowing about usually weren't that secret.
Tap.... Tap. Tap .... .... tap.
Cam turned to see Gen. O'Neill frowning pensively as he concentrated on the rather erratic movement of a pen he was playing with. He held it at one end and let the other bounce on the hard wood surface as he apparently tried his best to ignore the others at the table.
Cam wasn't buying. He suspected the general could repeat most everything that had been said so far verbatim. Not that a lot had been said - at least nothing of real substance. Cam had already given his own report and summarized the report from the Emergency Response Team - which wasn't much: four attackers, one beamed up with the kids. A possible unknown car had been spotted earlier in the neighborhood: late model, dark colored sedan - not exactly helpful. They were expanding their search and questions to include the park around the corner as the most likely staging area for the attack.
The autopsy and forensics report from Lam had been a bust as well. The only thing she could tell them was that the Jaffa they had in the morgue was unable to take tratonin. Apparently there was a small percentage of them with a certain enzyme or something in their blood that rejected it. 'Made it kinda rough for those few to break away from their goa'uld masters.
She'd also said the baby goa'uld wasn't a Ba'al clone - though it did share several alleles in common with the genetic material that had been recovered from the science lab they'd found at Ba'al's compound outside Bethesda a few months back. Apparently Ba'al had himself a queen out there somewhere - though Teal'c was pretty sure she wasn't on Earth or they would have found spawning and incubation tanks at the same compound.
The thought of even the one dead symbiote in the morgue on Earth was enough to make Cam's skin crawl - and from the sound of things they probably had at least two more, very much alive, if the escaped attackers turned out to be untattooed Jaffa as well.
Tap. Tap. Tap...
He glanced at the man beside him and bit his tongue. Biting the general's head off probably wouldn't be a good career move!
"Okay, then," Landry sighed. "To summarize: we've got squat. That about cover it?"
Apparently Cam and Jack weren't the only ones feeling a little frustrated!
Across the table beside Dixon, Sam winced. "Until we find something in those files or our off-world teams manage to stumble on something--"
"--Any luck on finding that mole, sir?" Cam interrupted the fruitless statement. He was a long way from being ready to give up yet.
"Not yet," the man at the head of the table answered unhappily. "We're still questioning people and running complete financial checks on everyone who could have possibly had access to the infirmary - including their immediate families. People don't tend to turn traitor for free."
If they were smart enough to get in here in the first place, Cam knew, chances were they were smart enough not to leave a money trail. He sighed as a headache began to pound behind his eyes.
Gen. O'Neill's pen slammed onto the table. "So what do we do now?" he demanded bluntly. "Keep sitting on our collective asses and wait for Ba'al to start returning them to us a piece at at a time?"
Oh, the man was definitely not in a good mood - and that little video conference call with the Pentagon and IOA earlier probably hadn't helped any. Across from them, Dixon paled and fought not to explode in turn. Gen. O'Neill immediately regretted the words and cast the other man an apologetic glance.
Teal'c, as always, remained unflappable. "With your permission," he addressed Gen. Landry, "I will go to Dakara to follow up on my request to the Interim Council regarding any and all knowledge concerning Ba'al and his clones locations and movements. I will also ask concerning any rumors of untattooed Jaffa elsewhere which might lead us to his current base of operations."
"Sounds like a plan." Landry nodded.
Sam spoke next, even as she gathered up her own notes once more. "And I'll get back to those encryptions," she volunteered. "I'll let you know as soon as we find anything."
This was answered by a simple nod as Landry pushed back from the table and stood. Lam gathered her stuff and stood as well. Apparently, the meeting was over.
"And the rest of us, sir?" Cam asked in a tightly controlled voice as he too rose in deference to the general.
Landry offered him a sympathetic shake of his head. "Go home, Colonel," he ordered bluntly and glanced beyond him to Jack and then over to Dixon. "All of you. There's nothing any of you can do here."
"I'd like to take over the hunt for that mole, if you don't mind, Hank," Gen. O'Neill suggested as he picked up his pen to play with again. There was a definite plea mixed with an iron fist in a velvet glove kind of quality to the request. If he had to pull rank, he would.
"Fine," Hank agreed reluctantly. "As long as you keep from sending any of my people to the infirmary. Maj. Harper of SG-5 is the point man to see."
"Permission to join the effort, sir," Cam requested as well and gave the two men a frustrated look. "With all due respect, I'm going to go stir crazy if you all don't give me something to do here! My wrist won't keep me from asking people questions."
"What about me?" Dixon added his own request. "I'm perfectly capable of sitting in an interrogation room all day too."
Landry cast the wheelchair bound colonel a sympathetic look, but shook his head. "Your family needs you, Dave," he answered resolutely. "You need to be with them, not here questioning men who may or may not have had something to do with your son's abduction. One of them looks at you wrong and I suspect you'd come out of that chair and break their neck!"
Dave couldn't deny the very real possibility. "Right," he growled unhappily. "I can see myself explaining this to my wife now: 'Honey, the five year old neighbor kid who just moved in has a deranged older brother who's a mad scientist experimenting with highly classified energy weapons. He went bonkers, kidnapped his younger brother and decided to grab Jason too just to keep him company.'"
The others still at the table all exchanged surprised glances and then Cam shrugged. "Works for me!" he declared.
Dixon groaned and rolled his eyes.
"Your story sounds as good as anything else we're likely to come up with," Landry agreed. "Tell her whatever you need to and assure her that we are doing everything we can to find both boys."
"And what do I tell Andy about seeing Danny floating in mid-air?" he asked.
"Never happened," Cam suggested. "Electrical jolts like that can play havoc with your short term memory. He just thought he saw it."
Dave offered him a mild glare. "And if the neighbors saw it?"
"Mass hallucination!" Landry offered and shrugged. He shook his head and gave a weary sigh. "I might be convinced to let you read the wife in Dave, but I don't think the truth is going to help her - and I'm definitely not letting you read a twelve year old in!"
"And how are you going to explain everything away to Jason when we get him back?" Dave refused to say 'if.'
Landry offered that a tired groan of his own. "We'll deal with that when the time comes," he decided and pinned the man with a hard look. "Go home," he repeated firmly. "I'll call the minute we have anything new to tell you. I swear."
"Sir?" Cam asked, hoping and praying that the general would grant his own request.
"Yes, Colonel, you can join the interrogation team." Landry awarded the thought a slight chuckle. "If confronting you and Jack doesn't break our erstwhile mole, nothing will! Just remember--" He allowed his eyes to include Jack. "--neither of you can get information from a corpse!"
* * *
"What did he mean by 'when we're safe'?" Jason asked.
Having been left alone again and locked into the empty room with nothing else to do, Danny had retrieved his coat and backpack and moved it over by Jason's. They sat leaning back against the wall wondering what was going to happen next.
"He's probably waiting until the Odyssey leaves or something," Danny decided. "Either that, or he's taking us somewhere." He frowned as he tried to remember Ba'al's exact words about letting them go. The goa'uld would probably get a kick out of implying that he intended to return them home safely only to 'let them go' by selling them into slavery on some back water world the SGC had never heard about before.
"What's the Odyssey?" Jason asked.
Danny sighed. Jason hadn't believed him before when he'd tried to explain they were in outer space and he probably wouldn't believe him now. "It's an Earth space ship," he answered simply.
"Danny!" the other boy protested sharply with an angry whine.
"I am not kidding!" Danny protested in turn. "Earth has been sending people to other planets for about ten years now. My uncle, my ... guardian," he stumbled slightly over the designation, refusing to name Cam his 'step-father,' "and even your dad are all a part of it!"
To his surprise the other boy didn't immediately scoff at him. Jason frowned. He chewed his lip. He glanced at the engine room door again. "...He said something about being stuck in space," he remembered quietly.
Ba'al had accused Danny of wanting to strand them in space until the SGC could ride to the rescue. Danny was surprised Jason had picked up on that!
"Not a good idea," he answered the other boy, explaining his answer to Ba'al as well. "There are a lot of bad guys out ... there." He waved a hand to indicate everything beyond their little room. "Some of them are even worse than Ba'al."
"And is that why his eyes flash like that?" Jason asked softly. "'And his voice goes all weird? Cause he's an alien?"
Danny nodded but didn't bother to try to explain about symbiotes. It wasn't necessary.
"He doesn't look like an alien." Jason frowned as his intellect warred with everything he'd been taught and believed to be true.
Okay, maybe it was necessary.... Keeping it simple then, Danny went into Goa'uld 101 and on to explain the basic history and operation of the Stargate Program, without revealing his part in it. He figured that would be a little too hard for Jason to believe on top of everything else.
"So what does he want with us?" Jason asked. "He said he was trying to help you."
Danny sighed and rested his head back against the bulkhead. "He's a goa'uld," Danny explained simply. "You can't trust him."
"But why did he kidnap us?" Jason insisted. "Is he going to turn us into goa'uld's too?"
Danny shook his head. "He's got all kinds of slaves," he answered and frowned at the thought. Something seemed wrong with it but he wasn't sure what. "He doesn't need to kidnap a couple of kids for that."
"Then why did he kidnap us?" Jason repeated again.
"He kidnapped me because I know stuff and he wants something from Earth and thinks I can get it for him," Danny explained. "You just got caught in the transport beam."
"Oh." Jason sat and chewed his lip again as he fought to digest everything that Danny had said. He frowned in confusion. "...This is real, isn't it," he said at last. "You're not just making it up."
It wasn't really a question, but Danny answered anyway. "I wish I were," he admitted. Life had been so much easier back with his mom and dad in Egypt....