#4 in the Life's Little Problems Series
Color Outside the Lines
A Little!Danny fic by: Maj. Cliffhanger
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Part 15
"Danny?" Jason asked as the younger boy finally sat back from the fire he'd made and slowly started feeding the fledgling flames some bigger sticks. "What are we going to eat?" He was really getting hungry.
"If we have to, I can rig some snares tomorrow," he answered. "It looks like it's fall here, so we should be able to find some edible berries too, but we have to be careful because some of them might be poisonous."
"My dad said you should never ever eat anything wild unless you are absolutely positive what it is," Jason replied. "And even then, you can get sick."
Danny nodded. "You have to be really careful," he agreed and fed another stick to the fire. "As soon as this fire is strong enough to leave, we'll try dialing the SGC again. If they don't answer by morning, we'll try somewhere else."
"Like where?"
"The Alpha Site," he answered. "I don't think anyone there will recognize my code but we can try sending a note through. If they don't have an iris, they'll get it and come rescue us." He wished he remembered the address for the Omega Site. The Asgard might actually have a way to trace an incoming wormhole.
"And how will you write the note?" Jason wanted to know. "Do you have paper and a pencil?"
"There's blank pieces of paper in the flyleaf of my books and we can use charcoal from the fire," Danny pointed out. It would be messy, he knew, but they could do it.
"And if they do have an iris?"
"Then we'll try somewhere else. We'll get home sooner or later," Danny promised him again. "If worse comes to worst and Ba'al discovers we never made it back, he'll come check on us."
"You should have told him you didn't know if the Alpha Site had an iris or not," Jason accused, scowling at the fire. Fear and hunger were making him irritable but so far Danny had managed to avoid a fight - that really wouldn't help anything!
"Maybe, but I didn't think about it back then. All I wanted to do was get away from him," Danny admitted. As far as he was concerned, the less Ba'al knew about the Alpha Site - and the state of his own fractured memories - the better.
"And now we're stuck here," Jason grumbled and glanced away from the fire back to where the gate and DHD were supposed to be - but all he saw was.... "Danny!" he whispered harshly, lifting his hand to point.
Danny turned to see twin reflected points of light blinking at them from the darkness. A moment later and a squat little - something - inched it's way further into the light, it's whiskers and ears twitching like crazy.
"Don't move!" Danny whispered.
Jason didn't look like he was planning on it.
The creature - it looked something like a cross between a ferret and a rabbit - rose up on it's hind legs, sniffing the air curiously. Raised up like that, it was about two foot tall. It was actually kind of cute, Danny thought, but even cute could be dangerous. He quickly tossed a rock at it and it disappeared back into the forest.
"Whoa...." Jason breathed, still staring after where it had vanished. "What was that?"
Danny shrugged. "It was a good sign actually," he decided. "I'm pretty sure it was an herbivore. And if it was curious enough to check us out at this time of night that means there's probably not a lot of predators in the area."
"Predators are animals who hunt other animals, right?" Jason asked, just to be sure he remembered right.
Danny nodded. "And herbivores are plant eaters. You can tell by the teeth. Don't worry," he added reassuringly. "The fire will keep most of them away, but it also means I'll probably have pretty good luck catching something to eat in the morning if we have too."
"But we don't have a knife or anything," Jason argued. "Even if you catch something, how will we skin it or gut it? I'm not eating anything raw! Yuck!"
The boy was way too picky for a survival situation, Danny thought, not that eating alien-anything raw was smart - but Jason would really freak if Danny had to try to get him to eat bugs! "We can roast it whole if we have to," Danny answered. "Or we can find some sharp rocks or something." He shrugged again and glanced back out toward where the gate and DHD were. "But I don't plan on being here that long."
Jason followed his gaze into the darkness and edged a little closer to the fire. "It's too dark to dial the gate now."
Although Danny knew the light from the fire had momentarily destroyed his night vision, he still thought Jason might be right. It had gotten awfully dark here, awfully fast. He had to wonder if maybe they hadn't moved into the gas giant's shadow? He hoped not or they could be stuck without sunlight for a very long time. "Maybe the planet we're orbiting has another moon or something that will come up later," he suggested.
"Or we can try making a torch," Jason added, fighting to stay positive.
Danny didn't bother to correct him about the torch. He was just too tired to try and make one out of twisted grasses on a stick or something, and he wasn't going to burn any of their clothes to do it. He just sighed and fed another stick to the growing flames, praying Sam would figure out his message soon.
* * *
"Sir!"
Landry glanced up as a certain blond astrophysicist careened around his door jam into his office. She'd obviously been running.
"Sir!" she repeated, excited. "I figured it out!"
Whatever it was, it was clearly big and Landry was already half out of his chair waiting to hear it. "The encryptions?" he guessed. Had she discovered a clue as to where Ba'al had taken the boys in the files the NID had sent them?
"No! The knocking at the gate!" she exclaimed. "It's Danny! It has to be! He's using the same code the aliens of P3R-233 did when they sent their warning to the alternate universe eight years ago!"
"Whoa! Slow down, Colonel." Landry quickly tried to rein her in. He rounded his desk and hurried to her side. As impossible as the idea of two little boys being able to escape from Ba'al was, he knew she wouldn't have made such a statement without being pretty sure about it. "Let's try this again, in terms my tired old brain can understand."
She made a visible effort to calm down and started again. "About eight years ago, Daniel discovered a quantum mirror on P3R-233 and accidentally stepped through to an alternate universe."
Landry was nodding, remembering the file. "The incident that lead to SG-1 going AWOL and then destroying two goa'uld motherships before they could destroy Earth."
She nodded back, continuing quickly. "Daniel brought back a piece of paper from that alternate universe giving us the address from which the attack would originate. He told me the aliens of 233 had sent out a warning and assigned a series of numbers to their gate symbols. Sir, Danny's using the same code to give us the address to the world where he and Jason are being held! What good is an S.O.S. if we don't know where it's coming from?"
"I thought I told you to let someone else worry about that?" he protested, even as he tried to wrap his mind about what she was saying.
"I tried, sir," she apologized. "It wouldn't leave me alone. Sir--" she tried again, obviously believing what she was saying, "It has to be them!"
Landry still had a dozen questions and more than a few doubts - this seemed like an incredibly big logic jump to him - but time could be of the essence. Nor did they have a better theory to follow up on. SG-8 had just returned with bupkiss after checking out the address the Free Jaffa had provided. Ba'al, or more likely one of his clones, had left the planet weeks ago. "Get your team geared up and ready to go," he ordered quickly, putting his questions on hold. "We'll send a MALP through and, if it's clear, you can check it out."
"Yes, sir," she nodded smartly, calling the rest over her shoulder as she quickly headed back down the hall. "Thank you, sir!"
* * *
Jason had been too upset and scared to go to sleep, though he was doing his best to hide it. It was kind of embarrassing that a five year old was being braver than he was! Then again, that five year old sure seemed to know a lot more about what was going on then he did, so it wasn't like Jason didn't have a reason to be upset or anything!
Still, if Danny said they'd be okay, he was starting to think maybe they would. The younger boy had been able to answer every one of his what-if questions and he knew stuff about survival that Jason's father had tried to teach him when they went camping. Jason wasn't real good about remembering exactly what that stuff was, but he recognized it when Danny talked about it - how they needed to stay together and not go wondering off, and not to put green wood in the fire because it would make smoke; and about how they could use their shirts to collect dew for water in the morning and that he'd teach him how to blaze a trail if they had to go looking for a stream.
If they could rig up a pole and line with a hook of some kind, then Jason could fish and he wouldn't feel so stupid!
He was beginning to think again that Danny was an alien because none of the kids Jason had ever met before were nearly as smart as Danny was - but if he was an alien, he was a good one and Jason was glad they were friends.
A sudden grinding noise from off to his left had his heart racing and terrifying images of giant rock monsters coming out of the ground to eat them up dancing in his head. "Danny!" he shouted.
The other boy had curled up on the other side of the fire and gone to sleep a long time ago - hours and hours, Jason thought, though he wasn't sure. As it was, Jason didn't need to shout because the sound had woken Danny anyway.
"It's the Stargate!" he identified it right away and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
And then he was off, racing into the night beyond the fire light toward the terrifying sounds. Jason didn't remember the Stargate sounding that loud when Danny had dialed it before and where was the big explosion of water he'd seen? Still, he was more afraid of being left behind alone than he was of whatever was making the sound so he quickly took off after Danny, hoping the other boy was right and they were about to be rescued.
They were about half way there when Danny suddenly stopped and Jason almost plowed into him again. The younger boy grabbed his coat sleeve and pulled him down into the tall grasses. "We gotta wait and make sure it isn't the goa'uld or Ori first," he warned Jason quickly.
At this point, they were close enough for Jason to see that Danny had been right about it being the stargate. The weird V things around the edge of it were lighting up the same way they had when Danny dialed it earlier. "What if it is?" he asked, remembering what Danny had said about there being 'bad guys' worse than Ba'al.
"We run and hide," Danny answered. "Shhhh!"
There wasn't time to ask any more questions. The gate suddenly sprang to life like before, with water exploding outward and then being sucked back into the gate. It was even more spectacular in the dark than it had been during the day! Danny reached down and grabbed his hand and Jason knew he wouldn't let go if he decided they needed to take off. Jason swallowed and squatted next to Danny, bitting his lip as something started to appear.
* * *
Everyone in the control room stared intently up at the various monitors situated around them. The MALP had obviously exited the gate in the middle of planetary night, but there was something going on in the dark just beyond the reach of the light from the active wormhole. They could definitely see some kind of movement - and it looked like there was a small campfire burning in the distance about a hundred yards away, though it was hard to be sure.
"Zoom in and switch to night vision," Landry ordered as he considered the screens above the main control console. "And turn up the audio." He was sending no one through the gate if they were going to be greeted by a bunch of hostile natives.
The monitors suddenly lit up with the clear image of two little boys, one of them jumping up and down in obvious excitement while the other one looked a little confused. "--saved!" Danny's voice suddenly sounded through the speakers. "I knew Sam would figure it out! I knew it!"
The entire control room burst into a mixture of celebratory hoots and laughter. Even Teal'c, who'd managed to return from Dakara less than an hour ago, was smiling up at the figures on the screen above him. Landry grinned over at Lt. Col. Carter whom he was surprised to see was actually blushing a little. And then both Jack and Lt. Col. Mitchell were pounding her on the back.
Landry clapped his hand down on Walter's shoulder in front of him. "Find a phone, Sergeant," he quickly ordered, "and get Col. Dixon back here pronto."
Jack nodded at Sam and Teal'c. "Let's go get our boy back," he told them. The three of them were already geared up and ready to go. Sam and Teal'c immediately turned to join the general as he headed for the stairs down to the gateroom.
"Sir?" Mitchell turned to Landry with a touch of desperation as the other three disappeared.
"No," Landry answered before he could again voice his request. "We don't know how they wound up there or who else might be waiting."
Mitchell frowned up at the monitors. "But, sir--"
"--I am not allowing an injured man to go through the gate, Colonel, I don't care whether you think you're fit enough or not!" he answered firmly. Jeesh, the man was worse than a kid denied a favorite treat! "The decision's final!"
Mitchell sighed and visibly slumped. "Yes sir."
Landry shook his head and grinned up at the monitors where Danny was still busy putting on his celebratory dance for them. "Kill the afterburners, flyboy," he declared. "You're not the only one who has to wait to give him a welcome home hug."