#4 in the Life's Little Problems Series
Color Outside the Lines
A Little!Danny fic by: Maj. Cliffhanger
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Part 30
P9G-844. At first glance, a rather typical world. Forest, grass, distant mountains. Jack had learned to stop complaining about the trees years ago. Planets without trees tended to be volcanic or ice covered or blazing hot deserts. Not exactly vacation resorts. 'Course planets with nice green boring trees could have their own unwelcome surprises as well - but this was hardly their first time here. No surprises - except for the bodies. Scavengers had been at them. Jack wasn't the only one to wince. Neither the Sodan nor SG-12 had been back to see to them. 'Bad sign...
Damn but he felt naked without a weapon!
Reynolds' and Raimi's men knew their jobs and spread out with silent efficiency, scanning the area on full combat alert. The bodies were given no more than a glance to confirm they were dead before Reynolds signaled Penhall to take point and they were moving out for SG-12's last known location, The Eye of the Gods. The pace was brisk and Jack was suddenly very grateful not to be carrying a backpack.
He took the opportunity to observe everyone. Reynolds was a good man; 2IC at the SGC. He'd inherited the spot when Jack was first promoted and continued to fill it admirably according to Hank - though the colonel much preferred being in the field to having to juggle the daily logistics and paper work that went with his responsibilities on base.
Jack could sympathize.
He didn't know much about Raimi. Unlike Reynolds, he was fairly new. Jack was sure he'd read the guy's jacket at sometime but couldn't remember any details off the top of his head. He looked damn young to be a full bird.
Jack didn't know most of the others, except Balinski. The red head reminded him too damn much of a younger Daniel - that is, when Daniel had first started with the program, not the five year old Daniel. Jack wasn't sure what the hell Balinski was doing on the extraction team - save one never knew when an egghead like him might come in handy! Jack had learned that lesson quite well.
Balinski had been with the program over three years now, having started out on SG-13 before transferring to SG-22. It was just a better fit. 13 was a exploratory and first contact team; 22 more a back up and geological survey team. Apparently, he was quite good at archeology but not so hot at linguists, and Dixon hadn't had a lot of patience with the boy's enthusiasm over mineral samples.
Jack just hoped Balinski could shoot straight.
They made it to The Eye of the Gods without incident or spotting any more bodies. Jack awarded the twenty foot tall obelisk only a glance before eying the deceptively peaceful forest around them.
"Check it out first," Reynolds ordered, nodding at Balinski. Ah, so that was why he was here: to read the Ancient scribblings - not that reading it had helped Danny the first time they came across it. What had it said? Jack frowned up at the thing. Something about enlightenment, if he remembered right.
"Why can't it say something useful like 'this way to the Sodan' or 'Danger! Ambush ahead!' he quipped to no one but himself.
Balinski managed to pry one of the side panels open to reveal rather typical looking Ancient crystal circuitry. Jack stepped forward for a closer look only to have the scientist step to the side and directly into him.
"Whoa!" he exclaimed, jumping back. "Watch it, will ya?" That had felt weird, more than weird actually.
Balinski shook his head after a short moment. "If these things came with a manual, I might actually be able to tell you something..." he muttered.
Reynolds heard him and lifted a brow. "Any burnt or missing crystals?" he asked curtly.
Balinski again shook his head. "I don't see anything, but then I'm not Col. Carter."
"Who is?" Jack asked facetiously - only to award his own question a rather dubious frown. It didn't even make sense to him. He shrugged it off and watched Balinski slide the panel closed as Reynolds keyed his handset.
"SG-3 to SG-12, come in, over." None of them expected an answer from this side of the obelisk, but he still had to try. "Sierra Golf one-niner, this is Sierra Golf three-niner, over."
Nothing.
He dropped his hand and offered the other members of the two teams a grim look. "Look sharp. We're going in hot." In other words, they could be walking into a trap. Jack knew they had no way of knowing what had happened to the others after they activated The Eye of the Gods.
Jack watched helplessly as the men dropped into a variation of the tight ring defense the SGC had developed for transporting aboard motherships. With eight people, it was two tiered; the inner ring standing back to back and the outer ring kneeling. Balinski was the odd man out, standing by the obelisk. He gripped his weapon nervously and waited for Reynolds' order.
With only a quick glance to make sure his men were ready, Reynolds gave a nod and the eight member extraction team - plus one - disappeared in a bright flash of light.
* * *
The text was starting to get all technical on him again. Danny scowled down at his notebook before glancing back up at the glowing display. He could spend days translating this stuff and it would still be meaningless as far as he was concerned. "I wish you understood Ancient," he muttered.
"Neither of us have had time for you to teach me," Sam answered, giving his shoulders a comforting squeeze from where she knelt behind him before reaching beyond him to point at part of the display. She might not understand Ancient, but she did speak 'math' and had managed to pick up the Ancient numbering system somewhere along the way. The symbols they used to indicate various mathematical functions were another story, but the numerical manipulations that resulted helped her - 'course, she had to translate it all into base eight math first, but... "This looks like it could be an algorithm for energy conversion."
Daniel glanced at the area and shrugged. He had no idea what the math meant but Sam's analysis seemed to match what he was reading elsewhere. "It was definitely a weapon," he decided, then had to correct himself. "Not this." He quickly indicated the device they were working on. "This is just a database of his research. Apparently he was working on a device capable of destroying Ascended beings. Merlin was afraid the Others would try to stop him and created this device so he could hide his research by shifting it to another dimension."
"Capable of destroying Ascended beings?" she echoed in surprise. "No wonder he thought they might want to stop him!"
Danny offered a one shoulder shrug and went back to translating. Sam was right. The more he did it, the easier it was becoming.
She offered the display a pensive frown. "He would have had to retake human form to shift dimensions, wouldn't he?"
"Probably." Again Danny shrugged. Most certainly, he knew, but he was reticent even with Sam to reveal just how much of his time as an Ascended he could now remember if he tried. There were still holes in his memory - huge holes! - but he instinctively knew that time was dangerous and didn't even like thinking about it.
Sam shook her head in both confusion and awe. "How do you fight an Ascended being, let alone a whole group of them? You're sure it wasn't a - I don't know ... a transdimensional shield or something?"
"No." He shook his own head grimly. "It was a weapon. And it looks like he finished it, right here on Earth ... but he then had to move it." Danny deftly reached up to tap part of the display and change the page. It flickered and shifted.
Sam decided to take that momentary pause to glance over and check on Jason. All she saw was Dr. Lee who was still busy frowning over his own laptop. "Jason?" she called, glancing around in mounting alarm as she realized she couldn't see him. He'd been sitting on the ground by Bill playing with his shoes and fighting not to ... fighting not to die of boredom!
Oh shit! A kid and boredom was a dangerous mix. Even she knew that!
"Jason!" She yelled, jumping to her feet. Why couldn't he have just curled up and taken a nap or something?
Danny was staring up at her from the ground as he too realized his friend had disappeared. "He probably went to find his mother," he suggested.
Sam agreed even as seven glowing symbols among the new page of Ancient text caught her eye. "I don't need to read Ancient to know what that is."
Danny glanced back at the display. "A gate address to where Merlin hid the weapon...."
As incredibly important as they both knew that was, finding Jason was more important. "Okay, memorize that," Sam ordered, pointing to the address, "then I want you to turn your attention to finding a way to get us back to our own dimension. We can always come back and study the information again later. I'm going to go find Jason." And hope like crazy he hadn't managed to find a way to hurt himself despite being out of phase!
Danny bit his lip and watched her head for the door.
"Don't leave this room!" she called back even as she hurried away. "I don't want to have to go looking for you too."