The planet Hakter's name could be roughly translated 'Celebration of Life'. For the Standers, 'Place of Death' would have been more appropriate. Its white sandy beaches turned pink with their blood. According to plan virtually all the Aschen in the galaxy had been forced together into one huge group on Hakter. Unfortunately, the intel had far underestimated the numbers that would entail. Far superior to the Stander Army in men, weapons, technology, and resources, they almost brought the Standers' Rebellion to its knees at Hakter. But, the Standers struggled on to finish their objective: the enemy were driven on to the next battlefield.
The Aschen dominated fifty-one planets in the galaxy. The battle plan called for systematically driving them from planet to planet, ever pushing them closer to the galaxy's edge. It required coordinated and synchronized attacks on the first several worlds, followed almost immediately with similar attacks on the next to force the Aschen from one world to the next and on from there before they had time to regroup and put up an organized defense. Each strike was engineered to force the Aschen ever closer to the defense web placed at the galaxy's rim. Once the Aschen could be driven past it, the web would be activated. With a hope and a prayer, it would send a pulse all along the border and through the StarGate system to keep the Aschen from reentering the Milky Way by ship or by Gate. The Standers would be free to repair what they could and to mourn what was irretrievably lost. The plan was working, but the price was far greater than they had ever imagined.
When the last Aschen ship winked out of the darkening skies over Hakter, Carter was huddled over Colonel O'Neill, desperately trying to staunch the blood spurting from the wound in his chest. She called for someone to open the StarGate back to Danara and ordered the withdrawal. Dragging their wounded and dying with them, the Standers stumbled back through the Gate.
She arrived on the other side drenched in the colonel's blood, her hands still pressed tightly into his chest. Word must have already reached the support personnel on Danara because hands pulled her away and began to minister to the colonel almost before she'd drawn in the first lungful of air unsullied with the acrid smoke of the battlefield they'd left behind on the other side.
Officials called to her as she numbly stared after the medical personnel carrying him away. "It did not go well, then?" She looked at her hands still wet with his blood, listened to the moans of the injured still being brought through the Gate behind her, and shook her head. No, it had not gone well.
"It's over then?" Chancellor Golant said, closing his eyes and shaking his head in deep regret. "This is where it ends?"
"No," she answered, "we were successful in driving the Aschen on to Torantay. And we will go on to meet them there as planned."
The officials looked at her with doubt and hope warring in their faces. She met their gaze without flinching. A small amount of blood oozed down her forehead from somewhere above her hairline; a rag was tied around her left leg and the torn material under it was dark with dried blood; her hands, chest, and bulging stomach were sticky and streaked with the congealing blood of their battle commander. But her blue eyes burned with the resoluteness and determination of one who would Stand until the end.
"You will lead them on then?" the chancellor asked.
"Until the last Aschen is driven from this galaxy," she promised him vehemently.
Satisfied, the officials nodded their heads as one and turned to spread the word. Despite appearances, the war was not lost. The fight would go on and, in the end, they would still be Standing while their enemies fled before them or lay still on the battlefield.
Someone pressed a cup of cold water into her hand. She drank it though it was coffee she wanted. Someone else stitched the cut on her head and the gouge in her thigh as she gathered those still able to fight and revamped a battle plan developed for an army of 150,000 into a strike plan for barely a tenth of that number. And all the time a part of her was bleeding away in grief and horror. Despite her brave words, she was shaking inside with the fear this really was the end.
They'd expected heavy losses at Hakter but not this. The dead and wounded there would cost them dearly at Torantay. And from there, they'd have to have enough still Standing for the final battle on Eonal. Victory was only two Gates and a jump away if only, somehow, they could pull off these last two battles. With the colonel down, it fell to her to pull it off. She knew what had to be done. The master plan was as much hers as his. But, she didn't want to carry on. Not when he was bleeding out in a field hospital somewhere. She tried to convince herself he would survive like he had more than once before when it had looked impossible. But, she didn't believe it. Sick at heart, she prepared to lead what was left of his army into battle. She had to carry on...this was what he was dying for.
It was time to go. She wanted to stall, wanted to give the doctors time to send her word. But the longer she hesitated, the longer the Aschen had to set up their defenses. And, there could be no word she wanted to hear: she had literally touched his erratically, beating heart when she'd pressed her hands into his chest to slow the bleeding. She turned to give the order to move out, but someone pulled off her body armor which wouldn't close around her stomach and replaced it with one that must have been made for someone larger than Teal'c...someone who had fallen on Hakter and wouldn't be needing it on Torantay. She fastened it over the protesting kicks of her unborn baby and nodded her thanks. Securing her pack, she gave the order and stepped through the Gate.
Their objective was clear...fight through the Aschen to high ground; assemble and activate what O'Neill had affectionately called Carter's Anti-Aschen Devise, the CAAD; stay alive to head back to the Gate when it drove the Aschen to their ships; and then start the whole process over again on Eonal. It would have been simple enough if the CAAD could have been taken through already active. It would have driven the Aschen off before they had time to inflict much damage on the attackers. Unfortunately, the design was by necessity too difficult to carry into a battlefield in one piece and had to be on high ground in order for its pulse to reach into space and force the Aschen to jump their ships. She was certain she could have revised the design given enough time. But, they'd had no time...Earth had signed onto the Aschen bandwagon. The clock was already ticking.
The suns were high in the sky when they came through the Gate. The Aschen had been expecting them and the fighting was fierce from the very beginning. Fifty of the Standers arriving on the planet carried a pack containing the CAAD components in the hopes at least one would make it to high ground. The rest of their army was along for the ride, providing firepower and acting as shields. They did their job as well as they could under the circumstances. The majority fell within the first twenty yards of the Gate.
From what she'd seen on Hakter, Carter had estimated they'd have only twenty to twenty-five minutes to make high ground before there wouldn't be anyone left to set up and activate the equipment. At the eighteen-minute mark, she abandoned hopes of making the top of the hill. All around her and behind her, Standers were falling. Her injured leg was slowing down her advance, and the air was so full of the battle's smoke she couldn't catch enough breath to make the climb. Shielded by her fellow soldiers, she moved quickly. Even so, by the time the CAAD was operational, she was the only one left standing as far as she could see. She issued the order to move on to Eonal before she herself was thrown to the ground by an explosive blast. Seconds later, the sounds of battle faded away as the CAAD drove away the resistance.
The bloodbath of Torantay was over.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Twenty thousand died in the white sands of Hakter and ten thousand more during the trip to Danara or within the first two hours after arriving. As many as 70,000 or more would probably have followed them in the ensuing hours, days, and weeks, but for the arrival of the one Aschen-decimated population that had answered O'Neill's call to arms too late to make a difference on Hakter or Torantay.
In fact, the Asgard arrived to find they were almost too late to make any difference at all. Stunned by the wounded, grieved their late appearance had contributed to such a waste of life, and unaware a battle was already being fought elsewhere, they went to work to save as many as they could.
Among the more than 55,000 lives they managed to pull out of the fire that day was one Colonel Jonathon Charles O'Neill.
His first thought was of Carter and how he didn't want her to see him die. Slowly his mind cleared enough to recognize it was Thor beside him, not Carter, and he wasn't dying after all. And then the awful truth penetrated his mind: his army had moved on to Torantay without him, without the vast majority of their number, and with Carter.
Healed from their wounds physically, if not emotionally, the first waves of Hakter survivors rushed to Torantay through StarGate and by Asgard ships far too late. The last of the Aschen fleet jumped outward toward Eonal just as the Asgard arrived in the system. Having been briefed on the battle plan, the Asgard gave chase immediately.
O'Neill had led the group through the Gate. He stood at its base and gazed out at the battlefield. The air was full of the smell of the blood of his people and the sound of their cries. In time, he would find there actually had been those among Carter's men who had survived the carnage here and found the heart to follow her order to move on to Eonal. But from what he could see as he surveyed the area that day, it seemed the whole of the Standers of Torantay had fallen.
Everywhere he looked there were dead and wounded. The historical records would show that O'Neill who had recruited them, trained them, and sent them into battle wept when he saw their brave sacrifice. But like most such accounts, they weren't true.
The air was charged with Carter's anti-Aschen pulse--he knew the exact technical term for it and even had a rudimentary understanding of how it worked, but it suited him to let her think otherwise. It told him, regardless of the carnage all around him, the Standers had done what they'd set out to do. The Aschen were one step away from defeat. He could take no satisfaction from that as he looked on the fallen all around him, but neither did he weep.
"You, Solomon," he said to Lt. Solace from Reteli, "as soon as the Gate shuts down, dial Eonal. Wait until we've gone through, then dial up Danara, and get what help you can for these people..." Every minute the wounded lay untended, more of them were lost. Even as he spoke, the moans and cries around him grew fainter. He didn't want to know how many would die before his battalion passed through the Gate, but the priority must be the Aschen. Not the wounded and dying at his feet. Not Carter and her child out there among them somewhere. He didn't search for her. He couldn't, no more than he could take the time to cry for any of these who had lain down their lives at his order.
He busied himself offering water and useless words of comfort to the wounded near him while he waited for his troops to all arrive so they could move on to the next battlefield. But, the Battle of Eonal would go on without them. When the Gate finally shut down behind the last incoming Stander, and Solace turned to dial the DHD, he found it had taken its own deathblow.
O'Neill received the news quietly. It took energy to curse, and his had bled out on the white sands of Hakter and under the five suns of Torantay. He nodded, quietly issued somber orders to care for the wounded anyway they could, and went in search of Carter. He knew where he should have found her...on the high ground desperately fought for and bought with the blood of so many good men. But, the hilltops were clear of bodies...she, or someone, must have known they wouldn't make it and chosen to set it off sooner. "Good choice, Carter," he assured her in his mind. The Asgard would have cleared out any stragglers her machine hadn't chased away.
He found her not quite halfway up the tallest hill. He quietly called her name and ever so gently turned her onto her back. She was breathing, and he sent up a prayer of thanks for that. He was no medic, but a hurried, fearful look revealed no spurting blood or gaping guts. She was as pale as the sands of Hakter, cold and clammy with shock, and he could see the pulse in her neck beating wildly. Scrapes, cuts, and bruises covered practically every visible inch of her body. He pressed a shaking hand under her body armor and rubbed her stomach. Almost immediately, he felt Carter Jr.'s answering kick. He gave a small, reassuring pat in return and turned to assess the soldiers who had fallen getting Carter this far. They were all dead. He pulled off his flack jacket and outer shirt to wrap around her and gingerly picked her up to carry back to the others.
Help would come eventually he told himself. The Asgard made the victory sure. And then the cavalry would arrive...he just had to keep her alive until then. He hadn't wanted her on the frontlines. She had no business being there in her condition, but if the pulse would have failed...they couldn't afford that. She'd trained others to help produce the CAAD and their counterparts which made up the defense grid, but he hadn't been able to give her the time she would have needed to turn farmers into engineering technicians. If something went wrong, she had to be on hand.
He'd made the call because he hadn't seen another way out of it, and she hadn't objected even though the life she risked was not just her own. But, it was obvious now; he'd called it wrong. She wouldn't have Stood long enough to effect any repairs if they had been needed. She should have been safely back on Danara cursing him for making her stay behind.
This fight was his; she had wanted no part in it. She'd heard all of his concerns and hadn't considered any of them valid. She was half in love with the ambassador. With the Aschen on board, she'd have had the freedom from fighting Goa'uld to seek a life with Joe Whatshisname. He had meant for her to have that chance. He had.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
He hadn't intended to ask her to join him when he walked into his self-imposed exile in protest of the Aschen Alliance with Earth. Yet, at the last minute he'd turned away from the various concerned and angry protests still being raised by the Aschen delegation, the rest of SG1, General Hammond, and her ambassador. "Come with me," he'd said to her.
Joe had angrily and indignantly objected, "Just what are you asking her to do? Join your ridiculous fight against the Aschen? Or marry you?" Good Ol' Joe had instinctively known from the beginning O'Neill stood between him and Carter even if there'd never been, never could be, anything between the two of them.
O'Neill had answered without heat as though he wasn't at all concerned with how things were going to play out, "She knows what I'm asking." But, how could she when he didn't himself? He started up the ramp to the Gate, and he didn't look back to see if she was seriously considering joining him...he wasn't that strong. Even when he heard her boots on the ramp behind him, he'd kept on through the Gate.
This past year, they'd been brought face to face with just how much they meant to each other more than once. He'd stood on the wrong side of a forcefield and refused to leave her, but still, he hadn't had a clue he wouldn't be able to walk away from her. He'd known it would be hard. He hadn't known it would be the far-side of impossible. It would have been so much easier if he'd never been forced to admit his feelings for her in that room or felt her snuggle against him contently when he had admitted he remembered having feelings for her when they were Therra and Jonah and not Colonel and Major.
When, after an eternity of waiting, he saw her step through the event horizon on the other side, he'd been too weak with relief to do anything except sit there looking up at her. She had sat down beside him.
"Glad you could make it, Carter," he had said nonchalantly as though she'd just shown up at a barbeque.
"What exactly did I make, Sir?" she asked him hesitantly. They'd been having a very heated discussion while the Gate had been dialed. The same heated discussion they'd been having ever since he first voiced his reservations about the Aschen. It seemed highly unlikely he had expected her to leave everything to take up a fight with which she disagreed. "I really don't know why you asked me along."
He looked away and said, "Maybe because I'm not so sure myself."
"Maybe," she said.
"But, you came anyway."
"Yes. Yes, I did," she said, sounding like she was more than a bit surprised by that fact herself.
"Because you thought I might be right?"
"Not a chance, Sir."
"Then?"
"How come I have to know why I came when you don't have to know why you asked me?"
"Because."
"Because?"
"Because if you came thinking I was ordering you to, or you figured you owed it to me after all we've been through...well, then I'd feel pretty silly getting down on my knees and asking you to marry me! Besides you know how much my knees hurt when I kneel."
She could have shrugged it off as the joke it seemed...but he so often hid what he really meant behind flippancy that she had to wonder if there wasn't something behind his words. Usually, she took a measure of pride in being able to read what lay under his banter and even enjoyed the challenge. But not today.
She had just left home and country for him. Not because she believed in his cause, not because he'd ordered it, but just because he asked. For weeks, he'd been raining on their victory parade. Finding the Aschen should have caused the celebration to end all celebrations at the SGC. Instead, he'd turned it into a time of suspicion and accusations. She had found herself at odds with him: a situation which always left her feeling sick both physically and emotionally. She hadn't eaten or slept well since the whole mess had started. He'd made her feel every accusation he made against the Aschen was against her as well. She'd heard each angry, frustrated word as though he shouted it at her alone. When he'd chosen to just walk away, she'd felt that as a personal blow as well. A death blow. And now he wanted to hide behind dumb jokes. Not today. He had put her through the wringer, and she was too spent to play his game today.
"I'm not laughing, Sir."
"No," he flinched against the anger and weariness in her voice. "I'm not either, Carter. I'd get down on my knees right now if I wasn't so afraid of your answer."
"Sir?"
He should have spoken the words to her right then, but, if he was anything, he was a coward. Standing up, he said, "We need to get off this planet before they change their minds about letting us go. Come on." He reached his hand down to help her up. She hesitated only a moment before accepting it.
He ran from her need for an answer through the next hour or two; Gating from world to world until finally settling on a quiet planet where, without speaking, they made camp under the trees. She'd come with nothing but the clothes on her back, but he'd thrown in two blankets and his favorite sleeping bag. Food wasn't an immediate problem either. He had brought enough rations to see them through the first several days. The night was beautiful. Bright stars twinkled overhead. Birds sang in the distance. A soft, summer breeze rustled in the trees. But the night's peace didn't extend to the two of them.
"It's no good, Sir," she finally said after playing with her food for several minutes without being able to choke down a bite.
He stuck his fork in and took a big bite. "Tastes fine to me, Carter."
"It's not the food, Sir." He knew that. But, it was no good. He couldn't bring himself to tell her why he had asked her to come. Not openly and honestly. Speaking the truth would make him vulnerable. Vulnerability led to sitting on the side of a bed with a gun in his hands. He had a disbelieving world to save; vulnerability was something he could not afford.
He frowned at her. Why did she have to make everything so difficult anyway? She knew how he felt about her. Without actually saying the words, he couldn't come any closer to telling her than he already had hooked up to that stupid zantac machine.
She waited, hoping he'd say something but knowing he wouldn't. She was afraid to force it...afraid he'd walk away from her as he almost had already today. In the field, he was the bravest man she knew, but when it came to facing his feelings...he was afraid. As afraid as he'd been when she'd been trapped behind that forcefield. And she'd known good and well why long before he'd been forced to admit it in that room.
But, a lot had happened since then. The incident with the terra-forming ship. All his anger over the Aschen. All his biting words, shouted accusations, and snide remarks about Joe. But...he had asked her to come with him.
One second she'd been feeling as though she was dying and half-hating him for it, and the next, he'd said, "Come with me." She could lose him forever like she'd feared she had on Edora and again when he and Teal'c had been hurtling through space in an out-of-control death glider, or give up everything she had on Earth. Her home, her friends, her job, her brother, her only link to her father, everything and be with him. He'd taken weeks to come to the decision to leave the SGC and Earth behind. She had made the decision in less time than it took him to walk up the ramp and through the wormhole. She sighed, that pretty much said it all. She wasn't going to chance losing him again just because he wouldn't say the words she wanted to hear.
"You don't have to get down on your knees, Sir."
"I don't?" he said faintly. That was it then, he'd missed his chance. She'd continue on being his second-in-command, fighting beside him even when she disagreed with what he was fighting for, and that would be it. She'd given up everything to be there with him; if that's what she wanted, he owed it to her. Even if it killed him.
"No, you don't," she continued. "I certainly won't insist. Bit undignified for an Air Force Colonel, don't you think?" He blinked at her in confusion. "Where you're sitting would be fine, Sir," she prodded him.
He stared at her dumbly. Oh, great, she thought. He never meant anything more than to ask me along to help fight the Aschen, and I'm a fool. "Or, you could just tell me what your plans are now you're free to fight the Aschen."
A slow smile of understanding spread over his face. "Tomorrow," he said, "tomorrow we fight the Aschen. Tonight we solve this little problem we have about being exiles without a lawful government to issue marriage licenses and ordain ministers to say the words and make things nice and legal. I wouldn't want you to be able to just walk away when you find out I snore."
She grinned at him in relief, "I already know you snore, Sir. I'm not going to walk away."
He turned suddenly serious. He'd intended to walk away from her even this afternoon. And Sarah had walked away before he could come back from Abydos and tell her he'd found a reason to keep breathing. "I need to know you really mean that," he told her soberly.
"I mean it, Sir."
He took a step toward her and took her hand. "Well, then, Carter," he said. "This will have to do. I, Jonathan Charles O'Neill, take you as my wife. For as long as we both live, I promise to be a good husband to you and to never walk away. And," he paused and in all seriousness added, "I'll try to talk to you about things and stuff like that."
She didn't laugh though for the first time in days she felt like it. "Thank you, Sir. I, Samantha Elisabeth Carter, take you as my husband as long as we both live. I promise to stand by you no matter what," she said gravely, but then couldn't help adding with a smile, "and I promise to try not to talk too much."
A wide grin had split his face, and for a moment the past weeks' struggles melted off his face. "You can talk all you want, as long as you don't always expect me to listen."
"So, what else is new?"
"This," he had said as he leaned over and kissed her.
The next day they'd begun their fight against the Aschen. They'd spent weeks traveling from world to world, following his instincts and rumors of Aschen duplicity and devastation. Tracking down the truth behind their promises and lies. Gathering evidence to convince others to join them in the fight. One world led to another and long before they'd reached the last, she was as convinced of the evilness of the Aschen as he was.
That day she'd cut the implant out of her arm. He'd winced when he saw the wound she'd left and said, "Um, Carter, maybe I shouldn't have been the only one to promise to talk about stuff?"
"I'm sorry, Sir. I should have...I can't...not knowing the Aschen are..." she had floundered trying to explain. He'd drawn her to him and comforted her distress as much as he could.
"Shh. It's all right. I understand," he had said. Although her words had made little or no sense, he did. The Aschen systematically wooed their prey into an 'alliance' like a benevolent, wiser, older brother. They promised to freely share their advanced technology and all the benefits of it without asking anything in return. But, in truth, they fulfilled only the barest minimum of their promises while decimating the planet's population with manufactured plagues which they then 'cured' to further their image as saviors. And, in the process they sterilized a huge portion of the population without their knowledge or consent. Most of the planets continued to believe the Aschen were their allies and friends even as their own civilization slowly dwindled away and their people died out. If their true nature was discovered, it was too late; there were not enough left to take a stand against their oppressors. The Aschen were free to exploit the land to provide grain and other resources for their empire. "They won't, not Earth. We'll get them first," he had promised.
But, his words didn't change what she had done. She'd been pregnant by the time they'd begun their campaign to strike back at the Aschen and drive them from their galaxy. The pregnancy terrified him. He had hoped it wouldn't happen. Not when they were on the threshold of war. Not when he might need her expertise on the battlefield.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
He gently settled her down among the other wounded of Torantay and tried not to wonder if the pregnancy had helped put her there. Carter was undeniably the smartest person he had ever known. She usually acted only after a great deal of thought but removing the implant had been a visceral reaction to the Aschen's evil. She hadn't given it any more thought than she had the decision to follow him into exile. He had asked; she had come.
She'd never given him reason to think she regretted either decision, and God help him, he would ask her again if he had it to do over again. And the baby? His relief when he'd felt her respond to his touch earlier revealed more than he'd acknowledged to himself before. He gave her a loving, reassuring pat and turned back to his men.
An army 165,000 strong, his Standers were not an army of young men eager for the romance of war. Their numbers were almost exclusively made up of men in their 40's, 50's, and even into their 60's and women past any hope of childbearing. The young were too precious a commodity to throw into a battlefield, even he wouldn't ask that of them.
For the most part they were simple farmers and their wives who had never fired a gun before he'd trained them, never watched anyone die a violent death until he'd sent them into battle, and never knew they were heroes until they Stood against a common enemy. He called them 'the recruits', 'the troops', 'the army', and, privately to Carter, 'the kids'. They called themselves 'Standers'.
And Stand they had. Against an enemy superior in almost every way except guts, determination, and rightness. They'd fallen at Hakter and Stood themselves up again to continue the fight. He had loved them, admired them, taken pride in them, and then he had ordered them into harm's way. Every cry of the wounded was on his head; every death on his soul. Like Carter, they were here because he had asked them to be.
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~
The Aschen had entered the galaxy by ship. Their first stop had been Eonal just inside the galaxy's edge. Following their path, O'Neill came to it five weeks into his exile. There had still been hope for Earth and other of the Stander worlds, but for Eonal the rebellion he planned to start was already much too late. The Aschen had wiped out its population, depleted its resources, and left it a wasteland generations before he had stood with Carter on its empty ground and vowed to rid the galaxy of the Aschen. He had left there determined to do so, though, as yet, they had found no advantage against such a technologically advanced enemy. He had ordered Carter to find something, anything, they could use against the Aschen and began to raise and train an army.
The task of recruiting an army had appeared daunting initially, but the intel they'd gathered did the convincing for them. Worlds once dotted with thousands of cities reduced within three or four generations to farmland providing food for the great Aschen Empire. Worlds which had once teemed with millions and billions of folks now barely home to thousands. Their own homes, empty of the laughter of children, bore mute testimony to the truth.
Chakon Abrary, a Stander from Gresht who lost his wife and two brothers on Hakter, described the recruiting of the Standers' Army:
She was the most beautiful woman we had ever seen, and she would
stand there before us and with a voice as sweet as honey show us
the true nature of those we had considered our saviors. We could
hardly believe it. We had taken them for angels, but they were
demons. Women clutched their arms over their empty wombs and wept,
and we men, well, we cried, too. It was that devastating to know
we'd traded our future for a pack of lies.
Then he would stand and with a voice so determined, so resolute,
it left no room for doubt, tell us it wasn't too late to do
something to stop the Aschen...if not for our own world, then for
the worlds of others, others who still had life to pass on. People
who still had a future. He never passed on the hope we'd be able to
reverse the damage and regain our own futures...they kept that hope
close to themselves. They had thoughts even then, that somehow
there'd be a way to return to us what the Aschen had stolen, but
that's not how they got us to join them...not by what could have
proven to be nothing but more empty promises. No, every word they
spoke they backed up. Every word.
She'd convince us how powerful the Aschen were, and then he'd convince
us we could stand up to them and chase them from our worlds anyway.
And when at the end, he would say, 'They're not getting away with this.
We're going to run them out of this galaxy. Will you join us? Will you
stand with us?' Well, the whole crowd would stand to their feet and
roar, 'Yes, we will Stand with you!'
It was a glorious thing to hear. It was a glorious thing to be a
part of. On world after world the call was heard to Stand, and on
world after world we rose to answer that call. That's how we drove
the Aschen out, that's how we found the strength to rebuild our
worlds. And we'd do it all over again. Believe it. After Hakter,
after Torantay. All over again. If he asked, we'd do it again.
Abrary and 165,000 like him answered O'Neill's call to arms. Most of the Aschen worlds offered up many more volunteers than he would have dared asked; they were dying out and if his war failed they would have sacrificed what little time their people had left for nothing. But, he didn't refuse them. He was determined not to fail, and he needed them, perhaps worse than their individual worlds did.
He recruited anywhere he could gather a crowd on many of the Aschen worlds. They would simply Gate in, assemble an audience and give their spiel. The Aschen had so decimated the populations of these planets they had no fear of an uprising and no longer bothered to secure even the StarGates. They maintained a presence on these planets to oversee the grain shipments, but they did not interfere in the lives of the natives on a day-to-day basis. O'Neill found it easy to avoid them and therefore was able to recruit openly on such worlds. These were the worlds the Standers would strike first when the time came. They fell to the rebellion without a single weapon fired in opposition. The Aschen never knew what hit them.
The planets which had not yet been reduced to an easily controlled number of serfs did not prove so easy to contact or to attack. Their Gates were securely guarded and equipped with deadly built-in defenses. For recruiting and recon purposes, the Standers were forced to waylay Gatetravelers from these worlds and individually convince them of the danger their peoples faced. These travelers were completely under the Aschen spell and hard to convince, but here too the evidence was clear and damning. In most instances, the travelers came to the Standers' side in the end. They were then sent back to their homes to form an underground resistance and quietly send recruits and whatever supplies they could through the Gate to Danara where the army was being trained. Those who could not be convinced became the unfortunate victims of random Gate 'malfunctions'.
Because they could not afford to rouse Aschen suspicion, the numbers these more populated planets could offer to the resistance were severely restricted. Yet, large numbers of Standers gave their lives to hold off the Aschen and neutralize their defense systems until the CAAD's were operational. The cost, for even one of these planets, would have been too high even to contemplate if Carter hadn't found a way to turn their defense systems into amplifiers for her anti-Aschen pulse. There simply would have not been enough Standers in all the army to survive a push to high ground like what was necessary on the planets of Torantay and Hakter.
Like Eonal, Hakter and Torantay were no longer inhabited by either their native peoples or the Aschen, and their defense systems had long since fallen into disuse or been dismantled. The huge numbers of Aschen the Standers faced on them were those they'd driven there themselves. Cornered and massed together, the Aschen more than made up for the ease with which they'd let their attackers take the first worlds of the rebellion.
The one planet among those ensnared by the Aschen where O'Neill refused to recruit was also the one planet he did not directly attack. It, like so many others, fell to his rebellion without bloodshed.
Earth. Though it had the largest population of all the Aschen worlds, the planet that sparked the Standers' Rebellion lent only two soldiers to the war: O'Neill and Carter themselves. Earth hadn't heard his concerns when he had been one of their own, and he had no hope they'd hear him as an enemy of the state. Likewise, he felt a direct attack would be futile and costly to both his former and present forces. So he waged a different type of battle on his homefront.
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~
"What is it, Sergeant?" General Hammond asked as he rushed into the control room.
"Incoming wormhole, Sir."
Hammond frowned. It wouldn't be one of his teams as they'd all been recalled. It wasn't worth sending them out. The Aschen were providing much more intel and resources than they could ever hope to gather.
"Incoming radio transmission, Sir."
"Let's hear it."
"This is Samantha Carter to General Hammond." Hammond felt his jaw drop open. He grabbed the mike, "Major Carter, this is Hammond. It's good to hear your voice." To the sergeant he said, "Page Jackson and Teal'c."
"Thank you, Sir. I was hoping you'd feel that way. I know I don't have the right to ask, but I'd like a favor, Sir."
"What is it, Major?" he asked even though she'd lost the title the day she followed O'Neill through the StarGate. In his mind, she'd always be one of his people regardless of the discharge papers filed somewhere.
"Well, Sir, I'd like to pick up some of my things...family photos and such, if they're still around. It would mean a lot to me."
Hammond looked at the ceiling as the complications and possibilities ran through his mind. She'd been dishonorably discharged but not branded a traitor like O'Neill. There were no warrants for her arrest. With the StarGate all but shut down until the Aschen moved it to the new Travel Complex, he might just be able to get her in and out without too much fuss. He looked pointedly at the tech sergeant who met his look and moved his hand to the panel that opened the iris. Hammond held up a warning finger to him.
"Let me clear the room, Major," he said into the mike. It was a decision he made more from his desire to see her and know she was really all right than anything else. If it was the wrong decision, well, he was about to be retired out anyway.
He ordered the skeleton crew of SF's to clear the Gate Room. Only when they were gone did he give the ok to the sergeant.
"Very well, Major, you can come on through," he said. He took the steps two at a time and met the two remaining members of SG1 on their way up.
They entered the Gate Room just as she emerged through the wormhole. Three men who had been so much a part of her life she knew them better than her own father and brother. They threw all the usual cautions to the air and swept up the ramp to engulf her. In the midst of the welcome, she managed to press the straps of a regulation SGC pack into Daniel's hand.
It was heavy and full. He looked down at it. The label read 'Jackson', but there was no reason Jack would have taken one of his packs when he'd deserted them, and Sam hadn't even taken her own. He met her eyes. They begged him to trust her.
She'd left without so much as a wave goodby over nine months before. He still felt the pain of that. But he gave her a small nod. Was there ever a question he wouldn't do anything she asked?
"Major Carter?" Hammond waved a hand at her obviously pregnant belly.
She blushed and with a smile said, "We've been busy, Sir."
"Here I thought the old cuss would take up fishing," Hammond joked. "How is he?" Jack O'Neill, traitor or not, mattered a great deal to him, and he'd regretted his loss everyday he'd been gone.
"He's fine, Sir. He sent his regards," she said somewhat hesitantly no longer sure of the general's view of the colonel. Though the general had not supported O'Neill's decision to leave, he had not condemned him for it either. But, they had been gone for months, and a lot could have changed in that time.
"Glad to hear it. What's he up to?"
"Actually, Sir, he's doing a lot of Standing around, but it suits him."
Hammond didn't buy that. Just standing around would never suit O'Neill. "That doesn't sound like the Jack O'Neill we all know and love," he said, doing a little fishing of his own.
The fish weren't biting; she changed the subject, "How are things here?"
"Quiet. You couldn't have called at a better time. We're pretty much shut down while they get things set up to move the Gate to the new Travel Complex."
"We were afraid they might already have taken it," she admitted. "I'm glad I came when I did." She looked directly at Daniel, "It's really important to me."
The general caught some hint she was saying more than her words were speaking,
"Any reason in particular, Major? Besides the obvious, of course," he asked.
She shrugged, "You know how it is for the colonel and me, Sir."
"A long way from home, Major. I understand. Unfortunately, all the colonel's belongings were confiscated. But, Daniel and Teal'c were able to collect your personal belongings. They're here on base."
"That's great, Sir. Thank you. I know you're taking a risk letting me come. I won't stay and make it worse."
"You can't leave without seeing Janet," Daniel objected. "She's here closing the infirmary, and we really want a chance to get to talk at least a minute before you go."
"A few minutes won't hurt, Major," the general told her with a smile.
Janet hugged Sam like the long lost friend she was. "I've missed you. I can't believe you ran off without even saying goodby."
"I had a problem with that, too", Daniel admitted. Teal'c nodded his head in agreement.
"I'm sorry, guys. I never meant to leave like that...I hadn't even thought about going with him at all, but then when he asked--" she shrugged unable to express what she herself had never quite been able to understand.
"You just walked away," Daniel finished for her. She could hear the hurt behind his words. Biting her lip, she reached out a tentative hand to his shoulder.
"I really am sorry, Daniel."
"Enough to stay?"
"I can't...the colonel."
"Talk to him, Sam. Get him to come home...we'll work something out."
"You know him, once he's set his mind on something..."
"He's wrong, Sam," Daniel said with certainty.
"How many times have you known his instincts to be wrong when he really felt strongly about something?"
"That's why you went when he asked? Because you thought he might just be right and the whole world wrong?"
"I'm not sure why I went, Daniel."
"They're the good guys, Sam." Daniel could be just as tenacious as the colonel.
Teal'c joined in, "O'Neill is wrong to distrust them. They will free the Jaffa and all the human slaves."
She was glad she wouldn't be there to see Teal'c's optimistic hopes crushed when they drove the Aschen out. She couldn't tell them the truth. Not here where security cameras blinked from every corner.
"Ok, guys," Janet interrupted, "Can we not get into this? Sam's only going to be here a few minutes. You two shoo a minute and let me play doctor." She pulled the curtain shut after them.
"So, you and the colonel?" she asked and laughed when Sam blushed. "Well, it's about time. You two belong together."
"Really?"
"Really. So no regrets? You're happy?"
"No regrets. I'm happy."
"Lie back and let me see what you've got here." Sam reluctantly obeyed and willed herself to not flinch when Janet felt her stomach. There was no way she could explain what being pregnant on a Stander's world was like. The sight of her swollen stomach had moved many to tears. Some of them could not remember seeing a pregnant woman before. Everywhere she went people would reach out a tentative hand and touch her stomach like it was the Holy Grail. In many ways, the baby was as much theirs as hers. A symbol of what had been lost, of what their sacrifice would be all about. She had dreams of stepping through the Gate into battle with a Stander walking beside her with his hand on her belly.
She shook off the intense discomfort she felt from this violation of her personal space and answered Janet, "A girl according to the colonel."
"So he's all right with this?"
"He worries," Sam answered quietly. This had been one of those 'things' they should have talked about but hadn't. At first, he had seemed to ignore the pregnancy altogether. But since the baby had started moving he spent what time he could with his hand resting on her belly feeling its kicks and squirms. He called it CJ or Carter Jr. and swore it was a girl.
"Well, someone needs to," Janet said. "How far along are you?"
Sam shrugged, "The implant messed things up a bit--I don't really know."
"Aren't you being followed by someone?"
"I've seen a few doctors," Sam answered evasively.
"But, have they seen you?"
"Janet, I...well, medical care isn't quite the same where we are." That was true enough. The Aschen had provided the medical equipment available on any of the Stander worlds. Danara was the only place she'd been lately where she would let anyone near her with anything remotely resembling a medical instrument. So far, she'd managed to escape the notice of the docs on Danara, and she certainly wasn't volunteering to visit them. She'd been poked and prodded more than enough before and after every SGC mission. Not that she was going to say that to Janet.
"I'm sure. You've got no business running around without someone to look after you. You're not leaving here without some prenatals, and I want an ultrasound, too."
"Janet, I don't have time for that."
"Well, maybe not for the ultrasound, but this will only take a minute. Honestly, Sam, what are you planning on doing? Have the baby in the bushes?"
She hadn't thought that far ahead, there hadn't been time. When she was first pregnant, they had been traveling the galaxy drumming up support and men for the fight. When they stopped to rest, she'd had the pressing problem of coming up with a weapon to use against the Aschen. Then they'd moved onto Danara where weapon research and development had kept her going day and night. They had only now finished placing the defense web. The rebellion was days away from being fought; she'd think about the baby after. If she survived.
"Ouch, Janet! Do you have to poke me!" she said, drawing the doctor's attention away from her unanswered questions.
"All done. You can sit up," Janet answered. Sam swung herself awkwardly up to sit on the edge of the bed.
"You're measuring 27 and a half weeks. Everything looks good, but promise me you'll get a midwife or someone to keep tabs on you and be there when the baby is born."
Before Sam could answer, Daniel called, "You guys done yet? We've raided the mess for chocolate, Jell-O, and coffee."
"As well as Fruit Loops," Teal'c added. "We have also delivered your belongings to the Gate Room."
Sam jumped up, "Wow, guys! Thanks. You're the best!"
"No coffee for you, Sam. And watch the chocolate, too," Janet ordered.
"Yes, maam," Sam had grinned. She'd gated offworld minutes later.
It was evening before Daniel smuggled the bag she'd left behind off the base and opened it to find several machine components and a paper with a diagram and directions written in Sam's careful script. Scrawled across the bottom in O'Neill's handwriting were the words, "I know you won't like it, but trust me on this." Sam had added a 'please' beneath it.
Jack was right; Daniel didn't like it. But, in the end, at the time Sam had instructed he assembled and activated the CAAD from the mountaintop. Of all the hands that struck against the Aschen in the Stander's Rebellion, his was the only one which struck a blow not because Jack O'Neill asked it of him, but because Sam did.
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~
So many things could have gone wrong with her mission, O'Neill felt sick the whole time she was gone. And that made him feel even worse. He was about to embark on a war. He couldn't afford to let personal feelings cloud his judgment or distract him from what had to be done. He'd been right. Loving her had made him vulnerable.
When she finally appeared, he sat and looked up at her just as he had that day she'd walked away from everything for him. Standers rushed around to hear her report, and he managed to nod at all the right places and maintain a façade of normalcy, but he was running scared inside. It wouldn't do, but he didn't know what to do about it.
Gradually, the others moved off, and she was left standing looking down at him with a slightly confused look on her face.
"Sir?" she asked quietly.
"Everyone fine back home?"
"Oh, yes," she said bursting out with sudden enthusiasm and filling him in on her visit. "Daniel wanted me to talk you into coming back," she said.
"Not going to happen," he said.
"I know. I told him that," she said and they fell silent.
"What is it, Sir?"
He stared at her intently. "Did you think of staying? Daniel'll do what needs done...the Aschen will be outta there and..."
"I...no. No, Sir! Is that what you wanted me to do?"
Never he thought, but he didn't say it. "So they sent real coffee, huh?"
He had promised to talk to her about 'things', and she had never called him on it. Until now. "Sir."
"No, Carter. I didn't want you to stay...I've been sick the whole time you've been gone afraid something would go wrong and you wouldn't be coming back. Or you'd be glad to be home and--"
"I am home, Sir," she said with enough conviction in her voice his heart finally began to beat again.
He leaped up and pulled her to him. "This isn't good, Carter," he said. "I can't lead an army scared to death for you."
"What choice do we have? I'm not sitting home wringing my hands, Sir."
"You could bake cookies?" He joked, but she didn't laugh. "What?"
"I used to bake cookies."
Ouch. "Oh? For Jonas?" he guessed.
She shook her head. "For my dad."
"Oh...you'll see him again. It's not like the Tokra don't have the resources to find us if they wanted. He'll come," he said and then frowned down at her again. "Do I always do that?"
"Do what, Sir?"
"Make empty promises whenever you're upset?"
She shrugged against him, "I guess maybe so?"
"I'm sorry."
"It's ok. It isn't what you say that matters."
"Are you saying, Major, that you don't give proper attention to the words of a superior officer?"
"Oh, can it."
"OK," he agreed easily. The discussion had wandered far away from 'things' and that was fine by him. Talking about it wouldn't change anything. In a very short while, he would order her into battle. In a matter of days, he'd take her and his 'kids' into the line of fire, and some of them were bound to die under his command.
He'd trained the recruits on the planet Danara, a world untouched by the Aschen. A split-second's distance from both Earth and Eonal by StarGate, Danara was many light years away from the Aschen path. It was a planet with the resources and willingness to take up a battle not its own. Their equivalent of an SG team had heard one of the earliest recruitment speeches, taken the information and need home to their government, and returned to officially offer whatever support their people and world could give.
O'Neill had gratefully taken them up on it. He sent them home with the plans for building training grounds and facilities to house the recruits. It was on Danara he had turned farmers into soldiers while Carter devised and built the CAAD's and the defense grid itself largely with resources the Danarian's freely provided. It was on Danara they had hammered out their battle strategy, and it was through Danara's StarGate O'Neill had launched the Standers' Rebellion.
And when the time came, Danara had converted its training facilities into field hospitals and soup kitchens to receive the wounded and weary off the battlefields. It was those Danarian hospitals the Asgard had emptied before finishing the war at Eonal.
Backed by the Asgard, not one Stander died on Eonal's wastelands or in the space above them. If not for the Asgards' untimely, timely arrival, the desperate, but hopeless, attempt to finish that battle would surely have ended in tragedy. But with it, the Aschen fled the galaxy, jumping their ships beyond the rim.
The Asgard, who had taken up the fight so late in the game, followed them through. They were waging another war in their home galaxy where the Replicators threatened to finish what the Aschen had started when they had decimated their population and forced them to take up cloning to keep their race alive. They had already given O'Neill as much time as they dared spare from their own battle.
It was left to the Standers to finish what they had begun. And finish it they did. The defense web was activated twenty-eight hours after the war had begun. The Standers' Rebellion was over.
Burying the dead would take five times as long as fighting the war. Caring for those left wounded and maimed would drag on for months. Finding ways to return fertility to entire worlds would go on for years and be only partially successful. But the fighting was over.
It was a time for celebration, but the Standers' weren't celebrating. First they had to rescue the fallen on Torantay and bury Hakter's valiant dead. The first rescue teams should have reached Torantay the day the war ended. But, they didn't. Danara assumed the Asgard had done for the wounded on Torantay what they had for those on Danara and then taken them on to the fight at Eonal. The dead on Hakter had been lying for longer than those on Torantay. They were their first priority. Those on Eonal assumed Danara had cared for the wounded on Torantay and sent them to join the burying details on Hakter or recover in the hospitals on Danara. With Standers split between Danara, Eonal, and Hakter those who looked to see an individual on one planet could naturally assume they were on another. Even someone like Colonel O'Neill.
The mix-up was deadly. The Rescue of Torantay, when it finally came, was hours away from being no rescue at all. As it was, it came too late for 11,312 of Carter's 15,000.
To O'Neill's battalion the Long Night of Torantay was an endless nightmare of giving what little comfort they could to the wounded and lining up the dead for identification and burial. They'd used up what medical supplies they had very quickly. They'd given their water rations away sip by sip to those who needed it worse than they did. Their battle rations had gone the same way. They had stripped the clothing from their backs to warm others, and still the cries of the wounded continued on. Their feet had grown numb, their arms and backs cramped and felt as though they would never straighten again; yet there seemed to be no end of bodies to be gathered.
For the wounded the night was much worse. The temperature plummeted with the setting of the last sun, and the cold seeped into their shattered bodies and ate away what little reserves they had left. Those spared the torture of consciousness, slipped quietly into death without any awareness. But, most of the wounded lay through the dark hours with the specter of death beside them. Some cried in fear and pain, some begging for release others pleading for life. The men who ministered to them could do precious little for them.
Carter listened to the cries around her and bit her lip to keep from joining them. Her body painfully shook from the cold and, she supposed, shock. Whatever had hit her, had hit her good. She had to fight through pain for each ragged breath, her vision blurred in and out, and her body ached everywhere. Her soul, too. The people she had led into battle were dying all around her. And the baby within her was still. She tried to move her hand to her stomach and almost passed out from the pain. Through it, she thought she heard the colonel call her name, but she had left him to die at Danara.
"Carter," O'Neill called to her again. He was almost certain he'd seen her move when he had kneeled down beside her. Kneeling was no longer a problem; his knees were beyond complaining, his arms and back, too. He couldn't spare but a minute to check her now and again when his duty brought him to her section. This was the first time he had thought she might be conscious. He reached out to check CJ, and Carter gave a small, choked whimper at his touch.
"Hey, Carter, you in there? It's me...the colonel." He'd tried a time or two to call her Sam, but it hadn't felt right. She had never even bothered to make the attempt to switch to Jack. Only in times like this when he had to identify himself to her did it seem awkward.
"Colonel," she rasped out sadly. "You're dead."
"No. I'm not dead. The Asgard finally decided to answer the phone, Carter."
"The Asgard...phone?"
"Yeah, they showed up on Danara after you left and did their little magic trick on us...I'm alive."
She struggled to open her eyes and focus on him in the dark. He briefly turned his flashlight to light his face. "It's me."
She gave a small shake of her head in disbelief, and he winced to see the pain wash over her and hear her stifled gasp of pain. He reached out a hand to her bruised and swollen face.
"The DHD took a hit...we can't dial out, so we're waiting for some help. The fighting has to be over by now, one way or another. They'll come soon, and you'll be all right."
Tears formed in her eyes. "The baby...can't feel..."
"She's been moving every time I've checked her. She's just sleeping right now. She's fine," he promised. She drifted off and he went back to the dead.
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~
She stirred uncomfortably on the hard, cold ground. She had been fading in and out of consciousness for what felt like hours. But, it couldn't have been. The Battle on Eonal would have been long over and help would have come by now. Even if the war had been lost, surely those on Danara would have come for them. No. It was only her pain and fear that made the time seem to pass so slowly. She had managed to work her right hand out from under her to carefully rub her stomach, but the baby had not responded. Please, God, let the colonel know what he is talking about, she prayed. Don't let this be one of his empty promises, let the baby just be sleeping. She'd tried to check her watch, but her left clavicle had to be broken. She'd ended up passed out from the attempt to get her arm to work already. She'd have to wait and ask the colonel for the time when he came by again.
As if on cue, she heard his voice. But it was in the distance, harsh and shouting, "Get away from there! Get back! Get back!" Surprised and frightened cries answered his order, and then an explosion rocked the ground she lay on. It's reverberations echoed through her aching head, and she knew.
Moments before the thought of moving had been too much, but now she struggled to her feet. Waves of pain and nausea rocked her, but she had to find him. She stumbled past rows and rows of injured, nothing but her fear keeping her up and moving.
Standers came toward her, their faces grim. "Major Carter. Let us help you lie down."
"Is he dead?" she asked them desperately.
"We didn't get close enough to see. Others are there...we'll know soon."
They reached out their arms and steadied her. "Maam, please, let us help you. He won't thank us for letting you hurt yourself."
"Take me to him," she begged.
"Maam," they protested.
"Now," she ordered.
"Yes, Maam," they said together. Although O'Neill had never been a soldier to accept orders without question, he'd taught his men better. Supporting her between them, they headed back the way they'd come.
"What happened?" she asked.
"A couple of the fellows were moving the dead. Tripped a live one. The colonel...he was close," the soldier closed his eyes and stifled a sob. "He ordered them back, but he...he threw himself...guess he thought he could shield them or something. The blast hit him pretty hard, Maam. I'm sorry. We're all sorry." She nodded and struggled on.
As they got closer, she could see the group of men squatting around him. He was alive then, he must be or they wouldn't still be with him. One of the men stood and came to her. She recognized him. He'd taken a crash course on field medicine to serve as one of their medics. He was older than most of the Standers, but in his uniform it wasn't usually noticeable. Now, though, he walked stooped over like the old man he was. She knew he would have nothing good to tell her.
"It's...bad, Major. The blast shredded his left leg from the thigh down; did the same to the right, midcalf on. I think...we might save him, just. But I'd need your order to do that, Maam. I can't...not the colonel."
She wanted to shout at him, that, of course, he could and he would do whatever it took to save him, but she knew exactly what he meant.
"I don't want to lose him," she told him weakly.
"I know," he said kindly, "but..." But, would he want to live? Would he hate them for making him?
She looked behind the medic to one of the other soldiers, "You're from Hazeldor, aren't you?" The soldier nodded. Hazeldor. Where only two children had been born in 3 decades. A barren world which would stand as empty and lifeless as Eonal within another 30 years. They hadn't asked Hazeldor for recruits, just whatever supplies and rations it could spare. They hadn't expected a dying world to sacrifice what little it had. Yet percentage-wise, Hazeldor had sent more Standers into battle than any other planet.
"You stood with us, even though..."she began but couldn't continue.
The soldier from a dying world knew what she was being asked. "Yes, Maam. We're cut off, but we're not cut down. We're still Standing. And so will he. Don't worry, Maam. He'll Stand taller on two stubs than most men will ever stand on two legs."
Carter knew the colonel better than anyone, and she believed her. She locked eyes with the medic and said, "You have my order. Do it."
Wispy clouds moved in to cover the moon, and a cold drizzle began to fall as the medic nodded to Samin Grate. Samin Grate had been a butcher from Gresht before the war. Using the colonel's own knife and working by flashlight and what little moonlight there still was, Samin called up his old skills and did what was required of him. O'Neill shifted in and out of consciousness as he worked on him, but Samin could do nothing for him but finish the job. When he was done, he stepped aside to allow the medic to take his place. He carefully wiped the blood from his hands and the colonel's knife, sheathed it, and handed it to Major Carter. Then he stumbled away to be sick.
The medic had turned 68 the day O'Neill recruited him. When he'd stepped forward, he hadn't been sure there was much he could do, and neither had the colonel. He'd tried to persuade him to stay home and help with the war effort in other ways, but he wouldn't have it. O'Neill had relented, changed his name from Qroisthanghei to George, and sent him to the Danarian doctors to train as a medic.
O'Neill had given him a second chance and now he returned the favor. He closed the colonel's surgical wounds with thread Standers carefully unstitched from their clothing. He washed the blood from the colonel's stumps with rain water caught and boiled in their helmets and wrapped them in strips of cloth torn from his own shirt. And then, as there was nothing else he could do for the colonel, he turned back to his work among the other wounded.
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~
O'Neill figured the worse must be over for the time being. They'd left him alone with Carter. She didn't look too good, but then he probably didn't either. He wanted to talk to her, but his voice was harsh from screaming. His body wouldn't quit shaking and his hand trembled when he carefully squeezed hers. He didn't blame her when she winced. It was probably black and blue, if not fractured, from the hold he'd had on it when that butcher had went after his legs. She gingerly shifted beside him.
"What can I do for you, Sir?" she asked.
"Walk away, Carter," he whispered harshly.
"Sir?"
"You don't want stuck with an old cripple...and you deserve better. Go," he motioned with his head and fought down the wave of nausea that brought on.
She was crying. She hated crying. But, the tears wouldn't stop and moving hurt too much to bother wiping them away. "I won't. You know that."
"I'll make it an order, if I have to!" he said angrily. Couldn't she see he was hurting here? Couldn't she make things easy for once in her life?
She hadn't expected him to react any differently, but shouldn't he be passed out or something to give her time to find the strength to deal with this? "I'm not walking away, Sir. Ever. I love you!" He frowned at her and opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't let him, "Look, I'm tired, I hurt, I think the baby's dead, and I've had to see you almost die twice today already. I can't deal with any more of this right now. Just pass out, will you and let me rest!"
Except for when the mess hall ran out of blue Jell-O, he'd hardly ever heard her complain. He'd pushed her too hard. He was instantly sorry. He wanted to spare her pain, not cause it. "If that's how you feel about it," he said, "but this discussion is not over."
She sighed. "You're never going to be easy to love are you?" she asked.
"Suppose not. While, you, on the other hand, are extraordinarily easy to love," he said with biting sarcasm. He should have swallowed it, and he knew it.
The clouds had lifted and in the light of the emerging dawn he could clearly see her battered face close up at his words.
She was silent so long, he thought she'd slipped into unconsciousness before she finally said, "If you can't say it because you mean it...please, don't say it at all."
"Carter, I...I do mean it." She didn't bother to open her eyes. He sighed in frustration. It sent him into a muscle spasm, and by the time he'd somehow survived it, she'd let it go. He gave her an apologetic smile. She really was easy to love, he thought right before she made him change his mind again.
"Look around you, Sir. These people need to know you're not going to just roll over and give up...I need to know you aren't."
"I thought we were going to let that go for a while, Carter," he scowled at her. He really should have listened to her and passed out. He'd taken a few deathblows before and they hadn't left him feeling nearly as badly as he did now. Maybe because he'd been dead through the worst of them while this time he was wretchedly alive. He could see in her face and hear in her voice she wasn't in much better shape then he was. She hadn't even been able to turn away from him to hide her tears. Neither of them was in any shape to be having this argument. But she answered his scowl with a glare anyway. He hated that. It put him in the position of having to do the talking. Of course, that is what he'd promised her when he'd married her. But, still...
"I'm not going to be any good for you, Carter. You'd be better off if I did give it up. What can I possibly do to help you or them? It's my fault any of you are out here in the first place. From where I'm lying, it looks like I wasn't much good to any of you to start with!"
She opened her mouth to say something but never got a chance. An injured Stander lying beyond her beat her to it, "That's not true, Colonel, Sir. You saved us from a death far slower than we've faced tonight. You made our lives count."
From their other side a Stander who'd taken a gut shot the day before and had held on to her tenacious hold on life longer than anyone could have imagined possible, raised her feeble voice enough for them to hear her say, "And our deaths." A violent spasm of pain hushed her for a minute, but she fought on to say, "There'll be children born because of what we did here."
All around them other voices echoed their agreement. It was as though the whole field of Standers, wounded and not, were surrounding him insisting he had been something he had not. "You did that," he said simply.
"No, Sir. We didn't," said Samin Grate stepping forward into his sight. "Most of us didn't even understanding we were dying. Those of us who did, well, we just rolled over and gave it up like the Major was saying. We would have died that way, and any hope for our worlds with us, if not for you."
Another Stander stepped forward, "You told us we needed to go on even with our futures wiped out before our eyes. You told us even if the Aschen had destroyed who we were and stolen our future, we could still Stand and fight. We believed you. Are you saying it was all just more lies?"
All around them everyone had grown still giving him the uncomfortable feeling the entire world, galaxy even, waited for his answer. "No. Of course not. Look what you've done...the Aschen are out of here, you can go home and rebuild your lives...maybe, maybe even find a way to reverse what the Aschen did. You don't need me for that. I'm just a soldier."
"You're more than a soldier to us, Colonel." It was George, the medic, who answered him. "Don't you know that? Don't you know why so many of these people have found the strength to keep going this night? You, Sir. You walk down a row of the wounded and the crying stops and people who were just about to give it all up decide they can hold out a little longer. You give up and what are you telling them? We're only asking you to do what you asked us."
"We want to keep Standing, Colonel. Like you taught us. But we need you. Stand with us, Sir?" Samin Grate begged him tears streaming down his face.
O'Neill frowned at them. He was a soldier; he knew how to command on the battlefield. But, he had never intended to lead them once the war was over. He had had in mind settling on the quiet little planet where he'd married Carter. Him and her, the baby, and a nice fishing spot. And two legs.
"You guys know better than anyone, I don't have a leg to Stand on," he said and didn't wince when he saw his shot hit home. Served them right for ganging up on him and throwing his own words back at him. "Just how do you expect me to Stand like this!" They were quiet before his attack.
He chanced a look at Carter. "You promised you wouldn't walk away," she accused him.
"Well, I think it's safe to say, I was right about that one," he snapped.
"We're not laughing, Sir. These people are telling you they love you and they need you. You can't just turn that aside with jokes."
"No. I can't," he said ashamed. Quiet hung in the night demanding his answer. "All right," he told George. "Help me up a bit."
"Not sure that's a wise thing, Colonel," the old man told him even as he moved to obey and motioned for Samin to give them a hand. It was a very foolish thing to do, but he clung to his consciousness and after a few minutes seemed to have weathered the worst of it. He looked from Stander to Stander. "It's been my honor to Stand with you, to see your bravery and endurance, to be your leader," he told them. "If it's what you want, I'll Stand with you again. We'll overcome the damage the Aschen have done, and we'll find a way to have a future despite what we've lost."
The men of his battalion cheered, and those that were able among the wounded of Torantay struggled to Stand beside them. Carter didn't have the strength to join them on her feet and cheering took more air than her injured chest could pull in. But she lay beside him as Colonel Jack O'Neil, commander of the Stander Army, wept.
The cheers of his Standers almost obscured the sound of the StarGate clanging into action beyond them; the cavalry was coming. The whoosh of the StarGate startled the baby into stirring within her, and Carter cried with relief. The Long Night of Torantay ended as the first sun pushed its way over the horizon and covered them all with its warmth and light.
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The Standing Series
by OffworlderStory Bemerkung:
Just finally getting around to putting these into one entry. Nothing new has been added, and though I've edited them here and there through the years, I don't believe I've changed anything besides typos and maybe an unclear phrase here and there.Site Navigation
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