The Wings Of Icarus

by Tilt

URL: http://stargateslash.com/ast/tilt/icarus.php
Summary: Jack's birthday, and what he wants is to go back to what he loves -- fast airplanes! But there are forces in play with other plans for Colonel Jack 'Mad Mouse' O'Neill -- and those plans involve Daniel

"God this place is the back of beyond."

"That's the idea, Danny. Plane falls out of the sky, you don't want anyone underneath it when it hits."

Daniel Jackson grimaced and closed his eyes against the images Jack's flippant phrase conjured in his too vivid imagination. "That is not reassuring, Jack."

"It happens, Danny. I won't deny it. But these days it happens a lot less than it used to." Jack glanced over and gave his lover's hand a brief reassuring squeeze before Daniel reluctantly pulled his hand away. The glaring desert sunlight reflected off the flat vistas of the Mojave, the watery mirage reflections wavering off the complex of large buildings in the distance. Closer at hand was the guard shack at the chain-link gate that controlled access to the Dryden Flight Research Center. As Jack pulled the truck up to the gate two airmen came out of the tiny white building.

Jack and Daniel handed the two guards their identification and waited while the guards disappeared back into the guard shack to check them. Jack looking with a hungry expression past the chain-link gate toward the buildings beyond. As the guards were returning something moved in the distance to one side of the buildings. Daniel barely had a split-second to wonder why Jack was suddenly grinning like a madman before an almighty scream of primal sound shattered the air and a blur of something blue and white shot toward them. The blur turned on its tail seemingly right above their heads and the truck rocked in the blast of sound as the blur shot upward several hundred feet in the blink of an eye.

"YEAH!" Jack yelled triumphantly. Daniel's ears were ringing, but Jack was grinning like a maniac.

"Welcome back, Colonel," one of the guards shouted over the noise as he handed back their IDs. The other guard nodded as Jack put the truck into gear and started past the opening gate.

"Now that," Jack said as the roar faded behind them, "Is the only way to fly."

==========

Daniel couldn't help smiling at Jack's excitement as they slid out of the truck. Jack seemed to shed twenty years once they were inside the gates of the flight research center, the dark eyes sparking with a mischief and joy that Daniel was far more accustomed to seeing when they were alone together behind closed doors.

He'd always known that Jack was a pilot. But until Jack had named his choice of birthday destination he hadn't truly thought about what being a pilot meant in the life of Colonel Jack O'Neill. The facts he'd always known -- Jack, Air Force, the Air Force Academy, and more than twenty-five years in the service -- hadn't correlated with the Jack O'Neill whose past was locked behind various degrees of "Top Secret". What he hadn't realized was that the Black Ops part of Jack's life was only part of his Air Force career. Until he'd laughingly asked Jack across their pillow one night what else Jack wanted for his birthday --besides Daniel himself stripped naked with whipped cream and a cherry on top-- he hadn't known that Jack had been a NASA test pilot. Or that, when time and circumstances allowed, Jack returned to Dryden to log his required flight hours in his pick of the experimental prototypes.

More than a year had passed since Jack had been able to come to Dryden. After seeing the wistful, yearning look in his lover's eyes as Jack showed him photos of his "favorites", Daniel knew it would be worth it.

Jack had given him back his life, had made Daniel want to live again. If whipping himself around the sky was what made Jack happy, then that is what they would do. SG-1 was currently on stand-down while Sam analyzed a series of odd devices that SG-3 had brought back from their last trip offworld. Teal'c was taking a long-delayed trip home to Chulak, and Daniel's linguistics staff were all much better at the Native American languages that SG-6 had found on a recent extended archaeological mission. The only thing Daniel worried about was whether or not he'd be able to pry Jack out of the place when they had to leave for home.

==========

Daniel had heard the word "cavernous" used to describe aircraft hangars, but he had to admit now that the word was truly the only one that fit. Dryden was several hundred acres of runway and huge buildings, most of them either storage or construction hangars. Aircraft of all sizes and types seemed to be more common than cars; everywhere he looked there were wings and rotors, and the technicians and engineers tending them. After checking in at the front desk and getting their security badges, they got back in the truck to head for the largest of the hangars.

It was already midafternoon and they'd driven the last four hours nearly non-stop. It was too late for Jack to fly that day and they were both too tired from the drive, so Jack could catch up with his friends and take Daniel on an impromptu tour of Dryden's current stable of aircraft. As they parked the truck again and slid out a figure in a blue Air Force flight suit came out of the hangar and stood waiting for them.

"Greg," Jack said, reaching to shake the other pilot's hand with an answering grin.

"Jack," Gregory Ogden replied. "Thought you might have given up on us this time. Where've you been?"

Jack shrugged. "Oh, you know, here, there, everywhere."

Unseen behind him, Daniel rolled his eyes and tried to squash down his grin. And failed as Jack turned and pulled him forward.

"This is Doctor Daniel Jackson," Jack said. "He works with me at NORAD, thought I'd bring him down and scare the hell out of him. Daniel, this is Colonel Gregory Ogden, old friend of mine from way back when I was trying to punch holes in the sky."

"Pleased to meet you, and it's Major General now, Jack," Greg said as he shook Daniel's hand. "They've got me set up in line to take over the flight program here when General Forbes retires. Whenever that will be. We thought about hitching him to Big Bertha and dragging him out but I'm not sure it would work. So you're working at Space Command too, Dr. Jackson?"

"Yes sir, civilian consultant," Daniel confirmed. Greg nodded and didn't ask further. The cover story he and Jack used -- and which was supported by both NORAD and Space Command -- was that Jack was working for the Space Guard Asteroid and Satellite Tracking Program, and Daniel was a cryptography expert deciphering encoded transmissions from Chinese and Russian satellites. Stargate Command was all but a Black Ops project, and in some cases classified to levels above what Jack had been cleared to when he was a Black Ops operative. So they had to lie even among ordinary high-security personnel.

"Come see our new babies, Jack," Greg said, waving them both inside the hangar.

"Fine with me, but you'd better still have my babies in there, Greg."

"Oh sure, we know better," Greg laughed as they followed him inside.

==========

"Geez Louise," Jack said appreciatively as they stopped by a tiny unmanned aircraft. "Why can't you make this one full-size?"

"We will, eventually," Greg said as he too gazed at the sleek white form. "This one's a test drone."

Daniel smiled to himself at the pure avaricious hunger in Jack's eyes as he circled the tiny UAV. The dagger form of the fuselage had two sets of wings, one short pair just behind what would have been the cockpit and the longer main wings just behind them. It had no vertical stabilizers and Daniel couldn't see how it would be controlled in flight. "I'm not a pilot, Jack, but how does this thing turn left and right? Where are the rudders?"

"Vectored thrust, Dr. Jackson," Greg answered. He waved Daniel to join him at the little aircraft's aft section. "See these flaps here?" He reached up to indicate the three titanium plates connected to actuators that surrounded the UAV's single jet engine, moving them slightly. "These move to deflect the thrust from the engine. We've got the flaps on the wings, of course, but the majority of attitude control comes from these. These things can turn literally on a dime. Our boys here at Dryden came up with this system more than twenty years ago, starting with the X-31."

"One of Jack's favorites," Daniel said with a grin over at Jack.

"Yes," Greg agreed. "Actually I think they designed it for him. It's the only plane we've ever built that can keep up with him."

Jack snorted a laugh. "So what else have you got, Greg?"

Daniel rolled his eyes again. Jack still hadn't shifted his gaze from the little X-36. Daniel caught his elbow and turned him around as Greg led them away. Jack turned to walk at Daniel's tug on his sleeve, but kept glancing back at the little UAV as they walked.

Kid in a candy shop, Daniel thought with a purely mental laugh.

Next they came to a partially disassembled F-16, and beyond that a deadly-looking black fighter plane with only its designation --YF-23 -- painted in white on its vertical stabilizers. Beside it, an identical plane in primer gray. These planes had only a single pair of wings blending into the fuselage, giving the plane a diamond-shaped appearance from just behind the cockpit to the notched tail.

"No, Jack, we're waiting on gyroscopes for both of them," Greg said as Jack opened his mouth. Daniel laughed. "These were still on the drawing board the last time you were here. But when they do finally fly, we're projecting at least Mach 2.5."

Daniel could almost hear the mental whimper. But then Jack tore his eyes away and looked around, then grinned and walked eagerly to the next plane in line, reaching out to run a hand along the shapely snout of a small, oddly-designed jet painted in NASA white with wide dark blue stripes and thin red stripes running from nose to tail. Daniel recognized the little plane from Jack's photos -- the X-29. Smaller than its fighter cousins, the little jet was a test design with wings that bent forward from the tail instead of back, with two smaller winglets slightly behind the cockpit. The single jet engine was of conventional design, the intakes on either side of the cockpit. Jack had explained that the X-29 was not only unique in its forward-wing design but in construction, utilizing composite materials in the wings, advanced flight computers and fly-by-wire control systems. It was one of the several planes Jack had flown over the years, even though he'd left Dryden when it was still in design development.

"Where's the other one?" Jack asked as he looked around for the X-29's twin.

"Engineering. Just the usual overhaul," Greg answered. "We'll have this one ready for you on Friday."

Jack smiled, gave the X-29's nose section another pat and walked on.

"Now here is why Jack keeps coming back like a bad penny," Greg said to Daniel as they went to the next in line.

Daniel almost laughed aloud wondering if Jack was going to throw himself at the X-31, hug it and call it Mommy. Similar in size to the X-29, the X-31 was a more conventional design with backward-swept wings and a single jet engine. It had the vectored-thrust engine assembly at the tail, and was painted mostly white with NASA dark blue around the cockpit, nose, belly and the leading edges of the wings. There were two X-31s sitting side by side, the second with a thin red stripe among its colors and a slightly longer cockpit to accomodate a second seat behind the pilot.

"I'd better not take you up in this," Jack said to Daniel as he began walking around the X-31s, inspecting them. "You'd barf, Danny."

"Could that just be the way you fly, Jack?"

"Could be," Jack said, flashing a grin back at Daniel from underneath the X-31's wing.

"They're not the fastest things in the sky," Greg said, putting a hand on the X-31's wingtip. "But in every test we've done, simulation or live, they've out-maneuvered every aircraft we've put up against them. Nothing can out-weasel these things, if you have a pilot crazy enough to push them to the limit."

"Like him?" Daniel asked, nodding at Jack.

"We've found one or two who are comparably psychotic," Greg said dryly.

Jack just grinned, and they continued on down the flight line.

"Somehow I never thought of you as the 'top gun' type," Daniel said quietly two hours later as they walked back down the flight line alone. General Ogden had been called to deal with a problem in one of the other hangars across the complex.

"I'm not," Jack said, grinning slightly. "Test pilot is a whole 'other ball game."

They had come to an F/A-18 Hornet that was being retrofitted with some new engine modifications, and Jack ducked under the wing running one hand along the gray metal.

Daniel watched with an indulgent little smile, wondering at this entirely new side of his lover. Jack ducked back out from under the F/A-18's nose and fell back in beside him as they continued on. Several more familiar forms: F-16s and F-14 Tomcats, the stars of the American fighter-interceptor pantheon; so recognizable to anyone who had ever watched the Gulf War on CNN. Jack had flown them all, at one time or another. But his real love seemed to be the experimental aircraft that would never see production, the singular prototypes that pushed the envelope in design, fabrication, and control. "Why, Jack?"

"Why what?"

"Why flying?" Daniel gestured up and around them at the aircraft, the technicians, the engineers. "Why test pilot and not top gun?"

Jack grinned as they came to another aircraft; another oddly-designed UAV with broad rotors similar to a helicopter. "Come on. Time for show'n'tell."

The hallways were blessedly cool after the heat of the Mojave, long hallways of doors not unlike many of the colleges Daniel had attended in his younger days, the offices and laboratories of Dryden's engineering and administration. The floors carpeted in a muted gray, and the walls wallpapered in a warm light tan. Between the doorways, framed photographs, paintings and drawings told the history of the Dryden Flight Research Center from its earliest days as NACA Muroc Test Flight Center to the present. Jack's eyes skimmed over the pictures as they walked.

"Here," he said finally, stopping Daniel at one particular photograph. Several crewmen surrounded a black aircraft, the canopy open to reveal a young man in a silvery pressure suit inside, smiling as they prepared his craft for flight. It was a black and white photo, the clothing of the men indicating times long gone by, certainly before Daniel had been born. Jack put up a finger to indicate the young pilot. "I was almost a year old when this was taken. When I was nine, I watched this man walk on the Moon."

"Neil Armstrong," Daniel said, reading the caption on the photo.

"Uh-huh." Jack looked at Daniel with a small smile, looked back at the photo, and then nodded down the hallway. Daniel turned and they walked on. "That same summer I was outside playing one day at my granddad's house -- don't even remember what day it was, just that it was way too hot for Minnesota -- sitting up in a tree house some of my buddies built in this big oak tree. All the sudden this gigantic noise roars by right overhead, rattled the tree house, the tree, hell, it frightened the birds right out of the branches. This greenish streak goes racing right overhead, then another and another. The noise alone could have split concrete blocks at twenty feet: three F-4 Phantoms. But I didn't know -- or care -- about that at the time. All I saw was power and grace." Jack looked around and stopped at another picture, a full color drawing showing several aircraft in flight among the clouds. He pointed to one of the planes, a long lean jet fighter. "This one here. The Marines fly them now, and a lot of Air National Guard units. But back then, during Vietnam, they were front line."

They turned to walk on, and after a moment Jack continued.

"You've got to understand, Danny, that was such a different time; a world of miracles. We had men walking on another planet. We had cures for horrible diseases that had killed millions. But we also had a war going on that no one understood and a lot of people hated, and things going on socially and culturally that freaked the living shit out of anyone over thirty. It was a damned schizophrenic time for this country. But for a little kid sitting in a tree in Minnesota, the best and brightest thing in the universe at that moment was this thunder like the voice of God." Jack stopped at another photo of the X-1 with Chuck Yeager leaning against the bullet-shaped fuselage, smiling. "From that moment on the only thing I wanted was to fly."

They walked on for another moment, and then Jack grinned suddenly. "You'd have been impressed with all the research I did. I knew exactly what I wanted when I walked into the recruitment office the day after I turned eighteen. But before I could spit it out they had me convinced to try for the Academy. Seems they thought I was too smart to be just a pilot."

Daniel ducked his head to hide his grin.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up, Space Monkey," Jack mock-growled.

Daniel did laugh, then turned shining happy eyes to Jack. "So you've been a closet genius all along?"

"Unlike some snooty know-it-alls I could name," Jack said, smirking back at him.

"You'll have to apologize to Sam."

"You're not too big to spank, Dr. Jackson."

"Promises promises, Colonel O'Neill."

They walked on and Jack stopped again by another photograph, looked at it for a long moment, then shook his head with a snort of self-conscious laughter. Daniel joined him and looked at the photo curiously.

The long, lean black form of an SR-71 spy plane; its tail decorated with a yellow NASA stripe, under the clear flawless blue of the Mojave sky. In front of it, a very young Jack O'Neill stood clad in a blue pressure suit, the oxygen tubes leading to the breathing unit on the tarmac at his feet, his flight helmet under one arm. And wearing the happiest, craziest grin Daniel had ever seen.

"That was the day I made it to 128,000 feet," Jack said wistfully. "The sky was black. First time I ever saw the Earth as a planet. First time I ever felt it in my gut, not just as a radar picture on the news."

Daniel couldn't hold back his smile at the young daredevil in the picture; buzz-cut dark brown hair, darkly tan from the Mojave sun, and even in the bulky pressure suit obviously muscular and fit, and incandescently happy; not shadowed by the grief and cares that had settled about him in subsequent years.

Glancing around to make sure they were unobserved, Daniel reached over and caught Jack's hand. Their fingers intertwined. Without a word, they started back to the truck.

There were times when the constant awareness of possible observation actually helped. They'd been in this kind of situation many times before -- on visits to other military installations, on trips to Washington trying to convince the Powers That Be to give them more funding. Somehow Daniel always seemed to forget how completely normal they could be outside of the SGC.

But the nanosecond they were unobserved --

Daniel yelped in surprise as Jack whirled around and tackled him back against the hotel room door. Daniel staggered the requisite step backwards, his back hitting the door and the door closing firmly and providing the solid footing as he got one hundred eighty-five pounds of desperate Jack O'Neill trying to climb inside his clothes with him; desert-warmed, slightly sweaty, muscular, touch-hungry Jack O'Neill. Daniel held on tight as the first kiss in hours went on, moaned softly as they broke it to breathe, and then continued with less desperation into little nibbles and kisses; reassurance, apology, reaffirmation, happiness, contentment, all the way down to the place in each soul where the other lived.

Daniel leaned his head back against the door so Jack could keep nibbling on his neck. Wiry, tough muscle under the white t-shirt, the shifting landscape of Jack's back beneath his hands. He felt Jack pull away slightly, felt careful fingers taking his glasses from his face, the quiet click as the glasses were put safely on some out-of-the-way surface, and then sudden vertigo as Jack tugged on his arm. One surprised yelp later, he was bouncing on the bed giggling uncontrollably as Jack landed on top of him in a tickle attack.

"My kind of day --" Jack mumbled between kisses as Daniel squirmed and wriggled with helpless laughter at the merciless fingers worming into his ribs. "Fast airplanes -- and --" Another fierce nibble of Daniel's neck, " -- morally corrupt grave robbers..."

"Jaa-ack! I am not a grave robber! I'm a --" Daniel broke off with another shriek of laughter.

"Cultural historian, yadda yadda yadda," Jack said. "But morally corrupt?"

"I'm not the one who gets my philosophy from -- damn it Jack, I will get you for this! -- Homer Simpson --"

Jack laughed and caught Daniel's wrists, held them away as Daniel tried to struggle against him and leaned forward for a long and very satisfying kiss, effectively silencing the protests.

A knock on the door broke the sudden silence.

Jack lifted his head and they both froze.

The knock sounded again.

Jack rolled off of Daniel and was on his feet instantly, hurrying to tuck his t-shirt back into the waistband of his jeans as Daniel had managed to pull it loose. He glanced back at Daniel who was also getting to his feet. Daniel's worried expression told him it was as unexpected to him as to Jack.

No help for it. Jack moved forward toward the door.

Two airmen stood at the door, both in the standard Air Force blue fatigues with NASA patches on the left arm and both with Captain's bars on their collars.

"Colonel O'Neill?" asked the one on the right.

"Yeah, what's the problem, Captain?"

Both of the Captains saluted, and Jack nodded and returned a sketchy salute of his own. "If you'd come with us, sir?"

Jack didn't move for a moment, wondering what the hell was going on here, trying to think one step ahead in the game without being able to see the board. NID? If he refused to go would they press the point? They didn't look armed, but Jack had been taught at least fifty ways to conceal weapons of all sorts.

If he refused --

Daniel came closer silently, his eyes wide as he shoved his glasses on. He looked worried --

He looked scared.

"Uh, yeah, let me get my jacket," Jack said to the two Captains, then closed the door.

"What's going on?" Daniel whispered as Jack moved past him to retrieve his leather jacket where he'd left it with their luggage earlier in the day. The sun was beginning to set and it could get uncomfortably cold after dark in the desert.

"I don't know," Jack whispered back as he shrugged into the jacket. He reached up and cupped Daniel's cheek with one hand, let himself drown in the endless blue of his eyes for a moment, then kissed him lightly. "If I'm not back in one piece by midnight, call Hammond." He leaned closer to whisper in Daniel's ear. "I love you. I always will."

And he was gone.

==========

Four hours later, Daniel chewed at his lip as he glanced once more at the clock. 10:15 PM. His fingers wandered across the strings of his 12-string guitar, shifting from an old blues tune he'd never caught the name of, then modulating into bits and pieces of Steeleye Span.

When he caught himself playing Elton John's "Rocket Man" for the third time that night he stopped himself and put the guitar down.

Jack had said wait til midnight. But he was going crazy now.

He'd ordered a pizza, eaten, watched a special on the History Channel on biblical archaeology (muttering all the while about the obvious attempts to force the data to fit the theory), taken a shower, and tried to lose himself in his music. And all the while praying to hear the door open...

Almost four and a half hours. Jack could be anywhere in the continental US by now, given the availability of state-of-the-art aircraft at Edwards AFB. His mind tried to calculate the distance for an aircraft at Mach 2 for four hours...

Or he could be lying dead in a shallow grave in the desert by now...

Or locked in some tiny room, drugged to the gills, being tortured by some NID flunky or ...

The door lock clicked, and Daniel jumped to his feet as Jack slipped quietly through the door.

"Jack!"

"Danny." Jack caught him as Daniel rushed to him, and they held each other desperately for a long, long moment. Jack pulled away and took Daniel's face in his hands, kissed him gently, then gave in and buried himself in Daniel's arms again. The soft, ragged way Jack had said his name nearly broke Daniel's heart.

"Here," Daniel whispered, gently steering Jack to sit on the edge of the bed, then knelt and began untying his bootlaces.

Jack looked down at him, sitting slumped as Daniel tugged his boots off and then gratefully allowing him to help him out of his leather jacket. Once the familiar comfortable weight of it was gone he fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes.

"Are you hungry? I got a pizza..."

"Yeah," Jack said softly. After a moment he sat up as Daniel got the pizza box. "Got anything to drink?"

Daniel opened one of the bottles of water he'd gotten from a Coke machine down the hall as Jack started in on the pizza. It wasn't stone cold but close to it, but Jack didn't seem to care. He ate it without complaint, seeming to need it as fuel rather than as something to be tasted. As he ate Daniel sat down behind him and began rubbing the too-tense shoulders.

"You have a million years to quit doing that," Jack said after a moment as Daniel's strong fingers kneaded away at the knots in his neck.

Daniel leaned forward and kissed the back of his neck. "What will you do if I don't ever quit?" he whispered.

Jack smiled. It was a small, weary smile. But Daniel was immensely relieved to see it. "Guess I'll die happy," Jack answered.

"You should write a new regulation when we get back to the Mountain," Daniel said. " 'All SGC personnel are required to make every effort to die happy.' "

"I don't think there's enough genius archaeologists to go around, Danny. And I got dibs on you." Jack sighed and leaned back against Daniel's shoulder, closing his eyes and turning his head to nuzzle Daniel's jaw line. Daniel put his arms around him and held on. "But I'd sell my soul to science if it meant we'd all die as happy as you make me."

Daniel made a little happy sound and squeezed tighter for a moment. "Are we in trouble?"

Jack shook his head a little against his shoulder. "No. Not trouble. Not us. Not this time. Someone might be, but not us."

"I love it when you're cryptic, Colonel O'Neill."

"I love it when you're sarcastic, Dr. Jackson," Jack replied, grinning again. He put the pizza box aside and upended the bottle to get the last few ounces of water. "We've got an early day tomorrow, and you've got a date with the back seat of a T-38. And as your pilot I need to be rested ..."

Daniel smiled against his neck, and reached down to tug his t-shirt up. "Rested, calm, alert." The t-shirt inched up and Daniel's hands went beneath it, curving around Jack's ribs and beginning to rub circles on his chest. "Free of all tensions..."

"Think you can manage that, Dr. Jackson?"

Daniel nuzzled up into the soft, silvered hair. "Oh yeah. I can manage that."

==========

A small sound nearby woke him. Daniel groggily wiggled, seeking warmth. And opened his eyes, alert in an instant, when his hand wasn't stopped by the solid reality of Jack's chest.

Instantly a gentle hand was on his head, caressing his hair. "It's all right, Daniel. I'm here."

The small sound again, something sliding and locking. Daniel rolled over a little to see better, then reached up and ran a hand down Jack's back and arm.

Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed, the peripheral light of streetlamps outside the hotel falling through the narrow window. The light glinted off the matte metal and plastic of Jack's old flight helmet, gleamed coldly off the polarized sunshield as he slid the dark plastic down and back up into its housing in the helmet's shell. Unit designations, scratched and faded, decorated the sides, and the nickname "Mad Mouse" in small white letters across the top. Jack's face was shadowed, but the light fell on his hands, gently smoothing down the ragged edges of one of the unit decals, fiddling with the slide button of the sunshield.

"What happened?" Daniel asked softly.

Six hours earlier...

By the time the silent hour and a half drive was over, Jack was wishing he'd thought to check a zat out of the armory back home. Or convinced Teal'c that he needed to see more of Tau'ri aeronautical technology.

The two captains, nameless so far as he could determine, hadn't answered his questions. They were obviously just fetch-it boys, ordered to keep their mouths shut. They had NASA patches on their uniforms, the only designation he could see besides the captain's bars. Both nondescript guys, though one had an obvious Brooklyn accent.

Things were definitely adding up in points for the NID. The NASA patches didn't mean they were NASA, or even based at Dryden or Edwards.

They were at Edwards, at one of the old gates rarely used as it was so out of the way on a side road more dirt than pavement, far from the buildings just beginning to light up in the distance, way on the western side of the base. An F-14 roared by overhead, not going flat out full afterburner but just flying toward the distant mountains, the angular red light of sunset on the white fuselage as it banked and gained altitude, pulling up with the stunning grace that never got old even when you'd seen it a million times.

Wish I was you, buddy, Jack thought in the F-14's wake. Anywhere but here, so long as it's less than arm's length from Danny.

Danny. God. Whatever happened, he had to protect Daniel. At least long enough that Daniel would follow his orders (for once) and get the hell out of Dodge.

The car was pulling up at the edge of Edwards land. Two small, heavily built buildings beside a rusted gantry empty of the missiles it had once supported, or else it was an old engine-testing platform. The buildings were blast bunkers, used for observation, partially buried under mounds of sand for protection, with only the heavy metal door and a pair of narrow horizontal slit windows facing the gantry. There was light in one of the buildings, shining through the windows in diffuse golden bars on the sand. The wind picked up as they got out of the car, and a dust devil whirled up at Jack's feet as the captains led Jack inside.

There was one bare light bulb in the ceiling fixture, falling on the scarred metal table that was the tiny building's only furniture. Benches built into the walls, cracked and peeling yellowed paint. The man sitting opposite the door wore blue Air Force fatigues but no indication of rank or affiliation or name. He was a big man, taller than Jack himself, and had some extensive scarring on the right side of his face. Burns, Jack thought. There were guys on some of the other SG teams who had been caught in a fire on one of their missions, and their scars looked similar.

The hand the man held out as Jack approached was covered in scar tissue as well.

"Colonel O'Neill," the man said in an unexpectedly tenor voice. "My name is Thomas Barnard."

Jack shook his hand. "Mind telling me what's going on here? I'm off duty."

Barnard sat down on the bench against the wall across the table and nodded to the two captains who had remained outside the bunker's door. One of them pushed the door closed and the locking bar slid into place from outside. Jack sank down carefully onto the other wall bench.

Barnard reached down to get a briefcase at his side and took two folders from it. He opened one and began to spread out schematics, pictures, and several documents with security clearance codes that made Jack blink in astonishment.

Not as high as the SGC, but pretty damned close.

"Colonel, you may have heard stories about the Nazis experimenting with gravity-control devices during World War Two," Barnard began.

"Indiana Jones stuff," Jack said, shrugging. And resolutely ignored the memory of Daniel sitting entranced in front of the TV, mouth hanging open in wonder as Indy figured out the map room in Tanis...

"For the Nazis, yes. But their research was based on something quite extraordinary." Barnard took one of the pictures out of the pile and turned it so Jack could see it clearly.

A rocky, sandy hillside, obviously in some sort of desert environment though with only a black and white photo he couldn't see colors to be sure. But what was most astonishing was the scorched wreckage jammed into sand that was fused into jagged shards around it. It had been round, or possibly oval, but the impact had driven the structure into a crumpled mass of twisted matte silver. Even wrecked there was a sort of mist of light around the craft, blurring the edges, like the glare off a field of snow.

"Hitler's Afrika Corps found this craft in Ethiopia in 1938," Barnard said. "Unmanned, though from reconstruction they determined there would have been space inside for something, though they found no indications of what it might have been. Reconstruction estimates put it as oval in shape, approximately twenty-one feet long, and weighing in at less than five hundred pounds." Barnard sat back against the wall and gave Jack an unreadable look. "Intelligence at the time indicated the wreckage was to be shipped to Hitler's sciences division in Berlin. But it never made it. Somewhere between Cairo and Berlin, it disappeared." He tugged another picture out of the pile, of a rusted, barnacle-covered metal shipping container sitting on the deck of a ship, two men in thick winter gear working to secure it to the deck. "Sixty-one years later, it was found by an environmental sciences expedition off the coast of Antarctica. The science expedition's ship went down in a storm, but fortunately they had called McMurdo for help."

Jack didn't react, but he'd bet Daniel's weight in gold that that science ship didn't go down in a storm. Not with something like this strapped to the deck. If it were real, If the bodies ever were found there'd be neat bullet holes in the back of each skull.

"This craft -- or what's left of it -- is now in American hands. Despite sixty-one years underwater the parts show no signs of wear, corrosion or oxidation. The hull fragments radiate visible light, and all of the parts emit phenomenally strong magnetic fields. They'll propel a two-penny nail completely through a two-inch thick wooden board. Iron-bearing rocks explode if they're within twenty feet of the propulsion mechanism. Our engineers and physicists believe that if these mechanisms could be reverse-engineered and an appropriate power source could be found, viable gravity-warping technology could be achieved. All current aeronautical and space technologies would become obsolete. The true Space Age would begin."

Jack almost snorted a laugh at the man. "Ya think?" Jack shook his head. "Barnard, I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. This -- propaganda you're handing me is the public spin version. What you want is weapons. I'm guessing here, but you don't fly prototype aircraft without being aware that every single pair of wings that gets you off the ground is meant to be some sort of weapon."

Barnard gave him another one of those inscrutable looks. "Quite right, Colonel O'Neill. You may or may not be aware that the American government has been in sporadic contact with several different extraterrestrial races. I am not privy to these contacts myself, but Project Raven was formed to combat the threat posed by some of these ... beings. Our mandate is to reverse-engineer the technology in this extraterrestrial craft and adapt it for our uses, either as weaponry or spacecraft. But we are not limited to simply the military role. You are currently assigned to the Space Guard project. You know first-hand the threats posed by near-Earth asteroids, comet fragments, orbital debris. Along with our strictly military function, our secondary mandate is to develop craft that can be deployed to deal with such natural threats, as well as for scientific purposes. Eventually, this technology might be released to the general public."

"More propaganda," Jack said flatly. "It'll never see the light of day."

Barnard shrugged. "Perhaps not. But the extraterrestrial threat is real, Colonel O'Neill. We are not alone in this universe. And we are vulnerable."

Jack recognized the attempt to appeal to his military side, the side that stopped thinking whenever anyone made noises about "a threat to the American way of life." But there was another Jack O'Neill who sat back inside the smart-ass colonel, the side of him that wrapped itself around Daniel's body at night and cursed the laws he was sworn to defend that wouldn't even let him hold his lover's hand in the light of day. And besides, he knew those threats. Intimately. He stole their weapons; he stopped their plans, and killed them when he had the chance.

But if he played the game now, maybe he could find out where all this was going.

"So what's in it for me?" Jack asked.

"Command of Project Raven, Colonel O'Neill. At present, we are a joint military and civilian project, and there would be no objections if you wished to retire from the Air Force. I believe your degree is in aeronautical engineering?" When Jack nodded Barnard went on. "At present, Project Raven is expected to last ten years, with a yearly budget of four billion dollars. We operate out of Groom Lake. We are guaranteed four billion a year. Any significant breakthroughs or viable prototypes could mean an expansion of the project into the scientific and asteroid-defense contingencies." Barnard took a list from the pile of documents. "Your choice of test flight personnel, scientific and engineering personnel; provided they pass security clearance." Barnard sat back and gave Jack another of those unreadable looks.

Jack just stared at him for a moment. "You want an answer now?"

"No. I realize this is not something that can be decided on the spur of the moment. I believe you'll be at Dryden for several days?"

Jack nodded. "Logging some hours. I've got old friends there, they let me take some of the old experimental prototypes out for exercise once or twice a year."

"We will contact you again before you leave." Barnard gathered up the pictures, schematics and documents and put them back in his briefcase, locking it firmly. He got to his feet and walked to the door, pounded on it twice. The scrape of the locking bar moving aside, and Jack saw the two captains had been standing guard outside. Jack got to his feet and slipped out the door, his skin crawling at having to turn his back on Barnard.

The two captains escorted him to the car they'd arrived in. It was full night now over the desert, and far in the distance he saw the running lights of the F-14 over the mountains as it banked into a turn, the flare of engine fire as it kicked in its afterburners. Edwards was ablaze in light now, shimmering with heat haze as the earth gave up the heat from the day. Above, the galaxy stretched in a path of starlit glory.

He didn't mind the silence on the drive back. It gave him time to think.

==========

There was a long moment of silence as Jack stopped speaking, and then Daniel reached up to run his hand soothingly down Jack's back again.

"They don't know you work for the SGC," Daniel said softly after a moment.

"Security. Unless they've got someone inside the Mountain, they have no idea that I'm not warming a desk chair up in NORAD, plotting ephemeri for NEOs and tracking orbital junk."

"And this -- spacecraft -- they found... it's not Goa'uld?" Daniel asked.

"No. Wasn't a death glider, wasn't anything I recognize." Jack shook his head. "But it wasn't just that, Daniel. We both know there's stuff out there we probably haven't seen yet. It could very well be from some bunch we haven't gotten to yet, further down on the list of Gate addresses. Or they might not have Stargate technology at all." He slid the sunshields down on the flight helmet again and then slid it back up, fiddling with the slide button. "And he made a point to say specifically that I could retire. That I could be a civilian and still be in charge of the project."

"Meaning they know about us?"

Jack didn't answer for a moment. "I dunno. Just hashing out the details."

They were both silent for long moments. Daniel reached over, curled his hand around Jack's elbow, and tugged lightly. Their hands twined, fingers weaving together as Jack let the flight helmet dangle from the other hand.

"Do we really do any good, Danny?" Jack asked abruptly. "Any good at all? Or is the only thing we're bringing back through the Gate trouble?"

"Did we create this war with the Goa'uld, you mean?"

"Did we bring it on ourselves?" Jack asked harshly. "If we'd never gone to Abydos..."

"Would Shau'ri still be alive? Would you and Sara still be together?" Daniel continued for him. He sat up, tugged on Jack's hand lightly. Jack turned to look at him, the move putting his face into shadow. "Would Jacob still be alive? He was dying, Jack. Sel'mac saved his life. Would Teal'c have left Apophis? But even failing all of that -- "

He tugged on Jack's hand again, and Jack let the flight helmet drop to the floor with a small thud and crawled up and into Daniel's arms as they lay back down together. Daniel tugged the blankets and sheets up around them, settling Jack's head on his shoulder much as he himself often chose to lay with his head tucked beneath Jack's chin.

"Failing all that... Do you know how the animals got their colors?" Daniel smiled when he felt Jack's confusion at the seeming non sequitur. "Way back when the world was new, there were the animals and the people of the fire and wind and rain. The animals had a good life in the spring and summer and fall, but when winter came many of the children and the elders froze to death. This went on, year after year, and the animals finally got fed up with it. They all got together to figure out what they should do, and they decided that someone had to go trick the people of the fire to steal the secrets of how to make fire. The wind, the rain, those wouldn't keep them warm in winter; those wouldn't stop the cold from taking the elders and children. But none of them could figure out how to trick the fire people to get the fire."

"Then Coyote stepped up and told them he could get the fire. Not Chipmunk, not Squirrel, none of the usual little thieves. Coyote. He was like you. If he was human, he'd be guzzling beer and watching hockey with you, but you'd better count the silver after he leaves and make sure you've still got your wallet. So none of them quite trusted him, but they finally said okay. He set off for the land of the fire people."

"He found three of them on the outskirts of their land; all of them sitting around a fire cackling over some inane story. Coyote went up to them and said,

'I've been travelling for days and days, and now I'm tired. Can I lay down next to your fire and get some sleep?' They tried to run him off, insulted him, gave him a hard time, but then finally they just ignored him and he lay down next to the fire and pretended to sleep.

"But Coyote had made a plan with Chipmunk and Squirrel beforehand. Just as things were settling down for the night, Squirrel started deliberately making noises out in the forest. The fire people all jumped up and started out into the forest, thinking it was something they could catch and eat. But Coyote jumped up, grabed a burning stick out of the fire, and started running. The fire people realized what was going on and started chasing him. One of them almost caught him, and grabbed hold of the tip of his tail, and burned it white. Chipmunk ran up beside him and Coyote gave him the burning stick. The fire swept back over Chipmunk's back and burned his sides and gave him his stripes. Then Squirrel took it, and the heat made his tail curl up. Then Robin took it, and the fire burned him and made him red. And it went on, until the fire people gave up and the animals made it back to their own lands. And they had the fire, and the children and elders didn't die from the winter's cold anymore."

Daniel was silent for a moment, his hand gently stroking Jack's hair soothingly. And then he went on.

"The fire burned them. It marked them forever. Many times the fire burned up the forest, before they figured out how to control it. I'm sure there were times when the animals all wished they could kick Coyote into the middle of next week, or kick themselves for wondering why they ever thought they wanted something so destructive. But the children and the elders no longer died from the cold. And when they gave the fire to man, man lived through the winter too. And the children of man didn't die from the cold, and all the people prospered. Eventually."

Daniel kissed Jack's forehead softly and then went on.

"The power we take from the Goa'uld, the Tollan, the Asgard -- it's the same, Jack; it'll burn us, it'll change us. The Stargate has changed us, all of us, you, me, Sam, Teal'c, Jacob, and Cassie. Yes, we're in a war. But the power we've stolen -- yes, we've stolen it from gods, or at least those who think themselves gods -- in the end, it will be shared by all. Eventually. One day, you'll see, we've done the right thing. It just may take longer than you want to wait to see the good it will do."

Jack was silent for a long moment. "The Goa'uld are still out there."

"Yes, they are."

"The Tok'ra have been fighting for hundreds of years."

Daniel tightened his arm around Jack's shoulders. "Yes. They have."

"But you're still sayin' that all of this will come out right in the end? How long do we have to wait? How many people have to die?"

"You've got to have faith in something, Jack. And nothing lasts forever. Not even the Goa'uld."

Jack sat up and looked down at Daniel's serene face in the darkness. "But Danny -- we're supposed to be protecting people."

Daniel nodded. "If you go to this Project Raven, and you build some sort of ships, fighter craft, weapons -- and a system lord shows up -- what would they do if they saw wings of starships coming to meet them? Wouldn't their response be overwhelming, devastating, as destructive as they could manage, because we're such an open, obvious threat?" Daniel reached up and caressed Jack's cheek. "At least with a covert defense, if a System Lord showed up tomorrow they might use much less devastating means. Because obviously the majority of the Tau'ri are no threat."

"And fewer people would die."

Daniel nodded.

"So you're saying I shouldn't think about this Project Raven."

"No. That's your decision. Either way is good. If you went to Project Raven you could go back to doing what you love -- flying and designing aircraft and spacecraft. You wouldn't be in the direct line of fire anymore, but you'd still be contributing to the fight for Earth. And if you retired from the Air Force, no one could say anything about the two of us. It's just a matter of what's truly important to you." Daniel reached up again and traced a hand down Jack's cheek, down his neck and shoulder and chest. "Whatever you do, I will be with you. No matter what, Jack."

Jack blinked at him in silence, then slowly lay back down. Daniel held him, and eventually they both slept.

==========

"Uh, Greg, I thought your T-38s were all blue and white."

"We heard you were coming and ordered three in black," General Ogden replied dryly. At Jack's look of disbelief he rolled his eyes. "Jeez, Jack! Honestly, we needed three more, we got them from an Air National Guard station in Virginia. They fly, they're in excellent mechanical condition, and the price was right."

"Well okay then," Jack said slowly. "Here's our limo, Daniel."

The T-38 waiting for them just outside the giant hangar door was black with white markings, slightly smaller than an F-16 and "thinner" if one could say that about a jet aircraft. Twin jet engines were mounted side by side in the aft section, with shorter wings than an F-16 and of a more delicate-looking construction, the T-38s used by NASA were most often employed as chase planes when other experimental aircraft needed close moment-to-moment monitoring in flight. A workhorse type of aircraft, it was used by the Air Force in general as a training aircraft. Daniel realized he'd seen them before, as chase planes hovering around the space shuttles during landings, often skimming only dozens of feet above the runway as the shuttles touched down.

And now, here he was, dressed in a full flight suit, flight helmet dangling from one hand, about to climb in the back seat with Colonel Jack "Mad Mouse" O'Neill at the controls.

He was certain he'd done crazier things in his time. But at the moment the only thing he could think of that even came close was saying yes to Katherine on that curbside in the rain, over five years before.

It was another flawless desert summer day, the temperature already climbing near 100 degrees. Daniel stood in the shade of the hangar while Jack began a very detailed inspection of the T-38, admiring Jack's grace and total ease as he moved flaps and ailerons, checked the landing gear, mechanical linkages, the surfaces of the wings, everything possible without taking off fuselage panels and needing tools. Daniel knew why he was being so careful. Finally he signed off on the inspection, handed one of the technicians the clipboard and grinned as he came to take his flight helmet from Daniel. "All set. Well, Dr. Jackson? Pass or play?"

"I must be crazy," Daniel said. He took a deep shaky breath. "Play, Jack."

Jack's grin lit up his face, and his eyes danced with mischief. "Best roller coaster ride on the planet. Come on."

Daniel climbed up into the T-38's back seat first, climbing up the ladder as Jack and one of the flight crew helped him inside. He pulled on the flight helmet as Jack plugged it into the communications system, did what Jack said as he helped him get belted securely into the safety harness of the ejection seat. Listened intently as Jack told him what not to touch, and what to do if they had to bail out, and then watched as Jack swung over confidently into the front pilot's seat, pulled his helmet on, got strapped and plugged in. Already they were moving, one of the flight crew towing them toward the runway with one of the low six-wheeled carts. Once away from the hangar, Jack reached up and pulled the canopy down, latched it securely. Daniel reached up to the slide button on his helmet, slid the sunshields down gratefully as the full glaring sun lanced into his eyes. Almost at the same moment he saw Jack do the same.

"Here we go, Danny," he heard Jack say through the headphones. A second later there was a smooth rumble beneath him, and a quiet rising hum and hiss as the engines ignited. A moment later the T-38 rolled past the tow truck under its own power, turned under Jack's guidance as Dryden's flight controllers directed him to the proper runway.

They turned to face down the runway, down several miles of straight flat tarmac stretching away into the shimmering heat-hazed distance. Jack gave a crisp salute to the crewman directing them, and faced forward again. A moment later they were racing down the runway, the hangars a blur, and then they were airborne and lifting with such grace that Daniel didn't even think about being scared.

They rose into the sky with such effortlessness that he hadn't even felt gravity's uncomfortable resistance. The T-38 tilted its nose to the sky, and Earth and all its cares were left far below and far behind.

==========

It was a very weird sensation, going through the high clouds, the great silent solid-seeming puffy walls of white. He'd been on dozens of airline flights, long hours spent between the Middle East, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Southeast Asia, Mexico, Brazil. But those had been airliners, and the view restricted to a tiny window. In a T-38, with the clear Plexiglas canopy bubble giving an unimpeded 180-degree view, he saw more of the vault of heaven than he ever thought possible. Those white leviathans were massive presences, defying gravity in their immense floating slow-motion dance, roiling violently as the T-38's nose pierced them and the thrust of the engines blasted hot exhaust gases into their cold misty realm, blocking out sun, sky, and the earth below. He watched the electronic horizon indicator, felt the tug of gravity as Jack rolled the little jet into a lazy barrel roll inside the cloud, and gasped as they punched through the other side and he saw the curve of the Earth, the flat endless tan of the Mojave and Dryden's complex of buildings and runways so far below. Another effortless slow tumble and they were banking into a wings-vertical turn and then a spiraling dive, the desert so far below rushing toward them before Jack pulled them up and up into the sun again.

It was so peaceful. Not really quiet -- the rumble-hum-hiss of the engines, the vibrations of the airflow over the wings, the occasional voices of Dryden flight controllers through the headphones, but surprisingly peaceful. The world stretched out below them, distant, the clouds and sky above serene and silent.

No boundaries, and even gravity held little sway.

He thought he'd be scared. But instead he was relaxed, trusting completely in Jack and the minor miracles of aerodynamics and wind.

This was Jack's world, with just as many wonders and contradictions as the man himself. It was another piece in the puzzle that was Jack O'Neill, and Daniel would keep it safe in his heart with all the other puzzle pieces that time saw fit to give him. Another priceless moment in the shared joys that made their lives together, jewel-bright and diamond-true.

==========

"You can't stay up in the clouds forever, Jack," Daniel said quietly at his shoulder. "Even if you had wings."

Jack turned and looked down from the high blue endless stretches of the sky to Daniel's small understanding smile. There was a vast contentment that somehow Daniel was capable of even after all the horrors and grief he had survived. It radiated from him, that quiet calming aura. Now it calmed the ache of leaving his natural element, of once more allowing himself to be brought down to earth and held by gravity's selfish grasp. Over Daniel's shoulder, the flight crew was towing the T-38 back toward the hangar, the black fuselage gleaming in the bright sun. Further on, the F/A-18 with the engine modifications was being towed out, the canopy lowering as the pilot tugged his helmet on.

He dealt with the flight crew, did the post-flight check and paperwork as they followed the T-38 back into the smaller storage hangar. Daniel chatted with some of the crew as they joked about his first flight with "Mad Mouse" O'Neill, Daniel protesting that Jack had gone easy on him (which Jack had, the T-38 not really designed for the aerobatics he could get up to in the X-31.) It was nearly noon by the time they were able to climb out of the pressure suits elements of their flight suits and head for Jack's truck. The F/A-18 was coming in to land from its short flight as they started off the base for lunch.

"You're too quiet, Jack."

Jack quirked a small rueful grin at that and glanced over at Daniel sitting beside him. Daniel had wriggled around half-sideways in his seat to watch Jack's face as he drove. Jack had almost gotten used to seeing Daniel in the military clothing they wore at the SGC, but seeing him in a flight suit was jarringly incongruous. Like some weird parallel-universe Daniel, who had never cracked a book in his life except for the latest copy of "Aviation Today". Seeing him in the back seat of that T-38 had been even weirder.

And somehow he hadn't expected that.

"It's all that about Project Raven, isn't it?"

That's Danny. Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a gun but had the psychological laser-guided thing down pat. "One thing you learn when you're flying, Danny, is that whatever shit you're living in gets left behind the second those engines fire up. It's a reflex, you learn not to think, if you get my meaning. You have to, because things can go from peachy keen to completely fucked in about a second and a half and the only thing that might keep you alive is thinking quick." He shrugged. "It's just that once I'm back on the ground the backlog all tries to squeeze in the doors at the same time."

Daniel's sudden understanding smile was all the answer he needed.

"It just occurred to me that that guy Barnard didn't show me any ID."

Jack sensed more than saw Daniel's quick, hard, startled glance at him. "But something that high up -- I thought they wouldn't --"

"That's too many re-runs of 'Mission Impossible', Danny. That's not how it's done in real life." Jack waved to the guards at the gates as they passed through. "Anybody -- especially around here, with Edwards and Dryden -- can get BDUs at the military surplus shops, same with the NASA patches. Same with a captain's rank insignia. If you wanted to convince someone that you really did work for the SGC, what would you do?"

"Show them my base ID," Daniel said, nodding. Then he smirked. "Although I guess you'd just pull out a zat and shoot them."

"You learn quickly, Grasshopper," Jack said, smirking back. "But these guys didn't identify themselves. For all I know, this Project Raven doesn't exist. Except for two or three things, it's all a big question mark. One, the guy talked like he knew I deal with aliens, and that I know that some of 'em are enemies. And two, dangling the chance to take this on as a civilian, when the only reason I ever consider giving it all up is because I happen to be madly in love with a very sexy, very intelligent, and very male archaeologist. The sexy and intelligent part would be just fine with them if your mother had been obliged to name you Danielle. As it is..." Jack stopped and sighed, shaking his head. "As it is, we have to live five different kinds of lie."

Daniel was silent for a long moment. "Fine country we live in, when someone can dangle the possibility of a normal life in front of us and believe we'd want it so much we'd give up everything we have to grab for it." He shook his head. "But Jack, from what you told me, they believe you work for NORAD, for Space Command. They shouldn't know we work with aliens. They shouldn't know for certain that anybody works with aliens. Yet they do and they think we work for NORAD."

"There's a leak somewhere, but they don't know everything," Jack said, understanding what Daniel was getting at. "I think it's time we call home."

==========

"Sam?"

"Daniel?" Sam blinked and turned away from her computer as she heard the note of anxious query in Daniel's voice on the phone. "Aren't you --"

"Yeah, we are. We've got a minor problem out here. Could you get the boss to call me on my cell phone? I've forgotten his number and I don't have it on my speed dial."

Sam blinked again. Then realized something must be wrong; she knew Daniel had General Hammond's phone numbers in his speed dial, they all did. Daniel must think his cell phone was tapped. He only talked like this -- cryptically -- when he was worried about security. "Yeah, sure, sweetheart. Give me a minute or two, okay?"

" 'Kay. Miss you."

Even worried about security, that was her little brother. "Miss you too. Now scoot."

She heard him laugh as the connection broke, and she was out the door of her lab and halfway down the corridor in four long strides.

==========

"One of these days I'm gonna come into your office and find you two sacked out together on the couch, sucking your thumbs and wrapped around the same teddy bear," Jack said with an amused grin. "You sure you're an only child? Maybe I need to ask Jacob if he sold you to the gypsies."

"Why, so you can kick his ass?" Daniel said, grinning back. "I'm not putting money down on that fight."

"Think I can't take out one old general with a snake in his head?"

"One old general who was cutting down rookies like you five at a time when he was your age, Jack? Like I said, I'm not betting one way or another." Daniel's eyes sparkled with mischief, and Jack felt at that moment he could take on half a dozen Jacobs and Sel'maks with that kind of love in his corner, no matter what Danny said about wily old generals. Or their snakes. "Here. He'll be expecting you."

Jack took Daniel's cell phone and sat back, watching Danny finish his spaghetti while they waited for General Hammond to call.

==========

General Hammond was not pleased.

Jack was glad he was in California, and that he had specific orders to continue his vacation, enjoy himself, not get himself killed, and make sure Dr. Jackson enjoyed himself too.

Such commands were the sort that made everyone at the SGC willing to throw themselves in front of incoming Jaffa staff blasts for their CO. But the other orders --

"What?" Daniel asked, attuned as ever to Jack's silences.

Jack looked over at him across the table, smiled a little at the bright desert sunlight falling through the window beside them and sparking the lighter strands of Daniel's hair to gold. Sometimes he looked to Jack like one of those masks on the mummies in Egypt, all golden skin, golden hair, and those impossibly blue eyes. Like the little boy who had once played make-believe in the King's Chamber had been transformed by the ancient pharaohs into their own image. "Hammond said to play it by ear. We need intel." His smile turned to a teasing grin. "And you're not going upstairs again today, Dr. Jackson. I don't fly archaeologists who've just eaten big plates of spaghetti and hot fudge sundaes."

"That's good, since the only way I'll get in an X-31 with you would be drunk, stoned or dead," Daniel teased back. He scooped up the last spoonful of his ice cream, deliberately licking the chocolate sauce off his lips.

"Gee, Dr. Jackson, am I detecting a challenge? I do believe I'm hearing a challenge."

"Oh I don't know, Jack. If you want to take it that way I certainly can't stop you. But you'd have to be very persuasive..."

==========

It was one hundred five degrees in the shade of the hangar. Daniel pulled his eye drops out of his pocket, feeling like his contact lenses were shrivelling, and then shoved his sunglasses back on. Every desert he'd lived in was different. Some were kind, with little dust. Some were dust bowls. Some were cold, barren, dead. Some teemed with life.

Some were hard as concrete, hot as a square mile of Hell, and so devoid of moisture that you felt your skin prickling as your sweat was literally sucked out of your body by nothing more than the desiccated air.

Fifty feet away, Jack was checking the wing flaps of the X-31: flaps, ailerons, rudder, leading edges of the wings the small winglets on the nose, the jet intakes on the underside beneath the cockpit. He was so capable, so calm, so much at ease.

Or maybe not, Daniel amended to himself as Jack rounded the X-31's nose and flashed him a wicked grin. Daniel ducked his head, trying to hide his answering smile as the flight crew brought the ladder so Jack could climb inside while another of the crew disconnected the fuel hoses.

General Ogden joined him as Daniel walked over to Jack at the X-31's wing. Jack turned and put a hand on Daniel's shoulder, squeezing briefly before reaching up to tousle his hair. The General carried a digital video camera. "One of the perks of letting Jack throw our hardware all over the sky," General Ogden said to Daniel's questioning look. "We get all this wonderful footage we can use to persuade the Pentagon to give us more money."

"Or scare them into submission," Jack said. For an instant he looked no older than the young daredevil in the photo he'd shown Daniel the day before. Daniel handed him his flight helmet and a moment later Jack was climbing up into the cockpit.

"Diligentia observito," Daniel said in Latin.

"Aio," Jack answered. "Nunquam remordeo ."

Daniel nodded, then backed away as the crew began towing the X-31 toward the runway.

"Latin?" General Ogden asked as Daniel joined him in the shade of the hangar.

Daniel shrugged slightly. "I'm fluent in twenty-six languages." That I can admit to, he finished to himself. The other three are classified. "With the military penchant for 'hurry up and wait,' I've had a lot of spare time on my hands. You haven't lived until you've heard Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark' in the original Greek."

The scream of the X-31's high-performance engine igniting precluded speech as Jack turned onto the runway and the tow cart pulled away. He saw Jack salute the crewman directing him onto the runway. And then the X-31's engines ascended from a scream to a full-throated howl. The little blue and white jet shot down the runway, seemed to float briefly only a few feet over the tarmac, and then turned itself literally on its tail and launched into the sky on full afterburners.

General Ogden began counting down: "Five... four... three... two... "

A sonic boom cracked suddenly above them, right on cue.

"My god..." Daniel swallowed in disbelief as he tried to keep the X-31 in his binoculars' field of view. The little blue and white jet was still climbing, twisting in a series of barrel rolls so fast that Daniel was getting dizzy. Then it suddenly nosed over sideways, tumbling through a complicated set of wild gyrations in a dive and then banking into a wings-vertical turn and shot toward the distant mountains. Where anyone else -- any sane pilot -- would have banked into another wide turn, the little X-31 skidded into a turn. It literally slewed around sideways, its tail fishtailing around, and accelerated back toward Dryden.

"How did he...?"

General Ogden chuckled, trying to keep the X-31 in his camera's viewing field. "I have no idea. Brace yourself, here he comes."

The X-31 dropped down several hundred feet as it approached, silent as it was outrunning the sound of its own engines. It came in over the runway, no more than two hundred feet off the deck, and snap-rolled into two barrel rolls before twisting back right side up and climbing again into the sun. The sound caught up then, the high-pitched scream of the engines thundering around him.

Daniel was glad Jack had left his truck near the hangar doors. He dropped onto the open tailgate, feeling like his knees might give out if he didn't. He could feel the adrenaline slamming into his system -- terror that he was about to watch Jack die right in front of him. He wasn't an engineer by any means, but surely that kind of madness would be tempting fate far too far. Surely the wings would be ripped away...

"Watch this," General Ogden said a few feet away. "We've had a dozen pilots try this trick, and he's the only one who can manage it."

Daniel got to his feet slowly and raised the binoculars again.

The X-31 was nosing over into a loop, a maneuver that seemed to be oddly slow motion to Daniel. As it reached the bottom and started to climb it seemed to come to a motionless hover as it reached vertical again: a delicately-balanced, vertical hover, a blue and white needle dangling itself between heaven and earth. Then the moment broke and it fell over sideways, twisted into short dive, and was flying level again. It wasn't the most spectacular stunt Daniel had ever seen, but it spoke of finesse, fine control, and utter command of the aircraft that was frankly stunning. "That's not supposed to be possible, is it? Hovering like that?"

"I wouldn't say it's impossible," General Ogden said, the video camera still following the X-31's progress. "But it's not a maneuver that anyone thought of when they designed the aircraft. He's tried it with several other single-engine aircraft but it seems the only one that can manage it is the X-31."

Daniel lowered the binoculars to just stare up at the twisting, spiraling sliver of white and blue, a tumbling mote of metal and power climbing for altitude, climbing toward the sun.

Like Icarus.

He swallowed, looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

"Here he comes again," General Ogden said.

Only meters above the tarmac of the runway, and sideways, the wings vertical, the blue belly of the aircraft flashed by in a dark blur, and a split second later the howl of the engines rattling doors, windows, the walls of the hangar behind him with the sheer power of the sound. A snap roll at the end of the runway, and Jack was climbing again, spiraling upward.

Wrong. Wrong. There's something ...

His stomach lurched, knotted, twisted.

Jack get out of there!

He lifted the binoculars --

Something flared on the X-31's belly, and it fell out of its climb, falling, tumbling -- and then recovering, leveling out, trailing smoke from its underside. But obviously struggling to stay level, the easy flight no longer effortless.

Daniel felt his knees going, but he flailed blindly behind him and caught the side of the truck, held himself up, unable to take his eyes off the struggling aircraft turning unsteadily trying to align itself with the runway.

Jack get out of there! NOW!

Somewhere far distant he heard General Ogden yelling orders, heard the controlled chaos as the flight crew scrambled for fire suppression gear, heard the flight controllers over the radio General Ogden now had in his hands as Dryden's crash team was scrambled. Jack's voice was tense and tight, as he struggled with erratic controls. And the bone-chilling realization as he heard Jack's controlled fear -- the left rear landing gear wasn't deploying.

He couldn't breathe. The only thing holding him up was the death grip on the truck.

The X-31 dropped in a sudden lurch, still at least five hundred yards from the end of the tarmac, then recovered and leveled out. The sounds of the single jet engine were erratic, still powerful but wavering, obviously trying to slow down. The nose came up, flaring the wings and causing the aircraft to drop precipitously another few dozen feet. The X-31 wobbled in the air as a sudden gust of wind slammed into the flared wings, and it dropped again, the right rear landing wheel striking the ground. It bounced up again briefly, buoyed by the wind, then the nose pitched forward and it slammed hard on the nose landing wheel. Instantly it rolled onto the left side, unbalanced, skidding and sliding, metal tearing away and flying into the air, the landing gear crumpling as speed and force met the unmovable, unyielding tarmac.

General Ogden grabbed his arm, and Daniel was running for the ambulance even before the X-31 had come to a jarring halt.

==========

The canopy blasted off and away just before the fire trucks arrived, and Daniel could see Jack struggling with the safety harness, trying to rip the straps away one-handed. A sudden silver glitter in the glaring sunlight, and Daniel realized he was cutting himself free with his pocketknife.

The X-31 was lying on its left side, held there by the partially crumpled left wing. Fuel was was already spreading in a widening pool. The fire team went to work with the suppression foam even before the trucks had stopped, and Daniel jumped down from the ambulance and raced toward Jack, General Ogden at his heels.

"Jack!" Daniel grabbed the webbing straps on Jack's pressure suit and pulled him bodily out of the tilted cockpit, yelping with the effort as Jack's flailing arm and scrambling legs threatened to throw them both to the tarmac. General Ogden ducked under Jack's arm and Daniel ducked under the other one, and they moved as fast as they dared away from the wreckage, toward the medics who were running to meet them.

"Wait!" Jack croaked. "Danny! Wait!"

"Wait? Jack the thing's dripping fuel --"

"Greg! Where are the fucking maintenance records?"

"Back at the hangar, Jack, we'll put the X-31 under lock and key and the fire foam won't --"

"The damned thing blew a hydraulic line!" Jack tightened his hold on Daniel's shoulders and shoved General Ogden away from him so he could see his face. "I heard it explode! It blew a fucking hole in the fuselage and took out some of the control wiring on the left wing and aileron! When was the last full overhaul?" Jack pulled Daniel to a stop and fumbled at his helmet straps, clawed his helmet off with his free hand and let it fall to the tarmac. Daniel swallowed in sympathetic pain -- there was a streak of blood dripping down Jack's cheek, beginning somewhere in his hair. And the sable eyes were hard as stone as he pinned General Ogden with an angry glare.

Daniel tightened his hold on Jack and waited for the axe to fall with the weight of insubordination and verbal assault on a superior officer. Jack got his feet under him properly and straightened up, giving a little involuntary sound of pain as he did so, but he didn't let go of Daniel's shoulders. But the medics broke the tension as they moved to take Jack to the waiting ambulance, and Daniel took advantage of the distraction to steer him away, deflecting criticism and anger alike. Once Daniel was certain the medics had Jack safe, he ducked away and scooped up the flight helmet from where it had fallen on the tarmac.

And then they were gone, the ambulance moving as quickly as it dared. Daniel held Jack's hand and didn't let go until the one of Dryden's flight doctors firmly pushed him out the door.

==========

He'd never been out of Jack's sight in Janet Frasier's infirmary, no matter how badly either of them was hurt. Had always been there, at his side, taking turns with Sam and Teal'c only when ordered to eat and sleep. Even before their relationship had grown intimate something would keep him within sight, if not within arm's reach.

As long as they could see each other, assess in an instant the state of pain or lack of it, the state of consciousness or lack of it, the worry or despair or relief or laughter... As long as they were near, and not alone.

Well, now he was alone, in a strange place, among strangers. It certainly wasn't the first time, had in fact been the proverbial story of his life since his parents died, but since Jack had wormed his way back into Daniel's mind and heart the emotional callouses he had used to insulate himself had softened and worn away. He wasn't used to it anymore. He hated it more than ever. And hated that he felt it; because when he'd been numb life had been much less complicated.

Dryden's main administrative and engineering building also held its medical facilities. Daniel had wandered around the corridors in a daze until one of the engineers found him and took him to the atrium, and then showed him a short cut route that would allow him to reach the medical section in less than two minutes. The test pilots' families were often in this same situation. But Daniel knew that Jack was relatively unscathed -- a bad knock on the head made much less so by his flight helmet, a cut on his leg where a bit of crumpled metal had protruded into the cockpit, bruises... he'd be sore from the crash...

He'd be more pissed off that he crashed the X-31. There were only three of them, after all.

And even given what he'd seen that morning, what he'd felt in the T-38, he still could not understand why Jack did this. Why he kept doing it, knowing the risks.

The atrium was a great airy space, three stories of open air, half of it with a high peaked glass roof. The floor was granite mosaic. Centered under the glass roof was an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system that showed the relative positions of the planets, moons and sun. Each planet was of a different kind of stone, with the rings of the ringed planets in some bright silvery metal. White gold or platinum, he thought. The sun was a great crystal globe of yellow citrine, Mars in red jasper... but Earth and its Moon were of water-clear white sapphire, etched in fine lines with the contours of coastlines and craters.

Such a small thing, to represent something so vast, itself so insignificant in the unknowable distances of the universe. He'd been out among those planets. He'd seen them, with his own eyes. And he'd seen alien moons orbiting alien worlds thousands of light years from the sun under which he was born. He'd lived under an alien sun, and called it home. For a while -- for one wonderful, peaceful year -- he had believed it would be his home forever.

Sometimes he wondered at this human penchant for assuming that anything could be forever. The universe kept proving it wrong, yet somehow one always was searching for bedrock, for stable floors, for something to hold to keep from falling.

Falling, falling, out of the sky. How many times had he fallen through the Stargate, fleeing pursuit, carrying Jack, carrying Sam, being carried by Teal'c.

Somehow they always carried one another home. Strands of a net, connecting, pulling on each other, bearing each other up. Binding up each other's loose ends and fraying lives.

He got up from the bench by the granite wall and began pacing, hugging himself for comfort. Jack would be worried if he saw it, but Jack wasn't here. Most of the administrative staff had gone home already, some of the engineers were working late, and outside the glass walls and roof of the atrium the long desert twilight was painting the sky purple shading to deep indigo. The Moon hung half-full over the horizon, and already stars were appearing in the east. So calm, despite his fears, the shock, and the iron-willed control he kept over both.

No matter the cost.

He turned back from the windows, wandered to the orrery. For the first time he noticed the words carved in the smoothed surface of the granite base.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthOf sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,I've chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air.Up, up the long, delirious burning blueI've topped the windswept heights with easy graceWhere never lark, or even eagle flew.And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

His eyes stung, and he felt tears gathering.

The chevrons locked, the wormhole formed, and they stepped through to another world. Once you got used to the sensation you paid it no more mind than walking through a doorway. There was no real sense that you had traveled thousands of light years, no sense that you were now halfway around the spiral of the galaxy from where you began. In the pilot's seat you saw the blur of speed, you felt the lift of the wings, you felt gravity's tug as the horizon tilted and you climbed into the clouds. You felt it. Every moment.

The Stargate was about destinations.

But Icarus knew the true joy was in the journey.

==========

Jack was exhausted, his leg had been stitched and a small bandage placed on the cut just above his left ear. He looked every one of his years. As of today, there was one more to add to the total. Daniel didn't think he remembered, or if he did it must be one of the most depressing birthdays of his life.

Daniel drove them off the base once the doctors had cleared him, and back to the small town of Lancaster where they were staying. The town had grown up with Edwards AFB and Dryden; home to the military families stationed there, one of those towns clustered around a main drag. Daniel pulled the truck into the parking lot of an Applebee's. "Can you eat or shouldn't I ask?"

Jack's voice was rough, far too tired, almost defeated. "Yeah. Can you?"

"I will if you will."

==========

It was nearly 2300 when they got back to their hotel, both of them nearly staggering with exhaustion.

The door of their room was open. Daniel saw it as they approached, unlocked and not closed completely flush with the doorframe, but from a few feet away in the dim hallway you couldn't tell. He flung out an arm and caught Jack's shoulder, stopping them both.

Jack saw it a moment later. "Oh fer cryin' out loud," he muttered tiredly.

Daniel moved to the door silently, flattened himself against the wall beside it, and waited for Jack's nod of agreement before he pushed it open.

No bullets came flying toward them, and no bodies. Daniel could see there was no one in the bathroom, and Jack moved quickly forward into the room. After a swift check to make certain the room was empty he motioned for Daniel to come inside.

Their luggage had been searched, their clothes and things flung all over the room, even Daniel's guitar case had been searched though fortunately the guitar itself seemed fine. The half dozen books Daniel had brought with him and Jack's flight manuals were scattered all over the floor, Daniel's allergy medicine bottles were scattered on the bed.

"What were they looking for?" Daniel asked after several stunned minutes.

Jack looked around again, then limped over to shove the door closed and slid the security bar into place. Daniel turned slowly, surveying the disorder -- clothes, books and the pages of his CD case torn out of the binder and flung around the room, Jack's favorite braided leather belt flung across a chair.

"You scared?" Jack asked quietly.

Daniel nodded silently.

"That's what they were looking for," Jack said. He held out his arms and Daniel was there instantly.

Long wordless minutes of holding each other, of burrowing into each other's warmth, the reassurance of each other's reality.

"Why?" Daniel said at last. "Does Barnard -- or whoever -- think that intimidating you like this will make you join their project? Join or else?"

"No, that was earlier," Jack said with a grimace plain in his voice against Daniel's neck. "The X-31 was meant to do that. This --" Jack stopped, freed one hand from around Daniel, and Daniel knew he must be gesturing around at the chaos of the room, "-- was meant as a threat to you."

"The X-31? It was sabotaged?"

"Booby-trapped like the proverbial.. er, booby."

Daniel chuckled helplessly, wearily, at the typical Jack O'Neill humor. "Why are they trying to intimidate me?"

"Not you directly, Danny."

"They want you to be scared for me?" Daniel pulled away enough to look into Jack's eyes.

Jack nodded. "Yeah, kiddo."

"Join up or we'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too?"

Now it was Jack's turn to laugh wearily. "Yappy little mutt." He reached up and ruffled Daniel's hair, and kissed him.

"But you'd look so good in that dress, Jack."

"And you'd look good in nothing but a dog collar yourself, Dr. Jackson."

Daniel lost it and fell over onto the bed, laughing so hard that Jack thought he was going to cough up a lung.

==========

Priorities. It all came down to priorities.

Get your priorities out of whack, and God only knows where you'll end up. He really thought he'd have learned that by now, as many times as he'd been through the Stargate. If you didn't know what to fight for, who to trust, why you were doing it, then God help you because you were heading for more trouble than you could probably get yourself out of. For yourself and everyone around you.

Daniel was finally asleep. Finally. Over the years Jack had formulated several tactics for making Daniel sleep. One: the Space Monkey See, Space Monkey Do tactic -- Jack yawns, Daniel yawns; Jack complains he's tired, Daniel starts getting cranky; Jack lays down, Daniel joins him. Depending on how exhausted he was, he was generally out like a light in less than five minutes. Two: keep him away from all caffeine until the last hit wears off, then steer him to a flat surface, preferably something soft, before he passes out. Three: make him watch ESPN. Four: play Enya music. Five: feed him a turkey sandwich. Six: make him have a giggle fit or tickle him until he was worn out. And recently Seven: mind-blowing sex, admittedly the oldest -- and still most effective -- trick ever devised to induce the human male to quit thinking and let the world go on without him. And whatever else he was, Daniel was definitely a healthy Tau'ri male.

The problem was, Daniel was so intelligent and they were so attuned to each other that any duplicity on Jack's part was instantly apparent to him. Daniel would pick up his true feelings and intentions on body language alone -- and that's what he would react to. Jack could yawn his head off or tickle Danny until his ribs creaked, but if he were only doing it to make Daniel sleepy the younger man would still be rattling away at his computer, scribbling on a translation, or pacing holes in the floor. And as Jack was also completely attuned to Daniel, he would react to Daniel's tension and anxiety... and both of them would be in knots.

So if he could get his better half asleep before he started in on the deep thoughts, all the better. A blissed-out, satiated, safe and secure Danny radiated his happy vibes even when he slept, and paradoxically it made it easier for him to think. Kept him calm.

Daniel was snuggled into his favorite place, his head tucked under Jack's chin, Jack's arms wrapped firmly around him. Jack ducked his head a little to rub his cheek on the tousled gold-brown hair and closed his eyes with a long sigh. They probably should leave. Pack up first thing in the morning and head back for the SGC, recall Teal'c from Chulak, haul Sam away from her microscopes and cyclotrons and pick a planet, any planet, don't tell me, let me guess, the three of spades; some place where not even the NID could find them if they weren't on Earth to find. Get some of Daniel's staff, pick a planet from the backlog slated for extended exploration and just go. Why take the chance that these threats were anything more than threats? They'd already managed to sabotage a jet that was constantly surrounded by technicians and engineers. He and Danny were alone here, without Sam and Teal'c to watch their backs, without the ready resources and weaponry of the SGC: without even a zat, and definitely without the plain old normal Tau'ri peashooters of P90s and MP5s. Returning to the SGC would satisfy Jack's personal number one priority -- Keeping Daniel safe.

There were others who could investigate Project Raven. It wasn't his job; his job was to save the universe. He grinned in the dark and kissed Daniel's forehead. Really. His job was to save the universe so that Danny could drink his coffee and stuff himself with cookies and stay up three days running translating someone else's languages, so that when Jack finally collared him and took him home there'd be no objections to using Plan Number Seven as a devious attempt to get Danny to sleep. Yeah. As soon as they got back, he'd edit his job description; all for the common good, of course. Danny-nookie was good for both of them. Right?

But the man he'd been up to the moment he first laid eyes on Dr. Daniel Jackson was a career officer in the USAF; a soldier sworn to defend the citizens of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. He'd long grown out of the youthful macho bravado that dictated the American way of life was not only the best way of life but the only way of life. He'd lived in too many cultures and seen too many different ways of life to believe that America was better. Different, maybe, with more freedoms in some ways. Being with Danny had taught him the utter futility of ethnocentrism. The first time he'd walked through the Stargate to Abydos, he'd become a soldier devoted not to the United States, but to Earth. Later, when he realized the magnitude of the Goa'uld threat, he had become devoted to a cause so great that he wasn't sure he could put a name to it. Maybe Danny could, in those twenty-nine languages stuffed into his head. Or maybe there was no name, no word that could hold it.

It was all a matter of scale. The human mind couldn't contain some things, so it assigned smaller-scale symbols to stand in for them, like the symbols on the Stargate represented the constellations. Atoms were miniature universes, house cats looked like lions and tigers, water going down a drain followed the same swirl pattern as a galaxy spinning into the black hole at its center. What he felt for Daniel, the depth and astonishing complexity and paradoxical spiritual hunger, was a reflection of the greater good that now held his loyalty. He defended the universe from the Goa'uld because Daniel was there, and Daniel was the other half of his soul. It made no sense; it had no name. He couldn't even bring himself to refer to it even in his own mind as anything so prosaic as a "homosexual relationship." It didn't fit. It never had. Danny was Danny. Just because he was in a male body this time around didn't ultimately make a difference. Not to Jack.

But would Danny be happier if they were living openly as a gay couple? Admittedly there still wasn't much that was "normal" about being openly gay in the United States, but they could both definitely do without the threat of court-martial hanging over Jack's head. In his bitterest moments Jack contemplated looking up who had come up with the "don't ask, don't tell" law and doing ... something. He didn't even know what. An angry letter wouldn't satisfy and putting a bullet in some politician's brain would leave Danny alone. Who was he kidding? Danny wouldn't be able to live without him, and after all they'd been through Jack knew he had no fear of death anymore. The thought was so terrifying that it usually snapped Jack out of his homicidal contemplations, and anyway, in a year or two or three -- someday -- he'd retire again and no one could say anything anymore when Danny turned in his change-of-address forms.

No. They were doing the right thing. Danny needed challenges, and the Stargate and the planets they went to were probably the only challenges intricate enough to satisfy him. A happy Danny was a Danny knee-deep in alien languages and artifacts. A happy Danny stayed up three days straight completing 50,000-word Goa'uld dictionaries. It meant no Danny-nookie for Jack for three days straight, and a wired and strung-out lover in serious need of caffeine detox and twelve hours of sleep. But that lover tumbled into their bed speaking in a pidgin Goa'uld-English and glowing with satisfaction and accomplishment. And when he woke up -- Holy Hannah, as Sam would say. Definitely made an old lapsed Catholic believe the nuns were right when they told you patience was a virtue.

The one thing that put a fly in the ointment was that Danny would think he was denying himself a chance to do something he loved. And in a way he was. He loved flying. Even after all these years, three crashes and a dozen moments of pure unmixed terror he still loved flying. If it hadn't been for that problem with his ears he'd never have left Dryden. When the flight doctors had taken him off the active pilots roster he'd thought he'd just get himself an office in the Engineering section and start designing aircraft. But then Colonel Doherty had offered him a place in Special Operations, and then the Gulf War and Iraq, Sarah and Charlie, and he found himself staring down at the gun that had taken Charlie away from him. It could have ended there. It could have ended before he'd ever laid eyes on that longhaired geek with the suitcase full of books and a head full of hieroglyphics.

It could have ended before he realized how big the sky really was.

No. It had never really been an issue, or a question. Project Raven wasn't what he wanted. They'd already proved they weren't fit to carry the battle for Earth, much less the greater good. If you were willing to use extortion on your own employees then what would you do to the people you said you were protecting?

There would be other chances to fly. In the meantime, he still had Danny.

He nuzzled into Daniel's hair, snuggled him a little closer, and drifted off to sleep.

==========

Sam yawned and burrowed back into her pillow as she heard the answering machine program activate on her computer in the room down the hall. Bright Colorado sunshine slanted through the curtains across the room but she was still on downtime so she had no inclination to move if it was anything less than a Goa'uld invasion or her dad and Sel'mak wanting to take her to lunch.

"Sam, it's me. I've got a lot of stuff to tell you about --"

Sam was on her feet in a flurry of sheets and blankets. In a moment she was at her home computer and picking up the cordless handset as she clicked off the answering machine program. "Danny?"

"Hey! Did I wake you?"

"No, sweetheart. What's up?"

"Oodles and gobs. We're heading home."

"So soon?" Sam sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes, glanced at the time display on the computer. Almost 10 AM. "What happened?"

"Jack crashed the X-31 yesterday."

"WHAT? Oh God, is he okay?"

"He's fine, Sam, he's fine. Just a laceration on his leg and a small one on his head, and he's sore all over. He managed to land -- sort of. But the X-31 he was flying is pretty much toast. Jack says they might try to rebuild it."

"Oh God, Danny, are you okay?"

Daniel didn't answer for a moment. "Well, you know, a good night's sleep helps," he said softly. "And I don't think I can get more than ten feet away from him for the next year or so..."

"Oh sweetheart, I know."

"But listen, there's more going on. The X-31 was sabotaged. And when we got back last night our room had been searched. Nothing's missing; Jack says it was strictly for intimidation. Did General Hammond clue you in to what happened the other night?"

"Yeah. I'm still on downtime. Teal'c hasn't come home yet, but if you need me I'm there. What did they do to the X-31?"

"Hold on, Jack knows." There was a moment of silence as Daniel handed Jack the cell phone.

"Carter?"

"Next birthday, sir, tell Danny you want to go fishing."

Jack chuckled wearily. "Will do, Major. Hydraulic line on the left rear landing gear exploded. There was some kind of chemical injected into the line with a hypodermic needle and the hole was covered over with epoxy. When it blew it took out most of the control and electrical wiring for the left wing. I was at 45,000 feet when it blew. Skidded down the runway for about a mile."

"Damn. And you walked away with only a couple lacerations?"

"Didn't precisely walk, but yeah. I'm okay now. We're coming home. These goombas from Project Raven can find somebody else. I'm not risking Danny. These twits already proved they're willing to kill to get what they want. They had no guarantees I'd make it down in one piece yesterday."

"No kidding. I'll tell General Hammond. What time are you leaving?"

"We'll start out around 1300. We're packing up now, we'll go eat and get on the road. We'll have to stop somewhere to sleep, but hopefully we'll be back late tomorrow afternoon."

"You know, I could go borrow a passenger plane and come get you. Thirteen hour drive through the desert -- that's a lot of opportunities, sir."

"I know, Sam. I'm tempted to let you come get Danny. But --"

"--But nothing! I'm not leaving you, Jack!" Daniel said loudly in the background.

"Well, there you have it," Jack finished. "He's gotten so overprotective lately... OW!"

Sam grinned. Daniel must have thrown something at him. "Safety in numbers, sir."

"Exactly. Anyway, that's the situation. We'll be on the road by 1300. Stopping tonight around 2100 or whenever we can find a place to sleep. We'll check in through the day. You gonna be home or up at the Mountain?"

"Running errands and cleaning house, sir. I'll keep my cell phone on."

"Good. We'll see you tomorrow."

"You be good to my little brother, sir."

"As good as he'll let me be, Major. See ya later."

==========

Daniel glanced over at Jack sound asleep in the passenger seat and smiled sadly. He was still sore, poor thing, and exhausted. He must have stayed awake part of the night. Daniel felt faintly resentful -- and slightly manipulated -- and guilty. He had thought Jack would drop off to sleep, that he had been as exhausted as he looked. Whatever had kept Jack awake, Daniel wanted to know and help. Silly, possibly too clingy of him (he knew he was too clingy, and he did try not to be), but wherever Jack was Daniel wanted to be; now more than ever.

How had Jack put him to sleep this time? He knew Jack did it sometimes when he felt he was working too hard or was too freaked out to sleep. Sometimes Daniel allowed it, knowing Jack was right. Other times he fought it, because he knew Jack needed him. None of the usual methods had been in evidence -- no hockey or football games, no Enya, he hadn't eaten turkey at dinner last night. No sex -- and Daniel would have refused anyway given the day they'd had, though he couldn't repress a small sigh of regret. What had it been? What had Jack done? He had to know so he could figure out a counter to it...

"Will you stop that? You woke me up."

"Stop what, Jack?"

"Thinking. I can hear the gears grinding."

Daniel smiled as Jack stretched groggily and took off his sunglasses to rub his eyes, then squinted into the mottled distances of Death Valley around them. He reached into the small cooler between his feet for a bottle of water. They had another, larger cooler in the back with more water and Gatorade packed in ice-- you could never be too careful in the desert.

There wasn't much traffic on the long stretches of sand-dusted highway, and Daniel was grateful Jack was awake. The truck had a good air conditioner so they were quite comfortable. Jack snagged Daniel's CD case and started flipping through the pages, then changed the Brandenburg Concerto for Jethro Tull's "Broadsword and the Beast."

"You okay?" Jack asked as the CD began.

"Yeah. Good choice."

Jack reached for his hand from the gearshift and held it on his leg, playing a little with Daniel's fingers.

"Sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Half the people -- and things -- and things that are people -- that we deal with on a daily basis."

Daniel chuckled and squeezed Jack's hand in appreciation of the joke. "They're not all bad."

"Well, yeah, it's a big universe. Statistically impossible they'd all be bad."

"Only you, Jack. Tolerance by statistics."

Jack grinned. "I'm a smart cookie. You said it yourself."

"That you are. Why isn't Mensa after you? They're chasing me like a bunch of hormonally-challenged fifteen-year-old girls."

"Er... uh. They do. Sure. Just haven't paid up my Secret Squirrel dues in a while. Want me to do the secret handshake?"

Daniel cracked up.

"Sounds like Teal'c."

"Uh, Danny, you do know the Vikings used to cut the heads off their enemies, let them get all putrid and then throw them at the enemy lines when they went into battle? Medieval germ warfare."

"I'll see you that and raise you rotting horse carcasses catapulted over castle walls during sieges."

"Eeeuuwww. Hell, Danny, those dead people of yours used to pull the brains out and stick all their stuffings into jars. 'Oh yeah, that's Aunt Senekmet's liver up there on the mantle, and there's her spleen, we use it as a doorstop...' "

"And how is this related in any way to Teal'c?"

"Junior. A man with a snake curled up in his guts ranks right up there with rotting horse corpses."

"He'll appreciate that. He won't get the joke, but he'll appreciate that."

"Tell him the bit about the Vikings, he'll like that."

"KINSEY!" they both said at once.

"God it irks me to think he's so typical for a politician."

"Lowest common denominator or just average?" Jack asked as he handed Daniel a fresh bottle of water.

"Sometimes I think it's the same thing. Don't any of these people ever look beyond power and money?"

"Not if they can help it."

"It gets harder every year to find someone I believe in enough to vote for. And I won't vote for the lesser of two evils."

"Do what I do. Write in Homer Simpson."

"My God, it's the NID theme song," Daniel groaned.

"Y'know, I've always wondered... if security guards hold a party, do they let each other in?"

"And do they frisk each other when they leave?"

"Oooh. Did someone say 'frisk'?"

Daniel looked over at Jack's hopeful smirk. Then he took the hand that had crept onto his thigh and lifted it to kiss the long fingers, smiling. "You must be feeling better."

"Yeahsureyoubetcha."

Daniel laughed at the eagerness. "Forty-seven going on fifteen, Jack."

"And this is bad why?"

"Not bad," Daniel said and picked up Jack's hand again and began kissing each finger. "Not bad at all."

Jack whimpered.

"I was thinking we could stop in Vegas for an hour or so..." Daniel grinned at the frustrated little whimpers; forty-seven going on fifteen for sure. Middle of the desert, nowhere to stop where they wouldn't be seen, they were several hours from where they'd stop for the night. Poor Jack.

Something flickered in the rear-view mirrors.

Jack instantly felt it when Daniel's attention abruptly swerved from teasing to alertness. Daniel clutched his fingers, and his entire body went from relaxed driving to tension. "There's somebody behind us."

"How many?"

"Three. I think. And they're all the same kind of car."

"Floor it, Danny!" Jack turned in his seat to reach for the toolbox he kept in the truck's cramped rear seats.

"Jack, I don't think snow chains and tire irons are going to do any good against these guys," Daniel said as the truck accelerated. They'd been doing eighty, and Daniel swallowed nervously as the needle crept up over one hundred. He was used to icy Colorado mountain roads that didn't encourage comfort at reckless speeds; he wasn't accustomed to driving fast anymore, even on desert roads so straight they could give nuns lessons in political correctness.

Jack turned and wriggled back down into his seat, hurried to buckle his seat belt again. Daniel risked a glance over as Jack shoved the adapter into the power connection on the truck's center console. Jack had a handheld radio of some sort. He reached up and turned on the truck's GPS unit and plugged another cord into the side of the GPS and the other end into the radio. "Go, Danny, run!"

Daniel swallowed nervously again. The speedometer crept up to one hundred twenty-five.

The shimmering watery heat haze over the desert seemed to waver like the event horizon of the Stargate, and like the wormhole shapes appeared arising from nothing. Several dark forms on the road far ahead, quickly resolving into three more vehicles, two trucks and a sedan, all dark indistinct colors. There were men in dark clothing moving between them. "Jack --"

Jack looked up from the radio, eyes instantly assessing the terrain and situation, and hurriedly put the radio into the center console storage compartment. Scrub brush and some broken terrain on the right, more scrub and several boulders on the left. "Slow down, Danny. There's no way to go around them. We'll have to talk our way out. I'll go with them, you run for Vegas and call Sam and General Hammond. I mean it, Danny, you run. Don't worry about me, just run. You can make it to Vegas in less than an hour."

"Jack --"

"No, Danny. They won't hurt me. You run." Jack put every ounce of quiet command into his voice. NID or Project Raven, they wouldn't have anything to work with if he was dead.

Daniel said nothing more, but the look of anxiety on his face was answer enough. Jack grabbed his hand and squeezed it quickly as Daniel slowed the truck as they approached the roadblock. Daniel's answering clutch on his fingers was painful, but just as swiftly gone.

The men moving to meet them at the roadblock wore cammos, Kevlar body armor and full combat gear. Each held an M4 and lifted it as the truck approached, aiming directly at Jack and Daniel. The three cars behind them moved swiftly to close off any route of escape, the passengers jumping out quickly with guns already drawn. Jack released his seat belt and held his hands up as the soldiers surrounded the truck and shouted at them to do so. Daniel did the same, his face white with anxiety.

Two of the soldiers moved to the doors and yanked them open, their compatriots covering them as they pulled Jack and Daniel from the truck into the punishing heat of the day. Two men shoved Jack against the front of the truck, guns aimed at his face, while two others grabbed Daniel and began wrestling to tie his hands. "Hey! Leave him alone, he doesn't have anything to do with this!" Jack yelled as he heard the scuffle behind him and Daniel's yelp of pain.

"That's where you're wrong, Colonel O'Neill," Thomas Barnard said as he moved forward into Jack's line of sight. The big man held a 9MM handgun in his scarred hands. "Captain?"

"Danny!" Jack began struggling against his captors, and then pain exploded in his shoulder and neck. He barely felt it as he fell to the sand-drifted asphalt, and the sounds of the fight no longer registered as he lost consciousness.

==========

Sam tossed two more wrapped packages of chicken into the freezer and reached for the bags of vegetables, tucked them around the into available spaces and elbowed the door shut. Turning around toward the laundry room, she stopped as the phone on the laundry room wall rang suddenly, unexpectedly. "H'lo?"

"Major Carter, we have an emergency situation. We've received a signal from Colonel O'Neill's satellite transponder, I need you back at the base ASAP," General Hammond said quickly. Sam heard the controlled worry in the familiar Texas drawl. "I've already alerted both the California and Nevada state patrols. Major Davis has sent us some intel regarding Project Raven. You'll be briefed en route to their last known location."

"Yes sir, on my way," Sam said. She slammed the phone down and whirled for the basement stairs.

==========

"Colonel O'Neill?"

Parts of him couldn't move. One arm could, and he tried to fight away the hands holding his arms and shoulders, cursing at the pain that exploded in his head as he did so. It was hard to breathe; the air felt like molten metal in his lungs, the smells of hot concrete, desert smells... California? Or Iraq? Had he crashed again? God no: not another one. What had he broken this time...? Someone hauled him upright; there were several voices now all speaking English, hands checking for injuries. He tried to drag his eyes open and the sun burst through like a laser straight to his exploding brain. He curled up against the hands, tried to hold his skull together as it threatened to split, squeezed his eyes shut.

"You're lucky you were in the shade, Colonel O'Neill, if you'd been on the other side of the vehicle you'd be looking at third degree sunburn," said a worried male voice at his side. "Get him inside, quickly!"

The hands were pulling him to his feet. Memory returned in a rush as a cautious glance through squinting, watering eyes showed him the dark gray form of his truck, the passenger side door still open: he was surrounded by uniformed men. CHP? Airmen? He couldn't make out who or what. "Wait," he croaked, cleared his throat, coughed some of the dust out of his lungs.

One of the figures in blue made his way through the crowd. "Jack! What the hell happened here? Where's Dr. Jackson?"

Jack swallowed painfully, then nodded gratefully as General Ogden yelled for someone to bring something to drink. One of the CHP officers had found the big cooler in the back seat of the truck and hurried over with one of the chilled bottles of Gatorade. Jack drank almost half of it before he could speak properly. "Transponder?"

"We switched it off. Some General named Hammond called me and told me you'd gone missing, I hitched a ride with a search-and-rescue team from Edwards. Hammond even gave us the exact GPS coordinates. What happened?"

Jack drank another few swallows of the Gatorade. He looked at his old friend for a long moment, wondering how much he should tell. "The X-31 was sabotaged, Greg; you saw it, I saw it. Those hydraulic lines had something in them that wasn't supposed to be there. Did Hammond tell you anything else?"

General Ogden glanced around at his men securing Jack's truck, pulling it over to the shoulder of the road to keep it out of traffic. The helicopter that had brought the search team from Edwards had pulled up and away, the thump of the rotors receding. One of the CHP men brought another bottle of Gatorade as General Ogden urged Jack toward one of the waiting SUVs used by the highway patrol in the desert. Jack sat down gratefully on the tailgate of one of the trucks and squinted up at the General as he finished the first bottle of Gatorade.

"He said you'd had some trouble," Ogden said quietly. "That your motel room in Lancaster was searched, and that somebody claiming to be from something called Project Raven had offered you a job. Now where's Dr. Jackson?"

Jack closed his eyes briefly. "The bastards took him. I thought it was me they were after." He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, gasped in pain as his hand rasped over twin burns. "Stun gun. All those guns on me and they hit me with a stun gun."

"There's some other General on the way by name of Carter. From Space Command. Said he'd meet you at Edwards."

Jacob. Sam. Jack nodded. The two of them -- or rather three, counting Sel'mak -- would keep him from freaking out and killing anybody who didn't deserve it. "Good. We'll handle it, Greg."

Ogden looked at him for a moment, obviously wanting to ask more, but then shook his head. "I'll have one of the airmen take your truck back to Dryden. We're supposed to get you back to Edwards ASAP. Let's go."

==========

Daniel lifted his head slowly, biting his lip at the pain as strained muscles protested the movement. His eyes were blurry; one blink and he felt his contact lenses moving on his eyes. His hands were bound behind him, and his ankles were bound to the legs of the chair. He forced himself to yawn several times, forcing his eyes to water. It helped, but he really needed his eye drops.

The room was dim, the walls of rough dark gray-green concrete. There were no windows. A single bare light bulb hung in a small round cage directly above him. In front of him was a bare wooden table. He couldn't see any doors. There were no sounds, either within the room or from without.

There was something in the room with him: something alive, moving.

It was sitting against the wall directly across from him, huddled on the floor. At his movement it had twitched a little, but the shadows of the room were so dim that beyond the small circle of light there was no detail. Simply a small form darker than the walls, that made a small involuntary movement as Daniel tried to lift his head.

The hard edges against his wrists were biting into the skin of his wrists, not the joint of his thumbs; zip-ties, not handcuffs. A glance down at his feet and he saw the white ends of the zip-ties binding his ankles to the chair legs.

A noise came from behind him, a heavy door opening, scraping against the floor. Two soldiers in combat gear rushed into the room and Daniel blinked. One of them was carrying a crossbow, a modern version of the ancient weapon in some black plastic material, and lifted it to point at the small huddled figure as he rushed into the room. The other soldier knelt briefly behind Daniel and cut the zip-tie binding his hands, then stood and put a legal pad and several pencils on the table in front of Daniel. In seconds the two had moved away and out the door as quickly as they'd appeared.

"Dr. Jackson."

Daniel tried to twist to see the voice behind him. He'd heard that voice saying something to Jack just before Jack had cried out in sudden pain. One of the soldiers had blindfolded him and they had shoved him into the back of a SUV even while he was struggling to get away. Several hours of driving and he had been herded down interminable corridors, cold, and stale smelling. He recognized the peculiar heavy, closed-in feeling around him even without being able to see. His life was devoted to an operation that existed in similar conditions. They were underground, beneath untold millions of tons of stone.

The last time someone had stuck him inside a strange underground military base they'd asked him what was that big metal ring with the funny symbols. Somehow he didn't think it was Katherine beyond that door.

"Why have you brought me here?" he asked the voice beyond the door.

"We have need of your peculiar form of genius, Dr. Jackson," the voice continued.

Daniel rubbed his wrists, examining the red stripes where the zip-ties had been. "Did you kill Colonel O'Neill?"

There was a moment of silence. "That's irrelevant, Dr. Jackson."

Not to me, Daniel thought fiercely.

"I have heard a lot about you," the voice from beyond the door continued. "Fluency in twenty-six languages, a double Ph.D by the time you were twenty-three. I'm told no one has ever been able to make an accurate estimate of your intelligence. Before your fall from grace among your academic colleagues, your were thought to be the sort of genius that comes along perhaps once in a generation, perhaps once in a century."

The thing in the corner was twitching again. Daniel watched it warily, trying to discern the shapes of limbs or features of any sort. It seemed like a shapeless dark mass, huddled against the wall. Was it a child? He'd been hearing he was a genius since before his parents died. "Genius" held all the emotional impact of "left-handed" or "blue eyes" for him. It was just something he was.

"Fortunately for us, your area of expertise lies within the realm of communication. We have need of your services as a translator, Dr. Jackson. That entity in the corner has been kept alive for over sixty-five years. In all that time, only one person has ever communicated with it. We want technical information -- propulsion systems, power sources, all relevant information pertaining to the spacecraft it arrived in. If this information is not forthcoming, the entity will be terminated."

"Is Colonel O'Neill dead?" Daniel asked again.

"Irrelevant, Dr. Jackson."

Daniel closed his eyes. "Then we have nothing more to say." Until Jack and Sam and SG-9 come through that door, then I'll be happy to call you dead; iff the Marines leave anything worth talking to.

"That won't be a problem, Dr. Jackson."

Nothing had changed, but suddenly Daniel was aware of a presence growing in the room. His eyes flew open again. The awareness came from none of his physical senses -- nothing in the room had changed. It felt like when he was puzzling out an artifact, the moment when utter confoundment suddenly twisted into brilliant understanding and previously misunderstood symbology turned into comprehension like sight coming into focus. Or like when Jack slipped into his office door with that assassin's silence to stand in the shadows and watch him -- he always felt that enfolding bright joy wrapping around him without Jack ever making a sound. Shards of words, syllables, and symbols began to bubble up unbidden in the darkness of his mind, the familiar and beloved phonemes of every language he'd ever learned, the learning so effortless it astonished him that not everyone could hear and see the utter simplicity of it.

There was a coldness, a liquid-air type of coolness, mental rather than physical, as if a lacuna of silence had made an eddy in his consciousness. Something directing his mind away, shunting his thoughts aside, weaving a wall of meaningless phonemes, cut-up bits of words meaningless in themselves, a rushing swirl of distraction.

"Who are you?" he asked suddenly. And thought it, repeating each word in his mind in all the various shades and variations of meaning, singular, plural, at that moment, in the past, are, were, will be. He thought it in Latin, in Abydonian, then in Goa'uld.

But the silence remained. He might as well ask names of the stars.

==========

"They started out as an archive project for the Department of Defense," General Jacob Carter said over his shoulder to his daughter as she followed at his heels, SG-9 half-running behind, all of them in desert gear. The Marines were in full combat gear save for the more conspicuous of the Goa'uld weaponry -- no staffs but all were carrying zats in concealed holsters along with their P90s, MP5s and M4s. They were running through the corridors of the SGC toward the elevators to the top of the mountain and the helicopter pads. "They had warehouses full of documents that had to be scanned or entered by hand into archival databases, starting from before World War One; intel, defense research, dispatches, DoD memos and reports, everything that passed through from 1900 on. They got up to World War Two and all the intel that had been gathered about Hitler's obsession with the occult -- the Indiana Jones movies were partially based on fact. Hitler was trying to find anything of a 'magical' nature, partially to prove the so-called 'superiority' of the Aryan race but primarily for weapons. The archive group found references to a UFO crash in Ethiopia in 1938. The crash was recovered from the site by Hitler's forces, boxed up in a crate and put on a ship. But despite what the captain of the ship claimed it didn't go to Berlin. The Nazis had begun building a base in Antarctica, and all of the 'magical' items were taken there for research. Somewhere off the coast of Argentina the cargo ship lost radio contact, and it was never seen again. It never arrived in Antarctica."

"So Project Raven found this missing ship?" Sam asked as they piled into an elevator.

Jacob nodded. "Not immediately. You're getting ahead of the plot, Sam. Project Raven was a civilian project -- the head was former CIA, but one of his immediate subordinates was an Army defense intelligence specialist. Thomas Barnard. He worked with the Mujjahadin in Afghanistan, fought in the Gulf War. His unit got trapped in a barn, and someone threw a Molotov cocktail. Major burns over about thirty percent of his body. He was captured and shipped to Syria. They didn't treat the burns, naturally. It just made the torture all that much easier." Jacob stopped and shook his head with a grimace. "Sel'mak's upset about that. She's saying there are some Tau'ri who should never call themselves human. Well. By the time Barnard was found and rescued, his mind was pretty much gone and it was a near miss on the rest of him. He was rehabilitated, medically discharged from the Army, and was recruited for Project Raven on the advice of his former commanding officer. Apparently reading all that Nazi propaganda did a number on his mental state. The head of the project went missing and was found dead of a 'self-inflicted' gunshot wound. Barnard stepped into his place and started making deals with the wrong people. The NID. And then Senator Kinsey got involved."

"Rat bag son of a--" Sam started.

"Samantha! I will not tolerate such language." Sel'mak's voice from her father's mouth was so sudden and so reproachful that Sam stopped in mid-rant, blinked, and shut her mouth.

The Marines in the elevator with them were smirking, but not laughing. Sam glared around at them, then laughed and shook her head at herself. "Yes, Mother," she muttered.

Jacob grinned and shook his head at her. "Can't get away with anything anymore, can you?" he said as the elevator doors slid open.

"So that's where the leak was? Kinsey? Or the NID?" Sam asked as they rushed down the corridor to toward the outer doors.

"Kinsey got them the funding, the NID gave them some very limited intel. Just enough to keep Barnard's paranoia going, and keep him motivated to do his job. What do you think happens when you tell a borderline paranoid that yes; there really are alien conspiracies within the government? There really are ultra-top-secret projects devoted to contacting alien life, and that that project has been in a secret war to save the planet for over five years? I'm guessing here, but I'd be willing to bet Kinsey set this up in one of his attempts to discredit or expose the SGC. Barnard's obsession to fight the 'dreaded alien menace' made him a loose cannon, and he has several dozen data mining specialists within Project Raven. They found the SGC by correlating and analyzing logistics data. You might be able to hide the SGC physically, but how can you hide the fact that there is more food being brought into this mountain than should be needed? And how do you hide all those shipments of medical supplies that Janet uses? Why would NORAD need all the ordinance and ammunition?" Jacob shrugged slightly. "To be honest, I'm rather impressed. The Tok'ra have been using such techniques to find Goa'uld strongholds for centuries. But most of us are from cultures that are far more advanced than Earth."

The rest of the Marines joined them at the outer doors, and they ran for the helicopters.

"So why Colonel O'Neill and Daniel?" Sam yelled up to her father as they all piled on board and got secured in their seats. She shoved a pair of headphones on as Jacob spoke briefly to the pilot, and then he was beside her again.

"Because there was more in that alien spacecraft than just technology, Sam," Jacob said, his voice now coming through the headphones as he too tugged a headset on. "There was an alien inside. They need Daniel to talk to it. And if they could blackmail Jack into bringing him to them, so much the better."

"Blackmail?"

Jacob gave her a significant look. Sam blinked, thinking, and then the pieces fell into place.

"Mother fucking rat-bag piece of shit! I'll tear those bastards apart with my bare hands!" Sam spat finally.

Jacob squeezed her hand. "For once, sweetheart, Sel'mak isn't arguing."

==========

"Where are they?" Jack asked as he tugged the sand-tan t-shirt down over his head. Sam handed him his sunglasses and stuck his battered old cap on his head, and he sat down to tug on his boots while she turned to get his P90. Jacob was standing at the locker room door keeping watch as Jack hurried to get geared up, leaning against the wall shaking his head in bemusement -- SG-1 lived out of each other's pockets, as Daniel had once said. And Jacob couldn't be more grateful that there were three of the finest men in this crazy universe that he could trust with his daughter's life. "Barnard said Groom Lake."

"They were at Area 51," Jacob confirmed. "When Kinsey got involved and increased their funding they built a new site at that dry lake at the northwestern edge of the old Nellis bombing range. The CIA has pinpointed their satellite uplink."

"Do we know if Daniel's there?" Sam asked as Jack got to his feet and she handed him the P90.

"No. There wasn't a satellite in a proper position to have seen their vehicles," Jacob sighed. "But it's a place to start."

Jack nodded silently.

"We'll find him," Sam said firmly, putting a hand on Jack's shoulder. "We will. He'll probably meet us at the door and say 'What took you so long?' "

"I hope you're right," Jack said. He tried to give her a reassuring grin but it just wouldn't work. That empty place just behind his left shoulder felt like a hole in the world that wouldn't ever be filled. Something always told him Daniel was alive in situations like this, but he still couldn't trust it any further than he could throw Teal'c; at least not until Daniel was beside him again. "Let's go."

==========

He could barely see the walls anymore. The phantom images blurred the real world, dimmed the light above him, made all insubstantial. He knew he was looking down at his hands on the table, he knew that they were there, he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms when he clenched his fingers into fists. All he saw was a purposeful mist swirling in streaks around him, filled with symbols -- letters, numbers, hieroglyphics, Russian Cyrillic letters, Sanskrit, Chinese ideograms and Japanese kanji, cuneiform, Abydonian hieroglyphs, Goa'uld, Celtic Ogham script, Norse runes, mathematical equations, Morse code. There were bursts of static and bits of music, the regular sweep of a pulsar in deep space keeping its exacting beat in the cold far hydrogen-hissing reaches of the universe.

Part of him was still able to think, that familiar clarity of cold intellect that could completely miss a squad of angry Jaffa yet translate the wall full of Goa'uld hieroglyphs directly behind them. In the middle of his stunned incomprehension of this new way of seeing, he had the presence of mind to wonder why he was seeing and hearing only bits and pieces and not entire concepts or words; and why nothing original? Why only the symbols, scripts and musical notes he already knew? The mental clammy coldness was like the mist of heavy fog, seeping through his mind, swirling in the symbols streaming around him. Fear, he thought. No, it had gone past fear long ago. This was despair.

Then it came to him on a wave of understanding.

Sixty-plus years of fear had driven the alien insane, reamed out its mind down to the most fundamental registration of information. The alien was psionic -- telepathic or empathic. It wasn't capable of communicating anymore -- all it could do was reflect back the most basic core linguistic programming of whatever mind it came into contact with. It couldn't form words or even concepts anymore, much less try to bridge the gap between Tau'ri and itself.

His sudden comprehension brought horror; a sick primal terror so personal he knew he'd have nightmares for weeks. And then a flood of compassion. His life was about communication, something so fundamental to his nature that he identified more as the container of those twenty-nine languages and all the myriad non-verbal communicative systems he'd learned than as "Daniel". He'd been chattering in Arabic, English, German and Hebrew long before he ever knew his name was Daniel. Without those languages, the ability to parse concepts into spoken or drawn or gestured words... well, there were fates worse than death. And some of them had nothing to do with the Goa'uld.

Alphabets and hieroglyphs were too abstract. He needed something visceral, something inherent in the physical laws constant throughout the universe. This entity was not even remotely human, nothing at all like the Tau'ri-descended races the Goa'uld had seeded throughout their realms. There was no common ground except those things inherent in nature -- mathematics, and the binary choices of Yes/No. Later would come physics and chemistry, but that would take other minds than his own. Sam, perhaps.

And to be honest he didn't know if the alien could ever recover enough to comprehend anything more complicated than simple numbers. But he had to try.

He began counting, visualizing dots of light in the amounts he simultaneously verbalized, repeating the numbers in Latin as well as English, hoping to avoid confusion. He recited one through nine, then blanked his visualization and thought of zero. Then he began the exercise again. After five repetitions there had been no flicker of query or interest, no indication of recognition. Sam had told him once that no species could achieve space travel without mathematics, that in fact no civiliation could arise without mathmatics. From his own discipline he knew that the beginnings of Egyptian civilization came from managing the yearly flooding of the Nile -- for which was needed geometry to lay out canals and astonomy to provide a calendar to fix the approximate dates of the floods. Once management of the flooding led to regular crop farming, accounting was developed to determine what portion of the harvest should be given to Pharaoh. All derived from mathematics, and numbers were the key. So whatever else this entity might be, it must have some understanding of numbers and simple logic.

Ten repetitions of the exercise, and there was still no response.

He blanked his mind, took another deep breath to banish the incipient frustration, and began again.

==========

They came down on the small complex of low buildings like a ton of bricks.

Three helicopters with the combined forces of SG-9 and a squad from Edwards roared across the desert, rising out of the shimmering heat haze, dark swift forms racing ahead of the clouds of dust and sand whipped up by their passing. One of the helicopters swung away from the others and began a wide circling perimeter should anyone try to escape, while the other two descended into the dusty expanse of cracked concrete surrounding the half-dozen buildings, circumventing the high chain-link fence. The moment the skids touched the concrete Jack, Sam and Jacob piled out, guns drawn, running to the first of the buildings. SG-9, a dozen strong, split up and took the closest of the flanking buildings. On the other side of the complex the squad from Edwards was landing and doing the same.

People began coming out of the rooms along the main hallway, shouting in fear as the two SG teams began to search the place. Jack was in no mood to be nice, not even to what were obviously civilians. Jacob was already interrogating someone who seemed to be some kind of administrator; Sam's high strident voice sounded further along the corridors ordering people out as she methodically went through every room.

"Thomas Barnard," Jack said gruffly to the group of what looked like college kids he'd lined up against one of the walls. "Where is he?"

They looked at one another, obviously frightened, holding a silent debate as to whether they should tell or not. Jack heard a zat firing further down the hallway, heard Sam's voice cursing. The group in front of Jack grew even more anxious as she came back into the hallway dragging a limp body by one arm.

"NID" Sam growled by way of explanation. She dropped the body on the floor and turned to run up the hallway again, whirled into another room with P90 raised and screaming at the occupants of the room to get out.

"Barnard," Jack snarled again.

"He's not here," Jacob said, coming down the hallway and answering Jack's snarl.

"But Daniel could be," Jack said. With a grimace he gestured with the P90 at the group before him. "Get out."

They fled. Jacob and Jack nodded to each other and followed Sam.

They found a few dozen others in the first building, stumbling fearfully out of rooms filled with computers: archivists, data miners, engineers, several physicists of various sorts. The troops from Edwards reported a building consisting of carefully sealed clean rooms filled with half-constructed forms -- satellites of some kind, judging from what the engineers they'd caught had told them. SG-9 had found another engineering building, and asked for help to identify some of the things they'd found. The Marines of the SGC knew better than to touch anything they couldn't identify.

"Nothing," Jacob said tensely as they searched the last of the rooms in the main building.

Jack leaned back against a wall for a moment, then turned and slammed his fist against the unyielding cinderblock. "Damn it, Jacob --"

"That NID flunky," Jacob said, overriding Jack's words.

They fled back up the hallways to where Sam had left her stunned victim. The man was just coming around now -- it had taken nearly fifteen minutes to clear everyone out and search the place. Jack dragged the man up against the wall in the hallway and got out his zat, grinned mirthlessly at eyes widening with fear as the Goa'uld weapon activated with a small hum of power.

"Two shots kills," Jack said grimly. "Three won't leave a body to bury. Your choice. You rat-bags should know better than to kidnap or coerce a member of Stargate Command. Especially Daniel Jackson."

Jacob put a hand on Jack's shoulder and bowed his head for a moment. When he looked up again his eyes were glowing gold. "Answer us. Daniel. Thomas Barnard. Where are they?" Sel'mak's voice was so chill that she sounded like Ra on a bad hair day.

Faced with an enraged alien and an even more enraged Air Force colonel holding an alien weapon trained at his head, any objections were futile.

And in the end it was only Sel'mak that kept Jack from killing him anyway.

==========

Jacob listened to the acknowledgements from the other helicopter as the last of SG-9 piled on board their helicopter. All accounted for; no injuries. He climbed aboard himself and yelled up at the pilot to go as across the complex the other helicopter rose into the sky.

The sun was starting to set, the long summer twilight beginning with the faintest hints of purple and sapphire in the eastern horizon. The pilots stayed low, following the barren terrain as far as they were able; the few rudimentary asphalt tracks through the old bombing range flashing by in a blur, the winding lighter lines of dirt roads. Jack sat tensely in the open hatchway watching the terrain blur by, eyes narrowed against the wind. Across from him, jammed in between two of the Marines, Sam was clenching her jaw hard enough to make the muscles ache. The ice in her gaze was the coldest thing in that desert at the moment.

They came over the ridgeline and descended toward the complex of buildings at the foot of a low dark mountain, one of the most heavily secured places on the planet. For probably the first time in its long and checkered history, Area 51 was about to have unexpected -- and hostile -- visitors.

==========

General Hammond must have warned the top brass at Area 51 not to get in their way. The Black Ops units that were base security met them as they landed. Barnard himself wasn't there, but two of his troops had come to retrieve the alien entity that Project Raven kept in Area 51's containment facility. Area 51 was a vast complex, encompassing most of the interior of the hollowed-out mountain and spilling out into the building complex at its foot. The surrounding foothills also held catacombs of bunkers, hidden tunnels, and natural caverns, some long forgotten or never explored. Barnard's men had taken the alien entity in a Humvee and headed off into the hills. The moment Jacob heard this, he radioed to the pilot of the third helicopter to begin a search sweep, and in moments they found the line of tracks in the desert dust.

==========

After a hundred repetitions of the numbers zero through nine, Daniel had abandoned that idea and gone on to geometric shapes; point, line, circle, triangle, square, pyramid, cube, sphere, pentangle, dodecahedron, icosahedron. Memories intruded -- of some psychologist, just after his parents had died. He hadn't known what the games were at the time, but nearly twenty years after the fact he'd realized it was an intelligence test. One of the tests had been for photographic memory and spatial relationships. He remembered he'd liked the soothing regularity of the shapes, like visual poetry.

There was still no response, no interest, no indication that his efforts were even registering on the alien psyche. He felt nothing from it. No interaction at all.

Maybe it was no use after all?

How long had he been doing this? And where was he exactly, in this place where he couldn't see himself but only feel the creeping misty coolness of meaningless symbols sliding against his thoughts? He was stone, the rigid ordered structure of concept, phoneme, grammar like boulders in a swift-running stream.

Beginning to get weary of the intense concentration of his efforts, he let the images fade and tried to make his mind blank and empty. Another memory intruded, but this time it was welcome -- candlelight, sandalwood, and Teal'c's serene ebony face in the deep silences of kel'no'reem. Other memories, of Jack trying his best not to squirm when Teal'c tried to teach him the basic levels of the ancient meditation, of Sam claiming that she relaxed better when she was doing quadratic equations in her head. The memories of his friends -- his family -- so vivid that whatever fears he'd had were far distant things. In the mind, there was no distance and no time.

The larger part of his consciousness stayed in that place, that memory, safe with Jack and Sam and Teal'c, disrupted only when the door behind him scraped open on rusty hinges and loud voices burst in his ears. They cut him free of the chair, bound his hands with handcuffs, pulled a blindfold over his head, and hauled him out of the room by his arms.

The voices were strident with anxiety. Under the blindfold Daniel smiled. Jack had found him, and the SG-1 Calvary was on the way.

==========

"Where is he?" Jack growled at the two captains SG-9 had caught as they tried to make a break for their Humvee. Crunch and Courageous weren't talking, and Sam's fluent curses from the tiny bunker built into the rock told him they'd managed to wipe their laptop's hard drive. There was no sign of Barnard, and the troops from Edwards had just radioed in that an unscheduled passenger jet had just taken off from Area 51's small airstrip. Jack squeezed the activation points on the zat and smiled frostily as the small weapon unfolded itself and began humming up to full charge. Around him, SG-9 did the same.

"General! Colonel O'Neill, we've got a Humvee approximately a mile and a half northeast from your position, it just came out of a cave, heading east-northeast --" came the voice of one of the pilots over the radio.

"Jack! Sam! Let's go!" Jacob called.

Jack wanted to kill something, but orders were orders. "Sorry, guys," he said to SG-9. He shot each of the captains once, stunning them, and whirled away. "You heard General Carter, let's move!"

==========

The pilots gave them exact directions. The hard-packed, parched arroyos were pockmarked with caves worn away in ages long past when Groom Lake had been just that -- a lake. Sinuous organic curves broken by sharp-edged gullies where the infrequent desert thunderstorms cut channels in soft sandstone, washes of crumbled sand crackling beneath their boots as they scrambled up and over. Sam was keeping pace beside him, and Jacob a few dozen meters ahead -- for an old man with a snake in his head he could still outrun all of SG-9. Jack pulled his water bottle out and took a long drink, and Sam took the hint and did the same without a word. It was well over one hundred degrees, and even though they were in the rocks and often in the shade the air was still so dry it burned going down your throat.

Jacob topped the next ridge of stone and stopped abruptly. He held up a hand and they all stopped dead in their tracks.

"Jack," Sel'mak's voice drifted back softly to them, "There are animals -- canids -- how very odd..."

Jack climbed the small ridge quickly and as quietly as he could. And stopped in silent astonishment.

Four long-legged gray-white forms were milling around a dark hole in a wall of stone some several dozen meters ahead. As Jack focused on them the largest turned its shaggy head toward him, and feral yellow eyes burned bright gold over a whiskered snout and a lolling pink tongue. One of the other coyotes sneezed loudly; one tumbled playfully over onto its back daring the fourth to play. The largest stared into Jack's eyes for one long moment, and then ducked aside and bumped into the one who had sneezed. And then they were gone, calmly trotting down the arroyo and away.

"What were they doing?" Sel'mak asked softly.

Jack shook his head slightly. "Ask Daniel sometime about how the animals got their colors," he said quietly. And then he was running toward the cave, knowing already what he'd find within.

==========

"Danny!"

Daniel smiled under the blindfold, and his mind filled with joy, as he felt eager hands haul him up from where he was curled uncomfortably on the floor of the cave. A moment later the blindfold was gone and there was Jack, relief written in every line of his face and joy the answer of Daniel's own in the deep brown eyes. And Sam was there, behind him, he was caught in a Jack and Sam sandwich as they both hugged him at once. He laughed helplessly, wishing he could hug them back but certainly happy to lean against Jack's shoulder while Sam took a screwdriver to the lock of the handcuffs. And laughed as one of the Marines handed her a pair of cutters when the screwdriver proved ineffectual. They'd have to saw the metal cuffs off but at least his hands were free, and he could give Jack a proper hug while Sam cuddled against his back again happily.

Then they were getting him to his feet, Daniel's arms around their shoulders as Jacob came forward to look him over, pronounced him fit enough as he straightened and stood on his own, then shooed his daughter away and hugged Daniel himself.

"Wait, Jack, we have a problem," Daniel said as Jack reached for his radio to call their helicopters for pick-up. "Barnard had an alien -- it was nothing I recognized, you were right about that. But they had the poor thing for over sixty years and they've driven it insane."

"Daniel?" Sam's voice from further inside the cave made them all turn. She was kneeling and staring at something slumped against the wall.

"The bastard left it here," Daniel cursed as he hurried to her. "It's all right, Sam, it can't -- it's insane, but not violent. It's vegetative, it really doesn't even know we're here." He turned as Jacob knelt beside them. "Jacob, has Sel'mak ever seen anything like this?"

Jacob's eyes flashed golden. "I will have to think about this, Daniel. There is something familiar about it, but it's a far memory. Have you managed any contact with it?"

"Not really. But it's psionic -- telepathic or empathic, I couldn't really determine which. It's so badly damaged mentally that it can't even form proper concepts even within its own mind. I don't know if anything could help it, but -- " Daniel stopped and shook his head sadly. "I did try."

"We'll take it to the Nox," Jack said softly as he joined them. He dropped a comforting hand on Daniel's shoulder. "They'd be happy to take in a stray, and they could help it if anyone could. It'll be all right."

"An admirable solution," Sel'mak said softly. "Let's go home."

==========

As fun as it might have been to pile SG-9 into the back of the truck and spend two days partying their way home, Jack and Daniel reluctantly conceded that the sooner they were back at the SGC with the unknown alien the better it would be for all concerned. Jacob and Sam had taken the alien and commandeered a small military passenger transport, SG-9 had returned in their helicopters, and Jack and Daniel had gone to Dryden to retrieve Jack's truck and make their own way home. With Project Raven in shambles it would be safe enough, and this time they went armed with a pair of zats and Jack's MP5.

They stopped in Durango for the night, glad to be in the mountains and the high country again, eating Chinese take-out on the balcony of their rather expensive hotel room, sharing a bottle of good wine and the exhaustion of a long day on the road. Above them, a few high clouds were flying on a fast wind in the height of heaven, brushing the bottom edge of the Moon, but otherwise the sky was clear. The wind was gentler where they were, warm with summer and smelling faintly of pine smoke.

Jack had been quiet for some time, finishing the remains of his sweet and sour chicken and taking long looks out at the forest on the slopes of the mountains. Daniel put aside the empty containers from his own meal and sighed, leaned back in his chair and drank the last of his wine. Then almost as if they'd planned it or had spoken aloud his free hand fell over the arm of his chair -- his fingers falling to entwine perfectly with Jack's hand that fell a split-second before his own; too strung-out to joke, but too happy to be together. They turned their heads to look at each other in the dark, and grinned before chuckling softly.

"I don't think I should go back to Dryden anymore," Jack said softly.

Daniel was silent for another long moment. "It's part of you, Jack. You shouldn't have to give that up."

Jack squeezed his fingers. "I think Greg Ogden is with Project Raven. As long as he's there, I can't go back. I'd be in danger every time I climbed into anything with wings." He shrugged slightly. "And... I'm getting too old for it, Danny."

Daniel didn't challenge that statement, though he wanted to. "New directions, Jack."

"Yeah," Jack said reluctantly. "New directions."

Daniel squeezed his fingers. "Stay here."

Jack did as he was told as Daniel ducked into their room to get something, and emerged with a folded sheaf of papers. He left the light on in the room so that it would provide illumination over Jack's shoulder so he could read.

"What's this?" Jack asked, recognizing it was a printed-out website page.

"It's a software package, Jack; a CAD/CAM package. Sam told me it's one of the industry standards for designing aircraft." Daniel smiled as Jack looked up at him. "I ordered it a couple weeks ago and Sam said it arrived yesterday. She'll help you install it on your computer. If you design something, we'll help you build it."

Jack blinked. "Jeez Louise, Danny... you do realize how much that costs? The money's one thing, but do you realize how much time you're talking?"

Daniel nodded. "Yeah. Sam gave me a pretty good idea. You're my family, Jack. I love you, and you love flying. I could no more allow you to be without airplanes than I could live without all my languages. It's what you are. I know how painful it is to live without the thing that gives you life." He shrugged slightly. "I won't allow that. The rest of our lives with the Stargate may be the roller coaster ride from hell, but as long as I can make life here on Earth mean something then it's worth it."

"More than worth it, Danny," Jack said, squeezing his hand. "More than I have any right to expect. And maybe more than you know. I'm not going to sit around fishing once I retire. I haven't thought about it much, but you always go back to what you love. It's what I went to school for, Danny. Designing airplanes."

Daniel smiled. "I know. And Jack?"

"Yeah?"

Daniel stood up, tugged on Jack's hand and pulled him back into the room. "You are not old."

"Not old? You looked at me lately?" Jack grinned as Daniel shut the sliding glass door behind them.

"Every chance I get, flyboy. Every chance I get."

"Why Dr. Jackson, have you been ogling me? Something tells me I should feel abused."

Daniel laughed. "Remember what you were saying about frisking people?"

"Ooh. Frisk away, Dr. Jackson."

Daniel burst out laughing and proceeded to do just that.

The End