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Title: Indemnities Author: drgemini24 Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Other SD type: Unrequited Feelings Season: Any Season Rating: R Warnings: Violence, Some Profanity Length: Novel Episode Related (spoilers): Need Summary: Daniel is severely injured and then abducted on a mission by a new Goa'uld on the block. Sam has to be the honorary Daniel Jackson, and get him home again, but then disobeys Jack. Will he be alright? Will she be punished? Disclaimer: This story was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt has been made to copyright any characters which may not have been originally created by the author, and no profit is made from this work of fiction. Any original characters and the stories themselves are the property of the author. Thanks to OdeToSpot for pointing out a wee Star Wars related inaccuracy – cheers.
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SG-1 and SG-5 had just arrived on P9M-143, where O'Neill ordered SG-5 to secure a perimeter around the gate. Before the gruff Windy-city inhabitant could say anything, Daniel was already making his way towards the ruins in the distance.
He was about to call him back but then decided against it, knowing that the younger man was unstoppable, so he told Teal’c, "T, watch Daniel's six - that pretty young thing will only get hit on my some ethereal beauty!"
Teal’c nodded in acknowledgement and quickly followed the bespectacled Archaeologist, staff weapon in hand. O'Neill quipped to Carter, "Carter... do your scientific thing."
Carter replied, with a bemused look on her face as she extracted her soil sampling kit from her bag, "Yes, Sir."
As Teal’c stood guard, making sure he was in earshot of the Archaeologist, Daniel videoed the inscriptions on the walls, all the while making notes and talking into the microphone. After he had recorded as much as he possibly could, he excitedly ran out of the ruins, past a bemused Teal’c, and towards the 'gate.
SG-5 chuckled amongst themselves on seeing the breathless academic, and O'Neill held him by the shoulders in an attempt to stop him.
He remarked, "Found a spring of beer?!"
Daniel told him with breathless excitement, as Carter approached their position, "It's amazing. The temple has been abandoned for five hundred years and is made of mudbrick. It's a temple of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom in battle and crafts..."
O'Neill interrupted him with a remark, "Wisdom in battle and crafts?! What, the Greeks knitted their enemies into retreat?!"
Daniel continued, ignoring the comment, "The inscriptions are in hieroglyphs! We know that the Greek had trade links with the Egyptians, but this is a whole new kettle of fish. The Goa'uld abducted these people from Greece and Egypt, but the style of mud-brick also suggests that Sumerians may have been abducted too."
Carter smiled in admiration as O'Neill remarked, an eyebrow raised, "And, pray, what of the people, Doctor Jackson?"
"I'm just getting to that. Greek temples traditionally have a statue of the god in question. However, the one here is missing. It would suggest that the people were relocated, 'cos when Greek communities migrated, they tended to take their god's statue with them."
"The kitchen sink?!"
After a more detailed Archaeological and Geological survey undertaken by Daniel, assisted by academic reinforcements from Earth, the assembled personnel made preparations to return to Earth.
Just as O'Neill was about to order Carter to dial home, they were ambushed by Jaffa. The SG personnel immediately took defensive positions around the DHD, MALP and local Geology, before returning fire.
Teal’c alone took out most of the enemy, but Daniel took several staff blasts to the torso as he struggled to dial home. He finally collapsed to the ground, much to his team-mates' horror. Carter and a medic attempted to pull him out of harm's way in order to stabilise him, but they were forced to retreat.
The remaining Jaffa overcame them and they were forced to leave Daniel behind as a heavily guarded Jaffa escort seized Daniel's lifeless body. Carter wanted to take them all out, but O'Neill restrained her. The Jaffa retreated and O'Neill reluctantly ordered Reynolds to dial home, despite Carter's protests.
Daniel could feel no pain, although the same went for his legs. He idly thought that perhaps his spine had been severed, and that maybe he was dying. He felt someone hoisting him up and then there was nothing.
He woke up in a Sarcophagus and quickly attempted to get out of it, remembering how, years back, he had gone crazy after being over-exposed to that particular piece of Goa’uld technology.
He eventually managed to climb out and that was when he noticed that his BDUs had been stripped of weaponry. He muttered to himself, "Not even an energy bar."
He looked around him and finally noticed the Jaffa. He waved at them with a cheesy grin and said, "Hi guys, I'm a little lost..."
He was interrupted by the one who seemed to be the First Prime, "Silence!"
Daniel raised his eyebrows, exhaled and said, "Ok..."
"You will tell me your name."
"Really? I mean, you'd think that if you took me specifically and healed me, then you would know my name."
The First Prime threatened him with a staff weapon, so he said, "Ok, ok, no need for that. My name's Han Solo."
Back at Stargate Command, Carter immediately approached Hammond and said, "Sir, request permission to lead a rescue mission to P9M-143."
"Request denied, Major. I refuse to send any more men until we know what the full situation is out there."
She stormed out of the gateroom in anger, as her team-mates looked on with concern. Hammond told them, "Briefing in one hour."
After a briefing, in which the events leading up to Daniel's shooting and capture were revealed, Carter tried to distract herself with looking through Daniel's notes and video footage from 143.
O'Neill entered her lab, concern all over his face. He asked her, "Carter, how're ya doing?!"
Carter dropped her pen, looked up and snapped, "How d'you think?! We've lost Daniel! We could've stopped them from taking him!"
She immediately apologised, "I'm sorry, Sir. I just feel we could have done a lot more to bring him home."
He raised an eyebrow and said nonchalantly, "Hammond's sent a UAV to 143. Turns out there's a large Jaffa camp three clicks North of the 'gate. If we took all the SG-teams there would still be no guarantee that we would overcome them."
She held her head in her hands and sighed in frustration, and she asked, "What about the Tok'ra or the Asgard?"
"Oh yeah, those guys aren't picking up. I'm beginning to think they only drop by when their own asses are on the line. So, what'cha doin'?"
"I'm looking through the notes and video footage Daniel took before he was abducted. I've had to use some of his books to decode the writing. There could be some clue as to what happened to him."
"Shouldn't Balinsky be doing this?"
"I had nothing better to do, and Balinsky's annoying."
Daniel was brought before Athena, and was made to kneel before the Goa’uld.
He tentatively looked up at her and said with a smile, "Hi."
Athena looked down at him and asked, "Are you not Daniel Jackson of the Tau'ri?"
He hitched up his glasses as he replied, "As I told your First Prime back there, I'm Han Solo."
She snarled at him, "You test my patience, Tau'ri. Tell me everything you know."
"Well, I do know a lot about Egypt and Mesopotamia, not forgetting..."
She interrupted his unwitty comeback with a Goa’uld ribbon device, and he writhed in pain. A few minutes later, she stopped and he collapsed to the ground, weakened by the psychological torture.
She said, arrogantly, "You are Daniel Jackson of the Tau'ri, comrades of the Shol'va, Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill. If you do not tell me what I want to know, I will ensure your torture will be many times worse than what you just experienced."
She clapped her hands and Jaffa moved in to extract the crumpled Archaeologist.
The remaining members of SG-1, SG-5 and Hammond were in the briefing room. Everyone except Carter sat at the table, while she stood at the front and addressed the group.
She pointed to various slides as she talked, "Using Daniel's notes and footage, I have discovered that most of the inhabitants of P9M-143 were enslaved around half a millennium ago, and changed beyond recognition to become what the inscriptions say, 'devoted slaves of Athena'. It appears that the inhabitants are the hostile Jaffa we exchanged fire with and who abducted Daniel. According to the inscriptions, a large vessel, home to Athena, remains in geostationary orbit above the planet as the natives cannot live for long periods away from it, due to perhaps certain unique environmental factors. The environmental factors could be the narcotics in the soil that Doctor Morgan discovered. The Jaffa are literally addicted to the planet."
She sat down in her usual seat, and O'Neill remarked, "No Goa’uld rehab clinics?!"
Hammond looked at him testily before asking, "What happened to the other inhabitants? You said that most of the inhabitants were enslaved."
She replied, "I'm not sure, Sir, but it looks as if there was a spot of ethnic cleansing."
O'Neill visibly cringed and Hammond said, "If indeed Doctor Jackson is on the ship, then how would we extract him?"
She replied, "We could ring aboard using the Prometheus and use the Tok'ra radioactive isotopes to escape detection. It's just a matter of finding him and ringing back, and shouldn't take more than a few hours. The Goa’uld will want him alive as he is valuable due to the Ancients' knowledge hidden in his brain."
Hammond asked, "How long would it take for the Prometheus to get to 143?"
"By my calculations, Sir, it would take four and a half hours using the sub-light engines. The hyper-drive is still a little shaky but using that would quarter the time."
"You have a go. Dismissed."
Daniel was repeatedly tortured and thrown into Athena's brig. She seemed angered as she could get no more information from him. Somehow, he had managed to throw up mental defences and protect his subconscious mind. He reasoned that perhaps this was a legacy of his ascended days and he was thankful.
Between torture sessions, he tried to assess the situation. They needed him alive for informational purposes. He admitted to himself that he was a poor choice as he was not privy to defence codes, but then he came to realise that perhaps Athena wanted something embedded in his subconscious mind.
He reasoned that maybe he still had some Ancients' knowledge locked away somewhere, and this could be lethal in the wrong hands. He was even more thankful for his mental defences.
He thought that maybe he could fight back mentally, but pushing the other way during the mental connection. After all, he had nothing to lose. He was as good as dead, virtually stuck in the middle of nowhere, and with not so much as a 9 mil to protect himself. He reasoned further that he would be killed eventually.
The Prometheus left Earth's orbit and Carter did the required calculations to operate the hyper-drive successfully. However, when activated, the window closed soon after opening, much to the frustration of everyone onboard.
Carter repeated the calculations but gave up when the same thing happened.
Col. Ronson said, a little impatiently, "Well, I guess we go the old-fashioned way. Set co-ordinates for P9M-143!"
The Navigational Officer entered the co-ordinates and the ship was on-course. Carter hid her face in frustration, as O'Neill wandered off the bridge, leaving Teal’c looking characteristically grim.
For the umpteenth time, Daniel was brought before his captor, and was subjected to the ribbon device. However, this time, he implemented his plan and mentally pushed back.
It didn't seem to have any effect at first, but then Athena moved her hand quickly, as if she had touched a hot coal, the device flying across the room.
She snarled at him, with characteristic Goa’uld arrogance, "You cannot fight a god! Soon you will know the full power of Athena!"
Her First Prime retrieved the hand device and she resumed the torture, but the same happened again and again, until she began to scream in pain and fall off her throne. Daniel turned to the advancing Jaffa and said, "Athena is no god."
The First Prime punched him, knocking him to the floor.
The Jaffa helped Athena up before she gloated, "I am indeed a god. You dare fight me!"
She looked at the Jaffa and shouted, "Jaffa! Kree!"
Suddenly he was aware of activated staff weapons flanking his face. He froze and wondered what the hell he should do.
And then the regrets started setting in -- he should have learnt to fight, he should have been more open with Carter, and he should have picked up a lot more tactical knowledge from O'Neill and Teal’c.
"Oh well", he thought, "at least I'll go down in Earth history as being the lunatic who said the Pyramids of Giza were alien landing pads."
Just when he thought all hope was lost, he heard zat blasts and he wasn't the target.
He tentatively turned around on his knees and saw Carter, Teal’c and O'Neill shooting up the place. His jaw dropped before his senses returned, and he quickly grabbed a staff weapon from a stunned Jaffa.
He shot Athena with it, remarking, "Nick always told me Greek mythology would get me into trouble!"
Athena fell to the ground, her symbiote trying to escape. He ruthlessly shot the symbiote dead.
When all of the Jaffa in the room had been zatted, Carter hugged him, but quickly let go when O'Neill and Teal’c looked at her oddly.
She composed herself and said with a smile, "Glad to see you alive, Daniel."
Daniel nodded in acknowledgement and handed Teal’c the staff weapon, saying, "Here's one more for your collection."
Teal’c bowed a little in acknowledgement and received the weapon. O'Neill asked Daniel, "Hey Space monkey, where's your glasses?"
Before he could reply, he collapsed from exhaustion.
Carter ran to his aid, but Teal’c threw the younger man over his shoulder, and O'Neill said, "We need to ring away!"
Carter rigged their path with C-4, despite her CO's protests, and they managed to ring back to the Prometheus, which quickly zipped away right before the mother ship exploded, not quite escaping the shockwaves.
Daniel eyes fluttered open in the Infirmary, confusion setting in for a few moments, before he wearily realised where he was.
He then realised that he couldn't hear anything, which understandably surprised the hell out of him. He sat bolt upright to see his colleagues stood next to his bed. They each said something, which made him regret turning down those lip reading classes.
He looked at them in confusion and O'Neill said something to someone else. Fraiser appeared and said something to him, so he touched his ears in reply and then realised that he couldn't speak.
"Oh well," he thought, "One out of three's not bad."
All of the sudden, things went black and he thought, "Oh, bugger."
After watching Daniel waking and discovering that he was deaf and dumb, Carter's heart broke.
She steeled herself and watched Fraiser continue her examination, before everyone realised that he had developed blindness too.
Fraiser concluded that the speech centre of the brain had been damaged, as well as his optical nerves and ears. She ran more tests and concluded further that he had a large tumour pressing onto his optical nerve, and only surgery would resolve his sight loss at the very least.
She shooed the rest of the SG-1 out of the Infirmary so her medical team could prep him.
Carter sat alone in Daniel's office, sobbing.
She thought to herself, "What a waste of a life. He's seen and done so much, travelled all over the place, been 'dead', and saved our skins so many times, only to die because some snakey-bd took a shine to him! This isn't how his life should end!"
Teal’c’s arrival interrupted her thoughts, and he asked her, "MajorCarter, have you relinquished all hope?"
She replied between sobs, "I don't know, Teal’c. I... I mean, we've thought we lost him several times, but this takes the biscuit. How could they do this to him? He would never harm a fly, but those idiots did those horrific things to him."
He sat down next to her and she sobbed into his shoulder, not for the first time.
O'Neill wandered in and looked at them in surprise, before saying, "Come on Carter, he's going to be alright. It's Daniel, and besides, remember when we went to the future? Future Cassandra made a joke about his future lack of hair. He's gonna pull through, and show those snake-heads."
The surgery was a complete success and Daniel's head was bandaged. He awoke sometime later to find that all of his faculties had returned.
Fraiser notified the rest of SG-1 and Hammond, and they came to pay him a visit.
He thanked Fraiser for removing the tumour, and he thanked his friends for saving him. O'Neill remarked, "You put up quite a fight, Dannyboy."
Carter worked in her lab on a Naquadah power generator, when she heard the sound of wheels.
She looked up and smiled on seeing a wheelchair-bound Daniel, who said, "I had to escape from the Infirmary - Janet was pricking me with all sorts of things. So, how're you doing?"
"Great... I'm just working on that Naquadah power generator."
"Cool. Jack told me that you did most of the translation from the temple on 143, and I just want to say how amazingly you did it."
She blushed and said a little dismissively, "Oh it was nothing."
He persisted, "No, your translation was at a Masters level. I read it and couldn't believe that you did it."
"It seriously was nothing. I swiped a couple of your books and got down on it."
"It's still brilliant."
She put her screwdriver down and asked him, concerned, "What was it like on the mothership, if you don't mind me asking?"
He raised his eyebrows, exhaled and replied slowly, "It... it was odd. Athena tortured me repeatedly with a ribbon device, and it seemed that she wanted something, perhaps the ancient knowledge locked in my brain. It hurt a lot but I finally worked out how to fight back and I threw her off course a few times."
"Now, that is brilliant."
"I had nothing to lose - she would've killed me. Thanks again for everything."
"What scared me the most was watching you getting shot repeatedly by those Jaffa. The Colonel was forced to order us to retreat."
"But..."
"I wanted revenge for what they did to you, and I think I got that when I blew the ship up. Colonel O'Neill's forgoing charging me for disobeying him."
"Wow."
She approached the seated figure and hugged him. When she pulled back, he looked up at her, surprised, and asked, a little confused, "What was that for?"
She blushed and replied, "I'm just so glad to see you alive. I thought you were a goner as soon as you lost your sight, speech and hearing."
He chuckled a bit and said, "Well, I'm here, with a free bandage. So, you wanna go to the Commissary?"
She smiled back at him and said, "Sure, it's time I took a break anyway."
She pushed his wheelchair out of her lab and along the various corridors to the Commissary, both of them laughing and talking along the way.
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