I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.
Colorado – Earth – June 2001
‘I usually fly business class’ Elizabeth Weir told the Skyranger pilot as they tore through the Rocky Mountains at what she considered a dangerously low altitude but the pilot seemed relaxed enough.
‘Trust me, you’re better off sitting in the front with me than in the back’ the pilot replied. ‘They don’t build these things with grunt comfort in mind’ he told her. ‘If you hit turbulence you could get the teeth rattled out of your head sitting on the fold-out seats back there’ he declared, indicating the empty hold of the VSTOL Transport aircraft.
‘How fast are we going?’ Weir asked.
‘About six hundred and fifty knots’ the pilot answered, ‘just subsonic but I can push her up to Mach 1.1 if need be’ he told her, ‘beats the hell out of flying a helicopter or a CV-22.’
‘You’re American?’ Weir verified. They hadn’t talked much during the flight until now, she had been far too wrapped up in the pile of reading she was trying to get through.
‘US Airforce on secondment to X-COM’ the pilot told her. ‘Hey we’re getting an escort in the last few miles, guess they want to welcome you properly’ he said, pointing out of the cockpit window to the left as another aircraft pulled up alongside.
Weir stared through the glass. ‘It’s a flying saucer’ she said incredulously.
‘Firestorm Interceptor’ the pilot explained with a grin. ‘Back-engineered Alien Technology, we use their stuff to shoot them down with these days’ he told her, waving to the other pilot who waved back. ‘They say they’ll be replacing the Skyranger here with an alien tech based aircraft eventually, but it’s not high priority so it could be a while.’
As Weir watched the Firestorm pilot decided to show off, spinning the Firestorm 90 Degrees so he was flying sideways then doing an impossibly tight combination flip and loop that somehow ended up with the saucer shaped craft directly in front to them going backwards at the same speed they were going. ‘How much does one of those things cost?’ Weir asked amazed at the agility of the craft.
‘Believe it or not they’re a lot cheaper than an F-22’ the pilot told her as the Firestorm repeated its manoeuvre in reverse and resumed its original position flying alongside as an escort. ‘It’s an amazing bird, do over Mach 6, pity the bugs fly even better ones these days’ he said sadly.
‘Bugs?’ Weir queried.
‘Sectoids, the little grey bastards’ the pilot explained. ‘Every time we think we’ve caught up they roll out something else, we’re always playing catch-up’ he told her.
Weir nodded, the summary analyses she’d been provided with had said pretty much the same. ‘Have you ever met one?’ she asked curiously.
‘I usually only see dead ones or unconscious ones in the back after a retrieval mission Ma’am’ the pilot replied. ‘Seen a few in alien containment but mostly they just stare at you through the glass with those big black eyes’ he said, deciding not to mention the fact that like most X-COM people he used to taunt the prisoners for kicks. ‘You can’t have a conversation with them, they say the Asgard are smart but the Sectoids... they’re only made as smart as they need to be, their officers are smarter than their grunts but they’re still not all there according to the experts, just enough brains to operate the machinery and know when to duck in a firefight’ he said.
‘The clones are an empty vessel waiting to be filled’ Weir quoted from one of the reports, ‘Loki programs them to do a job and they do it, minimal personal initiative or higher reasoning skills’ she said.
‘Now there’s one evil son of a test-tube everyone would love to get their hands on’ the pilot practically growled. The rogue Asgard scientist and would-be warlord was regarded about as highly as Vlad the Impaler in X-COM and SGC circles.
A thought occurred to Weir as she took another look at the flying saucer flying alongside them. ‘Is that thing carrying nuclear weapons?’ she asked nervously.
‘I hope so or it’s not much use as an escort’ the Skyranger pilot replied. ‘Three AIM-54X Avalanche missiles, with variable yield warheads’ he detailed, ‘two kiloton up to two hundred kiloton depending on how big a bang the pilot wants’ he said. ‘If you want some scale Hiroshima was a thirteen kiloton explosion’ he told her. ‘Of course compared to some of the big warheads they’re stockpiling just in case an Avalanche is a firecracker’ he continued. ‘They say they measure the yields of those things in the gigatons.’
‘So much for all those disarmament treaties I helped negotiate’ Weir muttered.
‘Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining’ the pilot replied ‘Thank God for the Cold War’ he joked, ‘the nuclear powers had enough weapons grade plutonium hoarded away to keep X-COM in nukes for years’ he said. ‘If we couldn’t make them glow in the dark we’d be knee deep in monsters from outer space by now’ he opined. ‘Arriving at the Mountain in five minutes Ma’am’ he told her, we’ll be met by a jeep that’ll take you from the strip to the base and then one of the SGC people will escort you down to the facility.’
‘Are you based there?’ Weir asked.
‘No I fly out of the North American X-COM Base’ the pilot told her. ‘I don’t usually taxi VIP’s around, I fly maniacs packing rayguns into firefights with invaders from outer space for a living most days’ he told her with a wry smile. ‘If I’m not doing that I usually haul cargo between X-COM, Cheyenne Mountain and Area 51, the kind they don’t want to move by FedEx because it’s from outta town... way outta town if you see what I mean.’
Weir shook her head. ‘I can’t believe all this was going on and I didn’t know about it’ she said. ‘Flying Saucers, Alien Parasites pretending to be Gods, UFO abductions are real...’
‘The truth is out there’ the pilot deadpanned.
Weir laughed, it was nice to know that the people involved in this had retained a sense of humour and hence their fundamental humanity despite everything they knew and had seen. ‘Have you been inside the SGC?’ she asked.
‘I got a guided tour the first time I flew a Skyranger to the mountain’ the pilot replied. ‘When we’ve beaten the bugs I’m going to try and get a transfer, see some of the galaxy.’
‘What’s it like?’ Weir asked.
‘When you’ve seen one secret underground bunker you’ve seen them all’ he replied.
‘I’ve never seen inside any secret underground bunkers’ Weir told him.
‘Then I hope you like the look of concrete, steel doors, exposed pipes and ducting’ the pilot responded.
‘They haven’t got me living on the base’ Weir told him, ‘they’ve got me a house in Colorado Springs.’
‘Definitely a VIP’ the pilot observed, ‘I share an unpainted room with a seven foot tall, knuckle-dragging two-hundred pound Neanderthal from the Australian SAS’ he complained. ‘And he was there first so he got the top bunk’ he added.
‘Seven feet tall and a knuckle-dragger?’ Weir queried with a smile.
‘Okay, I exaggerate for effect’ the pilot conceded, ‘six foot ten inches tops’ he told her.
‘So if you’re not spinning tall tales what do you do on these flights?’ Weir asked.
‘Usually I just put on some Johnny Cash and enjoy the view as it goes past as a blur at seven-hundred miles an hour thirty feet off the deck’ he replied. ‘They give us a lot of leeway to get away with doing things like that because they don’t think we’re going to live very long anyway’ he explained. ‘Skyrangers are plasma magnets when they’re heading into a hot LZ’ he told her, ‘friend of mine was shot down on his first mission, came in too high and too slow and it was game over’ he said with a sigh. ‘Me I try my best to scare the crap out of the guys and gals in the back, coming in low and fast for a retrieval op dodging trees and flying under power-lines’ he declared.
‘More exaggeration?’ Weir queried with another smile.
‘Nope’ the pilot replied with a grin. ‘I’ve arrived back at base with tree branches caught up in the landing gear more than once’ he told her.
Weir frowned. ‘For the record, and in the interests of self-preservation, exactly who do I tell them never to let fly me anywhere ever again?’ she asked.
‘Major John Sheppard’ the pilot answered. ‘If they’re X-COM and they’ve flown a mission with me watch out for the grimace’ he joked. ‘I make it my business to be the man that makes them happier jumping out the back into gunfire than they are on the way in getting there’ he said. ‘That little bit of extra motivation makes all the difference’ he opined brightly.
To Doctor Elizabeth Weir's surprise and mild horror despite the bravado he was in fact the most balanced and least gung-ho member of X-COM she met that day.
Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – June 2001
The scientist, Sharp thought his name was Felger but he wasn’t certain, looked up when the X-COM Commander arrived. ‘The girl’s body is still putting out a low-level EM field which spikes occasionally and is playing merry hell with our equipment’ he said, turning some kind of gadget around so Sharp could see it, not that the display meant a damn thing to Sharp anyway. ‘We moved her into this shielded room to protect the base computers’ he noted.
‘The girls name is Cassie’ Doctor Fraser retorted tersely from the other side of the bed, checking her daughters temperature again, the fever caused by the strange retrovirus afflicting her was getting worse and worse and as it did her behaviour was becoming more erratic.
‘Just let me go’ Cassandra begged, ‘you’re killing me’ she said. She knew what was wrong with her, her people called it the "Mind Fire" and she knew what to do to get rid of it, return to Hanka and wander alone into the forest.
Sharp deliberately ignored the girl completely for the moment. ‘SG-1 may have returned from her homeworld P8X-987 with the solution’ he announced.
Janet Fraser’s expression instantly shifted from one of desperation and fear to a flash of hope. ‘They found a cure?’ she asked.
Sharp shook his head. ‘They found a secret laboratory in the forest where Cassandra keeps asking to go’ he replied. ‘It looks like the Goa’uld Nirrti was experimenting on the people there to try and create an improved strain of human being, I don’t know the science behind how’ he admitted.
‘Rewriting their DNA using the retrovirus’ Fraser theorised.
‘Well however it’s done when Cassandra’s people reach her age they need to be stabilised or something because the change is too hard on the body’ Sharp told her. ‘Nirrti was tweaking their genes one generation at a time trying to create a hok’taur or advanced human to be a better host’ he said. ‘Well we can ask her the details when she wakes up because SG-1 caught the bitch’ he said.
‘She was there? They caught her?’ Janet responded wide-eyed.
‘Dragged her back here through the gate unconscious’ Sharp confirmed. ‘She was using some kind of personal cloak that made her invisible but she made two mistakes, firstly she made some noise and second she didn’t know we carry motion trackers, Colonel O’Neill shot her with a zat, when she’s awake again we’ll get her to do whatever it is she did to fix the other kids.’
‘I’m not a kid’ Cassandra stated, despite the raging fever she wasn’t going to let that one slip past her unchallenged.
‘The day anyone more than twenty years younger than me isn’t a kid is the day I break down and cry sweetheart’ Sharp replied with a grin. ‘Let me keep the delusion I’m not old a few more years okay?’ he requested in mock seriousness. ‘See you later, I just thought I’d let you know what was going on’ he told Janet before frowning, ‘she knows she has to reimburse us for the medical treatment right?’ he asked, nodding his head towards Cassandra. ‘I’ll have her washing dishes in the canteen for the next couple of months if her allowance doesn’t cover it.’
‘Hey!’ Cassandra protested as Sharp turned to leave ‘He’s kidding right?’ she asked before coughing a few times.
Janet shrugged. ‘You’d better hope so’ she replied. ‘Do you know how many people eat in there every day?’ she asked rhetorically, reaching over to stroke her daughters sweat-soaked hair. She was burning up, Janet thought to herself, oh God please let them make the goa’uld bitch cure her soon.
Major Carter arrived a few minutes later with a chess set but Cassandra wasn’t interested in playing. She did however render Carter near speechless when she started telekinetically moving the pieces, even making a knight tumble in the air in front of her saying it helped somehow. It was probably a good thing there were no X-COM Psionic Researchers present or they would have likely wired her up to every piece of machinery they had to try and find out how the hell she was doing it.
Three hours later and Nirrti still wasn’t cooperating. They had her sitting up chained to a cot in a cell, all her goa’uld technology stripped and wearing an orange jumpsuit but all she did was smirk at her captors. ‘If you release me I will cure the girl’ she said. ‘Otherwise she will die’ she stated.
Colonel O’Neill sat placidly on a chair beside her. ‘If Cassie dies what do you think will happen to you?’ he asked.
Nirrti laughed. ‘I am far too valuable a prisoner to be executed’ she declared, ‘your leaders would never permit it’ she said confidently.
‘Speaking as one of those leaders’ General Hammond interrupted, walking in the open door past Teal’c who had positioned himself there armed with an L2A2, ‘you’re playing a risky game’ he told the goa’uld. ‘On this world it’s called chicken’ he said.
‘And another Colonel named Sanders made a fortune from serving them up for dinner’ O’Neill interjected.
‘We will see’ Nirti replied with a smug knowing smile.
Commander Sharp followed Hammond in and regarded Nirrti with barely disguised loathing, just an alien parasite he thought to himself. ‘The kid is getting worse’ he told O’Neill, ‘I can bring in a team to mind-rape the bitch but they’re at least two hours away and it could be a while until she breaks’ he noted.
Nirti’s smile broadened. ‘Release my bonds, return my technology and I will save the girl’ she said. ‘All I ask is to be released through the chappa’ai with a sample of her blood so that I can continue my research.’
‘Not a fucking chance’ Sharp replied.
Janet appeared beside him. ‘Cassie’s temperature is up to a hundred and six’ she said quietly, a note of desperation in her voice. ‘She’ll die if you don’t help and I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t save her’ she said stepping forward and starting to raise a handgun to point at Nirrti.
Unfortunately for Doctor Fraser Commander Sharp moved a lot faster than she did and disarmed the doctor in a flash, painfully twisting the pistol from her hands before it was even fully raised. Janet screamed and struck out at him, Colonel O’Neill dragging her off as Nirrti chuckled.
‘I don’t know why the hell you’re laughing’ Sharp told the goa’uld, passing the pistol to Teal’c. ‘There’s faster ways than standard interrogation to break you’ he stated as Sergeant Andianov walked in and handed him something Nirti immediately recognised with considerable disquiet. ‘Everyone out’ he ordered. ‘Sergeant watch the door’ he added.
Still finding her way around after a few days at the SGC Elizabeth Weir ran into a tearful Doctor Fraser, a stern looking General Hammond plus Colonel O’Neill and the Jaffa Teal’c standing in the corridor outside one of the cells. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked before an ear-splitting scream howled from the cell nearly making her jump out of her skin.
‘Commander Sharp is utilising a Pain Stick on the prisoner Nirti’ Teal’c replied, as another scream rang out.
‘A what?’ Weir asked.
‘A goa’uld torture device that inflicts agony on both host and symbiote’ Teal’c explained. ‘He seeks to break her will and ensure her cooperation before Cassandra Fraser succumbs to her fever.’
Weir gaped in horror. ‘He’s torturing a prisoner while you wait out here? She exclaimed.
‘Time is of the essence if the girl’s life is to be saved’ Teal’c stated.
‘And you’re letting this happen?’ Weir asked Hammond.
Hammond looked away. ‘Technically he’s my commanding officer’ he noted awkwardly.
‘I was only obeying orders as an excuse went out of fashion with the Nuremberg Trials’ Weir retorted. ‘We don’t do things this way’ she declared.
‘Cassie is dying’ O’Neill responded coldly, leaning back against a wall arms crossed.
Weir gathered her thoughts. ‘I realise the girl means a great deal to you but...’ she began before Janet Fraser spun around and slapped her around the face hard enough to rock her head to the side.
‘She’s my daughter’ Janet said, directing a blazingly fierce glare at Weir.
Nirrti screamed again inside the cell, this time it was prolonged as Sharp gave her a longer taste of the device, the blinding bright light shining out from her mouth and eyes as a side-effect causing Andianov standing in the open doorway to cast a shadow into the corridor.
‘...but if we do this how are we different to them?’ Weir finished quietly, feeling the bruise forming on her cheek which she touched gingerly.
‘We do bad things for a good cause’ Andianov stated emotionlessly. ‘They do them for a bad one’ she continued. ‘If you cannot grasp the distinction then your intellect is vastly overrated.’
After one final scream, the sound of pleading for mercy and a short period of quiet Commander Sharp appeared at the doorway, the sergeant stepping aside to reveal he was holding a deflated, broken Nirrti by a twisted up clump of her hair, still carrying the pain stick in his other hand. ‘Just just need to motivate them the right way’ he stated before forcefully turning Nirti around to face him. ‘The girl dies I’ll torture you to death, bring you back to life in a sarcophagus and do it again’ he told the goa’uld. ‘Do you believe me?’ he asked with an intensity that would have scared the hell out of someone he hadn’t just been torturing.
‘Yes’ Nirrti replied, her normally commanding voice trembling and raspy from the screaming.
‘Cassie will be fine’ Sharp told Doctor Fraser who gave him a look of eternal gratitude. He noted both the bruise and the expression on Weirs face, guessing correctly the cause of the former. ‘I wouldn’t let you die either’ he told Weir. ‘And when the day comes that that’s an issue you might hate yourself for doing it but you’ll pray for some vicious ruthless bastard like me to save you’ he said. ‘Come on bitch’ he told Nirti with a growl, hauling her off down the corridor, Sergeant Andianov following behind.
‘You can’t defend humanity by abandoning it in yourself’ Weir called after him.
‘It’s been working for me okay so far’ Sharp replied.
Curia Building – Tollana – June 2001
Although the members of the Stargate Project who predated X-COM involvement were at least marginally to the left of Atilla the Hun, unlike the likes of Commander Sharp and his stormtroopers, it had soon become apparent to Elizabeth Weir that if she had any philosophical allies within the SGC it was with the non-military staff, especially the historians and anthropologists, so she had been making efforts to foster cordial working relationships with them. Doctor Daniel Jackson was especially valuable in that he was widely respected in many quarters because of his accomplishments both academic and otherwise, even the military types seemed to like him, he had after all shot an awful lot of Jaffa as well as dug up an awful lot of broken pots. ‘So how do you think it went?’ Weir asked Daniel after their preliminary meeting with High Chancellor Travell and other senior members of the Tollan Government.
Daniel considered the question for a moment. ‘It might have been easier if Omoc wasn’t so hard-line on the issue of tech transfer to “primitives” like us’ he replied. ‘Most of the Curia deep down seem to think they owe us one but there are still plenty who’ll stonewall any moves to liberalise their stance’ he said. ‘Their track record with the people of Serita completely colours their world view.’
Weir nodded. ‘But how well did you think I made our case?’ she asked.
‘Fishing for complements?’ Daniel asked with a smile.
‘I’ll read into that response I shouldn’t be hiding from criticism at least’ Weir responded, smiling back.
‘You made the case that all we wanted was a transfer of stargate technology which a more advanced race than them had given the Tollan anyway very well’ Daniel told her, ‘masterful use of language and tone especially when you shot Omac down in flames on the point of the Nox trusting younger races like them with technology they hadn’t developed yet.’
‘He walked right into it when he started spouting off about not being able to trust less advanced societies with science they didn’t work to attain themselves’ Weir noted. ‘They’re very advanced but I don’t think their political system is as cut and thrust as ours, their debating skills fall far behind their engineering.’
‘Nice to have one edge on them’ Daniel replied. ‘The others are back from their guided tour’ he said indicating the approach of the rest of SG-1 who had been off seeing the sights while the two academics met the Curia delegation.
‘We met Narim outside’ Carter announced indicating their Tollan companion.
Elizabeth Weir did a double-take and stared at the man. ‘I’m sorry’ she said, ‘but you look exactly like my boyfriend Simon’ she said as Narim shuffled awkwardly under her scrutiny. ‘I mean it’s uncanny’ she continued. ‘You could be twins.’
Narim slowly broke out into a smile. ‘Well all I can say is my doppelganger is a very lucky man’ he told her chivalrously. ‘You must be Doctor Weir?’
‘Elizabeth, please’ Weir replied.
‘Narim’ the Tollan introduced himself, offering his hand to shake in the Tau’ri fashion which Weir took. ‘I was surprised to hear that the Curia granted you an audience’ he admitted.
‘We threatened to take them to court if they didn’t’ O’Neill explained, ‘I mean haul them up in front of a Triad’ he corrected himself using the local word. ‘They couldn’t have been too confident they’d win’ he opined.
Narim shrugged. ‘Private citizens have successfully won their cases again the Curia in Triad many times’ he said. ‘Our government is not above our laws.’
‘There you see’ O’Neill said, ‘now that’s the kind of thing you don’t see enough of in the galaxy’ he declared.
‘Of course that also means that if the Curia voted to allow tech transfer with us Omoc or others could also challenge that decision too’ Daniel noted.
‘On the other hand there’s a lot to be said for dictatorship in certain circumstances’ O’Neill changed tack.
Narim chuckled. ‘It was wise of you not to bring Commander Sharp’ he opined. ‘During his brief visit to Tollana last year he managed to annoy many in the Curia.’
‘I’m shocked’ Weir responded sardonically.
‘The Commander is a skilled soldier and excellent tactician’ Andianov declared, defending him stalwartly as she glared at Weir.
‘The Commander is living proof of Talleyrand’s dictum that war is much too serious a business to be left to the military’ Weir retorted.
O’Neill chuckled. ‘You know you’d get more traction in military circles if you quoted Von Clausewitz instead’ he advised. ‘Policy is the intelligent faculty, war is only the instrument, not the reverse. The subordination of the military view to the political is therefore the only thing possible’ he quoted then noting the look of surprise in Daniels eyes he smiled. ‘Show me a military officer who hasn’t read On War thoroughly and I’ll show you a dumb son of a bitch’ he told him. ‘I can give you the best bits of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War too’ he added. ‘If you want to be good at your job you’d better be familiar with the guys that literally wrote the book on the subject’ he said.
Narim wasn’t quite following the cultural references but he got the gist of the conversation and understood the differences of opinion. Although Tollana didn’t have a formal military as such it did have Security Personal that were at least mildly paramilitary in role given that they both enforced the law and operated and controlled the planets Ion Cannon Defences. ‘I am told you are offering Hyperdrive technology in return for information on stargate construction?’ he asked, deciding to change the subject.
‘Technically we’re offering Goa’uld Hyperdrive technology we back-engineered from vessels of theirs we captured’ Carter told him. ‘We know you’re behind them in that, your ships are pretty slow by comparison’ she noted.
‘Our people were never expansionistic enough to devote much effort towards perfecting hyperdrive technology’ Narim replied. ‘What exploration we did was mainly done through the stargate, but to be honest we were never as driven to explore the galaxy as you seem to be’ he said.
‘But the technology is worth something to you though?’ Daniel asked.
‘We do have limited numbers of ships, certainly making them faster would be welcomed by the crews who currently have to spend months on a journey that might take days with a better hyperdrive design’ Narim answered. ‘We certainly wouldn’t offer you our Ion Cannons for them but since all you seek is non-military technology in return I doubt there would be a public outcry at what most would consider a fair mutually beneficial exchange.’
‘Omac’s a friend of yours could you maybe put in a good word for us’ Daniel requested. ‘He seemed to be the ringleader of the opposition camp in the Curia.’
‘He’s not as blinkered and immovable in his position as you may fear’ Nerim replied, ‘if you can make a convincing case he’ll come around with or without my attempts at intervention or persuasion’ he continued. ‘Knowing him as I do I’d say that part of his strategy is to be so obstructionist now that even if we do end up exchanging technology this time it will make further more controversial transfers in the future more difficult.’
‘You guess we’re still itching for those big honking spaceguns of yours then?’ O’Neill asked.
‘Of course’ Narim replied. ‘We know what a threat the Goa’uld are, you would be a foolish people indeed to not desire a weapon that can smash any ship they send against you and although you are centuries behind us you are not a foolish people.’
‘In the long term Earth wants a friendly and productive relationship with Tollana’ Weir told him. ‘We could be great friends and allies’ she said.
‘My people would be happy to be friends with yours, as we have friendly relations with the Asgard, Tok’ra and Nox, but we have always avoided alliances for risk of being dragged into someone else’s fight’ Narim told her.
‘You’re already in the fight or did the last Goa’uld attack slip your mind’ O’Neill asked wryly. ‘You know that Apophis could win the war that’s going on out there right?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Without the other System Lord’s to worry about he might decide its worth losing a few ships to finally get rid of the only human civilisation out there which can potentially kick his ass.’
Narim sighed. ‘I’m sure the Curia has considered that possibility’ he said.
‘You know with our hyperdrive on a ship mounting a couple of your Ion Cannon’s you could really give Apophis pause for thought’ Daniel noted. ‘He’d be far less likely to attack Tollana if he thought the immediate response was going to be your ships arriving over his worlds’ he said.
‘I’m going to push that argument to the Curia’ Weir agreed. ‘I’m not in the military, as a matter of fact I don't particularly like the military, but given the threats present in the galaxy some kind of strong deterrent is a must for any world that wants to retain its independence’ she said. ‘The Goa’uld might not care how many Jaffa you kill when they attack your world but they’d certainly care about the prospect of a Tollan warship arriving over their royal palace with a very vengeful crew aboard.’
Teal’c nodded his agreement. ‘Amongst the Jaffa there is a saying’ he began. ‘The best defence is a good Ha’tak’ he said.
‘Okay now that’s just a freaking classic Teal’c’ O’Neill told him with a grin.
‘Thank you O’Neill’ the Jaffa replied. He was always glad when one of his pearls of wisdom was well received.