MEMOIRS OF
BRIGADIER GENERAL JACK O’NEILL
(Retired)
Part II
Chapter One
By Arrietty
2025
The whine of a bullet sped past my ear as I dropped to a crouch. Taking in the situation, I noticed that there were eight people other than Jacob and myself in the room. Two were lying dead on the floor in front of me and two were behind the doorways in the offices along the wall. The other four were advancing along the floor towards us. I did not see Jonas amongst them, and they were shooting at us, so I made a split decision and dived unscathed into one of the offices. Jacob was not so lucky; he took a bullet in his leg and went down.
Seeing Jonas crouched along the wall taking pot shots at the enemy, I was pleased I had made the right call. Nodding to him, he covered me while I dashed out grabbed Jacob by his jacket and dragged him back behind the door. I slammed the door behind me and I quickly ripped the material from Jacob’s leg and bound it tight. The blood that was pumping from a main femoral artery was not going to do him any good out of his body, snake or no snake. As the bleeding stopped, I checked Jacob’s pulse, finding it was fast but steady. Turning to Jonas, I yelled.
“What on Earth is happening here?”
“A slight disagreement with our neighbors.” He shrugged, gave that lopsided carefree grin of his and opened the door to start shooting again.
Wasting no time, I switched the safety catch off my P-90 and joined him. I was aware of the other occupant of the room; she was busy blasting away through an opened window with what looked like a bazooka. It made nice big holes in the walls, but she wasn’t a very good shot. I had trouble remembering her name, but it came to me. It was Kianna I couldn’t help grinning internally; it looked like Jonas had got that friendship sorted out after all.
The fight ended abruptly when Kianna’s bazooka hit two of them at once. Fearing for their lives, the other two put down their weapons immediately and started waving their arms in the air. Jonas and I wasted no time; we secured their weapons and I tied up the prisoners while Jonas let in the security guards who had been locked out of the building.
I looked at my watch, I had only left Earth for five minutes and I had already got myself involved in a little war. Walking over to Jacob, I could see he was now conscious.
“So, Jake. You decided you didn’t want to go with me after all?” My reply was a glower. “You don’t look too good. Shall I take you back to Earth, or Tok’ra land?”
“Here will do, Jack.”
Glancing up quickly at Jonas, who was now kneeling down on the other side of Jacob, I looked back down at Jacob and spoke quietly to him. “No offence to the Kelownans here, but I think you will be better off at home or erm…home, depending on whom I’m talking to.”
“No really, Jack. I am fine, Kelowna will be fine. It will just take a day or two for Selmac to do his work; apparently I have lost a lot of blood.”
Looking at the large puddle of blood congealing on the floor, “Ya think!”
~*~
I decided to wait until Jacob was fully healed. It was good in a weird sort of way, hanging out with Jonas. I liked his house, it was unusual, but then most places were off world. I was and yet wasn’t surprised to learn that he and Kianna had married.
“So, the invite got lost in the mail then?” I asked.
Jonas just grinned and had the perfect answer. “Well, we don’t do things like that here, Jack. We get a certificate and sign it and that is it.”
“What no celebration? No guests? No presents? No bachelor’s party?” I couldn’t keep the forlornness out of my voice. “No cake?”
“Nope, no cake.”
Without any bidding or thinking, the vision of Sam’s face swam before my eyes. She was lying in the infirmary, she had just got back after being lost on the Prometheus and we were talking about cake. She had smiled at that, she liked my idea of cake.
My thoughts were abruptly broken into as Kianna came running into their home screaming Jonas’ name.
“JONAS. JONAS!” Clutching both his arms, she gasped for breath.
“Kianna what’s wrong?” Jonas looked straight at her as he spoke.
By now I had risen and was walking to the doorway and cautiously looking outside to see what might be out there. But all seemed well.
With a deep calming breath, she closed her tearful eyes and then spoke slowly. “They’ve taken Malia.”
“Who has?”
“The Grenuts.” Opening her eyes, she looked up at Jonas. “Oh, Jonas what can we do? They will hurt her.”
Now that name had piqued my interest. “What are the Granites, Jonas?”
Holding Kianna close, he spoke over her shoulder to me. “Grenuts.” He corrected. “We’re not quite sure what they actually are, but there is a small band of sub-humans that live in the Dark Forest about three miles out of the city.” Turning back to Kianna, he spoke quietly to her. “I will have to move quickly if I am going to get there in time.”
Nodding, she let go of him so he could unlock some cupboard doors. I felt the soldier in me salivate at the weaponry he pulled out of the locked doors. There were three large handheld guns, which looked similar to machine pistols. Pulling some small purple cylinders down from a shelf, he loaded up the pistols.
“What are those?” Walking towards Jonas, I reached out to pick one up. Jonas quickly passed the loaded weapon into my hands; it felt light and was well balanced and certainly looked nothing like the antiquated artillery that they had used on this planet before.
“It was something that Kianna’s symbiote designed for us. We needed something that the Grenuts were afraid of.”
“Aren’t they afraid of bullets?”
“Well, no they don’t like them, but they have a nasty habit of not dying. The bullets sort of pass right through them. They stop for a bit, and then keep walking.”
Refraining from pointing out that bullets don’t just sort of pass through you, they do or they don’t, I asked another question. “How many are there?”
“About fifty, give or take. It is hard to count their number as they look all the same, sort of.”
I was getting a little irritated about the words ‘sort of’ by now. “So where is their village? Can’t you ‘sort of’ go in there and find out?”
“No.”
“No?” I was sure that my eyebrows were half way up my forehead by now.
“They don’t have one. They are nomads, and about three times a year they venture into the city and steal people.”
I barely heard her at first, as she spoke so quietly. “Usually young girls, they sacrifice them to something or other. No one has ever escaped, so we don’t fully know why. We have found the dead bodies though.” At this point her voice broke and she fled into their bedroom.
“This girl they’ve taken, she is important to you and Kianna?”
“Yes, she is Kianna’s sister. She lives with their mother, who is very ill at the moment. I must find her and bring her back.”
“Well, count me in.”
Jonas gave a half grin, and picked up the other weapon. I watched as he locked the third one in the cupboard.
“I thought you would.”
“You thought I would what?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, want to try out these weapons.” Picking up some of Kianna’s personal things, he opened the door to their bedroom and went in to speak to her.
I quickly walked into the kitchen and raided the cupboards, pulling out food that wouldn’t spoil on the road, and filled water bottles. I had no idea of the terrain that we would travel over, so we needed plenty of water just in case. Spying a med kit, I grabbed that too. I had my usual supplies of MRE’s and med kit in my pack, but it was with Jacob and his gear at the hospital. We would have no time to retrieve that before we left. Part of the agreement of being here was that I could go anywhere as long as I was unarmed. This was a time that I regretted leaving my P-90 back at the hospital. I still had my zat gun hidden away safely under my jacket.
I had just finished collecting the gear, when Jonas walked back out into the living room - two empty packs swinging from one hand. Moving quickly I filled them, measuring out the weight evenly between the two. He pushed the weapons down into each of the packs out of sight. Jonas was not smiling, this was serious. There was a very good chance that we were going on a suicide mission, Malia would be dead soon if not already and all we were doing was retrieving a body.
I didn’t realize just how important this was until Jonas told me more as we walked through the crowded streets.
Now free from Kianna’s listening ears, Jonas told me what these creatures could be.
“As I said before, we are not one hundred percent certain what they are, but they are not human. They don’t breed, there aren’t any offspring. We assume that they are all male, but you just can’t tell. They are covered in hair, they have two arms and legs and a head just like us, but… they growl and snort and they smell disgusting. What is weird is that nothing seems to kill them. And believe me, we have tried everything.”
Looking at him, I raised one eyebrow.
“No, not a naquadria bomb. You’re right, not everything.” He shook his head and then continued talking. “But they are cannibals, well not cannibals as they don’t eat each other, but they eat what they take.”
I felt my stomach turn over at the thought, the urgency of retrieving Malia dead or alive increased with this knowledge.
“How does this weapon work? Does it kill?”
“Unfortunately not. It emits a high frequency that we can’t hear. They scream and hold their hands over their eyes and run away from the noise. The only problem is that the weapons only work at a forty-five degrees radius, so they can come up behind you. This is why it is good that there are two of us.”
“Their eyes?” I couldn’t let this one go.
He shrugged. “Well where our eyes would be. We don’t know what bits go where on them really.”
I closed my eyes briefly at the picture that sentence had put in my mind. “I don’t think I really want to know either.”
I heard a quiet snort beside me as we continued out of the city gates and into the countryside. I could see a dark blue/green mountainous area in the distance. I questioned Jonas with a look. He nodded in reply. I had to admit the place looked rather formidable.
~*~
It was mid-afternoon when we reached the edge of the forest. The sun was very hot and we were both sweating freely. The forest was dark, dank and cold looking. Even though we were sweltering, we pulled on our jackets before entering the dim interior. We also ate and drank our fill. We would not be stopping while we were in there as we only had about three hours to find and retrieve Malia before the sun sank below the mountain and made it too dark to traverse the forest floor.
“Oh, Jack, there is one more thing.”
I felt that foreboding feeling come over me as he spoke.
“You will need to put this around your nose and mouth.” He passed me a large thick bandana. It was dark green and smelt of rose petals.
Sniffing it, I wrinkled my nose and gave him a questioning look.
“Believe me, Jack. You will be thankful that you put it on.”
With reluctance I tied the sweet smelling bandana around my face and copied Jonas by tucking the bit at the bottom into my jacket collar. I was thankful that at least it wasn’t a pink or purple bandana, but dark green. I knew that if Daniel or Teal’c ‘ack’ ever found out about this, I would never be able to live it down. ‘Sam would find this really funny.’ Closing my eyes briefly at the pain that thought brought me, I quickly focused on what we were doing.
I observed that Jonas knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going. To me the forest all looked the same wherever I went, and I always believed myself a good tracker - maybe not as good as Teal’c, but good enough.
We walked up hill for about thirty minutes, and then abruptly we started down a steep incline. It was then I noticed the smell. Trying not breath through my nose, I gagged a few times as the stench permeated through the rose petal bandana and touched the back of my tongue. I could taste the foul odor. Jonas nodded to me and we quietly continued down into the gloom. Slowly, I began to learn to cope with the stench, which was just as well as it seemed to increase in strength the further down we went.
We had been in the forest for over an hour now; I was chilled through even with the exertion of climbing down through the bracken filled forest floor.
I heard it the same time as Jonas signaled me to stop. The sound grated on my nerve endings, it was nothing like I had heard before. I could see why Jonas had had difficulty in explaining what sound they made.
Suddenly, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, as a girl’s scream cut through the grunting and snorting. She was still alive. Reaching forward I grabbed Jonas’ shoulder, just stopping him just in time from running into the group of Grenuts. I could feel his body shaking with anger under my hand. Signaling him around, we circled the group.
I was not fully prepared for what I saw next. Jonas hadn’t told me that their hair was dark green, hanging long, down off their arms and legs. They were crouched over, almost loping in their walk. You couldn’t see any features as the long dark hair completely covered their heads. Hoping that they didn’t have eyes in the back of their heads, I slowly crept closer to the small band. There were about fifteen of them and they were circled around a young girl who was lying on the ground. Apart from looking extremely dirty and scared, she looked unharmed so far.
The stench of these beings was almost overpowering. My vision was beginning to swim before my eyes as the fumes from their bodies permeated the air. I could see Jonas crouching ready, waiting for my signal on the other side of the clearing. But the signal never came.
Without warning I felt a strong arm grab me around the neck and flip me onto my back. I felt the breath whoosh out of my lungs, the trees swaying dangerously as they dipped and spun above me. Then it went dark, and I could feel soft hair tickling my face. I whooped in a breath of air as my starved lungs drew in the much needed oxygen. Fortunately, at this stage my bandana had been removed, because as soon as the fetid air hit my lungs, I threw up all my lunch, breakfast, and dinner from the past three days all in one foul retch. Dragging in another breath, the stench assaulted my being as I crouched on all fours gasping for anything that resembled oxygen.
I fell with a thump as one of my legs was yanked straight out behind me; my arms gave way as I was dragged along the prickly forest floor. I had to admit I was thankful that I was dragged past my vomit and not through it, though compared to the stench that surrounded me, that was quite pleasant. I grunted as my hip bumped over a sharp rock and scraped all the way up my torso, finally knocking into my shoulder with force. I was dragged too quickly to grab the rock that would have made a nice weapon against my hairy green sasquatch. Suddenly, the world stopped moving as my leg was unceremoniously dumped on the forest floor.
“Argh!” Right on a fallen log.
“Don’t bruise the meat, it won’t be tender.”
I slowly rolled over onto my back. The trees were only moving a little bit, which had to be a good sign. Carefully, I sat up. I was surrounded by big green hairy monsters. I felt something touch my hand.
“Ah!” Trying my hardest not squeal like a girl, but I was feeling a little jumpy. Anyone could forgive me of that, surely.
Looking down, I saw Malia, her large blue eyes full of tears. I wasn’t sure if it was the odor or her fears that were causing it because my eyes were watering from the smell. Reaching out my hand, I clasped hers in mine, and smiled tentively. She smiled back, quickly sitting up she hugged me tight, her whole body shaking with fear and sobs as she clung to me. I returned her hug by holding her firmly with one arm and slowly looked around the clearing. I was stupid. Jonas had told me there were fifty odd of these creatures, and I should have kept an eye out behind me.
Looking through the gap between the creatures, I spied my pack lying abandoned on the forest floor. Lying beside it was my only way of defending myself against these hairy beasts. I just hoped that Jonas was able to retrieve the Grenut gun and that it still worked.
By now the sobbing had stopped and Malia slowly pulled away from me.
“Malia?” I asked.
Her big tearful eyes looked up at me as she nodded. I was amazed, from what Jonas had been saying I had imagined someone about fifteen or sixteen, but this little girl would have only been about twelve years of age.
“My name is Jack; I am a friend of Jonas and Kianna.”
Her face broke into a smile. “Jack? I have heard of you, Jonas talks about you a lot. Did he send you to rescue me?”
“Not exactly.”
Malia gave a small shiver. It was then I realized that she didn’t have a coat and it was cold in the forest. Quickly removing my jacket, carefully hiding my zat under the bracken in the process, I gave it to Malia. She gratefully put it on and zipped up the front, then tucked her hands into the warm pockets. Glancing at my watch I could see it was getting late. We had now been in the forest for two hours, with only one hour left before it became dark on this side of the mountain. “Now, Jonas - now would be a very good time to act.” But it seemed he had other ideas.
I hadn’t realized, but while Malia had been zipping up her jacket, more of these creatures had arrived. It was then I grasped that was what Jonas had been waiting for. He didn’t want to be surprised like I was by more arriving. But fifty? Could he take on fifty without the extra weapon? Leaning down, I whispered into Malia’s ear.
“When I say run, you run. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Don’t look back, you go straight up that hill and then down the other side towards the city. Whatever you hear, you keep going until you get home. Don’t stop for anyone. You understand?”
She nodded again. “Yes, Jack,” she whispered in a small voice.
“That’s my girl.” Smiling, I squeezed her shoulder.
Very carefully I scanned the edge of the clearing, looking for any sign of Jonas. Then I saw him, he nodded to me, as I held up four fingers shielding them from the Grenuts. Not that I thought they could count, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Quickly checking my watch I waited the four minutes until Jonas would make his attack. Right on cue, a quarter of the Grenuts were suddenly crouching over the ground clutching at their faces, emitting a high keening sound. Then, without warning, they jumped up and started running further down the slope into the trees, away from our escape route and Jonas. The other Grenuts started to come towards us. Yanking Malia up roughly by her arm, I yelled at her.
“Go, run! Now. Get out of here.”
She took off fast, fear giving speed to her tired legs. Pulling out my zat, I fired at the first Grenut. It screamed in pain, blue fire shot out of its body as it spasmed. Then recovering, it carried on walking towards me,
“Oh crap!”
Firing again, the blue light enveloped its body. The sight that met my eyes was comical. The long green hair shot out at right angles to its body, making it triple in size. The resemblance to Michelin man was very close, apart from the green and the hair of course. The electric blue light crackled and danced on the end of the hairs, the only sound now in the forest. The remaining Grenuts stood still, not moving as they watched the spectacle of their fellow beast’s transformation. With a scream and a yell the large fur ball waddled towards me, arms outstretched.
~*~
2025
“Hello, Jack speaking.”
“What do you want?”
“No, Daniel. I do not want to come around, I’m busy.”
“Something.”
“Okay then, I will tell you what I am doing. It is none of your business.”
“Oh for crying out loud. I know she said that, but the answer is no. Can you spell? N . O . NO!”
“I am not interested in the Mayan text or the Timbuktu text or the PZ 789 whatever text. Get it?”
“I am fine, nothing wrong with me.”
“What do you mean ‘a bit grumpy’?”
“Look, Daniel, I know what she said and I know I am meant to get out more, I know I should loosen up a bit more. But if you don’t leave me alone right now, I will come around there, and you will not like it one little bit.”
“Goodbye, Daniel.”
~*~
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