Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon Read Free Page A

there long enough to take some readings. By
our calculations, it's before dawn there now, sir. Any time before
twenty-one hundred should put us in for a daylight arrival."
    "Let's make it a departure at seventeen hundred. I'll get the orders
drawn up." Hammond stood. Jack, Carter and Teal'c rose with him;
Daniel, already standing, settled for another cautious nod. "Dismissed, people."
    Jack picked up the memo that Daniel had left on the table as Hammond closed the door of his ready room. "Oh, Daniel?"
    Daniel was already gathering up books, coffee cup, pens, leather
binder, folder... he paused in the act of juggling. "Yes?"
    "Funny thing, but this memo has my name on it."
    "Well... yes... I was supposed to give it to you. Nobody knows
where your office is. Including me, by the way."

    "Good. Let's keep it that way." Jack flicked the memo across the
table with a fingernail toward Carter, who fielded it and put it in her
own folder. "Captain, as my second in command, you're the keeper of
the paperwork. And, next time a little pre-mission briefing, okay?"
    "Absolutely, Colonel."
    Was that a smile? Nah.
    Couldn't be.
    Based on Hammond's seventeen-hundred departure time, they had
three hours to kill.
    Jack chivvied his team into the Quartermaster's office, without
so much as a restroom break. Ultra-secret, high-tech, save-the-world
kind of stuff as this program might be, he knew damn good and well
that Quartermasters offices around the world ran at exactly the same
speed... slowly.
    Four standard SG field packs, two MP5s, three Beretta sidearms,
and one staff weapon later, they'd wasted nearly two hours, between
the inventorying, packing, unpacking, repacking, and forms. There
were always forms. Even Daniel had been spooked by the amount of
paper being generated.
    Which left them an hour. Carter, who'd taken on the role of Daniel's keeper, helped him set his alarm for departure time, which in
typical military fashion she specified as t-minus ten minutes. To be
early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late. Waiting was a sacred
meditation.
    Jack had dispensed with that years ago. He showed up on the dot,
every time, but knowing Daniel, having a ten-minute window of
opportunity probably wasn't a bad idea. Still wouldn't keep him from
being late, but it would keep him from holding things up too much.
    Funny, how well he seemed to know Daniel, considering they'd
spent all of a couple of days together, more than a year ago. But
they'd been highly concentrated days, full of the kind of stresses that
either tore people apart or forged them together for life. He could tell
that Carter felt disadvantaged by that, but she'd adjust; in this line of
work, they'd all get a chance to build those bonds. The trouble was, it
would probably come at one hell of a price. It usually did.
    After a relaxing hour of target shooting in the base range, he cleaned his weapons and got everything ready, and strolled into the
Embarkation Room at exactly seventeen-hundred hours, to find the
team - even Daniel - already assembled.

    "Sir," Carter said. She looked tense and a little flushed. Adrenaline
pumping.
    Jack nodded to her, to Teal'c, and fastened a weather eye on Daniel,
who looked keen as a new recruit. "Got your Kleenex?" he asked.
    "Even better," he said. "Prescription allergy pills." Then, inevitably, an uncertain look. "And, ah, tissues. For backup."
    "Good plan." Jack turned to look up at the control room, where
General Hammond stood at a loose parade rest, staring out. "Radio
test."
    They each confirmed their radio reliability, and he made a crank it
up gesture at the little guy in the glasses, the one seated at the console
next to Hammond. Need to find out his name, he reminded himself.
Probably a good guy to know, considering he has his finger on the
button to close that iris thing and smash us into little particles so
small even Carter couldn't measure them...
    Then he settled in to watch the