For once in his life, Nelson didn’t have any glib comments or jokes on the tip of his tongue. He felt dead inside, as he explained what had happened to Palkewa and Galosi. They were still digesting it, staring wide-eyed through all the dust as if expecting to wake up, when Tony arrived. At his urging, they brought their attention back to him.
"We were on Bahassa, as you ordered, sir." Galosi reported, slowly. "We finished our talks with the people there, and returned to the ‘gate. It was still some hours before the return window opened, so we decided to wait." He looked at Palkewa nervously.
"I dialed the tau’ri from there," Palkewa continued for him, "just as I have every day for months, and the ‘gate opened! I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to do! We just… let it close again." She swallowed hard. "We decided to tell you as soon as possible, but we had no somaradio, so we just waited and came back here at the right time. To… this." She stared around blankly.
"When you connected to Earth, did you hear any radio transmissions?" Nelson asked through his surprise.
Galosi shook his head. "We didn’t think to use our radio. We never expected it to work, so we forgot what to do."
"It’s all right." Tony stepped up to the DHD. "I’m dialing Earth. If they’re back on the grid, maybe they can help us with the search. If this is temporary, they need to be warned."
He had to think for a moment, and then began pressing symbols. His hand shook slightly before he pressed the last one. Nelson suddenly realized he might not have been able to remember the symbols, himself.
The wormhole formed, as it had countless times before, as if it didn’t know just how monumental this moment was for them.
Wordlessly, Nelson handed Tony his radio.
"Stargate Command, this is Colonel Marcus of the Surv- uh, of SG-14. Do you copy?"
There was a brief pause. "Colonel, this is Sergeant Harriman. We read you loud and clear."
Nelson felt the tension in the group snap like a cut cord. Some of the Earthlings even smiled, despite their surroundings.
Tony responded quickly. "Sergeant, I don’t know how long this connection will stay open." He paused. "I don’t even know how it happened in the first place, but please listen closely. Earth has been stuck in a time loop. For you, the last ten hours have been repeating over and over for-"
"Yes, sir, we know all about that. The loop has been broken. We’re all back to normal here…" Harriman paused. "I guess."
Tony gave Nelson a bewildered look. "SGC, please repeat. Did you say the loop was broken??"
A female voice responded, confidently. "Colonel, this is Major Carter. I can confirm that Earth is back in temporal sync with the rest of the galaxy. We shut off the device on P4X-639, so it’s safe to come home now." There was another brief pause. "I imagine you’ve got quite a story to tell."
"That’s an understatement." Tony said faintly.
"Transmit your iris code now, Colonel."
Nelson’s hand reflexively dropped to his pocket, and he saw Tony’s do the same. The iris code transmitters, nicknamed Garage Door Openers, had been standard equipment for them all once upon a time. Since they hadn’t needed any GDOs for a very long time, they’d decided to store them down in…
Nelson looked back at the mountain. In a storage room in the lower levels.
"Uh, we don’t have our GDOs, Major." Tony slowly explained. "You’ll have to send a team out here to check us out before we can go home."
"Acknowledged. I’ll inform the General. Where are you?"
"P4… uh, P4X…"
Nelson knew how he felt. It had been so long since he’d called this place anything but ‘Hovak’.
"P4X-7344." A dead-sounding voice answered for him. Nelson looked over and took an involuntary step back. Hargrove was there, his face set and angry. He gave the distinct impression of a wounded animal.
Nelson could hear the tap of keys through the radio. "According to this, that planet is under Goa’uld control."
"Not anymore." Tony answered darkly. "But you’re right. Send a MALP to P3X-779 instead. We’ll meet your team there."
-.-
The SGC told them that it would take more than an hour to assemble a team and get it out to Savannah. Desousa and the Pyrta had returned from Cartago, in the mean time. Nelson had also taken the opportunity to keep dialing through the remainder of the stopover planets, seeing if anyone else had made it.
Tony watched him in a daze. Everything had happened so quickly, and he was rushing to catch up. The idea that the control terminal had been inside the barriers had never occurred to him; or, apparently, to anyone else. It made everything they’d been doing out here seem… laughable.
And pointless. All of his work, all the sacrifices his people had made, all of it had been for nothing.
"Boss!" Nelson called out, grabbing his attention. "We got a hit here."
A minute or so later, Bokal stepped out of the ‘gate, carrying an unconscious Jahu. They were both bloodied and covered with dust, and a small metal device had been strapped to Jahu’s arm. Bokal carefully deposited him on the ground, and the Pyrta hurried over to examine him.
"Colonel." Bokal looked relieved. "I’m glad to see you still alive. I feared we were the only ones to escape."
Tony set his jaw. "Were you here when it happened?"
"I was."
The dust had mostly settled since they’d first arrived, and a look of abandonment and loss washed over Bokal’s face as he looked out at what was left of the base. "I… I was down there in the forest, working on my equipment, when I heard the base alarm go off. At about the same time, orbital blasts began striking the mountain! By the time I arrived at the ‘gate, Jahu was already dialing out. He told me that Suna had given the order to evacuate. He never got the chance to finish." Bokal looked down at his feet.
"Tanies’bo was running out of the passage when one of the blasts hit the tunnel. He was crushed instantly. Jahu was struck by some of the debris and lost consciousness. It seems that whoever attacked us meant to seal everyone inside the mountain. They knew exactly where and how to hit us." He added bitterly.
Tony looked over at the Pyrta. "How is he?"
"Stable, for now." Archie examined the armband. "This is keeping him in a kind of metabolic stasis. It probably saved his life. Without it, he would have lost much more blood."
"I didn’t have any of the right equipment to repair his head wound, so I decided to put him in stasis instead." Bokal sighed. "Once I was sure he wouldn’t bleed to death, I ran back to the tunnel to help, but I was too late."
"The self-destruct."
Bokal nodded. "I probably would have been knocked out by the shockwave, if I hadn’t been using this," he touched the phase-shifting device on his arm, "but the blast nearly deafened me, all the same."
A thought struck Tony. "Some of them could still be alive down there! Could you use that thing to go through the rubble and bring them out?"
"I already tried, Colonel." He responded sadly. "Just after the explosion. I found no open passageways, and no air flow at all. I searched for almost an hour before returning to the surface. I didn’t know if the Goa’uld would land troops, or send them through the ‘gate, so I took Jahu to Kanut. It was the only address I could remember from your list of safe planets."
He grimaced apologetically, and Tony put a hand on his shoulder. "Don’t worry about it. I probably would have done the same. Actually, we’ll be leaving soon, ourselves. To Earth."
"You might want to tell Hargrove that, boss." Nelson pointed back towards the collapsed passageway.
Tony sighed and headed out towards him, leaving the others to explain the rest to Bokal.
Hargrove was shifting rocks at the tunnel entrance, tossing them to either side in an effort to clear the passage. Though Tony had seen him in combat many times, he’d never seen this kind of intensity in Hargrove’s expression.
Tony reached his hand out to the man’s shoulder, and then thought better of it. "Hargrove."
He didn’t respond, other than grunting a little while trying to move one of the larger rocks. "Hargrove, we have to go. You heard Major Carter. It’s time to go home."
"Either help me, or leave. Sir."
Tony couldn’t tell if that last bit was insubordination or the result of sheer physical effort, so he let it pass. With effort, he tempered his voice. "Bokal took a phase-shifting trip through those tunnels. There’s no one left alive down there, Hargrove."
"Bokal’s a scientist!" Hargrove snapped over his shoulder. "What the hell does he know about search and rescue?" His shoulders sagged for a moment, before he heaved again, rolling the boulder aside. "I’m not going anywhere. And if you’re going to order me to," he added just as Tony opened his mouth, "I’ll just tell you to go to hell. So do yourself a favor and don’t bother."
Tony felt short of breath. That had been what he was going to do. Kneeling next to Hargrove, he lowered his voice. "Even if she is alive, you’ll never find her alone, and you know it. Come back with me. We’ll tell SGC what happened. Maybe they can help with the search!"
Hargrove wasn’t looking at him, but Tony could see his stance slowly change. His shoulders began to shake, and he collapsed to the ground, sobbing.
-.-
On Tony’s orders, Palkewa and Galosi had returned to their homeworlds, along with the two Healer assistants carrying Jahu. None of them had wanted to go, but Tony doubted they’d be welcome on Earth yet, and it wasn’t safe here anymore. That left just him, Hargrove, Nelson, David, Pierson, Avery, Archie, and Bokal.
The eight of them stood in front of the ‘gate, surrounded by rubble and broken trees.
Off in the distance, storm clouds steadily approached them.
-.-
Home.
Tony sat on a bunk, in a featureless gray room with a locked door. Despite the prison setting, this place was still home, and it felt like it. Impulses warred within him, one to throw the chair at a wall in fury, one to burst into tears as Hargrove had, one to laugh uncontrollably at the sheer capriciousness of life itself, and so many others…
Home.
The faces of the Survivors flashed through his head, one after another. His stomach twisted, and he nearly retched at the sick irony of that name. Cayo, Suna, Govis, Premin’aha, Si’snaav, so many others. He forced himself to stop for a moment. Blake. Haley. It was painful, but he had to face it. They were dead. Rotting under a thousand tons of rock, and he was here.
Home.
He heard a keycard being swiped outside, and the door opened, revealing one of the base’s SOs and Nelson. Tony looked up with bleary eyes, and Nelson sat on the bunk next to him.
"It’s over, boss. The quarantine’s done. We can all go home now."
Tony choked back a bitter laugh. Home. "Julia’s expecting me, you know." He looked over at Nelson. "She set me up on a blind date before we left. For her, that was yesterday! She was always-" He cut off for a second, feeling rueful. "She is always trying to find someone for me, because she knows I’ll never go out looking for myself." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "How long, Nelson?"
Nelson seemed to know exactly what he was asking. "According to the Tollans, the barriers were up for ten months and two days."
"Ten months!"
"Come on." Nelson grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. "You need to get some rest, boss. They’ll be debriefing us all for weeks, at least, and you know how they are for details. I’ll call your sister and tell her you’re canceling, if you want."
Tony shook his head. "Thanks, but I’ll come up with some excuse."
They walked down the corridors of the SGC in silence for a bit. The place had an almost ephemeral quality after all this time, as did the people here. Tony shook his head to clear it. "Stokes and the others are back from Tollanna, I take it?"
"Yup. I saw them arrive. Temens asked about you."
He lowered his voice. "What about Bokal and Archie?"
"No word on them yet. Looks like they made a clean getaway." Nelson answered in a similar tone.
Luckily for the Deuca, Archie and both his assistants had been offworld during the attack. They’d all returned home, but not before Argyros had promised to keep an eye out for Earthlings in the future. "We will continue to fight the Goa’uld in our own way, Colonel." He’d said as he wiped the ‘gate coordinates for the final time. "When they are gone, I look forward to seeing you again, and perhaps visiting your planet."
Bokal’s situation had been slightly stickier. He’d asked that his existence be kept a secret, even from the people at the SGC. It was a huge request, but everyone had agreed to it. Bokal was one of them, after all, and if the SGC told his people that he was still out on his own, the Tollans would not stop until they’d retrieved him. Tony and the rest had agreed on a story explaining how they’d gotten away from the unas, and he was fairly certain General Carter would play along if asked about it. Bokal had also removed any remaining implants before thanking them- thanking them!- and heading through the ‘gate.
Tony could only hope he’d be safe out there all alone.
"What about the others?"
"The General sent teams out to Zau and Cha’havis. Jahu’s recovering nicely, but they haven’t heard from anyone else yet." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, and you’ll be happy to know the Hovakians are fine. The UAV spotted them a few hundred miles north of the ‘gate, up towards the coast. I doubt Apophis even knew they were there."
"That’s good news." Tony let out a relieved breath as they walked. "I keep on thinking back over it all, Nelson. How suddenly everything happened. We get hit on Helios, Hovak gets hit, and Earth is back, all less than a day. I think Hovak was destroyed because the barriers went down."
"I had the same thought." Nelson agreed. "Remember, Apophis said ‘you will never return to your world’. He probably knew about Hovak for a while, but decided to attack us only after he heard the barriers were down, to keep us from coming home. Still, what I don’t get is why he waited so long."
Tony grimaced. "To give us time to gather as many people together as possible, Nelson. He let us keep recruiting so that we’d weed out any ‘disloyal’ humans. That way he could wipe us out and not endanger any of his loyal slaves." He trailed off for a few seconds.
"Ten months, Nelson! All that time, all that effort, and all we succeeded in doing was painting a target on ourselves for the Goa’uld to hit."
Nelson grabbed him by the shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. "Oh, we did a lot more than that, boss!" A kind of desperate intensity bled into his voice. "Tony, if it wasn’t for us, the Hovakians would still be slaving away in those mines. Nereus would still be alive and the Shu would still be in the middle of their cold war, keeping an iron grip on all their planets. That unas would still be terrorizing and cannibalizing people on Apophis’ orders. We brought back a half dozen PL90s that the boys at R&D are currently drooling over, too. And probably most importantly, right now, astronomers all over the globe would be scratching their heads and talking to reporters. Remember Rev? It looks like he did his job, and that’s thanks to us, boss! Don’t you dare start thinking that what we did out there was a waste! I sure don’t. You may feel like a colossal failure right now, but as far as I’m concerned, you kept us alive and got us home. Thank you for that."
Tony looked at him in surprise. Something in his voice must have triggered that pep talk. He wasn’t used to being on the receiving end. "Everything you said is true, Nelson, and I’m glad to be back home." He sighed. "Still, none of that changes the fact that I have to go and tell a little girl that her parents are dead, and that it’s because of me."
Nelson grimaced. "I know. That’s really rough."
"Did you… know about the arrangement I had with Blake and Haley?"
"Yeah. Desousa told me a long time ago. He witnessed for you, remember?" Nelson started walking again. "God does everything for a reason, or at least that’s what you’re always telling me, Tony. You’re in for a tough time, but just like out there, you’re not alone in this."
