graculus

Another for

au_bingo...

Title: Et in Arcadia Ego
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Prompt: Other: Castaways
Words: 2700
Warnings: None
Summary: In which a routine mission goes all to pieces...

The first warning he had of the impending disaster was a succession of swiftly-blinking lights, an array of them telegraphing a warning something bad was about to happen, one way or another. Then sparks began to come from the console, quickly followed by smoke so thick it made Daniel choke, groping for the button that was supposed to trigger the built-in fire suppressant. Which should have triggered itself, of course, if the company wasn't far too tight-fisted for proper maintenance schedules.

He slapped his palm on the button once, then again, with no apparent result.

"Damnit."

The smoke kept building, making Daniel back away from the pilot's chair, groping his way towards the compartment door. His eyes were streaming now, the chemicals in the burning plastic making him blink away tears as he tried to orient himself within the flight deck. Two doors - one the exit, the other the emergency suits - it was starting to look like he'd be needing both sooner than he'd ever expected.

"Evacuation protocol has begun," a preternaturally calm female voice announced. "You are advised to make your way to the pod nearest to you, on the understanding that it may be behind you."

Daniel struggled with the cuffs of his envirosuit, fingers going through the motions he'd practiced so many times under much better circumstances. There, that was it. With a twist, the helmet locked into place; Daniel sucked down the clean air in gulps, wondering just what damage he'd done to his lungs by inhaling that crap.

"Routine mission, huh?" he said, as he turned to the compartment door and opened it, falling through into the corridor as the ship unexpectedly lurched. Just his luck, the fire was already affecting the ship's controls, so there was no time to consider options - get to a pod and get off, or prepare to face the music.

Except he needed his research or all of this drama would be for nothing. The ship lurched again, turning into a long spiralling arc that slammed Daniel against the nearest bulkhead, his helmet impacting with a muffled thud. For a moment the world spun, not just the ship, lights swimming before his eyes as he tried to focus on getting into the lab.

"Dr Daniel Jackson, passcode SG1 slash gamma." The door to the lab slid aside, the computer recognising Daniel's authorisation code without a hitch, for the first time in weeks.

"Evacuation protocol has begun." Daniel ignored the repeated warning. "You are advised to make your way to the pod nearest to you, on the understanding that it may be behind you."

"Shut up, shut up," Daniel muttered, as his gloved hands made heavy work of the lab's interior controls. Most of his research was written down, the old-fashioned way, so it was a matter of a moment's work to sweep the notebooks into a bag, the back-up hard disk popping out of the computer to join it as he turned back towards safety.

There was a pod just a matter of feet away, Daniel knew that, the location of every inch of this ship now all but engraved into his mind from the weeks he'd spent in it. He slapped a hand onto the control, hoping the damage already caused hadn't spread this far. It took a moment, the mechanism of the door grinding loudly, but then the pod opened at last. Daniel was inside, his movement triggering the door to close again even before he'd settled into the seat, his precious burden shoved into the nearest empty storage bin.

"Evacuation initiated." The light level in the pod dimmed, momentarily, then the countdown began. Daniel looked back through the small window of the pod to what he could see of the interior of the ship, shrouded in smoke and limned with flashing lights. "Brace for separation."

He'd done the drills, of course, so many times that he could do them in his sleep - hands moved to buckle himself in, eyes scanning the control panel to check for breathable air before the countdown ended, all of the things Daniel had hoped he'd never have to do in a real emergency. This time, even the calmly-voiced warning wasn't sufficient to prepare him for the slam of acceleration as the pod detached itself from the side of his ship.

& & & & & &

The trail of smoke streaked across the sky and he watched it fall, attempting to calculate its velocity and thus figure where it might land. It was moving fast, whatever it was, plummeting down behind the nearby range of low hills with no evidence of a return to the sky. That meant its landing site was not far, a day's walk at most, but far enough that he should make a start for it now, if he wanted to ensure he found whoever had inhabited the craft nearby to where it had landed.

After a moment's thought, he kicked dirt on the small fire he'd lit only hours before, picked up his pack and surveyed the clearing briefly before shouldering it. Nothing left to say he'd been here for weeks, months. Nothing to mark his exile here in the last place anyone would look.

& & & & & &

The way the pod had shaken on its entry into this planet's atmosphere, Daniel was almost surprised it even made it to the ground in one piece. Or pretty much one piece, from what he could tell upside-down and still strapped in his harness. The pod had dug itself into the ground, ploughing sidelong into the dirt till it buckled under its own weight, toppling over to lie awkwardly, cracks spidering across the plexiglass screen from a dozen points of impact.

It took three or four tries to unbuckle the harness, which had tightened around him uncomfortably by now, threatening to cut off the blood supply to some parts he still needed even if he didn't get to use them all that often. In the end the buckle opened and Daniel was dumped gracelessly onto the roof of the pod, now its floor - at least everything seemed to be intact, which was an unexpected bonus.

Daniel righted himself, crawled to the storage bin where he'd stowed his research, and pulled out the bag. The contents looked fine, not damaged by the poorly controlled descent and eventual crash - he couldn't bring himself to think of it as a 'landing' - as did the survival kit with which it had shared storage space. Another bin contained water, as well as purification equipment for making more, and a rudimentary shelter. In theory, enough supplies to keep Daniel fairly comfortable until the cavalry arrived, assuming that the emergency beacon on the ship he'd just left worked better than anything else on board.

He hadn't signed up for this, Daniel decided, as he kicked open the pod's door and slithered out into another world completely. Sure, he'd agreed to undertake solo exploratory journeys for the Corporation once the rights to now-uninhabited former Goa'uld planets had been bought by them, but it had seemed just like an ideal way to finally make some money out of his expensive education. What else had his twin doctorates equipped him for? There wasn't much call, even in the academic world, for an archaeologist with an interest in linguistics and only the Corporation had been offering anything much above minimum wage outside academia.

Once again, his desperate need to know what was 'out there' had got the better of him, just like it had when he'd accompanied his crazy grandfather on their ill-fated trip to Belize. That particular expedition had left Daniel spending a number of his formative years living with a sympathetic local family when Nicholas Ballard had disappeared, only for Daniel's grandfather to reappear ranting about giant aliens. Both of them had been hastily extradited to the US at that point, Daniel to a boarding school paid for by his trust fund and his grandfather to a mental hospital. In hindsight, given how much Daniel had hated the boarding school, he wasn't sure he'd got the better of the deal.

Outside the pod, Daniel got to his feet and looked around where he'd crashed. There was an obvious trail of destruction in the nearby trees, a wide swathe left by the entry angle of the pod marked by burnt foliage and cracked branches. The air seemed clear, the first few stars starting to appear in the sky of another planet's twilight.

"Moment of truth," Daniel said, then twisted his helmet and pulled it off, letting a little of the night air in but still leaving the helmet in place in case it proved toxic. It was a little thinner than he'd anticipated, but seemed okay, and after a moment he removed it completely.

It took a matter of minutes for Daniel to strip the pod of everything worth removing, emptying out the storage and making a tidy pile of what he'd found. Within an hour or so, he had shelter and a fire - he was starting to feel like this wasn't quite so bad after all. Of course, Daniel was restricted to eating emergency rations but that was a small price to pay for getting down safely and at least he was relatively sure what they contained. Despite the familiar-looking trees that surrounded his campsite on all sides, Daniel knew he had little way of telling what this alien forest contained, let alone what else might be on this planet. The only consolation he had was that this was one of the planets that had already been surveyed by drones and found to be uninhabited, so at least there was nothing to worry about in terms of alien encounters, friendly or otherwise.

As Daniel ate the first of what seemed likely to be a significant number of MRE's - he had no idea how long it would take his distress signal to reach someone who could respond, let alone how soon they might be likely to start looking - he wondered for a moment if that was a good thing. It would have been incredible to have been part of the original Stargate programme, if they'd allowed scientists to contribute in any way to a military-led operation like that, for the opportunity of making first contact with the descendants of people the Goa'uld had stolen from Earth thousands of years before.

In some ways, Daniel had always thought that would be less awe-inspiring than aliens, easier to handle, since they were not quite so... alien. It would also have given him a chance to try out some theories he'd always had, ideas of how certain ancient peoples communicated, what they believed. Things that could never be proven one way or another, except possibly by those who might have maintained those ways of communication, those beliefs. It was an archaeological pipe-dream, but one that was never likely to be experienced by them, if the US Air Force continued to have its way.

No, the best he could manage was a job like this, where at least he'd get to spend a significant amount of time on planets where nobody had walked for longer than anyone could imagine, alien or former Earth inhabitant.

As he poked at the bottom of the MRE with a fork, wondering just how something that looked so disgusting could manage to taste even worse, there was a sound in the nearby undergrowth. Daniel looked up, eyes trying to adjust to the growing darkness around him. He should have pitched his shelter closer to the pod, using it to ensure nothing could sneak up on him from the trees. Instead, he'd been sitting with his back to the darkness as if he had nothing more to worry about than whether his MRE was chicken or macaroni and cheese.

The planet was uninhabited, that much was certified, but they hadn't said anything about other lifeforms. Other lifeforms that might be quite interested in a newly-arrived visitor and having him for dinner, though not in the sense of inviting him to join them, more in the sense of Daniel himself as main course and possibly dessert as well.

There had been no weapons on the ship, so there were none in what Daniel had recovered from the pod, other than a knife he'd been using for pretty much any task where a cutting edge would be required - it had been equally useful for both setting up the shelter and cutting his way into the case of MRE's - it was still better than nothing. Daniel's hand dropped to his hip; just letting it rest on the handle of the knife made him feel a little better, even if he wasn't completely sure he could defend himself if pushed to do so.

There it was again. Daniel stood, dropping the MRE and fork; he pulled the knife from its sheath, certain he was holding it more awkwardly than necessary but still determined to do whatever was necessary. He hadn't come this far, surviving a crash landing on another planet, to fall victim to something that went bump in the night. Was it better or worse that he couldn't quite see what was out there? Daniel wasn't certain, as his imagination was working overtime on supplying potential sources of the sounds of movement through the nearby trees, each worse than the last.

"Routine mission, my ass," Daniel muttered and edged round the fire, not towards the source of the noise but away from it, trying now to put the fire between him and whatever it was out there. At least that way he would get to see what emerged from the darkness, whether that proved a good thing or not.

& & & & & &

Crouched in the darkness, he studied the newcomer. When he moved, allowing the fire to blind him from his surroundings, it was clear the man was no warrior - that view was supported by the way he held the knife, as if he was unsure what to do with it. A true warrior handled a weapon, any weapon, as if it were part of him. He did not know what this man was, why he was here in this place of exile, but he was no warrior. Was that something for good or ill? At least it could be said he was not an assassin, sent to end a time in exile with a shameful and secret death, so that was surely of the good?

He had made enough noise before to draw the newcomer's attention, to seek a response from him and thus measure his worth as an opponent. It had never occurred that someone else might come, not by design as he had been sent, but by accident. That seemed to be the way of it, from the path the falling ship had ploughed through the nearby forest and the rudimentary camp the newcomer had made in its shadow.

He had thought a thousand times how he might respond to rescue, an offer of assistance from one he knew, but had never considered this scenario. Would the newcomer have friends who would look for him, who might also assist a fellow prisoner of this planet? He could not know, had insufficient information to guess, but the first overture he made towards this man was likely to be important.

He could steal away now, pretend that he had never seen the ship fall from the sky, never seen the man who still stood peering into the darkness with fire-blinded eyes, accept his exile as it had been intended. He had done well so far, living off the rich produce of this world and harvesting the work of those who had once lived here. He would survive despite the best intentions of his enemy, long years of exile in a world far from his own.

There was an alternative to that existence, of course, one he could not ignore. He could step out from the darkness, hands empty but mouth full of words of welcome. He could not be certain of the outcome of such an overture, certain of the response from this man he had never seen before, but surely whatever came next was still better than a lifetime alone? Could he ignore such an opportunity?

Crouched in the darkness, he studied the newcomer and tried to decide.