[Moments of Adoration]

For Katie M. in the SG-1 Team Ficathon. Request: Teal'c meets an old friend. Many, many thanks to nanda and Karen for the beta, and many, many apologies to Katie for the tardiness.

"Yes sir," Carter was saying to Hammond when Jack finished making faces at Teal'c. "Based on the spectrophotometry reading, the ore they're mining has an electromagnetic field signature very similar to trinium. I think it's worth obtaining samples and establishing preliminary diplomatic relationships with the community there."

"Colonel?"

Jack pulled himself up straight. "I think it sounds utterly boring, General, and thus perfect for Carter and Daniel. We'll take it."

He shoved his chair back from the table, narrowly escaping a matching bruise on the other shin, courtesy of Daniel.

*****

The town crawled up a wide ravine between two scarred ridges, a collection of thirty buildings and a big smoke-belching complex that Carter said was likely some kind of ore refinery. A small river ran past the refinery, gaining momentum as it tumbled, until at the mouth of the ravine it collapsed into a wide flow and meandered off into a plain of tall blue-green grass.

Five kids tended a herd of cattle in that grass, all wide eyes and whispered chatter as Jack let Daniel take point. One, a girl Jack guessed was about twelve, stepped forward, her long, hooked stick planted firmly in the ground.

"Hello." Daniel stopped, Jack noticed, well out of reach of said stick, hands at his sides, palms facing out. The girl eyed him, a hard assessment worthy of someone three times her age.

"What?"

"Um, we'd like to talk to whoever is in charge," he pointed up the ravine, "about the mine."

After discarding Daniel as a threat, she checked out Carter and Jack, and then her gaze stayed firm on Teal'c's tattoo. Jack exchanged an uneasy glance with Carter, but the girl didn't appear upset, so he shrugged and Carter nodded, her grip on her P-90, like his, no longer quite so casual.

"You should go to the Axe and Hammer," the girl said, a firm nod confirming her command. "Night shift just got off." She waved her long stick at them. "Go on. They'll want to talk to you."

*****

The Axe and Hammer was easily the largest building in the town. A cross between a general store and a saloon, it dominated the street, built up on hefty stone supports like all the other buildings they had passed. "That's one way to deal with the river flooding," Daniel said, tracing his fingers along water marks staining the stone.

No one had stopped them along the road, though like the girl, the people they passed focused on Teal'c, whose eyebrow was plastered high on his forehead at the scrutiny. There was no air of hostility in their regard, but Jack's fingers had twitched on the stock of his weapon all the way up the ravine.

After climbing the steep stairs to the platform porch that ran the length of the Axe and Hammer, Jack pushed open the carved wood door, the other three crowding in behind him. Bright lamps hung from the ceiling, illuminating a large room, clean and spare, filled with wooden tables. A large stone hearth dominated one wall, directly across the room from a bar, also worked in stone. Every table was occupied, and every occupant was staring at the now-open door.

Jack leaned back, cocked his head toward Daniel, Carter and Teal'c. "Act casual."

"Right," Daniel said. "Act casual and we won't stand out at all."

The patrons were mostly men, and mostly lean and hard, their boots crusted with thick blue mud and their faces streaked with darker blue dust, edging into violet. They remained in their seats, but the air of anticipation sat heavy on the back of Jack's tongue, bitter like the acrid tang of refinery smoke that had followed them up the road.

Clearing his throat, Daniel said, "Um, hello. We'd like to speak with someone in charge about the mining operation and the possibility of trade."

Jack heard Carter and Teal'c shift, moving to flank him as Daniel stepped forward to do his thing, like he'd never been a glowy, insubstantial pain in Jack's ass. Jack had missed it, his team like this, like the old days. "I keep waiting for him to bust out with 'take me to your leader' one of these days." Jack said, sotto voce, and Carter's cheeks turned a delicate shade of red as she choked back a laugh. Jack glanced over to Teal'c, expecting an example of the Jaffa's recent inclination to wide, slightly unnerving smiles. But there was no smile. And no Teal'c.

A flash of movement caught Jack's eye, and there was Teal'c, already across the room, his hands fisted in the shirt of the man standing behind the bar, lifting him up and over it. A man bearing Apophis's mark.

This part of the old days Jack didn't miss so much.

Daniel fell back beside him. "Uh, this is not so good," he said, bringing his weapon to bear.

"Yeah." Jack did the same, as did Carter. "I thought he was over that whole Jaffa revenge thing."

Chairs scraped the floor as a few of the patrons now stood, curious murmurs rising into a low uneasy rumble. The occupants of the table closest to the door split up, two with biceps that rivaled Teal'c's heading for the bar, the other three pulling wicked-looking knives from their belts.

"Really, really not good," Daniel said as Jack signaled Carter to secure the door. But as Jack opened his mouth to shout a warning to Teal'c, the man in Teal'c's grasp laughed loudly, thumping Teal'c on the shoulders before grabbing him in a bear hug.

The room went silent.

"Oookay," Jack said as Teal'c returned the man's embrace. The miners advancing on them had paused, now watching the spectacle at the bar. "Not so much a revenge thing, I'm guessing."

"Not unless manly hugging is some Jaffa interrogation technique Teal'c never told us about," Carter replied, easing off her weapon at Jack's signal, as Teal'c and the man made their way around the tables and startled miners.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said when he reached them, his face opened wide in a brilliant grin. "Major Carter, Daniel Jackson, this is Jet'el. We grew up together on Chulak."

*****

"I came here four years ago." Jet'el told them as he sat them down and served them an early lunch of thick bread and sliced meat, and a mild beer that tasted of honey and anise. "It was easier than I expected, especially after Halanh and Geeren died."

Teal'c reached across the table, hesitating only a moment before wrapping his fingers around Jet'el's wrist. "I am sorry. I did not know." Jack only heard that particular tone from Teal'c when he spoke of Ry'ac, or sometimes Drey'auc, and guessed it was Jet'el's wife and kid who had died.

Jet'el shrugged one shoulder. "Amonet had little patience for those of us who remained loyal to Apophis after he was taken by Sokar. When we would not do her bidding, she had few qualms about expressing her impatience on our families."

"Oh." The hitch in Daniel's voice was minute, but Carter scooted a little closer to him, and Jack nudged Daniel's knee with his. Daniel gave them a quick, tight smile, waving off Teal'c's concerned gaze with a flick of his fingers. "We're sorry for your loss," he said to Jet'el.

Jet'el bowed his head. "I thank you. Now," he said, and Jack read his clipped quick transition as an obvious end to the discussion of his family, "I brew this." Rubbing his thumbs up and down the pebbled glass of his cup, he sloshed the beer inside. "And I feed them," he gestured at the miners with the glass, "and I am content."

"I would not have thought you would become quite so enamored of a quiet life," Teal'c said with one last glance at Daniel. "As I remember, you were hardly known for an aptitude to tranquil pursuits."

That devolved into a trade of nostalgia that gathered an audience of a handful of miners who had remained after their own meals. Ulin, one of those from the almost-altercation, turned out to be a very pleasant guy with a deep, soft voice. He added a few choice anecdotes about Jet'el's early brewing attempts to the conversation, which lead Jet'el to rescind his drinking privileges.

Feeling sorry for him, Jack started to recount Teal'c's first encounter with a troop of Girl Scouts selling cookies, but at a swift tap of boot against his shin, he coughed and said, "Uh, yeah. Teal'c? He's the picture of perfection. All the time. It's uncanny."

Jet'el chuckled. "I can hardly believe that. Did you know that he once climbed into a pasture with a very large and very ill-tempered bull, with very large horns." He set down his glass and spread his arms wide. "A bull that broke through the fence of its own enclosure and the fence of the adjoining pasture of cattle while chasing him, and led them all right down the main road of our village. The damage was... extensive."

"It was at your instigation," Teal'c said, arms crossed, his brow creased in a slight, embarrassed frown, "as were most of my memorably unwise choices."

"Oh, you can't leave us with that, Teal'c." Carter elbowed him in the side, grinning. "How often do we get to hear you and the word 'unwise' in the same sentence?"

"I have told you stories of my youth."

"None this interesting." Her smile only brightened in the face of his mock glare, and she abandoned him for Jet'el. "What else?"

She never got an answer; the door slammed open and the girl with the stick stumbled in, ragged breaths breaking up her announcement of "Jaffa! Jaffa are coming!"

The girl ran to Jet'el's side. "They bear the mark you spoke of, of the one you called Baal, and they are looking for those marked like you." She pointed at Teal'c. "Like that one."

Again, all eyes turn to SG-1.

Jack sighed. "So much for act casual."

*****

"It doesn't make any sense. How did Baal know we were here?"

"Good question," Jack said, tugging Daniel to his feet by his sleeve, hoping the action covered the slight tremor in his hands when Daniel said the snake's name. "And we'll worry about that later, when we're not in imminent danger of capture, torture and all that other good stuff. Carter?"

"On it, sir." She was already out the door when Daniel shrugged out of Jack's grasp.

"Wait."

"Daniel, didn't I just say-"

Waving off the reprimand with a waggle of his hand, Daniel rounded on Jet'el. "She said you'd told them about Baal's Jaffa. Why's that?"

Jack, all ready to order Teal'c to drag Daniel out, snapped his mouth shut. "Yeah. What he said."

"Jet'el?"

The look Jet'el turned on Teal'c was pleading. "They are not here for you. You should go. Please."

"Is there something you wish to tell me, Jet'el?"

"This is no time to be obstinate, Teal'c. This does not concern you. Now go."

"And it does concern you?" Jack said. "Why would Baal's Jaffa be looking for you? You make beer."

"Jet'el," Teal'c said. "Have you some explanation for this?"

Jet'el's shoulders sagged as he collapsed back into his chair under Teal'c's steady scrutiny. "I warned them just in case. But they should not be here. I took great care to make sure this would never happen."

"To make sure what would never happen?" Daniel said.

Hunching over his glass, Jet'el said, "Refining the ore produces a waste product, a chemical substance that enhances the effects of certain explosives by a significant margin."

Ulin nodded. "We use it to supplement the explosives we use when opening new lines for the mine. But I do not understand what it has to do with these Jaffa who come."

When Jet'el answered, it was barely above a whisper. "I steal it. And I take to other worlds, to marketplaces where there are men who broker for weapons, and I sell it."

"And you sold it to someone who really pissed off Baal, and then probably sold you out to try and save his own ass," Jack said. "You idiot."

"I thought only to give my people a weapon against the Goa'uld." Jet'el spoke not to Jack, but to Ulin. "To give meaning to the death of my family. Please understand that it was never about you."

"It wasn't? Even though you endangered us? After all this time we are not your people, Jet'el?" Jack winced at the reproach that chilled Ulin's soft-spoken questions.

"Colonel?" Carter called in from the porch. "Are we moving out anytime soon? Dust coming up off the road puts them right at the edge of town."

"Hang on, Major." Jack turned to the girl. "How many were there?"

"Many."

"You can go up to the pass," Jet'el offered. "Make your way down along the ridge. I will delay them. Or you can hide there," he glanced at Ulin and the other miners, "and I will give myself up."

"And what about them?" Daniel gestured to the miners. "Or the rest of the people who live here? Baal's not going to just ignore this place if he has any idea this is where that substance came from."

"Sir?" Carter was back in the doorway. "If we're leaving we need to do so sometime in the next, well, now."

Jet'el, his mouth pressed in a hard line, stood and grabbed Teal'c's arm. "Believe me. I did not intend for it to ever come to this."

Teal'c ignored him. "O'Neill..."

"Yeah, yeah." Jack threw up his hands, which no longer shook. "Carter, we're staying."

*****

"That's forty on the road, by my count." Carter passed her binoculars to Jack. "And looks like ten headed off toward the mine."

They lay sprawled on top of one of the taller buildings at the upper edge of town, giving them a clear view of the road and the Jaffa marching up it. It was clear of any other traffic; Jet'el, Daniel, and Teal'c had hurriedly raised the alarm with the townspeople while Jack and Carter had scouted for their vantage point.

The lack of non-coms would make a few things easier. "What do you have in the way of weapons?"

"Bows used for hunting, and beam devices that we use in the mines, but they should be effective as arms over short range," Ulin said. He and three of the miners from the Axe and Hammer had volunteered to help.

Jack shooed them down, following Ulin and Carter as they crawled back in an attic window. Back out on the street with the miners, Daniel, Teal'c, Jet'el and the girl, Keveth, who had stubbornly followed them, Jack pointed to Ulin. "Take your buddies and get those beam weapons."

As they disappeared down a narrow alley between two buildings, Jack crooked a finger at Keveth. "And you, you need to go home."

Baring her teeth in a ferocious grin, she thumped her stick against the ground. "No."

Jack ignored Carter and Daniel's poorly-veiled snickering as he crouched down eye-to-eye with Keveth. "Oh, really?"

She waved her stick dangerously close to Jack's nose, unfazed by the displeased edge in his voice. "You can't make me."

"Um, sir, clock's ticking."

Carter too, was unfazed as Jack rounded on her and Daniel. Stabbing a finger at Daniel, he said, "You get to baby-sit. And you," he pointed at Carter, "will get something unpleasant later."

Motioning everyone in close, he pulled out his knife, which he used to scrawl a crude map of the town in the dirt. "Okay then. Here's the plan."

*****

"Carter?"

"In position."

"Daniel?"

"Did I mention that this plan could use some work?"

Jack took that as a yes. "Teal'c?"

"We are prepared."

Jack leaned over the side of the building he had chosen as his perch and waved to Ulin, who was crouched on its porch. A shout went up and he ducked back, falling prone as the heavy tread of boots sounded nearby. Crawling back to the edge, he peered down to see Baal's Jaffa gathered on the road in front of the Axe and Hammer. One of them, the squadron leader Jack assumed, climbed the stairs to the bar and kicked open the door, disappearing inside. Two more followed him.

"Daniel, you're a go. Teal'c, you're a go." He took his thumb off the radio and settled down on his stomach to wait. Across the street and seven buildings down, he knew Carter was doing the same thing on the flat roof of what Ulin had told them was the local equivalent of the mayor's house.

His radio clicked six minutes later. "The mine is secure, O'Neill." The Jaffa below remained calm and apparently unaware of their compatriots' fate, and Jack breathed out a sigh of relief. "Daniel?"

"Keveth says it will be any time now, Jack."

As if in answer, Jack heard a rumble like distant thunder. The Jaffa did react to that. One of them charged up the steps into the Axe and Hammer, reappearing a moment later with the others, gesturing urgently.

"You're a go, Carter."

Before he'd even finished, the squadron leader cried out, collapsing and tumbling down the steep steps. The three Jaffa with him followed suit in quick succession.

Jack took aim and picked off two more Jaffa as they began to return fire in Carter's direction. Below him, bright beams flashed to life, flying back and forth across the street as Ulin and the others, who had hidden on the wide porches of the homes and buildings along the street, began to fire.

The rumble had built to a roar. Under Jack, the building shook, hard enough that he had to compensate for it when he fired at another Jaffa. "Holy cow," he heard Carter over the radio as a cloud of dust billowed up the street, disgorging a mass of very angry cattle, bearing down on the Jaffa pinned in the middle of the street.

It was over in under a minute.

Jack made his way down, the lowing of the cattle fading out as they continued up the ravine. Ulin and the other miners herded the surviving Jaffa into a tight cluster, disarming those few who'd managed to retain their staff weapons.

Carter was already on the ground, confirming that the dead Jaffa were, in fact, dead. She was on the radio with Teal'c when Jack approached. "All clear, Teal'c," she said. "We're secure here. Head back."

"Excellent. We have rendezvoused with Daniel Jackson and Keveth, and will join you shortly."

Jack grabbed his radio. "You mocked the plan, Daniel. You should never mock the plan."

"Do you really want me to remind you of all the plans that weren't so successful?"

Ignoring Carter's chuckle, Jack turned off his radio and clapped her on the shoulder. "Holy cow, indeed."

*****

"Goal!" Jack whacked a last chunk of broken glass with his broom, sending it skittering across the floor, into the hearth. The Jaffa had made a mess of the place, and while Teal'c and Jet'el sat one of the few intact tables, deep in conversation, Jack had offered Daniel and Carter's services for cleanup duty. He'd received an eye-roll from Carter, and Daniel had shoved the broom right back into Jack's hands.

"We will contact the rebel Jaffa to take custody of Baal's men," he heard Teal'c say as he stowed the broom behind the bar. Carter and Daniel had already abandoned their cleaning efforts, and sat with Teal'c and Jet'el. Jack joined them, pulling his chair around so he could rest his arms on the back.

"If it is your wish to leave this place," Teal'c continued, "they will take you to Master Bra'tac. He will be pleased to have you."

"I have no wish to fight anymore, Teal'c," Jet'el said, both his tone and the way he crossed his arms radiating defensiveness.

"Good idea, considering how your idea of 'not fighting'," Jack made air quotes for emphasis, "really sucked for all the people who live around here."

Jet'el had the good grace to look ashamed. "If it is the wish of those who live here that that I leave this place, I will accept your generous offer, Teal'c."

"Speaking of," Jack got up, pushing the chair back. "Daniel, you're with me back to the gate. Teal'c, you and Carter see what you can get out of Baal's boys before we turn them over to Bra'tac. If they knew for certain Jet'el was here, we'll have to figure out some way of misdirecting Baal."

"We will gain the needed information, O'Neill."

Daniel groaned. "It's three miles to the gate. Can't I stay here and clean?"

"No, you have to come share my pain." Jack waited by the door while Daniel tightened his laces. "Though that reminds me. Carter, where's that remote dialing thingy you promised?"

"It's on my to-do list, sir." Carter pulled Daniel to his feet, giving him a gentle push toward Jack. "Right behind your flying car."

"Decisions, decisions." He shouldered a still-muttering Daniel out the door. "We'll check in when we hit the gate."

"We'll be waiting, Colonel."

"I know." He returned her bright smile before clattering down the stairs on Daniel's heels.