Beyond the Iris: A Stargate Story

Chapter 9

Trigger warning
There are mentions of abuse in this chapter, though not graphic in detail, it may be triggering to some.

Jack

That stench clung to your clothes, swam in your memories, it followed you into the depths of sleep. At the core it was death, the slaughtering of people, innocent people, that paid their lives for the crime of being at the mercy of bad timing. But it was more than the rotting bodies on a riverbed that made my stomach churn. It was seeing the Jaffa, their symbiotes torn out of their stomachs, bulbous and bloated, being baked in the sun. They were the cause of this destruction, this decay. Looking down at my feet, the snakelike body coiling out of the man that dedicated his life to carrying the parasite made my stomach boil as I stepped on it, seeing its insides ooze and squelch into the river silt underneath.

I sneered and continued walking, listening to Major Lorne update us on the situation at hand. They had come to the village two months prior, back in July, and had left on not so favorable terms. He had been incapacitated when he arrived back at the SGC, and only when another SG team went back for a diplomatic mission and succeeded did Lorne agree to follow through with their plans to use the planet as a makeshift safe house for other planets that had been taken over by Anubis' forces. However, when he stepped through the gate it was clearly not what he had anticipated. An army of Jaffa had attacked the village, and it seemed neither side had won the battle. The Jaffa had retreated, but the village was wiped clean off the map.

Teal'c I think took it the hardest each time. For him it wasn't just Jaffa versus humans, but it was brother against brother. Those Jaffa he couldn't get over to his rebellion fast enough, and then those he couldn't protect. We walked into a med tent and Sam was helping carry in some of the wounded that may have a semblance of life to cling onto. Rows and rows of bodies needing to be dealt with, needing to be given a humane resting place. This place now was stricken from our planetary housing options, it was compromised, but that didn't mean the population that was left had to take care of this alone.

Bloodshed, it wasn't understood by civilians, it wasn't seen as honorable or acceptable. Hell, I didn't see it as acceptable, but I knew it was the consequences of war. It was to be expected, as much as I hated it, hated them. The Goa'uld saw us as cattle, nothing more than shells to be used to house their serpentine slithering bodies. So to them, they were just culling the livestock that was tainting the herd. It was this reality we kept from the rest of Earth. This potential for war at home, and even though many on our team didn't agree with keeping the secrets of life outside our own world they agreed that galactic intervention to public masses would not be well received on either side.

I followed Lorne to the back and found a middle aged man sitting up, half his face bandaged and his arm in a sling. Janet Fraiser gave me a nod and walked back to another patient. I grabbed a three pronged canvas stool and propped it open, taking a seat beside the man.

"Kialn, this is Colonel Jack O'Neill," Lorne began the instructions. "Sir, this is Kialn Humner, the leader of their defensive forced here."

I gave the bandaged man a tight nod and thanked Lorne as he left. I took a breath to steady myself. "Do we know how this happened?"

"I was going to ask the same." The man's gruff voice cut back. I tampered down the confused anger that was lit by his comment and understood I would be just as angry if I were him in this position.

"We didn't do this, we didn't bring the Jaffa here. If we did, we wouldn't be offering aid. It's my understanding that our people were in agreement talks with yours about using the spare forestland as a safe rehabilitation space for aid to others."

"Then how did they come here, and massacre my people?" He grit down. "My wife, my children, my father, gone. They lit our houses on fire in the middle of the night. I was out scavenging land for your people when mine were killed. Why? Because they were searching for something, for you."