bungakertas | An Exercise In Futility: Chapter Eight (Reply)

Jack stood at the door to the infirmary with Tuvok. They were watching Doctor Beckett argue with Malek. The two in the infirmary had been going back and forth for the past five minutes, and Beckett was eventually going to cave, but he did not like this plan and had no compunctions about saying so. In a thicker and thicker Scottish accent. Jack was fairly certain that they’d be treated to some genuine Gaelic in a moment or two as Beckett got so angry that English just stopped doing the job.

“There’s nae guarantee you’ll be comin’ back!” Beckett shouted, waving his arms for punctuation.

“Doctor, I would much prefer not to place myself or my host in this kind of danger, but there is no other plan available. If you have a better one, I will be the first to endorse it, believe me,” Malek replied.

“I dinnae need a good plan to recognize a bad one,” Beckett said, arms now crossed.

“No. But you do need a better plan to overrule the only one we currently possess,” Malek said, looking him straight in the eyes.

Beckett seemed to deflate. “I’d really rather not send you off to die.” He’d dialed back the accent, Jack noted. Back to normal, then. He was about to cave.

“Doctor, while I realize this plan carries a high level of risk, and there is always a chance of failure, I absolutely am not planning to die. I am not embarking on a suicide mission. I am trusting you to save my host when I return.

Beckett pulled an injection gun from a nearby drawer and unhappily loaded something into it. “I only learned about the Borg today. I may not be able to save your host.”

He placed the gun on Malek’s forearm and pulled the trigger. Malek pulled a face at the pain of the injection, but did not react otherwise. Then he nodded to the doctor. “I saw how well you cared for Freya. I have confidence in your abilities. You tau’ri seem to rise to the occasion when given the chance.”

That was twice today he’d said something like that. Now Jack was curious.

“The chip you have been injected with,” Tuvok said, “is not only a tracking chip. It carries the ability to administer a mild shock. Once you leave the Super-Collective's vessel, press down hard against it, and it will disrupt the nanite activity within your body. It may slow, or even halt, the assimilation process.”

Malek looked very pleased at this. “Very well.” He stood and exited the sickbay.

“So…,” Jack said, looking over at him. “You seem awfully sweet on humanity today.”

Malek smiled. “We have had our differences, I admit. I suppose it must surprise you.”

“A little.”

“I admire your people. You are honest. The tok'ra have sacrificed a great deal in our fight to survive and I fear some of the things we gave up may have been pieces of our souls,” he said, looking down.

Jack looked at the man for a moment and said, “Okay, I'm gonna stop you before this gets too weepy and tell you you're being ridiculous. Look, I'm the last guy to defend every decision the tok'ra have ever made and I'll tell you up front that you people piss me off more often than not. But I will also tell you that you overall have the right goals. My country's had allies in the past who didn't have the right goals, and working with them felt slimy. Working with you just feels annoying.”

Malek looked at him for a moment before laughing. “Very well, then. And thank you for the compliment, however backhanded it was.”

Jack shook his head. “All right, time to get you ready to go.”

They made their way down to the shuttlebay and started prepping Malek’s glider.

“Congress is going to eat us alive, sending this off to the Bugs,” Jack said, as he looked the craft over.

“Congress?” Malek asked.

Jack’s subsequent explanation about US military and defense budgeting and the accountability involved—with appropriately sarcastic commentary accompanying, of course—carried them through the rest of the pre-flight preparations.

They were just wrapping up when Sam Carter came into the bay.

“We just finished it,” she announced. “That Seven of Nine woman is absolutely a gem. I won’t tell you exactly how it works so that the Super-Collective can’t get it off you, but the installation process is to insert it into any socket for a control crystal. We programmed it to upload itself automatically without you needing to do anything else.” Sam handed Malek a control crystal that had been cut in half with a little black cap on the end. Jack smiled. Having been chopped off like that, it’d be a nightmare trying to pry the thing back out of the socket, even if the Repli-Borgs took in their head to try.

“If we had more time, we’d disguise it better for you,” she added, sounding apologetic.

“I feel as though I should take offense at everyone’s certainty I shall not return,” Malek said.

Jack laughed a little. “You really need to quit being so interesting today. I may have to start actually liking you a little.”

“Well, we certainly cannot have that,” Malek replied. “I think this is the time when I must retreat. My host is a perfectly able pilot and I have been keeping him uncomfortably suppressed to prevent any information being passed to our enemies. This time should be minimized.”

That got raised eyebrows from all three people standing there.

Then Malek’s head dropped. A moment later he looked up and gazed around, but the personality was clearly different. Shy, almost. And a quiet voice, with an accent different from Malek’s said, “While I know all of you already, of course, none of you have yet met me. I am Sallash, Malek’s host.”

Jack stepped up and said, “All right, listen, Sallash. I know it’s a late moment, but you don’t have to do this you know. It’s incredibly dangerous. You’re…well, you’re giving up everything to that thing in your head.”

“What he said,” Sam agreed. “We’re not committed to this plan. We can figure out something else.”

Tuvok nodded. “It does seem an extreme solution.”

Sallash shook his head. “You don’t understand.” He offered Jack a wry expression. “You probably don’t even want to after what Kanan did. And I don’t blame you. How he could…” Sallash trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. That’s over and you’re safe, and that is the important thing.”

Jack blinked.

“But after fifty years of sharing your mind with someone, doing everything with them, it becomes second nature to depend on them. I am very uncomfortable right now, not being able to share my mind with Malek,” Sallash said.

At this, Jack and Sam looked a bit put off, but Tuvok seemed to understand.

“I did not think you would care for it,” Sallash said, with an understanding smile. “It is not in your nature. But I trust in Malek. He will return me safely home.”

“Very well. If you are not being coerced, then let us proceed,” Tuvok said, picking up the silence after Sallash’s statement.

“Good luck, Sallash. And your snake, too,” Jack said.

Sallash climbed wordlessly into the cockpit of the glider and the three of them left the bay before opening the door to allow him to fly out.

“I wonder what he was before he volunteered to get snaked?” Jack mused out loud as Sallash flew from the bay and he began cycling the big door back to closed and repressurizing the deck.

“An illogical speculation when we may simply ask him when he returns,” Tuvok told him.

“Well, you’re no fun at all,” Jack mused.

Sam suppressed a smile.

“I am a Vulcan,” Tuvok replied.

Jack and Sam exchanged a baffled glance and Jack wordlessly ordered Sam to be the one to ask.

“You seem to say that a lot. Does it mean something?” Sam asked. “I mean, other than your species designation?”

Jack gestured for them to head down the hallway towards the elevator as Tuvok began to explain. By the time they’d arrived on the bridge, Jack was shaking his head in dismay, but had decided not to argue. If the whole planet gave up their emotions for something as dull as logic, then he was just going to class them all as innately boring and move on.

Which would be easier if he hadn’t watched Tuvok unhesitatingly join the fight to defend Prometheus—a ship not his own—earlier. And Teal’c had mentioned to Jack that he had shown himself a courageous and capable warrior during their engagement. So Jack couldn’t help but give him a few points for that, no matter how many emotions he skipped.

So when they arrived on the bridge, Jack said, “Frankly, that all sounds as dull as dishwater, but if it makes you happy, I won’t argue.”

Tuvok raised a brow and said, “’Happy’ would be an emotional response. But, to use the human metaphor, I will accept that statement ‘in the spirit it was offered.’”

Jack smiled. “There we go. Now for the fun stuff…although we will try not to let you have any. Time to set up our trap for the Super Bugs.”

He was less enthusiastic when he started to look over the artillery they had actually available. The ship had been designed to be the weapon, and they’d come out here planning to research a satellite, not stage a defensive campaign. Jack dialed the SGC and managed to convince Hammond to part with four 50-cals and as much ammo for them as they could load down on the extra troops that would gate in along with them, but he would’ve preferred at least double of both the big guns and the extra personnel.

Daniel, on Voyager, helped someone named “Harry Kim” search the planet for the suspected Ancient outpost and they found what they were looking for in about five minutes. From there it was just a matter of off-loading the relevant personnel and equipment from the two ships and setting up the site. Which included absolutely everyone on either ship who had the Ancient gene.

Carson Beckett had been absolutely flabbergasted when several of Voyager’s crew—including several non-humans—scanned positive for the gene.

"I’m starting to think we need to reconsider our view of the Ancients as so curious and exploratory minded. Apparently they only explored to find more romantic partners," Beckett groused as he and Jack worked their way down a hallway.

Jack, who’d been thinking something similar, shrugged. “Yeah, they got around in more ways than one.”

What they were doing was, more or less, turning on every single light switch they could find. The idea was to draw the Bugs to their position, so to do that, they wanted as much Ancient stuff turned on and making whatever noise it made as loudly as they could get it to make it. The outpost was small and boasted no defenses beyond a shield that had probably been designed for inclement weather events but was sturdy enough, though Jack was able to find a command console that gave him access to a real-time map of their area of the galaxy. The Starfleet folks called it a “sensor system.” While those with the Ancient gene went around turning on absolutely every single thing they could, everyone else was busily installing heavy artillery—Jack eyed the phaser canons being set up on the roof between their 50-cals with sincere envy—and rigging defenses on the approach. The Ancients had built this outpost at the head of a valley. Obviously that wouldn’t matter very much to a ship attacking from the sky, but anybody coming at them from the ground would have to come up the valley floor.

And finally, all there was left to do was wait. Wait, and hope that the bugs took the bait.

*~*~*

Author's Notes: Sallash, Malek’s host, is entirely my own invention. Originally his speech about trusting Malek was longer and then I realized it didn’t fit very well with Malek’s later assertion that he doesn’t talk that much. The conversation he makes that assertion in was eventually dropped in editing, but even so. Still, I’ve had this guy in my head for a while, and I thought it would be amusing for Malek, the arrogant jerk from that one episode, to be balanced out by a quiet and unassuming man for a host.

An Exercise In Futility: Chapter Eight

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