Stargate SG1 Fan Fiction ❯ The Secret Life of a Major General ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

O’Neill’s Residence, Colorado Springs, CO, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy
January 15, 2005
Late Evening

Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, Jack O’Neill rinsed the last of his supper dishes and placed it in the drying rack when a brilliant white light flared around him. Blinking to clear his vision, he expected to find himself on the bridge of a ship and instead found a grey asgärd standing in his kitchen.

“Thor!” Jack exclaimed as he recognised his alien visitor. “Carter said you’d drop by for a visit. How’s the new body working?”

“It is working well O’Neill.” Thor responded. “Once again you have our thanks and congratulations for exterminating the replicators.”

“Yeah well that was mostly Carter and Jacob and probably Daniel.” Jack said with a dismissing shrug of his shoulders as he pulled the plug in the sink to drain the water. After wiping his wet hands on a towel, he gestured towards the asgärd. “What can I do for you?”

“There is a situation that requires your assistance.”

“Mine? Sure Carter’s mind wouldn’t be better?” Jack asked curiously.

“No O’Neill. It is you the Council must ask.”

“Me?” he asked in surprised, not liking the ominous indication that it was not Thor going to ask him something but the Asgärd High Council.

“Correct. If we could be seated. There is much I must tell you of before any decisions are made.” Thor turned about and headed for the living room and the coffee table, which was the perfect height for the asgärd.

Following behind the grey alien who seated himself on the floor, Jack took the other side of the coffee table and folded his longer limbed body into a sitting position on the floor as well. Once they were both seated, Thor placed four pearl-coloured stones in the shape of a square in the center of the table.

Jack recognised the stones and shape, knowing that it was essentially a holographic screen and keyboard that accessed the computers of whatever Asgärd ship was in orbit. Once the screens were activated Thor beamed down a clipboard sized and shaped pearl-coloured board that was about a centimetre thick and pushed it towards his human companion.

Jack accepted the Asgärd equivalent of a touch-screen tablet computer as he had been given them to read various Asgärd reports before. The information of which was only stored in his mind and with the Asgärd.

“This begins O’Neill nearly two Earth years ago with Loki,” Thor began his debriefing and keyed the holographic computer to respond with visuals and audio when cued. The written information already uploaded to the computer in O’Neill’s hands.

Jack’s knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the coffee table. He had listened, forcing himself to interrupt Thor only for clarification or examine the relevant data himself, as the Asgärd reported on Loki’s experiments and how only recently had the Council been able to locate all of the renegade scientist’s outposts and what experiments he had conducted.

“You mean to tell me he was making children?!” Jack finally demanded.

“Correct O’Neill. Currently only thirty-six of the subjects are viable. However the Council would like for us to inquire with you what decision should be made regarding two of the subjects.”

“What two subjects?”

Thor tapped a holographic key and the holographic form of two children not quite two years old yet appeared above the coffee table. It was their faces that caused the blood to drain from Jack’s face. An all too familiar face that crowded the few photo albums in his possession.

“I wish for you to read the profiles of them please,” Thor said gently as he indicated the computer board with a finger.

Tearing his eyes from the holographic face Jack turned his attention to the flat computer he’d set on the table about an hour into the debriefing. Bracing himself, he read the reports on the two children twice.

“What is it you want me to do?” Jack asked hoarsely after several long moments. His mind in turmoil over what he had just read.

“The council would like to know if you wish for us to terminate the subjects—”

“Terminate?! How could you even—” Jack cut himself off and took several huffing breaths in an attempt to calm himself.

Thor waited patiently and after calculating enough time had passed, continued. “Terminate or be taken and reared by yourself or Colonel Carter.”

Jack looked at the two holographic children again. This could not be a decision he could make on his own, they were both theirs, so Carter… just the thought, his and Carter’s…

“What about kids?”

“What about ’em?”

“Do I take maternity leave and then come back? Do I drop the baby off at daycare on my way to some unexplored planet on the edge of the Crab Nebula?”

The conversation and Carter’s derisive words cut through his mind. No. Carter did not want children so she would not want them. That revelation—as well as her impending engagement—during that discussion had been painful enough. But now this gut wrenching decision was his. To do the unthinkable and choose to kill more of his children or do the equally unthinkable and terrifying task of raising them.

He had failed Charlie in the worst way possible. What was stopping him from failing these two in the same way?

“Well?” issued from the communication screen onboard the Daniel Jackson in Earth orbit.

“O’Neill is still deciding,” Thor responded quietly having left the human in question on Earth roughly an hour ago after the dilemma stricken man had asked for solitude to contemplate the choice he was to make. “He will contact me once he has made his decision.”

“Very well, the Council will await your next communication,” the Council representative responded before ending the communication and his corner of the split-screen went dark. The other side of the screen still showed the dark face of Niflheim’s commander.

“What choice do you believe the human will make Supreme Commander?”

“I do not know,” Thor responded honestly. “If the two subjects were not his offspring I know what his answer would be, but because they were created from his and Colonel Carter’s gametes his choice is unknown.”

“But I thought you said there was a rapport between the two humans?” came the inquiry.

“I have observed one—” the discussion was interrupted by a signal from the computer he had left with O’Neill. Accepting the call, the human’s drawn and haggard face appeared on the screen before him.

“You have come to a decision O’Neill?”