Chapter Thirty-Six

The trip to the SGC was very short, when one could simply travel the astral and teleport to wherever their heart desired then nothing stood in the way of their travel plans. Although it was clear Calla didn’t want him to by the way she stared at him with her icy eyes she still allowed Daniel to pick her up in his arms so they could go. Expecting to be home by sunset they didn’t take anything else with them except the Dream Dust in Daniel’s pocket.  Annie had flown to Colorado the day before in order to go over all of the information and get a head start on things.

Arriving in the infirmary of the SGC they were greeted by General Jack O’Neill who stood there waiting for them with a large smile on his warmly handsome face. “Hey!” He called out when they appeared. “Look who it is. Good to see ya.”  Jack had mellowed quite a bit in his exceedingly old age and gave Daniel and Calla a hug before Daniel could settle her down on the nearest bed.  “Hey, Danny-boy.” Jack tussled Daniel’s hair good-naturedly. “Oh sorry, I keep forgetting, I’m supposed to bow or something, huh? Lord Daniel and all.” He teased.

“Cut it out.” Daniel grinned. All these years and Jack still found it funny that the geeky and timid Doctor Daniel Jackson was the King of his own Kingdom.  He put Calla down on the bed.

“How do you doin’, honey?” Jack said as he looked down at her. “Feeling any better since the last time I saw ya?”

Calla was happy to see him, Jack always made her smile as she was doing now. She shrugged her slender shoulders in reply to his question.

“Sam and Annie are ready for ya,” Jack told her.  “What can we do?” She didn’t look so good to him, in fact she looked like she hadn’t slept in a month’s worth of Sundays. Colleen taking over the throne must be very hard on her but as far as the world could see Calla had handled it the way she handled everything; with style and grace.  On the inside she had to be fuming.

Calla shook her head to indicate there was nothing they could do and that was fine with Daniel who had other things to tend to while he was here.  He didn’t want to leave her alone either.  A few moments later his predicament was solved when Sam came into the room.

“Hi you two.” She said and hugged them just as Jack had done. “I really think we got it this time, Calla.  We’ll know by the end of the day and if it works like I think it will then we can start giving the UPs injections.”

“Ah, about that.” Daniel explained what else had gone down at the Town Meeting where the No Confidence Vote had been held.  Strange how that didn’t seem to make much of the world news perhaps it was because it simply wasn’t as salacious.  “You two agree?” He was surprised that Annie hadn’t already filled them in.

“Good plan.” Jack said.

Now that they were here Daniel no longer felt the need to keep the contents of his pocket a secret and he produced the small black leather pouch. “I want you to test this stuff. Don’t breath it in or anything you’ll have to wear a mask.”

Sam took the small pouch and opened it careful not to inhale she looked inside. “What is it?”

“Some of Morpheus’ Dream Dust.  It had a strange but positive effect on her. I want you to find out what’s in it.” Daniel went on to explain what happened the morning after their combined dream.

Calla sat there on the bed looking up at the three of them who had their backs turned to her and talking as though she weren’t even in the room. After listening to Daniel go on for a few minutes and getting more frustrated and angry all the while she picked up her good foot and booted him hard in the seat of the pants.

“Ow, hey.” Daniel’s hand went to his round butt as he turned to look down at her. “What the…” then he understood. “Sorry, Kitty.”  She just rolled her eyes in response.

Feeling the sudden drop in temperature Jack made a suggestion. “Why don’t we go get some coffee while they do their thing?”

Good old Jack. “That sounds good.  That ok with you, Kitty?”

Calla just turned her head away from him. 

“Ok,” Sam stammered as she watched the scene, “well you two run along, I’ll get this to the lab, I don’t know how long it will take.”

Daniel left with Jack.

“Chilly,” Jack remarked as they made their way down the corridor. “What’s going on with you two? If you don’t mind my asking that is.”

“She’s pissed that’s all.  The No Confidence Vote came as quite the shock to her.”

“But not to you?”

Daniel side stepped the question he felt guilty enough about it.  “What did you find out about the guy who bought the painting?”

Jack lead Daniel to his office where they sat at Jack’s desk and the General produced a dossier on one Gregory Svetlanavitch.  “There isn’t much here,” Daniel remarked as he leafed through it.

“Nope, not much to tell.” Jack explained. “He’s lived in the same house for the last forty years, alone.  He doesn’t seem to have a nephew or any other blood relatives.” Jack remarked. “That’s a lie. But other than that. He’s never been arrested or investigated for anything. He doesn’t seem to have any vices, doesn’t gamble, drink to excess or do drugs. Actually he seems like a pretty boring guy.”

“But no nephew?” Daniel asked.  “Interesting.” They hadn’t found any application to the art college in the name of Ivan or anyone from Russia for that matter.

“Could just have been a term of endearment, ya know?” Jack suggested. “I had a lot of aunts and uncles that weren’t related to me when I was growing up.”

“Yes but that’s more of an American custom than a Russian one.” Daniel remarked as he read through the small dossier. “Is he rich? He must be. How’d he make his money?”  If he could afford to drop one million gold on one of Calla’s paintings the guy had to be rolling in it.

“Got several million in the bank but lives in a modest home in a working class neighborhood.  The money trail starts at the same time he bought the house, we couldn’t go back further than that. Find that interesting too, Danny?”

“Very,” Daniel said thoughtfully and then raised his eyes to look at Jack, “but you knew that already.”

“Yeah, in fact Gregory Svetlanavitch doesn’t seem to have existed before 1990 or so…”

“When he bought the house.” Daniel said.  “Before that?”

“Nothing.  Just a birth certificate but you’ll also find a death certificate for a male infant with the same name and the same birth date in there.”

“He stole someone’s identity and reinvented himself.  I wonder who he was before.”

“No clue.” Jack admitted.  “The money was an initial cash deposit he walked into the bank one day with two suitcases of several million rubles and opened an account.”

“No one found that suspicious?”

“Hey it was the 80s the Soviet Union was in chaos after the fall of the Berlin Wall, remember?”

That was true. It had been a time of jubilation but it had also been a time of upheaval and uncertainty in the Soviet Union. Things had gotten a whole lot worse before they turned around and got better.  Two decades ago if Daniel had come across a man with such a past he’d say he had something to hide today he’d say he was possibly an UP with something to hide and that made whoever Gregory Svetlanavitch really was all the more dangerous.  Perhaps Wolfgar had been able to align himself with someone who already had a grudge against one of the citizens of Altair Ain—gee, Ares perhaps?  “We need more information.” Daniel said in a distressed tone.

“I’m working on it.” Jack assured him.

“I got another favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

“I need to contact Thor. I have something to ask him.”

“Sure,” Jack stood up, “let’s go see if we can’t get in touch with the little grey guy.”

In the observation room of the infirmary Calla had several vials her Ichor drawn and her blood pressure taken along with her pulse and temperature. They listened to her heart and got her up on her feet to judge how well she was regaining her balance.  She tottered there for a good long while determined not to fall before Sam and Annie sat her back down again.  They wheeled her down to the CTScanner so they could compare scans of her brain and body with those taken during her stroke three weeks before.  While they waited for the results they doped her up and prepped her for the lightly invasive and painful procedure which would relieve her of several of her ova. Luckily for them an Olympian woman’s eggs were not like those of a Mortal woman in that the Olympian’s were always ripe and ready.  It was only a matter of when they were released whereas a Mortal woman had one egg ripen every month and usually only one.  Therefore there was no need for Calla to take fertility drugs before under going the laparoscopy.

“Ready?”  Annie asked as she stood over Calla with a surgical mask covering her nose and mouth and holding up a small scalpel.

Calla nodded though she might like to know just why she continue going through this when her subjects had turned their backs on her so harshly.  It was rather rude of them to do that but still expect her to hold up her end of the bargain.

Annie made a small incision in Calla’s navel and gently inserted the laparoscope.  Keeping one eye on her work and the other on the viewing screen she expertly guided the small scope up to Calla’s ovaries expecting to find them fruitful for harvest.  Her blue eyes widened as the left ovary came into view and revealed that it was empty.  “What the hell?” Annie muttered without thinking.

Calla wanted to ask what was wrong but couldn’t and she couldn’t make heads or tails out of the image on the screen but the surprise was clear in Annie’s hushed voice.  Sam, on the hand, knew exactly what she was looking at and when Annie moved the scope around a little their trained eyes saw the pin prick of scar tissue.  Someone had taken her eggs.  Who? When? And…why?  Trying not to show her alarm Annie moved the scope back a bit to adjust the angle so she could explore the right ovary which she found to be half-full of eggs.  Breathing a small sigh of relief she moved the tiny scope around the walls of Calla’s insides looking for any signs of foreign entry but found none. Whoever it had been had only emptied one ovary, wasn’t that nice of them.  “OK, here we go, take a deep breath for me, Mom.” Taking up the needle in her free hand Annie guided it to the spot over the scope and inserted it through Calla’s lower abdomen. Watching on the screen she harvested several ova. “That’s it, you’re doing great and we’re almost done.” She encouraged. “Just breathe.”  A few  moments later and she was gently withdrawing the needle and then the laparoscope not long after that Calla received three stitches and was taken back to the observation room of the infirmary.

“Did you see that?” Annie asked Sam when Calla was out of the room.

“Yeah.”

“All right, you take this to the lab,” she handed the needle filled with the harvest to Sam. “I want to get a look at her last CTScan.”

“The one she had during the stroke?”

“Yes, that one.” Annie said.  The last time Calla underwent such a procedure had been just about five years ago and at that time both of her ovaries were healthy and still nearly full.  The scar tissue she’d found was new and still pink.  She didn’t trust the bitches that lived on Sengul they were all hustlers and hussies as far as she was concerned and her first thought was that they’d stolen them from her.  They’d asked for DNA samples from Daniel and Nick so why not a few eggs from Calla?  She’d never give them up, at least Annie didn’t think so, not unless it had been to secure Nick’s freedom.

Calla was groggy from the sedative they gave her and she dosed in and out on the scanner bed for the next hour or so while Sam ran tests and mixed things up in her lab and Annie poured over her medical file.

In the Communication Room of the SGC Daniel and Jack were able to get in touch with Thor who was in a far off part of a nearby galaxy and had been meaning to come by and see how Calla was doing. They’d picked up on the radio and television transmissions coming from Earth as such, Thor was aware that Calla had stepped down from the throne, he regarded this information with a bit of suspicion thinking the move premature.  He listened and then thought long and hard after Daniel posed his question regarding the necklace.  It had been a long time ago that they rescued her from Kanan. Surely if he’d found a necklace left behind he would have let Daniel know.  “I don’t believe so.” Thor answered finally.  “I don’t recall finding or even seeing any such item. I’m sorry Daniel.”

It had to be on the planet. Damn!  Daniel was so hoping Thor would say; oh, yes I completely forgot about that, I’ve got it right here. He hung his head in dismay.

“Need a ship, Danny-boy?” Jack asked as he laid on a hand on Daniel’s back.

“Yeah.” Daniel returned in a glum sigh.

“You got it. Hey, I’ll go with ya. It’ll be just like the old days.” He said trying to keep Daniel’s spirits up. “And it’ll be faster.”

“It will?”

“Sure, you bet. I know you’ve been out of the loop for a while, Daniel, but we’ve got ships that are twice as fast as the old ones and with the new technology Calla brought us from Sengul it won’t be long before they’re even faster.” Shutting down the communications device he patted Daniel on the back and led him out of the room. “When do you want to go? I’ll dig up the old file and get the coordinates.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.” Daniel said. “I should go see how Calla’s making out.” The procedure must be over with by now and he needed some time to think.  Leaving in the next day or two was dicey with her in the mood and condition she was in but the sooner he left the sooner he returned.  Before he could get to the infirmary Annie called him into her office and broke the news.  “Are you saying they stole them?” Daniel asked trying to get his head around the idea.

“Only she knows that for sure but they took them one way or the other.” Annie said.

Dumbfounded but not knocked off his feet Daniel opened his mouth, “Ares!” He bellowed.  No, Calla wasn’t the only one who would know. Ares had been present at the negotiations and that was the only time Calla had been out of his sight. He’d spent the whole day with her and the Sovereign and Vedic.

Annoyed at the sudden call Ares appeared in the room. “What?”

Daniel without hesitation or reserve laid out what Annie had just told him. “Is that how she got Nick out of prison?”

Ares was just as shocked as anyone else.  “No.” He said.  “I was there for the whole of the negotiations and believe me, Jackson, her ovum were never mentioned at any time.”  If they took them from her it had to be while he was otherwise engaged with those lovely ladies.  Ares couldn’t believe that after securing Nicholas’ freedom she would agree to such a thing.

“Well then what the hell happened?” Daniel asked heatedly. “If you were with her the whole time…”  Ares flinched and shifted his gaze.  “You left her alone with them?”

Ares cleared his throat. “Yes, she went on her tour of the city without me.”

“And you were doing what?”

“Enjoying the local hospitality.”  If they’d done something to Calla while he was fucking those bitches Ares would never forgive himself.

It was all in the Big Man’s eyes.  For only the second time in his life Daniel Jackson reached out quickly to grab hold of another man’s package and found it to be whole. “You son of a bitch.”

Ares jumped back and slapped Daniel’s hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“It was you!” Daniel remembered the pervasive wave of heat and desire he’d felt even on the mountain top. “Couldn’t resist fucking some of the local hotties, huh Ares?” He accused and took a step toward him.  “Just what was that business she asked you to take care of for her?”

“Your little tart.” Ares replied without flinching. “Calla told me to make her suffer for her offense and I did.”

“She never said anything like that.”

“Oh, yes, Jackson, she did.  The little bitch was part of the negotiation along with the women who’d slept with Nicholas.” He looked over at Annie and watched her cringe, he felt sorry for her. “She gave them all to me to do with as I pleased and I did everything that pleases me.”

“Ok,” Annie interjected. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear anymore of this.”  She knew full well what they were talking about but didn’t think it was right for her to be standing here listening to it and she didn’t want to anyway!  “Can we get back to Mom now?” She certainly didn’t want to hear about the other women Nick had been with even though to this day he swore he hadn’t touched them.  “I think it’s a safe bet that they stole them from her so what the hell are you two going to do about it?” They just stood there staring at her as though she were speaking in some foreign language neither of them understood. “Hello!  They took sperm from Nick and you,” she pointed to Daniel, “now we know they got some from you too. Along with her eggs, what do you think they’re going to do with them? I’ll give you a hint, I don’t think they’re making health shakes, ok?”

“Children.”  Olympian children. That’s what the Senguls were making. Calla’s children. Daniel’s children. Nick’s children. Even Ares’ children. Imprisoning Nick had only been a rouse to get Calla to the planet. Daniel thought that before, he did and now he was kicking himself for not listening, not paying attention to that inner voice.

“Not mine,” Ares sneered. “I left the bitch with an empty cup.”

“What bitch?” Daniel shot.

“D’Sila, the damn Vedic bitch.  She came to me wanting me to take her and impregnate her, offered her old flabby body up on a silver platter but she repulsed me. I wouldn’t touch her and when she begged and then threatened to use the contents of the cup to do it anyway I wiped it clean and left her with nothing but humiliation.”

Anyway you sliced it, Daniel’s trip to the planet where the last necklace lay waiting for him was now on hold.  “We have to go back. We can’t let them get away with this.”

“What shall we do?” Ares asked.  “Mass abortion? Shall we hold all of the women down or just shoot them where they stand?”

Daniel started to protest but had no argument to offer. If they went back Calla would find out why, she’d find out what happened and what good would that do? It would only upset her.  If they just shut up about it all she’d never know, well, so long as her memory didn’t return.  Even then perhaps it wouldn’t matter, if Nibor and D’Sila had forced Calla to give up her eggs surely Calla would have said something about it as soon as they were alone and they had been together before she had the stroke.  But if she’d done it willingly Daniel liked to think he would have sensed something was wrong with her.  “We can’t let them raise an entire generation of Olympians on that planet,” Daniel argued. “You know what it did to your Son.”

“He was a great ruler.” Ares lobbed back. “More Olympian Ichor will make the place less savage.  So they will be stronger there than they would be here…”

“My point exactly.” Daniel sneered.  “In a few hundred years when there’s a whole planet of them running around…you do the math.”

Ares’ upper lip curled. The little bastard had a point and a good one. Yet, the question remained; just what were they going to do about it?

“OK, are ya done now? Because there’s more.” Annie huffed and squeezed in between the two men who were now only inches apart and separated them.  When she was satisfied that they were going to behave for at least the next thirty seconds she turned their attention to the lighted board and the scans sitting there.  “This is Mom’s scan during the stroke,” she pointed to it. “This one was done just now. See anything?”

“What is that?” Daniel pointed to what looked like a dark spot about the size of a silver dollar on Calla’s front lob.

“Xeriniuim.  It’s why she can’t talk it’s blocking her ability to speak. Hell, it’s like it’s….eating…the area of her brain that was damaged by the stroke.  It’s settling in deeper and deeper.”

“So what do we do?” Daniel asked.

“Well, how do you feel about cracking her skull open?”

“Not good.”

“I didn’t think so.” But other than opening Calla’s skull and going in and sucking the shit out Annie didn’t have a clue as to how to get rid of it.

“How did it get there?” Ares asked.

“Glad you asked,” Annie returned.  “Whatever happened on the planet I think they drugged her, they shot her up with that shit, removed her eggs and then sent on her way knowing that when she got back here she’d die.  The only thing that saved her was that she was still here when she had the stroke. If she’d been home…” Annie’s voice trailed off.

“They tried to kill her.” Daniel whispered.  “Why?”

“Who cares?” Ares hissed.  “I told that bitch if she harmed my Daughter I’d rip her throat out, I intend to make good on that promise.”

Annie’s beeper went off. “It’s Sam, she must be ready in the lab.”

This better be good news, damn good news! Daniel thought as they made their way down to Sam’s lab.  “What have ya got?” Daniel asked disheartened.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Long story, I’ll tell ya later.”

Sam knew what was going on but it was clear Daniel wanted to know what was happening with her test results rather than going into it.  “It works, just like I thought it would.  I’ve got enough to inject all of the UPs, well that is, after the initial round of volunteers.”

“You can’t guarantee that the babies will be healthy, can you?” Daniel asked.

“No,” Sam admitted, “just that the UPs will conceive.”

It was better than nothing and they were one step closer to that elusive goal. Calla would be very happy about this if she weren’t so pissed off.

“I got something else too. Check this out it’s bizarre.” Sam said excitedly.  “I’ve been playing around with the Dream Dust you gave me and Annie told me about the Xerinium pool in Calla’s brain,” she’d guessed that was what was on Daniel’s mind and this was her gentle way of letting him know that she already knew.  “I thought perhaps the Dust had some effect on it and well, look.”  Sam picked up a syringe and squeezed a small amount of liquid Xerinium onto a slide she stepped back so Daniel could look at it through the microscope.

“Yeah, so?” He said when he stepped back.

“So this.”  Sam sprinkled a little of the Dust on and around the small pool of Xerinium and the liquid metal receded as though it were being attacked. The areas where the Dust had landed on the metal let out an acrid smoke.  “Pretty cool, huh?” Sam encouraged.  “If I can isolate why it does that, what the components are, then it’s possible to come up with something to inoculate all of you and Xerinium would never be a problem again.”

That news came a little late for Calla but it was good for the rest of them.

“This could help, Calla, Daniel.” Sam said as though she were reading his mind.  “I don’t recommend opening her head and putting a bunch of this stuff inside, I have no idea what the effect would be on her at this point, but we should be able to come up with something that will at least ease her symptoms.”

“She’d be able to talk again?”

“Yes and her mobility will greatly improve.”

That was good news. With all the bad news that just came his way Daniel tried to hold onto it.  “Is she awake?”

“Yeah, she’s ready to go home.” Annie said. “We haven’t told her about any of this just yet.”

“Gonna let me do it, huh?” Daniel pursed his lips. “Thanks.”

End of Chapter Thirty-Six of
Golden Years
by Moon Mistress
a/k/a Lisa Beth Darling
Go to
Chapter Thirty-Seven