A Dubious Ally
by Kathryn A
Challenge: Multiverse 2005
Recipient: LorienWillow
Words:2330
Jack shifted slightly in his hiding place, mentally wishing the goa'uld to perdition. Though in seven minutes, when the bombs went off, that's where they'd all be.
"An intruder, my lord."
Jack peered around the corner of the alcove. They hadn't found one of his team had they? He thought he'd been the only one unlucky enough not to get away.
The man that the Jaffa escorted into the room was a total stranger. And hardly dressed for a covert mission -- a long beige coat and a hat, of all things! The intruder doffed his hat and stuck out his hand. "Hello, I'm the Doctor," he said with an affable smile.
A scientist, Jack thought. I should have known.
"Kneel before your god!"
"Well, that's not very friendly," the Doctor remarked.
Jack placed the man's accent. What the heck did the Brits think they were doing?
"I'd just like to point out," the Doctor said hurriedly, "that someone has planted bombs on your ship."
Jack didn't care if the guy was human, he was going to kill this doctor if they got out of this alive.
The goa'uld Nefertem gestured at two of the guards. "Jaffa! Kree!" They jogged out the door.
"Bombs planted by you, a Tau'ri spy!"
"I'm not a spy!"
"Then how did you get on my ship?"
"I got lost?" the Doctor suggested.
Nefertem raised his hand, and his ribbon device glowed. The Doctor fell to his knees as the white light of pain bored into his skull.
Now, while they're distracted! Jack stuck his zat around the corner and shot the remaining two guards. As Nefertem was turning around, Jack managed to get one shot in. The goa'uld staggered, and his ribbon-pulse went wild. Jack grabbed the Doctor by the arm and dragged him staggering out of the room. Jack hit the door controls, and zatted them.
"There, that should hold them for a while. Can you walk?"
"I can run! Which way?"
Several corridors and corners later, they paused in a deserted storeroom to catch their breath.
"Thanks for saving my life. I'm the Doctor, by the way. And you are...?"
"Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF. And you should be shot, for treason."
"I was just trying to be friendly."
"Friendly!" Jack looked at his watch. "Well, the bombs should be going off in three, so the point is moot."
"I'm afraid they won't. Some of them anyway."
"What are you talking about, Doctor?"
"I disarmed them."
"What!"
"Well, how was I to know this was an act of righteous sabotage? Bombs are usually bad news."
"Bad news for the bad guys!" Jack snapped.
"Have you actually tried talking with them?"
"You saw how 'friendly' they were before."
"Well, they thought I was a spy. They'd naturally be upset. I've actually managed to get on quite well with people who thought I was a spy at first, once I'd explained the situation."
"You get 'mistaken' for a spy quite often, do you?"
"Frequently. Which just demonstrates the limitations of the military mind."
"Nefertem doesn't have a military mind."
"Nefertem, did you say? Where have I heard that name before...?"
"In one of your history books. Nefertem was an Egyptian god."
"Impossible."
"Of course it's impossible, the snake just thinks it's a god, that's why you can't deal with them."
"No, I mean, he can't be an Egyptian god, the Egyptian gods were all Osirans -- he looked human."
"Of course the Goa'uld look human --"
"Goa'uld? Never heard of them."
"You're on a goa'uld ship and you've never heard of them? The scourge of the galaxy and you've never heard of them?"
"What year is this?"
"What kind of a stupid question is that?"
The Doctor sighed. "Just answer it, please?"
Jack realised what kind of a stupid question it was. "You're a time traveller? Accident with a stargate got you stuck in the past?" He eyed the Doctor's clothes. "Or the future...?"
"What's a stargate?"
"A chappa'ai? Big ring thing, connects with other gates via wormholes, across the galaxy?"
"Fascinating," the Doctor breathed.
The floor jerked from under them. Sounds of explosions were muffled by the door.
Jack smiled. "Well, you didn't get all of them."
"We're still here, so I suspect the ship is merely crippled."
Jack opened the door and peered out. "Nobody near at the moment."
A blood-curdling scream pierced the air.
"This way!" the Doctor cried, running towards the screams.
"Scientists!" Jack muttered, and followed him.
It was Nefertem and his guards. The wall next to them was still burning, the guards either dead or stunned.
The Doctor knelt down by the goa'uld. "Badly burned, but he's still alive."
"That's easily solved," Jack said, raising his zat.
"No! He's helpless! That would be murder!"
"This is war, dammit!"
"Violence begetting violence, a never-ending cycle!"
A flare of heat and pain bit Jack's leg -- a near miss by a staff weapon. Jack dove down and fired his zat. Missed. Just one Jaffa in the corridor, but there would soon be more. He kept firing.
"Doctor, we've got to get out of here!"
The Jaffa went down, finally. Jack stood up, turning towards the still-kneeling Doctor. "Doctor, come on!"
The Doctor stood slowly, and turned around. His eyes glowed with an unholy light. "Kneel before your god!" he said, and lifted a bejewelled hand.
Agony. Agony and light and pain.
In the pain, Jack thought he heard voices. Except that both of them sounded like the Doctor.
"Die, Tau'ri spy!"
"No!"
"You defy me? Then you shall suffer!"
The pain stopped. Jack blinked up at the Doctor, whose face was contorted in agony.
"Help me," the Doctor whispered.
"He cannot help you! I am your master!" The strained growl came through the Doctor's lips.
"No," the Doctor ground out, in his own voice.
"That's right, Doctor," Jack said. "Fight it!"
Another blast of pain was Jack's reward, but the voices still argued.
"With your vessel I will become the greatest of the gods!"
"I won't give you the TARDIS."
"Then I will force you to kill this Tau'ri worm!"
"No! If you kill him, you won't have anything to bargain with."
"You are weak. You will not risk that."
"Don't kill him!"
The torment ceased. Jack shook his head groggily. The zat was no longer in his hand -- he must have dropped it in his pain.
"Stand up, Tau'ri spy!" The Doctor -- or more precisely, Nefertem -- commanded from his new host.
"That's 'Colonel' to you. Colonel Jack O'Neill," Jack said, with a bravado he didn't feel. He stood up.
"Now, walk!" Nefertem held up his ribbon device threateningly.
Jack walked. What was this TARDIS that Nefertem wanted? What sort of a fellow was the Doctor, if he could argue with a mature goa'uld even after being taken over? Why would the Doctor care what happened to him? The Goa'uld were masters of deceit, but only when they needed to be. If this Doctor was such a bleeding heart that he wanted to help an injured goa'uld, then maybe his not wanting Jack to be killed wasn't such a surprise after all.
Explosions kept on happening, as secondary systems in the goa'uld ship overloaded. The ship lurched more than once, but not enough to give Jack the chance he needed to attack Nefertem. Not with bare hands against a ribbon device.
Turning a corner, they came to something that definitely didn't belong on a goa'uld ship: a blue sort of cabinet or hut, about the size and shape of a porta-potty. Inexplicably, it had "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" written in white letters above the door. Was this the "vessel" that Nefertem was drooling over? Ridiculous.
"Move! Open the door!" Nefertem growled.
Jack opened the door and stepped inside, with Nefertem close behind.
Jack barely suppressed a gasp when he saw that it wasn't ridiculous at all. Where he had expected it to be dark and cramped, all was white and spacious. If that wasn't a set of control panels in the centre of the room, then he was blind and stupid. Advanced technology, no doubt about it.
"Nyssa!" the Doctor bellowed. "Nyssa, I need your help!"
Jack whirled around. The Doctor stood there, contorted, the hand with the ribbon device held out stiffly in front of him. The device glowed feebly, but the Doctor was obviously fighting against it.
Jack grabbed the Doctor's wrist, pushing it aside. Maybe he could get the device off before it went off.
"Doctor!" came a female voice from behind Jack. "Oh my goodness."
"Help..." the Doctor grated out.
Pain exploded at the back of Jack's head. As the darkness took him, he heard the Doctor's voice.
"Nooo!"
###
Jack pulled himself to his feet, holding on to the edge of the console. The central column of the console was glowing and moving up and down. There was the hum of smoothly functioning machinery. He heard voices through the half-open door on the other side of the room. He poked his head around it, and saw nothing but a long white corridor with the occasional door. How big was this place?
He walked quietly along until he came to the door the voices were coming from.
"I am perfectly fine!"
"It would put my mind at ease if you would let me examine you."
"You know nothing of Time Lord physiology."
"I'm not ignorant! Bioelectronics is my field, and you know how advanced we were on Traken."
"How dare you defy me!"
"You see, Doctor? You're not yourself."
Jack eased the door open. The Doctor was standing half facing away from the door. A young woman with long curly hair was facing the Doctor. Jack could see that the ribbon device was still on his hand. Damn. If he forced Nefertem to show his true colours, would the woman be able to do something? Well, she'd certainly been handy enough with whatever she'd beaned him with.
Jack stepped inside. "Of course he isn't himself. He's been taken over by an alien parasite. You should see him when his eyes start glowing."
Nefertem glared at Jack and raised his hand. "Why didn't you kill him, Nyssa?"
Nyssa's eyes widened briefly and then she gave Jack an unpleasant smile. "Yes, why didn't I?" she asked, sliding silkily towards Nefertem.
Nefertem smiled. Jack tried to move back but the ribbon device pulsed, throwing him back against the door. Jack staggered back but didn't fall, and he looked up in surprise to see Nefertem collapse mid-blast, as Nyssa pressed a device against his neck.
Nyssa glanced up at Jack. "Are you all right? The sedative won't hold him long."
Jack pushed himself away from the door and quickly removed the ribbon device from the Doctor's hand. Jack dropped the device on an empty shelf near the door.
"Help me put him on the examination table," Nyssa said. Jack did so, and they strapped the Doctor's body down. It was only then that Jack began to relax.
"A parasite, you said? Do you know what it is?" Nyssa asked. "Acanthocephala? Fungoid? Vertebrate?"
"I don't know. It's a like a snake, with spiny wings -- and jaws. It wraps around the brain-stem and into the brain. The host usually dies if you try to separate them."
Nyssa frowned. "I shall endeavour to do better than that. Much better. By the way, I'm Nyssa, of Traken. You are?"
"Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF, ma'am."
"From Earth?"
"Er, yes."
"The Doctor is quite fond of Earth. I'm sure he can get you home again, once he's better."
The time that followed was a blur to Jack, with Nyssa directing him to "hold this" and "press that" and read incomprehensible numbers from a screen. She scanned and poked and prodded, and at one point Jack had to hold a convulsing Doctor down while a machine buzzed and thrummed with such a high-pitched vibration that it made Jack's teeth ache. Then more scanning and muttering, as Nyssa made entirely sure that every last trace of the goa'uld was gone.
"That's it," Nyssa said. "He should be fine." She tapped a console and the Doctor's eyes fluttered open.
"Doctor, it's okay, the parasite is gone now," Nyssa said.
"I know," the Doctor whispered. "Knew you could help. That's why I tricked it into coming to the TARDIS."
"You tricked it?" Jack exclaimed. "But what if it got your ship?"
"It wouldn't have," the Doctor smiled. "Not with you two around."
"Thanks for convincing it not to shoot me."
"You're welcome," the Doctor said, grinning. "Now let me out of these restraints."
"Nooo," Jack said, smiling his most charming smile at Nyssa as he came around the examination table. "I think you're less of a danger to yourself and the universe... right there." Nyssa let a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth. "Would you give me a small tour of this 'TARDIS', milady?" he asked. He extended his elbow to her and after a moment's hesitation, she slipped off her operating stool and slid her arm through his.
"Nyssa!" The Doctor exclaimed, and tugged at his restraints. "You wouldn't dare!"
"You know he's probably right, Doctor," Nyssa said with a grin as she and Jack walked towards the door.
The Doctor spluttered something incomprehensible.
"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Nyssa said, and she touched the hand-panel as she left the room. She and Jack threw him a last grin as his restraints retracted.
"Where to first?" Nyssa asked, when they were out in the corridor.
"Does this place have a bathroom?"
"And here I thought you wanted a tour," Nyssa said.
"I just don't want to inflict my grime on a lady."
"Ah, a true gentleman," Nyssa said, with a half-mocking smile.
This trip was turning out just fine, Jack thought. He couldn't wait to see Hammond's face when the extra-dimensional porta-potty appeared in the Gate Room.
He grinned down at Nyssa. "Oh, I'm just getting started."
~fin~
Author's Notes:
Done for the Multiverse 2005 challenge, for LorienWillow, with the request "Jack O'Neill (Stargate: SG1) & The Fourth or Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who)"
This is set between "Time Flight" and "Arc of Infinity" in the Doctor Who universe.
Thanks to Mistral for being a sounding-board, and reveilles for beta-reading and solving my title and ending problems, and starborn_scribe for beta-reading.