At first, Daniel was inclined to let the General go gracefully. It isn’t that he doesn’t agree with Jack that the timing and circumstances are suspect, it’s just that he’s not sure the General owes them an explanation. Maybe he is burned out on the daily spectacle that is life as the commander of Stargate Command. He’s not a young man, and he has a family he doesn’t get to spend nearly enough time with because he’s constantly pulling SG teams (and the world) out of the fire. A new commander on base will be an adjustment, but he’s optimistic that they’ll find someone competent that they can all come to respect as much as George Hammond, even if they don’t love him like the man who has commanded the Stargate for five years now since it went back into operation.

That fragile hope takes a pretty big dent, if Daniel’s honest, by the way the man introduces himself; or, rather, doesn’t. But not everyone has the same leadership style, and what matters is if he’ll manage to keep them supported and safe in the field, and run interference at home with the politicians who just don’t understand the value of the Stargate Program. Morale might suffer a little from lack of inspiration, but the team leaders are generally an encouraging group, and Jack can be pretty inspirational when he wants to be, so someone else can pick up that slack.

The first official thing their new commander does is dismantle SG-1, without even consulting with Jack, and that’s the point at which Daniel knows that either Jack is going to get court-martialed, or this guy isn’t going to last long here. Colonel Jack O’Neill isn’t just the leader of SG-1, he’s the second in command of the whole base, and despite being military to the core, he’s always been a little bit of a wild card. It’s what made him good at black ops, and the challenges they’ve faced since the first trip to Abydos haven’t made him better at blindly following orders.

“Jack.” Calm down, Jack.

“Daniel.” The colonel’s teeth are gritted; he’s pissed. Daniel’s angry too (‘an archaeologist has no place on a front-line unit’ is still ringing in his head; it’s as if Bauer has never read any of SG-1’s mission reports, not to mention an archaeologist might not have a place on the front lines but his qualifications in languages are a very different story), but not as mad as Jack is.

“Jack!” Daniel physically moves to stand in the doorway, shooting Sam an I-told-you-so look. This is why he’d insisted on getting Jack into one of the most private places on the base, his own quarters, before telling him about General Bauer’s pronouncement. Jack usually goes for the sarcastic wit and dry humor, a quiet sort of mad, but some things are just enough to push him into temper territory, and this is one of them.

“Damn it, Daniel, you’re acting like you want to be reassigned!”

“No, Jack,” he keeps his voice quiet and measured, refusing to rise to the bait. O’Neill handling 101: if you start yelling too, you lose. “I definitely don’t want SG-1 split up, and if I wanted a desk job, I would have made the move ages ago.”

Sam, sensing an opening, jumps in to help. “Sir, General Bauer doesn’t know you…er…us like General Hammond did. He might need a more… diplomatic approach, Sir.”

“Are you saying I can’t be diplomatic, Major?” Jack’s still glowering, but that’s not really a dangerous tone of voice. Daniel relaxes in the doorway, pressing his shoulder into the frame and breathing a sigh of relief.

“Of course not, Sir.” Daniel ducks his head to hide a smirk; Jack often complains about Daniel’s utter disregard for the formalities of military life and chain of command, but he’s never met someone who can do perfect protocol with as much attitude as Sam. “Just suggesting it might be best to handle the new General with extra care until we get to know him.”

“Fine. Kid gloves for the new boss. I’ll keep that in mind.” He strides over to Daniel, who doesn’t move right away, looking up into Jack’s face. Jack’s standing very close – closer than he’d ever have stood if they were anywhere else on base – and there’s something still very tense about him, but after a moment of studying his expression, Daniel is pretty sure he can handle a meeting with Bauer without flying off the handle.

“Daniel?”

“Jack?”

“Can I go now?”

“Sure, Jack.”

Apparently, he shouldn’t have let himself be lulled into complacency. Possibly he needs to revisit basic training in handling air force colonels. Jack’s in with the new General for all of five minutes and manages to get himself an unofficial suspension. “What happened to ‘kid gloves for the new boss’, Jack?” They’re in the locker room, where Jack is shoving things into his duffle. He’s already changed out of his BDUs and slams the door on his locker hard enough that Daniel jumps a little.

“Time for plan B.”

“Super. What is plan B, exactly?” Daniel tilts his head. “Get a second retirement with a fun new disciplinary record?”

“Don’t give me that crap Daniel, it’s clear the man isn’t right for this program. SG-1 works, and only an idiot goes around changing up teams on the first day.”

“So what is plan B, Jack?”

Swinging the bag over his shoulder, Jack sighs and runs a hand down his face, lowering his voice as he walks over to Daniel. “I’m going to start by trying to talk some sense into Hammond. If he won’t come back, maybe he can at least pull some strings to get us a competent commander.”

Because he knows he’s hidden from the view of any security cameras by Jack’s body in front of him, and because he knows Jack is pretty worked up, Daniel reaches out and lays a hand flat on his partner’s chest, where Jack is warm even through his t-shirt. He wants to say, ‘see you at home’, but he can’t say that, so he settles for, “Let me know how it goes.”

“Sure thing, Danny.” The colonel smiles at him, the kind of expression that might have been something else at home, and then he’s off.

When he leaves the base, Jack hasn’t called. Daniel’s mind is on some of the other changes Bauer has already made around the base, and he drives to his apartment on autopilot. It only takes a few minutes to feed his fish and get his mail, and then he’s at loose ends. He considers heading over to wait at Jack’s, but that feels incautious right now. If Bauer isn’t just an idiot, he might be an NID plant or something, and in that case actively looking for reasons to get rid of SG-1. Daniel’s fairly safe as a civilian contractor, but Jack and Sam and Teal’c are in positions more precarious.

He’s managed to get lost in a translation when his phone rings, and he flips it open absently, tucking it between his hear and his shoulder. “Daniel Jackson.”

“Hey, you wanna do some stargazing tonight?”

“Jack.” He shoves the tome away and tries not to let his sigh of relief echo down the line. A glance up at the clock says it’s 8:30. Time got away from him. “Feed me, and you have a deal.”

“Peachy. See you in a few.”

Daniel opens his mouth but shuts it again because Jack already hung up. Shrugging into his jacket, he gets in his car and makes the short trip to Jack’s house. He doesn’t bother going inside, quickly scaling the ladder up to the telescope platform, an uneasy feeling settling in his stomach. It’s in what Jack hadn’t said – he hadn’t specifically said ‘come to my place’. And he had purposefully indicated that Daniel should go right up to the roof, which was the place in his house least likely to be surveilled. He’s dragged the portable stereo up here again too, and there are strains of opera drifting in the air. Something about his visit with Hammond has Jack spooked.

The man himself isn’t on the roof, but there are two bottles of beer so Danny takes one and settles into his chair, looking out into the multihued sunset. He doesn’t have to wait long before Jack climbs over the top of the ladder and comes over to sit down, offering Daniel a plate. He accepts it and pokes at the meal offering – baked potato and some salad, but Jack’s prepared the tuber with all of Daniel’s favorite toppings. Daniel pulls his legs up into the chair and digs in, glancing over at his best friend as he does. “What’s up?”

“George is being blackmailed by the NID. They threatened his granddaughters.”

“Oh, god.” Suddenly, Daniel isn’t so hungry. His mouthful of potato feels like a lump of clay going down his threat. “Jack…”

“I have a plan, but you’re not going to like it.”

He’s right, of course, Daniel hates the whole idea, but he doesn’t have a better one to suggest. Danny doesn’t want Jack to go off on any sort of mission alone, much less a black-ops-eque one with someone none of them trust. Unfortunately, Jack can pretend to be taking the time the General suggested to get his head on straight, but if any of the rest of SG-1 don’t go to work, the NID could quickly get suspicious. So he sends Jack off to play super-spies with Maybourne and goes to work, trying to ignore the anxiety coiling in his gut.

Before the end of the day, General Bauer sends a group to P3S-452 despite Sam’s objections, and Major Waite dies. Teal’c, who knows the dangers of their galaxy far better than anyone else in the Stargate program, retreats into his room and claims to be kelno’reem-ing. The first time Daniel knocks Teal’c ignores him, but the second time Daniel wanders by and tries again he invites him inside. He sinks cross-legged to the floor across from Teal’c, looking at his grim expression through the flickering candlelight.

“Major Waite’s death wasn’t your fault,” he starts, hesitantly.

“I know it was not,” Teal’c responds, firmly, but over the years Daniel has finally started to be able to read Teal’c’s expressions and there’s something there that tells him maybe his friend is lying. “I believe Major Carter, Major Waite, and I all cautioned General Bauer against this course of action to no avail.”

“Lieutenant Morrison’s going to be fine, and should get full use of his leg back.” Teal’c hadn’t waited to see what Janet thought of his new teammate’s injury before retreating to his quarters, but he gives a deep nod now, looking slightly less tense.

“That is, indeed, good news.”

“Bauer’s a moron, but we just need to minimize the damage he can cause. I don’t think he’ll be here very long. Jack’s working on it.”

He spends some time sitting with Teal’c because the familiar ritual of meditating while the other man kelno’reems has become something he quite enjoys. He’s never been one for silent meditation by himself (he much prefers a good book or project in his hands to muse on) but doing it with Teal’c is actually very freeing. He forces down some of the worry at having not heard from Jack yet, and after about a half an hour he feels much calmer and quietly lets himself out of the room.

Back in his office, he’s startled to find Sam pacing like a caged creature. Her hair is a little disheveled (he wonders if she even went home last night, or if she worked on the General’s new project all night?) and she’s frowning, arms crossed over her chest.

“Sam?” He pulls the door closed behind himself and hits play on the radio, turning the volume up past anything he would normally play it at, and then draws Sam down on the couch, with her back to the camera.

“SG-3 brought back enough refined naquadah to get the bomb operational.”

She sounds exhausted and resigned, but to be honest, Daniel wasn’t paying attention to that bit of Bauer’s spiel and so he’s not sure exactly what Sam is building.

“And that’s bad?” he asks, cautious, “I thought we were focusing on playing along for now.”

“He wants it tested. Today. On a planet with plant and animal life.” She drops her head into her hands and moans. “We have no idea how destructive it’s going to be. For all we know, it might destroy the planet entirely. He won’t even let me run simulations beforehand.”

The implications of that make his head hurt. They make his heart hurt too – that’s so against his principles; he won’t be able to stay here with this man in charge. If Jack is unsuccessful, Daniel will have to leave the Stargate program, and nowadays, he doesn’t know what he would be without it. Sam’s face is still in her hands so he reaches forward and puts an arm around her shoulders.

“You don’t have any choice right now but to follow his orders and try to minimize the damage.” He feels like he just had this conversation with Teal’c. McKenzie might have to start pulling his weight around the SGC with Hammond gone – their former commander had very, very rarely issued orders that required his officers to compromise their beliefs, but this new guy seems to have no such qualms. He lowers his voice to a whisper and leans in to give Sam a hug as if they were discussing something ordinary but depressing. “Jack’s working on it.”

Sam goes to give Bauer what he thinks he wants, feeling a little better, and Daniel tries to get some work done as he waits to hear from Jack. When the phone finally rings, he picks it up and curses the NID. This is a secure line in and out of the SGC – if this was almost any other situation, he’d be able to speak freely. But because they have no idea how deep the NID has gotten into the Stargate system, they have to dance around the issue.

“Yeah, Daniel. How are things at camp?” Jack sounds unharmed, at least, which is better than they can say for the SGC at this point.

“Erm, not good. General Bauer's testing his new naquadah bomb. He's taking shortcuts which Sam thinks could be disastrous.” Daniel completely leaves off the bit about SG-3 and losing Waite, because he doesn’t think that knowledge is something Jack needs right now.

“Well, Maybourne claims he doesn't know whether Bauer's in with NID or just a gung-ho patsy.” This doesn’t sound very discrete to Daniel, but he supposes if Jack succeeded in springing Maybourne from prison, his colonel is assuming NID is already on their trail.

“Yeah, well, either way, he's dangerous.” Briefly, he reconsiders telling Jack about Waite, but he doesn’t need to be distracted from keeping Maybourne in line and evading the NID at the same time, so Daniel chokes it back.

“Well hang in there, do what you can. I'll check back.” Jack hangs up, and Daniel just looks at the phone for a while, before gently setting it down. They just have to wait for Jack to do whatever Jack can do on his end. Meanwhile, something catches his eye on the map in front of him, and he quickly grabs it off the table. On his way to the control room, he grabs Teal’c; this could be what Sam needs to put an end to the bomb testing, but Daniel wants as much backup as he can get with Jack so far away.

 Daniel has no idea whether Bauer is just an overconfident idiot (a “gung-ho patsy”, as Jack had put it) or if he was just acting under orders from someone else that didn’t involve listening to his foremost experts, but despite Sam’s fervent protests, the General launches the bomb and it all goes to hell. He and Teal’c follow Sam to the security station as the rest of the base starts to evacuate; there’s probably nothing he can do in this situation but he can support Sam. As worried as he is about Jack, now he’s just as worried about Sam, who would not hesitate to go down trying to fix this ship.

He doesn’t even let himself think about the fact that if they autodestruct the base, they won’t have a Stargate to come back to, even if Jack succeeds. He doesn’t let himself think about how Teal’c must feel knowing he will be trapped on Earth, unable to see his family or fight the Goa’uld alongside the Tau’ri.

They all breathe a sigh of utmost relief when the gate deactivates and walk away without even acknowledging Bauer’s apology or his rank. Someone who can almost blow up the whole program on day one doesn’t deserve their regard.

 When Jack calls, Daniel is able to smile at Sam and Teal’c and tell them their leader was successful in getting Hammond reinstated. They don’t bother going home, instead staying at the base to help run damage control after the aborted evac and self-destruct, not to mention a destroyed planet, a bomb, and a damaged iris.

He’s able to take his first deep breath in more than a day when Jack arrives back on base to relieve Bauer of duty, unharmed and seeming quite pleased with himself, though there’s an edginess that suggests he isn’t one hundred percent happy with some of what he had to do, and it will probably take months to pry that information out of him.

Daniel doesn’t fully relax, though, until the very early hours of the morning when he walks past the airman arranging Hammond’s office back into its former state, rehanging diplomas and medals and certificates and pictures of the General’s family. That’s when he finally lets himself go back to his office, where Jack is passed out on the couch, and smile.