FIC: Amazon Nation (3/3)

[cdybedahl]

Sam woke up feeling warm and safe. Some time after she'd fallen asleep, someone had draped a fur over her. It was soft, heavy and warm.

A delighted moan nearby immediately brought back the memory of where she was and why. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

An arm's length away, Janet lay. She was on her back with her arms stretched out over her head. A pillow lay under her hips. Her face was turned toward Sam, her mouth slightly open and her eyes closed. Her legs were spread wide, and Gabrielle lay between them. Her eyes too were closed, and she seemed to be concentrating totally on what her mouth was doing to Janet's vulva.

Sam stayed still and looked at them, fascinated. She studied Janet's face as if it was the most exquisite work of art, and every twitch and moan sent little shivers of excitement down Sam's spine. She kept watching as Janet's shivers and groans grew more frequent and stronger, as the flush on her pale skin crept ever further down her breasts. She watched as, just before she was sure that Janet was about to explode into orgasm, Gabrielle reached up and gently put her fingers to a few places along Janet's hip bone. A frustrated whimper came from Janet, and she seemed to drop back to the level of arousal she'd been at when Sam woke up.

Between her legs, Gabrielle never stopped licking.

As silently as she could, Sam pushed the fur aside and moved closer to Janet. The anticipation of touch and the sheer joy of being able to was so intense that it made it difficult for her to breathe. She stretched out a hand to stroke one of Janet's gorgeous breasts, and was just about to touch when she noticed that Gabrielle was looking at her and discreetly shaking her head. She pulled her hand back and looked questioningly at Gabrielle, who briefly raised a hand in a waiting gesture.

So Sam waited. Again, Janet's arousal rose steadily, and Sam started to suspect that the fact that she hadn't been spotted when she moved had less to do with her own stealth skills and more to do with Janet's total obliviousness to the outside world. When it seemed like Janet was just about to again shoot for the stratosphere, Gabrielle gestured towards her chest rather than do the hip-touching thing. Sam smiled, wrapped her lips around Janet's nearest nipple and stroked it firmly with her tongue.

Janet's surprised gasp turned to a scream halfway through. Her back arched, her muscles tensed and she twisted and twitched enough that there was no way for Sam to keep sucking her nipple. She pulled back and just watched in amazement until Janet collapsed into an exhausted heap.

Gabrielle crawled up and lay down alongside Janet, propped up on an elbow.

"Satisfied?" she said.

"Sweet mercy, yes," Janet said. Her breath still came ragged. "But how..."

She opened her eyes and saw Sam.

"Ah," she said. "So that's where the second mouth suddenly came from."

"I hope you didn't mind me butting in," Sam said, smiling widely to show that the question wasn't serious.

"Horribly," Janet said. "Ruined it all. Now we'll have to do it all over again."

"All right," Gabrielle said and started moving down Janet's body again.

Janet grabbed hold of her and pulled her back.

"I was joking, woman!" she said. "God, another round like that would probably kill me!"

Gabrielle's smile indicated that she'd not been entirely serious either.

"I would've been a bit impressed if you'd really wanted more right after that," she said. "Or worried that I was losing my touch."

"Your touch is just fine," Janet said. "Very, very fine."

Sam stretched out on the other side of her from Gabrielle.

"So you don't want me to play with you right now?" she said.

Janet smiled. "Just wait a minute or two," she said.

Gabrielle swiftly moved over Janet, pushed Sam down on her back and ended up straddling her hips, facing her. She was heavier than Sam would've guessed.

"Or I could play a little with you," she said, moving her hips slightly, putting pressure in places that made Sam gasp. "Let Janet here watch for a while."

Sam glanced towards Janet. Janet was still smiling, so obviously she didn't resent the suggestion too badly.

"All right," Sam said.

Gabrielle smiled down at her.

"Good," she said. She lifter herself a little, reached down between her legs and brought her hand back with two fingers covered with moisture. She put the wet fingers to Sam's mouth. Sam let them in, sucked at them. They tasted of salt and musk, and something else she couldn't identify. Something sharp, kind of metallic.

"Good girl," Gabrielle said. She pulled her fingers out, bent down and kissed Sam deeply. She was, unsurprisingly, an exceptionally good kisser. It didn't take many moments before Sam was completely lost in the kiss, all her attention focused on the way Gabrielle moved her tongue and lips and body against hers. When Gabrielle broke contact between their mouths and proceeded to kiss her way down Sam's body, it left her gasping for air. It wasn't only the way Gabrielle touched her. There was more to her, a scent or a feeling that did things to Sam's mind that she couldn't quite understand.

"She's good, isn't she?" Janet whispered in her ear. "We should try to learn."

Sam tried to laugh, but it turned into a strangled gasp when Gabrielle stuck a tongue down her belly button at the same time.

"Do you think she gives lessons?" she managed to get out.

"If she does, we could never afford them," Janet said.

Gabrielle was breathing into Sam's pubic hair, spreading a soft, caressing warmth. Her hands were moving slowly up and down Sam's torso, lightly touching her nipples every time they passed.

It's like a swing, the annoying rational part of Sam's mind said. Push it once, and not much happens. Push it repeatedly, but at the wrong times, even less happens. Push it repeatedly at the right times, and you can reach the sky.

Slowly, teasingly, Gabrielle's mouth moved down between Sam's legs. Sam spread her legs as wide as she could, to give her all the room she might need. To invite her, entice her to touch harder, faster, more.

She felt Gabrielle's hands on her hips, and another hand cupping one of her breasts. She looked down and saw Janet's hand there. A hand that had touched her many times before, but not like this. Never like this. Janet's fingers gently pinched her nipple, and while her touch was not as supernaturally skillful as Gabrielle's, it felt as good to her simply because it was Janet's. She looked to the side, where Janet lay right next to her. Her face was serious, concentrated. Her pupils were dilated with desire. Sam moved to kiss her, and their lips met at the same moment as Gabrielle finally pushed her tongue between Sam's blood-engorged labia.

Sam felt her climax start. She felt the sudden involuntary tensing that immediately preceded the explosion -- and then it just stopped, leaving her panting and confused. She looked down and saw Gabrielle's hand leave the exact same spot along the hip bone where Sam had seen her touch Janet. So that's what it feels like, the rational fragment had time to think before it as drowned out by the massive pleasure sensation coming from her sex. Gabrielle's mouth was sucking at her clitoris at the same time as she was sliding her fingers in and out of her vagina, a combination that left thinking far behind and had Sam panting and begging for more in seconds.

Distantly, she felt Janet nibble at her ear lobe.

"Begging's no use," Janet whispered to her. "She can go on like this for hours."

Above the temple, the stars slowly moved their stately dance across the sky. The night birds sang, the insects rasped and the occasional small furry thing went crunch in the darkness.

Outside one of the temple's doors, a short Amazon stood guard. She had a P90 assault rifle hanging from a strap around her shoulder, a white and gold mask covering her face and a pointy stick in her hand.

She looked up when she heard another orgasmic wail from inside the temple. She tilted her head to the side and pondered for a moment. C or F?

She looked down at the ground by the large brazier, in which burned the fire that provided most of the light around the door. In the dust there, two vertical lines had been drawn, with a horizontal one drawn close to their top, forming a simple three-column table. One column was marked "C", one was marked "F" and one "U". There were a few more marks in the "F" column than the "C" one.

Hailey used the pointy stick to make a mark under "C". Then she frowned, unsure. It could have been the doctor. Perhaps it was. She scrubbed out the mark with the tip of her Amazon soft leather boot and made a mark under "F" instead. Then she sighed, rubbed out that mark as well and made one under "U".

As they got hoarser in there, it got harder to tell which one was screaming. If they didn't let up soon, all the marks would be under "U". Except when they were both howling at the same time, of course.

She sighed again. Over the past few hours, she'd got an entirely new understanding of why her lodge sisters had made so very sure to tell her that masturbating while on guard was a crime that might not only get her expelled from the lodge but also exiled from the tribe. Not that she was part of the tribe to begin with, but she understood the seriousness. And, after this, she also understood the need for the rule.

She sighed for a third time. If nothing else, after this night she'd got a whole new level of respect for the Amazon Queen.

I'll kill her, Sam thought as climax began to swell within her again. If she stops it and starts over again this time too, I'll honest to goodness kill her. Or die trying.

She had no idea how many times Gabrielle had repeated the cycle. Every time it seemed like the pleasure grew faster and reached higher, and the frustration at being brought down again grew sharper. Her senses seemed to grow sharper, more acute, at the same time as her mind lost its grip on past and future. All the remained was an intense now of sensation. Gabrielle was still between her legs, doing amazing things to her with tongue and lips. The queenly hands roamed up and down Sam's body as far as they'd reach, down her legs and up her torso, touching spots that Sam had had no idea could feel so good.

Less searingly intense, Janet was lying next to her. One arm under Sam's shoulders, the other gently caressing her breasts. Her lips kissing her. Nibbling her ear lobe. Leaving searing hot trails over Sam's skin. Engulfing nipples in lovely wet warmth.

Gabrielle's hand didn't move up to Sam's hip to touch the magic places. Instead, finger slid inside her oh-so-wet vagina and touched just as magic places there.

For some moments, her brain shut down. There was only incredible pleasure, warmth and love. It was searingly intense, burning away the whole world outside.

When the world returned again, leaving her panting and exhausted in Janet's arms, she couldn't even guess how long it had lasted. Her throat felt sore from screaming, so it must've been a little while.

"My god," she whispered. She blinked and slowly felt things fall into place again. The thick, soft furs under her. Janet's arm under her shoulders. The smell, a mix of incense and aroused woman.

"You all right?" Janet whispered next to her ear. On the other side, she felt the bed move as Gabrielle laid down next to her.

"I'm not sure yet," Sam said. "There might be some burned-out nerves."

Janet kissed her on the cheek. "You're all right," she said.

Gabrielle ran her hand along Sam's torso, from just above her pubic hair up between her breasts and slowly back down again.

"You're beautiful," she said. "Both of you."

Sam looked at her. "Not as much as most of your Amazons," she said. "And don't try to tell us otherwise. You have a whole lot of gorgeous women here."

Gabrielle smiled. "Pleasure is beauty," she said. "And you enjoy it more, because you expect it less. So you are more beautiful."

She still wasn't sure what to make of the Amazon queen. There was just... too much of her. Too knowing. Too physically excellent. Too wise. Too pretty. As if all the strong parts a whole group of fantastic women had been distilled down to one supernaturally amazing woman.

"It must be our turn now," Janet said. "You said all of us has to come during the night for the marriage to be valid."

"So I did," Gabrielle said. "So how do you want me?"

"Panting and moaning in ecstasy, if we can manage it," Janet said. "Until then, just lie down between us."

Gabrielle got up on hands and knees and climbed over Sam, who moved to the side to make room.

"I'm sure you'll manage that marvelously," Gabrielle said. She laid down between the two Earth women, and stretched out her arms to the sides, under Sam's and Janet's necks. Sam laid her head down on Gabrielle's arm, and marveled briefly at the solidity of the muscle in it. Even relaxed, it felt harder than Sam's own when she was exerting herself. Curious, Sam reached out and touched Gabrielle's thigh. The skin as warm, smooth and soft, but underneath lay a muscle like iron. A lean, well shaped muscle that smoothly joined with a delicious buttock at the high point. Having started to feel her up, Sam found no reason or desire to stop. With her hand, she explored the Amazon queen's body. Carefully, at first, staying away from all the obviously erogenous places. She looked towards Janet, and saw that she was doing pretty much the same to the other side of Gabrielle's body. The queen herself had her eyes closed and seemed to simply be enjoying the sensation.

Inch by inch, Sam let her caresses grow bolder. She ran her fingertips slowly up along the inside of Gabrielle's thigh, causing the legs to spread further apart. She kissed the sides and bottoms of her breast, avoiding the areola and nipple. She ran her fingers through the soft curly hair over Gabrielle's sex, and there her hand met Janet's. She looked up, and their eyes met. Janet was smiling. She winked at Sam, nodded towards where there hands were touching and by gently taking hold of Sam's hand asked her to follow her lead.

As one, they bent down and started more roughly licking Gabrielle's breasts. As one, their fingers moved downwards and slid in between Gabrielle's labia. The queen gasped. She spread her legs even further apart, and her hips moved to meet the probing hands. Sam moved her hand with the trembling hips. She spread slick fluid over every part of Gabrielle's sex she could reach, occasionally touching the clenching opening to get more. Her mouth was busy sucking and nibbling at a hard nipple, and a sideways gaze showed her that Janet was doing the same. Gabrielle was audibly moaning now, and her hips were moving with the rhythm of the touching hands. Sam let the nipple slip out of her mouth, inched herself upwards a bit. She stuck her tongue out and licked along Gabrielle's lower lip. Before she got halfway from one end to the other, Gabrielle had turned her head and caught Sam's lips in a passionate kiss.

Warm breath touched her face from the side. Sam broke the kiss. Janet moved in and took it over. Their fingers still moved in unison among the folds of Gabrielle's vulva, steadily inching the queen closer to ecstasy. While Janet was occupying Gabrielle's mouth, Sam licked her ear lobe. She was pressing her entire body as close as she could against Gabrielle, wanting to touch all of her at once. Her and Janet both, if possible. Janet's face moved slightly away from Gabrielle's, and following an impulse Sam dove in and kissed her instead of the queen. Right over Gabrielle's now-open eyes, their mouths met and joined. Down between her legs, Sam's and Janet's fingers both moved to the bottom of the vulva at the same time, and as if they'd planned it in advance they both slid their fingers inside Gabrielle's vagina side by side. Feeling the slick velvet walls against her finger on one side of her finger and Janet's skin on the other was an amazingly intimate sensation. Moving as one, her and Janet sliding their fingers in and out and Gabrielle meeting their moves with her hips, it gave her an intense sense of being connected to them. Of nearly being one.

"Harder," she heard Gabrielle whisper. Her breath had grown ragged, and when Sam stopped kissing Janet for a moment she saw that her eyes were half-closed.

Without taking her finger out of Gabrielle's vagina, she moved her thumb up and pressed it down on the hard little clitoris. Side by side with her, Janet's thumb did the same. All their mouths met in a sloppy, ineffectual but necessary three-way kiss. Sam's and Janet's hands kept moving. Faster and faster, harder and harder, as Gabrielle's hips moved faster and harder and she began to mumble urgent nonsense at them. Sam kept caressing, probing, kissing. Again, time became all but meaningless, drowned out by sensation. She could not have said if it was a moment or an eternity the lay like that before Gabrielle's entire body arced and she climaxed with a long, soundless gasp. Her vaginal muscles clenched Sam's and Janet's fingers so hard that they couldn't move them, and it almost hurt.

The moments of stillness passed, and Gabrielle relaxed onto the bed again. Sam pulled her finger out, just after Janet, their effortless coordination no longer there. Gabrielle smiled at them.

"So..." she said, and at that exact moment a sparkly golden light passed over the three of them.

"..., now we're all married," Gabrielle finished her sentence.

Sam lay her head down. She was feeling sleepy again.

"Your marriage rites are more fun than ours," she heard Janet say.

"Tell me about it tomorrow, wife of mine," Gabrielle said. "Believe it or not, but even Amazon queens get tired after a night of sex. I want to sleep."

"Wouldn't mind some myself," Janet mumbled, and that was the last Sam heard before she slipped into darkness.

"Samantha."

Sam woke with a start. She was still lying in the large temple bed. She was still naked.

"Good morning," Gabrielle said. "Here, drink this."

Sam sat up. Gabrielle was holding out a large cup to her, and for lack of a better option she took it. She looked around and saw Janet sleeping next to her.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Gabrielle went to a side cupboard and took out another cup.

"Just before sunrise," she said. "The doors will open soon."

Gabrielle walked up to the side of the bed closest to Janet and touched her gently on the shoulder.

"Janet," she said. Janet sat bolt upright.

"Hm?" she said. "What's happening?"

"Morning," Gabrielle said. "Here, drink this."

"What is it?" Sam asked. She looked into her cup. It was liquid, transparent and brown. It looked rather a lot like iced tea without the ice.

"A restorative," Gabrielle said. "Since we only planned for two brides, there are only two cups. You two need them more than I do."

Sam tasted it. It was slightly bitter, minty and just a little bit sweet. Overall, quite tasty.

"Hey, it's good," she said.

Janet drank from hers as well.

"Maybe you explained all this to Janet yesterday so she already knows," Sam said. "But I wasn't there for all the preparation, so... Do we dress before we go out? Or is this some kind of ritual showing off thing to prove that we did what we did?"

"I'm going to dress," Gabrielle said. "You do as you wish. You're certainly both good-looking enough that nobody will mind if you don't."

"I think I will, thank you," Sam said. She climbed out of the bed and headed for the back room with the pool, which was the last place she remembered seeing her clothes.

"Gabrielle," she heard Janet say. "There's one thing I'm wondering about."

"What?"

"What's the status between me and Sam, in the eyes of Amazon law? You said we are all married now, so are the two of us married separately too? Or are we only wives when all three of us are present, in some way?"

Sam stopped like she'd hit a wall. Now that was a question. She turned around. Gabrielle was looking at her with a very impish grin on her face.

"You are married all by yourselves as well," she said. "Just as if it had been only you here last night."

"Oh," Janet said.

"Do you dislike it?" Gabrielle said. "We have divorce rituals as well, if not. Although that would be considered a bit of a bad omen for the alliance between our peoples."

"No," Janet said. "No, that's fine. I rather like it. Even if it would've been fun to propose to Sam some day, I can live without that."

Sam let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. Being married, even in a way not anywhere close to recognized on Earth, was a lot more a lot faster than she would've chosen -- but it still would've hurt her a lot if Janet had wanted a divorce at once.

She dressed quickly and returned to the main room before any further momentous revelations could be made.

Janet and Gabrielle had both dressed while she was away. Not that they had a lot to put on in the first place, but at least it covered their more interesting bits.

"Shall we go out?" Gabrielle said. "I'm told that your superiors back home are getting rather worried and are threatening to send in warriors to rescue you if they don't get to talk to you within an hour and a half."

She headed for the main door, which swung open the moment she started walking towards it.

"Who told her that?" Sam whispered.

"Aphrodite, I guess," Janet whispered back. "And I wish she wouldn't walk so fast, I feel like I've run a marathon!"

Sam pulled herself up to her full height.

"Well, dear wife," she said. "Shall we go out and meet the masses of our followers?"

"Why not?" Janet said. "I'm pretty sure both of them will be waiting impatiently for us."

Hand in hand, they walked out of the temple.

Aftermath

The briefing room was unusually crowded. In addition to the members of the temporary SG-X, the remaining members of SG-1 had also insisted on being present. They sat along one side of the table, looking at the women: Jack with ill-concealed suspicion, Daniel with open curiosity and Teal'c as usual with no discernible emotion whatsoever.

On the other side sat the four women of SG-X. Major Carter and Doctor Fraiser looked a bit tense, for no apparent reason. Lt Satterfield looked relieved to be home, which had been fairly obvious ever since she stepped through the gate. Lt Hailey was dressed according to regulation, but her face was painted in an intricate pattern of ochre and black lines.

At the top of the table, as usual, sat General Hammond.

They all sat there, silent and waiting. A few minutes passed before someone knocked on the door.

"Enter," General Hammond said.

A tall woman in uniform entered and saluted.

"Here is the box set you requested, sir," she said and held out a small garishly colored box to the general.

"Thank you, sergeant," he said as he took it. "You'll get it back after this debriefing. Dismissed."

"Please be careful with it," the sergeant said. "It's signed by Hudson Leick, sir."

Hammond slowly turned and looked up at her.

"Dismissed, sergeant," he said.

"Yes, sir," she said and beat a hasty retreat out of the room.

Hammond looked at the box.

"Xena the Warrior Princess, Season Six" he read.

"What?!" Lt Hailey said in a low voice. "Hudson wasn't even in that season!"

"Major Carter?" Hammond said. "Can you please explain to me why I am holding this object?"

"Yes, sir," Sam said.

She got up and took the box from the general. She opened it, took out a DVD and slotted it into a player in the corner of the room. She pushed a few buttons. The room lights darkened, the screen covering the window to the Gate Room lowered and moving pictures began to play. On them, an athletic young woman with short blonde hair was stalking through a forest. She was dressed in a very short red skirt, and a matching sports-bra-like top. She had knee-high soft leather boots, and she was holding an odd three-pronged knife.

Sam froze the image.

"This is the character Gabrielle from the TV series 'Xena the Warrior Princess'," Sam said. "She's played by the actress Renée O'Connor."

She pushed more button, and another still image came into view next to the first one. It was nearly identical to the first one, except for a slight variation in the woman's stance and the appearance of the vegetation around her.

"This is the ruler of the people we met on P5X-8859," Sam said. "As you can see, the resemblance is quite uncanny. Nor does it end at the physical likeness. She has the same name, Gabrielle, and appears to have the memories the TV series character should have. Nor is she the only one. All in all, during our week on P5X-8859 we encountered three more characters from the TV show."

"So somebody set up a copy of this show there?" Jack said.

"We don't think so," Sam said. "The Amazons claim to have come to P5X-8859 about a hundred and twenty years ago, through the Stargate. According to them, they were led there by Gabrielle and their goddess Aphrodite. We did find physical evidence suggesting that they have been living in their village for at least a hundred years."

"Led from where?" Daniel asked.

"We don't know," Sam said.

"Aphrodite," Jack said. "This is the goddess who's into lesbian porn?"

"Yes, sir," Sam said. "She's also one of the four TV characters we met. Although the bit about the pornography is never mentioned there. Her aversion to fish, however, is. We also believe that she is the key to this entire mystery."

"How so?" Hammond said.

"From the look of it when she arrived and left, she's an Ascended. A being of the same order as Oma Desala or Orlin."

"So what we have here," Hammond said, "is a very powerful being who has set up a small culture on a distant world, that then somehow happens to closely resemble an Earth TV show? This does not make a whole lot of sense to me."

"It may be that the implication goes the other way, sir. It may be that the TV show came to resemble this society."

"How could that be?"

"When we talked to Gabrielle, she displayed a markedly greater knowledge of the world outside P5X-8859 than anyone else. She also mentioned that she has on occasion used the Stargate. We know from the experience with Orlin that the Ascended know far more about the Stargates than we do. With some help from Aphrodite, which would not be hard for Gabrielle to get, she may have come to Earth through the Antarctic gate before we found it. She may somehow and for some reason have set up the TV show to resemble her own world."

The General rubbed his forehead.

"Enough about their history for the moment, I think," he said. "Let's get to the current situation. Apparently we are allied with them?"

"Yes, sir," Sam said. "According to their customs, the only possible choices were war or alliance. I chose alliance."

"What does this obligate us to?"

"Not much, sir. Basically no more than we might give anyway as humanitarian aid."

"All right. Does it get us anything? I mean, even if they were founded by an Ascended, they are a primitive society using pre-gunpowder weapons. What could they offer us?"

"They are not as primitive as they look, sir. Janet?"

"Right," Janet said. She leaned forward and looked at her papers.

"After we finalized the alliance," she said. "I studied as many Amazons as I could. The results of that makes me hesitate to call them human. There ancestors were, without a doubt. But something has since changed them."

She leaned back in her chair.

"To begin with, they don't fall ill. At all. Gabrielle was the only one there who even understood the concept of illness. They heal extremely fast. When one of them suffered a broken ulna during weapons practice, the bone was perfectly healed the next morning--without having even been set. On top of this, they are faster, stronger and more coordinated than we are."

"In short, sir, as long we can explain things to them in a way that appeals to them, the possibility exists to use Amazon volunteers as quite impressive special operations troops."

"They use bows and arrows!" Jack said.

"Their arrows turn," Hailey said.

Jack looked at her.

"What do you mean turn?" he said.

"I mean they turn in flight. I've seen an Amazon shoot around a tree to hit a boar behind it."

"Lieutenant Hailey touches on another thing we discovered," Sam said. "Their weaponry is not primitive."

She took a cloth-wrapped bundle from a side table and unwrapped it, revealing the two halves of her P90.

"At one point, Gabrielle and I had a... misunderstanding," she said. "I fired on her. Using her strange knife -- a sai, I believe it's called -- she parried the bullets. She then disarmed me by throwing what looked like a sharp metal circle on my weapon. This is the result."

She handed the broken weapon around. It passed from hand to hand, so everybody got a look.

"The break seems awfully smooth," Daniel said after he'd had a chance to look at it.

"It is," Sam said. "It's much too smooth. There is no material missing, and there is no deformation of the material that is there. It's just split apart. Our current physics can't even explain why this might be possible, much less how it could be done."

"She parried bullets?" Jack said, his voice heavy with disbelief.

"Yes, sir," Sam said.

"We both witnessed it, Colonel," Janet said. "We also went back later and retrieved some of the bullets, to eliminate the possibility that it was some kind of illusion. The fact is that Gabrielle was fast enough to parry a salvo from an automatic weapon at a distance of less then ten yards."

"As I said, sir," Sam said. "Quite impressive special forces troops, if we can get them to help us."

"SO can we do that?" Daniel said. "What's their culture like? Are they likely to want to help us fight the Goa'uld?"

Sam and Janet looked at each other for a moment.

"As far as we can tell," Sam said, "their culture is fairly static. As far as we could tell, there is almost no expansion or exploration. What little there is consists of founding a new village every decade or so, when an old one grows uncomfortably large."

"Uncomfortably large?" Daniel asked.

"When it takes a noticeable amount of work to gather food for it," Sam explained. "Normally, they get all their food by hunting and gathering in the are close to the village."

"Ok, now that I know is primitive," Jack said. "Isn't it?"

"The hunting might be, if not for the advanced weapons Lt Hailey mentioned," Janet said. "The gathering itself can also be seen as primitive, but what they gather is not. A large number of the plants they pick have been genetically modified to be better sources of food and chemicals. All in all, their diet is considerably healthier and tastier than ours."

"So if they don't explore and it doesn't take them much time to gather food, what do they do?" Daniel asked.

"They hunt," Sam said. "The villages fight each other, sometimes."

"They party," Hailey interrupted. "A lot. And hard."

There was a brief silence.

"That's it?" Jack said. "That's what they do? They eat, fight and party?"

"More or less, yes," Janet said. "For a certain kind of person, it's pretty close to a functioning Utopia."

"You can't be serious!" Jack said, obviously upset. "They're just degenerates!"

Suddenly almost everybody was talking at once. Hailey and Janet were vigorously defending the Amazons, Jack was slamming them while Sam and Daniel tried to inject some reason into the argument. Satterfield looked frightened, Teal'c was impassive and Hammond's expression was fast heading for annoyance.

"Ladies, gentlemen," Hammond shouted after a while. "This is obviously too much for us to absorb in one sitting. I suggest we break for lunch. Be back here at thirteen hundred hours and we'll keep going through the details. As adults, if possible."

Sam's lab looked just like it always did. Right then and right there, that familiarity was something Sam needed far more than she needed food. Instead of going to the mess hall, she dug out an old energy bar from a drawer and poured herself a glass of water to go with it. She sat down in her own office chair, put up her boots on the desk and tried to relax.

"I thought I'd find you here," Janet said from the door.

Sam looked up and smiled at her.

"Come in and lock the door behind you," she said.

"Pity about the security camera," Janet said. "I have this powerful desire to kiss you silly."

"This is my lab," Sam said. "And there's been enough times when it's been a life-saver not to be observed."

She reached in under the desk and nudged a button she'd normally have pushed with her knee.

"The camera will now experience a brief technical problem," she said. "When it comes back in 30 seconds time, it'll show a recording of my empty lab."

Janet locked the door behind her and walked into the room.

"Very naughty," she said.

"Even if someone discovers it, I can get away with it," Sam said.

She tilted her head backwards, and was rewarded with a long, passionate kiss from Janet.

"All the years we wasted," Sam said.

"Hush," Janet said. "Bygones. Think forward. We have each other now."

She ran her hands downwards from Sam's shoulders, briefly fondling her breasts.

"I also have test results," she said.

Sam frowned, either at the interrupted groping or the news. Or both.

"Are they good or bad?" she said.

"That depends on how you look at it," Janet said. "I can't make up my mind if we should tell the General or not."

"Let's hear it," Sam said.

"Both of us are infected with nanocytes," Janet said. "Satterfield and Hailey aren't. All of the Amazons I tested are."

Sam frowned. "Why us and not the lieutenants?"

"I have a theory," Janet said.

"Yeah?"

"There's one thing you, I and all the Amazons have done that neither of the lieutenants have," she said.

"And that is?"

"We've had sex with Gabrielle."

Sam looked doubtful. "All the Amazons?"

Janet nodded. "Initiation rite into the tribe. Everybody has to go through it, or leave."

Sam considered it. "Do you think she knows?" she said.

"I'm sure of it," Janet said. "Do you remember that thing she did with her fingers? Before she went down on us?"

Sam groaned. "Her own fluids. She was making sure that we got infected. So what do these little buggers do? Are we infectious? Not that I'm planning to bed anyone but you any time soon, but there may be other vectors."

"They do tissue repair," Janet said. "And were not infectious. The nanocytes seem to be tied to our individual DNA sequences. Which I suppose means that Gabrielle carries some kind of mother-strain that can infect anybody, which I guess she got from Aphrodite."

"Tissue repair."

Janet nodded. "Since the marriage ceremony, have you had a single scratch? Or bruise? Anything?"

"Not that I can remember, no."

"With all the running around in forests and... other things we did during the latter half of the week, do really think it's reasonable that neither of us got anything? Not as much as a small bruise from lying down hard on a pebble?"

"All right," Sam said, convinced. "Why wouldn't we want to tell the General?"

"There's one more thing," she said. She took a printout from her lab coat pocket and handed it to Sam.

The printout was a picture from a high-powered microscope, and it showed two cells with something small and roughly cylindrical between them. No, wait, that wasn't two cells. That was one cell in a late stage of mitosis, shortly before it'd split into two new cells.

"The cylinder is a nanocyte, I guess?" Sam said.

Janet nodded.

"What's it doing?"

"As far as I can tell, fixing misreplications during cell division."

Sam frowned. "It prevents cancer?"

"That too, but I don't think that's the primary purpose. Remember how we wondered why none of the Amazons seemed to be older than their mid-twenties? Including Gabrielle, who we're reasonably sure is closer to ten times that old?"

For a moment, Sam felt dizzy at the implication.

"Jesus Christ," she said. "A cure for aging."

"If NID or someone else like that found out, we'd be lab animals for the rest of our lives," Janet said. "And with these in our blood, I can't even guess how long that might be."

Sam shook her head. "We're not telling anybody about this. Destroy all your data and hope nobody saw it."

Janet nodded. "I will," she said. "That's what we get for not practicing safe sex, huh?"

"Perfect health and possible immortality," Sam said. "I'd say we came off quite a bit better than most people who catch something from a one night stand."

Janet's face lit up. "And we may have stumbled onto the answer to another mystery," she said.

"And what would that be?"

"Why the Amazon marriage ceremony had no bit about until death do us part," Janet said.

Sam groaned. "Oh, that's so bad!"

"I still don't want to leave you for as long as I live," she added.

"You say that now," Janet said. "But just you wait and see how it feels in six or seven centuries!"

They both started laughing, but the laughter died out as the realization sank in that they might really be there to see how it felt six or seven hundred years into the future.

"This is going to take some getting used to," Sam said.

"I'll say," Janet said.

"To sum up," General Hammond said. He looked tired. It had been a very long debriefing, and not much of it made much sense.

"We are allied with an alien people. They look primitive, but aren't. Like the Nox. We probably can't get at their technology directly, but we may get some use of it if we can get volunteers from them. We have a possibility of semi-reliable contact with an Ascended. We have seeds to food crops that are far superior to any we currently possess."

He looked around the table.

"Does that about cover it?" he said.

"I think so, sir," Sam said.

"Good," Hammond said. "Then that is that. I do not want to hear any more about their culture or lack of it. I will consider this mission a significant success, in that we have initiated good relations with a possibly powerful alien culture, and we have acquired some advanced alien technology. It may not be weapons, but food is every bit as important to a military force. Major Carter?"

"Yes, sir?"

"If I understand it correctly, achieving this alliance required you and Doctor Fraiser to take some actions that lie well outside what the US Air Force would ask of you?"

Sam frowned. "What...?" she said. Then she saw Janet blush.

"Oh!" she said. "Right. Yes, sir, it did."

"I will put in a recommendation that the two of you receive commendations for diligence and achievement above and beyond the call of duty," Hammond said. "SG-X is put on hold until such time as it is needed again. Following one week's leave, Major Carter and Doctor Fraiser will return to their normal duties while Lieutenants Hailey and Satterfield are assigned to SG-18. Due to our new alliance with the Amazon Nations, Lt Hailey will be allowed to carry her Amazon war paint as long as it does note interfere with her duties. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you good day. Dismissed."

In the general chaos of people getting up, getting out, collecting papers, wrapping up displayed items, re-packaging Xena DVDs and all that sort of thing, Sam approached Hammond.

"General?" she said.

He turned to her.

"Yes, Major, what can I do for you?"

"About this leave, sir. Janet and I would like to travel a little, but on this short notice plane tickets will cost a fortune. Do you think we could get a military transport permission? It'd be so much more convenient just to be able to jump onto the first military transport with the capacity to spare."

Hammond smiled.

"Of course, Sam," he said. "You'll have it as soon as I can print it out."

"Thank you, sir!" she said.

She turned away, and saw Janet looking at her from the other side of the room. She smiled and nodded to her. In reply, she got a smile that made her insides melt.

"I still don't get it," Jack said. "If she's an Ascended, she's not even got a body. What's she going to need porn for, lesbian or... not lesbian?"

He, Daniel, Teal'c and Hammond were sitting in the mess hall. They'd just finished a late dinner and were having coffee. And some discussion of the kind that Jack didn't feel was appropriate while women were present and Daniel didn't think was appropriate at all. Hammond and Teal'c kept their thoughts to themselves.

"She affects the personality of a female obsessed with love and sex," Daniel said. "If she's done it long enough it may even be her core personality. She'll think of herself as having a body, with all the needs and wants that comes with it."

"But she doesn't actually have a body."

In the distance, a siren began to warble. All four men looked up.

"Who's going out now?" Daniel asked.

"Nobody," Hammond said. He got up from his seat and ran for the control room.

The other three looked at each other for a split second, then ran after him.

They got to the control room just as the event horizon dissolved in the gate. Hammond looked daggers at the technician sitting at the gate control terminal.

"What happened, sergeant?" he said.

"Nothing, General," the technician said. "I opened a connection as instructed by Major Carter, she and Doctor Fraiser went through and the gate closed. Perfectly normal, sir."

"Excuse me?!" Jack said. "Since when does Carter have the authority to open gate connections on her own?"

"She had a transport permission from the general, sir. And the gate counts as a military transport device, officially. Experimental and secret, but still transport. She showed me the passage in the regulations."

"Oooh," Daniel said. "Clever girl!"

"A bit too clever, sometimes," Hammond said. "Where did they go, son?"

"P5X-8859," the technician and Daniel said in chorus.

Hammond, O'Neill and Teal'c all looked at Daniel.

"Come on," Daniel said. "Where else would they want to go? They're on leave!"

"They're on leave?" Jack said. "So that just naturally means that they went to this..."

For a moment, words failed him.

"...this paradise for warrior lesbians?" he finished.

Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

"I believe my coffee is getting cold," he said, and then he left.

"Yeah," Daniel said, also turning away and leaving. "I'm with the big guy."

"Sergeant," Hammond said. "Make a note to open the gate to P5X-8859 again in exactly one week. If Major Carter and Doctor Fraiser do not come through at that time, post them as being AWOL."

"Yes, sir," the technician said.

"What?" Jack said as Hammond also headed for the door. "Is that all you're going to do?"

Hammond stopped in the doorway. He turned around and looked back at O'Neill.

"Colonel," he said. "I'm going to do what I suggest that you do as well."

He smiled.

"I'm going to not ask, and not tell," he said. "Come now. The coffee is getting cold."

THE END (unless someone asks for the sequel).

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

THE END (unless someone asks for the sequel).

Okay, I'm asking ;-)

Great fun - will Xena be in the sequel?

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

That's two sequel requests already, so I'll guess I'll keep working on that one. And no, she won't. This does go on (if distantly) from FIN so she stays dead.

At least that's the plan now...

[bella-poetessa.livejournal.com]

more please...

[warrior-cat.livejournal.com]

Wow! Awesome. ^_^ I loved it. And I'd love to read the sequel if it's ever written. XD

[aeryn-ryker.livejournal.com]

omg finished it on in one sitting! is there more to this yet?

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

No, and it almost certainly won't be. Sorry.