Epilogue

Two weeks later, Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter took command of Stargate Command, reporting directly to Major General Hank Landry, the new Director of Homeworld Security. Her husband, newly retired Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill helped the President pin the new stars to her uniform, officially promoting her to Brigadier General.

The ceremony took place in the gate room of the SGC, and was broadcast to Atlantis because it was impossible for everyone to who wanted to be there for the momentous occasion to actually attend.

Grace O'Neill was the youngest human in attendance, watching comfortably from the arms of her Uncle Teal'c, while the oldest being there was Bra'tac, representing the newly formed Jaffa Free Nation.

In the back corner of the room was a special group of guests, the team from NCIS who had been there the previous day to officially wrap up their case and had received an invitation to attend the ceremony.

/Flashback/

"As far as our doctors can determine," Daniel stated, "The hostages recovered had all been replaced by clones, with exception of Jon O'Neill, for obvious reasons."

Jack cleared his throat, reminding Daniel that the NCIS team wasn't cleared to know that piece of information.

"Which we cannot share," Daniel quickly stated. "It seems all of the clones were programmed to gather information and report back to their hideout and leader there. This process continued over a period of several years. Every single person who was cloned and replaced was military. We have a complete list from the surviving hostages and have already gathered all the clones together and dealt with them."

"Who was the mastermind of all of this?" DiNozzo finally asked the question that was on everyone's mind.

Daniel looked at Jack who gave the almost imperceptible nod to continue.

Daniel hit a button on the remote and a picture was displayed on the screen. "This is Harold Smith, according to local residents he showed up about five years ago, bought abandoned land and house, fixed it up, and claimed that he was retired and looking to lead a quiet life now. They said he kept to himself, but was pleasant enough when he would come in town for groceries and such. Even went to church every Sunday and was an elder there."

"Oh the irony," Jack lamented with a callous smile. "How hard it must have been for a man who spent over a thousand years portraying a god and being worshiped as one, only to have to spend his last five years of his life pretending to believe in one."

"Huh?"

"That man," Jack said pointing at Harold Smith's picture, "Is Ba'al, one of the former System Lords. Ba'al cloned himself, and we thought we had captured the last one. SG-1 attended his extraction ceremony ourselves. Guess the Tok'ra was wrong again! Imagine that."

"I'm not sure I follow you General O'Neill," Ziva admitted.

"It's like this Ziva," Cam said, turning to plain English for the explanation. "Ba'al is the ultimate bad guy times 1000 and then cloned something like thirty times. We've spent the last few years tracking down and killing all of the clones. We got to what we thought was the last one and attended a very long winded ceremony to official get rid of him. Only now, we find out that he wasn't actually the last clone and that there was one living here on our own planet all this time."

"Ah."

"Shouldn't we be out there looking for him?" Gibbs questioned, but pretty sure that he already knew the answer.

"We thought so too until we started talking to the local residents. Seems that Mr. Smith was involved in a rather tragic car accident on his way to church one Sunday about three weeks ago. His pickup truck collided with the semi-truck that comes to make the weekly gas delivery at the gas station. The sheriff said that he died on impact and burnt to a crisp, in what had to be a rather painful death. They recovered a corpse which upon further examination by our experts, was confirmed to be Ba'al. "

"Wrapping it all up, we've taken care of everything on our end, including gathering up any of the clones there were still out there and who we had hostages for. We gave the hostages a cover story that involved them shipped off to the Middle East and suffering from memory loss," Jack explained.

"I guess this takes care of everything," Gibbs admitted with an accepting nod.

/End Flashback/

Gibbs returned from his musings when President took the podium and began to speak. "When I was first told about what happens at this base that people actually travel to other planets I thought for sure that former President Henry Hayes was trying to pull a joke on me." She paused and smiled to allow for some laughter. "Little did I know it was all true and there was even more to it. I am unbelievably thankful to each and every one of you for the sacrifices you make on behalf of this planet on a daily basis. And you do it all in the utmost of secrecy. Someday when the world is let in on your secret, you will all be acknowledged as the heroes that you truly are. Until then, I all I can say is thank you and ask you to keep up the good work. It is appreciated."

She stepped away from the podium, signally the end to her speech. Applause broke out and the President acknowledged them a slight nod of her head and she paused several times to speak to various people on her way out the door, including each member of SG-1 and the Generals.

The NCIS team met up with SG-1 in the mess hall later to say their good-byes, where cake was being served in honor of the President's visit and Sam's promotion.

Gibbs offered his hand to Generals O'Neill and Carter. "Thank you. I appreciate the trust and honesty that you gave my team."

"You're welcome," Jack responded.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Tony began. "But I really hope we don't run into each other too soon, at least on a case," he claimed, with an obvious look at Vala who was across the room.

"Sorry for making you the suspect twice, but…" Gibbs trailed off with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You have to do what you have to do," Jack agreed.

"I believe that sentiment is all is well that ends well," Teal'c stated.

"Indeed," Jack agreed.

A chuckle from Sam escalated to full force laughter in seconds.

The NCIS Special Agents never did understand why the comments were so funny, but it didn't stop them from joining in the laughter.

The End