Heart's Desire (22 page)

“About as much as you regret kidnapping us. If I let you out of here, will you help us fly the ship?”

“It's my ship.”

“Answer the question.”

“What's in it for me?”

“We don't all crash and die.”

“Besides that.”

“You help us, and after we find our friends, you can have your ship back. You don't help us, and after we find our friends, we're handing you over to the local authorities so that they can throw the book at you.”

“What book?”

“A really heavy one. You get my meaning.”

“I think I do.” Keret shook his head. “Fine.”

“That's all you have to say? Fine?”

He shrugged. “You want me to say, no, I'll fight you with my dying breath? I know how to cut my losses. At this point, I just want my ship back.”

“If you take one step out of line…” Jack held up both the pistol and the zat meaningfully.

Keret shook his head. “And Reba said the Tau'ri had a reputation for being agreeable people.”

“I am being agreeable,” Jack said. “You don't want to see me when I'm not being agreeable. Now get your ass out here and help fly this thing.”

“I have a better idea,” Keret said as Jack unlocked the cage door. “Why don't I go up and fly my airship, and you two go fix whatever you've done to the engines that's making them sound like they're about to burn out.”

“It's cold outside,” Jack said. “You'll need someone to spell you after a while.”

“I've seen worse,” Keret said, holding up one hand to show off frostbite scars across the back of his knuckles.

“Me, too,” Jack said. “You want to have a pissing contest over who's been colder, or you want to trade off at the helm?”

“Do you have any idea what you're doing?”

“I've flown fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and I've flown second seat in a Goa'uld Death Glider,” Jack said. “This is my first time flying an airship, and if you want to show me how the controls are actually supposed to work, feel free.”

“You're going to crash my ship,” Keret said.

“That's what you get when you kidnap people.”

Keret shook his head. “Will you stop harping on it? It's a tradition in these parts.”

“Where I come from, it's a crime.”

“The two aren't mutually exclusive.”

Jack gestured toward the stairs with his pistol. “Can we get on with this?”

“How about, as a little gesture of mutual trust, you stop pointing weapons at me?”

“I don't trust you,” Jack said, but he holstered the pistol and put away the zat. “You go first up the stairs.”

“Your friend isn't going to shoot me?”

“Probably not,” Jack said. “I wouldn't make any sudden movements.”

He followed Keret up the stairs. Surely at their level of technology it was ought to be possible for these people to have invented elevators. He'd have to ask Daniel when the elevator had been invented, once they found him, just to see his expression.

The weather hadn't improved when they came out on deck, the wind howling against the ship's struts. Carter was clinging to the controls as if worried that she'd be blown overboard if she let go. If the wind picked up any more, that would start to be a possibility. She didn't turn for a moment, clearly not able to hear them over the shriek of the wind.

“Carter!” he called, and she turned, and then drew her pistol. “It's all right. I think.”

They made their way forward, Keret keeping his feet easily despite the shifting wind and the icy deck.

“I take it we've got a deal,” Carter said when they got close enough to hear.

Keret ignored her, flipping open a panel below the controls and hauling out coils of rope. He tossed one at Carter, who managed to snag it before it was whipped away by the wind. “Clip onto something,” he said, taking another coil of rope and fastening the carabiner at one end of it to a metal loop on his belt. He ran the rope around a nearby handhold and tied it swiftly, and then looked at Carter like she was a slow student. “Unless you'd like to find out how far it is down?”

“Hang on,” Jack said. “You go see what you can do to get more speed out of this thing. I'm going to get some lessons in flying an airship.” He took the rope from her and clipped it onto his own pants, tying it off nearby, although he didn't trust Keret not to cut the rope if he really went over the rail.

“It doesn't go
faster
,” Keret said, sounding alarmed.

“I think it will,” Carter said. “It's just a matter of making the right adjustments to the gravity drive.”

“You people are insane.”

“A lot of people say that,” Jack said. “Carter, see what you can do.” He squinted into the driving snow. “You show me how to keep this thing on course.”

“We have a course?” Keret said as Carter started cautiously making her way across the deck. “Here, wait, you.” Keret tossed her a rope, and she caught that as well, although she skidded off-balance in the process. “There's a ring next to the hatch. Fix the line!”

She did, and Jack secured the other end around the rail, making a guide rope that would make the trip from hatchway to controls at least a little less nervewracking. Carter nodded and disappeared below.

“We're following your friend's ship,” Jack said. He pointed out Carter's tracking device. “Just keep us pointed so that the lights glow nice and bright.”

“In a storm, threading our way through mountains you've never even seen before, with
your
friend doing the Queen of Heaven only knows what to our engines? You don't ask for much, do you?”

“Can you do it, or not?”

“Why not try?” Keret said, throwing his hands up. “The worst we can wind up is dead, and anyway I'd really like to have a talk with Reba about this really bad plan of hers.”

The ship rocked in a particularly strong gust of wind, and at the same time, Jack could feel the deck tip dramatically under his feet, knocking him against the rail. He held on tight and tried not to look alarmed.

“That would be Carter,” he said.

“She's crazy,” Keret said again, and grappled desperately with the controls. “You have no idea how close we are to
—”

He broke off as a dark shape loomed behind the snow, coming up way too fast and blocking out most of the sky. Jack recoiled, and then scrambled toward the speaking tube, as well as he could against the forward pull of gravity. “Carter! Slow us down!”

“That may take a minute!” Carter said.

Keret wasn't saying anything, his head bent over the controls in desperate concentration, wrestling the ship into a shuddering turn that seemed to violate a number of familiar laws of physics.

“We don't have a minute!” Jack said. “We need a hard starboard turn!”

“I can do that!” Carter said. “Hang on
—”

Jack felt himself sliding to starboard, felt the deck seem to tip under his feet. Without being able to see the horizon, there was no point of reference to tell him that down wasn't somewhere toward the starboard rail, with the bulk of the ship looming above him, the huge rock outcropping above them like a black wave, blotting out the sky.

He braced himself for a crash that never came. Instead, the airship skimmed past the rock face with what looked like barely meters to spare. There was a crack of thunder, far too close for comfort, and lightning illuminated half the sky.

“Carter! We're clear!” He held on tight to the rail as the deck returned to its forward tilt. “See, piece of cake.”

“Your god must love fools,” Keret said grimly, easing them back into a more level course.

“You may be right,” Jack said.

G
eneral Hammond stepped into the control room, glancing down at the blue shimmer of the active wormhole. Everyone always said it looked like a ring of water, but no water had ever shed that kind of rippling light from within. Hammond shook his head and glanced back at Walter Harriman, who had his head bent over his screen, apparently immune to the hypnotic appeal of watching the active gate.

“Any sign of SG-1?”

“I'm not sure, sir,” Walter said, frowning at his screen. “We thought we picked up a radio signal a little while ago, but the weather's getting worse. We're getting gale-force winds across a wide area. If this keeps up, we're going to have to recall the UAV, or…” He broke off, wincing. “Sir, we've just lost contact with the UAV.”

“Do we have a video feed?”

“Yes, sir.” Walter's hands moved swiftly over the keyboard, playing back the last few seconds of the UAV's transmission. The image looked grainy at first, but as the UAV soared over a jagged spur of rock, it became clear that the blurriness of the picture was due to swirling snow. The UAV banked, too sharply as one wing caught the wind, and the dark shape of a cliff face loomed briefly into view before the picture cut off abruptly.

“Damn,” Hammond said.

“Yes, sir,” Walter said. “We could launch a second UAV.”

“Not in this weather,” Hammond said. “And we can't keep the gate open indefinitely. Especially not when we've been expressly forbidden by the local authorities to do exactly what we're doing right now.” He shook his head. “Shut it down. We'll try again in a couple of hours.”

“Shutting it down, sir,” Walter said. The shimmering ring of light died out abruptly.

“You're sure you picked up a radio signal?”

“I think so, although the UAV was near its maximum transmission range at the time,” Walter said. “It… yes, sir, it looks like the UAV did alter its course to track a moving radio signal.”

“That would make sense if SG-1's still on one of the airships that attacked the treaty ceremony.”

“I can project a course over the next couple of hours based on the data that the UAV sent back, although of course there's no way of knowing whether the ship will stay on the same heading.”

“Do it,” Hammond said. “At least that'll give us somewhere to start.”

He'd only been back at his desk a few minutes before there was a knock at the door. “I have those budgetary forms for you,” Janet said. “And I wanted to see…”

“If there's been any word about SG-1?” Hammond shook his head. “Not yet. We're going to keep looking.”

“Of course,” Janet said. He knew it had gotten harder for her in some ways since she'd developed personal friendships with the people she worked with. SG-1 spent a lot of time walking into danger and a lot of time in the infirmary. Not to mention that she'd be the one who'd have to explain it to Cassie if anything happened to Sam.

“I'm hoping we'll get authorization for the expansions to the medical department that you're requesting.”

“So am I, but I'm also not holding my breath,” Janet said.

“Well, in the past the idea that an undetected alien disease has the potential to wipe out this facility
—
or for that matter the planet
—
has been motivational.”

“Understandably so, but what we really need isn't more emergency response capability, but more capacity to handle things that aren't crisis situations while still having the ability to deal with things that are. I'd like to have a physical therapist on staff, for instance, and another physician's assistant.”

“Things that aren't crisis situations can be dealt with at Peterson or over at the Academy hospital,” Hammond said.

“As long as they don't involve patients who aren't from this planet, or injuries that can't be adequately explained without endangering national security, yes, sir, they can. But seeing someone outside the SGC means losing half a day's work for some very busy people, and in actual practice, a lot of the time it doesn't really happen. The more we can do here, the more likely people are to actually comply with their physical therapy routines or get treatment for minor problems before they become major ones.”