Heart's Desire (23 page)

“Understood,” Hammond said.

“I'd say we could also use another psychologist on staff, but the ones we have are already chronically underutilized.”

“I take it that's your way of saying no one's willing to go see them unless they're under orders or plain out of their minds.”

“I wouldn't say no one,” Janet said. “But I'd like to see more people taking advantage of the resources that we provide to help them deal with some of the things they go through.”

“I'll tell them you said so,” Hammond said. “I don't expect that'll make very much difference, though.”

“You'd be surprised,” Janet said. “It can be very helpful for people to know that they won't get in trouble for admitting they're having problems. Or for taking the morning off to go to the dentist, if that's what they need to do. It's the least we can do, and when you think about all the health hazards our people face that we can't do a thing about…” She turned up her hands in frustration.

“Feeling discouraged?”

 
“Maybe just a little,” Janet said. “I'd like to feel like my patients were at least fully recovered from one set of injuries before they go out there and start getting more.”

“For all we know, SG-1 is perfectly fine,” Hammond said, as reassuringly as he could manage.

“Yes, sir,” Janet said, turning to go.

“Dr. Fraiser? For what it's worth, I'd like that too.”

S
am looked up from wrestling wearily with one of the engine's valves at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. “Good timing, sir, you can help me
—” She broke off when she saw that it was Keret, and let go of the valve wheel to draw her zat.

“If you strike me with the thunderbolt again, I won't be much good at the helm,” Keret said. Snow was melting in his hair, and his cheeks were red with the cold. He moved stiffly, like it was hard for him to feel his feet.

“I'm sorry,” Sam said, although she wasn't, particularly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Keret came to stand over the stove, unfolding his hands over it painfully. “Can't we make some kind of a deal, here?”

“I thought we had a deal,” Sam said, going back to her efforts to wrench the valve closed. “You help us fly the ship and we give it back to you when we're done with it.”

“Not much of a deal,” Keret said.

“Having second thoughts already? That figures.”

“Just pointing out that you could trust me better if you were offering me more than I'd get if I managed to get you both off my ship.”

Sam shrugged. “If we find the fabulous treasure your friend was looking for, you can…” She was about to say
you can have it
, but was aware that wouldn't sound very plausible. “You can have a share of it.”

“I doubt very much she's finding any treasure,” Keret said, shaking his head. “Reba's stared at those old writings until they've made her crazy. But if there's anything there to find, she'll have found it and be long gone by the time we catch up.”

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” Sam said. “We're making considerably better speed than we were to start with.”

“I've noticed that,” Keret said. “I'm just not sure how you've managed to keep from killing us all in the process.”

“Part of it is the adjustments I've made to the gravity drive
—
I've had the opportunity to work with similar kinds of technology. I'm also working on getting more power to the drive without the kind of power spikes that could burn out the crystals.”

“Here,” Keret said, and came over to her side. She drew her zat again pointedly, but he merely rolled his eyes at her and put his shoulder to the jammed wheel. At first it wouldn't budge for him either, but eventually he managed to pry it loose and get it turning.

“Thanks,” she said reluctantly.

“Will you show me what you've done to the crystals?”

Sam ran a grease-stained hand through her hair. “I swear, it's not going to explode.”

“So you say,” Keret said. “I was thinking more of a bargain. Show me what you know about the device of the gods, and I'll have a reason to keep faith with you even when you're not pointing a thunderbolt at me.”

She looked at him skeptically. “You're really interested?”

“My ship is my life,” he said. “The extra speed you say you can give us could be the difference between taking a fine prize and being left empty-handed.”

“I can show you what I've done,” Sam said slowly. She wasn't sure that helping pirates be better pirates was really the mission of SG-1, but if it kept Keret from trying to zat them in their sleep, that was probably for the best. She looked the man up and down as he checked the row of gauges in front of her, adjusting one with practiced fingers. “Where did you get this ship, anyway?”

Keret shrugged. “Won her in a fair fight with her last captain. Fair enough, anyhow. He'd crashed her trying to chase down one of the High King's tribute ships in a gale very much like this one, and I had to rebuild half her engine before me and the men who stuck with me could get her back in the air. So I figure I've worked for her.”

“Is this really what you want to be doing with your life?”

Keret shook his head, looking more amused than offended. “You think I'd make a better herder of sheep? Well, too bad for me if I would, because I've got no farm and no sheep, and no skill at wringing a living from a rocky patch of upland soil that gets scoured by every gale.”

“The High King must need men who understand how these airships are built.”

“How often does he need that? When one of the old ones wears out or isn't fashionable enough to impress those herds of wastrels in the capital, and then it's mainly a matter of putting a new skin over the same old engines. If we had more boxes of winds, it might be a different matter, but there aren't more than a few dozen in the whole of the world.”

A few dozen crystal arrays like the ones that powered the airship could have come from a handful of tel'taks, or maybe some shipment of Goa'uld starship parts that had once been intercepted. “You could build craft that would stay in the air without the gravity drive. We used to use similar airships on our world.”

“But they wouldn't look as fine or carry as much, and that's what the High King cares about. Putting on a show to look grand for the Queen of Heaven, and no matter that the rest of us starve.” He shook his head. “Anyhow, what's it to you?”

Sam shrugged. “I suppose I would just prefer not to be helping you carry on with a life of crime.”

Keret grinned wolfishly. “You mean, unlike stealing other people's airships?”

“We're borrowing it,” Sam said.

“Spoken like a pirate,” Keret said.

By the time she'd finished working on the set of valves she'd been tightening and shown Keret the first of the adjustments she'd made to the gravity drive, she was beginning to feel a prickling sense of guilt about how long Jack had been out in the driving wind.

“I'm going above,” she said. “But I'm wondering if I can trust you down here without me.”

“I could use the box of winds to shake the ship so that the two of you might lose your footing,” Keret said. “That wouldn't be wise in this storm. Or I might have a thunderbolt stashed away down here and shoot your friend when he comes down the stairs.”

“That won't be so easy,” Sam said.

“And then I'd have to spend all the rest of the night out in the storm myself, which isn't as appealing as all that. So you can probably go on up without bothering to handcuff me to anything. Unless that's your idea of fun.”

“I'll pass,” Sam said firmly.

She headed up, bracing herself at the top of the second flight of stairs as she opened the hatch. The wind still hit her hard, whipping her hair back and driving snow into her face.

She was glad of the rope they'd strung between the hatchway and the controls, gripping it tightly with hands made clumsy by the oversized gloves she was wearing. She didn't even try to speak to Jack over the howling wind before she was in arm's reach, and even then she had to thump him on the arm to get his attention.

 
“I'll take the helm!”

He nodded without arguing and let her slide into place where he'd been standing. The controls themselves broke some of the wind, but it was still painfully cold. Jack pulled off the wool cap he was wearing and handed it to her, and she nodded thanks as she put it on, tugging it down over her ears.

“Where's Keret?”

“At the engines,” Sam said, raising her voice to carry over the wind. “He says he'll behave, but I'd watch yourself!”

“I always do!” Jack said, resting one hand on his holstered pistol pointedly before grabbing onto the rope to make his way back to the hatch.

Sam smiled a little and peered at the radio receiver. The light designed to show the signal strength abruptly strengthened, and she frowned, and then crouched quickly to put her ear close to the radio itself. Even with the volume all the way up, she wasn't sure at first that she was making out words.

“… O'Neill, please respond.”

“Teal'c! Is that you?”

“Major Carter! We…” The signal faded abruptly, the wind dying down slightly as well, and she scrambled to her feet, leaning bodily on the controls to bank away from the cliff face looming in front of her.

They cleared the shelf of rock with bare meters to spare, the wind once again driving snow into her face, and it took her a minute to get the radio angled toward the handset's signal and get the ship more or less headed in that direction as well. When she thought she could without risking a collision, she crouched near the radio again.

“Teal'c! Is Daniel with you? Are you all right?”

There was no answer. She pressed her ear to the cold metal, but there was only a low static hum.

“Damn!” She straightened, not wanting to let go of the controls for long. She couldn't help feeling a surge of relief. At least Teal'c was alive, and he still had access to his radio. That was more than they'd known for sure a few minutes ago.

She pulled her coat more tightly around her, bracing herself against the persistent feeling that she was going to slide forward until she ended up plastered against the rail. It would be a relief to be back on solid ground with down staying under her feet. Or at least for the wind to slacken so that her face wasn't already going numb.

It wasn't as bad as Antarctica, she told herself, and wished that wasn't the kind of thing that passed for a comfort in her life these days.

S
ome hours later, the weather had only worsened, although Keret insisted that it should be better once they turned to the south and put the backbone of the ridge between them and the wind. Jack wrestled with the airship's rudders, hoping that the stiffness of their response was because the steering column was cold and not because the rudders themselves were jammed with ice. He wasn't sure what to do about that short of climbing over the side to try to knock it loose, which didn't appeal to him at the moment. Maybe Keret would volunteer for that. Or maybe Jack could volunteer him.

Keret had taken a turn at the helm, with a great many complaints that Jack was going to kill them with his reckless flying. Jack wished Teal'c were there, for a lot of reasons starting with the desire to have a third pilot he trusted implicitly and ending with the fact that Teal'c could probably wrench the damn rudder controls around without having to throw his shoulder against them bruisingly hard. Somewhere in the middle was the fact that Teal'c probably knew something about the Goa'uld technology this ship was using.

Carter seemed to have figured out what made it tick for the moment, and he trusted that she'd keep it running if anyone could, but he hated trusting himself to technology they barely understood. Of course, they did a lot of that. While a lot of Carter's explanations of wormhole physics went over his head, the ones that didn't had made it clear that every time they stepped through the Stargate, they were trusting themselves to a combination of unproven theory and luck.