Stargate SG1 - Roswell (11 page)
Read Stargate SG1 - Roswell Online
Authors: Sonny Whitelaw,Jennifer Fallon
“General!” Cam called in a voice that indicated he clearly understood the danger. “We have to get—”
“Doing it!” O'Neill was already angling the jumper into a near vertical climb. “Hang on.”
Even at maximum power, Sam wasn't confident the shields could deal with such a close proximity to the equivalent of a nuclear detonation. A high-pitched whine diverted her attention to the cargo bay. Sparks were arcing out of the time machine.
The Shockwave hit the jumper with the force of a giant fist slamming her back into the seat, momentarily overriding the inertial dampeners. She'd lost count how many times that morning her vision had started graying out from erratic g-forces, but surprisingly, the dampeners rapidly compensated.
Something else from inside the jumper wasn't faring so well, though, because acrid smoke was billowing into the cockpit. She heard a fire extinguisher, and, trusting her teammates to do whatever was necessary, blinked away the white spots before her eyes and turned her attention back to the Asgard transport scanner.
They may yet need to abandon the jumper.
“Don't waste your time, Carter, it's cactus.” O'Neill's voice was surprisingly steady. He continued to angle the jumper upward, attempting to gain as much altitude as possible which, under the circumstances, was their safest option. “Base, this is Jumper One. Carter!”
“Sir?”
Rolling his eyes, he snapped, “Not
you
, Carter. Base, I may have understated the
little
part of that problem. Those time-space coordinates you gave me? Not so good.”
She worried he was hallucinating. What he was yelling into the radio was making no sense. The sprinkling of stars thickened as they headed into what Sam hoped would be a stable orbit. She needed time to assess the damage and consider their options. Glancing over her shoulder she saw that Teal'c had the fire under control and Vala, who was on the deck just in front of the time machine, was beginning to come around.
“Loki?” Sam asked. Cam was bending over the Asgard, who was crumpled up against the bulkhead between the cockpit and the cargo bay.
Abandoning his attempt to make contact with the ground, O'Neill abruptly turned in his seat, and, eyeing the Asgard demanded, “What the hell is
he
doing here?”
Sam met his incredulous look. “I assume Vala beamed him aboard after his ship was damaged.”
“He's pretty banged up,” Cam reported. “Cuts and burns. I'm not exactly an expert in Asgard first aid but I'd say we better think about getting him some help real soon.”
“Carter! Dammit,
respond
!”
O'Neill demanded tersely.
Exchanging a worried look with her, Daniel said soothingly, “Jack? You don't have to shout. Sam's sitting right beside you.”
“Ewww,” Vala moaned and sat up. “What is that horrible pong?”
“Eau de Bayou.” Cam let out a low whistle as he turned from Loki to help Vala into the seat behind Sam and caught sight of the damage the exploding Ha'tak had left in its wake. “Man, take a look at that.”
The enlarged images on the HUD confirmed Sam's first thoughts regarding the impact site. “The Ha'tak exploded before impact. Only an airburst could have caused that much damage over such a large area.”
“Reminds me of the forest around Mount Saint Helens after it blew,” Cam said. '“Cept a whole lot bigger. The Russian government is gonna be mighty pissed about this.”
And a lot of Jaffa had probably died in that crash, too. Sam felt the full weight of that responsibility. Wiping a filthy sleeve across her face, she looked at O'Neill. “Sir, you shouldn't have come back for us.” The diplomatic aftermath of this alone could shred what little remained of their alliance with the Jaffa.
An odd expression crossed his face. “That's what she said you'd say.”
“Who?” The images on the HUD altered to show the jumper's low orbital track, southwest across the Ural Mountains.
He shot her a somewhat jaundiced look. “You.”
“General
you, in fact,” Vala spoke up, easing her wounded leg into a more comfortable position. “You know, with those little stars on her elderly shoulders and a remote time-traveling DHD device that apparently you will later bequeath to someone named Cassandra? She came back in time and told us when to find you.”
Comprehension hit Sam with the force of a bolt from a zat gun. Brushing aside a momentary twinge of guilt for assuming that this was McKay's fault, she rapidly processed the information. While she had often wondered about Cassie's hand device, the only circumstance in which she could envisage using a time machine was because something so catastrophic had occurred that the risk of fracturing, possibly even looping the timeline, paled by comparison.
Elizabeth Weir's inadvertent journey back in time ten thousand years had unquestionably saved Atlantis and the entire expeditionary force. That alone had proved that not all time travel ended badly—at least for the future. Still, it was a decision Sam doubted she would ever take lightly. This trip through time had to be incredibly important.
“Ah... Jack?” Daniel leaned forward
and gently clasped his shoulder, thinking—as Sam was a moment ago—that O'Neill was hallucinating. “Your head didn't look so good when we got here.”
The General turned in his seat, pointedly eyed Daniel up and down, and sniffed loudly. “Nothing wrong with my nose.”
“It's okay, Daniel. I...think I understand.” Sam said, still trying to grapple with the thought that future problems would demand such drastic measures.
Breaking into the uncertain silence that followed, O'Neill looked around at them. “Anyone's radio working?”
Daniel tapped his com unit. “Testing.”
“Mine is functioning,” Teal'c confirmed.
“Same here,” Cam added.
So was Sam's, but when she flicked through the other main frequencies, she was met with nothing but unremitting static. “I don't think the lack of response problem is our units.” The images on the HUD offered no immediate answers. “Sir, can you think about detecting satellites currently in orbit?”
Nodding, he said, “Lee programmed in all the latest data from the Space Control Center.”
Which was even better, but when the display turned up nothing but the expected scattering of micrometeorites, she added, “There should be several thousand communication and military craft currently in orbit.”
Or perhaps the term
currently
was wrong. Something about the co-ordinates of the Ha'tak crash site tugged at her memory. She began skimming through every radio frequency from one to nine hundred and fifty one Megahertz, only half paying attention to the conversation, hoping not to confirm what she suspected.
“Well, we did manage to rescue you all,” Vala announced from behind. “At great personal risk, I might add. I think
some
thanks might be in order.”
Thumbing over his shoulder in the direction of Loki, O'Neill said, “You picked up the wrong Asgard.”
Even Sam turned to stare at her. Vala threw her hands up, looking wounded. “Oh, come on! You can't blame me for that! Nobody thought to program in his particular signal—a rather compelling oversight if ever there was one—and his was the only signal I could lock on to.”
“Who were you
supposed
to collect?” Cam asked.
“SG-1, of course. And some Asgard geneticist named An.”
“What?” Sam spun around in her seat and stared at Loki.
“Do you think they'll notice a difference?” Vala added hopefully. “Let's be honest, they really do all look alike, don't you think?”
Coming back in time to save herself made no sense to Sam. Neither would she have come back to save an Asgard geneticist. Thor had told them the High Council had accepted the possibility their race would die out. Considerably more must be at stake.
Then there was the fact that she was certain that even in the future—if she'd wanted Vala to collect An and not Loki—she would have made certain Vala had been given the correct frequency.
Apparently she wasn't the only one to think there was something very wrong with this picture.
“Okay, everyone, time out!” Cam said. “With all due respect, General, exactly
what
is going—?”
A muffled
bang
from what sounded like one of the drive pods was followed by a sharp jolt. The jumper veered to port before abruptly angling down.
“Crap,” O'Neill muttered.
Before Sam had more than a chance to check their trajectory, a second muted explosion spun the jumper to starboard, and their angle of descent increased sharply.
The General pinned her with an icy glare as they once more began to plummet toward the ground. “Carter, next time you go back in time and pull rank on me, can you keep in mind how much I
hate
surprises?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Using webbing from the cargo storage, Teal'c strapped the unconscious Loki across the padded seats in the jumper's aft section. While the brief fire in the temporal device had caused only minimal damage to this section of the vessel, the chemical residue from the foam appeared to be adversely affecting the Asgard's breathing.
That they would be unable to maintain orbit much longer was clear, and while SG-1 had been confronted with similar situations in the past, it in no way mitigated the sense of urgency that now permeated the small ship. Colonel Mitchell was hurriedly unpacking a laptop that had been stowed with other items in the cargo nets, while Daniel Jackson had taken over the radio and was attempting to make contact with the ground.
“Dampers, anti-grav and shields are responding,” O'Neill announced. “But I can't maintain control of the drive pods.”
Colonel Carter had opened an overhead compartment and was examining the bank of exposed crystals. “I don't understand why not, sir. The systems are interlinked. If you can access shields, you should be able to power the drive system.”
“Lee was futzing with something in there before we took off.”
“Which, translated, means that Dr. Lee reconfigured the systems so that the power modules in all onboard systems were automatically interchangeable,” Vala explained.
“In that case there must be a physical break between the power modules and the drive pods.” Colonel Carter closed the first compartment, opened another and quickly scanned the contents.
When the view outside jerked slightly and their approach vector to Earth altered yet again, O'Neill amended his diagnosis of the problem. “Okay, I've got sporadic control. It seems to be more along the lines of a short circuit.”
A choking noise from his Asgard patient caught Teal'c's attention. He moved the failing scientist into a position where he might better draw breath, but doubted it would be of much assistance. “Loki is having great difficulty breathing. I believe he will be dead before we land.”
Vala sighed heavily and rose to her feet without comment. The injury to her leg or perhaps her recent loss of blood caused her to stumble. She would have fallen had not Colonel Mitchell caught her. “Careful, you're in no shape to be moving around.”