“I’m sure he feels the same way,” Sam said. Something about Zelenka clinging to her arm and expostulating had clued her in.
“You know the ropes and you’re better qualified to hold the fort than anybody,” Caldwell said. “I’ll leave Hocken and the 302 wing here with you. I don’t need it to run six days down to the first Milky Way gate and you might need it here.”
“I hope not,” Sam said. Which was an understatement. With the Hammond severely damaged and Atlantis with no shield, Lt. Colonel Mel Hocken’s 302 wing was the only defense they had if the Wraith showed up while Daedalus was gone.
“I hope not too.” Caldwell gave her a grim smile. “I may turn around and come back or proceed to Earth, depending on orders.” He plunged his hands into his pockets against the cold. “Give me six hours to get Daedalus squared away and we’ll get a move on. I’ll take your severely wounded aboard and send them through to the SGC at the first gate.”
“That follows,” Sam said. There were a couple, especially Joyner’s third degree burns, that she’d like out of here if possible. Keller and Beckett weren’t a burn center, try as they might.
“Find Sheppard,” Caldwell said. “He does this crap. Sheppard’s been missing more times than any guy I know and always turns up again.”
“Not more times than Dr. Jackson,” Sam said.
“I don’t think Sheppard’s actually been dead,” Caldwell said.
Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “You know, we see some weird things in our profession.”
Caldwell grinned. “Never a dull moment. Except the six days in hyperspace.”
“Except for that,” Sam said. “I’ve got the easy part, holding Atlantis. You’ve got the hard part.”
“The IOA,” Caldwell said.
September 20, 2009
Dear Jack…
Sam paused, staring down at the email form in front of her, then frowned and started typing again.
The Daedalus is leaving in two hours, so this is my last chance to put another letter in the databurst that they’ll send six days from now from PX1-152, the first Stargate on the edge of the Milky Way. It will be full night in Colorado Springs then, but I imagine Walter will be there. He’ll sort out all the personal emails and send them on, so on Sunday morning, September 27, you will wake up in your apartment on Massachusetts Avenue to see twenty emails from me, everything I’ve sent in the last twenty three days, since as far as you’re concerned I vanished completely.
She could see just how he would look, unshaved and muzzy with sleep, sloshing the hot coffee over his hand as he bent over his secure laptop open on the dinette table in the alcove with all the windows, a golden morning view eastward toward the Capitol dome just visible over the offices between from his eighth floor apartment. He’d spill the coffee and swear, but he wouldn’t clean it up, not until he’d opened the last one, this one.
I’m ok.
That was the thing he’d look for first.
I’m fine. Not a scratch on me. The Hammond has a few dings, but she’s in one piece too. You’ve got all the reports. They’re probably sitting in your email right now. Walter’s good that way.
No need to tell him that. He would have the reports, pages and pages of them. Hers. Caldwell’s. Sheppard’s. He’d have a hundred pages of reports. So no need to rehearse everything in them. No need to even hit the highlights. He would read them all, know every word in them by noon, drinking cup after cup of coffee, sitting there in boxers and a t shirt while the sun rose high, slanting stripes of gold across the carpet, visualizing the endless dark of space, the flare of shields in the void.
I wish I was there.
He would read that, one eyebrow quirking, say out loud in the quiet apartment, “Carter, that’s a lie.” And it was. She didn’t really wish she were there, not for more than a moment really, imagining a quiet Sunday morning at home.
I wish you were here.
Yes, kind of. And not. Or only a little. He’d smile at that. “No, you don’t, Carter,” he’d say. He knew her way too well. And he’d take that for all the things she wouldn’t say, all the things she wouldn’t put in a databurst that would go through Caldwell and Walter and Hank Landry and God knows who else before he read it.
I don’t know when I’ll be back, needless to say. Caldwell made the call that Daedalus was making the run because we’re still under repair. Since I have no idea what the situation there is…
How to phrase this bit? With Woolsey and the IOA, with the politics, with the movements of other ships… How long would Daedalus stay on Earth? Who would it bring back? When would it come? She had no way to know. She just knew that she’d keep it together until whenever.
…I’ll be here.
Maybe they’d get their hands on another ZPM and they could call Earth any time they wanted. Or maybe not. If a hive ship showed up it was going to get very interesting.
Caldwell is leaving his 302 wing with me, as he details in his report. Hocken is good, and they did an exemplary job in our last engagement. I’ve included commendation paperwork for Captain Dwaine Grant, whose conduct was above and beyond the call of duty.
There was no need to reiterate that. But he’d know that she meant it, would take a closer look and remember Grant’s name, read over it carefully seeing the crippled 302 in his mind’s eye, a plume of oxygen venting from his wing tank as he dove between the hive ship and the Hammond, taking the burst on his shields instead of the now unshielded bridge windows. Jack would read the formal, stilted words that Hocken and Caldwell had written, her formulaic endorsement, and he would see.
Anyhow, I’ve got to go. The taxi’s waiting. He’s blowing his horn.
He’d fill in the rest of the lyrics. Peter, Paul and Mary was his cup of tea.
Chapter Three
Guide’s Play
The moment Guide saw Ember, in the pilot’s lounge just off the dart bay, he knew there was something wrong. His face was smooth and well-fed, his dark blue silks immaculate, embroidered in copper with their pattern of whirling atomic particles, but tension showed in every line of his body. He radiated it.
It was enough that Guide let the rest of the party go ahead, allowed himself to be drawn aside as though on personal business that would not wait, his hand on Ember’s wrist so that they might speak mind to mind without being overheard.
“Is it McKay?” he said.
“No.” Ember’s voice was bright and rueful. “That one… I do not know. Sometimes I think there is a spark there, that he remembers. And then I do not. All is the same. Nothing has changed with him, and so we continue.”
“Then what is wrong?”
“You may recall Thorn, he who was Consort to Firebeauty?”
“I do, but she is gone,” Guide snapped. “Come to the point, Ember.”
Ember would not be hurried. “He stands now as guardian to Waterlight, who calls him Father. She is young, she is nothing, and the Queen has not seen her. But now Thorn has contacted us and said that they have captured the Consort of Atlantis!”
Guide took a long breath. “Have you seen the transmission?”
“I have,” Ember said. “It is John Sheppard.”
Guide did not ask if he were certain. That was useless. Of course Ember was certain. “And you said?”