Glazed eyes half opened. "Where...?"
"Not where, sir. When," Sam amended. "You came back in time to get us but something went wrong. I think you ran into an Asgard ship."
"Carter?" O'Neill's face screwed up. His voice was slurred. "Distinctly recall you being against time travel."
"Jack!" Daniel shook the General's shoulders in frustration. "We don't have time for a discussion. Just get us out of here!"
"Fifty thousand," Cam called, grabbing Sam's discarded pack and the P-90s. Cam was getting ready bail. He obviously didn't share Daniel's optimism that the General would recover in time to save them from crashing.
Cam was wrong, however. The jumper's flight systems suddenly powered up, the HUD flickered into full color and a remarkably well-rendered set of images appeared. Sundry floating debris dropped to the floor as the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity both kicked in.
"That's it, Jack," Daniel said encouragingly. "You're doing it."
"Woulda been a great game," O'Neill mumbled.
"Ten thousand," Cam announced. "Plus or minus, but the minuses are catchin' up real fast."
"Yes, yes I'm sure it would have been a wonderful game." The words tumbled out of Daniel's mouth. "Jack... listen to me. Can you concentrate on getting us into orbit?"
"Eight thousand!" Cam grabbed the back of her seat. "Sam? It's time to get outta here!"
"Just a minute. He's doing it." Sam scanned the controls, hoping she wasn't imaging things. She really, really did not want to abandon the jumper.
"We don't have a minute!"
O'Neill blinked again and shook his head as if to clear it. "Carter said... gotta go back four hundred years, first."
"Five thousand feet and that ground is coming up damned fast Sam!"
"Or was it three hundred, then forward two hundred?"
From the cargo bay she heard the time machine's consol hum to life, and something rippled over them. Surprised that the General had actually read her report on the jumper's log and time travel capabilities, Sam looked around in wonder at the stars. "It's working!"
She barely had time to register the relief of the faces of her companions before another ripple passed over them-and the jumper slammed sideways and began tumbling again, this time, end over end.
The inertial dampeners compensated a moment too late, throwing Sam out of the copilot's seat and into Cam. Bright blue, early morning sky filled the windscreen before the ground spun into view long enough to tell her that they were now at least fifty thousand feet above a densely forested landscape. The HUD flicked wildly through a dozen images, but O'Neill seemed coherent enough to straighten out the jumper's erratic flight path. As they leveled off, Sam glanced up to discover a Ha'tak plummeting towards the ground, a fiery tail in its wake.
Sam's head reeled with the implications. Two time jumps and five seconds earlier it had been the wreckage from an Asgard ship, and the jumper had been less than five thousand feet from impact. Now they were at fifty thousand feet, looking at a damaged Ha'tak?
"We must have hit the Ha'tak when we jumped forward to our time!" Cam remarked unnecessarily.
Ignoring the pain from the dozens of stinging slices down her legs and arms, Sam disentangled herself from him, grabbed her chair and awkwardly pulled herself upright relative to the Asgard transport device. They were not out of danger, yet.
"Oh, that's bad," Daniel declared. "That's going to upset the Jaffa."
Although he still appeared to be half-out of it, the General was struggling to bring the jumper under control, but at least the inertial dampeners and gravity were working at maximum efficiency, giving them a considerably more stable ride.
"Like they're not already pissed enough." Apparently satisfied they were no longer in imminent peril of crashing, Cam pushed past the still unconscious Vala to check on Loki, who'd been all but squashed beneath Teal'c's considerable bulk.
"That's the least of our problems. When the Ha'tak hits, it's going to explode with the force of a mid-yield nuke." Sam glanced at O'Neill. He was blinking and shaking his head, trying to focus. "Sir, are you okay?"
"What the hell was a Ha'tak doin' skulking around the place, anyway?"
"The mere fact that it did not reveal itself," Teal'c observed with a scowl, "indicates it should not have been there."
"Got a point, there, T." With Daniel's help, Jack pulled himself upright and grabbed the controls. "Base, this is Jumper One, do you copy?"
There was no response.
"Base, this is Jumper One. We've recovered SG1, but we've got a little problem, here."
The jumper continued to fly erratically. Sam peered at the HUD. The detail was exceptional, and somewhat reassuring. The region they were flying over was sparsely populated, which meant casualties from the impact of the Ha'tak would be minimal. A glance at the map coordinates confirmed why: 60°55N 101°57E. They were over Siberia.
But that Ha'tak was going in fast and she hadn't been exaggerating when she'd predicted the result of the explosion. Intending to beam the ships' crew to safety, she turned to the Asgard transport controls, but the screen was dead. One look inside the access panel beside her, told her why. She stared in dismay at the shattered crystals. "Sir, we-"
Without warning, the interior of the jumper was flooded with a searing light. Sam caught a glimpse of O'Neill lifting his hands to shield his face, but the photosensitive windscreen had already compensated, protect ing them from a burst of light as intense as the sun. Had it got through to their eyes, it would have seared their corneas and blinded them permanently. The Ha'tak had either self-destructed or the engines had blown moments before impact.
"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.
COMING MAY 2007
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
Martha Wells, Entanglement
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