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DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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Sam drifted near the gate, listening to her own heart beating in counterpoint to the soft hiss of the air circulator, counting the minutes that ticked over on the readout above her left eye. Her neck itched, no doubt dried sweat from the labor of maneuvering three hundred pounds of space suit around the Supergate. There might not be gravity, but it still took a lot of sheer muscle to move the mass of the suit itself. And this wasn't one of the lightweight suits with rebreathers they used for walking around airless moons- this was a more-or-less standard NASA job. She missed those rebreathing air packs- not only were they lighter, but they could break down exhaled CO2 for as long as their energy pack lasted. She focused briefly on the all-important oxygen indicator. Four hours of air gone- perhaps a little more since she'd been exerting herself at first. A little less than four hours left. She tried to breathe more shallowly. Calm. She needed to stay calm.
She kept a sharp eye on the debris field, though most of the fragments of the Korolev had long since passed her by following the Russian ship's explosive death throes. There was no sign of any motion amongst the drifting pieces of shattered machinery. Periodically, she'd scan all of the starfield in her arc of vision, looking for the telltale occlusions that would signal something moving, something close. Odyssey hadn't been destroyed, the last she'd seen. But she'd lost track of them in the fury of the battle. And if they had survived- where were they?
The battery indicator showed half-power, so she wasn't in danger of losing the radio yet, but who knew how long it would be before any rescue could arrive? She would continue to broadcast at intervals, she decided, until the battery was down to one-eighth power. Then she'd have to conserve power until she actually saw something moving. She knew there would be a rescue attempt though. Teal'c had left the Odyssey on a mission of his own, but he'd be back.
It was time to broadcast again. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Carter, come in please? Can anyone hear me? Please respond." She kept the quiver out of her voice and tried not to look at the red numbers ticking over on the clock inside the helmet. Over four hours. Surely if anyone had survived she would have heard by now? "If anyone can hear me, this is Lieutenant Colonel Carter. Please respond." She went over her options again in her mind. To dial the Supergate, she'd need to shut down the incoming wormhole. That had been a conundrum even with the resources of Odyssey- with just her, a few tools and her spacesuit, she was at a loss for ideas. Truly, her only chance lay in rescue. Where was Odyssey? She was in deep trouble if they took ten hours to get here, let alone ten years.
Fifteen endless minutes later and it was time to call again. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Carter. I'm in a spacesuit drifting free, approximately two thousand feet off the front right position on the Supergate."
She listened to the crackle of the static. Had that been her name? Or was she just imagining things, out of her desperate desire to not be alone? Then through the earpiece, a familiar voice. "Sam, it's me, Mitchell. Can you hear me?"
Mitchell? But he was on Korolev...Sam smiled incredulously, and blinked back sudden moisture from her eyes. "I can't tell you how good it is to hear your voice."
"Yeah, you too." Mitchell still sounded a little rocky, she thought, but he was coming back.
A million things crowded her mind, where was he, was he okay, was anyone else with him. What fell off her tongue was, "I saw the Korolev explode." She didn't know how he'd gotten off the ship.
"I must have lost consciousness."
He had to be in a ship, to be on the radio. An X302, most likely. So- Mitchell was alive if a bit confused. Teal'c was probably headed this way with a rescue party. What about... "Daniel?"
There was a brief pause. "Still on board… I think."
Sam closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing the aching sorrow on his face, remembering all the times they'd lost Daniel. Not again, damn it, she thought.
"What happened to the Ori ships?" Mitchell asked.
"They left here approximately four and a half hours ago," Sam said, a hint of irony in her tone. She could see the oxygen level gauge out of the corner of her eye. Three hours of air left. Not for the first time, she thought it would be damned ironic to run out of oxygen just before rescue arrived.
A third voice joined the conversation, and the relief was so profound she almost felt dizzy. "This is Colonel Emerson aboard the Odyssey. Colonel Mitchell, is that you?”
"Yes, sir," Mitchell responded.
"Thank God," Sam said. "This is Carter. Are you in range to beam me back aboard?"
Emerson's response was rather unwelcome. "I'm afraid that we haven't got beaming capability at this time. Kvasir's working on it."
Sam thought ironically, that she'd be the best person to help with that, if only she were there and not here. "Where were you?" she asked.
"I'm sorry we were out of touch there for a while," Emerson replied. "We lost all communications in the battle."
He continued on about tracking the Ori, but Sam had other problems. She broke in at the first opportunity. "Look, uh, I hate to be self-centered here, especially given what's just happened, but uh, I've only got a couple of hours of life support left here."
"I'm aware of your situation, Colonel. I'll keep you apprised," Emerson told her.
"Right," she muttered. "Apprised." More waiting. For now, she took a deep breath and counted team members like a mantra. Mitchell, me, Teal'c. Vala- alive somewhere, in the hands of the Ori. Daniel, doing whatever Daniel was doing when he was dead. He survived exposure to vacuum once before. Sort of.
Mitchell was talking to Odyssey. "Request permission to come on board, sir."
Odyssey- Emerson- responded in the affirmative. A good man, Emerson. He wouldn't leave her here to die if he could help it. Her thoughts drifted to his predecessor, Prendergast, and his ship, Prometheus. Both gone now. Daniel had been missing then, too...
She caught the spec of motion out of the corner of her eye and could just barely make out the the outline of the X303 as Mitchell guided his damaged craft toward Odyssey.
She tried to wait patiently, as the folks on Odyssey doubtless had more important things to do than entertain her. But she was rather alarmed to see a Lucian Alliance vessel coming up to point-blank weapons range. She clicked the comm. "Odyssey, this is Carter. Can you tell me what's going on?" Marks responded almost instantly. "Colonel Carter," he said in a low voice. "I'm rebroadcasting ship-to-ship for you. Colonel Mitchell is talking to the Lucians."
"-- Mitchell here. Look, we were all in this fight together, weren't we? This is not how allies are supposed to treat each other. Granted, we got our butts kicked, but we still need each other if we're gonna survive."
It was his good ol' boy southern charm act, and Sam didn't need to have heard the prior communications to know that the Lucians had threatened Odyssey.
Netan replied, "Our sensors detect your shield's at minimum. If you do not capitulate immediately, we will open fire."
"You'd be destroying the only other ship out here with life support capabilities," Emerson replied in a reasonable tone.
Netan sounded furious. "You dragged us into this battle knowing it would deplete our forces. I suspect intentionally."
We dragged them? Sam had wondered when she'd seen the Lucian ships join the battle. With a jolt, she finally figured it out. Teal'c. Teal'c had gone looking for help. From the Lucians? And she thought Daniel got crazy ideas. And why wasn't Teal'c on the comm? She belatedly moved Teal'c into the mental slot, team members I need to worry about. Which would actually be all of them, if the Lucians made good on their threat.
Mitchell was still trying to talk him down. "That's not true. We all lost. Badly. Why don't you tell us your situation? Maybe we can work something out."
"The situation is, you will surrender or be destroyed," Netan retorted belligerently.
Sam looked at the two ships, both horribly scarred from the battle. Engines, there, she thought, remembering their prior experiences with the Alliance. Sensors- must be that damaged area on the underside of the hull. Weapons...huh. Sam activated the radio. "Odyssey, this is Carter. I don't know what you can see from your vantage point or what your sensors are picking up, but from out here, that mothership looks pretty badly damaged. I'd be surprised if they were weapons capable."
Emerson responded only with "Thanks, Sam."
Sam gritted her teeth on a demand to know what was going on. And to think she'd felt a secret thrill at getting to do this spacewalk? At this rate, she didn't care if she never put on a spacesuit again. This was so, so...frustrating, being on the outside like this! Then she smiled feebly at her own internal pun.
Then the Odyssey was moving, away from the Lucian ship. Away from her, and Sam bit back a curse. First they had to avoid the Lucians blowing them out of the sky from pique. They were no good to her if they didn't.
When the Lucians did nothing, Sam explosively released the breath she'd been holding. "Okay, gentlemen, I'll just remind you that I'm ready to be rescued here. Any time."
"We'll get right on that," Mitchell promised. "Sit tight."
Sam floated tight. Or loose. Or whatever. There really wasn't a lot else she could do except watch the power and oxygen gauges. And worry about absent teammates. Marks, bless him, gave her periodic updates on ship status as they repaired systems and Kvasir worked on the transporter.
"We're ready to test the transporter," Mitchell came back on and reported finally. "Stand by."
"I'm standing as standing gets," she said, as cheerfully as she was able.
There were a couple more minutes of silence, then Mitchell's voice came back on, less hopefully.
"Sam, I'm sorry. We're not quite ready yet."
"Hate to rush you," Sam said jokingly. But...her air was getting low, and they knew it.
"Sam," Mitchell's voice was a bit uneven, as if he were walking briskly. "Kvasir isn't having any luck with the transporter. We're going to have to try something else."
"Oh?" Sam asked cautiously. "What did you have in mind?"
"Just don't go anywhere," Mitchell said.
Don't go anywhere? What was he... "Uh, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, it won't work," she said.
He confirmed it with his next sentence. "Hang on, Sam. We're coming to get you."
She saw Odyssey turn and head in her direction. "Oh boy." Odyssey was getting perceptibly bigger. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Sam asked.
"Are you questioning my piloting skills?" Mitchell said lightly.
"Look, the sub-light engines don't have that much control," Sam replied. "If you hit me, even at minimum velocity…"
"I am not gonna hit you," Mitchell said calmly.
Despite her knowledge of how difficult this was, the confident tone was reassuring. She just hoped he wasn't underestimating the difficulty. Her mind raced as she thought through the possibilities. "Even if you get me in past the shield, the artificial gravity will kick in. A fall from even thirty feet in this suit…"
Mitchell said, "Sam, stop worrying. Kvasir's riding the controls manually."
The ship kept getting larger, and even though Sam knew exactly how big it was, had seen it docked at the base in Nevada while it was under construction, it had never looked so huge as it did to her this instant. The docking bay was approaching at horrifying speed. Suddenly, running out of oxygen didn't seem like such a bad way to go.
There was a slight tug at the suit as she popped inside the shield that held in the atmosphere in the bay, and she raced along the deck, staring at the outside wall. Gravity was off, she realized and couldn't help wondering how Kvasir had selectively turned off the artificial gravity...or had he turned it off to the whole ship? Which was slowing, slowing, and she could feel herself getting infinitesimally heavier as she drifted downward and slowed down some more- well, as the ship slowed relative to her. She hit the deck with only the gentlest of bumps. Cam, I take back every mean thought I ever had, she thought. You are a very prince among pilots.
After all those hours in microgravity, the real thing felt like it was gluing her to the deck. Even after the medical team and technicians had peeled her out of the suit, she felt like she was still wearing it. She reached out a nerveless hand and shut down the backpack. Ten minutes of air left, she noticed as the red numbers faded. Not her closest call, but more than close enough.
The technician spoke into his radio. "We have her, sir. She's okay."
Sam was actually pretty grateful for the gurney that took her to the infirmary, and way more than grateful for the quick scrub down they let her take before running the usual plethora of tests.
Mitchell and Marks arrived about as soon as she settled back onto her pillow. She smiled at her teammate and put out a hand. "Thank you."
He shook it solemnly. "You're welcome. Yeah, I was going to say no sweat, but there was definitely sweat involved. In Kvasir's case I think it was perspiration."
Sam smiled again. Not quite so confident as he'd sounded at the time then. Then she had to ask. "Any news on Teal'c?"
"No," Mitchell admitted. "But we have something else." He gestured to Marks.
Marks handed the laptop he was carrying to Sam. She looked blankly at the screen.
"We downloaded the blackbox data from the Korolev-" Marks explained.
Mitchell couldn't wait and finished for him. "We know that six people got off using beaming technology before it went up. None of them was Jackson. However…" He pointed to the screen.
Now Sam recognized the data she was looking at. "The rings were also activated."
"You betcha," Mitchell said.
"Daniel," she said with rock-bottom certainty. Not dead. Ringed...somewhere.
"We don't know for sure-" Marks said anxiously.
"Daniel has more lives than a cat," Sam told him. "Besides, General O'Neill won't authorize a memorial without a body. It's a rule."
"We'll find him," Mitchell said.
Sam shook her head, "Hopefully in less than ten years."
"What?" Marks said.
"In the original Odyssey," Sam explained, "It took the sailors ten years to get home." And what a wild ride the last ten years had been, she thought. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined her childhood obsession with space would lead her on an odyssey like this one. Daniel could no doubt remind her of the details of the story, but what she always remembered was that it had a happy ending. So will this one. She had to believe that.
"Who names these ships?" Mitchell asked.
Sam gave a surprised giggle, then yawned.
Mitchell said, "You should grab some rest."
Sam shook her head. "Not yet. We don't have hyperdrive yet, right?"
Marks shook his head.
"I'll be right up to help as soon as medical clears me," Sam promised.
"You shouldn't-"
"Have you told them you were unconscious for four hours after the Korolev exploded?" Sam asked sweetly.
Mitchell's wary look in the direction of the medical staff answered that one.
"Go away and let me get dressed," she told him. She ran down the roster of teammates again. Mitchell, me. Teal'c with the Lucians, Vala with the Ori, Daniel...somewhere. And a happy ending. Real Soon Now. Sam got off the bed and went to help fix the Odyssey.