Chapter 9: Hatching a Plan

"Knock, knock," Jack called out as he looked into the ready room where Lee and Kara were standing by a white board. "You guys want some help?"

"You good at thinking out of the box?" Lee asked tiredly.

"I'm not too bad at it, but Carter… Well, she's a pro."

"Really?" Kara asked. Over the past two months she had come to both respect and loathe her. She had enabled Jack and Teal'c to beat her in a dogfight and she had beaten her at Triad her first night and all through that Sam had not once gloated. She just took it all in stride.

"She once blew up a sun," Jack calmly offered as he and Sam walked into the room to offer a different perspective.

"You what?!"

"Blew up a sun," Jack reiterated as he looked down at the pieces of paper on the table. "So what do you guys got?"

"Sir," Sam quietly cautioned since they hadn't told them about the Stargate and what it was capable of.

Several hours later they had yet to come up with a plan that wouldn't get most of the civilians on New Caprica killed.

"Anyone else hungry?" Jack asked out of the blue at one point. When the other three occupants looked up at him in shock, Jack slightly recoiled, "What? I'm hungry! It's… We skipped dinner and it's nearing on 2300 hours!"

Lee looked down at his watch and realized the time, "Frak! Come to think of it I am pretty hungry."

"It's settled then, let's go eat!" Jack clapped his hands as he turned to leave the room. When he got to the door he realized that there were only two people with him. "Carter!" he belted out.

"Sir. I'm okay, I'd-"

"Carter!" he added warningly.

She knew that tone well as she dropped the papers in her hands and headed to join her CO and company.

Thirty minutes later there was a roar of laughter as they shared some of their humorous adventures. They were interrupted when the Admiral sealed the hatch to the Officer's Mess, walked in and set a bottle of ambrosia down on the table and sat down to join them.

"Imagine my disappointment when I find out that the four of you are in here sharing war stories and I wasn't invited," he calmly stated as he poured himself a small drink.

"Sorry, sir. We were trying to come up with a plan for our return to New Caprica. We ended up working through the dinner hours and-"

"Carter's fault," Jack offered.

"Sir!" she exclaimed in shock that her CO would place the blame on her.

"What? You always get self absorbed in problems until you fix them. Usually you're the only one who then ends up not eating, this time you dragged the rest of us down with you."

"And how many times has my obsessive nature saved our butts, sir?" she asked indignantly.

"That's beside the point Carter. Just admit it, you made us miss dinner."

The three colonial members couldn't help but laugh at the interaction between the two members of SG-1. Adama put a halt to their bickering as he pushed two glasses of ambrosia in front of them.

"To finding a solution, no matter what the cost," Adama offered as he raised his glass. The four followed suit and raised their glasses as well.

As Kara poured her next shot, she spoke to Sam, "Speaking of finding a solution… You blew up a sun?"

Adama nearly spit out his ambrosia upon hearing that comment. "You what?"

"You know, it never gets old seeing and hearing peoples' reactions to what you've done," Jack added with a smile and a tip of his drink to his second in command.

"Glad my ideas have some more long lasting impact for you, sir."

"Me too," he added with a smug grin.

"You blew up a sun?" Adama asked slowly.

"You've had other hair brained ideas?" Kara asked.

"Let's see she's blown up-"

"Sir," she was quietly begging him not to make a big deal of her ideas.

"Carter there's nothing to be ashamed about you preventing a sun from collapsing in on itself, or you transporting a really really big hunk of rock through Earth."

"You transported an asteroid through Earth?" Lee asked in amazement. "Why in the gods' name would you do that?"

"Because otherwise it would have smashed right into the planet and destroyed it."

"Right… How?"

Sam sighed as she realized that she had to tell them one story, and considering that the other two stories that the Colonel had alluded to involved the Stargate, this was the safest story to tell.

"We took a ship up to the asteroid. With its hyperspace capabilities we-" she paused when she saw their confusion at their technology. "It's kind of like your FTL drive in that it gets you across the galaxy pretty quickly. Except that our hyperspace windows create a tunnel through hyperspace." They looked even more confused. She then picked up a napkin and extended it out. "Imagine that the universe exists on this plane. Instead of traveling along this plane, our hyperspace engines can fold the fabric of the universe and create a tunnel in hyperspace that allows for much faster travel across the universe."

"Enough with the technobabble Carter."

Sam turned and looked at her CO before continuing with her story. "Anyways, I was able to create an opening large enough to fit the asteroid and then we 'carried' it through hyperspace to the other side of Earth."

"What if you had missed and you popped back out in the middle of the planet?" Lee asked in shock that they had carried out such a crazy idea.

"See that's the beauty of her mind, she doesn't make little mistakes like landing an asteroid in the middle of the planet, she's that good!" he added proudly showing off his confidence in her capabilities. "Isn't that right Carter?"

When he didn't receive a reply he looked over at his second in command who was looking at Kara very intently.

"Carter?"

Sam ignored her CO as the wheels in her mind kept spinning and she studied Kara, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Kara slowly drawled out, "I think so... It could work, we'd be able to get the vipers in before they suspected anything."

"We'd have the complete element of surprise. We could also get the raptors in with teams to fly the ships out of there… Has it ever been done before?"

"I don't know, but it could work…"

"The timing would have to be precise, we'd have to do a lot of training to make sure they all launch as fast as possible. We should be able to calculate how high we jump in before we…"

"Yeah," Kara responded in quiet contemplation. "We'd still need a diversion… Any ideas?"

"You've been fighting them longer than I have, what would work?" Sam deferred to her.

"A threat… Like a battlestar, but then we'd have to leave the colonial fleet unguarded. We couldn't ris-"

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Lee finally asked in exasperation after shifting his gaze between their conversation of half statements that only the two of them seemed to understand.

"I think we just came up with a plan to get our people off New Caprica," Kara smiled proudly as she raised her glass to Sam who happily returned the gesture.

Ten minutes later they finished the outline of their plan that they had conjured up without any discussion before hand.

"Are you out of your frakking minds?" Lee exclaimed once he had finished hearing their proposal.

"Always, Lee, always," Kara stated smugly.

Adama studied the two women in front of him. "You really think this could work Kara?"

"As long as we ensure that our FTL can initiate from within a planet's atmosphere, it should work. They wouldn't know what hit them."

He then turned to Sam, "And you really blew up a sun and prevented another one from collapsing in on itself?"

"Yes sir," she answered steadily.

There was a long pause as he weighed his options. He'd sat in on other planning sessions with Lee and Kara, this really seemed like one of the only options that could potentially work. And if she really had done what she claimed to have done, it meant she was pretty smart and could probably find a way to make it work.

"You have 72 hours to iron out the logistics before I make my final decision."


TBC