Gift of Grace

Chapter 10: Beach Head?

The first thing Sam heard was the infuriated voice of her teenage, stowaway daughter, Grace, as two marines struggled with her to the bridge.

The first sight that Grace beheld of the bridge was of her overbearing, overprotective mother with her arms crossed and a vaguely familiar look of disapproval and... Disappointment?

Even though there was no need for it, Grace shrugged out of the men's grasp as they stopped just inside the entrance. Grace mimicked Sam's posture though she was sure she couldn't muster the same expression without becoming a mother herself. That look seemed to be saved for the elite parental group with teenage rebels underfoot. Rebels like her.

"I'm not sorry for what I did." Grace said as the silence stretched on. Silence was never good. Sam just raised a brow in response and somehow that managed to make her look even more menacing. "You would have done the same under the circumstances..." Grace pleaded with her, knowing it was true though Sam might not know it.

But Grace would not finish that thought as Sam just raised a hand to silence her, untangling it from the defensive stance she held before. "I will talk to you later."

Grace rolled her eyes after making sure her mother didn't see it. Sam had turned back to gaze through the window and down to the planet.

"What's going on?" Grace asked. But before anyone could answer her question, if they even intended to, a bright white light flashed in front of them all and the team appeared in its place, all dressed up in astronaut suits. "What the hell is going on?" Her voice had a hint of panic in it now but still no one paid attention.

It was as if her dream was playing right before her eyes. It was happening and she still could do nothing about it. No one would listen to her, just like in her dream. No, just like her nightmare. A nightmare she couldn't wake up from this time. She felt the prickle of tears in the corner of her eye and she realised that her breathing had become shallow and sharp in her chest. She tried to get it under control – it wouldn't be good if someone started paying attention to her only because she had collapsed to the floor.

Through all this, the team had left the room without uttering a word.

--

"Why have you come to this world?" Gerrok practically spat into the communications. This brought Grace out of her frightened state enough to feel the anger in her swell at the Jaffa's words.

"We have reason to believe that the Ori will use this planet to stage a full scale invasion..." Was her mother's reply and she couldn't help but think of how right she was. She tried to interrupt but the glare she received from Sam when she stepped forward was enough to close her mouth for her.

She tried to stop Daniel when the team re-entered the room but he walked past her as if she wasn't even there.

"Colonel..." She called to Cam as he also walked through the entrance to the bridge. He stopped to give her an apologetic look.

"Sorry, Grace, this is SG-1's mission... not yours." Grace was once again knocked back by how close minded these people were to her opinions. She needed to tell someone what she knew but no one would listen to her.

"We had no choice but to act on the information we had..." Sam continued to say to Gerrok as Grace merged back into the main conversation happening. Racing through her mind were all the possibilities she could think of to stop anything from happening but as she thought through them all, time marched on and the possibilities became fewer and fewer. She felt so helpless. She needed to scream at them.

"... We need to stand together as allies in the face of our common enemy." Daniel said.

"You said you've come to fight..." Gerrok answered.

"We have..." Cam said and Grace couldn't hold it in any longer.

"No, we can't fight them. It won't work!" She yelled, interrupting him and earning a few confused and also a few furious looks from her counterparts.

"Yes, the cloaked cargo ship I have in orbit tells me you have done nothing to stop this "Prior"." Gerrok said somewhat hesitantly, obviously taken aback by the nerve of such a young girl to stand up to her superiors.

"Look, the nuke is going to go off any minute. We need to turn it off before it can detonate." She said to anyone who would listen but none of them were taking her seriously. Grace was becoming hysterical at the sight of all of them just standing there, staring at her as if she was crazy.

"10 seconds..." Cam informed them with a brief glace at his watch.

"Shields to maximum..." Pendergast ordered. Gerrok called out to his Jaffa and was instantly gone from the screen.

"5 seconds..."

"Please, mom, don't do this." She pleaded with Sam, even going so far as to grab her arm so the woman would actually look at her in the eyes. But it was too late. Her own eyes were drawn to the planet where the mark IX had just exploded. Everyone now stared, awed at the power.

"Sir, the force field went into another expansion phase just before the bomb detonated. And it's a big one."

They all seemed to be talking at once but no one uttered a word to Grace. Gerrok came back on screen but she didn't pay attention. She stood there, staring at the planet. This was her dream. This was it. It was coming true. And that meant she knew what was going to happen next.

"If you are truly our ally, you will join us in this attack." Gerrok threatened, glaring down at them all from his little screen. "If you do not, your ship will become our next target." And he was gone.

Grace immediately turned to the team. "Stop fire. We have to stop fire." But everyone was silent again and Grace felt like the only live person in the room. They had grave expressions but still none of them paid any attention. This was too much like her dreams where she saw and felt everything but still didn't exist. She needed to exist right now.

"It's your call, Colonel." Sam told Cam. "But I don't think we have enough information as of yet."

"I say we run away and rethink the whole thing." Grace whipped her head around to look at Vala, who had just spoken up.

"I agree wholeheartedly!" She said, pointing energetically at the other woman. Cam looked from Sam to Vala and then to Grace, where his gaze remained. Grace could see he was having a hard time with the decision and she mouthed to him to not do it, pleading silently to reconsider what she knew was inevitable.

His shoulders then sagged and, still looking at the young O'Neill, he decided. "Open up with everything we've got."

To say Grace was shocked would be an understatement. She knew it was coming but the impact of it still left her gasping. The one person on the whole team that she felt like she didn't have to be careful around, the one person she could be herself with... and he had just betrayed her. She felt tears slipping down her cheeks but hadn't the strength to wipe them away. She could see her hurt reflected in his eyes but she couldn't look away. She was alone in a whole room full of people.

"Dammit." Her mother's voice dragged her gaze away from Cam. "Colonel, we need to cease firing now." A faint smile touched her lips. Finally someone was listening to her. Sam was realising it was a mistake. "They are using the energy of our own weapons to build their beach head."

"You mean they planned this?" Vala asked though the answer wasn't really needed to be said. With his order to stop firing immediately, Grace looked back up at Cam. She crossed her arms, locked eyes with him and raised a brow. I told you so.

--

"Oh yeah, we've been set up."

"What a complete shock!" Vala's very sarcastic reply came. Grace's own followed as she stood beside her.

"We need to stop Gerrok before..."

"It's too late." Daniel said, looking at the planet and everyone's head turned to watch as the force field enveloped the entire planet.

"We've got incoming. Three objects and counting..."

"They're pieces of a stargate for the Ori," Grace warned them, immediately recognising the next phase of her dream. Everyone looked at her strangely but it seemed her mother was now on her side.

"Take us out of orbit. Now!" She ordered.

"Shields to maximum."

"One of them is on a collision course. Brace for impact!"

"Get out now!" Grace screamed. Pendergast ordered sub light engines but the flying piece of technology still managed to hit them, damaging their shields and parts of their ship.

"Take us out of orbit. We can't stay here."

"Thank you." Was all Grace could say as the stress of the past few minutes finally caught up with her. But now all they could do was watch as the objects flew to their destination.

--

"It's a Supergate," Grace informed them. "The Ori need it to create a permanent foothold in our galaxy. By collapsing the planet, they will create a black hole, which will be powerful enough..."

"... To power the gate." Sam finished for Grace. "They could bring whole armies through there."

"Well, we have to stop it." Someone said but Grace's attention was now directed elsewhere as Vala beside her got a strange expression on her face, one that Grace had seen many times in her dream.

"It's not too late..." Vala starts to say but is stopped by Grace. The others were still arguing but the look shared between the two women was beyond words. "I have an idea."

"I know what you're thinking." Grace said. The determined glint in her eye was hard to mistake for anything else. "I'll do it."

"You have more to lose than I do."

"No, I have nothing to lose."

Vala just looked at her, not really understanding but both knowing what was coming next. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," Vala supplied, looking very much like she wanted to say something else. But there wasn't time. Grace nodded to her and then she was out of there, running as fast as she could through the grey interiors towards the rings on the ship.

"Cam, where are you going?" Daniel called after the retreating Colonel, who had seen the teenager leaving the bridge and had run after her.

Grace arrived at the ring transport out of breath and legs burning but there wasn't time even to let it catch up with her since something else just did. She tried to ignore him as she finished the activation code.

"Cam, what are you doing here? Get out!" She yelled at him, stepping onto the platform.

"No, Grace, I'm not letting you go!"

But before she knew what was happening, she was already on the cloaked cargo ship. And she wasn't alone.

"Why couldn't you just let me do this?" She screeched at him, already moving to the front of the ship.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, you could have been hurt or even killed!" Cam proceeded to yell back at her, zapping the pilot that had come to investigate. She didn't care what he was saying, though she wouldn't admit that she hadn't actually thought about the pilot already in the ship as she stepped over his unconscious body. She was kind of glad that he had come now.

"I have something to do, in case you haven't noticed." Grace told him, sitting down in the pilot's chair. "You should go back while you can."

"No, I'm waiting for you."

"Fine, have the rings ready for when I'm finished flying this thing. We'll go back together." She was surprised when he listened to her and went back to the rings to wait for her. Out of respect for time, she thought they both realised it was best not to argue right now.

"Come on, Grace, hurry it up!" Cam called from the back of the ship.

"A little busy right now. It's not exactly easy to fly this bulky thing into such a small space, you know!" He didn't reply and she allowed herself a small smirk at that.

The sudden stop of the cargo ship threw her forward in her chair and she immediately felt the effects of the energy link through it.

"Uh, Cam, get the rings ready!" She screamed, already pushing herself out of her chair.

But just after she finished calling out to the Colonel, a large energy zap escaped from the console in front of her, lashing out in her direction and knocking her back in the chair, unconscious with a large gash on her forehead.

"Grace!" Cam called, running to her side. Wiping away some of the blood but only managing to make it worse, he tried to wake her up but failed. "Why does everything have to go wrong at the last minute?" Knowing there was no time left, he picked her up in his arms, swung around and raced back to the transports, punching the last buttons randomly.

It was too late. The last thing he saw was a white light.

--