Julia watched John take the controls like he'd been born to them, feeling the anger of stress, frustration and confusion slide away into almost overwhelming relief. She didn't know how John had gotten here, but damn, she was glad he was.
After John reported the change of Pilot In Charge, he requested airspace to run the plane through some turns, claiming he needed to get a feel for the controls before he attempted a landing. Julia gripped the armrests of her chair tightly when John next pulled back on the throttles and slowed the plane into a full stall. Her stomach did butterflies as the jet dropped like a stone for 300 feet, then sailed forward like a glider when John dipped the nose and added power for a full recovery.
"Cessna niner Alpha Echo, why did you wait so long to assume control of the craft?" the air traffic controller wanted to know after another nearly perfect commercial turn. "You are obviously an experienced pilot."
"I was taking a nap," John replied lightly with that knowing grin that Julia was coming to recognize as a favorite of John's. It was infuriating.
"During an incident aboard your plane involving gunfire?" the controller demanded.
"I'm a sound sleeper," John retorted. "Flight, what is our position? I'm above overcast at 12,000 feet."
"You're thirty miles East of LNK."
"South of Omaha, right?"
"You're twenty miles Southwest of Omaha."
"Flight, transfer me to Offutt Air Force Base."
"Cessna niner Alpha Echo, that's a private airfield. You can't land there. Besides, you've passed Offutt, you'll have to backtrack East."
"I understand that. I have clearance, and a military prisoner on board. Transfer me to Offutt."
"Oh, Ok, then, Cessna niner Alpha Echo, transferring your case to Offutt's Tower. Call me back if you need anything. Good luck." Julia could swear the controller sounded disappointed. Emergency landings with prisoners and gunfire would definitely spice up an average day in Lincoln.
"Thanks for the assistance, Lincoln," Julia added.
John executed a smooth turn that put the sun to their backs and their nose towards Omaha. Shortly thereafter, he initiated another spat of conversation with the Offutt control tower, this time accompanied by a long conversation involving authorization codes and John getting testy with the lieutenant on duty. Julia smirked when John finally pulled rank, and told the obviously young man that he was going to land the plane on their General's front yard if they didn't give him clearance. The tower was silent for a couple of minutes after that.
"Authorization confirmed. Cessna niner Alpha Echo you are cleared to land under VFR as requested. Stay on current heading for the next ten minutes, then we'll guide you through your turn and get you below the ceiling. We've got good visibility, you'll be fine."
"Roger that."
John leaned back in the seat and rubbed his eyes. Julia felt herself also relaxing a bit into the brief few minutes of nothing to do but fly in a straight line. She wouldn't relax completely until she had her own two feet on solid ground, but for the first time since that terrifying moment when Daylon had started firing into the cockpit at Chuck and her, she actually thought she might live to do it.
An awkward silence fell over them. John seemed tense, fidgety almost, and Julia's mind was so full of questions and worry that she couldn't think of any appropriate small talk to start a conversation. John rubbed his eyes again, and Julia frowned as she noticed his bandaged hand shaking before he returned it to the yoke.
"Do you have any water?" he asked abruptly.
"Chuck keeps a bottle under the seat," she answered, her frown deepening as John dug around and then put the discovered bottle to his lips with something like desperation. Perhaps she was being alarmist, or just hyper-sensitive from the stress of their situation, but she didn't think John looked all that good.
"David said you were missing," she remembered suddenly, speaking the thought out loud accidentally. Had he been injured? Abused during his capture?
"McKay found me," John answered. Julia rolled her eyes. John was clearly a master at non-answer answers.
"But David said the meeting with that enemy informant was about trading for information to find you."
"I sortof found myself, to tell the truth; I escaped. I don't know what happened at Dave's meeting. I only saw him for a second."
"You saw him! He's OK?"
"He looked like he was in once piece."
"Thank God," she breathed, feeling another knot of tension unravel that she hadn't quite realized she was carrying. There was another lull. John didn't seem interested in conversation, but that had never stopped Julia before.
"So, since we have a couple of minutes, how about one or two of those questions you promised to answer?" John didn't say anything. "John?"
"What? Oh, questions. Right. What did you want to ask?"
Julia narrowed her eyes and looked hard at John. His reply had been too slow, like he'd had to come a long way back from somewhere else to answer. He was breathing fast, although not like from exertion, and she suddenly noticed the large purple dinosaur egg of a bruise over his right eye.
"John, are you alright?" He flipped a switch on the radio with a little too much force.
"We'll be fine, Julia. This is a sweet ride. I'll put her on the ground, piece of cake."
Another non-answer. "I'm glad to hear you sound so confident. I sat in on the manufacturer's training course when I bought the jet and it intimidated me. Chuck spent a year in training on these birds before he started flying them commercially."
"Let's just say I've got a lot of hours flying a lot of different ships. I'm sort of an expert at learning quickly."
"So how did you get here?" Julia couldn't resist. It was driving her crazy, and John seemed more focused as she kept him talking.
"Transporter," he said.
"Like on TV? Beam me up and all that?"
"Yup. I couldn't tell you all the physics, but basically you disappear in one place, and appear somewhere else. Damn handy for getting around quickly." He threw her a mischievous grin that he didn't quite sell, "Or for getting into places without going through the front door."
Julia just shook her head in amazement, "David said you worked with cutting edge technology. I had no idea how advanced he meant. It must have been killing him all these months not to talk about it," she realized.
"I'm sure he was given the riot act about secrecy and national security."
John suddenly closed his eyes tightly shut and began to breathe deeply.
"John, what's wrong," Julia snapped.
"Nothing. I mean I'm a bit under the weather, but I'll be… I'll get us down, Julia. I promise. Dave would kill me if I let anything happen to you."
Julia felt a thrill of foreboding. John sounded just like David had on the phone earlier today, when he wouldn't promise he would be all right and was half saying good-bye. And like before, she found herself growing angry.
"You came here because of David? Are you that arrogant? Or is it some kind of idiotic sibling competition that turns you both stupid? You're sick – and don't deny it, David tries to pull the same crap on me all the time. You're sick, you shouldn't be here. Surely there's someone else in the entire Air Force that can fly a jet and use that amazing beam technology?"
"No. There isn't." John answered tonelessly and Julia was startled out of her indignation. She'd expected anger, or maybe even more evasive humor, but the dull contradiction was alarming. She kept her mouth shut as John went on with an air of infinite weariness. "I'm not stupid, but I am a bit arrogant. I know I can do this, and I'm the only one I'm willing to ask to try. You're family, Julia. Dave needs you. It's not like we talk or anything, but I can tell." He suddenly cocked his head at her as if making an important decision.
"Look, I don't know what's going to happen once we're down. My people will get there as fast as they can, but I don't know how long it will be before I get to see Dave again, so would you tell him – Uh…" he broke off, turning red and looking at something on the ceiling in poorly disguised discomfiture.
Julia's eyes began to sting again. She didn't even quite know why, except that John's half-goodbye felt like it was bordering on a deathbed confession. John went on without looking at her, "Just tell Dave that he did a good job with Larsen. He did the right thing and don't let him beat himself up about me."
"About you?" Julia asked softly.
"Just tell him," John repeated sternly. He took a deep breath, checked his gauges and his surroundings. They were just over the cloud cover, skimming the tops so that it felt like they were sledding on snow. ""Bout time to contact Offutt again and make our turn."
Julia looked ahead in her seat, feeling a bit nervous about the landing and overwhelmingly worried about John. He was holding something back. Something that would affect David. Something that he didn't think he'd get to tell David himself?
John was reaching for the radio when a voice screamed into her own headset with such fierce volume, that she slapped her hands to her ears to press against the muffs.
"SHEPPARD! Take evasive action."
Before Julia could even translate the words into meaning, John had flipped the plane into a sharp left turn. She was thrown to the edge of the seat as the right wing outside the window beside her went nearly vertical. She caught a glimpse of pure blue sky beyond the wingtip when a flash of light streaked past them and on into the clouds below.
John throttled up and leveled out for an instant before repeating the maneuver to the right. Julia's stomach lurched as she saw the right wing dip into the clouds and she slid in her seat towards the cockpit window.
"Give me coordinates," John was saying, his voice loud but controlled. "I can't outmaneuver them in this thing!"
"It's 18 degrees above your six,"
"Roger that."
John yanked on the yoke and the jet went soaring into a steep climb. The engine roared into a whine of protest as John opened up and they shot skywards.
"Rodney, I could use a little backup!" John yelled.
"We're on it. We just can't miss or we'll take out a farm. Nice move, by the way. They're having to climb to get above you to fire again."
"Just tell me where they are."
"They'll overtake your altitude in five…four…three…two…take evasive!"
Julia was lurched to the side as John banked hard left again. Another flash streaked by Julia's window, even closer this time. The jet continued its turn. Julia felt the wings shudder.
"Shit," John gasped as the jet stalled and started to drop on its side. "Rodney! I overbanked. I need 30 seconds to recover and about 500 feet before I'm maneuverable again."
Julia was terrified. An overbank stall was one of those fatal mistakes that all pilots were warned about almost fanatically in flight school. John had lots of altitude to work with, but Julia closed her eyes in terror at the feeling of freefall. She started to count her own frantic heartbeats in an effort to focus on something besides the thought of the ground rushing up at her…20,000 feet below.
She'd only made it to about thirty when John grunted a very soft, "Got it," and she opened her eyes to watch the cotton clouds below them spin closer in lazy circles. John had regained control of the fall and was spiraling them downwards as fast as they'd just been rocketing skywards.
"This is not a fighter jet," she said, her voice high and panicky, wondering how much stress her wimpy commercial plane could take.
"No kidding. If it were I'd have a couple of missiles to blow those bastards up," John quipped back. "Rodney, about that backup!"
"Keep spiraling, Sheppard, they're watching you. You look like you're falling. If they sit around and watch for another two seconds, we'll have them."
"One thousand one, one thousand two…"
"Make that five seconds."
"Rodney!"
The clouds were coming up at them with frightening speed and John kept spiraling. Julia shot a glance at John and saw his arms bulging with tension as he fought the controls. His eyes were locked out the window and he was breathing through his mouth in fast controlled pants. He looked focused, but not afraid and Julia felt a chill as she realized that John had done this before. Not in this plane in this way, but John had seen combat and done things that Julia could only have nightmares about. The danger lurking under John's light and casual demeanor was fully unleashed, and Julia found it disturbing.
To distract herself, she looked back out her window towards the tail of the plane. She couldn't see the enemy that was firing at them, and she didn't have any idea what kind of aircraft it was. It was all so confusing and frightening.
A streak of light, almost bright blue in its intensity pierced the sky from such an altitude that it seemed to come from space itself (which she later learned, it had). The blue beam struck something invisible in the air above and behind them and a golden bubble appeared out of nowhere as the blue beam was deflected. At nearly the same instant, a yellow beam like the ones that had already sliced past them stabbed out of the bubble and sheared off their Starboard engine.
Julia screamed as the jet lurched and rattled with enough force to jam her teeth together. John swore and slammed back the throttles.
"We just lost power to the Starboard engine. Julia can you see what happened? Can you see the engine?" John's voice was tense as he fought the controls, trying to keep the jet steady as it bucked and pitched.
Julia gripped her seat hard and looked. "It's gone, John. The whole engine is just gone!"
"Rodney, where is the cargo ship?" John growled into his headset.
"You're clear, Sheppard. Larsen took off towards Utah after we got a hit."
"We took a hit, too. Lost our Starboard engine. Julia how's the wing? Feels wobbly on that side."
Julia looked again and gasped. A long dark burn streak lay in a deadly stripe across the crisp white paint, from front to back of the wing. The streak was in fact a groove, cut into the fabric of the wing itself. The tip was beginning to wobble, bending at the groove in ever widening oscillation.
"Something cut across it," she reported, not knowing how better to describe what she was seeing. "It looks like it's going to snap at the groove."
As if in response, the plane began to shudder as the flailing wing sent vibrations through the whole fuselage.
"Damn," John whispered. He met Julia's eyes for an instant and she saw concern for the first time. The moment of uncertainty was quickly replaced with resolve. "Daedalus, prepare to beam us up on my signal. Is anyone in trouble down below us when we ditch the jet?"
"You're clear. Nice big cow pasture to sink it into."
"First thing that's gone right all day. Start scanning for the lock. We may not have long once the wing goes."
"Understood. Make sure you two get close. You're bouncing all over the place down there. We just barely got both Teyla and the pilot under good conditions."
"Understood," John replied sounding grim. He had to concentrate for a moment as the jet listed to the right and shook with a violent rattle. When he could speak again, his voice had that tone of command Julia had heard in her office. "Julia, I need to you unbuckle, get to the cabin and then lie down on the floor."
"What? Why?"
"No time to chat," John snapped through another teeth-rattling shudder. "Do what I tell you."
"Of course."
Julia fumbled with her buckle and then pushed out of her seat, falling back into it again when the plane dropped suddenly out from under her.
"Go!" John yelled. Julia scrambled harder, hanging onto the armrests and the backs of the seats as she worked her way towards the rear, the floor vibrating and lurching out from under her feet. A violent shake threw her to her knees and she simply crawled the rest of the way into the cabin, propping her side against one of the seats and hanging onto the buckle.
Agent Daylon was just waking up from whatever Teyla had done to him and was looking around at the groaning, rattling fuselage around him. She saw fear in his eyes when he looked at her and started to struggle against his restraints.
"John! Daylon is awake! He needs to get out of here, too!" Julia had to scream to be heard over the noise of the distressed craft.
Julia wasn't sure what Daylon's plan had been, perhaps he would have been able to fly the plane once the rest of them were dead or incapacitated, but she couldn't condemn even the traitorous Daylon to death in a crashing airplane. Julia heard John's reply but he wasn't talking to her.
"Rodney, get the other guy out of here. Can you grab him with a radio lock?"
Julia couldn't hear the reply, her headset was wired into the cockpit, but a few seconds later a brilliant white flash surrounded the struggling Daylon who's eyes went wide with relief as it completely engulfed him. Julia blinked at the brightness. When she could see again, Daylon was gone.
"So that's how it works," she whispered to herself, a little bit glad she'd seen it before she had to do it.
"Rodney, do you have the lock?" John said next and Julia twisted to peer into the cockpit. John was fighting with the yoke. She didn't know how he kept the plane in the air, much less how he was guiding it into an ascent as he seemed to be doing. To give them more time once they started to fall, she wondered?
She knew the instant the wing failed. The jet gave a single, hard shake, and then it rolled gently to the right. Julia was thrown forward and into the front starboard seat, and suddenly understood John's instruction to lie down. She tried to comply and felt the plane continue to roll, its nose tipping towards the ground. She managed to flop onto her belly in the middle of the open space, her feet pointing towards the cockpit.
With a sickening twist, the world shifted, and the floor she was on was no longer "down". Down became the cockpit and Julia felt herself sliding into the corridor. The cockpit windows loomed below her and for a horrible instant, Julia was certain she was going to fall through them into the emptiness beyond.
Panicked, she tried to climb "up" the carpeting towards the rear seats. The plane twisted as it spiraled towards the ground and she began to drift away from the comforting solidness of the floor. She screamed just as a hot, heavy weight pinned her back down and pressed her into the floor with sudden, reassuring stability.
"I've got you," John rasped into her ear.
"John," she sobbed, "I don't want to die this way."
"You're not going to die. You'll be fine. Trust me."
Julia buried her face into the carpet, feeling John's hard body behind her, anchoring her to a solid surface that refused to stay "down". During one last terrifying roll, they both drifted away from the floor for an instant and Julia realized that John had his feet pressed against the bulkhead between the cockpit and cabin, keeping them from falling towards the flight deck. He had one arm hooked into the base of the nearest seat. The other arm was wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and she reached up to grab his arm, desperately needing the security of human touch.
"Now…would…really be…a good time…Rodney," John gasped into the small headset he still wore after he gave a mighty heave and they slammed back into the "floor" once again. The plane began to shriek with the pain of stressed metal around them. The cockpit windows exploded inwards and shards of glass went whizzing around the cabin in a sudden rush of wind. John grunted in her ear and she was terrified to realize that he was trembling, his whole body shuddering against her.
Julia closed her eyes, and buried her face into John's shoulder, certain they were going to die, wondering if she would feel anything when she did. She felt John pull her even closer to him, and she was glad she wasn't going to die alone. She almost felt safe in John's arms. Tears squeezed out between her lashes; she wished she could have seen David one last time.
When the white light surrounded her and the roar of the wind and the scream of the disintegrating jet ceased suddenly, Julia was certain that she was dead. She held still for a long time, eyes shut, body rigid. Finally, she realized that she was becoming quite uncomfortable and that there were voices talking around her. The floor under her was cold and textured metal, not carpeting.
"Nothing's broken, you can move him off, but keep him on his side. He's got some glass in his back."
Julia didn't recognize the voice, but she began to suspect that she wasn't dead after all when John groaned softly again in her ear. Julia suddenly remembered the white light around Daylon and began to struggle to get out from under a heavy and completely motionless John. Motionless except for the tremors that still shuddered through him.
"Give us a second, ma'am," the voice said and Julia held still just until John was lifted gently off of her and she squirmed until she sat up with John's head resting lightly in her lap. He had his eyes tightly squeezed shut, and he was breathing in short shallow gasps. She reached out to brush his spiky hair off of his forehead.
"He's burning up!" she exclaimed, finally looking up and around her. She was in a room of overwhelming grey, and three people Julia had never seen before in her life were kneeling around them. They wore military uniforms of some sort and all were holding medical equipment. One was taking John's blood pressure, another was cutting open John's shirt along the back and Julia gasped at the streaks of blood over pale skin hiding underneath black fabric.
The third had her wrist between his fingers.
"I'm fine," Julia snapped, stroking John's head again. "Take care of John."
"We've got to get the glass out, then we'll move him to intensive care," the medic soothed. "Are you OK? Any pain?"
"No, I'm ok. I'm fine. Just, why is he so hot?"
The medic clenched his jaw and wouldn't answer, but Julia thought he looked worried. She couldn't take her eyes off John's pale and still face. Pounding feet finally tore her gaze away and she was suddenly yanked to her feet and crushed into a desperate embrace.
"Julia, my God, you're OK. Thank God, you're OK," David choked out, burying his face in her hair. She melted into his fierce embrace, then felt herself shuddering with reaction.
"Thank John," she whispered finally. "David, you should have seen him fly that plane."
She pushed away suddenly, overwhelmed with concern for John. David let her turn to watch the medics work on John, but he kept his arms wrapped around her and she leaned into his chest gratefully. It didn't take long for her to realize that he was leaning just as hard on her.
Teyla and another man that Julia didn't recognize were crouched at John's head, talking and/or scolding him with the lighthearted banter of deeply concerned friends. John kept his eyes shut, but he was whispering answers to their gentle questions. The medics kept a worried watch on his pulse and blood pressure while one worked frantically to remove shards from John's back.
"Pressure's dropping," one medic announced loudly, "we need to get him off the floor and stabilized."
"That's the last of it," the medic at John's back yelled, just as John began to shudder with some kind of seizure. Julia buried her face in David's chest as the efficient medics launched John off the floor and onto a gurney where he was wheeled towards a waiting bed surrounded by a swarm of more doctors and nurses.
David slumped heavily against her, and Julia pushed away again, this time in concern for David. He looked older, haggard, burdened with some care that lay deep in his eyes. He was looking at John's friends however and took a shuddering breath. Shakily, David reached out a hand to the man standing beside Teyla.
"Well done, Dr. McKay," he said as the man took the hand and they shook firmly.
"We'll see," McKay shrugged. David just added an arm slap to the handshake and then turned to Teyla.
"Thank you, Teyla." His voice was soft with gratitude and he squeezed Julia tightly as he spoke.
"Thank you for what you've done for John," Teyla replied and Julia looked at David curiously.
"What have you done for John?" she demanded.
"That is a very long story, Julia," David answered, sounding more like himself.
"Then you'd better get started, David Sheppard. John promised me the whole story. I'm not leaving this room until I know John's going to be OK, so I'm thinking we've got time. You can start by telling me where the hell I am."
David laughed and pulled her close, crushing her into his arms again.
"I love you," he whispered in her ear and said nothing else. Julia sighed. That was all the answer she was going to get.
As she sank into his embrace, she decided that was really OK, for now.