I forgot what it was like. Watching and waiting for comments. On pins and needles to see if people still read the story and chapter. Whew! It's energizing and makes me want to post more!
So why not!
Unfortunately, Jon died in the last chapter, so the story is getting finished up from Jack's POV.
Jack stood still behind the collection of technicians who were trying to access the Odyssey's systems as he watched Jon on the screen. There were advantages to experience and he drew on every ounce to remain calm as he watched his younger self wrap the grenades. He knew exactly what Jon would likely do. If there was immediate suspicion when he walked in, the collection of grenades would be immediately flung in the direction of the console, letting the jolt knock the tape loose on the grenades. That was far and away the least preferable option, but it would probably be effective. If there wasn't immediate suspicion, Jon would try to place the grenades and loose the spoons manually before getting a safe distance between him and the grenades.
But in an enclosed room barely bigger than the effective radius of the grenades themselves, "safe" was a very uncertain prospect.
"Sir?"
Jack grunted at the voice of the lieutenant he had commandeered as an aide. So far she was doing pretty well, and managed to translate his grunt into an affirmative to continue.
"We have all technical members ready to go. As soon as the Odyssey's system begins rerouting teleport shield functionality to the backup teleport shield, we'll start beaming them up. However, the, um - "
Jack noted the hesitancy in the young woman's voice and turned to her, irritated. Apparently the irritation showed and the woman blanched before surging ahead.
"Sir, the special forces teams are not in position to be beamed up. They are enroute to us, but are still twenty minutes out."
Jack's head snapped back around to look at the screen showing Jon limping up to the bridge's door, er, hatch.
A thread of outrage ran deep in his mind - why hadn't he been told they had been delayed long before now - but far more immediate was that Jon was going into the jaws of the beast, and the backup and security he thought was already in position, ready to be beamed up, had suddenly disappeared.
"Everyone with a weapon on them is coming with me," he called out. "Now!"
Jack turned and sprinted for the door. One person, a skinny redhead, jumped from his seat and began following him. Jack slammed through the door and sprinted down the hall at top speed.
The techs were gathered in a room on the other side of the Pentagon sublevel that was serving as the DC center of Stargate Command.
Officers flattened themselves against the walls as he ran by and he ignored them, but as he passed a group of people in fatigues he yelled again, "If you've got a weapon, follow me!"
Ten seconds later he skidded to a stop at a guarded door. The guard had already seen him coming and had opened the door.
"You're coming with us," he huffed to the guard as he went into the room.
A dozen soldiers, all holding piles of computer equipment were standing in the room and looked up at him with surprise.
"Security got delayed and we have a very tight window to get aboard the Odyssey, people," Jack called out. "We," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at whoever had followed him, "are your impromptu protection and boarding party."
He turned to get a look at who had followed him.
'Oh. Just. Ducky.'
Four people stood just inside the doorway. The guard was clearly armed with his service pistol, and one of the people in fatigues he had passed in the hall was there too, a solidly built base guard with her service pistol. They looked competent, but …
The red-haired technician wasn't armed, and his lieutenant had followed.
He had run through half of their floor, during an invasion, shouting for armed people to follow him, and he'd gotten one person.
'Memo to self, require staff to be armed during an emergency.'
"You two," he pointed to the tech and his lieutenant, "stay outside the door. When the Odyssey's teleport shield goes down, they're going to race the shield reset and send everyone in this room up to the Odyssey. Armed hostiles have the ship."
"Sir, I am armed, sir!"
The skinny kid snapped off a salute and pulled a standard issue knife.
Jack blinked.
His lieutenant, Houston, her uniform said, didn't say anything, but reached into her pocket and pulled out a …. Walther?
"Fine. Red, you follow with the techs and soak up bullets as best you can. You," he pointed to the security guard that had been watching the door to the teleportation room, "are with the techs too."
Jack gestured to the guard who had followed his sprint through the halls. "You and Bond here, are with me. We're going to head for the - "
Suddenly the world flashed white.
"- bridge."
They were on the Odyssey.
"Red, pick up a weapon if you can. They know their part, just accompany them."
"Um, sir, what about you," his lieutenant asked?
Jack shrugged out of his dress jacket jacket and grabbed the Beretta M9 from his left underarm holster and loosened the one in his right underarm holster. His personal Colt was tucked in the small of his back and an F-S knife was sheathed on his left forearm.
"Oh," she said as he walked out the door.
The female guard who had followed as he ran down the hall looked at him with a bit of a shocked expression. "Sir, you can't have conceal-, um, never mind, sir. Sorry, sir."
Jack only vaguely registered their words as he rolled around the corner, pistol guiding him. The cameras had shown much of the ship, but they had only been placed at key intersections rather than being a full-coverage system. It would be easily possible for groups of Aschen to be completely undetected in the time Jack's people had been able to access the Odyssey's systems.
Jack sensed the guard fall in behind him and the lieutenant take the sweep position as the technicians flowed out the door in the other direction.
They had arrived mid-ship, and Jack led the impromptu boarding team forward, quickly scanning the hallway intersections as he came to them, but they were empty. It felt strange, walking through an empty ship, and he tried to not let his paranoia of teams of Aschen coming up behind him slow him down. There were too many hallways for his tiny group to cover, and since there was nothing he could do about it, he'd have to forge on anyway.
They reached the bridge's door without incident and he hoped the techs were doing all right. The bridge was able to control nearly the entire ship. Given time, the techs would be able to cut out the bridge's controls, but if the bridge was able to react, there were a lot of different nightmares the advanced ship could cause before the technicians could take over. He suspected that having some grenades go off in the bridge would keep them occupied.
Jack hunched at the door and looked at the other two.
The guard, a solid-looking woman with 'Mars' on her name patch looked tightly focused, and held her pistol with a confident grip that wasn't white-knuckled with tension. Jack approved. His Bond-fan lieutenant looked a bit more freaked out, but seemed to be holding it together well enough for now.
"We're basically going in shooting. We have only one potential friendly in there, and I don't know his status. Grenades went off in there about two minute ago, so there are probably plenty of wounded, but they've had time to recover.
"The door here is on the left side of the bridge. I'm going in and covering right. Mars, you go in covering ahead and left. Bond, you're shooting straight up the center. Stay in the doorway. We have very limited ammo, so conserve your shots. There might be some weapons in there if you have time. Got it?"
He hated doing this sort of action without a trained team. Ideally they would have something more than pistols, they'd have a special forces team trained for this sort of stuff, they would lead with a bunch of flashbangs, and there would be a lot more than three of them charging into who knows what sort of craziness.
"Sir, why am I 'bond'?"
Jack looked back at her. The lieutenant was wide-eyed and breathing quickly. Jack grinned. "Your Walther PPK. Classic Bond!"
She looked at him blankly.
"You know, James Bond? He uses a Walther?"
Her face shifted to a puzzled acceptance, but he could tell she didn't get it.
"Kids these days. No appreciation for the greats," he muttered.
The two women snorted slightly, and Jack smiled to himself.
Jack shifted and pulled his pistol to the ready. With a quick glance to the other two he punched in his ID code to the panel next to the doorway.
The doors opened onto a scene of carnage.
People littered the floor of the bridge, scattered about with limbs lying askew. The emergency lights were flashing alongside the regular lighting, giving a flickering surrealness to the scene.
A dozen people were standing or crouching over others lying on the floor, voices talking in low urgency, and bandages scattered about.
Surprise was complete.
If he had a whole team, they could have saved lives. The shock of flashbangs combined with a dozen armed soldiers coming in shouting to get down on the floor was almost always enough to keep a full-blown firefight from breaking out.
Three people with pistols didn't have that option.
Jack swept around to the right and opened fire on two men sliding a third wounded man across the floor. Two shots took the closer one in the back, knocking him forward, and the next two shots took the other man in the neck. To Jack's adrenaline-fueled body, the bloom of blood and the shocked expression on the man's face seemed to happen at a leisurely pace and he swung to target the next person.
He heard shots behind him as he opened up again. The next person was almost certainly an officer; a moderately decorated, drab-grey tunic didn't give much clue as to rank, but he had been giving an order when Jack burst in and was still standing with a shocked expression on his face, arm still pointing in the air.
More shots rang out as Jack walked sideways along the bulkhead, shooting as he went. The officer went down in a heap as the screams began to sound, the inhabitants of the room finding their voices after the surprise of the assault.
A guard, sitting on the ground, apparently wounded, was the next to catch Jack's attention. The man was grabbing his weapon and pulling it to bear on Jack. Several more shots rolled out from Jack's gun and the man was flung back, the gun falling aside.
Instinct from thirty years of combat told him it was time to switch weapons or reload, and he ducked behind a console while holstering the one pistol and pulling out the other.
He had come about fifteen feet from the doorway and he looked back to check on the others. Mars had taken a classic pistol-shooting stance a few feet inside the doorway. He couldn't see Bond, so hopefully she was still covering straight through the doorway.
There were too many points of motion for Jack's comfort, but they were mostly people crawling for cover, away from the shooters. Jon must have done a bang-up job because only two people were crouching running, everyone else was pulling themselves along in ways that suggested they were already wounded.
Jack popped up and began firing at three soldiers, who were crawling as a group toward a small pile of their weapons. Jack's weapon jumped in his hand and he rode the recoil back down, sending shot after shot into the three soldiers. He knew he was hitting them from their jumps and jolts, but they kept crawling. He vaguely noticed that more shots were hitting the soldiers than just his own, but he spent the whole clip before the third soldier finally stopped moving.
As he dropped that pistol and pulled his Colt from the small of his back.
He forced himself to scan the whole bridge, working to fight the tunnel vision that cut out his peripheral vision. Several people were curled up on the floor, too wounded to move to cover. Four people were cowering behind chairs at bulkhead computer stations. They didn't seem poised to move and Jack pushed them to the back of his threats radar.
The bridge seemed to be clear of visible threats, but three large banks of consoles near the front of the bridge were blocking a lot of area from his view, and he wasn't yet confident that they had removed the threats. He held up his fist and then flashed several signs to Mars to stay and cover him. She nodded and gestured through the doorway to Bond who was still out of Jack's sight.
Jack slowly made his way along the bulkhead in a short-strided walk that kept him ready to fire, his gun aimed at the front of the bridge, ready to fire at any threats popping up from behind the consoles.
"Throw down your weapons and slowly stand up with your hands above your heads!"
For a long second, there were no sounds as Jack continued moving, and then three men with weapons popped up from behind the consoles, weapons already firing at Jack. A fourth bolted from where he had been hiding, charging the doorway.
Jack dove forward with a roll and began firing back at them. His third shot dropped one of the men firing at him, and Jack charged forward again as the men's fire began to track toward him.
The blue beams sizzled as they cut through the air, but Jack's motion kept the shots from connecting as he raced ahead.
Two more steps and he finally passed the edge of the consoles, and lined up the soldiers so the nearer soldier blocked the further and was no longer covered by the console.
Jack slid to a halt, pulling his pistol in line as the soldier fired at him again, but the beam crackled past Jack's head. Jack's return shots hit the man in center of mass, the heavy .45 shots flinging the man back. A blue beam licked out from the further soldier as he tried to move around his falling companion and fire at the same time, but it hit the floor next to Jack's foot as Jack again caressed the trigger, pumping three shots into the final soldier, sending him backwards to sprawl over the console he had used for cover just moments before.
He took two measured breaths watching the fallen soldiers before moving his attention back to the doorway where Mars and Bond were …
No longer standing.
The fourth soldier was standing with Bond held in front of him, one arm twisted up behind her back far enough that it was probably dislocated, and his other hand gripping her throat.
Jack's gun leapt to target the man.
"Drop the weapon, earthling, or I'll rip her throat out."
Jack belatedly realized that his uniform was distinct from the others - a matte-black color with a different cut. Jack's stomach sank a little. He'd read the reports on the Aschen super-soldiers, and he would bet dollars to donuts that this was one of them.
"Geez, a little bloody, don't you think? You don't go with crushing, or snapping necks, or anything like that? Straight for the bloody option?"
Jack slowly circled around, forcing the Aschen to slowly shift as well. Bond's face was a mixture of pain, fear, and anger as the taller man kept her between him and Jack.
As Jack came around, he saw another evidence of the man's strength - Bond's feet were dangling six inches off the ground.
"You earthlings don't seem to understand anything else. Lowest common denominator. Drop it."
"Oh, you caught our Game of Thrones reruns. That's just TV. We're actually all bunnies and rainbows."
The man looked puzzled and shook his head in irritation. Jack was rewarded with a small smile from Bond before she suddenly gasped.
"Put down your weapon, or I'll rip her arm off. Then I'll rip her throat out. Then yours."
"Wow. You sure you aren't a snakehead? I haven't seen the whole flashy-eyes thing, but that sounds pretty snakey. Not very Aschen-like."
He continued to circle, keeping up a patter of talk, his circle slowly closing the distance.
"I'm Aschen! We're the greatest of Aschen! You and your planet are nothing but chattle, worth only what you can do for us."
"Da-a-ang," Jack drawled out.
He noticed that the Aschen was turning awkwardly, favoring one of this legs.
"I knew the Aschen were nasty, but I always had you guys pegged as cowardly-nasty. Too afraid to face things head on, so you guys do your fighting with bio-weapons so you could stay hidden away from needing to actually risk -"
The lieutenant's mouth was slowly counting down from five. As she reached zero, her legs kicked back, hitting the Aschen's left thigh. It wouldn't have done much against even a normal human, much less against someone of the Aschen's strength and toughness, but her captor gasped and his left leg crumpled.
Jack rushed forward, trying to close the distance for a clear shot, but the Aschen soldier let go of Bond's arm and caught himself against the wall, holding the struggling lieutenant by the throat in front of his body with one arm. Bond's right arm was gripping the Aschen's forearm, trying to keep her neck from snapping in the super-soldier's grip, her left arm dangling uselessly.
"Aah! Stop there!"
Jack stopped, gun still trained on the Aschen who was still twenty feet away. The man grimaced in pain as he straightened.
"Naughty, naughty," the man said through gritted teeth, effortlessly shaking her with one hand. "For trying a stunt like that…" He grabbed her dangling arm's forearm with his free hand and squeezed.
Jack winced as he heard the snap of bones and the young lieutenant's gurgling scream of pain.
"You must be a defect or something," Jack continued, keeping his tone even. "Aschen are usually smart enough to know when it when they've screwed up so bad they can't win any more. I came with a boarding party that is securing the rest of the ship. As soon as they're done with that, they'll be here and take you down too. Show a little brains for once and give up now."
Something ugly flashed through the man's eyes.
"What? You think I couldn't rip my way through a thousand of you puny Earthlings without even breathing hard? The only reason any of them will have time to realize they're dead is that my leg hurts a little. I'm going to paint the walls with their blood."
Jack goggled at him momentarily.
"Really? That's the best you can do? 'Puny earthlings?' 'Paint the walls with blood?' Are you too stupid to come up with original threats? I thought Aschen were supposed to be super-advanced or something. You have a birth defect or something? One of our guys took down a dozen of you so-called soldiers. Three of us have almost finished the job here. You don't have to die too, so put her down and you'll live."
Jack watched the arm holding the lieutenant for any quivering, suggesting a tiring of the arm, but was disappointed in that regard. The Aschen was, however, no longer paying as much attention to his captive, and his human shield was being being held lower.
"I crushed that soldier into paste for his troubles, and I'll do the same to you and everyone else on this ship. When we finish taking your world, I'm going to find every member of your family and rip them to pieces. Your -"
The Aschen suddenly stopped ranting and looked over to the side and Jack stepped forward, closing another couple feet before the Aschen jerked his human shield up and stared at Jack.
A slow smile grew on his face and a wicked glint in his eye.
"Your child? Yes, I can see it now. You two look a lot alike."
Jack's eyes tightened.
"You're a bit too old to be in a boarding party, but if he was your kid - ha! So funny. Would you like to know how he died? I beat him to a jelly. Crushed him bit by bit for setting off those bombs in here. He screamed like a little girl. I'll give you this comfort - I'll kill you in the same way. A son spawns from his father."
A sickness rolled through Jack's gut. It would fit his guy to do something like that. A flood of rage burst through him, banishing the sickness.
"Really? You think you could take me? Fine."
He tossed his gun aside.
"I'm gonna take you apart, piece by piece, you genetic mistake."
The Aschen's eyes widened in eagerness at Jack's motion, and then in rage at Jack's words. He casually tossed the lieutenant aside. Even the casual, one-armed toss sent the woman flying halfway across the room before hitting a chair with a crash.
Jack noted the anger and gave the Aschen his cockiest smile..
"You're nothing but a patchwork freak. A crude piece of muscle that's not even Ascen any more. Bottom of the barrel. Good for nothing more than soak up bullets for the real Aschen."
The man's face twisted in white-hot rage as he stalked toward Jack. The limp was barely there and Jack hoped that it hadn't healed or something.
"Rip and tear you," the man roared as he began to charge.
Jack slid his knife from his forearm sheath in a smooth motion and threw.
The man's good leg was in the air, coming down as Jack threw, and the Aschen's twist required his hurt leg to do the work. Wounded, it was too slow.
The knife buried itself into the thigh an inch above the kneecap.
Jack vaulted the captain's chair away from the Aschen as the man fell toward him.
He watched as the man yanked the knife free and struggled to his feet, flinging the knife aside. It hadn't stuck in nearly as far as it should have on a regular person, and there was no way a normal person could stand back up with that leg like the Aschen was doing.
"You super-powered, vat-brained morons are all the same."
The man was snarling as he continued limping toward Jack. He stalked forward hands flexing. As he got closer, Jack began circling.
"All muscle, no brain."
He stepped in swinging a big, haymaker punch.
The man's reflexes shot his arm up to block faster than Jack could see, but he stopped his punch and kicked a quick snap kick to the knee.
The Aschen saw the shift, but again, couldn't move his wounded leg in time. Jack's boot caught him on the knee and the man's leg collapsed.
Jack circled around the man's falling grasp and slammed a fist into the base of his skull.
It was like punching a tree trunk.
Jack continued spinning away as the Aschen spun on his knees trying to grab Jack.
"You could snap me like a stick," Jack remarked as he let the Aschen get back to his feet.
"But I have a secret weapon," Jack said.
The man glared at him for a couple seconds and took a few quick pants. A shudder ran through his body and he stood straight, suddenly as if his legs no longer bothered him.
He stalked forward, and Jack backed up, watching the oncoming Aschen carefully. His gait was a little jerky, but not nearly what it should be.
"My secret weapon is that I'm an old geezer."
He paused for a tiny second until the Aschen's forehead crinkled slightly, his words registering.
Jack lunged forward with another giant roundhouse punch.
The Aschen didn't bother blocking, instead leaning forward with arms reaching to grab Jack's body.
Jack felt the fingers grab his sides like iron bars, grasping for purchase.
With both of the enemy's arms engaged, Jack kicked again, this time ignoring the legs and hitting directly between the man's spread legs.
It felt like his shin was kicking a rock and he cursed as the Aschen's grip caught around his ribs and pulled him in.
He went with the pull, slamming his head forward into the Aschen's nose, feeling a crunch, but there was but no release of the iron fingers grabbing him. Panic gnawed at the back of Jack's mind as the inexorable strength didn't budge at Jack's headbutt and began to squeeze his ribs like a vice sending pain shooting through his ribs.
Jack swung his open palms around as hard as he could, slamming them over the Aschen's ears with a loud clap.
While the pain hadn't been able to distract the man, the sudden disorientation of his eardrums blowing out stunned him.
Jack picked his feet up, the shift in weight beginning to pull them forward, the Aschen's grip still holding him, though the grip was loosened. As they fell, Jack planted his feet on the Aschen's chest and thrust out with all his strength.
All the strength of his legs pushing was enough to break the stunned grip, and they flew apart, Jack landing on his back heavily.
Jack got to his feet unhurriedly and watched the Aschen stagger to his feet as well.
"Yup, an old geezer who's been fighting super-powered aliens for nearly as long as you've been alive."
He jabbed with a couple feints, and while the Aschen's arms blurred with speed, they were uncoordinated and the man's balance had him staggering with the force of his swings.
The Aschen swung wildly, and Jack managed to deflect the blows, ducking around their power more than blocking them. It felt like blocking someone swinging a massive sledgehammer at him - he was just barely able to deflect the blows, and even that was because the punches were unfocused, the movements slurred and off-balance.
"Ya learn a few things, like - " Jack scooted back quickly to get out of range of a small lunge. "Like, even though you're super strong and all that, you still - "
Jack placed his hand on a console for support and kicked what he assumed was an alien med kit at the Aschen's feet. The box was as large as a large toolbox and nearly as heavy. Jack's thrust wasn't subtle or even particularly quick, and the Aschen had plenty of time to gather his legs and jump over the sliding box, easily clearing three feet of vertical distance up and over the box and coming down at Jack.
Jack grabbed the damaged Aschen rifle that was resting on the console and swung low.
In mid-leap, the Aschen's strength and speed could do nothing to change his trajectory. Jack's swing was low, below the Aschen's flailed hands trying to block, and the energy rifle connected with the Aschen's ankles. The man's feet spun off to the side with the impact, and his upper body rotated along with them as he fell.
The Aschen's head cracked against the console and he lay still twitching for a second before spastically trying to rise.
"You still fall just as fast as everything else," Jack finished as he stepped forward.
The man's arms and legs jerked as he tried to get them to push himself up.
Jack flipped the energy rifle in his hands, getting a better grip on its barrel. He stepped next to the Aschen soldier who had managed to shakily pull his arms beneath him.
Jack took a deep breath and swung the rifle around and a long circle back, up, and down on the Aschen's neck just as he had done ten thousand times before at his cabin splitting wood with an axe.
The Aschen's body jerked at the impact and then lay still, the head cocked off to the side at an impossible angle.
"It's just physics, bitch, and I have the galaxy's smartest woman as my teacher."
Jack dropped the ruined rifle and turned away.
Yeah, Jon certainly didn't lose his mouthiness when he was made from Jack. As in the show, it's a bit of a trademark of the character.
Too bad that Jon's dead and we'll never see him alive again. ;-)
My Writing Struggle insight time: the balance between "real life" and staying true to the feel of the universe/story. Stargate certainly isn't a true-to-life depiction of all sorts of things, such as military behavior and stuff. They focus on the story and characters more than "real life" physical laws and stuff. (which is part of what makes the show so awesome!) So writing some of this stuff was a back and forth between trying to (relatively) accurately depict military and tactical combat, and trying to avoid the ludicrous Tom Clancy-style ten pages of detail describing the threading on the inside of a gun barrel.
I'm aiming for Military-sounding-enough-to-not-jerk-you-out-of-the-story-but-still-keep-the-adventurous-romp-feel-of-the-SG1-story-universe.
Sorry if I went too far in the "adventure romp" direction. This chunk got trimmed and re-written a dozen times as I kept trying to describe military base structure, likely ranks to be found in an area, likely number of people armed, ship layout, and tactical behavior. At one point it was nearly three times as long as it is now. I finally got absolutely brutal in hacking and slashing away chunks, to get it down to keeping the action moving along without pagesscreens to expository text.
So ... there's a bit of insight as to why the story is the way it is.
Also, this chunk probably took eight or nine months in total to complete. That might have something to do with it too.
