Jack walked through the Gate on Alpha Base and pulled his CBC off and beat it on his leg before jamming it back on his head. He wasn't sure what Harry's game was, making him cool his jets overnight in that silly confection of a castle he'd had built but he'd left at first light after thanking his diminutive hostess and her staff. Alpha Base was on a different time zone so they left in the morning and arrived late afternoon at Alpha. If Jack hadn't been so used to that sort of thing from past experience it would have been downright disconcerting.
Lou met him at the gate. "Wasn't expecting you Jack, until your interesting friend showed up that is."
"Where is that greasy skeezer anyway?" Jack asked, annoyed enough to pop out a childhood colloquialism.
"Around somewhere." Lou Ferettii shrugged.
"I hope you nailed everything down Lou. He's as bad as Vala."
Lou cringed. Vala had to be watched extremely carefully on base not to swipe things. "Nice time to tell me Jack."
"You read his file." Jack said, with a look of confused concern on his face.
"You tend to exaggerate a little Jack. I thought you were trying to be funny."
Daniel looked at Jack and rolled his eyes.
Harry came out from behind one of the tents, dressed in a black non-descript earth style outfit. "I hear you were looking for me Jack."
Sam, Vala, and Cam walked through the puddle into the disembarkation room and started handing their unused as it had been unrequited ordinance to the arms master. The planet had been a bust but it had to be checked out and a short handed team was a good choice for a cake mission.
"I still can't believe you guys didn't tell me. Sam. We've been friends for years." Cam was complaining to them.
"Not the time Cam." Sam told him. Her eyes narrowed. This wasn't common knowledge and until she and Jack had settled a lot of details it wasn't going to be either.
The three of them walked out on their way to the infirmary. "Well you had better tell me what's been going on soon or I'm going to start telling Jack that- "
"Colonel Samantha Carter Shanahan?" the Captain had taken the time to walk up to Sam in the halls as he didn't have authorization or clearance to be in the Gate room. He was flanked by a pair of SPs.
Sam gave them a wary look. "I'd appreciate if you dropped my ex-husband's name off that as I am." She sighed. "Yes?"
"By the authority of the military tribunal I am authorized to remand you to custody. I'm sure you would rather have your list of charges read to you in private, ma'am." He told her.
"What's going on?" Sam asked, clearly confused. Hank had managed to reach the group by then.
"Come with us, Sam, and I'll explain it. I've made it clear that you are not to be put in the brig." Hank told her with a withering look to the captain.
"Sir, wait, I'm being arrested? What about my kids?" Time wise they were at school but she couldn't leave them in NDC indefinitely and Jack hadn't signed the guardianship paperwork yet either as he'd left before Lorin had been able to get it to her.
"It's all right Sam, we'll get this sorted out. I'm coming with you and I've ordered up someone from JAG too."
Sam sighed heavily. "Yes sir." She said meekly and followed Landry to the elevator. The SPs at least had given her the dignity of not putting her in cuffs or reading off the list of transgressions in front of half the base. She wondered how many of them they had on her.
She had her own list of course that she thought about as she walked. Fraternizing with a superior officer, they broke that reg long before they broke that reg but they broke that reg anyway… more than once, not very often but there had been bad missions that ended in too much liquor and not enough self preservation. She'd married a man under false pretenses, carrying another man's child, a superior officer's child at that. Then she'd falsified medical records and forged another officer's name to do so and further mislead her former spouse. While Jack didn't have a chain of command he was a superior officer and she'd gone right back to bedding him with aplomb. Oh and they had lied to her ex-husband about the events of the medical records and she'd falsified electronic records to cover her tracks and convinced a superior officer to be a co-conspirator in her crime after the fact.
Honestly at this point, Vala ought to be extremely proud of her. She'd become an opportunistic criminal to save her own ass. I am officially fucked she thought and mentally laughed at herself for her internal voice sounding suspiciously like Jack's.
They lead her to one of the VIP suites and Sam started to ask General Landry about it when he gave her a short shake of his head. Sam closed her eyes slowly, acknowledging the message. 'I'll tell you when the goon is gone.'
Sam really didn't even listen when the captain read off the list of charges which had been shorter than she expected and mostly fell under frat reg nonsense and cheating on her husband. She laughed at the irony after he left. They never got caught when it was a violation and now she was being judged for giving a cheating bastard the child he'd said he wanted but couldn't make himself.
Sam felt she was going to laugh like a loon the first time some silly girl accused her ex-husband of getting her pregnant. It would serve him right.
"Now Sam, I know all these charges are utter crap. Jack is a Joint Chief; he doesn't have any authority over you or anyone else at this facility. At best that falls under inappropriate behavior with a superior officer and that's only frowned upon not a regulations violation. As for the rest, I don't know why they think you were running around on Pete. We all know it was the other way around. A DNA test will clear this up." His tone was that as her friend rather than her CO at the moment.
"No it won't." Sam said with a shake of her head and a disconcerting laugh.
"Sam?"
"Jake is Jack's biological son Hank. I don't know how they found that out but he is."
He looked at her a long moment. "Sam, I need you to be honest with me or I can't help you fix this. Were you having an affair with Jack while you were married to Pete?"
Sam snorted. Briefly she considered telling Hank the actual truth but it would serve no purpose and she couldn't make him lie on the stand for her. "The day of my wedding Jack left my life and I didn't see or hear from him again for most of nine years Hank. When I was struggling with conception and discovered Georgie had to be Jack's son because Pete was infertile, we exchanged a couple of e-mails. I knew he had a sample at the local sperm bank and I stupidly thought I was in a happy marriage that I didn't want to blow up with the revelation that his son was another man's child.
"I didn't talk to him after he agreed to sign the fertility agreement paperwork. Pete didn't know he was infertile at the time; probably still doesn't believe he is. I was pregnant when I came home and didn't know. Pete pressured me into sex the first night and I just assumed it was his by the timing. It didn't occur to me until later when I tried to get pregnant again that Georgie might not be Pete's.
"No, that's not true, lots of times I very much hoped he wasn't but I didn't check because I didn't want to know for sure as if he wasn't, I'd been keeping Jack from his son to save my own ass." She admitted.
"I'm sure you felt you were doing the right thing at the time Sam."
"I did but that's no excuse. Just because he didn't want to be with me didn't mean I didn't know how he'd feel about his children. It was unfair and I don't understand why he's forgiven me for it honestly."
"That's something you will have to talk to him about Sam. I don't have the answers to that question."
Sam nodded solemnly. "After he agreed to sign off on the procedure he told me out of respect for my marriage that he couldn't, wouldn't be part of their lives. It must have killed him inside letting another man raise his kids, them never knowing how loved they were all along."
"They know now. That's the important part."
"I suppose so. He could have done what I deserved which was demand a paternity test and demand custody."
"He'd never hurt you that way. He knew what he was getting in to and he didn't know Pete was a terrible parent, he just wanted you to be happy, and if giving you the kids your husband couldn't was the answer to that, well, then that was the answer."
"Anyway we didn't talk again after that until recently when it got back to him that I was struggling to hold on to the house. I guess he figured he couldn't say anything but he didn't want his kids to be homeless either." What an utter liar I've become, she thought absently.
"I never cheated on Pete. I did lie to him about the paternity of his kids, neither of which was conceived by having an affair. I can prove that. I have the fertility clinic paperwork with Jack's signature on it." Sam bit her lip.
"I believe you. Sam, I will do everything in my power to mitigate this nonsense for you. Even if you had run around on him you have proof he was doing so himself. Two wrongs don't make a right but they sure don't make a left either. He had no business accusing you of his own behavior."
Sam sighed. She hadn't had to cheat. She emotionally checked out from the start and never should have married Pete in the first place.
"I'll let the school know to put the kids on the AFB bus tonight. They can stay here with you. I can't let you back into your lab but at least I can have your laptop and whatever files you want so you can continue working." He told her.
"Thank you Hank."
"Part of that no one gets left behind stuff includes no one gets railroaded by a petty ex Sam." And then he left.
