Chapter 27

"What is it with you Carters, anyway?" said Jack. "Why do you always say you're fine when you're clearly not?" He'd had to slow his strides to match them to the man limping along beside him.

"And I suppose you're the paragon of honesty?" Jacob shot back. "Besides, Sam has enough to worry about without her old man's infirmities distracting her." He added, "Speaking of worries, I understand you're in a bit of a bind."

O'Neill looked at him questioningly. Jacob gestured to Jaira on his back. "Oh, that," said Jack.

"Yeah, that," Jacob replied. "She's a cute kid. You're a lucky man, Jack." O'Neill just nodded. "You gonna marry the mother?"

Jack coughed. "Geez, Jacob, don't beat around the bush or anything."

"I know, it's none of my business, except…" Jacob just shook his head and sighed, as if he wanted to say more but was holding back. Then, "Well? Are you? Do you love her?"

O'Neill ground his teeth at the other man's persistence. "You're right, Jake, it's none of your damn business."

They walked in silence for a bit. Finally Jack blew out a puff of air. "No." He glanced at the child on his back, making sure she was still asleep. "I don't love her. And I don't want to marry her. But hell, I don't have any legal rights. I want to be with her." He cocked his head back at Jaira. "But it would mean living on Edora." He looked at the older man in the darkness. "What would you do, Jake?"

Jacob didn't answer for a long minute. "You're between a rock and a hard place, Jack," he said at last. "The only thing I can say is," and he looked at Jack pointedly, "you're going to make a certain someone pretty damn unhappy if you decide to leave earth. And I don't mean Siler."

Jack stared at him. Did he suspect something? Not that there was anything, really. Surely Carter wouldn't have told her father about the not-anything. He'd almost stake his life on that. Did that mean, then, that Jacob had seen something between them? He cast his mind back desperately to any time when they might have let their guard drop…

His radio crackled and he grabbed it in relief. He'd had enough of this conversation. "Yeah?"

"O'Neill," said Teal'c. "I can see you. Bear to your left." In the middle of the dark landscape a rectangle of light appeared as the tel'tac door opened.

Casting one more suspicious look at his companion, Jack stepped through the doorway. The sight before him caused him to stop in his tracks. From pillar to bulkhead stretched a sea of children, all babbling like kids on Christmas morning. In the safe refuge of the tel'tac their fatigue and fright seemed to have been left behind and forgotten in the wake of the excitement of their adventure. Some of their clothes were torn, some had lost shoes, many were shivering, and all were as dirty as street urchins in Dickens' London.

It was one of the most beautiful sights Jack had ever seen.

"Damn," said Jacob. "That's a whole lotta kids."

Jack just grinned.

"O'Neill, Jacob Carter," Teal'c greeted them, "it is good to see you."

"Back at ya, T."

One of the kids detached himself from the crowd and ran to them. "Jack, you made it!" cried Nevan.

"You betcha," said Jack. "How you doing, buddy?"

"Fine, we tried to go through the stone ring but we couldn't and we ran and some people shot at us and a lady helped us and we went into the sewers and it smelled really bad and then we came out walked and walked and this ship is invisible and-" He stopped as suddenly as if a faucet had been turned off. "Jack, you're bleeding!"

"He got shooted," said Jaira, now fully awake.

Jack eased Jaira down off his back. Settling Jacob against a bulkhead, he and the two children followed Teal'c through the crowd into the cargo room where they went to work unloading blankets and water.

"Major Carter is helping with the birth?" his friend asked.

"Yeah. They shouldn't be long." Jack handed Nevan a carton of bottled water and told him to hand them out to the kids. Then he looked around. "Where's Jaira?" he said.

"Look at me, Jack!"

He looked up. She had clambered up the cargo crates until she stood on the topmost one. "Sheesh, baby, come on down from there," he said. She let herself be lifted down onto the floor.

He went to work applying first aid to scrapes and bruises and wrapping bleeding feet in gauze. Fortunately all the injuries were minor - thank God for no broken bones, thought Jack - and the children's spirits were good. Finally, having checked Jacob's dressing, Jack lowered himself wearily beside the other man. Jaira climbed onto his lap, and Nevan soon joined them.

Jack asked the boy a question that had been bothering him ever since the start of all this. "Nevan, how did they ever get all of you kids to go through the stargate in the first place?"

Nevan looked abashed. "They said they would take us to a place made of candy, and we could have all we wanted and then come home again."

The oldest ruse in the book, thought Jack.

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"Hey. You're kids. You didn't know." And now they knew. Jack felt sad for their lost innocence, for the ugly fact that they would never be trusting of strangers again.

~o~

"Breathe!" commanded Daniel, who was doing the honors of midwife.

"I am breathing!" Naytha shouted at him.

"Daniel means you should breathe rapidly, taking shallow breaths," Sam explained.

Naytha seemed to find this instruction more helpful, and began to exhale in short puffs. When the pain subsided, she collapsed back onto the rolled-up jacket Garan had placed under her head.

"I'm glad to see you're okay, Sam," Daniel said. "Last we saw, things didn't look so good for you and Jacob."

"We had a little help from the colonel," she said. She tore a piece of cloth from Naytha's tunic and wetted it with water from her canteen. She handed it to Garan who was kneeling close to Naytha's head. He needed something useful to do. "Use this to cool her face."

To Daniel she said, "You're getting to be an old hand at this. Isn't this the third baby you've delivered?" There had been Sha're's son, the harcesis, and before that a baby on Argos.

"It doesn't make it any easier," he said.

As Garan wiped Naytha's sweat-drenched brow with a shaking hand, another contraction seized the young woman, and she cried out again.

"The pains are close together," Sam told her. "That's good. It shouldn't be much longer."

Naytha was gasping erratically. "Remember," Sam said, "short breaths." Naytha nodded and began puffing.

"Is my sister all right?" Garan asked Sam.

"She's fine, the colonel has her," Sam said.

Daniel's head popped up over Naytha's knees. "What's she like, Sam?"

"Who?"

"Jack's daughter."

"Oh." Sam adjusted the jacket under Naytha's head. "She's - she's adorable."

"I can't wait to see-"

"Ahhhh!" Naytha cried out in pain again. "May the ancestors help me!" Then she began to sob.

Garan's face was a portrait in terror. Sam tried to reassure him that all births were like this, but he seemed to take little comfort from her words. She wished Teal'c were here. When Naytha delivered, someone would have to carry the young woman back to the ship. There was no way she was going to be able to walk. Sam hoped that Daniel or Garan was up to being beast of burden.

"Daniel, how's it going?" she asked nervously.

Daniel answered her in a strange voice. "Uh, Sam, can you give me a hand?"

Something in his too-casual tone chilled her to the roots of her hair, and she moved quickly to his side. "What is it?" she whispered.

His own whisper was barely audible. "I feel a foot."

She couldn't have heard right. "A foot?" She still couldn't believe it. "Shouldn't it be a head?"

He gave a curt nod, and his glasses slipped down his nose. His face was white. "It's a breech."

Her heart jammed. "Can you turn it?"

Daniel wiped sweat from his eyes with his forearm. "I don't know!" He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out, then did it again, apparently trying to calm his shattered nerves.

"I'm pretty sure you need to turn it."

"I'll try."

Sam put a hand on his back for whatever comfort it might offer as he struggled, grimacing with the effort. Despite the cold he was perspiring like a horse. Sam on the other hand shivered with fear. What if they couldn't do it? What if Daniel couldn't get the baby out? Her teeth chattered noisily.

Naytha cried out with another contraction.

"I think it's coming too fast to turn it around," whispered Daniel with more than a touch of desperation. "Oh, boy, here we go."

Naytha screamed again.

~o~

Jaira was tucking her doll under a blanket.

"Time for bed?" asked Jack.

"Yes. She's tired."

She wasn't the only one. The excited hubbub had died down and half the kids were sprawled in sleep. In the ten minutes he'd been sitting there, he himself had almost dozed off twice. Only the nagging worry about the other half of his team still out there somewhere kept him awake.

"I don't blame her," he said. "She's had a long night."

"She was scared."

He stroked Jaira's hair. "I'll bet she was."

"She didn't like those peoples. They were bad peoples." Jaira pulled the blanket up until only the doll's yellow hair stuck out. "But she's safe now. Her papa keeped her safe."

She looked up at him appraisingly, as she had done when they hid in the bushes during their flight. Sizing him up. His chest felt tight as he wondered again if she'd heard what he said to Broken: That was my daughter you almost killed. He wondered again if she found him worthy father material. Maybe, he thought, just maybe she did.

Jaira turned her attention back to Star and began to sing to the doll. Jack closed his eyes and lost himself in her crooning. He could listen to this for the rest of his life. Well, hell, he could, couldn't he? All he had to do was what he'd told Jacob - leave his home and his career and his friends and the certain person whom he'd make damn unhappy and go live on Edora. Pincers clamped around his heart. What the hell was he going to do?

"O'Neill!"

The ominous note in Teal'c's voice wrenched Jack from his thoughts. "What is it, T?" he said, rising and threading his way through the crowd to the command console where Teal'c had stationed himself. He settled into the other command chair. Jaira followed and leaned against his legs.

"I have directed the ship's sensors to monitor the search pattern of the Kalam aircraft." He touched a control and the screen displayed Tisne, its dark buildings silhouetted against a starry sky. Several daggers of light moved back and forth on the near side of the city.

"I thought they were searching on the other side of the city."

"A few moments ago they changed direction toward the southeast."

Jack swore. "D'nae bought us as much time as he could. I guess he got outvoted by those other two goons."

Teal'c's hand moved again, causing the display to disappear and revealing the desert outside the window. The moons, which had been low in the sky when they reached the cargo ship, had sunk almost out of sight, and now a band of crimson tinted the opposite horizon. The sky above had lightened to grays and pinks. Jack's gut clenched. Sunrise was on its way and Daniel, Carter, and the others would be sitting ducks.

He slapped his radio. "Carter! You've got enemy heading your way. Can you move yet?"

There was silence for a long moment during which Jack held his breath. Then Carter's voice: "We're coming, but it's slow going. There were complications, and Naytha can't walk."

Jack looked at Teal'c, who nodded and got up. "Teal'c is on his way," Jack informed the major.

"Roger that."

"Are they going to catch us again, Jack?"

He started at Nevan's voice. The boy had come up behind him and was staring with frightened eyes at the aircraft moving closer to them. "No, Nevan. They won't." Over his dead body.

They waited. Five minutes passed. Somewhere in the cabin a child whimpered in his sleep and a soft voice comforted him. Outside the view screen the rose color spread across the sky, and against it were silhouetted the alien aircrafts with their searchlights. They were maybe a mile off and getting closer. O'Neill ground his molars together. He looked at his watch. A new digit appeared. After an eternity, another. Come on, come on.

His radio crackled. "Sir!"Carter sounded like she was running. "Get ready to go as soon as we board."

"Copy that. Nevan, take Jaira and go back where you were." When the boy froze at the commanding tone of his voice he added, "Now!"

While the kids hurried to the other side of the cabin, Jack fired up the engines. He peered anxiously through the view screen. After a few minutes he saw them: Garan carrying a small bundle, then Teal'c, amazingly fast on his feet with the large burden in his arms. Daniel followed, dodging around Kalam versions of sagebrush and juniper, while Carter had their six, running-limping with her injured leg. She wasn't moving fast enough. She turned to look behind her at the aircraft, which was almost upon them. Suddenly its searchlight illuminated her like Callas at the Met.

"Carter, move your ass!" Jack shouted futilely at the view port.

As though she'd heard him, Carter zigged when the searchlight zagged, and the weapons fire that lanced from the craft missed her by the width of a tumbleweed.

Jack slammed his hand on a control, and the tel'tac door whooshed open. Garan hurtled through first, and close on his heels came Teal'c with Naytha. Jack heard an explosion outside, then the sound of automatic weapons fire as Carter and Daniel took aim at their pursuers. More weapon fire. Jack watched the door, his stomach tight. Daniel barreled through. He waited. Seconds ticked by with excruciating slowness. Finally - finally! - Carter dived through, landing amidst the pile of children and eliciting shrieks and screeches.

Jack slapped the door control and at the same time touched the Goa'uld version of a throttle. The tel'tac rose from the ground.

"Carter?" he called out.

"I'm all right, sir!" came the answering shout behind him.

Something rocked the ship. With the cries of children as backdrop, Jack played with the maneuvering thrusters. The ship reacted sluggishly, but it veered. More plasma fire shot forth from the search craft, which was now below them, but the firing was wild and random. The Kalam had watched the humans disappear into an invisible ship and had no idea where the target was.

The cloaked tel'tac left its pursuers rapidly behind, soaring into the upper atmosphere.

Jack sagged against the seat, exhaling a pent-up breath. They'd made it! Then he swiveled around to survey the scene: Daniel and Carter were picking themselves up, and Teal'c was laying Naytha on a mound of blankets. They'd beaten the odds once again. His team was safe, the kids were safe.

His daughter was safe.

As if on cue a small missile flung herself into his arms. Adrenaline-spent, he clasped Jaira to him. "You okay, baby?"

"Jack!" she said, ignoring his question. He tried to squeeze her more tightly, but she squirmed out of his grasp. "Jack, guess what!" Jaira's eyes were sparkling with excitement.

"What?"

His answer was a sound that rose above all the babbling in the cabin until everyone hushed and it was the only thing to be heard. Rhythmic, loud, insistent, heart-stopping.

The squall of a newborn baby.