Title: Smoke Jumpers – This Scorched Earth Below Us
Author: ltcoljsheppard
Rating: PG
Word count: 1811
Summary: AU prologue – A alternate version of John Sheppard never heard of the Stargate program. He works for the Bureau of Land Management and lives his life as a wildland firefighter, known as a smoke jumper. Story prompt by kneeddough aka Jill.
Diclaimer: The characters known in this story belong to the Stargate franchise and/or MGM Studios. The unknown original characters in this story belong to the author as does the story itself.
Dylan, the spotter, pulled open the door of Jump 2 to an unnerving roar. He swung it aside to reveal over three hundred acres of blackened giant Ponderosa pines. Looking down, he could see orange flames, like blazing tongues of fire, shoot high into the air, licking at the forest's crown. Plumes of thick black smoke billow and roll up from a fire line over a mile wide. At the fire's leading edge, a flame wall nearly eighty feet high whipped itself back and forth like an angry viper. Spurred on by the tornadic winds it generated in order to feed itself, the flames bucked and jerked as if trying to tear themselves free from the ground.
At fifteen hundred feet, the Twin Otter circled as the men inside looked down at the scorched earth below. The smoke columns rose out of a blackened landscape to spread out above them and envelop their transport. Super-heated air rushed into the plane's cargo area where the smoke jumpers sat, waiting, the thin mountain air now laced with the scent of wood smoke filled their nostrils. The roar of the angry beast below was so loud they could barely hear each other shouting above it.
Closing in on the drop zone, the Otter hit turbulence; the men bounced as if weightless from their bench only to be slammed back down on the cargo they carried. Many hands reached out to steady the essential stacks of equipment, even though it was securely fastened with straps, while other hands reached out to brothers to see them safely set back down amongst the group.
John Sheppard nodded to the man on his left as he pushed himself back onto the crowded bench, flipping his helmet back up so he could see out through the thick mesh of his drop helmet. The mesh shield would protect his face as he drifted to the ground through the dense branches below. From the pit of his stomach nausea tried to flow through the rest of his body but he forbade its progression. He concentrated on his breathing, now rapid but shallow, restricted by the tight strap of the jump harness across his chest. It was the life he'd lived for eighteen years and he couldn't ever imagine giving it up, but the inherent dangers of the life he'd chosen didn't ever escape his attention. It was knowing those dangers and respecting them that had kept him alive for almost two decades.
The spotter standing at the open door called out to them and John struggled to his feet weighed down by tools and equipment that would allow him to be self-sufficient for the first forty-eight hours on the ground. With a little help from Dex, he gained his feet and grabbed onto the overhead cable and made his way to the open door right behind his best friend. They had a ten man load and Sheppard was second in the jump line.
Jump 2 lined itself up for an initial pass over the chosen jump spot. Dylan dropped a set of crepe paper drift streamers and, as the Otter banked into a turn, they watched the streamers descend toward the ground. One red, one blue, and one yellow - bright against the seared backdrop of the forest below, they drifted like little waves of color and then they suddenly wavered and tumbled end over end. They were swept in toward the fire as if beckoned to their own destruction and the Otter banked to make a second pass in order to drop another set. The streamers again drifted like tiny kites and then tumbled and disappeared in the thick smoke.
The jumpers watched through the open door as the fire crested a ridge just a few miles from the drop zone. Conditions were grave and deteriorating fast, but Dylan gave a shout over his headset to the pilots.
"Take us up to three thousand."
Dylan turned to Dex and Sheppard, holding up two fingers. The two men stepped closer to the door and braced themselves there, being careful not to get sucked out of the plane by the slipstream.
"Looks like about five hundred yards of drift," Dylan yelled over the winds to the two lead off jumpers. "The winds are tricky down low. Stay wide of the fire so you don't get sucked in by the cyclonic activity. It's an angry beast, this one," he shared with the two experienced smoke jumpers and they both nodded. "The jump spot is in the shadow of that smoke column over there... there's a little meadow just east of the barn. Can you see it?"
The two men looked in the direction he was pointing and nodded yes.
Again Dylan's head was out the door and he looked forward beneath the plane. The pilot's voice came over the intercom then and everyone inside the cargo bay could hear the announcements coming through the squawk box.
"We got three thousand, Dylan, we got three thousand." Dylan said something in reply through his headset, and then his eyes were back on Dex and Sheppard.
"Okay, two jumpers," he commanded. "Are you ready?"
The two jumpers nodded yes and Dex turned to give his partner a light punch in the chest. John gave him a nod and took a deep breath.
"Get in the door," Dylan instructed and Dex dropped to a sitting position with his legs hanging out into the slipstream. Sheppard was close behind, waiting mere inches from his partner's back. Sitting there in the door, though the fire was still more than a mile away, they could feel the intense heat on their faces as they looked down into the conflagration below.
Again Dylan's head went out the door, looking.
Sheppard's field of vision filled with a panoramic view of the California mountain range. The land below ran in steep ridges and deep, dangerous, down slopes now obscured by thick gray smoke rising like tendrils toward the sky. The columns of smoke and lashing flames seemed to stretch up from the earth as if preparing to snatch the smoke jumpers from the sky.
Dylan pulled his head in and shot a quick glance at Dex and John. He raised his arm behind Dex's back. "Get ready!"
The slap landed sharply on Dex's shoulder, and he propelled himself forward with all of his strength. In the next instant Sheppard was out the door too and counting.
"Jump-thousand, look-thousand …."
The earth and the sky suddenly changed places as they revolved in a blur of images that passed by their vision in a blip stop array of aircraft wings, green grass, blue sky, tilting mountain landscapes, and black columns of smoke... and the noise. Not just the rushing wind screaming by at nearly one hundred miles an hour, but also the roar of the monster below filled their ears as it witnessed the arrival of those who'd herald its demise.
Sheppard's body pitched sideways to the right and he watched as his boots hovered high above his head. He set his focus beyond his toes to see the other eight members of their crew like little black dots in the blue sky above him. He smiled at the sight as he fell toward the earth at ninety miles an hour. The forest, the fire, the smoke and the mountains rotated below him as if he was a plane crashing to the ground in an uncontrolled spin.
"Reach-thousand …." Sheppard's right hand reached for the green rip cord and his fingers curled around it tightly. "Wait-thousand …."
Aware of what was hanging in the balance of the next few seconds he resisted the temptation to pull early. He waited out that odd, warped moment when time itself seemed to stretch out until it felt as though it would tear away from the very tension he put on it.
"Pull-thousand …."
His hand pulled right across his chest and shot out to the side. He felt himself tilt forward, then a tugging sensation across his shoulders and the pack rose off his back as the parachute struggled to open. Tossing his head back, John watched for it, and there it was, billowing into a gleaming rectangle of brilliant orange and white. In the aftermath of the roar and the snap and the sudden slowing of his descent there came a startling sense of peace.
Silence.
He looked up and checked the corners of his chute for tension knots, then reached up for his steering toggles and, pulling down left, he came around into the wind. John looked down. The head of the fire had temporarily halted along the crest of the ridge while the ground fire spilled down into the valley.
Dex let out a long, whooping yell just below him to the left. He, too, had just opened his chute and John whooped back. Dex looked up at him, seeing his partner above him to the right, they exchanged smiles and then turned to try to orient themselves to the jump spot.
The smoke columns rose high overhead, casting an ominous dark shadow over the land. Facing into the wind, they tried to locate the jump spot. Sheppard felt his gut tighten as he watched the ground pass below, appearing to surge one way and then the other as the chute rocked him back and forth. Pulling down on the left toggle, he began moving closer to the wind line, but still, he couldn't make out the jump spot. Dex yelled up to him that he couldn't see the spot and John yelled back and then chuckled.
The sky high above them was crystalline blue, dappled with a few fluffy white clouds that appeared as an image of heaven above him in contrast to the hell below. Sunlight streamed down in glorious rays between the smoke columns as if to light their way. John watched a pool of light gliding slowly over the mountain side like a spotlight beacon and suddenly he saw a field of gold below. He blinked at it as the sunbeam seemed to stop there, lighting up their landing zone and he couldn't help himself as he looked skyward in wonder.
In that moment Sheppard felt as though he could stay up there forever; peaceful in the strange silence. Sailing high above the great mountains and the forests and all the wild places of the earth, he could just continue soaring; out beyond the farthest horizon, into the upper atmosphere and beyond it to the infinite darkness of space to drift among the stars for all eternity.
Their small meadow appeared and they both saw it at the same time and Dex and John yelled out in unison. They gave each other a thumbs up and, pulling on their right toggles, the two jumpers drifted toward the drop zone.