517 Fail Safe
There was frustration all around. There was a ginormous rock on collision course with Earth. The Asgard refused to help using the handy excuse of the Protected Planets Treaty. And they had another ridiculous time limit of 11 days and 16 hours. 11 days and 16 hours to get to the crashed Tel'tak on Revanna, repair it, wrench out of the mud, fly to the asteroid, plant a bomb and make their escape.
Hammond took Jack aside and told him if their plan failed and they couldn't get the Tel'tak off the ground, he, O'Neill, was to take command of the Alpha site. This would be the people of Earth's last hope. There they would build a new civilization and be fruitful and multiply. Well before that they would merely have to survive. He knew there would be limited numbers and limited resources. All this Jack kept in the back of his mind while the engineers and Carter repaired the ship.
The four of them, they succeeded in their mission and Earth was safe. At least for the moment. The collision with the asteroid had been averted. But, and it was one big but, they were in a Tel'tak that was making a bee line for the sun with no means of altering its trajectory and no possibility of escaping the ship. And they had only 2 more hours left of life support.
"Ya know, I watched that movie. I didn't think it could really happen." O'Neill said as he was stretched out on the floor.
Carter who sat beside him said "It was full of mistakes, totally improbable."
"What, an asteroid hitting Earth?" Jack asked.
"No, that obviously could happen. No, I mean the way they blew it up."
"But it was so cool. Did they have magnets in their boots too?" He asked.
Carter smiled and continued, "And if blowing up the asteroid worked they would have scattered thousands of various sized projectiles onto Earth, almost as bad."
Teal'c chimed in "There were two films about asteroids."
"Tidal waves and Paris destroyed." Jack added.
"Our oceans didn't boil and our atmosphere didn't burn." Sam said.
"Earth is safe." Daniel said, and they were quiet again.
No one mentioned the fact they were all going to die. And Jack thought he was the master of self delusion.
Sam wanted to ask if there was a chance in hell they were going to make it, but well, she knew it wasn't probable. She reached her hand toward the man sprawled on the floor near her. He took her hand in his. There were so many things he wanted to tell her before he died. He wanted to tell her she was important to him, that she was beautiful and she made him happy. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and she knew.