"Some wedding night," Jack groused from where he sat on the edge of the more than slightly rumpled bed tying the laces of his boots. The hotel furnished alarm clock on the nightstand beside him read 6:00.
This night at the Watergate hotel had been a gift from General Hammond and their former colleagues at the SGC. Last night as they'd prepared to leave the backyard reception, Daniel and Janet had appeared at their side just as Sam finished thanking their guests. Their two friends had ushered them to the front of the house where a limousine waited to whisk them away. Neither Sam or Jack had known where they were going until the limo had slowed to a halt in front of the hotel. The driver had retrieved their bags from the trunk. The driver had handed the bags off to a waiting bellboy who had brought them straight to the honeymoon suite explaining that they were already checked in.
Following the military training that was by now so ingrained as to almost be instinct, they had split up upon entering the room checking for danger. Returning from the bathroom, Sam had nodded the all clear to Jack who thanked the bellboy with a generous tip. The two of them had converged on the sterling silver bucket containing a bottle of fine champagne. The card tucked in the bucket read simply 'From SGC.' The ice in the bucket had long since melted. The bottle of champagne still held a good amount of alcohol because neither Sam nor Jack wanted to tackle this morning's mission with a hangover.
Jack sighed as he watched Sam tuck in her shirt as she wandered over to the bed from the bathroom for a lingering kiss.
"Don't complain," she ordered him. "We got a wedding night after all. Considering everything, we've gotta consider that alone a small miracle." They'd managed to leave the buffet reception early last night so the suite hadn't totally gone to waste, but he wished they had more time to themselves before facing reality once more.
As Jack watched, Sam walked over and sat on the couch then braced her foot against the coffee table to lace her own boots. Jack felt the butterflies that he normally got before a mission return, and they'd brought friends. "Ready?" he asked as Sam straightened. She nodded as she got to her feet. Jack bridged the distance between them as from his pocket he fished the milky white stone ovoid that Daniel had given him before they'd left the reception. "We're ready to go, Thor," Jack said seconds before he felt the now familiar tingling sensation of the Asgard transporter.
"Do we have everything?" Sam demanded as soon as they'd materialized on the bridge of Thor's ship.
"Yeah," Harry assured her as he gestured to a square tarp laid out on the deck. Arranged on the tarp were a wide variety of alien and Earth weapons. Sam and Jack carefully scanned the selection. Jack leaned down grabbing two SIG Sauer handguns. Without a word he handed one to Sam who clipped the holster to her belt before drawing the weapon to examine it. They each accepted the spare ammunition Harry handed each of them.
"You want a knife?" Jack asked as he knelt to conceal one in his own boot. With her nod of agreement, Jack slipped a second knife into her boot. As he rose back to a standing position, Teal'c handed each of them a zat. "It's not too late to back out," he told them. "Sam and I can do this alone."
"You probably could," Daniel agreed, "but you're not going to."
"Janet, you and Cassie..." Sam tried to suggest.
"No," Janet denied before she could even finish the sentence. "You gave me my daughter, Sam. I'm just going to return the favor."
"Cassie's already been uprooted once in her life," Jack argued.
"I'm an adult now," Cassie told him with more than a little heat in her voice, "or close enough anyway. I can make my own decisions."
"Of that there is little doubt," Teal'c agreed as a shadow of a smile played across his solemn face.
"Mom and I are in," Cassie continued ignoring the choked sounds from several throats that sounded coincidentally like laughter.
"You're staying on this ship," Janet ordered.
"But..." the teenager protested.
"No buts," Daniel told her. "We've already had this discussion. You stay here."
Cassie glared at him with typical teenage belligerence but subsided into unwilling acceptance. Sam wasn't the only one to raise an eyebrow at the teenager's quick acquiescence to Daniel's edict just a breath after protesting the same from her mother. The look she gave Daniel made it clear she'd seen and understood more than the others had though. Daniel grinned in reply.
"What's that about?" Jack asked Teal'c.
"I know not, O'Neill" his friend admitted. Beside him Bra'tac raised a curious eyebrow along with his former student.
"Cassie, I could use your help with some stuff," Jacob suggested to the teenager.
"I thought you said we were ready!?" Sam yelled to her father.
"We are!" he protested. "This is something different. Something I was working on before you two decided to get married. I got behind schedule." He took Cassie by the arm and pulled her to one side. Standing in the corner the two shared a hushed conversation with Thor as Jacob handed something to the young woman. A minute later Cassandra followed Thor over to the control console in the center of the room. She stood a few feet away as he worked the controls. A moment later the young woman dissolved before their eyes.
"Jacob!" Janet growled at the older man. "Where..."
"It's alright," Daniel soothed the petite doctor. "I was helping Jacob with his project earlier. She's doing something every teenage girl loves to do. Shop. Nothing dangerous."
"She's doing something that needs to be done," Jacob added. "It'll keep her busy and safe while we do this."
Jack nodded. "Okay," he said ushering Sam from the command center. "Let's go through it one more time." He led their small group to one of the storage rooms in the ship's hold. Within the room, Thor, Bra'tac, and Maybourne had created a holographic recreation of the Presidential Lodge at Camp David. Over the next hour they ran through the plans for taking control of the lodge as well as their escape.
"Alright that's it," Harry announced. "It's time."
Jack nodded as he led the group from the hold back to the command center. Thor moved to stand behind the control console as the rest of the group stood in a small clutch in the center of the room. First one then another and then still more of the goa'uld concussion grenades supplied by Master Bra'tac disappeared as the Asgard commander manipulated a series of controls. Jack knew the grenades were reappearing around the Presidential Lodge in concentric circles. When the final concussion grenades appeared in the lodge itself there was no one to come to the aid of those inside. Those onboard Thor's ship had only to wait a few seconds before they too disappeared. A breath later as they re-integrated inside the Presidential Lodge, they were already moving. Bra'tac and Teal'c remained in the center of the room working in tandem to deploy the goa'uld shield the jaffa rebels had acquired. Each of the others went to their predetermined location and placed the small 'anchors' for the shield device along the edges of the wall.
"Done!" Janet reported from where she knelt near the door. As she stood she pulled a number of plastic zip ties from her pocket. These had been bought at a home improvement store and weren't the same as those used by police as handcuffs during riots, but they would do. She quickly went to the nearest unconscious Secret Service agent and rolled the man onto his stomach. She removed his weapons first then secured his hands behind his back and his feet together before rolling him back onto his side. Around her the others were doing the same. Now all they had to do was wait for their hostages to wake.