Chapter 9 - Breakout
"Is this what all the fuss is about?" said Jeff Grogan as he withdrew a wrapped bundle from the inside of his coat and placed it on the table. It made a resounding 'clunk' as it made contact with the surface. He stood back, waiting for Jen's curiosity to overcome her and didn't have long to wait as she cautiously unwrapped the brown oily cloth to reveal an odd- shaped grey metal object, while Jack looked on from his chair by the fire.
Her eyebrows rose as she turned it over in her hands, revealing faint letters and numbers embossed in an oddly-shaped recess which meant nothing to her yet. She looked up at him, noticing the hopeful expression that indicated his desire for praise and recognition for a job well done, and decided to play along. "I don't know, Jeff. Enlighten me?"
"It's a Sub-Space Multiplier Version 21." he said proudly and expectantly.
"I thought it would at least be a model 26 with the synchromesh gears." said Jack dryly, bring smiles to their faces. "How did you come by it?"
"A bundle of crates fell from a crane net and burst open. Some of the stuff went into the water but the rest was all over the quayside." explained Grogan. "When that happens, it's every man for himself if there's damaged goods lying around. They write them off as destroyed anyway. I could probably get a few more from the garbage bins tomorrow if you want."
"This is great, Jeff, but were there any smaller than this one?" asked Jen, smiling at him. "Something that'll be easier to conceal and carry when we get out of here? And was there any paperwork with them? I haven't a clue how they work yet."
"I'll look." replied Jeff, pleased with her reaction. "Look, Jen, seeing that it's your night off tonight, I was wondering if maybe we could go out to eat somewhere. My treat." But he already suspected what her answer would be, as she busied herself with a close examination of the object, oblivious to his question.
Jack saw his plight and took pity on the young man. Based on his own experiences with his former 2IC's similar obsession with new technological mysteries, he made a decision. "Tell you what, Jeff." he said. "I'd like you to come with me tonight to meet some people for a drink or three and discuss business. You up for it?"
Recognising reluctantly that it was the best offer he was going to get, Grogan grunted "Yeah, sure. Leave 'The Queen of the Gizmos' to it. Why not?"
"Don't fall up the stairs like last time." muttered Jen as they left a few moments later. She didn't even look up as the door closed, as her whole attention was focussed on the 'interestingness' of her new toy.
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"Well I'm sorry about that, Dad, but for just once I'm putting *my* priorities above those of the SGC and the Tok'ra too." said Sam as she paced the deck of the Tel'tak. "Well, not just mine. Jack's got no-one he can rely on to get him out of this. We've got to do something about it."
Her father removed his gaze from the windows, away from the blurry multicoloured canvas that was the universe viewed from hyperspace. It reminded him of the abstract art paintings that he'd never understood or appreciated in his former life on Earth. But the subtle changes in his daughter's explanations were starting to set him down the path of understanding.
"And the other two, Sam?" he asked, looking straight at her. "You've stopped mentioning Hailey and Grogan these last few minutes."
"Well of course those two as well!" Sam responded testily. "'Nobody gets left behind', remember?"
"O'Neill Book of Survival Chapter One." said Jacob with a wry smile. He gazed at her until her eyes reluctantly met his. "When did he become 'Jack', Sam, and not 'Colonel O'Neill'?"
"What do you mean?" she said defensively, her face reddening. "It's just his name. I mean, we've worked closely together these last years..."
"Sam." he interrupted in a gentle voice, "Sam, tell me the truth or I'll turn this craft around and head straight back to Colorado before they discover you've gone AWOL. Don't think that what you're asking me to do doesn't give me the greatest concern about your future as well as O'Neill's."
"Honestly, it's just.." she stammered.
"Anise told me." His cold words brought her confused thoughts to a sudden halt. "I thought you two were well and truly over it when you took up with that policeman recently. I even had hopes that you were thinking about a future that didn't involve getting into these ridiculous life-threatening situations any more."
She slumped into the nearby seat, dejected and spent. He watched her sad expression for a few moments and then sat on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the control console.
"Sam?" he prompted. "I think you need to tell yourself the truth out loud as well as me."
She remained quiet for a while, but slowly her inner resolve won out. "I don't want to live without him." she murmured. "I suppose Anise told you what he said during the Za'tarc testing, about how he'd rather die than lose me." She saw his brief nod. "Well it's the same for me. Only I didn't realise it was still true until he stayed behind on Andar. And I didn't see how much he was hurting as a result of my being with someone else until then. He never let on, of course, and behaved perfectly properly at work. But when he gave us a hard time during a briefing about our motives for wanting to trade with the Andans, I thought he was doing it out of personal animosity towards me. He wasn't, and that's why they're stuck there now."
"Sam." he coaxed gently, the softened expression on his face revealing just how strong their family bond was. "Say it."
She swallowed a couple of times and looked him in the eyes. "I love him, Dad. And I know that no-one else will ever take his place in my life. I've got to try to get him back, no matter what it takes."
Jacob stretched out his arm and her hand met his. "Good enough, Sam. Good enough. Don't forget to tell him when we get there."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
The noisy clatter of two slightly inebriated people climbing the steep wooden stairs to their house alerted Jen to the fact that her 'family' was home. She got up from her seat and walked towards the door holding her forearms out in front of her, her sore and burned hands in the air. She leaned on the handle with her elbow and the door opened before Jack or Jeff had managed to locate the keyhole.
At the sight of her, Jack sobered suddenly and shoved Grogan aside as he stepped in. "Jen?" he asked. "What happened?"
"Pushed back the frontiers of science a little too boldly." she replied. "Electrical burns."
As Jack tended to the damaged skin on her hands and applied the ointment and dressings from their first-aid kit, Jeff made increasingly incoherent attempts to console her. They both knew that he couldn't take alcohol like a seasoned Colonel and she ushered him away, making him happy with the suggested role of warming up the bed for her as soon as Jack had finished. Very soon his snores from the next room indicated that he was already on the job.
"In words of one syllable, what happened?" asked Jack, knowing only too well that she was Carter's protégée.
"I figured out how to open up the device." she explained. "It's got circuitry that could be a micro-model of the Goa'uld trans-dimensional coils.."
"Ah!" said Jack, raising his hand.
"Sorry." she grinned. "I took a look at the innards and saw that it's a variant of other alien technology that we've seen - just differently engineered and developed from the outset, a bit like two inventors in different places wanting to fly, with one ending up designing an aeroplane and the other a helicopter."
"OK, I get that. But what did you do to get injured?" asked Jack.
"I reassembled it and thought that I'd hook it up to a battery that we took from someone's pack when went on the run." she continued. She was finding that she could hold her cup of hot brew ('tea' didn't quite describe the native beverage) with her fingertips well enough: just the palms of her hands were tender and now swathed in dressings. "I stripped some wire from your old electric razor... Hey! You don't use it any more, Jack. Then I taped the it to a single 1.5 volt battery and held it between my palms. I just touched the ends of the wires to the two apparent contact points on the SuSp multiplier. Well, you know that you can't even feel the current on a small battery if you hold it in your fingers. Plus we'd been told that these things multiply the current by only two or three times. Boy! What a surprise." she finished, wiggling her fingers at him. "I guess this must be the industrial model."
"Well, I can see now why Carter thinks that it'll solve the Earth's energy crisis." said Jack, leaning back.
"That's the thing, Jack." she mused. "It's probably a double-edged sword."
"What?"
"It takes energy from sub-space to boost the output all right." she continued, being careful not to lose his understanding. "But if I'm right, it's possible that instead of taking the energy evenly from the universe, it sucks it out of the deepest point of the nearest gravity well." Seeing the puzzled look, she added, "It's taking the energy from the planet's core. Now each device by itself won't do any harm. But with millions of multipliers being used over long periods of time, the effect on the stability of the planet's core will make itself felt as increased quake activity and thermal flows to the surface, affecting climate stability. If you imagine a world full of greedy energy consumers, then ultimately - whether it's fewer or more generations - they will be no better off than they are at the moment. Burning up the entire planet's resources of natural hydrocarbon fuels as fast as possible without regard to the long-term future is no better or worse than this alternative. In other words, you don't get something for nothing."
"So we could be trading for a pig in a poke, then?" Jack mused.
"Oink." she smiled back at him, and they sat in silence until he suddenly stirred and looked hard at her.
"You and Jeff are going home tomorrow night." he said. "That's what we were arranging this evening."
The shock of his words left her speechless, but not for long. He was surprised, though, by her first question, having expected to be asked for details of the method.
"Why did you say 'You and Jeff', Jack? Where are you in this equation?"
"Two reasons." he replied tersely. "First, there's only room for two in one of the crates that's being shipped through the Stargate. Second, the kind of people who run this game aren't to be trusted. I'm their guarantee of getting paid and your guarantee of actually getting there. No arguments, Jen. This is the way it goes down."
She stood up and stepped towards him, indicating that he should get up too. As he got to his feet, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, burying her head in his chest. He automatically put his arms around her shoulders and held her in response. They both recognised that the emotion was anything but sexual, and stood together like this for several minutes before pulling apart.
She knew that if and when they were reunited back on Earth, the formality of their military ranks would stand in the way of moments like this. "Thanks, Dad." she whispered. "Just don't stay away too long, OK?"
"Promise, kid."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"Is this what all the fuss is about?" said Jeff Grogan as he withdrew a wrapped bundle from the inside of his coat and placed it on the table. It made a resounding 'clunk' as it made contact with the surface. He stood back, waiting for Jen's curiosity to overcome her and didn't have long to wait as she cautiously unwrapped the brown oily cloth to reveal an odd- shaped grey metal object, while Jack looked on from his chair by the fire.
Her eyebrows rose as she turned it over in her hands, revealing faint letters and numbers embossed in an oddly-shaped recess which meant nothing to her yet. She looked up at him, noticing the hopeful expression that indicated his desire for praise and recognition for a job well done, and decided to play along. "I don't know, Jeff. Enlighten me?"
"It's a Sub-Space Multiplier Version 21." he said proudly and expectantly.
"I thought it would at least be a model 26 with the synchromesh gears." said Jack dryly, bring smiles to their faces. "How did you come by it?"
"A bundle of crates fell from a crane net and burst open. Some of the stuff went into the water but the rest was all over the quayside." explained Grogan. "When that happens, it's every man for himself if there's damaged goods lying around. They write them off as destroyed anyway. I could probably get a few more from the garbage bins tomorrow if you want."
"This is great, Jeff, but were there any smaller than this one?" asked Jen, smiling at him. "Something that'll be easier to conceal and carry when we get out of here? And was there any paperwork with them? I haven't a clue how they work yet."
"I'll look." replied Jeff, pleased with her reaction. "Look, Jen, seeing that it's your night off tonight, I was wondering if maybe we could go out to eat somewhere. My treat." But he already suspected what her answer would be, as she busied herself with a close examination of the object, oblivious to his question.
Jack saw his plight and took pity on the young man. Based on his own experiences with his former 2IC's similar obsession with new technological mysteries, he made a decision. "Tell you what, Jeff." he said. "I'd like you to come with me tonight to meet some people for a drink or three and discuss business. You up for it?"
Recognising reluctantly that it was the best offer he was going to get, Grogan grunted "Yeah, sure. Leave 'The Queen of the Gizmos' to it. Why not?"
"Don't fall up the stairs like last time." muttered Jen as they left a few moments later. She didn't even look up as the door closed, as her whole attention was focussed on the 'interestingness' of her new toy.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"Well I'm sorry about that, Dad, but for just once I'm putting *my* priorities above those of the SGC and the Tok'ra too." said Sam as she paced the deck of the Tel'tak. "Well, not just mine. Jack's got no-one he can rely on to get him out of this. We've got to do something about it."
Her father removed his gaze from the windows, away from the blurry multicoloured canvas that was the universe viewed from hyperspace. It reminded him of the abstract art paintings that he'd never understood or appreciated in his former life on Earth. But the subtle changes in his daughter's explanations were starting to set him down the path of understanding.
"And the other two, Sam?" he asked, looking straight at her. "You've stopped mentioning Hailey and Grogan these last few minutes."
"Well of course those two as well!" Sam responded testily. "'Nobody gets left behind', remember?"
"O'Neill Book of Survival Chapter One." said Jacob with a wry smile. He gazed at her until her eyes reluctantly met his. "When did he become 'Jack', Sam, and not 'Colonel O'Neill'?"
"What do you mean?" she said defensively, her face reddening. "It's just his name. I mean, we've worked closely together these last years..."
"Sam." he interrupted in a gentle voice, "Sam, tell me the truth or I'll turn this craft around and head straight back to Colorado before they discover you've gone AWOL. Don't think that what you're asking me to do doesn't give me the greatest concern about your future as well as O'Neill's."
"Honestly, it's just.." she stammered.
"Anise told me." His cold words brought her confused thoughts to a sudden halt. "I thought you two were well and truly over it when you took up with that policeman recently. I even had hopes that you were thinking about a future that didn't involve getting into these ridiculous life-threatening situations any more."
She slumped into the nearby seat, dejected and spent. He watched her sad expression for a few moments and then sat on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the control console.
"Sam?" he prompted. "I think you need to tell yourself the truth out loud as well as me."
She remained quiet for a while, but slowly her inner resolve won out. "I don't want to live without him." she murmured. "I suppose Anise told you what he said during the Za'tarc testing, about how he'd rather die than lose me." She saw his brief nod. "Well it's the same for me. Only I didn't realise it was still true until he stayed behind on Andar. And I didn't see how much he was hurting as a result of my being with someone else until then. He never let on, of course, and behaved perfectly properly at work. But when he gave us a hard time during a briefing about our motives for wanting to trade with the Andans, I thought he was doing it out of personal animosity towards me. He wasn't, and that's why they're stuck there now."
"Sam." he coaxed gently, the softened expression on his face revealing just how strong their family bond was. "Say it."
She swallowed a couple of times and looked him in the eyes. "I love him, Dad. And I know that no-one else will ever take his place in my life. I've got to try to get him back, no matter what it takes."
Jacob stretched out his arm and her hand met his. "Good enough, Sam. Good enough. Don't forget to tell him when we get there."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
The noisy clatter of two slightly inebriated people climbing the steep wooden stairs to their house alerted Jen to the fact that her 'family' was home. She got up from her seat and walked towards the door holding her forearms out in front of her, her sore and burned hands in the air. She leaned on the handle with her elbow and the door opened before Jack or Jeff had managed to locate the keyhole.
At the sight of her, Jack sobered suddenly and shoved Grogan aside as he stepped in. "Jen?" he asked. "What happened?"
"Pushed back the frontiers of science a little too boldly." she replied. "Electrical burns."
As Jack tended to the damaged skin on her hands and applied the ointment and dressings from their first-aid kit, Jeff made increasingly incoherent attempts to console her. They both knew that he couldn't take alcohol like a seasoned Colonel and she ushered him away, making him happy with the suggested role of warming up the bed for her as soon as Jack had finished. Very soon his snores from the next room indicated that he was already on the job.
"In words of one syllable, what happened?" asked Jack, knowing only too well that she was Carter's protégée.
"I figured out how to open up the device." she explained. "It's got circuitry that could be a micro-model of the Goa'uld trans-dimensional coils.."
"Ah!" said Jack, raising his hand.
"Sorry." she grinned. "I took a look at the innards and saw that it's a variant of other alien technology that we've seen - just differently engineered and developed from the outset, a bit like two inventors in different places wanting to fly, with one ending up designing an aeroplane and the other a helicopter."
"OK, I get that. But what did you do to get injured?" asked Jack.
"I reassembled it and thought that I'd hook it up to a battery that we took from someone's pack when went on the run." she continued. She was finding that she could hold her cup of hot brew ('tea' didn't quite describe the native beverage) with her fingertips well enough: just the palms of her hands were tender and now swathed in dressings. "I stripped some wire from your old electric razor... Hey! You don't use it any more, Jack. Then I taped the it to a single 1.5 volt battery and held it between my palms. I just touched the ends of the wires to the two apparent contact points on the SuSp multiplier. Well, you know that you can't even feel the current on a small battery if you hold it in your fingers. Plus we'd been told that these things multiply the current by only two or three times. Boy! What a surprise." she finished, wiggling her fingers at him. "I guess this must be the industrial model."
"Well, I can see now why Carter thinks that it'll solve the Earth's energy crisis." said Jack, leaning back.
"That's the thing, Jack." she mused. "It's probably a double-edged sword."
"What?"
"It takes energy from sub-space to boost the output all right." she continued, being careful not to lose his understanding. "But if I'm right, it's possible that instead of taking the energy evenly from the universe, it sucks it out of the deepest point of the nearest gravity well." Seeing the puzzled look, she added, "It's taking the energy from the planet's core. Now each device by itself won't do any harm. But with millions of multipliers being used over long periods of time, the effect on the stability of the planet's core will make itself felt as increased quake activity and thermal flows to the surface, affecting climate stability. If you imagine a world full of greedy energy consumers, then ultimately - whether it's fewer or more generations - they will be no better off than they are at the moment. Burning up the entire planet's resources of natural hydrocarbon fuels as fast as possible without regard to the long-term future is no better or worse than this alternative. In other words, you don't get something for nothing."
"So we could be trading for a pig in a poke, then?" Jack mused.
"Oink." she smiled back at him, and they sat in silence until he suddenly stirred and looked hard at her.
"You and Jeff are going home tomorrow night." he said. "That's what we were arranging this evening."
The shock of his words left her speechless, but not for long. He was surprised, though, by her first question, having expected to be asked for details of the method.
"Why did you say 'You and Jeff', Jack? Where are you in this equation?"
"Two reasons." he replied tersely. "First, there's only room for two in one of the crates that's being shipped through the Stargate. Second, the kind of people who run this game aren't to be trusted. I'm their guarantee of getting paid and your guarantee of actually getting there. No arguments, Jen. This is the way it goes down."
She stood up and stepped towards him, indicating that he should get up too. As he got to his feet, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, burying her head in his chest. He automatically put his arms around her shoulders and held her in response. They both recognised that the emotion was anything but sexual, and stood together like this for several minutes before pulling apart.
She knew that if and when they were reunited back on Earth, the formality of their military ranks would stand in the way of moments like this. "Thanks, Dad." she whispered. "Just don't stay away too long, OK?"
"Promise, kid."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
