Chapter 10 - Home Run

Jack and Jen spent the rest of the night until the early hours clearing the house of everything that they weren't taking with them, with most of the items obligingly burning up in the hearth. As they worked, extracting and bagging objects to be later dumped discreetly over the dockside, the rooms began to lose the familiar look of the 'home' they had shared these past few months and Jen could almost taste the air of melancholy. The soreness of her bandaged hands only added to the feeling.

Jeff never woke from his ale-induced coma during the whole time that they were busy, snoring regularly until Jen could stand it no more and gently pinched his nose, whispering an endearment into his ear. "Shut up, you drunken pig." Judging by the instant effect, Jack could see who would be the dominant partner in any of her future relationships and grinned. She caught his expression and smiled back at him.

'If I were ten years older, I wouldn't be calling you 'Dad'.' she mused briefly. 'Give Major Carter a run for her money.' then wondering just where that thought had come from. "Just count yourself lucky that you can hold your drink." she said, adding "Sir." for good measure, the sly grin continuing.

"Brat." he grunted back at her. "Wake him up in about half an hour. We'll be leaving to meet our contact in the warehouses before dawn." Seeing that there wasn't much more to do, he sat at the table and placed all the Andan money they had amassed during their entire stay on the planet. He sorted it into coin and notes and then counted out several piles of paper money, each of one hundred crowns value, while Jen looked on, fascinated.

"Jack," she asked after a while, "I've worked the bar long enough to know that that amount would only buy a guy a couple of nights with a high-class whore, even round here. It's not enough to pay for smuggling two people out. What else have you promised them?"

Jack knew her well enough by now to realise that he couldn't pull the wool over her eyes - neither about this, nor anything else come to that, and he didn't hesitate to answer her. "It's the down payment that makes sure the container you two will be in gets to and through the Stargate. I watch it go through and then I return here on the ferry with their man. Let's just say that I owe them a big favour." His face took on a grim expression and he kept silent for a few moments. Seeing that she wasn't going to give up, he added, "Some of the men have family in one of the Andan detention camps. I'll be going on a little trip to help them out, so to speak."

"Risk?" she questioned.

"Not small." he said quietly. Noticing that she was about to start a protest, he added, "No, Jen. I can't back out of this and I won't let you. That's the deal. End of story. I've nothing left to lose if it doesn't go according to plan." He stared hard at the table-top but wasn't really seeing it.

Suddenly she really wished that the gap was twenty years less and not just ten. Really, really wished.

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"Sam, we have to face the facts." sighed Jacob Carter. "We can't stay here forever. The Tok'ra need this ship elsewhere. It's four days journey back to Earth, and if we go now, you'll be back in time to coincide with the end of your leave. Apart from which, I'm getting more seasick as time goes by, not less."

The cloaked Tel'tak bobbed around on the ocean's surface just a few hundred metres off the island where the Andan Stargate was sited, away from the regular ferry routes. A close-up observer might have noticed a peculiar flat patch in an otherwise choppy sea, but they had kept a good distance from that eventuality.

Sam sighed. Her father's repeated argument was beginning to wear her down, but her replies were just as vehement. "No! Your agent in their Bureau reported that the army was following leads of sightings in the docks, so they can't be far off making a run for the Gate."

"But if we get a report of any activity from our agent, we can come back within a few days." Jacob protested. "If not me, then another Tok'ra. I can talk them into that much."

"In that case you can leave me in the port." she replied. "I can stake out the ferry for long enough..."

"No." he said firmly. "Look, Sam, we've already overflown and recorded all the places where we thought they might be and although they couldn't see us, they know what sound a ship like this makes at low altitude, even if we are cloaked. They'd make themselves known somehow. And we've gone back to the same locations every day so that they'd know when and where to rendezvous with us. And what have we had? Nothing. The odds are too big."

"But it could takes months more to find them if we go away again!" she came back. "And I won't accept that." She slumped back into the pilot's chair, tired of monitoring the scanners, even though they were tuned to sound an alarm any time that there was movement near the Stargate.

The silence between them reigned like the roar of a waterfall. Suddenly deflated, she offered "Tomorrow. If there's nothing tonight, we'll leave tomorrow."

Her father nodded once and closed his eyes, knowing that not a second's activity would escape her attention.

He didn't know whether he'd actually fallen asleep when the quiet beep that accompanied a flashing light next to the comms / nav panel brought him back to the present. Sam was already there.

"Unusual activity boarding the next ferry due at the island." announced a curt voice over the radio against a faint background of static, and was gone. It may have been yet another false alarm, but the half-prospect of a life worth living wouldn't see her holding back on following it up.

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Inside the wooden crate that was being hoisted onto the docks from the ferry, Jeff Grogan was sweating. The air holes didn't provide enough ventilation to take away the effects of his combined hangover and motion sickness, and Jen wasn't giving up her present position with her nose close to one of them. Four hours ago they had sneaked in at the back of a warehouse, hidden behind a large stack of sheeted cargo. The loudness of the nails being driven in to close the lid had been unsettling, and had taken his mind off his predicament for quite awhile. When he started to become aware of his discomfort again, Jen had whispered a few well-chosen epithets into his ear concerning the consequences of his actions, and that had kept him quiet for a further period. It was therefore with great relief that he welcomed the sudden jarring and loud thump as the crate was deposited on solid ground.

Close by the crate, Jack and his escort - a man similarly dressed in a somewhat shabby tunic - lounged against the railings at the water's edge.

"Time for the first transaction." said the man bluntly, staring at the crate. "Hand it over."

"Not until it goes through the Gate." replied Jack in a quiet steady voice. His eyes were casually roaming over their surroundings, and he was unsettled by the sight of a small group of security guards congregated some thirty metres away, on the other side of the roller-track that had been placed up to the Stargate. Even if he managed to draw it out, the Beretta under his tunic wouldn't hold any numbers at bay for long if it came to a fight.

They stood watching as an electric-powered crane arrived and attached a hook to the ropes around 'their' crate and the driver walked back to his cab. Simultaneously, Jack noticed the guards split up and separate, but they were suddenly all walking towards him, their vicious stun weapons to hand. His escort, thinking that his money might somehow escape his grasp, reached into Jack's side pocket and made a grab for the contents. Jack clamped his hand on the man's wrist and they started to struggle.

"Stand still!" cried the lead Andan security man, now only five metres away. "Hold your hands above your heads!" Jack obeyed, but after a few seconds of standing still, the other man made another grab for the bag in Jack's pocket, and was immediately catapulted backwards as a stream of blue- green electric fire from a guard's gun encircled his head. He never uttered a sound as he bounced off the railings and fell in a heap on the stone surface.

Jack froze as the guards encircled him, awaiting their next move. To his surprise, the man to his right screamed and doubled up, just as a succession of loud noises came from the direction of the crate. Another guard cursed and dropped his weapon, grabbing his arm.

To his utter dismay, Jack realised that his 'kids' were firing through the air holes with their nine millimetre pistols, and then there was a loud splintering sound as Grogan suddenly stood up, having forced off the crate lid in one corner. They came into view, firing at the guards and managed to hit several before their ammunition was spent.

Jack reached under his tunic for his own gun, but never even got his hand on the grip when two guards slightly further away fired at the same time, their lightning bolts both hitting him squarely in the chest. The agony of the moment before he passed out caused Jack to give out a guttural scream, his last conscious sensation being that of the railings hitting him in the small of his back. He was totally unaware of his fall and impact with the water.

Jen and Jeff clambered out of the crate, throwing down their empty guns. As the remaining guards turned their weapons towards them, Jen stopped and put up her hands, but to her surprise Jeff ran straight to the railings, looked down briefly and then suddenly jumped over and into the water, narrowly escaping another bolt of fire.

A guard ran to the railings and aimed his weapon downwards, but did not fire. Jen took the risk of stepping over to see what was happening, and observed Jeff holding the Colonel's head out of the water, swimming slowly towards some iron rungs set into the jetty wall.

The guard commander appeared to take charge then, issuing orders for her to be seized and for others to help get the other two out of the water. After a few minutes, Jack's limp body was roughly hauled up on a rope, while Jeff was left to tread water.

"Please!" cried Jen, shaking herself free to kneel down by Jack's prone form. The Guards stood back, pointing their guns at the pair.

Expecting to be dragged away at any second, Jen was astonished to find herself enveloped in white light and with a familiar stomach-churning sensation, deposited onto a hard floor, temporarily out of harm's way.

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Jeff Grogan made it to the top of the jetty steps with the aid of some very rough persuasion by the militiamen. They made him lie on the ground while they clamped his wrists together behind his back, and he cursed as booted feet impacted his ribs several times.

But from the water, he'd seen the Goa'uld ring transporters descending quickly from a Tel'tak that no-one had noticed, suddenly to disappear upwards again. The fact that his companions were nowhere to be seen when he got back to the top of the jetty made him smile. But not for long, as he too was soon rendered unconscious by a blast of electric fire.

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