Chapter 21 – Harsh Reality
'Piece of cake. Piece of cake. Piece of cake.' The words kept tumbling through Jen's mind as she replaced the last of the files into the drawers and pocketed her miniature camera. Just like all the previous times that she had scanned the contents of empty offices in the almost-deserted SHB building, this had presented hardly any challenge. And what was more, she didn't have to memorise so many files and items since their return to Andar, having acquired her miniature digital camera from her lab at the SGC before their hasty departure from Earth.
This was 'good stuff' too, she was thinking as she checked the corridor both ways before sliding out of the room and closing the door silently behind her. She had gained strong indications of where the Earth weapons lay in storage, awaiting instructors from Earth who were now indefinitely delayed by the loss of their Stargate. She'd come across a memo about that cataclysmic event as well – possible sabotage, they thought, but more likely a technical malfunction causing enormous damage. Andan physics was highly advanced in anything relating to the application of electric power, but limited by an incredible lack of engineering finesse by Earth standards.
Thinking it through as she walked back down the long corridor, she saw that their Gate had been there for generations, and had been taken for granted by all but a few curious souls, none of whom was too intent on drawing public attention to themselves under the Andans' persistently harsh forms of Government. Since the day the sub-space multipliers had come to her attention – only eight months ago, she realised, but it seemed like forever now – she had wondered how the Andans could have developed such a good empirical knowledge of the means to make them, but even today understood relatively little of the underlying science and the consequences of their use.
Jack had made her see the parallel on Earth - that generations of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs had found clever ways to burn hydrocarbon fuels to make fast, plentiful and luxurious transport, along with inefficiently-heated and cooled buildings. There too, so few had tried to come to terms with the consequences of limitless use. Couple that with a global economy that required constant growth in demand to sustain the value of money, and she now though it inevitable that the oncoming juggernauts of loss of climate stability and energy shortfall would hit them all within a generation. The Tau'ri were no cleverer nor more advanced than the Andans after all.
This train of thought had taken away her full attention from her surroundings. Her heart skipped a beat when a grey-clad figure emerged through the doors at the end of the corridor, and she recognised the guard immediately, just about the same time that his face lit up in delight as he stared back at her.
"Jen!" he cried, then suddenly looked round as he realised that talking aloud was not such a good idea. He continued in a stage whisper. "Surprise! It's good fortune for us tonight." He walked forward to where she had come to a halt, her uncertain expression clearly indicating that she was wondering what to do next.
"Karra!" Not the most original greeting, but she was still undecided. "What are you doing here?"
"You need to ask?" he smiled back at her, walking towards her with his arms outstretched. "I've waited so long to be alone with you. I know that you want this too!"
"But the other cleaners..." she started to say as he hugged her.
"I told them to finish early. Something about a security search. They're outside by now." he explained enthusiastically. "And I know a room on the top floor with a huge soft carpet. We can have a few hours together. Come, Jen, I'll show you just how much I've come to care about you!"
Noticing that she was standing stiffly in his arms and had not replied, he stepped back in puzzlement. As his hands moved down, he felt the large solid object at her waist, underneath her overalls. She suddenly pushed him away roughly, a hastily-improvised look of anger on her face.
"Get off me, Karra! What do you think you're doing, eh? You think I'm a street-woman, or worse?" she spat at him.
"Jen!" he exploded. "What are you playing at?" He looked down to the now- obvious bulge at her side and a harder expression replaced his surprise. He stepped back a few paces and reached for his holstered stun-gun with a practised fluid movement, and the weapon was pointing at her before she could even begin to reach inside her overalls for her own gun.
"Stand still!" he thundered. "Raise your arms, now! Now, I said!" But his undoing began at that instant, when anger and suspicion replaced professional behaviour. Instead of treating her like one of his many arrests of Andan citizenry, he stared at her, directing his weapon at her upper torso, where it would have the greatest effect when fired. "You whore! I believed you all these months. You've been using me! What are you doing here?"
Jen was by now experiencing an adrenaline rush that made her realise what she should have done, and more importantly, what she had to do next. "Oh, Karra, please! You're frightening me!" she pleaded. "It's just the shock of seeing you. Where did you say this room is? We can go there right now." She began to unbutton her overalls.
"I said stand still!" he shouted again, the gun wavering in his hand. "Or I'll paralyse you this moment!"
"Oh, Karra....." she started to say, but froze as she saw his fingers tightening on the firing-button on the side. She flinched, remembering only too well the effect that the Andan guns had had on the much larger figure of Jack, back when they had nearly made it through the Stargate.
At first, she thought that she had indeed been hit by a bolt of electricity. And although the scene that next took place was engraved on her memory in fine detail like a slow-motion film, in reality it passed in less than a second. At the same time as pieces of glass began to fly in from the window, Karra's body was lifted sideways and flung against the solid door of an office, hitting it so hard that it flew open, depositing him on the floor inside the room.
Unable to resist moving forward to look inside, she saw first the splash of blood across the open door, and then took in his crumpled form lying several feet away, a great hole in his side pumping a solid stream of deep red liquid onto the light tan colour of polished wooden floorboards. His staring eyes flickered once and were still. Jen gaped at the scene in abject horror: no amount of combat training had prepared her for this. She had no idea whether she stood there for brief seconds or a longer time. Then, a very loud, sharp crackling sound came from outside, and the lights went out.
It galvanised her into action, and she turned and ran down the corridor to where she remembered the stairwell to be. She descended as quickly as she could in the dark, down three floors to ground level, her heart thumping. She was expecting to be stopped by more guards at any moment, but it seemed that Karra had indeed done a good job of emptying the building for his would-be tryst. As she ran along the twisting corridors to the rear exit, she heard several loud explosions from outside, and fancied that she could also hear the sound of glass breaking as it hit the ground. But all the time, the sight of Karra's bloody demise was etched in her mind.
She burst into the darkened back yard and ran in the general direction of the side gate. She was prepared to climb over the high metal obstacle if it wouldn't open, but was surprised to find it already ajar. She burst into the street and received yet another shock as strong arms suddenly grabbed her, bringing her to a stop. Before she could instinctively perform a disabling combat manoeuvre on whoever was detaining her, Jeff's voice took away her fright.
"It's me, Jen! Be still!" he whispered. On seeing that she had obeyed, he looked across the street to where he could just make out Sam giving him the signal to cross over. He passed a back-pack to her, grabbed her arm and set off at a run, and fortunately Jen followed without hesitation. Jeff followed Sam a little way through the darkened side-streets, and then took the lead since he knew this part of town intimately. They zigzagged down many streets and alleys, the distinctive smell of the waterfront getting stronger. Eventually they came to stop by a small jetty that had been cleared of the wreckage that still littered most parts of the lower town. Jeff moved to a small motor boat and pulled back a tarpaulin, throwing his pack into the boat and stepping in after it. He indicated for Jen to follow him, which she did. Sam waited by the head of the pier, her gun drawn as she peered into the gloom of the streets they had just traversed.
At the sight of a figure making its way towards them, she took aim, only to lower the weapon as soon as she recognised her husband's uneven fast walk. She glanced across the roofline of the adjacent houses and saw an orange glow beginning to develop in the distance, occasionally bringing the silhouettes into sharp relief.
As he reached the pier, Jack motioned for her to get into the boat, and followed closely behind. As soon as he was on board, Jeff opened the throttle and they left quickly but silently. A few hundred metres from shore, the size of the fire raging in the town centre became apparent, and Jack knew that the incendiary rounds he had fired into the bookshelves and other flammable areas of the building had done their work. After viewing the scene for a few moments, he turned round and in the moonlight, saw that Jen was staring at the rifle cover he had placed on the floor. She looked up at him, an expression of loathing on her face that he had never seen before.
"You killed Karra, you bastard!" she suddenly cried. "You didn't need to! I was handling it!" She jumped across at him and landed a punch in his right eye before Jack could raise his hands in defence. She then tried hitting, kicking and kneeing him repeatedly as he fell backwards, until she was hauled off roughly by Sam. She continued to struggle, aiming to continue her assault until Sam firmly and cleanly delivered a sharp, stinging slap to the side of her face. Jen suddenly became still and slumped down, and huge sobs began to wrack her small frame. Sam sat down with her and pulled her into a hug, holding her there for minutes until Jen had calmed down. Jeff kept looking round from the wheel, but concentrated on steering their pre-planned course.
Jack sat up, nursing his swollen eye, but nodded to Sam in response to her questioning look. He proceeded to stow their gear properly in the boat and sat at the back alone, his expression unreadable in this dim moonlight. Eventually Jen went to sit down next to Jeff. Sam moved to the stern and sat beside Jack on the small board. Behind them, the small, high-powered Andan outboard motor propelled them steadily through the water, the waves beginning to slap at the hull as they moved further out to sea before turning parallel to the coast line.
Sensing her husband's dour mood, Sam reached for his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. She leaned her head against his shoulder and to her surprise, felt him shaking. Instinctively, she turned and spoke closely into his ear, just loud enough for only the two of them to know what she was saying.
"Remember, I'm with you now. As long as you want me."
He squeezed her hand briefly in response, but she knew that although it must have been bad for Hailey to have witnessed someone she knew being torn apart by a .50 calibre shell, the cumulative effect on Jack, who would have seen it equally as clearly through his telescopic sight, was taking its toll on him. She would support him in his despair, not through pity, which she knew was 'inappropriate', but because she had been realising day by day that her love and respect for him would only keep growing. However long they might last in the terrible days of guerrilla war to come.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
'Piece of cake. Piece of cake. Piece of cake.' The words kept tumbling through Jen's mind as she replaced the last of the files into the drawers and pocketed her miniature camera. Just like all the previous times that she had scanned the contents of empty offices in the almost-deserted SHB building, this had presented hardly any challenge. And what was more, she didn't have to memorise so many files and items since their return to Andar, having acquired her miniature digital camera from her lab at the SGC before their hasty departure from Earth.
This was 'good stuff' too, she was thinking as she checked the corridor both ways before sliding out of the room and closing the door silently behind her. She had gained strong indications of where the Earth weapons lay in storage, awaiting instructors from Earth who were now indefinitely delayed by the loss of their Stargate. She'd come across a memo about that cataclysmic event as well – possible sabotage, they thought, but more likely a technical malfunction causing enormous damage. Andan physics was highly advanced in anything relating to the application of electric power, but limited by an incredible lack of engineering finesse by Earth standards.
Thinking it through as she walked back down the long corridor, she saw that their Gate had been there for generations, and had been taken for granted by all but a few curious souls, none of whom was too intent on drawing public attention to themselves under the Andans' persistently harsh forms of Government. Since the day the sub-space multipliers had come to her attention – only eight months ago, she realised, but it seemed like forever now – she had wondered how the Andans could have developed such a good empirical knowledge of the means to make them, but even today understood relatively little of the underlying science and the consequences of their use.
Jack had made her see the parallel on Earth - that generations of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs had found clever ways to burn hydrocarbon fuels to make fast, plentiful and luxurious transport, along with inefficiently-heated and cooled buildings. There too, so few had tried to come to terms with the consequences of limitless use. Couple that with a global economy that required constant growth in demand to sustain the value of money, and she now though it inevitable that the oncoming juggernauts of loss of climate stability and energy shortfall would hit them all within a generation. The Tau'ri were no cleverer nor more advanced than the Andans after all.
This train of thought had taken away her full attention from her surroundings. Her heart skipped a beat when a grey-clad figure emerged through the doors at the end of the corridor, and she recognised the guard immediately, just about the same time that his face lit up in delight as he stared back at her.
"Jen!" he cried, then suddenly looked round as he realised that talking aloud was not such a good idea. He continued in a stage whisper. "Surprise! It's good fortune for us tonight." He walked forward to where she had come to a halt, her uncertain expression clearly indicating that she was wondering what to do next.
"Karra!" Not the most original greeting, but she was still undecided. "What are you doing here?"
"You need to ask?" he smiled back at her, walking towards her with his arms outstretched. "I've waited so long to be alone with you. I know that you want this too!"
"But the other cleaners..." she started to say as he hugged her.
"I told them to finish early. Something about a security search. They're outside by now." he explained enthusiastically. "And I know a room on the top floor with a huge soft carpet. We can have a few hours together. Come, Jen, I'll show you just how much I've come to care about you!"
Noticing that she was standing stiffly in his arms and had not replied, he stepped back in puzzlement. As his hands moved down, he felt the large solid object at her waist, underneath her overalls. She suddenly pushed him away roughly, a hastily-improvised look of anger on her face.
"Get off me, Karra! What do you think you're doing, eh? You think I'm a street-woman, or worse?" she spat at him.
"Jen!" he exploded. "What are you playing at?" He looked down to the now- obvious bulge at her side and a harder expression replaced his surprise. He stepped back a few paces and reached for his holstered stun-gun with a practised fluid movement, and the weapon was pointing at her before she could even begin to reach inside her overalls for her own gun.
"Stand still!" he thundered. "Raise your arms, now! Now, I said!" But his undoing began at that instant, when anger and suspicion replaced professional behaviour. Instead of treating her like one of his many arrests of Andan citizenry, he stared at her, directing his weapon at her upper torso, where it would have the greatest effect when fired. "You whore! I believed you all these months. You've been using me! What are you doing here?"
Jen was by now experiencing an adrenaline rush that made her realise what she should have done, and more importantly, what she had to do next. "Oh, Karra, please! You're frightening me!" she pleaded. "It's just the shock of seeing you. Where did you say this room is? We can go there right now." She began to unbutton her overalls.
"I said stand still!" he shouted again, the gun wavering in his hand. "Or I'll paralyse you this moment!"
"Oh, Karra....." she started to say, but froze as she saw his fingers tightening on the firing-button on the side. She flinched, remembering only too well the effect that the Andan guns had had on the much larger figure of Jack, back when they had nearly made it through the Stargate.
At first, she thought that she had indeed been hit by a bolt of electricity. And although the scene that next took place was engraved on her memory in fine detail like a slow-motion film, in reality it passed in less than a second. At the same time as pieces of glass began to fly in from the window, Karra's body was lifted sideways and flung against the solid door of an office, hitting it so hard that it flew open, depositing him on the floor inside the room.
Unable to resist moving forward to look inside, she saw first the splash of blood across the open door, and then took in his crumpled form lying several feet away, a great hole in his side pumping a solid stream of deep red liquid onto the light tan colour of polished wooden floorboards. His staring eyes flickered once and were still. Jen gaped at the scene in abject horror: no amount of combat training had prepared her for this. She had no idea whether she stood there for brief seconds or a longer time. Then, a very loud, sharp crackling sound came from outside, and the lights went out.
It galvanised her into action, and she turned and ran down the corridor to where she remembered the stairwell to be. She descended as quickly as she could in the dark, down three floors to ground level, her heart thumping. She was expecting to be stopped by more guards at any moment, but it seemed that Karra had indeed done a good job of emptying the building for his would-be tryst. As she ran along the twisting corridors to the rear exit, she heard several loud explosions from outside, and fancied that she could also hear the sound of glass breaking as it hit the ground. But all the time, the sight of Karra's bloody demise was etched in her mind.
She burst into the darkened back yard and ran in the general direction of the side gate. She was prepared to climb over the high metal obstacle if it wouldn't open, but was surprised to find it already ajar. She burst into the street and received yet another shock as strong arms suddenly grabbed her, bringing her to a stop. Before she could instinctively perform a disabling combat manoeuvre on whoever was detaining her, Jeff's voice took away her fright.
"It's me, Jen! Be still!" he whispered. On seeing that she had obeyed, he looked across the street to where he could just make out Sam giving him the signal to cross over. He passed a back-pack to her, grabbed her arm and set off at a run, and fortunately Jen followed without hesitation. Jeff followed Sam a little way through the darkened side-streets, and then took the lead since he knew this part of town intimately. They zigzagged down many streets and alleys, the distinctive smell of the waterfront getting stronger. Eventually they came to stop by a small jetty that had been cleared of the wreckage that still littered most parts of the lower town. Jeff moved to a small motor boat and pulled back a tarpaulin, throwing his pack into the boat and stepping in after it. He indicated for Jen to follow him, which she did. Sam waited by the head of the pier, her gun drawn as she peered into the gloom of the streets they had just traversed.
At the sight of a figure making its way towards them, she took aim, only to lower the weapon as soon as she recognised her husband's uneven fast walk. She glanced across the roofline of the adjacent houses and saw an orange glow beginning to develop in the distance, occasionally bringing the silhouettes into sharp relief.
As he reached the pier, Jack motioned for her to get into the boat, and followed closely behind. As soon as he was on board, Jeff opened the throttle and they left quickly but silently. A few hundred metres from shore, the size of the fire raging in the town centre became apparent, and Jack knew that the incendiary rounds he had fired into the bookshelves and other flammable areas of the building had done their work. After viewing the scene for a few moments, he turned round and in the moonlight, saw that Jen was staring at the rifle cover he had placed on the floor. She looked up at him, an expression of loathing on her face that he had never seen before.
"You killed Karra, you bastard!" she suddenly cried. "You didn't need to! I was handling it!" She jumped across at him and landed a punch in his right eye before Jack could raise his hands in defence. She then tried hitting, kicking and kneeing him repeatedly as he fell backwards, until she was hauled off roughly by Sam. She continued to struggle, aiming to continue her assault until Sam firmly and cleanly delivered a sharp, stinging slap to the side of her face. Jen suddenly became still and slumped down, and huge sobs began to wrack her small frame. Sam sat down with her and pulled her into a hug, holding her there for minutes until Jen had calmed down. Jeff kept looking round from the wheel, but concentrated on steering their pre-planned course.
Jack sat up, nursing his swollen eye, but nodded to Sam in response to her questioning look. He proceeded to stow their gear properly in the boat and sat at the back alone, his expression unreadable in this dim moonlight. Eventually Jen went to sit down next to Jeff. Sam moved to the stern and sat beside Jack on the small board. Behind them, the small, high-powered Andan outboard motor propelled them steadily through the water, the waves beginning to slap at the hull as they moved further out to sea before turning parallel to the coast line.
Sensing her husband's dour mood, Sam reached for his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. She leaned her head against his shoulder and to her surprise, felt him shaking. Instinctively, she turned and spoke closely into his ear, just loud enough for only the two of them to know what she was saying.
"Remember, I'm with you now. As long as you want me."
He squeezed her hand briefly in response, but she knew that although it must have been bad for Hailey to have witnessed someone she knew being torn apart by a .50 calibre shell, the cumulative effect on Jack, who would have seen it equally as clearly through his telescopic sight, was taking its toll on him. She would support him in his despair, not through pity, which she knew was 'inappropriate', but because she had been realising day by day that her love and respect for him would only keep growing. However long they might last in the terrible days of guerrilla war to come.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
