Chapter 15 – Flight
"Enjoying the view, I see." Both Sam and Jack were surprised by the sudden voice behind them as it broke through their silent musings.
"'Morning, Corran," Sam greeted without turning around, watching the last of the colours fade from the sky.
"Is there some kind of tradition around here that everyone wakes up at some ungodly hour of the morning to stand in the cold?" Jack quipped; his eyes reflected his pleasure at being out there nonetheless.
"No, I was about to go for a run, you coming, Sam?" Sam mulled it over for a minute before nodding.
"Sure, why not. Jack?"
"An old man like me, trying to keep up with you two young, fit super-beings? I think not."
"Old?" Corran asked, raising an eyebrow. Sure his hair was mostly grey but…old?
"Fifty-seven."
"Pushing sixty and still in the field?" Jack raised an eyebrow at his terminology.
"Corran's ex-CorSec, he's had a military kind of background."
"Right…did someone tell me that before? I can't remember."
"Probably."
"C'mon Jack, we're gonna be taking it easy anyway, I haven't been able to keep as fit over the last nine months."
"But…all those trees."
Sam grinned. "They won't bite, honest."
Jack narrowed his eyes at her. "What about the things in the trees?"
"Oh, you'll be fine. I'll protect you."
"Hey! I'm not a kid, you know," he told her, sticking his bottom lip out and crossing his arms in a mock-sulk.
"Sure you aren't. If you don't go for a run, you won't get your surprise later."
"Surprise? I'll be ready in ten," he told her, grinning.
Sam looked to the bemused Corran for confirmation, despite the fact that it had been he who had suggested it to her, through the Force.
Curious about the people who meant so much to his apprentice, he had already spoken to Daniel and Teal'c, but had been able to get little out of them other than that they positively adored Sam and a brief idea of their characters. He supposed it was his past in CorSec that made him automatically want to check people out, but he also knew that he was curious about the past that Sam never spoke of. He stood in silent contemplation at the foot of the temple for a few minutes before they both re-appeared, without the extra layers.
As always, Sam had her blaster strapped to her thigh, Lightsabers in their special holsters, and didn't miss the fact that Jack had his too. It seemed that they were rarely without weapons, very different to Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c.
They quickly warmed up and within a few moments, had set off, taking the shorter route and at a steady pace, mindful of Sam being out of practice, and Jack not having the same level of stamina.
Ten minutes into the run, he realised that he would be able to pick the pace up a little and did so, commenting to Jack, "Not bad for an 'old man'."
"Oh, you know, lots of exercise, a good diet-" Sam snorted, knowing that he tended to live on takeaways when not on the base.
"Okay, so Doc Frasier says that the sarcophagi have possibly added about another twenty years to my life expectancy, provided I don't get shot first." Sam frowned.
"I didn't think you'd been in them that much."
"I hadn't."
"You died? Again?"
"And again, and again, and again…" he told her, slightly breathlessly, bitter pain evident in his voice.
"Sarcophagi? Dying? Again?" Corran asked, shocked, and confused.
"It's a Goa'uld device that can heal almost anything, and bring people back from the dead."
"Wow."
"Yeah, but it's addictive, and it…corrupts you," Jack corrected him, a hard edge to his voice. He was becoming increasingly breathless, while Sam and Corran seemed to be relatively fine.
"Oh, sorry," was the only, weak reply that Corran could give.
"So, how many times have you saved the world now, then?" Sam asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Oh, a couple more. You'll have to ask Teal'c for the exact number…Oh For Crying Out Loud!" He cut himself off as they reached a part of the path with a hulking great tree-trunk across it. He was left standing there as Sam effortlessly jumped over it, using the Force to propel herself over.
"Welcome to the world of those without telekinesis," Corran told him with a smirk as he started to climb over the trunk, using the knots and crevasses for hand and footholds.
When they reached the other side, they found Sam stood patiently, a grin smeared across her face.
"What took you so long?" Both men glared good-naturedly at her.
"Y'know, you might want to be careful; I could always tell them about that drink on P3X-959. The one that made you take off-"
"Alright! I get the point." She glared at him as he jogged past her, a smug smile on his face.
"Or there was the Shavadai dress, the plants, what the touched virus made you do, P7Y-490, or-" His smug commentary was cut off as she caught up to him and gently pushed him sideways, right into a ventaal bush. He reappeared a few seconds later, scowling and scratching at himself.
"Hey!" Sam carried on, laughing at his indignant exclamation as Corran pulled up beside him.
"You know, you're gonna have to tell me about those when she's not looking. Force knows Iella and Mirax have given her enough dirt on me to last a lifetime." Jack smiled wickedly.
"Just ask her where her mole is," he said as he scratched absently at his torso. Corran hid a grin as they started off after her, knowing that by the time they got back to the temple, Jack would be willing to tell him everything.
"So, why did you want me to meet you back here?" Jack called across to Sam as he entered what he took to be some sort of hangar. He had been going mad, scratching at his body where the plant Sam had pushing him into had left him with an infuriating itch that had taken half an hour in the 'fresher to finally wash away. 'So much for the trees not biting'.
"Because I have something to show you," was her reply, accompanied by an impish grin.
"Oh?"
"You'll see. This way." Sam led him across the maintenance bay to another, large durasteel door in the opposite wall. Within this large wall was a smaller, average sized door, which she keyed open and walked through.
Jack's first impression was of The Peacemaker, standing on its landing struts in a marked area, with a clear path to the door. His second was of a large group of assorted smaller crafts, some of which looked remarkably like one-man fighters.
A silly little grin spread across his face.
"Sweet!" Sam grinned, but said nothing as she lead him over to one particular craft, which looked the most like an earth plane. Using her Force powers, she leapt up onto the wing, popped the canopy, and reached in to flick a few switches.
"This," she moved backwards and began to pull something off of a seat, "is an X-wing, modified to fit a second seat in the place of an astromech droid." Jumping down, she handed him an orange bundle. "And this is a flight suit." She started to pull her own suit on over her clothes and Jack followed her example, putting his holster and weapon down beside hers.
Ten minutes later and Sam had instructed him on a few key things such as how to attach his helmet seals in the unlikely event that they would have to go Extra Vehicular as well as on how to adjust the unfamiliar tags, straps and clips of the suit.
Leaping back up on the wing, she reached out a hand and gestured, pulling a set of steps towards them for Jack to clamber aboard on. Settling themselves in, running checks and alerting the Temple that it would be them who were taking off took them only another fifteen minutes. Seeing that all four engines of the plane were lit green, Sam sealed the Canopy.
"You ready to go?"
"Ready and waiting." She could hear the grin in his voice and couldn't stop herself from grinning in return, remembering her first time in an X-wing. She keyed in the repulsors, her gloved fingers flying over the controls. Hovering and engaging her rear thrusters, the X-wing glided out of the bay and through the large, open doors. Once out and over the canopy of the forest at a sufficient altitude, she keyed the sub-light engines in, and they shot off through the atmosphere, bursting out into space in no time at all. The sudden acceleration was accompanied by Jack's joyful whoop as the inertial dampeners reacted too slowly to start with.
"S-foils to attack position." She kept up a running commentary for Jack, knowing that he would be learning to fly properly in the simulators later.
"Cool!" he exclaimed on seeing their wings split into the shape that gave the X-wing its name.
"Very. Inertial Dampeners to 97. Brace yourself."
"Wh-" Jack's question was cut off as Sam abruptly rolled to the left, and killed their forward momentum. "Oh." Having the inertial Dampeners dialled down allowed them to get a feel for the movement of the ship, resulting in an exhilarating stomach-lurch when she pulled manoeuvres like that. "What else can this thing do?"
They continued to run through exercises that received several more exclamations of delight from Jack, ever the flyboy.
"I'm gonna give you control in just a minute. Take a moment to get used to the controls, but nothing big. You won't be able to fly properly yourself until you can understand it properly; after hours of practice in the simulators and learning to read basic," she warned, cutting off his protests with the facts. "You have control now."
"I have control now." They automatically slipped back into the terms that had been used during their own training all those years ago back on Earth. Jack's time getting a feel of the craft was cut short when the space ahead and to their right was suddenly filled with the shapes of a large, heavily armed cruiser chasing a smaller shuttle. Sam grimaced.
"Looks like you'll get a chance to see this ship in action," she told him as a burst of transmission came through over the comm.
"Help…Derren Smithso…amaged. Repeat, I am under atta…key systems d…" The transmission was weak, and interrupted by bursts of static, but Sam recognised the voice.
"I have control now." She grabbed the stick and changed her heading to that of the red and green flashes of the mostly one-sided battle.
"You have control now. Anything I can do?"
"Not unless you can work as well as an R2 unit. Shields to full, quad lasers armed." She hit the comm send button and spoke clearly into the transmitter. "Unidentified vessels, this is X-wing zero-zero-one-tee. Please cease all firing and shut down your engines. Refusal to comply will result in hostile actions against you. Repeat, if you do not comply, I will be forced to take hostile action." She changed the frequency of the transmitter, keeping an ear on the receiver as she sent a message to the Temple. "Yavin Control, this is X-wing zero-zero-one-tee. We have unfriendlies in the system, chasing one of our own. Current heading one-nine-four zero-three-two. Request assistance." She switched frequencies again, Jack in a thin-lipped silence in the background. "Unidentified vessel, this is your last warning." No reply. "They're targeting engines…they want him alive."
They were within range now and Sam immediately threw the X-wing into a series of jukes and jinks, turns and rolls designed to keep the turbolasers of the cruiser from hitting them. They wove in and out of the bright beams of light, Sam using the Force to guide her but still not managing to avoid the occasional impact that caused the ship to shudder as the shields held firm.
They were now only a short way from Yavin 4 and at the back of her mind, Sam registered the fact that Jack had taken over talking to whoever it was down at Yavin control.
Snap rolling to her left, a proton torpedo shooting silently past where she had been only seconds before, Sam edged the targeting reticule to lock onto the area of the cruiser that the computer had – eventually – marked as being the engines. As soon as the display flashed green, the quad lasers finally charged to full, she opened fire, strafing across the ship before shooting past it, leaving only a few lines of carbon scoring as the unusually strong shields held. Pulling a tight turn at 300k ahead of the cruiser, she aimed back towards it, carrying out evasive manoeuvres as she locked on once again and zoomed back at it again.
"Uh, Sam, aren't you going to be cutting it a little close?" Jack's nervous question went unanswered as Sam concentrated on bringing the X-wing in low, only ten or twenty metres above the hull of the ship.
Again, she strafed the craft. This time, the shots impacted along the hull, the shields unable to cope at that close proximity.
She shot past again; slewing into another turn that made their eyes dim and their blood pool in their feet. Sam pulled out of the turn just in time to see the fading orange of a fireball and a flicker as the other ship limped into hyperspace.
"No!" Sam whispered, thinking her friend dead.
"Wait, Sam…the computer seems to be tracking something…there's a flashing screen with a picture and squiggles…an escape pod?"
"I…yes." She breathed in relief, pulling the 'picture with squiggles' up on her own displays. It had been jettisoned seconds before the ship exploded, shooting off towards the moon below them. Sensors informed her that there was a single human life form aboard.
Closing the s-foils and inserting them back into the atmosphere, they reached the temple just in time to see the small atmospheric craft take off and head for where the pod had presumably landed.
Bringing them in softly, Sam expertly landed and shut the craft down, popping the canopy and climbing out, setting the helmet back down on the seat. Jack followed suit, yelping when Sam pushed him off of the wing, using the Force to steady him and make his landing softer before jumping down herself.
"Hey, Teal'c," she greeted the large man who had walked over to meet them. "Was that-?"
"It was Jedi Masters Cilghal and Luke Skywalker. They have gone to retrieve the injured person in the escape pod."
"What just happened?" Daniel asked breathlessly as he jogged up to them.
Jack quickly filled him in on what had happened in the space above, finishing it with, "That was some pretty hot flying up there."
"Thanks," Sam replied distractedly, looking out towards the horizon.
"We have him, and he's okay." The sudden crackle that preceded the voice over a wide-band transmission to the comms cut into the tense air like a Lightsaber through Ithorian butter and Sam finally relaxed.
"Friend of yours?" Jack asked somewhat jealously. Sam nodded.
"I worked with him on Nar Shadaa, he was the only other Force-sensitive of us," she replied, seemingly oblivious to his jealous streak. All of a sudden, she seemed to shake herself out of her daze and turned to them with a smile. "Lunch?" In reply, Teal'c's stomach growled.
"Indeed."
"…I was walking down the street when they jumped out of a cantina and hit me with a tranquilliser of some sort. When I came to, I was in a small room in another part of the moon." Derren told his story somewhat dazedly…Sam attributed that to the heavy dose of drugs he'd been given and the inevitable dunking in the Bacta tank. "When they came back, I stole the key card for the binders, took my Lightsaber, escaped Nar Shadaa in a stolen ship, and jumped to here. When I came out of hyperspace, they were right on my tail."
"How?" Sam interjected, knowing that they wouldn't have been able to follow him through hyperspace.
"I don't know. I guess they must have guessed where I was heading…they knew that I was a Jedi, so it would have made sense." Sam nodded slowly…something was making the hairs on the back of her neck rise, and she couldn't put her finger on what it was. "And…well, you know the rest. Thank you."
"No problem. I'm glad you're okay…just make sure you get some rest now." She told him, squeezing his shoulder briefly before leaving.
Luke had explained to her that Derren had been on the Smugglers' Moon to investigate a lead for the Jedi. It had been nothing major, nothing that would have warranted a kidnapping and trailing through the galaxy.
"What do you think?" Luke asked her, falling into step beside her.
"Something's not right."
"That's the feeling I got. What about Derren's kidnappers?"
"I think it's most likely Terrell's men; he'd have been looking for revenge against the Jedi for shutting him down, even if you couldn't get an extended sentence for him."
"Could be. How are your friends doing?"
"Daniel's absorbed in the history of the Jedi and the Republic, with a little help from Tionne. Teal'c's been with Cilghal and Tekli, trying to find a cure before he runs out of Tretonin, and Jack…Jack's been learning how to read Basic so that he can get in the simulators and learn to fly." She laughed, smiling at the silver-haired man who had spent the last three days learning to attribute new symbols to their English equivalents. Luke raised an eyebrow.
"You didn't tell him that we can reconfigure it?"
"No…he needs something to do and Basic is a vital language in this Galaxy. I learned that the hard way." Her expression darkened for a moment before she forced the dark thoughts away. "Plus Jack, when he's bored, is not nice."
"So what are you going to do once he's finished that?"
"Teach him starship mechanics." Luke raised an eyebrow. "You really shouldn't be fooled by that 'I don't have two brain cells to rub together' act."
"I'll bear that in mind." Luke replied dryly as they reached the training room and warmed up, Luke partnering Sam for a practice duel.
"Ah!" Jack cried in frustration as the insistent bleeping of the ship told him that his shields were down to 7, both right engines had failed, his R4 unit had been fried and there was a proton torpedo locked in his six and closing. He squeezed his eyes shut as it hit and his ship exploded in a brief ball of light. His displays told him that he had lasted an entire 20 minutes this time and that, yet again, it was Sam who had vaped him and not any of the computer-run fighters.
Popping the canopy on the simulator, he climbed out to meet a smugly grinning Sam and a laughing Dentralla.
"You're good," Sam told him sincerely. It had been only his third non-training flight in the sim after all.
"You're better," he replied glumly.
"Yup." Dentralla growled a comment and Sam snorted, turning and fixing a look on the large Wookie.
"What?" Jack asked, eyes narrowed.
"She was just reminding me that on my first five sim flights I lasted only five minutes. What she forget to mention was that I was flying against a fully trained member of Rogue Squadron-turned-Jedi."
"Rogue Squadron?"
"X-wing squadron formed during the Rebellion, notorious for being the best-of-the-best."
"Oh."
"So, Jack…how do you fancy having something to do?"
"I get the feeling I don't really have a choice in this."
"No, but I'm sure you'll like it."
"And 'it' would be…?"
"Starship mechanics."
"What?"
"There's a whole docking bay full of ships, all of which need maintenance and repairs. I need a helper." Dentralla yowled at her. "Another helper."
"You want me to help you with your Doohickeys?"
"Yes, Jack." She rolled her eyes, knowing what he was doing.
"Oh, come on, you know I never understand what you're on about." He didn't sound too sure about that.
"Yes, you do. After all…you do have a masters degree in Physics."
"I…how long have you known that?"
"Quite a while. Jack, I know you're not as stupid as you make yourself out to be, and I know that you were interested in engineering once."
"Exactly. Once. Years ago."
"For crying out loud Jack, I can sense what you're feeling, I know that you're not stupid, and I know that you need something to occupy your hands as much as your mind. You've been pretending to be stupid for so long now that you've convinced yourself that you are."
Jack pursed his lips, a hard look in his eyes as he stared at Sam. She stared back, and he eventually gave in and looked away. She sensed that there was some reason that he had put up his 'dumb little me' façade but that he wasn't going to talk about it any time soon. What she didn't know was that it went as far back as his childhood, where his dislike for scientists and his reasons for acting dumb had started.
A deep rumble spilled forth from Dentralla and suspected that her eyes were twinkling mischievously. He turned to Sam, who was fighting to keep a grin off of her face.
"She says you can always take over from the cleaning droids if you really want."
"Funny. C'mon Sam. You're going to have to teach me how to make one of those static-electricity machine things…you know the ones that make your hair stand on end." He started to walk towards the maintenance bay, Sam and Dentralla following after and chuckling.
Sam decided to start simple with him, teaching as she went along. What she didn't realise was just how far back she would have to go.
"Look, I haven't given any of this stuff a thought in over twenty years, so you'll have to remind me as we go along." Sam grimaced.
"Right. What about Nintendo's?"
"Oy!"
"Alright, Teal'c, buddy, we'll be here waiting for you." Jack told the large, stoic Jaffa, grasping his hand once more before moving back out of the way. Daniel and Sam gave him similar words of support, at which he bowed his head solemnly.
"Thank you, my friends," he told them weakly.
It had been three weeks, and they were out of Tretonin, no closer to finding a cure, so they had fallen back on plan B. The problem with plan B was that it meant he had to stop taking the Tretonin for long enough to get it out of his system so that Cilghal could put him in a healing trance and use the Force to try to encourage his body to reconstruct itself. If it didn't work, he would die, and the Force healing was an untried method, so they had no idea whether to expect success or not.
They had tried to find a way to get back through the Stargate, but without a fleet of their own, they had no hope, which meant that they would have to go through the New Republic. As they didn't want the entire galaxy to know about the Stargate; at least not until it was secure and under control - where slavers and smugglers wouldn't be able to get it – they'd had to restrict themselves to putting the proposal to the Inner Council. They had not even been able to schedule a meeting with them yet.
Jack had raved at length about politics, and smarmy politicians who were just trying it belittle the Jedi that they held a grudge against, but it hadn't helped.
They were now facing the possibility that this could be the last time that they spoke to their friend and it showed in the hard set to their jaws and the glimmers in their eyes.
Stepping forward, Cilghal blinked her large eyes and set a salmon-covered hand over the waxy looking face of Teal'c, slipping him into a healing trance before seating herself beside him, holding his hand and lowering her head, concentrating.
They remained like that for days…Tekli taking care of Cilghal and Teal'c, making sure the Mon Calamari's skin did not dry out and that both were kept up with fluids. There was always one of his team-members standing sentry over him, watching, and waiting for any sign of life.
Sam suddenly looked up from the power converter that she had been showing Jack, her Force sense urging her to rush to the med bay.
"What is it?"
"Teal'c."
They rushed off without a second thought, barrelling into Daniel at the door. Daniel shook his head, a pained expression on his face; the steady mechanical tone of a two-one-bee's heart monitoring system a grim punctuation to the news.
