Charlie's hand was on his wife's back as the couple made their way to Sam and Jack. "We saw the flurry of activity. Something wrong?"
Jack looked at Sam, her expression lined and exhausted. Going back to the Air Force after a six-year hiatus had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Jack's heart clenched at the toll it was taking on her. As bored as she'd been as an adjunct physics professor and part-time scientific consultant at Cheyenne Mountain, going fully Air Force as the commander of the SGC had been too far in the other direction.
Then again, evaluating the effect of her so-called success here in the White House after their children went missing for a second time might not have been the right time to decide if her job was exacting a heavier price from her than they'd bargained for.
Sam looked around the ballroom before she leaned in, her voice low. "I had a few airmen watching Grace's car, just to make sure they got to the White House safely."
Charlie's brow furrowed, and Jack could read the disapproval in his oldest son's eyes. "Sam..."
She ignored her stepson's quiet protest. Not that it hadn't been a topic of conversation that reared its head every so often. Ever since Jacob and Grace had been kidnapped, both Jack and Sam had to fight the urge to hold them close until the end of time. Having been kidnapped by the Asgard himself, it was often Charlie who reminded the Air Force officers to give their kids a little space to be normal. Whatever that was.
He was careful not to press that wound too often, but Jack often capitulated whenever Charlie voiced his opinion. A lingering effect of believing that it had been Charlie, not an Asgard clone, who had shot himself with Jack's gun.
Sam played with the cup of punch Jack had given her a few minutes earlier. "It seems they've disappeared."
Cassandra's eyes fell closed in silent resignation. "Not again."
Charlie's grip on his wife tightened. Not an unreasonable response given how Cassandra had been attacked herself on that occasion. "Who took them this time?"
Jack caught Daniel's questioning eye from across the room. Damn, Jack was gonna have to break the news to the archaeologist that Nicole had apparently been in the car with Jacob and Grace when it vanished.
He felt a little sick at the thought.
Sam's voice brought Jack back to the present. "...unclear. What we know for sure is that there was some kind of pulse, the car lurched forward, then back again. The pulse knocked out the engines of cars in a thirty-foot radius, and while everyone was distracted with their own situations, the car vanished without a trace."
Jack cleared his throat. "We're trying not to panic, since we don't really know what's going on, but we've informed the President. She's got to decide how best to proceed."
Sam shivered beside him, like she wasn't a big fan of letting the president decide if the O'Neills could step in and help their kids.
"Hold on, let me get this straight." Charlie's face contorted while he faced Jack. "They disappeared. Literally. Like Asgard beam whoosh?"
Jack grimaced as he looked at his eldest son, more familiar than maybe any of his children with Asgard beaming technology. It was the reason it had taken almost twenty years for Charlie to find his way back home after being abducted for Asgard experiments. "First of all, an Asgard beam doesn't whoosh. Secondly, what they described sounds like it came from the car itself, not from some external force. Since Jake was doing some repairs on Grace's car, we think maybe he futzed with something he shouldn't have.
Despite the graveness of the situation, Jack had to chuckle to himself. It was just like Carter's kid to accidentally transport himself halfway across the galaxy or hundreds of years back in time just because he installed the fuel injector upside-down or some nonsense like that.
"What's so funny?"
From the look on Sam's face, she wasn't nearly as amused as he was by the situation.
He pulled her close. "I'm not trying to be obnoxious, honest. I just thought it was a little funny that we're living Back to the Future right now."
The color drained from Sam's face. "Oh, God. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope they're stranded in a country on Earth or even on a hostile alien planet right now. Anything other than time traveling. Jacob's so impulsive, who knows what he'd do to the time-space continuum."
Jack opened his mouth to comfort his wife as Daniel walked up, his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo. "Hey, guys. You haven't seen Nicole by any chance, have you?"
Sam turned a sick smile up to him, and Daniel stiffened. "What?"
Jack clapped the man on the shoulder with a grim smile. "Go find Vala, Danny. Bring a couple stiff drinks. You're gonna need them."
"I understand your concern, General Carter, but I'm not canceling this event. Not in front of all these reporters."
Jack stiffened. "Our daughter is a reporter, Madam President. Believe us, we know the value of a free press, but she's gone missing."
President Sandra Lincoln turned from her place by the large bank of windows behind the desk. Her floor length red gown had an almost built-in cape draped over the shoulders which contrasted beautifully against her dark skin. She crossed her arms over the beaded bodice. "Jack. Sam. I understand your worry. Really, I do. It's not lost on me that there's a disaster that interrupts things every two or three times you come to the White House. That alone would be enough to make me jittery."
Jack tensed. "We're not jittery, ma'am. There's good reason to be concerned."
She acquiesced his point. "Fair enough. I just think we're asking for pandemonium if three of the four original members of SG-1 go missing from this event tonight. And frankly, it sounds like there's nothing you can do to help them."
There was a long pause before Sam finally admitted the point with a half-nod in the woman's direction. "At the moment, we're still trying to figure out what happened."
The president offered them an apologetic smile. "I know you might be some of the best people to figure this out, but I need you here right now. I'll try to make it as quick as I can, but that's my decision."
"Madam President, with all due respect—" The look in Sam's eyes was so wildly ferocious, Jack almost expected that she was going to quit her job right then and there.
The president straightened, a subtle reminder of just who gave the orders in this room. "Be very careful with what you're about to say, General."
Sam sighed, shifting her arm again. Jack wondered if she realized she'd been flexing the arm which had been injured fifteen years ago. Maybe it was a subconscious thing. "We've seen a lot of people aspire to and come through this office, Jack and I. Some did the job as well as it could be done."
Henry Hayes.
"Others were more interested in what this office could do for them than what they could do for the people."
Kinsey.
"Some were so incompetent that they didn't seem to see how many people were pulling their strings."
Brandon Marks.
If the president in front of Sam had been Brandon Marks, she probably would have quit her job. Jack wouldn't have blamed her. The politician had been inadvertently responsible for Jack's heart attack a little over twenty years ago, and he'd been about to reveal the Stargate program to the world when Sam was shot and the kids were taken.
President Marks, like Senator Kinsey before him, had been arrogant and incompetent. A deadly combination. Though Jack didn't particularly care for this president's politics, at least she had a brain and wasn't afraid to use it. That alone made her worth respecting more than the other two.
"Your point?" Sandra Lincoln's green eyes were narrow. Serious.
"We tried to consult every single one of them. History will one day tell who was wise and who was foolish. It's time you think about your legacy, Madam President. I don't pretend that Jack and I have always made the best choices, but I'm confident that history will bear us out. Will show we tried to be good people. Did our best with the information we had at our disposal."
Interesting to watch the blue and green eyes at war with one another. Not enemies, necessarily, but certainly at odds. "And you think that history will automatically side against me if I don't do everything you suggest?"
Sam pasted on a smile that seemed to say the opposite of her usual cheery manner. "Of course not, but before you discredit our contribution, you might want to take another look at our track record."
President Lincoln raised an eyebrow. "That you always come through in the end, or that you've defeated every enemy that came your way?"
"I would never say that."
There was something dangerous about the way emotion played on Sam's lips and flashed in her eyes. Despite being married to the woman for twenty years and having worked with her before that, he wasn't sure he'd ever seen that look on her face. Apparently, when he'd been frozen in Antarctica, she'd had a chat with Elizabeth Weir and asked that the civilian commander of the SGC reconsider her decision not to let SG-1 contact the Asgard on Jack's behalf.
According to Dr. Weir, she'd used similar verbiage then. She hadn't said it then, but the look in Elizabeth's eye had suggested she didn't look forward to some theoretical day when she was squaring off against the astrophysicist.
Funny, Jack didn't often think of his wife as intimidating. Brilliant? Beautiful? Sure. But he had to admit it made sense for people to fear fighting her. Next to Teal'c and Bra'tac, she was the first person he wanted watching his six in a battle.
The president eyed Jack. "I know you lost your son, Jack. Getting him back twenty years later can only erase so much of that trauma and pain. Having your kids kidnapped and getting shot in the White House fifteen years ago couldn't have been any easier. I'm asking that you trust me. Just a little longer. I'll have you out by ten at the latest."
Jack's eyes drifted to the clock on the fireplace mantle. "That's in two hours."
She had the decency to look apologetic. "Unless you can tell me exactly how only the two of you can solve this problem, that's the best I can do. Until then, I suggest you try to mingle."
Sam opened her mouth again, but Jack put a finger on her pulse point to stop her. "Thank you, Madam President."
There was an alert on the phone on the woman's desk. President Sandra Lincoln turned her attention to the phone, her green eyes sober as another earth shattering crisis undoubtedly came her way. "I can trust you'll keep Dr. Jackson and Ms. Mal Doran apprised?"
Sam's shoulder sagged under the weight of her worry. "Of course."
Jack met his wife's eye as he opened the door out of the Oval Office for her. He'd only seen her get this defeated once in his life, and that had been about the time Jack's broken leg and ribs had kept him stuck in a frozen tundra with a stargate that refused to do anything more than light up and rumble.
Given the fact that they'd both nearly died on that mission, he hoped she was misreading the situation.
Of course, she was rarely wrong. So, there was that.