Warnings: None
If Jack expected any kind of apology from Jonas regarding the kwoon, he was left wholly disappointed. At 1400 hours he reported as ordered to Banshee's bay, and then proceeded to endure the most tedious of suit-ups he'd ever experienced. First came the circuitry layer, a full-body garment that resembled a neoprene wetsuit stamped with an intricate map of electrical circuits embedded in the material. The garment fit like a glove, clearly manufactured to his unique measurements, but the technicians still paused every five minutes to test the circuits and confirm he wasn't in any discomfort. Jack appreciated their consideration- under thirty pounds of armor plating any defect would be sorely felt on a five hour mission- but the incessant stream of commentary from Hanson's corner threatened to drive Jack to murder himself.
"Protocol changed, my ass!" Jonas exclaimed. His sharp tone bounced off the walls of the prep lab, stabbing Jack's eardrums with every word. If this were a combat drop, most of the suit up process would happen in the connpod itself, a significantly smaller chamber with less room to hide in. He groaned at the prospect.
"What's wrong?" his lead technician asked, picking up on Jack's discomfort immediately. "Too tight?"
"No," Jack replied quickly. "The suit's fine, I just-"
"Don't tell me what I already know!" Jonas shouted. Jack flinched.
The technician saw, and grimaced in commiseration. "You'll get used to it, sir. The first drop with a new copilot is always the worst."
"Yeah," Jack sighed. He looked around the lab, acutely aware of the people pressed in around him. Half a dozen loitered in and around his corner, and another three attended to Jonas. After prepping himself for so long at the Academy, this many people made him uncomfortable. Half of them didn't even look like they had anything to do. They were just standing- not just standing, Jack realized when Jonas' voice rose again. Avoiding. The more people who attended to him, the less were needed for Hanson, and apparently none of them were eager to face that ordeal. Jack was also suddenly aware that the three techs assisting Jonas were largest guys in the room.
"Actually," Jack told his lead, "I have an itch." He reached for his outer thigh, close enough to his knee that to inspect the site would require almost complete removal of the suit.
"What kind of itch?" a woman asked, noting her pad eagerly.
"What?"
Another two technicians stepped forward, eyes alight with enthusiasm. "Does it feel like an insect crawling, or a tag poking you?"
Insects? Now it did. "Uh…"
"Is it a skin itch, or does it feel like the manufacture of the suit?"
Jack blinked. The lead technician continued to adjust the suit, intent on his own task. Jack leaned towards him. "Which would take require more people to assist?" he muttered.
The technician's hands stilled as the words sank in. His eyes lifted for the barest of moments. "Suit itch."
Jack nodded. "It kind of feels like something in the suit is poking-"
"All right, guys, let's reset." The lead technician turned, and Jack saw his nametape for the first time, identifying the bespectacled man as Sergeant Siler. "Anwar, Rogers, get the circuitry layer off and do another inspection for tags and splinters." The two itch women stepped forward.
"Thanks," Jack addressed to both of them. He caught Siler's eye as they moved in, and received a nod and conspiratorial wink. "I'm sorry to be such a bother…"
"It's good you spoke up," Anwar assured him. "One pilot in the Lima Shatterdome once tried to ignore a poke in her suit and the doctors eventually found a 3-inch hole in her arm. You Rangers try to be so tough sometimes you're your own saboteurs."
It took another hour to get out of the suit, inspect it, and reapply, but it was worth it to feel the tension bleed out of the room. Jonas eventually quieted, when his captive audience became engaged with other tasks, and Jack was able to actually chat with the rest of his team. The added time passed pleasantly, until the time finally came to enter the connpod.
His boots clanked heavily against the deck while he and Hanson followed the corridor towards Banshee's helm. When they reached the open hatch Jonas shoved inside first. Any moment of awe Jack might have imagined he'd get to have on his first drop was a non-starter.
Siler and Jonas' lead tech followed a few paces behind them to complete the final check list. Hanson made a beeline for the right side chair. Jack let him- he never had a preference on joint drops, and had been running solo for so long that it didn't matter where he sat, so long as he was behind a wheel. Siler turned him away from Jonas so that he could run a careful eye over Jack's armor in better light.
"I really am sorry about all the trouble earlier," Jack murmured low enough that Hanson wouldn't hear.
"I appreciate what you did back there," Siler responded. "A lot of people have learned to let Hanson run his course, due to his service record. It would have been easy for you to just keep quiet." He ducked his head to check an armor clasp under Jack's arm, then straightened once more. "How's it feel?"
"Good." Jack bent his knees briskly. "Really good."
Siler nodded. "Then it's time to hook in."
"It's too tight!" Hanson accused sharply, severing the short moment of peace. Jack glanced over, and immediately regretted it. Over by first chair, Jonas lunged deeply against the tightness of his drive suit, hoping to settle the fit into more comfortable niches. "What the hell did you guys do to it?"
Before Hanson's poor team could respond, Jack spoke up. "The drive suit is manufactured to your specifications, Hanson. There's literally nothing they could have done to it." Jonas glared at him for derailing his rant, but Jack steamrolled past it. "I'm sure it just feels that way after not wearing it for so long."
Jack ignored the glare Jonas sent his way and clicked his boots into the latches in the floor. He pulled his attention away from Hanson to give Siler a nod. The Sergeant returned the nod and moved to leave. With an irritated wave of his hand, Jonas released his own man as well. As the technicians cleared the connpod, Jonas turned his attention fully on Jack.
"All right," Jonas barked, addressing Jack for the first time since they entered the prep lab. "I don't know how you were trained at the Academy, but until I know where you're at, just follow my lead. I don't need a loose cannon going off script on me. Got it?"
Jack abandoned any attempt to assure him that the Academy curriculum hadn't changed since Hanson himself graduated, and words of simple acknowledgement lodged in his throat, barbed with sarcasm. He managed to flash asimple thumbs up in Jonas' direction. Wordlessly he activated the drive interface. The metal panels beneath his feet separated and tucked themselves away, engaging the pistons and gears that connected his movements to Banshee's systems. Mechanical arms lowered and secured to his arms and wrists, lifting him into the air. This much was familiar. Hanson's whoop of enthusiasm was not.
"Here we go!" Hanson hollered.
"Looking good, gentlemen," Tendo said over the intercom. "Ready to initiate your first ever neural bridge, O'Neill?"
"Oh, he's ready!" Hanson called back confidently, before Jack could even open his mouth to respond. Jack took a deep breath.
"Guess so," he chimed in with false enthusiasm. "Let's do this."
"On my mark!" Hanson counted down. "3… 2… 1…"
Jack closed his eyes. At first he felt nothing, but before the first inklings of disappointment sparked, the force of Hanson's presence hit him between the eyes with the force of a freight train. He grunted, struggling to gather his wits under the onslaught. He'd been briefed on the drift, spoken with pilots who had first hand experience. All of them cited a merging of consciousness between the two pilots. Memories, emotions, experiences were all shared and intermingled between the two. Jack had been concerned what he might find in Hanson's mind, but this was nothing like what he'd heard. Hanson's presence was a force unto itself, weighing Jack down and making even the labor of breathing herculean.
Jack fought for the surface, and found space to exist beside Hanson. When he opened his eyes, he remained in the connpod, with Hanson a constant pressure between his ears. Now, his disappointment rose, but he tamped it down. Carter had warned him; this was no true drift, but if her changes to Banshee did the trick, it wouldn't matter.
"Oookay," Tendo chimed in Jack's ear. "Bridge is established." His words said little, but his tone spoke volumes. Whatever his readouts showed him, it wasn't anything like the numbers they'd hoped to get. Jack could have warned them about the lousy compatibility within moments of meeting Jonas, let alone after the debacle in the kwoon. Tendo paused on the comms to converse with someone on his end; while it was likely the Marshal, Jack wondered if Carter was there too, to oversee the results of her hard work. Maybe she was the one telling Tendo to roll with it.
"Right as rain!" Hanson boomed. "Yippie-ki-yay, am I right?" His voice lanced through Jack's skull like a megaphone piped directly into his helmet. Oh, yeah, this was great.
"Five by five," Jack concurred finally, casting an eye on his readouts. Usually he could interpret his sensors in a glance, but now he struggled to make sense of them. Having two people in his brain muddled what had been second nature in the Academy. He kept the observation to himself before Hanson could point out that his Academy training was garbage anyway, compared to real experience.
"What do you say we get this show on the road?" Jack suggested. He needed to know if Banshee would respond; if she didn't, he wanted out, as soon as possible.
"I'm ready if you are," Hanson returned. "LOCCENT?"
"Proceed, gentlemen."
Jack took a deep breath, preparing himself. A phantom tug pulled at his arm. Puzzled, he glanced down and found nothing there but his own extremity.
"Your right arm, idiot," Hanson growled. "Lift it." The phantom tug had been Jonas raising his own arm, Banshee's attempt to respond echoed into Jack's drivesuit. Gritting his teeth, Jack raised his right arm, and was immediately halted by the tremendous drag. For a heartbeat, Jack thought the interface had locked, but slowly, they managed to get one arm lifted, palm out like a crossing guard. Jack quivered under the strain, and this time when he felt the pull on his left arm, he immediately followed its suggestion and repeated the motion on both arms were up and level at chest height. Clenching his fists, he and Hanson curled both arms into a boxing stance.
"Well done, Banshee!" Tendo crowed. "Looking good!"
Jack grunted under his breath. "If you say so…"
"Lighten up, Jackie-boy! Once the adrenaline gets going in battle it'll be like a hot knife through butter!" Hanson's assurance was countered by his discernable shortness of breath, proof that he was not unaffected by the exertion. "Don't know about you, but I feel like a walk in the park."
Jack felt Banshee lurch when their convoy rolled into motion towards the open bay doors. Gritting his teeth, he settled in for the ordeal ahead. He was in, whether he liked it or not.