Our Legacy - Chapter 6
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters nor profit from their use - I merely toy with them for my own amusement.
Summary: A gate accident strands Jack and Sam in the year 2034, when the SGC is under the command of General Samantha Carter. But all is not as it seems, and to get home, they first need to save the world.
"So she's in London." Jake concluded, after the five had sat in silence reading the rescue plan for twenty minutes. "I suppose that's a relief."
"You have no idea." Beth said with feeling. "Mom never told me where she was going to be held. All this time I've been imagining she was being kept in some hellhole in a poverty-stricken, lawless country."
Jack privately thought that if General Carter was being secretly held by an evil organisation, it was unlikely her captors would treat her better just because she was in the UK rather than Iraq or Syria or some-such similar place, but elected to keep that thought to himself. He stood, stretching the kinks out of his muscles, and faced the other four.
"So, I assume it goes without saying that I'll be in command of the rescue mission."
Of the four of them, only Carter seemed to accept this statement without question. Beth raised her eyebrows at him. "No offense, Dad, but you're thirty-four years out of date. I think Jake should lead."
"What? But he's a kid. He doesn't even shave yet." Serena argued.
"Hey! I do too shave, thank you very much Serena!" Jake protested.
"Quiet." Jack ordered in his best Commanding Officer voice, and they all immediately fell silent and looked at him attentively. He smirked. "You just proved my point. None of you have any leadership experience, let alone any experience in this sort of behind-enemy-lines rescue mission. This is my show – I'm in command. I will be relying on you guys for advice on any freaky future-related crap, though."
"You mean freaky, future-related crap like how the security systems in the T.U.M's London office building work?" Beth asked sarcastically.
"Exactly." Jack said. "But you give me the information, and I call the shots. Are we clear?"
This time the three youngsters all mumbled agreement.
"Better." He said. "Now, it says in here that we're supposed to dress as security guards. Do we have uniforms around here anywhere?"
"In that closet." Beth answered. "Along with security passes and the standard equipment."
"Weapons?"
"You can't carry guns in England." Sam said, then looked uncertainly at the others. "At least, I assume that's still the case …"
Beth nodded. "I went through the gear Mom has left for us when we first got here. There are radios, zip ties, and pepper spray. No guns, no knives … no other weapons."
"Which is fine, because this rescue plan doesn't call for any of those." Serena said, gesturing to her computer screen. "You won't need to shoot anyone, it's all covert."
"I'd still feel a lot better if we were prepared for trouble." Jack said unhappily. "We are walking right into the lion's den, after all."
"We have to trust that my future self knows what she's doing." Sam said. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and she shrugged. "She's done this before; if we needed weapons I'm sure she would have given them to us. And for all we know they might have the means to detect any offensive weaponry, in which case it could give us away the moment we set foot in the building."
Jack growled in his throat in reluctant agreement. "Fine. No weapons. But I want you two to do a little self-defence training before we go anywhere." He said, pointing at Beth and Serena.
They both rolled their eyes at him.
"Please, you don't think our parents haven't been drilling us on self-defence since before we could walk?" Serena asked scathingly. "I'd bet you fifty creds that I could deck you in a fair fight."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You think you could take me?"
"She probably could, Dad. She's got scary moves." Jake said with an apprehensive look at the tall, dark haired young woman, who had a challenging look in her eye.
"And what about you?" Jack asked, looking at his future-daughter.
"I can fight." Beth answered. "Dad, bear in mind that you and Mom have known this day was coming for our entire lives. You've already spent a couple of decades preparing us for it, even if we didn't know it. We're ready."
"She's got a point." Sam said quietly, and he turned to meet her eye. "We would have prepared them for it, wouldn't we?"
Jack couldn't help the warm tingle that ran through him at her use of the word 'we'. He really liked the thought that one day they would be a 'we'.
"Still, we'll do a few sparring rounds later on. Just think of it as a warm up for the real thing."
The assembled group accepted this without complaint.
"What time is it now in London?" Jack asked.
Sam looked at her watch. "Almost 1800 hours."
"Ok, the plan calls for us to go just after midnight. Let's go over the plan in detail, and then we'll have a few hours to rest before we go."
Jack lay awake on a mattress, staring at the ceiling and listening to the others breathe.
It was a good plan. It smacked of Carter, and her multi-track mind brilliance, but he liked to think it had his own fingerprints in it too.
The General had prepared another pair of Asgard transporter teleports, the first to get them all to London, and the second to get them back to the safe-house again after they'd located the General. This time the transports would be keyed to some subcutaneous transmitters, which they had had to inject into their upper-arms before bunking down for a couple of hours' rest. The plan was to find the General, inject a transmitter into her, and then Beth would beam the six of them out.
That was only half of it though. He and Jake would take care of finding the General, but Carter and Beth had another job to do. They would get into the building's server room, and download files that implicated the Tau'ri Unification Movement. General Carter would then present the data as evidence alongside her own testimony as a former prisoner, to the leadership of the I.O.A., hopefully spurring an investigation that would tear down the T.U.M. entirely.
Dr Serena Jackson, to his surprise, had been given the pivotal role in the rescue plan. Apparently Daniel had raised a very impressive and talented young woman, who could indeed deck him in a fair fight, much to his earlier chagrin.
He checked his watch again, and sat up. Sam was sleeping next to him on the mattress, and he touched her shoulder.
"Carter. Time to wake up." She was sleeping only lightly, and woke at once, blinking before sitting up next to him and stretching with an arch of her back that he couldn't help but watch.
He rose and crossed to the other mattress where Beth and Serena slept, and woke them both with a gentle shake of their shoulders. As he approached the couch Jake waved him off, already awake.
The five silently went about preparing for the mission. He, Carter, Beth and Jake dressed in identical security uniforms, crisp white shirts and black slacks, with close-fitting black jackets. Serena, on the hand, stood out starkly, shivering in a navy mini dress that made his paternal instincts – well honed in his years of knowing a teenage Cassandra – squirm with the urge to tell her to put on something more decent. She carried a large purse, which he knew contained her own security uniform.
Beth had a laptop bag over her shoulder, and from it pulled the tablet device that he knew would activate the first site-to-site transport.
"Everyone ready?" He asked. The others nodded. "You've got the injector?" He asked Jake directly.
"Right here." Jake pulled it from a pocket sewn into his standard-issue utility belt, and then tucked it safely back.
He looked around the group one last time, meeting each of their eyes to check they were good to go. He lingered on Sam last, seeing a familiar pre-mission steel in her eyes and feeling immensely glad that she was here to lead the other half of their two-pronged infiltration. She gave him a steady look and a nod. "We're all ready, sir."
He took a deep breath, fingers itching for the absence of his P-90, and nodded to Beth.
"Go."
A bright flash of light later, they found themselves in a narrow alley in central London. The sky was a uniform inky black, but streetlights from the road at the end of the alley cast an orange-yellow glow to the night.
Jack tapped the communicator in his ear, causing the others to wince at the resulting thumping noise, and he nodded to Serena. "Whenever you're ready, Dr Jackson."
The young woman gave them a sloppy salute and a grin, and took a few steps away from them. She messed up her hair a little, quickly applied some prosthetic make-up to her forehead at the hairline, and then closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then she gave them a thumbs-up, and took off in an awkward run in her high heels, disappearing around the corner.
The four were left with just their communicators to listen to Serena's progress.
After a moment they heard her burst breathlessly through the front doors of the T.U.M.'s office building, swearing in French.
"Monsieur, monsieurs, help, s'il vous plait. Please help me." She said in a flawless French accent, sounding as though she was crying.
They heard male voices muttering and then footsteps.
"What's the matter, sweetheart?" A male voice asked.
"Please monsieur, they mugged me! They took my creds, they took my ID, mon Dieu, they took my phone! What am I to do? Please monsieur … oh, my head…"
"Woah, honey, why don't you sit down for a minute?"
"Maybe if I could just have a glass of water…" She sounded faint, and listless.
"Here, Joe, maybe you should get the first aid kit, she's bleeding."
"Yeah, I'll just – woah!" There was a scuffling sound.
"Easy there, sweetheart, let's get you sat down and we'll have a look at that cut on your head, and call the police."
"Thank you, merci, thank you."
There were footsteps, heavy men's feet punctuated by the staccato of Serena's stiletto heels, and doors opening and closing.
"There, you just sit down here. Joe, get the first aid kit."
"You're doing great Serena, now get them to make some coffee, and slip in the sedative." Jack instructed her quietly and clearly, knowing she'd hear him in her in-ear communicator.
"You're so kind, monsieurs. Thank you so much, I don't know what I'd have done …"
"You're more than welcome, honey." Some footsteps approaching.
"Now let's have a look at that cut –"
"AH!" A man cried out in pain, and there was the sudden sound of a violent scuffle. Jack and Sam tensed, Sam looking at him with a wide-eyed, panicked expression. He shook his head and closed his fist in the wait signal, listening intently. "Serena? Do you need backup?"
More male grunts, heavy sounds of bodies dropping, and then silence. "No thanks, Jack, I'm good." Serena's voice came over the comm line a moment later.
The four in the alley breathed sighs of relief.
"What the hell just happened?" Jack asked.
"I knocked them out. Give me a minute to upload Sam's virus to the security system."
"You were supposed to drug them." Jack said irritably.
"This way was easier." Serena answered.
"Do we need to go over the chain of command again?"
"Jack, shut up, I'm concentrating."
He bit back a sharp retort and raised his eyes heavenwards, praying for patience. He met Carter eyes and mouthed 'Jacksons' with an exasperated smile, and she grinned back sympathetically.
A long few moments later, there was the sound of clothing rustling, and Serena's voice came back over the comms.
"Ok, you're clear, come in to the security control room."
"Copy." Jack acknowledged, and signalled for the others to fall in behind him, knowing Carter would take up the rear behind Beth and Jake, as they'd planned. He rounded the corner, and after peeking around the corner to scope out the lobby, he entered the building. He hung a left towards the end of the lobby, and slipped into the unlocked security control room, the others on his tail.
Serena was just doing up the top button of her security officer's uniform.
"They'll be out for about six hours, I drugged them after they went down." She said, nodding a head at the men propped up against the wall, gagged, wrists and ankles bound with zip ties.
"Nice." Jack said appreciatively.
Sam manoeuvred around him to make a beeline for the security desk, clicking quickly through several screens. "General Carter's virus worked, the alarms are offline, and the security cameras are looping the last hour rather than recording anything new … and … yes, the lasers are offline in the server room. We're good to go."
"Ok. Everyone keep your eyes and ears open, comms on at all times, and avoid contact with any other security personnel on site. Serena, you stay here and watch our backs." He said, indicating the screens.
"Move out."