With the ships conducting repairs, time off was being taken planet-side in rotating shifts, and getting fresh food brought in from the planet below, there were reports to be read and written. Jack’s head buzzed from the decompression.
“Sir? Do you have a minute?”
He looked up from his desk.
“Come in, Major,” Jack invited Harper, leaning back from the computer. The major stood a little nervously in front of Jack.
“Sir, I…. when we get home… I’m going to ask Cassandra to marry me.”
Jack was glad he was sitting. What? He must have said it out loud.
“We’ve been dating for a few months,” Harper told him, cocking his head to one side. “I take it no one told you.”
“Nooo,” Jack confirmed, leaning back and lacing his fingers across his belly. “No one seems to be telling me much, lately. Does Nate… Jonathan know about this?”
“Yes, sir; he’s the one who introduced us.”
Jack groaned and breathed into his hands for a moment.
“I wasn’t sure how your relationship with her worked, sir, so I wanted to let you know that I’m in love with her. If she’ll have me, I want to spend my life with her.”
Lowering his hands, Jack studied him over the top of his reading glasses. “Are you asking my permission?” he asked. He took his glasses off; he was getting a headache again.
Harper shook his head and grinned. “No, sir, just giving you warning so that you’ll have time to get used to the idea. Dad.”
“Out,” Jack ordered, pointing to the door. He found a couple of Tylenol, put a cold pack to his face, and called Jonathan in.
“Go beat up Harper,” he told his clone. Jonathan shrugged, nodded, and left.
During the third month, a ha’tak exploded close to the ground and decimated a largely populated planet. Slave labor was mining naquadah, and the ore magnified the explosion. A chunk of the planet was literally blown away.
With the planet dying, as many as possible of the inhabitants were brought up to the ships and transported to another habitable planet in the same system. Since nearby planets were in the habitable zone, which experience had shown was a good indication that transplanting life from one planet to another should be sustainable, animals and plants were also transported and abruptly put down, left to quickly adapt, or not.
While engineers from the ships helped locals to quickly build temporary housing, rumor had it that Baal was nearby, sending the rest of the ships on a snake hunt. Jack, Jonathan, and Ninurta were on the bridge, studying the star charts of the area. They were nose to nose with a suspicious spot in an asteroid belt just beyond the tenth planet in the large, twelve-planet system. Their spidey-senses told them something was in there, but the ship’s sensors weren’t picking it up.
“Sirs! He’s on the run!” Heads popped up and focused on the main screen. A ha’tak was making a break for it, up and over, instead of across the lines.
“Get after him!” Markham shouted, belatedly looking back at Jack.
“And double-time it!” Jack added, giving the colonel a nod.
Ships came to screeching halts and flipped around in space to chase after the mothership. The ha’tak abruptly disappeared into a slipstream and loud curses echoed through the bridge of the Prometheus.
An image hit Jack in the center of his chest. “Home,” he whispered, staring in horror at the screen. “About face!” he yelled. “Get us home, NOW! Move it, move it!”
Markham stood ramrod straight in the center of the bridge, barking orders the second he heard Jack’s “Home”. The word was sent to the entire fleet and everyone set their coordinates.
“General, there’s a Gate here!” Davis shouted, pointing at the chart.
Jack stalked off the bridge and ran to the hanger bay. He and Teal’c jumped into a 302 and flew the second the Prometheus slowed enough to let them out. Ignoring the startled natives, Jack ran to the Gate while Teal’c dialed.
“Open the door NOW!” Jack shouted the moment the Gate was established. He heard a startled squeak from Walter and they ran in the second the event horizon was established, coming out in the Gate room.
“DefCon One! Get everything we have into the air!” Jack shouted as he ran through the door and down the hall.
Bells and whistles started to blow and people ran to their posts. Jack ran up to the command room and yanked on the phone while Walter sent out the signal to rally the 302s. Jack called Hammond and confirmed the codes. Hammond put the world on alert. Baal was a few hours away.
Jack called the Heaven’s Bow and had them put him and Teal’c down at HomeSec. The bells and whistles were going off at his office, too, as they ran through the corridors, startling everyone who thought he was off-world.
Hammond met Jack while Teal’c went to take command of the small fighter squadron that was kept on base.
“The Joint Chiefs are putting the military on alert and letting our allies know what’s going on,” he reported. “What is going on?”
“Baal slipped us the finger,” Jack said as they hurried down the hall. “He got into subspace before we could fire a shot. He’s headed here. T and I jumped in through a Gate, the rest of the fleet is on the way.”
All the Yards had been busy while they were away, and many new 302s began to buzz angrily in the air all over the planet. Jack’s only fear was that the pilots were untried. He met Teal’c outside and hurried to a waiting 302. They had to meet Baal long before he got to the planet.
Jack rounded up the troops the moment he hit air. Sam and Col. Jeffries showed up on his wing.
Baal came out of subspace near Saturn. Much to his shock, Tau’ri were there to meet him. The weapons of the 302s were hardly a match for a ha’tak, but the 303s were only minutes behind Baal so they kept him busy, stalling him while they waited for the rest of the fleet. Death gliders were picked off as they were targeted. 303s appeared and gliders immediately exited the hanger bays to join the games. The alien ally ships had stayed behind to deal with the remainder of Baal’s fleet.
The shields around Baal’s ship had been strengthened; the 303s were unable to get a shot through them.
“Playing with Anubis’ toys?” Sam called out over the radio.
“Looks like it,” Jack responded. His pleasure in her voice would have to wait.
They dodged in and out of death glider fire, Jack at the wheel while Teal’c took care of the firepower. He could sense Baal on the ha’tak; Baal was angry, shocked, and yet worried. Never had so many non-Goa’uld taken out Goa’uld ships before. Their 302 shuddered.
“O’Neill!” Teal’c yelled.
“Yeah, T, sorry,” Jack responded. No mental multi-tasking in the middle of a space battle…
“T, there has to be some place on that ship that is vulnerable,” Jack said, thinking out loud. “Nothing is perfect.” They dodged another blast from the ship. “Sam!” Jack called out. “How are those weapons able to get out if the shields let nothing in? Wouldn’t they phase out along the inside of the shields like ours do on the outside?”
“Good question,” she responded. “Give me a minute.”
They each took out several more death gliders as Sam thought about Jack’s ruminations.
“So, the way our weapons work is that the ship’s computer automatically tracks the weapon,” Sam said, doing her own thinking out loud. “When we lock onto a target, the computer makes note of it and fluctuates the field which allows…. target their gun muzzles!”
Jack immediately changed course direction and placed them in direct line with one of the ha’tak’s weapons. He took weapons control and fired the moment he saw a spark of energy. He spun them away. When he turned them around, that section of shield was down and the surrounding ship’s surface was crackling with energy.
The comm channels were loud with shouts from the other pilots. All the sharp-shooters took center stage and targeted the gun muzzles on the enemy. The mothership tried to escape the moment Baal realized what the insane Tau’ri were doing. While 303s kept him corralled, several more sections of shield went down and the remaining 302s began targeting the ship itself until an entire corner began to glow. The Heaven’s Bow got in close and tossed some kind of beam at the ship, latching on to it. Very slowly, the Anunnaki ship pulled away. Baal’s ship followed.
“It’s going to blow!” Markham called out over the pilot channel. “Everyone get out of the way. Far out of the way!”
302s scattered like startled mice, heading out into space in all 360 degree directions from Baal’s ship. The Prometheus gave the ha’tak one more blast through a downed shield section and the 303s also scattered.
Just beyond Pluto and the giant Oort Cloud, Heaven’s Bow released their tow beam, put their engines into over-drive, and disappeared. The mothership blew up with a star-sized explosion, sending a burst of shock waves in all directions. Asteroids were disintegrated, larger rocks turned into rubble that would rain down on planets and moons for quite some time to come.
Shouts of joy were heard on the headsets.
“Drinks are on me!” Jack announced.
Someone started singing We Are the Champions and by the time they returned to Earth even Teal’c was rumbling badly into the radio.
302s landed in the now legendary field where it all started. Pilots jumped out and fell on their faces as they kissed the snow covered ground. It wasn’t too long until local families showed up to find their heroes. Jack caught Sam in his arms and swung her around. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he held her as they kissed long and hard.
Helicopters showed up, cameramen hanging out.
“Someone get those peeping toms out of my airspace!” Jack ordered over his radio. He went back to kissing his wife. A short time later the rest of his family appeared front of him. Jack caught the children, squeezing them hard. He could not believe how big Olivia had grown in three short months. He kissed the crying, scared baby and handed her to Sam. He yanked Daniel into his arms and kissed him. They slipped on the snow and Jack fell on top of him. The children laughed as they continued kissing.
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