No Hero, Am I
The retort of alien gunfire echoed off the high valley walls around her, growing instead of diminishing with every subsequent rebound. It was nothing new to her, the crawling sensation of unease and fear that reminded her the alien warriors were behind her and would soon come up on her exposed back; neither was the stench of the thick alien mud, the sight of the swaying purple alien vegetation, the reassuring metallic feel of the DHD under her fingertips. As contradictory as it sounded, she was used to this unknown and unsettling foreign landscape.
So why she froze now, when speed was of the utmost importance and her life endangered by any hesitation on the part of her quick fingers, was a question she herself could not have answered.
Move, she thought desperately at her body upon realizing it had ceased to dial Earth’s address. Move, damn you! It was one of the first lessons you were taught in boot camp: never expose your flank, your rear, your weakness to the enemy. Face death head on.
Her body remained stubbornly still.
The mind that had begun to glimpse the vast expanse of the future, the intelligence that had brought a small world into the galactic playing field and helped to keep it there, raced. On her fourth review of the last five minutes, Carter had to conclude that there was nothing that could have caused her body’s unexpected and unexplainable freeze. Over the sudden and horrible silence that seemed to fill her mind, the blasts got closer.
It was then that she noticed her hands were trembling.
Cuts and scrapes covered her quivering fingers like so much trash in a football stadium; smears of mud painted the bruised skin in various stages of drying. Her ragged fingernails clung to her calloused fingers, the cuticles bleeding slowly from where she had been slashed by the alien thorn bushes while running through the weeping willows that tried to snag her by her ankles and eat her. Slowly, and only with the greatest exertion of her will, her hands turned to face the green alien sky palms up, scarred and burned and still shaking.
Move. Move, please, move! But her eyes remained locked on the unnerving sight of her life lines… both of which had been interrupted by a single vicious slash.
She swallowed, feeling her very blood seem to throb in agony as she remembered the desperate escape, the wild adrenaline that had carried her through the subsequent fights, and the gleam of the pale yellow alien sun off the alien’s saber as it swung down to kill her.
Close, so very close; had it not been for her instinctive and instant response, her head would be lying on the cobblestones where it had fallen from her shoulders. Another inch, another second, and she would have been dead. But her body had moved on its own, just as now it refused to listen, and her hands had risen up to grasp the steel blade even as it hurtled towards her unprotected neck.
That sharp, intense pain had been fortunately forgotten once she had disarmed and killed the guard, but it returned with a vengeance, perhaps brought on by the oddly detached sensation of seeing white bone through the open wounds. She shuddered, trying to swallow a sudden rise of bile, and attempted to push back the unbidden image of what would have happened if she had failed.
And it might have been that she had anyway, that her actions had only prolonged her inevitable demise. Her body was taunting her, foretelling of the moment her heart would falter and stop, betraying her with salvation so close. Earth, only a breath and step away… and she would die here, on an alien planet unmarked in the astronomical charts of space-going species thousands of years more advanced.
Please. Begging with her body, asking it to simply twist and take the imminent fatal blow to the chest, proved to be useless; and so it was that Samantha Carter prepared to spend to her last moments on this strange earth frozen, helpless, shaking.
With that acceptance the approaching alien footsteps and grating alien calls faded into the background, a white haze rising up in her vision to obscure the trembling hands, the unresponsive DHD.
Huh. And I always thought I’d go out with a bang... literally. Wondering if her body would be kind enough to let her die with a smile on her lips, she breathed out and waited for the end.
“Carter!” A sharp voice fairly crackled with annoyance as the radio, previously dead due to interference from the atmosphere, spat it out.
She jerked, all sensation returning to her limbs as her mind reeled. What the hell is the Colonel doing here? But even as she lifted her eyes to the green alien sky, her hands leapt forward and pressed the familiar sequence of constellations.
“Carter, get the damn Gate open, because I did not fly an F-302 all the way down from the Prometheus just to get out and push the buttons for you!”
Her palm hit the center control without thinking, and the wash of pain was pushed aside as she saw the fighter craft soar overhead, scattering her pursuers. Heart in her throat, she waved once and watched the Colonel take the F-302 for another loop, his arm lifting briefly in acknowledgement of her gesture and then settling back on the controls as Teal’c gave her a solemn nod from the rear seat.
Safe now, with her teammates watching her from above like guardian spirits, she turned her back on the alien world and walked through the Gate, to where her own planet awaited her return.
So why she froze now, when speed was of the utmost importance and her life endangered by any hesitation on the part of her quick fingers, was a question she herself could not have answered.
Move, she thought desperately at her body upon realizing it had ceased to dial Earth’s address. Move, damn you! It was one of the first lessons you were taught in boot camp: never expose your flank, your rear, your weakness to the enemy. Face death head on.
Her body remained stubbornly still.
The mind that had begun to glimpse the vast expanse of the future, the intelligence that had brought a small world into the galactic playing field and helped to keep it there, raced. On her fourth review of the last five minutes, Carter had to conclude that there was nothing that could have caused her body’s unexpected and unexplainable freeze. Over the sudden and horrible silence that seemed to fill her mind, the blasts got closer.
It was then that she noticed her hands were trembling.
Cuts and scrapes covered her quivering fingers like so much trash in a football stadium; smears of mud painted the bruised skin in various stages of drying. Her ragged fingernails clung to her calloused fingers, the cuticles bleeding slowly from where she had been slashed by the alien thorn bushes while running through the weeping willows that tried to snag her by her ankles and eat her. Slowly, and only with the greatest exertion of her will, her hands turned to face the green alien sky palms up, scarred and burned and still shaking.
Move. Move, please, move! But her eyes remained locked on the unnerving sight of her life lines… both of which had been interrupted by a single vicious slash.
She swallowed, feeling her very blood seem to throb in agony as she remembered the desperate escape, the wild adrenaline that had carried her through the subsequent fights, and the gleam of the pale yellow alien sun off the alien’s saber as it swung down to kill her.
Close, so very close; had it not been for her instinctive and instant response, her head would be lying on the cobblestones where it had fallen from her shoulders. Another inch, another second, and she would have been dead. But her body had moved on its own, just as now it refused to listen, and her hands had risen up to grasp the steel blade even as it hurtled towards her unprotected neck.
That sharp, intense pain had been fortunately forgotten once she had disarmed and killed the guard, but it returned with a vengeance, perhaps brought on by the oddly detached sensation of seeing white bone through the open wounds. She shuddered, trying to swallow a sudden rise of bile, and attempted to push back the unbidden image of what would have happened if she had failed.
And it might have been that she had anyway, that her actions had only prolonged her inevitable demise. Her body was taunting her, foretelling of the moment her heart would falter and stop, betraying her with salvation so close. Earth, only a breath and step away… and she would die here, on an alien planet unmarked in the astronomical charts of space-going species thousands of years more advanced.
Please. Begging with her body, asking it to simply twist and take the imminent fatal blow to the chest, proved to be useless; and so it was that Samantha Carter prepared to spend to her last moments on this strange earth frozen, helpless, shaking.
With that acceptance the approaching alien footsteps and grating alien calls faded into the background, a white haze rising up in her vision to obscure the trembling hands, the unresponsive DHD.
Huh. And I always thought I’d go out with a bang... literally. Wondering if her body would be kind enough to let her die with a smile on her lips, she breathed out and waited for the end.
“Carter!” A sharp voice fairly crackled with annoyance as the radio, previously dead due to interference from the atmosphere, spat it out.
She jerked, all sensation returning to her limbs as her mind reeled. What the hell is the Colonel doing here? But even as she lifted her eyes to the green alien sky, her hands leapt forward and pressed the familiar sequence of constellations.
“Carter, get the damn Gate open, because I did not fly an F-302 all the way down from the Prometheus just to get out and push the buttons for you!”
Her palm hit the center control without thinking, and the wash of pain was pushed aside as she saw the fighter craft soar overhead, scattering her pursuers. Heart in her throat, she waved once and watched the Colonel take the F-302 for another loop, his arm lifting briefly in acknowledgement of her gesture and then settling back on the controls as Teal’c gave her a solemn nod from the rear seat.
Safe now, with her teammates watching her from above like guardian spirits, she turned her back on the alien world and walked through the Gate, to where her own planet awaited her return.