The Ninth Chevron - Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am only playing in the world.
Previously: Ch 1 | Ch 2
The Ninth Chevron - Chapter 3
Stargate Command, February 2007
Sam awoke to the smell of coconut. And chocolate. Her mind was still a bit fuzzy, but she was sure she remembered that smell from not too long ago. She fluttered her eyes open to find herself staring at a relatively familiar, albeit blurry, ceiling. Not one to which she liked to wake up, but one to which she was forced to do so on occasion. She blinked several times trying to clear the blurriness from her eyes and to give herself time to remember why she was here, and why that smell was familiar. She shifted slightly and her whole left side spasmed painfully, causing her to clench her jaw and screw her eyes shut again. The pain passed after a moment and she breathed out a slow, shuddery breath through her nose. She forced her fingers straight again and licked her dry lips. Chancing opening her eyes once more she raised her left hand slightly and lifted her hospital gown away from the throbbing pain in her abdomen. Oh yeah, that's right, she got shot by an Ori staff weapon. She sighed softly and closed her eyes in thought for a moment. That was one question answered. Time for the other. Why was that smell so familiar?
She liked chocolate quite a bit, though she preferred dark chocolate to milk chocolate, she definitely wouldn't refuse any. She was quite fond of coconut also, when used properly. Why then, was this smell not tempting her as it should. She heard a snort from her right and glanced over. There was a head lying on the edge of her bed by her right hand. Tousled, short brown hair, resting on an uncovered forearm, the sleeves of the blue BDUs were rolled up to the elbow. Cameron. He was sitting by her bed, sleeping. He was going to be sore when he woke up. Macaroons. That was the smell. He'd brought her macaroons. In a brown paper bag. And they'd smelled strange, when they shouldn't have. She liked chocolate and she liked coconut, why had that smell put her off then? A shadow passed in front of her and she blinked rapidly at the loss of the light.
"Oh, you've woken up, Colonel." The voice was speaking very softly and Sam glanced over at Cam, still sleeping. "How are you feeling, Sam?" A hand took hold of her left wrist and held it gently for a minute.
"Fuzzy." she answered truthfully. "Very fuzzy. Been having trouble remembering things for a bit since I woke up. Thirsty." She was whispering as well, not wanting to wake up her friend. Very gingerly and slowly she was eased up and another pillow was put behind her so she was sitting up somewhat. She found a cup with a straw held out in front of her face and she took several small sips before letting her head fall back again.
"That's understandable, the medication we had you on yesterday was very strong. Everything will come back to you in short order." A pen light came out of a breast pocket and hovered over her eyes. "I want to test your pupillary reflex, okay? Sorry about the bright light." She knew the drill, opening her eyes wide she let the doctor, Carolyn Lam she remembered, flick the light back and forth across her eyes and away from them. "Good, that's normal. Any pain in your side?"
"Only when I move, or breath, or think about it." Sam chuckled and winced.
"Or laugh apparently." Dr. Lam smiled at her gently and patted her arm. She walked around the bed and tip-toed around the sleeping Cameron. Sam followed her with her eyes and saw her reach for a brown paper bag on her bedside table. The bag of macaroons Cam had baked. He'd written something on the bag in black marker. 'Take one, you'll like it', she sighed. He had so wanted her to like his macaroons. Carolyn dipped a hand in the bag and grabbed a couple and came back to the other side of the bed nibbling on one of them. "These are so good, I had no idea Colonel Mitchell was such a good cook. I think I've been checking up on you more often than I normally would so I can sneak a few more." she whispered, Cameron still slept soundly on his forearm by her hand.
"You really like it? He gave me one yesterday but it wasn't good." Sam said, scrunching her face in distaste. Carolyn looked at her surprised for a moment before her expression softened in understanding.
"Yesterday, you say," she offered Sam the second macaroon, Sam shook her head shying away from it slightly, "while you were on medication that affected your sense of smell and taste?" Sam's eyes widened slightly and she looked at the macaroon thoughtfully before nodding slightly. Carolyn held it closer to Sam's lips and she took a bite, it was sweet, with a hint of vanilla, the chocolate and coconut mingling together, adding both smoothness and texture. Almonds, he'd crushed almonds into it too. She blinked rapidly. Delicious. She took the rest of the macaroon and nearly swooned. Carolyn chuckled softly and walked away. Oh God, she'd told Cam she hated them! What was she going to do? If she told him she liked them he'd think she was indulging him. She looked over at him, still sleeping, his face turned away from her. Her hand reached for him, her fingers running into his short soft hair. She'd tell him. Eventually. Maybe. Once she'd learned to bake some just as good as his.
Stargate Command, July 2009
Cam turned the corner in the corridor and strode in through the door of Sam's lab, purposely grabbing her BDU jacket and holding it up by the shoulders, bouncing it up and down silently in expectation. She glanced up smiling when he walked in but her brow furrowed in confusion at his actions.
"What is it, Cameron? Are we going somewhere?" She'd decided some time ago that she would be saved a lot of bother if she just accepted that Cam only came calling so forcefully when she needed the break. And he was right this time too, she was getting nowhere with her research and the data was starting to swim in front of her eyes. She got up without protest and set her laptop to shut down before walking over and letting him help her with her jacket.
"Atlantis." he replied. "It's been a week since my gene therapy treatment. Gonna get checked out by the local sawbones and then it's jumper cert for me. Taking you with me." She smiled at his obvious enthusiasm.
"Cam, you're talking as if it won't take us hours to get to San Francisco, let me go to my quart-" She never finished her sentence as Cam lay a hand around her back, held out a small disc and pressed it. Sam was incredibly surprised to see him with a transport beacon, and even more surprised as the white shimmering light of an Asgard beam enveloped both of them. When she could see again she was standing in the 'gate room of Atlantis, staring at an amused looking Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, and a smiling Dr. Carson Beckett.
"Daedalus, this is Atlantis, we have the Colonels. Much appreciated." He was sporting a lop-sided grin as his fingers touched the comm in his ear. The disconnected voice of Daedalus' Asgard beam technician acknowledged the message and signed off. Sam looked dismayed. A technician gathered up the three transport beacon markers which had marked off the area in the cloaked city Sam and Cam had been beamed into for the benefit of Daedalus' technicians.
"Tell me you didn't just get us beamed to Atlantis for a joyride!" She whirled to face Cam and his evil smirk. John replied for him from behind her.
"Hell, no. He just got a beam to Atlantis to fail his jumper cert!" John was grinning too. Men and their bloody testosterone. She glared at Beckett who really should know better.
"Don't look at me, love. I'm just going to check the results of the Colonel's gene therapy. The arrangements for his arrival are none of my ken." He was amused. They were all enjoying this. She groaned in frustration and held her hand up to her forehead.
"It is quite alright, Colonel Carter. I approved this myself." Richard Woolsey was ambling down the stairs from command to join them. "The more members of the SGC to get the gene therapy and be certified on the puddle jumpers the better. Dr. Beckett, please proceed." He nodded to the Scots clone and she had to admit she was slightly placated. Dr. Beckett motioned in the direction of the infirmary and turned to lead the way.
"I'll get two jumpers ready and see you in the bay, Mitchell." John called from the stairs he was already ascending. Cam signalled an acknowledgement and turned towards Carson.
"Is this check-up really necessary, Doc?" he queried. "Dr. Lam's already given me the once over back at the SGC." Sam remembered her own gene therapy session after she took command of the city, she was slightly disappointed to have only expressed very lightly, enough to activate simpler or less well-protected pieces of Ancient technology. She could fly a jumper but not to the same degree of control as John or even Carson. Something she deeply regretted.
"Carolyn is a fine physician, Colonel, and I believe you when you say she's cleared you and your therapy," Carson looked over his shoulder at the pair while walking, "but let's just say I have a bit more hands-on experience with it. I should also be able to give you an idea of how strongly you may be expressing the therapy." Cam made a little silent 'oh' and Sam could see his eyes twinkling. She rolled her eyes, betting he was wondering how his measured up with John's. Pissing contests. They rounded the corner into the infirmary and Beckett indicated the scanner, Cam eyed it warily, but hopped on, lying back on the platform. "I also have a few more toys than she does." Carson smiled and activated the scanner, which he used to project a view of Cameron's body above his head and zoomed in all the way through into the nucleus of a cell and to the strands of DNA within, zooming in further to display a representation of the double helix structure of the known expression site for the ATA gene. He pressed a few more buttons which caused several boxes of information to appear next to the floating strands with bright lines pointing to individual globules in the structure. "Yes, that looks very promising. You'll also be happy to know that apart from the titanium rod in your leg, and the other remnants of your crash in Antarctica, you're fit as a fiddle." he stated happily. Sam was always amazed by the Ancient technology here in Atlantis. Carson switched off the scanner and held out a smaller device with a small display and what seemed to be a projector on the top for Cameron to take. He took it and sat up on the bed. Sam came to stand closer and smiled at him, she'd done this test too. "Now I want you to hold that and think 'light'." Cam held it up and focused his gaze on it, a small globe of light appeared above the device and the display flickered to show a little red bar which quickly grew to become orange then yellow, all the while the light grew brighter and brighter. After a few moments the light was painfully bright and the display was flickering back and forth from a greenish yellow to green. "Very nice, Colonel. One of our strongest expressions yet. Colonel Sheppard can quite easily take the device all the way into the green and hold it there, not many at all can get it past yellow. You might even give him a run for his money in the combat certification trial."
"Oh, Doc, you better believe it. I know he won't go easy on me and I intend to paste him. He hadn't flown fighters in years before he arrived in Atlantis and I've learned a thing or two about inertialess combat tactics in my time flying 302s. He's in for a surprise." Cam said with supreme confidence. Dr. Beckett smiled at him and ushered them off, wishing Cameron good luck. Sam looked at him as they walked back to a transporter.
"Cam, John's really good in the jumpers, he's been flying them for years. Don't underestimate him." She stared into his eyes when he turned to her and she could see he really wasn't. "Well, I'll cheer you on from the command deck anyway. Gotta root for SG-1 now even if I did run this place for a year." She was grinning, but it fell away at his look.
"Cheer me on from Atlantis? Nuh-uh, Sam, you're comin' with me. You know I take you up as soon as I can whenever I fly a new bird." he announced in a serious voice. She was about to protest when they reached a transporter and he held up a finger in front of her face to cut her off. "No buts, Sam." He used the finger he was holding up to choose the transporter in the jumper bay as their destination.
USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 4,612 days relative
Cameron swept the padded staff in a perfect arc only a centimeter above the mat while Teal'c leapt over it and spun his own staff vertically from his shoulder, around behind him and back up towards the Air Force officer's head from below as he was rising from his lowered stance back into a defensive counterpoint from which he had hoped to launch another attack. Teal'c's move caught him off guard however, and it was all he could do to flip the staff over his wrist and get both hands on it again to block the upper cut at waist height. He leapt back and spun the staff to a guard position behind his back and paced back and forth, his breathing laboured.
"That was good, I liked that. You would have got me had I been moving into any other stance." He told his sparring partner and friend, who nodded in acknowledgement.
"Indeed. That you instinctively chose that stance as your fall back move is telling." Teal'c smiled and raised his eyebrow, the Jaffa was barely breathing hard at all. Sometimes it annoyed Cam to no end. He was really having trouble keeping up with him nowadays. Age was really taking its toll, a year shy of fifty now. Teal'c was seventy years older though, damn aliens! He chuckled and Teal'c's only response was a tilt of his head.
"Just thinkin' we've been at this a dozen years now and you keep getting faster. I won't be able to give you a decent work out for much longer." He knew Teal'c could see the disappointment in his eyes and the warrior smiled gently, reproving.
"You believe you are slowing down with age, Colonel Mitchell. That your strength starts to fail you." He shook his head and lay one end of his staff on the floor. Cam followed suit, leaning on his a bit too much for his liking.
"You are strong in mind, quick in body, determined in spirit. You have only begun to fight. I have met few humans your age who are as physically able as you are now. Not even O'Neill." Teal'c followed him with his eyes as he spoke, Cam moved to the side of the mat and picked up their water bottles, throwing one to Teal'c who caught it deftly without pausing with his speech. "The only thing you lacked, Colonel Mitchell, was an emotional center. You had desire enough to fight, conviction enough to die, and reason enough to live, though you did not see it." Cam furrowed his brow at his friend and tilted his head enquiringly. "Not until you finally told her." A small smirk played across the Jaffa's lips and Cam grinned ruefully at him.
"Thanks, T-man." He nodded slowly at his friend before tossing his bottle aside and waiting for Teal'c to do the same after taking a long drink. He positioned his staff before him and set himself on the balls of his feet. "Once more." The Jaffa bowed slightly and took a stance, poised to attack.
USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 4,612 days relative
Sam stared at the ceiling over Daniel and Vala's bed as she listened to the other woman's fingers tap away at the keys of a laptop on the other side of the room. She sighed slightly and raised a hand to brush a long strand of her blond hair back around her ear. When engrossed in her writing, Vala was a calming influence for Sam, she'd lay on the bed and listen to the clatter of keys for an hour or two and leave again feeling relieved and invigorated. Sometimes they didn't even say anything to each other, Sam would just lay a hand on the other woman's shoulder and lean down to lay her cheek on the top of her head and Vala would look up smiling before she left. They'd grown close over the years. They talked about a lot of things, but sometimes it was the silences they shared which she valued most. Silence fell around her and she glanced over at her friend, noting she'd stopped her typing and was stretching languorously. She was taking a break.
"Vala, do you ever wish you and Daniel could be married here?" She watched Vala turn her head towards her then swivel her chair to face her and cross one leg over the other before replying.
"No, it would be undone when you succeed with your efforts. We made our peace with our own demons long ago, our commitment to each other isn't dependent on anything like that." Vala tilted her head at Sam and waited the span of several breaths before asking the question. "Do you wish you could get married to Cameron?" Sam looked away for a while before answering.
"To be honest? No. Not here anyway. For the same reasons as you, I think," Sam sighed once more and turned to look at Vala again, "but it makes me scared." The other woman's eyes narrowed in confusion. "If we get out of this, Vala, all our memories will be gone, forever. None of this will ever happen. What if... what if Cam and I never would have been together if not for this. What if all we'll ever share together is the time in this bubble which will one day burst and cease to exist, taking all we shared along with it. And I'm the one who's working so hard to burst that bubble!" She raised her hands to cover her eyes, her breath coming in small shudders. She heard Vala stand and pad over to the bed, sitting at the edge of it by Sam. She uncovered her eyes and turned to look at the other woman who was leaning over her with a sharp look.
"You're wondering if you're not working as hard as you could be to get us out of this?" Vala's words horrified her and she vehemently shook her head. "Or that by working as hard as you are you're somehow debasing yours and Cameron's feelings for each other?" This time she had to think a lot harder about it before shaking her head. She remembered how Cam had been before they entered into their relationship, how being on this ship was destroying him. She would do anything to spare him that. "Then you have nothing to worry about. Anyway, Cameron's always been in love with you, Samantha. Trust in that. Trust in him. Because believe me, he trusts in you."
Hypraxia Base, Praxyon, May 2010
Sam stared at her computer screen blearily, her eyes going unfocused every few seconds. She was way too tired and not as young as she used to be. She stretched her arms over her head and reached for her coffee cup only to find it empty. Sighing softly she laid it back on the table and returned to staring at the screen. There was something in these power consumption formulas solved by Eli Wallace which were whispering to her. She was missing something, Dr. Rush had missed something, they'd all missed something. She moaned softly. She needed coffee. She was close to an answer, her brain was itching the way it did when she was close. If only she could stick it out a moment longer.
"Brought you some coffee, darlin', and some of your favourite." That Southern drawl had her head whipping up to face the door. She was seeing things, Cam had a literal halo around his head as he walked towards her. It was just a little too symbolic for her mind to process at that moment. He moved out of the frame of the door and it was gone, but she nearly swooned when he placed the mug of coffee and the tall sundae glass of blue jello in front of her. She looked up at him by her side and smiled gratefully. He looked to the door before leaning down and kissing her softly on the lips, letting the contact linger, his warmth suffusing her tired brain. She sighed and closed her eyes. God, she loved him.
"I love you." She breathed the words out into the tiny space between them and the effect was immediate, no matter how many times she said it, the effect was always the same, he would smile and the colour would rise up his neck and into his cheeks, and his eyes would sparkle like the stars themselves. She did that to him. Every time. He raised a hand and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. The skin where he touched her burned at the contact, ached when it passed and tingled in her memory. That was the effect he had on her. Every time. He pulled back and went to pull a chair up to sit near her as she turned to her coffee and jello with a contented sigh. Some might consider it an odd combination, but it worked for her. She dug in with her spoon, letting the sweet fruity flavour fill her mouth.
"This is the power consumption formula figured out by that kid who dropped out of MIT to take care of his Mom?" He was looking at the formula on the screen, it was clearly incomprehensible to him.
"Yes, one of them. There are four of them, they kind of overlap and interconnect. There's something about this one that's trying to tell me something." She sighed as she took a sip of her coffee and scooped out another spoonful of jello. "From the telemetry we were receiving from the Icarus Base computers at the time of the connection attempts and then the successful wormhole establishment, this particular formula wasn't contributing much to the overall results. Mostly because of the way the dialling computer was set up to use it. I don't think Dr. Rush really figured out what its purpose was. He just knew it was a component of the whole, but not what part it played. It's a kind of regulator, we know that much, but it expresses far more strongly in the higher order dimensions than in space-time or even subspace. The effect there is almost negligible which is why I think Dr. Rush initially chose to ignore it when designing his first simulations." She'd lost him, she knew that, but he let her talk at him anyway, something he'd learned more recently, since joining SG-1. Something Jack never had learned. Sometimes, Cam knew when it was his job to be the sounding board, reflecting back or absorbing as needed.
"A kind of regulator, regulating what?" he asked the question and she was almost certain he wasn't expecting to understand the answer, but he'd gleaned a nut that was making him curious. That was how he always worked with her.
"Hmm. It smooths out energy conversion rates based on relative motion. It's definitely what allowed the wormhole to establish a connection with a ship." she explained, unconsciously going over the basics in her mind. "The regular Stargate network only has stellar drift and planetary motion to deal with, but to hit a target moving like Destiny requires this formula in order to succeed."
"Complex real-time synchronisation calculations, like Thor said." Cam prompted looking at the screen again.
"Right, which is why I started looking at it. It synchronises the motion of the target with the time-space continuum. The effect of this formula is small, but vital." she replied, finishing off her jello.
"Small in the four dimensions of space-time," Cam reiterated what she said and she nodded, "but not in the higher order dimensions." She nodded again. "Why is the effect in those dimensions so large when we're only ever going to connect with a 'gate in regular space-time?" Her brain froze. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. As she stared at the formula again the veil slipped from her eyes.
"Cameron," her voice cracked and her eyes were starting to sting, "did you..."
"Hmm?" He was sitting with his arms crossed against his chest looking at things he didn't understand and he'd asked the one question no one had ever asked. "Sorry, Sam, I know it's just gibberish to me, but-" She cut him off with her fingers against his lips when he turned to her, she followed it up with a long lingering kiss. Looking into his eyes with a huge grin when she pulled away from him.
"This formula isn't meant to perform synchronisation between the destination and space-time. It's meant to do it in hyperspace." That's what the Ninth Chevron was for.
On to Chapter 4