Secrets

Chapter Five Proving Ground

“What do you mean, you don’t know where they are?” Sheppard’s hands were balled into fists at his sides, and behind him Radek Zelenka was frowning deeply. Cadman just looked uncomfortable.

“I thought you had them!” Sam said incredulously. “You radioed from the hive ship. I thought you said that you had them.”

“I said I didn’t have them!” Sheppard replied. “I thought you had them. The plan was that you were supposed to beam them out!”

“I couldn’t get in range,” Sam said. “I was trying to, and I thought you said that you were on the hive ship with Ronon and Keller and Teyla.” She looked around the gateroom. “And where is Teyla anyway?”

“With Todd,” John said. “She needed to finish up some stuff. She’ll be back tomorrow. What about Rodney?”

Sam took a deep breath. “I don’t know. The hive ship blew. That’s all I know. Our shields were down completely and we had to get out ahead of the shockwave. We barely got our 302s on board in time.” Rodney was probably dead. But that had been the math all along — less and less likely he’d survive this. But Ronon and Dr. Keller… “If we’d stayed…”

Sheppard’s face was grim. “If you’d stayed with no shields you’d have lost the ship and all aboard.”

He knew the math too. The whole crew of the Hammond, a hundred and eight lives against three, Ronon, Keller, and Rodney. And yet. It was always easier from the other side, Sam thought, one of the team at risk rather than the ones who had to write them off. But she’d been written off again and again, and she was still here.

“They might have gotten out of there somehow,” Sam said. “There were Wraith ships all over the place. If they’d stolen a ship…” She’d done it that way once with a Death Glider. Of course, they’d nearly run out of air in a decaying high Earth orbit before they were picked up.

Sheppard’s face looked gray. “Ronon’s good,” he said. “He’d do something. We’ve got to get back and search the debris field.”

“As soon as the Hammond has shields again, we’ll do that,” Sam said. She made her voice hard. “But I can’t jump into a Wraith held system with no shields. Right now we’re working around the clock on the repairs.”

Sheppard swallowed. For a moment Sam thought he was going to protest, but he didn’t. “I know,” he said, and from Sheppard that was a concession of almost unimaginable trust. He knew she’d do her best.

And she would. “I’ll go see how the repairs are coming,” she said. “And put the priority on the shields. We may be able to get underway in a few hours.” She looked at Zelenka. “Dr. Zelenka, are you able to assist?”

“Absolutely,” Zelenka said, handing his weapon and tac vest off to Cadman. “I will help.”

“I’ll go tell Woolsey,” Sheppard said, and strode off toward Woolsey’s office. Cadman hovered uncertainly in his wake.

“You can stand down,” Sam said to Cadman. “Go clean up and report to me for debriefing in two hours. I want to hear what happened, but it can wait until you’ve had a few minutes and I’ve checked on the repairs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cadman said, looking relieved.

Sam glanced down at Radek. “Let’s go fix the Hammond.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Again.”

“Somehow it never stays fixed.”

Laura Cadman, clean and smelling like Satsuma shower gel rather than hive ship, found Colonel Carter upside down in the crawl space on deck E. “You asked me to report in two hours, ma’am,” she said to her colonel’s rear end. Carter was lying over a strut working on something beneath it, occasionally bumping heads with Dr. Kusanagi, who was also upside down on the other side of the hole.

“Cadman?” Carter righted herself, shoving her bangs back from her eyes and looking at her watch. “Two hours already?”

“I can come back, ma’am,” Laura said, though she hoped she didn’t have to. She’d really like a good night’s sleep in her own bed, but if Carter was busy she’d have to stay up and come back when it was convenient for her. Captains waited on colonels, not the other way around.

“No, it’s fine.” Carter got up. “Miko, are you good for a few minutes? I need to talk to Cadman.”

“Of course,” the upside down Dr. Kusanagi replied. “I will have this rewired before you return and then I will move on to section twelve.”

“Ok.” Carter dusted off her hands on the legs of her flight suit. “Let’s go have a chat.” She gave Laura a disconcertingly perky smile, the kind that made Laura wonder what bad news was supposed to follow it. “We can talk in my quarters.”

Worse, Laura thought. A private conversation that wouldn’t be overheard by anybody. She’d done ok on the hive ship, she thought. Well, except for not rescuing Dr. McKay who was probably dead, and managing to lose Ronon and Dr. Keller in the process. Yes, it had been Colonel Sheppard’s mission, but if she’d done something brilliant maybe they wouldn’t have gotten separated. Or maybe it was about the bears. She hadn’t meant to drop the ceiling on Dr. Robinson! That was definitely her fault. Though what was she was supposed to have done with no ammunition left and a pile of polar bears charging her, besides use a grenade? Trip them? Somebody better at this would have thought of something.

Oh God, with the gate working two ways she’d be lucky if she wasn’t on her way home tonight! She’d probably be back in Colorado Springs before breakfast. Washed out.

“Think we’re going to wash out?” The other Marine was tall and lanky, black hair barbered so ruthlessly he was almost bald, Lt. Aidan Ford, age twenty three, one year out of Georgia Tech. She was one year out of Florida State.

Two Marines, two Air Force. That was how it worked. Four lieutenants who had been given a shot at a program so top secret they hadn’t even known what it was about when they’d reported to Colorado Springs. She’d been sitting with Ford on the plane, and they’d traded snacks and speculations. Peterson Air Force Base? Why did they need two Marines? NORAD?

“Maybe it’s some kind of ceremonial duty,” Ford hypothesized. “Like the White House guards or something.”

“In Colorado Springs?” Laura looked out the window at the endless Great Plains. “Maybe they need some Marines for Air Force Academy kids to beat on.” They were kids, of course, twenty-one, not twenty-three. It made all the difference in the world.

Ford shrugged. “Maybe it’s good. Ever consider that?”

And it was. It was better than they’d ever dreamed.

They were going to other planets. They were going to other planets now, without a space ship, to battle real aliens that wanted to conquer Earth. They were going places they could never talk about, seeing things that maybe no human being had ever seen. If they didn’t wash out of training.

“Sixty-five percent of you do,” Colonel O’Neill said. He had steel gray hair and deeply graven lines on his face though he couldn’t have been fifty yet, a ramrod straight bearing even in slightly oversized battle dress and a unit baseball cap with the SGC patch embroidered on it. Laura coveted that cap. Those were special perks, special unit designations for the ones who had made it. “Sixty-five percent of you walk out of here and go back to your normal lives,” O’Neill said. “And let me tell you that you don’t get any points for being the best and the brightest here. I’ve seen a lot of smart kids.”

Standing at attention next to her in the second row of trainees, Ford frowned. He looked really worried. “Guess I don’t have anything to worry about, “ Cadman whispered. “Nobody said I was smart.”

Ford’s mouth twisted in a suppressed smile.

“You have something to say, Lt. Cadman?” O’Neill barked.

“No, sir!” Back straight, eyes front, nice and loud.

O’Neill shook his head. “Don’t shout, Lieutenant. I’m standing right here.” He went down the row. “And you may wish you’d washed out. Because if you do, your chances of being alive in two years are a lot greater. So if any of you want to voluntarily withdraw at this point, there will be no mark on your record.”

Ford’s brows twitched. As if, Laura thought. You’re going to tell me everything I ever read about is real and think I’m going to walk away?

Afterwards, in the hummer on the way out to the first proving ground, Ford drew her and the two Air Force guys who they were assigned with into a huddle. “We’ve got to stick together,” Ford said. “That’s the key. Teamwork. They didn’t assign us in four man units randomly. They think we’ve got complimentary skills. So we need to put our stuff on the table and work it out. What do you do, Cadman?”

“I blow things up,” she said.

They spent the next three days screwing up a variety of scenarios. There was a hostage rescue in which they were supposed to save this guy named Quinn from aliens, only Ford shot him instead.

“Lieutenant Ford,” O’Neill said with scathing sarcasm, “Your peerless brilliance has just resulted in the death of the man you came to save. Any questions?”

“No, sir!” Ford replied, eyes front.

“And stop shouting.”

There was an ambush scenario in which the Jaffa, Teal’c, wiped the floor with all of them except Laura, who blew herself up. Accidentally.

“Cadman, that thing has a timer for a reason!” O’Neill barked. “You’re dead. And so is the rest of your team. Once you set the timer, you have to actually leave.” He walked off shaking his head.

Sitting on the ground outside together, Laura took a swig from her water bottle. “We’re doomed,” she said.

Ford looked at her sideways. “So you were assigned to be the pessimist in our group?”

“I’m just saying that we haven’t won a single scenario,” she began. A line of hummers was pulling into the proving ground, O’Neill walking toward them. In a second everything changed, a swift exchange of gunfire that left bodies on the ground, Laura crawling through the dust and scant cover, Ford at her side.

“Foothold situation,” O’Neill gasped, one hand to the oozing blood at his side. “The SGC has been infiltrated by the Goa’uld. Get the hell out of here.”

“No,” Laura said, fumbling for a dressing. “We can’t do that, sir. With all due respect.”

It was just her and Ford in the end, dragging O’Neill back to the base so that he could show them how to rig the self destructs that would prevent the Goa’uld from bringing through an army, just her and Ford when they had to leave him unconscious while they went to blow the dialing computers to prevent the gate being used, while they set the charges that would kill the Goa’uld who had taken over the base, including its host, Major Carter. And just incidentally themselves.

Sorry, Nana. Sorry, Pops, Laura thought, crouching in the control room. She wished they would at least know what she’d done, but she supposed it never worked that way. Her eyes met Ford’s.

“Do it,” he said, and she pressed the firing button.

Nothing happened. And for a long moment her only thought was disappointment.

“Well done, Lieutenants,” a voice said over the loudspeaker.

In a moment General Hammond came down the stairs from the conference room above, Major Carter with him grinning broadly. O’Neill followed, his uniform still soaked with stage blood.

“It was a test,” Ford said flatly.

“Welcome to the SGC,” Hammond said, and shook each of their hands. “Well done.”

They’d done eight months of training, some of it in the field on alien worlds, and then Laura had gotten a plum slot on SG-12. Ford had gotten the Atlantis expedition. She’d cried when he’d been listed MIA a year later. And six days later she’d been told she was going to Atlantis on Daedalus to take his place.

Laura followed Carter through the corridors of the Hammond, waited while she opened her door. Please don’t let me wash out, she thought fervently. Not now!

Carter’s quarters were spartan, her narrow bed neatly made with squared corners, a big framed picture of the Hammond bolted to the wall above it. She sat down in the only chair by the desk. “Tell me what happened on the hive ship,” she said.

Laura took a deep breath. “We got pinned down. Dr. Zelenka hotwired one of the blast doors, which cut off the Wraith attacking us but also cut us off from Ronon and Dr. Keller. Colonel Sheppard told Ronon to go get Dr. McKay while we retrieved the ZPM…”

It was a long story, all the way through their precipitous departure and Todd’s hive ship, all the way through the part where a Wraith diplomatic delegation had been told she was Carter’s heir.

“That wasn’t my idea, ma’am,” she said swiftly. “That was Teyla, and so I followed along.”

“Always the best thing to do with Teyla on the subject of anything Wraith.” Carter looked vaguely amused, which was probably a good thing. Less like washing her out. “Cadman, have you ever wondered why I’m so hard on you?”

“No, ma’am.” One proper answer to that.

“Because you have tremendous potential,” Carter said quietly. “You think fast and you’re brave and practical, but you don’t lack imagination. I think you could go a long way. I want to give you the opportunity to test yourself and to have a variety of experiences. That’s what will give you the confidence you need to stand in any company.” The colonel looked at her keenly. “You’re not a kid from Florida State. Right now, today, you’re the best of the best. I’m not saying you need to be arrogant. But you’ve done two years in Atlantis and three with the SGC before and after that deployment. You’re head and shoulders above half of the people here. It’s time to put yourself out there. It’s time to start making the calls and thinking of solutions rather than waiting for orders. It’s time to believe in yourself the way others believe in you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Laura found herself inexplicably blinking. “I don’t…” She stopped, squaring her shoulders. Carter was looking up at her from the chair, not nearly as scary as she’d seemed before, forty something and a little worn. Somehow that made it easier to blurt out the thing she was thinking. “I’ve never been very smart.”

Carter was an academy graduate. At Laura’s age she’d already had a PhD in astrophysics. There was no comparison.

“There are different kinds of smart,” Carter said. “And not all of them come out of a book. Sometimes the most important ones don’t come out of a book.” She put her elbow on the desk, glancing at the pictures on the wall behind it and back to Laura. “The most important thing is teamwork. None of us have all the skills. Nobody is able to handle everything alone. We don’t have Superman.”

“And Superman has the Justice League,” Laura said, and then felt like slapping herself.

Carter broke into a smile. “He does. Because it’s all about complimentary skills. You’re not a scientist. And you don’t have to be. You don’t have to be an anthropologist or an engineer or a physicist. You just have to be the best of what you are. Take the opportunities you’re given and shine.” She shook her head. “Believe me, Cadman. You’re not short on anything. Colonel Sheppard would steal you back in a heartbeat. But I’m not letting him. I get you back as soon as Lorne is up and around!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Laura said, which was about all she could manage.

“You’re doing fine. You just need to develop the confidence to push when you need to.” Carter stood up. “Now go get some rest. Stand down for twelve hours, if the universe will give us that much time.”

Major Lorne limped into the control room, maneuvering around the consoles fairly skillfully on his crutches. Sheppard was just coming out of Woolsey’s office, still in the dirty uniform he’d presumably worn on the last mission, two days beard on his chin. Asking “How did it go?” would be rubbing salt in the wound. Obviously they didn’t have McKay, and everybody had already heard that Ronon and Keller were MIA. Well, maybe not everybody, but he’d already talked to Cadman, on her way out to the Hammond to report after getting a hot shower.

Lorne drew himself up, doing his best to look professional. “Sir, if I might have a word with you?”

Sheppard stopped. “Sure,” he said, frowning.

Lorne bet he wanted to hit the showers too, so he made it brief. “Dr. Beckett says he’ll take the cast off my leg this afternoon. I thought…”

Sheppard shook his head. “You know it’s not going to work like that, right? He’s going to put braces and things on it, and you’ll have weeks of physical therapy. There’s no way you’re going straight back on full duty.”

“Yes, sir, but…”

Sheppard clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a few more weeks,” he said. “Light duty for a few more weeks. You don’t want to screw that leg up permanently. Right now Cadman’s covering for you on the team, and as soon as Beckett says you’re ready, I’ll give her back to Carter. But you know that’s not going to be today.”

“I know,” Lorne said. And he did know. But he’d hoped anyhow.