Time is an abstract thing

Chapter 1 - Fruit Loops

The shots of staff weapons buzzed around their heads like spurred on bees. Fiery explosions hailed right, left, front, back onto the dark floor of the Goa'Uld mothership. Today was a crappy day, and that not only since the Goa'Uld had discovered them on their ship. Crappy went all the way back to breakfast. All he had wanted to do was to eat his Fruit Loops, but Daniel had lured him into a lengthy conversation about the ethics of warfare. When Jack had turned his attention back to his breakfast, the loops had turned into rainbow-colored mush. Practicing his willpower, he had kept it calm, no need to get agitated over loops. He simply got up for another bowl instead, but no time for that.

"UNAUTHORIZED ACTIVATION FROM OUTSIDE!" had roared through the corridors of Stargate Command, and he and Daniel had sprinted off. Now, eight hours later, he was on this goddamn spaceship—without breakfast. The owner of this particular big spaceship was cheesed with them. Mainly with Daniel, after all, he had the Eye of Ra in his pocket. How it got there? Well… Jacob had come to ask them for help. A Tok'Ra spy on Anubis' ship had gained possession of the eye, but they had lost contact, and then, 24 hours later, Jacob had decided to dismiss Tok'Ra protocol and follow the Air Force 'no man left behind' ethos. Hammond had approved the mission, and only an hour later, SG1 sneaked onto the planet over which Anubis' ship hovered. Their order: retrieve the eye and, if still alive, said Tok'Ra spy. Everything had gone pretty smoothly. The good old 'Teal'c slipping into a Jaffa armor' trick had worked, and they managed to get on the ship undetected. The Tok'Ra device had located their double agent, and since they knew the corridors of a Goa'Uld ship almost as well as the ones in Cheyenne Mountain, they had found him quickly. Easy, up until then, and Jack should have known better because seconds later, a troop of Jaffa had detected them, alarmed the others, and now about 200 Jaffa were on their heels. The Tok'Ra was shot early on, and in a wild shootout in which Carter, Teal'c and Jack gave Daniel cover, Daniel had grabbed the eye and stuffed it into his pockets.

Anyways, no time to get into the weeds of it now. Colonel O'Neill dove around a corner, locked the door behind him and fired at the switchboard. Plus 1 minute.

"Dead end!" Daniel called out and looked around in the storage room. The tinny steps of the Jaffa coming closer.

50 seconds. O'Neill raised his gun, ready to fire at any Jaffa that would make it through the door. Taking down as many as possible before they would eventually overpower SG1 and take them captive. There was only one thought that was worse than getting tortured—getting tortured without breakfast.

Carter's voice broke through the noise, "Transport rings. Daniel, Teal'c, I'll send you down. We'll follow! "

40 seconds.

"But Sam," Daniel growled.

"No buts, Daniel! Go! Dial out and keep the gate open for us," Jack commanded.

30 seconds. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the white light dissolve Daniel and Teal'c and gone they were. He would have to ask Carter one day how that beamy thing exactly worked.

Suddenly the wave of a massive explosion sent him tumbling backward. Smoke rose from the door. Crap. 5 seconds. He had miscalculated.

"Carter!"

"They hit the control center. The transport rings are useless!"

"ACTIVATION FROM THE OUTSIDE!" echoed through the mountain. General Hammond rushed down the stairs into the control room and took his place behind Walter.

"It's SG1, Sir."

"Open the iris!" General Hammond commanded, staring impatiently at the silver iris, which opened with the slow blink of a predator's eye. As soon as the iris was open, Daniel Jackson stumbled through the blue surface, quickly followed by Teal'c with his staff weapon held up high. They both swirled around, waiting for Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill to follow them through the galaxy home into safety. But nobody followed — just something: staff weapon volleys fired through the gate into the gate room.

"Leave it open!" Daniel yelled.

General Hammond stared at the gate, while more and more shots hit the gateroom, the first soldier going down in the enemy's fire. Suddenly a figure merged out of the event horizon. Against all hopes, it wasn't Colonel O'Neill or Major Carter, but a Jaffa. Teal'c aimed and took the Jaffa's life with a well-aimed shot. Just that second, another shot dart through the gate and hit Teal'c.

"Close the iris!" General Hammond barked.

"No!" Daniel screamed angrily. But the silver iris already followed orders and locked out the universe. Dull blows drummed into the iris, each of them adding another crack to the fragile thing called hope. Finally, the event horizon crumbled with a whoosh, and the dull impacts yield to a deadly silence. Soldiers, technicians, the medical team, Janet, Daniel, Teal'c, and General Hammond stared at the now so quiet Stargate.

"Shit," Jack hissed, giving up his cover. The Jaffa had not entered the room yet, but it was only a matter of seconds. Frantically, he looked around. They needed a hiding place. His eyes fell on a small glider, and his body followed right after, storming toward it, "Carter, in here!"

Another explosion rocked the ship. The door flew open, and Jaffa charged into the room. As the Jaffa looked around for the invaders, the glider took off—onboard Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill. Carter fired a lethal round at the Jaffa, and O'Neill maneuvered the glider through the narrow corridors of the spaceship, scraping along the walls—but no one was giving style scores today.

"Carter!" O'Neill yelled over the noise of the glider brushing along the walls.

"How do we get out of here?"

"Straight ahead!"

"I don't know about you, but I still can't walk through walls."

A fiery stream of energy shot ahead of him and ate a hole into the wall.

"How about flying through?" Carter triumphed.

Jack pushed the glider to peak performance, while more and more staff weapon shots hammered into their six. With a liberating whoosh, they slipped out of the spacecraft's tightness into the infinity of space and then further into a quick second of hyperspeed.

"If you had presented that as a plan, I would have declared you crazy."

O'Neill steered the glider deeper into the blackness. Away from the spaceship, away from the planet with the Stargate. For the first time, Jack had a thought to spare for Daniel and Teal'c. He hoped his friends had made it through the gate. As the little glider floated for some minutes, he noticed silence coming from behind him.

"Carter, you good?"

"Yes, sir. I can't believe we made it out of there."

"Yeah… But let's wait with popping the champagne bottles until those lights stop blinking." Worried, he looked at the control unit of the gilder, which was performing a nervous light show.

"They won't. We took some serious hits. We're ballistic."

"So, we're going down?"

"Well, given that we're in space and hence in zero gravity, not really, Sir."

"Carter…"

"Yes, we're going down."

"So what do we do? I've done the drifting in space and waiting for death thing, not fun."

"I've located a planet not too far away. If we get into hyperspeed one last time, we could get into the planet's orbit and…"

"And what?"

"Well, crash there… Sir."

„Genius plan." His voice dripping with sarcasm.

„WIth a bit of luck, we survive the crash and find a Stargate."

"Easy peasy. I just hope you got up on the right side of the bed this morning, 'cause I didn't."

For a quiet moment, they floated through the star-spiked blackness. Then Jack took a deep breath, maybe the last one he would ever draw—not that he liked being dramatic, but suddenly thoughts and feelings washed over him in an uncontrolled wave. This ludicrous plan wasn't even a plan. But he would not again just sit in an unmaneuverable spaceship and wait for oxygen to run out slowly, painfully. If they would make it to the planet, and if they would survive the crash, and if they would find a Stargate, he would really think about that retirement idea again. So the next time he was in a situation like this, he could turn around and kiss her.

"Carter…"

But he couldn't even say it. As if saying what he felt would seal their fate, be their death sentence.

"Sir?"

"Let's not do the 'it was an honor' thing. I feel today might as well be our lucky day."

Her giggle made him smile.

"Activating hyperspeed on your command, Major."

He couldn't see her, but he was sure how her face looked right now. Her blue eyes determine just like when she blows up suns. He heard her swallow as if she swallowed words she had formed already and instead said, "I feel lucky too. Initiating hyperspeed in 3... 2... 1... Go!"