STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) Read Free Page B

you might need it here.”
    “I hope not,” Sam said. Which was an understatement. With the
Hammond
severely damaged and Atlantis with no shield, Lt. Colonel Mel Hocken’s 302 wing was the only defense they had if the Wraith showed up while
Daedalus
was gone.
    “I hope not too.” Caldwell gave her a grim smile. “I may turn around and come back or proceed to Earth, depending on orders.” He plunged his hands into his pockets against the cold. “Give me six hours to get
Daedalus
squared away and we’ll get a move on. I’ll take your severely wounded aboard and send them through to the SGC at the first gate.”
    “That follows,” Sam said. There were a couple, especially Joyner’s third degree burns, that she’d like out of here if possible. Keller and Beckett weren’t a burn center, try as they might.
    “Find Sheppard,” Caldwell said. “He does this crap. Sheppard’s been missing more times than any guy I know and always turns up again.”
    “Not more times than Dr. Jackson,” Sam said.
    “I don’t think Sheppard’s actually been dead,” Caldwell said.
    Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “You know, we see some weird things in our profession.”
    Caldwell grinned. “Never a dull moment. Except the six days in hyperspace.”
    “Except for that,” Sam said. “I’ve got the easy part, holding Atlantis. You’ve got the hard part.”
    “The IOA,” Caldwell said.
     
    September 20, 2009
    Dear Jack…
    Sam paused, staring down at the email form in front of her, then frowned and started typing again.
    The Daedalus is leaving in two hours, so this is my last chance to put another letter in the databurst that they’ll send six days from now from PX1-152, the first Stargate on the edge of the Milky Way. It will be full night in C olorado Springs then, but I imagine Walter will be there. He’ll sort out all the personal emails and send them on, so on Sunday morning, September 27, you will wake up in your apartment on Massachusetts Avenue to see twenty emails from me, everything I’ve sent in the last twenty three days, since as far as you’re concerned I vanished completely.
    She could see just how he would look, unshaved and muzzy with sleep, sloshing the hot coffee over his hand as he bent over his secure laptop open on the dinette table in the alcove with all the windows, a golden morning view eastward toward the Capitol dome just visible over the offices between from his eighth floor apartment. He’d spill the coffee and swear, but he wouldn’t clean it up, not until he’d opened the last one, this one.
    I’m ok.
    That was the thing he’d look for first.
    I’m fine. Not a scratch on me. The
Hammond
has a few dings, but she’s in one piece too. You’ve got all the reports. They’re probably sitting in your email right now. Walter’s good that way.
    No need to tell him that. He would have the reports, pages and pages of them. Hers. Caldwell’s. Sheppard’s. He’d have a hundred pages of reports. So no need to rehearse everything in them. No need to even hit the highlights. He would read them all, know every word in them by noon, drinking cup after cup of coffee, sitting there in boxers and a t shirt while the sun rose high, slanting stripes of gold across the carpet, visualizing the endless dark of space, the flare of shields in the void.
    I wish I was th ere.
    He would read that, one eyebrow quirking, say out loud in the quiet apartment, “Carter, that’s a lie.” And it was. She didn’t really wish she were there, not for more than a moment really, imagining a quiet Sunday morning at home.
    I wish you were here .
    Yes, kind of. And not. Or only a little. He’d smile at that. “No, you don’t, Carter,” he’d say. He knew her way too well. And he’d take that for all the things she wouldn’t say, all the things she wouldn’t put in a databurst that would go through Caldwell and Walter and Hank Landry and God knows who else before he read it.
    I don’t know when I’ll be back,