Chapter 5
Kentucky Wilderness, USA
Project Ahrmuhgedn Initiated, Day 6
In the early hours of the approaching dawn Jack savoured the weight of Sam asleep on his chest as he stared at the stars visible through the new leafed branches overhead. After their lovemaking they had curled together and all too soon for his liking, Sam’s breathing had settled into the rhythms of sleep. And while she slept he remained awake, counting the cost of his soul that her death and these memories would bring to him. Praying for a miracle that the odds of the universe told him would not come.
To have loved and known… or never to have loved or known… It was tearing him apart. The hours of deliberation had at least presented him with one irrefutable fact. He could never have refused her last request. No matter the cost to himself.
As the sky began to lighten almost imperceptibly, Jack debated whether to awaken her and make one last loving memory for himself or leave her as she was. Asleep in his arms and unknown of the death that came with dawn’s light.
In the end, time took the decision from him.
A rainbow swarm of lights coalesced into the sleeping woman that slept in his embrace. Jack tightened his arms futilely around her to hold him to her as he pressed his lips to the crown of her head for his last kiss goodbye.
As the swarm of lights intensified within Sam’s body, Jack resolutely kept his eyes open to watch. Like with the birds the lights had consumed yesterday, the lights filled her form until she seemed to be an ethereal being of white light. Then just as he waited the agonizing heartbeats for the swarm to disperse and Sam vanish, the solid white light strangely flashed through the colours of the rainbow.
Once. Twice.
Finally, the rainbow colours seemed to concentrate and swirl around her centre. Then the white light returned to coloured motes and dispersed. Leaving an alive Sam in his arms. A woman who was very much now awake and wide-eyed.
For a heartbeat blue eyes stared into brown ones before Sam rolled onto her back as her hands flew to cover her abdomen—where the lights had swirled seconds before.
Jack’s own hand reached up to cover her own and the precious life that he knew now rested within—just has he had known when his firstborn had been conceived—and knew that a miracle had been granted.
And neither could stop the tears of relief and thanksgiving of life and love as they curled together.
. . .
An ocean away Daniel looked morosely at the screen he had positioned his chair in front of as he waited out his vigil of Sam’s biometric data. Sequence 6 had been engaged hours ago and while he didn’t know Sam’s current location—except that she wasn’t off-world, wasn’t safe—he had roughly calculated her time of death.
He took a swig of his cooled coffee and wished it was something stronger. To think he’d been so ecstatic about finally locating the Lost City and then the discovery of this Ancient colony ship on Earth by the world. Earth would finally know the truth of its history! God, what a fool he’d been!
Daniel jerked from his musings when a throat was cleared behind him. Turning his head, the archaeologist blinked behind his glasses at the physicist that stood in the doorway behind him.
“Dr McKay,” Daniel greeted.
“Dr Jackson,” Rodney returned, his eyes going to the screen Daniel had been staring at so morosely after his presence had been acknowledged. “That’s Sam’s data isn’t it?”
Daniel looked back at the lines of Ancient text. “Yes.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little morbid to be watching it, considering she’s…?” Rodney couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“No different than sitting beside a hospital bed,” Daniel retorted. Stand witness was all he could do now. He would do it as faithfully as they had done when he’d been dying of radiation poisoning. Hearing a chair scrape across the floor Daniel turned his head, surprised to see Rodney drag a chair next to his.
Rodney saw Daniel’s look and lifted his shoulders in a shrug as he settled into his seat. Without any more words the two men returned to watching the screen.
Time passed.
Each second bringing Daniel and Rodney agonisingly closer to the moment when the section of text of Sam’s biometric data that read ‘Terminate’ in red would change to black and read ‘Terminated.’
Then the moment came. Both men made soft noises of distress when the red text flashed onscreen. They started when a second window popped open and Ancient writing began filling it. Daniel peered at the script in surprise and confusion as he read.
ACTIVE GENE REGISTERED. CONCEPTION COMPLETE. REDELIBERATE STATUS.
DELIBERATING...
DELIBERATING...
STATUS CHANGED. ENSURE IMPLANTATION OF FERTILISED ZYGOTE.
Daniel nearly hyperventilated as he suddenly understood what was happening—what had happened.
Rodney couldn’t read the text, but he could see that instead of changing to black, the section of text that marked Sam’s status suddenly changed to green. Green was good. Green was wonderful. “Jackson?” Rodney promoted with rising excitement.
Daniel rose from his chair so fast that he sent it and his mug of coffee flying as he let out a triumphant whoop. “She’s alive, she’s going to live. Oh God. God bless Jack!”
Rodney squawked as he found himself lifted from his chair as he was seized in an enormous hug that proceeded to crush the air from him. “Yes, yes. She’s alive. That’s good. But breathing is too. I need to breathe Jackson!”
Still giddy with joy Daniel released the winded physicist who collapsed back onto his chair. Daniel nearly bounced from the room exclaiming, “I have to go tell Weir and the others.”
Rodney waved feebly at the retreating man as he looked back at Sam’s biometric data. “Thank God,” he said with heartfelt sincerity as he looked again at the green line of text. Suddenly, his face screwed up as he remembered one of the things Daniel had been shouting so excitedly. “God bless Jack? What sort of exclamation is that?”
. . .
“It don’t know whether to bless you or curse you Jack,” Henry Hayes, President of the United States of America and Councillor of the now United Earth Sphere spoke to the grey-haired general at his side seven months after the end of Earth’s Armageddon.
“Sir?” Jack cast a quizzical look at his commander-in-chief, not understanding what had prompted that remark. The two men were watching crews with salvaged machinery and borrowed ally alien tech in conjunction with Odyssey clear the trees that had grown up in the White House. While the presidential residence was an important emblem to the American people Hayes had declared that the clearing of hospitals, other aid facilities, and military bases around the world had greater priority than his house.
Henry gestured to the seven month pregnant BC-304’s ground coordinator as she directed the clearing crew and beam work. As Jack’s eyes went back to the woman, his thumb unconsciously rubbed the metal band on his left hand as he warmly looked at the cherished woman and the precious child she carried within.
“I think Sir,” Jack said sincerely, “considering what I could have lost otherwise; I will accept the cursing but consider it a blessing.”
“Well put,” Henry approved. He suspected that he would be the only president that would be thankful that one of his general’s had violated military frat regulations and impregnated a subordinate. It was also unlikely that such a future violation would quite literally save the subordinate’s life.
Some sticks-in-the-mud would have loved to court-martial the two officers but the AF had wisely decided not to pursue that course. Earth was in crisis and they needed those two officers as never before.
And with so many million dead… each new child was a treasure. And even as they mourned those lost Earth was rebuilding stronger and more united than it had ever been, bound together by the global tragedy. Armageddon had come, but the people of Earth had survived and in time would thrive again.
-FINISHED