Chapter 42
Living Room, O’Neill Farmhouse, Blaine County, MT
October 30, 2010
Fourteen days had passed since Operation Quarantine had swept through the Confederation and turned Earth’s worldview upside down once again. The Aschen had not been a benevolent saviour but manipulative and malicious planetary conquers that had succeeded with their first step in conquering Earth because of one man’s greed for power.
The man in question, the now former President of the United States of America, Robert Kinsey was under arrest, forced to resign from his position, and as his entire administration was being thoroughly investigated not only by the American people, but by all Earth nations.
With Kinsey out of office and his vice-president Hank Landry serving as active president until the upcoming election in November, the people of Earth and the media were focused on two things: those upcoming elections and watching the massive deliberative assembly of the dubbed ‘United Worlds’ on Alaris.
All forty-three planets of the Confederation and numerous other alien races and planets with various treaties and governmental alliances with the Aschen Confederation nations were in agreement that the Aschen must be punished for their actions. How, and what kind of punishment, was proving to be the sticking point of the Phase IV talks.
While Sam kept an eye on the American election campaigns, her main attention was intently on listening and watching the Alaris televised assembly sessions. Following Operation Quarantine Phase II on Earth, she had worked securing various high profile resistance members like Colson in safe houses, on coordinating with Maybourne to transport the representatives to Alaris. The Prometheus-class crews had also transported the vígamaðrs used in shutting down the AF ’shipyards back to the Iðavöllr and thus Asgärd hands, as well as returning the Nox invisibility devices that had been used to conceal the vígamaðr hangers on Earth.
A little over two weeks ago, an AF battleship doing a supply run to Earth had transported Josh and Matt home. Jack had considered the danger now posed by Kinsey to their family by the former president and his ilk to be negligent with the man’s arrest, arrests of most of the NID agents, and arrests of numerous other supporters. Being returned home, leaving Iðavöllr, and their perspective in the thick of the battle and amongst the aliens on Alaris had understandably disappointed their two boys. But after watching a few of the ‘boring talkies’ in Matt’s words, they were quite happy their father had returned them home a week after the Phase IV deliberative assembly had begun.
Hearing heavy footsteps from the kitchen Sam looked up from her spot on the couch inquiring at the man that entered the living room with two glasses of lemonade.
“The boys?” Sam asked curiously, knowing that Josh and Matt had been in the kitchen with him.
“Have taken off outside playing Resistance and Aschen,” the brown haired man drawled in his Texan accent. “How goes the assembly?”
“Another airing of grievances,” Sam confessed, not without sympathy for the representative of the planet in question but the assembly sessions had been going on for fourteen days, surly by now they would start addressing the reason for their assembly. Turning her head forward her eyes focused on her daughter on the blanket spread out on the rug and trying to eat a socked foot, and not the screen of the Asgärd visual display unit brought in from the bunker.
The brown haired man smiled fondly at the sight, remembering with nostalgia his own wife and children and the joy especially of his grandchildren. Sitting himself beside Sam, he passed one of the glasses of lemonade to her. “Anything new on the news?”
Sam shook her head as she accepted the glass. “No, feel free to turn it on if you want though.”
Accepting the permission, he reached out and turned on the television that sat beside the Asgärd VDU. As he caught a re-run of Kinsey’s original press conference he frowned faintly in response to particular a reporter’s remark about ‘the late General George Hammond’ when questioning the former president.
The frown turned into a sigh as he gestured with the remote to the television. “That’s the problem with these young reporters, they are so eager for news they don’t verify things.”
Sam turned an amused look on her couch companion and said dryly, “Sir, you are dead.”
“I am not,” George Hammond, aka Jorge Harmon, protested.
“Okay,” Sam conceded, “you are not, but technically, yes, you are. The Aschen did kill you after all.”
Hammond looked distasteful at the reminder of that. Six years ago, he had learned about the thirty percent sterilisation clause and had asked the questions of the wrong person that had ended up with Aschen taking steps to remove him. It was lucky for him that even after a heart stopped beating the brain lived for another six minutes or so, so when Jack along with Thor had attempted to rescue him at least his brain had been saveable.
The beam that transported his body onboard had snatched his daughter Susan at the same time—who had just entered his home—and she had demanded that Thor do what he could to save her father. Thor had complied and uploaded his mind into a cloned body. It had been Jack however, that had suggested that ‘General George Hammond’ remain dead and managed to convince Susan of the course of action that had resulted in his clone body only being matured to twenty years of age.
Susan had beamed down with his original body and shortly afterwards informed the world of his death. Not long after the funeral service, Susan and her family had been selected as qualified applicants for the off-world pioneer lottery, and the family had moved off Earth. A selection that had been arranged by the resistance so once off-world, his daughter’s family had quickly been whisked to one of the resistance’s haven settlements and the young ‘Jorge Harmon’ had taken up residence on Earth as a flight instructor for a private airfield in the state of Washington.
Relieved that his daughter and family were safe, Hammond had thrown himself into his second life and aiding the resistance movement on Earth. Essentially all the vígamaðr pilots that had been used to deliver dead zones to AF ’shipyards had been approached and recruited by himself—although those pilots were unaware that it had been his selection that had chosen them. Even on operation day, he had continued his incognito status and flown as Pierce-3, keeping to his carefully crafted script of a young man with military associations but no service and allowed a retired colonel to command the Pierce attack team.
“Still,” Hammond sighed as he muted the television and turned back to the Asgärd VDU just as it panned past the bored looking face of Jack. He was not surprised to see the retired colonel and resistance commander was also taking apart another pen.
Before Jack’s aid Sally could scold him again however the Tok’ra seated beside him leaned over and whispered in Jack’s ear. Jack’s hands froze in the middle of their destruction and he suddenly looked on the verge of laughing.
Laughter was something he never thought he would see a Tok’ra invoke in Jack, however taking a closer look at the very young looking Tok’ra had him smiling faintly. Even with the passing of years, he could still see the younger face of the Reetou boy in the assured young Tok’ra sitting at Jack’s elbow.
As the scene continued to pan by, Sally smoothly rescued the mangled pen and handed Jack a new one before they were out of sight as the VDU panned through the rows of representatives of the hastily converged United Worlds at the Phase IV deliberative assembly.
Hammond caught the byplay with the Tok’ra and looking at Sam inquiringly asked, “What do you think he said to make Jack nearly laugh?”
“Don’t know,” Sam lifted a shoulder in a shrugging motion, “it could have been either Charlie or Pales that made the remark and considering Pales’ biting humour is so like Jack’s, it’s a toss up.”
“I still never thought I would see the day when Jack would laugh with a Tok’ra,” George admitted.
“Neither did I,” Sam confessed, “but because of Charlie I think, Pales is as unique in his thoughts as Selmak was. Pales once told me that the other Tok’ra are bound by their host’s experiences as much as they are by their own genetic memories. He and Selmak are the only ones that have ever inhabited hosts that truly know what it is to be free. And that leads to a world of difference between themselves and the other Tok’ra that I think, somehow, Jack is able to sense. A difference that the other Tok’ra themselves fail to grasp.”