Jo Graham - Secrets

“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.