Jo Graham - Secrets

“It may never come up if McKay and I can do it discreetly,” Carter said thoughtfully.

He looked at her keenly. “Can you?”

“Of course we can.” She tilted her head up, the playing lights making her look younger than forty one. “I haven’t had a look at it yet, but Sheppard said it was a seamless naquadah casing, like a Stargate. Destroying it’s a lot easier than taking it apart. We can always just drop it into a sun. That will destroy a gate.”

“And you think that will satisfy our allies?” Jack made air quotes around allies.

“If Todd watches it go and monitors it with us, yes.” Carter shrugged. “I can handle Todd. He’s perfectly reasonable to work with. McKay and I can make it happen.”

Jack nodded. “Ok. And what’s the situation with McKay?”

“What you see. He still looks a little off, and he’s got the residual telepathy. Beckett says that may never go, as that seems to be one of the most persistent things given its prevalence among the Athosians. But if it doesn’t, then he’s in the same boat as Teyla,” Carter said. “We can all live with that, right?”

“The IOA won’t have him on Earth, but besides that,” Jack said. “You don’t think he’s compromised?”

She looked away, out over the wind-scoured ocean. “I can’t answer that. There isn’t anything to suggest he’s not his old self. But I know Woolsey is reluctant to give him access to everything yet, and if it were my call I’d say the same. We don’t know what happened in McKay’s head. We can’t be sure there’s not something…” Her voice trailed off.

“You think there is,” he said flatly. “Or you’d never bring it up.”

Carter shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s something not quite right. It could just be the telepathy. Hell, it could just be trauma. I’d walk the same line Woolsey’s doing — give him the benefit of the doubt, but not let him back in to every piece of code until it’s been longer and I had more of a sense of it.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Ok. That’s fair. Time to make sure he’s not a sleeper, running Death’s hidden agenda.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him on this project,” Carter promised. “Unless he double crosses and shoots me or something, we’ll be fine.”

And that was about as good as it got. “Anything else on your mind?”

“I’ve got a personnel situation,” she said. She looked at him sideways. “Off the record?”

“Of course,” he said.

“It’s pretty thorny.” Carter took a deep breath. “Franklin’s a good guy, or at least I thought so. But apparently he has some kind of grudge against Sheppard from back in Afghanistan seven years ago, and he dug up all that old dirt on Sheppard’s record and spit it around the weekly poker game. Which, you know, I’m not worried about from Sheppard’s point of view, because his nose is clean and if Woolsey’s not making waves then who cares about some charges he was cleared of seven years ago? I gave Franklin hell and he swore it would never happen again.”

“So?” Jack said. “I think that’s got it, right? If Sheppard’s nose is clean, it’s dead and buried.”

“If that were the only thing.” Carter shook her head. “Right now I’ve got Daedalus’ 302 wing attached until Caldwell gets back, which means I’ve got Hocken. She’s ok, no problems with her. But the way Franklin put it, it came out like he was the type to go making trouble for her. And the last thing I need is for my second in command to get Caldwell’s 302 commander brought up on charges.”

Jack was silent a moment, working through the chain of consequences. Caldwell was senior to Carter, and he’d hand picked Hocken for this command. He’d be pissed as hell, mostly at Carter that she hadn’t managed her own guy enough to keep him from making trouble for Caldwell. He’d back Hocken up, and Carter ought to back Franklin up because he was hers, even if she’d privately like to swat him. If she did, Caldwell would flip, and if she didn’t it would look bad for her, like maybe Franklin had a point and there was something behind it. Not that anybody would say that officially, but it was not what Carter needed. Competition for command of the battlecruisers was insane, and there had been some grumbles when Carter got the Hammond . He’d heard them. Boy, had he. But there was one critical question. “Anything to it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to,” Carter said, her eyes evading his.

Which meant yes, but Carter had managed to avoid being directly told by anyone officially in the chain of command. She wouldn’t perjure herself. She was serious about her word of honor. Carter would twist and tie herself in knots to avoid being asked, but if she was asked under oath, she’d tell the truth. Jack sighed.

“I thought Franklin was an ok guy,” she said. “Kind of a motor mouth, but a good guy. And I really need this team to come together. I need my second in command on the same page.”

“You’ve got to talk to him,” Jack said.

“How do I do that without telling him things that I don’t know and that he sure as hell shouldn’t know?”

“About the team,” Jack said. “No, you can’t say anything about Hocken. But that’s a temporary problem, right? Caldwell will be back in a week and then she’s his again. If Franklin’s got an issue it’s not going to come up when she’s on another ship.” He shoulder bumped her. “The problem here is whether or not you can trust Franklin, because yes, you’ve got to be able to trust him. The real damage here isn’t about Sheppard or Hocken. It’s about whether his CO can trust him not to run a personal agenda that’s counter to morale and good judgment. Franklin’s screwed himself, and he may not even know it.”

Carter sighed. “I hate all these feelings,” she said. “All these people feeling feelings that I’m supposed to do something about.”

“It’s part of the job, Carter.”

“I know.” She shoulder bumped him back. “It just sucks. I’ll have to talk to him. With no nouns.”

“Carter would like to buy a noun for $100,” Jack said. “But she’ll make do with an adjective.”

“If it’s a nice one,” she said.

Jack looked up at the sheets of light across the sky. It was pretty. And also freezing. “Cold out here,” he said.

“I’ve got to get back to the Hammond .” She pursed her lips regretfully.

“In the next thirty minutes?”

“Well, no.”

“Your papa will be pacing the floor?” Jack grinned.

Carter burst out laughing. “Should we sing Baby It’s Cold Outside ? Cause it sure is!”

“I can’t remember all the words. Something about ‘Baby you’ll freeze out there’?”

She hummed along experimentally. “Maybe just half a drink more?”

“Only I don’t have anything to drink.”

“Neither do I,” Carter said. “Sheppard has some beer, but somehow the Hammond doesn’t have the captain’s liquor cabinet.”

“I don’t suppose Woolsey stocked those VIP quarters,” Jack said thoughtfully.

“He might have at that,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing he’d do.”

“Baby, it’s cold outside.”

Inert, it still looked like something lethal. It gleamed dully with the cold sheen of naquadah, faintly mottled as though it were oily to the touch. There was no seam, no projector, nothing he could identify as a weapon.

Rodney turned Hyperion’s weapon over and over in his hands. It had been easy to find. Sheppard had been thinking about it so hard trying not to think about it that he was practically shouting. Teyla’s Gift might not work on humans, but Rodney’s had been the real deal. He didn’t have every nuance of course, not anymore, but with Sheppard standing next to him loudly not thinking about where he’d hidden the damned thing… It was like the old joke about not thinking about a hippo. The more you tried not to think about a hippo the more the only thing you could imagine was a great big purple one standing right in front of you. And that was dangerous with both Todd and Alabaster in the room. Like Sheppard would last ten seconds if Alabaster wanted to know where the weapon was!