Events on the Horizon: A Stargate Sequel

Chapter 5

Sam

Shrapnel was flying at us from all angles as my ribs ached trying to keep my heaving lungs still inside. The blood from burst vessels coated a metallic tang to each breath, but I continued running and pushing myself farther. I could see him there in the trees reaching out for help, and if I could just make it in time I could save him. The field before me though started to change consistency until the dirt was silt and from silt it was sand. Each step though my boots felt heavier, my joints tighter, and the terrain tougher.

"Sir!" I called out, voice hoarse and lost in the sounds of gunfire around us. "Sir I've got you! I'm almost there!"

"Save yourself Carter!" He yelled back, "that's an order!"

"I'm not going without you sir!" But each step was harder to pull through, and the expanse of land was stretching farther between us. The sand was growing denser, thicker, wetter into a pasty mud that sucked in my boots with each step.

"Get out of here!" He shouted again as another explosion behind him sent two men flying into the air in pieces. I winced and continued onward for him, Jack, just lying there with a crimson oozing from his abdomen. I was only 50 meters or so away but I could swear each step was sending me backwards, farther from him.

"Major!" I heard a call behind me, "Carter please!" I whipped my head to see someone calling for me, a young man with a buzz cut and deep set hazel eyes I'd never seen before. Wait, I had, I was on this mission with him. He was my partner. Was he?

Where am I? I thought to myself and pulled my feet from the now bog that they were trapped in, trying to find my way back to Jack.

"Help me Major Carter!" The man called out, "I have a daughter, and a wife waiting for me." The garbled pleading coming from him, his arm limp at his side with tendons snapped and bone jutting from tissue. I was so close to him I could turn and help but, what about Jack? I couldn't choose both I, I couldn't support both. I didn't even know if I could support one in this thick mud.

"Help him Carter!" Jack wheezed out, "he, he has a life more important now than mine. He has someone to go home to."

No, I thought, tears pricking at my eyes as I pulled at the thought of who to choose. You have me though Jack, me to come home to. My heart shattered as the tree the young man was leaning against cracked in half from an explosion and took him down with it. I gasped covering my mouth and trudging onward to Jack through the pain, through the tears, each footstep heavier than the last.

"Why didn't you save him, Carter?!" Jack shouted at me, lying there, unable to move. "He had a daughter and you could have saved him! He could have lived! But you had to think about it, and that hesitation cost his life." He spat out a mouthful of blood gurgling up to the surface and as my boots finally hit the dry ground in front of him he took one last breath.

"No, sir no, come back." I searched for a source of the bleeding as his eyes fell in front of me. "No, Jack." I whispered, pulling him into my arms. "We need to go, we need to get out of..." I stopped. "Where are we? What are we even doing here?" I mumbled aloud.

"Open the door!" His voice was around me and yet I couldn't see him. 

"What door?" I asked quietly, looking around, looking back at him lying in my arms.

"Dammit open the door! I can't help you if you lock the door Sam."

"I... there is no door? Sir, is that you?" I looked down at the body in my arms, but it was clearly Jack speaking to me. I set him down gingerly onto the ground and walked around the forest deeper, feeling like a fool in search of an entryway in the middle of a war zone. "What's going on? I don't understand." My quivering voice echoed around me as I went in search of the door.