FIC: Outside Influence (1/2)

[cdybedahl]

Outside Influence: part 1 of 2

Written by Calle Dybedahl

The SGC briefing room was its usual self. The smell of stale coffee, the slight hum of electronics, voices in the distance.

"So is she what she says she is?" General Landry said.

He, like the others in the room, was looking at Samantha Carter, who was standing next to the big wall-mounted screen. The screen was showing security camera footage from one of the SGC's holding cells. In the cell a blonde, butch-looking woman sprawled over a bunk. She was smoking a large cigar and tapping her foot in time to some unheard music.

"Genetically," Sam said, "she's almost pure Ancient. Judging from the amount of mutational drift in mitochondrial DNA, we estimate that her branch of the species have been isolated for some ten thousand years."

"Could that have been faked?"

"No," doctor Lam said. "If anybody out there had the technology to do genetic engineering that subtle, the Goa'uld would have had their hak'taur hosts centuries ago. Biologically, she's the real thing."

"All right," the General said. "What about the craft she arrived in? Do we know anything more about that?"

"Culturally, it's odd," Daniel said. "The technology and design is... familiar. It looks and works a lot like 1950s and 1960s technology from Earth. If we'd had reactionless drives and hyperjump back then, that is."

Landry looked at him.

"So they have a mixed level of technology?" he said. "Basic stuff, and a few high-tech things? Do we know where they got the high tech from?"

Sam interrupted.

"No, sir," she said. "The reactionless thrusters and the FTL jump drive are consistent with the rest of their technology, and they fully understand how to build them. Captain Thrace have given us her version of how it works. Which is on the level of what one of our fighter pilots would know about how his plane works, so it's hardly scientific detail, but it's been enough for us to make a few experiments and develop a couple of theories."

Landry turned his bulky body towards where Sam was standing.

"Are you telling me, Colonel, that these people have reactionless drives and FTL at a Cold War level of technology?"

Sam nodded. "Yes, sir, I am."

"Can we use it?"

"Yes, sir, I think we can. It's surprisingly simple. We could have built ships like these at any time in the past half century or so. It's just that nobody in this galaxy ever had the right idea."

"The right idea?" The General looked doubtful.

"Yes, sir," Sam said, nodding again. "It's even quite simple, once you've thought of it. It'll overturn most of post-1920s physics, of course, but that's a later problem. In practical terms, we should have an F-302 retrofitted with a reactionless drive in a couple of days. If that works out, we'll start modifying the entire fleet next week."

"Fantastic," Landry said. "I won't believe it until I see it. Keep at it, Colonel."

Doctor Lam cleared her throat.

"What do we do about the prisoner?" she said. "There's no medical reason to hold her, she's been cooperating and she keeps flirting with my staff. I want her out."

"She's flirting with everybody," Daniel said.

"Except Colonel Carter," Teal'c added.

Sam turned from the monitor and looked at her teammates.

"She's been hitting on you guys?" she said.

"Oh yeah," Colonel Mitchell said. "And how."

Sam frowned. "Why not me?" she said.

"Well, you're a woman...," General Landry started.

"She's made passes at me," doctor Lam said. "And all the nurses, male or female."

"Huh," Landry said. He turned to Sam.

"Maybe she respects you," he said.

"So what do we do with her?" Daniel said. "She's worse than Vala. Granted, she doesn't seem quite as fond of stealing, but she more than makes up for it in smoking, drinking, gambling, cursing and picking fights."

"She also makes inappropriate suggestions," Teal'c said.

"She's been perfectly nice to me," Sam said.

"Right," Landry said. "As I understand it, she's been cooperating as well as can be expected, she's got a clean bill of health and she has no characteristics that marks her as an alien."

There was a general murmur of agreement around the table.

"Colonel Carter?" Landry said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Since she seems to be treating you special, we'll see if that leads to any revelations. Until further notice, you have a house guest."

"What?!" Sam said. "But it's spring break soon! Cassie will be coming home from college!"

Landry got up from his chair.

"Well," he said. "I can't think of anyone better suited to help an off-Earth human adjust to this planet than her."

"What about my work?" Sam tried. "The reactionless thrusters? The jumpdrive?"

"Do what you can from home," Landry said. "Turn the rest over to dr Lee."

She was about to protest again, but Landry cut her off.

"You said it was 1950s tech," he said. "We don't need our foremost genius to work on that. We need you to try to figure out what else Thrace knows."

Sam's posture slumped a little.

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Try to have fun," he said. "Take her out drinking, or something. Go see a ball game. The Air Force will pick up the tab."

Sam turned to look at the monitor, where Captain Kara Thrace was blowing smoke rings.

"Yes, sir," Sam winced.

Thrace was silent for most of the ride from the SGC to the house Sam had inherited from Janet. The only thing she said was a brief "I can't believe how much like Caprica it is" while they were driving through the forest that led up to the Cheyenne Mountain entrance.

Sam had no idea what to say to the woman. They'd hardly talked while Thrace had been locked up, only briefly during the more technical parts of the interrogation. And yet, apparently, for some reason, Thrace treated Sam differently from everybody else.

She hadn't even complained when Sam asked her not to smoke in the car.

"Well," Sam said as she killed the car's engine. "This is it. This is where I live."

"Looks nice," Thrace said.

She was dressed in a shapeless one-size-fits-nobody blue jumpsuit. Her blonde hair was dirty and in disarray.

Sam got out of the Volvo, and Thrace followed suit. She stopped right outside the door, looking around.

"Your first alien planet?" Sam asked.

"Nah," Thrace said. "It's my twenty-sixth, I think. Maybe more. Not many had this many people, though."

"Not many do in this galaxy either," Sam said. "Earth is a bit special."

She thought she heard Thrace mumble something like "Yeah, no shit" under her breath. She mentally filed it away for later.

"So," Sam said, "What do you feel like first? Grand tour? Food?"

"A shower," Thrace said. "Some decent clothes."

"Sure," Sam said. "Shower or bath, your choice. As for clothes..."

She took a long look at Thrace. Which she, it suddenly occurred to her, she hadn't done before. Not even in the basic checking out the new chick way that her libido usually did all by itself. Now that she did, she came to the conclusion that Thrace was a little shorter, a little more muscular than herself and generally really nicely shaped.

Suddenly she found herself being annoyed that Thrace had been hitting on everybody except her.

"...you can borrow something of mine while we go shopping," she said.

Landry hadn't been kidding when he said that the Air Force would pick up the tab for this. An American Express card with an obscenely high limit was burning a hole in her wallet, and the only instructions she'd gotten for using it was a warning not to blow the SGC's entire budget at once.

"A bath?" Thrace said. "As in a big tub full of hot water and bubbles and stuff?"

"Big enough for two," Sam's mouth said before her brain could stop it.

Thrace turned a shit-eating grin her way.

"Is that an invitation?" she said.

Sam shook her head. "No," she said.

"I guess I'll just have to settle for the hot water, then," Thrace said. "And my trusty old hand."

She set off for the entrance, leaving Sam behind to blush.

Whatever reason Thrace had had not to flirt with her, it had evidently passed.

Later that night they were sitting at Sam's kitchen table sharing a pizza, since Sam hadn't felt like cooking. Not that she was much good at it at the best of times. It had always been Janet who did practical things. She'd cooked and cleaned and cared for Cassie and tended the garden and all those things. Sam had fixed the cars, painted the house and helped out as instructed. Occasionally they'd joked about living the stereotype.

"Who was she?" Thrace suddenly said.

Sam started.

"Who was who?" she said.

"The little brunette in the pictures."

"Cassie's mom," Sam said. It wasn't untrue.

"So where is she now? And who's Cassie?"

"She's dead," Sam said, and as always her innards turned into a cold hard knot when she said it. "Cassie's my adopted daughter."

"Oh," Thrace said.

"This food's nice," she continued, as if sensing that she'd stumbled into treacherous conversational territory.

"It's not exactly gourmet food," Sam said, appreciating the effort, if that's what it was.

"Oh, come on," Thrace said. "It's full of fat, protein, starch and salt. Don't tell me you've never craved this stuff after a couple of weeks in the field."

"It's... happened," Sam said.

"See," Thrace said. "We have something in common. What's your name, anyway?"

Sam put down the pizza slice she'd just been about to take a bite out of.

"You don't know my name?" she said.

Thrace shrugged.

"Everybody's just been calling you Colonel Carter," she said. "Which will be fine if you want it that way, but it seems a bit formal if I'm going to live with you."

Sam tried to smile.

"We haven't been treating you that well, have we?" she said.

Before the other woman could respond, Sam held out her hand across the table.

"Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter," she said. "Most people call me Sam."

The wide grin that Sam had already seen several times spread over Thrace's face again as she took the offered hand.

"Captain Kara Thrace," she said. "Most people call me Kara, Starbuck or You Bitch."

"Right," Sam said. "And which of those would like me to use?"

"Well, Starbuck's my call sign and I don't think I'll be flying again for a while, so that's out," Thrace said. "And I do kind of hope that you're not going to dislike me enough to swear at me. Which kind of leaves Kara, I guess."

Sam let go of Kara's hand, suddenly very aware that she'd been holding it rather longer than was entirely appropriate.

"Well, welcome to my home, Kara," she said. "You get the guest room. It doesn't have the best bed in the world, but I hope it'll do."

Kara smiled.

"If it's indoors and has a bed, it's better than many places I've slept," she said. "It'll be fine."

After she'd shown Kara her room and gone to bed, Sam found she couldn't sleep. The thought of another woman in the house after all this time made her tense. Not that she disliked it, really. It was kind of nice to know she wasn't alone. But...

Apart from Cassie, who still occasionally stayed in her old room, the last person to share the house was Janet. Having someone else there woke memories. Memories that had faded and mostly lost their sting over the past two years, but still not enough that she'd been able to face clearing out the last of Janet's belongings. She wasn't sure if she'd ever get that far.

Irritated, she got out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself. Maybe a glass of bourbon would quiet her thoughts enough to let her sleep. If not, she might as well get some work done. She had an idea about combining a Naquitar-enhanced distribution grid and a reactionless drive like the one from Kara's ship that might let them do some interesting things. Sure, the Prometheus and her sister ships already had reactionless drives -- but not ones they understood how they worked, which kept them from doing clever things with it.

She didn't bother to turn the lights on as she walked downstairs. She knew the house more than well enough not to need it. She opened the liquor cabinet, and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden sound of a voice.

"If that's booze, pour me one too," it said.

Sam turned. Vaguely she could see a slightly paler silhouette against the dark leather of the sofa.

Kara.

"What are you doing here?" Sam said.

"Couldn't sleep," Kara said. "Sorry if I startled you. I didn't feel like having any lights on."

Sam's heart rate slowly dropped towards normal.

"It's all right," she said. "You just surprised me a little. And I hope you don't mind your bourbon straight up, because I don't feel like fetching ice."

Kara laughed.

"If it's got ethanol in it, it's fine," she said. "And I'll go out on a limb here and assume that anything that actually comes in a bottle will be way better than the rotgut out of the flight deck tech's frakked-up still."

Sam filled two glasses with more than she'd usually drink. She gave one glass to Kara, put the bottle on the table between them and sat down in an armchair.

"You had a rough time?" she asked.

Kara made a sound that couldn't make its mind up if it was a laugh or a sob. She emptied half the glass in one swallow.

"The frakking Cylons killed ninety-nine point nine nine nine frakking nine percent of the human race," she said. "All that's left is forty-something thousand walking dead and a handful of resistance fighters slowly dying in the radioactive ruins of our homes. I'm the best frakking fighter pilot left in the entire fleet, and if I frakk up my entire frakking species dies."

She emptied the glass and refilled it.

"Yeah," she said. "I think you can say I've had a rough time."

"Been there," Sam said.

Kara looked at her.

"What?" she said.

"I'm only a decent fighter pilot," Sam said. "But I am the best brain we have in the entire off-world service. Sure, there are smarter people than me out there -- but none of them have anywhere near my experience with alien technology. So when Anubis tried to wipe out all life in the entire galaxy, and I was standing there trying to figure out how to use the only weapon that could stop him, well... Sam Carter fucks up and humanity ends."

"You were there all alone?" Kara said.

"No," Sam admitted. "My dad and a lesser enemy were helping. Didn't matter much, feeling-wise."

"I had Apollo and Kat and the other pilots," Kara said. "Also didn't help much."

She put her glass down on the table and leaned forward.

"How do you handle it?" she said. "How do you deal with the memories?"

Sam smiled, a bitter and mirthless smile.

"I'm sitting here in the middle of the night. I know my way to the bourbon bottle in complete darkness. I'm not sure that falls under 'dealing'."

"Let me guess," Kara said. "You throw yourself into your work like the world depended on it, because you know that some day it will. You keep everybody at arm's length, because if you don't attach to anyone you can't lose them. You screw anybody who'll consent, because for a few moments it makes you forget."

This time, it was Sam who drank deeply from her glass.

"I don't screw anybody at all," she said. "Not since Janet took a staff blast to the chest."

"So you were lovers," Kara said. "I wondered. You were being so vague about it."

Sam grimaced. "We were both in the military. We couldn't talk about it. Long habit goes deep."

"But you adopted her daughter."

Sam shook her head.

"Cassie was adopted by Janet first. Like you, she comes from another world. Her people were killed... It doesn't matter how. She was only a kid, the only survivor. We couldn't just leave her there."

Sam got up and walked over to the window. She looked out, towards the road where the occasional car passed by even at this time of the night.

"I can't even talk to my neighbors any more," she said. "I don't know what to say to them. They live in a world were a sports event is important, where the result of some inane reality soap matters. They don't know anything about what's out there. They have no idea how close they have all come to oblivion, over and over again. They go about their little lives in blissful ignorance, and I can't even make up my mind if I pity or envy them."

Kara came and stood right behind her.

"At least I don't have that problem," she said. "I can pity all of us who live, and envy those who died in the initial nuclear blasts."

"Will they be waiting for you?" Sam asked. "Will they hope that you'll be coming back?"

Kara shook her head.

"They saw my Raptor drift into some kind of shimmering surface in a frakking big circle of stuff floating in space," she said. "Drift into it and not come out again. They'll wait for a few hours, then assume it was a trap and decide that I'm dead. They'll put my picture up on the wall of remembrance, and they'll auction off my stuff while getting stinking drunk, and Colonel frakking Thigh will try to pretend he's not really happy that I'm gone."

Sam went to refill her glass, and discovered that the bottle was empty.

"Damn," she said. "And that was my last one, too."

"That's fine," Kara said. "I think I'll have another try at sleeping anyway."

Sam nodded. "Probably a good idea."

Kara headed for the guest room.

"Hey," Sam said.

Kara stopped and looked questioningly at her over her shoulder.

"At the base," Sam said, "why did you hit on everybody except me?"

"I didn't like your eyes," Kara said.

"What's wrong with my eyes?!"

"If I want to see the look in them, I'll go find a mirror," Kara said.

Try to have fun, Landry had said. Take her out drinking or something.

It wasn't like Sam had any better ideas, so why not try it? The dent left in her liquor level after three nights talking proved that Kara was no stranger to drinking, and Sam had a hunch she wouldn't mind loud music, flashing lights and dancing either.

"If we go out, will you promise me one thing?" she said to Kara across the noon-time breakfast table.

"What?" Kara said.

"Don't get into any fights. Or anything else that would draw attention from the police."

"I'll try, but I don't know what strange taboos you people may have."

"I guess that'll have to do."

As for where to go, there was only one place where Sam felt comfortable taking a possibly risky stranger. A place where they'd used to go quite often, and she hadn't been more than a handful of times in the last two years. Fortunately, it wasn't a place that changed much. It'd looked the same since Sam first came to Colorado Springs, and so had the people coming there. Sure, the individuals changed and fashions came and went, but the atmosphere stayed the same. And, of course, a few of the people did too.

"Major Carter," Lily said from behind the bar. "Wow, it's been ages since I saw you in here."

"Yeah," Sam said. "I've been... busy. And it's actually Colonel Carter these days."

"Well, congratulations," Lily said. "That warrants a celebratory one on the house for you and your... new girlfriend?"

Lily looked pointedly at Kara, who was standing next to Sam and trying to look in every direction at once.

Sam shook her head.

"Just a friend," she said.

Lily looked from Sam to Kara and back again.

"So you wouldn't mind if I hit on her?" she said.

A surge of emotion ran through Sam, taking her completely by surprise. It wasn't a very clear emotion, a strong mix of competitiveness, desire to protect and jealousy.

"Never mind," Lily said. "That expression was answer enough. I'll stay clear."

"No," Sam said, "really, it's OK, I don't..."

Lily laughed.

"Yeah, right," she said. "You always were a lousy liar. And even if I hadn't been teasing you, I wouldn't want to risk getting into a fight with you."

Sam was taken aback.

"What?" she said. "I don't fight. Or, at least not here."

"Oh, come on," Lily said. "I've seen your arms and torso. Someone who's lived to get that many scars is not someone I want to mess with. Particularly not when I know she's a professional warrior."

"You've seen her chest?" Kara said. "Does she show it off here often, or do you two have history?"

"Yeah, when did you...?" Sam said.

Lily grinned. "Four years ago?" she said. "Dr Fraiser's birthday? Tequila race?"

"Oh," Sam said. She felt her face heat up with a blush. "That time."

Kara looked from one of them to the other, wordlessly asking.

"I got a bit drunk," Sam said.

"She got stinking drunk," Lily said. "And she danced on the bar with her top off."

"Did she now," Kara said. She demonstratively looked Sam up and down.

"Tell me," she went on, "what is this 'tequila race'?"

"Well," Lily said. "I did offer you something on the house, didn't I?"

Sam groaned.

Gingerly, Sam tried opening her eyes. Two lances of sunlight stabbed through them into her brain, and with a pained wince she screwed them shut again. Her entire brain pounded with agony. Her mouth felt dry and dirty, and nausea topped her misery.

Serious nausea.

With a Herculanean effort, she made it to the toilet just as the meager contents of her stomach got forcefully expelled. A stench of human digestive juices and half-decomposed tequila spread through the bathroom. She lay down on the cool tile floor and closed her eyes. Maybe if she slept a little more she could get through the worst of the hangover without feeling it...

But sleep wouldn't come. The slow, grinding pain in her head got in the way, and pretty soon the floor's pleasant chill turned into shiver-inducing cold. She slowly worked her way up to a standing position, and with liberal assistance from the nearest wall staggered back into the bedroom and towards her bed.

Her occupied bed.

Kara lay stretched out on her back, loudly snoring and stark naked.

Just as naked as Sam herself.

It didn't necessarily mean that they had... that they had. It could just be that they got home from the club and in the tequila-laden fog they both ended up collapsing in Sam's bed. After getting their clothes off.

It could have happened that way.

Kara's snoring stopped. A few moments later, a drawn-out groan could be heard in its stead.

"Frakk," Kara said. "My head feels like something large stepped in it."

"Morning," Sam said, doing her best to sound light-hearted.

"Who won?" Kara said.

"Who won what?"

"The drinking race!"

"Oh."

Sam remembered Lily setting out a number of glasses and opening several bottles of tequila. She remembered explaining the rules to Kara, such as they were. After that, it got blurry.

"If your head feels anything like mine," she said, "I think we both lost."

A flash of herself pouring a shot of pale yellow liquid into Kara's open mouth came to her.

"Damn," Kara said. "I hate losing."

"I'm sure we put up a good fight."

She remembered lying on her back on the bar, with her blouse bunched up under her breasts. Kara trying to pour tequila into her navel, missing, and trying to lick it off her bare belly before it ran off.

Kara frowned.

"Did I grope the cute bartender?" she said.

Another flash, of Kara throwing herself across the bar trying to do exactly that, and Sam trying to stop her by grabbing hold of the back of Kara's spaghetti-strap top. Which promptly ripped apart, leaving Sam holding it and Kara sprawled half-naked over a barstool.

"You tried," Sam said.

"Frakk," Kara said. "I hope she won't be too pissed off at me."

"If we'd done anything that really pissed her off she'd have had Raya throw us out. But we should probably make sure to tip well next time."

Sam frowned when her ears caught up with her mouth. Next time? What next time?

"Sure thing," Kara said. "But right now I want some of that coffee."

Coffee?

Sam redirected what little brainpower she had to her sense of smell. Which did indeed register the distinct smell of black ambrosia. But who could have...?

A chill went through Sam's body as realization struck, nearly strong enough to suppress the hangover. She stood up abruptly.

"Oh God," she said.

"What?" Kara said. "Is something wrong?"

"Cassie," Sam said. "She was due to come home for spring break this morning."

Sam had been gone for so much of the time Cassie spent growing up that it always amazed her that the little girl she'd once saved was now a young woman of twenty years. A young woman who was at the moment frying bacon and eggs and smirking shamelessly at her adopted mother's miserable state.

"So how've you been?" Cassie said in her chirpiest voice. "Any new apocalypses avoided?"

"Not this week," Sam mumbled. "We had a plague scare a little while a go, but it got sorted out."

"Do you know that my roommate Dawn didn't believe me at all when I told her that one of my moms is a superhero? She just said something about her sister being one too," Cassie said. "And who is she, anyway? She doesn't look like your type at all."

Sam blinked. "What? Your roommate?" she said.

"No, silly, the woman you brought home last night."

Another chill traveled down Sam's spine.

"You were here?" she said.

Cassie nodded. "Last class got canceled, so I took an earlier flight."

"Oh," Sam said. "I... I hope we didn't wake you?"

"Are you kidding? The way you two carried on you'd have woken the dead."

"Sorry..."

"So did you pick her up at the club?"

Sam nearly sprayed coffee all over the kitchen.

"Cassie!"

"What?" Cassie said, moving crispy bacon from the frying pan onto a plate. "I don't mind, if that's what you think. If you're moving on after mom, that's good. You deserve a good life, you know."

Sam tried to gather her wits.

"I didn't..."

"You know," Cassie interrupted, "all these years I thought it was mom who made those sounds? I just never thought that you'd sound that high-pitched."

Sam felt panic beginning to grow at the back of her head. She made sounds? While making... while? Sounds that Cassie had heard? For years Sounds that she'd been making last night with Kara?

The panic climbed a bunch of notches towards the surface of her mind.

Cassie handed her a platter of bacon and eggs.

"I'm just kidding," she said. "There were no sounds. You guys came home, made a lot of noise and then you fell asleep. I just like to see you squirm."

The panic left and was replaced by equal parts relief and annoyance.

"You're an evil child," Sam said. "Your mother would've been proud."

Cassie poured herself a cup of coffee.

"Thank you," she said. "I do my best. And seriously, who is she? I've never seen you take someone home before, so she must be special in some way."

Sam ate a couple of strips of bacon before she answered, slowly feeling the fat and protein start to ease her hangover.

"She's from another planet," she said. "She's stranded here. I've been told to take care of her for a time, apparently with the hope that you might have insight in Earth adaptation for aliens."

Cassie sat down across the kitchen table from Sam.

"So which custom have you been explaining that entails her sleeping in your bed?"

"I was told it's called a 'tequila race'", Kara said from the door to the living room. Like Sam, she was wearing a dressing gown and a worn expression.

Cassie looked her up and down for a few moments.

"Hello, alien woman who sleeps with my mom," she said. "How do you want your eggs?"

"Almost crispy," Kara said. "My name is Kara, and I sure hope I didn't shag your mom last night."

Cassie returned to the stove and fired it up again.

"Why not?" she said. "She's in good shape for her age, and certainly not bad looking."

"I'm sitting right here!" Sam protested.

"Oh, I know she is," Kara said, ignoring Sam. "It's just that when I do shag her, I want to remember it."

Cassie laughed.

"I think I like this one, mom," she said. "You can keep her."

Comments

[sing1118.livejournal.com]

This is fabulous. Seriously. I love the pairing but can't behind a lot of the crossover circumstances- I like this one a lot.