Stargate Command, sometime in early August 1999
“Oh yeah; we’re pulling some gees now.”
The casual comment from his best friend made Cromwell chuckle despite the precarious situation they were in. Gravity tugged at him, its pull increasing with every foot of line he traversed. He’d never felt anything like this before. A glance at the Stargate — below him now in this strange, surreal environment where sideways had become down — gave him pause. Was the iris straining, or was that just his imagination?
He shook his head to clear the thought and glanced across to Jack, who hung suspended on his own line just a few feet away. The two of them were working side by side once more, for the first time in years. “I feel like I’ve put on a couple of hundred pounds,” Cromwell commented, grinning.
He saw the barest flicker of amusement cross his friend’s face. “I wasn’t gonna say anything.” Deadpan delivery was a long-established O’Neill talent.
Still grinning, Cromwell turned his attention back to the task at hand. According to that bright young captain up in the control booth, all they had to do was maneuver the bomb into position, set the timer, arm the thing, and then climb back out of the gravity well before it went off. Piece of cake. Well, except that climb’s gonna hurt like hell.
He thought he heard a strange noise. Was someone shouting? Everything sounded a bit distorted, down here in the gravity well. “Did you hear something?” he asked Jack.
Jack looked up. “Look out!” he shouted, just as shards of glass sprayed them both. They ducked their heads, shutting their eyes tightly against the crystalline rain. Cromwell opened his a moment later, looking across to Jack, who was bleeding from several cuts on his arms and neck.
“Are you all right?” Cromwell asked. His own skin stung, too. No matter; they were almost finished here, and once it was over they could worry about dealing with the cuts and any glass embedded in their skin. He hoped he hadn’t pissed off the facility’s doctor too badly.
“This is close enough!” shouted Jack. “Set the timer! Twenty seconds!”
Is he crazy? “We won’t make it out,” Cromwell warned.
“Twenty seconds!”
It’s your op, Jack, so we’ll do it your way, he thought, as he climbed back up the few feet to the bomb, which had remained stationary as they both slipped when the glass struck them. So this is where it ends? The two of us together, at least, this time. I suppose I can think of worse things. Hell, we’ve both lived through worse things. I hadn’t really figured I’d come back alive from my trip inside this place anyway, though I’d rather you didn’t think you had to go with me.
He reached the bomb and punched the timer for twenty seconds. I still say we could afford a little more time, he thought as he did it, but he followed Jack’s order anyway. “Set!” he called.
“Do it!”
Cromwell reached for the pin just as a terrifying creak sounded from below. He looked down in horror to see the iris torn apart, disappearing into the naked wormhole. The horror redoubled as he saw Jack slip farther down the rope, drawn toward the swirling maelstrom.
Abandoning the pin for now, he flipped over in his harness, grasping Jack’s just before the gravity could draw him beyond reach. “I’ve got you!” he shouted, even as he felt the blood rushing to his head.
Jack set his grip on the rope again. “Get up there and arm that damn bomb!”
Cromwell shook his head, which was already starting to pound from his being oriented upside-down in the intense gravity field. No way, buddy. I let you down once and I’m not about to do it again. One of us deserves at least a fighting chance at getting out of here before that thing goes off, and it’s gonna be you. “I’ve got you! Just climb!”
“Arm the damn bomb!” Jack ordered again.
Their eyes locked in stubborn disagreement. “Climb!” Cromwell shouted at his friend.
There was a jolt as his own rope parted and he felt himself spin around again, drawn toward the swirling maw of the wormhole with nothing to prevent his fall now other than his grip on Jack’s harness. Doggedly, he hung on, feeling his arms ache as he fought the intense gravity. At least the pounding in his head eased, the red-black border that had begun to claim his vision retreating as blood flow clawed its way back toward something resembling equilibrium. His gaze remained locked with Jack’s as they clung suspended to a single rope above a passageway to a black hole’s interminable oblivion.
Oblivion that would eventually consume the entire planet and everyone on it if somebody didn’t get up there and pull the pin on that bomb. He couldn’t do it; not with his rope gone. And Jack can’t do it with me hanging onto him and dragging him down. Under normal circumstances, Cromwell knew, either one of them could have managed to carry the other’s weight up a rope like that. But not in a field of however many gees they were currently pulling.
There was only one thing to do.
Cromwell let go of Jack’s harness, surrendering himself to the pull of gravity even as he saw his best friend’s hand grab for him a fraction too late, and miss. It was the last thing he saw, the act stretching into slow motion before the wormhole’s event horizon swallowed him and the world evaporated in sensory overload as blackness took over…