Snapshot from the Air
A scene
By Gumnut
Mar 2004

The scream of burning atmosphere. The wail of engines strained to do the impossible. The spin of grey stained blue alternating with the black and orange of dying civilisation.

His hands ached on the controls, his sweat gluing his gloves to his palms, his bared fingertips, red, daring blisters. No flight suit. No preparation. Just raw Jack O’Neill and the machine keeping him alive.

Fire blossomed in a spray of orange to his right, his reflexes spinning the bird away, arching far to the left, only to encounter another exploding brilliance that burned itself into his retinas, leaving a dark shadow in his eyesight.

His wing caught the blast and flared. The hull scorched, flame flickering briefly as whatever constituted paint on this planet burned itself into its component gases and blackened solids. But the fire did not hold, and he was lucky, the wing survived intact continuing to tease the wind as he conquered the sky.

He flipped the glider, cutting speed, and arcing back past the following enemy, dodging. His world was a mass of blur punctuated by the sounds of wretching and the scent of abrupt air sickness, but his thought was as focussed as his expression was grim.

Nothing mattered.

Nothing but life and death.

He preferred the former, but would take the latter if in the process he managed to deal out some of his own taking this goddamned stinking Goa’uld with him.

**********
FIN.

Snapshot from the Backseat
By Gumnut
9 Apr 2004

His world was inside out and all over his lap. The smell of himself cloyed his nostrils as the spin of grey and blue twisted his stomach, but he knew it was all that stood between him and death.

That and the man in the seat in front of him.

His pilot’s hair stood up haphazardly above the instrument panel, its silver punctuated by scattered flecks of red. Each strand shivered as the man punched buttons, swung controls, and cursed the enemy to their death.

Jack was possessed.

Daniel had never seen him like this, never seen him so focussed, so determined. Blood ran down the side of the Colonel’s face unnoticed as his head turned following a possible threat. The world spun again. Daniel swallowed his stomach, lost to the vagaries of fate and the skill of those hands.

“You bastard! Damn!”

Brilliance blinded him and a sudden hot wind blasted his face. Stray syllables of anger bounced off the shattered canopy.

Air roared in his ears.

“Daniel!” His name scattered.

“Daniel!”

Jack had turned to face him, his dark, angry eyes piercing through smoke. “Daniel!” Blood suddenly clouded his vision, masking it in red. What?

Hands grabbed him and suddenly he was falling. A flash of heat and pain.

Darkness.

**********
FIN.