STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) by Jo Graham Page B

last post. If anyone was ever stupid enough to try to transfer him out, he’d resign first. She’d make sure nobody was ever that stupid, if she could.
    We’ve got a lot going on here, as I’m sure you can imagine . It’s gotten kind of hairy, but nothing as bad as we’ve seen.
    That was circumspect enough. It sounded like she was in Iraq or Afghanistan, which she reasonably might be.
    I want to ask you a favor, seriously, Cass. I know you’ve got a lot going on with yo ur friends and your life, but can you look in on Jack for me? Drop in on him and keep him busy? Get him to help you with something. There could be something wrong with your car or your apartment or something. Give him somebody to take care of. I know you c an handle that stuff on your own, and that you’re grown, but it’s good for him to be needed.
    If she knew Cassie, her car barely ran and her shower had water leaking in the ceiling from the upstairs neighbor. Nonprofits paid receptionists even worse than the Air Force paid second lieutenants, and Cassie was sharing a falling down townhouse with five roommates in a fairly terrible neighborhood of DC. But she’d never ask Jack for help unless she thought it was for him.
    Sam smiled, imagining Jack with his shirt sleeves rolled up, fixing the showerhead in a mildewy bathroom, while Cass sat on the edge of the sink and told him all about refugee kids in the Sudan, both of them feeling so good about helping each other. Then he’d take Cassie out to dinner somewhere she couldn’t possibly afford, smirking as everyone looked at his gray hair and three stars and the radiant girl with him. Dirty old man, they’d whisper, and Jack would soak it up until Cass said nice and loud, “Dad, this is just so swell of you!”
    Take car e of yourself too, and be careful. I wish I could say I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, but I probably won’t make it home by then. Maybe, if I’m lucky, and everything calms down here. It would be nice.
    It would be nice, but unlikely. Cassie wouldn’t be alone, not unless she wanted to be. She’d have Jack, and maybe they’d go home to Colorado and there would be Daniel too, and Cam and Vala and maybe Teal’c if he made it. And Vala would pocket the rolls and Daniel would get tipsy on one beer and they’d talk about how they missed her. She and Janet would be the ghosts at the feast.
    “Absent friends,” Daniel would say seriously, his glass lifted, and everyone would say it too, except Jack who never did, just silently touching his glass to theirs.
    I love you, Cass.
    S am
     
    It was the best seafood in DC, or at least the best in a place that wasn’t pretentious and full of power meetings. Jack O’Neill rolled up the sleeves of his plaid cotton shirt and waved as his guest came in the door, looking around cheerfully before he wound his way among the tables and sat down opposite.
    “A fine idea,” said Konstantin Nechayev, tossing his jacket into the other side of the booth. “We are cold warriors again, meeting in some out of the way place where we will pretend to be fishermen.”
    “I never did that,” Jack said, deadpan. “I really did work on a trawler out of Gdansk.”
    Nechayev laughed as the waitress came over. “I will have whatever beer he is having. And I was on a shrimp boat just off Key West.”
    Jack waggled a finger. “I thought there was something Forrest Gump-like about you, Konstantin.”
    Nechayev flipped open the laminated menu. “So this is on your expense account or mine?”
    “Whichever,” Jack said.
    Nechayev looked at him over the menu. “It is sad, is it not? The things you do for your country. Dinner with an IOA member — what could be more dismal?”
    “Dinner with a system lord,” Jack replied. He looked up at the waitress. “I’ll have the Fisherman’s Platter with the clam strips.”
    “I will have the same with the shrimp,” Nechayev said. “I am yearning for my old shrimp boat days.”
    The waitress duly sent off