Dawn reluctantly crept over the low eastern hills, the ruddy Lazon sun seemingly unwilling to reveal its face to this god-forsaken land. The laws of physics are compelling however, so rise it did regardless of its personal feelings.
Dawn found the members of Banshee Squadron, both past and present, already awake. Sleep while surrounded by a thousand violent prison inmates did not come easily, and even when it did it was fitful and fraught with unsettling half-dreams and nightmares. To the five newly-arrived inhabitants, the dreary Lazon dawn was a welcomed relief.
Carter found Jazz outside the shack in which they had bivouacked, leaning carelessly against a rickety post holding up the flimsy porch roof, arms folded across her chest and eyes staring into the watery sunrise. The ugly scar running down the entire right side of her face caught the light and stood out starkly against her otherwise pale skin; writhing like an angry serpent as she clenched and unclenched her jaw.
This was not the Jazz that Carter remembered. The Jazz that had been her commanding officer had been hard, yes, but not like this. The casual way she had dismissed the deaths of Halfnose, Spike and a dozen others, the cold glint in her eyes, that scar... Surviving here for twelve years must have required some grim and unpleasant decisions, but Carter hoped that not all compassion had been driven from her soul by this place.
"Dismal, isn't it?" muttered Jazz, pulling Carter out of her ruminations. She wondered if Jazz had been reading her mind, but then realized that Jazz had spoken those words without withdrawing her regard from the rising solar orb.
"Oh, I dunno..." ventured Carter, squinting against the glare as she cast the sun a disinterested glance. "It beats the night."
Jazz's response was a derisive snort. "You wouldn't think so after twelve years in this stinking hole. Darkness is much better. In the darkness you can pretend you're somewhere else."
Carter had no ready response to that.
When the silence had stretched on uncomfortably long, Jazz turned her back to the sunrise and faced Carter "You're wondering what my colleagues will do. You're wondering if they'll take your word that a rescue mission is coming, or whether they'll just kill us all and steal your starfighters."
Carter was amazed by Jazz's astute summation of her unvoiced concerns; those were precisely the questions she had come out here to discuss. She would have been a little more tactful about it, but now that the subject had been so bluntly broached there was no more need to beat around the bush. "So, will they?" she asked plainly.
"Try to kill us?" asked Jazz with a grim sneer on her lips. "Yes. They're already setting their plan into motion, such as it is."
"What?!?" exclaimed Carter. She was instantly on the alert. "When were you planning on telling us?" she asked hotly just before tearing back into the shack to wake her team. When nudging and kicking failed to instill alertness into the slumbering quartet, she shouted "We're under attack!" into Max's ear. That did the trick. Max bolted upright, instantly roused to action, as did the others. There was a time for lazy slacking off, but this wasn't it. Thirty seconds later their boots were on and they were armed and ready for anything.
When Jazz strolled back into the shack Carter gave her a nasty look, but it didn't faze Jazz. "There's nothing you can do," she said. "There's a few hundred of them, and five miles of desert between here and your planes. We'll never make it; it's pointless."
Max stepped closer to her old friend, clearly wondering at the sudden hostility between Jazz and Carter. "What are you talking about?" she demanded from anyone who cared to elaborate.
Carter spoke up first. "The inmates are going to try and kill us to get to our fighters. Jazz didn't seem to think that was important enough to tell us about it."
Max took the news very skeptically, nevertheless, asked, "Is that true, Jazz? Whose side are you on?"
Jazz addressed her response to Carter. With a hard edge in her voice and a calculating glint in her eye, she calmly stated, "I would like to point out that I'm in here with you, not out there with whoever's running things now, so put your suspicions to rest, Commander. My loyalties should be clear by now. Besides, I didn't notice anything going on myself until a few seconds before you came out to talk to me."
Carter wasn't entirely convinced, but Jazz did have a point. She decided to let the matter drop for the time being. They had a more pressing matter to worry about. "All right, Jazz. I'm sorry I doubted you."
Now that the commotion was over, Jo stepped forward and said to Carter, "Well, this is another fine mess we've gotten ourselves into. What are we going to do?"
"Simple," answered Carter. "I have a plan."
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