Two rings later Elizabeth was greeted with the voice of the person she needed to talk to most in that moment. �O�Neill.�
�Jack, its Elizabeth. I need a favour and I need it to happen instantaneously.�
There was a brief pause and Elizabeth began to grow concerned that Jack was going to laugh at her and hang up.
But he didn�t.
�What can I do?� Jack asked.
Just as John was resigning himself to yet another day without any of the training he had been sent to receive there was a knock on the door to his quarters.
He had been mentally calculating the likelihood that a brief escape to Las Vegas proper, and, more specifically, the Strip, would be possible, since he wouldn�t mind getting a bit of money of his own in savings in the States�most of his own money, the income he got from the Air Force, was either invested in long-term investments or used to pay for the hanger his plane, leaving him very cash-poor while on Earth�and he had yet to encounter a casino that could catch his innate card-counting abilities so the four hundred he had reluctantly borrowed from Sam before leaving Colorado Springs could easily turn into a couple of thousand in an hour or so if he played it right.
If the person at the door didn�t have good news on the training-front, John decided, he was going to see about getting out of Nellis and Area 51 for a few hours�it wasn�t like it was unheard of for officers and enlisted personnel stationed at Nellis to hit the casinos when they were off-duty, and, after a few days of basically staying in the same BOQ room, John was positive that he couldn�t get much more �off-duty�. He made a mental note to avoid Caesar�s, though, because he remembered Sam mentioning someone they had served with during the Gulf War, who knew him pretty well, well enough to know about his card-counting skills (having lost more to John than he could really recall before John was basically banned from all of the regular games where ever he was based) was heading up security there lately. Surveillance and security was a private sector job that a lot of ex-service men and women got into after leaving the armed forces.
Rolling off of the bed John opened the door. A female officer in a flightsuit stood on the step that led up to his temporary quarters. Quickly reading her name and rank off of the leather nameplate on her flightsuit and taking in the patch indicating that she was a member of an X-302 squadron, John felt a tiny flash of hope that, not only would he finally get the training he had been ordered to get, but that he might also, finally, be able to get the hell out of Nevada.
He hated Nevada.
�What can I do for you, Captain Conway?� John inquired.
�Not destroy my ride, sir,� the Airwoman replied. John smirked in response, liking the Captain�s attitude instantly. �Hangar Bay 3 in half an hour work for you, sir?�
Though he could easily get ready and make it to Hangar Bay 3 in half that time, John simply nodded. Dismissing the Captain who took off at a light jog back toward the hanger bays, John went back into the depths of his quarters, hopping on one foot while struggling to untie the laces on the other boot while moving toward his flightsuit that had been sitting on the top of the dresser since he arrived.
Twenty five minutes later John entered Hanger Bay 3, easily spotting Conway running through the external pre-flight on one of the X-302�s about halfway toward the back of the building. He walked over to join her, noting that, while Conway ran her external pre-flight check on the 302, a thoroughly disgruntled man in a pristine lab coat watched her every move. When he got close enough John heard the lab coat guy complain loudly that he had already done everything that Conway was doing and she should really start trusting the people that built the damn thing to know if it was in any way damaged before sending it out. The scene was familiar enough�Rodney or Zelenka in the roll of the lab coat guy, John in Conway�s position�that John had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud at how universal�literally, apparently�the scientist-versus-military squabbles could be.
�I don�t get why you�re so protective of this particular one, anyway. How can you even tell them apart?� the scientist groused to Conway.
�This baby got me through Anubis and Antarctica, Morris, and I was on the team that developed the 302�s for a year before you were even read in on the project so don�t get all bitchy about me going over your cursory glances,� Conway said while running her fingertips over the nose of the ship. She