Disclaimer: Not me, I don't own a thing. Sue me if you want, I have no money to give you.
AN: This fic follows on from New Beginnings and has the same OC's as that story. You don't really need to read it to understand this one, but I won't stop you if you want to.
For the first time in a week, the infirmary was a bustle of activity. Five minutes ago the gate had activated, and Colonel Sheppard and Major Lorne's teams had stumbled through, closely followed by six burly marines who where trying to hold of some sort of attack from the other side of the wormhole.
Dr Keller and her team had been ready and waiting for them, rushing forward to grab the injured and cart them off to the infirmary for treatment, which was were she was at that moment, trying to asses the damage to Kara Hopkins ankle.
"Jen, leave me. I'm fine; it's Colonel Sheppard you need to check. He was beaten pretty badly," Kara said trying to pull herself away from the insistent doctor.
"I need to check for any permanent damage," Jen argued.
Kara pushed her hands away from her ankle and said, "It's been like this for two days, I'm sure it'll keep for another hour."
Jen finally gave in and moved away from her friend, pulling off the pair of latex gloves she donned for treating Kara and grabbing another pair and putting them on before she moved to asses the situation around Sheppard.
Their mission was supposed to be a simple trade negotiation, but like all simple operations on Atlantis, suddenly everything changed and it all became very complicated.
They'd left three days ago to seal their trade agreement with the Neerans. Major Lorne's team had been the principle team involved in the negotiations but had asked Colonel Sheppard's team to join them after the Neeran leader had said something about a ceremony to seal the deal that needed their leader to participate in.
And for once nothing had gone wrong, well not at that point anyway. The ceremony went ahead and Sheppard survived; no strange alien drugs or priestesses in site. It was later that night that everything had gone tits up.
There had been celebrating and dancing, pretty much the norm for Pegasus, but neither of the teams had indulged in the local booze and as the party wound down, they made their way to the tents that had been set up for them, Teyla and Kara in the smaller one and the men in the larger one.
It was about three in the morning that Kara had woken up, her gut telling her that something wasn't right. She woke Teyla and they both pulled on some clothing before quietly exiting their tent. Kara was slightly startled to see Sheppard awake and sat outside the men's tent, P-90 lying next to him on the grass.
"You feel it too?" he asked Teyla, who shook her head.
"It was Captain Hopkins who woke me with her suspicions," she told Sheppard.
"Is it the Wraith?" he wanted to know.
"I do not believe so," she said. "I do not feel their presence nearby."
Sheppard had been about to tell them to wake the other men when all hell had broken loose around them.
Kara dove to the ground, taking Teyla with her, as bullets, or something that sounded remarkably like them, whizzed past them. In a matter of seconds they'd been surrounded by men in dark clothing, pointing what looked suspiciously like guns at them. Kara did her best to hold them off but her weapons were still in her tent. Teyla went down pretty quickly when a lucky shot hit her in the leg. Kara glimpsed what look like a tranquilizer dart before she was too busy trying to stop from being hit.
It was pretty obvious that they weren't going to make it out but Kara and Sheppard kept fighting all the same. Kara assumed that someone had managed to get into the tent and stun the rest of the team quickly because there seemed to be no help coming from the five men that were supposed to be in there.
In the end there were too many of them. One of the attackers managed to land a kick to Kara's ankle when she wasn't looking and she went down. She felt the dart pierce her neck and she looked up to see Sheppard take a hit to the stomach. He went down and the last thing Kara saw as the drug took effect was Sheppard getting kicked onto his back.
When she came to, Kara found herself in a rough cell. Lorne and Ronon were in there with her, both moving towards her as she sat up, head pounding like she'd spent a hard night out on the town.
"Damn if that thing doesn't give you the hangover from hell," she said, pressing her hand to her head hoping that it would stop the pain.
Lorne had laid her back down on the bench she was on and told her what had happened. Apparently the Neerans hadn't told them everything there was to know about their planet during the trade talks. The thing they had left out was that up until about fifty years ago, they had been involved in raids and strikes against another people, called the Mayaf. It had all started a few centuries ago when a Neeran priest had run away with the daughter of the Mayaf headman. As is always the way with these things, revenge had been called for and soon the two peoples were sworn enemies.
It was the Mayaf, having heard that their enemies were sealing a trade agreement with a new powerful ally that had kidnapped them. Kara, Ronon and Lorne had been placed in this cell because the Mayaf seemed to think that they were going to be the most trouble. Teyla, McKay, Connor and Miles had been but into a different cell across the hall from theirs.
"Where's Colonel Sheppard?" Kara had asked, remembering the beating he seemed to have taken before she passed out.
"We don't know," Lorne had told her. "We think they might have him down the corridor trying to extract information from him."
Kara's blood had run cold. Sheppard was tough she knew that, but with no hope of immediate rescue, how long could the Colonel hold out.
After a day and a half of sitting in that cell, the cavalry had finally arrived. Six marines had busted the place up pretty bad and practically dragged them out of the cells. Kara could only watch as the marines broke down the door at the end of the corridor and pulled an unconscious Sheppard out of the room. He looked bad, but Kara's ankle was still hurt and she could barely walk by herself so helping her CO was out of the question.
Teyla had wrapped her arm around Kara's waist and helped her to hop back to the gate, Connor and Miles carrying Sheppard between them and the rest of the men covering their six as they retreated. They made it to the gate and McKay was dialling home when the bullets had started flying again. They staggered through the gate and practically collapsed into the floor of the gateroom.
