AN/ Set shortly after 'heroes' this story deals with the feelings of loss after the death of Dr Frasier, and the threat posed by what a little knowledge can do in the hands of a supposed ally.

Chapter one

Having served his country for more years than he cared to count, in a unending succession of blighted, war torn countries, Jack O'Neill had learned long ago to listen to his 'inner voice'. Fighter pilots described it as situational awareness, paranormals called it a sixth sense, O'Neill simply called it his trouble bump, and right now it was telling him that he was about to have visitors. And the very last thing O'Neill wanted right now was visitors.

It had only been a week since he had taken a staff weapon blast to the chest, and lost a close friend in the process, although his bruises and cracked ribs were on their way to healing, it would take longer for the emotional wounds to be healed.

The rest of his SG-1 team were still on duty, although unlikely to go off-world on a mission as a team until he recovered. Daniel was up to his over educated eyeballs in his lab trying to track down the location of the lost city, Carter was working on some high energy weapon do-hickey meant to replace the missiles on the X-303, apparently another of Felgar's madcap ideas. Teal'c, well Teal'c being his poker faced self had not given anything away, but Jack suspected he might visit his son.

Sighing deeply, O'Neill stood up and placed the fishing rod down on the jetty beside his chair. Then after a quick stretch to ease the muscles that seemed to need little excuse to ache these days, he headed up the creaking jetty towards the small wood cabin set back in the trees lining the shoreline. He had gotten about half-way up the jetty when the sound reached him, it took but a moment to identify the direction the sound emanated from and turn to face it.

Thus O'Neill caught sight of one of the US military's more unusual vehicles as it climbed over the trees on the far side of the lake, the large aircraft had a high wing mounted on its fuselage, ending with a large engine boom and a three bladed propeller on either side. The blades were far larger than any conventional aircraft, and it seemed to the watching O'Neill that it cleared the far trees by inches. The pilot made a slight course correction and now made straight for O'Neill's cabin on the far shore, and as the aircraft accelerated over the lake it now appeared to be touching the water in places.

Assuming that the pilot would head for the open meadow behind the cabin, O'Neill continued up the jetty, but a change in engine sound made him turn back. The MV-22 Osprey Tilt rotor was undergoing the change that made the aircraft so unique, the two huge engine pods were tilting up and away from the horizontal, changing the Osprey from a conventional aircraft into its helicopter configuration. The aircraft was so close now that O'Neill could see the two pilots, wearing their advanced helmets making them look like giant insects.

As it approached, the aircraft appeared to enter a tail-end skid, and with an impressive display of skill the pilot spun the aircraft about 180 degrees without losing any forward speed, so now the Osprey was approaching O'Neill backwards at some speed. O'Neill took a step backwards despite himself and like the highly trained warrior he was, began to evaluate escape options, in a split second he had narrowed his options down to diving into the lake, should the pilot misjudge his approach.

But the aircraft was slowing, and as he watched, the rear hatch swung down, revealing a huge bear of a Marine loadmaster wearing a flight helmet, he strode nonchalantly out onto the ramp and leaned out over the lake. Speaking into the helmet mike he began directing the pilot backwards, and suddenly O'Neill realised what the pilot intended, he was going to place the ramp over the wooden jetty while remaining in a hover, considering he could not even see where the back of the aircraft was it required a seriously gutsy piece of flying.

The down draft from the massive twin rotors blew the chair and fishing rod off the jetty and into the lake, and mentally O'Neill began to compose the claim he would submit to the admin office at the next opportunity, which of course they would turn down, budget cuts and all, but that didn't mean he wouldn't submit it. It kept the office weenies on their toes.

The Osprey drifted to a halt inches short of the jetty, and the Marine loadmaster removed his helmet and nonchalantly stepped out of the aircraft, onto the jetty, he approached O'Neill at a trot.

"Colonel O'Neill?"

The Marine had to bellow to be heard over the sound of the massive engines, Jack nodded in response.

"Sir, General Hammond has requested your presence at The Mountain ASAP"

As he spoke he had laid a hand on Jack's arm, leaving Jack no option but to follow the loadmaster guiding him towards the waiting aircraft.

"So I guess the fishing is off?"

Before Jack could make another wisecrack he found himself aboard the aircraft being secured into a bucket seat along the fuselage wall. And by the time Jack had turned to look out of the window the ramp had been raised, and the waters of the lake were speeding past as the Osprey transitioned back into airplane mode and accelerated. Whatever the emergency, there was no point worrying about it until he spoke to General Hammond, so with a skill honed over many years of soldiering, O'Neill was asleep by the time the Osprey climbed over the trees at the far side of the lake, and snoring long before the aircraft reached its maximum speed of 510km/h.

OoOoO

With stealth bordering on the supernatural, the four camouflaged shapes flitted from tree to tree like some form of medieval forest sprits. Major Coburn paused and sank to one knee behind a tree, without having to look, he knew his team had gone to ground around him. With his weapon pressed into his shoulder, he scanned the edge of the clearing, and wherever his eyes went so did the barrel of his M4 assault rifle, after all there was no point spotting trouble if he wasn't prepared to do something about it.

After scanning with the naked eye he scanned the clearing with his weapon's X4 magnification sight just in case he had missed something, but if there was trouble out there he couldn't spot it. Satisfied for the moment, he took his right hand off his weapons pistol grip and lifting it over the weapon so it was visible from both sides, motioned the team forward. All four rose in unison and moved forward at a crouch to the edge of the clearing, the sight which greeted them although not a surprise, because of a UAV over flight, still made for grim viewing.

In the clearing scattered to the four winds, lay approximately 25 Jaffa bearing the markings of the system lord named Yu. They appeared to have been taken by surprise, a hard task at the best of times, Coburn knew from hours of unarmed combat sparring that he would have to be having an incredibly good day to catch the SGC's resident Jaffa Teal'c as unprepared as these had been. Roughly half of them had not even managed to reach their staff weapons.

Coburn was a career soldier, who took pride in being at the very top of his profession, and these Jaffa were his enemy, however he felt that there was something very distasteful in the scene in front of him, it hadn't been a combat, it had been a slaughter.

Moving cautiously forward to the first corpse, Coburn knelt and rolled the man over, and received the first of many surprises of the day. The Jaffa had died, not from a staff weapon blast or other alien energy weapon as he had been expecting, but from the impact from multiple solid projectiles. Well it was not completely unheard of for other cultures they had come across to have developed firearms similar to those used by the forces of the SGC, but Coburn was another who had developed a trouble bump, and right now it was screaming at him.

Pulling his combat knife from its sheathe on his thigh, he sliced away the Jaffa's leg covering from around one of the corpse's many wounds, and ignoring the fact he was mutilating a body, cut into the leg until he could lever out the solid slug. Washing off the blood with water from his canteen revealed what his trouble bump had been trying to tell him, it was a metallic bullet alright, but from what sort of weapon?

Putting the round in his top pocket, he looked around. His team had continued to do a perimeter sweep around the edge of the clearing, now his second in command, Lieutenant Rebecca Hadley was approaching him. Even through the well applied camouflage cream he could tell she was puzzled.

"What have you got?"

Like many of the SG team commanders Coburn allowed a certain degree of informality to develop in his team, it made for greater efficiency and made him more approachable as a leader.

"At the briefing, General Hammond did say we were the first SGC personnel on this rock didn't he?"

Coburn nodded, he also knew that Hadley had already known the answer, she had a photographic memory for what passed in the briefings, a process he found mind numbing in the extreme, in fact more often than not he was asking her about such details.

"Well then how do you go about explaining this?" She held out her hand and dropped something into his palm.

At first Coburn thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, so confused was he that he removed a full magazine from one of his assault vest pockets and took the first round from the top and compared it to what he already held in his hand. It was a 5.56mm casing, exactly what would be ejected from his own weapon if he fired off a round. Flipping both items over he checked the batch numbers printed on the bases of both, they didn't match, but that didn't really mean anything, just that the spent casing was slightly older.

"We have found scores of them, I have bagged up several from each pile for analysis when we get back"

Coburn nodded and patted his subordinate on the arm, he rose and studied the scene from the fresh perspective that the new knowledge had given him, plotting where he would place people if he had been setting up this ambush.

"How many did it take do you think?"

Hadley's question echoed his own train of thought and not for the first time he told himself how lucky he was having this team, they were so meshed together that actions now had become instinctual.

"Not sure, but I wouldn't have tried it with less than sixteen men, or women"

Coburn added with a smile.

A shout to his left snapped his head around, one of his other team members Sergeant Nixon was waving at him from across the clearing. Coburn trotted over with Hadley on his heels. Nixon was standing pointing down at a patch of earth when they arrived.

"Combat boots sir! Not Airforce or Marine issue, but combat boots all the same"

Coburn looked down at the imprint, and found he had to agree with Sergeants assessment, the pattern was clearly of Earth origin.

"Have you got it on film"

At the sergeant's nod Coburn cocked his head at the clearing behind him.

"Go film our friends out there, pick out a suitable candidate for a post mortem, then we are going to cut short our mission, I think General Hammond needs to know that we have a group of non SGC personnel running around out here, my moneys on those NID bastards again".

Coburn didn't know how wrong he would prove to be.