Chapter 3 I Don't Like It Here.
SG-1 appeared in the small, quiet gateroom on Kelowna. A team of local military were waiting to escort them out to the mine, after a brief discussion they all moved on towards the airfield to the east of the main city. It was only when they were up in the small plane and heading towards a range of mountains in the distance that Vala suddenly stood up and moved towards the cockpit.
Mitchell was in the co-pilot's seat.
"Cameron," she said slowly, in a soft yet deadly voice. "Please tell me that we're not going where I think we are."
"Sorry Princess," apologised her CO. "I didn't know until we turned up either. Nothing I can do about it – that is the mine we're heading for."
Vala threw herself back down into her seat, in front of a vaguely surprised Daniel.
"What's up?" he enquired.
She shook her head fiercely, not trusting herself to speak.
"Hey.." he tried to take her hand but she frowned at him and clenched her fist.
"I believe that ValMalDoran is unhappy because we are approaching the mine from where she was taken by Dalton Frane." Teal'c said quietly.
"Is that right?" asked Daniel, shocked. He had been in Atlantis at the time, away from the rest of the team. Vala had been kidnapped by an ex-associate and crime lord who had taken her back to their home planet. She'd managed to escape but been injured - Daniel and SG-1 had only found her again by pure chance.
Vala pursed her lips and flicked her hair, having a hard time not to cry. Those five months separated from the rest of the team had taken their toll physically and psychologically on the alien. Like I needed any more emotional baggage she thought, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.
Daniel moved slowly and carefully to sit next to her, handing over his handkerchief as he did so.
Vala used it to dab repeatedly at her eyes and nose. After a while she unwound herself enough to lean against her fiance's arm and slip her hand into his.
Daniel kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek against her hair.
Another few minutes and Vala cleared her throat and sat straighter. "Well, Dalton Frane's dead now anyway," she sent a small smile towards Teal'c, who had performed the deed himself. "He sure got what his was."
Daniel laughed out loud. "Do you mean, 'he sure got his'?" he asked her.
Vala put her nose in the air. "That's what I said," she retorted, digging him with her elbow.
Daniel didn't mind, he was just relieved that she was almost back to herself again.
The small aircraft flew onward towards the mountains. Eventually it began to descend through the low clouds and before they knew it they were taxiing along the short runway close to the mine.
Vala looked intently out of the windows before she climbed out – no adversaries were visible in the immediate vicinity, but then they hadn't been last time either. They'd been ambushed as soon as they left the aircraft. She was still inside when Mitchell came to the doorway.
"It's safe, Princess," he told her. "You're okay. Now come out of there."
Daniel was stood near to the door – he smiled reassuringly. She took a deep breath, hoisted her P-90 closer to her shoulder and climbed down from the plane.
A small group of Kelownan army NCO's appeared from where they had been waiting behind a row of large boulders and approached the aircraft. Their commander spoke briefly to the Kelownan CO who had come out from the city with SG-1. He nodded, gestured towards their left and returned to the others.
"They've been here a while," the Kelownan CO told Mitchell. "It was their team who traced Mr Quinn's locator chip to the mine. They say that nobody has been in or out of the mine since they arrived."
"Could be a trap," Daniel suggested.
"Most likely it is," Mitchell agreed. "But it don't seem to me that there's an awful lot else for us to do. We're looking for Jonas – if there's a chance that he's in there then we gotta go look.
Daniel nodded ruefully. "Of course. I wasn't suggesting that we shouldn't."
"Yeah, I know." Mitchell smiled wryly. "Let's just all keep on our guard. Okay, Teal'c?"
The Jaffa inclined his head.
"I am, ColonelMitchell."
"Vala?" The ex-space pirate was watching the surrounding area intently, looking from side to side. She nodded without taking her eyes off of the outlying rocks.
"Let's do this then." Mitchell tightened his various straps and pockets, checked his radio and shouldered his P-90. "Has anyone packed extra first aid gear in their pack, in case we need it?"
"I have," Vala flicked a little smile across at her team mate.
"Well done. I have too. C'mon then." Mitchell took point and led his team and the four local soldiers who had come with them into the tunnels.
- o - o - o - o - o - o -
The mine was almost comfortable to be inside. The walls and floor were dry, the passages wide and high. Even Teal'c did not find himself having to bend at all to move along. SG-1 all had their lights on, atop their weapons – the Kelownan's had similar, slightly larger lamps mounted on their own guns. Mitchell had the tracking device with him – they walked in relative quiet for a good twenty minutes before he paused at a fork in the tunnels.
"This is fun," he told the others, in a voice which implied that it was everything but.
"What?" Daniel looked over his team mate's shoulder.
"The tracker can't distinguish between the two passages. They must run pretty close alongside each other – it's impossible to decide which one to follow."
"Can't we follow both?" asked Vala, already getting fed up of plodding along in the dark.
"Guess we'll have to." Mitchell briefly summed things up in his own mind. "Jackson, you're with me. Teal'c and Vala – you're together."
He pointed to the Kelownan's. "Two of you with each of us." They nodded, and separated accordingly.
"Okay." Mitchell tapped his radio. "Keep in touch. The tracker suggests that we don't have much further to go – between half to one klick, tops. So if you haven't found anything within, say, thirty minutes then come back. We'll rendezvous here."
Teal'c inclined his head.
Vala was already peering down the tunnel. "I'll take point," she said, looking back over her shoulder.
"That's my girl." Mitchell saluted them. "See you in thirty."
The two teams separated and headed off in their respective directions.
Vala looked back at her team mate after they'd been walking for about five minutes. "Is it me or is this tunnel getting wider?" she asked. The passage had expanded so far that even the Jaffa couldn't reach the sides if he stood in the middle.
"I believe that you are right," Teal'c told her. "There seems to have been a large ammount of digging in this area. Probably recently."
Vala shone the light from her P-90 at a pile of tarpaulins and cables which lay to one side of the tunnel. Several large packing crates stood close by, and a large lamp on it's tripod. "Hmmm." She looked troubled. "I hope that whoever left that here is long gone."
A shower of dirt smattered them all as it fell from the roof.
Teal'c looked up. "We should continue moving along," he suggested. "This does not seem a particularly safe place in which to remain."
"As opposed to all of the other places in this Alliance-controlled mine, you mean?" Vala smiled, heading off again.
Teal'c acknowledged her with a small bow. "Indeed."
A minute or two later and the smaller alien stopped again. The passage was so wide now that it was almost a cavern in itself. They were passing new mining equipment all the time by now - it was just lying in piles at various points along the tunnel.
"I don't like this," Vala stated flatly. "This cave is so wide that it would be easy to keep Jonas here, but – I don't know. It's not right. I can't explain it."
"I agree, ValaMalDoran," Teal'c's expression was sombre. "Everything has so far been too easy."
"They wanted to split us up!" the truth hit his team mate suddenly. "They must have been watching us from somewhere! They know we're here."
"We should return to the rendezvous point," agreed the Jaffa. The two Kelownan's with them began to retrace their steps.
"It's a trap." Vala felt a tide of panic beginning to rise within her. A rush of adrenaline started her heart banging in her chest. At that moment they both heard a small click from the ceiling further back up the tunnel.
"Explosives!" shouted Teal'c, throwing himself towards his friend. Behind him the roof and walls of cave exploded in a tangled frenzy of earth, rocks and equipment. There was a loud rumble as the roof came down.
The Jaffa landed hard on top of Vala, knocking her backwards onto the ground. His large hand protected the back of her head as they fell. Dirt and rubble continued to splatter them where they lay on the floor of the passage.
Vala shut her eyes against the grit and muck as it tumbled about in the air around her. Teal'c's body was so heavy that he was crushing her. Coupled with the heavy dust she was stuggling to breathe. She tried to steady herself and not panic, but the rumbling just went on and on and on.
- o - o - o - o - o - o -
Daniel and Mitchell's team had been halted in their tracks after only a couple of hundred feet. A rock fall had blocked the entire passage and there was no way to pass.
"It's fresh, sir," said one of the Kelownan's, feeling the heap of dirt.
"Dammit,' Mitchell swore under his breath. He held the tracker close to the debris. It still told him that the chip was ahead of them somewhere.
Daniel crouched down – shifting his P-90 onto his shoulder he pulled at something in the dirt. His heart leaped into his throat, before sinking rapidly into his boots. He stood and held whatever it was out to his CO. "Mitchell-," he stuttered.
The other man took it, frowning. "Aww, crap!" It was a fragment of a detonator from a batch of C4. He looked helplessly at his team mate.
Mere seconds later and they heard the sound of the other tunnel coming down. Dirt and stones fell from the roof of their own as the passage trembled and shook. Before the sound had even begun to decrease in volume Daniel and Mitchell were running back up through the caves, toward the surface.
- o - o - o - o - o - o -
Vala dug her fingers into Teal'c's arm, hard, to try and get him to move, but the Jaffa was unconscious, his staff weapon gone under the rubble. With difficulty she managed to wriggle out from underneath his body – the task made more difficult due to the amount of roof that the pair of them had been buried beneath. She felt for the P-90 – it's light had been smashed in the cave fall. Everything was dark. And still the roof of the cave continued to rain down upon them.
TBC...
