Here's chapter three! Enjoy!
Chapter 3: Stuck
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It hadn't taken Teal'c long to go back to the SGC after the rest of the team had disappeared. General Hammond, after hearing what had happened, quickly sent the Jaffa back with a six-man scientific team and Sg-7, who had gone to the planet before Sg-1. Currently, he was walking back towards the building with an eager little balding man on his tail.
"So, just for clarification, Mr. Teal'c, they, the rest of Sg-1, I mean. They just...," the slightly overweight scientist next to Teal'c paused to push his round glasses up his nose. "Vanished? No poof, or lights, or anything...?" Teal'c just breathed menacingly and walked faster. This went unnoticed by the curious interrogator, who merely matched the new pace, although panting a bit. " Um, Mr. Teal'c?"
With a curt sideways nod, the alien gave in. "No. As I have stated several times before, there was no sign of their leaving."
"But they touched the device."
A small but intimidating groan escaped from Teal'c's throat. "Yes."
"And you noticed nothing else?"
"No. I did not."
"Have you seen anything...similar to this before?" By now, he was struggling to keep up and panting hard.
"No."
"But-"
Suddenly, the ruin came into view and silently, the Jaffa thanked whichever gods where listening. Needlessly, he spoke. "We have arrived." And then, the former First Prime of the notorious Apophis, the very same man who stared whole armies down and won, who made grown warriors tremble with a single thought, ran from a stout, unarmed, middle-aged scientist.
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Falling upwards was a new sensation for Daniel, and he wasn't sure he liked it a whole lot. Idly, he wondered where he would land, or stop, or...whatever. But he didn't need to ponder for very long, because suddenly the world turned on it's end and a nest of very hard leaves stopped his fall. Looking upwards, he was slightly surprised to see the forest floor. Creasing his eyebrows, he turned his head to see the Colonel sitting up. "Jack? What was that?"
O'Neill groaned and rolled his neck. "Two words. Ba'al's gravity bender."
"Umm, Jack, that's three words."
The Colonel shrugged. "So I wasn't great at geometry, what 'cha gonna do?"
Daniel dragged a hand over his face and a long-suffering sigh escaped his lips. Deciding to do something productive, he took stock of their position. They seemed to be in a large upside-down nest (although it felt right side up); it was probably ten feet by thirty and seven or so high. Giant leaves stuck up all over the place, and Jackson hoped the owner of the nest wasn't behind one of them.
A voice drifted from Daniel's left. "Wonder what lives here." Daniel smirked. He wasn't the only one checking the surroundings.
"I'm hoping its not one of those giant things we saw earlier."
"How would they press the little lever thingy?"
Jackson paused, then slowly looked over at the Colonel. "What little 'lever thingy'?"
Jack pursed his lips guiltily. '' Um...I kind of...saw this little lever thing. " He tried to model it with his hands, "It was in the tree, you see."
"In the tree? You don't say?" Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, knowing exactly where this was going.
"Yeah, I uh, just pushed down on it. A little."
An incredulous snort escaped Daniel's mouth. "You touched something? You? Mr. Don't-touch? Mr. Leave-that-thing-alone-cause-I-ordered-you? Mr. NO-tocar?"
Because the Colonel knew he was right, he only offered a pathetic, "Hey," in response.
"You know, Sam's gonna love this."
Jack groaned. "Oh, come on, don't tell Carter. Please?"
"Nope, too late. Should have thought about that before you touched something." Daniel's eyes lit up with satisfaction, like he'd wanted to say that for a very long time.
"Look, mister, I touched one thing. If you hadn't touched the Ancient transporter, we wouldn't even be on this planet, so don't go lecturing me on not. Touching. Things."
Then when Daniel just glowered, Jack returned to his earlier question with a bit of victory tinging his words, "So. How'd they press it?"
Daniel crossed his arms protectively over his chest. "Who knows, Jack? They could be very intelligent. Possibly even sentient...we don't know enough to make any assumptions just yet."
Jack tilted his head towards the linguist. "They growled."
"That doesn't mean anything, neccessarly."
"Yes it does."
"No it doesn't."
"Yes, it does."
"No. It doesn't."
"Yes. It does.''
Jackson squinted as if in pain. Which he probably was. "No, Jack, it really doesn't."
"Yes, Daniel, it really does."
"Jack."
"Yes, oh wonderful friend of mine?"
"Won't be calling me that much longer if you don't shut up, Jack."
That gave the Colonel pause. But not for long. "Haha. You said 'shut up'. You only say that when your really mad."
"Well, I kinda am."
O'Neill grew silent again, the need to poke fun dwindling but still present. "It'll be really cliche if the mommy comes back and kills us for tresspassing, then feeds us to her little giant babies." The Colonel made big chomping motions with his hands, then looking at an irritated Daniel, pointed a claw at him. "Grrr to you, too, mister."
Suddenly, leaves crinkled to the right of Daniel, and the pair froze. Jack muttered a 'seriously?' under his breath.
"You will remain still, and tell us while you have entered the Safe Haven without permission." Behind a leaf stepped out a decently young man holding what could only be described as a lazer gun. His clothes looked like at one time, they were high end stuff, but now were dirty and worn. He was olive-skinned and had dark hair and eyes.
The Colonel scoffed lightly. "That what you call this place? Doesn't feel very 'safe' right now..." He made little quotation marks in the air.
Daniel, on the other hand, creased his eyebrows. "Wait. Safe from what? The giant things?"
The man lowered his chin, in a sort of sudden, reluctant understanding. He still held the gun at ready, but pointed it a little more downwards. "You are new to Hak'terra." It wasn't a question. "The 'giant things' are known here as Seturs, and you are safe from them here. However, we do not have resources for two more mouths to feed. You will leave."
"I don't think so! Have you seen those things?"
The gunman squared his shoulders. "Fine then. If you stay, you will stay as prisoners." He motioned with his head and four other similarly dressed men appeared from behind the leaves. Quickly, Jack and Daniel were restrained and pulled into a standing position. Neither of them really spoke while they were taken to another lever and thrown sideways to another nest. This one seemed even bigger and had a large dining table down the middle, occupied by around thirty people. On the other side of the table the pair were thrown into a Setur-sized cage.
One of the aliens peered through the cage. "You have defyed the Leader. So you will stay here."
After he walked away, Daniel sighed. "Smooth Jack. Real smooth."
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Sam Carter wondered almost casually if she would ever stop falling. Hopefully, something would stop her fall, preferably before she covered too long a distance to survive, and preferably, the landing would be soft and cushy.
When her back connected with a sloping ground, she rolled with it for a couple feet before she stumbled to a halt on a level plane. Brushing her pants off, Sam mentally checked for any injuries, and besides a slightly sore tailbone, she didn't find any.
Carter stood up and looked around. She smirked when she realized she had only fallen ten or so feet; she could have done so much worse. Sam seemed to be in a sort of underground cave, with two hallways shooting off from the left side of the room. When she wanted out, climbing up that slope was going to be trouble. However, being the ever curious scientist, she wanted to explore first.
Suddenly, a loud growling sound came through the whole at the top of the cave. Sam plastered herself against the side of the cave in the shadows so as not to be seen by whatever was on top. Or whoever. But it sounded like a lot of very large somethings that Sam really didn't want to come in contact with.
When the sounds died down, Carter edged herself away from the wall and down one of the corridors. On instinct, Sam grabbed her handgun from its holster and pulled it to ready position. Slowly, she made her way down the small hallway until it opened to another large cave.
However, this cave was different from the first one; its sides were not as smooth. In fact, there were large chunks of an odd colored rock jutting out on every side of the cave, and on some parts of the ceiling as well. Judging by a tingling feeling on the back of Sam's neck, the rocks were raw naquadah. A lot of raw naqaudah.
Carter went up to touch one, and noted the unique chalky texture of the valuble mineral, which only confirmed what she already knew. At that though, Sam huffed. The presence of the naquadah meant she couldn't stay here very long without risking being poisoned by it. However, she couldn't safely go back to the surface without running into the large animals that she heard growl earlier; for all Carter knew, they could still be up there. The best thing she knew to do was go back to the original room she fell in and try to see if the animals were still there.
Back in the first cave, she tried to peer out the hole, but didn't really succeed. That worried her more about getting out of here, but Carter didn't let herself think about it at the moment. Settling for listening, she strained to hear for any signs of the things that she had heard earlier. Sam didn't.
Hopefully that meant that they, whatever they were, had left. Which left only one question; how was she going to get out of here?
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TBC!
