Lorne had so far not put up much of a fuss with the people who'd come to examine him and take samples. There didn't seem to be much of a point for a few reasons.
One was the presence of security forces, who were armed and outnumbered him. Assuming he escaped, he could theoretically get home despite the loss of his GDO, by going to either a planet with allies or possibly one where a mission was scheduled, but he wasn't especially eager to go charging out into unfamiliar wilderness, trying to duck and dodge the people who would no doubt be chasing him all the way to the Stargate. He wasn't unwilling to do that if he had to, but just now it didn't really seem like he had to, which made it a foolish and unnecessary risk.
Another factor to consider was simply that -so far- the Ntsevu had not actually hurt him, or any of his team. That might change if he started bucking them, they might hurt him in trying to restrain him, or he might hurt them in attempting to resist, compromising any chance of this being resolved without bloodshed. It seemed entirely possible that Queen Jahnavi could be convinced that the people of Atlantis were actually willing to help her without her having to use force on them. If Lorne went around hurting and killing her people, she would be less open to a peaceful resolution. If there was power in that temple that could be used, the people of Atlantis could benefit from it, even if only by being able to send refugees to a protected world. Even if that was not the case, the fact was that there were only so many people on the Atlantis expedition, and replacing equipment and manpower was a lengthy and tedious process, even aside from the value of individual human lives. Lorne didn't want to start any killing, though he was willing to finish it if it did get started.
If there was any violence to be done, Lorne wanted every advantage. So far, he was building a reputation for being peaceful as a lamb. He had avoided confrontation even when he was armed, and now he passively cooperated. If and when the time came to fight, the Ntsevu would not expect it from him because he'd shown them no aggression of any sort. Lorne knew he was good at playing harmless. He'd even had COs in the past who had doubted his courage because he simply gave the impression of not being terribly serious. He was a relaxed sort of a guy, who didn't tend to get offended, and seemed not to even be particularly competitive most of the time. His own people mistook him for a pushover at times, so he could definitely use that misconception to his advantage against people who didn't know him. The element of surprise was a powerful advantage, even if it was only a small surprise, such as this particular sheep having teeth like a wolf.
The time came sooner than Lorne expected.
One of the scientists came down the stairs, and she was alone. Lorne was not immediately concerned, even though it was a change in the established pattern. It actually wasn't until she stopped in front of her cell and withdrew one of the M9s taken off Lorne and his team from her lab coat that he realized something was up, something that should probably worry him a little.
"You really don't need to perform that experiment," Lorne said quietly, feigning a levity he did not feel and holding his hands away from him while slowly standing up from where he'd been sitting, "If you shoot me, I will bleed, I assure you."
"Shut up," she spat, waving the muzzle of the gun in a shooing gesture, "And get up against the wall."
"Okay," Lorne said, cooperatively backing up to the back wall of the cell, "Now what?"
Instead of answering, she used her free hand to produce a set of keys from another lab coat pocket.
This Lorne regarded as ominous. It was clear this woman wanted quiet, and she had come here alone. It was likely she was acting as an individual, and not as the Queen's scientist. And there was no telling what someone acting independently might be up to. She could be here to kill him. Or she could be here to set him free. Or her purpose might be something harder to imagine.
Lorne sized her up. He was definitely bigger and heavier than she, though she was not an especially small woman. He guessed that, in a fight, her long black hair would be a hindrance flowing freely as it was now. She didn't look like a fighter, but there was a determined, almost desperate look in her dark eyes that Lorne recognized as dangerous. And besides, she was holding the M9, though whether she really knew how to use it or not was anybody's guess. Certainly she had no trigger discipline, placing her finger directly on the trigger instead of along the side of the weapon or on the guard.
Once the door was open, she gestured with the muzzle of the weapon again, stepping back from the door way and supplementing the visual instruction with the single word, "Move."
Lorne regarded her for a moment before complying. He suspected she really didn't want to use that M9, even if she did know how, because she was clearly attempting to limit noise. What he didn't know yet was if she wished him harm, or merely believed that the presence of an evident threat was the only way she could secure his cooperation. Not knowing her motives made it impossible to say for sure whether he should ignore her and stay here or obey her. In the face of the M9 and her unknown intent, Lorne chose to exit the cell and go where she pointed, for now at least.
Even if he did find himself needing to escape her, it would be a lot easier outside of the locked cell. Since she was directing him up the stairs, he knew there would be hallways and rooms with more than one door, providing him with more than one option to make his exit if he needed to leave in a hurry, not to mention windows out of which he could look to see how things stood outside the building.
Before he set foot on the stairs, however, he felt the need to turn to her and make an appeal, just in case she did want him dead, "My people will be coming to look for me. It's really gonna piss 'em off if I'm dead when they get here."
"Shut up," she said, "Up the stairs. Now."
"Okay..." Lorne said slowly, with an indifferent shrug, "But don't say I didn't warn you."
He took his time going up the stairs, checking over his shoulder to see if the woman would follow him closely. She apparently had more sense than that, and stayed well back, taking full advantage of the fact that she had an effective range weapon to ensure Lorne's continued obedience even several feet away.
"What's your name, anyway?" Lorne asked conversationally.
If he could get her to talk, he might get closer to finding out what her objective was. He might also get her to drop her guard a little if he made nice with her. Any advantage was worth getting. Ideally, of course, she would simply drop the threatening weapon, but as a second choice Lorne would take her becoming careless because she stopped regarding him as dangerous.
"My name is Rasika," she answered, which sort of surprised him because he'd really expected her to just tell him to shut up again, "Stop at the top of the stairs."
He did as she asked, stopping at the head of the stairs and turning to watch Rasika as she cautiously climbed up after him. She stopped several steps from the top, evidently thinking only of staying out of arm's reach and not realizing how easy it would be for Lorne to leap from the top of the stairs and tackle her on the way down. However, he didn't see his situation as dire enough for that sort of a desperate act. Too easy to break something tumbling down the stairs, too easy for the gun to go off and hurt somebody (particularly him). If he could have been sure Rasika intended ill for him, then maybe... but he could not be sure. Not yet. There were safer places to have a fight, and surer ways to wrest control from her. Lorne was a soldier, and that meant being able to weigh the potentials of risk and reward in a situation just like this one, and at least probably come out with the right answer.
At the top of the stairs was an archway instead of a door. Rasika directed Lorne to go through it slowly, and to stay where she could see him. As if she thought she could stop him from diving to either side of the door, where she would be unable to shoot him if he chose not to listen. But there was little percentage in doing so, and Lorne was smart enough to know it, so he did as she asked.
They turned right down the hall, passed by several rooms that looked like they were outfitted as labs studying all sorts of different things; they had open doors and no people inside. Finally they reached the room Rasika wanted, and she directed Lorne to enter it. When she followed, she closed the door behind her. She'd been in something of a hurry to get here, telling Lorne to move more quickly on the way, as though she was afraid someone would see them.
Lorne looked around the room. The walls were lined with a series of long wooden tables, each covered in vials and beakers and other, less identifiable scientific paraphernalia that looked as if it dealt primarily in chemistry. Littered about the place were piles of research notes and books, seemingly placed at random to simply fill up the space, but probably actually highly organized in some fashion. In the center of the room was a chair that dimly reminded Lorne of a dentist's chair, except it had straps that were clearly meant to lock the occupant into place and prevent their escaping.
His mind flashed back to that conversation with Jahnavi where she had confessed that every N'we had eventually been killed by the people studying them. He had no intention of going into that chair without a fight, and if Rasika hoped that little gun was enough to make him go there quietly, she had a lot to learn about him.
While Lorne was taking in the aspect of the room, Rasika went quickly to the table nearest the door and picked up a syringe. She was quick and quiet when she moved for him, and her timing was good because he was distracted by the room and its contents, but the second the needle touched the skin at the back of the upper part of his left arm, Lorne reacted.
It was pure reflex to turn, strike her wrist with the edge of his left hand to knock the syringe out of her grip, then to follow through by grabbing her other wrist with his right hand and twisting it, attempting to force her to drop the M9 she was still carrying; at the very least ensuring the weapon was aimed strictly downward. Rasika squeaked when Lorne hit her wrist, and cried out when he grabbed her.
They locked eyes as he completed he turn, and he saw more than surprise in her gaze. There was fear there as well. Just now, she had good reason to be afraid. Depending on how this little dance played out, Lorne might wind up killing her.
It was a convenient fantasy that disabling an opponent without killing or even maiming was always an option, but reality was far more harsh. When you found yourself fighting for your life, you had to take the opportunities you were given in the battle, and sometimes those were only kill options. This was especially true when you were in an enemy compound, with more adversaries potentially on the way.
Rasika responded to Lorne's attack, refusing to let go of the M9. She lowered her body and turned in the direction Lorne was twisting her wrist, moving towards him at the same time. This effectively took the tension off of her wrist. She stepped past Lorne, and he knew it was her intention to slip free and either deliver a blow from behind or else bring the M9 back into the picture.
Lorne rotated with her. By the time she snapped her wrist free of his grip, he'd turned to face her. He struck the hand she was using to grip the M9 in the same way as he'd struck her other wrist earlier. The weapon clattered to the floor, and Lorne immediately felt better because it lowered the stakes somewhat, and raised his chances of coming out of this altercation relatively unscathed.
Rasika's entire demeanor changed at the loss of the M9. It had become clear in the handful of seconds they'd been fighting that she was a rank amateur, and had about as much ability against Lorne as he himself had against Ronon or Teyla. The second she lost control of the M9, she sought distance from Lorne. Given her size and ability, that might've been a smart move, if that didn't give Lorne room to retrieve the M9 from the floor and come back up with it.
As he stood back up though, he felt a wash of dizziness, and a stinging on his arm where Rasika had stuck him with the needle of the syringe. That told him he hadn't reacted fast enough. Whatever she'd meant to inject him with, she'd gotten at least some of it in.
"What the hell did you do?" Lorne demanded, raising the M9 and aiming for Rasika, which stopped her in her tracks where she'd been edging behind the chair, trying to get away.
"Not nearly enough," Rasika snarled furiously, but her voice trembled, betraying the fear beneath the surge of anger.
The sound of footsteps out in the hall seemed to pierce Lorne's consciousness. It wasn't just the signal that he had to make a decision immediately. They sounded too loud, and seemed to reverberate in his head. Had he been poisoned? Sedated? He didn't get the impression Rasika intended to tell him.
He wanted to demand to know what he'd ever done to her to make her look at him with the hate she now revealed amidst the fear and anger in her eyes. But he didn't have the time. Those footsteps weren't just walking. They were coming to investigate the noise Rasika had made.
Lorne could not be sure Rasika had acted alone. Even if she had, everything in him rebelled against the very idea of letting himself be disarmed and locked back up now that he was free. He'd started fighting, and disengaging from that mode wasn't easy, especially now he was hurt. His impulse was to fight or to run, not to surrender. In no shape for a fight, he chose the other option.
Rather than leave through the door he'd entered the room through, Lorne brushed past Rasika and went to the door at the opposite end of the room. He found it was unlocked, opened it and saw another room beyond this one, about twice the size but with much the same sort of equipment. There were two doors aside from the one he'd opened, and Lorne hoped one of them wasn't a closet.
The door behind him banged open and someone shouted at him to stop. Lorne went through the door he'd opened and shut it, bolting across the large room for the nearest door. This one turned out to be a closet. By the time Lorne was headed for the last door, his pursuers had reached the room. They started to open the door Lorne had closed behind him, and he fired a warning shot to delay them. It bought him the seconds he needed to get through the next door and bolt out into an unfamiliar hallway.
The running had brought on a stronger wave of dizziness, which had exploded into a headache that seemed to be making his brain pulse. He knew that wasn't what was happening, but that's what it felt like, and it was already starting to disorient him. He was in trouble, and he knew it.
Lorne wanted out.
Karka and Avyan had of course heard what had happened with the strangers. Already on thin ice after having lobbied for their position studying the Stargate close up, Karka wasn't eager to have an audience with the Queen over some strangers she barely knew. But Avyan, in his quiet way, convinced her it needed to be done. As not studying the Stargate would be a mistake, so too was the way that the strangers had been handled. At Avyan's urging, Karka asked for and was granted an audience.
Avyan went with her in a show of support, but he said nothing. Always unnerved in the presence of the queen, it was as much as he could do just to come along. That meant it was up to Karka to make her case to Queen Jahnavi. It would have been easier for Avyan, who had not been so off-put by the informal and jocular manner with which the strangers behaved as Karka had been.
"My Queen," Karka had begun, "I do not believe we are handling the situation with the star travelers in the ideal fashion."
Karka had learned that Jahnavi respected a straight-forward approach, no circling the issue and certainly no coating it with frosting. Jahnavi also did not require her subjects to agree with her decisions, only that they follow her orders. No harm would come to Karka for her opposing opinion and -having granted the audience- Jahnavi would now allow Karka to finish making her case.
But there was a guarded look in her fair queen's blue eyes, and Karka could see that this was not an issue Jahnavi wished to discuss. It was not the first time Karka had spoken of something Jahnavi would just as soon not have talked about, so it did not daunt her. Much.
"Avyan and I traveled with them for a day and a night and part of another day," Karka reminded her queen, "And in that time we came to know them somewhat. Despite their attire and weapons, we found them to be gentle and patient in their dealings with us and the hunting tribe with which we spent the night. They could have come to us and demanded we bring them here at gunpoint, but they did not. You saw how they were armed, but surely you must also have seen that they came not with the promise of tyranny on their part, but the offer of fair trade. They were even willing to share what they knew of the Stargate, to help us defend ourselves and escape from the Wraith."
"I am aware of that," Jahnavi said curtly, and it was quite clear she wanted to hear no more of this.
But Jahnavi issued no warning or command for Karka to be silent, and so Karka forged on.
"Given their disposition towards us from the start, and the weapons at their command, I submit that disarming them, arresting one and exiling the others was neither wise nor just. Beyond my own speculation, we have the word of Major Lorne, and he does not strike me as a liar. More of them will come. And they will be very angry. Please, your Majesty, this will not end well for us if he continue on this course. But perhaps we can undo the damage we have done by releasing Major Lorne and letting him return to his people."
"NO!" Jahnavi all but shouted, banging her fist on the arm of her throne chair, "He is N'we, something we have not seen here in far too long. The N'we are our salvation. We cannot risk letting him go, not when he may well be the last of his kind, and our final hope."
"If we get the Stargate to function, we will have no need of the N'we," Karka replied, "And -if we do not release him- it is possible we will bring about a doom which will surpass the Wraith. We do not know what these people may do when provoked. They have fought the Wraith, and won."
"So they say," Jahnavi said, her eyes half-closed and glittering, a sign of annoyance.
"I believe them," Karka responded, "If we make enemies of them, they will destroy us."
"That is a risk we must take," Jahnavi said coldly, then her voice softened, "Karka... we are speaking of the N'we, those who have power over the Temple itself. If we had that, we would have no need to leave our home. We could stay."
"So why not allow Major Lorne to operate the Temple?"
"Even if he should agree, we cannot trust an outsider with our safety. We must secure the power for ourselves. And we will. Once we have done so, Major Lorne can go."
"If he survives," Avyan's voice startled them both, for he had never spoken in the Queen's presence.
Jahnavi shifted her gaze from Karka to Avyan, who managed somehow to meet her eyes unflinchingly.
"We all know that it is very possible he will not," Avyan continued, "if he dies, we may learn nothing, and yet still bring upon ourselves the wrath of the star travelers who have the power to challenge the Wraith."
Before Jahnavi could respond, one of her soldiers came rushing into the throne room. Hurriedly he crossed the room and knelt before her respectfully, before rising and giving his report.
"My Queen, the star traveler has escaped."