Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)
Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course
AN: For any exclusively Stargate fans out here, when Spike reflects about him being able to get close to a telepath, he's thinking of the vampire's immunity to telepathy; as revealed in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Earshot", vampire's thoughts, like the vampires themselves, don't cast any 'reflection', which means that telepaths can't read anything from their minds (Although a telepathy spell was shown on vampires to work when Willow cast one to communicate with Spike in Season Seven, I'm assuming that Willow's power level, coupled with the fact that the spell was intended to communicate with Spike rather than just read his mind, meant that the usual vampire/telepathy rules didn't apply. Anyway, enjoy
The Ghost in the Team
"Right then," Sam said after a few moments' pause, during which Spike stood at the door and kept as close an eye on his surroundings as he could without putting himself in a position where he could be seen, "I think I've got something here; just wait a minute…"
"Hurry up, will you?" Spike groaned, glancing back at Sam in frustration as he tapped at where his watch would have been if he'd worn won. "We do have a bunch of people here who want to kill us, you know!"
He freely acknowledged that it made little sense for him to be concerned about that- he didn't even have a body any more; how could he actually be hurt in the first place?- but he'd still rather not actually have to get into a fight; if nothing else, he didn't really want to be able to do nothing while watching these guys get killed.
"A few more seconds…" Sam replied, tapping desperately at her laptop, before suddenly slamming it shut with a broad smile just as the power of the room around them turned off.
"Yes!" Sam smiled, as she looked back up at Spike. "We've got it now; the power's down and they have no idea what they're dealing with!"
"Uh… and we do?" Spike pointed out, looking critically at her. "Sorry if I missed some secret military code, but last time I checked we've got an unknown number of guys on here who're perfectly willing to kill us and I can't touch anything!"
"True," Sam said, smiling slightly as she picked up the Prior's staff in one hand and her own weapon in the other. "But they don't know that, do they? Look, all you need to do is distract them when they show up and give me time to fire, OK?"
For a moment, Spike tried to come up with a reply to that query that wouldn't make him sound like a moron, but eventually he sighed and shrugged it off.
"OK, let's do this," he said, groaning as he turned towards the corridor. "Any ideas where the others might be?"
"Given where they were going when we arrived, I do have one or two ideas on that front," Sam confirmed, nodding slightly at Spike as she walked out of the control room and began to walk briskly along the corridor; evidently she wanted to move fast without making too much noise. Hurrying along in front of her- once again trying not to think too much about the fact that he could only just feel the ground beneath his feet and still wasn't making any actual sound-, Spike quickly fell into a pattern of halting at corners and waiting for Sam to catch up; he might not be able to get hurt in this state, but he really didn't want Daniel to get mad at him because the astrophysicist got hurt-
And when did I start to worry about what that bloody archaeologist thought? Spike wondered as he stopped before another corner. I mean, he hasn't actually done anything for me so far…
Except, of course, for spending the last few days whenever he'd had a moment to spare working with Sam to try and help Spike learn what had actually happened to him after the amulet thing, to say nothing of continuing to trust him even after learning the truth about his past. Ever since Spike got his soul back, only Buffy and Andrew had ever seemed to totally accept him back in Sunnydale- everyone else always seemed to generally tolerate him more than anything else-, but here?
Even after everything SG-1 had learned about him, they still accepted him.
Plus, he had the definite impression, from the time he'd spent with the two of them, that there was something going on between those two that maybe not even they'd realised yet…
Call him a sap, but even when he was soulless he'd had a certain fondness for the whole 'people-who-haven't-realised-how-they-really-feel-about-each-other' thing; he didn't feel like being responsible for these two not even having a chance to admit how they felt.
Glancing around the next corridor, he smiled slightly as he finally saw something useful; Mitchell and Teal'c, currently being surrounded by a bunch of guys with similar tattoos to Teal'c- none of them exactly the same, Spike noted; he'd have to ask what was with the different styles later-, standing around as one figure who appeared to be the leader looked impatiently at his surroundings, as though waiting for something or someone.
Turning around to look back at Sam, Spike jerked his head at the corner, unwilling to risk speaking at the moment; he wasn't sure how sensitive these suckers' hearing was, so he didn't want to risk giving away their position early by speaking.
Nodding in understanding, Sam went up to the end of the corridor, peeked briefly around the corner, and then stepped back to hit the staff lightly against the wall. A moment later, a Jaffa walked around the corridor, only for Sam to promptly bring the Prior's staff down onto his head, sending him collapsing to the ground. Pulling out a strange black object that Spike vaguely recognised from the SGC firing range when he'd been trying to get somebody to destroy the amulet- he thought it was called a 'zat gun' or something like that- Sam stepped around the corner and fired some kind of energy blast. Stepping around the corridor after her, Spike was just in time to see another Jaffa hit the ground before Mitchell grabbed his own weapon and 'zatted' a third Jaffa, leaving him and Teal'c unguarded.
"Didn't know you knew how to use one of those things," Mitchell said, indicating the staff Sam held with a slight smile.
"Well," Sam said, shrugging nonchalantly, "piece of cake, really."
"Too bad that the reason we even needed the sodding thing wasn't that simple…" Spike groaned, before he shrugged nonchalantly and glanced back at the other two members of SG-1. "So, how's things with you?"
"Oh, been questioned a lot about what we're doing here, what our motives in helping to free the Jaffa were, that kind of thing," Mitchell explained, shrugging dismissively before he looked inquiringly at Sam. "So, what's the situation outside this dreary old corridor?"
"It's not good, I'm afraid," Sam replied, shaking her head apologetically as the four of them began to walk away from the downed Jaffa. "The Odyssey tried to beam us out of here, but somehow the shields had been activated. At first, I thought it was something I'd done, but after checking the controls, I realized it wasn't me…"
"So there's someone else on board." Mitchell concluded.
"Hold on; someone else did that?" Spike said, looking incredulously at Sam. "And you couldn't have mentioned that earlier?"
"It didn't seem relevant at the time; there was nothing you could have done about it anyway," Sam informed the vampire before she turned back to look at Mitchell. "Anyway, we can't expect any help from the Odyssey; three motherships showed up and took up an orbiting position around the planet, and they had to retreat in order to avoid being detected."
"Then the Stargate is our only means of escape," Teal'c said grimly.
"Right then," Sam said, checking the pocket containing Spike's amulet- if they were going to make a run for it, it would hardly help if Spike ended up stuck on board because the amulet had fallen out- before looking back at Mitchell. "We'd better get going; see if you can get in touch with Daniel and Vala and let them know what's happening here."
"Right then; just give me a moment…" Mitchell muttered, reaching over to grab a radio from his pocket and raise it to his mouth. "Jackson, Vala, come in; if you can hear me, we're getting the hell out of dodge."
As SG-1 prepared to move on towards what Spike could only presume was some kind of exit for this place, Spike paused, something suddenly… tugging at his mind. It almost felt like that time when the First had triggered his mental commands to override the chip, except that this time there wasn't any music and it wasn't quite as focused.
It was like… if the First's trigger had been a subconscious hook to reel Spike in to do its bidding, this was like the mental equivalent a fisherman going out at night and shining a light into the water to attract his catch. Spike didn't feel like he had to check this out, but at the same time, he wanted to find out what it was…
Then an explanation hit him.
That 'Orici' chick they'd mentioned earlier… hadn't she been meant to be like the Ori equivalent of Jesus? She must have some kind of freaky powers if she was in charge of an army that was meant to include those 'Prior' guys; from what he'd been told on the trip here in the Odyssey, they were meant to have some mental powers, so it seemed like a safe bet that Adria had them herself.
OK, so she was meant to have been killed when that weird energy wave hit the planet; after all his time in Sunnydale, he should have realised that the Big Bads would never go down that easily, no matter where you- or they, come to that- were from.
Spike was just about to ask his new teammates if that was a possible explanation for what was going on when the Ori ship suddenly powered up, the lights automatically coming on.
"Sam?" Mitchell asked, looking inquiringly over at his friend.
"I don't know-" Sam began, only to be halted by a sudden rumbling around them. The rumbling stopped almost as soon as it had begun, but Spike suddenly felt a strange sensation around him, as though something was moving around them…
Oh bugger, Spike groaned.
If they hadn't just taken off from the planet right now, he'd be very surprised…
"That's bad, huh?" he said, glancing over inquiringly at his friends to confirm his theory.
"We're flying and we have no idea who's in control; I'd call that bad, yeah," Mitchell agreed, nodding over at the vampire.
"Let's get moving," Sam said, indicating the corridor that she and Spike had just walked down. "I might be able to override primary systems from the control room."
"And what if we find the person flying this thing there?" Spike asked, looking critically over at his new friends. "Don't know about you, but I'm not entirely eager to find out who could have survived that 'Dakara weapon' thing you told me about if those Prior guys are meant to be the only people who can actually steer this thing…"
"We'll worry about that when we get there, Spike," Mitchell said, as he checked his gun- Spike vaguely recalled that the thing was called a P-90- as they walked. "The first lesson you need to learn about being on an SG-team is simple; don't give up just because the bad guys are really big."
"So, in other words, same principle as when I was in Sunnydale, huh?" Spike asked, sighing slightly as they continued to walk. "Well, if I could fight against the First sodding Evil, I suppose I can deal with this…"
Then they turned a corner, and Spike found himself and his new friends standing in the control room of the Ori ship once again, still empty with no sign of a pilot or any kind of Ori influence.
"OK, here's a question," Mitchell said, looking over at his friends. "Who's flying this boat?"
"Well," Spike put in, "judging by the little itch I'm getting in the part of my brain where I think the First kept its little trigger thing to turn me into its little lap dog, I'm guessing we're talking someone with access to some serious mental oomf…"
Noting the sudden stares of the other three, he raised an eyebrow.
"What?" he asked, going over what he'd said before his face fell. "Uh… look… about that whole 'mental trigger' thing I just mentioned… would it help if I told you I had it taken out and the thing doesn't work any more?"
"You had a mental trigger stuck in your head by an Ascended being that made you do whatever it wanted you too?" Mitchell said, looking critically at Spike, seemingly ignoring the vampire's attempt to defend himself. "Sorry, but that's the kind of thing you're meant to tell people when you're having a psychiatric evaluation for a top-secret government operation, you know; we're meant to know if there's something that could jeopardise your role in the program!"
"Hey, the sodding thing got shut down ages ago and nothing's tapped into it since; I just didn't think there was any point bringing it up!" Spike protested as he looked at them. "Look, the sucker that stuck it there isn't around any more, the trigger's been shut down, and I know how to tell that the thing's been turned back on again so I'd let you know if anything was going on like that; can we just get this over with and get moving, will you?"
For a moment, there was silence as the three members of SG-1 looked around at each other, until Teal'c nodded and looked over at Sam.
"He makes a valid argument, Colonel Carter," the Jaffa said, nodding slightly at her. "When I was temporarily brainwashed by Apophis to believe that my original defection to the Tau'ri was false, you all nevertheless accepted me back into the fold. We have achieved independent confirmation from Captain Finn that the entity that triggered Spike's programming has been destroyed, just as Apophis has been; it would be hypocritical of us not to trust Spike because he was once brainwashed when you have trusted me after similar circumstances."
After a moment's pause- during which Spike made a mental note to ask Teal'c for more information about that intriguing-sounding story when he had the time-, Sam and Mitchell glanced inquiringly at each other and nodded, Mitchell subsequently turning back to Spike.
"Right," he said simply, staring in a neutral manner at the vampire that made it clear to Spike that this particular line of inquiry wasn't over yet. "You think that Adria's the one piloting this thing based on this 'feeling' you're getting in your brain? We've not got a better explanation now; we'll go with that. So-" here he turned to Sam, "-since we're here anyway, any chance you can hack into this sucker's systems and stop this thing from going wherever it is it's going?"
Sighing, Sam pulled out her laptop, crouched down on the ground, plugged the computer in, and pulled up the information from her earlier survey.
"I'll do what I can, but I'm not making any promises," she said, before she began to rapidly tap at the keyboard once again. "Look, can you just see what you can do about contacting Daniel and Vala again?"
"Right," Mitchell said, nodding at her as he tried his radio again. "Jackson, come in."
After a moment of static, Mitchell sighed and tried again. "Jackson, Vala, can you hear me?"
After another few moments of silence, Mitchell sighed and put the radio back in his pocket before he looked over at Sam. "We'll have to go out there and look for 'em. Sam…?"
"I'll keep at it," Sam said, nodding at her commander before she glanced over at Spike. "You go with them, Spike; an extra pair of eyes there would be more help than it would be-"
"In other words, get out from under your feet, mmm?" Spike asked, looking at her with a frustrated sigh before he turned around and walked out of the control room after Mitchell and Teal'c. "See you around; I'm off."
As soon as he stepped out into the corridor, however, Mitchell and Teal'c having already gone a few metres down in one direction, Spike turned around and began to walk the other way.
If anyone had asked him what he was up to, he would have lied through his teeth about his real motives, but right now, with that nagging feeling in his skull starting to feel like it was blaring out a warning system of some kind, he felt that he almost had a duty to see what was causing it. If he found the source, he could let the others know where the screwy bitch (If he was right about it being this 'Orici' bird they kept mentioning) was without her even knowing; he somehow doubted that alien telepaths could be that different from the demon ones he'd encountered in his time.
Simple enough, Spike assured himself as he walked along the corridor. Follow the headache, see if I'm right about the cause, find somebody to help me kick her arse and turn this sodding ship around, and we're sorted. What could be easier?
After several minutes of walking, Spike was beginning to think he should have reconsidered his 'plan'- if you could call it that; looking back, it had been absolutely pathetic. The ship was way too big for him to be sure that the 'Orici' would stay where she was long enough for him to get somebody else there to fight her if he even found her, and what was he going to do if he found her; taunt her into submission? Even assuming she was exaggerating about the whole 'Jesus' thing she claimed to have going for her, he couldn't touch anything, for God's sake; he'd be sodding useless even if he did manage to track her down!
Reaching a door on one side of the corridor, Spike glanced inside it, and instantly leapt back out of sight when he saw Daniel and Vala talking to some chick in a shoulderless gold dress that could only be this 'Adria' bird they'd been talking about earlier, standing in a simple room whose only form of furniture was a table with a blue tablecloth draped over it and a couple of torches that reminded Spike slightly of a Prior's staff in terms of design.
The dress she was wearing wasn't a clear sign to her identity, of course, but Spike somehow doubted a race who claimed to be 'gods' would allow their average follower to wear something like that. This woman was either someone important to the Ori religion or she wasn't with them in the first place, and Spike was pretty confident that the odds of it being the second one were slim to nothing.
"Adria," Vala was saying; risking a glance around the edge of the door, Spike watched her stare desperately at the other woman as she stepped forward slightly, "listen to me-"
"I'm sorry, mother," Adria interrupted casually. "The time for talking is over."
Pausing, she turned her head slightly, as though looking at something that only she could see, before she spoke again. "We've arrived."
"Wait, we've arrived?" Daniel said, looking almost incredulously at Vala. "But you've been here with us; how could you have sent the ship to Dakara this fast?"
"The will of the Ori is capable of many things, Daniel Jackson," Adria said, looking at Daniel with a smile that Spike found particularly worrying. "Do not doubt what they are capable of; their spirit is here in me, even as it steers this vessel to its destination."
Spike's eyes widened in shock.
If he'd understood what she was saying there correctly…
She's flying this sodding thing from here?! he thought; he only just managed to stop himself letting out an extremely vocal curse at the implication there.
If she could pilot something this big just by wanting to control it…
Even after having to go toe-to-toe with Glory, the prospect of going up against somebody capable of something like that wasn't something Spike wanted to have to deal with.
"Look-" Daniel began.
"Silence," Adria interrupted. "I have… something to attend to."
After a moment's silence Spike chanced a glance around the corner, only to see Adria standing silently near the middle of the room, her back to Daniel and Vala who were staring at her in confusion.
Personally, if Spike had been in their position he would've attacked the loony bitch the first chance he got, but given that she was apparently flying this thing right now, he supposed it might be a good idea to leave her as she was; there was no guarantee that knocking her out wouldn't send this thing hurtling into an asteroid or something like that.
After Spike, Daniel and Vala had watched Adria stand that way for a moment- the other two so far unaware of his presence outside the room-, the 'Orici' turned back to look at her mother and the archaeologist.
"You should thank me," she said nonchalantly to them; her casual attitude was really starting to get on Spike's nerves by this point. "I just saved your lives."
"What are you talking about?" Vala asked.
Before Adria could reply, the sound of footsteps suddenly reached Spike's ears, coming from the direction that he'd just walked in. Unwilling to let anyone else see him until he'd come up with some kind of plan for dealing with this situation- he'd rather not have to waste time explaining what he was doing here when he was trying to figure out a way to fight like this- Spike dashed across the doorway and hid around the corner of the corridor, his back to the outer wall of the room. With one ear up to the wall, Spike could still hear what was happening inside the room, and he could easily get to Adria if he heard something that suggested things were going to get ugly- not that he was sure what he'd do if that happened, but at least he'd be trying-, but his presence would still remain unknown until he wanted it to be.
"It won't be that easy," Daniel was currently saying on the other side of the wall; Spike could only presume he was referring to Adria's plans to conquer the galaxy via organised religion.
"Why wouldn't it be?" Adria replied, in the typically condescending tone of all arrogant villains. "I'm about to destroy the only real threat against us."
"You're forgetting about someone," Daniel stated, his tone level despite the weapons-fire that still struck the door to the room. "What about the Ancients?"
"You know as well as I do they'll never get involved," Adria retorted; her voice may have been just as casual as Daniel's, but her tone was so smug it reminded Spike of Angelus in the poof's bad days. "We have free rein in this galaxy."
"Adria," Vala suddenly interjected, "listen to me. I promise to stay with you. I'll hear you out on the whole Origin thing. I'll… even try and keep an open mind."
She paused for a moment, and then spoke again. "Just let everyone else go."
"It's too late for them," Adria said simply, as though she was apologising for having forgotten to buy milk at the shops rather than saying she'd allow some of her mother's friends to die.
"But don't worry," she added, in a reassuring tone that- to continue the earlier shopping analogy- sounded like she was telling her mother that she'd purchased a little treat for her to make up for the lack of milk. "I'll be keeping him alive."
For a moment, Spike wondered who she was referring to with that comment, but then she added "We have plans for you," and he instantly became certain that she was talking about Daniel; he was the only other person in the room right now.
'Plans', huh? Spike mused to himself, a grim expression on his face as he reflected on the possible implications of that statement. Now, doesn't that sound cheery…
Before anything more could be said, however, Spike heard a faint sound- it vaguely reminded him of a deep whistle, if that made any sense- through the wall, and suddenly there were two less heartbeats inside the room on the other side. For a moment Spike wondered what could have happened, and then he recognised the sound; the teleporters that had 'beamed' him and SG-1 up to the Odyssey (Well, beamed SG-1 up; he'd been dragged along with the amulet in Daniel's pocket).
Hold on a minute… Spike mused to himself, as he suddenly realised something. If they've all been beamed out- no way somebody would just beam Danny-Boy and Vala off without the other three- what am I still doing here?
There was only one explanation; Sam must have dropped the amulet at some point and it had stayed behind while she'd been beamed off.
Before he could continue that train of thought, a massive wave of something- Spike had no idea what it was, other than that it was setting his 'supernatural-sense' off like crazy- passed through him, raced along the corridor, and suddenly the staff-weapon fire around the corner had stopped.
"What the…?" Spike muttered, looking around the corner in confusion at where just moments ago a bunch of Jaffa had been firing at a wall, and now only a pile of clothing and their staff weapons remained to show they'd been there in the first place…
If Spike had possessed a beating heart, it would have frozen then and there.
It was exactly like what had been left of that Prior in the control room after that 'Dakara Superweapon' thing had been used.
Which, coupled with Adria's comment about her being about to destroy the only thing in the galaxy that could actually threaten her side, led him to conclude that they were right over Dakara right now, and the idiots down there had just used the weapon to try and save themselves.
Which meant, unless these 'Jaffa' guys had some extra perks he didn't know about that would allow them to survive that 'weapon' thing that must have just been used against the ship, he was the only person left who could do anything about Adria's plans to destroy the Dakara Superweapon.
But I can't even touch anything right now! Spike mentally yelled; he couldn't believe that he could be in a position to help only to learn that he couldn't do anything in the first place. How am I meant to-
Wait.
The implication struck him so suddenly he couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to him before.
Based on what he'd heard, Adria was able to move this ship by sheer force of will (And the freaky powers given to her by her 'daddies', of course).
Sam had been telling him practically since she'd run the first tests that he should still be able to interact with objects if he focused enough on touching them.
What if the problem wasn't a lack of focus… but a lack of will?
What if, instead of focusing on trying to hit Adria, he just went in there and hit her like the loony bitch she was?
After all, if she could summon up the willpower to get a massive spaceship moving around when she couldn't be much older than a year- according to Sam and Daniel, the Ori only found out about life in this area last year, and Spike had certainly seen stranger things in his lifetime than a chick who could become an adult in that kind of timeframe-, surely he, with over a century of experience under his belt, could summon the mental energy to punch her?
Well, Spike resolved as he stared at the wall before him, got nothing to lose, and a hell of a lot to gain by trying.