Thanks everyone for reading! And to those of you who reviewed - Teal'c is certainly feeling the love after last chapter. Every single of you had a pat on the back for him ;-)
Power Play (2), pt. 3
Daniel scratched listlessly at the wall with a blunt pick-axe, sighing as Ulan bumped into him yet again on his way to the mining cart. The boy was making it no secret that he was utterly disappointed in the best that 'Thor's warriors' had to offer… and Daniel could not really blame him. So far, other than an admirable, and admirably useless, readiness to go down with the rest of the Argonians, he and Mitchell had been absolutely zero help.
The rest of the team even less, although, he knew, not through any fault of their own, but because they were stuck on the Odyssey much as he and Mitchell were stuck on this planet.
When Ulan glared again on his way back from the cart, Daniel finally had to say something. "Look, I get it, you're angry," he kept his voice low so the guards wouldn't hear, "but we're not giving up, okay? We'll get everyone out of this."
The boy's only response was a derisive huff, and he pushed his way past Daniel to his own work spot.
Before Daniel could stop him, there was a loud thump from behind him, and he turned just in time to see Gaion slide down the wall, the rock he had been carrying rolling out of his hands.
When two Argonians tried to walk over to help, one of the guards discharged his weapon at their feet, causing them to jump back. Ulan rushed forward, but two more of his own people restrained him.
"Told you he wouldn't make it to dawn!" The same guard from earlier strolled toward the group of workers with a large grin. "Pay up!"
"He ain't dead yet!" another guard countered, and kicked Gaion hard. The man groaned, but did not get up.
"Stop!" Daniel shoved him away from the injured Argonian, and was not entirely surprised to find himself at the business end of a weapon. "Leave him alone!"
"Boss said to shoot 'em when the old one drops," the third guard pointed out. "I saw we shoot 'em then."
"Time's up," grinned the first guard, and aimed his weapon at Gaion's prone form.
Daniel hit the guard closest to him with a hard punch to the jaw, which sent the man to the floor and knocked the weapon out of his grip. There was a brief moment of stunned silence, as the other two Lucians had not expected one of their meek prisoners to fight back. Daniel took advantage of their confusion to pull out his Zat, and shoot one of them down. He had to jump out of the way, however, as the other one quickly recovered, and sent a barrage of energy blasts his way. Fortunately, the Argonians had scattered to the sides of the tunnel, as far away from the fight as they could.
Unfortunately, it took very little for the guard to realize he could use them as leverage. As he shouted for help, he pulled one of the nearby Argonians in front of him as a shield.
"Put your weapon down or he dies! And then I'll shoot the rest of 'em!"
Daniel gritted his teeth. Seeing no other course of action, he slowly lowered his Zat, and placed it on the ground in front of him.
"Smart move." Immediately, the Lucian aimed his weapon at Daniel, and fired.
At the last second, the Argonian he had been holding as a human shield knocked his arm aside, causing the weapon's blast to miss Daniel by a foot or more. The guard retaliated by hitting the Argonian hard and shoving him to the floor, but by the time he could bring his weapon up again, Daniel had retrieved his Zat. The archaeologist managed to squeeze off a shot just in time, and the guard dropped to the ground.
The noise from the fight, however, had drawn guards from other sections of the mine, and shouts of alarm and threats echoed along the tunnel walls.
"We need to get out of here." He directed the Argonians toward one branch in the tunnel that seemed quiet. "That way, quickly!" Two of them helped Gaion up, and they all rushed further down the tunnel, with Daniel bringing up the rear and ducking as best as he could from the stray energy blasts that flew over their heads.
When he heard shots coming from inside the mine, Mitchell knew they were out of time. He only hoped at least some of those shots were fired by Jackson.
He rushed to the nearest mine entrance, and stopped one of the Argonian workers who was scrambling away from the sound of the fight. "You need to get as many of your people as you can to a safe place. Run far away from here, stay together, we'll come get you when this is all over."
The man looked terrified. "Who are you?"
"Uh – we work for Thor," Mitchell improvised, and was glad to see the Argonian's eyes widen in awe. "Okay go, stay close to the ground, take shelter if you can – and don't go anywhere near those ships or the tents!"
He did not wait to see if the man was listening, and rushed inside the mine. The tunnels were dark, some of the lights having been knocked out by the mass of panicked workers. Energy shots flew everywhere. "Go, the exit's that way, get away from the mine!" He helped as many people out as he could, and even Zatted a guard or two, but eventually he realized he could not get to Daniel in the chaos.
"Jackson!" He tried the radio. After all, the two of them were definitely within range. "This is Mitchell, do you read?"
"I think our cover's blown!" The other man sounded out of breath, and the radio signal was bad. "We're making our way deeper into the mine, and I don't think there's a good way out at this point!"
The colonel swore. "I'll go for the Tel'tak. Can you hold them off that long?"
"I can try."
"I'll take out as many as I can with the Tel'tak, then I'm coming after you," he promised. "Mitchell out."
He ran back to the tunnel entrance, and took a second to evaluate the situation. The field was a sea of motion, with Argonians in dirty robes running to and fro in panic, and the black-clad Lucians shooting randomly and shouting for order. Much to his dismay, a group of guards were also headed for the Tel'tak, and Cam realized he had to beat them there, or fight them all.
That was easier said than done. He was shot at several times as he cut across the field, and one of the blasts charred the edges of his tunic, although luckily it mostly missed his flesh. He ignored the slight tug in his shoulder from the burn, and pushed forward. Several times he lost sight of the Tel'tak entirely, as he was bumped, shoved and shot at yet again. Screaming Argonians still filed out of the mine, and he did not think Jackson and the people with him had much of a chance holding off a band of armed Lucians in a dead-end mine tunnel with just a Zat.
He could not even begin to imagine what he would do once he got to the Tel'tak. The crowd was all mixed together now, although he hoped the Argonians would take his advice and run for the hills. At the very least, he could try to shoot up an alternative exit for Jackson. Or get rid of the naquadah weapon.
Either way, the odds of rescuing the Argonians and making it off the planet alive did not look good.
He was still several hundred yards away from the Tel'tak, and having difficulty advancing through the stampeding people and the barrage of weapons fire, when he heard his radio go off again.
"Colonel Mitchell, this is the Odyssey, do you read us?"
He stumbled and nearly fell flat on his face.
"Sir, our sensors are reading the emergency transport beacons again!" Major Marks looked up from his station, his expression filled with enthusiasm. "The signal's coming from the second moon of that gas giant!"
"There's some sort of construction on the surface, but we're too far to clearly read life signs." Sam calibrated the sensors and took a closer look. "I am reading massive amounts of naquadah."
"Probably a mine," Vala opined. "The Lucians trade in naquadah. Having an off-the-books mine would make any aspiring nobody into a very rich man, very quickly."
"And it would explain why they've been kidnapping the Argonians, free labour can't be easy to come by. We're within radio range." Her voice held an anxious note as Sam activated the communications system. "Colonel Mitchell, this is the Odyssey, do you read us?"
The only response was static. She clenched her fists, and tried again.
"This is the Odyssey. Cam, do you copy? Daniel? Anyone? I repeat, this is –"
"Holy mother of all, now that's what I call timing."
Sam's face broke into a relieved grin.
"Odyssey, this is Mitchell, do you read?" There was still static on the line, and they could hear weapons fire in the background. "Don't come anywhere near –" A burst of static obscured his next words. " –sort of reverse Death Star situation going on here."
Davidson frowned. "Colonel, this is Davidson. Can you repeat?"
More static, followed by more weapons fire.
"Colonel, we're preparing to transport you and Dr. Jackson back to the Odyssey –"
"No! They'll kill all the – nians – get to a safe place and you can – all on board."
"Cam, this is Sam, we're having trouble reading you clearly."
The only response was silence.
"I repeat, this is Sam, are you still there?"
Nothing.
"We need to go down there." Having fully geared up in advance, Vala walked up to Davidson's command seat. "Transport us to their position."
"I can't send you in the middle of a combat zone with no idea of what to expect."
"Odyssey, this is Jackson," through the speaker they could hear Daniel's transparent attempt to keep the tone light despite the situation,"we could really use some back-up here if you're not too busy."
Vala arched her eyebrows at the ship's commander. "Okay, now can we go down there?"
Mitchell muttered a string of swears as he ran the last thirty yards or so to the Tel'tak. He wasn't sure that the Odyssey had heard his warning about the planet-to-space naquadah weapon, and a Lucian had attacked him before he had had the chance to repeat himself. He had finally knocked he man out cold, but his radio had been damaged in the fight. He had had no option but to keep going for the Tel'tak, and hope that he could use that to communicate with the ship.
But the Lucians must have had their own communication system, because by now they seemed to have caught on to his presence. By the time he was near the Tel'tak, he was welcomed with energy blasts from about half a dozen different weapons. The hatch door to the ship was closed now, too. Not that it made much of a difference, given that he was likely to be fried alive before making it anywhere near the door.
He jumped out of the way of another energy blast, and fired back blindly with the Zat. As Teal'c had predicted, he was sadly outnumbered and outgunned. He rolled on the ground, trying to make a smaller, more difficult target of himself, and shot back a few more times. But with no places to take cover, things were not looking good. He felt a brief pain in his leg as yet another energy blast hit too close to home.
The Lucians attacking him were getting brave, now that they saw him on the ground and with no hope of escape. They came out from behind the Tel'tak, and when he tried to run back into the relative safety of the crowd in the field, one of them caught him with a blast to the side that burned far worse than the two near-misses before it.
Cam dropped back to the ground with a painful grunt, but within seconds he caught himself and rolled over, determined that he would at least take one more of the bastards out with him.
One more was exactly the number he had the chance to shoot, but only because the others were already lying prone on the ground. His head snapped up in surprise as a hand extended toward him from seemingly nowhere.
"Told you I should've come with you," Vala grinned.
Daniel fired a few shots from his Zat around the corner, then quickly retreated back to safety. About ten times as many shots came in return, and he was forced to peek out again and fire some more.
What he saw during the brief moment that he dared to look around the corner did not reassure him. There was a group of at least seven or eight guards, and they were close enough to overrun him and the Argonians with him within less than a minute.
Worse yet, they had hit a dead end. There was exactly one more turn in the tunnel behind him, and then a narrow space and a solid rock wall, where all the Argonians currently huddled together, offering each other mutual support against their hopeless panic.
Belatedly, he wished he had taken them out of the mine. Then the Odyssey could have beamed them all to safety. As it was, they were too far underground for the beacons to work well, let alone the radios. Of course, when the fight had first started, he had had no idea that the Odyssey was coming for them. Ironic, really, that he and Mitchell had been so certain they were on their own, only to have the rest of the team come to their rescue…and be too late.
He fired a few last shots at the oncoming attackers (the energy blasts that came in return were closer than before), before taking off for the last turn in the tunnel. A second later, he heard his previous position being overrun, and he had to stop around the corner and fire again, buying himself another few seconds, for all the good that that would do…
Out of nowhere, it occurred to him that if Jack were there instead of him, he could have probably taken out all the attackers with a few well-aimed Zat shots.
"Should've paid more attention when you lectured me on how to aim properly," he muttered to himself and an absent Jack O'Neill.
Actually, Jack would've probably gotten rid of the attackers ten tunnel corners ago, instead of allowing himself to be backed into a corner like a rookie.
The energy blasts came flying again, this time in a constant stream. There was nowhere left to run.
Daniel positioned himself in front of the group of terrified Argonians, and held up his Zat. "Stay behind me," he shouted, over the increasingly loud weapons fire…
…actually, the surprisingly loud weapons fire. There hadn't been that many shots before, Daniel was sure of it. And if the guards had gotten reinforcements, why weren't they rushing around the corner already?
Besides, the sounds he was hearing did not resemble the energy weapons blast. In fact, it sounded more like...
One of the guards did turn the corner then, and he was so surprised to see that it was a dead end, that he hesitated just long enough for Daniel to Zat him. He picked up the man's gun, and carefully peaked around the corner once more…
…only to be greeted by the sight of Sam and Teal'c finishing the last two of the guards.
The Jaffa then marched over to him. "You required assistance, Daniel Jackson?"
Daniel grinned.
