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Chapter Twelve: Not Exactly Plan A, Since When Does that Ever Work


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The first part of the thing went smoothly enough, as Mal left the other three on the mule and went into the post station to retrieve the package they'd been sent to get. There had been some concern about the fact that they were picking up an unknown item that could be anything, but the one thing they felt reasonably confident in assuming was these people wanted River alive. Even given that they had a sarcophagus, there were some injuries and circumstances the device didn't seem able to reverse, so they were unlikely to take chances with the girl they wanted so badly.

Once they had the mystery package in hand, the mule headed towards one of the more affluent suburbs of the city. This was one of the more worrisome parts of the plan. The post station and the Tam's estate were in the same moderate size city. While movement in the shopping districts and other tourist-y attractions was fairly free, the more upper class residential areas had strict air-traffic controls. It left them choosing from relatively limited routes on the ground and meant that if they had to use the shuttle, it was going to draw immediate attention.

SG-1 were sitting in Inara's shuttle with Zoe at the controls, listening over the radio to the crew on the mule. Not that there was much of anything to be heard at the moment. There hadn't even been much of an exchange between Mal and the man behind the counter at the post depot. Now there was only the sound of the running mule and the slight bit of traffic around it, which thinned out more and more the closer they got to the estate.

"This the place?"

"You'll have to use the intercom on the gate. I really never expected to come back here," Simon replied, sounding far more subdued than the generally argumentative doctor usually did.

"Jing cai," was followed by the sound of Mal's footsteps and the buzz of an intercom, "Got a package delivery here. Figure someone told y'all to be expecting it." A few seconds later, Mal's voice again, considerably softer, obviously just meant for the transmitting radio he wore, "Got a camera panning atop the fence."

"Very well. Pull up to the front, but do not exit your vehicle," the voice was tinny coming through both the intercom and the radio, but still noticeably disdainful for all that.

Again the only thing to be heard was the sound of the mule running, presumably pulling them into the estate past the perimeter fence. Before they'd all left the ship, Simon had related what he remembered about both the grounds and the house, just in case. The crew trusted River's word that the elder Tams were not knowingly involved, but that didn't guarantee they wouldn't find trouble waiting for them at the estate.

As if she could hear Jack mulling over the concern of not being able to see what was going on and worrying there was an ambush, and maybe she could, River said offhandedly, "Just the parents and the servants. Anxious to see us back home, don't know it's not home anymore. Feel guilty, but want to forget."

"Mei mei," Simon began, but the doctor couldn't seem to think of anything to say in response.

There was a pause then, during which the mule's engine was turned off and everyone was left waiting to see what would happen next. The next thing they heard was again Mal, asking, "Doctor, you know..."

"My parents," Simon's voice confirmed, almost robotically.

The next voice over the link was unfamiliar and female, sounding all but hysterical. "River! Simon! Oh, children, it's so good to see you!"

Again, Simon replied, sounding as if he was talking to some distant acquaintance he didn't much like. "Mother. Father. We were told to drop a package here. If you'll be so kind as to tell us what other instructions might have been left, we'll be on our way."

The next unfamiliar voice was male, and sounded greatly disapproving. "Simon, have you forgotten your manners entirely? What do you mean speaking to your mother in that tone?"

The doctor's voice was suddenly less emotionless, but that wasn't necessarily an improvement. "I'm sorry, Father. Exactly what sort of tone is appropriate to use when one's parents abandoned one's sibling to medical experimentation and then disowned one for attempting to save her? I can't quite recall which part of the etiquette books covered that!"

There was a gasp of horror from the Tam sibling's mother, and a bit of angry sputtering from the father, but before any member of the little family reunion could get any more snippy and sarcastic at the others, Mal stepped in again. "Now, now. Let's all just be reasonable-like here. Plenty o' hard feelings to go around, I suspect, but we got a few other concerns here."

"And who the devil are you to tell me how I should address my own children?" Mr. Tam spoke in rebuke.

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Your kids are on my crew, been with us near the whole time since the doc sprung his sis from that place you put her in," while the tones of everyone else in the conversation were pretty easy to read, Jack really didn't know what Reynolds was thinking from his voice. It was full of very pointed unconcern.

"Well," the anger wasn't gone, but the disdain was overshadowing it now, "No wonder you've lost all sense of decorum, hanging about with trash like this, son."

Jayne could be heard muttering something that must be deeply uncomplimentary, judging from the expressions on the faces of Daniel and Zoe.

"Shouldn't try to make Captain Daddy mad." River's voice cut over any other response, and left all of them silent for a moment. Jack was trying to picture in his head exactly the expressions on all their faces, as it was obvious who she was referring to, but he couldn't recall the girl using that moniker before now.

"River, honey?"

"No! Not home. Won't stay, can't make me!"

"River!" that was a chorus of all three other Tams together, which made everyone in the shuttle listening in exchange curious glances.

"Uh, River, darlin'" Mal's voice was tentative and sounded a bit confounded, "ain't nobody going to try and make you stay behind. There's no need to be clinging onta me so."

Her response was an oddly muffled, "Sorry, Captain."

"The only reason we came here is because we were ordered to by someone holding a friend of ours hostage. So if you were given any instructions for us, we would greatly like to have them. If not, well, Captain Reynolds isn't a terribly patient man, and Jayne, well, he likes to shoot things. I'd hate for them to do anything that might distress the groundskeepers." It seemed that Simon had gotten his snark back.

There was a bit of a ringing silence, before Simon's father replied in a very stiffly measured tone. "We were hoping that now the warrants had been retracted, perhaps you might see reason and come home."

Simon started hotly, "This isn't," and then stopped for a moment, before continuing on, "Do you know what they charged me with, father? Theft. Of government property. Not for breaking into a government installation, or for kidnapping my sister, but for stealing their property."

His voice changes from nearly dripping with disdain to something that's almost pleading. "Do you really imagine River would be safe here, in the Core, when they don't even consider her a person?"

"They didn't say anything about instructions. We were just told that our children would be coming with a package delivery," Mrs. Tam said softly, pausing before adding, "Simon are you sure..."

"We couldn't stay even if we wanted to. I'm sorry that you feel guilty now, but we're safer – and happier – where we are." Jack can admire that the young man's voice only wavers a bit. As angry as Simon had been whenever the elder Tams had come up, it was obvious it was from a deep betrayal that he wasn't over. This couldn't be an easy situation for him.

There was a short pause, and then Simon's voice spoke again. "Wait! Open it. That might be our instructions."

Although SG-1 was pretty sure it couldn't be something explosive if they wanted River in one piece, the declaration still made everyone in the shuttle tense. Finally, Gabriel Tam's voice broke the silence. "It's empty. There's nothing in here but … packing materials."

The next transmissions were random sounds of movement followed by the sound of the mule's engine. Mal advised them that they were turning around and heading back out of the estate, but other than that, no one was saying anything.

Jack was mentally running through the number of streets the mule still had to make it through to get back to Serenity when River's voice broke through the quiet, panic in her tone. "Ahead and behind!"

Then, quite clearly, seconds later, was the sound of gunfire. By the time Jayne's torrent of angry-sounding Chinese and Mal's shout of "ZOE!" registered, Serenity's second in command already had the shuttle in the air. It only took SG-1 a few bare seconds longer to start preparing themselves for action.

Zoe calmly told them someone needed to call Inara – who was out shopping as part of their ruse – and tell her to get herself back to the ship post-haste. Daniel took it upon himself to do so while the others broke out their weapons. Zoe concentrated on flying the craft at the fastest speed she could push it to, ignoring the pinging from the radio console. Jack figured that was presumably air traffic control looking for an explanation, though he was more concerned with rechecking his weapons than worrying about it.

The shuttle flew swiftly over the route the group had agreed upon in advance. It couldn't have been more than five minutes before they could see the mule down below. The plus side about being in the shuttle up above was they could easily see the two groups firing on the mule as they flew over the action. The minus side, however, was that the shuttle had no weapons of its own. It made actually doing anything about the situation was somewhat tricky.

In the end, their only real option seemed to be opening up the hatch and bracing themselves around its doorway to shoot out at the ambushers. It felt like a long time to come to that decision, but it couldn't have been much more than a few extra seconds. The people on the ground had only just started to really clue in to the shuttle's presence and look up before SG-1 was firing down on them.

It was obvious almost immediately they hadn't expected any reinforcements to arrive, and particularly not in this manner, as both groups of attackers quickly hurried to get back under cover of their own vehicles and flee the scene. It was hard to tell the status of the four in the mule from up above, as none of them were moving around much. Hopefully that was just because they were all still taking advantage of the limited cover the small vehicle offered. The shuttle had covered the distance in a remarkably short amount of time, but the ambushers were clearly well-armed and had taken those on the mule by surprise.

Zoe just barely waited for the transports on either side of the mule to peel out before setting the shuttle down. The space in the street was only just big enough for it, and likely only that wide because they were still in the better residential neighborhoods. She was up out of her seat in moments, gun at the ready. Somehow she was first out the door despite the fact SG-1 were already arrayed around the open hatch. Without having to even speak about it, Teal'c was out right after Zoe, eyes clearly marking out the directions the ambushers had fled. Carter gathered up what supplies they'd brought in the way of emergency first aid while he and Daniel kept an eye out for anyone the antagonists might have left behind. It was unlikely, as all they'd seen from above had been people fleeing and a few unmoving bodies, but no good would come of being less than cautious.

While scanning the area, and peripherally keeping track of Teal'c and Zoe's movement toward the mule, Jack realized he could see Simon and River moving about, now. They'd all still been hunched down inside the vehicle as the shuttle had landed. Before he could worry that it was only the two of them visible, Jayne was out of the mule and conferring with Zoe, looking entirely unhurt. River was also moving about freely, but Simon seemed stiff. Jack realized why when the doctor turned at an angle and it became apparent he was holding one hand clamped to his opposite shoulder. River lightly jumped out of the vehicle and helped to assist Simon out.

At that point, Reynolds finally made an appearance. Jack had sort of figured the man couldn't be too bad off, since no one in the mule seemed particularly frantic – or particularly upset – so it wasn't a surprise the ship's captain also got out of the mule under his own power, although he was pressing a bloody hand to the side of his head. There was a bit of a conference with some gesticulating between the three senior Serenity crew members, but a word from River broke the powwow up just as Jack was about to tell Sam to go ahead and go over to the mule to either treat the injured, or better yet, get them to agree to leave the scene. The whole group headed for the shuttle, with Reynolds looking somewhat displeased.

As they all filed into the shuttle, where the rest of SG-1 had stayed to keep an eye on the surroundings, Mal gave a terse explanation. "River says they're on the way back with more, we're leaving the mule and getting out of this fay-fay duh pee-yen, now."

That's exactly what they did. Sam got to deal with Reynolds and Doctor Tam, both of whom were fussing over who should have their injuries looked over first. Tam had taken a bullet to the outer part of the arm near the shoulder, but Reynolds had taken a serious whack to the head when the doctor's sister had shoved him down out of the way of fire. Simon wondered aloud why they'd been so willing to shoot at the group if they wanted to take River. Daniel was the one who replied, reminding them all that if these mysterious agents had access to a sarcophagus, it would be much easier to just kill them all and revive the ones they wanted. That put a heck of a damper on further conversation. The crew had heard it before, but Jack couldn't blame them for having forgotten; it took a while to get used to the idea that one's enemies could treat death as only a minor inconvenience.

The awkwardness caused them to make the swift trip back to Serenity in nearly unbroken silence – aside from the complaints of the two men having their wounds looked over by Sam and a few additional unanswered squawks from the radio. Their exit from the world was just as swift, though there was a bit of discussion about exactly where they were going to go. For the moment, they just directed themselves promptly away from Osiris.

As soon as the ship was headed out into the black and everyone's wounds had been sufficiently seen to, the whole group gathered once again in the galley. As everyone got settled in around the table, Reynolds continued to stand and addressed them all. "Way I see it, we've got three options here. We can run, but those gao yang jong duh goo yang still have Wash and will be back after River. Ain't got enough friends left to help us hide out long, neither. Second, we could wait and see what they do now we foiled their trap. Seems to me, though, what we should do is head straight for that signal Sam found on Londinum. Make a play direct for them as are behind this whole mess. Problem is, we'd be doin' it all but blind, and that's not a good option. So I figure we ought to talk some on it."

"It's not a good idea, but you're right. There's really not a better one." Jack conceded when no one else spoke up right away.

They were all tired of waiting and being ordered around. Whoever was behind this would now be aware that a group of people other than the crew they knew about were on Serenity, so their advantage in that respect was diminished. The next time they fell into an ambush, the other side would be planning for more people. And if there was a first one, there was bound to be another. No one was seriously considering the cut and run option. It wasn't a good position to be in, but Jack was actually glad to see the crew was just as convinced they couldn't leave a man behind as his own team would be. Even if the situation completely sucked.

There was quite a lot of talking for what seemed a pretty foregone conclusion to O'Neill, but in the end they did decide to head for Londinium. That was their only real lead and they could always divert for elsewhere if reason came up. It was time to stop playing by someone else's rules. SG-1 asked the crew to give them some better idea of what Londinium was like, but only Inara had spent any real time in the Core, and nearly all of that had been on Sihnon.

Carter's ability to trace the messages they'd been receiving back to the terminal they had been sent from was no small feat, but it did not give them too much to go on in terms of how easy it would be to get to the terminal and those who had been using it. Just as bad, Serenity was going to be obviously out of place as soon as they broke atmo – if they were even allowed to do so without giving a plausible reason for landing. Again, a fair amount of the discussion revolved around Mal's objections to Inara's involvement, but she was the only one with any kind of ties on the planet that would lend themselves to making a non-suspicious visit.

Again, SG-1 stayed mostly out of the argument, it being fairly obvious the discussion had less to do with real objections and more to do with personal conflicts between the two of them. Most of the rest of the crew seemed to have come to much the same conclusion. Again, the conversation never quite degenerated all the way into a full-blown argument, but it was obviously because both parties were making such a particular effort to keep it from doing so. In the end, backed as she was by the sheer practicalities of the situation, Inara won.

She would make an appointment to visit her Guild house's temple, thereby getting Serenity (under a fake ident Reynolds swore would pass muster) clearance to dock on the planet. It wouldn't have been entirely impossible to sneak in to one of the shadier cities – Londinium was a large, heavily populated world, after all – but it was also very heavily policed, and doing so without any kind of inside contact to shelter them would have been prohibitively difficult. This way, the ship would only be logged as being on the Guild's business, and given the sway held by that organization, record of their landing would not be made widely available. Sure, from what was said so far, the people after River were powerful enough to override those secrecy measures, but they'd have to be actively looking to do so. It wasn't impossible they'd be found out especially since Inara was known to be renting on Serenity, but it was unlikely whoever was behind this mess would have any reason to assume they would head directly to Londinium from Osiris.

Carter – with the assistance of River and, oddly, Book – volunteered to look over the public records and try to hack into some of the less public ones to try and figure out exactly where this terminal they'd been contacted from was located. Considering the nature of the transmissions, it seemed likely to be a private terminal within the operations base of whoever they were dealing with – but that wasn't a foregone conclusion. These people could have multiple bases or have anticipated some kind of attempt at a trace. Sure, it had taken both Kaylee and Carter's abilities to do it, but from the sound of the crew's story, the last time someone had come after the girl, they'd made the mistake of grossly underestimating everyone on the crew. These people surely had all kinds of reports about that; Jack figured they should assume these new threats would choose to err in the opposite direction. While she'd been working on the signal-tracing, Carter had also put some time into what would take to make their own access to the Cortex untraceable, or at least nearly so, and they used her theories to mask their latest efforts.

The day before they were due to arrive at the planet – Inara had gotten everything all arranged with the Guild after the crew had discussed things – Carter and River finally had some luck on exactly pinpointing the terminal location. It wouldn't seem like it should be that hard since her trace had located the terminal's exact GPS location and the layout of the city it was in wasn't exactly a secret. However, nearly every building on a Core world had a cortex terminal, and plenty of people carried around portable ones. Furthermore, the best maps of the city were not readily available to the public without a certain amount of registration and hoop jumping. The Alliance wanted to monitor everyone, but they didn't necessarily want anyone else to be able to do so, from what Carter had said.

Still, their security systems were no match for the minds of his genius and Serenity's working together. The terminal was located in a building which was filed on record as being a block of minor offices for Blue Sun Corporation. The name was eminently familiar to the crew, and even with as little of the system as they'd seen, Jack recalled seeing adverts for the company. Apparently it was some kind of amalgamated corporation that sold just about everything.

River wasn't exactly reliable from one day to the next, but that day was the first time that SG-1 saw her go completely loopy. The girl had been a little out of it some days, and had occasionally needed to be prompted a couple times before she replied to someone speaking to her. Now, however, she went into a fit of muttering to herself and rocking back and forth, saying little that was intelligible beyond a short rhyme about blue hands. It sent her brother into an equal tizzy of hovering and trying to medicate her somehow. The rest of the crew was not thrilled, but not quite as obviously distressed. There was some concern that the girl would still be loopy while they tried to pull off whatever plan they managed to come up with. It didn't end up being true, but it did take more than a full day from when they discovered the terminal to when they made landing for her to calm down again.

For SG-1, this new experience of watching the poor girl apparently unable to control herself wasn't any fun, but the crew of the ship not seeming terribly surprised helped somewhat. If she'd been this bad before, surely it was something she would eventually move through. Seeing River back to herself a few hours after Teal'c had been the one to handle the landing of the ship on Londinium helped even more. Mal and Zoe both had some experience with piloting the ship and possibly could have handled it well enough, but Teal'c was by far the most experienced pilot aboard, and he had volunteered to assist. The last thing they needed was to draw suspicion with a less than smooth landing on such a populated planet. According to Reynolds, port control might just be bored and officious enough to investigate.

Their pre-planning had gotten them as far as a landing berth on Londinium, with Inara having checked in with the local chapter of the Companion's Guild to get them an open slot at one of the planet's least reputable docks. Depending on how long their next step took, she might actually make multiple visits to the House to justify the extension of their stay, but luckily the Guild did not require any kind of preset schedule for such appointments. That was a minor check in their positive column. Unfortunately, it was just about the only one.

With Osiris, they had banked on the belief that whoever was behind this would not want to bring it into the public's eye. Even when they'd originally been after River, very little detail had been released with her warrant. Now, post-Miranda and all the fallout that had accompanied the broadcast, it seemed reasonable to believe whoever was pulling their strings would be even less likely want to draw undue attention, so they hadn't worried much about hiding their presence. That theory was supported by a lack of reports on the Cortex now about the incident on Osiris – they'd taken the chance to check, stopping over at a station a little bit out of their way.

Now, they needed to avoid detection altogether, as any alerts they pinged would be as likely to tip off the blackmailers as well as the local authorities. They could not afford to be picked up infiltrating the building or by the local sensors or Fed patrols. So they needed some better idea of how to maneuver around the location they needed to investigate, but there wasn't a lot of experience on Serenity with skulking about the Core planets. Simon and River were from there, but River was shaken by the mere mention of Blue Sun, and Simon had been very focused on his sister during his only experience in the realm of the covert. It was well out of Kaylee and Jayne's expertise to be subtle enough, and Mal and Zoe had always avoided the Core, leaving them only slightly more familiar with it than SG-1 themselves. Which left Book.

It was odd Book got his own category, but the man that they'd been told was some kind of religious devotee called a Shepherd was an enigma. He conducted himself as a man of God would, but even in the short time since he'd been back with the crew it was obvious he knew things no monastery Jack had ever heard of would teach. The deftness he showed in avoiding questions about that knowledge was also suspicious in its own right. It was obvious this was nothing new to the crew, and equally clear they had no explanation for it, either. Jack had found himself more than a little tempted to try and confront the man and get some answers, but Reynolds had apparently anticipated that and warned him off. He could admit to a grudging respect for the man stepping in to protect one of his own, but it was still a frustrating mystery. If they knew the man's background, they'd know whether he could be of more help or not.

So far the older man had said very little during their planning sessions, though he sat in on all of them. Of course, it was stretching it more than a bit to call them planning sessions, as so far they had mostly consisted of sitting around and determining what wouldn't work. Mal was pushing for them to just shove their way in and shoot their way out – it seemed to be his primary strategy for a lot of things. Which, to be fair, was something SG-1 found themselves doing a frequent percentage of the time, too, but they did usually try to plan better when it was something that could go so easily wrong like this could. Unfortunately, they just didn't have the information.

Between the efforts of Sam, Kaylee, and River, they were able to sneak their way into the local systems to get a better idea of the security setup of both the city and the offices themselves. Mostly what that did was verify there really was an obscene amount of security on Core planets. The specific facility they needed to get inside was closed to the public entirely, and not only required employee cards, but matching citizen ident cards, fingerprint and retinal scans, and voice verification – just to get in the door of the main building. There were a number of security stations between that outer door and the offices and labs where they might actually find some answers.

A couple of scenarios occurred to them at that point. Waylaying an employee and using them to get in, or taking their card and having one of their geniuses try and duplicate new ones that would get them in, or even simply overriding the security with their technical know-how. The problem was there were so many security checkpoints, and the list of people allowed in the building was so few they'd be likely to be noticed fairly quickly no matter what they tried.

In the end, it was a combination of Sam and Kaylee that came up with a plan they decided on. It wasn't foolproof, but no plan was, and with the situation they were up against, the best they could hope for was 'not terrible' really. The group had managed to get themselves access to both the building's security servers and the electronic grid of the city. The timing would be a little tricky, but despite all the redundancies and backups, Sam thought it would be possible to unlock all the security stations at once and if they knocked out the power immediately thereafter, keep them from going back up long enough for a group of them to get all the way inside.

The biggest problem was that it wasn't a small building. They had looked at what little was publicly available in terms of schematics, but taking into account what they were there to attempt to find, assuming those were actually accurate would be foolhardy. Considering the relative ease – definitely relative, as it had taken the three brilliant women working together over several days – with which they had accessed the security for the building, it did occur to them to attempt to access the place's sensitive files remotely. Doing so would make getting in and out much easier and more importantly, possibly verify there was something there worth going in after. Unfortunately, when they made the attempt they learned that while the security on their security might be somewhat lacking, they were a lot more careful with files that contained actual information.

It was Book's statement about Sam and Kaylee's plan being their best option that seemed to seal the deal for the Serenity crew, and after that point the discussion turned more from what they were going to do to when they were going to do it, and exactly who was going to be involved. Jayne loudly voiced his willingness to not be involved since he "weren't gettin' paid" despite his love of shooting things.

Sam going along seemed a necessary choice; she was the best at manipulating technology, even if the Alliance systems were different than the ones she was used to. Jack liked the crew of Serenity, he really did. He just wasn't quite sure how much he liked the idea of sending only part of his team off with them into danger. Of course, the bigger a team they sent, the easier it would be for them to be spotted and caught. Although it did occur to him that if they sent more people in separate teams, they could search a greater area faster.

When it came time to go in, that necessity of a faster search took priority. His geeks were split between the two teams – it made sense with them being the biggest experts on alien technology. Teal'c knew a great deal about Goa'uld tech, but was a far greater asset as the assault part of a team and his more practical knowledge of the tech would mesh well with Daniel's ability to recognize, but not always manipulate it. Meanwhile, it was also a good idea to separate Carter and Teal'c so that each team had a member capable of sensing Goa'uld possession. That put Jack himself on the team with Carter. A great deal of the Serenity crew was automatically excluded. Kaylee might be a genius with machines, but she didn't handle violence well, Simon would only be needed if things went very wrong, Inara would be entirely out of her element, and after the way River had reacted to the mere mention of Blue Sun, she couldn't be risked. Even if they'd wanted her along, as the one they were after, it didn't make sense to risk her.

To the surprise of SG-1, Book volunteered to go along, although he looked mildly uneasy at the prospect. To hear the crew tell it, the man was ridiculously proficient with firearms for a religious devotee, but he was a pacifist. Apparently this wasn't the first situation that had come up where he'd been willing to set those morals partially to one side to assist the crew. Zoe and Mal had taken it as given they were going along. At the beginning of the week, Jack might have protested that. It had taken a good long time for Zoe to forgive Mal for not telling her about the message concerning her husband immediately. He'd never actually seen the two of them talk it out, but somewhere between their arrival back on the ship and now, their relationship had shifted back to how it had been when SG-1 first encountered the crew. Also, despite his earlier protestations, Jayne had acted oddly offended when he wasn't included in their plans and was "to be left behind with the womenfolk" who he asserted "included the Doc."

While they had been doing what they could in the way of planning, Inara had finally made the time to spend a couple days worth of time visiting the local Guild House that was their ostensible cover for landing on the planet. Jack didn't think any of them really held out much hope they would manage to get in and out and away from Londinium without being identified, but it couldn't hurt to make sure their legitimate reason for docking would actually hold up to scrutiny with the locals after the fact if they did somehow perform that miracle.

Finally, when Inara called in to tell them she was on her way back to the ship, they were ready to make their gambit. River and Kaylee would deal with the shut downs they had planned to facilitate their entry from aboard Serenity. The two teams ended up consisting of Daniel, Teal'c, Reynolds, and Jayne in one group and himself, Carter, Zoe and Book in the other. They'd specifically chosen a day that was some kind of minor Alliance celebration in the hopes it would mean less people would be on the premises.

The first part of the plan seemed to go as well as could be expected. They arrived, and moments later, the outer door was unlocked. Between their lack of hoop jumping to get through, and the fact that the power went out mere seconds later, they were able to subdue the single human guard without incident before he could set off any alarms. A couple more outermost doors, and they were into the main part of the complex. At that point, the two teams split apart for different destinations. The team with Reynolds was heading to the offices, in the hopes of finding any kind of documentation as to what was going on or any other facilities where Serenity's pilot might be located if they turned up no sign of him here. It was also where the terminal they'd pinpointed was located. Turning out the power and then trying to access their files wasn't as crazy as it sounded; this strange future had some kind of digital paper that was used for most documents. Carter found it completely fascinating. Jack was just glad it meant they wouldn't have to wait for the power to come back on to access information. Meanwhile, his team was headed for the labs. It seemed like the most likely place to find the missing pilot, the suspected sarcophagus, or any other obviously Goa'uld technology that the Alliance might have its hands on.

They seemed to have chosen well in their decision to come in on a holiday, as the place felt very empty, full of dark offices and unattended desks. They avoided a few guards, and easily bypassed a man loudly cursing to himself about the power outage the building was currently experiencing, but otherwise they didn't run into anyone. Which was a good thing, certainly, it was just that it was also exactly the kind of luck Jack didn't trust not to suddenly turn fubar.

The place continued to be nearly deserted – until they got to the actual labs. There were more people down here, though they were preoccupied and milling about with flashlights, grumbling about the lights being out. It was still a small group, though, and they were all gathered together in a main vestibule. Their grumbling to one another did not sound remotely suspicious, just annoyed. That made them possible, if not entirely easy, to bypass. There were several corridors leading off of that main area, and his group ducked stealthily into the first one to the left.

Unlike the security locks to get into the building, the doors down here were all equipped with simple deadbolts on the outside. Between the doors that locked from the outside and the tiny observation windows located in them, it was obvious these rooms were used to keep experimental subjects of the human variety around to continue the experiments – whether they wanted to or not. Book confirmed that the rooms inside looked very much like what little he could remember from his time as a captive, but they were so utterly nondescript it didn't necessarily mean anything.

The first hallway ended up containing nothing more than a row on either side of identical, empty rooms. Their search was as quick and as quiet as they could make it, and the task was made considerably more stealthy by the barred windows at the back of each room letting in light. Back on Serenity River and Kaylee would be working to keep the power down for as long as possible by sabotaging attempts to get it back up again, but that was only going to work for so long.

The second hallway had the labs portion of the labs. Each of the rooms had a complex and bewildering array of equipment. Luckily, they had Carter and she could tell with little more than a glance if what was present was simply Alliance tech or not. There were five rooms in the hallway, and they cleared the first two with no comment from Carter. In the third one, however, she paused in front of something on a workbench he couldn't see from his position near the door before coming back over and simply saying one word. "Goa'uld."

He looked to her for clarification, and she whispered, "A component, not sure of what, but there's definitely Goa'uld writing on it and it uses crystal technology, which the Alliance doesn't otherwise seem to have." That still left them with the same two open options – either the Alliance had stumbled across an unknown quantity of Goa'uld tech, or there was at least one Goa'uld somewhere in the Alliance.

True, it wouldn't exactly be in the nature of the average false god to be playing human rather than absolute ruler, but it had happened before. Particularly when they were afraid of a bigger Goa'uld or had their own reasons for being stealthy. Like Seth, or Nirrti.

The fourth room contained the sarcophagus. They checked inside, but there was no one home. Unfortunately, while they were worried about who might come out of the sarcophagus, their luck finally ran out and the power flickered back on. There was a short but intense debate about whether or not to destroy the sarcophagus. They weren't going to make their way out of here by stealth at this point, but they'd probably get further if they didn't draw attention to themselves by blowing things up.

Unfortunately, the electricity coming back on wasn't the only part of their luck to come up dry. When they made their way back into the hall with the intention of glancing into the final room, they didn't even get to the door before a small sound back from the direction of the hub had them turning around to come face to face with the heretofore mostly absent security force. In fact, a large enough group of them to just outnumber their small band, and worse, they were all armed, with their weapons up and aimed.

"Hi guys!" Jack said brightly and waved jauntily. Because really, what else could you do?