A/N
For those of you who aren't aware, Slayers in Space and three of my other stories (including Visions of Vampires, the prequel to Slayers) have been nominated for a Crossing Over Award. If you're a member of Twisting The Hellmouth and enjoy reading this, please consider heading over there and voting for me.
As my way of saying thank you (and as an incentive to vote), I'm going to try to not end this chapter on a cliff-hanger! Gasp! Shock! Horror! Don't faint... Just enjoy. And vote! ;)
Duran
The public room of The Broken Bashaak was crowded to the point of overflowing when the sturdy door opened, banging back on its hinges to admit four wild-looking human women into the room crowded with Jaffa. A chill wind followed them, swirling around the room as conversations trailed off into nothing, all eyes turning to the newcomers.
They were dressed in dark robes, carrying a motley collection of weapons and clearly exhausted. Two of them, the blonde youngest and a predatory brunette, stood defensively around the weakest member of their group, a weeping woman who clung to the oldest of them. As the owner of the tavern approached them, the eldest woman handed the weeping one to the young blonde and asked him for two rooms. A ripple of amusement filled the room and kick-started several conversations back up.
"Do they not know there is a war in progress?" Tark'l, a rather portly Jaffa bearing the mark of a Horus Guard on his brow, commented to the two other Jaffa at his table with a severe look at the human women.
Gelan, the youngest of the three and formerly of the Serpent Guard, looked away from the predatory woman as she caught his eye with a challenging grin. He got the distinct feeling that she was spoiling for a fight and he wasn't in the mood to oblige.
"Have you heard?" he said in a confidential tone, leaning forward over the table towards the others sat there. "Teal'c and the Tau'ri have succeeded in blocking the Ori Supergate. Now that they are cut off from their home galaxy, it is only a matter of time before we defeat them."
"The Tau'ri!" snorted Bo'Kel, an ancient Jaffa with the gold brand of Setesh burned into his forehead. "Is it just me or have things got worse since they reappeared?"
"So they have blocked a Supergate," Tark'l said, ignoring Bo'kel as most did. "What is to stop the Ori from simply building another?"
"Hey," The feminine voice came from behind Gelan and he twisted in his seat to see the predatory woman standing behind him, leaning on a staff weapon.
"Someone mention the Tau'ri?" she said.
"What is it to you?" said Tark'l, standing.
Evidently he was in the mood to oblige her, Gelan thought, watching them. She looked Tark'l up and down... slowly... and then sneered at him. Next to Gelan, Tark'l bristled.
"I am one," she said slowly, as though speaking to one who was hard of understanding.
Several pieces of information suddenly clicked together in Gelan's brain. He barely heard Bo'kel's cackling laughter, staring up at the woman with rapt fascination.
"A fine joke," Bo'kel wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye. "Tau'ri!" he chuckled again.
"You are Faith," Gelan said to the woman. "I am Gelan."
"Yeah, an' he's Tarzan and that's Jane," she said, indicating Tark'l and Bo'kel in turn. "So you heard a me?"
"Only that Teal'c searches for you," Gelan told her as she sat down next to him, taking off the Tau'ri weapon she wore slung over her shoulder and placing it on the table. "And that you were at Chulak and Hankor."
"Was I?" she shrugged absently, searching for somewhere to place her staff weapon. Twisting in her seat, she looked back at her companions.
"Yo, heads up, Kay!" she shouted as she launched the staff weapon through the air.
Without turning to look or pausing in her argument with the tavern owner, the oldest woman stretched out a hand and snatched the weapon from the air. For the second time that night, all conversation in the room stopped.
"You were saying?" the short-haired woman said to the tavern owner.
"I thought there were three of you," Gelan said quietly to Faith.
"Now there's four," she told him, looking grim.
Gelan frowned. What had he said to upset her so? Tark'l suddenly seemed to realise that he was still standing and sat down, scowling at Faith. She glowered back and it suddenly seemed as though a fight was about to break out after all when Kay appeared at the table, looking at Faith.
"We've got a room," she told her. "Are you coming?"
"Actually, I was gonna get drunk," Faith said bitterly. "We got enough money for that?"
Kay frowned, "I don't think so."
"Do we have enough for a drink?"
"I will pay," Gelan told Faith, signalling the tavern owner skulking in the back of the room.
"I don't know what you heard but I'm not that kinda girl," Faith said, bristling. "Damn, never thought I'd say that!" she added under her breath.
"It is the least I can do for one who has fought in the defence of my homeworld," Gelan told her, bowing his head in respect.
She seemed unable to form words after that, opening and closing her mouth several times as he ordered a round of drinks from the tavern owner.
"You were on Chulak?" Kay asked Faith curiously as the tavern owner scuttled away.
"Uh..." Faith looked at Gelan and then away. "Yeah?"
"Teal'c says that you were," Gelan told her. "He would not lie."
"You spoke to T?" Faith brightened. "When? Is he here? What about the rest of SG-1?"
"I have not spoken with him myself," said Gelan. "Only to those who have. He was here today but returned to the Tau'ri homeworld several hours ago."
"Shit!" Faith said. "Look, I don't suppose you know the address do you?"
"You do not?" Gelan asked, surprised.
Bo'Kel was off again, cackling away at the thought of a Tau'ri not knowing the address for their own planet. Shooting him a poisonous look, Faith turned back to Gelan as their drinks arrived.
"No," she said baldly.
Gelan frowned, thinking about the problem as she drank. The address of the Tau'ri homeworld was still a closely guarded secret and one that he was not privy to. Only a select few Jaffa were trusted with the information and none of them resided on Duran.
"I do not know the address of Earth," he said slowly. "But I know that Master Bra'tac does."
"Great," Faith said, draining her tankard and setting it back down on the table with a metallic clunk. "Where is he? Let's go."
"Faith..." Kay said quietly to her as Gelan spoke. "You promised..."
"I believe that he is currently residing on Dakara."
"I know!" Faith said bitterly to Kay, cutting off whatever it was that the older woman might have gone on to say. "I know," she repeated, more quietly this time, staring glumly at her empty tankard.
Gelan signalled for another round of drinks. A gloomy silence settled over the table. Gelan stared at Faith, trying to reconcile the stories he had heard of a fearsome warrior with the almost broken-looking woman slumped over the table. Bo'Kel's cackles had faded into a series of wheezing coughs and the old Jaffa was a dangerous colour of purple. Casually, Faith reached over and thumped him on the back.
"So..." she said, turning to Gelan. "You got the address of this Dakara place?"
"I know it," Kay said quietly.
l
Sitting at his desk for the regularly scheduled update from Atlantis, Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman frowned as the active Stargate in front of him ripple. His hand hovering over the controls of the iris, he watched as four familiar figures emerged from the Ancient device. The hand suspended in mid-air slid away from the iris controls and over to the intercom system as the wormhole shut off.
"Uh, General Landry?" he said, pressing the button that would connect him to the Commander of the base.
"What is it Walter?" the General's voice was even more gruff than usual. He must have interrupted him when he was working on his paperwork.
"SG-1 have returned from Atlantis," Walter told him as the bickering group sauntered down the ramp.
"What?" General Landry's exclamation was shortly followed by the sound of his office door hurriedly opening and closing.
Footsteps sounded behind him as the General clattered down the stairs from the briefing room, through the control room and down the stairs into the hallway on level twenty-eight. Sighing, Walter made a mental note to switch the intercom in his office off.
In the hallway outside the Gateroom, General Landry was trying, unsuccessfully, not to look winded as he came face to face with his premier team and their probationary member. Straightening as he encountered their amused glances, he cleared his throat.
"Congratulations," he greeted them with a smile. "I understand from Teal'c that your mission was a success."
"Yes sir," Mitchell said with a smile and a glance at Colonel Carter.
"In more ways than one!" Vala said brightly.
"You found the address?" Hank asked, looking at Doctor Jackson.
They had halted the Ori invasion in its tracks and discovered the location of Merlin's weapon in just one mission? No wonder Mitchell had been so insistent that SG-1 was more than just a designation. But why was Doctor Jackson grimacing?
"Actually, we found three!" Vala confided.
"Three?" Hank echoed, confused.
"Only two of them relate to Merlin's weapon," Doctor Jackson told him. "Morgan le Fay specifically said that the third had nothing to do with it," he reminded Vala.
Morgan le Fay? The Arthurian sorceress? Hank frowned.
"But she didn't say why it lit up," Vala said to Doctor Jackson in a sing-song tone.
Hank could feel a headache inching its way into his temples. "I think you'd better report to the briefing room after the infirmary," he told them.
"More needles?" Vala asked, alarmed. "Do I have to?"
"Yes!" Mitchell and Doctor Jackson spoke at the same time as Hank.
Vala pouted but went along with the others as they moved off. Watching them disappear around the corner, Hank sighed. He'd sent them to find one 'Gate address and they'd come back with three. Only SG-1, he thought, smiling even as he shook his head.
Turning around, he headed back to the control room to give the order for three MALP's to be made ready and to requisition two Tylenol. He had a feeling he was going to need them.
l
"Finally!" Jool exclaimed as the door to her isolation room slid open and Caroline walked inside. "Donald wouldn't discharge me until you'd seen me. You should have been back hours ago, what happened?"
"Sorry," Caroline said with a stressed smile. "SG-1 came back sooner than expected and then there were unexpected complications with Colonel Mitchell... You get the idea."
"What kind of complications?" Jool asked curiously.
"Turns out he has the Ancient gene," Caroline told her absently, rifling through her chart. "Not that we can detect it," She looked up at the fully dressed slayer sitting bolt upright in the hospital bed and smiled. "Well, I can't see a reason for you to stay here..."
"I can go?" Jool asked excitedly.
"Yes."
"Thanks Caroline," Jool said, jumping off the bed and shoving her feet into her shoes. "I'll pick up my stuff later."
"Don't worry about it," Caroline said, leaving the room with her. "I'll have an airman drop it off at your quarters."
"Thanks," Jool repeated, dashing off in the opposite direction.
"Where are you going?" Caroline called after her.
"The gym!"
l
Wearied by Dreylock's snivelling as she listened to her explain exactly what Origin meant for her and the people of her planet, Adria greeted the arrival of Praemas with enthusiasm. Dismissing Dreylock, she turned to the tall Prior as soon as the humbled woman had left the council chambers.
"Well?" she said. "Where is she?"
His robes shifted and parted to reveal a small girl dressed in black robes. Her eyes looked very big as she sucked her thumb, staring up at Adria with a mixture of fear, defiance and curiosity. Adria stared back at the girl with disbelief.
"That," the leader of the Ori army said very quietly, flames licking around the edge of her irises. "Is not who I sent you to fetch."
"No," Praemas agreed, resting his free hand on Chaia's shoulder. "It is her daughter."
"Her daughter!" Adria hissed, the flames in her eyes burning brightly. "What use is her daughter to me?"
"I understand a mother will do much for her child," replied Praemas.
The fire in Adria's eyes died out abruptly. Mothers were a sensitive subject for the Orici, something which Praemas was counting on. He had failed her three times now and she was not known for her patience. Unless he could excite her interest in the girl his next mission might well be to sacrifice himself in the construction of a new Supergate.
"Did yours for you?" she said.
"The Orici knows all," Praemas said respectfully, bowing his head in obeisance.
Adria looked at him sharply, her perfect mouth pursed into a thin line. Praemas kept his gaze as blank as possible. Slowly, her gaze slid away from him to the girl.
"What is her name?" she asked.
l
Practically glowing, Jool bounced into Oz's room with a smile and a tray of food. The paler-than-usual werewolf smiled at her in greeting, pleased to see a familiar friendly face after almost twenty-four hours of seeing only medical personnel.
"Hey," Jool said. "Lunchtime."
"Thanks," said Oz, looking at the beige coloured macaroni and cheese with disappointment.
"Sorry it's taken me so long to come see you," Jool apologised, pulling a chair up to the bed. "Donald, Doctor Newman, wouldn't discharge me until Caroline had seen me but SG-1 came back early so she was late getting to me and then I went to the gym..."
Looking up from his unappetising meal at the Willow-worthy babble, Ox raised an eyebrow as he looked at the excited slayer in front of him. Had she been hooked up to a caffeine IV by mistake during her stay in the medical bay?
"...And then I sparred with Teal'c, you know, the one Andrew calls Grell, for a bit," she was saying now. "He's really good!" she paused to steal a grape from his tray.
"Where was I?" Jool asked rhetorically. "Oh yes! So after I showered I stopped by the control room while they were sending a MALP through to a planet that has a toxic atmosphere."
"You want my peas?" Oz offered as she stole another grape.
"No thank, I already ate," Jool explained, stealing two more grapes from his tray. "Walter says hi by the way."
Oz nodded, moving his tray around so that the grapes were on the other side, further away from her, "When's Jon back?"
"Couple of hours," Jool said, glancing at her watch even as she snagged his jello cup.
"Hey!" Oz protested.
"Sorry," Jool mumbled around a mouthful of jello. "Did you want that?"
Not as much as he wanted a steak, Oz thought glumly, pushing the macaroni cheese around his plate with his fork. A nice, juicy, blue steak still dripping with blood... With ribs on the side.
Oz blinked. That was unusually bloodthirsty even for him. When was the next full moon? He asked Jool and she frowned as she struggled to remember.
"Uh..." she said as the door slid open. "Caroline! When's the full moon?"
"I thought I told you to stop hanging around here," Doctor Lam replied with a mock-severe look. "Monday I think... why?" Jool looked at Oz in reply and the confusion cleared from the CMO's face, "Werewolf, right! I thought you could control the change?"
"It helps to keep track," said Oz.
Truthfully, he was unsure whether he could control the change in his current weakened state. It wasn't something he'd been in a position to test before. He made a mental note to buy chains for his apartment before Sunday.
"What day is it?" he asked.
"Don't ask me!" Jool said, reaching over his lap to steal some more grapes. "I haven't seen the sun since we went off-world."
"Then why don't you go up to the surface now and leave me to check on my patient in peace?" Doctor Lam said sweetly. "I can make it an order if you like," she added when Jool just gaped at her.
"Alright, alright, I'm going." Jool said, getting up. "I know when I'm not wanted."
Adjusting her stethoscope as the door closed behind the red-haired slayer, Doctor Lam smiled at Oz. "How are you feeling?" she asked, placing the stethoscope on his chest.
Oz flinched. Cold!
l
Groaning at the persistent ache behind her temples, Faith rolled over in bed and tumbled off the edge onto the floor in a tangle of blankets. Muffled giggles came from above her and she opened her eyes to see Mallie standing by the open door.
"Ugh," Faith said, grimacing as she swallowed in a vain attempt to get rid of the severe case of cottonmouth she had going on. "Remind me not to drink with Jaffa again."
"Kay sent me to wake you," Mallie said, helping her up. "Breakfast is ready."
Breakfast? Faith turned green as her stomach did a backflip. "Lead on MacDuff," she managed to say through gritted teeth. Maybe breakfast would make her feel better, she thought hopefully as Mallie frowned, confused.
"My name is Malina," the blonde girl said, dragging the sound of her own name out as though she was speaking to the village idiot. "Did you hit your head on a branch last night?"
l
"General? Do you have a minute?"
"Not really," Landry said wryly, putting down his pen. "What is it Doctor Jackson?"
"It's about Merlin's weapon," Jackson said, frowning. "I can't help but feel we're missing something."
"Like what?" asked Landry.
"I don't know," Daniel admitted. "That's why I'd like to go back to Camelot. There's got to be more clues in Merlin's library. I barely had a chance to scrape the surface before we had to leave."
"You don't think we'll find the weapon on Castiana or Sahal," Landry realised, looking up at the troubled genius.
"When I asked Morgan le Fay which planet we should go to, just before the others stopped her, she started to say that the weapon was not something," explained Daniel. "What if she was trying to tell us that the weapon isn't on either of them?"
"Then what is?" Landry asked him.
"I don't know," Daniel sighed, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "We know that Arthur and his knights journeyed to Castiana, Sahal and Vagonbrei. Now, Vagonbrei was wiped out, presumably by Morgan when the villagers revealed her location to Arthur and his knights. I'm willing to bet that Castiana's toxic atmosphere and Sahal's complete lack of any kind of civilisation were caused by similar events, they're simply Arthur's old battlegrounds in his quest for the Sangraal. But why would she say that I have my answers if I don't?"
"That's what I expect SG-1 to find out when you return to PX1-767," Landry told him.
"Ah," said Daniel. "Honestly sir, it's probably better if I go by myself. I'll work more quickly without any interruptions."
Landry regarded Daniel with a steady gaze for several long moments before he sat back in his chair. Okay," he gave his permission. "But I expect daily check-ins."
"Yes sir," Daniel promised, rushing out of the room to go pack.
l
Staring down at the gold and amber mushroom device that controlled the Stargate, Faith scratched her head. Beside her, Nya fidgeted impatiently. Faith really wished she wouldn't. It was distracting.
"Okay..." the Boston-born slayer said eventually. "That one then that one," she pointed to two of the symbols, a squiggly-looking line and two dots. "Can't remember, then that one," a falling egg-timer. "Can't remember, can't remember and the seventh one isn't on here."
"We don't need it," Kay said automatically as Nya sagged. "It symbolises the planet we're dialling from. This is Duran'."
"That's still a shit-load of possible combinations, Kay," said Faith.
"A hundred and seventeen," Mallie volunteered, flushing as they turned to look at her.
"Like I said... a shit-load."
Catching sight of Nya huddled into a small dark shaking ball on the steps leading up to the Stargate as she turned back to the mushroom thingy, Faith swore softly as guilt came crashing down on her shoulders. If it wasn't for her, Nya would still be with her kid.
Following her gaze, Kay placed a hand on Faith's arm, giving it a gentle squeeze as she walked past her, towards Nya. Slightly offended by the invasion of her personal space, yet oddly comforted, Faith watched the older woman as she soothed the distraught mother.
"Faith... we are going to get Chaia back... aren't we?" Mallie asked in a small voice, her gaze also on the pair rocking back and forth on the stone stairs.
"Damn straight!" Faith said fiercely, punching the first two symbols. "I promised, didn't I?"
"Yes... but Nya says she saw a blue light in the distance. What if it was-"
"I know!" Faith snapped, wishing she'd just shut up. Hoping Nya was wrong. Because she really, really didn't want to think about Praemas, or worse, Adria, getting their hands on the kid. If only she'd paid more attention when she was playing spin-the-Stargate back on the floating globes planet.
"That is too many," Mallie said, interrupting Faith's self-inflicted guilt trip. "Faith, that is too many."
Looking down, Faith realised that she was still punching the top of the mushroom. Throwing herself away from the console with a snarl, she paced back and forth as the inner circle of the Stargate spun around, trying to dispel the aching craving for something to smoke.
The Stargate stopped spinning and everyone turned to look as, with a grating clunk, the damn thing refused to work. Sighing, Faith stalked back to the mushroom device to try again. This time she paid attention to the buttons she was hitting.
"So," she said to Mallie when she was done. "How you doing anyway? I mean, it's gotta be rough, seeing your ex like that."
"Praemas is not my anything!" Mallie said forcefully.
"No..." Faith said as the Stargate refused to accept that combination either. "He's just the evil minion of the evil spawn of evil hell-gods that your evil father tried to make you marry. Nuthin' to do with you."
"My father is not evil!" Mallie flared. "Just... misguided."
"Look, do ya wanna talk about it or not?" Faith snapped, at the end of her patience as the Stargate failed to work yet again.
"Not!" Mallie snapped back.
Biting back a bitchy retort, Faith concentrated on trying to dial Nya's home planet. How many attempts was that now? God she needed something to slay.
l
Take that Robotnik! And that! Argh! Get rings! No! No!
"Stupid hedgehog," Jon grumbled, tossing his Nintendo DS onto his desk and flexing his aching thumbs.
Well, that had been a spectacular waste of a day, he thought miserably. Barred from the base until mid-afternoon, only to discover that not only had his former team-mates returned ahead of schedule for a change but also that until Oz was cleared by Caroline, his team was off active duty, the new lead on Faith assigned to SG-8 to investigate instead.
In response he'd shut himself in his office, with the door closed, knowing that it was the last place anyone would think to look for him and not wanting to see the shock and pity in his former team's eyes when they saw him again. Not wanting to hear their awkward attempts to talk to him. And if a part of him knew that he was acting childishly, he silenced it by reminding himself that, technically, today was his third birthday. Even if he did have fifty-odd years worth of memories.
Standing, he stretched luxuriously. That song he'd heard in England had been right. Youth was wasted on the young. If he hurried he could make it home in time for The Simpsons.
Cautiously opening his office door he peered out, making sure the coast was clear before he left his office, shrugging into the jacket of his BDU's. He was halfway to the elevators when he spotted Teal'c in the distance. Ducking down a different hallway, he took a detour only to wince as he heard his name shouted. Stopping, he waited for Andrew to catch him up.
"What?" he growled, moving again as soon as the young watcher reached him.
"I just wondered what you were doing over the weekend," Andrew said, looking crestfallen. "I thought maybe we could have a movie night. I brought my DVD collection..."
At the junction ahead, Carter appeared, talking to a dark-haired woman Jon had never seen before. As they turned down their hallway he acted quickly, opening the nearest door before Carter could spot him and bundling Andrew inside.
"Uh... Jon?" said Andrew. "I'm flattered..."
"What? No! Bad Andrew!" Jon whispered, his ear flattened to the stationary cupboard door as he listened for the sound of Carter passing by.
"Then why are we in here?" whined Andrew.
Jon shushed him as, on the other side of the door, Carter laughed.
"You shush!" Andrew said huffily.
"Shh!"
"Shhh!"
"Shh!"
"Shhh!"
"Sh-" cut off mid-shh as the door he was still leaning on opened, Jon tumbled to the floor. "Ow."
"I don't want to know," the Doc told him. "A4 paper?" she asked Andrew.
Scrambling to his feet, Jon tugged his BDU's back into something approaching neatness as a bright red Andrew wordlessly handed a pack over to her. Accepting it, the Doc fidgeted with the edges of the packet, staring down at it.
"So... um... I'm glad I finally found you," she said, looking up at him. "I need to talk to you. Claude Oswald's funeral is tomorrow. Can you give me a lift?"
"Sure," Jon said feeling vaguely sick.
"Okay," she said. "Okay."
He had a horrible suspicion that giving her a lift wasn't what she needed to talk to him about, Jon thought, watching her walk away. Thinking back, he realised that it had been about a month since London.
"Can I go now?" Andrew asked, oblivious.
"Yeah, sure," Jon said absently. He really needed a drink. "Wait, you're over twenty-one, right?"
l
This was pointless! She couldn't even remember how many combinations she'd tried, let alone which ones. She'd had to stop several times to let other people use the 'Gate and each time she'd forgotten where she was and had to start again from the beginning. Her stomach grumbled loudly, giving her the perfect excuse to stop and Faith stepped away from the console, glancing over the other side of the clearing where Mallie and Kay were showing Nya how to use Jaffa weapons.
"Hey guys!" she called. "Let's go. Lunch!"
Nobody argued, which was a good thing, and Mallie practically bounced across the clearing so they must have been just as hungry as her. Even Nya didn't look upset at the thought of leaving the Stargate to get something to eat. As they walked along the dirt road back to the small town, Kay hung back slightly, letting Nya and a happily babbling Mallie walk in front.
"I had an idea," she said quietly.
"Yeah?" said Faith, wondering if she wanted to hear it.
"If we wrote down all of the possible addresses, we could just cross each one off as we tried it," the shaggy-haired woman said. "That way we wouldn't keep trying the same ones."
Faith grimaced, "You noticed that, huh?"
Kay nodded, "I don't think the others did."
"Cool," Faith said. "So we'll pick up paper and a pen in town and then head back after lunch to try again."
"What's a pen?" Kay asked curiously. "And what is Cam?"
Faith laughed, "Not what," she said. "Who. Cam is Cameron Mitchell," she explained as Kay looked at her. "The flyboy in charge of SG-1"
Kay nodded in understanding. SG-1 she understood, even if she still didn't know what Cameron Mitchell had to do with Faith slowing herself down to rescue a Chapp'ai from an ocean floor.
"Flyboy is a military rank?" she asked as Mallie and Nya disappeared around a bend in the road.
"Faith!" Mallie's panicked shout startled both slayers. Exchanging worried glances, they ran in the direction of the others.
Imagining the worst, Faith was relieved to see that both of them were okay. What's more, there was no-one else in sight as they stared off into the distance.
"What?" she asked grouchily, angry with them for scaring her.
"By the Gods..." Kay whispered.
Glancing at her, Faith realised that she had the same look of horrified anticipation as Mallie and Nya as she too gazed into the distance. Looking in that direction for the first time, Faith's heart sank even as a predatory grin exposed her white teeth.
Above the town of Duran, smoke rose, thick and black, from several places. Now that she listened, Faith could hear the distant sound of fighting on the air.
"What are we waiting for?" she said, flicking the safety off her P-90.
l
He was pathetic, Jon decided. He was fifty-six years old for crying out loud. Or three. Or eighteen. It really depended on how you looked at it. Anyway, he felt old. Old enough to be able to buy alcohol without having to rely on a kid young enough to be his son to get it for him! It wasn't even like Andrew could hold his liquor. He was currently rambling on about magic and how it felt to be one with the force, blissfully unaware that he was in imminent danger of falling off Jon's kitchen stool.
"Wait..." Jon said, holding up a hand and frowning as he tried to unravel Andrew's point. "You can do magic? Like... actual Willow-type magic?"
Okay, maybe he was a bit drunk too, he conceded, reaching for a fresh Heineken. But at least he wasn't as bad as Andrew. And he had an excuse. If the anniversary of the day you got kidnapped, cloned and stuck in the body of a teenager wasn't an excuse to drink, he didn't know what was. Oh yeah, Andrew was talking about magic.
"...Nowhere as good as Willow but she says I'm her second-best pupil," slurred Andrew. "It's not fair... Dawn's good at everything... She doesn't even try."
"So what can you do?" Jon asked, hoping to see something cool.
"I used to be really good at summoning demons, but that was when I was evil," Andrew said mournfully and Jon did a double take at the young member of his team. Evil? "Now I can summon air and I'm working on floating pencils." Air? Floating pencils? So much for something cool.
"Oh!" Andrew exclaimed, sitting upright and brightening. The sudden movement tipped him too far backwards and he hurriedly righted himself as two legs of the stool left the ground. "I had a great idea for adapting a scrying spell to show us the last address dialled on a Stargate."
"So you can't turn people into frogs?" Jon asked, disappointed.
"No. It would be cool though," said Andrew, drinking his Heineken.
"Can Willow?"
"Yeah, but she won't," Andrew sighed. "Frog fear. She does rats instead."
Jon snickered, reaching for his beer to cover it. Drinking, he accidentally caught Andrew's eye and the Californian giggled helplessly. Heineken spurted from Jon's nose and within seconds they were laughing until their ribs ached.
l
The light might be fading from the sky but the battle for Duran raged on, the street lit by weapons fire. Wherever the melee was thickest, Faith danced, Mallie, Kay and Nya at her back. Her lethal body moved with the grace of a ballerina as she fought with zats and her fists, seeking to incapacitate her opponents rather than kill them.
She'd long since abandoned the P-90, learning that the distance afforded by a gun didn't lessen the reality of killing. But she didn't dwell. She couldn't afford to right now as she dodged another bolt of white light.
Suddenly the mood of the battlefield changed as the Ori soldiers began pulling back to the centre of the town. Harrying them along the way, Faith soon realised why. They were using the rings in the town square to retreat. Calling the others off, Faith turned away from the massacre that was developing as the Jaffa fought the dwindling number of troops clustered around the rings.
"Where are we going?" Mallie asked, still impossibly bouncy. "The fight is back there."
"That's not a fight, it's revenge." Faith said grimly. "The Ori won't let it go unpunished."
"But... we won," said Nya.
"There's no way it's that easy," Faith told her, shaking her head. "We won some breathing space, that's all."
"So what do we do?" asked Kay.
"Well..." Faith said, considering the question. "I'm hungry."
l
A/N
Phew! No cliff-hanger... ;)
P.S. Points to the first person to correctly guess where Chaia is.