I don't even this chapter. I ran way over the word count on the last and it kicked the action scene to here. Where it gave me just endless trouble. At least I managed to (mostly) resist the temptation to pepper everything with "begorrah" and "Ach a fi!"

If there is a point being made in this one, it is that fighting has consequences. So a general warning, too, that things are about to turn a wee bit more bloody.

Abbingdon Estate, Surrey, 51.15°N 0.25°W

"Damn," Zip said. Skype wasn't loading right. He poked at the settings. He was a little distracted — he was looking forward to his nightly call to Carter, more than he quite understood why.

Oh, there it was. No valid connection. WIFI was strong — had the house system logged him out? He opened up another terminal and typed a few "whoami's" to figure out which user he was being at the moment. Keychain issue? Maybe try logging in manually?

The open beer was distracting him. He drank some of it. Now, was this a hardware issue? No, wait…he was seeing the router fine, and the connection with the house system was up. Damn NT Server crashed again? He cursed the incautious moment he'd let a salesman talk him into trying a pre-packaged rack for Athena-1. And his own laziness in not migrating back to Linux and something that was the right kind of "patchy." (Apache, that is.)

So, fine. If he worked fast, he could reboot the house server and get connected back to the world before Carter went away. His fingers flew, muscle memory alone enough to guide them in SSH'ing in, bringing up the diagnostics panel, and…

"Now, that's funny," Zip said aloud.

If he didn't have such an oddball, hand-rolled system he might not have figured it out even then. Someone had spoofed the system into thinking it still had an outside line. Right at the cable terminus, it looked like, and Zip was willing to bet it was sending a heartbeat the other way to keep the alarm company from realizing the entire house had been cut off.

"Aw, hell no." Zip swore softly. Then he started running.

Bob watched the members of his team spread out with decidedly mixed emotions. He had reservations about the approach they were taking. He had reservations about several members of the team.

The two were not unconnected.

See, that was the problem in working with mercenaries. You couldn't just give them orders. Although they'd never put it that way, they thought of themselves less as soldiers and more like private contractors, and as such they had opinions. So you had to convince them that yours were better.

And this bunch was enthralled enough with the idea of an infiltration approach Bob had been forced to let them take it. He favored shock and awe himself. Keep together, enter fast, move through the house like a wave sweeping up everything before them. Infiltration had an honorable history; a relatively recent development in warfare, the technical meaning was breaking up your formations and sending men across individually to filter through and thus bypass an enemy's front lines.

That wasn't what his men were thinking, however. Basically, they thought they were the goddamn Batman.

The problem started with the location. The objective was in the Home Counties, less than an hour's drive from Number 10 Downing its own self, and in this post 9-11 world (as the calendarically-confused Yanks insisted on putting it), that was a very bad place to be letting loose with automatic weapons.

Add to that the nature of the place's owner. You'd be better off, Bob mused, attacking the Berkside digs of Sir Elton John. Lady Croft was a bit less famous, but was several times more wealthy — and held an actual hereditary peerage to boot. Shooting up the home of one of her barely two dozen remaining Earls and Countesses was unlikely to amuse the Queen.

And that was the other emotion that was trying to gain primacy. This was Lara Croft's home. The woman who had killed more than one of his brothers in the loose but very much there world-wide fraternity of the mercenary. Who had seemingly slaughtered dozens who had been with Rutland when he was unwise enough to challenge her in Bolivia.

Intel said the mistress of the house was far from here. And that was good. Because he was going to want bigger guns if and when he got a chance to go up against the woman herself. For now, taking out some of her people would do. It wasn't revenge that drove him. Well, not just revenge. Bob felt some obscure obligation to the profession that told him she should not be allowed to do that. Mostly, though, it was the attraction of a challenge. She was good, probably better than Bob, but win or lose it was bound to be the best fight he ever had.

And he'd do it. He'd do this. Even if it meant he'd spend the next decade looking over his shoulder. Because every man here tonight was going to be high on a terrorist watch list for the rest of their natural lives.

Well, he didn't think any of his new team were high right now, but he'd most certainly ended up with mostly those too stupid or too desperate to take the consequences seriously. But then, hadn't Tony Callan gotten his start when he tried to strong-arm a bank — while he was still serving in the Paras? Bob, at least, had earned his honorable discharge. And that put him one up on experience in an actual military unit on pretty much everyone he had with him tonight.

They were, in short, trainspotters. Anorak-wearing Soldier of Fortune reading gun-fondling wanna-be's. And that's why they took the client at her word that the place was defended by only "one aged relic of a butler and two geeks who do research and tech support," dressed up in their finest SWAT black and surplus Russian NVG's, and set out to ninja their way in.

Bob had ordered them to stay in teams and stay in contact. Because they had arms and surprise on their side, but splitting up your forces always invited the opportunity for a defeat in detail. Or, in the more technical terminology the Regiment had drummed into him, for a total cock-up.

He turned to the one other professional he had, the only man remaining from his first hand-picked team. Who wasn't a soldier by any means, but could be trusted to follow orders and otherwise do the sensible thing. "Okay, Craig," Bob said, "If you, the Master of Unlocking, are ready, it's time to move on to the Tech Center."

Taff was having a good day. The client's money had bought him the kit he dreamed of, his mates were a good bunch (even if the ex Regulars were a little snooty), and now he was out there in the world doing the job. Armed to the teeth and bad to the bone and now he had target sighted.

He took a step back from the thickly paneled wooden door. "On three," he murmured to his buddy. Then the moment of action; he slammed open the door with his boot, charged through, swiveled to cover what was inside.

Library, looked like. A scrawny fellow with dust-mop hair and nerd glasses looked up from where he was sprawled on a sofa, surprised.

"Right!" Taff said. He racked the action of his Mossberg with a flourish. "Don't you dare…"

His voice trailed off. Because the next moments were education in the difference between being trained and having experience.

Daniel Jackson was not a trained soldier. In point of fact, Colonel O'Neill had declared him basically untrainable. He had, however, been shot at a lot in the past few years. That tiny opening when the shotgun was being cycled was enough for his well-honed instincts to send him over the back of the couch.

He was aware, vaguely, of the difference between soft cover and hard cover. Even if he wouldn't use that terminology himself. But that same instinct told him he was better off behind something than behind nothing at all.

"Come out of there!" a voice yelled.

"Why?" Daniel yelled back.

That apparently flustered the man. Once again, Daniel wasn't acting according to script. At last the attacker figured out how to respond. "Come out or I'll shoot you right through that sofa!"

Daniel didn't reply to that.

"One!" the man shouted. "Two! Three!" Then he shot, aiming for center of macassar.

The results were spectacular, but probably not what he had intended. Daniel had already dropped flat. Feathers flew, a cloud of dust went into the air and the hot metal and gasses of the blast went right over his back as he threw himself underneath the couch.

The abused piece of furniture tipped over as if in slow motion as Daniel rose up under the coffee table and made a grab for the relic they had been recently discussing. The man was just standing there, looking to see what effect his first shot had had, when Daniel's far-too-practiced fingers found the studs to deploy and fire the zat.

Blue-white light and a sound like an Nintendo GameCube getting kicked over came from inside the room. Paddy held back. He was even less experienced than Taff — he was the youngest of the team — but he was much more cautious.

He fumbled at his radio. "Colonel, we have contact!" he stage-whispered. "Contact, Roger, over! Taff got hit with some kind of ray gun." The Welshman hadn't made a sound since the light and sound show. "I think he's down. I mean, man down, sir!"

He hoped Dai wasn't dead. The man was his best pal here. Not like those Regimental bastards, who couldn't even be arsed to, as they put it, "memorize yet another Jones." Calling him "Taff," indade!

"Hold for reinforcement," the order came tersely in reply. "We're clearing room by room. Do not let them get past you."

"Hold here. Got it," Paddy said. "Roger over and out."

Ray guns, eh? Jock wasn't sure how seriously he took that. He had an athlete's disdain for nerds, though, and he wouldn't put it past them to have kitted out with some sort of science-fiction crap.

He didn't bother replying to the radio, any more than he'd bothered trying to find another of suitable skill level to accompany him. He worked better alone. It was a careless partner, in fact, that had put short his promising career in the Scottish Transport Regiment, along with a much-more-promising trade in everything he could divert from the supplies he had been responsible for.

And if the pencil-neck he had at the other end of his G3 was as useful as he appeared, he was going to find the trinket himself — and make his own deal with their client for its return. The other mercenaries were merely an impediment.

"Talk," he said in a softly menacing voice. "Where's the Stone?"

"Usually at Edinburg Castle," his prisoner replied. He was overdressed for a night in, in a big-lapeled, calfskin loafer Eurotrash way. Long hair, too; he lacked only a soul patch to be perfect. As he was catching his breath, a fruity Public School accent was coming on.

"Ha ha." He moved the barrel just out of line, and gave the man a nice tap with it. "No stalling. I saw how you reacted to the picture I showed you."

The man yelped softly. He was going to have some good lumps in the morning. Assuming Jock let him see it. "I'm not sure," he gulped, "I'm not sure exactly where it is."

"Then we'll start at the place you're sure of and work from there. Up!" Jock prodded, then took a step back.

His prisoner pulled himself to his feet, wincing. "I'll need my keys," he said warily. "In my room."

"Of course," Jock said with false heartiness.

The manor was amazing. Despite his air of easy confidence, Jock had to admit to himself that it was a little overwhelming. The place was like a fancy hotel. No, like one of those really old-fashioned museums; not the big concrete ones where everything was track lighting and acrylic, but one of the stodgy ones with flocked wallpaper and gilding and bric-a-brac everywhere.

Well, okay, that was a bad analogy too. It had taste, taste like some of the homes in those glossy magazines.

It was also big. Really big. Jock had to wonder how many cleaners and other servants needed to come through here every week. Fortunately none of them lived on premises.

And for all the Ming vases (or whatever — Jock wasn't an art expert) the place was also fixed up with ultra-modern accessories. Wall terminals, a little coffee nook was outfitted with the gleaming chrome of automatic expresso makers and the like, and the nerd's room opened with a touch of his hand to a sensor plate.

Jock let him rummage, not allowing himself to be distracted by the piles of books and manuscripts and the odd art object hanging on the walls or being used as a paperweight. He knew there was a trick coming on. The nerd was just the sort to think he could pull one of those lame stunts like out of the movies. And then Jock would shoot him.

"This is a call from," the voice on the phone changed to a clearly different recording, "Iridium Satellite LLC," and then changed back to the previous operator, "Will you accept the charges?"

Air Force Major Samatha Carter thought very quickly. She had — almost in spite of the cover story she had been forced to use with friends and family — a good background in deep space telemetry and with ordinary terrestrial satellite communications as well. The Iridium corporation had a constellation of 66 communications satellites (they'd intended 77, hence the name) in six different low Earth orbital planes, giving subscribers to the system a world-wide coverage for voice and data.

Getting a call from that network was sufficiently intriguing by itself, but it was also an asset very much in character for Lara Croft — or her assistants.

"Yes," she said. There was a brief spate of intriguing hand-shake tones, then the caller was connected.

"I'm sorry for this." It was Zip's voice. He sounded out of breath. "Found one of Lara's old headsets up in her room, didn't have a current subscription on it, had to go through the Arizona office and convince them to put me on anyhow…"

"Zip, what's happened?"

"Attackers in the mansion. They cut off the rest of our communications. Not sure how many there are but I heard gunshots coming from the East wing."

An attack? In Surrey? "Zip, who are they?"

"No idea. You know the kind of trouble Lara gets into. Could be cultists convinced she has their idol, professional rivals, thieves, crooks, the undead, angry gods. She's pissed off entire third-world armies."

"And you called me," Carter shook her head.

"You can call more people than I can. I don't know how much time I have."

"Zip, don't do anything foolish. You aren't trained for this."

"And Daniel is?"

Carter almost smiled, as worried as she was. "You'd be surprised," she said. "I'll get help. You just keep your head down, you and Alister particularly."

"Alister! He was in the Library —"

And Zip's voice cut out as he dropped the headset.

He was clearly going to do something foolish.

Alister was so very, very glad he'd wasted so many hours of his college life on bar tricks. It was a stupid bit of sleight-of-hand, something any audience other than drunken students would see through in an instant. That, or men who were standing just far enough away in a darkened room to let him get away with it.

The tough part, really, was finding enough time to actually load the thing. To give himself that time he led the mercenary back to the first floor and through the hall of armor. And, yes, that put them closer than they had been to where the Stone was currently secured.

A passing thought troubled him. Did the man already know he was planning something? Was he letting this play out because he was, in fact, leading him close to his goal?

The one thing the mercenary couldn't know, however, is just how far Alister would go to keep the Wraith Stone hidden.

A few doorways past the Hall of Armor the mercenary's eyes flickered towards the Alignment of the Immortals reproduction in the Tiger Anteroom. Alister stopped in front of the William Blake-inspired painting to make his stand.

"Put down your gun!" His voice shook. He wrapped his second hand around the Gyrojet to stabilize it. It had been up in his room, preparatory to their usual morning meet at the indoor pistol range.

The mercenary didn't seem surprised. "So the mouse turns, eh?"

"I'm warning you!" Alister said.

"Warning me what? You won't shoot. You don't have it in you."

"You don't understand," Alister said. "This is bigger than either of us. The Wraith Stone is too dangerous."

The mercenary smiled. "See, I knew you could be helpful. So it is called the 'Wraith Stone,' eh? And our client's real name is Amanda, right?"

"I will shoot!" Alister said.

"You won't." The mercenary walked towards him. He didn't even raise his weapon.

Alister backed right up into the large painting of Blake's tiger, his pulse racing. The man was right. Squeezing the trigger on a paper target was one thing. Shooting at a living human being was something else. But what the mercenary couldn't understand was just how much of a corner he'd backed Alister into.

He remembered cowering, knowing there was no way to fight back against the thing that stalked the mansion. The fiery glow, a red as dark as venous blood. The sudden dashes of impossible speed. He'd seen what it could do. Knew too well the seared and shattered corpses it had left behind in that Peruvian temple where the thing had been unearthed.

"Please…" he said.

The mercenary was in touching distance when he fired.

And the gyrojet round bounced off the man's ballistic vest. "What the hell?" The mercenary staggered back. "Ray guns and rocket pistols?" The round was spinning around wildly on the floor like an escaped firework, throwing up sparks and smoke.

There was a whoosh of displaced air and the tiger reached down and dragged Alister into darkness.

Bob and Craig made it to the Tech Center without incident. "We could have cut the power anyhow," Craig mused, pointing at the stacks of UPS's sitting below the tangled racks of wire and servers.

"So how long is it going to take you to hack into their system?"

Craig snorted. "Forever. This guy Zip is good — he was one of the youngest heads of IT for a Fortune-500 ever. Got a nice write-up in Byte. But all he needs to be is half-assed competent. Until somebody gets NP to equal P, you are never going to crack passwords through brute strength. The thousand monkeys would type out the final Harry Potter book before we got in to this system."

"Yeah, yeah." Bob's attention was hardly on what Craig was saying. The man did this every time. It was as if he couldn't work without complaining about how impossible it was.

"No, I'm not going to waste time hoping he missed one of the obvious holes. Instead I'm stripping his hard disks manually. And if he encrypted the data itself, we're up the creek."

"If he didn't?"

"Then we still have to get lucky."

"You've got twenty minutes," Bob said over his shoulder. Absurd time pressure also seemed to help the man work his miracles.

"Bob?" The voice on the radio was unusually subdued.

"Yeah, Jock." Even now Bob was careful about keeping to the fake names.

"We've got trouble. One of them got away from me. Shot at me with some kind of crazy rocket pistol. I would have dropped him but a mumble and he got away."

"He what, Jock?" Bob was polite but firm.

"A giant samurai grabbed him. Sir."

"That," the giant samurai said, "was brave."

"Teal'c!" Alister said. His rescuer had arrived just in time. "You've been exploring the mansion's secrets," he realized.

"Indeed." The man was probably smiling, invisible though it was behind the black-and-crimson lacquered mempo. Then he doffed it, followed by the high-horned kabuto helm. The only other part of the armor he was wearing were the spode on his upper arms; the high-ranking Japanese warrior for whom the armor had been made had been considerably smaller.

"Teal'c, Amanda is after the Wraith Stone. She mustn't get it."

The big man regarded Alister. "What is an Amanda?"

"It's complicated," Alister said.

"Try," Teal'c said, carefully setting aside the rest of the armor — the helmet with what seemed like particular regret.

"Right." Alister ran a hand through his hair. Straightened his jacket. "It's this way. Amanda and Lara were friends at University. They had a little group. Amanda, Lara, Anaya Imanu, Samantha Nishimura. Some of their rivals called them the Benettons. Sorry — that's an insult that doesn't translate very well. Anaya went into civil engineering, but both she and Amanda were involved in the dig in Peru.

"I'm not sure how to explain this so it makes sense. Amanda and Lara were very close. All the group was, really; Lara doesn't make friends easily, but when she does, she does it with all her heart. And I'm pretty sure Amanda felt the same, which is why she's so hateful now. It takes a strong friendship to make that strong an enemy.

"Anaya was away that one day. First the bucket lift collapsed, temporarily stranding them down in the excavated temple. Really, really old stuff we are talking here. Not just pre-Columbian. Norte Chico or older.

"Then something awakened It." Alister shuddered. "Lara called it 'Fluffy.' Neither I nor Zip could manage to call it that. Not after it chased us around the mansion last time Amanda came looking for something. I call it the 'Unknown Entity.' I have no idea how old it is, where it comes from, even what kind of creature it is. It's just teeth and fire, moves like lightning, can't be hit by ordinary weapons.

"It killed everyone who was down there, Teal'c. Everyone but Lara and Amanda. The excavation flooded and partially collapsed. Teal'c…Lara had to leave Amanda behind. That's the thing Amanda has never forgiven her for. But she got out. Somehow she learned to control the Unknown Entity. And the key was the Wraith Stone, which Amanda took to wearing around her neck.

"Lara…she killed or drove off the Unknown Entity in Bolivia and took the Wraith Stone from Amanda. That's the thing Amanda's sent mercenaries to get."

"Then we had best see to it they do not succeed," Teal'c summed up succinctly.

"He's still alive!" The voice came from the man inside the library.

"Dai?" Paddy said. "Is he hurt?"

"He's just stunned," the man inside said reassuringly.

"I was going to…I was thinking about throwing a grenade in to get you to come out."

"For both our sakes I'm glad you didn't." the man said dryly. "My name's Daniel. Daniel Jackson. I'm an archaeologist."

"Niall…err, the guys call me 'Paddy.' It's Army slang I think. Kind of insulting, actually."

"Niall of the Nine Hostages," Daniel said. "Although you only have one now."

"You know the legend?" Paddy was surprised. He himself was only barely aware of the story behind his birth name.

"Archaeology covers a lot of ground," Daniel said.

Paddy shifted his grip, worked his way to a more comfortable position. The guys would be here. Eventually. Until then, he wasn't going to risk himself against that ray gun by going in, but by that same ticket, this archaeologist guy wasn't going anywhere either.

"What's this about?" Daniel's voice came from inside.

"Dunno," Paddy said honestly. "We were hired to retrieve an artifact." There was a loudly audible sigh of frustration from inside. "What's that about?" Paddy asked.

"Sorry. Just get tired of the way everyone treats archaeology as some kind of treasure hunt. Context matters, you know."

"No, I don't," Paddy said.

"Yeah, sorry."

"You're pretty good with a gun," Paddy said impulsively. "Err, ray gun. You have any good war stories?"

"I'm not a soldier," Daniel's voice said. His voice changed. "This isn't going to end well," he said. "My friends will be coming."

"So are mine," Paddy said.

Daniel gave a short laugh. "You know, you're lucky it's Teal'c out there."

Paddy thought about that. "He's not very good?"

"Oh, Teal'c is good. He's been fighting for longer than either of us have been alive. He's fought wars of conquest. He was the top bodyguard of a living god. I've seen him take on a dozen men at a time. Take a bullet to the chest and keep fighting."

Paddy shook his head. "Then I don't understand. Why did you say I was lucky?"

"You could be facing another friend of mine. Jack O'Neill." Daniel's voice was flat and utterly convincing. "Teal'c will fight you. It's a warrior thing. Jack would end the threat."

Paddy thought about that, too, and it was illuminating in far too many ways. He was beginning to wonder if this career change was all it had promised to be. "Let's talk about something else," he said quickly.

"I do know some war stories," Daniel offered then. "Archaeologists are partly historians, you know."

"Okay," Paddy said. "Try me."

"Let me tell you about a place called Passchendaele," Daniel said.

"Passion Dale? Sounds like a nice place."

"It was. In 1913 it was a quiet, rural village in Flanders, near Ypres. Then came occupation, and the formation of lines of trenches, and the first of a seemingly endless string of battles over the same short kilometers of ground.

"But what I wanted to talk about is October of 1917, when heavy rain began to fall on clay and sand already churned by the massive barrages of artillery. When a landscape as barren and pocked with craters as the surface of the Moon was turned into a sucking, sickening mud…"

"Bandy, Bootneck." It was Bob on the radio. "Back to the first floor, along the South corridor. One of our targets got loose. I'm having you sweep back towards Jock."

"Did anyone tell him…" Bandy said.

"…How much we hate his codenames?" Bootneck finished. He had a tattoo, which was the closest he came to having anything to do with the Royal Marines. "Lock and load. We're hunting…"

"Nerds with ray guns. Who like playing games."

They were one door away from the Hall of Armor when a voice called to them. "Gentlemen!" the voice said. "Kindly put your weapons on the floor!"

"The hell…" Bandy said.

"…With that!"

One went left, one right, one high, one low. Sweeping the room with their weapons. Nothing but the standing suits of armor. Which looked…different…than they had from the first time they had passed through.

They nodded to each other. "Giant samurai," they said in unison. "Playing stupid games." Bootneck swiveled his weapon and squeezed. A roar of sound came out of the Armalite as he methodically peppered the suit of Samurai armor, rounds plunging through lacquer and metal and silk and any human flesh foolish enough to be hiding inside it.

Their ears were still ringing as he stopped. A faint haze of smokeless powder hung in the air.

One arm on the full suit of medieval plate armor on the next stand over swiveled at the elbow. "You have chosen…poorly," the voice said, older sounding but not nearly old enough to be guarding a Grail.

Bootneck had just time to register the thread tied to the empty armor before a man in the striped trousers of a butler and white shirt but no vest shot him through the wrist. And in the other arm. And in one leg. The man had a bolt-action, but he was very fast, and very very accurate.

Bandy returned fire and the old man fell.

"Stay here," Teal'c instructed the young man. He moved swiftly through the passage back towards the Hall of Armor. Winston was bloody and on the ground. So was one of the mercenaries; he'd made a good account for himself.

The other mercenary may have believed he was moving quietly, but Teal'c heard him easily. And stalked him as easily. He would probably recover, given time and decent care.

Teal'c dragged his body back to the Hall of Armor. He spared a moment's regret for the firearms, but he'd explicitly promised O'Neill not to, "Go shooting up the place." So instead he appropriated an assegai from a wall display.

Then he knelt by Winston. The man was unconscious and his breathing shallow. He would need medical aid, and soon. Teal'c carefully picked him up and carried him back into the hidden passageway.

"Nerds with Star Trek weapons!" Jock raged under his breath, stalking the halls with his weapon clenched tight. "Samurai popping out of trap doors! God, I hate this place! And I hate even more the kind of people that are in it."

His radio crackled again. "We found them, sir. Plank was hit by an Aztec war club in the kitchen. Ape was stabbed by a pilum in the dining hall."

"Is this a SITREP or a game of Clue?" Bob replied angrily.

"We're not kidding around!" Snowdrop sounded close to panic. "Someone's taking us out one by one!"

"Then start moving four by four," Bob snarled.

Giant vanishing freaks in masks taking out guys with club and spear, great. But there were scrawny know-it-all jokers with fancy clothes and useless crap scifi weapons out here, too, and damned if Jock wasn't going to bag one before the night was over.

"Make a fool of me, will you!" he snarled as he stalked onwards.

Bob stared bleakly at the radio. Defeat in detail. It was exactly as he had feared.

Okay, on a case by case his guys had held their own. One of the opposition was hors de combat, another was safely pinned down. No, what threw off the averages was this x factor, this other person; a person that could seemingly appear wherever he wanted in the sprawling manor, and who could take on an armed man in full body armor with nothing but a Roman spear.

But he was still one man. If he could concentrate his forces…

"Ooh, I'm eating lobster tonight!"

Bob was at his side in a moment. "What do you have, Craig?"

"It's here. In this room."

"Yes!" Bob pumped his fist. That changed the game completely. They only needed to control this room, now, not the entire mansion. Which meant they didn't have to try to wage counter-guerilla warfare — a futile struggle as more than one nation had discovered. Now the situation played to their strengths.

"Wall safe," Craig said. "Disguised as that extra electrical panel over there. Trust academics — they were more concerned with documenting provenance than with data security. Anyhow, it's a Chubb integrated security system. Retinal scanner. But I worked at Chubb for ten years…"

Bob took the radio. "Everyone to the Main Hall," he said. "Objective is here. All we need to do is hold our position for a few minutes longer."

"Can I have thirty?" Craig complained. "It is a Chubb, after all!"

Finally! Zip whacked the DVD/Laserdisc player back-handed. Yelped. That had hurt. Really, the first clue should have been that no-one was going to release entire seasons of "Magnum, P.I." on DVD. (No matter how attractive that Tom Selleck dude seemed to be among women of a certain age.) Of course it was only a trigger to open the latest hiding place for a pair of Lara's signature automatics.

"The damned Abbingdon Ghost is doing electronics now," he said, aggrieved. No matter how pressed, Winston had never admitted to being the source of the various and ever-changing hidden secrets that kept the lady of the house entertained on a rainy day. Zip and Alister had begun referring to a spirit, a ghost with a sense of humor, a wide-ranging interest in history and literature and a deft hand with things mechanical.

Zip felt a lot better now that he was armed. He left one of the chromed H&K USP's where he found it. Lara might be a two-handed shooter but he was not. He also left the fancy shoulder rig with the fast magazine changer. There was no way he'd be able to learn that trick tonight. It wasn't like it would fit him anyway.

All of a sudden he was uncomfortably aware of being in the private bedroom of his employer and friend. Even if she didn't spend her time here lounging before the big-screen television watching hunky leading men in classic television shows. Probably.

Alister. If this was anything like the last few evenings, he'd still be with Daniel in the Library. Zip chambered the first round, then with a spare magazine in his other hand he moved out.

"I'm an archaeologist, Teal'c, not a doctor," Alister said helplessly, trying to tend to the fallen Winston. "We need to get him to professional medical help."

"Then we need to conclude this quickly," Teal'c said. "I observed movement among our enemy," he added. "I believe they gather in the Great Hall."

"That's bad," Alister said. Teal'c merely raised his eyebrows. "That's where the Stone is," he amplified.

"Then the battle must be taken to them."

Alister looked at the curved Mughal shamsir in the big man's hands. "I can't," he said. "I get nauseous just at the sight of blood. I'm useless here!" he burst out. "I'm not a warrior. I don't even know how anyone can take a thing like that and, and…"

Teal'c lowered himself to one knee. "It is no shame to be sickened by violence," he said gently. He thought for a moment before his next words. "Alister Fletcher, you have yet to meet the rest of SG1. Know that I respect O'Neill as a warrior. But I also respect Daniel Jackson as a peacemaker, and I respect Major Carter as a scientist. The warrior way is mine, and it wins battles. But it is those like Daniel Jackson and Major Carter who win wars."

"But…to run a man through?" Alister couldn't help asking.

"That is what weapons do." His voice was still gentle. "Alister Fletcher, I believe I understand. It is difficult to render an enemy unconscious without any lasting harm, especially when they are doing their best to cause lasting harm to you. It is necessary to be…pragmatic."

"I can't," Alister said. "In the heat of the moment, under threat, sure, I pulled the trigger. But in cold blood…I can't."

"That speaks well of you," the giant said sadly. "And I hope the time does not come when you discover that you can." He made his own quick examination of Winston. Nodded, stood. Then smiled a thin smile as a thought struck him. "They may not think so, but those in the Great Hall are lucky they are only facing me."

Alister was distracted. "How so?"

"I will fight them," he said. "Daniel Jackson would talk to them."

Then he was gone, and Alister was left with the injured Winston. Daniel Jackson. The archaeologist from the States. Who he had left up in the Library just before the mercenaries attacked.

"Zip!" The realization hit him like a bolt. "If they didn't find him first…he'd head for the Tech Room. Or he'd come to us. Which means the Library."

He scrambled to his feet, and in a moment he was headed off down the secret passage. Almost without him realizing it, his fingers had curled tightly about the butt of the gyrojet.

It is a natural human reaction to flinch. Soldiers and hunters train for a very, very long time to make their first instinct to point that modern weapon towards a threat and reduce it that way. But a hundred thousand years of evolution is there trying to counter the way it best understands; to raise the hands, to present the side of a rifle as if it were no more than a tree branch in order to ward off a blow.

Teal'c was fortunate in that the first mercenary he approached did not have enough of that training. The big jaffa burst out of the doorway and charged the length of the mezzanine resplendent in Hoplite helmet with tall horsehair crest, burnished breastplate and crimson half-cloak. In one hand was a study trident like a gladiator might have used in the arena.

He got to the man before he was able to power over his instincts and unlock his muscles. A deep lunge, then lift. The man screamed as he was lifted on the tines of the trident and hurled over the rail to the main floor below (although truth be told, most of the weight was born by the ballistic armor he was wearing).

Two men had been stationed at the ends of the galleries, with clear fields of fire across the Great Hall. The other was not distracted by having a giant run towards him. But leading a running man is a skill different from shooting at paper targets.

When Teal'c swiveled to face him across the gallery, he probably had a moment of exultation. He had a ranged weapon.

Unfortunately for him, so did Teal'c. The speargun he'd taken from the room with the pool twanged once and the man fell.

The jaffa continued to move in the smooth speed of vast experience, dropping low behind the solid rail and shifting quickly to put the additional weight of a roof pillar between him and the shooters on the floor below.

The mercenary leader spat something unintelligible. "Fall back!" he ordered. "Behind the barrier, everyone."

Then he looked up, shading his eyes, through the thick acrylic at where Teal'c was crouching. "You're good," the man said. "But we're done playing on your field. This acrylic is bullet-proof as well as spear-proof. Try to stick your head in here and I have four guys to shoot it off."

"Do you have the stone yet?" the jaffa rumbled.

"I do," the leader said without hesitating. "We've got nothing more to do with you. So be pragmatic — let us pull out and we won't have to kill any more of yours."

"I am a warrior," the jaffa said. "But I, too, can be pragmatic."

He opened his hands and with a light toss four live fragmentation grenades went over the top of the barrier into the enclosed Tech Room.

The black guy popped out of a door and Jock shot him. It wasn't a clean shot; actually, he hit the guy in the leg. Hardly mattered, though, with a modern military round. The 5.56 would blow a fist-sized chunk of an exit wound, and that's before you factored in hydrostatic shock.

The guy was still conscious, though. Down, and he'd lost his weapon, but still conscious. Good. He had that whole sweat pants and dreads thing going like one of those bank drones who went around on the weekends dressing like a street punk and smelling of ganja. Jock was going to enjoy shooting him. He'd missed the proper double tap but he could still follow up with the last part of the Mozambique Drill.

"Nooo!" a shout came from behind him. Jock turned his head. It was Commander Cody, all right, with his rocket pistol. At the far end of the hallway. Even less of a threat. Jock gave him a long, "you are next" look then deliberately turned to finish off his friend.

The nerd fired. If the human brain worked that fast Jock could have figured out his mistake while the round was in flight. The selling point of the MBA Gyrojet series of weapons had been the lack of recoil. Like their larger military counterparts the RPG or the MANPAD it released a self-propelled rocket instead of pushing a round downrange on the pressure of rapidly expanding gasses.

Two things killed that promising weapon, leaving it a curiosity of the 1960's. One was a quality control problem with the rockets themselves that compromised accuracy. The other was the simple fact that unlike a conventional handgun the velocity was lowest at the muzzle, increasing at an accelerating rate over flight.

The rocket still had fuel to burn when it hit the center of Jock's ballistic vest, but it was by then moving at just under the speed of sound. This time it punched through easily. The temporary cavitation was the size of a football and small blood vessels tore across several vital organs as the shock wave expanded through his torso. Jock's eyes rolled up and he collapsed without a sound.

"Goddamn, that hurts!" Zip said again. In the back of his mind, he was aware that shock had set in and the pain he felt now was nothing compared to what he should be feeling. He couldn't look at his leg. He'd been hit somewhere in the area of his left knee but between blood and swelling and his reluctance to learn all the bad news just yet he had no real idea what the real damage was.

"Hey, I've got Carter!" He announced to the others.

"Local authorities are en route," Carter said. "They'll be there within ten minutes."

"Winston's in bad shape," Alister said, worried.

"Tell Alister I heard that," Carter said. "We've got a plan."

"I can see the place now," an older male voice came; someone in the same room with her. "One minute."

"Ring me down the moment we are over the house," Carter said, obviously speaking to him. "Zip, that big hall I'm seeing from here; can you make sure no-one is standing there?"

Um, what? Zip raised his voice. "Everyone, Carter says she's going to ring us. And something about staying out of the middle of the Great Hall."

"Understood," Teal'c nodded.

"I'm glad someone does," Zip complained.

Forty seconds later, the Great Hall was lit up by a pillar of blue-white light. Five thick rings of some sort of metallic substance materialized one after another, then the space within the column was filled with a brilliance of sleeting particles.

The rings vanished, again one by one. And a blond woman with short hair wearing US Air Force fatigues was standing there.

"Major Carter!" Teal'c's grin was wide. He gently lifted the injured Winston and placed him carefully where Carter had appeared.

"We're ready," she said into her own radio headset. "Stand back," she advised everyone else, unnecessarily.

The light show and the mysterious geometric shapes came and went again. "He's in good hands," Carter reassured the others. "Thanks for the lift, dad," she told the person on the radio. "I'll stay here and try to help smooth things over with the authorities," she finished.

She took off the headset. Took in the Great Hall with a quick glance. "Wow," she said. "A girl could get used to living in a place like this." She then took a long look at the tattered survivors of the night's excitement.

"You, you're…" too many questions were tumbling over Zip's tongue. "Your dad has his own spaceship?"

"Long story," Carter said. "Here's a better question; where's Daniel?"

There was no-one outside the Library door when they approached. They heard voices from within.

"That's Daniel," said someone.

"No one there had any idea how (or why) Allied logistics had managed to get this one package through when all others had failed," they could hear Daniel saying. "The Marines were still starving, low on ammunition and shivering with dysentery…but they now struggled through the jungle wearing very nice hats."

Carter rolled her eyes. Put her weapon up and walked in.

Daniel Jackson was back on the couch (what was left of it). In one of the chairs perched a shorter, younger man with a rounded friendly face — looking both nervous and not a little wan at the moment.

"Don't shoot," Daniel said earnestly but calmly, holding his hands out. "Everyone, this is Niall Mulroney. He grew up along 'Scottie Road' — that's in Liverpool. He's an auto body specialist and plays a mean penny whistle."

"And I never, never want to be in a war," the young man said. "Or even hold a gun again."

Carter sighed, but fondly. Teal'c gave Alister a significant look. As deadpan as he no doubt intended to be, the big jaffa's eyes were wrinkled in a smile.

"Sam?" Daniel said lightly.

She sighed again. "Okay, Daniel." She gestured towards the young man. "Out," she said.

"Go through the East Wing. Continue through the gardens," Alister said impulsively. "The locals always come up the main drive."

Major Carter had made a lot of calls. The locals came in wary and well-armed, and toting stretchers, but they didn't come with guns drawn. They were surprisingly phlegmatic about the fact that whatever had happened, it was significantly above their pay grade and they were not going to be allowed to ask any real questions.

Sam suspected, strongly, this was not a new state of affairs. With the kind of money the Croft's had, and the kind of trouble Lara had been known to get into, this had probably happened more than once before.

Surprisingly, most of the mercs had survived, and their chances were considered good. There was a qualitative difference in the kind of injuries pre-gunpowder weapons produced. The worst off were those who had been in the Tech Room when several grenades landed among them.

Their hacker was practical uninjured. According to him, their leader — apparently a one-time member of the British Parachute Regiment — had shielded him with his own body. The man seemed to think that "Bob" would have wanted it that way.

Zip was not doing well. The EMTs had taken one look at his leg and shook their heads sadly before bundling him into the next ambulance in line. Sam gathered he would probably walk again, but he'd have a limp for the rest of his life. Otherwise he seemed strong, and in good spirits. Which might have had something to do with the kiss on the forehead she'd given him before his stretcher was wheeled out.

All the excitement meant she hadn't had a chance to fully share her news with Daniel. She finally got a moment to blurt out a rapid explanation as she handed over the one printout she'd been able to make before Jacob's arrival.

"Doctor Felgar is still massaging the data," she said, "But a quick first-pass heuristic for statistical significance pulled up over a dozen possible hits."

She showed him the map. "Naquadah concentrations are here," she pointed.

"Syria," Daniel said.

"And here, and here," she pointed. "All possible locations for undiscovered Ancient technology. Here, in the Mediterranean."

"That's Santorini!" Daniel said. "The Thera eruption…"

"…And here," she pointed to a spot in the mountain range at the extreme North end of California. "And here," she found a spot in the Atlantic ocean.

"Atlantis," Alister said.

"Oh, not this again," Daniel snorted.

"No…" Alister said. "Daniel, I was playing you before. I've read my Donelly too. I already knew most of that stuff you were going on about. Atlantis is real, Daniel. As real as ringworm."

"Atlantis!" Daniel said in exasperation. "Which one, pray tell? Plato's? Thera? Mu?"

"Why…all of them." Alister blinked.