So far as Major Lorne's awareness of the threat posed by the Crocuta was concerned, Colonel Sheppard needn't have worried. Lorne had recognized the hyper-aggressive behavior as hive or nest behavior almost immediately, for he too remembered the mission into the Iratus nest. Even had that not been the case, this was definitely not Lorne's first time in the territory of a hostile species.

The fact that nothing and no one bothered the team on the way back to the jumpers didn't make him feel any better, but Dorsey's mood was improved. Reed and Bridge weren't seriously injured, but enough that it was prudent to leave them on guard with the jumpers and take Dorsey and his team in their stead.

Lorne knew it wasn't that Dorsey was pleased Lorne's team had been cut to pieces, but that his own team was finally going to be allowed to do something. Dorsey didn't take as well to his team being the backup as Lorne did. It was understandable. Dorsey had earned his stripes as a team leader before ever coming to Atlantis, and he preferred to be allowed to act as such. Lorne had never had a problem working with him, Dorsey respected the chain of command… but he clearly preferred missions where he was in charge, or at least in the middle of the action, and there wasn't anything wrong with that.

As it turned out, they all should have been concerned about something else.

It all went down just a few hundred yards from the jumpers, but completely out of the sight of the two men on guard there unless they happened to be running the scanners, on account of a hillock and screening trees. Since the jumpers were shut, Fletcher and Larson would never hear the gunfire either.

The first shot caught Janko in the left shoulder.

"Cover!" Lorne knew the command was unnecessary, but he yelled it anyway.

Reed and Bridge went for cover immediately, but Dorsey hesitated, which resulted in his catching a bullet in the leg when he finally did go. Lorne, closest to Janko, grabbed hold of the man's vest and towed him back behind a boulder with some effort. Once they were in cover, Lorne checked Janko's pulse, and was relieved to find it. Another inch lower and the story might've been a different one, even despite the vest, which could do only so much. The bullet that had hit Janko had a lot of power behind it, enough that it had actually gone straight through bone before escaping out the back of Janko's shoulder.

So far, Lorne himself hadn't gotten hurt much on this little fishing trip, but he was finding that the injuries from his previous excursion were not quite as fully healed as he would have liked them to be. They weren't incapacitating, but they were slowing him down.

The team had gotten a bit scattered as each sought the nearest available cover, but Reed was in the same patch as Lorne and Janko. Since Reed had already sustained an amount of damage earlier, Lorne passed the task of aiding Janko on to Reed, turning himself to that of ensuring that the enemy did not advance on their position.

Some forty feet to the southeast of Lorne's position, Dorsey and Bridge had ducked behind a couple of tree trunks. Several bullets had taken the bark off the side of Bridge's tree, but failed to hit him. That, combined with the angle of the shot that had taken Janko gave Lorne a specific area to start looking at, trying to spot whoever was shooting that them.

Dorsey had clearly had the same thought, despite the distraction of having been shot. He'd been in cover a fraction of a second longer than Lorne, and hadn't paused to check anyone's pulse. Via gesture, Dorsey conveyed that he'd spotted the shooter… or a shooter, at any rate. The fact that Dorsey hadn't already put a bullet in them said he couldn't, likely because they too were behind cover.

Unfortunately, Lorne's concerns about multiple shooters were shortly proven valid, as someone tried to take a shot at Bridge from another angle. They nearly got him, and Bridge dropped flat to the ground to avoid giving them a chance to try again. This had obviously been a planned ambush. But something seemed to have gone wrong, or else Lorne's team would not just be pinned, they'd be surrounded. Maybe someone got jumpy and shot too soon. Lorne neither knew nor cared to know exactly what had gone wrong. What mattered was that it had, and because of that he and his team still had a fighting chance to get out of this alive.

The shooter aiming for Bridge tried another shot, perhaps in the hopes that Bridge would jump and break cover if a shot grazed near to him. It was a tactic that had proven sound in other battlefield situations. The instinct to get away from flying debris caused by a bullet impact was strong, and sometimes all it took was a flinch to expose someone enough to shoot them. Unfortunately for the shooter, this time it gave Lorne his exact position.

Lorne took aim and fired, though he couldn't get a clean shot through the foliage behind which the shooter was hiding. The bullet still hit, and his target staggered sideways, which was all Lorne needed to send a second shot to their center mass and bring them down.

One down, but how many were left? And who the hell were they anyway?

Definitely not Bethashaya, that was for sure. Not unless the Bethashaya had gotten some serious upgrades to their firepower in the last six weeks. But the only other group Lorne had any experience with were the Mhisi, and it was pretty clear they weren't allowed free-range in Bethashaya territory, which the Temple was several miles into.

What would the Mhisi be doing here anyway? And why would they be taking shots at Lanteans, several of whom they had earlier taken prisoner only to later release unharmed? There had to be a third party involved. It was the only thing which seemed to make sense.

Not that it really made any difference from Lorne's perspective. Someone was shooting at his people with projectile weaponry similar to that which he and his team carried. For the moment at least, that made them the enemy, and that gave Lorne free rein to do whatever he had to in order to keep his own people alive.

Who and why would come later, or not at all.

After signaling his intent to Dorsey, Lorne leaned just a little bit out from cover, as though trying to line up another shot. It had the effect he wanted, which was that the first shooter realigned themselves to get a shot at him. Lorne couldn't hit them from where he was, in fact couldn't actually see them. But Dorsey already had an eye on them, and their shift of position gave him a target to fire at, which he did.

Quiet descended after that.

They had only seen two shooters, but Lorne was unconvinced that was all of them. Who sent two people out to eliminate a squad? Admittedly, Lorne's group amounted to little more than a fire-team, but who could have predicted that he wouldn't have Sheppard's team on the way back, assuming they knew something about the comings and goings in the area over the last few hours? If they didn't, it made even less sense to send two people when they had no idea how many enemy soldiers they might encounter. There had to be more than two. Anything else was insane.

But if there were more than two, they were keeping pretty still out there, probably hoping Lorne's team was dumb enough to wander out into the open after eliminating the only confirmed threat in the area. Maybe back during Lorne's first year as a major, when he'd first begun serving under Colonel Edwards. Then he might've been that stupidly overconfident. But not now. And nobody serving under him was idiotic enough to move without his permission. He'd told them to take cover, and they were meant to stay there until he indicated otherwise.

"What I wouldn't give for a life signs detector right about now," Reed commented softly.

"Reed, you're a genius," Lorne replied, and keyed his radio, "Fletcher, I need you to run a scan and tell me how many life signs you can detect about two or three hundred yards east of your position."

They were out of range of a life signs detector, but the jumpers themselves were equipped with scanners that could detect life signs just fine, if they were told to look for them.

"There's a lot of activity over there, sir," Fletcher reported back after a few seconds, "Couple dozen life signs, I think. There's a lot of overlap."

Even including Lorne's team in that estimate, that made one or two squad's worth of life signs out there in the trees, all of whom knew exactly where Lorne and his people had gone to ground. Even if Fletcher could start handing out precise coordinates, the chances that Lorne and his team could work their way around to better vantage points without exposing themselves to fire were slim to none, especially since Janko was unconscious and Dorsey probably couldn't walk on his own.

"There's no way we can take out that many targets. Not under these conditions," Reed pointed out, saying aloud what Lorne had already been thinking.

"We may not need to," Lorne replied, "What do you want to bet they don't have life signs detectors?"

Reed cocked his head thoughtfully, "If we take out a few of them without their understanding how, that might freak them out and send them running."

"Exactly," Lorne nodded.

Reed asked, "How do you want to play it, sir?"

"Way I see it," Lorne said, somewhat thinking aloud, "the next move is ours, unless one of theirs gets careless. And they probably don't know how we got here. They'd avoid that clearing, and consequently the cloaked jumpers, because there's no cover. They don't know Larson and Fletcher are behind them. They think all they have to do is wait quietly until we move, or else sneak up on us."

"I still don't like the numbers," Reed remarked.

"You got a better idea?"

"No." Reed admitted.

"Neither do I," Lorne said, "But we can't stay here indefinitely, not with wounded people. And we can't go back to the Temple either. They'd follow us and cut us down the second we got out in the open."

Reed shook his head with a sigh, "No good options, but we've still got to do something."

"Zugzwang," Lorne replied with forced levity.

"What?" Reed asked blankly.

Lorne shook his head, "Never mind."

He keyed his radio and relayed the situation to Fletcher and Larson. He then gave everybody their marching orders. Nobody objected. They understood the situation, and they didn't have any better ideas either. Lorne couldn't help but think Sheppard, or perhaps Teyla or maybe even Ronon, would have come up with a better tactic. But none of them were here, and there wasn't time to plot all possible angles and discuss every potential tactic. If they wasted much more time waiting, the enemy would get the jump on them -literally- and then it would be all over, not just for them, but likely Sheppard's team as well. After all, once Lorne's team was dealt with, it was a straight shot to the Temple. Even if there weren't any Crocuta closing in, whoever these people were seemed certain to go to the Temple, and Sheppard's team was in no shape or position for a fight.

It was the first order of business to make sure that the attention of the enemy was aimed in the right direction. Reed was stuck keeping pressure on Janko's wound, and of course Dorsey was also out, which left it up to Lorne and Bridge to provide something interesting to look at.

Rather than play a game of whack-a-mole with bullets and hope not to get clipped, Lorne decided he and Bridge should make attempts to reposition, to circle around from opposite directions while maintaining cover. As quiet as things were out there, someone was sure to see or hear them. Even if no gunfire resulted, it should be enough to keep the focus on them so Fletcher and Larson could sneak in from behind. It might even prompt the enemy into moving enough that they gave away their position.

Lorne didn't much like the cover on his side. While the terrain was somewhat rough and forested, it felt like there were a lot of open spaces now he was trying to move without exposing himself to potentially being shot. He hoped it was better on Bridge's side, but couldn't tell from here. Over a minute passed with nothing happening except Lorne picking the next piece of cover he liked and working his way over to it, then pausing to listen and recheck his surroundings.

He knew he'd made enough noise to be heard (had done so intentionally, just in case his unintentional noises weren't enough), but the remaining members of the enemy band either had more sense or were taking the death of their comrades as a cautionary tale about jumping the gun and shooting before it was time. They couldn't know that Lorne and Bridge knew they were out there, and could only assume that Lorne and Bridge were simply being cautious. They also couldn't know how many of the original team they'd seen before the shooting started were still alive and mobile. They couldn't know Lorne was by himself over here, or Bridge by himself over there. But, most importantly, they couldn't know about Fletcher and Larson. Everything depended on it.

Because of the fact that any radio noise would be heard once they were close enough, the participating members of this harebrained scheme of Lorne's were basing their activity on time, the measurement of which was facilitated by the watches they all wore.

As Fletcher and Larson approached their targets (which they could pinpoint thanks to the life signs detector they had taken from a jumper), Lorne and Bridge were going to have to up their distraction game. Fletcher had given Lorne coordinates for the people he and Bridge had the best chance of reaching without breaking cover (something they could not have hoped to do without an exact fix on not only their targets, but other enemies in the vicinity who might spot them).

It wasn't perfect, since the detector couldn't give them a position of every rock and tree and patch of humped ground that could provide concealment for them (or their enemies), but it was a distinct advantage. Either Lorne and Bridge would reach their targets and eliminate them, or someone would spot them and start shooting. Either way, Fletcher and Larson could cause lots of chaos from behind, and probably take out several targets (ideally evening the numbers). After that, it was somewhat bound to become a free-for-all, though Lorne did have backup instructions in case everything happened to get still and quiet again.

Every instinct Lorne had was warning him this was a bad idea. Somebody was going to get hurt or killed out here, and it was going to be because he hadn't been smart enough to see it coming and prevent it. But, as he'd told Reed, the next move was theirs. Since Lorne was the ranking officer, that meant the next move -and the responsibility for whatever consequences that followed- was his.

Unsurprisingly, things did not go according to plan. And they did not go according to plan in a way Lorne hadn't anticipated. That was pretty much par for the course, especially in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Lorne's first warning that things had gone amiss was the sound of a twig snapping off to his left, when there shouldn't have been anyone on that side of him. Not unless someone had been moving around without his noticing since Fletcher's report, or else someone new had come on the scene.

His second warning was a burst of radio static, that was probably followed by Fletcher telling him that the lineup for this match had suddenly changed. Specifically, several new players had entered the field. But Lorne didn't hear what followed the static, because he was busy ducking and rolling away from a spear, and then from bullets coming from the opposite direction.

Suddenly there was shooting everywhere, and yelling, and people bursting out of apparently nowhere, and Lorne realized that his team was caught up in the middle of something, because the spears weren't just coming for him and his, but for the enemy as well. When he'd expected it to turn into a free-for-all, this was not what he'd had in mind, and since both sides seemed perfectly willing to take him and his out as well as each other, he didn't want to pick one as a favorite.

"Take cover! Get to the jumpers if you can!" Lorne yelled into his radio, but there was too much noise for him to tell if there was any response from the rest of the team as he dove for cover of his own.

As he banged up against a tree and slid down into a crouch behind it, Lorne wondered if this was actually a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps the shots fired on his team had been meant for someone else and the Lanteans just got unlucky. It wouldn't have been the first time.

Though he was desperate to know who was where and that all of his guys were okay, Lorne didn't dare touch the radio again. If someone was pinned close to the action, radio chatter might give away his position and get him killed. For the moment, Lorne had no choice but to wait.

Lorne's side where he'd been stabbed weeks ago was throbbing now, and he figured this must be the unnecessary exertion Dr. Beckett had warned him to avoid. But Beckett clearly hadn't been looking at Lorne's mission file, or he'd have realized that a fairly high percentage of Lorne's missions were of the rescue variety, and another large chunk of them were of the "serving as backup and expecting trouble" flavor. Very possibly, if Beckett had known Lorne's first active duty mission was to be a rescue, the Doctor would have refused to clear him. And, as it turned out, he might have been justified in doing so.

Distracted by the pain in his side and the shortness of breath that accompanied it, Lorne didn't see Ellet coming until it was too late. Ellet had crept in from somewhere to Lorne's right, carrying a spear and a grudge. He became aware of her just a split-second before the point of her spear came to rest against his throat. Not soon enough for him to bring his own weapon to bear, and he could feel from the pressure of the spear tip that any slight movement would be his last.

"I told your Colonel John Sheppard that this was not over," Ellet snarled angrily.

She shifted her weight slightly, and Lorne was fairly certain she planned to finish what she'd started last time Lorne had seen her. But she never got the chance. A single, close-range shot rang out, caving in the side of Ellet's skull and sending blood in all directions as she collapsed onto her side, eyes open, quite dead. Lorne looked from her to the shooter, and found himself facing a man he didn't know.

However, it seemed that the man knew him, "You were one of those at the Sentinel," the man said, narrowing his eyes and adjusting the muzzle of his weapon so that it pointed at Lorne, "The one who pushed the other into the Shayan River."

"Who are you?" Lorne asked, though he feared he already knew.

"I am Reder Wilhye. The man who shot you."