Chapter XI
The blond woman then went into a long rant about why the DHD wouldn't work without the control crystals, and how hard it would have been for someone to remove them, and why something called the MALP should have caught these kinds of things. Echo neither listened nor cared. Crap. She should have thought of this. Of course the DHD wouldn't work if Apophis meant to exile Klorel here. Stupid girl, she chastised herself, all that planning!
The younger man was approaching her again, she looked up sharply. "Its okay," he assured her, offering her his hand. She eyed him suspiciously and his hand fell limply back to his side, "I'm, I'm Daniel Jackson," he said, and then pointed to the older man, the blond woman, and an extremely stoic figure standing in the back, "This is Colonel Jack O'Neill, Major Samantha Carter, and Teal'c," the stoic figure nodded at her. She could now see that he bore the sign of the Serpent Guard, and she stiffened, her hand subconsciously fingering her own tattoo. It was a thin, dark serpent coiled tightly around her upper right arm. She had been given it after she was officially made lotar to Klorel. From the Teal'c's expression, he knew what her mark meant as much as she knew about his. Daniel seemed to notice the terse expressions on their faces and tried to ease the tensions, "It's alright, he doesn't serve the Gould." The girl stiffened, "Nor do I."
The girl looked beyond him to where O'Neill and Carter were arguing. She hoped they were still keeping an eye on Klorel. She didn't want him escaping and doing something unfortunate. Like killing her. She spoke, "I am Echo." It was strange, she later thought, how quickly she had accepted this name. But it seemed to be more of her than her old name. She suspected that these people were from earth, as she was, judging from their speech, names, ranks, dress, and technology. But she wouldn't say anything. Let them think she was from some other planet. Just in case. Jack turned to the rest of the group, "Looks like we'll need to find another way off this rock," he stated. Echo suspected that he had no idea how to do that.
She spoke, "I should have suspected something like this. Why would Apohis have stranded us on a planet with an active Stargate? Wouldn't make any sense." She sighed. Klorel looked up, slowly, "…You knew!" This seemed to make the girl happy, " 'Course I knew. I planned the whole thing." With this she stood up, "I think…yes," she seemed to have been weighing her options, remembering something, "I'm leaving." She turned to leave, backing into the woods again. Jack looked over at her, "You have a way off, don't you?" The girl looked back at him, "Maybe." The Colonel sighed, "Show us. We were going to help you." Echo paused. "Yes, I suppose that that would be the right thing to do. But I expect you'll be wanting to bring that along?" she gestured to Klorel. No answer. "Fine," she said, and made her way off into the woods, followed by Sg-1 and Klorel as their prisoner.
