CHAPTER ELEVEN
Planet
PJ3-176,
Milky Way
Galaxy.
The six leaders of the Ori rebellion on PJ3-176 were lightly defended, so deep inside their own territory. There were two big, towering guards standing by the main entrances to the room where the conclave held its gathering; two more were positioned by the only other doorway. The guards were armed with Jaffa staff weapons, and bore the seals on their foreheads of warrior-caste Jaffa from Tel'mar's army – they all must have been defectors.
Gathered together around the corner from the main entrance, the rest of the team listened to Cam as he explained what he wanted from each one of them. They all listened on in silence, and no-one had anything else to add to the mission plan once Lt Colonel Mitchell had finished talking; it was not that anyone else was afraid to speak up, but rather that Cam had come up with such a simple, yet effective, strategy for dealing with this scenario.
In the room down the hall, the six generals were discussing the strategies they would employ against Tel'mar's remaining loyalist forces in the final push into his lands, from multiple fronts. They planned to cut through the Goa'uld's weakened army and make a drive straight for Menphal.
Then once the city was taken, the false god Tel'mar would either be beaten into submission and forced to flee, or he would be killed without mercy by Ori forces, in battle or on display so that all the newly-subjegated masses could see the death of their once-mighty Lord. Their words were spoken loudly, and their voices laced with the confidence of arrogant men.
"Ready for the big show, boys?" Cam asked the other three men with a crooked smile. They all nodded in return, then the two Jaffa split off from the pair of Tau'ri, and made their way slowly and with deft skill down another corridor, around to the second entrance to the chamber they were planning to assault.
This just left Daniel and Colonel Mitchell, alone together, resting up for their push in against the armed Ori followers on sentry duty near the open doorway leading into the chamber beyond, where the important heads of the rebel army were gathered. They had to wait until Teal'c and Artan were in position to strike, then they could lead the attack against their foes.
"Are you sure this is the right thing to do, Cam?" Daniel Jackson asked softly at last, afraid that his voice might carry to the ears of the guards if he spoke any louder. "There is no other alternative here we might have overlooked, is there?"
"No Daniel, I don't believe there is, and I haven't came this far to turn back now when we're so close," Colonel Mitchell replied with grim, assured finality. "Now, are you with me, Dr Jackson?"
"By your side to the very end, Colonel." The other two were at their readied positions – the double-click that came through over their radio sets confirmed that to Daniel Jackson and Cam Mitchell.
Both of them were already suited up and ready to go, their automatic weapons clutched tightly in their hands with the safety-catches already switched off. With a nod from Cam, they both leapt out from around the corner and charged down the hallway, towards the two unsuspecting Jaffa guardians.
# SG1 #
The sound of gunfire back down around the corner from where they'd come did not bother Teal'c and Artan as they cautiously made their approach towards the two Jaffa sentinals, standing guard in front of the only other entrance to the meeting chamber where their six targets were located. But the Jaffa warriors on guard duty, however, immediately turned towards the direction of the gun-battle, bringing their staff weapons around to bear and activating the alien devices, readying themselves for a battle ahead.
Little did they know that they were now facing away from their immediate threat. Teal'c and Artan were hardly going to let them know this, however. They moved out away from the wall the two of them were pressed up against, took their positions out in the centre of the hallway facing the two unprepared Jaffa, and fired right into their backs, cutting the two warriors down without mercy.
"That went well," Artan said, as he reached down to check the pulse of the Jaffa he had shot down with his auto-cannon arm weapon.
"Do not bother with them, Artan; the warriors are both dead," Teal'c snapped, as he turned to race on past the two motionless bodies to the side of the entrance to the chamber. "We still have to deal with the six generals inside this room up ahead. They will be all the more difficult to eliminate, now that they are alerted to our presence here. We must move quickly, and with decisive action, before they can barricade themselves in against us."
# SG1 #
Dr Jackson and Cam Mitchell were also past their Jaffa opponents, and standing on both sides of their own entry-way into the chamber beyond. They could hear the hushed voices of the leaders of the Ori movement as they rushed about the room, overturning furniture and hunkering down in preperation of an attack against them.
This was not as sweeping, elegent an attacking pincer as Colonel Mitchell had imagined. The best-laid plans never survive first contact with the enemy, and all that jazz, Cam thought to himself with a sour little smirk. Still though, he knew he had to come up with a remedy to deal with this situation, and fast too.
"How many grenades do you have with you?" Cam asked Daniel suddenly, as an idea began to form in his mind.
"Six... why?" Dr Jackson inquired. Daniel blanched at the look in Mitchell's eyes, and seemed almost afraid to answer the Colonel's question.
"Get ready to pull the pins on two of them then chuck the live grenades around the corner – when I tell you to go," Cam said. Then, he reached down for his radio, that was clipped to the side of his combat vest. "T-Man, you and Artan get ready to charge the room from your end, when I give the order. Got that?" he asked, speaking through the comms-gear as he depressed the TALK button on its side.
"On your command, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c replied curtly over the radio-link. The two Jaffa warriors would follow Mitchell's order.
Then to Daniel, and without there being a connection between the two teams so Teal'c wouldn't misunderstand and charge the room without support, Cam said, "Go, throw the grenades now Danny-boy!"
In a flash, Daniel Jackson did just as Cam bid him to, pulling the pins out of the two grenades he'd unclipped from his belt, and hurling the now-live and active explosive devices far into the round, chambered room beyond them both. There were startled cries of panic and alarm, and the sound of scuffling feet on the stone floor as people tried to run away from the circular objects, or run towards them to throw the things back, neither member of SG-1 knew for sure.
But either way, the explosions came, and the room was rocked with the noise and savage intensity of the close-quarters detonations.
"Teal'c, now – go go go!" Mitchell shouted into the radio. He and Daniel Jackson raced into the smoke-filled room beyond, firing into the dark, shadowy masses that still moved amongst the rubble and debris around the chamber.
There were only a pair of the leaders who were still alive, on Cam and Daniel's side of the room at least, but the two men had shot them full of bullet-holes on their rushed entry in. Most of the others were killed in the grenade explosions. Artan, on the other side of the chamber, shot the last general though in the face when the two Jaffa rushed in through their own doorway, taking the man's head off his shoulders from the energy-weapon's blast.
But their work had been done quite easily, in the end. Brutal firepower and a speedy follow-through had triumphed, and the defenders' own shock at the unexpected attack in their own heart of power had been a major trump-card as well.
The team gathered together in the centre of the shattered, blood-soaked chamber, to discuss their next move hurriedly before Ori reinforcements arrived.
As Cam Mitchell was about to speak, though, there came a booming, resonant voice from behind him. The sound of his voice tore through the room like a thunderclap, and there was no denying the power nor the conviction of the words that were spoken. "Why have you come here, warriors of the Tau'ri? Why are you serving a Master who does not love you, Artan, noble Jaffa fighter?" the Ori Prior asked. "Your path to salvation and deliverance from evil lies in the book of Origin – do not serve this sinner Tel'mar anymore, and your eternal souls may yet be saved from damnation."
All four of the team rounded on the Prior of the Ori, that was standing in the doorway which Colonel Mitchell and Dr Jackson had burst in through. The Prior was holding a large, ornately-carved wooden staff, just like the Ori monk they had dispatched in the forest earlier in their journey to Alden; but there was something different about the staff, one thing being that it was larger, and of a darker shade in color.
The skin of the Prior of the Ori was, like all of his kind, wrinkled and ivory-white. There were also intricate tattoos on various parts of his body, some of which were not covered by his cloak, and could be seen by others. His eyes were hooded over, but when he opened them fully and looked at the men arrayed before him, they shone with a golden brilliance that chilled all of the team-members facing the Prior to their core. There was immense power at this Prior's command, as was true with all of the envoys of the Ori that had been encountered so far by the races of the Milky Way Galaxy.
"You are a fool if ya think we're gonna come over to your side of the fence, Prior," Mitchell said confidently. "We know what your game is, and we don't want any part of it, so why don't you pack up your little bag of magic tricks and take your sorry butt back to your own galaxy? Us Milky Way folk don't want what the Ori are sellin'..."
"Your race is arrogant, human, so I will forgive you this slight," the Ori messenger whispered, his voice laced with menace. "But do not think for a moment that this entire series of events was your doing alone. It was orcastrated, to lure Tel'mar's best fighters into this city. I was hoping to turn some of the core warriors of his army against the Goa'uld, so that they may return and report a successful mission, and act as assassins when the full offensive begins, eliminating the Lord before he can escape his city. If necessary, the strike team could have been dispatched. The six generals you have just killed meant little in the full scheme of things – they were simply bait, expendable, and hardly important to the war."
"But you weren't expecting us to be a part of this elaborate scheme, were you?" Daniel asked, but he was sure enough of the answer even before the Prior replied.
"Indeed, Dr Jackson," he said. "This is an unexpected complication. As too is the appearance of your Earth ship, heading towards this city – no doubt in some foolhardy attempt to find the three of you. The fortress near Menphal has been destroyed by your forces, though, so I have already given the order to begin the final assault. Soon, this entire planet will be under the control of the Ori."
"You will not succeed, Prior," Artan spat our defiantly.
"Oh, that is where you are mistaken, Artan," the Prior replied. "Few of your fellow warriors have the will to continue the fighting, and there has been enough chaos and bloodshed wrought in this war already. Your Lord Tel'mar is already in full flight, his final stronghold is destroyed, and there is no chance that your side can emerge from this conflict victorious. And, now that everything has proceeded along so far, and so unexpectedly, I have no need whatsoever to keep you alive..."
Colonel Mitchell didn't wait for the Prior to attack first; he raised his P-90 up into a firing position, levelled the gun at the Ori envoy, then loosened off a quick burst of bullets at the enemy. The rounds hurled through the air towards their target, then came to a sudden, inexplicible halt barely a foot in front of the Ori Prior's face. The cloaked figure waved his right hand down a couple times, and the stilled lead rounds dropped harmlessly down onto the floor with a soft, tinkling clatter.
"Fall back!" Cam shouted out back towards the others, as he too stepped back towards the doorway Teal'c and Artan had entered the chamber through, firing doggedly at the Prior all the while on full automatic. None of the bullets got through – the genetically-altered human's mental abilities were far too strong, as all the rounds were stopped by the Prior's will alone – but the Ori follower was not able to strike out against any of them while he was trying to stop the Colonel's weapons-fire from striking him. "Keep moving – I'll cover our retreat!"
Mitchell glanced quickly slideways to make sure the others were doing as he ordered, and retreating back to the other exit – but this was when he stopped firing his weapon for just a moment, and the Prior was freed to hit out against him with his advanced abilities.
The Prior shot out his right and left hands, with their palms raised. The force-push lifted Cam right up off his feet, and sent the Colonel hurdling back into the far wall with such force that the air was knocked straight out of his lungs, and Mitchell could taste blood welling up in his mouth almost instantly. His back was slammed into the ungiving stone wall with such force that Cameron thought he might have shattered his back.
The driving thrust back against the wall went away immediately, once the Prior lowered his hands. Then the Ori follower snatched up his staff weapon, which had been hovering in mid-air by his side the whole time the Prior had been using his mental abilities to attack Mitchell, and swung the imposing wooden cane around on the rest of Cam's team.
Artan, the closest one to the doorway, was the one that was targeted in the Prior's next attack. He fired his staff at the Jaffa, sending a burst of bright blue-white energy straight at Artan's back. At the last moment, the Jaffa seemed to sense the danger facing him, and made a last-ditched jump for the relative safety of the doorway ahead of him.
Because of this, he only copped the energy-bolt to the left side of his body, instead of right to the centre of his back. A glancing hit, instead of a likely kill-shot. The impact forced Artan right through the dooorway and onwards, sending him crashing down into the corridor beyond.
Cam, laying sprawled out on the floor, forgotten by the Prior for the moment, forced himself quickly upright on the ground as best he could. He fought valiantly against the pain and the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him, knowing that the Ori Prior would decimate his team, unless Mitchell got the inhibitor activated before it was too late.
He struggled with his kit-bag, trying to reach around to get at the zipper. Mitchell's body was wracked by another bout of spasms due to the over-exertion, and he almost cried out in agony – the Colonel bit down hard on his lower lip instead, to stifle the cry of pain.
There was nothing to do about the pain, but to try to ignore it and force himself onwards regardless. Cam Mitchell knew he had little time left – either the Prior would see him soon and finish the job, or he would tear through the others and there wouldn't be a team left for the saving.
Suddenly, he had the zipper in his hands and tugged the bag wide open with one pull of the cord. The 'anti-Prior gun', he'd suggested for a name for the device, sat right in front of Cam, and he reached down eagerly to pluck it out of the bag, like an excitable little kid with a favourite new toy on Christmas morning.
The settings had been calibrated correctly back on Earth, Mitchell saw at a glance – good work there, Dr Lee!
Teal'c and Daniel were making their way desperately back to where Cam lay sprawled on the floor, firing their weapons at the Prior in tandem as they went. They were coming back for him, and Colonel Mitchell wasn't surprised in the least because that was the way SG-1 always was. When he hit the button that activated the Prior inhibitor, the last few shots that Daniel Jackson fired at the Ori follower got through the man's mental defences... which had now been cancelled out by the device.
The Prior staggered back against the impact of the bullets striking his body, and looked down with disbelieving alarm at the wounds that stretched up across the side of his chest. Dr Jackson was shocked at first, as well, but then he glanced over at Mitchell and saw the open bag on the floor in front of the Colonel, with the inhibitor inside it, glowing with its front control panel lit up just like it always was when the device was switched on.
"Teal'c, the Prior's vulnerable!" Daniel shouted out. Teal'c moved swiftly, instantly changing focus from the stunned, wounded Colonel Mitchell, onto the Ori Prior that was sagging slowly down towards the ground.
Dr Jackson and Teal'c both opened fire on the Prior, cutting him down with a prolonged spray of bullets from their assault weapons. The bullet-ridden corpse of the Prior dropped backwards onto the ground where he stood, blood seeping out from over two dozen wounds all over his body.
Daniel stepped up to the Ori Prior's motionless form, aimed his gun at the man's head, and squeezed off a final short burst into his skull. It hadn't been necessary as the Prior was already dead, but Jackson wanted to make absolutely sure.
"Your gods won't save you now, Prior," the archaeologist and former Ascended Ancient said softly, looking down on the blood-splattered corpse. Then he turned and walked back to the others, rejoining Teal'c as he was helping Colonel Mitchell carefully back onto his feet again.
Cam was a little unsteady standing up at first, and taking his first few steps almost ended in disaster if Daniel hadn't swept in to catch the Colonel. But quickly enough, Mitchell recoverd, and he suited back up again, with the now-deactivated inhibitor device back in his kit-bag behind his back.
The SG-1 members quickly headed over to check on Artan who, despite themselves, the others had all come to accept as being part of their team.
