Wide Open Road Chapter 6, a stargate: atlantis fanfic

The conspiracy against the Tau'ri unfurls... Attacks across multiple fronts, kidnappings, an invasion, a spacebattle, a bomb... Amidst it all, what, or who, is the primary target?

Author's Notes:

Apologies that this chapter took a while! As will shortly become obvious, this one is pretty plot dense and took quite a bit more polishing than usual in order to make sure I'd kept everything straight. (I strongly suggest people take their time with this one.)

I suspect there's a 50/50 chance that people will either love/hate this chapter - mwahaha!

As always, this thing is unbetaed, so if you spot any particularly glaring errors please feel free to point them out.

Thanks everyone for the kind reviews and feedback. (Grateful thanks to the 60+ subscribers/followers – I hope you continue to enjoy this thing as it moves into the next section of plot!)

Note: I usually try not to clog up the ANs with review responses, though I do try to reply to reviews, especially when people have taken the time to give in-depth ones. However, FFN doesn't give any easy way to do so when the reviewer is Anon. So, apologies everyone else, please skim past the addition to the usual glossary at the bottom of the page.

Chapter 6:

Greer pulled gate room guard duty that morning, a job typical of the old hurry up and wait that took up so damned much time in the military. It mixed long periods of mind-numbing dullness, with pants-wetting moments of complete terror. He'd been given the task of periodically sweeping the gate room with a Geiger counter; the Lucian Alliance had managed to sneak a bomb with a naquadria payload onto an off-world base. It'd been pure chance that stopped the thing detonating. As it was, a few people had gotten irradiated from what Greer'd heard.

It was a real SNAFU, that all this should come down on the day they had a boatload of VIP bigwigs on base. Greer damn near rolled his eyes at the attitude of the civvies; apparently the extra checkpoint measures had not gone down well with their guests.

The scheduled off world activation alarm sounded, Teal'c and Master Bra'tac appeared, silhouetted in the event horizon. There was some negotiation going down today between the Free Jaffa Nation and the IOA; something about the giant death ray sat all innocent-like at Dakara.

Greer kept a close eye on the goings on in the room, even as the light of the wormhole winked out to nothingness; it was probably the most interesting thing that was gonna happen for the next few hours. SG-2 were due out on an escort mission to those Naquadah mines later - Colonel Edwards' guys were getting new blood to keep things friendly with the Unas the SGC were employing to dig it all out.

Despite the ominous crackle from the radiation detector, everything seemed normal. No alarming spikes into the red, nada. When Greer refocused on their allies, rather than scoping out potential threats, Bra'tac was greeting Landry, all friendly,

"Ah General Landry, I was sorry to hear about Hammond of Texas. I feel he would have thought the new Tau'ri vessel a fitting tribute."

Bra'tac looked genuinely saddened, it clearly wasn't just the usual diplomatic BS the higher ups tended to say by rote. Landry shifted on his feet, voice rougher than usual, he gravely agreed,

"Yes… Yes, he will be missed."

"Indeed."

Greer watched from the corner of his eye as Colonel Dixon entered the gate room, as far as Ronald knew the guy wasn't due off world any time soon. He wasn't a diplomat or nothing either, so he didn't have a clue why the colonel was there. The touchy colonel had been running his mouth lately about Sheppard; everyone noticed the uptick in ol' Dixon's bitching post-foothold-exercise. Greer wondered vaguely if the fool was going to do it in front of the major players. It was one thing to indulge in locker room talk, another to do it where the brass could hear. Ronald kept an interested eye on the conversation as Bra'tac continued to talk about bigwig crap with Landry,

"Ah yes the Jaffa in Yu's old territories have finally entered into negotiations with us, I hope that one day all Jaffa shall be united in peace."

The thing happened so fast. Ronald didn't have time to stop it.

Dixon finally stopped talking to the SF by the door, turned to face the ring, and changed. His facial expression rippled, going from joking laughter to the rictus of a madman. Greer saw it all unfold as if in slow motion. As soon as Dixon spotted Bra'tac he went for him. Twitchily, as if he was fighting himself the whole way - the big colonel reached for his sidearm and shot.

It was only the way the guy jerkily fired that stopped him taking down more than one person. His aim weaved all over the place. Teal'c pushed the older Jaffa aside, it probably saved the Jaffa leader from taking a headshot. Bra'tac took a hit to the upper right quadrant and went down, hard. Teal'c got between Bra'tac and the colonel.

Greer rushed the colonel, grabbing the gun as Dixon went to raise it from the twisted spasm he'd collapsed into. The next minute was full of panicked wrestling. Greer finally got Dixon in a classic arm twist hold. The gun skittered across the gate room floor, settling out of reach underneath the ramp.

Ron couldn't have heard what came out of Dixon's mouth,

"Stop me!"

Landry bellowed for a medic.

Dixon struggled like a wild thing. In the end, Greer sat on him so he couldn't do himself too bad an injury, thrashing as he was. With the way he'd gone off on one of their allies like that, Ronald wasn't sure Dixon deserved the consideration.

Teal'c was busy stemming the blood gushing from Bra'tac's shoulder. Crap, it didn't look good. Medics rushed in.

To Greer's quiet relief Colonel Edwards came in, he helped with restraining the prisoner - producing a pair of plastic cuffs. Edwards got Dixon into them with minimum fuss. Dixon was straining fit to pop a blood vessel, Edwards leaned down and hissed in his ear,

"I may be pretty as an angel, but I sure as hell ain't one. Give over son."

With eyes still roving crazily Dixon settled down, though it may have had more to do with the firm biting grip Edwards had on the other colonel's jaw than any real concession on the crazy's part,

"Thanks Colonel."

Edwards' shot Greer a tight grin, even as he magically produced enough restraints to truss Dixon up like a turkey,

"I'm Mary Poppins y'all."

Landry, apparently satisfied that Bra'tac was going to be alright, now Lam and co were gently getting him up onto a gurney, turned to their little party of three,

"What the hell was that Colonel?! I'll have you thrown into the deepest darkest hole in Gitmo, you'll never see daylight again! I order you to stand down!"

Dixon was groaning and twitching. If his hands weren't cuffed behind him, Greer was sure he'd be clutching his head. The colonel's eyes were glazed with confusion, senselessly roving around the room. Through lips flecked with spittle, Dixon got going on a rant that made no goddamn sense,

"You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here. Now we're finishing this deal…" to Greer's alarm veins were beginning to pop out on the guy's temples. Dixon began to hyperventilate,"…and then maybe, maybe we'll come back for those morons who got themselves caught. You can't change that by getting all... bendy."

Teal'c, preparing to escort Bra'tac's journey down to the infirmary paused. He sounded worried, well, as worried as the big warrior ever got,

"General Landry, the circumstances are remarkably similar to those when Martouf of the Tok'ra was killed."

Landry paled. Edwards swore bitterly, and kicked at Dixon's trussed up form,

"You like a professional asshole or what? Not again. It was bad enough the first couple of times."

Greer stared blankly, as Landry agreed with Edwards who, still muttering threats, roughly hauled a still crazily jerking Dixon to his feet,

"We never did develop a reliable method of detecting… or breaking the conditioning." Voice flat, Landry continued, "I genuinely thought this was behind us." He sighed, looking like a tired old man he muttered, "We've lost too many good people to this. Damn. Who the hell do you think's using it this time?"

A second later Greer got it. Crap, this was just like the worst-case scenario in that training course. Greer never thought he'd be grateful he'd gone through that charade; he was now. Dixon must have been brainwashed. Was it Nish'ta, or worse, was he a Za'tarc?

Odds were good the answer was Za'tarc, from the way he'd just gone full crazy as soon as he spotted Master Bra'tac.

Lam hustled over and busied herself strapping Dixon into a restraining gurney.

"Doctor Lam, will Master Bra'tac recover?"

"He'll be fine Teal'c. The bullet missed the nerve bundle, and his collarbone. Our best trauma surgeon is already working, and Holden from orthopaedics is scrubbing in."

As she strapped Dixon into the five-point restraints on the gurney Lam ran an assessing eye over him,

"Is this what I think it is?"

Landry replied darkly,

"Yeah Carolyn, I'm afraid it is."

Greer watched from his post as the whole messy procession filed out of the gate room.

There'd been noise and pain, then darkness and light. And now he was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, feeling like he'd hacked up a lung. O'Neill sucked in a couple of cautious breaths and when it didn't feel like he was going to be coughing up what remained of his oesophageal lining anytime soon, tried to work out what the hell just happened.

He'd been in his office. O'Neill was stuck behind a desk heading up Homeworld Command these days; it wasn't really what he wanted to do with his time, but Jack was self-aware enough to know that his fieldwork days were behind him. The knees, it was always the knees.

Speaking of which, O'Neill took stock. Nothing seemed to be hurting, well, no worse than usual.

Awkwardly levering himself to his feet, Jack cautiously looked around, it was as if the building had collapsed on top of him. There was thick dust everywhere, hanging in the air, staining what little light there was nicotine brown, and coating every surface. It almost looked like some of the digs Danny tended to get excited about. With a sigh of nostalgia, that he immediately regretted as it felt like he'd breathed in the entirety of the Nevada Desert during a sandstorm, O'Neill carefully tried to get the lay of the land. Whilst Jack's office looked mostly intact, just beyond the pane of glass, or rather the space where the pane of glass etched with a star map used to be, was chaos.

Steel girders had collapsed down from the floors above, punching through the office space like cocktail sticks stabbed into a cheese hedgehog by an unambitious dinner host – woah, okay, not good. He was feeling loopy. Concussion maybe? Jack hoped it wasn't a concussion, he'd had more than his fair share of them over the years. The docs kept warning him about post-concussion syndrome.

There was a scraping noise in the office beyond, O'Neill whipped out the Beretta he still carried everywhere, desk job or not, and cautiously made his way towards the source. The thick choking dust covered everything out here too, visibility was shot. Still, amongst the shallower bits of rubble there was-

"Oh, for crying out loud! Davis is that you?"

Davis looked as beleaguered as Jack had ever seen him, and that included the time everyone was stuck hanging from the ceiling in those alien pods,

"General?"

The major blinked owlishly at him out of a face rendered unrecognisable by dint of being coated in dirt. Davis looked very much the worse for wear. The usually neat officer's uniform was torn and dirty, his previously brown hair, now grey with dust, stuck up in strange tufts. The left-side of his head was covered in blood. Despite Davis's feeble protests O'Neill made a quick assessment and realised it was coming from a scalp wound, not his ear as Jack initially feared. Shit, on the one hand all that blood was slightly less worrying. On the other, another head injury. O'Neill tried for dry,

"Is it just me or is there a disaster zone in the middle of my office?"

Davis looked puzzled for a long long moment, before turning, and spotting the girders. If the situation weren't so dire, O'Neill might have chuckled at the stunned disbelief on the other man's face,

"I -I don't know what happened sir."

O'Neill covered up the worry, despite Jack's stated opinion of the man during their rocky beginnings, Davis was usually a sharp one. He sarcastically asked,

"Davis, why haven't you been promoted to Homeworld yet?"

Major Davis's reply was dry, "I don't know sir."

O'Neill had been hoping for something more definitive on the diagnosis front, still eyeing the Major he mused,

"Yunno Davis, it's a good thing this is the new office, and not the Pentagon department."

"Sir?"

"Imagine all the additional bathrooms we'd have to navigate around." O'Neill gave a theatrical shudder, "All that broken plumbing."

"Yessir."

Davis sounded amused. Finally, something more alive than stunned blankness.

"Let's go see what we can see, shall we?"

"Yes sir. But-"

Jack couldn't hold back the impatience any longer,

"But what Major?! There may be wounded men out there! For crying out loud! We need to get them help, we need to get us help."

Davis had on that irritating 'Appeasing Batshit Jack' face,

"Uh, yes sir, of course sir. I wasn't arguing otherwise."

"Then what?!"

"I was going to suggest that we dig out the Geiger counter first sir." Davis nodded significantly towards the vague shape of the scientific station, still just about visible in the gloom, "I'd like to know what we're walking towards sir."

The low grade clicking that had been going on the whole time they'd been talking finally registered,

"Yes, yes of course Major. Well done."

Jack belatedly remembered the morning's memo about radiation. Crap. His head injury must be worse than he'd thought, he was snappish and irrational. Davis, of all people, was being the voice of common sense. They'd both been there for the briefing about the increased Lucian Alliance threat.

"Let's go Major"

Having checked that no one else was buried in the bullpen, O'Neill started making his way along the hallway. Beside him Davis held out the worryingly clicking Geiger counter, Jack had to keep reminding himself, the noise was normal. Even in the middle of nowhere that thing would be going off. Jack only hoped the precaution would prove unnecessary, just the usual healthy paranoia whenever a new government department was being set up.

Somehow, Jack had a sinking feeling that wouldn't be the case.

Eugene Bates was being shot at.

To be honest, it wasn't that different from his day to day.

But he hadn't expected to end up in a firefight whilst he was queuing for coffee and his breakfast burrito at the local café. (They did fantastic shrimp and grits with red eye gravy too, but he didn't indulge that craving too often. That stuff was a one-way ticket to a coronary.)

He ducked down behind the counter and tried to work out where the shots were coming from.

There!

Across the street there was a flash.

He ducked down, and slipped along the serving space, hoping there weren't any other shooters.

Bates sprang to his feet and re-sighted the target. Yeah definitely his guy.

What the hell. From this distance it was difficult to make out, but the shooter looked like he was wearing standard US military gear.

The retort from his Beretta was deafening in the enclosed space.

The bullets that wracked the little eating place with holes and shattered not only the windows, but the glass fronted display cabinets, sending customers sprawling to the ground in panic, stopped.

Hesitantly Bates's fellow commuters started clambering to their feet.

Too late to do any good, the red and blue lights of the cops came tearing down the street. Bates pre-emptively dug out his credentials, put his gun down (but within reach), and prepared to talk his way out of being shot by trigger happy law enforcement. Sometimes this job really sucked, he hadn't even eaten breakfast yet, and now he had to deal with the fact that he'd just shot someone in broad daylight. In front of witnesses. As a black man.

All around him staff and patrons of the little mom and pop store were cautiously surveying the damage. Half of them looked grateful that he'd stopped the shooting. The other half were shooting him fearful looks. Bates heaved a sigh.

A nervous looking deputy moseyed his way over, bright silver badge glinting from the gun belt looped over his brown uniform pants. From the hesitance the guy showed even walking in the door, Bates could tell it was going to be a hell of a job clearing all this up.

"Agent Bates, IOA, here are my credentials."

"Ah, yes Colonel Telford is back from leave after the …accident off world gave him a relapse."

Hank sighed, a relapse. A terrible euphemism for terrible injuries incurred during what could only be described as a massacre. Thirty-seven personnel dead, Colonel Young the only survivor. Telford wracked with guilt when he realised, he'd gotten bad intel and broken his cover too late…

Something about the skirmish near Doctor Rush's DHD must have triggered a flashback, though damned if Landry could work out what it could possibly have been. The only upside to the whole sorry situation was that Telford had clawed his way back from whatever corner of his mind he'd ended up in, and they'd gotten the information they wanted from the DHD before the Lucian Alliance had shown up and nearly destroyed the gate. As they hadn't done with their little experiment, despite Rush's cautious warnings. They hadn't thought to guard against outright attack.

That was the sixth chevron now if Hank was counting right. Three more to go.

Ever since the chaos in the gate room this morning, Hank had been double guessing his interactions with Colonel Dixon going back months. How long had his colonel been a Za'tarc? Could Landry have spotted changes in the man's personality if he'd paid more attention? Aside from the shocking attempt on Bra'tac's life, had Dixon done anything else under the influence? Was he a Za'tarc at all? Or was it just a convenient excuse to explain away how not a one of them had spotted the man's issues until he'd cracked spectacularly?

No, Teal'c seemed pretty convinced on that front. The Jaffa was the closest thing they had to an expert. Landry flinched as bad memories from Vietnam reared up out of the dark, the way the man had been fighting himself.

It had been years since this sort of thing had been an issue, quite literally. The Goa'uld brainwashing technology hadn't reared its terrifying head since long before Hank had taken up this command. They'd never found a reliable detection method. Landry couldn't countenance the Rite of M'al Sharran that Teal'c was calling for, they'd lost too many men to the brutal method of breaking the conditioning. Yet, they desperately needed to find out what Dixon had done.

With a sinking feeling, Hank realised the last thing he'd talked to Dixon about had been getting Sheppard and Mitchell off base…

Ominously the red phone rang.

Dread trickled down Landry's spine. He wasn't due anything today.

Hank stared at the trilling landline for a moment, he shook himself and picked up the handset. Landry paled at the news relayed from Washington DC.

Someone had attacked Homeworld Command.

It was a good job he was already sitting down.

The harried voice at the other end of the line rattled off the dreadful news.

Homeworld's new location had been half destroyed. They didn't know if it was a bomb, or a gas leak or...

There were dozens of personnel unaccounted for.

Unconfirmed preliminary reports were that a Tel'tak had been spotted in DC moments before the attack.

The whole site was being evacuated.

Hank felt every year of his age.

Jack was there. He'd been heading up the transfer from the quiet corner of the Pentagon Homeworld had previously been skulking in. Nothing was confirmed, people were still being evacuated, yet that sinking feeling was back. Hank tiredly rubbed at his eyes as the news continued to come in, most of the people unaccounted for so far were high level personnel.

First Dixon, now this.

When it rained it poured, alright.

Well, he had just been wondering what to do with Telford now he was back on duty. Hank hated to do this to the man, but on account of needing to be out of the field, Telford was their current Washington liaison.

"Walter!"

A few moments later the familiar balding head appeared in the doorway,

"Yessir?"

"Fetch Colonel Telford, would you? We've got a situation at Homeworld."

Since Hank was needed at the Pentagon anyway, he'd send in Telford as his right-hand man on the ground. There was a knock at the door,

"Ah! David, that was quick. Good good. No don't come in, I need you to come to DC with me, we've got a situation. I'll brief you on the way."

"Yessir."

Wormhole Xtreme had just been renewed for a 6th season, Marty was ecstatic,

"Hey! Guess what Steve? We have a go!" Marty continued to march down the halls, "Yeah, yeah! Renewed! Looks like we're going to be able to do that alien living on Earth plotline after all! I know right? Maybe we'll even be able to do that Lost City thing we've been seeding in."

People glared at Marty as he continued loudly updating his co-producer about the good news. He gestured at them; he was on the phone here! Talking important business! He'd just gotten to the administrative wing of the studio when the men in black jumped him,

"Wha-? Um hey guys. This isn't cool."

Marty looked up at the two soldiers manhandling him down the hall.

They always scoffed and said he was paranoid. Then stuff like this happened!

Marty tried to stall, back peddling his legs as they pushed him towards the side door,

"What's going on? Is this about the plot arc for season six? I swear, we renegotiated with Ray Gunne, Doctor Levant is coming back next season! I know it's fantastical that anyone could survive that, but, well, the ancestorials solve everything! Deus ex amiright?"

Martin peered up at the bulky men frogmarching him along,

"It is isn't it? I'm sorry but yet another evil parasitic crab would have just been unbelievable!"

The men quite literally in black shoved Marty into soundstage four – the space they were currently converting into sets for the new alien threat, the evil Imitators! Marty wasn't convinced by the blocky Lego-like design the prop guys had come up with for the monsters, but hey, it was better than the tacky Aztec theme for the Crab Gods.

With a crashing noise, the blocky sets collapsed in a gratifyingly loud crunch of expanded foam crumpling. More men, this time in military green, burst through the set-walls and shot the men in black surrounding him.

Martin fell forward to the floor of the soundstage, thank god for studio security,

"Thanks guys! I don't know what their problem was."

"That's alright Mr Lloyd, we're just here to keep you safe."

"Yeah, some fans are just so... extreme, yunno?" Marty scoffed, "Look at them, their costumes aren't even right. I've seen better things at the conventions."

"Colonel Carter, a Ha'tak just dropped out of hyperspace. It's approaching our position."

Internally Sam cursed. Dammit, no one else should have been out here. There was nothing worth stopping for in this solar system, which was overly near a Pulsar. That's why they'd chosen it to give the engines a chance to idle and run diagnostics whilst stress testing the shields. This was more than just bad luck; they were far too close to the proposed Icarus site for comfort. It had taken years to find that world. Keeping the worry out of her voice, Carter asked,

"Any radio contact?"

"None ma'am." Marks replied.

Carter nervily made a last-minute status check. That had been the whole point of this pit stop after all. Systems were almost certainly in the green, but Sam doublechecked anyway. She read the summarized data off the command console even as she asked,

"Shield status?"

"Full power, running at 99% projected efficiency." Came the immediate response.

"Excellent, Major Marks ready weapons."

Carter wouldn't give the order to fire first, that wasn't how the Tau'ri operated. However, given it was likely pirates or worse, it wouldn't hurt to have everyone ready.

"Yes Ma'am."

The proximity alarm blared. The officer manning the pilot's station groaned,

"Ma'am!" That was Captain Kleinman, after years manning the weapons console on the Daedalus, he was an old hand at this, "Five more Ha'taks just dropped out of hyperspace. They're boxing us in."

Before Sam could decide whether to negotiate, enter hostilities, or make a tactical retreat, the weapons alarm blared shrilly. The shield flared up, the light of the energy attenuating across the usually invisible barrier strobed nauseatingly through the bridge. Carter bit back her outrage, they'd opened fire without even opening a channel.

"Ready the Asgard beam. Marks, prepare to manoeuvre us away, we can't afford to stay boxed in."

"Yes ma'am."

The Goa'uld weaponry barely made a dent in the shields, even after the other Ha'taks joined in and the weapons fire ramped up to a six against one barrage. The bridge was almost permanently lit by the sickly yellow glow shining through from outside, the effect was eery. Everyone looked jaundiced.

A long moment later a message came through. The staticky image on the communications screen cut in and out; the familiar signal snow that had become uncommon on TV broadcasts on Earth, a perpetual problem out here across the vast distances of space. Carter figured the interference from the energy blasts striking the shield accounted for most of it.

Sneering at the ignorance of their attackers, Sam manually adjusted the scanning frequency until the image resolved into something understandable. A stern looking woman dressed entirely in leather, reminding Sam uncomfortably of those vampire films, with the starlet doing improbable acrobatics in a corset, appeared on the viewscreen. She looked callous. Even with the dubious image clarity, her dead eyes promised cruelty,

"Time is short, and I'll be brief. This is Commander Kiva of the Lucian Alliance. Surrender at once Tau'ri vessel and prepare to be boarded. This is your only warning."

Warning!

Sam almost laughed scornfully, there had been no warning. This was an unprovoked attack.

Carter figured the cold woman was more dangerous than anyone in the branches of the Alliance they'd previously encountered. There was a calm about her that Netan always lacked. For all his posturing, the would-be leader had a weak grasp of his subordinates, let alone the rival Houses.

Ignoring the cold sweat that broke out, Sam responded in an equally brusque manner, projecting self-assured confidence for all she was worth. Holy Hannah! She'd wiped out the Asuran threat and held fast against the Wraith for more than a year with minimal support. Goa'uld tech was notoriously poorly engineered, the Hammond was a state-of-the-art BC-304, this should be child's play in comparison,

"Commander Kiva. This is Colonel Samantha Carter, Commander of the Earth vessel USS George Hammond. Cease hostilities at once or you will be fired upon."

Kiva smiled cruelly in response. Sam cut the message. The shields continued to cast their sickly glow, punctuated with blinding pulses from the Goa'uld energy weapons. Carter turned to her XO, and decisively issued orders,

"Take out the Hyperdrives of the nearest Ha'taks, Major. Use our upgraded Asgard beam weapons. It's not exactly a Wraith hive ship… But they're similarly bloated. We need to send this Kiva a message."

He nodded,

"Yes ma'am."

The Asgard beam burned through the inefficient shields of the first Ha'tak. The crippled mothership started venting atmosphere immediately. The second shot missed, the targeted ship dodged, due to some fancy piloting.

The first Ha'tak inexorably lurched out of formation, thanks to the uncontrollable extra thrust from the gaping holes in its hull, and the momentum from the beam weapon tearing through it. It drifted directly into the path of another member of its own fleet. The great bulk of the crippled ship smashed spectacularly into the superstructure of its fellow.

Sam watched the chaos that unfolded with no little satisfaction, they'd thrown off their enemy's plans.

Two of the motherships that had been firing weapons were forced into evasive action to avoid joining in the collision. In the resulting scrum, the Hammond took out another Ha'tak with the Asgard beam. They must have hit something more critical. The resulting shockwave knocked their (and hopefully everyone else's) sensors out for a few key seconds.

Eyes watering from the blinding flash the clear Trinium viewport only just attenuated to non-harmful levels, Carter fruitlessly tried to make out what was happening. Even if she hadn't been squinting through afterimages, Sam knew it was useless, but the instinct was difficult to override. At these distances, it was fly by instrument, or nothing. Gritting her teeth at the gamble, Sam ordered Kleinman to evade. Hopefully getting out of the plane of the elliptic would take them away from the solar system and the battle,

"Take us out of the orbital plane Captain! We need to get away from the epicentre."

Kleinman nodded tightly. His hands danced over the navigation console, without further explanation needed. Sam pressed her lips together tightly as they waited out the sensor blackout. This was an untested ship; their shakedown cruise should not have been this harsh a test of their systems.

The sensors finally stuttered back online. They were still boxed in, though her gamble had bought them some much needed space to manoeuvre.

With intergalactic hyperdrives to rely on, the Asgard hadn't put more thought into their sub-light engines than anyone else, they were still using Hebridan ionic sublights, the Hammond wouldn't outpace the Goa'uld ships this way. They were trapped in a dangerously full sector of space; too close to the Ha'taks, let alone the gravity wells of the three gas giants that orbited the star. It was simply too risky to jump whilst they were being fired upon, they might end up in the same system as that damned Pulsar and its deadly bursts of radiation. That stress test that seemed like such a good idea, felt like folly.

The other motherships got cautious after the spectacular explosion. Unfortunately, the beam weapons were still energy hogs. Even now, after a few years to study the Asgard core, a lot of their technology was frustratingly opaque. There were simply too many ships to take out with Asgard tech alone. Between the deliberately long shakedown cruise, and the nearby Pulsar, the Hammond was already at risk of running into reserves intended for the journey home.

This long-distance run to test the hyperdrives against several dense gravity wells hadn't been intended to be a test of the Hammond's weapons systems too. Sam stared in frustration as the Goa'uld weaponry impacted against the shield. The railguns were proving as ineffective as ever. Beam weaponry was out. The other ships were trying to herd them. The velocities they were traveling at were nearly incomprehensible and yet…

And yet.

Sam flicked from the command view to Marks' screen and eyed the tactical map. She quickly ran a few velocity calculations in her head, watching the way the Ha'taks deftly avoided the rail gun volleys they'd been reduced to. Their inefficient shielding wasn't that effective, so the ships were dodging the high velocity slugs. The Tau'ri persisted with the relatively low-tech weaponry, since on the rare occasions they actually managed to make contact, both Goa'uld Hat'aks and Wraith Hiveships were vulnerable against the high velocity slugs.

There wasn't much that could stand up to a ballistic lump of metal moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

Sam concentrated, trying to see the pattern.

Something about the way the largest of the remaining Ha'taks was manoeuvring…

There!

That pilot kept jinking the Ha'tak –

"Major Marks fire a prolonged rail gun burst at vector 60 by 48 by 17 on my mark. Then immediately resume the previous bombardment pattern."

"Yes ma'am."

"Mark!"

He looked puzzled as the guns fired towards seemingly empty space. Sam waited with bated breath, the crew manning the workstations around her continued to communicate with the engineering deck. Simultaneously the Hammond was trying to manoeuvre away from the kill-box, and fire high velocity slugs at the remaining Ha'taks.

Approximately 45 seconds later the furthest of the motherships dodged the computer calculated pattern of bombardment from The Hammond… and flew straight into the cloud of super-accelerated metal that Sam had ordered out into seemingly empty space moments earlier,

"Good work Major."

Marks nodded tightly at her, even as his hands flew over the console, inputting the orders to trigger the next firing pattern, he looked impressed.

On the tactical screen it was obvious they hadn't hit anything immediately critical. But the Ha'tak was eliminated from the fight. It moved sluggishly, the barrage of energy blasts it had been spouting eased markedly. Sam watched with grim satisfaction as the ship was inexorably pulled into an unstable orbit around the nearest gas giant. Within a few hours the other vessel would burn up in the planet's thick atmosphere. If it was as crippled as it appeared to their sensors, maybe sooner; the vessel's shield was only registering half the time.

The rest of the battle should have been similarly one-sided. Despite the swarm of Death Gliders emerging from the remaining motherships, there should have been nothing in the scavenged Goa'uld tech the Alliance relied on that could threaten the Hammond. The odds had turned from six to one to three to one within the space of a few minutes. The Daedalus-class vessel boasted the latest in hybrid Tau'ri/Asgard technology.

Yet, with three Ha'taks out of the fight, something went terribly wrong.

"Ma'am!" Captain Kleinman's voice was panicked, "The primary shield generator just blew!"

"What?! How?"

"No idea! Shields were holding at 94% efficiency. Nothing impacted the hull."

Sam exchanged a look with Major Marks, "Sabotage."

On cue the communications station lit up,

"This is Commander Kiva of the Lucian Alliance." The woman looked horribly smug, "Tau'ri vessel, prepare to be boarded."

Walter sat down at the gate controls with a sigh; Telford had taken the news and his orders… calmly. Which was more than he could say for General Landry when the senior officer had gotten the news about Homeworld. Then again, Chief Master Sergeant Harriman was feeling damned anxious himself. Whilst the General was in transit more news kept rolling in - the missing list was down to half a dozen personnel. Of course, to no one's great surprise, O'Neill was among them.

The sudden blare of the sirens made him jump, they always did.

Damn, they did say this kind of thing came in threes.

"Unscheduled off world activation!"

Harriman's shout accompanied the alarm. The LT on duty ordered,

"Close the iris."

Harriman resisted the urge to scoff, he'd been in the process of doing so before the junior officer had started talking,

"The.. The iris will not close sir!"

To Walter's horror, as well as the anticipated invaders, something shot out through the open wormhole. It was déjà vu. The damned thing looked just like a wraith grenade. In the stunned moment of 'oh shit!' a shrill tone emitted from the sphere. The marines who'd been lining up in the gate room visibly reacted to the sound. Walter gazed down in horror as men started viciously fighting each other in the room below.

That's when the heavily armed people dressed in leather appeared in the event horizon.

"Clear the gate room!" Ignoring the useless LT, he turned to the nearest airman and ordered, "Get up to the maintenance levels and turn on the emergency quarantine system!"

The airman saluted, "Yessir!"

"Hurry man!"

In the gate room below people were streaming through the open wormhole, Colonel Edwards, and Colonel Coburn & SG-2 were trapped down there. As the blast shields ponderously shut, Walter watched in horror as Coburn went down to the unmistakeable blue flare of zat fire. Was that one shot, or two?

Harriman continued bellowing desperate instructions, ordering a Force Recon team to hold the corridors to the gate room. Evacuating personnel from level 28. He keyed in the gate room lockdown code and hoped to god he was doing the right thing. The LT beside him was still panicking, Walter had never felt so impotent in his life, ordering men to what he knew was probably certain death.

Some days he hated the responsibility that came with his E-9 rank.

At this rate he'd be back to chugging Pepto Bismol straight out of the bottle again.

The people on duty in the mountain were all that stood between Earth and the invaders, whoever the hell they were. Harriman cued up the alarm to evacuate all non-combat personnel from the base, as the L.T. frantically shouted more orders above the din,

"Get those people out of there!"

Walter shot the incredibly young L.T. a worried look, "Sir, we're going to work this out."

Walter could only hope that Doc Lam would obey the civilian evacuation alarm. Despite the way those in the know probably thought it was nepotism, the base's chief medical officer had more than earnt her placement at the SGC. Landry's daughter was a dedicated doctor, a competent surgeon and able to make diagnoses other medical professionals would struggle to believe. Sighing, Walter continued to order the Force Recon teams into the Mu Formation, they'd all rehearsed for scenarios just like this over and over. He could only hope all that practice would pay off.

Teyla found the city of San Francisco beautiful, and terrible in its sheer size. So many souls pressed together in such a small space. Even Ronon, native of Sateda, that great metropolis of Pegasus, was disquieted by the sheer excess of the place. Worse, according to John and Rodney, San Francisco wasn't considered particularly large. There were cities on this world with populations more than ten times the number here. Teyla pushed down the urge to gape at the densely packed mass of humanity, even the attraction of Earth's wonderous markets had palled in the face of such extreme culture shock.

Teyla was grateful that she had left Torren safely with his father in Atlantis, the busy shopping street was no place for a child. The throng around her squeezed in, becoming nearly unbearable. Teyla had no idea how the people of this planet coped, if every meeting place was this crowded. She was due to reconvene with Dr Jackson at the other end of the busy shopping street; however, the crowd had swollen so that an already bustling street, became nearly impassable.

A hand landed heavily on Teyla's shoulder. She pushed down the reflexive response, which was to catch the offending limb, and twist until it snapped. Teyla turned an inquiring look at the mountain of a man looming over her, as she found herself forcibly turned around, she realised that what she had taken for an example of Earther rudeness was a deliberate hemming in.

Teyla was surrounded by five men, all wearing identical black and white outfits, the thin multi-layered affairs that Rodney called zoots? No, suits. Even on a world as thoroughly alien as this, Teyla knew this behaviour could not bode well,

"Is there a problem, gentlemen?"

Over her years as leader of the Athosians, Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tagan, had long since learnt the value of waiting for the other side to act first. It was not… nice, however the strategic benefit of allowing the other group to be seen to be the aggressor was frequently invaluable.

"Alien scum!"

The loud slur carried across the sidewalk. People turned to watch.

They did not even pretend to have a lawful reason for their conduct. There was no cry of 'police', or 'you are under arrest', and certainly no offer to show her their credentials. (Teyla had watched much of the Earther entertainment the Lanteans had brought with them over the years. In particular, a show set in Baltimore, called 'The Wire'. She had paid close attention during the Stargate Command briefings to know how these things were supposed to go.) The largest man merely started to drag her down the sidewalk.

"The boss lady will be happy to have her. Alien genetics. She's always on the hunt for new genetic stock."

Much as she disliked acting this role, Teyla decided to borrow from Rodney. She mentally whispered an apology to her teammate; Doctor McKay was brave despite his fears, Teyla had long since learnt to admire that about the man. They did not often acknowledge it, but Rodney frequently displayed true courage. An image of John, smirking that inappropriate lopsided smile of his, flashed before her eyes, even as she opened her mouth,

"Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped!"

It was a passable impression of the panic Doctor McKay usually put into his cries for help. Instead of coming to her aid, the people surrounding this little ambush started running. A clear space opened around her; the looming men threateningly reached for the primitive little metal slinging guns that the Earthers favoured.

The retort of the crude weapon firing was deafening in the valley created by the buildings that shaped the street. Teyla ducked out of the way in time, a civilian to the side was not so lucky. The screaming started.

Enough of this charade.

She needed to ensure the bystander was alright. Guilt flashed through her, if she had only acted sooner. It was quickly quashed in favour of focusing on the here and now. Teyla subtly shifted her stance, lowering her centre of gravity and flexing on the balls of her feet. She rushed the man who had fired the rudimentary projectile weapon.

Teyla snatched the gun and kicked his feet out from under him in one deft move. She ejected the magazine, and emptied the chamber, before dropping the now useless components of the weapon to the ground.

As one the thugs moved in.

Ten minutes later, still in the clear circle of space afforded by the, frankly cowardly, people in this market, the men who had tried to take her against her will were all on the floor. Unconscious. Teyla had not struck any of them particularly hard, there would be no serious injuries to attend to, nor broken bones to reset.

The blue lights that signified law enforcement on the Lantean home world drew close. Too late to help. Teyla hoped they had enough clarity to see that she was not the aggressor in this unfortunate encounter.

In a small miracle, given how crowded the street was, the wounded bystander had only been grazed by the bullet. The man was effusively thanking her for saving his life, even as the other civilians in the area surveyed Teyla with no small amount of suspicion.

To Teyla's relief the familiar voice of the Earther archaeologist was just about recognisable over the much quieter bustle of the crowd,

"Let me through, I can help!"

Daniel Jackson reappeared; heavy sacks loaded down with dozens of books in both hands. Immediately, the scientist who was so fascinated by the Atlantis database stepped in to smooth things over with the locals. Teyla did not express her relief with anything more than a raised eyebrow, and a mildly accusatory tilt of her head. Doctor Jackson seemed to understand the message anyway.

Ronald was about to tuck into lunch, a plate of lemon chicken, when it happened. The unscheduled off-world activation alarm blared loudly. Moments later, the altogether more …alarming sound of the civilian evacuation alarm started blasting. The distinctive clang of blast doors sliding shut, as everything but the designated evacuation routes sealed themselves, added another frisson of fear to the suddenly tense atmosphere.

All around him personnel filed out of the cafeteria, civilians heading topside, military hurrying to duty stations. Greer headed back down towards the security office, internally cursing the whole way that he hadn't been in the gate room to stop whatever happened. Ronald was damn sure it happened during SG-2s scheduled dial-out too.

He nodded to Private Becker as they both headed down, the guy had been on KP duty, but he was a marine, same as Ron. On level 24, Greer made way on the stairs to let a load of medical staff through, heading upwards. Greer took the opportunity provided by the forced detour to help out a group that were looking lost. He'd make his way downwards ASAP once the civilians were safe,

"Hey, Spencer, Lt" Greer squinted at a nametag, "…James," the LT nodded tersely. Greer turned to the civilians and, not for the first time, wished that, like military personnel, they wore nametags, "and… uh, you people. Do you know where you need to be?"

"Oh sure." Sgt Spencer's response was darkly sarcastic. Ronald did not appreciate his fellow sergeant's shitty attitude.

"Sgt! I asked you a question."

Instead of coming to attention at the bark, Spencer glowered sullenly. Christ, this was absolutely fucking unacceptable. The butterbar LT nodded at the civilians,

"Escort duty. I'll be helping them topside once that clears up."

The gesture towards the stairs was all the explanation needed. Greer nodded his understanding, surprised by her demeanour, there was a stillness to her that Ronald hadn't expected from her rank. Oh. Wait. Now he remembered; this one was AFSOC. She'd been one of the three that'd been with the notorious Sheppard when he'd fucked up the SGC. Greer saluted her, respecting both the person and the rank.

Greer turned to the civilians, shooting them a questioning look. A mousey looking civilian spoke up, the smallest of the three of them, the red head,

"I'm Dr Katie Brown. That's Dr Parrish, Dr Baxter, and Dr Franklin. Why the evacuation alarm?"

"No idea."

Greer admitted grudgingly.

The newly identified Parrish gestured to one of the other civilians,

"We were giving the famous Dr Franklin here the ten-cent tour when the alarms sounded. We didn't want to delay the medical evacuation. As Lt James said, we're going to wait out the rush, then make our way to the evacuation point."

Despite Brown's softly spoken demeanour and Parrish's nerdy appearance the docs seemed remarkably relaxed about the situation. Almost as unconcerned as the LT. Dr Franklin, a tall unhealthy-looking man, on the other hand was sweating nervously. Greer nodded reassurances, backing up the young LT's assessment,

"Good thinking people."

Yeah it was coming back to him, today was a busy day for everyone. New civilian personnel, something about a new head of research, and a …Senator? Ronald eyed the out of shape civilian with a concerned eye, the guy bristled at the attention.

Ronald tched to himself and decided to make the best of it. He eyed the logjam at the stairs, it was obvious the evacuation of the infirmary was going to take a while. There were a couple of patients on gurneys waiting for the elevator, and medics escorting shaky patients still connected to IV-lines up the stairs. Between the infirmary evacuees and the solid block of civilians coming up from the labs below, it was going to be some time before he could head down to the security station.

James was trying to organise their motley little group. The Special Forces L.T. knew what was what, that was for sure. Even knowing she wasn't fresh out of OTS, Greer was pleasantly surprised; Officers normally couldn't tell the butt of their gun from the barrel,

"People, we're best off staying here until all that dies down. You never know, we might get the all clear whilst we're stuck here." She gestured at the ends of the corridors and the stairs, "Let's set up defensive positions to protect the wounded."

Sgt Spencer exploded, the fiery idiot unknowingly echoed Ronald's earlier thoughts,

"Hey, no butterbar is going to tell me what to do!"

Greer cut the sergeant off at the knees, he hated turning on his fellow sergeant by siding with a damned career officer, but this was not the time. Deliberately, he scoffed loudly,

"No shit boy, she's spec ops and she outranks you. Listen to her."

James gave him an acknowledging nod. Behind her Parrish and Brown were quietly murmuring, which Ronald decided not to find alarming. Just as he'd noticed with James, they were far too calm about this for civvies. There was a weight of expectation in their eyes, a level of control to their movements that spoke of some level of experience. To Greer's gratified non-surprise, three of the botanists automatically moved to defensible positions, Franklin the only one letting the side down. The guy was sweating profusely, it wasn't hot.

Her orders were pretty much what Greer would have suggested anyway, defend the civilians for now. They were in no immediate danger here, but they were in position to help,

"We should make sure the docs finish getting the injured out of here, since we're stuck anyway."

Greer counted down mentally, 'five… four… thre-'

"And what good'll that do anyone!? Everything's happening several stories below us L.T."

Spencer's emphasis on her rank made it clear it was an insult. James defended herself calmly,

"All I'm saying is expect the worst, hope for the best."

Greer shot Spencer a poisonous look. The private was behaving better than he was, for chrissakes!

Following her orders, they repositioned themselves to defend the stairway and infirmary. James had an eye for tactical positioning that Greer could appreciate. Once they'd done what they could, Greer gave a theatrically agreeable nod, and settled in for the long haul,

"So, just the old hurry up and wait."

"Yeah…" James rocked back on her heels and kept a wary eye on the stairs. Becker who'd been silent up until then, surrounded by his betters, spoke up,

"Dammit, we need to get to our designated areas. Not hang around here."

"I know, Private."

Some of the frustration she must have been feeling crept into her voice. Weirdly none of the civilians raised a complaint.

As a group they waited around a few minutes more, uncomfortably catching each other's eyes then getting back to warily watching the evac and corridor junctions. Greer was getting antsy, but the blockage at the stairs was impassable in both directions. He hadn't thought there were that many people in the infirmary, but… Apparently, he'd been wrong. Yet another group was queuing up, towing IVs.

Greer called out,

"Hey, Doc, what happened?"

The medic turned, surprised,

"Oh, SG-9 and SG-22 came back from PC8-453. The archaeology team they were escorting had a bit of a run in with some Ancient tech."

Brown looked wetly sympathetic. Greer would have been judging the hell out of the little lady, but she was still too composed, not at all like most civilians he'd had to deal with. Hell, her, Baxter, and Parrish. They were too… too… it wasn't the bliss of ignorance either. There was hard edged experience in their gaze.

Greer nodded at the doc as the next round of patients were sent on their way,

"That the last of 'em?"

"The last of those able to move, yes."

"Ah."

"Yeah, I'm escorting them up, but… There's still patients in there." The medic gestured at the infirmary, "Doctor Lam is keeping an eye on everyone that's left."

The last of the injured were limping up the stairs to safety. At the sight of so many bandaged people Franklin muttered to himself,

"Just like Pittsburgh…"

Greer incredulously asked,

"Have you ever been to Pittsburgh?"

"Hey! I was born there." James interrupted, effectively ending the nascent argument.

Ronald was impressed. She was good. Didn't matter any if it was true or not, she'd stopped them dead.

He turned towards the infirmary.

All hell broke loose.

Where there'd been orderly movement a moment before the crowd on the stairs surged.

There were shots fired.

It took a split second to work out what the hell was going on. Old instincts kicked in, and Greer vaulted around the corner to join the private from KP duty behind the barrier formed by the tunnel's struts.

Ronald was startled and embarrassed by his reaction all over again when two of the botanists ran around the corner to join them behind the cover it provided. The tiny redheaded woman, who looked the type to burst into tears at the drop of a hat, turned and calmly rattled off the information he hadn't been able to get,

"It – it was those Milky Way guys in all the leather, and…" before Greer could yell at her to 'spit it out' she continued, "Our own people. SGC uniforms."

Greer was stunned. Dr Parrish nodded in confirmation.

Neither scientist was all that shocked by what they'd just told him. Greer was feeling pretty damned shaken.

"Becker – "

Attempts to wrest order were cut off when one of the leather clad hell's angels wannabes tried to shoot them from around the buttress. Greer regained his calm and fired a warning shot his way. It would do no one any good to be a hothead now, Ronald knew they needed to preserve ammo for what was about to come.

"Becker, now many clips do you have?"

"Just the two, sir."

"Damn…" Greer tched to himself, "Me too. Some well-prepared marine I am."

"Hey! Don't get yourself down like that!"

That was the petite redhead, Brown. Again, with the eery calm,

"Aw thanks doc."

Greer didn't finish that sentence, the rest of it would have been an angry bark about wishes and horses, but the look in her eye wasn't the pathetic simpering he'd been expecting. Instead he finally recognised the look in the civvies' eyes as the calm of a veteran. Greer turned awkwardly in his crouch, and found the tall thing streak of nothing wearing the same expression,

"Who're you guys again?"

The whispered answer was, once again, surprisingly calm, considering there was someone just around the corner trying to shoot them all,

"I'm Doctor Parrish, that's Doctor Brown. We're the department co-heads in Lantis's Botany Department."

As Parrish spoke, Brown was rifling for something in her purse. With an exclamation of triumph, she pulled out a weird ass looking gun. Parrish gestured at the nervous civvie, nearly earning himself a hole in his arm for his troubles. The other two scientists had found cover with James and Spencer on the other side of the stairs. Considering the situation they'd all found themselves in, the scientist was remarkably chatty,

"Sorry about Doctor Franklin. We were supposed to be interviewing for new staff, or possibly we were the ones getting interviewed? I've got no idea actually."

As he tried to organise some sort of crossfire with James, who'd taken cover at the other end of the corridor and was sniping from her end, the two botanists continued bickering cheerfully,

"Yunno David this is just like M5Z-84X."

"If you say so Katie."

Brown took down two soldiers with her super soaker even as she continued the conversation,

"Sure! I mean you and Lorne hiding from the big scary Telarians. Me and Stackhouse rescuing you…"

"Rescued me? As I recall we were only in trouble because you'd used your in with Doctor McKay to get the go ahead when you shouldn't possibly have gotten cleara-"

"Oh! Don't mention Rodney in front of Vanessa."

"No?"

"No, he keeps staring at her…" Greer automatically pricked his ears up to listen to the whispered word, "…breasts."

"Damn, he just never learns, does he?"

Brown sounded fond, "No, no he doesn't."

As they'd talked Brown and Parrish competently tag teamed four more of the hell's angels types trying to get up to their level.

Greer resisted the temptation to scoff at the insanity of white people, it wouldn't help anything any, but from the look on Becker's face, he'd noticed too. Ron shared a wry grin with his fellow soldier, noted that the two botanists were still holding their own, and signalled that he was gonna try and take a looksie at what was going on, on the other side of their little siege.

James timed it perfectly, her shot winged out and felled a member of the SGC who was fighting alongside the invaders. Greer risked a glance around his cover, immediately a bullet thudded into the concrete behind him.

"We need to do something!"

It was Doctor Parrish babbling again.

"No dammit. We've got cover here. A defensible position, and unknown numbers on their side. We stay."

Brown calmly fired off bursts of energy from her strange gun at the enemy, Parrish continued to argue his point excitedly,

"Look, Sergeant, we've both been in siege situations before. Doctor Brown and I are both First Wavers."

"Wha-?"

Becker looked just as confused as Greer felt,

"Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting, this isn't Pegasus."

Brown chimed in, surprisingly bitterly,

"More's the pity."

"Yeah, tell me about it Katie. Look, point is, we've" Parrish gestured between himself and the mousey woman, "both fought off Wraith. We're no soldiers, but we're not like poor Doctor Franklin either."

Brown tersely scolded the man, after she neatly took down another of the invaders,

"David, we're in a firefight. Do try to pay attention."

"Oh," the skinny doc looked chagrined, "Sorry Katie."

"Less sorries, more shooting."

Parrish redrew his own strange looking gun from where he'd stashed it in the waistband of his pants. Brown did not look at all surprised to see it there. Greer finally gave in to the urge to ask,

"What the hell is that?"

"Wraith stunner."

"Okay then."

Feeling vindictive Greer signalled that they should pop up in formation and lay down covering fire. To his gratified surprise, the two newly self-identified Atlanteans did exactly that. Between the four of them they managed to drive back the alien gangbangers, so their end of the corridor was no longer at risk of being overrun.

By the time Greer got to the stairway James was already organising a barricade at the stairs.

"Good work Sgt. Help me get some gurneys; we can jam them in there. Won't hold up to much, but it'll buy us time to work out what we do next."

"Nice moves yourself L.T."

He did not point out that most of it had been the civilians, Greer turned to the supply closet and started manhandling a gurney out and into the stairwell. Behind him there came a shout,

"Franklin! No! Come back!"

Spencer roared, "Get back here you useless fat fuck!"

Ronald grabbed for the civilian a second too late, a handful of shirt later, and the bulky man's momentum tore him out of Greer's grasp. Dammit! Stupid, stupid! It was his job to look out for these people, and he'd already lost one of them.

The twitchy Sergeant tore off after the civilian.

Greer was too late to stop him too. They vanished up the stairs. Ronald groaned in frustration,

"Fuck!"

James' jaw was set,

"Let them go. We need to protect the civvies here."

"I know. Dammit, I don't like this."

James nodded tersely.

Meanwhile, Parrish, Baxter, and Brown managed to jam three gurneys into the stairwell. It was a pathetic crappy barrier. But it could buy them vital moments. Becker was still guarding the evac route.

"Come on people!" Greer called out, "We don't want to get caught out here. It's too open."

"Keep watch. I'll check in with the medical people, see what's what. Back in five."

Greer nodded his agreement at James' orders. Becker moved over to cover the section of the stairwell she'd been guarding.

Parrish spoke up,

"We need to get to my lab. I've got some truly remarkable samples of a Pegasus species that's closely related to Atropa Belladona, it has some truly astonishing properties, it's not poisonous at all unlike its Earth counterpart."

"Doc, we don't have time for this!"

Brown interrupted lowly,

"No listen to him – it's a highly effective sedative. All we need to do is disperse it through the ventilation ducts and everyone below will be out cold."

"And why would we want to do that?"

The tiny redhead shot him a truly cutting look, Ronald was taken aback by the ferocity of it,

"Sergeant Greer, you saw it as clearly as we did. Half the people shooting were ours. There's something turning our own people against us."

Dr Lam pulled her handgun out of the emergency locker, then started passing around the weaponry to the rest of the remaining medical staff. The one consolation she had was that most of her people had left with their patients. Those that stayed favoured zats or wraith stunners. Do no harm still held sway here, even with the terrible situations they frequently came up against. Carolyn had a feeling alien life hellbent on enslaving the whole world had been on no one's mind when they came up with the Hippocratic oath.

From the radio chatter it was clearly an invasion, with clear aspirations of becoming something more like a foothold situation.

A real one this time.

Until they got the all clear, Carolyn and her staff were prepared to protect their patients at all costs. She looked across at the prone form of Master Bra'tac in recovery, fresh out of surgery, and the restless shape of Colonel Dixon. Sedated and restrained to the infirmary bed, the man was even more helpless than the average patient. Carolyn was grateful there'd been no serious crush injuries amongst the team that had come in earlier, 'just' a few fractured ribs and one compound arm fracture, all of whom had safely made it topside in the elevator.

She met Teal'c's calm gaze, the former member of SG-1 seemed remarkably serene about the situation given the frankly alarming chatter coming from the floors below, the shrill alarms blaring, and the fact that his old friend was lying in the infirmary with a recently patched hole in his shoulder.

The sentence that came out of his mouth was the last thing she expected,

"We shall need to carry out the Rite of M'al Sharran Doctor Carolyn Lam."

Lam blinked in incomprehension, then said, remarkably calmly given the suffusion of rage,

"No! I told you. It's barbaric! I won't condone it."

"It is the only treatment that has proven effective." Teal'c looked implacable, "In this condition Colonel Dixon is an enemy at our backs."

"Better he remains alive to give us intel later, than we condemn him to death for nothing."

Teal'c shot her a look, even as he reached for his own weapon, and moved as if to take a position beside the door. They were interrupted by a young woman with 2nd Lt bars on her collar. Teal'c brought his zat up to bear before lowering it. He gave the woman one of those serene nods of his,

"Yes Lieutenant James?"

Lam kept the relief out of her voice by channelling her anger at Teal'c's suggestion into her attitude instead. If the Lt was taken aback by the vehemence of her tone, she didn't show it,

"We've got a situation."

Lam opened her mouth, James hurriedly continued,

"More than the obvious that is. We just stopped you guys getting overrun by the invaders. Looked like Lucian Alliance to me."

"Indeed. Lieutenant James I heard the commotion outside. I chose to remain here to defend the infirm."

"Right. Yes. Well. That's not all of it. Not by a long shot. They, they had our people."

"Hostages?" Lam asked.

"No. Our people were on their side."

Lam felt the blood drain from her face. She turned to eye the struggling, even under sedation, form of Colonel Dixon.

"Teal'c have you ever heard of anything that could work so quickly?"

"Yes. I'd believed it a myth Doctor Lam."

"Clearly it wasn't."

"Indeed."

"Well?!" James's voice cut through the moment of shared horror.

"Amongst the Jaffa, there are legends of a device that could make Za'tarc with a flash. The tales have it that the gods Isis and Osiris often used such a thing to turn their enemies into their friends, before the System Lords rose up, and Ra threw them down in disgust at their hedonism. Rumour had it that Nirrti had acquired the technology before the end."

Lam blinked.

"Well that tears it, it's even more important we don't let anything happen to Colonel Dixon. He might be able to tell us what the hell happened."

Teal'c inclined his head. Carolyn turned to the lieutenant,

"Lt James. Please tell me you've got a team out there."

"Uh… Sort of ma'am."

"Sort of?"

"I've got a Marine Master Sergeant, a Private, and fou- three botanists."

Lam was incredulous, "And you successfully held off against the invaders?"

The chatter from the levels below had not been encouraging.

"Well," in a tone that said it all, "The botanists are Lanteans."

Carolyn hmmed in response, everyone at the SGC had heard the rumours.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

The heretofore expected, but as yet absent, sense of existential dread that Nick had been expecting to hit him like a ton of bricks ever since he'd gotten confirmation that aliens existed, finally arrived. With a thud. Rush had previously thought, all those months ago, calm in his mistaken belief in his own intellectual superiority, that he'd escaped such emotional turmoil by pure dint of thinking it fair fucking obvious that there had to be more life out there. The universe was an indescribably huge place after all. It was sheer fucking arrogance to believe humanity could be the only blip of life out in the dark.

Now, with the reality of it staring him in the face he was frozen with the sheer dread of it.

Rush wasn't sure if it was by chance or design, but Colonel Mitchell and one of the Sheppard brothers managed to escape the thoroughly stereotypical snatch of the alien craft. That is, Nick assumed it was fucking alien. It would be fair fucking embarrassing if he panicked like this over nothing.

The other two vanished up with the light and metal rings. Leaving nothing but a patch of dusty earth in their wake. The only thing that would make it more cliched, was a fucking cow looking distinctly puzzled.

Blinking the afterimages away, Nick realised he had to move, had to help the others. Escape this fucking insanity. Heart in his mouth, Rush sprinted towards their fallen forms. With a detached sort of horror, Nick spotted the half-a-gun sat incongruously on the desert floor, as he ran. The yellow-hot glow of molten steel showed where the rings had cleanly snatched only half of the thing away.

Nick was only metres away from the downed pair still sprawled on the desert floor when the rings materialised around him.

The first thing Nick knew after that was electric blue.

He collapsed to the floor, and blearily noticed the gold walls, before all consciousness fled.

O'Neill double took at the silver oak-leaves on his companion's shoulders,

"Hey Davis." He hissed as they cautiously picked their way through the choking dust and debris.

"Yessir?"

"Why didn't you say you'd made Lt Colonel?"

O'Neill wished they could have gone the other way, but the other exit from his office had been completely inaccessible. So, towards the probable death trap it was.

"You knew sir, you were the one who signed off on it."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"Huh." Jack frowned, "How are Majors Peterson and Green working out for you? I hope they aren't as big a pain in your ass as you used to be for us."

"Nossir."

Davis shot him a cheeky grin, a few years back O'Neill wouldn't have thought the man had enough personality to do even that. He sighed, and immediately regretted it as it felt like he'd breathed in all the grot in a room that had been sealed up for thousands of years. After hacking up a lung, O'Neill coughed out,

"I'm okay!"

He shot an annoyed look at Davis's concerned face, and doggedly continued picking his way over the rubble.

"Sir! Wait up!"

"What is it?"

Davis was scrambling rapidly through the broken concrete that blocked an office to the side. Eventually Jack worked out why, and once enough space had been cleared for him to safely help, joined Davis. A foot appeared. Then a lower leg. Then a body.

Airman O'Donnell looked very much the worse for wear. But he was alive, and conscious,

"Thank you! I thought I was a goner for sure!" The young man got some of his composure back and seemed to notice their ranks for the first time, "Sirs!"

O'Neill winced inwardly. Whilst rank did indeed have its privileges, he sometimes regretted the way it made it so difficult to talk to people.

"Oh for crying out loud, at ease Airman! Relax, well no. Don't relax, look around you. I think getting the hell outta here is more important than standing on ceremony, don't you?"

O'Donnell shot a panicked look towards Davis, before seeming to realise that O'Neill could still see him.

"Uh, yessir."

"Great, we're trying to find a way outta here. Care to join us?"

"Yeah. Uh.. What happened sir?"

"Far as we could tell… a something fell on Homeworld Command." Jack grumbled, "Just after we got our own building too. The rat bastards have no sense of timing."

Davis shared an amused look with O'Donnell, O'Neill pretended not to notice. Good, so long as they didn't notice they were no closer to finding an exit. In Davis's hand the Geiger counter clicked away to itself. Yeah, that'd been the reason the other exit was inaccessible, there was something decidedly hot at the other end of the building that they were trying to avoid. Jack had a sinking feeling that they wouldn't be able to for much longer.

They came upon another blocked corridor.

The Geiger counter crackled ominously, but it wasn't in the red zone yet.

The plan was simple. Greer and Lt James would escort one of the botanists down to the lab levels. The botanist would cook up a load of alien sedative, Greer would escort the geek to safety, and James would continue down to the central air circulation station for levels 26-28. The wholly separate system should hopefully prevent anyone closer to the surface from being taken down by the powerful drug.

Lam, Becker, and the remaining botanists would remain in the infirmary, guarding Dixon, and under Teal'c's capable protection. Greer and the nominated botanist would make their way to the secondary security station on level 16, with a backup supply of the sedative, and spread the plan to whoever was in charge of this mess.

Greer hoped it would work out that way. No plan survived an encounter with the enemy. From the atmosphere as they geared up with some of the contents of the Infirmary's security cupboard, James was of the same mind. So too were the botanists. They'd armed themselves with zats with all the calm of a member of a gate team.

After helping Lam and Teal'c barricade the infirmary, Greer, James and Brown picked their way past the makeshift barricade on the stairs and began their journey into unknown enemy territory.

"Boarders! They haven't bothered with the airlock, there's something stuck to the hull."

"You mean a breaching pod, Major?"

Sam turned to Marks in alarm,

"We're getting error messages on bulkhead hatches throughout the ship. They're making their way to engineering and the bridge."

"Dammit."

A new voice joined the chatter of the command channel on the radio,

"Carter, we've got pirates."

"Ronon?"

Sam was surprised for a moment, she'd forgotten he was on board, he'd tagged along because, as he'd put it, he was 'bored' waiting around on Earth. She'd never been quite so grateful to see the taciturn young man in her life, his familiar unimpressed visage a surprising comfort,

"I need you to keep them out of engineering Ronon. If they get to the engines or life support, we're done for."

"Sure."

"There's a saboteur somewhere on board."

At that Ronon's expression morphed into one of fury, he shot her a smile that was all teeth and dashed off in the direction of the engines.

Steeling herself Carter started issuing ship wide commands,

"All personnel to their designated stations. We have boarders. This is not a drill."

Mitchell focussed doggedly on putting one foot in front of the other. His whole world had tunnelled down to staying on his feet, despite the way his head was pounding fit to burst. He could not believe how much Sheppard was complaining. Cam had never known a man to bitch so damned much about sand. Being fair, the wind picked up enough that sharp grains kept getting thrown in his face every few minutes, and he was looking down at nothin' but the small patch of ground he was walking, or more truthfully, tottering over. This was the uncomfortable, difficult to work through scrubby desert of Colorado too. No cacti per say, but lots of prickly little bushes.

Cam staggered onwards, his arm slung over Sheppard's shoulder, it was awkward. Cam wasn't short by any stretch, but Sheppard was just that bit taller than he was. Enough to make it tough as hell with his knee. It was going to be difficult to cover any ground, but Cam was determined to give it the good ole college try.

Fuck. Cam's knee was wrecked. His good knee too.

Mitchell had no idea where the others had gotten to, he hoped to hell they were okay. Whatever the hell happened while he'd been out couldn't have been good from the way Sheppard was clutching at that zat like his life depended on it. Cam somehow ended up with the salvaged remains of a handgun, he couldn't quite tell what it used to be. Most of the barrel had been sheared clean off, making it resemble nothing so much as the world's smallest a sawn-off shotgun. Honestly Cam wasn't convinced that the thing would be safe to fire, or even if standing directly behind the person doing the shooting would be any protection. But it was all they had; Sheppard had practically pressed it into his hands before Cam fully came around.

Cam had woken up with a splitting headache, and the realisation that he was in a fireman's carry being awkwardly hauled across the landscape. He'd struggled his way to the ground, and instantly regretted that decision. His knee let him know in no uncertain terms that it had been overextended at some point when he'd been out. There'd been a distinct lack of people chasing them, despite Sheppard's closed lip worry. Cam couldn't tell if anyone was following them, but he sure as hell hoped they'd hear them before they were on them. For all his bellyaching, Sheppard was doing a good job of dragging both of their sorry behinds along in the desert scrub.

They staggered along, like the worst, most geriatric three-legged race contestants in the world. The mental image made Cam snort, which he immediately regretted as it pulled on his aching ribs.

Aw crap.

As his Grandmammy used to say, he was worn slap out, but he'd make it.

They marched onwards.

Eventually Cam remembered why every soldier hated sand so much. The nasty stuff got everywhere, it was chafing something awful before long, they still had miles to go.

The going was hard, not for the first time since the sirens had started wailing Vanessa wished Sheppard was leading this thing. Oh, he'd probably have no better clue what was going on than the rest of them. She was AFSOC, James was well-aware just how much of what Sheppard had done the other day had been improvisation. But… Dammit, it had been reassuring fighting her way through the SGC alongside the Atlantis CO's competent presence.

James told herself to buck up, even as they stumbled on yet another crush of viciously fighting soldiers who should all have been on their side. When she'd asked if this sort of thing happened a lot round these parts, James hadn't expected confirmation to come along quite so soon. This had been bad enough the first time around, though with the 20/20 of hindsight, James now knew they'd barely been putting up much of a fight.

These guys though?

It was a vicious and bitter skirmish every time they came across a load of zombiefied SGC guys down here.

Between her and Greer and the zats, they cut a swathe through the mass of maddened SGC personnel blocking their way to the botanical labs. The USMC Master Sgt was pretty badass. Brown wasn't flinching either, she'd materialised one of those Pegasus-special water gun looking things that Sheppard also favoured, and was laying down cover fire as quickly as any hardened veteran.

Finally, after what felt like an absolute age of stunning, zip-tying, and doubling back, they made it to the damned labs.

They were blessedly empty.

James set herself up guarding their six and let Greer and Brown hop to it.

Hopefully their magic sleepy time potion would sort all this crap out. Then it would just be mopping up. They could sort out who was who afterwards.

All was quiet.

There was a commotion down the hall. James didn't abandon her self-assigned post, but she did keep a wary ear out to see if the noise would get any closer.

Eventually it did, a young Asian officer was barrelling down the hall, pursued by yet more zombiefied personnel.

"Duck!"

The captain did so.

James rattled off six zat shots, five of them struck home.

The captain dealt with the sixth soldier, neatly taking down the snarling airman with a move straight out of the AFSOC handbook.

"Nice job Captain." James called out, "Need a hand?"

The woman turned, and James read Satterfield on her tag. In an efficient manner she accepted James's offered zip-ties, and they both got to work securing the downed soldiers. Once finished, Satterfield dusted herself off and kept a wary eye on the corridor she'd just come down,

"Thanks for the assist. What are you doing down here Lieutenant? I thought everyone else on these levels had been turned already."

"Ah, we've got a plan. That's if Teal'c's guess about what turned our people was right."

"I saw it on the monitors, it was a flash of light or a sound, out of this grenade thing. Suddenly half our people down there were tearing into our side. The people who weren't taken in were overwhelmed."

James nodded grimly. That more or less confirmed their suspicions. Proving she was the officer her rank implied Satterfield immediately went from sharing grim news to getting on with business,

"Anything I can do to help?"

"You can help me guard this here door until the geeks come out with our solution."

Satterfield grinned.

"I am a qualified geek myself yunno."

"Oh? In that case you should go in there and help, uh," James remembered herself a second too late, this wasn't the tight-knit loose chain of command structure of spec ops anymore, "if that's okay with you, Captain."

"Of course, this is the SGC. You've gotta be prepared to pitch in around here."

Satterfield vanished into the depths of the botany lab behind her. With renewed caution James resumed her watch.

Camile tried not to get squashed in the crush of people heading up to the surface or lose track of the IOA delegates and Senator Armstrong. Their escort, a distressingly young 1st Lieutenant, called Scott, was gamely trying to keep charge of their little group. But Camile had been around the political class long enough, and met enough fresh out of ROTC recruits in her line of work at DC, that she knew he was fighting a losing battle,

"Ma'am please, we can't afford to linger. This way."

Madam Shen shot the boy a filthy glare, Senator Armstrong, bless the man, was stoically pretending that it was all fun and games.

"Now, now, ambassador, I wanted to see just where my money was going same as you. We're all caught up in this mess, whatever it is."

The man's aide and daughter, Chloe, a more blatant example of nepotism Camile had never seen, nervously kept pace in the middle. Of the whole group, she was the only one obeying the young Lieutenant's orders with any degree of alacrity. Camile could see the other soldier biting his tongue to stop from shouting at them all to get going.

The group made it to level 15, nearly up to the NORAD/SGC divide and the secondary lift shaft to the surface when the rumble echoed through the base. Whatever was going on down there, they all felt it.

Around them the crowd were remarkably well-behaved, despite the air of quiet panic that suffused the atmosphere.

"Curtis is a good soldier, he's a tough guy. He's not gonna let anything happen to you."

Scott tried to add reassurances, but Camile knew it was the exact kind of line they taught at ROTS, Senator Armstrong was probably well-aware of that fact too,

"Well then, isn't this a grand adventure hey Chloe? Proof that we're getting our money's worth!"

Mitchell wanted to cry when they found the road. Ordinarily he would be advocating for sticking with the bush, but, the flat surface would let them make faster progress, and his knee was agony. Oh, Sheppard was doing his best to take most of the weight, but the angle, and the need to keep moving meant it was a losing battle.

Not for the first time he cursed the fact that his left leg was held together with more titanium than bone. Cam blearily wondered what the hell happened, between the suspected concussion and the gnawing permanent agony that was fluctuating between a low-grade burning sensation, and jagged shards of ice shooting up towards his groin with every step… Well, he weren't thinking too clearly at the moment.

Concussion or no, Cam could count to five, and they were missing three members of their party.

Sheppard had been closed lipped about what happened, not out of secrecy or anything like that, but the need to save his breath as he hauled his and Cam's sorry behinds out of the danger zone. Again, Cam eyed up the surreal site of the sawn-off handgun he was clutching. It was a completely clean cut. Looked almost sorta melted.

Hazily Mitchell checked their six for the umpteenth time, before digging in for the long haul.

Davis let out an exclamation, and started shaking a figure that had been disguised in the gloom of yet another office,

"Hey, hey are you okay?"

"Yeah yeah I'm fine."

O'Neill's questioning, "And you are?" was more sarcastic than it should have been. The figure looked painfully young. Even more than Airman O'Donnell back there. This new guy looked even worse on the baby-face front than the lieutenants Sheppard had unknowingly put through their paces. He looked pretty squirrelly too, come to think of it.

"Airman Evans."

Jack stood back and observed as the other two got the new guy on his feet, albeit unsteadily.

"What happened?"

Jack immediately shot back cheerfully,

"Not a clue!"

Squirrelly guy glared; Jack raised his eyebrows at him. They started trying to find a way around the newest load of rubble blocking their path. There was about a foot's worth of clearance between the mountain of concrete and the ceiling, the four of them clambered up and over.

O'Neill found himself embarrassingly short of breath, he hated to admit it but,

"Maybe we should rest for a minute, I can hardly breathe."

Airman Evans added the oh so helpful observation,

"It's the dust. It's in your lungs already."

O'Neill glared at the young man, even as Davis added his own two cents,

"We don't stop, we keep going."

"Oh for cryin- Davis, this is no time to pretend to be superman!"

They all settled down to catch their breath, Jack felt the need to lighten the mood. It was his fault they'd stopped,

"Well, isn't this cheery?"

O'Donnell gamely agreed,

"Yessir."

Davis rolled his eyes. Jack didn't hold back his smug grin, rank did have its privileges after all.

"So, how're we gonna spin this one to the president?"

"Oh no sir. That's all your job."

"Oh, come on Colonel, you're still our Pentagon liaison. It's half your job too yunno." Jack widened his eyes, "You're paid to kiss up to fifty percent of the asses."

Davis scowled. O'Donnell was visibly trying not to laugh. Jack started readying another riposte when Evans grabbed at Davis. In the dark, with the dust, the moment was a surreal confusion of movement and noise.

When the situation resolved into something Jack's brain could translate, Evans had Davis by the neck with what looked suspiciously like a shiv pointed at the major's jugular,

"We need to get out now. If you don't, I'm gonna kill him!"

"Oh for!"

Jack didn't bother finishing the exclamation, he simply drew a bead on the guy with his sidearm. He just knew Airman Snuffy had been suspicious. At the sight of the gun the 'Airman' began to panic,

"Put the gun down now. Put it down or I'm gonna kill him!"

Davis looked pretty calm for a desk jockey caught up in a hairy situation. If it weren't for the struggle to catch his breath, Jack was half convinced the guy would have looked bored. Jack aimed for the same tone,

"Airman what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm not going to die in here, we're going to turn around and find another way out!"

O'Neill sarcastically asked,

"Lucian Alliance - right, Airman Snuffy?"

He tried to work out how to get Davis out of this crap, the 'Airman' looked confused by the reference. Which only served to confirm it.

O'Neill didn't have time to mount an attack. O'Donnell loomed up behind the struggling pair out of the gloom like a bear and clamped down on the wrist holding the shiv. The shiv was crushed with a snap. Davis stumbled free; the distinctive wet crunch of a neck being twisted in a direction the human body was never intended to move echoed loudly in the silence.

O'Neill didn't flinch at the altogether too familiar sound.

He nodded at O'Donnell as the body of the Alliance spy slumped to the floor,

"Thank you."

O'Neill coolly poked at the corpse, with the toe of his boot he pushed the collar down exposing the black marking on the guy's neck that he'd caught a glimpse of earlier,

"See that? Clan tattoo." He met Davis's eye, "You okay colonel?"

"Yessir."

"Looks like Sixth House. He must have been the pilot."

O'Donnell looked confused,

"How'd you figure that sir?"

Even as he mused out loud, Jack was painfully aware that they were all missing something about this situation. What the hell had caused all this destruction? He had a sinking feeling they'd find out when they walked into it,

"Plan must have been to plant one of those bombs of theirs, then walk away. They must not have figured we had Asgard scanners at our disposal." Jack let out a melancholy sigh, "That's another one I owe Thor."

They were at level twelve when the tension finally snapped,

"I'm a US Senator! Don't you dare patronise me son!"

Scott put on his best 'officer' tone of voice,

"Sir, I need you to calmly make your way to the surface. We don't want you getting in the way of operations, or worse, getting hurt on our watch."

Scott tried not to let the bitching of the civilians he was escorting get to him. He'd initially thought he found the Senator's daughter, Chloe, attractive, in that distant, 'maybe I'll like her after all' kind of way that he felt about most women. But… As their attempts to make it to the evacuation point continued, Matthew found he felt pretty much the same way about her as most girls. She was confusing and altogether too soft, not as in girls are weaker, though as a soldier he'd heard that opinion expressed often enough, even at OTS. But… Just in a completely unattractive fashion that he'd always tried to push down and smother.

Oh he knew that DADT was on the way out, there'd been whispers for months now, and as far as Matthew knew only one SGC servicemember had ever been sent down under that section of the UCMJ, and that had been because their tryst had been witnessed by some asshole NID appointee. Old Hammond apparently always turned a blind eye, even when the affair was blatant, and Landry wasn't that particular brand of asshole.

Scott eyed up the Senator, and his daughter again. Why he, of all people, had gotten stuck with escorting this lot to safety, Matthew didn't know. Perhaps it was some sort of subtle punishment. At least the IOA lady wasn't complaining, though from the frown creasing her brow she was just as nervous about this situation as the others, she was just less vocal about it.

"Why do we have to evacuate?"

That was Coolidge.

"I've lived through an invasion attempt before you know young man. I survived the wraith. A few pirates are hardly-"

"Sir, I'm going to need you to pipe down, and let me get on with my job."

They joined the press of people making their way to the eleventh floor, up here nearing the non-SGC levels it was getting crowded again. Servicepeople were making their way down into the mountain just as quickly as civilians were trying to get out. It made for a hectic crush.

Dr Covel, the guy who was supposed to be SGCs new research honcho, wasn't complaining per say, but he'd been making passive aggressive comments the whole way to the surface,

"I must say Camile, I'm impressed."

Wray's response was dry,

"By what, the evacuation?"

"No, no of course no-" He caught Scott's eye, "Well, yes. Very efficient, excellent example of military derring-do. But what I meant was, it was everything you IOA types promised. I admit I was sceptical when the recruiter came to Cornell, but the science here? Marvellous. There's technology that I could scarcely have dreamed would exist within my lifetime…"

Covel continued to marvel inappropriately, Scott barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and only because Chloe was looking his way.

They were nearly at the top of the stairwell to the NORAD half of the mountain, Armstrong, who'd seemed too affable before, started complaining. Past panting breaths he huffed,

"Why didn't we use the lifts Lieutenant?"

"Lifts are for evacuating personnel who can't walk Senator, sorry."

"Surely as VIPs we merit-"

"That means people from the infirmary." Senator Armstrong looked annoyed, Scott belatedly tacked on a, "Sir."

The man barely looked appeased.

Progress slowed to a crawl at they reached the final landing. There was a hell of a crowd gathered.

Dr Caine, the IT guy Scott had seen around the mountain a few times stiffened as soon as he caught sight of Senator Armstrong. Veins popped out on his temples. His face went red.

He scrambled towards the politician with an arm outstretched.

"For the Sixth House!"

"What the hell?" Curtis exclaimed uselessly, as the civilian got ever closer to the Senator.

Scott grabbed the wildly thrashing tech around the waist and heaved him backwards. The crowd around them were bunching up, the people behind still trying to get off the staircase and out of the mountain, the people in front trying to help.

It was totally FUBAR. The stairs were no place for this kind of fighting.

For a terrifying moment Scott thought he was gonna go over the handrail, and meet his maker 20 stories below, but Armstrong grabbed him by the shoulder and helped him keep his balance.

Curtis finally seemed to remember he was a soldier and started trying to help wrestle the foaming civilian to the ground. The sharp edges of the stairwell, and the close quarters were making it next to impossible.

One moment Scott thought they had everything in hand.

The next there was a shout.

Curtis fell backwards, dazed by a blow to the head from an elbow.

Dr Caine rushed at the Senator.

Still struggling with the maddened civilian, Senator Armstrong vanished over the handrail.

From what felt like a million miles away Scott heard the exclamations below as people tried to catch them.

What felt like an age later, there was a thump.

Caine was still gibbering madly half-over the rail, half on the stairs of the flight one story below. Soldiers and civilians alike were holding the guy back.

Scott couldn't quite feel he deserved it.

Through the numb shock, Scott watched as the skinny little guy needed six men to pin him down and plastic cuff him. Even restrained, the doc was struggling like a wild thing. Face purple, veins popping obscenely. The group in front of him began manhandling the guy off the stairs.

He turned, and saw the look of blank disbelief morph into devastation, then rage on Chloe's face.

Scott tried to stave off the inevitable,

"I'm so sorry Chloe, but we need to get outta here. I know you're looking for someone to blam-"

"I'm not looking!"

With a growl Scott wouldn't have credited with the demure young woman he'd been accompanying all day, Chloe leapt at him. Clawed hands outstretched. Matthew deftly outmanoeuvred the young woman's attempts to physically attack him. He pinned her arms with embarrassing ease. Shushing her Scott simultaneously continued to hustle the group off the stairs and towards the surface.

It wasn't pleasant. The attempts at slaps gradually devolved into outright sobs. It was a good job he'd been doing so much PT lately due to all that training; he'd have never been able to pull her near dead-weight along the corridor otherwise. Matthew kept up a litany of soothing nonsense, even as they made it past the changeover point to NORAD and the Big Air Force section of the mountain on the eleventh floor, and the going got easier.

Somehow, they made it to the staircase to the surface, and began climbing. By this point Chloe was sobbing inconsolably, Scott turned to see how the rest of his group was doing and caught Wray's eye. Wray looked unwillingly impressed. The sour look the HR lady had been wearing the whole time was briefly replaced by an expression of understanding that he just couldn't stand. Scott turned away hurriedly, unable to stomach the empathy he saw there.

Sam made her way through the ship corridors. She'd ordered Marks to barricade the command deck and bridge and reroute command to the secondary bridge. Carter hoped they wouldn't see through her bluff, and waste valuable time trying to break through some of the thickest bulkheads in the ship, only to find the consoles they were protecting were useless to them.

Carter needed to get to the engineering deck, with its access to the shield generators and the hyperdrive systems. (Not to mention the Hammond's copy of the Asgard Core.) Whilst she couldn't help but worry about her crew, Sam knew they were all extremely competent. Between veterans of the Apollo, the Odyssey, and the Daedalus, long term SGC personnel, and the members of the Atlantis Expedition… The crew of the Hammond were unusually experienced.

A man dressed head to toe in the black leathers the alliance favoured appeared at the next corridor junction. Without compunction Sam shot him with her zat before he realised she was there. It wasn't a kill-shot, just a stun. Besides, she still remembered what happened to Colonel Paul Emerson when the Alliance had taken the Odyssey. They'd give her crew no quarter. So, she wouldn't give them a chance either.

Sam zip tied the guy and rerouted power from the nearest supply closet so he wouldn't be able to get out without a great deal of effort from someone outside, then moved on.

Sirens were wailing.

Sgt Hunter Riley couldn't believe it. They'd only just finished tidying up the worst of the wreckage from the Wraith bombing, and now?

Now the warehouses that were being used to hold all that downed wraith tech were on fire.

It just wasn't fair.

He'd been on clean-up duty for weeks.

They'd been days away from getting to the chair.

Now? Nellis was burning again.

Hunter could only hope he'd survive whatever the hell this was. Figures dressed in black were running around everywhere. He guessed only some of them were on his side, though of course, in his black Air Force, non-SGC, but part of the Stargate Programme, garrison uniform, Riley at least blended in with everyone else.

He dashed to the nearest supply closet and hoped against hope that this one would contain something he could use to defend himself. Nope, nada. Again, he was stuck with the clip in his sidearm and nothing else. Riley was lucky to even have that much; as an administrative aide he was purely there to help out the desk jockeys.

A loud boom that could be felt, as much as heard, rattled the complex.

From his viewpoint in the supply closet on the outskirts of Nellis, Sgt Hunter Riley watched with wide eyes as the central 'here's all the crap we haven't catalogued yet' Area 51 warehouse went up in flames. There went the scavenged wraith tech. This far out it was easy to see when the tide of the skirmish turned, the ant-like figures scurrying back and forth resembled a tactical game rather than real people. The airmen of Nellis successfully got the enemy on the run, driving the invaders out with well-placed gunfire, and even what looked suspiciously like a hastily uncovered railgun emplacement.

One moment you couldn't hide from the enemy, the next, it was all over.

The raiders or whatever the hell they'd wanted had fled as quickly as they'd arrived.

The tide had turned against the invaders with the all the unpredictable danger of the sea.

Riley sighed in relief and slid down to lean against the door of his supply closet. Perhaps things around here could go back to normal some time this year? Was that too much to ask?

The idiots running this conference were convinced the likes of Kavanagh held all the answers to the world's energy crisis. Just wait until declassification came along, and Rodney's work on the mkII Naquada generators, the matter bridge, wormhole networks, and ZPM's got released.

Rodney held back a sneer, he'd agreed to come, Zelenka had plied him with Molson's, and flattery, the Czech sneak! 'It'll be fun' they said, 'you'll get to mock Tunney's horribly incorrect theories about quantum tunnelling!' they said. Rodney sighed and stuffed a handful of caviar blinis into his mouth, munching as loudly and obnoxiously as he could to express his disdain for the whole event. The only attention it earnt him was an appalled look from the server.

Miko sidled up to him, and, much more politely, started cramming as much expensive food from the buffet onto her plate as she could manage. All the Expedition scientists who'd come were acting the same way, to a greater or lesser extent. Treating Earth as another alien planet, with strange foods to try and customs to observe, or in this case, completely ignore.

Rodney was painfully aware the Expedition scientists were acting ridiculously cliquey, oh not in the adolescent hazing/bullying sense at Highschool. It was as if they were the group of kids at uni that always hung around together, always sat together in the cafeteria, and stared at outsiders awkwardly until they left. Other people at the conference were giving them weird looks, and well, if Rodney was noticing it, it must be bad.

He nodded politely to Zelenka (rather than melting him with the sheer intensity of his perfectly justified rage), who was in a corner with Simpson discussing something heatedly. They were probably arguing about the possibility of organic bearings again. The disgusting semi-grown nature of Wraith-tech had made it clear that it was possible to do all sorts of things with, McKay shuddered, nature, that most scientists on Earth had never contemplated in their wildest pipedreams. McKay thought the argument had been well-worn back in Pegasus, let alone here, where they were forced to debate in euphemisms and aspersions.

Biro and Kusanagi were busily chattering to each other over the buffet. Well, Biro was chattering, Miko was nodding along politely, whilst cramming as much of the buffet food into her mouth as she could politely fit in one swallow. It was impressive, the amount heaped on her plate rivalled Rodney's, yet somehow, she managed to be …dainty as she ate her own bodyweight in badly made hors d'oeuvres.

McKay turned and eyed the crowd with a cynical eye. So far the conference was the usual mix of hilariously incorrect theories (based upon premises that were so far off base, that the basic assumptions contained therein were not only wrong, but ludicrously inappropriate), stultifying papers that nevertheless worried Rodney as they threatened to impinge ever further upon his as-yet-unpublished work's breakthroughs from decades past, and… science that was so pitifully basic a pre-schooler could do it.

Of course, his fellow Atlanteans being present helped soften the dark edge of 'we don't belong here anymore' that they were all feeling. Rodney spent much of the conference alternately trading disbelieving looks with Zelenka about just how very wrong everyone was about the basic fundamentals of the fabric of the universe, and… quietly but fiercely arguing with Radek and Miko about just what those fundamentals actually were instead.

It was all fun and games until someone pulled a gun.

Rodney's automatic response was to reach for his own. Which, actually, he had brought with him. It just wasn't openly displayed on his hip, like it would have been back in Pegasus. The split second of fumbling for the within-waistband holster gave the guy the chance to grab Simpson.

The bald thug, with a neck as thick as his head, had Simpson by her neck. He gestured with the hand holding the gun,

"Come with us… quietly, if you want your friend to live."

It was a good threat. Calm. Professional.

Miko, looking every inch the stereotypical Japanese wallflower, threw her plate at his face, and in the disgusted fishy aftermath, jumped on the man's back and dug a vicious little hand into the join between his neck and his shoulder.

The mass of muscle and testosterone went down like a felled tree, yowling in a surprisingly high octave. It was a move Rodney recognised from Civilian Self-Defence 101. She'd dug her bony (and from experience, extremely pointy) fingers into a nerve cluster.

Simpson struggled out of his grasp and joined Miko in grabbing at the goon's gun. The two women took him down in what would have been a hilarious slap-fest, if the situation wasn't so dire. Rodney finally got a hold of his own sidearm and cocked it at the brute, just as several more jackbooted thugs emerged from the crowd.

The apparent ringleader, a bruised heap of quivering flesh, held at gunpoint, with two sidearms, one of them his own gun, no less. But… There were five Lanteans, and nine thugs.

It was a standoff.

Dammit, this was the exact kind of stuff Sheppard was paid to deal with. Rodney was the genius tech guy who came up with brilliant last-minute solutions that killed the badguys weapons, not the one who pointed weapons at people. Yet, here he was.

Around them the convention hall descended into chaos. People were alternately streaming from the hall, frozen in fear, or, perversely, trying to get closer to gawp.

Miko, Simpson, Biro, and Zelenka all stood firm. They were clearly struggling with the urge to leap forward and do something. For all that she'd been amazing, Miko was just as unarmed as the others. They hadn't been expecting trouble, here, at a conference for - for – oh Rodney couldn't remember, something to do with aeronautics and astrophysics – but at a conference for Feynman's sake!

He wished one of the military grunts was around. With Lorne off doing god knows what in DC, Major Teldy and Major Rutherford were sharing military duties on the city. Why hadn't one of them come along as an escort? Dammit, Rodney should have gone with the botanists to the SGC, he was sure that Parrish, Brown, and Baxter were having a much better time of it escorting whatshisface, the new hybrid plant guy they were all so excited to meet. Rodney shuddered internally at memories of Parrish exclaiming loudly over some new species of daisy. Or not.

Rodney readjusted his sweaty grip on his beretta.

This was just like that time with Lavin and Kolya and the Genii thugs. Only, Rodney's team wasn't around to help save the day. Rodney wondered when backup would arrive, then blinked when he realised.

McKay was probably the most experienced person in the room when it came to this sort of situation.

For a moment his whole self-image inverted on itself. It was like Rodney was Rod. His infuriating, cooler, better, alternate self.

Arms newly steady around the Beretta, McKay checked his aim. He knew he'd never be as good as Ronon or even Sheppard at this, but he was a fair shot these days. All the Lanteans were. You had to be. 'How to survive a Wraith Encounter 101' was not just a funny name for civilian bootcamp, the way most of the cretinous SGC-bound military personnel seemed to believe. The classes weren't an excuse for the grunts to humiliate the scientific contingent, but a genuine effort to make sure that no one would be helpless if the worst should happen and Atlantis was overrun. (Again.)

McKay thought he had a clear shot. But he didn't want to risk the civilians in the hall.

He didn't want to resort to base threats, but, what else could he do? Trying to keep the quaver out of his voice, Rodney let his mouth start running,

"You know you'll never get away with this. We've faced down worse …people than you. They generally end up dead."

Biro, bless her strange little soul, quickly cottoned on to what Rodney was trying to do,

"He's right you know. I mean, you should really see the state of some of the corpses," she gestured dramatically his way, "He's directly responsible for."

One of the thugs who wasn't a groaning heap on the floor was beginning to look nervous, Biro continued,

"I mean… I've never seen anything quite like it. And as a pathologist, let me tell you, I've pretty much seen everything that can be done to the human body and then some."

Zelenka piped up,

"Yes yes, she is right. Rodney is small, vicious, petty man. Who happily takes out base urges on colleagues and enemies."

McKay felt one side of his mouth tilt up in a grimace. It seemed to do the trick. The nearest goon, another shaven headed lump of more muscle than sense, took a step back. Even with a brain the size of a walnut, he could read the room. Rodney readjusted his sweaty grip on his sidearm and leaned into the role he'd suddenly found himself cast in,

"Oh yes, you wouldn't believe how high the turnover rate is in my department." He channelled the terror and rage that no one else was doing anything shine in his delivery, he had wanted to be an actor once upon a time, "And guess what? The new recruits come in to replace the dead ones. It's a literal example of dead men's boots in action."

Miko and Zelenka both nodded sagely. Miko, Rodney noted, took the opportunity to move a step closer to the thug nearest to her.

The best lies were always close to the truth.

"You've gotta come with us. Or, or we'll start shooting!"

Simpson's grip on her purloined gun was steady as she gestured Zelenka over to a more defensible position. Rodney let the full force of his temper come to bear,

"Oh, really? I presume your bosses wanted us alive. Or are you too stupid to realise what sort of punishment you'd earn if your quarry turned up dead?" Rodney waved a hand to forestall the obvious response, "No, no, don't answer that. I can tell you don't have the intelligence to have been sent on this sort of job."

Simpson, who'd been doing a great job covering three of the bad guys with her gun, whilst casually standing on the downed guy's fingers, gestured emphatically,

"There's witnesses here. Don't force us to do something you'll regret."

As if there'd been a signal, the Lanteans practically moved as one. Rodney ducked as the talkative thug finally lost patience and fired a couple of rounds his way, he shot back, aiming for the other man's foot. He hit a knee. He'd been aiming for his foot. But hey! He was improving. No more shooting blindly with his eyes closed! The man went down with a howl.

Miko, meanwhile, had climbed her chosen thug like a tree. He was already on the ground in a groaning heap. They did say, you always had to look out for the quiet ones. She'd really taken those Pegasus 101 defence lessons to heart.

Radek tackled his thug, they were in a scrappy snarling heap on the floor. By sheer viciousness, Radek seemed to be winning. Zelenka was willing to use fingernails, pull hair, and even bite. The bigger man should have overwhelmed the little Czech engineer, but from the blood and the screams, Zelenka had a chunk of the man's ear in his mouth. Oh wait no, that was a piece of nose.

Rodney cautiously fired off another shot, this time hitting the targeted foot successfully. The guy he'd hit started screaming like a little girl. Hah! Take that bully who dares sully science!

The retort of another gun firing was deafening in the convention hall.

People were screaming and running.

Rodney looked around desperately trying to work out who'd been hurt.

Oh, oh, Simpson had taken down two more of the mysterious bad guys with her confiscated gun. Good for her. She'd been rather more ruthless than Rodney, one of them had a sucking chest wound, the other was staring disbelievingly at the bloody mass that used to be his thigh.

That left two thugs.

Panic struck.

Rodney spun, hunted for Biro. It took a long moment to parse what he was seeing. Once the panicked haze departed, Rodney blinked and the bloody image in front of him resolved into a chillingly familiar sight. The pathologist was cheerfully tending to what looked like a compound fracture in the man's arm. The thug was on the floor, tears running down his face and whimpering. Rodney caught a snatch of,

"Now now, big strong man like you, don't be such a baby!"

Before the conversation was drowned out by the poor guy's yell, as Biro casually reset the bone with an audible crunch. Rodney deliberately turned his back on the gory sight. The last thug was a breeze to take down after that.

He dropped his gun hastily to the floor and held his hands up in clear capitulation.

Rodney kept a wary draw on the lot of them.

After what felt like an absolute age, his heart hammering in his chest the whole time, seriously how did Sheppard always act so casual when he did stuff like this? The convention security and the police swarmed into the hall.

Very rapidly the nine men were in handcuffs or restrained to medical gurneys. Though not before there was a tense moment when it looked as if the Lanteans would have to spend the night in the cells themselves. It was the thug still who'd surrendered who ended the standoff. Completely ignoring his glowering colleagues, he confessed to everything. The thugs who weren't writhing in the not so tender care of the paramedics, looked increasingly angry as the sorry story of a last-minute kidnap job spilled out of the weaselly would-be-mercenary's mouth. The issue was settled when several of their fellow conference-attendees spoke up, singing praises of how brave the Lanteans had been, saving the whole hall from the terrible scary gunmen. All the mercenaries seemed to decide to surrender to the authorities at once after that.

Rodney had never been so relieved to surrender to the local authorities in his life.

"Doctor Rodney McKay PhD PhD. Myself and my companions are civilian contractors with the United States Air Force. These men," Rodney gestured emphatically, "Made an attempt on Doctor Simpson's person. We defended ourselves."

"Right! They tried to kidnap me. Miko helped take him down."

Simpson gestured at Miko; the police blinked in disbelief at the quintet of apparently scholarly types who'd just held their own against eight intimidating armed men. The guy Biro had been practicing her bedside manner on whimpered in fear when she looked at him. Even the police looked nervous at Zelenka's bloodily grinning visage.

"I will begin spacing members of your crew if you do not give yourself up Colonel Carter."

Sam cursed.

"One crewmember every hour. You have an hour to hand yourself in before you're directly responsible for the death of one of your subordinates. Commander Kiva out."

Sam had holed up in the engineering complex, with the secondary hyperdrive systems, and the door barricaded. Ronon cleared the way, Sam had taken advantage of his chaos to work some of her own. She was desperately trying to reroute power so the boarders wouldn't be able to completely take over the ship's systems.

As it was, Sam was concerned they might have already taken the bridge. Deliberately abandoned or not. The enemy were gaining ground in her ship far too quickly for Carter's liking. The last radio chatter she'd heard before she'd been forced to hole up in here to sabotage her own damned ship had been alarming, people were fighting in pockets all over the ship, and now Kiva was threatening to throw people out of the airlock.

Sam knew the decision to trick the LA into fighting their way towards the bridge had been the correct one. But her inability to be there to protect her subordinates while all this was coming down on them burned. It was like the gut punch of stepping through Atlantis's stargate to Earth and getting the news that she wouldn't be allowed back to help her people all over again. Only this time, it had been her choice.

Still, she'd achieved what she'd set out to do. Kiva would never gain control of the ship's primary systems. They were locked out of all Asgard technology, which included the hyperdrives and the weapons, and even if they successfully took the bridge, the Lucian Alliance would be unable to override Sam's command codes.

Now, to rescue her people.

Sam only hoped she could come up with a solution in time. There was someone in the ship's systems fighting her, the LA hacker had slowed her down at every turn. Hopefully that delay wouldn't prove fatal. Carter needed to regain control of her ship.

With a flash of inspiration Sam knew what she was going to do, she opened the ship wide comms,

"All crew. Code Persephone. I repeat Code Persephone."

Sam could only hope that everyone on board had read their briefing packets, if not finished the 0g training. Taking a moment to brace herself on the nearest handhold, Sam reached down into the guts of the crystalline array in front of her and yanked out the crystal that controlled the artificial gravity.

Immediately, she was on the float.

The minimal 0.1g thrust of the sub-light engines began pushing her gently towards the nearest wall. Damn. If she had any say in the design of the next generation of Earth's BC-300 series fleet, Sam would make sure that the decks were arranged perpendicular to the direction of thrust next time, as opposed to aligned parallel with thrust.

She rechecked that the bulkhead to engineering was sealed. And got working on the more complex job of sabotaging life-support in select compartments in her ship. This was going to be a much tougher job. There were several layers of redundancies and backups built into these systems to prevent Carter from doing exactly what she was about to attempt.

The radio that up until that moment had been dead let out a burst of static, then a voice echoed tinnily across the line,

"Hello? Anyone alive in there? This is Colonel Telford. I repeat any survivors?"

"Telford! It's good to hear your voice. O'Neill here inside Homeworld Command."

"General, good to hear you too sir."

"I've got Davis and Airman O'Donnell here with me. We took out one 'Airman Evans' who was pretending to be one of ours."

"Everyone okay in there?"

"Yeah sure, you betcha… Only flesh wounds."

As expected, the Monty Python reference either flew straight over Telford's head or went completely ignored,

"Good good, glad to hear you're all okay in there."

"What the hell happened?"

"There's been an attack. A cloaked Alliance cargo ship was detected on approach. It crashed into the building on the inner North side. They almost hit the Pentagon too, but the Snakeskinners intercepted them in time."

"Crap."

"I know sir. It's not looking good out here. The SGC is out of contact, and we're getting reports from all over the place about attacks on personnel."

O'Neill cursed more vehemently this time.

"Listen sir I've been talking to our intelligence people and they all agree. There's no way a lone cargo ship would try an attack on Homeworld Command without packing a little something extra."

Jack resisted the urge to keep cursing. Davis and O'Donnell were already looking nervous at the exchange as it was. Instead he asked rhetorically,

"Why don't I like the sound of that?"

Wisely Telford didn't respond to the tone of his voice, only the question,

"We think there may be a bomb onboard, as yet unexploded. You have to get the hell out of there."

O'Neill grimly trudged forwards for a few more minutes. They got to the nearest cross-junction and were met with an impassable wall of rubble.

Davis and O'Donnell both looked resigned. O'Neill sighed, and clicked the radio back on,

"David."

"Yes sir?"

"Looks like our nearest way out is blocked, how's it coming with that bomb disposal unit?"

"So far not so good. There's a lot of debris, they can't dig through it. We've got heavier equipment on the way, but by the time they get here… I don't know."

"What kind of bomb are we talking about?"

"Intelligence suggests it's a weapons-grade naquadria device with a probable yield of 50 to 70 megatons. We've already started evacuations. If it goes it's going to take out most of DC."

O'Neill eyed up his fellow airmen with bleak horror,

"Well, that sounds like the source of our radiation doesn't it, Davis?"

As one, the three of them turned to stare at what O'Neill had noticed at the far end of the hall. The outline of a shape that looked horribly like a Tel'tak was barely visible in the gloom,

"Wanna bet that's where our bomb is gentlemen? Shall we make our way there?"

"Sir! You don't know anything about defusing bombs!"

"Actually," O'Donnell spoke up nervously, "I did three tours in A-stan defusing IEDs sir."

"See? We've got someone inside."

Telford sounded insultingly panicked over the crackling connection,

"No sir, I cannot allow you to volunteer for something like this."

"You're not allowing me to do anything Colonel. I'm ordering. I don't need to tell you what will happen if that bomb goes off."

O'Neill cut the radio and turned to O'Donnell,

"Airman I need a run down on bomb disposal 101." He frowned, "Wait, Airman? How are you still an Airman after three tours?"

O'Donnell looked embarrassed,

"Got busted down after I disobeyed orders at the SGC sir."

"Who's orders?"

O'Neill asked incredulously, looking at O'Donnell suspiciously. Jack just couldn't think of anyone at Stargate Command who'd give orders bad enough to justify that kind of disobedience,

"Colonel Telford sir. He… look we lost 37 people that day because of him! I told him it was a terrible idea. I was right. He still busted me."

Jack winced, ah, yes. Right. That.

The grinding noise when he'd been on the radio earlier suddenly made sense. O'Donnell must have turned his molars to dust by now.

They were still dealing with the repercussions from that absolute shitstorm. And Jack had a sinking feeling that there was more stuff coming down the line they hadn't even thought of yet,

"Damn son, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe once this whole disaster has been sorted, we can work something out. I've seen nothing that would imply you're a bad serviceman."

"Th- thank you sir."

He met Davis's shocked gaze. Why hadn't he heard about this?

Nurse Witsig always wondered what the story was; this strange child, stuck in an asylum with all these hopeless long-term adult cases. It wasn't right. Who would possibly send a child to a long-term care facility rather than a special needs school that could at least raise him? Especially one such as this that focussed on caring for people with incurable progressive brain damage. The majority of the other patients here had Alzheimer's advanced enough that they needed round the clock care, since they couldn't feed themselves, let alone remember their own names.

And then there was the child.

She continued her rounds, humming pleasantly as she checked in on her little dears. Perhaps one of these days the child's caretakers would deign to check in on the boy's condition, and Witsig would give them a piece of her mind. Leaving a boy in a place such as thi-

Commandos dressed all in black smashed their way into the ward. They were heavily armed with huge terrifying looking guns.

"Please! Don't hurt anyone! This is a hospital!"

The men, looking frighteningly as if they were military, moved as an efficient unit. It was like when the doctors acted in unison to deal with a medical situation, however all that skill was directed towards competent lethality, rather than to save a life.

They grabbed the boy and shouldered her aside. The nearest soldier sneered at her as if she wasn't worth the attention,

"For the Alliance! Indolent Tau'ri sat fat in your ivory towers."

TJ had a moment to panic. Code Persephone. Prepare for 0g, fetch your mag-boots.

Only Tamara was on the wrong side of the damned line.

One moment she'd been inventorying bandages under Doctor Brightman's supervision in the Daedalus class ship's infirmary, nervously listening to the ship's superstructure rumbling with every hit on the shields, the next she was surrounded by angry people wearing leather.

For all that she'd been certified for gate travel and recommended by the taciturn light bird who'd headed her squad for some reason, TJ had never felt more unprepared. She tried to follow everyone else's lead, act casual, act unconcerned. Don't give away that you're suddenly clinging onto the bolted down gurney for dear life for a reason.

Free fall.

Captain Cadman lashed out at the nearest Lucian Alliance guard, but, no mag boots. Unused to 0g, both Cadman and the man she'd been attacking were sent hurtling off in opposite directions from each other. It was like a giant three-dimensional game of pool. And Tamara never had been much good at that game.

O'Neill stared bleakly at the form of the Tel'tak.

"So, this is where all that radiation was coming from."

"Yessir."

In Davis's hand the Geiger counter was clicking ominously.

"And if we get any closer, we're looking at a fatal dose?"

"Yessir."

"And Telford says there's a bomb somewhere in the building."

"Yessir."

Davis's face looked bleakly ironic.

"Yeah… Tell me about it." Jack grimaced, "Wanna bet it's in there?"

Airman O'Donnell spoke up,

"Sucker's bet sir."

"One of us needs to get down there and disarm that thing."

As one, the three of them turned to stare down the corridor towards the source of the radiation.

"Look, sirs, you're both too important to lose. I'm not."

"O'Donell! Don't!"

The airman stepped back out of easy grabbing range, and saluted,

"It's been an honour sirs."

With that the young man ran down the hallway, O'Neill made as if to follow him, but Davis held him back.

"Come back here!"

Major- Lieutenant Colonel Davis dragged O'Neill bodily away from harm, he spun to glare at him,

"Sir. Sir! It's too late."

"I've got to try!"

Still bodily clutching at O'Neill's bicep, Davis gestured vehemently at the doorway that stood a few feet away,

"As soon as he crossed that threshold, he was a dead man."

"I know I know, exponential decay. God dammit! He's just a kid."

James couldn't help noticing the parallels with the training exercise as they fought their way towards level 25. She was there to make sure no one got the drop on Captain Satterfield when the senior officer got busy with tech support. Vanessa was glad for the unexpected help, the FGO made it much more likely they'd stop the spread of the madness emanating from the sphere. Back at the labs they'd made sure everyone in the group knew the embarkation room isolation procedure, and each had a sample of the sedative. But the woman next to her genuinely understood all this science stuff.

Greer and Brown were heading up to find the officer in charge, with the backup, just in case. All James had to do make sure it wouldn't be needed.

The invaders were using the same strategy she and Sheppard had during the training exercise - in reverse. Despite the evacuation lockdown, and orders to enact the Mu formation, the enemy were progressively worming their way up through the mountain. The thing in the gate room made it too difficult to work out what was happening, the invaders were pushing affected personnel out ahead of them in waves. Every time it went off, more of their people were turned. Even up here, above the madness of the sphere, with access between levels deliberately cut off, there was a pointed lack of personnel on their side.

They struggled through the scrum to the lower levels and made it to level 26, with its crucial separation from the levels above and the useful spiral staircase. James had seen the footage in the lab security station, just as horrified as everyone else at the images playing out. They seemed to confirm Teal'c's hypothesis. The gateroom had been crowded. Colonel Coburn and SG-2 due to escort Colonel Edward's large mining team, preparing to head out to a prolonged negotiation session when everything went down.

From what she'd said, Captain-Doctor Satterfield had been on science duty up with the true geeks when the dual lockdown/military personnel to duty stations, civilians evacuate, alarms sounded. James figured someone from special ops tailing the Captain, who was more geek than FGO, could only be of the good. Hopefully Greer and Brown were safely up at the infirmary level by now, with Lam, Becker, Teal'c, and the rest of the plant nerds. James couldn't help the frisson of guilt that she'd let them go, one civilian and one soldier. But they had to get this stuff down there.

Teal'c's crucial information to stop the enemy from getting any further with their invasion wasn't exactly gold standard intel. Though the guy was the closest thing they had to a native source when they'd come up with this plan, James couldn't help but be nervous about intelligence that was little better than locker room rumour, distilled down across the millennia.

The sphere, whatever it was, was deadly. They had to stop it, before the enemy walked unaccosted through the base, and turned more of their own people against them. James tried not to hesitate as she made her way to the emergency air recirculatory cut off and prepared to press the big red button. They might condemn everyone down here to slow poisoning, the plant guys had been cagey about the effects of this crap. But Vanessa couldn't see how they had much in the way of choice.

Satterfield wasn't faring any better than she was, shooting at their own people taking its toll, the petite woman was lugging around all manner of scientific equipment to boot. James knew their oh-so-simple plan wasn't anywhere near simple. The sheer amount of gear the petite Captain was hauling, proof of that. She dreaded to think what would have happened if they'd followed the letter of the original plan, and James had gone in on her own.

Twice now, Satterfield had saved her hide, when a goonified SF or marine had nearly gotten the drop on her. It was damn near impossible to tell which side was which in the chaos.

Finally, they got to the tiny, yet crucial, cupboard.

James watched their six as Satterfield made her way through the onerous process of initiating the air cycler switchover. All the warnings were there for a damned good reason, but better level 28 become inaccessible than everyone in the mountain being exposed to the zombifying sphere. The whole Mu thing just wasn't doing its job. James couldn't quite believe no one had accounted for stuff like this when they'd written the protocols, but then again, wishes and horses and all.

There was gunfire.

Not the distinctive psst of zats. But bullets.

"We're about to have company!"

"One more minute!"

She ducked and wove her way closer to the gate room, making sure to keep herself between the enemy and the captain's vulnerable back. Satterfield needed to hurry up and plug that canister in. Knock everyone out. Stop the sphere turning anyone else. Couldn't be turned if you were unconscious.

They could sort out who was friend and who was foe once they'd all been knocked out.

James squeezed herself against the curved buttress of the tunnel, the isolation air recirculation unit for the bottom three levels was located right in a corridor junction. Which was proving both an obstacle and a boom. Even as she winged someone who should have been on her side with her stunner, Vanessa found herself grateful for the cover the strange space was providing them.

She could only hope the emergency air supply kits they'd scrounged from the lab levels would have enough gas left in them that they'd be able to get out of here once the deed was done.

"Got it!"

Satterfield's exclamation was quiet by necessity, but James could have rejoiced. Zats were fine and all, but sooner or later the people she was hitting would get up again, and James had no idea how long it took to be able to safely fire a second shot.

James scrambled for the mouthpiece of the emergency air kit and got it on. Satterfield reappeared from the central air supply unit and locked the cabinet behind her. The captain signalled that they should get going to their secondary target. James signed back the affirmative, they both rechecked each other's tanks, and prepared to wade down into the heart of enemy held territory.

Already, the sedative gas the plant guys knocked up was staining the air a sickly green. It hung thickly, cloying like the stuff that came out of a smoke grenade. The pair of them zatted anyone they came across as they began the final trek down to the gate room. They had to double check that the gate was shut off. The order had almost certainly been inputted to the computer when the evacuation command was given, but… what with the hypnosis machine and all, they couldn't take any chances that someone hadn't undone it.

Not for the first time James wished she had the codes Sheppard had used to such effect. They fought their way through a confused mass of invaders, in their distinctive leather outfits, and SGC personnel who were fighting both the invaders and each other. Between the gas, and their zats it didn't take long to knock out the people on this level, and ziptie them. However, James had been mentally counting down their airtime ever since they'd started using the canned stuff, and every delay made it less likely they'd get back out.

Finally, they got to the conference room on level 26, with the stairs that dropped down, first into Landry's office, then gate room operations. If it took them this long going the other way, they'd be out of clean air before they got away from the isolated gate levels.

Satterfield looked like she was about to do something stupidly self-sacrificial, James recognised the expression,

"Nononono Satterfield. I am not going to let you do a Sheppard."

The USAF Captain stared at her blankly.

"He looked down at the mess through the conference room window. Muttered 'I always wanted to try Parkour'. Didn't tell me the plan. Just had me help him set up the tear gas. Next thing I know he's nearly broken his neck jumping out of that window."

James gestured at the window in question. To her gratification, Satterfield paled a couple of shades as she gauged the height. Yeah, Vanessa figured she wasn't alone in her dual admiration and belief that the Atlantis CO was certifiable.

The pair looked out through the window at the gate room below.

"Wanna use the gate to destroy the sphere before it gets us?"

"No! We don't know how to undo it, we need it intact to study."

"Captain – Doc… Look are we going to turn any minute? Do you even know?"

It had been the big flaw in their plan. The elephant in the room.

Satterfield shot her a dark look,

"I guess if either one of us was gonna start frothing, we'd have done it by now."

Great, another Sheppard. What was it with superiors and being quietly batshit around here? If the myths were to be believed O'Neill was the worst of the lot, though James had never seen him in action herself. Satterfield eyed the gate room clinically,

"Worse than Waikiki beach when the tourists get off the cruise ships."

It was difficult to cling to her dispassionate façade as they watched the scene play out below them. No one could tell friend from foe. Not that the other side cared. The guys in leather were happily shooting anyone SGC, brainwashed or not.

James started whistling into the dark as the gas finally began to take ahold of the people below,

"So, Hawaii?"

"Yeah, grew up on Kaua'i."

"Cool, Pittsburgh."

Satterfield gave her a look of horror,

"Oh, you poor thing."

James shot her a grin that was wholly teeth in retaliation. Satterfield turned her attention fully on the people in the embarkation room,

"Looks like we have a go. Ready L.T?"

"As I'll ever be."

Squinting at the sluggishly writhing forms in the gate room, James put herself in the guard position, and signalled she'd be watching Grace's six. They ran to the blast door, tersely Satterfield nodded at her, James just had the time to make out her fingers flying over the wiring in the door controls, before moving into the gate room.

The blast door narrowed the gap in the doorway to a foot, before shuddering to a hault behind them.

They both had extra ammo, and crowd control gear. Though honestly, tear gas wasn't much good against this sort of mindless violence. It was backup, in case the sedative hadn't quite kicked in. The damned stuff relied on their targets being sane enough to notice they were choking to work. Just making the crazies cough wouldn't do much good when they were more concerned with tearing each other to pieces.

Taking turns to check their twelve o'clock and their six, the pair eased their way into the gate room. The blast doors should have been locked tight long before they'd triggered the gas. The lockdown alarm sounded, everything on base sealed to strategically allow for civilian evacuation, and bottlenecking the gate, as soon as Mu protocol was enacted. James knew the protocol; she'd witnessed it a few times.

Cautiously they made their way into the still room.

The scrum had reduced the usually pristine gate room to a hellish sight, on par with anything James had witnessed in Iraq. The concrete walls were smeared with blood. Even though everyone else was down, barely a foot in front of James' face the remains of SG-2 were still rabidly trying to tear each other to pieces. They stunned them. It took a zat to keep them down. Navigating around the chaos, they made their way towards the power junction that directly controlled the gate.

A random attacker leapt out of the green haze, backlit by the eerily visible blue glow of the still active gate and started blasting at everything in sight with a staff weapon. It was only pure dumb luck, that saved them. Satterfield was wedged into the corner next to the gate, trying to disconnect the naquadah ring from the power couplings. James watching her back, making sure the Captain had an exfil site through the side-door to the embarkation armoury. They hadn't been spotted by the invaders.

It was distasteful as hell, but Colonel Edwards' slumped form provided the perfect cover as they crouched by the gate control junction box. The obscuring haze of the green gas, and the Colonel's unconscious position propped up in the corner, obscured them just enough to make the risky attempt.

Satterfield did it.

With a loud noise, that attracted the attention of the fresh invaders, the Captain successfully separated the gate from the breaker box linking it into the grid. The gate immediately dropped the connection. James started cursing under her breath even as she brought her borrowed zat up to bear on the enemy that started paying attention to their presence. She and Satterfield both dragged Edwards out of there, he'd been shot, and then exposed to whatever the hell the sphere was spewing for far too long. Never mind the plant gas. Besides, James shared the opinion of the marines and Sheppard. Never leave a man behind. A short burst of fire held them back for just long enough to retreat to the corridor, and the relative safety the bottleneck offered.

James and Satterfield just managed to hold off the enemy long enough for the blast door to ponderously slide shut between them and the gate room.

Vanessa heaved a breath of relief and turned to raid the level 28 armoury. Taking a leaf out of Sheppard's book she went for the flash grenades and other crowd control measures. That sorta crap turned out to be hellaciously effective during the training exercises, and James saw no reason not to use it again.

"Think we did it?"

"Definitely."

James turned to Satterfield in the gloom, and noticed that the captain was clutching the brainwashing sphere that Teal'c had spoken of in such scary tones,

"What the hell, Captain?"

"Give me a minute."

James waited tensely as the captain turned the sphere over and over, before cracking it open.

"Nearly there…"

With an anticlimactic click the background hum, that James hadn't even noticed, stopped.

The silence was shocking.

Vanessa hadn't even realised she'd had a headache.

"Damn."

"Yeah."

Ronon didn't have a clue what a 'Code Persephone was. He soon found out. One moment he was dodging energy blasts from those funny little guns the guys in leather all seemed to be carrying. The next he drifted towards the ceiling when gravity turned off mid-stride, and his momentum kept carrying him upwards.

It was fucking disconcerting, but the other guys reacted worse.

Ronon figured space pirates would be more used to this space stuff than he was. But somehow, not. Cool.

Taking advantage of their complete panic, Ronon rapidly fired off a series of shots from his gun, and took a moment to be thankful when he realised, that unlike their weapons, his gun didn't send him floating backwards, or in one guy's case, spinning around in whimpering circles.

After a few experimental bounds down the hallway, and one hairy moment when he thought he'd misjudged the angle, and had a split second to desperately grab hold of the nearest object so that he wouldn't be stuck free-floating in the middle of the corridor with nothing to push off against – Ronon made his way through the decks of the ship towards the sounds of fighting.

Reynolds cursed his newly healed arm as he climbed up the SGC's emergency access shaft, it may officially be healed, but it still ached from disuse and the break. He hoped to use the lessons learned when Sheppard had so effectively staged his run against the base, not that the colonel knew that that's what he was doing at the time.

Albert almost sighed in relief when he got to level 16, and the security bunker. Only a few of their invaders had gotten up this far yet. Reynolds knew they'd been herded up here to see what their goal was. For all that they clearly knew a lot about Stargate Command, the precaution of not including the bunker on the schematics, and only telling a few trusted officers about its existence, meant the main target on this floor seemed to be the armoury.

Reynolds got inside, and hastily entered his code, putting the base into full lockdown. Throughout the SGC the remaining open bulkheads slid shut with a clang. Anyone who hadn't heeded the evacuation warnings by now had to fend for themselves.

From his position Albert could see the infirmary was under siege, and the gate was still open. The command to shut it off didn't work up here either. Hopefully the 38 minutes rule would still hold true.

It had been less than an hour since this had all started. He couldn't quite believe it. Already the scuttlebutt was that civilians had been snatched. The worst rumour was the one about the visiting Senator. Reynolds hoped like hell that wasn't true.

From the safety of the security bunker he watched in stunned amazement the chaos that was everything below level 25. The only people who looked at all organised were the leather clad forms of their invaders, SGC personnel were trying to fend off both the invaders and each other. And what the hell was up with the green gas that had flooded levels 26 through 28? Albert suppressed the expression of dread that he could feel trying to worm its way up his face. He was an officer, he needed to act like one.

The SFs whose job it was to constantly monitor the base from within the secret control room looked relieved,

"Sitrep?"

"You got here just in time sir. Those bulkheads bought the people in the infirmary several hours of safety, they only had minutes before."

"Good. Anything else I should know?"

"There's people trapped on level 28 sir. It looks like Captain Satterfield is pinned down, but the insurgents haven't spotted her. Colonel Edwards might be in trouble sir."

"Don't sugar coat it, is he down?"

"Hard to say sir, before they managed to pull him out of the gate room, I saw him take a gut shot."

Reynolds winced. That… that didn't sound good.

"Who's Officer of the Day?"

"I don't know who it is sir, it should have been Colonel Dixon… But… And Landry left for Washington before this all started. The general is safe for the time being."

This time Reynolds did let the dismay show in his expression, crap, no one knew who was in charge?!

The SF hastened to continue, "There's been radio chatter. Some of the Lanteans and a marine managed to fend off the invaders trying to get above their level and barricade the area. The bad guys didn't seem to think it was worth it for a couple of scientists and some grunts when their tenth operative went down."

Crap that probably meant he was in the hot seat didn't it? Albert wasn't even supposed to be on active duty, what with his damned arm.

"So, for the main, the Lucian Alliance are stuck below level 22?"

"Yessir. They clearly know about but haven't found the escape hatch."

"Well, that makes things simpler."

"It does sir?"

"Yes, have contingencies in place to stop stuff like this. When the wraith invaded, we very nearly had to use them. But it means everyone in the infirmary is still safe."

Comprehension dawned on the airman's face.

"Yeah, Lam and everyone that couldn't be moved are still on level 21."

"Yes, and everyone below that has to fend for themselves."

He turned to the red phone that sat innocuously in the corner of the security bunker and prepared to initiate base quarantine procedure, known as the Wildfire Directive. The external blast doors to the surface would seal themselves shut, NORAD would be shut off from the outside world, and the Greater Cheyenne Mountain Complex itself would go into full lockdown.

At that moment the radio crackled,

"Come in, this is Captain Satterfield, can anyone hear me?"

Reynolds caught the SFs eye, he looked just as nonplussed as Albert felt. Gingerly, and feeling ridiculous at his hesitance Reynolds reached out and clicked the respond button,

"We read you Captain, what's your status?"

"We have successfully shut down the device the Alliance were using to turn our personnel. Requesting assistance. There's a whole lotta people down here who're going to be waking up in a bad mood any minute now, and there's no way to tell who's on our side."

Reynolds gestured impatiently for the SF to get a visual confirmation, sure enough the gate room was filled with unconscious slumped figures on the concrete floor. It was a disturbing sight, made more so by the green haze that hung in a pall over the floor, making the slumped forms look dead.

With a sinking feeling Reynolds realised that he was the de facto officer in charge,

"Any way to verify this isn't a trick Captain?"

"Uh…" There was a distinct pause, "Lieutenant James says to tell you that we already played this game out a few weeks ago sir? And that the reruns are getting old now?"

Albert let out an explosive breath. That cheekiness from the AFSOC newbie was confirmation enough. It was over.

"Alright Captain. Thank you. I'll be sending down a Force Recon team and a few SFs to help. What do I need to know about the ongoing situation?"

A moment later a loud banging on the security bunker door made them both jump,

"Sir! Sir do not activate the self-destruct! Sir!"

Even muffled through a foot of steel the voice was audible, Reynolds checked that it was a friendly, before he opened the bulkhead,

"Sir!"

A marine master sergeant and two geeks were panting on the other side of the threshold.

"Please! I'm Doctor Katie Brown, we found a peaceful solution."

"At ease sergeant." He nodded to the doctor, "So I'd heard. Tell me all about it."

Cam groaned in relief, salvation. In the form of a Denny's, but hey, desperate times and all.

"Now, that's what I'm talking about!"

Sheppard raised an eyebrow at him in condescending disbelief, the snob.

He and Sheppard staggered into the restaurant, probably looking more like a pair of hobos than anything else, but, hey it was a Denny's, no one so much as raised an eyebrow.

Thankful that he somehow had change in his pockets, Cam pointed Sheppard in the direction of the payphone, and didn't so much hint as emphatically suggest that the other man should get a table whilst he made a call. Of course, Cam was most of the way there when the guy behind the till called out,

"Phones are customers only!"

"Crap."

Cam shoved the still hesitating Sheppard towards a table and hastily grabbed a menu,

"I can't believe I'm in a Denny's."

Cam growled a quick, "Shut up Shep."

"Denny's!"

"Quit your bitchin Sheppard. It's a good thing it is a Denny's – anywhere else would have kicked us out by now."

Sheppard pulled a face, Cam tried not to laugh at him hysterically. It wasn't his fault all this crap had gone down. Cam was a colonel in the United States Air Force for chrissakes! He should be the one keeping it together. The waiter came around, looking thoroughly disinterested in the pair of them,

"Hi…" Her tone was flat and bored, "My name is Laura, I'll be your waitress today. Is everything okay? You find everything you wanted?"

Cam was amused by her complete ennui towards her job,

"I'll have a coffee please, black." Cam's stomach grumbled, he inspected the contents of his miraculously present wallet and decided he had enough cash. Couldn't risk the cards right now. But he had plenty of notes. Cam eyed Sheppard, who looked just as tired as he felt, and aw to hell with it, "And I'll have the Grand Slam. Eggs over easy."

Cam folded up his laminated menu and leaned back, trying to work out their next move. Sheppard pulled a face at the menu, he took an inordinate amount of time over a simple decision asked,

"Could I get the French toast?"

"How'd you like your eggs?"

"Scrambled please."

"Anything to drink?"

"White coffee please."

The man was ridiculously polite. After the waitress strolled off, Cam made sure no one was watching them suspiciously. He subtly eyed up the other customers, and once sure no one was paying him any mind, made his way over to the payphones. Cam dialled the SGC and rattled off his ident code,

"Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Charlie, Sierra, Romeo, One, Eight, Zulu, Echo. Requesting immediate assistance."

Cam frowned as he realised with an unpleasant jolt that he'd been redirected to the Big Air Force hot line, well crap. He'd been in the meeting when they'd set this all up, if the SGC wasn't picking up, first redirect was to Homeworld, then the NID, and then the IOA, then the guys at Area 51… And then… Well there was definitely more on that list. Point was things had to be seriously FUBARed for Mitchell to have gotten through to these guys.

Crap. His Momma was right, his super-secret day job was gonna get him in trouble someday. Cam just hadn't expected the hammer blow to come during such a mundane day on good ole planet Earth. He'd been expecting to go out with a bang fighting off the Ori, or the snakes, or hell even the Lucian Alliance. Not after what could well be a case of pilot error, if what Sheppard senior here kept grumbling was anywhere close to the truth.

He sat down at their booth with a pained sigh. Shep looked up at him sharply,

"What was that all about Colonel Mitchell? Is help on the way?"

"Not now Shep."

"No! I've just about had enough of this. I've been in a plane crash, I've been shot at, I carried your ungrateful behind through miles and miles of desert. And my name isn't Shep, or Sheppard or any other military nonsense you toy soldiers all like to pretend. I am not my brother! It's David Sheppard. David. Not Dave. David. And if you can't manage that, it's Mister Sheppard."

Crap. Cam ran a hand down his face, and grimaced, he was getting too old for this.

Rush wondered where they were taking them. The others would not wake up. They were trussed up like prized fucking livestock, bundled in the back of a gold walled van that smelt as if something had died inside it. To add insult to injury, they'd been piled in an undignified heap, and Rush was at the bottom.

He could tell that Vala was there, it was her distinctive black hair making his face itch after all, and one of her barrettes was pressing into his cheekbone uncomfortably. But he wasn't sure who else had been caught. It all happened so fast.

One minute they were in the ricketiest fucking plane Rush had even seen. The next Mitchell had been shouting about incoming, Sheppard sounding far too calm as he executed moves that had Rush fair fucking grateful that motion sickness wasn't a thing he'd ever tended to – as the horizon wasn't up but sideways, the ceiling and…

Rush only hoped that whatever these people wanted of them; they'd survive it.

Things got blurry after that, light, a surreal image of a melted gun, the madness of suddenly being somewhere else, gold and oily, blue, darkness, an impact, getting dragged along, sand, panicked breathing, Vala pushing him down, another burst of blue, then nothing.

Notes:

Couple of lines of dialogue lifted from SGU episodes emAir/em, and emAlliances/em.

FGO: – field grade officer

Butterbar: – slightly derogatory term for 2nd Lieutenants, aka freshly qualified officers straight out of school who technically outrank Master Sergeants and other NCOs who've been in the forces for 30+ years… Nickname comes from the shape of their gold shiny new rank badge, and implies they're as much use as a…

Grateful thanks to ImpiousImp – who had a suggestion for the foothold that was desperately needed. They pointed out that in amongst the vast swathe of Stargate media, the Goa'uld canonically had a mass-insanity hypnosis device. My first draft of the SGC invasion plotline veered painfully close to accidentally wholesale plagiarising CWRs brilliantly awful foothold in Mathematique (seriously people can't reccie CWR enough lol). Not only was it a subconscious rewrite, it was a bad rewrite.

Yeah… Just as there's an Expanse easter egg in every chapter, there are easter eggs referencing the fact that Michael Rooker played Yondu, and Adam Baldwin played Jayne Cobb, and both played Stargate colonels.

There's some confusion about Private or Airman Becker's rank – I'm sure I remember him being referred to as Private in show dialogue, and the wiki claims he's a member of the Marine Corps… Yet the very same wiki article visibly shows him wearing Air Force BDUs… so…

Ahem, I hope this plot-dense chunk of chaos was enjoyable! We'll be rejoining our protagonists and things will get back to business as usual, or what passes for it in this tale, in the next chapter.

Review response:

To the kind extremely confused Guest who took the time to leave in-depth feedback despite feeling worried they weren't enjoying the story: –

Thanks for sticking with it! I hope you like this thing as some of the plotlines (hopefully) clear up. Saying anything spoilery about the Tel'tak would be telling, I will point out they've turned up on earth in SG-1 and SGU for pretty similar reasons…

As for my portrayal of Sheppard's family life, respect for the character? I'm uncomfortably aware I'm verging close to male-power-fantasy RPG character territory by reinstating the guy's early-canon Mensa credentials, alongside honouring the truly ridiculous breadth of military qualifications the character canonically has. Pilot who can fly practically everything, and a commando capable of taking down Wraith and 60 Genii? Even just one of those is pushing it, but all three, maths genius, commando and pilot?

My logic (or lack thereof) came from obsessively watching Outcast several times trying to parse just what it is about Flanigan's body language in that ep that's so disturbing. There is something peculiar to his portrayal of Sheppard, especially in Outcast. I realised there's stuff Flanigan only does as Sheppard, having maybe (definitely) hunted out most of the rest of the actor's body of work to try to get my ear in for his speech patterns… Bam, most of the Sheppard awkwardness isn't Flanigan, it's peculiar to Sheppard only.

It's more blatant having watched some of Dylan Neal's other stuff (Dave Sheppard). He's played both an exasperated older brother and a man who sincerely hates the other lead male character – in neither performance was Neal's body language quite so simmeringly confrontational as in his SGA guest appearance.

In short thanks for taking the time to review! But sorry not sorry, both Flanigan and Neal did a fantastic job of showing some pretty dark undercurrents in their scenes together. There's something rotten in the house of Sheppard, and I'm acknowledging the work the actors put into that performance.