Wide Open Road

by VetinariVimesy

John wants to get back to Pegasus. Too bad everyone seems determined to stop him. Between the IOA, the brass, & general idiocy it looks like Atlantis is stuck on Earth. At least there's stuff going on at the SGC to keep him occupied, right? A conspiracy against the Tau'ri unfurls. Attacks on multiple fronts; kidnapping, invasion, piracy, a bomb. Amidst the chaos, who's the target?

7. Chapter 7

For Auburn, who as you may be aware, sadly passed away at the beginning of the year. Their stories really are among the best in SGA fandom. Between the comedic genius of Intercostal Clavical, the harsh adventure of Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves and the brilliantly painful City of the Seven Walls - well thanks to Auburn I think I've seen every possible iteration of the SGA crew, all of them infinitely better written than the parent show. Rest in peace. You will very much be missed, even as your transcendental writing lives on.

WARNING Note the Canon-Typical Violence tag please! And when I say canon-typical, I point out this is the show that graphically showed the back of poor Major Kawalsky's head getting sliced off by the gate, with half his brains and a Goa'uld falling out... And the same verse that spent an entire episode watching Ba'al torturing Jack O'Neill with acid, knives and all sorts of other nasty things... (Shame that, Ba'al was such a cool villain initially, by the end of the show's run he was practically comic-relief) Not to mention the mangled bodies everyone in the Pegasus galaxy, from the Genii to the Wraith tended to leave everywhere! Or the way SGU happily showed one of the lead characters beating the other half to death and deliberately abandoning him to die on a desert planet... Or that graphic scene of open heart surgery in another episode... You have been warned!

---

Chapter 7:

The air was abruptly knocked out of him, as he was dropped heavily on his front, dragging John violently to consciousness. Before he could so much as groan at the shock of the impact, a voice exclaimed,

"Tau'ri scum! Thought you were better than us!"

There was a sharp blow, his side exploded as what was probably a boot connected before John could even think about dodging. Sheppard grinned lazily through a mouthful of bloody teeth, automatically adjusting his expression for maximum insolence. He had no clue what the hell he'd just landed in, but damned if he was gonna let these guys realise he hadn't caught his bearings. John kept grinning brazenly up at the guys until they backed out of the room. Which, he realised belatedly, was a cell.

A metallic hatch slammed shut as soon as they were through the doorway. Squirming John worked out that he was hogtied hand and foot with what felt like plastic cuffs. Nearly putting a crick in his neck in the process, he stared at the gold walls and ceiling in puzzled disbelief. Who'd snatched them, Trump's even more tasteless cousin? And what the hell was with the scorpion motif?

A Scottish voice cut across his mystification,

"What the fuck beamed us up?"

After allowing himself a moment of utter relief, John wriggled around to try and work out more about where the hell they were. Through the gold metal grill that separated them John could see that in the next cell, Rush too was bound at the wrists and ankles. Though, at least he was sitting, unlike John who was trussed up, stuck, lying uncomfortably on his front. John could tell the other man was working himself into a panic, he recognised all the signs from Rodney's frequent meltdowns. Unimpressed by Rush's histrionics John quoted an old favourite,

"I've got a theory, bunnies, bunnies it must be BUNNIES!"

John started in the same singsong tone the show'd used and ended in a shout that broke as he ran out of air due to his awkward position. If anything, through the metal grid Rush looked more nervous. Crap. All similarities aside, John kept forgetting that on several levels Rush was nothing like Rodney. Rush wouldn't get his stupid pop culture references; just think Shep was having a nervous breakdown or something. John coughed, embarrassed,

"Sorry Doc. Too used to hanging out with someone who'd have gotten that."

Admittedly they hadn't been doing all that much hanging out in recent months, even before that harried return to Earth.

There was a chuff of familiar throaty laughter from John's other side, Vala was there too - a tension John hadn't realised he'd been holding left him. John near sagged in the restraints. Rush looked quizzically back at John, head tilted like a bird's, something almost spiteful in his expression. Good. If he was busy being angry at John, he wasn't panicking. John tried to catch a glimpse of Vala in the cell on the other side, but, trussed up as he was, he couldn't quite manage to get a look at her.

"Vala?"

Her tone was nearly as grumpy as Rush's,

"What Beautiful?"

"You ok?"

"I'm fine S.O," came back her reply in a tone that strongly implied the opposite - she came across so achingly like Ronon that for a moment John had a flash of sharing a cell in Pegasus. Was it weird to get nostalgic about all the previous times you'd been captured? Before John could get too caught up in his inappropriate moment of mawkishness, the door to the cells opened and a woman walked in looking like nothing more than a corporate lawyer,

"My name is Athena, Tau'ri dogs. And you will bow before your goddess."

John's mouth ran away with him before he could think to stop himself,

"Don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a little tied up here. Also, I'm naturally lazy, you'll excuse me if I don't get up."

Worryingly she merely looked coolly at him, something greedy sparkling in her eyes, before turning to Vala's side of the room.

"Mal Doran."

Her tone could cut granite. Crap, this wasn't good. John wished he could see Vala but wishes and horses and all. The woman continued, clearly not expecting a response,

"Yes, I was so pleased to see that my Jaffa had caught you." Athena said airily, "I hadn't intended to hunt you down you know, but you were just there."

She smiled like the cat that caught the canary. John, feeling that crick building up in his neck, gave up trying to follow her movements when she wandered out of his field of view, and rested his head on the cool surface of the floor. Screw it. No point putting on a front when the person it was for wasn't even paying attention. Sheppard subtly worked at the cuffs, earning himself a badly abraded wrist in the process, okay, not plastic cuffs then. Plain old zip ties maybe? The edges on these things were sharp.

"I so look forward to getting caught up with you, find out what you've been up to with the Tau'ri all these years."

Vala's response was surprisingly angry,

"Oh, go to hell Athena. You always were a pox ridden daughter of a whore!"

John figured he must be missing something, but damned if he knew what.

"Touchy touchy Vala. You know that was nothing personal."

Okay, there was definitely history between them. Good. Well… Okay not good. It could be Kolya all over again, which would be bad. But at least they weren't completely in the dark here. Vala at least knew what to expect from …Athena.

Athena. What a name.

Oh. She was a snake. That explained the name, the god complex, and all the gold. Crap. John felt unforgivably slow in that moment of long-in-the-coming realisation, as if he'd finally lived down to all the imprecations about his intelligence Rodney had spewed over the years.

"Besides Vala you still owe me that information."

"Oh, really, go to hell Athena. Sokar's castoffs would welcome you!"

John wondered if he could save the host. That had to be a fate as bad as getting fed on by the wraith, only more drawn out.

"You know, you really should be nicer to me Mal Doran. I can make life very unpleasant indeed for you and your little Tau'ri …pets."

That alarming choice of words had John reassessing the situation from, 'Okay, how do we get out of this?' to 'If we don't get out of this, we are royally screwed.'

Disgustedly John realised he still felt guilty even now, that he hadn't spotted that Caldwell wasn't Caldwell all those years ago. Too caught up in his own insecurities about whether he'd be allowed to stay on Atlantis to notice the other officer was behaving in a manner that really didn't fit any Air Force John had ever served in. Though John supposed, he should cut himself some slack, he'd learnt the hard way not to trust the brass years before. The SGC only reconfirmed that tendency when they'd nearly kicked him out of the programme when they'd regained contact, because of damned Ashbrook and his terrible orders back in Afghanistan, again.

"Yes… Yes, this is going to be fun."

John resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the trite nonsense the Goa'uld was spouting. With a deliberate twist of his thoughts John stopped wool-gathering and tried to pay a bit more attention, since you never knew when a bad guy would spill the beans… but it was so difficult when Athena's big long monologue of evil boiled down to the usual, 'Me Advanced Alien! You puny human! Me squash you! Mwahahaha!' that he'd gotten used to over the years, coming from everyone from the Wraith to the Asurans, and even notably, the Alteran crew of the Tria.

"I shall enjoy watching you struggle as I force you to cooperate…"

What'd even happened to the Tria anyway? Had they really just forgotten about that ship in the void?

"Hell's too good for you Athena! Just you wait! I'll drop you from orbit to a certain Ori-ravaged world of my acquaintance, and we'll see how well you do against an angry mob!"

John zoned back in just in time to realise the evil villain monologue was winding down,

"…And now Vala, I shall find out all about the Tau'ri you've decided to align yourselves with."

Uh oh. That didn't sound good. She sounded altogether too pleased with herself.

Athena snapped her fingers haughtily,

"Jaffa!" John couldn't see her, but she must have pointed at someone cause the next thing she said was, "This one."

The heavy golden door that was the lone dominating feature in his cell slid open. Crap. Looked like he was it. Not that that was a bad thing; better him than the others. John was bodily lifted by the brute squad, and repositioned. They cut the ties at his ankles, barely letting him get his feet, painfully regaining circulation, under him, before he was dragged down the corridor.

"Guess I'll see you guys later!" John called out, as they forced him, hands still awkwardly tied behind him, along a series of identical looking hallways, each as tacky and gold as the last. He memorised the route, not knowing where they were taking him, but John figured any knowledge he could get about the layout of this place would be of the good.

Briefly John contemplated throwing off his guards and making a run for it, but they were armed, and already sadistically twisting his bound hands uncomfortably upwards ever higher behind his back. He hadn't even done anything yet.

John didn't want to know what would happen to the others if they decided to get it into their heads to punish them for his behaviour. Unlike the Genii's fanatic military, they were obviously trained soldiers of the ancient kind, and John really didn't like the mean look in their eyes. Besides, he'd seen what Teal'c could do. Striding ahead of them like royalty, Athena too seemed to be an altogether different kind of psycho from the type John had gotten far too used to dealing with in Pegasus.

John had a moment to regret that decision to play nice when they arrived at their destination. The first thing he noticed was the stench; a wall of smell hit him when the gold bulkhead whooshed open. The room reeked of the usual cell scents - urine, the sour stench of unwashed bodies… A veritable miasma of bleach and fear. But underlying that, was the cloying, sickly sweet, iron tang of rotting blood.

It wasn't, as he'd figured, another cell, or even an interrogation room. It was a fucking lab that was as disturbing as anything Michael had come up with in his twisted sick little brain. There were obvious signs of Mengele level insanity here. Which was made all the more alarming by the tacky gold aesthetic that pervaded absolutely everything.

John started struggling then, but it was too late, and the Jaffa were still stronger than he was by an order of magnitude. He squirmed as they cut the cuffs. However, Sheppard was forced over to the wall, which seemed to leap out and grab him the moment he was near. John got a punch to the head for his troubles that left him seeing stars.

When the world stopped spinning, John found himself staring blearily at the weaselly man shackled to the slab across from him. He looked as bad as John felt. The shiny bald dome of his head was glinting in the tacky gold light of the Goa'uld wherever the hell they were. Even in the boudoir-esque lighting the snakeheads seemed to favour, the guy looked sickly pale, almost green. Though John supposed that had everything to do with the nightmarish vision of all too recognisable, and worse, nearly recognisable things floating in tubes all around them.

John tried not to think about them too much.

It was a charnel house.

Despite himself John found his gaze inexorably drawn to the all too humanoid thing suspended in the tube behind the skinny bald guy, yeah, that'd used to be a person alright. It would have been difficult to say, but the obvious clue was the tattered 'GAP' logo still visible on the remnants of the clothing that wreathed the twisted figure.

Athena strode back in from a door on the other end of the space as if she owned the place, John guessed she did. She turned, and spoke to him as if he was a child,

"Now. I want you to use that delightful ATA gene of yours to turn this on."

Athena waved something that looked Ancienty at him. Crap. How the hell did she know about that? John supposed the news must have gotten out over the years, but it was a nasty shock. Covering his nerves Sheppard drawled,

"Uh. Let me think. No."

"Oh, you have no choice in the matter."

Her eyes glowed gold, and she gestured emphatically towards unwell balding guy,

"Joe here failed to do as I asked."

In the grating dual voice of a Goa'uld the sing-song tone she took on was even more out of place than it already was,

"Now. Mr Spencer actually tried; he really did. I could tell he was really making an effort. Honestly, I keep being given these so-called hok'tar to work with, and I've yet to see any evidence of superior genetics. So far all you Tau'ri seem equally deficient."

She gestured toward the nest of wires that wreathed his head, Joe twitched spasmodically, before resuming his vegetable impression. Oh, this did not look good.

"But alas, his best was not good enough."

The witch turned towards him, eyes still gold, and asked rhetorically,

"Do you want to see what happens to slaves that don't do as their goddess bids them?"

"No. I really don't."

Ignoring him, Athena fiddled with something on the gaudy gold jewellery that adorned her hand, and the whole wall rose up,

"Sheppard!"

John blinked in horror.

"Todd."

Athena snapped imperiously at the Wraith. Damn. John couldn't believe the level of ignorant arrogance the woman was displaying there, snakehead or not, you did not do that to a being that was 10,000 years old and could eat you. At least, not if you weren't actively trying to piss them off. If anything, Todd looked amused.

"Soon you'll be begging me to be allowed to be a Lo'taur Sheppard." Imperiously she nodded towards Todd, "Dinner time."

With a flicker, the forcefield John hadn't registered dissipated. Todd stepped forward and gestured awkwardly around the manacles,

"Am I to feed on this one, or that one?"

John was surprised to realise he knew the wraith well enough to tell that he was only pretending not to care either way. Athena casually waved an arm, as if she wasn't discussing ending a sentient life,

"Oh, eat the barber. He's useless to me anyway." She scoffed angrily, "Hok'tar my ass. I've yet to see any evidence of the superior Alteran physiology you Tau'ri keep claiming for yourselves."

With a glance in John's direction, Todd thrust his feeding hand towards the weaselly- no towards Joe – and started to feed. John watched unblinking, only realising as Athena's goons were connecting electrodes to his head that the guy hadn't even twitched as Todd sucked him dry.

"Now, you've seen what will happen if you don't comply with my wishes Tau'ri."

The Ancient device was waved under his nose, John thought 'off off off!' at it as the prickling sensation he associated with the technology made itself known. Thankfully, it stayed inert, but John could feel it trying to respond to him. Sheppard wasn't even sure what it was but knew there was no way in hell he'd be turning it on for this psycho anytime soon.

Athena sniffed,

"Pity."

Again with the finger snapping, and a less musclebound helper stepped forward,

"Attach the …motivator."

John tried to make the guy's life difficult by squirming around, but as soon as the first of the new electrode thingies touched his temple there was a blinding moment of pain that let the guy rapidly stick the whole series of them to his head. Each one hurt like a knife in the eye, as it did whatever the hell it was doing. Before long John's entire existence narrowed down to the agony of the electrical crown of thorns wreathing his head.

---

Ronon (literally) flew around the corner and was plunged into darkness. He'd chosen to bound along up near the ceiling, since, even without gravity, people forgot to look up. With no up and down to contend with, the ceiling made for a better floor than the actual floor.

He got near the place where serious fighting had obviously gone down. Someone had shot out the lights. Smoke wreathed the air, the distinctive smell of frying Earther electronics and burning crystalline tech made his nose twitch. Scorch marks scored the usually pristine drab grey walls of the Earther ship.

The Alliance had captured a crowd of their people. There was a mix of civilians and scientists all corralled into the mess. Ronon thought he spotted Captain Kleinmann in there, but in the darkness, it was difficult to tell.

Ronon backtracked. He needed to make an entrance.

Pushing himself gently backwards in the 0g, using minimal motions of his upper arms to manoeuvre, Ronon quietly got back out into the hall. Dex had gotten used to the new fighting terrain more quickly than the enemy, he planned to take advantage of that. He rechecked his weapons, his gun was set to stun, and fully charged. Ronon also had a borrowed handgun, which, was awkward to use in microgravity, admittedly, but he knew the recoil could prove useful. The strange phallic energy weapon he'd snatched from one of the raiders still seemed to have a charge too, though Ronon had no clue how long that would last. It would have to do.

He made it to the nearest hatchway, and settled in to scheme.

A few minutes later Ronon figured he had the outline of a plan. Anything else he'd just have to improvise, unpleasant as his years as a Runner had been, Ronon had a lot of practice to lean on. Besides, plans were nice and all, but in his experience, stuff rarely worked out the way you imagined it.

He kicked off from the bulkhead behind him, firing as he went. Using the physics of 0g, Ronon flew headfirst into the room. Dex flew past the hatchway to the mess. Ignoring the nauseating spin on the world, he shot the two Lucian Alliance members who'd been guarding the entrance as he hurtled past.

Ronon adjusted his trajectory minutely, and took cover behind, or should that be underneath, an upturned table? The point was moot in this environment with no up or down,

"Stop right there! Surrender. This vessel has been claimed as the rightful property of the Sixth House!"

As his eyes adjusted to the lower light levels, Ronon bided his time, playing indecisive. The Earther crew were bloodied and bruised; one of them had clearly taken a beating. As well as the wreckage of a barricade, formed from the flimsy black tables that were really the only moveable furniture on these 304-class ships to speak of, it was obvious that something bad happened here.

The guy on the float in the centre of the room looked like he was barely holding off whimpers of pain. It was that or he was gonna be sick. The dude was rotating gently, droplets of blood spinning around him in a morbid tableau.

Ronon smiled maliciously at the crowd of pirates crowding the Hammond's crewmembers into the mess. If the enemy wanted to fight with no concept of honour, neither would he.

"Okay, okay I surrender."

Ronon lifted his hands as if in capitulation. All the while making sure he had his back to a handy bulkhead he could push off. The nearest invader, a huge bald man, who reminded Ronon uncomfortably of the larger wraith turned pseudo-humans during that clusterfuck with Beckett's virus, reached towards him with a triumphant expression. Casually, as though nothing could be more agreeable, Ronon 'scratched' at his hair. The next second one of Ronon's favourite throwing knives was sticking out of the guy's hand.

The guy yowled. The momentum from the knife sent him drifting backwards and away from the floor. Ronon grinned nastily as the big bruiser panicked.

"Dannic!"

Ronon whirled away from the exposed entrance to the room, drawing his gun as he went. He fired at the newly named Dannic, who was still clutching at his hand, then ducked behind a floating table, as a volley of blue energy blasts flew his way. Blue lightning dissipated harmlessly across the metal.

The voice had come from the far corner, Ronon spun and fired. He nudged trapped spinning guy gently towards a bulkhead as he flew past. Another pirate went down. Ronon bounced himself off the ceiling and pushed downwards, still shooting. That was five down.

A new voice called out,

"Friend. This is pointless. I have my orders. You have your orders. We're both soldiers here."

Ronon resisted the urge to snort derisively. Sheppard was always trying to teach him diplomacy, not that Sheppard was any good at it either, but his team leader kept trying. The voice continued,

"I'm Varro. First of the Sixth House, what's your rank?"

Ronon's response was near automatic, though he couldn't keep the contempt out of his tone,

"Specialist Ronon Dex."

He finally caught sight of the source of the voice, a bulky blond man, who'd appeared in the hatchway. It would have been a stupidly exposed position, if not for the weaselly sneering guy who'd quietly flanked the exit whilst Ronon was distracted taking out the enemy in the room,

"Ah. My primary loyalty is to my home world, not the Alliance. I am allied with the Sixth House. But it is only a mutually beneficial arrangement."

At that announcement, the big bald guy, Dannic, gave a shocked glower. The bastard was tough, if nothing else. The knife had vanished, and he was squaring for another go. The skinny guy at the door didn't look too surprised, though the calculating expression on his face was making Ronon nervous.

"My loyalty is to this branch of the Alliance, and to Commander Kiva of course. But the Alliance, unlike the Tau'ri, is working for the good of all the peoples of the galaxy."

Ronon scowled disbelievingly at the chatty guy, he wasn't buying whatever he was selling. It was too like the honeyed tones the Genii used when they were trying to woo him. Ronon flatly stated,

"My loyalty is to Sateda. To the fight against the Wraith. To Sheppard." Ronon grinned, well-aware of just how intimidating he looked when he bared his teeth, "To the Commander of this ship. She is a good leader."

They both fired. Varro's blast brushed Ronon's arm, numbing it. Ronon grunted and kept firing, driving Dannic out of the room too. He scrambled for the next table and leapt. Using the lack of gravity to his advantage Ronon propelled himself upwards and bounced back down off the ceiling. He caught Varro a glancing blow to the stomach with his borrowed handgun and sailed towards the door using the momentum from the kickback. Ronon scrabbled for a handhold with dull fingers, and missed. He cursed viciously. This no gravity fighting was absolute stang.

In the moment of inelegant scrambling, the skinny man hauled Varro back into the corridor, a trail of blood floating along obscenely in the air behind him and hightailed it out of there. Dannic, grinning maliciously fired into the room of hostages. Hitting several crewmen. Ronon quoted a stanza from the great epic The War Queen Vaneshta at the berserker, and charged, this could not stand. Laughing mockingly Dannic followed his cohorts and disappeared behind a hatchway.

Behind him Cadman and Brightman worked desperately on the injured. He desperately wanted to chase after the cruel idiot, but Ronon needed to make sure everyone here was secure first. Ronon made himself watch the bastard run off, before turning to help.

---

Albert watched with no little relief as the first of the sedated and brainwashed personnel came around. Sgt Siler rubbed at his head,

"What happened Colonel?"

"Lucian Alliance attacked us Sgt. Glad to see you're okay."

Lam was hurrying around, unstrapping people from restraints, and generally looking harried. Reynolds hated to do this to her, but,

"Doctor Lam, any news on if our Za'tarcs are still… yunno… voodooed?"

She shot him a withering look.

"There's no way to be certain colonel."

Reynolds sent a pleading look Teal'c's way,

"Teal'c? Care to chip in here?"

"Indeed, Colonel Reynolds, Doctor Lam is correct. We have no way to be sure that those who were brainwashed are telling the truth now, that the conditioning is broken."

Desperately Reynolds asked what he knew was a stupid question,

"Not even that detector thing the Tok'ra were working on?"

Lam interrupted, "That technology never worked."

Reynold's felt his frustration boil over,

"Well we need to do something!" He gestured emphatically at the overfull infirmary, "More than half our security forces are tied up here. If they're not suspected of being whammied, they're guarding people who are! We can't end the lockdown until we know for sure they're not a risk."

Satterfield lifted her oxygen mask and cut in,

"Well, sir, James and I were down there. I think you'd know if the people who got taken in were still…"

"Crazies." James interjected, looking completely unapologetic about her use of the word, "They were completely batshit sir. Hell, it felt like the worst migraine in the world, only you didn't realise that's what it was, until it was over."

"Indeed?" Teal'c looked unduly fascinated, "The effects of this device sound wholly different to that of making a Za'tarc. Perhaps the myths about Isis and Osiris developing the technology millennia ago were true."

"What are you on about Teal'c?"

"Forgive me Colonel Reynolds, we previously speculated on the source of this technology. I heard rumour that Nirrti acquired some technology that had the same effects as those we witnessed today."

"What the crazy scientist didn't make it herself?"

"Oh no, she never claimed credit for that."

"Huh."

"It is likely she feared Osiris's reprisal if he found out she'd stolen credit."

"Oh great, one thing we do have in common with the damned snakes."

Teal'c inclined his head.

Damn, what the hell was he going to do? He couldn't very well lock everyone up, could he? Then again there was precedent. And they did have several floors of isolation rooms for just such a purpose… Reynolds steeled himself for the backlash and ordered Lam to ready the isolation floors.

The chief doctor glared at him but didn't press the point. It wasn't an ideal solution, but it would free up the personnel guarding this lot to help clear up this damned mess. Albert couldn't wait until Landry got back, let the General deal with this.

---

Ronon helped run triage as Brightman finished patching up the people Dannic hit with his spray and pray technique. A few Lantean veterans had been amongst those caught in the ship's mess, Cadman and Brightman included. Thankfully Brightman was a medic, and better still, she was calm about the situation, not panicking about the wellbeing of her patients loudly as Carson tended to, or worse wondering aloud about her own competence as was Keller's habit.

"Thank you Ronon." The doctor finished bandaging and shot him a look, "I've done everything I can here without access to the infirmary."

The flat tones of the enemy commander came across the intercom, interrupting whatever head of steam the doc might have been building up to,

"This is pointless Colonel Carter. Why do you persist in hiding from me? We will find you, and in the meantime your crew shall suffer for your petulance. Whatever you're planning, know that killing me won't make any difference to your fate, my lieutenants have orders to fire on this vessel at once should that eventuality occur…"

Ronon grunted derisively at the threat, and turned his attention to the nearest marine, it was Captain Cadman.

"You able to hold the line?"

"Oh sure." she said blithely, "They only got the drop on us the first time because we were busy playing distraction."

Ronon wasn't sure he believed her assessment of the way the situation had gone down. But thought better of saying anything. He grunted, then realised she was waiting for an actual reply,

"I better go find out what's happened to everyone else."

Quick as a whip she quipped,

"Try not to stick your dick in this, it's fucked enough already."

Ronon grinned fiercely back at the marine.

"I should say the same to you, Captain." He started down the hallway, and called over his shoulder, "Remember, no high explosives in space. Sheppard taught me that."

Cadman looked puzzled, "Wha-? Sheppard isn't an explosive's expert."

"No, I just don't wanna get sucked out into hard vacuum. Again."

Realisation dawned, a semi-amused scowl came over Cadman's expression, "Oh ha ha. Very droll. I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of judging how much or how little plastic explosive is needed to break open a bulkhead without blowing clean through the hull."

"Yeah. Right."

His dramatic exit was spoilt by the way Dannic and co had clearly barred the way behind them,

"Crap."

Cadman joined him at the corridor junction, shot him a wicked grin, then with a jaunty flourish theatrically produced a block of C4 and waved it at him mockingly.

"Need a hand?"

Ronon sighed and let her at it, with efficient movements Cadman sectioned off a small amount of putty and attached the detonator. She gestured for him to step back. They retreated down the corridor.

"How you wanna do this?" Ronon asked.

Cadman shrugged, "You go high I go low?"

"Fine by me."

Cadman triggered the detonator. Laura was definitely Ronon's kind of marine. Badass. Competently lethal, and not afraid to use her body to any advantage. Be that using her smaller stature in a fight or taking Teyla's lessons in flexibility vs bulk to heart.

They both rushed into the barricaded room as planned. Clumsy in the 0g.

Their small explosion to breach the bulkhead had sent people flying. Literally. Lucian Alliance members were scattered all over the place. Ronon grinned and started stunning. Between the explosion and Ronon's gun they made short work of the invaders in the room.

Ronon ran an assessing eye over the space,

"This a more defensible position, yeah?"

"Oh I'll say." Cadman grinned.

"Good." Neither Dannic or Varro were amongst those they'd taken out. "I'm going to push on."

"Alright, good hunting out there."

---

Hank looked at Patricia Armstrong's pale face and tried not to let the pity show on his face.

"I'm going to go public with the programme! I swear it!"

The woman's hands shook as she poured herself a very full glass from the decanter on the sideboard. The amber liquid nearly sloshed over the side as she gulped it down, then slammed the glass back to the wooden surface.

Despite her harsh words all Hank could feel was shame. He'd only just gotten the news himself. Senator Armstrong was dead. On Hank's watch. His daughter Chloe was blaming the SGC. Loudly. Landry couldn't find it within himself to blame her.

Up here in DC communication with the SGC was still spotty at best. Landry wanted to be back under the mountain dealing with this mess, or failing that, helping the efforts at Homeworld. Instead here he was, watching the woman in front of him pickle her liver in an effort not to feel anything. A second glass of amber liquid was poured, and rapidly worked through in short order. Awkwardly Hank offered his condolences,

"Mrs Armstrong, I am so sorry for your loss. I hope it will be of some consolation to know that your daughter is safe, and that the-" Hank nearly said situation, then remembered, Patricia had clearance. Of course she did, with the threats she was levelling, "invasion of Earth has been thwarted by the efforts of those working at Cheyenne. Your husband was a good man, he will be missed."

Patricia Armstrong sent him a hate filled glare, "Tell me my daughter is safe."

"I assure you she's perfectl-"

"That's what you said about my husband!"

---

Sam had a solution to the standoff. She didn't like it. In some ways it was even more risky than playing with the atmosphere. Hell, who was she kidding, Sam knew it was incredibly dangerous, could result in the Hammond going Dutchman out here in the black with all hands onboard for eternity. But Kiva wasn't giving her any option. In forty-five minutes she was going to space the first crewmember.

The Lucian Alliance commander still had three Ha'taks under her command, which she was using to great effect to back Sam into a corner. Carter couldn't activate her nasty little hastily programmed life-support subroutine, without activating the dead man's switch deal Kiva apparently had going on with her seconds on board the other vessels.

It was time to fight fire with celestial fire.

Carter ran the final few strokes of the anti-viral coding she'd desperately been typing into the ship's mainframe and hit enter.

With bated breath she awaited the results.

A groan echoed around the superstructure of the ship.

The crystalline array, that had been dark, lit up.

They had shields again.

It was temporary, no long-term solution, routed through circuitry meant to control the hyperdrive, but they'd hold up long enough to let her do this. No one to pilot. Her crew still desperately fighting boarders in every section of her ship, but… The Hammond was no longer a sitting duck.

Dare she risk everyone, to save some?

Carter glanced again at the storage bay, filled with a full third of the Hammond's crew manifest. There was no other option. She glanced at the estimated arrival time. Forty minutes. Sam had to try - if it worked no one else would die today.

If it didn't, no one would know. They'd just be dead

Jaw clenched against the urge to back away from this madness, Sam deliberately set the Hammond on a course that took them on a long drift towards the neighbouring system containing the pulsar. Sam fought back the dread that iced down her spine as warning labels flashed up on the scientific station she was using to monitor their course. Hastily she turned off all the automated safety features, and hoped their hacker, and thus their Ha'tak escort, hadn't noticed what they were headed towards.

---

Rush couldn't help himself; these people were making him nervous, and when he got nervous, he tended to revert to type,

"What the fuck is this? Tinker, tailor, soldier, cunt?"

Nick stumbled along; arm held in a harsh grip by the tattooed wall of muscle who seemed to make it his life's effort to blindly carry out Athena's every whim. He was worried about the others, he hadn't seen Vala or Sheppard in hours – he'd been stuck trying actively not to work on the chevron problems that were fucking crying out for him to crack them. But the cypher had been the only thing available to distract himself with in that damned cell. Rush was just worried he'd lose himself to the problem, and actually make the mistake of writing it down. Far as Nick was aware, it was the only possible thing he had that could be of interest to anyone.

He was thrown bodily into a wide open, thoroughly empty, fucking room. The gold theme continued here too, though in the echoing cavern, the state of the place was more obvious than it had been in the cells. The hieroglyphs that lined the walls were grimy and oil crusted. In places verdigris copper dripped down, betraying age and lack of care.

The power-suit wearing executive in front of him smiled smarmily, with her slick blonde hair and her wintry expression, Rush felt as if he was facing down a shark. Only, with less mercy. Nick tried to let none of his unease show in his expression, but he could feel the cold sweat breaking out as his hair began to stick uncomfortably to his neck.

"Hello Doctor Rush."

Rush kept his mouth shut and sneered.

Her smile merely grew wider.

Fuck. Fucking arsing hell, what the fuck had he fallen into?

She continued talking,

"Previously chair of cryptography at Berkeley, Field's Medallist, you cracked the P=NP problem, and the worlds' governments have been very upset with you ever since."

Rush blinked, she clearly knew who he was, oh shit, the silence, was he expected to say something now?

"I want you to use that brain of yours for me."

The denial was instinctive,

"No. Absolutely fucking not."

That disquieting smile was back again, her eyes flashed gold, her voice buzzed loudly,

"You act as if you have a choice."

The stick she'd been holding, and Rush had been trying his best to ignore, descended.

Red lightning crackled out of its tip.

The shock forced Rush to the floor, where he arched spasmodically, twitching helplessly in agony until Athena withdrew the stick.

"No."

"Really? Pity."

The stick returned.

The process was repeated several times, leaving Rush panting in jagged breaths in a puddle on the floor. He couldn't quite get his limbs to cooperate. As he tried to get at least partially upright, so he could at least glare at the witch, Rush realised with no little alarm that he was shaking. He couldn't control the twitching in his limbs at all.

"I still won't do it."

Athena raised an eyebrow,

"Impressive for a civilian. I'd continue, but I confess, I'm a little worried your heart might give out." She smiled maliciously, "And now for further motivation…"

She pressed something on what Rush had taken to be a piece of gaudy fucking jewellery of the worst variety of tacky chintz. A screen materialised out of nowhere on the grimy gold wall behind her, Vala appeared. Rush's emotions reeled, one moment he'd been trying to piece back together the tattered shreds of his dignity, to at least try to put up some sort of facade, the next, rage then fear tore through him like a storm. The conflicting emotions chasing each other restarted the shakes he'd only just managed to quell. She hadn't needed to resort to pain at all, it had all been a game to her.

Vala seemed oblivious to the camera, or whatever was being used to record her.

The thief looked mostly alright; she was pacing in another gold-walled room. Rush could see Vala was troubled, but she was alive and whole. Relief shot through him. He tried not to show it, glancing at the icy woman out of the corner of his eye, from the way her head tilted Rush got the unsettling feeling he hadn't been successful. Rush had become adept at hiding his fears from a very young age, yet this alien appeared to see right through him.

"Yes, she hasn't been harmed."

A perfectly shaped eyebrow raised, Rush was reminded unnervingly of Sheppard's tendency to speak with his eyes rather than words.

"You can ensure that this remains the case."

"What?"

Rush's heart sank, he already knew.

"Work for me, and your friend will remain unharmed."

She didn't need to state the threat, the implication was enough. The woman stalked towards the door and gestured imperiously.

"Yes, break this Tau'ri encryption for me, and your friend shall not be harmed."

Wait.

What about-

"And Sheppard?"

She paused and grinned maliciously,

"Oh, I make no such guarantees about him."

Rush snapped, the anger and grief that always roiled under the surface these days boiling to the fore with a suddenness that had him reeling,

"Who the fuck are you tae demand this!?"

Another malevolent look of glee,

"I already told you, Athena."

Another set of those damned Jaffa marched in, awkwardly manhandling a pair of desktop towers into the room. They were placed in the centre of the space, extension cables meandering messily across the floor, until they reached a previously hidden panel, where they were hastily wired into the grimy wall. She nodded at their handiwork.

Hesitantly Rush sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the computer. Watching with a sense of surreal detachment as they fussed with the thing, plugging it into the other desktop tower, and generally acting like an IT department setting up an office.

He came back to himself when the nearest thug shoved at his back roughly, pushing his head towards the computer sat in the middle of the floor,

"Work."

Rush hunched his shoulders and pretended to be cowed, he knew from bitter fucking experience that it was often the only thing men like that idiot would take. Hastily Rush scribbled a load of mathematical nonsense on the notepad they'd provided him, it was pure fucking gibberish; but he was trying to look like he was panicking. Nick reached out and sulkily pushed the power button.

Oh, he was panicking, but not for the reason that had the Phil Mitchell wannabe behind him looking so smug, where the hell were the others? Who'd taken them? Athena? Who was she and how did she have so many people willing to work for her? Why the fuck had they been attacked? Was Colonel fucking Southern Charm getting help? Or was he being kept somewhere else in this complex? What about Vala? Would working really keep her safe? He doubted it. And what about Sheppard?

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck!

The computer took an absolute age about it but booted up. Rush's heart sank when he realised what Athena meant by Tau'ri encryption. In front of him the computer was accusatorily showing a corporate address, identified as Colson Industries in the monochrome white on black pixelated text on screen. She'd kidnapped him for a light bit of industrial espionage. He desultorily scribbled down a stream cypher, the kind of thing he'd show one of his 101 classes in a bid to at least look productive, as he chewed over how to play this.

Nick was still suffering from the shakes in the aftermath of that damned stick. Rush exaggerated the aftereffects of his treatment in a bid to buy more time to think. Internally Nick was reeling. How the fuck was he going to get through this? Mild mannered mathematician, widower, formerly married to a concert violinist of some repute, break himself out of whatever the fuck this was? Rush snorted. Yeah right.

Well, dammit. She'd clearly known who he was. It wouldnae do him any good to stall too obviously, but, maybe Nick could do as she asked, just very very badly? Would that work?

Athena took his hesitance for something it wasn't, impatiently the ridiculously statuesque blonde spat,

"Well, then, make yourself useful. Pathetic Tau'ri, you're all so proud of your filthy contaminated world and its pathetic databases. Go on, break into them!"

Automatically he spat back, "Och aye, proud. Did ye know Trident is just next door to Glasgow? Don't talk to me about proud ye wee doss cunt." Rush's mouth was running on automatic, all his higher functions taken up with trying to work his way out of this mess.

He felt sick when he registered just what had come out of his mouth. Thankfully, by some utter fucking miracle, Athena didn't seem to register the insult. She left the room he'd been dragged to with nary a word, leaving him with the crippled computer in the great echoing gold space.

Rush was stuck with Tweedledee and Tweedledum for company. Incredulously Nick couldn't quite bring himself to believe that the worm had been stupid enough to task the apparently infamous P=NP Field's Medallist, of all people, with this job. Hacking into corporate networks? Please. He could do it in his sleep.

The real trick would be making it look like he was being careful, whilst deliberately leaving a breadcrumb trail for the SGC to trace. Rush couldn't leave anything that would make it obvious to this shower of shit what he was doing. He just had to trust that the people working at Stargate Command were as intelligent as they thought they were, which, given past experience, was fair fucking unlikely. But what else could he do?

Rush after all was the man who had solved the P=NP problem, and Athena knew that.

Suddenly claiming an inability to hack into his own world's computer systems, when he'd very publicly proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was more than capable of hacking into something utterly alien was a leap too far. Even for this fucking idiot.

Rush cracked his knuckles and got started. Glaring at the Jaffa staring at him from the other computer the whole time.

Give enough. Careful – balance it just right. Just like when he'd dossed around on the streets, look over here at the shiny shiny distraction. Not at what my other hand is doing as I nick your fucking wallet. Only, this time he wasn't playing to earn enough to get a bite tae eat, but for his very life. For the lives of a load of veritable strangers who'd somehow all come to rely on him, a fellow thief, and a maladjusted member of the USAF, who Rush was trying very hard not to think about too much.

Nick hadn't seen what Athena was doing to the man. But his imagination was more than up to the challenge. He pushed down the imagery and got back to work.

The worm had blocked access to every address, bar the one she was currently asking him to hack into, at the router level. Even more insultingly, the only thing loaded onto this skeleton of a machine was a fucking DOS that was so severely broken, all Rush could use it for was attacking aforementioned address. Nick was grudgingly impressed; this machine was so crippled, it was relying on the other machine in the room to actually function. He'd only seen a computer this fucked once before, when an undergrad had accidentally deleted most of the key functions of the Linux OS he'd been playing with, drivers and all. It had been an exercise in not laughing his arse off, as he'd eventually established that in order to even boot up, the machine would need to be temporarily slaved to another computer in order to do a full wipe and clean install. Rush had never seen it done deliberately before. The Jaffa next to him effectively had a kill switch and could keep a beady eye on everything he was doing.

Dammit, much as he didn't want to, Nick needed to play along for now. He only hoped the period of mostly doing as he was asked, albeit very fucking incompetently, wouldn't be too long for Sheppard. Nick appended the first of the comments to his shoddy hacking job on Colson Industries near automatically, scrawling a complex set of mathematical proofs about the orbital mechanics of a binary star system in the virtual margins, even as he wormed past several layers of encryption that even a year ago would have been impossible to break. Then again Rush mused bitterly, a year ago Nick and Gloria had thought they'd found their happily ever after.

---

Ronon caught up with the mass of fighting near the engine rooms. He was ferally pleased to note that of the group he'd encountered earlier, it was just Dannic. The other two were nowhere to be seen.

He fired down the length of the corridor, neatly taking out three of the boarders, and attracting the attention of the other man.

"Hey Dannic, Varro okay?" Ronon called tauntingly.

As he'd hoped, Dannic charged wildly.

Ronon met him blow for blow, using the berserker's anger against him. He backed up, it went against everything he wanted to do, but Ronon knew. He had to make it look like he wasn't protecting engineering.

Carter was doing something down there.

Ronon had to buy her as much time as possible.

If that meant making a nuisance of himself, rather than cleanly and efficiently taking down as many of these cowards as possible, then so be it. Ronon shot Dannic a mocking grin,

"That all you've got?"

---

Cam tried to lay low and not draw any attention to their quiet little corner. Sheppard meanwhile had sunk ever lower in his chair, as the lanky man gradually gave in to the urge to sulk. With Dave's new position, down nearly at eye-level with the table, Cam was finally seeing a little bit of familial resemblance. If not in looks, then in boneless slouching. It'd only taken more than twelve hours sitting around twiddling their thumbs for it to happen.

Mitchell and Shep abused the free coffee refills, only earning a slight glare from the ennui filled waitress who'd first served them, as she went off shift and noticed they were still there as she left. In a bid not to get kicked out, Cam bought another plate of eggs, which he picked desultorily at, whilst trying not to earn Dave's ire. It was better than the powdered stuff they served in the cafeteria, but only just.

An insomniac drunk in the corner was not-so-sneakily necking the contents of a glass bottle wrapped up in a brown paper bag, the complete lack of any attempt at subtlety threw Cam for a six – until he realised it was getting on for 0400. It was currently so far beyond zero dark thirty that Cam could see hints of sunlight peeking around the horizon, lightening the pitch black of the desert landscape from a vast impenetrably dark emptiness, topped by the awe inspiring star scape of the Milky Way, to something that was almost recognisable as human space again.

A bunch of kids all piled in the doors, upsetting the little bubble of tense quiet that had been Cam's world for the past God knew how long. They were young and loud; a blast of shocking noise in a world gone eery and strange with its surreal contrast between the oasis of harsh flickering fluorescent lighting inside, and the vast black echoing emptiness of the desert on the other side of the glass.

They cheerfully clattered around, ordering food, laughing at bad jokes, and generally making a bit of a ruckus. Cam settled back with his coffee, noting that Sheppard hadn't so much as turned his head in their direction. Concerned, he shot the businessman a questioning look, but it only got Dave straightening momentarily into his previous painfully stiff posture, even by military standards. When Dave realised the promised ride hadn't showed, Sheppard shot Mitchell a truly filthy glare, before subsiding back into the dazed slump he'd fallen into despite himself.

Mitchell bit his tongue, he'd already been on the receiving end of several tongue lashings that'd make his Pa blush something fierce, he didn't want to earn another. Still, Cam watched the goings on with growing concern as the troupe of kids gradually got more and more raucous.

First, a lanky snot-nosed kid sidled up to the drunk, and somehow managed to persuade the guy to part with a splash of whatever was in that damned bottle he'd been swigging from. As soon as Cam saw the cap, he knew it wouldn't end well; it was Everclear. Sure enough, moments later, the kid raised the glass to his lips, and spat the volatile liquid violently all over the table. The night owl was howling fit to burst a gut, the graveyard shift waiter fussed at the laminate table, and the kid was hacking and spluttering as if he was dying.

The drunk allowed himself to be chivvied to the counter for another coffee and a slice of toast, still cackling loudly, and for a while Cam figured that was the worst of the late night, or rather, early morning, drama over and done with.

It wasn't to be.

A while later another kid decided it'd be a grand ole time if he were to serenade the joint with his rendition of Shakespeare, by getting up on one of the tables. By this point, the kids weren't the only people in the place. The threat of dawn had brought with it the extreme beginnings of the early crowd, truckers and the earliest bleary-eyed commuters were mingling with the drunks and night owls. If Cam were a betting man, he'd guess the guy in a suit at the counter was a door to door salesman, with that heavy briefcase and ill-tailored suit.

Loudly, as Denny's began to veritably bustle, where all these people were coming from, Cam couldn't rightly fathom, given that they were in the middle of the desert, the boy got started,

"I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth…"

If it wouldn't have attracted yet another filthy glare, Cam would have groaned out loud. Between Mr Everclear noisily slurping up his coffee and munching obnoxiously on his toast, and the rest of the kids it was getting a bit close in here,

"…forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;"

Sheppard seemed to wake from the doze he'd fallen into. The businessman startled in obvious recognition of the speech, he looked around urgently, realised it was a load of kids, glared at Cam as if this was somehow his fault, and resumed his slump,

"…this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors."

Cam resisted the urge to start an argument, Sheppard kept acting as if everything wrong in the world could be landed on his doorstep. Though, he had to admit, the kid really was hamming it up something awful.

The kid reached the climax of the little monologue, working himself up into a near frenzy. Cam found himself unwillingly dragged along for the ride, caught up in the overwrought emotion the kid was practically emanating. Mitchell could damn near feel the despair that wreathed the words, which, given the fluorescent hum and Formica surroundings he found himself in, was just damned strange,

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither…"

The kid took a bow and jumped down from the table, smilingly directing the last line at a giggling teen who was probably his sweetheart, in what must have been his usual accent he turned to the giggling girl and said,

" though by your smiling you seem to say so."

And the moment passed. The waitress popped her gum, unimpressed. Cam had to admit that he weren't all that charmed either, the kid seemed to have completely missed the point of that grim little rant from the way he'd so casually dropped the mood. He side-eyed Sheppard, who was mulishly poking at his coffee, though at least the guy wasn't glaring at the other customers.

Cam figured the craziness must finally be winding down, but he was sadly mistaken. Another kid, one Cam wasn't entirely convinced was actually with the others, started trying to play tough by picking a fight with a light fitting. A light fitting.

"Are you talkin to me?"

Christ – he was really going for it,

"I said, are you talking to me?!"

The boy took a swing for the lamp. There was a horrible crunching tinkling sound as both the protective lampshade, and the fluorescent bulb inside shattered. The boy howled, clutching at his hand, which was weeping blood.

The waitress sounding utterly bored said,

"I'll call the emergency room." She pointed at a random teen, "You – don't let him clench his fist. I saw this before, someone else grabbed the guy's hand and squeezed."

There was a collective wince.

Hours later, Cam still couldn't decide if the kid had intended to make contact or not.

The late night/early morning craziness passed, and with it, Cam felt himself slipping into a semi-awake not-quite doze himself. He was so tired he'd slipped around the other side, and found new peaks of sleeplessness, which, thinking about it was probably a good thing? Cam still wasn't entirely certain he didn't have a concussion. And he was supposed to be keeping an eye out for the both of them, after all Sheppard here was a civilian, and the Air Force had all but stated that Cam was so far down on their priority list that'd likely be all damned day before they bothered to send anyone to fetch them.

---

"You, medic, treat my second in command. If Varro lives, you live. He dies, you die."

TJ glared silently at the cruel woman in front of her, and wordlessly moved to patch up the man who'd obviously been shot. In the back of her mind, TJ chewed over the fact that the Alliance knew all the terms they used. Just how long had they been spying on them?

It was a good thing that Dr Brightman and Captain Cadman had both gotten out from behind the blockade. Everyone stuck in this section of the ship was relying on the goodwill of a woman who didn't appear to have any.

Tamara took a moment to wince at the blood still bubbling up from the wound. Severe lacerating gunshot wound, in 0g. She didn't need to be a doctor to know this was bad, already she could see the blood was pooling where ordinarily it would drain away from the injury. Here, with no gravity to speak of, a massive bleed was trapped floating around the wound site within the body. 0g lead to all kinds of horrible medical complications.

Taking care not to make the damage worse TJ washed out the wound with saline solution, swiping irritably at the bloody water that hung in the air in front of her. In the end Private Dunning wordlessly pushed himself towards her makeshift operating room, and clutching the gurney started swiping at the globes of moisture with a towel. It didn't entirely work, but he captured the worst of it. TJ tried not to notice the way the combined surface tension and lack of gravity made the red liquid wobble sickeningly around the surface of the towel, not so much absorbing into the cloth, as cling obscenely to it in a surreal bloodied mass.

With extra-long forceps, and resorting to zealous use of the suction pipe, to suck away blood and water that simply would not drain from the wound in this damnably awkward lack of gravity that meant Tamara was hovering over her patient at a really strange angle, she removed the bullet lodged in his gut. Thankfully, no major vessels had been damaged, and the intestines hadn't been perforated, but TJ really didn't like the way the wound was acting in these unusual circumstances.

She packed the hole with sterile gauze, figuring it would hold until either the gravity got turned back on, or Dr Brightman came back.

Pulling off her gloves, and immediately regretting her unthinking action as even the slight jolt of momentum from throwing the gloves into the medical waste bin sent her drifting backwards, Tamara announced,

"I've done all I can for him."

"You haven't done enough, there's still blood-"

Even injured as he was, Doctor Simms chimed in, he called from his position slumped in the corner,

"You do realise wounds won't drain in 0g?" The senior doctor glared up at Kiva, "Medic Johansen said there was nothing more to be done, as the senior doctor here, I concur."

Kiva very deliberately knelt down and backhanded the Asian doctor with her gun, he fell to the floor, pushed there by the momentum. Kiva herself stumbled, nearly floating upwards into the horrible no man's land that had been used to so effectively restrain so many crewmembers. Kiva regained her footing by hastily kicking upwards, the momentum pushing her back down. The woman looked even more furious at the brief loss of dignity. For a long-horrified moment Tamara thought that Kiva would shoot Doctor Simms. The Commander reached for her gun, then the screams started.

In the corner of the bay, next to the emergency medical cubby for the 302 pilots, a beam of harsh light shot into the room through the trinium viewport. The member of the Alliance who'd been standing there howled as if in agony. TJ stared uncomprehendingly, until, with a start she realised she could see his bones. Sickeningly, it resembled the first-person accounts of radiation exposure on fast forward, the man's skin literally sloughed off, then his flesh, then the skeleton was reduced to dust.

Kiva rounded on the ranking officer in the room, Captain Kleinmann,

"What did you do to my men!?"

TJ watched with growing respect as the helmsman replied calmly,

"I've got no idea what just happened Ma'am."

Kiva looked as if she was about to commit murder. Simms may have (barely) escaped her wrath, but it seemed Kleinmann wasn't going to be so lucky.

Frantic pounding echoed through the storage bay, making several people jump. One more person joined the ranks of those floating helplessly in the no man's land created by the combined lack of gravity or handholds with which to rectify the situation in the centre of the echoing space.

Irritably Kiva swiped at the door controls,

"Dannic? What is it?"

"There's a crewmember giving me trouble. Been chasing him all ove-"

"So? Hunt him down! Or do I have to remind you what the price is for failure?"

Dannic hurriedly backed out, leaving the people the Lucian Alliance had rounded up and trapped in here to the stench of burning flesh left in the aftermath of whatever the hell that beam of light had been.

Kiva activated the comms,

"Colonel Carter, you have ten minutes until I space someone."

---

Sam needed a solution to this damned hostage situation and fast. On sublights it would take hours to get close enough to the Pulsar for her plan to work. Thankfully, with some quick talking on their parts, the medics and marines held off further bloodshed. But Kiva was getting impatient in her section of the ship, and she had sixty members of Sam's crew for leverage. Soon she'd make good on that threat about the airlock. Thankfully no one had yet made the connection between the nearby star and the death ray that fried that LA boarder, but, it was with a heavy heart that Sam watched a young crewmember get singled out, then pushed into the airlock.

The new medic was screaming, the Airman in question had just helped her save Kiva's First, but to no avail. Sam nearly flinched away from the scene playing out on the security monitor but forced herself to bear witness.

It was Colonel Emerson all over again.

The airlock cycled, the doors opened. Sam found herself shamefully grateful that the camera in there wasn't a high enough resolution for her to make out the blood vessels that were inevitably rupturing in the low pressure and high radiation environment of hard vacuum.

The Airman's body hung there obscenely in the 0g.

Sam forced herself to swap back to the more general view of the storage bay. Inside Kiva was looking smug at the looks of disgust and fear she'd earned herself.

"Colonel Carter, you have one hour before I space the next crewmember." Kiva nodded meaningfully at the new medic, "Perhaps next time it will be a woman?"

Sam resisted the urge to reply, she knew the situation would have been worse if she hadn't activated the Persephone scenario. Sam wanted to scream; she'd broken her own damned ship and people had still died. But her crew behaved admirably, those who could get to their mag gear in time had taken advantage of the 0g conditions to roust the forward line of the invaders.

Hell, even the crewmembers who hadn't been able to get to their equipment had been prepared. With the little forewarning Sam had been able to give them, most of her people swapped to 0g close quarters combat seamlessly.

Unfortunately it turned out quite a few of the Lucian Alliance must have experience in fighting in 0g themselves, from the way a small, but significant minority of the invading force hadn't panicked, but blithely continued fighting, and far more elegantly than Sam's own people. Carter wished she could vent the oxygen, and deal with this immediately. But… Those damned Ha'taks were still out there. The Lucian Alliance leader had proven she was deadly, Sam wouldn't put it past her to genuinely have the other ships waiting to blow them to kingdom come.

Grimly, Carter activated the latest novel subroutine she'd hastily written, getting the sublight engines erratically sputtering, and the manoeuvring thrusters 'randomly' firing. With no little satisfaction Sam realised the LA hacker had spotted what she was trying to do, and was fighting her coding to keep them in the outskirts of the pulsar system, but Carter knew the hybrid Asgard-Tau'ri systems better than the back of her hand. There was no way she was letting the person on the other side wrest control away again.

Sam got the shields dialled up to maximum strength, drawing power away from other systems, including weaponry, and the stuff usually reserved for the hyperdrives. Given that she'd been forced to cannibalise crystals from the hyperdrive array to fix the mess made of the shields, Sam figured she'd deal with all of that later. Much later. If there was a later.

When she judged they'd gotten close enough to the neighbouring solar system, Carter remotely activated the sublights again, and smiled an unpleasant little smile, as the Ha'taks moved to follow. She couldn't hear the chatter from here, but Sam could imagine the confusion. Now she only had to keep this up. Hastily she wiped the nervous sweat from her brow and settled in to make sure the code ran clean. Somehow Carter doubted any of the Alliance invaders would spot her plan in time. Well, with the exception of the mysterious hacker that was. Sam had a suspicion that the brain behind all her troubles was sharp enough to see her plan for what it was. An alert blarted rudely at her, Sam hastily wrested back control of the parts of the life-support systems she'd already slaved to her console and continued hastily tearing through the operating system of her own ship. If Sam could only keep this going for long enough, maybe she'd get everyone out of this.

Just as that thought came, a loud crash sounded outside the hatchway.

Crap. Time to move on.

Hastily Sam started shutting down her console, burying her traces in the system, and prepared to leave via the service hatch to the sublights.

---

Cam was relieved when the Air Force car finally showed up. He and Sheppard had been nursing their coffees for hours. Even though they'd both ordered large plates of food when they'd first arrived, with cursory orders of snacks ever since, the staff had been shooting them dark looks for a while.

Mitchell wasn't entirely comfortable with all the lollygagging they'd been forced into, but Sheppard looked downright twitchy. Cam would have thought someone so used to traveling cross country as Dave apparently was, would be used to waiting for hours for contacts to show up. Though he supposed, Sheppard was probably used to classier places than this.

"Finally! You know Colonel," Sheppard spat the rank like an insult, "I'd expected better from the Air Force. Then again, given that you seem to think my brother is capable of behaving like an adult, perhaps I should have realised."

Cam was stunned into silence for a beat as he processed the sheer depth of the implied insult there.

"Now wait just a goddamn minute!"

Dave glared pointedly at the finger Cam belatedly realised he'd raised, he lowered it sheepishly, but continued doggedly, pursuing his point, even as he suspiciously checked the credentials of the 2nd Lieutenant who'd arrived in the transport car,

"Sir."

"About time LT."

Cam could practically feel the wave of vindication emanating from Sheppard at Cam's repetition of his sentiments. The lieutenant calmly showed his credentials without being asked, completely unruffled by the sniping contest going on between a full bird and a business mogul,

"Yessir, sorry sir, we had an incident at Nellis sir."

Cam wanted to shut his eyes and cry, instead of asking inappropriate questions in front of the civilian, he turned to Dave and said,

"See! Something came up. Just like I told you before. And before. And before."

David opened his mouth as if to say something cutting, Cam cut him off,

"Nope! Not a word! I have been sat cooling my heels same as you for a whole goddamn day now. We're about to find out what happened, and we'll get in touch with someone who knows how we're gonna help find Vala, and Doc Rush, and your brother."

The LT watched Cam's rare show of temper with a surprised expression but didn't say anything. Cam sank into the blessed quiet of the car's air con and shut his eyes.

---

Sam kept firing, backing up the corridor. It was taking half her concentration not to get knocked off her feet by the recoil. In microgravity the retort of her gun provided enough force to make even this basic of soldiering dangerous.

A hatch loomed to her left, Sam took it.

The door hissed open, Sam pushed herself off the bulkhead, and flew through. She hastily bounced back off the opposite cabin wall, and yanked on the door controls, fusing the system, and sealing herself inside.

It was the old Asgard control centre for the transporters. A design holdover from when they'd had members of that ancient race willing to help the Tau'ri crew their vessels and learn their technology. Since the Hammond had the transport control console on the bridge, and the new Asgard core room built in as standard, this room hadn't seen much, if any, use yet.

A noise sounded from within the room. Sam spun around too quickly and was forced to steady herself on the ceiling, as the extra momentum sent her drifting.

"Who's there?"

"Hic!"

Carter frowned.

Doctor Novak emerged from the innards of the defunct console, gun raised, trailing crystalline cabling.

"Colonel!"

The Captain-Doctor hastily lowered her sidearm, and said,

"Am I glad to see you! I've been fighting back against our saboteur but, well," Novak gave a helpless shrug, "I'm no Sam Carter."

Carter tried to bear up to the renewed weight of responsibility settling on her shoulders. In the mad dash to safety, she'd nearly forgotten,

"Right, show me what you've got Captain."

---

Rodney nearly bit Bill Lee's head off the next time the genial but foolish scientist offered his help. If Rodney wanted assistance, he'd ask. He hadn't asked, he just wanted to be left alone to sort through the mess that was the SGC security footage. McKay was peeling through hours and hours worth of data, hoping he'd find some clue, some speck of information that would give them a lead as to just why and how this had all happened.

As soon as they'd gotten out of the police's clutches Rodney rushed to Atlantis, or rather, he'd wanted to. Miko had been the one to point out they were as cut off from the world as they were safe from it, there, in the city floating outside San Francisco bay. In the end he'd agreed to go straight to the SGC to report in but insisted the others make their way to safety. Simpson had glared at him, but Radek and Biro acceded with grace, not so subtly bringing up the fact of Atlantis's superior technology to anything of Earth's, perhaps including the stuff under the mountain.

McKay angrily flew through the debrief, he'd been short with the SFs who'd checked him in, barely held his temper during the interview, and rushed straight to the problem itself. Thankfully one of the Lantean old hands was running the SGC security room. He'd taken one look at Rodney's face, and given up his seat without complaint.

The invasion attempt had been horrible to watch, SG-2 had gone down so quickly. Snuffed out in their own backyard without so much as a warning from the people that stormed the gate room. It was so like watching Diablo and Corrigan go down during the Genii invasion during the storm in the First Year, that Rodney found himself swallowing back bitter bile, and rubbing at his arm, as he forced himself to comb the footage for any sort of clue.

All he'd gotten out of it, beyond the lingering coppery taste of fear, was the opinion that Captain Satterfield and Lt James should be snatched up for Atlantis post-haste. Alongside the airman who'd been on KP duty and the guy with Sergeant's stripes who'd helped Botany stage a successful barricade in the infirmary, then retake the mountain. He made a mental note to tell Sheppard to headhunt those four, before reality sunk in, and the rage and helplessness rushed back.

Inevitably footage of the invasion was scrambled, the tech the Lucian Alliance used to break into the gate systems and hold the iris open screwed with everything. Whole chunks of time, and people were missing.

The dead did not account for all their losses.

People had been snatched straight out of the SGC.

It was the only explanation, much as it was no explanation at all.

Between the anti-beaming shielding, the fact that the wormhole had been incoming the whole time, and the doors were guarded? It was a locked room mystery.

Rodney felt the headache bloom behind his eyes even as he mulled over the problem.

People had been taken, and not just from the SGC.

Just about everyone from the Atlantis Expedition who hadn't been safely on Atlantis had been targeted.

It was a small wonder there hadn't been a frontal assault on the city itself. But Rodney supposed, with an ironic twist to his mouth, that the Alteran tech had been good for preventing that at least. Maybe for all their spies, the Alliance simply hadn't been able to locate the city, drifting lazily as it was just beyond the bay.

Sheppard was missing.

Rodney pored over the CCTV footage of Sheppard's time in the mountain, hoping to find some sort of clue, anything, that would help him track his erstwhile friend down.

There was the fake foothold, with Sheppard playing GI Joe, and risking his neck. There was Colonel Dixon glaring up a storm… There was Sheppard hanging out with that Field's Medallist guy, Wish? No, Rice, and Vala, and… Wait a minute, what was that?

Footage had been cut.

Rodney's fingers flew over the keys in a bid to recover what had been deleted.

Oh, it was a neat job.

There was no obvious loop, or footage glitch.

The timestamps matched and everything.

But Rodney wasn't called a genius for nothing. His instincts were screaming at him that something was off here.

Hadn't Rush and Vala gotten Sheppard kicked off base just in time to get nabbed too?

Rodney started digging through the footage. He'd find it, whatever it was.

---

Staring worriedly at General Landry on the monitor, Mitchell wondered how the hell he'd gotten himself into this. The General was staring back at him expectantly, with that look on his face that Cam had learnt to be wary of.

"Sir?"

"Colonel Mitchell, I would like you to keep our… guest company whilst he's with us for his own protection."

Landry glanced significantly at Cam there instead of just outright stating what else he meant. Cam did his best to look like he was a competent adult who understood precisely what his boss wanted of him. He wasn't entirely sure he was successful. Cam figured Landry meant him to keep Sheppard away from anything he shouldn't be getting into, which… Was basically everything given the classified, special access project lid on everything concerning Area 51 and the SGC. Crap.

They'd made it to Nellis, and Area 51, only to find the place a warzone.

There'd been an attack.

The main uncatalogued alien materials warehouse had been blown up, re-burying the remains of the building that contained the Antarctic Outpost Control Chair.

Thankfully, the ridiculous delay in getting picked up meant that things around the place were well in hand, but… Mitchell stared at Landry, and the unfamiliar office behind him on the screen. The grandfatherly general looked gravely serious. Mitchell sighed,

"Yessir."

"That's my man!"

Mitchell resigned himself to spending the next few days bored out of his skull, and worried as all hell. Still, it beat laying around in the infirmary. Which was the alternative. His crutches had been gained despite the doc's fierce glare, not with her permission.

"Sir, any news on what the hell happened?"

Landry's response was dryly sarcastic,

"You mean, besides an attack against the SGC on all fronts?"

"Sir, last I knew we were up on a jolly. The next thing I know we're on the run from what sound suspiciously like Jaffa, and apparently Sheppard's crashed the plane. Now I don't know about you, but something about that don't add up to me."

Landry merely looked at Cam across the secure line,

"Colonel, you'll know when I know. For now, I'm just trying to clean up the mess in DC. Do you have any idea how loudly these jackass politicians complain when they're panicking?"

Cam was taken aback by Landry's frank dismissal of their bosses,

"Uh, nossir."

"Loudly Colonel." A gusty sigh, "Did you know that Senator Armstrong's wife is threatening to go public with the Programme?"

"What? Why?!"

"The late Senator of California was killed by a Za'tarc in the attack on the SGC son. His daughter witnessed the whole thing, she's blaming us. Specifically, she's blaming the young Lieutenant who was escorting them to safety at the time."

"Now that just ain't right."

"No, no it isn't, but grief does terrible things to a person."

"Crap." Cam quickly rushed out, "Sorry sir, my condolences to the family."

Landry waved him away impatiently.

"Now, you're well out of all that. And in a position to help me by stopping Mr Sheppard there getting similar ideas. Do you understand me Colonel?"

"Yessir!"

"Good, now scram. You look done in Cam." Landry sighed, "We all do."

Landry reached up and killed the connection. Shakily, Cam left the secure conference room, and made his way to the vending machine outside, and the sulking form of Dave Sheppard perched incongruously like some great Wall Street vulture on the military issue plastic chairs bolted to the floor in the corridor.

Cam spotted a Mars bar in the glass fronted machine and crowed childishly,

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

"Colonel Mitchell is now really the time?"

"Oh come on Sheppard, we've been hanging out exclusively in each other's company for days now. Loosen up!"

He rifled through his pockets for some change and started feeding it into the machine. It was only when the Mars Bar thumped to the collection tray and Cam turned to see the other man looking incredulous and angry that the tone of voice really sank in,

"Stop calling me that! For god's sake! I'm not one of John's military friends. My name is David."

"Oh, sorry. Dave."

Cam knew he shouldn't be needling the other guy, but he was just so relieved. For a while there he'd genuinely been worried that the SGC had fallen, between his injuries and the need to lie-low Cam hadn't a clue where to begin trying to help out, or even if he should try and make his way to the nearest base and hand himself over to the SFs.

It had been a long, interminable day, camped out in the liminal space that was Denny's, waiting for something, anything, to happen. He'd halfway wanted those Jaffa to catch up with them by the end.

Still, his momma had raised him better than this. Though Cam was hurting, Vala had vanished, and Carter was MIA, he knew Sheppard here was hurting too. The man's brother was missing. And he'd clearly never seen a firefight before, crap, the guy was a civilian, and Cameron had been going around expecting him to act like a soldier.

Cam felt like an ass. Even more so when the other man slumped in on himself and started apologising to him,

"Look I'm sorry Colonel, no one will tell me anything. No one's even bothered to take a witness statement. Don't they want to know about that experimental aircraft I saw? I'm sure it's got something to do with what happened, in fact I'm convinced of it."

Cam shook himself out of his stunned silence,

"What experimental aircraft?"

Cam had assumed it was surface to aircraft fire, or a plane. What was it they said about assuming?

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. Infuriatingly the guy still looked so perfectly at ease, even here in an environment he couldn't possibly be familiar with,

"You didn't see it?"

"No. I didn't see it! If I'd seen it, I'd have brought it up in my AAR!"

"Oh."

For the first time Dave Sheppard looked unsure, Cam realised that the front of asshole businessman was just that, a front. The guy was genuinely worried about his brother, Cam felt himself unwillingly softening towards the ass,

"Well it didn't look like any plane I've ever seen."

"Oh, you sure it wasn't say, a blackbird?"

Sheppard shot him a coolly amused look,

"Colonel, John's wanted to fly since he was three, I know what a blackbird looks like. No, it looked – it didn't look like it should be able to fly."

"Huh."

"It… This is going to sound like complete science fiction, but it looked a bit like a bug."

Cam's heart sank. That sounded horribly like a Tel'tak, their search just went from needle in a haystack to needle in several barns full of needles. He'd assumed it'd been a ground assault.

"Sheppard, I'd like you to come with me and see if you can point out which …aircraft you think it is you saw…"

---

Lindsey Novak fought back against the hacker. What's more, the doctor was winning. Sam redoubled her efforts to get sublight propulsion working from within the Asgard tech control room. Her forced move from her previous hidey-hole meant they'd lost precious time as the ship drifted towards the asteroid belt (well, dust belt) surrounding the Pulsar, rather than anywhere near the star's poles. Lindsey had bought her time; she'd been the one who secured the all-but-forgotten control room. Novak was also the one fighting on two virtual fronts to prevent the Lucian Alliance from overrunning the entirety of the Hammond's systems. It was the least Sam could do to actually finish her, well, their plan now. Mad as it was.

With one final burst of effort Carter rapidly bypassed the final safeties that meant sublights were only controllable from the bridge (and secondary bridge) consoles. She hastily rescanned the lines of code, then pressed enter.

No more 'random' bursts from the manoeuvring thrusters. They needed precision now, not stealth.

The angle of approach was everything.

Trick the remaining Ha'taks into thinking the Hammond was trying to make a run for it. Approach the pulsar from the equator, but get the enemy ships approaching from the poles. Then watch as the deadly burst of radiation the decaying star emitted fried the ships sitting in its path.

With any luck, the fact that the Hammond used Asgard shielding technology rather than crappy Goa'uld tech, and their approach at the relatively low-energy equator well away from the directional emissions of radiation from the poles, would prevent the vessel from coming to any serious harm.

Sam prepared to make the final, deadly, announcement over the shipwide comms,

"This is Carter to all personnel. Code Icarus. I repeat Code Icarus. This is not a drill."

It was a hell of a risk. But Carter wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't at least give her crew a chance to get to safety. Carter met Captain-Doctor Novak's eyes as she made the call. Of anyone aboard ship, Lindsey was probably the crewmember who best understood the potential ramifications of what was about to go down. Novak looked as serious as Sam had ever seen her, but the woman was not hiccupping, Lindsey nodded tersely and got back to typing. A few minutes later Novak called out,

"Got them."

Sam shot a quizzical glance the doctor's way. Novak sounded grimly satisfied,

"Oh, I locked the hacker out of our systems. And I've locked the room surrounding the console they were using to access the systems. Whoever they are, they're trapped in conference room 3b."

"Good work."

"Thanks!"

Novak shot Sam a tight smile and got back to work. Between them they might just be able to bypass the multitude of redundancies protecting the air supply safeties after all. Carter had resigned herself to the potential for a shootout, but if the pulsar did its job, then that dead man's switch wouldn't matter, and she could get back to Plan A.

---

Daniel was in his office, trying to pick up the intriguing line of research that had been triggered in Atlantis, about the Goa'uld from the era of Ra, and the sarcophagus development again, the book on Isis and Osiris open on his desk, when Jack strolled in,

"Daniel."

"Jack." Daniel replied warily.

"I need you to get out there and see if you can light a fire under any of Vala's old buddies."

Daniel blinked owlishly, then the information sank in.

"What?!"

"Yeah, if anyone will be able to get those guys to tell us anything it'll be you Danny boy."

Daniel tried pleading,

"Jack, I just don't see why you're sending me out there. Surely your job is to stop me going off and doing dangerous stuff."

"Well, let's see Danny, Mitchell's in Area 51, Carter's missing, so's Sheppard and Vala, and I need Teal'c to safely carry out the Rite of Malaga."

"Mal'sharran."

Jackson's correction of Jack's mangling of the word was automatic.

"Yes, that." O'Neill widened his eyes at his geek, "Danny I need you out there."

"Why?"

"Mitchell got in touch again. It was a Tel'tak."

Daniel's heart sank. This felt like Sha're all over again. Their people could be anywhere in the Milky Way. Even with Earth's fleet of 304s, the hunt for the people who'd been taken had just grown exponentially in scope. Daniel spotted Jack's worried face all over again, sighed, and pushed his glasses up his nose. He pursed his lips when he realised the 'space monkey' pout was in full bloom; despite himself Jack always managed to bring out the inner grad student in him,

"Oh alright, but don't blame me if it all goes wrong. You weren't there last time Vala sent us off on a wild goose chase across the galaxy. And she's not even around to ease the way this time."

Jack slapped Daniel on the back, deliberately misunderstanding the rant,

"That's the spirit!"

Daniel turned fully to face Jack annoyed, and double took at how worn he looked. It was only then that Jackson realised how haggard O'Neill was, he was in clean clothes, and he'd clearly showered, from the clean soap smell Daniel was getting… But his old teammate looked like he hadn't slept in a week, forget bags, his eyes were hollows in his face.

Daniel blinked owlishly as the new information presented itself, and asked,

"Jack… When did you get back from DC?"

"Oh, half an hour ago."

Jack waved his hand dismissively, Jackson risked another question, knowing even as he spoke what the answer would be,

"Did you get beamed over by the Ap-"

"No," Jack sounded sheepish, "transport plane."

"Jack!"

No wonder. If Jack had been awake anywhere near as long as Daniel had, and worse – unlike Daniel who'd been shopping, then smoothing things over with the police after Teyla had rather definitively taken down her attackers… Well, Daniel had heard about the pile of rubble that used to be a sizeable office block in Washington DC. That'd been Homeworld Command. Jack had been under all that debris not so long ago.

The real world came rushing back in, Daniel had gotten so caught up in his work again, the familiar groove of bantering back and forth with his friend had been automatic comforting and unthinking.

"Sorry, sorry Jack. I didn't – I wasn't thinking. Are you okay? I, I heard what happened. Hell, look around, we're still sorting out the SGC." Daniel shrugged helplessly in lieu of an explanation, "Teyla wanted to make sure our people were alright when we realised it wasn't just us."

Daniel squinted at Jack's grey visage, when the older man didn't visibly react to that confession, "Why are you here anyway? Even ignoring the lack of sleep, shouldn't you be in DC sorting things out there?"

Jack waved all of Daniel's questions away impatiently,

"Landry's in DC. He can deal with all that."

"Jack." Daniel let some of the old worry and exasperation with his friend's lack of care for himself seep into his tone, "Come on, you could have taken the time to get some slee-"

"No! No I damn well couldn't!" Jack interrupted, and started pacing, voice low and urgent, "Those rat bastards attacked us on all fronts. Homeworld Command is gone Danny, I watched a young boy willingly run to his death to save- to save us all…"

Daniel winced as Jack's voice cracked and his shoulders hunched up. Daniel was on the verge of reaching out to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder when Jack turned to face him, angrily rattling off a list that got more dire the longer it went on,

"I've been getting reports of attacks and kidnappings coming in from across the globe, the SGC got turned into a warzone, Nellis was stormed, did you know the Chair's buried again?"

Jack shot Daniel a look so bleak it took Daniel's breath away,

"That's just preliminary reports Danny. We don't have footage from the whole time the gate was open. It was open for thirty-one minutes, but we've only got fifteen minutes of CCTV. But personnel who were in the mountain when this shitshow went down are missing. Did they go through the gate? Maybe? We don't know! I've got reports here from people who swear blind there's no possible way they could have got out, because the invaders were dialling in the whole time. So where did they go? Out through the mountain? I've got other people who'll swear no one got past them. It's a mess Danny."

Daniel opened his mouth, but Jack got there first,

"And that's just the people we know about."

"What do you mean?"

"What about the people who haven't reported in, huh? The SGC has left behind so many strays over the years…"

---

"Ah, yes Colonel Sheppard. Ready to capitulate yet?"

"No."

John got a painful electric jolt for his troubles. At least, he figured it was electric. Things were getting fuzzy, they'd kept this up for what seemed like hours. Athena's hated face swam into view, he couldn't quite focus anymore,

"Now now. If you don't behave, I shall have to dispose of you."

A tall shaven man was dragged in spitting and cursing all the way,

"What the fuck do you want with me, you freaks!?"

John desperately sought for some sort of distraction, even as he helplessly watched the other guy getting inexorably dragged into their little drama. Through a mouth that didn't want to cooperate, he slurred,

"What's with all the Egyptian iconography anyway?" I thought you were supposed to be Greek, where's your owl? All I'm seeing are scorpions and cows and ibises….

Athena's expression went black.

Damn, John had just enough time to curse his smart mouth before he was backhanded hard enough, he was seeing stars. Still reeling, John watched muzzily as the goons threw angry guy to the ground at Athena's feet. For a moment it looked as if he was going to lunge for her, but she extended a hand casually. A reddish glow appeared in the centre of her palm, and the guy started writhing on the floor.

Still torturing the poor bastard, Athena turned to John and said conversationally,

"This here is Sgt Spencer of the United States Marine Corps."

When the man was left sobbing on the floor, Athena nodded to her henchmen, who strung the poor guy up in the same spot Joe had been in. John realised he should have recognised the look, the guy physically embodied the marine corps through and through, right down to the lack of hair.

"Now, Sgt Spencer here is related to our dear departed Joe Spencer. You know, the man I killed as a lesson for you when you refused to help me?"

Athena was clearly in a playful mood, John blinked as she continued to be altogether too chatty,

"Of course, he carries the ATA gene."

John wasn't sure if she expected him to contribute. He stared blankly at her instead,

"So you see Colonel," John's rank was spat like a curse, "His gene is almost certainly nowhere near as strong as your own."

Athena reached out and trailed her fingers over Spencer's chin. To the man's credit, he tried to lash out at her as she did so,

"Yes Sergeant, your poor, not mad after all, Uncle Joe failed to live up to my expectations, and, so, I killed him."

John noted the flinch came at expectations, not killed. He quashed the automatic officer's observation angrily. The poor guy didn't need John's two-cent psychology on top of his crappy day, he'd been kidnapped by this psycho, possibly didn't even know about aliens, and now had found out she'd killed some of his family? Damn. John tried not to let his unease show, he was technically the ranking officer in this room, he couldn't let his fear get to the other guy,

"Now regardless of how useless his ATA expression is, Sgt Spencer here may prove very useful to me indeed. You see Colonel, he's a manic depressive with suspected PTSD. His brain chemistry is so very fascinatingly far from the norm," here Athena shot Spencer a sly look, "that I really don't know what interacting with Ancient technology will do to him."

John watched in horrified fascination as the guy's fearful wince was almost immediately sublimated into anger. The worst thing was Athena was right, if Spencer was any Sergeant of his, the guy wouldn't be working, he'd be shipped straight off for therapy,

"Screw you, bitch!"

Spencer it seemed had finally had enough.

"You wait til I'm done with you!"

Spencer was struggling hard enough against his bonds that blood was running down his arms and neck. John felt sick. He could tell what was coming next, even as Athena smugly glanced his way to make sure he was still watching, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene playing out in front of him.

"Now, Sgt Spencer, I want you to activate this device for me."

"No way in hell you bitch! If you think I'm gonna do a single thing you say, you've got another thing comi-"

Athena lashed out with the pain stick, that up until that moment, had been innocuously held in her other hand. After the inevitable screams Spencer was left panting in his bonds. Whilst the guy probably didn't have the best judgement, which given the situation was understandable, John had to give him that. He was brave.

"You know Spencer, you are expendable. I've got people in position even now, who're willing to fetch more of you Tau'ri fools for me to play with."

Even after all that, Spencer was still glaring murder in Athena's direction. Athena deliberately left him chained to the wall like a dog and called in the next prisoner.

Her weird Jaffa guys obeyed with alacrity. John shot them a nasty look, but it went unnoticed.

The next poor soul the Goa'uld paraded in front of him was a child.

Spencer's murderous glare ramped up, even trussed up and ignored behind the bitch. Athena practically cooed, looking disturbingly proprietorial,

"Orlin here is the missing link between Tau'ri and… the Ancients as you call them."

John eyed up the practically catatonic boy who was staring blankly at the wall, was that drool?

"Good for him."

Athena, what a ridiculous affectation, she failed utterly to live up to the moniker of embodied wisdom from what John could tell, grinned nastily. She was clearly in the mood for a full-on Bond-villain rant,

"Unfortunately, the catastrophic brain damage he suffered makes him an unsuitable host."

"Really? I'd have thought all that extra space would mean more room for you."

Athena seemed to realise that she'd let more information slip than she'd intended, scowling she snapped out,

"Nothing of the host survives."

"Please! Even I don't believe that crap, and the only Goa'uld I ever met was some nameless flunky you guys forced into Caldwell."

John shut his mouth with a click, he'd been channelling McKay more than a little there. Sure enough, Athena's beautiful face twisted into a snarl, she marched over and backhanded John. His head snapped around with the force of it. Right. Snakehead. Superstrength. Her long beautifully tended nails caught his cheek and jaw, leaving sharp lines of pain behind.

"You will learn your place slave."

"Nah. Don't think so. Uglier bitches than you have tried to get me on my knees."

Athena's eyes glittered with malice at that idea, John hurriedly continued the sentence,

"Guess what? They all ended up dead shortly afterwards." John shrugged as well as he could, given the restraints, "It's a habit of mine."

"Now now Colonel. You've seen the stakes. You behave, you save all those people. Do you honestly think they're the only Tau'ri I've gotten hold of?"

Ignoring John pointedly she pushed the gadget at the boy, he blinked blankly at it. It glowed dimly in his presence but didn't activate. Snarling, Athena ordered,

"Take the useless cretin away!"

Athena was clearly embarrassed by the performance of her prized specimen. With one final zap from the hated pain stick, they were left alone.

"So…" John drawled between pained breaths, "First time?"

Spencer just glared.

"She left us alone in here. We should probably try to work our-"

Spencer stared at the shrivelled corpse lying forlornly beneath the ominous table in the centre of the room. Despite the degradation, he clearly recognised it. Voice distant he said,

"She said it was your fault Uncle Joe died."

Crap. Yeah, the worst thing was the kid was right. You never left a man behind. But, there Joe Spencer was, left behind. He'd have to do it again too. It was his duty as an officer, he gave the snake what she wanted, and it was all over, probably in ways John hadn't even imagined.

Spencer glared poison at him and stared pointedly at the things floating obscenely in jars around the lab rather than look at him. Sheppard resigned himself to silently trying to keep up circulation in muscles already constricted for too long.

---

Carter spotted something alarming on the shipwide security system, without thinking she flicked the intercom and shouted into the mic,

"Ronon! Get out of there!"

Dex was holed up far too close to the outer hull. They were about to fly into the beam of deadly radiation emitted by the star's poles at any moment.

"Dex, don't make me repeat myself! Make way to the central corridor! That's an order!"

Ronon shot a bloody grin at the Lucian Alliance thug he was in a standoff against and made a run for the nearest bulkhead towards the inner cabins of the ship. Sam watched with her heart in her mouth, he made it to the doorway – the pulsar lit up.

The image on the screen gave way to blinding white. Sam slammed her fist down on the console in frustration as the signal remained stubbornly dead. She, she didn't know if he'd made it.

Novak looked at her in concern, quiet despair writ across the slump to her shoulders, but continued working. There was nothing else they could do. If they didn't finish this, that desperate insane gambit would all have been for nothing.

Across the Hammond, control crystals fried, and circuitry burned. In the cabins along the aft side of the hull, anything organic vaporised instantly. The less critical plastic wiring insulation, plastic mess trays, cheap cotton bedding, people. Sam had deliberately backed the exhaust ports of the engines towards the star's pole to minimise the damage to the Hammond, the shielding there was extra thick to account for the radiation the engines put out. However, even with that extra layer of naquadah laced trinium alloy and ceramic shielding, anyone who'd been in the outermost aft cabins when the pulsar lit up was dead. Vaporised.

As it was, a few of the cabins towards the aft along the port-side of the ship were giving off alarming error readings, even a glancing brush from the pulsar had done significant damage.

Sam only hoped it was worth it. Until they got external sensors back online, they had no clue whether the Ha'taks dogging them had survived the insane manoeuvre.

---

Notes:

Grateful thanks to thiefnessman, who had some useful anecdotes about the sorts of goings on that tend to happen at Denny's!

With a couple of extremely minor exceptions just about everyone on the extended cast-list is a canon character that's turned up in SG-1, SGA, or SGU at some point.

I twisted canon slightly to claim that Joe and Sgt Spencer are related - if you're curious look up the two actors, there's a weird resemblance there! (Joe Spencer, somewhat infamously was played by Dan Castellenata, aka the voice actor for Homer Simpson, bringing the self-referential jokes to an new high in the episode he guest starred in!)

Satterfield was played by Grace Park, famous for Boomer in the Battlestar remake and Kono in the Hawaii 50 remake.

Joe Spencer - barber who shared O'Neill's brain for years via the communication stones.
Sgt Spencer - SGU regular, USMC Sergeant with medical issues.
Dr Lindsay Novak - BC-303/304 engineer who kept getting the hiccups, saved the day when Vala hijacked the Prometheus. In charge of Asgard tech with Hermiod on the Daedalus.
Dr Lindsay, one of the potential SG-1 candidates Cam rejected, she later turned up in SGA as an expedition scientist, helping out the locals.
Dr Esposito, another SGA character, Rodney embarrassed himself by reading her mind in Tao of Rodney.
Dr Palmer, SGU character, she dies pretty quickly...
Dr Franklin, SGU-regular, seemed to be a hydroponics specialist, (possibly ascended)
Dr Felger - SG-1 recurring character, broke the gate network!
Dr Brightman - recurring background character in SG-1 and SGU, medical doctor
Colonel Reynolds - recurring SG-1 character, second in command at SGC starting under Hammond, continuing with Landry
Colonel Edwards - in charge of the mining team in the first episode Lorne shows up in in SG-1
Colonel Dixon - gate team leader in SG-1 ep Heroes, needed rescuing, Janet Frasier dies.

...and, well... you get the idea!
One thing I have discovered by mining Stargate canon so deeply, well - between David Sheppard, David Dixon, David Telford, David Parrish and the two Lindsays... Well, suddenly Sheppard's Mitch and Dex and the later appearance of Cameron Mitchell and Ronon Dex make a horrible sort of sense... There was quite a bit of name repetition going on!