Action and surprise time! Here's chapter seven people! I hope you enjoy it; I know it's my favorite so far. :) Please review and tell me what you think! Thanks everbody!

Chapter 7

"Oh dear," Vala stated simply, as she looked out the main viewport on the Odyssey's bridge the next day.

"Ya think?" Daniel shuddered from where he stood beside her. The Ori ship all of them were looking at was unbelievably huge. Ten times bigger, indeed. It looked more like twenty or thirty times from where he was standing. From the angle their ship was facing the enemy craft, they couldn't even see the other end of it.

Off to one side of them, Samantha O'Neill mirrored Jackson's shudder. "Right now, I feel so much more relieved that we figured out how to incorporate Goa'uld cloaking technology in our own ships…"

"You can say that again," Mitchell agreed.

"Oh boy," Jack sighed.

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "Indeed."

The journey was over. Now, before them, was the Ori ship, which the Odyssey raced alongside as both ships sped back toward earth. Their goal was to stop the larger ship from reaching it. And they only had eighteen hours left.

Sam stepped over to one of the forward consoles. "How many life signs are we getting?" she asked of the airman who was manning the station.

The young man studied the board for a moment and then looked up at her in confusion. "Only one, colonel."

"One?" Jack asked.

"How the heck can one man run that gigantic thing?" Mitchell questioned.

Sam leaned over the airman's shoulder, looking closer at the screen and pointing to something on it while the rest of her team gathered behind her. "I don't know, but this reading is stronger than a normal human life sign."

"A prior," Daniel stated in realization.

"Or something," Sam nodded. "It's definitely not simply one of their warriors. It's some kind of advanced human, if not exactly a prior."

"Well great, if there's only one of them, this should be simple, right?" Jack said.

"Not necessarily, Jack. This isn't just a man or woman. It's a prior, remember?" Daniel corrected.

"But what about that prior neutralizer thingy that stops their powers? Didn't you even manage to make those devices smaller?"

Sam shook her head. "Those are never guaranteed to work. We may have been able to make the technology hand-held and convenient, but that doesn't mean it's always effective. There are a number of variables that can affect their usefulness."

Vala raised a hand. "Uh, we're still going to bring the un-reliable technology with us, aren't we?"

"Of course we are," Mitchell assured her. "Sam's just trying to say that, yes, this could end up being easy, but we have to be prepared for the alternative."

"And we must still stop the ship once we have eliminated the prior," Teal'c pointed out.

"How?" Vala asked. "We've always had problems getting rid of Ori ships. This one is a lot bigger."

"We blow it up," O'Neill said immediately. "And probably from the inside, to be sure."

Daniel winced. "Uh, yeah…"

Sam nodded. "He's right. That's probably what we'll have to do. We know from experience that we can't control Ori ships. They don't respond to 'non-believers'."

"That must have been annoying," Jack said thoughtfully. "It was always fun stealing Goa'uld ships."

Sam grimaced. "Except when they were sinking under water, of course."

Teal'c nodded at her. "Indeed. That was not a pleasant experience--most notably when we almost lost you."

Daniel cocked his head. "Missed that one."

"You were still glowy at the time," Jack reminded him.

"Ah."

Mitchell clapped his hands. "Okay, people. Playful banter time is over. We've got a planet to save--possibly an entire galaxy."

Vala's eyebrows rose. "No pressure…"

Daniel sighed. "We wish."

All six fell silent, and the only sounds were the thrum of the ship's hyper space engines, and the occasional clicks and beeps of the consoles around the bridge. The few other officers manning their stations remained quiet as well, respecting the team as they thought. They all knew what came next. They had to go over there. They didn't know what, exactly, they would find, or if they would be able to do what they had come to do, but all were resolved to try their hardest.

Jack O'Neill glanced around at the team that had once been his. Now it had gained two members, and one of them was its new leader. He looked at Mitchell, raising an eyebrow. Cameron nodded to him, silently relinquishing control to the retired general. The rest of them saw this, and turned their attention to O'Neill.

Jack shrugged. "Well, let's gear up."

Attempting to lighten the mood again, Sam threw off a mock salute. "Yes sir."

"Don't get smart, Carter," he snapped back immediately, smiling.

Sam grinned. He hadn't called her that in a while. The exchange brought a smile to the rest of them as well.

The Odyssey's commander stood from his chair to face them. "Good luck, SG-1. We'll be right here if you need us."

"Thank you, sir. That's good to know. Though hopefully this won't be as hard as we initially thought it might be," Mitchell said.

The commander nodded. "We all hope so." Then he smiled. "Do your thing."

Mitchell nodded and smiled along with the rest of the team, and then they all followed O'Neill from the bridge to prepare for transport.

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The Asgard beams on the Odyssey could beam from anywhere on the ship, or too anywhere on the ship, but it had finally been considered pertinent to designate one small room on the ship as a transporter room. This was where SG-1 gathered about twenty minutes later, geared up and armed and not quite ready to go. But they knew they had to.

Vala sighed as she checked her weapon. "Well, here goes nothing."

As they positioned themselves back to back, weapons drawn, Daniel made sure he was next to her, edged up a bit in front of her, as well. He was not going to take the chance of any aspect of his nightmare coming true.

"Well then, everybody ready?" O'Neill asked.

A simultaneous "no" rang through the transporter room.

Jack shrugged. "Me either. Now let's do this thing. Crank it up, airman!"

And the white flash of the beams took them again.

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The interior of the Ori ship was just as they remembered. Vala was the first to speak after they had secured the room they had beamed into, and all spoke quietly.

"Okay…now what?"

"Now we find that prior, or whatever it is," Jack answered.

"Great idea--how?"

"We beamed in not too far from him or her," Sam offered. "Should be…three rooms down. Unless they've moved in the last minute or so. I checked again just before we left."

Daniel glanced out into the corridor again. "There's no one out here," he said, stepping through the door. Mitchell followed him.

"He's right; corridor is still clear."

Daniel 'looked' at him. "As if I wouldn't be right about what I saw myself?"

Cameron shrugged. "Never hurts to double-check."

Jackson rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Jack, are the rest of you coming or not? We've got a job to do."

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"Whoa!" Vala yelped quietly, jerking back into the corridor from the room she'd been leaning into to check.

"What?" Daniel asked quickly in concern from beside her.

"He moved."

"What dya mean, 'he moved'?" O'Neill questioned.

"I mean he's not another room or so down, he's in this one!" she whispered.

"So it is a he?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes, but that's not important. It is a prior all right, and since we know this isn't where the bridge is, he must be in some sort of secondary control or monitoring room. There are screens and control panels all over half the walls. But that's not the problem."

"What's the problem?" Daniel said worriedly, not liking the look on her face now.

Vala gulped. "Well, obviously I wasn't going to stay around there long enough to be sure, but I think he saw me."

Jack winced. "Great. Well, let's be positive, shall we? And hope we still have the element of surprise on our hands. I have a feeling we're going to need it…"

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On the other side of the room from the door outside of which the whispering SG-1 was hiding, the prior had turned. His eyes narrowed; he was certain he had seen something, knew it had looked like a person ducking from the doorway. He also knew that it couldn't possibly be the person he thought it looked like.

However brief his glimpse of the disappearing figure in the corridor, what he had seen of it had burned in his mind, and he couldn't deny that it was familiar. But, no, there was no possible way…or was there? The ship was nearing earth, its destination…

The prior reached with his mind, probing for the consciousness that couldn't be there, on the other side of the wall…

And found it.

He could almost see her now, standing there. With his mind, with the powers of the Ori he took hold of her, and drew her to him, the long-since-spoken but never forgotten name rising in his thoughts.

Vala.

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Jack trailed of when Vala gasped and stiffened, her weapon falling from her hands and clattering to the floor.

Daniel sucked in a breath as the rest of the team winced, hoping the prior in the next room hadn't heard it, that they wouldn't be found.

"Vala?" he asked quietly, his brow furrowing. Her eyes shifted toward him as he grabbed her shoulders, repeating himself, his voice filling with worry. "Vala, what's wrong?"

"Daniel, I can't m-move."

He tried to move one of her arms, but it wouldn't budge. And now he was considerably more worried.

"What the heck is going on here!" Jack whispered fiercely.

Their question was answered when Vala moved--but not on her own. She cried out in surprise when an unseen forced suddenly began pulling her backwards into the room. "Help!"

"Vala!" Daniel yelped. He grabbed her arms in an effort to stop her, but even when the others joined in the effort proved futile, and she was pulled away from them.

Vala gasped when the force holding her released, and she found herself standing several feet inside the room. Another several feet away, on the other side of it, stood the prior, his intent gaze boring into her, and she felt her eyebrows rise nearly to her hairline. At first

she stood frozen, staring in shock at the man in front of her until she could form words again.

Outside the doorway SG-1 stood rigid, not going into the room after her yet but listening hard for clues of what was happening. For several moments they heard nothing, but finally they heard a single stunned word from Vala--a name they all recognized.

"Tomin."