A/N: Sorry about the long wait on this chapter, but I'm still struggling with writer's block. Sorry about the cliffie, but many of you know me well enough to know that it's worth it. ;)

John rolled onto his side, sliding himself away from Ronon's shuffling feet as he fought. He'd only been vaguely aware of feeling someone's hand on his shoulder, and he groaned lowly with the intense pain that still radiated from the point of impact. The hand on his shoulder became more insistent, and he shied away from it, clutching his hands over his groin protectively, lest another swift kick be let loose upon him. Slowly, as the seconds ticked past, he finally managed to open his eyes and look up, squinting against the pain as it was released slowly in waves.

"Colonel Sheppard, you must help them!" he heard finally over the ringing in his ears.

It was Henry and he was trying to yank on John's arm in an effort to help him up to his feet. John blinked in confusion, struggling to comprehend and recall exactly what had just happened over the course of the past few minutes. He tested his voice, which sounded scratchy and hoarse even to his own ears. "Henry…? What's going on?"

Henry was trembling with panic as he reached down with both arms this time and tried again to haul John up to his feet. "You must come quickly! Your friends are in danger!"

"What danger?" he asked as he wearily stuck out his fists to push himself up into a sitting position, then shook his head and tried to clear the washed-out haze of fuzzy cotton that seemed to linger in his peripheral vision.

"It's Dr. McKay and Dr. Beckett!" Henry wailed fearfully, wrapping a supportive arm around John's shoulders as he got to unsteady feet. "They're bein' waylaid!"

Teyla, who had finally managed to deter any further attacks, was suddenly at John's other side, assisting Henry in hauling John upright. "What do you mean? What is happening?"

"They're bein' waylaid by what I suspect is a pressgang!" Henry insisted poignantly, as if his friends should know what he was talking about, and was also trying to coax John into moving faster. "We must hurry!"

With Teyla's help, just as Ronon finished off the last of the two most stubborn attackers with a jab to the face, Henry managed to help John stagger into the tavern. But the two men they'd left at their table were nowhere in sight. They looked around in astonished surprise, but saw no sign of them.

"Where are Rodney and Carson?" John wheezed bewilderedly, still somewhat hunched over, but was at least managing to be able to support himself on his own two feet again.

Henry rushed forward towards the rear of the tavern, and John and Teyla did their best to keep up. Pushing through the rear exit, Henry emerged onto a dim and barren street corner with his three remaining Lantean friends close on his heel. Turning in circles and peering down the alleyways and gulping back his fear in a panic-struck haze, the young man caught sight of a drunkard that was sitting against the tavern's thin board exterior.

With a snarl, Henry hauled the barely-conscious sot up to his feet by the lapels of his inadequate jacket. "Where did they go? Which way were they taken?"

"Henry, what the hell is going on? What just happened in there?" John implored desperately, only managing to have just figured that McKay and Beckett had been kidnapped and had been dragged away through the rear exit of the tavern.

But Henry ignored him for the time being, intent on gleaning as much information from the destitute bum as he could. He shook the man furiously and the bum stirred.

"Whaddaya want?" the bum slurred drunkenly, prying his eyes open wide enough to see who had intruded on his sleep, then laughed heartily at the young man's frown. "Ha! You again! I dun see why ye always have ta pick on me, lad! I'm jus' here takin' a li'l rest before I get me wits about me enough ta git home ta me wife, ya know?"

"Which way? Which pier?" Henry growled lowly.

The aging and graying bum offered a crooked half-smile, showing brown and toothless gums, and then frowned. "An' why should I be tellin' ya that? Aye, I saw 'em come by. But if I tell ye which way they went, I could be next on their list to waylay!"

"You're far too putrid-smellin' for that," Henry shot back, wrinkling his nose in disgust and holding the man out at arm's length.

John, Teyla, and Ronon could do no more than watch in amazed bewilderment as Henry drew back his fist, as if to strike the aging bum.

"Wait, wait!" the bum begged, cringing back as far as he could from Henry's fist. "Alright, alright, I'll tell ya. But ye best not be mentionin' me, if ye get caught! Te'Lan would nay ever let me live it down an' would kill me without a second thought!"

Henry's eyes went wide with disbelief, his face contorting into an expression of sheer horror, and he promptly dropped the bum to land bottom first on the street. With a nervous gulp, he began to tremble and stutter once more. "He…? Was it him? Was it really Te'Lan?"

"Aye, t'was his gang," the bum said softly and indignantly, huddling up back against the board planks that made up the wall, and then made a motion with his finger toward an avenue that led east back toward the water. "They went that a'way. I doubt you'll catch 'em before they reach their ship, though. Even if ya did manage to find 'em, you'd never make it out of there alive, much less rescue yer two friends."

With fists still balled up in anger and frustration, Henry's gaze turned downward with despair. "Then… Then you did see them."

"Aye, I did," the bum scoffed smugly. "An' that's more than any one o' them deadbeats in the tavern will admit ta seein', all of 'em quakin' in their boots at the mere mentionin' of his name."

John strode purposefully up to Henry, pressing a hand firmly against his arm to drive him from his sudden and quiet reverie. "Henry, what the hell just happened? Where are Carson and Rodney?"

Looking back at the bum thoughtfully, who had by this point slipped back into his drunken stupor and fallen asleep, Henry's voice was low and etched with despair. "I'm sorry, Colonel Sheppard, but he's right. Even if we could find their ship, there's no way that we could just stroll up to Te'Lan, the Emerald Wanderer himself, and simply demand your friends back. We'd be slaughtered in an instant, or worse, waylaid by his pressgangs ourselves!"

"What are you talking about? Who is this Te'Lan guy, and what is a pressgang?" John demanded, holding out his arms with confusion, and his temper flared in response to Henry's despair. Did he really intend to just give up without a fight? There was no way that John would do that.

"This is a neutral port in the war, and not only is it dangerous work, but common folk don't oft associate with pirates," Henry began tentatively, holding absolutely still, his gaze unwavering. "At this time of year especially, it's difficult to find deck hands willin' to fight as a privateer under a letter of Marque. 'Tis disreputable work, considered only a small measure better than piracy, and unfortunate men who foolishly find themselves alone in the wrong area at the wrong time are sometimes pressed into service against their will. Captain Te'Lan has been known to ransack ships even while in port and is a man wanted under charges of piracy by the crown of Gulran, but no one has ever dared to betray him, even for the sum of more than a thousand gold pieces."

"They've been shanghaied by pirates?" John gasped incredulously, and the Earth-term earned a strange look from the others around him. He shifted uncomfortably under their questioning gazes, and tried to ignore them as he concentrated on gleaning answers from Henry. "There must be some kind of local authority that can help us."

Henry sighed heavily, shoulders slumped and arms outstretched in resignation. "The Gulran port-master's office won't be open 'til morning, and I'm sure Te'Lan's ship will be gone by then. Even if we don't get laughed out of his office, most of the local deputies tend to look the other way, either through bribery or through threats. If we're goin' to get your friends back, we're likely to be on our own."

There was no choice, then. As much as John would have liked to charge off down to the docks and search every ship present, he knew that it would be foolish. In the dark, on a foreign world, and with no idea how many gang-members they'd have to fight through just to figure out which ship belonged to this Te'Lan, there wasn't much hope that the four of them would make it very far by themselves.

"Let's get back to the Jumper," he ordered lowly and fiercely. "Dr. Weir needs to know what's going on, and maybe we can call in some reinforcements to help us search."

Ronon scowled with annoyance, but even still in a half-drunken state was not foolish enough to underestimate the danger. Without another word, they turned and purposefully walked along the more brightly lit streets in the direction of the Jumper.

Carson woke to the sound of chains clinking, the sound of water sloshing against the hull on which his head rested, and the unfortunate sound of a man retching on the other side of the small, cramped space. A low moan echoed off the walls, nearly drowned out by the creaking of wood and the incessant splashing of water. They were definitely on a ship, and if the slight listing motion back and forth was any indication, it had shoved off from the docks some time ago.

Prying open his eyes, he blinked as his vision struggled to adjust to the dimness, which was eerily illuminated by a few streaks of sunlight that shone brightly between cracks in the poorly-constructed planks of the door and doorjamb. Another moan and more retching sounds filled the space once more, and Carson could not help but pity poor Rodney. He judged the time of day to be about mid-morning by the length of the rays of light that were shining in, and if he listened very carefully, Carson thought he could hear voices far away.

"Rodney?" Carson called out hesitantly in the darkness. "Are ye alright?"

He could almost hear the man swallowing hard against the bile, and the voice that replied was harsh, hoarse, and obviously pained. "Does it sound like I'm alright?"

"No, not really," Carson offered sympathetically. "Got a wee case o' sea sickness a'ready, do ye?"

"Don't ask stupid questions," Rodney bellowed irritably, the chains of his shackles clinking again as he shifted. "Like that fact shouldn't have been obvious by now."

Rather than exacerbate Rodney's already foul mood, Carson shut his mouth and frowned at the darkness. Several hours passed slowly with no sign of any guards or demands from their captors, and as his mouth began to feel parched with thirst, Carson could only imagine how quickly the dehydration would begin to affect Rodney. Once the contents of his stomach had been emptied during the first hour, his nausea had turned to dry heaves. The smell of what was left of Rodney's dinner rotting on the floor was nearly enough to cause Carson himself some nausea, but he managed to turn his head away and hold it at bay.

It was late in the afternoon, he figured, by the time the latch on the door finally clicked. The small space was filled with light, and Carson's eyes squinted with the sudden intrusion. Hands silently grabbed his wrists and ankles, and the fleeting hope of being released from his shackles was quickly dashed when it became apparent that only the chain that attached him to the hull was being unfastened. On the other side of the room, he could hear Rodney's chains also being manipulated, and the sound was suddenly interrupted by the squeak of someone's shoes slipping on a patch of wetness on the wooden hull.

"Ugh!" someone with a harsher voice than even Rodney's sounded called out. "What the…? Get 'im out o' there!"

Carson heard a grunt and could almost see a faint shadow as Rodney was backhanded cruelly by one of the men. His gasping and wheezing for breath could be heard clearly, though, as Carson saw a figure in the darkness holding Rodney by the throat. Trying to move to help his friend, Carson was backhanded too by another of the men.

"I'll teach you to make a mess on my fair ship!" the man strangling Rodney growled furiously.

But yet another man pulled at his arm, sounding worried as he tried to get the angry man's attention. "They're needed alive. Ye can't strangle 'em yet, sir. The Cap'n would hang us from the mast!"

Carson could now see the large man's face and rumpled shirt in the darkness, if only just barely. A jagged scar stretched from the top of his balding head down to his chin, and he held Rodney in a strangle-hold that was making his face turn pale and his eyes roll up into his skull as unconsciousness loomed. He was grinning with delight, oblivious to the potential harm he was doing to his prisoner, just as he was oblivious to the worried and shocked expressions on the faces of his comrades. They seemed to fear him nearly as much as their prisoners did.

"Let him go!" Carson shouted in a panic as he watched Rodney fall unconscious, and still the scarred man squeezed mercilessly. Carson's captors tightened their grip on him as he struggled, and he was held firmly back. "Please, stop! You're goin' ta kill him!"