Stronger Now Than We Ever Were
Thus continues Stronger, with the consequences of being captured on '911'. Cue scene.
Disclaimer: Stargate and its characters do not belong to me. I'm just playing in the Cosmic Sandbox here.
Chapter III: And Away We Go
By the time 'Juggernaut' – the name Cameron had unofficially given to the behemoth of a Jaffa who had captured him and the rest of SG-1 – rounded up the rest of his team, Cam was thoroughly and summarily frustrated with the situation he'd managed to get everyone into. It had, after all, been he who ordered SG-1 to advance from their safe hidey-holes and recon the village. At a glance, Teal'c and Samantha Carter seemed the most at ease given their situation, while Daniel looked jittery and Cameron looked miles away. The Jaffa contingent had quadrupled in the less than an hour SG-1 spent on their knees and bound at the same end of the village at which they'd been found and captured.
After Juggernaut and his men wandered a short distance off and were conferring with another Jaffa warrior, Daniel glanced at Cameron, trying to get the other man's attention. "Plan?"
Cameron blinked his glazed expression away. "Working on it."
"Anytime now," Daniel suggested, struggling with his bonds.
"Working on it."
Teal'c glanced sidelong at Cameron and raised his eyebrow. Though the team seemed to be looking to Cameron for all the answers, and as team leader he should be the one coming up with answers, they were each running their brains ragged trying to devise an escape from their current situation. The state of being captured was an all too familiar situation for the members of SG-1, and was one in particular of which they were not the biggest fans.
Juggernaut and his friends returned and began dragging a struggling SG-1 to their feet, bodily moving them into a rough column before shepherding the team toward the center of the city. Along the way they were joined by several other cadres of Jaffa warriors who all joined in the death march toward an empty spot in the village square. At the city center, a flicker and shimmer dissolved the picturesque landscape and replaced it with the sturdy hull of a cloaked Goa'uld prison ship. As the ship appeared, Cameron and Daniel shared a glance of mutual dread.
That dread only magnified when a group of new arrivals appeared from inside the Goa'uld ship. Four Jaffa warriors escorted a man in a black and gold robe. He was tall and lean, gray haired, and the manner in which he held himself betrayed an exaggerated opinion of his own self worth. Ba'al, one of the last Goa'uld System Lords, crossed his arms and leered down at SG-1 and their marginally dire situation. "I wouldn't presume to imagine that you'd hope to never see me again," he commented, his eyes flashing with gold and his deep voice still giving off an all too human condescension.
"Wouldn't want to disappoint," Cameron replied wryly.
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" Ba'al left his honor guard and walked close to SG-1, surveying and leering at each member in turn. He stopped in front of Teal'c, giving the man an appraising glance with a small, sinister-looking smile. "Get them aboard. I have plans that I am quite eager to exploit," he announced finally, sweeping his arms in a broad gesture for his Jaffa to follow him onto the vessel and bring the captive SG-1 with them.
At a yell and the sound of several staff weapons discharging their payloads, Ba'al and his entourage quickly glanced back upon the village to the end opposite where SG-1 had been captured earlier in the day. A pair of Jaffa warriors were sprawled on the dirt where they'd fallen, dark burns marring their otherwise pristine armor. Just near the corpses, a group of Ori soldiers were advancing in their fierce plate and leather armor. Each face was obscured by their war helms, their own staff weapons brandished proudly and readily before each soldier and sewing chaos and death wherever they landed as eagerly as they spread their religion.
Ba'al growled and ran aboard his ship, initially forgetting about SG-1, who had found their awaited chance to escape. Teal'c used his impressive physical strength to wrestle Juggernaut's staff weapon away and killed two of his escorts before the huge Jaffa felt off the ramp and bounced off his back, dazed if not unconscious. Sam and Daniel were already racing to the south, in the direction they'd been captured earlier that day. Cameron jumped from the ramp, winced, swore, and took off after them. Teal'c covered their escape, stopping every several bounds to fire a salvo of staff blasts at the beleaguered Jaffa who now found themselves fighting on a loose two front battlefield. However, and luckily for SG-1, the war front Ba'al's men were most concerned about was the one on which they found the Ori soldiers.
As they beat a hasty retreat, Teal'c noticed how Colonel Mitchell was limping and not managing to maintain the same speed that Sam and Daniel were, who had already summited the ridge they'd reconnoitered from earlier. Teal'c came upon Cameron quite quickly, despite his hesitance from firing and covering their retreat. He bent low and lent his shoulder to the struggling man who, he noticed, was favoring his right foot, quite likely from an injury of sorts.
"Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c intoned, perhaps harsher than he intended, but the battle adrenaline was pumping now, and none of them would stop now, not with both Ba'al and the Ori gunning their bodies. The air was thick with tension and a feeling of dire necessity. Necessity to escape.
Cam glanced up at Teal'c and accepted the assistance, struggling across the sandy slope to catch Sam and Daniel who had made their Hail Mary and were racing for the Stargate. At some point during their escape attempt, Cameron glanced back over his and Teal'c's shoulder to see what could only be described as a platoon of Jaffa bearing down on them. Apparently Ba'al's soldiers had made swift work of the small Ori skirmish force and were now intent on retrieving their erstwhile prisoners.
"T, buddy," Cam muttered as they struggled along. "We're in the big kind of trouble."
At that moment Teal'c glanced back at their pursuers and then back down at Mitchell. "Indeed."
----
Daniel skidded to a halt at the DHD. The Stargate's bubble had just erupted from the gate, the event horizon forming as an incoming wormhole was established. The sun sparkling off their polished armor, another squad of Jaffa stepped through the gate. Their staff weapons were already armed and ready as they marched down the stone steps.
"Remember what Mitchell said?" Daniel muttered, huddling against Sam and struggling to use the DHD for cover against the Ba'al Jaffa. "About the mission?"
She glanced at him. "What?"
"Doomed."
Metal footsteps almost echoed off stone as the Jaffa came closer, but at that moment Teal'c and Cameron appeared, though only one was armed. Like some mythological warrior god, Teal'c stood with his staff weapon. Blasts lanced out from the weapon, rocking the Jaffa troops and killing two, whose lifeless bodies clanged and bounced down the Stargate stairs. Cameron scrambled over the ground on his knees, favoring the injured ankle, and joined Daniel and Sam in huddling behind the DHD while Teal'c continued his one-man army rampage.
"T!" Mitchell growled out, fiddling with the laces on his boot to add some additional support to the weak limb. "Clear us a road home."
Teal'c did not reply, but rather continued his game of firing and ducking, eliminating a Jaffa with at least every other staff blast. A quick look to the horizon showed the other group of Jaffa, the ones from the village, was advancing on them very quickly now. They would overtake SG-1's position in a matter of moments. "Hurry!" Teal'c's voice echoed over the din of battle.
Sam quickly hopped to her feet and began dialing the Stargate address for Earth and simultaneously ignoring Daniel as he hovered over her shoulder. After she punched in the last symbol, the event horizon appeared again. Teal'c seemed to have cleared them a path home. SG-1 hopped to their feet and ran through the gate.
Milliseconds later, having traveled thousands of Light-Years, they arrived on the other side, quite glad to feel the familiar metal ramp of the SGC beneath their boots. A security team was mustered at the base of the ramp, with a very alarmed General Landry and curious Vala Mal Duran in the control room. Sam glanced around quickly, realizing SG-1 currently numbered only three.
"Wait, where's Cam?"
----
"Dammit."
Cameron Mitchell, in what could easily be considered the blunder of the century, if not millennium, had not been able to clear the distance to the Stargate and negotiate the awkward stone steps with the same speed Teal'c, Daniel, and Sam had. Instead he'd stumbled along the difficult terrain and had fallen up the stone steps, only to trip at the finish line as the event horizon closed on him. Unfortunately, the rest of the team had not noticed his difficulty and had run ahead of him. He couldn't blame them, though, as it had been a fight or flight reflex... and when you have no weapons with which to defend yourself, flight tends to be the preferable and appropriate option.
"Dammit," Cameron muttered again, scrambling back to the DHD and manually inputting the gate address for Earth. He was activating the fourth chevron when something touched his shoulder. Cam glanced back just in time to see Juggernaut's baby blues again. A frown came to his features just as the titanic Jaffa's metal gauntlet impacted with his temple, and Cam collapsed like a rag doll against the DHD console.
His lucidity came and went, as he was bodily carried over the same awkward terrain they'd marched over the day past. Cameron's only conscious thought was that he was glad he was being carried, rather than dragged, at least. He tried to ignore the comment of "stupid Tau'ri" that could have come from any of the Jaffa, before he blacked out again.
Several hours, or days, later – and he hoped to hell it was just hours - Cameron Mitchell was lying in the center of a room with a distinctlyEgyptian feel. The walls were a mix of gunmetal gray and gold. It was then that he realized where he'd been taken. He was on Ba'al's prison ship, a prisoner of the second most sadistic System Lord in Goa'uld history.
"Well that's just lovely," he muttered to himself, staring up at the ceiling and feeling very exposed. They'd taken his clothing and equipment, leaving him in just his black undershirt, boxers, and socks. Thank God for the socks. He'd been rather unceremoniously dropped in the center of the room; he now laid like a star with arms and feet spread wide. The floor was cold on the bare backs of his legs and arms, but Cam made no effort to move. He just continued staring at the very ornamental ceiling, and considered the pompous pretentiousness of his captor.
All around he was surrounded by the distinct rumble of the ship's hyperdrive and other vital functions. In the corridor outside his cell, Cam heard the conversations and marching of, what he believed, at least seven different Jaffa. None of them sounded like Juggernaut, at least. Apparently Ba'al wasn't taking any chances this time, if he even was the original Ba'al and not another clone copy. Aside from other intellectual pursuits, like counting Jaffa, admiring the architecture of the ceiling, and learning to play a variety of musical instruments using only the power of his mind, Cameron found himself hoping that the rest of SG-1 had arrived back on Earth just fine, and wishing he could have returned with them. He sighed, and began to hum 'Ride of the Valkyries' by Wagner, though the tune was far less energetic than the version he remembered.
Doo da doo da doo da doo da doo da doo doo doo... sigh.
Thanks for reading again. I'm loving all the reviews. I hope this chapter took care off a few of the questions, and hopefully, created even more.