Disclaimer: What do you mean Stargate isn't mine?! This is outrageous! I demand to speak with...ah, who am I kidding? It's not mine.
A/N: Cam lovers rejoice! This chapter was written for you. Well, not really, but I thought I was being mean to Cam, so I threw in some (ok, a lot) of praise.
A Terrible Mistake
By CountryPixie
Chapter Four
"Dinner."
"Nope," Cam said.
"Dancing."
"Uh-uh."
"Fruit picking."
"What!" Cam cried. "There's no way…You already knew! That's not fair."
"You bet me I couldn't guess what Sam did on her first date. It's your own fault you didn't check to make sure I didn't already know," Vala said.
"But it's not guessing if you already know!" Cam protested. He looked to his teammates for support, but their grins let him know he wouldn't be getting it.
"Double or nothing?" he asked.
Vala deliberated for a few seconds before saying, "No. I think I'd quite like to see you do the Macarena during our next briefing."
"That's bordering on insubordination, Vala!" Cam whined. "C'mon, anything you want."
"What did you have in mind?"
"What do you want?"
Leaning forward after a few moments of contemplation, Vala whispered something that made Cam grimace. He glanced at Daniel, who suddenly didn't find the situation funny anymore, and nodded in agreement.
"Hey, hey, hey! You can't make bets including other people!" Daniel said quickly.
"You're far too paranoid, darling. The bet has nothing to do with you."
"Then why didn't you say it out loud?" Daniel asked, directing his question to both of them.
"It's not appropriate for your innocent ears," Vala said. Not believing her for a second, Daniel sat back down.
"Okay, ten guesses for what Mitchell did on his first date." Vala rubbed her hands together in anticipation.
"Rodeo."
"Nope."
"Target practice."
"No," Cam said as if he was offended by the thought. "It's not first date material," he explained.
Vala looked deep in thought before slowly breaking into a huge grin. "It wasn't…a haunted house, was it?"
The look of shock on Cam's face was utterly priceless. "How did you…?"
"I never reveal my sources, Cameron. Don't forget to pay up," she ordered.
Cam looked at Daniel guiltily. "What did you bet?" Daniel asked warily.
"Nothing that should concern you, Daniel," Vala said innocently before Cam could reply. Cam's face told a different story.
"If it involves me, Mitchell's not doing it. I told you before, you can't make bets about others."
"Fine," Vala sighed. "You should know, though, Cameron, I always get my winnings somehow."
"I don't doubt that," he muttered. "Enough betting. What now?"
"You just don't want to bet anymore because you're afraid you'll lose your pants," Sam said.
"Hang on! Jackson and Vala get thrown in here in nothin' but their skivvies and you still make fun of me?"
Sam frowned as she thought about it. "It's just funnier when it's you."
Cam stopped protesting, giving it up as a lost cause. "What else is there to do?"
"Besides finding a way out of here?" Daniel asked. "Not much."
"Hey, I'm all for tryin'. It's you guys who think it's impossible."
"Yes, and we've had hours to think now."
"Okay, Einstein. What do ya got?"
"Something is off about this whole situation. I can't quite pin it down, but it's definitely something important…"
"What about Ba'al's execution?" Cam asked. "He said, 'You've all made a terrible mistake.' Do you think this was it? By killing him, we were condemning ourselves to a life of imprisonment because when we finally stumbled across this place he'd never show up?"
"That doesn't really seem like Ba'al's style," Sam said.
"He'd never get to gloat," Vala added.
"Yeah," Daniel said, "and I got the feeling that he expected something to happen after he said that."
"So not that," Cam said. "What else?"
"Well, let's look at this from Ba'al's point of view," Daniel said. "He's living on Earth and gathering as much information as possible. He learns the history, and then mixes it up so that he knew it would fascinate me. He builds this place, probably underground since we were descending most of the time we were being brought here. It took Vala and me about twenty minutes and seven hidden passageways to get to this room, which suggests that he intended to keep us here."
"It'd be smarter to move us to a different planet," Cam said.
"Yes," Daniel said, holding up a finger, "but a rescue team would never find this place and our beaming technology most likely doesn't work." Cam conceded the point with a shrug.
"I guess what I don't understand is why," Daniel said. "Why go through all this trouble instead of just snatching us like most Goa'ulds?"
"Ba'al's always been different than most Goa'ulds," Vala answered. "He prefers to show his strength through wit and power rather than brute force. He's certainly not above destroying a few planets or killing thousands of people if it helps him get his way, but he's always taken a more passive aggressive route towards ruling the galaxy. Well, more aggressive than passive, but you get what I mean," she finished.
"Strangely, yes." Daniel said, looking confused. "And I think you just figured out why he did all this."
"I did?"
"Yes. It's like you said, his main strength is his intelligence. He's the only Goa'uld who actually understands Ancient technology, rather than just using it. He wants to use us to increase his knowledge of both Ancient and Asgard technology. By capturing us quietly, no one will know he has us and he can take as long as he likes to break us."
"I don't know, Jackson. I understand you and Carter, but why would he take us too? No offense guys," he said to Vala and Teal'c. Vala shrugged and Teal'c bowed his head in response.
"Think about it. He's always wanted Vala, or Qetesh, as his queen, and Teal'c as his First Prime."
"And me?"
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again, looking uncertain. "Come on, Jackson. I can handle it."
"If I'm right, you'd be the bargaining chip to get the rest of us to break."
"Well, at least I'm worth something," Cam said with an obviously faked grin.
"You're worth a lot, Mitchell. Just…not what Ba'al is looking for…" Daniel finished apologetically.
"He's right, Cam." Sam said. "If he needed it, Ba'al would learn more about piloting from you than anyone else."
"And you have the skills of a Sodan warrior, Colonel Mitchell."
"And you can charm your way out of a bad situation almost as well as I can," Vala added.
"And your perseverance is unmatched by anyone I've ever met," Daniel said.
"Optimism," Sam said, looking to Teal'c.
"Resilience," he said, turning to Vala.
"Loyalty," she said, swinging her body towards Daniel.
"I get it, I get it," Cam said before Daniel could say anything. "Thanks guys."
"You don't need to thank us," Daniel said. "I was going to say 'enthusiasm,' in case you were wondering."
Bringing them back to the matter at hand, Sam cut in. "Daniel, you said you thought this place was underground." Daniel nodded. "If that's the case, there has to be an air supply somewhere."
"Yeah?" Daniel asked.
"We didn't find any in our search for control panels." When she didn't get a response, she explained, "If there are hidden air vents, there may be hidden controls."
"We have already searched the room three times, Colonel Carter. We found neither vents nor controls," Teal'c said.
"I know, but they have to be here somewhere or we'd die. I don't know why I didn't think of it before."
"Hang on," Vala said, staring at the chairs. "Did you check those?"
"Of course," Cam said. "We checked everything."
Ignoring the looks from her teammates, Vala walked to the back of the nearest chair and crouched down. She began to push the designs on the back of the chair, obviously looking for something specific.
"Vala?" Daniel asked.
"No Goa'uld would ever create a room that even he couldn't escape from. With all the trouble the Jaffa have been causing, Ba'al would have had some way to free himself if his followers rebelled and threw him in here." Not finding anything on that chair, she got up and went to the next one.
"What makes you think it's in the chairs?"
"Remember Caius?" she asked.
"That smuggling monk guy with the power coil?" Cam asked.
"That's the one," Vala said with a smile. "One of his favorite smuggling places was underneath the chairs. He always thought it ironic that people could be sitting on what they were looking for." Abandoning that chair, she moved on. "The only problem is that we never used a Ha'tak for smuggling, so the chairs are different and it could be any number of –. Found it," she said as the back of the chair slid open to reveal a gaping hole at the opening of the air duct.
"Neither the best place for a vent or a very good delivery system, but I doubt the chair was airtight, so that solves the problem of air supply," Sam said.
"But not the problem of how we're gettin' out of here."
"What happened to that optimism, Cameron?" Vala teased from the next chair over. Her teammates turned to her, not realizing that she had already moved on. Pressing three symbols, the back of that chair also slid open. Inside, the chair was hollow underneath the seat.
"Jackpot!" Cam said, leaping forward and grapping the zat. Noticing that Teal'c was staring at him, he reluctantly handed the weapon to Teal'c.
"And I'll take this," Vala said, picking up the hand device left behind. "Let's see what's behind Door Number 5."
"Jackpot," Sam breathed, echoing Cam's words when she saw the crystals inside the last chair. She and Vala leaned down and began to rearrange the crystals. Within thirty seconds, they managed to open the door. Teal'c readied the zat, but no one came in.
"Let's go home," Cam said, heading towards the door to take a peak of the hall.
"Wait!" Sam cried, but she wasn't able to stop Cam from smacking into the force field. His groans were muffled behind his hand as he held his nose. "I tried," Sam said.
"And there we go," Vala said, moving another crystal and disabling the force field.
"Now are we ready?" Cam asked, one hand still covering his nose. Vala gave one nod of her head in reply.
"Okay," Cam said, peering down the long hallway. "Two guards at each end. Vala, Teal'c – think you can get all four without alerting anyone else?"
"Sure we can. Right, Muscles?"
"Indeed."
"Do it," Cam said, moving out of the way.
Vala and Teal'c moved stealthily down the hall in opposite directions. When they were both in position, they nodded to each other and moved in. None of the guards knew what hit them.
"Nice," Cam whispered, moving to help Teal'c drag the bodies back to the cell. Daniel and Sam ran over to Vala. When all four guards were in the cell, Cam and Teal'c grabbed the zats while Daniel, Vala, and Sam all reached for a pair of boots.
"Carter?" Cam asked, wondering why she was stealing the guard's boots when she wasn't barefoot.
"What? I'm not trying to escape in these heels," she said in answer to his questioning gaze.
"Right. What are you doing?" he asked, noticing Vala tear the bottom two inches of his jacket off in one strip.
"Seriously, Cameron, you need to lay off the snacks. This thing is huge," she said as she tied the cloth around her waist to form a belt. "Much better."
"Hey, I'm perfectly fit. You're just tiny," he said. "Okay, any ideas where our GDOs are?" Everyone looked at each other for a few seconds, saying nothing.
"Alpha site it is, then. Let's go."
A/N: If you can guess how Vala knew about Cam's first date, I'll give you whatever you want. Well, I'm lying, but I will think you're really awesome. There's a few possible answers, but one in particular that I'm looking for. Let me know, and you might as well review while you're at it, right?