XIX

Although Sam had always - perhaps not so secretly - revelled in being the one who could pull out the last-minute solution when everyone else was at a loss, she had to admit there was a different kind of joy in working with others who were just as advanced in the field. The scientists she worked with at the SGC were clever, thorough, and frequently inspired, but McKay and Zelenka were brilliant.

Brilliant, but... quirky.

Fortunately, there was nothing like eight years on SG-1 to prepare you for quirky.

She knew enough of McKay to recognise that running his mouth off was his default setting, and Zelenka seemed to be taking the frequent berating in good humour, so she tuned it out while she familiarised herself with the computer system. Jon was stretched out awkwardly on the floor of the lab behind them, shivering in feverish sleep with Teal'c's jacket as a blanket. Sam knew his condition had to be bad if he hadn't argued being left behind to rest.

The rest of the team had gone off with Sheppard to scout out the lay of the land. They hadn't banked on being dropped into the middle of a Goa'uld invasion - but it hadn't exactly been a surprise, either. Since when did anything ever go smoothly for SG-1?

So now they'd divided their forces. She would have liked to be with the rest of SG-1, but she knew she could do more good here in their makeshift headquarters, getting familiar with the city's computer system. The expedition had clearly got a respectable handle on it, but there was still a huge chunk of Ancient programming untranslated, and their current efforts were hampered by the fact that they weren't sure how well Baal could monitor computer activity.

"The Goa'uld have been moving our people into more secure holding areas," Zelenka said, studying a readout. "There are small pockets - eight, ten, twelve. We have little hope of predicting which one Doctor Beckett is held in."

"We can't afford to hit them all," Sam warned. "They're too widely spaced, and with up to five Goa'uld on patrol..."

"The lead Goa'uld appears to be remaining in the control centre," Zelenka pointed out.

"Which is worse than having him roaming the halls!" McKay said, exasperated. "I can't tell how much of our security encoding he's cracked, but he can get the basic systems up for sure. He's probably looking at the exact same set of readings we are. With some time I can figure out a jammer, but the second we get close enough to a cell to blank out the occupants, he'll realise what we're up to. We'll only get one shot at this."

"So we are back to the problem of isolating Doctor Beckett." Zelenka sighed and pushed back his hair.

"It can't be done. The Goa'uld, we at least have non-human parameters to work with... the Scottish, oddly enough, are not sufficiently distinct to show up as alien lifeforms!"

Zelenka sat up straighter, and raised a finger. "Ah. But he does have one area of distinction, does he not?"

McKay lowered his eyebrows. "We can't configure the biometric sensors to search for a single gene. And even if we could, our best detection method so far is 'hey, hold this and see if it lights up'. You're talking about exhaustive checking of the entire genetic code of every member of the expedition."

"I am just saying, it's a possible avenue of attack-"

"A stupid avenue of attack-"

Years of Daniel and the General had trained Sam to block out bickering, so it took a moment for her to realise when the tone of it abruptly changed. She raised her head, and saw figures scrolling on the Ancient display screen. McKay turned around and glared at her imperiously.

"What did you touch?"

She glared right back. "I'm not even connected to the system." Somehow, McKay's irritable condescension had taken on more charm in memory than it did when he was sitting a few feet away.

"Then who-"

They all turned to see Jon sitting up in his makeshift bed. His eyes were trained on the display screen, although not completely focused. She saw him absently-mindedly flex his hand, as if handling invisible controls.

"What's he doing? Whose bright idea was it to-? Hey, kid! Leave the computer system to the grown-ups, okay? No, uh, mind-touching without permission."

Jon paused in his concentration long enough to give McKay a contemptuous look, then resumed mentally cycling through machine code. The text was scrolling too fast for Sam to have read even if she understood Ancient.

Zelenka, however, seemed to recognise the general pattern of it. "I think this is the list of sensor-related subroutines I was just looking at." He turned to frown at Jon. "Please, what are you attempting to find?"

Jon seemed to take the polite approach somewhat better than McKay's, and paused again to explain.

Unfortunately, what came out of his mouth was, "Speculum pestilentum utilus possus cogitam."

"Tauri, kree! Come with me."

Carson was yanked out of the crowd with no more warning than those surly words. The Goa'uld had been gradually escorting small groups of prisoners away from the briefing room - he hoped for incarceration in more manageable numbers rather than to meet a horrible death - but he was the first one to be singled out specifically. Carson swallowed hard, and wished he'd taken the chance to visit the little boys' room before their imprisonment had started.

Several nearby marines nearby tensed to come to his aid, but Bates quelled them with a look. He followed it up with a narrow-eyed expression that was probably meant to communicate something, but Carson was too petrified to make much sense of it.

If that's a warning not to put up a fight, it's entirely redundant, laddie! His knees were so jellified he wouldn't have been able to if he'd known how. And his escort was Major Hertzberg, the most physically intimidating of all the Goa'uld hosts. Not that it made much difference. Even the wee lass with the pretty long hair was terrifying with that grating voice coming out of her mouth.

He was horribly aware that he'd only done one thing that distinguished him from his fellow prisoners - attempted to tend to those 'punished' for standing up to the Goa'uld. Did medical help for the defiant count as defiance?

The Goa'uld weren't big on defiance. Hertzberg's face was impassive and his body language impatient as he hustled Carson out of the briefing room and in the direction of the gate room.

Oh, shite, he was going to be executed as an example. Not that he'd make a very good one, because he'd probably blubber and beg for his life. Being strong and witty in the face of adversity was really more Major Sheppard's area.

Where was Major Sheppard, anyway? Maybe he was at this very moment planning a heroic last-minute rescue. Those were also very much Sheppard's style. And Rodney was possibly still free, and in possession of his laptop despite being confined to the infirmary. A small and lonely flag of hope started to wave above the stark sea of gibbering terror.

That hope died as he was marched into the control room and came face to face with Baal.

Carson had faced monsters, thugs and madmen - none of them very bravely, but he'd done it. Baal was different. The god persona he'd adopted for who could guess how many centuries fitted him like a glove, and he was collected, elegant, and charming.

Carson would be the first to admit that he was an old-fashioned boy about some things, but in his opinion, when you looked into the face of pure evil, it should be snarling, raving, or cackling insanely. It shouldn't have a twinkle in its eye and a smile that reminded you of your Uncle Patrick.

Come to think of it, he'd never really liked Uncle Patrick.

Baal looked up from the laptop screen he'd been perusing, for all the world like a busy executive who'd just had an underling escorted in. "Ah. Good. Doctor Beckett. You are the developer of the science your people call gene therapy?"

Carson's mouth went dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of it. Oh, bloody hell. He hadn't been expecting this. He stuttered out some meaningless sound, but Baal clearly had the facts already.

"Your science is crude... but then so are these bodies." Baal held out his arms and inspected his own like a man trying on a new suit. "I wish you to provide my host with the activation gene." Though couched as an airily spoken request, it was unquestionably a command.

"Erm..." Carson stared at him, tongue-tied. Baal apparently mistook the rabbit in the headlights look for bold defiance, and his eyes narrowed.

"Of course, should you refuse, I will be forced to take a new host from among the population who possess the naturally occurring gene." He gave Carson an offensive once-over, and dismissed him just as quickly, curling his lip. "Sheppard, perhaps, would be adequate..." he mused, "if something could be done about his hair. But I find my current host pleasing to me, and if I am forced to change unnecessarily, I shall be most annoyed."

Carson gulped, and Baal leaned forward, all trace of the jovial personality gone.

"Either you will prepare for me the gene retrovirus, or be prepared to sacrifice one of your companions to be my new host. Choose."

His eyes glowed.

John had met a lot of Generals in his varied and colourful career. Many of them had been drinkers, most of them had been fat, and nearly all of them had been shouting at him for stepping outside the lines of their neatly typed, colour-coded, wholly impractical battle plans. As a rule, they were men who'd seen plenty of action when they were lower down the ranks - seen it, because they were the ones standing at the back with field glasses while the commanders who actually took part in it fought and bled and died.

He'd met O'Neill briefly, and judged him both unusually fit and unusually straightforward for a General, even a freshly minted one-star. He'd heard a lot of rumours about the actions of O'Neill the Colonel, and registered the awe with which solid, sensible officers mentioned him. But still, the pieces had really only come together into a vague sense of satisfaction stroke bitterness that at least some people were lucky enough to get a CO who understood what it was like out there. When O'Neill had insisted on being part of the expedition to scout out the Goa'uld invaders' ship, he'd felt the familiar sinking feeling of having to drag dead weight brass around and kept them out of trouble.

That feeling had lasted for about seven seconds, most of which were employed just watching the man pass down a hallway. O'Neill moved with the kind of precision that you could have called textbook if it wasn't damn obvious that the last place it had been learned was sitting down with a book.

And with Teal'c and Jackson along for the ride, John felt uncomfortably like a green Lieutenant shoehorned into a long-established unit. These guys had served together for the better part of a decade, and it showed.

Since they'd come to Atlantis, John had been accustomed to being in command of all things military, and he had to admit, being kicked back down to the junior leagues kinda rankled. The truth was, he'd never been so hot on that whole 'taking orders' thing, no matter how worthy the source. Out in the field, he would always trust his own instincts above someone else's.

Which didn't mean he was dumb enough not to take all available intel.

"There's only five of them. What are we afraid of?" he asked.

The Goa'uld forces were stretched thin, with Baal holed up in the control room and only four underlings to secure a large number of prisoners and an even larger expanse of unfamiliar city. The only one patrolling within scrambling distance of the hybrid ship was Casey. Or whatever the hell alien was walking around wearing his face.

Jackson peered at him earnestly over his glasses. "Well, uh, they're Goa'uld," he said, clearly fishing for how much John knew on that subject.

"Goa'uld symbiotes provide their hosts with many advantages over normal human beings," Teal'c supplied, in a rumbling bass voice that matched his impressive stature.

"They heal fast, they move fast, their senses are enhanced, and they get pissed off real easily," O'Neill rapped out succinctly. "And they get to play with the cool toys." He raised a sceptical eyebrow. "How come you escaped being taken hostage?"

John's forehead was still throbbing, inside and out, from the blast he'd received. "I didn't. I was headed for the control room to make contact with Doctor Weir, so they knocked me out and stashed me in a separate cell. McKay was in the infirmary while this was going down so he managed to grab Zelenka and bust me out."

O'Neill immediately seized on the pertinent tactical information. "Weir's off-world?"

"With Teyla- ah, she's a native ally - and Lieutenant Ford. But I didn't get a message to them. They'll be gating straight in to Baal's hands." He grimaced. "If they haven't already. They were due back not long after the whole coup went down." He didn't have the first clue how much time had passed.

"What about Colonel Sumner?"

The wholly reasonable question hit like a punch to the gut. John reflexively straightened up to a position approximating attention. "Sir, Colonel Sumner was killed in action shortly after we arrived, sir."

The General narrowed his eyes. "What kind of action?"

O'Neill was not a man who would appreciate the sugar-coating any more than John wanted to give it.

"Our arrival drew the attention of alien hostiles known as the Wraith. They prey on humans and drain the life force out of them. Colonel Sumner was captured and interrogated and I was forced to shoot him." He would give no more self-justification than that.

He almost wanted the angry disgust that should have engendered, but it wasn't forthcoming. O'Neill merely nodded curtly, while Jackson looked grim. Teal'c didn't so much as twitch one way or the other.

"I'll want a full debrief and threat assessment later, but for now, our main priority has to be the Goa'uld. Teal'c, Sheppard, head toward where the prisoners are being held and see what you can see. Daniel, come with me. We'll rendezvous with Carter and the docs and see what they've found out."

O'Neill peeled away without a backwards glance. And somehow, that cool pragmatism was worth more than any effusive declaration of understanding. John followed Teal'c down the next hallway with his heart a fraction lighter.

"What's he doing?"

"He appears to be reprogramming the sensors."

"Which sensors? I don't recognise any of this- whoa, whoa, whoa, bring that page up again."

"I don't think he knows how he's doing it, Rodney."

"Then why are we letting him do it?"

"Because he is doing it well?"

The sound of the two Atlantis scientists and Sam in full flow was audible some way down the hallway as they approached. Daniel hung back and let Jack lean against the doorframe to display the sardonic raised eyebrow he was obviously dying to. Even Sam took almost thirty seconds to register his presence.

"Sir!" She flushed slightly, recognising her own carelessness without any need for a rebuke. Jack graciously - not a word Daniel was accustomed to applying to him - failed to give one, simply wandered in and gave his clone a scowl.

"Okay, who let JJ here at the controls?" he demanded.

Daniel mentally filed that nickname under 'things to inquire into further when Jack is very drunk'.

"Technically, he is not actually using any controls," Zelenka piped up helpfully.

"Yes, because if he was, we could stop him." McKay glowered and grabbed Jon by the wrist, but it didn't seem to affect the clone's concentration in the slightest. He had the same slightly glazed look adult Jack got when he was mentally interfacing with Ancient technology. "Hey! Kid. What are you doing? The sensors don't work like that!"

"Actually, what is he doing?" Daniel moved forward to squint at the fast flowing Ancient text. He could read the language quite rapidly now, but computer code in any language was impenetrable to him.

"Doctor Zelenka had the idea of using the ATA gene as a way to narrow down which of the life signs might be Doctor Beckett," Sam explained.

"Which is, as I keep saying, impossible." McKay raised a hand and rolled his eyes like the sassy girlfriend in the kind of films Cassie was always watching. He pressed in closer to the screen. "Especially with the- where are we now? This isn't the code for the biometric sensors. What's he doing now?"

"Tuas lumena obstra," Jon muttered, nudging him out of the way.

"What? What does that mean?" McKay swivelled round to look at Daniel.

Jack stepped in before he could speak up. "He said, sure, you can't use any of the standard sensor arrays to pick up a single gene, but, you can trick the scanners that look for viral contagions into accepting normal human parameters as a contagious disease, and then flag the ATA gene as a genetic weakness that makes people susceptible. Then you just intercept the quarantine instructions and that'll tell you where to look for the gene carriers."

They all stared at Jack for a few moments. Zelenka turned raised eyebrows on Daniel.

"He said that?" he queried.

Daniel quirked an eyebrow of his own Jack's way. "He said, 'you're blocking my light'," he reported neutrally.

Jack shrugged defensively. "It was in the tone of voice!"

They gated in ready for trouble.

Elizabeth hadn't detected anything amiss besides the inconvenient timing of the gate malfunction, but she trusted Ford's instincts, and it was better to be braced for a fight and not find it than vice versa. At the Lieutenant's suggestion, they went through the gate at a low crouch. She felt ridiculous doing it, but it dried up pretty quickly when the first burst of energy passed over her head and grounded itself on the Stargate.

After that, it all turned into chaos.

She'd been given basic weapons training, but she wasn't crazy enough to rely on it in a firefight, and anyway her companions were making it a priority to protect her. Ford and Teyla shoved her this way and that and crushed her into corners as they returned their assailant's fire.

"These are not Wraith or Genii," Teyla assessed quickly. "I do not recognise the weaponry they are using."

"I do. That's zat fire," Ford said. "One shot'll take you down like a Wraith stunner, but two in succession will kill," he explained for Teyla's benefit.

"There were no zats in the original cargo manifest," Elizabeth reminded him. Captured Goa'uld weaponry was jealously hoarded by the SGC thanks to its near-inexhaustible power sources, and like a fool she hadn't pushed for some because she'd expected this to be a peaceful expedition.

"Which means we're probably looking at a Goa'uld incursion," Ford said grimly. "Worst case scenario, they've infested the whole SGC. If they found a ZPM and made contact our people would have let them waltz right in." He squeezed off another few rounds at the unseen zat-holder.

He was right. Damn, damn, damn. Why hadn't she instituted a 'contact from home' protocol? The gate techs knew how precious every second was with an intergalactic wormhole connection, and they would have been only too delighted to drop the shield immediately for visitors from home... It was a foothold situation waiting to happen.

Or rather, no longer waiting.

"Their forces cannot be too extensive," Teyla said. "They knew we were returning, and yet left only one guard to keep watch over the Stargate."

"Major Sheppard'll be giving them hell," Ford said confidently. "Atlantis is too big for any sized invasion force to hold. Doctor Weir? Go!" With no further warning, he and Teyla hustled her toward the stairs, keeping up their covering fire on their Goa'uld attacker. Elizabeth ran as best she could, wishing she'd kept up the jogging that was always on her daily schedule - and always the first thing to be sacrificed as soon as a crisis loomed into view.

She wondered if she should be worried that even as she was running for her life, she was mentally blocking out a new agenda for their next meeting of department heads. New security drills, stricter fitness testing for the civilian population - Rodney would throw a wobbly at that, even though his offworld adventures had probably chased him up into the top ten percent, and not just because the others were dire. In fact, he'd probably use his field duty as an excuse to wriggle out of it - better to let him have that victory in the name of keeping the peace, or press him into competing against his fellow scientists to give him a self-esteem boost and them a reality check...?

Both her headlong flight and her ill-timed managerial musings were cut short when a dark-clad figure stepped out in front of them. Ford stumbled in shock, and was taken down by a zat blast from behind before he had a chance to react. Teyla came to a wary halt, not knowing enough about the handsome man before them to guess how much of a threat he was.

Elizabeth envied her that blissful ignorance.

Baal placed his hands together genteelly, and gave her a winning smile.

"Ah, Doctor Weir. How lovely to see you again."