XX
Teal'c was reserving judgement about Major Sheppard.
He appeared a competent warrior, so far as it could be judged before battle was joined, although he was possessed of an attitude that would probably be termed 'flip'. Master Bra'tac would have thrashed it out of any Jaffa trainee in a matter of hours, but Teal'c had learned early on not to judge the people of Earth on what came out of their mouths. The Jaffa were a straightforward people - false gods did not encourage deceptions that might disprove their divinity - but even the simplest of Tauri had a thousand different ways to say the same thing.
He had learned quickly to look to eyes and body language to convey what often alien words did not. The true epiphany had come when he realised that in times of duress the Tauri used words as a form of martial art, feinting, covering, deflecting. O'Neill had a mastery of the art that matched his all-out approach to other forms of combat: using every tactic - from the cunning to the childish to the outright bizarre - to drive the conversation back from any areas he preferred it not to visit.
He sensed a similar wariness in Sheppard's flippancy, but what old wounds he was guarding with it remained to be seen. Perhaps, like O'Neill's, they were what gave him strength; or perhaps they were dangerous weaknesses. For now, Teal'c would wait, and observe.
And in the meantime, perhaps, have some fun.
"So, this... Jaffa thing. What's that all about?"
Sheppard spoke casually, but kept his attention on their surroundings at all times, so Teal'c saw no problem with conversing with him.
"I am a Jaffa as my parents were Jaffa. The false gods enslaved my people many centuries ago, and we have but recently cast off the yoke of servitude."
He had found that the most profound truths directly stated tended to rattle the Tauri most thoroughly. Sheppard paused for a brief moment.
"O-kay. Yoke casting. I dig that. So, what, you had one of those snake-things in you too?"
"Under the reign of the false gods, all Jaffa were implanted with an immature symbiote at the onset of puberty. It used to be that removal of the symbiote caused death, but with the creation of the drug tretonin we were freed forever from such oppression."
"Cool," Sheppard said, inadequately. "Do you get to keep the super powers?"
"Indeed," Teal'c said, and did not smirk. He had become freer with his expressions in the years since he had joined the Tauri, but he could easily practise control when the whim took him. And right now, he was feeling whimsical.
Until he heard something, and raised a hand for silence. Sheppard, to his credit, stilled immediately and tried to detect the threat on his own instead of asking. Human senses, however, were no match for Jaffa.
"What's happening?"
"Five people, several hallways down."
"Super-hearing, huh?" Sheppard nodded to himself, impressed.
Teal'c was still listening. "There are two guards escorting three captives." That was more than partly guesswork: he couldn't pick the numbers out so cleanly, but one guard on four was foolishness, and three on two unlikely with Goa'uld arrogance. However, he was, as the Tauri said, on a roll. "Two of the captives are women."
Sheppard was hearteningly incredulous. "You can tell all that from footsteps?"
"I am Jaffa," he said impassively. He quirked an eyebrow. "One of the women is a warrior."
He saw no need to mention that he'd just glimpsed the group passing through a cross-corridor. Instead, he directed Sheppard with a series of gestures to a position where he would see them too. The Major's expression grew grimmer.
"Weir, Ford, and Teyla. Dammit. They must have gated right into a trap."
"How damaging is it that they have Weir?"
Radek was unsure whether to be reassured by General O'Neill's quiet authority, or frustrated by his degree of calm. The Goa'uld had Elizabeth! How could they talk in terms of captured information, as if she were no more than a computer disk?
Rodney was himself fairly collected, but at least Radek could see the personal concern beneath. "It's huge," he said. "She has the full set of clearance codes, access to all sealed areas and the full untranslated Ancient database. Worse, she has the authority to lock out all personnel, even Major Sheppard. If they get her command code, we're going to spend a whole lot time we don't have trying to crack security systems that I built to be uncrackable."
"She would never reveal anything to the Goa'uld," Radek said stubbornly. These outsiders did not know Elizabeth as they did. Did they think she would be weak, just because she was not military? If they did, they were all fools. She was perhaps the very strongest of all of them. O'Neill should know what kind of endurance it took to be the one in command.
Colonel Carter spared him a sadly pitying look. "She may not have a choice. If one of the Goa'uld chooses to jump hosts, it'll have full access to the memories of the person it takes over."
The thought that Elizabeth might have one of those obscene creatures invade her mind... Radek swore softly to himself in his own language, but it brought him little comfort.
"Rescuing Weir has to be our main priority," Rodney insisted.
Daniel Jackson leaned forward. "Unfortunately, she's likely to be even harder to get at than Beckett."
"Or not," O'Neill said. Radek realised that the display on the screen before them had changed. Jon's program had achieved its purpose, and the life signs display now distinguished between blips of two different colours. Most of the blue ones were mingled in with many whites in the pockets of prisoners, but there was one in the infirmary area, accompanied by a blip that had to be a Goa'uld. "Who wants to take a bet that that's Beckett?"
No one did. "What do they want with him?" Radek wondered.
"The same thing that we do," Rodney said darkly. "He knows all about the gene - and he has one."
Radek nodded soberly. "They want either his brain or his body." He thought about the havoc a Goa'uld could wreak in Atlantis with a host body that had the gene. "It is imperative that they get neither."
It was clear that the others agreed.
Carson had run out of ways to keep stalling.
Nerve-induced clumsiness was not something he found at all hard to fake, but the fact was, there were only so many ways he could delay collecting a needle and vial of the engineered retrovirus. For a fraction of a second he'd considered pretending there was none on hand and he'd have to synthesize it from scratch, but if Baal had access to the inventory list he'd have recognised the lie in an instant.
He probably would have anyway. Carson knew full well he was a bloody awful liar. His dear old mum had always been so easily upset he'd never had the chance to get good at it as a boy. One look at her disappointed face and he still cracked like an egg dropped on concrete.
Like the vial would crack, if he let go of it now. It would be so easy. His hands were visibly shaking. It would look like an accident. Move those fingers a millimetre further apart, and it would be 'oops, sorry laddie, you'll just have to wait while I whip up a new batch'.
But he didn't dare. Baal might or might not need him alive; Hertzberg he was sure was just itching for a chance to shoot him. From what he knew of the Goa'uld, they didn't play well with others, and the chances of his jailor checking in with Baal before he took his own steps to punish misbehaviour were pretty small indeed.
He couldn't risk it. Even if he were the kind to want to go out in a futile blaze of glory - which he wasn't, thank you very much - he had a duty to stay alive. He was the expedition's main doctor, their best authority on the gene and the biology of the Wraith. He was needed.
Instead of letting the vial smash, he packed it safely away in a padded box where it couldn't do so even by accident. Then, on a split second's impulse, he grabbed a second one to accompany it: this one, a simple sedative. He didn't think he had anything to hand that could take down a Goa'uld, but perhaps if he got the chance he could substitute the retrovirus for something much less harmful.
Maybe it was a smaller, less impressive brand of heroism than the dramatic gesture, but it was the best he could do. He closed the box and followed Hertzberg out of the lab.
John automatically checked his weapon as they moved in on the medical labs. He wasn't too hot on the idea of bullets flying around a non-combatant and a whole lot of very smashable medical equipment, but there was no time to go back and get the Wraith stunner off McKay. Teal'c had a zat, but apparently that was no alternative: a single shot wouldn't take down a Goa'uld, and multiple hits would kill Beckett. Flying bullets it was, then.
A part of him was still itchy over following somebody else's battle plan. His own first priority would have been to bust out Weir and his teammates - okay, a tougher proposition given the much greater guard they were under, but then, it never hurt to roll with the unexpected. O'Neill wanted Beckett freed not just as a step in winning back the city, but because he needed him to patch up Mystery Gene Kid. Medical urgency John could understand, but that was still a hint at the kind of priority-splitting that made him antsy. Even the best of COs brought their own agendas to the table, and if it didn't match your assessment of the situation, then well, you could just suck it up and keep your mouth shut, Major.
John's record bore a few black marks - not to mention a whole host of grey smudges - from his stubborn refusal to knuckle under to that reality of military life.
Right now, though, he was wary rather than out and out defiant. They were approaching their objective, so he shut off the inconvenient thinky part of his brain and followed Teal'c's lead.
It turned out they'd cut the timing pretty fine. Beckett and his Goa'uld escort were just emerging from the lab as they moved into position. Any later, and they'd have missed their chance to get the Goa'uld pinned down: there was only one doorway on the lab, but the hallway leading onto it had to many offshoots to cover. Fortunately, the Goa'uld had taken note of the same thing, and was coming out ahead of Beckett to cut his chances of making a run for it.
They let it get half a dozen steps from the cover of the lab doorway, and then opened fire.
Teal'c held his staff-type energy weapon high, aiming for a chest shot, so John shot low and to the left, the spot where he'd have taken a dive to if he was under fire. He'd called it right, but he underestimated the Goa'uld's reflexes. Not only did it twist away from Teal'c's shot, but it managed to leap beyond the target of his own. Before he could adjust his aim he had to duck back around the corner to avoid a zat blast.
Beckett squeaked in surprise and hit the deck. A padded box fell from his grip and skidded across the floor. As the Goa'uld made a grab for it Teal'c's next shot passed over its head, missing by less than an inch. John stepped out and drilled it in the stomach as it rose.
At least two of his bullets hit home, but they didn't slow the thing down. It whirled and squeezed off another zat blast at him. John saw the shot coming, but the narrow hallway left him little room to dodge without getting in Teal'c's line of fire.
He threw himself back against the wall, and the zat blast splashed over his head. To his dismay, the energy didn't dissipate, but rippled outwards across the wall. The shock that he got from it was less than the one a direct hit had given him earlier, but still enough to knock him to the floor.
Goddamn energy-conducting walls. Next time he saw an Ancient, he was definitely having a few words about their design philosophy.
His body was jittering madly, and it took an effort to wrench his neck sideways and get a read on the Goa'uld's position. It was grinning malevolently and steadying its zat for the second, killing shot.
Teal'c's next blast hit it square in the throat.
The Goa'uld toppled like a felled tree. Super healing powers it might have, but anything that walked around in a human body, even a stolen one, tended to find it useful to have lungs connected to mouth and nose and a working spinal column. It was dead.
Or not. To his horror, John saw the mouth of what ought to be so much crispy corpse slowly push open... and then something forced its way out.
It was snakelike, about six inches long, entirely too reminiscent of that chest-burster thing in Alien, and headed his way. John's well-honed military instincts told him that the most appropriate action right now was to scream like a ten-year-old girl and run away.
Fortunately for his pride, and much less fortunately for his chances of continued survival, he was still under the effects of the zat. All that happened was that he let out a faint, high-pitched sound along the lines of, "Gneep!" and jerked his right hand a few inches.
The Goa'uld parasite wasn't fast, but it was determined, and it was getting entirely too close for his comfort. John had no intention of becoming its latest model of all-terrain vehicle. Unfortunately, right now he wasn't doing so well in the driving seat himself. As he fought to move his spasming body, the thing drew steadily closer. It was covered in its last host's blood, and its little needle teeth-
Teeth? Why the hell did an internal parasite need teeth?
All the better to chew you with, my dear... John redoubled his struggles to get away - but it wasn't going to be enough. He gained half an inch of space; the parasite had crossed two in the same time. It was already close enough to brush his hair. Any moment now there would be a short, sharp-
-Squelch. A military issue boot - size: absolutely freakin' huge - stomped down a hairsbreadth from his nose, and squashed the parasite into so much biological waste.
John twisted his neck as much as he could manage, and looked up. There was a mountain towering over him.
It raised an eyebrow.
"Major Sheppard. Our mission here is achieved."
With that understated pronouncement, the Jaffa simply picked John up off the ground and slung him over his shoulders.
Rodney McKay was harder to pin down than you'd suppose.
Admittedly, the first time they'd met, Sam hadn't had much chance to get to know him. And wouldn't have wanted it. When somebody breezed in, insisted that their theory work trumped your years of hands-on experience, called you a dumb blonde, and campaigned to have your teammate left for dead, it tended to make a certain type of first impression.
The second impression had been similar, albeit under slightly more relaxed circumstances since the only thing at stake that time was the possible destruction of the planet. Until McKay's dumbass plan had resulted in her being injured, and he'd attempted to confide - well, okay, massively overshare - his insecurities in the course of apologising. At that point, she'd been forced to upgrade her mental image of him from obnoxious, callous jackass to obnoxious, grown-up version of that kid in junior high who you couldn't help liking despite his inability to interact on any level other than boob jokes.
And all right, it hadn't really been that much of a dumbass plan.
The fact was that under about forty-seven layers of smug, there actually lay a brain that could do a great deal of what its owner bragged about. Not one she could work alongside without a serious homicide risk, but certainly one that ought to be put to work somewhere a safe distance away. The Pegasus Galaxy had seemed plenty safe enough.
She'd been one of the major voices in getting McKay as installed as scientific leader for the expedition. He had the smarts, he could perform under pressure, and while he definitely didn't have the people skills, when you were assembling a team of genius candidates it was probably wiser to go with good old-fashioned tyranny than expect them to respond to good management. But it had never been intended to be a field position.
Clearly, something had changed.
She watched him as they both waited for General O'Neill to return from his sweep of the pier. She'd convinced the General to bring him along because they were probably going to have a limited window to disable the hybrid ship, and he had more hands-on experience with Ancient technology than she did. She'd fully expected it to be a babysitting detail, but McKay had surprised her. He'd kept up a stream of nervous chatter that didn't falter for long even after one of the General's glares, but he handled his weapon decently, stayed aware of his surroundings, and obeyed directions. That put him well ahead of the curve according the Jack O'Neill system of rating civilians - although he'd definitely fail on the most important rule, Do Not Be Annoying. But then, if you believed the General even Daniel failed that one.
Sam could picture, now, McKay undergoing the same slow transformation of self that Daniel had done through the years. She wasn't sure whether to be impressed or slightly saddened.
"So, uh, Colonel, exactly who is that kid you brought with you?" McKay finally asked the question the General's presence had cowed him out of raising. Sam, her face turned away from him as she scanned the hallway, allowed herself a small smirk.
"That would be General O'Neill."
McKay lowered his eyebrows condescendingly. "Kid, Colonel. As in physical age, not mental."
"Exactly." She grinned at his wilful refusal to show any confusion. "You've heard of Loki?"
He got it quickly. "The Asgard clone."
She didn't have time to give him more than a nod before the General returned.
"It's Colonel Casey," he said shortly. His grim face would be unreadable to many, but Sam knew him well enough to recognised the self-castigation. He was pissed that a whole team under his command had been taken for hosts, and even more pissed that he hadn't stopped it.
"So, how do we, er, neutralise him?" McKay asked, with a nervous cough.
The General answered the question, but addressed his response to Sam. "We take him alive." The appended 'if we can' didn't need to be spoken aloud. "We need to know what Baal's plans are. If we can get the Goa'uld out of him, he can talk to us. If not..." he looked grim, "we're just going to have to find another way to get the information out."
That dark prospect silenced even McKay.
After a moment, the General straightened up. "Teal'c and Sheppard are on their way. We'll take care of Casey. You guys figure out what you need to do to disable that ship."