Chapter 7: Sanctus, Sanctus...
"About time, too," said Ba'al. "Take us into orbit to meet them."
He felt only a small lurch as the inertial dampeners took the main blow of the Al-kesh's sudden lift through the atmosphere, back into orbit, and past the other four ships which had remained in orbit. The other four fell back into a wedge shape behind him, their sublight engines propelling them through the void of space, towards the bright outline of the Ori warship, its curved shape momentarily silhouetted against the brightness of the planet's sun glinting from around the edge of the ice world.
The Ba'al to this right informed him that the Ori warship was trying to establish contact with them. "Put them through, then," he said. Then he paused, thinking for a moment, "But transmit through the Al-kesh furthest to our left."
The view screen once again turned opaque, only this time, the excellent reception showed the pale, hooded face of a Prior of the Ori.
"Hallowed are the Ori," intoned Ba'al with a small, sarcastic smile playing at the edges of his mouth.
"Hallowed are they indeed," returned the Prior in a deep, slow voice. "However you, Ba'al, are an enemy of the Believers..."
"Ah. My fame has spread even to the legions of the Ori."
"Your infamy is indeed known to us. The Ori see all," continued the Prior without changing his voice.
"Sanctus... sanctus... sanctus..." muttered Ba'al to himself.
The Prior didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he made no sign of it, but simply finished, "and they have told those faithful to them of their true enemies."
"Alright, you know all about me. Naturally, of course," said Ba'al, his eyes flickering momentarily to a screen to his right, "So. Why don't we hear a little about you instead? You don't seriously believe the Ori will help you ascend when you did, do you?"
"As it is written in the tale of the dog and the sheep in the Book of Origen -"
Ba'al suddenly seemed to have had enough. After glancing once again at the screen to his right, he butted in brusquely with the words, "I will give you your chance to surrender now." His voice was completely calm.
This statement in the middle of his lecture seemed to snap the Prior back to reality. Still, Ba'al could see that he was tempted to laugh at it, but obviously his years as a Prior made him withstrain himself. Instead, he limited his reaction to a grimace-like smile. "You, with five tiny, inferior ships, dare to threaten a warship of the Ori?"
The communications died abruptly, and Ba'al's fleet scattered as a yellow beam of energy lanced out from the Ori warship to the ship furthest to the left; the ship which had been relaying the communications. The force of the beam snapped it in half before it exploded violently.
"Shields to one hundred percent!" shouted out one of the crew Ba'als as the four remaining ships close in on the Ori mothership and opened fire, their red cannon blasts scattering over the surface of its shields. Another yellow beam shot from the fore section of the mothership, but missed, as the Al-kesh came in as close to the shields of the sluggish warship as possible. However, even as a second Al-kesh was clipped by laser fire and was sent spinning off into space, Ba'al didn't call for a loss. He seemed to be waiting for something...
The Ba'al clone aboard the cloaked Al-kesh watched as the ships of his fellow Ba'als spun around the never weakening shield of the warship. But he could not help them. He turned away from the viewscreen and the battle, left his chair and walked - slightly stooped - to the Al-kesh's right airlock, where he could stand straight again. The other two Ba'al crew members stood there with a round, circular device about the height of the ceiling. Their arguing was very irritating.
"Can't two identical people agree on anything?" he demanded. "We're late, gentlemen. Team 2 are ready for a lock already, and all you can do is argue about a plan agreed on weeks ago."
"If the anti-prior device doesn't work..."
"It will work," said the pilot Ba'al, looking down at the modified oval device strapped to a belt around his waist. "Tau'ri teams have been using them effectively for months."
"Fine. We're ready then," agreed one of the other Ba'als angrily. He walked to the other side of the device and punched in a sequence on it's side. "Establishing wormhole connection... now." As though to punctuate his words, he pulled a green lever. The event horizon of the tiny gate formed, whooshed out and punched straight through the trinnium plated outer hull of the ship. On the other side of the ship the same thing happened as Ba'al's mini-gates connected. Ba'al stepped out of the grey interior of the Al-kesh through the hole in the warship's side. Behind him, the ship's twenty Kull warriors piled out looking like giant, shiny black beetles.
Suddenly the air was full of blue fire as a group of Warriors of the Ori rounded the corner and spotted them. The Kull warriors responded in kind, raising their arms, withstanding countless blasts from Ori staff weapons and firing off multiple red streams of energy. Ba'al hit two warriors at the same time with his zat, the blue energy playing over them as they fell together.
The fight was over seconds after it had begun. "Stay here and guard the Al-kesh, you five. You, Ba'al-whoever, take those five towards the rear of the ship, and I'll take these ten to go and get the Prior." Without even waiting to see if his orders were followed, he turned and marched off in the direction of the command bridge, the ten Kull warriors falling into step around him. The fact that even as they marched almost half the distance to the bridge without meeting resistance told Ba'al that an ambush or at least a massive counter strike was being marshalled. They rounded a corner and Ba'al leapt backwards as blue weapons' fire burst out from the far end of the corridor. However, when he looked around the corner and shot off a bolt of energy, he saw it splatter across the surface of a green energy shield of some kind. He grimaced. A stand-off. They couldn't damage his warriors; he couldn't get through their shield. Yet.
McKay glared in frustration at the ZPM connections. Firstly he'd just tried re-wiring the system with the old leads. But the metal wires had actually crumbled when he'd touched them. So, he'd had to pull the whole system apart and stick in new wires, connections, etc, etc, etc... all of which for some reason had been left in a sort of set of drawers. At a guess, they were more for regular maintenance, as the simple gear wasn't really more than enough to anything but patch it up. To make it worse, Mitchell had just called Davidson for a report ("I'm getting there but if you want this done before we get eaten, leave the Great Mind alone") and (as if there weren't enough problems) had informed them that the System Lord Ba'al had just arrived in orbit.
McKay didn't like the way that those things had stopped coming after Davidson had shot them. To him, this implied above average intelligence, something he didn't particularly like in nasty bugs, monsters, or - well, not much at all except himself, come to think of it. Oh well. Nearly finished now.
Outside the door of the transporter, Daniel could hear the loud clicking sound of the bugs crawling around, trying to find a way in. He had already seen the corrosiveness of their venom - it was only a matter of time before they got in.
The radio crackled and Mitchell's voice came through, echoing slightly in the confined area. "Hey, you guys, you nearly back yet?"
"No, Colonel Mitchell," answered Teal'c, "It would seem we are trapped."
"Oh - right. Okay, what?" asked Mitchell.
"Those bug things attacked us," explained Daniel, "trapped us in one of the city's transporters."
"Well, in that case, you're in luck," said Mitchell, "If he's really nearly there, then 'great mind'" - you could almost hear the sarcastic 'diddums' in his voice - "should have power back soon, and you can teleport to us here." He stopped for a moment, then continued, "I've locked down the control room as best I could, set up some surprises for if our little friends show up, and Carter's going to dial out..."
Vala broke in suddenly, "If the bugs turn up, use zats."
"Why?" demanded both Daniel and Mitchell at once.
"It would seem that weapons of the Tau'ri work effectively against these creatures..." began Teal'c.
"Yes, yes," butted Vala back in, "but a zat energy beam spreads out over a metal surface, so we can take out half a dozen of these little blokes each shot." She smiled broadly at her own cleverness, and Daniel nodded slightly, while Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, good idea," agreed Mitchell. "The other thing is, we got a call from Ba'al."
If possible, Teal'c's eyebrow lifted slightly higher on hearing this, before returning to normal.
"Gave the usual 'I'll help you while ever you're helping me' speech," continued Mitchell chirpily, "so we've agreed to position Kroyta gas in the ventilation for him. That should take care of our bug problem. Um, wait," said Mitchell, stopping and listening, "Gotta go, guys, the gate's dialling."
With that, he left Daniel, Vala and Teal'c fingering their zats in the dark.