Stargate Genesis

Episode 15

Lost and Found

Amelia Reynolds wrapped her arms around her legs and pulled her knees up to her chest for warmth. The floor of the interrogation room was cold and stank of bleach, but that was fine. When she had been thrown in here with a bucket of the stuff and a rag the room had smelled like rust and death, the smell of week old blood left by its previous occupant. She had shunned the severe metal folding chairs and sat with her back to the wall. It was actually a step up from the cell she had slept in the night before, and it was downright cozy compared to the brig she had been kept in aboard the fleeing Ha'tak. After she had failed to deliver the Elizabeth to the Lucian Alliance she had been left there in the dark without food or water or even enough room to stand. The Goa'uld that had designed that ship was obviously well acquainted with cruel and unusual punishments.

At least this room couldn't be vented to space, she thought, and an interrogation room meant an interrogation. At this point the worst part of her captivity had become not knowing how long it would last. No one had so much as spoken to her since she had been beamed off the Elizabeth. It was unnerving. Then again she had expected summary execution so maybe this indifference was a positive sign.

There was a creaking sound and the dimly lit room got a little brighter as three men wandered in. Amelia stood up and eyed them wearily. All three were dressed in grey suits with white ties and fedoras, a favorite of Alliance thugs. They had taken to styling themselves after 50s era American mobsters.

The tallest one stepped forward. He looked her up and down and his eyes lighted on the bruises around her neck.

"Is that one of ours?" he asked.

"No," she said. "It was the Wraith."

The tall man nodded.

"Pity. The troops are gonna start saying we've gone soft."

Anger took hold of Amelia's tongue and she spat at him, "so why haven't you killed me ye–"

Her words were cut off as the man's hand reached over the table and clamped down on her bruised neck. She tried not to swallow her tongue from the pain. It hurt even to breath.

"Believe me princess I've been asking the same question for the last three weeks," he said. "You lost us more than that one ship you know, not half the Ha'tak we sent to meet you made it back, and all this exposure has got the heat turned up a lot higher than I like."

He threw her backwards and her head collided with the wall causing her momentarily to lose consciousness. When she opened her eyes the tall man was holding her head up by the chin while his cronies gripped her shoulders.

"You're a failure," he said. "One we ought to make an example of."

He swung the back of his hand across her face then kneed her in the gut. She would have fallen over if not for the other two men still holding her up by the armpits. It was fortunate for their Italian leather oxfords that there was nothing in her stomach she could vomit. The tall man tugged at the hem of her undershirt beneath her air force jacket. He used it to wipe a spot of blood off a diamond ring on the hand he had struck her with.

Beaten and bleeding, Amelia looked up at his compassionless face.

"He said he'd stop working didn't he?" she asked. "He said if you killed me he'd walk am I right?"

The tall man polished the enormous gem a few seconds more before letting her shirt back down. He took his time sliding it back on his massive finger before looking down at her.

"Yeah," he said. "Almost those exact words. Your brother's got no imagination kid."

He snapped his fingers and the cronies started pulling her clothes off. She fought back so they bent her over the table in the center of the room and slammed her head against it a few times to quiet her. Dazed and exposed she looked back to see the tall man striding up behind her. He kicked her feet apart.

"There's plenty we can do to you that won't kill you. Hell some stuff won't even leave a mark."

He laughed and started to undo his belt. She watched horrified as he reached his hand into the front of his pants. He was going to rape her, and he was going to laugh while he did it. The sound of it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and poured adrenaline into her veins. It told her that no amount of pleading would be enough to stop what was about to happen. It laid bare the rotten fetid nature of the man and then… it was gone, replaced by the sound of gunshots and little pops as red dots appeared in the tall man's chest. In the next instant he fell dead to the floor along with his men whose weight had been the only thing keeping her pinned to the table. She slid off and slumped to the ground amid their bodies and caught a glimpse of her savior splattered with blood just before she passed out from shock.

~~00~~

If the Alliance's interrogation room had been cozy then this new interrogation room was nothing short of luxurious. The air was warm and smelled fresh as if no one had ever died here. Her chair was bolted to the floor, but it had armrests and the seat was even cushioned. The table between her and the two air force officers on the opposite side was of a heavy dark wood, and had a green felt top. A clear pitcher of water and three glasses on a silver tray had been placed in the middle.

The only thing here to remind her of her status as a prisoner was the thin chain that ran between the links of her handcuffs and an anchor set into the concrete of the floor between her legs.

"I'm Colonel Cameron Mitchell with the United States Air Force," said the older of the two officers, "and this man to my left is Major Ronald Greer."

Amelia said nothing but nodded an acknowledgement to Greer. She studied him, following his eyes around. He seemed to be having trouble maintaining eye contact with her.

The colonel produced a thick manila folder and pulled out a five by six inch photo. He laid it down in front of her and asked," do you know who this is?"

She looked at it. The photo was of a young man in a blue and red football jersey with the words "University of Kansas" printed across the chest and the number ninety-one just underneath. He had brown hair and green eyes like the colonel but looked a little stockier.

She recognized him immediately. They had first met during off world reconnaissance training at the Delta Site, and then later they had both been assigned to Earth's first gate-capable ship, the Elizabeth. She remembered running systems checks with him on F-304s and watching him spar with Colonel Sheppard during combat drills.

The colonel passed her another photo, this one of the same man slightly older and dressed in his cadet uniform. Then he passed her a third photo of the man as he looked just before the Elizabeth's departure.

"You would have known him as Airman Tracy Mitchell," said the colonel, "but he's been promoted a few ranks since he was killed in the line of duty."

Amelia looked from the photos of Tracy Mitchell with his brown hair and green eyes up into the same green eyes and brown hair of Cameron Mitchell.

"Were the two of you related?" she asked. "Is that why you're showing me these?"

"He was my nephew," said Colonel Mitchell, "but I'm showing you these because in three days time you'll be brought before a military tribunal on charges of treason resulting in his death."

"Unless I tell you everything I know about the Lucian Alliance right?" she asked.

"No," said the colonel suddenly very angry. "Helping us fight the Alliance now won't change the fact that you decided to betray your people and your planet to them aboard that ship."

He pushed his chair back and stood up with his palms flat on the table.

Looking down on her he said, "Whatever you do here today I promise you'll face the consequences of that decision, because right now a gifted young pilot with a family and friends who cared about him is dead because of what you did. If that matters to you at all then you'll help us stop it from happening again."

"And what if it doesn't matter to me?" she asked, tears welling up in her eyes. Of course it mattered to her. How could he even say something like that?

He took a fourth photo from the folder and placed it in front of her.

"Then maybe I can come up with something else that does."

This photo was of a different man, smiling in white latex gloves and a long white lab coat buttoned up the side and part way up his neck. His prematurely graying hair was cut short after the fashion of the military. Amelia knew him well.

"It's funny how military service tends to run in families," said Mitchell sitting back down. "This is why you did it isn't it?"

The man in the photo was Orlando Reynolds, Amelia's brother. A nuclear physicist who had joined the air force to be part of Area 51's Arcturus Two Project aimed at drawing zero point energy from an alternate universe. Years earlier the legendary Dr. Rodney McKay and his sister Jeannie Miller had provided a proof of concept for the project when they established a matter bridge to an alternate version of Atlantis. An unfortunate consequence of that breakthrough had been the near destruction of the universe on the receiving end, but the destructive nature of the technology had only made it more appealing to the military. All that was needed by the time Orlando arrived was a way to direct the matter bridge to a universe where the evolution of atoms never made it beyond hydrogen, helium, and lithium.

"I'm told your brother took to the technology immediately," said Mitchell. "General Carter told me she'd never seen someone pick up the fundamentals of quantum vacuum mechanics so easily. She thought he might have been close to a breakthrough when he disappeared last year."

Amelia didn't say so, but she knew that wasn't true. They had lived together for a while when she was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base. He had been sworn to secrecy, but the way he came home disheveled and anxious with stress lines chiseled into his forehead and under his eyes had told her all she needed to know about how his work was progressing.

"The Alliance is always after the latest and greatest in energy generation technology so we suspected them from the get go, but it's taken us a while to come up with a lead on his location," said Mitchell.

Amelia thought back to the nights in their tiny government apartment with not even a wall to muffle the sounds of her brother muttering himself to sleep. If anything the project had probably been on the brink of failure. He had been terrified that it would be shut down before he was permitted to open a single bridge.

"They contacted you, right?" said Mitchell. "They told you they'd torture him if you didn't do what they said."

Amelia nodded still holding the picture. Colonel Mitchell seemed to soften slightly.

"You should have come to us," he said. "We might have been able to help."

She shook her head, "They were always watching me."

"Well they aren't watching you now," said Mitchell. "And there might still be something we can do."

He passed her the folder and a yellow pencil from his breast pocket.

"There are more photos and some maps of a compound where we think they're keeping him in there," he said. "Try to think like a member of the Alliance and give us a way to get inside, and while you're at it write down anything at all you know about how the Alliance operates. We won't know what's useful until we need it so just write down whatever comes to mind."

He stood up and started to leave. Major Greer stood up with him, still not making eye contact with Amelia.

"Colonel," she said. "Would you mind if I spoke to your man there in private?"

She nodded at Major Greer who looked surprised. Colonel Mitchell glanced at the one way mirror behind which video cameras and hidden microphones were recording their every move.

"Privacy is something you'll find in short supply here," he said, "I won't stop the recording but I can mute the playback for a little while at least."

"Thank you," she said.

"The colonel left and the door bolted itself shut behind him, leaving the two of them alone.

"You're him," said Reynolds. "You're the one who burst in and saw me lying naked over that table."

Greer nodded stiffly.

"You're the one who killed them," she said.

He winced. He knew it was true, but the memory of the moment hadn't quite come back to him yet. When he tried to picture it all he saw was the rage, bright red in front of his eyes. The color of blood. Their blood.

"You saw what they were going to do to me and you stopped it," she continued. "I'm the villain, major, I know that much, but you saved me. I guess that makes you a hero."

Greer banged on the door with his fist and it swung open on mechanical hinges. He started through it but caught himself in the doorway and looked back.

"No," he said. "Just a soldier."

~~00~~

Amelia studied the materials Colonel Mitchell had left for her. As a pilot she was adept at pulling tactical data from aerial photography, and she could see that the compound where her brother was supposedly being held was heavily fortified. Two thin consecutive circles of cleared trees and brush around it were probably razor wire fences. An attacking force might be able to beam in between them, but any part of the complex behind the second fence would be shielded by beam signal jammers. A large wall ran around the inside with guard towers every fifty yards. Amelia could see sophisticated scanning equipment on their roofs and large guns jutting out of their windows. The structures inside this third obstacle were all of reinforced concrete, not that bombing the place was an option to begin with.

The maps of the compound showed that it had been designed to be easily defended. Structures radiated out from a large central amphitheater where defenders could fall back and pick off attackers as they came up the wide open roads. Whatever was being built inside was obviously of some importance to the Alliance.

Even with this cursory analysis Amelia could tell that a frontal assault would be a mistake. It might work. The SGC certainly had the resources to take it on, but the cost in terms of lives would probably be unacceptable to Colonel Mitchell.

Colonel Mitchell. Tracy Mitchell's uncle. What did he expect her to do? It wasn't as if she had been inside this place. If it had any weaknesses she certainly didn't know about them. Try to think like a member of the Alliance, he had said. That was almost funny.

Hang on, she thought, she had been a member of the Alliance. She had worked for them hadn't she? For months she had helped keep the Elizabeth within their reach, and then she had failed to deliver… but after that she had escaped almost unscathed. People would be talking about that.

Having been little more than a pawn Amelia didn't know very much about Alliance tactics, but one thing she had picked up on was the way they dealt with people who failed them. You could run or hide, but that would only delay the inevitable. If you were responsible for the Alliance losing some amount of face or power a bounty would be placed on your head, and sooner or later you would wind up right where they wanted you. The Alliance courted the best bounty hunters in the galaxy, and paid them very well. A bounty hunter with a suitable catch would be welcomed into any Alliance compound with open arms. She wondered how big the price on her head was.

~~00~~

Small as it turned out. Almost insultingly small. When one of the SGC's moles reported the bounty the Alliance was offering for Amelia she had been shocked at the miserliness of it. It was even less than they had once paid for a smuggler who had simply cut a shipment of Alliance kassa with a few pounds of dyed maize. It was as if the person who had authorized the reward hadn't really wanted her found at all, and oddly enough the contract for her bounty specifically required that she not be injured, a condition hitherto unheard of.

In the gate room, with the blue light of an active wormhole reflected in his eyes Colonel Mitchell took the handcuffs off of Amelia's wrists.

"Are you sure this is the way you want to play it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "It's possible they're taking the punishment for my failure out on him right now."

Mitchell nodded and pulled her wrists together behind her back. He secured them with a zip tie then ran a short length of rope between her ankles. With his hand gripping her forearm they stepped through along with Major Greer. The two remaining members of SG-1 stayed behind. The mole had informed them that Alliance bounty hunters rarely worked in groups larger than two and that female bounty hunters were few and far between.

On the other side the three of them stepped into a bustling shanty town crammed with fleeing convicts and refugees. Their dirty faded jeans and scuffed leather jackets hung with weapons made them fit right in. Greer took the lead off down the dusty street, and Amelia wondered if it was so he didn't have to look at her.

Half a mile from the gate and still solidly inside the town, they arrived at their destination. A shack made of corrugated aluminum panels with slats in the sides just big enough to poke the barrel of a gun through. Greer knocked and the vibrations shook the flimsy structure.

A wiry looking man with liver spots on a bald head and a few days worth of facial hair opened the door a crack and looked out at them. It was dark inside and the only light came from the red glow at the end of his hand rolled cigarette.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"To make you some money," said Cameron, and he pulled the door open far enough to fling Amelia to the floor inside. Then brushed passed the man into the shack himself.

"Hey you can't do that-" he protested, but Greer was already closing the door behind them and the man caught on quickly that he was outnumbered.

"Er-what was that you said about money?" he asked.

"Half of the bounty for this one here sounds fair I think," said Cameron, gesturing to Amelia still bound on the floor.

"You're bounty hunters?" asked the man. "That's odd. I've been in the business a while myself, and I've never seen you before."

"We know, but we've seen you. You work for the Lucian Alliance, and we hear they pay well. We're hoping to get in on their good side," said Mitchell. "Can you help us out? Bounty hunter to bounty hunter? An introduction is all we need and we'll split the take with you fifty-fifty how's that?"

"You barge into my house uninvited and now you're askin' me to stick my neck out for you guys? I don't even know who you are," said the old bounty hunter.

"Sixty-forty," said Mitchell.

"Done," said the bounty hunter. "I just needed to know you spoke the language."

~~00~~

The old man led them to a wooded area a few miles out of town. The compound was set a few hundred yards back and they were stopped on the road by an armed advance guard. The aging bounty hunter made the necessary introductions and the guards let them pass with a smile at Amelia.

Gates in the razor wire fences slid back and as they approached a steel door in the side of the wall opened from the inside. Having gotten this far without so much as an impertinent question Amelia got the distinct impression that the plan was working a little too well.

She searched around for hidden gunners lining them up in their sites as they passed, but didn't see any. Come to think of it, she had barely seen anyone. Besides the guards that had stopped them up the road she had yet to see a single person or vehicle moving around the compound. Something wasn't right, and Colonel Mitchell sensed it too.

"Uh, listen old fella why don't you wait out here while we head in," he said to the bounty hunter.

"Why so you can stiff me?" asked the old man suspiciously. "I've been doing this since you were a gleam in your father's eye young man and I'm not about to be–"

Bzzzt… Greer zatted him.

"He'll be better off if it looks like we double crossed him," he said. "Seeing as that is what we're about to do."

"Right," said Mitchell looking at the crumpled pile of bones and skin unconscious in the dust. He removed Amelia's bindings and handed her the zat gun at his side.

"Let's go."

Once they hit the inner courtyard Greer broke off from the group to hunt for the beam jamming equipment. Destroying it would be their ticket off the planet once they had located Orlando Reynolds.

It seemed to Mitchell that the place to keep the machinery for opening a matter bridge to another universe and the scientist you had kidnapped to build it would be the large amphitheater in the center of town so, moving as stealthily as possible, he and Amelia made their way to the entrance on its south side. The stealth turned out not to be necessary as there didn't seem to be anyone around to observe them, and when they arrived at the door to the amphitheater they found it unlocked and ajar.

They stepped cautiously inside and were greeted by an enormous room filled up with scientific instruments, but empty of people save one. Orlando Reynolds was standing in the center beside an enormous gently spinning cylinder dotted with blinking LEDs. Amelia called to him and he turned around slowly.

"Amelia!" he said. "I'm so glad to see you're all right."

He started pushing things aside to get to her and Cameron watched him take her in his arms wearily.

"What's going on?" said Cameron. "Where are all the bad guys?"

Orlando ignored him.

"I'm sorry you got involved in this," he said. "It wasn't my idea to use you for the attack on the Elizabeth."

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "Of course it wasn't. Lando what is all this? Did you really build this thing for them?"

"Yes, isn't it great?" he asked. "Imagine what we can accomplish once we have a hundred! These bridges could power the entire galaxy!"

"Now hang on a second," said Mitchell, his gun hand inching upwards. "There's a reason we don't use those things, remember? As far as I know there's still no way to figure if the reality you're pulling all that power from is ocupado."

Orlando Reynolds looked up seeming to notice him for the first time.

"Our's is the only reality of consequence," he said. "The air force might have been ready to pass up humanity's best shot at galactic harmony on the off chance that some far away universe would wither, but I for one am not."

Mitchell raised his weapon.

"You snake in the grass. We thought you were kidnapped, but you sought them out, didn't you? You just couldn't figure out how to do what was right so you figured you'd do what was easy."

There was an explosion somewhere far off. Orlando checked his watch then grabbed hold of a retreating Amelia.

"It sounds like the other one found the jamming equipment," he said. "I guess that means it's time to go."

There was a flash of light and he was gone along with the matter bridge generator and all the equipment he had used to build it. Colonel Mitchell looked around at the empty room. Amelia was gone as well. So much for his promise, he thought.

Written by Andrew Marron

Story by Andrew Marron and Caleb Palmquist