Chapter 10 Courthouse Chaos
"My pants are falling down," Vala grumbled, sticking her fingers into the loops on her combats and trying to hitch them up around her waist.
Daniel rolled his eyes. "That's because you've lost weight. Even though you appeared to eat most of the ice-cream supplies from the SGC last week."
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"There's nothing of you, Princess." Cameron leaned back on the Kelownan courthouse wall, where they were waiting to be admitted, and popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. "You look like a stick."
"I do not!" Vala protested indignantly. She ran her hands up and down her body, paying particular attention to her bust area. "Sticks don't have these do they? I mean, sticks are straight, not with curves on, like these. I'm not a stick at all, my boobs are too nice. That's what they call them in England, the Prime Minister told me. Boobs. Did you know that, Simon darling? Did you know that they call them boobs in England?"
Poor Lt Redwell's eyes were out on stalks and Mitchell bent over, hands on knees. "I dread to think the state that you and General O'Neill left the British government in, y'know," he laughed.
"Leave the poor man alone," Daniel rolled his eyes again and clapped the very red-faced young lieutenant on his shoulder. "And stop it!" he hissed at his girlfriend, who was looking at herself and her boobs sideways in a window. "People are watching!"
Looking around Vala perked up, then frowned as her BDU's slipped again.
"Come here," Daniel spoke gently. He tugged her towards him by her belt, which he undid and tightened for her. "Better?"
"Mmmm," she was leaning in for a kiss, but he put his fingers against her lips. "Not on duty, Ms Mal Doran."
Vala grinned widely and moved away, as the doors to the courthouse opened and people began to move towards the entrance.
Jonas stood waiting for them in the large, cool ante-chamber directly inside. "I'm to be called as a witness," he told them. "to corroborate the prosecution's case that Dalton Frayne attacked us without justification at the mine, that he kidnapped Vala, injured Teal'c and stole naquadria. If we can get him convicted for kidnapping alone, he'll go down for fifteen years."
"Good." Mitchell, Daniel and Vala said, all at the same time.
"Indeed," added Teal'c, with feeling.
"Are you ready, Colonel Mitchell?" Jonas asked.
The other members of SG-1 looked at them both, surprised.
Their commanding officer smiled, shrugging. "Jonas asked me to stand as a witness too, to add weight to the case against Frayne. Happy to oblige!"
"Can't I witness too?" Vala's face had a hard edge to it – she tilted her chin up, like she did when she wanted something. "I've got some great stories about him!"
Jonas shook his head. "Most of what he did to you occurred away from Kelowna – we have no jurisdiction with it. Don't worry – he won't get away with what he did to you. To any of us."
A bell rang from the gallery above them.
Daniel put his arm around Vala's shoulders and held her against him. She leaned in briefly, but still looked put out.
"I wanted to put him down," she whispered. "I mean, put him out. Put him somewhere?"
"Send him down," Daniel grinned, before stealing a quick peck on her cheek as they all entered the courtroom.
Jonas Quinn was as good as his word. The trial went on for two days – it could possibly have gone on for longer but when it came to people testifying to Dalton's good character there was an unsurprising lack of contenders.
Cameron acted like a cross between an Air Force general and a Hollywood A-lister when he stood in the witness box – the judges and jury members looked as if they would eat out of his hands.
Jonas was more subtle in his manner, but equally forceful – the defendant's counsel could be seen talking frantically with the accused more than once. At the end of the second day, the head judge dismissed the courtroom, telling them that sentence would be delivered the following morning.
Daniel told his girlfriend in no uncertain terms that she was going straight back to their lodgings and into bed.
For a moment Vala looked hopeful, until he reminded her that one of the many instructions which Dr Lam had given them, before she allowed Ms Mal Doran off-world, was that the alien had to have a nap in the afternoons. So Dr Jackson marched his mutinous-looking team mate off towards the bedroom, but two minutes after laying down on the couch she was fast asleep.
Smiling, Daniel kissed her forehead and sat right next to her, reading through one of his huge old textbooks. Simon Redwell sat in the next room, feet up on the small coffee table, listening to the radio playing quietly and fiddling with the pockets on his tactical vest.
Teal'c and Mitchell waited behind for Jonas. After about an hour he eventually appeared, and nodded to them, gesturing for them to come over.
"You can talk to Frayne," the scientist told them. "the judge says that it's unlikely that anything which the accused says will induce them to lighten his sentence, but he doesn't need to know that. Chances are pretty high that he won't talk anyway."
"I know," admitted Mitchell, "but at least we'll have tried."
"Agreed," Teal'c bowed, gravely. "And if we did not try, then we would not know."
The colonel nodded.
"Nothing to lose. Him or us. Let's go."
The cells were tiny but clean, and there were several floors full of them. The courthouse was also the local prison, Jonas told them, as they made their way lower and lower into the complex. Eventually they arrived on a level at which the scientist stopped and rapped against the metal door. It was opened almost immediately, a stoic looking guard nodded and ushered them through. About nine doors down the guard stopped and let them into the cell.
"Anything you need, I'll be right outside," the guard told them.
"Thanks." Jonas stood back and let Mitchell and Teal'c enter first.
Curly haired, short and chubby, Dalton Frayne was laying back lazily on his bed. He looked insolently up at them. "Come to have a go at me?" he asked, in an accent not unlike Vala's.
"Nope," Mitchell had his hands in his pockets, wandering around in the small room. "Come to throw you a lifeline."
The smuggler shrugged. "Why?"
"We want some information from you." Mitchell looked directly at Frayne. "You give us some decent intel, and there's a good chance that your sentence will be cut. Maybe by as much as half." He crossed his fingers inside his pockets, glad that his Grandma couldn't hear him spinning such whopping fibs.
Frayne smirked. "And again I say, why?"
Teal'c moved slightly closer towards the man on the bed. "Your wish is to be incarcerated in this place for a lengthy time then?" he asked the prisoner, his voice deep and threatening. "Your sentence is likely to be for a considerable number of years, possibly as long as twenty. The possibility of the death penalty is not unlikely. You do not wish to fulfill this opportunity to possibly achieve a lighter term?"
Dalton moved slightly, away from the Jaffa. He looked warier. Teal'c, in an enclosed space as tiny as that cell, was enough to make anyone look wary.
"Vala Mal Doran is a thief, a smuggler and a double-crosser," the smuggler spat at them. "She deserved everything – EVERYTHING – that she had thrown at her. And so help me, if my men could have aimed straight we wouldn't be having this conversation because she'd be dead and you'd never have found out what wa-…"
Mitchell grabbed Frayne by his throat and threw him up against the wall, smashing his head against the concrete. The colonel's face was murderous. His hands tightened around the other man's throat, and the man started to wheeze.
Jonas went to look out of the small window in the door. Teal'c put his hands behind his back and hummed quietly to himself.
Dalton pulled at Mitchell's hands, unsuccessfully. His eyes started to bulge as his face reddened.
"What's that you say?" snarled SG-1's leader. "You wanna tell me somethin, to make it worth my time having come here? Do ya?"
His captive nodded as best he could, hands still scrabbling at the colonel's fists.
Eventually Mitchell threw Frayne onto the bed, wiping his hands on his jacket, as if touching the man made him dirty. He knelt on the bed above the unfortunate Mr Frayne, one knee on his chest, leaning over him with his hands either side of his face. "Tell me about this City of Light."
Dalton gulped. "Nobody knows much about it – well, nobody around this neck of the woods anyway. It's meant to be on a world where you can find crystals which hold and diffuse light in a certain way. You can use them to make weapons – the bigger the crystal the bigger the weapon."
"Where do you get them from?" Mitchell barked out.
"Again – not around here. The City of Light is way across the far side of the galaxy somewhere – they're unique to that world."
"And how 'bout the Alliance? How did they get involved?"
Frayne moved on the bed, trying to dislodge Mitchell's knee from his torso. "I do some scouting about for them sometimes. Depending on who you deal with – well, they pay quite well."
The colonel leaned on him harder. "That's not what I asked."
Dalton swallowed convulsively. "Alright, alright! I don't know how they found out about the crystals, or how to make weapons from them. One of their many spies or members I suppose. But they have operatives and gangs on many planets now – for all I know one of them is from the City of Light itself. All I know is that they are trying to make weapons with them. It's getting the naquadria that's the problem, it's difficult to get hold of, not the crystals so much."
"As it should be," interrupted Jonas, moving away from the door. "Do you have any idea how dangerous naquadria is?."
"I don't care – I'm not the one using it." Frayne shrugged. "As long as I get paid for what I do, why should I bother about what might happen to someone else?"
Disgusted, Mitchell grimaced and pushed himself off of the smuggler. "You're a proper little charmer, y'know?"
Dalton Frayne grinned. "I don't care."
Jonas called for the guard and the three men left the court house, heading back to where SG-1 were staying.
The evening passed peacefully apart from when Vala wanted to play strip poker. She'd managed to deal the cards and cause Redwell to forfeit his boots before Daniel wandered in from the other room and realised what she was up to.
"Bed!"he reminded her firmly, tugging the cards out of her hands. "Carolyn said – you need to rest!"
"Daniel, I hate you!" she yelled at him, jumping up. "I had a full house! I would have won!" She wriggled and tried to pull away from him. "That's so unfair! Carolyn didn't say that I couldn't play strip poker!"
"Nope, but I insist," Jackson replied firmly, dragging her off into the bedroom.
Young Simon looked mightily relieved.
Jonas however, had spent over a year living on Earth and perfected quite an acceptable poker face. He looked sadly at his straight flush.
Mitchell grinned. "Trust me," he told the scientist, "however good you think you're playing, that woman will have you sitting in your underwear before the night is out!"
The woman in question was glowering at her beloved, who was insisting that she got ready for bed. She threw her hairbrushes and beauty bits around for a while before marching into the small adjoining bathroom, nose in the air. When she came out she seemed mollified however.
Vala stood behind Daniel and slipped her arms around him. "I do love you, Dr Jackson."
He turned and cuddled her in close. "You're such a pain in the butt, Vala," he kissed her firmly on the mouth. "But you're my pain in the butt." He kissed her again, deeper.
She leaned in against him, with a little sigh, getting as close to his body as she could.
It was only when Daniel felt her hands inside his shirt and realised that his own were doing a good job of cupping themselves around her rather nice breasts that he pulled away, breathing hard. "Behave," he told her resting his forehead against her own. "It's on Carolyn's list."
"Sod the list," Vala whispered, stealing another kiss, right on the edge of his mouth, but she allowed him to lead her to the small bed, where they snuggled up together for all of thirty seconds before the ex-space pirate began to make gentle snoring noises. Daniel grinned. No problems with insomnia any more, then.
The next morning SG-1, including Vala, waited in the courtroom while Dalton Frayne's sentence was passed. The jury were unanimous – guilty on all charges. The prosecution then brought to light numerous other previous convictions that the man had – including three for indecent assault, four for aggravated burglary and one for manslaughter. The chief judge looked sombre. His associates nodded solemnly as he spoke to them. The convicted man looked worried.
Mitchell looked thrilled to bits. "What goes around, comes around," he whispered to his team mates.
Dalton was made to stand. The three judges also stood to deliver sentence. The chief justice spoke.
"Mr Frayne, you have showed no remorse for any of your crimes, present or previous, and you have continued to employ yourself on the opposite side of the law from all that is moral and decent. I am therefore left with no other choice than to sentence you to death. You shall be hung by the neck until death, at sunrise, three days hence."
"You lied to me!" Dalton, puce in the face, pointed at Mitchell, who looked unrepentant. "You said that my sentence would be lessened if I co-operated with you."
The colonel stood as well.
"I lied," he said. "You're an evil little bastard, and you deserve everything you get."
Frayne, mad with fury, leaped onto the edge of the dock, and threw himself straight at Vala.
She jumped aside, whipping out her Zat, but before she could even think about firing it a single shot from a P-90 hit him in the chest. Dalton dropped dead at her feet. Turning, Vala saw Teal'c putting the safety catch back on his weapon.
"Thanks, Muscles," she smiled.
"You are most welcome, ValaMalDoran," the Jaffa bowed. "He deserved, as ColonelMitchell most eloquently surmised, 'everything that he got.'"
"Let's go home," Daniel said. He pulled Vala towards him, and wrapped his arms around her.
"Agreed." Cameron looked over his shoulder. "Is that okay with you?"
Jonas looked down at the dead man, at the courtroom in chaos, at the guards jostling around them and the medical crew trying to get up to the dock area. He started to laugh.
"I love working with SG-1!" he grinned. "Don't forget me though, will you?"
"Never." Cam clapped him on the shoulder, Daniel and Simon shook his hand and Vala kissed him, smack on the mouth.
Teal'c bowed. "Farewell, JonasQuinn," he said. "I feel sure that we will see each other again soon."
TBC