CHAPTER 76

A.U. No episode here. I came up with this chapter on my own. Many family problems cropped up during writing this, making it difficult to continue on, so it may or may not be all that great. Which is one reason why it took so long to update, to which I apologize for it taking almost a year to put this up. And I did ask for help from a couple of people for ideas. One of them was a lady named Fiona. Thank you for your help.

It was rather late at night and everyone was at home sleeping, accept for one person, Daniel Jackson. No, make that three people. Daniel had taken a few things from work home to look them over. And he was looking over his notes and the translations so much that he didn't notice the knocking at his door. He was still so in depth into his work, he didn't even register the person had, essentially, broke into his house.

"Doctor Jackson?"

He muttered something to himself as he sat at his desk and wrote something on his notepad.

"Doctor Jackson?" a slightly more forceful voice said.

He looked up and turned to see a woman standing nearby. She had a blue jean jacket, blue jeans and a tight red shirt on and long brown hair that was in a pony tail behind her back. She waved lightly and so did he.

"How can I help you?"

"I just broke into your house Doctor Jackson."

"Oh. Is there something I can get you or…."

"No. I came to rob you of all these precious artifacts." she said glancing around. "Maybe take your life in the process. Tell the world your theories were right and even show proof that aliens exist."

"Oh, okay. Just let me know if you need anything." he said turning back to his work.

She shook her head with a small laugh and sat down in a chair watching him while looking at her watch occasionally. After he didn't look up, several minutes later, she picked up the book on the table near her and began to read it. It took almost thirty minutes, then he suddenly looked up and jumped out of his chair.

"Almost thirty minutes Doctor." she said standing. "Nice book. Been awhile since I read that dead language."

"How'd you get in here?" he asked looking at her as he crossed his arms. "Why are you here? Why didn't you knock?"

"I used a lock pick after you didn't come to the door." she said ticking off a finger. "I came here because your web site seems to have the information and possible translations for an artifact I have, that I have yet to translate. You have extensive knowledge on ancient and dead languages, not to mention alien. As for knocking, I did, five times, loudly. I saw the light on and figured if you weren't going to come to the door, I'd let myself in. Nice place by the way."

He gave her a curious look then noticed a large bag near the doorway. Seeing as she wasn't wearing her guns, he guessed they must be in the bag.

"I'm guessing that you get caught up in work, a lot, even at that mountain. I'm further guessing that story that Mr. Primus, sorry Mr. Carter now, told me about you getting so into translations and such is true, which is apparently true. You zone out everything, including eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks. And like in this case, people coming up to you. I probably could have walked in naked too and you wouldn't have noticed."

He tried not to look guilty, and failed.

"Good thing I'm not here to rob you Doctor Jackson. Now, can we talk or is this a bad time?"

Ford and Carter weren't at home. They were out dancing, which they tried to do when they knew they had the time. Ford was in a black three piece suit that had a close resemblance to a tuxedo. It was one of the few times you would actually catch him in something other than his special boots. Actually, the only other time he wasn't wearing those boots was when he had his running shoes or his Garfield slippers on. Carter had a variety of shoes and other foot wear where Ford had barely anything, other than more than a few pairs of his boots. She'd been trying to get him to get something else, and was still trying. He wasn't wearing a tie with the outfit though, and she didn't care. The Starfleet cufflinks she thought were a stretch and after a good laugh after seeing them for the first time, quite awhile ago, they went out. She even had Star Trek earrings, that she wore occasionally, not the Bajoran things. Usually to a convention when they could make it. They would even go in Starfleet uniforms, his being an Admiral because of his actual rank in real life and the same with her, a Commander rank. One of the actors they got to meet in person, actually wondered why they were not the same rank. They told them what rank they were in real life and that impressed quite a few people to see that the military didn't look down on Star Trek and those sort of shows. Ford mentioned that Star Trek was one of the reasons that he ended up in charge of the Deep Space Telemetry facility. He couldn't explore space like them so he did it another way and Carter agreed. She wanted to be an astronaut, but with the current problems and such, she ended up where she was currently and didn't want to leave. Playing with the Hubble was, interesting.

Right now, she was wearing a very tight red sparkling dress. It was an inch from the floor, mostly because of the inch high red heels she was wearing. The dress stopped just above her chest and crossed up behind her neck, leaving just under her neck and her arms completely bare, along with her entire back. The dress actually left very little for the imagination, and when she first got it, it took awhile for Ford to get used to her wearing it. On either side of the dress, it split going to just above the knee. He thought it was showing way too much, but she got him to get over it. The dress also came with a small red purse that sparkled, which was at their table at the moment. She had one of the necklaces he got for her, a bracelet and earrings that matched. Plus red lipstick, fingernail polish and toe nail polish on along with some eyeliner than brought out the blue in her eyes. Though out of place on their outfits, they kept their watches on. They'd been dancing for a good hour or so now, along with many other couples when their watches beeped.

"Do we have to find out what it is?" she mumbled as she continued to look into his eyes as they kept dancing.

"Well, it could be important, like something with Sally." he said as he pulled her close and kissed her hand, while glancing at the watch. "It's the car phone. SGC's calling."

"Damn." she muttered as they stopped and walked back to their table. "I'll find out what it is."

She got her cell phone out and waited as the call was transferred from the General outside.

"What is it Chief?"

"Sorry to disturb you Colonel, but Doctor Jackson has requested that you and the General come to the mountain. He said it is extremely urgent and has something to do with the Ancients." Walter said.

"It can't wait till morning?"

"He stated it was very important Colonel and to hurry. I told him that you and the General were probably asleep….."

"He was very adamant about it I take it? Okay, we'll be right there." she said then hung up with a sigh.

"We've got to work don't we?" Ford asked with a sigh.

"Yep. Daniel says it's very urgent and has to do with something…Ancient." she said putting her phone back in the purse.

"Oh great. It'll take a while to get changed…."

"No. We're going straight to the mountain. I'm still in the mood to dance. After we see what's so important and chew Daniel out, we can go finish dancing when we get home. And depending on how Sally's feeling…."

"Aren't you tired at all?" he said finishing his drink of champagne. She finished hers quickly.

"No. I feel great. Full of energy. Don't you?"

"I probably shouldn't have had that last glass." he said helping her put on a small and thin red coat that went with the dress. "Otherwise, I'm still in the mood in more ways than one."

"I can tell." she said as he kissed her neck and moved closer to her.

They drove up to the guard house and surprised the guards on duty, who instantly averted eyes after seeing a look start to come over Ford's face. Ford kept the same look, making sure everyone knew their place all through the trip to the elevator and to the 28th floor. She kept from laughing, which ended up turning into chuckles every time an airman or someone else saw Ford's expression after they stared to long. A lot of people were surprised to see them in non military outfits, but still kept protocol, a lot more than usual. They were suppose to be off duty and it was late at night. Any other facility and it would have probably been unusual, in this place, no. Ford was the first to enter the briefing room, from by his office. He saw the entire team there with another woman sitting at the table. One he recognized too, and he was getting a small buzz from. Which made him figure that it must be something important. Daniel, Mitchell and Teal'c all sat on the left side of the table while the woman sat on the right, in the second chair down from Ford's chair.

"He woke us up too…." Mitchell began saying as he stood up with Teal'c and the others.

Mitchell was in black jeans with an Air Force gray shirt and a black leather jacket. All of it looked put on hastily. His hair was even still a mess. Teal'c was in his BDU outfit and it looked right, no wrinkles or anything. Daniel was still in the greenish slacks and button up white shirt he came to work in earlier.

All three men's jaw's dropped as Sam entered the room.

"Oh my…." Daniel muttered.

"There is a woman under that uniform we see everyday. Wow." Mitchell said as he looked down. "General O'Neill wasn't kidding about the red toenail polish."

"Yeah, kinda caught me off guard too when I found out she is always wearing toe nail polish, even off world." Daniel muttered.

Teal'c smiled with a nod that he was impressed with Carter's appearance.

"Thank you Teal'c." she said then gave the other two a small smile.

"You two guys want to keep working here?" Ford asked seriously as he removed his dress coat and draped it over her shoulders.

They looked at him seeing he was serious. Mitchell went into military mode quickly and sat back down keeping his eyes away from her. Daniel sat down and pulled out a folder. Ford sat down as Carter sat in the chair on his right.

"This look is different from those BDU's I saw you in before. I'm going to guess that you were even more striking at your wedding Colonel." the other lady said.

"I did get a lot of stares. This is…more revealing though."

"I'm glad to see that the military didn't take the women in you away."

"Actually, I wouldn't even wear anything like this when I with my former fiancée. I'm just glad that fell apart before we got to the altar. Hell, glad it stopped before we made any serious wedding plans."

"Ah. So he brought out something other's rarely see?" she said pointing at Ford.

"Let's just say, it took a real man to bring this side out of me. No offense to you guys." she said seeing a small hurt look on Daniel and Mitchell, before glancing at Ford a moment, who actually blushed.

Teal'c had no look, but he usually was hard to tell emotionally anyway. In many ways, Teal'c looked at Carter like a daughter. And considering his age.

"Ahem, yes….can we, someone start…" Ford said loosening his collar.

"Are you drunk General?" Mitchell asked. "Your eyes…."

"We had a couple glasses of champagne." Carter said. "I feel fine. But then I have a higher tolerance than he does."

"Small buzz effect. Should go away soon."

"Which one of you drove?" Daniel asked.

"Is this discussion important? We were called in for something else I thought." Ford said pointing at he folder in front of Daniel.

"I was going over some of my artifacts back home, rearranging to accommodate some of my newly acquired pieces." Lara Croft said as she sat back and placed her feet on the table. "One of the artifacts lit up, like it had done before when I acquired it. I didn't bother to figure out why at the time and decided to see what it could do. Which was very little I'm afraid. I had a few friends look at it, but it didn't glow for them, only when I touched it. A few days ago, while checking the internet, the moon light came through the windows and reflected off the….artifact. It glared into my eyes and I picked up the artifact to move it out of the light. It glowed again and showed a number of different lines that I was able to make out a bit better than before. Lines that I knew to be a language. Unfortunately, it was a language that I didn't know, that was until I looked it up on the internet and found Doctor Jackson's web site."

The team all looked at him.

"Daniel, you better have a good explanation…."

"I do. I do. Don't go Jack on me now." he said quickly. Ford narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything. "I put some of the Ancient symbols on the net along with a short explanation that I was looking for anything with such symbols and…..well, it was to find anything on Earth that dealt with that language. If anyone out there knew what those words and letters are, they wouldn't be able to do anything, since I basically put words that said basic everyday things, such as door, table, etc."

"Ah. You find anything yet?" Ford asked as he tapped the table lightly with one hand.

"A few things. Nothing that would help us. But Lara found an artifact years ago that is a Ancient artifact."

"Okay, so what is this artifact that is so important to drag me out of a sound sleep?" Mitchell asked covering a yawn.

"This." Lara said pulling a item that was bundled up in a white cloth.

The object in question was some inch thick hexagonal tablet. All black with a marble like finish and about five inches across. The top had a three inch slot in it that looked like a card or something close went inside it. Under it, there was a bunch of buttons that were in Ancient script.

"I'm guessing that it's an Ancient journal or some sort of notepad." Ford muttered then gave Daniel a glare. "Daniel, this could have waited till tomorrow. We were getting a rare moment out of the house."

"I think it is more important that we look at it tonight." Daniel stated.

"Why?" Carter asked hiding a yawn.

"Well, this is one reason." Daniel said holding out a hand.

Lara slid the object over and Daniel picked it up. Nothing happened and he slid it to Mitchell who touched it as well. Teal'c touched it next, then it was pushed to Carter who looked it over before giving it back to Lara. She picked it up and it lit up, not very brightly though. A holographic screen popped up from the slot and flickered on and off. Though they could all see a gate address mixed in with the barely distinguishable language.

"I have a good idea what these symbols really mean, other than the fact that they are star constellations. So, now do you care to let me in on what they mean?" Lara said putting the device back down. It shut off as soon as she let go.

"I want Ford to hold it first." Daniel said.

It was slid over and when he picked it up, it more than lit up. It stayed completely clear and totally readable, but it started to slowly fade.

"It's running out of power." Carter stated.

"That's what I thought so I had Walter….."

"Daniel…." Ford began when he noticed Daniel was already taking notes as fast as he could. The screen shut off rather quickly and didn't come back on. He shook it a few times and pushed a couple of buttons, but nothing happened.

"Well, I at least got the gate address." he muttered closing his notes.

"What did it say?" Lara asked.

"Something about a secret lab or room, but I didn't get much else."

"We can figure it all out tomorrow and maybe even figure out a way to power it back up with a naquada reactor. Maybe." he said as Carter started to say something. "In the meantime, everyone go home…well, not everyone, and get some rest."

"General. We have a problem that needs addressing before you leave." Walter said as he stood at the top of the stairs.

"It can't wait?" he whined.

"No General. We got a call from Area 51 and they reported that the shipment of extra weapons we sent them wasn't all there."

"And this call happened when?"

"Twenty minutes ago." he said saying he was going to inform the night commander, but seeing as Ford was here.

They all looked startled and were more than instantly awake at the news. Even Lara.

"Figures. I'm guessing you would have called us had Daniel not showed up. What sort….."

"One of the singular cases of zat guns are missing." Walter said looking at the report.

"That isn't a serious loss. It's bad, but I was thinking of something worse being lost." he said fully standing with some relief. "Any leads on where this missing case is?"

"None so far General. The only thing they have is that instead of getting what they were suppose to, according to the inventory list, your custom revolvers were in a box that was suppose to have those zats." Walter said.

"My revolvers?" Ford muttered in confusion as he looked around with his eyes thinking. "My revolvers? What would they and….hmm….."

"Why would you be sending guns to anyone? I thought you collected them." Mitchell asked.

"I do. But these were a pair I created and one of them got damaged so bad I needed a lot of time to fix it, and I just don't have the time." he said offhandedly as he kept thinking. Suddenly it dawned on him. "I was sending them to someone who appreciates weapons and would take good care of them. Even sent money to buy the parts. But how…."

"Did you accidentally mix up boxes Ford?" Carter asked worried.

The look on his face was enough they realized he knew where they were.

"I….oh no!" he said running his hands through his hair as he sat back down hard. "I was helping with sending off those extra zats and some other stuff and used the same type of case to send off my guns. I must have put the label on the wrong case."

"Shouldn't be too much trouble." Mitchell said. "Just call the people and tell them about the mistake and have them send it back. Hopefully they haven't…."

"Opened it? I send it priority mail. She should have gotten it two days ago." Ford said rubbing his forehead. "Ah dammit! She's one of those freaks that can't wait to see the newest design on whatever gun there is being made. She's been waiting to see the next version of the….stun gun anyway."

"You are one of those freaks you know?"

"Yes Sam. I know. Damn." he said with a sigh. "You all will go check out the planet tomorrow without me. Providing that what Sam finds on the M.AL.P. indicates that everything is okay."

"I'm guessing you're going to go see if you can get the zat's from her then General?" Mitchell asked.

"More like pay off. Good thing I'm rich. For a gun shop owner and bounty hunter, she isn't all that well in finances." he said leaning on the table with both hands as he stood up. "If things go well with her, then I'll be coming along shortly after. The Prometheus will beam me there tomorrow and then beam me back."

"Um, General? Shouldn't she sign a form before you start talking about everything…." Mitchell started saying as he waved a hand across the table.

"I already have Colonel." Lara said. "My question right now is, why did that tablet or whatever it really is light up for me and you and no one else, including various people I had look at it?"

"Daniel, you tell her what you can and have the doctor take a blood sample to find out how much of the gene she has. It's SOP." he said when Lara started to speak.

"General." Walter said as they started to disperse. "You might want to take this then."

A airman set a small dark brown to green crate on the table and opened it.

"They sent my guns back. And you got the call twenty minutes ago?"

"The Prometheus…"

"Beamed them back here. Okay. Yeah, they may help. Thanks Walter. Everyone's dismissed." he said closing the crate. He walked into his office and set it on his desk before sitting behind it and picking up the phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Five minute call to a person who can get me access to some items that will help in negotiations to get those zat's back."

The other's had left and she sat down on the other side of the desk, playing with one of her straps, purposely distracting him the entire time.

"You are a very cruel woman." he said as the phone was ringing.

"Well, if it wasn't for the camera, I'd put my legs up on the desk." she whispered.

"You're evil. Utterly evil." he muttered as she laughed.

"If it wasn't for you, I doubt I'd ever get in touch with my sexy side." she muttered back with a smile.

On the ride home they talked about maybe doing another couple of dances and maybe more. But when Ford pulled into the driveway, she had already passed out on his shoulder.

"All that teasing and you passed out. Really cruel Sam." he said carrying her into the house. She didn't wake up though.

Sam awoke feeling a little cold even though her sheets were over her. The aroma of coffee was in the air and she heard Ford in the kitchen talking to Sally.

"Morning Sam." he said looking up to see her walk out in her robe. "Open wide this time please."

She got her coffee and watched as Ford fed her. Sally wasn't being too fussy and even though she could eat using her hands on her own sometimes, she still managed to give that pout and sad look that made both of them give in and feed her by hand.

"Why did I wake up in only my undergarments?"

"You fell asleep on the way home. As much as I thought about putting your nightgown on you, you wouldn't let me. After I took the dress off, you latched your arms around me and didn't let go. Kept mumbling it's cold and not to leave you. It was difficult to undress with your arms around my waist, but I managed. You still had hold of me this morning."

"Hmm." she said smiling behind her coffee cup. "Too bad we have to go to work. All I did was put this robe on."

"You are bad girl lately."

"Mommy's bad? Why?" Sally asked confused.

"It's a figure of speech baby." Sam said kissing her on the top of the head. "He meant it in a good way."

"I don't understand."

"We'll tell you later in life honey." Ford said wiping her face lightly. "You're not old enough to know yet."

"You and mom talking about sex?"

They both were startled. Ford dropped the spoon as Carter choked on her coffee and spit some on his face.

"Where did you learn that word?" he asked wiping his face and shirt off as he gave Carter a look.

"It wasn't me." she said a little hoarsely as she also cleaned her face and the counter.

"You and Auntie Janet were talking about it while I was watching TV."

"For a small woman, Auntie Janet has a big mouth." Ford muttered still giving Sam a glare. "Don't tell her I said that."

"When did you hear us talking Sally?" Carter asked.

"Um." Sally said looking up and then tapped her fingers while pointing at them. "Four days ago."

"I came home early that day because of that headache, amongst other things. Janet came over after I called her, so we could talk woman related things. But we weren't that loud. You could hear us?"

Sally nodded with a smile as she picked the spoon up and started eating again.

"You must have my hearing." Ford said ruffling her hair. "What did Auntie Janet and mom say?"

"Stuff about feelings and mom not wanting it to end." Sally said with some confusion in her voice as she ate. "Mom wants to kiss you all day daddy."

"I know that." he said seeing Sam blushing.

"I had no idea you could hear us. I'll have to turn up the volume on you next time." Carter said.

"What do you not want to end mom?"

Sam blushed even more badly and Ford laughed but also blushed.

"That is info too young for you to know about right now. If you ever hear your mother talking about that subject again, tell her you can hear her."

"Okay daddy."

After dropping her off at Sam's parents and telling her not to tell the grandparents about everything she heard and that morning's conversation, they went to work.

"God, I knew she was smart and all, but I'd almost swear she's Harsesis." Ford said rubbing his face. "I'm just glad she doesn't understand it…."

"Thoroughly? I know. I had no idea at all. She never said anything before or ever mentioned anything about it. Much less asked any questions." she said as she drove.

"I think we should have her hearing checked, just in case."

"I gotta know, were you tempted last night? After undressing me?"

"Seriously? Yes. You always look good in red." he said eyeing her.

"Now who's being evil."

"I learned it all from you. You looked so much at peace and had that small smile on your face. Didn't want to take that away."

"Had you left the bed, I probably would have."

A few hours later, everyone showed up and entered the briefing room to find Ford at the table with three different crates. Only one was open. He was looking at the damaged gun, running a finger along the barrel. Ford had already removed his SG-1 and SGC patch from his arm on the coat and from the BDU's.

"Nice pistol. Fires from the bottom chamber. Different but interesting." Lara said picking the other one up. "Nice balance, good grip, though a bit big. A little heavy for my taste. Sight is dead on."

"I hope that thing isn't loaded." Mitchell said as she pointed it at him and pulled back the hammer.

"It's not." Ford said putting the damaged one back as she pulled the trigger, though she pointed it at the window first.

She put the other one back as the other's sat down. He closed the case and set them all on top of each other.

"And these other two cases have…" Carter asked.

"Guns, money." he said pointing at them before he sat down. "You all get any sleep?"

"Yeah, I just crashed here on the base." Mitchell said.

"As did I." Teal'c said.

"Daniel's house reminded me a lot of mine. Just, not as much space as mine. But he does have his place cluttered with almost the same amount of artifacts. Sizes are different vary though." Lara said. "Anyway, been a couple of weeks since I got to sleep in a bed again."

"Don't you dare." Daniel warned pointing at Ford who had raised and eyebrow and started to open his mouth.

"I wasn't going to say anything." Ford said holding his hands up innocently. Lara gave him and Daniel a strange look while Sam bit her lip. "At least, not what you thought. Give me some credit Daniel, I'm not that much like Jack."

"But it had crossed your mind." he stated. "I know you enough and you did hang with Jack long enough to think it."

"Well, I admit it did cross my mind, but even if anything happened, it's none of my business. So Lara, were have you been that didn't have comfortable beds?"

"Well, for the last two weeks I have been searching some underground tunnels near Ethiopia. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything spectacular. And sleeping on rocks isn't fun, but I've gotten used to it."

"What were you looking for?" Daniel asked.

"I heard from a colleague some years back about there possibly being some interesting treasure of historical value in that region. But I didn't find anything like I said. Nothing I look for anyway."

"Okay. So, what did you find out Sam?"

"About?" she asked and then quickly realized what he meant as he pointed out the window. "Oh, right, sorry."

"I'm guessing you two didn't get much sleep." Daniel said with a slight suggestive tone.

"No, I fell asleep on the way home. My mind was elsewhere right now."

"You okay Sam?" Ford asked with concern.

"Just started thinking about this morning."

"Yeah, I've been mulling that over too. We can talk to her when we get home."

"Yeah." she said in an agreement.

"Talk to who?" Daniel asked.

"Um….we've found out that Sally is a lot brighter than she's been letting on." Ford said.

"And incredibly good hearing." Sam muttered. "Anyway…um, according to the M.A.L.P., the Stargate is in a large open area. There's trees and bushes nearby, but no other signs of life. The only thing we really noticed that showed someone had been on this planet was a stone pillar several dozen meters away from the gate. We wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for the small energy reading we picked up."

"Stone pillar." he said nodding slightly. "I'm going to guess that this pillar looked very familiar."

"Yeah. It resembles the same one the Sodan use. Except that the words are different. Unfortunately, a lot of leaves and other objects covered it. I'll have to move them out of the way before I can translate it. But I can tell you that it is in Ancient." Daniel said.

"What could you read?"

"To obtain."

"That's it?" Ford asked puzzled.

"The rest is covered up."

"We sent a U.A.V. to look around, but we didn't find anything dangerous. A few rivers nearby and a lake or ocean several hundred miles out on the west side of the gate." Carter said.

"Looks safe to go General."

"I want to go." Lara said.

"That was a given. You are going Lara." Ford said as Mitchell started to object. "She found the….Ancient notepad or whatever it was. Besides, she has the Ancient gene. And I'm not going to be there."

"I trust her." Daniel said.

"Her reputation is most impressive as was her help those years ago. I have no qualms about her come with us General Carter." Teal'c said.

"I wasn't going to say she can't come. I just wanted to know how much she knows and the sort of dangers that we might encounter." Mitchell said. "I did read the report with her in it."

"You can tell her as you all go get ready to go. The Prometheus will be beaming me away and then hopefully, I'll be with you all in less than an hour. Be careful and watch each other's backs." he said standing.

The rest stood and headed out, except for Sam.

"Should I be worried?"

"About?" he asked putting one case under his arm, then holding the other two in each hand.

"You mentioned her once before. You know, if I hadn't…."

"Are you being serious?"

"Yes, no. I'm just wondering if she'll come onto you."

"Me?" he said drawing it out. "Um, doubtful. I'm too tall. Probably will remind her of….someone she knows. Anyway, the ring should be more than enough. Besides, she never has time for anyone, barely herself. Always hunting down the next bounty or fixing her car, or doing something with her guns. You know, if we had been in Chicago instead of California, it wouldn't have been the cops that picked us up. She would have, and it would have turned out a lot worse. On second thought, it would have turned out better seeing as I know her and she knows me. By professions that is."

"Hmm. Be careful and come back soon. As much as I know I can take care of myself and have the other's there with me, I've gotten use to you being there and I have to admit, I like having you watch my back." she said smiling, then lowered her voice. "Though I've noticed you usually look lower when no one else is nearby."

"You are truly evil lady." he muttered.

"I know. Ain't it sweet?" she said with a knowing smile as she turned and left.

"Thank god for patience." he grumbled out after she walked down the stairs. "Got to have been the alcohol that made her pass out before we got home last night."

"Kinda different that he's not coming with." Mitchell said as he checked his gun while Walter was dialing the site again.

They were all wearing the normal green colored off world outfits. Lara even wore the same thing. Except she had her backpack and guns.

"Don't think you can handle it Cam?" Carter asked.

"I think that question is reserved for us to ask you Sam." Daniel said.

"Hey, I was going off world long before he showed up. I can handle him not being around." she said defensively. "And, I've gotten better at fighting hand to hand, plus with knives and swords."

"We'll see." Mitchell said.

"I've been able to handle myself without a man in my life and I live a lot more dangerously that you all do, in some cases. They might not be on your side Colonel, but I am." Lara said placing an around Sam's shoulder.

"That's right. Us women have to stick together." Carter said putting arm around Lara as well.

"Oh geez." Mitchell muttered as he headed up the ramp. "See ya all later."

Teal'c only smiled through it all as he followed Mitchell through the gate. Daniel kept quiet as he walked through after the two women did.

"I'm not sure if it is a good thing that the General wasn't here or not." Walter muttered.

"Probably a good thing. Glad he's already been beamed away. Though knowing Colonel Carter, she'll probably tell him anyway." Reynolds said as the gate shut down.

"Well, on the bright side, they are in good spirits sir."

"Yeah. That's always a good thing."

They arrived on the planet with no trouble and didn't see anything coming after them or anything that looked dangerous. They weren't really expecting to find anything dangerous, but with their reputation.

"So, how you feeling?" Daniel asked.

"Wow. That was…strange." Lara said rubbing her arms.

"Feeling nauseous?" Carter asked.

"No." she said shaking her head. "A little cold, but you did tell me to expect that. I have to say, the idea of going to a new planet sounds quite appealing. I think I'll take that offer to join under a bit more consideration."

"Personally, I think you'd make a great asset." Daniel said.

"Thank you Daniel."

"Should we not continue with the mission Colonel Mitchell?" Teal'c asked.

"See. That's one of the reasons why I like you so much Teal'c. If we start getting off track, you're there to put us back." Mitchell said.

The two girls rolled their eyes as they followed the other's. Sam pulled her scanner out and swung it around.

"Is it just me or does the air have a kinda of…honey smell to it?" Mitchell asked sniffing.

"Could be a bee nest nearby." Lara said looking around after putting her glasses on.

"Which explains….." Daniel said stopping suddenly as he covered his face with his arm and sneezed. "That."

"From the looks of it on the M.A.L.P. screen, I suspect there is less allergy causing things there at that pillar." Mitchell said. "How far away is it now?"

"Several meters that direction." Carter said pointing to their right.

After a couple minute walk, they came upon the M.A.L.P. and the pillar. Several dozen feet away was a large cliff wall that ran a good half mile or more away from them and went towards the gate going downhill and somewhere off in the distance around it. Daniel walked up and with Teal'c's help, they began removing the vines and other things covering it. Sam scanned it while Lara lowered her glasses and pulled a book out along with a pencil.

"Read it yet Jackson?" Mitchell asked.

"Um…..well." he said readjusting his glasses. "It looks like it says, to obtain, something of equal value must be lost."

Carter looked up from the scanner with a frown. Teal'c was evidentially confused by the look on his face.

"And that means what?" Mitchell asked even more confused than the others.

"Um…..I'm not sure." Daniel said. "There's more here, but it's a little corroded. Give me some time."

"Say it again Daniel." Carter said.

"To obtain, something of equal value must be lost."

"Why in the hell does that sound familiar?" she asked herself as she bit her lip and tapped the scanner against her hand.

She muttered the sentence over and over a few times and then shook her head.

"I don't know, but I've heard that before somewhere."

"Sounds like something Ford would say." Daniel said.

"I've heard it before too. But where escapes me at the moment." Lara muttered.

"Okay, so some of us have heard the saying. Now, can we figure out what button, incantation or whatever we're suppose to do to get this thing to activate?" Mitchell said.

"The saying is unfamiliar to me." Teal'c said.

"Well, it says to obtain, so whatever it is we are suppose to obtain…."

"We have to give something of equal value in return." Lara said. "Like taking a treasure off a pressure sensitive pad. You have to replace it with something of equal weight or else you trigger the trap."

"Our problem is that we don't know what it is that we want to obtain." Daniel said. "Or at least not specifically."

"I am picking up a small energy signature inside the pillar. Though the frequency, range, and power level are completely different from the one that the Sodan use." Carter said.

Daniel tried pushing different areas of the pillar, but nothing happened.

"You try it Miss Croft. You have the gene, or at least from what Doctor Lam says, enough to activate Ancient technology." Mitchell said.

She walked up and looked it over. Mitchell started to say something when Daniel shook his head and muttered, give her time. Lara placed a hand on the top and felt the different letters, though she couldn't read the language, went down each of them and around it like Daniel did. Nothing happened though and she stood up.

"I think we need Ford here." Daniel muttered.

"Why? If she can't activate it, what makes you think Ford could? No offense Lara." Carter said.

"None taken."

"He is an Ancient." Daniel said like it was more of a suggestion. "I don't know. Just a thought."

"I'm going to go look around." Mitchell said. "T, we'll go explore while these three try to figure out this strange riddle. I'll give you guys half an hour before I call the SGC, that is if the General doesn't show up sooner to bail us out."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Daniel muttered as the two left.

Ford was beamed into an empty three story building nearby the street he needed to be on. After carefully looking around to make sure no one actually saw him show up out of no where, he headed down the stairs. Other than a few strange stares and some leers from people who looked ready to rob him, he was left alone. Especially after he moved his coat aside to show his guns. No one was really around as he walked up to the store front. There was a Mustang out front, the same one Carter had back home, except it was blue with white stripes and was original stock. Not upgraded like the one Ford gave Carter. It was parked inside the two door garage next to the shop. He only saw the car because the garage door was open, most of the way. The shop itself had two large windows with metal blinds covering them. The door was in the middle between the two windows. He could see through the windows, between the slits in the blinds, guns hanging from mounts on the wall. Above the shop were the words in large letters, GUNSMITH CATS, in italic. Just to the right of the windows was the words, shooting range.

"I actually thought this place was bigger. Hmm." he said walking off the street, up onto the sidewalk and to the front door.

Walking in, the area to his left was a wall that had shelves of ammo, almost any kind you wanted. To the right was the counter that had glass panels showing more guns in it along with more guns on the wall behind it. A cash register was near the middle of the counter. Though the bell above the door dinged as the door opened and closed, he didn't see anyone in the shop. Behind the counter, near the back of the front of the shop was a door. Through there it lead into the rest of the shop where guns were repaired, ordered or being sent items were stored. Extra parts and supplies, that sort of thing. And another door lead into the firing range. He set the three cases on the ground and turned back to the door turning the open sign around. Seeing as no one was apparently in the shop, or so it looked, he figured they were probably in the back working on something. So he paced around looking at a couple of weapons. And did so for over ten minutes. He noticed that the camera's were also on and seemed to be motion sensitive, keeping a watch on him. No matter who came in, the five camera's instantly saw who it was. He turned around when the door opened and Rally came out in a long sleeved button up white shirt and black leather pants, with what looked like a version of combat boots.

"Sorry, I was boring out a damaged barrel. How can I help you sir?" she asked going behind the counter as he walked up.

"Hello Rally."

She smiled and gave him a slight once over, mostly seeing what he was packing. Not surprising since he was in a gun shop.

"So, what do you see?"

"Well, no holsters on your hips or under the arms. I'd say that you probably have a couple or more in the coat itself, but from the way you walked up, you have one large gun or maybe two in holsters behind you. And the coat looks armored with a hidden gun in the right arm. Sound about right?"

"You are good." he said pulling one out slowly and setting it on the counter. "I have two of these that I carry just about everywhere."

"Wow. This is heavy! How can you even……wait a minute. This gun looks familiar." she said looking it over. "Interesting. The grip handles are just a bit bigger than normal. Almost unnoticeable."

She tried to get it to release the clip, tried the hammer and trigger and even tried to cock it.

"DNA palm scanner built into the handle grips. Rather impressive weapon all together. And expensive. If you're here to get it looked at for cleaning or repair, it will cost extra." she said placing it back on the counter. "And you'll have to take the scanner out."

"I'm not here to get my personal cannon's looked at. I do that maintenance personally." he said taking it back. "Besides, I made them myself."

"Hmm." she said placing her elbows on the counter. "Aren't many people out there that make and maintain their own weapons anymore. At least, not the way that one looked. So, if you're not here to get those looked at, how can I help you? You don't look….actually, you look familiar. But where……"

"General Ford Primus Carter." he said sticking his hand out. "I'm here on some government business."

She shook his hand even though it was quite a bit larger than hers. She was only 5'6.

"General? What branch?"

"Air Force. I run a base back in Colorado."

"Heard a lot about base closures going on and other dealings with movement of personal and even the retirement to discharge of other's. If you're looking for supplies…."

"You don't recognize me do you? We've met before. I even order some supplies from you, from time to time."

She gazed at him while tapping the side of her lip.

"I pay extra, a lot. You ship it to Colorado, to an Air Force storage facility at Peterson."

"You're that Ford! Wow! I'm sorry. I expected….I'm not sure what I expected really. Figured it was someone who wanted to keep a low profile. All those weapons I've sent, so far I haven't heard anything about them being used. You must be a collector."

"Amongst other things. Some of them I modified myself." he said proudly. "But we have met before. I even got to see Minnie May. Even fought Bean Bandit."

"I do remember you!" she said pointing a finger. "You paid my medical bill, amongst other things. I never did thank you for that."

"I actually know a bit about you….Irene."

She flinched.

"Always thought the name Rally was better. Tougher. More….racer like. Considering the car you drive and how you drive it. Oh, that reminds me, you're garage door is up."

"Dammit. It must have jammed again. Hang on." she said walking back through the door.

He heard the garage door close and then another door close before she came back about a minute later.

"Thanks for noticing that. Don't need my car stolen, again."

"I wouldn't either, not with a classic like that. Anyway, now that we have formalities out of the way, no offense." he said lifting one of the cases unto the counter. "Let's get to business. I'm actually in a bit of a hurry."

"You must have a big order in mind." she said seeing the cash inside the case.

"This is twenty five thousand dollars. Tax free, from my own personal account."

"Whoa! I am not helping anyone who's planning a coup…." she said holding her hands up.

"There is no coup Rally. Sure, there are quite a few politicians on the hill I'd like to get rid of and a few that need to be shot, but no coup. This money will make itself apparent in a moment." he said closing the case and picking another one up. "I'm actually very famous in the Air Force. These two guns were made by me personally, but I don't have the time anymore to repair them and I don't use them anymore. So, I figured a gun collector like you would appreciate them."

"This gun has seen better days." she said holding the damaged pistol. "Going to need a new chamber, barrel…almost have to replace the whole gun."

"The other one is totally functional so you have a template, if you want to repair it. Um, this case was suppose to be sent to you. I was helping the shipping department send some weapons and other items off to another base and…..I accidentally put the wrong label on the wrong crate."

She slowly put the damaged gun back in its box.

"You're here for those…strange alien snake looking things."

"They're government property. And more than my career is on the line here. Few people actually know I am here to retrieve them. And as much as I wish I could let you have one, because you are a gun collector, I can't. If they ever become available to the public, I'll make sure you get one, or more."

"What are they?" she asked seriously as she pushed the cases aside. "I see where the money comes in. A sort of bribe to keep quiet."

"Yeah, in a sense. Look, they are a very highly classified weapon. We were making a new version of a stun gun, and ended up with….something a little more powerful. The design was made by some sci-fi guys, along with lots of scientists."

"What's in the third crate by your feet?" she asked nodding her head.

"Something to….let's say, tide over the deal. If the money didn't get you, these would." he said picking the crate up and setting it one the counter. "Now, being a General, I have some…friends, in high places, in other countries. They were very difficult to find in this condition and they are originals. They have only been test fired to make sure they function, but have never been used for anything else."

"Oh my god! I've never seen so many at one time!" she said pulling a couple of the CZ-75's out. "And they all have walnut grips!"

"I'm going to put this as delicately as possible. These stun guns, zats is what we call them, are very classified. Classified high enough that if I didn't come get them, other personal would have came and taken the store apart or shot you and this place up, saying some cover story about this place being a terrorist hide out or something. Catch my drift?" he said quietly as she was still goggling the seven pistols.

She slowly put the guns back into the Styrofoam.

"I see where this is headed. How many troops or whatever you call them are outside waiting for your signal if I refuse?" she asked glancing out the window.

"None. I'd swear on a stack of bibles. I came here personally to avoid any troubles. Who you are and what you do impresses me and always has."

"Now you're flirting with me?!" she said stepping back.

"No. Attractive you are, but I'm married. And I want to stay that way." he said holding up his hand with the ring. "Look Rally, I really need those zats. I'll even give you a demonstration, and if you want, you can fire it. After that, I have to take them back with me. Like I said, I'm just trying to avoid any bloodshed or other troubles. Paperwork on this stuff is carefully looked at, so if they aren't recovered in the next couple of days, probably less, they will come looking and know they ended up here. I like doing business with you because you are fair and know what you're doing."

"I don't know why, but I think I believe you. I'll be right back."

He tapped on the glass with both hands as he looked up saying a silent thank you. She came back out with the same type of crate that had the weapons he brought in and he opened it to show they were all there.

"Rally, you have no idea how much you have saved me." he said sighing in relief as she put the other three crates behind the counter.

"You promised a demonstration General." she said with crossed arms.

"Yes I did." he said pulling a zat out and activating it. "We need a target."

"A target?"

"Yeah. Something that the electrical effect won't….blow up. Like a box of bullets. Though I don't think it would do anything to the bullets, I'd rather not try."

"This work?" she said pulled out a paper target.

"Got a box of them?"

She picked it off the shelf behind her and set it on the counter.

"It isn't a stun gun is it?"

"First shot, stun. Second, kills. Third…." he said handing it to her.

"Just point and shoot?"

"Three times."

She looked at the weapon, seeing the trigger and was surprised at no recoil and how it fired. She fired again and was less surprised at seeing the same thing. When she pulled the trigger the third time, she almost dropped it when the box of targets vanished before her eyes. He slowly took the zat as she felt the counter.

"That's why the public shouldn't have them or know about them."

"What the hell happened?"

"It vaporized it. Like being shot with a phaser from Star Trek. Can you see the need for secrecy?" he said putting the zat back and closing the case.

"It will vaporize anything?"

"Not everything. It's a little harder on bigger objects. But people it will. Just showing you what it does violates so many rules and regs. I could be brought up on treason charges, so please, don't mention this to anyone. Not even Minnie May."

She looked down at the crates at her feet and then smiled.

"If they become public knowledge, you'll give me one?"

"Promise. Don't expect any anytime soon though."

"What would I have to do to see where the research into all these new weapons is?"

"Join the Air Force and ask to be reassigned under me. Take a few years though."

"Things have been slow lately with all the new gun laws. I'll think about it General."

"You've got a good chance. Though lying about your age will get you in trouble real quick. I think you're…nineteen is it? Your real age."

"Twenty four." she growled.

"Sorry. You could still get in." he said picking up the case. "You certainly have a lot of the skills we could use."

"With flattery like that, I'll have to give the idea some serious thought." she said as he nodded.

"Hey, can you sign this so I don't get into trouble?" he said explaining the non disclosure form.

"And if I say something, and go to court or whatever and keep talking, then I might get killed?" she said reading.

"Well, not by me or anyone I work with. Just people who are more ruthless. I don't think you'll say anything though."

"You're right. I'd rather keep my life. Besides, if I take you up on that offer to join, then I'll learn everything." she said signing. "And if I don't take up the offer, I at least can say I make damn good money off what you buy every month. Certainly helps keep the repairs up on my car."

"Yep." he said taking the paper back and walking out the door.

He reached into his pocket and started to walk away to a, less conspicuous area to be beamed away.

"You'll want to hand over that case General. Or else."

"To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That sounds so bloody familiar." Lara muttered as she looked at Daniel's notes.

"Find anything yet?" Mitchell asked as he and Teal'c walked back up.

"No." Carter muttered. "Not really anyway. I'm picking up very faint traces of power from behind the cliff wall, but……"

"But?" Mitchell asked.

"I can't pinpoint it down." she said pushing buttons on her scanner. "There could be something behind here or it could be some trace elements of Naquada I'm picking up in various areas."

"Jackson?"

"We're still trying." he muttered brushing some dirt off part of the pillar with a brush. "I think I managed to figure out part of the next……part."

"And?"

"Well." he said standing up. "It says, or I think it says, This is the first rule of equiv….."

"Of what?"

"I can't read the rest. Too eroded with time."

"It seems really familiar. I swear I've heard that saying before." Lara said sitting on a rock nearby.

"Have you tried touching it again?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes. I even tried touching it while thinking as Daniel suggested."

"Well, I got no ideas." he said throwing up his hands. "Teal'c and I didn't find anything either, but then we didn't go up on that cliff."

"The U.A.V. didn't find anything up there either. And before you ask, it didn't scan anything either." Carter said.

"Maybe it will take your General to get it to activate." Lara suggested.

"Come on. We should be able to figure this out without him. We were doing it for years before he showed up." Carter said walking back over.

They all gave her looks, well, except Teal'c. He just raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"You're suggesting, that we don't call him, even though we might need him." Mitchell said waving a finger.

"Yeah. If we need him to help us with this, then why are we even here if it takes him to do everything?"

"Indeed."

"Alright then. We'll pretend that conversation didn't take place and I'll give us another hour at most." he said looking at his watch. "After that, we go get his help."

They nodded as Lara got up and muttered something.

"Didn't catch that." Daniel said.

"Alchemy. That's where I have heard it before. The saying is, 'To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemies first rule of equivalent exchange.' I wonder if any of this has anything to do with the Philosopher's Stone."

"Isn't that that….weird rock or whatever that turns other metals into gold?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes. Or so the theory was. I found it in one of my adventures. Rather easy in some ways really. But it has never done anything, other than glow when I touched it. And I did try to make it turn different metals into gold, and failed. Now that I think about it, when Hilary and a few other's touched it, it never glowed for them."

"Wait, that would mean that the Philosopher's Stone was made by the Ancients." Daniel said.

"Maybe we need it to open or get to whatever this leads to." she said waving a hand at the pillar. "The only problem is, it, is back in England."

"I don't see where it would go, even if we had it." Daniel muttered. "But even if we had it, it doesn't….help us with what the pillar says. I don't think giving the Stone up will take us to another location…"

"Unless it is needed in order to activate the transport system. Or whatever else it might activate." Carter said.

"That means I have to go home. Bloody hell. Several hours or more on a flight home only to have to do it again." Lara said heading for the gate while shaking her head.

"Wait a minute. You won't have to take a plane. Jackson, go with her back to base. Apprise them of our situation and then have the Prometheus use the transporter system to beam you to her house and then…." Mitchell said and then left it hanging as Daniel nodded in understanding.

"We should be back in….how long will it take you to retrieve it Lara?" Daniel asked.

"If I was at home right now? Few minutes at most. The house has changed quite a bit since you all have been there. Well, three of you anyway."

"See you all in half an hour then." Daniel said following her. "Maybe less."

"Ford will probably come back with them. Actually, he should have already finished in Chicago already."

"Yeah, it has been half an hour, and more." Mitchell muttered.

"Perhaps he had been detained by unforeseen circumstances." Teal'c suggested.

"Such as?" Mitchell asked.

"Being as I am not with him, nor have I been to Chicago in some time, I am uncertain. One possible cause is the person he went to see hasn't been located yet." Teal'c said.

"I hope he's not in trouble. Check that, I hope he's not causing trouble." Carter said sitting down next to a tree.

He turned seeing a couple black sedan's across the street, driver's still in them. Four men were standing in the small parking lot, with all but one having their hand in their jackets. The third guy had a shotgun in front of him, next to his leg. They all had business like suits on and long dark coats that offered no protection. They also all had that Mafia type look to them also, or Mob. Slightly short hair, bulky looks, two guys had mustaches and the other two with goatee's. And they all had dark sunglasses, same brand.

"And if I don't?" he said putting the case behind his back as he turned.

"I think you're smart enough to figure it out General." the first guy said removing a well used 45 caliber pistol. He didn't aim it though.

"First off, I'm surprised that you'd try something like that in public. Two, how did you know my rank? Three….."

"My employers don't have time for me to answer questions, so I'm giving you three seconds starting now. One…"

He dropped the case and had his gun out before they even noticed it. The first guy, the one counting, was killed instantly as the right side of his chest was blown out his back. The second guy got his gun out but he ended up with the same fate. Ford was swinging to shoot the third guy when a hard blast hit him in the chest. Even though his coat was closed, whatever hit him blasted him off his feet.

Rally had taken two of the crates into the back room and had came back out looking at the seven new pistols, almost drooling as she rubbed one of them against the side of her face. She instinctively dropped, dragging the crate of CZ-75's with her as she heard gun shots and suddenly her front door was shattered inward. A loud thump hit the floor in front of her counter seconds later. She stayed down hearing several rounds fired from a pistol, a magnum and a high powered shotgun. The blast continued on for a good minute. There was some yelling after the shots quit and then the squeal of tires on pavement. She pulled one of the hidden pistols she had under the counter and crept up to look out the window. There was no one outside, though there was shell casing's on the ground and a couple large blood stains in the small parking lot. Getting up slowly and with the pistol aimed, she went around the counter hearing a groan.

"Dammit. I thought I was the only one that used 20 gauge slugs." he muttered with a wince as he slowly sat up and tossed the flattened slug off his chest. "That smarts."

"What the hell happened?" she asked going around him and looking out the door with the gun pointed around. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, seriously. Damn. They've left." he said putting his gun away as he shook off the glass. "Couple black sedan's. I need your car."

"No way! I just got that thing fixed again and with original parts!" she said walking away from the door toward the phone behind the counter.

She stopped as she heard siren's in the distance. Ford stepped outside quickly and pulled his phone out. After talking to someone for a couple minutes, he walked back in as she was looking at the damage. A couple police cruisers pulled up as he was talking to her.

"We can't mention why I am really……"

"I knew that already." she said sarcastically. "You came in to get those guns repaired and then left with a special order that someone else wanted, right? Unfortunately, they got it and shot up my place at the same time. I'm going to charge you for this."

"Figured that already." he said as they went outside.

"So Rally, looks like you got in another shoot out. Who was it this time?" a police she knew asked.

"It wasn't her fault officer. It was mine. I was here on my own personal business, and some of it was government related." he said before she could say anything. "Go back inside Rally. I'll deal with all this."

"Fine. I need to assess the damages anyway. You are serious about paying…."

"Yes."

"Government?" the officer asked.

He pulled out his I.D.

"Air Force General? What would…."

"Classified. Point is, I was attacked and shot outside her place. She was not involved and I will pay for all the damage, just like I mentioned." he said and then almost started to tell the officer what to do as he memories of police work started to kick in instinctively. "Just, do whatever police work you have to."

"Don't tell me how to do my job General. I'm not under your command."

"Excuse me? I was trying to be polite, but if you want to get smart, I can call the President of the United States himself on my speed dial and have your ass…."

"General, what an unexpected surprise."

Ford turned around to see several men in black suit outfits walk up, one of which he was familiar with.

"Agent Barret? Why are you here?" he asked a little confused.

"Agent?" the officer asked.

"This has become a national security issue officer Davey." Barret said glancing at the name tag. "You and your men need to leave, now."

"Excuse me, but this is a crime scene and until you show me some form of I.D….."

Barret quickly pulled out his I.D. along with the few men he was with.

"Don't make me call your superior, again. I'm not having a great day as it is." Barret said looking at Ford distastefully.

"Call him then. I've never heard of the N.I.D. before…" the officer was saying when his cell phone rang. "Sir. Yes sir. They are? Ah, yes sir. We are leaving right now."

The officers quickly got into their vehicles and left.

"What did I do?"

"We can talk about that in the van General."

Ford laughed.

"I don't think so Barret. I consider you a friend, but you haven't built up enough trust to get me to do that. We can talk in the gun shop."

"I'm afraid I have to insist General." he said pulling his coat back slightly. The few men with him did the same.

"I know that you and Sam are rather good friends. But that won't stop me from shooting you all if you draw on me." he said threateningly. "I'm a lot faster and already have a gun ready. You already know what I'm capable of, at least on the reports. We can talk in there, or not at all. I'm on the clock."

Barret knew Ford's reputation and had read what files he was allowed to look at. The man was serious.

"Wait here." Barret said with a wave to the men then headed into the shop.

"What is this about Barret? Why are you here?" he asked sternly.

"We got a report of an illegal transaction going on at this place concerning some…classified material." he said glancing around at all the guns and then stopping on Rally who was writing on a pad of paper. "You're going to have to leave miss."

"Leave? This is my shop!"

"Calm down Rally. You don't have to leave…"

"General..."

"Barret." he said crossing his arms with the same stern approach. "What sort of report are we talking about, because I just got here several minutes ago. Well, we'll say been here about 30 minutes. Anyway, only a select few people, mostly my team, Lara and Walter, a couple others, knew I was coming here, so….."

"We got a tip twenty minutes ago that a high ranking officer was coming to this shop to deal with some dark haired lady, selling classified material."

"Classified material?" Rally said with a huff as she kept writing. "Strangely designed stun guns with killing power plus is more like it."

Barret gave him a crossed look.

"Look, I was trying to send her a couple of my personal weapons…." he said when his phone went off. "Hang on. Hello K-9. You did? Good, where is it? Still traveling? Great, send that information to the General and have Colonel Emerson on standby, understand? Yes K-9. That's what I meant, thank you."

He hung up quickly, looked at his watch and then back at Barret.

"I was sending her damaged weapons, don't ask, put the wrong label on the box and she got a few zat guns. I got them all back, she has promised not to talk and I even got her to sign a letter of non disclosure."

"She knows what they do?!"

"Yes. We were trying to make a better stun gun and ended up with the zat guns. The design was created by sci-fi fans. She said she might even join the Air Force. If she does, she'll ask for me and get placed under my command."

"Where is the form?"

He pulled it from his pocket rolling his eyes. Barret looked it over then handed it back.

"Alright." he said nodding in agreement. "Where are the zat guns?"

"They were taken from me. I'm going after them."

"Great work General. You've went from accidentally sending classified weapons to some broad…"

"Hey!" she exclaimed.

"To now letting…..who has them?" he asked crossing his arms.

"I don't know. K-9 has the case on GPS. From what he said, it is still on the move. Now, I'm leaving to go get it and I suggest that you go back to work. Goodbye."

"We're coming with General." he said defiantly.

Ford gave him a hard and stern glare, and Barret flinched, but didn't move.

"Fine, but whatever building, structure or whatever the hell the place ends up being, you stay outside and wait till I call. I'll call you from my car."

"Your car?"

"Yes. Because, unless it is like some highly fortified place, such as some place made of inches of steel or iron or something equally the same, I plan on driving right into wherever it is." he said making a jumping gesture with hand.

"Where is your car, because I didn't see it nearby."

"Just around back. Wait in your car or whatever you guys drive."

Wait a minute. There is no vehicles out back. I would have noticed. Hell, I would have heard it, especially if it is still that old Dodge Charger. She thought as the two men walked out.

Rally went through the door, grabbed her leather jacket, holster with gun and went out the back door to find Ford standing there with his back to her. With the sounds of traffic and other noises around the area, he didn't hear her back door open, and seeing as it was more than several dozen feet away, he didn't know she was watching as he made a quick call.

"Yeah, I have some trouble. Just send him here and I'll get it straightened out quickly. Please don't tell anyone else. Bad enough Barret and a few other N.I.D. are here. Thanks Colonel. I owe you one."

The General Lee beamed down in front of him a few seconds later. He got his keys out as he reached for the door handle.

"What in the hell was that?!"

"You two still dancing? No offense Sam, but…I kinda figured….you two would barely have any time because of Sally and work. You know?" Mitchell said sitting next to a tree near her. Teal'c just stood by glancing around.

"Well, we don't get out much anymore to go dancing. Sometimes we dance at home. I never was really into it until we went out. Something about it….well. Anyway, I really like it. Usually something country or classical. Sally wanted to join us once and I filmed it while he danced with her around the room."

"I figure that one more one sided."

"Yeah. He was just holding her while moving one of her arms slowly. She thought it was fun and giggled a lot. We switched after a few minutes and she fell asleep sometime later." she said holding her head up with one hand. That arm was resting on her right raised knee. A smile crossed her face as she remembered that night. "Hmm. Dancing in tight jeans makes it a little harder to perform some moves."

"Such as?" Mitchell blurted out without thinking.

She didn't seem to notice or if she did, she didn't let on.

"The dip for one. A dress is so less confining."

"You three still there?" a voice said through their coms.

"Yep, we're still here Jackson." Mitchell said getting up.

"We should be there in a few minutes. Ford still hasn't arrived in case any of you were wondering."

Sam resisted the urge to ask and Mitchell noticed.

"Did Reynolds or anyone else say why?"

"Um, no not really." Daniel said.

"What does that mean?"

They didn't hear anything come through the line and Mitchell asked again.

"It means they don't know anything yet." Daniel said as they started walking up. It was apparent they had ran from the gate to them.

"What's the hurry?" Carter asked.

"No hurry. Just thought if we could finish without him being here, like you said before."

"That's not what you were telling me Daniel." Lara said with a smirk as she narrowed her eyes.

"Um, what did I say?" he asked not sure what she meant.

"Well, you were telling me to hurry, back at my house." she said removing her pack and digging the stone out. "Because you wanted this mission to end quickly, just so he wouldn't show up. Other than because of a bet going on to see how SG-1 did without him, but so he could cook….what was it you said….."

"I get it now. I have to agree. If it wasn't for his real background, I'd almost swear my grandma taught him how to cook." Mitchell said then turned to lightly slap Teal'c on the chest. "How about you big guy, you looking forward to a good home cooked meal?"

"Indeed." he said with a knowing smile.

"I have to admit, it has been sometime since I have had anything to eat that would be considered, home cooked." Lara said. "Rations and MRE's you can only stand for so long. Well, this is it."

The Philosopher's Stone looked like a small egg shaped multi facet crystal set inside some strange rocky object. Underneath the rock like object were small holes that set in side something. It glowed lightly in her hands, but didn't do anything. Daniel took it and it quit glowing.

"Well, that answers that." Mitchell muttered.

Daniel walked over and set it on the top of the pillar and stepped back.

"Nothing is happening." Mitchell muttered.

"Maybe time is a needed factor." Teal'c suggested.

"No. I think Lara has to activate it." Daniel said.

"It's great to be needed." Lara said with a smile to him as she put her pack on and walked up to it.

She touched the pillar and then the Stone. Nothing happened though, at least not for a few seconds. They all heard a loud rumble like noise and turned to see part of the cliff face come out from the wall, spilt down the middle and part to show an entrance. Lara took the stone back and put it in her pack. The now open doorway was almost ten feet high and about four feet wide.

"See, we can do this ourselves. Knowing Ford, he's probably talking to her about guns." Carter said offhandedly as she along with the others slowly walked up to the open doorway with their weapons at ready.

"And if he's having…" Lara said with a implied tone.

The others chuckled. Lara didn't understand why they all did that, including Teal'c who also laughed.

"Ford Carter is an honorable husband."

"I trust him enough that I know he will never cheat on me. Besides, he gave me a binding legal document that if he ever did, I instantly own everything he owns and have the right to shoot him."

"Everything?" she asked skeptically.

"Down to his underwear."

"You're joking?"

"No. She showed us the paper. It's real." Daniel said.

"I haven't seen it though, but I believe it." Mitchell said.

"Hmm. That would explain why he didn't give me any lust filled looks during that little adventure in China. Unlike your friend Jack did a few times."

"General O'Neill used to do it to me." she muttered peering into the dark doorway with her light. "I don't see anything."

"I'll go first." Mitchell said entering slowly.

There was a short corridor dug out that lead down into the dark. From the looks of the wall, torches might have been there at one time. Mitchell was first, followed by the two women then Daniel and Teal'c.

"I have to admit, I did the same to him sometimes, but because of our careers…" Carter mumbled to her.

"I didn't understand how he ended up in charge until Daniel explained it to me last night. I'm surprised that the President even allowed you two to stay together. Or at least that was until Daniel explained that as well." Lara said lighting a flare. "I'm going to toss this ahead."

"Damn, this is a long tunnel." Mitchell muttered and then jumped as the flare went flying past him. "Ah! Warn me next time."

"She did Mitchell." Carter said as the flare stop rolling next to a metal door.

Mitchell walked up keeping his weapon ready and shined it over the door.

"Hmm. Jackson, I think we need your help on this one."

"Why?" he asked walking up past them to see writing on the door. "Oh. Well, um, you'll have to give me a moment to translate it."

"About how long? Because in case you hadn't noticed, this place is a little cramped." Mitchell said with his back against the wall.

"Indeed."

"Few……no, it's rather simple really. It's an Ancient research outpost, I think."

"Really?" Carter asked as her eyebrows shot up. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, this word says research."

"Okay, can you get us in?" Mitchell asked.

"I don't see any handles or scanning type devices." Daniel said looking over the walls near the door.

Lara reached out and touched the door. There was some sort of click noise and the door opened sliding into the wall to their right.

"Sometimes, the obvious approach does work. In this case, someone with this special gene was needed. Hmm, makes me wonder about some of the other artifacts I have." she said rubbing her chin as she walked in.

"I'll have to come over so we can go over them sometime." Daniel said.

"I'd like that."

"Can we, you know, do some actual work?"

"Colonel, you have to have some sort of fun while working or it isn't worth it." Lara said casually as she glanced around with them.

The room rather large, mostly consisting of old consoles that didn't seem to be working at the moment. From the video files they got from Atlantis, the SG-1 team noticed the room had the same type of design in mind when Atlantis was built. The walls, some of the consoles. Unfortunately, there were a lot of vines and other roots coming through the floors, walls and other cracks. Entropy had had its way in this place for quite some time. Some lights did come on as did some of the consoles after they entered the room. A few things of what once was possibly wooden furniture was crumbling to dust on the ground.

"Hmm. The architect looks familiar." Mitchell said glancing round.

"Indeed."

"Atlantis." Daniel said. "It's like the video footage of Atlantis."

"I really hope to see that place one day." Lara said.

"Me too. I'd already be there but…."

"We get it already Jackson." Mitchell moaned.

"Ford is trying Daniel. Just got to give him time to convince Jack and the higher ups to let you go." Sam said. "Hey, I see a door behind these vines."

"You know, I asked him to use his persuasion techniques to get me on the Daedalus." Daniel said as Teal'c and Mitchell hacked away at the vines.

"What did he say?" Carter asked.

"He'd only blackmail for a seriously good cause. I told him that me going was a good cause and he looked at me like I grew another head or something."

"Blackmail? Is that how he really became in charge?" Lara asked with some shock.

"No. He never did want to even be enlisted, rules and regs reasons mostly. But some people, higher up and otherwise decided to try and…well, use him. So he used information against them." Carter said with a tone that showed she had trouble with the idea. "I don't like that he did that, or I should say, that he was put into that position, but I can understand why he did it. All things considered, he hasn't used the knowledge as leverage to gain any advantages or special items or anything like that."

"He just got some people off our backs. And you two." Daniel said. "Certain members of the Air Force didn't think Ford could be objective enough with her under his command."

"Ah." Lara said as door was now accessible. "That rule about dangerous situations and sending someone else to do a job that only she could probably do right sort of thing?"

"Yeah, exactly that." Mitchell said as he waved his hand over a scanner near the door. Nothing happened though. "Lara, you try it please."

"So, what sort of info does he have?"

"Secrets that no one is suppose to have. Destroy the world with anarchy stuff." Daniel said as she waved her hand like Mitchell did.

"Guess it isn't going to work this time."

"Well, we can tell that they part so, let's use force. Help me out T."

Mitchell stuck his knife into it and with Teal'c's help they managed to pull the doors apart. They slowly went in to find an empty room in some better shape. It could have been a storage unit by the metal shelves that were lining the far wall, but all empty. There were cracks, but nothing growing. Just dust mostly. There was a door to their left with another scanner next to it.

"I'm going to guess that he hasn't told any of you some of these secrets?" Lara asked waving her hand by the scanner.

"No." they said.

"Well, other than the fact our own government killed JFK." Daniel said.

"Yeah, there's that." Carter said. "Otherwise he's not telling."

"And none of you have asked?"

"What would be the point?" Mitchell asked. "Nothing we can do with that info even if we knew it all."

"And I doubt there is anything that would help the Stargate program." Daniel said.

"Good point." Lara said.

The door opened into a room that looked like it was some sort of eatery area. There were metal tables, some knocked over and chairs, also some knocked over. A section to their left had a door that Mitchell looked through to find what was once a kitchen from the looks of things, except it wasn't in really good condition. Some vines and what probably at one time was food that had molded sprouting life. He closed the door with a sneeze and told them what he saw.

"I hear Atlantis has a better kitchen set up." Daniel said.

"Yeah. Ford said he wanted to see it." Carter said.

Teal'c walked past the tables and chairs to find another door at the far end of the room around a wall that came out from the wall.

"I have located another door." he said waving his hand, just in case.

It opened into a large room that had a shower type unit to the right behind another set of doors that opened manually. There were a lot of beds with metal dressers next to each one. Some were still open, but they were all empty. The beds were almost all in some sort of disarray, but the sheets had faded and mostly decayed with age.

"Hmm. It's strange, but despite the advanced age of this place, I believe whatever system keeps the air recycling…." Lara said sniffing as they kept walking toward the other end of the room.

"Is still functioning? Yeah. Something must have happened and they all evacuated. And whatever it was damaged the main entrance and a few of the other rooms." Carter said.

"I do not believe it was an attack. There is no evidence of such an action." Teal'c said.

"Could have been that plague." Daniel said.

"Could have been the Stone. Considering the stories behind its power, the people here must have done something wrong that made them leave." Lara said.

"I hope this place isn't as big as the SGC. Bad enough trying to remember everything about that place as it is." Mitchell muttered as they passed the thirtieth bed.

"I just hope there is some sort of log or journal left behind to let us know what happened." Daniel said.

At the end of the bed, to their left again was another door and there was one in front of them. Behind that door was the equivalent of what the Ancients used to use to clean and dry clothes. Some of the clothes, what was left of them were hanging on spinning racks attached to the ceiling. When Mitchell touched one it turned to dust instantly. Sam tried waving her hand over the scanner near the other door and it opened into a very large room. Most of the wall to their left was made of a very long console that was under an enormous screen. Other consoles were around the room under smaller monitors that the Ancients used to use. Some of them were lit up while others were dark. Several dozen feet in front of the large monitor, the floor sank down, going down five steps. Down there was a few more consoles with screens displaying information like the others. One large console was a few feet away from some large half octagon table with an indent in it that was attached to the wall. An open glass half dome was over the octagon table. The indent in the middle of the table had three yellow block lines coming off each side that went up to the wall, up the wall at a forty five degree angle and branched off to consoles on either wall.

"Wow." Carter muttered.

"Ditto." Mitchell said.

"This must be where they worked on the Stone." Lara said putting her pack on the floor and pulling out the stone.

"What makes you say that?" Mitchell asked.

"This, looks like it fits, in that." Lara said pointing at the indent as she walked toward it.

"Wait a moment! We don't know what that will do. Let's let Jackson look around first, maybe even read something before we start…..messing with that thing." Mitchell said waving his hand at the stone.

Lara set it near but not in the indent that she could tell it did fit in. It had the points in the bottom that went into the holes in the base of the Stone.

"Jackson…."

"Already looking." Daniel said looking at the screen that was in front of the octagon table.

"Carter…."

"I'll see if I can link up with any of these systems and learn anything." she said setting her pack down and pulling her laptop out.

"T…."

"I believe you wish to explore further Colonel Mitchell."

"Yep. There's another door and probably many more rooms to explore. Hell, we might even find some new weapons."

Teal'c nodded.

"Lara….."

"I'm going to stay with Daniel. If I ever do decide to join the SGC, might as well start learning how to read all this." she said not looking away from the screen.

"Alright. Well, I'm going to go back up top and let the SGC know what we've found. Then we explore."

"Indeed."

Ford got his hand onto the door handle and the window started rolling down as he heard someone yell. He let go and turned to find Rally practically stomping up.

"What the hell was that?! What was with that light and….."

As she got in front of him, still in the process of yelling, he covered her mouth with one finger.

"Would you please not yell your questions so loud that the people on the Space Station Mir can hear you? Get in the car." he said jerking his left thumb.

"What?"

"You want answers, get in the car. Or stay here and keep quiet." he said crawling in. He leaned out the window after seeing she hadn't gotten in. "Well?"

She went around a little reluctantly and was a little surprised when the door opened on its own. She got in and watched him press different buttons. Her eyes widened considerably at all the stuff she saw.

"I'm probably going to get my ass kicked for this, hell, might even get fired, though highly doubtful……put your seat belt on." he said backing out quickly and heading off down a road away from Barret and his team before taking a few turns to get back onto the road needed to go after the signal.

"I don't believe you're an Air Force officer at all. It's not possible. You people fly, not drive like this. They don't teach you how to drive like this." she said making gestures at the road. "I don't know a lot about the military, the rules and regulations, but I'm damned sure that this car is not standard issue, not to mention those guns. You people fly. You're not ground units."

"Actually, we are both. I'm just a better driver than a pilot." he said taking a sharp turn without having to apply the brakes. "Flying I can do. No problem. Combat flying, not so good."

"What does that mean?"

"If we were under attack, I could easily drive us out of here or almost where ever and get away in this car. If we were flying with people chasing us in planes or helicopters, we'd probably die."

She gave him the strangest look.

"What?" she asked in a curiously bewildered tone.

"As much as I like flying, I don't get to do it much. But I love driving and get to do it a lot. I'm a better driver than a pilot, especially during combat situations."

"Why?"

"I can't concentrate like that. Using all four dimensions or is it five? Point being, one person attacking me in the air, good chance I can take them. Two or more, not happening. Non-combat, I can fly many things. The Osprey was fun. Driving, bring it on. I excel at combat and driving."

It took Barret and his team a few minutes to realize that he had already left and they took off quickly after making a couple of calls to find out where Ford was headed.

"You signed that paper so remember that if you start talking about what I'm about to tell you." he said going twenty miles of the speed limit and glancing at her to see her reaction.

"I'm not sure I want to know. Hell, if what you said about those zat guns and me getting killed or worse is true, I'm better off not knowing." she said waving her hands. "Forget about what I said a moment ago. About the…transport thingy."

"That's a first. Fine, I won't say anything." he said looking at the small screen. "Damn they have some lead."

"How did your car get behind my shop, because I know it wasn't there earlier. Hell, I saw it appear out of nowhere! Or is this one of those things I don't want to know?"

"Well. We have….somewhat successfully, managed to….make a transporter system." he said like he was skirting the subject.

"Somewhat?" she said as she looked out the window and saw a stopped vehicle ahead of them.

She watched him not slow down, but speed up after looking at the other small monitor. He raced past the couple of vehicles that were stopped at a red light and went right through it. She glared at him in shock and looked back expecting to see an accident happen, but other than some honking of horns, people went about their business.

"I am in a hurry and the built in sensors showed it was safe to do what I just did, despite how illegal it was. As for the transporter thing, it doesn't work all that well on organic material. Or I should say, living." he lied.

"Okay. First it was the cell phones and now transporters that America or whatever country has made possible from the universe of Star Trek. Other than those zats of course."

"Yeah. You catch on quickly." he said rounding a corner so fast the car lifted a couple of inches off the ground.

"Bean didn't happen to give you lessons in driving? Because a lot of this seems like something he would be doing."

"No. I was trained by….a lot of people. Actually, I'm better than he is. Hell, my car is the fastest thing on the planet, with wheels anyway, and doesn't fly. Though I wish it did."

"Jeez! Are you trying to flip your car over?!" she cried out grabbing the handle above the door as he rounded another corner fast enough the car was driving at a 45 degree angle for a few seconds. "Did you also notice….."

"It was a red light again? Yeah. Don't care. The signal is only two blocks away. Once I see which vehicle we are after out of the three, I can easily take it out. And then……."

The collision alarm went off three seconds before they were hit. Ford heard the alarm, which was a lower but a little faster paced version of the Stargate alarm. He looked down long enough to see the direction and almost turned the wheel in time. The police car slammed into the right side rear making the General spin around a few times before hitting a light pole on the sidewalk. The light pole dropped across the top of the car and shattered glass everywhere as it popped loudly on the pavement. People ran away or inside buildings as other cop cars appeared on the scene pulling out weapons and shouting orders. Over a dozen cop cars showed up, completely surrounding them from escaping, by driving anyway.

Inside the car, Rally was surprised she hadn't been hurt or gotten whiplash. Her car had been through one of those maneuvers before and even rolled once or twice and in all those occasions, she felt pain from pulled muscles or neck trauma. She turned to see if he was okay but he was climbing out the window as the cops continued to shout orders.

"Get out of the car, place your hands on the hood and stay still! Any show of resistance will be met with extreme force!" one of the cops said through a megaphone as Ford was yelling back at the twenty some cops.

"Look up the license plate you ass! I work for the government! There's a note from the President himself in my file!!"

This yelling match between him and the officer continued for about a minute up to the point that the officer told him to get out of the car now or they would shoot. She hunkered down in the car further to not be seen and covered her head for when the glass broke, especially after hearing what Ford yelled back at that moment.

"THEN SHOOT ME!"

A bullet hit him right arm near his wrist, barely fazing him as he finished the sentence. He looked down as the flattened bullet dropped off his coat and onto the top of the car. As he flicked the bullet off the top, he activated the switch by accident and his hidden gun popped out of his wrist.

"Oh smeg." he muttered looking back up.

He barely managed to duck back in and get the window up as bullets bounced off the car. Everything from 38 specials, nine mill's, 44 and 45 cal's to shotgun ammo. It took the cops about ten seconds to realize they weren't doing anything except damaging their own vehicles from the ricochets. And even hitting a few of their own. The officer with the megaphone yelled at everyone a few times to cease fire. As they were tending to their wounded and regrouping, Ford hit a few buttons.

"Let's try this again you idiots. Look up the license plate and take a good long look at the name and info on that screen." he said into a small remote mike that was broadcasting outside the car. "Pay particular attention to notes!"

"What do we need to do in order for you to release your hostage?"

"Hostage?" they both said.

She grabbed the small mike.

"I'm not a hostage! I'm working with him to recover…." she stopped as he told her what to say. "Stolen government property. The Air Force had me be the middle man to find out who was dealing and selling stolen government property."

"We were in the middle of chasing them down with the stolen property when you rammed my vehicle!" Ford yelled as he took a quick look at the screen.

They had lost track of the vehicle that had the stolen zats. The GSP signal was gone. He slammed a hand into the steering wheel in frustration as he ignored the cop telling him to surrender the hostage again and that his story didn't check out according to their computers records. He was to get out and put his hands on the car, blah, blah, blah. Same line as before, plus a few added words that didn't need to be said in public.

"Open the door. I'm going to……" she said trying to open the door.

"No." he said as pushed a couple of buttons making a computer monitor and keyboard come out of the dash.

"But I know the police here. One of them might be Roy…."

"I didn't see Roy Coleman out there." he muttered still ignoring the shouts from the cop as he was typing away.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm doing a check on those cops." he said hitting another button.

The windows tinted to the point no one could see the inside. This made the cops antsy. She looked at the screen as it pulled up police records and photo's of the men and woman around them. According to the records, a lot of the cops were being checked out for taking bribes and for having possible connections with the Chicago mob. Several of the police out there were on the Internal Affairs list.

"Well, well, well. No wonder we were knocked off the road." he said hitting a few buttons on the keyboard.

It turned off and retracted back into the dashboard as he started the car again.

"I now understand why negotiating with you is not working. You're all crooked cops. And someone called you to stop me from getting those stolen weapons back. I give you an A for the attempt, and an A for managing to stop me long enough to allow them time to shut down the GPS. But you get the biggest F imaginable for trying to keep me here."

A panel opened up on the passenger side door and a small missile fired a few seconds later. He waited just long enough for the cops in front of him to see the missile and allow them time to run before firing. The blue and white car exploded taking the one in front of it with. Ford slammed on the pedal driving under the two flaming cars as they came back onto the ground. He plowed through the front end of another cop car, sending it spinning a couple if times as he kept the car going. Bullets bounced off once again making people in the buildings get down to avoid being hit by ricochets. What cars could start after him left, but eventually they had to give up as he got blocks ahead of them quickly. Once he thought he was sufficiently far enough ahead, he took a quick few turns on several streets and drove into a parking complex. Using the microwave jammer, he took out a few of the lights in one corner and parked in the dark.

"Damn. Must be losing my touch. Not only did they make me loose the signal, they somehow managed to jam me from tracing it again while we were back there." he said as he let out a sigh. "You okay?"

"Wow. And I thought my car was fast." she said letting go of her seat belt. "At least mine is better looking."

He was going to retort her on that comment when the General signaled an incoming call. When he saw the location, he hit a few buttons to make sure the screen didn't come on.

"General, this is Colonel Penderast. Why isn't your screen working?"

"I have it shut off. I'm not alone."

"Oh, let me guess, more top secret stuff?" she asked sarcastically.

"I see. Is everything okay General?"

"Oh yeah, just fine." Ford said with a grimace on his face. "Nothing I can't do on my own, so far. Is everything okay with my team?"

"Well, Daniel and Lara had to come back for something and then they went back. Otherwise, Daniel reported that they are doing fine. No troubles. They mentioned something about figuring things without your help."

"Ouch. Now that's insulting." he said with a small laugh. "They were working this job long before I showed up. All right Colonel. If I need anything, I'll call. If an emergency comes up or they need anything, just call me."

"Any time table here General?"

"Not at the moment. Things didn't go as planned. I'll explain later."

"All right General. Pendergast out."

"Someone under your command?"

"Yep." he said leaning back into the seat as it reclined. "I need to think."

Mitchell came back in as the other's were still working. Sam was helping Daniel with her laptop. He noticed the screen kept blinking a lot and he figured she was trying to clear it up. Daniel was trying to read it while giving Lara a crash course in reading Ancient.

"A lot of the systems are really screwed up Daniel. I'm not sure how much I can do." Carter said looking in a panel behind the console they were at.

"I know you'll try your best."

"Have you looked around any Teal'c?" Mitchell asked.

"I have. There is another door that leads further into this complex."

"Think you all….." Mitchell began.

"Yeah, we'll be fine." Daniel said with a wave. "Just call if you need help."

"Okay then. T, let's go look around."

"Mitchell."

"Yeah Sam?" he asked turning around near the door.

"Be careful. According to what I can tell from the power systems running in this place, not all the rooms have power running to them anymore. And some places it may be sporadic at best." she said still sitting on the ground behind the large console.

"Can you tell us how many levels are in this place or rooms….."

"3 levels from what I gather. As for how large and the amount of rooms. There's way to much damage to whatever they used for a computer core."

"Alright then. Thanks for the info." he said with a short wave.

"Where were we?" Daniel asked.

"This symbol." Lara said pointing at the console. "I'm beginning understand this language."

"Wow. That's, great. Really. Most people it takes time. Took Ford awhile."

"How long?"

"Took him a long time and then suddenly it just came to him. Guess it had to do with the fact of him being an Ancient."

"How many languages does he know?"

"Basically, the Chinese and Japanese related ones. Russian is rusty. Ancient, Goa'uld. Sign language. I think that was really it. I've been teaching him a few other's, or was. Now he doesn't have the time. Ford once mentioned you knew a lot of languages, including dead ones."

"Yes." she said naming off a few.

They chatted for a few minutes, while she guessed at a few of the symbols as Daniel gave hints.

"Any changes on the screen coming in more clearly?"

"Almost Sam. I can make the words out a bit more, but some of the finer details…"

"Hang on." she said working inside the panel as she also typed. "What about now?"

"You got it Sam. Don't do anything else."

"What is it?" Lara asked as Sam got up and came around to see them both staring at the screen intently.

"It's a log of one of the people who was working on the project here. From what little I gather here, they were trying to create…..well, something from nothing. Well, not literally nothing. More like turning different objects into things that would be needed. One of the problems was they either used too much or not enough power."

"Not enough did what?" Carter asked.

"The experiment failed and either turned into useless junk or fell apart."

"And too much power?" Lara asked.

"Boom. 23 people died during the many times they experimented on, the Stone. Apparently they had further plans to continue experiments but the plague hit making them shift priorities. 6 additional people died, being volunteers to be experimented on to find a possible cure with the Stone. Organic components didn't seem to work well with being changed."

"Should I ask what happened to those 6?" Carter asked.

"Um….it just says they died and there is a reference to what I believe is a medical journal or report that would give better detail of what happened."

"Did they ever learn to control it?" Lara asked.

"I'd have to check the other logs first."

"I might be able to run a translation program, but that would mean removing my laptop."

"And we can't do that." Daniel said still reading.

"I'll see if I can get one of the other ones to work. If so, then you can read it while I work on making this one readable for those of us that can't read Ancient."

Rally had called May to have her go and look at the shop and get it fixed up the best she could, amongst other things. Ford sat back with his eyes closed thinking as she told May what needed to be done and that she would pay May extra for all the hard work. With the extreme silence in the car, Ford could hear May asking questions, some personal.

"No May, I'm not going to sleep with the guy! He's married! Besides, he's as big as Bean! I mean as tall!" she hissed.

Ford didn't move and thankfully with them being in the dark, she didn't notice he blushed. May kept making references to Rally's mistake asking if she had saw how big he was or if she had an idea to which Rally was arguing back saying no and such. He knew that Rally has seen Bean in the raw, up close, by accident. Though Bean never knew she knew his, ahem size. He could see from the dash lights and the light coming from her phone that even with her slightly dark complexion, she was blushing and had glanced in his general direction of that area when talking to May. It took everything he had not to laugh, because he was sure she would know what he was laughing at. He shook his head quickly and sat back up before his mind wandered to thoughts he didn't need going at the moment.

"I gotta go May. Call me if anything comes up." she said. She closed the cell and put it in her coat. "So, what next or do you need my help?"

He rubbed his chin lightly still thinking.

"I haven't got any clue where to start on looking for where they could have went with those weapons. Even if they were going to be sold on the black market, the materials needed….are almost rare and very expensive. So rare and expensive that they would show up instantly on any BOLO dealing with the items in question."

"Out of all those friends in high places you mention, you don't have any here or anyone close to be a good informant huh?"

"Let's just say I have a tendency to piss people off more than be-friend them. Excluding the people under my command."

"Everyone one of them?"

"As far as I can tell. Since I took charge, moral has went up and thanks to me, everyone got a nice big increase in pay. Some of the women aren't all that happy that I married Sam, but…."

"I have a friend in this city who might know something, but it will cost a lot." she said pulling her phone out.

"Whatever you want, just fine out what she knows."

"How did you know my informant was a she?" she asked as she stopped dialing.

"You could say lucky guess, but from what I know about you, you've never gotten along well with men, ever."

"Lucky guess." she muttered dialing.

"Well, except your dad of course. You ever find him, I'll get him out of trouble, no matter what it is. Well, to a point."

"How did…." she began asking as the phone rang a few times and then he heard someone pick up.

"Hey Rally! What's up? If it's a tip, you better have money this time. I'm hurting a bit at the moment. I can't do an I.O.U."

"Yeah, I got money this time. Quite a bit actually."

"Quite a bit? What's that mean? Who did you bust?"

"No one this time. I'll just say that a special customer showed up and decided to be generous."

"You never told anyone about those zat guns?" Ford asked quietly.

"No I didn't. I didn't know what they were and hadn't really figured out what they were either." she said covering the phone for a moment. "I couldn't even figure out how they opened. Even though I had them for a couple of days, I was rather busy with a few things."

"Rally? You still there?"

"Yeah Becky. I need some info. Have you heard anything recently on some highly classified military hardware? Such as weapons?" she asked as Ford wrote those exact words out on electronic pad he pulled from his pocket.

"Classified military hardware? The weapon type? That's pretty big Rally, even for you. Are you serious?"

"Yeah."

"Info like that cost a lot."

"I have the cash, literally."

"If I can even find anything, stuff like that usually cost over $10,000."

"I can give you 20. Or more." she said seeing the message Ford put on the pad.

"20! Hell, I'll give you whatever I can find and more. Hang on. I'm going to have to make a few calls."

Rally closed her phone and sat back.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but before I met the woman I am married to, which I am deeply in love with and will do just about anything to keep her safe along with our lovely daughter. If she had rejected me back then and we never got close, I would have asked you out."

"What?" she asked a little startled as she turned to him sharply.

"I had a crush on you once. We have some thing's in common, such as guns and cars. I would have left the Air Force and came to work with you."

"Somehow, I don't think things would have worked out between us." she said looking him over slightly.

"Why?"

"You remind me too much of Bean."

"Hmm. I can assure you that size is the only thing we have in common, though he is a little taller. And I guess some of our skills are the same. Other than that, I am not like him as to personality. I also don't drink or smoke and have a lot more in morals than he does."

"I've noticed…"

Rally opened her phone as it rang.

"That was quick." Ford said after she told him who it was.

"Rally, I found out a few things. But it's going to cost you big….."

Ford grabbed the phone from her, making her jump. The laptop came out of the dashboard at the same time.

"What's your account number and which bank? I'll transfer $25,000 right away."

"Who is this? Where's Rally…."

"Rally is fine and sitting next to me. She's helping me out because I'm trying to get back stolen military property. Oh, Rally already knows your account number…." he said as Rally was typing away.

He handed the phone back and did a quick transfer.

"Oh my god! He's was serious!"

"She can keep the change. What does she know?"

"I can keep the change?! Cool! Okay, according to one of my contacts, they heard there is going to be some meeting down near the docks in one of the old boat warehouses. It has to do with some meeting with the Chicago Mafia and some people called the Trust. All they knew was that the meeting had to do with exchanging some military weapons for a hell of a lot of money. A few of my other contacts also had info that was the same, but some of them also told me about a few other places where meetings with military hardware was going down. Rally, several of my informants told me to stay away from this."

"The Trust. Damn! This is not good. Um, tell her to send the other locations where those other meetings are taking place to this email address and say that Air Force General Ford Carter told her to send the email and have her put this number in the email." he said writing his service number on the small pad. "I don't know what other military hardware might be out there, but whatever it is, it's probably dangerous. If she needs additional funds or something, here's my personal email address."

Rally gave the info over to her ecstatic friend as Ford started the car and punched in the info about the directions into the laptop.

"Thanks Becky. I'll be careful." she said hanging up. "Who's this Trust she was taking about?"

"Very dangerous people. People I haven't found the location of yet, even with all the resources at my disposal." he muttered angrily as he kept typing.

"Worst than terrorist?"

"Wanted dead cover it?"

"Traitors. Great, people who sell out their country." she said sarcastically. "What else can you tell me?"

"Nothing. You want to know, join the Air Force or whatever branch you prefer and ask to get under my command." he said still typing.

"More classified stuff?"

"Telling you about those zats would be considered petty info." he said sitting back.

"Ouch. Let me guess, you're going to want me to stay here?"

"No. I don't have any back up." he said pulling forward and driving away. "And in many ways, you're a better shot than I am."

"What does that mean?"

"I am better at kill shots and rather good at taking out weapons with a shot. Like blowing off hammers or putting a hole in a barrel to keep it from firing, that sort of thing. But shooting off fingers, no. No where near as great as you. I tend to blow hands off since I like big guns, so….." he said pulling out into traffic.

"What do you want me to do? All I have is my CZ-75 and two clips….."

"Look behind you." he said after hitting a button.

The back seat, both the seat and the back part popped out and flipped over. Imbedded in them were weapons.

"Wow a PC-90! Those are hard to come by! A long barreled 44 magnum with a scope and speed loaders. Made better."

"Ouch."

"Is that one of those assembly required anti tank rifles?"

"Yep."

"Hmm, a twelve gauge shotgun. Variety of rounds. Some illegal."

"That M-60 in your basement is illegal. At least I think it is now…" he said trailing off in thought as she picked up the shotgun. "Got a M-80 in the trunk."

"Geez! I think I'll stick with this weapon."

"I'll drop you off outside the warehouse. If things go wrong, just shoot whoever you have to. Take out the weapons or their fingers and such. Try not to kill unless you have to. I'd like to interrogate them."

"What are you going to do?"

"Drive in, raise some hell and hope they surrender."

A few minutes later and excessively speeding, he pulled into the harbor area where there was lots of warehouses. People were about working in different ones, building boats and such. He stopped next to a warehouse that had several boats that were being stored. One up from them was the meeting place. She got out slowly as he opened the trunk.

"I'm not using…."

"The M-80? I know." he said opening a bag in the back and handing her a leather jacket. "You're a little smaller than Sam, but it will provide you the protection needed anyway."

"This thing is heavy. Feels like lead plates." she muttered putting it on anyway. "I'm not going to be able to move very fast…."

"I'm hoping you don't get shot at, but this will protect you from anything they shoot, even if it was an anti-tank round. Trust me." he said closing the trunk and climbing back in after closing his coat up completely.

"Anti-tank?!" she muttered as he sped off quickly. "Now I know how Bean feels, maybe."

"So you're telling me, these strange weapons will give me the greatest advantage over all of my competition?" a slightly bald but well build man asked as he sat on the hood of his armored white stretch limo while he was smoking a cigar. "And I'll I have to do is help your boss when he calls?"

The white suit he wore clashed with the four men he had working for him. They had on jeans and leather jackets. One of the guys was wearing a blue pin striped suit. His men were all carrying semi automatic weapons, just waiting for the word to spray ammo at the three men that stood in front of a couple of silver Lexus's. They had casual black suits on, no weapons showing. On the hood of the limo was the case with the zats. One zat was missing and being held by a tall red headed woman who was holding the missing zat. She had on a blue business suit and high heels to match. Very dark framed but thin glasses sat neatly on her nose as she nodded at the man.

"And you only want to give them to me for a few million dollars? Something about that doesn't float with me." he said flicking ashes off the edge of the car. "They look more like children's toys."

"I can assure you Mister Scythe." she said opening the weapon. "These are not play toys."

"A demonstration always helps." he said taking a puff as she aimed it at a box nearby.

The meeting was taking place in a warehouse that had several large yachts in it. Most of them were covered and needing lots of repair. Several large wooden boxes and other crates were littered about the place. A few were broken, probably by looters. One of the crates that was open on its side with packing popcorn didn't move as a electrical field enveloped it.

"Very interesting effect, but nothing happened. Looks like…."

"I'm not finished sir." she said lightly but with a slightly annoyed voice. "I merely fired it to show you the effect it produces, or I should say what it fires. I would use it on one of your men, but I doubt that would help relations and using it on one of my own men…."

"Wouldn't look good either. What would have been the effect had you shot one of my men?"

"The first shot merely stuns." she said firing at the box again. "The second and ever shot afterward will always have the same look. But the effect is different. Had that crate been alive, it would now be dead."

"Dead?"

"Very dead. Two shots always kill." she said firing once again. The crate disappeared surprising Scythe and his men. "The third shot needs no explanation."

"Incredible." he said getting up and tossing his cigar aside. "May I try?"

"Of course. The product wouldn't be a great sell unless the owner was pleased with its function. Just don't shoot anyone here."

He grunted in agreement and pointed it at another crate. Three shots and it was gone. He tried it on another and it disappeared.

"Very impressive. Does it send the object…"

"No. It completely vaporizes the object."

"As impressive as this all is, I have to ask, where did such a technology come from. This has to be from….out there." he said pointing above him. "Or some serious military hardware."

"I can assure you that such a weapon is not from out there. My boss has many of….the people on the hill in his pocket. Their wonderful, toys as you once stated them as, was a….pay off to keep him from killing one of them for a mistake they made. My boss has his hands, deeply in the American military hardware and science departments." she said as he put the weapon back in the case.

"Why our family? There's a few other's out there that….."

"Yes, we know about the other families. Really, I don't know why. My boss told me to sell them to you. He must know something that I don't."

"Probably my sense of honest business. At least in our particular trade. Double crossing a dealer or buyer results in a wars between families usually. I would rather not have that. So, your boss only wants four million for these and our cooperation if he needs help in the future?"

"That is all he ask."

"I have no particular love for the government, but I won't go fighting against it in a coup da….."

"My boss does not have any plans to attack Washington D.C. At least not in that regard. His plans are….more for a change of leadership, on a whole."

"Assassination…."

"Running for President."

"Ah. I am beginning to understand now. I think such a venture sound appealing." he said nodding to one of his men. As the guy was getting a case from the trunk. "How do you recharge these things?"

"They are capably of firing many shots before needing a recharge. Say, several hundred or more shots. If one quits working or more, let us know and we will exchange them."

"And if we would like more of these?"

"You only need to call."

"Tell your boss we'll be waiting." he said as the case was opened and she examined the cash.

"I will pass only the message." she said taking the case.

They all started back to their cars when the warehouse door exploded inward. Instantly they all sprang into action as bright blue lights came at them. They all aimed weapons at the vehicle as it clipped a support frame and spun to a stop with the driver side to them. Ford didn't get out of the car, instead he and the other's were watching as the 50 some odd foot yacht tilted over hit the concrete floor. Glass and wood shattered as it fell apart leaving a very damaged husk of the former floating beauty. Several liquids poured out of it pooling up where it landed. They turned their weapon to him as he opened the door and stepped out. He quickly felt the buzz of a Goa'uld, or more than one.

"So this is the Ford he told us about." the woman muttered pointing her nine as she stood up.

As the Mafia group started aiming their weapons he pulled his personal canons and pointed them. One at the group he knew to be the Trust and the other at the limo.

"General, right shotgun only. Track movement by white limo. Fire only if I'm fired on." he said quickly. Before they could say anything he spoke as a short gun that looked like a Uzi popped up just to the right of the hood in the fender. "I assume you Trust people know what my weapons can do so I'll just quickly explain to you idiots behind the limo what I can do. These pistols are anti-tank. The shotgun in the car uses fletching rounds. And can change to explosive slugs if need be."

(A.U. The shotgun the General Lee is using is the same one that James Bond's car used in Die Another Day.)

Scythe waved his men off as he got out of the car holding a large double-barreled shotgun.

"I don't care who you are mister. You're messing with the Chicago Mafia. Only complete fools mess with us. We have you heavily outnumbered. I suggest you drop your weapons and surrender and we might let you live long enough to walk out of here."

"This man has been a serious pain to us and our boss Mister Scythe. I suggest you leave here and let us deal with him."

"No one….." he began saying as he aimed the shotgun.

"That wasn't a suggestion Mister Scythe. He works for the government."

"That's right. I'm an a very important Air Force officer that is very friendly with the President of the United States. I also have some very high friends on my side. I was only coming for those zat guns." he said slowly pulling his hammers back. "But seeing as the Trust is here, I need them alive for interrogation."

He turned sharply to look back at the man with the shotgun, who with his car and men were at least twenty feet away.

"I don't give a damn about the Mafia. I've dealt with terrorist worse than you so I suggest you drop your weapons and toss that case your man was holding over this way and leave before I decide killing you is worth my time."

It was a very quiet stand off that lasted only three seconds. As Scythe gave a small nod to one of his men, Ford lifted his arm to cover his head. Semi auto fire erupted hitting the side of the car and him. The shotgun on the car fired behind him into the man that was still spraying ammo. His entire sternum erupted into red and the man next to him went down as his left side was hit. They both slammed back into the limo splattering blood. Gun fire erupted after that. The Lexus went down quickly as Ford put one round into the engine and one through the guy getting behind the wheel. The woman dropped her gun grabbing her hand as her trigger finger was blown off. She and the other two got down behind the car each holding their hands. Ford turned the other gun and fired several rounds of both guns. He heard a few loud grunts of pain and the sounds of bodily impacts from his shots. Then there was silence. He slowly lowered his arm and looked at the limo. He had put a large hole in the windshield and through the side window. All the men were dead, except he didn't see the double barreled gun or the guy in the white suit.

"I told you all to surrender." he muttered kneeling down to pick up his spend casings.

The sound of shoes clacking on the ground near the limo, which he expected, made him drop completely and roll under the car. There was a gun shot, but it wasn't from the shotgun. He got up quickly looked over the top to see Scythe holding his right hand which was missing a thumb. He reached into his coat pulling a revolver out but didn't get it to it as the shotgun on the General blasted him back several feet. Rally came running up with the shotgun ready.

"So much for a non bloody ending." she muttered looking at them and then at him as he put his guns away.

"Thanks for shooting that lady and her people."

"I couldn't see anything but a glimpse of the front of that limo." she said looking at the coat. "Are you okay?"

"Just fine." he said shaking himself slightly. Many bullets dropped off as she stepped back. "Can you get that case over there for me while I deal with that group?"

"Ugh. With what you're paying, fine." she said handing over the shotgun.

"Stand down General. Yellow alert only." he said patting the hood lightly before heading for the Lexus.

The gun went back into the fender as Rally was closing in on the case. One of the men stood up from behind the back of the car pointing a zat gun. Ford fired as he rolled to his left, which he realized was a mistake just after he did so. The guy died instantly as his head and chest took the full impact. Ford swung up to fire but she shot him twice with the zat gun. The gun clattered to the ground as he lost grip and tried to hold himself up. He heard Rally yell something and even fire off a round, but a hard kick to his head was too much. The last thing he heard was a zat gun fire again.

Mitchell and Teal'c came back to find the three still working. Lara was a quick study. Daniel was really impressed with how quickly she was beginning to understand Ancient. Sam was working under their console trying to rig up a program to make it readable in English or possibly download the system info to look at later. They weren't sure how much longer any of this was going to continue functioning. Power kept flickering on and off.

"Well, we looked around, but this place has been totally abandoned. They took everything including the kitchen sink." Mitchell said with a wave of his hand.

"They took the sink?" Carter asked with a strange expression.

"No." Teal'c stated.

"It was a figure of speech. We looked around finding nothing. All of the rooms were empty."

"Except for chairs and tables Colonel Mitchell."

"Well T, those are relatively easy to replace. A weapon or some piece of scientific equipment wouldn't be as easy. They took all that. Sure there was furniture in some of the rooms, but anything that would benefit us is all gone."

"Several computer systems were functional."

"True, but they flickered as much as these do."

"Indeed."

"I think the power trouble we're having is because of your exploring." Carter said. "When Weir and the others got to Atlantis, McKay noticed a massive drop in power as they began exploring the city. All the lights and systems started coming online. The failsafe kicked in before the city was destroyed and Atlantis rose from the ocean floor. I believe the same sort of system was used here. Unless someone is there in that area, the power shuts down to conserve energy."

"Nice idea. Kinda wish we had that sort of system. Would save on the electrical bill." Mitchell said.

She nodded as she got up.

"I'd really like to see those other systems, but I don't know how long this place will hold up on power." she said.

"We'll not explore that way anymore then. I'd rather us not get lost or stuck here in the dark. Just in case the place uses the last bit of energy to keep us in or something."

"I didn't see anything like that, but I agree." she said.

"Alright, so did you two find out anything yet?"

"Quite a bit actually." Daniel said pushing his glasses up. "Other than Lara is a quick study."

"Yes. I think this line talks about something to do with power output." she said pointing.

"It does, but I don't know what it is really saying. Too technical for me."

"A little out of my field." Lara said rubbing her chin.

"Can you two tell me what it says?" Carter asked.

"Unfortunately no." Daniel stated with a shake of his head. "Ford might be able to understand it."

"To complex." Lara said looking away a moment.

"Do we have enough power to try the Stone? No, scratch that, did you read enough to see if it is even safe to put the Stone in that slot to see what happens?" Mitchell asked.

"Power? I don't know." Daniel said.

"As for what will it do. I don't know. From what we gathered, you insert the Stone and type in a series of commands into the keyboard system on that command console a few feet away from where the Stone sets in." Lara said.

"Okay." Mitchell said rocking back and forth on his heels as he thought. "So, an example of what you said would be that we put batteries in the remote but that little car isn't going to do anything until we push the little lever."

"Crud, but a pretty good analogy." Carter said. "Not bad Cam."

"Yeah, Jack wouldn't have even gotten that far." Daniel said. "He would have given us that dumb look and said 'what?'."

"Indeed."

"Well, let's put the Stone back and see what it does."

They all went up there and seeing as everything else had responded to her so greatly, they had Lara put the Stone in the slot. The yellow blocks instantly lit up as did several of the consoles, including the one the group was behind. The main console brought up the Ancient keyboard and part of the floor just in front of the main console slide aside to bring up a three inch circular platform that glowed a very light blue hue. There was a power flicker, but everything stayed on.

"Okay, I didn't expect that." Daniel said.

"Nor did I. I didn't read anything in that computer that said this would happen." Lara said.

"What was suppose to happen?" Mitchell asked.

"Actually, it didn't say anything really." Daniel said.

They kept glancing around waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did.

"Looks like it's up to us do the next part. I'll get my laptop and see what I can find out."

"While you do that, I'm going to sit over her and eat." Mitchell said.

"So am I." Daniel said.

"Who's going to help me with translation problems?" she said as she unhooked the laptop.

"I will. Let the boys rest. They don't have the stamina we do." Lara said with a smile and wink only Sam saw.

"Yeah. I don't even know why they came along. We could have done this all ourselves." she said kneeling down to link up her system as she took off a panel.

"I think they are mocking us." Daniel said with his pack half open.

"Probably." Mitchell stated as he took a drink from his canteen. "All I know is I had cereal for breakfast so I'm really hungry right now."

"We didn't include Teal'c you know." Carter stated.

"Now they are being cruel." Daniel said as the two girls laughed after Teal'c nodded at them with a knowing smile.

"This why we need the General here. He keeps the women in line."

"Mitchell, you're digging yourself a hole, a deep one." Daniel said as the two got glared at. The glare turned into that look only woman can give. "Forget that, you dug a grave you can't get out of even if you ascended."

"Ouch." Mitchell said looking at the ground.

Carter was still kneeling on the ground with Lara next to her.

"He's right." Carter whispered. "Ford wouldn't let it go on this long."

"He that controlling?"

"No. Let's just say that we'd already have been past all this by now and none of this poking at each other would be happening."

"Ah, because he's…an Ancient as Daniel said."

"That and he has a lot of technical know how so he would have figured out what all that said. We'd probably already know how this stuff works and such."

She nodded.

"You know what Colonel, I'm hungry too."

"So am I. Let's take a break with them."

Ford awoke to feeling pain. He wasn't in a great position which he found out quickly seeing as he was lying on his right side with his right arm in the air and that wrist being pulled on. Something metal was around his wrist and there was something tugging it. He tugged back to hear a cry of pain from a female.

"That hurt! Why didn't you wake up when I was yelling at you?!"

"Huh?" Ford grunted out as he slowly sat up and moved into a sitting position. "Damn, my hand hurts. What the hell happened?"

"That zat thing hit you, twice! Why aren't you dead?! Or is it that it only works on certain people and animals?"

"I'm one of the few people you may ever come across that can take two hits. I'd rather not try three."

"What the hell sort of handcuffs are these things?" she said trying a hairpin in the lock again. "I've been at this for 20 minutes and I still haven't made the damn thing move the tumblers at all."

Ford shook off the stunned feeling as he glanced around. They were attached to a metal pole, about two inches thick. It was a dozen or so feet high and sticking out of the damaged boat. He looked down the pole to find it attached to several other poles that went further into the boat. They were attached under a T section, making getting out practically impossible unless they had a wrench or a metal cutting saw. Part of the T section went behind her making so that neither of them could go under the pipes to get free. The General was on his side, a large burn mark on the undercarriage. His coat and guns were on the floor as well near the General.

"Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she asked still trying to unlock the cuffs.

"Sounds….wait that's the General." he said then looked at his right wrist, tugging her.

"Hey!" she said tugging back. "My hand is still attached here!"

"Sorry. I'll get us off in a minute. Oh man, my watch is broken. Looks like they stepped on it."

"Here, I want loose, now." she said handing him the hair pin.

"I don't need that." he said trying to pull his wrist out. "That's strange, I can usually…..oh hell no. Did you see a key or…."

"No. I woke up lying on the floor with you. I saw them shoot you, I managed to shoot one of them, but she shot me with that zat thing. Only once as far as I can tell. Don't know anything beyond that. Can you unlock these with this…."

"No. These are my personal handcuffs."

"Personal?" she asked giving the cuffs a disgusted look.

"No! We don't do that role playing stuff! I got these cuffs back when I was…." he said shutting up quickly. "The reason the key hole is a inch thick is because they were designed to only open with the key that fits. You can't use a hairpin or anything like that. No key, no unlocking them. They are also designed to clamp down harder if you try to pull them off."

"Great! I don't have my cell phone to call for help seeing as they took everything off me including my hidden pistol! From the looks of it, they searched you to."

"Everything I need is practically in that coat. Including the key. All we have to do is get to my coat." he said seeing his pockets inside out. He noticed hers were to.

"And how do we do that genius? Unless you can break though these pipes, we aren't moving."

He reached up and was slightly able to get the long pole to bend, but without being able to hold on better, he only noticeably bent it.

"Okay. Can't do that."

"Any other ideas? You seem to be a nice guy, but I'd rather sleep in my own bed instead of in your arms to keep warm tonight. Not to mention I'd rather have some personal privacy…."

"Same here." he said looking around. "Without any light, I can't see in the boat. Did you look?"

"Can't feel anything inside. If only May was here…"

"Why? Despite our predicament, I'm nice company ain't I?"

"Ha, ha. May always has hidden explosives.." she said seeing his eyes widen and turn away from her. "What are you doing?"

"Because of her, I started doing this years ago." he said popping the heel off his right foot. He looked at the pole and their cuffs. "Okay this isn't going to work."

"Why not?" she asked as he put the heel back on.

"Probably blow our hands off. It's C-5. Much more bang. Besides, I have a better idea." he said smacking the boot against the ground.

"You have a hidden knife in your boot." she said seeing the blade pop out.

"I actually haven't tried this before. First time for everything." he said looking at the pole then his foot.

"What are you…." she began as he swung his leg up and made a quick swipe.

Just above his head, the pole fell off clanging on the ground.

"You can put your legs behind your head can't you?"

"Yep. Can do the splits too. Sam can as well. Can't put her legs behind her head yet." he said untying the boot slowly with his left hand. "Not that she is trying."

"Sam?"

"My wife." he said removing the boot. "Move over here."

"Excuse me?"

"Just, sit on my lap or at least sit next to me. That way when I try to cut that T bar section, your hand is over here with mine so I don't cut you."

She slowly moved over and sat next to him, not on him. A couple of good swings and the pipe cut in half. A few more swings and he took a chunk out, also breaking the blade. He set the boot aside and grabbed the pole, telling her where to grab. On three, they both yanked and bent the bar back several inches and then got up free of the poles. After getting his boot back on, which she complained about seeing she wanted free right now and he said his foot was cold so she had to wait, they went over to his coat. Her coat and guns were tossed aside like his near the car. She got her stuff back first and then as he was searching the coat, she was putting her holster back on.

"Oh man, we are in so much trouble." he said with extreme despair.

"What's wrong?"

"Well, I can't put my coat on."

"Neither can I." she said rolling her eyes. "So what?"

"This coat like the one you had on, which I see is over there hanging on the General's back tire, is practically missile proof. I wouldn't survive the impact, but the coat, well, the lining inside would."

She stuttered a bit before exclaiming a confused what.

"Classified. They took the damn key."

"We're stuck together?!" she exclaimed yanking the cuff. She pulled her gun and he grabbed it before she could fire.

"Trust me on this. Dipping them in lava to melt them off wouldn't work. A bullet won't do anything."

"What the hell sort of metal is this?!" she said putting the gun away.

"Same thing as this sword and coat." he said putting his guns back in his holsters.

"If this metal is so powerful and stuff, why didn't they take the coat? Hell, why didn't they take your guns if they are so powerful?!"

"Probably because it is easy to track down. It is very, very rare. You have a better chance at winning the lottery than ever seeing this metal anywhere. That and they probably knew that I'd come with after them with everything the Air Force has, which could include a nuke. General, damage report?"

"All systems fully functional." a very low tone and emotionless computer voice said.

"Great." he said seeing her astonished look. "The car is computerized, you knew that."

"Yeah, but I didn't know the thing could talk."

"He doesn't. Not like you think." he said as they went around. "Think of it like a messenger service system, such as calling in on your credit card."

"What are we doing?"

"Pushing him back on his wheels. Get ready General. Roll down the window please." he said reaching down to grab the window frame as it rolled down.

"What do you mean push this over?! This is a 69 Dodge Charger! They were built….."

"With real metal at that time. I know. Just help, he'll do the rest. Go General."

There was a whooshing sound as the General initiated the right side ski mode. At the same time, they pulled up and he landed back on all four tires.

"How did we do that?"

"Ski mode, automatically makes him drive on two wheels. In this case, we used it to get him on four." he said as the passenger door opened. He tossed his coat in along with the one she had borrowed. "Toss your coat in the back."

"If we are getting stuck together, I want to drive."

"Not possible." he said after she tossed it in.

"Either give me the keys or we stay here."

"What part of not possible didn't you get?"

She held out her left hand and crossed her chest with the other. Then looked down and quickly shoved their conjoined hands away.

"As stupid as this is going to sound, the General only recognizes a few drivers as being able to drive him. You're not one of them. It's that DNA system like my guns. On a further note, how can you drive if we're cuffed like this?"

She groaned and growled before waving him at the car.

While Sam was now working on seeing what she could find out with her laptop, Teal'c and Mitchell went top side to see why Ford hadn't showed up. That was going on half an hour now. Really, Ford should have already arrived by now or at least sent some message along of why he wasn't there already. Sam was worried, but she didn't say anything. The other's noticed and they were all worried too. Daniel and Lara were still sitting and eating, mostly because they couldn't stop talking. Sam didn't say anything and it wasn't really a distraction for her. Daniel rarely talked to women anymore, aside from her. So it was interesting to watch him out of the corner of her eye. They were talking like really old friends. She was telling different adventured while he was doing the same. Somewhere along the line, they became competitive.

"I bet if you found information about a powerful relic or some ancient artifact, whether it is ancient as in Ancient or ancient as in old, and it was in some old and extremely large temple, I'd bet my guns I'd beat you to it."

"Oh please. I've been in so many temples and old ruins on other planets, you'd get lost before you even stepped into the door. If you could even find it."

"If it wasn't for me, you would have never found that hidden ship in China! Had you and the rest of your team showed up a day later, I would have been long gone and found the ship for myself. And then after I published my findings…."

"Which the Air Force would have….."

"I have people I could contact right now and they could put the word out about the existence of the Stargate! I could even provide proof and before the next day, your ever so secret program wouldn't be a secret anymore. They couldn't stop me in time."

"You aren't the first person to try and tell the world our secret."

"But I know I would succeed." she said adamantly. "Your Air Force is only good in your own country. You don't have as much pull in the other countries of the world despite being the great super power."

"We aren't the only country that knows about the gate Lara. They have agents out there that also keep the public from finding out…."

"And I still say I know people they couldn't get hold of. I have many more friends out there than you do."

"Ouch. Just because I became a laughing stock of the archeological community back then doesn't mean that all my friends from before rejected me."

"God you can feel the sexual tension in the air." Mitchell said as he and Teal'c walked into the room.

"How long have you two been standing there listening?" Carter asked looking up from her laptop.

"Oh a few minutes now. I figured I'd come break it up before a fight really started, or clothes started flying. Personally, I'm thinking more the latter than the first." he said getting glares from the two.

"So, where is he?" she asked.

"According to Walter, who got it from the Colonel on the Prometheus, he lost the zats and is currently out trying to get them from the people that took them."

"He had his car beamed to Chicago didn't he?"

"Oh yeah. Probably out joy riding right now. Anything on your end yet?"

"Still trying to get the translation program to figure it out. Could be awhile since I'm trying to also stabilize the power system. They used a ZPM at one time, but switched to some backup system that is somewhere underground. From what I could gather of the map of this place, the underground power plant can be reached from the third level. And seems to still be accessible."

"Maybe we should check it out. If we can figure out what the problem is and fix it." Daniel said getting up.

"The power can be restored enough for us to use the Stone." Lara said getting up as well.

"What are we going to use the Stone on anyway? Are we just going to try and change some object or something like that?" Mitchell asked as Carter was finishing what she did so she could take the laptop with them.

"If we can get this running, we might be able to figure out how they used it. And then it might help us in the fight with the Ori." she said as she got up.

"Works for me. Any help will be better than none."

"I got a map here we can follow. Can't say how long the power will remain going though so keep your flashlights ready." Carter said.

"Who are these Ori really?" Lara asked as they started off.

They weren't on a joy ride though. Ford wasn't having much trouble driving. She knew when to shift right. It was just that he was more use to driving with both hands on the wheel which he couldn't do right at the moment. Before they left, he showed he wasn't lying by allowing her to sit in the drivers seat and try starting him. She got an instant and loud, 'Access Denied'. Currently, they were just driving around while he thought.

"I didn't really notice the fuel gauge." she said trying to locate it.

"That set of bars down here on the lower right." he said almost pointing.

"That's a lot of glowing bars."

"More glow means more fuel."

"Only three of the…." she said as she tried to count.

"Twenty five bars. My favorite number. The General can go quite a long drive before he runs out of fuel."

"I want your carburetor. The price of fuel these days…."

"He doesn't run on gas. At least not what you can buy normally. Liquid Hydrogen." he said as she was starting to ask.

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Can be if it's not used right." he said taking a turn and getting honked at for it. "Don't know his problem. I wasn't doing anything illegal."

"This is Chicago. Not a small town like were you are from."

He shrugged.

"So, what do we do? Especially about this?" she asked holding up her handcuffed hand.

"I don't know yet. The other key isn't with me."

"It's back in Colorado?"

"Yeah. Best plan I can come up with is that I take you home, you get whatever you need for a semi long trip and we head for that state. I drive fast enough, we could make it there in maybe two days. I'd just have to first call and let work know what I'd be doing and why."

"We could take a plane and get there sooner. Not that I am saying that I'm going with you either way. And what would be the point of me getting anything from home since I can't change my top and I sure don't want to strip in front of you."

"What else do you want me to do?" he asked pulling into a parking lot and stopping. "These don't come off. My robot dog could do it but he's not here. And I'm not cutting my hand off. Nor yours."

"Robot dog?"

He sighed as he started the car and backed out quickly, nearly hitting traffic. They took off quickly down the road avoiding traffic and running through a red light.

"I got a better idea. I'm going to find a nice dark alley and then we can just…."

Ford forgot about what he was saying as a large supped up Dodge Ram slammed into his side. The General's computer automatically compensated to keep them from running off the road as he yelled auto pilot. The Ram slammed into their side again as Ford was getting off her lap.

"What the hell?!" he yelled taking back over.

"They're going for it again!" she exclaimed.

Ford slammed the brakes just in time making the Ram go past where they just were. He went to activate the shot gun system when the General was rear ended by another large Dodge Ram. The other Ram had gotten into their lane as they were hit making the front end slam into it, essentially boxing the General Lee in. Other cars stopped or left the road quickly, some crashing others causing traffic jams as they continued down the road.

Ford was still reeling from the jerking to his neck and from the pain of hitting his head on the steering wheel when she grabbed his hair pulling his head up. A couple guys in the back of the Ram were aiming assault rifles of some sort at them. Bullets bounced off as he took her hand out of his hair.

"Don't do that again. We're safe, at the moment." he said popping his neck.

"I forgot the car was bullet proof. Um, is it rocket proof?"

His quickly pushed a button and the shotgun system came out. The guy was just aiming the rocket and firing as the shotguns fired. The Ram exploded sending flames across the two vehicles behind it. Ford quickly moved out of the way as the burning truck started flipping end over end as it came back down. The other Ram was damaged but came after them.

"Must have really pissed off the Trust or something." he said accessing the map system on one of the small screens.

"Your head is bleeding. And I don't think it was this Trust." she said looking through her pockets.

"I'm fine. There's napkins in the glove compartment. Why don't you think it was the Trust?" he said taking the napkin.

"Well, for one thing, I recognized the guys you just blew up. Small time bounties I was thinking of going after." she said looking out the back window. "They're gaining."

"I'm letting them. I want them to follow me."

"Why?! They want to kill us! More me than you probably!"

"Because I need to know if they are really after you, or hired to come after me. Whatever the case, they seem to care little for innocent life and might come after my family in retaliation for blowing their friends up!" he said as the truck rammed them.

"Can you please keep ahead of them at least! I don't need whiplash!"

"Sorry. Call the police for me. I have an idea. Worked once before for me, though it was a cliff instead of water I used."

Several minutes of weaving through traffic and avoiding getting rammed several times, Ford turned off near a dock area. The truck continued to follow as he was getting closer to the edge of the concrete near the water.

"You aren't going to drive into the water are you?!"

"We could, but no." he said yanking the wheel.

He had slowed down enough for the truck to get close enough to ram them again. As they almost hit, he spun the General around, slowing down as the truck passed them. They started to slow down and turn the truck around as the General was completing a 360 turn. Before they could turn fully around, Ford plowed into the side of the truck and shoved them off into the water. Several cop cars and a S.W.A.T. team came down the road they just raced down as he spun back around and took off past them.

"Now, where was I?"

"Just, take me home please."

Lara was surprised at what and who the Ori were. After everything that Daniel told her, she figured there had to be some catch with the worship or die thing. She mentioned that Christians believe that everyone should believe in Jesus Christ, but that they didn't force it on others. When they started to go into further talks about religion, the others told them to change the conversation. Lights came on and off in different areas, some stayed on though most were starting to have trouble. The lower level was pretty trashed by what looked like some sort of quake that went through the complex at one time. They had to jump a three foot chasm in one area. Carter figured that it was a few dozen feet deep at most and only a branch off the main crack. The structural damage was pretty bad making them have to go through several holes in a few walls because of cave ins in the hallways. As they got near the end of the area where the map said the power systems were, they had to use their lights to see.

"The door doesn't work, not surprising." she muttered as Mitchell and Teal'c went ahead and pried it open. "Be careful guys."

"You know what, I think something is against the door. It's budging slowly, but I can't get it to move without help." Mitchell said wiggling his tired fingers.

"Indeed. From the sound, I believe a large rock is against the door."

Though kinda cramped, they all got their fingers in and pulled. It took a minute but they got them apart. There was a rock against the door that had fallen from the ceiling but left just enough room for them to get around it. Machinery that was obviously Ancient in origin was in the large cavern. Carter was just looking on in awe as she realized what it all was. Though most of it was damaged, some was still functioning which is why power was still on above them, but barely.

"Geothermal energy! Incredible!"

"Looks pretty bad down here." Mitchell said with a grimace at the smell. "Guess the quake that happened hit here pretty hard."

"Indeed." Teal'c said as he pointed at a large crack near them. "I can see molten rock moving below."

"Well, that explains the heat." Daniel said as he glanced around with his flashlight. "And the smell."

"We'd have to bring back a volcanologist to see if it's safe to even try fixing this equipment." Carter said still amazed.

"And then hopefully reverse engineer it enough to use for our own purposes, either on Earth or some other planet." Mitchell said.

"Yeah." Carter said.

"As fascinating as this is, I wasn't much for science in this regard. Can you do anything at this moment?" Lara asked.

"Not at this moment, no. I wouldn't even know where to begin." Carter said.

"Well then, let's go call the SGC. Seeing as we can't do anything else as you said. Besides that, we need a lot more light." Mitchell said.

Conversations varied on the way back, some of them on wondering about how Ford was doing and if he was actually not here because he was having fun talking to someone who liked guns and could related better to them. Mitchell made a comment about how things were turning out well for once as they started back into the main room. They all stopped when they heard the sound of metal footsteps. Several Jaffa in full armor came into the room as they quick backed out and hid. About ten entered the room and started looking at everything.

"This isn't good." Mitchell muttered.

"I guess those are the Jaffa you mentioned." Lara said.

"Yeah. T?"

"I am uncertain of who they own allegiance. Though, as O'Neill would say, I would guess they serve Ba'al."

"Considering he's about the only Goa'uld we really know left." Dnaiel said.

"So, what are we going to do?" Lara asked. "They outnumber us, but I've fought almost as many before and they had full auto machine guns."

"She has a point. We've done better against far worse." Mitchell said.

"I know it is far fetched, but what if they are Free Jaffa here looking around?" Carter asked mostly looking at Teal'c.

"It is possible. I shall endeavor to…" he said heading for the doorway.

"Wait!" Mitchell said holding up a hand. "One of them is coming this way."

As the Jaffa was getting close enough to see through the doorway, Mitchell stepped out holding his weapon on him.

"That's far enough."

The other Jaffa turned as the rest of SG-1 came out with their weapons also pointed.

"Drop your weapons. We have you outnumbered." one of the Jaffa's at the other side of the room near the Stone said.

"How about you tell us who you're working for?" Mitchell asked.

"Lord Ba'al." the Jaffa said.

"Figures. How about you just let us leave and you forget we were even here?" he asked seeing the Jaffa shake his head seconds later. "Didn't think so."

Lara saw one of the Jaffa reaching for something in his cloak. He along with two other Jaffa when down from shots to the head before the others started firing back. SG-1 just managed to get back into the hallway as several energy blast hit the wall where they were.

"Why did you shoot?!" Mitchell asked as he returned fire with Carter.

"One of them was reaching for what I looked like a grenade!"

"They only use stun grenades!" Daniel said ducking as the wall was hit above them.

"I didn't know that!"

"You know, you don't appreciate what you have until it isn't here!" Mitchell exclaimed taking another Jaffa out.

"You mean my walking shield." Carter said ducking back into the room as the wall was hit near her.

"Yeah!" he said reloading as Daniel and Teal'c shot past the two.

"Any moment, he's going to walk through that door and shoot them all." Daniel said.

Mitchell glanced out seeing as they weren't being fired upon at the moment. One of the Jaffa's was talking into a communication device as more Jaffa came into the room.

"Um, no, just more reinforcements." he said ducking back in. "Plan?"

"We could hide out in some of the darker areas of this place and pick them off." Carter said as she glanced out a moment.

"Anyone else?" Mitchell asked.

"We could surrender." Daniel suggested. When he got looked at. "You asked."

"I just heard something strange behind us." Lara said looking into the darkness.

They backed out quickly as they asked her what it sounded like. She said it kinda had a whoosh like sound, but not like the Stargate. She was trying to remember what it sounded like exactly while trying to duplicate it with her voice. Carter had a pretty good idea of what she might have heard and started to say it when they all stopped and heard the sound of metal rolling on the ground. The looked back to see no one following them and glanced around with their lights.

"Something just hit my foot…" Mitchell was saying when a bright light knocked them all out.

"We have located and secured the facility Lord Ba'al. And SG-1."

Ford pulled into her driveway and then did a quick scan. The house was in a suburban area of Illinois with the road on either side of the house. There was another house next door to hers and a few more up from that. Houses were across the street from there on either side. It was getting towards the evening so many of the houses had lights on.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking for danger. No one is home or on the property. Let's go."

He parked in front of the garage door that lead down into the sub garage section. It was built just away from the house and all in concrete. This room held all her special and somewhat illegal weapons, plus a lot of May's explosives. A doorway lead upstairs to go into the house. From there it lead to her room, May's room, another guest room which had a computer and a few other things plus the way up into the attic. Downstairs was the living room, kitchen and dining room. They went around and in through the front door. She turned off the alarm system and tossed her coat into the recliner.

"I could really use a shower, but that's not going to happen." she muttered as they went into the kitchen.

"Got anything to drink other than water?"

"No beer if that's…."

"I don't drink. Occasional wine with Sam, otherwise no. I meant maybe a pop or…"

"Got Diet Pepsi." she said grabbing a can for him and her.

"Thanks."

They both sat at the kitchen table drinking.

"Where's you phone?"

"Don't you have a cell phone?"

"In my coat, which is in the back seat." he stated and then looked at the table shaking his head. "That I should have put in my pocket."

They got up and she gave him the phone, dialing the number for him as he told her it.

"Don't ever call this number, because you could get into a lot of trouble and so could…oh yes, this is General Carter. Put me through to Walter please." he said then told them his service number as it was requested. "Hey Walter, I got a bit of a problem here, is my team okay without me so far?"

"Yes General." Walter said updating him of what they knew so far.

"Good to know they can do things without me. Um, you know those handcuffs of mine? Well, um….the key was taken."

"I take it you're handcuffed to someone then General?"

"Yeah, and I can't get them off."

"How can I help?"

"Um, just call my team and let them know I'm kinda stuck at the moment, but don't tell them about the handcuff thing. Just say I'm really busy and I'll explain it when they get back to base. I'm going to have to drive all the way back."

"We could beam you back General."

"Hadn't really thought about it that way Walter. She did accidentally see the car beamed in…." he was saying as the door was knocked on.

Rally forgot for a moment that she was still handcuffed and went for the front door, dragging him away from the wall. He lost his balance and fell to the floor taking her with. The phone bounced off the floor and dangled back and forth.

"General? General?!"

"I'm fine Walter. I'll call you back from the car." he said as he was helping her up.

He hung up the phone as she muttered something about it possibly being May that had knocked since the door was locked and she heard someone come in. Ford turned around muttering that the footsteps didn't sound like a little girls.

"No Miss Vincent. I'm not your cute little partner."

Rally pointed her CZ-75 quickly. There was a blondish man with a Desert Eagle pointed at them. Ford had no clue who it was and the guy didn't have any familiarly to him, but Rally was startled enough he could tell she knew who he was.

"I know of your reputation Miss Vincent. Yes, you could easily take my trigger finger off, or blow my thumb off, maybe even shoot a bullet down the barrel and keep me from shooting you, but you wouldn't be able to stop my friend in the car out there from shooting you through that window."

They both turned to see a red laser light coming through the window and on her right shoulder. It moved to Ford's head then back to her. She un-cocked her gun and set it on the table sliding it away towards him.

"I don't really know who you are mister…."

"Brigadier General Ford Carter, United States Air Force. Here on National Security business. Personal friend of the Henry Hayes. Even have him on speed dial in my car phone. You can leave and I'll overlook this…."

"Do I look like I give a fuck who you are!" he yelled pointing the gun at Ford now. "I don't care if you were god almighty! This bitch got my brother killed!"

"I didn't kill your brother! He had a bounty on him that I cashed in on!" she shouted. "I knew who he was and figured he would be out on the streets the next day anyway!"

"He was killed three days later in prison for admitting to the police a bunch of his illegal activities!"

"Sounds like it's his fault for talking then. Not hers." Ford said.

"My brother was a complete and total asshole that never could keep his mouth shut, but he was still family! He wouldn't even be dead if she hadn't brought him in!"

"If you're here for revenge then why in the hell haven't you shot me yet?!" she yelled.

"I so want to bitch!" he said walking up quickly and putting the gun barrel close to her head. "But I was the only one in the family other than our dearly departed mother who cared about him. Father never really cared and sent me to come get you. He wants to talk."

"And if I refuse? Then you kill me?"

"No." he said taking a few steps back as he waved at the window.

The red light disappeared and seconds later the door opened. A dark haired and needing a shave man came in holding a modified nine mill with silencer and laser sight. He pointed it at them as blondie put his Eagle away.

"Was that you that sent those two trucks after us earlier?"

"Yes. That was me." he said proudly. His face turned to anger as he continued. "I was hoping those idiots could just kill you both and make my job easier. Instead they failed, which made me have to carry out fathers plan."

"So, what are you going to do with me then?"

"Despite the fact I have no problem killing anyone that gets in my way, I don't like to get my hands dirty with blood. And I know you'll just fight back anyway when we get you free of him, so, I hired a helping hand that I know you can't stop." he said pulling a cell from his pocket and dialing. "Yeah, I'm ready. The door is open."

"Killing me wouldn't be a good idea. I have many friends in high places. Places you can't even begin…."

"My family has friends in places you can't even get to General!" he said with a smirk. "You won't be the first army or whatever branch it was person that we've killed. The family came after us and even had friends in high places too, but they all died of, unfortunate accidents. So you see, you have nothing. Be nice and you may walk away alive."

"I have more than you'll ever know." he said eyeing the window as he saw a car park near the sideway. "You haven't noticed, but I have a weapon."

The two looked at him more scrutinizingly as he lifted his hands holding them out. The guy then noticed a second belt about the one looped through his pants.

"Take it out slowly, or I will shoot her."

Ford pulled the gun on his right side, and muttered trust me quietly to her as he set it on the table slowly.

"Why did you give tell them you had a gun? That was our only advantage?"

"I'd like to live. I do have a family."

"So you're just going to let them take me?!" she exclaimed as they heard the front door open.

Both men turned to look as a tall dark haired man walked through the front door. Blondie turned back quickly as his partner went down.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention, I have two of these." he said waving the left hand holding the other gun. "Don't even go for it. Rally, who is this person anyway?"

She grabbed her gun off the table along with his as she explained.

"His brother's name was Andy. This is Cain, the older brother in a family that is very closely associated with the Mob in Chicago. Normally I don't go after them, but his brother was stupid and trying to rip off my car. I didn't even know about the bounty until I took him in, so it's his own fault for running into me!"

"Shooting my partner here was nothing General." he said with a casual laugh as he looked at the front door. "I really had thought about letting you go, but now, no. Hey, for another 100k, would you be willing to gut this guy for me?"

Rally lowered her weapon as did Ford when Bean came around the corner smoking.

"Oh great, it's you again." he muttered dropping the butt on the floor and crushing it.

"Hey, that's my floor your burning Bean! And why in the hell are you working for this guy?!"

He pulled his shades off slowly.

"Our deal was I never run drugs again. I'm still honoring that deal Vincent. His father hired me to ensure you make it to him in one piece."

"What if I shoot him?" Ford asked keeping the gun now pointed at Cain.

"Not my problem."

"Hey! My father won't pay you anything if I'm dead!"

"You're not part of the contract." he said leaning into the guys face with a sneer. "I told him there was a very good possibility Rally would kill you and your idiot friends before I got here. He only shrugged and told me to bring her if she wasn't dead."

"I'm not going Bean! I'll shoot you if I have to!" she said aiming her weapon at him.

"Besides, we're stuck together and she's helping me with a National Security issue." Ford said holding up his handcuffed hand. "I know you don't have much compunction about killing, and neither do I in some ways, but attacking me isn't a good idea. He says he has friends, mine are better and much, much higher."

Bean closed his eyes for a moment then put his shades back on.

"You're coat won't stop my bullets. How about I pay you to not do this deal? Double what they offered."

"No way! I'll give you triple if you stick a knife in him right now so we can leave!" Cain shouted.

"I'll give you a tax free million, again." Ford stated.

"I'll give you three million!" Cain shouted.

Bean reached into his coat.

"How high can you actually go on paying him? Seriously?"

"More than you can ever go…" Cain was shouting out until Ford yelled over him.

"I'm a multi billionaire! Bean?"

He pulled his hand out and opened a cell phone.

"This is the Roadbuster. I'm canceling my contract and forfeiting my payment. You're son Cain is here, he can give you the details." he said then hung up the phone.

"What?!" Cain exclaimed as Bean put the phone away and tossed a card on the table.

"Emails on the back." Bean said then walked out.

Rally was so stunned she barely noticed him leave. Cain reached into his shirt pocket as his cell went off. There was a rather loud argument as Cain told his father was had went down, practically word for word seeing as the two heard Cain's father yell for him to explain why Bean backed out of a contract and to tell him everything that happened without exaggerations. His father hung up after Cain was finished and told him to wait until he called back. Ford sat down in the kitchen chair as did Rally while he kept his gun on the guy. It was rather quiet until they heard the door open again.

"Hey Rally! I'm back and I…." a somewhat highly pitched female voice was exclaiming when it suddenly stopped.

Cain went to grab her when he dropped to the ground screaming in pain, clutching his right upper leg.

"Rally?"

"In here." she said as Cain started spouting curses.

"You're lucky. I could have killed you, but I think keeping you alive is a better bet." Ford said as he and Rally walked over to Cain. "You won't bleed to death, yet."

"Look at the hole you put in my wall!" she said as Ford told him to shut up.

He didn't stop and started to yell more, that was until Ford put his boot on the guys mouth and told him to be quiet or else he'd step on his throat next.

"I'll pay for it." he said putting his gun away as he bent over and pulled the cell phone and gun from Cain.

"Hey, I remember you!" May said dropping her bags on the table and looking at him. "You look much better without that large coat! And what a nice looking ass! Rally, did you finally…"

"No!" she said blushing as Ford stood up quickly, also blushing.

"I'm married!" he said waving his ring finger.

"Doesn't stop most men." she said seeing the handcuffs. "How long have you been hooked together?"

"Several hours now." she muttered yanking on it in a huff.

"Ohh! So, how big is he?"

"May!" they both exclaimed as she laughed.

"What? It's a perfectly legit question. If I was chained to him, I would look. Did you see her…."

"Shut up!" they both exclaimed again as she winced.

"Something must have happened because you're both blushing bad enough you could have painted your faces red."

"Nothing happened May! Thankfully I only had to pee once and he didn't watch. What are we waiting for?" she asked quickly changing the conversation as May started to look ready with more questions.

"The phone call…" he said as the phone rang.

The conversation was brief as he told the father who he was and then held the phone to Cain's head. Cain was crying in pain and probably from the yelling he was getting from his father. Most of what was heard had something to do with do not mess with this man, referring to Ford. Apparently the father did have friends in high places, but they wouldn't back him on doing things to Ford. Once it hung up, Ford put the cell phone back.

"You can still walk, so you better leave while I still feel merciful. I'll be keeping a watch on Rally and her friends, so, don't come back or send anyone."

The man hobbled out quickly and they heard a car drive off moments later.

"I'm going to guess by the looks of this lock, you lost the key and can't get free from each other." May said as she looked at the handcuffs.

"They are made of a special metal that is practically indestructible." Ford said as he and Rally went back into the kitchen.

A wicked smile came to May's face as the two sat down again and sighed.

"What else can go wrong today?" Rally muttered as she dropped her head onto the table lightly.

"Who knows." Ford muttered.

"You have a spare key, but it isn't here is it?"

"Colorado." the two said.

"That's a long drive or a somewhat short plane ride. And neither of you really smell all that great. How are you going to work out the showering problem?" she asked with a wicked look in her eyes.

"May!" Rally exclaimed.

Back at the SGC, Walter had informed Landry that Ford was, stuck and couldn't make it back at the moment. Landry shook his head and had him dial the planet so they could contact SG-1. After several attempts to get through to them, they sent a U.A.V. It showed about a dozen or more Jaffa near the opening in the cliff, that was until the U.A.V. was shot down. After they closed the gate, Landry was about to have Walter call Ford back and get a team ready when the gate became active.

"Unscheduled off world activation!"

"Close the Iris."

It closed as guards got into position.

"Maybe SG-1 is trying to get back." Landry muttered. "Any I.D.C. yet?"

"It's Bra'taks sir."

"Let him in. Maybe he knows something."

The Iris dropped and seconds later Bra'tak came through.

"Master Bra'tak."

"General Landry." he said with a nod and then looked around. "Where is Teal'c and the rest of SG-1?"

"Currently in trouble off world. Well, except for Ford who's stuck in Chicago. What's wrong?"

"I have learned recently that Ba'al has found the location of a possible Ancient weapon system. I have the planets Stargate address here." he said pulling a paper from his robes. "I am unsure of what sort of weapon it may be, but it wouldn't be a good thing in his hands."

"Unfortunately your timing is bad Bra'tak." Landry said looking at the address. "SG-1 went to this planet hours ago to look for something Ancient related. We had just tried to contact them moment ago when you dialed in."

"Did they respond?"

"No. A U.A.V. flying over the area found several Jaffa outside a opening in a cliff face, but we couldn't get much more info because it was shot down."

"That is most unfortunate. Are you planning a rescue mission?"

"We were about to when you dialed in. Walter, call Ford back and tell him he's needed. Get another team ready to go."

"I wish to help General Landry."

"You've gotten taller." Ford said as she was about to probably make another comment.

"Yes. Granny was able to find herbs to help me grow again! Me and Ken are planning to have a child next year!" May said happily as she bounced.

"That's good…." Ford began saying when his watch, which he replaced earlier, beeped at him. "General's calling. It's the SGC."

"SGC?" May asked confused.

"Trust me May, you don't want to know." she said walking out the door with him quickly.

"What's the problem Walter?" he asked activating a screen.

"We got a situation General. Your team is in trouble. You're needed back here right away." Walter said on the screen.

Rally stayed just out of view on purpose as instructed from what he told her on the way to the car.

"Damn. Well, got no choice then. Tell the Prometheus to stand by. Rally, close the door." he said as he hung up.

"Wait a minute!" she exclaimed as he started the car.

"I don't have time to argue." he said pulling her in and making the door close automatically.

She barely got her seat belt on as he turned on the lights and drove off quickly. May came outside yelling at Rally, but they didn't stop. So she pulled her cell and called.

"I can't really talk right now May. Just have the police come by and clean things up for me. I'll be back later and with money to pay for your help. I can't tell you anything else without exposing you to extreme danger." she said then hung up. "It's going to take more than a day even at high speeds to get to Colorado, so how…."

"General, this is Colonel Pendergast. Stand by for transport." a voice said through the com in the dash.

"No wait! I'm not…." Ford started yelling when the disappeared off the thankfully and currently barren street that was headed for the main highway.

Rally screamed, loudly. They were beamed onto the flight deck which had a rather nice view of space outside, that they were currently headed for still. Which is why she screamed, partially the reason anyway. Ford slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel putting it into a uncontrolled spin by accident. People on the deck were going crazy as they contacted the bridge or tried to think of something to do. The hanger door was coming down slowly, but they were getting closer and closer. Ford managed to get control back just in time as they slid right up to the edge, driver side facing space. The mirror was pressing against the shield making it visible to everyone. Ford quickly pulled a lever and made the tires shift so he could drive sideways away, thankfully just in time too seeing as the door would have caught on the mirror and probably tipped the car onto its side.

"That, was close."

He looked out the front windshield and waved slightly as crew started running up.

"You okay….great, she fainted." he said sighing.

"General, you okay?" one of the men asked.

"Oh, just fine. Have Pendergast beam me and the car down the street a ways so I can drive up and get to the SGC."

"Sorry General, can't do that. We need to beam you down into the SGC right now. Ba'al has your team. Or so is suspected."

"Son of a…..of all of the days." he said getting out on her side and picking her up.

"We can take her…."

He waved his cuffed hand.

"You can't take it off General?"

"Don't ask." he said telling them to beam the car down into his hanger at Peterson Air Force base.

Landry was in the briefing room talking to another SG team with Bra'tak when Ford showed up. And a girl in his arms. This got several stares.

"I'll explain later." he said standing her up. "Give me that nine and your spare clips."

"General?"

"Give them here please." he said trying to shake her awake. "Wake up Rally."

"General, would you like to tell me why you brought a teenage girl into this facility without permission?" Landry asked as he walked up.

"We're hooked together until I can find my spare key. And she's not a teenager." he said as she was starting to wake up. "We'll go through first and then you can send, hey Master Bra'tak…."

He nodded but did little else other than looked confused.

"You can send a team or teams through after that. Trust me Hank, this lady is on par with my skills in guns, probably better in many ways. And she's actually twenty something and has had to kill before to save herself." he said as Hank kept starting to ask questions. "Thanks for the gun."

"You're not even ready to go off world." Landry said seeing his current attire.

"Can't change since we're like this. I'll be fine with my guns."

"Why did you need my gun General?" the SG officer asked. "You have yours."

"She'll need it." he said dragging her down the stairs as she woke up and followed.

"Where are we and what the hell is going on?!"

"Take this." he said giving the gun and extra clips to her. "We can get unhooked later, right now I really need to save my friends and wife."

"Extra pay?"

"Yeah sure, whatever you want. Walter…"

"Dialing now." he said hearing the urgency in Ford's voice, the tone of the order and seeing the worry in his face.

"General, this isn't a good idea…."

"I know what I'm doing. She's already signed the paper, which is in my car." he said loading his two guns again. "Just wait for our signal."

The wormhole engaged as it locked into place. Walter signaled them that it was safe and that it didn't show any signs of Jaffa around. Rally was extremely reluctant to even go near the gate, so he picked her up over his shoulder and walked through at the amazement of the others. He set her down as they got through, thankfully she didn't get sick, but she was freezing.

"God I feel extremely naked without my coat." he said glancing around with his weapons at ready.

"We're on another planet." she said in amazement.

"Yeah, I know. Aliens are real too." he said walking over to the M.A.L.P. "Walter, we arrived safely."

"We see you General."

"I don't see anyone or hear anything…."

The screen changed to static on them suddenly.

"What happened? Were they attacked?" Landry asked.

"I'm not sure sir. I'm not getting any readings on the M.A.L.P."

Landry had the other team down below go through to see what had happened, after a few smoke grenades were tossed first. Once they got through and looked around, they reported back that their was no sign of any weapons fire, no sign of the General or the girl with him, and no sign of the M.A.L.P. They even went and looked at the pillar, plus inside the cave, finding no one around. There was plenty of evidence showing SG-1 had been there plus a lot of Jaffa, but at the moment, it was totally barren of anyone but them.

SG-1 had awoken just over an hour ago and no one had came to see them, or interrogate them. They also had no idea how long they had been out either. They were in a large room with a energy shield over the large doorway. No one was outside it and no one even came when they called a few times. At the moment they were just sitting there waiting, keeping silent since they could do little else. Their equipment and weapons were taken away like always, though their canteens and food they had was left near the doorway. Strange, but they didn't touch it at the moment thinking it was probably drugged. They continued to sit in silence waiting till someone came.

"Someone is approaching." Teal'c said as he stood up.

"Took them long enough." Daniel muttered also getting up.

The field dropped as a Jaffa activated the controls on the wall. They were surprised as two people walked in and the field was activated again.

"I guess that means you aren't here with a team to rescue us?" Mitchell asked as he sat back down.

"There was a plan, until me, Rally and the M.A.L.P. was beamed up to this ship and then we got zatted before we could shoot back." Ford said as he and Rally sat down against the wall. "Rally, my team mates. Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Doctor Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, Lara Croft and finally, my wife, Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter. Everyone, this is Rally."

Carter walked over and sat on his left with a questioning look as Rally muttered a brief hello. Rally was sitting with her knees drawn up and her arms around her legs, her head looking into her lap. From Ford's point of view, Daniel and Lara were sitting against the right wall several feet away. Teal'c and Mitchell were against the left wall, also several feet away.

"So, were you questioned, because we awoke in here and no one has been to see us for at least an hour before you showed up." Daniel asked.

"Nope." Ford said shaking his head. "I felt the zat and was barely awake as we were picked up, told not to fight back or else. Our weapons and watches were taken and then after she woke up, we were brought here. I tried asking a few questions but they didn't say anything. At least they didn't hit me, or her."

"Why is she here?" Carter asked.

"Haven't gotten my spare key yet." he muttered leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "So, what did you all find out?"

"Well, we…." Daniel began when Carter stopped him.

"Well, start talking." she said pointing at his handcuffed hand. "How did this happen to you?"

"Yeah, I'd like to know that as well. This is, you, we are talking about." Mitchell said also curious.

Ford sighed, loudly. And then told them just about everything that had happened. Certain personal aspects with Rally he left out on purpose, such as most of the conversation with May.

"That explains the rust stains on your clothes." Carter said picking at his shirt. The BDU coat was missing and he wasn't actually sure when he lost it. "And the othert fluids. Can you get us out of here?"

"No, they removed the hidden explosives in my heels. At least they put my heels back on so I could walk right."

"Nothing hidden anywhere?" Mitchell asked.

"Nope."

"If May was here we'd get out." Rally said looking up as she leaned back and sighed. "Not that I think it will do any good, but.."

She flicked her wrist and the small .25 caliber gun came out into her right hand.

"They didn't search her?" Daniel asked.

"They didn't see anything to look for. Her clothes are tight enough on her she couldn't hide a knife in her boot. Much less anywhere else, but that gun is small enough to keep hidden because her shirt is just fluffy enough to keep it from being seen." Ford said.

"Why didn't you have a gun like that hidden on you?" Daniel asked.

"One, my shirt is obviously to tight and it would show. Two, I couldn't use that gun if I really wanted to since my finger is to big to even try pulling the trigger. Three, I couldn't kill Ba'al if I shot him dead in the head with it, much less a Jaffa."

"Put it away just in case." Carter said. "If anything it could provide a distraction later if needed."

"I've realized I'm not having some weird dream and this is reality. Transporters do work for beaming up everything, including organic matter." Rally said glaring at Ford.

"Hey, you said you didn't want to know more. So I started lying on purpose."

"Well then, I want the truth! I'd rather know what might happen to me next."

"Daniel…" Ford said with a wave of his other hand.

"What?"

"You're the story man for this team. Tell her everything."

Daniel started with the story of the gate like he did with others in the past and told about the Goa'uld, the Asguard, just in case Thor came along or something and beamed them out. A few of their other allies and about some of their enemies. Especially their current one, Ba'al and the Ori. Plus finding the Lost City of Atlantis and the Wraith. Though he left out a few details that he told Ford to explain.

"Many, many years ago, the Atlantians, or Alterans, were experimenting on genetics. Which is where the Immortals came into play. I'm one of them which is why I came back from the dead after being shot twice by that zat gun. What you don't know, and we'll forgo explaining how I got here, is that I was born and on Atlantis those many, many years ago. Technically, I am so old I don't know my age. But seeing as most of getting to where I am today involved a but of time traveling, my real age is……um…how old am I again?"

Mitchell snorted with a laugh. Daniel chuckled. Teal'c smiled and Lara laughed while saying,

"Don't you know your age? Don't you know Sam?"

"Well, it's fifty something. He was thirty three when he showed up, then we found out later he was actually twenty years older than that, but by then….um.." she said trying to figure it out as he stopped her.

"My age isn't important. Point is, I'm not completely human and Teal'c here isn't human at all. He's Jaffa, so you've already met two aliens. Not all of them are bad."

"And here I kept thinking you were 30 something."

"Technically I am since I had to grow up all over again."

"Forget I asked. I have a question. We've been captured, right?"

"Yeah." Daniel said.

"Why are you all pretty much laid back about it?"

The group laughed lightly. Lara didn't really get it either.

"We've been captured many times, more than any other team has since the Stargate program began almost ten years ago." Carter said. "For us, it's not really anything new. Though I have to admit I am getting kinda worried. We aren't usually left alone this long."

"What's by the door?" Ford asked.

"Apparently our bags were looked through and for some reason, they left us our MRE's and water." Daniel said. "Even put my chocolate bars and the few things you cooked that we each had in our bags in here too."

"Okay. I know I'm hungry, and you all are probably are too, so…."

"We have no way to ascertain if our supplies have been poisoned or drugged." Teal'c stated. "Until now."

"Wait, what if it is poisoned? Won't that hurt or kill you?" Rally asked as it was set before him.

"I'll feel it, but my body will fight it off. Unless they spiked it with cyanide in which case I won't feel it, I'll just die and then come back in several minutes to an hour." he said looking over an MRE. "Still air tight."

He tried a few different items, which was mostly the things he cooked seeing as they were in tupper like containers. Water tasted right and so did his stuff. And it was small portions.

"You might as well try it with me Lara."

"What? Why would I do that? If it is poisoned, I don't feel like dying."

"Well, if you did, you'd come back."

"Wait a minute." Daniel said rather quickly. "You're not saying that she is.."

"Like me? Yes I am. You can either die while still young and fit or wait till later in life and maybe quite a bit older. And probably a lot more scars."

"I can't be Immortal." she said placing a hand on her chest and shaking her head. "I've had broken bones and other scrapes and bruises that have taken time to heal. I still have this scratch from bumping into a damaged wall in the dark back in that facility."

"How do you know she's possibly one General?" Mitchell asked.

"I've felt a weird buzz every since she showed up and been around her. I remember feeling the same thing way back in China, but I didn't think about it at the time. Well?"

"What the hell. Nothing else is surprising anymore." Lara said trying something.

"Okay, that has to be poisoned." he said setting aside one of the MRE's.

"What makes you say that?" Carter said picking it up and reading the pouch. "Smoked turkey."

"Because it taste and smells like cigarettes." he said taking another small drink. "That didn't help. Where's that chocolate bar of yours Daniel?"

"Whoa. Yeah, that does smell like cigarettes." she said tossing it aside.

"It's been like twenty minutes General." Mitchell said.

"I feel just fine. Though I still have a bad taste in my mouth from that thing." he said pointing at the tossed aside pouch of bad turkey.

They all got something and shared a lot as Rally asked other questions, mostly weapon related.

"Oh, a rail gun! I gotta see that!"

"You'd have to come work for us to be able to even get partial access." Carter said.

"I have an idea. You sell you gun shop to me, everything included. Okay, not everything." he said seeing her eyebrows raise. "The car doesn't count, neither does the furniture and small things like that. Say, one, two million. You'll have to tell me the worth later. Then you come work with us."

Teal'c and Lara were the only ones that didn't choke on their food.

"Say what?" Carter asked.

"General, no offense, but she barely looks like she's even out of her teens." Mitchell said.

"I'm 24!"

"My point exactly. She's way to young to be in the field…."

"She could do it. She's a better shot than I am in some ways, but I didn't mean going off world work."

"Okay, then what would she do?" Daniel asked.

"Almost a month ago, no over a month ago. Um, what's his first name again, ah, Sergeant Daren Dochterman, the Quartermaster for the base dealing with weapons told me he was going to retire for family reasons. Another child on the way. Um, I think he still has two weeks till that takes place. Rally fits the bill perfectly. He'd be able to show her the ropes before he leaves."

Everyone but Ford looked at Rally, scrutinizingly.

"What about May?"

"Sorry, but no. I'm afraid she'd hit on everyone in the base despite being married. Either that or not conform to my rules and get herself in trouble because she couldn't keep her trap shut about sex." he said shaking his head. "And the problem with the other two possible outcomes. One she blows the base up when she plays with our alien bombs and nukes, or worse, makes a better naquada bomb than Sam can."

"Excuse me?" Carter asked offended.

"May knows just about everything dealing with explosives Colonel. I have yet to see her not figure out the newest explosive. She creates her own fireworks. Doesn't help the fact her husband is a former wanted man who knows how to built any explosive device as long as he has the materials. I'd be willing to bet if those two were given the plans to this so called new nuke bomb…" she said suddenly stopping. "Um, why does the government built these things?"

"To fight alien bad guys in their ships in space. Or to blow up Stargate's if we have to. Which is why they are called gate busters." Mitchell said.

"May could move here with you, but no way is she working for us. Too much competition and her mouth…" he said shaking his head again.

"She probably wouldn't keep it a very guarded secret. Her mouth has gotten her into trouble many times. I'd have to pay Becky off first…"

"We did that already."

"Oh right. I'd get to play with all those different alien weapons then, right?"

"Well, not play, but close enough."

"Deal!" she said shaking his hand happily.

"Ford…."

"She's already signed the papers, which are in the General. Which I left on the Prometheus. She's much better with weapons than I am. At least in the modifying and building part."

"I'm quite sure I'm a better marksman than you are."

"I can hit a target with that personal cannon, three miles out. The people who trained me couldn't actually come up with a new classification for my extremely exceptional shooting prowess."

"General Carter rarely if ever misses his targets." Teal'c stated.

"Hmm…"

"Ah, finally, someone is coming." Lara said as she turned to look at the door.

The field dropped and a couple Jaffa entered with zats in their hands, though ready, not pointed. Ba'al came in, in some black leather like robe, his hands at his sides.

"Ah, SG-1. And two other's I don't know. I didn't realize the SGC decided to add new members." he said with his gloating smile.

"Nice to see you too Ba'al. What do you want?" Ford asked tiredly.

"So nice of you to finally join us General. I have to admit I was really surprised when I captured your team…"

"Not my team. He's team leader."

Mitchell waved his hand.

"Hmm. Interesting command structure seeing as I am quite sure your ranking system states you outrank him."

"Can we just get to the point?" he asked while standing up.

Ba'al looked down seeing the two still connected, but he didn't say anything about it. He even waved off the two Jaffa as everyone else stood up.

"Yes. When you weren't with them, I was quite surprised. Given SG-1's reputation, you all barely spilt up on missions. You're here now and that's all that matters to me." he said rubbing his hands together. "As much as it would be easy to have you all killed right here and now, I have to admit, you Tauri do serve a important purpose. If it wasn't for you gaining the Asguard as allies, I wouldn't have that wonderful beaming technology."

"You got that from Anubis." Daniel stated.

"Who got it from the Asguard Doctor Jackson. I've just recently learned about the Ancient research facility down on the planet. Though I can read Ancient, I cannot get the systems down there to work for me. Which is why you are all here."

"You knew we were coming here." Carter said.

"Yes, I did." he said smugly. "As I was saying, I could kill you all, but that wouldn't fit into my plans. So I offer this deal, you help me down on the planet, and I will let you go home safely. No interrogations, no torture."

"How can you expect me to believe that?" Ford asked.

"I would give you my word, but I know it would do no good. Nothing I could say or do would make you trust me." he said reaching into a pocket and pulling some necklace rope like object out. "Colonel Carter."

She caught the object as it was tossed at her.

"I give you the choice, either you can put it on by yourself and keep your dignity, or else I can have my guards shoot you and then I can do it myself."

Carter looked at it seeing it was a necklace of some sort, but about an inch thick.

"Let me guess, it's an explosive." she said.

"Very good Colonel. With that I know I will get your esteemed General's help. Put it on." he said demandingly as he gestured at the two behind him. They raised their zats pointing them at her.

"Do it Sam." Ford said.

She did so, reluctantly. When the two ends came together, it lit up in various places. At least it wasn't tight, though it kinda itched.

"I shouldn't have to tell you what will happen if any of you try anything. Shall we go?"

Ford started out while the other's began to sit down.

"No, I mean for all of you to be there. Call it an assurance of compliance General."

"You do know we are more dangerous together?" he said as they all walked down the hallway.

"Yes. But as you Tauri say, I have the upper hand. If my life sign becomes extinguished, Colonel Carter's is next."

They all beamed down, with two Jaffa, just outside the cave. Several more Jaffa beamed down with the M.A.L.P. and all their stuff on it. Ba'al told them to go to the gate and keep a watch on it. If any Tauri came through, they were to tell them that SG-1 was currently, helping him at the moment and afterward they would be allowed to returned unharmed. And to also tell them the consequences of what would happen if they were to try and interfere. They went inside, one Jaffa in front with Ba'al in the middle of the group and then the other Jaffa in the back. Other than a several staff blast here and there plus bullet casings, a couple of damaged screens from the bullets and a few damaged spots on the wall, everything still seemed to be working. Power was still getting to the Stone which was still in its recess.

"This place has seen better days." Ford muttered as the two Jaffa went further in to look around.

Ba'al waved a hand toward the Stone.

"Well Sam, let's hear what you've learned so far. Unless you want me to read all this first Ba'al?" he said waving a hand at a flickering screen.

"Yes, let's hear what you have learned Colonel."

Though she was a little reluctant, she told them what she found out along with Daniel and Lara pitching in from what they were able to read. Though she left out the fact that all the geothermal machines weren't functioning. She just said a few looked damaged, but still functioning, which is why they had power. A large quake had came through at some time damaging the inside of the facility and some of the machinery, but it would all work from what her laptop said. He could see in her eyes that she was lying about something and figured it was about the power systems.

"Hmm, geothermal power. Nice idea." he said thinking. "A theory was that the Philosophers Stone did take a lot of energy to use."

Ford walked up to the main console and looked it over. Daniel, Lara and Ba'al also stood by him looking it over.

"I could be guessing at a lot of this."

"Guess right, for Colonel Carter's sake."

"Daniel, help me out here."

Several minutes of them talking and Daniel pointing our a few things here and there, the two finally had a pretty good idea of how everything worked.

"Okay, let's see what happens."

A few buttons and such made the system light up considerably. Light poured up from the bottom and into the Stone. A bright red color appeared on it that shaded to various hues. A very small tremor shook the place, but it was just noticeable. The two Jaffa came back thinking there was trouble, but stopped when Ba'al waved them to stand guard at the door.

"That wasn't a good thing." Lara muttered.

"Been in a few underground quakes I take it?" Daniel asked.

"More than a few."

"Well, as far as I can tell, it's all ready to go. We have power, not a whole lot, but enough to do something. This small screen seems to be telling me that power is building up for usage. And I'm guessing from this screen that if you wanted certain things made, you'd have to supply some of the raw material needed." Ford said pointing things out. "What is it you wanted made?"

Ba'al laughed lightly.

"I will be taking over from here General." he said waving them aside.

They all backed up as the two Jaffa came down with the zats pointed at them. One of the Jaffa handed Ba'al a device which he used to call the ship. Moments later, several crates were beamed down next to the platform.

"Are we allowed to go?" Rally asked.

Ba'al turned around as he had the two Jaffa open the crates.

"Yes, I did say you could go back safely. And as surprising as this may be to you, you are free to go." he said waving at the doorway.

"And this?" Carter asked pointing at the necklace.

"One of the Jaffa at the gate has a device that will shut it off." he said picking up the communicator and telling the Jaffa at the gate that SG-1 was leaving to go home.

Ba'al was actually helping one of the Jaffa unload the crates while the other one was to take them back to the top.

"Why can't we stay to see if it even works?" Ford asked.

"Hmm, I don't see why not." Ba'al said activating the system.

Deep down past those three levels, drills and other machinery powered up to gather and divert power to the needed systems and Stone back up top as per the programming instructions. But not all the systems were totally functioning anymore, which Carter purposely lied about. Those machines that didn't work anymore didn't activate the fail safes to stop the excess heat and lava from coming up. With those systems down, the overload was too great and it sent a lot of power up top into the buffers. The cave flooded within seconds as lava erupted in rapidly and continued to pour in, kinda like when the Titanic hit the iceberg. The Stone glowed brightly and the items he placed nearby where engulfed in that light.

Then things went wrong as the whole room shook bad enough they all fell to the floor. A massive large crack split the room in half, by about a couple of inches, going right through the machine. The Stone bounced out of its recess and onto the floor as the system erupted into small explosions and fire. It was total chaos as the room continued to shake. The other consoles died or exploded. Whatever it was that Ba'al wanted created was created but fell into the growing crevice, Ba'al falling with it as he tried to grab it. Ford almost ripped Rally's arm from it's socket, not to mention her wrist as he rushed over to Sam. She had saw Ba'al fall in and started to panic. Though it burned her neck and wretched it slightly, he had ripped the necklace off and tossed it into the hole as quickly as possible. No explosion followed and they didn't stay to find out why. Lara saw the Stone and grabbed it off the floor before following. Teal'c picked up the fallen zat before running with them. Several large cracks appeared in the cliff face as they came running out quickly.

The Jaffa at the gate were having trouble standing as the area continued to shake from the massive quake that was taking place deep under the ground. They turned when they saw SG-1 running up.

"Where's Lord Ba'al?!" one of the Jaffa asked as they ran up.

"Dead." Teal'c stated loudly.

Teal'c shot the other Jaffa before he could get his staff weapon up in time. Everyone else dropped or scattered as staff blast came at them. Teal'c tossed his zat at Daniel as he grabbed the dropped staff weapon. Mitchell had managed to get to the MA.L.P. and got a couple of PC-90's. A few staff blast hit the M.A.L.P. as he ran to the other side for cover. Sam managed to get on the other side quickly and took the extra weapon.

Ford and Rally were both staying low to the ground seeing as they were pretty much sitting ducks. One of the Jaffa's close to the two saw them on the ground. He swung his staff weapon towards them but ended up dropping to the ground as he lost balance. He got to his knees and went to fire at them when he dropped the weapon grabbing his left eye. Teal'c took him out quickly and then diverted his aim to another target.

"Nice shot Rally."

"Thanks." she said putting the small gun away.

The two got up quickly and grabbed what they could with the others off the damaged M.A.L.P. Seeing as the others had taken out the Jaffa, they didn't have to help shoot anything.

"Daniel, dial us home!" Mitchell yelled as he got ready with the G.D.O.

"One of us is missing." Teal'c stated.

"Lara's been hit!" Carter said rushing over to where she lay on the ground.

"Figures." Ford muttered as he ran up. "Here, take my guns, her guns and her pack. I'll get her."

"We need to leave, like now people! There's a big volcano brewing!" Mitchell yelled.

They all looked back towards the former facility to see smoke and lava bellowing into the air. Ford quickly got Lara over his shoulder and did the same to a protesting Rally. Daniel went through first followed by Carter, then Mitchell and Teal'c. Ford and the two on his shoulder coming in last.

"Close the Iris! We need a medical team!" Mitchell yelled after Ford came through and ran down the ramp.

The Iris closed and seconds later they heard something hit the Iris. Only after the gate shut down did everyone relax.

"What happened?" Reynolds asked as he entered the room.

Mitchell and Teal'c was informing him of what happened as the medical team entered.

"Bring her here General. Set her down gently." the doctor said as she was bringing over a stretcher.

With help Lara was placed on the stretcher. Rally he set down next, to which she hit him in the arm. He ignored it while picking the Stone off the ground that dropped from Lara's hand.

"She's still conscious, but I don't know how long." the doctor said as she started to try and listen to Lara's heart.

Lara's hand shot up quickly grabbing Ford by his shirt bring him down to her somewhat blood covered face. She muttered something that only Ford heard, to which he nodded.

"I can do that." she said then let go.

"I've lost her heartbeat! I need a crash…" the doctor began yelling.

"No. She said don't." Ford said spinning the doctor around. "Just leave her and help the others."

"But…."

"That's an order."

SG-1 was now all in the infirmary and was still there even after an hour. K-9 had came down and managed to do something magnetically to unlock the cuffs. They were all in different beds being treated for bruises and scraps. The doctor wanted them all in their for observation for the night, just in case. Especially after hearing about the food being given to them anyway. Though Ba'al was letting them go home, he never did say if he didn't poison or drug the food. Plus they didn't have any idea what Ba'al was trying to create slash did create with the Philosophers Stone. Ford was left alone sitting in a chair next to Lara's stretcher.

Rally was asleep in a bed of her own. She had a few pulled muscles in her arm, plus some small amount of tearing in her rotary cup in her shoulder and a sprained wrist. Not to mention some bruises and cuts here and there. At first when they brought her in and she was being looked at, she was extremely restless, mostly from the pain. After getting drugged up like everyone else, she still wasn't able to sleep despite the sleeping aid that was injected into her line. Ford figured out what it was after seeing her keep reaching under her pillow for something she thought was suppose to be there. He managed to retrieve her CZ-75, emptied it and put in under her pillow. She quieted down quickly after that, though Ford got quite a few looks from everyone in the place.

Sam walked over as Ford sat back down with coffee in his hand.

"The doctor really wants to look at her."

"Tough." he said taking a drink. "Uh oh."

"What's…"

Ford didn't get the coffee cup out of his face in time as he sneezed. Thankfully it was his cold coffee, unfortunately, he dumped the contents all over himself. Lara breathed in deeply and sat up quickly feeling just under her right breast and her back.

"Oh my god. I'm alive." she exclaimed as the doctor came out.

"Told ya." Ford said setting the empty cup aside. "You make it sound like I was lying."

Ford left to get cleaned up as the doctor came over to exam her anyway.

Part of Lara really wanted to stay and help Daniel, go off world and such, but she had a few other places on Earth she wanted to look at before coming back. She was allowed to take the Stone back with her since the system it went with was destroyed and now it was basically a useless paperweight, in a sense.

A few days later Rally went home to tidy up and close up shop. May wasn't all that thrilled with moving to another state, but since Rally said she was moving there to work with or without her, she and Ken agreed to go. Becky wasn't to thrilled with loosing Rally and neither was the police force, well certain members anyway. She wasn't able to tell them exactly what she was really doing other than being in charge of everything weapon related at a Air Force controlled facility in Colorado. Misty, a friend of Rally's and May's, stayed behind with Becky to work with her. A few weeks later, Rally had moved into a new house with Ken and May, learned the ropes at work real quickly not to mention reorganized the whole armory to be much better and easier to run. And became the new gun instructor to allow Ford more time to do other things. A competition was held one day to see who was the better marksman. She won with small arms, mostly because she emptied her clips faster. With the other weapons, it kinda went both ways. In the end though, she had more wins than loses. Ford conceded to her better skills, though Sam could see it was reluctantly.