Author's Note: Contains extremely minor spoilers for "Sateda."
SGA SGA SGA SGA
Lorne set all thoughts of Anna aside as soon as he stepped through the gate. Up until that point, he'd worried if she would be okay when he left. Now, he left her in Colonel Caldwell's capable hands, knowing the Daedalus commander understood Anna's struggle better than anyone else.
This planet must be getting old, he mused as his team fanned out behind Sheppard. Ronon had been shot here, and Brandt's team was missing. Coming back for what amounted to the third time stung. It meant that they weren't as effective as they should have been on their first time visit.
They avoided the path to the village, choosing to allow Ronon to track the boot prints of Brandt and his team. The Satedan appeared calm, but Lorne knew he had to be angry beneath that patient hunter's exterior. That was one thing he admired about the big guy. When it came down to business, Ronon knew how to get the job done. And they had returned in the daytime, which made things somewhat easier. For now.
When Ronon growled, Lorne turned from where he covered the teams' six. "That good?"
"I lost them." Ronon knelt in the middle of a mud patch, glaring at the ground. "Their tracks were clear until now. There's so many, I don't know which ones to follow. One pair of prints leads back to the gate."
Sheppard looked around. "That must have been when Brandt radioed in to warn us. He said he was heading back for his team."
Ronon stood. "It looks like the tracks lead back to the village."
"En masse?" McKay asked.
"Yeah, en masse." Ronon glared as if the answer had been obvious. Lorne had to agree with him. "Sheppard, I don't think our men escaped this ambush without being hurt. But I don't see any signs of anyone being dragged away."
Lorne let his men continue the guard duty. "Which only means they were carried off, not dragged."
Sheppard nodded. "Lorne's right." He also eyed the terrain around them, which consisted of a stream and forest. "Okay. Let's go back to the village."
Lorne's team continued to watch the way they'd come, content to allow Sheppard to take the lead as they crept toward civilization. Lorne knew what that responsibility felt like. He'd hunted for Sheppard and the rest of them too many times to count. For now, he liked not being in command.
As they neared the village, things got hairy. Ronon whipped his head toward the west-or what Lorne figured to be the west-his gun out and already set to kill. Lorne and his men responded in kind, closing around Teyla and McKay even though those two had proven their worth in a fight long ago. McKay still managed to look frightened, and Teyla pushed her way out of the middle.
Sheppard joined Ronon. "What is it?"
"I heard something."
Lorne had learned to never underestimate Ronon's Spidey sense or hearing. His gaze went to the trees, and he noticed the way the branches moved. "Sir?" When Sheppard turned, he motioned with his eyes.
Sheppard understood. He touched Ronon and, with vague hand signals behind Ronon's and McKay's backs, gave them instructions. Lorne nodded again and spread the command to split up to his men. Just as he finished the command signals, a red beam jumped out of the forest. It missed him, but he dove anyway and landed hard on his shoulder. Seconds later, he came up firing his P90.
The fight was intense but quick. Ronon managed to take out two of the staff-wielding attackers, and Teyla finished off a third. Lorne and his men dispatched the other two, but not before one well-aimed blast grazed Reed's arm. Lorne pulled him out of the way before further damage was done.
Regrouping, Lorne pulled a pressure bandage from his TAC vest and wrapped it around the wound. He glanced at Sheppard. "We must be getting close."
"I agree."
"Close?" McKay had already started into his post-battle panic. "You call that close? I was almost incinerated."
"Yeah?" Lorne asked, a bit too irritated by Reed's injury to care about his tongue. "Then why don't you have a mark on you?"
"That doesn't matter." McKay held up a finger and would have continued, but Sheppard intervened.
"Let's get moving." Sheppard left the scientist gaping in the path.
Lorne followed the colonel, grateful that someone could shut McKay up. He respected the scientist, but he didn't like him. A bit further down the path, Sheppard held up a fist, and the entourage paused. This time, McKay shared the middle with Reed. A few minutes later, Sheppard motioned them forward. They found Brandt's team inside a free-standing cage. A black man rose quickly. "Colonel Sheppard! Major Lorne!"
Sheppard walked over to them, clearly noticing the absence of Captain Brandt. "Sergeant, where's Brandt?"
"He was taken a few minutes ago by those wannabe Jaffa." Sergeant Gibson motioned further down along the path. "They said something about taking him to see his goddess."
Lorne straightened, and he stared at Sheppard. He could see that the colonel had the same thought. Brandt carried the ATA gene, and Nephthys must have discovered that. Lorne sighed. "Well, that answers that question."
"Yeah." Sheppard eyed him as if trying to figure out his thoughts. "No, Major, we're not trying to take Nephthys out. We're here to get our men back."
"I'm aware of that, Sir."
Ronon, however, had no qualms about questioning Sheppard. "That's never stopped you before." He motioned Gibson and the other two men away from the door of the cage and used his gun to blow the lock away.
"Right now, we're here to get Brandt." Sheppard thought for a moment. "Major, head back to the gate with your team and Brandt's men, here. We'll go find Brandt and try to get him out."
"Yes, Sir." Lorne accepted the order even though everything within him wanted to accompany Sheppard. Suddenly, Anna encroached on his mission. If they took out Nephthys, they could help Anna more than any psychologist ever would. Rather than argue, he motioned his men ahead of him. "Alright, let's go."
Sheppard stopped him briefly. "Hold down the fort at the gate. We'll radio you when we head your way."
"Yes, Sir," Lorne said again. Sheppard watched him go, impressed. The man never questioned the order even when Sheppard knew he probably wanted to go of the reservation and kill a certain snake. Then, again, Lorne had always been one of the most controlled men on the base. He suspected it would take something fairly severe to cause the major to lose control.
Their trip into the village passed in silence. None of the "wannabe Jaffa," as Gibson had called them, jumped out of the trees or from behind the homes in the village. Just past the village, however, an ancient castle hovered over an idyllic lake. To Sheppard's mind, it resembled pictures of Highland castles that Beckett liked to study. That castle would be the perfect place for Nephthys to set up her base while on this planet.
The castle even had a gate. Sheppard crouched behind a low wall, studying the way men patrolled the wall from above. While this planet still used bows and arrows, previous experience had taught Rodney just how much a pain in the rear that arrows could be. A few moments of study, however, revealed that only two men guarded the gate. Sheppard caught Ronon's eye and pointed to one man. Then, he set his P90 to shoot only once and abruptly took out the second guard. Ronon's blast sent the first man tumbling to his death.
"Let's go." Sheppard jumped up and ran to the wall, knowing the team was behind him. Just outside the gate, which remained open, he flattened himself to the wall. No guards patrolled the inside of the gate, leaving the castle open it infiltration. Nephthys must only visit occasionally, or she really didn't have a huge power base. Either way, it worked for Sheppard and his team.
Once inside, it was just a matter of following the creepy Goa'uld voice without being discovered. Upstairs, in what Sheppard would call the master suite, they saw light pouring out of the door. Leaving McKay and Teyla to cover their six, he and Ronon crept up the stairs and to the door.
The room glowed with an overabundance of candles. A woman draped in a see-through gown sauntered around Brandt, clearly examining him. She smiled at what she saw. "My Jaffa tell me that you have what I seek." Her voice echoed on the walls.
"I do?" Brandt tried to play dumb, but it didn't work.
The woman smiled seductively and began to run her hands over him. "Yes." She paused for dramatic effect, an overused tactic of the Goa'uld. "You see, I have been fascinated by your kind for many years. Your abilities with this gene you carry could benefit me greatly."
"Gene?" Brandt was trying, but his voice had climbed an octave. Even though he probably didn't know Nephthys from Apophis, he still understood that a Goa'uld interested in his genes was a very bad thing.
The woman whirled. "Don't try to lie to me! I am Nephthys, your goddess." A moment later, she calmed and returned to running her hands over Brandt's shoulders, her body moving alluringly. "Join me." She smiled seductively into Brandt's face. "I can reward you in ways you can only imagine now."
Sheppard and Ronon exchanged glances, both sickened by the sight of a snake seducing one of their men no matter how attractive the host body. As Sheppard watched, he thought that the host resembled Anna. She had long dark hair like Anna, though the resemblance stopped there. Anna wasn't given to extravagant displays of her body the way this woman-snake-clearly was. He met Ronon's eyes again, this time giving him signals for taking out the guards in the room.
Before he could finish, the woman kissed Brandt. Sheppard cringed. What a position! The woman was beautiful, and any healthy man would find it difficult to refuse such a bold advance no matter what kind of creature lived inside the body. And Sheppard really didn't fancy watching one of his men play tonsil hockey with a Goa'uld. He raised his 9mm, trying to get a bead on the snake's head.
Brandt responded to the kiss momentarily, and that was all Nephthys needed. Both Brandt and the woman stiffened, and then the woman fell in a heap at his feet. He drew his shoulders up to his full height, held up his head haughtily, and examined his hands. Then, he stepped over the body of the woman, kicking it in contempt as he did so. "Get rid of it." His voice had changed, and Sheppard's heart sank. He lowered the 9mm as two men, unseen from the doorway, stepped forward to collect the body. As they did so, Brandt-Nephthys picked up a Goa'uld hand device and slipped his right arm into it. The orange gem at the center of it began to glow, and Brandt's eyes lit up with perverse pleasure.
He and Ronon didn't stick around to watch the disposal of the dead woman. Instead, they hurried downstairs and out the front door before Nephthys's guards figured out they were there. The ramifications of having a Goa'uld in one of Atlantis's soldier's heads ran through his mind as he hurried his team toward the gate. A short distance away, he touched his radio. "Major, dial it up."
"Yes, Sir." Lorne's voice came over the radio as the first staff weapon blast shot over their heads.
"Make it quick!" Sheppard turned to fire toward the origin of the blasts. "They know we're here!"
At the gate, Lorne stood next to the event horizon ushering his team and the remainder of Brandt's team through. Ronon, Teyla, and McKay ran through the wormhole, leaving Sheppard and Lorne on the planet.
Lorne eyed him as men ran from the trees. "Brandt?"
Sheppard shook his head just as they jumped through the wormhole.
~TBC~
