Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)

Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course

AN: Hope you like this; working out how Spike could get on board without anyone from the Lucian Alliance noticing him wasn't easy, but I think I came up with something that got the job done...

AN 2: For clarification, I'll be focusing more on Spike's actions on board the Odyssey at this point; Mitchell's actions during his attempt to infiltrate the Alliance will be covered briefly, but since his role at this point in the story is going to remain essentially the same as it was in the original episode I saw no reason to rewrite it in depth and focus more on Spike's activities on the Odyssey instead

The Ghost in the Team

If there was one thing Spike hated about this new life he was involved in now, it was the way everything was so much more complicated to figure out.

Magic might be hard in theory, but once you had a grasp on any kind of spell you could pretty much disrupt anything you had to deal with before the other person could finish it.

Being stuck on board Odyssey like this, on the other hand...

He might be fairly certain that the SGC wouldn't want these 'Lucian Alliance' buggers- and he just wished he could stop himself from thinking about that sodding werewolf from Underworld whenever he thought of that name; the damn movie hadn't been that good- to get away with the ship, but with his limited technical knowledge he had absolutely no way of knowing if what he was thinking of doing was going to just make it harder to repair the ship or trigger the sodding self-destruct mechanism, and blowing it up with all these people on it would have been a bit extreme even if this hadn't been one of only a few ships Earth had to defend itself with right now.

Getting on board the ship had actually probably been the easiest part of the current mess, even if it had also been the most boring bit; while Borzin and the other guy had been busy sending a message to whoever had set this whole trap up in the first place, Spike had hurried over to his unconscious friends and lain down over Daniel's body, subsequently focusing his mind on remaining exactly inside the form of the archaeologist without anything trailing out (Fortunately his 'condition' worked like a more straightforward possession at this point; he'd have been in real trouble if his coat started dragging along the ground while the rest of his body remained inside Daniel and someone spotted it).

After being apparently teleported up from the planet's surface- unable to restrain a momentary wince as the amulet was briefly separated from him when Daniel's body was 'beamed up' before he caught up himself; he might have remained 'hidden' inside Daniel's body but that didn't mean he wasn't still aware of the moment when he and the amulet were separated like that-, Spike had found himself in what looked like another Al'kesh, spending the next few hours lying around in Daniel's body trying to recall some old movies he'd seen (It was the first time he'd been grateful that his current condition had also negated his ability to sleep- probably because there wasn't much point in sleep when his body didn't need to 'heal' itself, given its technically non-existent status; he'd worry about the possible effects on his mental state when he had to-; he needed to be alert if he was going to remain in Daniel's body). When they finally arrived at the Odyssey, Spike waited until leaving him to briefly slip out of his captors' grasps while they were hauling Daniel and Vala off to the rest of the prisoners while he lowered himself through the floor (He'd spent enough time on the ship to get a decent feel for where he was when he was in it again).

The only question now that he was on board was what he should actually do now. He might be fairly certain that Mitchell and Teal'c wouldn't give up on figuring out a way to get the ship back, but he had no way of knowing how long it would take them to get here or even if they could do anything that would help him out...

In the end, with his new friends' lives at stake- and God, he couldn't get over just how strange it felt to think of people as friends after so long being mainly tolerated by everyone back in Sunnydale-, his options at the moment were pretty limited; all he could do was try to find someone he knew and hope that he found a friendly face soon...

Damnit... Spike groaned, wishing he had a solid body so that he could thump his head against the wall. Even after spending the last couple of hours wandering around the ship, sticking his head through walls in a seemingly-vain attempt to find someone on his side on this thing- while simultaneously trying to stay hidden from any Lucian Alliance members; just because he couldn't be hurt himself didn't mean he wanted to start making trouble for any SGC prisoners who might still be on board by giving the Alliance a reason to resort to torture-, he still hadn't managed to find any trace of anyone in the ship's crew who could help him.

He knew he should have paid more attention to the plans he'd been shown of the ship when he had originally, but when he'd considered that he was only there to act as a 'spy' when they got to wherever they were going, coupled with the fact that he couldn't actually do anything anywhere he went, he'd thought the whole thing a bit pointless; he knew basically where the bridge was- not that he'd had much reason to go there without the rest of the team tagging along-, and he'd learned where his new teammates had been staying during that time, but that was about it.

If he didn't find something soon, he'd just go back to his original plan of punching out the bastards who'd taken the ship one by one until he found something useful...

Sticking the front part of his head through another wall- just enough to allow his eyes through without exposing the rest of him-, Spike allowed himself a relieved smile as he stared at the sight before him, a large group of people, gathered in what looked like a big storage room of some sort, wearing the dark green uniforms of the SGC staff while standing around a varied amount of boxes.

"Oh thank God..." Spike muttered, prompting the nearest three crewmembers- he had no idea how you determined ranks on this thing; he thought it was something about the stripes on the suits, but he wouldn't like to swear to it- to turn around and jump slightly in shock at the sight of him sending his head the rest of the way through the wall.

"What the-?" one of them- the group consisting of two women and one man- said, looking at him in shock.

"Look, it's OK, you sods; I'm on your side, OK?" Spike hissed. "Name's Spike; I came here with Danny-boy and Vala-"

"Doctor Jackson?" another woman said, looking at him in evident scepticism (Not that Spike could blame her; his hair alone probably didn't exactly give the impression of a guy who worked on a team that should be tackling stealth missions as much as they were able to go into a situation all guns blazing). "You... came here with Doctor Jackson?"

"Newest member of SG-1 here, basically; can we get past your natural scepticism and direct someone here who could actually tell me what to bloody do in this situation?" Spike asked, rolling his eyes and wondering if he should look into a bit of a makeover if he ever managed to become solid again (And then wondered why that even mattered to him; when had he become the kind of sod who'd change his appearance for what was essentially just a job?).

"You don't have to worry about that," a more familiar voice said, prompting Spike to smile in relief as Daniel walked over to his wall, Sam and Vala close behind him. "We're right here."

"Thank whoever's bloody up there..." Spike groaned, as he looked between his friends. "You all OK?"

"For the moment, but I don't know how long that's going to last," Sam replied with a sigh. "Anateo- the commander who was in charge of this operation- wants me to repair the ship so he can take it back to the Lucian Alliance, but there's only so long that I can keep him distracted before he realises that I'm drawing out the repairs as long as possible."

"Any ideas why they want the ship?" Daniel asked.

"Or us, for that matter," Vala put in.

"No on both counts," Sam replied apologetically. "Not that it matters, anyway; with the transponder removed, Stargate Command doesn't have a hope of finding us."

"Yeah, and on that topic, how the hell'd these sods beat this thing anyway?" Spike asked. "I read the reports on these guys on the way here; I thought they just used old Goa'uld ships?"

"They do," Sam confirmed. "And you're right; normally a few ha'taks wouldn't be a problem for us, but not only had they lured us into a location near a neutron star where the radiation affected most of our systems such as sensors and shields, but they'd also set up a minefield that caused further damage to the ship. Add in the fact that we weren't expecting a direct ambush, and... well, you can see the results."

"Right..." Spike muttered, rolling his eyes slightly, wondering briefly at what seemed to be a fundamental rule of the universe; whether you were talking about demons, curses, or spaceships, everything had to have some kind of crucial subtle-yet-exploitable weakness...

"So our only hope right now is to somehow take the ship back?" Vala said, smiling slightly at the thought as she glanced over at Spike. "And fortunately, we have the perfect agent to get that done..."

"Pardon?" Spike said, looking at Vala in surprise before he sighed in frustration. "Look, it's not that I don't want to help out, but you've got to take into account that I really don't know that much about any of the stuff here; I'm pretty sure just getting the door open and letting you all out to start a riot isn't exactly what we're after-!"

"You're right when you say that wouldn't work," Sam said, a slight smile in her eyes as she looked thoughtfully at the intangible vampire. "There might be something else you could do, but it depends... how good is your memory?"

"Let's just say I remember things even when I don't want to," Spike said, grateful that the rest of his body was behind the wall as he shuddered slightly; the memory of his mother- or at least the vampire that had been his mother- trying to seduce him might have been repressed all these years, but he could still recall it pretty easily, and even the memories he'd held onto during his demon period like the memory of the first Slayer he'd killed remained pretty clear...

"Why do you ask?" he asked, wondering what his new friend was up to.

"Because I've had one idea to get us out of this that depends on you remembering precisely what I'm about to tell you," Sam replied.

Hurrying through the corridors towards the room Sam had directed him to, Spike tried to keep his focus on the small note he held in his hand- after it had been passed through a nearby air vent to reach him in his current location- and the route he had to take to get where he was meant to be going right now. The note was only a basic 'circuit diagram' of the system he'd be dealing with when he reached his destination that Sam had drawn up from memory on some scraps torn from another crewmember's logbook- the Lucian Alliance soldiers had only stripped them of their weapons rather than everything else-, but with radios unavailable it had been the only way to ensure he'd have the clearest possible idea of what to do with the equipment provided.

How do I get into these sodding things? Spike asked himself as he turned to run along another corridor. Five years ago I was just your normal vampire, and now I'm running around a spaceship, stuck as some kind of sodding weird ghost, trying to outwit a bunch of space pirates?

He wasn't sure what was freaking him out more at this point; the fact that he was in this position, or much he was becoming comfortable with it...

Then he found himself in front of the door that Sam had directed him towards, and thoughts of his personal comfort or otherwise in such a strange new lifestyle were pushed aside in favour of the immediate task. As quickly as possible, Spike entered the room, put the paper down on a nearby flat surface, and punched the man immediately in front of him in the face, following it up with as strong a kick as he could manage to the other guy's chest.

It wasn't his best blow, but it got the job done, anyway; both men were swiftly on the ground, unconscious for the immediate future, and Spike now had control of the Odyssey's bridge (It might be damaged, but what wasn't to find cool about being in control of a whopping big starship?).

Sam had admitted that the plan they'd come up with wasn't exactly a foolproof one, given the potential number of Lucian Alliance officers on the ship and the likelihood of someone coming to the bridge while he was occupied, but it was the best that they could come up with in the time available. If Spike could gain control of the transporters- according to Carter-, he should be able to either beam the Odyssey crew out of the storage bay and into an armoury, or he could beam the Lucian Alliance officers into other parts of the city until he gave the crew time to get out on their own; the subcutaneous transmitters that the crew used- and damn, he found that slightly disturbing; it reminded him too much of his own chip for comfort- should allow him to tell one group from the other easily enough...

It was just unfortunate that he only had the basics of how these damn things worked; he was fairly confident that he could get them working once they were actually turned on in the first place, but like everything else on this damn bridge, the console had taken a significant amount of damage in the attack that had resulted in the Lucian Alliance capturing it in the first place. Sam had given him some pointers about how to fix it- and Vala had chipped in what she could based on her own attempts to steal the Prometheus a couple of years back (Spike made a mental note to ask about that when he could)-, but without any way to know what was intact and what wasn't there was no way for him to be sure of being accurate with this thing...

Sod it, he finally decided, using the sensors to track the room where Sam had said she would be taken to when she had to continue her work on the ship; there was only one other life-sign in the room in question, and it definitely didn't have a subcutaneous transmitter.

This wasn't exactly a foolproof plan, but when it came to technology and magic, Spike had found that both had one thing in common; if you didn't know what you were doing with them, very unpleasant things tended to happen when you tried to use them.

"Here goes nothing..." Spike muttered, activating the transporter with a slight smile; at the very least, beaming out whoever was in there with Sam might give her time to do something about the transporters at her end...

Then he glanced out the Odyssey's front window just in time to see a man dressed in the simple grey jacket and trousers of the Lucian Alliance, with no sign of a spacesuit or oxygen tanks of any sort, drifting around outside the ship, and he couldn't help but wince at what had just happened.

Damn... he thought, shuddering at the sight as the guy tried to fire his gun at the window, turning away to stop himself having to witness the guy's head explode or whatever happened to the human body in this situation.

It might have managed to get the job done, but he really didn't want to see someone die that way...

"Sam?" he said at last, reaching over to activate a radio on a frequency that he was fairly sure was transmitting to the room where his new teammate was currently located.

"Spike?" Sam's voice replied. "What happened?"

"Wasn't sure how to work this thing exactly, so I beamed the other sod in the room with you out, and... well, let's just say he's not going to be any trouble," Spike said grimly. "Now, any chance you could talk me through the fine details of getting these damn things working properly?"