Later, Jethro wouldn't be able to say what exactly made him follow O'Neill and Teal'c from the conference room. Was it simply the reaction of a career Marine? Was it loyalty to a man he barely knew but already recognized as a leader he could follow? Or was it merely the instinctive drive to protect his home?
Whatever the reason, he pounded down the corridor, O'Neill and Teal'c just ahead of him, DiNozzo beside him, McGee hurrying to catch up.
O'Neill and Teal'c paused at what had to be an armory, given that a stream of troops filed by, each accepting weapons and ammo before continuing on their way.
O'Neill barked an order - Jethro thought he said, "Staves," but he wasn't certain - and then frowned at him. "What?"
"Marine sniper," Jethro told him. "How can we help?"
"You can't," O'Neill replied shortly. "Not this time - I've got good men here, and I'm not compromising them by throwing unknowns in the middle of a war zone."
"War zone?" Tony asked.
"Invasion," O'Neill shot back, accepting a very high-tech looking spear-like object from the armorer. Beside him, Teal'c accepted an identical one - the staves he'd referred to, no doubt. "At the least a scout force."
Jethro assumed what O'Neill and Teal'c did next was a weapons check, then O'Neill met his gaze once more. "Davies should have the gate closed soon. Meantime, stay out of our way."
Jethro's lips tightened, but he only nodded. He understood O'Neill's point, but he was, when all was said and done, a man of action - specifically, this kind of action: fighting for his life and the lives of those he cared for, and those he'd never meet but who nonetheless didn't deserve war raining down on them.
"Ready?" O'Neill asked Teal'c.
Before Teal'c could reply, a blonde woman in a captain's full battle kit with a rifle slung over her arm rushed toward them. "Colonel! Davies is down."
"Dammit," O'Neill swore. "Then get -"
"Down, too," the woman replied. "All of the techs are down."
"Efficient," Teal'c observed - and while that observation was very likely true, even Jethro knew its timing was lousy.
"Go on, Teal'c - I'll catch up," O'Neill ordered. Teal'c nodded, and thundered down the corridor, shoving regular troops out of his way as needed."
"Make a hole!" DiNozzo yelled, and the men parted to allow Teal'c better passage.
"What about you, Carter?" O'Neill asked.
The woman shook her head. "I understand the language, but I'm no good with computers."
"I am," McGee said, and Jethro felt a surge of pride in the competent agent standing beside him. The McGee he'd first met would've run screaming from this situation, but now he stepped up when he was needed.
Then he was watching O'Neill as the man's expression shifted.
Probably considering various scenarios, Jethro mused. I would be. Hell - I am.
"All right," O'Neill said finally. "McGee - you go with Carter, find a way to close the gate. Gibbs, DiNozzo - hold that room."
"Yes, sir," Gibbs snapped, even as he wondered, What room?
Then he was accepting a rifle - a Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle - and following Captain Carter and McGee along the same path Teal'c had taken.
Carter bellowed, "Coming through," in a tone that would've made Jethro's former drill sergeant proud, and less than a minute later, the four of them spilled into a room that could have been the bridge of a spaceship on some old television show. DiNozzo helped Carter secure the door behind them.
Jethro assessed the situation in a glance. Whoever sat at the bank of computers faced a glass window that looked out over … Jethro blinked at the combat zone below them.
A circular sculpture of some kind dominated the far end of the room, and emerging from its watery center were figures in armor that reminded Jethro of the part-human part-animal gods of Egypt Kelly had showed him once.
They - the enemy - marched through the gate and down the ramp leading up to it, carrying lances like the ones O'Neill and Teal'c had retrieved. Short bursts of light emitted from the pointed ends of the lances.
"Lasers?" DiNozzo muttered. "Terrific."
"Forget them," Carter ordered. "Our job is here. McGee - have a seat."
McGee did as ordered, and Jethro tuned out Carter's explanation - the computers were her and McGee's job. His and DiNozzo's job was to protect them while they did whatever they did.
Another look through the window made him smile. He had high ground and remarkably close range. Time for him to go to work.
"DiNozzo - tell me if the door's breached," he ordered.
"On it," came the immediate acknowledgment.
Jethro surveyed the room. Not a lot of cover presented itself, so he went to the far corner and shot a hole in the bottom corner of the window.
"A little warning next time," DiNozzo yelled, only it sounded distant and hollow thanks to the ringing in his ears from the rat-a-tat of shots in a confined space.
Jethro ignored him, instead crouching so he could sight down the rifle through the hole he'd made.
Even from here, he could tell that although the bolts from the lances O'Neill and Teal'c wielded were effective against the invaders' armor, the rifles weren't.
He allowed himself a small smile. Any armor had weak points, and from this vantage, he could spot them all. Fortunately, these invaders - Jethro's mind refused even to form the word aliens - were human, and that meant their armor had the same weak points he was already familiar with, especially the shoulders and the knees. And - oh, good - on top of that, it looked like their sides and upper legs were less armored than their head, chests, and hips.
Target-rich environment.
Jethro lined up on the invader nearest him and squeezed the trigger. The man's right thigh collapsed beneath him, and he fell to the ground. Jethro saw him scrambling to staunch the flow of blood for an instant before moving on to his next target.
NCIS - SG1 - NCIS
The moment Gibbs slipped past him toward the far corner of the room, Tony positioned himself between McGee and Carter and the door. His assignment was clear - to hold the door against whatever might come through it that wasn't someone he knew.
His first step was to survey the room below him for the likelihood of any alien invaders breaching the first line of defense.
Not likely. Between Gibbs' targeted shots, O'Neill and Teal'c's lasers - lasers! Cool! - and the blanket of fire laid down by the regular troops, the invaders were almost fully stopped at the bottleneck.
Just his luck - an alien invasion, and Tony would never get to fire even one shot in defense of his home. Then again, even if he did, he couldn't tell anyone about it, so maybe the whole situation was a wash.
With the room secure for the moment, Tony risked a glance over his shoulder toward McGee and Carter.
They spoke quietly, clipped words that Tony could barely make out and had less chance of understanding. Still, he thought that was a good sign - at least when doctors were talking, things were going well. He had to hope the same was true for geeks.
A high-pitched whine cut off any further musing on the topic, and he turned to face the window separating them and the ... staging room? It was as good a name as any … Just in time to watch the window shatter. Beyond it, O'Neill and the troops, even Teal'c, staggered backward, many collapsing with their hands clapped to their ears.
In the next handful of seconds, three things happened:
The invading party surged forward, taking advantage of the chaos following that incapacitating whine.
The defenders fell back, some even staggering through the open door to the corridor.
And another double handful of invaders stepped through the gate.
"Can you close the gate?" Tony demanded.
"Trying," Carter snapped back.
In a slice of space between the invaders' bodies, Tony caught a glimpse of a device he hadn't seen before - perhaps hip height, with a dome on top a square body. One of the invaders stood behind it, and Tony thought he might be making some kind of adjustment to it. Maybe he was charging it to emit that whine again?
Even if it wasn't the source of the whine that had turned the tide against the defenders briefly, Tony decided that a device that size boded no good.
"Gibbs," he called. "Can you get that boxlike thing in the center?"
Gibbs squeezed off several shots in quick succession before saying, "Negative. Not high enough ground, and too many bodies between me and it."
Tony glanced back into the staging room. The press of bodies around the device had just gotten thicker in the last couple of seconds as more invaders streamed through the portal.
Another glance told him that most of the defenders were retreating into the corridor. Then O'Neill's order chilled him.
"Seal the room. Set auto-destruct."
That O'Neill was still inside the staging room only underscored the seriousness of the situation.
"Dammit," Carter muttered, and reached for a control on the panel.
"Hey, hey -" Tony slapped a hand on her wrist. "What're you doing?"
"You heard him," she shot back. "We can't let them get past this base, and with that machine they've got, it won't be long before we're all down. We'll collapse the base on top of us and stop the invasion right here."
Tony's thoughts whirled. He knew she was right - the invasion had to be stopped here - but he didn't want to die. There had to be another solution….
He never expected to find it while he was staring down at Carter - at her chest, or more specifically, the bandolier of fragmentation grenades slung diagonally across it.
"Sorry," he muttered, and, letting his rifle drop to dangle on its strap, snatched two grenades from her bandolier.
"What the-!"
Tony ignored her cry and fell back against the wall opposite the window. So far, the invaders hadn't started firing at them, which meant he had a few seconds.
Plenty of time.
He scanned the room below - at least his target this time was stationary, not a receiver running a complicated pattern.
With a silent prayer, Tony popped the pin from the grenade. Four seconds. He took a step forward and threw it through the window. Three seconds. The second grenade followed after as quickly as he could line up the throw. Two seconds.
"Fire in the hole!" Gibbs yelled. One second.
Tony dove for cover, taking Carter with him. McGee dove out of his chair, and Gibbs fell on top of him.
Zero.
Two explosions rocked the room, and Tony thought his ears wouldn't stop ringing for a week. He shoved himself to his feet, readying the rifle in his hands as he looked over the window into the staging room.
To his left, Gibbs did the same, sweeping his rifle in a slow arc as he searched the wreckage of bodies and steel for any enemy that might still be alive. There was no movement from the pile, and Tony aimed at the portal that was somehow still standing and, worse, still open to allow more invaders to come through.
"Got it!" McGee's voice sounded tinny through ears damaged by too many bangs and explosions in a confined space. Before Tony could ask what, exactly, he'd got, the portal collapsed and a shield swirled closed to cover it.
Only then did Tony turn to offer a hand up to Captain Carter, but she was already on her feet, surveying first the remains of the staging room where many of the defenders - including Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c - climbed slowly to their feet.
Thankfully, the defenders who'd heard Gibbs' shout had hit the deck, and the invaders' armor, and bodies, had shielded them from the worst of the grenades' damage. Still, Tony knew he'd lose sleep over those defenders who hadn't survived the blasts. But that was for tonight, and tomorrow. For now, he accepted Carter's hug.
"Good arm," she said, and Tony could only nod an acknowledgment. In other circumstances, he'd make some comment about being the starting quarterback for Ohio State, but this moment was not a time for humor.
Gibbs' hand landed on his shoulder, and he met his boss' gaze.
"Atta boy, DiNozzo," he said, and again Tony could only nod.
Then Gibbs turned to Carter. "That thing secure?"
Carter nodded. "The iris is pure titanium. So far, it's proven to be impenetrable."
"But - if they're still coming through," McGee began. "They'll be -"
"Bugs on a windshield." The voice came from Tony's right, and he whirled to face this possible new threat, only to lower his rifle when he recognized O'Neill.
He tried not to wince when he saw the handful of lacerations down O'Neill's left side. They could only have come from the grenades he'd thrown, and Tony suspected he'd be seeing them in nightmares to come.
"So we won?" Gibbs asked.
"For now," O'Neill replied. Then he grinned, just a little. "Guess you could help, after all."