Gabriel moved forward holding her pulse rifle on the commander of the Phoenix mercenaries; she did not trust man to not try and remove her weapon from her hand so she stayed just beyond his reach. Motioning with her gun she ordered to the ground as her companion moved behind him and bound his hands with the zip locks he removed from his belt zipping the lock in place securely before moving towards Was and Ryan to make sure they were fine, Gabriel kept her gun trained on the now immobile commander.

"Are you alright to move Ryan and Lieutenant Washington?" asked the soldier with Gabrielle.

Lieutenant Washington seemed to come out of the stupor she appeared to be in at the sight of the two soldiers in front of her and Ryan and the Phoenix commander who was now lay on the ground tied up.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"We're friends we're here to help get you and young Ryan out. Well originally we were here to extract young Ryan here as we did not know you were still alive but now both of you. I'll explain more once we are out of here and safe back at the colony." Gabrielle told her.

Motioning towards the downed Phoenix commander with her pulse rifle and nodding.

"He is a bonus which I am sure that Commander Taylor would love to get his hands onto to not to mention a few of the colonists."

The man on the ground sneered at Gabrielle's words and spat. "You think you will get out of here alive you stupid bitch. You're dead all of you just don't know it yet!"

"Shut up you, you don't get to talk to anyone any more until we are asking you questions you piece of scum."

Washington screamed at him as Gabriel's man Bellarius helped her to her feet and she aimed a kick towards her now former captor.

"Lieutenant Washington….Mum….leave him," She heard from behind her and she turned to face the young man being helped up from the ground, "He isn't worth it."

"The lad is right mam. We have to get out of here before any of his men are alerted to our presence but we will take him with us just in case we run into anyone and to get more answers from once we get back to the colony." Bellarius told her.

Passing Ryan as gently as he could to Gabrielle the soldier then roughly hauled up their prisoner as Gabrielle took some duct tape out of her pocket and places some of it over the man's mouth gagging him.

"Right the package has been found so let's move shall we people?" Gabriel said to them as she broke radio silence contacting the rest of her team and telling them to make their way back towards the way they had come and to meet them outside.

XxX

Taylor cursed as he stumbled over a turf of grass the mercenaries behind him sniggered as the commander barely managed to stay upright.

"Are you alright sir?" Reynolds asked just to the left of the commander.

"Silence scum."

One of the mercenaries to the side of him snarled as he hit the young soldier on the back with his pulse rifle, Reynolds crumbled to the ground as the force of the blow caused him to lose his balance and the mercenary again stepped forward to club him once more but the mercenary in charge barking at the man to stop. The mercenary stepped back and Reynolds struggled to get to his feet encumbered as he was with his hands tied behind his back.

The mercenaries cruelly laughed as he struggled to get to his feet but made no movement to help him so Taylor and Shannon moved towards him to help him but were forced to stop when pulse rifles were brought to bear upon them.

"Get back, snarled the one who had stopped his man from beating Reynolds as he continued to struggle to stand.

"We're just going to help him up." Shannon yelled at the one pointing the pulse rifle at the young man who over the time that he and his family had been in the colony had become like a second son to him.

"No you are not, if he can't get up by himself then we'll leave him."

Reynolds glanced up at his words where he was still struggling to get to his feet just as the man signaled to the mercenary behind him and the man raised his pulse rifle aiming it at Reynolds back.

xXx

It did not take long for Gabriel and Bellarius with Ryan and Washington to make it back through the system of tunnels to the outside world but they were still beaten to the rendezvous point by the others of their team.

All of them moving swiftly and silently with the exception of the two they had just rescued through the undergrowth outside of the cave system towards where they had left their lookout when they heard a commotion in a clearing a little ways ahead of them. Gabriel signaled her men and they crouched down into the undergrowth their prisoner pushed to the ground roughly and subdued as Washington and Ryan stayed a little behind them watching the man so that he could do nothing to give away their position as they then proceeded forward on their bellies to get a better few of what the commotion was.

Ahead of them they could see a group of mercenaries and surrounding the rescue party that had set out to rescue Ryan and one of those solders about to be shot as he struggled on the ground to rise much to the amusement of the mercenaries watching him and those guarding the others. Gabrielle wasted no time and gave a signal to her men to intervene as the mercenary aiming the pulse rifle at the young soldier struggling on the ground was about to shoot the unarmed man Gabrielle's team fired stun grenades into the group the grenades exploded and a dense cloud of gas erupted from them knocking out within the clearing.

The mercenaries dropped like flies as the knockout gas of the grenades did their job and Taylor's men also succumbed to slumber as they breathed in the gas. Gabrielle's team stepped forward their faces covered by breathing masks so as not to be knocked out by the gas themselves and looked down upon the men on the ground wondering how they were going to get them all back to the colony.

xXx

Taylor groaned as he awoke his head pounding like a jackhammer was going off inside it as he struggled to remember where he was and why he had lost consciousness. He was aware that he was on a soft surface much softer than the ground that he had passed out on and he heard movement to the side of him, his eye flying open as a glass was placed at his lips and a voice told him to drink, a voice he knew.

He glanced at the person leaning over him and almost choked on the water he was being helped to drink as he gazed into the eyes of the one woman he had never thought he would gaze into again, the eyes of his precious Alicia.

"Take it easy commander you have had quite a time of it."

"Alicia b..but this is impossible….y….you're dead."

He stuttered as his eyes continued to take in the sight of Lieutenant Washington standing over him he was certain he was hallucinating for there was no way that Alicia Washington could be standing before him, he had seen her shot.

"It is funny but everyone keeps saying that but as you can see I am very much alive."

Alicia thought back to the moment that she had stepped out of the all-terrain vehicle and the shocked reaction of people who had come out to welcome the rescue team home. It had been disconcerting to say the least at their reaction the apparent joy from some of them on seeing her alive and it was something that she herself was still getting use to not least also the fact that her son was here in terra nova and she knew that she would have to tell Taylor about their son, if he didn't already know. She suspected he did from Ryan's words back at the cave system but her mind at the time had not taken everything in.

"However I can assure you I am alive Commander and we are in the med centre at the colony. You were knocked out by one of the gas grenades that Gabriel's team fired at the mercenaries to save your life and that of the others with you."

"Gabriel?" Taylor asked the name was familiar it was the name of one of the nurses here in the med centre and the one who had been the only one successful in keeping Boylan in his hospital bed when he had been insistent on joining the rescue party to search for young Ryan.

"Yes Gabriel or I should Colonel Gabriel Roaz, she and her men came through the portal with the Phoenix group courtesy of some of our friends back home. There were those within the military who had got wind of what the Phoenix group were up to and the Gabriel and her team were sent to help us keep the colony safe but you can talk further to her and her men when you are more up to it my love."

Taylor made to sit up but Alicia pushed him back just as Doctor Shannon walked into the room smiling at the interaction between the two of them.

"I hope you are trying to do anything stupid commander like get out of that bed before you are ready to, the staff have just had to pick up both Jim and young Reynolds from the floor for doing just that and I expect you to stay in bed Sir so don't even think of trying to get out of it." She told him sternly.

"Doctor Shannon I have a colony to run."

"No commander you don't, not at this very moment. The colony has been taking care of itself for the past few days that you and the others of your party have been in the land of nod under the expert care of Guz and Alicia here who herself should have been in bed but there was no keeping her there. So she has been doing some of what is your job as you put it and spending time with young Ryan getting use to the idea that she is a mum to a teenager, a teenager who I might add is as stubborn as you and if he tries to get out of his bed one more time I am going to tie him to it and I will the same to you if I have to commander is that understood."

Elizabeth finished her tirade and glared at the commander who wisely decided to stay in his bed rather than risk whatever the good doctor had in mind.

"Very well doctor I concede to your expertise."

Doctor Shannon nodded at him and Alicia as she left the two of them alone again and went to deal with her other patients.

"Well it seems as the two of us have some getting to know one another again."

"That we do Commander." Alicia smiled as she leaned forward and kissed him, glad to be back in the colony with the man she loved and with a son she was now getting to know. Life could not get any better she thought.

A/N: Just one more chapter to go and that will be it for this story. Cannot believe that it is finally almost done, the next chapter will be up not long after this one.