Sticks and Stones – Chapter 32 - by Emma Nisbet (grnfield)
The team were grateful that they encountered no resistance in their first few minutes on board the Ha'tak. The ship was eerily quiet and there was a complete absence of any non-mechanical sounds. The usual hubbub was missing from the vessel and Sam wondered just what proportion of the Jaffa were actually down on the planet. All in all she knew she could account for thirty of the large warriors. Six of them had been eliminated and replaced by Teal'c, Reynolds and the other members of Stargate Command. Another twelve were guarding the mine, and they had just avoided the last dozen on the building site below. Suddenly Sam realised there was also an untold number of warriors within the woods and villages of the planet below. Many of these had been eliminated by the SG teams, as they had worked their way towards the construction area and the mine. She wondered if, like Teal'c's group, these were also 'Jaffa minions' and were not privileged enough to be supping on the ship overnight. Surely if they'd been expected to return then their absence would have been noted but there was no sign that the Jaffa were on their guard at all - no more than normal anyway, she thought.
As they slunk down the corridor the team discreetly opened doors and examined rooms, both for potential threats and possible hiding places. The more they knew about the area, the safer they would all feel and they still needed to find a defensible place where they could lay low while they recc'ed the rest of the ship.
Suddenly in the corridor behind them they heard the unmistakable sound of the ring transporter activating. Sam looked at her watch and realised with horror that their time was up. The three Jaffa would be on top of them in mere moments. She glanced at Ferretti who caught her gaze, he was obviously having the same frantic thoughts as the Major.
Quickly Lou sprang into action and wrenched open the door to the room he'd just finished investigating. It was a simple storeroom, well as simple as any room in a Ha'tak could ever be. It still had the usual ostentatious gold hieroglyphs on all four walls and a large fancy design on the ceiling but more importantly than that it contained cargo. The room was crammed with boxes and crates of all shapes and sizes, piled high on top of one another in a none-to-organised way. Lou grabbed the back of Sam's tac vest and shoved her through the open doorway, Sands and Davies followed suit and a moment later Lou himself entered the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
The four Tau'ri arranged themselves around the small room in such a way that they could effectively ambush anyone who came to searching for them, assuming they weren't too vastly outnumbered, of course.
As they crouched behind the crates, the SG team members heard the all-too-familiar tramping of booted Jaffa feet in the corridor outside. They were pretty certain their presence aboard the ship had not been detected but that didn't stop anyone holding their breath and praying that no-one would enter the room.
It seems their prayers were answered when the footsteps continued past the door and faded away as the warriors turned a corner and marched further into the depths of the Ha'tak.
#
The three men and Sam breathed a collective sigh of relief and swiftly emerged from their hiding places for a brief discussion. They knew they were going to have to make some assumptions as to the comings and goings of the Jaffa warriors and cautiously they hoped to have a safe window of at least twenty minutes before the three warriors returned to ring back down to Chamaka.
Ferretti eased the door open a minute amount and guardedly peered out into the corridor. When he motioned that the coast was clear the SG team left the room, holding their weapons at the ready in front of them.
They set off in the direction that the Jaffa had taken, reasoning that as long as there weren't other Jaffa lying in wait along the way, then being this far behind was both the safest way of avoiding detection and also the quickest way of discovering exactly what the Jaffa were up to. Hopefully they would remain undiscovered and could gain some vital intel on the strength of the presence aboard the ship.
The decision had been made - many years before - that should anyone have the opportunity to destroy Ba'al, once and for all, then appropriate risks could be taken. Ba'al, like Apophis before him, had become such a major thorn in the side of the SGC that the powers-that-be had decreed he be eliminated as and when such a chance arose.
The problem was that none of the team-mates on the ship were entirely sure whether the same fate had been decided for Osiris.
Osiris (in the body of Sarah Gardner) had aligned himself with 'the great lord Ba'al' but no-one within the SGC believed - not for one moment - that he wouldn't try to overthrow the other system lord should the chance arise. In doing so Osiris would not only gain himself a formidable fleet of ships and warriors, he would elevate himself straight to the top of the system lord hierarchy.
Everyone knew Ba'al by his reputation at being one of the most ruthless system lords of all time. Second possibly, only to Ra and certainly far higher up the chain than Apophis, Cronus and the many other Goa'uld's that the SGC had managed to de-throne in the last seven years or so. No-one expected 'the great lord Ba'al' to make an error in judgement regarding Osiris, but everyone realised that mistakes could happen. It would only take a momentary lack of concentration on Ba'al's part to leave an opening for Osiris who would undoubtedly take any opportunity presented to him and Ba'al would be no more.
During the hushed conversation on the planet below, it had been planned that, before they returned to the surface, the four comrades would plant C4 at strategic positions around the ship, to be detonated by remote control once the vessel assumed it's nightly orbit. Theoretically this would leave only Teal'c and his Jaffa guarding the Chamakan population, Ferretti and his team somewhere near the construction zone and the four marine's who were stationed at the gate. The remaining warriors hidden in the woods would then be flushed out and subdued, ready for Teal'c to transport them to Chulak. Once there they would be given the chance to either live free or join the fight against the false Gods that they had been raised to serve.