Chapter 60: The Tok'ra Part 5

P34-353J, December 4th, 1998 (Earth Time)

Catra didn't have too much experience with spies. She only met one, actually, and that was a painful memory. How she had been as stupid as to ever trust Double Trouble… She suppressed the urge to shake her head at her own folly. But she had worked undercover herself, and she knew something about hiding your intentions - she wouldn't have survived in the Horde if she hadn't been able to do that.

And in her opinion, Jakar was a smooth operator, to use one of the Earth movie terms, but how he approached the spy halfway into the dinner just didn't look… quite as natural and inconspicuous as it should have been.

Of course, she knew what this was about, so she might be biased. Maybe. Cordesh didn't look like he suspected anything, but he was a spy, so he would be good at hiding any reaction. And if he suspected that he was detected, he might trigger whatever he had planned early.

Well, it was up to Jakar now. She was curious how they would handle it, tilting her head a bit to better listen in to the conversation.

"Cordesh! Enjoying the meal?"

"Jakar. Not as much as you must, after your mission."

"Oh, yes. I did miss kren, especially."

"Who doesn't?"

Then Jakar's voice changed. Mats was talking, then. "So, you finally grew to like it, Firnan?"

Cordesh's voice changed as well. "Yes. It took me a while, but who can resist it?"

Jakar nodded, smiling warmly, and took a bite of mat'o.

But Kordesh tensed up. Something wasn't right. And he was reaching to the small of his back, where…

Catra was already moving, jumping over the table between her and the two spies, when Jakar grabbed Kordesh's arm, and the two started wrestling over a... zat!

Catra unsheathed her claws as she closed. A single swipe, and… No! She had to think of the host! Clenching her teeth, she kicked Cordesh into the back of his knees, sending him to the floor.

But the spy took Jakar with him, turning the whole thing into a throw - and sent Jakar into the buffet.

But Catra was on him already, grabbing both his wrists and pinning him to the ground. He tried to shake her off, but he didn't have enough leverage or strength - not against Catra, at least; he was stronger than a human.

And then Adora was there, and Jakar was back, and the fight was over. Between the three of them, they had Cordesh secured before the rest of the people present made it over. Garshaw looked at them - at Jakar - with narrowed eyes while Jakar stripped him of weapons and tools and everything but his clothes.

"Firnan claimed to have tasted kren before and grown to like it," Jakar told her.

Garshaw nodded as if that was enough to identify a spy.

"You must be really serious about your food," Catra commented with a glance at Jakar.

"Kren is made from local sources," he said. "It's only available on this planet - and Cordesh and Firnan were not stationed here before they arrived with the councillors."

Ah. That explained it. Catra nodded.

"Then we need to find out if Cordesh decided to betray us or if he was replaced," Garshaw said.

Right. Catra was really glad she hadn't ripped the man's hand off.

"Will you extract the symbiont?" Daniel asked.

Right, they could do that.

"It's the most expedient way to check," Garshaw replied. "As soon as Firnan is free, he can tell us what happened."

Cordesh scoffed. "The plague that is the Tok'ra will soon be wiped out! And we will crush your allies as well!" he yelled.

Well, Catra might not be an expert on spies, but she knew empty bravado when she saw it. Although… She narrowed her eyes. "Could he have contacted someone in the system with this?" She pointed at the round thing on the ground next to the zat.

"Check it," Garshaw said.

While another aide picked the thing up, Catra looked at the captured spy. He was clenching his teeth, which she took as a good sign.

"It's pointless! You are doomed!"

Yeah, definitely empty bravado.

"There wasn't a long-range transmission since before he arrived here; the cache still holds the data."

So their secret was still safe. Catra smiled. That was a relief! Losing operational surprise would have been quite the setback.

"But there are short-range transmissions logged. Very little data, though. I'm trying to access…"

"Shor'wai'e! Yas!" Cordesh yelled. "Mal…"

Catra slugged the spy, then held his mouth shut before he could say anything else, but the communicator beeped.

Then the base shook from an explosion.

Jack O'Neill cursed as he crouched to keep his balance. "Are we under attack?" he snapped, his hand going for his carbine - which had been left in their quarters. He gripped his pistol's holster instead.

Garshaw was already talking into one of those round communicators. "Melion, what's going on? Melion?" He saw her press her lips together for a moment before she went on: "Ker'seh? Nelias?" she waited a moment

Jack struggled against the urge to rush out, get his M4 and… what then? Half the Tok'ra in the room had already left.

"We have lost contact with the transporter room," Garshaw announced.

"I smell smoke," Catra said. Her nose twitched. "And… burning flesh." She was still holding the spy's mouth shut.

Jack winced. "If they took the transporter room, they'll be storming the base right now."

"I don't hear any shooting," Catra retorted.

Then Per'sus' voice came through the communicator. "The transporter room has been destroyed. I don't see any breach in the walls, though."

That meant it hadn't been an attack from the outside. Jack muttered another curse. "Sabotage. He must have planted a bomb."

"More than one, I fear," the snake holding the spy's communicator ball said.

"Give it to me!" Anise snapped. "I'll check."

She all but ripped the thing out of the other Tok'ra's hands. He didn't seem upset, so that was probably normal.

Per'sus spoke up again. "The guards in the transporter room are dead. And the ring transport was damaged and is nonfunctional."

Which meant they were trapped in the base! Wait, no - they had that tunnel-growing technology. "Can you grow us an exit?" Jack asked.

Garshaw shook her head. "We don't have the necessary tools in this base. The main base should have recorded the explosion, but it'll take them a while to reach us."

Damn. "Didn't want potential spies getting a glimpse, huh?" Jack asked.

The snake's grimace was answer enough.

Fortunately, Adora didn't say anything about trust saving them and distrust hurting them. Instead, she said: "I could restore magic to the planet. Then Glimmer could teleport us out."

"All of us?" Malinor asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Two at a time," Glimmer corrected her. "But I think I'll be able to get everyone out."

'I think', Jack noted. That wasn't a clear confirmation in his book. "How long will it take for the others to reach us with a tunnel or transporter?"

Another aide whose name he had forgotten replied: "They'll be here in half an hour - I was just talking to Laran."

Half an hour? Well, that wasn't too bad. Jack started to nod.

Then Anise went to Carter and Entrapta and showed them the communicator. "Look at that!"

Jack really didn't like Carter's reaction.

"We need the scanner," she said.

"Yes. If there are more bombs, they should show up on the scanner." Entrapta nodded.

"More bombs?" Salesh stared at them.

Jack glanced at the captured spy. He couldn't see the snake's mouth, but his eyes… the scum was happy.

"OK, let's see - those bombs can't be using Naquadah, or we would have found them in our earlier scan, so…" Entrapa trailed off, eyes glued to her scanner.

"Check for these chemicals!" Anise rattled down some formula Jack couldn't follow.

Carter could, though, which was what counted. "Yes. None of that, none of those, either, but…" She drew a sharp breath through clenched teeth, and Jack knew that shit had just hit the fan - Carter only looked like that when things were about to go really wrong.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

"We have half a dozen bombs with chemical explosives placed throughout the base, sir," she replied. "And it doesn't look like the spots were randomly chosen."

"We're running a structural analysis," Entrapta cut in.

"Yes. Our technology makes tunnelling very easy, but without proper structural reinforcements, the tunnels are slightly more vulnerable to shocks," Anise said.

Jack refrained from closing his eyes. "Don't tell me - if the bombs go off, we won't need to be buried after our deaths?" Hell, to die buried alive… getting crushed quickly would be a mercy. He suppressed a shudder.

Carter nodded with a grimace.

"Well, the bombs didn't go off," Adora said. "Only one did."

"But they're on a timer," Anise said.

When it rained, it poured. "How much time do we have?"

"Fifteen minutes, sir."

"It's evacuation time," Jack said.

Garshaw nodded.

"Uh…" Adora's expression made Jack close his eyes and sigh. "If I restore magic, I'll be… well, I'll have to use all the magic returning. And we still don't know what my healing will do to symbionts inside a host."

And that had all the snakes in the room exchange grim glances.

"Can't you leave your host temporarily?"

"Only for a very short time without a habitat or stasis unit," Garshaw said. "And we don't have either in this base."

More secrecy messing things up. If Jack were a believer, he'd tell God that this was a little too blatant.

"We'll have to defuse the bombs then," Entrapta said. "Before it's too late."

"Can you do this?" Garshaw asked.

"We should be able to - and we have about ten minutes before we'll have to return magic, anyway!" Entrapta told her. "Let's go! The closest bomb is down the hallway outside!"

She looked excited, Jack saw. At least Carter looked suitably concerned as the geek squad rushed out of the room.

He ran with them - he had a lot of experience in demolitions, and since they were facing chemical bombs instead of some Naquadah or space magic stuff, Jack should be able to help.

And defusing a bomb definitely beat waiting while his friends and teammates risked their lives defusing it, in Jack's opinion.

Watching others do their best to save them all - and risk their lives in the process - was torture, in Adora's opinion.

"Alright, kid, let's see what kind of anti-tampering mechanism our snake has left for us to trigger. It can't be something that reacts to mere movement and shock, or it would have gone off when the base shook. But he must have a way to keep us from just pulling the bombs off and dropping them down a spare tunnel." Jack said. He sounded tense, but neither he nor Bow looked as tense as they should be - they were so close to the first bomb they had found, if it went off, not even Adora could do anything for them!

"According to my scan, there's a fine mesh inside the outer shell, connected to the detonator. But it's not perfectly covering everything, see?" Bow showed his pad to Jack.

"That's to keep us from just shooting or cutting the thing. What about the glue keeping the bomb stuck to the floor here?"

"That's under a mild current - so, perhaps if we kept the current going somehow…"

"There would still be some change when you pull the bomb off the wall, and if the bomb's sensitive enough…"

"Boom."

"Exactly, kid."

Adora let out a sigh through clenched teeth - softly; you didn't startle people defusing ordnance; the Horde had been very clear about that. Even Catra hadn't joked around in those lessons. Or with live ordnance.

She couldn't do anything here. So she stepped around the corner and checked up on the others. If Entrapta, Sam and Anise managed to crack the communicator, they could turn off all bombs with a single command. Or so they hoped.

"Oh… that's a very sophisticated protocol! Almost as good as Horde Prime's! Well, mostly - did you see this here, Sam?"

"Yes. That seems like an obvious weakness. Probably too obvious."

"Yes! It's probably a, what do you call it, decoy?"

"That, and an alert, I would say. But I think we can circumvent it like this…"

"Yes," Anise cut in. "And that should get us past the encryption to send out the delay command to the bombs. But we still need to figure out the command."

"How much longer until you have to restore magic?" Garshaw asked as Adora stepped back from Entrapta, Sam and Anise to check on the others.

"Seven more minutes," Adora replied after a check of her watch. Then she'd have two minutes left to use all the magic surging through her and… try not to expel the symbionts while Glimmer teleported people out.

"That's cutting it close," Garshaw commented.

Adora looked at her. The Tok'ra leader seemed to be, well, focused on her instead of the people defusing the bomb. "We really don't want to risk accidentally killing you all with my healing magic," she said. Hadn't she explained that before?

"But the risk for you and your friends would be lesser."

Oh. "That's not how we do things," Adora said, frowning despite herself. What did Garshaw think she was, so selfish as to sacrifice others for her?

And now Garshaw was smiling at her. Had that been a test? Adora wasn't fond of such games - Shadow Weaver had liked them.

Malinor spoke up: "Can you use your magic powers to seal off or disable the bombs?"

Adora bit her lower lip. "I have never done that before," she admitted. "I could attempt to turn them into plants, but if they are as sensitive to defusing attempts as it sounds they are, they might detonate anyway." Before she managed to figure out how to repeat what she had done to Horde Prime's flagship. Or how to freeze anything in stasis, or something. She wasn't a sorceress! She hadn't studied magic! Or tried to use her magic for such things.

Glimmer would be able to do that. Probably. Adora glanced at her friend. She looked tense but determined. Stubborn, almost scowling, as she watched Bow and Jack work around the corner.

"Six minutes left."

They were timing her? Adora looked at the Tok'ra who had spoken, Salesh. Oh, of course, they would be watching the clock count down. Their lives were at stake, after all.

"If we start teleporting out, we'll leave the spy for last," Catra said. She sounded matter-of-factly, almost calm, but Adora could see her tail twitching - her lover was as nervous as she felt herself.

Adora frowned at her, and Catra shrugged. "If Glimmer exhausts herself…"

Adora understood the sentiment, but… "She'd still do everything to save Firnan."

Catra sighed. "Right." Her ears drooped. She was probably blaming herself for forgetting about the host taken over by the spy.

Adora smiled softly. No one was perfect. But Catra was doing so much better than… before.

"Five minutes left."

"How are Jack and Bow doing?" Adora asked in a low voice.

"They want to cut out the piece of wall with the bomb stuck to it," Catra said. "But it's a crystal, and so if they cut through it, it'll send a power surge through the adhesive. Bow's trying to rig up a surge compensator or something."

Adora nodded. "And I can cut through the crystal." She summoned her sword. Again.

And she could carry the bomb away quickly. She might not get all of them, but enough so the base wouldn't collapse completely should be possible.

"Don't do anything stupid. We only need to deal with half of them," Catra said.

She didn't try to keep Adora from doing it, though. Adora reached out and pulled her into her arms, just holding her for a few seconds. Feeling her warmth against her body, Feeling Catra tense up, squirming for just a moment, before relaxing into her embrace. Yes…

"Four minutes."

Rats.

Four minutes left. Samantha Carter pressed her lips together. Four minutes until Adora would restore magic, and Glimmer would start teleporting people out. And until Adora might accidentally kill every Tok'ra with some uncontrolled mass-healing magic.

Which also meant six minutes until the bombs would go off and cause the entire base to collapse. Perhaps the Tok'ra's tunnel-growing technology had some drawbacks as well - though Sam hadn't done the static calculations to know if this was because of the inherent weakness of their technology Garshaw had mentioned or if the bombs would wreck a conventionally-built base as well.

And she didn't have the time to get distracted right now. They were so close to cracking the signal to shut down all the bombs!

"Nothing in the cache - the main unit clears it right after use," Anise said.

"That would almost make it redundant, wouldn't it?" Entrapta commented. "Oh! Nothing in the transmitter, either - nothing that wasn't already logged."

And the log files had been the first thing they had checked. That left the main unit's memory. Which was not only heavily encrypted but also using a sort of proprietary operating system that none of them - not even Anise, who had the most experience with Goa'uld communications amongst them - had ever seen.

But it still used familiar principles. And known hardware with which it interacted.

And that opened ways to crack it.

"Three minutes!"

Goa'uld communicators were a mature technology - but they weren't perfect. And this was a modified communicator - whoever had sent the spy had taken care to hide additional capacities inside it. New technology. Not as tested and proven.

And they had taken shortcuts when installing it.

Sam smiled when she found a minor glitch in the program controlling the interface between the main unit and the transmitter. "Anise? Take a look at that."

"Oh, yes!" The Tok'ra smiled and started typing on her tool.

"Oh! Clever!" Entrapta's hair flew over her own multitool. "If we overload the cache here…"

"...it will access the main unit's cache," Sam finished. And they could use that to insert a program to download the cache.

"Done!" Anise announced.

"Yes!" Sam quickly ran a search - and came up empty. But the communicator controlled the bombs, so the code to stop or at least delay the detonations had to be in there! The spy had used it to detonate the bomb in the transporter room!

Sam blinked. With a verbal command. A verbal code.

"I'm so stupid!" she snapped. "There's no code in the communicator because they never saved it in there - they only memorised it!"

"Oh!" Entrapta's eyes widened. "That's clever!"

Anise cursed.

And Sam whirled around. "But the codes have to be in the bombs!" And the Colonel and Bow were working on one around the corner!

"Yes!"

"What?" Adora stared at them, but Sam, followed by Entrapta and Anise, rushed past the woman.

He was looking at her as she rounded the corner - he would have heard her running. Good - she hadn't distracted him at a critical moment. "Sir, we need access to the bomb's communicator," she said as calmly as she could.

After a fraction of a second, he nodded. "That might be a little tricky."

"Here's the probe!" Entrapta handed him a thin needle-like device. "It transmits wirelessly. Just touch the communication array."

He turned to Bow. "We'll need to insert it through the internal mesh. Without touching it."

"Two minutes!"

Bow looked grim but nodded as well.

"Bow!" someone - Glimmer - said behind them.

But the boy had already turned to face the bomb, kneeling down. "I can guide you with my scanner."

"Let's do it."

And Sam was forced to wait and stare as the two men started working.

"Alright… this is the spot. Now… align the drill… bit more to the right, the angle is… yes, like that."

The Colonel had sweat on his brow now. "Step back into cover!" he snapped. In a soft voice that only Sam, Bow and probably Catra heard, he added: "Just in case."

Sam wanted to stay, but that wouldn't have made sense.

She still hated herself for obeying and getting into cover around the corner and behind Emily's shield.

"Alright, here we go!"

"Steady, steady… Stop!"

"And now the probe…"

"Check the angle."

"Yes, yes…"

"O-One minute!"

Sam held her breath.

"And… Done! We've got the thingie in!" the Colonel announced.

"We've got contact!" Entrapta blurted out.

Sam was already diving into the bomb's memory. Detonation protocol, communication… "There!" She blinked. "Hal mek?" That meant 'hold' in Goa'uld. It couldn't be so easy, could it?

"Sent!" Anise announced.

"Zero!" the aide announced.

A moment later, Anise yelled. "Bombs delayed!"

A cheer went up.

And Sam took a deep breath and sat down, leaning back against the wall.

That had been a little too close for her taste. And to think she had missed the possibility that the communicator didn't hold the codes to disarm or delay the bombs! Even though it made so much sense - it would ensure that no one could stop the bombs without the spy's cooperation.

But they had solved the problem, which was what counted.

"Oh, here's the command to disarm the bombs, 'hol'!" Entrapta said.

That meant 'stop' in Goa'uld. The spy probably had picked common terms they could slip into any sentence so they could use them in the open without sounding suspicious. Something to keep in mind.

Sam sighed as she got up and stretched. Anise and Entrapta were sending the commands to disarm the bombs, and Glimmer was both hugging and scolding Bow.

"That was cutting it a bit close, Captain."

She looked at the Colonel. He was smiling, teasing her. She wanted to hug him. Instead, she nodded with a grin. "That's how such projects go, sir. There's always a crunch at the end."

She couldn't tell if he got the comment about programming tasks. But his smile turned a little softer. "Good work, Captain!"

"Thank you, sir."

Catra let out a relieved sigh - silently; she had a reputation to maintain - and let her tail trail over Adora's thigh as she turned back to look at the captured spy, who was still on the ground, glaring at her over his gag. Grinning, she crouched down and looked him straight in the eyes. "So… looks like you were clever but not clever enough."

He made some angry noises through the gag.

"Don't bother; my friends are thorough - you won't be able to detonate the bombs now, even if you had a communicator." Well, between the four of them, they shouldn't have missed that possibility. She still said it loudly enough, just in case they had missed it and were listening. Well, not Bow - he was too busy dealing with Glimmer trying to kiss and throttle him at the same time.

The spy seemed to agree with her, though, and switched to silently glaring at her.

She sighed again, but theatrically now. "Let me guess - more threats about how your masters will surely crush us, how we are doomed, how the Empire will prevail?" She shook her head. "It won't happen; trust me - I've been there." And said the same things. "You'll see."

"No, they won't," one of the Tok'ra guarding the spy - another aide - said.

Catra narrowed her eyes. Did they mean…?

"What?" Adora butted in.

"When we captured Goa'uld, we extract from their host and execute them for their crimes," Per'sus explained.

"You can't do that!" Adora blurted out. "They're a prisoner!"

"They're Goa'uld!" Per'sus retorted.

"They're a captured spy." And O'Neill had decided to stop watching Sam disassemble the communicator and join the discussion. "We shoot spies back home."

Adora stared at him. "But… they're a prisoner. They can't hurt anyone any more."

"They're Goa'uld," Per'sus said. "They need to pay for their crimes."

"They almost managed to kill us all," Garshaw spoke up. "And they most certainly killed Cordesh - the Goa'uld murder every Tok'ra they can capture. Usually by torture."

"It's a risk every one of us faces," Jakar added.

Adora stared at them for a moment, looking from one to the other. Then she raised her chin a little, and her expression grew stubborn. "That doesn't make it right to kill them when they're a helpless prisoner!"

"We don't even know if they murdered your spy," Catra pointed out in support of her lover. "And killing prisoners means you can't get any information out of them." Adora pouted at her for that addition, but Catra shrugged - the Tok'ra struck her as pragmatic.

"That would require us to sacrifice a host to them. We won't do that," Garshaw said. "And putting them in stasis would not functionally change their fate - without a host, they would remain in stasis forever."

"You could put them into animals," Adora suggested.

"Or into a habitat made for the symbionts!" Entrapta added.

That, on the other hand, seemed to shock the Tok'ra. And the spy looked genuinely frightened for the first time since they had captured them, Catra noticed.

"Animals?" Gashaw repeated. "But that would…" She shook her head.

"We've encountered a Goa'uld possessing a large predator," Sam told them.

"But to bond with an animal!" Per'sus blurted out. "That's… the mental contamination from that - you'd lose your mind!"

"The snake seemed smart enough to give us some trouble," O'Neill said. "I should know."

"It's an abomination!" Salesh stated. "To bond with an animal is a fate worse than death - far worse. We wouldn't subject even a Goa'uld to that."

"They must have been utterly desperate - and likely not of sound mind already - to do this." Per'sus looked like he wanted to spit.

Catra didn't think this was a good moment to mention that they had been discussing letting the captured Goa'uld possess animal bodies.

"But we could let them into a habitat," Entrapta said. "We have two captured Goa'uld in such habitats, and they are doing fine."

"As far as we can tell," Sam added. "At least they have not complained."

"You have captured Goa'uld? And you're holding them in… a habitat?" Garshaw asked.

"Like a fish tank but for snakes," O'Neill told them.

"Osiris and Setesh. We captured them on Earth," Daniel said. "They were left there when Ra left."

"We know of those System Lords," Garshaw spat. "Even millennia after their disappearance, their crimes are not forgotten!"

Catra managed not to comment about holding long grudges. But it was a near thing, even though she understood the sentiment. But she also knew how bad holding such grudges was for you.

"And you haven't executed them as spies?" Per'sus asked O'Neill.

"Well, you know…" O'Neill shrugged. "Their circumstances were a little different from theirs." He nodded at the spy on the ground.

"We recovered Osiris from a stasis jar," Sam explained. "Although it could be argued that Setesh was infiltrating Earth society when we caught him."

"You are very soft for someone claiming to wage war against the Goa'uld," Garshaw said.

"Even if we were willing to kill prisoners, it makes no sense to do it," Glimmer said. "They can provide valuable information, and if the enemy knows they won't be killed, they are more likely to surrender."

"But to put them into a habitat…" Per'sus shook his head. "Like a larva. Without a partner to bond to, to share your thoughts and memories…" He seemed to suppress a shudder.

"They are fed three meals a day and got a warm place to sleep," O'Neill said.

"And we built them a keyboard - keyboards - to communicate with us!" Entrapta piped up with a smile. "Sized for Goa'uld!"

"It's still… We need hosts. To live without one is… like living as a cripple."

"With brain damage," Anise added.

The Goa'uld suppressed their hosts, as far as Catra knew. But they also got access to their memories. Was that more important than merely a source of information?

"Oh." Entrapta looked surprised. "But if it's so bad, why haven't they said anything?"

"They probably think the alternative is execution," Catra told her friend.

"Oh."

Adora nodded. "If that's how it is, then we need to find a better solution."

It was clear from the expressions on the Tok'ra what alternative solution they would favour.

Well, good luck trying to convince Adora of that! Catra thought.

And here he had thought they could get a good cop/bad cop thing going. But it seemed that the good cops, while meaning well, had unknowingly terrified the spy more than the ones wanting to execute him. Jack O'Neill faintly smiled at the irony - and made a mental note of the fact that the spy apparently was more terrified of being put into an animal than of being executed. That was important information. Also important was that the habitats they had built for their prisoners apparently qualified as cruel and unusual punishment. And, of course, that the snakes they had captured hadn't complained.

But that was for future analysis. They had a more urgent problem to deal with. "How about we discuss what to do with the spy after we've interrogated him?" he suggested.

"We need to liberate Finran," Garshaw said. "He'll be able to tell us what the spy did while in his body."

Jack suppressed the urge to say that they shouldn't discuss this in front of the spy. The snake would already know such obvious information.

"And that would kill the Goa'uld. Eventually," Catra said. "Unless you've got a stasis pod or a habitat."

"One that we could spare," Garshaw agreed.

"We can build a habitat!" Entrapta said at once. "I mean… it might not be as nice as I thought it would be - they really should've told me that! - but it's better than being killed, right?"

Jack couldn't tell if she was honestly asking or if that was a rhetorical question. But she was correct.

"Yes," Adora said. "We can take them back to Earth and keep them there."

The snakes didn't like that - they exchanged a few significant glances. "We need to be able to interrogate them," Garshaw said. "We'll be able to see through their lies."

Implying that Stargate Command wouldn't. But they were right in that they likely knew more about how the Goa'uld worked - hell, about the Goa'uld, period - that would make it harder for the spy to lie or hide information. "We can interrogate them here," Jack said. That might ruffle some feathers back home, but fewer than if he had just invited the snakes to set up an interrogation room in Stargate Command. Even though it would have been funny to see how the spooks with their foreign torture chambers would react to aliens pulling their own moves on them.

"As long as Finran doesn't have to suffer for too much longer," Per'sus said. He turned to stare at the spy. "It goes without saying that, should Finran die, we will not show you any mercy."

"And our prospective allies just have shown us that there are indeed worse fates than death," Malinor added with an expression that made Jack wince a little.

Yeah, those snakes really hated the Goa'uld.

"OK! It shouldn't take too long - we know how to build one. We probably should build a few more in reserve." Entrapta nodded. "Or a lot if we are going to invade a planet."

"But we also need to find a more humane way to keep Goa'uld prisoners," Glimmer said.

Garshaw smiled sadly at that. "I sincerely hope you find a solution, though we have tried to find alternatives for millennia since there are so few voluntary hosts, and none of the proposed solutions was practicable or morally acceptable."

"What about artificial bodies?" Entrapta apparently took that as a challenge.

"That wouldn't satisfy our need for a partner," Per'sus explained with a gentler smile. "It would be like a more mobile version of your 'habitats', I believe."

"Oh. I guess that means cloned bodies without higher cerebral functions are also out."

Once more, the Tok'ra shuddered - and the spy looked frightened again.

"That might satisfy some of the biological needs of our species with regards to mental capacity," Anise said, "but it would leave us bereft of the emotional and intellectual benefits a host offers."

"It would be like inhabiting a corpse." Malinor shook her head.

"You need a sapient, sentient partner," Daniel said, nodding. "But the Goa'uld keep their hosts' consciousness suppressed, trapped in their own body. Do they have different needs?"

Once more, the Tok'ra exchanged glances before Per'sus replied: "They have perverted this. They thrive on the control, on the oppression of their host. And that reflects on their entire society."

Daniel's eyes widened. "That explains so much!" he exclaimed. "If there is a biological urge, beyond genetic memory, then we have to reexamine our views of Goa'uld society!"

"But if it's a perverted urge, it also means they can change," Glimmer pointed out.

"Some of us can," Garshaw agreed. "But few amongst the Goa'uld can overcome their… condition."

"Or their conditioning," Daniel said. "If this is like… We need to talk about this with psychologists. It might be treatable."

He made the snakes sound like a bunch of poor, sick patients. Or addicts. Jack pressed his lips together so he wouldn't sneer. They were monsters. Monsters who apparently had a choice to be decent people and rejected it. But that was a topic for another day. They had a more urgent situation to deal with. "Anyway, let's get a habitat so we can start interrogating our spy," he said.

"And in the meantime, while we restore the transporter, we can continue our discussions," Garshaw said.

"As long as we can get more food," Catra cut in. "I, at least, wasn't finished with my dinner," she added when Adora frowned at her.

Jack chuckled at that - he could do with some more food himself. Even if it was snake meat.

The food didn't taste as good as before. At least to Adora. The thought that they were torturing their prisoners… She shook her head. How could this have happened? Why hadn't their prisoners said anything? Did they really fear they would be killed if they complained?

She bit down on a piece of fried meat, chewed twice then swallowed it. With some difficulty.

"Careful. You don't want to choke," Catra told her - in between stuffing her own mouth with more fried fish than should fit.

Adora frowned at her. "I'm not going to choke."

"But you're blaming yourself for the Goa'uld's problems." Catra twitched her shoulders in that not-quite-shrug of hers.

"No," Adora protested. "I'm just… wondering how this could happen." They had done all they could to treat their prisoners well - or so they thought.

"Because we don't know as much as we thought we do about the Goa'uld?" Catra shrugged again. "That kind of stuff happens. Nobody's perfect."

Adora pressed her lips together. That was true, but… "That sounds a bit callous," she said.

"Yeah." Catra agreed. "So?"

"What?"

"We did what we thought was best," Catra explained. "It turned out we were wrong. Kind of - no one seems to have a better solution, anyway. So… why torture yourself over it?"

"Because we have to do better!" Adora took a deep breath. "We need to fix our mistake." They couldn't torture their prisoners.

"If there's a way to fix it," her lover said. "You can't fix everything." She narrowed her eyes at Adora. "Not even She-Ra can do that."

Well, she should! But Adora didn't say that out loud. Her friends would scold her for that. And they were right - she didn't like it, but she knew she couldn't solve every problem. She couldn't heal everyone on Earth. She knew it well enough.

But she hated it all the same.

"And the Tok'ra have been working on this for a long time," Catra pointed out. "Not to help the Goa'uld, but to get an alternative to needing hosts, but it works out to the same."

Only, it didn't work out at all in this case. "There has to be a way to fix this," Adora said. "Entrapta and the others will find it."

"They've got other things to do. More important things," Catra retorted.

Adora was aware of that as well. Of course, they couldn't just focus on how to treat prisoners when they were fighting a war. But… "It would be easier to make the Goa'uld surrender if we had an alternative." Like with the Horde.

"They would have to believe us in the first place," Catra said. "Remember what we were told about the princesses?"

Of course, she did! Adora pressed her lips together. The Goa'uld would expect the worst. Not without justification - the Tok'ra apparently had been killing all their prisoners for thousands of years. To free their hosts, and because they had no alternative, apparently, but still.

The war would be worse than they had expected, she realised. Harder. Bloodier.

"We need a way to fix this," she repeated herself. Some way to show the Goa'uld that there was an alternative to enslaving others.

But as much as she tried, she couldn't think of any at the moment. She could only hope that their friends would think of one.