Fic:: WIP::Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves IV:: SGA/SG-1::[d]
Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves IV
an Alternate Universe SGA/SG-1 Crossover
by Auburn
Gen Plot with Mixed Slash and Het Elements
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four [a] [b] [c] [d]
"Are you really bleeding out?" Vala asked.
"Not quite," Jehan said, gritting his teeth.
"Good." She found his blaster and shoved it into his hands. "Cover the doors."
"You could get rid of his body," Jehan suggested. One more zat would do it, disintegrating Kell's body into nothing.
"We may need proof of death."
He contemplated that and decided Kell's head would suffice if it came to that. Reckell had that machete-sized knife; using it on the bastard that killed him would have pleased the Serrakin. The hole in his leg made thinking hard, no matter what he told Vala, he'd definitely lost too much blood. Any qualms he might have had about mutilating a body were swamped in the red haze of pain pulsing through him with each heart beat.
Vala took a seat the main console and typed in a series of command strings. She hooted as the armored airlocks thunked closed; they were proof against staff blasts and anything the Satedans had with them. "Gon'achs," she muttered. Security feeds flickered over the main screen, showing empty corridors, holds and then narrowing down to the cabins and shared spaces and engineering. "Oh, you - That's it, that's my girl."
"Who?" Jehan asked. He carefully didn't move, because every twitch jostled his leg and he didn't want to scream. His arms were trembling, too. "Mer?" he repeated.
"Our lovely Lindsay," Vala caroled. "Now just stay there." She typed in another command. "Everyone is locked in now."
"Mer?"
"Mer's alive," Vala answered.
Relief blurred everything for a breath. Part of him had been holding its breath since Kell mentioned Mer. Mer was okay, though; Vala said so. She didn't lie about things like that, not to Jehan.
The blaster was getting heavier, weighing too much even with both hands holding it up. The muzzle dipped as another pulse of dizzying pain made him whine under his breath. His head dropped down onto his chest and he jerked it up, jerked the blaster up too, until Vala caught it and set it aside. He blinked at her and realized he'd lost some time. She crouched next to him, looking concerned, without a hint of Qetesh left in her expression.
She held up her hand, palm toward him, showing him the small healing device she always carried.
"This will hurt," she told him.
He knew. The healing device would cost them both energy they couldn't spare, but he needed to be mobile again. He nodded to her to do it. They'd pay the piper later, after the crew and their ship was secure again.
The healing device could feel almost pleasant, warm and tingling, when used on minor scrapes and bruises or to ease muscle cramps, but on a serious wound it burned. Vala swayed, her face strained, and kept her hand pressed to his wound. Unlike a sarcophagus, without a symbiote to regulate and maximize the body's metabolism, the Goa'uld device exhausted both healer and the healed. His flesh melted together, the blood flow slowing with each vessel that knit back into a whole, andl fresh pink skin closed over the dimpled hole. Jehan sucked in his breath and fisted his hands against the sensation of every cell in his leg frying until the pain faded into nothing.
Vala rocked back and breathed hard.
"Enough," Jehan said.
She shook her head.
"Not enough. You need the muscles too." She reached for him again. It didn't hurt so much this time, which he took to mean the nerves had been fixed already.
They stayed on the floor after Vala finished.
She was still better off than him; the healing device hadn't replaced his lost blood. He need fluids, food, and rest. Vala would be fine once she'd had a meal.
No time for that.
Jehan levered himself up and limped to the security station. He found the feeds from engineering and drive chambers first. Mer was... He growled under his breath as he caught sight of Mer's bruised and bloody face. Novak was puking and Miko Kusanagi was... Jehan winced. Pretty much doing to one of the Satedans would he'd have once done to Ba'al given the opportunity. Maybe. He didn't know what he'd do if he faced Ba'al again. Try to kill him or go down on his knees.
Vala staggered over and braced herself against the console as Jehan opened the comm.
"Mer, we've secured the bridge."
Mer lifted his gaze to the security cam even as the tension and energy animating him seemed to disappear briefly. He squared those broad shoulders and slurred an answer within a second.
"It's about time."
"We underestimated Kell," Vala said.
"You think?" Mer's scowl was a thing of... not beauty certainly, but striking between his temperament and the damage to his face. At least Jehan thought so. "Now turn off that alarm before my ears start bleeding along with everything else!"
Vala cut the alarm. The silence that followed made their ears ring.
Jehan began scanning the other feeds, finding all the rest of their people either under guard in the rec room or in the infirmary, except for Caias. Janet Fraiser and the Satedan doctor were elbows deep in surgery on Signe. Jehan immediately dismissed his nascent plan to cut the gravity generators and lights. The most of the rest of the Satedans were trapped in the main armory and hold two, with a few exceptions - including a squad in Caias' quarters.
The smuggler didn't look happy. He was trying to bypass the airlock controls and get them out of his quarters into the corridor unsuccessfully.
He didn't appear under duress.
Jehan glanced sidelong at Vala.
"I see it," she admitted. She bared her teeth at the image. "We'll leave him there for now."
Caias was going to have much more to be unhappy about soon. What the hell had he been thinking? That he and Kell could use Mer as a hostage to Vala or Jehan's cooperation? The original crew of the Prometheus might have been able to eventually work around the safeguards and booby traps the three of them had put in place, but the Satedans couldn't manage it.
Jehan cycled the feeds back to the rec room. Vala chuckled rustily.
Daniel and Teyla were holding the Satedan's guns while Til tied them up securely. Lydia Dumais was frowning at a laptop that had obviously been used as a weapon.
Only Dumais looked up as Vala used the comm and said, "I see you don't need any help. Daniel, I'm sure you remember where the brig is. Why don't you introduce our friends to their new accommodations?"
~*~
Teyla noted Jehan's limp in the next day, but dismissed it as unimportant. Meredith still carried the bruises and swelling from his beating and kept up a steady litany of complaints about it, but he too would be all right. Signe remained under Janet's care.
They had survived the attempted takeover, but not unscathed, and the crew seemed shaken and off-balance.
The Satedans and Caias were locked down in their quarters or the brig, with the exception of their casualties. The dead were in a refrigerated morgue attached to the infirmary, the Satedan dead and the crew's only casualty.
After a short debate in the mess hall - chosen not because anyone wished to eat, but so they could avoid the rec room - those that knew Reckell best decided to give him what Daniel called a 'burial at sea' modified for space craft.
Seventeen hours later, Teyla arrived on the bridge dressed in her best leather and an embroidered vest. The rest of the crew were gathering there too.
The main viewscreen was dark until Miko slithered out of the access panel beneath it and said, "Try it now." It came alive with the blue infinity of hyperspace.
Vala beamed at Miko, who had her head propped against the bulkhead and was sitting still. "You're a treasure."
"Oh, yes, absolutely a treasure," Meredith muttered from where he was still repairing the navigation console. Environmental had been restored faster, once Teyla had checked hold two and discovered the glitch was a result of the Satedans breaking in and not faulty sensors. "Hooking up a viewscreen is remarkably difficult compared to, say, replacing Asgard technology that tells the ship where we are so that we can go where we want to and not exit hyperspace in the middle of a red giant or a planet." He glanced up at the viewscreen and grunted, adding, "Though, admittedly, most of the SGC's monkey's couldn't set the clock on a microwave. Good work."
Miko nodded and no one else bothered her. None of the crew had slept since the assault, and if she could rest there, they'd let her.
Janet greeted Teyla softly, looking immeasurably weary.
"Signe?" Teyla asked, fearing the worst. On Athos, a wound such as he'd taken would have been a death sentence.
"Stable," Janet replied. They both shuffled out of the way of Jehan and Meredith. Vala stood in front of the repaired main viewscreen. It showed a distant circle of light, Belkan's sun, dimmed by distance and filters. "I sedated him, otherwise he would have tried to get up here for this." She was older than Teyla had realized on their first meeting; all of the crew were. Exhaustion etched age into her face now, tiny lines and pinched lips giving her away. "McKay should be in a bed too, but if I tried to force him, he'd refuse." She sighed and stuffed her hands in her white coat. "He used to be such a whiny hypochondriac."
"Ow, ow, ow," Meredith said, pulling his hands back from the navigation console and sucking on the fingertips as sparks flared. "I said cut the power to the console!"
Teyla raised her eyebrow at Janet.
"Worse," Janet said.
"He is a survivor in his way," Teyla said. She respected that. She found Mer amusing most of the time; she rather treasured that. She hadn't had much to laugh at or anyone to laugh with until the crew picked her up on Athos.
"Tough when it matters," Janet agreed.
"No one saw that back at the SGC," Daniel said as he joined them. "Either that or the Tok'ra really changed him."
"Sometime soon?" Jehan prompted Meredith, leaning over him as he worked, one hand resting lightly at the back of his neck.
"Working as fast as I can."
"We're dropping out of hyper in twenty," Jehan said. "It'd be nice to be able to get back there if we need to run."
"Like that never occurred to me," Meredith snapped. He arched his neck back into Jehan's touch, then bent again to finish installing the replacement parts on the console. "Next time, shoot up something a little less critical."
"I'll make sure to let the next bad guy know."
"Ah, okay, that's got it."
Vala strolled over as Jehan slipped into the navigator's seat in Mer's place. "Ready?"
"Of course," Mer replied.
Vala leaned past him and activated the ship comm. "Brace for hyperspace exit."
Jehan glanced up at her. "Brace?" he complained. "I'm better than that."
She grinned. "Just fucking with them."
Dushka entered the bridge and stopped beside Daniel, Teyla and Janet, while Zelenka and Dumais wandered over and settled on either side of Miko.
"Where is Til?" Teyla asked.
"Sitting guard on the missile racks," Dushka said.
Teyla nodded. She'd joined Vala and Janet in washing Reckell's body and winding it in white linens. Til and Jehan had taken it after that, to place it in a missile casing Meredith and Zelenka had gutted. It was loaded in the first missile tube now, waiting for the ship to return to real space.
"Now," Jehan said. He pressed a button and the roiling blue light surrounding the ship peeled away before them. Revenge reverted to normal space in a brilliant splash of radiation.
Belkan's sun appeared on the viewscreen, smaller than it appeared from the planet, and dimmed by the ship's visual filters.
"Everybody ready?" Jehan asked.
The three Tau'ri got to their feet.
"Tak mal arik tiak," Jehan said.
"Tak mal arik tiak," Meredith and Vala echoed.
"You will not be forgotten," Daniel translated for Teyla. "It's Goa'uld."
Teyla bowed her head, touched her necklace and repeated the words in honor of the Serrakin first mate, adding a simple prayer to the Ancestor's to guide him to peace and safety.
"Initiating launch," Jehan said.
The missile case holding Reckell's body burst from the launching tube, seemed to drift, then began moving steadily away from the ship toward the sun. The viewscreen showed it briefly, light reflecting off its length, but the tactical display showed its path along the course plotted for it.
"Main burn commencing now," Meredith said.
On the screen, the missile's engines lit, plasma bright, and it sped away.
Teyla gasped as the engines went out.
"Burn through complete," Meredith said. He seemed pleased. "It'll reach the sun in two years three months and fourteen days."
"Set a course for Belkan," Vala ordered. "I want the rest of them off my ship."
"What about Caias?" Dushka asked.
"Him too," Vala said in a hard voice.
~*~
"Vala, my lovely, you know I didn't plot with Kell," Caias protested. He'd shaved off his beard. The smooth jaw and chin didn't improve his wide face. His eyes cut to where Jehan and Teyla guarded the door to his quarters, uncompromising and uncorruptable, and back to Vala.
She gritted her teeth and forced a smile. Qetesh would have had him flayed alive before the crew for betraying them, for being caught even considering such an action. She felt much the same. It had taken an effort not to order the majority of the Satedans spaced too. She'd enjoyed herding them through the corridors by opening and closing airlocks and slow venting atmosphere instead. Once the Satedans were secured and Reckell honored, that had left Caias. Dealing with what to do about him was the captain's job.
"It was just business," she murmured in a throaty tone. She wanted him to explain why more than a confession. There would be no trial. It would be her decision, backed by Jehan and Mer, and no one else's. She'd been the one to bring him aboard. "I do understand."
Caias grinned at her unrepentantly.
"It's a lovely ship," he said. "I could make a fortune with her back in the Viastella, especially once I got rid of the goons. You can't blame me for taking advantage when Kell came to me with his little plan."
Jehan drew his blaster and rested it in the crook of his folded arms, silently sending the message that he could and did blame Caias.
"You could have made a fortune crewing with us," Vala replied, stung.
Caias rocked back and scowled at her. "You aren't smuggling or hijacking, Vala. You've let the Tau'ri suck you into playing do-gooder. It's almost sickening."
That rocked her back. She glared back at Caias. Do-gooder? She had every intention of flying away from this adventure with a profit that would make the greediest Goa'uld weep. Just because it was turning out to be a bit more complicated and dangerous than expected or that they'd helped a couple of people out, didn't mean that plan had changed. Vala sniffed and said haughtily, "You needn't be insulting, Caias."
"Name one thing of value we've obtained since coming to this galaxy," Caias demanded. "Just one."
"We did pick up that very nice wood and the fresh fruit from Fahn," she said.
"And traded it. Like honest merchants," Caias objected.
She hated to admit it, but they had made honest deals for the goods they'd moved so far. Maybe Caias had a point. She'd never been particularly interested in honest work. It was so boring.
"Vala, you should have allied with those Genii - "
Jehan growled from his place behind her, silencing Caias, but it was too late.
Vala sighed dramatically.
"I've been a prisoner," she explained to Caias. So had Jehan, so had Meredith, and in another way, so had Teyla. They would never be willing to ally with anyone like Genii. "No."
"So, now what?" Caias asked.
"Since you threw your lot in with the Satedans, you can leave the ship with them," Vala decided.
~*~
The fires burning in Belkan weren't visible from orbit. A cold wind whipped acrid smoke into their faces once the rings deposited them in the same small plaza in the old city where they'd first met the Satedans. The cramped, cobbled streets were empty.
Jehan glanced first to Teyla and then Ronon, before drawing his blaster. He activated his comm with his other hand.
Mer's voice sounded through the earpiece of his comm set.
"What's going on down there?"
"Are your people always so shy?" Teyla asked Ronon.
Ronon grunted and headed for the tavern. "Solen!" he shouted. He pulled the door open and poked his head inside before entering. "Solen Sincha!"
Jehan motioned Teyla to join him as he activated his mike. "Ring down the ammo, Mer."
"I still don't see why we're paying them after what they tried," Mer complained. The rings flashed down and up, leaving behind a pile of crated ammunition for Satedan arms.
"They did what you hired them to do," Teyla commented.
"Oh, fine. Whatever. Let me know when you're ready to have the rest of the backstabbing gon'achs ringed down."
With a huff of laughter, Jehan motioned to Teyla. They caught up with Ronon as he backed out, followed by Sincha and two more Satedans. They were all tight-wound, but moving slowly. They headed straight for the crates and began moving them inside. Ronon nodded to Jehan and Teyla.
"Could have used this six days ago," Sincha muttered.
"Six days?" Teyla echoed.
Jehan caught that too. They had only left Belkan seven days ago. Whatever had happened had come on their heels. He glanced around again, noting several black-seared craters in the stone walls. He squinted. Those marks had come from aircraft. He raised his eyes and scanned the sky, half expecting the manta-like silhouettes of death gliders to appear.
"Some kind of raiders?" he ventured.
"Wraith," Ronon said.
"Not a culling," Teyla said, scanning the streets. With the appearance of men from the tavern, others were sidling from out of the houses and businesses. They scurried and flinched in the way of survivors of a recent attack. The thud of a dropped crate and Sincha cursing sent a thin man down the street into hysterics. The woman with him pulled him back inside.
"Raid," Ronon agreed. "Solon says there were three darts. Blasted the walls down, snatched up anyone out in the streets and went back through the Ring."
Teyla froze for one swift breath.
"As though they were hunting a runner," she said. She traced one finger over the necklace she wore on a leather thong, a habit of hers.
They finished moving the crates and followed Sincha back into the tavern. "Where's Kell?" Sincha asked. He went behind the bar and drew tankards of ale for all of them.
"Dead," Ronon said.
Sincha grunted and took a deep draught from his own tankard. "Wraith-bringing danp," he said and wiped foam off his upper lip. "Probably deserved it."
Ronon grunted.
Jehan tapped his mic back on. "Mer? Go ahead and send down everyone and check the long range sensors."
"Why?"
"They had Wraith here a week ago."
"Crap. Sending down the first group now."
He heard the rings and light flashed through chinks between the shutters over the tavern windows.
"'S not just here, either," Sincha said. "Fahn and Edwe were both culled."
Jehan set his tankard down. "Fahn?" They'd been there. The people had been mostly agrarian and friendly once they recognized Teyla. Their woodcraft had been exquisite, their houses built deep in a forest of monster trees, intricately decorated to blend into the landscape. Despite their fear of the Wraith, they hadn't been beaten down and broken the way many people in the Milky Way were - they didn't believe the Wraith were gods.
"Manaria too," one of the barflies added.
Mer and Teyla had destroyed the transmitter they pulled out of her. The Wraith couldn't be tracking Revenge. He checked Teyla and she looked ill, gray under the usual warmth of her skin.
"Last batch except for Melena and the bodies," Mer said. "I'm not getting anything on short range - No, wait, there's subspace signal coming from the planet. I think - Hyperspace window opening!"
Teyla jerked and gasped.
"Wraith!" she gasped. "The Wraith are coming!"
"We've got an incoming Wraith ship - " Mer shouted. "Oh, Hathor's tits, it's huge!"
The shriek of a dart diving through the atmosphere made Jehan draw his blaster. A series of explosion followed as it strafed the city.
"Get out there where I can ring you up!" Mer yelled.
Ronon followed Jehan and Teyla to the door. "No!" Sincha yelled. "We have to hide. There are tunnels under the basements."
"Melena," Ronon said.
Jehan ducked his head out the door and saw a white beam sweep over one of the Satedan squads they'd just ringed down. Caias was with them, lumbering slower than the long legged Satedans. They all disappeared into the beam as the dart sped onward. He tried to judge how long it would take to turn and a second dart screamed over head.
"Not so easy!" he snapped into the mic.
"Get out there," Mer said. "Jehan, it's firing on us and I don't know how long our shields will hold."
"Right."
He knew Teyla was hearing the same transmission, so he caught her eye and nodded to the open plaza.
She nodded back grimly.
They sprinted for the center of the plaza. Ronon bolted after them. A dart dove toward them, sweeping the culling beam beneath it like a broom. There was no cover. Jehan stopped and began firing the blaster at it. Teyla's P90 joined in, firing up at the speeding craft. The dart jigged to the side abruptly, black smoke pouring from one of its engines.
"Mer - "
Ronon hit him, sending both of them tumbling to the cobblestones and out of the path of second dart. They landed within the ring target area.
Teyla skidded next to them and called out, "Now, Meredith!"
The rings snapped down.
Jehan rolled onto his feet and ran for the bridge. Revenge shuddered as he reached it. Vala moved smoothly from the pilot's station to weapons as Jehan took his place. He didn't let himself look up at the looming Wraith hive on the viewscreen, intent on plotting a escape course and the calculations to open a hyperspace window.
"Shield at seventy-eight percent," Mer said. His thick lip blurred his usual sharp tones. He hunched over his console and typed constantly. Jehan knew he was manually adjusting shield frequencies faster than the computer programs would, inspired genius predicting the next shift and foiling the harmonics that would let a weapon break through. He summed his work up in a single word. "Holding."
"It's mostly been the small craft," Vala said. She had a firing solution on her screen and Revenge shuddered as a railgun opened up on the nearest dart. She began correcting the solutions for the wave of darts launching toward them as Revenge shifted into sublight and left orbit.
The railguns kept firing on the darts until the distance rendered their fire ineffective. The hive kept moving in on Belkan while the darts pursued them. They passed the fifth planet's orbit and Jehan initiated the hyperspace window.
Vacuum and darkness peeled open in a coruscant flare of exotic radiation. He checked the shield integrity to make sure the shield bubble was sound.
"Jump," he said.
Revenge flew into the window. It snapped closed behind them, tearing apart the darts that had followed them and lacked sufficient shielding to survive hyperspace.
"No one mentioned Wraith hives were that big," Vala said in the silence that followed.
Jehan leaned back in his seat and began wapping at the dirt on his pants from hitting the cobblestones under Ronon. He spared a thought for the Satedan, but figured he was likely still in the ring room with Melena, unless Teyla had gotten them out of there.
"That thing could eat a ha'tak for an appetizer," Mer declared eventually.
"Slow," Jehan said. The sheer size of the hive had made it slow to maneuver thanks to inertia. Probably. It had been headed for the planet, though. Maybe they hadn't seen what a hive could really do if it wanted. The hair on the back of neck stood up at that thought.
"We thought the downed supply ship we saw was big," Mer went on. "That was nothing."
"And the cruisers we saw over Athos," Vala added.
Mer bent back over the console and made a series of adjustments. Jehan checked read-outs and saw what he'd done: deforming the bubble to shadow the dimensions of the ship took less energy than maintaining a sphere that primarily held only vacuum. He left the chair and dodged over to the internal security station.
"That damn subspace signal I caught on the planet," Mer said, looking up with a stunned expression, "it's on the ship now."
"But we can't be tracked in hyperspace," Vala said.
"We can't stay in hyperspace forever," Mer replied. He wiped at the sweat on his forehead and winced as he brushed a bruised and swollen spot. "It's got to be the Satedans."
The bridge doors opened, admitting Teyla, Ronon, Melena and Til.
"What?" Ronon demanded.
"It's not them," Jehan said wearily, meeting Teyla's gaze. "Fahn and Edwe and Manaria were all hit before Belkan."
Mer followed his sightline to Teyla and shook his head. "No. The transmitter the Wraith used on her is gone."
Vala considered Teyla briefly, then shook her head. "Whatever is going on, Teyla isn't responsible."
Teyla straightened her spine.
"I must be."
Jehan stared at her, then rocked out of his chair and onto his feet, striding over to her. "This," he said, lifting the leather thong at her neck and the intricately made pendant hanging from. "You had this on Athos. We didn't go through your gear. There must be something in your gear, a tracker the Wraith planted on this or something else."
Teyla's hand rose and
closed around the pendant.
"Nothing," she whispered, "I had nothing but what I wore when the Wraith took me." She jerked the necklace loose. "Nothing but this. Samantha found it in the caves the day Athos was culled."
"Still, we need to go through everything you carried aboard," Vala said.
She glanced at Melena and Ronon. "I suppose we're stuck with you until we get wherever we're going."
"I set course for Dagan," Jehan said. He touched Teyla's shoulder and bent to rest his forehead against hers. He felt her trembling at first, trembling that slowly stilled in calm.
"We'll start with the necklace," Mer said. "Let's get down to the labs."
Jehan waited for Vala to stroll over after catching Ronon's eye. The Satedan waited patiently.
"He saved me from a culling beam," Jehan told Vala. He doubted Ronon or Melena would have any chance among their fellow Satedans - if there were any left after the culling of Belkan.
She studied Ronon again, suspiciously. "You want a place with this crew?" Ronon and Melena hadn't been part of the assault by Kell. Without them, Signe would be dead, and now Jehan owed Ronon his life.
"Yes," Melena said immediately.
Ronon scowled but shrugged. "Got no place to go back to," he admitted.
"Crew share each," Vala said.
Out in the corridor, Mer raised his voice. "Can you get a move on? I need to go by the mess hall and get something to eat."
~*~
Teyla fingered the pendant in horror. Memories of her mother tying the thong around her neck as a child mingled with the wet, cold night the Wraith culled Athos, her people and the Tau'ri fleeing white beams into the forest, Samantha lifting it from the sandy cave floor, Dr. Beckett admiring it, the Wraith lifting it on one talon and baring its serrated teeth in a mockery of a smile.
"This," she said. "This brought the Wraith to Athos?"
Meredith took it back from her and turned it over, the silvery knot shining in his blunt fingers. "Probably," he said. "There's definitely a subspace transmitter hidden within. It's not just a transmitter though."
Vala and Jehan were respectively perched on a counter and leaning against its edge. Dr. Zelenka and Miko Kusanagi had joined them as well. Zelenka looked up from a laptop. "No, very much more."
"I don't understand," Teyla said. "This was in my family for generations. How could it - "
"Because it didn't start transmitting until it was triggered," Meredith interrupted. "While I was testing it, it stopped transmitting. Then Kusanagi came in to work on it and it started again. Zelenka handled it and it stopped. It's calibrated to respond to people with a specific genetic marker, aka the ATA gene. You don't have it, but someone who does touched it and triggered it when you found it again."
"Samantha?"
"No, we've got the records on the expedition and she wasn't a positive. Kusanagi and Beckett and Markham were the ATA positives."
She remembered Beckett admiring the necklace and swallowed bile.
"So," Vala said thoughtfully, "if it was triggered again after you joined us, that means someone on our crew has this ATA gene."
Teyla nodded.
Meredith looked at Jehan.
Jehan looked startled and mouthed, 'Me?'
"You," Meredith said. "You set it off without even touching it."
Jehan paled and tensed. "So all those people on Fahn and Edwe... "
"It is my fault," Teyla said. "I brought you to them. I exposed you to this thing."
Her words failed to soothe and Jehan shook his head before stalking out of the lab.
Meredith took a step after him, then stopped. He turned back to Teyla. "We can disassemble it and deactivate the transmitter."
"No," Teyla said. She snatched it from his hand, dropped it to the floor and ground it under the heel of her boot, bearing down with all her weight until she felt the pendant shatter. "It is a tainted thing."
Meredith grimaced at the bits revealed when she lifted her boot.
"We could have studied it."
"Go find Jehan," Vala told him. "Teyla was right."
~*~
Mer studied the sensors as Jehan brought Revenge into orbit over Dagan. He found the stargate and began searching for the nearest population center or any power spikes that could be the ZPM.
The radiation spike made him jerk back from the laptop.
"What is it?" Vala asked.
"Just a minute," Mer muttered, typing in a new set of parameters.
The readings were ugly and damning.
"Someone nuked them," he said.
"The Genii," Lydia Dumais said from the environmental console. "Commander Kolya."
"Why?" Daniel asked. "Why would he?"
The fallout was drifting in a fan from a single point, carried on the wind, but would spread to the stargate soon.
"To teach them a lesson, if they refused to do whatever he wanted," Zelenka explained. His features were slack and his hand trembled when he pushed his glasses up into place again. "To test the bomb we built him." He scrubbed his hands through his wild hair before straightening his glasses, whispering, "Brendan... "
"How very unpleasant this Kolya must be," Vala mused. "So the ZPM is gone?"
Mer studied the readouts again and found another, cleaner energy spike, one that was static. Once he filtered away the nuclear radiation it was unmistakable.
"No, it's there," he said. He pointed out the reading. "It's still there."
"Then we'd better go get it before this Kolya does," Vala stated.
"There is much activity at the stargate," Zelenka said.
"Of course there is," Mer snapped. "Anyone that can still crawl is using it to get away. Most of them have already taken too many rads, but they probably don't know that." He glared at Zelenka. "Let's just hope your Kolya stuck around too close and caught a dose too."
Jehan leaned over, caught Mer's shoulder under one hand, and squeezed. Mer calmed himself down, but didn't apologize to Zelenka. He doubted it would help the other man's guilt. Instead, he picked out a natural spot to ring down, near the location of the ZPM, but still outside the fallout zone unless the wind changed.
"I'm going down with you," he told Jehan. "It's not like we could go anywhere without you anyway - you're our only pilot."
Jehan gave him a look, because both Mer and Vala could pilot; they just weren't brilliant at it. Then the corner of his mouth kicked up.
"I would prefer to remain on the ship, myself," Zelenka said.
Mer decided to let that go; Zelenka and the other two had good reason to stay aboard the ship. They wouldn't be close enough to see the direct devastation of the Daganese city, but the knowledge would be heavy in the air while they were groundside.
They assembled in the ring room: Mer, Jehan, Vala, Ronon, Til, Daniel, Teyla and surprisingly, Lydia Dumais. Vala and Jehan were in their Kull armor and Til had his staff weapon; everyone carried heavier armament than usual, along with dosimeters.
Mer missed knowing Reckell had the bridge while they would be gone. He checked his blaster was in his thigh holster again and tugged at the flak vest Jehan had insisted he wear.
"Everybody ready?" Vala sang out.
"As we'll ever be," Mer muttered.
They ringed down to Dagan.
Beta duties ably fulfilled by lexstar69 and sian1359 on this part.
tbc in 2010
an Alternate Universe SGA/SG-1 Crossover
by Auburn
Gen Plot with Mixed Slash and Het Elements
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four [a] [b] [c] [d]
"Are you really bleeding out?" Vala asked.
"Not quite," Jehan said, gritting his teeth.
"Good." She found his blaster and shoved it into his hands. "Cover the doors."
"You could get rid of his body," Jehan suggested. One more zat would do it, disintegrating Kell's body into nothing.
"We may need proof of death."
He contemplated that and decided Kell's head would suffice if it came to that. Reckell had that machete-sized knife; using it on the bastard that killed him would have pleased the Serrakin. The hole in his leg made thinking hard, no matter what he told Vala, he'd definitely lost too much blood. Any qualms he might have had about mutilating a body were swamped in the red haze of pain pulsing through him with each heart beat.
Vala took a seat the main console and typed in a series of command strings. She hooted as the armored airlocks thunked closed; they were proof against staff blasts and anything the Satedans had with them. "Gon'achs," she muttered. Security feeds flickered over the main screen, showing empty corridors, holds and then narrowing down to the cabins and shared spaces and engineering. "Oh, you - That's it, that's my girl."
"Who?" Jehan asked. He carefully didn't move, because every twitch jostled his leg and he didn't want to scream. His arms were trembling, too. "Mer?" he repeated.
"Our lovely Lindsay," Vala caroled. "Now just stay there." She typed in another command. "Everyone is locked in now."
"Mer?"
"Mer's alive," Vala answered.
Relief blurred everything for a breath. Part of him had been holding its breath since Kell mentioned Mer. Mer was okay, though; Vala said so. She didn't lie about things like that, not to Jehan.
The blaster was getting heavier, weighing too much even with both hands holding it up. The muzzle dipped as another pulse of dizzying pain made him whine under his breath. His head dropped down onto his chest and he jerked it up, jerked the blaster up too, until Vala caught it and set it aside. He blinked at her and realized he'd lost some time. She crouched next to him, looking concerned, without a hint of Qetesh left in her expression.
She held up her hand, palm toward him, showing him the small healing device she always carried.
"This will hurt," she told him.
He knew. The healing device would cost them both energy they couldn't spare, but he needed to be mobile again. He nodded to her to do it. They'd pay the piper later, after the crew and their ship was secure again.
The healing device could feel almost pleasant, warm and tingling, when used on minor scrapes and bruises or to ease muscle cramps, but on a serious wound it burned. Vala swayed, her face strained, and kept her hand pressed to his wound. Unlike a sarcophagus, without a symbiote to regulate and maximize the body's metabolism, the Goa'uld device exhausted both healer and the healed. His flesh melted together, the blood flow slowing with each vessel that knit back into a whole, andl fresh pink skin closed over the dimpled hole. Jehan sucked in his breath and fisted his hands against the sensation of every cell in his leg frying until the pain faded into nothing.
Vala rocked back and breathed hard.
"Enough," Jehan said.
She shook her head.
"Not enough. You need the muscles too." She reached for him again. It didn't hurt so much this time, which he took to mean the nerves had been fixed already.
They stayed on the floor after Vala finished.
She was still better off than him; the healing device hadn't replaced his lost blood. He need fluids, food, and rest. Vala would be fine once she'd had a meal.
No time for that.
Jehan levered himself up and limped to the security station. He found the feeds from engineering and drive chambers first. Mer was... He growled under his breath as he caught sight of Mer's bruised and bloody face. Novak was puking and Miko Kusanagi was... Jehan winced. Pretty much doing to one of the Satedans would he'd have once done to Ba'al given the opportunity. Maybe. He didn't know what he'd do if he faced Ba'al again. Try to kill him or go down on his knees.
Vala staggered over and braced herself against the console as Jehan opened the comm.
"Mer, we've secured the bridge."
Mer lifted his gaze to the security cam even as the tension and energy animating him seemed to disappear briefly. He squared those broad shoulders and slurred an answer within a second.
"It's about time."
"We underestimated Kell," Vala said.
"You think?" Mer's scowl was a thing of... not beauty certainly, but striking between his temperament and the damage to his face. At least Jehan thought so. "Now turn off that alarm before my ears start bleeding along with everything else!"
Vala cut the alarm. The silence that followed made their ears ring.
Jehan began scanning the other feeds, finding all the rest of their people either under guard in the rec room or in the infirmary, except for Caias. Janet Fraiser and the Satedan doctor were elbows deep in surgery on Signe. Jehan immediately dismissed his nascent plan to cut the gravity generators and lights. The most of the rest of the Satedans were trapped in the main armory and hold two, with a few exceptions - including a squad in Caias' quarters.
The smuggler didn't look happy. He was trying to bypass the airlock controls and get them out of his quarters into the corridor unsuccessfully.
He didn't appear under duress.
Jehan glanced sidelong at Vala.
"I see it," she admitted. She bared her teeth at the image. "We'll leave him there for now."
Caias was going to have much more to be unhappy about soon. What the hell had he been thinking? That he and Kell could use Mer as a hostage to Vala or Jehan's cooperation? The original crew of the Prometheus might have been able to eventually work around the safeguards and booby traps the three of them had put in place, but the Satedans couldn't manage it.
Jehan cycled the feeds back to the rec room. Vala chuckled rustily.
Daniel and Teyla were holding the Satedan's guns while Til tied them up securely. Lydia Dumais was frowning at a laptop that had obviously been used as a weapon.
Only Dumais looked up as Vala used the comm and said, "I see you don't need any help. Daniel, I'm sure you remember where the brig is. Why don't you introduce our friends to their new accommodations?"
~*~
Teyla noted Jehan's limp in the next day, but dismissed it as unimportant. Meredith still carried the bruises and swelling from his beating and kept up a steady litany of complaints about it, but he too would be all right. Signe remained under Janet's care.
They had survived the attempted takeover, but not unscathed, and the crew seemed shaken and off-balance.
The Satedans and Caias were locked down in their quarters or the brig, with the exception of their casualties. The dead were in a refrigerated morgue attached to the infirmary, the Satedan dead and the crew's only casualty.
After a short debate in the mess hall - chosen not because anyone wished to eat, but so they could avoid the rec room - those that knew Reckell best decided to give him what Daniel called a 'burial at sea' modified for space craft.
Seventeen hours later, Teyla arrived on the bridge dressed in her best leather and an embroidered vest. The rest of the crew were gathering there too.
The main viewscreen was dark until Miko slithered out of the access panel beneath it and said, "Try it now." It came alive with the blue infinity of hyperspace.
Vala beamed at Miko, who had her head propped against the bulkhead and was sitting still. "You're a treasure."
"Oh, yes, absolutely a treasure," Meredith muttered from where he was still repairing the navigation console. Environmental had been restored faster, once Teyla had checked hold two and discovered the glitch was a result of the Satedans breaking in and not faulty sensors. "Hooking up a viewscreen is remarkably difficult compared to, say, replacing Asgard technology that tells the ship where we are so that we can go where we want to and not exit hyperspace in the middle of a red giant or a planet." He glanced up at the viewscreen and grunted, adding, "Though, admittedly, most of the SGC's monkey's couldn't set the clock on a microwave. Good work."
Miko nodded and no one else bothered her. None of the crew had slept since the assault, and if she could rest there, they'd let her.
Janet greeted Teyla softly, looking immeasurably weary.
"Signe?" Teyla asked, fearing the worst. On Athos, a wound such as he'd taken would have been a death sentence.
"Stable," Janet replied. They both shuffled out of the way of Jehan and Meredith. Vala stood in front of the repaired main viewscreen. It showed a distant circle of light, Belkan's sun, dimmed by distance and filters. "I sedated him, otherwise he would have tried to get up here for this." She was older than Teyla had realized on their first meeting; all of the crew were. Exhaustion etched age into her face now, tiny lines and pinched lips giving her away. "McKay should be in a bed too, but if I tried to force him, he'd refuse." She sighed and stuffed her hands in her white coat. "He used to be such a whiny hypochondriac."
"Ow, ow, ow," Meredith said, pulling his hands back from the navigation console and sucking on the fingertips as sparks flared. "I said cut the power to the console!"
Teyla raised her eyebrow at Janet.
"Worse," Janet said.
"He is a survivor in his way," Teyla said. She respected that. She found Mer amusing most of the time; she rather treasured that. She hadn't had much to laugh at or anyone to laugh with until the crew picked her up on Athos.
"Tough when it matters," Janet agreed.
"No one saw that back at the SGC," Daniel said as he joined them. "Either that or the Tok'ra really changed him."
"Sometime soon?" Jehan prompted Meredith, leaning over him as he worked, one hand resting lightly at the back of his neck.
"Working as fast as I can."
"We're dropping out of hyper in twenty," Jehan said. "It'd be nice to be able to get back there if we need to run."
"Like that never occurred to me," Meredith snapped. He arched his neck back into Jehan's touch, then bent again to finish installing the replacement parts on the console. "Next time, shoot up something a little less critical."
"I'll make sure to let the next bad guy know."
"Ah, okay, that's got it."
Vala strolled over as Jehan slipped into the navigator's seat in Mer's place. "Ready?"
"Of course," Mer replied.
Vala leaned past him and activated the ship comm. "Brace for hyperspace exit."
Jehan glanced up at her. "Brace?" he complained. "I'm better than that."
She grinned. "Just fucking with them."
Dushka entered the bridge and stopped beside Daniel, Teyla and Janet, while Zelenka and Dumais wandered over and settled on either side of Miko.
"Where is Til?" Teyla asked.
"Sitting guard on the missile racks," Dushka said.
Teyla nodded. She'd joined Vala and Janet in washing Reckell's body and winding it in white linens. Til and Jehan had taken it after that, to place it in a missile casing Meredith and Zelenka had gutted. It was loaded in the first missile tube now, waiting for the ship to return to real space.
"Now," Jehan said. He pressed a button and the roiling blue light surrounding the ship peeled away before them. Revenge reverted to normal space in a brilliant splash of radiation.
Belkan's sun appeared on the viewscreen, smaller than it appeared from the planet, and dimmed by the ship's visual filters.
"Everybody ready?" Jehan asked.
The three Tau'ri got to their feet.
"Tak mal arik tiak," Jehan said.
"Tak mal arik tiak," Meredith and Vala echoed.
"You will not be forgotten," Daniel translated for Teyla. "It's Goa'uld."
Teyla bowed her head, touched her necklace and repeated the words in honor of the Serrakin first mate, adding a simple prayer to the Ancestor's to guide him to peace and safety.
"Initiating launch," Jehan said.
The missile case holding Reckell's body burst from the launching tube, seemed to drift, then began moving steadily away from the ship toward the sun. The viewscreen showed it briefly, light reflecting off its length, but the tactical display showed its path along the course plotted for it.
"Main burn commencing now," Meredith said.
On the screen, the missile's engines lit, plasma bright, and it sped away.
Teyla gasped as the engines went out.
"Burn through complete," Meredith said. He seemed pleased. "It'll reach the sun in two years three months and fourteen days."
"Set a course for Belkan," Vala ordered. "I want the rest of them off my ship."
"What about Caias?" Dushka asked.
"Him too," Vala said in a hard voice.
~*~
"Vala, my lovely, you know I didn't plot with Kell," Caias protested. He'd shaved off his beard. The smooth jaw and chin didn't improve his wide face. His eyes cut to where Jehan and Teyla guarded the door to his quarters, uncompromising and uncorruptable, and back to Vala.
She gritted her teeth and forced a smile. Qetesh would have had him flayed alive before the crew for betraying them, for being caught even considering such an action. She felt much the same. It had taken an effort not to order the majority of the Satedans spaced too. She'd enjoyed herding them through the corridors by opening and closing airlocks and slow venting atmosphere instead. Once the Satedans were secured and Reckell honored, that had left Caias. Dealing with what to do about him was the captain's job.
"It was just business," she murmured in a throaty tone. She wanted him to explain why more than a confession. There would be no trial. It would be her decision, backed by Jehan and Mer, and no one else's. She'd been the one to bring him aboard. "I do understand."
Caias grinned at her unrepentantly.
"It's a lovely ship," he said. "I could make a fortune with her back in the Viastella, especially once I got rid of the goons. You can't blame me for taking advantage when Kell came to me with his little plan."
Jehan drew his blaster and rested it in the crook of his folded arms, silently sending the message that he could and did blame Caias.
"You could have made a fortune crewing with us," Vala replied, stung.
Caias rocked back and scowled at her. "You aren't smuggling or hijacking, Vala. You've let the Tau'ri suck you into playing do-gooder. It's almost sickening."
That rocked her back. She glared back at Caias. Do-gooder? She had every intention of flying away from this adventure with a profit that would make the greediest Goa'uld weep. Just because it was turning out to be a bit more complicated and dangerous than expected or that they'd helped a couple of people out, didn't mean that plan had changed. Vala sniffed and said haughtily, "You needn't be insulting, Caias."
"Name one thing of value we've obtained since coming to this galaxy," Caias demanded. "Just one."
"We did pick up that very nice wood and the fresh fruit from Fahn," she said.
"And traded it. Like honest merchants," Caias objected.
She hated to admit it, but they had made honest deals for the goods they'd moved so far. Maybe Caias had a point. She'd never been particularly interested in honest work. It was so boring.
"Vala, you should have allied with those Genii - "
Jehan growled from his place behind her, silencing Caias, but it was too late.
Vala sighed dramatically.
"I've been a prisoner," she explained to Caias. So had Jehan, so had Meredith, and in another way, so had Teyla. They would never be willing to ally with anyone like Genii. "No."
"So, now what?" Caias asked.
"Since you threw your lot in with the Satedans, you can leave the ship with them," Vala decided.
~*~
The fires burning in Belkan weren't visible from orbit. A cold wind whipped acrid smoke into their faces once the rings deposited them in the same small plaza in the old city where they'd first met the Satedans. The cramped, cobbled streets were empty.
Jehan glanced first to Teyla and then Ronon, before drawing his blaster. He activated his comm with his other hand.
Mer's voice sounded through the earpiece of his comm set.
"What's going on down there?"
"Are your people always so shy?" Teyla asked Ronon.
Ronon grunted and headed for the tavern. "Solen!" he shouted. He pulled the door open and poked his head inside before entering. "Solen Sincha!"
Jehan motioned Teyla to join him as he activated his mike. "Ring down the ammo, Mer."
"I still don't see why we're paying them after what they tried," Mer complained. The rings flashed down and up, leaving behind a pile of crated ammunition for Satedan arms.
"They did what you hired them to do," Teyla commented.
"Oh, fine. Whatever. Let me know when you're ready to have the rest of the backstabbing gon'achs ringed down."
With a huff of laughter, Jehan motioned to Teyla. They caught up with Ronon as he backed out, followed by Sincha and two more Satedans. They were all tight-wound, but moving slowly. They headed straight for the crates and began moving them inside. Ronon nodded to Jehan and Teyla.
"Could have used this six days ago," Sincha muttered.
"Six days?" Teyla echoed.
Jehan caught that too. They had only left Belkan seven days ago. Whatever had happened had come on their heels. He glanced around again, noting several black-seared craters in the stone walls. He squinted. Those marks had come from aircraft. He raised his eyes and scanned the sky, half expecting the manta-like silhouettes of death gliders to appear.
"Some kind of raiders?" he ventured.
"Wraith," Ronon said.
"Not a culling," Teyla said, scanning the streets. With the appearance of men from the tavern, others were sidling from out of the houses and businesses. They scurried and flinched in the way of survivors of a recent attack. The thud of a dropped crate and Sincha cursing sent a thin man down the street into hysterics. The woman with him pulled him back inside.
"Raid," Ronon agreed. "Solon says there were three darts. Blasted the walls down, snatched up anyone out in the streets and went back through the Ring."
Teyla froze for one swift breath.
"As though they were hunting a runner," she said. She traced one finger over the necklace she wore on a leather thong, a habit of hers.
They finished moving the crates and followed Sincha back into the tavern. "Where's Kell?" Sincha asked. He went behind the bar and drew tankards of ale for all of them.
"Dead," Ronon said.
Sincha grunted and took a deep draught from his own tankard. "Wraith-bringing danp," he said and wiped foam off his upper lip. "Probably deserved it."
Ronon grunted.
Jehan tapped his mic back on. "Mer? Go ahead and send down everyone and check the long range sensors."
"Why?"
"They had Wraith here a week ago."
"Crap. Sending down the first group now."
He heard the rings and light flashed through chinks between the shutters over the tavern windows.
"'S not just here, either," Sincha said. "Fahn and Edwe were both culled."
Jehan set his tankard down. "Fahn?" They'd been there. The people had been mostly agrarian and friendly once they recognized Teyla. Their woodcraft had been exquisite, their houses built deep in a forest of monster trees, intricately decorated to blend into the landscape. Despite their fear of the Wraith, they hadn't been beaten down and broken the way many people in the Milky Way were - they didn't believe the Wraith were gods.
"Manaria too," one of the barflies added.
Mer and Teyla had destroyed the transmitter they pulled out of her. The Wraith couldn't be tracking Revenge. He checked Teyla and she looked ill, gray under the usual warmth of her skin.
"Last batch except for Melena and the bodies," Mer said. "I'm not getting anything on short range - No, wait, there's subspace signal coming from the planet. I think - Hyperspace window opening!"
Teyla jerked and gasped.
"Wraith!" she gasped. "The Wraith are coming!"
"We've got an incoming Wraith ship - " Mer shouted. "Oh, Hathor's tits, it's huge!"
The shriek of a dart diving through the atmosphere made Jehan draw his blaster. A series of explosion followed as it strafed the city.
"Get out there where I can ring you up!" Mer yelled.
Ronon followed Jehan and Teyla to the door. "No!" Sincha yelled. "We have to hide. There are tunnels under the basements."
"Melena," Ronon said.
Jehan ducked his head out the door and saw a white beam sweep over one of the Satedan squads they'd just ringed down. Caias was with them, lumbering slower than the long legged Satedans. They all disappeared into the beam as the dart sped onward. He tried to judge how long it would take to turn and a second dart screamed over head.
"Not so easy!" he snapped into the mic.
"Get out there," Mer said. "Jehan, it's firing on us and I don't know how long our shields will hold."
"Right."
He knew Teyla was hearing the same transmission, so he caught her eye and nodded to the open plaza.
She nodded back grimly.
They sprinted for the center of the plaza. Ronon bolted after them. A dart dove toward them, sweeping the culling beam beneath it like a broom. There was no cover. Jehan stopped and began firing the blaster at it. Teyla's P90 joined in, firing up at the speeding craft. The dart jigged to the side abruptly, black smoke pouring from one of its engines.
"Mer - "
Ronon hit him, sending both of them tumbling to the cobblestones and out of the path of second dart. They landed within the ring target area.
Teyla skidded next to them and called out, "Now, Meredith!"
The rings snapped down.
Jehan rolled onto his feet and ran for the bridge. Revenge shuddered as he reached it. Vala moved smoothly from the pilot's station to weapons as Jehan took his place. He didn't let himself look up at the looming Wraith hive on the viewscreen, intent on plotting a escape course and the calculations to open a hyperspace window.
"Shield at seventy-eight percent," Mer said. His thick lip blurred his usual sharp tones. He hunched over his console and typed constantly. Jehan knew he was manually adjusting shield frequencies faster than the computer programs would, inspired genius predicting the next shift and foiling the harmonics that would let a weapon break through. He summed his work up in a single word. "Holding."
"It's mostly been the small craft," Vala said. She had a firing solution on her screen and Revenge shuddered as a railgun opened up on the nearest dart. She began correcting the solutions for the wave of darts launching toward them as Revenge shifted into sublight and left orbit.
The railguns kept firing on the darts until the distance rendered their fire ineffective. The hive kept moving in on Belkan while the darts pursued them. They passed the fifth planet's orbit and Jehan initiated the hyperspace window.
Vacuum and darkness peeled open in a coruscant flare of exotic radiation. He checked the shield integrity to make sure the shield bubble was sound.
"Jump," he said.
Revenge flew into the window. It snapped closed behind them, tearing apart the darts that had followed them and lacked sufficient shielding to survive hyperspace.
"No one mentioned Wraith hives were that big," Vala said in the silence that followed.
Jehan leaned back in his seat and began wapping at the dirt on his pants from hitting the cobblestones under Ronon. He spared a thought for the Satedan, but figured he was likely still in the ring room with Melena, unless Teyla had gotten them out of there.
"That thing could eat a ha'tak for an appetizer," Mer declared eventually.
"Slow," Jehan said. The sheer size of the hive had made it slow to maneuver thanks to inertia. Probably. It had been headed for the planet, though. Maybe they hadn't seen what a hive could really do if it wanted. The hair on the back of neck stood up at that thought.
"We thought the downed supply ship we saw was big," Mer went on. "That was nothing."
"And the cruisers we saw over Athos," Vala added.
Mer bent back over the console and made a series of adjustments. Jehan checked read-outs and saw what he'd done: deforming the bubble to shadow the dimensions of the ship took less energy than maintaining a sphere that primarily held only vacuum. He left the chair and dodged over to the internal security station.
"That damn subspace signal I caught on the planet," Mer said, looking up with a stunned expression, "it's on the ship now."
"But we can't be tracked in hyperspace," Vala said.
"We can't stay in hyperspace forever," Mer replied. He wiped at the sweat on his forehead and winced as he brushed a bruised and swollen spot. "It's got to be the Satedans."
The bridge doors opened, admitting Teyla, Ronon, Melena and Til.
"What?" Ronon demanded.
"It's not them," Jehan said wearily, meeting Teyla's gaze. "Fahn and Edwe and Manaria were all hit before Belkan."
Mer followed his sightline to Teyla and shook his head. "No. The transmitter the Wraith used on her is gone."
Vala considered Teyla briefly, then shook her head. "Whatever is going on, Teyla isn't responsible."
Teyla straightened her spine.
"I must be."
Jehan stared at her, then rocked out of his chair and onto his feet, striding over to her. "This," he said, lifting the leather thong at her neck and the intricately made pendant hanging from. "You had this on Athos. We didn't go through your gear. There must be something in your gear, a tracker the Wraith planted on this or something else."
Teyla's hand rose and
closed around the pendant.
"Nothing," she whispered, "I had nothing but what I wore when the Wraith took me." She jerked the necklace loose. "Nothing but this. Samantha found it in the caves the day Athos was culled."
"Still, we need to go through everything you carried aboard," Vala said.
She glanced at Melena and Ronon. "I suppose we're stuck with you until we get wherever we're going."
"I set course for Dagan," Jehan said. He touched Teyla's shoulder and bent to rest his forehead against hers. He felt her trembling at first, trembling that slowly stilled in calm.
"We'll start with the necklace," Mer said. "Let's get down to the labs."
Jehan waited for Vala to stroll over after catching Ronon's eye. The Satedan waited patiently.
"He saved me from a culling beam," Jehan told Vala. He doubted Ronon or Melena would have any chance among their fellow Satedans - if there were any left after the culling of Belkan.
She studied Ronon again, suspiciously. "You want a place with this crew?" Ronon and Melena hadn't been part of the assault by Kell. Without them, Signe would be dead, and now Jehan owed Ronon his life.
"Yes," Melena said immediately.
Ronon scowled but shrugged. "Got no place to go back to," he admitted.
"Crew share each," Vala said.
Out in the corridor, Mer raised his voice. "Can you get a move on? I need to go by the mess hall and get something to eat."
~*~
Teyla fingered the pendant in horror. Memories of her mother tying the thong around her neck as a child mingled with the wet, cold night the Wraith culled Athos, her people and the Tau'ri fleeing white beams into the forest, Samantha lifting it from the sandy cave floor, Dr. Beckett admiring it, the Wraith lifting it on one talon and baring its serrated teeth in a mockery of a smile.
"This," she said. "This brought the Wraith to Athos?"
Meredith took it back from her and turned it over, the silvery knot shining in his blunt fingers. "Probably," he said. "There's definitely a subspace transmitter hidden within. It's not just a transmitter though."
Vala and Jehan were respectively perched on a counter and leaning against its edge. Dr. Zelenka and Miko Kusanagi had joined them as well. Zelenka looked up from a laptop. "No, very much more."
"I don't understand," Teyla said. "This was in my family for generations. How could it - "
"Because it didn't start transmitting until it was triggered," Meredith interrupted. "While I was testing it, it stopped transmitting. Then Kusanagi came in to work on it and it started again. Zelenka handled it and it stopped. It's calibrated to respond to people with a specific genetic marker, aka the ATA gene. You don't have it, but someone who does touched it and triggered it when you found it again."
"Samantha?"
"No, we've got the records on the expedition and she wasn't a positive. Kusanagi and Beckett and Markham were the ATA positives."
She remembered Beckett admiring the necklace and swallowed bile.
"So," Vala said thoughtfully, "if it was triggered again after you joined us, that means someone on our crew has this ATA gene."
Teyla nodded.
Meredith looked at Jehan.
Jehan looked startled and mouthed, 'Me?'
"You," Meredith said. "You set it off without even touching it."
Jehan paled and tensed. "So all those people on Fahn and Edwe... "
"It is my fault," Teyla said. "I brought you to them. I exposed you to this thing."
Her words failed to soothe and Jehan shook his head before stalking out of the lab.
Meredith took a step after him, then stopped. He turned back to Teyla. "We can disassemble it and deactivate the transmitter."
"No," Teyla said. She snatched it from his hand, dropped it to the floor and ground it under the heel of her boot, bearing down with all her weight until she felt the pendant shatter. "It is a tainted thing."
Meredith grimaced at the bits revealed when she lifted her boot.
"We could have studied it."
"Go find Jehan," Vala told him. "Teyla was right."
~*~
Mer studied the sensors as Jehan brought Revenge into orbit over Dagan. He found the stargate and began searching for the nearest population center or any power spikes that could be the ZPM.
The radiation spike made him jerk back from the laptop.
"What is it?" Vala asked.
"Just a minute," Mer muttered, typing in a new set of parameters.
The readings were ugly and damning.
"Someone nuked them," he said.
"The Genii," Lydia Dumais said from the environmental console. "Commander Kolya."
"Why?" Daniel asked. "Why would he?"
The fallout was drifting in a fan from a single point, carried on the wind, but would spread to the stargate soon.
"To teach them a lesson, if they refused to do whatever he wanted," Zelenka explained. His features were slack and his hand trembled when he pushed his glasses up into place again. "To test the bomb we built him." He scrubbed his hands through his wild hair before straightening his glasses, whispering, "Brendan... "
"How very unpleasant this Kolya must be," Vala mused. "So the ZPM is gone?"
Mer studied the readouts again and found another, cleaner energy spike, one that was static. Once he filtered away the nuclear radiation it was unmistakable.
"No, it's there," he said. He pointed out the reading. "It's still there."
"Then we'd better go get it before this Kolya does," Vala stated.
"There is much activity at the stargate," Zelenka said.
"Of course there is," Mer snapped. "Anyone that can still crawl is using it to get away. Most of them have already taken too many rads, but they probably don't know that." He glared at Zelenka. "Let's just hope your Kolya stuck around too close and caught a dose too."
Jehan leaned over, caught Mer's shoulder under one hand, and squeezed. Mer calmed himself down, but didn't apologize to Zelenka. He doubted it would help the other man's guilt. Instead, he picked out a natural spot to ring down, near the location of the ZPM, but still outside the fallout zone unless the wind changed.
"I'm going down with you," he told Jehan. "It's not like we could go anywhere without you anyway - you're our only pilot."
Jehan gave him a look, because both Mer and Vala could pilot; they just weren't brilliant at it. Then the corner of his mouth kicked up.
"I would prefer to remain on the ship, myself," Zelenka said.
Mer decided to let that go; Zelenka and the other two had good reason to stay aboard the ship. They wouldn't be close enough to see the direct devastation of the Daganese city, but the knowledge would be heavy in the air while they were groundside.
They assembled in the ring room: Mer, Jehan, Vala, Ronon, Til, Daniel, Teyla and surprisingly, Lydia Dumais. Vala and Jehan were in their Kull armor and Til had his staff weapon; everyone carried heavier armament than usual, along with dosimeters.
Mer missed knowing Reckell had the bridge while they would be gone. He checked his blaster was in his thigh holster again and tugged at the flak vest Jehan had insisted he wear.
"Everybody ready?" Vala sang out.
"As we'll ever be," Mer muttered.
They ringed down to Dagan.
Beta duties ably fulfilled by lexstar69 and sian1359 on this part.
tbc in 2010