Folsom Prison Blues by Eve11
Title: Folsom Prison Blues
Author: Eve11
Rating: G
~2700 words written in latecoming backup for our last unfulfilled requestor, poohmusings, who wanted banter/snark, team offworld on a mission, any season except nine, and didn't want Unases, Pete bashing, or the team meeting AU versions of themselves. Thanks to auntiemeesh for the beta. This one's set sometime in season 4. No spoilers.
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The cell door swung heavily shut, the guards left with a clomping of thick-soled shoes on the packed, dry dirt, and Jack cracked his knuckles and took a good look around.
"So kids, what do you say?" The gang was all here, which was better than being hauled off and locked up separately, at least. Carter and Daniel each occupied one of the two cells directly across the corridor. Carter swayed on her feet ever so slightly, while Daniel slouched against their shared wall near the dull iron bars, his eyes closed, his brow furrowed. Teal'c had been deposited in the cell directly to Jack's left; O'Neill couldn't see the Jaffa but somehow he could feel the man's presence, unfazed, through the solid stone wall.
No one spoke up. Jack stretched his neck to the side, earning a satisfying few pops. "Carter?" he prompted.
"Four," Carter said, studying the dim room sluggishly. She'd managed to take a blow to the head during their introduction to the lovely society of P29-757, and to tell the truth Jack was glad she was playing along at all. As he watched, she put a steadying hand against the wall but drew it back quickly, wiping something off on her thigh. "Ugh. Three and a half."
"You know the rules. No decimal points."
"Hm. I'll stick with four." She found an unblemished spot on the wall and sank against it, calling over her shoulder to the next cell. "Daniel? You there?"
"Three," Daniel answered without looking up. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. Jack figured, no matter how many cells SG-1 ended up in, Daniel would never be able to bypass that first gut-level reaction of bewildered frustration that came with imprisonment. No matter how much his mind focused on getting the hell out, after the bars first clanged shut, his body language and demeanor always broadcasted the same sentiment. I can’t believe this is happening. Again.
"Three?" Jack echoed. "That's a bit harsh."
Daniel eyed him through the bars, eyebrows raised. "You think so?"
"Come on." Jack pointed to a lumpy gray mass taking up the back corner of Daniel's cell. "They even gave you a mattress."
"Daniel got a mattress?" Carter asked with a jealous sigh.
"Indeed," came the disembodied voice to Jack's left.
If anything, Daniel shrank farther away from the offending mattress in his cell. "Do you know how many people died in the twelfth century alone, solely due to disease transmission through infested sleeping pallets?"
"I didn't get a mattress," Carter continued. "That's an unqualified four. Maybe even a four point five."
"A continuous scale is not allowed, Major Carter."
"Three," Daniel re-iterated. "Jack?"
Jack shrugged. "Seven."
"You've got to be kidding me," Daniel said.
"That is generous, sir."
Jack folded his hands behind his head. "It's not cramped, it's not cold, and nothing is electrified. Right there you're working with at least a six."
Daniel wrinkled his nose. "What about the smell?"
Jack sniffed the air. It smelled vaguely of wet socks, and less vaguely of stale urine. "It's not so bad."
"It's nauseating," Daniel corrected.
"Must be coming from your mattress," Jack said. "Teal'c?"
There was a moment of silence. Jack heard movement next door and tracked his teammates' eyes as they focused on Teal'c. So, the Jaffa was making a show of it at any rate, looking around.
Then, "I must rate this one a five."
Carter let out a breath. "You always say five."
"I have been in many worse prisons, and many better."
"You always say that, too," she said.
"It has not yet been untruthful."
"Be honest." Carter pointed in Teal'c's direction. "If it weren't for that window, you'd have rated it a four."
"Teal'c got a window?" Jack strode up to the bars, trying and failing to see around the corner. Teal’c must’ve raised an eyebrow, because Carter looked over at him and chuckled. Daniel, on the other hand, was still in the depths of his usual post-lockup funk.
"It's a tiny window," he said, sighing. "A tiny, barred, window-- and is there a quota? A must-get-jailed-so-many-times-per-month clause buried in our contracts?"
Jack held up his hands. "Hey, a window's a window." In Teal'c's general direction he added, "Don't suppose you can see anything going on out there?"
There was a short pause as Teal'c changed positions. "It appears the villagers are erecting four wooden pillars in the square and surrounding them with cordwood," he said.
"Oh great, a fiery death." Daniel leaned his head back against the wall. "Just what I needed to complete my collection."
On the other side of the wall, Carter had gone from chuckling to a silent, shaking laugh. Jack gave her a look but she waved him off with a gesture. Daniel caught Jack's eyes and turned to the wall on his right.
"Sam, are you laughing at me?"
"No, of course not," she said, going stone-faced for a split second before breaking into a grin.
"Because there is nothing funny about this." Except Daniel started to smile half-way through the sentence.
"Nothing at all," Carter said, grinning like a loon.
Jack gave a wry smile. It was time to get down to business. "Carter, stop laughing at Daniel. Daniel, go to your happy place. And someone fill me in on what we're dealing with here."
"Okay, okay." Daniel stood up and started to pace. Jack was fairly certain Daniel's happy place looked amazingly like the SGC briefing room, because after the post-lockup funk, the archaeologist invariably moved on to full-blown lecture mode. It made Jack long for a comfortable chair, but as it was he settled for lounging against the wall he shared with Teal'c, close to the bars. Carter, too, scooted up to the near corner of her cell.
Daniel took a deep breath. "Language, culture and ethnicity suggest that this society sprung from the early Judeo-Christian gnostic tradition, complete with a vengeful but ultimately protective God, Satan in the form of Sokhar, and a pantheon of lesser demons, any of which may have held sway over the lives of the people. But--" he held up a hand before Jack could interrupt, "the abundance of protective amulets in the populace, along with multiple depictions of a winged female demon hoarding and corralling children, leads me to conclude that the Goa'uld who ultimately controlled the immediate fate of these people was not Sokhar, but was in fact Lilith."
"Lilith? As in, fair?"
"Lilith, as in the first wife of Adam who fled the garden of Eden and became a vengeful, child-killing succubus."
"Ah. Thanks for clearing that up."
"I have heard tales of a minor Goa'uld that are very similar." Teal'c's voice was close enough to startle Jack; The Jaffa too had joined his team as near as he could. "But she was known to Apophis as Lamia."
Daniel stopped pacing. "Lamia is the Greek identification of Lilith. Both mythologies told of a woman turned to a flesh-eating demon for her refusal to be subservient to her husband."
"Ouch," Sam said. "So much for women's lib."
"Yeah, it probably also explains why they went straight for you when we came through the gate, Sam," Daniel spoke into the air. He started to pace again but stopped, realizing something mid-stride. "How is your head? Are you okay?"
She waved a hand, although Daniel couldn't see it. "I'm fine," she said. "I'll be fine."
Daniel, still hesitant, met Jack's eyes with a questioning glance.
"She's fine," Jack said. "You saw amulets?"
Reassured, Daniel continued the lecture. "Round medallions with Talmudic etchings, wards against witchcraft. Both the priesthood and the commoners had them around their necks, though I imagine that the literacy needed to inscribe one is relegated only to the ruling class. While it seems the Goa'uld herself has long abandoned the planet, the people are still ill-educated, mistrustful and highly superstitious. If we could just explain to them that we're not their enemy--"
"Oh, I think we're a little past that stage," Jack said.
"But we need--"
"Fiery death, Daniel!"
Daniel's shoulders sagged. "Right. We need to get out of here, first."
"By any means necessary." It wasn't how Daniel liked to do things, and violence was certainly not Jack's favorite solution either. But his team did understand; sometimes you had to get out, go home, regroup, and come back with the upper hand. He steered the conversation back on topic; for some reason his mind was still stuck on amulets. Suddenly, he realized why. "I didn't see any amulets," he said.
Daniel lifted his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Whereas I have no idea exactly how many armed guards led us here--"
"Nine," Jack and Teal'c answered in unison.
"--or which direction leads back to the Stargate--"
"That way," came the concurrent reply. Even Carter joined in, poking her arm out past the bars into Daniel's field of view, pointing with the rest of her team back behind Jack and Teal'c and toward the right.
"--but along the way, I did see plenty of statues, bas-relief, and amulets," Daniel said, ticking the sights off on his fingers for emphasis.
"Amulets," Carter said. "Like those?"
Daniel followed her hand, still in his field of vision, as she moved it to point at a space of wall above Teal'c's cell. Jack couldn't see what she was pointing at, but a look at the same spot above Daniel's cell gave him the answer. Hanging over the iron bars, impossible for even the tallest prisoner to reach, was a glinting medallion accented with a sprig of dried herbs.
"Yes, exactly," Daniel said, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of his own wall. "Does, uh, does everyone's cell have one of those?"
A look at Carter's cell and a read of his teammates' eyes gave Jack the answer almost immediately. "That's affirmative. What's it mean?"
Daniel blinked up at the amulet above Jack's cell. "To us, not much. But to them, it probably means that whatever supernatural powers we may have, they've been contained and nullified."
"So it means they're afraid of us," Carter said. Then, "Oh."
"Major Carter?"
Carter looked at Teal'c and gestured off to her right, away from her teammates' cells. "The guards will come through from that direction, right?"
"Indeed."
"Then I have a plan." She bent over her boots, loosening the laces. "Daniel, you're not going to like it."
"Carter? Clue the rest of us in, here."
She prised the boot off of her foot and tossed it through the bars over to Jack. "Sir, how's your aim?"
***
It took Jack fifteen minutes of boot-hurling, but the plan was finally set. Not long after Carter hastily re-tied her laces, the clomping of shoes down the corridor signaled showtime. Jack locked eyes with his 2IC as she moved to stand in the middle of her cell, back straight, her face passive and calm. Her fingers twitched a little at her sides, the only sign of nerves.
"Here we go," she said under her breath. Jack gave her an almost imperceptible nod, which she acknowledged and returned before passing the same nod over to Teal'c.
This would work, Jack thought. This had to work. A fiery death was so not on his agenda for today.
There were only five guards this time, but they were huge. As they came into view, Jack assessed them as young, strong, and hard-faced. But now that he was looking for it he could see a hint of nervousness in their stances as well. The one at Carter's cell fingered the small golden medallion around his neck -- how had Jack missed those the first time? -- before saying something that sounded like a chant or prayer in some language Jack didn't know, and unlocking Carter's door. Another chant to his left, another key scraped in a lock, and both Teal'c and Carter were being escorted out into the corridor. The last three guards came forward to the next pair of cells and Jack eyed them calmly, betraying nothing. He met the lead guard's eyes, and for the barest second he flicked his gaze up to the far wall.
A shout went up as the soldiers reached Daniel's cell. The men herding Teal'c and Carter stopped, tension evident as they gripped their short swords. One man, the one Jack had locked eyes with, pointed to the bare wall above the cell.
The protective amulet was gone. The cell was empty.
A fair amount of confusion worked its way among the soldiers, but they were still wary and on guard. It was five against two -- a big five against Teal'c and a still-swaying Sam. Come on, Jack thought. Still locked in his cell, he forced himself to be patient. Teal'c knew better than any of them when to take an opening. If he hadn't, it meant the odds were still bad. Come on, he willed the thought at the leader of the guards.
There was some jostling, threatening, and more than a little shouting, again in the unknown tongue. Teal'c and Sam held their positions as the leader gestured angrily to two of his underlings, who unlocked the empty cell, swung the door open into the corridor, and stepped inside.
That was when the mattress attacked.
Daniel lunged forward from under the thing, giving a loud and entirely un-mattress-like cry. He hurled it at the two startled soldiers, who apparently had whole-heartedly believed in Daniel's ability to dis-apparate or turn invisible with the lack of amulet protection, but had forgotten about his much more mundane ability to hide under a large object. The two guards crashed backward into the corridor, collapsing into a lumpy gray struggling heap, and clipping the knees of their leader as they went down.
"Finally!" Jack said, although it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. He exploded forward and grabbed the leader, pinning him against the bars as he staggered backward. The man battled Jack for a second, but then a large brown fist came onto the scene, connecting with the soldier's jaw and sending him sagging against Jack's hold.
"O'Neill," Teal'c said, tossing a key through the bars. Jack hadn't heard any signs of a struggle, but when he glanced to his left he saw the two hallway guards out cold on the floor, with Carter already disarming them and eyeing the struggling mattress.
"Good work, Teal'c," he said, pushing the slumped guard out of the way and opening his door.
Teal'c made quick work of the guards under the mattress, while Daniel finally made it out of his cell into the hallway, stepping over mattress and soldiers, and then making a beeline for the far wall by Teal'c's window before taking a breath of fresher air.
As quickly as the action had started, the scene settled into stillness. In the middle of the corridor, Carter kicked the pallet gingerly. "Jeez, this thing's nasty."
"No kidding," Daniel said, looking mildly green.
"I take back what I said about a four."
"Thank you Sam, but you still owe me. Big time."
"Hey," Jack hefted a short sword. "They're all tens if we can get out of them. Let's give it a try."
"That way?" Daniel pointed off in the direction of the gate.
"Affirmative," Jack said, as he gathered weapons from the fallen soldiers for the rest of his team. "Carter, I don't suppose you can build me a GDO out of boot laces and amulets?"
"No need," she said, at the same time Teal'c intoned, "That will not be necessary."
The two paused, sizing each other up. Sam asked first.
"You?"
"Boot. You?"
"Sports bra."
They both turned to look at Jack and Daniel. Daniel threw up his hands.
"Don't look here. They always find mine."
Three pairs of eyes fell on Jack. He sighed.
"It was up my sleeve, okay? They found it when they took our jackets."
"Sir, you know the rules..."
He did know the rules. But he also knew his team had his back. Jack started up the corridor, Teal'c at his side, Daniel and Carter at the rear. He figured they had a good five minutes before the natives grew restless, and there was plenty of cover from here to the gate.
"You can give me hell about it when we get home," he said. "Let's get out of here."
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Author: Eve11
Rating: G
~2700 words written in latecoming backup for our last unfulfilled requestor, poohmusings, who wanted banter/snark, team offworld on a mission, any season except nine, and didn't want Unases, Pete bashing, or the team meeting AU versions of themselves. Thanks to auntiemeesh for the beta. This one's set sometime in season 4. No spoilers.
------------------
The cell door swung heavily shut, the guards left with a clomping of thick-soled shoes on the packed, dry dirt, and Jack cracked his knuckles and took a good look around.
"So kids, what do you say?" The gang was all here, which was better than being hauled off and locked up separately, at least. Carter and Daniel each occupied one of the two cells directly across the corridor. Carter swayed on her feet ever so slightly, while Daniel slouched against their shared wall near the dull iron bars, his eyes closed, his brow furrowed. Teal'c had been deposited in the cell directly to Jack's left; O'Neill couldn't see the Jaffa but somehow he could feel the man's presence, unfazed, through the solid stone wall.
No one spoke up. Jack stretched his neck to the side, earning a satisfying few pops. "Carter?" he prompted.
"Four," Carter said, studying the dim room sluggishly. She'd managed to take a blow to the head during their introduction to the lovely society of P29-757, and to tell the truth Jack was glad she was playing along at all. As he watched, she put a steadying hand against the wall but drew it back quickly, wiping something off on her thigh. "Ugh. Three and a half."
"You know the rules. No decimal points."
"Hm. I'll stick with four." She found an unblemished spot on the wall and sank against it, calling over her shoulder to the next cell. "Daniel? You there?"
"Three," Daniel answered without looking up. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. Jack figured, no matter how many cells SG-1 ended up in, Daniel would never be able to bypass that first gut-level reaction of bewildered frustration that came with imprisonment. No matter how much his mind focused on getting the hell out, after the bars first clanged shut, his body language and demeanor always broadcasted the same sentiment. I can’t believe this is happening. Again.
"Three?" Jack echoed. "That's a bit harsh."
Daniel eyed him through the bars, eyebrows raised. "You think so?"
"Come on." Jack pointed to a lumpy gray mass taking up the back corner of Daniel's cell. "They even gave you a mattress."
"Daniel got a mattress?" Carter asked with a jealous sigh.
"Indeed," came the disembodied voice to Jack's left.
If anything, Daniel shrank farther away from the offending mattress in his cell. "Do you know how many people died in the twelfth century alone, solely due to disease transmission through infested sleeping pallets?"
"I didn't get a mattress," Carter continued. "That's an unqualified four. Maybe even a four point five."
"A continuous scale is not allowed, Major Carter."
"Three," Daniel re-iterated. "Jack?"
Jack shrugged. "Seven."
"You've got to be kidding me," Daniel said.
"That is generous, sir."
Jack folded his hands behind his head. "It's not cramped, it's not cold, and nothing is electrified. Right there you're working with at least a six."
Daniel wrinkled his nose. "What about the smell?"
Jack sniffed the air. It smelled vaguely of wet socks, and less vaguely of stale urine. "It's not so bad."
"It's nauseating," Daniel corrected.
"Must be coming from your mattress," Jack said. "Teal'c?"
There was a moment of silence. Jack heard movement next door and tracked his teammates' eyes as they focused on Teal'c. So, the Jaffa was making a show of it at any rate, looking around.
Then, "I must rate this one a five."
Carter let out a breath. "You always say five."
"I have been in many worse prisons, and many better."
"You always say that, too," she said.
"It has not yet been untruthful."
"Be honest." Carter pointed in Teal'c's direction. "If it weren't for that window, you'd have rated it a four."
"Teal'c got a window?" Jack strode up to the bars, trying and failing to see around the corner. Teal’c must’ve raised an eyebrow, because Carter looked over at him and chuckled. Daniel, on the other hand, was still in the depths of his usual post-lockup funk.
"It's a tiny window," he said, sighing. "A tiny, barred, window-- and is there a quota? A must-get-jailed-so-many-times-per-month clause buried in our contracts?"
Jack held up his hands. "Hey, a window's a window." In Teal'c's general direction he added, "Don't suppose you can see anything going on out there?"
There was a short pause as Teal'c changed positions. "It appears the villagers are erecting four wooden pillars in the square and surrounding them with cordwood," he said.
"Oh great, a fiery death." Daniel leaned his head back against the wall. "Just what I needed to complete my collection."
On the other side of the wall, Carter had gone from chuckling to a silent, shaking laugh. Jack gave her a look but she waved him off with a gesture. Daniel caught Jack's eyes and turned to the wall on his right.
"Sam, are you laughing at me?"
"No, of course not," she said, going stone-faced for a split second before breaking into a grin.
"Because there is nothing funny about this." Except Daniel started to smile half-way through the sentence.
"Nothing at all," Carter said, grinning like a loon.
Jack gave a wry smile. It was time to get down to business. "Carter, stop laughing at Daniel. Daniel, go to your happy place. And someone fill me in on what we're dealing with here."
"Okay, okay." Daniel stood up and started to pace. Jack was fairly certain Daniel's happy place looked amazingly like the SGC briefing room, because after the post-lockup funk, the archaeologist invariably moved on to full-blown lecture mode. It made Jack long for a comfortable chair, but as it was he settled for lounging against the wall he shared with Teal'c, close to the bars. Carter, too, scooted up to the near corner of her cell.
Daniel took a deep breath. "Language, culture and ethnicity suggest that this society sprung from the early Judeo-Christian gnostic tradition, complete with a vengeful but ultimately protective God, Satan in the form of Sokhar, and a pantheon of lesser demons, any of which may have held sway over the lives of the people. But--" he held up a hand before Jack could interrupt, "the abundance of protective amulets in the populace, along with multiple depictions of a winged female demon hoarding and corralling children, leads me to conclude that the Goa'uld who ultimately controlled the immediate fate of these people was not Sokhar, but was in fact Lilith."
"Lilith? As in, fair?"
"Lilith, as in the first wife of Adam who fled the garden of Eden and became a vengeful, child-killing succubus."
"Ah. Thanks for clearing that up."
"I have heard tales of a minor Goa'uld that are very similar." Teal'c's voice was close enough to startle Jack; The Jaffa too had joined his team as near as he could. "But she was known to Apophis as Lamia."
Daniel stopped pacing. "Lamia is the Greek identification of Lilith. Both mythologies told of a woman turned to a flesh-eating demon for her refusal to be subservient to her husband."
"Ouch," Sam said. "So much for women's lib."
"Yeah, it probably also explains why they went straight for you when we came through the gate, Sam," Daniel spoke into the air. He started to pace again but stopped, realizing something mid-stride. "How is your head? Are you okay?"
She waved a hand, although Daniel couldn't see it. "I'm fine," she said. "I'll be fine."
Daniel, still hesitant, met Jack's eyes with a questioning glance.
"She's fine," Jack said. "You saw amulets?"
Reassured, Daniel continued the lecture. "Round medallions with Talmudic etchings, wards against witchcraft. Both the priesthood and the commoners had them around their necks, though I imagine that the literacy needed to inscribe one is relegated only to the ruling class. While it seems the Goa'uld herself has long abandoned the planet, the people are still ill-educated, mistrustful and highly superstitious. If we could just explain to them that we're not their enemy--"
"Oh, I think we're a little past that stage," Jack said.
"But we need--"
"Fiery death, Daniel!"
Daniel's shoulders sagged. "Right. We need to get out of here, first."
"By any means necessary." It wasn't how Daniel liked to do things, and violence was certainly not Jack's favorite solution either. But his team did understand; sometimes you had to get out, go home, regroup, and come back with the upper hand. He steered the conversation back on topic; for some reason his mind was still stuck on amulets. Suddenly, he realized why. "I didn't see any amulets," he said.
Daniel lifted his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Whereas I have no idea exactly how many armed guards led us here--"
"Nine," Jack and Teal'c answered in unison.
"--or which direction leads back to the Stargate--"
"That way," came the concurrent reply. Even Carter joined in, poking her arm out past the bars into Daniel's field of view, pointing with the rest of her team back behind Jack and Teal'c and toward the right.
"--but along the way, I did see plenty of statues, bas-relief, and amulets," Daniel said, ticking the sights off on his fingers for emphasis.
"Amulets," Carter said. "Like those?"
Daniel followed her hand, still in his field of vision, as she moved it to point at a space of wall above Teal'c's cell. Jack couldn't see what she was pointing at, but a look at the same spot above Daniel's cell gave him the answer. Hanging over the iron bars, impossible for even the tallest prisoner to reach, was a glinting medallion accented with a sprig of dried herbs.
"Yes, exactly," Daniel said, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of his own wall. "Does, uh, does everyone's cell have one of those?"
A look at Carter's cell and a read of his teammates' eyes gave Jack the answer almost immediately. "That's affirmative. What's it mean?"
Daniel blinked up at the amulet above Jack's cell. "To us, not much. But to them, it probably means that whatever supernatural powers we may have, they've been contained and nullified."
"So it means they're afraid of us," Carter said. Then, "Oh."
"Major Carter?"
Carter looked at Teal'c and gestured off to her right, away from her teammates' cells. "The guards will come through from that direction, right?"
"Indeed."
"Then I have a plan." She bent over her boots, loosening the laces. "Daniel, you're not going to like it."
"Carter? Clue the rest of us in, here."
She prised the boot off of her foot and tossed it through the bars over to Jack. "Sir, how's your aim?"
***
It took Jack fifteen minutes of boot-hurling, but the plan was finally set. Not long after Carter hastily re-tied her laces, the clomping of shoes down the corridor signaled showtime. Jack locked eyes with his 2IC as she moved to stand in the middle of her cell, back straight, her face passive and calm. Her fingers twitched a little at her sides, the only sign of nerves.
"Here we go," she said under her breath. Jack gave her an almost imperceptible nod, which she acknowledged and returned before passing the same nod over to Teal'c.
This would work, Jack thought. This had to work. A fiery death was so not on his agenda for today.
There were only five guards this time, but they were huge. As they came into view, Jack assessed them as young, strong, and hard-faced. But now that he was looking for it he could see a hint of nervousness in their stances as well. The one at Carter's cell fingered the small golden medallion around his neck -- how had Jack missed those the first time? -- before saying something that sounded like a chant or prayer in some language Jack didn't know, and unlocking Carter's door. Another chant to his left, another key scraped in a lock, and both Teal'c and Carter were being escorted out into the corridor. The last three guards came forward to the next pair of cells and Jack eyed them calmly, betraying nothing. He met the lead guard's eyes, and for the barest second he flicked his gaze up to the far wall.
A shout went up as the soldiers reached Daniel's cell. The men herding Teal'c and Carter stopped, tension evident as they gripped their short swords. One man, the one Jack had locked eyes with, pointed to the bare wall above the cell.
The protective amulet was gone. The cell was empty.
A fair amount of confusion worked its way among the soldiers, but they were still wary and on guard. It was five against two -- a big five against Teal'c and a still-swaying Sam. Come on, Jack thought. Still locked in his cell, he forced himself to be patient. Teal'c knew better than any of them when to take an opening. If he hadn't, it meant the odds were still bad. Come on, he willed the thought at the leader of the guards.
There was some jostling, threatening, and more than a little shouting, again in the unknown tongue. Teal'c and Sam held their positions as the leader gestured angrily to two of his underlings, who unlocked the empty cell, swung the door open into the corridor, and stepped inside.
That was when the mattress attacked.
Daniel lunged forward from under the thing, giving a loud and entirely un-mattress-like cry. He hurled it at the two startled soldiers, who apparently had whole-heartedly believed in Daniel's ability to dis-apparate or turn invisible with the lack of amulet protection, but had forgotten about his much more mundane ability to hide under a large object. The two guards crashed backward into the corridor, collapsing into a lumpy gray struggling heap, and clipping the knees of their leader as they went down.
"Finally!" Jack said, although it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. He exploded forward and grabbed the leader, pinning him against the bars as he staggered backward. The man battled Jack for a second, but then a large brown fist came onto the scene, connecting with the soldier's jaw and sending him sagging against Jack's hold.
"O'Neill," Teal'c said, tossing a key through the bars. Jack hadn't heard any signs of a struggle, but when he glanced to his left he saw the two hallway guards out cold on the floor, with Carter already disarming them and eyeing the struggling mattress.
"Good work, Teal'c," he said, pushing the slumped guard out of the way and opening his door.
Teal'c made quick work of the guards under the mattress, while Daniel finally made it out of his cell into the hallway, stepping over mattress and soldiers, and then making a beeline for the far wall by Teal'c's window before taking a breath of fresher air.
As quickly as the action had started, the scene settled into stillness. In the middle of the corridor, Carter kicked the pallet gingerly. "Jeez, this thing's nasty."
"No kidding," Daniel said, looking mildly green.
"I take back what I said about a four."
"Thank you Sam, but you still owe me. Big time."
"Hey," Jack hefted a short sword. "They're all tens if we can get out of them. Let's give it a try."
"That way?" Daniel pointed off in the direction of the gate.
"Affirmative," Jack said, as he gathered weapons from the fallen soldiers for the rest of his team. "Carter, I don't suppose you can build me a GDO out of boot laces and amulets?"
"No need," she said, at the same time Teal'c intoned, "That will not be necessary."
The two paused, sizing each other up. Sam asked first.
"You?"
"Boot. You?"
"Sports bra."
They both turned to look at Jack and Daniel. Daniel threw up his hands.
"Don't look here. They always find mine."
Three pairs of eyes fell on Jack. He sighed.
"It was up my sleeve, okay? They found it when they took our jackets."
"Sir, you know the rules..."
He did know the rules. But he also knew his team had his back. Jack started up the corridor, Teal'c at his side, Daniel and Carter at the rear. He figured they had a good five minutes before the natives grew restless, and there was plenty of cover from here to the gate.
"You can give me hell about it when we get home," he said. "Let's get out of here."
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