Fic: WiP: Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves :: SGA/SG-1 :: b
Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves
an Alternate Universe SGA/SG-1 Crossover
by Auburn
[a] [b] [c] [d]
Honor Among Thieves
Mer studied the forcefield again, hoping for any weak area, any chance at getting himself out. Nothing presented itself and he cursed again. Even if he found something, they'd set up the forcefield in the back of their crummy ship's bridge, where they could keep a constant watch on him. While that indicated a quite natural respect for his abilities, Mer could have done with a little more underestimation in this one case.
"Shut up," Jup ordered.
"Come in here and make me," Mer snapped back. He glared at the Oranian.
Jup laughed, a really awful sound, like an asthmatic elephant seal, and went back to massaging or oiling, or something Mer didn't even want to think about seeing, one of his two heavy head tentacle-things.
A wisp of one of Jolinar's memories made him cringe. Those were Oranian sex organs and what Jup was doing in front of him was the equivalent of a woman playing with her breasts. The memory came complete with a picture of an Oranian in full rut, the tentacles swollen and pulsing.
Mer swallowed his gorge.
He could have lived his whole life without remembering that and been a happier man. He felt safe in believing even Jackson wouldn't have cared to see that. Only a xenobiologists would and they were all batshit. The Tok'ra had only been interested in the Oranians until it became clear they were satisfied to bow before the might of the System Lords and glean their leavings. Unsuitable, unreliable and not particularly smart, not like the Tollans, who might have been useful allies, but also proved perfidious in their dealings with the Tau'ri.
Selmak had briefed the Tok'ra council on the Goa'uld's triumph over the Tollan.
Jup bent over the control panel, studying something on a small screen there intently. Mer couldn't see what from his vantage point. He thought Jup was playing a game. He wasn't watching the screens showing sensor readings for incoming ships. Mer was. He coughed hard as it registered a hyperspace window opening and something big sliding through the system to the moon they were waiting on. It was half a day ahead of Vala's last transmitted ETA.
Maybe he couldn't get himself out of here, but he could make it easier for his friends.
"Where's your buddy, Tenat?" he asked. "You really think that if you manage to collect from Vosh and Ba'al, he's going give you that fifty-fifty share?"
"Tenat is on rest shift."
"Riiiight," Mer drawled. "He's probably doing something freaky to his head things."
Jup scowled at him, which kept his back to the screen. The ship de-orbited and disappeared from the sensor's purview.
"Tenat is not a pervert!"
"If you say so," Mer agreed. He let Jup go back to his game and kept an eye on the ship's proximity security surveillance. The Oranians hadn't improved their ship beyond Goa'uld spec, which meant very basic security. Goa'uld relied on their Jaffa to keep watch, rather than spy-eyes everywhere.
He thought the ship had landed just beyond the foothills and checked the camera aimed in that direction more often than the rest. Jup cursed his game.
"Bet you can't win that game no matter how many times you try it," Mer taunted.
"You will see," Jup replied and went back to it, starting from the beginning, all his concentration bent on winning.
On one of the screens, a dark figure crested the nearest foothill and started across the plain toward the Oranians' ship.
Jup crowed in triumph. "Got it."
He needed to keep Jup distracted a little longer. "That's not all you're going to get."
"What do you mean?"
The black figure of a Kull loped steadily toward them.
"You don't really trust Tenat, do you?"
"We're partners."
"Oh, come on. He's double-crossed us. You think he won't do the same to you?" The Kull − briefly Mer wondered if it might be a real Kull sent by Ba'al, because that would be bad, very bad − disappeared inside the sensor's blind spot. "He's still a backstabber. After all, he'd double-dealing everyone else, why not you too? It's an awful lot of naquadah."
Jup stared at him. His head tentacles curled up at the tips, looking shriveled and, Mer guessed, unhappy.
"Tenat wouldn't do that to me."
Mer laughed out loud.
"He's probably going to shoot you in the back right here and leave your body behind."
"He needs me to pilot the ship your partners are bringing."
Mer smiled cynically. "Of course. While you're being his flying delivery boy, Tenat will be all by himself, with all that naquadah. You'll never see him or it again."
"No, I − "
An intruder alarm began blaring finally. Jup spun back to the controls. The screens fuzzed to static. He lurched to the next console and began yelling for Tenat and cursing because the internal comms were down too.
Mer just grinned, recognizing the work of the boarding jammers he'd created as additions to Vala and Jehan's Kull armor. He kept smiling right up until he noticed another ship had entered the system and was on course for their moon.
Vala marched into the bridge, shrugged aside Jup's defensive fire and stunned him.
Vala pulled off her helmet and flashed a pleased grin.
"That went well. Did you miss me?"
"You're my rescue?" Meredith demanded.
Vala shot the controls to the forcefield next, frying them nicely so that it collapsed.
"Who did you expect?" Vala glanced around the bridge. "Anything we should take with us? I mean besides our naquadah?"
Meredith bolted out of his erstwhile prison and grabbed up Jup's pistol − it was an pulse energy weapon and he wanted to analyze it − then stabbed his finger at the al'kesh on the sensors. "No. We have to get out of here. That's one of Ba'al's ships."
Vala's eyes widened. "Egg of a carrion beetle," she muttered. "Bloody Jaffa."
She stuffed the helmet back on her head, rendering her voice ominous and inflectionless.
"Let's get the naquadah and go."
"Forget the naquadah − "
"Darling, it's naquadah."
"It's heavy! I'm not breaking my back trying to carry it."
He followed her down to the hold anyway, grumbling and bitching out of habit. "Do you even know where the naquadah is?"
"Yes."
Vala had found the naquadah first. Of course. Tenat was laid out on the deck of the cargo hold. Meredith skirted around him, thought twice and snagged Tenat's gun too, then stared at the chest holding the naquadah. "How the hell are we moving that? You know how heavy naquadah is?"
"Not to worry, it's all fixed up," Vala replied in that flat, mechanical voice.
Meredith checked and discovered she was right. The naquadah had been loaded on an sled with grav repulsors that made towing it along easy enough once they got it moving.
"They should have included inertial dampeners too," Mer complained not much later.
They were half way across the plain and the chest full of naquadah had no brakes. Once it was going in one direction, it wanted to keep going in that direction. Meredith was sweating under the hot sun and his arms ached, not to mention his bruises and the agony of his ribs. He felt sure that any moment, one might finish cracking in two and pierce his lung.
"Just shut up and help me steer it," Vala snapped back.
"Fine, but if I get shot by a death glider, I'm blaming you."
The sound of a death glider shrieking down through atmosphere followed less than a second later.
"You just had to say it, didn't you?"
Mer hunched over and gasped as he pushed the grav sled faster. He hadn't conjured the stupid death glider by mentioning it, damn it! They came with the al'kesh.
The glider flashed over them while firing at the Oranian ship. Typical of Ba'al's forces: shoot first, prostrate before their god after. Two more followed it.
"Please tell me Jehan's with the ship," he panted as they pulled the naquadah up the first hill. Loose scree slipped under his boots. His shoulders and back were both screaming now, along with every instinct that wanted to run for cover now, now, now. Sweat stung in his eyes and he could swear he tasted blood in his mouth.
"Of course he is," Vala answered breathlessly. "I almost had to chain him to the pilot's chair to make him stay with it, though."
The sled and the naquadah reached the top of the slop and kept going up into the air. Mer managed to keep hold of it and his inertia brought them back down. He wondered if his finger joints would ever be the same. He'd torn his thumbnail and it hurt like a bitch, more distracting than all the other pains he'd already cataloged. "Ouch, ouch, ou − "
He caught sight of the ship, gray and ugly as a hammer-headed metal bird, precariously balanced on the only semi-level stretch of ground available. The native grass and brush had been flattened under it. A boarding ramp dangled obscenely from its belly.
" − ch. Oh my God. Is that − "
"It's Tau'ri!" Vala declared.
Meredith gaped, then recovered. "Never mind that, it's on the ground and Jehan can't put up the shields until we're inside!" he yelled. Out on the plain, the Oranian ship clawed its way skyward, bedeviled by death gliders wheeling and curving around it as it rose. Someone had seen the second ship, though, and more gliders were arrowing toward the foothills.
He gave the grav sled a mighty push and then just held on as it tobogganed down the slope, running just to keep his feet under him. With a wild whoop, Vala latched on too and curled her legs up so that it pulled her along like a pennant.
They crashed into one of the landing struts. Vala let go in time and landed in a rolled up ball. Meredith hit with the sled and howled with pain as something crunched in his knee. The strut creaked and above them, the hull − which had to be pure trinium − boiled and sparked as it took a hit. Showers of metal droplets were flung out into the sun and the ship rocked unsteadily.
He did not want to under this ship if the struts failed. Pancake didn't convey what would be left. Purée, maybe. Strawberry purée.
Meredith dragged himself upright, whimpering with the pain from his knee, and gave the damned naquadah and its sled a push toward the boarding ramp. Vala made it to her feet too and joined him, dragging the sled and Meredith over. Basically, he just held on and used the sled as a crutch.
"Up we go," Vala declared. She was still insanely cheerful. It made Meredith want to hit her. A bolt of energy threw up a geyser of dirt and rocks, along with enough steam to burn bare skin, thanks to the water sublimated instantly by the plasma charge.
They wrestled the sled onto the angled ramp.
"Climb on," Vala told him.
Meredith crawled stomach down over the chest's lid and hung on as Vala gave a great heave and sent it, him, and the sled bumping and skidding up the steps and into the ship's airlock.
She ran in right behind them while Mer was still moaning and trying not to puke, hit the emergency close lock and yelled at the same time, "We're in! Go, go, go!"
Meredith slid off the naquadah chest, wobbled, and braced himself against a bulkhead as alarms howled through the ship. The deck under his boots shuddered alarmingly and he could feel the howl of the sublight engines as they took off. He counted the seconds in his head as gravity tried to pull him down to the deck.
They were out of atmosphere in under sixty seconds and that with some wild sideways maneuvers slowing them down. It took the airlock the same sixty seconds to finish its cycle and spill him and Vala into a corridor.
"I've got to get to the bridge," Vala called. She'd caught hold of the frame of the inner airlock as they went into freefall. She torqued her legs around and pushed herself at an angle down the corridor.
Meredith watched her twist as she flew so that her feet and legs could hit the bulkhead first, absorb her momentum and launch her again, even harder and faster, straight for an interdeck elevator.
"I'm going to the engine rooms!" he shouted after her. "Try to keep Jehan from blowing them before I get there or he'll kill us all."
Unless he passed out first. Little black spots floated around the edge of his vision as he gasped for breath. At least the freefall took his weight off his knee.
Mer fumbled for a handhold, oriented himself, and headed for the back of the ship. He knew how Earth engineers and designers thought. The reactors would always be as far away from the bridge as possible, down in its belly or its ass end.
~*~
Jehan punched the sublights and rocketed Prometheus into the upper atmosphere. Vala had Mer on board and they might end up knocked around, but they'd all be dead if the death gliders got in a lucky shot on the hyperdrives. He spun in the pilot's seat and leaned across the console to slap at the secondary controls that would bring up the shields. The ship slewed and swung as he did so, right into the course of one of the death gliders. It smashed into the shields before they were completely in place and the resulting force translated into spinning Prometheus like a top.
Vala shrieked over the ship comm and Jehan ignored her, wrestling the controls back under his command.
He had his hands full with maneuvering the ship. Someone else needed to man the ship's guns. Mer might be better at it, but Vala had spent several hours practicing dry fire target solutions from the bridge while they were in hyperspace. She knew the controls.
He wished futilely for even a fraction of the crew Prometheus was supposed to carry. He could fly without anyone else, but damage control handled keeping systems online, re-routing power conduits, and keeping everything critical working until there was time to do real repairs. Doing without equaled playing Russian roulette. Alarms were hooting all over the bridge in response to the hits they were taking and Jehan had to just hope none of them were for critical systems, because there wasn't anything he could do about them anyway.
Peripheral vision caught on one of the monochrome-blue toned screens that showed the three crew in the brig. They were thrown about like dolls with each course adjustment. No time to worry about them; they'd certainly be dead if he didn't get Prometheus away soon. Another screen showed Vala tearing off her helmet as an interdeck elevator brought her upship. He ignored it too.
Numbers cascaded through Jehan's mind; time to orbit, time to shield failure, juggling power to the engines for power to the shield, calculating the optimum ratio from second to second. Gravity's grip on Prometheus slipped, friction exchanged for freefall and Jehan had to curl his legs tight to the pilot's chair to hold himself in it, even while he rolled Prometheus end for end like a caber toss, radiation from the sublights' reactor exhausts slicing through two pursuing death gliders, killing the Jaffa pilots instantly.
~*~
Two hours after landing, Prometheus began taking fire. Alarms blared through the ship and Daniel knew he'd been right.
"Brace yourselves!" he yelled just in time.
Prometheus threw itself into the sky, every erg of power pushing it upward, nothing wasted on inertial dampeners or artificial gravity, and the G-forces smashed the three of them flat to the deck. As it accelerated, they slid into one of the bulkheads in a knot of bruised arms and legs.
The pilot sent the ship through a series a maneuvers better fit for a fighter jet or a hummingbird and one deep jolt after another ran through Prometheus as it began returning fire with its rail guns. Each new maneuver sent them sliding in a new direction, until Daniel wrapped his arms around the toilet stand, while Novak and Janet held onto him just in time for the overwhelming press of gravity to give way to free fall.
Prometheus continued to shake under fire and the scent of burning wiring drifted into the cell through the ventilation system. The lights flickered and gave way to red-tinted emergency systems.
"The shields can't take sustained fire of that caliber for much longer," Novak blurted. She let go of Daniel's leg and swam away, arms and legs flailing for purchase and finding. "Oh God."
"Novak! Legs down."
"I'm don't, I can't − I'm gonna − I'm − urk."
Daniel grimaced and swallowed hard as Novak threw up. It floated in yellow-brown globules that ended up in her hair and on her clothes as she tried to get away. Bile edged up his own throat in sympathy.
Prometheus fired once more, then inertia sent Novak and her stomach contents splashing into the opposite bulkhead as the ship accelerated abruptly. Daniel clutched the toilet tighter, locking one hand around his other wrist, since the stainless steel offered no hand holds − designed that way no doubt to frustrate enterprising potential escapees. Janet clamped onto his ankle after sliding down from his knee.
~*~
Vala dived into the bridge, in a dolphin swift somersault, and caught herself with one hand on a control console. She twisted on the fulcrum of her straight arm, jack knifed as she bent her elbow and hit the gunner's seat with a light thump. Reciprocal force threatened to bounce her right out again, sans gravity, but she'd locked legs under the console by then. Her hands were on the controls and the railguns began firing.
"Where's Mer?"
"That's an al'kesh, if you haven't noticed, my darling," she announced, ignoring his question.
Tense with apprehension, he demanded again, "Mer?"
"Headed for the engine rooms last time I saw him. He said something about you killing us all," Vala replied, teeth flashing white in one of her crazy smiles.
Jehan relaxed and fell back into the numbers of flying and fighting. Prometheus wasn't easy to fly; she was cranky and idiosyncratic as befitted the first of her kind, but with finesse, she could fly rings around any al'kesh or ha'tak he'd ever flown.
"Al'kesh inbound on vector five-six-nine," Jehan told her. "Death gliders on four-seven-six and four-nine-six."
"Got him."
Jehan compensated for the force of the railguns firing displacing Prometheus from the track he'd plotted, spitting a Goa'uld curse as he did so. The al'kesh had shields of its own and shrugged off the railgun fire.
"Oh, you're turning into a real pain in the mikta," Vala snapped. She half-floated over the control console, like an anchored and militant mermaid, as she fired again. "Get us out of here, Jehan!"
"Not easy," Jehan snapped.
"Right," Vala said. "Let's try these Asgard systems." She whooped as an energy weapon lashed out at the al'kesh, sizzling through its shields. "Take that! You know, I think these are Ba'al's Jaffa − "
Jehan wrenched Prometheus through an opening between the al'kesh and two death gliders. Ba'al. His heart skipped and rushed. He'd make sure he died with nothing left to revive in the sarcophagus before he went back to Ba'al. Burning up on re-entry would probably serve, but Prometheus had to have a self-destruct too. They needed to find that and re-program so that no one could activate it against them or take the ship from them through force. And so he could be sure Ba'al would never touch Mer or Vala. The only thing worse than going back would be seeing either of them in the System Lord's hands.
Maybe he pushed the ship a little harder than he would have without that thought in his head. An alarm began screaming as the fighter bay lost atmosphere. He routed more power to the shields, pulling it from non-critical systems. Prometheus had carried a crew of one hundred fifteen officers and enlisted. It now held six people. They didn't need to waste energy heating or lighting unused portions of the ship.
The engine room comm activated and he grinned as Mer's voice squawked through the bridge. "Are you trying to break all my bones!? I'm not at my best here, you know, and this misbegotten monstrosity was apparently built by dyslexic monkeys!"
"Hey, Mer," Jehan said.
Power to the sublights jumped eleven percent and smoothed out, letting Jehan put distance between Prometheus and the al'kesh. Vala snagged some of the power and fired the Asgard weapon again, penetrating its shields a second, lethal time. It broke up in a spew of vented atmosphere, radiation and smaller, interior explosions.
"Yes, yes, hey yourself, Mr. Laconic. Get us out of here and when we get together you can stun me by stringing three words together. Now stop trying to kill us. Naquadria is significantly less stable than naquadah − you can't treat this thing like damned ha'tak."
Jehan felt like smiling for the first time since Vala returned to the Tanafriti without Mer. Jehan hadn't been able to say anything then, just settled for glaring at her. He couldn't threaten Tenat and Jup. Couldn't tell Mer he'd come for him. Couldn't have if he'd been there, since any promise would have told the Oranians too much of what Mer meant to him. Promises were too easily broken anyway; Mer knew and Jehan knew as well. They'd both been cut with other losses before.
Prometheus was easily outrunning the death gliders and the limping, but still intact Oranian vessel.
"Where to?" he asked Vala.
She pulled herself over to the nav console and began plotting.
"Ushbos. We've got enough naquadah to pay for a complete refit and I want this lovely ship to have all the extras it deserves."
He flicked his fingers toward the screen showing the three crew. It looked like Novak had been space sick.
Vala frowned then shrugged.
"I think they'd be a bit safer if we let them off on Hebridan when we meet up with Tanafriti and Reckell."
The three Tau'ri were dangerous, but not that dangerous. Jehan shrugged his acceptance. Right now, at least one of them would be useful.
"Course plotted," Vala announced.
Jehan initiated the hyperdrive and sent them into the coruscating window that opened into hyperspace. Prometheus surged forward into the hyper window like a hound loose from the traces, doing what she'd been made to do with an eagerness he could feel under his fingertips.
The engine comm sounded.
"Hey, could someone get me a crutch or something? Little Miss Greedypants nearly finished the job Tenat started on me."
~*~
The difference as the ship reached hyperspace became apparent a moment later: no more hits on the shield or hull and the nearly soothing, half-audible vibration that meant they were safe again. The alarms stopped and the regular lighting came back up.
The comm from the bridge activated.
"Inertial dampeners are on-line," the cheerful voice of Daniel's original captor announced. "Ship shields are at eighty-nine percent, hyperdrives are at ninety-three, and we are currently three days out from Ushbos. Please orient yourself to the deck. Artificial gravity will be restored at six percent intervals every ten seconds beginning on my mark."
Novak whimpered.
"Mark."
Gravity returned gently as promised, leaving Daniel pressed face down to the floor. Novak made sick noises at the other side of the cell. The smell of stomach acid mixed with the lingering stink of smoke and a hint of ozone. He sighed and got up, moving out of the way, as Janet went to Novak and made sure she was all right before beginning to clean up as much as possible.
Novak had her head under the faucet in the tiny sink, washing the worst out of her hair when the cell door slid open. Daniel had decided the best course was staying out of the way, so he looked up from where he was sitting, while Janet spun to face the door while Novak didn't even look up.
The brig cells were all under surveillance from two cameras that left no corners unobserved. The bucket, mop and towels that the man in the cell doorway pushed inside served as a reminder. The red-scraped welt on one purpling cheekbone and the sweat-spiked dark hair registered a moment later. He pointed at Janet and gestured for her to come.
Janet planted her hands on her hips and glared instead of obeying. "We need to get clean clothes from our quarters," Janet snapped at the pirate.
One flickering glance took in Novak. The pirate sniffed and nodded, then gestured for Janet to come again. "You," he said in Goa'uld. "Come."
"Janet − " Daniel started.
The pirate raised his arm, aiming one of the Kull arm weapons at him.
"I'm going, I'm going," Janet said hurriedly. She skirted around Novak and went to the door. "Lindsay, I'll try to get you a clean jumpsuit or at least some scrubs," she called back before the door shushed shut again.
Novak finished rinsing her hair, wrung it out, and began dabbing her uniform as clean as she could get it with wet hands.
Daniel used the bucket and mop to swab the deck clean. He frowned as he worked. Where had he seen that man before?
~*~
Prometheus had a front viewport that doubled as a screen to display data from ship sensors. The twisting not-color of hyperspace translated into blue-purple seen through it. The sensors filtered and translated their data into frequencies visible to human eyes. It still gave Vala a headache. She still loved it.
Hyperspace was safe.
No one could follow, no one could engage, it wrapped around the ship and kept out all the long cold silence between the stars that otherwise seeped inside her.
They'd set the gravity generators back to their regular setting. She sank down in the captain's chair after Jehan left the bridge and stared at the viewport blankly. Slowly, her heartbeat reverted to a normal speed.
They'd beat the galaxy again, whipsawed the Oranians, the Lucian Alliance and Vosh, the arrogant, self-righteous Tau'ri and even Ba'al. She hadn't expected that whoreson snake. If Jehan...She pushed the thought of all the things that hadn't happened out of her head. They'd won. She could rest for a few more moments. The tremor in her fingers would subside once she had her breath back.
With no one there to see her, she could even let her head loll against the seat back and close her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.
She'd hidden it since Jup put a gun to Meredith's head, but she'd been terrified every minute of every day. No one had seen. No one ever saw. Vala had spent every day of her life in some level of fear. As a child, the fears had been small, circumscribed by the limits of her world, but children grow up and she'd discovered so much more to fear, until the Jaffa came. Until she was chosen and Qetesh taught her terror and despair and how small she was, how helpless, how utterly alone everyone was. She didn't know why she hadn't gone insane. She should have. It had amused Qetesh that she hadn't. Instead, she'd learned to use the fear and she'd also learned to always hide it too, because fear in others was a weakness, and after Qetesh, she couldn't ever afford to appear weak.
Only Jehan knew, but even he didn't see the fear; he knew because Ba'al had taught him all the same lessons Vala had learned from Qetesh.
The same way Meredith knew.
It had been better after she found Jehan, after Meredith joined them, because they weren't alone, but Jehan had shut down when she came back without his partner, only getting quieter as Vala faked her usual good humor and flirting with the rest of Tanafriti's crew, but Vala knew this time her way had angered him. She'd known and done it anyway, because it was the only way she had and because giving away how much getting Meredith back mattered would have only put them in that position of weakness, would have betrayed that both of them needed him, were afraid of losing him.
She'd done her best. Reckell, their second-shift first mate and the only reliable member of the crew they'd been running with lately, had covered too, but it hadn't been good enough to keep the damned crew in line once they had the loot from the cargo ship they'd ambushed. Solek had been looking for an opening for months. Without Meredith, Jehan had been too distracted to keep him in line and Reckell just wasn't ruthless enough − Reckell really belonged on an honest merchant ship. The rest of their cutthroats had fallen for Solek's line and then managed to intimidate Meredith's two engineering crew into siding with them too.
They were lucky they'd been left with the worthless cargo ship and the crippled al'kesh, but then again Solek had likely thought he was leaving them for dead. All without committing an obvious murder that would make the other members of the crew question whether to trust him with their necks. She was going to wring his when she caught up with him.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept for more than few minutes. Though the crew of Tanafriti had abandoned them days and days back, she and Jehan had both been on constant watch, then taking and learning to fly Prometheus had occupied them nonstop. If Jehan hadn't been with her, she would have lost the ship back to Daniel Jackson. And then Meredith would be dead, just like he sometimes said, when very drunk but not drunk enough to forget, the Tau'ri had wanted him.
The ironies made her so tired, now that the adrenaline had given away. Even the stiff, leather-covered headrest on the captain's seat felt wonderful behind her head. If she closed her eyes, she suspected she wouldn't open them again until she'd rested finally.
She forced herself up instead, hands braced against the armrests to push herself to her feet, grateful there was no one to see her sway from the exhausted headrush.
"Pain in the mikta," Vala muttered.
This ship had a genuine infirmary, a small but dedicated hospital, unlike almost every other ship she'd ever set foot in. Jehan would have Meredith and the doctor they'd kept in there now.
There would be drugs, too, because humans needed medicine, unlike Goa'uld and Jaffa, who relied on their symbiotes to fight off sickness and heal wounds.
Jaffa didn't even sleep, but she thought the Tau'ri probably had something to keep themselves awake. That's what she needed. She wouldn't trust the Tau'ri doctor to administer it, but Meredith could tell her which to take.
She really wanted to pick out a cabin and lie down in a bed and sleep, no matter how many nightmares she would have, but she knew Jehan would be staying with Meredith for the next shift at least and someone had to stay awake. She wouldn't let Daniel Jackson or the other Tau'ri get the drop on her again.
~*~
Meredith had about decided the floor would do a better job of holding him up than just the wall. The only problem he could see was that sliding down the wall and sitting would involve getting up eventually. He really didn't want to spend the rest of the trip − wherever they'd set course to − in the ship's engine rooms. He didn't trust the radiation shielding, for one thing, even if the US military hadn't turned over building their secret space ship to the lowest bidder. He knew the military-industrial complex and the corners they routinely cut.
He eyed the blackened panel halfway across the engine room where a wiring fire had been burning when he made it the engine room. Using a fire extinguisher had been interesting in near-zero gravity. It had floated him across the room. With the return of gravity, the remnants of the retardant foam were dripping down the bulkhead.
The panels would need to be pulled and the entire section rewired after they came out of hyperspace again. Mer didn't want to try it with the work-around he'd created on the fly still in use.
He sighed to himself in self-pity. He'd be the one doing that work, of course.
The sigh of the door opening made him blink his eyes open, only then realizing he'd closed them. His body had apparently made the decision about the deck too, because he was down on it.
Jehan bolted across the engine room and hit his knees next to Mer. His gaze flickered over Mer's face and the bruises there and over his body, where most of the damage was covered. "Mer?" he whispered. His hands came to rest on Mer's shoulder and his opposite elbow, light and deliberately gentle. "Mer."
Another person had come into the engine room with Jehan, but Mer ignored her.
"Took you long enough," Mer told him with a smile, because in fact Jehan and Vala had done the impossible, faster than humanly possible, but most of all, they'd done it: they'd come for him. "I started to wonder − "
Jehan's expression crumpled from concern and relief into pain. "I wouldn't leave − "
Mer caught his hand and overrode his protest. "If you could, not if you would," he corrected. He slid his arm from under Jehan's hand and twined their fingers together instead. He wanted to pull Jehan closer and kiss him, but his lower lip was split and Jehan disliked public displays. Kneeling on the deck with him and holdings hands was pretty overboard for Jehan.
The woman cleared her throat.
Mer squinted at her and then blinked. Short reddish hair, petite, grim expression, Air Force wings and a major's oak leaves, holy crap, they'd started letting women go offworld and that was −
"Fraiser!"
She jumped in surprise then stared at him with a confused frown. Finally her brown eyes widened as she recognized him despite the beard and the bruises. "McKay?" She visibly pulled herself together and knelt on the other side of him. Her fingers were cool on his neck as she took his pulse and peered into his eyes. "Explanations can wait. I want to get you up to the infirmary and take a better look at your injuries where I can treat them." She cocked her head and ordered, "Breathe in, then out."
Jehan watched her warily as she listened to Mer's hitched breathing.
"Broken rib," Mer told her.
"What else?" Janet demanded.
"This and that," he said. "I annoyed the Oranians."
Jehan's hand tightened on his.
Janet frowned at the engine room's walls and the door. "It will take some time to get a gurney down here − "
"I can walk," Mer snapped. "Jehan."
Jehan helped him up despite looking a little uncertain.
Janet's surprise felt insulting.
"What?" he demanded.
"You've changed."
His ribs screamed at him and he had to pant his way through it. Jehan steadied him and didn't even cringe away from the way he must have smelled at this point. A pointed glare went Janet's way, too. Mer managed to glare at Janet once he could breathe again. "I hate to quote O'Neill, but 'ya think'?" he snapped.
Janet had the grace to say nothing in reply and they made their way to the nearest interdeck elevator and the infirmary, where she examined him with the same clinical but not unkind expertise he remembered from the SGC. Jehan stayed beside him as much as possible and never left the room.
"We looked for you," she said. "Sam resigned her commission so she could look for you."
"Sam divorced me. And she always wanted to go offworld. Besides, I know the truth. The SGC knew I was with the Tok'ra. You decided the alliance was worth more than confronting them over one scientist. O'Neill never liked me anyway."
"You're wrong."
Meredith grunted.
Janet retrieved a two bottles from the drug cabinet and handed them over. "Antibiotics. The other's a mild painkiller."
Jehan lifted the bottles from her hand and turned them in his long fingers, reading the labels. Distrust radiated from him. Janet sighed loudly.
"Keep the ribs wrapped for at least a week," Janet told Mer. "Unless your symbiote − "
"Jolinar's dead," Mer interrupted. He didn't miss her either. He liked having his head and his body to himself. He did miss how fast she could have knitted his body back to better health as well as shutting down useless pain signals, though.
"Are you another prisoner of these − " Janet gave Jehan a less than friendly look, " − people?"
He immediately regretted the laughter. His ribs didn't like it.
"Meredith isn't a prisoner," Jehan said.
Janet looked at his and Mer's hands, still folded around each other and nodded. She began cleaning up, dropping empty wrappers into a trash receptacle, emptying the tray of implements into an autoclave for sterilization.
"Unlike me. Or Daniel and Lindsay," she remarked as she stripped off her gloves.
Meredith choked back another bitter laugh.
"You haven't the faintest clue. You think you're being treated badly? We'll let you go on a world with a chappa'ai and you can all go back to the SGC and tell them about terrible ordeal you endured - zatted and kept in the brig for a couple of days." He dropped off the exam table. "Try being a host or a slave for a couple of years."
"Or a couple of decades," Vala said, coming into the infirmary.
Janet's attention switched to her briefly.
Vala ignored her and studied the bandages around Mer's chest. "Ribs?"
He nodded.
"Shall I heal them?" she asked.
She faked it well, but Mer could recognize exhaustion under the mask. "I don't have enough energy," he temporized. "Give it a couple of days. Who's piloting the ship?"
Vala kissed his cheek. "Autopilot, genius. We're in hyperspace."
"Oh. Right."
Jehan tugged his hand. Mer gave her a mock helpless look.
"Better get some sleep," Vala said in a knowing voice. "I'll escort the doctor back to the brig."
"Just a couple hours," he promised.
"I'll relieve you," Jehan added.
Vala waved her hand carelessly. "Take your time. I'm a big girl."
They headed for the infirmary door.
"You could have come back to the SGC," Janet called.
Mer kept walking as he answered.
"Why? They didn't come for me."
~*~
"You know Daniel?"
Meredith's voice was calm, only curious, no accusation or anger. Jehan didn't have to always face him to feel safe. He still kept his back to the wall with anyone else except Vala. Meredith had grown used to him not talking much too; he'd accept the short answer. That made speaking easier.
"I recognized him."
He stirred in the spices, keeping an eye sidelong on Yu's lo'taur. None of the Goa'uld trusted each other enough for any preparations to be undertaken by a single slave. Ba'al was more likely to blow up something than play with poison, but that didn't mean Yu or any of the other's trusted his slave. Smart of them. If Jehan had had access to a poison that would kill all of them, including Ba'al, he'd have used it, even if it meant dying too.
Yu's lo'taur surprised him. He didn't look comfortable in his dress or his role. He didn't seem to get that none of them were supposed to get friendly with each other either.
"You knew they were going to eat them?" Jarren asked.
Jehan nodded and began steering the infusion. If it boiled, it would be ruined and Ba'al would be displeased. Since Jehan was the only slave with him, he would suffer that displeasure. Ba'al could be very creative in his punishments. He probably wouldn't kill Jehan this time, since he had no sarcophagus. Or maybe he would. Jehan paused and considered if it wouldn't be easiest to provoke Ba'al into doing just that, here where death could be a real escape.
"Yes," he told Yu's lo'taur. Vague curiosity stirred. Why didn't Jarren know this? "They do that every night for as long as the summit continues." Ba'al's last lo'taur had taught Jehan what to expect so that he could perform his duties properly. Not that he would have blinked at anything the Goa'uld did. Cannibalizing their young? Barely blipped the radar in his experience of what they would do.
Jehan took off his boots and set them next to the cabin's door. He left his socks on. The decks of the personal quarters were coated in rubber. It deadened sound and wasn't as easy to slip on as bare metal, but the cold of space still seeped through it.
Meredith didn't say anything more. That was different. Meredith talked. Jehan didn't know if it was a reaction to the Tok'ra symbiote keeping him silent for three years or if he'd talked that much before Jolinar took him as a host. Maybe both? Usually, Meredith would have already filled the air between them with a constant spill of words. Jehan liked it; he was never much for words himself, even before, he doubted he'd ever get over the lessons in silence as self-defense he had learned as Ba'al's slave.
He watched Meredith through his eyelashes. The ship's doctor had let him go, so though Meredith was bruised and raw in places, he was essentially okay. The relief made Jehan's throat ache, so he shrugged out of his leather jacket and draped it over the desk chair clamped into place in the knee hole of the built in desk. The whole ship was like that; the design integrated artificial gravity, the same as every Goa'uld ship he'd ever been on, but the builders had still secured everything against freefall. It wasn't a floating palace for a gloating parasite or a toothless cargo hauler. It was a warship. Now it would be a pirate ship.
Their ship unless the Tau'ri took it back.
"What do you think will happen when this is over? To us, I mean?"
Jehan stared at him and frowned, then said repressively, "That is between you and your master."
"Don't you think it is strange that the Goa'uld are letting us see their sacred rituals, hear their most secret conversations?"
Meredith picked his way around the cabin. Barren by Goa'uld standards or even human: it lacked portholes, and the sharp angles unadorned by any sort of decoration. Not that there had been much, but Jehan had cleaned out the General's gear when he claimed the flag cabin for the two of them, so nothing remained now; they left any personal possessions behind on Tanafriti. Meredith rubbed his upper arms and stared at the bunk they'd be sharing.
"Not to sound like a snake or anything, but I've never understood the military conviction that efficiency has to equal discomfort," Meredith said.
Jehan walked back over to him and wrapped his arms around him from behind. Without his jacket, his arms and back felt the chill too. Meredith felt warm wherever they touched, though, and Jehan leaned into him, rested his chin on a broad shoulder, and contemplated the bunk. It would be a tight fit, but they'd be warm at least.
"Puritans and low bidders," he murmured, startling a chuckle out of Meredith.
"We are definitely getting a different bed in here when we hit Borzin's."
Jehan turned his head and nuzzled behind Meredith's ear, inhaling the scents caught there, acrid, fear-laced sweat, musk and body dirt that a quick clean up in the ship's infirmary had missed. It wasn't precisely pleasant, but it was Meredith and it grounded him and let him exhale a shuddering breath of relief.
"We're renaming the ship too," Meredith muttered breathlessly, squirming but not moving away. "Prometheus. Shitty name. Bound in chains and getting his liver pecked out every day. The only thing worse would be Icarus."
Jehan laughed against his neck.
"Don't laugh. You chased that Hebridan ship right into the corona of their sun the last time."
"We had good shields," Jehan reminded him.
"Thanks to me," Meredith agreed.
"That was a good prize."
The Loop of Kon Garat made for good hunting. The space racers designed for speed and carried no weapons to fight off pirates and the top of the line experimental designs sold for good money on the blackmarket. It took a clever captain, sabotage or inside information, and a crazy pilot to catch them, though.
"May I speak honestly with you?"
"Have you not been honest prior to now?" Jehan replied in a dry tone.
Jarren appeared nonplussed. Did he think Jehan was Ba'al's lo'taur because he was stupid? Did he think Ba'al was foolish enough to choose Jehan for his appearance? His apparent naiveté could only be an act. Jehan certainly didn't buy it.
"Yes, of course," Jarren said, the words fumbling out. "What I mean is, can I trust you that no matter what I say, this conversation will remain between us?"
Meredith laced his fingers over Jehan's and they shuffled to the bed. Jehan dimmed the light and they crawled in under the blanket and sheet, awkward elbows and knees bumping as they stripped each other the rest of the way, finally warming as skin kissed skin. He tested where he could touch without eliciting a wince, skimming his palms over softer curves and bony angles with equal care. Sometimes they bruised each other, but not this night. Rodney's mouth tasted sour, but Jehan didn't care. He cared about the rasp of hairy thighs sliding against each other, rubbing and then stroking, his fingers finding Meredith's balls, vulnerable, secret and hot, weighing them and the rush of Meredith's moist breath into his own mouth. He savored every caress despite the urgency rising through them both. His toes curled when Meredith played with his nipples, just like always, and Meredith laughed, a sweet comfort.
Meredith whispered and whimpered and moaned when they had sex. He told Jehan what to do, announced his approval of any innovation that felt good, asked what Jehan wanted, gasped and panted and let out a bull deep grunt of satisfaction when he came. He listened too, with his eyes and his hands, for the sounds Jehan couldn't make, and took every wordless cue, translating each touch into what Jehan needed. He held on afterward, when he came in a silent, ecstatic shudder.
Nothing had changed. He'd said nothing, but he'd worried. The Lucians could be as imaginatively sadistic as any Goa'uld: eager stand-ins for the fractured galactic powermongers of only a few years before. Apparently, though, some tortures were left for only humans - or human bodies - to inflict on each other.
He'd once gone through the motions with Vala out of gratitude and to prove to himself he could, but he'd wondered if he'd ever want anyone again before Rodney signed onto the crew.
"I believe the Goa'uld are powerful beings," Jarren said, "that use humans like us as hosts. I believe they use their power to portray Gods so the masses will follow and serve them."
"I agree."
He'd surprised Jarren.
"You know this to be true?
"Yes."
Jarren's frown pleated his brow. "And yet you still serve?"
"As do you," Jehan had snapped.
Thinking about that, thinking about Ba'al, made him shiver and he wriggled closer to Meredith. The bunk was a narrow excuse to tangle his legs between Meredith's anyway. Meredith draped a heavy arm over his back and mumbled about bruises even while he pulled Jehan even closer. All the tension and terror of wondering if they'd get Meredith back finally began dissolving, but Jehan still couldn't sleep.
He whispered, "Hey."
Meredith groaned. "Of course, you want to talk now." He patted Jehan's back though. "Okay, okay. Tell me whatever it is."
"Jackson," Jehan said. "He was serving a Goa'uld."
"Impossible," Meredith said. "Not Jackson. He hates the Goa'uld as much as anyone. When did you see him, anyway?"
"The System Lord Summit, when they accepted Anubis, before Ba'al sent me to his research installation."
Meredith tensed then pushed himself up into a sitting position in the bunk. Jehan sat up too. The sheet and blanket pooled around their waists. Cool air against his sweaty, bare shoulders made his skin goosepimple. "The first thing I'm doing tomorrow is readjusting the environmental controls in this rust bucket," Meredith muttered.
The head of the bunk had a panel of controls for comms and the lights. Jehan dialed the overhead onto low, just enough light to make out Meredith's expressions.
"He was there," he insisted, "calling himself Jarren."
Meredith frowned. "Jolinar and I were on another mission then," he said quietly, the way he did when he picked through the memories the symbiote had left in him. "She always made sure we were were away if any Tau'ri were going to be around − thought someone might guess I wasn't another happy host after all."
That made Jehan grimace. He hated reminders of his time with Ba'al; he figured reminding Meredith or Vala of their imprisonment in their own bodies had to be worse.
"Not that that didn't turn out to be lucky for us," Meredith went on, "since Zipacna's fleet hammered the Ravenna base. We'd have died with the rest of the hosts and Jaffa if we'd been there when Lantash suicided." His mouth twisted downward. "Selmak and her host survived, of course, and oh..." He met Jehan's gaze. "They sent Jackson in undercover since he spoke Goa'uld. I'd forgotten. He was supposed to use the symbiote poison on the gathered system lords."
Jehan frowned.
"Why didn't he?" He would have. He would have taken any opportunity to kill Ba'al and the rest of the snakes. That Jackson hadn't pissed him off. That speaking to Yu might have kept Jackson from killing them made him angry with himself in retrospect.
"How would I know?" Meredith snapped. "Ask him."
He knew he wouldn't.
He'd already said enough.
Yu had been alone in the space station corridor. He held up his hand and Jehan stopped.
"Where is my lo'taur, Jarren?"
"I have not seen him, you lordship," Jehan replied.
Satisfied, dismissing Jehan as though he no longer existed, Yu began to walk off.
Jehan weighed the possibilities. Only one fit: Jarren had been acting as a provocateur. He would report to Yu and Yu would inform Ba'al of his reactions.
He called out softly, "My lord?"
Yu paused.
Jehan prostrated himself. "Forgive me. While you know I faithfully serve my master Ba'al, and therefore hear whatever I say with certain suspicion," he said, "I believe it is my duty to tell you that your new lo'taur cannot be trusted."
~*~
[c]
an Alternate Universe SGA/SG-1 Crossover
by Auburn
[a] [b] [c] [d]
Honor Among Thieves
Mer studied the forcefield again, hoping for any weak area, any chance at getting himself out. Nothing presented itself and he cursed again. Even if he found something, they'd set up the forcefield in the back of their crummy ship's bridge, where they could keep a constant watch on him. While that indicated a quite natural respect for his abilities, Mer could have done with a little more underestimation in this one case.
"Shut up," Jup ordered.
"Come in here and make me," Mer snapped back. He glared at the Oranian.
Jup laughed, a really awful sound, like an asthmatic elephant seal, and went back to massaging or oiling, or something Mer didn't even want to think about seeing, one of his two heavy head tentacle-things.
A wisp of one of Jolinar's memories made him cringe. Those were Oranian sex organs and what Jup was doing in front of him was the equivalent of a woman playing with her breasts. The memory came complete with a picture of an Oranian in full rut, the tentacles swollen and pulsing.
Mer swallowed his gorge.
He could have lived his whole life without remembering that and been a happier man. He felt safe in believing even Jackson wouldn't have cared to see that. Only a xenobiologists would and they were all batshit. The Tok'ra had only been interested in the Oranians until it became clear they were satisfied to bow before the might of the System Lords and glean their leavings. Unsuitable, unreliable and not particularly smart, not like the Tollans, who might have been useful allies, but also proved perfidious in their dealings with the Tau'ri.
Selmak had briefed the Tok'ra council on the Goa'uld's triumph over the Tollan.
Jup bent over the control panel, studying something on a small screen there intently. Mer couldn't see what from his vantage point. He thought Jup was playing a game. He wasn't watching the screens showing sensor readings for incoming ships. Mer was. He coughed hard as it registered a hyperspace window opening and something big sliding through the system to the moon they were waiting on. It was half a day ahead of Vala's last transmitted ETA.
Maybe he couldn't get himself out of here, but he could make it easier for his friends.
"Where's your buddy, Tenat?" he asked. "You really think that if you manage to collect from Vosh and Ba'al, he's going give you that fifty-fifty share?"
"Tenat is on rest shift."
"Riiiight," Mer drawled. "He's probably doing something freaky to his head things."
Jup scowled at him, which kept his back to the screen. The ship de-orbited and disappeared from the sensor's purview.
"Tenat is not a pervert!"
"If you say so," Mer agreed. He let Jup go back to his game and kept an eye on the ship's proximity security surveillance. The Oranians hadn't improved their ship beyond Goa'uld spec, which meant very basic security. Goa'uld relied on their Jaffa to keep watch, rather than spy-eyes everywhere.
He thought the ship had landed just beyond the foothills and checked the camera aimed in that direction more often than the rest. Jup cursed his game.
"Bet you can't win that game no matter how many times you try it," Mer taunted.
"You will see," Jup replied and went back to it, starting from the beginning, all his concentration bent on winning.
On one of the screens, a dark figure crested the nearest foothill and started across the plain toward the Oranians' ship.
Jup crowed in triumph. "Got it."
He needed to keep Jup distracted a little longer. "That's not all you're going to get."
"What do you mean?"
The black figure of a Kull loped steadily toward them.
"You don't really trust Tenat, do you?"
"We're partners."
"Oh, come on. He's double-crossed us. You think he won't do the same to you?" The Kull − briefly Mer wondered if it might be a real Kull sent by Ba'al, because that would be bad, very bad − disappeared inside the sensor's blind spot. "He's still a backstabber. After all, he'd double-dealing everyone else, why not you too? It's an awful lot of naquadah."
Jup stared at him. His head tentacles curled up at the tips, looking shriveled and, Mer guessed, unhappy.
"Tenat wouldn't do that to me."
Mer laughed out loud.
"He's probably going to shoot you in the back right here and leave your body behind."
"He needs me to pilot the ship your partners are bringing."
Mer smiled cynically. "Of course. While you're being his flying delivery boy, Tenat will be all by himself, with all that naquadah. You'll never see him or it again."
"No, I − "
An intruder alarm began blaring finally. Jup spun back to the controls. The screens fuzzed to static. He lurched to the next console and began yelling for Tenat and cursing because the internal comms were down too.
Mer just grinned, recognizing the work of the boarding jammers he'd created as additions to Vala and Jehan's Kull armor. He kept smiling right up until he noticed another ship had entered the system and was on course for their moon.
Vala marched into the bridge, shrugged aside Jup's defensive fire and stunned him.
Vala pulled off her helmet and flashed a pleased grin.
"That went well. Did you miss me?"
"You're my rescue?" Meredith demanded.
Vala shot the controls to the forcefield next, frying them nicely so that it collapsed.
"Who did you expect?" Vala glanced around the bridge. "Anything we should take with us? I mean besides our naquadah?"
Meredith bolted out of his erstwhile prison and grabbed up Jup's pistol − it was an pulse energy weapon and he wanted to analyze it − then stabbed his finger at the al'kesh on the sensors. "No. We have to get out of here. That's one of Ba'al's ships."
Vala's eyes widened. "Egg of a carrion beetle," she muttered. "Bloody Jaffa."
She stuffed the helmet back on her head, rendering her voice ominous and inflectionless.
"Let's get the naquadah and go."
"Forget the naquadah − "
"Darling, it's naquadah."
"It's heavy! I'm not breaking my back trying to carry it."
He followed her down to the hold anyway, grumbling and bitching out of habit. "Do you even know where the naquadah is?"
"Yes."
Vala had found the naquadah first. Of course. Tenat was laid out on the deck of the cargo hold. Meredith skirted around him, thought twice and snagged Tenat's gun too, then stared at the chest holding the naquadah. "How the hell are we moving that? You know how heavy naquadah is?"
"Not to worry, it's all fixed up," Vala replied in that flat, mechanical voice.
Meredith checked and discovered she was right. The naquadah had been loaded on an sled with grav repulsors that made towing it along easy enough once they got it moving.
"They should have included inertial dampeners too," Mer complained not much later.
They were half way across the plain and the chest full of naquadah had no brakes. Once it was going in one direction, it wanted to keep going in that direction. Meredith was sweating under the hot sun and his arms ached, not to mention his bruises and the agony of his ribs. He felt sure that any moment, one might finish cracking in two and pierce his lung.
"Just shut up and help me steer it," Vala snapped back.
"Fine, but if I get shot by a death glider, I'm blaming you."
The sound of a death glider shrieking down through atmosphere followed less than a second later.
"You just had to say it, didn't you?"
Mer hunched over and gasped as he pushed the grav sled faster. He hadn't conjured the stupid death glider by mentioning it, damn it! They came with the al'kesh.
The glider flashed over them while firing at the Oranian ship. Typical of Ba'al's forces: shoot first, prostrate before their god after. Two more followed it.
"Please tell me Jehan's with the ship," he panted as they pulled the naquadah up the first hill. Loose scree slipped under his boots. His shoulders and back were both screaming now, along with every instinct that wanted to run for cover now, now, now. Sweat stung in his eyes and he could swear he tasted blood in his mouth.
"Of course he is," Vala answered breathlessly. "I almost had to chain him to the pilot's chair to make him stay with it, though."
The sled and the naquadah reached the top of the slop and kept going up into the air. Mer managed to keep hold of it and his inertia brought them back down. He wondered if his finger joints would ever be the same. He'd torn his thumbnail and it hurt like a bitch, more distracting than all the other pains he'd already cataloged. "Ouch, ouch, ou − "
He caught sight of the ship, gray and ugly as a hammer-headed metal bird, precariously balanced on the only semi-level stretch of ground available. The native grass and brush had been flattened under it. A boarding ramp dangled obscenely from its belly.
" − ch. Oh my God. Is that − "
"It's Tau'ri!" Vala declared.
Meredith gaped, then recovered. "Never mind that, it's on the ground and Jehan can't put up the shields until we're inside!" he yelled. Out on the plain, the Oranian ship clawed its way skyward, bedeviled by death gliders wheeling and curving around it as it rose. Someone had seen the second ship, though, and more gliders were arrowing toward the foothills.
He gave the grav sled a mighty push and then just held on as it tobogganed down the slope, running just to keep his feet under him. With a wild whoop, Vala latched on too and curled her legs up so that it pulled her along like a pennant.
They crashed into one of the landing struts. Vala let go in time and landed in a rolled up ball. Meredith hit with the sled and howled with pain as something crunched in his knee. The strut creaked and above them, the hull − which had to be pure trinium − boiled and sparked as it took a hit. Showers of metal droplets were flung out into the sun and the ship rocked unsteadily.
He did not want to under this ship if the struts failed. Pancake didn't convey what would be left. Purée, maybe. Strawberry purée.
Meredith dragged himself upright, whimpering with the pain from his knee, and gave the damned naquadah and its sled a push toward the boarding ramp. Vala made it to her feet too and joined him, dragging the sled and Meredith over. Basically, he just held on and used the sled as a crutch.
"Up we go," Vala declared. She was still insanely cheerful. It made Meredith want to hit her. A bolt of energy threw up a geyser of dirt and rocks, along with enough steam to burn bare skin, thanks to the water sublimated instantly by the plasma charge.
They wrestled the sled onto the angled ramp.
"Climb on," Vala told him.
Meredith crawled stomach down over the chest's lid and hung on as Vala gave a great heave and sent it, him, and the sled bumping and skidding up the steps and into the ship's airlock.
She ran in right behind them while Mer was still moaning and trying not to puke, hit the emergency close lock and yelled at the same time, "We're in! Go, go, go!"
Meredith slid off the naquadah chest, wobbled, and braced himself against a bulkhead as alarms howled through the ship. The deck under his boots shuddered alarmingly and he could feel the howl of the sublight engines as they took off. He counted the seconds in his head as gravity tried to pull him down to the deck.
They were out of atmosphere in under sixty seconds and that with some wild sideways maneuvers slowing them down. It took the airlock the same sixty seconds to finish its cycle and spill him and Vala into a corridor.
"I've got to get to the bridge," Vala called. She'd caught hold of the frame of the inner airlock as they went into freefall. She torqued her legs around and pushed herself at an angle down the corridor.
Meredith watched her twist as she flew so that her feet and legs could hit the bulkhead first, absorb her momentum and launch her again, even harder and faster, straight for an interdeck elevator.
"I'm going to the engine rooms!" he shouted after her. "Try to keep Jehan from blowing them before I get there or he'll kill us all."
Unless he passed out first. Little black spots floated around the edge of his vision as he gasped for breath. At least the freefall took his weight off his knee.
Mer fumbled for a handhold, oriented himself, and headed for the back of the ship. He knew how Earth engineers and designers thought. The reactors would always be as far away from the bridge as possible, down in its belly or its ass end.
~*~
Jehan punched the sublights and rocketed Prometheus into the upper atmosphere. Vala had Mer on board and they might end up knocked around, but they'd all be dead if the death gliders got in a lucky shot on the hyperdrives. He spun in the pilot's seat and leaned across the console to slap at the secondary controls that would bring up the shields. The ship slewed and swung as he did so, right into the course of one of the death gliders. It smashed into the shields before they were completely in place and the resulting force translated into spinning Prometheus like a top.
Vala shrieked over the ship comm and Jehan ignored her, wrestling the controls back under his command.
He had his hands full with maneuvering the ship. Someone else needed to man the ship's guns. Mer might be better at it, but Vala had spent several hours practicing dry fire target solutions from the bridge while they were in hyperspace. She knew the controls.
He wished futilely for even a fraction of the crew Prometheus was supposed to carry. He could fly without anyone else, but damage control handled keeping systems online, re-routing power conduits, and keeping everything critical working until there was time to do real repairs. Doing without equaled playing Russian roulette. Alarms were hooting all over the bridge in response to the hits they were taking and Jehan had to just hope none of them were for critical systems, because there wasn't anything he could do about them anyway.
Peripheral vision caught on one of the monochrome-blue toned screens that showed the three crew in the brig. They were thrown about like dolls with each course adjustment. No time to worry about them; they'd certainly be dead if he didn't get Prometheus away soon. Another screen showed Vala tearing off her helmet as an interdeck elevator brought her upship. He ignored it too.
Numbers cascaded through Jehan's mind; time to orbit, time to shield failure, juggling power to the engines for power to the shield, calculating the optimum ratio from second to second. Gravity's grip on Prometheus slipped, friction exchanged for freefall and Jehan had to curl his legs tight to the pilot's chair to hold himself in it, even while he rolled Prometheus end for end like a caber toss, radiation from the sublights' reactor exhausts slicing through two pursuing death gliders, killing the Jaffa pilots instantly.
~*~
Two hours after landing, Prometheus began taking fire. Alarms blared through the ship and Daniel knew he'd been right.
"Brace yourselves!" he yelled just in time.
Prometheus threw itself into the sky, every erg of power pushing it upward, nothing wasted on inertial dampeners or artificial gravity, and the G-forces smashed the three of them flat to the deck. As it accelerated, they slid into one of the bulkheads in a knot of bruised arms and legs.
The pilot sent the ship through a series a maneuvers better fit for a fighter jet or a hummingbird and one deep jolt after another ran through Prometheus as it began returning fire with its rail guns. Each new maneuver sent them sliding in a new direction, until Daniel wrapped his arms around the toilet stand, while Novak and Janet held onto him just in time for the overwhelming press of gravity to give way to free fall.
Prometheus continued to shake under fire and the scent of burning wiring drifted into the cell through the ventilation system. The lights flickered and gave way to red-tinted emergency systems.
"The shields can't take sustained fire of that caliber for much longer," Novak blurted. She let go of Daniel's leg and swam away, arms and legs flailing for purchase and finding. "Oh God."
"Novak! Legs down."
"I'm don't, I can't − I'm gonna − I'm − urk."
Daniel grimaced and swallowed hard as Novak threw up. It floated in yellow-brown globules that ended up in her hair and on her clothes as she tried to get away. Bile edged up his own throat in sympathy.
Prometheus fired once more, then inertia sent Novak and her stomach contents splashing into the opposite bulkhead as the ship accelerated abruptly. Daniel clutched the toilet tighter, locking one hand around his other wrist, since the stainless steel offered no hand holds − designed that way no doubt to frustrate enterprising potential escapees. Janet clamped onto his ankle after sliding down from his knee.
~*~
Vala dived into the bridge, in a dolphin swift somersault, and caught herself with one hand on a control console. She twisted on the fulcrum of her straight arm, jack knifed as she bent her elbow and hit the gunner's seat with a light thump. Reciprocal force threatened to bounce her right out again, sans gravity, but she'd locked legs under the console by then. Her hands were on the controls and the railguns began firing.
"Where's Mer?"
"That's an al'kesh, if you haven't noticed, my darling," she announced, ignoring his question.
Tense with apprehension, he demanded again, "Mer?"
"Headed for the engine rooms last time I saw him. He said something about you killing us all," Vala replied, teeth flashing white in one of her crazy smiles.
Jehan relaxed and fell back into the numbers of flying and fighting. Prometheus wasn't easy to fly; she was cranky and idiosyncratic as befitted the first of her kind, but with finesse, she could fly rings around any al'kesh or ha'tak he'd ever flown.
"Al'kesh inbound on vector five-six-nine," Jehan told her. "Death gliders on four-seven-six and four-nine-six."
"Got him."
Jehan compensated for the force of the railguns firing displacing Prometheus from the track he'd plotted, spitting a Goa'uld curse as he did so. The al'kesh had shields of its own and shrugged off the railgun fire.
"Oh, you're turning into a real pain in the mikta," Vala snapped. She half-floated over the control console, like an anchored and militant mermaid, as she fired again. "Get us out of here, Jehan!"
"Not easy," Jehan snapped.
"Right," Vala said. "Let's try these Asgard systems." She whooped as an energy weapon lashed out at the al'kesh, sizzling through its shields. "Take that! You know, I think these are Ba'al's Jaffa − "
Jehan wrenched Prometheus through an opening between the al'kesh and two death gliders. Ba'al. His heart skipped and rushed. He'd make sure he died with nothing left to revive in the sarcophagus before he went back to Ba'al. Burning up on re-entry would probably serve, but Prometheus had to have a self-destruct too. They needed to find that and re-program so that no one could activate it against them or take the ship from them through force. And so he could be sure Ba'al would never touch Mer or Vala. The only thing worse than going back would be seeing either of them in the System Lord's hands.
Maybe he pushed the ship a little harder than he would have without that thought in his head. An alarm began screaming as the fighter bay lost atmosphere. He routed more power to the shields, pulling it from non-critical systems. Prometheus had carried a crew of one hundred fifteen officers and enlisted. It now held six people. They didn't need to waste energy heating or lighting unused portions of the ship.
The engine room comm activated and he grinned as Mer's voice squawked through the bridge. "Are you trying to break all my bones!? I'm not at my best here, you know, and this misbegotten monstrosity was apparently built by dyslexic monkeys!"
"Hey, Mer," Jehan said.
Power to the sublights jumped eleven percent and smoothed out, letting Jehan put distance between Prometheus and the al'kesh. Vala snagged some of the power and fired the Asgard weapon again, penetrating its shields a second, lethal time. It broke up in a spew of vented atmosphere, radiation and smaller, interior explosions.
"Yes, yes, hey yourself, Mr. Laconic. Get us out of here and when we get together you can stun me by stringing three words together. Now stop trying to kill us. Naquadria is significantly less stable than naquadah − you can't treat this thing like damned ha'tak."
Jehan felt like smiling for the first time since Vala returned to the Tanafriti without Mer. Jehan hadn't been able to say anything then, just settled for glaring at her. He couldn't threaten Tenat and Jup. Couldn't tell Mer he'd come for him. Couldn't have if he'd been there, since any promise would have told the Oranians too much of what Mer meant to him. Promises were too easily broken anyway; Mer knew and Jehan knew as well. They'd both been cut with other losses before.
Prometheus was easily outrunning the death gliders and the limping, but still intact Oranian vessel.
"Where to?" he asked Vala.
She pulled herself over to the nav console and began plotting.
"Ushbos. We've got enough naquadah to pay for a complete refit and I want this lovely ship to have all the extras it deserves."
He flicked his fingers toward the screen showing the three crew. It looked like Novak had been space sick.
Vala frowned then shrugged.
"I think they'd be a bit safer if we let them off on Hebridan when we meet up with Tanafriti and Reckell."
The three Tau'ri were dangerous, but not that dangerous. Jehan shrugged his acceptance. Right now, at least one of them would be useful.
"Course plotted," Vala announced.
Jehan initiated the hyperdrive and sent them into the coruscating window that opened into hyperspace. Prometheus surged forward into the hyper window like a hound loose from the traces, doing what she'd been made to do with an eagerness he could feel under his fingertips.
The engine comm sounded.
"Hey, could someone get me a crutch or something? Little Miss Greedypants nearly finished the job Tenat started on me."
~*~
The difference as the ship reached hyperspace became apparent a moment later: no more hits on the shield or hull and the nearly soothing, half-audible vibration that meant they were safe again. The alarms stopped and the regular lighting came back up.
The comm from the bridge activated.
"Inertial dampeners are on-line," the cheerful voice of Daniel's original captor announced. "Ship shields are at eighty-nine percent, hyperdrives are at ninety-three, and we are currently three days out from Ushbos. Please orient yourself to the deck. Artificial gravity will be restored at six percent intervals every ten seconds beginning on my mark."
Novak whimpered.
"Mark."
Gravity returned gently as promised, leaving Daniel pressed face down to the floor. Novak made sick noises at the other side of the cell. The smell of stomach acid mixed with the lingering stink of smoke and a hint of ozone. He sighed and got up, moving out of the way, as Janet went to Novak and made sure she was all right before beginning to clean up as much as possible.
Novak had her head under the faucet in the tiny sink, washing the worst out of her hair when the cell door slid open. Daniel had decided the best course was staying out of the way, so he looked up from where he was sitting, while Janet spun to face the door while Novak didn't even look up.
The brig cells were all under surveillance from two cameras that left no corners unobserved. The bucket, mop and towels that the man in the cell doorway pushed inside served as a reminder. The red-scraped welt on one purpling cheekbone and the sweat-spiked dark hair registered a moment later. He pointed at Janet and gestured for her to come.
Janet planted her hands on her hips and glared instead of obeying. "We need to get clean clothes from our quarters," Janet snapped at the pirate.
One flickering glance took in Novak. The pirate sniffed and nodded, then gestured for Janet to come again. "You," he said in Goa'uld. "Come."
"Janet − " Daniel started.
The pirate raised his arm, aiming one of the Kull arm weapons at him.
"I'm going, I'm going," Janet said hurriedly. She skirted around Novak and went to the door. "Lindsay, I'll try to get you a clean jumpsuit or at least some scrubs," she called back before the door shushed shut again.
Novak finished rinsing her hair, wrung it out, and began dabbing her uniform as clean as she could get it with wet hands.
Daniel used the bucket and mop to swab the deck clean. He frowned as he worked. Where had he seen that man before?
~*~
Prometheus had a front viewport that doubled as a screen to display data from ship sensors. The twisting not-color of hyperspace translated into blue-purple seen through it. The sensors filtered and translated their data into frequencies visible to human eyes. It still gave Vala a headache. She still loved it.
Hyperspace was safe.
No one could follow, no one could engage, it wrapped around the ship and kept out all the long cold silence between the stars that otherwise seeped inside her.
They'd set the gravity generators back to their regular setting. She sank down in the captain's chair after Jehan left the bridge and stared at the viewport blankly. Slowly, her heartbeat reverted to a normal speed.
They'd beat the galaxy again, whipsawed the Oranians, the Lucian Alliance and Vosh, the arrogant, self-righteous Tau'ri and even Ba'al. She hadn't expected that whoreson snake. If Jehan...She pushed the thought of all the things that hadn't happened out of her head. They'd won. She could rest for a few more moments. The tremor in her fingers would subside once she had her breath back.
With no one there to see her, she could even let her head loll against the seat back and close her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.
She'd hidden it since Jup put a gun to Meredith's head, but she'd been terrified every minute of every day. No one had seen. No one ever saw. Vala had spent every day of her life in some level of fear. As a child, the fears had been small, circumscribed by the limits of her world, but children grow up and she'd discovered so much more to fear, until the Jaffa came. Until she was chosen and Qetesh taught her terror and despair and how small she was, how helpless, how utterly alone everyone was. She didn't know why she hadn't gone insane. She should have. It had amused Qetesh that she hadn't. Instead, she'd learned to use the fear and she'd also learned to always hide it too, because fear in others was a weakness, and after Qetesh, she couldn't ever afford to appear weak.
Only Jehan knew, but even he didn't see the fear; he knew because Ba'al had taught him all the same lessons Vala had learned from Qetesh.
The same way Meredith knew.
It had been better after she found Jehan, after Meredith joined them, because they weren't alone, but Jehan had shut down when she came back without his partner, only getting quieter as Vala faked her usual good humor and flirting with the rest of Tanafriti's crew, but Vala knew this time her way had angered him. She'd known and done it anyway, because it was the only way she had and because giving away how much getting Meredith back mattered would have only put them in that position of weakness, would have betrayed that both of them needed him, were afraid of losing him.
She'd done her best. Reckell, their second-shift first mate and the only reliable member of the crew they'd been running with lately, had covered too, but it hadn't been good enough to keep the damned crew in line once they had the loot from the cargo ship they'd ambushed. Solek had been looking for an opening for months. Without Meredith, Jehan had been too distracted to keep him in line and Reckell just wasn't ruthless enough − Reckell really belonged on an honest merchant ship. The rest of their cutthroats had fallen for Solek's line and then managed to intimidate Meredith's two engineering crew into siding with them too.
They were lucky they'd been left with the worthless cargo ship and the crippled al'kesh, but then again Solek had likely thought he was leaving them for dead. All without committing an obvious murder that would make the other members of the crew question whether to trust him with their necks. She was going to wring his when she caught up with him.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept for more than few minutes. Though the crew of Tanafriti had abandoned them days and days back, she and Jehan had both been on constant watch, then taking and learning to fly Prometheus had occupied them nonstop. If Jehan hadn't been with her, she would have lost the ship back to Daniel Jackson. And then Meredith would be dead, just like he sometimes said, when very drunk but not drunk enough to forget, the Tau'ri had wanted him.
The ironies made her so tired, now that the adrenaline had given away. Even the stiff, leather-covered headrest on the captain's seat felt wonderful behind her head. If she closed her eyes, she suspected she wouldn't open them again until she'd rested finally.
She forced herself up instead, hands braced against the armrests to push herself to her feet, grateful there was no one to see her sway from the exhausted headrush.
"Pain in the mikta," Vala muttered.
This ship had a genuine infirmary, a small but dedicated hospital, unlike almost every other ship she'd ever set foot in. Jehan would have Meredith and the doctor they'd kept in there now.
There would be drugs, too, because humans needed medicine, unlike Goa'uld and Jaffa, who relied on their symbiotes to fight off sickness and heal wounds.
Jaffa didn't even sleep, but she thought the Tau'ri probably had something to keep themselves awake. That's what she needed. She wouldn't trust the Tau'ri doctor to administer it, but Meredith could tell her which to take.
She really wanted to pick out a cabin and lie down in a bed and sleep, no matter how many nightmares she would have, but she knew Jehan would be staying with Meredith for the next shift at least and someone had to stay awake. She wouldn't let Daniel Jackson or the other Tau'ri get the drop on her again.
~*~
Meredith had about decided the floor would do a better job of holding him up than just the wall. The only problem he could see was that sliding down the wall and sitting would involve getting up eventually. He really didn't want to spend the rest of the trip − wherever they'd set course to − in the ship's engine rooms. He didn't trust the radiation shielding, for one thing, even if the US military hadn't turned over building their secret space ship to the lowest bidder. He knew the military-industrial complex and the corners they routinely cut.
He eyed the blackened panel halfway across the engine room where a wiring fire had been burning when he made it the engine room. Using a fire extinguisher had been interesting in near-zero gravity. It had floated him across the room. With the return of gravity, the remnants of the retardant foam were dripping down the bulkhead.
The panels would need to be pulled and the entire section rewired after they came out of hyperspace again. Mer didn't want to try it with the work-around he'd created on the fly still in use.
He sighed to himself in self-pity. He'd be the one doing that work, of course.
The sigh of the door opening made him blink his eyes open, only then realizing he'd closed them. His body had apparently made the decision about the deck too, because he was down on it.
Jehan bolted across the engine room and hit his knees next to Mer. His gaze flickered over Mer's face and the bruises there and over his body, where most of the damage was covered. "Mer?" he whispered. His hands came to rest on Mer's shoulder and his opposite elbow, light and deliberately gentle. "Mer."
Another person had come into the engine room with Jehan, but Mer ignored her.
"Took you long enough," Mer told him with a smile, because in fact Jehan and Vala had done the impossible, faster than humanly possible, but most of all, they'd done it: they'd come for him. "I started to wonder − "
Jehan's expression crumpled from concern and relief into pain. "I wouldn't leave − "
Mer caught his hand and overrode his protest. "If you could, not if you would," he corrected. He slid his arm from under Jehan's hand and twined their fingers together instead. He wanted to pull Jehan closer and kiss him, but his lower lip was split and Jehan disliked public displays. Kneeling on the deck with him and holdings hands was pretty overboard for Jehan.
The woman cleared her throat.
Mer squinted at her and then blinked. Short reddish hair, petite, grim expression, Air Force wings and a major's oak leaves, holy crap, they'd started letting women go offworld and that was −
"Fraiser!"
She jumped in surprise then stared at him with a confused frown. Finally her brown eyes widened as she recognized him despite the beard and the bruises. "McKay?" She visibly pulled herself together and knelt on the other side of him. Her fingers were cool on his neck as she took his pulse and peered into his eyes. "Explanations can wait. I want to get you up to the infirmary and take a better look at your injuries where I can treat them." She cocked her head and ordered, "Breathe in, then out."
Jehan watched her warily as she listened to Mer's hitched breathing.
"Broken rib," Mer told her.
"What else?" Janet demanded.
"This and that," he said. "I annoyed the Oranians."
Jehan's hand tightened on his.
Janet frowned at the engine room's walls and the door. "It will take some time to get a gurney down here − "
"I can walk," Mer snapped. "Jehan."
Jehan helped him up despite looking a little uncertain.
Janet's surprise felt insulting.
"What?" he demanded.
"You've changed."
His ribs screamed at him and he had to pant his way through it. Jehan steadied him and didn't even cringe away from the way he must have smelled at this point. A pointed glare went Janet's way, too. Mer managed to glare at Janet once he could breathe again. "I hate to quote O'Neill, but 'ya think'?" he snapped.
Janet had the grace to say nothing in reply and they made their way to the nearest interdeck elevator and the infirmary, where she examined him with the same clinical but not unkind expertise he remembered from the SGC. Jehan stayed beside him as much as possible and never left the room.
"We looked for you," she said. "Sam resigned her commission so she could look for you."
"Sam divorced me. And she always wanted to go offworld. Besides, I know the truth. The SGC knew I was with the Tok'ra. You decided the alliance was worth more than confronting them over one scientist. O'Neill never liked me anyway."
"You're wrong."
Meredith grunted.
Janet retrieved a two bottles from the drug cabinet and handed them over. "Antibiotics. The other's a mild painkiller."
Jehan lifted the bottles from her hand and turned them in his long fingers, reading the labels. Distrust radiated from him. Janet sighed loudly.
"Keep the ribs wrapped for at least a week," Janet told Mer. "Unless your symbiote − "
"Jolinar's dead," Mer interrupted. He didn't miss her either. He liked having his head and his body to himself. He did miss how fast she could have knitted his body back to better health as well as shutting down useless pain signals, though.
"Are you another prisoner of these − " Janet gave Jehan a less than friendly look, " − people?"
He immediately regretted the laughter. His ribs didn't like it.
"Meredith isn't a prisoner," Jehan said.
Janet looked at his and Mer's hands, still folded around each other and nodded. She began cleaning up, dropping empty wrappers into a trash receptacle, emptying the tray of implements into an autoclave for sterilization.
"Unlike me. Or Daniel and Lindsay," she remarked as she stripped off her gloves.
Meredith choked back another bitter laugh.
"You haven't the faintest clue. You think you're being treated badly? We'll let you go on a world with a chappa'ai and you can all go back to the SGC and tell them about terrible ordeal you endured - zatted and kept in the brig for a couple of days." He dropped off the exam table. "Try being a host or a slave for a couple of years."
"Or a couple of decades," Vala said, coming into the infirmary.
Janet's attention switched to her briefly.
Vala ignored her and studied the bandages around Mer's chest. "Ribs?"
He nodded.
"Shall I heal them?" she asked.
She faked it well, but Mer could recognize exhaustion under the mask. "I don't have enough energy," he temporized. "Give it a couple of days. Who's piloting the ship?"
Vala kissed his cheek. "Autopilot, genius. We're in hyperspace."
"Oh. Right."
Jehan tugged his hand. Mer gave her a mock helpless look.
"Better get some sleep," Vala said in a knowing voice. "I'll escort the doctor back to the brig."
"Just a couple hours," he promised.
"I'll relieve you," Jehan added.
Vala waved her hand carelessly. "Take your time. I'm a big girl."
They headed for the infirmary door.
"You could have come back to the SGC," Janet called.
Mer kept walking as he answered.
"Why? They didn't come for me."
~*~
"You know Daniel?"
Meredith's voice was calm, only curious, no accusation or anger. Jehan didn't have to always face him to feel safe. He still kept his back to the wall with anyone else except Vala. Meredith had grown used to him not talking much too; he'd accept the short answer. That made speaking easier.
"I recognized him."
He stirred in the spices, keeping an eye sidelong on Yu's lo'taur. None of the Goa'uld trusted each other enough for any preparations to be undertaken by a single slave. Ba'al was more likely to blow up something than play with poison, but that didn't mean Yu or any of the other's trusted his slave. Smart of them. If Jehan had had access to a poison that would kill all of them, including Ba'al, he'd have used it, even if it meant dying too.
Yu's lo'taur surprised him. He didn't look comfortable in his dress or his role. He didn't seem to get that none of them were supposed to get friendly with each other either.
"You knew they were going to eat them?" Jarren asked.
Jehan nodded and began steering the infusion. If it boiled, it would be ruined and Ba'al would be displeased. Since Jehan was the only slave with him, he would suffer that displeasure. Ba'al could be very creative in his punishments. He probably wouldn't kill Jehan this time, since he had no sarcophagus. Or maybe he would. Jehan paused and considered if it wouldn't be easiest to provoke Ba'al into doing just that, here where death could be a real escape.
"Yes," he told Yu's lo'taur. Vague curiosity stirred. Why didn't Jarren know this? "They do that every night for as long as the summit continues." Ba'al's last lo'taur had taught Jehan what to expect so that he could perform his duties properly. Not that he would have blinked at anything the Goa'uld did. Cannibalizing their young? Barely blipped the radar in his experience of what they would do.
Jehan took off his boots and set them next to the cabin's door. He left his socks on. The decks of the personal quarters were coated in rubber. It deadened sound and wasn't as easy to slip on as bare metal, but the cold of space still seeped through it.
Meredith didn't say anything more. That was different. Meredith talked. Jehan didn't know if it was a reaction to the Tok'ra symbiote keeping him silent for three years or if he'd talked that much before Jolinar took him as a host. Maybe both? Usually, Meredith would have already filled the air between them with a constant spill of words. Jehan liked it; he was never much for words himself, even before, he doubted he'd ever get over the lessons in silence as self-defense he had learned as Ba'al's slave.
He watched Meredith through his eyelashes. The ship's doctor had let him go, so though Meredith was bruised and raw in places, he was essentially okay. The relief made Jehan's throat ache, so he shrugged out of his leather jacket and draped it over the desk chair clamped into place in the knee hole of the built in desk. The whole ship was like that; the design integrated artificial gravity, the same as every Goa'uld ship he'd ever been on, but the builders had still secured everything against freefall. It wasn't a floating palace for a gloating parasite or a toothless cargo hauler. It was a warship. Now it would be a pirate ship.
Their ship unless the Tau'ri took it back.
"What do you think will happen when this is over? To us, I mean?"
Jehan stared at him and frowned, then said repressively, "That is between you and your master."
"Don't you think it is strange that the Goa'uld are letting us see their sacred rituals, hear their most secret conversations?"
Meredith picked his way around the cabin. Barren by Goa'uld standards or even human: it lacked portholes, and the sharp angles unadorned by any sort of decoration. Not that there had been much, but Jehan had cleaned out the General's gear when he claimed the flag cabin for the two of them, so nothing remained now; they left any personal possessions behind on Tanafriti. Meredith rubbed his upper arms and stared at the bunk they'd be sharing.
"Not to sound like a snake or anything, but I've never understood the military conviction that efficiency has to equal discomfort," Meredith said.
Jehan walked back over to him and wrapped his arms around him from behind. Without his jacket, his arms and back felt the chill too. Meredith felt warm wherever they touched, though, and Jehan leaned into him, rested his chin on a broad shoulder, and contemplated the bunk. It would be a tight fit, but they'd be warm at least.
"Puritans and low bidders," he murmured, startling a chuckle out of Meredith.
"We are definitely getting a different bed in here when we hit Borzin's."
Jehan turned his head and nuzzled behind Meredith's ear, inhaling the scents caught there, acrid, fear-laced sweat, musk and body dirt that a quick clean up in the ship's infirmary had missed. It wasn't precisely pleasant, but it was Meredith and it grounded him and let him exhale a shuddering breath of relief.
"We're renaming the ship too," Meredith muttered breathlessly, squirming but not moving away. "Prometheus. Shitty name. Bound in chains and getting his liver pecked out every day. The only thing worse would be Icarus."
Jehan laughed against his neck.
"Don't laugh. You chased that Hebridan ship right into the corona of their sun the last time."
"We had good shields," Jehan reminded him.
"Thanks to me," Meredith agreed.
"That was a good prize."
The Loop of Kon Garat made for good hunting. The space racers designed for speed and carried no weapons to fight off pirates and the top of the line experimental designs sold for good money on the blackmarket. It took a clever captain, sabotage or inside information, and a crazy pilot to catch them, though.
"May I speak honestly with you?"
"Have you not been honest prior to now?" Jehan replied in a dry tone.
Jarren appeared nonplussed. Did he think Jehan was Ba'al's lo'taur because he was stupid? Did he think Ba'al was foolish enough to choose Jehan for his appearance? His apparent naiveté could only be an act. Jehan certainly didn't buy it.
"Yes, of course," Jarren said, the words fumbling out. "What I mean is, can I trust you that no matter what I say, this conversation will remain between us?"
Meredith laced his fingers over Jehan's and they shuffled to the bed. Jehan dimmed the light and they crawled in under the blanket and sheet, awkward elbows and knees bumping as they stripped each other the rest of the way, finally warming as skin kissed skin. He tested where he could touch without eliciting a wince, skimming his palms over softer curves and bony angles with equal care. Sometimes they bruised each other, but not this night. Rodney's mouth tasted sour, but Jehan didn't care. He cared about the rasp of hairy thighs sliding against each other, rubbing and then stroking, his fingers finding Meredith's balls, vulnerable, secret and hot, weighing them and the rush of Meredith's moist breath into his own mouth. He savored every caress despite the urgency rising through them both. His toes curled when Meredith played with his nipples, just like always, and Meredith laughed, a sweet comfort.
Meredith whispered and whimpered and moaned when they had sex. He told Jehan what to do, announced his approval of any innovation that felt good, asked what Jehan wanted, gasped and panted and let out a bull deep grunt of satisfaction when he came. He listened too, with his eyes and his hands, for the sounds Jehan couldn't make, and took every wordless cue, translating each touch into what Jehan needed. He held on afterward, when he came in a silent, ecstatic shudder.
Nothing had changed. He'd said nothing, but he'd worried. The Lucians could be as imaginatively sadistic as any Goa'uld: eager stand-ins for the fractured galactic powermongers of only a few years before. Apparently, though, some tortures were left for only humans - or human bodies - to inflict on each other.
He'd once gone through the motions with Vala out of gratitude and to prove to himself he could, but he'd wondered if he'd ever want anyone again before Rodney signed onto the crew.
"I believe the Goa'uld are powerful beings," Jarren said, "that use humans like us as hosts. I believe they use their power to portray Gods so the masses will follow and serve them."
"I agree."
He'd surprised Jarren.
"You know this to be true?
"Yes."
Jarren's frown pleated his brow. "And yet you still serve?"
"As do you," Jehan had snapped.
Thinking about that, thinking about Ba'al, made him shiver and he wriggled closer to Meredith. The bunk was a narrow excuse to tangle his legs between Meredith's anyway. Meredith draped a heavy arm over his back and mumbled about bruises even while he pulled Jehan even closer. All the tension and terror of wondering if they'd get Meredith back finally began dissolving, but Jehan still couldn't sleep.
He whispered, "Hey."
Meredith groaned. "Of course, you want to talk now." He patted Jehan's back though. "Okay, okay. Tell me whatever it is."
"Jackson," Jehan said. "He was serving a Goa'uld."
"Impossible," Meredith said. "Not Jackson. He hates the Goa'uld as much as anyone. When did you see him, anyway?"
"The System Lord Summit, when they accepted Anubis, before Ba'al sent me to his research installation."
Meredith tensed then pushed himself up into a sitting position in the bunk. Jehan sat up too. The sheet and blanket pooled around their waists. Cool air against his sweaty, bare shoulders made his skin goosepimple. "The first thing I'm doing tomorrow is readjusting the environmental controls in this rust bucket," Meredith muttered.
The head of the bunk had a panel of controls for comms and the lights. Jehan dialed the overhead onto low, just enough light to make out Meredith's expressions.
"He was there," he insisted, "calling himself Jarren."
Meredith frowned. "Jolinar and I were on another mission then," he said quietly, the way he did when he picked through the memories the symbiote had left in him. "She always made sure we were were away if any Tau'ri were going to be around − thought someone might guess I wasn't another happy host after all."
That made Jehan grimace. He hated reminders of his time with Ba'al; he figured reminding Meredith or Vala of their imprisonment in their own bodies had to be worse.
"Not that that didn't turn out to be lucky for us," Meredith went on, "since Zipacna's fleet hammered the Ravenna base. We'd have died with the rest of the hosts and Jaffa if we'd been there when Lantash suicided." His mouth twisted downward. "Selmak and her host survived, of course, and oh..." He met Jehan's gaze. "They sent Jackson in undercover since he spoke Goa'uld. I'd forgotten. He was supposed to use the symbiote poison on the gathered system lords."
Jehan frowned.
"Why didn't he?" He would have. He would have taken any opportunity to kill Ba'al and the rest of the snakes. That Jackson hadn't pissed him off. That speaking to Yu might have kept Jackson from killing them made him angry with himself in retrospect.
"How would I know?" Meredith snapped. "Ask him."
He knew he wouldn't.
He'd already said enough.
Yu had been alone in the space station corridor. He held up his hand and Jehan stopped.
"Where is my lo'taur, Jarren?"
"I have not seen him, you lordship," Jehan replied.
Satisfied, dismissing Jehan as though he no longer existed, Yu began to walk off.
Jehan weighed the possibilities. Only one fit: Jarren had been acting as a provocateur. He would report to Yu and Yu would inform Ba'al of his reactions.
He called out softly, "My lord?"
Yu paused.
Jehan prostrated himself. "Forgive me. While you know I faithfully serve my master Ba'al, and therefore hear whatever I say with certain suspicion," he said, "I believe it is my duty to tell you that your new lo'taur cannot be trusted."
~*~
[c]