FIC: Dinnertime Recon - Vala Chronicles #5 - M7/SG1
Title: Dinnertime Recon
Series: The Vala Chronicles #5
Author: Lyl (lyl_devil)
Rating: PG
Beta: strangevisitor7
Character: Ezra Standish - Magnificent Seven
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Disclaimer: I don't claim any rights to either show. I just like to play in their sandboxes occasionally.
Prompt table -> HERE
Prompt - 025: Strangers
Words: 2224
Summary: He didn't look dangerous, but then, neither did Sam or Daniel and they'd brought entire races to their knees.
~!~
Cam watched the guards carefully, taking special note of anything that could be used to their advantage. So far, he'd come up with nothing. Big and burly seemed to cover the majority of them, and he didn't give his team good odds of taking them out then taking the ship.
Not that it was the plan - well, not plan A. Maybe plan F.
He'd had a quick chat with the various members of his team and they'd all come to the same conclusion - if these people were fighting the Ori, then they would make good allies for Earth.
Well, everyone except Vala. She seemed to have a blind spot the size of a mothership when it came to her loving husband, who just happened to be one of their captors.
So they were biding their time, collecting intel on the situation in case they actually managed to break themselves out, while giving Jackson the opportunity to work his magic on the people in charge.
But right now they were on their way to dinner, which took priority over everything else as far as Cam was concerned. They’d been given rooms instead of cells, and there was no room service to speak of or decent locks on the doors, but Cam didn’t fool himself into believing they weren’t prisoners.
The polite escorts back to their rooms after several unsuccessful escape attempts just tipped the balance in favour of ‘prisoner’. It hadn’t helped that they were being prodded along the hallways like slow herd animals.
“Food's over there. Help yourself,” called out a voice as they entered what Cam assumed was their equivalent of a mess hall. Looking around, Cam spotted a side table full of strange and exotic fare.
He beat Sam to the table, but only by a hair. Apparently she'd come to the same conclusion he'd reached: if they wanted to kill them, poisoning their food wasn't the way they'd do it.
Turning with his plate full of food, Cam noticed that unlike most mess halls, this one only had one table, and it was already occupied. The man was the same person who'd accompanied Vala's erstwhile husband earlier, and who Vala had labelled as one of these mysterious 'Seven'.
According to Vala, he was Vin Tanner, a bounty hunter of some renown. He didn't look dangerous, but then, neither did Sam or Daniel and they'd brought entire races to their knees.
“So, Tanner, right?” asked Cam as he sat down across the table. He felt Sam taking a seat next to him, along with the rest of SG-1. Cam had to give the guy props, because he sure didn't look nervous or intimidated being outnumbered by his prisoners, and Cam didn't think it had anything to do with the big 'n burlies stationed around the room.
“So, Mitchell, right?” replied Tanner with the exact same inflection.
Cam bit down a smile because he was positive he saw a hint of amusement in the other man's eyes.
“You gonna tell us where we're going?” Cam asked as he dug into his food. Dinner time small talk was not his forte, but he could wing it given the chance. He hoped.
“Nope,” said Tanner, all lazy drawl and laidback amusement.
“You gonna tell us how long until we get wherever it is we're going?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna at least tell us what you plan to do with us when we get wherever it is we're going?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna tell us anything?”
“Probably not,” answered Tanner, and Cam had to refrain from pulling his hair in frustration.
“Why not?” he asked, annoyed.
“Don't trust that one,” pointing to Carter, “not to try and figure out where any of our bases are.”
“Bases - plural. So you have more than one.” Thank you, Jackson, for finally joining in this little hoe down.
Tanner just gave him a look like he was the slow child in the class, which just set Daniel to frowning in consternation.
“You think I can figure out what planet you're taking us to, just by how long it will take to get there?” asked Sam. She tried to sound disbelieving and incredulous, but Cam had seen her play poker - she couldn't bluff.
“Given the maximum speed of this ship and the length of our journey, then yes. We do,” another voice broke in, this one belonging to the first of the Seven they'd encountered, but hadn't realized it. Chris Larabee, the leader of the group, stood just inside the door to the mess hall. He was dressed all in black - the fashion choice of the galaxy's thieves and pirates. Cam couldn’t see any sign of a weapon on him, but didn't for one minute believe that the man was defenseless or weaponless.
Carter seemed ready to argue, but the guilty flush on her cheeks told Cam that Larabee and Tanner had been correct in their assumptions.
“Are you not concerned that that will occur regardless of whether you inform us or not?” inquired Teal'c, speaking for the first time. As usual the Jaffa left Cam to do all the talking, which while he appreciated the confidence Teal’c had in him, a little backup would be nice.
Larabee smirked in response before grabbing his own plate of food.
“Nobody said we were going in a straight line, or at a constant rate of speed,” said Larabee as he sat down across from SG-1. He was essentially sitting next to Tanner, but the space between them was more than polite personal space. To anyone else it would look like two people who didn't want to sit next to each other, but to a soldier, it spoke of warriors leaving enough space in case battle erupted mid-meal. Too crowded and you ended up fighting your fellow soldiers; too far away, and you might as well be in another room.
It was obvious to Cam that these two had spent a lot of time fighting together, and he had a feeling that it wasn't just Tanner and Larabee, that this extended to all seven men. There was a bond of trust and friendship there that could only be forged in the heat of battle...and now he was starting to sound like Teal'c.
Didn't mean he wasn't wrong.
“What do you plan to do with us?” asked Daniel, watching the interplay between Tanner and Larabee. Cam didn't doubt that Daniel had picked up a lot of the subtler cues, but wondered if he fully understood what they meant. Probably.
“That is the question, Dr Jackson,” said Larabee. Cam didn’t like being the one in the room with the least amount of information, but couldn’t figure out a way to fix that without being obvious. Vala had given them a brief rundown on members of the Seven that she knew -but it still left Cam struggling for information. These men had apparently been doing a better job with secret identities than SG-1 had ever done, because while most of the galaxy knew him and his team, very few knew even one of the Seven by name. Sure, there was speculation and the odd snake oil salesman who would sell you a name that had a fifty-fifty chance of being a real person, but very few people could actually lay claim to actually knowing one of the Seven.
It didn’t bode well for the SGC’s intelligence division, seeing as these guys had been roaming and fighting for at least four years, yet no one back at Command had ever heard of them.
“Will Ezra be joining us?” risked Daniel, casting a quick glance at Vala as he asked.
“Ez don't let anybody fly his baby unless he's sedated in the infirmary,” said Tanner. That was something any pilot could understand.
The meal descended into uncomfortable silence after that, as if everyone was aware that SG-1's heads could be on the chopping block once they reached their destination.
“This is an interesting ship design,” piped up Sam, breaking the silence. “Where’d you get it from?”
Trust Sam to be fascinated by new forms of alien tech.
“Didn't find it anywhere,” said Larabee, sounding pleased. “Built it ourselves.”
“Really?” Sam sounded extra specially fascinated now, and Cam had a feeling he'd have to pry her out of this ship when it came time to leave. “I didn't think there were a lot of ship building facilities that weren't controlled by the Goa'uld.”
“You built your 302's underground,” Larabee reminded her, “seemed like a good way to keep it hidden, so that's what we did.”
Cam really wondered how they got their intel, because that was not common knowledge.
“Did you design it, too?” she asked cautiously, and Cam really hoped she was very careful in her wording from then on, because he could see where she was going. Telling an engineer his design sucked balls was not the way to get on his good side.
From what they’d seen as they’d been escorted to the mess hall, Cam had decided that his first impression that the ship's layout was insane was accurate. It was completely and totally nuts. Hatches that weren't actually hatches (escape attempt #5), panels that opened to nothing inside (escape attempt #1-4), corridors that led to dead ends (#6a) or twisted around so bad a person got hopelessly turned around inside a minute (#6b, and Cam wasn’t letting Daniel live that one down any time soon). And nothing was labelled, either.
“Some of the boys did,” confessed Larabee. “Turned out pretty good, all things considered.”
Tanner seemed to find his food extra fascinating, though his shoulders were shaking and the noises coming from him sounded suspiciously like muffled laughter.
“And you can just shut up,” snapped Larabee, barely glancing at Tanner but Cam could hear the underlying affection in the tone.
“I wasn't the one who got lost, cowboy,” said Tanner, finally looking up. His face was red and his smile was wide, and he was trying his best not to laugh in his friend's face.
“I didn't get lost! I got - turned around,” he corrected, all wounded dignity.
“Fourteen times?” teased Tanner, and Cam had to hold back his own smile. “The only reason it wasn't more is cause Ez gave you that damn map.”
“Ezra had money riding on fourteen - any more and he would have lost the bet,” explained Chris. Cam got the feeling that this was a long running argument.
“Still, 'fourteen', Larabee. Even Buck only managed eight before breaking down and asking for a map,” chided Tanner. Cam filed the name 'Buck' away for future reference, because Vala hadn't mentioned anyone by that name in her brief introduction to the Seven.
“So, the design was deliberate?” Sam asked slowly, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“This ship is what happens when you give a paranoid con man and an imaginative tech genius free reign,” said Larabee, and Cam finally caught on. This ship was a brilliant anti-theft device in and of itself. Anyone trying to steal or board her, or even escape her, would most likely get lost along the way. The ship was one giant maze, and only the crew knew how to get around.
He would bet even odds that there were a bucket load of secret passages and other sneaky things all throughout this ship, as well.
“That is so cool,” said Cam, his fingers itching to explore the ship as much as Sam was probably itching to take it apart.
“You'd think so,” said Larabee with a rueful shake of his head, ignoring the smirking Tanner next to him as they both quickly finished their meals. “You've got free reign in certain areas, but as you've probably already figured out, don't go wandering too far or you'll get lost,” added Larabee, referencing their failed escape attempts as he rose to leave.
“I'll get a plate for His Highness,” said Vin as he followed Larabee away from the table. “Get him some food before he takes us through that asteroid belt he's been threatening.”
“Do that,” was all Larabee said before leaving the mess, Tanner following minutes later, not seeming to care if SG-1 had agreed to the restrictions imposed on them. Not that there was a lot of choice.
“Now,” said Cam, “Who's brilliant idea was it to leave the bulk of the conversation to me?”
Glaring at each of them in turn, though not so much at Sam who was still in geeky heaven at the thought of new tech to take apart, Cam wished not for the first time that he was able to shoot laser beams out his eyes. Maybe then they'd actually take him seriously.
“You did quite well, Colonel Mitchell,” said Teal'c, continuing to slowly eat his dinner.
“Yes, actually,” agreed Daniel. “Though next time you might want to--”
“Hey! How's about next time you ask the questions?” he said pointedly. Jackson was the 'linguist' after all, right?
Daniel gave him a 'what you gonna do about it' smile and turned back to his meal, leaving him only Vala.
Vala who had been silent during the entire exchange, and that had him more freaked than anything he'd witnessed in the past year.
END
Series: The Vala Chronicles #5
Author: Lyl (lyl_devil)
Rating: PG
Beta: strangevisitor7
Character: Ezra Standish - Magnificent Seven
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Disclaimer: I don't claim any rights to either show. I just like to play in their sandboxes occasionally.
Prompt table -> HERE
Prompt - 025: Strangers
Words: 2224
Summary: He didn't look dangerous, but then, neither did Sam or Daniel and they'd brought entire races to their knees.
~!~
Cam watched the guards carefully, taking special note of anything that could be used to their advantage. So far, he'd come up with nothing. Big and burly seemed to cover the majority of them, and he didn't give his team good odds of taking them out then taking the ship.
Not that it was the plan - well, not plan A. Maybe plan F.
He'd had a quick chat with the various members of his team and they'd all come to the same conclusion - if these people were fighting the Ori, then they would make good allies for Earth.
Well, everyone except Vala. She seemed to have a blind spot the size of a mothership when it came to her loving husband, who just happened to be one of their captors.
So they were biding their time, collecting intel on the situation in case they actually managed to break themselves out, while giving Jackson the opportunity to work his magic on the people in charge.
But right now they were on their way to dinner, which took priority over everything else as far as Cam was concerned. They’d been given rooms instead of cells, and there was no room service to speak of or decent locks on the doors, but Cam didn’t fool himself into believing they weren’t prisoners.
The polite escorts back to their rooms after several unsuccessful escape attempts just tipped the balance in favour of ‘prisoner’. It hadn’t helped that they were being prodded along the hallways like slow herd animals.
“Food's over there. Help yourself,” called out a voice as they entered what Cam assumed was their equivalent of a mess hall. Looking around, Cam spotted a side table full of strange and exotic fare.
He beat Sam to the table, but only by a hair. Apparently she'd come to the same conclusion he'd reached: if they wanted to kill them, poisoning their food wasn't the way they'd do it.
Turning with his plate full of food, Cam noticed that unlike most mess halls, this one only had one table, and it was already occupied. The man was the same person who'd accompanied Vala's erstwhile husband earlier, and who Vala had labelled as one of these mysterious 'Seven'.
According to Vala, he was Vin Tanner, a bounty hunter of some renown. He didn't look dangerous, but then, neither did Sam or Daniel and they'd brought entire races to their knees.
“So, Tanner, right?” asked Cam as he sat down across the table. He felt Sam taking a seat next to him, along with the rest of SG-1. Cam had to give the guy props, because he sure didn't look nervous or intimidated being outnumbered by his prisoners, and Cam didn't think it had anything to do with the big 'n burlies stationed around the room.
“So, Mitchell, right?” replied Tanner with the exact same inflection.
Cam bit down a smile because he was positive he saw a hint of amusement in the other man's eyes.
“You gonna tell us where we're going?” Cam asked as he dug into his food. Dinner time small talk was not his forte, but he could wing it given the chance. He hoped.
“Nope,” said Tanner, all lazy drawl and laidback amusement.
“You gonna tell us how long until we get wherever it is we're going?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna at least tell us what you plan to do with us when we get wherever it is we're going?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna tell us anything?”
“Probably not,” answered Tanner, and Cam had to refrain from pulling his hair in frustration.
“Why not?” he asked, annoyed.
“Don't trust that one,” pointing to Carter, “not to try and figure out where any of our bases are.”
“Bases - plural. So you have more than one.” Thank you, Jackson, for finally joining in this little hoe down.
Tanner just gave him a look like he was the slow child in the class, which just set Daniel to frowning in consternation.
“You think I can figure out what planet you're taking us to, just by how long it will take to get there?” asked Sam. She tried to sound disbelieving and incredulous, but Cam had seen her play poker - she couldn't bluff.
“Given the maximum speed of this ship and the length of our journey, then yes. We do,” another voice broke in, this one belonging to the first of the Seven they'd encountered, but hadn't realized it. Chris Larabee, the leader of the group, stood just inside the door to the mess hall. He was dressed all in black - the fashion choice of the galaxy's thieves and pirates. Cam couldn’t see any sign of a weapon on him, but didn't for one minute believe that the man was defenseless or weaponless.
Carter seemed ready to argue, but the guilty flush on her cheeks told Cam that Larabee and Tanner had been correct in their assumptions.
“Are you not concerned that that will occur regardless of whether you inform us or not?” inquired Teal'c, speaking for the first time. As usual the Jaffa left Cam to do all the talking, which while he appreciated the confidence Teal’c had in him, a little backup would be nice.
Larabee smirked in response before grabbing his own plate of food.
“Nobody said we were going in a straight line, or at a constant rate of speed,” said Larabee as he sat down across from SG-1. He was essentially sitting next to Tanner, but the space between them was more than polite personal space. To anyone else it would look like two people who didn't want to sit next to each other, but to a soldier, it spoke of warriors leaving enough space in case battle erupted mid-meal. Too crowded and you ended up fighting your fellow soldiers; too far away, and you might as well be in another room.
It was obvious to Cam that these two had spent a lot of time fighting together, and he had a feeling that it wasn't just Tanner and Larabee, that this extended to all seven men. There was a bond of trust and friendship there that could only be forged in the heat of battle...and now he was starting to sound like Teal'c.
Didn't mean he wasn't wrong.
“What do you plan to do with us?” asked Daniel, watching the interplay between Tanner and Larabee. Cam didn't doubt that Daniel had picked up a lot of the subtler cues, but wondered if he fully understood what they meant. Probably.
“That is the question, Dr Jackson,” said Larabee. Cam didn’t like being the one in the room with the least amount of information, but couldn’t figure out a way to fix that without being obvious. Vala had given them a brief rundown on members of the Seven that she knew -but it still left Cam struggling for information. These men had apparently been doing a better job with secret identities than SG-1 had ever done, because while most of the galaxy knew him and his team, very few knew even one of the Seven by name. Sure, there was speculation and the odd snake oil salesman who would sell you a name that had a fifty-fifty chance of being a real person, but very few people could actually lay claim to actually knowing one of the Seven.
It didn’t bode well for the SGC’s intelligence division, seeing as these guys had been roaming and fighting for at least four years, yet no one back at Command had ever heard of them.
“Will Ezra be joining us?” risked Daniel, casting a quick glance at Vala as he asked.
“Ez don't let anybody fly his baby unless he's sedated in the infirmary,” said Tanner. That was something any pilot could understand.
The meal descended into uncomfortable silence after that, as if everyone was aware that SG-1's heads could be on the chopping block once they reached their destination.
“This is an interesting ship design,” piped up Sam, breaking the silence. “Where’d you get it from?”
Trust Sam to be fascinated by new forms of alien tech.
“Didn't find it anywhere,” said Larabee, sounding pleased. “Built it ourselves.”
“Really?” Sam sounded extra specially fascinated now, and Cam had a feeling he'd have to pry her out of this ship when it came time to leave. “I didn't think there were a lot of ship building facilities that weren't controlled by the Goa'uld.”
“You built your 302's underground,” Larabee reminded her, “seemed like a good way to keep it hidden, so that's what we did.”
Cam really wondered how they got their intel, because that was not common knowledge.
“Did you design it, too?” she asked cautiously, and Cam really hoped she was very careful in her wording from then on, because he could see where she was going. Telling an engineer his design sucked balls was not the way to get on his good side.
From what they’d seen as they’d been escorted to the mess hall, Cam had decided that his first impression that the ship's layout was insane was accurate. It was completely and totally nuts. Hatches that weren't actually hatches (escape attempt #5), panels that opened to nothing inside (escape attempt #1-4), corridors that led to dead ends (#6a) or twisted around so bad a person got hopelessly turned around inside a minute (#6b, and Cam wasn’t letting Daniel live that one down any time soon). And nothing was labelled, either.
“Some of the boys did,” confessed Larabee. “Turned out pretty good, all things considered.”
Tanner seemed to find his food extra fascinating, though his shoulders were shaking and the noises coming from him sounded suspiciously like muffled laughter.
“And you can just shut up,” snapped Larabee, barely glancing at Tanner but Cam could hear the underlying affection in the tone.
“I wasn't the one who got lost, cowboy,” said Tanner, finally looking up. His face was red and his smile was wide, and he was trying his best not to laugh in his friend's face.
“I didn't get lost! I got - turned around,” he corrected, all wounded dignity.
“Fourteen times?” teased Tanner, and Cam had to hold back his own smile. “The only reason it wasn't more is cause Ez gave you that damn map.”
“Ezra had money riding on fourteen - any more and he would have lost the bet,” explained Chris. Cam got the feeling that this was a long running argument.
“Still, 'fourteen', Larabee. Even Buck only managed eight before breaking down and asking for a map,” chided Tanner. Cam filed the name 'Buck' away for future reference, because Vala hadn't mentioned anyone by that name in her brief introduction to the Seven.
“So, the design was deliberate?” Sam asked slowly, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“This ship is what happens when you give a paranoid con man and an imaginative tech genius free reign,” said Larabee, and Cam finally caught on. This ship was a brilliant anti-theft device in and of itself. Anyone trying to steal or board her, or even escape her, would most likely get lost along the way. The ship was one giant maze, and only the crew knew how to get around.
He would bet even odds that there were a bucket load of secret passages and other sneaky things all throughout this ship, as well.
“That is so cool,” said Cam, his fingers itching to explore the ship as much as Sam was probably itching to take it apart.
“You'd think so,” said Larabee with a rueful shake of his head, ignoring the smirking Tanner next to him as they both quickly finished their meals. “You've got free reign in certain areas, but as you've probably already figured out, don't go wandering too far or you'll get lost,” added Larabee, referencing their failed escape attempts as he rose to leave.
“I'll get a plate for His Highness,” said Vin as he followed Larabee away from the table. “Get him some food before he takes us through that asteroid belt he's been threatening.”
“Do that,” was all Larabee said before leaving the mess, Tanner following minutes later, not seeming to care if SG-1 had agreed to the restrictions imposed on them. Not that there was a lot of choice.
“Now,” said Cam, “Who's brilliant idea was it to leave the bulk of the conversation to me?”
Glaring at each of them in turn, though not so much at Sam who was still in geeky heaven at the thought of new tech to take apart, Cam wished not for the first time that he was able to shoot laser beams out his eyes. Maybe then they'd actually take him seriously.
“You did quite well, Colonel Mitchell,” said Teal'c, continuing to slowly eat his dinner.
“Yes, actually,” agreed Daniel. “Though next time you might want to--”
“Hey! How's about next time you ask the questions?” he said pointedly. Jackson was the 'linguist' after all, right?
Daniel gave him a 'what you gonna do about it' smile and turned back to his meal, leaving him only Vala.
Vala who had been silent during the entire exchange, and that had him more freaked than anything he'd witnessed in the past year.
END