SG-7 - Never That Simple A Mission... ( Magnificent 7/Stargate SG1 - gen, 2900 words)
Okaaay... I had a rather weird dream the other night, where certain of My Heroes were involved in a card game from hell...
Don't ask how it inspired this nonsense, but it did, and I had enormous fun dreaming it up.
It's a Magnificent 7 AU, crossed with Stargate SG-1 (and with my boys as, yep, one of the teams:) 'cause I wanted to include Hammond. 'Cause Hammond is awesome, even when listening to the tale of a mission like this...
SG-7 - Never That Simple A Mission...
"Open the iris," General Hammond spoke firmly, eyes on the Stargate.
... Because it was, after all, SG-7, their one and only civilian team, returning from their most recent, vital mission, and hopefully with...
... No.
He sighed.
With SG-7, as with SG-1, it was never that simple.
"Apologies, General," Larabee, the leader of Hammond's most motley crew, drawled as he exited the iris ahead of three of his men. "The others will be comin' through in a couple of hours, got held up with... administrative stuff, collectin' Ezra's winnings and gettin' them checked out by the doctors on the Alpha site. Should warn you, Ezra's winnings are not exactly in th'best of moods." His smile was flat and feral. "But I wanted to get these three home - 'least, that was my excuse for booking and coming home early - and to tell you that we've lost the fancy naquadah generator you lent us."
"Yes, I fear Major Carter and her minions will not be best pleased," Larabee's least motley subordinate said with a somewhat histrionic sigh.
"Lost, Mister Larabee?" Being wise to the ways of his staff, the General was not about to react to either of them without the full story. Of course, whether he wanted to actually know the full story was another matter. With SG-7, as with SG-1, it was always another matter.
"Well," Larabee cocked his head, thinking. "Maybe not so much lost as... got stolen on us."
"Stolen."
Hammond did note that one of Larabee's hands was firmly - not to say heavily - holding the youngest of the team down; J. D. Dunne was threatening to bounce straight off the ramp, which hardly indicated they had failed. He also saw the lurking, unholy glee in Larabee's eyes, and resigned himself to yet another long and involved 'explanation'...
He signaled to the Marines guarding the gateroom to stand down, briefly considered ordering them - and Siler and the others milling around - out while he listened to yet another tall but true tale, and shook his head. It would be all over the SGC soon enough. Especially given what SG-7's mission had been to recover. Not that he could see any sign that they had recovered anything. Yet.
"Yep, filched from right before our eyes by our so-called allies on what our Ez labeled ThePlanetThatDecencyForgot." That was Vin, as laconic as ever. "Mind you, it was at th'same time me an' Ezra were busy filching a stash of Xe'ls shapeshifting crystals from the same allies."
"Not sure how he and Ezra found out ThePlanetThatDecencyForgot had shapeshiftin' crystals," J.D. added, wide-eyed with admiration, "but then again, Chris said you'd know better than to ask."
"No, Mister Dunne, I'm afraid I do not know better," Hammond said drily. "I clearly recall both men were at the meeting where I yet again forbade grand larceny, even in the pursuit of a mission outcome."
"Now General, truly I must protest." Ezra was brushing the usual (and imaginary) wormhole dust from his beautifully cut 'intergalactic gambler' outfit. Even the odd visiting Pentagon pen-pusher had given up on trying to get Ezra Standish or Vin Tanner into BDUs on or off world; Hammond, like his less-than-meticulous 2IC Jack O'Neill, was not one to tilt after hopeless military windmills. "Have I ever disobeyed a direct order?"
There was a silence.
Hammond could see the Marines, the technicians, and the surprising number of people who had found an excuse to witness this keeping their silence with a visible effort. Probably in case he decided to stop the show.
"Without an excellent reason, of course."
There was another silence.
"In any case, it was hardly grand larceny." Standish now appealed to Vin, who nodded with a grin. "The security forces on that benighted planet were insultingly inadequate, after all, and we only purloined fifteen of the crystals."
"Only fifteen, Mister Standish?"
Ezra's eyes rounded in wounded astonishment at the sceptical tone. "Now General -!"
"Yeah, fifteen," Chris overrode his protests. "Trust me, I wouldn't trust Standish with one of those, so I frisked him afterwards."
Hammond thought about it - twice - then nodded. "Very well. And the fifteen crystals are now -?"
"Ezra lost them too," Chris said flatly. "On... I think the place is called PXX-969, General. Rather like an alien Reno with a touch of Hell."
"Or Hell with a touch of Reno," Vin mumbled.
"Hey, I thought it was fun!" J.D. couldn't help it, and the General gave him his best quelling stare, which was satisfying effective... for all of seven seconds. "Well, it was!"
"You were there to complete a mission, Mister Dunne," Hammond pointed out. "You were not there to have fun."
Vin shrugged. "Ezra was."
"Not at all, I was merely -"
"Playing Strip Sokar Naked poker with the locals, and y'lost."
"As you are well aware, I did so deliberately, given the grounds we had for believing our esteemed military employers could not possibly need them as much we needed the Unas triplephallus that I won - along with my clothes - in the very next round." Ezra spoke almost wistfully, with the artlessly avaricious smile only he could manage. "A four-foot high, solid gold Unas triplephallus, General. To be sure, it must have been worth..."
"I'm sure." Hammond suppressed a shudder at the thought of that coming through the wormhole. "And you won it because -?"
"Shocking as it may seem," Ezra did not repress his shudder, "the people of PXX-969 on are apparently the only humans in this or any other galaxy with no use for gold."
"Or Unas triplephalli f'that matter," Vin stopped and thought. "At least none that we want to know 'bout."
"So they didn't take too much offence," Chris added, "when Ezra did them over in what they called a 'non-serious' game. They prefer winning valuable stuff like Stargates and slaves."
"Then Buck and Vin and me got sorta... involved in a fight. Sorry, General," J.D. said, sounding just too excited to be sincere.
"Had to," Vin said. "Even Ez couldn't get away with bettin' their own Stargate - sorry Ez, but you know it's true - and no matter what they said, we did damn well pay for that bottle of bludwyrm's blood Buck was carryin' outa there. Paid for it with Ez's gold Unas triplephallus. Fact that we didn't 'zactly tell them they were sellin'..."
"Bludwyrm's blood, Mister Tanner?" Hammond interjected calmly. "I take it you have also forgotten the ban on alien alcoholic substances."
"Mighta slipped my mind, General, sorry 'bout that."
"In any case," Chris added, "it meant we all got thrown off the whole planet."
"With the bludwyrm's blood," J.D. added cheerfully.
"And the gold Unas triplephallus," Ezra sighed happily. "Impressive bit of finagling, if I do say so myself."
They all looked far too complacent for Hammond's peace of mind... and he still had not heard the outcome of the actual mission. "Gentlemen, may I remind you -?"
"Apologies, General," Chris sent something of a warning semi-glare around his men, who hastily - and imperfectly - wiped the self-congratulation from their faces. "So anyway, by sheer coincidence we ended up on that planet Doctor Jackson told everyone about - Mempfizz -"
"The one with all the temples to the false Egyptian gods and the virgin priestly caste," J.D., irrepressible as ever, piped up. "Not that Buck said the two head priestesses were at all virginal..."
"Or priestesses," Vin murmured. "And he always seems t'know."
Chris huffed, but didn't argue. "Must let Doctor Jackson know his research was faulty, General, turned out they were hermaphrodites."
"And this matters...?" Hammond sent another dampening look at J.D. before the boy could try to answer that one. "Go on, Mister Larabee."
"They took a fancy to one of my boys," Chris mock-growled.
Ah, thought Hammond, that might explain why Larabee had herded these three - who were known to be only just behind Doctor Daniel Jackson in what was commonly known as the AliensWantToDoWHATWithMe? stakes - back to Earth. Then again... it might not.
"Josiah!!" J.D. sounded suitably awestruck.
"Mister.... Sanchez???" Hammond ruthlessly excised the awe from his own voice.
"Yeah! Not that Josiah was complaining, he's all for new experiences he says, but Chris sort of persuaded them that they'd insulted Josiah, Josiah's team leader, Josiah's team, the SGC, Earth in general, the Asgard, the Tollan, the Tok'ra, the... anyone we could think of, and we sure thought of a lot - and he talked them handing over compensation."
"Remember the mini ion cannon your scientists were all in total lust with, General?" Chris might have been smirking, it was hard to tell. "The one we heard about from the Tollan, that the Saritans managed to throw together before blowing themselves up? My boys got their hands on one. For all of..."
"Oh, three -?" J.D. held up fingers. "Maybe even four hours -!"
"Before Nathan and Josiah between them dragged us to PJ7-USJ and swapped it and Ez's gold triplephallus on the open market for a pair of giant flying squirtslugs."
Ezra's complacency was back in full force. "And quite a fierce bargain we drove, I might add."
Hammond knew he shouldn't ask, but he just had to know. "Very well, Mister Larabee, what do you think the SGC would want a pair of giant flying squirtslugs for? And what do you mean you 'swapped' the mini ion cannon?"
A mini ion cannon. Oh yes, the Pentagon would want to know too, to say nothing of his own 'in lust' scientists...
Larabee, of course, cared neither for the Pentagon or the scientists. "Nathan and I chose the squirtslugs pretty carefully, General."
"And being fair an' all, the mini ion cannon was a fake," Vin added.
"Which, of course, was why the inhabitants of Mempfizz were so willing to part with it." Ezra smiled. "We were well aware of that, but it sufficed... for the time being."
"And being even fairer, so was the naquadah generator," J.D. added. "Fake, I mean."
"An' so were the pair of giant flying squirtslugs," Chris finished up. "Knew it all along... don't ask, General, you really don't want to know how we could tell. We used one of the Xe'ls shapeshifting crystals to turn them back into their real shape."
"Real shape?"
"The real ones are still giant, but they don't actually fly. Among," he paused, "other things they don't do."
Hammond said nothing, and said it pointedly.
"Several other things."
"Mister Standish," Hammond gave it up, and turned to a more likely target, "I believe you said you only took fifteen of the crystals."
"General, I swear on my mother's sainted divorce settlement -"
"I kept one," Vin cut in. "An' Nathan and Josiah between them knew how to use them. More or less. They turned the slugs back into their real shape... giant flying groundslugs and got given a pet rock in the shape of a naked Apophis as a sorta thankyou."
"The slugs were sentient, General," Ezra said, "exceedingly intelligent - and exceedingly embarrassed about the whole painful affair."
"They were nice," J.D. nodded. "Well, for giant slugs. Squishy and all, but... really nice. So was the pet rock. At least, it was nice, not squishy."
Larabee's lips twitched. "We took that back to Mempfizz, after Buck and J.D. got it well and truly drunk on the bludwyrm's blood. An' I sweet-talked the alien priest-whoevers -"
All three of his men gaped at him. Hammond manfully refrained from gaping, but only by the sort of effort that helped him make General. He was aware that everyone else in the gateroom were not making nearly as good an effort.
"Sweet-talked? You threatened to shoot them in seven of their heads!!" J.D. protested.
Chris scowled. "Yeah, maybe, but at least I smiled when I said it. It worked, didn't it? They took the damn thing."
"Because you told them the rock was a God!"
"It thinks it is."
"And to be just," Ezra put in, "I have to say that it would make a far superior god to the - for want to a better word - ophidian original. At least until it sobered up and took an aversion to the temples, the populace in general, and the planet in its sorry entirety..."
"And pretty much brought th'whole place down," Vin made a show if wincing. "Mind you, no one got hurt, but iffen snaky Apophis ever sets foot there, I'm thinkin' they'll have him for snake stew, general."
"One can only hope," Ezra said with cyanide sweetness.
Hammond wanted to agree, but at this point didn't think it at all befitting the state of appalled disapproval he was sure he should be feeling - and showing.
He met Larabee's eyes again - yes, the man was definitely smirking now.
And just who had agreed to a civilian team anyway? The General pushed that thought away and worked on showing rather more disapproval.
"'Course, we tried to help them get a lot of their false holy relics to all their false gods out before the place came down on all the rest of their heads," J.D. assured him earnestly. "Honestly, General, we never meant to wreck possible diplomatic relations with Mempfizz."
Hammond spared a thought for the state of said negotiations - which had stalled when the very same priests had taken a similar fancy to Colonels O'Neill and Reynolds - and decided to say nothing. As only he could, he said it very pointedly.
"Of course, one of the holy relics was the small trinium panel depicting the Six Million Breasts of Ma'at that Doctor Jackson had described so poetically, and that we wanted all along." That acquisitive smile was back on Ezra's face. "Which by sheer serendipitous chance happened to have fallen inside my coat pocket as we escaped from the, I regret to say, less than appeased locals."
"- Escaped and headed straight back to PXX-969, Reno-Hell," Chris finally took pity on Hammond - and the Marines, who were increasingly hard-pressed to keep up the imitation of a block of steel that was expected of them, no matter what - and started to wind the story up. "Because even given the way we left, those folk might not care for gold erotica but trinium erotica they do like. Ezra used it to get into the big Strip Sokar Naked game we'd been gunning for all the time." He grinned. "With the slavers from Reno Hell. Just like you ordered, General."
"I see."
"It was nothing." Ezra's modest disclaimer provoked rolled eyes from the fascinated - and all too familiar with him - audience, but Hammond just gave him another look. "Very well, General, it was sheer brilliance. Though I fear the Six Million Breasts of Ma'at are a lost cause, I thought it best to sacrifice it in the first match, rather than elect for the nudity-or-death option yet again, and never fear, I will be claiming it in my expenses -"
"No, Ez."
"No, Mister Standish."
Ezra stopped, blinked at both his team leader and the SGC head, and sighed dramatically.
"So you lost that round. And what then?"
"You wound me, General," Ezra put a hand to his heart. "Of course I won. All four subsequent games."
"Starting with SG-1." Chris's grin widened. "We did wonder if leaving O'Neill in bondage till last would be amusing enough to offset any payback -"
"Mister Larabee." Only years of listening stone-faced to SG-1 mission reports kept him stone-faced now.
Chris paused, then nodded sharply, but without entirely losing the grin. "Nathan and Josiah will be the best ones to explain it all in an acceptable way for the official debriefing. They're good at that. But yeah, Ezra won SG-1 back from the slavers. And then SG-2, and 3, and 7. One team per match.
"Like I said, they're all at the Alpha site being checked over - seem to be fine, though from what O'Neill was growling, Doctor Jackson..."
He paused, looking for the words. "Let's just say, he's pulled ahead again in the AliensWantToDoWHATWithMe? stakes."
A ripple of winces went round the gateroom, except for Ezra, who was (Hammond suspected) in charge of the betting pool, and Siler who (Hammond knew) was winning on points. Hammond chose the better part of discretion, well aware that far too many of his people would all too soon find ways to unwittingly even up the score...
And anyway, his money was on Larabee. Or O'Neill himself. He always liked the long odds.
"But nothin' too spectacular, he talked his way out of doin'... WHATWithThem."
Hammond sighed.
"Very good. Report to the infirmary, gentlemen, and we'll debrief when your team members - and SG-1 - and yes, SG-2, and 3 and 7 - return."
He watched them head for the doors, and tried not to imagine what that debrief was going to be like. Especially since it was Ezra Standish - surprise, surprise - turned back with a familiar, utterly evil look in his eyes...
"Oh, and General," the man's drawl turned positively dulcet, "wouldn't you agree that - given that I am now the proud possessor of Earth's premier world-saving body, not to say three other teams of this country's finest - I really am entitled to more recompense? After all, when Doctor Jackson purchased me..."
-the end-