by Geonn Cannon
The man gestured vaguely. “On this ship?”
“On any ship!” Carolyn demanded. “I don’t care who takes me there, I only care about the women who have been woefully neglected for far too long.”
He shuffled away and touched a box on the wall. A red light around the box turned green, and he spoke a guttural language Cam didn’t even try to make sense of. He looked at Carolyn and noticed Daniel and Teal’c also looked stunned by her outburst.
“That… uh, that was good,” Daniel said.
Carolyn was suddenly sheepish. “Well, you weren’t getting anywhere and I came up with that angle. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to run it by you…”
Cam said, “We would’ve gone along with it. Well done, Doc.”
“Thank you.”
The stevedore returned. “Escort soon.”
“You’ve been a tremendous help,” Carolyn said. “I’m sorry if I was a little rough.”
Another grunt, and he went back to shuffling boxes.
After a few minutes, the team was approached by a mechanical manikin mounted on a pole which moved via a track along the wall. It had a vague approximation of arms and legs attached to a torso that mimicked the station’s shape. Its head was triangular with a single yellow light embedded where the face would have been. The light pulsated when it spoke.
“Medical-slash-humanitarian aid requesting travel permit to Viaxeiro.”
“That’s right,” Carolyn said. “I’m Doctor… Who. These are my companions.”
The robot said, “Please follow me.” The body twisted on its axis and moved away from them. Carolyn looked at Cam again, and he gestured for her to lead the way. She’d gotten them this far, so why question it now?
Daniel spoke to Carolyn just loudly enough for Cam to hear. “You know, you’re not as infamous as SG-1. There’s no bounty on your head, so there’s no reason anyone would notice if you used your real name.”
“Everyone else gets to use fun fake names when they’re on missions like this.”
“Fair enough.”
They followed the robot away from the processing center, deeper into the station where they hoped to find someone to give them permission to board a ship. Cam allowed a little optimism to seep into his outlook. It felt like they’d been running in circles while Carter and Vala were in danger, bouncing from one lead to the next but getting no closer to where they needed to be. Now, at last, he felt like they might be on the last leg of their search.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
VALA SPENT the evening staring at the carved ceiling of their cold-water. Someone, probably a millennium ago, had taken tools and painstakingly carved out this little hovel. The buildings outside had been constructed, decayed, and rebuilt all for the singular purpose of keeping women like her imprisoned. She kept her hands laced on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles. Across the room, Sam had fallen asleep almost as soon as they said goodnight. She could usually do the same thing. It was a survival technique known to soldiers and thieves alike, the ability to sleep anywhere because they never knew when the next chance might arise.
She thought about seeing Tanis again after so long. It was like encountering a ghost, a remnant from her past life that she’d long thought buried and forgotten. Now here she was again, a memento of who Vala had once been. Before the Ori, before Adria. She knew she was a better person now. She wouldn’t trade her current position at the SGC for anything. But there was a lingering, nagging doubt about how long the SGC would allow her to hold a position on their flagship team. She was an alien. A wildcard. She was not only a civilian, she was a civilian they couldn’t control. She knew how much that terrified them.
What would happen if, one day, the IOA decided they’d had enough of her? Would they lock her up in that dreadful Area 51 she’d heard about? Or would they let her go back through the Stargate, back to her old life as if nothing ever happened? Vala didn’t know if she belonged in that old life anymore. And even if she did find a way to slip back into her old role as miscreant good-for-nothing, she knew without a doubt her new life wouldn’t just leave her alone. The Ori knew she was the mother of their Orici. They or their Priors or maybe Adria herself would eventually come looking for her as soon as she left the SGC. They would know she was vulnerable.
But on the other hand, if they knew she was vulnerable, they might not think she was dangerous… Her mind traveled along that tangent for a while. Eventually she must have slept, because at some point Sam moved from the bed to the small kitchen area. Vala kept her eyes closed until the room began to fill with a very familiar aroma. She sat up without opening her eyes, knowing her hair was wild, and sniffed the air.
“Is that… coffee?”
“It’s one of the things I make sure I never leave the SGC without. GDO, extra rounds, and some coffee. It won’t last forever, but I thought we had a pretty bad day yesterday, so…”
Vala kicked away the blankets and climbed from her bed, stumbling zombie-like toward Sam with one arm out. Sam placed a cup in Vala’s hand.
“Did you know there’s coffee on basically every planet I’ve ever visited?” Vala asked. “Earth’s isn’t even the best. I’ll take you to Eritupina sometime.”
“I’ll hold you to that. And when we get back to Earth, I’ll take you to Starbucks.”
Vala rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I’ve been on Earth almost a year. I’ve been to Starbucks.” She sipped the coffee. Not the best, as promised, but still better than nothing. “Before I forget, I think I came up with a plan to capture Adria.”
“Really?” Sam said.
“Mm. We’ll have to erase my memories, though, and make new ones. Fake ones. So that I believe the SGC finally got sick of me and kicked me out. But really, you’re just waiting for Adria to find out I’m vulnerable and come rescue me. Because I’ll believe the fake memories are real, Adria will know I’m ‘telling her the truth’ and she’ll trust me. She’ll walk right into whatever trap you and SG-1 set for her.”
Sam thought over the plan. “Wow. That could actually work. It puts you in an inordinate amount of danger, though.”
“It’s nothing the rest of SG-1 wouldn’t do for the greater good.”
“I suppose that’s true. We’ll talk about it more when we get home, but it’s a good plan. We’ll work out the details later. I think I could convince Landry to take the risk.”
Vala covered her proud smile by taking another sip of coffee. “So have you thought about the current plan? The fight we’re supposed to stage to get you in Lokelani’s good graces?”
“It shouldn’t be too hard to set something off.”
“What do you mean?”
Sam shrugged. “You fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.”
“I do not! I react as reasonably as one can in the face of unwarranted attacks.”
“You’re doing it right now,” Sam calmly pointed out.
“Well, you’re attacking me without warrant! I thought we had made real progress clearing the air, but clearly you still think I’m a liability to the team. I’m starting to think the true secret to SG-1’s success is the sheer, unadulterated arrogance of you all!”
Vala huffed, catching her breath and waiting for a rebuttal. Sam silently stared at her over the top of her cup until realization dawned.
“Oh. Oh!”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “I don’t think picking a fight is going to be a problem. The real difficulty will be making sure Lokelani sees it and does what we want her to do. From what I saw yesterday, she’s not easy to manipulate. I couldn’t even get a straight answer out of the woman.”
“She’s had a lot of time to perfect her little game,” Vala said.
There was a knock on the door and Sam went to answer. Tanis and Shein slipped inside, both women glancing at the cup of coffee Vala was holding.
“I thought it would be better if we met in here,” Tanis said. “Very few people know you’re here, but word will start spreading soon enough. It’ll be be
tter if we’re not connected to each other so we can work in secrecy.”
“I agree,” Vala said.
Sam went back to the small pot and took another pouch of coffee grounds from her pocket. Vala thought she was making more coffee for them, a petty jab at the woman she didn’t like, but she was surprised when Sam took the two cups and handed them to Tanis and Shein. Even Tanis looked amazed by the small kindness.
“I had a little bit of Tau’ri qahwa when I was a guest of their infirmary,” she said, her voice neutral. “It’s quite good. Thank you.”
Vala jumped on the thin thread of potentially common ground. “If you think what they have on the base is good, you should try the stuff they sell outside. It should be considered a controlled substance. If you ever make it back to Earth — ”
Sam cleared her throat. “If she ever makes it back to Earth, she’s never getting beyond the base.”
“Come on, Samantha…”
“That’s not negotiable just because she’s your friend, Vala.”
Tanis smirked. “Because no matter what I do, I’m still a criminal? Like Vala?”
“No,” Sam said, “because unlike Vala, you’ve proven yourself to be untrustworthy on the base. But beyond that, there are any number of pathogens on Earth which you’d be susceptible to. There are rules that go beyond trust. Do you know how long it took for them to finally let Teal’c live off-base?”
“Oh, so you’d lock me up forever for my own safety.”
Sam rolled her eyes.
“No, no, no,” Vala said. “Remember the coffee? The kind gesture? Peace offering? Come on, let’s just get through this, all right? We can make it work.” She looked at Shein and spoke through gritted teeth. “A little help please?”
Shein held out her hands, shaking her head with a smile. “I don’t have an angle here. I’m just enjoying the show. I love it when Tanis gets all fired up.”
Vala rolled her eyes. “All right, Tanis, fine. If you can’t work with her, work with me. You know how good we are when we work together. Remember our last job together? We took on Wyrrick, one of the biggest arms dealers the Goa’uld had! We walked right into that party and walked out with a fortune, and he never even knew it was us!”
“Wyrrick…?” Sam looked confused. “Dysmas Wyrrick? What party are you talking about?”
Vala waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, it was just some silly little thing. It happened right before I came to the SGC. My last big hurrah with Tanis. Wyrrick threw a party and invited a who’s-who among the Goa’uld — ”
“I know who he is,” Sam interrupted. “And I know that party. We were there.”
“What?” Vala blinked in surprise. “We who?”
“We, SG-1. We were undercover. He had a piece of Kali’s treasure that we needed to prevent a doomsday weapon from going off.” She remembered a point during the mission when a locked door suddenly opened. They’d never figured out the reason for that bit of fortune. “You were there at the same time? Robbing him?”
Vala said, “We both were. How about that. Our fates intertwined once more!” She put one hand on Sam’s shoulder, the other on Tanis’. “You see? You met four years ago, before Tanis and I became partners, before I had ever set foot on Earth. And two years ago, out of every planet in the universe, we wound up in the same place. And now here we all are once again. It was meant to be! We were destined to be here, now, doing this. So come on. Let’s put aside our petty differences and agree that for the time being we’re all going to tolerate each other for the duration of the mission.”
Shein said, “I’m starting to feel left out over here.”
“Don’t,” Vala said. “Because you’re exactly what we need. I trust Tanis and Sam, but they don’t trust each other. And Tanis doesn’t trust me the way she used to. But she trusts you. And you have no reason to distrust Sam… um… right?”
Sam and Shein looked at one another, trying to remember if they’d ever crossed swords. “She tried to attack me when we first got here,” Sam said.
“I thought I was protecting Tanis. No grudge if no grudge.”
Vala translated, “She’ll forget it happened if you do.”
Sam sighed. “Fine. Water under the bridge.”
“There you go. You’re the nexus. The go-between. You’re the one who will keep us from betraying each other or becoming suspicious.”
“I have an obvious bias toward Tanis, you know.”
Vala said, “Yes, sure, of course. But for the sake of the mission…”
“For the sake of the mission,” Shein said.
“I’ve worked with a lot of partners,” Vala said. “Apprentices, mentors, all sorts. Some of them betrayed me or I betrayed them. But I’ve never had a partner I respected more than Tanis. And I’ve never been a team player but SG-1 is showing me it can work. This isn’t the kind of job I normally would’ve taken on, but with you two in my corner, I think we can succeed.”
Shein said, “Sounds fun if you ask me. Tanis, you’ve been saying since you got here that you wished you had a couple more people you could trust to have your back. Looks to me like they just showed up.”
Tanis stared hard at Sam, who returned the stare without blinking. It was Sam who broke the silence between them. “Your goal is to stay behind and take over in Lokelani’s absence. My goal is to make sure you stay in prison. Those obviously aren’t mutually exclusive, so there’s no reason for us to antagonize each other.” She held out her hand. “Truce?”
“You forgot the fact that I want you to get out of here as soon as possible.” She took Sam’s hand. Vala could tell Tanis was squeezing harder than necessary, but Sam didn’t flinch. She also didn’t seem to respond by tightening her own grip. She just met Tanis’ gaze and let her decide when to let go. Vala admired the restraint. “Not to mention taking down a Goa’uld. I’m always up for that kind of fun, no matter who I’m playing the game with.”
Vala put her hand on top of theirs. “Fantastic! Shein? Come on. This is a thing sports teams do on Earth. I think it’s charming. Put your hand on top of mine.”
Shein approached and did as she was told, but not without reservations. Vala pushed down, then back up, waving her fingers in the air as the other three women stared at her.
“Go, team!” Vala said.
Tanis looked at Sam. “We’re all going to get killed, aren’t we?”
“There’s… there’s a good chance of that,” Sam muttered. “Yeah.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TEAL’C KEPT track of their distance traveled as the robot led SG-1 from the outer edge of the station to the interior labyrinth of narrow corridors. They barely went a hundred meters before the escort turned them left or right or guided them around a bend which took them in another direction. He believed the intention was disorientation and confusion so they would not be able to find their way back to the hangar without help. Or, barring that, preventing them from retracing their steps if they should return to the station at some point in the future.
Eventually they took an elevator to an extremely narrow passageway which was flanked on either side by what he initially assumed to be glass walls. He could see ships angling past the station and coming in to dock backed by a spattering of stars and a distant nebula. But he quickly realized there was no part of the ovoid station which was this narrow, meaning the walls were simply viewscreens looking out onto the surrounding space.
The robot remained in the elevator car. “Please continue forward. The Overseers are expecting you.” When the doors slid shut, Teal’c couldn’t see a seam where they met.
Mitchell stepped forward and ran his hand over the metal. “Huh. Okay. I guess whoever runs the show will open this when it’s time for us to go back up.”
“If they let us go,” Carolyn muttered.
“Rookie mistake,” Mitchell said. “We don’t say things like that out loud.” He looked down the passage and pointed to the door at the other end. “I guess we forge ahead.”
They could only walk two at a time, Mitchell and Teal’c in the lead with Daniel and Carolyn following. The doors slid open as they approached. Mitchell held up a hand so he could advance alone, pausing at the threshold to sweep the interior for any obvious threats. He didn’t have his usual weapons available but there was a Beretta tucked into his belt. Teal’c was also armed with a zat, but he waited for a signal that he should draw it.
Mitchell finally motioned for the rest of them to enter. The space beyond the doors was immense and mostly empty, save for two tables with three seats each. The tables faced a tall stage with five raised platforms. The walls were concave and smooth, reminding Teal’c of the inner surface of seashells. Their footsteps echoed off the high ceilings as they approached the center of the room.
“Stand where you are.”
The voice came from somewhere high above, the acoustics making it impossible to tell exactly where it started. The team stopped walking and five columns of blue light appeared on the stage. The light flickered before solidifying into the shapes of people in identical robes. Their upper faces were concealed by heavy veils. Teal’c could tell there were three women based on their physique and the shape of their jaws, but when they spoke their voices were distorted beyond gender.
“Identify yourselves.”
“State your purpose here.”
Mitchell said, “Hey, folks. We’re — ”
“You were not the representative who called this forum.”
Mitchell looked at Carolyn. She looked terrified. He gestured for her to step forward and she reluctantly did so. Her bravado from earlier had evaporated in an instant.
“Uh. Hello. I’m… I’m…” She blanked and looked at Daniel, who mouthed the name she’d given. “Right. I’m Doctor Who.”
“Doctor Who. Tau’ri transmission of a fictional adventurer.”
There was a pause before a second Overseer said, “Identify yourselves.”
“State your purpose here.”
