And no pain killers, either. Unfortunately. She grimaced.

This was just shaping up to be the best week ever. Not.

First off, on Monday she'd had a talk with Pete. And they'd mutually agreed to break it off.

Then Jonas had shown up, all bouncy and raring to go on some diplomatic mission.

And while Sam liked the Kelownan, when he was bouncy, he was... scary.

+ Of course, then General O'Neill had decided he wanted a vacation from running the SGC, and had insisted on coming with them. And now all hell had broken loose, and she'd been sent sideways in time to an alternate universe.

And there weren't even any cookies in it for her.

The facetiousness could be laid solely at General O'Neill's door, she decided. Pity he wasn't there to be glared at.

Damn.

She looked down at herself, grimaced at the splinted arm. It was going to hurt soon. The abraded skin on her side already hurt. Wistfully, she wondered what Dr. Brightman would have given her for the pain. Morphine sounded really damn good. Even if it meant days spent in the infirmary with an IV firmly strapped to one vein.

A breath of sound drew her eyes towards the door, and she blinked. There was a woman standing there, her body canted oddly. As if her spine had less or more bits than a normal spine. Of course, she was also grey, with white hair and dark eyes.

"Um. Hi?"

"Hey." The woman moved into the room, almost gliding, carefully skirting the end of the bed and came to stand next to Sam. She reached out a hand and poked her in the shoulder.

"Ow."

"You, uh..." The voice stopped, then started, and a babble of sounds broke out.

Sam blinked. "I'm sorry, I can't understand you."

"Oh. Damn. Er... be right back!"

Stopping herself before she shrugged, Sam waited. The woman returned in a moment with a small round robot. It reminded her of a remote control car. She vaguely remembered having seen another one, earlier. It had been yellow. This one was painted red, white and blue.

"1812." The woman said, then pointed at Sam's free arm.

Sam held out her hand, uncertain what the girl wanted, and a small syringe darted out and nicked the flesh of her wrist. "Ow!"

The woman spoke again, her tone obviously explaining, and suddenly, Sam could understand her. "--them to you, but I don't see how it could hurt."

"Huh?"

"The translator microbes."

"I can understand you." Ooo, understatement of the century, Carter. Well, aside from mentioning that Ba'al was a snappy dresser.

"Yup." The girl struck a pose, grinning, "I'm Chiana."

"Sam."

They studied each other for a minute, and Sam was strangely reminded of Cassie. Then the girl shifted, "Tell me about where you come from."

-

Sam Carter had been on Moya for two days, John thought, and already she was getting a taste of being a crew member on the USS Buttcrack. For the first day, she'd slept. And Noranti had discovered that one of her special pastes was rapidly healing the break in the Colonel's arm. She'd been bubbly about that, and claimed to have rediscovered some hitherto unknown catalyst in human blood. Or something like that. John hadn't listened too closely beyond deciding that it would be okay for Sam to wander around Moya--with the proviso that Chiana had to accompany her and keep her safe. She and Chiana had apparently hit it off when he wasn't watching. (the whole having sex with Aeryn thing having been a distraction).

A fist slammed into his jaw and he went to the floor before the owner could hit him again. "I repeat. WHERE is the Hynerian fekik?"

"Not here."

It had been a long time since John had had a decent laugh. Finding out that someone was actually stalking Sparky--had a lot of money out for his blood, even--was almost enough to make him giggle. Almost. Aeryn and D'Argo were dragged into the cell. Stark looked up from his corner and gibbered a happy sound before going back to fidgeting with the nap of his clothing. Or whatever the hell Stark did when he was trying not to go insane.

John was of half a mind to knock the Banik out, but he figured he wouldn't have to. As long as he didn't give them away.

"Maybe your companions will give us a better answer." The bounty hunter smiled, his grin almost toothless.

It was unfortunate for them all that Stark suddenly jumped up. "Wait! I'll talk! I'll tell you where the little slug is! He owes me money, though, and I want my money first!"

The bounty hunter smiled harder, "I believe we can come to some arrangement."

John hoped it would include the man's death (if it was a man, he wasn't too sure about that) and dismemberment. But meanwhile, he would worry. They hadn't dragged Pip and Sam Carter in yet. Hopefully, the Colonel would keep her cool and they'd stay hidden until this had blown over. Not that John Crichton wanted to hand Rygel over to them. But it might save them a little trouble. And they could always mount a rescue.

-

"Look, the only reason we didn't run was they had a weapons lock on us, right?"

"Yeah." Chiana didn't look convinced.

Of course, Sam Carter herself wasn't convinced about this plan. It was a Jack O'Neill kind of plan. But then, Sam had been involved in Jack O'Neill kind of plans for more than eight years. She figured she'd picked up the knack for them by now. And if she hadn't, they really had nothing to lose anyway.

"So, we do what I said."

"Are you frelled?" Chiana demanded softly. "They'll catch us and kill us! I don't want to die just yet."

"Been there, done that, forgot to buy the t-shirt." Yup. Definitely a Jack O'Neill kind of plan. "Can we get any information on where they are?"

"Hang on. Hey, Pilot?"

Pilot. The one crew member she had yet to fully meet. Crichton had made a crack about him not getting out much, earlier. "Yes, Chiana?"

"You heard the lady. Any news?"

"There are five of them total." Pilot's voice was very soft, he paused and gave a pained sound, "And they are talking about fitting me for a control collar. And Stark has told them where Rygel is. Three of them are searching for him while one is near the command and the other guards his prisoners."

Control collar didn't sound good. "Can you stall them? Maybe... convince them you already have one, or something?" Oh, yeah. Channeling the General all right.

"I can... try." Dry humor colored Pilot's voice. "And you are correct. If they had not had weapons, we would have run."

"Instead, I get to blow them up." Sam didn't clap. It wasn't dignified (and might attract attention).

"There is one other thing, Colonel Carter." Pilot seemed to hesitate, then he continued, "I believe they have another prisoner on board their ship. But he must be in a shielded compartment of some sort as I only got a vague impression when they were landing."

"Hrm." Another prisoner. She considered, then shrugged, "Thanks, Pilot. We'll cross that bridge when we blow it up." Damn you, Jack O'Neill. "C'mon, Chiana, let's go poke around their ship."

The girl shook her head, but adjusted the gun in her hand, "After you."

Rolling her eyes, and being glad that her arm was almost healed (and she couldn't explain it any more than Noranti could, although she suspected it was some freaky thing to do with the way the translator microbes colonized at the base of the brain--something she'd almost freaked about--and Jolinar and the Steveston symbiote, and, well, her freaky body chemistry. Some day, she'd leave her body to science) and she could use it. They'd made a stop in one of the side-corridors, where Chiana had handed her two gun-things called pulse pistols. Point and shoot, she could do. Although she did kind of miss her P-90. And her zat.

From what they could tell, these bounty hunters had personal body shields of some sort (which was how they'd over-whelmed Moya's crew in the first place). So the current plan was to reconnoiter their ship, sabotage its weapon systems, and then get them back aboard.

And if plan A didn't work, Sam was fairly certain she could come up with a plan B.

Damn, she needed C4. "Chiana." She breathed.

The girl looked at her.

"Explosives?"

"Not in this section. Might be some on the ship."

And they couldn't get back to the med-bay where her pack was. So, no C4. She almost pouted. Wait. She held up the pulse pistol. "These things have an overload setting?"

"Mis-chamber a round, wait 300 microts, boom."

Boom. "Good."

Now she had a plan B.

-

Dr. Daniel Jackson had always hated being captured.

For him, though, it was like something one did every month. Or bi-monthly. An occurance that generally included some bruising, some mocking, and Jack O'Neill or Sam Carter or Teal'c then rescuing him. There were variations, of course. Sometimes, he was held with those three. And other times, he wasn't the one captured (a rare occurance, although it was still amusing to get drunk and mock Sam for the Shavadai).

Right now, though, he was wishing he knew where he was.

According to his captors (who refused to listen to him), he was a man named John Crichton, highly prized by the Peacekeepers (whoever they were). Daniel had slowly worked this out of the words they were using (a strange mixture of sounds that reminded him of glottal stops, gaelic and french rolled into one).

It wasn't an easy language to understand, although they seemed to understand him fine (something that was irritating to a master linguist).

He'd been chained in worse places, of course. At least this one, they seemed to understand the need to keep a prisoner alive.

There was a soft scuffling sound from nearby, and he shifted. The ship he was on had been silent for a while now while his captors stalked off to pick up another prisoner (this one something called a Hynerian Royal. Whatever that was). The sound came again, and the door to his cell slid open.

A soft voice said something, then a girl glided in. Her skin was grey and her hair was white. Having seen one of his captors half-naked, and enough jaffa and goa'uld to last a lifetime (not to mention the whole dead for a year, and Jonas the Kelownan, thing) really gave one a perspective on things. Daniel decided she wasn't a halucination. "Sam. There's a Sebacean in here."

"Peacekeeper?"

Now there was a voice he recognized. If his lips hadn't been so cracked from lack of water (they believed in living prisoners, but hydration seemed a foreign concept to them) he would have smiled.

"Looks like."

"Damn." A familiar blonde head poked into the room and blue eyes stared at him, then froze in shock. "Daniel!"

"Hey." he croaked.

"Not a Peacekeeper." The grey girl said, voice amused.

"Definitely not." Sam was holstering the gun in her left hand, the one in her right still held steady as she looked over her shoulder. "Come watch the door while I unchain him."

"Right."

They switched places and Sam holstered her other gun then inspected the chains on his wrists. She frowned. "These are simple, but..."

"Hurry up."

"Damn. Sorry, Daniel, you're going to have to stay chained up for a while." Turning her head, she hissed, "Chiana. Stay here with Daniel while I find that reactor."

Again, the exchange of places.

Daniel considered arguing, but Sam wouldn't leave him there to rot. There was probably some sort of alarm hooked up to the cuffs. He sighed, though, as she disappeared. It had been nice to see a familiar face. The grey girl carefully closed the door and leaned against the doorjamb, eyeing him.

"So..."

A smile touched her lips and she shook her head, holding a finger to them.

"Oh." Damn. "Got any water?"

-

Two days on Moya, and already she was feeling like an intergalactic traveler. Okay, so she'd mostly already been one. Sam inspected the panels before her. This ship wasn't the organic, grown symbiosis that Moya seemed to be. It was more utilitarian and... grubby. There were pieces that looked like they didn't fit, and the whole thing had an air of being about to implode. Like the Millenium Falcon. "I should get out and push," she muttered softly. Then sighed.

Damn, she needed to stop watching Star Wars with Teal'c.

This had to be the engineering panel. She studied it for a moment, then frowned and reached for the tiny oval Chiana had given them earlier. It was smaller than her radio and she wondered if it was being monitored. A sigh escaped her. Expedience versus caution.

"Chiana."

"Yo."

"Do you think we could use anything from this ship? Weapons, food, currency, that sort of thing?" After all, once it was blown up, they could discover they needed something from it desperately.

A giggle came across, "You think like me and His Royal Irritatingness."

"I don't care if that's good or bad. I'm being practical."

"The answer is probably yes."

"Fine." Sam looked around, "Scavenge on your level for a few minutes. I'll do the same down here."

"Gotcha."

It took her a minute to realize she wouldn't know what the hell to take, anyway. Oh, she could make guesses (8 years plus of alien technology gave you a good frame of reference, sometimes). But they might not be right. So she left that up to Chiana and went to work on the panel.

The General, she mused as she poked through wires and bits and pieces and even something that looked suspiciously like gum, would be mocking her and asking her when she'd be done with her doohickey. Damn, she missed him. Well, more so now that she was stuck in something called Tormented Space in a quantum universe not her own (and, apparently there wasn't a Sam Carter here, because so far there hadn't been any Entrophic Cascade fits yet--although that might simply have to do with proximity, but she wasn't going to think about that, for now).

Of course, given the complete lack of recognition, this could be a universe very far removed from her own. A slight smirk touched her lips. A universe where she didn't end up attached to the General (aside from her own, of course). What a novel concept.

"Colonel Carter." Pilot's voice hissed.

"Yes?"

"One of the bounty hunters is heading back to their ship. I believe you may have tripped an alarm of some sort."

Damn. "How much time?"

"Less than 30 microts."

Seconds were shorter than microts. That still didn't give her enough time. "Chi?"

"I heard."

"Time for plan B."

"What's that?"

"Stay in the cell, get Daniel out when it's clear--screw the alarms."

"Gotcha."

There was no time to put the panel back together, so she headed for the stairwell back up to the level they'd come in on. Halfway up the steps, she heard the almost universal sound of a gun being cocked. "Well, well, well. Don't move."

She could see him above her and a little to the side, he had nothing on Aris Boch. Aris would have simply shot her, then thrown her in a cell. Still, she ought to be happy for simple things. "Wasn't planning to."

"C'mon, up the steps." He gestured.

"Thought you told me not to move." She replied sarcastically.

"Well, now I'm telling you to move."

"Okay." Sam threw herself backwards, barely making it to the floor below before little bolts of energy began slamming into the stairwell. She'd pay with bruises later, but only one shot had actually connected, singing her leg. The rest missed her by inches. Normally, she would have let him capture her. But normally, she wasn't the only one free. And she certainly couldn't count on backup from Earth.

With one pistol out, she fired back, assuming she would miss, while the other worked on figuing out how to overload the second pistol.

"Need a hand?"

"Chiana, get Daniel out of here."

"I did. He's stashed in a closet in the frelling maintenance bay."

"Fine. Get this bastard off my back."

Without waiting for Chiana to do it, Sam took off down the corridor and ended up back in front of the panel. "Pilot?"

"Yes?"

"Can Moya expel this ship without the engines being on?"

"Yes, she can, the docking web--"

"Fine." She cut him off. "Give us a count of 290 microts on my mark, then jetison this ship."

"I--"

"Don't argue, just do it." Her leg was beginning to hurt. It made her cranky.

"Yes, Colonel."

"Call me Sam, Pilot." Okay. Not completely cranky. Her fingers found the correct spot, and she waited. "Mark." The connection was set. A soft pulsing sound came from the pistol. She shoved it into the gap she'd made behind the panel and re-closed it.

"Sam?"

"Chi?"

"I got him. Now get your ass out of there."

"Willdo." But she stopped when she hit the door she'd seen earlier. Behind it was another cell. If it was as shielded as the other had been, it could be filled or it could be empty. And the person inside could be evil. She had to check, on the off chance it was someone else from SG-1 (and she was so going to think about the math later).

There was another prisoner inside. He looked up when entered, a hopeful look in his eyes. "Hi?"

He seemed harmless, kind of cute in that little brother sort of way. Sam shot the chains, "C'mon."

"Thank you, oh, thank you--" he tried to grab her hand, then stopped as the gun pointed itself unerringly at his head. "All right."

"In front. Move."

He obeyed, chattering about being a nice guy, and harmless, and innocent, and how his ship had been destroyed by the horrible bounty hunters who didn't understand the true workings of a driven Garbologist. Sam seriously considered shooting him.

"Sam, hurry up, you've only got a hundred microts."

"On my way. I picked up another stray."

"Frell."

"We can drop him on a planet. I think he's harmless."

"Look out!"

Several things happened at once, almost too fast for her to process. But adrenaline had flooded her system the moment she'd been shot earlier, so everything was moving in 3/4 bullet time anyway. The Garbologist collapsed at her feet, his chest smoking, his eyes open and blank. Sam shot the man who'd shot him, then dropped to one knee and slammed her back into the side of the corridor and took out the man who'd been standing behind her. She stared at their corpses, trying to decide if it was simply lucky that they hadn't been wearing body armor. Time stretched and changed, and she blinked, because Chiana was screaming at her from somewhere distant.

"Frell frell frell! Sam!"

"I'm fine, Chi, just--" Her left side ached, and she knew without looking that she'd been hit. Shit. "Ow. Took one hit."

"You have to get out of there!"

"I know!"

She dragged herself to her feet, and forced herself to run, adrenaline deadening anything but the need to get out of the ship before it was expelled from Moya.

"10." Pilot's voice announced in her ears.

She passed the room Daniel had been in.

"9."

Another corridor, and she didn't stop to grab the pulse rifle that must have been discarded by one of her attackers. "8."

"7."

Her feet hit the decking of the ramp down into the maintenance bay. "6."

"5."

"Hurry up!"

"4."

She skidded past Chiana, "Close the doors!"

"3."

The doors began moving slowly, ponderously, "2." Both she and Chiana grabbed onto the steel ladder-like protrusions.

"1."

Through the still-open gap, Sam watched as the ship was grabbed by an invisible force and dragged out of the ship. With the airlock open, she could feel decompression pulling at her, at Chiana. They both clung to the girders. Then the ship was expelled, and Moya lurched as Pilot turned her away from the explosion that proceeded to rock her.

Shudders went through the floor, and Sam grimly hung on to her chosen projection.

"It worked." Pilot sounded relieved. "It worked, but one of the bounty hunters is now arriving at the maintenance bay!"

Damn. "Chiana. Hide. Now."

"But--"

"No arguments!"

-

Part 3
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