"No offense, ma'am," offered Lorne, "but if you'd told me this morning that we'd be seeing this by day's end…"
"I know what you mean, Major."
Elizabeth was about to take her leave of Cestan when she again remembered her radio. "Jumper One, come in," she requested.
John's prompt response came as a distinct relief. "Jumper One here. We're headed for the second gate with the dialer."
"That's good to hear. As it turns out, we've managed to relax your deadline. Hope you didn't rush too much."
"NaliM…"
"Rush?" Rodney's voice overrode John's on the frequency. "Thank you ever so much for your belated generosity, Elizabeth, but we had a rather stringent selfimposed deadline with which to contend. It involved not getting ourselves crushed in an orbiting demolition derby!"
A few mumbled words could be heard in the back ground. Elizabeth understood just enough Czech to recognize that theirs promised to be an interesting mission report. "Glad to hear you're in one piece, then," Elizabeth told Rodney calmly, knowing full well that it would yank his chain. "We've got a couple of projects now; the dialer and shield controls on the second gate count as one, and we also need to develop a shield or iris for the first gate. How long do you estimate something like that to take?"
"Depends. How many engineers can I threaten with bodily harm?"
"Rodney."
His sigh was audible over the radio. "A couple of days, probably."
"All right. We'll guard the gate until then, in case any more Cadre types decide to drop in." She spoke to her people but also to Cestan, who nodded his thanks.
"Say, Elizabeth," remarked John with exaggerated casualness, "did we miss anything? Because it looks from up here like the Falnori and Nistra armies are packing up and bailing out."
She smiled. "Seeing is believing, gentlemen. We're heading for home. Keep us apprised on your progress with the dialer installation."
"Will do. We may have to send back to base for supplies, since the Dynamic Duo here will need to build a new housing for the controls."
"Which will be a veritable cakewalk in comparison to what we went through to procure the controls in the first place," Rodney griped. "We'll be in touch, Elizabeth."
The end of his transmission coincided with a shout from Alderman. In the time it took Elizabeth to spin toward his voice, everything tilted yet again.
Sekal smirked, one arm around Sergeant Denfield's throat. With his other hand he jabbed a handgun into the sergeant's ribs, the now-useless cuffs hanging from his wrist. "A word of advice," he offered genially to the other Marines now aiming their weapons at him. "Search your prisoners with a bit more care."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry," Denfield gasped out before the arm around his neck constricted in warning.
"Bastard grabbed Denfield's sidearm out of his holster," Lorne reported, his gaze trained down the barrel of his own weapon. "How the hell he picked the cuffs I have no idea."
"They're not the most ingenious confinement device in the galaxy." Sekal, unsurprisingly, looked rather satisfied with himself.
Damn it, they couldn't have come this far only to be shown up by a petty criminal. Elizabeth cursed herself for letting their collective guard down and raised her hands to halt Kellec and his comrades from advancing on the man. Even if their whip strikes were laser-accurate, they couldn't take the chance that Sekal might have just enough time to pull the trigger.
"Congratulations," she said coolly. "You've succeeded in making us look foolish. Now what do you want?"
"I want my men out of your jail. But since prisoner exchanges are often overcomplicated and precarious, I'll settle for one of your ships."
Not a chance. It hardly shocked her to learn that he was willing to let his associates rot in order to save his own neck. "You won't be able to fly it, since the jumpers respond only to a specific genetic marker."
The detail didn't seem to bother Sekal. "Then I'll take a pilot as well. I saw that one"-he jerked his head toward Corporal Vincent-"fly us here. He'll do."
"No, you want me." Lorne stepped forward, lowering his gun. "I outrank him and I'm a better pilot."
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Apparently Atlantis had more than its share of overly altruistic military officers.
Sekal must have considered the ransom for a major to be higher than that for a sergeant. The transfer was conducted efficiently, the raider's weapon hovering close enough to Lorne's temple to preclude any opportunity to jump him.
"Your utter lack of honor is sadly familiar." Cestan folded his arms, radiating contempt.
Lifting his eyebrows, Sekal said, "Where's the honor in being dragged around like a captured beast? Why should I trust that I won't be locked up indefinitely or worse? I see no reason to let any of you determine my fate."
Although hostage situations weren't Elizabeth's forte, she knew enough about reading people to identify Sekal as the goal-oriented type. He wouldn't hurt Lorne without provocation, but if it would further his plan he wouldn't hesitate.
"Hang in there, Major," she offered lamely.
"Hanging in, ma'am." Lorne's wry smile was belied by the insistent gaze he fixed on her. "Lousy time to lose contact with Colonel Sheppard on the radio, huh?"
Feeling the hard plastic in her hand, she quickly grasped his meaning. Unfortunately, so did Sekal. "Throw it away," he demanded. "All of you. No need to get all devious or heroic."
So much for that. There was another way to make this work, though. Elizabeth nodded and bent to place the radio on the ground. As she did so, she surreptitiously slid her thumb over the leftmost switch and hoped she'd gotten the right one.
"All right, Sekal. You win."
The transmission caught John off-guard. He sat up straighter in his seat. "What was that?"
Radek leaned forward, frowning. "It sounded like-"
"We'll let you gate to whatever address you want," Elizabeth's cautious voice continued, "provided you let the Major go before you step through."
"No deal," came the response. "I want the ship, and he's going to fly it."
John put two and two together and came up with a big problem.
"What the hell-?" Rodney reached out to toggle the radio and yelped when John seized his wrist. "Seriously, what the hell?"
"They're on vox," John explained shortly. "Somebody's keyed their radio open, the way you did during that first raider ambush, so we can hear everything that's going on. Things like that don't happen by accident. If you call them now, that son of a bitch Sekal is going to know we're on to him."
He double-checked Jumper One's cloak and adjusted his heading, aiming for the dot on the HUD that symbolized Jumper Two.
"Everybody can walk away from this," the raider was saying. "I'll even send your man back through the gate when I'm done. I'm sure I can find somebody to crack whatever Ancestor locks that ship has."
"Good luck with that," John muttered. The odds of getting a juniper to respond to a non-ATA pilot were about as strong as the odds of finding a Wraith dancing the tango in the Atlantis mess hall. Even so, he didn't want to lose another jumper out of the city's limited fleet-and he definitely wasn't going to trust Sekal to let Lorne go.
"We were supposed to be done with all the tense stuff for a while." Rodney flopped back in his chair, rolling a kink out of his neck. "There are only so many miracles I can pull off in one day."
"Then tag Radek in. Better yet, both of you put your heads together and brainstorm a way to take Sekal down without risking Lorne."
Jumper One closed in on the team's position, and John put the invisible craft into a hover fifty feet above Jumper Two and the small crowd gathered near the edge of the trees. All right, what do we have to work with? Sekal had an arm around Lorne's neck and a Beretta jammed into his ribs. Standing a conciliatory distance away were Elizabeth, Cestan, a handful of Marines and Falnori, as well as-Ronon and Teyla?