Prelude

Beep.

Beep.

Beep beep beep BOOM!

The explosion of fire, shrapnel, and bricks was followed so closely by two bodies flying out of what used to be a solid wall that the flames weren't even gone by the time they were falling.

Kimi would've cursed up a storm, let Oliver know how stupid he was for killing them both, but she was too busy screaming to chastise him.

Oliver let go of the woman clinging to him after being tackled out of an exploding wall, and Kimi flailed in the air. Reflexes kicked-in as adrenaline flowed in a great rush. Time appeared to slow as perception of time was altered by the mind-altering chemical, and the tiny fragments of stone falling with them became as still as a frozen wave. He reached back with one hand while raising the other. An arrow pulled from his quiver landed on the string of his bow and he drew the weapon taut. With a 'twang' of released tension, the arrow was sent flying through the air. In a motion so thoroughly practiced it was second nature, Oliver slipped his bow into the quiver then grabbed Kimi's legs.

Then reality took over and gravity returned.

As they fell, Oliver grit his teeth, preparing for the impact, and Kimi screamed. "Hold on!" Oliver shouted as the rope, attached at one end to the anchor on his hip and at the other end the arrow that was embedded in a wall a few yards away, snapped tight. There was a jerk of the weight of two bodies slamming into that rope, one that left a sizeable bruise on Oliver's hip, then they were swinging. As the adrenaline kicked in again, Oliver pushed the mind-numbing chemical aside and reached to Kimi's belt. He pulled away one of her knives and held it up to the rope, the woman now dangling from the grip of his left hand alone.

The timing had to be perfect.

And, in keeping with his training, it was.

"JJJJAAAACKIIIIEEEE!" Oliver shouted as he cut the rope and sent the two of them arching through the air with a great deal of momentum.

The woman, accompanied by the rest of Oliver's squad, turned at the shout and raised her hand. Her body glowed with power and Oliver felt gravity shift. Kimi stopped falling outright, but her sudden stop and Oliver's continued forward momentum made him lose his grip on her. With a flailing of his own, Oliver was caught by the walking mountain of armor that is the squad's heavy weapons specialist, and, oddly enough, also their field medic.

The man-turned-superhuman by an 'experiment gone right,' caught Oliver's well-built form that was covered from head to toe in three centimeters of ablative armor, took a half-dozen stumbling steps backwards cradling Oliver like a newborn, then tossed the Italian Colonnello over his shoulder, turned, and kept on running. As Oliver was tossed over Tommy's shoulder and ran with him like he was too wounded to walk, Jack grabbed Kimi out of the antigravity field spawned from her own body and hauled ass towards the Gate. Above them, a trio of Ori fighters gunned down more than double their number of Death Gliders, the lightly shielded fighters faring better than the barely-trained Lucian Alliance pilots. One of them, instead of flying off with the others, dropped something from its belly.

"RINGS!" Oliver shouted as he pulled his bow from his quiver. As he did, between the unsteady motion of the draw and the constant jarring of being thrown over Tommy's shoulder while the man was moving at a full sprint, more than half of his arrows fell out. With a silent curse, Oliver managed to catch one as it fell, drew the string back to his ear, which was awkward to do since he was still being jarred around and carried, and used the middle finger of his left hand, which was holding the bow, to flick the bulge attached to the shaft. The explosive tip now armed, Oliver took aim.

Beep.

A deep breath to steady his aim.

Beep.

As the final, triple 'beep' began, Oliver let the arrow fly. The trinium-alloy tip easily pierced and stuck into the base of the ring platform a dozen or so meters behind them. Then a gram of nearly pure potassium was dropped into a tiny vat of purified liquid naquadah and the ring platform disappeared in a flash of light and a concussive wave that shook the ground and kicked up dirt.

Oliver's lips twisted into a smug smile until Tommy took an energy round to his abdomen. The full six centimeters of ablative armor covering the man's torso took the brunt of the blow, but, even then, Tommy grunted in pain and still managed to redouble his speed. Bringing up the rear of their group, because the woman was built for endurance and not speed, Jack flicked her wrist towards the Ori soldier that had shot Tommy and the man was sent flying twenty meters to slam into a wall. The distance made the crunch of the man's body breaking inaudible, but Oliver had been on the receiving end of that power before. He knew how badly it hurt to have your spine nearly liquefied.

"Fifty meters!" Gabi, their squad's Combat Engineer and overall tech specialist for the Zeta Site, shouted over her shoulder. The only person outpacing her frantic charge for the Gate was Jesse, their CQB specialist. Now there was a body built for speed… to bad his endurance needed to be more enduring.

Then the Mothership entered the atmosphere.

"I don't have an arrow big enough for that!" Oliver groaned out of simple desire to not go insane. When faced with death, apparently Oliver resorted to dark humor.

Tommy, to his credit, managed to laugh without breaking pace. Having Nirrti, Goa'uld 'Goddess' of Death and Corruption, experiment with your DNA and inject you with body-altering drugs and cybernetics apparently had its upsides, the rapid healing factor and enhanced strength being highest ranked amongst them. The minor burn on Tommy's stomach, for example, was already stitching the muscle back together and regrowing the skin. A wound that would take a few weeks to heal on a regular Human would be nonexistent in a matter of hours even if Tommy ran full speed that entire time. The downside to his 'abilities'? He had to eat enough food for three people just to make his stomach not grumble. Getting the man full involved a dump truck full of meat.

They reached the clearing with the Gate and Gabi brought her arm up to her face. The DHD built into her tac-pad would dial the chevrons directly instead of spinning the ring which was perfect for situations where you didn't have time.

"The Iris!" Oliver shouted from his place still slung over Tommy's shoulder. "Dial somewhere else!" he ordered as Tommy finally set him down.

Gabi nodded in reply and started dialing the first planet that came to mind. All they needed was to get through the Gate, and waiting for the Iris on the other end to open was not an option they…

"User alert: orbital strike inbound," the VI built into all of their armor warned them.

There wasn't even time to scream. The silver-ish ball of energy the Ori used as a secondary weapon fired a round at the Stargate and the ring of superconductive metal exploded in a brilliant flash of light, and an immense shockwave of energy. They were clustered together out of reflex, the soldiers defending the two civilians that accompanied them off-world. As such, when the Gate, a half-dialed-connection's worth of energy flowing through it, exploded, all Jack had to do was snarl, glow, and raise her fist.

Gravity obeyed her wordless command and the members of Zeta-1 floated into the air, a shimmering bubble formed around them. The shockwave hit before the heat or the radiation, and their bubble was sent sailing through the air. Everything within two miles of the Gate was leveled, but not them. Jack's barrier held despite the pressure that was propelling it and despite the dozen or so buildings they were sent crashing through. When they finally landed, all tossed to the ground in a heap, only a few yards from the edge of the destruction the blast had caused, Jack was worse for wear.

She was always skinny, yes. Her power, that they barely understood, took energy from her physical form. She wasn't some half-ascended being trapped between plains of existence. She was a mortal woman with powers given to her by some strange element that was infused to her brain by Nirrti some three-hundred-something years ago. After that she was Ba'al's assassin, against her will, before finally being freed of her curse by those she now called her family. They beat her in combat then took her to the Tok'ra. Now she was one of them.

She was always skinny, yes, but she was never skin and bones. Not like she was now.

"What's wrong with her?" Cassidy, their resident agent from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service who specialized in hypnotism as both a weapon and a tool for infiltration, asked with a wheeze, her lungs burning from the heat of the blast.

"She just burnt through a couple million calories over the course of two seconds," Tommy replied as he very gently, and the fact that someone that large could be gentle was strange in Oliver's opinion, rolled Jack over and tilted her head up. He pulled the canteen from her belt and brought it up to her lips. Her canteen, unlike theirs, didn't hold water. Instead, it was a specially formulated energy drink that had enough kick to it to make a fully grown elephant's heart explode from the pure energy coursing through its veins. Each mouthful was over a thousand calories of formulated energy. It helped keep her going in combat when she burned through too much of her physical energy. Today, it just might save her life.

Jack almost coughed up the first three mouthfuls, but started draining the canteen with a wild abandon after that. As she did, Oliver looked around. The Mothership was still hanging over them, the Lucian Alliance were still fighting, and the Ori soldiers were landing in force. Apparently the Zetas weren't the only ones who wanted what the Lucian Alliance had hidden here.

"We need to keep moving," Marcus, their resident linguist, cultural expert, and overall historian, said with a worried glance towards where they could hear people shooting at each other.

"And go where?" Cassidy asked, her tone serious, almost pleading, instead of degrading.

"The Gate's gone," Gabi added needlessly, but they all knew she was just listing things out loud like she always did. "We don't have a ship, the Alliance docks would've been the first thing the Ori attacked, we're not equipped to attempt to take an Ori Mothership with six soldiers and two noncoms, and even if we could get a message off-world, we'd have to wait for a ship to get here."

"Is she able to move?" Oliver asked, ignoring Gabi's thinking out loud method of solving problems.

"Not on her own," Tommy replied.

"Fuck you," Jack grumbled as she tried to push her way up to her feet only to collapse into heavy breathing.

"Activate your hermetic seals," Oliver ordered as he performed that very task. He then walked over to where a metal cap prevented the city's sewage from smelling up the place.

"You've got to be kidding me," Kimi, who served as the squad's sniper, infiltrator, and blade-combat expert, said.

"Would you rather stay on the surface and get shot at by a Mothership?" Gabi asked as she lowered herself down into the hole and started descending the ladder.

Kimi groaned in dismay before following. Cassidy went down after her, Marcus shortly after that, then Jesse went half-way down and stopped. Tommy carried Jack to the edge of the manhole and gently lowered her down to Jesse then followed down after them. As the fighting got closer, Oliver drew another explosive-tipped arrow from his depleted quiver and fired it into the side of a building. As the building's collapse blocked off the street, he kicked the manhole cover into the air like a skateboarder would, jumped down the hole, and left the lid to land on their hiding spot with an accuracy born of decades of experience. By the time the Lucian Alliance got into the courtyard, they found it empty, the exploded building forcing them to take the long way around.

"So, about getting a message off-world," Oliver said as he landed next to his team with all the ease of a cat.

"We'll have to build a subspace beacon and tie it into the broadcasting systems in our armors. That'll let us get a message out, but I'll need to salvage equipment from the shipyards," Gabi replied.

"Then we better get moving," Oliver said as he activated the night vision built into his helmet's visual assistance systems. "The sewage system should get us close to the shipyards. We'll get what we need and assemble the beacon down here. Once the Ori are gone, we can go up to the surface and signal the Zeta Site."