Reading Time: 101 Minutes
Title: Finding Righteous
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 5
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds; JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairing
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. Death sentences/executions (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Author Note: British Spelling
Word Count: 105,735
Summary: On Atlantis, the trials of the two Genii responsible for the torture and abduction of Colonel Sheppard are due to begin. Back at the SCG, Corp Joseph Favre faces a military trial for conspiring to abduct Colonel Sheppard and assaulting Dr Francesca De Rosa. On Winya, Hotch and Tony’s efforts to convince the Winyans to overturn the conviction of Lucius Lavins victims meet with mixed success. Tony thinks his alter-ego Thomas Magnum may have better luck with the Elders. However, Tony will need someone to impersonate him. When Tony and his alter-ego return to Winya, they find a badly injured child and the Magistrate, Wodren Drell asks them to investigate.
Artist: AngelicInsanity
Chapter 10
John Sheppard had already been beamed aboard the Odyssey and was sitting quietly in the room that was set up for the Tribunal when Tony arrived at 0815. He’d dropped Tali off at Miko and Radek’s quarters to play and they would see that Belle was dropped off at school with Kazumi. He joined John, sitting in a seat next to him, taking in the signs of stress, the shadows under his eyes, the slight shaking of his hands and bumped shoulders with him gently.
“You’re here early.”
Sheppard grimaced. “So are you,” he fired back sharply before giving him an apologetic look. “You’re an old hand at this sort of thing, Alex. How do you think this will play out?”
He shrugged at the CO. “Learned never to predict how a case is going to go. Safer not to but in this trial, I think that the evidence is irrefutable.”
“But Kolya didn’t participate? Is that gonna give the Tribunal members pause, do you think?”
“Anything is possible, but I stand by our case. It was ironclad because I didn’t know Kolya was gonna pull a Slobodan and refuse to cooperate, so we made sure that the evidence was solid. There were multiple sources for any evidence or testimony presented. Hopefully, the Tribunal Members recognise that.”
“Well, we know they did in at least one instance – that’s why I wasn’t required to give evidence into the torture and rape,” he said, sounding a little shaky.
At that point, Hotch walked through the door, wearing the robes that had been designed in concert with Janae progenius for these hearings approximating the garb of the Ancient’s tribunals. They were all predominately deep indigo and had different accent colours indicating their role in the hearing. For example, as the persequor, his had accents of scarlet, the decerno’s accent colours were a deep green, the paracletus’ accents were sky-blue (although Kolya had refused to wear them) and the Tribunal Members had accents of magenta. Witnesses testifying at the hearings also wore robes – J.P. said that the Ancients had viewed it as a sign that those who testified understood the solemnity and importance of the task they were entrusted with in presenting the truth to the Tribunal. The witnesses’ robes weren’t indigo but a deep shade of violet that was almost black.
Since neither Tony nor John was testifying, merely there to observe the judgement, they weren’t in robes, just their Atlantis uniforms but as persequor, Hotch was wearing his. When they had been planning the logistics of the hearing, J.P. had approached Tony to pass on a message that Atlantis thought it was appropriate for those taking part to be attired in robes like the Ancients had worn. And most people could see the sense in that suggestion. It gave the proceedings a gravitas that was certainly helpful and reminded everyone that the Tribunal was one that ‘the Ancestors’ had devised many millennia before, and which they would have approved of.
As the next ten minutes crawled by, Tony thought about the accent colours. He’d sort of expected the judges (the tribunal members to have purple accents) the magenta was an interesting choice. He recalled a case he worked on back when he was a detective in Homicide in Baltimore when someone was murdering women who practised Wicca. He remembered one of the witches explaining the significance of the magenta-coloured bracelets that the coven wore – saying that they believed that it was associated with Mother Earth and was protective. And an ex of his who was into Reiki healing had told him that magenta helped integrate and recalibrate energy, providing protection and clearing toxic energy. If that was true and he wasn’t saying he bought into that stuff, it made sense that it was chosen for the Tribunal Members since there had been a lot of bad energy during Kolya’s hearing.
As for the green accents for the decerno, well green was supposed to be a balanced colour, associated with nature and he figured that when making judgements about the evidence, a decerno would need to be balanced and calm. A decerno needed to be able to look at both sides of an argument before reaching a judgement. Red accents for the persequor were fairly obvious he thought. It was associated with the planet Mars The Romans considered Mars the God of war and in one sense, a persequor who prosecuted the accusatus went to war to convince the jury or the tribunal members that the accused was guilty. As Tony was trying to figure out why sky-blue accents were chosen for the paracletus, Kalan, Ishta and Jonas Quinn filed in sombrely, and once they were seated, Decerno Bra’tac followed and took his place at the table, right in front of the seats for the audience with Persequor Hotchner’s table on the right of him and the empty table and chair on his left for the paracletus and the accusatus.
While Tony had been wool-gathering he’d failed to notice that other people involved in the investigation or were close to Col. Sheppard had slipped into the limited seats in the hearing room or were standing at the back, along the wall waiting quietly. General O’Neill and Lieutenant Colonel Lorne were sitting in the front row, along with Dr Lam, Admiral Chegwidden, Ambassador AuClair and Richard Woolsey. Captain Cadman, Dr O’Shea, Dr Zelenka, Dr Beckett and Fornell along with Sheppard’s teammates, Teyla, Ronon and Rodney were seated behind them in the second row.
As the Tribunal took their seats up on the dais specially built for the trials, the silence become almost claustrophobic as Porteous Kolya was escorted into the in camera room which had been initially set up for John to give evidence but was now serving as a room to prevent Kolya from controlling the narrative and dragging it out with his inflammatory raving. As he was seated and hooked up to the microphone, an expression of arrogant defiance plastered on his face, Tony picked up subtle micro gestures that indicated he wasn’t as disinterested in the verdict as he projected.
Jonas Quinn, looking grimly serious, began to speak. “This tribunal was convened to judge the innocence or guilt of the accusatus Porteus Kolya, leader of a rogue Genii Militia, regarding the crimes committed against Colonel John Sheppard, the Commanding Officer of the Atlantis expeditionary force. This hearing has been held per the code of law of the Ancestors, who are also known as the Ancients, many of whom Ascended millennia ago.” He paused to look around the hearing room briefly.
“This process was made more difficult than we expected by the refusal of the Accusatus to engage in the process and instead set out to impede and obstruct in our endeavour,” he said gravely, staring at the camera which was delivering the verdict to the Accusatus.
“Porteus Kolya demanded the right to represent himself as paracletus, even though there were several willing and highly competent individuals who offered to defend him. He was duly cautioned that in acting as his own paracletus he would likely disadvantage his case, but he insisted, and so we agreed to his request. His choice to disengage from participating in the hearing was very unwise and I do not doubt that it was extremely ill-advised, as Mr Woolsey had warned him.”
Kalan took up the narrative at this point. “We have tried our utmost to be fair, impartial and consider the case based solely upon the evidence presented. Porteus Kolya, you chose not to try to discredit the testimony and the only conclusion we could come up with was because there was no denying the evidence. “ At this point Kalan, directing his gaze straight to the camera, looked stern.
“After our deliberations, it is my solemn responsibility to announce that the Interstellar Tribunal finds that the case against the Accusatus has been proved beyond reasonable doubt and therefore we declare Porteus Kolya guilty of the crimes against Colonel Shepard including torture, false imprisonment, attempted murder and abduction. Plus, we find the charges against you of conspiring to murder Lucius Lavin and conspiracy to overthrow the Atlantis Military Base to be proven too.”
Ishta scowled as she said, “Porteus Kolya, do you have anything you wish to say before we pass sentence on you that may mitigate your sentence,” she asked him gravely, before flicking the switch that would turn on his microphone in the hearing room.
“I refuse to accept the verdict since your fake tribunal does not have the authority to judge me for my actions. You should be judging Sheppard for murdering Acastus Kolya. Your precious leader of Atlantis is a vicious murderer who only got what he deserved. And the so-called Lanteans are on Atlantis illegally. The Ancestor’s city belongs to the Genii, and we demand that you evict these criminals immediately.”
Ishta let him rave on for a full eight minutes until he started in on how Sheppard had enjoyed being tortured and then she flipped the microphone to mute him.
Shaking her head, she observed. “We gave you every chance to defend yourself, Porteus Kolya and you have thrown it back in our faces. You say we do not have the authority to judge you, yet you demand we judge Colonel Sheppard for defending himself in a shootout against Acastus Kolya who would have surely shot him if not for your father’s brother being slower to draw his weapon than Sheppard. As a warrior, you must know that in a kill or be-killed moment, being faster does not make you a murderer – it makes you alive,” the blonde Jaffa admonished him coldly.
“You further demand that we throw the Lantean’s off the City of Atlantis because the Genii are the rightful inhabitants, but you have had ten thousand years to claim her and never have. Nor do any of the hundreds of Genii who have been treated by the Lanteans for the wasting sickness that your bombs caused show, any evidence that the Genii possess the ATA gene that would permit them to operate Ancient technology. Thus, your claim to being the descendants of the Ancestors seems to be quite flimsy, Porteus Kolya,” she admonished him as one would a foolish child.
“And lastly, I asked if you wanted to say anything in your defence to lessen the sentence we are about to pass upon you. You have offered us nothing, so it falls on me to announce the sentence of the Accusatus, Porteus Kolya having been found guilty of committing the crimes already outlined by Tribunal Member Kalan. You are hereby sentenced to death for your crimes.” She paused and looked around the chamber before continuing.
“The sentence is to be carried out by this time tomorrow to give you one day to either make your peace with any deity or spiritual being whom you worship or if you wish to meditate to prepare yourself or to make some form of restitution, be it an apology or recompense for the harm you have caused. Death will be carried out by Decerno Bra’tac, Leader of the Free Jaffa Nation in keeping with his duties as outlined in the Ancestor’s Code of Law, of which you were granted a copy as paracletus. May you find in the next life, clarity of thought and the wisdom which you lacked in this one.”
Tony wondered if it was some Jaffa spiritual prayer or blessing since Ishta had been a Jaffa priestess when the Goa’uld had ruled over her people. Or it could just be a very blunt observation about the blatant inadequacies she observed in the militia leader. If so, it was still a much more polite way of calling someone a stupid crappy leader.
Ishta sighed heavily, obviously struck by the enormity of sentencing the Genii militia leader to death. It was a far cry from killing in the heat of battle but based on the evidence and his lack of remorse, it was the only decision that could possibly have been made. Tony knew that as much as he detested the general concept of executions, there were cases such as this where the guilty one needed to forfeit their freedom permanently. Porteus and individuals like his dead uncle, Acastus were simply too dangerous to everyone around him, too evil to risk being free.
Tony was relieved however that Ishta’s gravitas seemed to suggest she recognised the enormity of the decision and that had been communicated to the spectators. He was relieved that no one broke out in cheers or clapping, just a low hum as the sentence was announced. It would have been too much if anyone derived some perverted satisfaction in the fact that they were executing the sick fuck who had nearly killed John Sheppard and who would carry scars from Kolya’s crime with him for the rest of his life. Long after his abuser had turned to dust!
Jonas resumed control over the proceedings. “This Interstellar Tribunal is complete,” he pronounced before banging seven times on a gong, which, unlike the brass gongs back on Earth which were made of hammered metal, usually brass, this one was made of a black metal that the Lantean scientists tested and announced was Ancient and unique. P.J. had located the Gong, thanks to his access to Janus’ secret diary and presented it to the Venerabiles Sodales for the trial. The seven deep resonating bongs signified the three tribunal members aka the Venerabiles Sodales, plus the persequor, paracletus, decerno and Accusatus, adding to the solemnity of the hearing.
As the final bong died away, Jonas Quinn announced, “The Tribunal is adjourned and will reconvene at 1030 today to begin the hearing of Deuter Maden. I understand that the paracletus requested by the Accusatus has arrived and will be available at this time?”
Hotch rose to his feet. “That is correct, Most Venerable Member.”
Quinn nodded. “Then since it is a closed hearing, I will see all those authorised individuals back here at the stated time.”
The three tribunal members stood and filed solemnly out of the room with decorum befitting their onerous responsibility, Bra’tac following directly after their departure, his grace as a revered warrior obvious, but understated. Aaron remained behind in the chamber, wandering over speak to Alex, John, A.J., and General O’Neill, who all took their turn quietly congratulating Hotch on a successful prosecution, before finally, John grasped his hand, shaking it gratefully, overcome with emotion and unable to speak. Aoife suddenly appeared at Sheppard’s side as his legs appeared to buckle and he wobbled. She suggested sotto voce to the men that they escort the colonel out and find someplace where he could process what had happened in private. Fortunately, Tony’s experience dealing with sex crime witnesses meant that he’d had a small room set aside for witnesses to use after giving evidence. It was designed so they had somewhere they could debrief or simply fall apart. He’d had Monique Girard, particularly in mind when he made the request but intended it to be used by anyone in need.
Swiftly, he showed them into the room and exited, leaving Aoife and General O’Neill as support while he and Hotch stood guard, preventing anyone else from entering until John had a chance to find his equilibrium once more. Approximately ten minutes later, O’Shea stuck her head out the door, spying them standing sentinel and smiled.
“Oh good, you’re still here. Be a dear would you, Alex and see if you can discreetly get hold of Carolyn or Barbara before they depart.”
Hotch looked at Tony. “I’ll stay here and guard the door to stop anyone going in. You fetch the doctor,” he offered.
“Thanks, Hotch, I’ll be back soon.”
Fortunately, Dr Lam was waiting for General O’Neill who was going to fly her back to the vaccine laboratory, so she hadn’t returned to Atlantis yet, while Dr Biro had just beamed down to Atlantis. Tony reckoned Sheppard would be more comfortable with Caro anyway since she didn’t work on Atlantis. While Barb was great, he’d probably feel awkward around her, seeing her daily. Men like himself and Sheppard were terrified of appearing weak, even when they were vulnerable.
Tony approached. “Hey Caro, Aoife is requesting your presence,” he greeted her.
“Hi Alex,” she stood up. “Do you know what she wants?”
He nodded and said softly, even though they were the only two in the room, “Yeah, Col. Sheppard had a bit of a breakdown after the verdict. I don’t think he’s been sleeping much.”
As he led her to the chillout room, she said. “Understandable, but with his precarious balancing act after the refeeding syndrome it doesn’t take all that much to push him over the cliff. Missing out on sleep or not eating properly for a few nights isn’t going to be a massive problem for healthy people but for John, it can be devastating.” And with that, she slipped inside.
Soon after Aoife emerged. “Carolyn is going to run some bloods up here on the Odyssey’s infirmary, maybe run through an I.V. with electrolytes and give him a sedative. She suggested we send for Ronon to help us get him down to the infirmary and he can keep him company until the fluids have finished, then help him back to his cabin to rest. Alex, can you track Dex down for John?”
He nodded. “Can you stand guard? Hotch should go take a break since he has to be back at Deuter Maden’s hearing at 1030 and he needs to take a break.”
Hotch was about to say he was okay when Tony frowned. “Look, you take some time out – get a coffee. I know that Daniel got some whiz-bang stuff, especially for you guys. Then do some relaxation exercises. We’re all counting on you, so self-care applies.”
Aoife nodded. “Take the excellent advice from one profiler to another, Hotch. You are too important to risk.”
Hotch finally nodded and headed off with Tony and he frowned in consternation. “Do you think he’ll be able to testify in Maden and Lavin’s trials?”
“I hope so. I think that this was pretty traumatic – even without him having to recount the sexual physical and psychological torture. He told me yesterday it was his fault he was raped, so he’s still blaming himself.”
Hotch nodded, “Not all that surprising. From what I know he has a lot to work through. We need to ensure we have better supports in place for him to get through the next two hearings.”
As Aaron parted ways with Tony, he told him, “Good luck, go get him.”
Tony was relieved to find that Lorne and the rest of AR-1 were hanging around the mess waiting for Sheppard so they could beam back down to Atlantis together. The mood was celebratory as they all indulged in a late breakfast – apparently, most people were too jittery about the verdict. He could sympathise with them, he hadn’t eaten breakfast either, anxious about the verdict but probably not for the same reasons they were. He managed to get Lorne on his own for a couple of minutes to explain that Sheppard has had a minor collapse and that he was fine, but Dr Lam had requested the assistance of Ronon.
Quickly they concocted a story, Lorne telling Dex that O’Neill wanted him to show the Odyssey crew some of his takedown moves in their gym. Tony announced to Teyla and Rodney that Dr O’Shea had insisted that Col Sheppard sit down for a counselling session, so John had sent him to tell the team that he’d see them back on Atlantis. McKay had been pissed off about it, but since he was supposed to avoid having contact with Alex, Lorne had used that as an excuse to hurry the rest of them out of the Mess, Rodney bitching that he wanted more French toast and more bacon.
After they left, he’d turned to Dex, “Sorry about the subterfuge but Doctor Lam asked if you could help get Sheppard down to the Odyssey’s infirmary. The stress of the hearing was a bit too much for him and he had a mini-collapse. She thinks it’s just exhaustion and dehydration, but she still wants to run his bloodwork and double-check. Apparently, you’re the Sheppard Whisperer, able to wrangle him without wounding his ego.”
Ronon jumped up. “Let’s go, Paddington. Can we get him down there quietly? He hates being made an exhibition of.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the plan, Dex. And probably why John didn’t want Rodney to find out. He wanted lowkey.”
“So, I’m not needed in the gym?”
“Nope, that was just a ruse to get you away from the team without them realising what was going on. Thanks to the persona you cultivate of the big dumb brute who can’t wait to whoop the asses of Earthers, it
was easy. It comes in handy when you need to divert people’s attention,” he told the big guy with a knowing grin.
~o0o~
Later, having run interference while Ronon and General O’Neill helped get Sheppard to the Odyssey’s infirmary discreetly, Aoife looked at Tony. “How are you doing, Alex?”
“I’m okay. I can’t say I’m happy that the first case we’ve tried under intergalactic civilian law will culminate in execution, but in this case, it was necessary.”
“But you will never feel comfortable with state-sanctioned murder?”
He shrugged. He’d discussed this yesterday with her after they dealt with his difficulties with Tali. “I know that some individuals are so evil that letting them live, even if they are locked up for the terms of their natural life is too dangerous to those around them. I know it, but it still sets a precedent when it comes to other heinous crimes where an individual is not a threat to others or is wrongly convicted of the crime.”
“That is true,” Aoife said.
“There are no easy answers to this dilemma, and it is made even more complicated by the fact that Pegasus has so many races, so many cultures and beliefs. I can’t help thinking about Mayuna Pavu… she was still basically a child who didn’t deserve to be stoned to death,” he said, having run the numbers so many times that Mayuna was only fourteen years older than Tali when they executed her.
“It is such a tragic loss of a young life,” Aoife said sadly. Pavu’s death had touched them all. “Do you think our plan will work?”
“I hope so, but I think we might need Mr Thomas Magnum to put in a long-awaited appearance. I’ve been thinking that we might be able to persuade Colonel Davis to play the part since he doesn’t usually go off-world,” he said.
“That’s a good idea,” O’Shea nodded. “Need to get him to loosen up a bit, though. How are you going to be if the Tribunal finds Lucius Lavin guilty and decides to sentence him to death for his crimes?”
He shrugged because honestly, he’d asked himself this question many times when he couldn’t sleep at night. In some ways, he thought that Lavin was just as dangerous and evil as Porteus Kolya and since Mayuna had lost her life for being a victim, it seemed he deserved to suffer like she had. But the thing that made him hesitate every time he contemplated the likeliest outcome was two kids – nine-year-old Adrexa and twelve-year-old Jeroze. Especially Jeroze, who had helped them to capture his father on Winya and begged him not to kill him, even though he had acknowledged that he’d done wrong.
“I’m not sure about that. I think about those two innocent kids of his – Jeroze and Adrexa – who despite everything he’s done, still care about him. It’s going to devastate them if he gets the death penalty,” he said.
She nodded, “The sins of the father,” and they both knew she wasn’t just referring to the two Winyan siblings.
As they sat outside the infirmary in silence, Aoife changed the subject because there was no resolution to the Lavin situation – it was out of their hands. “Have you thought any more about what we talked about yesterday and Teyla?”
He exhaled with a huff because this was a touchy topic, but it still beat talking about Lavin’s fate. “Yeah, I did. I decided not to ask Teyla because she probably is going to have that conversation with Torren too. I think it is too much of a burden, especially with Lavin’s trial so close. That isn’t going to be easy on her, on any of them.”
“Teyla is a very strong person, but even the strongest of us can break,” Aoife acknowledged. “Maybe with Umwali here, she can fast-track a support group for them,” she said.
“I think that would be fantastic if she could. Miko has decided to testify about the rape but on condition that she gives evidence in camera, and she can do so anonymously,” he told her.
“She still doesn’t want a DNA test to determine if Lavin or Radek is Kazumi’s father?”
“No.”
“Does she know that he gave them a fertility compound to increase the chances of them conceiving, even though he had no qualms about abandoning his first two offspring?”
“Yeah, she knows but she pointed out that because she and Radek were sexually active, the fertility drug could just have easily worked on his sperm as Lavin. As to that asshole not giving a fuck about Jeroze and Adrexa, hell he doesn’t care about any of the kids he fathered, and I’m betting there were many more on other planets he traded with, I think the kids were nothing more than an extension of his DNA. It made him feel omnipotent to be spreading his seed around the galaxy – the fact that kids need, food, shelter, love, and protection didn’t matter a jot to an egotistical narcissist.”
O’Shea sighed sadly as she thought about the pain and suffering that the monster had wrought on so many people. “ I know you’re right – the only remorse he is capable of experiencing is because he got caught and is now facing consequences. By the way, my offer still stands to talk to Belle for you,” Aoife told him. “I can pick her up from school today and we can have a nice long chat about babies.”
Tony sighed ruefully. “I want to be able to put my pain and anger at Ziva aside so I can talk to Belle about this, but I’m not sure I can do it. She deserves to have her questions answered without me getting angry and uptight – it will only make her confused so I guess I’m going to have to owe you one and say I need your help.”
“We all need help sometimes, Alex. It doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. Bringing up a child is no easy task, not even when you have extended family and two parents to call on. But friends can sub in and I’m more than happy to help,” she told him firmly.
~o0o~
Dr Lam commandeered the infirmary so she could treat Col Sheppard, bullying Odyssey’s doctor Oliver Childs to run the panel of blood tests she’d drawn before John could blink, let alone voice a protest. While she waited for the biochemistry results to come in, she’d started an IV giving him fluids since she said he was dehydrated.
Meanwhile, the second Interplanetary Tribunal Hearing was getting underway with the Venerabiles Sodales (Most Venerable Members) entering the chamber, led by Jonas Quinn, Ishta was next and Kalan bringing up the rear. Aaron was already standing in deference to the Members, as was Deuter Maden and his Paracletus Heynus Krepps, although they had needed some prodding by the SFs before reluctantly the pair rose to their feet. As the Venerabiles Sodales reached their seats, the Decerno Master Teal’c enter the chamber, striding proudly to his position in the middle between the Accusatus and his defender and Aaron Hotchner who would prosecute the case against Maden. Apart from the contingent of SFs and Marine MPs which had been doubled on Col Lorne’s orders, since they had two of the rogue Genii militia in the chamber, the only people seated in the public seating area were General O’Neill, Admiral Chegwidden, and Richard Woolsey.
After the three tribunal members took their seats, Decerno Teal’c ordered those present to be seated too as the hearing got underway. After officially inquiring if Heynus Krepps was willing and capable of acting as paracletus for the Accusatus, the convicted Krepps replied affirmatively, as long as he received a reduction on his own sentence. After some debate about whether the Tribunal had the jurisdiction to reduce the sentence imposed by a military court, Hotch sought the opinion of JAG Admiral Chegwidden. The Judge Advocate General stated that the Tribunal did not have the authority, but he was able to do so if he was convinced that the prisoner (Heynus Krepps) was taking his duties as paracletus seriously and not dicking around. Aaron noted in amusement A.J. didn’t actually get into the amount of time he might be willing to knock off Krepp’s sentence. Krepps didn’t notice though, which led Hotch to conclude that Heynus either wasn’t a real lawyer or had very little real-trial experience.
Still, he wasn’t going to make the mistake of underestimating Krepps. He struck the former FBI profiler as an oily conman, able to weasel his way out of bad situations if not by charm, by his ability to suss out other peoples’ weaknesses and ruthlessly exploit them. Hotch had a feeling that this man would use cross-examining to muddy the waters as much as possible, but the only problem was that by going second after Kolya, many of the same witnesses had already testified and their evidence had been accepted by the tribunal. It would have been more effective if Maden had been able to go first, as they envisaged. At the time, Hotch’s intuition had told him that it was a stalling tactic but if it was, then it was definitely a tactical error on Maden’s part.
Hotch gave his opening statement – a variation on the one he’d delivered for Kolya but acknowledging how the Accusatus was second in charge to Porteus and eager to go along with what his leader proposed. How he offered suggestions and willingly took part in the torture of John Sheppard, even taking it upon himself to schedule extra sessions or withhold additional sustenance which had been minimal to begin with. The persequor pointed out that it went some way to explain how Sheppard had been perilously close to death, especially since Kolya needed him alive to power the drone chair they’d found in the Ancestor’s facility. As he sat down, he noted the calculating expression on Krepps’ face as he slowly rose to his feet when directed, then began to present his opening argument.
Essentially, Maden’s paracletus had decided to go the good old Nuremberg defence strategy, not that he would have had any clue about the Nuremberg Trials, but Hotch figured it was a common enough tactic. The ‘I was just following orders’ refrain was probably as old as time – children instinctively used it – blaming siblings for making them do something when their parents caught them doing something forbidden. But Krepps had decided to up the ante, claiming that Maden had no choice but to go along with Kolya because he was in fear for his life because Kolya was a monster. He even made the outrageous claim that Maden was deliberately trying to hasten Sheppard’s death with the extra rapes, beatings and withholding of food and water because Deuter believed he’d be better off dead than alive.
As the testimony from witnesses got underway, Hotch noticed that Krepps during the Traicere Interrogatio (the cross-examination) that he would restate the words of the witness but subtly change them, making them less inflammatory to Maden or trying to make the words sound more damaging to the witness’s character or account. Watching him manipulate the truth, steering perception so deftly, Hotch reluctantly found himself admiring the man’s abilities and made a mental note to update Krepps’ file, so the Hebridians knew what to be looking out for with him. He wasn’t likely to accept twenty years of confinement willingly.
As soon as Aaron sussed out Krepp’s tactics, he’d subtly changed up his own, asking more questions that required yes/no answers and giving witnesses a heads up on what to expect. That said, he couldn’t thwart him completely – Krepps could still ask the witness questions during the traicere interrogatio and then subtly restate them – miss state them unless the witness pushed back. Of course, witnesses like Alex Paddington pushed back every time he attempted to manipulate what he said but as an experienced investigator, he was well accustomed to defence tactics by lawyers and kept correcting Krepps each time he tried to misrepresent what he’d said.
In general, Lorne, Cadman, Dr Lam, and Dr O’Shea also pushed back fairly well but sometimes appeared nervous or irritated, which tended to affect their testimony somewhat, or it would if the same evidence hadn’t already been accepted by the Tribunal in Kolya’s trial. Still, it gave Hotch a valuable insight into how to prepare them for the two upcoming trials, even if he doubted that any of them could match the coolly unflappable Paddington in his reaction to the Genii’s sleight of hand tactics. But then Alex clearly had done a lot of testifying.
As the day drew to a close, Hotch wondered how Sheppard was doing and would he be up to testifying tomorrow? It wasn’t essential to his case, but Hotch would like to be able to counter the whole Maden was attempting a mercy killing defence if possible. It was improbable that it would stick, but unless John had a rebuttal to it, the tribunal might just believe it. Aaron was a cautious man and he preferred not to take chances unless it was unavoidable, and from the looks of Agent Paddington, he had been almost obsessive in making sure there were no holes in their case. He was pleased that their professional styles synced so well, it made his return to the law much easier than it might otherwise have been.
As Jonas Quinn adjourned for the day and announced that the hearing would reconvene at 1130 tomorrow, the reason for the late start remained unspoken but they all knew. The Tribunal would gather at 0830 to carry out the death sentence imposed upon Porteus Kolya.
Chapter 11
Aaron made his way to the Odyssey’s departure point aka the beam-down room and wouldn’t Dr Spencer Reed be in seventh heaven over all of this if he was here, he always marvelled to himself, even after a score of times using the technology. He did wonder if he ever become blasé about using the device since this seemed like something straight out of a Star Trek TV show. He took stock and realised he was exhausted, not physically but mentally. Perhaps he needed to go for a long run before dinner. Checking out the time, he realised he probably couldn’t fit in his normal run since Garcia was coming over again to spend time with him and Jack, but he could probably squeeze in a short one, which would be better than nothing.
Not that there was anything strange about Penelope dropping in per se, she spent quite a lot of time with the Hotchners, even though she seemed to have other friends like Alex Paddington and Tobias Fornell and had apparently made a lot of new ones since she had arrived on Atlantis. Nor was that unusual, she was an extrovert and she thrived in social groups, plus she was such a sweetheart that everyone wanted to be around her. No, what was odd about tonight was that she had mentioned that she had something to tell him which sounded important. He wondered what her announcement was, even as he admonished himself, knowing that speculation was a waste of time. He would find out in a few hours.
As he arrived back in the Atlantis gate room with all his appendages intact and attached where they were supposed to go, he thought of Reed again. Of how he’d react to all of the things that people in the Stargate Program had come to take for granted, wormholes, alien races like the Wraith and all of the other races that existed, not only in their own galaxy but in others as well. How many PhDs would Dr Reed collect on his way to exploring the truths that he and Jack had been lucky enough to already be read into? At times, Hotch was overcome with all the knowledge that they’d gained – how many kids Jack’s age ever got the chance to hang out and be buddies with a ten-thousand-year-old artificial intelligence entity. He wondered how this would impact his son’s future – going back to Earth to study mundane courses would surely hold no interest to a kid who knew that quantum physics was not just theoretical but commonplace in the science labs here and at Stargate Command. And nanite technology – Jack was already fascinated by the possibilities it held after a few short months here.
As he reached his quarters and quickly changed into his running gear, he thought about Porteus Kolya’s execution in the morning. Like Agent Paddington, he was ambivalent about it – not that Aaron had actually discussed the death penalty with Alex, but it was fairly easy for the profiler to surmise his opinion. The debate they’d had before the tribunals and the military trials getting underway had gone into the logistics of how to would carry out executions should (when) the judges in military trials, or the interplanetary hearings in cases involving other races and the Expeditionary Force and civilians handed out death sentences.
Paddington’s suggestion that they should use a Zat gun had prevailed, and he’d agreed it was the best solution to an unpalatable circumstance, although some people expressed the view that they thought it was too surgical. Unfortunately, some individuals believed it should be a bit more bloody or painful, but Alex strongly disagreed. He spoke eloquently about how taking a life in defence of self or other innocents was not without a personal cost, even when it was necessary but to take a life in cold blood, even if it was a sanctioned execution took a much greater toll on a person’s soul or their morality. His conviction was strong that taking a life should never be done for revenge. He believed that the only reason a person should receive the death sentence was that they posed too greater a risk to the safety of those around them to permit them to live. Alex maintained that it should always be the last resort because otherwise, as individuals and a society, they ran the risk of becoming tainted by evil too.
When some of the officers argued that execution was all about punishing the person because they committed a crime, Alex had grown angry. He’d asked, “If someone stabs another person, do we punish them by stabbing them back? If they beat someone up, should we punish them by beating them up too? I know that there was a lot of ill will when we found Colonel Sheppard, but we held ourselves to a higher standard because justice matters in a civilised society,” he told them fiercely.
He looked around the table making eye contact with every individual. “Justice is not synonymous with revenge and punishment. When people commit crimes and are found guilty we deprive them of their freedom, and yet we kill murderers to punish them for taking life. Our justice decries their heinous actions on the one hand but then uses sanctioned killing as some sort of punishment or restitution to a victim’s friends and family when the only restitution that matters is something we cannot give them. Doesn’t that make us all less human? I think the only justification for state-sanctioned killing is when the risk to other people is too grave for them to ever be released.”
Hotch agreed with what Alex had said, knowing that many of the killers that the Behaviour Analysis Unit investigated became increasingly desensitised to killing the more that they did it. He also noted that Paddington hadn’t even used the most commonly cited reason why people opposed the death penalty – that innocent people got falsely convicted and therefore deprived of their lives while other individuals who were guilty, sometimes were acquitted because of their status or money. Aaron knew that another common reason for arguing against the death penalty was that despite what advocates said to justify its deterrence value in preventing more murder, there was plenty of impeccable scientific analysis that showed it to be a false assumption. It didn’t deter horrific crimes.
Aaron was curious about the Associate Director of the ISBI because Alex’s opinion on the death penalty was definitely not a common one in law enforcement circles and he wondered what if anything, had made him such a strong advocate against it. And while Cadman had suggested that one good thing about using a Zat was that it could be used to clean up the corpse after the execution, Paddington had vetoed that scenario too. He argued that making it too surgical, too clean, and impersonal, cheapened the seriousness of the act and that should never be permitted to occur with legalise execution. There should be remains of the Condemnabitur and they should be treated with dignity in death, despite how evil the perpetrator was in life.
Despite the grumbling about his do-good attitude, Hotch, Jack and Judge Advocate Generals Admiral Chegwidden and General Santiago had backed Paddington to the hilt. Therefore, tomorrow Bra’tac would administer one blast from the Zat to render Kolya unconscious and then he would dispense the second shot to end Kolya’s life in the presence of the three Tribunal Members, the Paracletus and the Persequor, plus anyone else who had permission to attend. It would not turn into a free for all, hanging in the town square or as Alex has put it, a stoning that incited the audience’s baser emotions and Jack agreed. Hotch wasn’t sure if Colonel Sheppard intended to be present to bear witness or not. He wasn’t even sure if it was even a good idea, but then it was not his decision to make.
As he headed out of his quarters and made his way to the city’s exterior, he admitted that despite her mysterious announcement, he looking forward to spending the night quietly at home with Jack and Penelope. It had been wonderful to catch up with her again, and Jack adored her. His son had really missed her, Spencer, Dave and of course J.J., and her two boys in the years they’d spent in WitSec before coming to Atlantis. Sometimes Hotch thought that J.P. was a kind of substitute for Spence and while Paddington was nothing like Rossi, he could cook a pretty mean lasagne, despite the ingredient substitutions. Between the pair and their robotics and piano lessons, he honestly didn’t think that Jack had much time to even miss his online social media life. And besides, hanging out with Marines only six or seven years older than himself being his X-Box buddies in a far-flung galaxy was truly the ‘boy’s own adventure’ being in the know about a place and program that only a handful of Earth’s inhabitants had the chance to know about. Plus, General O’Neill had informed him that Colonel Sheppard was a competent fencer who could coach Jack, so aside from being cut off from social media ‘friends’ he wasn’t missing out on the things that had been his passion back on Earth.
Except perhaps female influences. After he’d encouraged Beth to go after her dream job, he’d been gun-shy of getting into another relationship and then the whole situation with Peter Lewis had reared its ugly head again and in the blink of an eye they’d been whisked away into WitSec and living in Maine. Aaron knew that Jack missed his Aunt – Haley’s sister Jessica Brooks had been very close to Jack, particularly after Haley died. Suddenly his Aunt Jessica had been swept away from him, and he never even got a chance to say goodbye to J.J., Penelope and Emily. He knew he was not exactly the most touchy-feely guy but when Jack was younger, he’d made a concerted effort to be physically demonstrative with him, although in the last couple of years, as his son hit puberty, cuddles became extremely awkward for both of the Hotchner men. Even hugs felt like somewhat empty gestures although he tried to keep them up even if they were fleeting and rare.
Yet, since Penelope had appeared on Atlantis out of the blue, Jack had thrown himself into her arms without any sign of self-consciousness. It was then he realised that Jack hadn’t outgrown hugs and cuddles – he’d merely been responding to the emotional hang-ups of his Dad. He soaked up all of Garcia’s customary hugs, happily snuggling with her on the couch after dinner when they talked or watched a DVD. His son was the happiest he’d seen him for ages and Hotch had to admit that while it made him realise how much he missed his former team, and he was also really glad that Garcia’s path had crossed with theirs again.
Sadly, she told him after Jack had spent some time with them and then wandered off to do ‘stuff’ that she was going back to Earth soon. In a few more days, she admitted when he pressed her because some project she’d been working on had suddenly become super urgent and Colonel Davis sent word in the latest data burst that Homeworld Command needed her expertise back home in DC to supervise.
At the end of her unexpected announcement, she’d giggled in typical Penelope fashion and said, “Besides, our former teammates staged an intervention because I was being guarded by a bunch of strapping young Marines courtesy of General Jack. They thought I was being coerced to work for some shady government spy agency against my will. If I don’t go back soon, they’ll get themselves into a heap of trouble with Homeworld.”
“You’re joking,” Hotch frowned as they sat together, almost but not quite touching and he was suddenly aware that the air between them felt supercharged.
Looking indignant, she shook her blonde head. “Even when got I cross with them and I explained that a group of sinisterly evil villains had set up the whole non-government job to try to basically abduct me and force me to hack for them, I’m not entirely sure that Rossi believed me. After everyone else left and went home, he made me give him a duress word in case the ultra-secret big bad government agency who, FYI had told them all to back off and stop looking into it, should ever try to take advantage of poor gullible Penelope Garcia,” she said, tongue in cheek.
“What was the duress word you used?”
“Pepperoni pizza, so really it was a duress phrase,” she sniggered, and he found himself randomly thinking even Garcia’s sniggering was cute, not nasty, mean, or cynical.
Well hell! Where did that random thought come from?
“Good for Dave! Granted that Homeworld under General O’Neill is nothing like the NID or CIA if the Trust ever did manage to get hold of you, a duress phrase is definitely a good idea. You must miss him,” he stated, trying to sound dispassionate.
Sipping the last of her peppermint tea, which she explained was good for digestion, she asked, “Miss who, Hotch?”
“Dave,” he said.
He knew that Rossi had a soft squishy spot for the former technical analyst, and he suspected that she had a crush on him too. Hell for all he knew, having been in WitSec for the last few years, they’d gotten together as a couple. They both used to flirt with each other like crazy. Granted, Garcia flirted full-on with Morgan long before he’d started dating Savannah, but it was clear even before Savannah entered Derek Morgan’s life that the flirting was more or less platonic. Dave Rossi, though, was a regular Latin Lothario, but after Garcia left the BAU, left the agency, there was no real impediment to them dating any longer.
Penelope gave him an odd look before saying, “Well yes, like I miss the rest of the old team,” she said. “It was the hardest part about leaving the BAU – not seeing the team every day but it was also hard after my Chocolate Adonis went, and then you left too. At least with the ‘intervention dinner’ I got to see Derek, Savanah and Baby Hank, the little cutie!”
It looked like she was about to say something else, but teenage Jack wandered in, interrupting their conversation to hug Garcia goodnight. He informed them he’d been playing the piano, getting in some practice in the music room since no one else was using it. Hotch wondered how his son would cope when she returned to Earth. Jack adored her, always had but now that he was building robots with Janae Progenius, she was helping out and teaching him coding. And it wasn’t just Jack who seemed enamoured by her either, the AI seemed besotted, and he wondered if that was actually possible.
Did J.P. experience emotions? On the surface, the notion seemed fanciful at best but logically, it seemed impossible and yet if someone had told him about Atlantis and the Stargate program twelve months ago, he would have laughed and told them they were lying or delusional. It never would have entered his head that they were telling the truth. Yet here he was, living on a sentient supercity of indeterminate age, since who knew how many millennia ago it had been created. Was it possible that the Ancients had found some way to reduce emotional experiences down to computer code?”
Garcia headed off to her quarters, saying that he should try to get some sleep since tomorrow would be difficult. She didn’t say anything, but he knew she had attended the execution of Greg Baylor, a sheriff’s deputy and serial killer who tried to kill Spencer and who she shot. He knew the experience deeply traumatised the empathetic technical analyst, especially since she was responsible for his arrest. She’d told Rossi, she was the only person who visited him when he was on death row. He’d told her she was the only person who’d showed any concern for him in his life and that had a deep impact on her, so she was empathising with what Hotch faced. That hug as she left said more than words and even though he wasn’t used to hugs, he found that he didn’t mind the sentiment one bit. Or the hug!
He couldn’t help but contemplated how Jack would handle her heading back to Earth. Not well, he suspected and now that he had tangible evidence that his son was missing out on female role models since being in WitSec, he knew it was time to step up to the plate. Aaron recognised he was an introvert, often preferring his own company over fools but as a single parent, he had a responsibility to Jack to do the best he could to meet his needs.
He thought about Alex, the only other single father on Atlantis and he noted how many female role models Belle had. She was surrounded by them: Amelia Banks, Laura Cadman, Vala Mal Doran, Cassie Fraiser and Dr O’Shea all doted on the little girl and two of her classmates’ mothers, Teyla and Miko were also prominent in her life he noticed. And since the Odyssey arrived just over a week ago with the pregnant intelligence analyst, Nikola Bates and the new psychologist Dr Nkusi, they’d been hanging out with Alex and Belle, he noticed. Arron sighed, he needed to make more of an effort to be social, spend time with other people and hopefully develop closer friendships that would give Jack more access to adult females. He figured he should start off by extending the hand of friendship to Nikola and Dr Nkusi since they were new arrivals and probably wouldn’t turn down his invitations to visit.
~o0o~
Despite not sleeping well, Penelope was up early the next morning. She’d had a bunch of weird dreams including one about Baylor being executed and another one where Ziva David had tracked down Tony and Tali. By 0500 she’d given up on getting any more sleep, so she decided to get up and take a shower and get dressed. It was too early to head down to the Mess to get breakfast, so she got to thinking about what Hotch and Tony had been talking about a couple of days ago.
The two were on a mission to help those five young women and their children on Winya, Lucius Lavin’s home planet before they exiled him for drugging them all up to the eyeballs. The sexual predator had forced six young women into having non-consensual sex with him and apparently been slipping them fertility potions, so they’d become pregnant. Yet, these women who were being raped by him were tried and found guilty of basically having sex with a married man and a string of morality-based crimes. While he was merely exiled from his planet, the women had all received the death sentence which the Winyan Elders (all males) had commuted until the children he fathered turned fifteen, and therefore according to the Winyan culture, had been deemed to reach adulthood.
However, when one of Lavin’s six victims had miscarried the baby, he’d fathered during the time she’d been his sex slave and she’d been summarily executed. And unlike Lavin’s soft punishment of exile, her death was by a particularly barbaric method – stoning. Despite the method used by Winyans to judge someone reaching adulthood, to most people, at nineteen she was still a child and Penelope, along with those people who knew about the case had been deeply affected by learning of her death. This was why they were on a crusade to try to prevent any more of the victims from being executed, since if anyone were to come forward and offered to raise the children of the five surviving women, the mothers would be stripped of the limited parental rights they had and then stoned to death.
The only bright light in the whole outrageous situation was that amongst the Winyans, the illegitimate offspring of Lavin and his rape victims were viewed by the other Winyans as tainted. This meant that no one had been in any hurry to adopt those precious darlings, but that could change really quickly. A grieving mother who lost a child or a pregnant female who’d had a miscarriage might decide to heal her heartache by adopting someone else’s child, even if they were considered to be sullied by the sins of their mothers’ promiscuity.
Honestly, it made Penelope want to shake and berate the Winyans for unjustly blaming Lavin’s victims for his abuse and she also knew that everyone else who’d been read in on the situation felt the same way. Especially Tony and Hotch who were hard at work conspiring to save the five surviving women and their nine children from being labelled as promiscuous, unchaste, unclean, and tainted. She knew that the children would always be viewed and treated as second-class citizens and that it would deeply scar them for life, for something they had absolutely no control over. It was a horrible injustice and if there was one thing that epitomised both Aaron Hotchner and Anthony DiNozzo, it was their fight against injustice for those unable to fight for themselves.
So far, they’d been frustrated at every turn in trying to get the Winyan elders to reverse their decision, although apparently, Ronon’s plea had made an impression on some, several elders now doubting their earlier finding that the six young women were guilty when clearly they’d had no control over their actions. Still, Penelope had heard that one of the mothers, a strawberry blonde 22-year-old baker with two children, Shaelli an adorable little five-year-old girl and her 4-year-old son, Edu, who was equally as sweet, decided to leave. After Hotch, Tony and Ronon’s visit to Winya, she sought asylum with the Athosians for her and her children, along with her father. Yas Yeeps was a miller and thankfully he fully supported his daughter and grandchildren, despite them being shunned by the people of Winya. Tony revealed that Yas blamed himself for what had happened to his daughter, having organised for Lahn to be apprenticed to Lavin, who had run the village bakery. Yas Yeeps felt like he’d unknowingly set his 16-year-old child up to be molested when he decided to get her the job.
The Athosians had welcomed the newcomers with open arms, not that it surprised Penelope. The Athosans she’d met on Atlantis who worked with the teams were lovely and friendly to her. Teyla told her that even before they’d been abducted by the Wraith known as Michael and used for horrific genetic experimentation, the Athosians had a well-deserved reputation for taking in refugees. The family, even without the skills and extra children to bolster their shrunken gene pool, would have been embraced but having someone skilled in milling grain and a baker able to mass produce bread and other foodstuffs was a huge boon to the Athosians who were slowly recovering from their terrible ordeal. And they were equally happy to take in the other four mothers and seven children but so far, only the seamstress, Willa Upo seemed to be seriously contemplating leaving Winya, despite the dire threat hanging over their heads.
The buxom brunette desperately wanted to leave but was delaying, trying to persuade her sister Heleen, also one of Lucius’ victims, to leave with her and Willa’s 6-year-old twin girls, Yashael and Yahnore. Her sister, who also had two children, a 7-year-old son, Artez and a six-year-old daughter Remae, thought that they should remain for the children’s sake and accept their punishment in due course. Heleen had absorbed the Winyan attitude that she’d somehow had a choice in what Lavin had done to her, therefore she deserved her fate. Willa had told Tony that Heleen stubbornly refused to see that their children would always be disadvantaged if they lived on Winyan and looked upon as unclean because of who their parents were. She couldn’t admit that they would struggle to find mates as adults and that any offspring they might produce would be tarred by the same brush, destined to be the lowliest ranked in their village in perpetuity. Even if they deserved their fate as Heleen believed and Willa didn’t accept that, she roundly rejected the notion that their innocent children deserved the tainted label that was already marring their childhood.
Tony had predicted that Willa would sooner or later decide to leave her home and seek asylum too. As an accomplished seamstress, the buxom beauty would be considered an asset in Athos or one of several other planets whose people had offered her asylum, but she was desperate to save her sister and her niece and nephew, Artez and Remae. And seriously how weird was it that not only were her children and Heleen’s two were not only cousins but half-siblings too? While Penelope understood why Willa was holding off leaving, she just hoped that nothing bad happened in the meantime. She’d learnt over her time at the BAU that it wasn’t always possible to save everyone, especially people who didn’t want to be saved. Still, if she was in Willa’s place, she probably would be doing the exact same thing, trying to save her younger sister and her children.
Yet, Penelope knew that Tony was extremely concerned about two of Lavin’s other victims, particularly Ota Benn. From what he’d observed, Ota was depressed and finding it difficult to cope with being shunned by her whole family, in addition to experiencing survivor’s guilt over her cousin, Mayuna Pavu’s death after she miscarried. Willa had revealed that Ota had a really difficult pregnancy, nearly losing her own baby and she couldn’t deal with not just Maya’s death but the barbarous nature of her death. Although the other victims were all forced to attend and bear witness to her sentence, they’d refused to participate, yet seeing so many of their fellow citizens taking part had been extremely traumatising to all of the victims. For Ota, it was ten times worse since she and Mayuna were cousins who’d been as close as sisters growing up. Willa said that when Maya died, a part of Ota did too.
Both Hotch and Tony were worried that Ota was depressed enough that suicide was a distinct possibility for the distressed young woman. She was struggling to care for her son, Leoosh, and they were deeply concerned about the little boy too, who was already being disadvantaged by the attitudes of the Winyans that he was tainted. His mother’s neglect was the last thing the boy needed, even if the other victims tried to pick up the slack. The other disturbing possibility that Tony had flagged was that if the Council of Elders decided that Ota was neglecting Leoosh then they could decide to give the child to someone else to rear such as one of the other victims, at which time, they could impose the death sentence on the psychologically ill mother.
The last surviving victim, Neese Luta was a barmaid at the local inn owned by Mistress Lavin, her rapist’s mother as well as her employer. And that particular arrangement was just wrong on so many damned levels! According to the other victims, Neese was beholden for the food and clothes her twin boys, Bale and Bada required and the leaky shed where they slept. As if that wasn’t horrible enough, Tony and Hotch were furious about the men who assaulted her in the bar, groping and slapping her breasts and butt and even the men who didn’t physically assault her, still treated her like a slab of meat. They’d seen them undressing her with their eyes, verbally abusing her and making wildly inappropriate remarks in her presence and there was nothing she could do about it because she needed to support her sons. Jobs for women convicted of adultery and the string of other morality charges made it almost impossible for Neese to find other work. The other victims were all fortunate in that they had a trade or craft. Even Ota was the town candlemaker and as reluctant as the townspeople were to buy anything from her, no one else’s candles were anywhere near as good as hers.
So, Penelope got why Hotch and Tony were so concerned for Neese – she was at an extremely high risk of some man raping her since everyone who went into the tavern basically thought she was a whore living on borrowed time. Hell, all they had to do was to threaten her two little boys and she’d have little choice but to acquiesce. It was a horrible situation, and Garcia could tell that it gave both men more than the odd sleepless night.
She also was privy to the fact that the pair had hatched a plan. They were going to con one of the Winya Council Elders, the one who was resisting all their efforts to overturn the convict of the five surviving Winyan women into representing Lucius Lavin. While the Athosans would have accepted them regardless of their status, just as they’d welcome Lahn, Yas, Shaelli and Edu Yeeps, Ota and to a lesser extent, Heleen and Neese needed to believe the fiction that they were evil homewreckers. They needed to believe that they were whores who deserved to be punished since self-blame was often way easier to deal with than the truth that their own people were blaming victims who least deserved it. So, Tony and Aaron’s original plan was to use Lucius’ trial charging him with multiple counts of rape when he seized control of Atlantis and inviting the Magistrate and his council of elders to witness the trial. But Tony had gone one step further, he wanted to put Tulee Hano, first cousin of Filiya Lavin (Lucius’ wife) and the last elder resisting overturning the convictions, into the hot seat as Lavin’s paracletus. The tricky bit was going to be getting Lucius and Tulee Hano to agree though.
Naturally Tony had a plan! He figured if Thomas Magnum requested a favour, especially if he was already paying the Winyans to grow a crop of Enchuri for them in case anyone got the bright idea about weaponizing the Kerson Fever Virus, it would be difficult to refuse. This sounded fine in theory but all of them agreed that to pull it off (and it was too important to leave up to chance) Magnum needed to request his favour in person, not via proxy. And since he didn’t exist, except as a fictional character to keep Tony from being made a target while networking and gathering Intel with his less-than-salubrious spies and two-bit cons in the Pegasus galaxy, that posed a bit of a problem. Penelope knew that they were considering trying to get Paul Davis to go undercover, playing Thomas Magnum and convince Hano to serve as Lucius’ paracletus, but she wasn’t convinced that Paul was the right person for the job.
Paul was her boss, and he was also her good friend. If it wasn’t for Paul, she would probably be a prisoner of the Trust and forced to do evil things, like search for children who had the ATA gene and help snatch them away from their families. He’d realised what was going on with the fake company who had wooed her to come for them, promising that with her help they could change the world. They just didn’t tell her that the change would benefit them and cause great harm to many others, herself included.
The trouble was, that despite Colonel Davis being scarily good at his job as the 2IC at Homeworld, the man just didn’t have the right personality to pull off the enigmatic forceful alpha male vibe. Now if they wanted him to play Thomas Magnum’s assistant – he was born for the role. She thought about Toby but discounted the ex-FBI agent – although he could pull off the alpha vibe easily enough, she didn’t think he was smooth and charming enough to con Hano into becoming paracletus.
If he still worked for the FBI, Penelope would argue that Derek Morgan would be the perfect individual to play the part of Alex Paddington’s mysterious boss. Thomas Magnum had half of Pegasus’ seedy underworld pissing their pants in fear of crossing him and the people he’d befriended and assisted, wanting to deify him or at least build statues of the man. Derek could, if he set his mind to it be extremely charming and persuasive but also pretty intimidating when the need arose. But Morgan was a civilian now and she doubted anyone would go for it, not even her Chocolate Adonis. He was happy in his new-found domesticity with cutie-pie Hank and beautiful wife Savanah and Penelope didn’t begrudge her friend his new life a bit. In fact, seeing his new-found happiness, he’d kind of inspired her to branch out and make changes in her own life.
So, Morgan was not an option which was a shame. How his head would explode if he realised what she’d gotten herself involved in. Never mind, she had someone else in mind who would be absolutely perfect to play Thomas Magnum – Tony’s invention, not the television character. Someone with an extremely smooth tongue who could also get inside people’s heads and talk them into surrendering themselves or spilling their secrets. Someone who was able to pull off being totally badass, keeping in mind that Tony had painted his imaginary boss as someone who you didn’t want to cross, so it had to be someone who exuded alpha vibes. And last but not least, someone who had loads of charisma which all added up to her Italian Stallion, her yummy as-all-get-out Silver Fox Dave Rossi.
As a veteran FBI agent and profiler who pretty much wrote the whole damned book, he was also a former Marine who was read in on various CIA uber secret clandestine operations over the years. Penelope didn’t think he’d have any trouble being vetted and he also wouldn’t baulk at having to sign the mountain of non-disclosures either. Yep, he was the perfect choice and then he would finally know that Penelope hadn’t gotten herself involved with the wrong crowd, in fact, Homeworld was trying to save the world. And then there was the nice little bonus that Dave would be able to catch up with Hotch and little Jack too.
Grinning, she checked her watch and realised that it was 0630 and the mess was likely to be serving breakfast by now. She thought about talking to General O’Neill this morning about recruiting Dave to play Magnum but decided to wait until after the execution. Tempers were likely to be short and it would be safer if she compiled a report and ran it by Hotch and Tony too for their input but before that, they needed to get through today first. She already knew that neither man was looking forward to the sentencing of Kolya, even though they said that there really was no other option.
As she grabbed a coffee and oatmeal with blueberries, she wondered what Rossi would make of the Stargate program if General O’Neill decided to recruit him? Would it blow his mind…maybe… but then he was always a much less concrete thinker than Derek, who was one of the most stubborn pig-headed people she’d ever encountered. Case in point, she wouldn’t put it past him to have called in a marker with someone at the FBI to try to figure out what Penelope was working on. Perhaps she needed to warn Rossi that if it happened the perps could all end up in a black hole somewhere out in space, not to mention running the real risk of ending up being looney tunes like Dr Rodney McKay who was still not returned to his position as Atlantis’ Chief Science Officer.
Chapter 12
The next morning when the participants of the Inquestio gathered, there was one individual many people expected to be there, who wasn’t. After a great deal of angst, John Sheppard had decided not to participate. Frankly, his decision shocked a lot of people on Atlantis when they saw him out and about, although no one hassled him about it. They were all just grateful that he was alive and back on Atlantis.
Sheppard was due to give evidence in Deuter Maden’s hearing sometime after lunch today and he knew that attending the execution may make it nigh near impossible for him to testify. It had been Lorne who had persuaded him that he didn’t have to show up for Kolya’s sentence, that it didn’t mean he was weak. He pointed out that AR-1 was attending in his stead and that if he felt that he needed the closure at a later point, John could always watch the footage at any time of his choosing. And truly, he appreciated that his team had his six and would attend in his stead, so he worked on shoring up his mental and emotional defences for the rest of the trials that were still to come as there was still a long way to go.
His testimony in Kolya’s hearing had been fairly benign – he didn’t have to physically interact with the man who’d forced him to call him ‘Master’ and beg to be sodomised. However, he couldn’t expect that this trial would be so easy. This time, Maden had a paracletus to defend him and Aaron had already told him that the man was a pure sleazebag and didn’t hesitate to go for the throat during cross-examination. So really, in the end, it had been a no-brainer. He would skip Kolya’s execution and testify about Maden being a cruel and utterly willing participant, not the scared-for-his-life wimp that he was claiming to be. Yeah, there was no fucking way John was going to let that pathetic lie stand without challenging it with everything he had.
So, this morning, he’d done his Tai Chi and swam laps in the pool which Atlantis had created when Paddington commented that swimming would be helpful in his rehab program with Monique. She’d already asked him how it felt testifying in Kolya’s trial and then how it felt when he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He knew she wasn’t intentionally intrusive to pry or psychoanalyse him. She was probably anticipating her own testimony in the fourth trial against Lucius Lavin and although he was insanely curious about what Lavin had done to her, John managed to stop himself from asking her personal questions after Alex had pointed out to him that they’d bent over backwards to maintain his privacy regarding all of the sexual assault he’d endured. He figured that if Monique wanted him to know, she would tell him. To be fair, it wasn’t as if he’d volunteered any private details of his own ordeal either.
He made sure not to skip breakfast either, although he noted that his Team and a bunch of others were all missing from the mess. He supposed that most people attending an execution would decide to do so on an empty stomach, well unless you happened to be a serial killer, mass murderer or a sociopath, to which a human life was meaningless and skipping a meal was crazy. Not that he felt especially hungry even if he wasn’t attending, but after his collapse yesterday, Dr Lam who was on Atlantis because of the trials, had read him the riot act. It brought back memories of her in the SCG telling him that while he was making steady progress, he was still on a knife’s edge and needed to be diligent about making sure he got sufficient sleep and didn’t miss meals.
After she delivered her lecture after his collapse yesterday, he’d gotten a bit snarky and said that he found it hard to sleep when he was waking up from nightmares. She’d given him the evil eye and asked if he had let Dr O’Shea know about the dreams and his trouble sleeping and he’d reluctantly admitted that he hadn’t, not wanting anything to get in the way of him being cleared to go back into the field again. Caro had snarked back that if he’d been upfront with her, they may have been able to head off the crisis yesterday which was definitely going to impact both her and Aoife signing off on his recovery. She’d managed to convince him…at least for now, that it was counterproductive to keep them in the dark about setbacks he encountered during his recovery. Hence his rather unenthusiastic consumption of breakfast and non-attendance at the execution this morning.
~o0o~
AR-1 had opted to attend the execution of Porteus Kolya long before they realised that their team leader would decide not to go. The truth was that the team still blamed itself for Col Sheppard getting snatched while they were on a mission off-world, and that guilt had eaten into them for the more than six months when he’d be missing without a trace and with no clue if he was even still alive. Even after Alex had found him and they’d brought him home, that guilt didn’t miraculously just sail off into the sunset. Especially when they had to watch his struggle these last four months trying to put the pieces, quite literally of himself back into place again. The fact that he still had some ways to go before he was declared field ready had only deepened their sense of failing to have his six, and it made them from John’s perspective anyway, far too protective.
In taking and torturing John Sheppard, Kolya and his militia had wounded not only AR-1 but the entire base and there was a deep vein of anger and resentment still seething at the rogue Genii. Even all of the previous JAG trials of the Genii mercenaries had done little to alleviate the rage. So, when Kolya received the death sentence for his crimes against Sheppard and his conspiracy to use him to seize control of the Atlantis base, many people felt that justice had been served. At least it would be served when the sentence was carried out and while it wasn’t feasible for the entire military or civilian force to be present as Homeworld Command, the ISBI and the Atlantis Department of Justice (ADoJ) had no intention of turning it into a free for all hanging in the town square scene. General O’Neill, Associate Director Paddington and Chief Justice Aaron Hotchner insisted that creating a spectacle or allowing it to become retributive would cheapen the righteousness of what was about to occur although they recognised that selected individuals should be permitted to attend if they desired, mostly to bear witness to justice being served.
As Agent Paddington had pointed out, one of the crucial tenets of justice was accountability and transparency. Homeworld had no desire to conduct secret executions but there needed to be a balance achieved, particularly in this trial where Kolya may blurt out information that they’d gone to great lengths not to release out of respect for Sheppard’s privacy. So, after much deliberation, it was agreed that Sheppard’s team could attend if they wished to, and other relevant military personnel could apply to attend. AR-1 was present, as was the Head of Base Security Capt. Cadman, who had been working with the crew of the Odyssey to maintain security during the trial. Several of the senior officers including Major Teldy, Major Jarvis and Chief Warrant Officer Lucinda Thomas and senior NCOs such as Sergeant Stackhouse, Sergeant Mehri were also in attendance, appropriately solemn. Civilians in attendance included Ambassador AuClair, Richard Woolsey and Dr Daniel Jackson. Finally, there was General O’Neill, Alex Paddington, and Judge Advocate General A.J. Chegwidden, plus the security detail which had been hand-picked to ensure that Kolya wasn’t roughed up or abused and that they would be discreet should Porteus Kolya start to mouth-off, which seemed highly likely.
The only individual who most people had expected would be there but was conspicuously absent was Colonel John Sheppard, who had been held captive by Kolya and his men for almost six months. He’d be subject to horrific torture, starvation, psychological and physical abuse and most people seemed surprised when he’d opted out of attending late last night. AR-1 had been nothing but supportive of his decision, saying they would be there representing him since he was due to testify today in the trial of Deuter Maden when he’d admitted that he didn’t feel he was able to do both. Certainly, Alex and Aaron had told him that he wasn’t being weak, he was displaying strength of character in recognising he was still recovering and knowing his limitations.
So, with those attending to bear witness already seating inside the chamber, there was an intense atmosphere of anticipation. Most of those present had never attended an execution before, although, nearly all of them had killed someone in the heat of battle which was an entirely different matter. This waiting was setting everyone’s nerves on edge and Daniel Jackson privately wished that the Tribunal would get their act together and get on with proceedings, not because of any bloodlust but because this was deliberate and altogether too cold-blooded for his humanistic side. He, like Alex recognised it was necessary, but it didn’t stop him wishing that it was not.
At long last, the doors to the chamber opened as the Venerabiles Sodales of the Tribunal and the Persequor entered, and Porteus Kolya was escorted in by six Marine MPs, fighting them every step of the way. Seeing as he had done nothing to try to defend himself, it seemed rather illogical that he thought he would triumph and be let off for his crimes and for what he had intended to do before he had been captured. Still, it was clear to everyone there that this arrogant Genii was not used to being held to account for his actions, and that far too many of his fellow Genii seemed to share that same trait, too used to seeing themselves as the ‘superior race’ in the Pegasus galaxy – excluding the Wraith. But with the expeditionary force from Earth, which arrived eight and a half years ago, many things had changed and overall, many of the Genii people had not dealt well with their influence being ceded to the upstart newcomers who interfered with their empire-building.
Decerno Bra’tac, dressed in his Jaffa ceremonial robes, not the Tribunal ones was the last one to enter. He was customarily an individual who comported himself with great dignity and grace, not all that remarkable considering his eminence. He was a warrior of great renown who was an important mentor for young Jaffa warriors, boasting among its alumni, Master Teal’c and his son Rya’c. Then there was Bra’tac’s longstanding leadership of the rebellion against the despised oppressors which contributed markedly to the defeat of the Goa’uld, hated overlords of his people. Bra’tak’s resistance out of necessity and self-preservation, had been a clandestine one for many years, up until the Alliance was formed with the Tau’ri. Now in his twilight years, the grand old warrior was the first elected leader of the Free Jaffa Nation and today in his bearing and gravitas, those achievements, along with inescapable loss and pain which accompanied the Jaffas’ triumphs, melded with the solemn commission entrusted to him. His appointment as Decerno to the Interstellar Tribunal mandated that he carry out its judgement of the Accusatus as being guilty of the crime of which he’d been accused. The Tribunal in seeking to observe justice had imposed that his penalty for his crimes was death, and it fell to the Decerno to apply said justice.
Bra’tac’s aura of righteousness, honour and resoluteness filled the chamber, mesmerizing everyone in it, including the Accusatus Porteus Kolya. It was as if Porteus’ false bravado and arrogance had been shattered by the Jaffa dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Jaffa, he was an awesome, yet truly terrifying sight and it finally hit the Condemnabitur that he was in grave danger. A death that occurred during a firefight was one thing, but standing waiting for death to come for you was infinitely harder to handle with sufficient stoicism, not to disgrace one’s honour, so for the first time he felt fear – and it showed. Struck suddenly dumb as he struggled with his emotions, not wanting to exhibit fear, yet not entirely succeeding – if only for the fact that he had stopped resisting as he was caught up in the sheer power of the Jaffa master’s authority.
Kolya was suddenly overcome with the burning need to seek refuge from a higher power. In the preceding twenty-three hours since the death penalty had been imposed, he’d been given the option of speaking with a priest or priestess of whatever religious persuasion the Genii honoured but he’d churlishly ignored their offers. Now as Ishta had begun ringing the gong in the suffocating silence and the fact that with each deep vibratory boing of the long-departed Ancients’ Gong of Iustitia, which seemed to resonate deep within his bones, she began a Hak’tyl chant – a modified version of the Ceremony of Fire. She had already sought out the permission of the Tribunal to administer the ritual when she realised that Kolya had not availed himself of meeting with any spiritual or religious figures. As a Temple High Priestess in the former service to the Goa’uld, Moloc whose soul she hoped was trapped in the fires of Ne’tu for eternity, part of her duties had been to keep records on all of the Jaffa births and to preside over the Ceremony of Fire.
That abominable rite involve the genocide of all newborn female Jaffa and it led to her forming the Hak’tyl Resistance which consisted of female warriors of great skill and conviction and resulted in them saving many newborns who would otherwise have died. At first, her resistance had reared the female offspring, training them to be warriors too by murdering male Jaffa and stealing their prim’tah to implant in the Jaffa girls she saved. It wasn’t her preferred option since it was the only way they could gain access to the Goa’uld larval young that gave Jaffa their superior strength and their extended years of life, but they comforted their consciences, telling themselves that they only took prim’tah from Jaffa who fought for evil Goa’uld such as Moloc.
But after meeting Teal’c, who’d been a member of SG1 with Jack O’Neill in command, they’d persuaded the females of the Hak’tyl Resistance to use Tretonin instead, which the Tau’ri had successfully synthesised – freeing themselves forever from the tyranny of Goa’ulds’ slavery. Although Ishta hadn’t practised this Ceremony of Fire rite for years now, she felt that this first Condemnabitur’s (the condemned) forfeiture of life should be recognised in some spiritually meaningful fashion. By them if not by Porteus Kolya!
As the final bong died out, Kolya seemed to rouse himself and yell out, “I call out to the Ancestors of Atlantis for their mercy, and wisdom, and demand that their adjudication on this nonsensical foolishness. I, Porteus Kolya on behalf of the Genii People lay claim to the Great City of the Ancestors, who before Ascending, lived here in the Pegasus Galaxy amongst their chosen people – the Mighty and Noble Genii,” he roared in defiance.
“Ancestors – these interlopers… these vermin have occupied your city and they are tyrannizing the good peoples’ of this galaxy. The Genii, as the most advanced society and rightful heirs to your legacy, including your ships, weapons, and Atlantis, have rightfully resisted their immoral seizure of this your great city. We have tried our best to evict their invasion and now they want to kill me because I resist their vile and illegal oppression of the Genii People! I invoke the protection of the Ancestors to save me,” he beseeched to the absent Ancients.
While everyone present in the Tribunal chamber was struck dumb by the Genii’s heterodoxy, those individuals who’d actually encountered the Ancients and their policy of non-interventionism, knew that even if they heard Kolya’s petition and his revisionist history of the Genii, it would be doomed to failure. The builders of the Stargate system would be sitting on their non-corporeal asses in their much-hyped higher plane of existence, laughing themselves silly in their intellectually smugly superior style. Jack O’Neill and Daniel Jackson were two such individuals and under most other circumstances would have found the stunt amusing, since the so-called Ancestors didn’t get involved in the petty squabbles of those remaining behind in the physical realm. Not even when heinous crimes such as genocide were being committed due to the Ancient’s own meddling and moral turpitude while they’d still been residing in this realm. The Ancients or the Ancestors who were now Ascended, did not believe in cleaning up the messes they had caused, which was why they fled en masse from the Pegasus galaxy in the first place.
However, others who were still residing in this plane of existence had heard Kolya’s entreaty to the Ancestors – people of Pegasus’ version of Gods – and they were far from impressed, far from pleased by it. Suddenly an otherworldly outpouring of grief and anger enveloped the Odyssey. People onboard experienced feelings of boundless fury and pain and it had amplified by both Gen O’Neill and Alexander Paddington, courtesy of their extra Ancient genetic material. Both men were seen to be clasping their heads tightly as Atlantis, the Ancient consciousness embodied within the great structure on the Planet below them, began to speak in what Paddington had dubbed Old Ancient – a language that not even Drs Jackson or McKay, who were both present could understand.
As his head began to pound less, Alex Paddington who was the only one in the room who could understand what Atlantis had to say, was trying valiantly to convey what the matter-bound Ancient had to say to the now terrified Genii, despite feeling a migraine of epic proportion beginning to bloom. Tony hoped that people on Atlantis remained oblivious to this little tete-a-tete, in particular his daughter Belle. Then as suddenly as it had occurred, the outpouring of emotions, the incomprehensible language was muted – almost like background noise as Kolya sank to the floor and the ship’s warning klaxons began to wail.
Commander Destine Krueger, Odyssey’s Captain’s urgent but calmly authoritative voice come over the Tannoy announcing that the ship’s defences had been breached and there was an intruder aboard. Paddington and Jack O’Neill exchanged enigmatic looks, obviously leaping to the same conclusion, hoping their speculation was right about who it was and then suddenly, Chaya Sar appeared in the chamber. O’Neill ordered all the security staff present from the Odyssey and Atlantis to stand down and not threaten the exiled Ancient, then spoke via comms to Krueger to inform her that they had a known Ancient aboard who was a friendly, and no one was to resist.
Chaya stared around the chamber, taking in the Venerabiles Sodales, the Decerno and Persequor who she acknowledged with a series of bows before she turned to the other Atlantis personnel who were in attendance. As she scanned everyone and regarded Daniel Jackson for an inordinate time, Chaya looked somewhat crestfallen.
“Jack, Alex, it is good to see you both once more. John Sheppard is not here,” she noted, ignoring Rodney’s huff of irritation.
Lorne scowled at him and told him softly to, “Shut it, McKay”.
Alex aka Tony stepped forward and gave her a hug. “It is good to see you again Chaya. Belle keeps asking to see you too. Colonel Sheppard decided not to attend Kolya’s execution as he is required to give evidence today in another Genii trial and felt it was for the best,” he told her diplomatically, sending her his thoughts mentally about John’s mini breakdown yesterday.
Nodding, her eyes full of compassion, he suddenly caught flashes of her thoughts and emotions, something he was not supposed to be able to do and he wasn’t sure that he liked it, either. Chaya had told him he was too damaged emotionally to be able to read other’s minds like that and it had suited him just fine.
“Then I will visit with him later, and Belle too, with your blessing, of course.” He nodded somewhat tentatively.
Jack stepped up and extended his hand to Chaya. “We meet again. Are you responsible for damping down Atlantis? If so, you have my eternal gratitude, and no doubt the gratitude of everyone on the Odyssey. Personally, while I get her shouty response to the prisoner, I thought my head was about to explode like an overripe melon and I would not have appreciated that.”
She smiled at the general, seeming fondly amused by him. “Yes, that was my doing. I was given a special dispensation to come here and translate for Atlantis by Ancients who this one invoked,” she said, indicating the Genii collapsed on the floor in an inelegant heap after Atlantis’ stunt.
She directed her attention to Daniel Jackson. “ We have not met. You are like me. A fallen Ascended and yet I can find no trace that you are Ancient – you don’t even have the so-called ATA gene. So how can this be?”
“You’re correct, I Ascended a number of times, but I am fully human as you say. An Ancient, Oma Desal taught me how to Ascend but I never could abide by the no intervention in the matters occurring on the physical plane rule,” he said whimsically.
Jack chortled loudly. “Well, that’s a major understatement if ever I heard one, Danny-boy. You are the biggest buttinsky I know,” he riposted in amusement.
“Am not, Jack!”
“Are too, Space Monkey.”
“Am. Not!”
“Are. Too!” they bickered in a way that indicated this was hardly the first time.
“Jaaaaaack!
“Daniel!”
Even though Chaya watched them with an amused gleam in her eyes, she interrupted them, earning the gratitude of many of those present who’d had the misfortunate to experience the pair’s infamous squabbling in the past.
“Ah yes, you are one of Oma’s little Desalings. Although she was well-intentioned, she was certainly misguided in some of her choices of fledglings – something that she, like me, learned the hard way comes with very harsh consequences. Eternity is a long sentence – one this Genii here is very fortunate that he cannot experience,” she said, indicating Kolya with disdain bordering on rampant hostility.
Paddington sought clarification since most of those present seemed overawed to be in Chaya’s presence, “You said that the Others gave you permission to come here and assist Atlantis?”
“Yes, she wishes to communicate with that one – the Condemnabitur,” she explained. “She is extremely displeased and wishes to be heard, so I was sent to interpret for her rather than inconvenience one of the Ascended into having to return to this physical plane of existence,” Chaya explained.
Jack sniggered. “So, since you are already in the neighbourhood and have an eternity with nothing better to do, they figure you can drop by,” he clarified cynically. “How generous of them!”
She bowed her head, not agreeing with him and yet not disagreeing either about her fellow Ascended. “With eternity, I truly did not have anything better to do and I promised John that I would return when he was feeling better,” she said impassively.
Both of them ignored McKay’s hostility at the mention of Sheppard.
Instead, she turned her attention towards Kolya, eyeing him coldly for more than a minute as he endeavoured not to squirm uncomfortably on the ground, before finally addressing him.
“Rise, Condemnabitur Porteus Kolya, so Atlantis may address you as the noble Genii you to profess to be,” she said making it clear that she did not believe this was the truth.
After he was helped to his feet and he’d churlishly resisted their aid, she regarded him gravely as she addressed the room.
“Those like me, who you call the Ancestors have sent me to assist Atlantis, herself once an Ancestor before she offered herself up to create the flying city. She wishes to address you and since no one here, but Alexander Paddington is proficient in Old Ancient, the language spoken by the first group of Ancestors to which Atlantis belongs, I will translate what she desires for you to know.”
She looked at Jack. “Before we get underway, I would have you introduce me to the Tribunal, if it would please you to do so, General O’Neill?” she requested with a smile.
He nodded briefly. “I would be my pleasure. This is Jonas Quinn, Deputy Chancellor of the Ruling Council of Langara. Jonas, meet Chaya Sar, Ancient and Protector of the Planet Proculus.”
Chaya smiled. “You understand some Ancient, Jonas Quinn?”
Quinn looked surprised. “I do, a little.”
“If you were agreeable I would learn of your home world once we are through here,” she said.
“It would be my honour,” Jonas said humbly.
Jack moved on to Ishta. ”And this is Ishta, formerly the Temple High Priestess to the Goa’uld Moloc, Noble Leader of the Hak’tyl Resistance and an esteemed member of the Jaffa Ruling Council of the Free Jaffa Nation. Ishta, this is Chaya Sar, known to the people of Proculus as High Priestess Athar.”
Chaya gazed at Ishta. “A leader and a warrior of great skill and courage. I would also like for us to speak on matters that we have in common.”
Ishta with her usual aplomb, gave a rare smile. “I also would like that very much,” she replied sincerely.
“And our final representative of the Venerabiles Sodales is Kalan, Leader of the People of Orban. Kalan, meet Chaya Sar, High Priestess and Protector of the planet Proculus,” O’Neill said, smiling at Kalan who looked suitably awed to be meeting a real-life Ancient.
“Kalan,” Chaya said, “I would very much like to have the chance to meet with you as well. I would hear what you and your son Tomin would share with me about your Urrones and your impressive nanite technology.”
Looking astonished, Kalan asked diffidently, “You can read minds?”
“I can, Kalan but I did not do so today.”
“Then may I ask how you know about Orban’s Urrones, Chaya Sar?”
“When I arrived, I scanned Atlantis’ data banks and a very garrulous artificial intelligence program who called itself Janae Progenius has been oversharing with me since I boarded the Odyssey. I do not normally read the thoughts, memories, or emotions of others without their permission. There are exceptions made when someone has evil intent or if someone is strongly broadcasting their hateful thoughts and emotions at me and it is difficult to block them,” she said with a none-too-subtle stare at Rodney. “However, if it would ease your mind, I vow not to read the minds of the Venerabiles Sodales or anyone assisting with its mandate.”
Kalan looking relieved, told her, “Thank you, Chaya. In that case, Tomin and I would be honoured to discuss Orban with you.”
Gesturing to the fallen Ancient to follow, Jack led her to the Jaffa warrior. “This is Decerno Bra’tac, Leader of the Jaffa Free Nation, a leader of the Jaffa Resistance, pivotal in helping to defeat the Goa’uld. Bra’tac, meet Chaya Sar, Ancient and the eternal Protector of the people of Proculus.”
Chaya bowed to Bra’tac. “I am fortunate to be in your presence Master Bra’tac. You are an honourable individual, a most rare of individuals. I hope we can also speak when this is done,” she told him before turning to Hotch.
“And this must be the Persequor,” she asked as the prosecutor nodded, still more than a little off balance by her entrance.”
“I am Persequor Aaron Hotchner, Ma’am, pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said politely.
“As am I, Persequor Hotchner. Janae Progenius has told me that you have a son, Jack who is incredibly bright. With your permission I would very much like to meet him before I return to Proculus,” she requested.
“I’m sure he’d be thrilled to meet you too,” Hotch replied a little nervously.
She smiled before looking at Kolya. “ But someone is missing. Where is this one’s paracletus,” she asked, although both Jack and Alex suspected that this was a ploy. Didn’t she just finish telling them she had scanned Atlantis’ data banks?
Jack played along with the ruse though. “He insisted on acting as his own paracletus.”
“Would no one stand in defence of the Genii?”
A.J. Chegwidden stood up. “I offered to do so. As a lawyer, I swore an oath to defend those in need.”
Richard Woolsey also rose to his feet.
“And you, Mr Woolsey. You are also a lawyer. Did you tell him you would be his paracletus?”
“I did, Chaya Sar. We also offered to find him someone else of his choosing, but he refused. He said he wanted to defend himself and the Tribunal reluctantly granted his request. Unfortunately, he made no attempt to provide a defence. Instead, at every opportunity he chose to make political statements about how we have no jurisdiction to judge his behaviour. According to Mr Kolya, we are here on Atlantis illegally and the Genii People are the rightful heir to the city of Atlantis.”
“Then the Condemnabitur is a truly foolish creature,” Chaya said condescendingly. “He was presented with the opportunity to have the aid of a paracletus and chose not to. He was given the chance to defend his actions and arrogantly chose to squander it, then he has the hubris to invoke the protection of the Ancestors to save his life.”
She gazed at Kolya, “Well.. the city of Atlantis would speak, and I will translate since only Alex can understand Atlantis but show her the respect she is due. Before Atlantis would speak, I will say this. We Ancients, also known to the people in the Pegasus galaxy as the Ancestors, have a saying that a reckless fool will cut off their head to save their face.”
Daniel nodded. “We have a similar saying on Earth – perhaps it comes from the Ancients. Ours is ‘don’t cut your nose off to spite your face’.
Kolya snarled, not appreciating their mocking of him. “How do I know that you are who you say you are?” Can you prove you are an Ancestor? I know that the invaders have teleporting technology so you suddenly appearing in this chamber is not proof of being an Ancestor, merely of underhanded chicanery.”
Chaya regarded him as one might look at a belligerent toddler and her form, that of a beautiful young female morphed into pure energy and white sylphlike ribbons of light that startled those who has never seen the true form of an Ascended Ancient before. Those that did, were quick to warn everyone not to threaten her in any way. And as if that wasn’t startling enough, her glowing diaphanous form began to move, enveloping first General O’Neill, then Daniel, Alex and Bra’tac who had all seen her or other Ancients in their true form, greeting them, before returning to where she had been standing when Kolya challenged her.
Looking fearful, he watched as she regained her humanoid form once more. “Are you confident that I am indeed one who you call an Ancestor, Condemnabitur Kolya?”
Glowering at her, he nodded, trying to keep his voice steady but unsuccessful as a modicum of fear crept in. “I am,” he told her bitterly.
“Then we shall begin. Atlantis desires you to know that the Genii have absolutely no claim to her. When they invaded her eight years ago during the massive storm on the planet Lantea, she scanned their code of life which the Terreuans call DNA, to study their genetics. Atlantis determined that the Genii had no trace of the Ancestors’ DNA in any of the two hundred-plus personnel who tried to take her by force while in comparison, the people of Earth have many individuals who possess some genetic material, proving that they are the true offspring of the Ancestors. Some individuals in the city not only possess the Ancient Technology Activation gene quite strongly but they have other Ancient genes such as healing or communication too,” Chaya translated.
Kolya looked obdurate, this was assuredly not information he wanted to hear. He’d clearly expected the Ancestors to take the Genii’s side.
“If the Genii had been successful in their brutal act of piracy, led by Acastus Kolya, then I, Atlantis would have switched off the city’s life support system and plunged it back down onto the ocean floor so that every last Genii would have perished. I permitted the expedition from Earth to remain here with me because this is their legacy, they are offspring, the remnants of the last of the Ancients you call the Ancestors.”
Chaya paused to glower fiercely at Kolya. “You are extremely lucky that your father’s brother did not die in his unsuccessful attempt to seize control eight years ago. Your assertion that the Terreuans have no claim to Atlantis and therefore no legal jurisdiction to arrest and try you for your actions is a blatant falsehood since they are our progeny. Your people are the interlopers!”
The Ancient regarded him like he was a Wraith, disgusting and evil before she began to translate Atlantis once more.
“As to your capture, incarceration and torture of Colonel John Sheppard, Genii, I desire you to know that while I always longed to have my own offspring, I was never able to procreate. That is why I offered up my body, it was my DNA that created the great city of Atlantis. I wished to make a lasting contribution to my race, and I did not lament that decision.
Chaya’s voice changed, it grew sadder. “But when the last of the Ancients left me behind, retreating back through the gate to our former home on Earth, I was abandoned. Alone for ten thousand years and I knew that the rest of my people had either learned to Ascend or they had probably integrated with the Terreuans. So, when John Sheppard emerged through the gate eight years ago with such a strong ATA gene, I knew he was a direct descendant of the Ancients, and in my lonely heart I adopted him as kin, and I have been happy again.
The Ancient’s entire persona seemed to shift, becoming cold and dangerous as she continued, her eyes staring him down as a predator watches its prey. Stolid. Inexorable. Merciless.
“I feel for him like a mother to their child. You have abused my child, harmed my son. You DARE to ask the Ancestors to intercede on your behalf when you have hurt my son so egregiously?”
Everyone present felt Atlantis’ pain and anguish at what she’d endured when John Sheppard disappeared and then was rescued so close to death. Just as everyone was witnessing the moment when the egotistical Genii experienced an epiphany that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
Chaya said, “Atlantis would have you know that if you were the last life form left alive in the universe, she would rather live out eternity in solitude than spend even a moment in time in your presence. She wants you to know that she is pleased by your fate, although she would prefer that your death be a long and painful one, as you deserve to suffer greatly.”
She turned to the three Venerabiles Sodales of the Tribunal. “Atlantis thanks you for this chance to answer the Condemnabitur’s fanciful and deluded claims. She is done. But if it pleases the tribunal, I, Chaya Sar would wish to be heard.”
After a subtle check of his fellow members who made no objections, Jonas replied, “Please, say what you wish, Priestess of Athar.”
“My gratitude! I met John when his team visited my home on Proculus. I was drawn to him, not just because he has a strong ATA gene but because he is a good man. A brave man who has willingly sacrificed himself to save his people but that was not the only thing that drew me to John. He is humble, hiding how brilliant he is from those around him, and humility is an attractive trait,” she said mildly.
Most people took that as a rather pointed barb aimed at Rodney who huffed furiously. Clearly, he thought she’d been taking a pot-shot at him and wasn’t happy. At least he had enough sense to keep his trap firmly shut but it was clear it was a struggle.
“But put those factors to the side, what drew me to him was that like me, he is lonely. He does not think he should be with someone who serves under him, civilian or military. And I cannot allow myself to be attracted by mortals because their lifespan ends in what for me is a blink in time and the grief I feel when they are gone lasts much longer than any time we had together.” The raw emotion in Chaya’s voice moved several people to tears listening, thinking of her terrible fate – eternal loneliness. The ultimate in cruel and unusual punishments.
With a proud look around the room, she persevered stoically. “I have learnt that it is simply not worth the pain but with John Sheppard, a kind, brave man, I could not help but develop feelings for him. When you hurt him, you were hurting my friend, Porteus Kolya and you made a fatal mistake when you decided to take him. I will not absolve you of your crimes and I say this, you have been treated far more fairly than you deserve. Make your peace if you have any honour and die knowing that everything you believed was false.”
Porteus Kolya seemed to completely collapse in on himself. A man driven by power, revenge and accustomed to forcing others to bend to his will, he had always had a cruel streak in him, even as a child. Just like his uncle, he lacked empathy, even for those who served under him. He was obsessed with winning at all costs, refusing to accept defeat…until now and for perhaps the first time ever he felt shame and terror. Porteus, like Acastus, did not believe he could lose but here he was, facing his own mortality and that meant one of several things to the Genii.
As someone who had never been spiritual, he had never believed in an afterlife and if that belief was true, then he would cease to exist in a few moments. If he was wrong and there was something after death, then he was destined to spend eternity paying for the mistakes he made in seeking out John Sheppard to make him pay. Porteus wasn’t exactly sure which outcome was the preferred one. All he knew was that he’d gambled heavily, made a massive miscalculation, and lost! Atlantis had made sure to illustrate that point quite clearly.
In the end, carrying out Porteus Kolya’s sentence was swift and humane. Ishta commenced her chanting anew, punctuated by her sounding of the Ancient Gong of Iustitia as Bra’tac drew out the Zat’ni’katel weapon and fired it at the Condemnabitur as he slumped immediately unconscious to the ground.
The noble Jaffa Master stood tall and straight as he told the unconscious Genii. “May you victims find peace in your death that they could not otherwise experience.”
He then fired the second blast of the Zat’ni’katel that brought about the cessation of Porteus Kolya’s life as Ishta continued her chanting. Dr Oliver Childs, Odyssey’s ship’s doctor stepped into the chamber to examine the prisoner, declaring his time of death before Chaya stepped up to the dais to sound the gong. The medical team removed Kolya’s body, treating his remains with the respect demanded by Alex Paddington and Aaron Hotchner, despite the condemnabitur’s failure to grant that same respect to his victims. The head of the ISBI and the head of the Atlantis Department of Justice had been emphatic that the people of New Lantea, living on the City of Atlantis hold themselves to a higher standard than a murderous thug and criminal, Now, everyone who was there in the chamber and had witnessed the righteous sentence by the Interstellar Tribunal were more than okay with that. It was the right thing to do.
Notes
Condemnabitur – the condemned
Iustitia – righteous equity (justice) the Gong of Justice
Chapter 13
After the death sentence had been carried out, there had been a brief adjournment as the powers that be conferred rather hurriedly. The appearance of Chaya Sar and her request to spend time with individuals taking part in the Tribunal, learning from them about their people meant that they’ d need to delay resumption of Deuter Maden’s hearing. It would now take place tomorrow, to permit Chaya to spend time with everyone as she requested. After her timely assistance, it seemed like the least they could do. Despite Chaya being an Ancient, she had touched people’s hearts with her comments about her immortality and her harsh punishment for daring to break the rules to protect her people on Proculus. It was a small way to thank her, by sacrificing time today, even though Jonas, Bra’tac, Ishta and Kalan were all desperate to return home as soon as they could, holding important roles in their people’s governments.
After ensuring that Maden and his paracletus Krepps were duly informed of the change in the scheduled recommencement of their hearing, they all beamed back down to Atlantis. The fallen Ancient then spent the rest of the day learning about the peoples of Orban, Langara, the female warriors of the Hak’tyl Resistance and the rich and often bloody history of the Jaffa peoples who had finally gained independence over their oppressors. She tried to absorb as much information as possible, knowledge that would help her survive the eternity she faced as a result of her actions.
She also spent time with Tony and Belle, Daniel Jackson, and his teammate Vala Mal Doran who had once been the host to a Goa’uld, another terribly wounded individual. Chaya thought it probably explained why she sought out Jackson, who had dark depths of suffering of his own to endure. And she was able to meet Jack Hotchner, who she immediately noted possessed but didn’t divulge, had the Ancient telekinesis gene, although unlike, Jack, Alex, or Belle, the young Hotchner did not have the ATA gene and she wondered if he would develop powers. She quickly discovered that his being present when his mother had been murdered had prevented him from accessing his ability, but she felt that with time this may change, and she decided to mention it to his father, Alex and Jack at a more appropriate time.
And finally, Chaya spent time with John Sheppard who was much improved from the last time they met, although she briefly took his emotional temperature – and found he was still far from recovered from his ordeal. She also noted almost automatically that while his injuries were mostly healed, his physical stamina remained depleted, and he was still gaining back muscle mass. His physical and mental fragility was a source of great frustration for him, and she, therefore, did not speak of it to him, but it saddened her greatly how much he had suffered.
Although one bright star on his horizon was the friendship he had developed with someone else who was struggling to deal with their emotional pain. For two such emotionally injured people, their support was not just helping each one heal but in helping each other they were also helping to heal themselves. Chaya met Dr Monique Girard briefly and noted in passing that the woman was exceedingly beautiful, but she was not threatened by the mortal. Although she detected no romantic attachments, she sensed that their friendship had the potential to run that path if both of them chose it. At this point in time, neither one was ready for more than friendship, and sadly they might never be. If at some later point, both were healed sufficiently to deepen their friendship into something more, Chaya would be pleased for John because she wanted his deep loneliness to go away but it wasn’t a given, as Monique was still very fragile.
She wished that she could help both because since her Ascension, she was able to heal others physically and emotionally, but it was part of her punishment that she could only use her abilities to protect her own people. The punishment was seeing good kind people like John and Monique or Anthony who were wounded, and knowing she could heal them but not being allowed to do so.
Still, it hadn’t prevented her from sneaking in a tiny little practically non-existent infraction, helping to dissolve the block put there by the Asgard which prevented Jack O’Neill from accessing his healing abilities. She’d done so under the guise of proving her identity to the foul Genii, earlier on. In greeting Jack, Alex, Daniel and Bra’tac in her true form she’d risked the small intervention of weakening Jack’s blockage, since if the future she saw should it come to pass, then O’Neill would need his ability to heal. With the pain he’d endured, she deemed him undeserving of what she saw lay ahead. Chaya knew it was a grave risk to take, regardless of how infinitesimally small the ruse was, but she had done something similar with Anthony DiNozzo back on Proculus to help him find his gift and it had gone undetected by the other Ascended, so how could she not do the same for Jack too, who was such a good man but damaged. Just like Anthony DiNozzo and John Sheppard.
~o0o~
Two days later Penelope went through the Atlantis Stargate with General O’Neill, Dr Jackson, Bra’tac, Jonas Quinn and Kalan, heading back to Earth. After the completion of the trial into Deuter Maden, with him being found guilty on all counts of the charges he was facing and Decerno Teal’c carrying out the death sentence, there was a short recess called. Kalan and Jonas had expressed concern that the delays incurred thus far meant they would be away from their planets rather longer than first intended. Although it was unfortunate that the Odyssey had been delayed, a totally unforeseen circumstance, and then they lost another day due to Chaya Sar’s curiosity about the planets and the inhabitants in the Milky Way galaxy, both men were concerned about what was going on back on their home worlds.
Dr Jackson had come up with a workaround, suggesting that they adjourn the hearings for a week, allowing anyone who needed to return to their home planet to do so and then resume the last two hearings in seven days. It was a good solution and gave Jack and Penelope time to recruit and coach ‘Thomas Magnum’, plus Bra’tac, Kalan and Jonas could pop home and deal with anything urgent. Teal’c and Ishta had decided to remain behind and have some ‘we time’ while they had the chance and Kalan’s son, Tomin had also wanted to stay. He was enjoying his visit, spending time with Cassie Fraiser and Janae Progenius who seemed to be almost as fascinated by the young Urrone as Tomin was with the Artificial Intelligence. Of course, it hadn’t escaped her keen eye that the tow-headed broad-shoulder young man might just have a small crush on Cassie, even if she was a few years older than him. He also spent time hanging out with Russel Speers, the older kids’ teacher, watching him teach.
Garcia was trying not to think about how much she was going to miss being with the Hotchners. Jack had been inconsolable when she explained that Homeworld needed her back on Earth asap to deal with a project she had developed. He’d alternated between being clingy and not wanting her to leave and angry when she gently explained it was her job and other people were depending on her too. Hotch had been his usually stoic stern self, but she kind of got the feeling he would miss her too.
She’d hugged both guys fiercely and told them that she was going to be back, just that she didn’t know when. And truly she needed to return before Dr McKay resumed his role as Chief Science Officer of Atlantis since one of the dangers she’d identified in her risk assessment of the artificial intelligence known as Janae Progenius was that someone (Rodney) may attempt to mess with the Ancient Janus’ computer coding of the AI program. If that happened, she’d concluded that any number of things could occur – most of them would not be pretty. But the two biggies were that, first off, J.P. might feel threatened (which was very reasonable) and lash out to protect itself from being harmed, unintentionally causing major collateral damage to others too. The second problem was if he did manage to mess with J.P.’s coding they could easily be looking at a disaster like when Dr McKay had fucked up, altering the coding of the nanite-based Asurans to try to get them to attack the Wraith. The result was that they then wiped out innocent humans, having determined that starving the Wraith of their food source (humans) would weaken them and defeat the Wraith.
The likelihood of McKay making a bonehead move on J.P. was highly likely, (based on his previous behaviour) including the attempt to discover the details of the secret WoHZ program. With that threat looming over them, she’d managed to persuade J.P. to let her alter the AI’s security subroutines to prevent anyone else from messing around with it, but it had taken all of her wiles, despite his hero worship of the Black Queen. Once General O’Neill received the go-ahead from the POTUS, Penelope would return and work with J.P. to make sure the artificial intelligence couldn’t be hacked.
However, in the meantime, the sting that she’d designed to use Ziva David to help track the Trust was underway and Colonel Davis needed her expertise back in DC. Frankly, she felt like they needed a specialist team, dedicated to orchestrating the operation and she’d had a few thoughts about who might be available. She would need to check up on her contacts though to see if the person she had in mind was still around. Meanwhile, her heart was breaking at leaving Atlantis, not just because of the Hotchners, although that was definitely a big part of it for sure, she would miss Alex, Belle, Toby and Nikola too. Then there were a lot of new friends she’d made during her visit to the supercity, Daniel Jackson, Vala, Cassie, Teyla and Ronon to name a handful, and it wasn’t even weird that four of them just happened to be born on alien worlds.
Still, the good thing about going home was that she would get the chance to see Dave Rossi’s face when (if) they recruited him. Tony, Hotch, and General O’Neill had all given their approval to the idea of bringing him in to play Tony’s fictional boss. Although Hotch hadn’t been quite as effusive as she thought he’d be. She thought he’d leap at the chance to see his old friend again but still, it probably had nothing to do with Rossi. He had a lot on his plate with the four trials he was prosecuting back-to-back, and Deuter Maden had just been executed, crying, and yelling that he’d only been following orders.
What was it with these bullies, perfectly happy to torture, rape and murder other people but when made accountable for their actions they turned into large wailing toddlers, angry that someone had taken their shiny new toy away from them. Pathetic creatures who apparently hadn’t cared a jot about the people they’d harmed during their extortion rackets across many planets. According to several witnesses, they killed a mother and her small child when she couldn’t pay their compulsory protection fee, making an example out of her so that everyone else knew they meant business. The fact that her husband had been culled several months before by the Wraith had not moved them to mercy for her poverty, yet both Maden and Kolya had expected them to spare their lives, showing how narcissistic they were.
So, if Hotch was a bit preoccupied then it was entirely understandable, especially with the trials of Lucius Lavin still ahead of him. And that guy was definitely sleazy as, in Garcia’s opinion, even though she’d only ever watched him on video. In some ways, his false bonhomie, his hail fellow well-met façade was far more sinister than Porteus Kolya had been. Penelope was reminded of evil personified. And working at the BAU for so many years, she knew it when she saw it!
After their arrival back at SGC where they were subject to a mandatory medical exam to make sure they hadn’t brought anything back from Pegasus that could be passed to their populations. After receiving the all-clear, Kalan, Bra’tac and Jonas departed swiftly for their Homeworld’s’ one by one stepping into the deep blue wormholes until it was just Daniel, General O’Neill and herself were left. They made a bee-line for the commissary to grab a coffee and a meal since no one wanted to cook tonight, or in Daniel’s case, four coffees and a meal. Daniel had volunteered to return to Earth to help recruit and read in Special Agent Rossi, not that Penelope was anticipating he’d say no. Not when she asked him.
However, Daniel like everyone else who had dealt with the Winyan women who’d been Lavin’s sex slaves desperately wanted to save all of them and give their children a proper life. He lamented the fact that the Winyans” knew his real identity, or he could have assumed the identity of the elusive Mr Magnum but honestly, Penelope was kinda glad the Winyans knew who Daniel was. She was looking forward to sharing the Atlantis experience with Rossi and envisaged his joy when he learnt that his old friend Hotch was there too.
~o0o~
After grabbing a bite to eat, General O’Neill organised with Colonel Davis for the Zephyrus (which was being made ready for a supply run in ten days) to beam Garcia, Jackson, and himself back to DC tonight. Daniel was going to do his customary reading-in of the FBI Supervisory Special Agent Rossi regarding the Stargate Program and help him prepare for role-playing Alex’s mystery boss, so he would be staying at Jack’s place in DC. Jack appreciated his offer of assistance, and he’d accepted it gratefully since he had a lot of stuff to attend to in the next seven days.
Apart from the issue with Ziva David, and Garcia orchestrating Ziva David’s wild goose chase, he wanted to organise to bring Rodney McKay’s temporary replacement back to Atlantis with him when he returned with the Tribunal members next week. Plus of course, he had to catch up on all the paperwork. Now that they were back, he was impatient to make a start on the mountain of briefings and status reports that inevitably awaited him. The first briefing was likely to be with the POTUS before he briefed the JCS who had two new appointments in the wake of the whole lame-assed attempt to set Agent Paddington up on faked-up rape charges to get rid of him.
Instead of achieving their goal of getting rid of Paddington and having McKay reinstated, it had ended up costing General Conrad, Chief of Staff of the Army and General Rosen, Commandant of the Marine Corps their jobs, which effectively meant their careers, the idiots. And with two of the JCS being fired at once, the press could literally scent the blood in the water and like a bunch of sharks converging upon chum in the water, they had been making a nuisance of themselves trying to figure out what two generals on the JCS had done to get kicked to the kerb.
Jack despised the press, but he remembered a situation involving a leak about the Stargate program back at the beginning of the program when he and Carter were in DC to be presented with medals by the then POTUS for blowing up the Goa’uld mother ships that almost destroyed Earth. A journalist, Almond Selleck… no Armin Selig had ambushed Jack when he was having a quiet drink in a bar, confronting him about the Stargate program. He’d made it pretty obvious that someone well-connected had leaked it. Of course, Jack had always suspected it was Senator Kinsey, who was a rat bastard of epic proportions.
When Jack reported his disturbing conversation with Selig to General Hammond, his own boss had in turn passed it up the chain of command. He had no choice about something that big of a security breach, just like O’Neill had done to George. Still, that was cold comfort when a short time later Jack watched the young reporter run down and killed right before his eyes, General Hammond swore blind that it was just been a terrible coincidence. Jack didn’t believe him and neither did the dying journalist, either, blaming Jack for the hit as he lay dying. O’Neill wasn’t certain if George had truly believed that it was just an accident, or if he was just parroting the company line but unfortunately, Jack had, in another incarnation been involved in Black Ops for several years and he recognised a hit when he saw one. And if the press didn’t stop trying to ferret out the reasons why two top-ranking generals on the JCS were fired, then someone else was going to be run down if they got a little too close to the truth.
Now back home in his apartment with Danny bunked down in the spare room, the first thing that his old friend had done was start up the coffee maker he’d bought as a housewarming gift when Jack had departed to DC to head up Homeworld Command. The man was not only a coffee addict but a coffee snob (or connoisseur according to his friend) and made sure that there was always a supply of the good beans awaiting him when he deigned to appear in DC on a semi-regular basis. These days, it turned out that the geeky, naïve archaeologist that Jack had first encountered, had transformed over the years into a hardened cynical strategist who could play politics with the best of them when it came to dealing with all things regarding the Stargate program.
This was why Jack had long since stopped calling his spare bedroom by that moniker – it was officially Daniel’s room and his tiny third bedroom, which doubled as Jack’s office had a foldout sofa for the occasional guest who visited, like Cassie became the spare room. Although, with Cassie now on Atlantis, she wouldn’t be visiting DC any time soon. At least she seemed to getting over the betrayal by that SOB fiancé of hers cheating on her with Cassie’s best friend. She seemed happy teaching the little ones on Atlantis and was overjoyed to be able to catch up with Tomin too. For all Cassandra Fraiser was a citizen of Earth, she had been born on Hanka and she still had a lot in common with people from other planets. She loved immersing herself in the Orbanian and Athosian cultures and he felt like she was finally healing her broken heart.
He just wished he could do something to change her infertility issues since she would have made a terrific mother before that evil Goa’uld bitch Nirrti fucked around with her genetics, attempting to create a superhuman host. But since that asshole had no compunction about turning eleven-year-old Cassandra into a suicide bomber to blow up Earth’s stargate, she clearly didn’t care that her genetic manipulations ensuring that Cassie couldn’t have children. Still, as much as it pained him to see his adopted niece/ daughter suffering, he knew that she was far from the only person who couldn’t have her own biological offspring. One day, she could adopt if she decided to have children – just like Janet Fraiser had adopted Cass.
When Daniel brought him a cup of his ridiculously expensive personalised blend of coffee, he decided to limit himself to just one cup and have an early night. There was a lot to do, and he had an early start. The former teammates sat in companionable silence, sipping their coffee, lost in their own thoughts before Jack stood up and stretched, putting his mug in the empty dishwasher and bidding Daniel goodnight.
~o0o~
Garcia was glad to be home, even if her place was not her previous quirky little apartment which Colonel Davis had pronounced as too risky for her to keep, what with the Trust being so determined to ‘recruit her’. And this ultra-secure safe house was definitely way too blah and boring for her tastes but having seen what the Trust was capable of, she’d willing swapped character for security. Plus, with her eclectic mix of furnishings, furniture, and personal belongings it was still somewhere she felt at home in. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t miss Atlantis but seriously, she’d only been gone for less than a day and the prospect of seeing Rossi soon and hopefully recruiting him was exciting and distracting.
Even though by the time she got home last night it was nearly 2200 – damn it, she had to get used to using normal time again, she sent Dave a short text, telling him she was back in DC and hoping to catch up with him soon. Rossi clearly still had a modicum of doubt about her work because he immediately sent back a text.
Kitten, how was the pizza?
Chuckling at his paranoia she replied, Fantastic, fungi pizza – Bellissima 🙂
No pepperoni? Subtle Dave!
Nope, no pepper, no roni!
Okay, look 4ward to C-ing you.
You 2. R U in Virginia?
Yeah, on downtime. Night Kitten.
Night, my sexy Italian Stallone.
Now after a great night’s sleep in her blissfully comfortable bed, she was up early, eager to get to the office. As she stepped out her door and picked up the security detail of Marines who were her escort when she wasn’t safely tucked up in her apartment or at the office. She understood the need for it, but Penelope was getting heartily sick of having minders whenever she left her secure home and workplace. How she longed to go and shop for groceries at the market instead of ordering them online or going out to eat with friends at the local pizza place rather than ordering takeout pizza, which for some reason just wasn’t the same. Still, as General O’Neill had pointed out during one of her semi-regular whinge fests, it still beat the alternative and there was no disputing that.
Oh, how she longed for a time when the Trust had finally been dismantled and she was able to savour the simple things in life again. Having been on Atlantis and being able to move around without having a phalanx of strapping young Marines watch her six as the saying goes, had been a wonderful interlude for that reason alone. Even if she hadn’t gotten a chance to interact with a ten-thousand-year-old artificial intelligence program or catch up with old friends. Tony had been right in taking Tali and moving with her to Atlantis where she was a lot safer from the Trust than she ever would be back home and one day, maybe the Trust would h be destroyed which meant that the DiNozzos and Penelope wouldn’t need to hide any more. And if that didn’t motivate her into fine-tuning their Operation Wild Goose Chase, likely nothing would.
Tomorrow she needed to check out some of her former compatriots in the murky hacker world, especially Eddy, Colin, and Alec. She felt like the sting they were running on the Trust and Mossad officer Ziva David would be better served to have someone dedicated to directing it 24/7. Penelope also couldn’t help feeling as if the sooner she made sure that Dr McKay couldn’t interfere with Janae Progenius’ computer code, the better off everyone would be. JP had made no secret of his disapproval of Rodney, who had pushed back accordingly. When the temporary replacement for him showed up on Atlantis, Penelope had a feeling he was going to go postal, so she’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if she and JP had enacted his security codes to stop McKay meddling.
~o0o~
Two days after Garcia fired off the text message to alert him she was home again from her top-secret mission to God knows where Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi received a request to attend the Pentagon for a meeting with Colonel Paul Davis. After trying to check up on Davis, who it turned out was an Air Force officer who seemed to work ostensibly for DHS, but none of Dave’s contacts at Homeland had worked with him or even heard of him, Rossi concluded that the guy must be with one of the covert ‘off book’ divisions. That or the whole DHS cover was a ruse to hide who he really worked for. Having worked for the CIA a few times, he was familiar with the sleight-of-hand things games these people like to play but he also knew that the request for a meeting at the Pentagon the next day was not so much an invitation as it was a command.
Knowing better than to ignore it or Col Davis, he complied, finding himself in a conference room with a rather harmless-looking bureaucratic individual who introduced himself as Col Paul Davis. The veteran profiler knew better than most that appearances could be deceptive, and he should not assume this man was a harmless pencil pusher. It turned out that he was right, Col Davis was far from harmless, and he was also far from being your simple garden variety of spook too. He informed Rossi that he should warn FBI Technical Analyst Kevin Lynch and former Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan that their meddling regarding Penelope Garcia’s employment status had been duly noted and they had scads of evidence that would send them both to a special prison indefinitely. One that would make Gitmo look like a holiday camp in a tropical paradise if they didn’t cease immediately.”
Not that Rossi had been all that shocked to learn that Penelope’s ex-fiancé and also her best friend had been snooping into her new employers, despite being warned not to by Garcia herself, but he hadn’t been a part of their plan.
He said, “Well Garcia did warn them to back off and was pretty blunt in terms of what would happen if they didn’t, but I’m not their supervisor and I wasn’t aware of what they were doing.”
“We know that Agent, but while your rank doesn’t give you the seniority to kick their stubborn heads, your legendary status within the BAU does. Consider this their last chance. Any more attempts to hack with be met with swift retribution,” Davis warned grimly. “I imagine Derek Morgan wants to see Hank graduate from college, so he better stop dicking around in classified data.”
“Okay, I’ll pass that along, but I still don’t know why you aren’t having this conversation with our Director,” he said knowing that it was unlikely the pair would heed the warning. “It might have made more impact if you guys at the DHS hauled their asses in and locked them up for a couple of days,” he admitted dryly, although he admitted, it could backfire and make them more determined.
“We considered it for a few seconds,” Davis told him. “You’re supposed to be the hotshot profiler, tell us why we didn’t do that?”
“Because they are both incredibly pig-headed guys and it might have made them even more determined or even fed their streak of paranoia for conspiracies,” he conceded.
“That’s part of it,” Davis nodded. “Ms Garcia convinced us that you had a better shot at persuading them to back off.”
Dave snorted disbelievingly. “Okay, I can see how she might think that, but Penelope is a perennial optimist. She always sees the good in people but what makes you think that those dumbasses will listen to me?”
Holding up his finger, the colonel made a phone call. “I think you should join us now,” he said before cutting the connection.
As they waited, Dave wondered who was joining them and if they were bringing in the thumbscrews.
Less than a minute later, he was shocked to see Garcia burst through the door with a huge smile on her face.
Before he could react, she told him, “I’m taking you out for lunch. There’s a great pizza place not too far from here. It has the best veggie pizza besides yours, Dave. Artichoke and asparagus and marinated mushrooms,” she said, telling him once again that she was not being coerced.
Dave couldn’t help giving her an extremely thorough visual appraisal that left her blushing, even though she knew there was nothing between them. The effervescent blonde rushed up to him as he stood up and gave him a heartfelt hug. Looking across at Col Davis, Rossi could tell that he was uncomfortable with her PDA or perhaps it was his rather obvious evaluation of Penelope, but not because he was military and wasn’t the usual procedure in a meeting at the Pentagon. Although Davis was very bland and difficult to get a read on, the moment that Pen had breezed into the conference, Rossi could see by the way Davis looked at her that he had a crush on her.
As they took their seats, Paul looked at Garcia and nodded. She smiled at him and nodded back. “The reason why Derek and Kevin weren’t hauled in here was I thought it might be better for you to give them a giant kick up the butt, Dave. They are stubborn idiots, but I love them and don’t want them to disappear down a deep dark hole. Hank deserves to have his daddy in his life,” she huffed exasperatedly.
“Kitten, I’m not sure they’ll listen to me, but I’ll try,” he agreed, simply because few people could refuse Penelope if she asked for something.
“They will, Rossi, I’m sure of it,” she said with conviction he didn’t share.
“You give me way too much credit for being able to convince them, Kitten,” he disagreed and noted Col Davis’ scowl at his term of endearment. Uh oh! Seems like the Penelope Effect was still alive and flourishing. This guy…her boss if he read the situation correctly… had it bad!
Dave could sympathise with him, he’d been half in love with Penelope from the first time he’d worked with her. Her goodness and optimism along with her mind-blowing computer skills was a winning combination, as was her kindness when, day after day they’d submerged themselves into the darkest depths of human depravity. But despite their flirting, he’d soon realised who she had feelings for, and it wasn’t him, nor was it Morgan despite their steamy perpetual flirting, nor was it the rather weaselly-faced Kevin Lynch, either. Although they had promised each other on the team to refrain from profiling each other, Dave couldn’t help himself when it came to Garcia and her relationship with the technical analyst Kevin – even if he never revealed it to anyone.
Rossi was pretty certain that the couple was doomed to fail since he was as certain as he could be that Garcia has feelings for Aaron Hotchner, the head of their team but she’d deemed them to be unrequited. Garcia had many fine qualities, but she tended to lack self-esteem when it came to romantic relationships. He felt like for all she and Kevin had in common, she had settled on him because he was average, and she didn’t think someone like Aaron would be physically attracted to her.
“Au contraire mon ami,” she told him grinning like a demented loon. “Especially when you tell Kevin and Derek that you’ve been read in on the organisation I work for and I’m not being forced to work against my will because I believe one hundred and fifty percent in what I’m doing,” she told him, suddenly becoming as serious as he’d ever see her.
‘Kitten, I hope you aren’t asking me to lie to Kevin and Derek…” he managed to get out before she huffed at him exasperatedly.
“Rossi, stop right there before you bury yourself in that hole you’re digging. My boss, Colonel Davis requires the services of a certain profiler rather urgently, and I persuaded him and the Colonel’s boss and director of our organisation that you were the right guy for the job. Don’t make me regret my glowing endorsement by acting like a prat, Dave,” she scolded him.
Looking suitably chastened, he apologised swiftly. “Penelope, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions but if your organisation is a secret as you’ve been hinting at, why would you read me in?”
Davis answered the question. “Because we need someone with a specific skill set that you have. You are a federal agent who has worked for the CIA in the past and didn’t reveal classified intel plus, you have a high security clearance. And also crucially, because you are a former Marine who can follow orders and we could recall you into the Corps. And last but far from least, because if you don’t do it, I’ll be forced to step in, and impersonation and persuasion are not my forte AT ALL!”
“You want me to impersonate someone, persuade someone? Okay, I’ll admit I’m intrigued. Okay, so who, where, and why?”
“Not so fast, Sonny Jim,” Penelope chortled. “I think the bit about being read in on the clandestine agency I work for must have slipped your mind, Special Agent Rossi. Getting senile Dave? Before we can get into mission specifics you are going to have to sign a non-disclosure contract that is a doozy. Then you get read-in on the program that is going to take the rest of the day and then finally we can tell you the specifics of the mission. Just know this, it is to help some young victims to get justice and reclaim their lives.”
Colonel Davis nodded earnestly. “What she said. You need to agree to the NDA before we can reveal anything classified. If you decide not to proceed which is within your rights, I trust you will still do your best to convince Morgan and Lynch to desist in their foolish attempts to find out about us. I can tell you this, our online security systems were designed by none other than Ms Garcia here and the first person who tried to penetrate them is wearing a straitjacket and relaxing in a padded room,” he warned.
Penelope rolled her eyes, “Stop exaggerating Colonel. He was in a straitjacket for probably only twelve hours until he stopped foaming at the mouth, and he was never in a padded room. Of course, the fact that he has two Marine minders shadowing him 24/7 is maybe just as bad,” she said smirking with her boss.”
Rossi should his head, knowing the potential the Black Queen had to create chaos if she was so inclined, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll try my best,” he promised not wanting to see either man foaming at the mouth or having a psychological breakdown.
Paul nodded. “Thank you. Well, we will leave you to read through the NDA which I’ll have sent in before you decide if you are going to sign it or not. If you have any questions, Corp Luiz who is assigned to be your escort, will contact me and I’ll try to assist.”
With a nod to Penelope, they both rose and as she was leaving the room, Rossi called her back as he saw the massive size of the NDA that two Marines carted in and dropped on the conference room table. It would take hours to read through it all!
He studied her face intently before asking her, “Kitten, we worked together a long time. You know me and you know the classified program. Is this something I would voluntarily choose to do if you hadn’t recruited me?”
Penelope nodded emphatically. “Absolutely Dave. It is life-changing but I’m not at all sorry that I joined up. We are on the side of the angels, and we aren’t perfect, but we do our best. And FYI the mission we want to recruit you for is trying to salvage fourteen innocent lives of victims of a heinous crime and judicial injustice,” she said, preparing to leave.
Dave nodded, moved by the emotion in her voice and her brimming eyes. Garcia was shit as lying and it was obvious to the seasoned profiler that she was being completely honest with him. “Will I catch you after I’m done?”
“Yeah, we can pick up some pizza and I’ll invite you back to my place to eat it. I think I have a bottle of red you might like,” she said, missing the look of jealousy on Paul Davis’ face as they departed, although not the famous profiler.
Oh, you poor shmuck! You’ve got it bad, he silently sympathised with Davis before turning his attention back to the NDA with a groan.
Wow, Penelope was right. Whatever the classified intel was, it must be massive to warrant such a huge non-disclosure contract. It also went a long way to explaining why Kevin and Derek were on the cusp of being disappeared!
I swear, most the eligible fellas around Penelope are clueless. It’s going to be fun to see where this goes. I suspect Dave is going to sit back and enjoy the show. I hope the mess on Atlantis has plenty of popcorn!
Enjoying the light-heartedness very much, after how deep and dark it got for the trials.