Reading Time: 108 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

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Chapter 14

David Rossi watched from the conference room above, what Penelope informed him was the gate room or embarkation room, although apparently only someone called Master Sergeant Walter Harriman ever referred to it thusly. He watched as someone materialised right out of what looked like a blue wave, walking calmly down the ramp wearing strange clothes that Dr Jackson informed him were Jaffa ceremonial robes. The man… the Jaffa who was not from Earth, looked if Rossi had to guess to be on the late side of sixty or perhaps early seventies, but Garcia whispered in his ear that Bra’tac was over one hundred and fifty years old. Jackson confirmed her statement, saying that on average, those Jaffa who had survived being cannon fodder for their former masters often lived double the life expectancy of humans or they did before they stopped using a prim’tah. Later when his brain stopped exploding he would ask what a prim’tah was, but right now he was way too overcome to be interrogating Stargate personnel about the finer points of alien anatomy.

Garcia must have realised he was on the cusp of an overload, Daniel too since they both fell silent and seemed to be engaged in a silent conversation. If he wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed by THIS he might be pissed off that they were acting like patronising jerks. How could they possibly expect him to remain rational and coherent in the face of such a massive secret which suddenly turned science fiction into science fact? All those conspiracy nuts rabbiting on about alien abductions would be losing their shit right now screaming I TOLD YOU SO at the top of their lungs.

To be honest, Rossi now realised that until his first alien came walking through the stargate, on some level he hadn’t truly believed the whole thing was true. Penelope had remarked on the fact after he’d been read in on the Stargate program that he was being uncharacteristically calm about the whole thing. When he replied that he wasn’t known for being an irrational hothead, she’d laughed.

“I didn’t mean to imply that, but most people think that we are trying to con them, and they can get pretty outraged. Do you take me for a fool-type outrage, but you are calm and rational.”

Yeah, not feeling so calm and rational now, Rossi, his inner voice taunted at him. And in just a few hours he was going to be walking through that puddle of what looked like water, but Dr Jackson explained was really part of the event horizon of the wormhole which the stargate used to enable interstellar travel. And Dave was having a mini meltdown even if he tried not to show it. Several minutes later Garcia was patting his bicep, trying to attract his attention.

“Hmm…sorry Kitten, what did you say?” he mumbled congratulating himself that he could string simple sentences together.

Giving him a radiant smile that always made her brown eyes dance with mischief she repeated, “I said, that I’m buying you a cup of coffee and some pretty acceptable tiramisu cake.”

Dave chuckled, “If you are suggesting we head to the commissary, Penelope, then I doubt you’ll be forking out money, but I could probably do with a refill,” he conceded getting to his feet and ignoring the fact that there was still a half-drunk carafe of coffee on the table, albeit it was probably only lukewarm at this point.

~oo0o~

Five hours later, Rossi was preparing to go through the Stargate to Atlantis with Lieutenant General O’Neill – a three-star who was the Director of Homeworld Command – the ultra-secret organisation that employed Garcia and had saved her from the Trust. The four others accompanying them were Bra’tac, Leader of the Free Jaffa Nation and a Canadian couple with a small child who Dave estimated was probably about eight or nine years old. The two other members of the judicial tribunal from Langara and Orban still had a couple of days grace, but as Bra’tac had arrived back several days early, the General decided that they should head back to Atlantis early so that the Millers and Rossi could get started on their work right away.

Rossi didn’t mind and not just because he wasn’t a big fan of being more than twenty floors under Cheyenne Mountain either. Having been given a detailed outline of what they wanted Rossi to do, he was eager to start preparing for his undercover assignment as Thomas Magnum and no – not the television character but the alter-ego of the Associate Director Alexander Paddington. The man had created a fictional character as a security measure when dealing with some of the seedier members of other races in the Pegasus galaxy to safeguard his life since he was a single father with a small child.

Frankly, Dave thought it was a highly ingenious strategy and he was looking forward to working with him. But mostly, he was concerned, just like all of the other people with a stake in the case to try to save the lives of the victims of sexual slavery. For a veteran of psychological profiling, he’d seen a lot of injustice in his time at the BAU, but this was different. It was an injustice that a bunch of elder men had visited upon a group of young women even though the Elders of the council had also been drugged by Lavin’s herb and forced to obey him. It was just lucky for the Council that Lavin’s character didn’t have a sexual predilection for forcing old men to become his sex slaves. Dave was extremely happy that he’d been tapped on the shoulder to try to help these five young women and their children and was eager to get started.

Still, he was a bit disappointed that Penelope wasn’t accompanying them. She said she was returning but had a few more things to tie up before she returned, hopefully when the two other tribunal members returned to Atlantis. And despite being read in on the program, Garcia remained tight-lipped about one of the projects she was working on, although she shared details on the second which was actually the hunt for a serial killer that was only peripherally connected to Atlantis and even then it was tenuous. However, the Associate Director of the ISIB had sought permission from General O’Neill to investigate the case. Apparently, AD Paddington was considered to be a hotshot investigator and had looked at the case after the person who was convicted had his conviction overturned and the FBI agent who handled the case, resigned for failing to disclose relevant eyewitness testimony.

She’d agreed to run down new leads while she was back on Earth after Paddington’s new Intelligence Analyst had found old cases that hadn’t previously been linked to the serial killings. Garcia was chasing them down and doing a deep dive on the man the FBI had believed was responsible before he was acquitted at a retrial. He read the psychological profile of the killer by Paddington and was impressed by it, wondering again why he’d never heard of this agent before. When he read a second profile that Paddington supplied, wanting to have its assumptions verified or called out, with no indication who had written it, Dave found there was something hauntingly familiar about the style and lexicon.

When he asked who the author Penelope was had given him a cheeky smile, mimed zipping her lips and told him, “I promise, all will be revealed, my sexy Silver Fox.”

He huffed at her in mock irritation since it was hard to stay mad at her for any length of time and she had promised him that all would be divulged, which he intended to hold her to. As they were waiting for the rest of the party to assemble in the gate room, Garcia was acting anxious and worrying at her bottom lip, a mannerism he was familiar with after working with her for so long.

“What has you so worked up, Kitten,” he asked her trying to exude a composure he didn’t feel.

“Kevin and Derek. Do you think they’ll listen and stop trying to find out what I’m up to,” she implored him. “General Jack is a reasonable guy, but this is too big,’ she gestured at the room around her.”

He looked fierce. “Well, I certainly gave it my best shot. Told them I’d been tapped to undertake an investigation by the agency who you work for and had to be read in on some of the classified data and that they were this close,” he held up his hand showing negligible clearance between his thumb and forefinger, “to getting locked up in a deep dark hole. I told them that in light of what I learnt, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help them if it happened, because they deserved whatever happened to them. I may have mentioned that I didn’t think Derek was being fair to Savannah or Hank by pursuing this but short of shooting him, I couldn’t prevent him from being an ass.”

“But will they listen?” she wailed, looking highly distressed.

Dave put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I hope so, but they are both pig-headed, so with Morgan, I may have leveraged his family by having a quiet word with Savannah about what he was up to. I also reminded Kevin that you still love and care about him, even if it isn’t how he’d like you to, and you’ll never forgive yourself if he disappears because he couldn’t leave well enough alone. I don’t know what more we can do, Kitten.”

“I know Dave, thanks for trying to guilt them into butting out. Let’s hope you convinced them.”

Whatever he was going to say to Penelope was interrupted as General O’Neill dressed in blue fatigues and looking a lot more relaxed than he did in his Air Force dress uniform strode forcefully into the gate room with Bra’tac right on his heels. Both men to Dave’s experienced eye moved with the predatory grace and confidence of seasoned soldiers used to going into battle.

According to all he’d learnt, neither individual had been the sort of officer to lead their troops from safely behind the battlelines, choosing instead to be in the thick of the fighting. Never the sort of leaders to expect their people to do anything they weren’t ready to do too, including more than their fair share of apparent suicide missions. The fact they’d managed to survive them was a testament to a whole lot of skill, wrapped up with a massive dose of good luck over the years. Now, with their high ranks of office, they wore the mantle of leadership with humility and humour that clearly earned them a lot of respect.

At least from the Marines and Air Force personnel stationed at Cheyenne Mountain. The former Marine and veteran profiler noted that while the personnel were respectful of Brigadier General Hank Landry, a career officer who had spent little time in the field as possible, and even then preferred to command from behind the front lines, the level of respect by the staff was much more fervent and genuine for Bra’tac and Lieutenant General Jack O’Neill. He was fairly sure that the Jarheads and Zoomies would have no hesitation in following the pair into the Stargate to certain doom if they asked for volunteers, although he ardently hoped it wouldn’t come to that on this trip through the gate. It was his Grandson’s birthday in seven weeks and Dave had every intention of spoiling the little dude rotten.

Following in their wake was the small family from Canada, the mother Jeannie, who Penelope said was a scientist and her husband Kaleb was an English Literature lecturer from the University of British Colombia in Vancouver. Their daughter Madison appeared to be asleep and was being carried in her father’s arms. In the short time since he’d met them, they seemed to be a personable pair, and they definitely scored points with Garcia for being vegetarians, but as nice as they appeared he did wonder what they were doing going to Atlantis. As Kaleb drew closer, Dave realised that the little girl was really out of it and was going to ask about her status when General O’Neill pre-empted him, saying the medicos and the Millers decided to sedate her for the trip.

“We only had one other child travel from Cheyenne Mountain to Atlantis via the Stargate and Alex decided in consultation with our CMO that it would be wise to sedate her for the journey. It can be quite disorientating travelling so far and it seems like a wise course of action. Plus, minors can’t sign NDAs so if she is sedated she’ll just think she is still here on Earth, so it is safer for her and the program.”

Rossi shrugged. It made sense and as someone who had never travelled in a wormhole before, he was hardly qualified to give an opinion. As Kaleb shifted the child higher on his hip, looking anxious, O’Neill issued the order for the gate technician to dial the address of the Atlantis stargate while Bra’tac looked on impassively. All their hand luggage had been already loaded onto carts that several Marines would send through using radio-controlled vehicles. Miller had told him that since they were going to be staying on Atlantis for an extended time, possibly between 6- 12 months, the rest of the stuff they would need had already loaded onto the Zephyrus.

As the eighth symbol on the Stargate locked into position, there was a whoosh-ing sound before what looked like a blue wave of water, but he was reliably informed was something called an event horizon sloshed out and he knew it was time to go. He gave Penelope a final hug and waited as the General and Bra’tac strolled up the ramp and entered the wormhole. The Millers went next, Kaleb throwing him a wry look that Dave interpreted as, ‘ What the hell are we doing,’ and plunged in, following his wife who seemed much more accustomed to the idea of travelling by wormhole than her husband, even if she said it was her first trip via the Stargate. Finally, it was just him left standing at the beginning of the ramp. Taking a deep breath, reminding himself he was a former Marine and Marines weren’t chicken shit, he gave Penelope a jaunty wave and set off up the ramp and into the blue wormhole, his heart in his mouth.

After a lifetime or maybe a few minutes, he really couldn’t tell, he was spewed out of the travelator from hell, feeling like his insides had all been squeezed tight. In fact, it gave him a new appreciation for how toothpaste must feel being squeezed out of the tube. Panting as he tried to regain his breath. he automatically catalogued the reactions of his party, feeling disconcerted by the fact that General O’Neill and Bra’tac were acting as if they’d just stepped out of an elevator, perfectly composed, and continuing to converse as if everything was perfectly normal. And then it hit him, that for both of these males, it probably was. They were used to travelling this way and didn’t need to stop and think about what just happened, to them it was normal.

At least the two adult Millers were looking as disturbed by the trip as he felt, although Jeannie didn’t seem shocked by the structure they found themselves in. Rossi realised he had no idea what he thought an ancient supercity built by technologically advanced aliens would look like because honestly, he hadn’t given it much thought. If he had though, it would be nothing like this modernistic, sleek, and stylish architecture, nothing at all. Yet while Kaleb was looking as surprised as Rossi felt, hanging onto his daughter for dear life, Jeannie looked around and spied someone who was obviously waiting for them. As the dark-haired handsome man grinned at them, she beamed.

“Hi, Major Lorne.”

O’Neill smirked. “He’s a lieutenant colonel now Mrs Miller.”

“Oh, well then, congratulation, Colonel Lorne,” she smiled at the man who snapped off a salute to O’Neill and then gave a respectful bow to Bra’tac.

“Welcome back to Atlantis Jeannie, Master Bra’tac and General O’Neill. And to Mr Miller and Special Agent Rossi, welcome to the city of Atlantis. As the others know already, before I can show you to your quarters or arrange a tour of the city, it is a mandatory security protocol for all new arrivals to report to the Infirmary for a medical examination. So, if you’ll come with me,” he said politely as he began to herd them away from the gate, which Rossi noted idly, was a lot smaller than the one at Cheyanne Mountain.

Processing what Col Lorne had just said – well that explained why Mrs Miller didn’t seem fazed by her environment. This was clearly not her first trip to Atlantis, although judging by her less-than-effusive reaction to the stargate, it was the first time she’d arrived by this particular mode of transport. Frankly, he was not a fan – it felt a bit like the magical form of the travel described in the Harry Potter series of travelling by portkey. It occurred to Dave that sedating young Madison had not just been a wise course of action, but a kind one as well. He rather wished someone had thought to offer it to him as an alternative, but it was too late now. Hopefully, when he returned home (God willing) it wouldn’t be quite so bad, since he’d know what to expect. But seriously if anyone asked him to give gating a review on Yelp he’d have to say it was a really bad trip and that was coming from someone who’d lived through the whole ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’ Timothy O’Leary and LSD counterculture rebellion.

As he was musing about trips, he heard O’Neill ask Lorne who was on duty in the Infirmary.

The lieutenant colonel replied, “Dr Beckett, he swapped with Dr Angel who had a migraine.”

Jeannie exclaimed, “Carson Beckett? But Meredith said that he was killed in an explosion.”

O’Neill nodded. “True, he was trying to save a scientist who had an explosive device in him and had successfully removed it, but it detonated when he was trying to dispose of it and killed him. But the Wraith Beckett called Michael managed to get a sample of Beckett’s DNA and cloned him,” he explained briefly, ignoring Kaleb and Rossi’s open mouths and gobsmacked expressions. “Atlantis discovered him when we were searching for Teyla’s people who Wraith Michael abducted to carry out genetic experiments on.”

Jeannie turned pale. “Oh my God, those poor people! Did you find them?”

O’Neill looked grim. “The ones he hadn’t already killed with his failed attempts to create human wraith hybrids to become his super soldiers.”

Well, that sounded horrific, and Dave felt himself throw up a little in his mouth during that whole conversation but as they headed towards what Lorne explained was a transporter device used to travel around the huge city, he heard the unmistakable sound of feet running down a metal staircase.

Turning towards the sound of the feet, he heard a voice yell out, “Wait!” as a teenager came thundering down a metal staircase with a taller guy in hot pursuit before the lanky dark-haired, brown-eyed youth took the three last steps in one prodigious leap, with nary a stumble.

The lad crossed the distance between them like a shot out of a gun and launched himself at Dave. He screeched at the top of his lungs, “Sorry we’re late, Uncle Dave. J.P. and I lost track of the time and Dad had to come find me.”

Rossi had caught the gangly teen reflexively. He wasn’t sure who this boy was, but the kid certainly seemed to know him, even if Rossi couldn’t place him. As the lad continued to babble on about J.P. and robots at a mile a minute, eventually the adult accompanying him (Dave presumed it was his father) alighted the final stairs and crossed the gate room towards them. And finally, it dawned on Dave who he had attached to him like a limpet or perhaps a remora fish when his father was close enough to recognise, although Dave did wonder if he was suffering a mild psychotic break caused by his trip through the worn hole.

That thought was dashed when Hotch gave him a shit-eating grin (well it rated as such with the normally taciturn man) and he said, “Thanks for coming Dave, it’s great to see you.” He looked at the teenager who was attached to Rossi and smirked. “I’d shake your hand, but it doesn’t look like you have one to spare.”

Leaning fully into the hug, now he realised his limpet was none other than Jack Hotchner, who was of course no longer a prepubescent lad but a full-on adolescent who’d had a serious growth spurt, he grinned too. He’d really missed Jack and Aaron when they went into WitSec but somehow, even if intellectually he knew that Jack was now fourteen, he failed to connect the dots when he’d accosted him.

Hotch looked at Col Lorne. “If you want to take the Millers to the Infirmary, he said, noting the child that Kaleb was carrying, I’ll attempt to remove my son from Agent Rossi’s personage and follow on,” he said with amusement. “It might take a while, he warned. “He’s been missing Penelope, even if she hasn’t even been gone for a week.”

Lorne looked at O’Neill who was watching the reunion with amusement. Even Bra’tac, the stoic Jaffa was looking on indulgently. Seeing no objection from O’Neill to the proposal, Col Lorne grinned, revealing a dimple. Jack Hotchner had quickly become a favourite among the military on Atlantis.

“Sure, but don’t be too long or the Doc will send out minions to hunt Special Agent Rossi down.”

Hotch nodded. “Noted, Colonel.”

When Hotch had finally convinced Jack to detach himself from the man he’d always seen as an uncle despite the lack of blood ties, Rossi realised they were alone. Well technically, Atlantis personnel were still carrying out their duties and ignoring them, but the party from Earth had disappeared, leaving him with a whole lot of unanswered questions. It suddenly occurred to him why that psych profile on the serial killer that Penelope was working on was so damned familiar. He really should have recognised his old friend’s work; he’d read his reports often enough over the years. But since he believed that Hotch and Jack were still in WitSec, his brain had obviously refused to make the logical connection. Then it hit him, the two were still in WitSec but this was the ultimate in witness protection.

He sighed, they had a lot of catching up to do.

Rossi said, “It’s so good to see you both. I had no idea you were on Atlantis.”

Aaron looked surprised. “Once you were read in, I felt sure that Penelope would mention us,” he remarked as he lead them into the transporter.

“I think she intended it to be a surprise,” Rossi said, looking at Aaron, appraisingly.

Later that night, as he readied himself to spend his first night in Atlantis, Dave was feeling energised and ready to get started. He was glad that they’d let him stay in what they’d designated the family wing, just around the corner from the Hotchner’s apartment and near the Millers’ quarters too. He’d finally solved the mystery of what a lecturer in English Lit was doing on Atlantis. It seemed that it was his wife who was the one that had been recruited to fill in for her brother, Dr Rodney McKay who was on medical leave from his position as Chief Scientific Officer until such time as he was cleared to resume his duties. Kaleb was going to teach high school English while they were on Atlantis and Madison would attend class with the younger children.

He was impressed with how welcoming everyone was in the family wing, sometimes groups could become rather insular and make outsiders feel unwelcome. Not that it mattered to Rossi since he was only here to do a short-term job and then go home, although Aaron had hinted that if this little escapade was successful, they might require him for other gigs impersonating Mr Magnum. But aside from his own status, he was really glad to see the family groups give the Millers such a warm welcome. He was surprised to learn that there were also Athosians living in the family quarters and that everyone seemed to get along well. He was also quick to notice that he wasn’t the only single person with no children who were living in the wing that was nominally reserved for families.

Two females were living there too. Cassie Fraiser who had been

here before the Hotchners arrived via the Zephyrus, and Dave grinned when he remembered Aaron’s description of Jack detoxing from his social media addiction in a tiny two-person cabin for twenty-one days. Cassie was the younger children’s teacher and would teach Madison. The young woman was extremely popular with the parents and the kids, even the older ones seemed to adore her. He also learned that she was Jack O’Neill’s surrogate daughter. It seemed Cassandra was not a native of Earth, she came from a planet called Hanka where O’Neill’s former team designated SG-1 had rescued her after her entire planet had been wiped out by a plague caused by a Goa’uld. Initially, the SGC’s chief medical officer, Dr Janet Frasier had adopted the eleven-year-old orphan, with Jack and his team becoming de facto uncles and an aunt to the alien child. After Dr Fraiser was killed, off-world in a combat situation trying to save a life, Jack had taken over as her guardian and adoptive father, which made all of the military personnel treat her with great deference due to their respect for Jack and her dead adoptive mom.

The other single female was a Dr Emanuel Umwali Nkusi, a newly arrived psychologist who he noted, most people called her Umwali. She had a most fascinating accent, it was clearly African – he wasn’t sure precisely where in Africa she was from, but her accent was a hybrid of two distinct geographical regions, and he couldn’t quite place it since. Wherever she was from, she tended to use rather a lot of colourful colloquialisms in the short time he’d spent in her company, of which the exclamation, ‘bloody Norah,’ seemed to be rather a favourite of hers. When he asked her about her speciality she told him she treated torture victims, including sexual abuse and domestic violence, sexual slavery, sex trafficking, trauma and PTSD.

It turned out that she was going to New Athos tomorrow to meet with one of the Winyan victims, Lahn Yeeps who had two children fathered by her rapist and had with the encouragement of her father Yas, found the courage to seek asylum with the Athosians. He sought permission to go with her, especially so he could talk to Lahn’s father and try to get valuable insight into how the males on Winya thought and acted. He already knew that in general, the Winyans were disposed to treat Thomas Magnum reverentially. That was partly for treating Lucius Lavin’s wife and children respectfully and ensuring that they had the means to be comfortably self-supporting, but Rossi wanted insight on the man he was going to have to persuade, Tulee Hano. Dr Nkusi was happy for him to accompany her if he gained permission from the acting military CO, Lieutenant Colonel Lorne. He agreed to ask him after speaking to one of the Athosians, a beautiful woman called Teyla Emmagan who lived in the family wing with her son Torren and mate Kanaan.

As he thought about his field trip tomorrow, he considered the other single woman that had an apartment in the family wing, Nikola Bates who was the new ISBI intelligence analyst. Since she was pregnant, it was obvious what she was doing residing here, especially as this was her first pregnancy. Rossi could see why it was a good idea for her to stay here in FQ since she was a first-time mother who had the benefit of other women who had gone through pregnancy to give her help and advice. Some of the Athosian women had experienced multiple pregnancies, Arna Sulani had four children and could probably in a pinch act as a midwife, so it made sense for Nikola to live here before her giving birth.

Plus, Hotch had mentioned that Alex Paddington was good friends with Nikola, and he lived here in the family quarters with his four-year-old daughter Annabelle ‘Belle’ Paddington. It seemed that the scuttlebutt on base was running rampant about how to categorise Alex and Nikola’s friendship. Some people thought they had been together before the widower’s marriage but neither of them was giving anything away. From Rossi’s profiler’s eyes, they acted towards each other as good friends rather than former lovers but still, first impressions could be deceptive.

As Dave finally unwound enough to think about getting some shuteye, he padded towards the bed and pulled back the covers, climbing in and pulling the lightweight covers over himself as he settled down in the bed. Thinking about Paddington, his brain in its current state of exhaustion, having travelled who knew how many lightyears across space, was trying to tell him something about the Associate Director. There was something niggling at him as his brain shut down. The blonde athletic man reminded him of someone or else he’d encounter Paddington somewhere, but if so then he couldn’t place him. Regardless, Rossi was intrigued by him, what had possessed the man to come up with the fictitious Thomas Magnum? It pointed to a playful side he wouldn’t have expected from someone in his position.

Plus, his profile of the serial killer that Penelope had shown him demonstrated the guy knew his way around a psychological profile and yet had also managed to make some pretty damned useful intuitive leaps of logic that Garcia was going to chase up while she was back on Earth. There was definitely more to the man than what he presented to the world, Dave thought tiredly as he was drifting off to sleep.

~o0o~

Two days later, Rossi found himself under the protection of the all-female team of Major Anne Teldy which bore the designation AR-5, and AR-3, led by Capt. Reddling which was made up of British and Canadians. Hotch, Captain Cadman, a delightful and flirtatious alien Vala Mal Doran and Alex Paddington were also accompanying him to Winya to try to persuade Tulee Hano and the five-man council of elders to attend Lucius Lavin’s trial. Supposedly, his raison d’etre for visiting the planet and speaking to the council was to negotiate a trade deal with them, since Homeworld was eager to have the Winyan farmers cultivate a crop called enchuri.

Apparently, there was a virus/infection that was common in the Pegasus galaxy, known by the locals as Kerson Fever – which was usually acquired as a child and treated with a plant. As such, it was viewed by the people of Pegasus as a simple childhood ailment that one recovered from, giving them lifelong immunity, except no one from Earth had immunity and the symptoms were much worse in adults leading to several people dying before Dr Keller isolated what was causing it. O’Neill had decreed that they should have a large surplus of the Enchuri plant on hand for emergency use. Dave figured that even with all of the containment protocols they had in place to prevent contagions from being brought back to Earth, sooner or later it was inevitable that Kerson Fever could pop up back home and they wanted to be prepared.

So, Dave, who would be Thomas Magnum, Alex Paddington’s mysterious and powerful boss for his visit to the planet, would complete the final negotiations for the crop of enchuri to be cultivated on Winya. In payment, they would supply the Winyans with farming equipment, seeds, medical aid, and medicines. Rossi learnt that most of the civilisations weren’t advanced enough to have currencies, since the Wraith deliberately kept planets at a preindustrial state of development to minimise the chances of them becoming a threat to their dominance. Only a few civilisations had managed to fly under their radar, while others such as the Athosians had realised that technological advancement guaranteed that the Wraith would strike them hard and so imposed their own self-limits on technological advancement. All of this added up to trade being exchanged not for hard currency but for goods and services in kind.

So, while he was there to negotiate the enchuri crop, he could informally chat about Lavin’s upcoming trial. Thanks to his visit to New Athos yesterday and his long talk with the ex-pat Winyan, Yas Yeeps, who’d recommended using the close familial relationship which existed between Tulee Hano and his cousin, Filiya Lavin. It was thought that this was at least partly responsible for his vilification of the young victims of Lavin, seeing them as being responsible for the breakdown of Lucius’ marriage to Filiya and him having to help support her and her two children so they didn’t starve. However, thanks to Paddington (in the guise of Thomas Magnum) setting her up in a lucrative business as a spinner and weaver Tulee was no longer forced to provide food and clothes for Lavin’s family as Filiya was making a good living.

Yas Yeeps had also recommended that he enlisted the assistance of Filiya Lavin in persuading Tulee to act as Lavin’s paracletus during his trial, He also suggested that Dave should talk to Madame Lavin, mother of Lucius because she was the step-sister of Tulee’s wife, Pela Hano. Of course, Dave would wait until he met with Hano today before he decided how to proceed, but it certainly helped to have an insider’s take on the relationships within the tight knit Winyan community. At the moment, Rossi favoured using the women in his life to manipulate the man who Yas described as stubborn as a stone, but he would take Hano’s own emotional temperature before locking in a strategy since there was so much at stake. He’d already watched the video testimony collected by Agent Paddington and his team and been greatly moved by their situation but somehow, meeting Lahn yesterday, it stuck with him how Lahn Yeeps had only been fifteen when Lavin forced her to have sex with him. The child now had two of his numerous children that she had to rear!

Paddington had also briefed him on how Thomas Magnum had started out as a safer way to gather intel from the less salubrious individuals, grifters and itinerants who were often best placed to hear gossip and intelligence. Tony had cast himself as merely a mere lackey to a powerful man – he was someone on a similar level to those he was pumping for information and thus, Magnum was born. Thomas Magnum was reputed to be a very mysterious man, known to generously reward informants for supplying him with well-sourced information but whose retribution was swift and without mercy when double-crossed, or someone tried to fool him with false or questionable intel. Paddington had managed to create a fictional character that was equally loved and feared. Most importantly in this instance, his generous and compassionate treatment of Filiya Lavin, who supplied information that enabled the Atlantis teams to arrest Lavin with little drama, had quickly won over the Winyans by his level of generosity toward Lavin’s family.

Paddington also mentioned that it had been his plan for Thomas Magnum to argue to the town council that the young women and their children should be permitted to leave Winya and make a fresh start somewhere else, since in such a small population, having eleven offspring of Lavin competing for partners, they posed a threat to the already small gene pool. However, that plan had hit a snag with three of the four remaining victims not willing to leave because they felt they should pay for their crimes. The fourth victim, Willa Upo, although happy to leave Winya to ensure a better future for her children, although Willa was hanging on, trying to persuade her sister Heleen to leave too. This was why they needed to get the Winyan Council of Elders to reverse the guilty verdict against the five remaining Winyans with Tulee Hano being the massive stumbling block. Rossi conceded this put a lot of pressure upon him. Although when interrogating serial killers, he was often trying to save victims, so if wasn’t exactly new, but still, he felt the weight of expectations sitting heavily on his shoulders. A lot of people in Atlantis were heavily invested in saving these children and their mothers.

As he took a seat in one of the two small spaceships that the Lanteans referred to as puddle jumpers (because they were small enough to fit through the Stargate puddles) he once again marvelled at the engineering feat that created these sleek spaceships so many millennia ago – long before humans evolved. He knew that these vehicles only responded to those people who had the ATA gene and that the interface was a mental one. He watched as Ch Warrant Officer Lucinda Thomas in the Royal Canadian Air Force who possessed the Ancient gene sat down in the pilot’s seat and engaged the engine, piloting the jumper down from the docking bay and right into the event horizon. It was a far better way of travelling through wormholes than walking through them, he concluded gratefully.

Chapter 15

Later, as Alex led him to the local tavern, which Dave knew was owned by Madame Lavin, who was the mother of the serial sexual predator, Rossi decided that Yas Yeeps’ analysis had been pretty damned accurate. During the negotiating process for the Winyans to cultivate and harvest the enchuri plant which had important for the strategic concerns of Atlantis, it gave him a splendid opportunity to assess the negotiating style of the five male councillors – in effect the village elders, whose word was law.

Although in this case, they were practically falling over themselves to secure the deal with Thomas Magnum. Paddington hadn’t exaggerated the devotion they felt for him. If anything, he’d actually downplayed it and he wondered how it felt for the agent to see Rossi feted and welcomed so lavishly by the Winyans when in truth, he was responsible for providing the very generous reward to Filiya Lavin that earned the Winyans undying devotion.

What Dave had no way of knowing was that for fifteen years, Alex had soothed ruffled feathers, expedited warrants, garnered information from other law enforcement agencies, came up with out-of-the-box leads and usually received little if any acknowledgement. He’d once pulled his boss and a young woman out of a trapped submerged car that his boss drove off a dock into the Anacostia River. To do so, he’d taken out both gunmen while running flat out, to dive into the river with his scarred lungs to drag his boss and the civilian out of the trapped car. Once he’d freed them and got them back onto the dock, then he had to resuscitate them and after all that, his boss won the meritorious civilian service award. So, Rossi getting the adoration for being Thomas Magnum, it didn’t faze Tony at all. He was used to it.

When Dave asked him about missing out on the kudos, Alex gave a lopsided grin and said, “Well, maybe a little bit but it’s a bit like parents letting Santa Claus take all the credit for the Christmas presents that they tell their children he brought them and then how they wield him like a big stick for the rest of the year to bribe their kids to toe the line.”

Dave decided it was an extremely interesting rationalisation and snorted at the thought that one day, Thomas Magnum might turn out to be the Pegasus galaxy’s answer to the jolly-red-suited-guy. But instead of some plump rosy-cheeked fellow, Rossi thought, he’d looked like a tall handsome Italian with silver hair and a goatee, who made pasta and appreciated a bottle of fine red wine.

Pushing away that frivolous and fanciful notion since they had serious business to attend to, the profiler thought about the five members of the council and his first impressions of them. Magistrate Wodren Drell, an ectomorphic older man with not a lot of hair left on his head, was logical, and decisive but ultimately willing to reconsider his position if there was a valid reason. Abo Trewe was a pudgy-looking man with faded red hair and a receding hairline who was driven by his emotions and tended to jump to conclusions, while Gerde Yemel, was dark-skinned with silver frizzy cut short to his head and wiry despite his age. Rossi quickly pegged him as an introvert who took his own sweet time making decisions, which was usually a good thing. Tulee Hano was his mirror image; rotund, had a florid complexion, and the profiler soon realised this man was highly opinionated (as in he had an opinion on everything and everyone) and he was a rigid thinker to boot. Hardly a desirable set of qualities and Dave could easily see why Yas Yeeps could describe him as stubborn as a stone and realised that he made up his mind impetuously and then clung to it regardless of it being correct or not.

The final member of the council was a wizen old man with rheumy blue eyes that looked as if he wasn’t sure what day of the week it was but turned out his mind, as well as his wit was sharp as a tack and Rossi decided underestimating Ando Jeet would not be a smart move. Especially when the old codger insisted that they close their deal for the enchuri crop with liquor called shluk he boasted to have made himself and tasted like battery acid. Not that Dave had ever had the misfortune to drink battery acid but if he had, the profiler was pretty sure it would taste like Jeet’s shluk. As he was trying not to heave his guts up after taking a polite swig from the flagon, he noted the old bastard’s glee at having taken him by surprise. Still, as Dave was heroically trying to keep from making any embarrassing reactions, he was admitting that he agreed with Yeeps regarding Hano. Rossi after noting his reactions for himself had decided that Yas was right, the easiest way to get him to volunteer to be Lucius Lavin’s Paracletus was manipulation via his loved ones.

To this end, they were waiting at the tavern for an audience with Madame Lavin. While she kept them waiting as she dealt with a few of her drunken clientele, Thomas aka Dave ordered a couple of teffa ales, the Winyan local brew. He took a cautious sip, hoping that the  teffa ale would be a lot more palatable than Ando’s shluk. Fortunately, the grain-based beer wasn’t bad, although he found the deep violet colour of the teffa grain rather off-putting. Alex quietly conjectured about how the ale would fair now that Yeeps (who was Winya’s only miller had moved to New Athos with his daughter) as Yas had explained that there was a two-step process in milling it. The miller said that it was necessary to remove a highly toxic alkaloid from the harvested teffa grain – a process that had been developed by his great-great-grandfather and passed down through the generations.

He also warned Rossi that if the Winyans offered him gulahish, Rossi should proceed with extreme caution. Seeing his curious expression, Alex explained sotto voce that it was somewhat similar to Kava from the South Pacific and made from a tuber root that was indigenous to Winya. A number of the Atlantis expedition had drunk it, assuming it was harmless and ended up having their stomachs pumped with activated charcoal then spending several days in the Infirmary.

“Dr Biro analysed the drink and discovered it contained an even more toxic chemical than teffa but one which the Winya’s had developed a tolerance for over many generations of not just using it for making alcohol but using it as a root vegetable to thicken stews or roasted with meat.”

During their conversation, Dave had his eyes on one of the barmaids, a young raven-haired beauty who was being given a hard time by the all-male customers who were visiting during the mid-day period. Bawdy didn’t begin to describe the disrespectful treatment she received. The profiler also noted that while the other barmaid wasn’t treated appropriately either, she was not subject to the same degree of revulsion, nor was she subject to having her assets groped either. As he watched one brazenly loutish young male in full view of everyone, slip his hand up her skirt before she managed to slip away, Alex shook his head angrily.

“That’s Neese Luta, Lavin’s last victim. Because she is a convicted criminal, they think that they can treat her like a piece of garbage, and so does she. She won’t leave Winya because she thinks that this is what she deserves.”

And right there, Rossi could understand why so many people were invested in saving these young women and their offspring. He recalled the videos he’d watched of the interviews conducted by Paddington after they’d taken Lavin into custody and then later Aaron’s interviews too. Lucius Lavin might hide behind the mask of a buffoonish character who was greedy and grasping but essentially seemed a pretty harmless fellow, but in interviews with both men, they’d managed to get him to lower his mask several times to reveal a highly dangerous individual. Evil in the same way Dahmer and Manson were evil.

If Rossi had been determined to help the victims and their children before seeing Neese and the Hell she endured because she had been convinced that she deserved nothing else, he was now as officially obsessed as the rest of the Lanteans who were working their butts off to save these young highly impressionable women. Failure was not an option.

~o0o~

Rodney McKay was not happy. No, scrub that observation, he was extremely unhappy. He’d been intensely pissed off since learning that Jeannie was coming to Atlantis to fill in for him and in the two-week notice he received about her impending appointment, he called out all of the stops to have it rescinded, only to discover that his two main backers on the JCS, Generals Michael Rosen and Irving Conrad had been terminated and were awaiting trial in some uber secret military prison. So, he reached out to his super-secret contact at SAD or SAC (Special Activities Centre) as they were now called since changing their name in 2016, only to discover its head, Mr John Jones (and Rodney did not for a moment believe that was his real name) had been fired too after a massive fuckup. Now, Rodney McKay had been around the block enough times to know that getting fired at SAD was a sure-fire way to earn Mr Jones a dirt nap as the mob would say. His replacement, Ms Jayne James (yeah, like that was her real name) had replied to his encrypted emails saying that SAC was satisfied with his sister as his temporary replacement. She tersely informed him it was the opinion of her superiors that Dr McKay should concentrate his efforts on sorting out his emotional issues so that he could resume his position asap and stop worrying about his replacement, since her credentials were impeccable for the task.

After going to all the trouble of finding a way to get access to a computer on Atlantis, despite his minders watching him constantly so he could get Jeannie’s assignment deep-sixed, only to be rebuffed by the CIA and learn that his supporters had all been sidelined, he was beside himself. Jennifer had temporarily increased his blood pressure medication and it had left him with erectile problems and insomnia. Since his usual ways to treat insomnia: sex, jacking off or failing that, taking a couple sleeping pills to sleep weren’t available to him, he was in a foul mood, worse than even his normal ill-temper on steroids. Even John was giving him a wide berth, as he prepared for the final two trials of Lucius Lavin.

So, when Jeannie had turned up two days before and brought her husband with her and her daughter (who she’d given up a brilliant scientific career for), Rodney had refused to welcome his temporary replacement. And seriously, why did she bring hubby and Madison to Atlantis when she never had in the past. It wasn’t as if she was going to be here for more than a few weeks at most. Then today, after she finally tracked him down after that obnoxiously juvenile AI ratted him out to her, she mentioned that Dr O’Shea wanted her and Rodney to take part in some family counselling; he felt like he was ready to combust. What the hell was it with these people – were they trying to make him insane.

Then trying to change the subject, she joked that she expected to find him, and Jennifer married by now, or at least living together, which made him want to scream. Why did everyone try to interfere in their relationship – he and Jennifer were happy with things the way they were.

As she chatted away about Kaleb and how he had been asked by General O’Neill if he would consult with some bunch of aliens about setting up educational facilities for adults whose mental development was of children, he wondered why she’d agreed to come to Atlantis and work on his special projects. Jeannie was not a fan of the military. When he asked her she was evasive, trying to deflect him.

Finally, she said, “Things I learnt convinced me that there was a clear and present danger and sometimes passive resistance isn’t sufficient. I want Maddy to grow up in a world where she has free will to make choices,” she said, and he mistakenly believed she was speaking about the latest thwarted attack by the Ori.

It wasn’t until much later he would come to realise she was speaking about a more recent threat to Earth’s existence, and one much closer to home. In the meantime, he chaffed under the unreasonable restrictions he was subject to, with no indication of when his minders and their constant supervision might be dropped. And to add insult to injury, by the end of their first visit since he’d nearly died more than three years before when he had an alien parasite inside his head, Jeannie casually let drop that her family had been busy cosying up to his ultimate nemesis Alex Paddington and his devil’s spawn.

How could his sister betray him like that? And what sort of a mother would let her child interact with such a horribly ill-mannered brat as Belle Paddington. It was all her fault – she just had to taunt him with that wretched song that night. Why the hell did they have to come here and ruin his life? People were suddenly taking his side – a bumbling cop over Rodney, the most intelligent individual in three galaxies.

After Jeannie left him, indicating she had a lot to get done, he felt angry, hurt and confused and decided to take O’Shea’s advice and practice some stress relief. He and his entourage made their way to the recreational area that had been set up recently, checking out the room which now housed an upright piano. O’Shea had recommended that they set up a piano in an area of the city where McKay could go to play the piano and not run the risk of encountering Paddington. Plus, with many other people enjoying being able to play too, it meant that they didn’t have to troop through the family wing all the time.

Thankfully, no one was using it and he sat down and started warming up. He’d been resistant to the idea of playing again, if he couldn’t be a concert pianist then really, what was the point. And yet, in spite of his stubborn avoidance of music for decades, with far too much time on his hands right now and his brain buzzing with angry thoughts, he discovered that music helped to take his mind off his woes. It was particularly helpful if he was struggling to master the technical aspects of some of the pieces that had bested him when he was still taking lessons. So, it had become his obsession to master those pieces that he thought were beyond him and he found it was truly a good way to relieve his stress.

He had to give credit where credit was due, O’Shea was right. Playing made him feel better about himself and for decades he’d let a parochial suburban piano teacher’s unqualified opinions of his musical abilities rob him of something that made him happy. Even better, piano was something that Jeannie had never played, she’d opted to play the oboe as a child, so he never felt like she was trying to one-up him like he had with their academic achievements. No. the piano was all about him!

~o0o~

Tony scrutinised the legendary profiler as he watched Neese and her treatment by the male clientele in Madame Lavin’s inn. He’d soon realised who she was and why she was been treated so shamefully, he watched him slip into a highly authentic persona of a charismatic and powerful alpha male who had, first Madam Lavin and later Filiya Lavin acting like putty in his hands. He lavished them with compliments, many of them non-verbal as his smile and his eyes let them know he found them to be desirable and attractive. Tony had to hand it to the suave older man, Dave was doing a damned fine job of acting like a sexy Latin Lothario and perhaps it wasn’t an act. Even the two barmaids responded to his magnetism, but Rossi was completely fixated on his target.

It was an even more impressive act since Tony knew that the law enforcement professional despised Madame Lavin for condoning the lewd conduct of her male clientele towards Neese, when she could have easily stopped them but didn’t. She seemed to think that because she gave Neese and her young ones (her son’s children) food and a leaky roof over their heads, she could treat Neese like a serf and the young woman had no cause to complain about it. And really, any niggling misgivings he might have had about leading either of the Lavin women on so they could con Tulee into defending his cousin’s husband had been swept away by the hopeless acceptance of Neese who believed it was her cross to bear for her sins.

Rossi praised Madam Lavin’s establishment and her food which she’d insisted on providing gratis in appreciation for what Thomas Magnum had done for her grandchildren, Jeroze and Adrexa and her daughter-in-law. It seemed to have totally escaped her awareness that she didn’t just have Jeroze and Adrexa but nine other grandchildren, none of whom had asked to be brought into the world but deserved to be loved and taken care of too. But Dave played his part to perfection, mentioning that he was concerned that Lucius should have someone from Winya to represent him when he stood trial because everyone deserved the opportunity to defend themselves. When Madame Lavin wavered, he pointed out that ensuring her son received a scrupulously fair hearing, could only serve to comfort his son and daughter, who despite his behaviour, obviously still loved him dearly. He mentioned how as they grew older, they would probably struggle with what he’d done to them all. He’d mentioned that if one of Lavin’s relatives were to offer to serve as his paracletus, he, Thomas Magnum would pool strings to make sure that the Most Venerable Tribunal Members would permit it.

Of course, he was subtlety making sure that she arrived at the individual they wanted to ‘volunteer’ by mentioning it needed to be someone who had a good grasp of laws and was not afraid to stand up in public and speak their mind. Someone who didn’t care about offending people if required, someone who would not buckle under pressure. Soon enough, Madame Lavin was suggesting that she knew just the man. Her daughter-in-law’s cousin, Tulee Hano, who was on the Winyan Council of Elders.

With a butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth expression, Rossi responded innocently. “Really? Hano is family; I had no idea.”

Madam Lavin frowned. “How do you know Tulee?”

“Well, I don’t really know him, but I met him a little while ago when I was negotiating with the council for Winya to cultivate a crop of the enchuri plant for Atlantis because our people aren’t immune to Kerson Fever. Unfortunately, it killed several of our people a few years ago. So, we decided to stockpile enough enchuri so that we can treat any outbreaks of the illness, rather than having to go collect it when we’re in a medical crisis. Thus, I was here negotiating payment,” he explained smoothly.

Tony joined the conversation. “Tulee is a great negotiator,” he commented. “Tough and uncompromising.”

Dave aka Thomas Magnum nodded. “Yes, he is, and I agree Madame Lavin, he’d be perfect as a paracletus, but do you think he’d agree to do it? It would mean having to travel to Atlantis,” he pointed out, as she pursed her lips.

“Well, as you say, he is family and one of the Winyan elders. He would be doing it for Jeroze and Adrexa’s interests and he does dote on them so. I’m sure he’d be delighted to be asked,” she said confidently.

Dave smiled. Well, it will certainly ease my mind if he does. It concerns me that those children will face a difficult time in the years to come, having to live with Lucius’ legacy, even though they obviously still have filial feelings for him. After all, he is their father.”

“Indeed,” she averred. “It is a terrible shame that those young women did not resist him, but he can be so persuasive and he’s a fine figure of a man, too,” she sighed as Rossi exchanged an incredulously outraged look with Tony, quickly masked by both of them.

Having achieved what they set out to do, the two men cut short their visit, pleading that Thomas wanted to stop off before they return to Atlantis and pay his respects to Filiya for her assistance in locating Lavin. Slightly mollified by the departure of the debonair and admiring lady’s man, she insisted that the next time they were on Winya, Thomas must be sure to call in and visit. “And please, call me Moorea,” she told him, batting her eyelashes at him coquettishly.

He demurred that he wouldn’t dream of missing the chance of being in such delightful company and Tony was impressed that Rossi managed to lie through his teeth without choking on such massive whoppers. As he led Dave to Filiya’s mudbrick and thatched roof cottage, he produced a mysterious parcel that he said Penelope had sent back with General O’Neill. When Rossi enquired about what it was, Tony informed him it was a ball winder that wound hanks of spun fibre into balls that could easily be used for weaving, knitting or crocheting. Penelope informed him that it was a lot faster than doing it by hand and she’d sent extra bobbins for spinning too.

As they knocked on her open door, Lucius’ wife emerged, beaming when she saw Tony. “Fair day, Agent Paddington. I had heard that you were to visit Winya today. Can I be of assistance,” she gushed at her benefactor.

He smiled at her because, despite her horrible treatment of Lavin’s victims and their children, Filiya was a victim of her odious husband too. She was in her middle to late forties but could easily pass for someone a great deal older. Plus, the most charitable description of her was that she was homely – plain looking, stolidly built and possessed a rather sour countenance. Although to be fair, she was always very welcoming to him and seemed much more personable since her spinning and weaving business had boomed.

“I just wanted to drop some treats in for your children, Filiya.” It was something he did whenever he was on Winya, for all of Lavin’s offspring but he didn’t tell her that, either. Plus, he always brought food for the five women and their children, although he usually had the female military members of their mission deliver the food, trying not to make too big a deal out of the food hampers of staple foods, because they were still hoping to influence the council to reverse its verdict. Being seen to openly take sides would just entrench Tulee Hano’s position even more. Visiting and assisting Filiya Lavin who was seen as the wronged party, on the other hand, was met with approval by the Winyans and he didn’t have to hide it.

“Plus, we, he indicated himself and Dave, ‘wanted to see how you were doing.”

She smiled at him gratefully and looked at Rossi. “Fair day to you, Sir.”

Tony took the hint and did the honours. “Filiya this is my boss, Thomas Magnus. He wanted a chance to meet you himself and thank you for helping us,” he told her as Rossi smoothly took over, monopolising the conversation with his overwhelming Italian charm and charisma.

Oh yeah, Penelope was right when she argued that Dave was born to play Magnum. Paul would have been a pale substitute. Rossi oozed sex appeal and Col Davis would have had to force it.

Thomas kissed the back of her hand with a flourish, bowing chivalrously to the middle-aged matron of the house, who reacted to his charm offensive by blushing furiously. Trying not to giggle like a giddy teenager, she fell to profusely thanking him for his incredible generosity to her family.

“I know that you have been exceptionally generous – the equipment you have supplied to me has been of exceedingly high workmanship. Better than I could have ever hoped to own. It makes the goods that I produce very highly prized and raised the barter price I can gain for them so much more than I could have expected. Before, I was struggling to feed my children but now we are thriving.”

Having already handed over the package to Rossi, Dave smiled at her winningly. “I am gratified to hear this. My assistant Ms Kitten who is a knitter of fibres informs me that extra bobbins for spinning are always welcome and that you could use another ball winder to turn skeins into balls of fibre.” He handed her the package and she practically dissolved into tears of gratitude before opening it with great reverence.

“Oh, Thomas Magnum, you are much too generous, kind sir. I can never thank you enough,” she babbled. “Can I offer you some refreshments?”

“A cool drink would be appreciated,” he told her. “After concluding our trade agreement, I think I drank a little too much shluk,” he told her with a rueful smile that again had her simpering like a schoolgirl.

As she bustled around fetching a cordial made from some sort of Winyan-grown bright red berry that tasted a bit like redcurrants and stained their lips red. Rossi got to work, adroitly persuading Filiya that it would be in everyone’s best interests, particularly Jeroze’s and Adrexa’s if her husband had a Winyan to defend him at his trial. Especially if the tribunal should find him guilty and then impose the death penalty for his crimes. At her shocked exclamation, he informed her that two of the ringleaders who had kidnapped Col Sheppard had already been found guilty and executed. If Lavin received competent defence from one of his fellow Winyans, especially if it was someone who had filial links to him and could say he’d done what he could, it would surely help them to deal with his loss, now and in the future, should he be sentenced to death.

She looked concerned. “Jeroze is angry at his father but still feels guilty for turning him in. You are right Thomas Magnum, it will be very difficult for him if Lucius is executed.”

Tony had already realised this would hit the lad very hard and it concerned him, often keeping him up late at night. “And a paracletus could argue for clemency for his children if he is found guilty,” he told her.

Rossi nodded. “Agent Paddington is correct. I have already discussed this with Madame Lavin. She suggested that Tulee Hano could be persuaded but I’m not sure about that. He seems to be someone who is not open to persuasion,” he finished with admirable understatement. The truth was that the stubborn coot was as immovable as a mountain range.

“Yes, Cousin Tulee should defend Lucius. Jeroze admires him and will realise that everything possible was done to help him, even if he didn’t deserve Tulee’s air and succour, she said, nodding. “And I will admit that Tulee is a hard man to persuade, but he is my cousin, and he is fond of myself and the children. I’m sure when I explain to him that he was doing this for the children, not for Lucius, he will agree. Before you were so generous to me, helping set up my fibre so I could support us, Tulee provided for us – we owe him a great deal.”

As they finished up, Thomas impressed on her that time was of the essence in persuading Hano. If he was going to be Lucius’ paracletus they would have to make arrangements for him to attend the hearing. Tony mentioned that perhaps the other Winyan Council of Elders would like to be present too, so they bear witness that Lucius received a fair hearing. Filiya dutifully promised to mention it to the Chief Magistrate. When Major Teldy checked in to see if they were ready to leave, Tony radioed back that they were leaving Filiya Lavin’s cottage in a few minutes and would meet everyone else back at the jumpers in twenty.

When they took their leave of Lavin’s former family home, Tony led the veteran profiler out of the village towards the open field where they’d landed the two jumpers. All in all, it had been a good result. With luck Madam Lavin… ‘Call me Moorea,’ and Filiya would be able to guilt Hano into being Lavin’s paracletus and force him into defending the sociopath which must surely make him see how pitiful their own justice had been.

He grinned at his companion. “Thomas Magnum did good today,” he praised. “Thank you, for your help” the Associate Director said gratefully.

Rossi gave him a cheeky grin. “Let’s not count our chickens before they come home to be roasted,” he said cautiously, as Tony shot him an incredulous look.

“Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be home to roost but I’m jonesing for a good pollo arrosto,” he smirked.

At that point, they shifted to Italian in case anyone might be spying on them since Dave was still undercover until they cleared the planet. Not surprisingly, it was Neese that Dave wanted to bitch about, wishing they could just put her in protective custody and drag her back to Atlantis. Tony understood where he was coming from, he wished they could put all four Winyan women and the seven kids into protective custody, but it wasn’t that simple, which was why they were going through this complicated charade to get Hano to walk back his dumb chauvinistic opinion.

About halfway to the jumper, Tony stopped, hearing childish sobs, shushing Rossi so he could determine where the crying was coming from. They tracked the cries of pain to a small rise, with some medium-sized bushes and a tall tree, finding a young child with coffee-coloured skin and dark hair curled up in a heap, clearly injured. As he assessed him, Tony was instantly aware that the child had been severely beaten – he recognised the signs. He squatted down near the lad, moving slowly and very gently he began to examine him examined as the child stared up at him with wild eyes.

“Hey there Leoosh, do you remember me? I’m Agent Alex from Atlantis. I’m trying to help you and your mother, buddy.”

The boy calmed down somewhat, watching him like a hawk with terrified eyes. Oh, he knew that look alright.

“So, listen, buddy, I just want to help you. I know your hurting and I’m going to ask my friends to go and fetch your mother, Leoosh but until she gets here, I need to see where you’re hurt? Can I do that?”

Leoosh stared at him before flicking a glance at Dave. Tony correctly interpreted his question. “This is my boss, Thomas Magnum. He wants to help you too. We hate it when people get hurt – it’s our job to help them.

The kid’s hazel eyes had widened at the mention of Thomas Magnum, apparently even eight-year-olds had heard of him. Congratulations DiNozzo, you’ve created a monster.

As he was speaking, Tony was carefully taking inventory of the child’s injuries. The soon-to-be black eye, bloodied nose and split lip spoke volumes about what had happened to him, even if he refused to explain how he’d gotten them. More alarmingly, it was obvious to Tony after a lifetime of experience that the boy had a head injury. Gently, barely touching Leoosh’s head, he ran two fingers over his skull and his stomach clenched as he tried not to throw up. He detected a depressed area in the lad’s skull that was definitely not a good sign. Checking, he found one of the boy’s pupils was blown and he knew that Leoosh needed urgent medical attention.

Plus, the child was breathing funny, and he was pretty certain what that meant. Gently with his knife, he slit the child’s shirt open. His chest was littered with bruising that indicated he had cracked or broken ribs. He hoped that Leoosh didn’t have a collapsed lung, or they were in deep shit. As he reached over and took the child’s hand and told him his mother would be there soon, he started talking softly to Rossi in Italian so the boy wouldn’t be alarmed. He outlined what he suspected about Leoosh’s condition and that the Winyans didn’t have the facilities or knowledge to deal with such serious injuries and the only option they had was to take him straight to Atlantis.

Dave agreed and pointed out the bloody rock that was several feet away, no doubt it was the blunt instrument that had been used to stove in the boy’s head. It was likely that it may have fingerprints, DNA or trace evidence on it, and they needed someone with forensic skills to collect evidence. It was also clear to both heartsick men that an adult-sized boot had kicked Leoosh at least once in the kidneys. The kid was lucky to have survived although if he didn’t get treatment soon, that might not be the case for much longer.

Tony was swiftly formulating a plan so that as soon as Ota arrived, they could swing into action. Leoosh needed to be medivacked to Atlantis and Ota needed to accompany him and keep him calm and reassured. He needed to remain and preserve the crime scene and have Captain Cadman return with his crime scene kit so he could nail the sonofabitch who beat Leoosh nearly to death. What sort of person would hurt a skinny eight-year-old little kid. He was already so cowered by his people’s treatment of him and his siblings that Tony was pretty sure he didn’t even fight back since there were no signs of defensive wounds.

Major Teldy and her team plus Hotch, who’d been with her when Tony called for help, arrived with Ota Benn who was moving slowly. He knew instantly that she was also hurt but right now was not the time to interrogate her. He was pretty sure that the two assaults were connected but he was focused on getting Leoosh back to the Atlantis Infirmary asap.

Dave pointed to Leoosh’s abdomen which was also showing signs of swelling. That was not good. Acknowledging that he’d noted the swelling, he asked Dave to keep Leoosh distracted while he talked to Ota,  as he explained how they’d discovered her son as they were headed back to the puddle jumpers. He stressed that he was seriously hurt and although he told her he wasn’t a doctor, he knew enough to know that he needed immediate medical attention if he had any hope of surviving. He asked her permission to medivac him back to Atlantis and for her to go too to help him remain calm since the more upset he became or struggled, the more dangerous it was given his injuries.

Ota immediately gave her permission for Leoosh to be transported to Atlantis in a puddle jumper once she realised that his injuries were far too severe to be treated on Winyan and his only hope was the advanced medical facilities on Atlantis. But she protested that she couldn’t leave Winya since she was a convict and didn’t have permission to leave the planet. Luckily, Captain Reddling’s team had arrived at the scene with Magistrate Wodren Drell who had heard Tony’s report and quickly took charge after a cursory examination of Leoosh revealed that Tony hadn’t been exaggerating about his condition.

“Go. Ota. Be with your son. He needs his mother, and you should be with him,” he said compassionately. The ‘in case the worst happens,’ hung heavy upon the air but unspoken by Drell.

“I have your permission,” Ota asked nervously. The council had not been happy when the Yeeps left.

“Yes. Yes, you have my permission,” he confirmed.

Tony took the opportunity to announce in the presence of Wodren Drell, “ And while you are on Atlantis, you can be treated too for the beating you took, Ms Benn.”

She paled and staggered before insisting, “I’m fine. We must hurry!

Chapter 16

Right before they headed back to Atlantis with Ota and her badly injured son, Leoosh, Tony had a quick word with Major Teldy, Captain Cadman and Captain Reddling, deciding that Reddling’s team would remain behind to back him up while Teldy’s team would medivac the injured boy and his mother to Atlantis. Then her team would return with Captain Cadman who would collect his evidence-gathering gear so they could process the scene. He quickly scrawled off a note to Fornell telling him to be sure to take photographic and forensic evidence on both of the victims, glad that even after almost two decades since he was a cop, he still continued to carry his little black notebook and pencil on his person in case he needed to take notes. It was a habit, just like the fact that he continued to carry his belt knife on him… just in case.

As Teldy’s team was leaving, he pulled her aside, whispered so that only she would hear that he was pretty sure that Ota Benn had been sexually assaulted and to let Dr Biro know so she could do a rape kit. Hotch and Rossi exchanged a few quick words with him as Teldy nodded and began to supervise moving the skinny little boy. It seemed that the two profilers were on the same page as he was, all of them seemingly having reached the same conclusion about Ota, so he knew they would ensure she was handled carefully. He mentioned to them that they should reach out to Dr O’Shea. He was guessing she would assign Dr Nkusi to support Ota.

Hotch nodded. “Don’t worry Alex, we’ll see to it. And just remember, this wasn’t your fault.”

He grimaced because of course, he was blaming himself for not persuading Ota into leaving Winya before this happened. But he just nodded, because he agreed that there would be plenty of time for laying of blame after they found the sicko who could hurt an innocent little boy so badly. Now he needed to focus on catching a monster.

He issued an order to Hotch that he wanted Lavin transferred to the Odyssey’s brig since with Ota in Atlantis, he really didn’t want a repeat of the episode with Dr Girard, and they all knew if Leoosh didn’t survive, Ota would have nothing to lose. Indeed, he and Dr O’Shea were fairly sure that she already met the diagnostic criteria for suicidality. If Leoosh didn’t make it, she would have few qualms about dying, trying to get to Lavin who was being guarded round the clock. Finally, he asked them to organise with Teyla or Miko to look after Belle until he could leave Winya and explain to his daughter that he was looking for whoever hurt Leoosh. Staring at their backs as Hotch and Rossi followed Major Teldy and her team back to the puddle jumper, he could only hope that Leoosh would make it.

When Tony offered his services as an investigator of crimes to Magistrate Drell, he was relieved that he accepted his offer gratefully. After all, anyone who was capable of beating a child to the point of death needed to be found and punished. While Capt. Reddling and Corporal Evans were guarding the crime scene, so it wasn’t compromised, Tony took Ch Warrant Officer Lucinda Thomas – herself a victim of domestic violence, Sergeant Stephanie Lamont and their Athosian guide, Parel Lakir into the Winyan village to question possible witnesses. Seeing that Tony already knew that the Winyan kids had been quick to pick up on the attitudes of their parents towards Leoosh and his half-siblings and bully the nine (now seven kids after the Yeeps’ departure) he felt their best shot was talking to his brothers and sisters first. He gathered them all together at the Upo cottage and informed their mothers what had happened, asking them to support their kids as he and Thomas questioned them. He sent Sgt Lamont and Parel Lakir out to question the rest of the villagers, telling them to stay together.

He decided to leave Artez and his sister until last since the pair, especially seven-year-old Artez, were extremely close to Leoosh, and they’d been hit by the news of Leoosh’s assault extremely hard. He knew that Heleen was his surrogate mother when Ota wasn’t capable of looking after him and she seemed to be taking the news of the attack on Leoosh very badly too. He wondered idly if it was dawning on her that staying here to give Artez and Remae a future perhaps wasn’t such a great idea after all. Had she thought that as Willa had argued, their children would be better off someplace that didn’t despise them for how they’d come to be born?

To give them a chance to recover from the shocking news, he started out with Willa’s twin girls, Yashael and Yahnore. The twins, who were six and awfully cute, said that they’d seen Leoosh at school, but he didn’t want to play afterwards. They thought he was going home to do chores, but Tony got the impression Leoosh often went home to check up on his mother. He sighed, remembering as a small boy, he’d known that his own mother was ill, and he would follow her around to make sure she was okay. Of course, since she was an alcoholic, she was often not okay, but he didn’t understand that there were days when she was too drunk to get out of bed.

Thomas was talking to Neese Luta and her twin boys, Bale and Bada who were almost five. They were regaling her with a rundown of what they learned at school that day, but in the end, they told a similar story to Willa’s two girls. They tried to get Leoosh to go fishing with them because they weren’t allowed to go by themselves, yet but he said he needed to go home to do his chores and would go with them later so they could have fish for dinner. But they said that he never showed up. Lucinda thought that their mother seemed very nervous and agitated but she confirmed that Leoosh never turned up to take her sons down to the local pond. In fact, Bale and Bada had been excited to learn that Thomas Magnum has sent them a food package and that they’d be eating stew for dinner rather than the scraps she was allowed to bring home from the tavern, so they didn’t go searching for their sibling.

Finally, he questioned Artez with his mother present while Thomas talked to six-year-old Remae, Willa staying with her while Lucinda questioned the little girl. Although she hadn’t seen Leoosh after he left the schoolhouse she revealed that she’d overheard him tell Artez that someone was hurting his mother. When Tony asked Artez, he’d yelled at his little sister and said it was a secret and he’d promised Leoosh not to tell anyone. Heleen had turned an interesting shade of green and Tony figured she was trying not to throw up as she realised how stupid she’d been not to leave when Willa first suggested it. Winya was not safe for them or their children.

But Tony wasn’t just looking at Heleen, he’d seen Neese and knew that she was scared witless. He thought about the men at the tavern who made her life a living Hell and figured it was the most likely place to start. After they managed to assure Artez that it was alright for him to break his promise so that Tony could lock up the bad guy who hurt Leoosh and his mother, they learned that a man came to the Benn home (a falling down one-room hovel) and his mother would send him out to hunt for food, berries, wild tuber roots or sometimes Artez admitted that Leoosh would steal food from some of Ota’s customers, who paid her poorly for her candles. When he returned home his mother was always ill and would send him to stay with Heleen and Willa until she was well again. Unfortunately, Ota had made Leoosh promise not to tell anyone about the man, so Artez didn’t know who it was they were afraid of.

Tony had a pretty good idea what was going on – he’d spent a year working vice in Philly before going into the UC gig in the Macaluso mob. He reckoned that one or more of the jerks he’d seen hanging around Neese in the tavern were threatening Ota and Neese, forcing them into non-consensual sex by threatening to harm their children. The trouble was that these children conceived by a monster and shunned by their community, had grown up with only a mother as their parent. It was only a matter of time before Leoosh would try to protect his mother and become a threat to the man or men who were using her. Lahn Yeeps had been fortunate in having a loving supportive father, so he doubted that she’d been targeted and judging by the shocked expressions from Heleen and Willa Upo, they’d had no idea either but living together had probably served as some measure of protection, as had the fact that their father had also stood by them until his death six weeks ago.

Nevertheless, in his opinion, Neese was in danger if she stayed here since he was positive she could identify the men who were raping Ota and no doubt Neese too. The fact they’d been questioning the kids could easily push the perp/s into eliminating her. He needed to place her into protective custody – hell he needed to place Heleen and Willa into protective custody too and the six remaining kids. The perp/s might think that Ota had shared what was going on with Willa and Heleen too, so in reality, all three women and their kids were in danger. That meant he had to convince Magistrate Drell that at least until the forensic tests came back or he could get Ota or Neese to identify the perp/s they couldn’t stay here on Winya.

After he’d briefed the magistrate on what Artez and Remae had said about Leoosh telling them someone was hurting his mother, and Tony voiced his suspicions, Drell looked like he wanted to upchuck. “Why didn’t she tell someone?”

“Because Ota Benn believes that she is a bad person who deserves everything she gets. She was judged guilty, and her sentence of death was commuted so she could raise her son. She watched her cousin’s barbaric execution for miscarrying the child she was pregnant with, and Ota feels her only reason to exist is Leoosh. It is my experience that whoever is forcing her to lay with him (or them, since it could be more than one man), is threatening to hurt Leoosh if she resists or tells anyone what is happening.”

“You have seen this sort of depravity before,” Drell asked in disgust.

“Unfortunately. I’ve learnt that there are far too many men who believe that women are mere possessions, that their bodies belong to their husbands or their mates to do with as they, please. It is what Lucius Lavin believed, and once he found the herb on his travels, he found a way to make any female or even a male for that matter lay with him whenever or wherever he wanted to have physical relations,” he said, using the Winyans’ terms for sexual intercourse.”

Drell sighed. “I cannot believe that anyone from Winya would hurt Leoosh. He is but a child. And such a timid one at that, but then, I find it hard accepting what you say about someone forcing Ota Benn to lay with them. For one thing, she is an adulteress, an unchaste woman that no self-respecting man would choose to lay with.”

“Where Thomas Magnum and I come from, women are not owned by their husbands’, nor do they have to lay with him or anyone if they chose not to. Forcing them to have physical relations against their will is called rape and it is a crime, a serious one but not for the woman. In our law, she is the victim. Ota was abused as soon as Lavin took away her ability to resist him. She refused his overtures before he started using the herb on her, on all Winyans so you couldn’t resist him and yet she was the one judged to be an adulteress, shunned by all and sentenced to death.” It was impossible to disguise his anger and he didn’t even try.

He also knew that despite it being law, many men back on Earth did not respect this belief, either and that there were countries who certainly rejected it, still insisting they had ownership of women and therefore their bodies and wholesale mass rape during wars was still seen as inevitable. It was still shocking to him how few war crimes of mass rape had been prosecuted by the UN and he recalled how New York ADA Alex Cabot had decided to try to address the situation by working for the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court. She was prosecuting sex-crimes and other human rights abuses in areas such as Rwanda, Somali and the Congo after working with an illegal immigrant in New York city who witnessed a rape/murder. The witness was herself a victim of rape in the Congo, and even though Cabot managed to get her political asylum, the witness decided to return to Africa to help other victims which had ended up inspiring Alex too.

“And now it’s happening again,” he said grimly. “But instead of being drugged, some monster or maybe more than one man is forcing her to let him use her body, but this time he is threatening Leoosh.”

“So how did the lad end up being beaten?”

“His siblings all agree that he headed straight home after school. I think he was worried about his mother and perhaps he caught the man the man in the act who was forcing her, and the rapist got scared that Leoosh would tell someone what he was doing.” Tony shook his head in disgust. “Poor little kid probably wouldn’t understand that raping a convicted adulteress wouldn’t be considered a crime here, so Leoosh might have threatened to expose him, trying to protect his mother, who he loves.”

“So, what motive would the man have to beat Leoosh,” Drell asked, not even bothering to argue with Tony’s statement.

“Fear of being shunned for laying with an unchaste female,” Tony said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Rage at being called out by a child, a cowed and submissive one at that. It could have easily triggered the man’s sense of masculinity. Men who force women to lay with them usually do so to feel powerful. It is not really about having their urges met,” Tony told him. “When I find him, I’ll be sure to ask him about his motives and let you know.”

“I see. Well, this is certainly a terrible thing. How are you planning on finding Leoosh’s attacker, Agent Paddington? Do you think that Ota will identify him?”

“No, I don’t believe she will, which is why I’m going to put her into protective custody in Atlantis and also Willa and Heleen Upo and Neese Luta since I think that they might have knowledge that they don’t realise. But more importantly, even if they have no idea who has hurt Leoosh, the perp…er the attacker probably thinks that these women talk to each other and I’m not willing to risk their lives or their children. Someone who is capable of beating a small boy to the brink of death is one sick fucker and I’m not taking chances,” he said forcefully. “I need you to tell Neese, Heleen and Willa that you give permission for them to return to Atlantis with me so I can protect them until the perp is caught.”

Drell frowned. “The perp?”

“Sorry. It is law enforcement technical jargon – short for the perpetrator or the culprit of the crime which is being investigated. Some people use the term unsub meaning the unknown subject,” Tony explained

The extremely thin man nodded comprehendingly. “I understand. And I take it fucker is another term for a perp?”

Tony grinned savagely at the magistrate. “Yep, it is.”

“Very well. So, if I give my permission for you to take the three convicts and their offspring into protective custody, along with Ota Benn and Leoosh, should he survive, what next. How can you find the fucker so they can be safely returned to Winya?”

So, Tony explained that when Captain Cadman returned with his gear, he was going to collect evidence from the crime scene and take it back to Atlantis and have the scientists process it. Then he would return tomorrow and collect DNA samples from his suspects and question the villagers.”

Drell sighed. “You have suspicions who might be responsible for this atrocity then, Agent Paddington?”

Tony smiled grimly. “Yes, I do.” For starters, he was going to cheek-swab every damned animal that he, Rossi and Hotch had seen assaulting Neese when she was working at the tavern while they’d been there. Tony was glad that he had such an excellent visual memory for faces, he wouldn’t want anyone to be left out.

Wodren looked satisfied. “Fine. You have my permission to proceed with your investigation then. Also, you have my approval to place the Upo sisters, their children and Neese Luta and her two sons into your protective custody in the city of the Ancestors. I beg of you to catch the fuckers as quickly as you can. This horrific act will cause much consternation amongst the good folk of Winya.”

Mentally grinning at Drell’s unintended cussing, Tony nodded. “Agreed Magistrate Drell, but I would ask you to come with me now and tell the women that I am authorised to take them into my custody,” he requested, knowing that Neese wouldn’t leave otherwise, although Heleen might be persuaded. “My people will accompany the women to their residences to pack up any possessions they may need while they are in my custody,” he said.

“And please, tell no one of my suspicions, I do not wish to alert the men responsible for this situation that I may be on to them. There will be time enough to make announcements once the investigation is completed,” he told the Magistrate before he turned and left Drell’s abode.

~o0o~

Around 2100 Tony, Cadman and Major Teldy and Captain Reddling’s’ teams finally made their way back to Atlantis with the Winyans who Tony had taken into protective custody. Everyone was exhausted but the Winyan women’s reactions when they looked around the city of the Ancestors were something almost indescribable: wonder, disbelief and awe were all wrapped up in weariness and worry. All six kids had long since crashed in exhaustion and ended up being carried by Teldy and Reddling’s team as they made their way to the Infirmary for their mandatory checks. Tony was surprised to see Teyla there and Lahn and Yas Yeeps too.

Noting his surprise, Teyla explained quickly. “Leoosh is in an induced coma. He had surgery on his brain, and they removed one of his kidneys because they were not able to repair it. The skull fracture was pressing on his speech centre – he was not able to speak. They don’t know if this is permanent or not. The doctors could not say if he would survive and I thought Ota needed someone who could support her,” she told him softly.

He nodded. “That’s good thinking, Teyla. Where are Shaelli and Edu?”

“They are with Kanaan in our quarters. Torren and Felix are getting to know their half-siblings,” she said sadly. “I just wish that they had met during happier times,” she said.

“Do they know they are half-siblings,” he asked her quietly.

“No, the time is not yet right,” She demurred. “And by the way, Belle is with Miko and Radek. She has been fretting for you, Alex. I believe that she senses that something is far wrong.”

He nodded, that damned Ancient communication gene. She might not be able to read minds just yet, but she was highly empathic and adept at reading people’s body language. “I’ll go and see her after I’ve been cleared.”

He kind of finagled his way into getting his physical done asap, even biting the bullet and letting Dr Keller do it so he could check on Tali. He still had a lot to do tonight but he needed to connect with his daughter before he could focus on settling in the Winyans. Although the temperature between himself and Keller was still pretty arctic, she did tell him that the trauma surgeon, Dr Gerhard Böhm who had a lot of experience in combat zones and had been appalled by the state of Leoosh when he’d been rushed into surgery. Keller who’d assisted, told Tony he’d crashed due to the internal bleeding, but they managed to resuscitate him. He also had a tear in his liver that they had managed to repair. All in all, it was not good.

He asked about Vala – could she use her Goa’uld healing device to help him heal?

Keller told him that she had gone to Balara with several of the scientists to see the Ancient cities and hadn’t answered their radio hail. He learned that Jack had used the device since they were out of options and Leoosh’s condition was so perilous, but he was nowhere near as proficient at using the Goa’uld technology as Vala. However, Leoosh had stabilised after the general’s attempt, so they thought he’d helped. In the meantime, Col Lorne had dispatched AR-2 to try to locate Vala and bring her back to Atlantis.

As he left the Infirmary after letting Willa know that he would be back soon, but first he needed to go home to check up on his daughter, he slipped out, musing that it had been the most cordial discussion he’d had with Dr Keller since the infamous chat about John Sheppard’s kidnapping. Then there was the even more infamous piano incident that ended up with her boyfriend being relieved of duty because he had a psychotic break which she blamed on him, and it wasn’t hard to see why he and the good doctor weren’t exactly BFFs. Still, they’d managed to communicate somewhat effectively just now. Checking his watch, he could see it was after 0200 hours now, so he radioed Radek to check if they were awake and he confirmed that Belle was very much awake, so he made his way to the Zelenka’s quarters.

After hugging him tight, his daughter burst into tears, and he realised that this was probably going to be one of those broken nights of sleep – where Tali had nightmares and slept in his bed.

Picking her up, she wrapped her legs around his waist and put her head down onto his shoulder and sobbed into his uniform shirt. Having learnt the hard way it was better to let her cry herself out since attempts at consoling her rarely were effective, he realised his shirt was more than a little damp which was kind of euww but what could you do. Kids would be kids.

Miko shot him an empathetic look and handed him a clean tea towel to try to mop up the tears and snot which he did, trying not to think too much about it. Really, he wasn’t in a position to complain, by the time he met Tali she was practically out of diapers. What was the occasional snot attack compared to exploding diapers and noxious fumes? Although if he had been allowed to get to know her when she was born, the daddy part, not the roofied rape victim would have endured it stoically to see her first smile, her first tooth, her first babble, her first step.

As he realised Tali’s emotional storm had died down, he engaged his daughter in conversation. Hey, sweetie, I’m sorry I was late and couldn’t pick you up from school.”

“But you promised, Papa.”

“I know I did, Belle and when I made that promise I thought I’d be home from Winyan so I would be able to pick you up after school.”

“Why didn’t you? I thought something bad had happened to you.”

“Well, I was on my way home and I found a little boy who someone had hurt very badly, Sweetheart. You know I’m a policeman, right?”

She nodded tearfully.

“It is my job to help people who are in trouble…”

“And kids too.”

“Especially kids, Belle. So, that’s why we brought him back here so the clever doctors on Atlantis could try to make him better and I stayed behind to try to find out who hurt him, to lock them up so they can’t hurt any other kids. That’s why I’m so late, Princess.”

Tali stared at him, and he felt like she was staring into his soul. “Is the boy alright Papa?”

He knew that there was no point in lying or even deflecting, she would know. He sighed, The doctors are trying their best, Sweetie but we don’t know yet if Leoosh will be okay.”

He heard Miko and Radek gasp at the news and he reckoned that they were imagining how they’d feel if someone had hurt Kazumi. He turned and told them softly, “Depressed skull fracture, fractured ribs, internal bleeding. He lost a kidney and the docs have him in an induced coma.”

Radek started muttering in his native Czech and Tony smirked, envying him for being able to swear without tiny ears being sullied by his cussing. Tali being fluent in Hebrew, Spanish, French and Italian, didn’t leave him much room to vent. Somehow cursing in Mandarin just didn’t come naturally to him. Miko was speaking softly in her native tongue and seeing his curiosity informed him it was a prayer to Buddha. He was surprised, not realising Miko was a Buddhist but then religion was not a subject that came up in casual conversation either.

Tali tugged at his sleeve. “Papa did you find the bad person who hurt Leoosh,’ she asked him.

Shaking his head, he told her, “No, not yet but I will. I had to bring some evidence back so the scientists can help me find out who did it. I need to go back again tomorrow but I wanted to see you before you went to sleep.”

“You scared me, Papa,” she confessed. “Everyone was so sad and angry I thought you had been hurt,” her voice quavered, “Or died,” she told him, tears welling up in her green eyes again.

“I’m sorry we scared you Princess, but everyone was angry and sad because when kids are hurt by grownups it is very bad,” he explained gently.

“Okay but Papa, can we please have a secret word that only you and I know, so next time I know that you haven’t been deaded,” Tali asked imploringly.

“Killed, not deaded, Sweetie and that’s a really great idea. I should have thought of it myself. We’ll have to come up with something before I go back to Winya tomorrow,” he said as Tali beamed at him and snuggled into him for a cuddle.

Later, after a quick shower, he ended up letting her accompany him back to the infirmary, essentially since the only way she would let him leave was if he forcibly removed her and he figured that her presence might be useful if any of the Winyan kids had woken up during the mandatory exams. Just to be on the safe side, he grabbed his sound-cancelling headphones in case there were conversations to be had that weren’t suitable for the five-year-old’s ears. As a single dad, he was lucky that so many people would happily step in and babysit Tali but sometimes he had no choice but to bring her to work, hence the headphones and a bunch of talking books he’d downloaded for her to listen to. He also grabbed a heap of art paper and crayons and pencils in case they needed to occupy any of the Winyan kids and headed back to the Infirmary.

When he left the Infirmary to check up on Tali, he’d left the evidence he and Capt. Cadman had collected at the crime scene in Laura’s custody, intending to return so he could log it into the lab in the presence of one of the scientists who were properly credentialed so they could begin to process it. He was surprised and relieved when Laura told him that Fornell had stopped by and signed for the evidence and taken it to their crime lab. He’d also enlisted two of the scientists who had the necessary forensic qualifications to report to the lab and begin processing the evidence they’d collected from Leoosh. Then he’d logged in the evidence Tony and Laura collected at the crime scene so that they could start working on that as well. It was a real relief to have someone as experienced as Fornell take over logging in evidence because Tony knew it would be done right. It also meant he could spend extra time with his daughter instead of logging in evidence.

It strengthened his resolve to push for ISBI to hire more experienced agents, but for now, there was the pressing issue of what to do with their Winyan guests, which included eight children under eight years old. At first, they debated letting them all spend the night in the infirmary and then allocate them quarters in the family wing, but somehow Keller didn’t exactly embrace that option and it was late to be allocating quarters tonight with the kids tired and started to reach meltdown levels. Not that anyone could blame them, what with seeing their half-sibling so beaten up and being in a totally alien environment as different from their home as fire and ice – they were pushed to their limits.

However, it was Lahn’s father who offered a third solution. He offered to watch all eight of the siblings in the quarters Lorne had already assigned to the Yeeps when they arrived hours ago earlier. He reasoned that Lahn would want to stay with Ota, who they hadn’t been able to persuade to be properly examined, apart from a cursory blood pressure check and the mandatory scans and blood tests for pathogens and parasites. And she’d only agreed to them being carried out while Leoosh was in surgery. He knew that the other three mothers all had wanted to stay and support Ota too as she maintained a vigil by her son’s bedside, although Willa offered to help Yas watch the half-siblings, knowing that eight children were too much for one person, especially under these circumstances.

His offer had been gratefully accepted for the night. Tomorrow they would see about getting them all assigned their own quarters but right now, Yeep’s suggestion seemed to be the most sensible one. Even without the trauma of being placed into protective custody, or the brutal attack on Leoosh, it was rather obvious that the children and their mothers were finding it stressful being on Atlantis. It might be the city of the Ancestors but for the Winyans with their simple pre-industrial way of life, the city and its technology were extremely alien and far from welcoming. Atlantis’ population thankfully was another matter and the Winyans were showered with kindness, even from people who had no idea who they were, only that they were the family of an eight-year-old boy who had been beaten almost to death.

Yas walked over to his petitely built daughter who was sitting next to Ota and kissed her on the head, telling her not to worry about Shaelli and Edu. He tucked an errant strand of her strawberry blonde hair away from her face before gently taking Ota’s hand and squeezing it in a fatherly gesture.

“Leoosh is a strong boy. He will survive, Ota,” he told her comfortingly. “The healers in the city of the Ancestors are very gifted. It’s going to be alright,” he soothed her as he put his arm around her and gave her a hug, nodding to Neese and Heleen and shepherded out the two sets of twins and Artez and Remae with Belle holding Remae’s hand, chattering away about Atlantis. Tony, Teyla, Willa, and Laura accompanied them back to the family wing. They briefly stopped off at Teyla’s quarters to collect Shaelli and Edu who were sound asleep and Tony and Yas carried his grandchildren back to their apartment.

Yas decided to sleep with Shaelli and Edu in their room and told Willa to take Lahn’s room with her twins and her niece Remae while Artez, Bale and Bada would sleep in Yas’s room. Tony asked J.P. to lock the door so that only Yas or Willa could open it since they didn’t want the kids wandering around in the middle of the night and getting lost. Teyla and Laura disappeared during the ‘where would everyone sleep’ portion of proceedings, returning with cups of hot chocolate and cookies for the children and tea for the adults. Soon the eight children were tucked up in bed and the adults were contemplating what had happened. What became apparent, all of them were feeling guilty that they hadn’t been able to prevent Leoosh from getting hurt.

Yas shook his head. “Maybe if I’d pushed a bit harder for you all to leave with Lahn, I could have prevented this.”

Willa shook her head. You must not blame yourself Yas. You tried and I tried to convince them too, but Heleen, Ota and Neese would not budge. You did the right thing getting Lahn, Shaelli and Edu to safety, even if a lot of people are very angry with you for leaving.”

Yas looked pissed. “Let them. I’m not going to apologise for saving my daughter’s life. She doesn’t deserve to die. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Teyla leaned forward. “I agree with you, Yas. I would ask you though, why is it that you see what Lucius did so differently from the other Winyans though?”

He thought about it. “I really hadn’t considered why before now. I just did,” he said looking contemplative. “Maybe if Lahn hadn’t been my daughter, I might have seen her and Willa and the other girls as the others on Winya see them, as acting lewd and unchaste but I know my daughter. She would never want to lay with that sick scoundrel Lavin, especially in the town square. Lahn would never desire to have physical relations with him and his other so-called wives if she had a choice,” he declared angrily.

“Lahn is not like that, and it destroys her every single day that he forced her to do that. Then people blamed her for something that she couldn’t control. It is wrong to condemn her…to condemn all of you when you had no choice. Before he discovered that wretched herb and infected us with the madness, I saw Lahn turn down his disgusting invitations many times. She was not the one who did wrong, and it was not right that they blamed her or any of you. I saw you turn him down, Willa, and I saw the others refuse to lay with him too. He forced you to be with him and have his babies.”

“Yas is right. It was not your fault,” Alex told Willa, not for the first time either.

Yeeps looked at the curvaceous brunette. “I know your father could never discuss this with you or Heleen because he was embarrassed, but he didn’t blame either of you for what happened. He knew that it was Lavin who was solely to blame.”

Willa looked sad. Lort Upo had passed away less than two months ago, and they could see that she missed her father. “I understand why he was embarrassed but if he’d told Heleen and I that, I think she might have given serious thought to leaving when you did, Yas. As it is, she thinks we disgraced our family.”

“Lort was a good man, he just had trouble speaking about what was close to his heart.”

Deciding to call it a night, Teyla and Cadman showed Willa how to use the bathroom facilities and unlock and lock the door since the high-tech features were beyond anything she could conceive of, particularly the running water and flushing toilet. Leaving Yas and Willa after wishing them a peaceful night, Tony picked up Tali who was asleep on his lap and they all headed off to their respective quarters, hoping that Leoosh’s condition improved during the night.

He didn’t even bother putting Tali into her own bed when he reached their place – he deposited her straight into his bed and went to change into sleep gear before crawling in beside her. He was going to have to come up with a safe word or phrase that would reassure her that he hadn’t been hurt or killed when he was unexpectedly delayed. Despite her being too young to really remember her mother, making her believe she was dead by faking her death and sending her off to her father like some unfortunate puppy had left Tali with deep-seated abandonment issues. Then the violence and trauma of the Trust trying to grab her sure hadn’t helped with her inability to cope well with anxiety. He really should have thought about having a safe word before now but there was no point in beating himself up about it tonight.

As he drifted off to sleep, he wondered why Vala wasn’t answering their radio calls and realised they should have talked to Cassie about whether she could cope with having eight temporary students joining her class for the next few days. Still, it was late now, or at 0330 very early and he didn’t want to disturb her if she was asleep.

Chapter 17

The next 24 hours were hectic, and it was all hands-on-deck as the investigation heated up. When Tony popped over to the Infirmary at 0700 to check to get a SitRep on Leoosh, he found Dr Biro on duty. She looked exhausted but greeted him cheerily. She informed him that Leoosh had further stabilised but that they were still keeping him sedated to help him heal. The next hurdle would be trying to persuade his mother to let them carry out a rape kit on her. While it was hard to think that a rapist might be getting away with what they’d done, he and Barb agreed that if she refused to allow one, they would have to respect her wishes.

It was Lahn who finally managed to help them to get inside Ota’s head, explaining that Ota probably thought if she admitted to having let herself be raped, her commuted sentence would be nullified immediately. Although Tony and Aoife both thought she would ultimately welcome an end to the guilt and shame she endured daily, her focus was on Leoosh and wanting him to recover. Losing his mother could jeopardise that recovery and as much as they could all tell her that she was the victim, the Winyan people would not see her as a victim. It was a depressing view but one which was also hard to argue with, given what had already happened, especially to her cousin Mayuna.

Eventually, she had agreed, not to a rape kit but to having Barb Biro give her a proper medical exam, which in turn revealed bruising, contusions of the thorax and a cracked rib. Those were the signs which Tony had noted yesterday, having had more than a few of his own, even before he entered the police academy. Dr Biro also confirmed to him privately that she showed clear signs of forced sexual assault but refused to talk about how she received her injuries. It was frustrating but he could hardly blame her. But if Ota was refusing to talk and Leoosh wasn’t able to tell them who attacked him, that made it more difficult to bring the perpetrators to justice. Sure, he was confident of finding whoever it was through DNA trace evidence but that was going to be difficult to explain to the Winyans who would need a simpler form of proof to convict those who were responsible.

Once he had the culprit/s in custody, hopefully, they could get confessions out of them. After all, he was a good interrogator, adept at keeping the suspect off balance to trip them up, and Dave and Hotch had cracked a lot of serial killers in their profiling careers. He doubted that the Winyan lowlife scum would be able to withstand a concerted campaign of interrogation without tripping themselves up.

Plus, he was convinced that Neese knew a lot more about what was going on, but like Ota, was scared to talk about it. Time again to try to convince her to seek asylum. Maybe Yas and Lahn could assist them with that task. They seemed to have settled in with the Athosians fairly quickly, not that it was a surprise, the Athosians were a friendly and welcoming people.

Tony organised breakfast for everyone then got Tali and the Winyan kids off to school, leaving a somewhat surprised Cassie Fraiser to deal with thirteen kids. Although most people didn’t know it, ten of them were half-siblings (excluding Tali, Madison Miller, and question mark Kazumi Zelenka). Later he’d sat down in his office with Willa and Yas to talk about suspects. He’d decided not to pressure Neese right now, maybe Aoife and Dr Nkusi would be able to gain her trust, but he couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. He was a man and also in her mind, had a similar role as the Winyan Council of Elders who’d shown only too clearly whose side they were on, and it definitely wasn’t hers. If what he suspected was going on, she had no reason to trust any male ever. Damn it, what a mess!

“Tell me about the men who hang around Madame Lavin’s tavern,” he asked the pair.

Willa looked at Yas and frowned. “There is a group who spend too much time in there, drinking teffa ale,” she said. “Hopefully, with the crop that Winya has agreed to grow for Atlantis they will find a more profitable use of their time,” she said reprovingly.

“So, they hang around getting drunk and abusing the barmaids,” he concluded.

Yas sighed heavily. “Pretty much. Ever since Lucius got everyone addicted to that damned plant, they lack the motivation to work, and their families continue to support them.”

Tony frowned, “Why would their families do that? I’ve seen their behaviour and the way that they treat the unfortunate barmaids. I wanted to arrest them and throw them in prison and if it happened on Atlantis, that’s exactly what I’d be doing,” he fumed.

Yas and Willa exchanged another non-verbal conversation before she spoke. “Because the leaders of the gang are viewed as the real victims of Lucius Lavin, and they are angry.”

“Victims, how are they the real victims? What did Lavin do to them?”

Yas looked supremely uncomfortable. “He removed six extremely attractive young women from the extremely limited pool of marriageable females. And in the case of the Upo sisters and Lahn, those three come from families considered to possess considerable wealth (or we did until we decided to flee Winyan) so the men you saw lost the opportunity of marrying into wealth and producing offspring. There aren’t enough women in Winya as it is, so anyone who was courting Ota, Mayuna, Neese, Lahn, Heleen or Willa before Lavin took them as his wives or had designs on them, even undeclared is considered to be harmed by him and by them.”

Tony was furious but it sure went some way to explain the awful behaviour he’d witnessed. “So, because they were, to use Magistrate Drell’s words, convicted adulterers, the men who were courting them broke up with them? How ridiculous. So why don’t the men leave and find someone on another planet if they were that invested in getting married?”

“Willa, blushing with embarrassment told him, “Winyan men do not think that women of other worlds are worthy of bearing their children,” she said. “We are a people who can trace our beginnings back to before the Wraith appeared.”

Xenophobia! He really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Yas looked uncomfortable.” But for several generations, there have been many more male children born on Winya than female. Many men have never found a mate, which made Lavin’s actions even more egregious to the men on Winya. Many are desperate.”

“It’s true,” Willa confirmed. “No one understands why. Our healer, Miril Argou was trying to find an elixir that could improve fertility and increase the rate of female offspring, but she died several seasons before Lucius discovered the herb that made everyone a slave to him.”

Well, that possibly explained the fertility tonic he used on Atlantis, Tony mused. The thieving bastard stole it.

“The Council does not speak of it openly, but they are concerned about the future of Winya if something does not change,” Yas told them. “I believe it was the fact that Tarkus Bek approached me, wanting to arrange a marriage between himself and Shaelli that finally convinced Lahn we had to flee,” he said gravely. “Before that, she was resisting my urging to seek asylum with the Athosians.”

Willa gasped. “Tarkus Bek? But…but he’s old,” she exclaimed, not hiding the revulsion she felt.

Yeeps grinned. “Yes, he’s a couple of years older than me,” he agreed with a chuckle before he became serious.” And his wife never carried any of his babies to term. He is desperate for a child to carry on his family line.”

“Yeah, she just died in childbirth, even when Miril gave her a herbal tincture to take to stop her falling pregnant because it was too dangerous for her and she refused to take it,” Willa said in anger. “But Yas, Shaelli is not yet six summers old.”

“I know, Willa. I was sickened by the thought of him being with my beautiful grandbaby and threatened to take Shaelli and Edu and escape to New Athos without Lahn when Bek presented me with his offer. He even hinted that because of her unfortunate birth, the Council might emancipate Shaelli earlier than fifteen summers so she could get started early.”

While he left unsaid what was meant by getting started early, Tony and Willa were in no doubt about what the sick pervert meant by it. Tony was fairly sure Yeep’s revelation had just cemented Willa’s resolve to never return to her home. The Upo home might be one of the largest and grandest in Winya, but no home was worth endangering your kids for, no matter how many generations it had been in the Upo family.

A couple of hours later, Tony was in a second meeting, this time it involved Cadman, Nikola Bates, General O’Neill, Colonel Lorne, Fornell, Rossi and Hotch. He filled them in on the crime, what he’d learnt from Artez yesterday, and what he’d learnt from Yas and Willa earlier on.

Fornell was pissed, having collected evidence from Leoosh’s broken body and he showed the photos of the boy’s injuries, including bruising that had become more visible by the time they’d medivacked him to Atlantis. The boot marks on his chest and abdomen were estimated by the seasoned investigators to be of a male with a shoe size corresponding to an American size 9. The handprints were also at best guess made by a male with an average-sized hand, but they would need to be analysed by a forensic expert. Tobias has swabbed the little boy hoping to get an epithelial trace (skin cells) that would help them find who had beaten Leoosh within an inch of his life. Judging by the evidence of hand prints on his body, it seemed like a reasonable hope. He also reported, much to everyone’s relief that there was no sign of sexual assault.

Tony pointed out that there was a possibility that Leoosh may not be able to speak since the damage was in the vicinity of Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe, which is the main area of the brain responsible for the production of speech.

“Thankfully it does not involve the understanding of speech and when Agent Rossi and I found him he couldn’t speak but he could understand us. So, we have to be prepared that he might not be able to tell us who attacked him and so far, Ota Benn wasn’t talking, either. Maybe Drs O’Shea or Nkusi might have better luck.”

He deliberately didn’t mention his hunch that Neese knew too- after all he had no proof.

“We are still waiting on lab results about the rock we found at the scene. I also found some fibres and a small scrap of material that doesn’t seem to match the clothes that Leoosh was wearing. With luck, we’ll have that back soon,” Fornell reported.

Hotch looked grim and Tony got it. Anyone who could attack a small boy was one sick fuck and needed to be caught. “Are we going to start swabbing the men who we saw assaulting Ms Luta in the tavern?”

“Yes, and I’ve already sent out a request for several more cases of cheek swabs to be brought to Atlantis when Dr Jackson arrives back here from the SGC today with Jonas Quinn and Kalan.”

Jack frowned. “So, what is the working theory about why the boy was attacked?”

“I think that the unknown subject or possibly several unsubs are pissed off because Lavin stole six young females of marriageable age and made them his sex slaves. To the Winyans that meant the woman was classified as unchaste and therefore no longer marriageable. That means six males missed out on getting married. Willa indicated that several of them had fiancés and the rest had admirers so that means there are at least six disgruntled guys. I propose we start with anyone who thought they were going to be married.”

Rossi said, “Then there is the younger cohort who might think that they are more likely to miss out on getting married because of those six men who were supposed to pair up with Lavin’s victims but didn’t.”

“What about family members of the men who run the risk of remaining single and therefore may not be able to produce an heir. A father might be angry that the line will die out,” Hotch suggested.

Jack interjected, “Is there any chance someone related to Lavin is responsible. Their whole whacked-out blaming of the victims for breaking up Lavin’s family even though he was a rapist is bizarre.”

“Anything is possible but if I’m right about Ota and Neese being raped and threatened, then I think it is more likely to be younger men who feel like their life has been ruined.

Fornell cussed in Italian and Tony and Rossi chuckled at his vulgarity before he switched to English. “The stupid thing is that they are victim blaming and rejecting six women who would probably welcome the opportunity to have a normal life and have male figures to raise their children.”

Lorne who’d been pretty quiet up until now, asked. “If you are right about Neese and Ota, then why did they single out those two. Is it because there is something about them – their looks?”

“I think it was their isolation. Willa and Heleen live in the family home together with the four kids and up until recently, their father Lort Upo lived there too. As for Lahn, she lived with her dad and he’s very protective of her and her children.”

Rossi said, “That sounds like a reasonable theory. Here’s another, even if it is a bit out there. Alex, you mentioned that Yas was the Winyan miller and that the teffa ale needed to be milled by a special process?”

Tony shrugged. “Sure, if they are pissed that the teffa ale is going to become scarce and they are feeling aggrieved because they see themselves as victims of Lavin and his women robbing them of their birthright, I guess that raping Ota and Neese might seem like they’re taking back control. Seems to me there is a lot of rage behind it. Captain, can you ask Willa about who were prospective partners for the six of them before Lavin drugged them up. Don’t forget to ask about Mayuna too,” he asked Cadman.

She smiled. “I’ll do it as soon as we finish up here, Agent Paddington.”

Jack looked at Tony. “Are we done here?”

Tony shook his head. “Two more issues. Have we heard anything about Vala? She could help speed up Leoosh’s recovery,” he stated, which was true enough, but Tony cared about Vala, not just because she’d healed his lungs and his knee. He’d recognised in her another wounded soul like his own and her rather loud and flirty act was a lot like how he chose to portray himself, or at least it was before he became a dad.

“We have discovered that there was a tunnel collapse in the city she was exploring with the two scientists on Balara. We don’t know yet if they were trapped and can’t get out or if they were injured in the cave-in,” Lorne reported gravely. “AR-3 and AR-8 are helping the Marines on Balara affect a rescue.”

“And the second issue?” Jack prompted him impatiently.

“Yas Yeeps and I have been noodling over a plan to approach the Interstellar Tribunal if we can get the Winyan Elder Council here for Lavin’s trial, asking them to overturn Lahn’s conviction because she was drugged and not able to give consent.”

The others stared at him in shock. Hotch grinned, “It’s ballsy – I like it,” he smirked.

Lorne shook his head. “The Winyan Elder Council are going to be pissed,” he predicted but there was a gleam in his eye. “It could backfire.”

“Yeah, I know that, but Yas is pretty determined to do everything in his power to vindicate his daughter, even if they are not living on Winya. And I can’t really blame him. Who amongst us wouldn’t do the same thing if it was our daughter?”

Since no one there could deny that rhetorical question they remained mute, and he nodded at them. “Yeah, me too, Besides, I think Atlantis might have a bargaining chip to ensure that the Elder Council don’t wig out and declare war or something equally ridiculous.”

Lorne looked intrigued. “And what might that be?”

“I need to talk to the scientists to make sure I’m not barking up the wrong tree before we play the card,” he said cautiously.

Jack waved his finger at him in a parody of a scolding mother to a wayward child.

“Oh no you don’t, Agent Paddington. You don’t get to tease us with that tantalising spoiler and then say you need to consult with the geek squad. C’mon, spill! Whatcha got for us? “ he said sternly, although Tony knew he wasn’t really mad.

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses, General. It’s just that I was talking to Yas and Willa before, and they mentioned something I didn’t know, and it got me thinking. They informed me that not only is fertility an issue on Winya but so is the fact that many more boys are born than girls, which exacerbates fertility directly but also indirectly too.” Seeing some blank looks he explained, “Because in each cohort there are fewer females available to reproduce and that puts a lot of strain on the male Winyans because there are too many males.”

“So why don’t they seek out females on other planets,” Jack asked looking bemused. as everyone else nodded at his eminently reasonable suggestion.

“Because the Winyans are xenophobes – they think their blood is superior to other people since they can trace it right back to when the Ancients were still here, before the emergence of the Wraith, according to Willa.”

“And what does this have to do with the placating the Council of Elders?” Lorne asked what everyone else was wondering about. “Not seeing the connection, Alex.”

Tony looked at Rossi, “Remember I mentioned to you after your unfortunate encounter with shluk to watch out for the gulahish, not to drink it?”

Dave nodded. “I remember.”

Cadman and Lorne exchanged looks of horror, remembering how sick several teams were after imbibing it during one of their goodwill missions to the planet.

“Well, the tuber root contains a highly toxic alkaloid that was responsible for putting our people in the infirmary, but the people of Winya have developed a high level of tolerance for the gulah plant. They grow the damned thing and don’t just make booze out of it, they eat it too. Even the kids!”

At this point, he paused to see if everyone understood what he meant.

Nikki, who hadn’t really had anything to say up until now chuckled and shook her head at Fornell. “Ah Boss, your awesome ability to think outside the box means you’re gonna have to join the dots for me and don’t skip any dots assuming I’ve already joined them up,” she requested. “What’s this goulash got to do with anything?”

Everyone else grinned and joined in, asking what the hell he was trying to say. He frowned at their obtuseness, “Not goulash, Agent Bates,” he corrected her with a smirk, “It’s called gulahish and it’s a fermented drink that’s similar to Kava.”

“Sorry Alex, my bad. But why are we focusing on gulahish again?”

“Well because it seems to me speaking as a non-geek here – that the decline of females in their population must have some sort of environmental cause. After all, as I’m sure you’re all aware, all foetuses start out from the default state of being female. A male is created when the foetus is masculinised by male hormones. Plus, a much higher proportion of miscarriages are males, which is why they are considered to be more fragile in a biological sense. That means that the birth rate usually favours females, yet, on Winya they have far too few girls being born, and it continues to drop which doesn’t make sense.”

“So, you think it might have something to do with them consuming gulahish,” Rossi clarified.

“ Yes. No. I don’t know. Not gulahish necessarily but something they are ingesting. Teffa grain has a toxic chemical that they have to mill a certain way to make it safe for them to use in their ale too. There could be a score of things that are toxic and are causing the proliferation of male babies to be born,” he said.

“And Drs Keller and Clone Beckett are both genetic researchers. We could offer to try to help them figure out why so few girls are being born,” Lorne said, understanding dawning on him.

Jack shuddered, “Just as long as neither of them is allowed to carry out genetic manipulation experiments,” he insisted sternly. “Not after the Wraith/human hybrids debacle. No Wraith vaccines. Zero, zilch, nada, bubkes,” he stressed, deadly serious despite the seemingly jovial language. “Simple tests on the environment and food and water sources.”

Lorne rolled his eyes. “You’ll get no argument from me, General”

Tony nodded emphatically. “Nor me!. I’ve already expressed my opinion fairly colourfully about letting those two loose in a genetic lab to play around,” he agreed. “But the point is, that the chance to try to figure out what is causing too few baby girls to be born on Winyan and possibly to arrest the trend and save their people, is surely going to outweigh the loss of face over the Elder Council getting their crappy judicial decision laughed out of court,” he said looking smug.

General O’Neill gave his approval. “Okay, if Mr Yeeps decides to ask for a hearing, I’m fairly sure the Tribunal Members would agree to hear the case,” he gave his approval. “And let’s offer to try to figure out why the Winyans have too many boys and too few girls.”

He looked around the conference tables and said in a way that suggested it wasn’t really a question, “So if that’s all, Campers, I suggest we adjourn. I want to get to Balara and get a SitRep on the tunnel cave-in,” he said impatiently.

Rossi held up his hand, “I just have one more question General.”

Looking grumpy, he exhaled noisily. “Fine! What is it then? Chop, chop!”

“I want to know, how you managed not to choke on Ando Jeet’s godawful shluk, Paddington.”

Tony grinned despite the seriousness of the last 24 hours. “You mean his battery acid? Elementary Mr Magnum, I merely pretended to swallow it. After many years of being undercover, not drinking stuff you get offered, especially booze, is one of the most important tricks of the trade,” he told him grinning. “You’re going to have to work on that, my friend. From what I’ve heard though, that stuff could be marketed as prep for a colonoscopy,” he informed them, to a room full of laughs.

There was no way he was going to share with the others that he’d perfected the art after being forced to swallow down drugged liquor after he was undercover with a suspect who later turned out to be a serial killer. Jeffrey White had slit his accomplice’s throat when his partner wanted to get rid of Tony and he’d woken up from some pretty freaky dreams about what White did to him while he was drugged.

~o0o~

The rest of the day passed by swiftly. Tobias, Tony, Cadman, and Amelia returned to Winya to take DNA samples which a lot of the Winyan males were not happy about, including the council. Tony however spun it to them that if they are innocent, then this would clear their names and cunningly suggested that it might have been a non-Winyan native to blame. He had Amelia take cheek swabs from himself and Laura and invited the council to return to Atlantis to watch every other Lantean who was on Winya with him yesterday get swabbed too. After his earnest appeal, it was difficult to refuse to let them test people and they’d started with the men from the tavern who they’d seen sexually assault Neese, saying they needed to obtain more supplies from their home world, which was sort of true but even if they had sufficient supplies, he wouldn’t have swabbed everyone right off the bat.

Tony’s tactic was two-fold – he wanted to draw out the investigation to have an excuse to keep Ota, Neese, Willa and Heleen in protective custody and secondly, there was no point in swabbing and running tests for people who were obviously not suspects. Better to use their resources to take blood samples of the population and try to figure out why they were on a fast train to evolutionary extinction. He wondered if this project might be a suitable one for Dr McKay to work on, as a way of testing to see if he might be ready to start working on less stressful projects. He’d talk to Aoife about that, but he tried to stay out of the whole mess because it was Alex Paddington who McKay apparently blamed for his world crumbling around him.

And the man so clearly was not happy to have his sister and her family on Atlantis. He couldn’t figure out why, Jeannie Miller seemed like a really nice person and her husband had immediately offered to help out Cassie with the eight Winyan kids that had temporarily joined Belle’s class. Even though Kaleb was ridiculously overqualified for the role of a classroom assistant, he seemed genuinely excited to have a chance to work with the Winyans. He was also fascinated with Cassie and Tomin when he learnt that although human, they weren’t born on Earth. Kaleb Miller was going to have so much fun hanging out with Daniel Jackson who was due back soon.

Tony also gave Magistrate Drell an update on Leoosh’s condition. Drell had been frankly surprised that he was still alive, having expected the worst when he’d seen him last night before he was rushed to Atlantis. Tony also told him that Ota and the mothers of his half-siblings were maintaining a bedside vigil while the children were attending school with his daughter and her classmates. Several Athosian families had offered to watch the children after school, he told the head of the council which was enough to mollify any rumbles of discontent from some of the other Winyans who were not well disposed to letting the so-called convicted adulteresses leave the planet.

Before they left Winya, Tulee Hano asked Agent Alex to please pass on a message to Thomas Magnum that after due consideration of the matter, he had decided that he should offer his services to represent Cousin Filiya’s husband, Lucius Lavin at his trial. He wanted Mr Magnum to understand that while he had never liked Lavin, he was doing this so Jeroze and Adrexa would know when they were a little older, that despite his abhorrence of Lucius, the man still deserved to receive a fair hearing and that one of his family stood up for him.”

Tony thanked him gravely while internally he was doing a happy dance. It was like slowly but surely, the players were being assembled on the chess board and they could get try to get five innocent victims acquitted so they could attempt to reclaim their lives and heal from what Lucius had done to them.

~o0o~

Back on Atlantis, Daniel had arrived accompanying Jonas Quinn, Kalan and a young woman who was disappointed to learn that General O’Neill was not on Atlantis currently. Merrin who along with Jack, had been singlehandedly responsible for the Urrone educational programs on Orban had been persuaded by Kalan and Orban’s healers to return with him to Atlantis. Merrin was lured there by the news that not only was Cassandra Fraiser on Atlantis teaching a class of young Lanteans, but Jack O’Neill was there too. Only he wasn’t, he was off on Balara trying to rescue Vala and several scientists.

When Daniel was briefed about Vala he was distraught, pleading with Henri AuClair to authorise him to go to Balara to help in the rescue of his friend and teammate. The Commander argued that there were already five teams, plus Ronon Dex out there digging them out and that there was nothing more that Daniel could do, but the archaeologist was nothing if not persuasive and Henri against his better judgement had sighed before giving in. He asked Lorne if they had someone who could be spared to fly Dr Jackson to Balara, and the colonel had offered to fly him there personally. Indeed, they were already sitting in the puddle jumper waiting for clearance to leave when AuClair ordered them to stand down.

“We’ve just received a communication from General O’Neill, Colonel. The three missing individuals have been extracted alive. although in a serious condition. They are getting them ready to be evacuated. ETA right now is 45 minutes.”

Daniel heaved an enormous sigh of relief. “Do we have any idea of injuries yet, Ambassador AuClair,” he inquired into his mic.

“Negative, Dr Jackson, other than the bare facts that they are in a serious condition, but I understand that Dr Beckett is on site and that he sent word back to have a surgical team on standby.”

As they exited the jumper and made their way down the metal staircase to the gate room, Lorne tried to distract Daniel from his worrying over Vala. “So, who was the young woman you brought back with you, Dr Jackson?”

“Please, call me Daniel and my friend’s name is Merrin. She is one of the Urrones from Orban. Merrin was selected to share Orban’s knowledge with Sam er Colonel Carter while Kalan’s son Tomin learnt about the Goa’ulds from Teal’c when SG1 went to Orban. Jack kinda abducted Merrin from the SGC once he found out what happened to the Urrone children after they went through the ceremony to have their nanites harvested and shared with the non-Urrone population. When he learnt that she didn’t even have any concept of what it meant to have fun, he was appalled and kidnapped her to show her what it was like being a kid on Earth.”

Lorne looked surprised. “What happened?”

“He very nearly caused an interplanetary incident. Kalen was furious, as were the powers that be at the SGC and DC. He was almost court-martialled, and he was utterly unrepentant over what he’d done. Jack tried to convince Merrin to ask for political asylum, but she told him that her people had been waiting a decade for the knowledge that she’d acquired on Naquadah generators, and she couldn’t let them down. But, by taking her to the junior school that Cassie had attended, she learnt that there was a way to teach people without nanites, since after the harvesting, Urrones rejected nanites that were implanted and were considered incapable of learning anything further. When they implanted her nanites, the Orbans’ got to see how kids on Earth were educated and so they realised that the Urrones who’d gone through Averium…”

“What is an Averium,” Lorne interjected.

“The ceremony that harvests their nanites,” Daniel explained patiently.

“Okay, sorry I interrupted.”

“It’s fine. So, they realised that all the Urrones could be taught didactically.” Seeing Lorne’s glazed look, he amended, “Through instruction in a classroom.”

The colonel grinned. “ Ah, gotcha. So, that young woman is the girl who General O’Neill abducted?”

“Yeah. She is one of their main educators for the Urrone children, but there are generations of them who they assumed were incapable of learning anything. Merrin is trying to set up adult learning centres to cater to the older Urrones, specifically. Apparently, she’s been working herself to the bone, plus teaching the younger Urrones and she fell ill because she was run down. Kalan and the healers thought a week or two here on Atlantis with Tomin and Cassie and the chance to see Jack again would help her regain her strength. He’s going be really pleased to see her,” he finished up as he checked his watch, noting that they’d been talking for nearly twenty minutes, and he was feeling a lot calmer.

“When is the last time the General saw her,” Lorne asked curiously.

“Just after she went through the Averium. She wasn’t able to talk but she was able to draw and so that’s what they did together.”

“Wow, that’s just incredible. And now she’d educating other Urrones?”

Thirty-one minutes later, Vala Mal Doran and the two scientists were being carefully retrieved from the puddle jumpers carried in stokes litter basket type stretchers, with space blankets wrapped around them and all three attached to IV lines with fluids running through since they had been trapped in the cave in for roughly forty-eight hours and needed re-hydrating. Once they manoeuvred them down the stairs from the jumper docking bays they were deposited, stokes and all onto gurneys and the teams of medics whisk them away. Not before Daniel caught sight of Vala’s face though, which was pale as a Wraith, except for the spots where she was bruised and bloody – even her normally shapely red lips appeared almost bloodless. More distressing perhaps, Vala was still and silent as a statue, not surprising really since she was unconscious, but his friend was such an irrepressible character, what with her flirty confidence and teasing. Something which he was only just recently beginning to see was a front she adopted to protect herself. Seeing her so pale, so still, it was unnerving, to say the least.

As Jack emerged from the throng of military personnel, suddenly adrift now that the three patients had been whisked away, he bee-lined it over his friend. “Hey, Danny. She’ll be okay,” he said soothingly.

“Is that what Carson said, Jack?”

“Sure, he reckoned they’ll all be fine, eventually.”

“What the hell happened?”

“They were caught in a tunnel collapse on Balara.”

“What were they doing on Balara, Jack?”

“Ah well, Vala heard a lot of the scientists talking about how many of the Balarans fled the city after the plague and that most people left with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what was in their pockets. I guess our space pirate decided that after more than four years, a lot of them had most likely perished and that what was left behind was fair game. She probably overheard Renni and Novo, two Balarans talking to the geeks about technologies that were probably still in the labs in the capitol, Baldor.”

“You reckon it was too much of a temptation for her,” Daniel said sadly.

“I’m saying that she’s never made any secret of her attraction to space treasure, Danny but somehow ever since her confrontation with Adria, maybe it’s become a way to distract herself,” Jack said with compassion.

~o0o~

Several hours later, Jack stopped by to see how Vala was doing to find Daniel holding vigil by her bed. She hadn’t regained consciousness yet but between the surgery to fix the compound fracture of her ankle and a subdural haematoma, no one was particularly concerned at this stage.

“Hey Daniel, how is she,” he enquired, noting but not commenting on the fact that Daniel was holding Vala’s hand.

“Serious but stable, according to Dr Keller,” he replied. “They hoped she’ll regain consciousness within the next 12 hours.”

“That’s good. Ah… ya might want to head off to the Mess, grab a bite or at least a cup of decent coffee. The stuff they have here sucks,” Jack told him.

Daniel shook his head, “Thanks Jack, but I’m good.”

“Okay so subtle isn’t going to work here,” he said, speaking aloud. “I need you to amscray for a bit, Space Monkey,” he said using an old nickname of his for the archaeologist. “Bottom line, due to the compound fracture and all the dust and whatnot from the tunnel collapse, the docs asked me to try using the Snakey healing device as they are concerned about post-operative infection. Ya know I don’t like using that thing with an audience,” he grumbled.

Letting go of Vala’s hand cool and passive hand, Daniel rose to his feet stiffly, doing the stretching of seized muscles dance that only came from spending too long sitting in an uncomfortable hospital chair, and yawned. “Okay, there’s no need to be rude Jack, I can take a hint.”

O’Neill chuckled. “Clearly ya can’t, Danny boy or I wouldn’t have had to practically bludgeon you over the head to get you to give us some privacy,” he disputed snarkily.

Daniel was obviously considering a comeback but realised it wasn’t the time or the place so instead he settled on a change of subject. “Have you had a chance to catch up with Merrin yet?”

Giving him a genuine smile of happiness, his former team leader replied, “Only for about ten minutes. I hardly recognised her.”

“Yep, she’s all grown up. It’s a shame Sam isn’t here, she’d love to catch up too.”

“At least Merrin and Cassie can spend time together though, but yeah, Carter would have loved to see her.”

“Well, I guess I’ll go and grab some coffee since you’re throwing me out,” Daniel prepared to leave. “Thanks, Jack. I know you hate using the Goa’uld device,” he said as he slipped out.

Mumbling under his breath about slimy snakes, Jack produced the gaudy gold device with the tacky large ruby-coloured stone and slipped it on his hand. He tried not to think about Hathor and her Goa’uld crony. But he especially tried not to think about the Tok’ra called Kanan, focusing instead on Vala and her fractured ankle, trying to visualise destroying any nasty alien bacteria that might have been lurking in the Baldor tunnel complex where several hundred security vaults had been located. After roughly ten minutes of healing, Jack felt exhausted, even though he’d stayed strictly away from Vala’s head, not confident enough to try healing any damage to her brain that the subdural haematoma might have caused.

Collapsing into the chair vacated by Daniel, he ripped off the hated Goa’uld artefact and flung it aside hoping that his hatred at the former owners hadn’t interfered with the process. Once again, he wished Carter was here, she was much better at using the damned thing than he ever would be. Possibly because she was a lot more sanguine when it came to dealing with her possession by the Tok’ra, Jolinar than he could be about the brief time he spent with Hathor’s Goa’uld buddy or the Tok’ra Kanan.

Still, Jolinar hadn’t forced Carter to go on a wild goose chase trying to rescue Lord Baal’s lo’taur either, a mission which went horribly spectacularly wrong. It resulted in Kanan committing the Tok’ra equivalent of hari-kari and leaving Jack like a shag on a rock, captured by Baal who tortured and killed him with acid only to revive him in his sarcophagus so many damned times he lost count of how many times he died. By the end, he pleaded with the all-powerful Ascended Daniel to kill him so he couldn’t be revived but Ascended Danny refused. since that would have broken the rules, damn it!

Sometimes he wasn’t exactly sure if the Ancients weren’t worse than the Goa’ulds, since in his humble estimation they were moral cowards. The Goa’uld didn’t have any morals, to begin with!

As he waited for Daniel to return to maintain a vigil by Vala’s side, Jack found himself thinking about all they had achieved in the last couple of months. They had managed to hold military trials for all 39 of the Genii mercenaries who were now all transported from the Pegasus galaxy to several different Hebridean prisons in the Milky Way to begin serving out their sentences. These ranged in length from fifteen to twenty years. Plus, with the raft of extortion and crimes of violence that Paddington had uncovered that Porteus Kolya’s men had been running on several primitive planets that lacked any type of law enforcement, most of the thugs got additional sentences that would mean they would be geriatrics when they were released. Jack was thrilled to hear that Warrick’s people weren’t big on time off for good behaviour – apart from granting a few months off at the end of the sentence for exemplary conduct, so it would be a long while before they needed to worry about what to do with them.

His people had also managed to pull off a highly classified court martial of Lance Corporal Favre using the British Service Justice System complete with a UK JAG and prosecutor and a Queen’s Council to defend him. All of it took place at Cheyenne Mountain Colorado and many of the witnesses had given their testimonies from Atlantis thanks to a complex series of extremely powerful mobile transmitters in the 304s that meant that they didn’t have to drag everyone back to the SGC. Dr Lee had jokingly called it the Twilight Barking communication link which Alex had seized upon and now it had stuck. Still stupid name aside, it had saved Paddington, Aoife O’Shea, Dr De Rosa, Caroline Lam and various military personnel who helped Alex investigate the lance corporal’s activity, hacking into the classified mission specs and passing them to the Genii, from having to travel back to Cheyenne Mountain and interrupt their work.

By the end of the court-martial, Joseph Favre had received a bad conduct discharge but that was surely the least of his troubles. By not pleading out and insisting on a trial by his peers, he’d given up the chance that he might be permitted to return to the UK to see his family, the cretin. Now he was in a Hebridian prison and would never be allowed to return to Earth. The main thing was that he had been held to account for the damage he’d done to Sheppard and Dr Francesca De Rosa.

The Venerabiles Sodales on the Tribunal had done a magnificent under extremely trying circumstances. Porteus Kolya had fought them every step of the way but when he dared to call for the intercession of the Ancients, Jack had not expected Atlantis to step up, or for the Ascended asshats to permit Chaya Sar to interpret for the city. Who knew they had it in them? And when Chaya had proved to that ignorant boor that she was exactly who she claimed to be and Kolya finally realised that the Genii were not the successors of the Ancestors, that had been a truly priceless memory and he’d cherish forever.

The director of Homeworld Command was proud that when it came time for Porteus Kolya and Deuter Maden’s executions for their crimes, it had been done in a manner that was properly solemn and wholly professional. He was extremely impressed that Alex had steadfastly stood his ground and Aaron Hotchner had backed him to the hilt over Paddington’s insistence it being enacted in an honourable and righteous way. Their mutual insistence on setting an exceptional standard under which executions would be handled, now and in the future, boded well for how both agencies were being led during their nascent development. He was pleased with both agencies; both would continue to operate under the umbrella of Homeworld Command, and he knew instinctively that both men were the right ones for the job. So much had been achieved in such a short period, it was hard to believe!

And with Jonas, Ishtar, Teal’c, Bra’tac and Kalan all beyond ecstatic to have met a real Ancient – one who had Ascended and retained much of the knowledge of when she had Ascended, Jack knew that they felt as if their assistance in serving on the Interplanetary Tribunal had been more than amply repaid. The fact that she had been so fond of Alex and his daughter, John Sheppard and even Jack had certainly been added cachet – Bra’tac might even stop addressing him as HUMAN! But seriously, her unexpected appearance had given their esteemed visitors from the Milky Way an experience that few would ever have or probably even dream of. And the neat thing was that Chaya was an Ancient that Jack actually admired, and she was not an arrogant jerk – she was eager to learn about other races, cultures, and beliefs. Best of all, like Daniel, who had refused to stand by and watch the people of Abydos destroyed without trying to save them, Chaya refused to let the people of Proculus – her people – be murdered by the Wraith who was a Hybrid race who the Ancients had created. Jack admired her for having the courage of her convictions, knowing she had paid a terrible price for it.

But for all the good that they had managed to achieve, it hadn’t all been smooth sailing. The attempt by people who were supposed to be on their side, trying to set up Paddington had certainly rubbed some of the gilt off the gingerbread. Two of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were gone and the head of the CIA’s SAC (Special Activities Centre) as SAD was now called since 2016 had gone too and probably not retired. It felt like such a terrible betrayal when it came from their own people, and he was sure that Alex felt the same. Not only was there a target on the Paddington’s backs because of the Trust but also because of people in Alex’s own government. Now both father and daughter were safer here on Atlantis than on Earth.

As to the future, they had the Lavin trials still to conduct and hopefully, they would be able to overturn the Winyan’s verdict finding Lavin’s victims guilty and sentencing them to death. Having eight-year-old son of one of the victims in the Infirmary was just all kinds of wrong and he hoped that Alex and the ISIB would identify whoever hurt Leoosh Benn, who’d just been looking out for his mother.

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