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Cadman fell forward through the event horizon, after what seemed like an extremely long passage. She rolled and tumbled once before regaining her feet in a move that should have wowed anyone watching, had there been anyone watching. She looked around and frowned at the vacant landscape. There should have been a welcoming party as well as the rest of her team waiting.
There was a sign on a post, written in an odd script that she couldn’t read. There was a crackling sound from a speaker on the top of the post and a voice said, “Stand where you are. Put your weapon on the ground. Clasp your hands behind your head. You have until the count of ten to comply or you will be terminated.”
Well that wasn’t very welcoming at all. She quickly unclipped her P-90 and carefully lowered it to the ground, then put her hands behind her head. There was movement in the trees and she glanced over to see someone standing there, hunched down behind the leaves of a bush, waving at her. “Come on!” the woman called. “Hurry, before they come!”
Take her chances with a voice threatening to terminate her, or run for the trees? Decision made, Laura bent and scooped up her weapon and charged towards the stranger, who turned and ran as soon as Laura was close enough to follow. They left the trail quickly, crashing through underbrush and through a stand of dense shrubbery (which were arranged in such a way that there was a lovely two layer effect) They had not gone far along a path when the woman suddenly disappeared, her head no longer visible above the bushes. Moving faster, intending to catch up, Laura rounded a tree, she found that the ground sloped away from the path .
“Down here, be careful, it’s steep, slide if you can,” her guide called.
Pushing a branch aside, she saw her dark-haired ‘rescuer’ standing at the base of the hill, about twenty feet down. Cadman waved and dug her heels in, cautiously sliding down. The woman smiled as she had almost reached the bottom and began running again. There would be no rest for the weary, it seemed. There were a lot of large rocks at the base of what seemed to be a cliff face. Edging around one, a tight fit with her backpack on, she found herself inside a cave.
“We’ll be safe here, I’ve set motion sensors to alert us if anyone comes.” She looked a little familiar, but Laura wasn’t certain why. She had shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes and a round, pleasant face. Most striking were the spots that ran over her forehead, down both sides of her face and her neck, disappearing beneath her collar.
“Safe from who, exactly?” Laura asked when she had caught her breath.
With a dismissive wave of her hand the woman said, “The enforcers. They would have picked you up as an interloper. Then they would have held you for who knows how long.”
“Why?”
“The Intendant’s Proclamation, you’re in violation of it.”
“How so? I just got here.”
She tapped the center of her forehead and slid her finger down her nose. “First of all, you lack nose ridges. Second of all, there’s your clothing, that is not a proper uniform.” Laura looked down at her plain black BDUs, stripped of insignia as usual when going off world. “And lastly, you lack either a collar or a lead mark.” The woman pulled up her sleeve and showed a tattoo on her forearm. “You obviously don’t belong here. You won’t survive long unless you conform to the Intendant’s Laws. The latest Proclamation clearly states you must be marked as a lead or a pet.”
Great. Just what she needed. “I appreciate the help miss...?”
“Tigan. Ezri Tigan.”
“Miss Tigan...”
“Just Ezri is fine.”
“I’m Laura Cadman. I need to get back to the Gate, Ezri. I’m obviously not where I need to be. The rest of my team isn’t here. I can dial Earth and go home...”
Ezri’s eyes went wide. “Earth? Oh, you really need to stay out of sight. The Intendant means to see the Terrans destroyed, there’s been one too many slave rebellions and she threw a fit and declared all out war.”
It hit Laura suddenly that she might not just be a little lost, but very, very lost; Ezri’s words made little sense. “I think I might be lost. Something went wrong with the Gate crossing.”
“Not surprising, the rings have been breaking down more and more frequently over the past few decades. Only desperate people use them to get around, that’s another reason you would have been taken into custody immediately.”
Laura sighed. This had all the earmarks of a SGC disaster mission. She was alone out here, none of her team had come through with her. “I should still make the attempt.”
“The enforcers will give up soon, they’re spread thin here and lazy. They’ll search the woods, meander around the ring for a while and then head back to base by mealtime.”
“You seem to know their schedule. Why did you help me?”
Ezri shrugged. “Because it pleases me to do so. I’m stranded here for a few more days. My ship is in for repairs, waiting on a part. The Intendant owes me, personally. She killed a friend of mine, my partner.”
“So this is revenge?”
“Mischief, more than anything. As I said, it amuses me to thwart her proclamations whenever I can. I enjoy circumventing enforcers.”
Several hours later, Laura was stripped down to her tank top, her hair braided tightly into a single plait, wearing a leather collar around her neck and walking a few steps behind Ezri as they made their way through the town towards the spaceport and Ezri’s ship in the drydock. She had drawn the line at a leash, promising to keep her eyes downcast and head bowed. The society under this Intendant was very black and white, the laws clear and punishments harsh. Ezri had convinced her that she had a better chance of passing unnoticed if she pretended to be Ezri’s pet. Secretly, she was rather enjoying playing the part.
They had gone to the Gate, but the address for Earth would not lock, nor would the alpha site or the three other emergency addresses Laura had memorized. Defeated and out of options, she planted a tracker in the sand at the base of the pole with the sign in case her team came through looking for her. She had then accepted the invitation to go along with Ezri until she could figure out what to do, or a rescue team came for her.
She was still with Ezri when the ship was repaired. They had a lot of time to talk and get to know each other. She had given Ezri the basics of her life and what her job was in broad terms when they talked over the time they had spent together. Ezri had filled her in on the politics of the sector, though she wouldn’t tell her too much more about the intendant. They had a lot in common, surprisingly, considering that Ezri was a mercenary for hire. Her new friend - and the object of her growing crush - offered to take Laura to a base called Terok Nor, where she could meet up with some people from Earth, Terra, as it was called here, possibly arrange for transport there.
Walking around the base, Laura saw more aliens than she had ever encountered in one place and her mind was still boggled when Ezri brought her to a lower level of the base and introduced her to some members of the Terran resistance. A short conversation was all it took for her to realize that the wormhole had not only dumped her in the wrong place, but in the wrong time by about three hundred years, and quite possibly in a completely different dimension.
Thoroughly disheartened, she and Ezri were left alone in a room as the Terrans discussed what to do with her. “Look, Ezri, I don’t really want to get involved with all this. I am clearly in the wrong place. These are not my people. I don’t know if I can even get back to my people. I can’t go adopting someone else’s war, not until I know I can’t get back to my own.” She doubted that would happen. She wasn’t an astrophysicist. She didn’t know how to compute the data she needed to do time jumps, or figure out how the wormhole had diverted her in the first place. She was a munitions expert, she liked blowing things up, not building them from scratch.
Sympathetic, Ezri patted her arm and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You could always stay with me. I’m down a partner and it’s always good to travel in a pair to keep up appearances. Maybe we could check another ring on another world, figure out how to get you home?” Ezri gave her a smile surely meant to cheer her up.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll do what I can to earn my keep on the ship,” Laura promised. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something. These Terran resistance fighters looked a little ragged and threadbare at the seams. She really hadn’t wanted to leave Ezri’s ship just yet, and the situation here didn’t look very promising as a safe refuge. Over the past few days, she had caught a few hot stares when Ezri thought she wasn’t looking. She wouldn’t mind spending more time with her, seeing where it might lead. Since it seemed that she couldn’t go back, she needed to concentrate on moving forward and finding her way.
When the resistance guys came back, Ezri cleared her throat and slapped Laura’s shoulder as she stared at the floor. “I changed my mind, guys, I’m gonna keep this one a while longer, she owes me for food and fuel and she can pay me back in trade.”
“Just as well, supplies are scarce, we can’t really afford another mouth to feed around here,” the one named Bashir said and showed them to the door.
“I’ll drop those supplies in the usual location,” Ezri told him and reached for Laura’s hand, pulling her along behind her. When the door swished closed behind them, Ezri continued to hold her hand, intertwining their fingers. Laura looked at their hands and then up at Ezri. What she saw made her smile, and eased her mind about signing on to the mercenary’s little crew. She saw acceptance and welcome and promise there in Ezri’s eyes and smile.
The Start