This was not the time for them to abandon reason and panic.

But Max couldn’t help and do anything but that. “Shit.” She thought to herself as both her and Jack continued to stare at the twin lights advancing towards them.

Jack snapped out of his daze and moved into action. Quickly he grabbed Max’s uninjured arm and shoved her towards the slope while pulling out his gun and, even though he knew it wasn’t going to do anything, fired off several shots.

Lorne had gotten used to gunfire long before this but when he suddenly heard shots reverberate it startled him, causing him to slip slightly. After regaining his foothold, he turned around to see Jack making his way towards him with a determined look plastered on his face and gun in his hand.

“What’s going on?” he asked as Jack paused only long enough to holster his weapon. While Evan hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the person/thing/entity that had uttered that single bone-chilling word, he figured it must have been one hell of a nasty if Jack was trying to scamper up like there was no tomorrow.

“I’ll explain later.” Jack gritted out as he moved to grip an outcropping of rocks. After firing he started up the rocks like hell and hadn’t looked back to see if by some miracle the bullets had hit the damned thing, halting its progress. “Somehow I don’t think I’m that lucky.”

However, the question that was burning Jack’s mind was how hell Daleks were in the Pegasus Galaxy. The Doctor had never said anything about ever running into them while he was here and had never come across any mention of the things in any of the SGC reports he had read.

But there would be time to find the answer to that later, right now he was more concerned with getting out of here and burying that son of a bitch before it got out and more followed.

Max lost her footing and while gritting her teeth in frustration regained it, then continued back up the slope; not caring that she had torn her trousers in the process. “C’mon Maxie,” she told herself as she grabbed onto the rocks in order to pull herself up. “this shouldn’t be too hard for you. This is just like when you were with the Athosians and you had to help hide the weapons cache.” Max flinched slightly as the sharp edge of a rock sliced through the skin on her arm. “Yeah...just like hiding the weapons cache.”

She looked up to see how far ahead the others were and was dismayed to see that they were already half-way up while she was only a quarter of the way. “I’d be right up there with them if it wasn’t for this stupid arm.” Having the appendage tied up was getting to be more of a hindrance than help and right now she needed all the speed she could get. Pausing, she steadied herself and, somewhat awkwardly, removed the make-shift sling then since there wasn’t much time she could waste fiddling with it, tossed it down. Gingerly moving her right arm she gripped the rock and pulled up. Pain shot through her arm; Jack’s industrial pain killers must have started wearing off, but at least she was moving slightly faster than before.

Biting back a yell, Max continued her slow progress up the slope. Then for some reason, she decided to look down and saw more that the original twin lights at the base. “Fuck.” She thought as she continued on her journey up.

“Colonel the Wraith just came through the Gate and are heading your way!”

Just after he heard those words John could faintly hear the buzz of the darts. Knowing that everyone had heard the warning, John looked around for the closest cover and while he knew that it wouldn’t do that much good in the long run hopefully it would buy them some time. “Head for the trees!” he called out as he sprinted for his gear.

Just after the words had left his mouth two Darts flew past them and circled around to pass them again.

“Damn it.” John breathed as he ran with everyone else across the open field.

The Doctor had paused when Colonel Sheppard had shouted, as did Martha and everyone else, wondering what was going on. Then two ships flew over them and everyone bolted towards the outcropping of trees that was at the other end of the open field. It hadn’t been that much of a stretch to figure out that the ships weren’t good and after glancing at each other both the Doctor and Martha ran with the others. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to run for his life, and it wouldn’t be the last so the Doctor wasn’t worried about that, it was that everyone seemed to panic at the mere sight of the ships that gave him cause for concern.

But he’d have plenty of time to ask questions when they weren’t running for their lives.

John looked up to see the Darts coming around for a second run and knew that the pilots would have the group in their sights. No sooner had the thought appeared in his mind then he saw the almost-opaque blue beam that Wraith used to cull with and realized it was headed straight towards Martha.

Martha saw the beam sweeping towards her and dived to the side, rolling as she did. After the year that never was she had gotten so used to being in top physical shape that she had continued training even when there wasn’t any need to, although when she was with UNIT it had been required but even after leaving she had continued, and was glad that it was coming in handy as it passed with inches to spare. Getting up almost immediately she started to run again and soon reached the tree line.

The Doctor wasn’t far behind Martha and soon the entire group was out of the open. “What are those things?” he asked as they started to move through the trees.

John turned to give the Doctor a questioning look, “Wraith. How long have you been with the SGC?”

“Oh it’s hard to say. Although sometimes it feels like just last week.” The Doctor replied with a smile while mentally making a note to ask Max for a complete run-down about the SGC and Atlantis after they got out of this mess; having to fake his way through pointed questions was getting to be too much.

There was something about the answer that didn’t settle right with John but he pushed it to the back of his mind because there were more important things at the moment; they needed to find a cave or something relatively solid that was big enough for all of them to hide in because he knew from experience that trees alone wouldn’t keep the Wraith from finding them.

Tapping his headset he said, “Sheffield, dial Atlantis as soon as the Gate shuts off and tell Weir what’s happening.”

“Yes sir.”

John looked at the group and knew that they had to find those caves now. Fortunately when they had done a flyby of the area they had spotted a few, but that had been up in the air and they were on the ground so it wasn’t going to be easy as to figuring which direction they were.

Just then his radio crackled to life, “Colonel Sheppard, you there?”

Started at hearing the voice, he replied with a mixture of surprise and caution, “Major Lorne?”

Evan reached the top just behind Jack and was just about to ask where Piper was when Jack spoke up, “You got any rope?”

“Sorry?”

“Rope; got any? As well as explosives, preferably C4?” The C4 might not do anything to the Daleks structurally, but Jack could use the stuff to trigger a cave-in and hopefully stop them in their tracks long enough for them to get away.

“I do.” Evan replied, unclasping his pack and letting it fall to the ground. Rummaging around it he managed to find everything and handing the items to Jack said, “It’s all I got.”

Jack took everything Lorne handed to him and as he tied one end to a large boulder and the other around a charge while asking, “How fast can you run?”

“Pretty fast. Why?” Evan asked, raising an eyebrow. He had a pretty good idea what Jack was planning to do but wondered why.

“Because I don’t think you want to get caught in another cave-in.” Jack let go of the rest of the rope and tossed it down the edge. “Max, can you plant the charge on the wall? Then grab the rope and we’ll pull you up.” He called out.

“Will do.” Max worked fast; planting the charge then looping the rope into a foothold and slipping it under her shoe.

“Finished.” she called up, readjusting her hold on it and glad that Jack had decided not to wait for her to climb up under her own power; they needed as much of a head start as they could get. They needed to stop the Daleks before they got out and started running all over Pegasus.

Evan grabbed hold of the rope behind Jack and they slowly started to pull Piper up. After a few minutes of pulling she was finally up all the way and dusting off her clothes. She looked at Jack and said, “We have a problem; there are more.”

“How many?” Jack asked not surprised the least as he walked over to a spot that looked like it could take the house down if blown to bits.

“At least three that I saw, there could be even more.”

“Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Evan asked rather sharply, wanting to know what the hell those things down there were, how both Jack and Piper seemed to know how to take deal with them, and why Jack had called her Max…things were getting too strange even for Pegasus.

“When we get out of here.” Max replied, reaching towards him with her one good arm, turning him around, and then gently (but firmly) pushing Lorne forwards. As they ran Lorne’s radio crackled to life and they heard, “Sheffield, dial Atlantis as soon as the Gate shuts off and tell Weir what’s happening.”

“Yes sir.”

Glad that the signal had only been blocked, Lorne reached for his radio and after activating it said, “Colonel Sheppard, you there?”

There was a pause and then, “Major Lorne?”

Evan could hear the confusion and surprise in John’s voice and wondered exactly how much time had passed since the building had collapsed as well as what was going on that warranted that amount of emotion. But there were more important things to think about at the moment (like getting out of the cave before it collapsed) so he just said, “Yes sir. But we’ve got a little problem.”

“Seems like we all have one right now.”

Jack finished setting the last charge and as he did looked up and saw lights rising up from the blackness. “Shit.” He breathed, frozen to the ground for the moment. Then he snapped out of it, turned around and ran like hell towards the others. He caught up quickly, grabbed hold of Max’s uninjured arm and pulled her with him as he continued running.

“What’s going on?” Max asked as she tried to keep up with Jack who was running hell bent; it had surprised her when he had come up like that and grabbed her.

“Change in plans.” Jack said as looked up and saw that they were at the mouth of the cave. As soon as he had stepped onto the grass Jack flipped open the switch to the detonator and pressed the button.