Sam smiled at Mal as he came down the ramp from the Gate. "How was the mission, Colonel?"

He scowled at her. "Why don't you ask Dr. Collins," he grumbled and shot a look at the linguist.

"Doctor?" Sam asked.

Amelia sighed, and sent Mal a weary look. "I don't know how many times I can apologize, Colonel."

"Not enough," he muttered.

Sam held up a hand. "Does someone want to fill me in?"

Major Fischer shoved past Mal. "She translated the inscription wrong and we were nearly killed by several booby traps intended to keep out intruders. The Colonel is upset because he lost his sunglasses when he nearly fell into a pit full of some unidentifiable critters."

"I'm not upset about my sunglasses, Major, I'm upset because this is the sixth time in four missions she's screwed up a translation." He looked at Sam. "Find me another linguist."

"She's doing her best."

He shot his science officer a glare. "Don't you start, you were zero help with anything. You couldn't even figure out how to bypass the system that set the traps into motion."

She propped her fists on her hips. "Hey, this stuff is all new to me, there's a learning curve."

"Your learning curve is going to get us killed, Dr. Menken."

"Hey, that's not nice!" Amelia told him. "You should apologize to her."

He glared at Sam. "If my brother gets anywhere near me I will kill him for this. I want Lee, Van, and Oliver back." He stalked from the Gate room.

"General, isn't it time to consider allowing someone else to lead SG-1? I'm fifteen years that kid's senior and I have to answer to him, it's ridiculous," Fischer told her.

"Maybe you should have spent more time working toward promotion then, Major. Colonel Hughes earned his position as leader of this team and he will remain the commander. Is that understood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"He's a good commander, he just needs to get used to us," Amelia offered.

Dr. Menken snorted."You're only saying that because you have a crush on him."

"I do not! You apologize, Asha!" Amelia snapped.

"For telling the truth? No. You spend half your time staring at him when he's not looking."

"Which is probably why you screw up your translations," Fischer added.

They began sniping at one another, trading insults.

"That is enough!" Sam yelled.

They quieted and looked at her sheepishly.

"Sorry, General," Amelia said.

"All of you need to figure out how to mesh as a team or I will replace you. If you can't work together it could get you killed out there. Figure it out! Dismissed!"

She watched as they left the Gate room. She held in a groan when Elias stepped into the room. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Albrecht, I have work to do."

"I specifically told you to disband SG-1."

"You did and I followed that order. Captain Kain is now a part of SG-13. Dr. Walsh is with Dr. Jackson, assisting with translations. Dr. Kain has been transferred to Research Base Alpha. So tell me, what is your problem now?"

"Malachy is still leading SG-1," he answered.

"And what is your point?"

"That was the point."

"You wanted them split up and I've done exactly that. You never stipulated that one of them wasn't allowed to remain on SG-1. That is my advance team, I need a leader I can trust in charge of it. I think you've spent enough of your time telling me how to run this facility, Mr. Albrecht. I've done as you asked, you can trot along now."

"You haven't done as I asked. Malachy is still on SG-1."

"Show me where in your order it tells me that I couldn't leave him in charge of the team and I'll remove him," she told him.

"It was understood!"

"Obviously not clearly. Good bye, Albrecht." She left him standing in the Gate room.

Van grabbed the bottle of beer Lee offered him. "I've translated nearly everything we brought back from the last Furling world before ..." He trailed away.

"Before we were hacked apart," she finished bitterly.

"Yeah. How's SG-13?"

"Boring as hell. I hate it. All we do is gather information on worlds that SG-1 and SG-2 have cleared for exploration. If I have to listen to Dr. What's-his-name drone on about the different dialects of the Ancients anymore I'll scream."

Van wrinkled his nose. "They don't vary much from one to the other. It's all in the pronunciation, there's not much to drone on about."

"Exactly!"

Mal came out of the kitchen with a bowl of chips. "Where's the salsa?"

"I stress ate it all last night after we got back from six boring hours on our last mission. Sorry." Lee shrugged.

He sighed and sat down beside Van on the couch. "My team is going to get me killed. The linguist can't translate anything to save a life. My science officer spends half her time looking up notes to be certain she's doing things correctly. Oh, and she insists on being called Asha, not Natasha and not Nat. If you don't call her Asha she ignores you. Then there's Major Fischer who insists on telling me every five minutes that he's more than a decade older than I am and he should be leading SG-1. I'd rather be with you on SG-13."

Lee winced. "I'd much rather be with you guys."

Van took a drink. "How's Oliver doing at the research base?"

She shrugged. "As long as there's stuff for him to work on he's good, but he did tell me he'd rather be with SG-1 going off-world."

Mal sat forward. "All right, so how do we get the team back together?"

"Kill your brother off?" Lee suggested.

"All right, how do we get the team back together without committing murder?"

"Sorry, I don't have an answer for that." She shrugged.

"We all know that Elias set us up, if we could prove it I'm sure the General would find a way to put the team back together," Van told them.

Mal popped a chip into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "If Elias keeps to the way he's always done things, then the proof is written down somewhere. He likes to keep track of his accomplishments."

"Awww he keeps a diary. Does he write down who he has a crush on too?" Lee grinned at him.

Mal chuckled. "It's more of a journal than a diary. He thinks that at some point in his life someone is going to want to write a biography about him."

Lee snorted. "As if."

"My thoughts exactly," Mal replied.

"Well short of breaking into his home and digging through his stuff I don't think we'll ever find his happy little journal of stupidity. I doubt he's gonna leave that in his briefcase for us to find," Lee replied.

He nodded in response to what she'd said and ate another chip.

"If you and Van can keep him occupied I can get my hands on it."

"We are not breaking into his home," Mal told her. "We don't even know where his home is!"

Lee's grin was sly. "I know exactly where he lives."

"Excuse me? How do you know that?" Mal asked with a scowl.

"Because I haven't trusted that slimeball from minute one. I may have had my father pull a few strings and get me some information."

"No, it's not happening. We aren't breaking into his house. He'd slam us if he discovered we broke into his house and we'd never get a job anywhere again."

"All right, if we aren't going to go after the proof you might want to up your life insurance before that pretty little linguist gets your butt killed."

"I don't think there are many insurance companies that will cover death by otherworldly means," Van told her.

Mal groaned. "I'm going to pretend we did not just discuss breaking into my brother's home to manufacture evidence that he screwed us over."

"No one said a single word about manufacturing anything," Lee answered with a scowl. "We are discussing finding real proof that he did this to us. Come on, Colonel, I can't spend another minute with SG-13. If I do, I'll walk off a cliff for some excitement."

He grinned at her. "And I'll shove my team over after you."

She laughed. "So, how do we do this?"

"I think I can manage to distract him." Mal grinned.

"Do not get into a fist fight with him or the General will suspend you, probably permanently," Van told him.

"I won't, promise. But if I speak to him we all know it will dissolve into an argument. Normally, I try to avoid those situations but maybe it's high time I confronted him." Mal grinned broadly at them.

"Okay, so let's plot this out."

Mal held up a finger. "First, we order pizza then we plot!"