SG1-24 Two Roads

by Cannon, Geonn

  “Must have been rough.”

  “No doubt.”

  “You know Colonel Getty better than I do. How long can we look at this stuff before he starts getting antsy?”

  “We have some time. He’s pretty into the whole history aspect of what we do. Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s started taking night classes so he can learn some of the mythology.”

  Daniel whistled. “Wow, I’m jealous.”

  He paused and moved closer to what appeared to be a loose brick. He ran his fingers along the edges of it, displacing the dusty mortar until he could wiggle it free. When it cleared the slot, a narrow opening appeared in front of them. “Well. Not exactly ‘open sesame,’ but it’ll do in a pinch.” He used his flashlight to make sure there were no nasty surprises waiting for them inside before he stepped into the darkness. They crossed the beams of their lights and moved far enough apart that they could get the general idea of what they had found.

  The majority of the room was filled by a golden table with various glyphs carved on the surface. One end of the table had a small control panel, and the opposite side had two crystalline uprights that reminded him of football goalposts. The uprights were positioned so they braced the panel between the hidden room and the main chamber. Daniel approached the table and Morello moved so that his shadow wasn’t eclipsing her beam. He hardly noticed as he bent down and began reading the carvings. He brushed away the dust and ran the beam of his light across the whole inscription, getting the gist rather than the word-for-word message.

  “Huh.”

  Morello said, “Is that a good huh or a bad huh?”

  “It’s a… huh.” He furrowed his brow and raised his own light to the wall. He marked the shape of the panel. “This would slide out of the way, and then these uprights would basically be pointed directly at the Stargate.”

  “Sounds about right,” Morello said.

  Daniel looked back at the carvings. “Well, this… this is a warning written in Ancient.”

  “So it was either put here by Anubis or given to Kali by him.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said softly.

  Morello waited for him to translate or clarify. When he didn’t, she prompted him. “Well? If it’s a warning, what is it warning about?”

  He took a moment to make sure his translation was correct before he spoke again. “Something very, very bad.” He reached up for his radio. “Colonel Getty?”

  “Find something interesting, Dr. Jackson?”

  “Ah… more worrisome than interesting,” he said. “We need to get back to the SGC as soon as possible. If I’m translating this right, then Anubis and Kali planned a retaliatory strike in the event of the Goa’uld being defeated.”

  “What kind of strike?”

  “One that could kill every single Jaffa in the galaxy in one fell swoop.”

  Lucia didn’t look like much from orbit, but Vala knew it was much less impressive from the ground. It was rare to find a monochromatic planet. Different cultures tended to thrive in their own little corner of the world, and each one was as unique and original as the next. Lucia was an exception to this practice. As near as Vala could tell, every person who had ever called Lucia home was a thief of one stripe or another. Pirates, fences, corporate raiders, confidence artists, grifters, mercenaries, and so forth all thrived in the planet’s bustling business trade. The story went that if any child showed the least bit of compassion on the playground, they were immediately shipped off to a foster home in some lesser system. It was a fetid hellhole that one would have to be insane to risk visiting.

  To Vala and Tanis, it was their home away from home.

  Lucia was home to several of their contacts and, through them, they could easily spread whatever they had just stolen across the planet. One stop shopping for the instant destruction of their trail. Anyone trying to follow their tracks would hit Lucia and find themselves faced with a vast and untraceable mess. It was a lovely little quagmire from which they could shake off the strings of pursuit and set out on their next adventure without fear of being pursued by past victims.

  Since the downfall of the Goa’uld, the planet’s reputation had grown by leaps and bounds among the criminal element. The criminals who kept Lucia’s economy thriving knew that none of them on their own were powerful enough to fill the universe’s power vacuum, so they decided to join forces. Instead of trying to overtake and absorb each other’s businesses, they combined forces and called themselves the Lucian Alliance. From what little Vala had seen, she was impressed with their infrastructure.

  But a bureaucracy was still a bureaucracy, even if its sole clientele was made up of criminals. The Alliance would pay them a good exchange for the direfs in the cargo hold, but if they cut out the middle man and went straight to one of their men on the ground, they could haggle for a higher rate. Fortunately Vala knew one such individual that she was confident they could talk into seeing their way.

  As with most places, the city that controlled the Stargate was the largest and most bustling. Tanis approached the city through a gauzy cloud cover and found an empty space among a row of rooftop landing sites. She settled their ship in among others that had made some not-so-clean getaways and a few paddock bashers that seemed to be on their last legs. Vala unlashed herself from the seat and went into the cargo hold as soon as the ship had settled.

  “What’s the name of this guy again?” Tanis asked.

  “Siero. I’ve already told him what we’re bringing and he’s got it all arranged.” She unfastened one of the boxes from its netting and dragged it to the center of the space with a grunt of effort. She flipped up the top and crouched in front of it to fill a small leather pouch with a sampling of what they had. “He’s a good man. Trustworthy, as far as that goes in this environment.” She held the pouch in her hand and juggled it in her palm. She added a few more pieces and stood up. “There we go. Should be enough to convince him we’re on the level.”

  Tanis said, “Looks good to me.”

  “Excellent.” She tossed the bag to Tanis, who caught it one-handed. “Siero usually hangs out at a club not far from the Stargate. He knows we’ve arrived so he should be waiting.”

  Tanis tossed the bag back to her. “Make sure he knows there’s more where that came from.”

  Vala caught the bag and tossed it back. “One of us really should stay with the ship.”

  “I agree. Bad neighborhood.” She tossed the bag to Vala.

  Vala caught the bag and looked offended. “You don’t trust me.” She lobbed it back at Tanis, and it hit her in the chest hard enough to rock her back on her heels.

  “Would you trust you?” She tossed the bag back, hard enough to hurt Vala’s hand when she caught it. “Besides, you obviously don’t trust me alone with the cargo, either.”

  Vala’s jaw dropped, her eyebrows knitting together. “I am offended beyond belief! To think my own partner, the person whose hands I’ve placed my personal safety in more times than I can remember, thinks so little of me… well, it hurts. It hurts a lot, Tanis.”

  “Are you done?”

  Vala sniffled.

  “We’ll meet Siero together. That way we don’t have to worry about what the other one is getting up to with the rest of the loot. But if anything happens to my ship — ”

  “My ship!” Vala corrected.

  “Our ship,” Tanis allowed. “If anything happens to it while we’re gone, I’m taking it out of your share. Understood?”

  “Fine.” Vala looped the top of the baggie around her belt and tied it tight, making sure it would stay put before she let go of it. She put on her long black coat to dissuade leatherwhips, the deft-fingered children who used stiletto blades to cut valuables away from people’s clothing, and gestured for Tanis to lead the way out of the ship. Once outside Vala entered the triple-layer lock while Tanis draped a tarp across the ship’s shell to make it less noticeable to casual passersby.

  In truth, Vala wasn’t offended by the other woman�
��s lack of trust. She didn’t trust Tanis either, when it came down to that. If anything it was a compliment; their mistrust came from a full knowledge of what the other person was capable of doing. Tanis was a Hebridan career criminal with multiple arrests to her name, but to date she’d never spent a single day behind bars. Every time she was captured and faced punishment for her deeds, she found some way to slip free of the shackles and carry on as before. Vala thought that escapism skill could prove useful. Vala could hold her own when it came to getting out of tough spots, but it never hurt to have an expert around. Vala knew Tanis could outwit her if she chose to, and Tanis knew the same about Vala. They were well-matched, and that made it volatile for them to be in confined quarters for very long. Vala knew that Tanis would do whatever was necessary to survive.

  Over the year they had worked together, she’d picked up the majority of Tanis’ life. She was a natural-born Hebridian, which meant she was treated like a second-class citizen to the Serrakin people. She wanted to be a pilot from a very young age but couldn’t get into any of the privileged classes. She ended up taking lessons from unlicensed border runners just to learn the ropes, and before she knew what was happening she had become one of them. Doing illicit runs was far more fun that shuttling Serrakin fat cats from their penthouses to vacation homes, so she decided to keep doing it.

  From there she gained contacts of her own and earned a reputation as someone handy with machines. Serrakin tech was sufficiently advanced enough, and she was adept enough in it, that she could figure out most operating systems even if they came from other civilizations. That skill put her in high demand with some of the more dastardly criminal groups, and she was soon being recruited by reckless types who took on increasingly risky jobs. It was one of those jobs that led to her closest encounter with actual incarceration. Vala remembered Tanis telling her the whole story one night after they’d been celebrating a particularly successful heist.

  “I got scooped up in a sting operation. I was on one of our off-world colonies running a long con in the form of a company store. Someone screwed up and my homeworld sent someone to pick me up along with a couple of other guys who were making problems on a neighboring colony. They sent a ship to bring us back home to lock us up, but we hit an asteroid field. We were forced to make an emergency landing on some barren rock. The ship was too damaged to take off again, so we were stuck.”

  Tanis and other prisoners managed to get free from their restraints and overpowered their Serrakin guards. And there they stayed, picking off their jailers one by one, struggling to stay alive on what little rations they had left.

  “Trapped on a barren planet with two dark, handsome men?” Vala said the first time she heard the story. “I can think of worse fates.”

  Tanis had made a non-committal noise in her throat. “Different strokes.”

  “So? How did you finally get free? Fix the ship? Was there a Stargate on the planet?”

  “There was, but back then we didn’t even know what the damn thing was. Three years we wasted within walking distance of our ticket home. Anyway, I tried to fix that damn ship the whole time we were crashed there without ever making any real progress. It was starting to look like we were just fighting over which side would get to starve to death. But then a group of obnoxiously altruistic soldiers showed up. We conned them for a while, and they’re the ones who told us what the Stargate was capable of, and almost got away scot-free. But they were just a bit too clever. They figured out the truth and helped our jailers recapture us.”

  Vala narrowed her eyes as a thought occurred to her. “Wait a minute. This altruistic third party that caused all the problems for you… it didn’t happen to include a fellow named Daniel, did it?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember all their names, but I remember the man who tricked me into becoming a prisoner again. Jonas Quinn.”

  “Hm. I was thinking about an obnoxious do-gooder I ran into a few weeks back. Primitive technology, insisted on sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. I thought maybe it was the same person.”

  Tanis had shaken her head. “The universe isn’t that small.”

  “So? You obviously didn’t spend very much time in prison.”

  “Not a day. We had a trial, of course, and my solicitor said that I had suffered cruel and unusual punishment being stranded on that rock for three years. I mean… sure, while I was stranded there I had killed a couple of the crewmen. But that wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have killed them if they hadn’t crashed in the first place.”

  Vala shrugged. “Seems like solid logic.”

  “Anyway, the argument wasn’t going to win but it bought me some time and sympathy. I was moved to an area of the prison with lower security and managed to break out using an access panel in my cell. I hijacked an off-world transport and headed out to seek my riches elsewhere.”

  “And riches we shall find!” Vala had promised.

  Now they were in one of the worst districts of the most rotten city on Lucia, called the Bellows because the bad element blew out from there to the rest of the planet. Vala had come prepared for the potential of thievery; she had three weapons hidden on her right side alone, and she could easily draw two more with her left hand if the need arose. She had little doubt that Tanis was probably equally armed. Despite that, they had been on the street less than a minute before she felt the tell-tale tug of pilfering fingers at her belt. She rocked back on the heel of her boot, into the pickpocket’s reach, and forced his arms all the way around her waist. Once he’d been snared she gripped his wrist hard enough to bruise before spinning to look at him.

  “Here now! What in blazes do you think you’re doing? Thieving from a hardworking woman? Taking my mediocre earnings for yourself? Well? What have you to say for yourself? Are you mute?”

  The would-be robber turned out to be a boy not yet old enough to shave. His eyes were so wide Vala thought they might pop out, his lower lip trembling as he scanned the area for the rest of his gang. He stuttered and stammered until Vala took mercy on him. She released his hand and waved him away dismissively.

  “Go. You’re not worth the effort of trying to find a constable.”

  The boy turned and fled. Vala adjusted her belt as she watched him go, surreptitiously making certain her pouch was still in her possession. Tanis, who had slipped into the shadows along the side of the street when the confrontation began, stepped forward to rejoin her. Vala glanced over and raised her eyebrows hopefully.

  “Anything worthwhile?”

  Tanis revealed a handful of coins and a few pieces of jewelry. “It’s obvious he wasn’t a very good thief, but I still expected a little more from him.” She looked in the direction he’d fled. “Shame. If he goes back to his people empty-handed he’ll be harshly punished.”

  “How else will he learn?” Vala had clear memories of her own trial by fire in the months after being separated from Qetesh. Being kind to the boy would have done him no favors; if he was meant to be a thief he would have to learn to deal with failure sooner or later. Vala gestured for Tanis to put away their mediocre spoils from the encounter and continued on. The little thief had driven home the fact that every person they passed was a potential thief, so they kept their wits about them as they moved through the crowd.

  They turned down a wide alley that was crowded from either side with makeshift storefronts manned by people trying to sell things they’d most likely stolen earlier that day. Vala and Tanis ignored the desperate people who scrambled and pushed their merchandise, eyes always forward and refusing the more determined salesmen with terse shakes of their head. The alley ended in a red door guarded by two men who made no attempt to hide their weapons but also didn’t move into defensive postures when Vala and Tanis arrived.

  Vala smiled her best smile. “Hello, boys. Siero is waiting for us. I’m Mal Doran, this is Reynard.”

  “Don’t know you, ladies,” one of the men said. “Probably should turn around and go back the way you came.�
��

  Vala’s smile collapsed. “Well, that was very rude. I don’t feel very welcome. How about you, Tanis? Do you feel welcome?”

  “Not even a little bit.” She glared at the larger guard. “Mighty rude to turn away a couple of ladies who want to conduct business with your boss. You could be costing him a very nice payday.”

  The man met Tanis’ gaze without changing his expression in the least. “Why don’t you let us deal with Siero? Run along now, girls.”

  Vala and Tanis glanced at each other, shrugged, and then each grabbed the guard nearest to them. They both pulled and sent the men tumbling. As they fell, Tanis and Vala lashed out with their free hands to steal the weapons from the guard’s holsters. When the men managed to get back onto their hands and knees, they looked up into the business ends of their own blasters. Vala’s smile was back on display, while Tanis flipped her hair out of her face without taking her eyes off her target.

  “Now, as much as I would love to continue this little display of emasculation, you boys are not our goal. We just want to go inside and speak to your boss. Conduct a little honest crime.”

  “Fine. Go in.”

  “Splendid.” She flipped the gun and handed it back to him by the barrel. “We’ll just let this little dust-up remain between friends.” She winked at him and turned on her heel, flipping her coat in the guard’s face as she went inside. Tanis held her gaze on them for another second before she followed.

  Siero owned the club and currently he and his entourage made up the entire clientele. He operated from a booth at the back of the main room, a seat that was raised onto a dais so he could overlook everything that went on in front of him. He was surrounded by two advisors on either side, and their combined weight caused the platform to sag slightly in the middle. The money-launderer was a stubby block of an Oranian, his muscular body long since gone to fat due to sitting in a booth all day counting his chits. Even the tentacles hanging from the back of his equine face looked like pudgy little slugs.