“Because I’ve got to justify my paycheck somehow.” Daniel pressed the icons, and looked up to see the ceiling iris open. Slender rings dropped down around them, gleaming like brass, and an instant later he was surrounded by light. He fancied that he felt an electric shiver race through him as the transport rings took him apart on the molecular level, but the process was too swift, too complex to really perceive. One moment he was staring through the cage of rings at the open, columned corridor, and the next he was in near darkness, surrounded by machinery.
And people were looking at him.
If there was a disadvantage to the Goa’uld ring transporter, it was that the system lacked any element of surprise. The occupants of the navigation control room knew that someone was beaming in as soon as the rings had begun to hover down from the ceiling iris at their end. It wasn’t like kicking in a door: Daniel was on full view of three white-robed technicians and two Jaffa guards for several seconds before he could even move.
Jack was faster. Even as the rings had started to lift he had ducked between two of them, leaping between one as it rose and over the one below, rolling out of the way before the shouting even started. Daniel saw him use the zat gun to blast one of the guards. The bronze-clad man gave a guttural cry and slumped, his body wreathed in lightning.
One of the technicians ran at Daniel. He ducked aside, grabbed the man as he went past and slammed him into the wall behind the transporter. As the tech bounced away, Daniel heard the zat snarl twice more.
He glanced up to see the remaining Jaffa raise his left arm, fist clenched, armored forearm horizontal to the floor as if he was holding a shield. A moment later, he was — a raised boss on his armor had fanned out, impossibly fast, snapping out a ring of gleaming metal and then another to encircle the first, and the Jaffa was raising his staff weapon behind a round shield, like that of a Greek hoplite.
The next zat blast caromed off the shield and spattered into the ceiling.
The Jaffa’s staff weapon opened, the cruel spear-end snapping into two halves to unleash a sizzling bolt of white-hot plasma. Daniel was already hurling himself floorwards, and he felt the heat of the blast across his shoulders. He dragged his MP-5 up, thumbed off the safety and tugged the trigger, felt the gun hammer back into his hand as a burst of armor-piercing bullets crashed deafeningly into the shield. They didn’t get through, simply whirled away in a lethal storm of ricochets, but the Jaffa had not been expecting the force behind them. He stumbled, the shield coming up on reflex, and Jack shot him in the knees.
A zat gun’s stunning discharge is effective no matter where it hits. The Jaffa collapsed, latent voltage curling across his armor and snaking away into the floor.
Daniel scrambled up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Jack was blinking down at the unconscious Jaffa. He made a vague circular mime around his own forearm. “Neat trick.”
“Think we can get some of those?”
“If you meet this Hera, maybe you can ask.”
Daniel glanced quickly around. “Jack, get the door. I’ll see what’s best to break.” He went for the centre consoles, shoved an unconscious technician out of his seat and then pressed a series of icons, activating a display panel. “And here we go.”
“What are you doing?” hissed Jack. He pointed at a bank of control crystals. “All the fragile stuff’s over there!”
“Just give me two minutes.”
“Carter and Teal’c might not have two minutes.”
“And if I blow all these systems without knowing what they do, I could lock down this entire section, or cause the hyperdrive to overload and blow up, or —”
“Okay, I get it. Just…” Jack turned back to the hatch. “You know.”
The screen was filling with data. Daniel stared at the pages of meaningless hieroglyphs for a few moments, then found his way back to a core menu. “Here we go. They were running course calculations before they went into hyperspace, coordinating the fleet. Looks like they were going to send all this data up to the pel’tak in a few minutes. I think we found this place just in time.”
Jack didn’t answer. Daniel tapped at the screen, watching as the menu shrank to a new series of options. He didn’t want to interrupt the course calculations before he had to. That would alert the pel’tak — the ship’s control deck — too early. Instead, he navigated around the course data, idly watching the program running as a systems diagram came up over it.
And then he froze, his finger halfway to the screen. “What the hell?”
“Ah, Daniel?”
“Two minutes.”
“You said that two minutes ago!”
He wiped his finger across the screen, shrinking the system diagram. He no longer had any interest in it. Instead, all his attention was on the course calculations. “Jack?”
“Don’t tell me we can’t blow up the navigation system.”
“Ah, sorry.”
Jack left the hatch and ran over to him. “What have you found?” he asked, with the weary tone of a mother indulging a curious child: and whatever it is, no, you can’t keep it as a pet.
“Hera’s orders to the fleet, the core seed for the course calculations.” He pointed to a block of golden text on the screen. “Jack, she’s after the same thing we are.”
There was a moment of silence. Then: “Say again?”
“Hera is amassing this fleet with the express purpose of capturing the Pit of Sorrows.”
Jack stepped back. “How the hell did she… Daniel, who else got that message from Ra?”
“Obviously it wasn’t sent just to our gate. If Ra was really serious about knowing when the Pit had been compromised, maybe it dialled all his gates.”
“How many did he have?”
“A lot.”
“Look, don’t think I’m not impressed, okay?” Jack gestured at the screen. “Really, I am. But how does this change what we need to do here?”
“Because we can use this! Jack, you know how far behind the Pit we were in the Tel’tak, and there isn’t a small ship in this fleet that could even match that performance. Hyperdrive speed is all about how much power you can throw around — I’m guessing the only reason the Pit itself is so damn fast is because it’s a one-shot engine. I’d lay money down that it makes one trip and burns out for good.”
“Oh, right…” Jack nodded, suddenly understanding. “So if we stay right here…”
“…And let Hera go exactly where she wants to go, we’ll get to the Pit of Sorrows faster than we ever could on our own.” Daniel pushed the seat back and got up. “Plus, she knows where it is.”
“Where is it?”
Daniel pointed vaguely at the screen. “There. I don’t know, Sam’s the astrophysicist.”
“She’s gonna be so disappointed in you when I tell her about this.”
“You called her awkward, remember? Come on, let’s get out of here before somebody finds these guys and sounds an alarm.”
They ran back to the transporter. Jack readied the zat gun again, while Daniel found the controls to return them to their original destination. He pressed the sequence, and waited.
Nothing happened.
“Okay, that’s not so good.” He keyed the icons again, with the same effect.
“Daniel?”
“It’s not working.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Make it work.”
“That’s kind of what I’m trying to do…”
“Did I mention that I could hear marching out there?”
Daniel gave him the sour eye. “Making up stuff like that isn’t the best way to motivate me, you know.”
“Who said I was making it up?”
“Maybe there’s a reset button somewhere.” It was a slim chance, probably no chance at all. He had used ring transporters before, and none of them had ever needed a reset before they would work twice in a row.
Still, the alternative explanations — that he had been actively locked out of the system, or that weapon
s fire had damaged the machinery — were considerably less palatable, especially if Jack really had heard an approaching patrol. He searched rapidly through the available icons, but none looked immediately like a reset key. In desperation, and certain that the yammer of his own pulse masked the stamp of approaching hoplites, he pressed the original combination again.
There was a grinding from above, and the ceiling began to dilate. “Oh thank God,” he breathed.
“Hm?”
“Nothing.” The rings were dropping down around them. “Had it all under control.”
“Glad to hear it,” Jack replied. “So, where would be the best place to hole up?”
There was a blast of white light, a singing along Daniel’s nerves. The light obscured all sight, all sound, and then it raced up away from him. “One of the storage areas. It’ll be close to the flight bay and there should be plenty of —” He stopped, abruptly. “Where are we?”
They were not back at the intersection. The corridors around them were narrower, the floor darker, the ceiling solid and devoid of illumination. The only light came from burning lamps set into alcoves in the walls, and the glow of the transporter aperture above his head.
When that closed, there was only the flickering glow of the flames.
Daniel suppressed a curse, and began to study the control pedestal. “I must have hit the wrong icons.”
“Daniel…”
“Working on it.”
Jack grabbed his arm and dragged him sideways, hard. “We’ve got company!”
Daniel heard it a moment later: the rhythmic stamp of marching feet, and close. He tugged free of Jack’s grip, and together they darted to the nearest corner. “This is getting to be a habit.”
“Shh.” The first Jaffa were already striding past the corner.
Daniel crouched, shrank into the wall. There was a pillar, but it was set into the corner, and provided little cover. If any of those marching men so much as glanced in his direction, he would be facing a forest of spears in an instant.
The patrol was larger than the one they had seen on the storage level — these Jaffa marched four abreast. That was, until a gap appeared in their formation, a gap two men wide, ten men deep, and occupied by a lone figure in white.
Daniel frowned, and looked closer.
It was a woman. She was compact, a head smaller than the Jaffa surrounding her, and dressed in a flowing white chiton that only hinted at what curved beneath. Her skin was pale gold, her hair had the metal iridescence of wet sand under shifting sunlight. A jeweled headdress glittered at her crown, matched by rings in her ears and bands at wrists and ankles.
She walked with a mix of unconscious grace and restrained, nervous fury. “Hera,” breathed Daniel.
“Looks like trouble,” whispered Jack.
“Capital Tee.” The last men in the patrol had gone past. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
He stood, turned, and saw what was rounding the far corner. “Holy —”
Two more Jaffa were walking towards him, but unlike any he had seen before. They were vast, their heads almost scraping the ceiling, their shoulders broad, their limbs thick and powerfully muscled. They wore little armor, save for a mail kilt and a great curved disc over their shoulders, but their heads were covered by huge helms. Bulls’ heads in bronze and dark iron and gold, their horns long and wickedly pointed.
The eyes of the Minotaurs glowed red in the fluttering gloom.
Daniel shrank back around the corner, knowing he was directly behind Hera’s procession, but the Minotaurs were almost around the corner, and the thought of being charged by the monsters was terrifying. Somehow he knew that a zat gun wasn’t even going to slow them down. He ducked back around, out of their sight, and noticed Jack had done the same.
More marching sounded from the opposite direction. Suddenly Daniel realized that they had, by some horrible accident, found their way onto the decks favored by the Goddess Hera herself.
There was no way he could get back to the transporter.
Jack held up a hand, gestured for him to move forwards. Daniel nodded, and began to pace as silently as he was able along the corridor. If he kept at just the right speed, he might be able to stay between the two patrols until he reached an unoccupied intersection.
Again, a slim hope, but better than no hope at all.
Jack was just behind him. He could hear the second patrol, seemingly on his heels, and beyond that the heavy, measured tread of the two Minotaurs.
And then, from ahead of him, the sounds of the first patrol stamping to a perfectly-executed mass halt.
Crap, thought Daniel. He slowed.
“Lokhagos, take your men and return to the pel’tak. I shall call you when you are needed.”
The voice must have been Hera’s. It was deeper than Daniel would have guessed from the woman’s stature, and backed with the unmistakable snarl of a Goa’uld, but there was a honey to it, too. A seductive lilt that, coming from a System Lord, spoke to Daniel Jackson of pure danger.
He had been right in his initial assessment. Hera was trouble, and far more.
The patrol began to march again, and Daniel almost sighed with relief when he heard their footfalls moving away. If the pel’tak had been back in this direction, he and Jack would have been sandwiched between two platoons of Jaffa and the monstrous Minotaurs. As it was, only Hera remained ahead.
He moved on. Sure enough, the woman stood alone. She glanced back, almost in his direction, and he saw that her features were narrow, delicate, almost childlike. Until he saw the intensity of her gaze, and the subtle flare of golden light from her eyes.
She was beside a tall hatchway. At a wave of her hand, it slid aside, and she stepped through.
Jack was at Daniel’s side. “How much further to the next intersection?”
“Can’t be too far. We’ll carry on, see if we can’t get to a corner and then double back.”
“And don’t screw the address up this time.”
“Picky.” They moved on.
There was a corner just ahead, twenty paces past the hatch, maybe less. Daniel increased his pace, almost involuntarily, and headed right for it. He wanted to be as far from Hera and her oversized warriors as possible — there was something dreadful about the Minotaurs that went far beyond their mere size. Had he been asked to explain it, he would have faltered, but the reaction of his skin and his gut was enough. They were wrong, somehow, and he needed to be away.
Fate, however, had other ideas. As he neared the corner another brass-headed monster peered out from around it.
Daniel cursed, realizing with a horrible swoop of despair that he and Jack were trapped. He slowed, turned as fast as he could without sliding on the smooth floor, and bolted back towards the hatch.
There was no other way. It was after Hera, or into the hands of her Jaffa.
Jack passed his hand over the control. There was a second’s nerve-jangling delay, and then the hatch slid open. Daniel waited until Jack was through, then ducked in and waited until the hatch closed behind him.
He looked back. They were in a wide, open chamber, dotted with furniture, with a kind of railed gallery along one wall and a series of viewports against the other. Outside the ports, splinters of light moved between the stars. In the centre of the room stood Hera and another woman, a slave with dark hair. Both were looking right at them.
Jack was already striding forwards. He raised the Zat, snapped off a shot at Hera, but the slave was hurling herself into his path. The beam caught her in the throat, span her around. She collapsed in a storm of voltage.
“Wait!” Daniel ran towards Jack. He had seen what Hera wore on her right hand.
It was a spiral of bright gold, wound between her fingers and curling fluidly down her wrist. Daniel saw the gem in Hera’s palm glow, and flash out a pulse of distortion at Jack.
She was too slow. Jack snapped sideways, caught the woman’s arm and dragged her off-balance. She gave a scream of rage, cut instant
ly short as she found the emitter of the zat gun pushed hard into her throat.
“You know,” Jack said, his voice very low and very flat. “When people try to ribbon me I get really twitchy. Sometimes I try to press a button once and I end up pressing it over and over again…” He stepped partway behind her, twisting her arm up and ripping the device free from her hand. “Kind of a nervous thing.”
Daniel was staring at Hera. She was breathing hard, her eyes wide. Her head was twisted back away from the zat emitter, neck muscles tight under golden skin. Her forehead shone.
Something cold and heavy formed behind Daniel’s ribs. “Jack.”
“I got this.”
“I don’t think you do.” Daniel was watching a single bead of sweat on the woman’s skin. It had started at her temple, and was tracking a glistening path down her jawline. “She’s afraid of you.”
Jack threw an accusing glance at him. “That’s kind of the point.”
“When was the last time you saw a System Lord afraid?”
“Oh, for crying out loud…” Jack jerked away from her, stepped back, the zat still aimed unerringly at her face. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know. Not Hera.”
“Okay, how much trouble are we in here?”
“More than you can possibly imagine,” said Hera, stepping out from the shadows under the gallery.
Behind her, a dozen Jaffa hoplites raised their arms in perfect unison, shields whirling out of nothing, spears snapping apart to crackle with deadly energy. More appeared on the gallery, and from hatchways on either side of the chamber came the huge Minotaurs, stooping to get their horned helms under the doorframes. In moments, the room was full of Jaffa.
Daniel turned slowly, watching Hera walk out into the room. She was dressed in the same flowing white garment as the first woman, was jeweled in the same way, had her hair set in the same style. Her face was the same, her compact stature the same. Even her voice had sounded entirely as the woman in the corridor had sounded.
As far as he could see there was not a single difference between them. They were utterly alike.
No, he realized, not quite. The woman Jack had threatened was clearly shaken, her hand to her throat, eyes still on the zat. She was shaking, very slightly. Hera, the new arrival, was striding forward as calmly and confidently as she might walk alone, under a summer sky.
STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust Page 22
