It was a peculiarly patient game this Goa’uld was playing. Time and again Goa’uld arrogance had been the Tau’ri salvation. Blind faith in their supremacy made the Goa’uld vulnerable. But that this Goa’uld held his forces back, instead of leading a rash charge across the open plains staff weapons blazing, augured ill for them all. Caution was anathema to the Goa’uld way of thinking, and yet clearly they were exercising exactly that.
Teal’c led them down into the ravine. The walls, blasted by the harshness of the sun and the sporadic burning skies, were charred black and high enough that they obscured them from plain sight as they crept back toward the Stargate.
He kept the Mujina at arm’s length, ignoring its gentle testing around the fringes of his mind. It would slip into his consciousness again, that was its nature. Given time even separation wouldn’t help.
He saw dust in the air. It took him a moment to realize its significance.
“Down,” Teal’c rasped, holding up his fist. The others reacted instinctively, dropping to one knee, bringing their heads well below the sight-line across the plain. “They are close, O’Neill.”
“Well that’s not good. How many? Where?”
“There is a legion of Jaffa in the second ravine. Their presence is betrayed by dust. They move with great caution but sheer numbers causes the dust to rise.”
“Crap.” He set his back to the wall. “Options?”
“We cannot allow ourselves to be captured with this creature, O’Neill. We must use stealth.”
“That would be the sensible thing to do. So I am thinking we do the exact opposite, because that’s what they’ll be expecting. Carter, any ideas?”
“Even if we follow the ravine we’re going to have to break cover eventually. There’s not a lot else we can do. Someone has to reach the DHD.”
“I guess that’s me then,” Jack said, pushing himself to his feet. “I feel like the slow-motion version of Steve Austin in this get up — minus all the bionic parts. All right, wish me luck.”
Before any of them could stop him, O’Neill broke cover. He went up over the top and sprinted for the DHD. The first blast of staff weapon sliced through the air before he was even half way across the killing ground. O’Neill ducked and rolled, going down hard. He labored back up to his feet, and looked around as though momentarily dazed. A second lance of energy speared the sky. Teal’c heard a distinct crackling followed by a pop and a sharp snap as a component within the staff blast reacted with the volatile atmosphere and the first bubble of flame ignited. The downdraft blast of heat bowled O’Neill off his feet and saved his life; the streams of three staff weapons crossed exactly where his head had been less than a second before.
“Whose bright idea was this again?” O’Neill’s disgruntled voice sounded inside his helmet.
“It was yours, O’Neill,” Teal’c told him helpfully.
Two things happened simultaneously; the flame silhouetted O’Neill, leaving him dangerously exposed, and the air above the second fissure ripped with flame, the oxygen in it igniting explosively. A series of detonations tore at the sky, each more savage than the last. Tongues of flame licked down at the red earth, burning the dust black. As the shockwave of the final explosion rippled out, dozens of Jaffa came out of their hiding places, aflame.
Teal’c watched in horror as they burned.
“Kill them,” the Mujina’s Apophis-voice crooned inside his head. “Light up the sky, burn them all. They are nothing. They stand between you and the liberation of your people! Burn them, Teal’c. Set the sky on fire. Do what you have to do. Do what burns inside your soul, First Prime. Kill them. Let this be the beginning of your vengeance. Let this be the first triumph we share together! Burn them!”
Teal’c had raised his own staff weapon before he realized what he was doing.
His shot went high over O’Neill’s shoulder, igniting another wide expanse of sky. The Jaffa beneath it screamed as the flames snaked down to claim them.
Teal’c loosed a second shaft of lethal energy into the sky as O’Neill reached the DHD.
O’Neill stared at his friend and at the horror his two shots had created. Teal’c met his gaze with hard resolve. O’Neill looked away. Teal’c could see the shock and anger in O’Neill’s face. It meant nothing to him. He raised his staff weapon and ignited another swathe of sky.
“Burn them!”
Beside Teal’c, Carter and the creature scrambled up out of the trench. There were a hundred blazing Jaffa between them and the gate. Teal’c felt nothing but pity for his people as they burned, but that did not slow him down. He ran, staff weapon blazing, toward the gate as O’Neill punched in the co-ordinates.
The sky was a brilliant burning sheet of flame. The heat coming off it was phenomenal. It scorched through the protective barrier of his evac suit. He felt his skin shriveling. He could only begin to imagine the damage the hostile fires were inflicting upon the Jaffa as they fell writing to the scorched earth.
In his peripheral vision Teal’c saw movement but he was too slow reacting to it. Twenty feet from O’Neill, a Goa’uld rose up, energy coruscating around him as he reached out with his dominant hand and brought the power of his ribbon device to bear. The gem in the heart of the latticework pulsed orange, and then flared, the center blazing red hot as its raw power gathered. The energy pulsed out from the Goa’uld’s palm and across the distance, sending O’Neill down hard.
Teal’c swung around and fired, the shot taken too quickly for him to draw a proper aim. It fizzled wide of the Goa’uld commander, but the shock of it did enough to break his concentration.
Teal’c fired a second and a third shot, driving the Goa’uld back.
The System Lord looked across the killing ground at him. Teal’c could see the cruel malevolence plastered across the Goa’uld’s face as he came striding out of the ravine. The ribbon device pulsed as he raised his hand.
“Go!” Teal’c yelled into the mouthpiece of his helmet. His voice crackled out over the airwaves. A heartbeat later Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter were sprinting across No Man’s Land toward the dubious safety of the unopened gate. Before it ran, the Mujina turned to look back at Teal’c.
“It is not too late to deliver them to your people, Shol’vah. Redemption is only a matter of minutes away.”
“I do not seek absolution, creature. Now go!”
Teal’c racked another pulse and detonated the blast, blowing a crater in the red dust at the Mujina’s feet. It ran then, all pretense of cunning abandoned in favor of flight. It was fleet of foot, moving faster over the uneven ground than the others, and quickly overhauled Jackson and Carter’s lead.
Teal’c looked over its shoulder to see O’Neill dragging himself up on to his knees. Through the coms in his helmet, Teal’c heard him cursing and with a glance saw why: a staff weapon had ripped open a gaping hole in the leg of his evac suit and the strain from rising had torn it wider. With the integrity of the suit breached O’Neill was in trouble. Teal’c didn’t hesitate. He went over the top and ran, bellowing a garbled war cry and loosing bolt after bolt from the staff weapon in his hands as he did. There was no rhyme or reason to the shots. They went high and wild, low and dirty, charring the red dust. Some scorched through the air, blistering more pockets of combustible gas and causing them to flame. It didn’t matter. They bought O’Neill the precious seconds he needed to punch in the final co-ordinate and open the Stargate. The growls in Teal’c’s ears were equal parts agony, desperation and determination. O’Neill wasn’t about to fail them, even if it cost him his own life.
Teal’c roared.
Fifty feet from the gate the blue water of the event horizon ripped out of the aperture. The way home was open. O’Neill had done it. Teal’c saw the colonel go down again. The sucking silence that followed was hideous. Then both Carter and Daniel Jackson were yelling — this time the sound was primal and filled with fear for the fallen O’Neill.
Teal’c ducked beneath a wild burst of fire fro
m a Jaffa weapon, and ran, hard, fast, keeping low, his arms and legs pumping. A burning man staggered across his path. The flames consumed him, turning his flesh to blistered sores. Teal’c fired once, putting the Jaffa out of his misery, and was past him. He ran to O’Neill’s side and gathered him into his arms. The colonel shuddered once, violently, and opened his eyes. “Go!” he rasped.
“Indeed,” Teal’c said, rising. He watched Daniel Jackson’s back disappear through the gate and followed him. “We do not leave men behind, O’Neill. That is the law.”
But O’Neill had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Teal’c gathered him into his arms.
The Mujina stood on the first of four steps leading up to the Stargate.
“Deliver him to your people, Teal’c. It is your duty.”
“One more word and I shall silence you forever. Do you understand? Go through the Stargate.”
The creature turned and scurried up the remaining steps, hesitated at the threshold, and then threw itself into the rippling blue wormhole.
Carrying O’Neill, Teal’c turned and cast one last lingering look back the way he had come before stepping through the gate. The killing field was littered with burning Jaffa, a hundred points of light, one for each dying warrior. It was a hellish sight that would burn forever within him.
Chapter Thirteen
Take the Long Way Home
“We’ve got an incoming wormhole, sir,” Harriman’s fingers rattled out a series of commands on the dialing computer. The screen flashed through a series of iconic images. They had become a second language to Walter Harriman. He back-calculated the point of origin as each new chevron encoded. “It’s too early for it to be SG-1 or SG-12, Sir, they’re not expected back for another twenty two hours.”
General George Hammond looked up at the array of screens above their heads. The digital reads scrolled through at an alarming rate making it impossible to read any of the data they offered. Hammond drew in a deep breath. The waiting was the worst. The ninety seconds from the first contact through to the final chevron locking down. He traversed the gamut of emotions in that short space of time, from surprise to curiosity, anxiety, hope, all of them. He studied Harriman, reading the man because he couldn’t hope to read the screens. Harriman was agitated, which was never a good sign.
“It’s Colonel O’Neill’s IDC.”
“Open the iris, Sergeant. Let’s bring our people home.”
One of the white-coated gate technicians punched in the code to open the iris, and out in the gate room the huge naqahdah shield contracted smoothly into the Stargate’s frame. A dozen soldiers wielding M16s lined up on either side of the ramp, their guns aimed solely on the eye of the wormhole. If anything other than O’Neill and his team came through the Stargate all hell would break loose down there, but it would be a cold day in the sun before they would establish a foothold on his watch. No matter how many times he had stood there and counted his men and women as they went out, and counted them coming home again, there was always that moment of doubt that this time would be the time something went wrong. Wormhole physics was hardly the most foolproof of disciplines. With Murphy always lurking just over his shoulder, there was always that element of ‘whatever can go wrong will go wrong’ about it.
“We’re picking up five distinct travelers, sir.”
“Looks like it is mission accomplished then, soldier,” he leaned down to talk into the microphone. “SG-1 returning with a possibly hostile prisoner. Look sharp everyone. From what we know of this creature it poses a serious threat, so let’s have no mistakes.”
He held back the smile as he saw each of the men down there stand a little straighter.
“Sir, we’re experiencing a weird sort of interference,” Harriman told him.
“Weird in what way, Sergeant?”
“I’m not sure how to explain it, General.” Harriman swiveled in his seat and pushed one of the two earpieces back so that he could talk and monitor the incoming traffic at the same time. “Once a connection is established, it’s a solid signal,” he moved his hand from left to right in a flat line, “but this one is more like a pulse.” This time his finger peaked randomly as it moved across his chest, as though duplicating a tachycardic rhythm. “My guess is that the gate is struggling to hold the connection, sir.”
“This isn’t the place for guesses, Sergeant.” Hammond’s admonishment was harsher than he intended.
“No, sir.”
And then the Stargate failed.
It was as sudden and shocking as that.
One moment the event horizon was open and SG-1 were coming home the next the aperture was empty and they were staring at the back wall, slack-jawed as the implication of what had just happened sank in.
“We’ve lost the incoming connection, sir.” Harriman shook his head. “It’s gone. There was a huge spike of energy, like an explosion or something, and then it was gone.”
“Well get it back, soldier, SG-1 are out there.”
He could see it in Harriman’s face… The man didn’t want to say it, but it was obvious what he was thinking: not anymore.
Hammond refused to believe it, even though he knew it was true. Harriman couldn’t re-establish the connection anymore than he could order Mister Sulu to teleport the boys back home. A smooth stone of sickness settled in his gut.
This was it, the day he had always dreaded: the day they didn’t come home.
Chapter Fourteen
To Seek the Sacred River Alph
There was no way home for SG-1.
Daniel Jackson stepped into the Vasaveda Stargate, expecting to emerge back in the gate room, safe and sound. He had made well over a hundred journeys since joining up with SG-1. That was a hundred times he had stepped into the gate only to finish that same step on the other side — wherever that may have been. But this time was different.
He felt it as he threw himself into the rippling blue meniscus, the sudden frission that surged throughout each and every cell of his body. He knew the science, or at least thought he did — the gate broke down every atom and neural relay that made up Daniel Jackson, translated it into a base signal that it fired out along the warp of the wormhole, only to be reassembled by the second Stargate almost instantaneously. There was a spiritual argument that the man who emerged couldn’t possibly be the man who entered the wormhole, given that the nature of the matter transferal was to rebuild atom by atom, neuron by neuron… but that left no room in the equation for the soul. It had bothered him once, the idea that what emerged had to be a pale copy of the original: a facsimile. Yet the soul was supposed to be unique, a man’s essence. It was one of those theological arguments that could be spun out every which way, but it didn’t change the fact that he stepped in and stepped out, and bar a little light-headed travel sickness he never felt a thing.
This time, as he plunged through the gate, it felt as though his body were being stripped cell by cell down to the bone and down still into the marrow. He went blind with the agony. Every ounce of his being burned. The thought that something was wrong barely had time to establish itself in his consciousness before he felt his mind tear asunder.
And a moment later the Stargate reformed it and he stepped out into darkness. Physically sick and reeling, Daniel fell to his knees and clutched at his stomach, retching. Without thinking he released the clasps sealing his helmet and barely managed to throw it aside before he dry heaved.
Sam came through a moment later, managed three awkward steps and collapsed at the bottom of the Stargate. He crawled over to where she lay and saw her clawing at her helmet. He helped work the clasps loose and pulled it off. She tried to speak but couldn’t. Her mouth moved but she choked on the breath and the words, not managing either in her need to do both.
“It’s all right,” Daniel said, trying to calm her. “We’re all right.”
Sam stared up at him, wild-eyed. “What happened?” she managed before a brutal coughing fit wracked her body.
“I was going to ask you,” Daniel said.
“Where are we?” Sam asked when she finally stopped coughing.
“That was another one I was kinda banking on you answering,” Daniel said, looking around them. There wasn’t a lot to see. Wherever they were, it wasn’t Kansas — or Colorado Springs for that matter. Before she could answer, the Mujina came through the gate. It faired no better, managing four steps forward before it lurched off violently to the right, stumbled and fell. A pitiful whine escaped its lips as it lay there.
The gate provided the only source of light; it was enough to see the sheen of ice frosting the bare stone walls of the cavern. The walls were rough-hewn, blasted out of the ground with explosives — he could see the long thin drill lines where they had been planted. There were thirteen identical lines, each perfectly smooth, that seemed to be carved into the rock while all around them the stone was jagged from where it had been broken away by the blast. It suggested a basic level of technological development not dissimilar to Earth’s, give or take a century or so. Daniel’s breath misted in front of his face. Already the blonde tips of Sam’s hair had whitened as the frost thickened. The ghostly blue light of the gate only served to make it feel colder still.
Teal’c was the last through the Stargate, carrying O’Neill in his arms. He walked resolutely forward, placing each footstep with exaggerated care, and then knelt to lay O’Neill down before he buckled and slumped against the wall. None of them said anything for the longest time. The confines of the chamber echoed with the sounds of their ragged breathing. O’Neill groaned but didn’t move.
“This is not Stargate Command,” Teal’c said, removing the clasps that fastened his helmet. He put it aside.
“What happened?” Daniel asked, crawling over to be beside O’Neill.
“The damage from the Goa’uld weapon tore open O’Neill’s suit, exposing him to the worst of the sun’s radiation and heat of the burning sky.”
SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Page 8
