A little while later she felt the gentle kiss of the slightest breeze against her cheek. It was the first sign that there might be a way out of this subterranean darkness. It was growing noticeably colder, too.
A minute later she saw the first chinks of day bright.
They started to run toward it, scrambling up the shale. Sam’s feet slipped and skidded on the loose stones. She hit the light and stopped dead in the cave’s mouth. The world, for as far as she could see, was white. Vast featureless expanses of snow stretched out beneath her. There was nothing but whiteness as far as the eye could see.
It was a heartbreaking vista — and not one she had ever wanted to see again, not after the last time when they had stumbled out of the second gate onto the polar ice. There was no sign of any cavalry coming to their rescue. She bit back the bitter disappointment. It wasn’t the time for self-pity. Not if they wanted to find a way off the ice. Not if they wanted to find a way home. This was Fat Lady territory. Sam could hear her doing her vocal exercises.
“Okay, this isn’t exactly what I was hoping for,” O’Neill said. “I was thinking more like air cars and post-industrial cityscape. This is all rather… isolated. Carter, run a scan for life signs. I don’t know whether to hope there’s something out there, or really hope that there isn’t.”
“A yeti or two, maybe?” Daniel said.
Sam ran the bio-scanner. The results, for the second time since they set out from Earth, made next to no sense. “Sir? I’m not sure what to make of this. According to the scanner there’s a small army virtually on top of us.”
“They must be really small,” O’Neill said, his sentence punctuated by the telltale snick of a round being chambered no more than a few feet behind them. Sam turned to see the muzzles of two old style service rifles pointing down at them from a ledge on either side of the cave’s entrance.
“Now that’s just rude,” O’Neill muttered. He turned slowly, raising his hands above his head. “I am Colonel Jack O’Neill, of the United States Air Force. This is Major Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson and Teal’c. We come in peace. Do you understand? Peace. No guns pointing. It’s just not the done thing where we come from.”
“The weapon is old, O’Neill. I do not believe it poses a threat to us.”
“It’s not polite to mock the people pointing guns at you, Teal’c. They might take offense.”
“No offense was intended, O’Neill. I was merely stating a fact. The barrels show marked signs of wear. Statistically it is improbable that such a weapon could expel its projectile with any degree of accuracy.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” one of the four gunmen said, standing slowly. “Given that it would be really difficult to miss with the muzzle pressed up against the side of your pretty bald head.”
“See what I mean, Teal’c,” O’Neill said. “Upsetting the guy with the gun is a really dumb idea.”
Sam watched as the rest of the gunmen rose. They moved with military precision. Each covered the other so at no point were there less than three guns aimed at their quarry. In a curious sort of way their discipline was reassuring. It meant they were less likely to get flustered or fire off a round accidentally — so the fact that they were at least organized meant the chances of making it out of this mess alive were greatly improved. The first man came down from the ledge. He was tall, maybe six inches taller than Jack, and broad shouldered like Teal’c, but with a markedly less defined musculature. He moved with a natural grace despite the treachery of the elements. Sam saw that he wore some sort of rubberized boot, designed no doubt for gripping the ice.
He was well protected from the elements with a fur-lined animal-hide over his head and shoulders, and beneath what appeared to be a derivative of Arctic BDUs, white to blend in with the snows, and with enough padding to suggest some form of Kevlar lining or suchlike. He was blonde, blue-eyed, square-jawed and distressingly handsome. They all were, she realized, looking at them one at a time. They were beautiful people to the point of being almost comic-book idealizations of what the perfect man ought to look like. The sight of these perfect specimens of humanity coming down from the narrow ledge was unnerving. There was nothing sensual or erotic about them. On the contrary, the marked genetic similarity between each of them was enough for Sam’s mind to leap to a certain set of inbred conclusions.
“You do not look prepared for the elements, which is puzzling, is it not, brothers?” The soldier said to his companions.
“Most puzzling,” another one of their handsome captors said.
“It would suggest that they were not expecting this weather,” the first man continued, “but that only posits another puzzler, does it not, brothers? Given that there is nothing but the ice of the tundra for more than two hundred klicks in any direction. Quite the conundrum, wouldn’t you say? What is a boy to think?”
“Perhaps we parachuted in,” O’Neill offered.
“I don’t think so. You would have been seen. Believe me, with nothing to see for miles, even the slightest movement tends to draw the eye. Four parachutes in the sky are not going to go by unnoticed. Besides, no chutes,” he pointed at their kit, and offered a wry smile. “So unless you were planning on bouncing I can’t see you jumping out of a plane.”
“Nice,” O’Neill said appreciatively. “Good solid deductive reasoning and a smart mouth. I think I am going to like this kid.”
“Aside from the whole pointing a gun in our faces,” Daniel said.
“So, no parachutes,” the soldier went on, ignoring the interplay between his captives, “and if I am not mistaken no tracks around the mouth of the cave here, so what am I to make of that? It isn’t as though you could simply materialize out of thin air, is it?”
“That’s a bit too Star Trek,” O’Neill said.
That puzzled the man. He appeared to think about it for a moment, trying to work it out for himself, but eventually gave up.
“You do not fear our weapons, you appear in the middle of nowhere, out of nowhere, and you show absolutely no regard for the trouble you are in. I am Dragul of the Corvani, I do not believe you are either Corvani or Kelani, which means you are an enigma, O’Neill. You are clearly not one of us, yet how could you be anything other? You speak our tongue, wear the face of our people, though it is a good deal more haggard than is common. Perhaps you have escaped from the salt mines to the south?”
“Hold on a minute. Haggard?”
“But then I look at your companions, a mix blood with dark skin, a weak man better suited to books than hard labor and a woman. None of them would last a week in the mines, for very different reasons, so you cannot be escaped prisoners. The alternatives available to me are diminishing by the moment, you see, because the more I deduce, the less I know of you.”
“Like you said, I’m an enigma,” O’Neill said, wondering why they hadn’t counted the Mujina amongst their number. Was it somehow invisible to them? Was that another talent the creature possessed? It was a question for later.
“Be quiet,” Dragul said. The shift in his tone from amicable to sharp made it all the more unnerving. It was as though an aspect of his personality had simply been overridden. He wasn’t their friend, neither was he interested in making small talk. They were his prisoners. He was evaluating the threat they posed, and what reward bringing them in might earn him. Sam looked at Teal’c. The big man raised a silent eyebrow and inclined his head. “Now, how did you come to be out in the middle of nowhere, utterly unprepared for the environment? And more to the point, what do you want here?”
“We’re little green men,” O’Neill smiled weakly.
“Little green men?” Dragul asked, obviously puzzled.
“Purple people eaters from out of space. Aliens. You know?”
“Ah, Off-Worlders? Perhaps you are at that,” Dragul mused. “For all its implausibility, it is at least an answer that bears the semblance of truth about it. If I search will I find your rocket ship buried around here? The thin
g is, no matter how I look at it, there is no legitimate reason, or means, for your being here, which makes you interesting.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Sam knew O’Neill well enough to know he was up to something. He played the fool well, but he had that look about him — in the military they called them ‘tells’ — facial ticks, twitches, or just shit-eating grins — things that give away the opponent’s intentions without their even knowing it was happening. O’Neill liked to think of himself as inscrutable but Sam had him pretty much figured out.
“The thing about being people of interest, my new friend, is that more often than not you don’t want to be noticed by the people to whom you are of interest.”
“And that would be your people, I suppose?”
“My people? Oh, no. My people are the scum of the earth as far as Corvus Keen is concerned, but then, so am I. Being a traitor to the blood doesn’t tend to go down well at the best of times.”
Sam felt Teal’c stiffen beside her. This Dragul appeared to have a gift for saying the right thing to get a rise out of his captives. Perhaps it was all part of his diminishing calculations and traitors was the next logical assumption, or perhaps he was blessed with an uncanny ability to read people. She looked at Teal’c. He was obviously ill at ease, every muscle tense, ready to lash out explosively… Yes, traitor was a reasonable assumption, she realized, but the man couldn’t possibly understand the connotations of the insult in the Jaffa’s ears, nor how deep the hurt of the word ran.
“Which is your way of saying you’re just doing your job and you are about to take us to your leader?” O’Neill said.
“Indeed,” said Teal’c. “The alternative was almost certainly to shoot us where we stand.”
“Your friend takes all the fun out of life.”
“I’ve found that,” O’Neill smiled. “So enough with the pleasantries, you’ve decided not to kill us, which I have to say is a good decision and should be commended. So how about we move on to stage two of your plan, the bit where you take us to meet your higher-ups because we might be of interest?”
“Are you always in such a hurry, O’Neill?”
O’Neill half-shrugged, half-nodded. Sam had seen the gesture a dozen times in the last week. It was trademark O’Neill dissembling.
“Follow me, and do not think about trying to run. Our weapons may be old, but our bullets bite just as hard as ones minted yesterday.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” O’Neill said, falling into line behind the soldier. He winced at the sudden shooting pain that lanced up from his knee. “Besides, where, exactly, do you suppose we might run to?”
“No doubt that is what Jahamat will want to talk to you about.”
“Jahamat being your superior officer?”
“Either that or his very hungry wolf hound.” Dragul said with a chuckle. “I shall let you worry about which for a while.”
They followed the four men back up the path to the ledge where they had lain in wait, and then up a concealed track worn into the ice by the shuffle of weary feet. Sam couldn’t help but wonder why of all the places in this forsaken wilderness they’d chosen to make camp so close to the gate if they didn’t know it was there? Was there something in them that responded to the gate’s proximity? If nothing else puzzling it out would be something to keep her mind busy while she trudged through the snow. The sun beat down coldly on the white. Where it was thinnest the ice formed crystalline run-offs, like miniature frozen waterfalls that caught, reflected and refracted the light in a glory of colors. The sight of this simple nature was breathtaking. It was as though she were somehow being shown the very numen of the iced land, and coming in to contact with this luminous beauty how could she not be touched by it?
The narrow path took them over the top of the mountain, rising higher and becoming ever more treacherous before it slowly began to work its way down the other side. It was no wonder they hadn’t been able to see this Jahamat’s camp when they emerged from the tunnels. The place bore all the hallmarks of permanence she wouldn’t have expected to find in some temporary bivvy in the middle of nowhere. The natural surroundings had been used to enhance the camouflage, blending the tents into the white where possible. More impressive though were the buildings she assumed had to be the command structure — these were built block by block with chiseled ice stacked one atop the other and canted slightly so that the weight of the structure was taken by the blocks from the other side, while the center of the roof itself was formed by thick skins. It was an ingenious twist on the basic igloo design. Each igloo appeared to be joined by low passages of more skins, each braced with an inner framework for support. Looking at the basic shape, Sam assumed the frame was constructed from various things they might have scavenged from the local area, including bones — after all the skins had to come from somewhere. Didn’t they?
She counted thirty igloos and three times that many skin passages linking them.
Despite the sheer size of the camp she couldn’t see anyone, but judging from the number of tents and the core building network she assumed they had stumbled into a small force, around two hundred to two hundred and fifty men, give or take.
From one of the igloos she saw smoke fires rising and felt her stomach contract with sudden hunger pangs as though the smoke reminded her how long it had been since any one of them had eaten real food, not those tasteless MREs.
“Sir,” she whispered, trying to guide O’Neill with her eyes. He followed the direction of her slight nod, but she had no way of knowing if he could tell the furthest snow-laden tarp half-hid what appeared to be a serious piece of kit: a top-armored ATV with snow-tracks and a front-mounted cannon. It was incongruous with the almost antique rifles the men used, and that made it interesting. It suggested one of two alternatives to Sam; either the army was terminally under-resourced and the men were being forced to make do with whatever lay to hand, or this was such a remote unit that the expectation of them facing a combat scenario was virtually nil — meaning they didn’t need the latest tech, only enough to make sure they weren’t devoured by whatever this ice-planet’s version of Wampa’s were. Neither alternative was especially comforting.
Dragul held up his hand for them to stop walking. He knelt and planted something in the ice. A moment later the red glare of a flare burned out in the sky. It was obviously some sort of pre-arranged signal to make sure Tweedle Dum didn’t shoot Tweedle Dumber on the way down into the encampment. It had the rather curious side effect of letting anyone within a fifty-mile radius know about their presence on the ice.
Eight more armed men met them at the bottom of the slope. These were better equipped, and dressed in the same black and silver arctic BDUs that Dragul and his team wore.
“Well, well, what have we here, soldier?” said the smallest of the men facing them. He had a weasely little face pitted with acne scars, the left side hanging slackly, mouth down-turned, as though the result of some form of stroke. But it was his eyes that disturbed Sam. They blazed with the sort of fervor she associated with religious fanaticism.
“We found them on the other side of the mountain, Major Damorkand.”
“And what were they doing there?” Damorkand asked without so much as acknowledging the possibility that any of them might have been able to answer for themselves, given the chance.
“We aren’t sure, sir. “
“So you decided to bring them here, soldier?”
“I believe they will be of interest to Jahamat,” Dragul said.
“It isn’t your place to believe, soldier,” Damorkand said with all the absurdity of a zealot locked into his dogma. Then he seemed to see the Mujina for the first time and everything changed. His head inclined a few inches to the side in quiet contemplation of whatever whisper he heard in his head. Sam had no liking for the expression that slipped so easily across his deformed face. Again, it was in his eyes. She shivered. There was nothing remotely pleasant about his scrutiny.
; “Let me be the judge of that,” another voice said. Sam turned to see a man emerge from the tunnel of skin. He straightened up, standing a full head taller than either Damorkand or Dragul.
“Jahamat,” Damorkand said, his tone suddenly obsequious. “I was just reprimanding young Dragul for bringing a potential threat into our encampment. Once again he has shown a reckless disregard for the safety of the mission.”
“On the contrary,” the one called Jahamat said, “he has shown initiative, something sadly lacking around here, soldier. You are dismissed.” He turned to Dragul. “Perhaps you would accompany me, soldier? I would be most interested in hearing the hows and wheres of your encounter with these intruders, and the reasoning behind bringing them into the encampment.”
“But of course, sir. Might I suggest the one called O’Neill joins us? I believe a few minutes of his company will be more than enough to convince you that it was the right decision.”
“Of course, and what of this one?” Jahamat gestured toward the helmeted Mujina. Like Damorkand he had seen something through the dark visor that intrigued him, but unlike the weaselly little man, the hunger-lust hadn’t immediately overcome his eyes. That made the newcomer even more interesting.
“It is unlike the rest of them,” Dragul said. “But how much different I do not know yet, sir.”
“Yes,” Jahamat said. “I can feel something... Most interesting.”
“Carter, look after things here,” O’Neill said, deliberately cutting across Jahamat’s train of thought. “I’m trusting you to keep Daniel out of trouble.” Before Daniel could object O’Neill continued, “I’m serious, Daniel. I know you. I’m sure you could find some sort of cavity in the ice filled with the frozen remains of the missing link given enough time, so let’s just try and stay out of trouble, shall we? No excitement.”
SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Page 10
