To his left a blonde haired woman played airplanes with her baby son. She was a pretty young thing with a scarf tied in her hair and no make-up that he could see. She smiled and made burbling noises as she held the boy up to the sun and then brought him back to her breast and hugged him tightly. She knew. Daniel wept quietly then for all of them.
Whistles blew sharply; the piercing sound cut above the hubbub of the prisoners. Guards grabbed more bodies — they weren’t people to them — not caring now as men pleaded to be taken with their wives and sons. For a minute he thought that the Kelani might fight back. By sheer weight of numbers they could have turned their callous execution into a bloodbath and taken more than a few of the Corvani with them, but they didn’t fight. They allowed themselves to be separated and stood weeping and reaching out as the carriage sidings were lifted and the bolts slammed into place. Tiny slits no more than an inch wide had been cut into the wooden sides. Fingers reached through desperately clawing at the air and in the darkness behind them eyes without hope stared out at everything that had been taken from them.
A different kind of whistle sounded then. The train engine vented a raft of steam as it lurched backwards. Pistons pumping, the iron wheels began slowly to roll and as they did more and more steam curled up around the base of the engine, wreathing the entire underside of the train. When it finally moved away the train looked disturbingly like some kind of mythological beast, an iron and wood dragon. It was every bit as lethal as any imaginary creature that had bubbled up from mankind’s subconscious fear of the dark, because the death it was transporting them to was real and final and not fairy tale at all.
With the crowd thinned the last of the resistance seemed to bleed out of the Kelani. Guards changed shifts. The sun fell and rose and fell again, the bite of the night cold almost blessed relief as it reminded them they were alive. Not that many of the left behind wanted reminding.
With his strength returned, at least as far as it could with so little food to fuel it, O’Neill had taken to going out amongst the prisoners, talking to them. At first Daniel had thought it so utterly out of character for the Airman he had followed him. Unlike Daniel, Jack wasn’t interested in their stories or their grief, he was interested in what little strength remained inside them. Some of the Kelani took to calling him “the steel man”, possibly because of his graying hair but more likely because he simply refused to be broken. He planted a few words here, a few there, and let them grow inside the men. They were simple words. The message was all about hope. He didn’t lie to them and tell them everything was going to be all right; no one would have believed him if he had. Instead he told them simply that they would have a chance, and when it came they had to be ready to seize it. Daniel knew O’Neill well enough to know at least part of the message was no more profound than that these men would get a chance, somewhere between here and the Facility, to own their own deaths and not meekly be herded along to the experimental laboratories, the shower blocks, or whatever other hideous fate awaited them. It didn’t need to be profound. It needed to be truthful. These men needed to hear the truth because lies couldn’t help them run away from what was happening to them. Only the truth could set them free — even if that freedom meant accepting the reality of the genocide going on all around them. He didn’t promise them that they could save their loved ones or that their wives and sons would be fine. Far from it, in the most subtle of ways O’Neill planted the seeds of revenge.
Daniel saw the Mujina twice over the coming days. The effect the creature had on the crowd was fascinating and horrific both at the same time. The Kelani looked to it as salvation. Daniel saw only death’s hungry eyes looking back at him. The first time, the Mujina stood at Jahamat’s side, though for its second visit it stood beside a bloated slug of a man in black and silver who treated everything as his domain. This had to be Corvus Keen, Daniel reasoned, struck by the way the man embodied every cliché of corrupt incompetence. Of course, logic dictated that the man did everything in his power to nurture that misconception — truly incompetent men rarely rose to hold such power and they certainly didn’t hold on to it for any length of time. The fat slovenly embodiment of greed and excess was nothing more than a layer of cunning used by Keen to lull both friend and foe into underestimating him.
Both visits seemed to serve the same purpose, for the man with the creature to gloat.
Each time the Mujina left them something died within the Kelani.
That something was hope.
It was a brutal game the creature played, lifting them up and then crushing them. It took a certain kind of malice to be capable of it.
They would never look at Jack in the same way that they looked at the creature from the flames of Vasaveda. He was a leader but he wasn’t a beacon. He didn’t blaze in the same way. But, Daniel knew, he would never fail them. That was O’Neill. He was a genuine hero in a world of false Messiahs.
In the darkest part of the night, Daniel heard something. It was no owl, no matter how much it wanted to be. Beside him O’Neill cupped his hands over his mouth and loosed a wolfish howl. A guard came up behind them and gave the colonel a savage kicking. O’Neill lay on his side, taking it. No amount of blows could rob the smile from his face.
Another train rolled in that morning, and two more during the course of the day. The guards were every bit as ruthless as before as they weeded out their selections. There were two kinds of train servicing the station. There was no telling whether the train that rolled was meant to transport the soon-to-be-dead or the damned that were destined for the Facility.
Finally they were chosen.
Chapter Twenty-three
Master and Servant
Teal’c was alone.
The Mujina had seen to that. The black and silver clad soldiers stood lined up against the wall like a firing squad, watching him without so much as a twitching eye. The old rifles were held almost carelessly. Did they think so little of the threat he posed? They did, Teal’c realized. He considered his options. He could make a stand here — their body language betrayed their arrogance; these people were not used to their captives making a stand. It was all about controlled aggression. A burst of pent up fury. He could break free of his guards and in three steps ram the flat of his hand into the face of one, taking him down, and before the second could react have him lying on the floor bleeding out of his ear, larynx crushed from the force of his elbow. Then in another two seconds he could almost break two or three more before a single gun came up to aim at him, but what would be the point? There were a dozen more. These soldiers were lazy because they could afford to be. In the turrets along the high walls the dead eyes of trigger-happy sharp shooters followed him. He could feel how much they wanted him to try it, to make a move. Losing five men was nothing to them. But for the Jaffa to die here was not glorious; far from it, it was nothing short of foolish. So he would let them live, for now, even if it meant taking their pokes and prods and abiding the scorn and distaste of lesser men. It was not a fight for now.
“You! Forward! Move!” barked a split-faced man with snow-white hair. Teal’c watched the spittle froth up over his lower lip. The split in his face was more than a trick of the light. The Jaffa had almost mistaken the birthmark for shadow but as the shove in the back staggered him forward he saw it for what it was, a big angry raw welt that covered more than half of the man’s face. “Take him to Kelkus!” the guard barked, turning on his heel. He was gone before Teal’c was halfway across the gravel.
Another shove prodded him forward.
They drove him toward a small facility annexed to the main building. There were bars on the windows but no glass. Glass offered some indication of the technological advancement of a society — if it was fine blown and clear they had learned certain purification techniques, if it ran with streaks and was impossible to see through, it was a reasonable assumption that they were still technologically stunted. The rusted bars gave nothing away. Teal’c looked around, taking stock of the soldi
ers on the walls and the muzzles aiming down from the turrets as much as he did the men policing the square.
Servants in rags shuffled about their business. At the door of the facility he saw stick-thin women forming a line. They clutched tin bowls and wooden spoons and wore the same beaten-down sadness. They might have been pretty in another life. Teal’c smelled the abuse on their skin. He looked at them one at a time, committing their faces to memory. There would be a reckoning before he left this place. He promised himself and he promised them.
“In here. Kelkus is expecting you.”
“Old rat-face has taken an interest in you, man,” his guard gloated. “He picked you out from all of the new arrivals. You should be flattered.”
Teal’c said nothing.
He did not need to.
He walked with his head high, hoping the women saw his silent defiance and drew some little solace from it. He had been both guard and prisoner often enough to know strength was found in the little things.
The room they left him in was empty. They slammed and bolted the door behind him. Teal’c paced the room once then settled in the far corner, back pressed up against the wall. It was no more than five paces across, seven long. The floor was scuffed hardwood, the walls smeared with some sort of lime composite that smelled of old death. Teal’c was in no doubt that the room had been used for both torture and murder in its time. Death rooms had a certain ambiance. This was a death room. He noticed a series of scratches around the base of the wall. Names. He crouched down low and looked. Some were so old and faded he could barely read them others could have been carved that morning. There were thousands of them. Tiny names scratched into the lime, the only proof that the prisoners had ever been here, and for many the only proof they had ever lived. Using his thumbnail Teal’c scratched his own name into the soft lime, adding it to the wall of remembrance for the next prisoner to read. It was another one of those little things. There was strength in a name.
But there was so much pain in a thousand of them, and all the untold stories trapped in the stone.
He was still on his knees when the door opened.
The rat-faced newcomer smiled as he closed the door behind him. He did not bolt it. Teal’c had no doubt that he could kill the man. He decided not to. Later perhaps, if the need arose, but for now it served no purpose other than to vent his mounting anger. He looked up.
“No need to worship me,” the man said, his nose twitching ferally as he offered Teal’c his hand. “Oh, okay, but only if you must.”
Teal’c’s right hand snaked out and snatched the man’s arm. His grip was merciless. He pulled Kelkus down until they were eye to eye. “You are presumptuous, old man. I do not worship anyone.”
The man’s smile was disgusting. “But you will, you will.” There was no fear in his eyes.
Teal’c pushed him away.
“Perhaps now that the anger is out of your system we can get on with things?”
“What do you want from me?”
“You interest me. You are plainly neither Kelani nor Corvani, so the logical extrapolation of that thought is that you are by necessity something else. I know only one ‘other’ so I am trying to decide whether you are a god like him, or something else entirely. I do not believe you are a god — ”
“And I do not believe he is a god,” Teal’c said matter-of-factly.
“ — so that makes you something else again. A treasure, of sorts, no? Perhaps Iblis will reward me if I deliver you to him… what do you think?”
“I am no treasure,” Teal’c said.
Kelkus smiled his wretched smile again. “No, perhaps not. But that makes you a problem, my tattooed friend. Because that means you came from beyond the stars. Tell me, how did you come to be here? Why this place of all the worlds?”
Teal’c stared at the little man, but said nothing.
“Oh, come on, there is nothing to be gained by being inscrutable. Talk to me.”
Teal’c merely furrowed his eyebrows.
“Fine. I had hoped you would see reason, but it is not something I shall worry myself over. You present me with a problem, stranger. Perhaps I should just kill you and have done with it? What do you think?”
“You are not strong enough to kill me.”
“Ah, death does not require brawn my thick-necked friend. Sometimes all it requires is a tiny little pin-prick.” He mimed delivering a lethal injection.
“Then perhaps you are suitably equipped.”
Kelkus burst out laughing at the insult.
“I like you, it would be a pity to have to kill you.”
Teal’c looked around the room, “There is no pity in death.”
With that, Kelkus left him. The bars on the door weren’t pulled back for another day. He sat with his face turned to the stars. They were yesterday’s confetti in the sky, thrown away by a billion careless lovers. Dawn came slow and red. Who would remember the coming day, Teal’c wondered to himself, because for so many there would be nothing remotely memorable about it. He would remember it though, he had decided that already.
Kelkus came to him a little after dawn, before the small cell was filled with light. There were six black and silver clad soldiers with him. “Help him up,” Kelkus told them. And to Teal’c, “It’s time for you to meet your new god, my talkative friend.”
Teal’c rose slowly. Judging the relative strength of his captors was instinctive: these few were more formidable than yesterday’s men, but still barely a match for his explosive aggression should he choose to unleash it upon them. The thrill of anticipation itched through his right hand. He clenched his fist. Smiled. “There are no gods, only lies. I do not believe in lies.”
“Ah, but there are truths as well. Glorious truths. Come with me and I will show you.”
As they walked through the narrow passageways, rifle muzzles prodding him in the back, Teal’c looked at these so called truths and saw more lies barely concealed beneath the flaking concrete. They reached a set of stairs that led up. Kelkus nodded. Teal’c climbed slowly, counting each one. One hundred and twenty seven steps later they reached the first and only door. It was a humble gateway — that was the only way the Jaffa could describe it. Where other doors in this place had been banded with iron or decorated with unnecessary ornamentation, this single door was bare blond wood. There was no knocker and no handle. No, Teal’c realized quickly, there was a pressure sensitive plate set into the stone beside the door. Kelkus pressed his hand flat to it, allowing the device to scan his print. The door opened. Teal’c frowned.
The simple act of opening the door changed everything.
The hand sensor wasn’t homogenous technology — it had been brought in from outside. It could have been a leftover from the time of the Goa’uld, but he doubted it.
Kelkus pushed him inside.
“Here he is, master,” the man fawned, scraping his sandaled feet across the floor as he shuffled in to the room. Ever the warrior, Teal’c’s instinct was to take stock of this new environment. The room seemed disproportionately large given the narrowness of the stairs. It was a curiously clinical chamber, all sharp angles and sterile surfaces that were not in keeping with the rest of the rooms in Corvus Keen’s folly — it wasn’t a castle or a keep or palace or dungeon, municipal block or any other kind of habitat. It was just a sprawl of adjoining rooms with no rhyme or reason to the build. Teal’c tried to place this new room according to the impression of the interior he had pieced together in his mind, but the place was a sprawling mess of architecture of which there was no sense to be made.
He could guess the general vicinity in terms of towers and the annexed prison, but there was no way of knowing where he was for sure without looking out of the chamber’s single window.
The light was almost radiant as it filtered through the flawless glass, so pure he could see the dust motes hanging in the air.
Wearing a medical face-mask that covered all but his black eyes, the creature that called itself Iblis stood i
n the center of the room. He leaned forward, hands braced on the side of a steel-topped bench. Blood dripped down a steel tube beside his head. Teal’c heard the buzzing of flies. He did not know what he had expected to find up in the tower room, but a Goa’uld surrounded by medicinal drips and monitors was not it.
“Bow down in the presence of your god,” Iblis said, that cold metallic arrogance rusting through his voice as his eyes flared silver.
“I would rather die,” Teal’c said.
Kelkus rammed a fist into the base of his spine, meaning to drive him to his knees. Teal’c did not flinch. He turned slowly to face the weasel-faced man, arching his eyebrow. Kelkus stumbled back a step, his hands coming up instinctively to ward off the anticipated blow. Teal’c did not give him the satisfaction. He turned back to Iblis.
“Is this your doing?”
The white linen mask hid the Goa’uld’s expression but not the delight in his eyes. He took a delicious moment before answering. Teal’c did not know whether he could believe Iblis or not when he promised: “No, no, no, this is all their doing. Humans are so creative when it comes to hurting each other. Have you not learned that in your servitude, Jaffa? Leave them alone and they will drive themselves to extinction. It is their way. I am merely an observer, a set of eyes off the stage watching this Grotesque Theater unfold. It is fascinating, though. Beyond that, it is rewarding. Only the fool believes he knows all the pain there is to know. These cattle are opening my eyes to suffering I could never have imagined. So tell me, First Prime, what brings you to my world? Are you looking to serve a new master?”
“That is no secret, Goa’uld. I came here to kill you,” Teal’c lied, thinking of O’Neill. It was the kind of thing the Colonel would say to throw his opponent off balance. The words came easily to him.
“Have I become so legendary that Apophis would send his First Prime to dispatch me?” There was genuine amusement in his voice at the prospect. Iblis shook his head. Teal’c could tell he was smiling beneath the mask. It was a curious thing for a Goa’uld to wear.
SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Page 16
