SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne

by Savile, Steven

  Careful to be sure the moon wasn’t at his back to play traitor, Teal’c crouched down, digging in for the long haul. He watched the life signs of the camp, the routines of the guards and the movement of the water carriers. There were pockets of prisoners that were completely ignored by the water carriers, he realized quickly, and assumed they represented the old and infirm. The guards up in their watchtowers took sadistic pleasure in their task. When a woman ran toward the gates of the station a single staccato rattle of gunfire cut her down. She twisted and spun and fell like a discarded rag doll and lay in a puddle of her own making. Worse, by far, no one down there dared go to her side so she died alone.

  Teal’c rose slightly, his face twisting into a snarl.

  There was no way he could make it unseen to the watchtower and he couldn’t see the murderer’s face, so he added an unseen enemy to his mental list. It weighed heavily now.

  O’Neill and the others were down there somewhere; they had to be. Down there or already shipped off on one of the death trains. He needed to give them a sign. Something to let them know he was out there, but what? What would O’Neill be looking for?

  He resisted the urge to string up a dozen of Keen’s Raven Guard, despite the fact that it would have delivered his message loud and clear. Not every man in the black and silver deserved to die. That was a lesson he had taken with him from Chulak.

  In the end he decided to try one of O’Neill’s animal calls. He crouched, cupping his hands over his mouth and pursed his lips. He gave three short bleats that were meant to sound like the hoots of an owl but sounded more like the death throes of a tomcat in heat.

  A moment later a howling wolf answered him. Only there were no wolves in any city he had ever encountered; they preferred the solitude of the forests or the wide open tundra. O’Neill had heard him. Teal’c was torn. Part of him wanted to break from cover and run to O’Neill’s side, to stand together, but another part of him was so horrified at the sheer volume of suffering all around him that the only stand it wanted to make was against Corvus Keen and the monster that lurked in the man’s shadow: Iblis.

  They were alive — and gathering that intelligence had been the entire purpose of his mission. He hadn’t come to rescue them barehanded. He was no fool. Any rescue attempt would need numbers and careful planning. It was enough to know that O’Neill and the others were alive, and the railway tracks told him exactly where they were going.

  He ran back toward the rising flames.

  * * *

  They had been betrayed.

  He knew that the moment he saw the thick black smoke. He crawled back up the railway embankment and stared at the painted raven. Behind it angry red tongues of flame licked at the black sky. He knew with dread certainty it was Kiah’s home that burned. She had foretold it… and even as he walked down the center of that lonely road, Teal’c knew he had brought it down on her. Not by creeping out, but by seeking her out in the first place. Her hand of friendship had cost her dearly.

  There was no sign of Jachin. Teal’c crossed the street, no longer worrying about the shadows. There was no safety there anyway.

  They were throwing buckets of water at the rising flames when he reached them, his worst fears made horribly real. Red ghosts burned gauntly across their beaten faces. These people had suffered too much already, and this one fire burning right at the heart of their home threatened to consume their final talisman — the thing they believed held the wrath of the tyrant Keen at bay. They had invested so much — too much — in the blind woman, and now with the flames devouring stone, flesh and bone, it was no wonder they were broken.

  “Is the old woman inside?” Teal’c shouted. One of the Kelani turned, saw him, and turned away, throwing his bucket at the trailing flames. The water hissed and steamed to nothing before it could reach the stone wall.

  Jubal Kane was trying to force his way into the burning building only to be battered back by the ferocious heat, and then Teal’c looked up at the window and saw Kiah’s frightened face pressed up against the glass as she struggled with the frame. She couldn’t force it open. All around Teal’c people were urging Kiah to break the window and jump for her life, but she wouldn’t — couldn’t — do that. The only mercy would be that the smoke would take her long before the flames reached her — and that was no mercy at all. Her hand beat weakly against the glass. Eventually the heat would shatter it but by then it would be too late for the old woman.

  Jubal Kane lurched away from the doorway, tears of frustration and grief stung from his eyes by the smoke. Choking black clouds of the stuff engulfed the doorway. Inside the house a series of small detonations rocked the foundations one after another. A deep crack resonated through the very core of the building as one of the main braces buckled and finally snapped beneath the anger of the heat. Jubal Kane saw Teal’c and for a moment didn’t seem to know whether to curse him or beg for his help. His lips moved. Teal’c read them: you brought this down on her… But he might just as easily have been transferring his own guilt onto the soundless screams of Jubal Kane’s frustration.

  Teal’c looked away — anywhere but at the grieving son.

  The young girl with the red dress was there with them, running at the flames with her small bucket of water. Again and again she ran back to the water pump on the street corner and back to the flames, spilling more than half of the slopping water as she did. Teal’c turned his back on the burning house. He followed the girl to the water pump and knelt at her feet. “Pour water on me, child,” he said, with his head bowed. She didn’t ask why, she just did it, pumping the handle hard, water splashing everywhere. She soaked him to the bone. Teal’c rose, nodding his thanks to the child, and walked toward the burning house. The heat of the conflagration was fierce even twenty feet away. Before he was halfway up the tenement stoop it had scorched most of the water out of his clothes and he felt it burning his skin and the roof of his mouth as he tried to breathe. That didn’t stop him. Teal’c walked forward, into the fire.

  * * *

  The heat of the blaze fused the clothes to his skin even as they shriveled away to a blackened nothing.

  He took the stairs carefully, walking at the outside of the risers, not the inside where the fire would have weakened them. He didn’t touch the walls, didn’t look back down even as the flames bullied his back, he just walked deeper and deeper into the heart of the burning house. He knew which room she was in. It was the same one she had hidden him in earlier that day. The smoke was thick, cloying. It rippled in black eddies across the ceiling. The door on the landing was closed. Teal’c pressed his hand flat against it and felt the heat built up behind it. He knew that opening it was the last thing he wanted to do, the backdraft from the oxygen sucked into the fire, gorging it, would vent out in a huge explosion: but he had no choice. He had to go through the door if he wanted to reach Kiah.

  He aimed the blow level with the lock and drove the flat of his foot hard into the wood. It splintered inward, the latch torn from its mounting. Even as it crashed open Teal’c heard a series of short high-pitched pops and hurled himself out of the line of the blast. He hit the floor hard, hands covering his head. Still, the explosive force of the backdraft tore out through the door and swelled to fill the corridor for a full five seconds before it shrank back inside the doorway. Teal’c rolled over. His back burned, agony searing deep beneath his skin. Biting down on the pain, he pushed himself to his feet and plunged through the open door.

  He could not see Kiah for the smoke.

  Teal’c crouched low, looking beneath the blanket of roiling smoke for any sign of the woman. He found her lying unconscious beside the bed. She had obviously been trying to climb into it when she finally succumbed to the relentless choking of the smoke burning through her lungs. He knelt beside her, leaning in close to try and feel her breath on his face. Her eyes were closed. She looked almost peaceful — as though she had come to terms with the fear, faced it and prevailed, and finally accepted what the blaze meant.
He felt the softest feather of fitful breath against his cheek. That was enough. Teal’c gathered her into his arms. Kiah was painfully frail, light. He felt every bone as he lifted her.

  Behind him, the glass in the window shattered outward, raining searing shards onto the street below.

  The flames roared through the small room, consuming everything in their way. They ate through the soft fabrics, chasing up the curtains to frame the broken window. They consumed the bedding, climbing the heavy flock paper on the walls to rage across the ceiling and across the doorway, forcing Teal’c to plunge through the flames. They burned at him, into him, so hot he felt his grip on consciousness scorched away as he staggered down the stairs, flames raging all around him. He hit the wall. Hit the banister. It splintered beneath his weight, breaking away treacherously. Teal’c barely stopped himself from going with it, lurching away from the ragged edge of the wooden rail even as it blackened and burned.

  And then the air hit him. With it came the strength to manage another step and another. He clutched Kiah to him. His eyes stung with smoke-tears. He stumbled toward the door. Every inch of his flesh shriveled tighter around his bones. Ablaze, Teal’c emerged from the burning house.

  He managed three lurching steps before he fell to his knees.

  The young girl in the red dress was the first to rush toward him with her bucket slopping water.

  * * *

  The fire burned out, but not before taking the house and much of the street with it. There was no doubt it had been deliberate. Jubal Kane had suspected the black-skinned newcomer until the stranger had plunged into the flames and carried his mother out. Now the man lay in the other room being tended by his daughter, Nat. She pressed cold compresses to his skin, trying to take the heat out of him but the man was on fire inside. Jubal had looked in on him an hour ago. His skin suppurated, yellow blisters swelling even as hard skin cracked and wept. Jubal had seen burns like this once before — and then the victim had died before sunrise.

  His wife, Elli, sat with his mother. She was awake. The smoke had taken its toll but she would live, thanks to the heroism of the stranger, Teal’c. That he would risk his life for his mother absolved him of all suspicion as far as Jubal was concerned.

  No, there was only one man responsible for the fire: Corvus Keen.

  What this meant for his sister, Namaah, there was no way of knowing. Keen kept her close. He had an unnatural obsession with her even though he treated her like some worthless piece of crap. The way he had always looked at her, even when they were young, made Jubal’s skin crawl. He could only hope that for once this fixation of Keen’s would keep her safe.

  He called Jachin through. They were joined by Basry, Sallah and Nadal. “It’s obvious who is responsible for this,” Jubal Kane said. “The question is what do we do about it?”

  “We cannot fight a war against them single handed,” Nadal said, voicing the simple and most obvious truth. They were not equipped to go toe to toe with the Raven Guard. They did not have the men or the firepower. They had survived this long on token resistance — being too small an irritant to be worth Corvus Keen’s time to crush. That, and in no small part, the last lingering traces of love for his mother had stayed his hand. The fire burned that last illusion of safety away. Keen didn’t care about any of them, and to fight him now would almost certainly mean their own damnation.

  But Jubal Kane was prepared for that.

  Hungry for it, even.

  He wanted an end to this.

  “We’ve lived under this false shadow of protection for too long, but one fire has burned it all way. And stripped of it, we’re as vulnerable as all those others who’ve been dragged away to his bloody ‘facilities’. And if we aren’t careful, we’ll end up just as dead.”

  The damning words hung in the air unanswered for the longest time.

  “What do you suggest we do?” Sallah asked, finally. Sallah was a lanky figure with an almost epileptic fidgetiness. He squirmed in his seat, looking from face to face for answers. “We can’t fight a war, Nadal is right.”

  “Not toe to toe,” Jubal agreed, “but there are other ways to fight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cunning over brawn, courage over numbers. Look at that man next door if you want to know what I expect from you now, brothers. That a stranger would do this for us, without a thought for his own safety, that shows us the way.”

  “You want us to burn with him?” Jachin said, aghast.

  “You always were too literal. No, I mean we spread the word to Kray and those others like him who still stand against my brother. It’s time for our passive resistance to become active. Together we can hurt Corvus Keen. He rules by fear. We don’t need a war, we need simply to make him fear us instead.”

  “But why should he fear us? What can we possibly do to him? He has an empire, for God’s sake. All those guns. It’s too much, Jubal.”

  “All it takes is one spark, one fire, one little victory.”

  “You have a plan, don’t you?” Nadal said, leaning in.

  “What fate are you most afraid of for your family?”

  “The train,” Nadal said, without hesitation.

  Jubal Kane nodded. “We hit the death trains. We stop thousands from reaching his facility and in saving them add their numbers to our cause.”

  “Thousands of starving, desperate wretches,” Sallah said. “They’re as good as ghosts already. They aren’t going to stand up to Keen.”

  Jubal shook his head. “You underestimate the power of redemption, my friend. They might be ghosts today, but tomorrow they will be avenging spirits. Instead of entering the facility as prisoners, they will march side by side with us as liberators. Can you imagine the effect it will have on Keen’s men watching thousands march across the fields toward them?”

  “You’re mad,” Sallah said, shaking his head. “He’ll crush us before we get within one hundred miles of his precious facility… You plan on facing automatic rifles with pitchforks and broken pipes? We aren’t playing soldiers here, Jubal.”

  “You’re right Sallah. We’re not playing at all. We’re fighting for our lives.”

  * * *

  By rights Teal’c should have died.

  His symbiote worked aggressively to counter the debilitating effect of the burns, nourishing his skin even as the girl soothed it with water and soft words. It salvaged his system from inside out, supporting organs that would otherwise have failed as his skin failed to absorb the oxygen they needed to survive. He lay in a pool of his own sweat as the heat still burned inside him. The sweat-yellowed sheets clung to his naked body.

  He tossed and turned all night and into dawn, slipping in and out of consciousness. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the flames burning again.

  The girl soaked her towel and pressed it to the gold embedded in his forehead. She touched it almost reverentially.

  He opened his eyes.

  She pulled her hand back as though slapped.

  “I will not hurt you, child,” Teal’c said “There is no shame in curiosity.”

  “What is it?” she asked, hesitating before reaching out again.

  “It is a slave marking. It says I was once owned by a Goa’uld called Apophis.”

  “But you are free now?”

  “I am free now,” he agreed, struggling to sit up.

  “No, you need to rest. The girl tried to stop him but he had no intention of lying there meekly and waiting for the healing to happen. His symbiote would treat the worst of his injuries, time would heal the rest.

  “I am well enough, child.”

  “I have a name, you know,” the girl said, shaking her head in disgust at his stubbornness.

  “I am sure you do.”

  “It is Nat. Thanks for asking.”

  “I did not ask.”

  “I know. It’s called sarcasm.” She peered at him. “Are you simple or something? I mean, did the fire melt your brain and leave you stupid?”

&n
bsp; “That’s quite enough of that, young lady.” Jubal Kane leaned against the doorframe, an intense smile on his handsome face. The Kelani possessed an almost magnetic charisma, Teal’c realized, feeling the brunt of that seemingly easy smile for the first time. He had misjudged the man. He was a born leader, like O’Neill. He had that same affability that masked a fierce intelligence and ruthless cunning. Jubal Kane was a man you wanted on your side in a fight. Looking at him, whip-lean and hard, Teal’c could not help but wonder how much like his brother he actually was? To look at, one was in effect a shadow of the other: the black and the white, the bloated and the athletic, the compassionate and the cruel. But for a childhood of love instead of festering hate he could have been looking at Corvus Keen. “How are you feeling?”

  “I have been better.”

  “Truly. I don’t understand how you’ve recovered so quickly, third degree burns across more than eighty percent of your body should be a death sentence.”

  “In another, perhaps. But I am Jaffa.”

  “I’m not going to complain. I would much rather you didn’t die.”

  “As would I.” Teal’c pushed himself up to his feet. He was decidedly unsteady. After a moment he accepted the girl’s hand and allowed her to support him.

  “I can’t begin to thank you for what you did back there, for my mother.”

  “Then do not,” Teal’c said. His bluntness surprised the man. “I merely repaid my debt to her. We are even.”

  “Not yet. You may have repaid her, but there is a debt still between you and I. Kiah told me about your friends. I know where they have been taken. I can help you find them. Let me do that, then we can call it even.”

  “That is not necessary,” Teal’c said, raising a hand to forestall Jubal Kane’s objection, “but it is most welcome. I believe they have been taken to the encampment to await the death train.”

  Jubal Kane nodded. “Six wagons and three trains shipped out this morning heading to the Rabelais Facility. The camp is empty now. I believe that is where we will find your friends, if they are still alive.”