Sam lay there for another ten minutes watching the men to see if they were any less erratic than the lights. They weren’t. Two of them, she saw, walked a short distance away from the compound’s fence into the shadows of nearby trees — she couldn’t be sure but they appeared to be necking back a bottle of something, meaning they wouldn’t be too interested in what happened to their little strip of fence for the next few minutes. It was moving faster than she was ready for. Sam pushed herself to her feet. The wet grass soaked through her BDUs, making them cling uncomfortably. She checked off to the right once, and then ghosted down the hill toward the length of fence she’d decided to cut through.
Every step of the way she expected to hear the blare of a klaxon going off and for the searchlights to all swivel around to focus on her. It didn’t happen.
She hit the fence and fell to her knees, digging quickly with her hands to scuff up enough of the bottom wires for her to start cutting through them. Each individual link took her seven seconds to sheer through using the wire cutters the Kelani had given her. They were blunt almost to the point of uselessness. She needed to cut through six to be able to squirm underneath the fence, seven or eight to be on the safe side. In less than one minute she was through and on the other side.
As Sam dragged herself through the dirt — kicking out with her feet almost as though she were swimming — the first dogs barked. It was the other sound she hadn’t wanted to hear. She tried to judge how far away the animals were; there was no way to know if they were running free or if they had handlers reining them in. Either way, she had to run — difficult in her weakened state — sending all of her time calculations out the window. “Just great.”
She looked over her shoulder. The drinkers were still drinking, but it looked like they were about to put the cap back on their bottle. She didn’t wait to see if they decided to light up a smoke: she didn’t need to, they were already reacting to the barking dogs. She ran. Straight across the dirt yard toward the chemical vats, arms and legs pumping hard. Three hundred yards at a full sprint — it should have been comfortable, even running hell for leather, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten. Halfway and her head was spinning. Fifty yards from the drums and she was running blind, her eyes refusing to focus. The last ten had her stumbling tangle-footed and falling, picking herself up only to fall again. How no one saw her was a miracle.
She unwrapped the explosive with shaking hands, willing her head to stop spinning. It was a primitive device, little more than two sticks of dynamite and a timer really, and she primed it quickly, giving herself two minutes to get clear. It would have to be enough.
Sam pressed it onto the metal casing of the drum, wedging it up against the welding on the lower stanchion exactly where Jachin had told her to. The force of the explosion would tear the weld apart and leave a gaping hole in the outer casing of the drum. The fumes would leak out, come into contact with the smoldering fragments of the bomb and everything would go up in a second lethal explosion.
Or at least that was the theory.
Sam made it all the way back to the opening in the fence and hunkered down, waiting for it to blow. The effort of running made her nauseous and she squeezed her eyes shut against the world’s queasy spin, taking deep breaths. After a moment she peeled open one eye. The searchlights roved across the roof of the building and up and down the yard as she counted the seconds off in her head. After one hundred and fifty seconds it still hadn’t blown. Cursing, she checked her watch, hoping she’d miscounted with the adrenalin pumping. She hadn’t. The timer hadn’t triggered the detonation. Which meant she had to go back and either fix the timer or set it off manually. Neither particularly appealed. She didn’t even have a radio to call in to O’Neill and let the others know what the hold up was. She stuck to the shadows this time, not running so much as ghosting. She kept low and ran in short staggered intervals.
The searchlights swept across the yard. She almost ran headfirst into one of the beams and barely managed to check herself before she did.
One of the wires had come lose from the timer. Unfortunately the countdown device has almost run its course, and was stuck one second from true, so reattaching it was out of the question. She’d have had an entire second to contemplate the life flashing before her eyes, before ‘boom’. Not ideal. But she had nothing with which to jerry-rig a new timer either, or work out a way to circumvent the old one.
Or did she? Her feet squelched in the run-off from the downpour that had collected in a muddy puddle around the bottom of the chemical vat and she realized that she’d already seen the solution — the thirsty guards had been kind enough to demonstrate. All she needed was their bottle. She didn’t even need that: she had her water flask. Working quickly, she filled it from the rain puddle, and pried the explosives away from the metal drum. She wedged them in against the side of the drum as best as she could, then stripped away the wires from the timer, leaving them exposed and bare. Next she balanced the water flask as precariously as she could, the mouth of the bottle less than an inch away from the wires. She held on to it while she steadied her nerves. The idea was pretty simple. It was like the old game Mousetrap, really. One thing connects to another. Cause and effect reduced to water, wire and hopefully an explosion. She would let go of the flask and eventually gravity would take its toll, the weight of the water would tilt it as the rain continued to fill the flask until it reached the brim — it would either fall, or spill its contents, meaning it could play out one of two ways: the steady flow of water would complete the circuit and count down that last second, or the bottle itself would force the wires together, and making contact complete the circuit. There wasn’t really a great deal of margin for error, the bottle couldn’t fall the wrong way, she’d compensated for that, but it could fall short or wide of the mark and miss the wires all together, but by rights either way ought to work and she really wasn’t fussy. As long as the thing blew, mission accomplished. She could sort out that idiot Jachin later.
But — and there was always going to be a but — there was no way she would make it all the way back to the fence. Not a prayer. She’d be lucky to make it behind the next vat, which meant there was no running away this time. She hoped the explosion bought the others the time they needed to get inside the compound. And even more fervently she hoped she would be there to greet them when they did.
With another silent prayer to the patron saint of bombers, Sam took her hand off the water flask and started to run.
* * *
The explosions tore through the night.
O’Neill had expected a single double-shock detonation and a few fireworks; the charge had been a small one, barely more than a flash-bang, according to Jachin. But what they got was no simple double-shock. That first concussion ruptured the silence and was followed by a second much larger detonation as the vat itself went up — only it didn’t simply ignite. The trapped fumes turned the entire structure into a huge grenade, the force of the detonation tearing the metal drum to razor sharp shrapnel that it spewed across the compound. It sliced into the surrounding drums, scoring through the metal casing, and seconds later causing a third and forth explosion.
Flame ripped out blanketing the sky above them from horizon to horizon, turning night into day. He could feel the battering heat on his face even this far away from the blaze and all O’Neill could think was that Carter was down there in the middle of it. She didn’t have a radio or any other way of letting them know she was okay, she didn’t even have a weapon to protect herself now that she’d drawn all attention her way… If she was even alive after the Fourth of July light show down there. “Goddamn sonofabitch!” O’Neill turned on the grinning firebug, grabbing him by his ragged shirt. “You said a small controlled explosion!”
“But isn’t this so much better?” The flames reflected in Jachin’s eyes, making him look crazed.
“Better?” Jack shook him. “Carter is in the middle of that goddamn mess!”
Se
archlights roved wildly through the darkness, looking for the saboteur, and klaxons blared into discordant life. Doors opened and guards and prisoners alike streamed out into the yard. It was chaos, which was exactly what the pyrotechnics had been meant to achieve.
Down the line, Jubal Kane gave the signal and his ninety-three guns rushed the gate. The rest of the refugees and prisoners followed barehanded, screaming and whooping as they charged the Facility’s chained gates.
In disgust, O’Neill let go of Jachin and watched as Jubal fired the first shot. The bullet took one of the watchtower guards in the side of the head, sending him sprawling backwards over the low wall of his ensconcement. He was dead before he fell. There were no pin-wheeling arms or terrified screams. It was all very surreal. He simply fell.And as though that were some prearranged signal, ninety-two other guns roared.
Suddenly the compound was filled with screaming, flames, and the angry bark of gunfire — all notes in the music of war.
“Is that a hand cart I see on its way to hell?” O’Neill said to no one in particular.
“I do not believe so, O’Neill,” Teal’c said. “There are no wheels.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Under Your Skin
The Mujina emerged from its nest into a world of fire. All of the memories of its imprisonment swarmed up to overwhelm it; they had found it, but rather than transport it back to hell the Ancients had chosen to turn this new world into one of flames and death. Could they hate it so much, so blindly, that they would damn an entire world to make sure it was alone? Yes, it thought, yes they could.
It stared at the seven metal towers, at the angry flames consuming them, and at the shadows they threw across the compound and its friends, those who came to worship it and offer devotion. They crawled on their hands and knees in the dirt, unable to flee because the gates were chained and there was no way out, nowhere to run. The rain could not touch the fire. It burned and burned, eating into the metal. Spreading. It would not take long for one spark to catch the wind and be carried to the main building. That was the way of fire: it ate and ate and ate, never sated. They would all die, it knew, everyone in this place, everyone that it had allowed to become close to it, and all that would remain would be their bones.
“No!” it screamed, consumed by the fear of being alone once more. Its voice was lost amid the pandemonium.
It reached into their minds, wanting to help, wanting to calm them. But all it found there was fear and anger and hate, and all it could do was recoil, reaching out from mind to mind to find something. It didn’t know what. Just something, someone it could help, someone it could save so that it didn’t have to walk into the fire alone.
It staggered out through makeshift graves, head turned to the sky. The black smoke still burned from the incinerator fires, but it was swallowed up in the conflagration. Everything burned. Everything.
It was a horror the creature had never thought to see again.
It saw a slack-skinned woman trying to batter the flames away from an old man. It saw the two of them fall to the floor, burning.
The Raven Guard struggled to establish some kind of order. They dragged the Kelani out of their barracks into the yard area, as far away from the burning drums as possible. They marched down the line, barking bigoted epithets as they pistol-whipped any fool too slow falling into line. Others fanned out like ants marching to fight the rising flames — a hopeless, pitiful task.
“I didn’t do it,” the Mujina said, grabbing the closest person. She was a shell person, hollow cheeks, dark eyes and breasts shriveled away to nothing, like the rest of the meat on her bones. She shuffled, trying to pull away from the Mujina, but there was no fight in her. So instead the woman stared imploringly at the creature, begging it to let her go. But then her eyes flared wide open with hope as she thought she understood, thought that the Mujina was here to save her, when all it wanted was forgiveness. “I didn’t do it,” it repeated. “This isn’t my fault. It isn’t. I didn’t do it.”
“Save me,” she said, and it wished it could help her. It really did. It wished that it could help all of the Kelani that had been gathered here to die.
But it knew that it could not.
That knowledge undid something within the Mujina’s mind. Some fundamental piece of its identity, its sense of self, sheared off. All it had ever wanted to do was help. It lived to help. And now, when it was most needed, it could not.
And then, through the mass of suffering that threatened to overwhelm it, the Mujina touched another mind, something strong, glorious, and like a moth it was drawn toward it.
* * *
O’Neill was side by side with Jubal Kane when the Kelani fighter breached the gate. The chains couldn’t hope to withstand the sheer mass of bodies hurling themselves at the gate; Kane pulled his pistol and fired a single shot into the hasp, blowing the lock wide. Howling triumphantly, they poured into the death camp. They didn’t care if the searchlights found them. Guns spat, bullets streaking through the burning sky.
O’Neill took out two of the gate guards, and made an eyes right gesture to Kane. Jubal didn’t miss a beat. He hit the wall, counted off three, one, two, three, on his left hand, and spun around the corner, firing once. His single shot took the defender between the cheek and jaw, burying itself in the man’s head. Kane nodded back to Jack, giving him the thumbs up.
He only had one spare clip and O’Neill felt no great rush to waste human life, be it Corvani or Kelani. They were still human. If he could get through the next few minutes without firing another shot he’d be a happy man.
Nadal and Teal’c came up behind them. The Kelani moved with surprising athleticism for a man of his size. The others came in behind them, spreading out to form a wedge that drove deep into the ranks of the defenders. The place reeked of blood and sweat and all of the other stenches of confinement and torture.
The yard was in chaos, the Raven Guard struggling to impose any kind of order. The Kelani prisoners weren’t fighting. Days without food, days filled with systematic mental and physical torture, had beaten the fight out of them. But Jubal Kane’s raucous war cry galvanized them — the knowledge that after all this time someone had come to save them. There were no gods in places like this, O’Neill knew that all too well, but it didn’t matter. Their prayers had been answered by the dark and hungry avenger that was Jubal Kane. That was answer enough.
“I’m going to look for Carter,” O’Neill said. “You go do whatever it is you have to do, hero.”
Jubal Kane nodded. “I will find my brother and end his atrocities once and for all. Wish me luck.”
“Just a hunch, but I’ve got a feeling you aren’t going to be the one needing it.”
Kane grinned at that — and his grin was every bit as mad as Jachin’s had been as he stared into the fire. These people scared him.
“Teal’c, come with me.”
* * *
Something had come over the prisoners.
It felt the shift in their minds.
The fear was there still, but it was no longer the driving emotion.
It took the Mujina a moment to realize what this long forgotten emotion was: hope. It felt it coming up in waves from the thousands of stoop-shouldered and beaten-down Kelani. Nothing changed in their faces. They did not punch the air and cheer. They did not fight back. But deep down inside, in the secret place they had nurtured and clung to during the dark days of their confinement, they had dared to hope. That hope had been crushed, battered, tortured and experimented on, but somehow it had not burned out. It was a curious thing, hope, it took almost nothing to revive it. And now, striding into the compound it was the very first gift the liberators brought with them.
The Mujina wanted to weep. The emotion was so intense. It couldn’t keep them all out of its head. It lurched forward under the weight of hope, trying to see, to find the bright and brilliant mind it had touched. “Neryn Var,” it called out to her but she wasn’t there. It called out again and again
but it was so loud. There were so many cries. Shouts. It couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t find that glorious mind again. “Don’t leave me,” it whispered. “Not now…”
It scanned the faces of everyone near it, pushing deeper and deeper into the press of bodies, and ignoring the imploring looks and grasping hands that clawed at it.
“Don’t leave me,” it said again.
“I won’t leave you,” a voice said out of the noise. It turned, filled with its own bright and burning hope, and saw Iblis’s slug-like smile on Corvus Keen’s borrowed face. “Not now, not ever.”
The Mujina reached out. Something was wrong with the Raven King’s mind. It… it did not belong under this skin. The Mujina tried to focus, reach down, reach in. No, that wasn’t right. Some of it did. That made no sense unless…. Two minds in the same shell, one dominant the other almost gone, superseded by the new bright, glorious mind. It had sensed this once before in the woman, Nyren Var. She had been the same, two somehow fused into one, but her second mind was every bit as alive and bright as the first, not like this.
And then, the most curious of thoughts crept into its own mind: could it also share this gift? Could it become like them? Could it open itself to another and never again be alone inside its own skin? Could it turn into something beautiful inside of its plain emptiness? Would she come back to it, would she share its life, if it did?
“Will you help me find her?” it said.
“Who?”
“The woman, Nyren Var. The Tok’ra. Will you help me find her? She promised to come back to me. I miss her.”
“Tok’ra?”
“She is like you, two inside one, the shell and the real mind. She has such a beautiful mind.”
“I will help you find her,” the Raven King promised. “But first we need to leave this place.”
SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Page 23
