04 - The Morpheus Factor

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  And elsewhere, Etra’ain and her circle gathered once again to stare into the minds of the visitors from Nothing.

  Something else. We must find something else. We must.

  Try another. Surely one of them has something we can use.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Teal’C had been raised to believe the Goa’uld were gods: omnipotent, omniscient, immortal.

  One was not supposed to hate one’s gods.

  After a while he had realized they were not gods—not really. They were parasites, and their stolen host bodies could bleed and die just as his own could if the damage was more than the parasite or a handy sarcophagus could heal.

  But they were still more powerful than anything else he had seen. He served bitterly, hiding his resentment, his rage at the bondage of himself and his people, because the Goa’uld could not be defeated. He was good at hiding his feelings, so good that he had advanced steadily until he was Jaffa First, the most trusted servant of Apophis. Even in his hatred Teal’C felt pride in that achievement; he had never seen any world that had anything like a chance against the Goa’uld, his masters.

  Never, that is, until the day that a man looked at him across a scene of carnage and yelled, “I can save these people!”

  He had believed Jack O’Neill. He had turned his energy staff against his own troops and defected to the sworn enemies of Apophis.

  So what was he doing here, surrounded by Jaffa in their serpent helmets and waiting for orders with the rest of them?

  He could feel the infant Goa’uld within him curl around itself.

  He looked around as he lifted his own helmet tore over his head. The place was familiar, the kind of familiarity that meant he belonged in this place. He’d been here so many times before he never noticed the detail.

  He noticed them now—burnished metal walls the color of dark copper, twisted columns that were more embellishment than any real structural necessity. It was a Jaffa briefing room, and that low, soundless vibration he could feel through his feet and in his bones meant that he was on board a Goa’uld mothership.

  The Jaffa moved past him, dozens of them, and assembled themselves in orderly ranks facing him, standing at attention. They were waiting upon his pleasure, waiting for his orders.

  He was back with Apophis, and though he could remember everything about his time with SG-1, he could not remember how he had ended up here. It didn’t seem important, and yet it had to be, because if Apophis had him he should be dead, not preparing to brief his troops as he had done so many times before.

  There were so many Jaffa standing before him.

  Then, exactly as if he had indeed provided yet another detailed briefing on the objectives of Apophis’ most current desire, the assembled Jaffa saluted him, fists hitting leather breastplates like dull, simultaneous heartbeats. They pivoted and filed out past him, their booted feet heavy against the deck plates, and as they did so, he could feel the ship poised to land, the slight shudder as it settled on its resting place. They carried their energy staffs proudly.

  What is this?

  Something. Useful?

  The image changed, and he was leading a troop of Jaffa into a large auditorium. A crowd of frightened humans huddled in the center of the room, and Apophis walked behind him, arrogant and proud but not willing to stand in front of his warriors.

  One of the humans stooped and picked up a rock—what was a rock doing indoors?—and threw it. It ricocheted off Teal’C’ helmet and bounced off the arm of the Jaffa next to him.

  “Kill them all,” Apophis said.

  “My lord,” Teal’C began a protest, knowing even as he did so that it was not only futile but dangerous to oppose his Goa’uld lord.

  “Kill them all.” The Goa’uld’s voice echoed in basso profundo, shaking the very floor they stood upon.

  Resigned, Teal’C leveled his energy staff and began to fire long sweeping beams of energy that caught and flattened their human targets like wheat under a scythe.

  This! This we can use!

  Can we ask? This is the staff he carries now.

  A snort of derision. To possess a weapon was one thing; to ask for one was… ridiculous. Strangers did not give away power. It was unheard of.

  But in the Shaping, one could examine such power, study it. Move the witless dreamers to demonstrate it… and make it real.

  Let us see more of this.

  He found himself in the Jaffa armory, running a soft cloth the length of the energy staff, checking the slide of the triggering mechanism, examining the way the bulbous head of the staff separated to spit out death. It was power, the power of the Jaffa—power of the Goa’uld.

  He marched at the head of his chosen troops into yet another city, another auditorium. He stood at attention while Goa’uld chose those who would receive the matured larvae, menaced the crowd, chased those who would flee, executed those who dared oppose. This was his life, and he lived through it helplessly, knowing how it would be even if he himself had never been there. It pulled him along to his final fear: There was nothing, anywhere, that could stand against the Goa’uld.

  In some universes, it had actually happened that way.

  He had killed himself—or at least another self—to prevent it.

  He had claimed that this reality was the one that counted. But the symbiote within him fought back in its own mindless fashion, creating something else.

  He entered the Gate room through the Star-gate, the iris spinning back out of the way as if it had never been there, and the place was so familiar: the ramp, the guards standing by, the computers calculating the location of the next set of coordinates and how far they might have shifted in thousands of years. When he raised his head he could see the viewing window from the humans’ briefing room, and staring down at him in turn was General Hammond, his face perfectly impassive as Teal’C led the Jaffa through the Gate and into the heart of the human command complex.

  They screamed as they looked up from their tasks and saw the invading Jaffa, their helmets’ eyes glowing red, and someone managed to hit an alarm before dying under the relentless fire of energy staffs. The main door to the room slid open and human soldiers poured through, scrambled to meet the threat, but they weren’t ready. Some were in uniform, rifles at the ready, but some were half dressed and struggling into flak jackets that did them no good under the withering fire of the disciplined Jaffa.

  Teal’C had known the humans would not be ready; after all, the iris had let him through. His Jaffa had fanned out from the Gate immediately, denying the defenders a tight target. The alarms screamed and lights flashed, but he led his squad through the humans like a spear, securing the door before they had a chance to lock it down, and then the Jaffa began hunting through the corridors of the Stargate complex.

  Carter died first, her eyes wide and unbelieving even as she fired steadily at him from a prone position in the command corridor. Her bullets couldn’t touch him, couldn’t touch any of his men. They mowed down the opposition, and as he stepped over Carter’s body, her eyes were still wide and unbelieving, but dead.

  Hammond was next. He led his men unerringly to the command offices, even as the humans threw more and more men and firepower against them; he knew that more and more Jaffa were pouring through the Gate to meet them, the two waves crashing against each other in a fountain of human—never Jaffa—blood. Hammond stood beside his desk, unarmed, alone, waiting for his fate. Did he expect the courtesies which were the right of opposing commanders? Probably not, Teal’C thought, as one of his squad aimed and fired and then snapped the energy rod back up again in parade rest. Hammond staggered back, half turned, fell across his desk, then back behind it without making a single sound.

  The sound of Jaffa boots echoed everywhere in the mountain as he led his men from one room to the next, methodically wiping out the opposition as if the humans had never had any weapons at all. He could hear explosions, flashes of energy, unending gunfire, but he kept on through all the noise and smo
ke as if it were nothing at all. He moved at a steady trot, from one precise target to the next: the infirmary, where Janet Frasier died defending her patients. Central research office, where he found Daniel Jackson and swept him aside like so much lint from a woolen tunic. He kept moving, his nostrils flaring as he hunted, killed, hunted again.

  “I can save these people!”

  No, Jack O’Neill, you cannot save them. They are the victims of the Goa’uld, and nothing is as powerful as the Goa’uld. Nothing.

  What? What thought is that?

  That is the mind of the dreamer, the voice of despair. This is an evil weapon.

  Weapons are neither good nor evil. They are tools, and we need tools.

  But we need to see him use it again.

  Something is in the way. I do not understand. This is a mind and… something else.

  Watch. Observe.

  Shape.

  The Jaffa swept through a monitoring station, and Teal’C paused long enough to scan the external views of the mountains—fighters massing against the Goa’uld ship like so many mosquitoes battering themselves against the stone of an ancient pyramid. As he watched, a jet crashed directly against the slanted side of the Goa’uld ship. The burning wreckage, black oily clouds and orange flames consuming it, slid down the side without so much as denting the alien ship, without marring its perfect surface.

  He turned and led his squad out of the room without bothering to look at the monitors again.

  Targets. They were all targets: the command center, the research office, the infirmary, the barracks. They broke out of the Stargate Command complex and into the interior of the Cheyenne Mountain complex. It was a waste of good slaves, all this killing, but Earth was full of slaves waiting for their masters, and they made their way out of the mountain, and as he had expected, as he had always secretly feared, the humans really were unable to resist.

  Around him, the Jaffa cascaded down the sides of the mountain from the Goa’uld ship, millions and millions of serpent-headed men, a murderous avalanche overwhelming the world.

  “I can save these people!”

  Perhaps. But soon there would be only the dead to save.

  Is it enough?

  It is never enough. Investigate further. Plumb each to their depths. Find every detail of their weapons. The Narrai keep coming, and we have no one else here to take dreams from.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A large archaeological excavation can resemble a small city of tents and workers gathered to recover the evidence of a more ancient city of clay. Daniel Jackson threaded his way through the tents and stepped over the first of the twine boundaries that defined the dig’s grid system. Every three feet, a stake anchored the twine, creating carefully defined squares. Some of them had already been excavated down several layers, and sifting screens beside them gave evidence that every scrap of dirt had been examined for artifacts.

  It was a familiar sight. He smiled. These were the signs of a well-organized dig. Without even looking, he knew that the site notes would be neat and precise and informative. He’d grown up with archaeology, lived and breathed it all his life. He knew without thinking about it how to step carefully along the paths defined as clear, how to recognize the subtle lift of the earth’s surface that meant that centuries before, that earth had been disturbed by man. He didn’t even notice the heat and glare of the sun, high in the sky.

  No one seemed to be around, but the time of day might account for that; it was easier to work in the early hours, before the temperature rose into three digits, and in the early evening, while there was still light enough to see. In the middle of the day—well, the phrase “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun” did have its applications.

  Still, there were usually at least a couple of overenthusiastic graduate students hunched down by the remains of an ancient hearth, using soft camel-hair brushes to patiently coax dirt away from a potsherd. He couldn’t see anyone around the ruins.

  What ruins were these anyway? He paused to study them for a moment, trying to orient himself. He could see low, crumbled walls, the remains of mud-brick architecture. In his mind’s eye he could see those walls whole again, containing tiny rooms where people once lived and laughed. They had walked along these paths, bargained for food and other necessities, danced and celebrated and loved life, mourned and buried their…

  …dead.

  What is this?

  He thinks this is his life. But this is a place of death. I don’t understand.

  Perhaps there will be something here to help us bury our own dead. You are bitter, Vair.

  !

  Very well. Are the survivors gathered and counted? How are they shaped?

  There are not many of us left. We cannot survive if we cannot destroy the Narrai at their nests. They will come again and again and again until we are all dead. Etra’ain, we must find a way!

  I continue to seek.

  Slowly he turned, and found that the city of tents had disappeared and had been replaced by a massive pyramid, larger than Kheops’, larger than any pyramid he had ever seen. The sides had been finished and were smooth and white, dazzling in the bright sunlight. Not far from where he stood awed, a ramp rose up along the side of the massive structure, a wooden path from the sullen earth to a large rectangular defect in the sloping side. It had to be an entrance—the original entrance, not one that a later scientist had created to gain access to the interior. He caught his breath in sheer wonder.

  The next moment he was inside the main entry shaft of the pyramid, with no memory of climbing the ramp or moving from bright sunlight into darkness. And that was strange too, because even though it was dark, he could still see. He ran his fingertips over the outlines of the massive stones, feeling the ancient marks of chisel and human sweat.

  The tunnel angled downward steeply, and he had to move slowly to keep his balance, stooping as he walked; the ancient Egyptians had been shorter, as a rule, than their descendants. More than once he had to edge around a pit that would have swallowed him up, but each time he managed to pass it safely.

  The pictures on the wall described his journey, described the journey of the deceased: Beloved of Horus, Osiris, Great Lord of the Dead, He Who Holds Justice in Both Hands. The colors were fresh and clear as the day they were painted.

  As he descended, the sides of the shaft grew wider, the ceiling higher, and the sourceless light intensified. Unlike the desert sunlight, however, this light brought no warmth with it, and he shivered in his light cotton shirt and shorts and murmured to himself as he straightened. But he could no more abandon the exploration than he could stop breathing. He could feel a faint urge to stop, to do something else, but this was what he was born for, and no trivial tugging at his mind and memory was going to distract him.

  He knows this place. He seeks truth here.

  Truth is not a weapon to kill Narrai!

  You are afraid, and we understand, Vair. But this path may give us information of value as well. Let us see where it takes us.

  Despite the open entrance, it seemed that no one had ever entered this tomb since the days that its occupant had been laid to rest by singing priests. As the tunnel finally leveled out, the dust on the floor rose up in pale puffs with each footstep. He should have needed some kind of breathing filter, something to keep the ancient talc out of his lungs, but somehow it didn’t bother him. His right foot kicked something more solid than dust, and he looked down to see a model ship, complete with papyrus sail and tiny oars. It looked new, or it would have if the hull hadn’t collapsed under the blow. The rim of the boat was trimmed in gold foil.

  The room was full of furniture, in fact: chairs with arms carved to represent wings; headrests for sleeping (and how did they manage to sleep that way? It looked awfully uncomfortable, and the one time he’d tried it himself, with a modern reproduction, he’d gotten a crick in his neck that took weeks to work out—so much for devotion to science); stands to support the great ostrich fans that kept
desert air circulating; beds; a full-size chariot needing only a pair of horses and a driver to take off across the desert in pursuit of antelope or Hittites. Everything the well-to-do corpse would need in the afterlife.

  He kept going. According to all the old pyramid plans, the shaft ought to angle upward, and there should be a plug blocking the entrance to the main burial chamber, but he found no obstructions. He wondered why all the scientists and students laboring outside had never bothered to venture up the ramp and inside. It was dangerous, entering a tomb, but surely someone would have tried? Surely he wasn’t the only one curious enough to venture deep into the unknown?

  So much the better if he was; that meant this was all his own discovery, his alone.

  Of what possible use is this? Old bones and trash!

  Wait. It is more than that. This is something old of his world, and there may be things of use—

  Besides, there was something—someone—waiting for him at the end of this tunnel. Someone he wanted very much to see. He moved forward even more eagerly than before, knowing that the lack of barriers was a message to him, telling him that someone was waiting just for him.

  The passage turned abruptly, and he found himself in a chamber filled with weapons of ancient Egypt: bows, spears, bronze knives, slingshots lining the walls as they might in an armory.

  This wasn’t right. Pharaohs never filled their tombs with weapons of war. He looked around in disgust, then turned back, and the passage reopened before him.

  It turned a corner, and he found himself in the armory again.

  “This is not where I want to be,” he said to himself and pushed through the limestone wall, looking for the stone tunnel again.

  His path was littered with Hyksos war clubs. He kicked them aside impatiently and picked up his pace, almost running now.

  Where is he going? Bring him back!

  I cannot. I have not created this dream, and I cannot keep him under tight control in it—