Stargate SG-1 - Permafrost

by Sally Malcolm

  “Tomorrow, at 11.24.”

  “So there’re, what, just over three hours of daylight?”

  “And an extended period of twilight either side,” Monroe said. “We should be able to head out by ten o’clock – weather permitting.”

  “Hmmm,” Jack said, with a glance at the night-black windows. Outside, the wind was picking up speed and power, a few flakes of white swirling into the light cast by the cabin.

  “Sir?” Sam was crouching on the floor, rummaging through her pack. “I think I’m going to turn in, with your permission?”

  “Sure,” Jack said, and cracked a yawn himself. Daniel followed suit. Jetlag wasn’t as difficult as gatelag, but they were all tired after the long journey. The shortage of daylight wasn’t helping much, either.

  “Ha!” Monroe laughed. “You need to ask for permission to go to bed, do you?”

  Obviously irritated, Sam sat back on her heels. “I’m on duty,” she said.

  “Sorry.” Monroe held up a placating hand. “I don’t mean to offend. It’s odd, that’s all, for a grown woman.”

  “It’s military,” Sam said, pulling a couple of things out of her pack and getting to her feet. She’d been given the one spare bedroom in the cabin – which even had its own bathroom – while Daniel and the others would bunk down together in the communal living area. Ed had been apologetic about the lack of space, but compared with their usual off-world accommodation, a warm, dry cabin was luxury. No one was complaining.

  “I hope the wind doesn’t keep you awake,” Ed said, standing up from the table and walking over to Sam. “It can howl like a banshee around here.”

  Sam smiled at him. “I don’t think anything could keep me awake tonight.”

  Ed nodded, patted her on the arm. “Then get to your bed.” In a lower voice he added, “I hope you’ll forgive my colleague. Douglas can be…challenging. He’s got a brilliant mind, of course, but he’s not the easiest person to live with.”

  “It’s a not a problem,” Sam said. Then she looked over at Daniel and Jack. “Goodnight, Daniel. Sir. Uh,” with a glance at Teal’c, “Mr. Murray.”

  “Carter,” Jack said with a nod, keeping his eyes on Sam – and Ed – until she’d disappeared into the short corridor that led to her room.

  Daniel yawned again, and so did Jack. Teal’c, standing by the window and gazing out into the night, looked like he might have already entered a state of kel’no’reem.

  “Of course, you’re all jet lagged,” Ed said, as if the thought had just dawned on him. “We’ll leave you to rest. Doug,” he said to Gordon, “let’s go to the lab – I’ve a few things to run over with you, after today.”

  Gordon grunted, but didn’t object. He just dumped his empty mug in the sink. “I’ll be having my breakfast at six o’clock,” he said, as if it were a threat.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Daniel assured him, “you go right ahead. We’re used to sleeping anywhere.”

  After wishing them goodnight, the pair disappeared through a door into the back of the cabin – the lab, Daniel supposed, and their quarters – and then SG-1 were left alone.

  Jack blew out a long breath, flopping back in his chair. “What a colossal pair of asses,” he said.

  Daniel snorted a soft laugh. He couldn’t argue with that.

  Turning from the window, Teal’c said, “I do not trust them, O’Neill. I believe they are hiding something.”

  “Like what? The good coffee?”

  “I cannot say for certain. But I do not believe they have been entirely honest with us about the site they are excavating.”

  “Yeah,” Daniel nodded, “I got that too. But you have to remember they’re academics. They’re afraid I’m going to come in and steal their glory; they’re protecting what they’ve discovered. Their careers and status depend on the papers they publish.”

  “Unlike you,” Jack said, not without sympathy.

  “I have no academic career or status – as you saw.” He looked at Jack, gave him a smile. “Thanks, by the way, for that little intervention.”

  Jack waved it away. “They’re both morons. You know, I’m starting to hope we find some Asgard gadget that zaps them good and hard.” He lifted a finger, as if coming up with a genius plan. “In fact, let’s send them in first, just to see what happens.”

  Daniel smiled, shook his head. “Ed’s not so bad. I think he likes Sam, anyway.”

  Jack made a gruff sound in the back of his throat and drained his mug with a grimace. “He makes terrible coffee.”

  He decided not to comment on the possible link between Ed liking Sam and his inability to make coffee; he suspected the connection was only in Jack’s head. “I can’t think straight,” was all he said out loud. “I’m gonna bed down.”

  It didn’t take long, a well-rehearsed routine, before he, Jack and Teal’c were lying in the dark, listening to the wind howling around the cabin. It seemed to be getting louder, its strange, shrieking gusts growing stronger each time they mounted an assault. It felt a little like being under attack.

  “Makes you think,” Daniel said quietly, his eyes fixed on the window. Even without his glasses he could see the snow flying horizontal, caught in the wind, tumbling against the glass as if briefly trying to get in and then changing its mind.

  “Makes you think what?” Jack said. He lay next to Daniel, sleeping bag pulled up to his chin. He sounded sleepy.

  “What it must have been like, living here at the darkest time of the year, when all you had to keep the night at bay was the fire you kindled with your own hands.”

  “Makes me think it must have been cold,” Jack said, his voice blurring toward sleep.

  “Yeah,” Daniel agreed. “Cold and frightening. Listen…” They lay in silence as the wind shrieked past. “There are several Norse myths about the creatures that prowled the night at mid-winter, on the eve of the solstice. You can see how they started, why they believed them. Imagine sitting in your longhouse, wondering, for real, whether the sun was going to rise in the morning.”

  “There are such myths among the Jaffa, also,” Teal’c said, from where he sat cross-legged on the other side of the small living area. “It is said that, in the early days of our people, evil creatures stalked the night, feasting on human flesh. In the darkest of these times, when the day did not dawn, the sun god, Horus, was born of Isis. It was he who returned the light to the world and defeated the creatures of darkness.” He exhaled a slow breath. “But that is a lie.”

  “It’s a myth,” Daniel said, “invented to explain a dark and frightening world.”

  “Horus was a false god.”

  “True,” Daniel said, lowering his voice. “That is, the Goa’uld impersonating Horus was a false god. But the myth itself? That’s real; that’s the product of the human mind looking for patterns and explanations for things they can’t possibly understand. Like why the sun grows weak, or disappears for a few months each year, like why the wind screams like some kind of murderous creature… It’s fascinating, don’t you think? Places like this, elemental places like this, puts you in touch with the primitive mind in ways that—”

  “Daniel?”

  He blinked in the darkness. “Jack?”

  “My primitive mind needs sleep. So does yours.”

  He smiled, looking up at the slatted wooden ceiling. “Okay.”

  But outside, the banshee wind continued its howl and it was difficult not to imagine millennia of unquiet spirits in its voice. Daniel’s smile fell away. He had always found it too easy to imagine the creatures in the dark, myth or no myth.

  Laying there, watching the snow driven past the window, he understood those men who had lit fires against the darkness and prayed to their gods for the sun to rise, and for light and warmth to return to the world.

  Jack woke with a start, every sense on full alert and his heart hammering. A blaze of adrenaline spread out like a flare from the center of his chest, white-hot in the blackness.

  He didn�
�t move, held himself tense and listening. The wind was battering the little hut; he could hear its joints creak, the windows rattling in their frames. He could almost feel the teeth of the wind biting through the walls, icy cold and dangerous. But that wasn’t what had woken him.

  Drawing his attention inside, he listened for movement within the cabin and cursed himself for not setting a watch. It was difficult to hear above the noise of the storm, but after a few thumping heartbeats he was satisfied that no one was moving inside either. He sat up, pushed his fingers through his hair, and let his heart rate slow, let his muscles relax. His watch, glowing in the dark, told him it was just after four in the morning. Not that the time made much difference when the sun didn’t rise until noon.

  His mind felt fuzzy, oddly disoriented. His blood was still racing, as if looking for a fight, and he couldn’t just lie there in the dark. He had to do something. He had to move.

  Quietly, he untangled his legs from the sleeping bag. The air was chill and he grabbed the fleece pullover he’d been using as a pillow and pulled it on, rubbing his hands over his face and trying to clear his mind. Stepping over Daniel, he made a silent circuit of the room, just to make sure there were no monsters under the bed – literally speaking.

  “O’Neill,” Teal’c said quietly, his eyes opening as Jack crept past him.

  “It’s nothing. I just…” He wasn’t sure, exactly, what was bugging him.

  “I sense it too,” Teal’c said, rising fluidly to his feet.

  “You do?”

  “A sense of unease, undefined yet persistent.”

  Jack nodded. “You got any ideas?”

  “I do not.”

  Jack’s Beretta was sitting under his pack, loaded and with the safety on, but he resisted the urge to fetch it. Unless the two history geeks had gone psycho, there was no apparent danger here beyond the storm, and a pistol wasn’t going help calm the wind. And yet… Something was making the hairs rise on the back of his neck and he’d learned a long time ago not to ignore his instincts.

  “Go check on Carter,” he told Teal’c, because a little paranoia never hurt anyone.

  As Teal’c silently left the room, Jack approached the window with a trepidation he didn’t fully understand. Outside, the night was raw and black. No moon, no stars, no light at all. Daniel was right; places like this brought you right back to basics, back to monsters hiding in the shadows.

  Lifting a hand, he pressed it to the window. It was icy under his fingertips, his breath misting against the glass as he watched the snow fall. He could feel the cabin shake as each gust slammed, broadside, into the frame. He hoped Icelandic builders knew what they were doing and glanced up at the ceiling, just in case.

  And when he looked back out at the storm, something was moving in the dark.

  His heart skipped several beats; the breath froze in his chest.

  There was something out there, a shadow against shadows, heading into the wind. He could see the snow eddying around it in swirls. Mouth dry, he worked his jaw to speak. “Daniel?” It was no more than a rasp. He turned, hissed louder. “Daniel!”

  “Huh?” Daniel sat bolt upright, grasping for his glasses. “What…?”

  “There’s something out there.”

  He turned back to the window, but he’d lost it – the shape was gone. All he could see now was snow. “Damn it.”

  Daniel scrambled to his feet and came to join him. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. An animal, maybe?” But it hadn’t looked like an animal; it had looked human.

  Behind them, a light came on. “Everyone okay?” Monroe shuffled drowsily into the room.

  “Yeah, sorry to wake you,” Daniel said. “We— It looked like there was something outside.”

  Monroe scrubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s not possible.”

  “An animal, maybe?”

  He shook his head. “There’s precious little wildlife up here in the winter. An arctic fox, maybe, nothing bigger.”

  “No bears?” Jack said. It could have been a bear, maybe, with that upright shambling gait.

  “No bears in Iceland,” Monroe said, “except the occasional stranded polar bear.”

  “What about a person?”

  “A person? There’s no one for miles around – your eyes were playing tricks, Colonel. It’s a dark night.”

  Maybe, Jack thought. Maybe not. The light from the corridor had turned the glass black; all he could see now was his own disheveled face staring back at him.

  “Monsters in the dark,” Daniel said, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

  “Aye,” Monroe nodded. “Daugr and haugbui – you’re not the first man to imagine monstrous beasts in the wild places of the north.”

  In the window’s reflection Jack saw Daniel move closer and their gaze met in the glass. Jack didn’t believe in magic and, although he knew his eyes were quite capable of playing tricks, he was pretty certain that he’d seen something out in the storm.

  And he was pretty certain that Daniel believed him; they both knew monstrous beasts were real, after all.

  Chapter Three

  “Sierra Golf Charlie this is Sierra Golf One Niner. ” The colonel sat at the radio set in the far corner of the room, legs stretched out and one eye on the archeologists arguing sotto vocce in the kitchen. He looked relaxed, but Sam knew he was anything but. “Sierra Golf Charlie, this is Sierra Golf One Niner.”

  The radio hissed and at last Harriman’s faint voice crackled out of the speaker. “Sierra Golf Charlie, send.”

  “One Niner, we’re at base camp one klick due south of the site. Holed up in bad weather over night. Clearing now and moving out to take a visual recon in thirty minutes. Will advise the outcome in twelve hours. Over.”

  “Charlie, solid copy. Have fun in the snow. Out.”

  The colonel cocked an eyebrow at the snow comment. “Easy for him to say.”

  Sam smiled and pushed her foot into her boot. Through the window, dawn was breaking along the horizon. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but the sky was still heavy with clouds and it almost seemed as though the sun was slipping in beneath them, its light sliding horizontally over the snowy planes of the earth.

  “…well you’ll have to. We have no choice!” Ed Monroe’s voice rose from the kitchen in evident exasperation. He’d been arguing with the obstreperous Dr. Gordon all morning, presumably trying to make his colleague see sense.

  Perhaps feeling her eyes on him, Monroe turned and offered Sam a smile that was more nervous than apologetic. It made her think that Teal’c was right; these two were hiding something. She just hoped it was all to do with professional jealousy and nothing to do with Asgard technology.

  “I maintain it’s ridiculous,” Gordon said, addressing Monroe although his words were loud and obviously meant for them all. “The American army has no right to be here. They can’t just march all over the world as if they own it!”

  The colonel bristled but didn’t rise to the obvious bait. He just pushed his hands through his hair, took a breath, and stood up. “Okay,” he said, like a camp leader rallying his troops, “get your skis on kids, we’re moving out.”

  “You can’t give me orders,” Gordon protested. Unlike the colonel, he was rising to the bait.

  “Nope,” O’Neill said. “You can stay here and polish your fossils, if you like. But my team is going to do what we came here for. Daniel…” He glanced around. “Where is he?”

  “He is still in the laboratory,” Teal’c said. He was already kitted out in cold weather gear, although he’d refused skis and said he would run alongside them. Sam didn’t doubt he could do it.

  “Daniel!” the colonel yelled, making Gordon jump so hard he knocked over his coffee mug on the kitchen counter.

  “For goodness’ sake!”

  The colonel just shrugged.

  And then Daniel popped his head around the door that led to what was, generously in Sam’s opinion, designated as the ‘lab’.
“You bellowed?”

  “We’re heading out,” the colonel said. “Get your stuff.”

  “Oh. Okay, I was just—”

  “Daniel? Daylight, remember?”

  Daniel looked at the window, blinked, and said, “Yes, yes right. Sorry. I’ll be right with you.”

  Inevitably, Daniel’s idea of ‘right with you’ didn’t tally with the colonel’s, but eventually – after about thirty minutes – they were all ready to go. Gordon, bundled up in a red snow suit, took one of the snowmobiles while Monroe offered to guide SG-1 on skis. Teal’c’s decision to run drew a skeptical look from Monroe, but no comment. He was smarter than his colleague, Sam figured.

  “Don’t touch anything until I get there,” Daniel warned Gordon. “It’s important.”

  It was difficult to see Gordon’s expression beneath his reflective sunglasses, but his tone of voice was clear enough. “It’s my site, Dr. Jackson. You’re here under sufferance.”

  With that, he kicked his snowmobile into life and started out cautiously across the new snow.

  Monroe watched him go with a tense expression, then cast a worried glance in Daniel’s direction. Sam didn’t think Daniel noticed it, but she did.

  “Problem?” she said, maneuvering herself toward Monroe. It had been years since she’d skied cross country and it was taking her muscle memory a few moments to kick in.

  Monroe just shook his head. “No, it’s just…this is a big find, you see. Huge.” He glanced at Daniel again. “Things like this make or break careers. We have to be cautious.”

  “Daniel has no intention of stealing your find,” she assured him. “Or taking the credit. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “Really? So why is he here? Why is he here with you? None of it makes much sense.”

  “No,” she agreed, flicking a glance at the colonel as he gave the signal to move out. She adjusted her sunglasses, pushed off with her ski poles. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  It was actually pretty amazing, skiing across the snowfield with the low sun slanting in from the east. The colonel kept the pace reasonable, because it wasn’t far and it was clear that Monroe didn’t share their level of fitness. Teal’c, on the other hand, didn’t even break a sweat running alongside.