Stargate SG-1 - Permafrost

by Sally Malcolm

  “Hey, watch out!” Jack was behind him, one hand braced on the wall and the other holding his Beretta. Daniel didn’t need to see his face to know that he probably shouldn’t be on his feet.

  Teal’c jumped down into the tunnel, but kept his weapon trained on the hole above him. “They are coming,” he said, backing up a step. “We must move.”

  “Slowly,” Jack said. “Carter needs more time.”

  But she didn’t have it. Gordon had already leaped down into the passage, landing in a crouch. He hissed, vocalizing even if the creature had no discernible language. Jack lifted and fired his weapon in one swift motion, but the shot went wide and only clipped Gordon’s shoulder.

  “Dammit,” Jack growled and Daniel saw him press a hand to the back of his neck.

  The panic felt like pressure inside his skull and Daniel squeezed shut his eyes. “It’s not real,” he said. “They cause it, they use it to confuse their prey.”

  “Move!” Teal’c shouted, backing up as Gordon flew at him.

  And then they were fighting in the dirt and Monroe was scrambling down the ladder, the Norseman right behind.

  “Carter!” Jack shouted over his shoulder, back down the passageway. “You’ve got two minutes and we’re coming in hot!”

  Two minutes.

  It was impossible, in two minutes.

  Gunfire ricocheted along the narrow passageway, the sound thundering toward her. She could hear the colonel shouting orders, the creatures snarling. And in front of her all she could see was the crystal array and the transformer she was improvising from the innards of her radio. If she didn’t step down the power output it would blow the remaining shards of crystal and then they’d be up the creek without any kind of paddle.

  Another gunshot, this time closer.

  She glanced over her shoulder, saw the colonel crouched in the doorway. There was movement beyond him, the sounds of a struggle. They were fighting hand-to-hand, resisting every step of the way, and Sam was out of time.

  “Carter.” The colonel’s voice was taut. “Now would be good.”

  She didn’t reply; she was too busy working.

  “Daniel, go left,” the colonel ordered.

  In her mind’s eye, Sam could see them pulling back into the chamber, forming a rough skirmisher line. Teal’c would be in the center, Daniel to the left, the colonel to the right. But he was injured and there were three of the creatures now. One-to-one: even odds, except that the creatures couldn’t die and her team very much could.

  She wrapped the last of her scavenged wiring around one of the power crystals and hoped it would do the job, but she was trying to mesh Asgard technology with kindergarten electronics and the chances weren’t great.

  “Carter!”

  “Yes sir!” She moved away from the array, back to the dais where the crystal shards lay. She snatched up the largest and held it ready to insert into the emitter. If it worked, if the crystal didn’t blow out, then it should create a small containment field. How large, she couldn’t say. What would happen to her, trapped inside it with the creatures, she couldn’t say either. But the rest of her team would be safe. She hoped.

  Glancing up she could see the creatures now, the Norseman clambering into the chamber from the tunnel to join the other two. Her gaze skittered away from the sight of Gordon, the bullet hole she’d put in his forehead livid and unnatural as he stalked the colonel. They weren’t attacking though, just biding their time, pressing her team back. They had the upper hand and they knew it.

  “Colonel,” she called, “you need to get out of their way – I need them to come closer to me.”

  “Carter—”

  “Sir, they have to be inside the field when I activate it and I don’t know how big it will be.”

  He bit off a curse, but gave the order. “Daniel, Teal’c – let them through.”

  Daniel was limping and Teal’c was bloodied as they pulled back to the left, taking cover behind the columns and leaving the colonel to go right, opening up a direct route for the creatures to reach Sam.

  She felt it as they drew nearer, that sickening unease she’d experienced around Monroe. It made it difficult to remember what she was doing, why she was standing there letting these things stalk her. In her hand, the shard of crystal began to shake. It took a moment before she realized it was because she was trembling.

  “Sam.” Daniel’s voice was distant but adamant. “It’s them, they’re doing it. They’re making you feel like that. You’re not really afraid.”

  Like interference, she thought. Static over the airwaves. She tried to tune it out.

  Tearing her gaze away from the creatures, she saw Daniel watching her from the shadows of the columns, his weapon – for all the good it would do – trained on the Norseman. Teal’c was further behind, closer to the entry. She couldn’t see the colonel.

  She tightened her hold on the crystal. “Come on then,” she said in a low voice. “Come and get me.”

  She didn’t know if they understood her. There was no humanity left the things that were hunting them, but there was intelligence. A dark, malignant intelligence.

  The creatures stopped moving, their heads turning as if listening.

  “They’re communicating,” Daniel said. “I saw them do this before, outside the hut.”

  Communicating. Infections don’t communicate, not like this. “Daniel,” she said, “I think—”

  But it was too late; they were moving. Gordon lunged for her first and she ducked out of his reach. Monroe and the Norseman were flanking her, but weren’t close enough to the emitter yet.

  “Sam, just do it!” Daniel shouted.

  Whites of the eyes, Captain. She backed up a step. Whites of the eyes.

  “Carter!” O’Neill barked from off to her right. “Now!”

  She glanced in his direction and saw Monroe lumbering in fast. She flung herself toward the dais, but was too slow. A dead hand caught the back of her jacket, hauling her backward. She jabbed hard with her elbow, felt it connect with flesh and blood. Monroe stumbled, his balance lost momentarily. She used the slim advantage, slammed her elbow back again and twisted free of his grip.

  But the Norseman was crouched on the dais now, snapping and hissing, and something was snatching at her ankle. She stumbled away from Monroe, right into the grip of the ancient corpse. Its stench, its leathery skin, revolted her but she ignored it and reached for the emitter with the hand holding the crystal. She was an inch short.

  The Norseman had a fistful of her hair, yanking her back. The crystal slipped in her cold grasp. And then someone else was there and the creature holding her shrieked and let go, falling sideways. The colonel, his Beretta raised like a club, looked down at her.

  “Do it,” he said.

  She scrambled over the dais and pressed the shard into place. For a moment nothing happened and all she could hear was her own harsh breathing.

  But then the crystal began to pulse, not blazing as it had done earlier, but a soft steady glow. She stared at it, breathing hard.

  “Sam,” Daniel said, “look.” The two columns nearest to the dais were glowing, the Asgard runes flickering as if made of fire. Some of the other pillars were flickering further back in the chamber, but there wasn’t enough power to illuminate them all. And something was happening to the creatures too, they were staggering, their limbs twitching. Climbing off the dais, Sam backed away.

  The colonel did the same. “Is it working?”

  The Norseman was the first to fall, collapsing into a pile of old bones. Then Monroe and Gordon followed a moment later, sprawled across the dais.

  Sam barked a relieved laugh. “Yes sir,” she said, “I think it’s working.”

  She glanced at him, at his ashen face and the livid wound on the side of his head. “Sweet,” he said.

  “I see no force shield,” Teal’c said, coming to join them. His shoulder was bleeding where Gordon had shot him and there were scratch wounds on his face and neck from his
fight with the creatures. But otherwise, he looked okay. Alive.

  “I don’t think it’s that kind of containment field,” Sam said, looking back at the bodies of the men. She took a step closer, lifted her hand to the symbols on the pillar. The light flickered orange across her skin but otherwise had no effect. “And I don’t think it’s an infection, not one we’d recognize.”

  “Then what is it?” Daniel said.

  “I think it’s some kind of life form.”

  “So are bacteria.”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean intelligent life. You saw how they were communicating. I think—”

  “Um, Carter?”

  The colonel was looking at something behind them. Sam turned, startled to see a woman standing there watching them. She was tall and wore a long dark cloak that shimmered and shifted as she moved. It was made entirely out of feathers.

  “Oh,” said Daniel. “Hello.”

  “Velkomin,” the woman said, and bowed her head. “Ek heiti Valfreyja...”

  “Yes,” Daniel said, “I thought I recognized you. My name is Daniel and—”

  But the woman continued talking as if Daniel hadn’t spoken, and it was only when something rippled across the surface of her skin that Sam realized they were looking at a projection.

  Daniel took a step closer as the woman continued to speak in her strange, lilting accent. “Fascinating,” he said, examining her closely. “Absolutely fascinating. This is— Wow.” He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of them. “This is actually the goddess Freyja.”

  “What’s she saying?” the colonel said.

  “Oh.” Daniel turned back to the hologram. “Um, she’s welcoming us and she’s telling us…” He listened more closely. “…that we’re great warriors for having brought the draugr here, that the evil within it can’t be destroyed but that she has used her power to bind it within its grave.”

  “This must be the recording played to the people who first brought the Norse warrior here,” Sam realized. “It probably rebooted when I reinstalled the emitter crystal.”

  “Right,” Daniel said, eyes bright with excitement, “which makes this an actual vision of the goddess Freyja. This could have informed the very origin of Norse mythology – in fact it must have inspired the sagas and the Poetic Edda! Look at the cloak of feathers – this is literally a living myth. I mean, think about it—”

  “Daniel.” The colonel was swaying, his face ashen and fingers tight around the grip of his weapon. “Anything tactical I need to know?”

  “Oh, right,” Daniel turned back to the hologram. “Okay... She says the draugr will stay here past the midnight sun and the midday night. Ah, that means all summer and all winter – so forever, essentially.”

  “Until curious archaeologists remove essential components of the device,” Sam grumbled.

  Daniel cocked his head, still listening. “Oh, now she’s saying ‘On this eve of Jól I bid you make merry and celebrate the rebirth of Sol, the light of the world.’”

  The woman spread her arms, her feathered cloak spread like wings, and then the image was gone and the chamber was left in silence.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Um,” he said, “I think she just wished us Happy Holidays.’”

  “Okay,” the colonel said, “then I’m done.”

  With that his eyes rolled, his legs gave way, and Sam only just caught him before his head cracked on the stone floor.

  Chapter Nine

  There’s pain in his head, people shouting over the noise of chopper blades. Controlled chaos. Is he being rescued, he wonders, or left behind?

  But there’s wind-blown snow in his face, not sand. And there’s cold, not heat. This isn’t Iraq.

  “Colonel, can you hear me?” Someone shines a bright light into one eye, then the next. “Pupils are reactive,” the same person says. He doesn’t recognize the voice.

  “We all need to be quarantined,” someone else is saying, barking orders above her pay grade. Carter, it’s Captain Carter. “Major,” she says, “Colonel Calvin needs to contact General Hammond immediately. He needs to tell him to initiate Protocol 303.”

  “Take it easy, Captain. First thing is to evac Colonel O’Neill back to Kef.”

  “Sir, he needs to be quarantined.”

  “He needs a doctor.”

  “One of us should go with him.” Jack knows that voice; it’s Daniel.

  “You go,” Carter says. “Teal’c and I will stay here until the SGC team arrives.”

  And then there’s movement – he’s being lifted on a stretcher – and when he manages to open his eyes he sees a deep blue sky above the whirling chopper blades.

  Daniel’s hand is on his shoulder when the helo lifts away from the ground. “It’s okay, Jack,” he says. “You’re going to be okay.”

  He decides to believe him.

  “Colonel, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Janet Fraiser stood, arms folded, in the doorway of the isolation room and Jack stopped with one leg in his BDU pants. “Don’t you ever knock?”

  “No,” she said, apparently unfazed by his state of undress. “Why are you out of bed?”

  He sat back down, trying to move carefully without looking like he was moving carefully. Fraiser didn’t need to know exactly how woozy he still felt. “I heard Carter and Teal’c were back,” he said, which was explanation enough. But Fraiser appeared unmoved, so he added, “Come on, doc, I’ve been stuck in here forever. And you said I’m not infectious…”

  “Apparently not,” she agreed, as if she wasn’t entirely pleased about it. “But you do have a fractured skull. You need to rest.”

  “I’m too bored to rest.”

  And that was the truth. Four days in isolation, even with a head injury, was enough to test his patience. He didn’t do well without distraction, his thoughts tended toward dark paths that led to times and places best forgotten. And since reading and TV were apparently banned too, it didn’t leave a lot to occupy his mind. Even sleeping was risky when his thoughts were left to wander.

  Maybe Fraiser saw something of that in his face – she knew his past better than anyone on base – because her expression softened a fraction. “I’d rather you had a chair.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “not a chance in hell.”

  She shook her head. “It’s that or nothing, Colonel.”

  He held her stubborn gaze for as long as he could, but she wasn’t giving way and his head hurt too much to win this battle through force of will. He waved a hand at her. “Fine,” he said, “have it your way.”

  With a satisfied nod, she turned around. “I’ll send a nurse with a wheelchair.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Two minutes after she’d left, he was dressed and out the door. He figured Carter and Teal’c would be in the infirmary for their post-mission physicals, so he headed in that direction, keeping one hand braced on the wall to compensate for the irritating wobbliness in his legs.

  But it was good to be up, good to be walking. Although he did feel rather more like a limp dishrag than he’d expected and he suspected he was walking kinda slow.

  “Colonel?” A nurse paused to look at him with concern. “Does Dr. Fraiser know you’re up?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Where’re Captain Carter and Teal’c?”

  “In the infirmary, sir,” he said. “Do you need some help?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Jack dared him to disagree. “Why?”

  Wisely, the kid backed down. “No reason, Colonel. Uh, Merry Christmas, sir.”

  Jack blinked at him. “Is it?”

  “Sir?”

  “Is it Christmas today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Well, Merry Christmas, Lieutenant.” Strange, but saying the words didn’t hurt quite a much as they usually did. His head on the other hand…

  Fortunately the infirmary wasn’t much further and he could hear Carter’s voice before he pushed open the door. The sound made hi
m smile.

  She was sitting on one of the beds, talking to Fraiser, while Teal’c lay on the cot opposite, having the gunshot wound in his shoulder redressed. They both looked tired, but well.

  “They’re still working up the samples we took from the victims in Iceland,” Fraiser was saying as Jack pushed open the door. “But it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. The closest comparator would be a virus, if a virus was able to work in cooperation with other viruses.”

  “Like insects?” Carter suggested. “A collective life form?”

  “Right,” Fraiser agreed. “They appear to colonize necrotic tissue but, rather than feeding on it as you’d expect, they utilize the existing neuro-pathways as a guide to replicating them in order to access the functions of the host.”

  Carter nodded as if the idea of alien insects taking up residence in dead humans made perfect sense. “And then they use the host bodies to find more suitable hosts.”

  “Or to make them, if they can’t find them.”

  Carter looked thoughtful, scrubbed a hand over her tired face. “But they were intelligent,” she said. “The creatures. The hosts.”

  Jack had to agree – it was difficult to forget the intelligence he’d sensed in the things that had attacked them – but Fraiser didn’t sound convinced.

  “In the way that a hive mind is intelligent, perhaps,” she hedged. “But it exists only to feed, to reproduce, and to create more of itself. I doubt they’re capable of complex thought.”

  “They could definitely communicate,” Sam persisted. “We saw them.”

  The doc spread her hands. Clearly she wasn’t going to argue the point. “Like I said, we’re still researching. Whatever it is you found out there, Sam, one thing I can tell you for sure is that it’s an entirely new life form.”

  “Extraterrestrial?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Fraiser said. “But it’s certainly unique, so far as I know.”

  Which didn’t say much, given the size of the galaxy and the very tiny proportion of it they’d explored in the two years the Stargate program had been active.

  “What I don’t get,” Carter said, “is why the Asgard just buried the host there. Why not beam it off the planet or destroy it?”