“Yeah. He’s made it pretty clear I’m not in his chain of command.” Jack shook his head.
“Can he do that?” Daniel asked. “I mean, a general’s a general, right?”
“I don’t think it’s ever come up before,” Jack said. “Whether or not you have the obligation to obey someone who outranks you in another timeline. Not that it matters a whole lot, since he’s got more guys with guns than we do.”
“Yeah, I kind of noticed that,” Daniel said.
“Did you have to get caught?” Jack asked. “Whatever happened to being sneaky?”
“I didn’t feel like being so sneaky that I got trapped down a hole where no one could find me,” Daniel answered. He lowered his voice. “It’s very like the ouroboros chamber on P6T-847, but it’s not identical. I really think Sam needs to take a look at it.”
“You heard Sumner,” Jack said.
“Perhaps Colonel Sumner will be in a more reasonable frame of mind tomorrow,” Teal’c said. Jack didn’t think he believed it, either.
Daniel held up the camcorder he’d been holding cupped in the palm of his hand. “Well, I got some decent footage of the place, we can at least start by looking at that. But, Jack —”
“I know,” Jack said. “Let’s not push him any further. Not until we have to.”
Dinner was served early and McKay herded them back from the installation before the sun had fully set. Sam trailed along behind the main group, glad of a brief moment of quiet to make sense of everything she’d seen. McKay had done a good job tracing the conduit, which did in fact seem to indicate that there was another power source somewhere, but the most promising segment dead-ended in a wall of fallen rubble. They’d either need to get a lot of people in to help clear it — and even then it would need to be shored up, and she wasn’t sure the expedition had the equipment to do it — or they would need to find a way to get at the conduit from beyond the blockage. It was possible that there was another ZPM, but at least it was a pure engineering problem. Not like the other issues.
She’d seen hostility between military and civilian personnel before, but nothing like this, and in a weird way she was glad it wasn’t happening in her own timeline. Although, given that they’d heard nothing from Atlantis since the expedition walked through the Stargate, this or something even worse could be going on right now…
She pushed that thought aside, made herself nod at Airman Salawi, slogging along at the back of the group, her pack loaded down with the team’s spare laptop and several other pieces of equipment. “Why doesn’t Dr. McKay leave stuff set up?”
Salawi gave her a wary glance. “Colonel Sumner’s orders, ma’am. He doesn’t want the Athosians to get their hands on any of our equipment.”
“Oh.” There was nothing to say to that, Sam thought, or at least nothing she was going to say to Salawi. She just hoped Daniel had found something useful when he wandered off.
Dinner was pretty much the same as they’d been served the previous night, more, if different, stew, bread, a half cup of coffee for those who couldn’t be persuaded to take a cup of the local tea. Sam took some, sniffing warily, and decided it didn’t go too badly with the stew. It had a faint undertone of something between mint and ginger, and she wasn’t surprised to see Jack set his aside.
“Anything?” she said to Daniel, and he shrugged.
“Maybe. I’ll show you later.”
“Ok.”
The divided mess hall was depressing, and neither Jack nor Daniel seemed in the mood to linger. Sam shoveled down her share of the stew and, as soon as they had all finished, Jack shoved back his stool.
“Come on, kids, let’s call it a night.”
No one tried to stop them — in fact, no one spoke at all — and when Jack and Teal’c searched their quarters for bugs, they came up empty.
“So maybe they took the hint,” Daniel said, sitting on the edge of a packing case to take his boots off.
“Maybe,” Jack said. He went to the door and looked out, his expression unhappy.
Sam busied herself lighting the lamps. “So what was this ‘maybe’?” she said to Daniel, who produced a small camcorder from one of his pockets.
“I think Janus was here, too,” he said. “This looks like the installation we came through.”
“Yeah.” Sam adjusted the picture, slowing it down so that she could examine it frame by frame. “Nice camera work.”
“Thanks.”
“Dr. Beckett was not at dinner either,” Teal’c said.
“You noticed that,” Jack said, and Teal’c inclined his head.
“Indeed.”
“Yeah, I don’t know where he’s gone, but I’m beginning to think it’s not as simple as ‘off helping the locals out of the goodness of his heart.’”
“Do you think he is a prisoner, O’Neill?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shook his head. “The only thing I do know is that it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.”
Sam tuned them out, focusing her attention on the installation, and after a moment Daniel came to look over her shoulder. It was, as he had said, a close match to the installation on P6T-847, though the consoles in the outer room were laid out in a different pattern. It looked as though Janus had divided power monitoring from the control functions, and there was more redundancy in the controls — two separate positions that seemed to expect someone to enter a destination. She looked up.
“Can you tell if this is older or newer than the one we saw before?”
“I’m not sure,” Daniel said. “That’s one of the things that would be easier if we could just go back and take another look —”
“Just a guess.”
“I think it’s older. Although a large part of that is based on knowing that the Ancients abandoned Pegasus when they did.”
“It would really nice to know,” Sam said. “If this is an older unit, then we can assume that the changes Janus made were improvements — well, that Janus thought they were improvements, anyway.”
“Yeah, Janus’s ideas of ‘new and improved’ can be a little — unorthodox. But I take your point.”
Sam let the images spool forward, slowed them again as Daniel entered the inner chamber. “The lack of a door does seem to suggest that this one’s earlier.”
“That might have been removed later,” Daniel said. “I didn’t really look that hard.”
“Mm.” Sam let the images run, sliding past consoles and instrument panels that she’d seen before. The equipment in the inner chamber looked less finished, the ouroboros wider and less detailed, and the central console was definitely different. There were fewer displays, and on at least one the readings were given in an entirely different scale. Less sensitive? More sensitive? She closed her eyes for a moment, making the conversion. This was less sensitive than the one on P6T-847, which argued that it was indeed older, before Janus had worked out how closely he needed to control the energy build-up. But the main console… It was entirely different, and she froze the image for a long time before she was able to identify the various pieces. They all seemed to be there after all, except…
“That’s weird,” she said, squinting at the little screen. “It looks like — yeah. That redundant circuit, the one we had all the trouble with…”
“The one that caused the problem?” Daniel looked at her over the top of his glasses.
“We don’t know that,” Sam said. “But, yeah. That one. I’m pretty sure it’s missing.”
“That’s… interesting.”
Sam nodded. “Except that since I still don’t know what it was supposed to do, it makes it hard to figure out what it means that it’s missing.”
“We need to go back there,” Daniel said. “Jack!”
Jack looked over at them. “Don’t say it.”
“I’m afraid Daniel’s right,” Sam said. “It’s definitely another version of the installation that brought us here, but there are enough differences that I’d need to go over it in detail before I c
ould figure out if I could repair it enough to get us home.” She looked back at the camcorder’s screen, touched buttons to move the pictures back and then forward again. “I bet the Ancients were trying to run their shields and everything off the power source originally designed for this device. McKay and I agreed that there wasn’t enough power in the ZPMs to do it, not the way the power room was configured. I wonder if the conduits we were tracing don’t ultimately lead right back here.”
“It may do — that.” Jack waved his hand to encompass physics and other sciences. “But I’m not sure just how cooperative Colonel Sumner is feeling.”
Sam turned off the camcorder to save the battery. “Sir, that doesn’t make sense. I would think that the best way to deal with us — with the problem that we represent — is to let us figure out how to get back where we belong so he can go on running things the way he wants.”
“You’d think,” Jack said. “He says he’s just trying to keep everybody safe — and maybe he is. We’ve been here less than thirty-six hours and we don’t know anything about these Wraith. But I’m damned sure he’s not going to let us go explore that installation on our own.”
“So what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Daniel said.
“I don’t think that’ll work,” Sam said, with regret. “If we’re not in sight, he’s going to know exactly where we’ve gone.”
“We could sneak off from McKay,” Daniel suggested. “He’d cover for you.”
“Daniel,” Jack said. “I’m not ready to cause that kind of trouble yet. The situation just isn’t clear enough.”
“One thing that’s clear is that you out-rank him,” Daniel said.
“Not in this world. Carter. Is there any problem with your examining the installation with, say, Lieutenant Ford for an escort?”
Sam paused. “I don’t — I don’t think so, but I don’t know. Though I’ll be the first to say I don’t understand everything it does.”
“No kidding,” Jack murmured. “Is there any reason we don’t want Sumner to get his hands on it?”
“It’s one of Janus’s devices,” Daniel said.
Sam winced. “Daniel has a point, sir. If either the colonel or the situation are unstable —”
“If?” Jack made quotes in the air.
“Yes, sir. Then maybe we don’t really want him to have access to one of Janus’s machines. Particularly one whose limits are unknown.”
“But, Colonel Carter,” Teal’c said. “If we do not investigate this device, are we not ignoring our best way to return to our own time?”
“Not ignoring,” Jack said. “We’re just — delaying a bit. Carter. You’re with McKay tomorrow again, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Sam nodded. “He asked me to help finish tracing that conduit — which is likely to lead us to the new installation, by the way.”
“See if you can’t find something else for him to look at,” Jack said. “Daniel, go with her, do what you can to help.”
Daniel nodded.
“We’ll do what Sumner wants tomorrow,” Jack said, “be nice and cooperative, and then we’ll see. And I still want to talk to Dr. Beckett.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Attack
TEAL’C rolled upright at the first clatter of the alarm. It sounded like someone beating pots together, and as he stuck his head out the door of their shelter he saw that was exactly what it was. Sergeant Pollard was standing in the door of the mess hall banging on a pot with a metal ladle, and behind him one of the airmen was slamming two pots together. The air was filled with a thin, rising whine, growing ever louder and coming from the direction of the Stargate.
“Everybody to the mess hall!” someone was shouting, and flashlights split the pre-dawn darkness as Sumner’s Marines rushed for what were obviously well-prepared positions.
“We’re out of here,” O’Neill said, at his shoulder, and Teal’c looked back to see the others up and ready, O’Neill and Carter with their pistols drawn, Daniel with the rest of their gear slung over his shoulder. Not for the first time, Teal’c wished he had his staff weapon.
If wishes were deeds, all men would be First Prime. The old proverb flitted through his brain, and he shook it away, drawing his own pistol. “Indeed.”
The whine had become a shriek, a scream of tortured air, and Teal’c looked up to see a sleek aircraft with a needle nose flash past against the thin clouds.
“Those must be the Wraith,” Daniel said.
“You think?” O’Neill caught his shoulder, shoved him toward the mess hall. “Come on, move!”
They dashed across the open space, the Marines opening the perimeter at their approach, and ducked inside just as a new sound came from behind them. Teal’c glanced over his shoulder to see a shimmer and then the shape of a dozen men appeared out of thin air. Most of them were armored, their faces hidden behind bizarrely organic masks, coarse white hair straggling lank to their shoulders. The skin of their bared arms and hands was the pale green-white of corpse-light. The Marines opened fire at once, two or three men firing on each of the masked warriors. The first one staggered, bullet holes blooming on his chest, but kept coming for far too long before it fell. One Marine kept pumping bullets into it, while his teammates switched to a new target.
“Teal’c!”
Teal’c turned, taking the P90 O’Neill held out to him.
“Bates says they’ll try beaming drones inside next.”
Teal’c glanced around the hall, saw the way the civilian scientists and the rest of the Marines had toppled tables to create makeshift fire points, backs to the wall, leaving the main room empty. Carter and Daniel had already done the same, and Carter had also acquired a P90, while Daniel was hastily checking what looked like O’Neill’s pistol. Teal’c moved to join them. “Drones, O’Neill?”
“The ones with the face-things.” O’Neill mimed putting on a mask, his expression unhappy. “Apparently they’re controlled from somewhere else —”
The air shimmered again and Teal’c dropped to one knee behind the table.
“Here we go,” O’Neill said, and cocked his weapon.
The Marines fired first, careless of crossfire, and Teal’c ducked into the table’s dubious shelter. Daniel yelped as a splinter tore past them, and O’Neill swore. Teal’c took more careful aim, aware that O’Neill was doing the same at his side, and held down the trigger. The first masked Wraith staggered, snarling like an animal; behind it a second masked Wraith leveled its long staff-like weapon. Teal’c ducked again, and blue fire crackled past him, struck the wall and clung for a moment, writhing, before it vanished. O’Neill kept firing and finally the first Wraith fell, but the second one kept coming, roaring its rage. Teal’c aimed more carefully, stitched another line of bullets across its chest and through its legs, and finally it, too, fell.
Behind them, one of the scientists screamed. Teal’c jerked around to see the man held off the ground, a Wraith’s hand fastened at the base of his neck. The scientist screamed again, and shrank, withering to a mummy, a corpse left too long in the sun, dead before the Wraith could cast him aside. Two of the Marines fired then, and the Wraith turned toward them, roaring, fighting through the hail of bullets for three more steps before it finally collapsed.
That was the last of them, at least for the moment. Teal’c cocked his head to listen for the distinct whine of the attacking aircraft, but there was only relative silence, the harsh breathing of the humans, the soft whimper of someone wounded. Someone’s radio crackled.
“Darts have cleared to the west.”
Sergeant Bates triggered his radio. “Not back to the gate?”
“No, sir. They headed straight west and took off like we had missiles.”
“Copy that.” Bates touched his radio again. “Colonel Sumner, Bates here. Permission to stand down?”
There was a moment’s pause before Sumner answered. “Go ahead. But keep the civilians under cover just in case they decide to come back.”
“You he
ard the man,” Bates called. “Stand down. Civilians are to remain —”
“We need a medic here!” That was McKay, his voice high and strained. “Where’s Beckett?”
“On my way,” a woman’s voice answered — Dr. Beckett’s assistant Marie Wu. She scrambled across the open space, lugging a pack marked with a large red cross, and dropped to her knees beside the table.
Teal’c looked around again. None of the Marines seemed to be injured, and there was only the one casualty, the scientist who had been attacked by the drone. The mess hall door opened then, and two Marines came in, dragging a third between them. They dumped him unceremoniously against the wall and went back out again, to return for a second man. Neither one showed any signs of obvious injury, but they lay sprawled as though dead.
“Wu!” That was Bates again. “Marines down!”
The woman’s head appeared over the top of the table. “Unless they’re bleeding, Sergeant, Dr. Parrish has priority.”
O’Neill’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with them?” he said, to no one in particular, but one of the younger Marines gave him a quick glance.
“Stunned, sir. They should be ok. The Wraith only carry non-lethal.”
Teal’c lifted his eyebrows at that, but Daniel nodded.
“Ok, that makes sense, in an unpleasant kind of way. If we’re a food source, they’re not going to want to waste resources just killing us out of hand.”
“That is indeed an unpleasant thought, Daniel Jackson.” Teal’c eyed the wall where the blue fire had crawled. It did make sense, though, and he had seen one Wraith feed.
Daniel gave O’Neill’s pistol a rueful glance. “And, you know, I don’t think this would have been very effective.”
Teal’c put his head to one side, considering the matter. “I believe you would need to empty the entire clip in rapid succession. And even then…”
“Those things heal fast,” Carter said.
“Indeed.”
O’Neill climbed out from behind the table, moved toward McKay, who was still standing hands on hips, glaring at everyone. Teal’c followed, curious, and saw one of the other scientists propped up on somebody’s pack, clutching at a bloody field dressing high on his left thigh. He was a tall, skinny man with a long face that might have been attractive by Tau’ri standards if it hadn’t been screwed up in pain. That was definitely not from a Wraith weapon, and McKay bared teeth in a savage smile, as though he’d read Teal’c’s thought.
STARGATE SG-1-19-23-Ouroboros-s08 Page 10
