07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  “It’s the deportment classes I’ve been taking. Sir, please. I want to go to ’335.”

  “With respect, Colonel!” spluttered Warren. “If you’re implying—”

  “I’m not implying. I’m noting that two thirds of my team and Dr. Fraiser have gone missing. Now, I don’t know about you, Major, but I’d like to find out what the hell happened.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry.”

  Going by the way Jack heaved himself from the chair, the deportment classes hadn’t yet advanced to Lesson Two, Rising Gracefully. He hid a wince, turned to Hammond. “Request permission to gate out to M3D 335, sir.”

  Past experience showed that Jack wasn’t going to take No for an answer. Besides, Hammond had got what he wanted, and if circumstances had been less worrying, he’d have called the situation a Godsend. “Permission granted, Colonel. Take SG-3 and—”

  “No. Sir. I’m going on my own. It’s a whole moon full of Marines, General, and I don’t… I don’t want to put anybody else at risk.”

  The toy huddled in a corner, and he pretended to be asleep. He was not. His eyelids fluttered in an involuntary spasm. Fear made it impossible for him to relax. This attempt to deceive her was the first vaguely amusing act he had conceived in three days. Perhaps she should not have revived him. But it had been worth it, if only for the knowledge of having flouted the will of that arrogant human, Simmons. Besides, it could be remedied. Quite easily, in fact.

  Nirrti nudged the toy with her toes and found a fleeting spark of enjoyment in the way a shudder racked his body and his eyes snapped open on a look of pure terror. Maybe not?

  No. It was time for something new. She turned away, heard the toy sob with relief, and smiled. The room was splendid, and this was an opulence that would never pall. Intricately carved pillars of wood, hard and small-grained and with a reddish sheen, supported a low ceiling. From the beams hung curtains of sheer silk that partitioned the space into a gently swaying maze in all shades of red and orange. One entire wall was taken up by a mirror of polished silver. Savoring the whisper of cool fabric on her skin, she parted the curtains to step through and study her own image.

  How long had it been? Seven hundred years? Eight hundred? She barely remembered. The host’s body had worn well, still retained a fair measure of its former owner’s youthful allure. But it would not last, could not last. She thought of the Hankan girl, the boundless possibilities and power open to a hak’taur, and felt the rage rise again. A new host was another debt the Tauri owed her.

  A touch on the bluish gem set in her ribbon device released an invisible burst of energy that altered the molecular structure of the mirror. Like oil welling from a vent, viscous grayness pooled and obscured Nirrti’s reflection, then cleared to a jungle vista. Deep within a closed-off part of her cortex, her host dreamed of home, while she watched, once more and as if through a window, the events of three days ago.

  The Chappa’ai, inset in the outer wall of the temple, fills with liquid azure gleam, and Simmons’ gift is flung from the wormhole in a graceful arc. Once, twice, the healer spins in the air and comes down heavily on the root of a thousand-year-old tree. In coarse tan clothes, not in white today, she lies motionless. Stunned? Dead? The latter would be inconvenient. But no. She lives. Near her slack mouth a leaf shivers under shallow puffs of breath. Nirrti, too, breathes again, entranced by the stirrings of the leaf.

  And so she starts when a second traveler seems to fly straight at her. For a second their eyes meet, black on blue, although the woman, tall and blond, is unaware of it. Nirrti sees shock, pain, and a gleam of avid curiosity. This intrigues her—more than the leaf—because curiosity would have been her own first instinct. Curiosity and the need to examine just how the Chappa’ai could have deceived them to such a degree. Maybe she will reveal the secret. After all, this Tauri woman probably has saved Nirrti’s life by staying the healer’s hand and she will bear closer scrutiny. In good time. Is it possible that Simmons has given more than he intended? For the moment, though—

  Incredibly, a third figure hurtles from the Chappa’ai. Now Nirrti is sure that Simmons has not intended this. Greed and caution would not have permitted it. For the third is male, but not human. He is Jaffa, the shol’va who denied his god. A memory of Apophis’ fury makes her smile. She herself relishes the illusion of divinity and the terrified veneration it brings, but she is a scientist and has never been deluded enough to believe her own lie. The key to immortality is, after all, knowledge not godhead.

  Mouth gaping, teeth bared in a scream of rage and pain, the shol’va hits the ground hard. When, at last, the Chappa’ai winks out, the blond female is the first to discover that they cannot leave this place. One terror compounded by another. And it is only the beginning. What the Tauri and even the Jaffa cannot hear are the vibrations that whip the beasts into a frenzy and lure them to their prey. Hungry and swift-footed, they fly from their lair, dark, bristling shapes unlike anything the subjects have ever seen. And, as planned, the subjects are driven apart in the struggle for their lives.

  “A gift. My, what a gift,” Nirrti murmured as the image dissolved into the silver surface of the mirror.

  Slowly, her fingers curled and clenched in a fight to resist temptation. She wanted to bring them in now, break them now, use them now. But it would not be the same. The true triumph lay in their willing surrender when the horrors out there had piled despair upon despair and even servitude seemed preferable to further endurance or lingering death.

  Exhaling, she relaxed, clapped her hands once. One of her beautiful new Jaffa entered instantly and quietly, anticipating every whim of his mistress, as a good servant should. He had brought a flowing red robe, held it out for her approval, and she raised her arms and permitted him to clothe her. When he was done tugging folds into place, he took a step back, eyes averted, as though he had anticipated this need, too. For a few moments she studied him, appreciated the nervous play of muscles under milky skin dotted with freckles, the almost imperceptible flaring of nostrils when he sensed her gaze on his face and the new tattoo on his forehead—the golden shape of a dove in flight. At last she reached out, fingertips caressing the sensitive flaps of his pouch.

  “You please me, child,” she said.

  His smile was beatific. “You honor me, Lady Nirrti.”

  “Yes, I do. The question is whether you deserve it.” She increased the pressure of her touch just enough to suggest the potential for exquisite pain, but not enough to hurt him. Yet.

  Only the slightest squirm betrayed his desire to back away. Excellent. He had been one of the first, and he had come far. “How can I make myself more deserving, Lady Nirrti?”

  Yes, he had come far indeed. But was it far enough? “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Master Sergeant Charles Macdonald.”

  She almost laughed. Such a waste of time, Tauri names. “Master Sergeant Charles Macdonald, I have a task for you.”

  “Please, Lady Nirrti, name it.”

  “Dispose of the thing in corner.”

  “As you wish, Lady Nirrti.”

  He disappeared through the curtains, and she curbed an impulse to follow and watch. Let him believe he was trusted. Shadows danced and from behind sheer fabric rose the toy’s cracking voice.

  “Sarge, what are you doing? Hey, come on, Sarge. It’s me, Gonzales. Gonzo… Come on, you remember me. You gotta remember me! Please, Sar—”

  When her Jaffa returned to drag his prisoner before her, the toy’s eyes, unearthly pale in an olive-skinned face, appeared to scream.

  “How do you wish me to dispose of him, Lady Nirrti?”

  “Take him to the temple. And”—she smiled at the thought—“make my pets jump.”

  BDUs and combat boots felt uncomfortable and alien after a couple of weeks of jeans and sweatshirts and walking barefoot round the house.

  Bull, Jack decided, suddenly angry at himself.

  It was neither the BDUs nor the boots. He felt uncomfortable and
alien. Though not usually prone to fits of nostalgia—God knew he had little enough reason to be—right now he wished he were in his twenties again, a stupid kid off on his first mission, young and eager and full of himself. Not exactly ideal either, but preferable to middle-aged and jaded and full of something else.

  “Chevron five engaged,” chanted Sergeant Harriman.

  Five? Thirty-nine, more like. What the hell was taking so long? The gate’s inner ring seemed to be spinning at half its usual speed and doing it on purpose.

  “Chevron six engaged.”

  Harriman’s contributions to this interior monolog were a tad predictable. Why couldn’t he say something interesting like, The balalaika-type thing’s just got a triangle clamped over if!

  “Chevron seven locked.”

  Locked. Now there was a plot twist!

  Jack O’Neill watched the event horizon roar out at him; a blaze of glory that momentarily froze all thought. It always did. Given a chance, he’d look at it all day. Of course it didn’t stand still long enough. It sloshed back into a luminous membrane across the gate and sent blue reflections rippling around the room.

  At which point Hammond was supposed to say Colonel O’Neill, you have a Go or Godspeed, Colonel or both. He didn’t.

  Now what?

  Clutching his P90 until he thought either the gun or his fingers would snap, Jack refused to turn around. The last thing Hammond needed to see was him getting jumpy. Getting jumpy?

  Just stand here and breathe, O’Neill. He’s gonna say it. Any second now…

  He didn’t.

  Instead the blast door rumbled open. The noise was followed by the clatter of boots on concrete. Hurried boots on concrete. There was only one person who regularly entered the gate room at this pace. Something to do with time-keeping issues brought on by a propensity to lose himself in dictionaries or similarly riveting literature.

  “Come to kiss me goodbye, Daniel?”

  The boots clattered to a halt beside him. “Uh, nothing personal, Jack, but no.”

  Jack whirled around, stared up at the control room window, just in time to see Harriman take cover behind his computer screen. Hammond next to him didn’t move; a burly, implacable rock who stared right back.

  “General, we had a deal!”

  “That’s right, Colonel. The deal was for me to pretend I’ve never received a certain piece of correspondence and let you go through that gate. But you either go with Dr. Jackson or not at all.”

  The SFs dotted around the room began to look interested, and Jack began to feel no longer uncomfortable and alien but slightly nauseous. “Daniel’s half blind! He’s not fit for duty!”

  “Neither are you,” Daniel muttered helpfully. “Want me to poke your ribs?”

  “Daniel—”

  “They’re my friends, too. I know the score, Jack. I’ve always known it. I was the one who took us to Abydos without having the coordinates to get back, remember?”

  Oh yes! How could he possibly forget? The first of three supremely joyous occasions on which Daniel Jackson had died. Jack’s nausea ratcheted up a notch. If he ever went through that wormhole, he’d sail out the other end barfing. “Is this supposed to convince me?”

  The response didn’t come in quite the way Jack had anticipated. Instead of waiting for General Hammond’s blessing, Daniel took the steps up to the ramp two at a time and steamed for the Stargate at flank speed.

  “Dammit, Daniel!”

  It was pointless, and Jack knew full well that he’d lost this argument. He only had two options. One—staying put—was absolutely out of the question. And thus Colonel O’Neill, for the umpteenth time, found himself running after an enterprising archeologist. Halfway into the event horizon, he heard Hammond’s voice rattle over the PA.

  “Godspeed, Colonel.”

  Very funny, sir.

  The thought melted into rushing, star-streaked black.

  Stumbling out onto orange air and looming rock, Jack decided that the trip through the wormhole had left him more than usually chilled. His first impression of M3D 335 didn’t help. The gate sat at the bottom of some humungous hole, which in turn was capped by a planet that looked set to belch in his face. Apart from the Stargate, the only access to this tomb was by parachute or through a narrow gorge opposite. And if the locals didn’t want you to come calling, they either whacked you upside the head as soon as you poked your nose into said gorge, or they lined up around the crater to shoot fish in a barrel. Or both.

  Jack sensed a cold prickle of paranoia seep up his back and tried to ignore it. At least he had an answer to Question Number One. Part of him had been hoping for a forest with thick underbrush to hide in. But, given the terrain, there was no way in hell that Carter, Teal’c, and the doc could have gone anywhere, except where Warren said they’d gone. Unless the escort had been lying. But why would the Marines lie? Why indeed? The query brought to mind his team’s interesting theory about the—

  “DHD seems okay to me,” said Daniel who’d crouched in front of the Dial-Home-Device, tinkering with some diagnostic tools. Now he stowed them and rose. “Of course, Sam’s the expert, but I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

  Daniel’s words sounded flat and sank like lead under the weight of the planet above, but at least they’d fractured the eerie quiet of this place. Too much quiet. No wind, no trees, not even a pebble clattering down the cliffs. Why were there no guards at the gate? Warren had mentioned guards, three of them. Maybe only after dark. Maybe. But still…

  “Jack? Are you listening?”

  “Yeah. The DHD’s fine.”

  Which led straight to Question Number Two. Harriman had corroborated that the gate malfunction was intermittent and affected outgoing wormholes only. That aside, whatever had caused the problem, it seemed to have resolved itself. During the past few days there’d been no further glitches. So why would Carter concoct some cockamamie tale to scare Norris?

  “…unless she had a damn convincing reason to get off this rock,” Jack mused aloud. “A reason she didn’t want to air to the gentlemen of the Marine Corps.”

  “What are you—” Daniel stiffened suddenly and turned toward the gorge. “Shh!”

  “I wasn’t saying anything.”

  “Shh! Somebody’s coming.”

  Almost of its own accord, Jack’s hand flew into a sequence of signals. A swift memory flashed up, of the last time he’d done it and what had happened next. When the image receded, he already was running for a boulder to the left of the gorge, keeping an eye on Daniel who’d headed right as ordered. On the dusty ground their footfalls made virtually no noise, but the tracks would be visible. Couldn’t be helped. They’d just have to be fast.

  Pretending that the activity his ribs currently engaged in was normal, Jack skidded into cover behind the boulder. Nice view. Across the mouth of the gorge he saw Daniel peer around the edge of his rock, giving a thumbs-up. Like Carter, just before—Throttling that thought, Jack brought up his gun. The metallic click of the safety coming off sounded perversely loud. He flinched and forced himself to go still. Never easy for him, more difficult than ever now.

  The gorge funneled noises into the crater like the an old gramophone tube. Out there the ground had to be covered in shale. He could hear the crunch of boots on stone. Four sets of boots… probably. Voices. No. One voice. Barking commands. In English. He relaxed a fraction. It ruled out Goa’uld or Jaffa—unless they were practicing. Well, they had to sometimes, right?

  Daniel had heard them, too, raised an enquiring eyebrow, and Jack shook his head. Before he indulged in prospects of a happy reunion with his pals, the Marines, he needed to have these guys where he could see them—or draw a bead on them if necessary.

  The footfalls grew louder. The visitors were moving fast, carelessly, which was good news one way or the other: they either had no idea that somebody was expecting them, or their intentions were as pure as driven snow. Okay, there was a third way, and it wasn’t such good news: the
y knew they owned the goddamn place. Eyes fixed on the cleft in the rock wall, Jack spot-welded the P90 against his cheek and waited.

  A minute later Larry, Curly, and Moe trotted into view, as unwholesome as he remembered them from the exercise. Behind them followed their CO. All things considered, a bunch of Goa’uld would have been preferable.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He stands right at the lip of the Stargate, arms flung wide, body curved in a fluid arc, like a gymnast on a beam, trying the impossible, trying to regain balance broken. She knows what will happen, knows that gravity will win, because that’s what gravity does, it always wins, immutable and uncaring. A tiny shiver ripples around the edges of weightlessness, grace collapses, and he falls. Watching helplessly, she knows what awaits him on the ground, knows because—

  “No!”

  Sam Carter shot from a sweat-soaked, troubled sleep, listening to the echo of her own scream. It shook loose a cacophony of chatters and screeches in the canopy above. Curled up into a tight ball, she nestled further into the crook between bole and branch where she’d spent the night and wished she were invisible. Gradually the noise died down, and no one found it necessary to check on the intruder or come shopping for breakfast. Thank God for small favors.

  After a few minutes of listening for stealthy approaches, she decided it was safe and awkwardly uncoiled. In the process she discovered several muscle groups she hadn’t known she owned—amazing what an extra-hard orthopedic tree could do for one’s anatomy. Not that it made that much of a difference, and these kinks at least would work themselves out once she was on the move again. As for the rest…

  She rolled up the tattered leg of her pants—damp. Everything was damp and never dried. Had the fabric started rotting yet? Maybe. A flap of material came away under her fingers. Unless she managed to get off this adventure playground sometime soon, she’d be running around in her bra and panties. Of course, in order to get off she’d have to find the DHD, and in order to have any hope of finding that—if it even existed—she’d have to find the gate, and before she did any of the above, she’d have to find Teal’c and Janet. If Janet was still alive. It’d been three days now, three days of plodding through the jungle looking for them. She was less worried for Teal’c; Teal’c had that air of indestructibility—deceptive, yes, but he did have a symbiote—and he knew how to take care of himself, better than any of them. Janet on the other hand…