07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  What happened next was just as slick. The sergeants casually herded Newbie in the direction of the communications shack—it’d been introduced as such to Colonel O’Neill. While Sergeant A swiped a keycard through the door lock, B sent a furtive jerk of the head at Mr. Poletti’s brave, whose lips began to move. In other words, the brave was either nuts and talking to himself, or wired and inviting other guests to the party. Whom? Newbie and the sergeants entered the com shack. A minute later the guests arrived: Norris and Poletti showed up, collected the brave, and also felt the urge to communicate. If nothing else, it answered one question. The two sergeants who looked like they ought to be wearing suits instead of BDUs were the ones calling the shots around here. NID sprang to mind. Sweet.

  By now the eggplant had darkened to a color combination exclusive to Gothic novels, and the men milling around the square were beginning to disperse. The only one dragging his feet was the guy who’d suffered that nasty pulmonary incident in the mess earlier.

  “Jack?” Daniel said softly. He looked worried.

  It probably wasn’t a good idea to admit that his commanding officer shared the sentiment. “I’ve seen him. I’m just not sure which club he belongs to.”

  “What?”

  “The ape who went into the hut last was the real tail. This one’s a freelancer.” Easing himself from the crate, Jack swore under his breath. How come it hurt that much if he didn’t even have a fracture to show for it?

  “You okay?” This from the man with the world’s worst shiner.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Jack ducked into a short alley between two huts and broke into a run, Daniel right behind him. At the other end, they whipped around the corner and stopped dead. Their shadow was following doggedly, his footfalls getting louder. Timing the noise, Jack stuck his leg out and was treated to a rather nice forward flip. The pursuer hit the ground oomphing, rolled onto his back, and found himself staring up the business end of Daniel’s Beretta.

  “Hi,” said Jack, patting his P90 to indicate politely that, on request, they also did fifteen rounds a second instead of two. “Anything we can do for you?”

  The man didn’t look as though he was going to make any requests. Front paws raised, like a puppy waiting for a belly-rub, he yelped, “Colonel O’Neill?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Corporal Lon Wilkins, sir.” Corporal Wilkins seemed to want to salute but didn’t dare to move his hands. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  Well, that held a certain comic piquancy. As far as Jack could recall, he’d never got that type of enquiry from a Marine flat on his back. He grinned. “You heard the corporal, Daniel. He said freely. Put the gun away and help him up.”

  “Thanks, sir.” Duly restored to an upright position, Wilkins dusted himself off, came to attention, and said, “You’re looking for Major Carter, right, sir?”

  The blush triggered by Carter’s name revealed that Wilkins carried a torch the size of a young lamppost for the Major. For some reason it irritated Jack. “And Dr. Fraiser. And a big black guy who variously goes by Murray or Teal’c. You know where they are?”

  “No, sir. They did leave for the Stargate, though. I saw them. But that’s all I can tell you. That and…” The corporal swallowed, looking sick all of a sudden. “I don’t usually—Look, I heard what Colonel Norris told you in the mess. It was a lie. The guys who guarded the gate that night? They sat right next to you, sir.”

  Poletti and the Braves. That put an interesting spin on things. Jack filed it away. “Thanks, Corporal. Now beat it. You don’t want to be seen with us.”

  “Uh, no offense, but no. Sir!” He got that salute in at last, then hesitated for a moment. “Watch your back, Colonel. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s weird.” With that profound observation Corporal Wilkins sprinted into the alley and out of sight.

  “Weird, huh?” muttered Daniel. “One way of putting it. Now what?”

  “Now?” Jack poked his head around the corner, saw that the passage was empty, and started heading back toward the square at a leisurely pace. “Now we’re gonna sit tight till lights-out, and then we’ll pay a visit to the radio shack, pardon the pun.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what passes for headquarters around here. The two guys who masquerade as sergeants went in there for a confab with the messenger boy, Norris, and the Poletti gang. To discuss new orders, I assume.”

  Daniel cast him a sidelong glance. “How can you possibly know all that?”

  “Afraid I’m committing a tactical error?” snapped Jack, instantly regretting it. Daniel wasn’t afraid. He was. And maybe Daniel should be afraid. Because it was conjecture, and it was the best Jack had right now.

  He stormed out into the deserted square, staring at the planet, at the quiet barracks that seemed to be flattened by oily light. What the hell was he doing here? If he was all the SGC had to offer, then God help Carter and Teal’c and Doc Fraiser.

  “Jack!” Daniel’s hand on his arm, insistent and not letting go.

  Stuttering to a halt, Jack turned around. “Sorry,” he ground out. “Must be the light. Feels like I’m floating through a fish tank covered in green goop. Green makes me cranky.”

  The look gave it away. Clearly, Daniel found the image intriguing but didn’t buy the excuse for a second. “What I was trying to convey back there—and I can see where it gets confusing—is my appreciation for those deductive reasoning skills of yours.”

  “Ah,” mumbled Jack and shrugged. “No big deal. You know what I’ve been doing in the bad old days. It involved a lot of that.”

  “Glad we cleared that up.” Daniel broke into a cautious grin. “Now can we get some dinner?”

  “You got a death wish? If the rest of the place is anything to go by, they serve boiled newt as—Oh crap!” Watching his nemesis approach, Jack wondered if it was too late to change the entree back to boiled newt.

  Poletti in tow, Norris had emerged from the com shack and strutted across the square. “O’Neill! Sergeant van Leyden wants to see you.”

  “In which case Sergeant van Leyden can drag his ass out here. If he asks why, tell him to read up on privileges of rank.” Norris’ face said that this was exactly the reply he’d hoped for. Jack didn’t like it. Time to stir things up a little. “By the way, Norris, what were you doing at the gate this morning?”

  Haughtiness gave way to consternation, and Norris’ jaw worked hard. Eventually he snarled, “I was waiting for Major Warren. We were expecting him back. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “We? Who’s we? That happy little family you’ve got here?”

  This time the shock tactics didn’t work. Norris smirked. “Look, O’Neill, you two can either come with us or—”

  The motion, a blur in his peripheral vision, told Jack that the unspoken threat had just become the only option and that it was gonna be ugly. He spun around, managed to block a blow that nearly broke his arm. His fist, aimed at Poletti’s solid gut, missed by a mile. God, this guy was fast, way too fast! Jack was going for his gun when a punch to the kidney made him arch back helplessly. As he sank to his knees, pain tinted the planet’s crescent brilliantly red, until the Stooges appeared out of nowhere to join the fun.

  Curly’s face smiled down on him, and Norris bleated a lame, unexpected protest. Then they were all over Jack, pinning him down, flex-cuffing his wrists, leaving his ribs screaming. Six feet away lay Daniel, tied up and motionless, nose busted, lip split, blood glaring from an ashen face.

  “Take them to the gate,” a whole new voice ordered, sounding like its owner was enjoying the spectacle. “Send them… home.”

  Sergeant van Leyden, Jack presumed.

  It was near sunrise by the time Teal’c awoke, remembering little, except that the injury must have been grievous, else he would not have slipped into a healing trance. Then the forest, alive with the howls of its creatures, brought the events back to him.

  He cau
tiously pushed himself upright, neck craned to look at his shoulder. A large bloodstain had soaked from where the fabric was torn and down the front of his shirt. Drenched by the pervasive damp, it was already beginning to blend with dirt and sweat. The wound itself had closed. Only a rosy scar, standing out starkly from dark skin, marked its location. That and perhaps some minor twinges and residual stiffness in his shoulder. In time, scar, twinges, and stiffness would fade, and they were a small price to pay for his folly.

  “Shek kree a kek, hasshak!” he hissed, furious with himself.

  Had he let himself be fooled like this as a raw recruit, Master Bra’tac would not have wasted any time or effort on whipping him. Master Bra’tac would have sent him home to his mother, to learn how to spin wool and tend small children, because Teal’c was not fit to become a warrior.

  “Hasshak!” He spat again and pushed himself to his feet.

  The shelter in the tree was empty, as he had feared. Dug into the ground he found a deep hole, filling with moisture. This was where Dr. Fraiser had hidden her dagger. Near the hole lay a small piece of rock; a whetstone, no doubt. There was nothing else the tree could tell him, and Teal’c stepped back out into the open, noting with some astonishment that she had not taken the backpack or any of the weapons, despite the fact that he had hardly been in a position to stop her.

  Why had she left without supplies or arms? And where had she gone?

  He could not visually recall her leaving, because he had been slipping from consciousness, but perhaps… Teal’c returned to the boulder that had secured the entrance, sat down once more, and closed his eyes. In his mind he saw the doctor’s drawn face, her gaze lucid for the first time in days, agonized with the realization of what she had done. Then the image went black. This was when he had begun to drift. But he had still been able to hear; the sounds as clear and precise as they became in the split-second before sleep.

  He’s already dead.

  Said aloud as if in response to something or someone—what or whom?—and with a distinct undertone of apprehension. The doctor had told an untruth, and she had been afraid of being found out. Not just about the lie. She had had the opportunity to kill him and refused to take it. Twice. First when she had only wounded him; the second time when he had lain helpless. Instead of striking, she had backed away, slowly and with great difficulty—a child, aware of the cost of disobedience but disobeying nonetheless—and then she suddenly had turned and run.

  With perfect accuracy, his memory mapped out the volume and direction of the sound her footsteps had made. When his eyes snapped open, he stared at a tight gap in the undergrowth. Teal’c rose and retraced her path, unsurprised when he could not find boot prints. The ground, bog-like and resilient, returned to its original state within minutes. However, on the bushes themselves several thin twigs were broken and leaves crushed; unmistakable tokens of passage.

  Dr. Fraiser’s choice of escape route bewildered him. To the east, the terrain became easier, sloping gradually into a broad river valley. Logically, if a person were fleeing from something, they would tend to take the easiest path for best possible speed. Indeed, Teal’c himself had done so three days ago, fleeing from the beasts that had attacked them. Dr. Fraiser had done the opposite. She had turned west, choosing the most difficult and dangerous route, uphill into the mountains and back toward the Stargate—and the beasts. Why?

  “To go home,” he murmured in answer to his own question.

  In her ramblings, she had repeatedly expressed a wish to return home. At the time, it had struck him as the most rational thought she was conceiving. Now he wondered.

  Even when she had shown no sign of improvement, he had clung to the hope that the condition would be temporary. But he was no longer sure that it was madness at all. The assault on him, in its preparation and execution, spoke of a cunning that was fundamentally unlike Dr. Fraiser. Not because she lacked the intelligence and determination, but because she lacked the callousness. The fact that he was still alive proved it. If not madness, what then?

  Teal’c knew of one thing that would explain it, and the thought sickened him to such an extent that he refused to entertain it. But whatever the case, he needed to find her, even if it meant temporarily abandoning his search for Major Carter. At this moment Dr. Fraiser was the more vulnerable of the two, although Major Carter, too, had been injured, and it was impossible to predict her current state of health.

  In the name of a false god Teal’c had led men into battle, more than once, and thus the weight of responsibility he felt was as familiar as it was unwelcome. Unwelcome not because he sought to shirk it, but because he knew the consequences error could entail. His own father had fallen victim to them, murdered for failing to please the whim of a would-be god and win an unwinnable skirmish. Holding himself accountable, he had calmly accepted his punishment—as indeed had O’Neill, who had become his own judge and jury. Neither man had conceded that responsibility without error could not exist.

  If there were no risk of error, what weight could there be to responsibility? They went hand in hand, one the dark side of the other, and the conclusions O’Neill had drawn were wrong. The penance he inflicted on himself was unjust and would be warranted only if he were a god possessed of omniscience.

  Teal’c decided that, should he escape with his life, his friend and brother would need to be reminded of his patent lack of divinity.

  Fuelled by sudden resolve, he turned back, collected the pack and his staff weapon, set off on the doctor’s tenuous trail of broken twigs, crushed tendrils of creeper plants, bark scraped from tree trunks. Irrespective of the difficulty of the terrain, all traces were on a line that led uphill and west as straight as a bird flew. It was as though Dr. Fraiser followed a beckoning voice, imperious and seductive.

  Further up in the mountains, the ground became marginally drier, and here he found footprints—mostly indentations made by the tips of her boots. She had been moving fast, running at times, and continued for longer than she should have been able to sustain such a frenzied pace. If Teal’c was right, the will that governed her would drive her on relentlessly and past the point of exhaustion. And if he was right, it meant that a Goa’uld was on this planet.

  More than four hours into his pursuit Teal’c reached a small stream and followed it upriver, until it widened into a pool. Halfway along its northern shore, he discovered the impression in the mud. During his first winter on Earth, O’Neill had explained to him a game Tauri children liked to play. It was called Snow Angels, and O’Neill had obliged by throwing himself to the ground and demonstrating its mechanics. This looked similar—the shape of a body etched into the soil, legs splayed, arms stretched wide.

  Dr. Fraiser’s physical strength seemed to have flagged at last. She had tripped over a root and fallen face down into the mud. From there she had gathered herself and crawled to the water’s edge, presumably to drink.

  “Shek kree,” Teal’c muttered, dismayed.

  He knelt, scooped up a handful of water and, careful not to swallow any, sloshed the sweat from his face. Tepid and smelling sickly sweet, the water was less than refreshing. It also was tainted, Teal’c knew not by what substance. When he had first come upon the creek two days ago and several miles further downstream, he too had drunk from it, but his symbiote had neutralized most of the contaminant. Other than a passing dizziness there had been no ill effects. However, he could not tell what harm it would do to Tauri physiology.

  Some, he surmised. Dr. Fraiser had risen again, but the footprints, plainly outlined now, were uneven and staggering like a drunkard’s. He trailed the unsteady path and two hundred meters further up found a rock where she had rested. Though not in the position he would have expected. Instead of slumping onto the smooth stone directly, she had walked around it and sat facing uphill.

  Why? Whom or what had she been watching?

  Teal’c eased himself onto the rock, absently noting that his shoulder ached; a reminder that, while the symbiote wa
s able to accelerate his body’s healing process, it required the rest of kelno’reem to do so properly. It would have to wait. Rotating his arm to loosen cramped muscles, he suddenly realized that the maddening cackle and chatter of the jungle had ceased. The only sounds were the tap of condensation dripping from branches and the splash of a reedy waterfall at the western end of the lake. Other than that, the forest was quiet.

  His fingers inadvertently tightened around the staff weapon, and he fought off a sense of foreboding. Then his gaze traveled upward, against the motion of the water, over black rock and plants shining with moisture, until at last he saw what Dr. Fraiser must have seen.

  Atop the cliff and its cascade rose, gray as ghosts, the ruins that housed the Stargate.

  Dr. Daniel Jackson felt distinctly claustrophobic. The rock walls reared toward a starless corridor of olive drab sky, and the uneven ground wasn’t designed to enhance physical or spiritual balance.

  Send them… home.

  As he walked—alright, tottered—Daniel mulled the three words over, the linguist in him fascinated by that beat before home. Somehow the pause suggested that there was no place like… home. It could be interpreted in all sorts of ways, none likely to coincide with his preferred definition. For instance, the—

  He stumbled, felt a hot bolt of pain rattle through his head, heard the snigger of the goon behind him, and swore under his breath. You’d think that, if people insisted on converting your face to raw hamburger, they’d at least have the decency to order a sedan chair for you afterwards.

  “You okay?” whispered Jack.

  “Shut up!” barked Mr. Poletti, the echo of his voice bouncing through the canyon.

  “Fine,” Daniel said quickly, careful to keep Jack on his right, in order to hide the left side of his face. The goons—dead ringers for a mob of Jaffa—hadn’t been kind enough to give him a moment to take off his specs. That pair, too, was trashed now, though it didn’t make that much of a difference. He couldn’t see out of his left eye anyway, and so far he’d been unable to ascertain if this was because the eye had swollen shut or because, this time round, he’d actually lost sight in it.