“A makeup kit?” The quip was followed by a penetrating glance. “Jack, I know what’s on your mind. But we’ve got no proof that she’s here, and to go off on a wild goose chase to—”
“One day, Daniel. You said it yourself. We’ve got a day. And before I start chopping off bits of Carter, I intend to use that day to try and find Nirrti’s sarcophagus.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Teal’c had heard the Stargate activate, but by the time he had succeeded in scaling the cliff, the arrivals were long gone. Or perhaps, he mused, they had not been arrivals. Perhaps Dr. Fraiser, favored by the luck of children and madmen, had found the DHD and had indeed gone home.
The area beneath the Stargate was sunlit and deserted, unremarkable, and the gray walls of the ruins breathed a semblance of coolness. Even the jungle noises had returned, dispelling the silence, and he strode out into the clearing, confident that he would be safe for the time being. In a patch of mud, not far from the place where he himself had landed four days ago, he found two slim lengths of white plastic. Teal’c recognized the strips—flex-cuffs—and squatted to examine them more closely.
They were torn, their ends frayed and showing teeth marks. It indicated several things; two prisoners had been brought here—No, they had been sent here. Had they been escorted, their escape would have been foiled. And whoever had sent them, surely wished for them to die. Cuffed, and therefore most likely unarmed, they would not have stood the slightest chance against the beasts.
Except… He slowly swiveled on the balls of his feet, surveying the clearing once more. This time the beasts had not attacked. The prisoners’ boot prints told their own tale. Once they had freed themselves, the two men—the size of their boots made them men—had risen and walked off in different directions, though well within sight of each other. Teal’c recognized the pattern. He himself had followed it a hundred times and more; they had been exploring. Which suggested they were new to the territory. If they—
A ponderous rumble rolled across the glade, familiar and startling at the same time.
“Hasshak,” Teal’c muttered under his breath. Foolishly, he had allowed himself to neglect that particular source of danger.
He rose, loped back toward the cliff, and climbed the nearest tree to a nest of broad branches, some ten meters above ground. By the time he had settled into this aerie, the fourth chevron was locked. He sat virtually at eyelevel with the face in the wall and, for the first time, found occasion to study it. Almond-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes, that stared at him with the peculiar blank look of carved stone; a strong, straight nose; sensuously curved lips that gaped to reveal a row of sharp teeth; a long, pointed tongue, lolling like a ramp from the cavern of the mouth out onto the clearing. For reasons he could not clearly define, Teal’c found the sight profoundly disturbing.
The Chappa’ai was set in the idol’s forehead, a massive spinning jewel, its outer ring now dotted with five amber lights. Six. The seventh light all but paled under the mighty rush of the wormhole exploding across half the glade. Then the event horizon retracted and stilled. In these few moments of deceptive peace, Teal’c sensed rather than saw movement.
Scanning the huge face, his gaze finally caught on the dark recess of the mouth. There. Behind the points of the teeth flitted shadows, nervous yet eager, as if they wished to emerge but did not quite dare yet. Curious… His attention was distracted by four figures tumbling from the Stargate, flailing and screaming and all too reminiscent of Teal’c’s own arrival on the planet. Fleetingly he recalled the excruciating wrongness of that journey and asked himself if it was the same for these men, or if they had too little basis for comparison.
They were young and fit and clean-shaven, in smart uniforms, and all had been part of the unit that had journeyed to M3D 335 on the same day as Major Carter, Dr. Fraiser, and Teal’c; the unit that had been goaded into a pointless race by Colonel Norris. They struck the ground in an ungainly jumble of limbs and equipment and spent several minutes shaking off the shock and the effects of the impact. Eventually, one of them struggled to his feet.
“This ain’t like they told us,” he observed and added, “Can’t see that PhD thingy either.”
“The what thingy?” asked another.
“That phone-home-device or whatever it’s called.”
“DHD! Dial-home-device, you ass!”
“Who cares?”
“Shut up!” The speaker was the young corporal who had assisted Major Carter at the Marine camp. “You hear that?”
“Hear what? It’s dead silent.”
It was true. Like a tape recording that had stopped abruptly, the jungle noises had ceased again, almost as if the forest were holding its breath in anticipation. The quiet chafed at Teal’c’s awareness like a rough shirt on tender skin.
Into the silence one of the men said, “Oh boy.”
Pouring out from the mouth and coiling down the tongue came the beasts, two dozen of them, jostling and pushing and flooding the glade. What had restrained them until now? At the back of Teal’c’s mind a vague recollection began to congeal into realization, but before it could take shape the events unfolding below demanded his full attention. The Marines had formed a protective circle, their backs to each other, firing at the heaving mass of black bristles and fangs and making the same discovery Major Carter had made, namely that projectile weapons were ineffectual against these brutes’ armor. The Marines would not prevail. He knew it for a fact, and they would find out soon enough.
Teal’c felt torn. Although he had every reason to suspect their intentions, to stand by and watch these men being ripped apart was impossible. With sudden resolve he slung the staff weapon from his back where he had strapped it for the climb up the cliff, aimed, and loosed a series of rapid blasts at the beasts, killing one and wounding several others. The rest paused, shuffling uncertainly, then retreated a few meters, giving the prey a fraction of breathing space. The Marines saw their chance and took it.
“Now!” bellowed Major Carter’s corporal. “Go, go, go!”
His comrades lowered their weapons and sprinted across the glade toward the edge of the forest. In a reckless act of bravery, the corporal himself held his position, determined to cover his friends. A swift glance over his shoulder assured him that the men had almost reached the presumed safety of the tree line. He fired a last burst at the creatures, wheeled around, and ran. As though they had been waiting for that moment, the brutes attacked, flanking him on both sides. He hooked and feinted like a hare, but they inexorably drove him off course and cut off his escape route. Instead of joining his comrades, he came racing directly toward Teal’c’s tree and the dead end behind.
A mere twenty meters further were the cliff and nothing but thin air.
Without even thinking about it, Teal’c set aside his staff weapon, tore free a vine and lowered it. “Jump, Corporal Wilkins!”
The man’s head snapped up. He tripped, staggered, regained his balance, and bounded for the vine. Teal’c no sooner felt the corporal’s weight yank against his grip than he began to haul in the makeshift rope, ignoring the pain in his barely healed shoulder to pull even faster. For all he knew the brutes were capable of leaping and might still bring down their victim. And leap they did, snapping and snarling, but to no avail. Seconds later, Teal’c dragged Corporal Wilkins onto the branch beside him. The corporal’s eyes went wide when he recognized his rescuer, but he did not comment. Instead he glanced past Teal’c and back down to the ground. Below, the beasts had abandoned their futile hunt, swarmed into a turn, and set off after the Marines who had fled into the forest.
Fingers still cramped around the vine, Corporal Wilkins fought to bring his breathing under control. “Uh, thanks. Nice shooting. That’s one hell of a gun you’ve got there, Mr. Murray,” he gasped. “Sorry, sir, I don’t even know your rank. What are you, sir?”
“I was First Prime to the false god Apophis. I have renounced my service.”
“Ah,” said Corporal Wilkins, obviously decid
ing not to pursue the subject. Suddenly his expression darkened. “I gotta get down, go after the guys. They might need—”
“That is inadvisable.”
“Well, that’s just too bad, sir.” The young man began to ease himself off the branch. “I don’t know how you First What’s-Its do stuff, but in the Corps we don’t leave our guys in the lurch.”
Teal’c grabbed a fistful of uniform and hauled the struggling, swearing man back to his side. “We do not leave behind our people either, Corporal Wilkins. However, all you would accomplish by searching for them now is your own demise. Your weapons are useless against these beasts. If your comrades are lucky and smart, they will not fight but outrun the creatures. You have risked your own life to give them an opportunity for escape. You have done enough.”
The corporal’s face plainly stated that he begged to differ, but in the end he acquiesced as there were indeed no shots being fired in the jungle. “Sounds like you’re right, sir. They’re running.”
Too fast to even look back and ascertain your whereabouts, Teal’c did not reply. Life had taught him that idealism was a precious commodity, and he had no desire to quash it where he found it.
For a while they sat quietly, watching the glade below. At length, his voice still a little unsteady, Corporal Wilkins declared, “I suppose I should go back and report to Sergeant van Leyden, tell him what happened, bring reinforcements.” He scanned the clearing. “Except… You know where that DHD thing is, sir?”
“I do not.”
“But they told us it’s always by the gate.”
“Mostly, but not always,” Teal’c answered. “It may have been hidden on purpose. Or it may not exist at all.”
“Not exist?” The young man parroted, his face draining of blood. “So what are we—”
In the foliage above a bird began to screech, and at the same time Teal’c felt a diminishing of the vague sense of discomfort the unnatural silence of the forest had caused. Again realization hovered just beneath the threshold of conscious thought, again events dispelled it. A second bird answered the screech, then other animals chimed in, until the normal cacophony of the jungle was restored. Little later a bulky black shape appeared across the glade, not far from where the three Marines had vanished. The beast moved sluggishly, uncertainly, as though it had woken from drugged sleep in a location it had not expected to find itself in. Behind it and at its side, others broke from the forest, all in a similar state, until the whole pack was staggering up the stone tongue and back into their lair under the walls of the ruins.
“I’ll be damned,” muttered Corporal Wilkins. “They suddenly feel like a nap or something?”
“I do not know, Corporal Wilkins,” Teal’c answered truthfully. “However, it appears that now would be a good time to leave.”
Within minutes they were back on solid ground. His sidearm drawn and raised, Corporal Wilkins cautiously approached the beast Teal’c had slain. Even in death it seemed gigantic, its body covered in spikes a quarter of an inch thick, its stubby trotters ending in claws. Its snout was pointed and from under slack flews protruded a set of razor fangs stained with old blood.
“That is one danged ugly critter,” the corporal declared. Then he holstered his weapon and glanced toward the edge of the jungle. “No good going after the guys, I suppose. Might end up walking in circles for days.”
“Indeed,” confirmed Teal’c, only too aware of his own experiences.
“So what do you suggest we do, Mr., uh, First Prime, sir?”
“I shall continue to follow the trail of Dr. Fraiser. She is… unwell, and it is imperative that I—”
“Dr. Fraiser’s here? And Major Carter, sir?” At Teal’c’s nod, Corporal Wilkins swallowed. “Sir, are you trying to tell me you’ve never been back to Earth?”
“We have not. The Stargate malfunctioned.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that, Corporal Wilkins?”
“Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson came looking for you, sir. They…” The young man blushed, clearly uncomfortable. “I think—I know—Colonel Norris lied to them. I spoke to them briefly. Then they disappeared. We were told they’d gone back to Earth. Like you, sir.”
Driven by a sudden, sickening certainty about who the two prisoners had been, Teal’c’s gaze arrested on the spot where the flex-cuffs had lain. They were gone now, trampled under by hundreds of claws.
The cab they’d taken from Sea-Tac International stuttered to a halt at a street corner in one of the least savory areas of suburban Seattle.
“That’s forty-five bucks,” said the driver.
George Hammond stared at his travel companion who smiled innocently and turned up empty palms so as to indicate penury.
“You gonna pay me today or what?” the cabby snarled.
Clearly the US Air Force was going cover the cab fare as well. Hammond pulled a fifty dollar note from his wallet and handed it to the driver. “Keep the change.”
“Ain’t takin’ nothin’ bigger than twenty dollar notes.”
Snapping forward in the seat, Maybourne poked his head through the open partition. “Take it,” he hissed. “And we want the change back. All twenty bucks of it.”
The tone was steel-edged, suggesting that refusal would be a bad mistake, and the driver knew better than disputing the math. Without another word he gave Maybourne two tens, then growled, “Out!”
Hammond slipped from the cab and watched as it drove off, tires smoking. Obviously the cabby wanted to get the hell out of here, and who could blame him? The street was lined with shops that had gone bust, windows boarded over and signs faded or dangling. The only establishments still in business were a drinking hole, a heavily barred liquor store, and a hot dog stand at the corner of the next block. A wino had occupied a stretch of curb and was ranting at a hydrant. In an alley opposite, two shadowy figures abruptly ducked behind a dumpster when they noted Hammond’s interest. A trio of teens, in low-slung jeans wide enough to accommodate a small country, swaggered out of the liquor store, clutching paper bags and giving him the hard man stare.
He turned, expecting to find Maybourne right behind him. Instead, the ex-colonel had made a beeline for the hot dog stand. He’d also pocketed the change from the cab fare. Beginning to appreciate Jack O’Neill’s recurring itch to shoot the man, Hammond headed after him. Given time of year and latitude, the night was surprisingly muggy, and he wanted to unzip the windbreaker. Fingers already on the tab, he reconsidered. Presumably the idea was to remain inconspicuous. The Aloha shirt had parrots on it.
At the hot dog stand, Maybourne was squirting relish on a dog that, by Texan standards, was a Chihuahua. A runt at that. The less than sanitary individual manning the stand demanded an extortionate six bucks for the feast, and Maybourne forked over one of the ten dollar bills and grinned at Hammond.
“Want one, George? My treat.”
“You could have eaten on the plane,” groused Hammond, deciding not to point out the obvious.
“And poison myself with the junk they serve?” Maybourne demanded around a mouthful of hot dog. A glob of relish escaped and left a green trail down his front. Two bites later the dog had disappeared. He scrunched the napkin into a ball and lobbed it into the gutter. “Let’s go.”
He briskly strode across the street and into the alley, deserted now, apart from a few rats. At its end, Maybourne took a left, crossed another street, found another alley, until they emerged on an avenue that looked somewhat more reputable than the area where they’d started out. Directly opposite rose a tall, institutional gray facade. George Hammond recognized it without ever having been here.
“St. Christina’s Hospital. That’s where Conrad held Major—”
“No names.” Grinning faintly, Maybourne checked up and down the street. “Doesn’t look like we’ve got company yet, but you can bet your two-star derriere that the NID will pick up our trail. We don’t have much time.”
“Time for what?”
“Getting inside.”
Next to the former hospital stood a tenement building. Maybourne headed for the entrance, bounded up the stairs, nudged the front door. It clicked open. “Lucky the landlord’s too stingy to fix it. Fire escape would have been a bit too public for my liking. After you, Huggy.”
“Don’t push it!” Hammond ducked into the building.
The stairwell was dark, smelled of damp newspapers and floor polish, and served six floors. They climbed every single one of them, plus an additional set of steps onto the roof. Sodium streetlight poured over the cars parked below, a few lit windows adding brightness; somewhere nearby wailed an ambulance, its horn drowning out a mix of TV shows and the rattle of cheap air conditioning units. Up the block, a black SUV pulled into the street, crawled past the hospital, and disappeared again.
“Company,” muttered Maybourne. “Won’t take long till someone decides to see if we’re home already. We’ve got maybe ten minutes, fifteen at the most.”
Hammond felt himself shoved along the parapet and out onto a metal catwalk that connected the tenement to the hospital. The hand-painted sign Warning! Condemned! wasn’t half as forbidding as the notion of jumping the gap between the buildings, so he didn’t argue.
Over on the other side Maybourne pushed past him, flung open a hatch and plunged down a dark flight of stairs. “Move it, General! ORs and offices are on the third floor. You don’t want to meet the boys from the SUV, I guarantee you.”
Guided only by the meager light filtering in from the street, they clattered down the staircase, one floor, two, three, their footfalls echoing through empty corridors and ricocheting from tiled walls. Maybourne shot from the stairwell, barreled down a hallway, scanning room numbers as he went, and stopped outside a closed door. A few seconds later Hammond caught up with him, panting and wishing he were thirty years younger, thirty pounds lighter. By the time he could breathe again, Maybourne had forced the lock.
“It was a real sweet deal. Instead of dismantling the facility, the NID said a silent prayer of thanks and took it over the way Conrad’s people had left it.” He hit the light switch, illuminating what looked like a cross between a lab and a control room.
07 - Survival of the Fittest Page 17
