07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  How do I wish to proceed? It was too dark to see Teal’c’s face and determine if, maybe, this was a Jaffa joke.

  “Daniel Jackson?”

  Okay. No joke. So who had died and put Dr. Jackson in command? And that was a very nasty thought. Having decisions forced on him wasn’t a happy thing either—probably dreamed up by some cosmic force that wanted to have fun at Daniel’s expense. Something about the shoe being on the other foot. What was it Jack had said apropos of bad calls?

  Of course Daniel had done it before. Digs with SG-11, meet-and-greets with SG-9, he’d gone undercover—hell, to all intents and purposes he’d led the Abydonians. But that didn’t mean he had to like treading that fine line between reason and instinct or embrace this other lives depend on my every move tactical stuff. The kind of stuff Jack did every day of his life. The kind of stuff Teal’c had done. And look what it did to them. So, unless it was to teach him a redundant object lesson at the worst possible time, why would Teal’c—

  “It is merely expedient, Daniel Jackson. Under the circumstances we both shall fare better if I supply the brawn to your brain.”

  “It’s not like you’re stupid, Teal’c.”

  “I am not. You, however, are not very brawny at this moment in time.”

  “Point taken. Though I’m sure if you thought about it, you could put it little more bluntly.”

  “Without doubt. How do you wish to proceed?”

  Ah, yes. The million dollar question hadn’t gone away, had it? Dr. Jackson, how do you wish to proceed? Apart from sauntering into a Goa’uld Shangri-La overrun with Jaffa clones and asking politely if they minded handing back your team mates, washed and pressed if it wasn’t too much trouble.

  Daniel’s instinct was to charge in and free Jack, thus putting someone with the necessary training and experience back in charge. Reason told him it was a crap idea—and yes, he did hate treading that fine line. Jack was the one Nirrti wanted, which meant two things. First, he’d be under heavy guard—too heavy for two lightly armed men—and, second, he probably was safe for the time being. Probably.

  Other lives depend on my every move.

  It was a hell of a choice. “We try and find Sam,” Daniel said softly and then, driven by some weird urge to justify himself, rattled on, “She’s the technical wiz. So if I’m right about that transmitter, and if we’re going to put that thing out of commission, we’ll need her expertise. Besides, she’s—”

  “I believe it is a wise decision, Daniel Jackson.”

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  And that was that.

  Neon-bright streaks—stars stretched to infinity in hyper-space—rushed past the tel’tac’s cockpit window. Hammond watched them with something that bordered on a five-year-old’s sense of awe and a good deal of humility. Only a handful of Earthlings, for want of a better word, had ever seen this. But it didn’t stop man from using pilfered technology he couldn’t even begin to comprehend to build a vessel capable of these speeds. Hubris? Or the desire to defend a planet that, polluted and overpopulated, still was the only home he had? Maybe a little bit of both. And if that was the case, did George Hammond really have a right to judge Simmons and the NID?

  The hell he didn’t. He wasn’t quite that humble.

  “We shall be leaving hyperspace soon.” Bra’tac glanced up at him, hands cupped around the navigational controls of the tel’tac. It looked like he was cradling a glowing basketball. “You may wish to sit, Hammond of Texas.”

  “Why?” Maybourne asked suspiciously, white-knuckled fingers clutching the armrests of his seat. He wasn’t really taking to this deep space thing and had been subdued ever since he’d first clapped eyes on the small transport ship.

  Hammond made it to a seat with less than a second to spare. Engines roaring in protest, the tel’tac gave a sharp lurch, and the bright streaks outside the window abruptly contracted into shiny pinpricks. Harry gave a soft groan and closed his eyes.

  “That is why,” Bra’tac replied after the fact and in a tone that suggested smugness lessons were an integral part of Jaffa training. Teal’c had it down to a fine art, too.

  Seemingly ponderous at sub-light speed, the tel’tac entered the system that was their destination. The second planet was a gas giant and, like Jupiter, had trapped more than its fair share of moons. The sixth of those moons was M3D 335, and it was rising; a small beige crescent that peeked over the orange and purple striations of its primary’s atmosphere and slowly rounded into a disc, still beige and still unremarkable—but for what had happened there.

  What had happened there—or what Hammond thought had happened—was the reason that he and Bra’tac had agreed not to use the Stargate. The trip in the tel’tac might take longer, but the fact that they could drop in unannounced and—thanks to the cloaking device—unobserved more than made up for the delay.

  “Do you wish me to approach the moon’s Chappa’ai, Hammond of Texas?”

  “Yes, Master Bra’tac. It’s as good a place as any to start looking.”

  “Indeed.”

  Bra’tac slipped the little ship into a retrograde orbit around M3D 335, and they slowly spiraled toward the surface and the night side of the moon. There was no cloud cover, only a fine haze that softened what few contours the landscape showed. This was one heck of a boring piece of rock, Hammond decided and watched the holographic display in front of Bra’tac instead. Not that he could make any sense of the Goa’uld glyphs that flicked through thin air. His best guess was that the tel’tac’s sensors were scanning for naquadah. Given that a Stargate’s rings were made entirely of the metal, it was one sure-fire way of locating the gate.

  Up ahead the endless plains suddenly were broken up by some sort of elevation, craggy, black enough to make the evening gloom seem bright, and jutting from the ground like Ayers Rock—only much, much larger. At some distance to the east of it, between the ship and the range of cliffs, twinkled lights.

  “There’s the camp,” Hammond said, rising from his seat again.

  The tel’tac banked south to bring them in directly above the scattered collection of huts and tents.

  “Looks quiet enough,” offered Maybourne. Now that terra firma was in sight, he obviously felt that it was safe to leave his chair and had stepped up to the window.

  “Yeah,” Hammond muttered. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected—Goa’uld motherships, factory-size labs, the island of Dr Moreau—but all he saw was a thoroughly average training camp. “Let’s find the gate.”

  Bra’tac didn’t acknowledge, but the camp fell away beneath them and the tel’tac sped for the cliffs, sniffing after naquadah. Within moments the rock face had grown into a humungous obsidian wall.

  “Dead end,” Maybourne said dryly.

  “It is not.” Bra’tac launched a pitying glance in his direction. “Observe, Maybourne.”

  Presumably Sam Carter could have explained how this worked. George Hammond, on the other hand, didn’t have the first idea—not that it bothered him too much, above and beyond the sudden covetous realization of how useful this gadget would be for long-range reconnaissance. The view from the window was replaced by a three-dimensional topographic skeleton of the area ahead. Tightly packed contour lines shone bright green and, about a klick north of their current position, retracted sharply into a gorge that sliced the cliffs in half.

  “Very nice.” As the map winked out, Harry gave a grin. “Listen, Master, if you got any of these to spare, I know some people who’d be happy to—”

  “Cut it out,” snapped Hammond.

  It got him a sour stare, but Maybourne stopped wheeler-dealing for the time being. Without comment, Bra’tac shifted his hands over the surface of the basketball. The ship banked again and headed for the mouth of the gorge, climbing all the way to hug the top of the cliffs and turn east, following the canyon below. Seconds later, the tel’tac swept out over a sizeable crater and hovered, silently and invisibly, some
fifty meters above the gate.

  Beneath, a platoon-strength group of Marines stood lined up in orderly rows of two, clearly waiting to embark and clearly not expecting a free ride. In addition to Spaz-12s and rifles, each pair carried a grenade launcher. One of four men who seemed to constitute the guard force at the gate stepped in front of the DHD and began to dial.

  “Where the hell are they off to?” asked Maybourne. “Kabul?”

  “Unlikely,” Hammond murmured absently, squinting at the DHD. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  Bra’tac’s fingers slid over the controls, and the image in the window jumped closer—or so it seemed. Trying to ignore the knot of worry in his gut, Hammond stared at the brightly lit glyphs around the red centerpiece. “Earth,” he said softly. “They’re going back to the SGC.”

  “With that kind of gear? Are they planning to stage a palace revolution? I mean—”

  “Hammond of Texas,” Bra’tac interrupted, sounding a little vague. “You may wish to look at the Chappa’ai.”

  Vagueness in Bra’tac was enough of a novelty to make Hammond take up the suggestion. At first it didn’t register, but when it did, he let out a low, slow whistle. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured under his breath.

  The gate was spinning for its third lock. The second one, the one Hammond had just about caught, had been Auriga. It should have been Cetus. The third chevron engaged—on Lynx instead of Centaurus. Although the DHD showed the coordinates for Earth, the gate itself was dialing somewhere else entirely. The Marines below were either blissfully unaware of the situation—or fully aware of circumstances General Hammond had never been briefed on; they embarked briskly and without hesitation, pair after pair stepping into the event horizon and traveling—where?

  “Carter was right,” Harry said. “It’s malfunctioning.”

  “I do not believe it is.” Bra’tac didn’t offer any further insights, and it was impossible to tell whether he contradicted Maybourne for the heck of it or whether there was something else on his mind.

  Below, the last pair of Marines mounted the dais. George Hammond was staring at the gate with the kind of desperate intensity that made your eyes water. Then the men disappeared, the wormhole collapsed, and the chevrons winked out.

  “I didn’t catch the first glyph, but I’ve got the rest of the address,” Hammond announced.

  “Indeed, so have I.” Bra’tac flashed a sly smile, fingers gliding across the controls again. The tel’tac’s onboard systems played back a holographic image of seven glyphs.

  Hammond wrestled down a growl and checked if Harry was entertaining any further notions of acquiring contraband technology. In fact, the ex-colonel wasn’t. He was studying the gate and the surrounding area.

  As if he’d noticed Hammond’s stare, he suddenly turned. “Four guards at the gate. That’s a bit light. Unless—”

  “—the guards are Jaffa,” Hammond finished for him.

  “These men are not Jaffa.” Bra’tac’s dark eyes glittered with a mix of pride and righteous indignation. “You are Jaffa here and here”—gnarled fingers tapped the old warrior’s head and heart—“and it takes years upon years of training to truly understand this. You may become Jaffa without a symbiote, but a symbiote alone will not make you Jaffa.

  “However, I should not indulge myself. At one hundred and thirty-seven years of age and with these old bones aching, teaching sometimes seems more attractive than fighting.” The shrewd glance he threw at Hammond gave the lie to that confession—Bra’tac could be as coy as a maiden aunt and obviously enjoyed the effect. Even when it was slightly marred by an agile leap from the pilot’s seat. “Jaffa! Kree r

  The door to the cargo compartment slid open with a promptitude that suggested Bra’tac’s men had been standing right behind it, rigidly at attention, shin guards spit-shined to a luster. Contemplating his disembowelment, no doubt, Harry retreated to the farthest corner of the cockpit. Bra’tac pretended not to notice and began to issue a clipped string of orders in Goa’uld.

  Hammond felt a momentary twinge of sympathy for Harry. It passed when he remembered Teal’c, stolidly submitting to Maybourne’s threat of using him as a lab rat. Had he considered it just punishment for his betrayal of Apophis? Or had he known it would never happen, because his trust in Jack O’Neill had been complete even then?

  The memories spun away, scattered by a hard hand slapping Hammond’s back. “Observe,” Bra’tac said and turned him back to the window.

  The glass—no, it couldn’t be glass, Hammond reminded himself—the clear pane darkened to the charcoal tint of a celebrity limo’s passenger windows, and from the cargo hold came an oddly rhythmic hum and a surge of light. He would have looked had Bra’tac’s hand on his shoulder not stopped him. In front of the gate five metal circles—like miniature Stargates—seemed to pop from the ground, stacking on top of each other and infusing with sudden radiance. A ring transporter. Hammond was aware of the technology, of course, but he’d never seen it for himself.

  The cloverleaf of Marines had sprung apart, diving into cover behind the DHD and the dais. As the rings whapped out of existence again, apprehensive faces, MP5s glued to cheeks, peered from the respective hideouts. The weapons were trained on the object the transporter had delivered, a small silvery sphere sitting harmlessly in the dust. George Hammond could relate to silver-sphere-o-phobia. A similar globe, inhabited by sentient bacteria of all things, had nailed Jack to the gate room wall and just about killed him. Though this one seemed to be of a different variety, and if he was right, it—

  The little ball exploded into brutal brilliance—even the tinted window couldn’t dim it completely—and if such nuclear brightness had an acoustic equivalent, Hammond was hearing it now, though tamped by distance and the tel’tac’s hull. If it felt like this inside the ship, just how bad would it be it out there? Legends claimed a banshee’s shriek could kill a person. Hammond decided he believed it.

  Outside, the Marines were reeling, eyes scrunched shut, hands clapped over ears, weapons discarded, mouths gaping in screams that remained inaudible under the noise. Within moments the men collapsed, crumpling like rag dolls while the light faded and the shrieking stilled.

  “Are they dead?” Hammond asked in a dry-throated rasp, suspecting the answer but needing to make sure nonetheless.

  “They are not,” replied Bra’tac. “It was a stun grenade.”

  “Flash-bang for grownups.” Harry’s enthusiastic tone was at odds with the wistful look he shot Hammond, correctly assuming that the grenades were off-limits, too.

  “Come quickly. We cannot wait until they revive or reinforcements arrive.”

  Bra’tac shooed them into the cargo hold and, together with four of his Jaffa, into position for the ring transporter. It was a snug fit, and the air buzzed with the smell of men sweating pre-battle adrenaline—though, if they were lucky, there would be no battle. Not yet, at any rate.

  Men and smell and anticipation fractured to nothing. A ring transporter worked along the same principles as the Stargate, Sam Carter had said. Sounded about right, except the experience was a little less disorientating, a little less chilly. Like pictures changing in a slide-show, the stuffy cargo hold morphed into the crater around the gate and tepid air, with only a brief moment of blackness in between.

  The Marines were out cold, draped around the dais and the DHD. Bra’tac crouched by the nearest man, a faintly Mediterranean looking hulk. Two quick slices with a knife exposed the Marine’s midriff, and for a second Bra’tac recoiled, shoulders stiffening. Then he slipped his fingers into the pouch and teased the symbiote from its womb. Blindly searching for something—a host?—the black, spiky head undulated over the Marine’s stomach, sniffing the air until it withdrew again—not soon enough for Hammond’s liking.

  “Jeez,” groaned Harry, voice strangled with revulsion.

  Bra’tac rose with an awkwardness that, for once, betrayed his age and rapped out a command, sending his troops into a flurry
of activity. “This man is weak,” he remarked grimly, turning to Hammond. “We must make haste. Come.”

  While his Jaffa began to tie up the unconscious Marines, Bra’tac headed for the DHD in a whirl of black wool and worry. Reaching the device, he dropped to his knees and opened an inspection hatch under the dialing table. “See?” he asked curtly.

  George Hammond didn’t. “What am I looking at?”

  “These”—Bra’tac pointed at an array of colored crystals that gleamed dismally in the jaundiced light of the planet—“have been switched. That is why the symbols do no longer correspond.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Worst thing you could do.” Harry shook his head, heading off the reply. “Four missing guards will leave them guessing, but if you fix that they’ll know that we know.”

  “Your shol’va is right, Hammond of Texas.” You had to look twice to spot it, but Bra’tac was actually grinning a little. “Undoing the damage would reveal more than we want to reveal. By dialing the address for the Tauri, we can follow those warriors. If your information is correct, we shall find your people and Teal’c there.”

  “Alright.” Hammond nodded slowly, then jerked his chin at the Marines who, bound and gagged and hovered over by Bra’tac’s men, now lay side by side like a row of corncobs in a produce stall. “What about them?”

  “They will be brought aboard the tel’tac. Two of my men will guard them.”

  Which left Hammond with Bra’tac, four Jaffa, and Harry Maybourne whose support was capricious, to say the least. Not exactly the stuff of conquests, but it would have to be enough. Without another word, George Hammond stepped to the DHD and dialed the coordinates for Earth.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The last thing Sam remembered, though she couldn’t recall how or why, was drowning in pain, and she gathered that memory and put it where she couldn’t see it. She’d take it out, dust it off, and analyze it later, but right now other stuff probably was higher up on the agenda.