Great! Dollars to donuts the Marine was smirking. Daniel groaned. “Sugar high must have worn off.”
“Uhuh. You’re concussed.” Sam patched a smile over the worry lines. “I kind of forgot how dreadful you look.”
“Thanks. Love the costume,” Daniel retorted and suddenly remembered that he wasn’t concussed enough to have missed the obvious. “Where’s Jack?”
The smile disappeared, nudged aside when she shook her head. The unknown soldier piped up in her stead. “Colonel O’Neill is doing us all a favor.”
“That paragon of tact over there is Master Sergeant Charles Macdonald. USMC, in case you hadn’t noticed. What he’s trying to say is that Nirrti’s… busy. In her lab. With the Colonel.” Sam took a breath, then added, “You can imagine what it means—though I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Golden doors at the end of a golden corridor. Daniel squinted up at her. “The lab’s two levels down, right?”
“Yeah. How do you know?”
“Educated guess.”
It was nothing of the sort. What had forced him to a grinding halt outside that corridor was the fact that Daniel had sensed something—he’d sensed Jack there for a second—though how or why was beyond him. Then again, Jack had had the combined knowledge, abilities, voodoo of the Ancients downloaded into his brain. When the Asgard had siphoned all that stuff out again, who was to say just how much they’d missed in the race to save his life? Or what they’d seen and not told Jack or anyone else about? In any case, Jack being Jack, he wouldn’t have opted to communicate in ways whose existence he’d deny until he was blue in the face. Not unless he had no choice. Daniel struggled to forget the bone-deep distress rushing in on him at that moment and recalled something else.
He pushed himself up on his elbows. “Nirrti’s not in the lab anymore. Teal’c and I saw her leave.”
“You sure?” A sliver of hope, barely acknowledged, brightened Sam’s face. “We need to get in there to—”
“Sam, we can’t get him out yet.” Daniel could barely believe he heard himself say it, but if they didn’t knock out the transmitter first, they wouldn’t stand any chance at all. Neither would Jack. “We—”
“It’s two birds with one stone, Daniel. Nirrti has way of controlling people’s minds—including mine. If it weren’t for Macdonald here, I’d swear blind that I’m a leg short. She’s controlling Janet, and she’s probably controlling the clones as well. We’ve got to take out whatever helps her do it.”
“I agree.” Breathing slowly through his nose until the nausea subsided and the room stopped rotating, Daniel sat up. “Except, you won’t find it in the lab.”
“Why not?”
“Because the lab’s too deep inside the building. We’re looking for a transmitter. Teal’c figured out how she does it.”
At Sam’s questioning glance, Teal’c moved in two steps from his post by the door and plunged into an epic tale of naked plant guys and sound frequencies and deaf Marines. She listened quietly. When he’d finished, she sat staring into the middle distance for a while. Eventually, she said, “HAARP.”
“You mean as in plinkety-plink?” Macdonald mimed strumming a set of strings.
“That’s a lyre, not a harp,” Daniel commented tiredly, foregoing the eye roll in the interest of protecting his head.
Sam didn’t even twitch. They were too used to Jack, compared to whom the sergeant was a rank amateur. “I mean as in High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.”
“I thought we’re talking low frequency, Major,” Macdonald cut in.
“Fm getting to it. The assumption is that they’re conducting experiments to prove the viability of certain technologies Nicola Tesla discovered, including mind control. So—”
Macdonald snorted. “Tesla was a fruitcake!”
Pretending she hadn’t heard him, Sam carried on. “It’s definitely possible to impair rational thought and induce certain moods—aggression, paranoia—through radio frequencies. We all know that. Sergeant Macdonald and his men started killing each other.”
“Don’t remind me,” Macdonald said bitterly.
“But we didn’t start killing each other on PJ2 445,” objected Daniel. “Though I got pretty damn close to throttling Jack a few—”
“No, we didn’t, because what we ran into was around ten Hertz; mood swings and migraines only. For thought control you’d have to be able to hook into brain frequencies—probably Theta waves, which are in the seventy Hertz range.” Sam scrubbed a hand over her face. “I think Nirrti’s piggybacking a mind control frequency on an ELF wave. In other words, we’re looking for two transmitters, not one. I also think that the second one will be on her person. In close proximity it may still work after we’ve taken out the ELF transmitter.”
“Wonderful,” groaned Daniel. If anybody hit him with any more good news, he’d start screaming.
Sam shrugged. “Not nearly as wonderful as the fact that we have to get to the top level somehow.”
Okay, that didn’t qualify as news, good or otherwise. He and Teal’c had already figured that one out. They’d also delivered proof positive that the central stairwell was to be avoided at all cost. There had to be another way. Nirrti had built neither the city nor this fortress. The Goa’uld didn’t build, they adapted. So Nirrti had adapted this place to her requirements. But what about the folks who had built it? Early Cambodian, at a guess. Hindu at a further guess. So what did that mean?
Daniel studied the room. It was small, unadorned, and two opposing corners still held beds made from rough wooden planks and sprung with woven rope that had frayed and sagged to the floor. Not exactly palatial. Plain. Poor. Servants’ quarters. Obscure. Out of sight. Set apart. That was it! He scrambled to his feet, vaguely noting that his headache hadn’t become any more bearable.
“Are they still looking for us, Teal’c?”
“They are not,” Teal’c replied, one eyebrow lifted in a delicate enquiry. “They appear to have retreated toward the stairwell, presumably planning to trap us when we return.”
“Good.” Daniel opened the door, took a peek. The hallway was as unprepossessing as the chamber they were hiding in. Either side there were more small doorways, more servants’ chambers. The far end of the corridor opened into a cavernous room. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? On the other hand, they were due at least one break. Without turning around, he asked, “Teal’c, would you mind carrying Sam again? It’s quicker this way.”
He slipped into the hall, listening, almost sniffing the air for company, but it was quiet, as Teal’c had said. His bare feet ground over a layer of dust that cushioned the stone tiles. Nobody had been here in decades—centuries maybe. Daniel smiled.
Furtive footsteps behind him told him the others were following. “That way!” he murmured.
“Where are we going?” Macdonald, sounding petulant.
“To find the second staircase.”
“There is no other staircase!”
“Yes, there is.”
Okay, so it was conjecture, but he wasn’t about to admit that to a Marine.
The hallway led into an enormous kitchen. For a moment Daniel’s imagination populated it with men and women, sweating in the blazing heat from clay ovens and the open fireplace, shouts and chatter and clanking of pans, thick wads of steam and the sweet scent of exotic spices. Then the images faded, leaving behind long-cold
f
stoves, a black and empty fireplace, copper pans dulled by grime and silently dangling from racks.
“See?” asked Macdonald. “I told you there’s nothing here.”
Slowly, Daniel turned full circle, squinted past Sam who was perched on Teal’c’s back. It had to be here. It was the most logical place. Everyone came through the kitchen. One of the great constants of the universe.
Yes!
There they were. Across the room two tallish, fuzzy shapes sat in front of an otherwise plain wall. As he approached, gray patches solidified into the forbiddi
ng faces of the dikpals. This time it took him less than a minute to release the door mechanism. The stone slab swung aside to reveal a steep, narrow flight of stairs.
“Okay, I bite.” Sam peered at him over Teal’c’s shoulder. “How the hell did you know?”
“Going by the cultural pointers all over this place”—Daniel gave a sweep of the arm meant to include fortress and city—“I figured the people who built it had a caste-system; strict social hierarchy from princes and priests all the way down to laborers and servants.”
“So?” asked Macdonald.
“So suppose you’re a prince, Sergeant. What happens if you come down the stairs and the stable hand, who’s on the way up, bumps into you?”
Macdonald shrugged. “I smack him?”
“Spoken like a true Marine. And no. You run to the nearest priest for a round of ritual ablutions and spiritual cleansing, which is both expensive and time-consuming and should be avoided whenever possible.”
“By having separate servants’ corridors and stairs!” Sam exclaimed.
“Exactly. It explains the tunnels Teal’c and I found, and if I weren’t such an idiot, I’d have realized it hours ago.” Fuming with annoyance at himself, Daniel gazed up the seemingly endless staircase. “We should—”
A loud thud made him whirl around. Macdonald had collapsed, gasping for air, his face contorted in a bluish rictus.
“What the…?” breathed Daniel.
Teal’c looked impressed. “O’Neill predicted that your explanations would have this effect one day.”
“I want you to tell me what’s wrong with them, that’s what!” Simmons’ minion snarled.
“There is nothing wrong with them!”
How many times had she said this? Two? Three?
Nirrti had lost track of the conversation. Mrityu’s suffering, a constant groundswell in her awareness, proved to be more of a disruption than anticipated. It was pleasurable, and normally Nirrti would have welcomed it, but she could not afford to indulge under the circumstances. The man staring at her from the viewing mirror was at least as shrewd as his master—and twice as insolent.
“Look, you think we’re stupid?” He spat the words as though he wished to spit on her. “We’ve run a whole battery of tests, and the results all say the same. You screwed up somewhere, and you’d be better off admitting it, because I doubt the Jaffa you kept are doing any better than ours.”
“You lie so that you can justify your invasion of my territory!”
The man smirked. “You wish, lady! And this isn’t an invasion. We…”
A wail of anguish from Mrityu blotted out his words, and Nirrti found her attention distracted yet again. Was it merely more of the healer’s yammering, or had the Tauri died at last? She hoped the latter was the case. That way she might get a reprieve from all this pitiful emotional turmoil, amusing at it was.
The creature in the mirror looked at her keenly. It seemed he had asked a question and expected an answer.
“I will not tolerate your invasion,” she said.
“Yeah, you mentioned that.” His smirk deepened. “This conversation is getting a little circular. Not quite up to our usual acumen, are we? But I’m a nice guy, so don’t mind repeating myself. It’s a search party. You’ve got a bunch of people running around who shouldn’t be there. I’m guessing they stayed under your radar so far. ’Cos you would have mentioned it if you’d noticed, right?” He stared and waited. Finally, receiving no reply, he continued. “So, as I was saying, we want them back.”
She stared at Simmons’ crony, teased a smile of sincere regret from the memories of her host. “I fear the intruders are dead. The planet is most inhospitable, and I suggest you recall your men before they meet the same fate. After all, you claim they are unwell.”
“And I fear that’s not just a claim. It’s a fact!”
For the first time his mask of superiority slipped to reveal anger, even alarm. He was telling the truth. If that was the case, and assuming the humans, in their elemental ignorance, had contrived to actually obtain reliable test results, then the Jaffa were defective. All of them, including hers. The most obvious explanation would be an error during the cloning process—but cloning was too basic to make mistakes. It would be tantamount to committing an error when adding up two and two. Besides, had she made a mistake of such magnitude, the clones would not have been viable at all. No, it was impossible. He simply was a better liar than she had given him credit for.
“Show me records of your tests, and I might believe you,” she demanded, bored the moment she said it. Why did they insist on these rituals? Mrityu was quiescent now. Had the Tauri died? Nirrti wanted to return to the laboratory.
Simmons’ creature must have anticipated her request. Without a word, he held up two sheets of paper—paper!—for her perusal. The scribblings on it meant nothing, might have delineated the pedigree of his favorite dog. Nirrti pretended to study them and, for a moment, allowed her boredom to show.
“Very well.” She had to be seen to comply, even if Simmons’ threat of withholding the symbiotes was ludicrous. She could clone her own, had been cloning them, because she did not trust the human scientists. But it would be unwise to let these people know that their ploy meant nothing to her. As long as they felt in control, they were harmless, could be manipulated. “I shall study the problem,” she said. “Once you have withdrawn your troops.”
“That’s got nothing to do with the problem!” he blustered. “We’ll withdraw our men once we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
“I told you these people are dead.”
“Including the Jaffa?”
He had tried to make it sound like a taunt, but she had lived too long, seen too much, not to detect the flicker of worry in his eyes.
Fool! He wanted the shol’va. Simmons wanted the shol’va. Why? Why would they need him when they had new Jaffa?
New Jaffa.
Here was the solution to the riddle, the connection whose existence he had so adamantly denied. The claim that she had committed an error was designed to hoodwink her—a ruse to deceive the goddess of deceit herself. In different circumstances Nirrti might have found a spark of admiration for the sheer gall of it, but not now.
That disgraceful travesty of a Goa’uld, who had let himself be captured by the humans, must have recognized the cause of the problem, while she had been blind to the most basic of facts. Unforgivable—if understandable. You acquired Jaffa and ensured they did your bidding; you did not concern yourself with the minutiae of their existence. They simply were. But as young animals needed to hone their skills by following their parents example, so Jaffa needed to learn how to coexist with their symbiotes. Failure to master that skill was lethal, for animals as well as Jaffa.
Simmons needed the shol’va to teach his Jaffa how to be Jaffa. It was almost grotesque enough to amuse, especially as, to her, the remedy would come so much easier. She would summon one of the Jaffa manning her last ha’tak to help train the clones properly. Simmons, on the other hand, would not get his wish. He would have to crawl to her for help.
Barely suppressing a smile, she said, “They are all dead.”
This time the man’s face gave away nothing. “In which case I’d like to see the bodies.”
“You shall see them,” she promised and cut the transmission.
His image dissolved at last.
She might have told him that her pet boars left no evidence behind; a truth, and he knew it. But it was far more satisfying to pretend to give in to his demand and decimate his and Simmons’ hopes. “Jaffa! Kree!”
Her First Prime, a mere shadow against the wooden paneling of the wall, eased away from his post by the door and approached. With less grace and strength than he should have displayed—or was it merely a trick of her imagination? No. When he stepped toward her, sudden light flooding his face, she found the telltale signs of exhaustion marking his features.
“Yes, Lady Nirrti.”
“K
ill the Tauri if he is not already dead and kill the woman. Have their bodies brought here. Also, send some of your men to retrieve Jackson and the shol’va. If they are still alive, kill them and bring me the corpses. And do so before those fools out there find them.”
“Yes, Lady Nirrti.”
As he left, a warm breeze swept through the open door, stirred the silken drapes, and flooded the room with the scent of jasmine. Nirrti inhaled deeply, letting the fragrance ease her tension. Somewhere in the back of her mind the mewling of Mrityu blended with the ancient despair of the host. But she could not allow herself to drift into its music too deeply. She had to—
The door crashed open, driving jasmine and quiet from the room.
“Lady Nirrti!” Her First Prime was shaking, and this was not attributable to insufficient training. “Lady Nirrti, the woman has escaped. My men say Macdonald is with her, and so are Jackson and the shol’va.”
She almost laughed. Survival instincts were a peculiar thing. They would drive a creature on in search of continued existence, even when the quest itself promised nothing but death.
“They should not have taken Macdonald with them,” she said softly.
Master Sergeant Charles Macdonald? Where are you?
There was no answering thought. Impossible.
I command you to reveal your location!
When he still refused to answer, she let her rage slam toward his mind at full force. The agony of it should have guided her like a beacon, but instead of burning his mind, her thoughts ineffectually frittered into a cold, dark void. It might mean that Macdonald was dead. Or perhaps unconscious.
“Find them!” she hissed at her First Prime. “And inform the commander of my ha’tak that I may wish to leave.” Nirrti felt a knot of worry tightening in her stomach, and forced herself to focus on the woman, Carter.
Somewhere high above gleamed a little speck of brightness, though Sam doubted it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Once they reached that light, chances were that brown smelly substance would start hitting the fan at an unprecedented rate.
07 - Survival of the Fittest Page 32
