07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  “Absolutely, sir.” Fraiser nodded so hard, he was afraid her head would fall off. “Nirrti’s gone. Something must have happened. And—”

  “Let’s speculate later. We’ve got to get out of here while we can.” He tried to push himself up. His chest clenched around a mad jig of stutters that had no discernible rhythm to it and scared the hell out of him. “Help me up. And then take a step back, ’cause I’m definitely gonna spew, and I don’t want to do it all over you.”

  Oh yes, and this was definitely Fraiser. She suddenly sported that mulish medical expression, the one that proclaimed Do as I say, or enema. Nirrti couldn’t reproduce that one in years of trying. Eventually the expression relented, and Fraiser threaded an arm around his shoulders. “Just so you know, this is against my better judgment. If we were at home, I’d have you hooked up to an ECG so fast it’d make your head spin.”

  “And that’s different from usual how? Don’t forget the putting me in restraints—”

  The rest of that was cut short by the threatened spew. Fraiser didn’t retreat when he doubled over. She just slipped sideways out of the line of fire, one cold little hand rubbing his back, anchoring him between heaves, and he was pathetically grateful for her touch. All around them, the clones in their glass tubes looked on while he was losing a lunch he couldn’t recall eating. At last he ran out of bile, too.

  “We’ve got to go,” he gasped, trying to ignore the taste in his mouth.

  “In a minute. Don’t move.”

  The tone brooked no argument, and the hand disappeared, leaving an oddly empty patch between his shoulder blades. Jack decided that Don’t move didn’t extend to his head, so he looked up to watch her make a beeline for a U-shaped counter that embraced the control console for Nirrti’s hellish contraption. It obviously was some kind of drug cabinet, except the goodies seemed to be synthesized rather than drawn from little bottles. Fraiser came back with a large glass of clear liquid and the type of hissy hypodermic used for flu shots.

  She thrust the glass at him. “Drink it. All of it.”

  “What is it?”

  It damn near provoked an eye roll, then she seemed to concede that a certain amount of trust issues was excusable. The attitude wilted to guilt. “Just water, sir. Really. You’re dehydrated.”

  He took a sip, rinsed his mouth, spat, drank properly. Nodding at the hypo, he asked, “And that?”

  “That’s what’ll keep you going for the next hour or so.” She gave a bitter grin. “Good job I assisted Nirrti. At least I know how to work the synthesizer.”

  They’d have to talk this out, wouldn’t they? Personally, Jack figured the sooner this delightful episode was tucked away alongside Iraq and everything else that hurt, the better. Which worked fine when only he was involved. Except, in this case he had somebody else to worry about. They’d definitely have to talk. But not now.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Doc, and you still didn’t answer my question.”

  “Electrolytes and a pinch of nitro.”

  “A pinch of what?”

  “Nitroglycerine. It’ll help with the arrhythmia, though it won’t fix it.”

  “Dynamite. You know me, Doc. I never suffer from stuff I can’t spell, and I never inject explosives.”

  “Shut it. Sir.” She’d almost smiled, so that was something. Her fingers felt for his jugular, and she placed the hypodermic there, triggered it. It did hiss. “Express delivery. You should start feeling better in a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah. Let’s not wait for that. In a couple minutes Nirrti might show up with a crew of Jaffa to check why you’re offline.”

  Fraiser didn’t look convinced but held out an arm to support him.

  Inching off the table to start the fun part of the evening, he remembered what had happened immediately before Nirrti’s attempt to fry him in mercury. “I think I’d better try this on my own. Nothing personal, but I don’t need my ribs squeezed.”

  “You’ll fall flat on your face if you try that, and your ribs are fine, Colonel.” Another wry grin. “Nirrti was good enough to fix those.”

  Amazing what slipped past you when you hurt all over. “Remind me to send her a thank-you note.”

  The floor was no warmer than the rest of the lab. It was useful, though, in that his freezing toes provided a solid focal point when the clones and the tubes and the entire room embarked on a whirl around him, dancing to the insane stutter of his heart.

  “No way. Sit down again.” Fraiser, sounding half a million miles away and disconcertingly adamant.

  “It’ll get better once I’m moving. Where’s the damn door?”

  “This way.”

  Jack had no idea whether or not he actually was walking or where. All he could see past the starburst lights exploding on his retinas were the eyes of the clones, all alike, all staring at him. What the hell were they going to do with these things if they made it out of here? Take them home?

  He must have said it out loud, because Fraiser muttered, “They’re not sentient. Not beyond limbic instincts.”

  Not exactly an answer, though it suggested the solution, grim as it was. He’d worry about it later. From somewhere beyond a barrier of fog and eyes, he heard the whoosh of a door sliding open, felt air warm enough to replace cold sweat with the real item. The barrier thinned to admit a vista of corridor and Goa’uldy gilt walls—or maybe Fraiser’s cocktail was kicking in at last. His heart seemed to have abandoned its efforts to leave his body through his left nostril.

  The hall was as long as he recalled and had sprouted no side-exits since he’d last come through here. Not good. They’d have to make this fast. Hoping it wouldn’t result in a crash-landing, he disengaged himself from Fraiser’s grip.

  “What are you doing, Colonel?”

  “Testing your therapy. Run!”

  It was more of a stagger, fingers trailing one of those golden walls, just to give him a direction in which to topple. Of course Fraiser didn’t run. She paced him, prepared for a quick catch. At the mouth of the hallway he stopped, flattened himself into the shadows and sucked in a surprised breath.

  Judging from the activity he’d witnessed—when? A thousand years ago?—he’d expected a steady flow of Jaffa clones cavorting through the stairwell. Instead, peace and quiet. Odd. Definitely not to be trusted. Lately his lucky breaks had been too thin on the ground for that.

  The bargain basement was one level below them, and he recognized the entrance to the vault where they’d been captured. That might work. It had a ring transporter.

  As though she’d been reading his mind Fraiser whispered, “The outgoing transporter can only be activated from Nirrti’s ribbon device. Trouble is, as far as I can tell, it’s the only way out of here.”

  She probably was right. Just like Nirrti’s lab on Hanka—if on a somewhat grander scale. He shrugged. “So we’ll get the ribbon device off her. But first we get Carter. Any idea where she is?”

  “Two levels up.” There was a beat, and Fraiser continued, “She’s not guarded. She can’t walk.”

  For a second Jack believed the lab door had opened. Then he realized that shock was tracing a cold finger down his spine. “You’re trying to tell me she—”

  “No. Nirrti cured her, but Sam doesn’t know that.”

  Swallowing a curse, he stuck his neck out a little further and, prompted by the memory of a dozen mystery Marines swinging from the rafters—two thousand years ago?—checked the upper levels. Wall and stairs between the third and fourth floors were pocked with blackened craters, the signature brand of destruction left by plasma bolts. At the bottom of the stairwell lay an assortment of arms and legs, clad in Jaffa armor and flung wide in death. Clearly somebody else had taken exception to Nirrti’s hospitality, and along the fourth level gallery guards were blockading all the corridors, waiting for the demolition crew to scuttle from its burrow.

  Jack scanned the stairwell again and—for the first time in two millennia—felt like smiling. Things seemed to be ch
anging on the lucky break front. “They never clean up after themselves.”

  “What?” whispered Fraiser.

  “There.” He pointed at an orphaned staff weapon wedged under the stairs. “Quickly, before somebody complains to housekeeping.”

  George Hammond hunkered in the shadows by the city gate and, like Harry and Bra’tac beside him, stared at the coil of smoke that twirled up from a tall pagoda about two klicks northwest of their position.

  “What do you think caused this?” Bra’tac murmured.

  “SG-1.” Hammond grinned around a whole mouthful of hope. “They tend to exhibit a certain degree of carelessness with Goa’uld property.”

  “I noticed that,” groused Maybourne. “Jack can be real clumsy around advanced alien technology.”

  They’d reached the city just in time to witness the explosion. A staff blast had risen like an emergency flare, streaking for the pinnacle of that pagoda, missing narrowly. The second blast, less than three seconds later, had struck home, and something atop that building had gone up like the Fourth of July. Something vital, presumably. Now there was a pitched battle in progress up there; more staff blasts slicing through the dusk, a much weaker flicker that might be a zat, and, unless Hammond was hearing things, gunshots.

  Ignoring Maybourne’s observations, Bra’tac nodded slowly. “Then this is where we shall go.”

  “Get real!” Harry gawped at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Did you see what’s under the boob-shaped thing with the missing tip? Where I come from, we call that a fortress!”

  “Where I come from, we call it a challenge.” Bra’tac flashed one of those predatory smirks. “Hammond of Texas. I thank you for providing an old man with such entertainment. Come!” He rose easily, belying his old man act, and without looking back set out across the square by the gate, evening light gleaming red on his skullcap.

  “Jeez!” Harry groaned. “He reminds me of Sister Mary Evangeline back at school. Is he always like that?”

  “Pretty much.” Hammond pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s go before we lose him.”

  Bra’tac was heading straight across the square, so it was safe to assume that the Marines had fanned out into the city, his Jaffa on their heels. Hammond and Maybourne caught up with him in an alley that burrowed in northwesterly direction between crumbling houses and tilting statuary. Art and architecture were ancient and distinctly Asian, and Hammond wondered which conclusions Dr. Jackson might have drawn. He himself couldn’t read anything into it, apart from a sense of threat that seemed to waft from behind empty casements and lopsided doors. Not the surreal fear of the flashbacks he’d had in the jungle, but something new, something he hadn’t lived yet. Preferable, to his thinking, because whatever the danger might be, it didn’t come embroidered with dead familiar faces, dead accusing eyes.

  You don’t know that, George.

  The thought chilled gooseflesh from his skin and didn’t bear contemplating, so he upped his pace to stay abreast of Bra’tac. An instant later an outstretched arm slammed into his chest, stopping him dead in his tracks.

  “Do not move!” murmured the old warrior, head cocked like a deer tasting the air.

  As always in the tropics, night had fallen abruptly. Under the faint shine of stars the alley—a different one, narrower and rising steeply—had turned into a gray chasm, doors and windows gaping like fathomless mouths. Some fifty meters ahead was an intersection, a patch of not-quite-charcoal between the houses. It looked deserted.

  At first Hammond couldn’t make out a damn thing apart from the thudding of his own heart and Maybourne huffing down his neck like an asthmatic seal. Then he heard it. A high-pitched chitter and the scraping of metal on stone, barely there, intermittent—and stationary. It was too faint to pin down distance, at least for human ears. Bra’tac, on the other hand, seemed to have gauged it to the millimeter.

  “Come,” he murmured and led them toward the intersection.

  Three houses from the end of the alley he signaled them to stop, molded himself to the wall, and moved on noiselessly and virtually unseen, shadow among shadows. The chitter was much more pronounced now, though the scraping had all but ceased. Bra’tac sidled up to a window, peered inside. An instant later starlight glanced off the blunt head of his staff as he swung the weapon into readiness. A hand came up briefly, waving them on, and they followed him into the house, guns drawn and unsafed.

  The upper floor and roof had disintegrated long ago, and the wan gleam of stars frosted a large open room—probably a combined kitchen and living area. Piles of rubble rose from the stone floor like a miniature mountain range, and strewn in among them lay broken furniture and crockery. Hammond’s boot toed something hard that rolled over, clattering; a pottery bowl, absurdly intact. The chitter was loud in here, ringing with greedy, needy excitement. What the devil was this?

  Bra’tac nudged his arm, pointed. In the farthest corner of the room lay two shapes, human or at least a pretty good imitation thereof. Hammond felt a fist of terror slam into his gut, forced past it, did what he had to do, what came with the job, same as the letters that started I regret to inform you. If nothing else, the godforsaken exercise that had triggered this whole mess had proven conclusively that SG-1 wasn’t immune to things that killed you. He’d just blindly clung to a belief in miracles—which was what happened when you were fool enough to care for those under your command. Unhappily for him, George Hammond didn’t know how not to give a damn when he sent his people into harm’s way.

  He stepped closer, straight into a weak-kneed puddle of relief when he saw drooping heads, scalps half-bared by crew cuts. Not his people. Definitely not! Air slipped from his lungs in a surprised little gasp as he tried to yoke USMC follicular fashion to Jaffa armor and failed. Surely they couldn’t be part of Simmons’ mob. Not with that outfit.

  “What the hell?” he whispered.

  The words penetrated where the noises of their approach hadn’t. One of the men lifted his head, and his eyes snapped open, dim light glinting in the whites. “Who are you?” Slow and labored and, had he been able to summon the energy to make it sound that way, baffled.

  “I’m Major General Hammond, Stargate Command. What’s your name, Marine?” Obeying an instinct, Hammond was about to crouch next to the man.

  Bra’tac clamped his arm in an iron grip. “Do not move any closer!” he hissed.

  “This one’s safe. He’s dead.” Maybourne, who’d been hanging back, shoved past them, dropped into a squat, lifted the second man’s head to see his face. “Whoa! Take a look at this! He’s—”

  “Hasshak!”

  This time it wasn’t a game. The staff weapon arced around, whipped into Harry’s midriff to snap him double, tore him off his feet. Neatly folded like a piece of laundry, he flew back and into a heap of debris.

  “Are you nuts?” he yelped.

  Darting toward the spot where Harry had crouched, Bra’tac brought down a booted foot, hard. To Hammond it sounded as though he’d stepped into a plateful of fortune cookies—except, there were wet, squishing noises mixed in with the crackle.

  “Hasshak!” Bra’tac growled again. “Do you wish to become a host?”

  “A what?”

  The old warrior lifted his foot. The thing underneath was writhing in its death throes, and Hammond could see the dorsal spikes, black on gray in the gloom, flaring a threat no one would take seriously anymore. Up close and personal he’d only seen its like twice—two times too many by his reckoning—but he recognized it alright.

  Calmer now, Bra’tac whispered, “When the symbiote sensed this man’s death approaching, it left the pouch to search for a host.”

  “Isn’t it a bit young for that?”

  “Indeed, Hammond of Texas. But it would have tried, and it might have succeeded with that fool there.”

  “Mutual, to be sure,” groaned Harry, scrabbling to his feet in a susurrus of dust and pebbles. “Before you knock me senseless again, oh Cranky One, you think y
ou might wanna check what killed our friend? Don’t know about you guys, but I’d kinda like to know, with a view to avoiding the COD and all that.”

  “There is no risk to you, Colonel Maybourne. Or to Hammond of Texas.”

  “Oh yeah? So what’re they dying of? Old age?”

  “They are dying because they are not Jaffa. Their symbiotes have weakened them to the point of death.”

  Which, in the strict biological sense, would make the Goa’uld larvae parasites—intelligent tapeworms—which was about as apposite as it got. Hammond stared at the Marine who’d sagged a bit further into his corner, wheezing for air and listening to all this. Whatever had been done to the man, whomever he served, they couldn’t just stand by and watch him die. “Can’t you help him, Master Bra’tac?”

  “It is too late, Hammond of Texas. This man has never learned to practice kelno’reem, therefore his symbiote was unable to sustain his body’s function.” Bra’tac’s cloak swished; perhaps he had shrugged. “I cannot teach him in the time he has left. Nobody could.”

  “Look,” said Harry, an edge of disgusted fascination in his tone.

  The Marine’s hands had been clasped over his stomach. Now the fingers were nudged aside by the thing rising from his pouch and snaking through the chinks in the armor. It reared five, maybe six, inches high, head swaying sinuously, as if it were sniffing for something. And perhaps it was; aroused by scent of potential hosts, it chittered eagerly. Bra’tac snatched it up and, with a swift jerk, snapped its neck.

  “Hey!” The edge in Harry’s voice bloomed into full-blown disgust. “Why did you do that? You got any idea what these babies are worth on the open market?”

  “You will sell Goa’uld?” Bra’tac seemed intrigued by the idea. “As slaves?”

  “Kinda. Charged a million bucks for the last one, and—”

  Their unexpected bonding session was interrupted by the Marine Jaffa—or whatever he was. He extended a shaking hand in Hammond’s direction. “You… you are from Earth?”

  Hammond shot a quick glance at Bra’tac, received a nod to indicate that it was safe, and squatted next to the dying man. “Yes, we’re from Earth. Well, two of us, anyway. We—”