A last quick check outside confirmed that Daniel had snatched up the opal rock and shoved it inside his vest. He'd shed his coat and bonnet, too, which Vala thought was a pity. In a display of agility that might in other circumstances have left her feeling rather tingly, he leaped onto the animal's back. The horse promptly took off, barely avoiding a team of larger and shaggier relatives pulling a cart with a gigantic smoking metallic urn on top.
Even with Daniel safely away it would be some time before the jumper was airborne and capable of beaming them aboard. Mitchell could quite easily be dead by then. Behind her she heard shouting and glass smashing. Her would-be pursuers were helping themselves to a few gems before the fire really did take hold. Nothing much she could do about Howard since he'd decided to make himself invisible. She ducked low and left, circling around and back toward the stairwell—which was now blocked by a burning beam. Flames had taken hold of the banister, and a set of thin drapes over one window vanished in a brief, illuminating conflagration in which she caught a glimpse of figures in the stairwell dragging out the men she'd zatted earlier.
There had to be another way out of this place.
The sound of someone puking came from behind her.
“Howard?” She turned and squatted down to see the shaking youth, tears streaming down his reddened face, trying to curl up beneath a display cabinet. Neuroses were one thing but this boy's trauma was so crippling that it was going to kill him. Somewhere nearby, glass popped and shattered in the heat, and a roar of greenish flames erupted. Chemicals in a storage cupboard, no doubt, or perhaps some crystals on this odd little planet were actually flammable.
“I'm going to regret this, I know.” She dropped to her hands and knees and crawling to him, yelled, “Howard, listen to me. We have to get out of here before we both end up toast. And I can assure you; being burned to death is not nice. I know, it's already happened to me once. Well, actually, twice, but that's another story.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending and seemingly incapable of movement. “How...how?”
“Help me out of here and I'll tell you all about it. Promise!” A burning beam crashed down beside her. God—any god that cares to listen, really, because at this point I'm prepare to consider all options—please don't let me to die like this again.
Wiping his nose on his sleeve, Howard clambered out from beneath the cabinet—only to let out a terrified yelp as more glass shattered, spraying both of them with fine slivers. The heat was becoming intolerable, and the acrid smoke was choking. “Did you know I was once possessed by a god?” she yelled above the noise. “Well, she thought of herself as a god, it's a long story. But we really must leave before we both die, otherwise you'll never get to hear it, okay?”
Howard finally seemed to come to his senses, because he took off back the way she had come, but instead of turning left, he headed right along a corridor that opened to—
“Oh. This really is bad.” The wide, winding staircase was already ablaze. Just as she was deciding that perhaps getting a little crisped on the way down was far better than getting a lot crisped by staying put, the floor collapsed beneath them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daniel could swear in twenty-seven Earth and several alien languages, but all he could say as he snatched up the opal rock and leaped onto the back of the horse, was, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Although the horse took off in the right direction, Daniel barely managed to hang on when the animal almost collided with a team of Clydesdales pulling a steam fire engine. He shortened the reins and brought the horse's head down. The terrified animal pulled up short but continued to dance around for several seconds, confused by people dressed in night-clothes rushing past them with pots in hand to join a rapidly growing bucket line. Finally, Daniel managed to gain some control by directing the animal away from the clanging bells, shouts, heat and roar of the out-of-control blaze.
“Daniel! What the hell's going on?” Jack demanded through his earpiece. “Sounds like you've started a world war from down here.”
It'd been a while since Daniel had ridden, but his mount needed no urging to maintain a hard canter across the park, taking the low hedge in a fluid jump. “Forget the time machine,” he yelled into his com. “I'm on my way back. We have to beam Vala and Mitchell aboard.”
“You left them behind?”
Despite the background noise, the incredulity in Jack's voice was unmistakable, which just added to Daniel's own frustrated anger and despair. Of all the stupid things to have happened.
After locating several clamps in the coach house, Mitchell had suggested trying the tack room for the other things on Sam's list. Daniel had caught a powerful whiff of sour whisky and vomit at almost the same moment as he'd heard a deafening gunshot and felt Mitchell slam into him. They'd literally walked into a guard coming around the corner. Daniel had instantly retaliated, but the shot from his zat had knocked the lantern from the guy's hand and onto a bale of hay. The flames had taken hold even before Daniel had disentangled himself from Mitchell. Then things had gone nuts with panicked horses and people running everywhere.
Daniel's first instinct had been to get Mitchell back to the jumper, but the bullet must have done some major damage because he'd been bleeding copiously from the abdomen. Just carrying him a hundred feet away from the flames to the rear of the geochem building had been enough to bathe them both in blood. Maybe if he could have transported Mitchell directly onto an operating table, Lam might have been able to save him, but right then the Colonel's only hope was Vala and her hand device.
Reaching the Angell Street intersection, Daniel pulled back on the reins, finally urging the horse to slow. “Jack, listen to me! I've got the clamps and opal rock. Tell Sam to forget the time machine for the moment and concentrate on getting the transport operational. Mitchell's seriously wounded and God knows what state Vala is in.”
A glance over his shoulder confirmed what he'd dreaded. The coach house had been all but consumed and the surrounding wooden structures were now well ablaze. Flames had also taken hold of the geochem building. He was about to turn away when something—chemicals kept down in the labs most likely—blew out the bottom right section of the building in a crazed, multi-colored pyrotechnic display. The roof immediately sagged, sending a shower of sparks into the air.
Stomach in knots, every instinct urging him to go back for his teammates, Daniel forced himself to turn away. He allowed the animal its head, and it galloped down Angell Street.
When he'd grabbed the horse, he'd had it in mind that Mitchell or Vala—or both—would need it once she'd patched up Mitchell enough to be moved. The barred window, the opal rock on the ground, and Vala's interrupted transmission had resulted in a split second decision that tasted like crap but offered them the only possible way out.
It hadn't surprised him that Vala had come to the same conclusion half a second ahead of him, but what had surprised him was the fact that she'd unhesitatingly acted on that realization by tossing out the rock. He couldn't blame her for spooking the already terrified horse, which, he now realized from the markings on the tack, belonged to a policeman.
Jack had thankfully given up pestering him for details. The horse slowed to a loping canter, the clops sounding overly loud on the cobblestone road. Before Daniel could urge it to increase its pace, though, it fell back into a broken, jarring trot that drew attention to the wound in Daniel's right thigh. A glance at the tear and a darker damp path surrounding it told him how lucky he'd been. The bullet that had gone through Mitchell must have nicked him in the fleshy part of his inner thigh, missing his scrotum by a hair's breadth. Lifting himself in the saddle, he checked the wound and dismissed it as minor.
He almost laughed at that. Twelve years ago he would have been hollering his lungs out that he'd been shot. Now, it was a minor inconvenience. He was also aware of people running up the street toward the fire. Not ambulance chasers, but local residents carrying buckets and blankets, going to aid the firem
en who, by the increasing intensity of the tawny glow, were going to have a hard time stopping the blaze from spreading.
Crap. He had no idea if there'd been a fire, bad or otherwise, on Rhode Island in 1908, but Lovecraft had never mentioned it in any letter Daniel had read. Then again, Lovecraft had never mentioned the jumper, either, yet after tonight the boy would become a virtual hermit. Obsessed with astronomy, he would also give up publishing his hectographed journals, The Scientific Gazette and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, and instead focus on dark, meandering poetry. It would take five more years before he turned to writing self-absorbed stories about hidden, extra-dimensional horrors until finally churning out first person accounts that bore an uncanny resemblance to actual events—including the existence of a city in Antarctica built by the Ancient 'Elder' gods.
People stared at Daniel as he rode past; woman with children in their arms, clustered at the entrances of their homes. . As soon as the fire was under control the police would begin scouring the city looking for those who had started it, and every one of the folk in this street would remember an oddly dressed rider on a police horse, fleeing from the blaze.
Abandoning Mitchell and Vala.
Daniel's sinuses, which hadn't given him a moment's trouble after successive immersions in a Goa'uld sarcophagus and two post-mortem ascensions, chose now to begin throbbing unmercifully.
By the time he'd reached the outskirts of the park, no amount of urging could push the horse's pace beyond a reluctant trot. Snorting and champing at the frothy bit, the animal refused point blank to carry him along the leafy path into the woods.
“Daniel Jackson!” Teal'c called from the darkness.
Dismounting, Daniel gave the horse a slap on the rump, hoping it might take off and lead pursuers astray. “Thanks, pal.”
His thigh sent a spear of pain through his whole leg as he ran after Teal'c through the gingery hued woods. Fingering the opal rock, he was still second-guessing his decision to leave Mitchell and Vala behind when he caught sight of Jack's thin-lipped expression through the jumper's windscreen.
Sam was waiting for him just inside. Daniel slapped the opal rock into her hand then reached into his vest for the clamps. “You're going to beam them out.”
It was not a question but a statement of inarguable fact.
“Right?” Daniel asked when Sam moved into the cockpit. He noticed her laptop was sitting on the Asgard transport between the front seats. Loki was closing a panel on the time machine in the rear, while Teal'c moved passed Daniel to secure the hatch.
“Sorry, Daniel.” Sam's apology was clipped and sympathetic but she refused to meet his eyes. Instead she reached inside a panel above the copilot's chair.
“What?” he demanded, disbelieving. “The only reason I left them was because—”
“Daniel!” Jack called from the pilot's seat. “The Asgard transport is fried. I'm going to try and land this thing in the university grounds.”
The impact of Daniel's decision to leave his teammates was made worse by the lack of reproach in Jack's words.
“Sir, you can't!” Sam's head jerked around.
“Carter—” His eyes bored into hers with an intensity that was agonizingly familiar. “I told you before. I am not leaving here without Mitchell and Vala.”
Recalling the earlier conversation, the full measure of Daniel's decision hit him.
“Why would we want to avoid the consequences? “
“Because they might not be something you 'd be willing to live with. “
“The cloak uses too much power,” Sam was saying. “I can almost guarantee that it'll bum out this relay—if I can even get it to work. And we can't just land in front of everyone, General. We've already interfered with the timeline too much as it is.”
“Have we?” Daniel made no attempt to hide his desperation. “You can't know that for certain. Sam, everything that's happened occurred because we caused it. Tunguska, Lovecraft's obsession with evil extraterrestrials posing as gods—”
“Corona, New Mexico, 1947,” Jack added. “Northwest of the Roswell Army Air Field.”
“What?” Sam and Daniel demanded simultaneously.
“I didn't mention that?”
“No!” Recalling the damaged Asgard ship, Daniel glanced back at Loki who returned his stare, unblinking. “You mean that's where—when—he came from?”
“According to you,” Jack addressed Sam, who was clamping the opal rock in place, “SG-1 were sent to July 1st, 1947. Something about a rip in some material.”
“Tear in the space-time continuum,” she clarified, but then countered that by adding, “that doesn't makes any sense.”
Jack sniffed. “That's what I said.”
Anguished and in pain, Daniel snapped, “Jack, at the very least can you attempt some clarity by referring to Sam's future self as General Carter?”
Daniel wasn't entirely certain if Sam's hesitation in answering was due to his outburst, Jack's words, or the difficulty she was having with the opal bearing rock, until she said, “Even if removing Loki created a weakness, which under extraordinary circumstances might—and I stress, might—have allowed an unstable wormhole to be directed to that point in space-time, the fact is, according to the log, Loki wasn't taken from 1947 until some minutes after you and Vala arrived and beamed us out.”
For once, Daniel sympathized with Jack. “What does it matter? While we're standing here arguing about it, Mitchell is dying and Vala's...for all I know, she was still inside the building when the roof collapsed. We have to go back for them.” He turned to leave, but a firm hand on his shoulder forestalled him. Teal'c was holding a field dressing and motioning him to sit.
“You took a hit?” Jack's eyes narrowed when his gaze dropped to the wet patch on Daniel's thigh.
“This...discussion is pointless,” declared Loki, coming forward and seating himself in a passenger chair. “Return me to my time and I can effect repairs to this vessel. You will then be able to recover your.. .friends.”
Latching onto that promised solution, Daniel allowed Teal'c to edge him back into the cockpit. “You got the time machine working?” he asked Loki.
“Of course.”
The Asgard's arrogance was not lost on Daniel, nor was his sense of urgency. Daniel doubted that had anything to do with saving Mitchell and Vala. Suspicious of Loki's motives, he was about to say something more when Teal'c ripped away the material of his pants leg. The sharp stab of pain took his breath away, but he brushed off Sam's look of concern with shake of his head. He'd had worse injuries. Hell, he'd died more than once, and neither occasion had been pleasant.
“Maybe working.” Sam ignored Loki's affronted look and added, “And maybe we were responsible for certain historical events. And theoretically, the weakened section of the space-time continuum in 1947 may have been triggered by something other than removing Loki.” She withdrew her arm from the bank of crystals, stood, and checked her laptop. “I'm just not so sure about the impact of all those maybes. We could end up creating a time loop.”
“Carter, for crying out loud, instead of retiring to a nice nursing home you—General you,” Jack amended with an apologetic glance at Daniel, “goes gallivanting around the universe with some old geezer named Herbert! Now something happened in the meantime to change your mind, so can we at least work with that?”
Still looking none too happy, Sam gave a reluctant nod. “On that basis, Loki's right. And it won't matter how long we take to effect repairs once we leave because we can return to 1908 seconds after we leave here.”
“Then in order to recover Colonel Mitchell and Vala quickly, would it not be advisable to depart this time as soon as possible?” Teal'c finished tying off the field dressing on Daniel's leg. “Which would also prevent the discovery of this ship.” He pointed through the windscreen to a bunch of lights headed in their direction then turned back into the cargo section of jumper, presumably to make certain everything was properly stowed this time.
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“Sir, you're going to have to be careful not to arrive in 1947 until after we left.” Sam closed the panel and moved into the front seat. “And don't attempt to use any sub-systems or we'll draw too much power. Concentrate instead on the drive pods, inertial dampeners and life support.”
Daniel eased himself into the chair behind Jack. The lights dimmed except for the control panel and a strip along the length of the bulkhead. Other than a few scrapes and bangs from the branches, the jumper lifted smoothly into the air. The inertial dampeners were obviously working okay because the patchwork of city lights fell away at a rate that should have compacted them into the deck like a pancake. Outside, the eastern sky was showing the first purplish traces of dawn.
Sam closed the laptop and secured it in a bag. “To ensure we don't run into any aircraft or high altitude weather balloons in 1947, you shouldn't attempt to use the time machine until we're in orbit.”
Stargate - SG-1 - 09 - Roswell Page 12
