For just a second longer, Teal’c stared at the spot where the transporter rings had appeared and disappeared, then he tore his attention away. He knew what had happened, and there was nothing to be done about it. Except leave, as quickly as they could, because Nirrti would not let it rest here.
The clones, bereft of the will that had governed their actions, seemed frightened and confused, and for the moment they had ceased firing. Perhaps it had finally occurred to them that, unless they gave up a futile fight, they would be trapped here as surely as their quarries. Teal’c took his chance, leaped off the roof, and bolted into the cover of the colonnade as soon as his feet struck the ground.
His team mates and Sergeant Macdonald were still in the same position, hunkering under the arcade.
“Now we know what was so important in there. They kept the door open for Nirrti.” Major Carter scrambled to a stand. “Dammit, I should have seen it coming! It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. We—”
“Why the devil did those rings go off?” Sergeant Macdonald never received an answer, either because he had not been heard or because there was no time to explain.
Smoke was rolling from the building, thick and black, blotting out the stars and forming reddish domes above the torches that illuminated the terrace. Through it, seemingly out of nowhere, stabbed a thin, vertical line, not unlike a target laser. It was aimed at the center of the fortress, directly into the open stairwell. By Teal’c’s count it lasted two seconds, perhaps three, then it vanished again.
Daniel Jackson frowned. “I’m thinking this is probably not a good thing. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking we should get the hell out of here.”
“Indeed.”
“We’d better go.” Major Carter, not privy to these musings, rose. “Cover me!”
Without waiting for a reply, she darted out into the open and toward the building. The clones by the marquee loosed several halfhearted staff blasts that fizzed through the smoke harmlessly off-target. When Teal’c and Daniel Jackson returned fire, they desisted almost immediately. Major Carter reached the covered patio and began to rip silk curtains from their fastenings. Lengths of fabric trailing after her, she raced for a fountain outside Nirrti’s quarters, dunked the silk into the water.
“What are you waiting for?” she shouted.
Teal’c, Daniel Jackson, and Sergeant Macdonald made a break across the terrace. This time it drew no reaction from the clones. Firelight trilled across the patio, cast orange highlights on the stone and flickering shadows from the pillars. The heat was dry and stifling, a mere promise of what was to come. But they had no choice, and O’Neill was still imprisoned in the laboratory. If he was still alive—as indeed he would be. Teal’c refused to contemplate any other option, snatched one of the sodden sheets Major Carter held out, and wrapped it around himself.
“Okay, Teal’c’s on point; I’ll be bringing up the rear,” she said and turned to Teal’c. “Last time we checked, there were two guards left in there, though I don’t believe—”
“No.” He shook his head. The men who had defended Nirrti’s rooms had either fled or burned. Even with the aid of a symbiote it was impossible to survive this for long. Which meant he would have to find the shortest route and commit no error. There would not be time to double back.
A flap of wet fabric tugged over his nose and mouth, Teal’c ventured into the blaze, grateful that the floor was stone—uncomfortably warm, but not combustible and therefore safe. The smoke was thick enough to virtually blind him. Still, logic dictated that the entrance to the suite would be off the central stairwell, which had to be at the other end of this room and to the right. Using his staff like a machete, he swept aside more silken hangings, all furiously alight, burning pennants. Each sweep shook loose a blast of incandescence, and the unprotected skin around his eyes and on his forehead felt as though it shrank in the heat, too tight to contain his face. Like a fiery heart, the room seemed to pulse around him, expanding and compressing, hypnotic. From the corner of his eye he saw tall, dark figures, dancing in shrouds of flame to the roar of combusting oxygen. He turned, only to find that it was a row of burning pillars, realized that it was as good as a warning. Before long, the ceiling would fall.
Within some invisible conduit the temperature rose just high enough to trigger a freak draft. It momentarily cleared the smoke, dragged it toward the roof terrace on coattails of fire. Teal’c found himself less than six feet away from a wall he had not expected to be in this location and with no means of telling whether the exit would be to the left or to the right. If he chose wrong, they would die. His instincts told him to go left, and he obeyed. If he wasted time on hesitation, they would die anyway.
He kept the wall in sight now, yelling—and coughing—in frustration when it led him to a window, not a door. How could he have been so wrong? How could he—
Not a window; it could not be. The heat would have shattered the pane that even now seemed smooth and undisturbed. Eyes tearing from the smoke, he saw that it was an observation device—a communication globe stretched flat, like the television units the Tauri preferred. It showed an area of the city he did not recognize and three men running up an endless flight of stairs. One of them was Jaffa, and the way he moved appeared oddly familiar.
The stately dance of the pillars exploded into a fury of sparks and noise and splintering wood, and the ceiling near the terrace collapsed. Flames began pressing in toward him, and his silk cocoon had stopped dripping and felt hot. Briefly assuring himself that his team mates were still following, Teal’c hurried on. Unless he found a way out within the next—And there it was.
A dark shaft, punched by cool air that fed the fire, and at its end an open door.
“Come!” he shouted, smoke delving into his lungs and making him choke.
He stayed by the door, counting them off: Sergeant Macdonald, his scalp blistered where embers had burned through the fabric; Daniel Jackson, blindly staggering along, his already damaged eyes red and swollen; Major Carter guiding him, soot-blackened, hair singed, but otherwise intact.
They had barely reached the safety of the stairwell when a deep rumble shook the fortress and for a moment seemed to still even the blaze behind them.
“What the hell?” enquired Daniel Jackson of no one in particular.
“What the hell?” For a second Jack thought he was about to keel over after all. Despite the upbeat medical bulletins he issued to Fraiser at regular intervals, he wasn’t all that steady on his feet.
Staff weapon tucked against him in case he lost his balance, he closed his eyes for a moment. He wanted to sleep for a year, but even sitting down would have been a relief. Except, if he did that, he probably wouldn’t be able to get up again.
“Colonel?” came Fraiser’s voice, way to reedy. She sat tilted at an odd angle, one elbow propped into the crook where floor met wall.
“I’m peachy.” Jack slapped on a smile.
This time she didn’t call him on it, and it scared the crap out of him. That, and not knowing where Carter was or Teal’c—or Daniel, with that bizarre notion of his.
… if I buy it out here, it won’t be because you’re there but because you’re not…
What if Daniel was right?
The thought splintered in another rumble, and it dawned on Jack that the phenomenon was objective, not subjective. First somebody seemed to have fired an intar straight down the center of the stairwell, and now this. Lousy experience showed that there more than likely was a causal connection between these events.
The umpteentuplets also found it kinda weird. You could tell because, for the time being, they’d quit trying to fry him. Staff weapon ready to fire, Jack edged out onto the gallery for a peek. Nicely lined up on the levels above and below, the ’tuplets stood staring into the hole. Maybe they’d been bred from an unusually dumb germline. Maybe it was their incubation-day, and the sperm donor had beamed down a strip-a-gram.
Yeah, you should be so lucky, O’Neill.
He could start picking them off now, but then he wouldn’t get to see what was so damn fascinating down there. Another rumble, and he used it to slip just far enough toward the edge of the gallery to get a full view of the bottom floor.
“What the hell?” he whispered again.
A mosaic at the center of the floor—presumably the target area for that beam earlier—had turned a glassy, luminous green, shadows pulsing through it. It seemed to be growing, and they’d have to get past to reach the vault. After they grabbed the ribbon device and found Carter—neither of which was likely now, not with Fraiser injured. The best he could do was get her out. And then he’d drag his sorry ass back in here and look for his 2IC.
But first he’d end this current party.
Without bothering to duck back into cover, he took aim—and never fired the shot. The germline couldn’t have been all that dumb. Or the clones knew more about pulsing green floor-fungus than he did. They turned around and ran for the exit, which meant downstairs, which meant the gang of four holding the upper gallery was headed his way.
He dived back into the corridor. Fraiser still looked like Casper after hitting a wall, not that he’d expected any improvement. The black and red scorch mark on her shoulder was digging wider and deeper—if left untreated, staff weapon burns could swelter on long after the actual hit—and underneath he could see the faint white gleam of her collarbone.
“What’s happening, sir?” she whispered, barely audible over the ongoing rumbles.
“Company. We’re gonna have to drop off the radar.” Squinting against the gloom, he scanned the hallway. No doors either side, but thirty meters along was a cross-passage. Not perfect, but it would take them out of sight and hopefully out of mind. He leaned the staff weapon against the wall and crouched. “Brace yourself, Janet. This is gonna be fun. I’m sorry.”
“No, sir.” She knew the drill too well not to get what he was doing and tried to wriggle away from him. “You can’t carry me. You—”
“We haven’t got time for foreplay, Doc. Either you let me carry you round the corner there, or we both stay here and wait for the clones to declare open season. What’s it to be?”
Her glare promised that his next medical would include a prostate exam, but she stopped fighting him. Jack hooked under her good arm, pulled her onto his shoulders, and somehow just knew that he’d never in a million years get up from his squat. Somebody yelled, a furious howl of frustration—his own, he realized, startled—and then he was on his feet. Fraiser’s weight shifted subtly, grew a fraction heavier. Grateful she’d passed out at last, he grabbed the staff and staggered for the intersection, waiting for shouts and running footsteps and the sizzle of plasma bolts to catch up with him.
They never came.
An eternity later, Jack rounded the corner and allowed himself to catch his breath and listen past the rumbles that shook the building, the roar in his ears, the thumping stutter of his heart. On autopilot, his mind took in details of the location and filed them away. The cross-passage, lit only by the residual light spilling along the corridor, probably formed a ring around the stairwell; on its outside stretched a parade of doors, mostly gaping on empty rooms. A little further down the hall two were shut. No ’tuplets anywhere in sight, which was good news. He tried to figure out where to go from here. Follow the passage and hope for another corridor or wait a few more minutes and head back the way he’d come?
He wished the thumping would stop, so he could think straight. How was he expected to—
Okay, so his ticker wasn’t responsible for the thumping. Too rhythmic for starters, and it came from the direction of those two shut doors.
Carter.
Sucking in a dizzy breath of relief, he eased Fraiser to the ground as gently as he could and edged along the hallway. “Sam?”
The thumping picked up pace and vigor.
“Sam!”
“In here! Hey!” A male voice, hoarse and commanding and, as far as Jack was concerned, the next-best thing to a boot in the groin. “Get us out!”
You’re an idiot, O’Neill! Fraiser told you she wasn’t locked up!
But “Sam” and whoever else was in there might be of help. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. Jack decided to ignore that lump of misery in the pit of his stomach and brought up the staff weapon. “Stand back from the door!”
The lock showed excellent workmanship and took two blasts before it gave. Somebody yanked the door open and dispelled any residual hope he might have held of Carter having contracted a bad case of strep. Nicely lit by the lone torch in the cell, “Sam” was an easy six foot six, distinctly male, and African-American. Behind him thronged four more faces, all of whom Jack recalled seeing on the clones.
He froze.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
George Hammond watched in dismay as the night sky above the fortress blossomed into flickering red.
“It’s on fire,” observed Harry.
“Oh, really? Thanks for pointing it out.”
“You know, there’s a reason why people run out of burning buildings rather than into them.”
“You are afraid, Maybourne?” Bra’tac’s voice struck that fine balance between amusement and contempt.
“No. All I’m saying is I’ve got a million bucks coming my way when I get home, and I’d like to live to enjoy it.”
“The Jaffa have a saying. No pain, no gain.”
“That’s not—”
“There!” Hammond cut in. Above, just about visible, rose the end of the staircase and, set back from a small plaza, an ornate structure, like a shrine. “The sanctuary.”
Predictably, Bra’tac upped the pace, and by the time they crossed the final step and reached the top, Hammond was determined to reassess his fitness regimen.
That’s why they don’t send two-stars into the field anymore. Nothing to do with protecting strategic assets. Most of us are just too out of shape to hack it!
His only consolation was to hear Maybourne panting nearly as hard.
A high, elegant archway flanked by statues formed the entrance to the shrine. Beyond lay darkness so complete, you could have cut it with a knife.
“Anybody seen a light switch?” quipped Harry.
The reply was a metallic noise Hammond recognized as a staff weapon opening. For a moment he found himself hoping that Jaffa shot people who consistently cracked lame jokes. The tip of the staff began to glow, casting its light over wall friezes, well-trodden floors, and a dark shape crumpled against the wall. Another dead clone. His symbiote lay nearby, fins limp, body still.
The passage opened out into a round, high-ceilinged room, empty except for a seam of pillars, and he tried to fight back a black wave of despondency. There was nothing here. The kid had been lying—or he’d been too confused to understand what Hammond wanted. They’d just wasted a half hour they might not be able to make up.
“It was not wasted,” said Bra’tac, and Hammond realized that he must have been talking out loud. “Observe!”
The old warrior pointed the staff weapon at the center of the floor. The halo from its tip lit up a mosaic—concentric rings, crenellated around the outsides, the widest about six feet in diameter.
“I don’t—” Hammond began, then something about the pattern triggered an association. “A ring transporter?”
“Indeed.”
“Where are the controls?”
It was Harry who found it. He’d wandered off along the pillars and suddenly gave a surprised grunt. “Hey, this place has Nirrti’s paw prints all over it. Literally. Didn’t Dr. Jackson play with one of these on the planet where your bomb kid came from?”
“Who?” Hammond squinted in the direction of the voice.
“The girl Dr. Fraiser adopted. Look!” He indicated the faint outline of a palm print halfway up a column. When he brought his own hand closer, the outline grew brighter.
“Do not touch it!” cautioned Bra’tac.
For once Harry obeyed. He took
a step back, and the palm print dimmed again. Bra’tac motioned them to stand at the center of the mosaic, briefly placed his own hand against the print, and ran. “Ready your weapons!”
He made it in the nick of time, all but vaulting over the first ring shooting from the ground. The remaining four zipped up in quick succession, and Hammond watched the world around him being swallowed by light.
Almost instantly it transformed into an eerie green glow, pushing through a narrow doorway into some kind of vault and backlighting eight armed figures, frozen in surprise. The rings whopped back into the floor, and before the men could react, Bra’tac opened fire. A thundering melee of gunshots and staff blasts tore away any sense of time.
Then, abruptly, the fight was over.
Too soon, and for the first time Hammond truly appreciated why Bra’tac refused to consider these men to be Jaffa. Against fully trained warriors, the three of them could not have won this, at least not without taking casualties. But the clones, tired and ragged from what must have been a previous skirmish, fought with unfamiliar weapons unsuited to the tactics their originals had been taught. They’d never stood a chance. Bra’tac, in a lethally graceful burst of motion, had dispatched four of them, Harry and George Hammond had taken care of the rest. Hammond had tried to shoot to disable, not kill, aiming for his opponents’ legs. In one instance his aim had been too good; the round had nicked the femoral artery, and the clone had gone down into a rapidly widening pool of blood.
“Shouldn’t his symbiote stop the bleeding?” murmured Harry.
“Not if he can’t kelno’reem,” Hammond replied curtly.
[Stargate SG-1 07] - Survival of the Fittest Page 36
