At least she did not have to worry about the Goa’uld. That was, admittedly, a great burden lifted from her shoulders. Now she could devote her full attention to SG-1 and the final journey that lay before them all.
The sphere shattered as it hit the metal floor, shards scattering everywhere. The semi-liquid core pooled into a quivering gray puddle, dull and silent.
What had he done?
Jenmar replayed NebtHet’s words in his head, hoping he had misunderstood. But, no, there was no other interpretation. He, Jenmar a’Keyleb — granted, at long last, the privilege of a full Djedu name — had been summoned home.
Home to Duat.
Home to the Djedu.
Home to NebtHet.
The very home which Tanith would soon leave orbit to attack, destroying both SG-1 and the entire Djedu race.
Jenmar could scarcely breathe.
What had he done?
He should have trusted NebtHet, but his anger and disappointment had blinded him. It was only too clear, at last, that he had allowed Aset to play upon his worst fears — and now everything was in ruins.
He had no one to blame but himself.
If only he had severed the connection with NebtHet when he had the chance. How much better to have never known what she offered him, to be blissfully ignorant of everything he had just thrown away.
Now, not only would he be the instrument of her destruction, but he would be forced to witness it firsthand. Tanith’s was to be the lead ship in the attack. His master — their master, now, he supposed — would then move in for the final kill.
The unsuspecting Djedu would have no chance — unless they were warned. But there was no way, not without the sphere.
There was, of course, the chaapa’ai…
But that meant he would have to leave the ship. Tanith had dismissed the guards once Jenmar had relinquished the second data crystal, so he was, in theory, free to go where he pleased —
But, no. Even if he could ring back down to the planet, Jaffa were already massing at the chaapa’ai, awaiting the order to invade Duat. Getting past them unseen would be impossible.
Unless it didn’t matter whether he was seen.
NebtHet had called him resourceful. Perhaps he was. Perhaps there was a way out of this, after all. He had talked the Tau’ri into exploring a worthless pile of ruins. Convincing some Jaffa he was on a mission for Tanith would be child’s play.
At least, he hoped so. Whatever happened, if he could save the Djedu and SG-1, it would be worth the risk. Even if NebtHet found out what he had done, even if she denied him ascension. Even if he died.
He had to at least try.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Oy.”
Not again.
At least there were no steel drums pounding in his head this time, only a slight buzzing sound which, now that he focused on it, Jack realized were insects of some kind. Alien crickets. Very loud alien crickets. Very close by. In the grass.
Grass. So that was what was making his ankles itch. Actually, it was a nice change of pace from waking up in a black pit or a stone crypt. Tayet’s people got bonus points for not repeating themselves. And of all the possibilities he could think of, waking up lying in grass listening to crickets wasn’t the worst of them.
Tayet.
Carter.
Jack’s eyes flew open and he pushed himself up with his elbows. It was dark. Night, then. That would explain the crickets, or whatever they were. Above him were dim stars, none of which he recognized. Still not Earth. No surprise there.
The last thing he remembered was Carter/Tayet vanishing through the gateway, just before that crocodile-lion thing had taken him down.
Instinctively Jack felt his chest. No gaping hole. Good. His heart was still intact then. For the most part.
Carter, however, was nowhere in sight. It was just him. Alone.
The rest of him seemed in one piece, so he stood up. Someone had given him a new tunic. The other one had been pretty well shredded. Still with the sandals, though. Seriously, what did these people have against decent footwear?
Now that his eyes had adjusted, Jack could make out what was around him. The large, black shape immediately ahead of him turned out to be the remnants of a collapsed wall. In fact, there were partial walls on all four sides. It was a room of some kind, or what was left of one. The roof was long gone and only a single, arched stone doorway remained.
Wherever it led, it was too shadowy to see.
What Jack could see, though, was his empty P90 along with the canteen and knapsack neatly piled by the archway. At least they’d sent his stuff along with him, worthless though it was.
Their placement couldn’t be random. They might as well have slapped an ‘Exit’ sign over the archway. Fine. He’d play along.
He needed to find Carter anyway. And save her, if he still could.
When Jack picked it up, the knapsack seemed heavier than it ought to. Reaching inside, his fingers curled around something of familiar size and shape.
Son of a —
It was a clip. And a full one, judging by the weight of it. How convenient.
Jack replaced the empty one in his weapon and double-checked the safety before settling it into its familiar position across his chest, which, as it turned out, was still a bit tender after all. There wasn’t much comfort in knowing that someone had thought he’d need the extra ammo. Especially considering how that had turned out the last time.
Edging around the corner of the doorway, Jack scanned for sign of anything. It was clear — just a big open grassy area, surrounded by more half-broken walls. The darkness made it difficult to find the doorway in the opposite wall, but after letting his eyes skim up and down it a half dozen times, he finally spotted it.
Jack felt vulnerable as he jogged to the other side, like maybe someone was watching him. He kept glancing up at the tops of the walls, scanning for the slightest movement, but there was absolutely nothing there. At least, not that he could see.
This doorway was identical to the first one, and the chamber it opened up into almost the same as the one he’d just left. He’d seen some stupid science fiction show once where the people would leave a room by one door and walk right back into it from the opposite side. Probably not what was happening here, but it sure as hell felt like it.
Overhead, the faintest hint of turquoise was tingeing the sky and the stars seemed to be fading quickly. Not so much night, then, as nearing dawn. Good. Once he had enough light, the rules of this game were going to change. He was sick to death of getting led around by the nose.
Although how he planned to change them, Jack hadn’t figured out yet. He’d leave the details to Cart — To later.
Right now, there wasn’t much to see. In fact, there was nothing, so he pushed ahead to the next chamber.
Finally. Something different.
For a moment, Jack thought he’d made it out of the ruins and into a forest. In the dim light he could just make out the thick trunks of enormous trees, stretching far beyond the range of his vision. Only they weren’t trees. Jack was in the midst of them before he realized they were nothing more than staggered rows of massive stone pillars in yet another vast but roofless room. And the shadows were still deep enough that he’d lost track of the boundary walls. Without them, he had no sense of which direction he’d come from, or where he needed to go.
Crap.
He hadn’t meant to get turned around like that. Usually he was pretty good at keeping on a straight track. This place though — well, it was as confusing as hell. Everything looked the same as everything else.
A faint rustling noise reached him on the cool, dawn air. Jack froze. Visions of the Ammit stalking him made his heart rate spike for a few beats. But it wasn’t the right sound. This was more controlled, more cautious. More human.
“Carter?”
A shadow emerged from behind a pillar. He raised his gun as a precaution.
“Ah, no, Jack. Actually, it’
s me.”
“Daniel?” Okay, so not quite who he’d been expecting. Not that finding Daniel was a bad thing. That is, if it was Daniel. Jack wasn’t ready to trust anyone in this place. Not without proof.
“Yeah. Hi.” Daniel had put his arms up in the air when he saw the weapon, but he gave a little wave in greeting.
Definitely Daniel.
Still. He’d been fooled before. Carter had seemed okay at times too, until her eyes glowed.
Jack kept the gun raised. “How do I know it’s you?”
“Um, I don’t know,” Daniel replied, with just the right hint of mystification in his voice. “Who else would I be?”
“I assure, you, O’Neill, that he is truly Daniel Jackson.”
Jack spun to his left as Teal’c’s voice came from the shadow of another nearby pillar. The Jaffa strode forward, staff weapon in hand, and came to stand beside Daniel.
“It is good to see you, Daniel Jackson.” Teal’c sounded sincere. He even bowed his head in a very Teal’c-like way.
“Yeah. You too, Teal’c. It’s nice to see a friendly face,” Daniel beamed.
As much as Jack wanted to lower his gun, he still held it at the ready. He needed to be very, very sure.
“Hey!” From his right, Carter also emerged from the forest of pillars and made to join the group. “Am I glad to see you guys!”
“Hold it right there.” Jack swung the gun from Daniel and Teal’c and took a bead on Carter. She froze in her place.
“Colonel?” Uncertainty tinged her voice. She sounded so like herself that he’d have been fooled too, if he didn’t know any better.
“Just — don’t come any closer.” Jack motioned her away from the other two with the tip of his gun. “She’s a Goa’uld. Her name is Tayet.”
Shock drained Carter’s face of all color. Even in the weak light Jack saw her go pale as a ghost. “What? Sir, I swear —”
“I do not sense a symbiote within Major Carter,” Teal’c said. He gazed calmly at Jack.
“You sure?” He wanted to take Teal’c’s word for it, but, under the circumstances, knowing just whom to trust was a tough call. The only thing Jack knew he could be certain of was that T himself wasn’t a Goa’uld.
Although that didn’t mean he couldn’t be compromised in some other way. They’d had proof of that recently enough.
“I am quite certain,” Teal’c replied, just as calmly as before.
“Jack, you want to put that down, please?” It was Daniel this time. Teal’c had vouched for him too. It all came down to how much he trusted Teal’c’s word.
Carefully, Jack lowered the weapon.
“How’d they get it out of you so fast?” he asked Carter. Jack knew enough about the extraction procedure the Tok’ra were working on to know that he didn’t want to know. From what he’d heard, though, it was a risky and complicated procedure. He hardly expected to see Carter up and walking around so soon, like nothing had ever happened.
“Sir?”
“The snake, Carter. How’d they get it out?”
She looked completely perplexed. “Colonel, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just got here.”
“So you don’t remember the quicksand and that whole business with that croco-lion thing that wanted to eat our hearts out?”
Carter’s eyes grew big as he spoke and she shook her head. “Sorry, sir. I was stuck in some place with Mar…” Her voice trailed off and she looked uncomfortably between him and the others. Taking a deep breath she went on. “With someone who looked and acted an awful lot like Martouf.”
“Martouf is dead,” Teal’c pointed out, a bit too bluntly. Carter winced.
“I know. Which is why I’m sure now that it wasn’t really him. But whoever he was, he was awfully convincing.”
“They all were,” said Daniel, thoughtfully.
“Excuse me?” Jack could see Daniel was having one of those light bulb moments. There was a look of barely controlled excitement on his face.
“They were all convincing.” He pointed at Jack. “You, I take it, had someone who looked and acted like Sam.” He turned to Carter next. “You had someone who convinced you he was Martouf. And I —” Daniel took a deep breath before continuing. “I had Sha’re — and an old woman who claimed to be the Goa’uld who took Shifu from Amaunet and gave him to the Jaffa priestess to hide on Kheb,” he added in a rush. “But, that’s neither here nor there.”
“My companions were Bra’tac and Rya’c,” added Teal’c, reflectively. “In retrospect, I do not believe they were authentic either, although at the time I thought otherwise.”
“Wait — so you’re saying that the Carter I just spent the last two days thinking was a Goa’uld, wasn’t?” That headache was starting to come back.
“Oh she probably was a Goa’uld, she just wasn’t — you know — Sam,” clarified Daniel. “None of them were real. Or, at least, they weren’t the people they pretended to be. I’m pretty sure they were real enough otherwise.”
“So, how do we know we’re all the real us now?” Jack looked from face to face. Now that he’d caught up, what Daniel said made sense. If he really was Daniel, which he was if Jack trusted Teal’c. Who probably wasn’t compromised, but could be. In which case, then Carter maybe wasn’t herself either.
Yeah. His head was definitely hurting.
The others were all looking at one another. Finally Daniel spoke. “I guess we don’t, Jack. We’re just going to have to trust each other.”
Jack looked at each one of them: Teal’c, Daniel, Carter. Familiar faces, acting and talking like he’d expect them to. It felt right. Not like before, when everything had felt wrong.
Fine. He’d go with his gut on this one. He just hoped to hell his gut was right.
Lowering his weapon all the way, he rested one arm on top of its stock.
“Okay. I can do that.” The smile came fairly easily. “By the way, good to see you, kids.”
Carter’s face relaxed into a slight smile as well and Teal’c inclined his head. Daniel, Jack could tell, was already a million miles away, his brow creased in thought.
“Well, the good news is, I guess we’re not dead after all,” Jack pushed on. “So anybody have any idea what the hell is going on here?”
Daniel raised a finger. “I think I do.”
Why did that not surprise him? “Care to share with the rest of the class?”
“This all started when we were ‘killed’ back in that cavern by those two Goa’uld.”
“NebtHet and Aset,” provided Teal’c.
Daniel nodded. “NebtHet was an Ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Dead. According to mythology, she and Aset welcomed the dead to the underworld and stood guard at either end of their funeral bier in the tomb. If you think about it, there’s a certain logic between those personas and what happened here. Obviously, they’re the ones behind all this.”
“But what exactly is this?” Carter sounded just as confused as Jack felt. Good. At least he wasn’t the only one not quite tracking.
“Sha’re — the fake Sha’re — kept insisting we were on a journey to the Hall of the Two Truths.”
That sounded familiar. “Yeah, what is that?” Carter asked. “Martouf kept talking about it too.”
“It’s also from Egyptian mythology. It’s the Hall of Judgment where the deceased were to be deemed worthy or not to enter the afterlife.”
“Except, we’re not the deceased. Are we?” Jack added. The fake Carter had finally given that up, but still, it didn’t hurt to check.
“I’m pretty sure a sarcophagus was used to revive us all, sir,” the real Carter replied. “That is, if we were even dead in the first place.”
Jack shoved the images from the cavern back into the dark corners of his mind. Oh yeah. They’d been dead all right.
“Whatever happened to us,” Daniel went on, “I’m fairly certain we were meant to believe we were dead, and on some kind of journey through the underworld.”
&n
bsp; “Bra’tac told me that I had died. As had he and Rya’c,” Teal’c offered solemnly. There was just a touch of something in his voice that made Jack give him a sideways glance, but the Jaffa appeared as stoic as ever.
“Yeah, Sha’re tried to convince me I was dead too,” mused Daniel. He looked at Carter. She was nodding.
“Martouf said the same thing.” Carter looked like she was about to say more but decided against it. In the near dawn light, Jack thought he saw her face redden slightly. He could only imagine what kind of mind games they’d tried on Carter if they’d conjured up Marty’s ghost. Bastards.
The others were looking at him, he realized, to confirm their theory.
“Well, you know me, I always believe everything Carter tells me. So, yeah, I thought I was dead there too. For a while. At least until her eyes did that whole glowing thing.” He cringed at the memory.
“But how did they do it?” Carter’s face was taut with concentration. “I get that they were able to make themselves look like people we knew, but how did they get everything so accurate? All the information? Stuff no one would ever know unless they were the person they pretended to be?”
Daniel was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Sam. But the more important question, I think, is why? What do NebtHet and the others want with us, that they’d go to these lengths to get it?”
“Does it matter why?” asked Jack. “Look, we’re all together now. I say we just find a way off this rock and the hell with the Hall of the Two Whatevers.”
“Two Truths,” Daniel corrected.
“Whatever,” Jack threw back.
“If Martouf — the fake Martouf — is to be believed, then there is a Stargate on this planet,” Sam said. “There was a gateway that supposedly would have taken me there.”
“But you ended up here instead?” Daniel asked.
Carter flushed a little. “Long story.” She gave a rueful smile. “Look, the colonel’s right. We need to just get out of here. Martouf told me that the Goa’uld who live here can’t leave this place — their physiology is dependent upon the naquadah in the planet’s core.” She took a deep breath. “Apparently they need someone who can design a way for them to leave and still survive, and they’re willing to use whatever leverage they can to make that happen. We need to get through the Stargate before they find out we’ve managed to escape. According to Martouf, these guys make Apophis and the other System Lords look like guardian angels.”
STARGATE SG-1 29 Hall of the Two Truths Page 21
