by Crane, J. F.
* * *
The studio was a large square room, big and scruffy with pieces of set piled up against one wall. Distinctly unglamorous. It was also deserted.
Hands resting on her weapon, Sam entered the room, Sorcha by her side. The old woman was peering around the studio, interested despite herself. “This is all?” she said, gazing up at the cardboard sets. “Even the homes in which they live are not real.”
“It’s called a set,” Sam said, scanning the corridor again. “TV is all fake.”
“Like the Ark,” Sorcha said, and her face creased into a smile for the first time since they’d left the Badlands. “Their whole world is a mere ‘set’.” She seemed to enjoy the new word. “They live isolated from the reality and distract their minds with another fictitious world built within the first.”
“Ironic,” Sam admitted, walking further into the room and stepping over a nest of trailing wires that led from a small glass-sided annex to the cluster of lights and cameras in the center of the floor. “Stay there,” she said, waving Sorcha back to the studio door. “I’m going to check out that annex. If someone comes, call me.”
Sorcha snorted, glancing irritably into the corridor. “If I am to play guardsman while you work, at least give me your weapon so I might defend myself.”
Sam’s fingers tightened around her gun, an involuntary reaction.
“Ah,” Sorcha said with a bitter smile. “You do not trust me.”
“It’s not that.” But it was, and they both knew it. The P90 felt heavy in Sam’s hands, a weight between them now.
Saying no more, Sorcha just looked at her with those hard eyes of hers. Judging.
With a sigh, Sam unclipped her weapon and handed it over. Thera would have disapproved, but she wasn’t Thera. She’d never been Thera. And trust, Daniel had proven again and again, usually paid dividends.
Sorcha took the weapon with a nod and listened intently as Sam explained how to fire. “Give me five minutes,” Sam said when she was done. “And don’t pull that trigger unless you’ve got no choice.”
“I will not,” Sorcha promised, turning back to the doorway and fixing her gaze on the hallway beyond.
Sam watched her for a moment, then headed across the studio and ducked into the annex. As she’d suspected, it was the studio’s equivalent of the SGC’s control room and a brief survey of the equipment was enough to show her that the plan was at least possible. Sunrise appeared to be recorded digitally—which made sense, given the Ark’s limited resources. It also meant that patching in Daniel’s camcorder was just a question of finding a way to interface with the Ark’s technology. Kinda like making a Mac talk to a PC—if Macs had been invented on Mars and PCs on Venus.
With a sigh she crouched behind the desk to get a closer look. A small monitor was showing the current episode as it played, simply streaming it from the local mainframe out to the screens in the city. Broadcast was really the wrong word. This was more like a wide area network, with all the terminals connected to a central server that—
“Samantha!”
Sam looked up, startled. Sorcha stood in the doorway to the annex and in her hand was the P90. It was pointed right at Sam.
“You should have listened to your instincts,” Sorcha said. “In the Badlands we learn to trust none but our kin.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jack kept his gun leveled at Tynan Camus’s back while Rhionna led them up a narrow staircase toward the top of the wall that surrounded the Ark. Seeing it up close, he noted the curvature of the smooth gray stone and realized the thing was a built like a giant sea wall. He wasn’t prone to flights of fancy—he didn’t always enjoy the path his imagination chose, so he kept it on a tight leash—but it was impossible not to imagine the last days of this world; seas flooding through cities, and terrified people holing up in this final refuge while outside their civilization drowned.
Desperate times threw up all kinds of leaders—some good, most bad. Telling those last survivors that they were special, saved by divine purpose instead of by blind goddamn luck, must have been an easy sell for the predecessors of Tynan Camus. Desperate people believed anything that made sense out of their misery; they were easy to lead. Easy to deceive.
And the Elect had exploited that to the hilt. They’d lived like kings, while outside their world went to hell.
At the top of the staircase Rhionna stopped and waited. The wall opened out to a path about five meters wide, with the Ark’s dome rising up on the right and sweeping skyward toward the scudding thunderclouds. Rain streamed down its side in writhing torrents, so heavy Jack couldn’t make out where the Badlands had once sprawled. Or maybe, he thought with a sick drop in his gut, they just weren’t there anymore.
“How far’s the gate?” he asked as he herded Tynan up to the top of the wall. The man’s face was pasty, and he glanced out at the storm with unease. Maybe he didn’t like heights.
“There.” Rhionna pointed at a shoulder of steel that stuck up from the wall a couple hundred meters further along. Doubt clouded her face. “That’s the mechanism. It’s not been opened for over a hundred and eighty years, though.”
“Good job I packed some WD40.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. Into the silence, Camus said, “Are you imbecilic enough to consider opening the gates, Colonel O’Neill?”
Jack fixed him with a look. “I’m imbecilic enough to do just about anything.”
“In the middle of this storm and with the seas rising?” Camus snorted. “You would destroy us all!”
“Guess you should have thought of that before you locked half your people out.”
Camus’s lip curled. “If you mean the creatures in the Badlands, then you are mistaken. It is the Lord who has set them Outside, where the light of the Sun might purge their sins. We cannot interfere with His will.”
“Well, as we like to say on Earth”—Jack prodded him into motion with the barrel of his gun—“bullshit.”
Camus stumbled forward a step, feet tangling in his heavy robe. He scowled at Jack, but kept walking and turned his attention to Rhionna instead. “Do you think the soldiers will obey you?” he asked. “Do you think they will open the gates at the command of a Seawolf whore?”
She glanced over her shoulder, jaw tight. “No,” she said. “Because you’re going to give the order.”
He laughed, a grating trill of derision. “And why would I do that?”
“Because,” Jack said, slowing as they reached the massive gate mechanism, “your flock down there are going to demand it.”
Camus stared at him. “This is madness indeed.” He jabbed a finger at the people sitting engrossed before the screen. “Do you honestly believe they will demand that I open the gates?”
“You might be surprised.”
Ice crept into Camus’s eyes. “What have you done?”
“Nothing.” Jack smiled. “Yet.”
“I will never open the gates!” shouted Camus. “I would rather die before I gave that order.”
“They are people!” Rhionna cried, with a look that reminded Jack all too much of Daniel. “How can you just stand here and let them die out there?”
“Because the Lord decrees it.”
“Arrant nonsense!” Rhionna shot back. “You know it is. Don’t make the mistake of thinking me as empty-headed as your followers. I have a mind of my own and I have used it. You don’t believe the Lord has decreed it any more than I do.”
“Perhaps I don’t,” Camus conceded. “Nevertheless, the Ark was not made for them. It was made for us, and there is not enough room or food to house the Badland beggars. That is a fact.”
“Then we must all have less—an equal share.”
“An equal share?” He flung a hand toward the plaza. “Do you think they will agree to your equal share, Rhionna Channon?”
“They will when they see what the people in the Badlands have suffered.”
Camus laughed. “You are a naive fool, like your father.
You think they will feel pity for these people? When they see them thronging before the gates, do you think they will feel pity, will wish to share their homes and food?” He glared at Jack. “You know what they will feel, O’Neill. You have seen it, I am sure.”
Saying nothing, Jack kept his face deliberately blank. But he knew, he knew exactly what Camus was talking about.
“Fear,” Tynan said. “They will feel fear and terror, and they will turn to me—to the Elect—to save them from the hordes outside the gates.” He laughed again. “This was your plan? You are a greater fool than I had imagined. Bringing the damned here only strengthens my hand!”
“You’re right, that was our plan,” Jack said with a shrug. “But not all of our plan.” He glanced at his watch and turned to look at the screen in the plaza below. “Watch this. Three, two, one…”
Nothing happened.
Sunrise continued to play out its Technicolor melodrama uninterrupted.
“Impressive,” Tynan said. “Very impressive.”
Jack ignored him, glancing over at the vast Sunrise building with a knot of cold fear in the pit of his stomach. Carter.
Something had gone wrong.
* * *
Hands raised, Sam stood up. “Sorcha, what are you doing?”
“I cannot allow you to do this.” The old woman took a step closer. “You are wasting our best hope of activating Sciath Dé.”
The P90 sat awkward in her hands, but it was lethal all the same. Sam cursed herself, glad the colonel wasn’t around to witness this profound gaffe. How could she have been so stupid? “Look, we don’t have time for this,” she said. “If we don’t get the gates open, they’ll all die out there. Faelan. My friends. They’re depending on us.”
On me.
“You will bring down the soldiers upon us before we can activate the shield,” Sorcha protested, edging further into the room. “And then more than the Badlands will be lost. All of Ierna will die.”
“But if we tell the people the truth,” Sam countered, “if we show them what life is like in the Badlands and beyond, then they’ll help us find the controls for the shield and—”
“Truth!” Sorcha spat. “Why should they care about truth while their bellies are full and their minds empty? The truth is before their eyes yet they remain blind!”
“They won’t be able to ignore this,” Sam said. “They’re not bad people, they’re just ignorant.”
With a derisive grunt, Sorcha advanced further into the room, forcing Sam to take a step back. Claw-like hands jerked the gun up a fraction. “Help me activate the shield, or I shall take the device you stole from Acarsaid Dorch and do it myself.”
“What about Faelan?” Sam pressed, looking for a weak spot. “Are you just going to let him die out there?”
“Sciath Dé is all that matters. More than his life, more than yours. Faelan would understand that.” The gun jerked again. “Give me the device.”
“No.” Rolling onto the balls of her feet, slow and subtle, Sam judged the distance she’d have to cross to reach Sorcha. A low tackle would do it. Chances were the old woman would never get a shot in. “If you want it, you’ll to have to come get it.”
Sorcha’s face hardened and her finger tensed on the trigger. Sam ducked to the right, diving for the scant shelter of the desk. Bullets spewed, and she felt a bright stripe of pain across her arm. She fell awkwardly, hit her left knee, rolled. From the corner of her eye she caught a flash of movement outside the annex window.
“I do not wish to harm you.” Sorcha’s voice was tight, uninflected. “Give me the device.”
On the floor, still covered by the desk, Sam shifted so her back was to the wall. She was dimly aware of the pain in her arm, and through the thunder of her heartbeat she realized two things; there was no way out, and the gunfire undoubtedly had alerted the Elect Guard. It would only be a matter of minutes before they were discovered.
She eyed the desk, trying to calculate its weight. If that tipped over, it might distract Sorcha long enough to overpower her. She was only an old woman, after all. An old woman with a submachine gun—her submachine gun. Sorcha moved, her footsteps tentative. “The Guard will be here soon,” she said, frustration rising. “Give me the—”
A man rushed into the annex, swinging something solid-looking at Sorcha’s head. She cried out—anger and fear—and Sam flung her arms over her head when a burst from the P90 shattered the glass window and showered her in fragments. Someone fell hard, toppling over a chair, and then the only sounds were her own harsh breathing and the monotonous drone of Sunrise still oozing from the studio’s computer.
Chapter Twenty
The walk was over, but standing in the shadow of the great metal doors, bearing the brunt of the planet’s climate, Daniel knew that the really hard part hadn’t even begun yet.
Never had he been so cold or so tired. Never had so much depended on a single act of compassion from one people to another.
The refugees huddled together, shielding each other as best they could, but the wind and rain were merciless. Behind him, the sea pounded at what was left of the shore, its waves like unrelenting fists. This high up the hill, they were safe from the ocean, but that wouldn’t last; he was reluctant to ask Faelan how long it would take for the waters to reach them.
Right now the captain was making his way through the throng of battered people, handing out rations of water, words of encouragement, whatever would hold this fragile band together and keep them standing. Daniel figured that, somewhere along the line, Jack must have made an impression; he almost smiled to see Faelan so committed to SG-1’s pledge that no one got left behind.
As if sensing the scrutiny, Faelan turned and caught Daniel’s eye. His jerk of the chin was a summons, and Daniel pushed his way towards him. Together, they walked a short distance from the group.
“We can’t last out here much longer, Dr. Jackson.”
Reluctantly giving voice to his own anxieties, Daniel replied, “Are you worried that they didn’t make it?”
Faelan wiped a hand over his face, pushing back his soaked hair in a futile gesture. “I trust in your friends, and I trust in Rhionna.” It was an affirmation of sorts, but the doubt was still there.
“And Sorcha?”
“Sorcha Caratauc is single-minded, Daniel, and she does not like this plan.”
“The plan doesn’t hinge on her. They’ll make it with or without her.”
“There’s still the Elect Guard to contend with. They’re slow and lazy, but they are everywhere and they are armed.”
“So are Jack and Sam,” replied Daniel.
Looking somewhat reassured, Faelan nodded, but anything he might have said was cut off when the huge screens mounted outside the gates sputtered to life. As one, the refugees raised their heads, as if awaiting salvation; in a way, it was an appropriate notion.
Daniel couldn’t contain his grin and clapped Faelan on the shoulder. “I knew it. I knew that they’d make it.” But his relief was short-lived; in grainy images that spiked and flickered on damaged screens, Sunrise began to play. He turned back to Faelan, who was now staring out across the sea. “It doesn’t mean anything, Faelan. They can still make it.”
“Perhaps they can, Daniel. But the question now is: can we?” He pointed out into the very teeth of the storm, and with sick dread, Daniel realized what he was talking about. Where the horizon used to be, there was now a thick line, a slash of deep gray cutting through the tumultuous seascape.
“It’s a wave.” Faelan’s voice was leaden. “In a little while everything—everyone—that isn’t inside the dome will swept into the sea. Rhionna and your friends must succeed. If those gates don’t open, Daniel, then nothing in Ierna can save us.”
* * *
Carefully, Sam lowered her arms. Biting off a curse at the pain in her left bicep, she watched her sleeve darkening with blood. Her fingers still moved alright, though, so it probably was just a scratch. It hurt like hell, even so. Cla
mping her hand over the wound, she got to her feet and cautiously peered over the desk. Sorcha lay sprawled on her back, the gun flung free of her grip. Next to her lay her assailant, curled up and clearly in pain. Though she could hardly believe her eyes, she recognized the long robes and the fleshy face—now pale and clammy—of Pastor Ennis Channon. He’d been shot, at least once, his robes blooming crimson over his chest.
Treading across the broken glass, one eye on the studio door because she expected the Elect Guard to burst through any moment now, Sam snatched up her weapon and clipped it to her vest. Better. Then she turned to Ennis.
He was looking up at her, his breathing fast and shallow. “Rhionna,” he whispered. Blood foamed pink on his lips.
Sam darted a glance out into the studio, listened for footsteps. “She’s alive,” she said. “She’s trying to help bring the people of the Badlands inside.”
Ennis nodded. “As she always has.”
“But the Elect Guard will be here any second so I can’t—”
“No.” The word was a wheezing sigh.
Sam frowned. “They will have heard the gunfire.”
Lifting a heavy hand, Ennis gestured toward the studio door. Sam craned her neck to see. It was closed, Ennis himself must have shut it. Still, it was hardly enough to keep the soldiers out.
Smiling, Ennis bared blood-stained teeth. “No noise,” he breathed. “For Sunrise.”
It took a moment for Sam to get it. “The studio is soundproof. Of course it is. They didn’t hear anything?”
Ennis shook his head. “Show them the truth,” he said. “Show them.”
Behind her, Sorcha stirred. Keeping her good hand on her weapon, Sam crouched before Ennis. He was dying, the wound in his chest pumping out blood with each beat of his heart. She fished out one of the dressings she carried, knowing it would do little good but unable to just sit there and do nothing. Ignoring her own pain, she tore open the packet and pressed the bandage against the wound. “I can contact Rhionna,” she said. “Bring her here. She would want to see you before—”
