"I had a vivid hallucination in which I felt I was being chased through this city, and was killed," Teal'c replied. "By Daniel Jackson and Captain Carter. It was..." He seemed to think about the word for a long time before choosing, "... disturbing."
Jack's dream washed over him again, thick and slow, heavy with dread. Disturbing. Kind of like watching those two so close together, dusty brown head bent close to dusty blonde one, examining the results of Daniel's target practice. Unconsciously in each other's personal space. Well, you wanted to see them bond. Yeah, just not in a predatory wolf-pack kind of way.
If that was what it was.
"I hate this place," Jack said, and shoved himself back to his feet. "Yo. Carter. Let me do that."
He hobbled toward them, cursing the drag in his foot, and they both looked up to stare at his approach.
Identical blue-eyed stares, and for a second, the dream - hallucination? - he'd apparently shared with Teal'c in the night took on weight and texture and certainty.
Daniel stepped back to let Jack see the tight grouping of shots on the wall. "I never thought I'd hit the broad side of a barn. She's a good teacher."
"Yeah," Jack agreed, staring at that tiny, expert impact zone, and imagining it in somebody's bleeding chest. "Enjoying yourself?"
"Not really." Daniel was frowning now, and there was genuine wariness in his blue eyes. "Jack... I thought you'd be pleased. If I get better, I won't slow you down, I won't be a liability in a fight..."
"Yay?" Jack loaded it with sarcasm, and jerked his head at Carter. "Playtime's over. Let's get moving."
She didn't. "Sir, you said one clip..."
"And now I'm saying I'd rather be six streets away before anybody comes to investigate what that racket was, Captain. Any questions?"
For a genuinely cold second, he saw resistance in her eyes, and then she smiled and it was gone. "No sir. Good work, Daniel. Maybe later."
He nodded, cleared his weapon and holstered it.
Wasn't I saying he needed more practice? Yeah, I did. Which bothered Jack at least as much as the fact that he couldn't make himself be happy with either outcome.
'hey ran into Alsiros again just after the sun touched the center of the hollow sky.
Or rather, what was left of him.
"Colonel!" Carter's sharp yell jolted him into a lopsided jog, pain or no pain; he slowed down to scale a waist-high rubble pile made by a couple of collapsing walls, and slid down the other side to find Carter and Teal'c standing together in what looked like another big courtyard. Agora. Whatever. Like the one in Chalcis, this one was tiled, and it had a big fountain in the center. The water still trickled from broken, mutilated statues, but the stuff in the square pool looked brackish and foul.
It looked like a war zone, post-occupation; destroyed buildings, burned fragments of timbers, jagged broken foundations and fallen columns. A giant statue that must have once been some god or other lay on its side, shattered into four pieces. One massive hand held a golden globe with intricate symbols all over it.
The place was a treasure trove. There were pieces of gold glittering everywhere. Over by the fountain, coins and jewelry spilled out of a rotting, beautifully painted wooden chest. Tattered silk flapped like sun-faded ghosts with the wind.
Human beings collected shiny things. The fact that they'd left it here, abandoned, told Jack about as much as he wanted to know about how desperate things had gotten here, before the end.
And whatever came afterward.
Grandpa Preacher - Alsiros - was kneeling with arms spread out to each side, on the cracked steps of what had once been a massive marble-faced temple. It was shattered now, nothing but jagged walls and broken columns. Whatever holiness had once been inside was long destroyed.
"Alsiros?" Jack took a couple of steps closer, saw the man's graying hair blow in a sudden gust of wind. The black robe he was wear ing flapped restlessly. "Hey. You okay...?"
"Careful, sir," Carter murmured, her MP5 still locked in firing position. Teal'c stood with her, tense and ready to jump forward, but the old man just turned his head toward Jack without making a sound.
He was splashed with blood. Dried blood, turning rust-brown, spi- dering over his face and neck, coating his hands as if he'd washed in it.
"Hey," Jack said again, more slowly. "So... you okay, there?"
"Dead." Grandpa wasn't preaching anymore. His voice was hollow, broken. Haunted. "So many dead."
Jack slowly sank into a crouch next to him. "Alsiros. Who's dead?"
A blood-smeared hand rose, gestured vaguely toward the far end of the courtyard. Jack looked over his shoulder at his team, fixed on Teal'c, and nodded. Teal'c nodded back and took off at a run across the courtyard.
Carter's frown deepened. She still had her finger on the MP5's trigger, and was watching Alsiros with way too much focus. Jack caught her eye and sent her a silent stand down.
She didn't.
"Captain Carter," he said, quiet but firm. "We're okay here."
She blinked and let the weapon slide down to a resting position.
Daniel, oblivious, had moved forward next to Jack. "Alsiros? Remember me? Daniel Jackson? What... what happened to you?"
The old man looked blank. Unoccupied. But as the eyes focused on Daniel's compassionate face, something snapped back in place, with a vengeance.
He grabbed Daniel's shoulder, hard enough to make the younger man wince. Jack didn't move, but his finger stayed close to the trigger.
"She," Alsiros said fiercely. His eyes were wide and full of horror, fury, something too big for a human body to hold. "I gave her worship, but she... she craves only blood. Only death."
"Who? She, who?" Daniel said, holding Alsiros's hand on his shoulder as if he wanted to reach out to him but didn't dare. "Alsiros, who?"
"The goddess," the old man whispered. "She chooses... she knows... I saw her face last night, cold and beautiful, her eyes as bright as suns..."
Jack met Daniel's wide eyes. No question, that was the description of a Goa'uld... Daniel fumbled in his pockets and came out with the single photograph he had of his wife. He offered it to Alsiros. "Is this - is this the goddess?"
The old man barely glanced at it. "No."
Jack sighed under his breath, and heard Daniel echo it; the last thing they needed right now was the prospect of fighting Skaara and Sha're. Bad enough there was some other snake out here running around, probably with a small army of Jaffa at her command....
Teal'c had reached the far side of the courtyard. Whatever he found, he found it quickly, and came loping back fast.
"Two are dead," he reported. "I believe the others in this party have fled separately, farther into the city. They no longer appear to be traveling together."
"Faithless," Alsiros murmured. "They were faithless and the goddess punished us. She came in my dreams... in my dreams... laughing..."
He let go of Daniel's shoulder and began to wring his hands, over and over, dried blood flaking from his skin.
Teal'c said, over Jack's shoulder, "I do not believe a Goa'uld killed them." Jack turned to look at him, and Teal'c sent Alsiros's stained hands a significant look. "They died as did the one we found before."
"Stabbed?" That was from Carter, who'd moved up behind Daniel. Teal'c nodded.
"Hey. Alsiros." Jack got the full-on crazy stare in response. "Don't take this the wrong way, but... let me have the knife."
Alsiros looked briefly confused. He had nothing with him, nothing but the black robes, and some other kind of robes underneath... and then he slowly reached inside the black and came out with redstreaked metal in his hand. Same style of dagger as before. Triangular blade, ram's head at the top. Probably from an armory of some kind. Maybe each of the tribute offerings had been issued one along with the black robes, the better to kill you with, my dear.
"Okay, just hand it to me now," Jack said in his best, kindest voice. Alsiros started to, then hesitated, staring down at the bloodstained bronze. "D
on't think about it. Just hand it over."
But he didn't. When the old man looked up, his eyes were bright and sharp again, glittering with tears. He stared at each of them in turn, as if he'd never seen them before, finally focusing his gaze on Sam Carter.
He handed her the knife. She frowned, her hand closing around it, staring down at it for a few seconds before shoving it into her pack.
"Alsiros," Daniel was asking urgently, "did you do this? Did you kill them?"
"Not I."
Jack bent his head toward Daniel and said in an undertone, "I'm no detective, but I'd say bloody knife plus bloody hands plus dead guys equals guilty."
"Not necessarily," Daniel muttered back. "Maybe he was trying to, I don't know, save them. And picked up the knife for self-defense."
"Thank you, Perry Mason. No unprotected backs and sharp objects for him. You can appeal later."
Alsiros wasn't watching them; he was focused on Carter, his hand touching his moonstone collar. Like Carter's, it was flawed. Alsiros's was more than half dark, occluded like there was some invisible eclipse going on inside of him.
"Okay," Jack said with false heartiness. "Daniel, you're in charge of Alsiros, here. We need to get moving; if we're making for the Acropolis, we've got a long way to go."
"I will stay," Alsiros said. He turned his crazy gaze back toward the destroyed temple, with its broken-teeth columns and shattered gods. "If the goddess wills it, I will come to you."
Which had more than a little aroma of genuine psychosis to it, and when Daniel raised his eyebrows at Jack, Jack shrugged and took a step back. Daniel moved closer to him to whisper, "Ah, we're not just going to leave him here, are we?"
"Let me put it this way: Yes. Yes, we are."
"But Jack - "
"Daniel, I am not dragging along a possibly homicidal crazy guy against his will. He doesn't want to come, fine. We're moving on."
"Jack!"
"Leave him food and water." Jack let the command seep into his voice and level stare. "You heard him. Maybe he'll come to us." With a nice, shiny knife in his hand.
Daniel had more argument left, but he was wise enough to store it up for later. He left a short supply of NIREs forAlsiros, painstakingly explaining how to open and prepare them, and then they were on their way, heading farther into the guts of the destroyed, dead city.
"O'Neill," Teal'c said, and gestured with a jerk of his head off to the right-hand side.
Someone was standing on top of a pile of rubble. Dark tunic, a fluttering tattered cloak. Holding something that glittered metallic in the light.
And then, like a ghost, he was gone.
"Tell me you saw that," Jack said. Teal'c nodded. "What do you think?"
"I think that they move very swiftly," the Jaffa answered. "And they have been following us for some time now."
"The Dark Company?"
"Those I have seen wear dark clothing."
"Well, that's just never good. Keep your eyes open." Jack looked toward Daniel and Carter, standing out of earshot. "And Teal'c. Watch them, too."
Jack set a faster pace, as fast as he could possibly hobble. We've got to get the hell out of here. He felt the pressure more with every passing hour.
For the rest of the day, they hiked arduously over shattered rubble and around blocked streets, trying to keep more or less on the compass heading Teal'c had given for the Acropolis. Teal'c, Carter and Daniel took turns with sightings, scaling walls and, on one memorable occasion, a broken marble plinth that still had the dismembered marble legs of some statue attached to it. Daniel had looked particularly weird, standing up there gazing at the horizon, hugging those giant marble ankles. When he'd shimmied down again, he'd reported that they'd only covered a half a mile or so toward the goal.
Which put it still at least two days away, assuming they kept to the same pace. Great. Jack really didn't want to do any more camping in Crazy Killer Theme Park, but he didn't see any way out of it.
Of course, some traitorous part of his brain whispered, maybe you get there and all you find is some nice roomy marble tomb of a place, and nothing to help you fix the DHD. Maybe it's a one-way trip, after all.
That wasn't strategically useful, even if it might be true. He rejected it and focused on the matter at hand.
"Getting dark," Carter noted. She'd been very quiet today, talking in monosyllables when spoken to. He couldn't gauge her - was it just that the little voice in her head was louder, and she was convinced this was a waste of time? Or when it came down to brass tacks, did Captain Carter not have what it took to carry on in the face of overwhelming odds? No, he had better instincts than that. Carter was okay. She'd hold together. If he'd ever misjudged anybody on that score, it had been a geeky, sneezy scientist on a mission to Abydos... who'd ended up saving his ass.
"Find us some shelter," Jack said, and took the opportunity to sit down on a handy stone block that had once been part of somebody's home, somebody's business. Daniel was, as usual, grubbing around in the rubble. This time he came up with something that slithered through his fingers almost like a living thing, and Jack felt that instinctive tightening along his spine. Nope. Not a snake. This was gold, where it caught the light.
"Necklace," Daniel said, and carried it over to sit next to Jack. He bent his dusty head to examine it more closely. "God, it's beautiful. The artistry - these links are so small, they're almost invisible." Jack's first impression had been right after all, it was in the shape of a snake, with a thick triangular head and ruby eyes. Daniel's voice was hushed and almost worshipful. "Here. Hold it."
Jack waved him off. "No offense, Daniel, but you've found about a hundred trinkets so far. Doesn't the new ever wear off for you?"
Daniel, who'd taken off his glasses to examine the piece more closely, looked up at Jack and gave him that little strange smile. "No," he said. "Jack, somebody made this. Not a factory, not a machine, a human being. He had to smelt each of these tiny links and fit them together, it must have taken months of backbreaking work. Then he sold it to someone else, who put it around her neck and wore it... it may have been the only nice thing she ever owned. It may have been a gift from a lover, or a husband, or a father... Jack, this is the history of people. Each of these things, they mean something. Touching them... it's like touching all of human history."
Jack stared back at him for a second or two, then reached over and took the necklace. He held it, feeling the weight of it, the cool and almost living movement of the tiny links. The ruby eyes winked at him. He wanted to see what Daniel saw, the magic that Daniel felt holding these things. All he could think of was a Goa'uld, ready to sink its evil little self into the back of his neck.
He managed a smile and handed it back. "Yeah," he said. "Pretty fabulous."
Daniel beamed, and wandered over to show Teal'c his find.
That was when Jack felt they were being watched. Again.
He sat for a few seconds, then levered himself back to his feet and made his way over to where Teal'c and Daniel were talking.
"Teal'c," he said, interrupting Daniel's monologue. "Take the side street over on the right, circle back. We've got visitors. Daniel, don't look. Just keep talking."
"About, ah, anything in particular?" Daniel asked.
"Don't suppose you know anything about hockey?" Dumb question. "Watch The Simpsons?"
"Um.. "
"Okay, talk about the snake."
Daniel launched into another voluble explanation, this time about mining and cutting rubies, and Jack nodded wherever there was a pause that looked like it might need a response. As he listened, he casually turned them around so that he was facing back the way they'd come. Daniel didn't even notice... or if he did, he played along well. No sign of Teal'c. No sign of anything moving out in the rubble.
Could have imagined it. No, probably not, that sensation had saved his life too many times to be just nerves.
He caught a flicker of movement off to the right. Daniel was saying, " - hand-po
lished the gems using sand cloths - " and then, blindingly fast, Teal'c was in the open and moving to attack. Jack grabbed Daniel and threw him behind cover, brought up his MP5, and Teal'c dived behind a thick nest of boulders and came out holding two strug gling figures.
After a couple of seconds, the faces clicked in. Teal'c had hold of the brother and sister from Alsiros's party. The boy was fighting, but that wasn't having much of an effect on Teal'c, who had hold of both of them by the backs of their tunics like a couple of stray puppies. The girl looked doe-eyed and scared to death.
Jack saw the intention in the boy's set face a second before he saw the knife, and yelled, "Teal'c! Watch yourselfl" just before the boy slashed with a familiar-looking bronze knife. He scored a shallow scratch on Teal'c's tac vest.
With no memory of having moved, Jack was suddenly over the pile of rubble between them and grabbing the kid, wrestling the knife away with a quick, efficient turn of his wrist. The boy - Pylades? - yelled out his rage and hatred, and struck blindly with fists; Jack got him in a sleeper hold and took him down to his knees. The girl, by contrast, was almost catatonic, tears streaming down her face.
"Teal'c? You okay?"
"I am uninjured, O'Neill," he said, and drew a finger across the slice in his vest. "However, I am grateful for the warning."
Daniel joined them, sliding down the mound of rubble - damn, that thing was tall, Jack hadn't realized it until then - and came to a stumbling halt, looking from Jack and the boy to Teal'c and the girl. "Pylades? Iphigenia?"
"Let her go!" Pylades yelled at Teal'c. Teal'c, after a raised eyebrow at Jack, released her. The girl dropped to her knees next to her brother and put her arms around his neck. Jack let the boy loose, too, and he wrapped Iphigenia in a protective hug. "I swear, I will kill any who try to hurt her - "
"Easy," Jack said, and stowed the knife in his tac vest pocket to show empty hands. "Nobody's hurting anybody. You okay? Both of you?"
Pylades slowly, unwillingly nodded. "We ran," he said. "I hid her here, when she couldn't run any farther. I was coming back for her when I saw you."
Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon Page 10
