"I'd rather not."
"Wasn't asking your preferences. Don't worry, I'll collect them before dark."
Daniel holstered the weapons, avoiding his eyes.
There was a slight, metallic click from the body, and the collar slithered loose in two parts on either side of the dead man's neck. Daniel pulled it off, frowning, and they all watched as the black stone swirled and turned pure white. Daniel stowed it in a pocket on his vest.
"You keeping that?" Jack asked. Daniel nodded. "Why?"
"I don't know."
"But...?"
"Seems like a good thing to do."
No arguing with that. Jack watched him as he got to his feet - still a little shaky, but not bad - and covered his concern by reverting to standard Jack O'Neill operating procedure. "We're burning daylight. Teal'c - "
"Sir!" Carter's blurted shout. Jack whirled and braced into firing position; he was fast, but Daniel went from wounded archaeologist to fastest gunslinger in the West at warp speed, pulling the M9 in a blur.
And, thank God, didn't fire, as a child darted from cover and raced across open ground. Girl or boy, tough to tell - small, long-haired, dressed in a grimy ragged sack. Skinny little stick legs smeared with dirt. Carter bounded after, scooped up the kid under one arm and brought him-her-it back over, struggling like a wild animal.
"God, she's starving," Daniel murmured, and holstered his M9 as if he'd forgotten he'd even drawn it. Jack didn't move out of firing position, focused not on the kid but at the deserted ground beyond. "Sam, put her down."
That was difficult; the kid was feral, trying to bite and scratch and kick with every ounce of strength in that forty-pound-or-so frame. Sam finally crushed her in a bear hug from behind and held her still as Daniel pushed the girl's grimy chin up enough to get a look at her collar.
"It's white," he said, and leaned back on his heels to exchange a slightly sickened look with Jack. "She must be eight or nine, Jack, but she's - "
Malnourished. Belly swollen, limbs like sticks, face barely more than a skull. Without prompting, Daniel dug in his pack and found a candy bar - trust Daniel to consider Butterfingers a mission essential - and unwrapped it. It was shattered into fragments; he picked the largest one and held it out.
"Careful," Sam warned. Sure enough, the girl snapped at his fingers. Daniel avoided the teeth and pitched the candy into her open mouth; surprised, the kid nearly spit it out, then sucked on the sugary taste, chewed and swallowed.
"More?" Daniel asked. She didn't move, just stared at him. "Open." He showed her by opening his mouth and tossing a bit of candy in.
After a few long seconds, her pale lips parted. Pitch. Chew. Swallow. Like feeding a baby bird. He'd never thought of Daniel as especially good with kids, but there was something warm and gentle in him that the kid responded to, even while her whole body shuddered with a desire to run.
Or maybe it was just that she liked Butterfingers.
When the wrapper was empty, she whispered, "More?"
Daniel paused in the act of crumpling the slick paper and glanced up at Jack, then back at her. "A little later," he promised. "You'll get sick. Are you thirsty?"
She nodded, hesitantly. Daniel got out the canteen. Carter loosened her hold to let the girl reach for the water, and she took it, swallowing greedily, until Daniel tugged it free.
And then she bolted, twisting free and running like a deer over piles of rubble. Carter swore and started after, but Jack called out a countermand. He was relieved to see Carter obey.
"God," Daniel said, as he fastened the canteen tight again. "Are there more like that? Surviving out here?"
"Or not," Jack said grimly. "She seemed to know where she was going."
They moved out in the same direction. Jack kept his sights high, scanning the piles of rubble and what rooftops and walls were still standing; the next street had a row of nearly intact buildings, doors gaping empty and columns cracked but still upright.
Daniel pointed out a flash of skin, the flutter of a robe. "She's ahead of us."
"Heading for that building," Teal'c said. It wasn't much different from the others, except that it had a fully intact roof.
"Temple?" Jack asked.
"Doubt it. Maybe a civic building, something secular. We must be getting close to the center of town." Daniel's eyes were glazed; his head wound must have been hurting him, because he didn't look all that fascinated. "It's the first one we've seen with a door..."
The girl broke cover and darted up the steps, dirty feet flying, to batter on that door with both fists.
It swung open, and she flashed inside.
More people came out. Tattered and ragged and ill-kept, most of them, but not bloody. There were six of them... seven... ten. Women and children. Mostly children.
They stared silently down at SG-1, and SG-1 stared back.
An old man stepped forward, carrying himself with dignity despite the straggly state of his white beard and oily hair, and inclined his head to them slowly.
"If you're looking for a way out," he said, "you might as well stop, friends. Ahead lies death."
"Ah... hi," Daniel said, and moved forward a couple of steps. "How do you know that?"
"Because I've been there," the man said, and raised snowy white brows. "To the temple. That's where you're going, yes? To the goddess? To seek her favor? Might as well seek the favor of the crows, or the mercy of the wolf. There is no rescue there. My name is Laonides. You are strange to us... come you from Delphi?"
Daniel took two more steps forward, then stopped when Jack made a gesture. "Actually, we came through the Stargate from Chalcis."
"Star... gate?"
"Chappa'ai," Teal'c supplied. He'd shifted his staff weapon to vertical, making it look like nothing more offensive than a particularly big, clumsy walking stick.
"Ah!" The man's face lit up, then smoothed out again. "Yes. The Chappa'ai. So we came here as well. I am from Delphi, where the Oracle lives. But - I have been to Chalcis, and you seem - different."
"We're peaceful travelers," Daniel said. "From a distant planet called Earth. This is Jack - Sam - Teal'c. I'm Daniel."
Laonides bowed with great, slow dignity. The others clustered around him bowed too. "We are pleased to see you." Then he focused on their collars, lingering on Daniel's and Sam's. "I grieve that you cannot stay with us long. The moon calls for you. It will not be safe. But please, come inside. Share what little we have."
He made a grand gesture. Jack exchanged a look with his team, each in turn; Daniel looked eager, Carter doubtful, Teal'c guarded. He nodded and looked at the rank of steps marching up to the shelter.
Stairs. Why'd it have to be stairs? Haven't these people ever heard of handicapped access?
He set his teeth and began the limping process. Unexpectedly, he felt an arm under his shoulder, and looked over to see that Carter was taking part of his weight. She avoided looking back at him.
"People will talk," he murmured, and saw her lips quirk, just a little. "Ow."
"Save your breath, sir."
"For screaming?"
Somehow, he made it to the top without passing out. Laonides bowed again, and up close, his eyes were sharp and very clear. No fool, this guy.
"Accept rest and comfort," he said. "There's little enough of that here, we offer what the gods allow."
Something - maybe respect for his elders - kept Jack from spouting off some flippant remark about the gods and what kind of acrobatics they could get up to with themselves; Laonides' people backed up into the shelter of the columns, then filed into a broad open doorway. The door looked battered and cratered, but sturdy. It wasn't contemporary with the rest of the ruin, and looked hand-crafted, even down to the rough metal hinges.
It slammed with finality after Teal'c entered, and all of them, even Daniel, shifted body language from polite to alert. But no ambush was in the works, just two thin girls who'd swung the door shut, and dropped three heavy metal bolts in place to keep the pl
ace secure.
Jack turned his attention from the door to the room. It was big, heavily scarred by black starburst impacts, and the marble floor was cracked and uneven.
It was a camp. Tents made from stitched black robes, or patches of other fabrics that must have been personal tunics; most looked threadbare. A few enterprising souls had built some stone walls out of small blocks, cordoning off sections of the room. Lots of kids; it hit him full force when he saw them standing together, watching. The oldest was about twelve, the youngest no more than a toddler, dirty fingers jammed in her mouth. Like third world kids from every black ops mission he'd ever regretted, kids without a future, kids destined to starve or be hunted or just die of utter disinterest.
The women ranged in age from matrons to barely-legal, all thin and gaunt. If any of them had once been pretty, it had been scoured off of them by bruises, stress and hunger.
"Please," Laonides was saying, gesturing them to a section of the room near a small, well-ventilated fire. No chairs, of course. No blankets, either. No pillows. The place was no better than the poorest refugee camp, and Jack frankly couldn't imagine what it was they ate, if they managed to eat at all. Water trickled painfully out of a broken fountain beyond the end of the hall, and was being collected in some small chipped jugs.
Jack eased himself down to a sitting position, disguised a pained hiss as a sigh, and held out his chilled hands to the warmth. Where were they getting the wood? They must have been scavenging for days to find the supply piled in the comer, and it was still pitifully small.
Laonides was waving a young girl forward, the prettiest of the bunch, relatively speaking; she carried a shallow bowl with her. It looked like it was full of a thick paste, kind of like oatmeal, only the color ofprunes. Smelled rancid. She knelt in front of SG-1 and offered it up to Jack with a fixed, frightened smile. He looked at Daniel.
"We probably, ah, should accept," Daniel said as he sat crosslegged on the floor. "They're just trying to be welcoming."
He reached for the bowl to scoop some out. Jack caught his hand and put it back in his lap. He leaned over to Carter and whispered orders. She dug in the pack and took out five MREs, began ripping them open and separating them into components. "Very generous offer," he told Laonides. "Actually, let us pay you for your hospitality. Be our pleasure."
"There is no need..." The old man's voice trailed off as he saw what Carter was doing, and he actually licked his lips before he could control himself. "Food is scarce, it is true. There were storehouses in the city, but they have been emptied over the years by survivors."
"Survivors?" Daniel asked. He picked up a packet of peanut butter and held it out to a thin young boy, who snatched it and turned it over greedily in his fingers, searching for its secrets. Daniel showed him how to tear it open. There was a general indrawn breath as the rich smell of Peter Pan hit the air. Teal'c offered an oatmeal cookie bar, which the shy girl who took it carefully divided into four parts to share with others.
This was going to break his heart, Jack thought, and handed over Mexican Rice to a middle-aged woman with a face like a skull. She looked dazed, unable to imagine what she held in her hands. He pantomimed eating. Laonides held up a sharp hand when the others surged forward and sternly supervised the distribution of the riches; he accepted a small portion of Pork Chow Mein. The effort they took to savor it was painful.
"I'm sorry," the old man finally said, once he'd licked the last drops of sauce from the container and carefully put it aside. "You asked a question. Yes, there are survivors. Some of us live, after the Hunt. We find shelter. Form camps. Defend ourselves as we may, with the help of the gods. I have survived four Hunts."
He said it as if it was like climbing Everest with a broken leg.
"What's the record?" Jack asked.
Laonides blinked. "After I survive this one? Five."
A sense of humor, yet. "And the rest...?"
"Most survived once. Not twice. Some..." His eyes shifted uneasily away, then back. "Some choose not to try."
Like the two lying on the marble floor in the comer, presumably, who hadn't come to the fire or reached for the food. Both women, looked like, although they were so thin it was hard to tell. They were turned away from the fire.
"Have you seen a couple of kids - teenagers?" Jack asked. "Brother and sister. They were with us last night, got separated this morning."
"No," Laonides said. "No others have come to us for days. But our scavenging parties will look for them. If they are alone, they will not survive for long."
"Thanks."
"Scavenging parties?" Daniel asked.
Laonides beamed and put his hands on the shoulders of two of the nearest kids. One was the girl they'd followed. "The children are quick enough to stay out of sight. They do well."
"You send your kids?" Jack asked. He couldn't keep the chill out of his voice, and didn't want to.
"The women are too clumsy, I am too old." Laonides shrugged. "We have little choice, my friends. All must contribute, or die."
Daniel said, "Do the kids fight, too?"
"No. We do not fight. You do not know the strength of those the goddess rules."
"Oh, got a fair idea." Jack pointed at the black starbursts on the walls, looked over at Teal'c. "Staff blasts?" Teal'c nodded. "So your Artemis, she's got an army, right? Armed with weapons like the one my friend carries?"
Laonides said nothing. His eyes stayed narrow. After a few seconds he tried another smile, but this time Jack could see the calculation behind it. "You have great weapons, it is true. We do not. Therefore, we do not fight."
"Not the way we do," Jack agreed. "But you stay alive."
"We hide."
"You welcome strangers at the door."
"Strangers may become friends and allies."
"And fighting can take all kinds of forms, right? Like hunting. Like scavenging. Like ambush. And these kids, they really work for you, right? Lots of folks out there not quite ready to knife a kid in the guts. Yet." No answer. Jack made sure his hand stayed comfortably on his MP5. "So, you asked us in not because you're so damn friendly, but you thought maybe you could take us down. Get, oh, some nice shiny weapons? Maybe some clothes, some fresh supplies? Don't blame you." Jack reached out, took the bowl from the girl who still knelt next to him. She looked shocked. He sniffed the contents and met Laonides' stare. "Yummy. How fast does it do the job?"
Silence. You could have heard a pin drop. Daniel shifted and frowned, clearly mystified, but Laonides was tracking things perfectly.
The old man reached out, took the bowl from him, and handed it back to the girl. "Put it away," he said to her. "Be very careful."
"Jack?" Daniel asked. "What's going on?"
"These nice folks are pretty non-violent. That doesn't mean they're not survivors, Daniel," Jack said. "So what was it? Ground glass? Arsenic?"
Laonides shrugged and reached for a small patchwork bag that lay near the fire. In it, shiny green leaves that looked like holly.
"It grows wild here," he said. "The desperate eat it, when they can stand the hunger no longer. It kills within moments. I am sorry, but as you said, we are not warriors. These - they are the helpless. I do what I have to do to keep them living. Sometimes that means killing those who are stronger."
Daniel was just figuring out how close a call he'd had; Jack saw the color drain out of his face, then surge back. Object lesson, Danny boy. Not everybody's your friend.
And then Daniel looked down at the remains of the impromptu feast spread out before them, the hungry faces, and methodically tore open another MRE package and began offering what he had to the kids.
There were times, Jack thought, when he was genuinely proud to know this man.
Laonides was shaken. He watched Daniel silently distribute food, watched his people take it, even the girl who'd brought the poison, and said, "What will you do to us?"
"Actually, not a damn thing," Jack said. "Just passing through. This goddess, she
lives in the temple, right? Up on the hill at the center?"
"The Acropolis, yes. But if you go to her, you will die, or worse."
"Worse?" Daniel paused, breaking up crackers. A child dared to steal one from his hands; he smiled with absentminded kindness. "Worse than death?"
Laonides' face was a mask behind the beard. "We don't speak of it."
"Hey. You do now," Jack said.
The whole group stayed still, waiting, and then Laonides let out a great, gusty sigh. "I will tell you what I know," he said. "I think it is more than anyone who lives, outside of the Acropolis. But it is little enough to help you. Some who go to the goddess are sacrificed on her altars, this I have seen; the smoke rises up black to heaven. Some... some are slain by her guards. Some are taken to become her guards, and when they are taken, they change. Even those we know... they are no longer themselves. It is the same with the mooncollars. Once the change begins, it cannot be stopped"
He extended one grubby finger to point at Carter's collar. She reached up to touch it, startled, and looked grim. "I almost forgot," she said. "It's bad, right?"
"With the moon comes madness," Laonides said, almost gently. "You forget yourself already, yes? At night, the moon calls you? And sometimes in the day?"
She nodded. Daniel, unreadable, didn't move.
"Tonight, the moon will take you far. You will kill, and forget who you are. I have seen fathers kill their sons, wives their husbands; I have seen terrible things." He turned that look on Daniel. "You still have the mind to resist. It will be the worse for you, that you will run and kill and know what you do. Better you die now."
"No," Jack said flatly. "Not gonna happen. We'll tie them up if we have to. No killing on either side."
"Do you not think it has been tried, my friend? Lovers pledging faith, parents swearing protection for their children? I bound my son, during my first Hunt, to save him. He is not with me now." Laonides looked severe and sad. "Either they will kill, or they will be taken by other hunters, as will you. You can only save yourself, out there. No one else."
Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon Page 14
