“How long?” she asked.
“Thirty-three minutes.” Jack risked another look, decided the coast was clear. “OK, let’s do this.”
The entrance hall was empty, no Jaffa left behind. Jack paused in the doorway of the corridor that led to the symbiotes’ chamber, but he could see nothing but the flicker of Goa’uld torches. Maybe a shadow moved, beyond the light, but he couldn’t be sure. He motioned for Teal’c to cover him, and edged down the corridor, keeping close to the shadowed wall. He could hear water as he came closer, paused just inside the entrance to let the others come up. The noise was good, would help cover their movement, the zat blasts. Even flattened against the corridor wall, he could see its source. A ribbon of water fell glittering from an elaborate ceiling rosette, and splashed into a glass-walled cylinder that seemed half full of writhing pink eels. The top edge of the cylinder was banded in gold, and golden spikes stood out from it like the rays of a sun. He risked a further look, saw only a single woman, a priestess by her headdress, twirling a spindle as she sat beside the tank.
Now or never, he thought, and waved the others forward. He popped into the doorway after them, ready to provide covering fire. There were three Jaffa, caught by surprise with their helmets open and their staff weapons leaning against the wall beside them. Teal’c dropped two with well-placed zat blasts; Danyel got the third, but not before he’d fired once. The priestess screamed, spindle clattering to the stones, and Jack brought her down with a single shot.
“Which corridor leads to the gate room?” Teal’c asked, scooping up one of the staff weapons, and Danyel pointed.
“That one.”
“Cover us,” Jack said, grabbing a staff weapon himself, and put himself between the larva tank and the doorway by which they’d entered. “Sam, get one of those things.”
She was already moving, hiking up the skirts of her robe to free her legs. She unstoppered the jar and climbed up onto the platform that held the cylinder, bent around the spikes to dip the jar into the water. Jack looked back toward the door. No sign that anyone had heard them — but then there was the sound of zat blasts from the direction of the gate room.
“Better hurry, Sam,” he called.
“I’m trying,” she answered. “These things are slippery.”
He risked another glance over his shoulder, saw her leaning over the edge of the tank, her hand brown among the thrashing larvae. She gave an exclamation of triumph, pulled back with a foot-long symbiote wriggling in her grasp. Jack caught a quick glimpse, pink, blind, embryonic, its three-fold jaws opening and closing ineffectually, and then she dropped it into the jar and pressed the lid solidly home.
“Got it!”
More zat fire punctuated her words, and Jack grimaced. “Great. Let’s go.”
They fell back toward the corridor that led to the gate room, Jack covering their retreat. So far, at least, they hadn’t attracted any other attention, but he knew that wouldn’t last. A staff blast scorched past them as they reached the end of the corridor, and Danyel looked over his shoulder.
“We, um, we may have a little problem.”
“There are still four Jaffa left in the gate room, O’Neill,” Teal’c said. “We cannot reach the DHD.”
“Crap.” Jack leaned past Danyel’s shoulder, snapped a shot at a Jaffa as he dove for a better position.
“They’re going to be calling for reinforcements,” Sam said. She wound the jar more tightly into the cloth sling, settled it on her hip.
“We may have a break there,” Danyel said. “Teal’c says they won’t want to interrupt Ra.”
“That’s helpful,” Jack said. OK, the Jaffa were in cover, tucked in behind the columns that lined the hall; the DHD was in the open, and even if they could get to it, there wouldn’t be time to dial. No, they’d have to take out the Jaffa first. “Is there any other way across there?”
Danyel looked around. “Maybe?”
“Could you be a little more definite?”
One of the Jaffa was moving, trying to work his way up the hall, and Jack snapped off a shot that knocked him back.
“If we go back the way we came, there’s another corridor that comes out over there,” Danyel said. He nodded to a shadowed alcove almost directly across the gate room. “But it’s a long way around.”
“Too long,” Jack said.
“O’Neill,” Teal’c said. “I believe they are calling for assistance.”
Sure enough, one of the Jaffa was talking into a golden armband. Jack grabbed his watch: eighteen minutes before Aset would unblock Earth’s gate. “We’re going to have to rush them,” he said, and Teal’c nodded.
“I will try for the gate itself,” he said.
Jack saw it instantly, the converging angles, the shots it would give him and Danyel and Sam, and braced himself.
Teal’c leaped forward, startlingly fast for such a big man, and Jack swung into the open to cover him, Danyel and Sam at his heels. Sure enough, the first Jaffa broke cover, and Jack picked him off. Danyel caught the next one with a pair of zat blasts, and Teal’c and Sam caught the last two in unexpected crossfire. Jack grinned, and only then saw the curl of smoke rising from the DHD.
“Oh, crap!”
Sam was already on it, stripping off the sling to pry up the panel. “It’s OK,” she said. “I can fix this.”
“You got twelve minutes,” Jack said. “Danyel, cover the side entrance. Teal’c, with me.”
They took up positions on either side of the hall, sheltering behind the pillars, where they could more or less cover the main entrance. Jack looked at his watch again, seeing the minutes tick away. “Sam.”
“Almost there,” she answered, never looking away from the crystals.
“They are coming, O’Neill,” Teal’c said, and Jack heard the sound of armored feet on the stones of the entrances hall. He braced the staff weapon fired as soon as he saw movement at the end of the hall.
“Sam!”
“Almost —”
Jack fired again, and a Jaffa tumbled down the steps. They could hold them off for a little while, but if the Jaffa commander sent his men around to the side corridors, they’d be trapped.
“Got it!” Sam yelled.
Jack risked a look at his watch. It was time, past time, and that meant —
“Dial direct!” he shouted. “Danyel, cover us.”
He heard the gate begin to turn, the heavy chunk of the chevrons locking, and fell back as Danyel fired past him at the approaching Jaffa. And then he and Teal’c were at the DHD and the wormhole lit behind them in a whoosh of light.
“Go!” he yelled. “Teal’c, Sam, go!”
The Jaffa were entering the gate room, and he ducked instinctively as a staff blast screamed past him.
“This is a bad idea,” Danyel said, and Jack shoved him toward the gate. He backed after him, firing his own staff weapon. A Jaffa fell, then two more, falling in a tangle of limbs, and staff blasts shot past him, vanishing into the event horizon. And then at last he was close enough, and he made a jump for the gate, tumbling out of the wormhole and down the familiar steps outside Pharaoh’s palace in a tangle of robes. More staff blasts passed overhead, and then the gate winked out. There was sudden, blessed silence. Jack picked himself up, pleased to find that he was only bruised, and Sam cried out.
“Aset! Oh, my God!”
Chapter Ten
Aset lay sprawled on the ground just beyond the DHD, her head and shoulders in the lap of a young soldier who held a fairly clean-looking kilt against her side. The cloth was bloody and her eyes were closed, her hands lax in the dirt. Teal’c dropped to his knees at her side.
“O’Neill!”
Jack went to one knee beside them, wincing as the big man gently uncovered the wound. A staff blast through the Stargate had caught her in the side between ribs and hip, the flesh torn and blackened. At least the blast had cauterized most of the major vessels, or she’d be dead already, but as it was — He grimaced and looked away.
She wasn’t going to survive this.
“Teal’c, my brother,” Hor-Aha said, his voice reflecting the same shocked knowledge. He beckoned to the nearest of his men. “Quickly, bear her to the temple. Perhaps —” He stopped, shaking his head.
“Yes.” Teal’c interlaced his fingers with her unresponsive ones. “We must try.”
They brought her into the temple, into a cool antechamber, and laid her on a bed hastily spread with linen and a pillow. Temple servants brought lamps until the narrow room glowed, and the scent of the oil warred with the smell of her burned flesh. A small boy was set to fan her, keeping the flies away, and the senior priest came hurrying with soft linen heavily smeared with honey. He laid it gently over the wound, not daring to move her to bind it tight. Danyel made a strangled noise and turned away. Sam went after him, laying a hand on his shoulder, spoke softly in his ear. It was the best they could do, Jack knew, and to use so much of the precious stuff on what they had to know was a hopeless case… Tears prickled in his eyes, and he cleared his throat. Teal’c looked up, his own eyes suspiciously bright.
“I cannot lose her, O’Neill.”
Aset’s eyes opened then, vague and unfocused at first, but then her gaze sharpened. “Teal’c,” she whispered, and the ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “You are well.”
“But you are not,” he began, and she freed her hand from his, reaching clumsily to cover his lips.
“Shh. It is well.” She closed her eyes again, a flicker of pain racing across her face.
Jack stepped back, looking for the priest, but the man had seen the same thing, and beckoned to an acolyte. The youth poured a thick liquid into a shallow dish, and the priest held it to her lips, dribbling it into her mouth with the ease of long practice. Poppy syrup, Jack knew. He knew, too, that it was all they could do for her. Make her comfortable, and wait for her to die. Ellie would miss her, and there could be no explanation; Hor-Aha would give her a tomb fit for a queen, and none of it was fair. Even if they’d been back in his own time, with all the resources of Landstuhl available, this one would be touch and go. Here in Egypt, five thousand years before antibiotics and artificial skin — He shook his head, focused on what he could do.
“Teal’c,” he said softly. It had been more than twenty-four hours since the Jaffa had entered kelnorim, and Jack could tell that this was going to be a long and painful vigil.
”O’Neill.” Teal’c did not look up, his hands closed again around Aset’s limp fingers.
“You need to take a break, buddy,” Jack said.
“I cannot.”
“Teal’c.” Jack groped for the words. “She’ll need you later.”
Teal’c closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet. He disappeared into a side chamber, and Jack stood for a moment, looking down at Aset. At least the poppy syrup had soothed her.
“Damn it,” Danyel said. “There’s got to be something.”
“Like what?” Jack asked, and turned away before he could answer. He made his way back out to the temple’s grand entrance, stood for a long moment looking out at the deepening night. Twenty-six hours since they’d left — twenty-eight, now — and so much for thinking they’d won. The reed matting swung in the breeze behind the gate.
“Jack?” Sam came to take his arm. “I’ve sent one of the soldiers for Tamit and Ellie.”
Life goes on, Jack thought. The baby needs to be fed, even when her favorite aunt lies dying. He nodded. “Good idea.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist, glad to have her there, guiltily glad it wasn’t her on the bed inside. She rested her head against his shoulder.
He didn’t know how long they stood there. The moon cleared the horizon, a misshapen coin, and a night bird called from the river. A pair of torches moved by the palace, vanished again, and he could smell the fading smoke of a hundred hearths. Not fair, not by a long shot, and there was nothing he could do.
“Jack.” That was Danyel, his voice sharp and worried. “Jack, Teal’c’s — he’s got an idea.”
“What?” Jack blinked, pieces fitting together. “Oh, no, that’s not a good idea at all.”
“Tell me about it,” Danyel said. “But — have we got a better one?”
“Egeria?” Sam looked from one to the other. “Come on.”
Teal’c was sitting cross-legged beside Aset’s bed, his face calm. “O’Neill. Egeria has spoken to me. If Aset agrees, she will take her as a host and heal her, and promise to share her body as you tell me the Tok’ra do.”
“That’s if we believe her,” Danyel said. “If she can be trusted.”
“You yourself told me she was mother of the Tok’ra,” Teal’c said.
“In my timeline,” Danyel said.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “The Goa’uld don’t exactly have a great track record here, Teal’c.”
“And if we do not,” Teal’c said, “Aset will die.”
“What’s worse?” Jack asked. “Being dead, or being a Goa’uld?”
Teal’c looked down at the woman on the bed. Her breathing was shallow, her eyelids fluttering a little as the poppies’ effect wore off. “If Egeria betrays her —” He stopped. “I will not permit it.”
“But —” Danyel began, and Jack grabbed his shoulder.
“OK,” he said. “But if it doesn’t work —”
“We will have done all that we could do,” Teal’c said. “And I will do what I must.”
Jack nodded. “Sam?”
“It’s right here.” Sam unwound the jar that held the symbiote from its sling.
“Do it,” Jack said, and hoped none of the priests would return before it was finished. How he was going to explain this to Hor-Aha — but he’d cross that bridge when he got there.
Teal’c reached out to take Aset’s hand. “Aset,” he said. “Aset, hear me.”
She’s not going to answer, Jack thought, but to his surprise, Aset opened her eyes.
“Egeria can save you,” Teal’c said. The lips of his symbiote pouch gaped open, the winged head of the Goa’uld emerging. “If you are willing, she will join with you, and save you.”
Aset blinked hard, tilting her head as though to see. Her eyes widened, but then she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered, and closed her eyes again.
Teal’c closed his eyes in turn, and the Goa’uld — Egeria, Jack reminded himself, it was a Tok’ra, the first Tok’ra — wormed its way out of the pouch. There was a moment when it hovered, wings spread, and then it leaped for Aset’s throat. She choked, and the thing had vanished, burrowing into her flesh.
“Damn it,” Danyel said. He was looking sick, and Sam grabbed his hand.
“It’s OK,” she said, but didn’t sound very sure.
“Give Teal’c the new symbiote,” Danyel said, his voice tight.
Sam nodded, and brought the jar to Teal’c, crouching at his side. She opened it, and Teal’c shook himself, reached in to take the larva. It squirmed for a moment, as though trying to escape, then seemed to sense a Jaffa, and dove into the pouch. Teal’c’s head snapped back, and then he steadied.
“Aset? Is she —?”
“I am well.” The words were barely a thread of sound, but it was Aset’s voice, not a Goa’uld’s. “Or I will be. Egeria says it will take time, and I must sleep…” Her eyes closed again.
“Her breathing is better,” Sam said.
Jack scratched his head. “OK,” he said. “That’s — weird, but hopeful.”
“If she is Egeria,” Danyel began, and shook his head. “Actually, I have no idea how this will all work out.”
“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Jack said. “For tonight, I’m sure Pharaoh will put us up.”
“I will remain here, O’Neill,” Teal’c said.
Jack nodded. “Do you want company?”
Teal’c smiled. “It is not necessary. But thank you.”
Chapter Eleven
Cheyenne Mountain
2008 AD
General Jack
O’Neill looked down the briefing table waiting for somebody to say something. Mitchell had just laid out the situation with the Tok’ra, with considerable interjections from Daniel about everything. Landry was pacing while Vala was being uncharacteristically silent, Teal’c characteristically so. And Carter… Well, it was about time for her to come up with a brilliant plan, wasn’t it? “So?” he prompted.
“We could attempt to use Ba’al’s facility,” Carter said reluctantly. “I’m fairly sure I can figure out how it works. That would allow us to use the Stargate to get to the right time, or at least to the right era. But we still have a problem.”
“Both of Earth’s Stargates are buried at that time,” Daniel said. “The Antarctic gate is under the ice, and after the rebellion against Ra the Giza gate was buried.”
Jack’s brows twitched. “The Antarctic gate… It’s in a crevasse. It’s not inoperable.” And he ought to know, having found out the hard way.
“And then we’re in Antarctica. In 3000 BC.” Carter pursed her lips. “How do we get from Antarctica to Egypt? How do we even get out of the crevasse? Remember, we found the body of a Jaffa down there. He couldn’t get out.”
“Climbing gear,” Jack mused. “Proper equipment…” They hadn’t had cold weather gear or anything but emergency supplies, and he’d been wounded. A well supplied team might be able to get out onto the glacier. But then. Antarctica was a long way from Egypt.
“The Giza gate can’t be buried,” Vala said, and everybody turned to look at her. “It can’t,” she said, folding her hands on the conference table. “Because somehow Egeria left Earth, right? She didn’t stay. So she must have used the gate. Therefore it can’t have been buried the entire time.”
Mitchell raised a finger. “I think she’s onto something there.”
Daniel shook his head. “OK, they unburied the gate and Egeria dialed out. What, it was open for a few hours in several hundred years? There’s no way we can know exactly when.”
“Actually, maybe there is,” Carter said, looking down the table, and that was his regularly scheduled Carter, always coming up with a technical solution. “At any given moment most of the Stargates in the galaxy are inoperable. We found that out back in the first year of the program. If you just randomly dial gate addresses out of a database, less than fifty percent will connect. Now, some of those are gates that are permanently offline, destroyed or inoperable for one reason or another, and some of them are busy. The gate is already being used, and that’s especially true of worlds that have a lot of traffic. It may take sixty or seventy repeats to get through because somebody is always dialing in or dialing out.”
STARGATE SG-1-23-22-Moebius Squared-s11 Page 9
