Teal’c reached into the gilded brazier, produced a charred stick. Jack took it, began to draw lines on the floor. “OK, here’s the overseer’s house, and the granary, and that’s the armory. Show me where Ra’s men are placed.”
“Here,” Egeria said, and drew a cross halfway down the armory. “That is where his watcher sits. And the dozen men are here, on the far side, where you would not see the guard change, or anyone bringing food and drink.”
Crap. Jack frowned at the crude map. The obvious approach was covered by the watcher in the armory; the other side was too exposed, visible to anyone crossing the courtyard, or looking from the entrance to the pyramid.
“We’re not going to get in without being seen,” Carter said.
“Yeah.” Jack sighed. “We’re going to need a diversion.”
“I really don’t like that idea,” Danyel said.
“What? You haven’t even heard my plan.”
“That’s because you don’t have one yet,” Danyel answered, and Jack saw Carter grin.
“Of course I have a plan,” he said. “We need a diversion. That’s a plan.”
Daniel waited, cocking his head to one side, and Carter said slowly, “You said that’s an armory? What kind of weapons are in there?”
“Egyptian ones,” Danyel said. “Spears and bows, mostly, plus shields and some bronze ingots for making more.”
Carter made a face. “Do the Goa’uld know that?”
“I don’t know.” Danyel looked at Teal’c, who shrugged.
“I do not think Ra has ordered any kind of inventory yet, Colonel Carter. Why do you wish to know?”
“I was thinking,” Carter said. “We need to drive them out of the armory, right? If they thought something was going to explode — they’d withdraw, right?”
“Very likely,” Teal’c said. Jack thought that was approval in his face.
“I have some C4 with me,” Carter said. “A chain of little explosions, running from the back door forward to where the watcher is placed —”
“You’d need something to make them think there was more coming,” Jack said. “Otherwise, they’re just going to go after you. A fake device, maybe.”
“Sorry, sir,” Carter said. She looked down at her dress. “That I didn’t bring.”
“I have this,” Egeria said. She held out a Goa’uld tablet. “Would that help?”
Carter took it, nodding. “It just might.”
It was full dark by the time Carter finished modifying the tablet. She had pried it apart and repurposed the various components, so that the original casing was now webbed in wires that held a dozen blinking crystals. It was very impressive, Teal’c thought, though he should not have been surprised. Sam could have done the same thing.
She saw him looking, and flashed him a quick smile. “So what do you think?”
“If I were confronted with that, I would hesitate,” he answered, and her smile widened.
“Couple it with a few explosions, and they ought to retreat.”
“That’s the plan,” Jack said. “What is it with you and explosives, Carter?”
Carter shrugged, but her smile didn’t entirely vanish. “Bombs are fun?”
“If you say so.” Danyel added a fuse to the last of the half-dozen packets Carter had improvised from her packages of C4. “OK, these are all ready. Two with timers, the rest with —”
“Snap and toss fuses,” Carter prompted. “Just like a grenade, really. Break the seal, and you’ve got thirty seconds to get rid of it.”
“Yeah.” Danyel regarded them warily.
They were little bombs, Teal’c thought, not likely to cause any real damage. Confusion, yes, and with zat fire, and surprise on their side, it should be enough to make the guards fall back. “Are you sure I should not go with them, O’Neill?”
Aset laid a hand on his arm. “You cannot.”
“She’s right,” Jack said. “If anything goes wrong — you’re our back-up, Teal’c.”
“As you say.” Teal’c couldn’t pretend to like the idea, but he had to admit that O’Neill was right. It was just — he hated being trapped here, playing at being First Prime, unable to do anything to drive the Goa’uld away. “Very well.”
“OK,” Jack said. He gave a last glance at the plan sketched on the stone floor, then deliberately rubbed his sandal across it, scuffing it out. “Danyel, Carter, you’ll get into the armory and set off the charges. Use your discretion about the interval, but no more than a minute apart. When the second one goes off, I’m heading for the back door of the overseer’s house. I’ll get the queen and the boys, and head for the tunnel entrance. We rendezvous at the other end of the tunnel, outside the palace. Got it?”
Danyel nodded.
Carter said, “Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s go.” Jack turned for the door.
“Good luck, O’Neill,” Teal’c said. Jack lifted a hand in answer, and the door closed again behind them.
“Now,” Egeria said. Her eyes seemed to flicker gold, but then Teal’c realized it was a trick of the lamplight. “We will wait a little, and then we will inform Ra.”
“What?” Teal’c hand tightened on his staff weapon.
“We must time it just right,” she said. “We must warn Ra before the first explosion, but not in time for him to send reinforcements. And we must tell him there will be more attacks, from all quarters, sow as much confusion as we can. Attacks through the Stargate, so that he takes men from the walls.”
“Why tell him at all?” Teal’c demanded. Only a Goa’uld would think of such a thing — but, no, this was Egeria, Egeria and Aset, and he would not believe that possible.
“We must make him trust us,” Egeria said. “Teal’c, if I am to do what Danyel says I will, Ra has to take us with him when he leaves. Even if Pharaoh would leave the Stargate unburied long enough for us to leave, you and I cannot just walk through the gate and proclaim ourselves goddess and First Prime, we must have a sponsor among the gods, and who better than Ra? But to do that, he must believe we are loyal to him.”
Teal’c nodded slowly, suppressing the niggling doubts. “Very well.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The first message played in the quiet coolness of the puddle jumper, picture projected in two dimensions on the inside of the windscreen. A woman with long black hair pinned up at the back of her neck spoke to them earnestly, her recorded voice swift over unfamiliar syllables. She wore a wrap top the color of polished wood, lusterless, like raw silk. Her eyes were dark over broad cheekbones, epicanthal folds accented by the dark eyeliner she wore, beautiful and very, very human. And yet this woman was an Ancient, an Ancient or one of their children or grandchildren. She or those before her had walked through the Stargate from Atlantis, left their city to sleep and sought refuge and peace on Earth.
A refuge now destroyed by the Goa’uld.
Cam shook his head. If he were her, he’d be pissed. He’d also want to know where another puddle jumper had come from. The wall behind her didn’t betray where she was, but he’d bet good money on Hokkaido. He’d bet he knew her distant descendant, Dr. Miko Kusanagi of the Atlantis Expedition. Even driven underground they must have some of their communications equipment still, some way of monitoring air traffic and radio signals, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to fight off the system lord’s slave raid. They’d probably picked up the jumper and wanted to know who it was. After all, if only someone with the ATA gene could fly it, it had to be one of them. Maybe they hoped it was more of their people. Maybe they hoped it was desperately needed reinforcements.
Only it wasn’t.
The second message began to play, the same woman again but her shirt was different. A different day. They were calling again. Daniel would be able to understand spoken Ancient, but none of them could.
Carolyn’s hand moved toward a key.
Sam shook her head. “Don’t do it.” Carolyn looked back at her. “Don’t reply,” Sam said. “We can’t.
Remember? We’re trying not to change history. We can’t interact with the Ancients or their descendants in 2492 BC. If the Ancients know about the future or have access to the Stargate, that will change everything! Right now they’re cut off from the gate. If they don’t have any jumpers left or won’t have them in the next few years, then even if they knew the Goa’uld no longer controlled the gate, they couldn’t get to it. But if they still have a jumper and we make Ra leave the gate, there’s nothing to prevent the Ancients from using it. And that will change the entire history of the Milky Way! The Ancients on Earth have to stay underground or everything’s different.”
Reluctantly, Carolyn moved her hand away. “Maybe they could help us.”
“Maybe they could,” Cam said. “But they’d want access to the Stargate in return, I bet. And we can’t do that.”
“So we just let them call and call with no answer?”
Cam nodded. “Sooner or later they’ll decide it’s just a glitch and there is no jumper here. We just leave it be.”
Carolyn took a deep breath and a long look at the woman in the picture, speaking earnestly into the camera. “OK.” She turned it off. “Then I guess we should recloak the jumper and get busy.” She gave Cam a wobbly smile. “The only Ancient armada is us.”
“Yeah,” Cam said. He put his hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. You’ll do them proud.”
The back of the armory was in deep shadow, but there was no way to miss the Jaffa who stood leaning on his staff weapon beside the narrow doorway. It gave access to a narrow workroom, Danyel remembered, used mostly for repairing leather goods. The bronze work was done in the smith, far enough from the other buildings to reduce the risk of fire. It was a small room, and Danyel guessed — hoped — most of the Jaffa would be inside the armory itself. But first they had to get past this guy.
“That one looks pretty alert,” Carter said in his ear. “And I can’t make the shot from here. What now?”
“Good question.” Danyel glanced around the courtyard again. At least the back door wasn’t meant to be observed — it was defended from within, the inner door fitted with a bar, so that a single soldier could watch over both the stockpiled weapons and the workroom door.
“I guess we need a diversion,” he said, and Carter gave him a look. “Give me the basket.”
She handed it over, and Danyel tucked it under one arm. “When you get your shot, take it,” he said, and stepped out of the shadows.
He made no attempt at concealment, but even so he was within twenty feet of the door before the guard stiffened to attention.
“Who’s there?”
“It is I,” Danyel answered. He kept his voice calm and easy, an ordinary person on an ordinary, insignificant errand.
“Stop where you are.” The Jaffa lifted his staff weapon, fire coiling in its opened tip.
Come on, Carter. “I’m sent with bread,” he called, and lifted the basket slightly.
“Our meal came hours ago,” the guard said. “What folly is this —?”
A single bolt of zat fire split the night, and the Jaffa sprawled forward into the dirt. Danyel grabbed the staff weapon, blinking to clear his sight, but there was no reaction from inside the armory, or anywhere around the walls. Carter darted to join him, and he handed her the staff weapon so that he could drag the Jaffa into the deeper shadow at the base of the wall. The door loomed open, a single lamp casting a faint light within. If there had been another guard, he would already have given the alarm, and Carter nodded as though she’d read his thought.
“Go.”’
Danyel ducked inside, zat unfolded and ready, swiveled to cover every corner, but as he’d expected, the room was empty. “Clear.”
“It’s a start,” Carter said, as she joined him. She set the basket on the table and began unloading the improvised bombs. “Let’s hope the door isn’t barred on the other side.”
Danyel checked it, eased it open on its leather hinges. It was weird, she was his original Carter, the one he’d worked with for eight years before he’d gotten himself lost in the past, but she felt like a stranger now. “No, we’re good.”
“Right.” Carter stuffed several of the bombs into her pockets, handed him the two with the timers. “You know how to set those, right?”
“My timeline only diverged a few years ago,” Danyel answered. “I know how to use the timers.”
“Right,” Carter said again. The apologetic grimace was disconcertingly like Sam’s. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“No problem.” Danyel eased the door open a little further, and together they peered out into the dimly-lit armory. The space was more crowded than he had remembered. There were racks of spears and shields toward the main door, as well as spears and unstrung bows, but the near end of the workshop was filled with the detritus of the peace, bronze ingot, stacks of hides, bundles of wood and huge unidentifiable baskets. The Jaffa had set up a powered light near the observer’s narrow window, but they had shielded it and kept it turned low to keep from betraying their position. There were maybe half a dozen of them, more than he’d hoped, but the darkness and the clutter ought to provide enough cover.
“Up the right side,” Carter said softly. “Behind that pile of metal?”
Danyel nodded — they didn’t really want to burn the armory down — and said, “And if I can get to it, closer to the main door?”
“Yeah.” Carter squinted into the dark. “Four minutes, and four minutes forty-five?”
“Right.” That should give him enough time to plant them and get back to Carter. He twisted the dials, hiding the flashing lights, and slipped forward between the piles of baskets. He could hear the Jaffa talking, though he couldn’t make out the words. They sounded bored, though, and maybe a little fed up with the whole plan, and Danyel hoped they’d stay distracted.
He made it to the spot Carter had indicated without being seen, and crouched in the shadow of the piled bronze to wedge the first explosive into the space between two ingots. He slid the second device into a pile of arrow shafts, sweeping the floor around it in the probably vain hope of keeping any fire from spreading. No matter how careful they tried to be, they were probably going to set the place on fire — but it would be worth it, if they could rescue the queen.
He rejoined Carter, saw her check her watch, and nodded. She cracked the first of the fuses, and lobbed the bomb gently over the nearest pile of baskets. It landed with a definite thud, but before the Jaffa could react, the explosion came. Danyel ducked in spite of himself, saw Carter toss the next bomb, and then another. The Jaffa captain shouted, trying to get his men into order, and Carter aimed the next bomb directly at the observer. There were more shouts, mixed with screams from a wounded man, and someone fired blindly into the dark, the staff bolt crackling overhead. The captain shouted again, ordering his men after the attackers. Carter hefted the fake device, judging the distance, threw it so that it bounced and rolled almost to the captain’s feet, and in the same moment the first of the timed devices went off, toppling the pile of ingots and knocking over a long rack of spears and shields. The Jaffa hesitated, but their captain shouted again, urging them forward. A second voice called for backup.
“Time to go,” Danyel said, and Carter nodded.
They backed toward the workroom door, weapons ready. The Jaffa fired again, and then the second device exploded, drawing their fire. Danyel kicked open the workroom door, zat ready, and Carter ducked past him, darting into the shelter of the wall. He saw her beckon, and hurried across to join her in the shadows.
“Well, that certainly got their attention,” he said, and Carter grinned.
“Let’s just hope it gave Jack enough time —” She broke off, her face changing, and Danyel spun to look himself. More Jaffa were pouring out of the palace, armor snapping into place. Light flashed from the pyramid and the mothership perched at its tip, and an amplified voice shouted in Goa’uld, warning of intruders in the compound.
“That’s not good,” Danyel said
. They weren’t going to be able to meet up with Jack, he could tell that immediately. The best thing, the only thing they could do was to try and get out themselves, if they could manage it without getting killed or captured themselves — “Damn, we should have saved some of those bombs.”
“I did,” Carter said. “Only two, though.”
“Nice.”
“They come in handy,” she said, and looked over her shoulder again. “OK, you said there was a side gate?”
“It’ll be guarded,” Danyel warned, but pointed along the wall. “This way.”
Jack flattened himself against the mud-brick wall of the granary, staff weapon pressed against his side, waiting for the first explosion. There was a patrol, but it didn’t come by here more than twice a night — more proof, if he’d needed it, that this was a trap — but if Danyel and Carter didn’t get a move on, he was going to risk running into them. Something moved by the granary door, a slithering shadow, and he started to charge the staff weapon before he realized what it was. The cat hesitated, dead mouse dangling from her jaws, then darted away across the courtyard.
Jack let out his breath with a sigh. Danyel would have quoted a prayer, or some appropriate invocation; he was having a hard time not swearing aloud. Come on, he thought. It was times like these he really missed radio. Come on.
And then it happened, a flat crack that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what it was. A second explosion, louder, sounded almost on its heels, and he scurried across the gap, flattening himself against the back wall of the overseer’s house. He waited for a moment, hoping the queen would hear and be ready to leave, but there was no sound of movement from inside. OK, he thought, plan B. Again. He lifted the bar carefully from its brackets, trying to make as little noise as possible, and eased the door open.
It was even darker inside, in what had to serve as the queen’s bedroom, and he made himself wait until he could make out the pale lump of the pallet, the shapes of baskets and a tall jar, before he risked moving. The room was empty, and a dim light flickered in the main room; the queen said something, soft and soothing, and one of the boys made a smothered, unhappy sound.
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