STARGATE SG-1: Kali's Wrath (SG1-28)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  O’Neill nodded his approval — the Reetou were still a threat, after all. “Let’s move. We gotta find Daniel and then get outta here.”

  As they ducked into the corridor, Carter said, “Sir, the Stargate is still underwater, and the ring console on the island is still broken. The only ship is Kali’s mothership.”

  “I admit the plan still needs some details filled in…”

  The report of a zat startled O’Neill. He whirled around to see Carter lowering her weapon and a Jaffa, who had just turned the corner behind them, twitching on the floor.

  “Good shot,” O’Neill said. “Let’s go.”

  With the ease of long practice, O’Neill and Carter moved into formation. First O’Neill stood fast and covered with his weapon while Carter moved forward. Then Carter stood fast and covered with the zat while O’Neill moved forward.

  Typically, Kali’s stronghold was a maze of corridors, with nothing labelled. Of course, O’Neill thought, even if it was labelled, it’d probably be in a language that only Daniel could read. They’d been through the stronghold before, but they’d been focused then on trying to find survivors. O’Neill hadn’t paid as much attention as he should to the layout, just enough to know when he’d checked a room already.

  When they reached a T-intersection, O’Neill moved ahead to check around the corner while Carter covered his six.

  He saw four Jaffa standing in front of a doorway.

  One of them caught sight of him and yelled, “Kree!” before O’Neill could pull his head back.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. Just as he turned around to tell Carter that they were seen, two more Jaffa turned into the corridor behind them.

  Carter fired, taking one out. Both O’Neill and the other Jaffa raised their staff weapons into position to fire, but O’Neill moved just a bit faster, squeezing off a shot which struck the Jaffa just as his own finger spasmed on the control of his staff weapon. The Jaffa’s blast fired harmlessly into the ceiling.

  “Really wanting my P90 right now,” he muttered. “We’ve got four more coming from that way.” He jerked his thumb behind his head.

  Then more Jaffa appeared behind the two they’d just taken down, and the one in front was familiar: it was the same one who’d been guarding them in the lab. Which means the snake-head turned Carter’s toy off. Happy joy.

  O’Neill signaled for Carter to move, and they dove to the floor, sliding toward the intersection. As soon as the Jaffa — now almost on top of them — came into sight, O’Neill fired the staff weapon. He didn’t have time to take aim, but it was practically point-blank range, and it wasn’t as if it was a precision weapon in any case.

  Carter had been a few feet behind O’Neill, so it was half a second later that she fired her zat. Between them, they took down the three Jaffa.

  “Didn’t you say there were four?” Carter asked.

  O’Neill nodded. “Other one probably went for backup. Go!”

  They ran down the only corridor remaining. At a four-way intersection, two more Jaffa were to their left, while several more appeared to their right. They both fired blindly and kept running.

  O’Neill gritted his teeth. There was no way they were going to find Daniel this way, and two people on unfamiliar terrain trying to outrun a platoon of Jaffa who actually were familiar with the terrain meant they were just living on borrowed time.

  So they needed to change the terrain.

  The corridor they turned down was a dead end, but there was a room at the end.

  “If we’re really lucky,” he said as they ran toward it, “Daniel will be in there.”

  They weren’t really lucky. O’Neill yanked the door open while Carter covered him. It was a storage room, filled with large boxes. Throwing the door shut behind them, he pointed behind one container and moved behind another.

  Carter took up position where he’d indicated. “Now what, sir?”

  O’Neill sighed, then noticed that there was a window. “Cover me,” he said as he moved toward it, pushing the red curtain aside, revealing wooden shutters, which he unlatched and opened.

  A burst of cold hit him, and he wished he still had the fleece — probably in some container along with his P90. The window looked out onto the village, conveniently enough. It was about a ten-foot drop out the window to a snow-covered, tree-lined incline that would take them into the village.

  Carter whispered, “They’re getting closer, sir.”

  “All right, Plan A is we stay here, hope we can hold out against every one of Kali’s Jaffa as they step through the door. Plan B, we jump out the window and take our chances in the now-completely-empty village that’s full of nice places to hide.”

  “Plan B sounds good to me, sir.”

  Nodding, O’Neill said, “Let’s go.”

  Carter covered O’Neill as he hopped onto the window sill, dropped the staff weapon onto the snow-covered ground, looked down to judge the distance, then leapt off.

  He landed and bent his knees as soon as his boots struck snow, then springing up from the crouch into a forward shoulder roll.

  The first time he did this was in special ops training, taught to him by the even-tempered old sergeant who had served as his training officer.

  O’Neill had been younger and more respectful then, so he hadn’t actually said what he had thought: Why the hell are we wasting our time learning to do a shoulder roll when we should just bounce up and shoot whatever bastard we’re up against?

  Instead he had asked for permission to speak, which the TO had granted.

  “Sir, what is the purpose of the shoulder roll at the end of the landing, sir?”

  The TO had just stared at him for a moment before answering. “Jumping from a height gives you momentum, Airman. That momentum needs to be shed. Why, do you think there is a better way?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “And that is?”

  O’Neill had quickly looked from side to side before answering. “Sir, just bounce up and shoot whatever bastard we’re up against, sir.”

  “Try it.”

  “Sir?”

  The sergeant had pointed up at the large wooden staircase that they’d been jumping off the top of and going into forward shoulder rolls. “Try it.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  And so young Jack O’Neill had run up to the top of the stairs, jumped off the top, bounced back up from the crouch, and then lost his balance and fallen on his ass.

  The other trainees had been too well disciplined to actually laugh at O’Neill, but he had seen a couple of their lips curl.

  Again pointing at the staircase, the sergeant said, “Try it once more, Airman.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  O’Neill had gone back up, and this time when he bounced back up he fell on his face.

  From that day forward, he made sure that he knew how to do a proper shoulder roll.

  Of course, the training mat was flat and made of foam. On P3X-418, O’Neill was jumping onto snow on an incline, so his shoulder roll was probably not up to his TO’s standards. Then again, the old bastard was long since retired, living in New Jersey, and spoiling his great-grandchildren.

  Betcha never thought I’d be putting your training to good use on an alien planet, Sarge, he thought as he struggled to his feet and brushed the snow off.

  He heard the electric sizzle of several shots from a zat, and he immediately ran for where he’d dropped the staff weapon.

  A second later, though, as O’Neill was banging the staff weapon’s center with his palm-heel to get the snow off it, Carter leapt out the window.

  Her landing and shoulder roll were, he noticed, flawless.

  “Ol’ Sarge would be proud, Carter.”

  “Who, sir?”

  “Never mind, let’s move before the Jaffa decide to jump after us.”

  They started to move down the mountain. “I don’t think they’ll follow out the window, sir. Their armor — ”

  She was interrupted by a staff weap
on, which hit the tree to their right.

  “Talk later, Major!” O’Neill put the staff weapon on his shoulder, muzzle facing behind him, and started firing blind, hoping it would give the Jaffa pause enough to allow the pair of them time to put some distance.

  It must have worked, as by the time they got to the base of the mountain, which was also the start of the village, there were no visible signs of pursuit.

  They moved silently among the very same structures that they had been overtly searching for survivors only yesterday. This time, they were hugging the walls, trying to stay out of sight. The lack of pursuit could change at any moment.

  “Sir,” Carter whispered, pointing at one of the few two-story structures.

  Nodding, O’Neill moved toward it. That required going around in a semi-circle in order to continue hugging the walls, as it were, and Carter covered him as he crossed the distance between a small house and the two-story structure, which turned out to be a library of some sort. There were books and scrolls and maps and things haphazardly tossed about onto shelves that lined all the walls, with two big tables with benches in the center.

  “I’m guessing Kali doesn’t use the Dewey Decimal System,” O’Neill muttered.

  One of the two tables was empty, but the other had two maps laid out on it. Peering at it, O’Neill saw that the top one was a map of the village, and under it was a detailed layout of the castle.

  “And where was this when we needed it?”

  Carter pointed to the rear of the library. “Sir.”

  Following her finger, O’Neill saw a spiral staircase. He nodded, and they moved toward it. He gestured for Carter to stay put, and she nodded, staying at the base of the staircase with her zat ready.

  O’Neill moved quickly up the stairs to find a darkened storage area. More shelves like the ones against the walls, but up here they were in several rows, making for very little floorspace. The only light came from the two windows, one on the north side, the other on the south.

  He whispered, “Carter!”

  She looked up, nodded, and followed him up the stairs.

  O’Neill moved to the south window, since that was the one that faced the mountain stronghold. He saw about a dozen Jaffa leaving from the front entrance to start searching the village.

  “What’s the plan, sir?”

  The temptation to quote Indiana Jones’s line about making it up as he goes was great, but O’Neill managed to resist. “Stay up here until the Jaffa are gone, then go back to the castle and spring Daniel.” He winced. “The plan gets kinda fuzzy after that. I don’t suppose you could fly the mothership?”

  “I know enough about the systems that I could probably fake it — but I’d feel a lot better with Teal’c or my father around.”

  “Your faking it is better than most people’s skill, Carter. I’ll take it.”

  “Thank you, sir, but — ”

  Holding up a finger, O’Neill said, “Ah, ah! No ‘buts.’ I paid you a compliment. You say ‘thank you, sir,’ and there the sentence ends.”

  Carter smiled. “Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.”

  “That’s better. You did good with the thingamajig Kali had you build.”

  “Honestly, sir, I didn’t think it would have such a profound effect on symbiotes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it did, but that wasn’t my intention.”

  “There are times, Carter, when intentions matter less than results.”

  “Yes, sir — sometimes, maybe.”

  O’Neill smiled. “Well, I’m sure Daniel would have something long and boring to say about how the ends don’t justify the means.” He shook his head. “Damn, I’d like to hear one of those long and boring speeches right about now.”

  “Me, too, sir.”

  Watching as the Jaffa moved in formation to search the village, O’Neill put a finger to his lips and they waited in silence, trying not to breathe too loud. Then a noise came from downstairs, and they both turned to look at the top of the staircase. O’Neill pointed to the spiral staircase’s landing. Carter nodded and moved toward it, zat at the ready.

  The Jaffa weren’t anywhere near close enough to already be in the library, so either these were other Jaffa O’Neill didn’t know about, or other survivors of the Reetou attack they missed the last time, or another bunch of Reetou.

  Or, as it turned out, Teal’c, Captain Patel, and the Thakka.

  “Teal’c?”

  All three of them looked up. “O’Neill!”

  Quickly, O’Neill went down the staircase, followed by Carter.

  “Well, this is a nice surprise,” he said, keeping his voice low. Then he looked at the Thakka. “And a not-so-nice surprise. What’s he doing here?”

  “Getting us here,” Patel said as she unshouldered her backpack. “Since the Stargate wasn’t an option, the Thakka got us a cloaked cargo ship.”

  “Uh huh.” O’Neill wasn’t thrilled, but he couldn’t very well argue with the results; the ends justified the means, after all.

  Teal’c looked around. “Where is Daniel Jackson?”

  Carter said, “We still have to rescue him from Kali. She wants him to negotiate with the Reetou on her behalf.”

  That got the Thakka’s attention. “What?”

  Quickly and concisely, O’Neill filled them in on what had been going on. He had considered asking Carter to do it, but while the major had many virtues, quick and concise explanations were not among them.

  The Thakka actually snarled. Until he joined the SGC, O’Neill had never seen anyone snarl in real life before, but between the Goa’uld and Jaffa, he couldn’t go a week without seeing at least five snarls.

  “Negotiate? The Reetou killed an entire platoon of Jaffa, and would have killed me were it not for the Tau’ri. And now she would speak with them?”

  O’Neill stared at the Thakka. “I’m sorry your boss is a jerk, except for the part where I’m not sorry at all. We need to rescue Daniel and get the hell out of here, and your cargo ship just got elected for the second part of that plan.”

  Patel had been rummaging in her pack, and was pulling out a couple of P90s and extra ammo. “This might help, Colonel.”

  Handing off the staff weapon to Teal’c, O’Neill grinned. “Oh yeah, youbetcha, Captain. Well done.” He grabbed both P90s, tossing one to Carter.

  “I also brought some C-4 and eight grenades,” Patel added, handing two grenades each to O’Neill, Carter, and Teal’c.

  The Thakka was shaking his head. “It has become clear to me that the Mother Goddess is not what I believed her to be.”

  “Ya think?” O’Neill said, sliding a clip into his P90. “Look — can you help us get into the castle up there so we can rescue Daniel?”

  “Perhaps.” He walked over to the table that included the design of the castle and started studying it. “Ramprasad and I used these to aid us on our plan of defense against the Reetou.” He pointed to a spot on the mountain that had a small triangle on it. “This indicates a secret door to an underground passage that leads to the redoubt’s lowest levels. Ramprasad and I had hoped to lure the Reetou to that passage and trap them with Jaffa on either side.”

  “Turkey shoot,” Patel said. “Nice.”

  The Thakka shook his head. “It would have been, had we succeeded in luring the Reetou there.”

  O’Neill had finished locking and loading his P90. “All right, let’s lay low here until the patrol passes us by. Then we’ll head to the mountain to — ”

  “Jaffa! Kree!”

  Turning, O’Neill saw one of the Jaffa had entered the library. He was pointing his staff weapon into the room, aimed mostly at Teal’c, but he was in a good position to hit any of them.

  The Thakka stepped forward. “Lower your weapon, Jaresh!”

  Jaresh hesitated. “Thakka? Why are you with these Tau’ri outsiders and Apophis’s shol’va?”

  “Teal’c is no traitor. I have learned that much we believed to be true has been a lie told us by a creature who
masquerades as the Mother Goddess.”

  Jaresh stared at the Thakka, lowering his weapon. “How can you say that?”

  Teal’c took advantage of the unguarded moment and fired his zat, but even as Jaresh fell to the floor, two more appeared in the doorway behind him. They looked in horror at their fallen comrade, and in anger at their First Prime. O’Neill realized that they’d probably heard and seen the entire exchange.

  Confirming it, one Jaffa looked right at the Thakka and spat the word, “Shol’va!”

  However, just as they were activating their staff weapons, both Carter and Teal’c fired their zats and took them both down.

  “Looks like ‘sneaky’ just went out the window,” O’Neill said. “Thak, you know the terrain, you take point.”

  The Thakka nodded, then turned to Teal’c and Carter. “Thank you both for not killing them. They were fooled by the false goddess as I was. They do not deserve to die for that.”

  “We’ve only got two zats,” O’Neill said.

  Staring at him, the Thakka said, “What did you call them?”

  O’Neill raised his eyebrows. “Drop the ‘ni’katel.’”

  Shaking his head, the Thakka said, “Are you so lazy, human, that you cannot speak an extra three syllables?”

  “Yep,” O’Neill said without hesitation or apology.

  The Thakka actually smiled at that. “I admire your honesty.”

  “Well, I can die happy now. Point is, I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to stun every Jaffa we’ll see.”

  “I understand that, O’Neill. But — as I’m sure Teal’c has told you — Jaffa are trained soldiers. They know that death may come at any time when serving their — ” He hesitated. “ — their god. Nonetheless, I would prefer that killing my fellow Jaffa be a last resort, not a first one.”

  O’Neill glanced at Teal’c, who inclined his head slightly. That told O’Neill everything he needed to know — mostly that the Thakka was okay in Teal’c’s mind, which was good enough for O’Neill. “We’ll do the best we can. Let’s move.”