Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Now he cocked a puzzled eyebrow and attempted to correct the error. "I assure you, I am

  "Of course he is!" cried Hamilgart. "Meleq would not let those he loves travel without a guardian."

  "Of course he is," the Colonel echoed firmly, drilling Teal'c with a stare that said the error suited him just fine.

  "Then we are doubly honored." Again Ayzebel bowed. "Please permit me to show you to your rooms."

  "Thank you." Water dripping from his hat, Daniel performed an obeisance that would have looked good at a Japanese business meeting. "The honor is ours."

  The boy had remained in the background during the introductions, but now he bounced alongside his mother, curious and eager. "Can I come?"

  "Sure you can." Head tilted, Jack O'Neill grinned at him. "What's your name?"

  "I am Luli," he proclaimed importantly and flopped into a bow. On the upswing he added, "Heir of Hamilqart."

  his is the market," Luli explained unnecessarily. He was wearing Jack's ball cap and had been appointed their guide for the morning. So far he'd taken them around the stadium, the race course, and the city temple.

  Everywhere they'd encountered friendly, smiling people who seemed genuinely pleased to see them. Probably the reason why Jack allowed Luli to drag him off down a narrow covered alley and towards an exotic symphony of smells that advertised the proximity of at least fifty different food stalls. Daniel watched the pair disappear in a throng of locals and grinned. The only thing missing was the penny whistle, otherwise Jack could give the Pied Piper a run for his money. How he did it was a mystery, but the fact remained that he'd got himself instantly adopted by yet another kid.

  Maybe it'd draw him out a little. Daniel's memory wasn't exactly trustworthy these days, but Jack seemed different, more remote. Not unfriendly, and of course the jokes kept coming hard and fast, plating the armor, masquerading as extroversion and hiding the man. He'd sat in that tent at Vis Uban claiming they were friends over a chasm of distance. Not coldness, not something you really could put a finger on. Just... distance. Of course Jack had never been outgoing, not as far as Daniel recalled, but this put a whole new spin on self-contained. Sam and Teal'c simply accepted it; in fact, they'd warned him off. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that something had happened and they refused to tell him. Kinda like walking into the briefing room and getting that hearty welcome from General Hammond: Dr Jackson, this briefing is classified. Was he part of SG-1 or wasn't he? Whichever, Daniel was unwilling to let it slide. Letting stuff slide wasn't in his nature, that much he did recall. Except, he had a hunch that Jack would be a tad more difficult to crack than the General.

  "They off on a mission or something?" Sam had fought her way through to him.

  "Looks like it. I think Jack's about to get a crash course on local cuisine."

  She laughed. "You're saying he needs rescuing?"

  "Nah. Sea urchin's supposed to be a delicacy."

  "Sea urchin?"

  "Little black prickly things that are a pain to step into."

  "How do you eat them?"

  "Carefully?"

  "Very funny, Daniel." She looked around, taking in the sights and sounds of the bazaar. "Amazing what a difference sunshine makes."

  Wasn't that the truth? Last night's dinner had been a pretty awkward affair. Hosts slumping into dejection at each thunderclap tended to make the guests a bit jumpy. By morning it had blown over, though, and Hamilqart's mood turned to exuberance. He'd gushed about rising suns and good omens and hastened into town to apprise something called `the Synod' of their arrival.

  The town was similarly buoyant now. A sea of colors flooded the market, stallholders were praising their goods and asking fantasy prices, prospective buyers loudly begged to differ, the bass boom of portly men mingling with the soprano of shrewd old women. Hoots of laughter and snatches of music from a tavern somewhere, and the scents of perfume, leather, clay, and spice.

  Sam pointed at a tightly packed row of stalls selling textiles in all shades of violet and pink. "Fashion district?"

  "Kind of," replied Daniel. "Phoenician is derived from the Greek word for purple. It's because they'd figured out a way of using the extract of purple sea snails as dye. Seems like these guys imported the idea."

  "Yeah. Except, we still don't know how they got here in the first place."

  However they'd got here, they sure as hell weren't afraid of Jaffa, which probably was a hint. Daniel's gaze drifted to Teal'c who stood near an intersection of two alleys, produce and jewelry. He was keeping a watchful eye on Dr. Kelly, planted like a breakwater amid milling shoppers and sketching Punic/Phoenician street life into her notebook. More than one passerby bumped into her, too busy smiling and bowing at the Jaffa to pay any attention to where they were going. Every now and again whispers of spirit could be heard. A woman in a silk robe held a toddler up to him. With that ferocious baring of teeth he called a smile Teal'c obliged, murmured something, and briefly placed his hand on the child's head.

  "Beats having folks run from you screaming," muttered Sam. "I guess we'd better round them up and find Luli and the Colonel."

  Two minutes later they were headed towards the food stalls, Teal'c shooing a meek Professor before him. Over breakfast he'd informed her that he was, indeed, an alien. Ever since she seemed convinced that Nowlin' Mad Murdock had somehow morphed into B A Baracus and treated him with the utmost caution.

  The missing pair hovered near a stand that sold seafood. Furtively spitting small black bits of bristle, Jack was trying to look ecstatic.

  "Ever had fresh sea urchins, Professor?"

  "Delicious, aren't they?" Dr. Kelly graced him with an innocent granny smile. "I told the boy you were fond of them."

  Imminent second-degree murder was averted by Teal'c. "O'Neill," he murmured.

  Spitting some more, Jack turned casually and followed the Jaffa's gaze. Half hidden in the shadows of a brightly striped awning huddled a man, watching them. He was tall, in his thirties, a good deal shabbier than even the poorest Tyreans they'd seen so far, and he wore calf-length pants, a tunic in muted browns, and a strange floppy cap. When he realized he'd been spotted, he slowly stepped out from under the awning, not threatening but poised to run at any moment. By instinct or experience he'd identified Jack as the leader of their little group.

  "Who sent you?" he rasped. "And what do you want?"

  The man never got an answer. Red-faced with anger, small fists balled at his sides, Luli leaped forward.

  "You dare speak to him, scum? You dare come here? Go away! Go where the likes of you hide! Go -"

  "Whoa!" Jack caught the boy by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back. "Easy! What's he done?"

  "He is a heretic! He offends the Lord Meleq!"

  "And you can tell that how?"

  "By his clothes!" The look Luli shot him was universal to children the galaxy over: You're a nice guy, but you're not really clued in, are you?

  "His clothes?"

  "They're Phrygian," the Professor chimed in drily.

  Daniel nodded. "You can tell by the headwear."

  "See? Even they know!"

  By now people had begun to gather, muttering and staring, their mood shifted from relaxed friendliness to lynch-mob menace. Somebody spat at the man's feet. With a subtle move Teal'c lowered his staff weapon an inch or two, asserted his presence. The circle of onlookers widened fractionally. The stranger's eyes took in the staff, the tattoo, and his face contorted in a grimace of hatred.

  "Jaffa!"

  That reaction at least had an ugly flavor of normalcy.

  "He's my friend," said Jack sharply. "And you're -"

  He was cut off by an excited outcry that came racing up the narrow passage like floodwater, sloshing up the walls and spilling into doorways. Simultaneously, dozens of shoppers started pushing down the alley towards the source of the shouts, jostling along anything in their path. Daniel heard Jack's frustrated yell and realized that the so-calle
d heretic had vanished. Into a stall or into the mass of bodies, it didn't matter. The man was gone, and they and a potentially nasty situation were being washed away by the human tide.

  At length the throng disgorged itself onto a vast open space by the harbor. O'Neill sheared away from the crowd and made for a section of the dock that was relatively clear of people. Major Carter and Daniel Jackson had also seen him and followed, as did Teal'c, herding before him Professor Kelly and the boy.

  "What the hell was that all about?" growled O'Neill.

  "Quick! Quick!" Impatiently, Luli prodded him to move nearer the edge of the seawall before others had the chance to occupy the prime place. "They've come back!"

  "Who's come back?"

  "Abibaal," the child exclaimed, pointing across the harbor. "Abibaal is coming back."

  The two vessels they had seen from the cliff on the previous day floated on their moorings, beaks of iron protruding from the prows and three banks of oars stacked one above the other on port and starboard. Between them, rounding the peninsula that formed one of the piers of the inner harbor, a third ship became visible; this one smaller and under sail, its oars limply trailing in the water.

  "They should have returned from Sidonia yesterday," the boy babbled breathlessly, stumbling over his words. "The storm must have delayed them. There will be a big ceremony tonight."

  More and more Tyreans gathered along the quay to cheer the vessel's progress. Driven by a southerly wind, it now passed between the two battleships. Two diminutive figures could be discerned scaling the mast and crawling onto the top boom above the sail. As they worked their way outwards to the tips, cutting the tackle, the huge, leather-quilted square began to sag. This, as Teal'c surmised, was not the customary procedure of striking sail.

  His assessment had been correct. The crowd became quiescent, their elation replaced by troubled murmurs until those abated too. In the end the silence was broken only by the cries of gulls and the groaning of ropes and canvas from the oncoming ship. The destruction of the sail had decelerated its approach, and the drag created by idle oars slowed it further. On deck a solitary man hastened forward and grabbed the pole of a sculling rudder mounted to the prow. In the stem another sailor handled its twin.

  Laboriously the vessel began to turn until it stood at ninety degrees to its former course. Its motion had all but stopped, but it would not be enough. The crewmen knew. Wide-eyed and helpless they watched as their ship slid broadside against the harbor wall and shrieked to a rest, hull on stone, oars snapping and splintering like matchsticks.

  "Don't look!"

  Putting himself between flying shards of wood and the boy, O'Neill pushed Luli back from the edge of the quay to shield him from physical harm and from the sight beyond the frightened faces of the sailors.

  The scene spoke of carnage in all its obscene glory. This had been a merchant vessel, not a battleship, yet someone had chosen to attack it. Shattered fittings everywhere proved that a fight had taken place, as did the crumpled, gored corpses that littered the deck. A number of them wore armor, possibly a detail of soldiers dispatched to prevent just such an occurrence. If so, they had failed in their task, and they had paid a high price for it. Among them lay bodies clad in the plain, utilitarian garb of sailors. Seagulls settled on them, hacking pieces of flesh from gaping wounds. The man who had operated the stern rudder snatched up a piece of wood and hurled it at the birds. It skittered over the deck and came to rest against the limp fabric of the sail. The gulls spun up and circled briefly before diving onto the carcasses once more, beaks agape, yellow eyes blazing.

  "Whoever did this, they weren't after the cargo." Leaning over edge of the dock, Daniel Jackson peered into the hold. More bodies there, their blood soiling bales of cloth and ingots of bronze.

  One of the survivors looked up, his visage soot-stained and defeated. "No, friend," he mumbled. "They took the children."

  "What children?"

  "Six firstborns of Sidonia, sent to -"

  "Colonel!"

  Major Carter's voice was soft and tightly controlled as she pointed at the poop deck and the source of the stench that hung, cloying and putrid, above the vessel. Knotted together in grotesque poses, skin taut and blackened where it had not split to reveal the stark ruby of muscle, teeth bared and cracked from the heat, lay further corpses. Singed ends of rope were coiled around them and the planks beneath charred, smoke still curling up in places. The victims had been tied, suggesting that they were burned alive. Teal'c could think of only two reasons to do this, torture or execution. Professor Kelly turned away, fighting a reaction that had gripped most of the bystanders close enough to see and smell.

  Two of the seamen pushed a gangplank up onto the quay. Their three comrades silently carried the first body ashore and carefully, reverently, placed it on the ground. The dead man had been one of their own. The crowd receded before them, for fear of being tainted and to create space for the many dead to come.

  As the sailors returned aboard to collect another corpse, the eerie quiet finally was broken by a call.

  "Make room! Make room for the Synod!"

  Heads twisted and feet shuffled among murmurs of relief, and people pressed against each other to clear a path for a solemn procession of priests and acolytes, Hamilqart among them. It was led by a man in lavish amethyst robes, who moved with the fragile grace some old people possess. He approached the body and wordlessly stared down at it, standing almost as tall as Teal'c himself, white hair flowing to his shoulders, on his head a circlet of gold. Then his gaze wandered over the deck, the fallen there, the sailors who had interrupted their grim duty for the duration of this scrutiny, and at last to the abomination in the stern of the ship.

  "You were wrong," he said softly. "Abibaal, old friend, you were wrong."

  Suddenly he spun around, surprisingly agile for a man of his age. Clear, penetrating eyes studied Teal'c and the rest of SG-1.

  "I regret that we could not offer you a better welcome. But perhaps it was Meleq's will that you should witness this. Please return to Hamilgart's house. I shall come to see you. There is much to talk about." After a quick glance at O'Neill he added, "Leave the boy with me. He will be safe. His father wishes to speak to him."

  `Kandelabrum' was a Priest of the Third Order, Luli had said.

  Alright, so the guy's name was Kandaulo.

  It was a mind game. One best kept to himself, given the circumstances. Anything to distract from that ship and its reek. Nothing stank like senseless butchery.

  `Kandinsky' had turned up at Hamilqart's house less than two hours after they'd got back, about an hour after the water had gone slightly tepid and Jack had begun to contemplate leaving the bathtub. Apparently the Phoenicians had a thing about bathtubs. According to Kelly there were dozens of them in that place where Daniel had found the `gate address. They were carved from stone, high-walled, and too short to stretch out if you were above 4'3". He couldn't have cared less. He'd happily have hopped into a thimble, just as long as he got to scrub off that stench. There was nothing else they could have done, except watch people mourn their dead. He knew how that went. He had first-hand experience.

  Clean and in fresh clothes, he now listened to `Kandahar' offering them the option of doing something. Well, not really offering. The priest was talking more in terms of destiny and Meleq-sent. The sort of stuff that normally rang the entire O'Neill carillon of alarm bells at once.

  Normally.

  Ayzebel had risen from her chair further down the arcade, making the rounds with glasses of perfumed water. How she'd heard of the ship was anybody's guess, but when they'd returned from the harbor, the whole patio had been awash with crushed blossoms, jasmine and honeysuckle and roses strewn on the floor, drifting in the pool, dreamlike and fragrant. That, and a hot bath in each room. To cleanse them of death, she'd said. It took more than soap and water.

  Smiling at her, he accepted a glass. The corners of her mouth curled up, but the eyes stayed somber. Then
again, his own attempt probably hadn't been all that convincing either.

  "How would you wish us to help?" asked Daniel.

  They were sitting in a shady comer of the patio, on four low benches arranged in a square. Carter next to him, her hair still damp after the bath. She had a stubborn look of composure, and momentarily he wondered what kind of mind games she played. Teal'c and the Professor perched opposite, Kelly's complexion still a subtle shade of green, but Jack didn't derive any satisfaction from it. Living history was a lot less fun than digging it up from the safe distance of millennia. He knew that too. On the bench to the left sat Hamilgart and Daniel in diplomacy mode, and across from them, enthroned on a seat all to himself, `Kantankero', Priest of the Third Order.

  "Is this not obvious?" His Eminence winked, as though he'd realized that Daniel was dragging his feet on purpose. "We would ask you to help us find the men who did this."

  "We know nothing about these men."

  "Luli tells me you have encountered one of them."

  "The Phrygians?"

  Papa Smurf on the market, with the bad headgear and worse PR. The only one in this place who seemed to think that a Jaffa was a Jaffa was a Jaffa. And that made no sense, did it? If the Smurfs were the bad guys, how come they were afraid of the big, bad First Prime?

  "Yes, the Phrygians."

  "Why would they attack your vessel?"

  "Because they are heretics."

  And wear goofy hats. What kind of an argument was that?

  "They don't share your ways of worship?" Daniel enquired cautiously.

  "They have vowed to wipe out our ways," explained Hamilgart, leaving the Priest of the Third Order to ponder the ignorance of Meleq's putative emissaries. "They worship the bull-slayer, the one sworn to destroy the Lord Meleq."

  Three or four bells in the carillon were swinging into a peal. What did they really want? Find the killers who had slaughtered and burned a shipful of people or fight an unholy war? Or was it one and the same?