"Right. Onward and downward," she murmured. What was it they said about people who talked to themselves?
Another fifteen feet down she froze, not sure if she'd really heard what she thought she'd heard or if the fever was getting to her. No. There it was again. Soft, rhythmic squelching. She knew that noise. She'd been listening to herself making it for the past three days; footsteps on soggy ground. Then a sharp crack. Somebody had trodden on a branch, and he/she/it was coming her way.
Now what?
Play possum.
Easier said than done. Below, the hiker was closing in, and she hung barely twenty feet above his head. If he looked up, he was bound to see her. Like the exercise. The Colonel had drummed it into them with a sledgehammer: Don't give them reason to look up. Don't even breathe. And then it'd all gone wrong. Why?
She held her breath, ignoring the tremors that racked her arms and shoulders and promised to explode into a full-blown cramp. When the hiker came into view, Sam stifled a gasp. The snazzy hairstyle pegged him as a Marine, but the outfit and weaponry made him something else entirely-unless the USMC had radically changed their dress code and equipment during the past three days.
Then, almost directly under her, his step faltered, he stopped, looked around and finally, inevitably, up. She knew why. She'd sensed it practically the same moment as he. It explained the costume.
"Well, lookee here." The upturned face was smirking.
Its owner had participated in the exercise. Except, back then he hadn't wom a tattoo on his forehead. A bird in flight. Whose sign was that? Daniel would know. Sam decided against asking and just stared back at the man. What was his name? Burger? Somebody had called him Burger. King? Surely not Dairy Queen? Macdonald. That's what it was. Master Sergeant Macdonald.
Macdonald kept smirking, and it gave her the creeps. A shaft of sunlight stabbing through foliage picked out the tattoo, lost it again when he raised and primed the staff weapon he carried. "Okay, sugar. Let's have a little competition, huh? Let's see if you can climb faster than I can shoot."
The practical part of the competition would be wholly redundant. The state she was in, Sam couldn't climb, period, and never mind fast. There was no point in even trying.
... gravity will win, because that's what gravity does...
And sometimes this was an advantage. Returning the ex-sergeant's smile, Major Samantha Carter did the one thing he hadn't expected her to do; she let go of the vine.
The impact was crushing, strained ligaments, bruised bone, sent agony boiling up her leg. Her trajectory had been just so, bringing her down smack on top of him. The crumpled heap beneath her lay motionless-dead or out cold, right now she didn't give a damn. Groaning, she crawled off, rolled him on his back, undid his chest armor. Lifting the coarse shirt, she found it; an x-shaped incision on his abdomen, edges of the flaps curling up slightly. A Jaffa's pouch.
"Damn," she whispered, shaken although she'd known it'd be there.
At that moment he gave a low moan. Not dead, then. Time to haul ass. She struggled to her feet and, using his staff weapon as a crutch, slipped off the path and into green, dripping undergrowth.
Far off, in the direction from where he'd come, rose a scream, human and desperate.
"Seeing that you insist on pleasing your whims, Colonel... Then again, I suppose that's the one thing you actually excel at." Norris sneered and pointed across a dusty square kept in the moon's color scheme of titillating beige. "Over there's the mess. I reckon that'll do."
Daniel, normally all in favor of a non-violent approach, was beginning to hope that Jack would deck the creep. The needling had been going on non-stop for the entire three klicks from the gate into the camp. Obviously Norris had an ego to massage. Might have to do with the fact that he'd been caught with his pants down and jumped sky-high when Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Jackson had ambled from cover back in the crater.
Eyes hidden behind shades, Jack was taking it with a forbearance so out of character as to be positively unsettling. Okay, like it or not, they needed Norris's cooperation, but usually Jack didn't let minor issues such as that stand in his way when he was pissed. And he ought to be well and truly pissed by now.
"That'll do fine," he said, face stony, except for a tense white line around his mouth that betrayed the effort to keep a lid on whatever he felt. "Thanks."
Thanks? Talk about gilding the lily. Daniel had heard just about enough of this crap, and if Jack didn't put a stop to it soon, he would.
"Make yourselves at home in there," Norris offered; the sudden generosity probably due to his having placed yet another successful kick in Jack's teeth. "I'll round up the men who were on escort and guard duty that night. You can ask them if you don't believe me or Major Warren."
With that he strode off toward a cluster of huts. Jack gazed after him for a moment and then headed for the mess. For once, Daniel resisted the impulse to rush in where angels feared to tread. Given their history over the past months, it might get him punched in the nose. And in truth, he didn't really want to find out. If this was what he thought it was, he had no idea what to do about it. Besides, now wasn't the time.
The camp was oddly quiet. He'd been to the Alpha Site once, and at the base there folks had been falling over themselves in a constant bustle. Here he'd counted maybe ten people so far, excluding the perimeter guards. By a stack of crates across the square loitered a couple of men, casting furtive glances his way. A third one stepped out of a squat building nearby-latrines, going by the way he adjusted his pants-and he was staring openly, a look of surprise and suspicion on his face. At his nod, the pair by the crates joined him, kicking up dust, and they set off in Daniel's direction like a bunch of hoodlums spoiling for a fight. They passed him at shoulder-brushing distance.
"Hi, Dr. Jackson," Latrine Boy said. "Hope you'll enjoy your stay."
Then they were past and disappeared around a shack, which probably was where the good citizens of Stepford kept their wives. And just how had that guy known his name? Conference with Norris in the Fonz's office? Daniel felt his skin crawl. The place had him spooked in broad daylight. Coffee would help. Definitely.
The mess offered all the coziness you would expect from a corrugated steel hut, but at least it was more or less empty. And the smell rising from the coffee machine suggested something freshly ground. Not necessarily coffee, but still. At a table by one of the windows sat two men-one of them actually smiled. Jack had grabbed a perch as far away from them as possible and was staring holes into the wall. Daniel sighed, got two mugs of coffee and wandered over.
"Here," he said, putting a mug in front of Jack. "Not sure about the taste, but it's the right color."
"Thanks," muttered Jack, tried a sip, and grimaced. "Love the color."
"Yeah." Daniel gave a brief grin. Maybe now was the time. After all, the shades had come off for the time being. "Look, Jack, are you gonna tell Norris where to shove it or-"
"It's the only thing that is right about this place."
-shall I?"
"What?"
"What do you...?" It gradually dawned on Daniel that every single one of Norris's snide comments might have missed its target. He started laughing.
"What's so funny?"
"Me."
"Yeah, well, that's a given, but now isn't the time."
"I know. Welcome back." The wry look it got him made plain that Jack understood exactly what was on Daniel's mind and that there was some truth to it, too. But he was back. Daniel grinned again, harder. "Okay. You first."
"For starters, the training. This is a Marine camp, for cryin' out loud. There ought to be lots of muscular guys running around, singing cadence. So where the hell are they?"
It really was only for starters. Ticking offpoints on his fingers, Jack reeled off a list that proved he hadn't missed a trick since stepping through the gate. Some of the items -like the conspicuous absence of people-Daniel had noticed himself. Others-the unsuitable terrain, for instance-hadn't registered.
; "Ten," said Jack, left pinky raised. "What's with the location of this place? I mean, three klicks from the gate and wide open? Does it get any more unsafe? Makes no sense."
"So, you're- Yuck!" Daniel realized that his coffee hadgone cold, which did nothing to improve the taste. "You're saying that-"
"Carter or Teal'c would have picked up on most or all of these things and smelled a rat. Somebody may have taken exception to their keen sense of smell."
"Norris?"
Jack snorted. "My good friend Colonel Norris couldn't find his own ass if you lit it for him. Partly because he's so far up it. I'm starting to think you could be right, by the way. Anyhow, he's a straw man. He hasn't gone to get the escort or the guard. He's gone to ask what to do with us. Somebody else is running this show."
"How do you know-" Suddenly it hit Daniel. His eyes narrowed. "You're starting to think I could be right about what?"
"You, plural."
By Jack's standards the answer was straightforward. Daniel considered a celebratory sip of gross cold coffee but refrained when he saw the door open. Not Norris. His three pals from the square, steering for the table next to his and Jack's.
"What?" Jack had clocked the frown.
"The bouncers who just came in?" Daniel murmured into his mug. "I, uh, met them earlier. One of them knows my name, and I swear I've never seen him in my life before."
"Should have told me," Jack murmured back. Aloud he said, "Wonder what's taking Norris so long."
As if on cue, the colonel strode in, self-importance wafting behind him like cheap aftershave. "I'm sorry, O'Neill, but the men aren't available. Their units are conducting night maneuvers. So you might as well head back."
"I don't think so, Pete." A thin smile edged onto Jack's face. "I think I want to wait till they're back, and then I want to talk to them."
"This whole thing is outrageous," spluttered Norris. "I told you a half dozen times that they won't be able to tell you anything new. Chances are that the Stargate malfunctioned, just like Carter said. Too bad, but there it is."
The smile got thinner, verging on predatory. "I want to talk to these men. I don't give a damn how long it takes."
This wasn't quite the tune Norris had got accustomed to on their trek from the gate. He hesitated for a second, then snapped, "What is this, huh? Trying to come over concerned or something? You weren't that worried about your team when you screwed up the exercise, were you?"
The look Jack gave him was on a par with liquid nitrogen. Just as quickly as it had flashed up it was gone again. He wavedNorris closer as if for some confidential revelation and gently, if rather loudly, asked, "Tell me something, Pete. Do you actually have to work on being such a pr... preternaturally offensive jerk or is it a gift?"
Somebody at the table across the room seemed to have swallowed the wrong way. A frantic wheeze resolved into a protracted coughing fit. Norris straightened up, bright red in the face, and sent the cougher a glare that made Daniel want to extend his condolences to the victim. Jack had pasted on a mask of pure innocence and contemplated the coffee dregs in his mug.
Finally, Norris turned back to him. "Fine, O'Neill. Have it your way." And, with a nod to one of the Marines at the neighboring table, "Poletti, find these... gentlemen... quarters when they're ready."
"Yessir." It was the man who'd addressed Daniel by name.
On the way out Norris slammed the door hard enough to set the window panes rattling.
Coming out of a wince, Daniel smirked. "Personally, I'd have gone with the first `pr'."
"Oh, I dunno." Jack cocked an eyebrow. `Vow he's gonna go find a dictionary to see what `preternaturally' means. Broadens his horizons."
Her prison was dark and dank and stank of rotting wood and fungi and mold. There was enough of the stuff in here to keep a pharmaceutical plant busy for decades. Not that it did her any good. Through a knothole a million miles above her head a trickle of light seeped into the hollow bole; just enough to extinguish the faint, pulsing glow of whatever organism it was that ate this tree from the inside out. Like everything in this place-or the place itself; it ate you from the inside out. She shuddered, pushed away the thought, and dug in the dirt until she found her weapon again. Not a real one, of course. He'd disarmed her when she'd tried to resist capture, and God only knew where he'd stashed her handgun and knife. Out of her reach, anyway.
The only weapon she had was a tent stake, slim and light and blunt. Well, not so blunt anymore. She'd slipped it from the backpack during their first night here, while her captor had believed her asleep and kept watch outside. Even from out there he'd heard the soft clinking of metal on metal and crawled back inside the tree, to check what she was doing and drag her back onto a makeshift pallet of leaves and twigs.
Her pulse leaped into a frantic race at the mere memory of it. She couldn't recall ever having been so scared in her life. If he'd caught her... If he'd caught her, she wouldn't have had to worry about her heart rate ever again-it was as simple as that. But he hadn't caught her. All he'd done was take the pack outside with him. By then she'd already removed and hidden the stake.
Digging some more, sickened by the slick, moist earth squeezing between her fingers like a living thing-just as well her nails were short-she found the whetstone. It was a small piece of rock, rough and hard as flint, pushed up a few hundred years ago by the sapling tree. She rubbed it over her pants to clean off the dirt and settled back to do what she'd been doing whenever her captor was absent during these past three days. He was absent often and for long periods of time, and she knew he was searching for another victim.
It wouldn't be long now. The tip was already sharp, and she'd managed to hone an inch or so to an edge. She'd come to love the rhythmic swishing of stone over metal. The sound promised escape and a return home, and it calmed her. It also was a kind of meditation. While she whetted the stake, her mind rehearsed the plan for the hundredth time; the small, vital details of where to position herself, when to strike, where to place the dagger. There would be no second chance. If she hesitated for even a fraction of a second, gave him the slightest opening, he would crush her. The images were perfectly clear now, and she could almost feel the gentle pop of the point piercing skin. Like bursting a zit.
The notion made her laugh, quietly, briefly, snapping her out of her reverie. Good. She needed to stay focused, and never mind that her head was pounding. Her attention fixed on the boulder that blocked the entrance. Had it moved? No. He wasn't back yet, though he would be soon. He always came back several times during the day, to make sure she hadn't found a way to free herself. When he'd first left her here, she'd tried to shift the boulder. Tried for hours, straining and swearing and angrily refusing to admit that it was hopeless. Physically he was so much beyond her it defied description. But she still could outthink him. He'd shift the boulder for her, unblock the narrow gap in the tree, and then-
She drew a hissing breath, froze. There! There it was again. A soft squelch of boots on wet ground; the kind of noise you'd associate with a maiden aunt dispensing sloppy kisses. Kissy-kissy, louder now. Bigger. Because it wasn't an aunt, it was an uncle. She giggled, instantly recognized the hysteria and wrestled it down. No time for that. The steady, insistent voice that had kept her sane until now demanded action. This was it. If she spent another day in this hole, she'd lose it.
Suddenly her palms were slick with sweat. Railing under her breath at the vagaries of physiology, she ripped a strip of fabric from her shirt and wrapped it around the stake to give her a secure grip. Then, inch by inch, so as not to make the slightest sound, she edged off the pallet and over to the entrance. Back pressed into the digestive slime that coated the tree's interior, she stood and waited, half convinced that he would hear the hammering of her heart. She barely heard anything beside it. But then she did hear something else. The scrape of stone on wood.
He was back.
She'd been watching carefully whenever he'd opened the entrance. He always rolled the boulder
from left to right. Perhaps it was easier that way, perhaps he'd done it once and, finding that it worked, did it the same way each time after that without giving it any thought. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the fact that he rolled it left to right now. Once the gap was clear, he'd pause, not entirely immune to the exertion, then he'd push himself off the boulder and duck and turn to enter. At that moment, and at that moment only, his jugular would be exposed.
The scraping was loud now; scraping and harsh, labored breath. A thin slice of light cut into the gloom inside the tree, broadening slowly, winking in and out as he moved. Another push, another, and another. Then stillness, no more winking and scraping, only the unbroken strip of light and his gasps.
It brought the familiar urge to fling herself past him and flee. She'd tried that, too. He'd moved faster than she ever could have imagined, caught her, and carried her back inside. After that he'd always made sure that his legs partly blocked the gap, as they did now. But he'd have to turn.
Wait. Not yet. Wait!
It was a second. Only a second, two perhaps, but it seemed to grow out of all proportion, stretch into infinity. Her fingers cramped around the grip of the stake.
Relax. Relax your arnz. Relax your fingers.
If the muscles got too tense she would have neither the speed nor the accuracy she needed. The bacterial goop that clung to the bark was beginning to seep through her shirt, sticky and moist on her skin. She concentrated on the discomfort, allowed it to distract her just enough to breathe again. Very, very softly.
And then he turned and ducked into the opening.
Her arm flew up, fist tight around the stake, just as she'd rehearsed it time and time again in her mind. He saw the movement from the comer of his eye. His head snapped around, but he was helpless at that moment, broad shoulders wedged inside the gap, arms still caught outside.
"Dr. Fraiser! No!"
Perhaps it was the sound of her name, perhaps the look in his eyes. It dredged up words of a promise she'd made; more than a promise, a command: First, do no harm. Fierce and compelling and almost enough to stop her. Almost. Her arm kept moving, needing to find its target, but its thrust changed, thrown off course by four words. Instead of slicing the vein in his neck, the stake plunged into the hollow above his clavicle, destroying a nexus of nerves and disabling the right side of his upper body. He bellowed in pain, reeled back, and crumpled against the boulder.
Stargate SG-1: Survival of the Fittest: SG1-7 Page 10
