"Jack? Stay put, Jack."
By Jack O'Neill's estimate, he'd already done too much of that. "I'll be fine. Just give me a minute." An hour would be more realistic, but if things played out the way they usually did, he probably didn't have that long. "How did I get here? And where is here?"
"I carried you. The ruins weren't far. This must have been some kind of wardroom." Sitting on his haunches, Daniel slowly seesawed to a rest in front of Jack. Rumor had it he bought those bandannas on purpose. "You were out cold. I'm guessing it's a concussion."
"Ya think? What the hell happened? Did I get hit by a tank?"
"You got hit by a girl."
"I what?" The pieces fell into place. He remembered that indefinable sense of being watched and, seconds later, a slim, filthy, stinking figure whirling from the shadows. The business end of a staff weapon flying at his face, the shrill shock in her eyes when she'd recognized him, too late. "Carter. Did I mention I like her attitude? Where is she?"
Wincing, Daniel nodded toward a comer of the room, a makeshift pallet, and its occupant. "I, uh... You were down, and somebody was standing over you with a staff weapon. I kinda overreacted. Knocked her flat."
"Thanks."
"Nothing as inherently funny as misguided acts of heroism, huh?"
True. Except it could have been a real Jaffa with real Jaffa brethren lurking in the bushes. As far as Jack was concerned, heroism lay in the intention rather than the outcome. "Thanks anyway."
"You're welcome."
"Fraiser and Teal'c?"
Daniel gave a despondent little shrug. "No idea. All I know is that the staff weapon Sam used isn't Teal'c's."
"You can tell?"
"Sure. The markings are all different, depending on-"
"Make, model, and year."
"Something like that."
"Crap." A real Jaffa with real Jaffa brethren lurking in the bushes... and where there were Jaffa, there usually was a Goa'uld. "Crap," Jack muttered again. "So, where did Carter leave Teal'c and the doc? Did she say?"
Another wince. "No. I haven't talked to her yet."
"Come again?"
"She's in real bad shape, Jack."
Thankfully, the room was so small Jack could get away with just scooting over to Carter's pallet on all fours. Standing up might have been tricky. Daniel had cleaned her up as best he could, whittling down a solid layer of grime to smudges of dirt on a waxy face. Wrapped around one leg was a pristine bandage, looking absurdly out of place.
Jack stared at it. "What?" he said.
"It's nasty. Deep gash, and it's infected. I put antibiotics on it, but..."
The rest became a blur of sounds, throbbing in tune with Jack's headache. Not just infected, if the jaundice and the odor were anything to go by. He'd seen this once before, in a rebel camp in Honduras, and he'd hoped to hell he'd never have to see it again. Sweet Jesus, not Carter! He shouldered the thought aside. There was no place for it now. If and when the time came, he'd do what he had to do, but on the whole the preferable option was finding Fraiser. After all, they did have a tame doctor running around somewhere in this hellhole.
As gently as he could he patted her cheek. "Carter? Rise and shine. Time for a debrief" No reaction. Another pat. "Come on, Major. Sitrep. Now! That's an order."
She moaned a little, and suddenly her eyes flew open on a flash of panic that melted into toe-curling relief. "Sir," she whispered, voice brittle. "I thought... dead... I didn't... I-"
"You whacked me upside the head, Carter. How's that gonna kill me?" He forced a grin, hoped she'd buy it. "If you'd whupped my ass, maybe, but my head? Hardest material known to man."
Bingo. It was wan and diffident, but it was a smile alright. Duration needed work, though. The panic crept back, in its wake something dangerously close to despair, and she pushed herselfup on her elbows. "You shouldn't be here. You can't-" For the first time she seemed to clock Daniel. "You neither. What happened to your face?"
"Amazing, isn't it?" Jack said agreeably and didn't quite manage to evade a kick to his ankle.
Feigning innocence, Daniel crouched and handed Carter his canteen. "Nothing serious. Little difference of opinion with some Marines on `335."
The canteen jerked and spouted a splash of water. "Jaffa," she hissed.
Jack wheeled around; a move he immediately regretted, especially once the window had juddered into focus and he failed to spot any hostiles outside or elsewhere. "No Jaffa, Carter. We're-"
"The Marines, sir. The Marines are Jaffa."
Oh great. He exchanged a glance with Daniel, who barely percep tibly shook his head. Maybe he was right. Maybe they should just let-
"I'm not delirious, Colonel!" And maybe she was right, too. Her eyes were fever-bright, but she seemed lucid enough. Pissed enough.
"Okay, Carter. How about you start with In the beginning and work your way forward from there?"
Haltingly and with something less than her usual precision, she did just that. By the end of it she'd answered questions Jack hadn't even known he had. However, the two most important answers were missing. Where was the DHD? And where in the blazes were Teal'c and the doc? She couldn't say, and pushing her into speculations would get them nowhere.
"Good job, Major," he murmured. "Now grab some sleep."
"But, sir-"
"Sleep, Carter!"
"Yessir."
Five minutes later she'd dozed off.
Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, mixing sweat with grime and evenly distributing the mess. Great camouflage, if nothing else. What he wanted to do was get up and pace and fiddle with stuff and generally drive the natives nuts. Spread the joy. Given that the room measured about ten by ten feet and held two men, the pallet, a backpack, and one major, that was a bit of a no-no, even by his standards. The realization didn't diminish the urge.
While Carter and Teal'c had proved conclusively that they didn't need their CO's able assistance to dig themselves into a real deep hole, right now said CO had no idea of how to drag them out of said hole. He should have. That's what being in command meant, right? Right. It sure as hell didn't mean being terrified of hopping in any direction because whatever direction you chose to hop in might be dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
"This isn't your fault, Jack."
Perversely, Dr. Jackson's ability to read minds-specifically Jack O'Neill's-remained unimpaired by smashed spectacles. Having had twice his annual allowance of confessions wormed out of him earlier, Jack was in no mood to share warm fuzzy feelings. Instead he stared at the walls; anything to avoid that blue drill bore gaze coming from Daniel's end. The faces on the wall stared back. The faces didn't give a damn. They stared back with their blank eyes and Buddha smiles, too pretty by half and effete enough to raise Jack's hackles. Apophis sprang to mind. And Ra, for that matter.
"What are you going to do about Sam?" Typical Daniel. If subtle doesn't work straightaway, switch to frontal attack. "I checked her medikit, Jack. She never used the morphine. She knows what's coming. So do I, and we can't afford to wait much longer. If we do nothing, she'll go into septic shock in a day, two at the most."
Jack knew perfectly well and didn't need to hear it. Didn't want to hear it. "Daniel-"
"I'll do it."
The look on Daniel's face made Jack swallow his reply.
"There was this kid on Abydos. Crazy about digging up artifacts. Care to guess who he got it from?" Daniel gave a bleak little laugh. "A chamber caved in, and a stone block landed on his arm. We didn't find him until three days later. By then the infection had set in. I was the only one who had a rough idea of what to do."
"You never told me."
"It's not a fun story." Daniel shrugged. "If I hadn't put a bee in his bonnet, the kid wouldn't have been there. I always blamed myself"
"I know the feeling," muttered Jack. A shaft of sunlight pouring through the hole in the ceiling had crawled up the wall and illuminated three of the smirking poster boys, cozily grouped together. If he had
a hammer and chisel, he'd give them a nose job. Make them look like the Andrews Sisters. "Who are these guys, anyway?"
Abruptly hauled back from the sands of Abydos, Daniel blinked. "What?'
"Not what. Who. They." Jack pointed at the relief.
"Oh." Daniel scrambled to his feet and walked closer to the wall, until he actually could see what he was talking about. "They're the original Rakshasas. Bhaya, Mahabhaya, and Mrityu."
"Of course they're the Rickshaws. Popular vocal group in the fifties. Why did I ask?"
Dr. Jackson grinned, which did interesting things to the left side of his face. "The Rakshasas are demons. Their names mean Fear, Terror, and Death."
"Charming. Aren't they a bit girlie for the job?"
"Depends on the job. They're shape shifters. According to legend they're the children of the Vedic goddess of death, deceit, and destruction, Dann. She's said to have..." The sentence petered out, and Daniel stared at the relief, open-mouthed. "Uh-oh."
"Daniel?"
"The lady traveled under several aliases. Dhumavati's one of them. And so, by the way, is Nirrti. What did Sam say Macdonald's tattoo looked like?"
"A dove." Jack didn't like where this was going.
"Or a pigeon. The pigeon's supposed to be Nirrti's messenger. Messenger of doom, obviously. The Atharva Veda even lists charms to ward off pigeons." Daniel turned away from the wall and sat crosslegged on the floor. "Upon those persons yonder the winged missile shall fall! If the owl shrieks, futile shall this be, or if the pigeon takes his steps upon the fire! To thy two messengers, 0 Nirrti, who come here-"
"Daniel! I get the idea. Where there are Jaffa, there usually is a Goa'uld."
"As far as we know Nirrti doesn't have that many Jaffa," Daniel offered.
"Yeah, well. Maybe she's started a recruitment drive," retorted Jack, but his heart wasn't in it. Something else had occurred to him. Something that might just- "What's the one thing no self-respecting Goa'uld would be caught without?"
"A makeup kit?" The quip was followed by a penetrating glance. "Jack, I know what's on your mind. But we've got no proof that she's here, and to go off on a wild goose chase to-"
"One day, Daniel. You said it yourself. We've got a day. And before I start chopping off bits of Carter, I intend to use that day to try and find Nirrti's sarcophagus."
eal'c had heard the Stargate activate, but by the time he had succeeded in scaling the cliff, the arrivals were long gone. Or perhaps, he mused, they had not been arrivals. Perhaps Dr. Fraiser, favored by the luck of children and madmen, had found the DHD and had indeed gone home.
The area beneath the Stargate was sunlit and deserted, unremarkable, and the gray walls of the ruins breathed a semblance of coolness. Even the jungle noises had returned, dispelling the silence, and he strode out into the clearing, confident that he would be safe for the time being. In a patch of mud, not far from the place where he himself had landed four days ago, he found two slim lengths of white plastic. Teal'c recognized the strips-flex-cuffs-and squatted to examine them more closely.
They were tom, their ends frayed and showing teeth marks. It indicated several things; two prisoners had been brought here- No, they had been sent here. Had they been escorted, their escape would have been foiled. And whoever had sent them, surely wished for them to die. Cuffed, and therefore most likely unarmed, they would not have stood the slightest chance against the beasts.
Except... He slowly swiveled on the balls of his feet, surveying the clearing once more. This time the beasts had not attacked. The prisoners' boot prints told their own tale. Once they had freed themselves, the two men-the size of their boots made them men-had risen and walked off in different directions, though well within sight of each other. Teal'c recognized the pattern. He himself had followed it a hundred times and more; they had been exploring. Which suggested they were new to the territory. If they-
A ponderous rumble rolled across the glade, familiar and startling at the same time.
"Hasshak," Teal'c muttered under his breath. Foolishly, he had allowed himself to neglect that particular source of danger.
He rose, loped back toward the cliff, and climbed the nearest tree to a nest of broad branches, some ten meters above ground. By the time he had settled into this aerie, the fourth chevron was locked. He sat virtually at eyelevel with the face in the wall and, for the first time, found occasion to study it. Almond-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes, that stared at him with the peculiar blank look of carved stone; a strong, straight nose; sensuously curved lips that gaped to reveal a row of sharp teeth; a long, pointed tongue, lolling like a ramp from the cavern of the mouth out onto the clearing. For reasons he could not clearly define, Teal'c found the sight profoundly disturbing.
The Chappa'ai was set in the idol's forehead, a massive spinning jewel, its outer ring now dotted with five amber lights. Six. The seventh light all but paled under the mighty rush of the wormhole exploding across half the glade. Then the event horizon retracted and stilled. In these few moments of deceptive peace, Teal'c sensed rather than saw movement.
Scanning the huge face, his gaze finally caught on the dark recess of the mouth. There. Behind the points of the teeth flitted shadows, nervous yet eager, as if they wished to emerge but did not quite dare yet. Curious... His attention was distracted by four figures tumbling from the Stargate, flailing and screaming and all too reminiscent of Teal'c's own arrival on the planet. Fleetingly he recalled the excruciating wrongness of that journey and asked himself if it was the same for these men, or if they had too little basis for comparison.
They were young and fit and clean-shaven, in smart uniforms, and all had been part of the unit that had journeyed to M3D 335 on the same day as Major Carter, Dr. Fraiser, and Teal'c; the unit that had been goaded into a pointless race by Colonel Norris. They struck the ground in an ungainly jumble of limbs and equipment and spent several minutes shaking off the shock and the effects of the impact. Eventually, one of them struggled to his feet.
"This ain't like they told us," he observed and added, "Can't see that PhD thingy either."
"The what thingy?" asked another.
"That phone-home-device or whatever it's called."
"DHD! Dial-home-device, you ass!"
"Who cares?"
"Shut up!" The speaker was the young corporal who had assisted Major Carter at the Marine camp. "You hear that?"
"Hear what? It's dead silent."
It was true. Like a tape recording that had stopped abruptly, the jungle noises had ceased again, almost as if the forest were holding its breath in anticipation. The quiet chafed at Teal'c's awareness like a rough shirt on tender skin.
Into the silence one of the men said, "Oh boy."
Pouring out from the mouth and coiling down the tongue came the beasts, two dozen of them, jostling and pushing and flooding the glade. What had restrained them until now? At the back of Teal'c's mind a vague recollection began to congeal into realization, but before it could take shape the events unfolding below demanded his full attention. The Marines had formed a protective circle, their backs to each other, firing at the heaving mass of black bristles and fangs and making the same discovery Major Carter had made, namely that projectile weapons were ineffectual against these brutes' armor. The Marines would not prevail. He knew it for a fact, and they would find out soon enough.
Teal'c felt tom. Although he had every reason to suspect their intentions, to stand by and watch these men being ripped apart was impossible. With sudden resolve he slung the staff weapon from his back where he had strapped it for the climb up the cliff, aimed, and loosed a series of rapid blasts at the beasts, killing one and wounding several others. The rest paused, shuffling uncertainly, then retreated a few meters, giving the prey a fraction of breathing space. The Marines saw their chance and took it.
"Now!" bellowed Major Carter's corporal. "Go, go, go!"
His comrades lowered their weapons and sprinted across the glade toward the edge of the forest. In a reckless ac
t of bravery, the corporal himself held his position, determined to cover his friends. A swift glance over his shoulder assured him that the men had almost reached the presumed safety of the tree line. He fired a last burst at the creatures, wheeled around, and ran. As though they had been waiting for that moment, the brutes attacked, flanking him on both sides. He hooked and feinted like a hare, but they inexorably drove him off course and cut off his escape route. Instead of joining his comrades, he came racing directly toward Teal'c's tree and the dead end behind. A mere twenty meters further were the cliff and nothing but thin air.
Without even thinking about it, Teal'c set aside his staff weapon, tore free a vine and lowered it. "Jump, Corporal Wilkins!"
The man's head snapped up. He tripped, staggered, regained his balance, and bounded for the vine. Teal'c no sooner felt the corporal's weight yank against his grip than he began to haul in the makeshift rope, ignoring the pain in his barely healed shoulder to pull even faster. For all he knew the brutes were capable of leaping and might still bring down their victim. And leap they did, snapping and snarling, but to no avail. Seconds later, Teal'c dragged Corporal Wilkins onto the branch beside him. The corporal's eyes went wide when he recognized his rescuer, but he did not comment. Instead he glanced past Teal'c and back down to the ground. Below, the beasts had abandoned their futile hunt, swarmed into a turn, and set off after the Marines who had fled into the forest.
Fingers still cramped around the vine, Corporal Wilkins fought to bring his breathing under control. "Uh, thanks. Nice shooting. That's one hell of a gun you've got there, Mr. Murray," he gasped. "Sorry, sir, I don't even know your rank. What are you, sir?"
"I was First Prime to the false god Apophis. I have renounced my service."
"Ah," said Corporal Wilkins, obviously deciding not to pursue the subject. Suddenly his expression darkened. "I gotta get down, go after the guys. They might need-"
"That is inadvisable."
"Well, that's just too bad, sir." The young man began to ease himself off the branch. "I don't know how you First What's-Its do stuff, but in the Corps we don't leave our guys in the lurch."
Stargate SG-1: Survival of the Fittest: SG1-7 Page 16
