Relativity

by Stargate

  Carter didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to think about what might happen if Jackson was wrong. Covering the moment, she toggled her radio. “This is Major Carter. Captain Grant, any further contact from Colonel O’Neill yet?”

  “Negative, Major,” Grant seemed distracted. “We just heard something off in the distance. Sounded like weapons fire, but I can’t be sure. Shall we investigate, over?”

  Sam weighed the request for a lone moment and then replied. “No, stay put at the gate, and stay alert.” She switched to a different channel. “Colonel, this is Sam, do you read me?” Faint static hissed back at her. “Colonel O’Neill, are receiving?”

  The channel remained resolutely silent.

  She entered the ship’s transportation chamber and forced her way around a pair of security drones and a contingent of intendants. O’Neill was on his feet, pulling the other man in the cloak to a standing position. Her crew had already stripped them of their equipment, piling the crude hardware on the deck. Mirris’s skin felt hot and tight across her face, as if her anger was on the verge of ripping out of her.

  “Administrator?” One of the subordinates offered her a screensheet, but she ignored it. She could not take her gaze off the Earther. “There is an anomaly. The matter stream bio-monitor registered a peculiarity during the transportation process, which almost caused an abort.”

  “What are you talking about?” she growled, and the younger woman recoiled visibly.

  “The two prisoners… They share identical genetic profiles. Closer even than clones. It is as if they are the same man.”

  Mirris stalked forward and pushed past O’Neill, ignoring his shout of “Hey!” The human stumbled, still dizzy from the effects of the drone’s stunner. She tugged back the hood covering the older human’s head and saw something remarkable.

  “You’re alike,” she said quietly. “Older, but alike. How is this possible?”

  There was a flash of recognition in the eyes of the elderly man, as sudden and as hateful as the emotion she had felt in the command nexus. Mirris took cold satisfaction from it. “It’s you,” he said. Abruptly, the old man leapt at her, his fingers curling into claws to tear at her throat.

  One of the drones blocked his path and hit him across the legs, dropping the elder man to the deck. Mirris turned her gaze on the colonel. “The Aschen believe in logic and science,” she began, stalking toward him. “We dismiss ideas of fate and luck.” A lethal smile emerged on her lips. “But if such things do exist, Colonel Jack O’Neill, then they have clearly decided to favor me today.” She chuckled, and it was a hollow sound. “I don’t yet comprehend how that one comes to be here with you, but I will happily exploit what he represents.”

  The Tau’ri made a play at looking unconcerned. “I’m sorry, have we met? ‘Cos your face isn’t ringing any bells with me.”

  Mirris shook her head, basking in the desire to kill him where he stood. “No. But you knew my partner. And I remember very clearly the gift you gave him.”

  Understanding crept across his face, flattening his swaggering manner. “Ah. Mirris, right? Listen, about that laptop…”

  She turned away and made for the door; she knew she had to, because it would be important to wring O’Neill dry of every vital piece of intelligence she could compel from him, and if she stayed in the chamber any longer she would not be able to stop herself from murdering him. “Place them in secure holding,” she told the intendant, and strode out into the corridor.

  Her hand strayed to her wrist, to the place where she had once worn the bonding torc that Mollem had granted her. He will pay, she told herself, O’Neill, and every last human on his blighted, backward planet.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It turned out that ‘secure holding’ was actually a featureless white chamber somewhere on the lower levels of the Aschen vessel. The room was oddly proportioned, with a small footprint of floor but a very high ceiling that extended up for two levels. There were a group of cube-shaped cages made from bars of a clear blue plastic sitting in a square on the floor. One side hinged open as the security drones hustled them forward with the muzzles of humming energy guns. Jack didn’t want to feel the sting of the weapons a second time. In the good light of the alien ship he could see the machines clearly, and it confirmed his suspicions. These were the same kind of robots that SG-1 had engaged back on P5X-404. The designs were not exactly the same, but the art deco bullet-head look was unmistakable; he filed that bit of intel away for later consideration.

  The Aschen themselves had been quite happy to let the tin-heads do the heavy lifting with their prisoners. Mirris’s junior officers seemed afraid to get their hands too dirty, like they didn’t want to get too close to Jack and… And the other guy. O’Neill halted in front of the open cell, and the robot gave him a shove toward it. Another machine pushed the old man toward a second cage.

  “Okay, okay,” Jack retorted, “I was just wondering if you had anything with a sea view, maybe.” He saw a flat panel extruded from one inner wall that had to be a sleeping pallet, and a weird-looking thing in a corner that could have been a toilet or a shower, or maybe both. O’Neill hoped he wouldn’t be in here long enough to have to find out.

  He walked into the cell and the wall dropped down again, sealing it seamlessly. Jack automatically put his hands on the bars and tested them. They gave a little under pressure; not so much that they might break, but maybe enough that he could bend them… Escape plans began forming in his head the moment the machines turned and rolled away through the hatch to the corridor beyond. In the neighboring cell, the old man sat on the pallet and leaned back, ignoring him.

  “Hey,” Jack hissed, “Pops. These bars are pliant. Might be able to get—”

  He never got to finish his sentence. Something hummed underneath the two occupied cube-cages and they rose into the air on a column of invisible force. O’Neill baulked and watched the floor recede away from him until they were a good thirty feet off the ground. The cells stopped and floated there, as immobile as if they were cemented into the walls.

  “Go ahead, skinny out,” said the other man. “Reckon you could make that drop without breaking your neck?”

  “Ah, bite me,” Jack retorted, and began feeling around the seams of the cage, taking the measure of his new confinement.

  It was Everitt who brought them running; the lieutenant burst into the command tent with a grim look on his face. A patrol of men from SG-3 had recovered someone out in the jungle surrounding the encampment. Injured, he told them.

  Sam and Daniel came out to meet them at the edge of the clearing, two of the men carrying a third figure in SGC fatigues between them.

  “Jade!” blurted Jackson, recognizing the woman. Carter saw the pale cast of shock on the woman’s slack face, her skin marked with the new bloom of bruises and abrasions.

  Williams, the corpsman from the medical tent was right behind them with a folding stretcher. In moments, they had her on the steel frame and were marching her into the camp. Williams kept with them, checking Jade on the move. “Minor concussion,” he said to himself, “no apparent signs of blunt trauma from ballistic weapons or burns from energy attacks.”

  “Found her at the bottom of a shallow ravine,” said one of the SG-3 troopers. “Far as I can tell, she lost her footing up top and came down head first. She was lucky, could have broke her back on rocks or tree trunks.”

  Daniel bent over her. “Jade? It’s Daniel. Can you hear me?”

  Sam saw her eyes flutter. It was odd; Carter had hardly been aware of the woman when she had been masquerading as Major Hannah Wells, but now she knew who— and what— Jade really was, Sam suddenly found herself seeing faint ghosts of Jack O’Neill’s face in the semi-conscious woman’s appearance. There was a part of her that was searching for elements of another face as well, but she pretended not to be aware of it.

  Williams yanked open the flap on the medical tent, and Jade coughed and drifted to the surface of consciousness as the
y hauled her inside. “Where…?” She managed.

  “You’re in the camp on Kytos,” explained Sam. “You’re safe.”

  Jade tried to shake her head. “No… Not…” Her gaze fell across Teal’c’s silent form and found the broken insectile shape on the far side of the tent. “Ite-kh?” Her voice cracked and she tried to get up from the stretcher.

  “Easy, now,” said Williams. “Stay put.”

  The woman didn’t hear him. Sam saw her eyes shimmer as she understood what had happened to her Re’tu companion. “No…” she repeated, her voice fading.

  “Jade, I’m sorry,” said Daniel; but she slumped back into the carry frame and passed out, a few tears streaking the caked dirt and blood on her cheeks.

  Sam shot Daniel a look and he knew she wanted them to leave. Williams got to work and they exited with the men from SG-3. Carter sent them back out to bolster Captain Grant at the gate, while he followed her through the camp.

  “The men who found Jade, did they say anything about Jack, or… Uh, Jack?”

  Carter shook her head. “Both MIA.” She sighed. “The colonel will contact us when he can.”

  They approached the long tent. “If he can,” Jackson said grimly.

  Predictably, inside the meeting pavilion things were not a model of peaceful diplomacy. The raised voices of the Pack members, of Kinsey and his staff, and the occasional attempted interjection from Colonel Reynolds came to them even before they entered. While Sam gave the colonel a run-down on the current circumstances, Daniel found himself standing next to Suj, who wore a frown that ruined her pleasant features.

  “Ryn is aboard his vessel, in communication with the Wanderer,” she said without preamble. “Word of the chaos here has reached our flotilla and the people there are distressed. There’s talk of a combat deployment being prepared to come and extract us.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Jackson said quickly, “This isn’t chaos… It’s just, uh, a concern.” He knew how lame his denial sounded and Suj’s expression showed she knew it too.

  “One of our guardsmen saw your warriors returning with the woman. Is it true that she was the interloper who disrupted the meeting on Earth?”

  Daniel’s first reaction was How did they find that out so fast? and he failed to hide it from her. He gave a reluctant nod. “Yes. But I’m afraid the situation is more complicated than that.”

  “It is her?” Koe broke in, picking up the thread of the conversation. “So, we are in danger here on Kytos, then, as much as we were on the Tau’ri homeworld!”

  “No!” Jackson retorted. “Well, maybe. We’re still trying to determine that.”

  “In our codes and laws, we have the right to demand she is turned over to us for a criminal hearing,” said Suj. “The Pack hold claim to Kytos and she is on the planet. Technically, she is already our prisoner.”

  Daniel was still trying to frame a good reply when Kinsey’s voice brayed. “No one is claiming anything or anyone unless I agree on it!”

  “So you dare to take control here?” Vix growled. “This is not an enclave of yours, Tau’ri. You have no right to come into our territory and enforce your edicts on us!”

  Jackson groaned and caught Carter’s eye. She looked like he felt; frustrated and annoyed.

  Teal’c was aware of voices and movement, but they seemed to come to him from a great distance, as if the Jaffa were at the bottom of a deep well. He was conscious of the cage of his own flesh, the edges of a great burning pain across his chest , the searing of his skin. With effort, he tried to open his eyes, but they only fluttered, giving brief and cloudy impressions of the medical tent around him. He could smell blood and chemicals, the acrid tang of disinfectants. Teal’c saw a man in fatigues and at his side, stepping closer, a familiar figure in the patchwork garb of the Pack.

  Ryn. The one who had tried to kill him.

  Teal’c wanted to cry out a warning, but his lungs sucked at air and his muscles would not respond. He was trapped, pressing against the wall of his own agony.

  I will not submit, he told himself, and began to marshal his concentration. There is no pain. I will rise. In the kel no’reem, there is no defeat.

  “Is this the intruder?” Ryn kept his tone level, almost chatty.

  The Tau’ri healer shot him a look, irritated by the distraction of his arrival. “Can you remain outside, please? I’m busy.”

  Ryn ignored the order. “Will she live?”

  The healer sighed heavily, turning back to work on the woman, who moaned softly. “Yeah. If I can tape up the ribs she broke without any interruptions, she should be okay.”

  The Pack pilot let a slender silver rod slip from his sleeve into his hand. Like the communicator matrix in his ship, it was a gift from the Aschen. The body of the device held a revolving magazine with five vials of fluid, two of which were already spent. Ryn had made good use of them, removing obstacles to his ascension up the Pack hierarchy. He did not understand how the liquid worked, only that it left no traces and turned the inherent weakness in any man’s body against himself.

  He had hoped to use one of the vials on Vix; but the big warrior was wily and there had never been a moment when Ryn could have done so without alerting others. Under different circumstances, he would not have considered using the rod at all, but a cold flood of panic was building in his thoughts and Ryn’s options were limited. The Jaffa had not died when he was supposed to, and so there was the risk that he would awaken and reveal what he knew. Matters were now clouded further still by the arrival of the woman. Mirris’s warning had been curt and unequivocal; the newcomer was a threat to the entire scheme. She had the potential to bring Ryn’s duplicity into the light before he could cement a position at the head of the Pack. She could not be allowed to live.

  Ryn had an inelegant solution, but it was the only one that he could employ. He had to make the kills quickly and silently, then use the confusion that followed to press his advantage.

  “I need you to go,” said the healer, without looking at him.

  “The same can be said of you,” Ryn replied, and stabbed the sharp end of the rod into the other man’s back. The device discharged instantly and the Tau’ri stiffened, the muscles on his neck standing out in cords. Ryn pushed him into a folding chair and the healer choked silently, wracked with sudden paralysis. He watched the other man until the healer stopped twitching.

  Reloading the rod was a simple matter of working a thumb wheel, setting another vial in place for the injector mechanism within. Ryn hesitated at the woman’s side, clutching the Aschen device like a dagger. His nerves tingled and he fought to stop his hands from shaking. “To the heart, then,” he said quietly to himself, making a decision. He raised the device over her chest and she blinked into wakefulness, her face creasing in fear.

  Ryn stabbed out, but the downward arc of the needle-tipped rod halted inches from her skin as an ebony skinned hand locked around his wrist and held it there.

  Teal’c’s vision was blurry and he fought off the effects of the drugs in his bloodstream, forcing himself to stay focused. The effort of propelling his body off the gurney sang in his muscles. Dimly, he was aware of the corpsman slumped in the chair, not moving, not breathing. He saw the flash of silver in Ryn’s hand and knew it for what it was: a weapon.

  The Jaffa pulled every ounce of his will together and snatched at his target. Ryn gasped as Teal’c grabbed him, pulling the glittering rod away from the injured girl’s chest. The Pack pilot’s eyes were wide with manic intensity. He struggled against the Jaffa’s brute strength, shaking his hand as he attempted to break Teal’c’s iron grip.

  At any other time, this poor excuse for a fight would have already been over, but Teal’c’s body was still rising through the fog of sedatives, weakened from the fights in the cockpit and the SGC. He felt slow and ponderous.

  “Curse you!” spat the other man. “You’ll die!”

  “Eventually,” he managed thickly, “but by your hand, not today.�
�

  The woman stirred, trying to push herself away from the two combatants, and Ryn shouted wordlessly, throwing all his might into shifting Teal’c’s grip. The tip of the silver rod described loops in the air as it veered away, toward the Jaffa’s injured torso. With a final, forceful shove, Teal’c broke the momentum of Ryn’s attack and reversed the turn.

  Before he could stop himself, Ryn’s thrust impaled him on the rod, the metal disappearing into the flesh of his stomach. Teal’c heard a faint hiss from the inner workings of the device and Ryn’s cheeks flushed red. A strangled scream escaped the man’s lips and he fell away— slowly, so it seemed— to crash into a heap at the Jaffa’s feet.

  Teal’c head swam and he staggered a step. Then there were arms holding him up. He turned to see Daniel Jackson at his side, alarm clear on his face.

  “He was a spy,” Teal’c gave a slow nod toward the Pack warrior. “And a killer.”

  Eventually, the Commander’s voice drifted across the gap between the two floating cells. “You’re wasting your time. I’ve been in these things before. There’s no way out unless the power’s deactivated. The cells are made of a bio-plastic. It seals itself shut like bones knitting, or something.”

  “How’d you get out last time?” Jack demanded.

  A shadow passed over the old man’s face. “Sam rescued us.”

  The way he said Carter’s name gave Jack pause. Regret and anger oozed out of the word. He found himself unable to stop from asking the question. “Where is she in… Where you come from?”

  The Commander turned on the pallet and glared at him through the transparent bars. “She’s dead, okay? Very dead. Not Ascended-dead or any of that other stupid new age crap, dead like Charlie-dead, like Fraiser-dead—”

  “That’s enough!” Jack shouted, his anger from the confrontation on Kytos returning. “You hateful son of a bitch.” The words slipped out of him in a rush; normally, he would never have had such a harsh and immediate reaction to being goaded, and it cut into him. He felt a powerful loathing uncoil in his chest. “What the hell are you made of?”