The Barque of Heaven

by Stargate

  He could barely contain his anger. "You corrupt... snake." His voice was shaking as much as the rest of him. "A nanosecond of my wife's life could not compare to the whole of your miserable existence. I will get her back. I will kill Amonet if I have to cut her out myself, and I will kill you."

  Mat shook her head sadly. "Stupid child, do you not realize there is nothing of your wife to retrieve? She has given all of her mind to her mistress. There is nothing left of her now but her pretty shell."

  Daniel closed his eyes, cold denial seeping through him. "No. Lies. Everything you say is a lie. She's alive. I've spoken to her."

  "All that the host knew now belongs to Amonet. How else did we gain the knowledge that O'Neill was the one on Abydos with the bomb that murdered Our beloved? Amonet came to us with this information to trade for safe passage after Apophis fell to Sokar. Your-wife-betrayed you and delivered O'Neill, all of you, to Us."

  "No...."

  "Fret not, sweet one. You shall see your mate again." Mat kissed him gently on the lips, leaving his mouth cold and feeling filled with venom.

  Daniel opened his eyes, his stomach churning and stared past the lustrous black hair and shining crown, desperately trying to sort through Mat's taunts. Something was missing. He focused on Jack's hands, bound in their chains. It took a moment to realize that those strong, lethal hands that had been hanging limply were now slowly curling around the chains, preparing....

  Daniel looked down into Mat's pampered face, saw the host's features distorted by the evil possessing her. Sha're has to go through this, day after day....

  "Perhaps you're right. I would do anything to spend eternity with Sha're." A hollow chuckle escaped him. "But never on your terms."

  Without warning, he jerked his head forward and butted her right between the eyes.

  Stunned, Mat staggered back, within range of Jack's legs as he kicked out and wrapped them around her neck. He hauled up on the chains and with a lightning-quick squeeze and jerk, the woman fell to the floor. Unconscious or dead, it was hard to tell.

  Chaos erupted. Jaffa surged forward from all directions, hammering Jack into submission.

  In the ensuing melee Teal'c and Sam responded with kicks of their own, until Mat's first prime shouted some order into the room. He stalked up to Jack, now bloody and unmoving, then turned to Daniel.

  "You dare strike a goddess?"

  "No goddess of mine," Daniel spat.

  Two swift steps brought the first prime to striking distance and he let fly a blow with two-hundred pounds of muscle behind it, straight into Daniel's stomach.

  The pain was immediate and shockingly intense. Somewhere in his dimming mind, as his knees buckled and his throat was constricted by the metal collar, Daniel felt something deep in his belly shift and tear.

  He sank into oblivion, and his one last thought was of his wife.

  GATE TWELVE CONT'D

  "To Go Forth by Mourning"

  am sighed for the tenth time, and glared at the dripping rock walls of the small cave into which they had been dropped, literally. In the aftermath of the colonel's attack on the Goa'uld, the first prime, with his mistress' lifeless body in his arms, had ordered them released from their chains, dragged along dark, torch-lit passages and dropped into a black hole gaping in the floor of another chamber.

  That terrifying push into nothingness still gave her shudders, the second of freefall still stretched out in her head as a plunge to the center of the world. It couldn't have been more than a three meter drop but it was enough. The brief glimpse she had of the tiny space with its slick walls, before the Jaffa's retreating torches left them in utter darkness, had told her how difficult escape was going to be.

  She stilled and listened to the sounds from the others. The colonel breathed harshly, still in pain but coming up out of the sleep he had dropped into thirty minutes ago. Teal'c seemed at ease but the faint, distracted muttering he'd started as they settled in the dark was increasing. That in itself was alarming enough. The master of reticence, Teal'c didn't mumble to himself; when he wanted to say something, everyone heard it.

  Daniel still lay in the recovery position she had rolled him into after his unconscious body had landed on top of Teal'c. His breathing was changing from slow and deep to shorter, faster gasps as he-hopefully-climbed toward consciousness. Sam ran her right hand through his hair, willing the comforting touch would bring him back to wakefulness. Her left hand was still wrapped around his wrist, not losing contact with that pounding pulse. He was hurt, that much she knew, but how badly was impossible to tell in this darkness.

  "Silwanet."

  "Teal'c?" she turned her head in his direction, ears straining. "You okay?"

  "Major Carter." His voice was soft, distant. "How is Daniel Jackson?"

  "I think he's starting to wake up. The colonel, too. What... what's going on with you?"

  Teal'c's pause seemed to increase the isolation she was feeling.

  "Teal'c!"

  "Forgive me, Major Carter. I find myself distracted by the words of the Books of Djehuti. Their sounds and images are most engaging."

  "Oh, boy. Can you control it?" A Teal'c without his faculties didn't bear thinking about.

  "I can." Teal'c's voice was reasonably convincing.

  To Sam's right, the colonel woke with a snort and a groan. "Gah! Son of a bitch." He shuffled around, his boots kicking her legs in the cramped space.

  "How do you feel, sir?"

  "Super, Carter. Fine and dandy. Fit as a fiddle. Oh, damn...."

  "Sir?" She didn't let go of Daniel, but strained her eyes in the colonel's direction.

  "Nothing major, Major."

  She grinned briefly in the dark.

  "A few bruises, killer headache. I swear, if that overdressed snake in the grass has burned off my chest hair, I'll kill her."

  Sam could hear him shuffling around, searching out the extent of his injuries. "You already did that, Colonel."

  "Sweet. What happened then?"

  "The Jaffa got a little fractious. There wasn't much we could do, sir. They attacked you and that first prime guy hit Daniel, hard. Daniel passed out. I was afraid he'd choke to death before they unlocked us." She turned her head back in Daniel's direction, fingers rhythmically stroking his short hair. "They dragged us through three tunnels and dropped us down a hole in the floor. We're in a pretty small cave." It was hard keeping the defeat out of her voice.

  "So-Goa'uld dead, no guards about-I'd call that a result."

  "Most likely Mat's people have removed her to her Ha'tak vessel where she will be resurrected in a sarcophagus." Teal'c's voice informed from the dark.

  "Ha'tak?" Sam was surprised. Daniel had said the camp on the beach was temporary but there had been no time to work out how Mat had come to be here.

  "Her presence here is not part of the Trial of Moons." Teal'c sounded distracted still, but certain of what he was saying. "If she is responsible for our being trapped in this situation, then she came to this planet to mete out her final revenge upon O'Neill. The Stargate here would be inoperable to her. Therefore she must have landed in a vessel of some size."

  "There'll be a lot of Jaffa between us and the 'gate, if we can get out of here," the colonel remarked gloomily. "Daniel passed out from one hit to the stomach?"

  "Well, it was a pretty vicious blow, sir," she replied, defensive for Daniel's sake.

  "I'm not doubting that, Carter, but Daniel's a tough man, despite appearances."

  "Didn't he fall hard when we were thrown out of the Stargate -way back on the planet with the ordnance? Maybe the Jaffa got the same spot he bruised then. I can feel some swelling on his left side."

  "His shoulder was hurting a while back, too," said Jack.

  "When? Which shoulder?" Sam straightened up, alarm bells ringing.

  "Uh, last planet, I think. I thought it was just a bruise. Why?"

  "Left or right shoulder, sir?"

  "Left. What is it, Carter?"

  "I
don't know for certain, sir. The pain in his left shoulder could be a sign of referred pain-he may have internal injuries. I wish I could see him properly." As Sam spoke, Daniel shifted under her hand, waking slowly. "We have got to get out of here -now."

  "I hear you, Major," The colonel sighed. "So, one team member with possible internal injuries, one with an open bleeding wound-the cause of which has kyboshed Junior. The way I feel, Ernest Littlefield could down me on the first attempt. At least you're still fighting fit, Carter."

  "Daniel's waking up, sir." Sam leaned over Daniel, still monitoring his pulse. "Hey, Daniel. How are you feeling?"

  "Umph... what happened?" Daniel rolled over onto his back, hand brushing hers as he reached to knead the pain in his side. "It's dark. It is dark, isn't it? It's not me?"

  "It's not you. We're in a cave. They threw us down a hole, basically. Where do you hurt?"

  "Oh. Um. Shoulder, stomach, head... what are you doing?"

  She felt him twitch as she lifted his t-shirt and ran her fingers over his belly.

  "At least your hands are warmer than Mat's. Oh, Sha're, love. What she did...."

  Sam's fingers stilled. "Daniel? Are you in pain?"

  "No. Well, yes, but that's not it. I've just realized what Sha're did." He subsided into silence. Under her hands his chest rose and fell with deep, controlled breaths.

  "What did she do, Daniel?"

  There was a shuffle from Teal'c's direction and she found a sopping bandana pushed at her, full of water soaked up from the walls.

  "Thanks Teal'c."

  She fumbled it at Daniel's face until he caught it and sucked on the moisture.

  "Mmh, that's good." He sighed. "Mat said Amonet told her Jack killed Ra. That Sha're `gave up' the information. But she didn't know about me, about Kasuf or the Abydonians ris ing up against Ra. It was just Jack. Which means...." Daniel paused for long moments. "Which means, Sha're kept our involvement from Amonet. She protected us. Amonet must have found some memory of the ship exploding in Sha're's mind, but she covered for me, for us. Oh, boy. To Amonet, I was just Sha're's husband, a doctor, harmless. She gave up just as much about Jack as would satisfy Amonet. Sorry, Jack...."

  "Hey, she did exactly the right thing. She barely knew me, but she knew enough to pick the guy with the big guns and bad temper. That's a hell of a woman you're married to, Daniel."

  Daniel choked out a sad laugh in the concealing darkness. "Yes, yes she is."

  "On that note, may I suggest we blow this hole and bug out of here?"

  "For all we know we've already missed the lockout on this planet, sir."

  "But we don't know for sure, so all the more reason to hurry, Carter."

  "Where do you suggest we go, sir?" Sam wiped the cloth over Daniel's face again, her hand squeezing his.

  "Well, I may be hallucinating, but I think there's an opening just below roof level on the wall opposite me."

  "Really?"

  "There's a faint draft coming through and if you look out of the corner of your eye, there's a glow, like phosphorescence."

  Sam clambered to her feet, trying not to step on Daniel. Her groping hands found the colonel and he turned her ninety degrees.

  "There-twelve o'clock high."

  It was faint, so faint it disappeared completely if she looked straight at it, but sidelong there was a definite blue glow, just outlining a hole in the wall, big enough for a person to crawl into.

  "The entrance would be out of sight from where we were thrown in," Teal'c said, hands brushing Sam as he fumbled up the rock wall.

  "I'm an idiot," Daniel muttered at their feet. He shuffled around; there was a rip of Velcro, a click and suddenly a dull beam of light illuminated their little prison, leaving them all squinting at each other. Daniel had the bandana over the lens but even dimmed, it was enough to see the tunnel entrance directly over Teal'c's head.

  "Vow he remembers," the colonel smiled down at Daniel. "Bus is leaving, kids."

  "Wait, I just need to check Daniel out." Sam knelt by his side and took the little pen light from him.

  "Sam, I'm okay. Just a little sore."

  "Here?" She pressed gently over his spleen.

  "Ow! Oh-feel sick."

  "Left shoulder still hurt?"

  "Yeah... why?"

  "Daniel, I think you've suffered some damage to your spleen. This area seems a bit distended and certainly tender. We're going to have to be very careful to avoid it rupturing."

  Daniel blinked up at her. "I keep getting hit in the same spot," he complained.

  "I know. We'll have to avoid that in the future. Here." She pulled his glasses out of her pocket and handed them to him, then took his hand and gently pulled him up to sit. "We can't do too much about it but try not to over-exert yourself."

  "While we're crawling through tunnels escaping a pack of angry Jaffa?"

  Sam grinned at him. "We're SG-1, remember? Piece of cake."

  "We ought to make that our motto." Daniel smiled tiredly. He made a flapping motion with his arms and she and Teal'c hauled him carefully to his feet.

  "Mmmm, cake," the colonel Homered. He sent an approving nod at her over Daniel's shoulder. "Time to go."

  Daniel sighed in relief as the team paused at yet another junction of two tunnels, both bearing near identical glyphs. A short time spent wandering undecided through the tunnels had put them back on the course of the Trial of Moons: a labyrinth of natural passages through the caves, intersections signposted by a choice of two or three glyphs Teal'c identified as being in the language of the Books of Djehuti. This was the fourth such set encountered since crawling from the mercifully short shaft leading out of their prison. Teal'c and Jack had carefully boosted Daniel up to Sam's grasp. Teal'c had declared his own attempt at entering the tunnel to be less than acceptable-hands slipping from a solid grip on the edge in a sudden flash of weakness that nearly dumped him on his backside like an old man.

  Teal'c was now artfully ignoring the concerned glances coming his way.

  "What do these two mean?" Daniel limped to Teal'c's side, studying the convoluted glyphs in the guarded beam of the pen light.

  "This," Teal'c pointed to a crossed circle surrounded by three concentric ripple lines, "means `To go forth by moming'. This one," he turned to the glyph on the right-hand tunnel, identical but for an added miniscule curlicue, "depicts the phrase `To go forth by mourning', the definition being grief here rather than the start of day."

  "You have got to teach me this," Daniel said wistfully. He sighed in frustration. Even fighting off pain, he couldn't switch off the constant nagging puzzlement over this language only Ra seemed to have used. Which, of course, was impossible, one person didn't create and use a language all of their own, not to this degree of complexity. Did they?

  "Where to from here, T?" Jack asked.

  "This way." Teal'c confidently led them down the left-hand tunnel.

  Daniel followed Jack, walking on automatic pilot. The walls seemed to press in on him as he moved. Always seem to end up in tunnels... catacombs....

  Suddenly and achingly vivid, Sha're's face floated before him, smiling tentatively in flickering torch-light, sounding out long-unused words, following him half afraid as he gave voice to a story lost for centuries.

  "He was the last of his kind. "

  "What?" Sam staggered off-balance as Daniel stopped midstride in front of her.

  Daniel looked at her, his gaze sliding on to Jack as an idea began to form.

  "Jack, you were there-in the catacombs beneath Nagada. The story on the walls; about Ra, the rebellion on Earth. `He was the last of his kind'. It said so. I thought later it was an embellishment but now...."

  "I remember, Daniel." Jack leaned against the cold rock, clearly glad of a moment's respite.

  Daniel surged on, barely keeping ahead of the theories as they formed. "As far as we know, Ra was the first Goa'uld to come to Earth-ten thousand years ago. All that time, on and off Earth, he ruled over the rest of th
e Goa'uld-his forces were never beaten and yet no-one seems to have known anything about him, we've never even found a reference to his home planet. And he has a fully developed written and spoken language that has no resemblance to the Goa'uld language." He stopped for breath as his words began to run together.

  "What if Ra wasn't a Goa'uld?"

  Three astonished faces blinked back at him.

  "Wait a minute, we saw a human body with glowy eyes," Jack finally managed. "That says Goa'uld to me."

  "We know one parasitic race can inhabit humans, what's to disprove there wasn't another that could do the same thing?"

  "Daniel ....

  "What if the story on the wall was true-"

  "No," Jack butted in again. "Just, no. Alright? I have a hard enough time with the fact that Junior's evil, upstart, crossdressing cousins are running around wearing humans like a cheap suit. There are no others."

  "But, the language-"

  "Could have been devised as a means to communicate sensitive information that other Goa'uld were unable to interpret," Teal'c offered softly.

  "Yes, but...." The look on Jack's face evaporated the rest of the sentence and Daniel found the spurt of energy his conjecture had produced was fading right along with it.

  "Besides," Jack nodded to Teal'c to head off again. "Ra's parasitic ass is floating in a cloud of atoms in space and that's the end of it."

  Sam darted a skeptical look at Daniel and followed Teal'c. Jack narrowed his eyes at her retreating back.

  "What? I know what atoms are."

  "Never said a word, sir."

  Jack glowered exaggeratedly at her and ushered Daniel on. He shook his head and trudged after Sam, not quite sure if the muttering coming from Jack actually contained the word, "magnets ".

  They had been on the move for twenty-five minutes, so far without sounds of pursuit, a situation that was not going to hold for much longer. They pushed on. Teal'c chose a tunnel that led them into a small cave, their single tiny light throwing eerie shadows from the rock formations hanging from the roof. There was more water here, running down calcified walls and dripping steadily off stalactites to join a little stream that trickled erratically across the cave floor. An earth-deep chill seeped through the air around them, sapping precious body heat and energy.