“Then that is where we will go,” Teal’c said. The little girl squeezed his hand. He squeezed it back.
It was an effort to walk. Breathing was hard; every inhalation felt like death by a thousand cuts as the air itself stung his smoke-damaged lungs.
“You don’t look so good,” Nat said.
“I will be fine,” Teal’c assured her. He could feel the symbiote compensating for the weakness in him. What his body needed was Kelnorim, but he did not have the luxury of time so any real healing would have to wait until O’Neill and the others were safe.
They joined the rest of Jubal Kane’s crew in the main room. “Nadal, move your hefty buttocks and let Teal’c sit,” Jubal said. Nadal made to move but the Jaffa shook his head. “Thank you, I will stand.”
“Another stubborn fool,” the Kelani muttered. The man was fat and he did not carry it well, but there was a hardness to his eyes that the warrior in Teal’c appreciated. For all the extra weight, Nadal was a fighter. There were too few of them in the Kelani ghetto. “Well I for one am not too proud to park my backside down in a soft chair and enjoy it.”
Teal’c looked at the others, recognizing Jachin, but not the fidgety stick insect of a man who sat across from the corpulent Nadal.
“We have business to discuss, gentlemen,” Jubal Kane said. “Nat, go play in the street.” He ruffled her hair as she screwed up her nose. When she was gone, he continued: “All right, we’ve got one question to answer, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. My friends, tell me, how do we stop a train?”
“Is that supposed to be a riddle?” Sallah asked, scratching at the scrag of beard that had grown through his sallow cheek.
“I can think of a few ways,” Jachin offered. “Short of hijacking the train or parking a truck across the tracks, we’re looking at damaging the rails themselves. Given the momentum of a packed train at full speed we’re talking about very little damage. A simple explosive charge would do it. Hell, a sledge hammer and a little time would.”
“Okay, let’s put it this way — can you do it?” Jubal Kane asked.
Jachin grinned. “I might not be much of a fighter, but I know my way around a detonator. Trust me, I can do it.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.”
They listened to him as he outlined his plan for derailing the Rabelais Death Express.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Downbound Train
Daniel Jackson lost himself listening to the music of the train, the driving pistons and the belching steam and all of the other rattles and creaks in the dark. It wasn’t exactly an orchestra of hope but that was because he knew what it meant — they were hurtling down the rails toward their final destination. With that in mind, the driving clatter of the iron wheels hitting the cracks in the tracks was more akin to the melancholy of a funeral dirge.
All around him the stink of desperation sweltered. Strangers pressed up against him. Their misery was palpable. The selection process had stripped them of their dignity and any illusions they might have had. They might just have been riding down into Hell.
Why don’t they fight back? It was an obvious question and it rang in Daniel’s mind. They allowed themselves to be ushered onto the death train and herded like lambs to the slaughter. There was a fatalistic resignation to it all. And now, in the filth and the dark, all he could smell was defeat. This was their lot; this was what Fate intended for them. That hurt Daniel more than any of the slings and arrows of supposed outrageous fortune Shakespeare had railed about. How could this kind of treatment ever simply become ‘acceptable’? And of course, how many other trains like this one were there out there in the night? Ten? One hundred?
He wanted to rally them into rebellion. Maybe Jack could say something to whip them up? What though? If knowing that their loved ones were being sorted out for death wasn’t enough to make this worm turn, what on earth could be?
On earth? Daniel grunted. It was a bitter sound in the blackness. And in the echo another thought resurfaced:
What if we don’t make it home?
Daniel had thought it — or variations on it — a hundreds times or more. How could he not? Each time they stepped into the gate there was a very real chance none of them would return, they all knew that, but this was the first time it genuinely felt as though it might be true.
And curiously, he wasn’t scared.
He pushed his back up against the hardness of the wood side.
Outside, beyond the carriage, Daniel heard a bang — a short, sharp detonation. It took a moment for his brain to register that it was an explosion, and a moment longer to understand the implications of it. He felt the shift in the train’s momentum shiver up through the timber all the way from the wheels to the roof, and then the screech as the wheels locked and the roll became a slide. His balance was pulled away from him by the unexpected slide, he clawed at the straw and hard wood lining the bottom of the carriage but couldn’t stop himself from pitching back.
And then the world around him descended into chaos.
“Jack?” he called out. It was buried beneath the sudden rage of impact as something wrenched one of the carriages further up the train off the rails. The violence of the derailment tore through the prisoners. They were so tightly packed into the death trap that they couldn’t protect themselves, they couldn’t so much as raise their hands as they twisted and fell, slammed into the wooden sides even as the walls ruptured lethally. Then the world lurched away beneath him, hurling Daniel upward as the wagon jack-knifed. His face slammed into the splintering roof and he reached out, trying to find something to hold on to. Metal and wood contorted violently, twisting into a web of jagged pains. Around him the screams were contagious. Daniel could hear so many more sounds, the gut-wrenching sobs of the injured; the angry barks of the guards trying to make sense of the accident and instill some sort of order; the grating of the train’s wheels still spinning on uselessly and the melancholy wind that blew through the wreckage.
Daniel fell into a sharp hardness of bodies.
Hands pushed at his face and chest. He smelt the heat of blood. Felt the hot dribble of it into his face. He pushed back against the bodies, trying to find his feet.
The carriage lurched again, and for a moment it seemed to hang there, suspended by the thinnest of threads, then the weight shifted and the entire carriage yawed. It was a graceless topple, the slide into oblivion only arrested by the sudden and shocking implosion of jagged wooden spars and metal braces that bled moonlight and agony as the forces pulling at the wreckage finally tore it apart.
Daniel fell.
A long tooth of ragged wood tore through his upper arm as he came down on it and the press of bodies crushing down on him meant he couldn’t drag himself free. Another twist in the darkness drove him further onto the wooden stake. He screamed but it was only one more frightened sound in the all-consuming dark. He tried to think rationally: a few more inches and it would be all the way through his arm and piercing deep into his side! He screamed again, trying to yell for Jack or Sam or anyone who might hear and help, but like the first one it was lost amid the others. Voices cried out. Bodies kicked and thrashed. He felt himself being hit and kicked by people desperate to crawl over him and out through the ruined siding into the fresh air. Those less fortunate lay still, bleeding or already dead. Daniel struggled to push down against the floor — or was it the ceiling? The derailment had him utterly disorientated. It didn’t matter. He stared out through one of the broken panels. A full moon hung in the black sky. He fixated on it. Agony blazed through his arm as he tried again to move it.
And then he felt the first tear of wood entering his side and the pain put out the moon.
Chapter Twenty-nine
How to be Dead
The Goa’uld, Iblis, raged silently.
He could not abide incompetence in those around him. Kelkus was dead. His disciple had paid the price for his own stupidity but that did not appease Iblis’ fury. The Shol’vah had escaped him, not once, bu
t twice. It would not happen a third time.
No.
The time had come to step out of the shadows.
Iblis stood at the threshold of the vile bone mausoleum the Mujina had chosen for its nest. The place was rank with decay and old death. Ugly. Some few pilgrims still waited on the steps and among the graves clutching their offerings like the treasures they were not. It amused the Goa’uld that even in the face of such bleakness the humans managed to cling to their death rituals. Behind the corrugated iron roofs of the old factory buildings smoke belched into the black sky. Kelani bodies fueled the fire. Everyone in the Rabelais facility knew that, and yet still they found some cold comfort in building their graveyards and observing their rituals.
It was a suitable place to hide the ring transporter that allowed him to move freely between the capital and the various facilities he had instituted. It gave him a power the others could not grasp — the ability to seemingly be in two places at once. It was a simple deception, but the rumors it spawned were frequently amusing.
He heard the mewling of the Mujina, a desperate melancholy loneliness in its cry. It was like some wolf howling at the moon to attract a mate. Pitiful. Iblis had no interest in the creature tonight.
No, tonight he intended to visit Corvus Keen and put an end to this charade once and for all. Keen had made his own nest on the third floor of a derelict building in the heart of the old production buildings, close enough to the incinerators to smell the fires all day and all night. Even outside the air was putrid. There was so much death here, even just scratching at the surface. What went on behind closed doors thrilled the Goa’uld.
The bulbous body of a black rat fled into the shadows as he swept by.
He left the bone garden and came out onto what they laughingly called Main Street. The pouring rain drummed a maddening percussion on the corrugated roofs. Behind him the watchtowers loomed like specters. Despite its obvious decay the Rabelais Facility was perhaps the last truly majestic building in Corvus Keen’s Empire. It was a relic of better days. Five stories tall, row upon row of windows, some blacked out, some bricked in, others gazing blankly across the filth-strewn streets like the blind eyes in the face of a once noble patrician. The thick walls hid the screams. But lights still burned in the first floor laboratories, meaning the master of Rabelais was still at work. The man’s thirst for knowledge was impressive. The man’s thirst for pain, more so. He seemed to devise a new torture with every coming dawn. There were so many Corvani here who excelled, that it made Kelkus’ failure all the more galling.
Iblis wearied of this body. It was neither ugly nor beautiful, indeed it was utterly unremarkable.
He took the rusty old freight elevator to the fifth floor, the car rattling and wheezing as it struggled with his weight, and then walked down the deserted passageway toward Corvus Keen’s chamber. Bare bulbs flickered in and out of light, casting shadows across the floor. By the time he reached the forth bulb they were all dead. He wasn’t surprised that no one challenged him or blocked his way. It was a mark of his supreme arrogance — after all who would dare try to kill him? That was the way Corvus Keen’s mind worked. Where some might have fallen into paranoia and surrounded themselves by soldiers, Keen simply refused to believe anyone would have the temerity to try and kill him.
How wrong could he be?
Iblis didn’t wait for permission to enter.
He swept into the dank smelly room. It was a sty, every bit as slovenly as its occupant. “How can you live in this filth?” he demanded of the tyrant. There was no ‘sire’ now, no unctuous bowing and scraping.
Keen was marooned in his chair, struggling to stand. His face relaxed visibly when he saw Iblis come through the door. The wolfhound at his feet stirred, opening an eye to see who disturbed its slumber. Its jowls curled back on yellowed teeth at the sight of the Goa’uld but its snarl settled quickly into a sigh and the dog closed its eye once more, content to sleep the rest of the day away.
Iblis smiled and closed the door behind him.
“Your mutt is neither faithful nor watchful, it seems.” The words sounded like one long sigh as he ghosted up behind the tyrant’s chair.
“He’s tired,” Corvus Keen answered gruffly.
“Indeed, yes, yes… Tired. Aren’t we all? Tired of incompetence. Tired of other people failing.”
“What do you want, Iblis? I am in no mood for games tonight.”
“Want? Like you, I want the world. Actually I want more. I want worlds. I want the stars. Even the way you talk reeks of indolence, do you know that? Be more specific with your questions, Keen. You never know which one might be your last. It would be a pity to die uttering a foolish question. What do you want with me? So much more pertinent don’t you think?”
“Can’t you go and play with one of your corpses? There must be fires to light and bodies to burn. I am in no mood for this.” The ridges along the top of the fat man’s skull had begun to ripple, his skin mottling with a turgid blue tinge as his face flushed.
“No, or rather yes, if we are being precise. I can and I will play with a corpse — but I won’t be going anywhere to do it.”
“Why is it your kind delight in riddles, Iblis?”
“Ah, you are quite right. I should speak as plainly as I would have you speak. Yes, yes, yes. I should speak plainly for the stupid fat man on his pretend throne.”
“How dare you!” Corvus Keen struggled to rise, his arms shaking from the exertion of trying to lift his colossal frame out of the chair. He was livid. Flecks of spittle sprayed from his mouth and his eyes blazed with anger.
“Kneel before your god and beg for your wretched hide. Do it. Now!” Iblis stared at Keen and saw the fear in his eyes.
“You’re mad…”
“No, merely weary. It is time to end this game.”
“You mean to kill me? You can’t hope to get away with it…”
“I can’t? Why ever not?”
“Because… because…” Corvus Keen spluttered, craning his neck to look.
Iblis reached out slowly and pressed his fingers into the flabby flesh of the half-breed tyrant’s throat, twisting them so that the nails dug in painfully. “Go on, I’m waiting to know why I can’t do this. Yes, yes, yes. I am waiting. So tell me before I wring your stupid fat neck for you.”
“I am… THE RAVEN KING!” Corvus Keen gasped, struggling for every breath he took. Keen’s eyes bulged comically in their sockets and the skin around them began to turn purple. Still Iblis’ fingers tightened their relentless grip.
“Why?” It was less than a croak. Keen’s hands were up at his throat trying desperately to wrench away Iblis’ fingers but the Goa’uld’s grip was like iron.
Iblis threw back his head and laughed. “Why?” he mimicked. “Why? Because I am your God.”
Iblis smiled. His smile widened, and widened, and did not stop stretching until it had transformed into a deathly rictus. From between its lips a gray scaly worm wriggled. The ridge of its spine was slick with blood.
Iblis’ eyes rolled up inside his head, the host body dead before the Goa’uld had fully extricated itself. All Corvus Keen could do was scream as the thing squirmed and slithered toward him, and then, lightning fast, whipped around his neck and in, through the skin as it wrapped around his spine and pierced his brain stem, taking control. The fat man convulsed in his chair, then sat up straight, sneering down at his own flesh where food crusted against flaccid skin.
For a long moment Iblis simply absorbed all that had been Corvus Keen and Zarif before him. So much hatred. So much anger. No wonder the human had allowed his body to crumble beneath him; it was nothing short of mercy that he was liberated from the mass of fat and blood. Iblis absorbed it all, all of the knowledge — his father, his blood, the step-sister he coveted, the daughter that might have been his, the brother he loathed, the mother he had burned and blinded — all the hopes and fears that had driven Corvus Keen. And he turned them into something more potent: power.
<
br /> “Better,” he said, steel in his voice as he pushed himself to his feet. This form was at least interesting if not attractive, and for now it suited Iblis’ schemes.
He walked across to the window and surveyed what had become his new domain. It was not beautiful, but that did not matter, it was deathly.
And dreaming of death, soon it would be time to open the Stargate.
Now, at last, he could emerge from the shadows. The irony of this new body amused him. Instead of some beautiful butterfly emerging from its cocoon he was a swollen, bloated moth. But moths always had been the true kings of the night, Iblis thought, dragging the corpse of his last host toward the door.
Wheezing in his new skin, the Goa’uld cursed the arrogance of the man it had become and vowed to keep guards close to hand in future.
“You!” Iblis shouted, trying out his new voice. At the far end of the passageway a black and silver clad guard turned, about to spit a curse his way before he saw Corvus Keen dragging a dead man toward him. “Dispose of this thing before it stinks up the place.”
The guard looked down, recognizing the corpse despite the damage to its stretched face.
“He out-lived his usefulness. Be sure you do not.”
Chapter Thirty
Runaway Train
Teal’c walked toward the wreckage.
Jachin had been right, it had been disturbingly easy to derail the train. A single charge had blown out one of the tracks, buckling the iron rail so that when the engine hit it at full steam it was lifted and twisted and slipped the tracks. Within fifty feet the lead carriages had snaked out uncontrollably and gone over onto their sides, skidding and sliding through the grass and dirt of the embankment. That in itself would have been enough, but not for Jachin. The impact that turned the derailment into a wreckage was even simpler: the Kelani rolled an old flatbed truck down the slope of the embankment into the path of the sliding train. The gas tanks on the truck were full, promising an explosive impact.
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