by Jamie Duncan
SIREN SONG
Stargate SG-1 - 06
Jaimie Duncan & Holly Scott
(An Undead Scan v1.0)
For our mothers
Jaimie and Holly would like to thank: Katie and ML Hull for their valuable insight and suggestions; Lori Goldman for offering encouragement at a critical time; Sally Malcolm and Tom Reeve at Fandemonium Books for giving us the opportunity to publish the book; and Sabine Bauer for her assistance during the editing process. Special thanks to our fellow Stargate fans (especially the LJ crew), who share our love of the show and the team, and who have brought us both so much joy over the last few years.
CHAPTER ONE
Colonel Jack O’Neill staked out his vantage point beside the meeting hall and eased down onto a strategically located bench. The village nearest P43-912’s Stargate was pretty enough, with lots of tidy homes and flower gardens, and friendly folks everywhere. So far, this had been a completely uneventful mission: meet, greet, smile, exchange pleasantries, ignore the Relosians’ awed and frightened stares at Teal’c, send Major Samantha Carter off in search of valuable things like trinium and technology, and let Dr. Daniel Jackson get busy with the negotiating.
In fact, it was always like this lately. A new planet, peaceful exploration, mundane trade stuff, and then SG-1 was on its way to the next mission. It was all so… routine. Which explained why Jack was bored out of his skull. This struck him as being pretty ironic, given the fact that many times in the past year, he’d wanted nothing more than a few hours of down time for a hot shower and a nap. But even so, a spectacularly loud explosion or a few firing matches with Jaffa wouldn’t be completely unwelcome.
There were days he didn’t mind the slow pace—days when they sat around drinking homemade barley wine, eating stews full of unidentified meat and vegetables, and accepting the gratitude of people they’d actually been able to help. On those days, Jack could forget that everything had changed around him while he was standing still and that his equilibrium was not yet restored. Daniel’s return from the ascended state had removed that awkward off-kilter feeling he’d had the entire time Jonas had been with them, and now they were finding their old rhythm again as a team. The thought made Jack smile; their rhythm was a combination of staccato call-and-response, with a dash of shout-and-pointed-silence. It worked for them.
The missions were coming faster now that Daniel was back to his old self—almost at the pace of the second year the team had been together, after they’d figured out enough destinations to keep everyone busy and still have some left over. Jack reminded himself that he had the universe for a workplace. A little boredom was a small price to pay for that.
“Sir, there’s enough trinium here to justify setting up a mining operation. Not a huge amount, but my preliminary guess would be two deposits, maybe three.” Carter sat down on the bench next to him and handed him a hunk of unrefined ore. Her face was smeared with dirt, as though she’d been down there clawing it up with her own hands. He wouldn’t put it past her. “It’s a quality vein, extending about one mile beneath the surface.”
Jack took the rock and tossed it in the air a few times, like a lumpy baseball. It was so light it might as well have been hollow. “Daniel thinks they’ll give this to us for free.”
“Really?” Carter snatched the rock mid-toss and began waving a scanner over it. “Maybe they’ve got no use for it.”
“Or any interest in why it’s useful to us.” Jack tilted his head and watched Daniel in animated conversation with two of the Relosians, whose purple robes shimmered in the sunlight. They were wearing some of the craziest headgear Jack had ever seen, puffy red towers with rows of shiny beads dangling off the ends. Daniel accepted yet another ceremonial cup full of what passed for beer in the village. It wasn’t bad stuff, although it made Jack’s eyeballs burn whenever he inhaled too close to the cup. “Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“Not really. They’re pre-industrial, so it wouldn’t occur to them that we plan to make weapons with this.”
“Lucky us.” Jack flipped open his chronometer and glanced at the time. Teal’c had left for the ’gate to report in to Hammond half an hour ago, and it was less than a ten minute walk. “Carter, did you pass Teal’c on your way in from the quarry?”
“No, sir.” She stopped fiddling with the rock.
Wrapping his fingers around the watch, Jack tapped the wristband a couple of times. He had seven years of experience with this team, and Teal’c always reported back to him when he returned from completing a task.
Unless something was wrong.
Jack keyed the radio. “Teal’c.” A short burst of static, then silence. “Teal’c, do you read me?” After a moment, he nodded to Carter, who gave it a try on her own radio. Still nothing. Jack straightened and shifted the weight of his vest around, to make it sit more comfortably on his shoulders. “I’m going to take a walk,” he said quietly. “Stay here with Daniel.”
“You think something has happened to Teal’c?”
He looked out toward the forest, then back at the cluster of huts near the center of the village. “Just keep an eye out.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, as one hand came up to cover her P90. Jack rose from the bench and moved off toward Daniel, who was surrounded by a group of elders and two pretty young women serving drinks. They were still talking. Amazingly, Daniel never seemed to run out of alien conversation starters. Sometimes Jack could barely think of subjects for small talk with people of his own planet; he supposed Daniel’s fluency was a gift. Or a curse, for the person on the receiving end of all that curiosity.
“Jack!” Daniel gestured to the Relosians, some kind of interstellar sign language for ‘hang on a second’, and said, “I’ve made some progress. They want to trade us for these beans.”
“Beans?” Jack looked down at the shriveled grey things Daniel was holding in the palm of his hand.
“Not just any beans, Jack.” Daniel curled his hand closed to protect his prize. “These are sacred ancestral beans, handed down by their forefathers. Each year at planting, these are buried in the first row plowed.”
“And then a beanstalk grows, and they live happily ever after.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes. “Jack, be serious. They are offering these to us as a gesture of lasting friendship.”
“Right,” Jack said. “Of course they are.” He fluttered three fingers at the Relosians, a halfhearted “be right with you” wave. They nodded their approval and turned to each other, their conversation escalating in a wave of excited chatter as their red-beaded hats clattered with movement. “Wrap it up, then.”
“There’s still some points to work out, and I don’t—”
“SG-9 can do the detail work, like always.”
Daniel nodded, though a troubled frown briefly appeared on his face. Jack knew this was one of those moments—the missing details of Daniel’s life that were hiding in the cracks of his post-descension memory, rising to the surface one by one. SG-9 would come in to clean up the offworld bargains and treaties; as a member of Stargate Command’s flagship team, Daniel wouldn’t have the time to spend weeks hammering out interstellar trade agreements. Now that he’d been reminded, he wouldn’t forget again. Jack was never sure whether these kinds of details were recovered memories or something learned all over again. It didn’t really matter, since Daniel was a quick learner.
“Start packing,” he said, watching as Carter took up a position near the head of the trail. Without waiting for Daniel to pepper him with questions, Jack turned and set out toward the valley path.
The village sat atop a small green hill overlooking the forested valley below. The Stargate was hidden deep in the forest and invi
sible from the settlement. Jack followed the trail to the edge of the cultivated gardens and stood in the middle of the path, his gaze tracing its faint edges down the hill, across a short stretch of open plain, and right to the forest perimeter. He pulled open his front jacket pocket and withdrew field binoculars, then enhanced the focus and scanned quickly over the area. No sign of Teal’c.
After a moment, he lowered the binoculars, but his sense of alarm notched up a peg. He reached for his radio, and after a moment’s hesitation, he keyed it. “Daniel, Carter.”
“Yes, sir,” Carter said, followed by Daniel’s static-overlaid, “Go ahead, Jack.”
“Gather up anything you don’t want to leave behind—day packs only—and meet me on the trail.”
“Jack, I need to—”
“Daniel, that’s an order. Do it now.”
“Trouble, sir?”
“Not yet,” Jack said. There was no reply from Daniel; Jack knew Daniel’s thousand-yard glare was currently burning a hole in the back of his vest, but he also knew Daniel was already three-quarters packed. There were some things Daniel didn’t question—very few, but a direct order was one of them. That, at least, hadn’t changed at all.
It took less than a minute for Carter and Daniel to make their way up the hill. Daniel was stuffing items into his pack as they approached, but he stopped long enough to hoist it on. Carter fastened the straps for him. “Did you say our goodbyes?” Jack asked Daniel over his shoulder.
“Not exactly, no. But I gave the beans back, until we could seal the agreement. Are we leaving?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe. Keep your eyes on the trail,” Jack said. Carter raised her weapon in tandem with his own.
“I don’t think these people are any threat to us,” Daniel protested.
“Teal’c is late,” Jack said, and that was all he needed to say; Daniel cut the commentary.
The canopy of trees shielded an unsettling kind of gloom, broken randomly by shafts of sunlight shooting through the thick overgrowth of leaves and moss. Too much contrast, and the light seemed as impenetrable as the darkness. It made Jack wary; too many ghosts in his peripheral vision, which wasn’t quite as sharp or discerning as it used to be. He reached out with one hand and signaled quickly —fan out, keep a watchful eye forward, quiet. Carter and Daniel immediately dropped behind him to obey. With a distance of only a few paces between them, they continued moving down the faint trail.
Jack listened to the sounds around them, even as his gaze swept across the trail looking for shapes, dark masses, things that were out of place. They could have used Teal’c’s tracking skills. His own couldn’t compare. Anyway, it was possible he was wrong, that nothing had happened, that Teal’c had simply encountered a friendly local and—
“Ouch,” Daniel said behind him.
Jack whipped around, his P90 leveled in the direction of that mild complaint. Daniel was holding his nose with one hand, looking pissed off, and Carter’s face registered sharp wariness. Daniel reached out with one finger and touched the air in front of him. It shimmered red for a moment before the color died away.
“Force field,” Carter said. She moved to the side, testing the boundaries; Jack moved with her, a mirror image. It took six paces for him to reach a firm barrier, but Carter continued on past that point. Carter met his eyes. “You’re inside, sir; we’re outside.”
“I gathered that,” Jack said tightly. All around him, the forest was alive with sound. He turned slowly, tracking stray noises he couldn’t identify, and asked, “Doesn’t this feel a little familiar?”
“Deja vu,” Daniel murmured, rubbing his nose. “We’ve seen this before.”
“Several times,” Sam said, poking experimentally at it. “Goa’uld design.”
“Last time we saw it in a forest, though…” Daniel met Jack’s eyes. “It was because of Aris Boch.”
Jack’s face twisted into a grimace. Four years had passed since their last encounter, but for Jack, the capture of his entire team by the bounty hunter, Aris Boch, had been a memorable event. All the details were fresh in his mind, from the force field Boch initially used to contain them, to the shield-penetrating weapons, to the way he’d held them all hostage to ensure each would cooperate for fear he’d harm the others.
Can you take him? Jack had asked Teal’c, because he really wasn’t sure himself, and because he’d needed to know if they had a chance of rescuing Carter by force.
I can. Teal’c had seemed certain. Maybe he’d been wrong.
Jack backed away from the force field. Carter and Daniel didn’t even need to be told what was coming next. They crouched and waited out of the line of fire as he raised his weapon and loosed a few experimental, useless bursts toward the shield. He didn’t want to assume anything—some version of force field technology was available on half the planets they’d explored to date. That didn’t mean Aris Boch was behind it. What were the odds?
The voice came from the edge of the woods, to Jack’s left. “I see you’ve learned nothing since the last time we met. The mighty SG-1, trapped by the greatest hunter in the galaxy.” A pause, and then, as if he couldn’t resist pointing it out: “Again.”
With a sigh, Jack turned and faced Aris Boch. It really was déjà vu—same armor, if a bit more battle-scarred than the last time they’d seen it; same nasty-looking weapon, like the mother of all pistols, heavy, deadly and looking like it was a part of him as he casually aimed it in their direction. Cocky bastard. Although he knew it wouldn’t work, Jack leveled his weapon at Aris, who only smirked at him, hazel eyes sparkling with self-satisfied amusement in the rugged face. Bad enough to be caught by a bounty hunter, but twice by the same bounty hunter was… well…
As if Aris could read his thoughts, he smiled broadly and said, “Embarrassing, isn’t it? Don’t feel too bad, Colonel. I’ve tricked aliens with brains twice the size of yours.”
“Yes, that makes me feel much better,” Jack said testily. “Where’s Teal’c?”
Aris moved his free hand to his wrist. Teal’c’s suddenly winked into view, sprawled unconscious in the middle of the path and proving that Aris wasn’t aiming at the dirt. On instinct, Jack moved toward Teal’c and with a muttered curse jerked back from the forgotten force field.
Aris looked down at Teal’c and prodded him with the toe of his boot. “He’s fine. You should already know I’m not in the business of damaging valuable merchandise,” he said, adding after a beat, “If I don’t have to.” Teal’c stirred, but didn’t wake. “If I had known he would be this easy, I would have gone for hand-to-hand.”
Jack sighed. When Teal’c was on his feet, this was going to be ammunition for weeks’ worth of ribbing. If they lived that long. Jack asked, “How did you find us? And what the hell do you want?”
“Good questions, Colonel. They’re the questions I would ask, if I were in your place.” Aris looked over at Daniel, then at Carter, his smile widening in response to their identical frowns. After a moment, he put his foot squarely on Teal’c’s chest and pushed. Teal’c’s eyes flew open, and Aris stepped back in a smooth motion, out of reach of Teal’c’s long arms. “As for how I found you—blame your Relosian friends for that. One of them was only too happy to sell you out. But I’m afraid you won’t get an answer to the second question yet.”
Jack yanked his cap down, frustrated. Of course the Relosians had sold them out. The planet was too peaceful. Nothing that looked this peaceful was ever as good beneath the pretty painted surface. He should know by now not to trust people who wore fancy hats. Jack leveled the P90 at Aris’ chest again—never mind that it wouldn’t do any good; it made him feel better—then asked Teal’c, “You okay?”
“I am uninjured.” Teal’c’s murderous scowl indicated only his pride was bruised. Aris pointed his weapon directly at Teal’c’s head. Teal’c pushed up off the ground to stand beside Daniel.
Jack gave Teal’c a long look. Wordless understanding passed between them. His team was outside the shield, and Ja
ck was inside, effectively cut off from them.
“How touching. Everyone all together again.” Aris smiled his cynical smile. “Especially you, Dr Jackson. The last anyone heard about you, you were…” He raised his eyebrows and circled a finger above his head. “A glowing cloud.”
“Your intelligence really isn’t that reliable, is it?” Daniel said mildly.
Carter stepped forward, drawing Aris’ attention. “Look, we should be past playing games. We know what you do, and how you operate, so -just tell us what you want.”
“Very bold, Major!” Aris squinted at her, his expression amused. “You’ve been getting used to taking charge, haven’t you? Getting ready to lead a team of your own, perhaps?” When Carter didn’t answer, Aris chuckled and went on, “What I want, Major, is for you and Dr Jackson to come with me. I need your expertise. And of course, I’ll need the Colonel here and Teal’c as bargaining chips.”
“We won’t go with you,” Daniel said immediately. Jack stepped as close to the force field as he dared while avoiding another jolt. His fists clenched; he forced them to relax. Daniel could say the words, but without some way of breaking through Jack couldn’t stop Aris from taking them and he couldn’t help Teal’c.
“Now, now. Dr Jackson, haven’t we been through this already? I tell you what you’re going to do, and you do it.”
“Or… not,” Jack said with more bravado than he could back up.
Aris regarded him pensively. “Colonel, I really don’t have time to play nice. And I don’t think you want me to force them, do you?”
“What kind of expertise do you need?” Daniel said.- Jack watched him; Daniel was in full negotiation mode, all sensors on. Good for Daniel. “Because there’s no reason you need all of us.”
Uh-oh. Wrong turn. “Daniel,” Jack said sharply.
Aris looked over at Jack, a smile twisting his face. There was a new scar on his forehead, curving angrily down past the corner of his left eye, which drooped a bit. “That may be true, Doctor. Why don’t we ask the Colonel here how he feels about that?”