by Jamie Duncan
“The ‘why’ of their capture might tell us who has them,” Jacob said. “Have they been working on anything in particular the Goa’uld might want them for? Pissed anyone off lately?”
“Hard to say,” Hammond said. “This is SG-1 we’re talking about. Over the years, they’ve accumulated a lot of enemies.”
“Fortunately, most of the Goa’uld they have offended are dead now,” Malek said. “Many by the hand of SG-1.”
“There are still a few out there,” Jacob said.
“It’s a short list,” Hammond answered. “However, I’ll have my people go back through the mission reports, to see if there are any loose ends that might lead somewhere.”
“We’ll put the word out to our operatives, to be on the lookout,” Jacob said.
Malek rose from the table and bowed. “I will see to it, Selmak. General, with your permission,” he said.
Hammond nodded, then gestured one of the security personnel over. “Go with the airman. He’ll give you whatever you need.”
Jacob waited until Malek was out of sight on the staircase before he said, “George, don’t overestimate what we can do. They could be anywhere. It’s a big galaxy out there.”
“I know that, Jacob.” Hammond sat back in his chair. His back was aching and his stomach was growling, but at least he was feeling more hopeful than he had been before Jacob showed up. “Don’t underestimate your daughter. Or Jack, or Teal’c, or Dr. Jackson.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Jacob stretched and sat back, mirroring Hammond’s posture. “I don’t suppose we could grab some coffee, could we?”
“I thought coffee didn’t agree with Selmak,” Hammond said.
Jacob’s face fell, revealing the true depth of his weariness. “He’s going to make an exception, in this case. ’Gate travel really takes it out of me these days.”
“Maybe Selmak hasn’t had good coffee.”
“Maybe Air Force coffee is what convinced Selmak coffee was evil,” Jacob said, and pushed back from his chair. “Come on. How about if you grab those mission files? We can go through some of them ourselves.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hallway on the other side of the door was empty. Sam nodded to Aadi, who stepped up beside her, Teal’c close behind.
“Which way?” she demanded.
He pointed left, and they set off at a jog. Although they stepped as lightly as possible on the stone floor, their footsteps still echoed in the narrow passage. The hallway was lit by recessed pot lights in the ceiling, which cast bright circles on the floor and left the spaces in between in darkness. Obviously they were outside the holding area; this kind of lighting would be counterproductive when it came to keeping an eye on prisoners.
“What is this place?” she asked Aadi as they slowed to a stop beside another door and he waved her past it toward the one at the end of the hall.
“Quarters, I think,” he whispered.
That brought Sam up short again. “You’re taking us through troop quarters?”
He flashed teeth in a smile that stopped just this side of mockery. “Slaves,” he clarified. “From when Sebek used this building, before the landing station and the big ship.”
“So, abandoned, then, right?” His answer was a shrug. Sam aimed a look over his head at Teal’c. “Hopefully.”
The door at the end of the hall was locked. She pulled the panel off the wall beside it and got to work on the crystals, while Aadi chewed his thumb and Teal’c kept a wary eye on the corridor behind them. How long until dawn and somebody came with rations and found the guards? Guard, she corrected herself, as she wiggled a sticky crystal free. Apart of her brain caught a wistful thread on the idea of rations.
“What is beyond this door?” Teal’c asked.
Aadi shrugged again. “I think laundry. Or kitchens. I was little when I was here.”
Sam re-slotted the crystal. Nothing happened. She started over.
“Your father worked in the laundry?” That image started out as amusing, but didn’t stay that way.
He must’ve seen it on her face, because he looked away. She was considering a “sorry” when the door cracked open, and a wedge of light fell into the hallway.
“Well,” she said, her eye to the opening. “Not abandoned.”
It was definitely the laundry. The door opened onto a small landing that looked down on a long, well-lit room lined on one side by steaming vats as tall as Aadi, and on the other side with some kind of static driers. Down the middle, colorful linens and robes hung on wires, dripping into a drainage trough that ran the length of the room. At two of the driers, slaves were laying clothing out on racks, pulling them taut and sliding the racks into the open mouths of the machines. Other slaves stood ready to pull the racks out immediately, unclipping the now-dry material and dropping it in careful layers onto hand trucks, which were rolled down to the misty far end of the room for pressing. Discounting the ha’tak, this had to be the only good-smelling room on the whole planet, and she wondered if the scent of laundry soap was another one of those galactic constants, like fir trees and sullen teenagers.
Fortunately all fourteen slaves were too busy with their work to pay much attention to a doorway leading to an empty part of the complex, and she and Teal’c managed to slide the panels open far enough for them to squeeze through, Aadi first under Teal’c’s arm, then Sam. The door sighed shut behind them as they crouched together on the landing. In the middle of the side wall beyond the driers, a good thirty, forty paces away, was the only other door. At the far end, next to the pressers, a single Jaffa was leaning on his staff, looking bored and unhappy in the thick humidity. Sam didn’t envy him his chain mail and greaves.
Silently, Teal’c aimed the blade of his hand at the hand trucks collected at the bottom of the stairs, each one with a basket big enough to hold a person. Sam crept down the stairs, bent low to keep behind the inadequate cover of the meshing along the railing. From the bottom of the stairs, she waved at them to follow her. The humming of the machines covered the sound of their boots on the steps. Aadi’s bare feet were silent.
Once at the bottom, Teal’c climbed into the basket and Sam, smaller and a little more agile, crouched behind it, helping Aadi get some momentum going before leaving him to push and half-crawling beside it. She kept an eye on their shadow as they went, to make sure that her own wasn’t at all visible around that of the truck. They stuck close to the wall so that Sam was sandwiched in pretty tightly. Occasionally, when Aadi’s steering got sloppy, or the truck jogged on the cracked concrete of the floor, she found herself pinned and had to shove with her shoulder to get Aadi back on track. Still, they made good progress.
About halfway to the door, someone spoke to Aadi, a low hiss of recognition and alarm, and the hair rose on the back of Sam’s neck. She heard him murmur something that sounded like “Esa” and “Bren,” and whoever it was moved away. A moment later, Sam could hear a man singing. Another, thin, wavering voice picked up the song, and another, farther off, until the song rose and fell around them, weaving its mournful way through the thrumming of the machinery. When they were even with the door, two men—she could make out the tops of their heads—rolled a wire rack hung with robes along beside them, blocking the guard’s view of the open doorway. Someone else, a woman bowed in half like she had some kind of bone disease, came up beside Aadi and took the cart from him. Hidden behind the rack, Teal’c stood and stepped out of truck, while a third man heaped clothing into the now empty cart. Nodding their thanks the three of them quickly slipped out the door.
Sam took a moment to get her bearings and to stretch the tension from her legs. She wasn’t feeling too steady. She glanced up at Teal’c, who was looking away down the corridor toward the next set of doors.
“Aadi,” she said. “We have to find our gear. We need—” Teal’c’s pointed look made her change her mind about mentioning the tretonin in Teal’c’s pack. “There’s equipment we’ll need when we access the ’gate.”
“We can deal with that later,” Sam interrupted him. “We need the gear. Do you have any idea where it might be?”
“It is likely that it will be stored near the armory,” Teal’c answered, “which will be on the ground level, and carefully guarded.” He didn’t look too happy about that. “It may be more prudent to find Aris Boch and use his authority to gain us access.”
Sam gazed blindly down the hallway. “Maybe.” Then she looked earnestly at him. “How long?” He would’ve taken his dose of tretonin before leaving Earth, but she couldn’t remember if he’d had one on Relos before they were captured.
Drawing himself up even straighter, if that were possible, Teal’c said, “I will be fine.”
“How long?”
He answered reluctantly. “A day, perhaps two under good conditions.”
“Right.” And a planet with heavy gravity, arid toxic atmosphere, two days already with minimum rations and practically no water, and the certainty of hand-to-hand combat. So much for “good conditions”. She found herself wrinkling her nose the way the Colonel did. “Okay, we’ll have a look at the ground floor. We have to pass through there, anyway. If it looks good, we go for the gear, and if not, we head for the mine and go with your plan.”
“Agreed.”
They started off again, and were a few paces away before Sam realized that Aadi wasn’t with them. She stopped and looked back. He was standing in the middle of the hallway looking uncertainly first at them, and then back toward the doorway to the laundry.
“Aadi,” Sam whispered as loudly as she dared. “Let’s go. It’s not safe here.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to go there,” he said in a low, scared voice. “You can get your own gear.” He cast another longing look toward the laundry. “Esa can sneak me out in the linens.”
Sam stole a glance through the doorway. The view was still blocked by the drying rack. “Can Esa take all of us?”
He hesitated and shook his head. “No. They won’t take you. Him.” He aimed his chin in Teal’c’s direction as he came toward them. “Maybe they’ll turn you in for favors.” He took a step backward toward the door. “You go. Through that door and then around—there’s a big room with windows in the roof, and then the doors out.”
Teal’c leaned close to her ear to murmur, “He will betray us.”
Inside the room, the rack rattled as someone moved it away from the door, and Sam pushed Aadi up against the wall out of sight. She could hear the Jaffa shouting something and the sudden hiss of escaping steam. Trucks rumbled by.
Her eyes close to Aadi’s she asked, “Would you?”
He shook his head.
“Your father would.”
“I won’t.”
He would. She knew he would. And if they let him go, they’d lose the only leverage they had with Aris. The idea of holding a kid hostage made her feel dirty and heavy, but the whole place made her feel dirty and a little extra weight on her conscience would be bearable if it got them—all of them—off this awful planet. Maybe.
“We can protect you.”
“None of you can protect me.”
“You trust this Esa person to protect you.”
Aadi frowned. “He’s different.” He cast another nervous look over his shoulder and pushed her away. “They’re changing shifts. If I don’t go now—”
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the sudden shrieking of an alarm.
“Our escape has been discovered,” Teal’c said as he circled Aadi’s arm with his hand and began to draw him down the hallway away from the door. “There is no time for this debate.”
Aadi set his feet and struggled against Teal’c, but it was no use: Teal’c looped an arm around his waist and picked him up like a suitcase while Sam trotted along behind them. She caught up in time to clamp a hand over Aadi’s mouth, preventing him from shouting out.
“You want to go back to that cell?” A shake of the head and wide eyes. “We aren’t going to hurt you, but if you aren’t quiet, the only ones who are going to come here to save you are Jaffa. Your choice.”
The kid went slack in Teal’c’s grip, resigned. She nodded to Teal’c, and he put the boy down. Aadi barely had his feet on the ground before they heard a shout behind them. The Jaffa was in the hallway with the bent woman, who was pointing at them.
“Oh crap,” Sam said, and both she and Teal’c raised their zats. They were too far away still, so instead of shooting they turned to run. Aadi slammed into the door at the end of the hallway and curled himself into a ball at its foot while Teal’c returned fire. Sam yanked the panel off the wall. Two crystals in, two out, one here, the other there. The door snapped open, tumbling Aadi into the atrium beyond. Scooping him up with one arm, Teal’c continued to fire until Sam ducked through the doorway after them. When it closed, she shot the control panel with the zat, covering her face with her hand against the shower of sparks.
The atrium was huge, the length of a football field with an arched glass ceiling that revealed a roiling grey sky, lit in the east by a thin wash of red. They were standing on a mezzanine that circled the room on all four sides, a couple of stories above the main floor. Sam risked a peek over the edge. In the central space, a smattering of Jaffa met in the middle for instructions and then dispersed. One of them looked their way and pointed.
“The door!” Sam shouted at Aadi over the rising sound of pounding boots. “Where is it?”
He whirled in place to scan the room and finally pointed. “There. Down!”
Sam followed his outstretched arm. She couldn’t see the doors themselves, but a ruddy light stained the main floor in a long rectangle at the far end of the atrium. “I don’t think down is going to be an option.”
There were two stairwells leading up to the mezzanine, one on either side of the room. Both were between the fugitives and the doors. Three Jaffa were storming up the stairs on the left, another four on the right. No chance of going either way.
“Here,” Teal’c called, and waved them toward a narrow side hallway. Slipping into it, Sam counted five doors leading off of it, two on either side and one at the end. Teal’c slapped the control panel for the nearest door on the left, but before they could make it inside, the door at the end of the hall opened and a Jaffa stepped through. The staff blast cooked the air beside Sam’s face. She threw herself against the wall, twisting away from it and toward Teal’c and Aadi. Teal’c turned away too, trapping Aadi behind the wall of his back, like she’d seen so many Jaffa do when they shielded their Goa’uld charges with their own armored bodies. Only Teal’c had no armor.
He fell heavily, smoke rising from his left side, his staff weapon spinning out onto the mezzanine. Sam didn’t pause to assess the damage, but twisted around on her knee and zatted the Jaffa twice. A quick check over her shoulder showed her Teal’c rising to his hands and knees, then sitting back on his heels. He waved her on as Aadi bolted through the open side door. Five long steps took her to the end of the hall where she leaped over the dead Jaffa and stabbed the control panel. The door slid open. Another narrow hallway, this one dark. She reached an arm inside, pulled off the control panel, yanked out as many crystals as she could hold in one hand, and tossed them on the floor, where they shattered. Then, holding the door open with the toe of her boot, she pulled off her jacket and dropped that, too. She let the door close, the sleeve of her jacket showing at the seam where the two panels came together. Then she sprinted the few paces back down the hall and threw herself into the next room, past Teal’c who was holding the door open for her, and colliding spectacularly with Aadi. Somehow, he ended up in her lap on the floor, both of them facing the door, her hand clamped again over his mouth. Teal’c locked the door as footsteps stormed past them.
Sam held her breath and Aadi tightly until he started to struggle again
st her. She let him go. He scrambled into the corner and stared wide-eyed at the door as a Jaffa on the other side shouted orders. There was a staff blast, and another, and then the sound of footsteps receding down the next hallway.
Teal’c sank to his knees.
Sam crawled across the floor to him and gingerly pulled away the charred edges of his jacket. It had been a glancing blow, but it wasn’t good. It was a long way from good. She slapped the side of his face, first gently, and then harder, until he opened his eyes. “We can’t stay here,” she whispered.
“I agree.”
“Can you walk?” The question was a courtesy. He had to walk, or they were dead.
“I can.”
While she was helping him to his feet, a noise behind her drew her attention and she craned her neck awkwardly to look. Up near the ceiling there was a ventilation grate, hanging open on its hinges. Aadi’s feet were kicking and wriggling, and then they disappeared inside with the rest of him. Teal’c braced himself against the door, so Sam could hop up onto the packing crate Aadi had used and peer into the narrow space. She couldn’t see a thing.
“Aadi!” she whispered and waited. Nothing. Damnit.
The shaft was a good size for an underfed thirteen-year-old boy, but there was no way a grown woman and muscular, wounded adult man were also going to fit in there.
She jumped down, sat on the crate and ran trembling hands through her hair. Think. Her brain obeyed, though as if playing in slow motion. Everything seemed stretched and ungainly. When she looked up at Teal’c, he seemed far away at the clear centre of a grey-edged circle.
“We could take the hallway,” Teal’c suggested, angling his head toward the door Sam had disabled. “The Jaffa will not expect us to be behind them.”