“General O’Neill,” Sam said, and heard Daniel give a soft huff of laughter.
“Well, that would be like Jack, all right.”
“Possible,” Zelenka said. “But extremely inconvenient.” He swore again as the lights swung closer. “Back.”
They retraced their steps into the depths of the building, Zelenka in the lead, Dex holding on to the back of his jacket. Sam felt her way along the left-hand wall, feeling for the band of smooth tile Zelenka had showed them earlier, swallowed a curse herself as she nearly ran into Dex. Daniel did run into her then, and muttered something unhappy under his breath.
“A little further,” Zelenka said, “and we can risk the light again.”
The floor sloped steeply away underfoot, and Sam had to slow down to keep her balance. He breath caught, hearing the others moving away, and then Dex said, “Wait. Hold hands.”
“Ah. Yes.” Zelenka stopped, and Sam groped her way forward, hand colliding at least with Dex’s shoulder. Behind her she could hear Daniel’s breathing, and reached back, swinging her left arm until she struck his chest.
“Ow,” Daniel said, but his grip on her hand was almost painfully tight.
“Ready?” Zelenka asked, and they started off again.
It was truly dark in the narrow space, only a faintly lighter patch behind them to show where they’d been. The ground steepened further, and Sam heard Dex grunt as he nearly tripped over something.
“Just a little more,” Zelenka said. “Ok, stop.”
They stumbled to a halt in the dark and Sam heard the click of a switch. Light flared, not directly in front of them but around a corner where it would be hidden from the entrance, and Zelenka said, “This way. I’ll tell you when you can turn on your lights.”
“Where are we going?” Sam asked, but followed obediently. Zelenka’s flashlight picked out broken paving, fragments of tan and red and blue among the pale rubble. It was another broad corridor — another part of the service areas, maybe? There was no machinery left to give her any clue.
“We’ll try another way,” Zelenka said. “Sumner’s men are between us and the city’s edge, we’ll need to go around and under, which — we’ll need to hurry if we’re going to make it in time.”
The corridor ended in a sprawl of rubble, stone dust spread across the tiles. Zelenka pointed them to a crude ladder leading to another tunnel, and produced a knot of rags on a stick that he used to obliterate their footprints. Sam lowered herself into the deeper dark — it smelled of mud and old iron — and Zelenka scrambled down behind her.
“All right,” he said. “You can turn on your lights now.”
“We’re back in the transport tunnels?” Daniel asked, casting his light around.
“I think so,” Zelenka answered. “The subway, more or less.”
The beam of Daniel’s light caught a long oval plaque set into the wall, embossed with Ancient characters, and Sam moved hers to join it. “That’s pretty. What does it say?”
Daniel let his light fall again. “Do not throw trash in conduits.”
“Oh.”
“That’s disappointing,” Zelenka said.
“The Ancestors’ stuff usually is,” Dex muttered.
Zelenka led them to the end of what seemed to have been a platform and then down another newly-built ladder to the floor of a square tunnel. Curved rails hung from each of the corners, their surfaces still black and glossy. Sam shone her light on the nearest one, and it struck glittering iridescence from the dustless material. Curious now, she crouched to touch it, felt her fingers glide across it as though it were oiled ice. She tried again, pressing harder, but there was no way to get any purchase on the gleaming substance.
“Frictionless material?” she said. That would explain why no dust gathered on it. And placed in the corners like that, it could certainly allow a vehicle to slide effortlessly along its track.
Zelenka looked over his shoulder, his glasses catching the light. “Yes, or very nearly so. Rodney would like to get his hands on enough to run some proper tests, but he can’t without having to explain where it comes from.”
“That must be frustrating,” Daniel said, without much sympathy.
The tunnel curved gently, making it hard to judge how far they’d come. Once they had to climb over piles of rubble where a cross tunnel had partially collapsed, but in general the tunnels seemed reasonably intact. At last they reached another ‘station,’ where a modern ladder led up a slope of debris. At the top, a hole showed paler gray against the black and Sam automatically covered her light. Zelenka switched off his own and climbed up, pausing at the top to peer slowly around, but then beckoned for them to follow.
They emerged in the shell of a building, roof and windows long gone, but all four walls still mostly intact. The sky was lighter overhead, and Dex made a face. “How far north did we come?”
“Yes, we’re cutting it close,” Zelenka answered. “If we hurry…”
His voice trailed off as though he didn’t quite believe it himself, and started for what had been the main door. Sam switched off her light and followed, the others at her heels. She was starting to feel the effects of only a few hours’ sleep and the climb through the ruins, and she wasn’t at all sure she was going to be able to keep up the pace. But if the alternative was hiding all day — she’d give it her best shot.
It was lighter outside, the sky to the east starting to grow pale, the stars fading. In the distance, she could see a string of lights that had to be the campsite, but there was a vast swath of darkness between them and it, and no sign of Sumner’s men. Ahead, between the buildings, she could just make out the edge of the lake.
“So where exactly are we going?” Daniel asked.
“Back toward the camp, I’m afraid,” Zelenka answered. “And hope Sumner has called off whatever was going on.”
Sam suppressed a sigh. At least they wouldn’t be climbing through tunnels. Presumably it would be easier on the surface.
A thin whine sounded in the distance, rising sharply. Dex reached for his hip as though he was still carrying a weapon, then pointed instead.
“Wraith!”
Sam turned to see lights above the lake, coming rapidly closer and resolving to weird needle-nosed fighters. Two swooped toward the camp, turning on a dime — I wouldn’t like to follow them in a 302, she thought — but a third came straight on as though it was homing in on them.
“Cover!” Dex yelled, all caution vanished. “Get under cover!”
The building they’d just left was roofless, no protection there. Dex was waving them on, pointing toward another building that seemed to be more intact, and Sam dashed for it as the scream of the Wraith ship grew louder. Daniel was at her heels, stumbling as he tried to watch where he was going and get a look at the ships; ahead of them, Zelenka dove through the doorway just as a beam of blue light dropped from the belly of the fighter. It swept along the ground, carried with the ship, and Dex grabbed her arm, jerking her off her feet. She rolled and came up swearing. Daniel leaped after her, but the beam caught him, and he vanished. Sam flung herself after him, but Dex dragged her back.
“Daniel!”
The fighter streaked away, pulling up sharply to vanish into the night. Sam stared after it, her heart racing.
“Oh, God, Daniel.”
“I’m sorry,” Dex said.
Sam turned on him. “What the hell do you think you were doing? I could have gone after him —”
“You’d be dead.” Dex stared down at her, his expression bleak. “Just like he is.”
“No.”
“That was a Culling beam,” Dex said. “That’s how they hunt. They’ve taken him back to their ship, and — I’m sorry.”
Oh, God. Sam realized she was shaking, stiffened her shoulders. “We’ve got to go after them —”
“Inside,” Dex said, and Sam let herself be pulled into the shelter of the nearest building. The whine was sounding again, rising to a scream, and another of th
e Wraith ships swooped by overhead, low enough that if she’d only had a P90 she could have done some serious damage. Gunfire sounded from the camp, and the Wraith ship rolled into a looping turn and headed to join the fight.
“They’re distracted,” Sam said. “We’ve got to get to General O’Neill —”
Zelenka shook his head. “We must stay here,” he said. “The Athosians will not be waiting for us, not with Darts in the air, and even if it weren’t foolish to take the chance, I cannot take us to their camp on my own.”
“But —” Sam stopped, knowing he was right.
“We will wait for a better chance,” Zelenka said. “Which will probably not be until nightfall. I am sorry, Colonel.”
So am I. Sam swallowed the words along with the lump in her throat. “There has to be a way to get him back.”
“No one’s ever escaped from a hiveship,” Dex said.
“Then we’ll rescue him.”
“That’s —” Dex stopped, silenced by her glare.
“We’ll rescue him,” she said again, as though the repetition could make it true, and let herself slide down to sit at the base of the nearest wall. Somehow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kine
DANIEL regained consciousness upright and immobilized, his cheek resting against something that felt like a thick vine. The rest of his face was exposed, the air cool and faintly damp. He could hear a distant jumble of sounds, but couldn’t make sense of them — were they machinery, voices, something else entirely? They weren’t nearby, however, and he risked opening his eyes.
It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t make out the shapes around him. He hung suspended in a shallow niche, wrapped securely in an organic-feeling net, cords and membranes holding him immobilized. There was another niche directly opposite him, perhaps three meters away; it was empty, the cords withered and slack, the membranes desiccated and in tatters, but the shape of the empty space was unpleasantly like a coffin. The Wraith — he’d been taken by the Wraith, caught in a flash of light that had to have been some kind of transport beam, and now he was — where? The net was too tight to allow him to turn his head and the angle didn’t allow him to see either the floor of the corridor or its ceiling. A Wraith ship, probably, he thought, and closed his eyes to listen. Yes, those could be the common sounds of a ship in space, ventilators, machinery, but he couldn’t be sure.
Still, that was the most probable answer, and one he didn’t like at all. He was on a Wraith ship — a hive, one of the scientists had called it, taking the word from the Athosians, and there was something nastily insectile about the web that held him. The rest of the corridor looked organic, too, as though he were inside the body of some enormous animal. He filed that for later consideration — maybe it would prove some kind of advantage — and tried to lift his arms.
There was no give at all in the webbing, not even when he exerted his full strength. It was no better when he tried to move his legs and, finally, he had to admit that he couldn’t really move at all. Well, he could move the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, but that didn’t seem to get him anywhere. He let himself hang for a few minutes, listening while he got his breath back, then pressed himself forward against the web.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?”
There was no answer, just the distant sound of machines — or possibly, he thought, if the ship was in some sense alive, then perhaps what he was hearing was the sound of its internal organs, breathing, circulation, digestion. That wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought, either, and he rocked forward again.
“Hello?”
There was a sound, soft and directionless, something between a sob and an indrawn breath. He froze, straining to hear, but it was not repeated.
“Hello! If you’re out there —” He stopped, the sentence dying unfinished. Talk to me and we can help each other, he would have said, but the words were hollow. There was nothing he could do for himself in this position, never mind helping anyone else, and from the look of the cell opposite, anyone else in here with him would be in exactly the same position. In fact — In fact, given everything he’d heard about the Wraith so far, there was every chance that this was the ship’s larder, and that he and any other humans were simply stored here until some Wraith was hungry enough to feed.
That thought was enough to get him straining against the web again, with the same lack of result, and he stopped, panting. Clearly, he wasn’t going to break free using brute force — Teal’c might have been able to do it, but not him. Ok, what was he carrying in the way of gear? A flashlight, unless he’d dropped it — he couldn’t feel it in his pocket, though he could feel the webbing pressing his pocketknife against his thigh. The pocketknife! Though what use a three-inch blade was going to be against the heavy cords even if he could figure out how to get at it…
There was a new sound from the corridor to his left, only a bit louder than the ambient noise, but unmistakably footsteps. Someone, more than one, was coming. He rocked forward again, straining against the web, but could see nothing until the footsteps were almost opposite him. There were three of them, a female with two males hovering deferentially behind her, and Daniel swallowed hard. He’d only gotten a brief look at the Wraith during the fighting and its aftermath, and then most of them had been the faceless drones. These were far closer to human, disconcertingly so despite the pale green skin and the pointed teeth, so sharp and so many of them, the clawed hands and the grooves beside their noses, secondary organs that looked like a snake’s sensory pits. The female was paler than the others, veins showing green beneath her marble skin, and her heavy white hair hung in a luminous curtain; she seemed to be in charge, too, and Daniel tried what he hoped was a plausible smile.
“Hey, hi. Could we maybe talk about this whole prisoner thing?”
The female had been looking away, but when he spoke her head whipped around faster than he would have believed possible, eyes green as a cat’s fixing on his. Her clawed hand flashed past his face, releasing the strands that held his head immobile and drawing a thin line of blood from his cheek. He was suddenly, painfully aware of her presence, a pressure against his mind, worse than the Replicators, worse even than the Ancients, and he fumbled for the barriers he had taught himself.
“Whoa, don’t — That’s not a good idea.” Even as he spoke, he’d found the right countermeasure, like tuning in to a radio frequency, and shoved back hard. He caught a momentary jumble of her thoughts — shock, anger — and then the tumbling warnings of the two males, urging her to caution. She snarled, her right hand coming up, claws flexed, the mouth that crossed its palm gaping wide, and Daniel flinched in spite of himself.
The two males started forward themselves, their thoughts a clamor of warning and concern.
* — must not endanger yourself —*
That was the taller and tidier of the pair, the one whose silver hair was drawn up in a complicated tail; the other, short and wild-haired, was blunter:
* — Queen will kill you if —*
And then he’d lost the thread, shook his head hard. The female snarled like a tiger. “What are you?” Her voice was low and throaty, slit-pupiled eyes almost glowing in the dark.
“Um, human?” Daniel’s mouth was dry. “Just a traveler passing through —”
“Liar.” She cocked her head to one side. “My mother will destroy you utterly, you and all your kind.”
“That really isn’t necessary,” Daniel began.
She spun around, though Daniel hadn’t heard anyone else approach, and the other males made hasty bows. Daniel strained forward to see the newcomer. It was another male, even more elegant than the others, with silver hair pulled up and back into an elaborate fall that framed a narrow, long-boned face. He wore the same long leather coat as the others, but his seemed to be embossed with delicate patterns, and the tuft of beard at the tip of his chin had been divided into two points, each one tipped with a tiny silver bead. The female glared at him, visibly unimpres
sed — most of their communication was telepathic, Daniel thought, but he couldn’t seem to find the way to tune in again. The newcomer bowed.
“But the Queen has given him to me,” he said aloud. “For my research.”
“I will not quarrel with her,” the female said. “Or with you. But it’s a mistake.”
The scruffy Wraith — his hair was a mass of matted dreadlocks and a dark green tattoo spiraled over cheek and jaw and down his neck — said, “If it’s what she wants —”
“Then we’ll certainly oblige,” the other male said firmly.
“Excellent.” The newcomer fixed his eyes on Daniel. They were darker green than the female’s, the pupils narrowed as though the light was stronger than it was. Which must mean that the hives weren’t dark to them, Daniel thought. No wonder they attacked so often at night. “What’s your name?”
“Jackson. Daniel Jackson.”
The newcomer nodded. “So. Daniel Jackson, our queen has given you to me. If you cooperate, you may be allowed to live a little longer, and so may your kin on Athos. Resist, and there will be no reason so spare any of you.”
Daniel licked his lips. “I understand.”
“Excellent.” The newcomer did something to the web, and it sagged away. Daniel hadn’t been expecting that, and stumbled forward, almost into the arms of the female. She made a noise between annoyance and disgust and shoved him away. The scruffy Wraith caught him, set him upright again.
Now that he was in the corridor, he could see that there were dozens of cells on either side, lining the walls from the more brightly-lit hatch twenty yards to his left and disappearing into the shadows to his right. Most of them seemed to contain a human being, though most of them appeared unconscious — a mercy for them, maybe, but deeply disconcerting all the same. A trio of the masked drones was waiting, weapons in hand. The newcomer nodded to them and they took up positions on either side of Daniel, moving with that same eerie quickness that the female had shown.
STARGATE SG-1-19-23-Ouroboros-s08 Page 17