STARGATE SG-1-19-23-Ouroboros-s08

by Melissa Scott

  He led them back through the maze of tunnels, though by this point Sam had been through so many caverns and sections of old transit system that she could no longer tell if they’d walked through those areas before. Nor could she tell how far they’d come, except that her boots were a weight on her ankles and she was starting to doze off any time they stopped. They’d been walking for perhaps forty minutes when Dex lifted his head sharply and Sam felt a breath of damp air on her face. She could hear water, too, the faint musical sound of water running over stone, and a few minutes later they ducked through a triangular gap in one wall to emerge in a larger chamber where the sound of the water was suddenly very loud.

  Zelenka fumbled in the dark, and then a match flared for an instant before he got the lamp lit. It was Athosian, Sam guessed, another of the oil lamps that the scientist had collected, and the warm light revealed a hole high in the opposite wall. Water flowed from it, a steady stream, spilling over irregular debris to pool in what looked like a shallow basin carved from the stone. Sam licked her lips at the sight, and Zelenka nodded.

  “It’s clean. Perfectly safe to drink.”

  Sam didn’t need another invitation. She scooped it up in both hands, not caring that she spilled some down the front of her shirt, swallowed four or five mouthfuls before she made herself step away and give Dex and Zelenka their turns. While they drank, she glanced at her watch, pressing the bezel to light the numbers so that she could see clearly. A little past one in the afternoon: surely Sumner would be searching for them now, and she hoped McKay and his people weren’t in any trouble. Another four hours to sunset, five hours to full dark, so an hour or two after that before they could link up with Jack and Teal’c and start figuring out how to rescue Daniel…

  Her eyes stung at the thought, tears she couldn’t afford and that she told herself fiercely were uncalled for. This was Daniel they were talking about. He’d have managed to talk his way out of being fed on, was surely already plotting his own escape.

  “There is also — yes.” Zelenka reached up into a niche carved into the wall and produced a box that seemed to be made of thin strips of wood woven together. “There is not much, but it’s high energy, like a concentrate bar. We can each have two.”

  He held out the box to reveal bricks the sized of dominos stacked on a waxy-looking leaf. Sam took two, slightly sticky to the touch and looking like pressed tobacco, but Dex grabbed his with visible relish.

  “Trail bricks.”

  “Something like that, I think,” Zelenka agreed. “The Athosians call them way-loaves.”

  Sam sniffed. It was a pungent sweetness, like raisins or molasses, and when she nibbled off a corner it had the same heavy flavor. There was an undertone of salt, a pleasing contrast, and she finished them more quickly than she’d meant, then went to rinse her fingers in the pool and take another long drink of water.

  “Not ours,” Dex said, and turned his remaining bar over. “No government stamp.”

  “I believe Teyla said these were made here,” Zelenka answered, “not traded for.”

  Daniel would know what to make of that, Sam thought, her eyes prickling again. Just like he’d know how to analyze the different names, and know what questions to ask Dex about his government. She cleared her throat. “Look, if we could take down one of those — what did you call them, Darts?”

  “That’s what they’re called,” Dex said.

  “If we could capture one — has anyone every tried flying one back into a hive?” There were plenty of problems with the idea, Sam knew, starting with the inherent problems of flying an unfamiliar aircraft, but it was at least a place to start.

  “Nobody’s been that crazy,” Dex said bluntly.

  “Somebody must have tried.”

  Dex shook his head. “Not that I ever heard.”

  Zelenka gave her a sharp look. “If one were to somehow steal a Dart, one would have to fly it onto the hive, find the person, and then fly the same or another Dart back out again. This is not the Milky Way, there are no people here who are capable of powered flight. The Wraith have destroyed them all.”

  Sam closed her mouth tight over her automatic protest. He was right, that was the problem — except that there had to be a way. She wasn’t prepared to surrender.

  “I was on a wrecked hiveship once,” Dex said. “Not here, on a world called Tarrengh. Nobody knew what had happened to it, but it was empty — you’d think it was just another big hill until you got around to the eastern side and could see there were openings that were too regular to be caves. My unit did some exploring there when I was first in training. What was left of it was enormous, and that was maybe half the ship — the bow half, the regimental engineer thought, because there weren’t any engines. It looked like it was made of bone and metal, and there were two long halls that were just niches that were the ship’s larder, where they stored the humans they Culled.” He shook his head. “One door at each end and a hundred cells on each side. Even if you could get there, it would be a death trap.”

  “There has to be a way,” Sam said. “We can’t leave him.”

  Dex’s voice was flat. “If you don’t, you’ll just die, too.”

  “No.” Sam glared at him.

  “Be that as it may,” Zelenka said firmly. “We can do nothing until dark. This is as good a place as any, we’ll rest here for a few hours and then move on.”

  Sam controlled herself, nodding. It wasn’t Dex’s fault — well, except that he’d kept her from going after Daniel. But she was not going to give up yet. Not until she had to.

  Seeker’s quarters were a suite of rooms not too far from the laboratory. They were dark and cool, mist coiling from the corners and around the pillars that divided the largest room into several separate areas. The furniture was low and sprawling, curved and placed as though it had been grown from the fabric of the ship itself. Daniel would have like to examine it more closely, particularly the display globe that grew from a thick stalk, cradled in vine-like fingers, and table set with what looked like some sort of game board, but Dekaas hurried him on toward a corner where the furniture was more shaped to human bodies. Well, more like a lobe than a corner, Daniel thought, or like the curve of a leaf. The interior in general was as rounded as the inside of a seashell, if seashells came in shades of green and gray — one more reason to think that the ships were in some sense organic.

  Dekaas sent a drone for food, and waved his hand over a sensor shaped like a flower to bring up a stronger light. “Let me take a look at your face,” he said.

  “Why bother?” Daniel asked. “If I’m just going to be fed upon, it seems like a waste.”

  “He might not feed on you.” Daniel couldn’t tell if that was irony in Dekaas’s voice or if the other man was utterly serious. “And if he doesn’t you don’t want to die of preventable infection.”

  “True enough.” Daniel sat motionless as Dekaas examined the long scratch, and then sprayed it with something that stung and smelled like cotton candy. The drone returned with a tray that held half a dozen covered dishes, and Dekaas waved for it to stand further off. It was still too close for him to try attacking Dekaas, Daniel thought, and relaxed again as the other human uncovered the plates. “What is all this?”

  “Food.”

  Daniel sighed. “Ok, I’d gotten that far. What is it? And, more importantly, why feed us?”

  “There are humans who live among the Wraith,” Dekaas answered. “It would be pointless to starve us.”

  “Yes, ok, but why?” Daniel studied the plates, newly aware that he hadn’t eaten for almost a day.

  “Because starving humans are hardly satisfying.” Dekaas chose a round object that looked like it had been wrapped in a leaf and popped it into his mouth.

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” Daniel took one of the leaf-wrapped spheres and bit cautiously into it. It contained some sort of grain wrapped around a soft, cheesy center. He thought for an instant that Dekaas smiled, but then the other man’s expressio
n hardened.

  “I was born with the Taint — I can hear the Wraith, feel their presence and their thoughts. I tried to hide it, but eventually I was found out. I was included in the next draft sent to the Culling grounds. Fortunately, there were others there who knew what it meant to carry the Taint and, before the Wraith came, they taught the rest of us the rudiments of the mind speech. The Queen took us into her service.”

  “But you — serve — Seeker, I thought.” Daniel chose another of the bite-sized wraps, careful to sound unchallenging.

  “I do.”

  “So what is he, exactly?”

  “He is a chief cleverman, Master of Sciences Biological.” There was a note in Dekaas’s voice that suggested he was translating literally. “He is also one of the Queen’s favorites, lord of her council.”

  And also a note of pride, Daniel thought. Dekaas cared that Seeker was an important man on the hive. “Was that the queen I saw earlier?” he asked, though he was already fairly sure it wasn’t. Or at least not the person Seeker considered to be the queen. “White hair, really quick with her claws?” He touched his cheek below the scratch.

  This time he was sure Dekaas smiled. “That was the Young Queen,” he said.

  “The Queen’s daughter?”

  “Yes.” Dekaas considered him. “You are very curious.”

  “I’m hoping it’s a survival mechanism,” Daniel said.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not.”

  That wasn’t particularly encouraging. Daniel chose another couple of bite-sized pieces from the tray — sweet and spicy, sort of like barbecued chicken — and ate them while he considered his next move. “Look, all I and my people want is to go back where we came from. We were not expecting to find anything as — fearsome as the Wraith, and honestly I think our leaders will just want to stay home and stay out of your way.”

  “I have never yet met a human who did not know of the Wraith,” Dekaas said thoughtfully. “Where are you from, I wonder?”

  “Obviously, I can’t tell you that.”

  “But that is the question.” The door of the suite had opened so silently that Daniel hadn’t heard, and he looked up to see Seeker striding toward them. “The question of the hour, I fear. Dekaas, you may go.”

  “Yes, lord.” Dekaas rose gracefully, collected the tray, and disappeared into the inner room.

  Daniel came to his feet as well. “I was just saying to Dekaas that all we, me and my people, all we want to is to go back where we came from. You’re definitely not people we want to mess with, and frankly I think we’d all be happy if we didn’t have anything to do with you ever again.”

  “An interesting offer.” Seeker tipped his head to one side, and waved his hand at the sensor to dim the lights again. “Had we met under other circumstances, it might have been acceptable. However, too many men have been killed for that to work.”

  “We’ve lost people, too,” Daniel said. “We’d both have to accept that.”

  “Just so, and the Queen does not wish to do so,” Seeker answered. “And I wish to know where you are from.”

  Too late, Daniel realized that Seeker’s mental attack had already begun, winding delicately around his thoughts as they spoke. He caught his breath, struggling to find mental purchase — it felt as though he were standing on ice, with no way to hold his ground, no way to push back against the pressure that was slowly driving him toward the answer it sought. A name, a glimpse of the cloudless sky at night, a map, the path he’d taken to come to Athos, all that and more Seeker demanded, a thousand questions like a thousand cuts nibbling at the edges of his mind. Daniel took a stumbling step backward, shaking his head as though that could clear his mind. There was Cheyenne Mountain, and the gate room, and Seeker pressed him further, toward the outside, toward the parking lot and the empty night sky over Colorado —

  “No!”

  Daniel shoved back against the question, clumsy and fumbling, but strong enough to make some progress. Instantly the pressure faded, reappearing in another place, probing for how he’d come to Athos. And that he really couldn’t answer, didn’t dare answer. The Wraith disliked light, and he dredged up the memory of desert suns, of Egypt and Abydos and a dozen other worlds, flung that blinding brilliance into Seeker’s mind. He flinched back, hissing sharply, and Daniel pressed his advantage, groping for secrets behind Seeker’s mental barriers. He caught the briefest glimpse, a cascade of jumbled images too swift, too complex to understand, and then Seeker slammed him against the wall, claws flexed and ready. Daniel cried out as they pierced his skin, delivering a jolt of pain and something else that sent his heart racing. He felt the hand-mouth opening against his skin, felt the skin parting, a terrible suction tugging at heart and lungs and life, all the more painful for being utterly unnatural.

  Seeker drank, teeth bared, one long pull like a man draining a water bottle on a hot day. Daniel hung suspended, shriveling under Seeker’s touch, fire running like water along every nerve. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Daniel could feel himself shaking, shivering as though he were freezing, every nerve on edge and empty. He tried to raise his hand, sure that he’d see the skin wrinkled and spotted with age, but he couldn’t find the strength. And still Seeker stared at him, the green eyes unreadable, contemplating something Daniel could not begin to see.

  Abruptly he was falling again, cool water pouring through him, quenching the pains and filling out the shriveled spaces. He caught his breath, his head falling back, unable to believe that he was alive again, whole again, and Seeker released him. He wasn’t quite quick enough to respond, slithering halfway down the wall before he could command his legs again, but he managed to straighten before he fell.

  “So.” Seeker’s voice was very soft, silky smooth. “You have had a taste of what I can do. And believe me, that was nothing more than a taste. I can drain your life entirely, Daniel Jackson, leave you dead, and then restore you — but how far? Shall I leave you as you are, a young man, or shall I make you old before your time? Or shall I leave you crippled, just alive enough to know what I have done and will do to your kin on Athos?” He smiled, showing teeth. “Yes, that has merit. I will ask these questions again, and I trust you will have rethought your answers.”

  The suite door slid shut behind Seeker, and Daniel let himself sink slowly to the floor, not sure how much longer his legs would have held him. It was no wonder the people of Pegasus were terrified of the Wraith, he thought, struggling for some kind of objectivity, anything to hold back the memory of his life being drawn inexorably from his body. The pain was agonizing, but worst was the knowledge, the absolute certainty of impending death.

  And yet he hadn’t died. He spread his hands in the dim light, remotely pleased to see that they weren’t trembling. He wasn’t even visibly aged, not withered the way the corpses had been on Athos. Which meant that somehow the Wraith had returned what he’d taken, the life force or whatever it was that they actually fed upon. None of the expedition members had even mentioned that as a possibility — though perhaps the Athosians knew? If only he’d been able to talk to them before he’d been taken, found out what they knew about the Wraith…

  How long he sat there he didn’t know. The drones had disappeared, though he didn’t remember their departure, and there was a pitcher of what proved to be water sitting on the floor by his foot. He was painfully thirsty, he realized, probably a side effect of being fed on and restored, but he still sniffed cautiously at it before he drank. Not that there was much he could do to tell if the water was drugged, or much he could do if he guessed wrong. Still, he made himself stop and wait after the first few mouthfuls just in case.

  Nothing happened. He drained the rest of the pitcher more slowly, considering what this meant. Certainly the Wraith seemed entirely confident of themselves in their dealings with humans. And well they might: they were stronger, faster, and they had a monopoly on any technology more advanced than, say, the early twentieth century. But they were not indestructible.
It took a lot of bullets, but any Wraith could be killed. They were no different from the Goa’uld in that.

  He pushed himself to his feet, swaying for a moment before he regained his balance. A side effect of the feeding, he thought, not some drug, and he rested his hand on the wall until he was steady. Dekaas was nowhere in sight, either — another indication of the Wraith’s general confidence — and Daniel moved quickly to the main door. It was locked, of course, and the controls refused to respond to his touch. He searched his pockets, came up with the pocketknife, and began to pry at the cover. The thick spongy material gave under pressure, but the blade made no real impression, and he abandoned that for the moment to search the room instead.

  It was large, even allowing for the size of the ship, and he guessed it reflected Seeker’s status among the Wraith. The furnishings were elaborately made, organic shapes spiraling up out of the floor or slumping down the walls; the covering of mottled hide and twined cords — tendons? — was hardly to his taste, but he had to admit it was a coherent aesthetic. The center of the room was dominated by the display globe on its stalk, and there were buttons marked with odd characters hidden in the leaves around its rim, but nothing Daniel did could make it function. He glared at it for a moment and moved on.

  The other end of the room held more furniture, a set of low couches around the table with the game board. They looked a little bit like dining furniture in classical Greece, if the Ancient Greeks had grown their couches from giant gourds. The board was hexagonal, and divided into unequal sections; the polished surface was covered with counters of stone or bone, pale against dark wood. They were clearly laid out in a pattern, but Daniel couldn’t tell whether he was looking at an interrupted game or some sort of problem set out to be solved. He thought it might be designed for three players, but that was as far as he could get.

  Beyond the table was an irregular niche in the wall, banded with tiny crystals like the inside of a broken geode. A hidden light came on as he approached it, revealing a dozen or more objects settled among the crystals. They looked like artifact, he thought, all sorts of artifacts, human-made and Wraith and animal jumbled together like some weird cabinet of curiosities. There was a cylinder that looked like an enormous rifle shell, except that the tip was a quartz-like stone that flashed green as he turned it in the light. A pale green plaque of something that felt like shell or ivory, carved with a stylized, striding man carrying what looked like a shop sign under his arm; a coil of what felt like well-cured leather cord, thick as his hand at one end, tapering to an odd metal connector at the other; a sharply pointed metal rod with a teardrop black stone at one end — and an Ancient crystal, chipped and broken, but still unmistakable.