03 - The First Amendment

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  Now the central clearing was completely empty, the surrounding houses with their own individual compounds eerily silent.

  “You’ve noticed what I’ve noticed, I hope?” Carter asked as they checked around a corner.

  “Yeah. Where are the bodies?”

  “There aren’t even any bugs.”

  There weren’t. The last insect they’d seen had dropped from the pink gas outside the town wall.

  There weren’t any bird-critters, either, or animals, or humans. The place was completely deserted. No chickens or dogs, imported from Earth along with the human population.

  “I do not like this,” O’Neill asserted with great conviction.

  “I do not like this, Sam I am,” Carter responded ritually. O’Neill sighed. “Sorry, sir.”

  “I’m supposed to have the patent on the wiseass remarks, Major,” O’Neill snapped. The two of them hadn’t even looked at each other during this exchange. “Okay, let’s head for the tower and see if there’s anything up there. That’s where they were supposed to be holding the prisoners.”

  The path to the tower, unlike the rest of the streets of Etaa, seemed to be newly paved with a shiny asphalt surface. It didn’t hiss, not even when O’Neill spat on it, and it failed to dissolve several of the test substances—dirt clod, candy wrapper, MRE—they tossed at it. It had no particular smell. So they proceeded very gingerly down the path, until they arrived at the northernmost of the once-twin towers at the main gate of Etaa. The footing was powdery, slippery underfoot, as if it would be greasy when wet.

  The black surface seemed thicker just inside the main gate, and not as shiny; it covered most of the floor and halfway up the walls, in an irregular pattern as if someone had used a paint sprayer. It flaked away from the floor as they walked across it, its consistency somewhere between powder and goo. O’Neill risked touching one of the walls covered with the stuff, and it left a dark smudge across his fingertips and nothing more. It had stopped abruptly just short of the gate itself, and had been invisible from their vantage point outside the town.

  “You’re not going to taste that, sir,” Carter informed him even as the thought crossed his mind. She took another vial from her pack—the one containing the melted mud was still intact—and scraped a little of the black stuff into it. O’Neill shrugged and turned away, wiping his fingertips across his fatigue pants and leaving a long black smear in the process.

  They made their way up the circular stairs that curved around the inside of the tower walls, stopping an listening at every step. As they proceeded, the black stuff became more patchy. Some of the original stone of the tower—one of the few buildings in the town actually constructed of something other than mud brick, woven vines, and thatch—was still exposed, and the black stood out sharply against the soft pale yellow.

  The observation room of the tower, where Morley reported that the SG-4 prisoners had been held, was coated at one end with the black stuff. On the other side of the room, near the window that overlooked the interior of Etaa, the place looked as if a fight had taken place, with low stools overturned, drapes ripped down, rushes on the floor scuffed to reveal bare floor. But there was no sign of life.

  O’Neill went to the inner-side window while Carter searched the room. His vantage point overlooked the main street of the town, and he could see most of the main square. There was nothing, not even on the farthest periphery from the melted area. Nothing moved in Etaa. No impossibly tall humans, no animals, no bird-critters. Nothing at all.

  He shifted over to the exterior window, searching for and finding the other members of the team moving down the line of the wall, just inside the shelter of the trees. Satisfied that they were all right, he continued to scan the horizon, looking for signs of the tubenecks or their opponents.

  “Uh, sir?” Carter said. Her voice sounded odd. “There’s something here I think you should look at.”

  He glanced over to see her squatting beside a ripped length of curtain, balancing against the butt end of her rifle. Taking one last look around, he came over and went down on one knee beside her.

  “What is it?”

  Carter pointed to the curtain, following its folds until it intersected a particularly thick layer of black stuff. The line where curtain met goo could have been drawn with a straightedge.

  O’Neill unlimbered a pocketknife and poked at the black stuff. It didn’t cover the curtain—it was the curtain. Or it had been, at least.

  “Yikes,” he muttered. “Where did all this come from?”

  “Sir.” The blond captain’s voice was strangled. “Look.”

  She was pointing with one unsteady hand at a bit of bright metal similarly cut across by the goo. O’Neill worked his knife blade under the scrap and tenderly worked it free from the fold of cloth that had snagged it. It was machined metal, not something manufactured on Etaa, a smooth, slightly curved plain rectangle about an inch long, with one flange sticking out, trimmed by the goo.

  “What—” he began.

  “They’re captain’s bars, sir,” Carter said, her tone tight with unshed tears. “Look.” She picked up the bit of metal and held it next to the gold leaves on her own shoulder. “This belonged to—” she looked down at the goo—“this was Captain Dwyer of SG-4. And look there—”

  His gaze followed her pointing finger to a place well above his eye level, where the black stuff had disfigured the cool yellow wall. At the very top of the black mark, as if held in place by it, was a small tuft of white feathers, as if from the very edge of an edge of an elaborate headdress. “All this black stuff, sir—I’m betting it’s all carbon. Everything living here is dead. They’ve all been—” She gestured helplessly at the black layer. “They must have herded everyone onto that street we came down, where it was so thick, and—”

  “Which ‘they’, Captain? The Jaffa? The tubenecks? The moths?” O’Neill was just as shaken as Carter, and normally he wouldn’t have minded if she knew it. But this wasn’t the time or place to allow emotion to control their action. They had a military problem with immediate consequences not only to his own team but, very possibly, to Earth itself.

  Carter took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. “Unknown, sir. Teal’C may be able to tell us if this was a weapon the Jaffa had under development, but it doesn’t match anything I’ve seen or heard him talk about. There are some similarities between this and the stuff we saw on the battlefield, but as for which side used it—assuming it wasn’t something available to both sides—I can’t tell.

  “It obviously acted quickly and completely. The remnants show that much. Maybe further analysis back home will tell us more.”

  O’Neill nodded, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “All right, Major. Collect your sample. Until further notice we’re going to assume everything left on this planet is an enemy.”

  Teal’C, Jackson, and Kinsey watched the other two go, and then Teal’C moved farther back into cover. Daniel watched as Kinsey kept his mouth shut and followed, his eyes busy over every detail of the place. Daniel could remember a time, only a few years ago, when he could publish his research findings in peer-reviewed journals and engage in endless academic debate over the interpretation of a variation in hieratic script, with one side holding that the symbol meant something entirely new and subtle and the other that the hapless scribe, three thousand years dead, had been caught at last in a spelling error. That sort of thing happened when one’s words literally were written in stone.

  Newspapers, though—his professors used to sniff with disdain. Newspapers were created to wrap fish in. Weekly or monthly newsmagazines weren’t much different, in their opinion. That sort of thing had no scientific value whatsoever. It added exactly zero to the sum of human knowledge.

  Daniel Jackson, Ph.D., wasn’t so sure. Opinions mattered much more in the day-to-day world than all the reviewed journals in all the university libraries everywhere. And there were more things in heaven than were dreamt of by all the Doctors of Philosophy in all the
universities in the earth.

  He shook his head to clear it of such meanderings, and then shook it again to get the lank blond hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut again. He would have gotten one if it hadn’t been for Carter’s racquet-ball challenge.

  He hoped the tapes came out. He wanted to take a good long look at the manipulators on those moth creatures, and he wanted a lot more information about the details of manufacture of the weapons those long-necked beings carried. He could tell quite a lot about a species based on one or two stray items, and could speculate happily about the rest for years. Two new intelligent species on one world!

  Or not. One might be from this world—he knew the human community hadn’t done much exploration here—and the other from another world. Or they might both be from other worlds. They might use ships, or—no, at least the tubenecks had seemed puzzled by the Gate.

  How had they managed to miss the aliens the first time? Didn’t the Etaans have any warning at all?

  Shostoka’an smiled maternally down at Jack O’Neill. “We are very few,” she admitted cheerfully. “We are those of this city, and the outlying places where we find the yellow metal and farm, and that is all. This is a good place, but there does not need to be many of our kind here.”

  She’s passed over a gorgeous cup, roughly inlaid with gems, some of which had no counterpart he knew of on Earth. O’Neill had taken a cautious sniff—he’d learned not to accept proffered food and drink automatically—and made a face.

  Daniel had taken it from him, raised it in salute to the tall, elegant woman, and sneaked one preliminary sniff himself before downing the concoction. As he suspected, it was cow’s milk, rich and creamy, straight from the udder, mixed with blood, probably from the same cow. It made sense as a ceremonial drink for the Masai. “Thank you,” he said, wiping his mouth. “It is good. You have healthy herds.”

  Shostoka’an nodded in appreciation. “What of your herds on your world? Do they increase?”

  “They do. We are fortunate. There are no”—oh, dear, what would the local equivalent of lions be?—“no predators where we come from.” He sent a mental apology to the summarily dismissed fanged half of Earth’s ecosystem.

  “Do you have enemies on this world?” Jack had asked.

  Shostoka’an had -tilted her head thoughtfully, the ostrichlike plumes waving in the slight breeze. With instinctive courtesy, she hadn’t offered Jack a second chance at the blood-and-milk, though Daniel knew Jack would have choked it down somehow if she had. “Enemies? What do you mean?”

  “Those that brought you here are your enemies,” Teal’C had said.

  Shostoka’an had smiled brilliantly, teeth and jewelry gleaming equally in the firelight. “But they have been gone a very, very long time, and never returned. They are all dead now.”

  And now Shostoka’an and all her people were missing. He wondered if a few remained in the outlying farms and the gold mines, hiding from the disaster that had come to their world.

  Teal’C stopped with a wave of the hand. Kinsey moved to the Jaffa’s far side, and the three of them looked at more of the ruins of Etaa.

  “This is worse than the other side,” Kinsey observed.

  “No kidding,” Daniel agreed, and unlimbered his camcorder to take a quick shot of the vanished sections of city wall and crumbled houses within the inner compounds. He wished he’d brought more tape.

  “I do not think there are hostile creatures still in this place,” Teal’C said thoughtfully. “But we know they are nearby. We must remain cautious.”

  “I’ll second that,” Daniel agreed. “I’d like to get closer, though, and see if I can get better images of some of the damage. The experts back home may be able to tell what kind of weapon did this.”

  “They have a lot of experience in that sort of thing?” Kinsey inquired.

  Jackson shrugged. “Some.” Without waiting for Teal’C to comment, he moved forward, out of the shadow of the trees, the camcorder held to his eye as he panned slowly across the shattered stones and wood of the wall and the houses within.

  Behind him, he could hear Teal’C’s nearly silent grunt of disapproval, and Kinsey’s footsteps, following. Teal’C would take up a rearguard position, Jackson knew, keeping an eye out for anything that might menace them.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could still see the remaining tower at the main entrance to the town. A flicker of movement jerked his attention toward it, and then he saw Teal’C raise a hand in acknowledgment. O’Neill and Carter, then. Good. He liked knowing where everyone was.

  It was odd, he thought, as he approached the breach in the wall; with this much destruction, there ought to be more smell of decay, more bodies—not just that lingering unpleasant scent that was sometimes overwhelmingly there, sometimes not present at all. Maybe the Jaffa had already rounded everyone up before the tubenecks and moths had shown up. He almost hoped so, and then was shocked at himself, at the thought that there might be something even worse than Goa’uld slavery.

  He could hear a scrabbling sound coming from behind him and spun around, only to see Kinsey balancing uncertainly on a pile of rubble. Teal’C, behind the journalist, was frowning mightily, probably at the other man’s propensity for seeking out the highest point possible. You’d think a combat reporter would know better, he thought disgustedly, and then he saw Kinsey’s face change and Teal’C bring his energy staff up to firing position. Teal’C was moving very slowly. It wasn’t like the Jaffa at all.

  He tried to look up, but it was as if he had been caught in molasses. His arms wouldn’t lift, and he could barely turn his head from side to side. He was having trouble breathing. He was vaguely aware of a high-pitched whistle.

  He could hear loud noises—something beating at the air like giant fans. Wings.

  A shadow swept over him, and he tried to force his head up to see.

  Too late. Long knives stabbed into either side of his body, just under his shoulders, and he was yanked up into the air, his own enhanced weight dragging him against the sharpness that pinned him, as the wings above him snapped downward. The camcorder went spinning down to the ground and bounced. The paralysis, and the whistle, stopped at the same time. He heard the sound of an energy staff being discharged.

  He twisted frantically, struggling, and it only drove knives—the talons projecting from the jointed legs of the moth, too similar to that bug that had bitten him earlier to be coincidental—deeper into his flesh. He couldn’t lift his arms to strike back, to wield a weapon of his own. As if adding insult to injury, the powder from the moth’s wings drifted over him, making him sneeze, and he felt something deep inside his body go crunch.

  Gusts of wind buffeted him back and forth, but he was past noticing. He had fainted.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Okay, I get the picture,” O’Neill said, rising hastily to his feet and giving the captain a hand up. “That’s enough. I think it’s fair to say that if there are any human survivors on this world, they’re going to be hiding too deep for us to find. Let’s get the hell out of here, and blow this Gate. I don’t know who’s fighting who on this world, but we want no part of it. They’re not going to follow us home.”

  Carter swallowed. “Sir, if I may make a suggestion—”

  “Make it snappy, Carter.”

  “I think we ought to show this to Mr. Kinsey. He needs to understand what we’re dealing with.”

  O’Neill glared at her, the kind of glare that indicated that he knew she was right and didn’t much like the fact. “All right,” he said at last. “But if he doesn’t get it, well, too bad. We’re not spending one more minute here than we have to. We’ve got no guarantees those aliens aren’t coming back.”

  “I think they’re finished,” she said quietly. But O’Neill was already at the observation window.

  “Can’t see them anymore,” he reported. “They’ve got at least another hour before rendezvous. Let’s stay here for another half hour—or until we see more of
those things—and then head for the meeting place.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth before Carter, standing at the cityside window, said sharply, “Sir. That’s Kinsey. And Daniel and Teal’C aren’t with him.”

  Teal’C watched in horror as the bolt of energy from his staff passed harmlessly over the body of the moth. It was flying erratically, weighed down by the body of the archaeologist, its wings straining to lift itself and its prey over the rubble. At unpredictable moments the giant wings would grab more air, causing it to bob up and down, making a second shot extremely risky.

  Daniel was impaled on the barbs of a second set of appendages, twisting, writhing. As the moth struggled to lift itself past a roofline, the two watchers saw his body go abruptly limp.

  The human journalist was as shocked as he was, Teal’C noted; Kinsey simply showed it more. His face was drained of color, and he was spinning in place, trying to watch all the skies at once for another of the moth creatures.

  “Go to the tower and notify O’Neill and Carter,” Teal’C said rapidly, already moving at a quick trot toward the house behind which Daniel—and his abductor—had disappeared. “Stay with them. I will recover Daniel Jackson.”

  Frank Kinsey had absolutely no doubt that the Jaffa meant exactly what he said. He could barely repress the desire to scramble after him, screaming, “Wait! Stop! Don’t leave me here alone with those things!”

  But Teal’C was gone, moving with amazing grace and quickness for such a large man, his energy staff held close to his side.

  And Frank Kinsey was all by himself on an alien world where things swooped down from the sky, and he wasn’t thinking about headlines anymore.

  The tower was to his left, at about ten o’clock. He began running, stumbling, still twisting his neck to try to watch the skies.