This was cold and deliberate and worse, so much worse.
And it was worse when it was finally over, and they were quiet.
For a hard, horrible second all Jack could think of with Daniel's limp warm weight in his arms was the name of his son, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, chanted over and over inside his head in a keening wail.
He couldn't look at Daniel's dead face. He just sat, holding him, until he heard the soft metallic click of the collar coming open around his neck. It slithered off to thump down in the grass, and the stone swirled red, then white.
Jack carefully laid the body down and walked away to lean against a tree, shuddering, watching the night fall. Above them, the Acropolis glowed like a beacon.
"O'Neill," Teal'c said quietly from behind him. He had laid Carter - no, Carter's corpse - down next to Daniel. "Captain Carter - her collar has released."
Get it together Colonel. It's up to you now
He turned, fixed the two big men wearing the white collars with a look that made both of them - burly as they were - look nervous. "Pick them up," he said. "Anything happens to them, you'd better hope Artemis gets you before I do. Understand?"
They both nodded and moved off behind him. He heard rustling, grunts, the sounds of bodies being lifted into fireman's carries.
He waited, motionless, watching as something just slightly blacker than the sky floated up from some open area inside the Acropolis. Hawk wings opened, and it glided nearly silently over their heads, heading toward the city.
A Goa'uld glider. Artemis, on the hunt.
"Let's move," he said.
The place was incredible. Daniel would have been in some kind of religious frothing ecstasy. Jack, cold and furious and hard as steel, only cared about how many he had to kill, and what he was going to have to blow up.
Six Jaffa hanging out by the front door, for a start. If Pylades' information was right, SG-1 had to go through four rooms with more than two entrances in each one to get where they needed to go. No telling how many guards. Pylades hadn't been exact in the count.
Jack gestured sharply to Teal'c, breaking the targets into groupings. Teal'c nodded and raised his staff weapon.
Jack took in a deep breath, flicked the MP5 to fire position, and thought, all you have to do is not miss.
He wasn't in the mood to miss, actually.
Three brief bursts, full auto. Three Jaffa down with holes where their symbiotes used to be. Teal'c had taken out his targets with fast, accurate energy bolts.
They never got off a shot.
Surprise was blown; Jack pelted forward and attacked the steps. He ignored the pain. His ankle was so far down the list of things he cared about that even the pain was just another input, one to be marked off the list as not tactically useful. He could feel things ripping. Screw it. That was what infirmaries were for, when the bleeding was over.
He slid on the marble at the top of the steps, paused to put a round in one of the guards who was still weakly moving, and moved into the first room. Teal'c flowed in with him, silent as a shadow, unlike the three Jaffa who pounded noisily out of a side entrance at a dead run and threw themselves in the path of another combined burst of auto fire and plasma.
The statues and treasures in the room that Daniel would have found fascinating were just things to be negotiated around, or shoved out of his way. Behind Teal'c, Menelaos and Philemon were coming in, bearing their burdens. Jack could hear their fast, scared breathing.
Prey. Yeah. Prey on this, Artie.
"Left," he ordered Teal'c; they moved together, either side of the door. Teal'c took high, Jack low, and Teal'c was a half-second faster to fire at a Jaffa hiding behind a thick-muscled marble statue. It blew apart. The Jaffa behind it staggered out in the open, blinded, and Jack took him down. His mental map told him this was the reception room, where Pylades and Iphigenia had been separated. Pylades had been taken left, his sister right.
"Left," he said again. Another doorway. Jack turned to check their six and caught the golden glitter of enemies on their tail; he barked at Menelaos to duck and fired over his shoulder.
Over Carter's dead body.
Teal'c, facing the other way, was firing too. Getting it from both sides, Goddammit, Daniel, I told you this wouldn't work, but then suddenly it was quiet again, and Teal'c pronounced an all-clear.
One more room.
Big one. Lots of marble. Columns for days, and at the end, a throne fit for a goddess. Empty. No sign of any damn sarcophagus.
He saw a flicker at the comer of his eye, and instinctively ducked. Too many columns, too many places to hide - he came around again, and fired at two more Jaffa. A staff blast smoked the air beside him; another one boiled marble at his feet. Menelaos and Philemon ducked and covered; Jack went down on one knee and fired and missed, fired again and scored.
He tracked the last figure in the cluster and prepared to shoot, but Teal'c's staff weapon knocked across the barrel and sent it out of line. "No," Teal'c snapped. "It is the girl."
The girl... Iphigenia. Tiny, fragile Iphigenia, curled into a shaking ball at the foot of the throne, hands cradling her head, surrounded by the bodies of fallen Jaffa. She was wearing an expensive-looking white silk robe trimmed with gold, and had a gold diadem on her head. Handmaiden to the goddess. Pylades had been right about Artemis being interested in Seers.
"Iph," Jack called, and beckoned to her with one hand. "Come on. Hurry ."
She raised a tear-streaked face, saw him and hid her face again, then took a second slow look.
"Come on!"
She got up and staggered toward them, flinching at the bloody bodies of the fallen Jaffa. She was swept up in a hug against Teal'c's body, and the little war party moved on for the exit in the back of the hall.
The temple, where Pylades said the altar was.
Iphigenia gave a shrill scream of panic when another guard darted from cover, and Teal'c turned his body to protect her as Jack fired. The Jaffa went down with a crash and a groan. Maybe dead, maybe not; no time for worrying about it. Jack moved toward the dark gaping hole that led to the last room they were going to need.
It was empty, except for a huge black disc on the far wall, ringed in silver, and a shimmering field of stars. Holographic. They danced and flickered in a mesmerizing rhythm.
There was no sarcophagus.
Oh God. Jack felt the weight of it hit him in a way he hadn't allowed it to since he'd watched Daniel and Carter chew the leaves.
It was for nothing. All for nothing. There was no sarcophagus, no return, no miracle.
Teal'c shook Iphigenia by the shoulder - gently, but enough to get her attention. "Was there not a golden box in this room?"
She shook her head and averted her eyes. Terrified, Jack thought.
"Maybe an altar?" he put in. "Did they move it?"
"Nothing!" she said. "There was nothing!"
Jack stared at the empty room, only half listening. He closed his eyes and heard Daniel saying, Christ don't you understand? She can make us believe.
He started walking toward what wasn't there, hand outstretched, and ten steps from the far wall that looked off into space, he banged hard into something that came as high as his chest. Ran his hands over empty air and felt raised carvings.
Relief washed over him in a hot, stinging flood, so strong it almost raised tears. "Teal'c." His voice sounded rough and rusty. "It's here. We just can't see it. Help me find a catch, should be on this side -"
Teal'c joined him, feeling his way along the invisible structure until there was a grating sound, more stone than metal, and the invisible scarab wings opened, and light sprang up white and real and solid from the center of exactly nothing.
Iphigenia pulled away and retreated to a comer.
He gestured to Menelaos and Philemon to put their burdens down, and watched as they lowered Daniel and Carter lifeless to the floor. What if it only works once? What ifI can't save them both?
Not really a choice. "Carter fi
rst," he said, and motioned Menelaos forward. The man came, pale and scared to death; he and Jack lifted Carter's limp body and laid her in the empty capsule, hands folded. Not because she was female, but because she was a dead shot, and she knew what the damn missing DHD part looked like, and it was a command decision with cold, hard parameters.
He didn't look at her face. It hadn't been a pretty death.
The wings grated shut, and the whole thing went invisible again. He paced, checking the exit, waiting for the other hobnailed sandal to drop. Artemis wouldn't be gone forever. Somebody would have gotten off a message, would have recalled the ship. It wouldn't be long now, unless Her Exalted Snakiness was too crazy to care anymore...
Come on, come on...
He realized someone was missing. Crap. The girl. Last he'd seen her, she'd been crammed in the comer, looking scared.
"Teal'c," he said. "Iphigenia. Where'd she go?"
Teal'c looked surprised, but then, he'd been staring at the sarcophagus, too. "I do not know, O'Neill. I did not see her leave."
"I'd better go find her."
He took two steps toward the exit, then spun around as the sarcophagus ground open.
Silence, except for the sound of his heart thudding faster in his chest. He held his breath until he saw a pale set of hands groping at the sides, and then Carter's blonde head as she sat up.
She looked around, dazed, and blinked at them. "Where-" And then she knew; he saw everything kick in. Fast, his Carter. She climbed out of the sarcophagus, steadied herself, and flashed him an unsteady smile.
"Nice to see you, Captain," he said, straight-faced when all he wanted to do was grin and whoop.
"Same here, sir," she said.
"Feeling okay?"
"Better than ever." If there was any lingering trauma, she had it well buried. "Can I have my weapons?"
He unslung the extra MP5 and tossed it to her. "Carter, you're with me. Teal'c, get Daniel in the oven. Philemon, Menelaos - " No clue what to do with them. "Scavenge some staff weapons. Shoot anything that comes in here, except us. Got it?"
They nodded. Philemon was handing over Daniel's body to Teal'c, who was cradling it with care. Daniel's head lolled limply, at an impossibly uncomfortable angle.
"All right, sir?" Carter asked him.
"Find me a DHD part, and I will be. Check your targets. We've got a civilian kid loose out here somewhere."
"Iphigenia?" she asked. He nodded. "Yes sir. You can count on me.
"Yeah. Getting that."
They hit the door together, heading for the rest of the temple.
It kept nagging at the back of Jack's brain, and in that little nervous spot of skin where his hair brushed his collar...
Why hadn't Artemis come back?
He and Carter conducted a methodical sweep, concentrating first on the Throne Room; they flushed out four more Jaffa, but there was no sign of Iphigenia. Carter got a minor bum on one arm, he got some cuts from flying shrapnel when a marble block exploded; they came up with nothing of any practical use. In a room to the other side, they found a locked door that resisted MP5 fire so effectively Jack figured it had to be made of naquadah. Carter, ever resourceful, retrieved a staff weapon its deceased owner wouldn't need and fired, over and over, until the lock melted into slag.
Beyond that door was something mind-boggling.
"My God," Carter breathed, staring.
"Yeah, nobody ever told them size doesn't matter," Jack said, but even sarcasm fell flat measured against the scale of the room. It went on - nearly literally - forever. Gigantic, echoing, full of glowing silver stands with stones set in the top. Some were gray - offline, Jack guessed; most were lit up at the base, with stones showing either black or white. As he watched one of the stones swirled from white to gray, and the light switched off and powered down.
"It's the control room." Carter motioned helplessly with the muzzle of the rifle. "All these collars... thousands. Tens of thousands."
So many people, literally being manipulated from here. The technology was staggering. Evil, but staggering.
He shook himself out of it and said, "Find the off switch."
"What if I can't?"
"Then make one, I don't care how you - Carter!" He caught sight of a Jaffa - a really stealthy Jaffa - easing into the room with a staff weapon already aimed. He fired, and Carter joined him as she whirled around; the Jaffa flew backward, out of the doorway. Jack lunged for the wall and took a slanted look outside - more coming. Five or six that he could see. "Go, Carter! Get it done!"
She didn't waste her breath on an acknowledgement; she ran for the most obvious suspect, a big silver platform with a board laid out in front of it. As soon as she stepped on it, alarms went off, screaming like banshees. She ignored them and started pushing buttons.
Jack engaged the Jaffa, counted for three and saw the rest head off in full retreat just as an explosion shook through him, blew him off balance, and he saw Carter go flying across the room.
The whole console was slagged. What indicators were left on it flared white-hot, and shut down.
And one by one, so did the control stands, switching off like miles of failing fluorescents. Jack scrambled over to where Carter was rolling over to her hands and knees, dazed and bleeding, and helped her up. She wiped her cut lip and grinned.
"Off switch," she said. "Made one. C-4."
"Put yourself in for an extra vacation day, Captain. Let's go."
She was staggering a little but hell, so was he; his ankle couldn't keep it up, not even with the constant pound of adrenaline. He was going to crash, and then bum, and then his ashes were going to ignite.
"Still need to find the DHD thing," he said. "Go, Carter. I'll take this way."
They split up, searching the room; he spotted something in a thick glass case that looked familiar.
An elegant Greek statue of a goddess with a diadem of stars on her head, one foot on a rock, one hand lifted toward the sky. He'd seen larger versions of it shattered in pieces all over the city, but in the ones he remembered, she'd been holding a golden orb.
This one was holding a thick blue crystal.
"Carter!" he yelled, and smashed the glass. No booby traps he could find; he didn't have time for dicking around being careful, and reached in to snatch it up. It felt warm. Best of all, it didn't go off in his hand like a grenade. "Think I've got it!"
She wasn't moving. She was standing in the comer, looking down at something.
"Carter?" He waggled his hand and the prize.
"Take a look," she said, and he limped over to her.
Dead body. Female. Dressed in a short white silk robe, tied off with a gold belt. Cross-laced golden sandals.
A big blackened hole in the guts, and the whole front of the tunic was tacky with blood. Sightless dark eyes stared up at the ceiling, and there was blood trickling out of her mouth, too.
"She didn't make it to the sarcophagus," Carter said, and reached down to press fingers to skin. "Sir, she's been dead a while. She's cold."
"No," he shot back grimly. "The host is dead. The snake is on the loose."
And he had a damn good idea where to find it.
It wasn't quite like the last time he'd come back from the dead.
Daniel gagged in air, felt his lungs expand and had the same compressed drowning feeling he remembered, but this was colder, longer and more chilling.
Also much more painful. Definitely worse than taking a staff blast to the chest. He sat up, coughing, trying not to gag on the sticky lingering taste of the leaves, and saw Teal'c standing there, smiling and extending a hand to him.
"Daniel Jackson," he said. "It is good to see you."
"Yeah, you too," he said, and looked around the room. Their two Dark Company guys standing near the door, clutching Jaffa staff weapons and looking nervous. Little Iphigenia, standing in the corner...
His eyes skipped past her, and then came back fast. Iphigenia. Pylades's pretty, fragile little sister, dressed
in pale silk, with no collar around her neck.
Her eyes flared white.
"Teal'c!" he yelled, and pointed; the Jaffa whirled, but before he could shoot he staggered, fell to his knees, and went down. Hard. Eyes rolling back in his head. Daniel reached to grab him, and toppled out of the sarcophagus. Overbalanced and fell on the floor over Teal'c's unmoving body.
The Jaffa was still breathing, but definitely out. What in the hell... the two Greeks by the door were falling, too. Collapsing on the floor.
A cold touch at the back of Daniel's neck made him flinch and twist over on his back. Iphigenia's eyes flared cold white, and when she raised her right hand he saw it was armored with a Goa'uld hand device. The stone flared hot gold, then flushed to orange.
"I waited," she said, and extended her palm out toward his forehead. "I waited for you to live again, so that you could suffer for defying me."
"What did you do to - "
"I command here. They see what I wish them to see, they live and die at my whim. As do you!"
"Not any more." Daniel inched his way backward until his shoulders hit the cold inscribed metal of the sarcophagus.
"I have more mooncollars," she said. "And you will serve. And you will run, dog, until I say you may be allowed to die." She lunged, pressed the stone of the hand device directly against his forehead. He felt the violent heat of it pulsing against skin and bone, and froze. "You cannot kill me. I am eternal. I was immortal before your kind crawled from slime."
His hand slid along Teal'c's side and bumped cold metal. A familiar angular shape.
The Beretta came into his hand as if he'd called it, and he pressed it hard against her stomach.
"You're nothing but a parasite," Daniel whispered, "inside of a teenage girl. Back off or I'll kill you."
Iphigenia's lips curved into a vicious smile. "Then try. I'll take you in her place, to give me life. Would that not please you? You could at last know what your lover knew, at the end of her sorry life. You could know the glory of what it means to be Goa'uld..."
She broke off with a sudden, startled gasp, and the glowing, twinkling starlights on the wall behind the sarcophagus flickered. An explosive rumble shuddered through the floor...
Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon Page 21