Only not. Ra paced toward him, his white shenti no different than that of Hor-Aha, his eyes darkened with kohl, his arms banded with bracelets. “You are the one,” he said.
“One what? One great guy?” Jack thought he ought to get some points for that. Not that you did from humans, and he bet the Goa’uld didn’t do any better.
“Don’t toy with me, O’Neill,” Ra snapped. “Do you think I cannot tell that you are not from this world?”
Oh boy.
“You may be dressed like these humans and may even pretend to be one, but I know what you are.” Ra snapped his fingers and one of the Jaffa along the wall produced a small white box, holding it out carefully and deferentially. Ra took it from him with his finger tips, holding it delicately. His other hand was encased in a hand device, each finger chased with gold. “You see?” He held it out toward Jack and Jack tensed, prepared for intolerable pain.
Instead, nothing happened.
Or rather, the only thing that happened was that the little white box lit up, lines of incomprehensible letters scrolling across a tiny screen. Ra smirked with satisfaction. “You cannot deny it.”
“Deny what?” Jack said.
“That you are one of them. You are not the only one who has meddled on this planet, nor the only one I have killed. But the others were useless, uncertain, children of bastard birth who did not know, who could not tell me where their hidden places were, where their elders kept watch. But you are one of them yourself, are you not, O’Neill?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said.
Ra waved the white box at him. “This!” he said. “It does not lie. The others spoke of a time travel device, but only the woman could operate it. I have torn her mind to shreds and she knows little — one spaceship, one device — she does not even know the dialing address for the treasure she knows lies hidden! But you do, do you not, O’Neill? You know the way to the Lost City. You know how to operate this time travel device. You know all your people’s secrets. Perhaps you are even the one of which the rumors speak, that gadfly Myrddin who would champion humans against the Goa’uld?”
“Never heard of the guy,” Jack said. This was starting to sound…not good at all.
Ra shook his head. “Your race is dead. You are nothing. And your pitiful descendants will be nothing except hosts for us.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Jack said, twisting his arms against the Jaffas’ grips.
“I would,” Ra said and raised the hand device. “Your mind will be open to me and you will tell me what you know when you can bear the pain no longer.”
Ra was right about one thing, Jack thought as he sank to his knees, screams ripping from his throat. That thing was excruciatingly painful.
Daniel thought they looked quite a bit like a Goa’uld entourage, all things considered. A little weedy, but then since Egeria had supposedly been in hiding, that was more or less to be expected. Aset/Egeria didn’t entirely look the part of Supreme Overlady in Sam’s best dress — truth to tell, by ancient Egyptian standards, Sam’s best dress wasn’t all that nice, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about that. It was a plain white linen sheath, good material but a conservative cut, falling from a band just below the breasts to just above the ankles with straps made of contrasting cloth. Aset’s own jewelry would have to do, as Sam didn’t have anything nice but a pair of gold stud earrings and a watch that was decidedly not period. Aset at least had appropriate earrings.
Teal’c, of course, looked the part already. Their Teal’c, Daniel amended. In his immaculate white shenti and gold bracelets he looked like Egeria’s First Prime, even if they’d had to draw Ra’s tattoo on his scarred forehead with kohl. Fitting out himself and Cam was a little more difficult. Danyel’s clothes fit him, but…
“Are you sure it’s supposed to look like this?” Cam said for the fourth time. Danyel’s shenti was a little short on him, a couple of inches above the knee. On Cam it looked like he was wearing a towel around his waist and nothing else.
“You look fine,” Danyel said absently, hunting in a chest for sandals. Daniel supposed this must be his bedroom, though the low carved bed with its tufted wool mattress looked big enough for a small army.
“I’m kind of…” Cam gestured to his chest. “…bare.”
“Vala will like it,” Daniel said. His own shenti at least fit. And he was a little more used to the idea of wearing one. No, they hadn’t worn them on Abydos, but at least the concept was familiar.
Danyel handed over a pair of worn leather flip flops. “These are going to have to do. They’re too big for me, but they’ll probably fit you.”
“Thanks,” Cam said dubiously. “How the hell are we supposed to fight our way in and out of stuff in flip flops?”
“You get used to them,” Danyel assured him.
Daniel shrugged. “I see teenagers at home skateboarding in them.”
“I’m not a teenager,” Cam said. He tugged the shenti down a little further. “Let’s go.”
Out in the main room the other team was gearing up. While Aset/Egeria and her entourage went straight to Ra, the other group would try to get aboard the mothership. That was Carter’s team, Carter and their own Teal’c and Vala, with Danyel along to translate. Also presumably Danyel knew how the pyramid was laid out, which he really didn’t. Going through it five thousand years later was not at all the same thing. Sam would presumably be staying here with Nithotep and the baby.
“Ready?” Cam said, trying to look as professional as a guy can while wearing a towel and flip flops.
“Ready,” Carter said. Her mouth twitched. She struggled.
“You know you want to,” Daniel said.
Carter burst out laughing. “It’s just that he keeps losing his pants!”
Vala cast an appreciative eye over Cam’s chest. “I think he looks perfectly splendid.”
“I never said he didn’t,” Carter said.
Nithotep gave them all a stern look, despite not having understood a word of it. Some things didn’t require translation.
“She asks if we are through clowning and ready to save lives,” Danyel translated quickly.
“We are ready,” their Teal’c said, coming to stand a pace behind Aset, a staff weapon in his hand. “Let us begin.”
“Right,” Cam said. It was time to get this mission back on track. He looked at Aset/Egeria. “We’ll follow your lead.”
Egeria looked him up and down, then looked at Danyel. “One of you to each side, I think, preceding me while my First Prime follows. I think that is the proper disposition of human servants. You do not need to keep your eyes down, as that way you could not guard me, but try to look humble.”
“Of course,” Danyel said with a deep half bow that managed to look both proud and graceful at once. Cam didn’t think he could do that on a bet.
Vala leaned in close, her hair brushing against his shoulder as she whispered in his ear. “Just look submissive, darling.”
Cam shook his head. Vala was utterly irrepressible. “Carter? You ready?”
Carter nodded. “We’ll be thirty minutes behind you. No radio contact.”
“Got it,” Cam said. “Let’s go, people.” And he led a Tok’ra lady in procession out into the cool Egyptian night.
Carter watched the first team head up the road, the amusement of seeing Cam pantsless yet again fading quickly. “OK,” she said, and turned back to the others. “We give them thirty minutes, and then we go.”
“And in the meantime, we eat,” her other self said briskly. Tamit brought around a shallow basket piled with flat loaves of bread, and Carter took one without enthusiasm. She wasn’t really hungry, but she knew her other self was right. They might not get another chance for quite a while, and she nibbled halfheartedly at the bread and the sour cheese that came with it. The queen mother was regarding her dubiously, and Carter reached into her pack for the bag of chocolates and offered them around. Vala and Teal’c took them gratefull
y enough, but Sam’s eyes went almost comically wide.
“Oh, my God, chocolate! I’ve missed that even more than coffee.”
Danyel said something to the queen mother, and offered her a square. She unwrapped it, sniffed it, and then took a cautious bite. From her expression, she wasn’t entirely certain, but she finished the square.
“What about your weapons?” Carter said to Sam, and her other self looked almost wistful.
“I wish,” she said. “I’m staying with the queen mother. We’ll be your backup if anything goes wrong.”
But. Carter closed her mouth over the word. If it was her Jack —
Sam said, “I’m a physicist. An engineer now, and an architect. You’re leading an assault team, and I know my limits. Much as I’d like to go with you, I’d be a liability. Here, I’m an asset.”
She was right, Carter realized. She would be — not a liability, Carter refused quite to believe that, but she wasn’t a soldier. And someone had to mind the store, just in case things went south. Sam must have seen her face change, for all that Carter tried to hide her thoughts, because she gave a wry smile.
“Besides, I’d have a really hard time not killing Ra if I had the chance, and that would defeat the whole purpose of this.” She shook herself. “In the meantime, let’s go over the plan of the pyramid one last time.”
Dirt floors were useful for this kind of briefing. Sam sketched the outlines of the pyramid, laying out the main corridors and the tunnel entrance that they would use. Sam had built that, Carter realized, Sam at the head of a team of rebels, digging in secret to link up with spies in Ra’s temple.
“You are certain that the exit will be unguarded,” Teal’c said, staring at the drawing as though he was memorizing the map.
“As certain as we can be,” Sam answered. “Pharaoh had it watched of course, but those guards will have been withdrawn, and no one in Ra’s service knows about it.”
“What about ring platforms?” Vala asked.
Sam pointed. “Here and here. But they are guarded, or at least they always have been.” She looked around the little circle. “Anything else?”
There was nothing. Carter forced herself to take another mouthful of the bread, and Danyel handed her a cup of the thin, weak beer. Safer than the water, she told herself, and drained it. “What was that tunnel for?” she asked. “Originally, I mean.”
“Well, first we wanted access to the pyramid,” Sam said, with another quick grin. “Then I had this idea. If we filled the end of it with flammables, burned out the supports — I made them wood at that end — I thought we could probably collapse a corner of the pyramid so that Ra’s ship couldn’t get a lock on the Stargate.”
“You remind me of my dad,” Carter said, without thinking.
“Really?” Sam looked faintly embarrassed. “I never knew mine. He was killed in Vietnam when I was a baby. My mom raised me.”
“My mom died when I was in my teens,” Carter said slowly. “Dad took care of us as best he could. That’s part of why I went into the Air Force.”
“Mom would have had a heart attack if I’d even suggested it,” Sam said. “I had the hardest time talking her into letting me get a car, never mind flying a plane. I can’t imagine…” She shook her head. “She was determined to keep me safe. She wasn’t going to lose me like she lost Dad.”
“Did you ever know George Hammond?” Carter asked, and Sam nodded.
“He was my father’s wingman, the one who brought back his body. Danyel said that in your time he commanded the SGC?”
“Yes.”
“I remember when I was little he used to send me Christmas presents,” Sam said. “But Mom didn’t like having him around — too many bad memories, I think. She lost touch. That — I’m sorry about that, from what Danyel’s said. He must have been an amazing man.”
And that was more of what the Stargate had done, Carter thought. The time loop that had thrown the team back to 1969, when they’d given Lieutenant Hammond a note from his future self in order to get back to their own time — she’d wondered how that had changed him, and if it had, indirectly, changed her father. And now she knew. In her time, Hammond had saved Jacob Carter’s life that day in Vietnam, and maybe he had taken a crazy risk because he knew that somehow he was going to survive.
Somewhere in the back of the house, the baby began to cry. Sam looked up, listening, and a few minutes later Tamit appeared with Ellie in her arms. Sam started to get to her feet, but the queen mother said something and held out her arms. Tamit handed her the baby, who quieted abruptly. She said something more, and Danyel translated.
“The Lady says she left men still loyal to her in the palace, who will aid us if they can.”
“More important, let us know if anything goes wrong,” Sam said. She stood up. “Well.”
Carter looked at her own watch. “Time.”
Her other self nodded. “Good luck,” she said, and held out her hand. Carter took it, her own hand but with unfamiliar, unexpected calluses. Sam turned to embrace Danyel then, and Carter thought she heard her say, “Bring him back.”
Danyel’s arms tightened briefly, then he released her, and opened the door. It was dark still, only the first hint of dawn showing in the eastern sky. As the queen mother’s guard unbarred the gate, Carter looked back to see the three women standing in the door, the queen mother, Sam now with the baby at her breast, and Tamit holding a lamp, shielding the flame from the night air. Soldiers flanked them, spears at rest but ready, and Nithotep lifted her hand in blessing and farewell.
“The wings of the true Horus shelter you from the false gods, and the Lady of Light bring you safely home,” Danyel translated.
“Thank you,” Carter said, and they moved out into the night.
Chapter Fifteen
The palace and the area around the pyramid was busy as an anthill. Ra’s Jaffa had already corralled enough of Pharaoh’s workers to create a seemingly endless stream of bodies carrying things in and out of the pyramid. Others scurried around the edges of the working groups: courtiers and servants, Carter guessed, trying to salvage what they could of their lives without drawing Ra’s notice. At least it gave them some cover, and kept the Jaffa occupied.
They found the entrance to the tunnel easily enough, hidden in one of the outbuildings — a stable, by the smell — and she and Teal’c stood guard while Danyel wrestled the trapdoor open. There would be no one to spread straw back over it, but it opened on an ordinary-looking cellar The entrance to the tunnel itself was hidden behind a stack of coarsely made storage jars: double bluff, Carter thought, with approval, and flicked on her flashlight.
The tunnel was low, but wide enough for a man carrying weapons to walk comfortably. Even Teal’c didn’t have to bow his head, though he did glance warily at the bricks shoring up the walls. Only the ceiling was timbered, no surprise in this wood-poor land, and the tunnel ran straight and true. Torches and lamps would foul the air, Carter thought, as would a horde of soldiers, but with flashlights and only four of them, it was surprisingly clean and efficient.
Danyel took point, leading them briskly along the corridor. They’d sealed the walls with what looked like some kind of mud plaster, and it was flaking away in spots, but the basic structure seemed sound enough. They’d covered maybe a hundred yards when the brick gave way to timber, and Danyel’s pace slowed.
“Almost there,” he said quickly. “It’s just wood and plaster between us and the corridor, so — let’s keep it quiet.”
“Of course, darling,” Vala said, and drew her zat, letting it unfold. Danyel looked annoyed, then realized her intent and swallowed his complaint.
“Let’s go.”
The tunnel ended a few yards further on. It was sealed by a wooden panel set into a frame of heavy timber and crossed by more timber bars. Danyel drew a thin knife and scratched at the panel’s edge, opening a thin crack that glowed with artificial light. He applied his eye to the gap for a long moment, then straightened.
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“Clear,” he said, and began methodically to cut around the other edges — through plaster or paint, Carter guessed, that hid the panel from the other side. Once all four sides were clear, he and Teal’c lifted away the heavy bars and set them carefully out of the way. Teal’c stepped back to cover him, and Carter lifted her P90 as well. Danyel braced himself, and hauled the panel back and in. Plaster split and rattled on the stone floor of the pyramid. It wasn’t really all that loud, but Carter winced, bracing herself for discovery. Light spilled in over them, but nothing happened, and she let out her breath in a sigh of relief. Danyel heaved the panel out into the corridor, and scrambled out after it.
“Clear,” he said again.
Carter gestured for Teal’c and Vala to go, followed them a moment later. She’d been in pyramids before, on enough planets that she’d lost count, but it felt weird to know that this was Earth. She shook that thought away, and turned to help Danyel set the panel back into place. It would pass a cursory glance but not a close inspection, and she hoped Ra’s Jaffa were still busy securing the palace complex.
“Which way?” she asked, and Danyel pointed.
“Up. To the mothership.”
Cam gave his shenti another downward tug surreptitiously, keeping his eyes on Teal’c ahead of him. The other Teal’c, the one without hair. It was more than a little odd having multiples of his team running around, but not nearly as weird as the time he’d stolen a battlecruiser from himself. All in a day’s work at the SGC, he said to himself.
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