“Don’t worry,” O’Neill said softly. “We’ll find them, Daniel.”
Elsewhere, somewhere unimaginable among the stars, Skaara and his sister Sha’re stood within a massive prison building, an arena full of people. The building was made of great blocks of stone, with fluted columns. At one end was a high, arched door made of thick metal bars. Skaara and Sha’re shivered, as much from the aftereffects of their terrifying journey through the wormhole as from sheer terror.
The people around them were not normal people of Abydos; their skin and hair were of all colors. Some wore animal skins with patterns they had never seen before, and some, strange shiny cloth. They were all afraid too, huddled together and whispering in their fear.
Skaara stood in front of Sha’re to protect her, though no one seemed very interested in them. The air was thick, dense with an unfamiliar level of humidity; it seemed tinted purple, like the shell of a dung beetle, and was hard to breathe.
Through the door came a line of many Serpent Guards, holding the death sticks.
One of them stepped forward. His snake helmet was folded down; the two of them recognized him as the one the Ra-god had called Teal’c. Teal’c pointed to Sha’re and said to her sharply, “Chek mok!”
Skaara moved between them, and the guard accompanying Teal’c aimed a death stick at him. Skaara swallowed, frightened, but lifted his head in defiance anyway. Sha’re was his sister and Daniel’s beloved. Daniel was not here to protect her, so the responsibility fell to him.
The dark man spoke to him as if in sympathy. “Your death cannot help her.”
Skaara was startled by the sound of his own language, and by the look in the man’s eyes. This Teal’c seemed almost human. Still, he served the Ra-god, the accursed one….
Sha’re put a hand on her brother’s arm. “No, Skaara.” To Teal’c she added bravely, “I am not afraid.”
One of the Serpent Guards led her away, one of many that the devil ones selected out of the crowd. Muffled cries of grief followed them as other families were torn apart. Skaara lunged forward, wild with helplessness, but was stopped, held back by other prisoners.
Teal’c paused, looking back, and gave Skaara a nod, as if acknowledging that the boy had made a brave effort. Frustrated, enraged, the boy watched his sister walk out the arched door, her head high and proud, like a queen.
Late that night, O’Neill, cleaned up and inexpressibly weary, stopped by the infirmary to see the surviving member of the firefight in the Abydos Gate room. Louis Ferretti was lying on a cot, the upper half of his body and one side of his face heavily bandaged. Tubes eeled out of all parts of his body. Throbbing lights over the bed recorded respiration, heartbeat. One arm was hung from a metal contraption. The place stank of antiseptic and sickness.
Beside him, hunched over, sat Kawalsky, staring at his folded hands.
“They tell me he’s gonna make it,” O’Neill said softly. He had no reason to doubt it; this might be a secret base, but he’d seen how this place was outfitted, and it put many military hospitals to shame.
Kawalsky nodded, never taking his eyes from his twisted fingers. “Yes, sir.”
It didn’t matter. Ferretti was one of his men, damn it, and he took the man’s injuries, and the deaths of the others involved, very, very personally.
The fact that the injuries and deaths couldn’t stop the kidnapping of Daniel’s wife, of the boy he had adopted for his own, made it that much worse.
“You gonna stay here all night?”
“Yes, sir.”
O’Neill nodded quietly. That was Kawalsky’s right and privilege. O’Neill might be Ferretti’s commanding officer, but Kawalsky was his best friend. He gave the patient one last look and stepped back out into the corridor.
At the end of the hall, looking around as if not at all sure what direction to take or even why, stood Daniel Jackson. He was wearing a fresh, clean set of fatigues that looked far too big for him. O’Neill stopped in front of him and waited patiently for the other man to notice him.
“They don’t know what to do with me.” Jackson’s voice was bewildered. Lost. He smiled quickly, blinking through the lenses of his glasses.
O’Neill nodded again. At least this one of his stray sheep he could do something about. “C’mon. Let’s get outta here.” With a jerk of his head, he gathered the other man up to follow him.
In the middle of examining the display of commendations and citations and photographs decorating the wall and mantelpiece of the fireplace in Jack O’Neill’s living room, Jackson sneezed.
“Bless you.” O’Neill passed him a box of tissues. They were drinking; at least, O’Neill was drinking, working on his second or third beer. Jackson was still nursing his first. Despite Skaara’s experiments, he was clearly unused to alcohol. His words were a little unsteady.
“Going from one planet to another makes my allergies—” He blew his nose, stopped to think about what he’d just said, shrugged.
“Anyway. As soon as you were gone and they realized they were free—I mean, Abydos was their world for the taking—”
“You have a party?” O’Neill was watching him, faculties unblurred by the liquor.
“Oh, big, big party. They treated me like their savior, it was…” He blushed. “Embarrassing.”
O’Neill raised a bottle in ironic salute, slid back deep into the tan leather couch. “Daniel Jackson. Savior of Abydos. It’s amazing you turned out so normal.”
Jackson smiled, a tentative, sweet expression, and took the chair opposite, setting his bottle down on the coffee table. “I spent the first year having to stop everyone I saw from bowing all the time. It was like, ‘Hi, please don’t do that.’…” He blushed and picked up the bottle again, taking a swig of beer.
“Lucky it didn’t go to your head.”
Jackson laughed, as if at a memory of himself. “If it wasn’t for Sha’re, I… She was the complete opposite of everyone else. She practically… fell on the floor laughing every time I tried to do some chore they all took for granted. Like… grinding yaphetta flour. Have you ever tried to grind your own flour?”
O’Neill opened another beer. “Actually, I’m trying to kick the flour thing.”
Daniel drained the last swallow. “This is going straight to my head. What time is it, anyway? I must have Gate lag.”
O’Neill laughed. “You’ve had one beer, Daniel. You’re a cheaper date than my wife was.”
Jackson grasped foggily at the change of subject and gestured broadly at the frames on the wall and the stone mantelpiece. Photographs of O’Neill with a woman were conspicuously absent. Come to think of it, he thought fuzzily, the room did have a rather Spartan look about it. It was painfully neat, done in shades of tan and brown, and there wasn’t a copy of Good Housekeeping anywhere. All the carpet seemed brand-new. “Yeah, when am I going to meet your wife?”
O’Neill snorted. “Oh, probably… never. When I came back from Abydos the first time, she’d already left.”
Daniel stared at him, eyes owlish behind the wire-rimmed lenses. “I’m sorry.”
O’Neill’s mouth twitched, and he swirled the liquid in the brown bottle. “Yeah.” Taking a deep breath, he went on, “So was I. But I guess saying it didn’t change anything.” He took a deep drink. “I think in her heart she forgave me for what happened to our kid; she just wasn’t able to forget.”
Jackson blinked earnestly. “And what about you?”
An edge of sober harshness entered O’Neill’s voice. “Me, I’m the opposite. I’ll never forgive myself.” He took another long swallow of beer. “But sometimes I can forget.”
Daniel picked up his bottle again and rolled it back and forth between his palms, watching the other man, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t seem trite or sentimental. He wondered if O’Neill was telling the truth about being able to forget; he doubted it. But about not being able to forgive himself, well, that part was true. He could tell that just by the look in O’Neill’
s eyes when he had realized Skaara was gone too. There were a lot of things, it seemed, that Jack O’Neill would never forgive himself for.
* * *
Sergeant Carol Ketering watched as one of the new ones slid a small loaf of bread from one of the silver platters into her diaphanous gown. The woman was thinking of escape, then. Ketering could have told her there was no way out of this—this harem; she had tried all the doors, meeting stolid human guards or, worse, the Snakeheads each time, and there were no windows in the stone walls. Just luxury, flowing transparent gowns, vessels of gold and silver, incense, wine. Slave boys dressed only in twisted loincloths providing massages. Sweet-scented violet air.
Everything a woman could want, in fact.
Except freedom. Carol Ketering believed very strongly in freedom.
They had taken away her uniform, the khaki pants, tank top, jacket. They’d shoved her toward a perfumed bath, pointed at a diaphanous pile of white, nearly transparent silks. Men and women she could only think of as slaves had bathed her, washed her hair. After a while she’d submitted, telling herself that there was no point in exhausting herself struggling against taking a hot bath.
She watched the human guards tensing.
He was coming again, then. They always stood to attention when Teal’c came. It didn’t take much to recognize the hierarchy.
And when Teal’c came, someone always left with him. Carol moved back, stealthily, hoping to avoid notice. Several of the others around her did the same. The new one, though, not yet up on the protocol, merely looked around apprehensively. For a moment her eyes, dark and bright, met Carol’s, and despite any differences in the worlds of their respective births, a flash of perfect understanding passed between them. The new woman too faded back into the crowd.
Unfortunately, when everyone was pressing back trying not to be noticed, someone always ended up still in front.
Teal’c pointed with his staff.
Take her, Carol thought without shame as the staff appeared to waver toward someone else. Take her, not me.
But the staff was pointing at her after all. The slaves moved forward. Carol stood, contempt clear in her face. She was in the United States Air Force, by God, and she wasn’t going to let them get anything out of her but her name, rank, and serial number.
As soon as they grabbed her, the facade crumbled.
“Where are you taking me? I’m a sergeant in the United States Air Force, and I demand to know where you’re taking me!”
Ignoring her struggles, Teal’c grabbed her wrist and dragged her along, down the dark halls. The escort marched close behind. Even if she had managed to break free, there was nowhere to go.
Finally they entered a huge room lit by a fire roaring in a brazier. The high walls were draped in gauze-like linen. The heat made her sweat. So did the sight of the man the other women called the Lord Apophis, whispering dread stories behind their hands every time one of their number was taken, never to return.
As she had been taken.
He was wearing a gold skullcap, gold kilt and sandals, and his collar was covered with jasper and turquoise. Bracelets twined around his wrists and hands. His body shone as if oiled.
Apophis studied her as she screamed and kicked, fighting with every fiber of her being, wild with a certain knowledge that death stood before her. “Let me go!”
Then he reached out and touched her forehead, the stone in his palms glowing, and suddenly she wasn’t struggling anymore. There was fear, but it was very very far away.
“Lovely,” he said in deep, guttural voice. “You could be the vessel for my future queen.”
Queen? She wondered numbly. Deep inside, a part of her mind that remained her own began a steady screaming.
He walked around her, looking her over like a prize mare, and snapped his fingers. Two more slaves stepped out of the shadows, light gleaming off the knives in their hands.
Carol saw the glitter, wondered at it, and did not move.
The slaves cut away her clothing, leaving her naked. Apophis caressed her, smiling, touching her all over her body, leaning over to sniff her skin, walking around her as if inspecting a particularly fine cut of meat.
“Yes,” the guttural voice said. “Yes, very nice indeed. But I am not the one you must finally please.”
He wanted her to lie on the stone slab before the brazier, she understood, without knowing how she understood it. She lay relaxed, looking up, seeing Teal’c, seeing Apophis. Teal’c was impassive, as if he had seen this many times before. The sliver of self that remained to her gibbered with fear.
She saw a lovely woman come from the shadows, her gown flowing loosely around her. The woman wore long robes, heavily embroidered, and a veil over her face. Through the transparent cloth Carol could see that her skin was very fair, and her dark eyes brimmed with sympathy, kindness, wisdom.
“Yametha. Re!” the lord said.
The woman stood beside the stone slab and parted her garments to reveal her upper belly—and the slit that gaped in it. The opening pulsed in and out.
Carol watched, breathing evenly, screaming inside, as something thick and white snaked out of the slit in the woman’s body. Far from expressing pain, the woman leaned back her head, an expression of ecstasy crossing her face.
The thing dripped something vile and viscous across Carol’s skin as its head twisted and shifted, more and more of the translucent body issuing forth, as it investigated her intimately. Its jaws split in three, and winglets stood out behind them. It made a noise.
Apophis watched eagerly.
The thing came up into her face. If it had had eyes, she would have said it stared at her.
Again it made a noise, a shrill screech of rejection, and abruptly it withdrew, retracting into the woman’s belly. She gasped once, as if with pleasure, then slowly closed her robe.
“A shame,” the lord said as the woman returned to the shadows. His hand came out to stroke Carol’s forehead again, the device upon his hand glowing.
As the remaining independent spark of Sergeant Carol Ketering struggled and flickered, she saw the lord’s eyes glow, heard his last words as if from far away, and the scrap that was Carol fled them, into the final safety of ultimate darkness and refuge from horror.
“Send another,” Apophis said.
And Carol was grateful to die.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Ten-hut!” Samuels barked in an excellent imitation of a drill sergeant. In response, the others seated around the briefing table came to attention as General Hammond entered.
The general moved to the head of the table and remained standing, resting his knuckles against the polished wood. All the dust covers were gone now. All the equipment was fully functional.
“People, what is spoken of in this room is classified NSI Top Secret,” he announced. Then, with a sharp look at O’Neill, he went on, “Colonel. What do we know about these hostiles that we didn’t know yesterday?”
O’Neill barely refrained from an unmilitary shrug. “Not a helluva lot, sir. The Abydos boys who survived the attack on our base camp believed it was Ra.”
“I thought he was dead, gentlemen. Which is it?”
“Oh, he’s dead. He’s definitely dead,” Jackson said, polishing his glasses. He looked at O’Neill. “The bomb… I mean, he has to be dead, right?”
O’Neill closed his eyes to keep from rolling them too obviously.
“Then who is coming through the Stargate?” Hammond snapped.
Jackson cocked his head, thinking. With an air of a thinker reaching a satisfactory conclusion he piped up, “Gods.”
This was not what Hammond had expected. “What?” The word was nothing if not the roar of the enraged bull general.
“Not as in God Gods,” Jackson explained, tumbling back into a professor persona without skipping a beat. “Ra played a god—the sun god. He ‘borrowed’ the religion and culture of the ancient Egyptians he brought through the Gate and then used it to enslave them. He wan
ted the people of Abydos to believe he was the only one.”
Carter, with professorial tendencies herself, caught on. “You’re saying Ra wasn’t the last of his race after all.”
“Maybe he’s got a brother, Ray,” Kawalsky quipped sourly.
“That’s what we need,” O’Neill muttered, agreeing with him.
Daniel was off in full cry after a theory. “Wait a minute. The legend goes, Ra’s race was dying…. He survived by taking over the body of his human host, an Egyptian boy. But who’s to say more of his kind couldn’t do the same thing? They could have done it anytime and”—the impact of his own words sank in—“anywhere there’s a Gate.” He paled. “It could be happening… now.”
Hammond took it in and turned to O’Neill. “Colonel, you’ve had the most experience in fighting this hostile. Assuming you have to defend yourself in the field—are you up to it?”
O’Neill’s lips tightened. “We beat ’em once.”
Hammond looked at him. “I’ll take that as a maybe.” Shifting his attention, he went on, “Captain Carter, you’re confident our Stargate will send us where we want to go with this new information?”
Carter showed signs of a very long night. “The computer’s feeding revised coordinates to the targeting computer now. It’ll take time to calculate, but it should spit out two or three destinations a month.”
Hammond nodded, taking a deep breath. “People, let’s not fool ourselves here. This thing is both vast and dangerous, and we are so far over our heads we can barely see daylight. These hostiles we’re up against possess technology so far superior to our own, we don’t have the faintest idea how it works.
“We would all be much better off if the Stargate had been left in the ground.”
Carter protested. “With respect, sir, we can’t bury our heads in the sand. Think of how much we could learn! Think of what we could bring back—”
Hammond had had enough of the upstart captain. “What you could bring back is precisely what I’m afraid of, Captain,” he roared. “However…”—he forced himself to swallow his ire—“the President of the United States happens to agree with you. In the event your theories pan out, he’s ordered the formation of nine teams whose duties will be to perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and if possible, to make peaceful contact with the peoples of these worlds. These teams will operate on a covert, top-secret basis. No one will know of their existence except the President and the Joint Chiefs.
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