Definitely no bad guys and, even better, he could see their gear dumped in a heap against the far wall. He let out a short sigh of relief and poked his head back out to summon Carter. Her weapon was aimed right at his head and he held up a hand in mock surrender. “Easy,” he murmured, although he didn’t blame her for twitchy reflexes.
Her expression was taut as she lowered her weapon. “Sorry sir.”
He waved her apology away. “Come on,” he said, and headed back inside. “You’re gonna love this.”
There was so much stuff in the lab he couldn’t really take it all in, and as Carter followed him inside her eyes went wide. “Oh, wow.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
Jack covered the door, while Carter went over and collected her weapons and the rest of her kit. “Sir,” she said, while she pulled on her tac vest, “I know we’re just here for our stuff, but it’s possible we could find something even more useful…”
“Such as a way to open the Stargate?”
“Maybe.” She flashed him a quick smile. “I won’t know unless I look.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” he said, resisting a smile of his own.
“Yes sir.” Jamming the alien weapon into her belt, she got down to work.
One shoulder wedged against the doorway, Jack stood watch while Carter poked about in the lab. After a couple of minutes, he saw Teal’c peer cautiously around the end of the corridor. Jack lifted his hand in greeting as the others approached. “Hunter was right,” he said. “All our gear’s in here.”
“Well that’s lucky,” Daniel said, sounding dubious. “Why does it make me feel like something’s about to go horribly wrong?”
“Bitter experience?”
“Yep, that’ll be it.”
Hunter shook his head. “You can’t be dawdling here,” he said, glancing nervously back down the corridor. “Ain’t safe.”
“Here,” Jack said, offering Hunter the Amam’s weapon. “Take this. It’ll make you feel better.”
“O’Neill?” The slight question in Teal’c’s voice was enough to suggest disapproval.
Jack shot him a look. “My enemy’s enemy, Teal’c.” He turned back to Hunter, layering his words with a tone of command. “He’s not gonna hand us over to the zombies.”
Hunter glanced down at the weapon, then up at Jack before he reached out and took it. “You can trust me.”
For now, maybe. But he couldn’t keep his gaze from the symbol Hunter wore on his forehead and all he said was, “Cover the corridor while I get my gear.” He didn’t have to ask Teal’c to stay with him.
While they took position at the door, Jack followed Daniel into the lab and retrieved his vest and weapons, leaving his pack until they were about to move out. He was relieved to see that nothing had been tampered with and he felt a hell of a lot better being properly armed again.
“Wow,” Daniel said as he shrugged on his tac vest, “this place is amazing.”
“Reminds me of your office,” Jack said, glancing around the cluttered space. “Full of junk.”
“Or fascinating artifacts and highly advanced alien technology?” Daniel suggested absently, his attention already caught by something he’d seen.
In the center of the lab was a bank of consoles where Carter stood gazing at something with her usual intent focus. Around the edges of the room, on a kind of work bench, there were numerous gizmos and gadgets, some of which were taken apart. Most looked as bizarre and creepy as the rest of the ship, but a few were more familiar and some were definitely Goa’uld. He spotted a disassembled zat on the far end of the bench and reached out to pick it up, turning it over in his hands.
“Daniel?” Carter said, glancing up from the console. “Do you recognize this language? At least, I’m assuming it’s a language…”
Daniel was on the other side of the lab, but he headed gamely over to where Carter stood and peered at the screen. “Oh, it’s definitely a language,” he said with sudden interest. “Okay, wow, this is fascinating.”
“It is?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, very.”
As Daniel bent closer to the screen, Jack glanced down at the zat in his hands. It looked beyond repair, at least beyond his skill, and he dumped it on the bench and headed back to the door. “Teal’c,” he said, “go get your stuff.”
Back braced against the doorframe, he kept one eye on the corridor and one on Hunter. “You’ve been here before?” Jack guessed.
Hunter nodded, but kept his gaze fixed on the corridor behind Jack. “We’re collecting intel,” he said. “On the Snatchers.”
“Intel?” Jack said, surprised by the word.
“For Hecate,” Hunter explained.
“Right.” For the Goa’uld — it was important to remember who he was dealing with here.
“Huh,” Daniel said suddenly, standing up straight behind the console. “That’s unexpected.”
Jack waited for him to elaborate, but he either forgot he’d spoken out loud or got distracted, because he was bending over the screen again, squinting at the text. Jack glanced at Carter, who just gave a small shake of her head and a shrug.
“Daniel,” Jack said. “What does it say?”
“Oh,” Daniel glanced up over the tops of his glasses. “Ah, I can’t actually read it.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t read it?”
“No.”
“And yet… ?” He gestured toward the console. “‘Unexpected’, you say?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, I definitely wasn’t expecting the language to be a derivative of Ancient.”
“Ancient?” Carter echoed in surprise. “Really?”
“Oh yeah,” Daniel nodded. “Without a doubt. Ancient was its root language — a long time ago, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Jack ran a hand through his hair, trying to quell his frustration. “So, what, these are some kind of flesh-eating zombie Ancients, now?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel said, with obvious delight.
“Okay.” He took a breath. “Carter?”
“I can’t interrogate the database, sir. There’s data streaming, but the interface isn’t responding.” She grimaced in annoyance. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think there’s anything here that can help us open the gate.”
He acknowledged what he’d suspected with a nod. Not what he wanted to hear but there was no point in wasting time on a dead end. He headed back inside to get his pack. “Right,” he said, “we’ll move out and —”
“Wait!” Daniel’s head was tipped to one side as he squinted at the screen. “Just — Okay, wait, I might have something. Huh…”
He’d disappeared down the rabbit hole again, but Jack figured they could spare a couple of minutes. If anyone could figure it out, it would be Daniel. “Two minutes,” he warned him, slinging his pack over one shoulder. “And then we’re outa here.”
If he heard, Daniel didn’t respond. Jack glanced at his watch, marking the time: he wasn’t joking about the two minutes.
It was evening back home, he noted. The sun would probably be setting. Hard to imagine, in this place, that home was still out there, that its billions of people were still running about oblivious to the threat they faced from so inconceivably far away. Hard to imagine that he’d been one of them, once. Oblivious.
Perhaps because he was thinking of home, something on the cluttered lab bench caught his eye. Was that… ? He peered closer. It was. Half buried beneath something that might, once, have been a Goa’uld hand device he saw a familiar symbol: Earth. Reaching out, he knocked the debris away to reveal a small, square block that looked like it could have been made out of polished soapstone. Five of its sides were smooth and blank, and the only thing on the sixth side was the symbol for Earth. Weird, he thought, that it would be here. But then he remembered the girl, Elspeth, with the symbol tattooed on her arm. Resistance, she’d called it, a symbol of rebellion.
“Okay,” Daniel said behind him, talking to Carter, “so
the thing is, I don’t think this is actually a spoken language at all. The syntax is impossible…”
Jack peered more closely at the cube. It looked harmless enough so he touched it, smooth stone beneath his fingertips. He picked it up.
“Anyway,” Daniel was saying, “if I’m right then I think this, here in the corner, translates roughly as ‘schematic’.”
“That’s a map?” Carter said, sounding dubious.
Jack glanced up at them, turning the block over in his hands. “A map of the ship?”
“Well, it’s not Vegas,” Daniel said, one eyebrow lifted.
“Funny.” He nodded toward the console. “Can you see a DHD on there?”
“Just give us a minute…”
“I don’t see it,” Carter said shaking her head. “How is that a map?”
“Think of it more like an anatomical diagram of the body.”
Both he and Carter were bent over the screen now. “Oh! Okay, so we’re here?” Carter said, pointing. “That’s — Wait. Are those life signs?”
Jack glanced over at Teal’c, who was back at the door with Hunter. “You see anything?”
“No,” Teal’c said quietly, though he held his staff weapon ready for use. “I have seen nothing, O’Neill.”
“That don’t mean they’re not coming,” Hunter cautioned. “They can be real quiet. We should go.”
Hunter’s unease was contagious, but Jack schooled himself to be patient. They’d found a map and if there was a DHD they’d find that too. Maybe, at last, their luck was changing; maybe they’d get home after all.
Turning the block over in his hand, he traced his thumb over the Earth symbol with a sudden, intent longing. It felt cool and smooth to the touch but he wasn’t expecting it to move beneath his thumb, for the symbol to slide slowly inward until it was flush with the rest of the cube’s surface. “Oops.”
Daniel looked up. “What ‘oops’?”
“Probably nothing,” he said, just at the moment a beam of white light shot up into the air and expanded into a giant holographic image of Earth. Then a female voice started talking — very loudly — in a singsong language he didn’t understand. The lightshow filled the room and, almost certainly, the corridor beyond.
“Sir, shut it off!” Carter said in alarm, staring at the screen. “They’re moving!”
He prodded at the block but nothing happened. “I’m trying!”
“What did you do?” Daniel asked, hurrying around the bank of computers.
“Nothing, I just —”
“O’Neill!” Teal’c shouted, backing into the lab in the face of a massive Amam. He opened fire immediately, but the staff blast just bounced off the thing as if it was shielded. It paused for a moment, head swiveling from side to side as it scanned the room, searching for something. Or someone, as it turned out. Its eyes fixed on Jack and it began to stalk toward him.
“Ah, okay,” he said, taking a step backward.
Carter got off a couple more shots, but they just ricocheted away, sending Teal’c diving for cover.
“Hold your fire!” Jack barked. The room was too small for a semiautomatic.
Slowly, he backed up. He was trapped at the back of the lab between the bank of computers and the bench. He looked around for a way out, but there was nothing. And the creature was bearing down fast.
“Sonofabitch,” Jack growled, pulling out his handgun. But the Amam slammed its hand down on his wrist and knocked the weapon from his fingers, sending a bolt of pain shooting up into his shoulder. “God…” That hurt.
Then the Amam seized his other wrist, holding it up close to its face as it stared at the block Jack was still clutching. The skewed, revolving image of Earth cast eerie shadows as it turned across the creature’s face, but it didn’t seem to notice as it gazed at the cube.
Behind it, over its shoulder, Jack could see the door was clear. The others could escape. He threw a look at Daniel who just shook his head in refusal. No.
So he glared at Carter instead, until she reluctantly nodded, grabbed Daniel’s arm and hissed something into his ear as she pulled him toward the door. She knew, as well as Jack did, that backup would be on its way. They only had a few seconds.
Sure enough, at that moment, Teal’c stepped out into the corridor and fired several times back the way they’d come. “Major Carter,” he yelled. “We must go.”
Hunter joined him, glancing the opposite way along the corridor. “Come on! It’s clear this way.”
The creature holding Jack turned its head, but it didn’t look concerned and its grip on Jack’s wrist tightened further. His fingers were starting to go numb.
Too late for subtlety he yelled, “Carter, get them outa here!”
“Sir…” She looked torn.
“Just go!” There was only one way this was ending for him. “Find a way home.”
Stricken, she turned, pushing Daniel ahead of her into the corridor as Teal’c covered their retreat.
The Amam didn’t follow, as Jack had hoped it might, it just turned back to him, studying him like a hungry man might study a juicy steak.
“I warn you,” he said. “I haven’t bathed in days. I’m not gonna taste any good.”
Ignoring him, the creature tightened its hold on Jack’s wrist. He spat out a pain-filled curse and the block dropped from his fingers. Its light died as soon as it left his hand and the Amam watched it fall to the floor with apparent fascination. Then it looked back at O’Neill, head cocked to one side in a curiously human gesture. “You are Lantean,” it said, forming the words precisely.
“I’m what, now?”
It bared its teeth. Maybe it was smiling. “You are of use.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
George Hammond had told himself that the current situation was just about as bad as it could get. He’d been wrong. He hadn’t factored in the appearance of the man now standing in his office, but perhaps that was due to his own short-sightedness: vultures always circled while the carrion was still kicking.
“What do you want, Maybourne?”
Without waiting for an invitation, Colonel Harold Maybourne sat down in the chair opposite, tossing his hat onto Hammond’s desk. “I’d say a more appropriate question would be ‘what is it you want, General?’”
Hammond took a breath, biting back the reply that sprang to his lips. The worst thing you could do with men like Maybourne was play their game. “Can we dispense with the obfuscation, Harold? I have a planet to defend.”
“Yes, I had heard that.” Maybourne leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Though his expression was solemn, self-satisfaction radiated from him in waves; Hammond could practically smell it. “The situation, I believe, is grave.”
“And how would you know about that?”
“I have sources.”
“Not official ones. You are so far from this chain of intel, Maybourne, you might as well be shucking corn back in Iowa. So I’ll ask again, how would you know about that?”
By rights, Hammond knew he should be sticking to the eyes-only directive for the current situation, but he couldn’t resist prodding Maybourne, shaking him up a little to see what fell out. Besides, he was neither confirming nor denying anything. And by the looks of it, his little test had worked. Maybourne shifted in his seat, eyes flitting to the side as he realized he’d given away more than he should.
You think you’re a big player in this game, thought Hammond. Son, you’re nothing but Little League.
But the colonel made an admirable attempt to recover. “I think, General, that we should focus on what’s important here. The Earth is in trouble and something has to be done. I don’t believe I’m speaking out of turn when I say that I may be the one to do it.”
At that, Hammond’s fraying temper almost snapped. Only one last tenuous thread held it together and that thread told him there was hope yet, that, against the odds, SG-1 might still make it back and put this whole damn thing to bed. A tiny fragment of hope, but there it wa
s.
To reveal anything else to Maybourne at this stage would be unwise. But Maybourne, it seemed, was less circumspect.
“General, I’ve succeeded where Jack O’Neill failed. I’ve been able to set up an off-world base. An Alpha Site, if you will. Just say the word and we can begin evacuation immediately.” He cleared his throat and had the good grace to look mildly uncomfortable. “Of course, there would need to be a… discussion about the chain of command. My people, however, have already proven more than resourceful in establishing an efficient operation. If you were to speak to the President–”
“Now just wait one damn minute, you slick son of a b–”
“No, General, I’ve already waited long enough. We all have. This entire planet has done nothing but wait, and now it’s about to pay the price. That gate isn’t simply an on-ramp for the intergalactic highway, George. It’s a weapon. You and your teams might be happy to take your little hearts and minds trips around the galaxy, smiling at the locals, while the Asgard and the Tollan and the Tok’ra pull the strings and play you like puppets. But there are factions who believe that more… robust measures need to be taken to ensure the safety of this planet. You had a duty of care, General, and you failed. If we’re waiting on anything, it’s for the other shoe to drop.”
Enough was enough. To hell with eyes-only, to hell with playing the cards carefully, this idiot had just pulled on Hammond’s one remaining thread. “You’ve got some damn nerve, Maybourne. You come in here and tell me how your people can save us? Do you have any idea why we’re in this position? It’s because of your people and what they’ve done. They’ve lied and they’ve stolen and they’ve turned our allies against us. You and your people put Earth in danger, and you’ve done so in the most underhanded way possible. Don’t you dare accuse me of failing this planet; the blame falls firmly on your shoulders.”
“The blame, sir, falls with the SGC and your command. The blame falls with your flagship team, always ready to play the heroes and take the glory. So tell me, General, where is SG-1 now? Where are your heroes?”
SG1-25 Hostile Ground Page 18