“Ten blocks,” Daniel whispered in her ear, which was both informative and a rather pleasant sensation. She should make Daniel whisper vital information into her ear more often.
The rest of the journey was slow—it was debatable if they'd gained much time hitching a ride, although it felt good to rest her aching leg—but as they neared the university, even in the dark it was clear the dwellings were larger and set further back from the road. Following Mitchell's lead, Daniel pulled some of the pale wooly fur from an open bale and used it to wipe the bloodstains off his neck and hands.
It had taken little effort to heal her teammate's superficial cuts. Likewise, O'Neill's head wound was fully healed, but Loki had been an entirely different matter again. There was something profoundly wrong with the Asgard, something she could not fully discern, and although she had sealed his burns and knitted his broken bones, Vala suspected he was in dire need of a new body—which would explain why he was so eager to get the time machine operational.
While Vala's only wound had been her leg, the blood from that was now covered by the long coat she wore. Instead, she ran the greasy fleece over her hands. Experience had taught her that smelling like a domesticated animal was a useful accessory in one's nighttime camouflage kit.
An excited hand signal from Howard confirmed they were nearing their destination. Mitchell signaled with his fist and pointed to the shadows and the others nodded silently in understanding. Jumping off the back of borrowed transport was more or less second nature to her, but Howard landed face down in a mud-filled wheel-rut. Helping the youth to his feet, Daniel whispered, “Which way?”
Howard gestured with a decidedly unsteady hand. “Two... two hundred yards, across the park.”
They took off, jogging in that direction. “What about the other stuff that Sam needs?” Vala asked, looking over her shoulder to Howard, who was trying to wipe himself down as he ran. “Where do we get that?”
“Oh...clamps and the like. Urn...the workshop and stables are behind the geochem building.”
They reached an ironwork gate, a rusted and ineffective hindrance easily circumvented by climbing over a short hedge. “How much time do we have?” Daniel directed his question at Howard.
“Time...time...” Howard echoed between puffs, tugging at a small golden chain draped across his vest. Easing closer to a miserly pool of light from a ground floor window, he withdrew a pendant, flipped open the lid, and squinting at the tiny clock inside, said, “It's almost 3:00am.”
“Sunrise this time of year on the east coast is around 0415,” Mitchell informed them. “We'll have to split up if we're gonna find what we need and get the jumper out of here before anyone sees us.”
Ahead of them was a boxy looking three-storey stone building with rows upon rows of arched windows. Mitchell signaled them to stop behind a short, neatly clipped hedge paralleling the pathway. “That the geochem lab?”
“Yes.” Squatting beside them, panting heavily from their jog across the park, Howard pointed to what looked—in the darkness—to be an open wooden building just beyond. “Those are the stables and coach house.”
“Okay, Jackson, you go with Vala to get the opal, I'll take the workshop.”
“There's about ten things on your list,” Vala countered, readjusting her com unit so it wasn't gouging her cheek. “We only need one lump of biogenic silica.”
“She's got a point. Jackson, you and I will take the workshop, Vala gets the opal.” Tapping his com unit, Mitchell added, “No chatter unless it's absolutely essential.”
“Just don't take anything other than the opal rock,” Daniel warned Vala. “I mean it.”
“Right.” She nodded. “No precious jewels and other bits of treasure. Just a shiny rock which is on display...where?”
“I'll take you,” Howard offered, his wheezing now under control. Mostly.
Like Daniel, Mitchell's eyes were constantly taking in their surroundings as he spoke. “I thought we'd agreed you'd just, point out which buildings?”
“Oh, don't be such a spoilsport,” Vala admonished. “Howard's having the time of his life, aren't you, Howard? Besides, we'll be in and out before the guards even begin to wake up.” She lifted her zat and smiled.
With a sharp intake of breath, Howard squeaked, “You're not going to.. .to kill anyone, are you?”
Daniel clapped him on the shoulder and offered him a reassuring smile. “It's not a gun...well, it is a gun, but... It's a ray gun,” he said. “It just knocks people out. Like an electric shock. It's not fatal; you only pass out for a few minutes. We're not going to kill anyone, I promise. Right?” Daniel, displaying a distinct lack of trust, directed the last comment at her.
Vala sniffed, offended by the very notion she would mess with the timeline, or shoot anyone—unless she absolutely had to. Or there was a profit in it for her.
Okay, not that—she really had to stop thinking such larcenous thoughts. Smiling, she nodded and said, “Cross my heart.”
Daniel looked doubtful, but they were running out of time. At a signal from Mitchell, the men waited only long enough to establish there was no movement around the buildings, before vanishing into the nearby shadows. Vala took an additional few moments to work her way around in the other direction toward what Howard assured her was the rear entrance.
She froze when she smelled something unique to this world: burning tobacco plant. Then she saw it; a tiny cinder glow ', in the darkness that grew momentarily bright before fading and dropping to the level of a man's thigh. Although she was tempted to zat the guard, the soft thwang and brief plasma glow would not go unnoticed. She'd seen sufficient people on this world engaged in the addictive behavior of smoking to know that the man probably would move on in a few-moments.
Beside her, Howard's breathing was stilted and overly loud. Vala reached for his hand and patted it gently, calming him, a little tempted to make some remark about amateurs, and then deciding against it, because he was only a boy, after all, and one suffering an excessive degree of anxiety. Nothing would be served here by her being mean spirited.
The glow faded and then fell to the ground. A gritty sound followed, then, finished with his cigarette, the guard moved off. Vala signaled for Howard to wait in the shadow of a low hedge while she ran in a crouch across the grass and up the path to an ill-lit door set back between a pair of fluted concrete pillars.
While her preferred method of dealing with locks generally worked quite well, the primitive mechanisms found on this world had proven slightly more challenging than expected. Admittedly, she'd never had any real trouble getting into the various offices around the SGC, having had plenty of practice on Daniel's door, filing cabinet, desk and that secret little cache of interesting keepsakes he thought no one else knew about. But the small toolkit she'd liberated from Colonel Carter's laboratory before they'd left the SGC proved rather useful, which meant she didn't have to feel guilty about borrowing it in the first place. She had the door open in less than ten seconds.
Howard came running in behind her, panting and mumbling something about the guards. Closing the door, Vala peered into the musty darkness. “Where now?”
“I can't believe I'm doing this.” He was pale and trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement.
“Take a deep breath. Where do we go from here?”
“Up...upstairs.”
The creaking wooden steps were not softened by carpet, and Howard's attempt at tiptoeing was painfully loud to Vala's ears. The stairs led them to a landing directly beneath the window over the entrance, and then turned in the opposite direction to the second floor. Under the window was an ugly wooden cabinet with a glass lid. The beam from her flashlight fractured into several colors when she passed it across the rocks inside.
“Bowenite and Cumberlanite,” Howard said, coining up behind her. “They come from this area. The opal bearing rocks are on the next floor.”
They were halfway up the flight to the third level when she heard what sounde
d like a gunshot outside, followed immediately by yelling. Then came shouts of, “Fire!” and a series of high-pitched whistles.
“Daniel!” she barked into her com unit. “I heard shots. What's going on?”
Howard gasped loudly, tripped, and fell heavily against her. “What's happening? What do we do?”
Rather than Daniel, O'Neill responded through her com, “What's the problem?”
Ignoring them both, Vala bolted up the remainder of the steps. It was unlikely anyone had noticed their entry, so she could only assume Daniel or Mitchell had managed to get themselves noticed, and that right now they were too busy to reply. Waving her flashlight around the room, she saw twenty or thirty glass-topped wooden display cases. Although fairly certain she knew what to look for, it could still take several minutes of searching. “Howard!” She ran back down the first few steps, grabbed his shoulder and hauled him up. “Where is it?”
Stumbling against the banister, he stuttered over his words. “We... we have to flee! If we're caught here—”
The whistle blowing and cries from outside increased in volume, directly in proportion to a distinctive amber hue. Whatever had caught fire wasn't wasting any time about it. Despite that, given she was standing within a few feet of it, she saw absolutely no point leaving without getting what they'd come for. “Plenty of time for getting away. Now concentrate, Howard. Tell me where to find the opal rock.”
“I think... I...um...yes, it's the case over beneath that window.” He pointed nervously toward the far side of the room, and, grasping the wall to steady himself, inadvertently brushed against an electric switch.
The entire floor was abruptly bathed in light.
“Howard!” she hissed, spinning around. “Are you trying to get us caught?”
“No...no... I...!” He fumbled around with the switch, his expression so agonized in the glare of the lights, that she abandoned a momentary desire to throttle him. Besides, there was no time. The view through the windows was very unsettling. The coach house and stables must have been made of tinder because the fire was devouring them. Worse, the intense heat was carrying cinders upward where a light wind had caught them and tossed them toward the geomchem building.
“Daniel? Mitchell? If that fire is some sort of diversionary tactic let me tell you, it's a little over the top.”
“What fire?” O'Neill demanded through her radio.
“Mitchell's down!” Voice strained as though he were carrying a heavy weight, Daniel added, “Knocked a lantern into the straw.” His transmission ended abruptly, followed by the sound from outside the building of more gunfire.
Vala ran past the rows of display tables and, foregoing any kind of finesse, used the butt end of her zat gun to smash the glass of the cabinet, which instantly set off an excruciatingly loud ringing—either that, or the alarm had been triggered because the building had caught fire. The light from the blaze outside danced across the gems in the cabinet, bringing the fragmented rainbow colors to life. Most of the rocks on display with the opals were chunky, but she spotted a slab piece about the size of her hand and the thickness of her little finger. Careless of the shattered glass, she snatched up the rock and glanced out the window. Not good. While a half dozen people who had responded to the fire were pulling carriages and horses away, several more had redirected their attention to the geochem building. Worse, a large tree just outside the window was well and truly ablaze.
“Got the rock,” she announced through her com to O'Neill and Daniel. “Where are you?”
“Trying to get us both out of here!” Daniel barked.
“Howard!” Vala yelled, spinning around. The alarm seemed designed purely to deafen intruders rather than alert the guards or officials or whoever it was now headed for them. A coppery glow on the wall by the ceiling caught her attention: two hemispherical bells were mercilessly beating her eardrums into submission. A shot from the zat killed them and simultaneously extracted a terrified yelp from Howard, who had wedged himself behind a tall bookshelf. “C'mon!” she ordered, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him to his feet.
He stumbled, thrust out a hand to balance himself...and pushed the bookshelf off-balance. Vala kept running—until the sound of glass smashing drew her attention. Several windows had fallen victim to Howard's panic-driven clumsiness, and hundreds of glowing cinders rode in on a wave of heat.
So much for Carter's optimistic and impractical notions of non-intervention in the timeline.
They reached the stairwell and were halfway to the landing when the clump of heavy boots alerted her to the arrival of two burly figures, who, upon seeing them, began blowing more of those ear-splitting whistles. Zatting them too soon, however, had the unfortunate effect of blocking what appeared to be the only way out—which was rapidly filling up with even more people shouting something about thieves using the fire as a diversion.
“Not my idea, I can assure you,” she muttered to herself as she bolted back up the stairs.
There had to be another stairway, otherwise how had the owners of this place managed to drag all these hideous display cabinets up here? Turning back the way she'd come she was surprised to find no sign of Howard, so she ducked low between two wood and glass display cases filled with more rocks, and ran along a hallway to the opposite side of the building, away from the fire.
Stopping at the window at the end of the hall lined with hundreds of books, she glanced down. It certainly wouldn't be the first time her life had depended on jumping from this height—except those higher places hadn't had bars across their windows. And these weren't flimsy decorative things but thick iron posts welded into the surrounding framework.
She cursed the bars roundly for a moment, even using a few of the new words she'd picked up earlier, and then keyed her com unit. “This is not looking good, Daniel. Where are you?”
Back in the direction from which she had come, people were stomping around and bellowing things that did not bode well for her future. She glanced outside again to see several men in uniforms dismount from horses and run between the buildings. The pale haired animals tossed their heads back and shied away from the blazing light.
And then two figures, one being carried across the back of the second, stumbled around the corner of the next building.
“Daniel, I'm right above you!”
He paused, and although she couldn't see his face in the shadow of the building, was certain that he looked up. “Vala!” he yelled not bothering with the com. He lowered Mitchell to the ground. “Get down here. Now!”
The way Mitchell slumped, she was very glad she'd thought to bring the hand device. The only problem was actually get-ting down there.
“You! Stop or we'll shoot!”
Crouching and simultaneously spinning around, Vala fired the zat'nik'katel at the shadowy figures. Their cries had already alerted others, who, mistaking her weapon's discharge for flames, yelled, “This side of the building's already ablaze!” Or perhaps they were right and the sparks coming in through the window had taken hold of the rows of books. This entire situation really was becoming quite irritating.
“Barricade him inside! Let him burn!” cried someone else.
Let him burn? It seemed preposterous that anyone could mistake her for a man, particularly since she was still wearing a bonnet. A glance outside again revealed that Daniel had managed to secure one of the horses the uniformed men had abandoned in their haste. Sort of. The animal was rearing, trying to pull away. Vala assumed Daniel's intention was to use the creature as a method of escape. It gave her an idea.
Granted, it was not so much a choice but an option that required her to trust her teammates implicitly. And while that wasn't an entirely foreign concept, it was still novel enough to give her pause...
But not for long because the voices of the men pursuing her were getting closer. Forcing the window up, she shoved her arm through the bars. “Daniel!”
She wasn't certain if he'd heard her, but the beast certainly heard the thunk
when the opal rock she'd tossed through the window hit the gravel in front of it, because it shied and danced away—directly into Mitchell.
Colonel Mitchell's failure to notice he'd been trampled when the hooves came down on him, sent Vala rigid with shock. Mitchell was either already dead, or close to it. She had to get down there. “Daniel! Get back to the jumper and beam us out. I'll take care of Mi—”
Something thick and stinking of onion and cabbage wrapped around her neck with enough force to jerk her off her feet. Elbowing her assailant in the kidney, she simultaneously planted her right foot behind his ankle, bent her knees and leaned forward. Her attacker's momentum carried him over her shoulder and into the barred window, ripping off her bonnet and headset and, by the feel of it, her ears, as he went.
Winded but unfortunately not unconscious, the man managed to grapple her ankle while she was feeling around for her com unit. A boot heel into his face put paid to that notion, but by the sound of things, several more of his friends were on the way.
Stargate SG1 - Roswell Page 11