Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1

by Sabine C. Bauer

  "Remember what you said to me, Deodatus?"

  "I said a lot of things. Mind giving me a pointer?"

  "You didn't think my people would just shrug and move on without me, did you? My people won't either."

  To underline this exemplary drill in wishful thinking, Tertius grabbed the bowl and slammed it on a cockroach the size of a tennis shoe. The slop splashed on the flagstones, mingling with squashed cockroach to create what would appear on tomorrow's menu as the Chinese Special: Chunky Goo.

  "Did you have to do that? We could have found another one and raced them."

  "Are you listening to me?" The master chef turned over the bowl and covered the Roach Suey. "Our men will be coming."

  Last time Jack had checked, the legionnaires were either dead or wounded or inhabiting their own honeymoon suites down the hall. "What men?"

  "Let's start with the fifteen the Tyreans couldn't find in the garrison."

  "Who are stuck on an island."

  The Mona Lisa look returned with a vengeance.

  "Okay. They're not stuck. You had a boat hidden somewhere. So that's fifteen guys. Against this? Sweet!"

  While being escorted to their deluxe domicile, Jack had grown a whole new appreciation for the temple precinct. It was among the more solidly built fortresses he'd ever seen. The courtyard and colonnade were the refined part to impress the casual tourist. Beyond it lay an inland version of Alcatraz, with a maze of narrow corridors, three-foot walls, and barred gates at every corner. Add to that a few dozen guards, and it left you puzzling over how Tertius' raid on the temple could ever have succeeded in the first place...

  Unless the Tyreans had let it succeed. To fan SG-1's enthusiasm for a strike against the Phrygians? Maybe. Of course, what Kandaulo couldn't have foreseen was SG- I's CO and his pet Brit being gang-pressed into a pleasure cruise and developing rather more background information than desirable. The logical step for the priests would have been to unobtrusively eliminate the witnesses, right? Right. And that, by the way, was -

  "Sit down, Deodatus! Or at least stand still. I'm getting dizzy."

  "Good. Then you know what it was like on that pesky ship."

  God's gift was in an obstinate mood and kept trailing his circles around the cell. If you closed your eyes, you could almost believe you were going somewhere. Until you walked into a wall. His specialty. Preferably head-first. What would Oma Desala have to say about that? If you suffer from a migraine, the marble was quarried a long time ago. Sounded like the real thing, even if candles didn't feature. Hey, he could -

  "Please!"

  Tertius kept staring at him, until Jack finally ground to halt. It immediately set him on edge.

  "So, what do you think your men'll achieve against this?" he asked, mostly to say something, and to gloss over an encroaching sense of helplessness that drove him crazy. He knew when he'd last felt it, and he didn't want to go there.

  "Sit! Down!"

  Without warning, Tertius jumped up and pushed him back until a stone edge struck his calves and he folded onto one of the platforms that served as cots. The man held on to his shoulders and stood looming over him.

  "Would it please the Tribune to look at me?" he requested, oddly formally, as though to make up for the drill yard tone earlier.

  The Tribune didn't have an option, did he? By now the Tribune knew the Primus Pilus well enough to anticipate that the Primus Pilus wouldn't budge until the Tribune damn well did as requested. Jack glanced up, careful not to reveal whatever the man was looking for.

  "Good." Tertius smiled a little, the glimmer of a torch catching in his eyes. "You've been imprisoned before, yes?"

  "Once or twice." Or three times or a dozen, but twice it had been memorable enough to count.

  "What did they do to you, Deodatus?"

  You gotta be kidding... "So, what do you think your men'll achieve against this?"

  "No! What happened to you?"

  I met some bottom feeder of a snake who'd enjoyed a previous and deeply fulling host-symbiote-relationship with the Marquis de Sade.

  "Forget it, Tertius. I don't want to talk about it."

  The eyes wouldn't let go. "It's not forgotten. It's in here with you."

  The hell it was! It was out there, on some remote pissant planet that wouldn't know daylight if the sun shone!

  "Tell me," said Tertius.

  "I can't!" That much at least was true. Jack slowly removed the hands that pinned him into place, but didn't get up. "I can't."

  Tertius flopped on the platform next to him. "Did you ever trust anyone enough to tell them?"

  The guy had got the wrong end of the stick, but Jack wasn't about to point it out. He didn't trust himself enough, that was the long and the short of it. If he ever talked about it, hearing his own words would make it real, and he'd have to acknowledge what had been done to him. Face it. Just how, pray, were you supposed to face the intolerable? And in the unlikely event that you actually found a way, then what? Go nuts? Become an axe murderer?

  Bottom line was, he preferred the tried and tested method. Worked with insurance salesmen as well: Say you're Evel Knievel and slam down the phone. If you did it often enough, they'd go away. Like this would. Eventually it'd slink off to some shadowy recess of his mind and fester there. But at least he wouldn't have to acknowledge it.

  He leaned back against the stone wall, shivered a little when its coolness penetrated the tunic and reached his skin. "Why the honey?" he asked.

  "What?'

  "Marcellus - Tullius? - made me drink honey? Why?"

  The response was a burst of laughter. Unlike him, Tertius had mastered the art of accepting defeat gracefully. "You are hopeless, Deodatus. But I shall answer you, just to teach you how it's done. We give honey to newborns to strengthen them, and we strengthened the new life within you, the soul about to be reborn, the same way."

  "Sounds easy."

  "It isn't. In order to be truly reborn you must leave your old life behind. You can only do that by facing it first."

  Wrong end of the stick, Jack's ass! Time to change the topic. "So... What do you think your men'll achieve against this?"

  More chuckles. "Nothing on their own. They've alerted the other settlements. Their warriors will band together, and then they'll come for us. We don't leave our people behind."

  "I noticed. Did I tell you I trust you?" Jack tried for a grin and nearly got there.

  "You mentioned the possibility."

  "Yeah, well... It's a strong probability, I guess."

  "Don't rush on my account." The smirk was audible. "I wish there were a way your team could join our soldiers. It's a shame that we can't contact them."

  "They'll contact us."

  Tertius sat up and peered at Jack, staggered. "Is that a possibility or a probability?"

  "It's a fact. We don't leave our people behind either."

  "You trust them."

  Evidently not enough. Else he'd never have come up with the cockeyed notion that they might have engineered that avalanche.

  "They won't think any less of you." The bastard had backflipped onto the old subject.

  And no, they wouldn't think any less of him. But that wasn't what scared him. Being pitied was. Pity, commiseration, compassion, you name it, hovering in their eyes and behind their smiles and around their words, from the moment they found out and sympathetically ever after. Poor Jack. Poor O'Neill. Poor Colonel. And that would make it real too.

  "Tertius, does the phrase flogging a dead horse mean anything to you?"

  "Dammit!" Dr. Jackson felt for his glasses, which were safely tucked away under the robe. Unfortunately, they constituted an anachronism that would have blown this obstacle course of a disguise out of the water.

  In addition to being about an inch too long for him, the costume came with a headscarf, held in place by a leather ribbon. The look was decidedly Mosaic, and the loose bit in front tickled just above his left eyebrow. Daniel blew upwards, with the result that the
fabric fluttered and sank back to tickle a different patch of skin. Super. Then again, it seemed to work. The few times they'd encountered purple blurs on the road, reactions had been between respectful and dismissive.

  As a matter of fact, the trickiest part so far had been explaining to Professor Kelly that she wasn't going to join the excursion. By comparison, sneaking out of the house had been child's play. Ayzebel had led him to a dark comer of the patio and down a narrow staircase into a labyrinth of gloomy chambers and corridors. If he'd missed the skulls ogling him, the dry, musty smell would have flagged it up: catacombs. Daniel remembered reading somewhere that the Phoenicians had liked to keep their dearly departed in close proximity. Given the size of the place, Hamilgart had at least ten generations of his forebears lodging in the basement. Anyway, at the far end of the catacombs had been another, even narrower staircase and a horrendously creaky backdoor that opened into an alley. Piece o' cake.

  Night was falling fast, and the light gray horizontal blur of the road began to blend in with the dark gray vertical blurs of the trees. It couldn't be far now. As if on cue, Ayzebel slowed her step.

  "We are almost there, Lord Daniel. What do you wish to do?"

  "Just call me Daniel," he murmured.

  "As you wish, Lord Daniel."

  He stifled a sigh. "Can we get inside? I'd like to have a look around first. Maybe there's a way of getting Jack out."

  "I cannot see how you might achieve this, but yes, you can go inside." She reached under her robe and retrieved a satchel of some kind. "Take this. It contains barley. Once you reach the courtyard, go to the inner sanctuary. If anyone else is in there, pretend to make an offering. Walk around the statue seven times, and then place the satchel at its feet."

  "How do you know these things? I thought women weren't -"

  "As a child I used to come here to play. I learned many things." A soft chuckle. "It was not permitted, of course, but that made it all the more interesting. Sometimes the priests caught me, but they merely laughed and sent me home. Those were better days."

  Among the trees on the hillside above reared the shadowy bulk of the temple, crowned by a bubble of warm light. Torches were burning in the courtyard. They followed the road around the perimeter and to the entrance. Ayzebel stopped.

  "I must wait for you here. Do not be long."

  "I won't be," Daniel promised, and slipped through the archway.

  Inside the court he was confronted with the hum and bustle of frantic preparations. Everyone was far too busy to pay any attention to him. In the unsteady shimmer of the torchlight he could make out Temple Guards posted by each of the cells under the colonnade and at every doorway. They put paid to the notion of springing Jack the straightforward way.

  The Guards' were the only bodies at rest. Acolytes, singly and in pairs, scurried to and fro across the yard, and Daniel couldn't even guess at the purpose of their errands. Muttering an apology, he stepped out of the way of a fast-moving purple blur and squinted for the inner sanctuary. He assumed it was the tower that Kelly had been so curious about. The bronze gates stood open now, and he made a beeline for them, careful to adjust his pace to the frenzy around him. A set of seven broad steps led up to the shrine.

  The interior smelled of wood smoke, and it was deserted. Fire baskets hung from a vault at least fifty feet high, and from somewhere above filtered the muted murmur of voices. At the center of the room loomed a massive statue, its head almost grazing the ceiling. After a quick double-check, Daniel decided to save the offering for later and put on his glasses instead. The bright golden blur of the idol solidified to a colossal bull, raised on its haunches, arms extended and too anthropomorphic to be called front legs anymore. Set into its belly was an ornate hatch, shut for the moment and accessible via a marble ramp. He took a few steps back until he could see the statue's eyes. A ruby flicker danced behind them.

  "Oh God..." He felt a prickle in the nape of his neck, fine hairs standing on end. "Jackson, you moron!"

  He knew what he was looking at. He'd seen old drawings of idols like this. The older incarnation of Moloch. It was a play on vowels. When the Hebrews had conquered Canaan - Phoenicia - they'd tried to stamp out Canaanite religion. To demonstrate what they thought of it, the name of the main local deity had been conflated with the vowels of the Hebrew word bosheth, meaning shame, to Molech. Later on, when the Phoenicians had colonized North Africa and the cult had been revived in Carthage, people had worshipped a new god in old guise: Moloch.

  Jack had been right. Meleq was a Goa'uld, and one who - like Moloch - got his kicks out of burning children alive. The blessed Mysteries of Meleq. Jesus! One by one, the kids would be pushed into the furnace inside the statue, and... The walls of the sanctuary were pocked with hundreds of niches, each containing a small urn. No points for guessing what those urns held. No more urns. Not tonight. Not ever. Not if Dr. Daniel Jackson had anything to do with it!

  Wishing he'd never listened to Kelly and her claims that rumors about Phoenician child sacrifice were a Roman fabrication, Daniel slowly circled the statue. Directly behind it gaped a small doorway and through that lay a steep staircase, barely more than shoulderwide, which spiraled upwards within the tower walls. The voices he'd heard came from up there. After a moment's hesitation he ducked through the doorway. Jack would probably consider this a singularly bad idea.

  He figured he must have rounded the tower at least once by the time a scythe of light came slicing down the steps. The voices were much louder now, chanting some kind of litany, and Daniel tried to stop breathing. Flattened against the wall, he crept up to another doorway and peeped through.

  Swell! Meet the entire Synod, assembled for private prayer or something. They stood gathered around Kandaulo, whose arms were raised in supplication. Daniel's gaze drifted up automatically, and he just about choked back a gasp. Not prayer. Conference call. Above the priests' heads hovered a Goa'uld communication globe. While he was watching, the globe's filmy lead-colored surface swirled clear, revealing the face of -

  Huh?

  Daniel remembered him alright. One of the fun guys he'd met when he'd been posing as Yu's loyal and trusted servant at the last System Lord Plot-Out. He also remembered that briefing after he'd come back from Peflasco Blanco. Jack had got it in one, and right now Dr. Jackson seriously considered resigning and letting Colonel O'Neill have his job. Time to go.

  Ten minutes later he shot from the temple gate, nearly colliding with Ayzebel.

  "Where have you been?" she hissed, drawing him into the shadows under the wall.

  "Sorry. Something came up. I know now who Meleq is."

  "Did you not know before?" With a stem glance she added, "You are wearing your eyeglasses."

  Mechanically he reached for them, then his hand dropped. "Doesn't matter now. I'm not going back in there, and I feel safer seeing stuff. You said you can show me where they keep Jack?"

  "It is along here."

  Ayzebel led him around the building and through the forest to the rear of the temple. They turned a corner, and Daniel squinted. At regular intervals slim fingers of light reached out and stroked across dry earth, roots, and pine needles. They emanated from a row of vertical slits, maybe three inches wide and twelve high, stretching a scant foot above the ground along the entire back of the structure.

  "These are the windows of the cells," whispered Ayzebel.

  Great. There were at least twenty of them. What was he supposed to do? Stand here and holler Jack's name until he either got an answer or the Temple Guards came running?

  Suddenly he grinned. This might work... Or not.

  Note to Jackson: whistling and grinning don't mix. He dropped the grin and slowly began to walk across those spokes of light, whistling his heart out. Twelve windows down he hit pay dirt.

  "For cryin' out loud, Daniel! The Flintstones?"

  He belly-flopped. Through the narrow opening he could see Jack peering up at the window slit. For a split-second an image interposed itse
lf; Jack gazing up at things far worse in another hole of a prison... Daniel pushed it aside.

  "It was supposed to be the Simpsons theme tune. How did you know it was me?"

  "Ever heard Teal'c whistle?"

  Good point. "What about Sam?"

  "Carter doesn't whistle in uniform."

  Dr. Jackson wasn't so sure about that, but he let it slide. "How're you doing? You okay?"

  "No. Tertius squashed Senator Kinsey."

  "What?"

  "Whom, not what. My pet roach. I was going to race him. Great little runner. Competitive, yet frugal. Happy to feed off garbage."

  "Jack!"

  "I'm fine, Daniel."

  For now. "Listen, Jack, I've just been inside the temple. Looks like -"

  "Later! This is important. Best time to strike is once they've started the ceremony. Tell Carter to hitch up with Tertius' guys. They're -"

  "I thought they were all

  "You thought wrong." Jack impatiently shook his head. Next to him another face squeezed into view. "You haven't been formally introduced. Tertius, meet Daniel. Daniel, Tertius."

  "Hi," muttered Daniel.

  "Tell him, Tertius."

  The man gave a crooked smile. "Your friend says he trusts you...

  Then he began rattling off explanations and directions. Every now and then, Jack chimed in to clarify a point. With any kind of luck, nobody would get burned tonight. Finally, Tertius pulled a heavy gold ring off his finger and tossed it through the window at Daniel.

  "Don't lose it. When you meet my men, ask for Flavius and show him the ring. He'll recognize it."

  "You can't miss him," supplied Jack. "Thin fellow, keen sense of smell."

  Slipping the ring onto his own hand, Daniel nodded. "Thank you, Tertius. Thanks for trusting me with this. But there's something you two don't know."

  "What?" Jack frowned.

  "Remember Ishta and her women? What they told us about Moloch?"

  "Extra sick Goa'uld, yeah. Burns babies and -" He cut himself off and then softly repeated the names to himself. "Oh crap. Meleq and Moloch, huh? Am I getting warm?"

  "Birds of a feather, Jack. It's the same cult - or at least close enough. But it gets worse."