"We can't wait any longer," said Daniel, visibly bracing for an argument, a hint of accusation in his tone. "I just wish you'd- You're early. The morphine took a while to kick in."
"Yeah." There would be no argument. Because there was no sarcophagus, was there? There never would be. Half tempted to turn and see if the fight draining from him had left a trail, Jack inched closer.
Carter was gazing at him with a doe-eyed alertness belied by the pin-prick pupils. "°s okay, sir," she slurred. "Won't hurt a bit."
Let her believe that. But Daniel was right. It had to happen now. Unable to look away from the hellish mess that was Carter's injury, Jack crouched. "Need a hand?"
Surprise or misery or both nudged Daniel into a shudder. "Fire would be good," he murmured. "Hot water. Sam's got cooking gear in her pack, so-"
"How about you let me check her out first?" said an indignant voice behind them.
Daniel's head snapped up, and he blinked into the direction of the speaker. "Janet? My God, where-"
"Let's save the welcome home party for later." With a brusqueness out of character for her, Fraiser shouldered Daniel aside, squatted next to Carter, and nodded at the flashlight sitting on the floor. "Somebody hold this for me."
"Sure." Sounding a little uncertain, Daniel picked up the light. "Like this?"
"Higher! And more of an angle! I can't see a thing. Yeah, that'll do." Seconds dragged into minutes dragged into an eternity filled with Carter's soft moans as the doctor probed the wound. Eventually Fraiser glanced up and straight at Jack. "Why did you wait this long? I can try, but whatever I do, I doubt she'll make it."
Daniel flinched, stung. "For God's sake, Doc, she can hear you!"
Ignoring him, Fraiser kept staring at Jack, her eyes near-black and utterly cold. "If she dies, you're to blame."
"I know." He wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to talk around the swirl of nausea rising in his throat. Nausea and an overwhelming sense of wrongness.
The flashlight jerked, then clattered to the floor, its beam briefly shooting upward as it flipped. Mercifully, Fraiser's eyes sank into shadow. Daniel had grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly. "What the hell is the matter with you? Jack's no more to blame than-"
"Daniel!" Jack struggled to school his expression into something between neutral and dead. "This isn't helping. Let her go."
A hint of bewilderment and panic flashed across Fraiser's face, and she came to her feet, avoiding anyone's gaze now. "I'm sorry, Colonel. That was out of line. She... Sam is a friend." For a moment she seemed to listen inward, then said, "I can't do much here. Bring her to where I'm staying. It's safer, and I've got a small surgical kit in my pack. I'll need it."
Wordlessly Daniel made to pick up Carter. With a swift pat to the back, Jack stopped him. "I'll carry her."
Daniel acknowledged it with a nod, moved aside. "Jack?"
"I can handle it." Barely, but that wasn't what Daniel's question had been about anyway. His knees vigorously disagreed with the undertaking, and he found out the hard way why Fraiser had advised against heavy lifting when she'd first examined his ribs-a lifetime ago. Though Carter wasn't heavy. Not exactly huge to start with, she'd lost a dramatic amount of weight.
Now, dopey from the morphine, she nestled her head against his shoulder, smiled at him, and muttered, "Nice."
"We aim to please, Major." He tried to smile back, didn't quite make it. His gaze settled on Fraiser, who was watching them with the look of a scientist studying a pair of lab rats. "Which way?"
ut the others did get back. So there has to be a way off this planet," Corporal Wilkins said for the eighteenth time since their encounter, and he was sounding anxious. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I don't wanna end up like Gonzo, poor bastard."
`Gonzo' was the man whose body they had discovered at some distance from the Stargate, hanging off a lintel in the perimeter wall. The corporal had served with him, and he had insisted on cutting down the flyblown corpse of Private Joe Gonzales. The beasts had inflicted terrible injuries, but Private Gonzales had died from a single shot to his head. Someone had possessed the mercy to spare him further suffering.
Once they had buried him, they had continued in a south-easterly direction. Just after nightfall they had come upon a ruined guardhouse and set up camp for the night. Approximately two hundred meters further on, across open terrain, was a large gate in the city walls, now swallowed by shadows. Had they arrived earlier, Teal'c might have proceeded inside, although some indefinable instinct warned him against any such foray. However, instincts or no, tomorrow at first light they would have to explore what lay beyond the gate.
"I was wrong. We should have gone looking for White, Lambert, and Ryder."
The corporal was referring to the soldiers who had arrived with him. His petulance was beginning to tax Teal'c's patience. Or perhaps it was merely a combination of the relentless heat and humidity and the renewed silence of the forest. A nub of masonry was pressing against his still aching shoulder, and Teal'c noiselessly shifted his position, wishing he could afford the peace of kelno'reem. He had seated himself by the doorway, observing ajungle and ruins bathed in pale starlight. It imbued the world with a ghostlike quality, enhancing the now familiar sense of foreboding that had befallen him as soon as the silence settled over the trees once more.
From behind came a soft rustle. Corporal Wilkins had risen and crawled closer on all fours to peer out the door. "I gotta go find those clowns," he muttered and, with the next breath, "Got a stinking headache, though."
Unable to discern any smell and struggling to keep his tone civil, Teal'c replied, "I recommend you ingest appropriate medication and try to sleep. I shall wake you for your watch."
"Been popping aspirin for the past three hours, sir. It's a miracle if I've got any stomach lining left after this." More rustling. The corporal had retreated to the back of the room and was rummaging through his backpack. Then he returned, carrying his weapon. "Gotta go find them," he said again.
Teal'c grabbed a fistful of his sleeve. "Corporal Wilkins, we have discussed this repeatedly. It would not be wise for you to attempt a search. Not on your own, and especially not in darkness."
"Let go of me!" The corporal yanked his arm free and only barely seemed to curb the impulse to train his weapon on Teal'c. "I've got my orders, and you're not authorized to stop me. Sir!"
The address was made to sound like an insult, and Teal'c felt his blood boil. "What orders, hasshak?" he hissed. "Not long ago you were attempting to run back to M3D 335 like a frightened boy!"
The weapon snapped up, but Teal'c was faster. On his feet in the blink of an eye, one hand clamped around the barrel, he wrenched the submachine gun from the corporal and jabbed its stock into the man's midriff. For a moment Corporal Wilkins sagged back, winded, then he collected himself and was about to attack again.
A sound from outside, a stone accidentally loosened and kicked by a boot perhaps, penetrated the scrabbling noises of their fight.
"Quiet!" Teal'c barely breathed the command and his hand shot up in warning.
The corporal's training reasserted itself. Slowly and carefully, he recovered his submachine gun and moved in behind Teal'c who had retrieved his staff weapon. Directly south of them a dark shape oozed from the tree line like a thing spawned and bred in the jungle. Curled into a crouch, it approached the guardhouse, its silhouette broken up only by the black protrusion of the gun barrel. A Marine then, or perhaps-
The half-formed hope was smashed by a shot tearing through the window at the far end of the room. Corporal Wilkins cried out, and Teal'c whirled around. The flare from his staff weapon briefly illuminated a blackened human face. It dropped from sight in a shower of dust and crumbling masonry. The corporal had been hit, but not grievously. Sprawled on the ground he opened fire on the man approaching from the trees. None of the rounds struck its target. But it could only be a matter of time.
Teal'c did not feel the curious tingle that would have ann
ounced the presence of a Goa'uld symbiote. "Hold your fire!" he shouted. "We are friends!"
The answer was a barrage of shots from the window. Flattened against the doorjamb, he loosed another staff blast. This time there was a scream and the thuds of a body dropping limply behind the casement. Teal'c cursed softly, hoping the man was wounded rather than dead. Barring Dr. Fraiser's assault on him, this was the first instance of human aggression he had encountered, and it almost came as a relief. Because, unlike the other dangers on this planet, it was comprehensible and meant that questions might be answered-provided he could take at least one of the attackers alive. He needed information, and in his experience dead men spoke very little.
"No friends in this game, Mr. First Prime," the corporal snarled. "It's either them or us, so save the negotiations for when they're dead."
"I was not aware that this was a game," grunted Teal'c, keeping a close eye on the other hostile who had dropped in a patch of ferns and was almost invisible now. "We need to-"
The ferns twitched. Their movement provoked an extended burst from Corporal Wilkins's gun. Stalks and fronds ripped apart, and the man hiding in the clearing returned fire briefly, then leaped up and scurried toward the tree line. Without Teal'c's volition, the tip of his staff weapon swiveled after the fleeing figure, blossomed orange in the night, ready to unleash death. His fingers were tightening on the weapon's grip, nearing the pressure required to trigger the blast. He heard the bellow of blood in his ears and, faint but clear, a voice commanding him to kill lest he be the one killed.
"What are you waiting for?" Corporal Wilkins screamed. "Shoot him!"
With supreme effort Teal'c forced his hands to unclench and was rewarded by a sharp bolt of pain that ripped through his skull and scattered his confusion. Howling with fury, the corporal brought up his gun, fired. A reckless sprint spirited the attacker to the relative safety of the jungle. But there might be a second enemy yet hiding behind the guardhouse. Teal'c ran out the door and around the building, Corporal Wilkins in close pursuit.
The man was still there. Even in the pallid starlight his wounds seemed horrid, his face melted away by the staff blast. But he was alive and, though blind and undoubtedly in agony, he would not desist. Clutching a K-bar knife in his right, he had pushed himself to his knees and was listening intently for any sound that might betray his opponents' position.
Knowing that it was a half-truth at best and would be to no avail, Teal'c said, "Put down your weapon. We have no wish to kill you."
The knife slashed at Teal'c's leg, and only a jump back saved him from injury. The man opened what had been his mouth and emitted a gurgling noise. It could have meant anything; a plea for mercy or a pledge to fight to the death. Teal'c never found out. Corporal Wilkins had arrived, weapon raised, but before he could fire or Teal'c could intercede, the wounded soldier gave a keening wail. The knife slid from his fingers, and he fell forward, his whole body racked with spasms that gradually eased until he remained perfectly still.
Plagued by regret Teal'c crouched, reached for a neck slick with blood, hoping to find a pulse. He did not succeed. The man was dead, and perhaps it was kinder this way. About to remove one of the man's dog tags, Teal'c heard a soft metallic click and forced himself not to show any reaction. He had expected this.
"Sony, Mr. First Prime," the corporal said. "Nothing personal."
"If it is not personal, what are your reasons?" Teal'c enquired calmly, his right hand furtively digging into a pile of rubble and mortar dust.
"No more than one winner in this game, Mr. First Prime. You're good, but you ain't good enough. Or maybe you are, but we're not gonna find out. `Cos if you're dead you're not gonna be chosen."
Teal'c's fingers closed around a fistful of debris. "And only the best survive the challenge and are worthy to serve their god."
"That's right."
Starlight reflected in the corporal's eyes, making them seem drained of color, drained of soul. This latter notion, Teal'c believed, was none too far from the truth. He himself had survived a Jaffa training camp, survived the final selection. He had killed to survive. But not in cold blood. Not a warrior of his own team. So what was happening? He could not afford to think it through now. He had to act, else he would have mere seconds to live.
"I see," he said, allowing his left hand to slide along the grip of his staff weapon.
The movement was minute, but it was enough for Corporal Wilkins to notice and be distracted. His gaze shifted. "Don't even-"
Teal'c's right shot up, flinging a handful of dust and broken stone at the man's face. Corporal Wilkins cried out, controlled the reflex to claw at his eyes, fired, and missed. In throwing the rubble, Teal'c had dropped sideways. Now he bounded to his feet and was on the disoriented man in one leap. For the briefest of moments, he felt a craving to kill and attain the glory of selection. He forced it away, knowing it was not his own mind speaking to him, twisted the weapon from his opponent's hands, and knocked the corporal out cold.
Patting down Corporal Wilkins, he found a sidearm and a combat knife, which he pocketed. The sidearm he unsafed, taking a deep breath. His theory might be flawed, but putting it to test was the only option. The damage inflicted would be temporary after all. He placed the gun next to the corporal's ear and fired. Then he turned the man's head and repeated the process.
Roused by the noise and pain, Corporal Wilkins gave a yelp and his eyes snapped open. Wary of a renewed attack, Teal'c sat back on his haunches, watching his patient. The corporal blinked several times, awkwardly pushed himself to a sitting position, and squinted around in some confusion. Finally his gaze lighted on the dead soldier, and his eyes darkened with anguish. Teal'c knew then that both his suspicion and his treatment had been correct.
"Ryder!" the corporal croaked, evidently recognizing something other than the soldier's face. "Ryder. How-" It was then that he became aware of his deafness. Staring in panic, he fingered his ears, brought his hands away smeared with a trickle of blood. "What hap pened to me, sir?" He all but screamed.
"Do not be afraid," Teal'c said. "It will pass in time."
Hearing himself speak, he grasped that his method of curing the madness, while successful, had one fundamental flaw.
For the first time in days Sam Carter wasn't in pain or immediate fear for her life, and the morphine was trying to suck her into a blurry, wooly headspace. Maybe she should have taken the stuff from the start. Things really were a lot more pleasant this way. She refused to concede that this absurd sense of wellbeing had anything to do with her current mode of transport.
No way.
"Stop fidgeting, Carter," he muttered. "You're not helping."
"How about piggyback?" she offered and tried to straighten up.
"Major! If you don't keep still, I'll sling you over my shoulder, caveman-fashion, I swear!"
Worth thinking about. She'd have a nice view of his ass. And he did have a great ass. For a commanding officer. Sam giggled.
"For cryin' out loud!"
"You okay, Jack?" Soft and concerned, Daniel's voice came drifting through the halo of his flashlight.
"Yeah. Except Carter's contracted ADD on top of everything else."
The beam of the flashlight froze in place, allowing them to catch up. "Want me to carry her for a while?" asked Daniel.
No.
"No. I'm fine."
Thanks, sir. Not that Daniel doesn't have a cute butt, but-
"We need to keep moving." Janet, cold and impatient, not like Janet at all.
Sam remembered now. This was why she had to stay alert. "Something's wrong," she murmured.
"Everything's okay, Carter," the Colonel said immediately. "Doc's gonna look after you."
The way she'd done earlier? With coldhands, colder eyes, unaware or uncaring that she didn't heal but hurt? Not like Janet at all.
"No," Sam rasped.
He wasn't listening. "How much further?"
"About five minutes, tops," the Dr. Frai
ser dybbuk replied, trying to sound soothing.
"You gave us the five minutes spiel half an hour ago," snapped Colonel O'Neill. "Mind telling me where we're going, Fraiser?"
Janet pointed up. Same walls, same statues, same treetops silhouetted against an indigo sky full of alien stars. The stars looked cool and clean, as far away from this planet as you could get, and Sam wanted to be there. Maybe it was she who was wrong, not Janet. Couldn't tell anything for sure, not with that goddamn drug in her system. Next time she'd do it the way people did in the movies-bite down on a leather strap.
They climbed an alley of stairs and the ruins below fell away into darkness. No animal calls, and it felt like the forest was brooding, hatching something. Whatever it was, you could bet your six that it wouldn't be good for either your health or your sanity. After all, just look at them. Her. Janet. And what about Teal'c? Where-
Tripping on a step, Colonel O'Neill nearly lost his balance. After that there was a distinct seesaw to his step. Sam looked up, saw his mouth compressed to a tight line, muscles in his jaw working.
"Sir, I could try to-"
"Don't say it, Carter," he gasped.
"Levitate?"
He barked a brief laugh. "You're high, but you're not that high, Major." Up ahead, the flashlight had stopped rising. "Keep going, Daniel!"
"Wouldn't know where. I'm at the top."
"Jacob's Ladder has an end?"
By the time they reached the paved plateau at the top of the stairs, Sam was still trying to figure out how her dad came into this and what he needed a ladder for. Daniel was waiting for them, caught on to the limp.
"Dammit, Jack-"
"Save it, Daniel. Where now?"
"It's through there, sir." Janet, hovering like a gloomy ghost.
Obediently Daniel's light illuminated through there. It was a passageway barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Wreathed around the entrance was a trio of figures.
"Great," murmured the Colonel. "Fear, Terror, and Death."
"Bhaya, Mahabhaya, and Mrityu." Daniel yanked the flashlight away from the statues.
Stargate SG-1: Survival of the Fittest: SG1-7 Page 20