It provoked some good-natured protests and chuckles, and it confirmed that the men did, in fact, carry symbiotes.
"Now, in case any of you has second thoughts about this, I suggest you keep in mind what General Crowley told you. This is a matter of national security. You're to hunt down and eliminate the colonel, the major, and the geek, and you're to capture the alien alive. Are we clear on this?"
"What about the doc?" one of the men asked.
"Don't worry about her. The lady's taken care of her."
The lady?
"Anything else?"
Shaking of heads all round, and the brief bout of sympathy Hammond had felt for the Marines shriveled in the jungle heat. A gnarled hand clamped around his forearm, painfully tight. Bra'tac sent him a look of warning, and Hammond realized that he was grinding his teeth. He forced his jaw to relax, let the tension trickle down his back together with the sweat. At least they had the right planet.
"We'll stay in radio contact throughout," continued the gunnery sergeant. "Once you've achieved your objective, you're to return here, not to the gate. We'll want these"-he nodded at a grenade launcher-"to take out the boars and get to the dialing thingy. Right, if there are no more questions, move out!"
So there was a DHD. It would simply be a matter of finding it.
The Marines stacked the launchers and some of their packs by a tree, covered them with camouflage-netting, and filtered back into the jungle. Less than a minute after the last one had disappeared they were inaudible. Bra'tac still motioned to wait. His hearing was better, of course.
Harry lasted another minute, then he shrugged, scrabbling to his feet. "Let's go."
In a move so fast it looked like a blur, Bratac's hand shot out and yanked him back. "Let us wait."
Eventually Hammond realized what they were waiting for. One cry at a time, animal hoots and cackles replaced the dripping silence that had fallen while the Marines were in the glade.
When the full cacophony of jungle noises was restored, Bra'tac rose. "Vow let us go."
"Who the hell put you in charge, old man?" snapped Maybourne.
"This!" The staff weapon twirled up in a swift arc and held, tip cracked open and buzzing with energy, an inch away from Harry's nose. Bra'tac flicked a glance at Hammond. "He reminds me of O'Neill."
"Whom is he trying to insult?" Harry's hands had risen, placating and palms front, and he angled back from the tip of the staff weapon. "Me or Jack?"
Somewhere in the canopy some animal crowed a reply. The staff weapon whirled again, came to a rest again, still pointed at Harry's nose, except now Harry was lying on his back, a fern frond gracefully draped over his forehead. Bra'tac had knocked the legs out from under him.
"Not bad for an old man of one hundred and thirty-seven," said Hammond, trying to keep a straight face.
"Ha! You have heard of our match!" Bra'tac barked a dry laugh. "O'Neill did well for a human. Few could have taken me then. Now, of course, it is different. I am older."
"And meaner," Harry muttered under his breath.
"Indeed! You would be wise not to forget it." The staff weapon swung upright, and Bra'tac took a step back. "If you wish to survive, you will do exactly as I say."
Scowling in Hammond's direction, Harry came to his feet. "Thanks for all the support, Huggy." Once he'd dusted off his wounded pride, his gaze settled on the mound of launchers. "We should borrow a couple of those, just in case."
"He's got a point," conceded Hammond, remembering the outsize trotter prints and what the gunny had said about needing the artillery to get to the DHD, wherever it was. "They might come in handy."
"What purpose do they serve?" Bra'tac looked doubtful.
"They blow holes in things. Big holes."
"Very well. Jaffa! Kree!"
Hammond noted with vague surprise that this time he barely started when two Jaffa materialized like mushrooms popping from the ground. Bra'tac gave his orders in hushed Goa'uld, and the men quietly retrieved two of the grenade launchers and draped the netting back into place to make it look as though nothing had been disturbed.
By now the light in the glade had begun to dim, and the slide of the day into late afternoon recalled the urgency of the situation. They had been issued an ultimatum. They needed to find SG-1 before the Marine Jaffa did. Bra'tac knew it, too. Eyes even darker than usual, he aimed a slow nod at Hammond, then turned, cloak swirling, and led the way back onto the trail of the Marines.
Knowing her leg still existed was one thing. Translating that knowledge into locomotion was quite another. For the time being, she concentrated on skipping along on the cognitively and sensually verifiable leg, which had its own drawbacks. The thigh muscles she could feel were cramping, and her head objected to being jolted every five seconds.
"I need a break," panted Sam. More than anything she was getting fed up with wandering-jumping-around aimlessly.
"You should use both legs," Macdonald retorted. "Ma'am."
"Easy for you to say. Why don't you just climb out of a window?"
"Point taken. Come on."
Sam suspected it was a trick to keep her going-hopping-at least for a little while longer. She wanted a beer and a wheelchair, in that order. Some twenty minutes ago an alarm had sounded, and he must have assumed that her escape had been discovered. He'd led her from one flight of rooms to the next, each deserted, some windowless-a shuttered procession of ghostly habitats, festooned in faded silk and dry rot. Eventually they'd come out into the corridor they were in now.
Ahead lay a T-junction. Macdonald parked her against the wall and quietly slipped out of sight. Half a minute later he was back. "You wanted a break. Round the comer is some kind of an alcove. We can hide in there for a while."
In real terms, the alcove was a balcony that clung to the wall like a barnacle to a ship's hull and looked out over an enormous round stairwell. Enclosed by wooden lattices and no larger than a wardrobe, it offered just enough space for two people to sit down opposite one another. Macdonald eased her to the ground, pulled the door shut behind him, and slid down the panel until he hit the floor.
A warm evening glow trickled in through the latticework and cast his face into an untidy mosaic of dark and light. One eye had disappeared completely, the other stared out at her from a patch of gold. Sam looked away, gave up on the mind reading, and let silence ratchet up the tension until the air seemed to crackle around them.
A split-second before something-Sam's patience or the alcove's struts-snapped, he asked, "You done any thinking yet?"
"What?"
"The mind control thing."
As a matter of fact, she had, and she wasn't sure at all that this really was mind control. "What if it's posthypnotic suggestion, Sergeant?"
He gave a soft snort. "I'm Force Recon, Major. Same caliber of training as your Special Ops boys. Brainwashing techniques and how to defuse them are pretty high on the agenda. I know how posthypnotic suggestion works. This ain't it. Besides"-he did that curious head-tap again-"it doesn't explain how she can know what goes on in here. And I'm not nuts, ma'am."
No, Macdonald seemed perfectly sane. And he was right. Posthypnotic suggestion didn't explain Janet either. Her behavior had been far too complex for that. But the notion that Nirrti was a telepath was equally farfetched. They had absolutely no prior evidence for that.
Which left Sam with what? An abiding wish to have her team around, so she could bounce ideas off Daniel, Teal'c, the Colonel. Thinking of them raised a cold wad of anguish that threatened to swallow her whole. She couldn't allow that to happen; she'd be unable to function.
Next.
Suppose the gadget was exactly what Macdonald said it was-a gadget. It made sense. Nirrti loved gadgets. So, if Sam were her, where would she put it? She reached up, laced her fingers through the lattices, and pulled herself to a stand.
"I thought you wanted a break," Macdonald hissed.
Ignoring him, she stared out into the rotunda, spiraling stairs, rooms
and corridors spoking off from galleries, and more alcoves above and below. "I need a floor plan, Sergeant. What's what."
«Why?
Talk about wringing water from a stone. "Damn-lit, Sergeant, do I have to make it an order? Right now I only have the vaguest idea of what it is we're looking for, but knowing where to look for it might help firm it up a little!"
He came to his feet with a grunt and squeezed in next to her, rubbing up against her shoulder and hip. The touchy-feely stuff wasn't strictly necessary; on the other hand, it wasn't overt enough to call him on it. If he needed to play his little games, fine. "This is the only connection between the different levels," he said, nodding at the stairs. "Well, the only one I've found, and believe me, I've been looking."
Superb from a strategic point of view, Sam admitted, but for their purposes it sucked. "What else?"
"This level and the level below, barracks-quarters-and armory."
"Armory?" Sam cocked an eyebrow. This sounded better.
"Don't get your hopes up, Major. That's one of the places where the air gets real thin for me real quick."
"Too bad, but it probably won't for me."
Another snort. "Leaving aside your mobility problem, ma'am, do you even know how to use the weapons they've got?"
Well enough to damn near kill my CO, you arrogant goon! Aloud she said, "Do you, Sergeant?"
The reply was unintelligible.
"I didn't get that, Marine."
"Ma'am. No, ma'am."
"If you ask nicely, I might teach you someday. What else?"
"Everything you see there"-Macdonald pointed up some forty meters worth of shaft-"is Nirrti's private domain."
"All of it?"
"She only really uses the top level. That's where her rooms are. There's also some kind of roof terrace. The floors below are kind of a buffer zone, I expect. To separate her from the rabble," he snarled. "Access to the penthouse suite is by invitation only."
"Who's invited?"
"Her personal guard, Lennox from third platoon-well, a copy that's her, uh, First Prime I, think she calls it-and her servants."
"Servants?"
"Some guys who didn't make the cut for cloning." He gave a crooked grin. "Like my copy."
Which could be useful. Sam filed away the information, then realized that one item remained conspicuously absent from Macdonald's list of facilities. She thought she knew why. "What about Nirrti's lab? That's up there as well?"
"What makes you think she's got a lab?" His eyes narrowed. Evidently the distrust was mutual.
"She's cloning people, right? You can't do that in the bathtub, so there has to be a lab. Where is it?"
"You want me to tell you where O'Neill is? Forget it!"
When hell freezes over. Besides, Macdonald had just told her. The Colonel was in the lab. As, in all likelihood, was Nirrti. And if Nirrti was the only one who could operate the ring transporter, she also was their only ticket out of here. Sam tried her best smile. "Look, Sergeant, first of all, it's Colonel O'Neill to you. Second, has it ever occurred to you that this gadget may be in the lab? Whether you like it or not, you'll have to tell me and we may have to try and bust in. So stop second-guessing me and tell me where the goddamn lab is!"
"Two levels down." He'd probably broken a tooth or two grinding it out.
"Thank you." She raised herself on her toes and craned her neck to peek down. Yeah, two levels down and diagonally across she could just make out a wider than usual corridor that shimmered golden. Looked about right to her. Looked Goa'uld to her. "Oh, hang on..."
"What?"
She wasn't sure she'd seen what she thought she'd seen. A wisp of movement, caught from the comer of her eye-it might have been nothing. She kept staring at the area, a shadowy recess one level up from the lab where the stairs reached the gallery. Ten seconds later she knew it was something alright. She and Macdonald weren't the only people creeping around in the fortress. A dark figure emerged from the niche, then another.
"My God!" she breathed.
"What?" Macdonald asked again.
"Take me out onto the gallery. Now! And this time it is an order!"
His eyes widened. "With all due respect, ma'am, are you crazy?"
"No. I got us some reinforcements. Move it, Sergeant!"
"Reinforce- Yes, ma'am!" Patterns of light and shade madly gyrated across his face as he nodded.
While Macdonald half dragged, half carried her from the alcove, along the hallway, and toward the exit to the stairwell, Sam tried to compute timings. Six corridors for cover around the gallery, and up a flight of stairs-how fast? She had to head them off, because the one thing she couldn't risk was calling out to them. And what if they didn't come up here? What if they disappeared down a hallway on the level below? What if-
"That's far enough," whispered Macdonald and ground to a halt. "We don't want to be seen."
Wrong. Five meters ahead, the corridor opened onto the gallery and the void beyond. Sam disengaged herself from the sergeant, dropped to the floor, and began to crawl. Just as well she could do at least that on her own, because Macdonald wasn't happy. There was a novelty. She headed for the shadows by the wall and stopped with six inches to spare. Out in the stairwell everything seemed quiet, no noises, and she could see half of a flight of stairs from where she lay. Empty, and so was the gallery. Had they gone past already? One by one, she scanned the doorways on her level for a flicker of movement. Nothing.
Damn, damn, damn! Where-
On the level below, a figure broke cover and hurtled up the stairs, two steps at a time. Yes! It was Daniel. So-
"Freeze!" yelled a voice from somewhere above. "Identify yourself!"
The ID came in the form of a staff blast from the same corridor where Daniel had appeared. A split-second later, Teal'c raced after his team mate, who'd stopped and turned.
"Go!" Teal'c roared, loosed a second blast, and kept running.
Except, he was drawing fire now. Whoever was upstairs had recovered from their surprise. Three plasma bolts in quick succession exploded around Teal'c, raining chunks of masonry down the stairwell. Sam gritted her teeth in frustration. She couldn't recall ever having wanted a weapon so much, but all she could do was pray.
eal'c's shout should have catapulted him up the stairs. The tone had been flavored with That's an order! But Daniel had a pretty good idea of what was going on behind him-besides, he couldn't see the steps for dust.
Nobody gets left behind.
Another staff blast zipped past, close enough to singe his hair, and Daniel fired wildly in the direction where the flare of light had come from. What was the range of a zat? Further than expected, obviously. He heard a scream, and a dark, blurry shape toppled from the gallery above. One of the blurry shape's colleagues took exception. The next plasma bolt damn near charbroiled Daniel's toes. He returned fire, simultaneously with Teal'c, who came storming up the stairs, snagged Daniel's arm, and hauled him along.
"Which part of Go! did you fail to comprehend?" wheezed Teal'c, never breaking stride.
Daniel didn't bother to reply, too busy trying to keep up and struggling to draw oxygen from air laden with dust and the fried-wattage reek of energy discharges. A new blast dented the wall behind them, sent stone heads popping from the frieze. Whoever was doing the shooting was in serious need of target practice-then again, even the biggest dud hit the ten-ring once in a while.
Their only chance was to reach the gallery and the cover there. How many steps? Thirty? Fifty? And did it even matter? They'd been rumbled, and-
The floor evened out, and Daniel almost tripped because he'd been expecting another step. A few meters ahead was a corridor. But the guys upstairs weren't stupid; their fire now zeroed in on the entrance, ready for Teal'c and Daniel to run into the blasts.
Teal'c let go of him, swung around, staff already flying up, and loosed two bolts. One hit home. It bought them five seconds. Daniel darted for that inviting patch of shadow and safety, was about to
dive right into it, when he heard the shout.
"Daniel! This way!"
He couldn't see worth a damn, but he recognized the voice. He also recognized that it came from the next corridor along. So he ran on. A plasma bolt tore into the doorway behind him, ripped free a spray of stone and mortar. Amid a barrage of rapid Goa'uld, Teal'c fired back. Daniel could make out a really juicy curse, knew that he was the addressee.
Sorry, Teal'c.
"Keep going! Next hallway! Cover me from there!" Daniel dropped into a crouch-for all the benefit that would bring; he was the proverbial fish in the barrel-and zatted blindly at the guards above. They were moving along the gallery now, headed for the downward staircase. Not good. At least the nice thing about Teal'c was that, in situations like this, he could be relied on not to stop and discuss the issue. He sprinted past, straight toward the entrance. With Jack it would have been different.
The thought cut like a knife, and Daniel was almost grateful for the staff blast that singed the other side of his head. He ducked, kept zat- ting people he couldn't see, thought he'd got a hit-somebody hollered-and then Teal'c had reached the entrance to the corridor and began laying down cover fire. Daniel shot up, swayed for a moment, disoriented by a head-rush, and ran for the doorway. Propelled by the heat of another plasma bolt, he flung himself through, dived for the floor alongside Sam, landing hard.
"Nice to see you," he observed to Sam's left foot.
"Amen," replied her top end.
"Get up, Daniel Jackson!" Teal'c was heaving Sam up to sling her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "More guards are on their way. They will arrive shortly!"
"Crap!" Daniel muttered into the floor.
A hand hooked under his armpit, pulling him up relentlessly. Jack? He looked up, winced. He didn't recognize much else, but he recognized the coif and had a dizzy vision of Jack applying at a USMC recruitment office and getting turned down on the strength of his hair being incapable of conforming to a proper crew cut. Not Jack. A Marine.
"You heard the man," Not-Jack grunted and shoved him along the corridor. "Move it, mister! Go, go, go!"
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