The Drift

by Diane Dru Botsford

  They kept walking, not batting so much as an eyelid.

  As they passed Teal’c, he offered, “Perhaps their language is dissimilar, Daniel Jackson.”

  “Good point.” Daniel shoved his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Chappa’ai?”

  Nothing. They breezed past him like he was nothing more than an ant on the sidewalk.

  “Anulus? Circacona?” He dropped his hands. “Porta?”

  “Enough with the playing nice.” General O’Neill darted out in front of the couple and raised his hands. “Listen, folks — ”

  The man strode right through the general without so much as a ripple.

  He continued on, the woman at his side. The general whirled toward Sam, the white scar on his eyebrow stretched tight. “What just happened?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Though it would explain why the flowers didn’t put out any scent. She bent down to pick one.

  Her hand passed through it. “Maybe it’s some kind of hologram technology?”

  Daniel walked over to another obelisk and waved his hand. It went directly through. He headed around to the other side.

  “Perhaps ghosts?” Teal’c added.

  “Ghosts, my ass.” General O’Neill pointed toward the departing couple. “They’ve got something to do with this. The lost memories, the gate. The whole shebang.”

  “Maybe…” Daniel mumbled from behind the obelisk. “Guys, I think I found something.”

  Sam hurried over to join him. Rectangular rows of block-like glyphs covered the obelisk’s back end.

  “I have seen this language before,” Teal’c observed.

  “You should have,” Daniel said. “It’s Ancient.”

  General O’Neill took a step back from the obelisk. “Ancient as in ‘old’ or Ancient as in — ”

  “The Ancients.” Daniel pointed to a lower section of the text etched into the granite. “It’s an older dialect. Similar to the language we found on Heliopolis.”

  “Ernest Littlefield’s planet.” Sam glanced back up at the traffic on the bridges outside the central tower. Ghostly foot traffic, she reminded herself. “Can you translate it?”

  “Huh.” Daniel’s head jerked up. “That’s interesting.”

  “What?” the general demanded. “Daniel, so help me god. If you tell me I have to stick my head in another brain-sucking machine to get us out of here, I’ll quit. I’ll resign my — ”

  “I didn’t mean that sort of interesting. Although, really? You’d quit?”

  “Daniel…” The general growled.

  “Just kidding. Sort of.” He pointed toward the bowed top of the stone where the Ancient glyphs were twice the size as the lower text. “According to this, the planet or the city, I’m not sure which, is named Pedion Elysium.”

  “Like Elysium Fields?”

  Surprised, Sam raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  “I do read, you know. Henry V. Act four. Scene one.”

  “William Shakespeare,” Teal’c said. “’What infinite heart’s-ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy.’”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” The general’s grin disappeared.

  “You can remember Shakespeare, but not how we got here?” Daniel asked.

  General O’Neill crossed his arms. “Can you?”

  “No. But — ”

  “Then don’t mock, Daniel. It doesn’t suit you.”

  Pushing aside the idea that General O’Neill and Teal’c both read Shakespeare, Sam examined the stone’s lettering more closely. “What does this Elysium have to with the Ancients?”

  “Actually, it makes sense.” Daniel waved toward the flowers at the base of the obelisk. “The lilacs. The woman with garlands on her wrists. In Greek mythology, Elysian Fields. Or Elysium if you use the Latin derivative like — ”

  “Daniel,” the general warned. “Cut to the chase.”

  “Right.” Daniel ran a hand through his hair. “Elysium was considered the hero’s final resting place. The Greek poet Pindar referred to Elysium as an island.” His eyes went wide. “Now that I think of it, Pindar’s account mentions a Kronos.”

  “We killed that slimy snakehead off years ago.”

  “I don’t think it’s the same, Jack. In this case, Kronos could be connected to the Hellenistic embodiment of time.”

  “Time. As in?”

  Daniel gestured to a lower passage. “In this case, more like…” His fingers traced along a line of text. “More like slipping free of time. This place, Pedion Elysium…” He whirled toward the general. “’A final resting place!’ I think this might have been one of the last colonies of the Ancients before they ascended.”

  “You mean like Vis Uban?” Sam asked. “How does that explain how we got here?”

  “Or why the people appear as ghosts,” Teal’c added, “unaware of our presence.”

  “Jack, don’t you get it?” Daniel excitedly raised his hands toward the walkways above. “If this is — was — one of the last pre-ascension colonies of the Ancients, your Ancient genetics might have something to do with how we got here.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me happy, how?” Pissed, Jack turned toward the central tower. What Daniel said made sense. It confirmed his suspicions. Underlined his resentment at having that damned ATA gene.

  Sure, being able to save Earth’s butt had its benefit. But this time, thanks to his grandparents’ great-grandparents’ heritage, they were somehow stuck on a god-forsaken planet with a bunch of walking Ancient holo-ghost-whatevers. The whole thing made him want to lie down, just turn his brain off, and take a nap.

  “Help! Somebody? Please!”

  The cry for help came from the other side of the wall. It sounded like a woman, but he couldn’t be certain. Without another thought, Jack broke into a run with SG-1 hot on his heels. They reached the arch and he jerked up his fist, signaling the team to halt. He peered through the arch and saw a small-built woman with a long black ponytail. She ran parallel with the outside wall, away from their position.

  Whoever she was, her get-up was pretty much like his, except her pullover was red, not green. Could be a friend. Could be a foe. He had no way of knowing. He pulled his head back and gestured toward Carter and Teal’c to take the far left. With a nod back to Daniel to follow, he slid out the right side and hugged the outer wall.

  “Yo ren ting jian wo ma?”

  What the hell?

  The woman turned around and froze when she caught sight of Jack and the others.

  High forehead. A narrow, but square jaw. She wasn’t so much a woman as a barely out of teenaged youth.

  He wasn’t sure how, but he knew this girl.

  “You!” He stormed toward her. “You know what’s going on here, don’t you?”

  “Jack!” Footsteps behind him announced his conscience coming to tell him to back off.

  This time he refused to listen.

  “No, Daniel.” He grabbed the girl’s elbow. “The gate’s gone so how did you get here?”

  “I don’t know!” The girl started to do the very thing Jack hated more than anything.

  She started to sob.

  He counted to three, letting his temper simmer down.

  “I think you do know,” he finally told her. “I don’t know how, but I’ve seen you before. And, I think you know who we are, too.”

  “Sir…”

  “Not now, Carter,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I want the truth, damn it. I’m tired of this bullshit.”

  “I told you,” the girl yelled, breaking free from his grip, “I don’t know!”

  The ground started shaking again.

  “O’Neill — ”

  “Yeah, I feel it.” But he really didn’t care. Not anymore. He seized both her arms and held on. “Who the hell are you and how the hell did you get here?”

  The rumbling intensified beneath his feet. Walls cracked. He thought he heard glass shatter.

  The girl jutted
out her chin. “I. Don’t. Know!”

  A boom shot out, echoing across the canyon. The wall to Jack’s right shattered into a spray of rock, spewing toward them with ferocious velocity. As he yanked the girl out of the way, a second boom shook the ground, tossing him off his feet. With a hand over the girl’s head, he kissed the dirt and hoped for the best.

  In less than a heartbeat, the tremors stopped. He waited another moment just to be sure.

  “It’s over, Jack.” A hand on his arm. Daniel. “You better take a look.”

  Jack released the girl and climbed to his feet. Daniel was pointing back toward the city or, rather, where the city had once been.

  The canyon was empty. Rippled waves of heat rolled across a barren wasteland populated only by yellowed grass, dirt and dust. No, Jack realized, that wasn’t quite true. Squinting against the hot sunlight, he made out a small brownish building, no more than a story high. Maybe a half a click off.

  “Was that not the central tower’s location?” Teal’c asked.

  “You see it, too?” A glance at Carter gave Jack the nod he needed to confirm he wasn’t certifiably nuts.

  Movement next to the building caught his eyes. The outline of a person. Maybe a man. Too far off to tell. Whoever it was, he — or she — waved their arms. A bit of cloth flapped in the breeze. A flag of some sorts. Or a robe.

  That damned breeze.

  A sudden chill seized Jack’s bones and he tried remember.

  No. No trying.

  He strode up to the girl. “You’re that trainee from the outpost, Weiyan — ”

  “Weiyan Shi,” the girl said. “Why are we not in Antarctica?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANTARCTICA

  50 years earlier…

  Huang crept toward his prey, resisting the urge for self-ridicule. As First Prime of Lord Yu, he would have sought greater enemies on the field of battle. The Jaffa armies of Sokar, Apophis, even Ra would have trembled as he led the Dragon Guards against them.

  Instead, his life had been reduced to exile within the frozen wasteland of the Tau’ri’s southern pole. Worse, his head and heart warred over whether it was just to kill the creature before him. The odd black-and-white bird waddling before him walked more like an old man than a bird in search of flight. Its orange-lined black beak crooned piteously as if calling out in loss. To kill such a creature felt wrong.

  But necessary. Hunger gnawed at Huang’s belly as he watched the bird cease its cries. It stopped walking, preening the dense white feathers on its chest. Two days had passed since losing his satchel. Two days with no food and little sleep. A blizzard had hit only hours after losing his gear, forcing him to find refuge in an ice cave. For hours he’d laid within the rippled blue ice, wrapped only in his cloaks. On occasion, his eyes would play tricks on him, casting golden-white tendrils of light across the cave’s floor. He would squeeze his eyes shut against the mirage, his mind rolling over the great failure that had led to his plight. Staving off self-pity, he strived to find hope, or at least the chance of it in the future.

  Upon the storm’s end, he had ventured out again to follow the great glacial cliff along the frozen sea. He felt for all the world as if he stood alone on the Tau’ri’s planet. He was not fool enough to believe Lord Yu would send rescue. For all his master knew, he was dead. If Huang did not find true shelter from the cold soon, that would surely be his fate. Several of his toes had begun to blacken with festers swelling near the tips where his nails had worked loose.

  But first, he must eat. Even if it meant killing the man-like bird to do so. Less than ten paces from what would become his next meal, Huang thumbed the staff weapon’s trigger. The firing head opened, releasing a short crackle of energy as it charged.

  The bird’s head swung up. A single caw erupted and black eyes darted in Huang’s direction. Its oblong wings flapped though no flight occurred.

  A single shot blasted off its head.

  Using his staff weapon, Huang hobbled over to the dead bird. Blood oozed from its severed head. He pulled out his belt-knife and sliced the creature’s breast open, revealing a thick layer of fat. The pungent stench curdled in his nose, smelling more like fish than fowl.

  Breathing only through his mouth to fight off the stink, he sliced down further, revealing tender red meat underneath. He carved away the fat, filleted the breasts and withdrew them from the carcass. Flipping the bird over, he took a half-step back and blasted its feathers with the staff weapon. Over the ensuing embers, he roasted the meat on his knife’s point.

  He bit into the barely seared meat and immediately spat it out, overwhelmed by the rank taste. Shoving down the bile that threatened to rise, he forced himself to eat the entire thing.

  As he consumed the putrid meal, disgust crossed his mind. A reflection of how purposeless his life had become.

  Here sits the once-future First Prime of Lord Yu, relegated to eating whatever vile sustenance I can find.

  A glimmer of golden light flashed to his far right. At first he believed it only a trick of his eyes, teary as they were from the smell. When the light flared again, he rose up from his meal and turned toward its source.

  Nothing. The light had disappeared. In the far distance, many days’ walk from his position, smoke bellowed from a high mountain. With reluctance, he admitted to himself that the smoke did not come from the same location he’d seen days ago. The earlier storm must have forced him off-course.

  Even so, where there was smoke, there would be Tau’ri. Huang heaved a heavy sigh. He knew not what he would do upon meeting them, but if Lord Yu cared so greatly for these people, Huang had to believe they would welcome his presence.

  The golden-white light flashed again, emanating from beyond the next bend in the glacial cliff. Ignoring the pain in his feet, Huang ran until he reached a tattered red flag attached to a pole wedged into a stone cairn.

  The light was still there, hovering a mere hand’s length above the wedged-together pile of rocks. Huang cautiously approached. The cairn was no more than a few paces wide though its top stones were higher than his head. Too small to be the burial place of any Tau’ri, he knew not what the cairn contained.

  He picked up one of the rocks, its surface smooth. Weatherworn, he realized. Glancing up at the light, Huang noticed long white tendrils extending from its center.

  “Thank you,” he said, though the very idea of speaking to a light felt foolish. “Are you a friend of the Tau’ri?”

  The light ascended from the cairn, its tendrils folding in along its central column. Huang stumbled back in fear that he’d upset the strange being.

  “Are you foe?” he dared asked.

  The light flared bright gold, and then, disappeared.

  Huang returned his attention to the cairn. Grabbing stone after stone, he pulled down one wall and then another. Several bundles nestled between the stones, covered by what appeared to be gray woolen blankets. They would help keep him warm on his journey. Lifting up a blanket, he discovered that it was fashioned as a pairs of pants. Relief washed through him. The added clothing would aid his climb up the mountain to the Tau’ri. He gathered up the woolen clothes.

  A glint of metal beneath them caught his attention. Pulling back more of the woolen items, he found small, colorfully wrapped packages. Some shaped like blocks, covered in what seemed thin metal paper with strange letters printed on top. Others were cylindrical, bright red containers with black lids. More writing appeared on their sides as well. Pulling out the containers, he discovered even more packets. Of the items present, the largest pile was of long, thin bars, each swathed in more layers of the metal paper.

  He unwrapped one, discovering inside a dark brown solid substance, squarely scored. Though the bar was very cold, the metal paper must have insulated it well enough to escape freezing. He broke off a piece. Sniffed it. A musky aroma with a sweet edge. He bit into it.

  It was food!

  In excitement, he ripped open more packages. There was
hard bread, a fatty meat, and lumps of white crystals tasting very sweet.

  Biting off another piece of the brown bar, he searched for the billowing smoke from the mountaintop. It was gone!

  Fear gripped his stomach. Had the light destroyed the Tau’ri? Was that why it had encouraged him to pillage such a vital resource?

  Huang swallowed hard, the Dragon Guard trainee within reasserting itself. Lord Yu must be warned. If the light was at war with the Tau’ri, only the great System Lord would know how to combat such a force.

  Grabbing as much of the supplies as he could carry, Huang retreated to the cave in which he had taken refuge. There he donned the woolen clothes. Fed, warmed, and alert, he picked up his staff weapon and headed forth to retrace his steps to the Chappa’ai. He would find the dialing device, certain it must be buried somewhere within the cavern’s ice-covered floor. From there, he would travel to one of his master’s protected worlds and send work back to Lord Yu. In doing so, perhaps the Goa’uld would see the success in his endeavor, and not his failure.

  As he strode past his earlier hunting place, snow began to fall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  PLANET DESIGNATION: UNKNOWN

  STATUS: UNKNOWN

  TIME: UNKNOWN

  “Why are we not in Antarctica?”

  “Good question.” Jack broke off staring at the girl long enough to get the lay of the land. A warm wind blew against his face. Dust and dirt swirled across drab, lifeless plains, the only color provided by SG-1’s green pullovers, and the red one worn by the girl.

  A kid. Barely out of her teens. Yet somehow, she had something to do with whatever in the hell was going on.

  One piece of the puzzle down, too many more to go.

  Movement way off in the distance caught his eye. Someone was definitely waving from the one surviving piece of a city that had disappeared into thin air. Jack was pretty sure the building had been the base of the city’s central tower.

  There was something familiar about whoever it was, something about the long, flowing white robe they wore, too. Jack squinted, feeling like he should take action. Like he should know what to do.