by Stargate
Walter Harriman’s hands were nowhere near his keyboard; in fact, they were wrapped around a mug of coffee, which made it all the more unusual when the console in front of him began generating a stream of commands at lighting-fast speed. “Aw, no,” he spat, diving at his controls. “Not this, not again!”
Harriman’s fingers danced over the keys, fighting to halt the inputs and falling far short. “This isn’t supposed to happen!” he complained aloud. “We fixed this, we encoded it! You can’t take remote control of dialing without a command code—”
On the screen, a data window pinged open. Command Authenticity Confirmed, read the display. System Recognizes Authorization Code— Colonel J. O’Neill, Officer Commanding, SG-1.
“What?” demanded the sergeant. “No! He’s not authorizing anything!” There was a mechanical whine and with steady, inexorable motions, the heavy steel blast doors fell down over the control room’s windows and across the access corridors to the chamber beyond. Walter’s frustration broke and he mashed the keyboard. “Stop it!”
The barriers slammed into place with a dull thud and the on-screen display shifted into dialing mode. Alarms ringing, the Stargate’s inner ring of symbols began to spin.
Someone was calling his name. Teal’c heard it over a metallic gnawing and crunching, a tinny little voice issuing from his radio.
“Teal’c!” It was the Tau’ri Major, the one called Duarte. “Are you all right, man? What’s going on up there?”
He decided not to dignify the question with a reply and blinked slowly. Fresh blood was gumming the corner of his right eye and he could feel a gash open across his temple.
In the dimness, he caught sight of the Re’tu— still visible, so the Jaffa’s luck was holding— bent over the cables in the shaft’s companionway. It took a moment for him to fathom what the alien was attempting. The Re’tu’s powerful arachnid mandibles were chewing into the governor cables controlling the elevator’s counterweight. Even as he watched, it bit clean through one of the strands. There was a rattling twang that echoed down the shaft and the car lurched.
Teal’c got up and came at the Re’tu. It fended him off with two legs, kicking out aimlessly. With a two-hand strike, the Jaffa broke one of the limbs cleanly, drawing a snarl of pain from his foe. The alien tore apart the remaining counterweight cable and let it snap.
The Jaffa saw it coming and grabbed on to the steel frame of the car. The slab of cast iron counterbalancing the elevator dropped into the dark and with nothing to hold it in check, the lift instantly did the opposite, slamming upwards as the weight fell. The pulleys screamed and spat streams of fat yellow sparks. Acceleration forced Teal’c down and he fought against it, still desperately trying to engage the alien.
The levels of the shaft flashed past in a blur as the elevator rose like a bullet along a gun barrel. The Jaffa heard Duarte’s voice again. “Emergency brakes!” he called. “Manual switch right there! On the roof!”
He saw it instantly; a lever painted in black and yellow stripes. If he could reach it, he could throw it, halt the rise, stop the creature reaching the upper levels of the base; and then he remembered that the alien seemed perfectly capable of understanding the Tau’ri language.
The Re’tu stamped on his hand as Teal’c went for the switch, blocking him. The Jaffa threw punches at the alien’s thorax, and there were satisfying crunches of bony matter where his fists landed.
A backward swipe from one of the insectoid’s legs hit him in the ribs and Teal’c felt a bone break. The creature pulled back, disengaging, and tore a device from its belt. The Jaffa had seen similar objects before— they belonged to the race that had built the Chaapa’ai, the ones Daniel Jackson called ‘Ancients’. The small pod flipped open and he caught sight of a display, like a signal reading, growing stronger as the elevator came closer to the surface.
Abruptly the pod gave off a strident chime and the alien growled. The Re’tu flashed Teal’c a last look and then stabbed a control on the device. There was a flash of blue-white radiation, and the arachnid vanished.
He lurched forward and yanked the manual switch, activating the emergency brakes, and with a hellish screech the elevator vibrated to a halt.
Teal’c lay on the roof of the car, panting and furious.
Jade heard the familiar metallic sound of a gate chevron locking into place and she broke from her cover, sprinting quickly around the side of the embarkation ramp. She was tired and her muscles were singing with fatigue, but in a few moments she would be away. The woman gripped the rails on the ramp and vaulted over to land at the base as the second chevron locked.
“That’s far enough, missy.” The voice was such a shock that she actually reacted with a physical jerk, as if she had been slapped.
Jack O’Neill was halfway up the ramp, squatting in a crouch. He stood and in his hand was a P90 submachine gun aimed squarely at her chest. He took a step towards her and nodded at the Tok’ra data-rod. “Turn that thing off and give it up.”
Behind him a third symbol swung into place and the chevron lit with orange light.
For a moment, Jade’s voice fled her and she gulped. When she finally spoke, it was with none of the control or strength she’d used on Jackson or Carter. “If you don’t move, when the wormhole opens you’ll be caught in the plume.”
“This isn’t going to get that far, Hannah. If that is your real name.”
“Please let me go!” It came out in a sudden shout, a cry of pleading.
A fourth glyph locked. “Nope,” said O’Neill. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Jade shook her head. “You wouldn’t fire on me, I’m—” Her voice caught and she hesitated for a second, framing her words. “I’m an unarmed woman,” she concluded.
The man took careful aim. “I’m just about ready to do whatever I have to. You put my life, the lives of all my friends, heck, maybe even my planet in jeopardy. I am so not in a good mood right now.”
She looked up as the fifth chevron flashed into life. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. That’s a soldier’s duty.”
He heard the tone in her voice, the pain and the hurt. “Is that what you are? A soldier?”
Jade felt the fight go out of her; all the energy to resist drained away and she felt hollow and abandoned. “I don’t know what I am any more.”
The Stargate’s sixth chevron locked. “Last chance,” said O’Neill.
“Yes,” said Jade, raising the data-rod. She tapped the activation stud and the emitter winked out. The dialing sequence aborted and with it the gate rolled to a silent halt, the chevrons fading into darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Who is this woman?” Doctor Lee ran the hand-held scanner over the overnight bag on the dresser beside the unkempt bed. His voice had an air of awe to it. “And where did she get all these wonderful toys?”
Sam Carter glanced up at him from across the small room. “She tried to use those ‘wonderful toys’ to blow up the SGC, Bill. Try to keep that in mind.”
Lee grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s just that… Well, this technology, it’s more advanced than anything I’ve seen in a long time.”
The Major had to admit that the scientist had a point. The search of Wells’ room in the base officer’s quarters had already turned up a handful of items of decidedly unusual hardware. It was Lee who had detected the presence of an exotic device attached to the inside of the room’s door, and thanks to his quick thinking Sam had been able to deactivate it with a low-range pulse from a zat. She cast a careful eye over the device; it was Goa’uld, made in the shape of a scarab beetle, with an emitter spot where the insect’s head would have been. If they had forced open the door, a DNA scanner on the device would have registered an intruder and unleashed a single-shot, high-band energy discharge that would have reduced everything in the room to ashes.
The scarab-guard lay on the room’s bed along with all the other pieces of kit they’d found so far. There was a p
istol, a construct of glass and lightweight silver alloy, probably some kind of coherent-energy weapon. A device that resembled the wireless datapads used at some Air Force research centers, only much smaller; Sam had toyed with it a little, but there were encryptions blocking access to the pad’s memory and she didn’t want to chance triggering any security programs that might wipe it. There was the sensor-baffle from the woman’s bag, which steadfastly blanked the attempts by every scanner they had to penetrate it. Then the vials of thick, mercury-like liquid. Carter picked one up and held it to the light. The fluid inside moved sluggishly, glittering. At least she could be sure of what this was; the tubes contained a suspension of inert nanites, the tiny molecule-sized robots floating in a processor matrix awaiting commands to activate them. They bore some resemblance to Replicator design, but not enough to convince Sam that those artificial beings were behind this. Rather, the nanites looked like a back-engineered copy of Replicator tech, but how they’d been made was beyond her.
“Reloads,” offered Lee. “Wells must have been planning to use them to top up her nanite stores when she went off shift.” The scientist had already tested the remains of the micromachines that had eaten Carter’s P90 and determined that they were the same strain as those in the vials.
“Lucky for us we caught her before that.” Sam frowned. “If she’d had a full tank there’s not telling what she could have done.” She thought of the initial medical scan she’d seen of the spy, and the displays showing the reservoirs for the nanites in her bone structure. Carter’s skin crawled as she thought about having those tiny robots scrabbling around inside her.
She put the vial back down and her eyes fell to the biggest of the items, sitting on the center of the blanket, ticking quietly to itself. It was translucent and smooth, slightly warm to the touch, with a striated surface made of clean, careful angles. The object unfolded at a seamless hinge along its surface, coming open like a clamshell. One inner surface was a touch-responsive keypad, another what seemed to be a multifunction display screen. At the moment, the pod showed a gently moving waveform and a stream of text made from blocky alien letters. Carter couldn’t read it, but she’d seen the language of the Ancients enough times to recognize it. She held the object up to her eyes. “What is this?” she whispered, on some level hoping it might actually answer her.
“I don’t know about you,” said Lee, “but I am itching to have a go at that thing with a screwdriver. Metaphorically speaking, I mean.”
She shook her head slowly. “Teal’c said he saw the Re’tu use something like this just before it teleported away. I’m guessing it could be a locator for some sort of beaming device, but it seems too intricate just for that.”
“Maybe it actually is the transporter, not the beacon.”
“Inside something no bigger than a pineapple? That’s a bit of a stretch.”
Lee gave her a look. “After all the stuff we’ve seen, you’re going to choose now to start thinking small?”
“It’s obviously Ancient,” she replied. “But I’ve never seen anything close to this level of complexity in their relics.”
“Now you have,” said the scientist. “I mean, think about it, Sam. All the artifacts the gate-builders created, all the ones we’ve recovered over the years, they’re the commonplace ones. The stuff they made a lot of.”
She smirked. “I’d hardly say a Stargate’s a commonplace piece of hardware.”
“To us, yeah!” said Lee, “But not to them.” He pointed at the pod. “Remember that time-loop device you found on P4X-639? We haven’t come across any more of those yet. That thing could be something like that, some kind of ultra-rare one of a kind…” He paused. “Well, two-of-a-kind, if the Re’tu had one as well.”
Sam watched the lines of text moving back and forth. “I need to show this to Daniel.” She carefully closed the device and placed it in a padded case. “When you’re done, get all this other gear down to the lab. We’ll run some tests, see what we can figure out.”
“Where’s Doctor Jackson now?” Lee asked as the armed airman at the door stepped aside to let her leave.
“The holding cells,” said Sam. “Talking to the prisoner.”
She looked up as he entered the room, and the expression on her face was the same one he’d seen in the infirmary. She turned away, suddenly seeming smaller in the featureless orange jumpsuit they’d dressed her in. “I’m so sorry, Daniel.”
Jackson’s lip curled and he tried— and failed— to keep an angry tone from his voice. “You’re sorry. About what? Planting a naquada bomb on the base or lying to me about who you really are?”
“All of the above. Please understand, everything I’ve done has been for right reasons. I know you’ll find that hard to believe, but it’s true.”
“Hard to believe?” Daniel repeated, his annoyance shifting to incredulity. “Yeah, I guess when someone I thought I had a genuine connection with turns out to be an interstellar terrorist, I would have a tough time of it!”
“I’m not a terrorist,” she retorted.
“Oh, pardon me.” He sat down opposite her, across the table that was the room’s only other furniture apart from the two chairs. “You’re a ‘freedom fighter’, is that it?”
“In a way,” she admitted. “But not the way you’d think of it.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re not.” He leaned forward. “You’re not Hannah Wells from Kansas City, you’re not a US Air Force major or a doctor.” Unspoken words boiled at the back of Daniel’s throat; he knew he was supposed to be calm and maintain an air of detachment addressing a prisoner, but this woman had cut into him in a way that he couldn’t readily explain and now to learn it was all part of some subterfuge… It made him furious. “And you are not… You are not Sha’re. So you can quit mimicking her body language.”
A ghost of surprise passed over the woman’s face; then her expression shifted again, and it was as if she had discarded a mask. “You’re right. I apologize. I had no right to do that. I know how much you loved her.” She leaned forward and ran her slender fingers through her hair, the handcuffs around her wrists clinking as she moved.
Daniel’s brow furrowed. Where her fingers traced through her dark hair they left streaks of henna-red, the coloration altering beneath her passing touch. “How are you doing that?” he demanded.
“Nervous habit,” she admitted. “There are photo-molecular pigments in the follicles. I can shift my hair color just by thinking about it.”
“Another kind of lie?” Jackson folded his arms. “What color hair were you born with?”
She eyed him. “To be honest with you, I don’t remember.”
Jackson returned her gaze. He was losing patience with her obfuscation. “You’re going to be held here indefinitely. You’ve been classified as an enemy combatant under the provisions of the Homeworld Security Act. I have some questions for you, starting with this one. Where is the real Major Wells?”
“She’s safe. She hasn’t been injured. Ite-kh won’t harm her, as long as you release me.”
“Ite-kh?” He considered the name. “The Re’tu?” Daniel leaned back. “And just who are you and Ite-kh working for?” From the corner of his eye he could see the observation balcony above them, the compartment dark behind a sheath of mirrored glass.
“The same people as you. The people of this planet.”
“What are you, an agent of the Trust? Perhaps part of the rogue NID elements we’ve been tracking?”
“I’m as human as you are, Daniel.”
He nodded. “That, at least, appears to be partly true. At first we thought you might be a Re’tu genetic construct, maybe even an android.”
“I have had some…enhancements,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t make me inhuman.” She leaned forward. “I am not your enemy.”
“You kidnapped an innocent woman and stole her identity, infiltrated this facility in collaboration with an aggressive alien life form, not to mention assaulting several Air Fo
rce personnel, plus all the lying and bomb-planting stuff.” He took a breath. “You tell me what that is, if it isn’t the behavior of an enemy.”
Behind the one-way mirror of the observation tier, O’Neill watched with a fixed scowl and folded his arms. The door behind him opened and Carter came in, a sheaf of papers in her hands.
“Colonel,” she began. “I have some preliminary intel on the prisoner.”
Without taking his eyes off Jackson and the woman, he nodded. “Let’s hear it.”
“There’s a serious mismatch between the files in the base computers and the hard-copy records in Wells’s service jacket at headquarters.” She brandished two sheets of print-out, one showing an image of the woman in the cell below in Air Force uniform and another of a woman of similar age and build in the same outfit. “Wells, Major Hannah Geraldine, USAF Medical Corps. This is the real person, sir. According to airline records, she flew in to Denver, rented a car and drove to Colorado Springs. At some point between there and reporting in to Cheyenne Mountain she was replaced by that woman.” Sam pointed at the prisoner.
“And our files were hacked to make the substitution seem kosher,” he said grimly. “Kinsey’s going to shut us down for sure when he finds out about this.” Jack threw a glance at Carter. “Any clue as to the status of the actual Major Wells?”
“We’ve got Air Force Intelligence and local law enforcement on the ground in Colorado searching. I also called in a couple of favors with my cousin in the Federal Marshal’s office and had him put out a back-channel sweep for anything on Wells or…” She pointed. “Or her.”