Retaliation (3 page)

“We’ve had patrols out, try-ing to discourage them.” “They’re just sad,” Skaara said. “We’ve had jackals breaking into our storehouses for weapons-“ “You have arsenals?” O’Neil said in surprise.

“Lieutenant Kawalsky explained about keeping our weapons safe and combat ready,” Skaara said.

“Better to keep them off the streets and out of the wrong hands,” the colonel agreed. “But you also have to protect the weapons. My advice is to post a twenty-four-hour guard-and use the most dependable sol-diers you have.” Skaara sighed. “If I use those men to guard our guns, who will be left to guard the streets?”

It was nearly noon as Daniel Jackson strolled the company streets of the terrestrial base camp. He was intentionally late for General West’s arrival. Daniel didn’t like the man, having had run-ins with him be-fore. And although he wanted to talk to the general, he wasn’t about to stand hanging around through a mili-tary inspection. A dedicated civilian, Daniel had no in-terest in “playing soldier,” as he put it.

Daniel had walked from the city of Nagada, a dusty trip across the desert. The hood on his robe of native homespun was up to protect his fair skin from the double suns of Abydos. He’d just finished the cool drink he’d cadged in the mess tent, glanced at his watch, and figured it was time to put in an appearance. Although Daniel noticed a little more activity than usual in the streets, no one had told him the cause. So when he reached the open square around the pyramid and the downed spaceship that covered it, he started past the Marine guards with a casual wave.

“Halt!” The order came in both English and some-what mangled Abydan. I don’t have time for whatever soldier boy happy horseshit they’re up to, Daniel thought, taking another step. The harsh snick! of bullets being chambered warned Daniel of his error. He stopped, glancing around to find at least four rifles being aimed at him.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

“We got a special on body bags,” a hard-faced Ma-rine noncom responded. “One to every customer who breaches that perimeter. Free.” “Yeah, they’re dying to get ‘em,” another Marine added. “Look, I’m in a hurry.” Daniel quickly moved his hands, nearly got shot, and throttled back to slow mo-tion as he slid down his hood to reveal his face and Earthman’s blond hair. “I’m supposed to be meeting General West,” he said, not mentioning his tardiness.

“Oh, it’s him,” one of his Marine captors muttered in disgust. The noncom’s face didn’t change. “Send for the El-tee,” he ordered, and one of his men set off.

At least, Daniel noticed, they weren’t pointing their rifles at him anymore.

Jack O’Neil’s aide, a young lieutenant named Charlton, came to collect Daniel. As they moved off toward the pyramid, the offended guest demanded, “So what the hell is going on here?”

“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Charlton stared in disbe-lief. “We had a raid through the StarGate just as we were expecting General West. A bunch of Horus guards came through. They nearly nailed the general, and did kill several Marines and Abydan militiamen. They could be still around the camp, wearing captured local desert gear.” He fingered the sleeve of Daniel’s robe. “Any locals with their hoods up are immediately suspect.”

Daniel, who’d just been about to raise his hood again, stopped. “Oh,” he said. “It’s been a hell of a mess,” Charlton went on. “Searching for these guys has completely screwed up our schedule. We’re only about to start the inspection now.”

“Damn!” Daniel exclaimed. Whether it was for the incursion, the deaths, or being trapped in the inspection after all, even he couldn’t say. As the search for the infiltrators went on at lower gear, General West emerged again from the downed starcraft to see just what the Earthmen had been doing on the planet Abydos. The terrestrial base camp had been established on a rocky outcrop some miles from the city of Nagada and its quartzite mines, with hexagonal earthworks surrounding the pyramid that housed the Abydos StarGate. To West, the locale looked like the butt end of beyond, a godforsaken plateau surrounded by reddish-yellow sand dunes.

West’s spirits weren’t lifted when he saw Lieu-tenant Charlton approaching with the lone Earthling in residence on Abydos, Daniel Jackson. The Egyptolo-gist’s wayward genius might have deciphered the cryptic inscriptions that allowed West’s research team to unlock the ten-thousand-year-old artifact Jackson had named the StarGate. But ever since he’d wangled a place on the reconnaissance through the portal, Jackson had become a loose cannon. He’d gone native, marrying Sha’uri, daughter of a local chieftain. The two of them, with the aid of Sha’uri’s brother Skaara, had played important parts in destroying the half-human, half-alien god-king Ra. But then they’d nearly wrecked West’s attempts to mine the strange golden quartz found on Abydos- the mineral that fueled all of Ra’s enigmatic technology.

“General.” The civilian slouched up, apparently dressed in a bathrobe, to shake West’s hand. After O’Neil’s military courtesies, the contrast couldn’t have been greater.

West suffered the familiarity. “Sorry you were delayed, Doctor. But you’re right in time for the start of our inspection.”

Jackson’s eyes glazed in palpable boredom.

West was very interested to see how the expedi-tionary force had handled the latest attack from the former overlords of Abydos. The past week had been spent repairing the damage of invasion from the alien starship. Tents had been replaced to house a much smaller force. New strongpoints had been created, minefields laid. But there were still slagged areas where energy weapons had melted solid rock.

Wreck-age from crashed udajeets, the enemy’s antigravity fliers, was still being examined and removed.

And, of course, the hulk of the immobilized starcraft loomed over the whole base like an unspoken threat. When the vessel had landed, it had enlarged the area of the Abydos pyramid by acres-and obliterated a quarter of the former base camp. West tried not to think of the tents, equipment-and men-who had disappeared under the craft’s bulk. The general’s concern for the expeditionary force, heightened by the sneak attack that had almost killed him, abated somewhat as he conducted his inspection. Morale among the mixed-service garrison was high- not surprising, under O’Neil’s command.

West found the camp defenses tight, the equipment spotless. Techs were even working to repair some of the vehicles destroyed when Hathor’s ship had con-fronted advancing troops.

“Commendable,” he told O’Neil. “You’re doing very well, Colonel.” “With what I’ve got,” O’Neil finished for him. “I know why you don’t want to send replacements. But did you have to take away the best of my old Abydos hands? I could really use Feretti and Kawalsky-that’s not a slight on Charlton here.” The young lieutenant stood straighter. “It’s just that members of the original team have better connection with the locals. With them transferred back to Earth, we’ve had to depend more on Dr.

Jackson.” “That’s a valid security concern,” West replied. “But believe me, those men are doing more good where they are right now. If I can’t give you men, I will send more equipment. After this morning I see more of the dangers you’re dealing with.”

If he’d followed his own wishes, West would have recalled the troops from Abydos and buried the Star-Gate, closing a dangerous doorway of opportunity for an attack on Earth. But he couldn’t do that without de-priving his country-and his world-of the techno-logical benefits of Abydos quartz. So he allowed the danger, both military and personal.

The general had earned his reputation-and his stars-by being an expediter, by making things happen.

That was not a way to make friends. The fact was, there were lots of people hiding in the bushes with baseball bats, waiting for a crack at West.

And this debacle on Abydos might just have given West’s enemies their opportunity. Brigade-sized assets blasted down to a heavy battalion-and for what? A “space program” with only one known desti-nation, vulnerable to counterattack from at least one other planet-probably others. West had to admit that he’d severely miscalculated the situation on Abydos. To develop the mines at Nagada, worked by Abydan muscle power, he’d brought in a company with experience both in the Third World and in intelligence circles. But the United Mining Car-tel had made a mess of things. They’d nearly pushed the Abydans to rebellion-under the unlikely leader-ship of Daniel Jackson. The general had even been pushed to replace Jack O’Neil as commander on Abydos-UMC had com-plained that O’Neil was too partial to the natives. But O’Neil’s replacement, General Francis Keogh, had been about to start a shooting war when the spaceship Ra’s Eye had appeared-commanded by yet another ancient Egyptian deity.

Between his overeagerness to get the wonder crystal and his underestimation of the enemy, West had opened the door for disastrous losses on Abydos. Hawk-masked Horus guards had ventured through the StarGate to attack Earth itself. Luckily, the alien incursion had been contained within the former missile silo where Earth’s StarGate was now located. More troubling was the problem of explaining away the losses in the Abydos fiasco- how hundreds of soldiers could die in the midst of peacetime.

But the fighting had left a new treasure on Aby-dos-a damaged spacecraft whose weaponry could destroy tanks the way a human swatted flies. If West could bring home a starship, even a damaged one, it might make up for his earlier miscalculations.

“Have you made any progress deciphering infor-mation aboard the wrecked craft?” the general asked.

“We’ve got something about the size of a large of-fice building,” Jackson replied. “And judging from the inscriptions, about half the doors are marked ‘Dan-ger-Do not enter.”

The young lieutenant serving as O’Neil’s aide spoke up a bit more diplomatically. “Sir, Ra’s empire seems to be a paperless culture. But we found several crystal slabs about four by five inches and a quarter of an inch thick, covered with hieroglyphics.”

“They were hard to miss, glowing in the dark,” Jackson added. “They seem to be miniature computers,”

Charlton went on. “Dr. Jackson and the Abydans have begun translating.”

“To begin with, we’ve gotten into some records about who was aboard,” Jackson explained. “You know about the Horus guards? They represented several... factions is the word, I guess.” He shrugged.

“The leaders are all names out of Egyptian mythology. Sebek-the crocodile-headed god. Apis, the bull god. Ram-headed Khnum.”

“And the commander, who I understand spoke to you?”

“The cat-headed goddess of good sex and deadly vengeance,” Jackson said.

“Hathor.”

“A rather odd combination,” West commented.

“Half of the stories about Hathor make her terribly fierce,” Jackson replied. “There’s a legend that Ra asked her to deal with some rebellious mortals, and she almost exterminated the human race. That seems to be rooted in fact-according to the secret archives in Nagada, Hathor was dispatched to put down a rebellion on a colony called Ombos, and covered that world in blood.” “Charming,” West said.

“On the other hand, you have tales like her involve-ment in the great court case between hawk-headed Horus and his uncle Set.”

“And what kind of head did Set have?” West said skeptically. “Nobody’s been able to identify it from the pictures’ Jackson said. “Some scholars have identified it a gazelle’s head. Others think it’s the pig-unclean flesh, and all that.”

“That’s a pretty wide range there,” Jack O’Neil said. Jackson shrugged. “That’s why a lot of people in the field just call it the typhonic beast. We don’t know what it is. Set is also covered all over in red hair-that’s an evil sign. As Egyptian culture went through the millennia, Set went from a brave warrior god de-fending Ra to the personification of evil, fighting Ra.”

He waved a hand. “Anyway, Set killed Horus’ fa-ther and stole the crown of Egypt. Ra was supposed to judge the case, but got offended by one of the other gods and refused to go on. Hathor got Ra in a good mood and the trial back on track by, well, flashing him.”

West shook his head. “This is what you spend your time translating?” “Actually, I spend my time trying to bring literacy back to this world-Ra tried to destroy all scribes and history. And I teach the younger people English, so they can deal with you and your people. They need all the help they can get.

Things are tough here on Abydos-“

“We’ll come to that,” West said decisively, cutting Jackson off. “It’s your call, O’Neil. How best can you protect our people from a pagan nympho-killer and those boy scouts with blast-lances?”

“Maybe you should remember, General. Those boy scouts have pulled our asses-and your chestnuts-out of the fire several times now.” Jackson glared. O’Neil spoke up, eager to furnish his wish list. “If you can’t give me men, I’ll take vehicles. We need to expand the perimeter here. I want long-range patrols.

For all his annoying editorial opinions, Dr. Jackson has pointed out how little we still know about this world.”

The general nodded.

“I could use more Humvees,” O’Neil went on. “And a couple of helicopters.” He glanced at West, matching his poker face. “General Keogh’s chopper contingent was completely destroyed. We already have foot patrols in the nearer desert. If we extend long-range patrols out there, I’d like to have the ability to back them up.”

“Is there some reason for patrolling so vigorously?” O’Neil pointed westward. “As the general knows, we established a sizable cemetery out that way.” Even his voice became expressionless. “Certain of the locals have disturbed the remains.”

West stopped and whirled on his junior officer. “Cannibalism?” “No, sir,” Lt. Charlton spoke up.

“Grave robbing. They thought we buried personal effects with our dead.”

The general’s frown deepened. Such practices suggested that many in Nagada must be in dire straits. He decided on a change of plan.

“Dr. Jackson, do you think it would be possible to speak with the Council of Elders?” he asked abruptly. “I’d like to put an offer to them personally.” “Are you kidding?” Jackson said. “They’d love to have a chance to go face-to-face with you.”

A radioed warning from Skaara ensured that the Humvee caravan from the base camp got Nagada’s version of the red-carpet treatment. The Elders of the city stood lined up to greet the general in the huge gateway. Kasuf stood in the lead, eyes sharp as knives in his impassive, gray-bearded face. General West and the rest of his delegation of Earth-men were marched through town to the hall of the Elders.