STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust (31 page)

She glared at the back of his neck. “I’d rather die.”

“I have heard those words many times,” he told her, wearily. “It is surprising how difficult they are to put into practice.”

Past the transporter platform the hallway sprawled out into separate corridors. As Carter and her unwelcome guardians neared the platform a Jaffa hurried out from one of these, dropped to one knee in front of Kafra and uttered a short series of Goa’uld words.

“Rise,” said Kafra. “Speak the slave-tongue.”

“Forgive me, master.” The man got to his feet, but kept his head lowered. He looked very young.

Slave-tongue
?
wondered Carter. She never heard her own language referred to as that. Then again, the use of Earth languages among the Goa’uld had been a matter of fierce scholarly debate in Stargate Command for some time. Carter stored the fragment of knowledge away. She would torment Daniel with it later, she decided.

Should she ever see him again.

“Is your mission complete?” Kafra was asking the man. In response, the Jaffa shook his head, eyes still fixed on the floor.

“My lord Kafra, I have failed you.”

“Explain.”

“The sensors in the Vault still do not respond, and the ch’epta who entered have not returned.”

“Hm.” Kafra clapped his hand down on the man’s shoulder. “The inefficiency of the ch’epta is no reflection on you, Jaffa. When I have secured this prisoner, I shall give them cause to hurry.”

The man raised his head. “The God will fear for his prize.”

Prize?
Carter felt a jolt. That was the word Neheb-Kau had used, when he had heard of the approaching fleet.

“The God knows no fear,” Kafra was telling the young Jaffa. “Return to the Vault, and I shall meet you there.”

Carter stepped forwards. “Wait.”

“Behold, the God’s new plaything,” Kafra muttered, with exaggerated weariness. “What is it now, human?”

She ignored the insult, and spoke directly to the younger man. “The Casket… Look, when the sensors failed, did they register a drop in temperature before they went dead?”

He blinked at her. “They did!”

“Human,” Kafra grated, his eyes narrow. “What do you know of this?”

Carter returned his gaze. “Your master’s prize is loose in the Vault.”

“Impossible!” There was a shifting around her, a click and clatter of armor. The Jaffa surrounding her had reacted to her words, stepping slightly back, as if the very mention of such an event could cause them harm.

“Kafra, I was in there with it, before the Casket was sealed. The Pit of Sorrows was buried under hot sand for five thousand years, and we only found it because it was freezing cold. The Ash Eater feeds on energy, remember? Including heat from the air…”

The young Jaffa swallowed hard, and reached up to his neck armor. There was a series of sliding clicks as his helm rose to cover how pale his face had become.

“Listen to me, all of you.” Kafra was leaning in slightly, drawing the warriors closer. “Our lives are forfeit if Djetec learns of this. We will deal with it ourselves, quietly. Do you understand?”

“But the God —”

“Is concerned with other matters. And once we are successful, he will be doubly forgiving.” Kafra smiled. “Now we will go to the Vault, recapture the creature before it can do any harm, and be at our barracks before the throneship enters hyperspace. Agreed?”

“As you command,” the young man breathed, his voice unsteady behind the impassive serpent faces of his helm.

“I’m coming too,” said Carter.

Kafra tilted his head. “For what reason?”

“Because I can help. I know your technologies, remember. And you don’t want to have to waste a man guarding me while you could have us all down there.”

“I will stay,” said the man who had joked at her expense earlier. “It is my honor.”

“You have none,” growled Kafra. “Human, so be it.
Jaffa, kree!”

The Vault was only four decks down from the throne room, no more than a few hundred meters by corridor. The Jaffa ran all the way, their pace unhindered by the weight of their armor and the ungainly length of their staff weapons. It was a testament to their strength and stamina that they were not even out of breath by the time they reached their destination.

After her recent ordeals, Carter was in far poorer shape. When she got to the Vault’s hatchway the sprint, and the thought of what she might be heading into, almost took the strength from her.

She wasn’t even entirely sure why she had demanded to accompany the Jaffa. The idea of facing the Ash Eater a second time was, quite frankly, terrifying. The image of Anna Andersson’s body sliding into dust under her hands would not leave her, nor that of Greg Kemp’s wrecked face or Laura Miles’ vanished, crumbled arm. Oddly, though, it was the fate of Lucas Harlowe that disturbed her even more than the others, in that no trace of him had been found at all. Teal’c had found the powdered remnants of his gun at the foot of the ladder, but the man himself no longer existed, even as a shape. He was a couple of kilos of dust, nothing more.

And there was every possibility, given where she had fallen, that Carter had brought a sizeable component of him out of the Pit with her.

That thought caused her empty stomach to clench painfully. She winced, suddenly weak, and a wave of giddiness swayed her. She stumbled away from the Vault’s massive, armored hatch to steady herself against the nearest wall.

A shadow loomed next to her. It was Kafra. “I’m fine,” she told him.

“You are a danger to us.”

“I told you, I’m okay.” She fought the weakness down, and straightened up. He was peering at her carefully.

“When did you last consume food?”

“What? You think I’m
hungry?
”

“I think your species is weak, and must be replenished often.” He took something from his belt, and held it out to her. It was a small bar of yellowish matter, like modeling clay. “Eat.”

“Thanks,” she said, waving the bar away. “I’ll get drive-through.”

“Human, you will eat this and be sustained. Otherwise you endanger me and my Jaffa.”

She no longer had the strength to argue. She took the bar from him, nibbled off a corner. “There. I’m eating, okay?”

The stuff was sugary, with a slightly spicy tang. Not unpleasant. As Kafra turned away, Carter took a bigger bite, and then put the rest of the bar into her pocket as she chewed.

She watched him open a panel by the side of the hatch. Behind it, a slab of smooth, matt glass glowed softly. The Jaffa placed his palm flat against it, until it pulsed and gave a single, harsh chime.

The door slid aside, slowly, as if it was immensely heavy. Beyond it was more darkness. Carter sighed to herself, and rubbed the bridge of her nose absently. Neheb-Kau’s funereal choice of décor wasn’t improving her headache at all.

Lights flickered on behind the door. Carter walked over to get a better view, and saw a chamber being gradually revealed as a series of illuminated panels switched on in sequence. “At least there’s still power,” she said.

“These lights should have been on.” Kafra lowered his staff weapon from the vertical and stepped into the chamber. “The Vault’s sensors keep them lit, as long as there is life within.”

Carter went through just after him. The First Prime glanced back, and raised an eyebrow. He’d not been expecting her to be so eager, she thought. But then he didn’t know her very well.

With the others behind her, she followed Kafra into the Vault.

There was little to see. The Vault was roughly the size of the throne room, and its décor was not much different from the other chambers Neheb-Kau frequented, with dark, inward-sloping walls and a floor of glossy black marble. Armored hatches ranged along each side wall, and at the end of the chamber, raised on a stepped dais and lit by a ring of powerful beams, stood a squat golden pillar,

“The Casket,” she said. “He must have had a place set up for it, way before he got here.”

“My master has sought the Ash Eater for many lifetimes, human.” Kafra was pacing carefully forwards, his staff at the ready. “The empty space he kept for it reminded him of its loss.”

“Many lifetimes,” Carter repeated, under her breath. It was a vast understatement. Neheb-Kau had mentioned Ra keeping the Ash Eater as a pet, and Ra had been driven off Earth five thousand years earlier. Which meant that Neheb-Kau had been pining for his lost monster all that time, at least.

She could easily believe it. The Goa’uld were often single-minded to the point of mania, and with their host bodies continually maintained by their sarcophagi, or simply discarded in favor of new and prettier models, time didn’t have the same meaning for them as it did for humans. They simply continued, as they had always done; ageless and unchanging and utterly obsessive.

From what Carter could gather Neheb-Kau had found the Ash Eater on its lifeless homeworld, lost it to Ra somehow, and then spent five thousand years plotting to recover it. And now, thanks to a stray staff-blast, there was every chance he had just lost it again.

No wonder Kafra didn’t want him to find out.

The Casket was open; the cup at its top exposed, the cover retracted. “It’s gone.”

“Human…” Kafra was aiming his staff weapon at one of the side hatches, the last door on the left.

It was open.

Carter swallowed, and edged forwards. She reached out, put her hand into the open door, and spread her fingers.

“The air’s not cold. It’s not here.”

“You would feel it?”

“Oh yeah.” She remembered the chill of the Pit, suppressed a shudder, and then leaned into the doorway. As soon as she did so, she saw what lay on the chamber floor, and froze. “Kafra?”

“What do you see?”

“Could you come in here?” She glanced back outside, at the Jaffa waiting, staffs aimed, behind their First Prime. “Just you.”

As he entered, she stepped aside to let him see what she had spotted. On the floor, partially concealed around a corner, lay the withered, desiccated corpse of a man.

She stood for a few seconds, looking silently down at the body, then dropped slowly to crouch next to it. The man had been curled up when he had died, hands over his head. He lay on his left side. His back was against the wall.

The Ash Eater had reduced him to a papery, withered tatter, a stick-figure of powder and crumbling bone.

“One of the ch’epta,” said Kafra. He tapped the exposed skull with the toe of one boot, and the part he had touched sloughed and collapsed, a small cloud of dust rising from it. Carter got up, stepping back to avoid having the stuff on her skin again. She had borne too many dead already.

“How many were there?”

“Three.” Kafra was examining the door frame. “This mechanism has been destroyed. The ch’epta must have tried to seek refuge here.”

“So if it came through here after them, where did it go?” Carter moved past the corpse, around the corner and into the chamber beyond.

“Oh no,” she breathed. “Oh God, no…”

The chamber must have been a store for Neheb-Kau’s other treasures. Square columns of smooth black stone stood against the walls, waist-high, some bearing gleaming objects inside transparent cases. Several columns had been pulled to the floor, their contents dashed apart. Carter’s boots crunched on broken glass as she made her way forwards.

The other two ch’epta must have pulled everything they could down in front of the Ash Eater. It hadn’t done them any good. They were sprawled at the far end of the chamber, dark twists of sticks and powder and gaping, collapsing skulls.

Past them, light was spilling in from a hole in the thick metal wall, ragged and powdery and dripping dust and fragments. It looked like the Ash Eater had chewed its way clear through to the mechanical crawlspace, filled with ducts and crystalline conduits and the sickly blue glow of safety lighting.

“It must have stripped the energy from the molecules of the wall,” Carter whispered. “That’s incredible. I didn’t know it could do that.”

“There are lights in the crawlspace. Why are they not destroyed, as the door and the sensors were stripped of their power?”

“That’s what scares me. Kafra, these mechanical spaces — are all the decks connected by them?”

“Indeed.”

“Then we’re in really serious trouble. Neheb-Kau said that the Ash Eater is mindless, it’s a corpse. The only reason it wouldn’t take power from the lights here is if it sensed a bigger meal elsewhere. How far from here to the reactors?”

“Not far enough.” Kafra turned away from the light. “What can we do?”

“The Casket,” she replied. “Somehow, we’ve got to get it back in there.”

“The Casket no longer functions.”

“I know.” She moved past him, and out through the open hatch. “But maybe we can fix it.”

She headed back towards the dais. Behind her, Kafra emerged from the chamber. “Jaffa!” he called.

Carter crouched down next to the pillar’s base. There was a dark patch on its gleaming flank, rough and carbonized. The impact of the staff-blast. She ran her hands over it, felt a slight imperfection in the metal, and pressed. A panel slid aside, revealing a bank of glowing crystals.

Several of them were darkened, their surfaces crazed.

The other Jaffa had gathered around their First Prime. “You two,” he said, “will remain here. The rest will make their way to the reactor chamber, and watch for the demon’s arrival.”

“My Lord Kafra?” Carter recognized the voice of the youngest Jaffa. “What does the creature look like?”

“Like a black cloud,” she called back, over her shoulder. “When I saw it, that’s what it was like. And if you see it, don’t get anywhere near it. I think it’s got a long reach.”

She heard the man hurrying away, two of his fellows in tow. The other two must have been looking rather too nervous for Kafra’s liking. “Lower your helms, fools,” he snapped. The demon is far from here.”

“Then why do we remain?”