STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust (35 page)

Who knew what alien horrors had been fitted to this vessel?

“And the Ash Eater is his newest toy.”

“Newest? Oh no… You have merely returned to him what was lost.”

“Lost or stolen?”

“Ah, First Prime. You are an inquisitive soul. I feel that you and I would get on well, under different conditions.” Pa’Nakht must have operated a control, because a moment later Teal’c felt the frame that held him aloft shiver a fraction, then begin to turn. “But we can no longer be distracted by such talk.”

The rotation was not fast. It took several seconds for him to turn ninety degrees, away from where Pa’Nakht was keeping his devices. The ka’epta of surgeries walked with him, slowly pacing back into his field of view just as the frame swiveled him around to face what could only have been the pride of Pa’Nakht’s collection.

As soon as Teal’c saw it, he knew that things had taken a turn for the worse. The devices Pa’Nakht had shown him, had used on him, were disturbing enough, but this creation was more awful than anything he had yet seen on the throneship. It hung before him on a jointed gantry, an insane tangle of limbs, like a great insect or spider cast from chrome and gold and black glass.

Every one of its limbs was different in size and form, and each was tipped with some nightmarish cluster of needles or blades or gleaming probes. As Teal’c watched, horrified, the machine quivered slightly, as if waking.

Even that slight motion was livid with malign intent.

“I cannot tell you how my master acquired this device,” Pa’Nakht told him. The masked man’s voice, for the first time, had changed. It seemed a little somber, now, as if he were feeling just a hint of regret. “The circumstances are too disturbing. Even I have tried to forget them.”

“What is it?”

“It has no name. As for its purpose…” The mask tilted a fraction, and the eyes in that blank metal face gleamed with strange desire. “Wait a while. You will see.”

As he spoke, the jointed gantry began to unfold, hinging open in complex, inhuman geometries.

Teal’c tugged at his bonds, heaved desperately at the restraints holding his arms, his ankles. If there was any structural weakness there he had to find it, to bring his strength to bear on it in these final few seconds. To get even one limb free could be his salvation.

But there were no weaknesses. The frame held firm, as the machine spread its metal arms to welcome him, bright needles and mirrored blades sparking in the chamber’s harsh light.

As the instruments came close, a scalpel passed close enough to Teal’c for him to see his reflection in it, his own dark eye staring back at him. A second later, the razors touched him. He could feel how cold they were. How sharp.

“Do not struggle,” Pa’Nakht told him, his voice strangely gentle. “The machine will compensate, and move with you. This, in turn, will cause you more pain.”

“Your concern is touching.”

“Hush, First Prime, and be still. It begins.”

The chamber shivered.

At first, Teal’c thought that the machine had touched the frame he hung on, that some part of its mechanics had struck the restraint gantry hard enough to shake him. But then he heard a faint rattle from behind. The vibration had caused some of Pa’Nakht’s devices to move against one another.

The machine must have felt it too. It retracted its arms a fraction and held itself motionless, as if waiting to see what was going to happen. Teal’c felt the blades and the needles leave his skin.

It was true, then. The ship had shaken.

The force required to move several thousand tons of starship was not inconsiderable, and Teal’c knew the gut-deep lurch of an entry into hyperspace too well to mistake the shiver for that. No, the ship had been moved by some external force. An attack, or a collision.

As the thought struck him, another shudder coursed through the frame, and the chamber lights flickered. Teal’c felt the slightest shift in the position of his bonds, and readied himself.

The machine shrank away from him. Its motions were so fluid, so lifelike that he found himself wondering if there were some sort of mind within its metal shell. Then he realized that, if there were, he had no desire to know anything about it.

Behind him, he heard Pa’Nakht cross the chamber. There was the sound of a door sliding open. “Jaffa,” the ka’epta said urgently. “To me, quickly.”

Teal’c tensed his right arm, exerted leverage in a very specific manner. The restraint around his wrist, its electrical connection to the frame reset during the power fluctuation, shifted.

He pulled, then put all his strength into his right shoulder. There was a soft cracking of fractured metal, and the restraint came away.

A tiny fragment of systemry fell, and rattled against the hard floor.

The restraint was heavy, a thick band of gold around his forearm. Teal’c lifted it back into position, holding the arm where it had been as more footfalls sounded.

He listened closely. From the weight and speed of the steps he knew that two Jaffa warriors had entered the chamber. Both carried staff weapons. Neither had his helm raised. Both of them had been surprised by the shaking of the deck, and neither had quite recovered.

“Guard this man,” said Pa’Nakht. “I will discover the cause of this disturbance.”

“By your will.”

One of them men came around in front of Teal’c, his staff weapon open and aimed. The other was behind him. Teal’c watched the man in front for a few moments, knowing he didn’t have long, but needing to prepare. He closed his eyes, formed a mental map of the chamber; himself at the centre, the two Jaffa in their positions ahead and behind. Pa’Nakht outside, unaware of the partial failure of his restraint system.

Teal’c opened his eyes, and let his gaze flick to the piece of metal that had fallen from the frame.

The Jaffa in front of him followed his eyes, saw the fragment, and stooped to pick it up. “What is this?”

Teal’c slammed his arm down, the edge of the restraint band crashing with shattering force into the back of the warrior’s skull.

The man jerked horribly, a massive neural shock straightening his muscles at the instant of death. Teal’c’s hand, still on its pulverizing downward arc, closed around the staff weapon as it fell from the warrior’s grip. He jabbed it backwards, letting it slide between his fingers for an instant before catching it again around the control stud.

The weapon went off, the recoil almost taking it back out of Teal’c’s grip. There was an explosive, meaty impact from behind him, and the crashing of an armored body being blasted back against a wall.

The warrior in front of him hadn’t even hit the floor yet. As Teal’c raised the staff, the man who had once held it slumped, the last scraps of life shivering out of him.

Teal’c raised the staff, still held the wrong way round, and tilted it at the frame behind him. He hesitated, adjusted his aim a fraction, and fired.

The plasma bolt detonated at the point where the frame met the floor. Teal’c had judged that the power feed for the restraints would emerge there, and his guess was rewarded a second later when the metal bands dropped instantly away from him. He almost fell, the shift in weight and position stumbling him, then regained his balance and moved away.

The base of the frame was on fire, black smoke stinking up into the air.

The blast had scalded his back and legs, but the injuries could be easily endured. He flipped the staff around and caught it in firing position, just as Pa’Nakht stepped back through the door.

Teal’c fired. The ka’epta ducked aside, surprisingly nimble, the bolt shearing through his shoulder armor but not slowing him down. His slender, gloved hand darted out to his collection of devices, ranged along a curved metal table.

He snatched up the green stone artifact, swung it around under Teal’c’s arc of fire and towards his head. “Dream,” he said.

Teal’c felt something slide past his mind — an instant of unutterable beauty — but his reactions were already in control. He ripped the device from Pa’Nakht’s grip with his free hand and then swung the staff around in a blurring arc. The emitter slammed into the ka’epta’s mask, spinning him about.

The blade of the dream-maker was not sharp, but Teal’c was very strong. When he hammered it into the back of Pa’Nakht’s neck, between the back of his mask and the top of his shoulder armor, it went clean through him.

Pa’Nakht gave a choked sigh, and folded up. Teal’c let him fall. Perhaps, in his final moments, the man had experienced one of his own terrible, beautiful dreams, his life fluttering out in the face of some unimaginable ecstasy.

Or maybe he had just died. The result was the same.

Teal’c went to the door, and peered out into a black corridor. He heard running footsteps, but they were distant and going away from him. There was no-one in sight. He stepped out of the chamber and reached for the door control.

Then he paused, and found himself looking back into the circular room. The three bodies were quite still, and there was a small fire guttering at the base of the restraint frame. The glittering torture machine, with its insane array of limbs, was hunched against the curving wall.

Teal’c lifted the staff weapon, aimed it carefully, and began to fire into the chamber.

The plasma bolts it emitted were constrained in such a way that most of their power was released in violent, armor-shattering explosions. But they were also searingly hot. In Teal’c’s expert hands, the staff turned the interior of the chamber to an inferno in moments.

When he was sure everything within would be destroyed by the fire, Teal’c closed and locked the door. Pa’Nakht and his collection of dreadful artifacts would do no more harm.

Now that he was free, his first priority was to locate Major Carter. When he had last seen her, she was in the columned hall, on one of Neheb-Kau’s personal decks. He would have to begin searching for her there.

First, of course, he would have to determine both where the hall was, and in fact where
he
was. Amidst the throneship’s maze of oppressive, tomb-like corridors and chambers, it was difficult to get his bearings.

Teal’c began to make his way along the corridor, pacing carefully at first and then, when he realized that there was no-one in his immediate vicinity, at a steady trot.

He reached a junction, and paused. The three other corridors leading away looked almost identical, although one was shorter than the others. Teal’c chose that way, and had just started down the passageway when the deck jolted hard under him.

This was no mere shiver. Something had exerted a very sizeable force on the ship.

It felt as though the jolt had originated from within the vessel.

He set off again, noting the way that the lights were starting to flicker and dim around him. This confirmed his intuitions somewhat, and also caused his pace to increase. Internal damage to a starship was never good news for those within. When that damage was enough to cause the power to fluctuate, and set off measureable vibrations in the decks, then the situation was truly one to be feared.

He rounded another corner, and almost ran into a group of slaves.

They were just emerging from a doorway. Teal’c counted six of them, four men and two women, their heads shaved and their bodies almost naked. It seemed that Neheb-Kau enjoyed not just the worship of his subjugates, but also their degradation.

The sight of them tore at him. For their part, the fact that he was still dressed in his battered civilian outfit seemed to offer them no comfort. It was not a surprise. No matter how he was dressed, he was an armed Jaffa, and to be feared.

And feared he was. The group dropped, as one, to their knees.

“Rise,” he told them. “And quickly. You are in great danger.”

“My Lord,” a woman whispered, not looking up. “What is your will?”

“I am no-one’s Lord,” he replied. “This vessel has suffered great damage. It would be wise to seek a place of safety.”

The slaves looked at each other nervously. “I… I do not understand,” the woman said.

“Listen to me. If you wish to live, go to the glider bays. Find a ship and leave this vessel.”

The woman glanced nervously back at her companions. “My Lord, none of us can fly.”

“Then find someone who can.” He stepped past her, then paused. “What deck number is this?”

“Forty-two, my Lord.”

“Thank you. Now go, and heed no-one else.” He tipped his head to her, in deference. “Follow your own will.”

Once he knew what deck he was on, finding his way to the columned hall was not hard. For all its funereal décor, like most Goa’uld technology the throneship was basically a standard design, handed down and copied over hundreds of generations. It had been heavily modified, but even that could not alter its basic layout.

Before long, Teal’c had climbed up through the decks to the hall. He could have used a ring transporter and been whisked there in an instant, but the power fluctuations had been getting steadily worse over the past few minutes, and he no longer trusted the system to take him apart and put him back together in precisely the right order.

The gold-clad Royal Guards were gone when he got there. In fact, throughout his travels through the ship he had seen almost no-one, and been easily able to avoid any Jaffa he had encountered.

Perhaps most of the Jaffa on board had all been diverted to damage control duties. This was not a comforting thought.

He made his way into the hall, heading for the great golden doors at the end. The floor shook under him again when he was partway there, but this time the movement was followed by a distant, thunderous roar, and then a far stronger jolt than he had yet felt almost had him off his feet. The entire ship seemed to tilt. Several of the burning lanterns tipped from their stands, spilling their flames across the floor, and there was a hefty splitting noise from above Teal’c’s head. He ducked to the side as a coffin-sized slab of ceiling hinged down and exploded against the marble.

The ship was coming apart.

From behind him, he heard voices. He ducked behind the nearest pillar and waited, as running footfalls drew closer.