STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust (6 page)

Daniel was standing up, peering about. “What is this, emergency power?”

“Maybe there’s another relay,” said Carter. She got up and went over to the centre board. O’Neill watched her press several controls in sequence.

A wide panel in the centre of the console changed from being golden metal into a slab of what looked like illuminated glass.

“Whoah,” said O’Neill. “Carter, what did you just do?”

“I think this board is Sephotep’s test panel. Patch feeds come off a lot of the new systems and filter through data crystals to here, so I’m guessing…” She trailed off, then grinned. “Got it!”

He joined her at the console. The panel was alive with graphics; animated diagrams and graphs in sharp blue-white vector, streams of Goa’uld hieroglyphs rolling down like tickertape. “Can you read this?”

“I’m just looking at the pictures. Teal’c?”

O’Neill stepped aside to let the Jaffa get close to the panel. He kept his silence as the big man studied the graphics for several seconds.

“You are correct, Major Carter,” Teal’c said finally. “The panel monitors the systems data for this entire vessel. I believe Sephotep was recording this information continually before the power failed.”

“Does it say
why
the power failed?”

“The error was Sephotep’s. This vessel has many extra systems — an enhanced hyperdrive, sensors, weapons. Sephotep was attempting to activate too many at once.”

“Guys?” said Daniel.

“Wait.” Teal’c was scowling down at the panel, tracing a line of moving hieroglyphs with a fingertip. “Sephotep was readying the weapons to fire.”

“Holy…” O’Neill glanced reflexively towards the front of the ship, to where the temple would be if he’d been able to see though half a ton of loose rock. “He was lining up to fire on the refugees!”

“A strafing run,” Teal’c agreed. He straightened. “However, he could not have relayed that information back to Apophis.”

“Yeah, he’d be here already.”

“Ah, guys?” said Daniel again. He was near one of the forward boards, pointing down at the metal panels there. “I think this might be important…”

Teal’c darted forwards, startlingly fast. “A locator beacon.”

Carter ran over to join him. “Daniel? How long was this —”

“I noticed it blinking as soon as I looked over here.”

“Well switch it the hell off!” O’Neill poked his head through hatchway. The clouds above him were heavy, sluggish, and bluish sparks flickered from one to another. Lightning, he hoped.

“I cannot,” Teal’c replied. “Major Carter, disengage the phase relay.”

“Already trying…” There was a tight note to her voice that O’Neill didn’t like at all.

He ducked back in. “What?”

“No go, sir. It’s not built to be tripped manually.”

“Can’t you just pull some of those crystals out?”

She shook her head. “They lock when there’s power going through them.”

“Well, smash them or something!”

Carter stared at him. “I think that would be a really good way to detonate the generator.”

“O’Neill,” said Teal’c. “We must warn the refugees.”

“Next on my list.” He went for the hatch, stopped momentarily on the threshold. “Teal’c, you’re with me. Carter, find a way to kill the signal. If you have to, drop a grenade into that relay and run.”

“Understood, sir.”

He jumped out of the hatch, his boots crunching onto the plateau’s frosty surface. The wind had picked up, whipping at his uniform and stinging his face with sleet. “Next time, arctic gear,” he growled to himself. “Regardless.”

The temple was several hundred meters away, almost hidden behind boulders and jagged, broken ground. The clearest route to it was close to the edge of the cliff, which O’Neill didn’t like at all, not with the storm almost on top of him. Probably better than clambering through the boulders, though. “What do you think, Teal’c? This way?”

The man didn’t answer, just set off past O’Neill at a fast jog.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” O’Neill took a second to tighten the sling on his MP5, then began to follow the Jaffa.

It wasn’t easy. Teal’c didn’t seem to notice the weather at all, but O’Neill was being buffeted by the wind with every step. Having to squint against the sleet made things even more difficult. It was all he could do to keep up the pace.

There wasn’t any other option, though. The refugees needed to get through the gate
now
.

O’Neill forced his attention down to the stone beneath his boots, jogging forwards as fast as he could, only raising his head every few meters to gauge his progress. Teal’c was still ahead of him, already out of shouting distance. If that wasn’t bad enough, the gale must have been whistling through some rock formation close by, giving forth a rising whine that O’Neill was finding quite painful.

There was another sound, more familiar: the crackle of his radio demanding attention. He lowered his head to it. “Carter?”

Static hissed out at him for a moment, before wind-noise he had been hearing rose suddenly into a rippling shriek.

He’d heard that sound before.

There wasn’t even time to spin and face what was coming. O’Neill hurled himself forwards as the ground where he had been standing turned into a cloud of fire and shattered stone, a brutal explosion that sent him whirling through the air and straight towards the edge of the cliff.

If Jack
O’Neill hadn’t have jumped when he did, the shockwave from that blast would have pulverized him, shattered his insides. But in doing so he had given his body enough lift to be spun, by the blast and the freezing wind, to the cliff-edge and its frightening drop onto the killing ground below.

For one dreadful, airborne moment, all he could see in his future was a long dive and a messy impact, but then the hard edge of the cliff whirled up towards him and smashed heavily into his face and chest. The breath went out of him in a guttural whoop as his ribs compressed, then he was sliding wildly, grabbing at the rocks around him, feeling them slice his skin even through the deadening cold.

He managed to stop himself just before he ran out of plateau.

A second went past while he tried to remember how to breathe, how to think. He had fetched up on his belly, head and shoulders in mid air, and spent a short time staring down at the Stargate while pieces of cliff rained down past him. Then, when he had regained control of his lungs, he scrambled back a short distance and flipped himself over.

His gun had gone flying in the blast. He reached over to grab it, but then noticed that the magazine was gone, ejected or broken off. He threw the useless thing aside.

Teal’c appeared above him, reaching down to haul him upright. “Are you harmed?”

“I’m fine,” he croaked. “What the hell hit us?”

The Jaffa pointed, towards the temple. O’Neill saw a tiny sliver of dark metal in the sky, turning, executing a tight curve under the cloud layer. The screaming sound had faded, but he knew that respite was only temporary.

He keyed his radio. “Carter?”

“—
on out there? Colonel O’Neill, where
—”

“Calm down, Major. I’m right here.”

“
Where’s ‘here’, sir?
”

“Out in the damned open, that’s where.” He and Teal’c had made it almost all the way to the buildings before the attack came; when he glanced back to the Tel’tak, it seemed very far away. The ship that had attacked him was already several kilometers beyond the temple, but racing closer with every second. Neither direction seemed a good choice.

Then he remembered who was in the buildings between him and the onrushing fighter, and started running again, Teal’c in close pursuit.

“
What’s out there?
” That was Daniel. There was a staccato timbre to his voice that spoke of furious activity. “
We just heard shots, we didn’t
—”

“Death glider.” It was close enough now to be unmistakable; a glossy crescent howling down out of the sky towards him. As soon as he had spoken the machine unleashed its energies a second time; O’Neill saw gouts of fire spitting from its cannons.

He dived for cover, throwing himself behind a boulder.

There was a whiplash impact as a shot hit the rock, an ear-splitting din of frozen stone superheating and exploding away in lethal shards, and bolts of fire were ripping past as the glider fired over and over into the plateau. O’Neill felt the punch of each blast through his boots, through his bleeding hands as he crouched.

A shadow crossed him, viciously quick, as the glider hammered through the air over his head, and he heard the electric whoop of a staff weapon as Teal’c sent darts of energy lashing up into the sky. A shot connected, spattered uselessly off a wing.

The glider flew level for a second or two, then rose into a smooth, almost vertical climb, accelerated into a blur. In a heartbeat it was lost to the clouds.

“Damn,” muttered O’Neill, getting up. He was starting to hurt all over. “That turned up fast.”

Teal’c had been down on one knee, trying to get a better aim at the fighter. He rose, slowly, eyes on the churning whorl of cloud the machine had left in its wake. “If the glider arrived in response to the distress beacon, it must have already been close to this world. It is likely that a mothership is in this system, searching for the Tel’tak.”

“And now they’ve found it. Thanks to us.”

“Gliders may have been searching every nearby world. O’Neill, we do not have much time.”

“No kidding.” He turned away, towards the temple, and saw greasy smoke twisting into the air. “
Dammit!
Teal’c!”

He could hear voices, now that the death glider and its banshee screeching was gone from the sky. Even through the biting wind, shouts drifted across the plateau. He couldn’t make out words; the gale was robbing the sounds of all but raw emotion. But that was enough. There was suffering in those voices. There was anger, and distress, and pain.

There was screaming. High, thin shrieks of agony came to him through the storm.

O’Neill and Teal’c were inside the complex within half a minute, and when they ran past the outer ring of buildings the source of the voices became instantly plain. As soon as O’Neill saw the tableau, his heart shrank in his chest.

No matter how much tragedy he had seen in his life, the universe always seemed intent on furnishing him with more.

One of the structures, a small two-story building just outside the temple dome, had been blasted apart by the death glider. Every remaining opening vomited thick smoke, and Jaffa were desperately trying to extinguish the fire with great urns and jugs of water. A couple were trying to fight their way in through the debris, but the flames were too intense, the smoke too dark and choking. There was no hope, O’Neill could see that before he even reached the place, but the cries from within the structure were pitiful.

Several other Jaffa were clustered around a figure that twisted on the hard ground.

He skated to a halt next to them, while Teal’c ran to the burning house. Bra’tac was there, along with some of the Jaffa he had seen earlier, their hands on the figure that shuddered on the cold stone. They looked as if they were trying to hold the man down, to restrict his writhing, but their efforts were becoming more redundant with every second. The Jaffa’s strength was ebbing away into the air.

If O’Neill had seen this stricken warrior before, he couldn’t have recognized him now. Fire, and the electric energies of the death glider’s weapons had seen to that.

“What can I do?” he asked dully, his stomach a knot. “Morphine?”

Bra’tac shook his head. “His symbiote would have suppressed the pain,” he said quietly. “Had it lived.”

He spoke to the men with him, gesturing into the temple. Between them, they lifted the dying Jaffa and carried him into the darkness. O’Neill watched them go, then stumbled back towards the smaller building.

The screaming had ceased. The fires inside the structure were lessening, but wet smoke was still pouring from the openings. There was a vile reek to it. The Jaffa who had been throwing water were standing at the windows, looking in, silent and still. Teal’c was with them, as unmoving as the rest.

“Nothing could be done for them,” he said, as O’Neill approached.

“Them?”

“The woman and the child.”

O’Neill closed his eyes for second. “God,” he breathed, in spite of himself.

He felt Teal’c move past him. “There are no gods here.”

Not yet
, O’Neill thought.

He followed Teal’c into the temple. As he went in he could see that the outer walls of the place were massively thick, which would have given him some hope if he’d thought for a second that death gliders were the only things on their way. The staff cannons carried by the Goa’uld fighters would be hard pressed to penetrate that weight of solid stone, it was true, but one good run by an Al’kesh bomber and the temple would simply fly to dust, along with all who sheltered there.

Which, judging by the number of people crowding within, must have been almost everyone on Sar’tua.

The interior of the temple was dark, the shadows broken only by a few flickering lanterns. O’Neill glanced quickly about as he walked inside, trying to gauge his surroundings, but most of the space was lost to him. There were a lot of pillars, he could see that, and a circular dais at the centre, but most of what he saw were people; ragged, nervous Jaffa warriors, a few women, some stoic, hard-eyed kids. Many of them carried pathetic bundles of possessions, wrapped and bound remnants of whatever lives they had left behind on Chulak.