Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (14 page)

"Any sign who attacked him?"

Teal'c held out a bronze dagger, triangular in shape, with a ram's
head handle. It was smeared with blood. "One of the other tribute
sacrifices," he said. "Perhaps some of them have formed hunting parties."

Jack felt dizzy for a second, because he recognized that knife. Deja
vu. He'd seen it in his dreams, only... only it had been killing Teal'c.

"Jack!" Daniel's sharp, urgent call. They all turned to look.

He held up a silvery mesh collar, loose and unfastened, with a
white moonstone. Not his own; his was still around his neck. "It came
off," he said, and indicated the dead man. "I heard a click, and it just
slid apart."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, what did you touch?"

"Nothing, Jack. I'd tell you if I had." Daniel sounded as frustrated
and irritable as Jack felt. "I was tying off the blanket at his feet. I
looked up when I heard the sound. Nobody touched the collar."

"Let me have it," Carter said, and reached out. Daniel dropped the
heavy weight of it into her open hand. "Maybe I can open it up, see
how it works."

Nobody had any better ideas. She set to work with tools.

Dawn came, bringing a pale blue wash of light but leaving a significant chill in the air. Jack thought longingly about the brand-new
standard-issue jackets he'd refused in the Quartermaster's office back
at the SGC. Hypothermia was a concern; best to keep everybody
moving until the weak sunlight warmed up enough to be useful.

Carter, despite using every trick she had in the bags, including Teal'c's brute strength, hadn't been able to make a dent in the
unlocked collar. Jack could tell it was driving her crazy. Carter didn't
like to be thwarted, especially by something mechanical. "I should
be able to open this," she said finally, and tossed her toolkit off to the
side to rub her forehead. "Dammit. I don't know this metal, but it's as tough as the stuff the Stargate's made of."

"Maybe the same stuff?" Daniel asked.

"Without a full lab, I can't determine that. Nothing I have here will
scratch it, and I haven't found any kind of pressure point or catch or
fastening. However these things work, I'm not going to figure it out
any time soon."

"Bag it," Jack said. "Let's move. I don't feel too comfortable staying over. Let's get moving."

"Are we still making for the temple as Alsiros suggested, O'Neill?"
Teal'c asked.

"Unless you've got a better plan, in which case, hey, toss it out."
Teal'c shook his head. "Then we keep moving until we spot something we can use."

"Shouldn't we... I don't know, say something?" Daniel asked, as
Carter shouldered her field pack and prepared to move out. He was
looking down at the body left behind, wrapped for the afterworld.
Jack and Teal'c paused in the doorway to watch.

"Sure," Carter said, and let the pack slide off. "What do you want
to say?"

"I don't know." Daniel was frowning in concentration, staring
down. After a short pause, he said, "I'm sorry you came such a long
way to die, and I'm sorry we couldn't help you. I hope you left someone behind who remembers you."

It had something personal in it, Jack thought, and remembered
Daniel leaving on that first mission to Abydos - homeless, friendless,
joining up with a bunch of hard-assed military guys who didn't have
much respect for a trunk full of books.

I hope you left someone behind who remembers you.

"Amen," he said quietly, and limped away before Daniel could
look at him. Outside, he slid on his sunglasses, checked his compass,
and left a black-ops style mark on the wall, right around knee level.
At least he'd be able to tell if they went in a circle. Not that the dead
guy inside wouldn't give it away.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said, and caught up to him in two strides. "I have
taken a sighting from the top of that wall." He pointed to one that
looked really, really high. "There is an Acropolis in the center of the
city, as Alsiros said. It is many miles to get there, and there appear to be no streets that travel in a straight line."

"Who builds a street that doesn't... never mind. What you're saying is that this place is a maze, right?"

"Almost certainly, it was built with that intention," Teal'c agreed.
"Perhaps it was meant to foil invasion."

"Whatever it is, it's a total pain in the ankle." Jack grimaced, to let
Teal'c know it was a joke, only not really. "Take point, and keep your
eyes open. If somebody's running around dispatching new arrivals,
let's stay off their dance card"

Teal'c's eyes were wide, suddenly. "Is there a possibility of dancing, O'Neill?"

"Figure of speech. It means, let's don't get killed."

"Indeed"

Daniel came out of the night shelter, and stopped, blinking in the
bright sun; Carter's hand closed over his shoulder and more or less
gently steered him out of the way. "Colonel?" she asked, in that way
that reminded him it was time to get moving.

"Waiting on you slackers," he shot back. Carter looked up, a flash
of bright blue eyes that were surprisingly cold. She'd taken it personally. Odd, he usually had pretty good radar for who he could needle,
but hey, bad night, dead guy, he could see how it might screw up a
generally good attitude. Daniel, on the other hand, shrugged it off, as
Daniel typically would.

Time to mend fences. Jack quirked his eyebrows at Carter and
said, "I'll take rear today. Keep Teal'c company."

She nodded, a bare quick movement, and moved around him to
fall in behind the big Jaffa. Jack made an after you to Daniel, who
gave him a doubtful look but set off after Carter. The ankle wasn't
so bad today - rest and anti-inflammatories had cut the pain by about
fifty percent. He wasn't up to sprinting, but he could hobble along at
a brisk clip. Jack kept his MP5 in a comfortable two-handed position,
ready to bring it up with a snap if a situation presented, but the moming seemed quiet. Even the wind had let up, and the place smelled of
nothing but dust and a faint, universal aroma of decay.

He caught a flash of something, just a dark shadow, moving fast,
and turned to bring his weapon to bear. Nothing - no. There'd been
something. Maybe human.

We're being tracked.

Jack checked their six at regular intervals, but there were no shadows behind them that he caught sight of. Night seemed a long way
off, left behind, and as the sun warmed the air the place seemed a little
more inviting.

Particularly, of course, to Daniel, who slowed down at every new
comer, in front of every piece of rubble or carved stone. He got into
the habit of darting up even with Carter, detouring into a likely pile of
rubble and doing what Jack could only think of as hit-and-run archaeology - shoving aside piles of stone and rubble, looking for artifacts.
The third time, he came up with something that looked like pieces
of broken pottery; he jotted down notes and sketches on the move,
dropped the pieces into a padded bag and stowed it in his pack. There
were lines of stress around his eyes and mouth, a kind of wildness in
him Jack didn't understand, until he looked at it from Daniel's perspective. After all, not only were they in a ruin - which was enough to
make the man salivate like Pavlov's dog - but a ruin with a mystery.

Jack hobbled up next to him, sometime about an hour in, and
peered over the man's shoulder at a scribbled notebook covered with
stuff that might as well have been hieroglyphics, so far as Jack was
concerned. Okay, it probably was hieroglyphics. "How's it going?"
he asked. It was an innocent enough question.

It opened the floodgates. "This is so frustratingf' It burst out of
Daniel, steam under pressure. "Jack, this place is a treasure trove,
who knows what's in here, my God, it stretches for miles and there
are probably artifacts in every one of these rooms - all these carvings,
all these statues - " He gestured helplessly at it all. "I'll never get it
all. I couldn't get it all if we spent a year here. This needs a team, a
full-scale archaeological - "

"Probably a good time to mention that if we die, you don't get any
of it."

"I know." Daniel frowned ferociously at his notebook, sighed, and
flipped it closed. "It's just - I never expected to see anything like this.
It's beyond my experience. Like Abydos and Chulak, only times ten.
Times a hundred. All these rooms... "

Jack put a hand on his shoulder, aware of the flinch that ran through
Daniel's body; not antipathy, just gut-deep reaction. It probably said a lot about Daniel's childhood, now that he thought about it. Sha're
was the only person Jack had ever seen touch him without causing
that defensive reaction. "Daniel," he said. "We could be walking into
anything. You know that, right?"

"I know. I'm trying not to slow you down, and I'm watching out,
really. I am." Daniel looked up ahead, to where Carter was standing
at the next comer, watching them with a tilted head. She beckoned
for them to get a move on, then stepped out of sight. "She seems...
different today."

"Bad night," Jack said. Daniel started walking, without any protest; Jack fell into stride next to him, with frequent glances back over
his shoulder.

"Jack, did you dream?" Daniel asked.

Jack nearly missed a step, covered, and was grateful for his sunglasses and hat to hide most of his expression. "Hope."

"I did," Daniel said.

Jack waited for more, but that was it. Daniel lengthened his stride,
sprinted on up ahead to grab hold of a broken hand-sized statue and
examine it avidly, stroking his hands over it like a lover's body.

Jack shook his head, checked their six, and wished alternately that
the place wasn't so damn deserted, and that it would stay that way.

Something weird happened, when Jack called a rest period. Well,
not weird weird, but definitely out of the ordinary.

He had just eased himself to a half-reclining position against a
handy fallen piece of masonry when he saw Daniel take his M9 out
of its holster. If it had been Carter, Teal'c - hell, anybody else related
to the SGC, up to and including the dourAirman Collins on the chow
line - he wouldn't have taken much notice, but Daniel didn't handle
guns. He wore one, reluctantly, but it was a necessary evil; he didn't
exactly bond with them.

Have to work on that.

He watched as Daniel looked at the weapon, tilted it curiously this
way and that in the sun, and smoothly slid the magazine out and then
back in. Fast, fluid motions worthy of a trained military man.

Which Daniel wasn't.

And Daniel didn't holster his sidearm; he held it at his side, close to his trouser seam, and walked over to Carter. She was sipping water;
he bent over and asked her something, and she smiled and nodded.

"What's that about?" Jack asked. Teal'c, sitting next to him, looked
in the direction Jack pointed.

"I do not know."

Daniel cleared the M9 clip, pocketed it, and ejected the shell from
the port to make it safe. He showed it to Carter, who nodded, and then
he slapped it all back together again. She watched critically, made a
couple of corrections, and had him do it again.

"Huh," Jack said. "Okay, now, I really think we're not in Kansas
anymore. Since when does Daniel actually train? Without anybody
making him?"

"He has had little instruction from your warrior-teachers," Teal'c
said. "Is it not natural that he wish to continue to expand his knowledge of the weapon?"

No. Not Daniel.

Carter came over to squat next to him. "Colonel, Daniel wants to
do some target practice. What do you think?"

"I think that stealth and gunfire are mutually exclusive." Jack
watched Daniel sight down the pistol and dry fire it. "Why?"

"Sir?"

"Why does our peacenik archaeologist suddenly want to shoot
bottles off of rocks?"

"Might have something to do with the dead bodies back there."
She shrugged fluidly. "Not to mention the man who died this moming... Sir, I just think it's better if he gets some practice in. He might
need it before too long. You never know - "

She wasn't wrong, although it still gave Jack an itch between the
shoulder blades. "One clip."

She flashed him one of those luminous grins and went back to Daniel. Jack leaned his head back against the wall and watched through
slitted eyes as she put Daniel into firing stance and walked a full circle
around him, correcting him with touches and small shoves.

Then she moved in behind him and gave him the signal to fire.
Crack. She ordered a halt and checked the target.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said. "This morning, you asked if I dreamed of
running in the night."

"Yeah. You said Jaffa don't dream."

"We do not. What I experienced was not a dream."

Teal'c's face was closed and still as he studied Carter, who moved
to Daniel to give him some correction in his stance. She stepped up
behind him, front to his back, and reached under his arms to lift them
up and lean him into the stance. Very intimate. Well, that's probably
against regs, Jack thought, not to mention going to make him flinch
like a mother...

Only it didn't. Daniel didn't pull away. Well, look at that.

Crack Two shots down. Crack, crack, crack. Five.

Teal'c had said something important, Jack realized, and he scrambled to catch up. "What exactly did you experience?"

"I had a vivid hallucination in which I felt I was being chased
through this city, and was killed," Teal'c replied. "By Daniel Jackson
and Captain Carter. It was..." He seemed to think about the word for
a long time before choosing, "... disturbing."

Jack's dream washed over him again, thick and slow, heavy with
dread. Disturbing. Kind of like watching those two so close together,
dusty brown head bent close to dusty blonde one, examining the
results of Daniel's target practice. Unconsciously in each other's personal space. Well, you wanted to see them bond. Yeah, just not in a
predatory wolf-pack kind of way.