Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (9 page)

One of them unveiled and began punching an address into the
machine.

"Daniel? Symbols?" Jack kept his voice soft, but the crack of
command in it made Daniel jump and fumble with his pack. He got
the video camera and held it out to the side, trying for a good angle.
Chevrons lit up on the Stargate as the address locked in.

The one dialing hit the red ball on the DHD, and the Stargate activated, plasma boiling like water. When it settled into a shimmering
pool, the veiled travelers began to walk up the steps. One or two faltered and had to be helped along by their fellows. The armed security
detail didn't move, until one ripped off her veil and backed away. She
turned to run, but spears clashed in front of her, forming a glittering
fence.

"She's just a kid," Carter blurted in alarm. "Sir - "

"We don't know what's going on, Carter," he said flatly. "Hold
your position."

He didn't like it, really didn't like it. The girl was crying. One of
the others took off his veil and came back down a couple of steps to
take her by the shoulders, then embrace her. A man old enough to be
her father, maybe. He put her veil back on and adjusted it, then his
own, and led her by the hand up the steps.

"No bags," Daniel said softly.

"What?"

"They're not carrying any bags. No packs, no food... nothing.
This isn't travel. They don't expect to need anything, where they're
going."

One by one, they disappeared through the wormhole. The man led
the girl through, still holding her hand tightly.

The one who'd dialed the gate, and the few left standing at the
foot of the steps, removed their veils and dark robes as the wormhole
disengaged with a snap and a flare.

Familiar faces underneath. "Acton," Daniel murmured. "And the
rest of the town council... um... Jack...?"

The town council was turning in their direction. Acton's finger
pointed at them.

"Think our diplomatic card's been pulled," Jack said. "Right. Time
to go."

He led the way toward the Stargate, MP5 held at the ready across
his chest, warm and lethal. Acton wasn't pointing at them any more,
but his expression had gone dark and rigid.

"Tell him thanks for the hospitality, but we're due back home."

There was some back and forth, fluid syllables that sounded, on
Acton's part, more than a little angry. Daniel gave it right back, short
terse responses, and Jack watched his eyes begin to glitter.

"Apparently," Daniel finally said, in a flat, tense aside, "we
shouldn't have seen that. Some kind of religious taboo."

So this wasn't going so well. Perversely, he felt himself relax. At
least things were back to normal - trouble.

"Just dial the gate, Daniel," Jack said, and stepped in to face off
with Acton. He'd been right, this guy wasn't just your average gladhanding politician. Acton had that dead-eyed stare of a man who'd
fought and killed, and he didn't blink when Jack engaged him in a
silent battle of wills.

Behind them, Daniel moved toward the DHD. One of the guards
got in front of it, blocking his path. Jack brought his MP5 up in an
unmistakably threatening way and pointed it right at Acton's chest.

"Go around him," he said flatly.

"Jack, he may not understand..."

"Oh, he understands," Jack said. Acton's eyes were burning with
fury. "Just dial."

Daniel eased around the guard and began entering symbols. Each
solid chunk of the sequence eased just a tiny bit of tension in Jack's
spine.

They were going to get out of this after all, and leave it for Hammond to fix whatever diplomatic valve they blew. Good in theory....

... until it all went to hell.

"Colonel O'Neill!" Teal'c yelled, a full-throated cry of warning, and the Jaffa's staff weapon fired with a shockingly loud burst.
Whether they'd been looking for a fight or not, they were in one
now; Jack instantly shifted his grip on the MP5 and slammed the butt around to connect with Acton's head. Acton went flying. Dammit,
we're outnumbered, I don't want to kill these people...

He spun to assess the situation, just as Teal'c took a step back, firing over the heads of advancing security guards. Something happened
Jack couldn't actually see; Teal'c went down in a haze of crawling
blue sparks. Daniel stopped dialing and ducked for cover. Captain
Carter leaped like a panther to Teal'c's side and let loose a rattling
burst of auto fire - still aiming over the heads of the massing guards.
Jack did the same, covering their six, and backed up to grab Daniel by
the back of the shirt and drag him upright. "Dial!" he barked.

Daniel gave him a white-faced, anxious look and slapped a symbol
with more than necessary force. There were five lit up so far. Two
more...

Something hit Jack in the back, hard, and spread over him in a
red convulsing haze. He heard Daniel yell his name, and then he was
down with no sense of impact. The stone was hot under his cheek, but
he couldn't move. Paralyzed. Dammit. A hit to the spine?

Daniel went for his holstered Beretta. Too slow. Clumsy. Needed
more training...

Not that it would have helped. They swarmed him like ants and
brought him down on the ground, next to Jack.

Jack had an ant's-eye view of sandals trampling past him. Acton
was talking in a sharp, angry voice to the rest of the town council.
That's it, talk it over he thought. The paralysis was temporary. Had
to be temporary. He'd get movement back, and then he'd kick some
bony Greek ass, no question about it. The stone felt warm and gritty
under his cheek, and he saw a trickle of blood flow past his left eye.
His own? Carter's? Teal'c's? It was just a trickle, not a flood, but it
was very, very red.

The argument ended with some flat pronouncement from Acton.
Dammit, Daniel, I need to know what's happening, a little translation
would be good... Of course, Daniel must have thought he was unconscious. From time to time he heard Daniel's voice rising and falling,
spiked with anger but unnaturally even, as if he was making a huge
effort to be reasonable when all he wanted was to strangle somebody
with their own guts.

One of the guards stepped in at a curt word from Acton, and, by the sound of it, slammed the heavy metal-clad butt of his spear against
Daniel's face.

That ended the conversation.

Jack listened to the percussive sound of symbols being entered
into the DHD. Seven symbols. Then the explosion of the wormhole
forming.

The sun, warm and golden, beat down on his back like a giant
hand, holding him still. He saw movement from the comer of his eye;
black drifting veils brushed the stone next to him, and then somebody
was tugging Jack's numbed body up by the collar of his BDU shirt.

Acton. He had something in his hands... a round silver mesh circle with a white stone in front. He touched the stone, and the circle
opened.

He wrapped it around Jack's neck and fitted it together. Some kind
of words that sounded formal. No, thanks, it really doesn't go with my
outfit, Jack's brain babbled, at the same time the practical side of him
was firing off questions about what this was, what it did, and why the
hell hadn't he shot this damn bastard when he'd had the chance...

He felt the silver collar click together, and something cold shot
through his body. The mesh constricted like a living thing, tight
against his throat. He wanted to gag, but couldn't even do that.

Acton looked briefly into his eyes, and for a second Jack thought
he saw something that might have been pity. Then Acton stepped
back and ceremoniously covered his eyes with his hands, in a notseeing gesture. The floor lunged up at Jack as the guys holding him
dropped him. Rustles and clicks told him that the same ritual was
being repeated with Daniel, Carter and Teal'c. Daniel was the only
one able to resist, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

Apparently, everybody who visited Chalcis got a free Goa'uld
souvenir...

Hard hands grabbed Jacks arms, flipped him over, and towed him
painfully up the steps. All he could see were the foreshortened faces
of two security guards, looking pissed off at the effort of lugging him,
and the harsh golden sun staring down.

Then the shimmer of the Stargate.

Then nothing.

he next thing Jack knew, he was in pain. Yep. Pain. Lots of it.
Sharp spikes all up and down his body, an ankle that felt like it
might as well have been chopped off with a dull axe, and a throbbing
headache.

He tried to sit up, but something was holding him down. Daniel's
hand, flat against his chest.

Jack opened his eyes, blinked, and brought the world into focus.
First, a dim, dusty kind of sunlight, the wrong color, shading toward
blue. Second, a cold dry wind loaded with sand that stung his exposed
skin and made him involuntarily squint against it.

Third, the look on Daniel's face, which was somewhere between
terror and relief.

"Jack?"

"Daniel?" He looked pointedly at the hand pushing him flat.

Daniel removed it and slumped back into a sitting position. He
looked battered, but intact. The bruise turning purple along his cheek
and forehead was going to be a real beauty. "I don't think you should
sit up yet. You took a hell of a hit."

"Yeah, yeah." Jack not only sat up, he kept going. Daniel made
ineffective don't-do-that motions as Jack rolled to his feet - creaky,
infinitely slow, but still mobile. He got vertical with a sense of grim
triumph, which eroded some when he tried to put his weight on his
gimpy left ankle. Crap. Felt like somebody had taken a hammer and
shattered his bones into ground glass. "Carter? Teal'c?"

"Here, sir," Carter said from behind him. She was sitting down,
leaning against what looked like a ruined stone wall. Pale as milk,
with a drying smear of blood on her cheek. "We're both fine, sir.
Teal'c's having a look around."

Not a bad idea. Jack followed suit with a quick comprehensive
scan of the immediate area. One big circular Stargate, and steps they'd
probably tumbled down, which would account for all the bruises and sprains. One DHD, sitting off to the side.

His gaze swept it, stopped, and came back to contemplate it further.

"Captain Carter?"

"Sir?"

"I'm no scientist, but shouldn't we be, oh, dialing out of here?
Right now?"

Carter didn't move. Her voice was weary. "Yes sir. It looks like
somebody removed some of the control mechanism, probably a crystal of some kind. It's not broken, just disabled. I had a look around,
but if the missing part's here, it's hidden. Without it, the Stargate
won't dial."

"Peachy," Jack said. He kept going on the visual survey. Not a lot
to see - they were in some kind of an open courtyard, like the airport
concourse back on Chalcis, only this one was destroyed. Tiles broken
and buckled, walls tumbling into heaps, wind dragging grit around in
aimless drifts. "Daniel, what the hell just happened?"

"I don't know." The younger man sounded discouraged, not to
mention tired and depressed. "Jack, I'm sorry, I had no idea they were
going to attack us. Acton told his people to deal with us. But I thought
he meant dealing as in trading with us, not - "