Hydra Read online

  Hydra

  Holly Scott & Jaimie Duncan

  An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.

  Fandemonium Books, PO Box 795A, Surbiton, Surrey KT5 8YB, United Kingdom

  Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON

  in

  STARGATE SG-1™

  MICHAEL SHANKS AMANDA TAPPING

  CHRISTOPHER JUDGE

  DON S. DAVIS

  Executive Producers JONATHAN GLASSNER and BRAD WRIGHT

  MICHAEL GREENBURG RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON

  Developed for Television by BRAD WRIGHT & JONATHAN GLASSNER

  STARGATE SG-1 © 1997-2011 MGM Television Entertainment Inc. and MGM Global Holdings Inc. STARGATE: SG-1 is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc TM & © 2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  Photography and cover art: Copyright © 2011 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  WWW.MGM.COM

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  For Joyce and Allen

  who are greatly missed, and remembered with love

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Two

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Three

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Four

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Five

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Six

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  doli capax

  Eshet (P3X-5S2)

  October 29, 2002

  Carter hadn’t told them to prepare for a dead-of-night arrival. The wavering backlight from the gate sent their shadows writhing over the fitted stones of the platform, twice as big as life, like something from one of those slasher movies — the ones with the shadows that rose up and did the real killing, shocking a scream out of the audience because they were busy looking for the danger someplace else. Carter could have calculated the timing this way if she’d wanted to — and probably had, in some corner of her brain — but O’Neill was happy to chalk it up to good fortune. Nothing like a good approach from the scary darkness to make an impression on the locals. Things were looking up, finally.

  “What a difference a day makes,” he sang under his breath.

  Beside him, Jackson snorted. “Uh huh. That’s what I love about you, Jack. Nothing so momentous that you can’t sum it up in a cheesy show tune.”

  “Hey,” O’Neill snapped. “That is not a cheesy show tune. That is a classic. Dinah Washington would so kick your girly ass.”

  With a dismissive shrug, Jackson set off down the steps. “Somehow I doubt it.”

  “You know, Jackson, hubris is an ugly quality.”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows and paused to look at O’Neill as the gate shut down. “Jack,” he said, all surprised, sunny pride. “Have you been reading again?”

  “The dictionary came standard with the software.”

  Carter’s expression was neutral as she followed Jackson off the platform and onto the road, but O’Neill knew she was smirking on the inside. Teal’c had nothing to say, but inclined his head a fraction when O’Neill added, “I’m just sayin’: Dinah Washington was no pushover.” He turned to his left. “Carter! Time?”

  She tilted her head. “Forty-seven hours, 19 minutes...mark.”

  “Okay, kids. No dallying in the gift shops. Find the magic doodad and make it home in time for breakfast.” He heard Jackson say “Eggs” wistfully and had to order himself not to think about hash browns and coffee. “Keep your head in the game, Jackson.”

  Jackson flipped him a mock salute and kept walking. “Yessir, mon capitaine.”

  O’Neill sighted along the snub barrel of the P90 so that the laser danced its jittery dance in the middle of Jackson’s flak vest and let his finger tighten on the trigger. “One of these days, Dr. Jackson,” he muttered. One of these days. But not today. Today they had doodads to collect, natives to awe, et cetera, and so forth.

  Despite the rousting from their beds in the middle of the night, the locals were not as awed as O’Neill would have liked, given that he did not have all day to dick around with the subtleties of interrogation. Time was tick, tick, ticking audibly in his head while the mayor or the czar or whatever he was quivered in the mud with his hands behind his neck and promised in a quavering voice that he had no idea what the magic doodad was or where it might be. The old guy looked vaguely like somebody O’Neill would expect to find smiling on a Swiss cheese wrapper, right down to the milk-fed rosy cheeks and the shorts with suspenders — “Lederhosen,” Jackson said. O’Neill rolled his eyes, and, for convenience’s sake, named the guy Von Trapp. The village was a nice enough place, lots of sharply angled roofs and a communal well and a schoolhouse with a bell and everything. Not exactly postcard material, what with the mud and the way all the buildings seemed to lean downhill, their doors darkly open so that the barnyard animals could go in and out, but nicely situated in a little notch where the river sluiced ice-blue down from the snowy mountains in the distance.

  True to the intel on P3X-5S2, aka Eshet, there were no antennae or power sources more sophisticated than the waterwheel churning away, grinding whatever passed for grain, and none of the men lined up on their knees at O’Neill’s feet looked like they could win a fight with Jackson’s little sister, if he’d had a little sister. The most dangerous objects they’d seen so far were a pitchfork and an ax, and Teal’c had pretty handily taken care of both the ax and the guy who came at him waving it.

  So they were left with a bunch of guys kneeling in the mud, a few women on the edges of the square in the shifting torchlight hiding tow-headed kids behind their skirts, and Mayor Von Trapp making some very, very bad choices in terms of handling the situation.

  O’Neill crouched down to the guy’s groveling level. He put a knuckle under the mayor’s chin and raised his head so that they could see eye to weepy eye. “Look,” O’Neill said in a low, calming voice. He pressed his knife into the crease between the mayor’s two chins. “You don’t have to be scared. We don’t want to hurt you.” He raised his gaze to take in Carter and Jackson and Teal’c standing behind the row of men. Teal’c’s scowl alone looked like it could flay skin to the bone. Jackson had those worry lines starting but didn’t seem too inclined to step in. Carter was Carter, ready for action and not much expression on her face beyond wary attention. “Well, maybe we do, but only because you make us. You don’t have to make us.” He added pressure to the knife and felt the mayor’s quivering ramp up to eleven. “Just tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way. Make us look for it, and you won’t have much left to protect.” O’Neill smiled. “See? Easy.”

  Surprisingly, the mayor stiffened and his eyes got less weepy and more determined. “We will give you nothing.”

  O’Neill’s smile faded and he bowed his head, disappointed. The guy had picked a bad time to develop guts. “You’ll give us nothing. Which presumes, of
course, that you do have something.” A tiny twitch of the knife, and blood gleamed on its edge. “Where is it?” The guy’s eyes widened and his hand came up to close like a claw around O’Neill’s wrist. His voice low, O’Neill repeated, “Where is it?”

  “We don’t know! We don’t know anything! Leave us a — ” The woman’s protests were cut off by the butt of Carter’s P90. She went straight down like she was cut off at the knees, collapsing in a puddle of skirts. Two kids swarmed out of the hovel nearest her and covered her with their skinny bodies; Carter’s arm fell slowly. Strafed by Teal’c’s scowl, the little crowd retreated farther into the shadows. Jackson stared blankly at the mountains or at whatever it was he looked at inside his head at times like these.

  The mayor’s grip loosened and he fell away onto his back, leaving O’Neill there with his knife still poised, the blade dark with blood. “Why’s it always got to go the hard way?” O’Neill asked the glassy eyes as he rose to his feet. He caught Carter’s gaze and nodded. “Find it. Do what you gotta do.” As the three of them moved away, he added with a tap on his raised wrist, “Ticktock, folks.”

  In retrospect, the fire was probably a really bad idea. No doubt the flames from the burning houses licking up against the black sky alerted the Jaffa to their presence. When the lintel over his head exploded with a staff blast, O’Neill vowed to have a little word with Carter about the status of their intel. While he was busy separating tree shadows from Jaffa shadows and then putting as many bullet holes in the latter as possible, he rehearsed his speech. He had time between revisions to get his foot under a fallen Jaffa and roll him over to check out the tattoo. Some kind of dog, maybe, or a deer. As he made his way back to the center of the village — pausing to work his knife through the narrow spaces of a Jaffa’s chain mail and into his kidney — he checked out a couple more. The Apophis tattoo he recognized. The one that looked like a scimitar he didn’t.

  Back at the well, he waited patiently while Teal’c twisted a guy’s head round backward and then asked, “You get it?”

  Teal’c shook his head. “I did not. I have not seen Daniel Jackson or Captain Carter.”

  “Speak of the devil,” O’Neill said, and turned to watch Carter vault herself across the back of a burly Jaffa before backhanding him. Behind her, Jackson strolled along, stepping carefully over the bodies she left on the ground as she made her way across the little square.

  “I don’t understand it,” Carter said as she got within bitching distance, anticipating O’Neill’s pointed question. “There was nothing in the intel about a Jaffa encampment.”

  “Rebels,” Jackson offered, his head tilted so that he could see the tattoo of the nearest Jaffa right side up. “They’re all different.” Shaking his hair out of his eyes, he aimed a finger at his own forehead. “The tattoos, I mean. Probably rebels. They must be hiding, which explains why they aren’t in the intel.”

  Waving the explanation away with a gloved hand, O’Neill demanded, “Where’s the thing? I’m not leaving here without the damn thing.”

  Jackson held up a black lump about the size of a baseball, smug smile on his face, and waved it at O’Neill.

  “That’s more like it,” O’Neill said. “Time to go.” He ducked to avoid another staff blast, but it didn’t matter. A grenade spun across the square, fetched up against the well, and blew them all to the ground.

  Twisting around in the mud to riddle the forest between the burning houses with bullets, O’Neill shouted the order to retreat and kept firing until he could see the rest of them picking themselves up and making hell-bent for leather up the hill toward the gate. Then he got up and followed them, firing more or less blindly as he went.

  “What a difference a day makes,” he hummed to himself.

  PART ONE

  alibi

  elsewhere

  CHAPTER ONE

  Stargate Command

  October 30, 2002; one day after invasion of Eshet

  Jack O’Neill signed off on the last mission report with a flourish and slapped the cover shut. Months of backlog, finally attended to. He threw it on the pile of reports to his right and sat back in the chair with a sigh of relief. Getting caught up was the only silver lining to a four-day quarantine and lockdown. Maybe SG-10’s new historian had used the time to learn all about the SGC’s handy protocols for dealing with weird alien artifacts. The one he brought back was harboring a virus that turned skin blue and shrank the vocal cords. They’d all been trapped in the mountain for the better part of a week, waiting to see if they’d start squeaking.

  In the meantime, Jack had taken over someone’s office — eminent domain, he told Carter — and begun banging out reports. It was either that or climb the walls. Or play chess with Daniel, who had perfected the art of playing with one hand and typing with the other, which distracted Jack to the point of losing.

  There were only so many matches he could spar with Teal’c before he lost some teeth, and Carter…well. She was all excited about the blue virus.

  Now that it was cured, Jack was itching to get on the departure roster and back to business as usual, but they were bringing in teams that had been stuck off-world, and the delayed missions were bottlenecked. So it was a relief when the alarm klaxon went off and the call followed: “Colonel O’Neill to the gate-room.”

  He met Daniel jogging down the hall toward the stairs to the gate-room, his sleeve dangling as he shrugged his jacket on. “Didn’t hear them calling you,” Jack said.

  Daniel just gave him a look. “They called you, which means I’m next,” he said, pulling a smile from Jack right about the time they ran into Carter and Teal’c. The four of them peeled around the corner and stopped shy of the ramp where General Hammond was waiting behind a phalanx of SFs.

  “Sir?” Jack said.

  “Off-world activation,” Hammond answered. “It’s Bra’tac’s IDC.” No sooner had he explained than Bra’tac stepped through the wormhole, heavy boots clanging on the ramp. Teal’c stepped forward, ready to exchange traditional greetings, but Jack put a hand on his shoulder, a subtle command. Bra’tac’s posture was stiff, and he barely glanced at either Jack or Teal’c. Beneath Jack’s hand, Teal’c tensed.

  “Welcome, Master Bra’tac,” Hammond said.

  No answering smile came from Bra’tac. Instead, he nodded to Hammond and said, “Hammond of Texas. I have come to ask for an explanation for your actions on the mountain world of the Eshet and to tell you the trust of the Jaffa has been broken.”

  Jack had never heard Bra’tac express mistrust of the Tauri since those very earliest days. The hair rose on the back of his neck. “Bra’tac, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I am speaking of the massacre which occurred on Eshet yesterday — the massacre led by your team in pursuit of technology owned by the people of that world.”

  “What?” Jack’s sense of disquiet was growing, tingling low in his belly. So far, not one word of what Bra’tac had said made a bit of sense. More than that, the utter conviction in his voice knocked Jack flat. Since when did Bra’tac believe the worst about them? About Teal’c? “Bra’tac, whatever massacre you’re talking about — we’ve been stuck here at the SGC for almost four days. SG-1 hasn’t been off-world since…”

  “Eight days, sir,” Carter said, from behind him.

  “Yeah. Eight days.” Jack waited for the skepticism on Bra’tac’s face to ease, but it didn’t change at all.

  Teal’c said, “I give you my word: whatever has occurred, SG-1 is not responsible.”

  “You swear this?”

  “I do.”

  Bra’tac’s deep frown seemed to pull the next question from Daniel. “Bra’tac, what world is this?”

  “It is a mountain world, full of people once enslaved by the Goa’uld. They gave freely of themselves when the rebel Jaffa arrived on their world and have since built an enclave there. These people lived in peace. Until yesterday.”

  His voice pitched low, Daniel said to Carter, �
��Aren’t we scheduled to visit a mountain culture in a few months?”

  “Yes,” Carter said. “P3X-5S2. It fits the description superficially, but without a more in-depth description I can’t be sure.”

  “Well, if it’s on the schedule, there you go,” Jack said. “Haven’t been there.”

  “This troubles me,” Bra’tac said. “O’Neill, the Jaffa who were present described you and your team in great detail. Some of them have met you previously in battle and believed you to be honorable warriors. Do you think they would implicate you if it were not so?”

  “Do you think we would lie to you?” Jack had had about enough of the implications, and he was damn well going to get an answer to that question. He was willing to wait all day in fact without letting Bra’tac off the hook, but Daniel broke the moment.

  “There’s an easy way to resolve this. Let’s just take a trip to P3X-5S2 and see for ourselves. Once they meet us, that’ll put this to rest.”

  “If that’s the planet,” Carter said. “We don’t know that yet.”

  “I’m sure Bra’tac will be kind enough to point out the gate address, and then we’ll know. General?” Jack looked to Hammond. “Permission to go and prove we’re not mass murderers?”

  “Granted, Colonel.” Hammond focused his attention back on Bra’tac. “And once this has been resolved to your satisfaction, I hope we can talk again about what has made you assume the worst of us.”

  Bra’tac didn’t bother to answer the question. He met Teal’c’s eyes and said, “I will wait here while you retrieve your battle gear.”

  Jack held off on saying anything else until they were in the corridor, and then he directed his question to Teal’c. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here, or has Bra’tac just lost his mind?”

  “I have never known Master Bra’tac to jump to conclusions or make false accusations,” Teal’c answered, but Jack could see he was feeling the same stunned doubt that was sitting like a cold lump in Jack’s own gut. “There must be some truth to prompt it.”