A Matter of Honor Page 19

  Pulling her flashlight back into the cell, tugging as its crooked neck wedged in the square confines of the bars, she turned off the light and stood for a moment to let her eyes grow accustomed to the dark. There was nothing she could do. She hated that. Retreating to the rear of the cell, she slid to the ground and leaned her back against the wall. All she could do was wait, for rescue or for the Jaffa. Both were coming, of that she was certain. Her fate would depend on who arrived first.

  "You know what first attracted me to archeology?" Daniel Jackson asked, as he tramped at Teal'c's side through ankle-deep water that pooled icily in the dark corridor. "The weather. Egypt, South America, maybe Italy and Greece, North Africa... That is where I expected to be spending my days." He shivered. "Ironic, huh?"

  Teal'c considered his reply. He was consistently surprised by the human ability to disguise true feelings with inane babble, a tactic reminiscent of a battlefield feint. O'Neill was a master of such deception, but it seemed that all his friends shared the trait to a greater or lesser degree, especially when under stress. Teal'c refused to be distracted by such behavior, and so simply said, "I believe your dissatisfaction has less to do with the temperature than your fear for O'Neill and Major Carter."

  Daniel Jackson frowned. "I'm trying not to think about that."

  "Both O'Neill and Major Carter are formidable warriors. They will triumph."

  It was Daniel Jackson's turn to be silent. For a while the only sound in the corridor was the quiet sloshing of water as they walked. When he did speak again, his voice was much softer. "Some battles aren't fought with guns, Teal'c."

  "O'Neill will not succumb," he insisted, "wherever the field of battle. He will be victorious, or die in the attempt."

  His friend slowed, head shaking. "That's exactly what I'm afraid-"

  "Aray Kree!"

  The young voice boomed out from behind, arresting them both mid-step. Teal'c's hand tightened on his staff weapon as he glanced over at Daniel Jackson; they both knew that surrender was impossible. "If you leave now," Teal'c called in response, back to the owner of the voice, "I will spare your life."

  "Has'shak!" The voice was closer now, youthfully arrogant.

  "No," Teal'c replied as he turned to face the young Jaffa. "You are the fool." It was a child's face, a boy only a few years older than Rya'c.

  The boy's eyes widened when he recognized the brand of Apophis upon Teal'c's brow. "You are the Shol'va!" He swung his staff weapon up, eager for use. "My God will reward me for your capture."

  Teal'c shifted his stance, ready for the fight the boy offered. "Your god is false."

  "And your lies are well known!" The boy's lunge was marred by his anger and easily parried in a half turn. Using his momentum to carry him around, Teal'c swung the butt of his weapon up into the boy's chest and sent him sprawling. With a deft twist, he had the head of his weapon open and pressed against the boy's throat.

  "Tell your master that he will not go unpunished for his crimes. Tell him that the Jaffa will rise from beneath his fist, and that we will soon rid the galaxy of the scourge of the Goa'uld! Tell him to fear us."

  The boy's mouth opened and closed, angry and disbelieving. And perhaps, beneath it all, there was a glimmer of hope. But not enough.

  "Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, without looking away from the Jaffa's face. "Now is the time."

  From his left he heard the electronic fizz of a zat'nikatel opening. The young Jaffa's head turned, mouth open in shock, as Daniel Jackson fired a single shot. He jerked as the energy danced across his body, then lay still. Teal'c stood straight, staff weapon coming to rest on the ground. Just a boy, he thought, lying cold in the water.

  Daniel Jackson cleared his throat. "You, ah, couldn't have changed his mind."

  He turned to his friend; Daniel Jackson seemed to possess the uncanny ability to see into the hearts of all men. "He is much like my son."

  "I know. And you freed Rya'c. One day you'll free them all."

  Teal'c nodded, returning his gaze to the unconscious face of one of his own. One day all Jaffa would be free and the Goa'uld would be dust in the wind. But not this day. "We must leave quickly. The shot from the zat'nikatel will have alerted others."

  "It's not far from here." Holstering his weapon Daniel Jackson peered down the dark, wet corridor. "If I'm right, there should be a door somewhere on the left." He made a face and glanced up at the ceiling. "Let's hope the room's still standing."

  Jack crouched in the shadows, contemplating the dim light emanating from the cross-corridor. The electronic compass on his watch indicated south-southeast. And who knew where the hell that was on this godforsaken planet, but as long as he was still heading toward the center of the complex he was going the right way. After Carter had been taken they'd fled, heedless of direction, into the outer rings of the fortress. But he knew Carter would be at the heart of the stronghold, close to Baal. Close to that room...

  A tremor ran through him, and he ignored it.

  The question was, whether to head toward the light or away from it? Light meant power, which meant Jaffa. Jaffa might also mean Carter. Or capture. Gritting his teeth he repeated Teal'c's homily - there is no bravery without fear. There is no bravery without fear. At this rate he'd be the bravest sonofabitch in the galaxy.

  Silently he stepped out into the corridor and crept toward the light, keeping to the shadows, every sense straining for the enemy. There was more warmth here, at least, and the corridors were increasingly ornate. More like he remembered from his previous stay at Baal's Pleasure Palace. But he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about Carter, and getting her the hell out of there before they flung her against that damn spider web that sucked you down into- Damn it! Think of something else. Cold beer. His dock, at dusk. Fishing. Fishing with-

  A door hissed open ten feet ahead. Pressing himself against the reliefs carved into the walls, he held his breath as booted footsteps clanked into the corridor and headed... away from him. Slowly, he peered from his nominal hiding spot and saw the backs of three Jaffa marching toward the light. Thank God.

  Dry-mouthed he crept after them, passing the doorway on his right. Two doors that would open automatically as you approached and-

  He was half-carried, half-dragged down the corridors, a Jaffa on each side, fingers digging into his arms. Gut and legs liquid with terror he let them haul him through the doors and out into the bright corridor. He knew where they were taking him. It was only moments away, but it wasn't now Not now It didn't hurt now He was still himself, he was still Colonel Jack O Neill, serial number-

  Jolted back to the present he found himself standing frozen and alone in the corridor. Staring at the door. An innocuous door. But his mouth tasted like bile and his head spun. He forced in an urgent breath, but it ratted in his dry lungs and made him cough. His knees gave way and he slid down the wall, trying to stifle the sound. He knew where he was. He knew exactly where he was.

  And somewhere in the back of his mind an alarm started to blare.

  Booted feet, the jangle of armor. The bark of a voice. Getting closer. Coming for him! Adrenaline pumped him to his feet, mind ultra-sharp and everything suddenly playing in cut-glass clarity. There was only one place to hide.

  P90 clutched to his chest, he turned to the door and watched it hiss open. Light from behind him flooded the dark corridor beyond, casting his shadow long and thin. But even in darkness he would have known this place; the walls were soaked with the stench of his despair. Without pause he stepped inside and the doors slid shut behind him. The corridor faded into gloom, but enough illumination seeped inside to outline shapes. Square black shapes, the openings of the anyway-up cells; his had been the third on the left. On rigid legs he walked past it, unable to keep his eyes from turning and fixing on the object of a thousand nightmares. It was dark and empty; just like him.

  Ahead there was a noise, someone moving. Wrenching his morbid gaze away, he crouched low and crept forward. The cells didn't seem to
be working. As soon as Yu had knocked out the power generators, the gravity-twisting had stopped and the cells had become nothing but long, dead-end corridors with open mouths. That's all they were still. He crept closer to the sound of movement, peering through the increasing gloom, not daring to use his flashlight.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the differences from last time - the lack of light or power, the mildewed scent of decay. The hefty metal grate covering the entrance to one of the cells. That was new. And unique; no other cell was barred. His heart jumped with a beat of hope. Carter?

  Licking at dry lips he crossed the corridor, still keeping low as he started to run toward the locked cell. A little C4 should get the grate off. With any luck they'd be back out and hiding in the rabbit-warren fortress before the alarm could be raised. And from there-

  Light hit him from behind. He flinched and dodged into the shadows of a cell. Trying not to think about where he was, he crept deeper into the blackness as heavy footsteps reverberated down the corridor behind him. Three Jaffa passed the cell door - Larry, Moe and Curly - big and brutally armed.

  They stopped, as he'd guessed they would, outside the locked cell.

  "Your friends have abandoned you," a voice announced, imperious and gunmetal cold. "You are alone here."

  "Haven't caught them yet, huh?" Her bright, spirited response danced through the darkness and filled Jack's heart with pride. Creeping toward the entrance of the cell he risked peering around its lip. The Jaffa who had spoken stood close to the grate, his face hidden in the murky light. Jack could see nothing of Carter.

  "They hide like rats in the sewers. But they will be caught," Curly replied. "And if you do not answer our questions, they will watch you die. Slowly."

  "I don't think so."

  "Your bravado is foolish. If they come for you, we will be waiting."

  "Like I said, you haven't caught them yet." But Jack detected a tremor of uncertainty in her voice, and shared it. The Jaffa was right; the trap was set and she was the bait. Just peachy.

  Curly must have detected the same tone of disquiet, because he leaned closer to the bars. "Tell me now what I wish to know, and your end will be swift and painless."

  There was a long pause, and then, "My name is Major Samantha Carter, United States Air Force. Serial number 638-"

  "Shel kree!" The Jaffa snapped, turning away. "Bring her."

  The screech of a bolt being drawn set Jack's teeth on edge as he ducked back into the shadows. Three Jaffa. He could take them; he had the element of surprise and a faster, more deadly weapon. Carter would hit the deck as soon as she heard the first shot, and the guards would be down before they knew what had happened.

  Crouching in the darkness he readied himself. He was close and the targets were large enough to compensate for the lack of visibility. He switched his weapon to single shot and settled the sight against his eye. The Jaffa leader, Curly, was the first to walk past his hiding place, head bare and inviting a bullet. Jack's finger tightened on the trigger, waiting for Larry and Moe to come into view before he made his move. And then there were three, one on each side of Carter, fingers biting into her arms. She looked frightened, but was doing her best to hide it.

  Good night assholes. His finger squeezed the trigger and-

  Light flooded the corridor. "Shor'wai'e!" A voice barked the words from the corridor beyond. Jack froze.

  Chastened, Curly turned back to the men escorting Carter. He didn't look happy. "Tal'shak," he muttered. "Yas!"

  Picking up the pace, they dragged Carter forward and out of Jack's line of sight. Slowly he lowered his weapon, thankful for his luck. If he'd taken the shot a second sooner the new arrival would have walked right in on their escape and raised the alarm. He and Carter would have been trapped like rats in the proverbial trap. As it was, he still had a chance.

  Galvanized, he crept out of his hiding place as the doors at the end of the corridor slid shut. Breaking into a run he sprinted toward them, then stopped and made himself count to five before stepping through and peering out into the corridor. He just caught a glimpse of Carter's blonde hair as she turned a comer to his left; darting to the opposite wall he followed her in a low run.

  It was only then that he realized he'd run right past his former cell without a backward glance. Nothing like a little action to keep a guy distracted; he hoped all his ghosts would be so easily appeased.

  Half-right, Daniel thought as he shouldered open the narrow door and pushed his way into the room. The door was wedged shut by half the ceiling and the contents of the room above, and he was forced to climb up onto the rubble as he squeezed inside. He sniffed; the stench in the air was grossly unmistakable. He moved the beam of his flashlight carefully across the floor until it touched the armored arm of a long-dead Jaffa buried beneath the debris. Water dripped from the ragged hole that was once the ceiling, trickling through the wreckage and adding its own scent of damp decay to the putrid reek of rotting flesh.

  "Is this the place we seek, Daniel Jackson?"

  Teal'c's flashlight darted about, glinting against golden walls and coming to rest on two pillars which stood at the center of the room. Reaching from the ceiling to the floor, each was of different design - one shimmering a soft gold, the other simple stone. Approaching the golden pillar first, Daniel ran his fingers over the characteristically Phoenician engravings of the sun god and his sunhorses. Then he circled the pillar, flashlight held close to his face as he studied its unblemished surface, until his questing fingers found what he sought. A raised cartouche, bearing the legend Meleq. Professor Kelly would be green! Smiling to himself, he turned to the stone pillar. A relief of Baal, wielding a lightning bolt, dominated the pillar. It was primitive but beautiful, and the design was clearly Canaanite - almost identical in composition, in fact, to the mosaic ceiling on Tsapan. Above the image, inscribed in the little darts and triangles of Ugaritic cuneiform, was a line of text. He spoke slowly as he translated, "Verily Baal has fallen to the earth, Dead is Baal the Mighty." Then he crouched, fingers tracing more words beneath the image. "Baal the Conqueror lives; the Prince, the Lord of the Earth, has revived." He glanced over at Teal'c. "A reference to his defeat at the hands of the system lords, perhaps?"

  "Perhaps," Teal'c agreed. He looked around the empty chamber, and when he spoke again his voice carried a shade of doubt. "I do not believe the power unit we seek is in this chamber, Daniel Jackson."

  "No," Daniel agreed, pushing back to his feet. "There should be more. An altar, a place of worship." Slowly he circled the stone pillar again, fingers trailing over its rough surface until he found the cartouche that corresponded with the golden pillar. It too was raised, and dirt had settled into the deep crevasses of the carving. He blew gently and a little puff of masonry dust circled up into the air. The name within the cartouche was also written in Ugaritic script, but it did not spell Baal. Instead the name was Re'ammin. He ran a finger over the word, nudging a clump of stone dust from the top of the first letter, pressing a little harder than before. "It could be that-" Beneath his hand the cartouche slid slowly and irrevocably inwards with a soft grating sound of stone-on-stone. Daniel froze. "Uh-oh."

  Teal'c's eyebrow rose curiously, just as the ground beneath Daniel gave way. With a yelp he fell, hit something hard and went tumbling down and down.

  Back in the cells, Sam could have sworn she'd felt eyes on her. Not unfriendly eyes, but her skin had crawled with the sensation of being watched. Perhaps she was clutching at straws, but the fanciful part of her mind hoped that she'd felt her team watching her. That they were there, waiting in the shadows, to free her.

  The practical part of her mind hoped she'd been imagining things, and that her team had hightailed it back to the `gate with the antigrav device - that they'd gone to beg Hammond for reinforcements before they tried to spring her.

  The realistic part of her mind told her that was bull. The colonel would make at least one rescue attempt before calling for backup. She knew him too
well to doubt that. If he didn't come, the only explanation would be that the Jaffa had gotten to him first. And that was a scenario she really didn't want to consider.

  Pushing such demoralizing thoughts from her mind, she fixed her attention on where she was going. They'd taken a right from the doors at the end of the cell block, then a left approximately twenty meters further on. They'd been walking along this corridor for a good three minutes, and she'd seen several other Jaffa march past. It must be the heart of the remaining occupation of Baal's stronghold; something to remember on the way out. PMA - positive mental attitude. She remembered it from the Academy's survival training. Colonel Kirk Greenberg had taught it, a brick-house of a man with a neck as thick as his head. Positive Mental Attitude, the first rule of survival.

  Her memories were disrupted when her guards stopped abruptly and she was yanked around to face another anonymous door. She went hot and cold simultaneously, realistic enough to imagine what awaited inside. Or at least to try. The colonel's eyes came starkly to mind, haunted and blank as he'd stumbled through the `gate with the strange woman's wrist gripped in his hand. He'd said nothing, just stood there shaking with adrenaline until Doctor Fraiser had gently coaxed him toward the infirmary. He'd refused to lie on a gurney. He'd refused to let her touch him.

  Something had done that to him. Something here. Something, in all likelihood, through those doors. If it had driven the colonel to the edge, what the hell would it do to her?

  She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. Panic pulled at the edges of her mind and she ruthlessly ignored it. Fear was dangerous, fear was the enemy's weapon and she wouldn't do their job for them. Instead she forced herself to recall everything she'd been taught about resisting interrogation. Colonel Kirk Greenberg trooped back into her thoughts.

  Anger, that was vital. And she had it in spades, especially when she remembered O'Neill's return and the fragile weeks of recovery afterwards. She wouldn't let the bastards get the same satisfaction from her!