A Matter of Honor Page 7

  Major Carter nodded toward the bed behind her. "Daniel's okay - nasty concussion, but otherwise fine. And the colonel's trying to find someone who'll open the `gate for us." A cloud shadowed her eyes as her gaze drifted down the ward. "I guess we were lucky."

  He followed her gaze, the wounded stretching the length of the room in a row of white-shrouded victims, all engaged in their own personal battles to survive. "It seems that the Kinahhi are justified in their security measures."

  "Yeah. Lot of good it did them."

  "Indeed." Desperation, he knew, was a merciless master who felt no compassion. "There is little that can deter the determined, as our dealings with the Tok'ra have demonstrated"

  She shifted uneasily onto the balls of her feet and plunged her hands into her pockets. "I don't know that you can compare-"

  "Unpack your suitcases kids, looks like we're staying." Major Carter started at the sound of the loud, familiar voice; Teal'c merely inclined his head as he watched O'Neill approach.

  Despite his ebullient tone, Teal'c could sense a genuine anxiety radiating from his friend. It curled tightly in his own gut, occupying the space once reserved for the prim'tah.

  Major Carter's eyes darkened. "They won't let us leave?"

  "No one in or out - `security measures'."

  "The first cry of every tyrant." The voice was slightly slurred, but unmistakably Daniel Jackson.

  O'Neill turned, barely concealing his obvious relief. "You're awake!"

  "Uh - I think so." Daniel Jackson winced, a hand drifting to the dressing on the side of his head.

  "Headache?"

  "More like agony, actually," he grimaced. "Thanks for asking."

  A slight smile touched O'Neill's lips, but he said no more. And into the moment's silence Major Carter intruded, her anxiety obvious. "Sir, I don't like this."

  O'Neill's attention snapped back into focus. "Me neither. But short of actually storming their `gate room - and don't think I didn't consider it! - we're not going anywhere."

  "What does Crawford say?" Carter pressed. "Surely he's not happy that they've-"

  "Perhaps," Teal'c suggested, "you can ask him yourself?" Bill Crawford was pushing through the narrow doors at the end of the ward. Next to Councilor Damaris, who accompanied him, the ambassador appeared especially stunted and graceless. The image was most amusing.

  Teal'c felt the end of his bed dip as O'Neill perched on it, legs stretched out and arms folded across his chest in a gesture of belligerence that Teal'c doubted was accidental. In battle, appearance was sometimes more important than strength - a phenomena the Jaffa knew all too well. The ability to engender fear in your enemy was a warrior's greatest weapon. Sitting there with his legs barring access to their small comer of the ward, and a scowl hovering like storm-clouds on his brow, O'Neill presented a forbidding figure. Crawford attempted to conceal his discomfort as he approached, but the fact that he stopped several feet from O'Neill spoke of the colonel's victory.

  The ambassador cleared his throat. "I'm glad to see you're okay," he said, with all the sincerity of a Goa'uld.

  "No flowers?" O'Neill pinned Crawford with a look. Apprehension rippled across the man's features, but he didn't flinch from the silent confrontation. In the end it was O'Neill who spoke again. "Something else you wanted?"

  Stepping forward, the Kinahhi woman endeavored to relieve the tension. "Please allow me to offer the sincere apologies of the Security Council, Colonel O'Neill. We are most distressed that you have been involved in this unfortunate business."

  "Distressed enough to open the `gate and let me get my people to a doctor?"

  Her brow furrowed "Let me assure you, Colonel, our medics will take excellent care of your people. No offense to your own medical personnel, but I assure you that they will receive more effective care here on Kinahhi."

  "Yeah well, no offense, but I don't trust your medics."

  Crawford took a warning step forward. "Colonel..."

  "Oh what?" O'Neill erupted. "Grow a spine, Crawford! Don't you see what's happening? They're holding us here!"

  "For what purpose?" Damaris shot back, fire blazing in her eyes. It was incongruous in her otherwise impassive face.

  "Why don't you tell me, Councilor?"

  "Believe me, Colonel O'Neill," Damaris said, in a voice just colder than ice, "if we meant your people harm you would already be harmed."

  "Is that a threat?"

  "Simply an observation."

  Nothing else was said, and the silence grew long and tense. At last Damaris addressed Crawford, her tone imperious. "The Stargate will be reopened in the morning, once the security sweep is complete. You may contact your people then."

  And with that she turned on her heel and strode away. Crawford didn't follow immediately, fixing O'Neill with a deadly glare. "You're walking a fine line, O'Neill. McMurdo's only a phone call away."

  O'Neill remained as inscrutable as any Jaffa. But as Crawford hurried after Damaris, Teal'c saw a twitch in the colonel's jaw and knew that he sensed the menace. Danger was all around them, hidden behind polite smiles and veiled threats. He had made an enemy in Councilor Damaris - an enemy who, Teal'c instinctively felt, was more dangerous than she appeared.

  The fat Kinahhi sun was slouching toward the horizon by the time SG-1 were `escorted' back to their quarters. The evening shadows were long and scruffy, and the fading sunlight did little to warm the stone quadrangle. Somehow the chill seemed appropriate, Jack thought, as he listened to a kindergarten-soldier ordering them to stay put. He wasn't blind to the not-so-subtle shift in their treatment by the Kinahhi, and he bore the change with as much civility as he could muster. Under the circumstances, it wasn't much.

  "Yeah, yeah," he called after the backs of their departing escort, "for our own protection. I get it!" Protection, his ass! He'd been in enough prisons to recognize the shape of their walls, whatever the decor. Bottling up his frustration, he turned back to the rest of his team with a flat smile. "Well this sucks."

  Daniel, chalky behind his spare glasses, nodded a faint agreement and eased himself onto the cold tiles. "They're afraid, Jack," he said, leaning his head against the stone wall and closing his eyes.

  He was right, of course. Even Jack could see fear and distrust creeping through these people like a disease. Given what he'd witnessed this morning, could he really blame them? The woman and her dead child had been an incarnation of grief so intense he'd barely been able to move toward them, shackled as he was by his own memories of a small, broken body...

  "Sir?" Carter's voice startled him out of the quicksand memories. She met his gaze with a silent question. Everything okay, sir?

  Avoiding her eyes, and the question, he moved to sit next to Daniel. "Like I said, this sucks."

  Carter nodded dutifully, but he wasn't entirely convinced she shared his sentiment. Her attention drifted and she absently gazed up at the tops of the buildings that surrounded them. A speculative light danced through the shifting greens and blues of her eyes, lending them a luster that was- Not something he should be noticing. He cleared his throat. "Carter?"

  She blinked, startled. "Sir?"

  "You're thinking."

  Eyebrows rose in surprise. "Well, I- I was just "

  "Thinking. About what?"

  She shook her head, an instinctive gesture of denial, and then abruptly changed her mind and squatted in front of him. In a low voice she said, "I've been thinking some more about the anti-gravity technology." Her gaze darted to Daniel and back again. "And about the Goa'uld city."

  Oh, he so knew where this was going. "What about it?"

  She grinned her contagious grin. "I was thinking, we really should check it out. I mean, if we're going to be stuck here anyway..."

  "Stuck here," he pointed out, thudding his boot against the flagstones for good measure. "I doubt day-trips are on the itinerary, Carter."

  Next to him, Daniel shifted and raised his head. He still looked sick, but his eyes had lost none of thei
r astuteness. Despite the appearance of dozing, he'd obviously been listening to every word. "On the other hand," he said, "this is probably going to be our last chance to take a look at the city."

  "If the deal with the Kinahhi goes ahead," Carter agreed, "Crawford won't let us anywhere near this place again."

  "And if it doesn't go ahead no one will be back."

  Damn it, he hated it when they played this kind of tag-team logic. Especially when they had a point. If they never returned to Kinahhi...

  "What happened to `nobody gets left behind'? "

  "That's an entirely different scenario. "

  "That is the exact same damn thing, Jack. "

  Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to be objective. He hadn't missed the anger in the councilor's face back at the hospital and knew that, whatever happened, this was his last chance to get a look at the anti-gravity technology. But at what cost? Daniel was doing a passing impersonation of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and for all Teal'c's Jaffa stoicism Jack knew exactly what a six-inch wound to the shoulder felt like. Exactly.

  And the wisest thing to do with two injured team-members was to play it safe. Dig in until he'd located an exit route, then evacuate the injured and get the hell out of Dodge. Racing across the city on a covert mission to visit a floating city -however cool that sounded -had `disaster' written all over it. He glanced at Teal'c for support; Teal'c understood command, he'd carried the burden longer than Jack. But the Jaffa simply raised his uninjured shoulder in half a shrug. "It will not be an easy task to evade the Kinahhi surveillance equipment."

  Even as Teal'c spoke, Jack knew what was coming next. "Leave that to me, sir." Carter exchanged an excited smile with Daniel. "We'll only be gone a couple of hours, max."

  A couple of hours? Yeah, and then- Hang on. "We'll only be gone a couple of hours?" He glanced suspiciously between the two. "We?"

  At least they had the good grace to seem awkward, although there was something else in the looks shooting between them. It planted a grave seed of suspicion. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought they were deliberately hiding something. But they wouldn't do that, would they? Not his team. "It makes sense for Daniel and me to go," Carter explained, with a conviction disproportionate to the situation. "I mean, I need to see the technology. And Daniel-"

  "Has a severe head injury." Was he the only one conscious of the fact?

  Daniel fingered the dressing on the side of his head. "It's nothing. I'm fine. And anyway, I have to go-"

  "No. You don't." This was just not going to happen. "You and Teal'c stay here, while Carter and I-"

  "Tsapan." Daniel said the word softly, as if it had some weighty significance.

  It certainly seemed to hold some for Carter, who stopped dead and stared. "Daniel!"

  "He has a right to know, Sam, before he decides whether or not to go

  She shook her head, jaw clenched. There was a reason Carter never won at poker; her eyes gave away far too much. And right now they were brimming with apprehension as she frowned down at her fingers, tapping an anxious rhythm on the stone floor.

  "What's going on?" Jack asked quietly, fixing Daniel with a steady look. There was a compassion in his friend's face that made his hackles rise.

  "Tsapan," Daniel repeated. "The floating-city. There's something you need to know."

  Inside, Jack felt his mental defenses rally. After all these years it was an instinctive response to the imminence of something - anything - that might upset his carefully constructed, rigidly controlled inner landscape. "What about it?"

  Daniel's eyes flicked to Carter and back again, and Jack matched the movement. The same sympathy shone in her face, laced with something else. Fear? Guilt? "Tsapan was the name of a mountain on Earth," Daniel explained quietly, "Mountain Divine Tsapan."

  Still not having a clue, Jack's patience was running thin. Carter chewed at her lower lip, a frown tugging at her brow, as Daniel very carefully said, "It was the legendary home of Baal."

  Breath hitched in his lungs. Acid. Daggers. Black, agonizing death. Then white light, again and again and again- Damn it. Jaw clenched he found himself staring at his fists, white-knuckled as the rage boiled up in the pit of his belly. Acid. Daggers. Don't think about it, don't think. "So it's what?" he asked stiffly, focusing on his hands. "A second home for his playboy lifestyle?"

  "There's no evidence he's been here for centuries, sir." Carter was trying to reassure him, as if he were some hopeless PTSD vet who could blow any minute. Hell, maybe she was right. His fists grew tighter, and he refused to listen to the rage pulsing in his ears. How dare she imagine she knew how he felt? How dare she pity him?

  "It's possible we'll learn something," Daniel added in the same treading-on-egg-shells tone. "Something we can use against him, or against the other System Lords."

  Hard intel - that had been the mission the first time too, hadn't it? Get the intel then get the hell out. Only that time he'd ended up rotting in an Iraqi jail for four months, and the time after that? He balked at the memories of that hell-hole and blew out a short breath, looking up and right into Carter's eyes. Open and honest, but not intruding. "Sir," she said earnestly, "Daniel and I discussed it yesterday - we can handle this alone. And if I could just get a look at the technology then-"

  "Yesterday?" His anger, like magma under pressure, found the vent it needed and erupted. Its force shot him to his feet. Acid, daggers, death. You bastard! Sucking in a deep breath he fought to keep himself together. When he spoke, his voice was deadly quiet. "You knew about this yesterday?"

  Carter's face froze, chin jutting out. Oh, she knew what she'd done all right. "Daniel and I talked about it last night, sir."

  He nodded, his rage making the gesture short and jerky. "And why the hell didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't think-"

  I didn't think you could handle it, sir. "Damn it!" he snarled, and Carter blanched visibly. "Baal could be hiding around the goddam corner, Major, and you didn't think I should be aware of that?"

  "He's not around the comer," Daniel interceded, also standing, and turning a whiter shade of pale in the process. "He's not here, Jack. That's why we didn't tell you. You didn't need to know."

  A short gasp hissed through Carter's teeth.

  "You didn't think Ineeded to know?" Jack repeated icily.

  "Major Carter and Daniel Jackson sought to spare you from revisiting unpleasant memories, O'Neill," said Teal'c. His steady voice cut through Jack's blinding anger, although it was tinged with disquiet. "I warned them that you would not see the matter in such a light."

  Damn straight! He whirled on Carter. "Daniel, I can understand. But you, Major, you I should damn well report!"

  Carter nodded slightly. "Yes sir. I'm sorry, sir. I just didn't want you to-"

  "I don't care what you want, Carter," he barked savagely. "Just do your job."

  Mortified, she dropped her gaze to the ground. "Yes, sir."

  And then he turned on Daniel, skewering him with a look that would have sent a parade ground of recruits running for cover. "Tell me everything."

  "There's nothing more to tell," Daniel replied, although unlike Carter he wasn't cowed. Instead, there was unabashed and honest sympathy in his face, because he'd been there, he'd seen it all. Jack shrank from his gaze, trying to preserve whatever shreds of privacy and dignity remained. Daniel shrugged. "It's no big deal."

  Furious, Jack backed up a step. "Oh no. It's a big deal. And if either of you ever pull a stunt like this again, and I swear to God I'll ...I'll-"

  Unable to look at them, afraid of what he might do - or reveal - Jack turned and stalked away. There was nowhere to go but his cramped little cell of a room, and he couldn't face that, not now. He cursed under his breath; he wanted to hit something. Or someone. Crawford, perhaps? Or Kinsey? Or Baal. Acid. Daggers. Sonofabitch. Black, agonizing death. White, terrifying dawn-

  "Sir?" Carter's voice rang loud in the silent courtyard, but he didn't stop walking. "Sir, if I can
see the technology I might be able to figure out a way to save Henry Boyd and his team."

  His footsteps faltered. Boyd, someone else falling into an agonizing death, trapped in that infinite moment of terror.

  "And let's not forget the immense personal satisfaction, not to mention archaeological significance, of locating the site of Yahm's defeat," Daniel added brightly. "Which, I appreciate, isn't exactly your priority right now, but nonetheless..."

  Daniel was trying to lighten the tone, trying to give him a way back from the fury that was driving a wedge through the team. Typical Daniel. For a long time Jack stared down at the dull leather of his boots, dark against the white stone floor. His team was like a lifeline. They'd dragged him back from the brink every time - they never left him behind, not ever. Not even when he was chewing off their ears for trying to help him, for trying to protect him. "Yam?" he said eventually, his voice rattling with an emotion he'd rather hide. "Baal defeated a vegetable? I'm impressed."

  He heard a soft snort of laughter from Daniel and it released something inside him. The knot in his chest began to loosen as the fury settled back down into the dark places where it habitually lurked. Grudgingly, he turned. Daniel, still white as a ghost in blood-streaked clothes, was watching him with a carefully neutral expression. He was hiding what he knew, and for that Jack was profoundly grateful. Teal'c stood at his side like a sentinel, staff weapon braced against the ground, watching and understanding. And Carter... She was on her feet now, but her head was slightly dipped, and she stared contritely at the floor a few feet ahead of him. He knew his words had hit her hard, and he was still too angry to regret them. She should have known better. She did know better, which was at least half the problem.

  "So...?" Daniel asked, speaking for them all as they awaited his decision.

  So... Take a day-trip to Baal's pleasure dome, breach his orders and cause all kinds of merry-hell? Or play by the book and get his injured team home safe and sound?