Relativity Page 7

  “Administrator,” he began, and he made that little sighing noise that Mirris found so very irritating. “I have concerns. In fact, many of the staff aboard ship have them, although of course as your subordinate I have made sure such dissension has been suppressed.”

  “Really?” She sipped at her drink. “Do go on.”

  “We all understand that the nature of our mission requires us to step outside the normal conventions of our culture, but in the dealings with these nomads…” He sighed again. “Does it really serve the interests of our confederation to make such a close association with one of them?”

  “You find the migrants distasteful, Geddel.”

  “I do,” he admitted. “But that is not the root of my concerns. I feel, Administrator, that you are allowing yourself to adopt some of their baser traits.” The thin man gave the steel band on her desk a pointed look. “During the last communication you had with the operative, you were overly emotional. Quite aggressive.”

  “Aggressive?” She repeated the word mildly. From Geddel’s point of view, she would have seemed calm, perhaps the only sign of any distress being the subtle whitening of her knuckles around the glass tumbler. Inwardly, Mirris entertained the sudden, violent fantasy of springing to her feet and backhanding him across the face. For a brief instant, she felt the heat of passion, imagining the experience of his cheekbone cracking beneath her strike, of blood spurting from his nose as he fell wailing to the metal deck. You loathsome little parasite, with your constant disdain. I know what you think of me. Poor broken woman with her hidden anger, marking time. She blinked away the giddiness and covered it with another sip. “I think you have misunderstood,” she lied. “These nomads lack sophistication, and in order to bring my operative to heel I must sometimes employ obfuscation and fakery. That was not aggression, Geddel. It was theatre.”

  “Oh.” The thin man sighed again. “I see. Of course. It was quite convincing.”

  “What use would it have been otherwise?”

  “Will it be necessary for you to duplicate this behavior in the future?”

  She glanced away. “It may be. As such, I expect no more comments or ‘concerns’ from you, is that clear?”

  He bowed slightly. “Of course, Administrator.” And once again, Geddel’s eyes strayed to the band on her desk. Mirris knew he didn’t believe her, and his look was his ridiculous way of telling her that. “Is that a bonding torc?” he asked. “From your late betrothed, am I correct?”

  Mirris found her veneer of calm disintegrating, and covered it with a brusque command. “Ensure the aura-cloak remains at full power and keep us to the edge of the migrant fleet’s sensor envelope until I order otherwise. It would jeopardize the mission if they detected our presence in this system. You are dismissed, sub-director.”

  “Of course.” Geddel bowed again and made his way to the door. He hesitated on the threshold and gave her a patronizing glance. “If you will permit me to say so, I feel some sympathy for your loss. Perhaps if you would like my counsel—”

  “You are dismissed,” she said again, with more force than she had intended. Geddel turned away and the entranceway closed behind him.

  Liar, she said to the door, You are mocking me. But Geddel would see; all of them would be made to see there would be reciprocity. A payment in kind for what the Tau’ri had taken from her.

  There was a sharp noise and Mirris felt wetness on her palm. She glanced down and saw a fracture in the side of the glass where it had cracked in the tension of her grip. With icy precision, she disposed of the tumbler in the chamber’s reconstitutor and used a dermal regenerator on the cut in her flesh. She did not look at the torc again.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  Carter glanced up from the screen of her laptop and blinked. Her eyes felt sandy with all the hours she’d been starting at the display, and it took a second for her to focus. “Oh, hey Daniel. What’s up?”

  “Nothin’,” he said, wandering into the lab from the corridor, his hands in his pockets. “I was on my way out and I wondered if you needed a ride off-base?”

  “Out?” Sam had taken her wristwatch off earlier and set it aside. She picked it up now and frowned at the timepiece. “Is it that late?”

  Daniel jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “Yeah. This place plays havoc with your circadian rhythm, doesn’t it? Not many clocks around, no windows. Can’t tell what time of day it is.” He gave a wan smile. “They do the same thing in the casinos in Vegas.”

  She eyed him. “You’ve never been to Las Vegas.”

  “Sure I have,” Jackson said defensively. “That last time we were out at Area 51 in Nevada?”

  Sam chuckled. “Playing the one-arm bandits at McCarran Airport does not count as Vegas,” she told him, “and neither does losing your pay check to Teal’c on poker night.”

  Daniel made a dismissive gesture. “Ah, I let him win. You know what he’s like, he gets so emotional when he loses.” He nodded at the computer. “What’s so interesting it’s got you working overtime?”

  “Preliminary reports on the scrap from the robots on P5X-404,” said Sam, turning the screen to show him lines of comparative atomic spectra. “The most interesting thing is that the machines were not indigenous to the planet.” She pointed at colored bands on the display. “These here? That’s traces of rare earth metals in the alloy I brought back. As far as we can see, those metals don’t appear to exist anywhere on 404, and even if they did, it would be in amounts too small to be used in building robots. I’m running some chemical dating tests right now, but I’m willing to bet we’ll find they don’t match the age of the local rocks either.”

  “Which begs the question, why would someone go to all that trouble? Bringing war machines by ship or through the Stargate to an unremarkable planet and then burying them in the sand…”

  Sam nodded. The issue had been nagging at her since she first realized the differences. “I’ve already ruled out a bunch of races we’ve encountered as the builders of the robots, but I could be here for days combing the database and still come up empty.”

  Daniel folded his arms. “Why would someone want to defend a bunch of giant stone spheres?” He asked the air. “Maybe it’s a site of religious significance, and the robots were guarding them against interlopers? Or they could be left-overs from some off-world invasion.”

  “Or maybe the Pack put them there.”

  “Ah, so we’re going for the distrust everyone because they hate us and want us to die conclusion, then?” Jackson shook his head. “I know after so long we have a bit of a reputation out there, but this is bordering on xenophobia.”

  “I never said that,” Sam retorted. “But sometimes it is hard to think the best of strangers.”

  “Suj said something very similar.” Daniel nodded slowly. “And I wish I didn’t agree but I do.” He sighed. “I think I’ve been hanging around you guys too much. The military mindset is rubbing off on me.”

  “Really?” Carter smiled a little. “We could say the same thing about you. I mean, look how much Teal’c has mellowed since he met you.”

  Jackson began to speak, but his words were flattened by the sudden whoop of an alert siren. “What now?” he yelled.

  Unscheduled off-world activation? Sam hesitated a moment, expecting to hear those words broadcast over the SGC’s public address system. Instead, there was a momentary dimming of the lights in the lab, so fast and so slight it was barely noticeable. She didn’t need to say anything to Daniel; the two of them tore from the lab and ran for the control room.

  Jackson threw a glance out of the big armored windows into the gate-room, expecting to see… Well, something. But the chamber beyond appeared completely normal, the Stargate silent and dark. He glanced over the shoulder of the duty technician at the control console as one of the large steel blast doors below slid open, allowing Sergeant Siler and a couple of armed airmen to enter. Siler had a complex device in his hand that chattered like a Geiger counter, and he was waving it aroun
d in careful motions, taking readings. The two soldiers panned their assault rifles back and forth, watchful and ready.

  Sam was already in urgent conversation with Colonel Reynolds, for the moment acting as base Commander while Hammond was away and Jack was already home for the evening. “What’s the problem, sir?”

  Reynolds’s face was set in his usual perpetual frown, but deeper than usual. “Damned if I know, Major. We got a power spike from one of the monitors and it tripped the alert…” He leant down to talk to the technician. “Well?”

  Daniel watched the automated checklist on the airman’s screen run swiftly down its length, leaving a trail of green tick-marks. “Uh. Gate systems appear to be nominal, sir,” replied the technician. “No errors.”

  Sam tapped the microphone that broadcast into the gate-toom. “Siler? Anything?”

  The sergeant glanced up at the armored windows. “Nothing, Major. Electromagnetic, thermal, ultraviolet, quantum… All scans in here read negative.”

  “My laptop does this kind of thing all the time,” offered Jackson, in an attempt to be helpful.

  Carter nodded at the Stargate. “This is an alien construct made of exotic matter and crystalline circuits we still only know a little about, Daniel. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “And there’s no tech support help line, either,” noted Reynolds without humor. “Major, what’s your recommendation? I can lock down the base if that thing’s going screwy on us.”

  Sam studied the readouts. “I don’t think that’s necessary. But we should suspend all gate travel for a few hours while I run a full diagnostic.”

  The colonel nodded. “Fair enough. We’re not expecting anyone back until sun-up anyhow. Do what you need to, but all the same I’m going to bump up internal security to level three.”

  “I guess you won’t be leaving any time soon, then?” said Daniel, as they walked away.

  “Guess not,” said Carter. He could see her mind racing.

  Daniel couldn’t help but grin. “You love this stuff, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “All the techy mystery stuff. The robots, this power surge. You love the challenge. You have this expression on your face, like a kid in a candy store.” He smirked. “I think it’s sweet, actually.”

  Sam left him at the elevator doors in the corridor. “Funny,” she said over her shoulder, “I saw the same look on your face when you were crawling all over those alien monuments.”

  “Ah.” She had him there. “Touché.”

  Tyke swore loudly when Deano slapped him and he cocked his fist back to smack the jerk in his fat, sneering face. Deano shoved him away and Tyke slipped on the uneven concrete floor of the warehouse, but he kept his balance. “Kick your ass—” he began, his anger rising.

  “I said be quiet, fool,” Deano grunted. “Listen!”

  Tyke realized that the others were all keeping it down as well. Mag had an unlit joint halfway to his lips and AJ was reaching for his gun. It was then that Tyke became aware that the streetlights outside were acting weird; there was a ripple of flickers, as if they were going to cut out, and then they popped back on like nothing had happened. From nowhere, he felt the hairs on his arms and the stubble on his chin prickle. “What the hell?” It was like when he visited his aunt over in Aurora; the woman had these nylon carpets everywhere and you couldn’t take two steps without building up a static charge that zapped you every damn time you touched a doorknob, or something. His skin crawled; and then just as abruptly, the sensation faded.

  There was a heavy thud from the floor above them, and a distant scraping sound. “Five-oh?” hissed Mag, eyes darting around the large, dimly lit space.

  Deano listened intently for a moment. “Naw,” he said eventually. “Pigs come in the front door.”

  AJ snapped his fingers. He always did that when he was nervous. “Reckon its those jerks from Grove Street. Tryin’ to be sneakers.”

  “Could be,” Deano allowed. The truth was, there wasn’t a lot of what you could call gang culture in Colorado Springs, but what did exist was just as inclined towards turf wars as the equivalents in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit and New York. It was just a little more low-intensity. But that said, crews like the Two-Eight didn’t take any less pride in doing violence toward their rivals. Tyke had been jumped into the gang when he was twelve years old, and it had been his life ever since. If there was a concept he understood, it was the idea of respect; and someone talking a stroll around a piece of Two-Eight territory like the derelict house without permission was clearly an act of disrespect.

  Mag rolled the joint between his fingers, and then finally pocketed it. He had personally been responsible for running a stolen car into the porch of a Grove Street banger’s place and the resulting fatalities. “They know this is our set,” he sneered. “They here, and it’s on.”

  “Yeah,” AJ grinned.

  Tyke strained to listen. Faintly, he thought he heard voices. “A couple of them? Come for a look-see?”

  Deano had moved away from the pool of light cast through the warehouse window, into the deep shadows. “Don’ matter who it is. Two-Eight lives here.” He jerked a thumb at the wall where the gang’s graffiti tags were writ large in white spray paint. “What we got issa home invasion, dog.” Deano reached inside his jacket and his fist returned with a large-framed, nickel-plated revolver. “Check it, we gotta deal.”

  “Just four of us,” began Tyke, “if there’s more of them—”

  AJ grunted. “You gonna puss out, Tykey?” He made a tutting noise. “Time to represent, homes.”

  “Get yo’ gats,” said Deano. “We got pest control to do.”

  Jade wiped her mouth and offered the water pack to the Commander. He ignored her, studying the cylindrical pod’s energy output display. “Good,” he said to himself. “The jump went smoothly.” He shrugged off the pack on his back and opened it. “Index is almost dead-on for the co-ordinates we set.” He was breathing hard from the shock of transition.

  “Where is this place?” Jade took a wary step towards the grimy arched window. Through the dirt-smeared glass she could make out buildings and streets, splashes of color and what seemed like vehicles moving on a nearby highway. “I’m here…” She said it herself, as if it was important to voice the words aloud in order to set the reality of it in stone. “We’re back.”

  The old man made a brusque gesture. “Get over here.” He didn’t look up from what he was doing. “Where’s your weapon?”

  “Do I need it?” She tapped the discreet holster on her belt. “There aren’t any aliens on-planet…”

  The Commander snorted. “There’s more than enough to be worried about without things from outer space.” Metal creaked somewhere off in the shadows and Jade froze. “More than enough,” he repeated, this time in a whisper.

  She activated the implant with a thought-impulse and felt her eyes prickle. The colors of the warehouse changed from puddles of darkness and weak light to a thermal landscape of blue and black. Attenuated through sheetrock walls, she saw blobs of white and red moving gingerly forward, keeping low to the floor. “Contact.” She subvocalized the word, letting the implant’s subdermal comlink broadcast it. Jade took out her gun and thumbed the activation stud. At the corner of her vision, she saw the Commander doing the same. By reflex, Jade found herself looking for the tell-tale glow of a symbiote inside the torsos of the new arrivals, but there were none. These were humans; nothing special.

  Their body language changed as the four figures moved into the dull light. “So, what we got here?” The voice was a slow, menacing drawl. Jade saw now that they were just youths, most of them half her age at least, and they moved with affected, cocky swaggers. Each was dressed in similar clothes, sporting hats or neckerchiefs in the same colors; blue, black, white. She knew tribal insignia when she saw it. The one who spoke had a silver pistol in his hand and he made an exaggerated play at studying them. “What we got here? Grandpa and some baby
doll?” The other three gave a chorus of rough sniggers. “Hey,” he said to the Commander, “if you’re going for a little somethin’ somethin’ here, you ought be inna motel, not Two-Eight’s house.” Jade kept her gun concealed as he looked at her. “Huh. But you don’ look like no working girl.”

  “Easy marks…” sneered the tallest of them.

  “Watch your mouth,” said the Commander. “She’s my daughter.”

  Another of the youths cackled, laughing around a crude cigarette between his lips. “Better check yo’sef, Deano. You be rude, dog.”

  “Shut up, Mag.” Up came the revolver. “I don’t give a crap what she is, meat.” The leader bore his teeth at them. “You got about ten seconds to give me what you got, or else you’re dead!”

  “I don’t think so.” The Commander raised his weapon and Jade saw the snake-like curves of a zat’ni’katel. With a metallic snap, the pistol’s cobra-head muzzle reared up and activated.

  “Yo, AJ.” The one named Mag called to the tall youth. “See that? Whas’ he got there? That ain’t no kinda gat.”

  “The word,” said the Commander, “is zat.” Without warning he flashed off two bolts from the Goa’uld pistol in quick succession; Deano, with his revolver, was hit first, and then AJ, who had an automatic. Both of them went down to the floor, jerking and twitching from the impact of the alien weapon’s lightning-like energy bolts.

  The remaining two broke and ran, one slipping and racing the way they had come, the other pounding toward an exit door and the rusting fire escape beyond it. In a single, seamless action Jade pivoted and thumbed her pistol’s selector to low yield before releasing a dart of brilliant red light. The beam charge struck the fleeing youth in the back and washed over him, for a second lighting the room with hellish color. He fell like a puppet with its strings cut, the pulse overloading his nervous system before he hit the floor.

  The last one, the youngest one, was at the stairwell when he was thrown off his feet, and went skidding down on to his backside. He had collided with something large and invisible; the kinetic impact made the prism-optic camouflage concealing the third member of their team flicker, and for a split second the youth looked up and saw the shadow of a giant insect looming over him. Predictably, he started screaming.