Jack had little choice but to check his temper at the 'gate before he returned to the campsite. Under mounting pressure from above, General Hammond had been forced to order the return of the engineering team, effectively scaling down the rescue effort to the three remaining members of SG-1. Jack understood the reasoning and accepted Hammond's sympathetic apology, but it didn't lesson the feeling of finality that had settled in his stomach. The withdrawal of the engineering team sealed Daniel's fate. SG-1 weren't geared for this type of S&R, and leaving them planet-side was the general's way of allowing the team to say their goodbyes.
"Carter." Jack acknowledged her as she strode purposely towards him across the field on the opposite side of their campsite. "Tell Rogan and his men to pack it up, they're going home."
"Sir?"
"You heard me, Major."
"They're calling off the search?"
Jack's silence was answer enough for her.
"They can't do that, sir! We haven't even sent a probe down the tunnel. For all we know he could be on the other side of the obstruction."
"What would you like me to do, Carter?" He swiped the cap from his head and tossed it at the ground in frustration. "I'm not the one making the call on this. Hammond's not happy either, but he has his orders and he's not about to countermand them for the sake of one man whether he agrees or not."
"But this is Daniel, sir."
"One among many. We all know what the risks are and accept them. You have your orders, Major. Have Rogan and his men pack their gear and break camp. SG-4 needs their bridge building skills on PJ7-002."
"Yes, sir."
"Where's Teal'c?"
Sam looked over her shoulder in the direction of the mountain. "He's scouting to the west of the tunnel entrance near the river bed. He and Rogan got into a conversation about where the most likely exit points for lava tubes would be during an eruption and he decided to take a walk."
"Alone?"
"No, Corporal Lewiston has gone with him."
"Fine. Call them back. Tell Rogan he's to head to Earth for supplies before joining Makepeace. Hammond is expecting them back within the hour."
Carter nodded once, her dark gaze lingering just long enough on Jack to make him uncomfortable.
~oOo~
The floor was cold. The last few times Daniel had woken up, the pull of his injuries or some quickly forgotten dream had been the culprit, instantly bringing awareness to his still tired mind. This time was different. Not only was the floor cold, it was also flat, and that in itself was unusual. Daniel shifted his weight about, waiting for the inevitable stones to bite into his back and thighs and dust to stir his sinuses, but there was nothing.
Biting down hard on his lip against an expectant tide of pain, he rolled slowly onto his left side using his good hand to support his injured one. The move had been less of a chore than the previous times he'd tried, and letting out a long breath, he levered himself up on his elbow.
A gauzy blue light swam about him, not really bright enough to illuminate the area, but just enough for him to know he was no longer in the cavern. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, but eventually shapes began to evolve through the gloom.
The wall in front of him was smooth. No jagged rocks or stalactites hanging from the ceiling, no pocketing from where other rocks had hit them during the quakes. As he reached out towards the wall, his hand connected with another surface. This one had right angles. Perfectly formed to the point of being seamless, Daniel knew without doubt that whatever he was touching was manufactured. Using the surface as leverage, he pulled himself upright, relieved when his head didn't connect with the ceiling.
Adjusting his injured arm in its sling, he scrubbed a hand down his face in an attempt to push away his tiredness. The room was a mystery, an enigma where none should exist, especially miles underground. In the far corner, Daniel noticed the light seemed to be more intense, and suspecting it was likely the source, he picked up his abandoned pack and started to feel his way towards it.
Another tremor ran under his feet and the walls shook, showering him with fine dust from somewhere above his head. The realization that this room was no more stable than the one he'd left began to sink in as he looked about for somewhere to shelter while the tremor passed. There was nothing though. What small amount of light he had was barely enough to give him a vague image of the shapes around him and nothing more. Like the ones before it, this tremor seemed to move like a wave under his feet, rippling the floor and causing the walls to yaw and groan. He lost his balance for a moment, staggering forward, and reaching blindly into the dark before connecting with another smooth surface.
As soon as he'd managed to anchor himself in one spot, the tremor rumbled past and the noise faded into the background, leaving him alone once again. Letting out a sharp breath, he hitched his pack back onto his shoulder and headed for the light source.
Curiosity called out to him in the form of a partition jutting out at a right angle from the longest wall in the room. Light spilled out from behind it, just barely enough for him to catch sight of glyphs etched into its smooth surface.
~oOo~
A cup of steaming coffee was offered in silence. The fire that barely gave off enough heat to chase away the chilly night air was starting to dwindle but no one made an effort to toss on a fresh log. Jack didn't generally harbor defeatist notions, but the departure of Rogan and his team felt like a sucker punch. He understood the reasoning and accepted the decision that had been made to move the team onto more urgent missions, but he was finding it difficult not to take the withdrawal of support personally.
Jack looked around the campfire at the faces of his teammates, their expressions closely mirroring his own. He'd seen Carter staring off into the distance at the mountain, eyes squinting ever so often as though she was trying to look straight into its heart. There was nothing to see. Night time on this planet descended quickly and shrouded the land in an inky darkness. Teal'c tried to give the outward appearance of meditating but Jack knew better. He guessed it was the nervous tension in the air or something, because he was hyper-aware of the other man's emotions simmering just beneath his calm exterior.
"Sir?" Carter broke the silence.
"What is it, Carter?"
"I think we should…" she trailed off, as her gaze wandered from him and back to the mountain. "Maybe we could-"
"I'm not good at guessing games, Major."
"Teal'c and Corporal Lewiston found several other entrances earlier. Maybe they're worth investigating in the morning."
"You heard Rogan, those tunnels could lead anywhere, and we don't know how safe they are. I really don't want to explain to Hammond how I managed to lose more members of my team."
Carter drove her heel into the ground in frustration. "Then why are we still here? Why recall the engineers and leave us here if we can't continue the search?"
"I don't know, Carter."
"They wish for us to have a moment of closure," Teal'c added, eyes still firmly closed. "Is it not the tradition of your people to give those closest to the deceased an opportunity to say their farewells?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then if we cannot resume the search for Daniel Jackson, we must assume that he is lost to us."
"You know," Jack started, mouth twitching with hesitation, "I don't… aw, hell!" He rose and shook out his legs. "I'm gonna take a walk, clear my head."
"Would you like some company, O'Neill?" Teal'c started to stand.
"No," said Jack, gesturing for him to sit back down. "You and Carter get the camp ready. We're bugging out first thing in the morning."
Sam looked up sharply. "We're leaving?"
"Pretty sure that's what I just said, Carter! Look," Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. "Just… clean this place up. I'll be back soon."
~oOo~
Familiarity beyond the obvious connection with the Asgard teased the edges of Daniel's mind. An old college lecturer of his came to mind, with his tweed jacket and matching pants, hair swept to the left in a comb over, he stared right through him now as he had all those years ago. The man never connected with his students on a personal basis, in fact, he held class as though he was imparting his wisdom to an empty room, but he knew Germanic languages like he'd been born to the period.
"A man can be a king in his own kingdom, but that doesn't make him inventor of all that he claims. Take the Romans for example…"
When Daniel managed to separate the man's inane ramblings of historical proclamations versus actual fact, what he was left with was an intuitive way of viewing runes and associating them with their meanings. The discovery of the Asgard and their use of the runic language both thrilled and excited him. What was difficult to understand was the connection they held with the Nordic nations of Earth. Common theory was that displaced persons carried their culture with them, but what happened with the Asgard? The Goa'uld kept their own language and distinctive writing style, but the Asgard – aside from assuming the persona of known Nordic gods – used a style of writing virtually identical to Germanic runes. They didn't have their own unique written language?
Did this mean the Asgard established the Nordic nations on Earth, or was theirs the first culture they had interacted with and decided to adopt some of their ways? An eerie thought crossed his mind: If they were the forefathers of modern day Scandinavians, would that also make them the true gods of Nordic culture?
He used the puzzle of the wall as a distraction from the throbbing pain in his wrist. Rows of the angular glyphs flowed across the surface, back lit from a source that Daniel couldn't see. The opposite side of the wall was almost identical, the only difference being a cluster of groves cut into the surface, similar to the one that had ultimately led him into the room.
Daniel set down his pack and opened it, taking out the cloth of stones and laying them out on the floor. One by one, he held up each stone, matching its surface with the grooves on the wall.
"Now," he whispered, "if you could only tell me what you all do."
He set the stones aside to concentrate on the wall. Whatever the origin of the Asgard language, their use of the Elder Futhark alphabet was obvious and made individual character recognition relatively simple. Determining which of the Germanic languages, however, would have been a greater chore if it hadn't been for the sampling of Asgard they'd discovered on the wall at Heliopolis. No, in this instance, it was the light that would be his greatest enemy in trying to decipher the wall. Whatever source was illuminating the characters was not constant. Whole segments of text flickered and died, only to flare up again seconds later. Daniel likened the whole exercise to trying to read with a strobe light.
The wall on Ernest's planet had been relatively simple to read in comparison to this one. Best he could determine, it read like a work manual of sorts, but the terminology was difficult to translate. Perhaps the dialect was older than the Heliopolis panel? A written language adapts, evolving over time to incorporate a broadening of its oral twin and changes in the civilization. As cultures evolve, new phrases and objects are introduced that require a place within the language. It was possible that was what Daniel was seeing here, but also more likely that this wall contained information not meant to be shared outside the Asgard people, and was written in some form of shorthand.
"Yeah, didn't think it would be that easy."
Simple words flowed to become more complex sentences which he stumbled over when he couldn't grasp their meaning. Some symbols appeared to represent whole words while others had to be joined together like individual letters to form a word. Whatever the Asgard had used this room for, what secrets it held, it wasn't going to be easy for Daniel to decipher.
After several hours staring at the symbols, and with only a vague idea of their meaning, Daniel finally succumbed to the need to rest. He pulled his sleeping bag from his pack and rolled it out, deciding to make use of its thickness for comfort rather than climbing inside it. Lying on his side, his injured arm supported by the sling and the ground, he let his gaze wander over the wall and down to the ground, taking the text as a whole. Nothing stood out to him, and kicking his legs out in frustration, he let sleep take him over.
To be continued…