Chapter 25

Sam was furious.

At herself.

When she'd heard the voices, she'd quickly tracked them to the group gathered in the intersection two blocks from the alcove where they had left Jacob. As she watched and listened, concealed behind a parked vehicle, she had tried to assess her options. She could take out the guard holding Jaira, but the one on O'Neill might kill him at the same time. Maybe she should down the colonel's captor first. She had been so intent on estimating strategies and trajectories and milliseconds of response time that she had been oblivious to D'nae's stealthy approach on her position. He had pressed his weapon into her back before she even knew he was there.

Now, as she was prodded forward, Bok'n smiled at D'nae. "I'm glad to see you have regained your senses, D'nae," he said. "This is excellent. You have found the colonel's female."

Sam's anger suddenly found another target besides herself. O'Neill, always alert to her moods, murmured, "Easy, Major." To the provost he said, "Can it, Broken. She's my first officer."

Bok'n merely chuckled. He said to Sam, "Where is the other one who was with you?"

"He was dying," she said. "I couldn't help him." She was half afraid her lie carried too much of the ring of truth.

"We'll find him," said Bok'n. He turned to D'nae. "Colonel O'Neill has kindly offered up the location of the rest of his team and the children."

Sam cast a glance at her CO, but his face revealed nothing.

"That is indeed fortunate," D'nae said. "Shall we return to the Hall of Wydra? We can then discuss what to do next."

Bok'n's expression turned adamantine. "There will be no discussion this time, Magistrate. These alien miscreants will be punished."

"Miscreants?" O'Neill repeated.

His sarcasm brought the ghost of a smile to Sam's face, but it quickly faded when she looked at Jaira, pale and trembling in the hard grip of her captor. They had to figure out a way out of this mess. Now.

Bok'n continued, "Once we retrieve the children, the surgeries will take place as scheduled. We can manufacture more Silak'ha. That can be administered later. Tonight the aliens will be executed."

"As you wish, Venerable Provost," D'nae said, and Sam thought she detected a weariness in his tone, as though he were fed up with the whole business. "Let's return to the others now."

Sam thought fast. Once they were on the move, they would have a chance of creating some kind of distraction. They had only to take out the two guards. The provost and the magistrate would be easy pickings after that. They weren't trained soldiers. Turning her head minutely, she met the colonel's knowing look. He was strategizing too.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Bok'n said curtly, "In a moment. There's one more thing I want to do first." He took a step toward O'Neill, putting his face once again up close to the other man's. They regarded each other - white hair and gray, wide mouth and thin, gray eyes and brown - with unconcealed hatred. "Colonel," Bok'n said, his voice low and ominous, "you have made our lives a misery since you set foot on our planet. You have threatened the Kalam way. For that, I would see you suffer."

"Oh, I don't know. Watching me suffer is highly overrated. You can ask a few of my enemies."

Bok'n continued to stare at him, a smile curling his lips. His head moved and he looked directly at Sam. The coldness in those pale eyes made Sam's stomach lurch. "I know that those not in Unity rut like beasts," he said. "You have probably enjoyed copulating with this one, Colonel. Thus my pleasure as you watch her being disemboweled."

Sam kept her face a blank mask while fear and adrenaline coiled inside her.

"Leave her out of this," O'Neill said, his flippant tone replaced by a desperate edge.

Bok'n gave her another long look. "Very well," he said, and Sam sagged a little in relief, while at the same time she wondered why he had so easily acquiesced. The provost abruptly turned away from them. He nodded at the guard holding Jaira. "Kill the child instead," he said.

"No!" cried Sam and O'Neill at the same instant.

O'Neill's shout was cut off by the guard's arm tightening around his throat. He coughed and sputtered, and his face drained of all color. "We told you where the others were," he rasped, grimacing as the guard ground his weapon against his back. "And you've got us. Leave her alone!"

The guard holding the child had hesitated, watching the provost for a change in his orders.

"No," Bok'n said. "Do it."

"Wait!" D'nae's bellow next to her ear rattled Sam's already frayed nerves. "Provost, please don't do this."

Sam felt an ember of hope flare up. If they could get D'nae on their side… She said, "I thought you needed children, Provost."

Bok'n shrugged. "She is only one. We have plenty more."

The hope flickered out, and Sam felt herself turn as cold as death.

"Kill me!" The colonel's strangled cry made her heart seize. "Leave her alone and kill me! That's what you want. Let her go!"

Sam could smell the pungent odor of fear mixed with sweat emanating from the tortured man next to her. Across from her Jaira looked dazed. Her eyes stared, unfocused, at nothing.

Bok'n looked at him coldly. "No. She is special to you, Colonel. Why, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is punishing you, and I can think of no better way."

O'Neill struggled uselessly to pull from the man holding him. But even if he broke free, Sam thought, he couldn't possibly move faster than the weapon would fire. Both he and Jaira would be dead in an instant.

She thought furiously. If she charged, on the other hand, it might distract Jaira's executioner just long enough for the colonel to take them out. Of course, D'nae would probably shoot her first, but that was a risk worth taking if it would save the colonel's daughter's life.

One last time Bok'n nodded to the Kalam holding the child. The guard moved his weapon to Jaira's temple. The child swayed, in shock. Sam tensed her muscles. Now!

But she moved too late. The whine of a plasma weapon pierced the night.

~o~

Viorel ran up to Daniel, breathless. "This way. Hurry!"

"Wait! What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to help you! Follow me," she said, and turned in a direction opposite from where they had been heading.

Daniel gripped her arm. "No! That's the wrong way. We need to get to the bridge."

"It's heavily guarded. You'll never make it across."

Daniel closed his eyes. Of course it was.

He opened them again. "Then where-?"

"I know a better way. Come on!"

Daniel regarded her a moment, then let go her arm. "All right." He motioned to Teal'c, and the group began to follow Viorel.

As they made their way through more dark alleys, Viorel explained in answer to Daniel's questions that she had been monitoring the security communications, and learned about the firefight near this location. "That's how I found you," she said. Then, "Here we are."

They had emerged onto an intersection of several streets. Daniel drew back. "We'll be sitting ducks out there," he hissed.

"It will be all right," Viorel said, "but we need to move quickly." Hurrying into the middle of the intersection she stopped at one of the mysterious hexagon-shaped kiosks Daniel had seen on their passage through the city the previous day. Tapping on an almost invisible touch pad, she opened the door. She motioned to the group to enter. "Hurry!"

Daniel exchanged a glance with Teal'c in the darkness. "We do not appear to have any further options, Daniel Jackson." Daniel nodded, and they urged the children across the street to the kiosk, where Viorel ushered them inside. Daniel heard clattering and when he looked inside he saw a metal stairway descending into an underground tunnel system. A whiff of aroma told him it was the city's sewer network.

When the last of the children were in, Viorel said to him, "This will lead you out of the city if you keep going in that direction, east," she said, pointing. "It goes under the river and into the countryside." She gave him a long look. "Good fortune, Dan'l," she said. "I hope you return home safely."

He clasped her shoulder. "Thank you for your help." He turned to enter the kiosk, then a thought struck him. Turning back he said, "You know, you could come with us."

She blinked in surprise. "Why?"

"Well, what's going happen to you once we're gone?"

She thought, then grimaced. "Provost Bok'n will suspect my part in this. I will likely be imprisoned. Or worse."

"He'll probably have you executed, won't he?"

Viorel sucked in a breath sharply. She looked at the city, the only home she really remembered, then back at him. "But what would I do if I came with you? How would I live?"

He explained how SG-1 had many times helped find homes for other refugees. "But if you stay here you'll almost surely die."

Still she wavered.

He held out his hand. "Come on. Don't be afraid." Tentatively she took it, and he pulled her gently inside.

~o~

He would sort it all out later. Jaira's scream. The old man's shout. The guard who had held Jaira falling backwards, blood oozing from his forehead. The faltering of the pressure around his own neck and his instantaneous reflex - slamming the back of his skull against his guard's face, grabbing his weapon, killing the man. All this he would remember later. In the moment of action, however, Jack was only a machine bred of years of instinct.

When awareness returned, his thoughts turned first to Jaira. Frantically he swung around, looking for her. Carter had scooped her up and was comforting her. His major looked at him over the child's head pressed against her shoulder and nodded. Jaira was all right.

The hammering of his heart subsided and he became aware of D'nae standing next to him, slowly lowering his weapon.

"Nice shot," Jack said to him.

"I have studied many things in my long life. Marksmanship is one of them."

A sound then. Scrabbling and footsteps. Bok'n was on the run. In a few long strides Jack overtook the fleeing man and tackled him. With a knee on the old man's chest and one hand fisting the collar of his tunic, he pressed the barrel of the Kalam weapon he had taken from the guard into Bok'n's neck. "That was my daughter you almost killed, you son of a bitch."

Bok'n's eyes widened slightly, but he said nothing.

Jack twisted the shirt at the man's throat more tightly, his whole being on fire with molten fury. His mind leaped back several years, to when he'd held another man on the ground, gun pointed at his head, on the planet where the sky had turned red. Jack's anger at that man, whose sabotage had caused the death of several of the SGC's best people, had been almost uncontrollable. But his team had stopped him that time.

Not this time.

Jack jammed the gun harder against Bok'n's neck, and the man's face twisted in fear.

"Sir!" Carter's shout sounded far away.

"Not this time, Carter."

"But sir!"

"Let me do this!" Nevertheless, he glanced back at her. She was still holding Jaira, and now the child was looking at him.

He tore his gaze away from his daughter, back to the old man gasping and coughing at the pressure of the gun on his throat. Jack O'Neill had killed many men before this. He had gunned them down and blown them up. He had broken necks, slit open throats, embedded knives deep into hearts. His hands had been drenched in other men's blood many times. He never took pleasure in killing his enemies, but he would probably confess on occasion to a grim satisfaction in destroying the most evil of his adversaries. And this man under his hand certainly qualified, in Jack O'Neill's book, for that distinction. On a scale of 1 to 10, Broken rated 15. No mercy. Vengeance is mine.

And yet.

She was watching. Jack's hand holding the weapon shook.

"Colonel." It was D'nae's voice this time, close behind him.

"What!"

"We will deal with him. Go now." Jack looked up. The magistrate's gun, too, was trained on Bok'n.

He looked down at the provost again, but without seeing him. He saw, instead, Jaira's eyes fixed on his back. He released the pressure of the gun on Bok'n's neck.

The provost coughed. Ignoring Jack, he said, "Have you lost your mind, D'nae?"

"No, Provost, I have found it. You have finally gone too far. It's time for a change."

"Don't be absurd. There is no change on Kalam. I have been Provost for fifty hek'tons and that will not change."

"It will now," said D'nae. "We'll find other ways to augment our population. Please let him go, Colonel."

Beyond D'nae Jack could see Carter, tense and white, her eyes pleading: Let it go, sir. And Jaira, gaping at him. He wondered if she'd heard what he told the provost. That was my daughter. He had wanted to tell her himself, not have her learn it like this.

D'nae was still talking. "Be assured, Colonel, the Wydra will punish him."

"How?"

"He will be tried and sentenced to an eternity in confinement."

Jack looked at him. "It'll only be your word against his about what went down here." That was met by an uncomfortable silence.

Bok'n said, "Tallin and Oren will ratify anything I propose. First I will have Viorel arrested. Then I will have both of your heads."

D'nae licked his lips nervously. "We will settle this in the tribunal. Please release him, Colonel."

Gradually his anger began to seep out of him. D'nae was right. Bok'n was their problem, not his. The only thing that mattered was that Jaira was alive. He took one last, disgusted look at the provost. Then he lifted his knee from the old man's chest. "You don't deserve to live," he said. "But you got lucky this time." Slowly he stood up. His muscles, all of them, ached.

Turning his back on the two aliens, he crossed to Carter and Jaira. He touched his daughter's cheek. "You okay, baby?" Her saucer eyes were riveted on him. She nodded, but her trembling lips and chattering teeth told a different story. "Here, Carter, let me," he said, and the major passed the child to him. Once in his arms Jaira began to sob. He hugged her fiercely. Pressed his lips against her hair. Closed his eyes against the tidal wave of relief that washed over him and made his legs shaky. "It's all right, you're all right," he murmured over and over.

Gradually Jaira's sobs quieted. When he opened his eyes, Carter was watching him, her own eyes oddly liquid. "You okay?" he asked her.

Her smile was crooked. "I'm fine, sir."

He heard a scuffling and a grunt, and Carter looked over his shoulder. "Sir, get down!"

He dropped to the ground with his burden, and a single shot slammed his eardrums. Jaira's cry was muffled against his chest. Then all was silent.

He looked up. Carter was holding his Glock. She nodded the all clear. Rising on unsteady legs, the child cemented to his body, he saw Broken spread-eagled on the ground, blood spreading across his chest. D'nae, flushed and shaken, was getting to his feet.

"Bok'n disarmed D'nae," Carter explained, "and was about to shoot you."

He looked down at the sidearm in her hand. She must have retrieved it from where his captor had tossed it. "Good work, Major." She took the compliment with a nod and handed the weapon to him. He holstered it and turned to D'nae. "Is he…?" Jack began.

D'nae looked at the man on the ground. "I-" A gurgling sound came from Bok'n's throat, then the old man was silent, his eyes staring blankly at the night sky. "Yes, he's dead." Visibly pulling himself together he said, "I am sorry for what has happened." Gesturing at the fallen provost he added, "But I am not sorry for that. I will divert our forces away from your people and the other children."

"They've already been diverted," said Jack. At D'nae's surprised look Jack added, "But if you can keep them diverted, that would be good."

"I will try." He pointed behind them. "One block that way is an entrance to our underground waste disposal network. It will lead you out of the city." He told them where to find the entrance and the code to open it. "And hurry."

They turned to leave, but Jack had a thought and turned back. "Hey, that drug of yours can't bring someone back to life, can it?"

D'nae looked at the body at his feet and frowned. "In rare cases it has been successful."

"In this case?" said Carter.

"In the case of the provost, all efforts of our medical scientists will be directed to that end."

"Of course they will," Jack said. "Can you stop them?"

D'nae's shoulders slumped.

"Right." He turned to Carter. "Major, hand D'nae my zat." She raised her eyebrows in surprise, but complied, retrieving the weapon from the ground where the guard had tossed it with the Glock and the P-90.

D'nae looked at the weapon in his hand.

"You want him to stay dead?" Jack asked the magistrate.

The other man looked at O'Neill, then down at the slain provost. He nodded slowly.

Jack explained how to use the zat. Then he gathered up his P-90 and said to Carter, "Let's get your dad."

When they had gone a block they heard the zat fire. Then again. And once more. Then silence.