General Hammond looked across at Makepeace. "What is it Colonel?"
"We need that virus, sir," Makepeace said.
"I'm aware of the tactical implications of the idea Colonel. There is the minor problem that we don't yet know how the software in those things works at all, let alone how to implant a virus into it. Or how to modify one so that it does a better job of wiping the things out."
"The Tok'ra could…" He wound down in the face of Hammond's glare. "And then again maybe not."
"Thank you Colonel. You can continue Teal'c."
*
"Let's get out of here then," Daniel Jackson said, tucking O'Neill's Smith and Wesson into a holster that he had helped himself to by relieving O'Neill of the burden. Teal'c heaved a sigh of relief so deep his Go'uld larvae must have been worried that it was going to be shot through his chest wall by the reaction of his diaphragm.
"We should bring him along," suggested Teal'c.
Jackson shook his head in total bafflement. "Who?"
"The Count."
"What on earth for?"
"To enable us to continue our research into removal of the Goa'uld larvae."
Jackson blinked a couple of times before replying. "Yeah, OK. I know how important that is to you, but at the first sign that we need to get a move on. He goes by the way side. OK?"
"Understood."
Heidi wore an expression that said, 'what planet are you from?' that gradually changed to one of awestruck respect as the nature of the discussion dawned on her. Jackson thought he was being a fool letting Teal'c talk him into it, but changed his mind when he saw the look on Heidi's face. For some reason that was important to him. Thus he proves once again that even the most intelligent of us have biological imperatives.
Jackson felt good, he felt bad and he felt mean. He had guns, he had friends, he had grenades, he had knives and he had the knowledge of how to use them. If he were Rambo, he'd be tying a bandanna around his brow about now. He wasn't John Rambo, but he might pass for Indiana Jones without the bull whip, or the sneer, or the scar under his lip or the attitude, or the…Ok, let's face it, he's not even a passable Lara Croft, but he's all we've got.
"Heidi, lead on," Jackson said. He heaved the comatose Count onto his shoulder, then he staggered, this was not going to be easy. Teal'c leant down to do the same to O'Neill. "Can you take care of Carter for us?"
Heidi Pravda debated her own sanity and then agreed to his request. Thus proving that even the most sensible of us suffer from the same imperatives. She staggered beneath the unhelpful bulk of Samantha Carter and led the way out through the door. They staggered purposefully into the hallway and debated which direction was the least unsafe.
"That way would be quickest," Heidi suggested, pointing in the direction that led back into the castle and the main hallways.
"But it will be full of guards and space for them to gang up on us," said Teal'c, "Whereas the other way is longer, but the narrow corridors offer only limited room for them to come after us."
"Which way will your mother bring the cart?" Jackson asked.
"To the tunnel entrance," agreed Heidi.
"Then that is the way we go."
They staggered into the corridor, burdened with the weight of two slightly drained SGC personnel and one slightly shop soiled vampire. Within a few metres it looked like the tunnel was a hundred kilometres long. For some reason they seemed to be going backwards. They would take a step forward and the end of the tunnel would seem even further away. It was all an optical illusion brought on by the lack strength and wavering commitment, of course.
A few pebbles fell from the roof in a little mineral shower. It landed on Jackson's head. He turned around to try and shoot something and left a whole bunch of little holes in the wall after his itchy finger squeezed the trigger. Each shot ricocheted into the dark with a high pitched whine that set their teeth on edge. He hit nothing biological but it was a close thing for Heidi and the hapless Samantha Carter.
"Sorry, sorry," Apologised Jackson. His paranoia was now in charge of the asylum. He continued staggering along beneath the weight of the Count, moving almost backwards while he waved his gun around threateningly. There was nothing behind him yet to be quailed by the sight of his weapon but he did it anyway. Something was moving in the corridor behind them. He could hear it, still someway away in the distance, but he couldn't see it.
He was concentrating so hard on identifying the sound, that he almost overshot the next corner, only noticing the bend when the pursuing guards clattered into view. Jackson ducked for cover only to find that he was stumbling down a new corridor rather than flattened against the wall like he expected he would be. He fell to the floor, down with the Count. For a moment Jackson struggled beneath the weight of the comatose vampire while the action happened around him.
The sound of Teal'c staff blowing holes in the stonemasonry filled the air, and drowned out the curses that Jackson muttered. The Count rolled off him with a meaty thud. Jackson staggered upright and found himself confronted by the concerned face of Heidi Pravda.
He picked himself up from the floor and re-burdened himself with the uncooperative Count, then the three of them ran for all they were worth. Under the circumstances that wasn't much. A large chunk of the ceiling fell in behind him leaving a cloud of dust and the smell of burnt wall coverings.
"I believe that I have delayed them enough to get some distance," bragged Teal'c.
The guards rounded the corner and strode onward, proving that Teal'c confidence was grossly misplaced. Jackson stopped in the hall, leant against the wall and let forth a blast with the AK-47. A few guards went down. A few others dived for cover behind a tapestry. They were not of the bright kind, these guards, they only had enough processing power for the task of guarding and breathing at the same time. The others spun on their heel and took cover behind the corner in the hall. Those ones were almost officer material.
Jackson spun beneath the burden of the Count, faced toward the direction they had been heading before they were so rudely interrupted, and intensified his efforts in staggering along behind the team.
A sound like an avalanche in a snow resort came from the corridor where the guards were hiding. A puff of air and dust billowed behind the SG-1 team.
"I think the grenades have done a bit of structural damage," concluded Teal'c.
"Wonderful," wheezed Jackson. The dust had irritated his sinuses. He felt the need to sneeze like the need to breathe, there was nothing he could do to control it. Burdened down by the Count's dead weight, it was the last thing he needed.
It was not exactly a great time to notice the sound that was coming their way from ahead of them. Priorities changed. Sneezing might be the second last thing he needed right at that moment.
*
"Just hold it there Teal'c," General Hammond said. He checked his watch. "We haven't heard much from the infirmary for a while," he said to Colonel Makepeace. "I'm going to check it out."
*
A lanky (literally) figure swirled into the hallway and looked at the damage that the collapsing roof had wrought. The newcomer's midnight robe was billowing in a breeze that wasn't there. All around it the devastation wrought by a few well-chosen grenades was still falling to the floor.
"DECISIONS, DECISIONS," ruminated Death. "WHERE, OH, WHERE DO I START? I THINK I SHALL START WITH…THAT ONE OVER THERE."
*
General Hammond stepped into the Infirmary and looked around him. Alarms sounded, their cacophony almost deafening, and they went unacknowledged. Confusion reigned and Catastrophe appeared to be the heir to the throne.
The wild squeak, squeak of an overloaded set of hospital trolley castors signalled the approach of a team of medical staff. They ploughed straight at General Hammond, the two of them apparently more interested in the display on the contraption on the trolley than any thing that might be in their way. They were frantically wheeling a de-fribulator through the doorway and into the suite where O'Neill and Carter were housed. General Hammond jumped out of the way hurriedly before the runaway cart full of electrical and electronic medical technology mowed him down.
"Who is that for?" General Hammond demanded of the passing medical trauma team.
"Doctor Fraiser," the medical technician threw an answer over her shoulder, and proved by what she said that she had completely misread the nature of his request.
General Hammond pushed through the door and found himself confronted by a nurse who made to restrain his entry.
The nurse wore a facemask, gloves and clean-suit. "This is a clean area," he said. "If you haven't scrubbed up then you can't come in." He held up his hand, almost touching the General but refraining from resting his gloved palm against the general's chest by just a few centimetres. It was almost as though he were restraining himself before toppling over and placed his gloved hand against the General's uniform. The hand stopped a couple of centimetres from contact. The nurse's restraint was not related to respect for Hammond's rank, but more through a desire to prevent the passage of possible infections.
Over the nurse's shoulder, General Hammond could see the back of Janet Fraiser's head. He recognised the colour of her hair more than anything else.
"Doctor Fraiser," he called over the nurse's shoulder. "What is the status?"
"I can't tell you yet," she looked up in baffled confusion for a moment before she said. "Just wait outside there and as soon as I know something I'll tell you everything."
He retreated from the infirmary reluctantly, only to find Teal'c standing behind him.
"No news then?" Teal'c asked.
General Hammond sighed. "No," he said reluctantly. "We may as well complete our debriefing while we wait."
*
Ahead of them, Daniel Jackson and Teal'c found a door marked with Germanic lettering. It read, "here be dragons." The writing was really on the wrong side, Jackson thought.
He looked over his shoulder and thought he could here his pursuers. They had been remarkably circumspect since the SG-1 team had induced a pile of masonry to fall from the roof and onto their heads. They healed fast, but that did nothing to prevent the head ache.
Half of SG1 ground to a halt, struggling beneath the burden of the comatose Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter, plus the extra burden of the Count who was dead to the world, for a while any way (probably forever really, although he was strictly speaking 'undead'). The way the Count's head was healing was distinctly creepy, Jackson thought.
He dumped the Count from his shoulder unceremoniously onto the tiles. He landed with a meaty thud, again.
Jackson was enjoying that part of the chase. He could take or leave most of the rest.
"How long until he's up and mobile again?" he asked Heidi.
Jackson relieved Heidi of her burden and then carefully placed the unresponsive bulk of Samantha Carter against the wall. Heidi collapsed to the floor beside her.
"Half a day at the most," she said. Heidi was close to exhausted. Carter certainly didn't look heavy, but she had turned into a huge burden by the need to carry her through the last couple of hundred metres. Heidi was huffing and puffing heavily and that was the second most enjoyable part of their flight from the castle. Jackson was pleased that she had spurned his offer of a replacement shirt. Seeing her sprawled on the floor, labouring for breath in one of Jackson's shirts was not half as alluring as the outfit that she wore.
She saw that Daniel Jackson was no less exhausted than she was and felt more satisfied with her own performance.
Jackson pushed on the door. It resisted. He pulled on it, with similar results. He tried twisting, turning pulling and tugging on the door handle. Nothing made any difference. He tried kicking and got a result. His toe hurt. He let fly with a couple of invectives that we will translate as "!@#$%^&*()," or something similar. The words all seemed to have four letters and each seems to comprise just the one explosive syllable. They don't appear in the Germanic or Egyptian lexicons.
Ah, perhaps they are in English. Just hang on while I look it up.
After and exhaustive search of the Oxford English dictionary we find that they are words with Anglo-Saxon roots and are considered impolite, expletives.
Hmmm? We must make a decision here.
After consulting the PG ratings guidelines, we will have to leave the words used by Daniel Jackson in expressing his feelings about his hurt foot un-uttered in this instance. Instead we will watch the comical dance he is executing. Jackson hopped on one leg, while holding the toes of the other between both hands. He pirouetted through one complete revolution and then began another before being interrupted by Teal'c who said, "we do not have time for this Daniel Jackson."
It is perhaps prudent to explain that Teal'c was still staggering beneath the weight of a perfectly unresponsive Jack O'Neill, and naturally he would be short of patience.
"It's locked," Jackson announced after he managed to regain control over his tongue. For a while there his reptilian brain (the old bit that was left over when the upgrade was done to the hardware a few generations back) was in control of the input/output buffer. He finally managed to open his eyes and close his mouth, and relax some of the new creases that marred the surface of his face there for a moment.
"It's locked," Teal'c translated for the benefit of Heidi Pravda.
"Of course it's locked," Heidi announced tetchily. "Do you think they leave the way into the castle from our village unlocked?"
"So who was it that was ahead of us in the tunnel?" Jackson asked. His tone was curious, as though puzzling one of life's fundamental mysteries.
"Probably my father and his cronies," she said. There was a note of unconditional admiration in her voice.
"Do you still have the key?" Teal'c asked. It was a perfectly reasonable request.
"What? Yeah of course."
"Grrrrrr," Teal'c hissed, staggered, and then placed the bulk of O'Neill beside Carter. She flopped sideways and rested her head against the shoulder of O'Neill. If it wasn't for their pale colouring and shallow breathing it might have been a touching scene.
Something caught his attention in the passage leading to their position.
Teal'c turned from his contemplation of the unconscious military personnel and let off a blast with his staff, taking out a couple stones from the tunnel roof and interrupted the mad dash of the approaching vampire guards. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, only easy. They just filled up the hallway and waited to be shot. The rest ducked into a doorway, showing admirable self-preservation, and they hid for a moment.
Heidi skipped back along the corridor, brandishing Samantha Carter's guns. She skidded to a halt and took a wide stance before letting off a barrage of lead pellets that cascaded in a metallic hailstorm between the stones of the passage. "I love these things," she chortled. "They are so much fun!"
Teal'c and Jackson exchanged one of those, 'we've created a monster' looks.
Heidi sauntered back to join them, holstered the guns with a flourish that would have done Angelina Jollie proud. She fumbled in the folds of what was left of her dress and produced a key amid a rattle of small metallic objects. It was attached to a huge ring, probably 15cm in diameter and accompanied by several other old style cloverleaf headed keys. The whole mess looked like it weighed a couple of kilograms and would wear a hole in the pocket of any one who carried it in about two minutes.
Jackson caught sight of the mass of keys that might have weighed down a prison warden and frowned.
"What?" asked Heidi Pravda, after she caught the expression on his face. She tossed him the bundle of keys. It arced majestically through the air, heading straight for his outstretched hand. It bounced off the palm of his hand like a rubber ball hitting a concrete floor. It lobbed onto the floor and into the corner between the wall and the door.
He shook his head, not understanding for a moment where she could possibly have hidden that key bundle; which was his excuse for not catching them. In reality his clumsiness was caused by his preoccupation with things intellectual during that early phase of his life when the kinaesthetic traces were being developed for his gross motor skills. He had failed to develop the supporting neural pathways that would have allowed him to perform those tasks such as catching a ball when he was a child.
While the keys lobbed into an inconvenient position on the floor, Jackson was using the biological processor that separated his ears to conclude that she probably kept those keys in the same place where she stored the knife, which was no answer at all. "Oh yeah," Jackson acknowledged and then scrambled onto the floor to gather them back up.
O'Neill flopped out from under Carter's head, and landed face down in her lap. She didn't seem to care.
Heidi turned to halt beside Teal'c, guarding the passage from the approaching vampire guards. They stood side by side with their respective weapons drawn. Teal'c let off a blast that decapitated two more Vampires and covered the wall with scorch marks and a spattering of smouldering meat. Shooting Vampires was a frustrating experience. As much as they tried to cull the numbers they seemed to keep coming. They had to run out of the things sooner or later, or so Teal'c had once believed, but sooner was going to be a problem because they were still advancing.
A few of them decided to try rushing the SG-1+ obstruction. It was a relatively short lived charge.
A rain of dismembered Vampire components rained down upon them like a gory hailstorm. Heidi dived for cover as soon as she saw Teal'c take aim. She somersaulted once and landed on her butt with precision timing that ensured maximising of bruising and minimising of self-confidence.
Teal'c had a similar tumble and cannoned into the unfortunate O'Neill, thus ensuring his ongoing descent into embarrassment by making the pair of them sprawl in such a way that they both measured their length with Carter's body.
Both Carter and O'Neill remained unconscious throughout this impingement of their person so they can only experience the embarrassment by reading this report.
Their combined excruciating moment was broken by the sudden intrusion of a few gory condiments that rained down to spice up the tableau. Teal'c pulled three furry fingers from his face and looked around for the exit to the compound. (Anything to take his mind off some of the other thoughts that such intimate contact with Samantha Carter's might cause. It was new territory for Teal'c and suggested that his intimate contact with Countess's sister had opened up new possibilities.)
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of barbecued…um…ah…yuck. I know what that smell represents. People smell all sorts of ways before they get burnt, but they only smell the one way afterward.
OK, so there were no more Vampires to worry about? Not in the sort term anyway.
They had been roasted in quantities to make a New Guinea highland feast look like a vegetarian convention.
Teal'c couldn't see the door from where he was, even after the obstruction provided by the bodies of Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill was moved out of the way. He had to wait a few moments before the air cleared to reveal a gaping hole in the wall. Standing in front of it Daniel Jackson was still fumbling with the keys, trying to fit them into the door that was no longer even remotely secure. What can you say? He was in shock. The palsy of his hands made a mockery of trying to get the key into the lock anyway, so it was just as well that there was now a colossal hole in the wall.
Teal'c did a quick head count and came to a number that was much greater than six, but a couple of them weren't accompanied by bodies. The number of heads that were still attached to bodies seemed about right. A couple of them weren't moving. Heidi, he knew was OK. Carter was… O'Neill was… Well it was going to be up to Janet Fraiser to tell him how Carter and O'Neill were.
"Daniel?" Heidi Pravda asked. She crawled out from the tangled mess that was made by the limbs that belonged to O'Neill and Carter and found his face behind his badly skewed glasses.
"I'm OK," he said and sneezed, twice.
He thought about trying to stand up, but found his lips planted against Heidi's. Her hands clutched at his hair, and anchored his head in place. He dropped his hands onto her back to stop him self from falling back onto the floor and his hands encountered a lot of bare skin. In fact it didn't seem to matter where he put them, it was all the same. Heidi didn't seem to object at all. It was not one of those moments of great self-discipline, but he decided to enjoy the moment.
She broke away eventually, breathlessly.
They exchanged one of those, 'ah… well… what do we do now?' kind of looks, and then they both went vivid shades of chartreuse.
"Oh, you have broken your facial decorations," she said, and then smoothed his hair.
Behind them, Teal'c climbed to his feet and swayed like he was dancing the last waltz before the night was over, two steps this way, two steps that way and then turn.
Heidi stood quickly and then slung an arm around Teal'c's shoulder and managed to make the whole tableau look at least slightly more incongruous.
"Heidi, is he OK?" Jackson asked.
"Mostly. I think, perhaps. Yes or No…"
"I'll take that as yes for now."
Daniel climbed partly to his feet and then bent to check on the status of O'Neill and Carter. They were both motionless. Jackson pulled a few lumps of plaster off Carter and at least proved that she had his full compliment of arms and legs and that there didn't appear to be any blood coming out of her (not that she had a lot left after her earlier contretemps with the Countess. The blood all over Jackson was still leaking out of the dismembered pieces of Vampires that had been baked onto his clothing.
The Count had slumped to the floor. Jackson only paid him enough attention to make sure he wasn't about to do any self actuated movement for a while longer yet.
"Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said vaguely and then shook him by his shoulder. It was not a good move, because Jackson was holding himself upright by an effort of will, rather than any inherent balance.
He slumped to the floor, barely able to remain upright even on his knees.
Teal'c crawled groggily on his hands and knees and shook himself so that the smear of Vampire moved around. None of it had the common curtesy to fall off. He climbed shakily to his feet and staggered out through the hole on the wall, mostly because Heidi Pravda slapped him on the back and the momentum carried him through that way.
"OK," Heidi said exultantly. "We're out of here."
She ran for the door only to be pulled up short by the appearance of a guard who was moving about like he meant to obstruct her. His mouth opened and revealed another orthodontic nightmare.
"—!" yelled the Guard. I could translate that into Ariel 12 point like the other Goa'uld speech, but it had as much meaning as a cry of "Aiiiya" before someone in one of those lame Anime cartoons raced forward with a sword.
"—!" yelled Heidi in return and raised her knife. It did look rather pathetic, but nobody was laughing.
Teal'c almost fell back through the hole in the wall, shook his head once and then shot the guard with his staff. The guard collapsed to the ground, now the best part of half a metre less statuesque (although which statue we're comparing it to is a debatable point.) than he had been.
"OK," Jackson said circumspectly and clambered to his feet. "We're out of here." Nothing went wrong this time.
"What?" asked Heidi, before getting his meaning from context.
They regained their burdens and clambered through the still smoking ruin of the exit door.
"Snap," said the wall. "Crackle. Pop."
"Which way?" asked Jackson, befuddled. The patch of vegetation-less ground looked the same in every direction.
"Mother's cart should be here by now," Heidi complained.
"Well it isn't," pointed out Daniel Jackson pettily.
"Perhaps we should follow those marks over there," suggested Teal'c. "Just an idea, but they look like a heap of foot prints and the drag marks left behind by the passage of an army of boot heels."
"That would be Dad's group." Heidi guessed.
"Sounds good to me." Jackson agreed.
"What's that noise?" Teal'c ruminated. Like he didn't know.
"It's a team of Vampires," Heidi answered. "Come on! Run!"
It was only a matter of kilometres to the stargate. It doesn't sound much. The members of SG1 were huffing and puffing evilly by the time they got twenty metres down the road, labouring beneath the triple burdens of their comatose team mates, their captive Goa'uld vampire and their own terror.
The entire cast of 'Dracula - the movie' appeared to be on their tail by that stage, and boy, were they pissed.
*
Janet Fraiser burst through the door, interrupting Teal'c's narrative yet again. She was still dressed in surgical scrubs and had a mask hanging around her neck. Her hair was still contained inside a disposable hat. General Hammond called after her. Framing the question he had been trying to get answered for several minutes.
"I don't know anything conclusive yet," she shouted over her shoulder while she marched purposefully through the hall and up to the door of another of the suites. "Nothing about anybody beyond what I've already told you." She glanced down at the pager on her hip, tutted once, and then set off back along the corridor before she disappeared into another ward, without saying anything else.
A gurney raced past the position where General Hammond and Teal'c were seated. It was heading back to the infirmary after leaving the operating room. On it, Daniel Jackson lay with his head bandaged and his arm coupled to a mixture of intravenous drips and monitoring equipment. A machine that went ping, went ping.
"Is he all right?" General Hammond called to the medical technician pushing the cart.
"The operation was successful," the medtech called back. "Well we released the pressure on his brain. There's no p[oint getting confident yet though. He's not out of danger yet, he's still in a coma." He shrugged and then they were moving along the corridor again.
General Hammond watched the gurney while it was pushed into the recovery room. His expression was speculative for a moment. Staring at the place where it passed from view. He was watching the swinging door, swing when a thought occurred to him; he appeared momentarily confused. One question needed answering still. "Teal'c," he said. "How did Doctor Jackson get injured?"