Though a huge coordinated man with flame hair, Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the Ankh Morpork city watch radiated an air of competence. But not today. Today he was not having one of his better moments. He crouched behind the overturned cart that formed the ersatz watch command post for this latest hostage siege scenario. Strictly speaking he was In Charge and he was not happy with the way it was being conducted. He turned to Constable Visit-the-infidel-with-pamphlets-praising-our-lord.
"Visit," Carrot said. The rest of his name was too big a mouthful even for Carrot to bother trying to say it out loud.
The constable turned from his rapt concentration on the building across the street from where they were encamped and for once didn't have a parable to explain what was happening - with religious overtones. He just stared at Carrot and waited to find out what his commanding officer wanted to say.
"So what happened then?" Carrot asked mildly.
This was his chance. They came along so infrequently. Few people encourage Visit to speak. He drew breath and prepared to deliver. Anything he said took on many of the aspects of a zealot's sermon and he had the words already mapped out in his head. The Omnian school of public speaking had a lot to answer for. Carrot steeled himself for the stilted delivery.
"They dashed into that building and we heard a great deal of screaming, the sort of ruckus one would have expected in the temple when…"
"The Fool's guild," Carrot interrupted. "I heard that right then?" Even Carrot, good natured and unfailingly polite Carrot, interrupted the flow of Omnian religious quotations when Visit got into stride. Carrot hadn't always been like that, but lately he had discovered that there was only just so much time in the day and so much to do in a city where crime was not just rife or organised, it was Organised. "They went into the Fool's guild?" There was just the last hint of wonder in his voice. "The Assassin's guild I could have understood." The Assassin's guild was right next door to the Fool's guild, there had been one particularly nasty period in the recent city history when that proximity had been the cause of a great deal of confusion and trouble. "But what would have possessed them to go into the Fool's guild?"
"That's what Downspout said," Visit supplied. "And I think I have the answer. I have these pamphlets if the Captain would like to browse through them I'm sure…"
"Perhaps later Visit. In the meantime can you get Downspout to come and see me?"
The Omnian constable almost bowed and scuttled over to the building behind their overturned cart.
With visit out of the way Carrot turned to the brain's trust of his watch.
Leaning against the cart beside Carrot was Sergeants Colon and Angua. Perhaps that should have been said brains and trust. Angua had brains and Fred Colon had… no perhaps that wasn't right either.
"Fred, I thought Nobby was with you on traffic patrol?" Carrot asked.
"Well he was going to be, but I was caught up with something, and Angua was working the vice squad and she needed back up. So Nobby obliged. You know how he is always ready to throw his lot in with his fellow officers."
Carrot knew just how Nobby was. Corporal Nobbs was one of life's born quartermasters, always prepared to volunteer to look after anything valuable. Nobby looked after the petty cash, because whenever you opened the petty cash tin, you could be sure that Nobby was minding it in his own pocket. 'Wouldn't want anyone to come along and steal something that was just left around in a jar,' he would say.
Angua looked over her shoulder at the door to the Fool's guild again. Things had been quiet in there for several minutes. That was never a good sign. She turned her attention back to the rest of the watch's senior officers. A crowd was developing, as there always seemed to be when things happened on the streets of Ankh Morpork. It was that kind of town. Always ready to provide an audience to any street theatre.
Many members of the public watched Angua instead of the siege at the Fool's Guild, because she was worthy of their attention. She normally had the whole Chicks in Chain-mail thing going, and it worked for her big time, but not this time. This time she was dressed more in the manner of…
"They should be back there by now," Carrot supplied.
The only other members of the watch involved in their little contretemps, Constable Dorfl and Sergeant Detritus had been sent off to guard the back entrance, so there was no chance that the subjects of the hostage drama had made their way out the back way. The sight of a troll armed with a siege engine and a golem armed with his own freedom were enough to stop anyone in their tracks.
"I would have said so too," Angua agreed. She would have nodded but that sort of thing brought with it a few risks, dressed as she was on this occasion. She was out of uniform, going undercover, so to speak. Perhaps that should have read under-covered. Her dress seemed to be short of both material and fasteners. A lot of their audience appreciated the view.
"We were doing the bag snatch sting," Angua explained to Carrot. "I've tried to explain to Nobby that the whole sting works better if I carry the bag, but Nobby insisted that was not the sort of thing that a lady should take the risk doing. He insisted on playing the lady role."
"That seems to be more than a passing phase of his," Carrot commented charitably. Nobby and dresses was becoming synonymous lately.
"It does appear to be a touch more serious than that," commented Angua vaguely.
"Wasn't Detritus with you?" Carrot asked her. This whole operation was starting to make his carefully planned roster look rather superfluous.
"He spotted Haematite doing some sort of deal in the alley over there," she pointed across the road. "He went to check it out. He was gone a while and Nobby turned up and…"
Carrot nodded knowingly.
Detritus was hell on the slab trade in town. It had been his great passion over the last few months, dealing his own form of justice to the dealers who were preying on the city's little pebbles.
Carrot nodded. He always encouraged community policing. "How is Haematite?" Carrot wondered idly.
"He'll recover," Colon answered. "A bit of grout and a bit of time and he might be walking and talking again by the end of the month."
Carrot nodded thoughtfully. Street justice was frowned upon. Justice is mine sayeth Lord Vetenary the Patrician of Ankh Morpork. Somehow Carrot doubted that Lord Vetenary would be too upset about Detritus providing rough justice to a slab dealer. "So what were these men doing?"
"We're not really sure," Angua frowned prettily. "We were over there," she pointed to the corner of the street, "and this cart came tearing around this corner. It was travelling way too fast and overturned. They were being followed by another cart; it stopped, barely before it ran into this other one. They took one look at the wreck and then just disappeared. That was immediately after Nobby came over to investigate. I was concentrating on the slab case and missed that bit."
Carrot nodded. He didn't recognise the cart. He was better with people.
Fred Colon almost spoke up at that point. If he had he would have said something about an issue that had been on his mind for a while now.
As the head of the Ankh Morpork traffic division, the investigation of traffic accidents and supervision of the clean up came under Fred's jurisdiction. Even someone with the sort of limited imagination with which Fred Colon had been endowed would eventually begin to notice the increasing frequency of cart accidents in the vicinity of Angua's bag snatching sting.
Crouched down beside Carrot, he was acutely aware of how distracting a sight young Angua could be. Dressing in that dress(?) might just have been the final straw.
The only thing that stopped Colon's mouth from uttering those traitorous words was the presence of Carrot. While Carrot was a competent officer, even if life's natural sergeant Colon said so, he did so have a blind spot where his girlfriend was concerned.
In Angua's defence the injury rate to women walking through the streets of Ankh Morpork had dropped significantly over the past few months. Replaced by injuries to cart drivers admittedly, but still a considerable improvement. The Seamstresses' Guild had been quite complimentary about the change in circumstances.
"One of them was carrying a silver sword," Angua offered and then shuddered, violently. Her clothing struggled for a moment to contain her anatomy and managed to do so at the last moment. The silver sword was significant. Werewolves' aversion to silver was legendary and justified. "I could smell it, even from way over there." She pointed to the alleyway where the confrontation with Haematite had occurred.
"They grabbed Nobby and backed straight into the Fools' guild," Visit concluded. He had just returned to the command cart after summonsing Downspout. The laborious progress of Constable Downspout from the roof of the building behind them continued while they spoke.
"Obviously thought he was an old lady," Angua added as an after thought.
"Not locals then," Carrot concluded. "Locals would know better than to head for that building." He thought for a moment. "But they're not that badly informed either. If they knew to wave that silver sword at you." That was a pretty well formed conclusion as well. Wearing the outfit she had chosen for the sting Angua looked for all-the-world like the highest priced lady of negotiable virtue that the city might possess. The last thing a man would think upon seeing Angua in that guise was anything to do with werewolves. Someone knew who she was, obviously. Which was it, an ignorant local or a well-informed foreigner?
The grinding noise made by the passage of a moving gargoyle had almost reached sufficient volume to obliterate any attempt at conversation. All eyes turned to watch the approach of a specialised species of troll.
"Oo on'ed oo ee ee?" Constable Downspout asked Carrot. The city's gargoyle population had been queuing up to join the City Watch over recent months. They had a lot to recommend them. They made a great surveillance team, and after his initial hesitations the head of the City Watch, Commander Vimes, had found them to be extremely useful. They were patient, rarely becoming bored with the more tedious surveillance activities and they watched the one spot continuously, and for that they were paid all the pigeons they could eat.
There was an obvious down-side to their employment. It had made something on a mockery of the carrier pigeon message dispatch system that the watch used when the gargoyles first came on board, but that was a small price to pay. (Unless you were a pigeon of course). Their one draw back was their inability to move their lips. You had to develop an ear for their accent.
Carrot had about the best ear for accents in Ankh Morpork.
"Was there anything else going on when they came through here?"
"Ike ot?"
"It just seems strange," Carrot ruminated thoughtfully, "that they would grab Nobby and hide like that. It's not as though we were actively pursuing them or anything. This just seems rather panicky to me."
"Ey ust abbed im an an," Downspout said.
"Nothing unusual about them at all?" Carrot asked. He waited for a response.
The gargoyle shrugged. "ey ere ools."
"They'd have to be to capture Nobby. They should have known that would bring down the wrath of the Watch." Carrot frowned. Something wasn't right about this situation. "Did anyone get a good look at them?" He asked.
Most of the team shook their heads. Downspout shrugged.
"Nobby would have," suggested Fred Colon.
Carrot gave him a look.
Colon got defensive. "Well he would have."
Carrot blinked and turned away as though not believing they had just conducted that part of the conversation.
"Thanks Downspout," Carrot said. "Can you watch out for us when we make the play for the door? I think we might need a high sight line. Just to be on the safe side."
The gargoyle shrugged and lumbered painfully away. It climbed the wall of the building in a sort of stop-motion animation kind of way. Carrot watched the progress of the gargoyle intently until it settled itself into position atop the building.
"Alright," Carrot said decisively. "Let's go and prod some buttock."
*
Jack O'Neill sprawled in the last chair before the exit to the conference room cradling his silver and sandy haired head in his hands. The day's third coffee sat half consumed on the table beside his elbows. His booted feet sat on the desk and they waved back ward and forward in time with the cadence of his words.
"Let me see if I've got this straight," O'Neill said. General Hammond sat to one side of the huge back lit television screen they were using for the mission briefing. He nodded for O'Neill to continue. Samantha Carter was pointing at a star in the middle of a cluster of stars and she smiled encouragingly. The image on the screen might as well have been the night sky outside their secured compound for all it meant to O'Neill. "It just appeared. Right? There's how many combinations of gate addresses? Sixty million or something, and there's only a fraction of those addresses used right? So one appears all of a sudden, just like that. Bingo! The Gou'ld have created a new one. After being inactive for all this time, we get a sign that they're expanding again. And you want us to go through and find out what they're doing?"
"That is correct," General Hammond answered. He crossed his hand in front of him, neatly beside his half-consumed coffee.
"Am I the only one here who doesn't think that this situation looks just a bit strange," O'Neill continued. "I mean, people, what's going on here? These bastards have been capturing people since before Moses played full back for Jerusalem and then they implant them with these little parasites that eventually propagate their species and we want to send a tiny little team of four to say hello. Does any of this start to ring a bell with you people?"
He made a Ta dah gesture.
He faced four blank faces.
"What's your point?" General Hammond finally asked when no one else seemed to want to take up the issue.
"Well, it just sounds kind of dangerous, that's all," O'Neill explained.
"Yes. It is."
"And some more people could get killed."
"Yes that is possible."
"And the stargate teams are always at the pointy end of these problems."
"That is true. For which you have everybody's thanks."
"But most of them have no idea we exist because the whole thing is classified and the population of the Earth has no idea of the constant threat it faces."
"True as well."
There was silence.
"Well," O'Neill said finally, he pulled his feet off the table and sat them back on the floor. "OK, so I've made my point now. You can continue the briefing. I won't interrupt again." And with that he lifted the cup off the saucer and drank the rest of his coffee.
"Thank you Colonel," General Hammond conceded, "Major," he gestured for Carter to continue.
"As Colonel O'Neill pointed out," Carter continued, "this is an unprecedented development in the stargate network and we need to be cautious in how we go about our next few moves. Seeing how this is so unexpected, we sent a probe through the new wormhole. We'll run the tape."
She picked the remote control off the table and zapped the television. Luckily the video player was close to the television and it caught the backscatter from the remote and interpreted that as a command to action. On the television screen a scene that had been recorded inside a large office or study replaced the star field. A few desks were arranged haphazardly around the floor. Each was covered with paper. The resolution of the video image was too poor to make out the content of the paper sheets. A few half-finished machines sat on desks and a few more of them were bunched up in the corner.
Nothing happened. The video image ran on. More of the same nothing continued to happen. With no coffee left to distract him, O'Neill started flicking balled up pieces of paper into the waste paper basket.
The probe rotated about its axis. There was a window to the outside world. O'Neill paid attention for a moment and then grew bored. It looked like a pleasant day, a few fluffy clouds and little else to mar the azure perfection of a spring day. It looked heaps better than being stuck here beneath hundreds of metres of solid rock in the Rocky Mountains and listening to this crap.
"The atmosphere is predominantly Nitrogen," Carter said, "with a combustible concentration of Oxygen, trace gases, Carbon Dioxide, helium, argon, krypton," Carter was talking into the lengthening silence. She wrapped up the briefing quickly, having realised that the audience hadn't gone with her on that last tangent. "It appears to be breathable," she explained. "The temperature was temperate, say Southern States spring. Humidity was low. Nice place to visit."
"The desks and chairs suggest human occupation," General Hammond said.
O'Neill bounced one of his paper balls off the back of Teal'c's head. The rebound missed the basket by several metres.
"The Goa'uld often get involved in human occupation," Daniel Jackson said evenly. "It's what they do, occupy humans. We are their preferred host after all."
Daniel's wife had been captured and infested with a Goa'uld parasite. It was the reason he had been dragged back into the stargate operation from another world. He was not military by background; he was an archaeologist, or more correctly an Egyptologist. It had been his translation of the hieroglyphics that had decrypted the stargate for modern human use. For that breakthrough he received few thanks. Typical of the military; do a good job and your reward was a harder job. It was all classified. The entire stargate teams existed in a state of virtual missing-person status.
"How long does that video record go on for?" O'Neill asked.
"An hour, then we pulled it back through."
"Why?"
"Because it couldn't open the door and we didn't want to open our discussions with who ever is on the other side of the gate by blowing one of it's doors off it's hinges."
"In other words the probe wasn't armed." It was the second bad pun that the team ignored. Things must have been serious. O'Neill exchanged a glance with Jackson.
"That's right," Carter said.
O'Neill pulled his feet off the desk and dropped his boots to the floor with a thump. "OK, when do we go?"
"Right away," General Hammond boomed.
"OK, let's go then." O'Neill was already on his feet. "Let's get at it people."