"I don't see how this thing can possibly work," Ponder Stibbons told Mustrum Ridcully. He pointed at the stargate which steadfastle refused to be intimidated by the wizard's gesture. "It doesn't seem to tap into the local thaumalogical field at all." Ponder removed his hat and scratched at the straggly mane that passed for his hair. "I can't see how something so obviously eldritch can operate without at least some sort of power source."
After a few years overseeing their activities - and cringing whenever their budget came up for review - Ridcully was well down the track toward learning how to deal with Stibbons and his team of high powered thinkers. It involved letting them come to him. It was a bit like teasing a trout. If he played dumb enough, they eventually had to start talking sense. It was a skill they had to learn if they wanted to continue getting the resources they used up at such an enormous rate.
"The alchemists are always playing with a thing they call chemical energy," Ridcully suggested.
Ponder was taken aback by the validity of the statement - it was not like Mustrum Ridcully to make suggestions like that, not like him at all - but he rallied as soon as the obvious fallacy presented itself to him.
For all that chemical energy was obviously insufficient to power a device like the one in front of them, it took a surprisingly long time for Ponder to come up with the counter argument. "That's just variations on fire," said Ponder finally. "It wouldn't have anything like enough energy to power this thing. I mean look at it."
Ridcully would rather not, if you don't mind.
"Forest fires seem to have a great deal of energy," Ridcully pointed out reasonably.
Ponder took a moment to consider that concept. "This seems to use energy in the same sort of proportions as a lightening strike," he concluded.
That smacked too close to the whole 'God' thing for Ridcully's taste. If someone really was toying with the powers of the gods then there might be hell to pay when the bill came due. Literally.
It was a vain hope, especially so if they were mention by name, to even consider out loud the possibility that the denizens of Dunmanifestin might have had a hand in this thing's creation. Ridcully hoped they weren't watching them at this very moment and wondering how to best stuff up the lives of all concerned. He knew it was a vain hope the moment the idea occurred to him.
Ridcully shuddered at the thought.
If they didn't get this thing under control soon, it might be like the one time a sourcerer got loose on the discworld. It had been a dark day in the disc's history, a dark day indeed. Back then Ridcully was living up in the mountains, hunting birds and snaring trout, and he had missed most of the real action. But he had heard all about it over many a large lunch. No one had escaped the wrath or consequences - except for Rincewind, nothing ever seemed to stick to Rincewind. But everyone else who had been part of the Unseen University had taken a thaumalogical beating in the aftermath.
He said as much to Stibbons, who did not respond. Which was strange, Ponder Stibbons never let a theoretical thaumalogical conversational opening rest. Like many of the high energy magic team Ponder was not all that well acquainted with the notion of a rhetorical question and often found himself saying things to people and then enduring the most extraordinary blank expressions in reply.
Ridcully looked up just in time to see Ponder's eyes flick open wide, as though the lids were loaded with springs.
"Oh my God," Ponder Stibbons cried. "It's come from the dungeon dimensions. It's been cloaking itself as a man and now the tentacles are coming out…" The rest was muffled by his arm that suddenly encased his head and it appeared to be trying desperately to burrow it's way into Ponder's shoulders.
Ridcully reacted quickly. He had been through this before; confrontation with the dungeon dimensions was old hat now. He was a veteran of several recent campaigns and knew exactly what was required. He raised his staff and uttered the first spell that came to mind.
There was a blinding flash of octarine light. It came from the tip of Ridcully's staff.
Where once he had been standing beside Jack O'Neill, Teal'c disappeared with a puff of air. There was just a gentle pop and then he was gone.
*
Jack O'Neill had been through this before; confrontation with staff wielding alien monstrosities was old hat now. He was a veteran of more campaigns against the Goa'uld than he cared to remember. He was responsible for removing Ahman Ra from Abedos. He was the bane of Apophos' existence. For years he had survived the trials and tribulations of life in the Stargate command because he reacted quickly and occasionally correctly.
He slapped at his holster with his right hand, but of course that was empty. He remembered belatedly that his gonne - no that was gun - was still sitting in Commander Vimes office.
He was incorrect in that assumption as well, but the Jack O'Neill couldn't possibly have known what had happened to his guns. When last O'Neill had last seen his guns they had been sitting on the desk alongside the one that Daniel Jackson had been assigned by that bastard quartermaster back at SGC, but not any more. Now Corporal Nobby Nobbs was looking after it for them. It just wouldn't do to leave something like that just lying around where anyone could just pick it up and steal it. Oh no. Nobby was looking after it for them, being the good citizen that he is.
With the use of his own gun out of the question, O'Neill had to think quickly. It was time for plan B. He dived across the table that separated him from Samantha Carter, scattering the half-finished sketches of a rose that caught the light just so, and the plans for a horseless carriage powered by burning hydrocarbon. They drifted onto the floor to join the plans for-the-machine-for-setting-type-by-the-action-of-fingers-against-keys.
O'Neill slid across the desk, balanced on his hip, poised and ready for action, and then he fell off the edge.
O'Neill rolled when he dropped off the desktop and bounced to his feet. He snatched the gun from Samantha Carter's holster. "Die you Goa'uld scum," he cried and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He cursed, released the safety and squeezed the trigger again.
Sort of under his control, the gun released a storm of lead particles. The cataclysmic lead storm was accompanied by the sort of rapid fire banging that suggested deafness was a valid long-term prognosis to anyone who could still hear. The room was filled with the reek of burnt cordite that only a US Military issue fully automatic sub-machine gun could manage. Spent cartridges rattled to the floor. A few of them bounced off Samantha and Ponder Stibbons. They were still hot and they burnt like hell.
"Hey," Samantha cried.
No one could hear her and no one was listening anyway.
Every one of the members of the City Watch dived behind something that had been designed by Leonard De Quirm to make life easier for everyday man. For the moment they served a second purpose, they protected every man troll and werewolf from taking a hit from a lead pellet. The watch personnel all knew from experience what a gonne was capable of and this one was an order of magnitude worse than even their vivid imaginings. Their earlier experience had been one shot at a time, not this firestorm.
Stibbons thought quickest of all. He hid behind Detritus.
A couple of spent shells bounced off the troll and landed harmlessly on the floor. "Dat's sort of annoying," commented the Troll, three beats behind the drummer as usual.
For all the projectiles, smoke, noise and smell that discharged from the gun, Ridcully was too quick for that little ploy of O'Neill's to be even partway successful. The Arch Chancellor dived head long over the windowsill and out of the room, moving remarkably quickly for a man of his age, stature and girth. His flight was followed by the tiny shrapnel and splinter cloud that had once been the aerates-milk-to-make-frothy-coffee-machine, which had taken the brunt of O'Neill's enthusiasm.
"Get the frog," Ridcully yelled to Stibbons before he dashed across the garden.
*
Samantha Carter wasn't hanging around. She might have been slow to react when the threat first appeared, but that all changed as soon as Jack O'Neill had responded to the threat posed by the Goa'uld. She had reacted very quickly then. Her job in this fracas was clear, she had to get back to SGC as quickly as possible and let them know what was going on over here. Lucky she was the one with the DialHomeDevice. But in the meantime it was important that she get through the next few minutes unscathed, so she could use it.
She had seen Teal'c disappear, wiped out by a blast from that staff. That sort of thing makes you aware of the important issues.
All of her suspicions about this place and the creators of this new gate had been proven. Her first job was to spread the word. Before she could do that though, it was important to dodge those guys with the wormy thing in side them until she had a means to defend herself and protect the DHD. It was vitally important that those guys didn't get hold of it. The last thing the SGC needed was giving the Goa'uld a means to get through Earth's gate.
She had seen O'Neill take the shot at the Jaffa. That was great, but his taking he gun for it had meant she was unarmed now when she needed to get out of this place. Jack could sort that immediate threat from the Goa'uld they had identified, she knew that. In a way that was good that he had the gun because he was the best shot among them and he wasn't afraid to use it - but it left her unarmed. She had to do something else, something to identify how many more Goa'uld might be in this place.
Keeping out of trouble, preferably somewhere where the Goa'uld weren't, was the answer in the short term.
She reached a decision.
She could always find a way back to the gate later, after she had a chance to do a spot of planning.
For the moment she had to wait until the dust smoke and screaming cleared, and then get back to SGC. She wasn't hanging around here, where the Goa'uld were out in the open while she waited for that to happen though. She could get hurt big time dong something like that.
She dived through the door and found herself in the corridor filled with dangling weapons.
"Oh," she said in a tiny awed voice, and then she skidded to a halt. "Dear."
She was going to have to tread very carefully if she was going to avoid getting a nasty injury from this lot.
*
The noise had stopped. Ponder Stibbons suspected it might be safe to come out now. There was really only one way to find out for sure. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He crawled out from behind the bulk that was Detritus and blinked a couple of times at the carnage that spread before him.
His ears were ringing and his eyes were watering. The smoke had started to clear and he could see that the disc was still where he had left it moments earlier.
Ridcully was nowhere to be seen.
He had a vague recollection of being told to do something with a frog. He just wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it, exactly. It was baffling.
Then he saw something move. It was near the floor and it was green. Ponder had enough clues. He knew what he had to do in the short term.
*
Commander Vimes pushed out from behind the remains of what had once been Havelock Vetenary's favourite frothy coffee machine and looked carefully around the room and it's wreckage. He was wondering what sort of mechanism allowed a gonne to do that, fire repeatedly like that, and was suddenly desperate to make sure the cunning artificers never got hold of that idea. A gonne with a repeating mechanism like that could do as much damage as Detritus' siege weapon, and be portable enough to carry around by a human. That was an awful combination. Humans just couldn't be trusted with a thing like that.
And of course there was the Jack O'Neill situation. Vimes understood perfectly the desire to put great bloody holes in Mustrum Ridcully, but it was another thing to actually try doing it. The man must be mad.
And to think that Vimes had started to like the man.
There was only one thing for it. They had to stop him before he actually followed through with his first attempt at University Management succession.
But as soon as the decision to take action was made, it was already too late.
*
O'Neill leapt across the room in the direction where he had last seen the jaffa, scattering drawings and half-constructed implements that blocked his path as he went. For a moment he thought he saw the creature hiding behind the table, but instead it had managed to get out through the window.
O'Neill said something that would require censoring.
He made for the wall by the side of the window, and waited there with his back to the wall long enough to be hopeful that he wasn't about to take a bolt the way Teal'c had. He chanced one quick glance into the garden, gun aimed and ready.
He thought he saw a purple flash in the garden and let off another burst.
Everyone still left in Leonard De Quirm's study dived back behind whatever cover they had used during O'Neill's previous barrage.
The body in the garden exploded in a cloud of feathers.
"Damn," O'Neill said from the cover provided by the wall of De Quirm's study wall. "Missed."
"Good," Ridcully said from the cover of a large tree. "Missed."
The bloody thing that used to be Henrietta the Hen said nothing. Her feathers floated in the wind.
*
Ponder Stibbons crawled out from behind Detritus again, and then made his way across the floor, threading his way through the forest of table legs and scattered paper. He remembered what Mustrum Ridcully had demanded of him in that last second before dashing into the garden.
His job was to catch the frog, the one who had been that denizen from the dungeon dimensions, before it changed back.
If circumstances had been a little less pressing, and events around him moving at a slower pace, he might have pondered the question of why the thing had been so easy to transform. It wasn't as though magic had been all that effective on things from the dungeon dimension in the fracas that followed the last time one of them burst through to the discworld. But for now he was just thankful for the opportunity to continue to make his way in the world.
Ahead of him he saw something green.
His hearing was obviously returning. He heard the thing in front of him croak. His target was acquired, it was time to act.
He made a diving grab for the frog. The hand supporting most of his weight was leaning on a piece of paper. When he pushed off, the paper went backwards as fast as Ponder went forward.
Most of him went forward rather. Part of his upper body went down instead.
The frog, for its part, watched his approach and hopped away at the last possible moment. This is consistent with the narrative requirement that insisted on maximising the amount of embarrassment experienced by poor Ponder Stibbons.
Ponder slid across the floor, leaning heavily on his face. He completed the manoeuvre by collided head first with the leg of a table.
He groaned and rubbed the top of his head, which he had just used to shift the table and all of it's contents several centimetres.
Teal'c watched Ponder's plight for a moment, croaked once derisively and then hopped again, hiding behind a suction-device-to-help-lift-all-those-small-pieces-of-rubbish-off-the-floor machine.
That looked like a wonderful vantage point from which to watch the drama unfold.
*
A seven-foot tall skeleton, wearing a midnight black robe, stood beside a giant white horse. A careful look at that robe would note that it wasn't fashioned from midnight coloured cloth, oh no. It was fashioned from midnight itself. No ensemble of that kind is complete without the wicked implement of doom, in whatever shape it may take. In this instance it was a scythe with the most wicked cutting edge. The handle of that reaping tool was clutched in one boy hand with a death's grip.
A closer look at the horse might also be revealing, assuming we could actually see in that dimension between instants of time where the apparition 'lived'. The horse looked like a flesh and blood thoroughbred. And the illusion would have been excellent if the horse happened to be standing on the ground. It was standing near the ground, not on it. It's placement was a little inaccurate, that was all. After travelling so far, a minor navigation error - it was only a couple of centimetres after all - might be forgivable.
A closer look again would reveal a skeletal rodent atop the anthropomorphic personification of Death. It was dressed n a similar slice of midnight and it carried a similar, although scaled down, version of the scythe
They looked solemnly down at the pathetic smattering of chicken remains that Jack O'Neill's most recent barrage had spread across a dozen square metres of garden. There were feathers and gory globules everywhere one looked.
"THAT WAS SOMETHING OF AN OVER KILL," The skeleton commented. The voice, if you could call it a voice, was like two tombstones rubbing together, full of foreboding undertones.
The skeleton clutched a leather-bound, gold embossed book in one hand, and anchored the scythe in the crook of it's elbow of the other while it rummaged around in the satchel slung over the horse. It's hand emerged with an egg timer clutched in it's bony fingers. The sand had all run out.
The huge white horse tossed its head and snorted derisively. It seemed that it was still having trouble finding the ground with its feet, or maybe it just didn't care. Two of them were a couple of centimetres above the ground and the other two were embedded a couple of centimetres into the ground.
"HENRIETTA HEN," the skeleton said significantly. "THIS IS YOUR LIFE!" He proffered the book.
The shade of Henrietta Hen tilted her head on one side and peered closely at the book. Inside the confines of it's covers, the pages had become silent for the first time in years. The chicken scratchings that had been busy chronicling the life of Henrietta the Hen had only just recently come to a scratching and abrupt halt.
It wasn't as though she cared.
The book didn't look like anything to eat, but she decided to test it any way. She pecked at it.
No it was definitely not food.
She gave up on the book to look for better pickings on the ground.
"THAT DIDN'T GO AT ALL WELL," Death told his tiny bony black robed rodent companion. "LET'S HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AT THAT SCRIPT." A piece of paper rustled between the bony fingers of his hand. "MUMBLE, MUMBLE, INSERT NAME HERE, THIS IS YOUR LIFE… MUMBLE, MUMBLE. OH THERE'S A FOOT NOTE; DAMN I HATE THAT."
He climbed aboard his Horse (which for some reason had the less than portentous name of Binky). Death paused for a moment while he looked significantly at the stargate. It rested malignantly on the other side of the window. He shook his head sadly. "THAT THING HAS BEEN HERE FOR LONGER THAN A WHOLE DAY AND ALL I'VE GOT TO SHOW FOR IT IS ONE DEAD CHICKEN. IT JUST ISN"T RIGHT. OK, WHERE DO I FIND THE NEXT HUMAN?" Death consulted whatever aspect of space-time it was that he used for the storage and processing of the infinite amount of information he had to deal with on a day to day basis, "AH THERE'S THE NEXT ONE."
*
There was no returning fire. Jack O'Neill took one more look through the open window, gun in a two handed grip, legs splayed. He holstered the gun and then leapt over the windowsill. He fell further than he thought before he landed heavily on a rose bush. He spent a few seconds disentangling his fatigues from the thorns and then a few more brushing at the little dribbly cuts on his hands and neck.
Then he was off after the other flash of purple that he saw weaving between the mis-matched shrubbery. It was heading for the fence at the far end of the garden. That wouldn't do. He had to stop it before it got out of the compound. If it got into the city outside he might never find it again.
O'Neill ran on, dodging between the mis-proportioned statues and the shrubbery himself.
The fleeing figure stopped, turned aimed the staff.
O'Neill struggled to come to a halt and find a bit of decent cover.
The bush beside O'Neill burst into flame. It was onlt luck that prevented O'Neill from being toasted. Luck and a tripping over a ten centimetre tall bird bath. He wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth. He rolled with the fall and then ducked behind a stone bench, which like most things designed by B.S. Johnson, it was brilliantly conceived but lacked a certain attention to detail. It was eleven feet high and not equipped with stairs. It was bulk and it provided cover. That was all that mattered.
*
It was an impressively proportioned white horse and it snickered behind Mustrum Ridcully. The wizard blinked once and then turned slowly, certain of what he was going to see and far from pleased at the prospect.
"What are you doing here?" Ridcully demanded. "My time is not for ages yet."
Everyone knows that wizards can see death and they have a certain foreknowledge of when their time is neigh.
"I KNOW," said Death in that voice of his that sets hearts and tremble and bladders a wobble. "IT'S JUST THAT, WELL, YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY NEXT APPOINTMENT. SO, I THOUGHT, I'LL JUST TAG ALONG. THAT IS, IF YOU DON'T MIND?"
Ridcully turned away and did his best to ignore the seven-foot skeleton riding the giant white horse beside him. It is a testimony to the quantity of bizarre things that happen on the disc world that he managed a fair job of it.
A small piece of fence exploded out of the brickwork behind Ridcully, it was followed immediately by a high pitched whining noise that trailed away into the afternoon. Ridcully pulled his head in before it took it into its mind to do the same thing as the brickwork.
"THAT WAS JOLLY CLOSE, I MUST SAY," Death said. "IT'S A WONDER I DON"T SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOU IF YOU GO THROUGH LIFE DOING THINGS LIKE THIS FOR ENTERTAINMENT."
Ridcully wasn't having any of that line of reasoning. The subject needed to be changed quickly. Now what was a suitable subject? "How's your grand-daughter making out?" Ridcully asked Death. After he spoke he realised how bizarre the conversation must sound.
"SUSAN IS JUST FINE. WE DON"T GET TOGETHER AS OFTEN AS I MIGHT LIKE BUT ISN"T THAT ALWAYS THE WAY WITH ADULT CHILDREN."
"I guess so," said Ridcully who, as a celibate Wizard, knew nothing of that sort of human behaviour at all. He had met Susan Sto Helit on one memorable occasion when she was filling in on the family business as you might call it.
Another piece of brickwork exploded from the wall and in the aftermath it showered fine pink powder over Ridcully.
The most insulting aspect of the dusting was the way the powder passed through Death and Binky as if they weren't there before it finally settling on Ridcully.
"YOU HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH ME, SORT OF," Death intoned. "IT"S TIME WE MADE OUR WAY."
Jack O'Neill broke from cover behind the stone bench and stole more of the distance separating him from Mustrum Ridcully.
Ridcully raised his staff and began reciting.