64
The Burning Fuse
Marvath stayed to tend to and observee Evree and her young, for a time, at least. But now that that particular crisis was past, Jacob had other things to do. He approached his daughter and gave her a nudge.
"So, do you want to spend all day watching baby Goa'uld?" he asked. "Or would you rather go find out what Ahriman is hiding on that moon?"
Sam looked at him as if he were insane. "How long have we been standing here when we could have been on our way?" she demanded.
Jacob shrugged. "Selmac wanted to be here for the birthing. Enough to make an issue of it." He laughed with only the faintest trace of regret. "Having a symbiote is a lot more intimate than being married. You absolutely have to find a way to work out any differences." His look became speculative. "Speaking of marriage..,"
"Don't we have a ship waiting for us?" Sam suggested. The topic her father was bringing up was one that she wanted to head off at the pass. Of course she wanted to get married and raise a family. But not so much that she'd settle for just anyone. It had to be the right someone.
Jacob nodded. "Teal'c is probably already waiting for us at the gate."
&&&&&
Ahriman's face was suffused with rage. "Insufferable female!" he ranted. "How could she stoop to give birth among the Tau'ri?" His footsteps measured a quick, angry pace, back and forth across the chamber's large expanse of floor. Then, his footsteps halted. "Is it possible that she does indeed lie near death?"
"I have no way of knowing, Lord." It was merely one out of a myriad of faces. Ahriman paid so little attention he could barely tell one from another. "If you so desire, Lord, I would be willing to offer myself as hostage to the Tau'ri on the condition that I am allowed to examine the queen."
"I shall remember your willingness to sacrifice yourself." A lie. Ahriman seldom remembered anything that did not directly affect him. "But I do not trust the Tau'ri. I had rather not lose one as loyal as you, unless it was for a specific purpose."
"As you will, my Lord." The underling backed cautiously out the Ahriman's presence, well aware, even if his lord was not, that nothing had been accomplished by the exchange.
Ahriman sat and thought of how he would punish Evree before turning her over to Anubis.
&&&&&
"There it is." Daniel had been going over transcripts of their limited communications with Ahriman. He'd heard them, or of them, and something that he couldn't quite put his finger on kept niggling at the back of his mind.
"There's what?" Hammond had wondered at Dr. Jackson's interest in the records, but was willing to trust his intuition.
"The first ultimatum Ahriman gave us," Daniel explained. "He said that he would destroy the Earth if we didn't hand Evree over to him."
"I remember," General Hammond responded. "It's also what he said the last time."
"Not quite," Daniel contradicted him. "This last time, he said that he would annihilate all life on Earth."
"I'm not sure I'm seeing where you're going with this, Dr. Jackson," the general replied musingly. "It comes to the same thing, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Daniel challenged. "To destroy the Earth would require some pretty impressive firepower. Something like Jacob, Sam and Teal'c should have found by now."
The picture suddenly became sickeningly clear to the commanding officer. "But to annihilate all life on Earth..," he murmured unhappily.
"Could be done with something as small as a virus," Daniel finished for him. "God, I hope I'm wrong. But if I'm not, it could explain a lot of things."
"Like why our search party never found anything," Hammond said grimly. He slapped a button that would immediately broadcast his voice throughout the entire complex. It also made warning claxons sound and lights flash. "Effective immediately," Hammond ordered. "This entire facility is under quarantine until further notice."
&&&&&
"Incoming message, dad," Sam said, frowning slightly. Shouldn't they be maintaining radio silence, or the equivalent thereof, this close to Ahriman's domain?
"Let's hear it," Jacob invited. He didn't look happy. He had a very strong feeling that it wasn't going to be good news.
"They're recalling us," Sam reported. "They don't think there's a weapons installation. They think the attack will be biological."
"A weapon invisible to the naked eye," Teal'c mused. "A clever ploy, but it does not fit in with Ahriman's actions to date."
"Maybe it's not Ahriman," Sam ventured. "Evree did say that Ahriman was working to form an alliance..,"
"With Anubis," Jacob finished the sentence. He quickly maneuvered the ship back in the direction from whence they came.
"We will not be allowed back at Stargate command until the threat has been dealt with, will we?" Teal'c asked rhetorically.
"No," Major Carter admitted. "We won't. Current orders are no one in or out until further notice."
&&&&&&
Jack went back to the infirmary turned Goa'uld nursery. He had some questions for Evree. Ones that hopefully could be answered. At least if there were answers to these questions, they wouldn't embarrass anyone. He'd had enough of that the past couple of days.
When he entered, he saw Evree, ensconced in bed, eyes flicking back and forth between her offspring and a t.v. that someone had put there just for her, it had to be, since it hadn't been there before.
"Whatcha watchin'?" he asked with little or no curiosity. Just a way to open up a conversation.
"Hush, O'Neill," Evree ordered gently. "Gerald is trying to decide whether or not he should stay with Sally, or if it is Rita that he truly loves."
O'Neill did a double take at that. "You're watching a soap opera?" he asked incredulously. Somehow, for all that he thought that Goa'uld in general were the scum of the universe, he never thought he'd see one stoop to watch a soap.
"I am trying to learn about humans," Evree explained, her eyes still doing their flickering dance between television screen and incubator tank. "Most particularly about human emotions and courtship rituals."
Jack saw the remote, laying on the bedside table and commandeered it and switched the soap opera off. "If you want to learn those things," he remarked, wondering why she wanted to know, then deciding that he didn't want to know why she wanted to know. "You'll never learn from that trash."
Evree looked confused. "Are you saying that what Gerald is going through isn't real?" She sounded very disappointed.
"It's all fiction," O'Neill replied. "But I didn't come here to discuss soap operas. As far as I'm concerned, you can fill your mind with as much of that crap as you want to. After we've talked."
"What do you wish of me, O'Neill?" Jack wished that she'd put it some other way. That particular phrasing was open to more than one interpretation.
"Ahriman said that if we didn't give him you and the kids." Jack nodded briefly towards the incubator. "That he'd annihilate all life on Earth. Which sounds like some kind of biological weapon. Do you know if he has anything like that?"
"I can say neither yes nor no," Evree confessed. "Once Ahriman took over, there were rooms in what was once my own home that I was not allowed access to." Her tones were highly offended. "I do believe that there were some chambers that were refitted as laboratories. Beyond that, I cannot say what went on behind those doors. Ahriman went to no little pains to see that I obeyed his edicts to stay away from those rooms." Her face suddenly took on a haunted expression, and her eyes almost automatically roved to her children, as if to assure herself that they were all right.
O'Neill's curiosity was engaged, but there was something else there. Maybe it was just that he couldn't help wanting to know what it took to make a Goa'uld that obviously afraid. "What did he do to you?" he inquired gently.
"The first occasion that I tried to enter a restricted area," Evree recalled. "Ahriman ordered one of his Jaffa to give me a beating. I only tried once more after that."
"What happened then?" Jack was already starting to feel sick. Evree might be shaking the foundations of his beliefs about Goa'uld, but Ahriman was shoring them up again.
"He flayed the skin off my back," Evree muttered. "Nor was I allowed the use of a sarcophagus. I had to deal with the pain until I had healed enough for it to go away of its own accord." The memory alone was almost too much for her to bear, and she bit her lip to keep from crying.
O'Neill was actively fighting the gag reflex now. He was a soldier, and he'd seen some pretty gruesome sights in his time, and dealt with them as he'd had to. But the thought of doing something like that to a helpless prisoner went way beyond any boundaries he could deal with. No wonder she had nightmares. It was little short of a miracle that she wasn't a complete basket case. Then it occurred to him that he could be making a snap judgment there. Maybe she was a basket case. But a well-adjusted one.
"O'Neill?" Evree ventured a trifle timidly. "Did I say something amiss?"
"What makes you think that?" Jack countered. Actually, he'd been thinking of what he'd like to do to Ahriman if he ever had the opportunity to lay hands on him.
"Just now," she replied in a small voice. "You looked so very.., fierce. Like a Jaffa about to go into battle. And since there is only you and I here, I assumed that it must have been because of something that I said."
"It had to do with something you said," O'Neill agreed. "But you're not the one that I'm mad at, Evree. Sometimes you drive me almost as nuts as I think you are. And that still doesn't give anyone the right to do what Ahriman did to you."
"You are angry on my behalf?" Evree was beyond stunned, and a little apprehensive too. O'Neill had been consistently kind to her since the birth of her young. She was waiting for yet another about face from him.
"Yeah, I am." Put that way, it weirded Jack out a little too. Still, right was right. And Ahriman was a mad dog that needed to be put down. His breathing rights ought to be revoked for just being able to conceive of such atrocities. "And I think that the universe would definitely be a better place without him in it."
"That is one subject upon which I believe that you and I are in complete agreement, O'Neill," Evree commented.
&&&&&&
"You shall have your queen as I promised, Lord Anubis." Ahriman, through his host, was sweating, and it was the sharp-smelling sweat of fear.
"Then where is she, Ahriman?" Anubis asked conversationally. "I shall arrive soon, and I wish to take possession of Evree immediately upon my arrival."
Ahriman closed his borrowed eyes briefly, wondering what to do. At last, he came upon what seemed as the most workable solution out of all that options. "She has been taken hostage by the Tau'ri," he replied, hanging his head as though in shame. "I have given them to understand that I shall wipe out all life on their planet if they do not return her and her offspring."
"She has given birth?" Ahriman had Anubis' undivided attention now, if he had not had it before. It was, at least, proof that Evree was indeed a queen and of age to bear young. "What do the Tau'ri do with her young? Or, for that matter, with her?"
"I know not, Lord Anubis." And Ahriman did feel genuine regret at that. The accursed Tau'ri were proving to be quite a thorn in his side.
"Were you, in your incompetence even able to ascertain which planet she was spirited off to?" Anubis was quite clearly unhappy. With Ahriman.
"Their home world, Lord," Ahriman responded. "During the last communication, their leader claimed that Evree lay near death after her birthing."
"Since when has giving birth done harm to the queen who performs the act?" Anubis demanded. "You are so far proving to be utterly useless. I shall no doubt, have to deal with the Tau'ri myself. And, rescue my queen."
"I and my forces are of course, at your service, Lord Anubis," Ahriman said subserviently. It rankled, to be sure, but he had drawn the conclusion that he had better do all that he could to stay in Anubis' good graces.
"And you have done so well thus far," Anubis responded sarcastically. "Stay where you are, bumbling idiot. I shall claim my queen myself."
Ahriman began to see his carefully laid plans and equally well-thought out timetable being to crumble. Because of Evree.
&&&&&
Sam was pacing around the room like a caged animal.
"You know that's not going to help," Jacob observed. If it weren't for Selmac whispering in his ear, metaphorically speaking, he'd probably be doing the same thing.
"What am I supposed to do?" Sam queried irritably. "I should have figured it out. I should be there helping right now."
"The last communication that we received from Stargate command said that so far, the biological weapon, if it exists, has not yet been loosed,," Teal'c pointed out. "It is, after all, only speculation."
"And if Ahriman does find a way to deliver it, not only could he wipe out the entire population of the Earth," Sam commented. "But he'll also be able to get Evree back. Because I'm betting whatever bug he might have won't like Goa'uld."
"All we can do is wait and hope for the best," Teal'c offered. It was a course of action, or more precisely, inaction that didn't sit well with him, either.
Jacob didn't like it either, but he felt that it behooved him to keep the two unwilling guests company. He pulled out a deck of cards. "Have they taught you how to play poker yet, Teal'c?"
&&&&&&
"Incoming message, sir," the communications technician informed General Hammond. "It originates near PX549, but not on it."
"Let's hear it," Hammond ordered, his curiosity piqued.
"Humans," boomed Anubis' voice. "I require that you give me the Goa'uld queen that you hold hostage. I offer no assurances save that I am not as tolerant as Ahriman."
"We aren't holding her against her will," Hammond was quick to point out. "She came to us begging asylum."
It came as no surprise whatsoever to Anubis that Ahriman had lied to him. Nevertheless, he was taken aback at the thought of a Goa'uld seeking sanctuary among the Tau'ri. "Whether she is there willingly or not is of no consequence," Anubis commented. "I will have her. I have Ahriman's timetable, and I see that your time is running short. Now, you deal with me. And what Ahriman threatened, I promise."
Hammond fought down a wave of panic. He'd heard enough about Anubis to believe the Goa'uld's 'promise'. And he keenly felt the lonely weight of command as he realized that the next decisions that he made would determine whether people lived or died.