Previously:
"Patrick,"Loki addressed the human. "Col. Carter tells me her team will be looking for her. We have a detour to make."
Col. Cameron Mitchell wandered the halls of Thor's ship, looking for Daniel. He considered calling him on the radio, but this felt like a better way to do it. Both Cam and Teal'c were worried about their teammates. General O'Neill and Daniel were wearing similar expressions of anger and barely disguised fear. Teal'c had agreed to check in on the General while Cam looked for the missing civilian.
As he searched for his errant friend, Cameron was struck by the sheer size of the Asgard vessel. He knew that a fair amount of the space was taken up by the hyperdrive but the hallways were labyrinthine. It made little sense, as he never saw more than one or two Asgard per ship.
Maybe when the standard Asgard ship design was developed, there were just more of the little guys to fill them, he speculated. For the first time, the true impact of the Asgard war with the Replicators struck home to the soldier.
Asgard did not have much use for human-style furniture. But Daniel was not one to complain. Cam found him sitting on the floor, surrounded by books and notes.
"Hey, Jackson, what ya' up to?" Cam asked.
Daniel looked up with the vague and blank expression he always had when studying ancient history. "Um, I am trying to learn more about the legends of Loki. I think that is the only way that we are going to figure out what is going on here."
"I thought Thor was taking us to Loki?"
"No, Thor is taking us to the hidden lab that Asgard Loki used to store the Goa'uld that has taken him as a host. We have no idea what we are going to find."
Cam slid down to the floor next to a stack of books. He picked up the one on the top and flipped through it, only to realize it was written in German. "So, finding anything?"
There was a short silence before the archeologist answered him. "You know, I was always surprised that there was an Asgard like Loki. Loki was a trickster god. He was a god of mischief and mayhem and loved to scare the humans. Does that sound like an Asgard to you?" When Cam merely shook his head, Daniel continued. "And look at this story here," he reached for the book in Cam's hands and flipped to an illustration of a woodcarving. "Most historians claim there has never been an established cult of Loki. Although he was part of the Nordic cannon, he was more often seen as a part of other god's stories. Except this one village." He tapped the page.
The woodcarving showed a scene of terror. Fire licked down from the sky, igniting the small dwellings. The humans were posed in stylized postures of fear and horror.
"What happened here?" Cameron asked.
"This came from a village called Tuunguskaar. The village ceased to exist after the fire. Only a few witnesses escaped to tell the story. The inscription reads, 'Our God deserted us. Madness has ensued. Brother kills brother, husband kills wife. Fire rains from the sky.'" Daniel looked up with an expectant gleam in his eye.
Cam hated to let his teammate down, but; "Okay, what does that mean?"
Daniel rolled his eyes. "Don't you see? The village of Tuunguskaar worshipped Loki. Notice that the inscription reads 'Our god' not 'Our gods.' The Norse cannon was a polytheistic culture, yet here they believed in one god. This has to have happened when the Goa'uld was there. The Asgard, Loki, comes in, studying humans. A legend begins. An Asgard would have been content to stay in the background but a Goa'uld would not. So let's say that this Goa'uld manages to get to the village. Chaos ensues. Maybe it took over one person, maybe it took over several. After enough goes wrong, Loki comes down to investigate. And here the Goa'uld finds its new home."
"I don't know, Jackson," Cam replied, skeptically. "That's just not how Goa'uld behave."
"Thanks, new guy, I know that. But it is how Loki behaved. The Loki of Earth myth, at any rate." Daniel tapped his pen on the book as his eyes slipped into his foggy, scholar look.
"Okay," Cam spoke before he lost Daniel to his thoughts, "so the Goa'uld sees Loki and decides to go for the big tasty treat. And that is when this weapon gets built?"
The tapping continued. "I guess, I just don't know. The weapon was fired on Earth at least once. I think this woodcarving proves that. And Thor said that Goa'uld Loki was discovered because of the weapon. But there is missing time. The Goa'uld would have had access to Loki's ship and technology. Now, Thor swears that this weapon was dismantled but what if there was another one? What if that is what the Trust and Dr. Gillson are after?"
"Are they after the weapon, or are they after the Goa'uld symbiote?"
Daniel snapped his book shut. "Both would be my guess. We won't have any clear answer on that one until we get to the lab and see if the symbiote is still there."
"You do realize that if Dr. Gillson finds the symbiote, he has at least three people that he can put it into."
Daniel did not respond. Instead, he gave Cam a very worried look and leaned his head back against the wall.
Their radios suddenly clicked to life. "Daniel, Mitchell," O'Neill's voice came through, "come back to the bridge. We'll be there in five minutes."
"On our way sir," Cam radioed back, as he helped Daniel pull his work together.
Together they jogged back to the bridge. The viewscreen showed a very ugly and barren planet. "Are we gonna be able to breathe down there?" Cam asked.
"Although the planet itself is uninhabitable by oxygen dependant life forms, I know that the laboratory has breathable air," Thor responded.
"When was the last time you were here?" Cam asked.
"Approximately 500 of your years ago," came the bland reply.
Cam quirked an eyebrow. "Well let's hope someone paid the electric bill."
"All right, everybody listen up," General O'Neill interjected roughly. Cam snapped to attention. "We are not picking up any life signs down there but that may not mean anything. Be prepared."
The humans formed a back-to-back circle, guns at the ready. Thor, unarmed as always, positioned himself at the center of the ring. Focused on his job, Cam barely registered the transporter's flash of light before it was gone. They were left in a dim room, illuminated only by the lights from their gun sights. Within seconds, though, automatic lights flicked on. It was a vast lab of Asgard design.
"Spread out," the General ordered.
As Cam walked away from his teammates, he was truck by the cleanliness of the room, an observation that was echoed by Daniel a moment later.
"Jack, this place is spotless," Daniel said.
"Yeah, it doesn't look like it has been left alone for a day, let alone 500 years," the General answered him, giving Thor an inquiring glance.
"The air circulation system would have severely limited the accumulation of dust," Thor explained. "However, I too am surprised…someone has been here."
At that moment, Teal'c shouted an alarm; "O'Neill!"
The men ran over to the far corner Teal'c had been investigating. The site that greeted them brought them all to a stop, as did the smell.
After a brief silence, O'Neill looked to Daniel; "Daniel, care to explain?"
Daniel couldn't. On the floor lay the body of an older man. Lying on top of the man's chest was a handwritten note that read, Try again, Daniel.
Cam knelt down and felt the skin on the dead man's face. "This guy has been dead for awhile. And isn't this the doctor that Alex Portmanoy was working for?"
Daniel, however, was staring at the note. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Kneeling down, his eyes flicked back and forth between the papers until he finally said, "That's Alex's handwriting."
O'Neill gave him a piercing look, "Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure, yeah."
"So, is Alex Portmanoy working with the people who kidnapped Ella McPherson and Col. Carter?" Teal'c inquired, sternly.
"Or is Dr. Portmanoy now host to a Goa'uld?" Cam hated to put the idea out there, but it had to be said.
General O'Neill was not convinced. "I don't know," he said sourly, unknowingly echoing Cam's thoughts from earlier. "Personalized notes, dead bodies left as gifts. This does not sound like how Goa'uld behave."
"It is, however, exactly how this Goa'uld would behave." Thor joined them in time to hear the last comment. "The symbiote is no longer hidden here."
"And there is no point in having a symbiote unless you put it in someone," O'Neill added, looking downward towards Daniel.
Daniel sat back on his heels and closed his eyes. "So, where do we go now? Could they still be on Earth and we came all the way out here for nothing?"
"Not for nothing, Dr. Jackson," Thor responded. "We needed to know exactly what we are facing. Now we do. I know where this Goa'uld will go. We must stop him."
TBC