Chapter 12

Carter's heart felt a surge of hope when she saw O'Neill's head pop up like a prairie dog in the window. She had yet to see Daniel, and there was another face that appeared in the window. It looked like Avedra, but she couldn't be sure. The bottom line was that at least O'Neill was alive, and he probably knew where Daniel was in general if they were not together.

The sun sank behind the ridge of the valley, blanketing the land in total darkness once more save the glow of the complex and the bright flashes every time the maltak overloaded. She had learned quickly to shield her eyes once the pulses began building. Just before the overload sprang forth, she could hear three distinct but quiet pops. Then the maltak would fire off its arc at the Stargate.

She wanted in the worst way to check on Antalus, but she had to be at the ready for Teal'c's signal to make the run for the cell. There would be no time to waste once the guards were distracted from the complex. They would come running with the second explosion that would presumably knock the bars off the window. Then there was the whole issue of getting everyone out of the cell and into the hills where they had a chance to hide.

Somewhere along the way, she would try to meet up with Teal'c. She was not going to leave anyone behind. Not ever again, and certainly not someone who had been by her side in both battle and peace. She would never leave anyone behind, even, she thought, in the face of a direct order. There would be no more Wheelers in her memory, no more nightmares, no more regrets, no more guilt that would never be quelled.

She put on her night vision goggles once more, looking toward the hills for any sign of Teal'c. He would be hidden. That was his way, especially since the Goa'uld had night vision technology of their own that far exceeded that of the Tauri. She thought it curious that they had not been captured at all given the technology gap that existed between the two races. Didn't Neja have thermal detection systems?

On the other hand, Neja was a system lord on a budget. He was buying what he had. Like the cheap construction of his "palace", perhaps he lacked the resources or funds to outfit his troops with the latest and greatest Goa'uld technology had to offer. He had the basketball, but he didn't have the hoop. Whatever the reason, Carter was not about to begrudge the advantage it gave SG-1. If it meant they could hide using conventional warfare tactics, so be it. She was not about to apologize for it.

Antalus suddenly appeared in the stairwell leading to the second level. He was crouched down and careful not to expose his presence to the outside world. She waved for him to approach, motioning that he should keep his body low to the floor and use the consoles in the staging area for cover. He did so and was soon at her side where they could talk.

Carter pulled out a canteen and offered it to him. He accepted and took a deep drink from it.

"I have done all I can do with the cycles to repair them," he said, returning the canteen to her. "They are too badly damaged, though. They are being disabled with every emission."

"Is that the popping noise I'm hearing?"

"Yes," he confirmed with a nod. "You're hearing the cylinders explode."

"Were you able to figure out how long we have before this thing goes?"

Antalus took a quick peek over the console at the compound outside. Carter gently tugged on his sleeve until he was safely out of sight. He brought his attention back to her. "Yes and no."

"Which is the yes part?"

"Given the exponential loss of cylinders with each emission, the overload will reach capacity in approximately two hundred overloads."

"Okay, that seems like a good amount of time to get something done. So, what's the 'no' part?"

Antalus sighed in frustration. "Minerals unique to this world are used in the control cylinders to inhibit the level of power produced by the maltak's reactor. Otherwise, we could not stop the transport of materials through the wormhole to an exact destination."

"You'd be extending the wormhole."

"Precisely. The destination coordinates are carefully calculated so that an object materializes on the other side in an exact location. Without controlling the power level, we would overshoot the destination by entire worlds." He paused, making sure he was not losing her.

Carter urged him on. "Okay, I follow you so far."

"The control cylinders share a common receptacle of the minerals. The system is redundant in that, if one cylinder fails, another will pick up its task. In order to compensate for the taskload, the cylinder will use an amount of minerals equal to that of two cylinders plus half the amount for one cylinder to compensate for the increased work required." He paused. "The system is currently running at over twice the normal limit, and the taskload is increasing with each emission."

"And if the minerals run out, the system will fail a lot faster than two hundred overloads?"

Antalus only nodded. Carter had painfully grasped his entire concept and its implications. She dared to ask the final question. "So, how long does that leave us?"

"One hundred cycles at the most."

She did a quick calculation in her head. Given his estimates, that left them with just over four hours to do whatever it was they were going to do to get off Beman or at least get a safe distance away before the maltak leveled everything around it.

"How do you know so much about this thing?" she asked, nodding toward the reactor that pulsed again.

He squinted at it, and it was very hard to decide if it was a look of admiration or disgust as he peered into the glowing and pulsing white light. "I helped design it. Of all the things I could have created with my gifts of knowledge and foresight, I created a monster for a monster." He looked turned his head from it and focused back on Carter. "My people were carefully chosen by Lord Neja to build his technologies. It was no accident, I assure you. Nor was his slaughter of the outlying settlements. It was systematic until he eventually took over the main gathering. By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late."

"But how did he know to separate your builders from the rest of the population?"

A scowl crawled across his face as he pondered the answer. "Of that I am not sure. However, he managed to keep those of us vital to the construction of his weapons alive and unharmed." He paused. "The rest, he killed."

Carter could envision the slaughter. She had seen it herself. Jolinar had certainly witnessed it. Sometimes, their memories collided and created one horror on top of another.

"Antalus, I want you to take the tunnel into the hills. You'll be safer there."

"My people will not be, though," he countered. "I must remain here and keep trying to bring the reactor under control. If I do nothing, my people will surely die. At least this way, I will have done everything I could to save them."

She wanted to put up a fight. She knew she would lose with the old man, but he had his mind set on staying, remaining to his probable death and that of the entire race of people who had come to Beman as explorers. They were so much alike, his people and SG1. They wanted the same things. Neither group wanted to die, and neither was willing to capitulate to the whims of one man, one tyrant. Neither was immune to the sacrifice of life for liberty and freedom. Antalus was most likely about to die for that very principle.

He put his hand gently on her arm, then to her face, cradling it in his hand. "You are not leaving me here to die, Samantha Carter," he comforted, as though reading her mind "I stay of my own will for my people."

She looked into his eyes. They were honest and practical, as was the man to whom she was speaking. "We'll come back for you if we can," she managed, though it was unlikely there would be anything left to rescue once the maltak went. Maybe even the Stargate would be melted down into a heap of metal.

"I believe you will," he said, as if it were a revelation. He gave a small smile, then said, "I must return to the lab and continue to work on the reactor. Be safe and find your friends." He then crawled to the stairwell and disappeared again.

In a short moment she was alone, lost in a silent room that billowed light until another emission shot off toward the gate. She took a moment to pull herself together, to get strong in mind and body in order to be ready for Teal'c's impending signal. She checked her pack and found two wrapped blocks of C4 right where they should be. She broke the one block apart into smaller chunks to be applied to the bars of the cell. She would wire them all together and blast the metal off in one shot. The goal was to take the foundation holding the bars with it so the men inside could easily climb out of the window. It wasn't the first time she had used C4.

Carter had to be honest – she loved C4. It was one hell of a chemical compound that did so much with so little. Malleable like clay, it could be molded to whatever the target was, and it would stick. It was Play-Do for warmongers.

She finished her preparations of the explosive and lined them up in the pocket of her vest along with the primer cord and detonator. Her pack was back on her back, and she was sitting again, watching and waiting. The night sky shone through the transparent ceiling of the maltak. Tiny stars fought through the glow of the reactor, shimmering against the shield. She rested against the housing of the console, watching the sky for the signal.

The minutes counted down to the rendezvous time with the shuttle. The appointed pickup time came and went. It made no difference, though. There was no way she would leave her team behind. She would never do that, even if she had safely secured Avedra. She looked up to the sky again, looking for any sign of the shuttle passing overhead. She doubted she would see it in plain sight, but she watched for it anyway, wondering if it had come for them at all.

A shot from a staff weapon cut vertically into the night. She was on her feet with it, just in time to see a series of explosions taking place in the hills. Teal'c must have been wiring the entire time he had been gone. They were timed explosions, giving the illusion of flanking attacks. There was commotion in the compound as Neja's guards began rallying to the point of invasion.

Carter pulled down the goggles on her head and quickly moved toward the shield, carefully waiting her time to exit it and make a run for the cell where O'Neill had been seen. A squad passed alarmingly close to her location, but she was waiting in the shadows created by the console. They did not see her.

She took a split second to look at the shield. Antalus had promised that she would be able to walk right through it. He seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to the maltak, and she felt she should trust him. Still, she slipped her knife from its sheath and tossed it carefully in front of her. It passed through the blue shell with a quiet fizzing sound, landing on the grass outside.

She sucked in a deep breath, hoping the fizzing sound wasn't that of the shield frying the knife with deadly voltage. She had to chance it. There was no choice. In the first clear break she saw in anyone observing the maltak, she made a run for it, slipping through the shield in one long stride. She ran toward the cellblock, her rifle at the ready. Carter slid down beside the wall in a crouch and made her way toward O'Neill's cell, keeping low and out of sight as much as possible.

When she got there, she peered down inside the cell, seeing one man on his feet but no sign of either Daniel or her commanding officer. She looked at the one man, seeing quite clearly that it was the man they had all come to rescue.

"Avedra?"

"Yes!" he answered jubilantly. He walked to the bars and pulled himself up to face her. "You have to get us out of here. Your friends are very sick."

"Where are they?"

Avedra looked down. "Here, against the wall."

"Move them away from the window. I'm going to blast these bars and get you guys out of there."

He stepped down from the window. She immediately began placing her blocks of C4 on the bars of the window, wiring each one consecutively into the detonator. She glanced up every few moments and watched as Avedra dragged O'Neill and Jackson to the far wall and propped them up side by side. Even in the green glow of the night vision, both men looked terrible.

She quickly finished placing the C4 and warned Avedra to stay back. She, herself, stepped to the side. A moment later, she detonated the explosive, sending spittles of foundation flying into the air. Avedra was prepared. He had O'Neill up and moving the moment the blast was done, shoving him through the window. O'Neill was beginning to perk up, awakening to the situation. He tried as best he could to help.

Carter grabbed him under the shoulders and pulled him out of the window. He landed half on her, and then she felt the burning of his skin against her hand. He was shivering and his breathing was shallow, even in the face of his exertions to get out of the window.

Next, it was Daniel's turn. He seemed worse off than O'Neill, not quite as alert to being shoved upright through the cell wall. He groaned, dead weight in Carter's arms as she pulled him to freedom. Then it was Avedra's turn. He held out a hand for her to grasp. She took it and pulled hard, lifting the man through the window. He fell to the ground, panting and in apparent pain. She would have seen if he were injured if there was time. As it was, they were tiptoeing through a minefield of sorts, behind enemy lines and breaking all the rules of sane warfare.

As she got to her feet, she extended her hand to Avedra to help him. He took hold of it and stood. Together the two managed to get O'Neill and Jackson upright and ready to move. The logical thing to do would have been to head for the nearby cover of the forested hills that ran along the back of Neja's palace. Her instincts, though, said to go the other way. They would look to the cover of the nearest hills first. She might be able to buy them some time if they went the opposite direction, the tactic least expected. There were dips in the land where they could hide if they had to in a pinch. She wrapped Daniel's arm around her shoulder and began heading for the far side of the valley. They would do an end-around to the gate, moving just inside the tree line on the far side of the valley. It was darker and there were better places to hide.

"Are you certain you want to go that way?" Avedra asked, taking charge of O'Neill.

"We don't have time to circle this valley to get to the gate. We only have four hours before that maltak goes. If we're not out of here by then, we're in big trouble."

"We will not be able to move quickly. The patrols will see us."

"Maybe." She shrugged. "Look, we have to make a run for it. There's no choice. I'm willing to risk a straight shot to the gate over doubling travel time. We should be fine if we keep our heads down."

Avedra looked at her decisively. "Very well."

"Ready?" she asked, not giving him time to form any secondary arguments. When he told her he was, she opened the holster on her thigh and withdrew the nine-millimeter. "You know how to work one of these?" she asked, handing it to him.

"Your Colonel O'Neill called it 'point and click' technology. Seems simple enough."

Even in the face of adversity, Sam gave a small chuckle at the appearance of funny moments. "Yeah, it's that simple."

She checked on O'Neill briefly. If it was possible to be unconscious and standing, he had accomplished it. "Time to go, sir," she assured him. Then they set off across the village to the other side of the valley.

Avedra kept pace with her, despite being lagged by O'Neill's lethargic running. Daniel had finally started to come around, awakening to their situation and the fact that they were making a run for it. He tried to help as much as he could, but he too was burning with fever. It was a wonder either of them were in any condition to travel.

They used the buildings in the village as cover as long as they could before they were forced to run across open field. After three hundred yards, the entire party was growing too tired to move. They had to take a rest, Carter admitted. She begrudged herself the need to get Daniel off her shoulder for a moment. They came upon a small trench in the land. It was deep enough to conceal them from horizontal detection in the valley. Anything higher would be a different story. They could only hope that Teal'c was drawing enough attention his way to give them a straight shot back into the hills.

Avedra lay on his back, panting with his exertions to keep O'Neill moving. Carter was not faring any better as she slipped out of her pack to cool down. O'Neill and Jackson were two heaps of flesh that looked as though they had been strewn on the ground. Their arms came to rest where they had been dumped.

Carter removed a canteen from her belt and coaxed O'Neill to sit up. He looked horrible to her. His skin was still on fire, and the dampness of the cell that had permeated his clothes was now replaced by perspiration. His eyes looked gaunt in the pale light emanating from the village. "Here, sir, take a drink."

"Can't," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Stomach's not going to handle it."

"You have to try, sir. You're badly dehydrated. We have a long way to go before I can give you some more."

He gave in to her commands, taking small sips from he canteen. She could see him forcing it down his throat, and she could only imagine the fight he was putting up to keep the liquid down. She slid over to Daniel and repeated much the same process, only his resistance was a little more ardent. He was much further gone than O'Neill was. His exposure to the sickness seemed worse. Or perhaps it was that O'Neill was more stubborn. In the grand scheme of their situation, it didn't matter much. Both men were in dire straits, and the fun had only begun.

O'Neill took a deep breath in an effort to quell his desire to gag. When he calmed, he asked, "What's our situation, Major?"

She returned to his side to speak with him. "It's not going exactly going according to the game plan, sir. Teal'c is drawing the guards into the hills so we can make a run for it over here."

"The shuttle?" he asked, his teeth chattering slightly.

"Came and went. We're going to have to gate out of here unless the Tok'ra have had a change of heart and are willing to risk it for us."

"Pigs . . . fly . . . " he breathed.

She gave a brief smile at O'Neill's sarcasm. "Yes, sir." Carter looked at him for a long moment, the seriousness of the condition returning. "We're going to make it back, Colonel."

His eyes focused on her finally. "I know we will, Major."

Daniel had curled up into a ball again, and Carter nearly loathed the task of untangling him. It meant that he would hurt, that he would be torn from the only position that seemed to bring comfort only to be dragged up into the hills surrounding the valley.

That, of course, begged the next question – where were they going? The better hiding places in the hills were far too high ask O'Neill and Jackson to climb. They were having a hard enough time on flat ground. Cliffs were completely out of the question. Or perhaps they could make one small set of cliffs that would lead to the cave Antalus had shared with her and Teal'c.

She scanned the hills, looking for its approximate location and finding it. It would be a perfect launching point for their run to the gate if they could just make it there. It would give Jack and Daniel time to rest, and she could even take a look at Avedra's side and tape it to make travel a little easier. From there, they could make a line for the tunnel entrance and go back into the belly of the whale, so to speak. Then they'd only have to go a short way to the gate. They'd activate it and step through and be on their way home, package in tow.

Ludicrous, flashed through her mind, followed closely by, Insane. And it was, she knew. The planned means of leaving Beman were disappearing one by one. Someone had been fibbing to the SGC, and she could not quiet the image of Anise coaxing SG-1 to do her bidding. If Anise was the culprit, then what did that make Avedra? He seemed rather calm considering they were trying to outrun serpent guards with two people who could barely walk. The questions buzzed around her head as she nearly force-fed O'Neill and Jackson more water.

On the other hand, she reasoned, Avedra would not have been sent on a mission if he were apt to shrivel up at the first sign of trouble. No, the Tok'ra could not afford to fail in such areas. They would send someone they could trust, someone who would get the job done. If her father was as strong a voice in the resistance as everyone was saying, then he would be the first to send the best and the brightest to get such vital information.

She had to shake the questions out of her mind. Even though they kept appearing with a vengeance, there was no time to consider the conspiratorial answers at that particular moment. There was no more time to rest, either. They had to start moving again to gain the full advantage of night. Carter put her pack back on and secured the canteen back in her web belt. She stepped over O'Neill and got down next to Daniel.

His glasses were skewed to the side. She straightened them, then sat him up. His condition seemed to be worsening the more the minutes ticked by. "Come on, Daniel. We have to go."

"Just let me stay here," he begged. "I can't go any further."

"Yes, you can," she said adamantly. "We're getting the hell out of here, and that means you, too. Don't make me pull rank on you."

"But I'm not in the military," he automatically protested as he had on so many other occasions.

"You've just been drafted. Now, get up," she ordered, pulling him into a standing position.

Avedra already had O'Neill ready to travel. He looked at her again, not saying anything. Either he was deferring to her command of the mission or he was not a man of many words. The Tok'ra were by no means vociferous, but she would have gladly welcomed some ideas from him about their situation. He offered none, though. Carter decided to take it as a vote of confidence rather than an omission of cooperation. The man was helping all he could by practically carrying O'Neill. She was not in a position to ask him to do more than that at the moment.

The tree line was not far. A hundred yards or so, and they were soon in the cover of complete darkness, swallowed whole by the black of the forest. The ground was soft, making their steps quiet and undetectable. An occasional branch would snap, but that could not be helped. They had to keep moving at a steady pace if they were going to make a run for the cave.

The heat was beginning to take its toll on Carter. She was hot and tired, and the whole hiding out routine was making her cranky. Her concerns fell to Jackson and O'Neill once more as they moved in unison toward the higher areas of the hills. More explosions went off in the distance, followed by the maltak's venting at regular intervals.

Her hand started throbbing again. Her ring finger, in particular, was pulsing with pain. She had to keep using the bandaged hand to hold Daniel up so that her good hand could go to the P90 if the need arose. Daniel was holding his own for the most part, but he was dependent on her to keep from falling.

She stood at a crossroads in the forest. Paths that cut up the hillside would have made travel easy. Again, though, the guards used the trails. It would leave her team wide open to attack. By the same token, it would speed up their trek up the mountainside.

Avedra set O'Neill gently to the ground, then joined her at her side. He looked up the trail, as well, pondering it. "I know what you are considering. We will have no defense should we be discovered by the patrols."

She was breathing heavily with her exertions to keep Daniel standing. Her whole body was beginning to feel like it had been beaten. Her legs ached nearly as much as her hand. "I know," she answered finally, still weighing the pluses and minuses of taking the trail. "We can't stay on rough terrain much longer, though. These guys aren't going to handle it."

"Agreed. Perhaps I should scout ahead while you rest here?"

"No," she answered resolutely. "We stay together. We came here to get you. I can't risk you going alone." She looked at him, her voice a little softer, realizing how harsh she must have sounded. "They need the information you have, and we're going to bring it home."

He looked back up the trail. Its outline was brought out by the moonlight seeping through the trees. "Where is it we are going?"

"There's a cave not too far from here. If we can make it there, we can give these guys a rest and figure out how to make it to the gate."

Avedra smiled slightly. "I wouldn't argue rest, certainly."

"Me either. So, let's get going. The sooner we get there, the better."