VIII
It was funny how quickly interstellar travel became as routine as hopping on a train. For all that Goa'uld technology was way ahead of their own and more Sam's area of expertise, Daniel suspected he could diagnose engine problems in a tel'tak more accurately than in his own car. He recognised the change in sound and vibration instantly as they dropped out of hyperspace, and ran to join the others on the bridge.
"This is it?" he asked, peering at the display. Somehow, no matter how often they did this, he could never quite get over the idea that the images they were seeing were real and not computer simulations. The planet that hung in space before them was painted in unwelcoming shades of red and grey that spoke of a turbulent atmosphere.
"Kelshan," said Selmak, nodding Jacob's head. "Our operative intercepted a transmission detailing Baal's intention to return here to oversee the final stages of the project."
Although Daniel would hardly have believed he could get used to the harsh tones of a symbiote speaking through its host, hearing tactical information from Selmak had become almost routine. Perhaps it was the fact that Selmak did seem to prefer to take a back seat unless dispensing knowledge that was specifically hers rather than Jacob's. Most other Tok'ra symbiotes he'd met were a lot more eager to jump in and do the talking, and no matter how many times he heard about it being a mutually beneficial relationship, it still set his teeth on edge.
He didn't like to subscribe to the Jack O'Neill Book of Cynicism too often, but when it came to the Goa'uld... Well, the Tok'ra were nothing like the Goa'uld. Except for when they were.
For all that he'd fought tooth and nail to preserve it, he couldn't say he was totally sorry the alliance between Earth and the Tok'ra had gone south.
"They do not appear to have detected our approach," Teal'c observed. "There is little evidence of activity on the surface of the planet."
"That ties with our information," Jacob said, back in control. "It's an underground research base, belonging to a minor Goa'uld called Teshram." Very minor, Daniel suspected; the name was failing to ring any mythological bells, which meant that Teshram had probably never had a chance to establish a foothold on Earth.
"One of Baal's hired consultants?" Sam asked, leaning forward. Her father nodded.
"Teshram's strictly small change. He used to be in the service of Cronus, but disappeared off the scene about six years ago. Rumour is that he tried to set a trap for Cronus that didn't spring the way he wanted it to."
"And Baal trusts this guy?" Daniel said sceptically.
"No Goa'uld ever truly trusts another, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c pointed out. "However, Teshram would be foolish to attempt to challenge Baal."
"Teal'c is right," Jacob agreed. "Baal's the head of the pack now. Even if Teshram somehow managed to take him out, there's no way he could hold on to Baal's territory. Every Goa'uld in the galaxy would be making a power grab. It's not like the old days where the System Lords kept each other in balance."
"Yeah, the good old days," Daniel said wryly. The System Lords' infighting might have worked to their advantage, but ultimately he had to subscribe to Jack's simplified theory of galactic politics. The less Goa'uld around, the better.
"So what's the plan?" Sam asked as she checked over her weaponry. After eight years of galactic exploration, Daniel could handle his as professionally as his military companions, though he'd never be as comfortable in a fire-fight. Still, this mission wasn't intended to be one.
For all the good pre-planning usually did them.
"The complex is quite large, but very little of it's actually in use," Jacob explained. "Baal no longer fully trusts his Jaffa, so he's been keeping tabs on the project personally. The place should be all but deserted. We can land the tel'tak close to one of the access hatches at the edge of the complex. They have sensors, but no personnel for patrols - provided we go in cloaked, they've got no way of knowing we're here."
"We know where this 'project' is being kept?" Sam asked, as they braced themselves for landing.
Jacob nodded. " According to our information, Baal's expecting to be finished with it in a matter of days, so it's imperative we handle this now."
"The question is, finished with what?" Daniel wondered.
Jacob brought them in for a smooth landing and stood up, fishing out a zat. "Now remember, our priority is to keep the technology out of Baal's hands. I have the codes to the base computer that should get us in to see it. If it's possible, we'll steal it, but if there's the slightest chance things are going to get hairy, better to destroy it than run the risk of Baal completing his project."
He spared a pointed glance for the members of SG-1. "And, tempting as it may be, remember that if the opportunity does come up to take out Baal... killing the one Goa'uld who's keeping the others' attention occupied could end up being very bad news for the rest of the galaxy."
The three members of SG-1 exchanged glances, all aware that if that chance did come up, the political considerations weren't going to stop them.
Jon didn't even respond to Jamie's dazed admission, just pulled them off the road without a word and stopped the van.
"Out," he said, coming around to open the passenger door for him. His expression was kinder than the rather curt instruction, but he didn't look particularly worried. Or so Jamie thought. His vision was starting to go kinda donut-shaped, dark blotches blooming in the centre and at the corners, and when he tried to climb out, his legs were surprisingly weak.
Jon made no move to assist him, simply beckoned him away from the van. He said a word, but the sound of it blurred, and Jamie couldn't figure out if he was supposed to have understood it or not. Everything was going very wobbly...
Next thing he knew, he was slumped on the ground against the base of a tree. He didn't know if he'd walked there or Jon had dumped him, but he knew he couldn't stand up again. Dark blood stained his fingers where he'd been clutching his wounded chest.
So this it, he thought, rather dispassionately. This is what dying is like.
Jon's face loomed over him, a pale blotch in the darkness. Then bony but surprisingly strong fingers gripped his shoulder, and-
And.
Something radiated through him from Jon's grip: warmth, accompanied by something else that he wasn't sure he had a word for. The... something... gathered in the centre of his chest and pulsed.
And then, so rapidly he felt there should have been an audible pop, his vision straightened itself out. Time snapped back to normal from the stretched out pace it had been following.
Jamie saw Jon start to sway, and reflexively lunged to grab him as he fell. To his bemusement, his body obeyed the command easily, and without the slightest trace of pain. He helped lower Jon to the ground, then examined himself with trembling fingers.
There was still blood on his hands and on his T-shirt. But when he flattened it out to find the bullet hole, the pale skin beneath was whole and unmarked.
Jon had healed him.
He had no idea how that was possible, but that wasn't exactly important right now. Whatever Jon had done, it had obviously taken it out of him. His eyes were almost rolled back in his head, and he looked on the verge of slipping into another of those terrifying seizures. Jamie shook him by the arm.
"Jon! Jon. What can I do? Tell me what to do," he begged.
For a moment, Jon's dark eyes cleared and focused... but the words he spoke were not in English. "Commutatis inver... enodatis... Atlantis," he said, and passed out.
The Goa'uld base appeared to be deserted.
Teal'c moved through the hallways with silent grace, all senses on alert. Although he had never visited Kelshan, it was intimately familiar. The Goa'uld stole from each other and everyone else, and the layout of the base was like many others he had walked for decades before any of the humans accompanying him had even been born.
Of course, in those long past days, stealth had been but an exercise for when he was training with Master Bra'tac. The First Prime of Apophis did not move with stealth. He shook the planet's foundations with his footsteps, as befit the servant of a god.
False god. The thought was as triumphantly defiant as it had been the first time, when despite the doubts that prompted it he had fully believed that Apophis would hear it in his mind and strike him down. For all that Apophis was long since vanquished and those world-shattering words free to be spoken aloud, the thrill of the forbidden remained. The habits of a century were not unlearned in years.
He did not believe the Tauri would ever understand what it meant for a Jaffa to defy his god and choose freedom - and that was truly what made them wondrous to him. They carried their freedom with them, neither jealously guarding it nor taking it for granted, but simply unable to conceive of living in any other state. It was a gift O'Neill had bestowed upon him that fateful day on Chulak, by the very act of assuming he already had it. He had asked Teal'c to assist, with the simple expectation that he was free to choose.
And Teal'c had chosen, and cast off slavery, and fought gods.
Against today's prey, he had sworn a special oath of kel kalach tokeem kal'kek - vengeance of the soul that grows even beyond death. It was not the Jaffa way to do so silently, but O'Neill was a man whose heart was kept in silence, and he would feel shamed, not honoured, by another taking a spoken vow in his name. O'Neill would never declare Baal a blood enemy, for to do so would be to declare that he had been caused pain.
So Teal'c made his vow in silence, but held to it as fiercely as any he had shouted for all the universe to hear. Today, perhaps, he would get the chance to fulfil it.
"This way." The Tok'ra Selmak was in charge of Jacob Carter's body now; Teal'c saw Daniel Jackson stiffen instinctively at the change in voice. His Tauri friends, he had noticed, seldom looked to body language unless speech was unavailable. Teal'c had been aware of the shift since it was first made several minutes ago.
They approached what experience told him would be the control centre of the base, and his alertness rose a step. There was no sound but the faint hum of machinery, but that proved little. Even the Goa'uld could be quiet, on occasion.
Colonel Carter was the first to reach the doorway, and with hand signals pronounced it clear. They moved in. Teal'c assisted her in securing the room while Daniel Jackson and Selmak approached the computer terminals. Once he was sure no immediate threat existed, he assessed their location more thoroughly. It appeared to be solely a computer room, and unless this base followed a different layout to the ones he was familiar with, they had already visited all the closest chambers big enough to house a large-scale engineering project. His apprehension grew.
"Is the code the Tok'ra agent gave you still valid?" Colonel Carter asked, from her position guarding one of the three possible entrances. Teal'c was forced to split his attention between the two others, although one was the one they had entered through. It was at moments like this he most keenly missed O'Neill. His companions were all worthy warriors and tacticians in their own right, but to none was it first priority. Their attention was split between their safety and the mission, and without O'Neill to take the position of protector that duty fell to Teal'c.
It was a heavy burden.
"Working on it, working on it... damn." Jacob Carter had reverted to his own voice to answer his daughter, and uttered a curse that was wholly Tauri in origin.
"Is that... what I think it is?" Daniel Jackson said warily.
"It is a detailed schematic for interfacing a piece of Ancient technology," Selmak confirmed, resuming control.
"What kind of technology?" Still covering her doorway, Colonel Carter backed toward the computer console to be able to briefly glance at it.
"Well, I'm no expert," Daniel Jackson said, tilting his head, "but it looks to me an awful lot like... an engine."
The unsettled feeling in Teal'c's belly grew to such an extent that it almost felt as though he had his symbiote back. "Baal is building a ship," he said grimly.
Jacob Carter raised his head, eyes troubled. "Baal has built a ship," he said. "This is finished, Sammie. We've been set up."
"Shol'va, kree!" The harsh bark of a Goa'uld voice had Teal'c turning and firing his staff weapon in one smooth motion, though he already knew that it was not Baal.
The Goa'uld flinched - false god! - obviously not protected by a personal shield, but quickly recovered from the near miss, and raised a ribbon device to aim at the Tauri clustered by the computer. They dove for cover as the console went up in sparks.
"Teshram?" Daniel Jackson guessed dryly.
"That's our boy," Jacob Carter agreed, aiming and firing with his zat. The shot went wide; Colonel Carter's shots were truer, but the bullets failed to slow the Goa'uld down. Teal'c was unable to get a clear line of fire from his position, and retreated toward their original point of entrance.
Teshram delivered another blast with his ribbon device, narrowly missing Daniel Jackson, but the expected tramp of Jaffa - or even Kull warrior - feet did not materialise. Teshram's garrison was not just small, but apparently non-existent.
"I believe we are not the only ones who have been set up!" Teal'c observed, quickly taking cover.
"Makes sense," Colonel Carter said. She leaned around the console unit to squeeze off some more shots, forcing Teshram to temporarily back up. "Baal must have fed the Tok'ra spy outdated information. If this Teshram is famous for stabbing his allies in the back, it probably suits Baal to make use of his expertise and then get him out of the picture. He sends the Tok'ra here to destroy a piece of technology that's already been moved, it really doesn't matter who comes out on top - he still wins."
"And meanwhile, Baal is out there somewhere with a brand new ship powered by Ancient technology," Daniel Jackson said, wincing at another near miss.
"We've got to get this information back to the Tok'ra," Jacob Carter said.
"We've got to get word back to the SGC that Baal has a ship that may be capable of evading Earth's defences," his daughter added.
Teal'c stood momentarily to fire off a blast with his staff weapon. It missed Teshram, but at least caused the Goa'uld to duck for cover.
"Perhaps we should first concentrate on getting out of the base," he suggested mildly.
The curator of the Iaeronan Hall of History was quite delighted with the find of the shelter. Well, aspects of it, anyway.
"You see, when the Wraith come-" John tried to explain again.
"When the Wraith come, we scatter," the curator said cheerfully. "Like the hraka before the hunt. It is our way." He clapped his hands gleefully over the bowls and pieces of pottery the team had noted during their stay there.
The shelter itself, with all the phenomenal Ancient technology involved in hiding and maintaining it, was apparently only interesting to him on a level of 'hmm, nice architecture'.
"Yeah, the whole scattering thing. That's good, that's good," John said placatingly. "But still, with a shelter, you can... uh, shelter." He looked around. "It might get kinda cosy, but you could fit maybe twenty people down here; the village leaders, your children... The Wraith would never know they were here."
"If the Wraith did not know they were here, then how would they select from among them?"
"Well... that would be the point," he said, after a pause.
The curator smiled rather bemusedly. "We select from among the hraka, that they are prepared for the next Cycle," he said, in the tone of someone explaining elementary principles to a slow learner. "The Wraith select from among our people, that we are ready to embrace the next Cycle. If the Wraith do not choose, we are not prepared."
Nothing made your day quite like having things explained in small words by insane people. John opened his mouth to speak, but Teyla stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Your ways are very wise," she said, with a small bow of the head.
And hey, that was just how John had been about to describe them.
Well. He would have used a four-letter word, anyway.
"We are grateful for your gift of the crystals," she continued. Oh, yeah, that was right - the reason why they were doing the whole diplomacy in the face of idiocy thing. Swell. "We hope they will teach us much about our past."
"Yes, yes," the little man said cheerfully, his attention still on the discovered artefacts. "We must strive to learn about the past."
"As opposed to from it," John muttered darkly, as he and Teyla made their way up from the shelter and struck out in the direction of the Stargate.
"Let us hope these crystals are sufficient to meet Doctor McKay's needs," Teyla said, checking them carefully to see they were undamaged. John had been glad that he'd chosen to leave McKay with Ford rather than put him through unnecessary marching when he'd seen the way the curator had carelessly swept the power sources into a bag like so many oversized marbles.
"Let's hope," he agreed.
The Iaeronans were, he guessed, nice folks. But that didn't mean he wanted to spend any more time on their planet than he had to.
Baal looked upon the fruits of his labours, and was well pleased.
The group of Tauri he had captured had proved... enlightening. It was as well their knowledge was of use to him, as their aspects were most displeasing. Even the female was disgracefully plain-looking. The Tauri at least appeared to have selected their premier team with an eye to aesthetic appeal, but it was appalling how far their standards had slipped by the sixth-ranked group in their hierarchy. No Goa'uld would accept followers of such substandard appearance.
Instead, the Tauri appeared to select their warriors on the basis of stubbornness, a trait that should have been bred out centuries ago by any right-thinking deity. However, the defiance of the group called SG-6 had been worthless in the face of his methods. He had learned all he needed to know from them as fast as they could babble it.
The warriors had told him much of the force he would face at his destination: their numbers, and their likely tactics. An exploration team only, no match for the might of his armies, but nonetheless, it pleased him to win his way in by cunning, stealth and guile.
The boy and the woman were more promising. The Tauri educated their underlings to a far better level than Jaffa or human slaves were allowed to achieve - foolish, but undeniably useful. The boy had been able to tell him much of the Tauri's understanding of the technology of the Ancients; primitive in comparison to his own, of course, but even the directionless tinkering of primitives could be useful, when Ancient devices were so rare that more advanced thinkers had yet to have a chance to encounter them.
It was from the female that he had pulled the most precious shred of knowledge of all. The existence of a gene - a marker that allowed certain humans to activate machinery just as the Ancients had done. He had long suspected that such a thing must exist, but his current host did not possess it, and nor did the humans of any world he had yet conquered. The fact that it was not wholly lost, but found among selected members of the Tauri, explained much about how such a young and ignorant race had prevailed against such unlikely odds.
It was amusing and galling in equal measure to learn that O'Neill himself was one of these genetically advanced mutants. Perhaps that accounted for his unfathomable good luck - an ability to manipulate technology far beyond what was apparent in his façade of stupidity.
If it was a façade. O'Neill's hidden skills were truly vast indeed if he could maintain such an act quite so constantly.
O'Neill, alas, would make a very poor host, although the idea provided long moments of enjoyable contemplation. It would be satisfying indeed to take him... but ultimately, he suspected, the cause of many unnecessary headaches. No mere host could defy the will of their controlling god, of course, but the most obstinate among them could maintain enough of a presence to make commentary. Even the delightful prospect of breaking O'Neill through the things he was forced to witness paled into insignificance against the idea of voluntarily sharing headspace with the man.
No, taking O'Neill as a host was an idea best kept for idle fantasy - or, better yet, passing on to some lesser Goa'uld so that they could deal with the headaches.
His own current host was so thoroughly broken in that he worshipped Baal as well as any of his other followers. It would be something of a pity to leave him... but of course, one had to keep up with advances in the breeding stock. He would do this host the honour of a quick and painless death in recognition of his centuries of faithful service.
The faint curl of love and gratitude that drifted up in response to that notion made him smile. Yes, it would be a shame indeed to trade this in for the uncomfortable early years of training a new host. But sacrifices had to be made, even by the gods.
With his new ship, he would travel to Atlantis, and enslave the population of gene-enhanced Tauri. There he would find his choice of new hosts, a city full of Ancient technology just waiting for him... and, perhaps, a whole new galaxy to conquer and do with as he wished.
After all, when one was a god, there was no need to start small.