Chapter Nineteen: Cleaning Up The Mess
AN: Hey, sorry for the delay in this chapter. I went to Spain for a week and a half and then I had computer troubles. Here it is, at long last!
Chapter Nineteen: Cleaning Up The Mess
"Henry, Skinner, you can come out of there now," she said, smiling. She spoke English with a very familiar trace of accent.
Hardly daring to believe what his ears were telling him, Jekyll left the shelter of the crates. He hesitated for a moment, stared at her for a moment, then rushed forward to embrace the woman he'd never dared to hope to see again.
Daria tilted her head up for a kiss. Jekyll, his heart lighter than it had been in weeks, obliged, delighting in being able to hold her close. She returned the gesture with a fierce passion, her hands cupping the back of his head.
"Get a bloody room," Skinner said. It sounded as if he were rolling his eyes in exasperation.
The two broke apart, Jekyll reddening with embarrassment, Daria glaring good-naturedly at the thief.
"There always seems to be someone interrupting us," she said dryly. "It never fails."
Jekyll laughed, the first time he'd done so in ages. "Daria, what are you doing here? I thought the Council forbade you to come back!"
The Tau'ka nodded. "Until I told them how dismally Dorou failed with the Goa'uld problem. They agreed that sending him was a mistake."
"Ye can say tha' again," Skinner said as he collected the coat and hat he'd abandoned beneath the rubble. "But didn't they 'ave something against you 'n the Doc?"
She nodded again. "They aren't happy about it, but once I turned down the offer of Head of Intel, I finally managed to convince Felis and Halcon that my experience made me a much better choice for the position here." Her eyes bright with joy and love, she said. "I get to stay."
Jekyll found himself at a loss for words. She could stay. Daria could stay. With the League- with him. "God, Daria, that's wonderful!" he said, embracing the Tau'ka again.
She flinched a little and pulled back. Jekyll was suddenly reminded of her injury. "Are you alright?" he asked.
Daria nodded. "Just got a bit of a scorching," she said reassuringly. "I came out worse in Mongolia. What are you two doing here?"
"The cult seems t' 'ave set a trap," Skinner said. "Thanks fer rescuin' us."
"We keep finding people who've been killed," Jekyll added. He indicated the body of the unfortunate woman. "They've all died by a massive hemorrhage, but I have no idea what causes it."
The Tau'ka crouched next to the woman's body, inspecting it minutely. "Is this how Agent Dorou died?" she asked, touching a gentle finger to a drying trail of blood and smelling it.
"Yes," Jekyll replied. "Do you recognize it?"
Daria nodded, wiping off her blood-smeared finger. "This is the work of a col'kenthe gauntlet," she said. "It translates as 'ribbon-device. He," she indicated the lead cultist with a jerk of her head. "Was wearing one. But how did he get it? Normally only System Lords wear them." She turned the woman's left wrist over, raising an eyebrow at the image cut into her skin. "Well, it seems that they still haven't learned the meaning of subtlety."
"What do you mean?" the doctor asked, coming over to join her.
She pointed at the image of the crested serpent. "That's what a Goa'uld parasite looks like," she explained. "They're practically shouting their presence at you, if you know what to look for. They're taunting you."
"Why?" Skinner asked.
"That's the way they think," Daria said with a shrug. "They're megalomaniacs, when you get down to it. Nebthet and her underlings are telling you that they are more powerful than you, that you can't possibly hope to defeat them."
Jekyll stared down at the mangled corpse. "Can we?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied fervently. "No one is undefeatable. Not even a Goa'uld with delusions of grandeur." She paused, her head cocked to catch a faint sound. Standing up, the Tau'ka drew her sword and crossed to the cultist Skinner had taken care of. The man was stirring feebly.
Daria stood over him, sword hovering an inch or so about his throat. "Don't move," she said, then repeated the order in Goa'uld. With her free hand, she began to tug at the front of his shirt.
"What are you doing?" Jekyll asked. He stopped, eyes wide, as the Tau'ka pulled the hem of the man's shirt free and raised it to reveal an X-shaped slit in his belly.
Daria seemed to ignore him. Swiftly, she plunged her hand into the slit and pulled something out as the man shrieked in fear. As she straightened, the two men could see what was clutched in her fist- a horrible wormlike thing about a foot long, pale and slimy, with four independently moving spines in place of actual jaws. The two humans recoiled instinctively.
"W-what is that?" Jekyll asked, eyes wide with revulsion.
"A primta," Daria said coldly, eyeing the thing in her hand with a mix of utter disgust and loathing. "An immature Goa'uld. This man was made into a Jaffa'tau by Nebthet."
"She chose me…" the cultist said weakly, dazed by the sudden removal of the parasite. "To be bestowed with the gift of a goddess… I was to be honored above all others…"
"What are you going to do?" Jekyll asked.
Daria looked down at the Jaffa'tau, then turned to Jekyll, labradorite eyes grave. "You two should go."
"What-?" Instinctive loathing for the parasite turned to horror at what she was leaving unsaid. "You're going to just kill him?"
Obviously, Hyde said.
"He won't survive without the primta," Daria explained dispassionately. "It replaces its incubator's immune system- he'll be dead of some illness or another within a week. And before then he might get back to his 'gods' and tell what happened here. We can't let that happen- just as we can't let him go on with this thing," She shook the primta sharply, making the wormlike alien squeal, "inside him. Especially if there's any chance he can get back to the cult." She looked down at the man, her expression now sorrowful. "There's nothing else we can do- you don't have the technology to do anything for him. Go. I'll meet the pair of you back at the mansion."
Skinner tugged on his sleeve. "Let's get outta 'ere," he said, pulling Jekyll away.
"Daria…" Jekyll said slowly. "There's nothing else…?"
She shook her head. "No. Now go. I'll make this quick."
Skinner managed to pull his companion away. They left the warehouse wordlessly, Jekyll trying to get his mind around the cold steel he'd heard in Daria's voice. He couldn't begin to comprehend the ancient hatred her people had for the race that created them, but it clearly went deep enough that she was willing to kill a man in cold blood to prevent the parasite he carried from maturing. How could Daria be so… hard?
Daria waited until Jekyll and Skinner were well out of earshot before kneeling down next to the cultist and stuffing the keening primta roughly back into his belly-pouch. The Tau'ka had no particular quarrel with this human, just the Goa'uld he carried. Since the man could no longer survive without it, it followed that he would die. It made sense to give him a quick death now instead of a lingering one by tuberculosis or smallpox or influenza or any of a hundred other diseases, during which time he might be able to get back to his masters. She would at least give him a death that he would find honorable. She couldn't break through the brainwashing Kheti and Nebthet had placed on their followers, so the best she could do would be to work with it.
It was a sad truth of her job that sometimes innocent bystanders got mixed up in things they shouldn't.
She hated this part of her job.
"Can you understand me?" she asked in Goa'uld.
The cultist nodded blankly.
"Good. Do you serve your goddess?"
"To the death," he swore, also speaking in the Goa'uld tongue.
"Then get on your feet," Daria ordered, steeling herself for what she had to do now. There was practically no chance that he would survive what came next. A newly-made Jaffa'tau, though perhaps superior in strength and speed than a normal human, was not match for a trained Tau'ka. She called one of the abandoned staff weapons to her hand and thrust it to the cultist as he got up. "Fight me. Should you win, you will have served her well. Should you die, you shall have the death warranted you by your status as an honorable warrior."
Daria took a few paces back and raised her sword. "Jaffa'tau, kree."