Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons (32 page)

“Damn,” Cam said, crouching low against the wall and releasing a precise burst of weapons fire up the staircase. “They got here fast.”

“You’d be amazed what Oranians can do when they smell profit,” Vala said.

“We cannot hold them here.” Teal’c was farther down the narrow stairway, wielding his flashlight to try and see into the darkness. “There appears to be a room to the left, less than a hundred meters away.”

“We don’t want to get trapped,” Cam warned.

“Better than dead,” Vala said.

Daniel stood up, staying flat against the wall. “Teal’c and I can check it out, see if there’s a back door.”

Cam nodded, not taking his eyes off the Oranians further up the stairs. “Be quick, or we’ll be falling back anyway.”

With a nod at Teal’c, Daniel began to run down the steep steps. Teal’c was right; there was a door, and the panel at its side looked like it would open it if there were power. He jabbed at it anyway, to no effect. Behind him, Cam’s P90 rattled again, overlaid by the electronic hiss of Vala’s zat.

“Any ideas?” Daniel said.

Teal’c just gave him a look. “Stand back, Daniel Jackson.” His roundhouse kick looked terrifying, but his foot impacted harmlessly on the door. With a growl, Teal’c threw his shoulder against it. Still nothing.

Daniel’s radio crackled. “We’re falling back.”

Damn it. “Fall back slowly!”

He looked at the panel again. “There must be a manual override,” he said. “There must be a way to open a door if the power goes out, right?”

“Perhaps,” Teal’c said, rubbing his shoulder.

Daniel got closer to the wall, scanning its surface with his eyes and fingers, looking for irregularities. Ancient design was smooth, sinuous, and it was only as he traced it with his fingertips that he felt the slight ridge in the surface that cut across the whorls. “There’s another panel here,” he said, and wished Sam was with them. He pressed it and, to his surprise, it moved inward and then opened with a slow slide. Inside there was a simple lever, which he pulled, and the door released and slid open a few inches. “Yes,” he breathed.

Jamming his fingers into the gap, Teal’c hauled it open. Daylight flooded out from the small room on the other side, its narrow window looking out over the ocean. Daniel figured that counted as a backdoor. “Cam,” he said into his radio, “come on down. There’s a way out.”

“On our way,” Mitchell replied. “So are the Oranians.”

Teal’c covered the door, firing back up the stairs as Vala and Cam retreated into the room, then Teal’c pushed at the door, muscles bunching as it slid shut with a click.

“It won’t take them long to figure out how to open it,” Daniel pointed out.

Two quick shots from Vala’s zat left the door mechanism smoking. “Now no one can open it,” she said.

Daniel didn’t comment on the obvious flaw in her plan.

Cam was peering out the window, still catching his breath from his flight down the stairs. “When you said there was a way out…”

Daniel joined him at the window and gazed down at the glittering ocean. “Hmm,” he said. “That’s a long drop.”

“I sure hope someone brought a rope.”

The boom of ocean waves crashing against a cliff face greeted them as they stepped out of the Stargate onto P3X-406, the glare of sunlight on water almost blinding. Jack wished he still had his trusty glacier sunglasses, but that was something else the other O’Neill had kept for himself.

“Spread out,” said Balen Tark, and he watched as her people fanned out around the gate, securing the perimeter. They were good, whoever they were. Jack didn’t move, though, still savoring the sensation of gate travel — the indefinable frisson of stepping through the event horizon and launching yourself across the galaxy. Damn, but he’d missed it.

Ahead, perching on the cliffs that fell away a hundred meters to the left of the Stargate, stood the Ancient outpost. Gray as the rock it was built on, it nonetheless had something of a fairytale aspect as it teetered over the ocean, its spires glittering in the planet’s hot sun. Jack figured there’d be one heck of a view from the guest rooms.

“No welcoming committee?” he said to Hartkans, who stood next to him on the stone steps.

“Oranians are a spacefaring race,” Hartkans said. “They rarely use Stargates. They prefer to land a ship instead.”

“That’s new,” said Jack, and tugged the standard issue ball cap lower over his eyes. He missed his own kit. Without it he felt like he was just playing at being Colonel O’Neill. The only things in his pockets that he actually owned were his wallet and the keys to his bike, still parked outside Bosco’s Tavern. But the P90 was familiar, at least, and he relished the feel of it in his hands after so long. Until he’d put on the uniform and stepped through the Stargate, he hadn’t realized how disconnected he’d become from the man he’d once been.

“You’re sure you know what to do, Colonel?” Hartkans said, flinching slightly as the wormhole disengaged behind them.

“It’s not difficult,” Jack said. “We get into the outpost and find the device. I activate it — killing the Oranians — and then we spring SG-1 from jail.” Assuming they’re still alive. Assuming any of this is true. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Hartkans didn’t answer. “Balen,” he said instead, “leave some of your people to hold the gate, just in case.”

“In case of what?” Jack said.

Hartkans walked down the steps, away from the Stargate, without looking over his shoulder. “In case something unexpected happens.”

Jack had a feeling Hartkans was expecting something unexpected.

There’d been a time when rappelling down the outside of an Ancient structure on an alien world would have been a remarkable event, but that time was long past. Now, as Teal’c grabbed hold of his wrist and helped him climb in through the window, what Daniel mostly felt was tired.

“Thanks,” he said, shaking loose the cramps in his arms and rolling his shoulders. Vala sat some distance away, back against the wall, chewing on a power bar while Mitchell was studying the door. The room they were in was larger than the one above, with an annex through an archway off to the right.

“Bathroom,” Vala said, when she saw Daniel looking. “En suite. No water, though. I checked.”

“No power either?” Daniel guessed.

“And no way out,” Mitchell confirmed, turning away from the door. “Unless you can open this one too?”

“I can try,” Daniel said.

He found the manual override without much trouble, but it was broken. The lever wobbled and was obviously no longer connected to the door mechanism. Daniel sat back on his heels. “So, plan B?”

Teal’c was still at the window, one hand on the rope as if he could will it to detach itself and fall down. “I could attempt to free climb back up and retrieve the rope,” he speculated, but Cam shut him down with a wave of his hand.

“We have C4,” he said. “We’ll just blow the door.”

“Well,
that
won’t tell the Oranians exactly where to find us,” Vala said.

Cam fixed her with a look. “You got a better plan?”

Turned out, for once, she didn’t.

The sun was hot — he’d forgotten how alien suns could be hotter or colder than Earth’s Goldilocks star — but Jack found he didn’t much mind the heat as they took the path from the gate to the outpost. There were definite advantages to this young body he’d inherited: endurance, strength, and undamaged knees were some of the most noticeable. He figured, physically, he was even younger than Daniel and Carter had been when they’d first joined the SGC. Mentally, though, he felt as wise as Methuselah.

An experienced mind in a young body made a potent combination, which was probably why he recognized the approaching sound before the others — the scuffing of boots against rock. “Off the path,” he hissed, ducking behind one of the boulders that littered the cliff top.

The creatures who marched past were like nothing he’d seen before. They certainly weren’t human. Their faces were reptilian, long and with weird tentacles on either side. There was a group of about five of them, heavily armed, escorting a ragged human prisoner. He glanced at Balen, who was watching them with narrowed eyes and a twitchy trigger finger.

She spared him a look and in a low voice said, “Oranian hunting dogs.”

“Dangerous?”

Her grin was savage. “What do you think?”

Jack preferred to keep his thoughts to himself, so he said, “What about the human?”

“Like you,” she said. “Perhaps he has the Ancient genetic marker?”

He watched the little party disappear into the distance, swallowed up by the shadows cast by the vast structure ahead. “You guys know a way into this place, right?”

“Of course,” Balen said. “There’s always a backdoor.”

In this case, the backdoor involved a long and perilous climb up a narrow stairway cut into the cliff, with nothing but the ocean waves to break your fall — before they smashed you against the rocks. Nice thought.

By the time he reached the top Jack was sweating, his skin starting to crisp in the intense sunlight. If Carter had been there, she’d have had some kind of scanner to warn them about high UV levels. But, of course, she wasn’t there. None of his team was there. They were being held hostage by the creepy reptile guys.

Maybe.

Balen led them through a narrow doorway into a cramped and dark passage. It smelled musty, like damp rock, and abandoned. The rest of the outpost soared above them and Jack figured the basement was as good a place as any to start. “Now what?” he whispered as Hartkans and the rest of Balen’s people crowded in behind him.

“The device is several floors up,” Hartkans said. “Balen knows the way and we can —”

“Wait. Where’s my team?” Not that they were really his team anymore, but still. “Where are they holding SG-1?”

“We’ll find them after,” Hartkans said, glancing at his watch. It glowed in the dark and Jack could see a timer counting down. “Come on, we don’t have long.”

“Before what?”

“Before it’s too late.” Hartkans fixed him with a look. “For your team.”

And you know this, how?
Jack thought, but kept it to himself. There were far too many unknowns here for his liking.

There were no lights at first, only a faint illumination filtering down the stairs from higher up. But despite the gloom, Jack could see that everything was getting increasingly fancy the further they went: swirly patterns carved into the rock, the steps opening out into a broad staircase, and eventually the lights activating as they passed.

Hartkans stopped, surprised the first time it happened.

“Motion sensor?” Jack suggested.

But Hartkans shook his head. “You did it,” he said. “The outpost’s responding to your ATA gene.”

Jack tried not to be creeped out by the fact that this Ancient pile of stones could somehow detect his genetic code. “I should get some of these installed at home,” was all he said out loud. “It would save —”

Something detonated above them. The explosion shivered through the stone stairs, followed by a concussed silence when all Jack could hear was ringing in his ears. “What — ?” The clatter of falling masonry cut him off, clouds of dust billowing down the stairs and making them all cough.

“Damn it,” Hartkans growled, glancing at his watch.

Balen snarled something in her own language. “You said they wouldn’t be here yet.”

“There’s still time,” Hartkans said. “Keep moving.”

Jack didn’t bother asking who ‘they’ were. He doubted Hartkans would tell him the truth, and he’d find out for himself soon enough. He unsafetied his weapon and followed as Hartkans started running up the stairs.

The noise of a firefight began to filter through the dust and he could hear energy weapons discharging — a staff blast? “Jaffa?” he called to Hartkans.

“Oranian pistol,” Hartkans said, spitting dust from his mouth. He stopped when the stairs reached an intersecting corridor, glancing both ways. “Balen?”

“That way,” she said, indicating left. Unsurprisingly, it was the direction from which all the shooting was coming.

“Something unexpected?” he asked Hartkans.

Hartkans’ face was tight. “We have to get to that device first,” he said. “Everything depends on it.”

Jack didn’t answer, but did notice the lack of ‘sir’ in the orders Hartkans was throwing around. He kept his hands on his gun, using it to gesture along the corridor. “After you,
Major
,” he said.

Hartkans gave him a cold stare, then looked past him — probably at Balen. “We can’t afford to screw this up.”

Jack said nothing, but he could sense the weapon aimed at his back and knew he had no choice but to follow as Hartkans crept along the corridor. It was pretty clear what would happen if he didn’t cooperate.

Daylight spilled into the corridor up ahead, through the shattered remains of a door that had been blown out from within. He glanced into the room and saw a long slender window and a shard of sunlight falling across the floor, glinting against something silver that lay in the dust: the wrapper from a military issue power bar.

But there was no time to comment because suddenly they were under attack.

“They’re behind us!” Balen yelled and Jack spun, dropping to one knee as a streak of gunfire scorched overhead. It was some kind of energy weapon he didn’t recognize. Oranian, he guessed from the fact that a group of the bastards was bearing down on them at a run.

“Hold your ground!” Hartkans yelled, and he opened up with his P90 at the same time Jack did. The enemy went down easily, but there were more behind them. Many more.

Jack edged to the side of the corridor, offering a narrower target. “We need cover!” he barked at Hartkans.

But Hartkans wasn’t paying attention. “Tark,” he yelled. “Get O’Neill to the device. We’ll hold them here.”

“What —” Jack began, but Balen grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. She was strong.

“Come on,” she said. “We can end this now.”

He hesitated, but Hartkans and the rest of Balen’s people were holding the corridor, and going with Balen at least offered him options.

They ran, clambering over the rubble from the doorway, then further on into a clearer section of the corridor.

“This way,” Balen said, skidding to a halt. “Shortcut.”

He would have missed the narrow opening in the wall, but Balen obviously knew it was there and squeezed through. Jack followed. He doubted it was part of the original Ancient design, but the rough set of handholds cut into the rock was easy enough to climb. Above him, Balen disappeared through a hole, and a moment later his own head was poking into the room above.