Heart's Desire (12 page)

“We'll have to make some kind of deal, obviously. I hadn't gotten that far, all right?”

Teal'c shook his head. “If the device works as you describe, it would be of great value to someone in search of wealth. Do you truly believe Reba will keep any bargain you attempt to make with her and allow you to take it away with you?”

Daniel shrugged. “I'm not even sure it's something that we can take with us. For all we know, it could be the size of a building or hooked up to an Ancient power source that we have no way of moving without an engineering team.”

“In which case, its potential benefit to us seems slim.”

“Oh, come on,” Daniel said. “There are all kinds of things we could find out even if we can't take it away with us. Where to find more sources of naquadah, or planets that have advanced civilizations that haven't been enslaved by the Goa'uld, or…”

“Are those things truly your heart's desire?”

“I told you, I think that part is poetic license.” He felt the mood could use a little lightening. “I'm pretty sure that finding more advanced weaponry is Jack's heart's desire, anyway.”

“I am not as certain of that,” Teal'c said, unsmiling.

“All right,” Daniel said. He was going to have to come out and say it. “Fine. What if we could use this device, whatever it is, to find Sha're's son?”

It had been her dying wish, communicated to him through an effort no one had thought possible as Amonet wracked him with the ribbon device. She had wanted him to find her son, hidden away by Amonet to prevent him from being destroyed because he possessed the genetic memory of the Goa'uld. And so far they'd found nothing, only dead end after dead end.

It was a while before Teal'c answered. “The possibility seems remote.”

“You can't say that. We haven't even seen what exactly this thing is or what it does. Until we do, we don't know if we'd be passing up our only chance to… I mean, right now we have no idea where to even start looking. All we have is the name of a place that could be anywhere in a very big galaxy.”

“I understand your desire to find the child,” Teal'c said, “but
—”

“Do you?” He couldn't bite back the words in time, although he knew as soon as he spoke them that they were unfair. Teal'c had a son of his own, and must have held him as a baby the way Daniel had held Sha're's child so briefly. He had barely paid attention at the time, his heart still sick at losing Sha're again to Amonet mere moments after the birth, her look of desperation transforming into the haughty glare of a hateful stranger wearing his wife's face.

“You must believe that I do,” Teal'c said evenly. “I am not questioning your motivations, but I am starting to wonder if I should question your judgment.”

“Sometimes we have to take risks,” Daniel said, stung by the implication behind the words. “If we aren't going to
—” He broke off as one of Reba's men came down the stairs from above, throwing them a disinterested glance and starting on down to the deck below. “Hey,” Daniel said. “Excuse me. Please tell Reba I have some very interesting information for her.”

The man shrugged in what might be assent and continued down.

Teal'c looked at him. “You mean to tell her what you believe you have discovered?”

“The way I figure it, we have two choices,” Daniel said, talking fast. “One, we try to stall until somebody rescues us, and hope that happens before Reba can make a deal with Asherah. If it doesn't, we get handed over to the Goa'uld. Or, two, I tell her what I've figured out, and see if we can make a deal to go check out these coordinates together. Even assuming
—
no, wait, hear me out. Even assuming there's absolutely nothing there, that buys us a lot more time. Jack and Sam are going to be looking for us, but we have to give them time to find us.”

“What is to prevent her from taking the information and then dispensing with us as no longer needed?”

“I'll give her the coordinates but not the directions for how to find the exact spot where the thing is located. We'll go from there. Come on, it has to be better than being sold to a Goa'uld who's going to take us offworld and put us somewhere where nobody's going to be this willing to talk to us.”

“Very well,” Teal'c said after a moment. “Perhaps the search for this device will present us with an opportunity to escape.”

“Maybe so,” Daniel said. He tried to push away unwanted emotions, to focus clearly on finding the right words to persuade Reba that a deal would be to her advantage. There was no point in thinking about the last time he'd seen the baby, nestled in Kasuf's arms with the man's hand cupped wonderingly over the fine fuzz of his grandson's hair.

“You'd better have something for me,” Reba said, coming upstairs with a cup of something steaming in her hand. He let himself wonder where hot water came from on an airship for a moment, appreciating the distraction, and then looked her calmly in the eye.

“I think I know how to find whatever it is you're looking for,” he said.

Sam watched as Jack carefully pushed open the hatch in the compartment's roof, to no immediate outcry. He nodded to her and then boosted her up. She braced herself on her elbows, hanging onto the hatch cover awkwardly for a moment until she could open it the rest of the way without letting it fall noisily.

She scrambled up, and Jack followed, pushing himself up easily without making a sound. He glanced at the stairs, clearly weighing going up or down versus staying on this deck, and then turned away from them and started very cautiously working his way toward the stern of the ship.

In the middle of the deck, a large cage was stacked with cargo. She couldn't make out more than dark shapes in the moonlight that spilled in through the small windows set into the airship's hull. Jack peered in through the bars and then turned his attention to a small compartment set against the hull just aft of the stairs.

Storage, maybe, which meant there was some chance of weapons. He opened the door, moving very slowly. She couldn't hear any creak from the door's hinges as he opened it, which was a good sign; the hum of the motors below them was probably covering their footsteps.

She couldn't see his expression, but she could see him shake his head and push the door equally slowly closed again. She could also smell well enough to get the picture that they probably hadn't discovered a weapons locker. Well, finding the latrines was useful in the long run.

Jack moved slowly along the hull of the airship, making his way back toward the stern. She didn't see whatever it was he saw, only saw him freeze and flattened herself against the hull beside him. It was dark, but surely anyone coming would be able to see their shapes in the dim light, and probably take a closer look.

It was the door to the stern compartment opening, a man stumbling out sleepily, heading in their direction. Probably heading for the latrine, which meant he'd have to pass them, which meant there was no way he wouldn't see them.

She stepped out from the shelter of the wall just before she thought he'd have to see her. “Hey,” she said softly. It shouldn't have worked, but his eyes went to her face for a moment as he opened his mouth to speak, and that was all it took. Jack was already moving, wrapping his arm around the man's neck in a chokehold and then lowering him carefully to the deck once he went limp.

Sam went down on one knee, pressing her fingers to the man's throat long enough to determine that a pulse was still beating there and then rifling quickly through his clothes. She found a knife first, handing it up to Jack, and then finally a zat, tucked in an inner pocket in his reeking coat.

She held it up as the man began to stir. Jack nodded, and she fired at the man as he opened his eyes. The man jerked under the zat's blast and then went limp again. Sam winced, sure that someone must have heard the zat discharge, but she couldn't hear an alarm being raised.

Jack moved fast all the same, making for the door, which was still open a crack. He flattened himself against the bulkhead and peered in, then shut it as carefully as if he were trying not to wake a sleeping child. He thrust the knife into the crack just below one of the hinges, jamming it in tightly.

Sam shook her head. “That's not going to hold,” she whispered.

He spread his hands, looking around for something better. Sam investigated the cargo that was dimly visible through the nearby bars of the cage, hoping he didn't expect her to produce any more solutions out of her underwear.

Wool, more wool, a sack of something that felt like grain, another sack, but filled with the hard shapes of something definitely not grain. She reached inside and had to repress a noise of triumph, pulling out a handful of nails and holding them up.

He nodded appreciation and waved her toward the door, taking the zat from her and covering her as she spiked the door as quietly as she could. “Sleeping quarters,” he mouthed when she glanced at him, and she nodded. If they could keep most of the crew contained for the moment, this might actually work.

Jack tensed, and she looked up to see someone coming up the stairs from below. She could only make out their outline in the shadows, and Jack must have had the same thought, because he strode easily toward the stairs, as if he were someone who belonged there, and made it nearly to the man's side before he fired. The man went down, and Jack beckoned her over, handing her the man's zat.

He jerked his head questioningly toward the door, and she shrugged. It had better hold, because she couldn't jam the door any more securely without making an unholy racket. He nodded, started for the stairs, and then hesitated, his shoulders tightening.

She leaned in to whisper. “What?”

“You go first,” he said, not sounding happy about it. Which suggested he was going to be working just to get down the stairs, and that jumping off them or scrambling back up them under fire was probably right out. Right, then.

She took a deep breath and then took the stairs fast, zat at the ready, trying to take in the scene below in the split second she might have before someone saw her. Aft was probably the storage compartment they'd been trapped in, and directly in front of her was some larger compartment that thankfully shielded the stairs from most of the deck.

Forward around its corner she could see a jumble of machinery, some of it moving in a clockwork tangle of gears and pistons, and in the middle of the deck the shapes of two long tables, with low chairs like overturned baskets scattered around them. There was a yellowish glow coming from above the tables that she was pretty sure… She leaned out as far as she dared. Yes, it was some kind of light bulb, bulky and odd-looking but bright enough behind its thick glass that they weren't going to be able to sneak around in the shadows.

There was one man sitting at one of the tables, drinking out of a steaming mug, and she thought she could make out two more tending the engines. They hadn't seen her yet. She motioned Jack down behind her, and waited for him to make it down to move. He was moving carefully but quickly enough, although she noticed that he braced himself on the stair rail as he crouched, zat raised.

He pointed out targets with his free hand, and then fired, her own first shot a heartbeat behind his. She thought she saw the man at the table go down, but he was Jack's to worry about, and she was already moving, scrambling forward toward the machinery of the engines.

“What in the name—” someone growled, close by, and she fired again, hoping the zat bolts didn't hit anything vital in the airship's machinery. She could feel the heat coming from what must be the top of the main engines, and from the small metal stove on which a kettle was steaming, probably warmed by the heat of the engines rather than an actual open flame.

She could hear Jack firing behind her, and see someone ducking down across the deck from her, disappearing behind a bank of spidery levers. She eased out from behind the minimal cover she had, waiting for a flash of movement that she could fire at.

She saw it closer than she expected, someone moving behind the stove, and she hesitated. If the stove was resting right up against the engines—

Jack fired before she could warn him, blue fire crackling over the man's body and across the surface of the stove, and the man fell, luckily for him not onto the stove but back to sprawl on the deck. The kettle skittered across the surface of the stove and fell clattering to the deck.

Sam waited for a moment, but nothing else happened except that Jack put his foot on the kettle to stop it rolling. She stood up cautiously. “Is that it?”