Heart's Desire (19 page)

“And that kept you out of combat positions, right?” He smiled sideways, like he appreciated the absurdity of defining SG-1 as a non-combat assignment. It was, of course, technically, because otherwise it would presumably have been a ground combat unit, which would have meant no female troops could be assigned to it.

“Right, totally.” There were memories trying to intrude, hers or Jolinar's, she couldn't be sure, choking sulfuric smoke and burning heat on her skin, the crackle of a staff weapon being charged and leveled at her chest—

She dug her fingernails into her palms, insisting on the reality of the present moment, standing at the rail of the airship sailing briskly through the clear cold sky with Jack watching her a little too sharply.

“See if you can rig that antenna,” he said. “And then you can get some rest for a little while. We can trade off taking the helm.”

“I guess we're going to have to,” Sam said. “It would be better to have one of us monitoring the engines, but…”

“You can sack out down there if you want,” Jack said. “But I need you at your best.”

“All right. After I set up the antenna,” Sam said. “Have you had a chance to check out these instruments?”

“I've checked them out, but I don't have any idea what most of them are,” Jack said. “I'm betting the thing that looks like a compass is a compass, and beyond that, you've got me.”

“Let me know if you find anything that looks like a barometer,” Sam said. “The last UAV survey I did showed a storm system forming off to the south. I don't know if we're anywhere in its path at this point, but it would be nice to have some warning if a storm's blowing up.”

“It looks clear enough right now,” Jack said, but he kept his eyes on the horizon.

D
aniel clung to the rail of the airship's upper deck as the wind buffeted him. The view was spectacular, the golden sun slanting through deep canyons shadowed by the mountain crags. Even with the distant hum of the engines it was quiet compared to flying, more like being in a ship in space.

And when had that started being a familiar metaphor drawn from daily life?

“It's beautiful,” he said, as Reba glanced at the ship's instruments over the shoulder of one of the men at the helm. He thought her expression softened a little at that, although she shrugged elaborately.

“If you like rocks,” she said. “Personally I prefer fields of grain and storehouses groaning with tax goods just begging to be taken off the High King's hands.”

“Actually I like ancient artifacts and interesting inscriptions,” Daniel said. “But this is a change from the usual trees.”

“Trees are worth more than rocks,” Reba said. “What are your people doing out here? We hear the strangest things about the Tau'ri.”

“Strange how?” He edged into the minimal shelter from the wind provided by the bank of controls, hoping that if he let go of the rail, he wouldn't regret it in the next hard gust of wind.

“Nobody's sure what you're up to,” she said. “You visit worlds and do strange things and go away again. You trade generously for practically useless goods, and never enough in any one place to be making you rich. Unless your people aren't used to getting anything at all from offworld?”

“We're not out here to make a profit,” Daniel said. “Although we are interested in technology that could be useful to us. Mainly we're out here to learn about other cultures and build relationships with the people on other planets.”

“You're just… what, curious?”

“It's important to us to understand other people, and it helps us understand ourselves as well. The history of humans in this galaxy
—
where we came from, and how the Goa'uld and the Ancients and the Asgard have all interfered with human development in various ways
—
is important to understanding everybody's situation now.” He considered her. “You've learned to read some Ancient. You must have been at least a little curious about what you could learn.”

“The location of valuables.”

“Come on, though, there are plenty of easier ways of making money than hunting down relics of the Ancients.”

“Oh, surely,” Reba said. “Stealing grain and selling it in the villages to people who are starving on the High King's grain ration after most of their own crops have gone in taxes. That's a quick way to riches, right there. After you've paid the crew and taken on supplies and bribed the miners for lifting gas, you can build a fine house and retire there. One of these days.”

“There must be other options besides piracy.”

Reba leaned back against the rail, her eyes on the sky, seeming unconcerned about the long drop to the rocks below. “Maybe on your world,” she said. “Here you can be a farmer and go hungry a year or two out of every five, and watch your babies too young to sell off into indenture starve. Or you can be a miner and break your back to feed your family, or sell yourself into indenture and sweep some lord's floor. Do any of those sound particularly attractive to you?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “Have you ever considered that the real problem here is the amount of what you produce you're handing over to the Goa'uld in tribute?”

Reba shook her head. “Asherah takes her due, and that's the way it is,” she said.

“Not everywhere,” Daniel said. “It's true that my people are comparatively wealthy, but that's because for the last couple of thousand years, we haven't had the Goa'uld exploiting our natural resources and taking our people as slaves. If your people didn't have to pay tribute
—”

“Yes, I've heard that about the Tau'ri, too,” Reba said. “You're troublemakers, stirring up people to defy the gods.”

“Isn't that what you're doing, when you get right down to it? The things you're stealing aren't delivered to the capital, so they aren't turned over as tribute, which from a certain point of view could be considered defying Asherah's rule over this planet already.”

“There's a difference between being wicked and being troublemakers,” Reba said. “If your people haven't found out the difference yet, you may well find it out soon. Asherah has better things to do than bicker with the High King over a few sacks of grain. But if you spread that kind of talk around the villages…”

Daniel spread his hands innocently, wondering if he'd pressed the point too far. “I'm hardly in a position to do that, am I? Not while I'm a prisoner aboard your ship, and one you're going to trade back to the Tau'ri as soon as possible.”

“I'm really starting to wonder if pushing you over the side wouldn't be a better idea,” Reba said.

“It wouldn't. You said it yourself, how many ways are there to gain everything you could possibly desire?”

She shook her head, her hair flying in the whipping wind. “You'd better hope the answer is at least one. And I think that's enough fresh air for you. Down you go.”

He took the stairs slowly, considering whether there was any point in trying to make a break for it. There really wasn't, although he found himself thinking through whether he could do it. It shouldn't be that hard to reach back and catch hold of her arm, flip her over his shoulder and send her tumbling down the steps.

Assuming she wasn't already holding the zat on him behind his back where he couldn't see. It was an academic exercise, really, since he still thought negotiation was the best strategy.

He stepped back into the cage as she opened it for him. Teal'c stepped aside wordlessly, and watched the door as it closed.

Daniel glanced at him, feeling a little bad about his brief unshared freedom, and frowned when Teal'c immediately looked away. Then he followed Teal'c's gaze to the corner of one of their radios, tucked nearly out of sight under a bolt of cloth.

Almost immediately, two of the crew came up the stairs from below, tramping past their cell on their way to the aft storeroom. Pulling out the radio and trying to reach Jack and Sam was only going to get it taken away. They'd have to wait until the ship quieted down overnight.

“Your notebook,” Teal'c said, and handed it back to him. Daniel dug in his pockets and found a stub of a pencil, sharp enough to write with. He flipped the notebook open and began sketching the deck above as he remembered it.

Teal'c raised an eyebrow, and Daniel shrugged. “I left my camera back in the capital,” he said.

Teal'c waited a moment until the two crewmen were out of sight, and then said in a low voice, “Were you able to determine how this vessel is armed?”

“I think there may be some kind of weapons mounted on the top deck,” Daniel said.

“What kind of weapons?”

“They were just some big mechanical things that looked like they might be a way to aim weapons. Although really they could be anything, I don't know. I was talking to Reba, trying to get her to open up a little.
 
I'm not sure how well that worked, though.”

“I see,” Teal'c said, not particularly patiently.

“We're not planning to shoot it out with anybody else up here, right?”

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. “Are you certain?”

“I'm certain that's not my
plan
,” Daniel said. As was unfortunately usual in his life these days, that was about the best he could say.

C
arter came up on deck to set up her makeshift tracking device; she'd rigged a looped antenna that could be angled to test the signal strength from different directions and what she said was the local equivalent of a light bulb that brightened as the signal strengthened, so that he didn't have to strain to hear a crackle over the gusting wind.

“There,” she said with satisfaction once she'd lashed the whole assembly to the panel that held the airship's instruments. She pushed her hair out of her eyes wearily, looking very nearly dead on her feet to Jack.

“Go sleep,” he said.

“You want something to eat?”

He brandished an energy bar at her, one of the items of their personal property that she'd liberated from Keret. “Off with you.”

It was quiet on deck once Carter had descended to sleep in the engine room, presumably so that if alarms went off she could do something about it, or maybe just because it was the warmest place on the ship. He didn't really mind the chill. The air was crisp and clean, without the lingering taste of smog that hung in the air even in Colorado Springs. He bet that when the sun set, the night sky would be amazing.

Of course, when the sun set, it would be bitterly cold on deck even in gloves and wearing a wool hat he'd found below decks pulled down over his ears. They'd have to take short watches overnight and take turns warming themselves below. One more reason for Carter to sleep while she had the chance.

She emerged in what he judged by the slant of the sunlight to be mid-afternoon; if one of the dials on the ship's instrument panel was a clock, he hadn't found it yet. She looked a little better rested, and was carrying steaming cups of something.

He took one gratefully and let her take the controls. The drink proved to be salty rather than sweet, some kind of broth or soup, but the main thing was that it was hot. “I take it you've figured out how to work the stove.”

“If you put a kettle on it, it boils,” she said. “I think this stuff is some kind of fermented grain paste, sort of like miso. At least I hope this is what it's supposed to taste like.”

“Works for me,” Jack said. He took the opportunity to lean over the rail, watching the ship's shadow chase them across the rocks far below. “The signal's been getting stronger,” he said. “I think we may be gaining on them.”

“I hope so,” Carter said. “I've been trying to get as much speed as I can out of this thing without using the gravity drive too much. We could probably go faster if we were willing to fall straight forward, but…”

“But that would be exceedingly strange, so let's not do that unless we have to.”

“That was my thought,” Carter said.

“What happened to sleeping?”