Uneasy, he’d checked the shrine and found different fresh flowers and a desiccated lizard corpse. His relief had been intense. So she was definitely okay. Absolutely still around. Good… but weird. She knew Ra and Setesh were dead, yet that still didn’t stop her leaving them offerings. Asking them to bless her upcoming marriage.
Crazy. The sooner we m
ove in here and get these folks caught
up to the 20th century the better. It’s a crime, the way they’ve been forced to live
.
Not that Daniel would agree with him. Daniel was completely
gonzo over the untouched, unspoiled beauty of Mennufer and its people.
Easy for him to say. He’s not the one living without toilet paper. Although, come to think of it, he was perfectly happy on Abydos…
Daniel was a strange, strange man.
Moving on again, he checked his watch. Two hours more steady walking to go before he reached Mennufer. Roll on getting that first base camp established; he was hiking himself to skin and bone here.
And by yourself, which isn’t exactly observing safety protocols.
But he was safe enough. Khenti had assured them there were no dangerous critters in the area. No bears. No wildcats. No wolves or even coyotes. No Adjoan equivalents, either. Just birds, lots of birds, and they weren’t dangerous. But probably he’d have risked frisky fauna anyway. Not only because locating the mine and its bounty was the mission’s top priority and only one person was required to report back to the SGC, but because he’d needed the alone time. A few hours without everyone’s eyes on him. A chance to sweat out his simmering irritation in solitary exercise. Having Dixon around was like carting an unexploded bomb in his back-pack. A genial, co-operative, amusing, unexploded bomb.
Things would be a lot simpler if he was a bastard.
But he wasn’t. In fact, under different circumstances, he knew Dixon was the kind of man he could easily call a friend.
Only I don’t need a new friend. I’ve got all the friends I can handle. What I need is for Dixon to go the hell away
.
But that wasn’t going to happen until this mission was accomplished… and God alone knew how long that was going to take.
I can do this. I can. I can put up with Dixon staring at me whenever he thinks I’m too busy or preoccupied
to notice, or trying to con me into going fishing with him. I can put up with him asking five hundred questions an hour about our past missions and showing off his stupid eidetic memory. I can put up with him charming the locals. And Daniel. And Carter. Ev
en Teal’c
.
He just wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand waiting for the hammer labelled ‘Frank Cromwell’ to fall on his head. Because it was going to fall. Not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. The certainty was in Dixon’s cool, shuttered eyes and the questions he
didn’t
ask, that burned up the long, awkward silences between them.
And it didn’t help, either, knowing his team was waiting for
that hammer-drop too. He hated feeling their surreptitious gazes
on him, their anxious concern. Since his half-assed visit to the house before this mission kicked off, Daniel hadn’t said anything more about the situation but he was
thinking
, dammit.
Daniel thought louder than any man alive.
Even
Teal’c
was thinking. Not saying anything, that wasn’t his style. But he sure as hell was thinking, almost as loudly as Daniel. And so was Carter. All three of them, thinking and wondering. When the black hole incident had blown up in their faces — when Frank —
Afterwards
, he’d done such a good job of not letting them talk to him about it. He’d even managed to fend off Daniel, a minor miracle. The only one who’d come close to cracking him had been Fraiser, and even then… he’d said hardly a word. And that was the way he intended to keep it. Dixon or no Dixon, let the hammer fall where it may.
What the hell use was talking about it, anyway? Frank was dead, without even a body to bury or burn. He was dead, he was gone, it was all so last year.
Whatever Dixon had come for, he was going to leave empty handed.
I want my team back. I wan
t it the way it should be, just the four of us. Kicking Goa’uld ass down one side of the galaxy and up the other
.
And it pissed him off that he couldn’t have his way. Pissed him off harder that Hammond had put him in this position, made it impossible for him to say no, because he owed George Hammond more than he could hope to repay in one lifetime.
I just — I want this mission to be over.
A warm breeze drifted across his face, carrying with it the scent of growth and rebirth. Of flowers finding their way to the sun. Birds soaked the air with joyous song. Adjo truly was beautiful, an unspoiled paradise.
Jesus Christ, I hate this friggin’ place. Somebody get me out of here, soon.
“Okay,” said Sam, catching her breath after another run of shattering sneezes. “Stop a minute. I need to get my bearings.”
Ever obliging, Teal’c and Colonel Dixon stopped. They were
halfway up the valley’s far sloping side, surrounded by saplings and rock outcroppings and some kind of flowering yellow creeper carpeting the ground as far as they could see.
“Have you become disoriented, Major Carter?” said Teal’c, his tone scrupulously neutral.
Bless him.
If the colonel was here he’d be complaining loudly about me getting him lost
. “No. Yes. Temporarily.” She shoved her used tissue back in her pocket and stared at the photo-still from the UAV footage, which showed Lotar’s riverside village and the entrance to what they suspected was a mine.
What had better be a mine or we’re all in deep doo-doo
. Then she checked her compass and ran the positional math in her head, again.
“You’re sure it’s a naquadah mine we’re hunting?” said Colonel Dixon.
She nodded. “I am now. There’s so much naquadah close by I can feel it.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That happen a lot?”
“No, sir. Almost never.” She shivered, her naquadah-sense tingling like bad pins and needles. “It’s kind of throwing me off. But give me a minute, I’ll get us back on track.”
Colonel Dixon pretended to be interested in the bark of the closest tree. “Times like these a hot air balloon would come in handy, I reckon.”
She looked up. “A hot air balloon?”
He was grinning. “Yeah. Sure. Three-sixty degree visibility. Maneuverable. Adjustable elevation, and not too zippy. I went hot air ballooning in the Australian outback once. Dawn over Alice Springs. Amazing. You’d never believe soil could be so many shades of red.”
She swallowed impatience. “Sounds great. Unfortunately I forgot to pack my hot air balloon for this mission, so…”
He was still grinning. Teasing. A light of devilment in his eyes. “Tut tut, Major. That was careless.”
With a last look at the compass, ignoring him, she nodded. “Okay. We need to head a bit more
thataway
— ” She pointed to the left. “Over the next rise. The mine entrance should be there.” Without warning she sneezed. Again. She’d been sneezing steadily since they started up this side of the valley.
“Gesundheit,” said Dixon helpfully.
“Thank you. Pollen,” she said, fishing in another pocket for a fresh tissue. “Which I don’t usually react to, but wow. This stuff’s potent. Looks like the Adjoan spring is well and truly sprung. If this keeps up I’ll have to steal a few of Daniel’s antihistamine tablets.”
“We should continue, Major, so we might establish the presence of a mine as quickly as possible,” said Teal’c. “We may yet be searching for some time, and I do not advise returning to the village in less than full light.”
He had a point. The valley sides might not be sheer, exactly, but they were relentless. She didn’t care for the idea of negotiating them in the dark, even with a flashlight.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
To her huge relief the opening in the hillside was right where she’d posited. The entrance yawned wide before them, seductively beckoning. Best of all… it really was a mine. Not a cave. Not a deceptive shadow on the UAV footage, or a shallow scrape in the valley. It was a real, live, honest-to-God mine.
“Man oh man,” said Dixon, catching his breath from the last bit of steep, treacherous climbing. “We found it. Amazing.” Then he turned. “Actually, Major, you found it. Great job.”
Flushed with exertion, she nodded. “Thanks, Colonel.”
He laughed. “We’ll have to start calling you Naquadah Woman. Start up a line of comic-books in your honor.”
“Classified comic-books?” Amused, she wiped her forearm across her face, smearing sweat and grime, aware of a rising jubilation. “Cool.”
Holy Hannah and her best friends. We did it, General.
“You are positive it’s a naquadah mine?” Dixon persisted.
“It is,” said Teal’c, and gestured at their surroundings. “The evidence is irrefutable. Not only do we have Major Carter’s reaction, there is no vegetation for some one hundred meters around the mine’s entrance. Raw naquadah is inimitable to plant life.”
“Really?” said Dixon, taking a step back. “What about human life?”
“We’re fine provided our exposure is limited,” Sam assured him.
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” said Dixon. “You guys mined the stuff for a couple of weeks and you survived.”
She stared at their barren surroundings.
Only just
. “Thanks for reminding me, sir.”
“I should have realized this was a naquadah mine after looking at the UAV footage,” said Teal’c. He sounded deeply unhappy. “It is not advisable for you and Colonel Dixon to remain here.”
“Hey,” she said, turning to him. “Don’t do that, Teal’c. The UAV footage was way below par. It showed bare patches all over the valley. And we’re only going to be here an hour or two, tops. Colonel Dixon and I will be
fine
.” She took his arm and shook him, lightly. “Come on. Let’s get in there and have a good poke around.”
“In?” said Dixon, sounding dubious. “Is that wise, given our limited — or should I say non-existent — equipment?”
Well. For a gung-ho Special Ops type he was certainly cautious. “I don’t see that we have a choice, sir. We can’t go back to Colonel O’Neill and say,
Hey we found a mine and it looked really promising from the outside
.”
“Good point,” said Dixon, after a moment. “But we’re limiting our exposure to thirty minutes max
and
staying close to the entrance, because
I’m
not going back to O’Neill and saying,
Hey we found a mine and it looked really promising and then Carter fell down a bottomless shaft
. Okay?”
“Colonel Dixon is right, Major Carter,” said Teal’c. “It would be foolish in the extreme for us to risk ourselves without need.”
Technically she was the team leader, but they weren’t exactly wrong. “Okay, okay,” she sighed, then shook her head at them. “Anyone’d think I’d suggested we go abseiling in there.”
Teal’c’s obdurate expression softened, fractionally. “I believe
if you thought it would lead you to a scientific truth, Major, you would attempt to abseil into a sun.”
“Ha, ha, Teal’c, very funny,” she said. Then, considering, pulled a face. “Although actually, I’ve always thought it might be kind of cool to blow one up…”
“God,” said Dixon, clearly torn between horror and admiration. “And to think I thought people were exaggerating about you!”
She wasn’t going anywhere near that one. “So. Are we ready?”
Not paying attention, Dixon looked again at the mine’s entrance, then behind them at the gently remorseless fall of the valley down to the river and village below. “How the hell did they get the stuff out of here once it was mined?”
“By tel’tac,” said Teal’c. “And using anti-gravity technology. Naquadah mines are often sited in difficult locations. The Goa’uld long ago grew adept at overcoming such challenges.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Lucky them. Unfortunately for us we’re going to have to come up with more conventional ways of shipping the stuff back home.” She tugged her flashlight out of her fatigue-leg pocket. “Okay. Let’s take a quick look around then head back to the village. We want to be there when the colonel returns.”
On a deep, shuddering breath, her blood fizzing with anticipation, she led her team into the mine.
Its pitch-dark interior fractured under the onslaught of their flashlight beams. The air was heavy and stale and pressed against their exposed skin with dry, dusty fingers.
“I was kind of thinking there might be bats,” said Dixon, as they eased their way deeper into the preliminary chamber. “Since this is the next best thing to a cave. Or spiders, at least. But this place is as neat as my granny’s kitchen. I think I’m a little bit disappointed.”
“Can’t begin to tell you how glad I am about that,” said Sam, feeling the dirt floor shift and crunch beneath her boots. And then she sucked in a sharp breath, because her stabbing flashlight beam had skewered a scatter of pick-axes… and an abandoned ore-trolley just past them. “Okay. This is more like it.”