Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1 (19 page)

The speaker was the guy in the chair, and Jack could have sworn
he'd heard the voice before. With deliberate slowness the man
rose and advanced to the middle of the hall. He stood motionless,
unprotected and half concealed by the gloom. A hand extended and
hung there expectantly.

Waiting to say Hi?

It felt more like some ritual or a bizarre kind of test. Test of
what? He dimly recalled a theory on how the common garden
variety handshake had originated as a token of being unarmed.
Trust, parley, that sort of thing.

What would Daniel do? Easy. Over the protests of the crabby
guy on whose uniform it said Colonel somewhere, Daniel would be
in there and mesmerize everyone with the peaceful explorers from
the planet Earth spiel.

"Don't even think of it!" Kelly hissed from the corner of her
mouth.

Okay.

Just as slowly and deliberately, Jack started walking up to the
man, one eye on the guards to check if they were showing any signs
of life-threatening concern. Nobody moved. Behind him whirred a
noise like steam escaping from a kettle; Miss Marple airing her
displeasure. Tough.

The moment he was close enough to see the face, he knew
why the voice had sounded so familiar. Their host still wore the Phrygian outfit, but he cleaned up nicely. Without the layer of
grime and that subservient stoop he'd adopted for waltzing through
Tyros, he looked smarter, fitter, more dangerous. The lack of floppy
headwear might have something to do with it as well. Keen hazel
eyes betrayed a flicker of amusement. He'd clocked Jack's reaction
and gave a faint smile.

"Yes," said Papa Smurf. "We meet again."

Talk about cliche. But at least it was English.

The hand still hung there.

Jack clasped it and sensed the tension in the room ease. The
room did better than he. He just about hopped with surprise when
a thumb dug in firmly between the second and third knuckles of
his right. Which would make Papa Smurf, a bit anachronistically, a
Master Mason. Now what? Return the handshake and try to bluff it
out or stick to the truth?

Truth implied trusting these folks. Regrettably he had certain
problems with the concept. Last time he'd trusted somebody, he'd
ended up with a little buddy upstairs whose travel plans and lovelife hadn't exactly been a barrel of laughs. Truth was, these days he
barely trusted anyone to even touch him.

Great timing on the violins, O'Neill! How about making up
your mind? Truth or dare...

Papa Smurf's turn to hop. "You're not one of us!"

"No."

"Yet you took my hand?"

As a matter of fact, they still stood there, hands laced like love's
young dream. But somehow it seemed wiser to wait until his new
pal made a move to let go.

"I did," Jack replied softly. "It's a question of faith, isn't it?"

"Like admitting to friendship with a Jaffa?"

"There's Jaffa and then there's Jaffa. If I didn't have faith, he
and I wouldn't be friends, and I'd probably be dead a few times
over."

"You have courage."

Or a screw loose. Purely a matter of opinion.

The man finally let go of his hand and took a step back for
scrutiny. "Whom do you serve?"

"Not the Goa'uld."

"He befriends Jaffa, but he doesn't serve the Goa'uld." The
laughter that followed rippled on through the toga brigade, but it
signaled astonishment rather than disbelief. "And he doesn't like
answering questions either."

"I'm over my daily limit already. How about we swap? You're
Tertius?"

"Yes." He grinned. "I'm the primus pilus here. You know what
that means?"

It means I outrank you, Captain, Jack thought but didn't say it.
"You run this outfit."

"I do. You are a soldier, aren't you?"

"Yes." Airman, really, but the Captain probably wouldn't grasp
the distinction.

"Your rank?"

"I'm a colonel."

"I..." Tertius blinked. "I am not familiar with that."

Ah. He'd looked it up when they'd been cramming Latin for
countless loops. He knew he had. Joseph Mallozzi, PhD, hadn't
been familiar with it either, so Jack had abandoned Latin for the
Novice in favor of a dictionary. Teal'c had been peeved because
Roman ranks didn't have any equivalent to First Prime. Damn,
what was it? Two words... He'd been pleased when he'd found it,
but his brush with vanity had been short-lived once he realized that
he'd have had to run around in a toga instead of one of those nifty
leather skirts and a breastplate.

"Tribunus laticlavius sum."

The toga boys broke into whispers, and the troops snapped
to attention, fists thudding on chests. From Kelly's end floated
something that sounded like Miserable Paddy! Presumably it had
more to do with linguistics than with his rank.

Tertius had gone a little pale, as though he expected to get
his ear chewed off first and an order to fall on his sword second.
"Paeniteo, domine," he apologized. "Please, come with me."

At the back of the hall another chair had materialized, and Tertius
steered him towards this cozy little seating arrangement. Togas
fluttered out of his way, and the guards had stopped breathing. If Goonius and Beefcake got wind of this, they'd probably feel
compelled to disembowel themselves. Nodding at the second chair,
his host sat and Jack joined him. On the wall above their heads
loomed a large stone medallion that showed a young man in tunic
and pants and the Phrygian cap. He kneeled on the flank of a fallen
bull, forcing back its head, about to slash the throat.

Some sixth sense warned Jack that he was being studied while
studying the relief. "What?"

"Do you recognize him?" Tertius smiled that faint, knowing
smile again.

They worship the bull-slayer the one sworn to destroy the Lord
Meleq.

"I've heard of him."

"He is the slayer of all that is evil."

"And he's called Buffy, right?"

"Forgive me, Tribune, but I cannot tell you. You're not one of
us, and I'm sworn not to reveal his secrets."

"I know the feeling." Jack gazed up at the medallion again.
Suddenly he said, "Must have been a fair few evil people on that
ship, I guess. They were all... slain."

"What ship? What people?"

"The ship you attacked. The people you burned alive. Oh... and
the kids you abducted. Don't forget the kids!"

"It wasn't our doing! We don't burn people!" Interesting
emphasis. The man's hands had clenched around the armrests of
this chair and he'd half risen. "You were deceived, Tribune, I swear
it!"

That thought had occurred to Jack, roughly at the moment when
Kandaulo had first opened his mouth. But he'd seen that ship,
hadn't he? He'd smelled it, for God's sake! And he'd been there
and done that, time and time again over the past seven years, and
he should have known better. He should have grabbed his team and
Miss Marple, hightailed it back to the `gate, and left these fine folks
to sort out their own problems. Except, there were the kids... What
the hell had he been thinking of? Rescue them and play happy
families? That was over, done and dusted nine long years ago.

"Give me one good reason why I should believe you," he said tersely.

"You're still alive."

"Not good enough. See, that immediately makes me wonder
why I'm still alive. What do you want?"

"Your trust."

"Wrong answer. Try again."

Tertius had eased himself back onto the seat. Now he leaned
forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers locked tightly.
"Tribune, whatever else happens, you have my word that none of
us will harm you. Nor your companion." He flicked a quick glance
at Kelly, who'd done her most obtrusive to edge through the round
of togas. "But it doesn't change the fact that you have only two
choices. You can either trust me or join us."

"Join you?"

"If you wish to know more and return to your own people it's
the only way. Become one of us."

I don 't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member:
On the subject of clubs - and cults - Jack was with Groucho Marx,
as Seth's little band of faithful had found out to their detriment. Of
course, to get a foot in the door he'd pretended to be a follower of
Seth. Largely successfully. No snippety-doo-dah...

"And joining you entails what?" So much for this truth thing. It
was the dare after all.

"Have you lost your marbles?" spluttered Kelly. By now she
was circling in a holding pattern behind his left shoulder. "Do you
have any idea of who these people are? What -"

Jack turned and showed her about twenty more teeth than he
actually owned. "Professor?"

"I told you to -"

"Shut up or I'll personally remove you from the premises. With
extreme prejudice."

`Vow, you listen, duckie! I've

"Ah!"

"Fine!" Swaths of fabric heaved indignantly, and she crossed
her arms. "Don't say I didn't warn you!"

"I won't." He turned to face his equally obstinate host again.

"Your nurse?" asked Tertius with a sympathetic grin.

"My what?"

"Continuemus..." the man muttered, dodging Jack's glare. Then
he looked up. "You have decided?"

"What do I have to do?"

"I cannot tell you that yet. So you see, you shall have to trust me,
one way or the other." The knowing smile was back. "You'll have
to pass the initiation first."

Initiation, huh? He could do initiation. Back in the glory days
when he'd enrolled at the Academy attitudes towards the timehonored ritual of hazing had been somewhere between slack and
ignorant.

"When?"

"Vow." Tertius rose, and the togas swished approvingly. "Please,
follow me -... What is your name?"

"Jack."

"Jack? Forgive me, but it seems a strange name."

This from the man who called himself The Third One. Jack
shrugged and got to his feet. "It's short for Jonathan."

"That's the Hebrew form. You want the Latin." Bun lolling at a
belligerent angle, Kelly had snapped out of her sulk with a smirk
that promised some terrible revenge. "Deodatus."

Deodorant?

"God's Gift." The smirk broadened viciously. "And aren't you
just, duckie?"

Tertius, who'd missed the subtext in its entirety, nodded
enthusiastically. "Fitting indeed. You shall see. Follow me,
Deodatus."

The crew of eavesdropping togas parted, and Tertius strode
towards the door. Jack - Deodatus - did as he was asked and
followed, envisioning cruel and unusual ways of killing professors
of archaeology.

The guards fell in behind him.

"That star chart they're using is dodgy. Longitude's off by at
least two degrees. I can compensate, but a lot of it is guesswork,"
muttered Major Carter, gazing at the screen of her laptop and the
graphic display on it. Suddenly she added, "You know, I think we're missing something here."

She was rechecking, for the fifth time since their return to
Hamilgart's house, the course she had plotted from the city of
Tyros to the island the unmanned aerial vehicle had identified.
Teal'c knew she liked to use her team mates as a sounding board,
explaining theories to them and thus to herself. Frequently it helped
her find the solution. However, the current problem did not seem to
warrant such measures, and he suspected that her mind had drifted
beyond the calculations.

"You fear that the permission for us to accompany the Tyrean
warriors has been obtained too easily?"

The Jaffa had wondered about it himself, as had Daniel Jackson,
no doubt. After the adamant refusal on the previous day and the
delay this morning, the Synod had undergone a remarkable change
of heart. Their ill-disguised act of blackmail should have enraged
Kandaulo. Instead the High Priest's silver eyes had lit up as though
he had received a gift, and he had taken mere moments to deliberate
before allowing them to join the expedition. The rest of the priests
had fallen in line, even the old man Tendao, although his agreement
could most likely be ascribed to a sudden autumnal infatuation with
Major Carter.

"Perhaps Kandaulo has an ulterior motive," Teal'c suggested in
answer to his own musings.

"What?" Major Carter's head snapped up and she stared at
him, squinting against the sunlight that flooded the patio. "Oh...
No, I didn't mean that, Teal'c. You've got a point, though. It was
weird..."

"Then what did you mean?"

"Those two," she replied, lowering her eyes to the screen again
and veiling a glance across the sparkling pool at Hamilqart and
Ayzebel.

Their host and hostess stood under the arcade at the opposite
side of the courtyard, engaged in a whispered dispute.

"In my experience, Major Carter, disagreements between
spouses are a normal occurrence."

Considering the final year he and Drey'auc had spent together,
he might even say that arguments in wedlock were as common and as noisome as akmur'tal moths in the wetlands of Chulak.

"Believe it or not, Teal'c, I realize that." She smiled wryly. "But
this is different. I don't think Ayzebel wants him to go."

"That would also seem normal. She already may have lost a son,
and she does not wish to lose a husband as well."

"All the more reason not to send him away in anger."

Under the arcade the voices rose and carried over the distance in
agitated mumbles, just loud enough for the Jaffa to overhear. The
loss of his symbiote had sapped some of his strength, but it had not
dulled his senses. Unwelcome at times, it proved of advantage now.
What he heard told him that they were indeed missing something
and that the situation was more curious than Major Carter surmised.
For it was not Ayzebel who was angry with Hamilgart; in fact, the
reverse was true.

"I shall not repeat myself, woman!" hissed Hamilgart. "Your
actions could destroy us all. Disobey, and I cannot and will not
protect you any longer."