Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1 (26 page)

For the fifth time inside as many minutes, Dr. Jackson raised his
binoculars and scanned the troops either side of the path. Nothing.
Not a whisker... Oh hello!

Something new was happening. On the slope opposite a group
of about twenty men broke from the trees and started running
across the rubble field and up towards the pass. Their uniforms
or whatever they called it were different. They were kitted out in
white tunics. Not terribly smart. Set against the cinder gray of the
crater, the shirts hollered Shoot me! On the other hand, the only
people with guns around here were Sam, Teal'c, and himself, and
he sure as hell didn't plan on shooting anybody. Whoever these
guys were, they must have been mobilized in a hurry. One of them
had left his javelin at home. Probably just got out of -

Daniel interrupted his scan of the running men and panned
back. Something in the way Mr Spearless moved seemed awfully
familiar. Fast and graceful, and every day for almost six years he'd

"Holy... !"

Without losing track of the men, Daniel fumbled for his radio
and pushed the call button.

"Sam! Come in, Sam! Now!"

A few bars of static, then she replied. "Daniel? Curtain's gonna
go up here any minute, so -"

"Sam, I got him!"

"What? You got whom? Daniel?"

"Jack!" He was grinning like an idiot and knew it. "I got Jack!
Check out the hillside opposite, the group cantering your way.
Sixth from point, the one without the javelin."

There was a short delay, then he heard "Holy Hannah!"

"Uhm... Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Always assuming they're not playing paintball out there...
He's with the wrong enemy."

Personally, Daniel didn't care if Jack joined the Keystone Kops
just as long as he was alive and in one piece. From a tactical point
of view, however, Jack's unexpected shift in allegiance almost
certainly had a knock-on effect on their plans.

The radio crackled again, and Sam came back. "I noticed,
Daniel. I don't know what's going on, but we've got to try and
reach him. The man who's leading that unit is the guy we ran into in Tyros."

"What?"

It was the unthinking reflex of surprise that made him look
up towards Sam and Teal'c's position, otherwise he would have
missed it. Despite the gradient, the boulder rolled leisurely, almost
reluctantly, each slow bounce knocking free more stones until the
entire hillside seemed to liquefy.

Daniel snapped from a petrified moment of shock, frantically
keying the radio. "Sam, get out of there! Get out now! The whole
damn mountain's coming -"

His voice was drowned out by the roar of stone grinding on stone
as the avalanche tore over the ledge. The basalt yoke that formed
the narrows of the pass was buried under rock and a mushroom
cloud of dust. Then, with the languid pace of the inevitable, the
river of shattered stone and tom bodies delved into the canyon,
picked up speed, and began to race towards the valley, swallowing
everything in its path.

Part of his mind coldly registered that he was safe, too far above
that chute of destruction to be swept along. Tearing from below
came screams, screams he could do nothing about. They sparked a
gut-churning remembrance of terror and pain and death in another
place, another time; screams he could have stopped, all-powerful
as he was, should have stopped, no matter what, because -

"Daniel!" His radio blurted through the cries, real and halfrecalled. "Are you okay?"

"Thank God, Sam!" Panting with relief, he forgot to push the
button, cussed, and tried again. "Sam! I'm still here. What about
you?"

Good question.

She'd answer it once Teal'c decided to move. He'd practically
thrown her under that stone canopy, and then two hundred and
forty pounds of Jaffa had landed on top of her. Enough to wind a
walrus.

"You know, Teal'c, next time you get the urge to jump my bones
we to ought find ourselves a room," she grunted.

"I do not believe that it would have withstood the rockslide, Major Carter." He sounded a bit muffled as he finally heaved
himself off her butt. "Are you unharmed?"

"Ask me again in a minute."

Sam scrambled to her feet, coughing up dust and trying to
determine whether she'd get lectured by Janet Fraiser in the
hopefully near future. No, probably not. Her right elbow felt pretty
banged up, but it wasn't broken, just bruised. Teal'c attempted to
look dignified through a caked grime facial and failed. Each time
he moved his head, some of the silt that had piled up on his bald
pate trickled to his shoulder. Eventually Sam realized that she
was staring and turned away, stomping on a grin. The ledge was
peppered with debris and ankle-deep in gravel. What lay beyond
was worse.

"Are you unharmed?" Apparently the sixty seconds were up.

"I'm fine, Teal'c. I'm... fine..." she said slowly.

Whoever had been posted below wasn't. Gradually the vanes of
dust settled, clearing the view on a trail of death and devastation.
The men who had guarded the pass were gone, either buried or
carried away. From under a heap of stones jutted an arm, pale
against dark volcanic rock, still clutching its sword, the blade
gleaming in the sunlight with obscene luster. Sam wanted to retch.
Suddenly a faint, whispering noise penetrated the unnatural quiet.
She spun around, grateful for the distraction.

A thin veil of dust and gravel hissed from the edge above and
formed a mound on one side of the rock shelf. Teal'c studied it
pensively and, without warning, grabbed her arm and silently and
swiftly pulled her into the shadows behind a boulder. Then she
heard it too. Footfalls from above, halting and uneven; the step
of someone negotiating difficult and dangerous terrain. Make that
two someones. Footsteps One and Two crossed above the overhang
until they found a place to climb down onto the sill.

The soldiers wore Tyrean uniforms, but they weren't regular
troops. They belonged to that award-winning collection of thugs
- Temple Guards - who had sailed on the battle-worn third ship.
Briefly scanning the ledge, they found nothing amiss and made for
the gulch at the far end.

Her radio chose that moment to crackle to life. "Sam? Come in, Sam."

Teeth clenched with frustration, she ripped it from her jacket.
Switching it off now would do more harm than good. One of the
Guards had turned, alerted by the noise, and carefully crept towards
their position. Sam squeezed through a gap behind their boulder
and deposited the incriminating black box among some stones
right by the precipice. Then she crawled back into cover, praying
that Daniel would prove his usual insistent self. Teal'c, who had
watched her antics with grave interest, nodded his approval.

Bang on cue, the radio asked, "Sam? What's going on up
there?"

The man stopped for a second, listened, and changed his course
past the boulder and towards the end of the ledge. Seconds later he
found the device. Calling out to his colleague, he briefly weighed
it in his hand and flung it out over the rubble field where the pass
road had been. The radio squawked "Sam?", described an elegant
arc, and disappeared from view.

Their visitor rose and wiped a dirty sleeve across an equally dirty
face, chuckling. Then he loped back towards the ravine, where the
second Guard was waiting. Two minutes later the pair were out of
earshot. Sam and Teal'c waited another two minutes before they
emerged from cover.

Staring at the graveyard beneath him, Teal'c muttered, "These
men purposely caused the avalanche."

She knew what he was thinking. She'd been thinking the same
thing. The furtive noises they'd heard from the ravine just after
they'd reached this place had to have been made by the two soldiers
climbing past.

"It wasn't your fault, Teal'c. How were you to know?"

He didn't respond.

At last she said, "You'd better call Daniel. We need to meet up
with him."

"As you wish."

"You can't help them!"

They were the four ugliest words a commander could ever hope
to hear, and Tertius was finding out the hard way. He'd lost two thirds of his little army in a matter of seconds. Jack ducked under
a flailing arm, grabbed hold of the man's shoulders, and shook him
roughly. It'd either get him decked, or Tertius would come to his
senses.

"What do you want to do? Run up there and start exhuming the
bodies?"

"They're my men!"

"They're dead!"

"I'm responsible for them!"

"Were! Were responsible! You are responsible for the living, and
you damn well better start acting on it. The Tyreans ain't gonna
wait till you've finished throwing your tantrum!"

And they wouldn't. In the distance Jack could see the first small
figures crawling over the pass. Too soon and too well organized. In
combination it told him that the rockslide hadn't been an accident.
There were weapons of mass destruction that required surprisingly
little in the way of research and preparation and delivery.

Some of what he'd been saying seemed to penetrate at last.
Tertius stopped struggling, freed himself gently, and turned to gaze
down into the valley again. It was quiet now. Quiet enough to hear
the screams of the wounded. All of them were at the lower end of
the pass, where the men had had a little more advance warning.
Stumbling among the casualties and trying to help were those who
had escaped unhurt. Maybe thirty. Few enough.

The death toll was bound to rise still. Half of the wounded would
be dead in a matter of days, from shock or fever or gangrene, and
they'd die wishing they'd have been crushed under a boulder. And
all the casualties were Phrygian. The surgical precision of the thing
was awful and allowed for one inevitable assumption. Precision
was Major Samantha Carter's middle name.

God help her if she'd done this. God help him if she'd done it
for his sake.

"I knew them all. Each one of them... And now I can't even
tell who's still alive," whispered Tertius. Then he released a long
breath and squared his shoulders. "My apologies, Deodatus. You
are right, of -"

"Don't ever apologize to me for caring about your people. I've been there." Jack struggled to unclench a fist of sick, hot
fury pumping in this gut and managed to rustle up a smile from
somewhere between rage and self-disgust. "You keep this up, I
might start trusting you after all."

"You're becoming reckless, my friend." A faint grin nudged
some life into the pallor of Tertius' face.

The old warrior, Caius, noticed and a corresponding grin made
his scar bulge. The startling facial contortions culminated in a
sympathetic wink. If asked he'd probably have recited a similar
speech, but he seemed just as happy that he'd been relieved of the
duty to deliver a pep talk to his commanding officer. The other men
stood watching, shell-shocked and silent. Beefcake looked close
to tears.

"First sign of senility." Jack shrugged with a levity he didn't
feel. "So... What's Plan B?"

"Plan B?"

"The stuff you come up with when Plan A goes pear-shaped."

The endless pause that followed was plenty of answer, and it
had nothing to do with idiom. Tertius had understood well enough.
There was no Plan B. Easy mistake and one that Jack had made
more times than he could count. He'd probably have made it this
time, too. That little ambush had been way too sexy to go wrong,
hadn't it?

"We have to keep them away from where the women and
children are hidden," Tertius said at last. "And we have to get the
wounded to safety."

Safety was in short supply, and Tertius' musings weren't so
much a plan as an objective. But it was more than the man had had
ten seconds ago, and they weren't exactly spoiled for choice. All
they could do was try and hold the newly created stone barrier at
the bottom of the pass until the survivors had recovered the last of
the wounded. If they were still alive after that, they'd have to run
like hell.

"Okay," said Jack. "Let's go."

Dr. Kelly was beginning to think she should have stayed put
and stirred the goat stew, with or without borage. The valley was too quiet. A while ago they'd heard a thunderous noise that had
rumbled on and on, but other than that not a peep. The conspicuous
absence of reaction made her nervous. The least one should expect
was a little hue and cry, wasn't it?

Her stola caught on a bush and she yanked it free impatiently.
The ripping noise was satisfactory in a small way.

Luli whipped around and shushed her before ploughing into the
next thicket.

Maybe she should write a monograph on the Phoenician Boy
Scout movement when she got home. It'd be guaranteed to make
Cricklebottom and Haig foam at the mouth. This thought cheered
her up considerably, and she giggled.

Luli shushed her again.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, lad! Do you honestly think
anybody else is crazy enough to stagger through here?"

Through here was a steep mountain flank riddled hip-deep with
macchia that had to be a haven for vipers and God only knew what
else. The crickets alone were driving her mad with their chirping.
She could see the village again, deserted and baking in the midday
heat, and they were indeed moving away from it. That much at
least seemed to be going according to plan.

"Are you sure this is the right way?"

"Yes, Lady Siobhan."

Five minutes later he disappeared over a crest. Leaving behind
more excess fabric, Kelly mustered something akin to a trot to keep
up and found him crouching by a slab of rock just beyond the ridge.
Below him stretched a cluster of scraggy olive trees, sheltering the
road. The boy barely acknowledged her arrival.

"I told you I would lead you to the road, did I not?" he murmured
offhandedly, mesmerised by the scene on the far side of the olive
grove.