Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1 (9 page)

Amen to that.

Kelly hefted the Gladstone bag and set off down the road,
Daniel trotting after her. Teal'c and Ayzebel were a few steps ahead
of them, Teal'c's head just visible above an amorphous mass of
people. A hand lightly touched Sam's shoulder, making her start.

"I thought Miss Marple would take root," murmured Colonel
O'Neill. "Listen, Carter. If anyone should ask, I'm taking a walk."

Crap. "You're planning to check out the temple, sir?"

"You never know. I might end up there."

"Is that wise?"

"Probably not. I'd look it up on the Internet but there's no
modem in my bathtub." A quick white gleam in the darkness told
her he was grinning. It disappeared abruptly. "I need to find out,
Carter. Something feels funny."

And that was that. Arguing with the Colonel's funny feelings
didn't pay.

"You want backup, sir?"

"No. Just make sure Miss Marple doesn't catch on. If she realizes
that I didn't invite her along, it'll cost me my manhood."

Sam chuckled. "I'll keep her busy."

"See you back at the house in..." He turned to let his watch
catch the starlight. "Two hours."

"Sir? What if -"

"I can take care of myself. I'm good at this, Carter."

Before she could say anything else he'd slipped among the trees
and vanished.

iobhan Kelly rose on tiptoe, peered over several shoulders,
and spied the shaven head bob at a reassuring distance above
a great many hirsute ones. Then again, distance didn't mean much
because that alien lad had eyes in the back of his polished pate. She
sidestepped one of the Tyrean aubergines, bent over, and pretended
to tie her shoelaces. Young Jackson, slaloming through an entire
clan of natives, failed to notice. Excellent. Without straightening
up, she ducked off the road, and hid behind a tree trunk. The
multitudes kept oozing past. Dim starlight picked out a shock of
blond hair; the girl drifted by, looking preoccupied. Three bothers
down, one to go. But that meddlesome pocket-edition of Attila the
Hun was nowhere in sight. Where the dickens had he got to?

The steady stream of humanity - alienity, rather - gradually
thinned to a trickle of stragglers. She must have missed him. So
much the better. Bag in one hand, Kelly clutched the branches
of a bush with the other and hauled herself up the embankment.
A few dozen yards into the forest she came upon a narrow trail.
Dear Mama had gone to her grave still harbouring a firm belief in
the constitutional benefits of the carrot, and perhaps the heaps of
daucus carota shovelled into little Siobhan from an early age had
produced some effect other than diarrhoea and an abiding dislike
of all things orange. Despite her age, Kelly's night vision was
perfectly in order. Good enough to see that the trail ran uphill in
approximately the right direction and to follow it.

As the patter of feet and the murmur of conversations faded,
nightlife in the forest took over. Owls hooted and small mammals
- or possibly marsupials - skittered through the undergrowth. Their
activities invited the question whether there were large mammals
or marsupials and, if so, whether they had fangs. She set down
the Gladstone bag, opened it, and groped for her hunting stool.
The leaves that unfolded to create the seat had elongated holes for
better grip. In other words, the stool could double as a walking
stick and weapon. Chances were she wouldn't kill anything with it, but a hefty smack with the steel-tipped end was guaranteed to make
those man-eating platypuses think twice.

Platypuses or platypi? Perhaps platypus, with a long V. Ought
to ask Jackson in the morning.

The thought elicited a giggle, astonishingly loud in the quiet of
the forest, and this in turn called to mind some patently absurd advice
on how, when travelling on foot in the wild, one should generate a
maximum amount of noise so as to frighten away predators. Absurd
or not, the Professor felt sure that no self-respecting predator would
be frightened by a giggle. The situation required harsher measures.
Taking a deep breath she launched into a full-throated rendition of
Good King Wenceslas. Not quite seasonal, of course, but it was the
only song she could remember off the top of her head.

The trail led steeply uphill, and a quarter of a mile on the good
King Wenceslas wheezed his last. It reminded her that she wasn't
thirty or even sixty anymore.

"Chin up, duckie," she panted.

At last the trail levelled out onto a small clearing around a few
rocks and a well. Through the break in the treetops one could
glimpse a patch of starry sky, and the well was the kind of idyll to
which Greek mythology habitually ascribed at least one nymph.
Water pearled over rock and minute fronds of moss and tinkled into
a shallow basin, its sound cool and tempting. Kelly bent down and
scooped a handful, drinking thirstily.

Halfway through the second scoop, a large, strong hand snapped
over her mouth and a corresponding arm whipped across her midriff,
clamping her into near immobility. She swallowed the wrong way,
snorted water through her nose. The stick proved useless, so she
dropped it, coughed, spluttered, and wiggled in her attacker's
grasp, trying to bite that hand or place a kick. Not a chance. She
went limp. She'd read that somewhere. It worked.

A startled gasp, and the vise grip eased almost immediately.
Enough for her teeth to find purchase and bite down hard on the
hand. The grunt of pain was satisfying, but instead of releasing her,
he tightened his hold again.

"For cryin' out loud! Stop it!" he hissed, pulling her to the
ground and into cover by the rocks around the well. "I'm gonna let go now. Don't even think of making any noise!"

Of all the confounded nuisances, it had to be Colonel O'Neill! He
did as promised, but the Professor had no intention of not making
a noise. The man was a Neanderthal! A bloody Irish Neanderthal!
She exploded.

"Are you insane?"

"Try pissed off! Keep your voice down, dammit! I could hear
you from a mile off. Like a moose in heat!"

A what? Just how rude could you get? However, considering the
relative proximity of the temple, Kelly did as he'd asked.

"You could have killed me!" she snarled back. "What if I had a
heart condition? Hm?"

"I should be so lucky! What the hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing!"

"I asked first!"

The pale starlight lit up a face tight with anger. Well, he wasn't
the only one annoyed. Now she'd have to get rid of the fool, which
would cost valuable time.

"I am doing my job. Something you clearly are incapable of
appreciating. I suggest you just wend your merry way, and I'll
continue with my research."

The attempt to push herself up was defeated when he yanked
her back. "Stay down! Am I correct in assuming that Major Carter
hasn't been consulted on your little fieldtrip?"

"Yes."

"Is that `Yes, I'm correct' or `Yes, she knows about this'?"

"Yes, you're correct. And I was doing perfectly fine until you
jumped me."

"Ow!" He gave a surly sneer. "I bet that hurt."

"What? Being attacked by a six-foot lummox?"

"Admitting that I'm right. I'm six foot two, by the way." He
lowered his voice even further and seemed to listen for something.
"Look, Professor, much as I'd like to tie you to a tree and leave you
there till morning, I don't want to scare the other guys. We've got
company. So -"

"Company?"

"Will you shut up for once in your life? There are men out here. I've counted fifteen so far, but at a guess there's at least twice as
many, probably more. Up until you came bumbling through the
bushes, they had no idea that anyone else was enjoying the fresh air
and scenery. Chances are they're looking for us right now. So you
will pack that bag and that swagger stick of yours and stay glued to
my tail. Is that clear?"

Men in the forest?

Unfortunately he didn't sound like he was joking. As a matter
of fact, he didn't even sound angry anymore. He sounded coldly
professional. As though he actually knew what he was doing, God
help her. Slowly, Dr. Kelly nodded, gathered her belongings, and
rose.

Once they'd entered the forest, he began to trace a wide circle in
northerly direction, moving with surprising stealth. No wonder she
hadn't heard him in the clearing. Kelly imagined a grimace each
time the hinges on the handle of her bag creaked or the cap of her
boot kicked at a branch. Every now and again he'd stop dead, listen
and watch for a minute or so, and either adjust their course or carry
on. The theatrics were sublime.

After a lifetime of creeping through brambles, he belly-flopped
behind a fallen tree and motioned her to do the same. Some
hundred yards ahead reared a huge, dark obstacle; the outer wall
of the temple. To the right along the wall the faint, unsteady glow
of light spilled onto white flagstones, probably from the archway
through which they'd entered the precinct yesterday.

"Oh crap..." whispered O'Neill.

Charming language.

He'd taken out a toy-sized spyglass and was giving himself a
crick in the neck, scanning the roof of the temple. If he had any
manners at all he'd offer the glass to her so she could have a peek
as well, but apparently that was too much to ask. She'd just have
to see for herself, wouldn't she? Squinting hard, she gazed at
the upper expanse of the wall, capped by a dark velvet sky and a
myriad stars. Suddenly something black and shadowy blotted out a
small segment of what passed for the Milky Way in these parts. It
disappeared again, but several feet to the left of it wafted a similar
shadow. Then that vanished, too.

"Move!" O'Neill rasped. "Go, go, go!"

"What?'

"Not now!" He roughly hauled her up by one arm and over the
bole. "Move!"

Never letting go of her, he broke into a run, dragging her along
whether she liked it or not. Moments later they broke from the
forest and onto the stone path. The going was easier, but that didn't
make much of a difference, because he'd picked up speed. Shouts
and metal clanking, neighing of horses and a dozen rushed footfalls
behind them explained what had imbued him with this unexpected
sense of urgency. It seemed the temple was under attack.

Not thirty anymore, not even sixty... Stitches stabbing her side,
breath coming in rapid oxygen-depleted yelps, feet turning to lead,
perspiration running from her scalp and down her face, her neck,
her back, the shouts growing louder. That inviting gap in the wall
just ahead now, not far, not far at all, you can make it, duckie,
like cross-country back at Rodean, you can... Blinking through a
vinegary trickle of sweat that had seeped into her eyes, she saw the
bright gap shrink to a narrow rectangle.

Commotion there, too; frightened faces and flying purple, fear
turning to doubt to outrage to hate. Those morons thought they
were with the attackers.

"Wait!" yelled O'Neill. "They're on the roof, dammit! Watch
your heads! Don't... Wait!"

The light winked out amid the dull rattle of bars being slid across
the inside of the gate.

Without losing his stride, O'Neill darted left among the trees,
wrenching her sideways at the same insane pace. A bit further in
Kelly slipped in a patch of mud and fell hard, almost taking him
down with her, skinning her knees and spraining her wrist.

"Stay put!"

His shout was followed by the bellow of a gun. A scream, and
their pursuers, mere yards away, skidded to a temporary stop.
One of the men had dropped, clutching a shoulder. O'Neill stood
braced against a tree, aiming at the next target. With a handgun!
How many bullets did these things have? Six? The modem ones
had more, hadn't they? One handgun against God knew how many alien savages. Why hadn't he brought that great big cannon of his?
Pathetic planning!

Huffing with frustration, she groped for her stick and scrambled
towards a nearby cedar. Stay put, indeed! They weren't going to
take her without a fight!