Heart's Desire (17 page)

“Carter, this is weird!”

“Sorry, sir! I'm trying to dump speed!”

It was working, he had to give her that. They were slowing, although the levers under his hands were shuddering, the canopy snapping like an enormous sail where the wind caught at it. He could hear something creaking, could do nothing but hope it was something that was supposed to be creaking, and risked leaning over the rail again.

“A hundred feet!”

“Hang onto something! This may get a little rough!”

Rough wasn't the word for it, Jack thought as the deck pitched and then dropped abruptly out from under his feet. Weird was definitely it. He had just enough presence of mind to hang on as his feet left the deck and he started to fall upward toward the undersurface of the canopy above, and then was just as abruptly dropped back on his feet.

His right knee buckled under his weight, but luckily he was already hanging onto something. “Are we done?”

“You tell me!” Carter said.

He looked cautiously over the rail. The airship was hovering an arm's length above the ground, drifting very slowly to starboard.

“What's our altitude?” Carter called.

“About three feet!”

“Well, here goes nothing,” she said, and the airship dropped to the ground.

It sounded about like Jack imagined dropping a metal cargo container three feet might sound, a resounding clang that jolted through his bones. Nothing audibly crunched or screamed
—
either metal or any part of him
—
and after a moment, he let out his breath in relief.

He still felt strangely heavy, and the deck under his feet felt once again like it was tilting. He kept a careful grip on the railing, but although the airship shuddered in the gusting wind, it wasn't either dragging across the rocky ground or tipping over as the wind battered the canopy. That was a good thing.

After a minute, Carter came up the stairs, making her way cautiously across the deck. “Sorry,” she said. “That wasn't the world's smoothest landing.”

“It works for me,” Jack said. “Let's get these guys off the ship and figure out which way is back to the Stargate.”

Carter leaned over the rail, her eyes on the sky. “What about Daniel and Teal'c?”

“One problem at a time,” Jack said, but he followed her gaze for a moment, wishing he could make out the shape of another ship against the lightening sky.

T
eal'c was not surprised when Daniel Jackson did not return promptly. It would be to their advantage for him to attempt to learn more of the pirates, and it was characteristic of him to do so by making an effort to engage them in lengthy conversation. Besides, he felt that he himself would not have voluntarily returned to the cell in which they were confined any sooner than was strictly necessary.

He had to admit it was a comfortable enough captivity as such things went. One of Reba's men had come down and tossed things through the bars at him, first hard bread and a warm metal bottle that proved to contain a salty soup, and then lengths of woolen cloth that the man had grudgingly pointed out could be hooked to rings set in the underside of the deck above as slings for sleeping.

Still, it did little to ease the frustration of being once again a prisoner. Since joining SG-1, he had spent more time than he cared for being imprisoned, detained, and otherwise not free to leave, starting with his arrival at the SGC. It was a part of his job, and one he accepted, but not one that he was becoming any more fond of.

As Apophis's First Prime, he had led troops into battle many times, and carried out many missions. The threat of capture had always been something he took for granted. The reality of capture had not. He had always returned from battle, and if he had not, he was aware that Apophis would not have taken many pains to retrieve him. Had he been captured by the forces of a rival system lord, it was unlikely that he would have survived the experience.

At least, he had thought so at the time. Since joining the Tau'ri, he had learned not to underestimate the chances of surviving what seemed like impossible situations. The prison of Ne'tu should have been one of them. It was widely known that no one had ever escaped its confines and lived to tell of it, and even Martouf's assurance that Jolinar of Malkshur had once done so had not appreciably increased their odds.

And yet when Major Carter had insisted they attempt to rescue her father from Ne'tu, he had actually believed O'Neill when he said that if they could find a way in, they would find a way out. He had been pleased but not as surprised as perhaps he should have been to see them when they ringed aboard the transport ship. Their clothes had been scorched and stinking of sulfur, and they had been exhausted and battered but very much alive, smiling as he pressed water on them and assured himself that they were not in imminent danger of expiring.

His own current captivity was at least less unpleasant than being confined on a volcanic prison world run by a Goa'uld who imagined himself the incarnation of evil. He hung the cloth sling and climbed into it, finding it more comfortable than the floor for resting. It was certainly no worse than the quarters aboard a ha'tak, where he had slept for so many years.

He shook his head, remembering that time in his life. He had been so proud when he had first come aboard one of Apophis's ships as Bra'tac's young apprentice, even if his duties had been limited to guarding things that were unlikely to be attacked and reporting that there was nothing to report. His doubts had been fewer, then, and he had taken great pride in victories that now he thought of with regret.

One of the airship's crew came stomping up the stairs and gave Teal'c a curious look. Teal'c met his gaze impassively.

“You're Jaffa,” the man said after a moment. He was a tall man with a face that might have been handsome without the scars that raked across it from forehead to cheek.

“That is true,” Teal'c said.

The man came closer, although he stayed a cautious distance back from the bars, like a man used to dealing with prisoners. “What is it like, serving the gods?”

“I no longer serve the Goa'uld,” Teal'c said. “And they are not gods.”

The man shook his head. “If your god comes to strike you down for blasphemy, we'll put you over the side.”

“The false god I once served is dead,” Teal'c said. “Asherah will not strike you down either, unless she learns of your actions from some human who has reason to tell her of them.”

“She's got no reason to blast us,” the man said. “We give our share to the temple and leave her priests alone. Reba's nearly as good as a temple priestess, anyway.”

“Do you not feel that it is wrong to kidnap people and hold them for ransom? Or to steal from farmers who have little to spare?”

The man's eyes shifted away from his, but he sounded defiant when he spoke. “The High King does as much, doesn't he? And as to kidnapping, if your people didn't have the ransom to spare, they wouldn't pay.”

“And then you would drop me from a great height.”

“I never said we were as holy as all that.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Yassi,” the man said. “I don't suppose it'll do me any harm to be known to the goddess for bringing her a blasphemer and traitor. If it comes to that.”

“We will find the device of which Daniel Jackson speaks,” Teal'c said. “His profession is finding relics of past civilizations that have been lost.”

“A treasure hunter?”

“Of a sort,” Teal'c said.

“Good luck with that.” Yassi shook his head. “If there were a way to get rich by digging scraps out of the ground, somebody would have done it by now.” He turned away, pulling down a coat that was hanging from a rusting hook and shrugging into it. “Filthy wind, but at least we're running ahead of the bad weather.”

He headed up the stairs toward the upper deck, leaving Teal'c wondering if it would do any good to say that the only way that these people would ever be prosperous was to stop paying tribute to the Goa'uld. Not likely. They would only say that even if they were to do such a blasphemous thing in defiance of their gods, they would surely be struck down by their wrath.

And if there were any way to overthrow the gods and be free of them forever, someone else would have done it by now. That was surely what these people would say, even if he were able to persuade them it was a desirable goal. It was what he had heard from all too many of his own people since he began trying to raise them against the Goa'uld.
Who are you to tell us we can do what has never been done, Teal'c? Who do you think you are?

It had been done at least once, on Abydos if nowhere else. The people of Abydos were free of Ra, but it was hard to point to them as an example without acknowledging that their future was uncertain. One of the other system lords would surely eventually attempt to claim a world rich with minerals that could be mined, especially one where the people needed to be taught a lesson in obedience. It was only Apophis's desire to hide Amonet on Abydos during her pregnancy that had protected the insignificant world and its people so far, but now that time was over.

But that was a problem for another day. For now, he comforted himself with the thought that even confined behind these bars, he was finally free of Apophis. Apophis's death in the destruction of Ne'tu was worth all the risks that SG-1 had run while imprisoned there, many times over. Apophis's
final
death, Teal'c hoped, although he would have felt even more certain if they had witnessed the death of Apophis with their own eyes. But surely even a Goa'uld could not have survived the massive explosions that had claimed the planet, triggered by the Tok'ra attack. There would have been nothing left for a sarcophagus to revive.

He looked up at footsteps coming down the stairs, and reached out a hand to catch the bundle that Yassi tossed him from halfway down. “Reba says you can have all this back,” Yassi said. “Nobody wanted it.”

Teal'c bent his head in a gesture somewhere short of actual thanks, and Yassi disappeared up the stairs again. He unwrapped the bundle, which contained mainly items of no obvious use. Among them were Daniel Jackson's notebook and a rubber eraser but no writing implements of any kind, his friend's flimsy cloth hat, apparently not considered attractive enough or warm enough to be of value, and a paper-thin metallic survival blanket, which had clearly been unfolded before being discarded.

He lifted the survival blanket to refold it, and when he saw what was under it his heart lifted. Reba had returned their radios. She must not have recognized them for what they were; he had seen no sign that these people used radio technology, or had any means of communication at a distance beside signals from banners observed by the eye. That meant their chances of rescue had just significantly improved.

He turned on one of the radios, but at the sound of footsteps coming back down the stairs, he silenced it immediately and thrust it under the edge of a bolt of heavy cloth where he hoped it would be effectively concealed.

The portly man who had come down from the upper deck glared at him. “What are you about? You leave the cargo be, Jaffa.”

“I am preparing to sleep,” Teal'c said calmly, unfolding the survival blanket.

“That's a poor enough excuse for a blanket, sure enough, but don't go thinking you can use our cloth to make up for it. You've got a hammock, and that's more than good enough for the likes of you.” The man shook his head. “Reba's a fool not to keep you both in chains.”

Teal'c let a little of his frustration show on his face. “On the contrary, I think her decision is wise. Were she to keep us in chains, she would eventually regret that decision.”

“You stay out of the cargo,” the man said, muttering an oath and heading down the stairs.

B
y the time they'd dragged a dozen unconscious people up the stairs, Jack was limping with every step. Sam's own legs were aching; she estimated the current subjective gravity at significantly higher than 1G, and every step felt like she was hauling an enormous pack on her shoulders. Jack looked ready to abandon the whole idea of lowering crew members down the side with rope in favor of just rolling them off the upper deck.