Retaliation (18 page)

“That is our designated rally point. You’d better start your movement now. I think the enemy is beginning to stir.”

Skaara nodded and returned to his troops.

Charlton’s voice was quiet as he said, “He was coming to ask us for help-but he offered all he could.”

The mass of Abydans began to stir. Most of Skaara’s people set off for the mines. But in ones or twos, a sig-nificant proportion were veering off toward the city.

“You could have warned him,” Charlton began.

O’Neil cut him off. “Here it comes,” he said tightly. The Horus guards had regrouped and were once again moving out. Given their ability to pierce the dark, they had surely spotted the Abydan militia. It looked as though Skaara’s offer of help might only have served to precipitate the final assault.

The men have been briefed. O’Neil reminded himself. They know what to do. With fuel fires still raging off to one side, there was no way the Horus guards could advance in the darkness. They looked even less human, stippled by the flickering flames-like some bad dream out of humanity’s childhood. The advancing tide passed the three-hundred-meter mark-an inconspicuous stake.

“Open fire,” O’Neil ordered.

Single shots rippled out as the Marines carefully chose their targets. Light mortars chuffed. Grenade launchers fired. Horus guards dropped, but the losses made about as much difference as pinpricks to a charging rhino. Two hundred meters.

Blast-lances were now crashing in answer to the patter of gunfire. O’Neil crouched lower, adding his own shots to the fusillade. His stomach muscles tightened .. .

“Now!” He gripped the radio operator by the shoulder.

The man was already shouting into his mike. “Battery Four!” Out in the desert, the four-gun Marine artillery bat-tery O’Neil had secretly emplaced in case of disaster tore down its camouflage nets and began firing. The guns were zeroed in to drop their shells a hun-dred meters from O’Neil’s position. A slight error in elevation, and yet another force would become the victim of friendly fire.

Blasts ripped the night-tore through the ranks of advancing Horuses. They might be gods on their own world. But here on Abydos they had been reduced to the level of statistical targets.

In the desert artillerymen pulled their lanyards. A second salvo, a third, a fourth.

It was too much for the hawk-headed guards. They recoiled ... The fifth salvo was a starburst, the signal to break contact and run for the mines.

O’Neil launched himself from the fighting hole. ‘Time to boogie out of Dodge.” Daniel Jackson awoke to a pounding head and a strong urge to barf. He was hanging upside-down, on some sort of coarse material. That explained the head. And he was moving, which might contribute to the nausea. Funny. I’d expect at least I’d feel physically better after being seduced.

He didn’t even have pleasant memories.

Then he discovered his hands were tied.

“Wha-“ The word came out more like a croak. “What’s going on?” He was feeling a little more aware now. The rough cloth was a homespun Abydan cloak. He was being carried on someone’s shoulder-a fairly big man, he would guess. Certainly, the guy had no problem with Daniel’s weight. He managed to maintain a steady marching pace.

Someone on the far side of Shoulders, as Daniel instantly dubbed his carrier, was engaged in a brief conversation.

No one spoke to Daniel.

By craning his neck, Daniel realized he was able to get a view of wherever they had come from. It didn’t help much. All he saw was sand dunes, illuminated in a rushing reddish glare.

“Hey!” A drunk-sounding Abydan voice came from ahead of them (behind him?). “You’re heading the wrong way! Didn’t anyone tell you? The Earthmen have run for it, toward the mines. All you’ll find at their old camp is hawk-heads. Thousands and thou-sands! They’ll go to the mine tomorrow and kill them all. Might as well go home-“ Shoulders dumped Daniel ingloriously to the sands and advanced. As Daniel pushed himself to hands and knees, he heard the noise of a scuffle, a scream, then an ominous crunch!

Feet, do your stuff, Daniel thought.

His feet couldn’t, though.

They were tied at the ankles.

Daniel did manage to turn himself around, so he’d face whoever was coming. The murderous Shoulders advanced, a threatening black shadow outlined against a huge fire raging in the Marine camp.

Could the late drunk have been right? Had Horus guards taken over the beachhead from Earth?

Another low conversation. Daniel didn’t make out the words, but he was sure the other voice was female. He turned, peering into the red-tinged darkness. Shoulders threw back the hood of his cloak and fiddled at his throat. The silhouette of his head abruptly turned into that of a giant hawk. / think that answers one question, Daniel thought.

The big man fiddled again and his normal silhou-ette returned. This time Daniel caught the sense of the female voice-assent.

Shoulders removed his robe, revealing the full re-galia of a Horus guard. Daniel also heard a flapping of cloth off to his right. He peered. Another one of the boys? No.

“Oh, my God!” he burst out.

“Goddess, actually,” the answer came in English.

The face that gazed down at him was vaguely simi-lar to Faizah’s, like that of an older, harder sister.

Of course, the last time Daniel had seen this face, it had also been under strange illumination-the blue

-glare of the matter transmitter. “Hathor,” Daniel finally said.

“Yes,” the warrior woman looming over him said, and Faizah simply vanished. “You should be grateful you’re here to be aston-ished, Daniel,” the cool, ironic voice went on. “I had intended to enjoy-then dispose of you. You might call it pique. Few men have ever rejected what I offered you.” And lived, the unspoken completion of that sentence seemed to hang in the air.

Hathor’s hand went to her throat and held out the Eye of Ra medallion. “Then I found you had this. And I thought that as a scholar, you might enjoy a bit of... final research.”

Her voice abruptly became businesslike. “Now, if you agree to walk along with us, I’ll free your ankles.”

“Urn-okay.” Daniel didn’t hesitate to give his parole. He might be able to outrun the big guy. But he’d never beat Hathor-or the blast-lances they carried. “Who’s your big friend?” “He was my aide in destroying Abydos,” Hathor said nonchalantly. “His name is Khonsu.”

It was in some Egyptian poem-Daniel couldn’t recall the source. But he did remember one line. “Khonsu the killer is.”

The two godlings activated their masks, and conver-sation was over. Hathor now wore her conventional sign of the cat instead of the Horus mask. How any-one, with her figure, could have been taken as a run-of-the-mill Horus guardsman ... Daniel supposed the witnesses had other things on their minds-like surviving combat.

Apparently his captors had donned their masks for communication purposes. Soon a squad of Horus guardsmen appeared, greeting Hathor with deep obeisance. They formed up around the odd trio like an honor guard and conveyed them toward the Ma-rine camp.

Hathor resumed her human appearance as they entered the shambles of the camp. Tents flapped in shreds, a lot of war machinery lay destroyed, and there were dead bodies-Earthmen and Horus guards-everywhere. “Your friend the Marine has escaped for the time being,” she announced, after receiving reports. “I’ll let my minions handle the pursuit tomorrow. I have other concerns.”

“Forgive me for sounding nosy,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to go looking into military secrets. But you barely had enough guardsmen to operate that ship over there.” He nodded toward the Ra’s Eye. “So where did you get the army?” Hathor looked at him, then shrugged. “One of my rivals governed a fairly populous planet. “He re-treated there when I established my ascendancy on Tuat.” “Ra’s throne world.”

“Yes. I forgot you deciphered those childish hiero-glyphs.” She looked annoyed at his interruption-which could definitely be a life-shortening problem, Daniel reminded himself.

He took his life in his hands again. “So, how did you get the army? Your rival had thousands, apparently, while you had fifty.”

Her voice was almost bored. “How did I turn the Abydan fellahin against one another with only two followers? A stroke against the head is usually the easiest.”

They reached the golden spaceship. Teams of guards were at work in the corridors cleaning up.

The same activity was underway in the pyramid of the StarGate. More minions appeared and reported, all in low voices. Hathor shared one bit of what struck her as amusing gossip. “It seems your wife is above us, holding out in the upper levels of the spaceship,” she said. “Much as I was not so long ago.”

Some of her amusement faded. “My people do not think her resistance will be as successful as mine.”

The goddess apparently came to a decision. “I re-gret you won’t be able to offer your good-byes.

We’re going on a journey.”

They marched down to the chamber of the StarGate, which Hathor had cleared. Even Khonsu was ordered to go, though he put up an argument. When the room was empty, Hathor produced the Eye of Ra medallion. “I examined this while you slept,” she said. “While the exterior is bronze, there are workings inside made of Ra’s special mineral.”

“What does it do?” Daniel asked.

“I saw it once,” the goddess replied serenely. “I’ll show you.”

Sure, Daniel thought. Dead men tell no tales.

Hathor approached the StarGate with the medallion in her hand. She stopped at the carving that repre-sented the constellation Serpens Caput-the serpent’s head. Hathor pressed the amulet to the center star of the constellation and stepped back. The huge gold-quartz ring swung into silent operation, revolving, then stopping as the triangular chevrons clicked into place. Then Daniel noticed that the place markers were not locking on to the usual constellation signs. It seemed that Ra had designed the portal to two different coor-dinate codes-the constellations, which everyone in his empire used, and the spaces between the star signs, which was apparently his secret! The final chevron fell into place, provoking that odd harmonic which accompanied the formation of the StarGate’s energy fields.

Energy gushed forth in the usual way, then settled into that deceptively placid-looking rippling pool of light.

Daniel found his wrist grasped in a strong, compe-tent hand.

“Come,” Hathor said briskly, “let’s see what Ra was hiding.” She didn’t have to pull, however. Daniel was already stepping up to the energy interface with her.

Throughout his youth and through many misad-ventures, Daniel’s stepmother used to complain that his curiosity would be the death of him. Maybe, Daniel thought, after all these years, Mom will turn out to have been right.

Taking his second StarGate journey to an unknown destination, Daniel Jackson discovered he couldn’t be sure whether it took more or less time. It wasn’t just the disorientation of being squirted between two widely separated points. The geometry and space of the connecting “tube,” or whatever it was, didn’t fit the homely three dimensions (or four, including time) that Daniel’s senses were accustomed to.

But one thing Daniel could take as a given. No matter where you went via StarGate, you should expect a bumpy ride.

Daniel was flung from the StarGate terminus feeling as if he’d been propelled by a kick in the head through a high-speed funhouse where they played very rough tricks on you.

Yet in a strange, sadistic way the passage felt.. . less bad. He still landed curled into a fetal ball. But this time he remembered to breathe on his own, and he didn’t get violently ill.

Of course, Hathor was kneeling over him, shaking him rather peevishly and telling him to pull himself together.

Maybe that’s what makes the distinction between men and gods, he thought. The ability to take a complete psychic and somatic pummeling as if it were nothing. At last the goddess left off the shaking-a wise deci-sion. He’d been a projectile vomiter in his youth.

It took Daniel a moment or two before he really began taking an interest in things again. That’s when he noticed the talking head. It was ashy white, some-what human-but definitely, chillingly other.

Daniel knew that Ra had been a symbiosis of a young human male and an unguessably old alien.

Apparently, here was the otherworldly side of Ra’s family tree.

At last Daniel concentrated on the fact that the float-ing head was talking. Then he realized he didn’t com-prehend a word of what the blasted thing was saying.

Still worse, it seemed as though Hathor didn’t have a clue, either. “Do you understand this language?”

she demanded.

Uh-oh. Neither of them had considered that Ra might install a security system in-wherever they were.

The floating head seemed to be going through a set speech, and getting a bit more irritated with each repe-tition. The thing was apparently a three-dimensional image-the edges were just a little bit fuzzy.

Hathor finally held out the medallion around her neck and thrust it into the head. That was apparently the right choice. The face looked friendly, although it still spoke incomprehensibly.

Daniel, meanwhile, was investigating the space where they landed. It bore a vague resemblance to the command deck on Ra’s Eye-about the same way a bedroom closet resembles the Rose Bowl.

The place was big-spacious enough to accommo-date a couple of football fields, at least. Including spectators.

There were lots of control panels, all glowing softly. Daniel avoided them. But directly beside the talking head was a slate and stylus in gold crystal-almost ex-actly like the microcomputers in Hathor’s former ship. Daniel picked up the slate and sketched in the hi-eroglyph for where? Immediately, a new image appeared. It showed a stylized pyramid apparently floating between stylized versions of suns.

Hieroglyphs floating between each sun symbol gave the names of stars. Hathor stared. “According to this, we’re parked somewhere in interstellar space!”

Her eyes went speculative. “As good a place as any to hide a valuable asset.”