STARGATE SG-1 29 Hall of the Two Truths (5 page)

So what the hell had happened?

To make matters worse, he also had a missing Tok’ra. Hammond didn’t relish making that call to the High Council, although maybe they would be able to shed a bit more light on why they’d proposed the mission to ‘679 in the first place. Jenmar had presented it as an opportunity to explore newly discovered Ancient ruins, but maybe Jack had been right, and there was more to it than that. Considering his people had been missing for nearly eighteen hours now, Hammond was inclined to think so.

“The UAV is ready to deploy, sir.” Sergeant Harriman was standing in the doorway, waiting expectantly.

Hammond nodded. “I’ll be there in a moment, Sergeant.” He supposed it was too much to hope that they’d find SG-1 safe and sound in a nearby village. That just wasn’t their kind of luck, lately. Maybe he should have heeded Dr. Fraiser’s advice and given them some leave time. If he had, they wouldn’t be in this fix — whatever it turned out to be.

Walter had retreated only as far as the conference room and was waiting for him. Sending the UAV was more of an exercise in hope than expectation, Hammond was sure. He was already steeling himself for what came next.

“Walter, when we’re done with the aerial reconnaissance, I’m going to need to make a call.”

“Yes, sir. Local or long distance?”

“Very long distance.” Hammond sighed. “Better start looking up the area code for Revanna.”

Everything ached.

And by everything, Jack meant,
everything
.

Although maybe that was a good sign. At least it suggested he was more or less in one piece. Even if all those pieces hurt like hell.

Now if only he could figure out where he was. And how he got there. Because by the way his head was pounding, all signs pointed to a first-class hangover.

Or the after-effects of a high-powered zat.

“Crap.” Now he remembered. Well, parts, anyway. There’d been that Tok’ra, whatever his name was, and some ruins. And a couple of death gliders shooting at them.

“Crap,” Jack repeated, rolling onto his back and digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. If his head would clear, then maybe he could think straight. What he wouldn’t give for a couple of aspirin about now.

Tok’ra and gliders and zats.

Oh my.

He dug his hands in deeper. One of Maybourne’s steel drum bands seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside his skull. They were playing their entire repertoire. He pressed even harder. Had he ever mentioned he hated Calypso music?

Focus, damn it.

The memory of Carter dropping to her knees in the glow of blue zat-fire came to him. Vividly. That was all it took. The cobwebs cleared. Everything came back.

Jack’s hand went instinctively to his holster. Empty. Of course it was. No self-respecting bad guy would have left him armed. Still, he double-checked, just to make sure.

Nope. They got all of it.

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Jack looked around. Dirt floor. Rock walls. No visible exits, although the light was so dim it was hard to say what he might be missing. What little illumination there was came from a few anemic torches that burned far out of reach above him. Their flickering light danced across four other motionless forms laying nearby.

Four?

Oh yeah. The Tok’ra. How could he forget?

Well, good. At least they were still together. That was one less thing he had to worry about.

His eyes rested on the body nearest to him.

“Carter —” He could make out her blonde hair even in the half-light.

Ignoring the fact that his muscles felt like Jell-O, Jack managed to crawl over to where she lay sprawled on her side. “Carter!” Rolling her onto her back, he reached past her collar to check for a pulse. Beneath his fingers her skin was warm and he could feel her heart beating steady and strong.

He started to breathe again.

“C’mon, Carter. Wake up.” He shook her by the shoulder and she stirred slightly. Good, but not good enough. “No sleeping on the job, Major.” He shook her again. Her eyes struggled open and she blinked at him, recognition finally kicking in.

“Sir?”

“Trust me, it wasn’t the tequila.” She was still too fuzzy to get his joke. It had been a lame attempt anyway. “How’s your head?”

“It hurts, sir.” She winced.

“Yeah, zats’ll do that. I’ve gotta check on the others. You gonna be okay?”

She nodded, still a bit unsteady. He patted her gently on the shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere. And don’t doze off on me.” She blinked again, wide-eyed, still trying to shake it off.

Daniel was next. He was easier to rouse, a sign that the effects of the zat were wearing off. By the time he was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, Teal’c was already standing. A moan from the last unconscious form indicated that the Tok’ra, Jack still couldn’t remember his name, was coming around as well.

“Any idea where we are?” Daniel squinted into the darkness. Jack spotted his glasses on the ground and handed them to him. “Thanks. That’s better. Or not.”

“It appears to be a cavern,” Teal’c remarked. “Possibly underground.”

“Spread out,” Jack told them. “The light doesn’t go very far. Let’s see what we can find.” He eyed the Tok’ra, who appeared rather pale. “Maybe you’d better just stay here.” The guy nodded, looking grateful. Great. Of all the Tok’ra they
could
have been captured with, they had to get the one who probably didn’t know which end of a zat was up.

Carter and Teal’c fanned out in opposite directions and were already exploring the unlit space. Daniel was moving more slowly, his attention focused on the sconces. Jack could see that vague look of curiosity on his face, the one that suggested that, if they hadn’t been imminently in mortal peril, he’d find this place incredibly interesting — just like at the ruins. Which only went to prove that, if they’d left when Jack wanted to in the first place, they wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. He hated to say “I told you so” but —

Jack turned to stare at the Tok’ra. Come to think of it, things had been just fine until he’d shown up. That was one hell of a coincidence.

“You wanna tell me who the hell those guys were?”

Jenmar — Jack remembered the name now — nearly jumped out of his skin.

“What?” The Tok’ra’s voice quavered and he shrunk back slightly as Jack advanced toward him.

Oh yeah. He had something to do with it, all right. Jack could smell it. The Tok’ra were up to their old tricks. Damned if he hadn’t been right.

“You know very well what I mean.” Jack gestured upward. “The Jaffa in those death gliders. Whose were they?”

Jenmar was shaking his head. “I — I don’t know.”

“Like hell you don’t,” snarled Jack, getting right up in Jenmar’s face. He was sick and tired of being a pawn in whatever game the Tok’ra were playing. “There had to be some reason you wanted us on that planet. All that ‘You ought to see the ruins, they’re lovely this time of year’ bullshit was just the bait to get us out there. Now I want to know why!” He reined in the urge to throttle the guy. He wouldn’t let it be Brother Malchus again.

“I s-s-swear — I don’t know anything.” The young Tok’ra was visibly shaking now. Good. Let him be scared, the lying little sonofa —

Jack didn’t see Daniel until he was practically between him and the simpering little snake head.

“Jack —” Daniel was pleading in his best diplomatic voice. Jack scowled at him too.

“This was a set-up, Daniel. Right from the start. I told you we couldn’t trust them.”

“The Tok’ra are not responsible,” whimpered Jenmar, taking a half step back to give Daniel more space, and taking advantage of Daniel’s size to partially hide behind him.

“Jack, listen.” Daniel’s palms were up. “If he was behind this — if he set us up — then why would he be here with us? He was knocked out right along with the rest of us. He swears he didn’t do this, Jack. I believe him.”

“Sir —”

The ‘I found something’ tone of Carter’s voice aborted Jack’s response to Daniel. Right. There were more pressing issues than how they’d gotten here. He wasn’t done with the Tok’ra, but it could wait until later.

“What is it?” He glared at both Daniel and Jenmar for good measure before turning around to look for Carter. Jack could barely make her out in the shadows.

“I think you’ll want to see this.”

“Whatcha got?” When he reached her, Carter was pointing downward, scuffing the dirt with her boot. It took some effort to see what she was showing him, but finally he saw it: a faint and definitely metallic arc inlaid into the floor.

Rings.

“Well, that would explain why there appears to be no way in or out,” said Daniel, coming to look too.

“I’m guessing there’s no panel around here that’s going to let us use them?” Jack figured there wasn’t, but he felt compelled to ask anyway.

“If this is indeed a prison, then you are correct, O’Neill. We will find no means to activate the rings from within this cavern.”

Jack automatically looked to Carter. It was almost Pavlovian, after all these years. About now was when she usually came up with some brilliant solution to get them out of here. She glanced up and caught him staring at her. Damn. He hadn’t meant for that to happen.

“Sorry, sir. I’m afraid I don’t have any answers either.”

“Didn’t expect you to, Major.” He’d meant to let her off the hook, but by the crestfallen look on Carter’s face, not to mention the glare he was getting from Daniel, apparently it hadn’t come across that way.

Jack looked back down at the rings. “At least now we know where the front door is.”

“Which gets us what, exactly?” Daniel frowned.

“I don’t know, Daniel. Someplace to lay out the welcome mat.” He hated not knowing what was going on. It made him irritable. So did this damn headache.

“Everybody just —” Jack waved them away from the rings. “Go see if you can find a panel somewhere.” He cut off Teal’c before he could speak. “I know. There probably isn’t one. But humor me.”

Jack watched them scatter. The odds of success weren’t great. Zero, in fact. But it sure as hell beat sitting around waiting for the next damn shoe to drop — or his head to explode. Whichever came first.

The others had regrouped in the center of the cavern by the time Sam joined them. She’d made one more pass around the perimeter, but hadn’t found a thing. Of course, without even so much as a flashlight it was possible she could have missed a well camouflaged panel. But she tended to agree with Teal’c. They were trapped in this place until someone decided to ring them out.

“The good news is that they obviously didn’t put us in here with the intention of killing us,” Daniel pointed out. “They could have done that easily enough on the surface.”

“Well,
that
certainly brightens my day.” The colonel was making no attempt to conceal his bad humor. Sam avoided looking at him. His earlier remark still stung — as if she really needed further proof that he’d lost confidence in her. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t trying to figure a way out.

If only her head would stop pounding. It was hard to think around the pulsating, red mass of pain that made her brain feel like it was about to be split in half. She was usually pretty good at ignoring physical discomfort, but, as far as headaches went, this was off the scale.

It didn’t help, knowing the rest of them were waiting for her to conjure up some kind of brilliant idea. Sam could feel herself tensing, defensively. What did they expect, after all? It wasn’t like she could make a control panel appear out of thin air.

“I guess all we can do is wait,” she said finally, watching as their faces registered disappointment. Well, Daniel’s and Teal’c’s, anyway. She still wasn’t looking at the colonel.

“So it would seem.” There was a hint of resignation in Teal’c’s voice. He adjusted his stance as if he intended to remain in that pose for quite some time.

Out of the corner of her eye Sam saw the colonel shove his hands deep into his pockets and let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Awww, Hammond’ll be looking for us by now. We’re way past due. I think.” His hand covered the empty place on his wrist where his watch had been.

“Who’s to say we’re even on the same planet?” Daniel observed. “We were unconscious for a long time; at least it feels that way.” His brow furrowed in concentration. Or maybe it was pain. “Much too long for it to have been just a zat.”

Sam hadn’t considered that before, but Daniel was right. And it would explain the headache. “You think we were drugged?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know, Sam. But I think we all felt pretty awful when we woke up. If it was only a zat, then it certainly wasn’t any ordinary one.”

That was true. And it made sense. They’d all taken plenty of zat hits in their time and none had incapacitated them as long as this one obviously had. If whoever captured them had used the Stargate, or had a ship in orbit, who knew where they could be this many hours later?

Her head throbbed all the more, just thinking about it. Sam couldn’t help herself — she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to make it stop.