Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (11 page)

"The sun is setting." Alsiros interrupted the flow of Daniel's questions to point at the faded bluish disk sliding down behind the horizon.
"We may not waste any more time with your foolishness. I will tell
you what you need to know in order to give honor to your people."
He looked as if they should have been grateful. "You must make your
way to the temple, and Artemis will judge your bravery. Your heart
will be weighed before the eyes of the goddess, and you will join the
Divine Hunt."

"Okay, hold on... hunt?" Jack asked. "What kind of hunt? And
that heart-weighing, that's not literal, right?"

Alsiros shook his head impatiently and stalked away. The kid,
Pylades, spoke up. "The Divine Hunt," he said. "Our sacrifice keeps
our people safe. If we are judged worthy, we'll join her company and
serve her in the temple. Otherwise..." He gave Iphigenia a glance and
kept whatever he'd been about to say to himself. "The goddess knows
a pure heart. I hope to see you in the temple."

He followed Alsiros, who was already striding through the rubble
and heading for one of the two sagging doorways. The rest of the
black-robed group straggled after, talking excitedly.

"Well, that was the end of a beautiful friendship," Jack said. "What
now?"

"I guess we find the Temple of Artemis," Daniel shrugged. "Listen, won't the SGC have some kind of protocol when we don't check
in?"

"Oh yeah."

"Which is...?"

"They'll open the wormhole to send a message through to us."
Jack squinted at the sun. "If we miss more than two contacts, they
send SG-2 in after us. Major Dixon's in command while Ferretti's
still in rehab."

"They'll look on Chalcis first," Carter said.

Jack nodded. "Acton's bunch will have a real nice story. They
saw us to the gate, waved bye, don't know what the heck could have
happened. Unless SG-2's real motivated to thump an answer out
of somebody, we can't count on rescue showing up here any time
soon....Options?"

"Sir, the temple's the only landmark we have so far. If that's the
center of this place, maybe that's where we find the missing piece to
the DHD," Carter put in. "Shouldn't we follow them? Alsiros seems
to know where they're going."

"His type always do. Teal'c. Get up high, take a look. We need a
lay of the land."

Teal'c nodded, handed his staff weapon to Carter and lunged up
the tallest pile of rubble, then vaulted up again onto the nearest standing wall, athletic and graceful as a cat. The top of the wall was narrow,
but he balanced like an acrobat, rock-steady, and turned in a slow
circle.

Jack shaded his eyes against the dying glare of the sun. The wind
must have been pushing hard at Teal'c, but the Jaffa didn't seem bothered. "See anything?"

"Yes," Teal'c said. His voice sounded odd. "The city stretches for
many miles. It is vast and ancient. Much of it is in ruins."

"Any sign of a temple?"

"I cannot say. There appear to be some large intact buildings in
that direction." He pointed. "But the streets are narrow, and many are
blocked. It is a difficult path."

"Guess Alsiros was right," Jack said. "Probably good to get a head
start, then, if there's some Goa'uld time limit to this thing. And he
never answered me about the heart-weighing issue. Anybody else
bothered about that?"

Teal'c jumped. Just... jumped, right down from a height of about
twenty feet or so, easy as if he'd been jumping off a foot-high step.
He landed with flexed knees, straightened, and extended his hand to
Carter. She smiled and handed over his weapon.

"Well, I don't know," Jack said, straight-faced. "You stuck the
landing, but the Russian judge only gave it a three....Daniel, Alsiros
seemed a little hairy about the sun going down. Any idea why?"

"Well, it's getting colder. It'd be nice to find some shelter." Daniel rubbed his hands together, then clasped them under his armpits.

Teal'c spoke up. "I located a defensible position when scouting,
O'Neill."

"Lead the way." They all looked at him. "What?"

"Sir... not that I'm doubting you, but are you sure you're in shape
to make any kind of a hike right now?" Carter asked.

He tested his ankle and found the pain level about a six on the Jack
O'Neill Scale of Debilitation, which meant he could soldier on effectively. He'd hit an eight once, when he'd blown out his knee the first
time on the parachute drop. Came close to a nine in a Baghdad prison.
He figured by the time he hit a true ten, he'd be dead anyway.

"I'll be fine," he said.

They all exchanged looks.

"What?"

"Nothing, sir," Carter murmured.

He followed Teal'c across the confines of the courtyard, trying
hard not to limp. Familiarity with pain bred contempt, so it got easier
as he went along. It looked like there had originally been several exits
from the courtyard where the Stargate sat, but with the walls collapsing it was more or less open ground with random cover.

More walls at sharp right angles outside of it, these still standing
and at least two stories tall. They were completely enclosed, looked
like, except for two narrow alleyways, one to (he checked the compass on his watch) east and one to west. Presuming he could read an
alien planet's magnetic field the same way as back home. Ought to
ask Cartel.

And yet... no.

"The shelter I located is in this direction. Also, I believe these
streets are unblocked for much of the way." Teal'c pointed. Opposite
from Alsiros's tracks. Jack made a move-out gesture.

Even though Teal'c kept the pace slow and easy for the sake of
Jack's ankle, it was tough. Carter kept hovering behind him, clearly
worried, which left Daniel at the rear; Jack glanced behind, and sure
enough, Daniel was lagging fifty feet back, busy looking at the walls,
rubbing his hand over them with an interested expression.

"Captain, this is why he doesn't hold down the rear. Oh, Daniel?"
he called back.

"Yeah, just a minute."

Jack rolled his eyes and nodded Carter toward him; she went
to round him up. Daniel immediately tried to enlist her to his side.
"Captain - Doctor - take a look at this. What do you think? These
reliefs - "

"Not now, Dr. Jackson." Carter's voice was brisk and professional.

"But the reliefs... it's just that the material of these walls doesn't
match what - "

"Daniel." A little more steel under the friendliness. It brought Daniel up short. "Time and a place."

He froze for a second, then nodded. "Right. Sorry." He moved out,
shot Jack a look, and went past him to walk behind Teal'c.

When Carter joined Jack again, he gave her a slight nod. "Nice
Daniel-wrangling. Of course, you're still new at it. He's being polite.
It'll get tougher."

She snorted a laugh and dropped back to follow.

All in all, it seemed like the longest walk of Jack's life, which
given his history was saying a lot.

Teal'c led them around a right turn, then a left, then another left.
Blank walls, broken by toothless doorways that led into darkness, or
into more alleyways. What had Alsiros called this place? The Great
City? Maybe once, but it had been years since this place had seen
anything like civilization.

"Jack!" Daniel's voice, thick and urgent with alarm. Jack paused,
turned and looked. The younger man was crouched down on hands
and knees beside a pile of fallen bricks.

Jack controlled a flash of pure temper, fueled by pain and exhaustion. "Archaeology later. Shelter now."

Daniel reached behind the rubble and pulled something free. He
held it up to catch the last cold blue rays of the sun.

A skull, more yellow than white.

"It's not ancient," Daniel said quietly. "Probably not more than a
few months old. The bone's not even bleached yet. There's more back
here, but it's all been disarticulated. Tom apart and dumped."

Jack forgot about his ankle. "Animals?"

"I don't see any sign of gnawing. The bones aren't scattered." He sat back, considering. "There's no collar. Some clothing left, but no
collar."

Jack looked at Carter. She was frowning, but she lifted one shoulder in helpless commentary. Nothing they could do. They didn't even
really know what it meant.

"O'Neill." Teal'c was up ahead, and he stepped back from an
open, darkened doorway. "There is more."

The smell warned Jack long before his eyes adjusted to the relative
darkness of the room; the roof was missing, but it was still murky.

"What is it?" Daniel asked, coming up behind him.

"More bodies." He counted and came up with twelve. "Fresher
ones, smells like." He flicked on his flashlight to take a look, and
wished he hadn't. Combat prepared you for a lot of things, but that
still didn't make it easy to stomach. Not if you were lucky.

"God," Carter murmured from behind him as he moved to a second corpse. Tough to tell how long they'd been here; decomposition
was pretty advanced, to the point that it was difficult to tell the men
from the women. "Sir, this one's been hacked to pieces."

"Yeah," he agreed. Behind him, he heard boots scraping, and Daniel bolted outside to heave. Not an unreasonable response; Jack had
done it plenty of times. "Whatever happened here, it was violent. Any
of these collar things?"

"No sir. None of them have them. The clothes are gone, too. Scavenged, maybe?" She gulped, fighting nausea. He jerked his head
toward the exit.

He and Carter stepped out into the relatively cleaner air of the
alley - hallway? - and he looked to Teal'c. The Jaffa was silent.

"Goa'uld?" Jack prompted.

"The Jaffa do not kill in such a manner unless no other weapons
are available to them," Teal'c replied. "I - have never seen such a
thing on any Goa'uld world. Death, yes. But this was not done by
Jaffa."

"Somebody's holding the right end of the knives. Swords.
Whatever."

"Agreed. We should be alert."

Jack nodded, one sharp jerk of his chin. "You said you found
shelter."

"It is defensible, O'Neill."

"Even better."

Teal'c led them around two more comers, a sharp right, over a pile
of rubble from another fallen wall that it took Jack two tries to make it
over. That raised his pain index another half a point on the scale.

In the shadows, half blocked by another crumbling wall, lay a
blind doorway. Darkness inside. Jack held up a closed fist to bring the
team to a halt - naturally, Daniel didn't notice at first - and used the
penlight to check out the interior. Looked good - one empty room, no
windows, no corpses. He limped in and rested his back against one
thick wall with a silent sigh of relief. Damn.

Teal'c settled at the door, facing out, watching the alley outside.
A thin, fading band of sunlight crawled over the outside wall and
disappeared, and everything started going dark. Carter, without any
prompting, broke out the portable stove for warmth, and began laying
out rations. Daniel was drawn over to make some half-hearted jokes
about the macaroni and cheese. Jack let his throbbing, protesting body
rest up, and nursed a small amount of water like sipping whiskey. The
stove radiated a warm orange glow, but didn't do much to heat up the
space. Jack finished his water and held up a hand to Carter.

"Yo. Captain. Toss it."

"Anything in particular you're hungry for, sir?"

"Whatever." She tossed one, and he fielded it without effort. He'd
long ago formed the opinion that all MREs were the same, it was
just psychology to label them differently. But then, as Carter had
pointed out back at the SGC, he'd never met military chow he'd actually liked, and he had to admit, the modem MREs were a hell of an
improvement over the old crap. "Teal'c? You eating?"

"I am not hungry."

"It's here if you want it."

Teal'c nodded in acknowledgement without taking his eyes off of
the empty alley outside. He hadn't forgotten the room back there, the
dismembered bodies. Well, Jack hadn't either. He had a hunch he'd
be seeing it again when he closed his eyes.

Daniel and Carter were talking in low voices, something about the
Stargate and translation again. Jack let the words wash over him without worrying about the meaning, realized he'd forgotten about the MIRE in his hands, and opened it up to wolf down the main course -
turned out to be tuna with noodles - and the lemon pound cake. Peanut butter and crackers for later, if he got snack-hungry.

Almost before he'd finished swallowing the last sticky bite of
cake, he felt his body relaxing.

The wall felt soft as that feather bed he hadn't used, back on
Chalcis.

Just before his eyes slid shut, he saw Carter and Daniel, huddled
together over the warmth, talking like old friends, and he thought, if
we get out of this alive, we're going to make a damn fine team.

Then it all slid away, or he did, into darkness.