Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (15 page)

If that was what it was.

"I hate this place," Jack said, and shoved himself back to his feet.
"Yo. Carter. Let me do that."

He hobbled toward them, cursing the drag in his foot, and they
both looked up to stare at his approach.

Identical blue-eyed stares, and for a second, the dream - hallucination? - he'd apparently shared with Teal'c in the night took on weight
and texture and certainty.

Daniel stepped back to let Jack see the tight grouping of shots on
the wall. "I never thought I'd hit the broad side of a barn. She's a good
teacher."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, staring at that tiny, expert impact zone, and
imagining it in somebody's bleeding chest. "Enjoying yourself?"

"Not really." Daniel was frowning now, and there was genuine
wariness in his blue eyes. "Jack... I thought you'd be pleased. If I get better, I won't slow you down, I won't be a liability in a fight..."

"Yay?" Jack loaded it with sarcasm, and jerked his head at Carter.
"Playtime's over. Let's get moving."

She didn't. "Sir, you said one clip..."

"And now I'm saying I'd rather be six streets away before anybody
comes to investigate what that racket was, Captain. Any questions?"

For a genuinely cold second, he saw resistance in her eyes, and
then she smiled and it was gone. "No sir. Good work, Daniel. Maybe
later."

He nodded, cleared his weapon and holstered it.

Wasn't I saying he needed more practice? Yeah, I did. Which bothered Jack at least as much as the fact that he couldn't make himself be
happy with either outcome.

'hey ran into Alsiros again just after the sun touched the center of
the hollow sky.

Or rather, what was left of him.

"Colonel!" Carter's sharp yell jolted him into a lopsided jog, pain
or no pain; he slowed down to scale a waist-high rubble pile made
by a couple of collapsing walls, and slid down the other side to find
Carter and Teal'c standing together in what looked like another big
courtyard. Agora. Whatever. Like the one in Chalcis, this one was
tiled, and it had a big fountain in the center. The water still trickled
from broken, mutilated statues, but the stuff in the square pool looked
brackish and foul.

It looked like a war zone, post-occupation; destroyed buildings,
burned fragments of timbers, jagged broken foundations and fallen
columns. A giant statue that must have once been some god or other
lay on its side, shattered into four pieces. One massive hand held a
golden globe with intricate symbols all over it.

The place was a treasure trove. There were pieces of gold glittering
everywhere. Over by the fountain, coins and jewelry spilled out of a
rotting, beautifully painted wooden chest. Tattered silk flapped like
sun-faded ghosts with the wind.

Human beings collected shiny things. The fact that they'd left it
here, abandoned, told Jack about as much as he wanted to know about
how desperate things had gotten here, before the end.

And whatever came afterward.

Grandpa Preacher - Alsiros - was kneeling with arms spread out
to each side, on the cracked steps of what had once been a massive
marble-faced temple. It was shattered now, nothing but jagged walls
and broken columns. Whatever holiness had once been inside was
long destroyed.

"Alsiros?" Jack took a couple of steps closer, saw the man's graying hair blow in a sudden gust of wind. The black robe he was wear ing flapped restlessly. "Hey. You okay...?"

"Careful, sir," Carter murmured, her MP5 still locked in firing position. Teal'c stood with her, tense and ready to jump forward, but the
old man just turned his head toward Jack without making a sound.

He was splashed with blood. Dried blood, turning rust-brown, spi-
dering over his face and neck, coating his hands as if he'd washed in
it.

"Hey," Jack said again, more slowly. "So... you okay, there?"

"Dead." Grandpa wasn't preaching anymore. His voice was hollow, broken. Haunted. "So many dead."

Jack slowly sank into a crouch next to him. "Alsiros. Who's
dead?"

A blood-smeared hand rose, gestured vaguely toward the far end
of the courtyard. Jack looked over his shoulder at his team, fixed on
Teal'c, and nodded. Teal'c nodded back and took off at a run across
the courtyard.

Carter's frown deepened. She still had her finger on the MP5's
trigger, and was watching Alsiros with way too much focus. Jack
caught her eye and sent her a silent stand down.

She didn't.

"Captain Carter," he said, quiet but firm. "We're okay here."

She blinked and let the weapon slide down to a resting position.

Daniel, oblivious, had moved forward next to Jack. "Alsiros?
Remember me? Daniel Jackson? What... what happened to you?"

The old man looked blank. Unoccupied. But as the eyes focused
on Daniel's compassionate face, something snapped back in place,
with a vengeance.

He grabbed Daniel's shoulder, hard enough to make the younger
man wince. Jack didn't move, but his finger stayed close to the trigger.

"She," Alsiros said fiercely. His eyes were wide and full of horror,
fury, something too big for a human body to hold. "I gave her worship, but she... she craves only blood. Only death."

"Who? She, who?" Daniel said, holding Alsiros's hand on his
shoulder as if he wanted to reach out to him but didn't dare. "Alsiros,
who?"

"The goddess," the old man whispered. "She chooses... she knows... I saw her face last night, cold and beautiful, her eyes as
bright as suns..."

Jack met Daniel's wide eyes. No question, that was the description of a Goa'uld... Daniel fumbled in his pockets and came out with
the single photograph he had of his wife. He offered it to Alsiros. "Is
this - is this the goddess?"

The old man barely glanced at it. "No."

Jack sighed under his breath, and heard Daniel echo it; the last
thing they needed right now was the prospect of fighting Skaara and
Sha're. Bad enough there was some other snake out here running
around, probably with a small army of Jaffa at her command....

Teal'c had reached the far side of the courtyard. Whatever he
found, he found it quickly, and came loping back fast.

"Two are dead," he reported. "I believe the others in this party
have fled separately, farther into the city. They no longer appear to be
traveling together."

"Faithless," Alsiros murmured. "They were faithless and the goddess punished us. She came in my dreams... in my dreams... laughing..."

He let go of Daniel's shoulder and began to wring his hands, over
and over, dried blood flaking from his skin.

Teal'c said, over Jack's shoulder, "I do not believe a Goa'uld
killed them." Jack turned to look at him, and Teal'c sent Alsiros's
stained hands a significant look. "They died as did the one we found
before."

"Stabbed?" That was from Carter, who'd moved up behind Daniel. Teal'c nodded.

"Hey. Alsiros." Jack got the full-on crazy stare in response. "Don't
take this the wrong way, but... let me have the knife."

Alsiros looked briefly confused. He had nothing with him, nothing but the black robes, and some other kind of robes underneath...
and then he slowly reached inside the black and came out with redstreaked metal in his hand. Same style of dagger as before. Triangular
blade, ram's head at the top. Probably from an armory of some kind.
Maybe each of the tribute offerings had been issued one along with
the black robes, the better to kill you with, my dear.

"Okay, just hand it to me now," Jack said in his best, kindest voice. Alsiros started to, then hesitated, staring down at the bloodstained
bronze. "Don't think about it. Just hand it over."

But he didn't. When the old man looked up, his eyes were bright
and sharp again, glittering with tears. He stared at each of them in
turn, as if he'd never seen them before, finally focusing his gaze on
Sam Carter.

He handed her the knife. She frowned, her hand closing around it,
staring down at it for a few seconds before shoving it into her pack.

"Alsiros," Daniel was asking urgently, "did you do this? Did you
kill them?"

"Not I."

Jack bent his head toward Daniel and said in an undertone, "I'm
no detective, but I'd say bloody knife plus bloody hands plus dead
guys equals guilty."

"Not necessarily," Daniel muttered back. "Maybe he was trying to,
I don't know, save them. And picked up the knife for self-defense."

"Thank you, Perry Mason. No unprotected backs and sharp objects
for him. You can appeal later."

Alsiros wasn't watching them; he was focused on Carter, his hand
touching his moonstone collar. Like Carter's, it was flawed. Alsiros's
was more than half dark, occluded like there was some invisible
eclipse going on inside of him.

"Okay," Jack said with false heartiness. "Daniel, you're in charge
of Alsiros, here. We need to get moving; if we're making for the
Acropolis, we've got a long way to go."

"I will stay," Alsiros said. He turned his crazy gaze back toward
the destroyed temple, with its broken-teeth columns and shattered
gods. "If the goddess wills it, I will come to you."

Which had more than a little aroma of genuine psychosis to it, and
when Daniel raised his eyebrows at Jack, Jack shrugged and took a
step back. Daniel moved closer to him to whisper, "Ah, we're not just
going to leave him here, are we?"

"Let me put it this way: Yes. Yes, we are."

"But Jack - "

"Daniel, I am not dragging along a possibly homicidal crazy guy
against his will. He doesn't want to come, fine. We're moving on."

"Jack!"

"Leave him food and water." Jack let the command seep into his
voice and level stare. "You heard him. Maybe he'll come to us." With
a nice, shiny knife in his hand.

Daniel had more argument left, but he was wise enough to store it
up for later. He left a short supply of NIREs forAlsiros, painstakingly
explaining how to open and prepare them, and then they were on their
way, heading farther into the guts of the destroyed, dead city.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said, and gestured with a jerk of his head off to
the right-hand side.

Someone was standing on top of a pile of rubble. Dark tunic, a
fluttering tattered cloak. Holding something that glittered metallic in
the light.

And then, like a ghost, he was gone.

"Tell me you saw that," Jack said. Teal'c nodded. "What do you
think?"

"I think that they move very swiftly," the Jaffa answered. "And
they have been following us for some time now."

"The Dark Company?"

"Those I have seen wear dark clothing."

"Well, that's just never good. Keep your eyes open." Jack looked
toward Daniel and Carter, standing out of earshot. "And Teal'c. Watch
them, too."

Jack set a faster pace, as fast as he could possibly hobble. We've
got to get the hell out of here. He felt the pressure more with every
passing hour.

For the rest of the day, they hiked arduously over shattered rubble
and around blocked streets, trying to keep more or less on the compass heading Teal'c had given for the Acropolis. Teal'c, Carter and
Daniel took turns with sightings, scaling walls and, on one memorable occasion, a broken marble plinth that still had the dismembered
marble legs of some statue attached to it. Daniel had looked particularly weird, standing up there gazing at the horizon, hugging those
giant marble ankles. When he'd shimmied down again, he'd reported
that they'd only covered a half a mile or so toward the goal.