In progress
Action/adventure, drama
Set in Season 5 and 1944
FR-T

Disclaimers:

Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, The Sci-Fi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and related marks are trademarks of Activision. The Man from UNCLE and related trademarks are the property of MGM/UA and Arena Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.

The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.

Author's Notes:

This is the seventh story in the Demiurge series. It follows on directly from the action of The Angel of Chaos and also from Raiders of the Lost Gate. It is followed by The Devil's Right Hand.

Acknowledgements:

Many thanks to Sarah for doing her usual bang-up job of beta reading. 

The Dragon Rising

Bremen
1997

Alma Schmidt sat in her living room and smoothed down her skirt with quick, obsessive movements. In all her fifty-six years of life, she had never been as nervous as this. In the kitchen, the kettle whistled; Alma went through and poured the boiling water into the teapot. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed four and she walked quickly to the door, where she stood, waiting. No knock came.

Doubt began to creep into Alma's mind. Nervously, she advanced to the door and threw it open. A man in his early thirties stood outside, his eyes wide with shock and his hand raised to knock.

Alma gasped.

"H-Hello," the man said, nervously. "I was looking for..."

Alma smiled and tears sprang to her eyes. "It is you!" she cried.

The man swallowed hard. "You know who I am?"

"Of course," she assured him. "Come inside. The tea should be just ready – I know how you hate coffee in the afternoons; so English – and I have some of your favourite cheesecake." She chuckled to herself. "I'm afraid that you'll have to manage most of that yourself; too rich for my tastes these days."

The man seemed lost as he walked past the woman into the house. The place had been freshly decorated in neutral colours in preparation for the upcoming sale, but she had delayed putting the place on the market, waiting for this moment. She had a solemn trust to discharge before she could leave her childhood home and this man was a part of it.

"I hardly dared to hope," he admitted. "So you're..."

"My name is Alma," she said, as she closed the door. "I suppose that you don't know that yet. It must have been difficult for you to track me down. I kept my name when I married, but I know that there are at least three other Schmidts within two blocks of here."

"Well, I guess I can hardly blame you for that," he told her phlegmatically. "So, your husband; is he..."

"I asked him to go out for the afternoon."

"Right. You're taking this rather better than I expected. I thought there might be trouble; screaming, accusations of insanity, possible threats of arrest."

Alma took him by the arm and led him through to the lounge. "Sit down and I'll bring the tea," she said. "There's a letter for you on the table; it should answer most of your questions." She left him and went to the kitchen door, then turned back to face him again. "It's good to see you again, Daddy," she said.

*

Moscow
2001

Dr Svetlana Alexandrovna Markova walked into the lobby of a shabby old office block in one of the less fashionable areas of Moscow. She could feel eyes on her as she entered and she was acutely aware of the weight of the pistol in her shoulder holster. Some armed employees of the state might take comfort from the presence of a weapon at their side, but Svetlana had few illusions as to her own ability; she was required by regulations to carry a sidearm on duty, but it always felt to her as though she were issuing a challenge that she was simply not prepared to meet.

Svetlana turned to the address board and located the name she wanted; it was on the fifth floor and – naturally – the lift was broken. She trudged slowly up the stairs to the fifth-floor landing and faced the door of an office that had once had a glass panel, before it had been broken in and replaced with a cheap wooden board.

In place of a proper sign, a sheet of paper had been taped onto the board, with words printed on it on an ancient dot matrix and amended in thick, black marker:

FSB Drugs Trafficking Task-Force.
Unit 66.
Please note: We keep no drugs on
the premises. Special Agents carry
less than 15 roubles...on a good day.

Svetlana knocked and then pushed on the door; the lock had been smashed, but a bolt on the far side of the door rattled securely. She heard footsteps approaching from within and then the bolt was drawn back and the door opened.

A young woman wearing a shapeless, third-hand suit over her bony frame and a listless expression on a half-starved face looked out. "You're not from Perestroika Pizza," she accused blandly.

"True enough," Svetlana agreed. She took out her ID and held it up. "Dr Svetlana Markova; Senior Research Officer, Special Directorate for Extrasensory Perception in Espionage and Counter-espionage."

"I am sorry," the woman drawled.

"Since I am only here because no-one else in the FSB will even bother to take phone calls from the SD, perhaps we can skip the personal abuse?"

The woman shrugged. "Sure," she agreed. "Senior Lieutenant Sabina Karpova, Unit 66. What can we do for you, Dr Markova? And please be brief; I see the pizza coming up behind you."

"It is more a question of what I can do for you," Svetlana replied. "I have a lead on Dragon."

Karpova looked Svetlana up and down, assessing her. "You like pepperoni?" she asked.

"Yes, I do."

Karpova nodded, then turned and walked away, leaving the door open behind her. "Come on in and meet the boss," she suggested. "And pay the pizza man!"

With a sigh, Svetlana took out her wallet and paid for the two extra large pizzas. One was pepperoni, the other anchovy and she wondered why a share of the anchovy was not on offer, even to the founder of the feast. Then she followed Karpova into the dimly lit office and bolted the door behind her.

*

The Magic Hedge,
Montrose Point Army Base
1944

Major General David Williams sat at his desk and pressed his fingers into his temples, feeling a migraine coming on. He had been having a bad day so far, in a bad week, during a pretty ropey month. Even for a career soldier the entire war would have to be considered an ‘off' period, but since his aide had gone on leave five months ago, things had gone from bad to worse. Karin had left everything in perfect order, even writing down much of the current information that had previously been stored only in her incredible brain, but her replacement was just not up to her job. Really, Williams needed two assistants to replace her and the one man attempting the thankless task had now become totally lost, which meant that the task of coordinating the actions of one half of the Office of Secret Action's highly-specialized field agents had changed from being a challenge to a trial of Herculean proportions.

All of this was only made worse when the agents in need of coordinating chose to fight him. Major Duncan O'Neill of the US Army Air Forces was easy enough to handle; a professional soldier and highly experienced clandestine operative, he knew how to follow orders – although admittedly on occasions he chose not to – and he was a part of the regular chain of command. If a General said jump, Duncan O'Neill enquired as to the optimum height rather than assaying a philosophical discourse on the nature of the act of jumping. The same could not be said of Drs Sally Carter and Mathias Jackson.

The latter in particular – an archaeologist and adventurer, incredibly brilliant and utterly infuriating – was a throbbing pain in Williams' head. The fact that he was directly responsible for the absence of the industrious Karin – having rather thoughtlessly fathered her three-month-old son, some months before marrying her – did nothing to endear him to the General. Williams would not even have bothered to call him if not for the fact that he was undeniably the country's foremost expert on Nazi occultism and on one Nazi occultist in particular.

Sally Carter was also an expert, not on occultism but on theoretical physics and in particular on high-energy fields. A former disciple of the publicly vilified Nikola Tesla, her work with Dr Stephan Kawalsky in the past year would have revolutionised the understanding of superconductors and telemetrics...if only anyone outside of their department at the OSA ever heard of it. Like Mathias Jackson, Sally Carter had a young child to consider and neither of them was keen to take another trip to Nazi Germany.

"I have important work to do," Carter insisted. "My experiments are at a crucial stage!"

"I was in the middle of a dig in New Mexico," Jackson added. "We've put everything on hold while I'm here and it's costing us; and we don't have the SS Paranormal Division's budget!"

Even O'Neill was being difficult. "General, with all due respect to my erstwhile comrades-in-arms," he said, and Williams was fairly sure that he meant it, "I think we really should keep the full-on fieldwork for the military professionals."

At that, naturally, the whole thing descended into a free-for-all. Fortunately, Williams had anticipated this. He signalled his temporary aide, Sergeant Fox, to dim the lights and switch on the projector. As they became aware of the face on the screen, the three operatives fell silent, as Williams had known they would. They face would have had an impact on most people – the woman in the picture coupled film star looks with an electrifying charisma which was amply conveyed through the photographic medium – but it was not her appearance that had this effect on the team before him.

"Mariana Veidt," Jackson said, ruefully.

"The witch," Carter added.

"These pictures were taken approximately one month ago," Williams explained. "It seems that Miss Veidt was successfully excavated from the cave-in in Antarctica, Dr Jackson," he added.

Jackson shrugged. "She seemed to have gained superhuman strength from somewhere," he noted. "Why not superhuman endurance?"

"Even leaving aside Dr Jackson's more outrageous claims," Williams said, wishing that he really could, "the opinion of the OSA Executive Committee is that Miss – or, as she is calling herself now, Doctor – Mariana Veidt is one of the most dangerous women in the world; if not one of the most dangerous people."

"Does that really need saying separately?" Carter asked archly.

"This woman is currently active in Bavaria," Williams said, forging on regardless, "conducting experiments that we believe relate to some manner of sonic weapon. We wouldn't have recalled the three of you to active service, except that the Office is currently stretched rather thin in the European theatre. We did send another team to infiltrate Miss Veidt's base at Castle Falkenstein, but we lost contact with them ten days ago. We need to send someone else in and the Cataclysm team have three great advantages: firstly, that you have encountered Veidt before; second, that between you, you possess the skills to deal with most of the military, scientific and paranormal challenges that this mission will involve."

"Only most of them?" Mathias asked.

"And thirdly..." Williams began.

"We're not doing anything else at the moment?" O'Neill suggested.

"Quite."

"Dr Carter, I know you have your son to consider," Williams said.

Carter sighed. "I do what I do for my son," she assured him.

"And I know you also have a child, Dr Jackson. Oh, God, do I know that you have a child," he muttered.

"Yes, General."

"Any plans to return my aide?" Williams asked.

"No, General," Jackson assured him, "although if she lets me take this mission, I'll probably have to stop home and look after Melbourne to make it up to her."

"You'll do it then?" Williams asked.

"I expect I'm asking for trouble, but I'm in. I doubt whether anyone else understands just how dangerous she is. Just give me time to speak to my wife and I'll meet you at the plane."

Williams nodded his head in satisfaction. "Alright," he said. "Then we will continue with the briefing."

*

Pfronten, Bavaria
Five days later

Commandant Amy Kawalsky, assassin for the Temporal Counterinsurgency Group, lay in the undergrowth, facing the hut where she had stayed two nights before. She was alone now, but at that time she had been in the company of Tom Keeler, her partner – in life, work and bed – and their enigmatic ally, Gretel. Although they had left the hut unoccupied, there were lights under the blinds now and a curl of smoke from the chimney. Behind her, the bracken crackled.

"What do you think?" Amy asked.

"Old friends," Tom replied. He lay down beside her and proffered a small device. "Recognise it?"

"A tripwire alarm," Amy realised. "I've seen one like it before, but..."

"Last year," Tom told her. "Hammond's friends. Check your tracker."

Amy did as she suggested. In addition to Tom, a second temporal trace showed on the display...less than ten feet away to their left.

As one, the two of them turned, levelling their carbines.

"Come out!" Tom directed.

"I have you both covered!" the reply came, but a slight uncertainty suggested that he had been caught just before getting into position. Tom was glad; he knew the voice and with the advantage of position, the man could have taken them both.

"Commander O'Neill?" Amy called.

There was a pause. "Captain Kawalsky?"

"Captain?" Tom asked.

Amy took a deep breath, and then lowered her carbine, signalling for Tom to do the same. "It's Colonel O'Neill, isn't it!" she called. "You're with Dr Jackson?"

The bushes rustled and the tall, grizzled figure of the man they knew as Praetorian Commander emerged. "You've seen something of Daniel?" he asked.

"Practically all of him," Amy replied. "But that's neither here nor there," she added hurriedly.

O'Neill sighed. "Come down to the hut," he invited. "You can tell me what he's got himself into now and explain exactly where you sprang from."

Colonel Jack O'Neill watched the woman as they walked down to the hut. She looked like Amy Kawalsky – apart from the hair – but she moved differently; wary, and leaning away from him as though she were afraid of him. The young man with her had the same wariness, but less fear of O'Neill.

"So...not the Amy Kawalsky I know?" Jack asked.

Amy shook her head. "Our timeline has been squeezed out," she told him. "That was your doing, in part; you helped George Hammond to block the signal which would have created our world."

Jack cocked his head on one side. "So...I'm not the Praetorian Commander anymore?"

"You never were," Amy assured him. "Not now. Oh; this is Commandant-Lieutenant Thomas Keeler. I believe he contributed to your opposite number's official biography."

"You were a pleasure to write for," Keeler assured him. "Laconic, I mean. There's nothing worse than a commander who insists that his trite words of wisdom be recorded for posterity."

"Glad to be of service. So...You two are propagandists?" Jack asked, confused.

"I used to be," Keeler replied, "and Amy was a historical analyst, before we transferred to the Executive Action Division."

"Executive..." Jack felt a shiver run down his spine. "You're assassins?"

"Temporal impact adjustors," Amy corrected, with the faintest hint of embarrassment. "We...change the degree to which people impact on history."

"You kill them?"

Keeler shrugged. "We used to. We're sort of retired. Well, as retired as assassins can get," he admitted.

"Are you disappointed?" Amy asked quietly.

"That would be kind of hypocritical," Jack assured her. "I'm just surprised. I never pictured Amy Kawalsky as professional killer material."

They reached the door to the hut and Jack rapped out a simple code. After a moment, a bolt was drawn back and the door opened by a wiry, blonde woman with tanned skin and pale grey eyes. She held a pistol in her right hand.

"It's alright, Inge," Jack told her. "They're friends...I think. Amy and Tom."

Inge looked the two newcomers over and then nodded. She snapped on the safety catch and tucked the pistol into her belt. "Please come in," she said, with forced politeness. "There's stew on the stove."

Inge moved to the stove while Jack settled their ‘guests' at the table. They had a hard look that worried her; it reminded her of the SS operatives that she had worked with before she had met Jack. Perhaps sensing her disquiet, Jack walked over and slipped an arm around her waist.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"I don't trust them," Inge whispered.

Jack leaned close to her ear and whispered: "Neither do I, but it was a fight I couldn't win."

Inge reached up and twisted a hand into the front of Jack's shirt and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Be careful," she warned.

"Hey. I've got you to watch my back, haven't I?" he reminded her. "Keep an eye on them for me."

"Yes, Jack," Inge replied.

She watched him walk back to the table and then turned her gaze on the newcomers while she stirred the stew. The woman was pretty, which was enough for Inge to take against her, but at least she seemed to be attached to the man she was with and very wary of Jack. The man was handsome; he looked back at Inge and his gaze was kind, but she had seen his eyes when she faced him with a gun and knew that he could be deadly. Weak and naive she might be, but she had spent long enough in the company of killers to know such people on sight.

"So," Jack said. "Daniel."

"He's in the castle," Amy replied.

"Rats and chains?" Jack asked.

"Silk sheets and fur rugs."

"Ah. One of those imprisonments."

Amy gave a crooked smile. "The Imperiatrix was always fond of him. And of his father," she added.

"And his grandfather," Tom added.

"The Imperiatrix?" Jack was baffled.

"Mariana Veidt, Lady President of the Confederated Empire of America," Amy explained. "Or plain Frau Dr Mariana Veidt as she is at present. In time – in this timeline – she will most likely depose Hitler, usually in 1945, and become the Supreme Reichsführerin, ruling over a shattered Earth."

"Shattered?" Inge asked.

"There was a reason why even those who felt doubts regarding her motives still served," Tom assured her. "Dr Jackson's historical analysis work showed two real options – the tyranny of the Empire...or the devastation of the Reich."

"Jackson?" Jack asked with a groan. "So it was Daniel..."

"It was Daniel who identified the dominant tracks of history," Amy acknowledged. "But you come from a world without Veidt; without Ahriman," she added. "For you, the Goa'uld are something that only happens on other planets."

Jack gave a deep sigh. "Goa'uld?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And this all has to do with the Fowler's Coffin?"

"The what?" Amy asked.

"A stone casement," Inge explained. "A sarcophagus of sorts, designed to contain a living tesseract. I would imagine that you used it to travel through time. You might know it as the Dahak Casket."

Tom nodded. "So, you call it the Fowler's Coffin in your world?" he asked Jack.

"We don't call it anything," Jack replied. "In my world, we'd never heard of it; ‘Fowler's Coffin' is Inge's term. Don't be fooled by her advanced knowledge of transtemporal dynamics; I found Inge when I got here last year. She just happens to be ahead of her time."

Inge blushed, furiously and turned back to her stew.

"Well, she's right," Tom agreed. "And we do call it the Dahak Casket."

"And it's here?" Jack asked again.

"Yes," Amy agreed.

Jack nodded, sombrely. "Nice to know we're on the right track at last. We've searched most of the rest of Germany in the past year, but when we heard that the town here was wiped out it sounded like the sort of thing we were looking for."

"You met Garth then," Amy noted. "We haven't seen him since Gretel sent him on his way; was he alright?"

Inge narrowed her eyes. There was some weight behind Amy's words; a layer of guilt that did not sit easily with her profession of concern.

"He was fine," Jack assured them. "We gave him some food to keep him going. He mentioned this Gretel," he added. "He was very worried about his friend Magda and her sister; didn't feel this Gretel really cared about them."

"She's...an odd sort; Gretel, I mean," Amy admitted, blushing. "I...I tried to rescue Daniel from the castle," she admitted. "I wanted him to come and leave the two girls behind. He told me that his Amy wouldn't even have asked."

Inge saw Tom wind his hand supportively around Amy's. She turned and began ladling the stew into bowls.

Jack shot a look at Tom, who gave a slight shrug. Jack nodded: "Daniel's always been a little hazy on the matter of tough decisions," he told Amy. "You tried to do what you thought was right; he just holds you to a higher standard than might be reasonable. Trust me; he does the same thing to me. It can be tough to live up to that."

Amy gave a grateful smile and Inge could feel the affection that Jack felt towards her, or perhaps to the woman whom she resembled. Inge strode over and slammed a bowl of stew down in front of Amy, then placed another, more gently, in front of Tom. She went back for two more bowls and then came back to sit by Jack.

Jack reached out under the table and patted Inge's leg reassuringly. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," she assured him.

"Anyway," Jack went on, "we've been tracking the Coffin – or Casket – as best we can since I fell through the tesseract a year ago. This was our first serious lead."

Amy nodded. "I think the Casket has been sealed for most of that time," she explained. "Ahriman seems to be experimenting with ways of using the Casket to sow destruction. Apparently she's destroyed whole worlds before now."

"Whole worlds?" Inge gasped, appalled.

"The effect – the rage – is reciprocal," Amy said impatiently. "But the thing is..."

"Reciprocal," Inge whispered.

"Yes. It means..."

"That the tesseract – this Dahak entity – engenders the rage in minds around it, and then feeds on the very aggression and violence that it creates. The power builds and the aggression increases; the effect spreads, as it did in the castle where we were experimenting with the tesseract." Inge frowned. "But victims of the effect have almost superhuman strength and they attack each other; they would wipe each other out and soon there wouldn't be anything left alive inside the field; the effect wouldn't sustain...would it?"

Amy stared at the woman in amazement, realising that what she had taken for obtuseness was in fact a level of intellectual abstraction to which she could not even aspire.

"Would it?" Inge asked, almost desperately.

*

Daniel paced up and down in his palatial quarters. Every time he tried to rest, the luxury of the room caused a pang of guilt to stab through him and so he had been on his feet for hours, trying to work out what to do. He was increasingly of the opinion that he should have gone with Amy when he had the chance and tried to help the girls later.

The door opened and he ran towards it with some half-formed intention of pushing past the maid and making a break for freedom, but it was no maid who entered and he drew up short before Mariana was forced to take action.

"Hello, my love," she said, and all of the coquettish glee seemed to have returned to her voice.

"Not still angry?" he asked.

Mariana shrugged. "Turning my weapon on Iblis was...most amusing," she explained, her lips curling into a smile. "When she returned from her hunt to report that she had slain her entire squad, I must admit that I laughed. You have a wicked sense of humour, my darling."

"I had rather hoped she would be killed," Daniel admitted.

"No doubt, but I would not have kept her as my servant if she were not a most formidable creature. It is almost a shame that I sent her out with my special commandos; our regular troops would have been most taken aback by her reaction to the Dahak energies. Fortunate also that she was not with the children," she added. "Your gambit showed a pleasing disregard for their safety."

"I knew the weapon was not aimed at the castle itself," Daniel assured her.

"Indeed?" Mariana searched his face for signs of deception and found none. "A pity. I had hoped that I might have unlocked a more ruthless streak within you. As it is, Frau Zelig's body is somewhat damaged; if I release my Iblis to take another host – as you may understand she is most eager to do – I think that poor Anile Zelig will die. It seems a harsh fate; she is no innocent, but she has never harmed a soul without Iblis to guide her hand."

Daniel bit back a sour response. He knew that Mariana was goading him and that he was close to giving her the satisfaction that she sought.

Mariana smiled at him and gestured for a maid to enter and place a covered tray on the table. "This is Marta," she told Daniel. She slung an arm around the girl's shoulders, then swiftly looped it about her neck and dug her fingers into the soft flesh of Marta's throat.

Marta was clearly used to such treatment and barely even flinched.

"What are you doing?" Daniel demanded.

"Dear Daniel," Mariana sighed. "Marta is one of my most trusted servants. She has a husband in Pfronten and a little daughter. I will be sending Marta to you with food from time to time and I shall not always be at liberty to come with her. If you attempt to escape, I am sure that she will try to stop you; should she fail, I will kill her." She smiled, sweetly. "Rush her and escape and you will have sweet Marta's death on your conscience. Do we understand each other?"

"Yes," Daniel replied bleakly.

"Good." Mariana released the serving girl's throat. "Run along, Marta; you have duties."

"Yes, ma'am," Marta replied. She gave a short curtsey and then left the room. Again, she gave no sign that she considered her treatment to be harsh or unusual.

"Such a sweet girl," Mariana said. "Of course, you may decide that her life is insignificant next to the millions you have already condemned."

"I haven't condemned anyone," Daniel told her. "You can't give the Nazis victory; not at this stage of the war. You'll lose and become the forgotten footnote of history I know you to be."

"Will I?" Mariana asked, innocently. "Perhaps you should do a little research before you jump to any conclusions," she suggested. She reached into her jacket and took out a small recording sphere, which she set beside his supper tray. "You may find the information on this device illuminating."

"I'm sure I shall," Daniel agreed, moving towards the sphere, but Mariana caught his arm. His skin burned at her touch and he hated himself for it.

"Not yet, my love," she murmured. "After I am finished with you."

Daniel swallowed hard. "I wouldn't want my supper to get cold," he said.

Mariana twisted his wrist and forced his body up against hers. "The supper is salad and cold meats," she assured him. She pushed her free hand under his shirt and up his chest.

"I hate you!" Daniel hissed.

Mariana's chuckle was triumphant as well as sensuous. "Yes," she agreed. "And you burn with it." She thrust him backwards and he felt his feet leave the floor as he was propelled to the bed. Mariana stalked after him, her movements slow and deliberately cruel, like those of a cat playing with a dying mouse.

*

Moscow
2001

Karpova's boss was Major Vladimir Djerovich, a veteran of the KGB, Border Service and now the FSB. He shared the pepperoni with Svetlana, while Karpova consumed the anchovy and onion pizza with a gusto that belied her bony frame.

Djerovich was almost sixty years old, but still strong and robust despite a lifetime of smoking black, unfiltered cigarettes like the one that smouldered in the corner of his mouth, even as he ate his share of the pizza. As long as Svetlana could stare at the dog-end, he never seemed to draw on it and she wondered if this was why the smoke had never harmed his health, because it had never got as far as the inside of his mouth, let alone his lungs.

There was a photograph on Djerovich's desk, showing six men in dark suits and long coats, standing in front of a three-tonne truck. A young woman in a white dress sat on a folding chair in front of the men. There were crates in the truck and one had been smashed open, revealing a mass of dark, brick-shaped packages. Svetlana knew that she was looking at a photograph of a successful drug raid.

"Unit 66," Djerovich said, spotting her interest. His voice was heavy with nostalgia. "We were the Moscow Untouchables; Colonel Valentin's secret weapon in the fight against the drugs' trade. All of us had lost someone to that filthy business; friends, brothers, lovers." He touched a fond hand to the photograph, stroking the young woman's cheek. "Even poor Leva had lost her fiancée when his coastal patrol tried to stop a group of smugglers. None of us would ever have sold out to those bastards; not for any money."

He tapped one of the young men, a fresh-faced, good-looking twenty-something with a black, unfiltered cigarette in one corner of his grinning mouth and a hand on Leva's shoulder. "That was me," he explained. "I was a handsome devil, back in 1966; if you can believe it. That was before it went bad, of course."

Karpova desperately waved her arms behind the senior agent's back.

"What happened?" Svetlana asked.

Karpova slapped a palm to her forehead.

Djerovich picked up the photograph. "They could not buy us," he explained, "and so they bought our superiors. We were investigated for corruption and evidence was planted to incriminate Colonel Valentin. They said he had been allowing certain dealers to continue to operate in exchange for money: A filthy lie!"

He turned and spat on the floor. Karpova grimaced and went for a cloth.

"Then they said that he had been seeing a known drug dealer's sister," Djerovich went on. "That...That was true, but she was an innocent. But it looked bad for the Colonel and he was suspended while the investigation was carried out. Three days later he...They said that he shot himself; I do not believe it and I never have. Then Anatol was killed during a raid and Volodya was crippled in a car accident. That left just three of us and Leva.

"Konrad had just married and threats were made against his family. He decided that the risks were too high and he quit in 1971. Marko, Leva and I kept on working as best we could, but we were too few. Marko was transferred to counterterrorism, but I had been very vocal in my criticism of the handling of Colonel Valentin's case and they decided to punish me by leaving me here."

"And Leva?" Svetlana asked.

Djerovich stood and walked to the window.

"They were married in 1978," Karpova whispered. "She died three years ago of lung cancer; secondary inhalation," she added, almost inaudibly.

Svetlana winced. "What did you do to end up here?" she asked.

"I volunteered," Karpova replied. "My father is Konrad Karpov, the second on the left," she added, indicating the photograph. "I grew up on tales of Unit 66 and..." She tailed off, perhaps unwilling to express her disappointment in the reality in front of her boss. "Maybe we should talk business?" she suggested hopefully.

"Yes," Djerovich agreed, without enthusiasm. He turned back to face Svetlana and returned to his desk. "You said that you knew something about Dragon."

"I said that I had a lead on the case," Svetlana corrected. "I actually know very little about Dragon itself."

Djerovich sighed. "Officially, neither do we," he admitted, "but I still have a few contacts and the Karpov family are well-connected. Sabina; will you explain to the good doctor?"

"Yes, Sir," Karpova agreed. She turned to face Svetlana. "Dragon is the name of a new street drug, or rather one of the names; colloquially it has a number of aliases: cut, angel fire, angel blood, inferno. It doesn't have a technical name yet, but the big dealers trade it as Dragon."

"I have heard of angel blood," Svetlana noted, "although I thought that was simply a disassociative anaesthetic, similar to phencyclidine."

Djerovich shook his head. "This is the official line, fostered by the fact that the observable effects are superficially similar in some users," he said. "Users experience feelings of disconnection and empowerment; insensitivity to pain, paranoia."

"However," Karpova continued, "the similarity stops there. Dragon is not chemical in origin, but botanical; it is based on a plant alkaloid. In terms of effect, PCP users rarely become violent unless pressured or forcibly detained; almost all Dragon users do. In most cases, use of the drug triggers a brief, but intense high, characterised by stillness and calm, followed by a period of extreme aggression. The user lashes out at anything around him – or her – and exhibits superhuman strength."

Svetlana chuckled. "You mean an appearance of superhuman strength," she corrected. "A person on PCP can break handcuffs and punch through plate glass, but only because they do not care what harm they are doing themselves in the process."

"No, Dr Markova," Djerovich assured her. "Dragon users exhibit genuine enhanced strength and there is some evidence of boosted sensory acuity."

"Fascinating," Svetlana whispered.

"You will understand that the military are very keen to trace the source of this drug," Djerovich noted. "That is why Unit 66 is the only element of the Drug Trafficking Task-Force assigned to the case and why we have had to discover most of this information for ourselves."

"Some of it through less than official means and channels," Karpova added.

"General Pavlov's Special Projects Division don't want us to even have a chance to stop the supply before Military Intelligence can gain control of the source," Djerovich explained.

"Is that why no-one else would speak to me about it?" Svetlana asked.

"Most probably," Karpova agreed. "Did they forward you on to us?"

"They kept redirecting us into brick walls," Svetlana replied. "Lines going dead, infinite muzak and so forth. Eventually someone slipped up, however, and mentioned Unit 66. I looked up your number, but..."

Karpova chuckled. "I apologise for your pains," she said, lifting the telephone handset and giving it a little shake. "No-one's paid the bills on this thing for years. Actually, it's almost flattering that someone bothered to come and find us in this old place, even out of desperation. But I'm not sure what you could have to tell us if you didn't know anything about Dragon," she added.

Svetlana shrugged. "Well, I think I see how things fit together now. You see, one of our SD projects has been tracing historical references to warriors who were capable of entering a state of religious frenzy and performing superhuman feats in this state. We had a lead on a caste of shamanic warriors in southern Siberia and we assigned an agent to investigate the stories. He filed several reports connecting the stories to the use of a local plant – the snow lily – with psychotropic properties, then we lost track of him. He sent us one last report before he disappeared; a single word."

"Dragon," Djerovich said, and in a moment the years of self-pity fell away. His back straightened and his saggy face hardened in determination. "And...the military don't know about it? General Pavlov's SPD...?"

"General Pavlov doesn't like the SD much," Svetlana assured him. "The feeling is mutual. We wouldn't go to him and he wouldn't have listened if we had."

"Then...we can beat him to it," Djerovich said.

"Not a friend of yours then?" Svetlana asked.

Karpova grimaced. "It was Lieutenant-Colonel Pavlov – as he was – who prosecuted Colonel Valentin," she explained.

"Would you care to join Unit 66 for a trip to Siberia, Dr Markova?" Djerovich asked.

"Please," Svetlana demurred. "Transportation is on me."

*

Bavaria,
1944

Amy and Tom went through to the second bedroom to ‘settle in' – or in other words, to speak in private and decide whether or not to trust Jack and Inge – and Inge gathered up the bowls. They would leave this place, probably in the morning, but Inge insisted on washing up – scouring the dishes and pans in a bowl full of cold well water – as diligently as though she were in her own home. Jack approved of such care, which would after all reduce their traceable presence, but he found her refusal to let him help her upsetting. She still saw him as her protector and insisted on repaying him in service and that made him question just what she considered to be a service.

Inge had come a long way since their first meeting. Her desire to return to the fold had left her swiftly, and she no longer quailed when he got angry with his situation. That was a blessing; he had felt like such a monster for the first few months. He hated being trapped in this time, helpless to return to his home or to find his friends; he had grown short-tempered and Inge had been afraid of him. In time, however, she had realised that he was not angry with her; that even if he had been, he would not have harmed her. Somehow, when she stopped being afraid of his anger, his anger was lessened.

She had changed physically as well as emotionally; she had put on weight and her skinny frame had gained muscle mass. Living outside for the first time in her life had given her ashen skin a healthy tan, although her eyes now looked alarmingly pale in her bronzed face. A woman who had grown exhausted after a few minutes of struggling through the woods could now have trekked over hard terrain all day, if she had not insisted on pretending that she had a stitch a few minutes before Jack's dodgy knee would have forced them to halt. She had also ceased to be delicate and pretty; she was beautiful now and, when she let it show, she was strong.

His thoughts were interrupted when the bedroom door flew open and Amy emerged, armed and armoured.

Jack reached for his P90. "What the hell...?"

"Temporal energy readings," Amy explained. "Two signatures, heading straight for us from the south."

"Two?" Jack asked.

Amy nodded. "Probably a counterinsurgency team. Tom is watching the back of the hut, but we should be able to take them before they break cover."

"No!" Jack snapped, but he picked up the P90 and headed for one of the windows. "I have two more friends who might be here in the past. We wait until we can see them. Inge, can you pass..."

Before he could finish, Inge had pulled the field glasses from Jack's pack and passed them to him.

"Thank you," Jack said.

Amy grinned.

Tom caught a brief flash of motion on infrared, then there was nothing. "Something to the rear," he reported. "Just a glimpse."

"Probably a fox," Amy replied. "No temporal signature to the north."

"Amy, my love, we've been shot at by more people from this time than from any other," he reminded her.

"Stay alert then; and try not to get too sentimental, sweetheart."

"As you say," Tom agreed. He heard a sound, like a twig cracking and he leaned carefully out of the window.

Something thin and cold touched his throat.

Shapes moved on the edge of the forest, one fair, the other dark; both dressed in rough jackets and scarves.

"I can take them," Amy whispered.

"No."

The two figures came closer; their clothes were unfamiliar and the woman's hair was much too long, but there was no mistaking the way that they moved.

"Carter!" Jack called out. "Teal'c!"

The two looked up at the call and then moved forward more swiftly.

"Colonel!" Carter called.

Jack grinned and hurried to the door. Inge moved after him, while Amy remained ready at the window.

Teal'c came forward first and clasped Jack's arm. "It is good to see you, O'Neill," he said.

"And you, Teal'c. Carter; glad you finally got here," Jack said. "Well...actually, I'm not glad you're here, exactly. Not for you, anyway."

"I understand," Sam assured him. "And we've been here a while, actually."

"Three years now, isn't it?" Jack asked.

Sam blinked. "How could you know...?" She began and then stopped and stared in silence as Inge emerged from the hut.

"Hello, Major Carter," Inge said softly. She walked up to Jack's side and looped her arm through his.

"You?" Carter gasped. "Sir; this woman..."

"Dr Weiss has given me every reason to believe that she has changed her...or maybe just gained a political and moral allegiance," Jack assured his comrades. "We can trust her. Which is more than I can necessarily say for the two inside," he added in a lower tone. "Any more with you?" he asked.

"Just one," Sam replied. She put her fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle. "She'll be here in a moment," she promised.

"Colonel O'Neill!"

Sam looked up in surprise at the call of warning. "Is that...?"

"Not really, no," Jack replied. "Come on."

They hurried into the hut, Jack retrieving his arm from Inge as they went. Inside, they saw that Amy was aiming her carbine past her partner at a young woman with a scarred face, who had a knife held at Tom's throat.

"Friend of yours?" Jack asked.

"Colonel O'Neill, this is Lotte Leman," Sam replied.

"I know you," Inge said. "From the castle."

Lotte turned a cold gaze on Inge and the scientist fell silent.

"Okay," Jack said. "Kawalsky, put up the weapon; we're all friends here."

"Not while she has a knife at my partner's throat, she isn't," Amy replied.

"It's alright, Amy," Tom assured her. "If she was going to kill me, she would have done it already."

"She lowers the knife, then I lower the rifle!" Amy insisted.

"Lotte," Sam said softly.

The girl took a step away from Tom and the knife was gone; Jack could not have said for sure what had happened to it. With a sigh of relief, Tom stepped forward, keeping himself between Amy and Lotte until he could lay his hand on the barrel of her carbine.

"It's alright," he promised her. "No damage; no vengeance needed."

Amy stared into his eyes for a long moment before she allowed herself to lower the weapon. All at once, the tension fled. It was as though the entire room had been holding its breath and now let out a collective sigh of relief.

"So what brings you here?" Jack asked.

Sam took out what was obviously some sort of lashed-up monitoring device, not dissimilar to the SGC's standard-issue naquadah scanner. "Chasing time signatures," she explained. "Also, we ran into a lad called Garth who said he's sent lots of people to this hut who were all asking about the Coffin."

"Well, like I say; glad you could make it," Jack assured her. "Alright; introductions: Major Samantha Carter and Teal'c; Dr Inge Weiss you know and Commandant Kawalsky you know by analogue; this is her boyfriend Tom. They kill people," he added. "Amy and Tom, this is Teal'c and I suspect you know Major Carter in some shape or form. This one is a scientist."

Amy nodded. "Ours is the Technical Director of the Temporal Counterinsurgency Group," she acknowledged. "I like your hair, Ma'am."

Sam gave a rueful smile. "Thanks. And this is Lotte Leman; she kills Nazis."

"In which case, glad to meet you," Jack said. "Alright; now we're all together except for Daniel who is a prisoner, sort of, in that castle. Our objectives are to rescue Daniel, lock down a dangerous alien artefact, avoid the attention of the Nazis, neutralise a terrestrial Goa'uld presence, avert any and all potential futures in which said Goa'uld rules the Earth with an iron fist and, if at all possible, get back to 1957 Milwaukee or points forward. I open this one to the floor," he declared. "Any suggestions?"

"Tea?" Tom offered.

"It's a start," Jack allowed.

*

Mariana slipped from Daniel's bed once she was finished with him, dressed quickly and then left. Daniel was weary, but instead of letting himself drift into a tormented slumber, he forced himself to rise and move to the table. He picked at his lunch and examined the device that Mariana had left. As he had expected, the recorder was touch activated and as his fingers brushed across the smooth surface the sphere lit from within and a shimmer of light appeared above it, resolving into the holographic image of a man with a battered and bloodied face; a long, heavy blade rested beneath his chin and his eyes were filled with fear.

A Goa'uld voice boomed from out of shot: "Begin."

The man swallowed hard. "My name is..."

"Unimportant."

"I am the last survivor of the Tserani people, who occupied this planet until, in their folly, they defied the will of the Great Lord Sokar. When I am gone, this record will be all that remains of the Tserani.

"It is almost three years since the comet approached our world," he said.

The man worked a control in front of him and his image was replaced by a diagram of a planetary orbit. It was a testament to Sam's patient instruction that he was able to look at this diagram and judge that the ‘year' mentioned previously would have been slightly shorter than Earth's, but not by much. As Daniel watched, a trace appeared and moved towards the planet.

"We did not know at the time that this ‘comet' was an artificial craft, but many saw it as an ill omen. Then, at its closest pass to our world, a part of the comet broke away."

The image zoomed in as the ‘comet' approached the planet, so that as it moved in its sweeping orbit around the alien globe, he could clearly see a fragment break off and plunge towards the unsuspecting world.

Now Daniel saw a grainy shot of the night sky, filled with unfamiliar constellations. After a moment, this peaceful scene was split by a brilliant light as a huge shooting star ripped out of the sky and smashed into the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust which rushed towards the camera in the last moments before the picture broke into static.

"This impact, in an unpopulated area, shrouded the world in a dust cloud that stained the sky red; a religious fervour gripped the world. The cult of Sokar experienced a resurgence, but rival cults of Ra and Apophis also emerged. We knew that this must herald some great disaster, but we did not know that the comet and its cargo were the harbingers of a more terrible god than any we had known."

A new figure appeared in the hologram, a powerful, dark-skinned man in ornate, black armour. Daniel choked on his salad. "Well, that puts you in a whole new light, Mariana," he noted.

In another part of the castle, a little girl lay sleeping. Her baby sister stirred in her crib as a dark shape moved towards her. Mariana Veidt stood over the infant and looked down. Lisl gave a soft, gurgling cry.

 "This was the coming of the Destroyer; of Ahriman. Angel of Chaos, Slayer of Worlds and Slaughterer of the Innocent."

 "Shh," Mariana murmured, softly, and she reached down into the crib.

*

Amy stood in the shadow of the trees and looked up at the looming bulk of Castle Falkenstein. She raised her hand and pointed to one of the windows. "I went in through there last time," she said. "They tracked me out with dogs, so they'll have secured that window by now. Besides; I doubt you could pass for a maid even if we stopped off in Pfronten for disguises."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

"We should have brought your sneaky friend, but then I suppose she would stand out a little too much as well, with all that scarring on her face."

Teal'c studied the castle in minute detail. "Is it not unusual for there to be so much activity at night?"

"I'm rather afraid it isn't," Amy replied. "Do you think you can get to the ruins of the old outer bailey without being seen?"

"Can you?" Teal'c asked coolly.

"Sorry," Amy said. "Didn't mean to wound your professional pride. You go first then; I'll keep you covered."

Teal'c simply nodded in acknowledgement and then took off for the broken wall, moving fast but low to the ground.

"He is good," Amy allowed.

The Jaffa dropped down behind the wall. After a moment he gestured for Amy to follow him and she ran to his side, as silent as a cat.

"You are well trained for this work," Teal'c noted.

"Better than the one you know, you mean?" Amy asked.

"Indeed."

Amy grinned at him. "If we follow this wall to the edge of the ridge we can hop through a breach and be in cover with a good view of the gatehouse," she explained. "Let's see what all this ruckus is about."

They moved together now, the Jaffa and the assassin, sliding unseen through the night. Both wore dark clothes, although Teal'c was dressed in a countryman's workwear and Amy in the light-absorbing night camouflage of the Executive Action operative, complete with helmet. To further reduce the risk of discovery, each of them wore a standard-issue ioniser at their belt, to prevent detection by dogs.

From the cover of the wall, they looked out over the gatehouse and saw a row of trucks drawn up before an open gate. Men hurried to and fro, loading the vehicles, shouting and guiding them through a complex series of manoeuvres in an attempt to keep the road as clear as possible.

"What are they doing?" Amy asked.

"They are leaving," Teal'c replied.

*

In the small hut, the rest of the group had endeavoured to make an equitable division of the sleeping space. Tom had volunteered to take the first watch, leaving the second bedroom free for Sam and Lotte to share, while Jack had the main bedroom. Inge seemed prepared to sit up with Tom and would not hear of letting Jack give her the use of his bed.

"You can't trust her, Colonel," Sam had warned, but Jack had shaken his head.

"I've been with her a year, Carter," he reminded her. "You may not realise it, but you had an effect on her; after she met you, she was just waiting for a push to get her going. She got that push after the SS tried to kill her. We can trust her, Carter, and we need her."

"Alright," Sam had sighed.

"You just don't like her because she's smarter than you are," Jack had quipped.

Sam had protested, but her heart had not been in it. In part at least, Jack was speaking the truth.

Jack settled down to sleep more easily than he had done in a year. He knew now where his friends were, he knew where the all-important Casket was and, for the first time, he believed he had a real chance of getting home. Only one thing was missing and he clutched a pillow against himself as he closed his eyes and sought for slumber.

The creak of the door, when it came, was not unexpected.

"Inge," Jack began, as she slipped beneath the blanket at his side. "I'm not sure..."

"I am," she replied, firmly. "You have spent a year telling me not to let anyone else dictate what I think and do," she reminded him. "That means I am not prepared to give you up, Jack. I will act the quiet girl in public if you are ashamed to let your old friends see us together..."

Jack's heart sank; he felt wretched. "No," he told her, turning over to face her. "I'm not ashamed of you," he lied.

"You did not want them to see me come in here with you," she pointed out.

Jack couldn't think of an answer to that, so instead he kissed her.

"Do you want to sleep?" she asked, wriggling closer to him.

"Not yet," Jack admitted.

*

2001

Dr Svetlana Markova sat on board the Special Directorate transport plane and sipped her coffee. The Dassault Falcon 50 was much better than anything that she had ever had access to on the Stargate Project, but then the Directorate had picked up most of the Stargate Project's funding when it collapsed.

"So where exactly are we going?" Djerovich asked.

"We fly out to an airfield in Siberia," Svetlana explained. "There, we meet up with one of the Directorate's less formal contacts, a border guard named Major Rasputina. She was helping our operative before he went missing and she can lead us to the...well, he was able to locate a rather interesting factory." She passed a dossier to the veteran agent and let him read. Djerovich passed it to his junior partner.

"Milk pasteurisation?" Karpova asked sceptically.

"This factory receives regular shipments of botanical samples," Svetlana explained. "And twenty pints of milk per day; already pasteurised and semi-skimmed. Whatever it says on the planning documents, this factory is not pasteurising milk."

"You are sure that this contact will not alert anyone else?" Djerovich asked. "General Pavlov has quite a grip on the military."

Svetlana shook her head. "The Major had two daughters; twins. One of them died as a result of Pavlov's politicking and the other still suffers from post-traumatic stress," she explained. "She will take us to the factory and her husband has provided us with the use of an airstrip that even General Pavlov has no knowledge of."

"And her husband is...?" Karpov asked.

"An...import/export entrepreneur," Svetlana replied.

"A criminal?" Djerovich demanded, enraged.

"Former criminal," Svetlana assured him. "His wife is a very honest border guard and he has served his time in prison. Just don't ask him too many questions about his friends," she suggested.

*

1944

A dozen or more parachutes drifted slowly out of the night sky and settled on the edge of the forest. With swift, efficient movements, the commandos gathered their canopies and hurried into the cover of the forest to unlimber their equipment. Major O'Neill signalled for his team to spread out and secure the area, while he conferred with his fellow specialists.

"What do you think?" Duncan asked.

Mathias shrugged. "I'm mostly thinking castle," he admitted.

Sally nodded her agreement. "Look at that place," she said. "It's lit up like a Christmas tree."

"Agreed," Duncan said. "Alright, then; Jackson, go with some of the boys and take a look at the town. Sally and I will see what all the fuss is about. We'll meet up on the ridge overlooking the road, just at the end of that wall."

"If you circle around the hill, you can use the old ruins as cover for your approach," Mathias suggested.

Duncan pondered for a moment and then said. "I'm thinking quick as we can," he admitted. "I got a bad feeling that time is of the essence here."

*

Daniel sat, almost transfixed, and watched the story of the Tserani people. They had been an advanced and cultured people, with a rich civilisation and a dozen great nation states spread across two large continents on their homeworld when Sokar came. They had repelled his initial punitive assault, but knew that he would come again to avenge the humiliation of their rebellion.

"Ahriman came to our city in the wake of the comet, claiming that he would lead our people out of fear and into the future. He appeared as though he came from the provinces, healing the sick and lame and offering great wisdom and advancement. He brought with him a large following from the countryside, including a dozen close disciples and his loyal right hand, the one called Iblis."

The recording sphere displayed a series of images: Ahriman speaking to a civic council, then to a robed man who appeared to be some manner of king; Ahriman addressing a crowd who would not have looked out of place at the Nuremburg Rallies; Ahriman healing the sick.

"His followers included the rich and famous as well as the poor and disenfranchised and Ahriman soon persuaded King Dar to allow him to act as an ambassador of peace among the nations and sects of our world. He travelled widely and his agent, Iblis passed unseen among us.

"At first, all seemed well; Ahriman brought all nations to the negotiating table and provided weapons to fight off invaders. We did not realise that he worked in secret against us. Even as we hailed him as a hero and turned a blind eye to the debauches of his followers, he fostered mistrust between our leaders. We were blind to this, until the tragedy at Nagar."

The scene changed again, showing a great mass of human beings pressing around a great, columned rotunda.

"He gathered all of the great leaders of our world to a peace conference and feast and his followers spread the word that all who came would be fed. Millions flocked to the hall that he had built on the island of Nagar. There they waited for the announcement that our world would have peace everlasting and for the feast to begin. But time went by and no announcement came."

On the display, Daniel saw the people growing restive. Here and there, fights broke out and those closest to the rotunda were shouting abuse.

"Some tried to leave, but found that their path was blocked by an invisible wall. Panic began to spread from the outer edge of the crowd."

The sphere showed that panic, the people pressing away from the force field and jostling those behind them. More fights began, but Daniel could almost see the mood turning as the word spread back through the crowd and all eyes eventually turned towards the rotunda.

"The people felt betrayed. They turned on their leaders and rushed the great hall."

The crowd surged forward at the gate and burst into the rotunda, forcing the doors with the sheer weight of their presence and leaving dozens crushed in the press. The images swirled and now Daniel saw the crowd charging along the corridor, smashing anything breakable that came to hand and snatching up chairs and pedestals to use as weapons. At the door to the council chamber they paused, until once again the pressure of so many bodies burst the doors asunder and the front rank spilled across the floor in a mangled heap.

The crowd rushed down to the great round table and stopped in horror. There in front of them they beheld an obscene abomination. The rulers of the proud nations of their world lay before them, not merely slain, but their bodies arrayed in poses of the foulest degradation with each other and with the carcasses of men, women, boys, girls and animals. The king from that earlier scene still moved; he was as dead as the others, but his corpse had been strapped to the back of a pig that wandered aimlessly about the hall, stopping here and there to feed on the dead.  The bodies of dozens of children were hung about the walls like paper dolls.

And in the centre of the round table, Ahriman stood over the stone bulk of the Dahak Casket. His face was covered by the visage of a leering demon, but Daniel knew him by the black armour he had seen earlier. He was soaked in blood. The body of a young girl, torn and disembowelled, but with her angelic face quite free from hurt or gore, lay atop the Casket.

"Welcome!" Ahriman boomed, and it was the voice that had threatened the narrator at the beginning of the recording. "Behold your future, Tserani. Behold the fate of those who defy Lord Sokar."

"It was a scene calculated to create fury and it succeeded. Unable to take in the scope of the slaughter before them, many people missed the details and swore that some leaders were absent from the scene. They turned on each other, every nation certain that they had been betrayed. And Ahriman laughed."

And Ahriman did just that. And then he lowered his hands and thrust the dead child from the Casket. He slid his hands across the bloody surface in a precise pattern and the Casket cracked open. The inner seals parted and a vile, unnatural, black radiance poured forth, casting its shadows across the room. Disputes became violent and the crowd began to tear and bite at one another.

Ahriman stepped backwards, flung his arms into the air and laughed out loud. Transport rings sprang from the table and the Goa'uld was swept away in a flash of light. The shot cut back to the outside of the rotunda and the heaving, battling mass of humanity that tore and rent at each other.

And then the rotunda exploded and a wall of black light washed out.

"The wave of destruction travelled around the world," the narrator explained. "Every soul on Nagar was killed by the blast; they were the lucky ones. A rage struck the Tserani and they turned on one another. Armies fired on civilians, missiles were launched, striking friends, neighbours or even the countries who launched them as their controllers succumbed. Families slew one another, children murdering parents and parents slaughtering their children. Even the animals went mad, tearing at anything that came close to them.

"Rivers ran red with blood and the earth was stained. Even the seas foamed crimson as the whales and the sharks and the fishes tore one another to shreds. Our good, green world turned red."

Daniel did not regret that there were no pictures of this horror. Instead, the recording cut back to the narrator's battered face.

"And then it stopped. At last, the madness left us and the survivors began, slowly, to emerge from hiding. Small groups came together; camps arose and the long business of rebuilding began. That was when Ahriman returned.

"He came with Iblis and they struck each camp where the survivors had tried to bring life out of all this death. There was no hiding from them and they rooted out every survivor. Some they killed out of hand; others were presented before the Casket and forced to fight and kill one another. None were spared, not men nor women, nor even children. Babes were snatched from their mothers' arms and smashed on the pavement, until barely an acre of land remained on this world that was not stained with blood.

"Now, at last, I am the only one left and death will be a sweet release to me."

There was a dark, cruel laugh and the blade was taken away from the man's throat. "If you seek death," Ahriman growled, "you must find your own."

And now the image showed the world from space once more and it was red.

Daniel felt the bile rise in his throat at the horror and the absurdity and the obscene waste of such a dreadful action. His blood ran cold as he thought of Magda and Lisl and that haunting line: not men nor women, nor even children.

Magda woke slowly and saw the shadowy form standing over Lisl's crib. As the last fog of sleep left her, she saw Mariana turn towards her with Lisl in her arms.

And Mariana bounced the infant gently and cooed and whispered to her.

"You and your sister are very special," Mariana murmured. "You will live, whatever happens to the rest of your world. You will live and you will serve me well, and if needs be it shall be your task and your honour to repopulate this benighted world when I am done with it."

Magda watched and she listened, although many of the words meant nothing to her, even those that she knew the sound of. She sat up a little more and Mariana looked up at her.

"Good evening, Magda," Mariana said. "You have slept a long time."

"Good evening, Mariana," Magda replied.

"Come here and take your sister," Mariana instructed. "I am afraid that we will need to leave this place now. Clothes have been brought and packed for you; you need only dress yourself, put on a coat and make sure that Lisl is wrapped up snug and warm."

"Yes, Mariana," Magda agreed, looking at her with absolute love and trust, for this was the woman who had dressed her warmly, restored her hearing and sung to her the first song that she had ever heard.

Mariana handed Lisl to Magda and turned to go, but Magda caught her by the hand.

"Yes, Magda?"

"I love you, Mariana," the little girl declared.

Mariana blinked, momentarily speechless. Ahriman was unused to declarations of love; fear was her idiom. It had no more been a common occurrence for Mariana Veidt herself to hear such words, at least not from any but her devoted and willing slaves, who had all been adult males. Women had always disliked her and she had had little time for children. "I...Well, I love you too, Magda," she said slowly, knowing that this was what was expected.

Magda beamed with joy.

Leaving the girl to get ready, Mariana went out into the corridor. Iblis, still trapped in the injured form of Frau Zelig, was waiting for her; weak from blood loss, the shapeshifter leaned heavily against the wall.

Mariana laughed out loud. "Do you know? It may just be true."

"Imperiatrix?"

"Never mind," Mariana said. "Bring Daniel to the car."

"Daniel?" Iblis knew that it was foolish to bait her mistress this way, but she had always been able to slip between bodies and avoid physical pain. Being forced to endure the effects of Anile Zelig's injuries was making her ill-tempered. "Do you use the given names of all of your prisoners now? Or is it only this one that you consider your equal?"

"Mind your tongue if you ever want to leave that battered form!" Mariana snapped. "Get out of my sight, before I add to your troubles. No, wait," she added, as Zelig began to shamble awkwardly away. "Come with me first. I shall heal the worst of your injuries."

Zelig inclined her head. "Thank you, Imperiatrix," she whispered, gratefully. Her eyes sparkled with tears at this unexpected act of kindness.

"Do not think that I do so for your comfort," Mariana assured her with a sneer. "I merely wish to be sure that you do not bleed in the car and frighten the children."

*

Sam found that, despite her long trek to reach Castle Falkenstein, it was hard for her to sleep. Lotte – a woman long-used to sleeping under the pall of fear and nervous excitation – had no sooner lain down than she had curled in on herself and fallen asleep. Sam, however, was too agitated by the reunion with her CO, the impending return of the fourth member of their group and the possibility of a return to their own time to find repose.

Either that or she could not sleep because Lotte was hogging all of the covers.

With a sigh, Sam swung her legs to the floor and pulled on her boots.

"Something wrong?" Lotte asked.

Sam looked around and saw the girl's almost-black eyes sparkling in the darkness. "Just restless," Sam assured her. "Go back to sleep."

Lotte closed her eyes and did just that; Sam envied her.

Sam struggled into her vest, pulled her civilian coat on over it and picked up her MP40; she had abandoned her P90 a year ago, its ammunition exhausted, smashing it to pieces so that no-one could find and replicate its technology. She pulled back her hair and fixed it in a short ponytail. She was looking forward to having it cut short again once she got home; if short hair were not so out of place in this time, she would have had it trimmed already.

The main room was empty. Sam poured herself a cup of coffee and went outside to join Tom Keeler on guard.

"Good morning, Major," Tom greeted her, without turning.

"Commandant-Lieutenant," she replied.

"Call me Tom, Major, please," he said. "Exec operatives work primarily undercover. I haven't worn my uniform since my last promotion ceremony and I rarely use my rank."

"Alright, Tom," she agreed, but as her understanding was that a commandant-lieutenant was roughly analogous to a senior lieutenant in the Air Force, she did not invite him to call her Sam. She looked over at him and saw a looked of pensive worry on his face. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I was thinking about my Master-at-Arms," he admitted. "He said I was the best he'd ever trained; he'd have kicked my ass if he'd lived to see me let an untrained peasant with a shiv get the drop on his kid sister."

"You were trained by Major Kawalsky?"

"Captain," Tom corrected, "although it's probably about the same thing. I've always known the Kawalskys a little," he explained. "Our families had a connection. We always did alright in the Empire, because we were there when the Imperiatrix came back from the Antarctic; like your family."

"Huh?" Sam asked.

"It was Sally Carter, Duncan O'Neill, Mathias Jackson, Stephan and Mia Kawalsky and my grandparents, Albert and Rachael Kreel, who brought Mariana Veidt to the United States," Tom explained. The, ah, ‘big three' – Carter, O'Neill and Jackson – became her inner circle, while the Kawalskys and the Keelers – as they became known in the States – were left with only each other. They all died in suspicious circumstances," he added, in response to Sam's shocked silence. "First O'Neill, then Carter; Mathias Jackson lasted longest, but after his wife was killed..."

"Good God," Sam gasped.

"The M-at-A was a conspiracy theorist," Tom explained. "Not quite a rebel, but a doubter. He believed that the three of them had been murdered because they began to question Veidt's motives. Jacob Carter and Marius Jackson..."

"Marius?"

"Named after Veidt," Tom said. "I'd bet real money that was a cause of some friction in the marriage. But those two were raised almost from infancy by the Lady President's closest servants, while O'Neill's family were almost wiped out, leaving only baby Jack to be raised by the state."

"And no-one said anything?"

"She won the war for us," Tom replied. "No-one much wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth and by the time anyone thought to question..." He sighed. "I don't know what kind of aliens you are used to dealing with are like, but Veidt – Ahriman – is exceptionally good at what she does. She found that serpent, Iblis, not long before the fall of the Reich and with his aid she extended her power throughout the Capitol. She gained position after position, from Presidential Advisor to Chief of Special Projects; she seemed surprised when they passed the Amendment and proposed her as Presidential candidate, but I suppose that Iblis arranged that."

"Why did no-one fight back?" Sam demanded.

"Because it worked," Tom replied. "Most people never saw the bloodshed and in its wake she brought peace; prosperity. Life in the Empire was good. It's hard to see the evil when you are not suffering."

"And...Amy?"

"We knew each other as children, a very little, but I never thought much of her, nor she of me. I don't think she recognised me when we met as adults; I certainly didn't know her. I'd last seen her in dungarees and there she was wearing about a square foot of blood-red leather."

Sam choked on her coffee. "I beg your pardon."

"She was possessed by Iblis," he explained. "Iblis had a funny taste in party clothes," he added, without the slightest hint of humour. It was clear that, for this man, the memory of his lover dressed in skimpy leathers was not a happy one. "Go ahead," he said, apropos of nothing.

"Tom?"

"Confirmed," he said. "Hold; bringing in Gulveig." He turned to face Sam. "Word from the castle," he explained. He took an earwig from his pocket and handed it to Sam.

Sam took the device and put it in her ear.

"Go ahead," Tom said again.

"It looks as though target is moving house," Amy Kawalsky reported. "Gultop asks if Úlfhednar can join him in the mall to assist him in a little shopping expedition."

"Confirmed," Tom agreed.

"Match the listener to my song," Amy added.

"Kriemhild, no," Tom argued.

"Tom?" Sam asked.

Tom touched his ear. "Siegfried," he insisted. "With the channel open, everything you say is on air."

Sam blushed, furiously. "Sorry."

Tom took his hand from his ear. "Kriemhild, it's too risky."

"We can't lose them," Amy insisted. "You bring Grimtep and Gulveig after me. If it has to be, that's an order, Siegfried."

"Yes, Ma'am," Tom sighed.

"Out."

Tom clenched his fist in frustration. Sam mused that this was just one reason why the Air Force had fraternisation regulations in the first place.

"So what was all that about, in real terms?" she asked.

"Your friend Teal'c wants you to send the Phantom up to the ruins to help him acquire transportation and supplies," Tom explained. "Amy will stay with the enemy convoy and I'm to use our resonance detector to trace her temporal signature and bring you after her."

Sam nodded her understanding. "I'll fetch Lotte," she said. "Then we'll get the others up and ready to move. Except...is Dr Weiss up already? I didn't see her in the main room."

Tom laughed. "Well, she wouldn't be," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Tom's smile faded. "You mean you didn't realise?"

"Realise what?"

*

Daniel was expecting Mariana, or perhaps the maid, Marta, when the door opened, but it was Frau Zelig who opened the door.

"Reports of your injury seem to have been rather greatly exaggerated," Daniel commented.

"You did that," Zelig said, accusingly. "You, a human, were able to turn the force of my beloved Dahak against me!"

"I had help," Daniel assured her.

"Get dressed!" Zelig spat. "We're leaving. The garrison is loading the Casket for transportation for our secondary facility. You and the children will accompany us."

"Magda and Lisl?" Daniel asked. "Are they safe?"

"Safe!" Zelig's eyes flared white. "Safe as can be. She says that she loves them." Zelig turned her head and spat onto the floor. "For the last two days, every moment out of the laboratory she has been tumbling with you or sitting with those children, cuddling and cosseting them; rocking the infant to sleep, or stroking the older one's hair and calling her sweet names," she sneered.

Daniel began to change into travelling clothes from the wardrobe, refusing to let himself be discomfited by Zelig's presence.

"You I almost understand," she admitted. "You are quite exquisitely formed for a mortal and the desire to take pleasure from our human meat is one that I know only too well. But the children? How can they hold any interest for her?"

With one leg in and one out of a pair of pants, Daniel paused. "You're jealous of them," he realised.

"Shut up and dress," she snarled.

Over the years, Daniel had learned to curb his natural outspokenness to a degree. One-too-many beatings had cured him of the impulse to always speak his mind, but he could not help his thoughts. As he finished dressing, he turned and watched Zelig, who half turned away and tried to pretend that he held not the slightest interest for her.

"Do not look at me like that!" she demanded, suddenly. "I do not want your pity!"

With a shock, Daniel realised that, whether she wanted it or not, Frau Zelig – or rather, Iblis – had his pity. He had never known a Goa'uld who exuded such an air of raw need; had never seen one of his world's parasitic foes so eaten up by envy and insecurity. He would rarely have characterised the Goa'uld as psychologically stable, but Iblis was a whole different story.

"It's the shapeshifting, isn't it?" he asked.

"Be silent."

"No-one knows what you look like, so no-one worships you. No-one trusts you," he added, thinking of the Ashrak, Mafdet.

"I do not want trust," she assured him.

"What do you want?" Daniel asked. "To be acknowledged by your master? For someone to hold you like she holds Magda? To be loved for no reason but yourself?"

"Shut up! Shut up!" she screamed. "If My Lord Ahriman did not want you unharmed...!"

"But she does, doesn't she," Daniel reminded her. "But she's a little less concerned about you."

"Shut. Up."

Daniel pulled on his shirt and gave her a long, hard look.

"Don't look at me," Zelig growled.

"You realise that you might get more snuggles if you could be a little less defensive," he suggested.

Zelig frowned and turned away from him.

Daniel donned a sweater and a jacket, trying to ignore the gnawing impulse that was building inside him. At last, however, it became too much for him. He picked up a coat and crossed to stand beside Zelig and then laid a hand on her shoulder.

Zelig turned towards him. The white flame burned through the tears in her eyes and for a moment that light looked more plaintive than intimidating. Her hand rose and reached towards him, but then her face contorted in rage and she thrust him violently away from her.

"I need nothing from you!" she insisted. "There is a bag of spare clothes for you in the corridor. You can carry it. I have a bullet wound."

*

"There they are," Teal'c whispered.

Amy nodded, watching the four figures moving towards the shining, black bulk of a staff car; three adults and a child, the latter carrying a baby in her arms. "They must be about to leave," she said. "I'll get down to the trucks; you wait for the Phantom of the Opera."

As she rose and prepared to make her way down the ridge, Teal'c caught her arm.

"Her name is Lotte," he said, softly.

Amy opened her mouth and then closed it again, feeling the weight of meaning behind his rebuke. "I'm sorry," she said.

Teal'c nodded his acceptance of the apology. "And she is not a phantom," he added. "She is a Ghost."

Jack woke suddenly with a light shining into his face. Instinctively, he reached for his P90, but then the light was lowered and he recognised the silhouette in the doorway.

"Carter?" he asked, confused.

"They're on the move," Sam replied. "Teal'c and Lotte are getting us some wheels, but we need to be ready."

Jack nodded. "Two minutes," he promised.

"And her?" Sam asked, flicking the flashlight beam over to Inge for a moment.

"Two minutes, Major," Jack repeated coolly.

"Yes, Sir," she replied.

Three trucks stood in the goods yard of the castle, waiting for the last of the supplies to be loaded. At last, the signal was given and the pulled away, one after the other towards the gate. The second truck was obviously in trouble, however and it wobbled terribly as the driver struggled with the wheel. After a moment he stopped, switched off the engine and leaned on the horn to get the attention of the Feldwebel in the front truck.

"What is wrong?" the Feldwebel demanded.

"Flat tire," the driver replied. "We'll need to change it."

The Feldwebel snorted in disgust. "You should have checked earlier," he said. "We can't wait for you; just get it sorted out and follow on as best you can."

"Yes, Feldwebel," the driver acknowledged.

As the other two trucks pulled away, the driver and his mate jumped down and fetched out the huge, pneumatic jack that was needed to lift the three-tonner. More than half of the garrison had been roused and ferried out by truck and there were no mechanics left in the yard to do this work for them. They could probably have found some more, but they had no time to waste. They cranked up the truck and changed the wheel, then lowered the truck back to the ground.

"Look at this!" the driver called, as his mate stowed the jack. "Bring a flashlight."

The other man came over and they examined the deflated wheel. As the driver had suspected, the damage was no simple puncture but a long, clean tear; the cut of a razor-sharp knife.

"We'd better..." he began, but he got no further. A powerful arm wrapped around his neck from behind and twisted. His mate did not even have time to look around before he too was seized, a hand clamped over his mouth and a knife slipped smoothly into his back.

Lotte snatched the keys from the driver's belt and ran to the cab while Teal'c swung the two bodies up into the back of the truck. He sprang up behind them and Lotte drove out of the gates at high speed. Only when they were a mile from the castle did she slow down so that Teal'c could dump the bodies in a ditch and join her in the cab.

Lotte smiled and handed him a map, neatly folded and with their route marked out in red. "And the supplies?" she asked, as she pulled away again.

"Food and clothing," Teal'c replied. "Everything that we require."

Duncan O'Neill watched through field glasses as the castle emptied and he gaped in disbelief. As the last truck rumbled out, some way behind the others, Sally Carter struggled up the ridge to join him.

"It looks as though someone was expecting the bailiffs," she noted.

"Or the in-laws," Duncan agreed. As he spoke, the truck pulled to a halt. "Alright, let's go. I want to get hold of that last truck and see if we can..." He stopped as a man climbed from the tailgate and dragged an unwieldy load down from the bed of the truck.

"Is that a body?" Sally asked.

Duncan frowned as a second corpse was unloaded. "I don't think we're alone," he told Sally.

The truck moved off and Duncan watched until it turned away and drove out of sight. "It's not going to the same place as the others," he noted. He turned at the sound of an engine and saw another vehicle approaching, this one coming up from the town of Ingen. "We need transportation," he said. "We bag this one."

"What about the driver?" Sally asked.

"Just...stay here," Duncan told her.

Sally sighed, but if there was to be any assassination – or even non-fatal mugging – of civilians, she had no real wish to be involved. She stayed put as Duncan slithered down the hillside to crouch in ambush below the rendezvous point. The car came closer and Sally noticed that it was showing no lights. It slowed as it approached, eventually rolling to a stop just a few feet from Duncan's position.

A window rolled down.

"Need a lift?" Mathias called.

"Jackson!" Duncan hissed, angrily. "What are you doing in that car?"

"Driving," the archaeologist replied. "I saw they were pulling out and thought we might want to follow. Sorry I couldn't get anything to fit the boys."

"I'll send them back to the extraction point," Duncan sighed. "Shame; it would have been nice to have back up on this one, but even if you got a bus, we couldn't easily trek across Germany with an entire squad of commandos."

Sally scrambled down the hill to the roadside. "Mercedes-Benz, 170V Cabriolet A," she said, approvingly. "Gotta hand it to the Germans; they make a mess of the world, but they make great cars. Aren't you worried that the owner will miss it?"

It was hard to see his face in the starlight, but Sally knew that Mathias's smile had just vanished.

"Mathias?" she asked.

"No-one in that town is going to miss anything," Mathias said, sombrely. "They're all dead."

"God," Duncan gasped.

Sally looked at the Major. She knew that he could be a hard man when he had to be, but he was an old soldier and knew that there were things that soldiers could not easily accept. It was one thing to attack, even kill, a civilian and steal his vehicle, but slaughtering the population of a town was quite another.

"It's worse than that, though," Mathias said.

"Tell us on the way," Duncan told him. "We need to get moving."

*

Siberia
2001

Major Valerie Pavlovna Rasputina was a tall, handsome woman with a stern bearing. She had the look of a career officer and carried a Dragunov SVD with an easy familiarity. A small squad of border guards stood close by; unlike their leader, several of them were clearly local, with tanned skin and Mongol features. They wore uniform fatigue jackets under heavy hide coats and two of the four had replaced their regulation footwear with fur-lined riding boots.

"Major Rasputina," Svetlana greeted the officer.

"Dr Markova," Rasputina replied.

Svetlana quickly made the introductions and Rasputina led them across the airfield to a bulky, grey-hulled vehicle with a sharply-slanting prow. "I am afraid there will be little home comfort," she apologised. "There is bad business afoot at this factory."

"So you thought a tank was the order of the day," Karpova drawled.

"We must deal with all sorts in the border patrol," Rasputina replied. "But this is not a tank, she is an armoured transport; a BTR-70, to be precise. A little antiquated, perhaps, but we do not always have access to the high-end technology out here in the hinterland." She patted the vehicle's hull fondly. "We call her Borte, after the wife of Genghis Khan," she added.

"How sweet," Karpova noted, as the four of them crowded into the rear compartment of the BTR, along with three of the soldiers. "You can almost smell the yurts."

Rasputina glanced at Karpova as she stowed her rifle. "Be careful what you say," she cautioned, with what might or might not have been a smile. "You sit among the descendents of a proud race and they do not take insults to their ancestors lightly. It is all too easy to disappear in Siberia."

Karpova shivered.

"Is that why you operate out of a smuggler's airfield?" Djerovich asked blandly.

"The rules are a little bit different out here," Rasputina went on. "There are precious few respectable livings to be made on the tundra, but on the other hand, the criminals tend to be, for want of a better word, honest. We don't have enough people to control a border as big as this, so we have to compromise; it wouldn't take much for a high-handed city cop to make things very tough for the border patrol." She sighed. "But we are not here to argue, but because there is something that we agree on. We may turn a blind eye to a little horse-theft and racketeering, but we're hard on gun-runners and drugs. I think we can agree on that," she offered.

"Yes, we can," Djerovich agreed.

"Well, whoever is operating from the old bunker, they are serious customers. They have influence and money; armed guards and high-end security. That says drugs to me, and a lot more than a little marijuana."

"Bunker?" Karpova asked. "I thought this was a factory?"

"It has been a lot of things," Rasputina explained. "It was built during the war to house some kind of secret project. It was used as the housing for a secret laboratory and an experimental power station since."

Karpova raised an eyebrow. "And now a milk pasteurisation plant?"

"And such a lucrative venture that it is protected by guards with expensive Belgian assault rifles," Rasputina added. "Captain Byko of the Special Directorate was a cautious man, yet not cautious enough. I did not bring this squad along simply for the quality of their transportation."

At that moment, with the fourth patrolman safely installed in the machine gunner's seat, the driver switched on the engine and the entire vehicle began to shudder.

"I'm not entirely sure that the Empress would have been flattered by the comparison," Karpova noted, her voice distorted by the bone shaking rattle of the BTR.

"By all accounts, the lovely Borte was pretty hard to handle herself," Rasputina assured her.

"Do you have a plan?" Svetlana asked.

"Plan is a strong term for what we have," Rasputina replied. "I have managed to make contact with one of the workers at the plant. He has confirmed that the entire workforce is devoted to processing the snow lily into a thick, greenish-white paste that is compressed and dried into tablets."

"Dragon," Djerovich growled.

"Can you trust this man?" Karpova asked.

Rasputina was silent.

"Major?" Svetlana asked.

"My husband seems to think so," she allowed. "He assured me that I can trust the man absolutely."

"You sound doubtful," Svetlana noted.

"I have great faith in my husband's judgement," Rasputina asserted. "He would not have survived among very long among smugglers if her trusted ill-advisedly."

"I thought that you were tough on smugglers?" Karpova noted.

"Yes, but he is an ex-smuggler," she assured the agents. "He let himself be led astray once, by the lure of guns and drugs, but he went straight after a jail term and our marriage. By local standards, that means that he restricts himself to horse-theft and race fixing," she admitted with a wry smile. "In spite of that one lapse of good sense, I trust him and his judgement," she repeated. "It is only that...well; he has never met my contact. In fact, when he told me that I could trust the man, I had not even mentioned meeting him."

*

1944 – A fortnight later
Siberia

The troops who escorted the convoy of trucks to the gates of the newly-constructed bunker wore Russian uniforms, but they were well-armed with a mixture of MP40 submachine guns and Mauser K98k rifles. There were even a few of the new StG44 assault rifles in evidence, which could have betrayed the troops as soldiers of the Wehrmacht, even with all traces of Nazi iconography stripped from the sides of the trucks. Not that many units of the poorly-equipped Red Army would have stood a chance of stopping this force reaching its destination.

"It's a little more Spartan than Falkenstein," Daniel noted as he climbed out of the car. "I like the obelisks," he added.

Zelig, now almost healed, stood close behind him, her malice almost palpable. As though sensing and rejecting his ongoing sympathy for her plight, Iblis had made a point of being as vile towards Daniel as possible and Mariana, not unwilling to see Daniel ground down, but apparently wishing to retain her place in Magda's good graces, had allowed this to a point.

In terms of good graces, Daniel's place in Magda's was secure, but he had lost some of Mariana's favour by vacating her bed. After the little home movie that she had laid on for him, the thought of touching Ahriman's host made him physically nauseous. Perhaps her face had not been in the record, but the knowledge that the mind was the same – and that that ruthless will had power over the lives of Magda and Lisl – was more than he could stand, for any reason. He had always known that he had a limited reserve of hypocrisy and now he felt sure that he had plumbed its depths.

"It is not without its comforts," Mariana assured him. "Let us get Magda and Lisl settled into their quarters and you shall see that my dear ones will not be required to sleep on stone. Afterwards, I shall show you the more functional part of the compound."

Daniel noted with some interest that the bunker was manned by Russian soldiers and that they mixed poorly with the German newcomers. It did not escape Daniel's notice either that Mariana had begun to speak Russian – with a flawless accent – since their arrival and that the Russians addressed her as Comrade Dr Mariya Witte. She had swiftly dispatched the Germans to guard the perimeter of the compound, thus separating the two forces.

The quarters were located three storeys below ground, but they were very richly-appointed. They seemed very open and airy, for all that they had no windows. Daniel recognised the artificial light that the Goa'uld used in their starships, or at least an approximation thereof. Magda, her juvenile mind having already left her true family and their tragic fate in the past, was clearly thrilled. The fact that the room was equipped with a fine crib told Daniel that Mariana had been in contact with the garrison here since their meeting.

Leaving the delighted Magda to settle Lisl in their chambers and dismissing Zelig to see to the domestic arrangements, Mariana took a fast hold on Daniel's arm – far from oblivious to his revulsion – and steered him back through the artificial caverns of the bunker towards what Daniel thought must be the centre of the complex.

"This is where I have constructed what I now feel to be my rather unsatisfactory substitute to you, my dear Daniel," she explained. "I have made a resonating chamber for the Dahak energies, which I hope will obviate the need for such a sacrifice as you beheld in the record of the Tserani."

"Do you always force your victims to record their own destruction?" Daniel asked, cringing away as far as he could manage.

"Not always," she replied, "but work such as mine serves no purpose if not recorded. Such excesses have a salutary function, if word of them is disseminated, and prevent others from taking the foolish step of defying Lord Sokar."

"You sound almost sorry," Daniel noted.

Mariana shrugged. "I have always enjoyed my work," she admitted, "although in my later years I find myself longing for survivors to rule over."

"Why..." Daniel swallowed hard. "Why did you do that to their leaders?" he asked. "What purpose did it serve?"

Mariana smiled. "Rage," she replied. "Before it can destroy a world, Dahak must feed and its food is anger; its drink, hatred. As I say, however, I believe that this resonating chamber will allow me to unleash that power without the need for such...absurd and, yes, perhaps obscene theatrics."

"‘Perhaps' obscene?" Daniel asked. Familiarity had bred contempt and he now found it difficult to be surprised by the excesses of the Goa'uld, but their attitude to their own deeds still sometimes left him aghast. "And what do you plan to do? Wipe out the population of Siberia? Rough on the Siberians, certainly, but hardly a global-level horror."

Mariana ignored his scorn and continued: "Instead of creating an external concentration of rage, I need only seal the open Casket in the chamber. Contained, the energies will resonate, creating a reinforcing wave. By the time that the chamber cracks on impact, the energies contained within will be too awesome for even me to comprehend."

"Cracks on impact?" Daniel was beginning to worry.

With a sinister laugh, Mariana led Daniel through a door into a silo, the size of the Gateroom and six storeys high. They were approximately halfway up the chamber, on a steel walkway which ran around the body of a huge rocket.

"Behold, the Vergeltungwaffe Entsheidende," Mariana declared. "The ultimate weapon of vengeance; a missile the like of which this pathetic world has never known. On launch, it will climb to an altitude of one-hundred-and-thirty miles, and then descend to impact on its target; undetectable and unstoppable, and accurate to within one hundred yards at a range of ten-thousand yards."

"An ICBM?" Daniel asked.

"A what?"

"Intercontinental ballistic missile," Daniel replied. "We'll be building these soon enough...although that is very accurate," he admitted.

"These ICBMs will be based on my designs, no doubt," Mariana growled. "And none of those will carry such a deadly payload. The warhead of the V-En is the resonating chamber for my beloved Dahak. Soon – very soon – this beautiful weapon will carry the Dahak Casket to Britain and transform the Allied forces assembled there into no more than a rampaging mob in the midst of their own stronghold."

She gave a self-satisfied chuckled. "Or at least, that is what I promised Der Führer in order to get the parts for the V-En."

*

Frau Dr Veidt's German force had brought several tonnes of food, as well as dozens of crates of the Reich's most advanced battlefield weapons. Coupled with the groundwater reserves at the bunker, this would permit the two forces and the three hundred assembled civilians – representatives of many nations, all sympathisers to Ahriman's apocalyptic utopian cause, carefully groomed and gathered here by Iblis and her fellow agents – to survive in isolation for over a year. While the Germans reinforced the perimeter, Comrade Dr Witte's Russian platoon unloaded the convoy as quickly as possible; the Siberian winter was bitingly cold and they had to move the supplies to the sheds and get the trucks under cover before the petrol engines froze solid.

Private Grinkov was part of a three man team unloading one of the three-tonne trucks, loaded with blankets and clothing. He reached in and lifted out an armful of blankets and, to his surprise – not to say amazement – found a woman lying underneath, with a strange mask covering her mouth and nose.

"Who are you?" he demanded, then, realising that it did not matter, he dropped the blankets back on top of the woman and called out: "Sergeant!"

There was a soft sound, like a heavy sneeze, and something plucked at the heavy cloth. Grinkov tried to call out again as the woman pushed free of the pile of blankets, but found that he could neither speak not move.

Grinkov's sergeant heard his call and saw the soldier collapse to the ground. He saw the third man in his team run over, then recoil and fall, bleeding, beside Grinkov, becoming one of only two men in this version of history who would ever be killed by a bullet from a Heckler & Colt KSP-9.

The sergeant, more cautious than his subordinates, drew his pistol and moved forward to stand beside the truck. As the woman dropped to the ground, he levelled the muzzle of the revolver at the back of her head. "Halte!" he commanded.

"Damnit," the woman growled, raising her hands.

The sergeant stepped forward, but before he could reach the intruder, he felt a sharp pain in the small of his back and his vision blurred into blackness.

"Sloppy," the killer accused.

"Him or me?" Amy turned to face Gretel. The current host – or perhaps incarnation would be a more appropriate term – of Ormazdh was a strikingly beautiful brunette, whose slender, willowy frame was made deadly by the symbiote coiled around the base of her brain.

"What brings you here?" Amy asked blithely, her voice muffled by her mask.

"Much the same as you," Gretel replied, crouching to retrieve her dagger.

Amy reached up and removed the respirator from her face. The gauge on the side informed her that she had only an hour of air left. "I'm glad we got here when we did. It was hard for me to sneak a breath from under those blankets; a few more miles and they would have been unloading a corpse."

"A frozen corpse," Gretel added, pulling her greatcoat close around her. "Let's get you something warmer from the trucks."

Amy shook her head. "We need to get out and I'm wearing my TCG fatigues under this farmer's tunic; all I need is a hood and I could go for a stroll on the frozen tundra."

"We are on the frozen tundra," Gretel told her, but she did not push the matter. Amy was right that they needed to get away from the bodies and the trucks before another team arrived. They slipped away from the goods yard and into the cover of a stone bulwark.

"Why didn't you come back to the hut?" Amy asked.

"Jaffa," Gretel replied. "I have no idea what a Jaffa is doing here and now, but he would sense the symbiote in me. That's a lot of explanation and I didn't feel up to it." She shrugged out of her coat and passed it to Amy.

"You need that more than I do," Amy assured her.

Gretel shook her head. "I'm going back in," she explained. "You might need to look like you belong outside. The German troops have set up half a mile out; you'll need to pass them to meet up with Tom and the others. I'll be the woman on the inside."

"Alright," Amy agreed, grudgingly, "but watch out for Iblis. She's riding around in a blonde called Zelig."

"Frau Anile Zelig," Gretel agreed. "I saw her when she came hunting us. She used to be one of his mistresses; a General's wife. I wonder what happened to General Zelig. Nothing good I suppose," she mused. "A shame. He wasn't such a bad old thing as SS staff officers go."

"That's a pretty big qualifier," Amy declared. She pulled on the coat, checked the pistol and tucked it into the hidden holster inside her jacket. "Alright; I'm going to get in touch with Tom and the others; what about you?"

"I'll try to find out what Ahriman has in mind," Gretel replied. "I'll try to get word to you and act alone only if I have to. You must do the same; if you do not hear from me, I shall likely have succumbed to death at last and I will rely on you to finish my work for me."

Amy shook her head. "Honestly, Gretel; you're even more of a pessimist than Tom."

*

Teal'c pulled their stolen three-tonne truck to a halt by the roadside almost as soon as Amy's temporal trace stopped moving. The team huddled in the back of the truck, wrapped for warmth in the greatcoats that had been the vehicle's cargo, while Tom – whose TCG fatigues protected him from the cold, as Amy's protected her – scouted out a place to stay.

"She may be a Nazi sociopath," Sam noted, "but you have to admire her gall; relocating in the depths of Soviet territory."

"Ahriman is no Nazi," Teal'c reminded her. "A Goa'uld would feel loyalty to no human leader and she may well have offered her services to the Soviets instead of – or as well as – the Nazis. We must consider the possibility that we shall face resistance from Soviet troops."

Jack gave a dry chuckle. "After the SS, whatever poor Red Army saps haven't been relocated to the front should be a breeze," he assured the Jaffa. "It's the weather I'm worried about."

Suddenly, Jack and Teal'c reached for their weapons, and a moment later they heard a soft whistle. Jack gave a soft, answering whistle and Tom scrambled into the back of the truck.

"There's a bunker a few miles north; that's where Amy is, although she seems to be on radio silence still. A mile east of here, there's an old, abandoned farmhouse. It looks like it would make a pretty good base of operations; certainly better than the back of this truck," he added.

"Agreed," Jack said. "You and Lotte scout the area, make sure there are no patrols about. There are some Red Army coats in the back here, which should help you blend in. We'll take the truck up to the farmhouse and establish headquarters. Once we have somewhere to plan from and fall back to, we'll worry about the bunker."

The farmhouse was indeed perfect for their needs. Like the house near to Paderborn where Jack and Inge had hidden from their SS pursuers, it was abandoned, but not derelict. There was a range, which could be refuelled easily enough once they had a chance to chop some wood, and the water supply was pumped up from underground. There was even a barn which they could use to hide the truck; only a rusty old chain kept the doors shut.

As the team unloaded their gear from the truck, Sam opened up a tool kit and retrieved a pair of heavy bolt cutters. "Here," she said, slapping the cutters into Weiss' hand. "Get the chain off the barn doors and try to open it up."

"Yes, Major Carter," Weiss replied, with equanimity, although she was wringing her hand in pain.

Sam scowled at the scientist's retreating back.

"Go a little easy on her, would you," Jack said.

Sam turned her scowl on her CO for a moment, then quickly schooled her expression into neutrality.

Jack sighed. "Go on," he said.

"Sir?"

"Permission to speak freely, Carter. Say what's on your mind."

Sam paused for a moment, then exclaimed: "How could you do it, Colonel?"

"Do wh...No, I'm not walking into that one," Jack said. "Things happen, Carter. Inge and I have been together for a whole year and...I'm only human," he sighed.

"She's weak!" Sam snapped. "She's a pitiful, needy creature and you're taking advantage of her!"

"Inge isn't the meek little mouse that she was when you met her," Jack replied, sternly. "She's been through the fire and come out stronger. She can keep going longer than me, for crying out loud."

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"I don't mean..." Jack sighed again. "Sometimes I worry," he admitted. "I didn't go looking for this, but sometimes I wonder if she doesn't think she's repaying me."

Sam sat down on the tailgate of the truck. "She doesn't," she said, reluctantly.

"How do you know?"

"Because I know that was the one thing she wouldn't do for her so-called mentor," Sam admitted. "I never thought you would have forced her or coerced her," she assured him, "it's just that she belongs in this time and you belong in ours. What is she going to do when you have to leave her?"

"Actually, I was thinking of bringing her with us," Jack replied. "She doesn't have a place in this time, Carter. Until I showed up, she was supposed to take a bullet in the back of the head."

"No!"

"Yes."

"Did the SS decide she'd outlived her usefulness?" Sam asked.

Jack shook his head. "The resistance tried to kill her," he explained.

"Huh. Well, that makes sense," Sam admitted. "I just didn't..."

"Didn't like to think of our side wanting to kill someone so sweet and innocent?"

Sam shrugged. "Although the thought that she was out of the way would have made me feel a little better."

"Why?"

"Because she may be an unutterable drip, but she is smarter than me," Sam admitted. "I hardly let anything slip to her but everything I gave her sent her mind off in new directions; she practically developed a new theory of temporal manipulation in front of my eyes. It's just so unfair! Why should someone so lacking in backbone have a brain like that."

"Well, I..."

"Jack!"

Jack turned and Sam stood as Weiss ran towards them. She had left the bolt cutters somewhere and her face was flushed with worry.

"What's wrong, Inge?" Jack asked.

"It's the padlock," Weiss gasped. "The padlock on the chains."

"What about it?" Sam asked. "Didn't the cutters work?" A shiver ran up her spine; a lock that resisted those cutters was likely to be another sign of future influence.

Weiss shook her head. "It cut alright," she panted, "but...The chain was covered in rust, but the lock was covered in mud. The mud cracked off when I cut the lock and I could see that it was..." She reached into the pocket of her coat and held up a heavy padlock. It was indeed coated in frozen mud, and where it had cracked off the metal shone brilliantly.

"Almost new," Sam realised.

"Teal'c!" Jack strode off; Sam and Weiss followed and Teal'c soon appeared, running out of the farmhouse to catch up with them.

Having seen no sign of Red Army patrols, Tom and Lotte headed back towards the farm. Distracted by his concern for Amy's safety, Tom walked right past the trail and Lotte had to call him back.

"Hoof prints?" he asked.

"Just one set, I think," she replied, studying the tracks. The main track to the farmhouse was as hard as rock, so there were no tracks, but here in the trees the ground was not quite frozen and a single line of hoof prints had indeed been impressed into the earth.

"It looks recent as well," Tom noted. "Moving away from the farmhouse, but still..."

As though emerging from his thoughts, the sound of pounding hooves filled the air.

At the barn, Jack threw his P90 to Weiss and hauled on the left-hand door. Teal'c took the other door, while Sam and Weiss held their weapons at the ready. The heavy doors swung open, to reveal that the barn was in fact a garage and storeroom, stacked with gas cans and heavy crates. A crowbar lay on top of on of the nearest crates and Jack used this to lever up the lid.

"Ah, damn," he muttered.

"What is it?" Sam asked, although she had a feeling that she knew the answer.

Jack reached into the crate and picked up a Tokarev SVT-40. "We've just set up shop in a gun-runners' lair."

*

2001

Leaving the Borte and the border guards behind, Svetlana and the FSB agents followed Major Rasputina through the wilderness. As they walked, Rasputina filled them in on the history of the site.

"This has always been considered a cursed place," she explained. "It is considered by many to be the third most evil place in all of the old Soviet territories."

"What are the top two?" Karpova asked.

"Tunguska and Chernobyl. The bunker is several stories high and runs around ten storeys deep into the ground. It was built during the war as a fortress against all conventional forms of assault and, although probably vulnerable to nuclear attack, it would still stand up well today.

"During the building of the bunker, a mass grave was uncovered and dozens of workmen were killed, although that was par for the course on a construction project in Siberia. Stalin didn't send people out here because he wanted them to feel loved in the gulags," Rasputina noted.

"What was this place built for?" Svetlana asked.

"Rocketry research," Rasputina replied. "There was a project to develop an answer to the German V-weapons, but nothing came of it. An accident destroyed the entire laboratory, but the structure is almost indestructible. For fifty years, the authorities tried to find something to do with it."

"Why not tear it down?" Karpova asked.

Djerovich chuckled. "If a bunker has been built to withstand shelling and aerial bombardment, it will be almost impossible to demolish," he assured his partner. "There are concrete blisters like this all over Europe, built during the war and too much trouble to destroy."

Rasputina nodded her agreement, and then went on: "In this case, the structure is built around three-dozen steel-and-concrete piles, buried more than forty metres below ground. The reinforced concrete walls still carry eighteen miles of copper wiring and nine of copper pipe and I'm assured that most of the water and electrics still function, even if they are a little antiquated. Whatever the accident that gutted the original laboratory, the utilities in the wall ducts were untouched.

"After the war, the bunker was used to house an experimental atomic pile," she went on. "Nothing much came of that either and they moved the pile out. Then it was done out as a shelter for senior officials, in case of war with the United States, but the water table had been contaminated by the run-off from the pile's coolant flow and a lot of people got sick. When Communism collapsed they sold the site off as soon as possible, without mentioning the problem with the groundwater." She held up a hand. "Quiet now; we're approaching the perimeter."

The four Russians crept forward to a line of trees and looked out at the bunker. It was a massive, sinister structure, more like a temple than a military bunker. The low, flat-topped mastaba of the bunker itself was flanked by four concrete obelisks. The figures of the guards who walked at the foot of the wall were tiny and with a start, Svetlana realised that the mastaba was not low at all, merely dwarfed by the towering obelisks.

"What are those for?" she asked.

"The towers?" Rasputina asked. "No-one knows. There are ducts buried in the concrete and power lines running into them, but they go deep down and the concrete – if that's what it is – seems to be almost impervious, even to the hardest drill bits. A team of engineers spent three years working on them, but to no avail."

The bunker sat at the heart of a compound, ringed by a razor-wire fence. The ground within the boundary and for a hundred metres around it had been cleared of undergrowth. Towers stood at regular intervals along the line of the fence, manned by guards with machine guns and rifles. Incongruously, a huge sign faced them, bearing the image of a cheerfully smiling cartoon cow.

"They must really love their milk," Karpova noted.

Djerovich shook his head. "I need to get inside," he said.

Rasputina nodded. "That can be arranged."

*

1944

Mariana took a light luncheon with Daniel, over which she extolled the virtues of her launch system.

"In order to save fuel and protect the dwelling chambers from rocket exhaust, I have commissioned a magnetic accelerator."

"A mass driver?" Daniel asked. "I know the Nazis made a lot of technical advances, but the linear accelerator was not one of them."

Mariana shrugged. "It was difficult to build such a mechanism from these primitive materials," she admitted, "and the accelerator rails had to be significantly longer than usual..."

"The obelisks," Daniel realised.

His hostess' lips curled into a hungry smile. "Your perceptiveness and understanding continue to impress me, Daniel," she said.

"I'm sorry not to disappoint you," Daniel drawled.

Mariana stood, suddenly, and strode around the table. She caught Daniel by the lapels and dragged him up into a kiss. With some effort, he wrestled free of her before the bile could rise in his throat. He bent double and retched.

"Still you reject me!" Mariana hissed.

"You're a monster, Ahriman," Daniel accused.

The blue eyes flared and the Goa'uld spoke to Daniel. "You knew that before, my darling," she purred. "I never pretended to be anything else. Can you not master these scruples? Not even for the sake of the children?"

"Not even for them," Daniel gasped, wiping his chin. "I can't...not when all I see is what you did to those people."

With a cry of disgust, Ahriman overturned the table and flung it against the wall. "You did not know them!" she roared. "They were nothing to you!"

"They were people!" Daniel insisted. "Besides, you're about to do the same to everyone I know or care about, if they even manage to be born in your world."

With her left hand, Ahriman grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt and thrust him against the wall, while her right hand – as though belonging to a different person – caressed his face lovingly. "The world is doomed," she murmured. "You can not save it, but you can save the children."

"I can't," Daniel choked.

A chuckle rose in Ahriman's throat, somewhere between mockery and tenderness. "We shall see," she purred and then, in the voice of Mariana Veidt, continued: "I am almost glad; it had all been too easy up until now." She released him and smoothed down his shirt, solicitously. "You know that Iblis wants to use you as his body," she noted.

"Nice to be in demand," Daniel said dryly.

"It isn't you that he wants," Mariana assured him.

"Of course not," Daniel replied. "It's you. She...he...it thinks that if it is in my body, you'll snuggle up to..."

"Him," Mariana said. "Iblis adopts the gender of his host and so, in your body, he would be ‘he', as in Frau Zelig's, she is ‘she' and in the form of Zerref Ch'a, loi was ‘loi'."

Daniel could not stop himself rising to the bait. "Loi?" he asked.

"The pronoun for an amale," Mariana explained. "A sort of reproductively passive gender, acting purely as an incubation chamber for the combined seeds of the male and female of the droin. They were an interesting species," she mused. "The amales had a deeply ingrained sense of self-loathing that made them quite needy; Zerref Ch'a was almost as desperate for affection as Iblis herself," she added. "I used to have such fun playing them off against one another. I truly think that Iblis hated Zerref as much as loi hated laself by the end of their association."

Daniel shivered. "I notice that you speak of the species in the past tense," he said.

Mariana shrugged. "I have not encountered them in some time," she admitted. "I did not," she added, "annihilate them; their rebellion was minor and called only for decimation. Zerref Ch'a is dead, of course, but mortals die."

"And does Earth require annihilation or decimation?" Daniel demanded.

"Lord Sokar requested annihilation," Mariana admitted, "but I no longer feel bound to his will. I intend to cull the population heavily, but I find my whim leads me now towards rule, not merely devastation. And to rule, I must have subjects," she added.

"What are you going to do with the missile?" Daniel demanded.

"Now that I have converted to the cause of communism," Mariana explained, "I will target the V-En at Berlin, ending the threat of Nazi Germany forever, in the name of Mother Russia!"

Daniel gave a humourless laugh. "Or at least, that's what you told Comrade Stalin to get permission to build the bunker," he said.

"You learn fast," she said approvingly.

*

The riders streamed into the farmyard at the gallop. For Jack, a thoroughly modern warrior, it was an object lesson in the strengths of a disciplined cavalry force against exposed infantry. Even Teal'c had barely had time to react to the thunder of hoof beats before there were riders all around them, swathed in long coats, furry hats pulled tight over their heads and toting a mixture of SVT-40s and PPSh-41 submachine guns. They held their weapons in a professional, two-handed grip, guiding their horses with their knees and holding a steady aim despite the movement of the steeds beneath them.

One of the riders snapped a command in Russian, but it was too fast for Jack to make out what he was saying.

The man tried again, this time in German. "Setzen Sie Ihre Waffen aus den Grund und heben Sie Ihre Hände über Ihren Kopf an!"

Jack was glad that Daniel was not here to get them into trouble by answering in German.

"We are American," he said.

Another rider moved forward. "Yankee soldiers?" he asked, doubtfully.

"No," Jack assured him. "We're not with the military." There was no doubt in Jack's mind that the weapons these men were stockpiling were military issue and most armies frowned on stealing munitions in a time of war.

"Then you will not be missed by anyone," the rider pointed out. He half-turned and called something in Russian to his comrades.

To Jack's surprise, Inge stepped forward and called back. The rider stared at her for a moment, then muttered a curse and brought his rifle to his shoulder.

"Hold your fire!" A third man eased his horse out of the group and it was at once apparent that he was in command here. He sat high and proud in the saddle of the finest horse in the group, an animal with a noble bearing and an intelligent face, full of character. The man himself was no less striking, with a handsome, aquiline face, long, drooping moustaches and a truly impressive fur hat. He wore a dark grey, officer's greatcoat and a long, curved scimitar hung at his hip.

The leader barked a command and sprang smoothly to the ground. His followers did the same, more cautiously and in two groups, one covering Jack's party while the other dismounted.

Jack leaned over to whisper to Inge. "What did you say to him?"

"Well, he said something bad about your mother, so I...defended her."

"You defended my mother?" Jack asked, doubtfully. The English-speaking rider was still glaring murderously at Inge.

"Well, I may have offered a less-than flattering opinion of his mother," Inge admitted.

"You will lay down your weapons and step back, please," the leader said.

"Colonel?" Sam asked.

"Do as he says, Carter," Jack sighed. "Best we could do is take some of them with us."

They set their weapons on the ground and stepped away, allowing several of the riders to advance and gather up their submachine guns.

The second rider began to speak in Russian, but at a curt gesture from his leader he switched to English. "These are German weapons," he noted.

"And a German truck," another man added. "They must be German spies, damn those Nazi bastards!"

The leader turned and pointed at the speaker. "Hold your tongue!" he barked. "I will not have that kind of language spoken in front of a lady." He turned to face Inge and Sam. "Please forgive our crude ways," he said. "We are simple men and used to plain speech."

"You're forgiven," Sam assured him dryly.

The leader smiled and directed his gaze only at Inge. "Although your language is none too moderate, dear lady," he noted.

Inge shrank back against Jack's side and Jack put an arm around her.

"But I am forgetting my manners," the leader said. "I am His Excellency Nicolai Tevyavich Rasputin, Bandit Khan, Terror of the Wehrmacht, Scourge of the Soviets and second cousin to the late, lamented Gregori Efimovich."

"Colonel Jack O'Neill," Jack replied. "Pleased to..." He broke off in alarm as the self-styled Bandit Khan seized his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Why is the Scourge of the Soviets wearing a Red Army officer's greatcoat?" Sam asked.

"My second-in-command, Major Samantha Carter," Jack introduced. "This is Teal'c – he kills gods – and Frau Dr Inge Weiss, Physicist, Linguist and all-round Super-Genius."

Inge blushed.

"It is a pleasure to meet such distinguished and civilised people," Nicolai Tevyavich declared. "As to the coat; well, I did consider embracing the new order and becoming the Commissar of the Bandits, but the image simply did not work for me. I do like the coat, however."

"I see," Jack said.

Yuri Tevyavich beamed at them. "Bring them inside and tie them up," he ordered.

*

Frau Zelig's bullet wound was largely healed, but still ached terribly. Iblis was growing increasingly irritable and being obliged to mind Ahriman's business while the mistress devoted herself to seducing Daniel Jackson did not help. The only ray of sunlight in her existence was that, for the first time since Ahriman's return, Iblis was being allowed to work directly with her beloved Dahak Casket.

For most people, the Casket was an object of terror, a source of unspeakable evil and a bringer of fury, death and destruction. There were, however, a few individuals in whom the energies radiated from the living tesseract known as Dahak generated a quite different response. Whenever the seals of the Ancient-built Casket were released, Iblis experienced a surge of unquenchable desire, a lust as insatiable and irresistible as the fury that gripped the common man or woman. For Iblis, therefore, the Casket was a giving thing, and the Dahak entity the only creature in the universe who had ever given her anything without asking for something in return. Ahriman loved the Casket for the power that it gave her; Iblis simply loved Dahak, with all her black and ruined heart.

She stood now on the gantry beside the nosecone of the V-En rocket and watched, breathless with anticipation, as the Casket was lowered down from the surface. A Russian technician stood with her, directing the crane controller through a radio telephone, but she was all-but oblivious to anything except the descending shape of the Casket.

As the Casket reached the level of the gantry, Zelig waved for the crane to halt.

"Stop," the technician ordered. "Alright, now run it back and..."

"Not yet!" Zelig snapped.

"Hold it," the technician echoed.

"Run out the cradle," Zelig ordered, "but first I must..." She licked her lips, eagerly. "I must examine the Casket." She had felt frustrated of late. Ahriman was obsessed by Jackson and Iblis had failed even to seduce a serving girl to slake her needs; to make matters worse, she had been forced to leave her regular lover, the faithless but oh-so athletic Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman, in Pfronten. The desire to feel the caress of Dahak's powerful energy field had never been so strong.

The technician went over to the nose-cone of the rocket and opened the heavy steel hatch in its side. Behind the hatch lay a second heavy steel cover, with a wheel at the centre. The technician turned the wheel to release the locks and lowered the hatch down on its hydraulic rams, exposing the interior of the resonating chamber. A cradle of steel bands hung in the centre of the chamber and the technician drew this out on a set of expanding runners.

Zelig saw none of this. She was gazing raptly at the Casket, her hands hovering nervously over the surface. She licked her lips again and then let herself touch the flawlessly smooth surface of the casket. She felt the power of the Dahak entity, even through inches of stone and three layers of the most powerful stasis fields even devised. Her fingertips tingled and her heart began to race. Without true volition her fingers traced the sigils on the Casket, which appeared to be carved into the surface of the stone, but in fact lay beneath the surface. The sigils formed a pattern, a circle around a triangle, both cut by numerous strokes, lines and swirls.

At her touch, the sigils changed position, sliding under the stone until all trace of the pattern was gone, releasing the outer seal. Her hands continued to move, manipulating the markings to release the middle seal. The sigils glowed brightly and began to slither under the surface of their own accord. Zelig's breath came in short, sharp gasps and, when the lid of the casket cracked and the grey radiance of the filtered Dahak energies spil