In Progress
Action/Adventure, Drama
Set in Season 8
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. 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.
Acknowledgements:
Hurrah for Sho; she may not be the quickest Beta reader, but she's thorough.
Captain Amy Kawalsky huddled in the meagre shelter of a canvas lean-to and waited for her guests to arrive. Thick rain sheeted down all around her; soon it would stop, the sun would rise and with it the temperature and the heavy, cloying fog would form and not relent until the rain returned at nightfall. She was in a less-than stellar mood, but not because of the weather. She resented any interruption of her investigation of a site, but for all her misgivings, she understood the gravity of the situation; that was why she had signalled a Code Dundayin in the first place: possible Elder Threat contamination.
The rest of SG-11 had already been evacuated to the Delta Site, but as team leader she had been asked to stay behind and brief SG-7. She was not sure how to take this last. On the one hand, it was a greater degree of trust than was shown to most team leaders when the mysterious Behemoth Protocols were invoked, while on the other it suggested that her health might not be at the top of General O'Neill's list of priorities. Of course, General O'Neill had a lot on his mind, but having known him since she was twelve and he a captain, Amy liked to think she had a particular connection to the SGC's commanding officer.
The Stargate opened and SG-7 emerged into the pouring rain; for as much as they were likely to notice. They made for an intimidating sight in their armoured biohazard suits; small wonder they did not do much first contact work these days. The effect was only slightly diffused by the fact that the five figures, although essentially faceless, were nonetheless quite distinctive. Two of the five were markedly smaller than the others and one of those carried only a pistol; that was the Russian, Lieutenant Rasputin. Of the taller figures, only one seemed utterly at home in his armour, moving with the same catlike grace he displayed in PT fatigues in the SGC gym; Lieutenant Roberts. The tallest member of the team was a woman; Captain Lloyd, the 2IC and Amy's replacement on SG-7. Sergeant Pearson was marked out by the slight, indefinable barrier that hung between him and the officers.
The last of the five, the leader of the team, approached Amy and she snapped off a quick salute to her former CO; her first commanding officer at the SGC and a man whom she still regarded with fondness.
"Colonel Ferretti," she said. She could stand losing the investigation to him, when it would have rankled withy anyone else, because he had done so much to help her become a part of this squadron in the first place.
"Captain Kawalsky," he replied. "The General said the leader of SG-11 would brief us; I keep forgetting that's you."
Amy grinned at him. "And you sent me such a lovely card when I got the gig."
Ferretti leaned close. "Don't let on I told you, but I get Merlyn to remind me of these things." He turned towards his sergeant. "Pearson: How about it?"
Pearson checked a gauge in his hand. "No known contaminants, nanites or biotransmitter frequencies," he announced. "The atmosphere's clear."
With evident relief, SG-7 released the seals on their helmets and pulled them off. The air was cold, but it was clearly hot inside the suits.
"Standard drill," Ferretti said. "I want a full sweep, mechanical, electronic and psychometric, ASAP. This one's a priority job," he explained to Amy. "Merlyn thinks this could be a key find, so we're going to do the safety sweep, then bring the rest of your team back once we know it's safe." He looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, but we'll also be staying to supervise the investigation."
"Understood, Sir," Amy grimaced.
"I've asked Captain Lloyd to work with you as much as possible," Ferretti went on. "Technically I'm in charge, but you know what that's worth on a dig."
Amy forced a smile. "You want a look around?" she offered.
"Sure," he replied, gratefully.
"This way," she said. "By the way, what did you mean 'psychometric'?"
"Object reading," Ferretti replied. "The detection of psychic vibrations within material objects or the air around you, usually through touch. Lieutenant Rasputin is psychic."
"Oh."
Ferretti smiled and handed Amy a sealed and very official-looking envelope. "Welcome to the Behemoth Register," he said.
"How old?" Ferretti asked, gazing around at ancient walls, which were still largely intact.
Amy shrugged. "We think about twenty-thousand years," she replied.
"They certainly built to last."
"Yes, Sir," she agreed. "The outpost was built by the Shay, probably some two thousand years before they were wiped out by the Goa'uld following an unlucky meteorite strike on their homeworld," Amy explained, as she led Lieutenant-Colonel Ferretti into a small control room with a holographic projector at its focal point.
Ferretti nodded. "I recognise the style," he told her. "We found a similar place on another mission; turned out to be an observation post set up to study The Scourge."
"Well, this was definitely a scientific outpost," Amy assured him, "which was what first tipped me off that something odd was going on."
"I don't follow?" Ferretti admitted.
"One of the big mysteries of the Shay, back when we first found Shayara, was how a relatively primitive race could master space travel and become a serious threat to the Goa'uld," Amy explained. "We answered that question quickly enough; the Shay weren't primitive; they had technology that rivalled the Goa'uld, right from the start. Unfortunately, this created another mystery."
"Which was?"
"Where did they get that technology from?"
"They didn't make it themselves?" Ferretti asked.
Amy shook her head. "Virtually impossible. The Shay had almost no scientists. They practiced the application of science and engineering, but there was no experimentation; no study. It was as though their society was just given a fleet of ships, a rack of plasma rifles and a basic working knowledge of vehicle maintenance and told to get on with it. This actually explained a lot about their society," she observed. "The Shay themselves were the minority of Shayara's population; a hereditary aristocracy of warrior-hunters, supported by a helot-class who took care of labour, agriculture and government."
"Wait," Ferretti interrupted. "The government was an underclass?"
"They were dedicated to keeping the Shay nobles in their accustomed fashion, and so long as they did, they Shay let them get on with their lives. The helots actually became pretty advanced before the Great War finished them all."
"Great War?"
Amy nodded. She sat down at one of the control stations. "This is what the Shay called the hall of records; an archive access suite. We managed to work out the controls and started to study the records. That was where we found signs of Elder Threat influence, but before that we came across these files."
Images flickered into life on the projector, three dimensional and which seemed almost real enough to touch. The first image appeared at first to be a kull warrior, but the black armour was of a slightly different design and this warrior – and warrior he most definitely was – carried a long-barrelled plasma caster and wore a long, slender sword at his hip. The camera pulled back and the figure sprang down to join three others who were stalking towards a small town, dominated by a palace.
"This is a condensed history of the Great War; a sort of primer for children, as best I can make out."
Ferretti chuckled. "Sounds about my level," he agreed.
A voice began narrating the scene in the Shay tongue. Ferretti did not understand a word of the language, which sounded hard and unforgiving, even to an old soldier, but Amy translated and summarised for him.
"The Shay were 'hunters', in their own language. We might call them assassins, except that there was little political motivation in their actions, at least at first. They chose the most challenging targets and hunted them for sport, setting themselves against whatever protection the quarry had, be it natural defences, skill at arms or a small army. They trained to fight from infancy and according to the texts the arts of war came as naturally as walking; they were born killers."
The hologram showed the Shay moving through the corridors of the palace, cutting down any guard who appeared in their way. A door opened and an unarmed man stepped out, a servant of some kind. Weapons were raised, but not one of the hunters struck at him, even when he ran off, screaming for the guards.
"They were ruthless, but they had a strict code of honour," Amy went on. "A foe who could not fight would be spared, they would use no weapon against an unarmed opponent and they would never strike a fleeing foe in the back. On the other hand, they would hound their quarry until they were forced to fight."
On the display, one of the three hunters chased the servant through the corridors, finally cornering him in a dead end. Desperate and panicking, the man lunged at the Shay, barehanded, and the hunter felled him with a powerful punch to the throat, which must have crushed his victim's windpipe.
"Why?" Ferretti asked. "Why would a whole race engage in such an elaborate form of…murder?"
"We just don't know," Amy admitted. "But what we do know is that eventually, it wasn't enough. The Shay decided that they had kept things small for far too long."
The image switched to show a different Shay. This warrior carried a carbine and a short, broad-bladed tchul'da. As the hologram pulled back, Ferretti saw that this Shay was part of a great army, marching through the ruins of a city. Rows of captives were shown, being dragged on chains through the streets, and then the viewpoint swept to the crest of a hill where another of the Shay hunters stood over a group of prisoners, who knelt before him, one by one.
"They set out to conquer, and on each world they overran, they left Shay governors to train the population to become a helot class like the one on Shayara. If they chose to swear allegiance to the Shay, they would be spared; otherwise…"
On the display, one of the natives had refused to kneel. Without a moment's hesitation, the Shay drew his sword and slashed the man's chest open. Blood sprayed, and then the screen went dark.
"But then the Shay found something that they were not expecting. An enemy worthy of them; just as swift, sure and deadly as they were."
A face lunged out of the display. It was a thin face, with bone-white skin and malevolent, blood-red eyes. The mouth gaped wide in a hiss of rage, exposing rows of needle-sharp fangs.
"The kalshek'tak," Ferretti whispered.
"Sir?" Amy asked.
"The Dragrsrech," he said. "The Holy Empire of the Vampires."
In the outpost's main control room, Captain Meredith Lloyd, Merlyn to her friends, was accessing a very different file. Strings of text played across the holographic display and she had to halt them regularly in order to translate the information.
Suddenly, an image did appear; Merlyn almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of a creature that haunted her nightmares.
"Well, that gets the adrenaline flowing," Lieutenant Roberts observed. "A shoggoth; big one, too."
"Never wanted to see one of those again," Merlyn agreed. "Not even a little one. It looks like the Shay were studying this one in the lab."
Roberts gave a dry laugh. "I wonder what happened to them, then."
"If I'm reading this right, they burned the shoggoth when it began to develop autonomy," she assured him. "What's interesting is why they were researching shoggoths in the first place." She ran the file back a short distance.
"'The shoggoth mind appears to match the patterns found within the psychogenic matrix of the machine creatures, suggesting that these primitive mental structures may have formed the source for…'" Roberts shook his head in amazement. "The Scourge are part shoggoth?"
"Ah…yes," Merlyn replied. "You read that just on one glance? You must have been working overtime studying your Shay."
"I find it strangely fascinating," Roberts admitted. "I don't know why. Besides; you know me. Takes me a while to learn a language, but once I've got it I can read and speak it like a native. So why were they interested in The Scourge?" he asked.
Merlyn thought for a moment before replying. "Well, I've speculated from the first that The Scourge was an offshoot of the pre-sentient biotechnology of the Elder Races," she explained. "Miss Goffanon and I have also been working on a theory that when the Elder civilisations fell, their servitors – the half-intelligent races raised up to labour for them – became free to develop their own cultures."
Roberts nodded his understanding. "So some, like the shoggoths, remained only barely sentient, while others – most notably the people who would one day become the Ancients – became fully sentient and developed into great civilisations themselves."
Merlyn looked a little crestfallen. "You worked this out as well?" she asked.
"No," Roberts assured her. "Eleri told me when we had dinner last week."
Merlyn frowned. "You're dating my RA?" she asked, exasperated.
"We have dinner from time to time," Roberts replied. "She doesn't know many people and I get to find out what you're up to."
"You could read my briefing reports," Merlyn suggested.
"You're too tentative. Eleri is far more willing to conjecture; this way I don't just find out what you think is true, I find out what you're afraid might be."
Merlyn blushed, angrily; she did not like the idea of anyone, even Roberts, trying to second-guess her.
"I suppose the next question is, why do the Shay want to know about The Scourge," Roberts suggested.
"Well, that's easy enough," Merlyn assured him. "The Shay wanted to fight the toughest opponents and The Scourge were pretty tough; maybe even too tough for them. That would have worried them, especially since they were at war, but they would have wanted to go after them anyway."
A star map appeared in the holographic display. Sections of the galaxy were coloured red, blue or green.
"Red means the Dragr," Amy explained. "Blue is the Shay and green is the third party in the war. When they encountered the Dragr, it was only a matter of time before the Shay met their mortal enemies and, since neither side had much time for 'the enemy of my enemy', they were soon at war as well."
"The Goa'uld," Ferretti said. "Yes; Merlyn has told us this cosy little bedtime story."
Amy nodded. "Then you know that, before long, more than two-thirds of the galaxy – far more than is now controlled by the Goa'uld alone – was split between these three empires and the war was caught in a perpetual stalemate. The Dragr had their strength and their psychic abilities, the Shay had their skill and the Goa'uld had the numbers; no one group could ever beat the other two and if they gained from one enemy, they lost to the other.
"Then, finally, the balance was broken. The Shay encountered a new foe, a new…quarry and their attention turned inwards."
"The Scourge?" Ferretti guessed.
"It seems likely. Whatever the case, they effectively withdrew from the war and their empire began to contract; they weren't beaten, so much as they lost interest in conquest and went home."
"What happened to the Dragr?"
Amy shrugged. "It just so happened that, at the time, the Dragr were on the back foot from a series of bloody battles against the Shay."
"Provoked by the Goa'uld, as I understand it."
"That's right. The sudden withdrawal of the Shay was unexpected, but the Goa'uld armies were ready and the Dragr were tired. The Goa'uld overwhelmed the vampires and drove them back to their homeworld, Nign.
"After that, the Goa'uld ignored the Shay for millennia, then – for no readily apparent reason – brought all of their might to bear on Shayara, massacring millions and triggering the hunt in which thousands of Goa'uld lords from the mighty to the minor were slain in their own palaces. They tried everything, but Shayara would not fall and the Shay kept on exacting their bloody toll from the Goa'uld, until at last the meteor fell and the Shay went silent overnight, leaving the Goa'uld the sole great power in the galaxy."
"That's quite a war," Ferretti agreed.
"More than seven hundred trillion were killed over the course of a thousand years," Amy said. "That's about fifty times the number of humans who have ever lived on our world, every year for a millennium."
"No wonder there are so many dead worlds out there."
"Quite."
Ferretti's radio crackled.
"Colonel?"
"What's the word, Merlyn?" he asked.
"All clear, Sir. No sign of current Elder Threat activity on any monitor. Sergeant Pearson has detected an unknown signal and is investigating, but the source is not Elder tech. We've established early warning protocols and Pearson will set a sensor perimeter as soon as he's locked down that signal; the Captain can call her team back in any time."
Ferretti grinned. "There you go," he told Amy. "And I'll make you a promise: I'll keep Merlyn and Roberts working in the archive room here and leave the actual archaeology to you."
"Thank you, Sir," Amy replied. "I'll contact my team and see if I can persuade General O'Neill to release some more personnel."
"You won't," Ferretti assured her.
"Sir?"
"The fact that we're here at all is testimony to the seriousness of the Elder Threat," Ferretti explained. "The Replicators have arrived."
Amy's face grew pale. "Surely, then…"
"This is important," Ferretti assured her. "The Scourge may not be an immediate threat, but if…no, when they show up, they make the Replicators look like tinker-toys."
"What a comforting thought." Amy turned and left.
The debate that had been raging in Ferretti's head was suddenly resolved and he hurried after her. He caught up with her in the entrance hall of the outpost, a great, open bay where the Shay would have stored their vehicles. Once, it would have housed dozens of vehicles, but now only a single hunting jeep remained. Lieutenant Rasputin sat in the passenger seat of the jeep, eyes closed in concentration as she listened for the tell-tale whispers at the edge of her mind which would indicate a dormant, psychic presence.
"They took Daniel!" Ferretti called.
Amy turned. "Sir?"
"The Replicators. They came out of nowhere and they took him. No-one knows exactly why, but…"
"The Ancients," Amy said. "They want the Ancient knowledge locked inside his memory; that's the one thing that he has that they would care about."
Ferretti nodded. "That's the general thinking."
"I'll go and get my team," Amy said.
"We can relieve you if you'd rather…" Ferretti began, but Amy shook her head, emphatically. "Here, I can hope to make a difference; there, I'm just another body. I'm not going to go to pieces on you, Sir," she assured him. "Not this time."
Ferretti watched her go and his heart wanted to burst with pride. She was the sister of one of his closest friends, and she had cut her teeth under his guidance. He had always felt a certain responsibility for Amy and kept a special eye on her as she worked her way through the SGC, but he also felt that he had some small part in her successes. She had done well for herself and he still hoped that when her PhD was complete she might find a place on SG-1; as it was, leading a specialist investigation team was no mean feat for a woman of her age.
He turned towards the jeep and saw that Alexa's eyes were now open.
"Something disturbed you?" he asked.
"Fear," Alexa replied. "She's afraid for Dr Jackson; the pain of that fear was…intense."
"Is she just putting a brave face on it, or will she be alright?"
Alexa shrugged, helplessly. "I do not know her well enough to say," she admitted, "but her fear is not beyond her ability to control." She climbed down from the jeep and crossed to her commanding officer. "She cares for you, very much," she noted. "It helps her that you are here, I think."
"Sometimes that happens when you work together," he replied, offhandedly. "I feel better for knowing she's around; I trust her," he added, without thinking.
Alexa hung her head, as though she had been reprimanded. "Of course, Sir."
Ferretti could have kicked himself, but now that she had reminded him of her betrayal, he could not find anything comforting to say to Alexa. "Keep a third eye out," he told her. "Don't want anything boiling up from underneath us without warning."
"No, Sir," she agreed.
The radio in his Omega suit crackled again.
"Colonel Ferretti."
"Yes, Kawalsky?"
"The Gate has just opened, Sir," Amy reported. "I haven't touched the dial and I get no response to my signal."
Ferretti frowned. "Get under cover," he ordered.
"Way ahead of you, Sir."
"It's probably nothing, but…"
Alexa winced and staggered a little; she raised a hand to her head.
"Get down and stay down, Kawalsky!" Ferretti ordered. He unhooked his helmet from his belt and swung it over his head. "Sierra-Golf-Seven; full protocols, now!"
Amy crouched in the undergrowth beside the path and watched. She had a clear view of the Gate and she saw what came through it, although she did not quite believe it. They came fast, too fast for her to count, but there were at least two dozen of them, each one blade thin and as pale as a ghost. They had narrow, sexless bodies and hard, angular faces; they were, without question, vampires.
"Between twenty and thirty hostiles," she reported in a whisper. "Heading for the outpost, on foot and at speed. Never seen one in the flesh before, but they appear to be Dragr."
"Stay put," Ferretti ordered. "We're coming to get you."
SG-7 met up in the bay.
"Where's Pearson?" Ferretti asked.
"Not responding," Roberts replied. "He should be out on the perimeter, setting the sensors."
"Dam…Darn it! Well, we can't afford to split up," Ferretti sighed. "We go as fast as we can and get Pearson, then back to the Gate and pick up Kawalsky." He headed for the side of the bay.
"Sir?" Roberts asked.
Merlyn gave a grim smile. "Shotgun!" she called. "Roberts; gunnery." She reached the passenger door and realised that the seat was already occupied.
"You know the rules, Captain," Ferretti reminded Merlyn. "She called it first."
"Yes, Sir," Merlyn conceded. While military protocol overruled the arcane laws of calling shotgun, Alexa did have marginally more experience manning the second position of a Shay hunting jeep than Merlyn.
"You know, I have better reflexes than you Sir," Roberts pointed out. "I really should be driving."
"Your point being?"
"Nothing, Sir."
Roberts obediently climbed into the raised centre seat of the six-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle and activated the cupola weapon, a heavy plasma caster. In the passenger seat, Alexa ran through a similar set of checks for the forward weapons and the navigation systems. All of the passengers made certain that their safety harnesses were fastened; Lieutenant-Colonel Ferretti was a pacey driver.
Ferretti thumbed the ignition stud. "Everyone ready?" he asked, as the engines thundered into life.
Roberts pushed his M181 into a weapon rack on the cabin ceiling and locked it in place with a retaining bolt. "Ready as I'll ever be," he replied.
"I have a lock on Sergeant Pearson's communicator," Alexa announced. "Five hundred yards due East of the doors."
Ferretti nodded. "Then hold on tight," he cautioned.
The engine roared; the six wheels gripped instantly and the jeep was flung forward with incredible speed. Ferretti hurled the vehicle out of the doors, then hauled it around to the East in a shower of mud and rainwater. The jeep's headlight blazed, but even so it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. Although it went against his instincts, Ferretti eased back the throttle lever.
"Any movement from his signal?" he asked.
"None, Sir," Alexa replied, concerned.
Roberts activated the infra-red sensors in the cannon's targeting system. "Heat signatures ahead," he reported. "Too pale for human."
"Sergeant Pearson is a hundred yards away!" Alexa insisted.
"There's no living human out there," Roberts replied, firmly.
Ferretti brought the jeep to a sudden halt as figures materialised through the curtain of rain. Even in these conditions, there could be no mistaking the narrow-bodied creatures that circled around a huddled shape on the ground. At the sight of the jeep, however, they scattered in panic. It was hard to hear past the drumming of the rain on the body-shell, but they could just make out the word 'dhampiri', uttered over and over in a high wail.
"Roberts, Rasputin; keep us covered," Ferretti demanded, releasing his safety harness.
"Sir," Roberts began. "I don't think he's…"
Ferretti turned and fixed Roberts with a steely glare. "We find out for sure."
"Yes, Sir."
Ferretti and Merlyn left the jeep and moved warily forward. They held their MPXs ready, but for the most part they were relying on Roberts to keep them safe and Rasputin to warn them of danger; she could sense the hostility of a powerful, psychic being such as a kalshek'tak before it struck.
"Something is wrong," Roberts muttered. "I can feel it."
As Ferretti approached the mud-caked mound, Alexa started up in alarm. "Kalshek'tak," she whispered. She tapped her communicator switch. "Sir! It's a kalshek'tak!"
The warning was timely. Ferretti sprang back as the vampire leaped up from the ground and struck at his face with a long, hooked dagger. He slipped on the mud and fell onto his back, but that only cleared a line of fire for Roberts and the kalshek'tak was engulfed in a stream of plasma which boiled the rain and transformed the sodden killer into a figure of flame.
All around them, Alexa felt minds that had been carefully suppressing their hunger, rage and fear open up and she almost fainted at the sudden surge of hostility. "Surrounded!" she gasped. "We're surrounded."
Without a second's hesitation, Roberts thumbed the cannon to direct operation and swung the weapon in a wide arc to the left of the jeep, then to the right, laying down a ring of flame which even a kalshek'tak would be hesitant to cross. Ferretti was up again and he and Merlyn were running back to the jeep. The vampires charged through the gap in the ring behind them, but Roberts picked them off with well-aimed bursts of plasma.
Ferretti stumbled into the driving seat and slammed the door closed; Merlyn threw herself in a second later. With nothing in her way, Alexa unleashed a barrage of fire from the forward cannon to further dissuade any pursuers.
"Got some coming in behind," Roberts warned. The cannon swung on its powered gimble and fired twice. "Weapon reserves draining; the plasma chamber needs some time to cycle."
Ferretti strapped himself in and slammed the throttle forward, running down two more vampires and charging blindly into the night, before skidding to a halt facing back towards the enemy. "Sons of bitches must have swiped his transmitter," he snarled. "But where'd they take the rest of him?"
"There's only one place they could have taken him," Merlyn replied. "The only way off this planet."
Only three vampires remained at the Stargate, armed with staff weapons and long, recurved swords. Amy gripped her P90 tightly as she watched them and wondered how much good the weapon would do. If she could take out these three, she could call for reinforcements; her own team at least. She dismissed that idea quickly enough; an archaeological survey unit – even and Air Force archaeological survey unit – would just be meat for the grinder to the likes of the Dragr.
Amy shuffled cautiously closer to the Stargate. The P90 was many things, but although it was impressively accurate for a weapon of its size, it was no sniper's rifle.
Suddenly, the guards at the Stargate snapped to the alert, raising their staff weapons. Amy followed their gaze and saw another half-dozen vampires marching through the rain. Amy did a double-take; the Dragr who had arrived through the Gate had all been dressed in black Jaffa armour; these wore ornate, blood-red body armour, sculpted with ridges, claws and fangs. They carried long-bladed polearms and wore heavy pistols at their hips. They had not brought any packs with them, which meant that these must be a different set of Dragr; a group who had – the thought was appalling, but the conclusion inescapable – already been waiting on the planet when SG-11 arrived; waiting for SG-7. Now they had what they came for and they were leaving.
As they came closer, Amy saw their prize; unconscious, bound and carried between two Dragr, was Sergeant Pearson.
"SG-Seven-niner," she hissed into her radio. "Come in, Seven-niner."
"Go ahead, Eleven-niner." The pick-up on the Omega suit's built-in tac radio was well shielded, but Amy could still hear the drone of an engine in the background.
"There's a group of Dragr at the Gate," she reported. "They have 7-four."
"We're already on our way," Ferretti confirmed. "Do not engage on your own; just try to see the DHD if they leave."
"Confirmed, Seven-niner," Amy agreed, reluctantly. One of the guards was already dialling; he stood between Amy and the DHD, so that she could not see the address. She put her eye to the telescopic sights of her P90, but the magnification was far too slight to make out the symbols, even if the view was not obscured. She set down her weapon within easy reach and took out her field glasses.
The Dragr heard the engine before Amy did. The leader of the guards and the leader of the newcomers both looked up and the latter barked a command in a harsh, guttural tongue. The guard finished dialling the address and signalled for his two subordinates to take Sergeant Pearson through the wormhole, but he did not move from his position.
The red-armoured warriors formed a line before the Stargate, planted their polearms blade-up in the mud and drew their pistols.
"Sir. There's a line of warriors waiting for…" Amy broke off as a seventh armoured Dragr hurried out of the trees opposite her position. He had clearly been sent to scout the flanks and ensure the line was not ambushed, but if the commander had sent a man to sweep in that direction, he must have sent one in the other.
Amy dropped her field glasses and rolled to her right as the polearm blade stabbed down, plunging into the soft earth where her head had been. She reached back for her weapon, but the Dragr ripped his blade from the mud and swept it towards her, forcing her to roll further from her P90. He took a step forward and kicked her weapon away and Amy took this small respite to roll to her feet.
Her opponent stood six-foot-five in his armour and could not have weighed more than one-hundred-and-fifty pounds out of it. He had a long, narrow, pale face with high cheekbones and dark, indigo eyes. His long, black hair was swept back into a sodden ponytail and his lips were twisted into a cruel smile. He narrowed his eyes and licked his lips with a wine-dark tongue.
"I shall take your soul from you," he said, pressing her with his gaze and attempting to paralyse her with his will.
Amy hid her fear with bravado. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
"Kawalsky!" Ferretti yelled. When there was still no reply, he kicked the floor of the jeep in frustration. "No, no, no!"
"Sir," Alexa said. "I think…" she touched a button and the rain disappeared; the world in front of them washed grey as a thermal image was projected onto the windshield. All four of the jeep's occupants could now clearly see the line of kalshek'tak blocking their way; there was no sign of any human in their path.
"Clear the way," Ferretti ordered.
"Yes, Sir," Alexa replied, feeding target data into the jeep's onboard computer.
The weapons in the hands of the vampires began to flash; some solid projectile struck the windshield and a small part of the image went black. White flares cut through the night as the plasma cannon fired.
"Rockets away!" Alexa announced.
Mindful of the DHD and the captive sergeant, she had aimed for the ends of the line. The kalshek'tak were shaken by the impact, but not broken. As the jeep grew nearer, the survivors drew their polearms from the ground and charged it. The leader of the group threw himself over the hood and stabbed straight for the driver's seat. Ferretti slammed the vehicle to the right and the blade sliced through the glass between Ferretti and Alexa, digging six inches into the base of the gunnery chair. The jeep skidded to a halt.
Roberts angled the plasma caster as far down as it would go. "Eyes!" he warned, and a brilliant light bled through the damaged windshield as he pumped three shots into their assailant.
Ferretti's door was ripped open and a kalshek'tak reached in, pale face split by a hideous grin. Without hesitation, Alexa drew her MPX, leaned across in front of her commander and emptied a clip into the leering face. Merlyn opened her own door as another warrior approached and shot him down before he could reach the jeep.
For a moment, all was quiet, then gunshots broke through the silence. The wormhole – and the captive Pearson – beckoned, but somewhere in the trees, Kawalsky was in trouble. In the split second available to him, Ferretti decided.
Amy emptied the clip of her Five-SeveN into the Dragr. Six shots hit harmlessly in the chest, nine in the neck and five in the face, but it barely seemed to register; if there was any effect, it was only to make him angrier.
The Dragr slashed at Amy with his polearm. She ducked one swing and sprang over another, but he was fast as well as strong and he caught her in the gut with the butt end of the weapon. Amy doubled up in pain and his armoured hand caught her around the throat. He lifted her into the air and stared into her eyes, his implacable will striving to overcome her stubbornness and mental training.
"Is this where you tell me how you're going to take me back to your lair and torture me until I beg for death?" Amy choked around the strangler's grip.
"No," he purred and he drove the clawed tips of his gauntlet into her neck. "This is where I kill you."
He planted the polearm in the ground and drew a long, jagged knife with his left hand. Amy kicked out, desperately, but her legs had no strength.
A bullet tore through the Dragr's armour and broke the bones of his wrist. As the sound of the rifle shot reached them, his grip loosened, spasmodically, but did not release. With a last surge of strength, Amy brought both legs up and kicked out at the Dragr's chest. She felt her skin tear as she ripped free of his gauntlet. He half turned and then a stream of white-hot fire engulfed him.
Amy landed hard. She heard the jeep pull up, but it seemed very far away.
"Kawalsky!"
"Colonel," Amy croaked.
Ferretti leaned over her and smiled. "You're going to be okay, Amy," he assured her. "Thanks to Roberts' shooting."
She forced a smile.
"Kawalsky, listen to me," Ferretti said. "Did you see the address where they took Pearson?"
"I'm sorry, Sir," Amy replied. "I tried, but…"
"Not your fault," he assured her. "Rest easy, kid. You did a good job today."
"Thank you, Sir," Amy said. As though he had given her leave with his absolution, she allowed herself to sink into the sweet, black oblivion of unconsciousness.
*
Pearson had no more idea where he was than his team mates did. He was dragged from the Stargate, down corridors and across courtyards. He was held by both arms and his head pulled back so that a thick, bitter liquid with a distinct aniseed aftertaste could be poured down his throat. He spat it out once, but then a pair of crimson eyes met his and his mind yielded before their force. The liquid was poured in again and he swallowed, drinking almost a pint before the will released him. Then he was thrown down onto a soft, yielding surface.
With the greatest of effort, he managed to sit up. He was lying in a four-poster bed, on a soft mattress, with a woman gazing down at him. She had cool, dark red eyes and a sweet smile played across her red lips.
"Where am I?" he demanded, but that effort was all he had left in him and he slumped back onto the bed.
"You are safe," the woman assured him. "You are home." She crossed to sit at his side and stroked his brow with her cool fingers. He shivered, repulsed by her touch. "Sleep now, my darling," she purred. "Have sweet dreams, and I can promise you sweeter awakenings."
*
Stargate Command, Earth
SG-7's debriefing was a sombre affair. Captain Kawalsky was in the infirmary, essentially unscathed, but suffering from a multitude of bruises, abrasions and a few cracked ribs; there was no word of Sergeant Pearson. General O'Neill was clearly troubled by this, but he could not hide the fact that he was distracted by larger concerns. The Replicators were advancing across the galaxy with alarming speed and it seemed unlikely that humankind would live long enough to be troubled by The Scourge again.
"I hate saying it," O'Neill told them, "but we have to look at the…" He gave an almost imperceptible shudder. "…bigger picture. I can't spare anyone to search for Sergeant Pearson until this crisis is past. Once the Replicator threat is ended I will have every SG team we have out combing the galaxy until we find him, but until then…"
"But Pearson could be invaluable in the fight against the Replicators," Ferretti pressed. "He understands machines and they are machines. Moreover, if we wait, we may be too late. If Djanka gains control of The Scourge she will emerge from this crisis as the only power in the galaxy and we won't have a snowball's chance in H…in Hull of stopping her."
"Does she even have access to any Scourge weapons?" O'Neill asked.
"She wouldn't have taken Pearson otherwise," Merlyn assured him. "She had her kalshek'tak élite lying in wait for us on this world and who-knows-how-many others that she knew would be of interest to us. They knew what they were after and they went straight for the sergeant. Now, Djanka has no interest in people except in as much as they can be of use to her. If she didn't need Pearson to fix a machine for her, if this was an opportunistic abduction, she would have taken Roberts, for what he did to her children, Rasputin, because it would hurt Danica, or me, because of my understanding of pre-Ancient phonic resonance."
"Why not take you anyway?" Alexa wondered. "Your ma…abilities would be as useful as Pearson's, surely?"
Merlyn shook her head. "She tried and failed to break me; she'll probably want to pretend she didn't care."
"And I think she's scared of you," Roberts added.
Merlyn blushed.
"SG-7 are one expeditionary team," Ferretti went on. "Our weapons are useless against the Replicators and our tech wizard is missing. There's nothing we can add to this fight and you know it, Sir. We don't know where he is, but we know how to find him and how to get him back. I'm not asking for extra help; just let us go get him. Please."
O'Neill closed his eyes for a moment. "You've got your team, your gear, and anything or anyone who isn't either in use against the Replicators or actually nailed down," he said. "Good luck, Godspeed and try not to break any traffic laws." He stood up and left the briefing room, as though afraid he might change his mind if he stayed.
Ferretti made a triumphant fist. "Yes!" he exclaimed, softly, but there was a desperate edge to his voice.
Alexa was shocked. "You lied to the General!" she accused.
Roberts was more reserved. "So, how do we find him and how do we get him back, Sir?" he asked.
"Damned if I know," Ferretti admitted. "But I didn't lie," he added, sternly. "Lying implies that I expected him to believe me. General O'Neill has to make tough decisions and he's accountable to people who don't always see beyond the numbers. Sometimes he needs to know exactly what's what and sometimes…Sometimes he needs his officers to hand him just the right amount of bull that he can square what he knows is right with what the book tells him is proper. But if you have faith in nothing else then believe that General Jack O'Neill knows bull when he smells it."
"This is why I never want to be promoted," Roberts admitted.
"You'd make a very dashing Captain," Alexa assured him.
"We still have no idea how to get our sergeant back," Merlyn reminded them.
"I'm counting on you and Roberts for that," Ferretti told her. "We need a foolproof plan, or failing that, a crackpot scheme will do as a starter. Lieutenant Rasputin and I will find Pearson; I expect you to know how to retrieve him when we do. Understood?"
"Yes, Sir."
Ferretti nodded. "Dismissed, then." He turned to Alexa as the others left the briefing room. "I'm sorry to have to ask this of you, Lieutenant," he began, but she held up a hand to stop him.
"It's done," she said.
"You don't know what I was going to ask," Ferretti protested, but relief swept through him. He really did hate to ask it of her and he was grateful to think that he might not have to.
Alexa gave a thin, weary smile. "I do." She scribbled something on her notepad.
Ferretti stood and walked around to stand beside her. She had written a time and a Gate address and a single word: 'Ghost'. He put a hand on her shoulder and nodded his head in approval.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said.
*
P89-10K
"Nice neighbourhood," Ferretti drawled.
He and Alexa were huddled in the back of the Gate cavern, where the icy wind did not reach them. P89-10K was a frozen wasteland, with no sign of life besides the Stargate itself and a DHD, tucked away in a cavern to prevent them being buried in the snow.
"There is little here that anyone could want," Alexa replied. "I suppose that makes it a perfect meeting place; who would come here by chance?"
"What's wrong with feeding the ducks in the park?" Ferretti wanted to know.
After what seemed an eternity, surrounded by the din of the howling wind, the Stargate opened and disgorged two pale figures. One was a woman with light blue eyes and almost white hair, who wore an ivory gown and a cloak of white fur; the other was a man, in white armour with a skull helmet. Ferretti and the Phantom stood back as Alexa went forward to greet the woman.
"Hello, Ghost," she said, fondly.
"Alexa Vasiliovna," the Ghost replied. She smiled and added: "Shura. My Lady Danica was surprised to receive your contact," she went on. "It was…unexpected."
"Our need is great," Alexa replied.
The Ghost nodded in understanding. "My Lady regrets that she can not attend in person, but she is pressed hard by the Replicators. Anya is attempting to gather our forces to mount a last resistance and My Lady's presence is urgently required."
"Is…Is she alright?" Alexa asked. "She hid so much when I contacted her."
"She is…unharmed," the Ghost allowed.
Ferretti stepped forward. "Sergeant Pearson has been abducted by kalshek'tak in the service of Djanka," he said, abruptly. "Some of them wore red armour and carried these weapons." He held out a polearm and a pistol. The Phantom accepted them and passed the pistol to the Ghost.
"These are known to us," the Ghost replied after a moment's consideration. She seemed deeply concerned by Ferretti's news. "These are the weapons of an ancient order of kalshek'tak knights, now adopted by the Kalash'rak of Djanka."
"Kalash'rak?" Ferretti asked.
"The Soul Hunters; her élite storm troopers. The blade of the bloodspear can cut through trinium steel and the bore pistol fires a projectile that burrows through the target until it reaches the heart."
Ferretti grimaced. "Eew."
"They are a brutal people, Colonel Ferretti," the Ghost told him. "The Kalash'rak are the most vicious of all; psychopathic killers who live only to kill and maim in the name of their Queen."
"And they have Sergeant Pearson," Alexa said. "Can you help us to find him?"
The Ghost looked deeply grieved. "Finding him will be easy," she assured him. "Djanka has withdrawn most of her forces from battle in preparation for her last, great offensive. She still hounds My Lady, but her efforts seem focused now on overthrowing Lord Baal and asserting dominance over the surviving System Lords. To this end, she has gathered the bulk of her armies and fleet at her primary base." She took a data crystal from within her cloak. "What little we know of the defences, plans of her central fortress and intelligence on the numbers of her followers are contained on this crystal," she explained.
"What does Lady Danica wish in return?" Alexa asked.
"Equipment and specialists to begin the process of automating her mining operations," the Ghost replied. "She refuses to use slave labour and thus needs to increase her efficiency if she is to remain…"
"Competitive?" Ferretti asked. "We can't make promises," he said, "but we'll see what we can do. I'd much rather have Danica on the rise than Baal."
"Also, your promise that Shura will not be harmed," the Ghost added.
"I can not promise that," Ferretti replied.
"You can if she does not accompany you," the Ghost insisted.
Ferretti looked at the young woman. He had learned a great deal about the Ghost when Alexa had made her expanded report regarding her time as a captive of Danica's father, Byelobog. She had been the voice of her god, issuing threats in his name, murmuring bitter nothings to the objects of his twisted seductions. For him, she had mocked and flirted with Alexa and her sister, Vasilisa, in the name of the master whom she hated.
"I can not promise that," Ferretti said again. "Nor can I ask Lieutenant Rasputin to stay behind. Danica knows this," he added, firmly. He held out his hand.
The Ghost hung her head. "She does not ask it," she admitted. After a moment, she handed over the crystal. "But you will look after her, Sir?" she asked.
"I look after all of my people," he assured her.
"There is still a place for her at her sister's side," the Ghost blurted out. "My Lady is in dire need, Shura," she pressed. "If she only had you to stand with her…"
"I can not," Alexa said; it was the third time that she had refused this offer and she knew, somehow, that it would be the last.
The Ghost evidently knew it as well. "I do not think that the offer will ever be made again," she said. "Even if you survive, I doubt very much whether Lady Danica will be alive to make it."
Alexa bit back a sob. Ferretti stepped in front of her. "Enough," he told the Ghost in a voice that was gentle, but firm.
The Ghost nodded once. "You will be facing great danger," she told Ferretti. "This world that you must travel to is not only Djanka's great fortress; it is Nign, the homeworld of the kalshek'tak race. It is a world of eternal darkness where you shall have no advantage over the vampires."
Ferretti shrugged. "We've got Roberts," he reminded her.
"I hope he is enough," the Ghost said. "We have little enough to spare, but My Lady is willing to lend you a squad of Phantoms under the command of Dori'ac."
Ferretti shook his head. "Say thank you, but it would complicate matters," he decided. "We'd better get going," he added. "You take care of yourself, Ghost."
"Yes, Sir."
"And…And take care of that Lady of yours, too," he added, blushing.
"I always do."
Ferretti turned to Alexa and saw a tear in her eye. "Say your goodbyes, Rasputin," he ordered, with false gruffness. "I'm dialling."
"Yes, Sir," Alexa replied.
The Ghost approached Alexa and reached out to brush away the tear.
"You know what she wants," Alexa said.
The Ghost nodded. "She knows that it will not happen, however. I can no more leave her than you could leave them, and I think for the same reason. She needs me. Even if I felt able to betray my mistress, no-one has ever needed me before. I will not betray that."
Impulsively, Alexa took the Ghost's face between hers and pressed her brow against the Ghost's. For a brief moment, she allowed their two minds to touch. They drew apart and their gazes met, both tearful now. Alexa nodded; the Ghost nodded back.
Alexa walked to Ferretti's side. She dried her eyes while he sent his IDC through the wormhole; she would not embarrass him by appearing in the SGC with tears in her eyes.
"Everything good?" he asked.
"Not really."
"Same old same old," Ferretti sighed.
The Gateroom was in uproar, men and women rushing to and fro.
"Stand-by, Colonel Ferretti," Sergeant Davis advised. "Captain Lloyd requests you join her and Lieutenant Roberts on the Gamma Site.
Ferretti nodded. "How soon can we go?"
"Dialling you now, Sir."
The Stargate reopened behind them. There did not seem to be much else to do, so they turned and went through again.
*
SGC Gamma Site, Shayara
The Gamma Site was in almost as excited a state as the SGC. The guard at the Gate had been tripled and heavy weapons deployed. Along the shores of Lake Kawalsky, missile gantries were being assembled. F-302s patrolled the night skies and experimental cannons were being test-fired into the darkness. As the most exposed of the SGC's facilities – and, as the headquarters of the International Experimental Research Group, arguably the most important – the Lake was being readied for battle.
"Colonel Ferretti!"
"Sergeant-Major Davis," Ferretti replied, matching the guard commander's salute.
"Captain Lloyd's sincerest compliments, Sir," the Welshman said, "and she asks will you join her in the flight labs on the east shore."
"Thank you, Sergeant-Major," Ferretti said.
The flight lab was where research was carried out into inertial damping and propulsion. Unlike the stardrive laboratory, the flight lab did not build starships, they took them apart and analysed them. The lab was a hangar, dotted with computers, scanners and test equipment and full to bursting with the parts of crashed, derelict and otherwise defunct spacecraft.
Merlyn hurried across the hangar towards Ferretti and Alexa. "Colonel," she said. "We have a plan."
Ferretti could have wept with pride. "That's my guys!" he told her.
Merlyn looked delighted, but a little apprehensive as well. "It's not one-hundred percent just yet," she admitted. "We're still about a hundred miles south of foolproof, but probably a little way north of crackpot. There are some rough edges to smooth out."
"Give me the rough version," Ferretti said. "You know I'd only get lost in the fine detail."
"Yes, Sir. Well, I got the idea from Djanka herself; from the way she uses her kalshek'tak to strike terror into her enemies," she explained. "We now know that the Goa'uld are afraid of the kalshek'tak because the Dragrsrech was once a major threat to their existence, so I thought: What is it that the Goa'uld and the kalshek'tak both fear? What race were once able to beat them both at their own game?"
"You mean apart from us?" Ferretti asked.
"The Shay," Alexa realised.
"We've had several years to explore this planet and enough Shay equipment has been found for us to effect a pretty good impression of a Shay hunting party. I think we made a good start at this already," she went on. "You saw how Djanka's forces scattered at the sight of a jahl."
"Of a what?" Ferretti asked.
"A jahl; the hunting jeep."
Ferretti nodded. "What was it they were shouting?"
"Dhampiri," Alexa replied. "It means half-vampire; the son of a vampire and a mortal woman who possesses the ability to penetrate a vampire's cloak of invisibility and to strike a mortal blow against them."
"Well, that may be so," Merlyn allowed, "but it's also the Dragr word for the Shay; much as kalshek'tak and Galash'rak are Goa'uld for Dragr and Shay. Anyway; Djanka's forces are already on edge. If we do this right, we'll appear to be their nightmares made flesh. That should give us an edge; hopefully enough of one to get to Pearson, destroy Djanka's Scourge cache and get out again."
"You think it would work?" Ferretti asked.
"I think it'll take a miracle, Sir," Merlyn admitted.
Ferretti shrugged. "Well it's a good thing you believe in miracles then."
*
The Fortress of Night, Nign
Alexander Pearson woke from dreams of darkness with a throbbing head. He felt as though a second brain had been forced into his skull alongside his own and only just removed, leaving his skull close to bursting and his grey matter compressed into a painful, squelching mass. He remembered little of what he had dreamed, but what he could recall left him feeling cold.
He moved slightly and someone else moaned, softly. He became aware of soft, silken sheets, the heady aroma of incense and the warmth of another body in the bed beside him. An arm slid over him and he felt a woman's form press up against his back. For a moment, a sense of chilling wrongness swept over him, before being swept up in a tide of confusion.
A hand toyed with the hair around his ear; long, hard fingernails gently scratched his skin. A woman's voice, low, throaty and seductive, purred in his ear: "You are awake at last, my beloved Alexander."
Slowly, feeling as though he were still dreaming, Pearson pulled away from the woman's embrace and rolled over to face her. He found himself staring into a pale face with huge, red eyes and a smiling mouth.
"Where am I?" he asked. A sense of déjà vu gripped him; he had asked that question before. For a moment, he remembered being carried into this room and the feeling of a will that was not his own forcing him to swallow a bitter drink, but then the memory slipped away from him.
"You are safe," she assured him. "You are home." She caught him in a possessive embrace and forced a hungry kiss on his mouth.
Pearson stood in the shower and let the hot water stream over him. He felt relief as muck and stale sweat sloughed from his skin, but his mind still seemed mired in a haze of weariness and confused desire. He rubbed his hands together, felt the slim band of gold around the third finger of his left hand; the ring that Djanka had given him at their wedding and his brow furrowed. He knew that Djanka was his wife, his love, his life; he knew that he had married her, here in the Fortress of Night of Nign. He knew these things to be true, to have happened, but he could not remember them.
"It will come back to you," Djanka had assured him, but when she told him that their children, Asreth and Yanis, had been slain by the soldiers of the SGC he had not been able to call up their faces in him mind. Surely, he should know his own children?
He shut off the water, dried himself and dressed in the dark robes that Djanka's handmaidens had set out for him. He pulled on his shoes, and then looked up, aware that he was being watched. Djanka sat on the edge of the bed, watching him with lazy eyes, black dress cut low and slit to the waist over skin-tight pants; a vision to die for, yet his feelings were muted by uncertainty. Again, he knew that he loved her, knew that he wanted her; he just could not seem to feel it.
"Tell me again what is happening," Pearson said.
"Between them, the envious System Lords, the barbaric SGC and the unclean Replicator hordes have driven us back to our last stronghold," Djanka replied. "They took you, the SGC, and they attempted to brainwash you; to turn you against me, my beloved Alexander."
"Xander," he corrected, absent-mindedly. Alexander sounded wrong; it was not him.
"You see!" she snapped, angrily. "They have even tried to change your name! You are Alexander; my brave, beautiful consort." Djanka leaped to her feet and hurried towards him. She stroked his face with cool, tender fingers. "They have done you so much harm, my love. I only pray that you have time to become yourself once more. And" – she added, coyly – "that you remember how to activate the weapons in the cache."
He fixed her with his gaze. "Weapons?"
*
SG-7 briefed in the office of the flight lab. Alexa fetched a reader for the Goa'uld crystal and they examined the plans which the Ghost had given them. The Fortress of Night was a towering structure, carved from the basalt of Volspa, the Dragr's holy mountain, as a symbol of Djanka's dominance.
"Looks pretty solid," Ferretti noted. "Only realistic way in is this courtyard, but we'd have to get there from the air."
"Or from space," Roberts replied.
Ferretti raised an eyebrow. "Space?"
Merlyn smiled. "About six months ago, one of the reconnaissance units found a Shay hangar about six miles west of here. They recovered three ships, identified from files in the hangar computers as druj'ha; loosely translated, 'assassins', although the researchers call them bats."
"Essentially, they're safari vessels," Roberts explained. "Small, fast, long-range; a Shay hunting party could cruise around the galaxy for several months, or until they filled the hold with trophies."
"A sort of space-going Jeep Cherokee?" Ferretti asked.
Roberts nodded. "Of course, given their hunting habits, the Shay loaded for bear, or more specifically, snake."
"Which means that the druj'ha is less of a Cherokee and more of a tactical heavy fighter," Merlyn finished. "And they seem to be in perfect working order."
"Cool."
"What about nanite infection?" Alexa asked. "Without the Omega suits we'll be vulnerable."
Merlyn nodded in agreement. "One of the technicians is fitting out a series of Shay hunting suits with nanite shields as we speak," she promised. "They should provide almost as much biohazard protection as an Omega suit."
"And far better armour," Roberts added. "Just try not to lose them; we only have a handful."
"Most importantly, we will look like Shay hunters," Merlyn said. "Unfortunately, to complete the illusion, we will have to use Shay weapons, which we are not so used to as our own. Lieutenant?"
Roberts nodded in acknowledgement and led the team to another table, where he had laid out a selection of weapons. "The plasma casters we've seen before," he began. "Just remember to set the field constrictors to high or we could end up splashing ionised, superheated hydrogen over each other. We also have a number of spear throwers, designed to penetrate the armour and thoracic shield of a Dragr and these little beauties." He held up a bulky pistol. "Short-ranged, but fires a heavy explosive bolt, designed to penetrate armour and cause massive internal damage."
"Nasty," Ferretti commented.
Roberts gave a grim smile. "If it all gets too close for comfort," he finished, "we'll each have a kal'hek mimetic stake and a tchul'da sword. I suggest you stick to the kal'hek as its weight and balance are similar to the combat knives you're used to. If you've never fought with a sword before, you don't want to be waving a tchul'da around near anyone you know or care about."
"I can use a sword," Alexa said.
Her team mates turned to stare at her.
"Not competitively, perhaps," she admitted, "but my father believes himself to be the blood descendant of Genghis Khan; I learned the sabre along with my alphabet."
Roberts shrugged. "Better than nothing," he allowed. "Anyway, our objective will be to avoid close combat. If she wants him to activate the weapons, Djanka will have Pearson in the cache chamber." He returned to the plans of the Fortress of Night. "Assuming that Danica's information is accurate, the size of the cache has required her to knock through several chambers into one, weakening the internal defensive configuration of the fortress. From the courtyard, it should be relatively simple to gain access to the cache via this staircase here and bring Pearson back to the ship."
"And if he's not in the cache chamber?" Ferretti asked.
"Cells are here," Roberts explained. "Bit of a walk, but only one, straight corridor; easy enough to keep it clear with a pair of plasma casters."
"Sounds easy as cake," Alexa said. "I presume there is a catch."
Merlyn gave a rueful smile. "The catch is that we have to do all of this and return to either the ship, or to the Gateroom here, before we are overwhelmed by the superior physical and psychic might of the several hundred kalshek'tak within the fortress."
"We need to move very fast," Roberts said, "and we have absolutely no time to practice. We can keep in touch with the Black Tower here on Shayara – the ship is equipped with a form of quantum resonance transmitter – but there won't be any back-up and it's all-too likely that we'll get back to find that our planet has been eaten by the Replicators anyway. We will be descending into the mouth of oblivion to rescue a friend from the clutches of a demon, while all the fiends of hell are let loose upon our world."
Ferretti shook his head. "When you see a quarter lying on the sidewalk, I bet you think: 'Hey! Someone was mugged here!'" he accused. "Straight up, no poetry, what do you reckon our chances are if we follow this plan?"
"Slim," Merlyn admitted.
"Slim to none," Roberts amended, "which is a whole lot better than if we try to storm the castle or assault through the Gate without support."
"Right. So, we have a crazy plan, a futile plan and a doomed plan?" Ferretti stood for a long while, seemingly lost in thought. At last, he shrugged. "Crazy it is, then."
*
Djanka clutched Pearson's arm as though terrified that he would be snatched away from her again. He felt a warm glow at the knowledge that she was so devoted, so dependent on him, but still that nagging feeling of wrongness persisted.
"After you were taken, I almost fell victim to despair," she explained. "I can breed children and train Jaffa and my command of the kalshek'tak is absolute, but only you have the…" She paused, as though searching for the word. She pushed her hand under his shirt and caressed the skin above his heart, seeming to find the turn of phrase she sought there. "The gift to make the ancient weapons function. I knew that, without you, we would fall to Lord Baal, or to the SGC, or the Replicators.
"I retreated here to gather my remaining forces, for one last, desperate stand, as I thought. But here I found strength and courage and I determined that I would have you back, even if only to die with me."
"I…don't plan on dying," Pearson assured her. He raised his free arm to ward off something that brushed against the skin of his temple; it did not seem to do much good. His head twitched and he became away of a distant murmuring sound. "What is that?"
"You sense it?" Djanka asked. "Fascinating. You truly are gifted."
Pearson felt annoyed. "Did you ever doubt it?" he snapped.
Djanka's eyes widened in anger and for a moment it seemed that she might attack, but she mastered her temper. "Of course not, my beloved husband. But please, do not raise your voice to me. You know how protective my warriors can be. I should" – her tongue flickered hungrily across her lips once more – "hate to see you harmed in any way." She smiled, broadly, and the dangerous light in her eyes was stilled. "I was merely surprised by how swiftly your faculties are returning after your ordeal. That is good; I am certain now that you can restore function to the weapons in the cache before we are overrun.
"What you hear are the voices of the weapons, muted at present by my kalshek'tak. Once you have tamed them, we can remove that restraint and give them free rein. It will be glorious, my love."
She led him on towards the cache and the murmuring voices grew louder and more ominous. Pearson shrank back from them for a moment, then something clicked inside his mind; the voices no longer seemed fearful, they were welcoming. He felt a pull more powerful by far than his attraction to Djanka. He disentangled himself from her arm and almost ran towards the welcoming drone of the Song of The Scourge.
*
Alexa squirmed uncomfortably as a technician helped her into her Shay battle suit, a system of overlapping armoured plates, connected by a membrane of thick, black, rubbery fabric. Merlyn and Roberts seemed almost built to fit into the black carapace, but to judge by their armour, all Shay – male and female – were five-ten or taller. Alexa also had a few issues with the helmet.
"I don't know if you'd noticed, but it has no eyeholes," she told Roberts.
"That's what this is for," he explained. He took a lightweight headset from a rack and placed it gently on Alexa's head. Two soft stalks slipped into her ears and a curving strip sat close in front of her eyes. It was rather loose, but at the touch of Roberts' finger on one of the earpieces it constricted to fit perfectly to her head.
"So the helmet has no eyeholes because I already have this thing blocking my vision?" she asked.
The technician took her left wrist and held it up. There was a control panel on the back of this sleeve. "Systems activation code is one-one-sey-ko-bree-seven," he explained, entering this code using a keypad labelled in the Shay alphabet and numerical system.
"Why didn't I think of…bozhe moi!" Alexa's vision expanded so that she could see Merlyn standing almost directly behind her. At the same moment, her hearing became sharper; a distant murmuring in the next room was suddenly crystal clear. She staggered and almost fell.
Roberts caught hold of her and steadied her on her feet. "Easy there," he cautioned. "It could take several minutes to get used to the sensory feed. The helmet will help."
He took her helmet and slipped it over her head. As he did so, she realised that a part of her disorientation came from being able to see normally, as well as though the sensors, so that she had two mismatched images for her brain to struggle with. By blacking out her normal senses, things were made clearer.
"You're seeing and hearing through sensors implanted across the helmet's surface," the technician explained. "Before that you were just seeing through the headset's own imagers. In either case, your field of vision is now approximately two-hundred-and-twenty degrees; not quite eyes in the back of your head, but close. The headsets also incorporate your communications and can be tuned to receive a sensor feed from the ship."
"This is very confusing," Alexa complained.
"You'll get used to it," Roberts assured her. "Once your head stops spinning a little, try walking around to get the hang of it; you'll adjust quickly once your kinaesthetics kick in."
"I just wish the fit was better," she sighed. "I feel like a dwarf in this thing."
Roberts took her wrist again and touched a control. At once, the armour seemed to shrink, the connecting membrane contracting and even the armoured plates seeming to melt away at the edges, until it was a perfect fit.
The technician stared. "I had no idea it could do that," he confessed.
Merlyn turned to look at Roberts.
"It just made sense it would do that," he said, defensively. "All the suits we found were the same size and, although it's possible the Shay were all identical clones…It just seemed logical."
"I didn't say anything." Merlyn tried the same control and her suit changed shape, subtly, to accommodate her build and figure.
Tentatively, Alexa tried standing up and took a few experimental steps. At first it was very confusing, seeing things as they went past and around behind her, but slowly she found her bearings and was able to move quite freely.
"What do you think?" Merlyn asked.
"It's very flattering, as body armour goes," Alexa admitted. "I am unconvinced of the seductive benefits of a screaming demon face mask, but it's certainly figure-hugging."
"I meant to wear."
"Actually very comfortable." Alexa paused. "I think I just worked out what the mask is for," she said. "It is hard to tell if someone is serious or joking if you can not see their face; likewise, you can not tell if your opponent is afraid. If a Shay hunter were afraid, this suit would conceal that."
Roberts nodded. "Same principle as Samurai face-masks; an element of practical defence coupled with an emotional barrier and a sense of mystical protection, of course," he added, with a nod in Merlyn's direction.
"Warding off the evil spirits," she agreed. "I wonder if the Shay were that primitive or if this was a more deliberate psychological tool?" She shook her head. "For another time," she decided. "Colonel Ferretti is waiting in the druj'ha," she said.
"Will he be able to fly it?" Alexa asked.
Roberts nodded. "The flight systems of the Munin were based on a Shay control set-up; they won't be unfamiliar to him."
As always, Roberts seemed utterly at ease in the Shay armour, as he was in an Omega suit. Merlyn and Alexa found themselves caught out occasionally by their expanded peripheral vision, but Roberts seemed to have no problems.
"It's very like an Omega suit," Alexa mused. "Only lighter."
"Well, the Omegas are based on Anubis' supersoldier armour," Merlyn reminded her, "and there's a good chance that he based the kull armour on Shay technology. Apparently it's best to try and forget that you're wearing armour at all; the connecting membrane contains pseudo-muscular structures which assist movement; if you try to move as though you're carrying a load, you might overcompensate."
"Like walking in low gravity," Roberts added. "The important thing is to keep your feet on the ground."
"What about shooting," Alexa asked. "I can move with my vision like this, but…"
"Targeting is built in," Roberts assured her. "With any Shay weapon in your hand you'll get a projected crosshairs and a basic range indicator. It won't be quite as good as trusting your own instinctive skill, but the difference should be compensated by the target-rich environment."
"Oh joy."
Roberts opened the door to the main hangar and they went in. "And there she is," he whispered. "Our ship."
The druj'ha was one of the most intimidating vessels that Alexa had ever seen. It was sleek and black, with broad wings and it did indeed look for all the world like a giant bat. It was also armed; turrets projected on the spine of the ship and on either side of the undercarriage; another cannon was mounted beneath the nose and missile batteries hung beneath each wing. The entire vessel seemed to ooze menace; no wonder the kalshek'tak would fear it and Lieutenant Roberts loved it.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ferretti emerged from the hatch as they approached. He seemed to have adapted well to the armour, but was still a little unsteady on his feet. "We should keep these headsets on during the flight," he said. "Give us time to get used to them. We've got another hour until we're ready for launch; I suggest we all take a little time to train with the Shay weapons."
Alexa watched a bulky object being pulled up the ramp into the hold on a small trolley.
Ferretti followed her gaze, despite the helmet. "Disruptor-modulated micronuke," he said. "We've got enough d-bombs to take out a temple twice the size of anything we've met before; hopefully it'll be enough for Djanka's cache. Should make a pretty mess of her castle as well."
Alexa waited for Merlyn and Roberts to move away, and then she removed her helmet and her headset. "Colonel," she called, softly.
Ferretti took off his own helmet and looked at Alexa, expectantly.
"You do not believe that we will return," she noted.
"I never said…"
"It is as you said when we first met The Scourge," Alexa went on. "If we go down, you wish to 'take plenty of the bastards with us'. That is why you have brought the micro-nuclear device."
"It's a contingency plan," Ferretti assured her.
"I want to rescue Sergeant Pearson," Alexa said. "What do you want, Sir?" she demanded. It was insubordination and the fact that Ferretti did not call her on it spoke volumes. "Sir?"
"I want that bitch to pay for what she's done," he admitted. "She has tortured my officers, abducted my sergeant and sent…" he broke off. "And I want to wipe her off the face of the universe," he finished.
Alexa's pulse raced. "And will you sacrifice us to do that?"
"Never," Ferretti assured her. "That bomb doesn't go off if any of you can still make it out."
"And you."
Ferretti did not reply.
"Colonel?"
"Get some practice," he told her.
*
Pearson looked down on the cache chamber and he smiled. He knew, although once more without the confirmation of memory, that he shared with Djanka a deep and passionate dedication to a singular cause: The accumulation of power. As surely as he knew this, he knew that what he was looking at was more than a collection of deactivated and sedated Scourge weapons; it was power.
Djanka had collected a vast number of weapons and stored them in this vast cavern. The gallery on which they stood ringed the chamber and it was lined with dozens upon dozens of kalshek'tak, all focusing their mental force into suppressing The Scourge. Pearson hardly spared the vampires a second glance; he had eyes only for the machines. He looked down at them in wonder and he knew them. He knew their capabilities and he knew their weaknesses. He knew their needs and he knew their names; the names that were buried in their nature as concepts, not as words.
There were war machines…No, he realised; they were harvesters. They were the collectors of souls, which gathered the living beings who would fuel the rest of The Scourge and brought them to the temples. There were dozens of them, each one just waiting for a pilot to give them life. He knew also that they called their unwilling partners lovers, and that in its way this was an accurate description.
There were attack sleds; doomgivers. These craft had no extraneous parts, only the siphon chambers, a drive, a simple Mind and an annihilator cannon. They existed only to bring destruction; their own survival was meaningless. Pearson could have wept in awe at such beautiful simplicity.
Djanka had chosen well; she had taken none of the complex structures that required the guidance of a central Mind; no simulacrum generators, no long-range transmitters or nanite missiles. Every weapon here could function autonomously, under the control of a little Mind, responding to the superior control of a true Mind if one were present, but not dependent on it. This meant that she did not need to bring a greater Mind into her fortress, but it also meant that each weapon, once activated, would seek to return to the control of a Hive, taking as many 'lovers' as possible with it.
"The key must lie in overriding the central…consciousness is the wrong word; the imperative will of the little Mind without disabling the nervous system which enables operation," he mused. "If that were possible, then the chosen pilot could exercise full control of the machines…"
"And I exercise full control over the pilots," Djanka concluded. "Can you do it, my darling?"
Pearson ignored her and made his way down to the chamber floor. At the centre of the great cavern was the prize of the collection, a massive annihilator – that which ends eternity, was the Scourge name – powered by a dozen siphons. It could not fly; it only needed to point and shoot, so it had the simplest of Minds. It would be the easiest of the weapons to override and it would also be the most useful if the Replicators were to attack.
"Can you do it?" Djanka demanded, impatiently. She was not a woman used to being disobeyed.
"Yes, yes," Pearson replied, offhandedly. He could not be bothered with Djanka's feelings at the moment. The Song was rising all around him and he saw only the vast power to be harnessed here. All else was triviality; only the work mattered. "Leave me," he ordered. "Have someone bring me tools and food as I need it; otherwise, I am not to be disturbed."
With his eyes glued to the great cannon, he did not see the venomous glower that Djanka directed towards his back. She turned to one of her servants. "Bring him anything he needs," she told the man, "and keep him working. If I must face this insolence, I shall have my use of him."
*
The druj'ha had a cockpit, six cabins, a common area and a hold. The hold included an armoury locker and would have taken the jahl had they not filled it with munitions – a decision which Ferretti had not taken lightly. The common area was divided into a sort of lounge with benches against the walls and a table and chairs in the centre and a compact kitchen. This left only a little room, so the cabins – located beneath the floor of the common area – were Spartan cells and the cockpit was only large enough for one pilot and a navigator.
Ferretti, assisted by Merlyn, handled the ship through take-off and hyperlaunch. After a few hours, they changed places with the two lieutenants. Neither Roberts nor Rasputin was a pilot, but they were capable of watching the dials as the ship flew through the uneventful kaleidoscope of hyperspace.
Ferretti and his 2IC retreated to the kitchen for coffee and MREs; they sat and ate in discontented silence.
"I think…" Merlyn began, then she stopped.
"Permission to speak freely and off the record," Ferretti said.
"I think that Djanka must have learned about Pearson's abilities from either me or Lieutenant Roberts," she admitted. "I don't want to sound vain, but I'm fairly certain that it was Roberts. He himself admits to losing consciousness under Yanis' assault and he said that they discussed learning something from his mind."
Ferretti nodded, slowly. "This had occurred to me," he agreed. "She had to have learned it from somewhere."
"I'm a little worried about what else she might have learned."
"You may have a point," Ferretti said with a shrug, "but I'm willing to bet she didn't get much. He's a tough nut, Roberts; just like you. What worries me…"
"Sir?"
"Do you think he's worked this out?"
"He is very smart," Merlyn replied. "Whether he has or he hasn't, I think he blames himself for letting anyone get snatched."
"You think I don't?" Ferretti demanded, suddenly defensive.
"No, Sir," Merlyn assured him, "but people deal with failure in different ways. I think Roberts is probably experiencing something of a crisis of self-worth; best if we don't do anything to exacerbate the situation."
"So what do we do?"
Merlyn shrugged. "Press on with the mission," she said. "I think the best thing for him right now is to have something else to occupy his mind."
"She feels unhappy; like we're holding her back," Roberts noted. "Just feel the vibration."
"I can't feel much else," Alexa assured him.
"Can you check the engine readouts?"
"I don't know," Alexa replied, honestly. "What's the Shay for 'engine readouts'?"
"Ja kê suto," Roberts replied.
A heads-up display appeared on the main screen. To Alexa's untrained eye, the graphs on the display certainly appeared to be engine readouts. She turned her head and the display moved with her; she realised that far from appearing on the screen, it was in fact projected directly into her eyes by the headpiece.
"Thanks," Roberts said.
"What for?" Alexa asked.
Roberts turned to look at her; his face was hidden, but she could read the confusion in his body language. "The displays," he explained.
"I didn't do that," Alexa assured him. "I thought you did."
"I didn't touch anything. The status controls are on your side."
Alexa felt a trickle of fear creep up her back. "Then who brought up the display."
"Bris suka," Roberts said, tentatively.
At once, a woman's voice answered. "Fi nada. Trini bris suka toola nejê broto fesil." Alexa thought that she must be speaking through the earpieces, but the communication channel was so clear that it was hard to be sure. "Qua na brico fesi."
Roberts seemed almost as startled as Alexa. "Bra na Lieutenant Timothy Roberts," he said. "Fala nê Lieutenant Alexa Rasputin. Bri sa Roberts; fal sa Alexa, su Shura. Meklo dan, kala na Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Ferretti, kal sa Colonel; fala nê Captain Meredith Lloyd, fal sa Merlyn."
"Chola pa." Another display appeared.
"Lieutenant, are you introducing us to this spaceship?" Alexa asked, although it did not in fact seem that odd. Now that it was addressing them, she realised that there was an awareness in this ship; like the computers in the outpost on P96-H18, the ship's systems were not quite intelligent or alive, but neither were they entirely inert.
He shrugged. "She wanted to know who we were before she authorised us to access computer-aided weapon status. "Qua nê fesilan?" he asked.
There was a long silence.
"Tiya nê Wilhelmina," Roberts said.
There was a pause. "Brê sa Wilhelmina," the ship said.
"Right," Roberts said. "Now she has a name, let's see if we can start teaching her a little English."
"Tell me honestly, Merlyn," Ferretti said. "Do you think we'll be alright?"
"If we have faith," Merlyn replied.
Ferretti chuckled. "I was thinking on a more immediate level," he admitted.
"So was I," Merlyn assured him. "Eternally-speaking, you'd have to convert to Catholicism to even have a chance of being alright."
"Do you really believe that?" Ferretti asked.
"I…I don't know," Merlyn admitted. "Everything I was raised to believe says that it is the plain and simple truth, I just don't want to think that my friends are damned. I think that's the thing; I do believe it, I just don't want to."
"This is why I quit," Ferretti told her. "I have enough doubt and uncertainty in my life without adding religion to the mix."
"I don't think that religion creates confusion," Merlyn replied. "My faith in God gives me one certainty, even when everything else is in doubt."
"Oh, I still believe in God," Ferretti assured her. "Mama Ferretti didn't raise no atheist. I just turned off religion. What brought you into the military, anyway? I mean, you're not my first Catholic 2IC, but the Kawalskys were an Air Force family. Where do you fit in?"
"It's about order, Colonel," Merlyn replied. "I need structure in my life; the Air Force gives me that. After college I did a lot of soul-searching, tying to choose which way to go. I knew I needed that structure, so I had two choices."
"Army and Air Force?"
"Military or the Benedictines," Merlyn corrected.
It took only a few hours for Wilhelmina – having been given the name, the ship now responded to it, or to Mina, without question – to gain a solid working knowledge of English and even a few words of Russian. The ship's computer was plainly an incredibly flexible and sophisticated piece of equipment and seemed almost to possess intelligence, although that was likely an illusion created by good programming. Likewise, it was almost certainly Alexa's imagination that lent the cultured, feminine voice with its strange, alien inflections a particular warmth when addressing Roberts.
"Of course, we should probably not start giving her too many commands in English after such a brief introduction," Roberts suggested. "She has a highly specialised vocabulary and I suspect that any translation would introduce a potentially deadly uncertainty."
Roberts had clearly enjoyed teaching the computer and, furthermore, had succeeded in increasing the ship's speed by almost seventy percent and reducing the vibrations in the hull to a gentle thrum. It seemed that the technicians at the Gamma Site, armed only with a limited grasp of Shay language, had erred severely on the side of caution. Once in conference with the ship itself – or herself, as he insisted – he had also been able to call up a wealth of performance data to help him ascertain Wilhelmina's precise capabilities.
Alexa had also found herself enjoying the process; it was a good way to keep her mind from her various fears for the safety of her comrades and she felt safer for knowing that the ship was in some way on their side.
"Mina; are you equipped to read Goa'uld data crystal?" Roberts asked.
"I am equipped to read all forms of enemy data storage for intelligence gathering purposes," she assured him. "This vessel has been optimised for use in the Alshar K'rek."
A panel in the main console opened and Roberts inserted the Ghost's crystal. An access screen was projected before them.
"Alshar K'rek?" Alexa asked.
"The crusade – K'rek – against the Alshar. Alshar is 'tyrant'; in later dialect used specifically of the Goa'uld." Roberts began running over the data again.
Alexa could feel his excitement at exploring this new ship; an excitement that was as genuine as, if less intense than, the joy that Colonel Ferretti took in fast cars. But beneath that, there was pain. He had been suffering since his capture by Djanka almost a month before and torturing himself over what she might have learned. Now he was sure that he was responsible for Pearson's capture and that certainty would eat at him until they got the sergeant back. He would not share his pain with anyone; that was his way.
But Alexa had her own pain and it was becoming too much for her to bear alone. "I'm concerned about the Colonel," she told him.
"I know," Roberts replied. "You don't hide it very well."
Alexa looked away, but with her expanded field of vision it was almost impossible for her to turn far enough to remove Roberts from sight. Anyway, she could still feel him looking at her.
"He doesn't mean to snap at you," Roberts assured her.
"He does not trust me."
Roberts sighed. "Actually, I think he's worried that he's letting you down," he said. "He likes to bottle things up, does the Colonel; he's a lot like me in that respect. The last thing he wants is some snotty lieutenant coming and looking right through his shell; it makes him feel exposed." He took her shoulder and turned her back to face him. "He wants to look after us, Alexa," he explained. "He can't do that if we worry about him."
"I can't help worrying. It's like he wants to give his life protecting us."
"Well, that is worrying," Roberts agreed, uncertainly. "I just don't think you'll help by showing him your concern; it makes him think he isn't doing his job right. We just have to be there if and when he needs us." He sighed. "Do keep an eye on him, though. Let Merlyn and me know if he seems about to do something foolish."
"I shall," Alexa agreed. "Thank you."
"Thank you," Roberts replied.
Alexa almost asked him what he was thanking her for, but she realised that his pain had lessened, just from sharing hers. She sat back in her seat and watched as he planned; as near as could be expected in the circumstances, she felt content.
*
The engineer worked. He had no name, no will, no anima of his own; he was merely a part of the greater whole that was The Scourge. All his being was bent to repairing the machines that would gather the souls and open the Gate and wake the Minds, and bring The Scourge back to the galaxy. Each of the little Minds that he touched in his passing saw in him the promise of boundless nourishment; of a world full of life, with which The Scourge across the galaxy could wake and once more bring war to their ancient foes. How the scaled ones would scream when the race they thought destroyed rose once more to rain destruction down upon them.
Pearson drew back from the annihilator with a start. He shook his head and felt the psychic tentacles of The Scourge clutch possessively at his mind as he dragged it free of their influence. He was aware at some level that his defences had been weakened, his mind laid open before that pervasive influence. He had felt its tendrils take root in his mind once before, but then he had been poisoned by vector nanites and saved only by…by…He could not remember who had saved him, but he knew that he had been saved and that he hated her – Her! It was a woman, then – for what she had done.
But why do I hate her? He wondered. Did I want to be one with The Scourge?
Banishing such fruitless thoughts, he reached back into the annihilator. He had carefully cut through the outer shell of nano-deposited chitin, and then peeled back the weapon's fleshy interior to expose the casing of the little Mind. Now he reached through the healing gash and grasped the casing.
Images assaulted his mind, pounding in on him from without and welling up at the same time from a dark and violent part of his soul. He saw cities laid waste, men and women running in terror. He saw the sea boiling and millions of creatures screaming in agony as it happened. He saw worlds from space, their surfaces a featureless mass of molten rock and knew that they had once been home to billions of peaceful people. He felt the helpless terror and the degradation of the poor, suffering souls who were encased within the siphon chambers, forced to watch as The Scourge abused their strength to slaughter their kin.
Pearson saw all of this and he revelled in it. He cracked open the Mind casing and exposed the soft, frail brain within. It looked almost exactly like a human brain, but smaller and smoother; this was just a little Mind, after all and did not require great sophistication. He saw the brain lying there, helpless and quivering with a vitality so weak that it could not be deemed more than a vestige of life. He longed to smash it to the floor and crush it beneath his boot, all for the pleasure of hearing its scream echo in his mind.
But that would have defeated his purpose. He did not want the annihilator dead, just compliant.
He was utterly engrossed in his study of this thing, so fragile, yet capable of such destruction. When a hand touched his arm, he started and almost dropped the Mind in spite of himself. He turned to face Djanka, and for a moment a feeling of pure revulsion rippled through him; revulsion for the Mind, for The Scourge, for the woman with the cold and deadly smile and even for himself and what he was doing.
Then the moment was passed and he felt only anger at the interruption.
"Does it go well, my love?" Djanka purred.
"It would go better if I were allowed to work without interruption," Pearson said, tightly, adding as an afterthought: "My dear. As you can no doubt not see, I have to reverse the cerebral connections between the little Mind and one of these siphon chambers, so that one of the donors will be able to feed target commands to the machine. It is complicated work and I can not do it if I am constantly forced to stop and explain myself to you."
Djanka's hard eyes bored into him, glittering like jet set in garnet. If he could sense the danger in that glower, Pearson was untroubled by it.
"If you are left alone, how soon can you be ready?" Djanka pressed.
"Soon," Pearson replied.
Djanka left him to his work, striding off with a handmaiden trotting at her heels. The girl wore a dress that encased her legs in a snug tube, forcing her to take tiny steps; to keep up with Djanka's long paces, she almost had to run. Djanka enjoyed watching others struggle.
"I wished to make us of a like mind," the Queen mused. "I think that perhaps I did too good a job. He was naturally far more servile, but I was afraid that I would leave him too vulnerable to the control of the weapons if he were too meek. Do try to keep up, girl!"
"Yes, My Queen," the girl panted, wearily.
They walked along the passageway and a Jaffa rounded the corner ahead of them. He was dressed in the black armour of the Skull Guard, but a pair of curled horns decorated his helmet. He fell to his knees before he came within a hundred yards of his Queen and she stopped to let him shuffle up to meet her.
"Baphomet," she purred.
"My Queen," her First Prime replied. The role of First Prime in Djanka's army was less glorious than the equivalent rank in the service of a System Lord, for he did not command her kalshek'tak soldiers. Nevertheless, Baphomet was an honoured title and the incumbent was her most loyal and devoted servant. "I bring grave news," he announced. "An enemy vessel has arrived in this system. It will be here within the hour."
Djanka turned to her handmaiden. "Tell my beloved husband that 'soon' will be within one hour or not at all," she ordered.
The handmaiden bowed. "Yes, My Queen."
"Do you know which of our enemies approaches?" Djanka asked, idly.
"It is…" Baphomet struggled to contain his fear. "It is the Replicators."
A scream echoed along the passage from the direction of the cache chamber; it seemed that Sergeant Pearson had not been pleased to be interrupted again. Djanka shook her head. "I should have kept him more servile," she decided.
*
"This vessel will arrive in the Nign system in fifteen minutes."
Ferretti dragged himself away from sleep and with an annoyed grunt forced himself to get up. He pulled on his headset and helmet.
"I say again; this vessel will arrive in the Nign system in fifteen minutes."
"Lieutenants; I seem to recall you were supposed to wake Captain Lloyd and me some time ago," he grumbled. "How long have you been on duty?"
"Five hours, Sir," Roberts replied.
"Five…?" The chronometer in his suit confirmed Roberts' assertion. "Then what the h…hey are we doing fifteen minutes out from Nign?" As he asked this, another question made its way to the forefront of his sleep-addled brain. "And who made that announcement?"
The team gathered over coffee for a last briefing before their arrival; the news that Roberts and Rasputin had been talking to the ship was – Ferretti felt – just not the shock that it should have been.
"We are so far from SOP it's not even funny anymore," he sighed. "Still, good work with the engines, Roberts."
"That was Mina," Roberts demurred.
"Well done, Min…" Ferretti caught himself. "Why bother paying compliments to a stupid machine?" he groused.
"Careful, Sir," Roberts chided. "You'll hurt her feelings."
Ferretti frowned. "And you're sure that 'she' can get us in and out?"
"We have examined the weapon specifications carefully," Alexa assured him. "This is a most formidable vessel. Mina has also revealed to us a host of stealth systems that we simply did not know she had."
"Attention; one minute to Nign system. Prepare for deceleration."
"Shouldn't someone be in the cockpit?" Merlyn asked.
"Mina is a better pilot than any of us," Roberts assured her. "Besides, we can see anything we need to from here. Mina: main screen display, please."
The projected image in Merlyn's vision flickered and changed. The vortex of hyperspace seemed to flow around her, as though she were the ship. Displays appeared in front of her, reporting time to deceleration, system status and sensor readings. Her head began to swim and she hastened to don her helmet and black-out the conflicting sensory data.
Then a sudden blackness opened out in front of them and they were gripped by the gentle remnants of suppressed g-forces as the druj'ha left hyperspace. At once, alarms sounded in her ears and warning lights flashed across the displays. Roberts spoke a swift string of commands in Shay and the monitors grew calm; SG-7 found themselves surrounded by the common area once more, with a three-dimensional diagram of the system hanging above the table.
"All stealth systems engaged," Mina reported. "Course set for low-profile orbit of planet Nign-4."
"Someone want to tell me what we're looking at?" Ferretti asked.
Merlyn pointed to the largest object on the diagram. "This is the Nign sun, a fairly unremarkable main-sequence star, perhaps thirty-percent larger than our own and five-percent dimmer. This" – she indicated a tiny pin-prick of light – "is our target; Nign-4. As you can see, Nign-1 is a rocky giant, about the size of Neptune. Nign-2 and Nign-3 are gas giants and 3, the smaller of the two, would dwarf our own Jupiter. A peculiarity in orbital physics means that the fourth world in the system is almost constantly in the shadow of one of these three giants."
Mina spoke up: "Planet designate Nign-4 sunlight has not seen duration twelve-thousand-and-thirty-nine years."
"Few kinks in the programming?" Ferretti asked.
"Not bad for four hours of lessons," Roberts retorted. "Of course, that's Shayaran years which are slightly shorter than ours, but still…"
"And when will it next see daylight?" Ferretti asked.
"In three-hundred-and-fifty-six years, planet designate Nign-4 sunlight will see for duration seventeen hours."
"See; she's getting better already," Roberts said.
"No wonder they hate light," Merlyn said. "Have they seen us coming?"
Roberts shook his head. "At this range? Not a chance."
"Then what were all those alarms about."
"This." Roberts touched the display and it zoomed in. Still many millions of miles from Nign-4, Wilhelmina was travelling alongside a second ship. This vessel was long and sleek, with a pointed prow and four, curved fins radiating in a cruciform configuration around the aft section. It was perhaps five times the size of a ha'tak vessel and clearly much faster.
"What is that?" Ferretti demanded.
"Our diversion," Roberts replied. "A long-range, Replicator battleship."
*
As the battleship cruised almost lazily towards Nign, four ha'tak vessels were despatched to intercept it. Mina's crew watched in horrified fascination, the battle's conclusion horridly inevitable. The ha'taks fired first, a concentrated volley of plasma bolts doing little to tax the Replicators' shields. Swarms of gliders closed the gap and added their efforts, until the forward shield was glowing cherry-red with undispersed energy.
"It can't hold much longer," Ferretti said. "Can it?"
"Each time shield resistance threshold approaches, internal configurations are permutating of shield circuitry," Mina informed him.
"You what?"
"She says that when the shield is almost down, the Replicators build a better one," Merlyn explained. "I don't know if she's getting better or I'm just learning to understand her."
Finally, the Replicators returned fire, neatly and decisively. A beam of white-gold light stabbed out and struck one of the ha'taks, burning clean through the shields and destroying the peltac. A similar fate awaited two of the remaining ships. The last ha'tak set a collision course and the beam pierced its reactor core; the Goa'uld vessel was blown apart, the debris spiralling slowly away into space.
Now the battleship fired again, a dark-hulled torpedo moving rapidly towards each of the silent ha'tak vessels. Roberts magnified the view of one of the weapons, revealing that its surface was composed of thousands of interlocking blocks.
"Boarding parties," Ferretti said in a flat voice.
The gliders tried valiantly to keep the missiles from the crippled ships, but to no avail; they were as impervious to plasma fire as the warrior-bugs that they would reshape themselves into on impact. One brave soul flew his glider into a missile, shattering it, but that merely sealed the doom of the other pilots. Myriad tiny energy beams stabbed out from the battleship, slicing the gliders to pieces, and a replacement missile was launched toward the third ha'tak.
"Poor bastards," Alexa whispered. "I can feel their terror; their helplessness."
"How do you fight against that?" Roberts asked, appalled.
"With faith," Merlyn replied. "Nothing is invincible," she assured them.
"Anyway; not our job," Ferretti reminded them. "Keep going, Mina," he ordered. "Get us away from this…abattoir."
*
In a secret chamber in the bowels of the basalt castle, a small figure lay curled on the floor. Suddenly, she uncoiled and arched her back, her head twisting almost painfully far back along her spine. No human could have survived such a spasm, but Maricza nag Tsaryda was a Dragr. She had for years served as the personal seer of Queen Djanka and her gift was awesome.
A young male Dragr crouched beside her and drew her into a hard embrace, holding her writhing body still. "What do you see?" he asked her.
"The Destroyers come!" she cried. "The Scourge rise!" She shuddered and grew still. Slowly, she turned her eyeless face towards the male. "They are coming."
"The Destroyers?"
She shook her head. "The promised."
The male gave a gasp. "The twin?" he whispered, hardly daring to hope it might be true.
*
Only a single ha'tak vessel stood between the Replicators and the fortress now. In her command chamber, Djanka faced the ha'tak commander on her screen and ordered him to flee.
"We shall not leave you, My Queen," the commander replied.
"Yes, you shall," she assured him, "because I must have a ship. If you are destroyed, I am stranded; I want you standing by above the Palace of Shadows; if necessary, I shall transfer there and you will carry me to safety. Now go."
"Yes, My Queen." No doubt relieved, the commander turned from his communication screen and the ha'tak vessel moved away.
Djanka activated her internal communications. "All defences are to open fire as soon as the enemy vessel is in range," she instructed. "Baphomet; are the slaves in position?"
"They are ready," her First Prime responded, "but your consort will not allow them to approach the weapon."
Djanka sighed. "Give him space," she decided.
Around the fortress, heavy plasma cannon began to roar, spitting deadly bolts into the sky. The defence satellites were already firing, for all the good their weapons could do against the Replicators.
A Replicator missile launched from the prow of the battleship and headed for the nearest satellite. A small turret popped through a hatch on the satellite's hull and released a stream of heavy projectiles. This was a Dragr weapon and far more effective than any Goa'uld technology, but although each shot stripped a handful of blocks from the missile's surface, it was solid to the core and at least half of the blocks reached the target intact.
The missile burst on contact, scattering the blocks across the surface of the satellite. Swiftly, they drew together, combined into the form of worker-bugs and began working on the hull, transforming it, piece by piece into duplicates of themselves.
Warning indicators flashed on Djanka's command display.
"Satellite 2 is infected, My Queen," a Jaffa announced.
"Destroy it!" Djanka commanded.
One of the workers tumbled through the hull. It secured its feet to the inner surface and made its way towards the control relays. Moments before it reached them, the core of the satellite's reactor went into overload.
The battleship advanced, regardless. Its shield rippled as it brushed into the middle of a field of cloaked mines. Dozens of warheads detonated, throwing out billions of joules of energy. The shields flickered, weakly.
Fire from the satellites and the surface redoubled. Flights of Dragr missiles rose to intercept the battleship, but the energy beams flashed in the darkness, cutting down half of the missiles before they even reached the shields. Nevertheless, the Replicator ship was weakening.
"Satellites 3, 5and 8 infected," the Jaffa warned.
"Destroy them."
The Jaffa touched the necessary controls. "3 and 5 destroyed," he reported. "Contact with Satellite 8 has been lost."
Another Jaffa looked up in alarm. "Satellite 8 has begun firing on our missiles," he reported.
Djanka's hand curled into a fist. "Shoot it down," she ordered.
At last, some of the defensive fire began to penetrate the Replicator shield. Plasma bolts hit home, but failed to even scorch the surface of the hull. The missiles had some effect, but not enough to slow the vessel's advance.
Then the main batteries on the battleship opened up, sending their deadly energy beams lancing towards the planet's surface, turning weapon emplacements to balls of molten rock and metal. Hatches sprang wide and wave after wave of the Replicator missiles issued forth.
Djanka's command screen flickered and a figure appeared. She seemed to be a human, small, neat, and poised; her short hair swept back and her grey uniform jacket immaculate.
"I am six-point-two," she announced, calmly. "We wish to study your race; you will therefore be allowed to depart this world in peace, providing two hundred specimens are left for examination. Refuse and we shall search for survivors in the ruins of your world."
"I am Djanka nag Kryadyas," Djanka replied, using the clan name of her host to add grandeur and legitimacy to her claim. "Leave now or be destroyed."
The screen went blank; Six-point-two apparently saw no reason to dignify this threat with a response. Well; she would pay for her arrogance. Djanka reached for the intercom, but before she could reach the controls, a welcome voice spoke.
"The weapon is ready, My Queen," Pearson announced.
"Then fire!" Djanka hissed.
*
SG-7 watched the attack with increasing anxiety.
"You almost have to admire her tenacity," Ferretti said.
"Only if you've never been on the receiving end of it," Roberts assured him.
"Look!" Alexa called.
On the projected image of the fortress, explosions wracked the central tower, sending great slabs of basalt crashing down into the courtyards.
"That wasn't a weapon hit," Roberts said. "She blew her own tower open!"
Merlyn stared in horror at the stunted tower. A deep shaft was now exposed, leading up from the bowels of the fortress. She called up the plan of the Fortress and confirmed her worst fears; the shaft rose up from the cache chamber. As she watched, a platform emerged from those depths, bearing the unmistakable form of a Scourge annihilator.
Alexa swallowed hard. "My," she said. "That is a big one."
*
The annihilator stood for a moment, still and silent. Eleven of the twelve siphon chambers had closed up, each holding in place one of Djanka's hapless slaves. The twelfth was the chamber that Pearson had made the master chamber; held within its embrace, lay Djanka's kalshek'tak handmaiden. Her mind was the key to targeting the cannon and her mind was a slave to Djanka's.
The cannon sensed its prey and swivelled with unnerving speed towards the approaching vessel. Tendrils of green mist began to coil from the siphon chambers and wrap themselves around the condensing chamber. Electricity arced up and down the firing veins and a low, inhuman moan began to issue from the weapon. Long, palsied fingers of energy flickered across the weapon's surface and grounded themselves in the basalt.
With an unholy shriek that echoed throughout the fortress, the annihilator fired. A boiling, writhing stream of sickly green light spat forth and engulfed the Replicator vessel. For long seconds the beam seemed to tether the battleship to the black rock of Nign and the wail of the weapon grew in pitch, volume and fervour. The same bright flickers of electrical fire and trails of green mist now coiled around the vessel, feeling out the cracks between the Replicator blocks and pouring into those microscopic flaws.
The beam stopped. Silence fell across the fortress. For a long moment, the battleship hung in space, tiny flickers of green light leaking out from its hull.
Then, silently, it burned. With impossible speed, green fire leaped out into the vacuum, consuming flesh, steel and trinium with equal voracity. Within seconds, the hull was gone, leaving only a skeleton of decks and girders. In moments, that too had been consumed and the last occupants of the ship followed soon after. Nothing was left; not even ashes.
With their mistress and their mothers destroyed, the Replicator missiles simply broke apart and their constituent blocks ignited in the atmosphere to fall as shooting stars above the fortress.
*
Djanka gave a triumphant cry. "The stars themselves bow down in recognition of my victory!" she declared, pointing up at the rain of burning Replicator blocks. "I regret only that I could not see that arrogant bitch's face when she perished," she laughed. She sensed a hole in her gestalt and realised that her handmaiden – and the other donors – had been consumed by the blast.
"Have twelve more slaves brought to the tower!" she ordered, ecstatically. "Oh, my beloved! Give me more!"
*
"This is not good," Ferretti observed.
Roberts thought for a moment. "We need to act quickly," he said. "If we move fast we can still take advantage of the confusion of the attack."
"You have a plan?"
"I do."
Ferretti shrugged. "Make it so, Mr Roberts."
Roberts nodded. "Mina; crash dive," he instructed.
The ship's engines thrummed with power as the drives stepped up beyond optimum to maximum safe level and beyond.
"And if you could share the plan with us at some point," Ferretti added.
"Same as before," Roberts assured him, "just a lot faster. Mina, time to contact?"
"Contact in seventeen minutes," the computer replied.
"Contact?"
"Planetfall," Roberts replied. "We reach the courtyard in seventeen minutes; with Mina's stealth systems, the debris from the Replicator ship will provide an effective screen until we start shooting. Speaking of which, is it safe to target the Scourge weapon?"
Merlyn shrugged. "You're not asking the right people," she reminded him.
"True," Roberts agreed. "Mina. Girah shik ré nahar, ok ph'liu zha trhend brisinga?"
"Fotek shora ni'asim."
"She says the energy readings from the weapon are currently…unstable."
Ferretti nodded. "Let sleeping dragons lie," he decided.
"Roberts!" Alexa said, suddenly. "The contingency plan?"
Roberts smacked the palm of his hand into his forehead; in Shay battle armour the gesture make a reverberating 'thunk'. "I almost forgot. While we're all likely to die if everything goes south, I've set a contingency pattern in Mina's navigation circuits, just in case. Once we disembark, I'll leave her on automatic defence; she'll shoot any Jaffa or kalshek'tak who gets too close or takes a shot at her. While she is waiting for us to get back, the code word 'aphelion' will trigger the contingency.
"On receiving the code, Mina will immediately break station and execute a short hyperspace loop. After one hour, she will return to Nign and take up a stealth orbit. If we can transmit the word 'perihelion' on any frequency, she will return to a station over the fortress, ready to receive further commands."
"Just be careful what you ask of her; her English is worse than mine," Alexa added.
Ferretti shared a proud look with Merlyn and nodded, approvingly. "Good work, lieutenants," he said. "Let's rock and roll."
*
The arrival of SG-7 was everything that they could have hoped for. Mina switched her drives to deceleration mode forty-five seconds before they hit atmosphere, but they were still travelling at almost fifteen miles per second when the heat shields began to glow and the inertial brakes kicked in. Two seconds later, her speed dropped dramatically as she fired a volley of individually targeted missiles which destroyed the gun emplacements surrounding their target courtyard. The missiles hit eight seconds after launch; Mina herself was three seconds behind.
At one mile up and travelling at Mach 3 she dropped her cloak. The courtyard was close to the same length as Mina's hull, but she levelled off, fell cleanly into the open space and stopped dead, three feet up, with six inches of clearance at her nose and stern. Before anyone on the ground could react, her plasma cannons – a linked pair in the dorsal turret and a single unit in each of the turrets on her ventral flanks – began firing and the side hatch popped open.
The few brave souls who had not panicked at her crazed descent did so now as the hatch disgorged one of the kashek'tak's worst nightmares: a band of four Shay warriors on the hunt.
It was all too easy.
Goa'uld and kalshek'tak alike fled before SG-7, running madly for their lives. The Jaffa stood, but were seriously outgunned, abandoned by their allies and infected by the fear of the powerfully psychic kalshek'tak. They reached the cache chamber with barely a hint of resistance. For one crazy moment, Ferretti thought that they might actually get away with it.
The cache chamber was huge; it could have taken hours to search it for Pearson, but fortunately he was close by, standing as calm as could be between the rows of war machines, his hands behind his back.
"Sergeant?" Ferretti asked.
"Yes?" Pearson asked in reply.
Ferretti reached up and removed his helmet, letting the sergeant see a familiar face. "Come on, Sergeant; time to go," he said.
"But there's so much to do here," Pearson replied.
Roberts took a step forward. "Pearson…" he began.
By that point they had all realised that there was something wrong, but there was a great distance between realisation and acceptance and SG-7 were still caught in that unforgiving no-man's land. That was why, when Sergeant Pearson produced a Scourge blaster from behind his back, not even Roberts could react fast enough.
A flash of green light sprang from the weapon and knocked Roberts to the ground. He lay very still, a column of cloying steam rising from the centre of his breastplate.
From behind them came the sound of staff weapons opening. Alexa turned and raised her stake thrower, but there were at least half-a-dozen Jaffa there.
"Colonel?" Merlyn asked.
"No," Ferretti said, disbelieving.
"Sir?" Alexa's echoed, her voice wavering.
"Put your weapons down please," Pearson said, calmly. "Give the order, Colonel, or the lieutenant dies." The weapon gave a low, eager whine. It was like a small version of the annihilator, but instead of a siphon chamber it had extended tendrils that dug into the flesh of Pearson's left forearm, drawing power from his body.
"Pearson…" Ferretti began.
"I will kill her," Pearson promised. As though to reinforce his words, the tendrils began to pulse with that sickly, green light, visibly carrying a charge of psionic force from the sergeant into the firing chamber. "For what she did to me, I may just kill her anyway, but you are making it certain."
"No!" Ferretti said again, but this time he was decisive. "Not that. Lower your weapons," he ordered.
The two women obeyed, reluctantly. Ferretti heard Merlyn's voice murmuring "aphelion," but he was too devastated to take in what that meant. He set his plasma caster on the ground and raised his hands in the air.
"Very good," Pearson said. "Take them away, Baphomet."
"Yes, My Lord," one of the Jaffa acknowledged, almost choking on the words.
*
The three of them were stripped of their armour and thrown into a dingy cell. This chamber had been carved from the black basalt of the mountain with less care than elsewhere. In the parts of the fortress where the Goa'uld walked, the walls were straight, smooth and lined with marble and inlaid with gold and precious stones. These walls were bare and rough; the cells was lit only by a small window hacked high in the rear wall and the opening onto the passage was barricaded by thick, diagonally-crossed bars of hard, reddish-copper metal.
The team were not being treated entirely without respect. Without their armour they were left with only their underclothes to wear – unlike their Omega suits, the Shay hunting gear left no room to wear regular fatigues beneath – but the First Prime, Baphomet, had deigned to provide replacement clothing. They were unprotected and without weapons or communications, but were able to maintain a modicum of dignity. Most worryingly, however, they had lost their nanite shields and thus their protection from the influence of The Scourge. Alexa was on the verge of tears, Ferretti seemed to be on the edge of madness and Merlyn knew herself to be at the brink of despair, but she also knew that she would have to be the one to hold the others together.
"Do you think he's…?" Alexa left the thought unspoken.
"Never," Merlyn declared, with forced optimism. "I don't think he's capable of dying; it's a human weakness."
Alexa forced a smile.
"I just…I can't believe it," Ferretti said. "Pearson, of all people. I never thought I would see the day a member of my team turned on me."
"He's been brainwashed," Merlyn insisted. "We're in the middle of a fortress full of mind-warping vampires; we should have expected it. We should have brought a zat'nik'tel and worried about explanations later."
"At least you had the presence of mind to send the ship away," Ferretti sighed. "I choked completely. I let you down."
"No!" Alexa insisted. "I felt something wrong, but I thought it was The Scourge. His mind was so…open; I should have realised…"
"Stop!" Merlyn snapped. "You sound like Tamira's family. Recrimination is useless! We all knew this was a long shot, so let's not talk about who may not have been absolutely, inhumanly perfect today. To err is human, remember."
Her team mates had the decency to appear chastened.
"Alright; now what do we do now?"
There was a long, long silence.
"Well, we can't summon the ship without comms," Ferretti offered.
"I said what do we do, not what can't we do!" Merlyn snapped.
"Wait for Pearson," Alexa said.
Ferretti sighed. "Sorry to remind you, kid, but Pearson's not on our side just at the moment."
"Yes he is," Alexa insisted. "He just doesn't remember it. He has been forced to believe that he is a member of Djanka's court; someone fairly important it seems."
"How does this help us?" Merlyn asked, earnestly.
Alexa focused her gaze on the middle distance as she thought aloud: "If his mind has been changed, we may be able to change it again, hopefully before too much of The Scourge gets in. Fortunately, there are no serious Minds in that cache, just a lot of hate and hunger."
"Do you really think Djanka will let us get within a hundred yards of Pearson?" Ferretti asked.
Alexa looked at him. "Sir; Djanka is a Goa'uld who has brainwashed our friend into turning on us all. He'll be in here to gloat over us if she has to carry him." She stopped and winced in apparent pain.
"Alexa?" Ferretti asked, concerned.
"The weapon; she's fired again. Without my helmet…"
"Let's just hope her need to gloat outweighs her need for firepower," Merlyn sighed.
Far above the cells, Djanka revelled in her new-found might as the annihilator tore another Replicator vessel to pieces; far below, the seeress moaned in her sleep.
*
Alexa's understanding of the Goa'uld mind was excellent; Pearson came to gloat less than an hour after they were imprisoned.
"Things progress well," he told them, his familiar voice made alien by his mocking tones. "I have restored the annihilator and the smaller units will soon be operational as well. Your Replicator allies have been defeated at every turn and I have turned the tables on you, my erstwhile captors."
"We are not your captors," Merlyn assured him.
Pearson laughed out loud. "Clearly not. Now I have the power and I will make you turn on those you love; not by brainwashing you, but by using you to power our glorious machines. You will have the honour of spearheading the return to glory of The…" He closed his eyes tightly. "Of my empire."
Ferretti and Alexa shared a worried glance.
"Xander…" Ferretti began, but it sounded forced. He and the sergeant had worked closely for many years, but not on first-name terms. "Pearson; this isn't right. You were never my prisoner. We served together for years. We were both in SG-2 under Major Kawalsky; that makes us the longest serving partnership in the SGC. Even SG-1 has changed line-up since then!"
"Lies!" Pearson snapped. "All lies that you cooked up to make me betray my beloved Queen Djanka."
"Your beloved…!" Ferretti bellowed. "That red-eyed, snake-brained…"
Pearson raised a zat'nik'tel and shot Ferretti without a moment's hesitation.
"Pearson," Merlyn said, soothingly. "You must remember all of the things we have been through. Do you remember Maya? The girl at the university on Erd who was so sweet on you?"
"That girl was as foolish as you," Pearson scoffed. "You thought to make me betray my beloved, but I was too strong for that. I rejected her and she wept."
"More pouted, as I recall," Ferretti groaned.
"What about Yeth?" Merlyn offered. "When we were trapped in the caves of Lord Nor, it was you who saved us. That frequency generator was an incredible piece of engineering."
Something flickered across Pearson's face; clearly he was more easily touched by reminiscence of machines than of women. But then a shadow came over him. "And you all thought that I had betrayed you. You must have thought that I had remembered who I truly was."
"No!" Merlyn protested, but she had lost him again.
"I shall return for you when it is time," he said. "Until then, I leave you to contemplate your fate."
"Pearson!" Ferretti called, desperately. "You must remember who you are."
"I am Djanka's consort," Pearson laughed. "She is my beloved; you are nothing."
"She can not be your beloved," Alexa told him in a small voice.
Pearson scoffed. "Do you imagine I might be in love with you?" he mocked. "I hate you, Alexa Rasputin. You were the one who violated my mind; I could never love you."
"I know," she admitted, sadly, "but still, she can not be your beloved, Sergeant Pearson, because you are gay."
*
Roberts returned to consciousness slowly; very slowly. His body ached; he felt drained of energy and the skin on his chest felt as though something very hot was being pressed against it. He took a breath and the air felt thin; he was still in the fortress then, high in the mountains.
And there was someone else present.
He tensed his body as the footsteps came closer. Even with his eyes closed, he was aware of a hand reaching out for him. It touched his chest and…
"Hai!" Roberts cried, jolting upright as a sensation like freezing swept across his overheated chest. At once, the freezing turned to burning.
He shrank backward, raising his arms defensively. The woman who had been crouching by his bedside leaped away from him and a small, ceramic bowl slipped from her hands to smash on the floor. An overpowering aroma of aloe drifted to his nostrils.
He looked down at his chest and saw that his pale skin had turned a deep, sunburned red. Apparently Shay armour was enough to defeat a low-level Scourge energy blast, but not completely. There was a smear of salve on his skin and he quickly realised that this was what had caused the cold sensation, and the smell. He was in a small room with white walls, rather like a monastic cell in appearance. There was a wooden chair, a small table beside his bed and the bed itself, more of a cot than a bed, really.
Roberts looked towards the woman, who was kneeling on the floor, gathering up pieces of bowl and trying to collect as much of the spilled salve as possible. She was almost painfully thin, her bony body covered by a rough, drab-grey dress and a pale cream wimple covered her head.
She lifted the pile of shards and set them on a small table, then turned towards him. Her face was narrow, her skin pale and her eyes were indigo; her body was not emaciated, it merely lacked the fat reserves of a human frame. She was unmistakably a kalshek'tak.
"Please; do not be frightened," she said. She moved towards him, her eyes fixed on him, and he felt waves of cool, soothing energy flow over him.
"Stop that!" he snapped, raising his hands once more. Somewhat to his surprise, she did and the gentle touch vanished from his mind. He found that he rather missed it when it was gone.
"My apologies," she said. "I promise that I will not touch your mind again; indeed, I doubt whether I could do so without your leave. Your resistance is quite extraordinary."
"Good of you to say so," Roberts drawled. He was doing his best to hide his fear from her, but had no difficulty admitting it to himself. The last time he had been captured by Djanka, he had come as close to breaking as he had ever done and the memory of it haunted him. Being touched by another kalshek'tak, even such a gentle touch as this one, was almost more than he could bear.
"May I continue to treat your wound?" the woman asked.
"Why are you asking?" Roberts demanded. "It's not like I can stop you. I feel like I haven't slept for a week."
The kalshek'tak still made no move to advance. "Your body has resisted a trauma that would have killed a lesser man. It has piqued Queen Djanka's interest and saved your life twice over."
"Twice?"
"Once from the blast itself and once from the Queen's vengeance; she has decided that she would rather know what makes you, a mere human, so strong than exact immediate revenge for the death of her children."
"Oh, wacko. Anyway, it was the armour that kept me going," Roberts assured her. "I see that's been taken elsewhere. Along with my vest."
"I could hardly salve your wound if it were covered and neither armour nor vest was in much condition for reuse."
Roberts shrugged. "Well, thank you for leaving my pants on at least."
The woman bowed her head, but a small smile flickered across her lips.
"And it occurs to me now that I wasn't wearing long pants under the battle suit."
"I thought that you might prefer to be better covered when you awoke."
"That's very decent of you…What is your name?" Roberts asked.
"Nara," the woman replied.
"Well, thank you, Nara, and yes; please do continue the treatment. I swear I will never mock a sunburn victim again."
"Thank you, sir," she replied. She approached, almost diffidently, and smeared a handful of the thick cream across his burns with a clinical hand. The numbing coolness spread swiftly through his body and he sighed, gratefully.
"Why thank me?" Roberts asked.
"I would be punished if I failed to do as my mistress commands," Nara explained. "I can only imagine what she would do to me if I allowed you to die again."
"You're…a slave?" This put a whole new light on Djanka's organisational structure. He had not imagined that the kalshek'tak would be slaves. He had pictured them forming an upper caste, served by humans; not occupying the lower echelons of society themselves.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
Roberts laughed and the movement hurt his chest. "I don't think you need to call me sir," he assured her.
"You are a prisoner in whom the Queen takes a great interest," Nara assured him. "That places you some way above me in the scheme of things."
Roberts shrugged. "And what did you mean, 'die again'?"
"Your heart stopped when the blast struck you," Nara said. "You were to be taken to the pit to be cast in with the bodies of traitors and the other unclean, but it was noticed that you had begun breathing once more and the Queen ordered you brought here."
"How long was I dead?" Roberts asked, dreading the answer. He knew that technically it was possible to revive a person after a considerable length of time if their body had been artificially respirated, but that the chances of such a person having the range of movement, speech and thought that he seemed to possess was minimal.
"Perhaps…six minutes in your terms," Nara told him.
"No sarcophagus?"
"No, sir."
"Oh." That could only mean one of two things: either he was the luckiest man alive – which in his current circumstances he was inclined to doubt – or he was not human.
*
A silence fell across the cell.
Pearson raised a hand to his head. "Djanka is my…She is…I must go."
"You live in Colorado Springs with an architect named Steven," Alexa pressed, straining towards him with her mind. "You have three cats named Winkum, Blinkum and Nod! You have a workshop in the garage and Steven grows roses in the garden!"
"I…I have things to do," Pearson insisted. He fled in confusion and Alexa slumped to the ground with tears in her eyes.
"Alexa?" Ferretti said, gently.
"I swore," she whispered. "I swore that I would never tell."
Ferretti dragged himself up and put an arm around Alexa's shoulders. "It's okay," he whispered. "It's okay."
"Did…Did you know anything about this?" Merlyn asked.
Ferretti shrugged. "No; not really. Although I guess it explains why he never seemed to have a girlfriend."
*
The door to Roberts' cell opened. Nara retreated to a corner and bowed low, pressing her forehead to the floor. Djanka entered, flanked by a pair of hungry-eyed vampires in the same red armour as those who had abducted Pearson.
"So," Djanka said, "the man who murdered my children." There was no seductive purr in her voice this time; the Queen felt no such sense of secure superiority. Roberts was almost flattered to realise that she was dealing with him as a near-equal. "I have neither forgotten, nor forgiven, but you intrigue me, dhampir."
Roberts' eyelid twitched.
"Asreth was a bitter enough loss," the Queen continued. "He was loyal and he was a magnificent warrior, but I am pleased to discover that his executioner was at least worthy of the title. You are, if nothing else, a born killer yourself; dhampir to the core.
"But Yanis…Her death I cannot forgive. She was so young, not even a thousand years old. A mortal kalshek'tak might live that long; she should have lasted for ten thousand years, even denied the use of a sarcophagus." She smiled at Roberts. "You know, of course, that our hosts, although durable, are beyond the grace of the sarcophagus; much as your body might prove, dhampir."
"Stop calling me that," Roberts growled, softly.
Djanka ignored him. "My poor, darling Yanis was quite taken with you, you know. She desired you deeply, the foolish girl; she always did have a soft-spot for humans. I do not doubt that the attraction would have waned eventually, but it was she who begged me to let you recover in the first place; I would have killed you on the spot for the murder of Asreth and your insolence in resisting my power." Her face darkened. "I should have killed you. I indulged my best-beloved child and she is lost to me because of it."
Roberts was somewhat surprised to see genuine grief in the face of his captor; it gave him no pleasure. In fact, he felt almost sorry for the Queen.
"Well, now I shall not kill you," Djanka went on, her expression hardening, as though she had sensed his pity and rejected it. "You will be kept alive for three years, until my next Queen-daughter is ready to take a host from the Kryadyas clan. In that time I will break you a hundred times, then give you to her as a blending gift. I promise you, she will not be so gentle as Yanis was."
Roberts shuddered at the idea that Yanis might have been considered gentle.
"In the meantime, I shall acquire a sarcophagus and learn if it will work on your body, dhampir. I do hope it does; I want you alive and suffering for a very long time." She raised her hands and rubbed her fingertips gently together before her face. "We shall begin now," she said. "Hold him."
The two guards moved forward, but at that moment the door burst open and Pearson ran in.
"What is happening, Djanka?" he gasped, breathlessly. "My mind…I am confused. So many memories, but they…they can not be mine!"
Djanka's eyes flashed angrily. "Come away, my love," she hissed. "Do not let your tormentors see you like this."
She hurried him out and the two guards followed. At the door, the Queen turned and addressed Nara. "See to his needs, creature," she spat. "Make sure he can survive me."
As soon as the door of the tower chamber was sealed behind her, Djanka slapped Pearson hard across the face. "Pull yourself together!" she commanded. "How dare you make a fool of me in front of my prisoners?"
Pearson looked at her; his eyes showed that he was lost and afraid and she saw her work beginning to unravel in his gaze. Quickly, she drew him close and kissed him, tenderly. He shuddered.
"Beloved," she murmured. "Your mind was sorely abused. Do not let them overwhelm you again." As she spoke, she pushed the fingers of her psychic power into his mind, deftly smoothing his fears and reinforcing the surface persona that she had so carefully constructed to hide his memories from him.
"I am so confused," he whispered.
"Focus on what is sure," she replied. "I am certain; your love for me; the power we shall wield together. Go back to the cache, my love; my guards will escort you."
Pearson nodded. "Yes, beloved," he agreed. "I will do as you suggest."
As he walked away, Djanka sighed. "At least he seems less arrogant now," she mused, but she decided that he needed closer watching. She glanced at the door to Roberts' cell, but she did not care to go in there alone. She turned and went back down the tower stairs to find Baphomet.
*
"How does your chest feel now?" Nara asked.
"Better," Roberts admitted. "Not great though. I imagine that will swiftly become the least of my worries, however. So, there are no sarcophagi in the fortress?"
"Her Majesty has no use for them and she would not wish a lesser Goa'uld to enjoy any privilege denied to her."
Roberts nodded his understanding and walked over to the window. He could see the courtyard below him, devoid of druj'ha; he hoped that that meant that one of his team mates had been able to dismiss her before their…what?
"What has happened to my comrades?" he asked.
"They are well, and as safe as can be hoped," Nara replied. "Queen Djanka intends to use them to power her weapons."
"Damn her!" Roberts snapped. "If it isn't our blood she wants it's our hearts and souls." He shook his head, angrily.
"It is a great honour to give your life's blood to a queen," Nara assured him, although she did not sound entirely convinced.
Roberts gave a short, humourless laugh. "I would far rather give my life's blood to a slave like you than to a queen like her."
Nara looked almost bashful and she smiled as though at some private joke. "I would not want your blood, anyway," she told him. "I grew out of my bloodthirst when I ceased to be a babe in arms."
Roberts frowned. "I don't understand," he admitted.
"Blood-drinking, among grown Dragr, is a…" She searched for the right word. "It is a perversion," she decided. "A piece of infantile fetishism, practised as a form of dominance ritual by the royal clans of the old empire. Dragr infants are suckled on blood," she explained, when Roberts still looked blank.
"The absence of nipples," he realised. "You aren't truly mammals at all; you're something quite distinct."
"This is so," she agreed, "although we are superficially similar in appearance and, for some unknown reason, quite capable not only of mating with humans, but of successfully reproducing."
"Dhampiri," Roberts said. "The hybrid children are dhampiri."
Nara shuddered. "No," she replied. "The dhampiri are something else; the Shay. Surely you know that?"
Roberts shrugged. "This was what we thought, but…According to the legends of my people, dhampiri are the children of vampires."
"It is not so," Nara assured him, "and Dragr can not mate with Shay, although humans may breed with either. Yours is a very…flexible race."
"If I am human," Roberts replied.
"You certainly smell human," Nara assured him.
"Why do you serve her, Nara?" Roberts asked.
"Conquest," she replied. "I am Nara nag Vyalakas and the Vyalakas clan are vassals to the Kryadyas. When she took the body of the Kryadyas queen, Djanka became the ruler of the clan and of all their vassals; a Queen's right to rule is encoded into the genetic structure of her clan, creating a natural hierarchy of psychic dominance. For years, however, Djanka did not exercise this power and another queen, Szpeirtza, actually rose to rule over the Kryadyas in her place. She was a good queen," Nara told him, sadly.
"When she returned to Nign, Djanka butchered Szpeirtza and used her host's genetic imprimatur to assert control of the clan. To their credit, they tried to resist, but through terror and bloodshed and their instinct to obey, she forged them into a unified psychic gestalt. With that power she was able to dominate the other clans. Now all Dragr are her vassals. As her Jaffa die off or abandon her, she recruits ever more of us as her slaves and warriors. The noble clans provide her with hosts, overseers and underlords; the survivors of the old religious clans give her seers and mystics. The lesser clans are a source of warriors and the worst of our race – the sadists, the psychopaths and the blood-crazed – become her élite Kalash'rak; the Soul-Hunters."
Roberts' eyes widened as the scope of Djanka's ambition was revealed to him. "She has given up on the Goa'uld empire," he said.
Nara nodded. "She seeks to restore the Dragrsrech – or I should say the Kalshek'no, for she forbids the use of our ancient name and ancestral tongue – the Holy Empire that once spanned a third of the known galaxy, under her absolute rule. She is already Queen and Empress; now she would set herself up as goddess as well. And with these new weapons of hers, I do not know that anyone can stop her."
*
"Any luck?" Ferretti asked, half-heartedly.
Alexa shook her head. "I really need a proper set of lock-picks, or even a hair-pin or two. If only I still wore my hair long."
Ferretti tactfully refrained from comment. He knew now that Alexa had changed her style because she knew that Danica intended to grow her sister's hair long. Telling her that she would be far prettier with long hair could only be a terrible faux pas, even if he avoided saying that Danica proved the point.
"I'm sorry," was all he said.
"Let's not start that again," Merlyn said, firmly. In spite of their predicament, she did not appear to have faltered. Her faith was indomitable and death held no fear for her.
Of course, that was her own death; the deaths of her heathen and heretic colleagues were no doubt a greater concern, as her religion taught that they would go to Hell. Ferretti wondered what she made of the revelation that Pearson was gay; he knew what his mother would say and Mama Ferretti had nothing on Merlyn as far as Catholicism went.
"I don't think this is even a real lock," Alexa decided, throwing down her makeshift tools – a spoon handle and a long splinter of wood. "It's just for show; the real thing's magnetic or something."
"Don't waste your energy on it, then," Ferretti said. "Sit down and keep your strength up. Tell me about Pearson."
Alexa looked pained. "I can't, Sir," she pleaded. "Really, I've said far too much. I just hope I haven't pushed him further into his shell."
"How so?" Merlyn asked.
"By betraying his confidence. I know what I know from the time when we merged minds," she explained. "He was untrained, so when he tried to hide his secrets from me, all he did was push them to the front of his mind. I learned…I learned a lot about him, none of it actually bad, but all of it very private. I gave him my word that I would never tell another soul. I mean, you can see why it is so important to him."
Ferretti nodded. "It would put him in an awkward position," he agreed. "He could lose his job. It must be tough, keeping a secret like that from your friends."
"Yes, Sir," Alexa replied, softly.
Ferretti looked at her with a new understanding. "But he didn't see anything about Vasilisa?"
"I have practised to hide my thoughts," she explained. "You can only do that by not thinking of the things that you wish to hide. By focusing on something else entirely, you thrust that to the surface of your mind as a shield. Sergeant Pearson knows my favourite movies of all time, the kind of music I like and how much I miss my parents."
"It can not have been easy for you, either," Ferretti said.
"No, Sir." Alexa looked up and met his gaze. He gave a slight nod and she smiled, faintly.
"But what I actually meant was: what has Djanka done to him?"
Alexa flushed with embarrassment. "Oh!"
"Even if I wanted to know the details of my sergeant's love-life, I wouldn't ask you to tell tales out of school," Ferretti assured her.
"Of course, Colonel," she agreed. "I apologise." She paused a moment to gather her thoughts. "I believe that she has used some method, probably a drug, to open his mind to outside influence. I suspect a drug because his mind is still open. She would not wish him to work with The Scourge while subject to influence, so she must have used a method which can not be halted before its time.
"Having rendered him vulnerable, she has used her psychic abilities to construct a superficial, but powerful, false persona; a character for him to play. She has imbued this character with great certainty, but no underlying memory; she has therefore been obliged to suppress his true memory as best she can and create this fiction of the SGC brainwashing him. When the memories are exposed, the imprinted persona attempts to incorporate them into the fiction. I was able to reach him, if only for a moment, because I could call upon an incompatible memory; something that the imprint could not possibly square with him being Djanka's adoring consort. The memory of the man he really loves."
Merlyn shifted, awkwardly.
"Can you bring him back?" Ferretti asked, shelving his 2IC's problems to deal with later.
"He hasn't gone anywhere," Alexa assured him. "This is a real rush-job. The real Pearson is all still in there, just submerged and sedated beneath this false persona. All I need to do is expose enough flaws in the fiction, then give him a good shake."
"How long and how difficult?"
"Five minutes, but I'd need to make deep contact again. We'd both be vulnerable."
Ferretti shrugged. "Well, we'll just have to give it a go. Merlyn and I'll try to keep you safe while you dig deep."
"If we get the chance," Alexa said.
"We will," Ferretti assured her. "We have to."
*
"The old Empire fell when we were defeated by the Goa'uld," Nara explained. "Dragr society in the days of empire consisted of a multitude of lesser clans, ruled by the nobles. The noble clans were the aristocracy and the Emperor was chosen from among the consorts of their Queens. Their power was restricted, however, by the rules of the church and there were religious clans – families of powerful mystics and psychics – whose role it was to keep the Emperor and his court in check.
"When we were humiliated in defeat, the lesser clans blamed the nobles and to save themselves the nobles passed the blame up to the Emperor and his clan. The royal family were wiped out in a bloody coup called the Night of Shattered Hearts and the surviving members of the clan stripped of rank, privilege and name, but the people were not satisfied. This time, the noble clans said that the priesthood should have restrained the Emperor; which was true, even if it did not expunge the blame on the aristocracy. The power of the church was broken and faith in our god died. A new order rose, one without the moral codes which the religious clans once enforced."
"Where does Djanka come into all this?" Roberts asked.
"Many centuries later," Nara replied. "Most of our fall we engineered ourselves. The religious clans fought to restrain the nobles, but were despised by the populace. Some left our world and those who remained became no more than pawns of the nobles. Our fall from grace was complete and the lesser clans lost any respect that remained for the old religion. Unopposed, the noble clans charted a decline into decadence. When Djanka came, the religious clans spoke against her, but we had been silent for so long that we were ignored; in response, she made us slaves."
"Yours is a religious clan?"
Nara inclined her head in acknowledgement. "Once the greatest of them. Now the Vyalakas are deemed unworthy to hold rank or to bear arms, let alone to carry a symbiote, and the only clans with power now are those headed by a Goa'uld. Djanka does not trust us because for millennia we have maintained our devotion to the Old God and the old codes. As she would be worshipped by us, that makes us heretics and traitors."
"And your clan are the heresiarchs," Roberts said. "I'm still not sure that I understand why you're tending prisoners for Djanka."
"The Queen's psychic powers are formidable," Nara admitted. "To raise the Dragr in revolt against her would be impossible; backed by the Kryadyas gestalt she would crush us with a thought."
Roberts shrugged with false nonchalance. "She's not all that," he assured Nara.
"To you, no," the vampiress agreed, "for you are not bound to her by ancient ties of vassalage. You slew Asreth and destroyed Yanis; you can set us free. We can not act directly against the Queen. However, I will do what I can to aid your escape, if you will destroy Djanka."
"I'd like nothing more," Roberts said, with perfect honesty.
Nara nodded. "Then tell me what you will need," she said. "I can try to bring you weapons, although the door is guarded and I do not have a key to release you."
"I don't need weapons," Roberts assured her.
*
Ferretti sat on the bench beside Merlyn and watched as Alexa fretted to-and-fro along the length of their cell. He was itching to be loose as well, but there was more than that to Alexa's impatience. The Scourge was weak here, but it was straining at the leash, nevertheless; that meant that Alexa's mind was crawling at the touch of its psychic tendrils. Merlyn was shifting uncomfortably on her seat and even Ferretti, who was about as psychically-sensitive as a Christmas cake, could feel something; no wonder Alexa was straining at the leash.
"Maybe she'll just leave us here to rot," Ferretti suggested.
"Happy thoughts, Colonel," Merlyn reminded him.
Alexa put her head up. "Someone's coming," she said.
Ferretti listened closely. Sure enough, he heard footsteps down the corridor and a squeaking, rattling noise. "What is that?" Ferretti wondered.
"I don't want to think about it," Merlyn replied. "Still; this could be our only chance."
Ferretti nodded. "Lieutenant; ready on my signal."
Alexa nodded, sharply.
Three figures approached the door of the cell. Two were Jaffa, carrying staff weapons; the third was a kalshek'tak male, pushing a squeaking trolley, laden with rattling, steel covers.
"Food!" one of the Jaffa barked. He and his comrade stood on either side of the kalshek'tak and levelled their staff weapons. "Stand with your backs against the rear wall of the cell."
Grudgingly, the three of them backed away from the door. The second Jaffa kept his staff aimed while his commander stepped forward and moved his hand in a complex pattern over the lock, which clunked in response.
"I told you," Alexa groused.
"Go on," the commander told the kalshek'tak.
As it had been for Roberts, it was a surprise for Ferretti, Merlyn and Alexa to see a vampire in a servile role, but he was not to hold this position for long. The commander stepped back and the kalshek'tak moved forward. Ferretti tried to work out if he could get past the trolley and through the door to the Jaffa without getting killed. Then the vampire released the trolley, held out his hands and flung himself violently backwards. In each hand he held a kal'hek, the long, mimetic blade designed to pierce a kalshek'tak's breastbone; they proved more than enough to penetrate the armour of a Jaffa.
The force of the vampire's thrust drove both Jaffa across the corridor and slammed them up against the wall. The blades split their hearts and pinned them to the basalt, so that their bodies hung on the wall when he released the weapons.
Ferretti gave a low whistle. "That's…"
"…impressive," Merlyn finished. "In a deeply scary kind of way."
The kalshek'tak bowed low. "I am Tzernos ka Vyalakas," he said. "I am here to help you."
*
As her programming seemed to be unravelling, Djanka had ordered her Kalash'rak to keep watch over Pearson. The senior of the two, Fyzir ka Dralys, was struggling not to allow his partner, to see how afraid he was; Ranja nag Mircea was for once enjoying the liberty her junior status gave her to show her fear. The Scourge was frightening enough for the Dragr, but the human was something else. He was doing something to the Scourge machines and they did not like the look of it.
Instead of activating the machines one-by-one, he seemed to be linking them together, beginning with a core group of war machines. He had gathered the machines around one of the sleds and run their tentacles into the siphon chambers. Now he was removing ropes of fibrous cable from the heads of the war machines and unravelling them to the sled's Mind chamber.
"What is he doing?" Ranja asked.
"I do not know," Fyzir admitted. "Find out; scry him."
Ranja's eyes dilated in fear. "I?" she asked. "But you are the seer."
"And you are the junior and you do as I say," Fyzir replied, exerting a slight force on her mind to remind her that he could compel her obedience. "Scry him."
"Yes, Voyva," she acknowledged. She closed her eyes and sent her mind out towards the human. What she saw made her blood run cold.
The Scourge was changing. The simple Minds of the various machines were beginning to talk to each other, even in their sedated state. At the heart of this network of Minds, Sergeant Pearson's new construct formed a nexus at which all of the Minds touched. When it was finished, the chamber he was adapting would be the focus of a combined Mind, a Mind that would rival Djanka's psychic gestalt for control of the cache.
Without even stopping to return to her body, Ranja threw herself at the human with a desperate cry.
Pearson looked up with eyes that stared blindly into the middle distance and yet seemed to see Ranja's astral form. The single eye of the nearest war machine followed the human's gaze and flashed with green light. Ranja's astral form screamed and her body collapsed.
Fyzir was alarmed. "Ranja!"
Pearson shuddered and looked around him, as though just waking from a deep sleep. He gazed placidly at the twitching form of Ranja; her eyes had opened and stared sightlessly at the chamber ceiling. He turned back to the nexus and shivered in disgust. He reached out, tore loose a cable and thrust it into the open siphon chamber of the active machine. The entire assemblage shuddered in hideous parody of Ranja's spasms, and then fell in on itself.
"Her mind is gone!" Fyzir accused, angrily, more afraid for himself than grief-stricken. Ranja was his junior, but she had been strong; he was under no illusions that whatever had killed her could do the same to him.
"She's stopped me making a terrible mistake," Pearson said. "Remember her with honour."
Fyzir was a sociopath, like all members of the Kalash'rak, but despite his own lack of regard for the lives of others, he could only stare in incomprehension as the human went blithely back to his work. Steeling himself for the inevitable mockery, he closed his eyes and sent out a mental summons to the remainder of his pack.
*
Djanka strode back into Roberts' cell; she was guarded by four Jaffa this time. Once more, Nara bowed to the floor, but Djanka seized her by the collar and flung her bodily from the chamber. The Jaffa spread out along the width of the cell, weapons held ready.
"Alone together at last," Roberts quipped.
Djanka fixed him with her crimson glower. Her power burned into his eyes, throttling his mind; he tried to recoil and look away, but he was held by her will. He felt her mental claws dig into the surface of his mind, strip away the trivialities he threw up to block her and…rebound from his shields.
The Queen hissed in rage. "How do you do that?" she demanded.
Roberts shrugged. "Natural bloody-mindedness?" he suggested.
"You don't know," she realised. "You have no more idea than I do." Djanka stalked towards him, keeping him paralysed with her eyes. "How did you kill my son? My poor daughter?" The pressure on Roberts' mind increased and he found himself forced to his knees. "I will know. I have all of the psychic resources of the Kryadyas clan at my disposal and I will break you, if I have to kill every last one of them in order to do it. You will bow your head before me of your own will, human."
Roberts leaped to his feet with a speed that startled him a much as it did Djanka. His hand snapped out and clutched her throat in an iron grip. The four staff weapons snapped open, but none of the Jaffa could get a clear shot at Roberts around their mistress.
"Release me!" Djanka ordered.
Roberts' grip tightened.
"My kalshek'tak will kill your friends!" she choked.
The voice that emerged from Roberts' throat was barely human; even he did not recognise it. In fact, he was quite unaware of where the words were coming from. "What matters is that you die," he said.
"Kill the sorceress!" Djanka ordered.
"Yes, My Queen," one of the Jaffa responded. He turned and left the room.
The sorceress. Roberts shuddered as he realised what he had done. He still felt as though something was speaking and acting through him, but that did not relieve him of a sense of responsibility. He was SG-7's combat specialist and it was his place to protect them. How could he let himself be used to endanger them?
He fought desperately against the impulse to kill Djanka, regardless of the cost; with a shock, he realised that the something that was holding him back from action was the same something that shielded him from Djanka's influence. With an effort of will, he tore his mind free.
He released Djanka and he staggered back, breathing hard.
Djanka rubbed her throat, ruefully. "You are strong," she commended him. "You will be a powerful weapon when I control you."
"What about Merlyn?" Roberts asked.
Djanka gave a delicate shrug. "I would imagine she will be dead in…five minutes."
"But I let you go!"
"And so your other comrades survive," Djanka replied, offhandedly.
"No!" Roberts lunged for Djanka again.
The Queen turned her gaze on him and lashed out. Roberts recoiled and slammed hard against the wall. He dropped to his knees and bowed his head, helpless before her influence. "Fascinating," Djanka purred, her self-assurance reasserting itself with breathtaking speed. "To save your friend you have sacrificed your protection." She touched his chin and raised his face towards her.
"So strong, yet so fragile," she chuckled, stroking his face, possessively. "Leave us, Jaffa," she instructed. "I shall not need you; his will is mine now."
The guards withdrew. It was a perfect opportunity for Roberts to escape, but he could not move. As he had not understood his strange resistance, he could not restore it. He was not even certain if he wanted that defence restored, if it rendered him incapable of acting to protect his comrades.
Djanka laughed aloud. "Oh, my poor dhampir. Such conflict in your soul; it is quite delicious."
Roberts was still on his knees and now Djanka knelt in front of him and stroked his face. He was crying and she wiped away a tear, raising her moistened thumb and licking off the salt water with exaggerated relish.
"I will change that," she promised. "When you are my assassin, you shall have no doubts; I will make you pure again."
Her words filled Roberts with fear, but he was so utterly in her power that he could not even shiver.
*
"The stone of this mountain is shot through with veins of an ore called verenite," Tzernos explained as he led Ferretti, Merlyn and Alexa deeper into the fortress. "We refine verenite to produce a metal called veranium, which is used to create long-range psionic boosters; the metal focuses psychic energy to prevent dissipation over distance. The ore has the opposite effect, however; verenite interferes with our psychic abilities." He lifted an amulet from around his neck, a dark red stone, carved and polished into the shape of two interlinked rings. "This is verenite," he said. "We wear these talismans to shield us from Djanka's mental commands, although they inhibit our own abilities also. It is a poor barrier and would not resist direct assault, but it works to keep us from falling into her gestalt."
"So you're the resistance?" Ferretti asked.
"Such as it is," the Dragr replied. "My clan is opposed to her rule and there are many who hold with us, but only a handful ever take direct action. We can not trust any Dragr without an amulet; their thoughts might betray us in spite of themselves. Only in the depths are we truly safe; in the verenite mines where the walls are riddled with the suppressing ore. This way," he added, pointing to a narrow shaft with a ladder on one side.
They climbed down a long way; Ferretti estimated almost three hundred metres by the burning in his arms when he finally stepped off the ladder.
"I do not look forward to going back up," Ferretti admitted.
"We have an elevator," Tzernos assured him, "but its access point is on the far side of the fortress from the prison."
The mines were rough hewn and damp, but cool air blew through the tunnels and there were bright lamps on the walls which provided a pleasant change from the gloom of Djanka's world.
"My head feels clearer," Alexa said. "I can feel The Scourge stirring, but it is…distant."
"That is the verenite," Tzernos confirmed. "Come this way; your weapons and armour were sent for disposal and our agents have redirected them. Also, there is one here that you should meet."
"Maricza!" Merlyn exclaimed.
The blind seeress lay on her palette bed. She looked very pale, even for a kalshek'tak, and her red hair was matted with oily sweat, but it was hard to mistake her for anyone else. A white shift clung to her body and she was covered by a thin blanket. A verenite amulet, similar to Tzernos' but larger and more ornate, hung on her breast. She turned her eyeless face towards Merlyn and gave a weak smile. "Hello, Merlyn," she said, feebly.
Ferretti and Alexa stared at the ruin of Maricza's face in horror. The empty sockets turned towards Alexa and a look of rapture came over the seer's expression. "The twin," she whispered, reaching out for Alexa, who retreated.
"It's alright, Lieutenant," Merlyn promised. "She won't hurt you."
With an obvious effort, Maricza pushed herself into a sitting position. "This is so," she agreed.
Tzernos pushed past Ferretti and hurried to Maricza's side, helping her to lean forward so that he could prop pillows behind her back. "She has not the strength to hurt anyone," he assured them. "We have moved her deep into the caves, but still she feels the presence of The Scourge too deeply to sleep. It was Maricza who alerted us to the dangers we face," he explained. "She knew the Queen's madness was growing and she saw the peril that she brought upon us with the ancient weapons. The Queen would not listen and so she came to us; it was difficult for us to shield her from Djanka, but we believe that we have succeeded." He gave a wry smile. "If she knew where we were, she would have killed us by now."
"She does not know," Maricza assured him. "I would sense her attention. She is, at present, distracted by The Scourge."
"It's getting stronger, isn't it," Alexa said.
"Yes," Maricza agreed. "As your sergeant wakes the machines, the Kryadyas' control over the beast is overtaxed. Soon, they will be unable to maintain their sedative field."
"They don't have any superior Minds," Alexa went on, "but the war machines will be able to lure and capture pilots and take prisoners back to a Scourge temple on another world."
"We have to do something," Ferretti said. "Tzernos; our weapons?"
"In the next chamber," Tzernos said, "but she must speak to you first."
Maricza nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Tzernos." She gathered her thoughts for a moment, and then reached out for Alexa once more. "We have met before, Lieutenant Rasputin," she said.
"You now my name?"
"Merlyn mentioned it when we shared our imprisonment," Maricza explained, "but I have seen your spirit exposed; when you spied the land around your twin's stronghold."
"You were…?" Realisation dawned on Alexa. "I didn't recognise you without…" She broke off, awkwardly.
"I understand," Maricza assured her. "Please; take my hand. Lend me a little of your strength in resisting the horrors that surround me."
Alexa swallowed hard. "I…I think I can do better than that," she said. She approached the bed and motioned for Tzernos to stand aside; this he did, although reluctantly. Alexa sat beside the seer; with her left hand, she held Maricza's right and she laid her right palm on the seeress' forehead.
"Rasputin?" Ferretti asked.
"I told you once that being psychic means having a hole in your defences," Alexa explained. "Djanka and her commanders have used Maricza for so long that they've made that hole wider; as The Scourge and Lord Nor once did with my mind. That is why she can not blot out the touch of The Scourge, even here."
"So what are you going to do?"
"The same thing that my sister did for me." Alexa gave a guilty smile. "I mean Danica, of course. I'm going to heal the damage."
"You can do that?" Merlyn asked, surprised.
Alexa nodded. "Physical wounds and mental trauma are difficult; you usually have to let them heal on their own. Psychic damage; that's easy." She turned to look at Maricza. "You will find that your powers are diminished," she said.
Maricza smiled. "That will be no great burden," she promised.
"Are you sure about this?" Ferretti asked.
"I have to try," Alexa replied. "Danica did this for me; I can not refuse it to another."
Alexa closed her eyes and concentrated. From without, there was very little to see, especially with the limited psychic sensitivity of the onlookers impeded by the verenite in the walls. Tzernos and Merlyn merely felt a tingle and Ferretti did not even sense that.
Alexa took her hand from the seeress' brow and Maricza smiled again.
"Thank you," Maricza said. She turned her head upwards and drew a long, shuddering breath through her nostrils. "Oh, I am so tired," she sighed. "Listen quickly, before I fall asleep. Your comrade, Lieutenant Roberts, has…"
"He's alive?" Merlyn asked.
"Against all likelihood, yes," Tzernos confirmed.
"And he has agreed to aid us in return for our help in freeing you all," Maricza went on. "He has a plan to destroy Djanka, but I suspect that he will need your assistance. We will show you the way to the tower chamber where he is being held as soon as you are ready."
"What of Pearson?" Alexa asked, urgently. "I must reach him before he does something that we will all deeply regret."
Maricza nodded. "Tzernos will guide you to him and assist you in any way he can," she promised. "He will provide whatever else you need, if it is in his power, but it will be your strength that tells, young seeress. You should know, before you confront her, that Djanka fears you, Alexa Vasiliovna Rasputina. You are two souls who are one and it is foretold that you will destroy her." She lay back down on the palette bed. "Now, I must rest. I will not see you for some time, I deem," she added, "but we shall meet again."
Alexa stooped and kissed the Dargr's forehead. "Sleep well, Maricza nag Tsaryda," she said. "May you sleep long and wake peacefully."
Maricza's head fell back onto the pillow and she slept, her hollow, lidless eye-sockets staring at the ceiling.
Tzernos laid a hand gently on Alexa's shoulder. "Come," he said. "It is time."
*
While SG-7 readied themselves, Tzernos had donned his own armour. It was not unlike that of the Kalash'rak, but plainer in design and darker in colour, more the deep red of a fine claret than the crimson of freshly-spilled blood. He carried a bloodspear and a bore pistol.
"I was told that those were the weapons of an order of Dragr knights," Alexa observed.
"Many orders carried them," Tzernos replied, "including the Divine Arm; the holy warriors of our clan. The order was disbanded four thousand years ago."
"You do know how to use that thing?" Alexa asked.
Tzernos smiled. "We have kept our ancient traditions alive in many ways, Lieutenant Rasputin," he assured her.
Ferretti and Merlyn were taken to the main elevator shaft, while Tzernos led Alexa through the mines to a tiny door in the rock. The door slid open to reveal an elevator barely large enough for one person.
"It's a good thing I'm not claustrophobic," Alexa muttered. "So will you wait for me at the top or vice versa?"
"There is a ladder," Tzernos said. "I will take that."
Alexa's eyes widened. "You have got to be kidding me. How far up are we going?"
He shrugged. "Only a few hundred metres."
"Oh; is that all?" she drawled.
The lift took almost five minutes to make the ascent. Alexa was not convinced that it would not be more efficient to send the lift back for Tzernos, but when she reached the top he was already waiting for her. He did not even seem to be out of breath.
"How did you do that?" Alexa asked.
He gave a thin smile. "We move very fast, especially in straight lines," he replied.
"I can feel it again," Alexa told him. "The Scourge." She slipped the imager over her head, and then donned her helmet; the nanite shield was still holding and the pressure on her mind eased.
"Stay behind me," Tzernos ordered. "I shall protect you; you end the threat of these machines."
"Right," Alexa agreed, uncertainly. She was not sure how she would achieve this goal, as the equipment that the resistance had retrieved did not include their disruptor bombs. Tzernos insisted that they must have been removed before the gear was taken to be disposed of, but that knowledge would not help Alexa to destroy a massive array of Scourge technology.
*
Nara entered the tower room, bearing a tray of food for the prisoner. Roberts lay on the bed with tears in his eyes; he looked battered and half-stunned. Nara set the tray down and went over to the young man; close-up, she could see the scars of Djanka's touch behind his eyes. Her hand hovered over his brow, but he had made her swear not to touch his mind.
"I brought what you asked for," she whispered, reaching into her robe. She brought out the headset from his Shay armour and proffered it to him. "I do not know what use it will be to you, but…"
Roberts made no attempt to take the device from her.
"Lieutenant Roberts?"
The body on the bed began to shake with silent tears. Suddenly frightened, Nara reached out her hand and locked her gaze with his. At once she felt that his psychic shield was gone and she sensed Djanka's cruel hand upon his will.
"Above you," he whispered, the effort almost more than he could manage.
Nara looked up and for a moment she saw Djanka hanging, suspended by her feet in the rafters. Then the Queen let herself drop towards her rebellious slave with a cry of rage, whether aimed at Nara or at Roberts, it was impossible to say.
Nara dropped the headset and tumbled backwards. Djanka rolled with her landing and kicked out towards Nara, who leaned aside, blocked the kick with one arm and shoved Djanka off balance.
"Once more, my generosity betrays me," Djanka hissed. "I should have slaughtered your upstart bloodline a generation ago!"
"Correct that oversight, if you can," Nara challenged.
The Queen lunged at Nara and the two women fought, fiercely. Roberts gave them only half a mind as he struggled to overcome Djanka's psychic paralysis, but he could see that this was a clash of two giants; mistress and slave they might be in the eyes of their world, but there was little to choose between them. Djanka might have the edge in practice and freshness, but Nara had speed and a labourer's endurance. Nara was hampered by her slave's robe, but Djanka was no less impeded by the alterations that she had wrought upon her kalshek'tak flesh; the mammary implants and the bone grafts that widened her narrow, vampire hips.
"Guards!" Djanka hissed, but the only response from outside the door was a burst of gunfire.
The door opened; Ferretti and Merlyn entered. The helmets of their battle suits hung at their sides, since they had not had the luxury of time to reacclimatise themselves to an expanded view. Wisely, they avoided the fight, moving around the struggling vampires to Roberts' side.
"You're alive," he gasped, as Merlyn arrived.
"So are you," she replied. "Can you move?"
He shook his head with slow, painful movements; it was clear that he would be unable to manage anything more demanding.
"Fine," Ferretti said, "so I carry him."
Roberts managed to wave his right hand in defiance, knocking the headset onto the floor.
"What's that doing here?" Ferretti asked.
With another great effort, Roberts gasped: "Perihelion."
Merlyn exchanged a look with Ferretti. Her CO shrugged.
Merlyn lifted the headset from her belt. "Perihelion," she said.
Seven thousand miles away and five hundred miles above the surface of Nign, Wilhelmina heard the call. Her systems came to life and she set a course for the fortress at maximum acceleration.
"What now?" Merlyn asked, but before Roberts could muster a reply, her shoulders were seized and she was swung violently against Ferretti with such violence that they both tumbled across the floor until the met the wall.
"He is mine!" Djanka hissed, but the distraction cost her dearly.
While the Queen's attention was on Merlyn and Ferretti, Nara was able to get around behind her and pin her arms. Djanka thrashed and struggled, but for all the strength of Dragr and Goa'uld, she could not break free.
"Release me!" Djanka snarled. "I am your superior!"
"Did you forget, My Queen?" Nara asked, breathlessly. "The Vyalakas clan were no mere priests! We were the holy warriors of the old faith! Now we are labourers, but we still breed for strength! You have betrayed every sacred tenet of the Dragrsrech and it is my duty – and my privilege – to see that justice is done."
"I shall not be defeated by you!" Djanka declared and she reached for the power of her gestalt.
*
Alexa and Tzernos staggered as a wave of savage triumph surged over them. It was followed by cries of terror.
"Bozhe moi," Alexa gasped.
"She has taken the gestalt's power away from the cache chamber," Tzernos realised. "They are waking!"
They ran, heedless of the risk of detection. Any guards present to hear them had far more pressing matters on their minds; in fact, matters would literally be pressing on their minds. For now, the Omega suit and Tzernos' verenite talismans – there were strips of the ore set in the surface of his helmet and a carved amulet in the shape of the linked circles at the brow – protected them, but the pressure was growing.
Three of the Kalash'rak ran from the cache chamber with fear in their eyes. They saw Alexa and Tzernos, and Alexa could see them perk up at the sight of someone whom they could fight. They lifted their bloodspears and charged. Alexa fired her stake thrower and one of the Dragr went down.
Tzernos leaped into the fray, parrying attacks from the two remaining warriors. "Go on!" he yelled. "Stop The Scourge!"
Alexa obeyed, because she knew that if she even slowed down she would turn and run from the eldritch horror that waited in the cache chamber.
Fyzir ka Dralys was the leader of a pack of Kalash'rak that had been nine strong. With Ranja as good as dead, they were still eight; eight of the deadliest warriors on the planet Nign. They should have been able to handle anything that the universe could throw at them, and yet they had failed.
It had all happened so fast. First the pull of his Queen's mind on the gestalt, then an inexorable increase of mental activity from the machines. The engineer had turned to one of the war machines and fired the blaster into its workings.
"Stop him!" Fyzir commanded.
Two of the pack sprang forward and charged at the human. He turned, calmly, and fired the blaster at the first of the kalshek'tak; the attacker fell, his chest smouldering evilly. The second raised his bloodspear, but the war machine was on the move and seized his arms with its metal tentacles. It snatched him into the air and sliced his head off with his own weapon. It dropped the body, caught the head, then tossed it into the heart of the abandoned mass of machinery.
That was when The Scourge had awoken and the wall of psychic force had rolled out; that was when the mystics maintaining the suppressing field had cried out in agony; and that was when four of his warriors had fled. He had shot one of the cowards down himself, but the other three had not slowed. Only Fyzir and one other, Rathen ka Lamys, remained.
"Take the machine!" Fyzir decided. "Together; now!"
The two warriors attacked together, but despite their mental link, the Kalash'rak did not work well in numbers. They were chosen for their lack of empathy and each man tried to let the other take all the risks. Fyzir's blade sliced off a mass of tentacles and Rathen's smote the single, terrible eye from its socket, but although they cut deep gashes in the skin of the machine itself, it kept coming.
A second mass of tentacles struck out and coiled around Rathen. He dropped his blade and clawed at the tentacles, but to no avail. Fyzir moved to cut him free, but he was forced back; he did not feel like risking his own life for Rathen's. A moment later he regretted his decision, when Rathen was flipped through the air to land in one of the war machines connected to the collective machine.
The hatch of the war machine closed and its eye glowed.
"Stand down," Pearson ordered Fyzir. "Obey…or die."
Fyzir knew that, if he surrendered, he would follow Rathen into the machine. Already he could see tentacles stretching up to the gallery and hauling the writhing, stricken mystics down to the waiting siphon chambers.
"If you want me, come and take me," he challenged.
*
The kalshek'tak slave lurched away from her Queen, clutching her head and screaming in agony. Djanka gave a whoop of triumph and stalked towards her, ignoring the humans for the moment. Merlyn took advantage of the Queen's distraction to stagger up and return to Roberts' beside.
"What do you need the ship to do?" she asked.
"You have to translate it into Shay," Roberts gasped.
"I can do that," she insisted.
Ferretti picked himself up and reclaimed his stake thrower. Djanka stood with her back to him, triumphant over her fallen foe. He took careful aim and fired; the stake flew from the launcher and shattered a window, well off to the left of his intended target.
Ferretti blinked and quite suddenly realised that Djanka was standing right in front of him, with her hand on the barrel of his stake thrower.
"Foolish little man," she hissed. She ripped the weapon from his hands and thrust him back against the wall. She closed with incredible speed and gripped his head between her powerful hands, razor-sharp thumbnails poised over his eyes and a look of triumph on her face.
Then she stopped. Slowly, her expression became one of fear.
*
Alexa saw at once what had happened.
She did not see the machines, only the Minds behind them, and especially the new and potent Mind born of the nexus of little Minds embodied in Pearson's construction and the still-living brain of the slaughtered Kalash'rak. She was torn between horror at what Pearson had done and a kind of awe that he had managed it. She was not sure that the Scourge machines themselves would have known how to construct a new controlling centre.
In conflict with The Scourge, Alexa's greatest advantage had not been strength – in which she was comparatively lacking – but subtlety – which The Scourge possessed in not the slightest degree. As she saw Mind and not machine, so The Scourge saw minds and not bodies. Moreover, it was distracted by the savage assault of the one Dragr still standing. Alexa turned her mind inwards, brushing the probes of The Scourge aside so that she was all-but invisible to the Mind. Thus cloaked, she made her way towards the mess that was Pearson's tortured psyche.
"Lieutenant Rasputin!" he called, as she approached. One of the war machines turned, alerted by Pearson's senses. "No!" Pearson snapped. "This is the one who invaded my mind." His blaster was still wrapped around his arm, but he drew a heavy blade from his side. "She is mine and mine alone."
*
"Are you insane!" Merlyn demanded, not quite sure that she was hearing Roberts aright. "We'll be killed as well."
"Order her to fire!" Roberts insisted, the words coming more freely now. "One shot only, but order it."
Merlyn closed her eyes. "Cha sath," she whispered.
The small window and the wall around it disintegrated as a blast from Wilhelmina's plasma cannon struck the tower. Djanka staggered away from Ferretti, who stumbled and fell.
Djanka stood in the centre of the room and pressed her hands against her temples, her face twisted in agony. "No!" she screamed. "No! Get out of my head!"
"What's wrong with her?" Ferretti asked.
The slave rose shakily to her feet and helped Ferretti to rise. "The Scourge," she said. "She exposed her servants when she took their strength and now it reaches back through the gestalt for her."
Djanka screamed, piteously.
"Damn her," the woman snarled.
"What?" Ferretti demanded.
"I have worked for her destruction for centuries; now…now in her desperation, she has stolen the sweetness of victory."
Djanka slumped on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably and staring at the world with the eyes of a mindless beast.
"How can I savour her end when I pity her so?"
*
Pearson's first, frenzied attack knocked the rifle from Alexa's hands. She jumped back and drew her own sword.
"Come then!" the sergeant challenged. "Let us see some sport!"
He thrust at her, powerful but clumsy; Alexa parried easily. She warded off a few more attacks while she got the measure of her opponent, but soon realised that she would need to beat him quickly. He was unskilled, but The Scourge was providing him with an almost limitless reserve of strength and endurance. She cut at his arm, drawing blood, but he barely noticed the wound and riposted with terrible speed.
They fenced for several moments, with Alexa in control of the fight, until Pearson parried a cut with his left arm. Her blade cut deep into the blaster and a surge of energy flashed back along the blade, throwing her against the side of the sled. The tchul'da dropped to the chamber floor. The breath was knocked out of her and she could not respond as Pearson approached and levelled his sword at her throat.
Fyzir fought harder than he had ever fought in his life. His pack was broken and he could feel his Queen slipping away, but he did not lose heart. Indeed, the death of every other Dragr who had meant anything to him only served to redouble his sense of absolute self-importance.
With two swift, chopping blows he hacked the remaining tentacles from his enemy. On it came, blind but relentless, seeking to crush him with its massive bulk, but he drove his bloodspear up through the unnatural thing's shattered eye into its head. It spasmed once and then was still. Fyzir wrenched his blade free and smote the machine so that it toppled backwards and collapsed.
Two more war machines stalked over their fallen comrade and charged at Fyzir. With a roar, Fyzir leaped to meet them and he died, burned down by their glass-green gaze.
"Now!" Pearson declared, but he did not make the killing blow. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes.
Alexa knew that there would not be another chance. She reached up and pushed aside the blade with her armoured left wrist, while with her right hand she tore off her helmet. As Pearson struggled to recover the initiative, she caught hold of his head and thrust her forehead against his so hard that she felt their skulls knock together. The shared pain jarred both of their minds momentarily into matching patterns and Alexa used this to make a connection with Pearson's mind.
As their minds met, Alexa saw Djanka's conditioning loom up before him like a great, grey wall. She fixed her psychic fingers into the greyness and wrestled with it; the barrier tore like paper. Triumph surging through her, Alexa ripped at it, but there seemed to be no end of the greyness. She stepped back – figuratively speaking – and looked at the wall.
She gasped in horror. Every piece of Djanka's elaborate fiction that she pulled loose was flowing back into the barrier; the false persona was reconstructing itself, but in an even more jumbled form. If she could not remove it soon, it would drive Pearson insane.
*
Djanka's eyes snapped open. Nara recoiled in horror, drawing Ferretti back with her; the eyes were still red, but her pupils burned with the green fire of The Scourge, casting a ghastly green glow throughout the room. She stooped and picked up Ferretti's stake thrower. "I shall not fall alone!" she hissed.
Nara stared in horror as the Queen levelled the weapon at her breast. She knew that she was in danger, but she was paralysed by the light from those eyes. Beside her, Ferretti stared blankly; Merlyn also was frozen in place.
There was nothing anyone could do as Djanka prepared to kill them all.
Help me! Alexa screamed in her mind.
I am here, Shura.
Alexa could have wept for joy. Danica, she said. We must help him.
We can do nothing to the barrier, Danica told her. We must strike at the source. Join with me.
There was a moment of fear, but Alexa remembered what Maricza had said: Two souls who are one. I am ready, she told the Goa'uld, then, willingly, she allowed her power to flow into Danica's. But as they turned away from the barrier and struck out at the mind behind it, Alexa realised that the seeress had been wrong. They were not two souls, they were three: Alexa, Danica…and Vasilisa.
But they were as one.
Djanka howled once more and the light in her eyes flickered. The psychic assault launched by the threefold soul struck her at the apex of her conflict with the influence of the Scourge. Her mind was sent into turmoil and her power was shattered.
Released from Djanka's power, Nara and Ferretti slumped to the ground.
Merlyn gripped the side of the bed for support. "Cha sath!" she gasped.
A blue-white plasma blast bleached away the green light and turned Djanka's body to flame.
The barrier melted away as Djanka's mind collapsed. Alexa's triumph was short lived, however. As the Dragr Queen and her Goa'uld symbiote died, a wave of rage and pain washed back through the psychic network of the gestalt; a gestalt of which Pearson was still a part.
Desperately, Alexa threw her psychic presence around Pearson. The force of Djanka's death hit her like a wall of flame.
*
Tzernos cut down his second opponent and raced into the cache chamber. War machines were rising from their resting places and pouring out through the passages of the fortress. Sleds were beginning to levitate from the floor and their weapons glowed green. The handful of kalshek'tak not already dead or sealed in the siphon chambers were writhing on the ground in agony. Even Tzernos, whose clan had no part in the gestalt, felt the impact of Djanka's death brush against his defences.
In the centre of the chamber, Alexa crouched with her arms around her friend. A war machine loomed over them and Pearson pulled away from Alexa. The tentacles snared the young woman, but Pearson snatched the pistol from her belt and fired at point blank range into the machine's eye; its head was blown apart and it fell, directionless, to the floor.
Tzernos charged. A war machine moved to intercept, but he knew exactly what to do. The blade of his bloodspear swept across and sliced through the cables of the horrid thing's neck. He sprang up onto its collapsing body and leaped to join the two humans.
The Dragr stooped and swept Alexa onto his shoulder.
"Get her out of here!" Pearson yelled.
"She came for you!" Tzernos replied. He flipped over his bloodspear and threw it like a javelin to stab into the wall beside one of the exits. He scooped up Pearson with his free hand and sprinted hard for the doorway, evading the war machines by dint of pure speed. He dumped his passengers unceremoniously on the floor and wrenched the spear from the wall.
As he turned, a war machine charged, but Pearson stepped out and raised his hand. The machine stopped.
"They don't know quite what I am," he said. "They're confused, but it won't last. Pick up Alexa and back away."
Tzernos obeyed, but he scowled at Pearson's back as they retreated, the war machine stalking after them. "You have doomed my world," he accused.
Pearson shook his head. "I was thinking like a Goa'uld," he reminded the vampire. "I didn't trust The Scourge, even when it had me doing its work." He pulled out a remote detonator and twisted the arming switch. "By pouring their energy into the creation of the nexus Mind, they have irrevocably tied themselves to it. And the danger in a centralised intelligence is that it make you easy to sabotage."
The war machine twitched, beginning to suspect that the engineer was no longer a friend of The Scourge.
"Care to do the honours?" Pearson offered.
The war machine seemed to make up its mind; it crouched to spring.
Tzernos reached forward and pressed the trigger. A blue flash erupted from the cache chamber. A single spark of blue ignited in the midst of the green eye of the war machine and then the eldritch light died.
*
Roberts rose to his feet, the paralysis falling from his limbs with Djanka's death. He picked up and imager and spoke into it. "Rozja si," he ordered. Moments later, Wilhelmina's hatch gaped welcomingly beyond the shattered wall.
"Still feel sorry for her?" Ferretti asked.
Nara gave a sad smile. "More than ever," she admitted, ruefully.
*
"You have eight hours to evacuate the fortress," Pearson explained. "The d-nuke's main explosion will be contained by the basalt, but the contamination will spread a fair way; I suggest you try to get at least thirty miles away."
"That will not be a problem," Nara assured him.
"Denn die Todten reiten schnell," Roberts said.
Merlyn smiled thinly. "Good to see you back to your old self," she told him, although there was a brittleness behind his eyes that she had never seen before.
Roberts inclined his head, solemnly. "Thank you for trusting me," he said.
"You have earned it," she assured him.
"And this will remove all mark of The Scourge from our world?" Tzernos asked.
"So long as Djanka didn't have anything beyond the fortress," Pearson agreed. "Everything connected to that controlling will was killed by the shock of its death and the interference of the transmitted disruption charge." He pointed to a small stack of crates. "I used up all of the charges from my comrades' packs in making the kill-switch, but it seems they decided there was no such thing as overkill; they had five times what I used in the back of the ship."
"All of which we'll leave with you, in the name of interstellar friendship," Ferretti added.
Nara inclined her head, gratefully. "We thank you for your help," she said. "You have our gratitude and I do not wish to appear ungracious, but it is best that you depart swiftly. Without the cannon, the Replicators could arrive at any moment, and the mood of the clans will be vengeful."
"The great clans who supported Djanka will wish to find scapegoats and the lesser clans will want to avenge the wrongs done to them by the nobles," Tzernos explained. "It will not be safe for anyone, but outsiders least of all. We shall do our best, but I do not have a great deal of hope that we will be able to remove Djanka's Jaffa safely."
"So we rid you of Djanka, but all you have left is war?" Ferretti asked.
"There is hope," Maricza said. "We did not have that before. And if peace can be achieved, it is by the Queen of the Vyalakas."
Roberts was the first to realise. "Nara?" he asked, amazed.
Nara smiled, shyly.
“Well,” Ferretti said. “Thank you, your Majesty.”
“Thank you,” she insisted again. “I hope that we will speak again, in better circumstances.”
*
Wilhelmina lifted SG-7 from the surface of Nign and powered away into space. The hold was equipped to act as an infirmary and it was here that Alexa lay, unconscious, surrounded by her team mates.
“They would make formidable allies,” Merlyn noted.
“Yes,” Roberts agreed, “but we did plunge them into civil war.”
Ferretti shrugged. “I think they'll be busy for a while, looking after their own.”
He reached out and smooth the hair away from Alexa's face. Her eyelids flickered, the first sign that she might be only sleeping, not comatose. Ferretti felt a surge of relief.
“I think we should do the same,” he added, looking fondly on his four comrades.