06 - Siren Song (44 page)

“Really,” Jack said, his eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’ve noticed we don’t have
anything to trade with?”

Aris held up his free hand, warding off Jack’s skepticism. “My word is good
on over two thousand planets, Colonel. I didn’t get that kind of reputation by
cheating my trading partners.”

“Whatever,” Jack said. He’d already run out of both patience and time, and if
Aris was playing some kind of game, he wasn’t in the mood. He hadn’t completely
made up his mind to leave Aris alive when they ditched his planet. “Get to the
point.”

“You gave me this,” Aris said, resting his hands on his son’s shoulders. He
glanced over at Teal’c, then at Sam, and nodded. Jack had a strong sense of déjà
vu. “I’ll give you my ship.”

“Just like that?” Carter asked. Jack was happy to hear that she was as
skeptical as he was. He’d trained her well, clearly. “How do we know it’s not a
trick?”

“Major Carter, I could already have shot you where you stand. I could have
killed you all. Yet here you are.” Aris regarded them all with an amused
expression, as though they were simple to even have asked the question.

“So you’re not being generous, then,” Jack said. Aris met his eyes for a long
moment.

“Hardly. What would be in it for me?”

“Perhaps you and your son should come with us,” Teal’c said, making the
question sound like an imperative. Jack shot him a look, but Teal’c studiously
ignored him. The last thing Jack wanted was Aris Boch in his way. He wanted Aris
Boch on his side even less.

“I’m afraid not. Chances are you won’t make it off this planet, and I have
other concerns now.” Aadi pressed back against Aris, who dropped an arm over his
chest to pull him close. “You’d better hurry. Don’t forget, Yu is on his way.”

“Yu, Yu, Yu,” Jack muttered. He’d put that issue on the back burner and let
it boil dry. It was like he’d left half his brain down there in that cave of a
library.

“Your race’s resistance to the Goa’uld… if we could isolate the source of
it, think of the benefits to all the races enslaved by them.” Carter leaned
forward to lend emphasis to her persuasion. Aris looked diffidently at her. “I
thought it was the
roshna
,” she went on, “but Brenneka told me so much
about the Nitori. It might be genetic. Your people could help humans all over
the galaxy, if we could just—”

“If I would leave my people to help yours,” Aris said. “Not going to happen,
Major. Come back and visit us sometime. If we’re still here, we’ll be happy to
help you with your little science project.” He moved his hand to his blaster.
“My son and I have plans for the Goa’uld.”

“Those plans wouldn’t include going back down to that vault, would they?”
Jack asked. The thought made his skin crawl, and the look on Daniel’s face told
him he didn’t like the idea much, either.

Aris’ smile was completely not reassuring. “Not your problem, Colonel. Now
get off my planet before I have to shoot you.”

“Password,” Daniel croaked, and Jack looked down at him, concerned by the way
saying even one word made him choke and gasp.

“Barokna,”
Aris said, in answer to the question.

Daniel raised his eyebrows, and Jack asked what he was probably thinking. “The same as the old ship?”

“No reason to change what works,” Aris said. He stepped back, pulling Aadi
with him. “Here’s hoping you’re as good a pilot as I am, Colonel. Though I doubt
it.”

“Here’s hoping you manage to live past sunset,” Jack said. For Aadi’s sake,
he left the sarcasm out of it, though he was pretty sure Aris heard it anyway.
The twisted smile on Aris’ face confirmed it.

“My people are resourceful, Colonel. And so am 1.” Already Aris was backing
away from them, but Aadi pulled away, stared at Carter for a moment and then
Teal’c, as if he wanted to come to them.

“Thank you, Aadi,” Teal’c said, and inclined his head. Carter smiled again.

“Aadi,” Aris said, a tone of command in his voice. The boy’s eyes turned
glassy with unshed tears, but he nodded his head at Teal’c and retreated to his
father’s side.

Jack stared up at the ship behind them. With any luck, he might still
remember how to fly her. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, helping
Teal’c pull Daniel to his feet.

The password worked like a charm, and once they were all aboard, Teal’c slid
smoothly into the pilot’s seat, displacing Jack without so much as a request for
permission. Jack had some vague thoughts about protesting, but the sharp twinges
from his finger stabbed the idea of that right out of his head. Fondling that
bug-eye of a control was not going to be easy, so he sat down to play navigator
and contented himself with watching the black, disgusting landscape fall away
beneath them as they climbed along the rock face and out of the valley.

Behind his shoulder, Carter leaned closer and sucked in a breath at the sight
of dead rebels and Jaffa scattered in the streets.

“Better to die free,” Teal’c said, in what was always his last word on the
subject. No need for Jack to say he agreed. They all did, though it was a damn
waste to have to wipe out half a planet’s people to get to it.

“Carter,” Jack said. “Find us someplace to go. Someplace close, with a
’gate.” Daniel was curled up against the wall behind him, and for all Jack knew he could be bleeding to death. Nothing they could do
about it but hurry.

“Yes, sir,” she said. The pressure on the back of his chair eased when she
straightened and went to the center console. A moment later she said, “Sir,
there’s a
ha’tak
headed straight for this planet. It’ll enter orbit in
less than three minutes.”

“It is undoubtedly Yu’s
ha’tak,”
Teal’c said, maneuvering them through
the last fading blue of planetary atmosphere and out into the yawning darkness
of space. Jack scanned the star field. Death gliders and cargo ships swarmed
around them. They fit in perfectly.

“Let’s just ignore it and get out of here,” Jack said. “They won’t notice
us.”

“Sir,” Carter said, and before she even said another word he’d heard the
entire argument in her tone. “From orbit, that mothership can wipe out entire
cities. The revolution will be over before it’s even begun.”

“They expected it, Carter.” Jack swiveled in the seat to face her. “They knew
he was coming.”

“No, Aris knew. And he knew he couldn’t stop Yu. Especially not without a
ship.” She met his gaze steadily.

“Oh, come on,” Jack said, annoyed. “Don’t make this out to be a sob story for
these people. After what he did to us?”

“There are more lives at stake here than that of Aris Boch,” Teal’c said,
though he wasn’t looking at Jack. “We gave those who assisted us our assurance
we would aid them in winning their freedom. Now we have abandoned them to lose
it again.”

“You know how this game is played, Teal’c,” Jack said.

He swung back around. Now the mothership had come into view, a faint speck
ahead, but growing. In the foreground was a black shadow that blocked out the
stars. A second
ha’tak
already in orbit. As it began to rotate, the
central pyramid became a narrow wedge of light.

“I know only that we made a promise in order to secure your freedom,” Teal’c
said, and now he did turn his head so Jack could see the look of determination
on his face.

Jack sighed. “We don’t have any weapons. What the hell are we supposed to do, ring over and take them on one by one? Look at us,” he said,
gesturing widely to include all his walking wounded.

“This vessel is heavily armed,” Teal’c said.

“I thought cargo ships didn’t carry weapons,” Carter said.

“In general, they do not. However, this one does.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Jack muttered. “Considering who owned it last.”

“Sir,” Carter said, pointing at the mothership that was now looming beyond
the nearer one. Teal’c maneuvered around to get a closer look. The ship slowed,
then assumed orbit.

“It is moving into position to bombard the surface of the planet,” Teal’c
said. “If we are to act, we must act quickly.”

“Can we even do enough damage to make this worthwhile?” Jack asked.

Teal’c glanced back at Daniel, obviously weighing “worthwhile” with
“promised”, and nodded once. “I believe we can.”

Jack looked at Carter, whose silence gave agreement. Then he raised his hand,
capitulating. “Do it. But make it good, Teal’c. I want to be home in time for
dinner.”

That tiny ghost of a smile that passed for a grin appeared, then Teal’c gave
all his concentration to finding a point of vulnerability on the nearer ship.
Both
ha’taks
glowed on the view screen in front of them.

“They have not raised their shields,” Teal’c said. “They do not expect attack
from other ships.”

“Well, at least there’s that,” Jack said, and leaned back to watch the show.
Nothing else to do now but play it out.

“SG-one-niner, do you copy?” Jacob boosted the signal and adjusted the orbit of the cargo ship. Most of his attention was taken up by
the approaching
ha’tak,
which he’d been watching with growing dismay.
His ship was cloaked, not that it mattered; his
tel’tak
was
indistinguishable from the other Goa’uld vessels drifting in orbit. The arrival
of a second mothership here couldn’t be a good sign, not with Sebek’s
ha’tak
already on the planet, and this second one rotating into firing position,
batteries aimed at the planet’s surface. Chatter from the ship in orbit told him
that the newcomer belonged to Yu, and Yu was undoubtedly on board. Chatter from
the ground told him the remaining city on the planet was in the throes of some
sort of rebellion, which meant that, if SG-1 was really down there, they had
either caused it or were trapped in it.

With the signal boosters on his ship, Jacob was pretty sure he should’ve been
able to get through to them by now, if they had access to their radios. It was a
gamble, but he had nothing else to go on.

He got up and stretched, restless, frustrated. There wasn’t much left for him
to do here. Either they’d hear him, or they wouldn’t; either they were in the
middle of chaos, or they were already dead. It could be they’d never come to
this planet at all, but there was a part of Jacob that wasn’t ready to admit it
could be true. It would mean he had no leads, no way to find Sam. This option
was better than no option at all.

The display of the planet’s surface showed plumes of smoke rising into the
atmosphere, circling up from large explosions below.

If there is a way to escape, they will find it,
Selmak reminded him, ever
practical. Jacob was having trouble believing it at that moment, and although he
knew Selmak was troubled by his pessimism, he reached for the radio yet again.

“I could put the ship down and take a look around down there,” he said, only
to be met with Selmak’s violent objection.

You are Tok’ra. In the eyes of half the galaxy, you are no better than a
Goa’uld. These people have risen against their masters. Do you wish to kill us
both?

With a sigh, Jacob said, “SG-one-niner, come in. SG-1, do you read me? This
is Jacob Carter.”

As before, there was nothing but silence. Jacob stared at the ceiling. He’d
have to keep hailing. They’d have no idea he was there.

The ship’s automatic beacon squawked at him, the proximity warning triggered
by the nearest ship. He leaned forward to get a better view. This wasn’t exactly
a fine specimen of a mothership, by any stretch. A vast section of the outer
ring was actually open to vacuum. Maybe it explained why Yu had come to mop up
the planet himself. Jacob was vectoring his cargo ship away when a
tel’tak
disengaged from the traffic around the
ha’tak
and blasted across
Jacob’s bow, laying a heavy pattern of fire against the underbelly of the
ha’tak,
where many of the vital systems were. Then the
tel’tak
swooped around in an elegant turn to finish with a volley of shots directly into
the open decks of the ring. The results were immediate and spectacular. Debris
blossomed silently as the
ha’tak
started to yaw, the outer ring breaking
up, separating in jagged sections. The mothership started to spin away,
propelled by the force of the explosions, irreparably disabled.

Jacob double-timed it out of there and looped back above the plane of
destruction to watch as Yu’s ship changed course in an attempt to avoid the
expanding cloud of debris. Too slow, the mothership couldn’t avoid a section of
the destroyed outer ring that collided with it in a glancing blow, raking and
skipping along its underside before tumbling away. The explosions that erupted
from the impact proved that Yu’s shields weren’t up, and, Jacob hoped, with that
damage, they wouldn’t be. The mystery
tel’tak
emerged from behind one of
the largest drifting sections, squeezing between it and the scarred angle of the
ha’tak’s
damaged central pyramid, and headed for Yu’s mothership.

“Son of a bitch,” Jacob breathed. There was a wordless stirring inside him.
Selmak agreed.

The
tel’tak
rose up, gracefully slipping past two death gliders that turned to challenge it, and circled around to the sloped side facing the
planet. A moment later, the ship’s navigational array was reduced to spark and
cinder. Precision shooting, Jacob noticed, and precision flying. This was no
local native who’d managed to grab a ship and take the fight to the air.

This was someone who knew how to fly.

The
ha’tak
returned fire, striking the ship’s thrusters and sending
the little craft spinning for a moment before the pilot righted her, and then
ducked to evade the gliders giving chase. Jacob leaned forward and switched the
com signal over.

“Unidentified vessel, do you read me? This is Jacob Carter. Come in.”