STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust (18 page)

“My Lord.” She tipped her head, the slightest bow of deference. “Please, allow me to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Anshar’s conduct.”

Tsukiyomi dropped languidly back into his throne. “I expect nothing less from him. He is a brute and a boor.”

“He is an idiot,” Hera smiled.

“That too.”

“How lucky that we are not.” She leaned forwards, just a little, over the table. She had heard rumors of Tsukiyomi’s preferences, but the involuntary dip of his eyes belied them. She pretended not to notice. “However, I also must apologize for my own conduct.”

“I do not understand.”

“Alliances should be based on trust and openness, do you not think?”

At the mention of the word, Tsukiyomi did a little leaning of his own. “I do, my Lady.”

“I could not mention this in front of Anshar, you understand. He is still convinced your First Prime, Hashitara, was killed during the attack on his diplomatic convoy.”

Tsukiyomi gaped. “I… He… Lady, he lives?”

“Barely. He was critically injured. His symbiote suffered great damage. We have been treating him as best we can, but even so he requires many more hours in a sarcophagus before he can be truly well.”

“Where is he?” The words were a whisper.

“On my yacht. I will have his sarcophagus transported to your vessel immediately.”

Tsukiyomi frowned. “Lady, the sarcophagus too? How shall I return it to you?”

“Consider it a gift. To cement our alliance. Our…” She held out her hand, palm up for him to kiss. “Our friendship.”

When Tsukiyomi’s ship was gone from the sky, Hera went to join Ericaceae at the yacht.

She walked, again. There would be a time for haste, when the Auger was ready and her flagship, the mighty
Clythena
, was ready to take her to it, and then on in search of the demon. But for now, it pleased her to take refuge in her host’s memory again, in the feeling of dry grass under her bare feet.

“They are gone, then?” Ericaceae asked, as she approached. She was waiting at the base of the ramp.

Hera nodded. Behind her, mechanical clatters and whirrs echoed out across the plain, as the Hall of Negotiation began to fold itself away. “They are indeed.”

“Do you think either will trouble you again?”

“I very much doubt it.” In fact, Hera thought idly, Tsukiyomi probably wouldn’t even make it home. While the sarcophagus he had taken so eagerly aboard his vessel did indeed house the broken body of Hashitara — broken by Hera’s own Minotaurs, in fact — it also contained an extra addition of Pythia’s devising. A pulse emitter, powerful enough to destabilize the frequency of his Ha’tak’s hyperdrive. If he did not find it before trying to re-enter realspace, his entire vessel would detonate before it ever reached its window.

If he did find it, certain aspects of its design would leave him in no doubt that the device had been planted by Anshar.

And as for Lord Anshar himself, his chances of survival were slimmer than Tsukiyomi’s. Hera had been most adept in helping the System Lord seek out the spies in his royal household, and little wonder — it was she who had put them there in the first place. Unfortunately for Anshar, they too carried a little something extra with them; a genetically-tailored disease, unrivalled in its virulence and the agonizing, incurable damage it would wreak on a Goa’uld symbiote. Of course, had Anshar not been so fond of inflicting pain himself, his household would have been spared the pestilence that was tearing it apart. The disease had been designed to remain inert and undetectable until such time that it was activated by extreme levels of stress hormone.

And Anshar’s interrogators had caused the hapless spies a very great deal of stress indeed.

In the best case, both Anshar and Tsukiyomi would be dead very soon, and what was left of their clans and households would each blame the other. Even if both System Lords survived, they would still declare war on one another, a war which would leave both weakened and ripe for the harvest.

In either case — in every possible case — Hera would take their domains within the year.

Somehow, that should have made her feel better than it did. But right now, all she could think of was the demon, Ra’s monstrous Ash Eater, loose among the stars.

Evidently, Ericaceae was thinking about the same thing. “Do you think he will be seeking it too?”

“Neheb-Kau? If he still lives, then yes. I cannot imagine that he would not.”

“So you may be required to fight him.”

Hera glanced sideways at her sister. As usual, it was like looking into a mirror. “Neheb-Kau is the least of our problems, Eri. You never saw the Ash Eater feeding. I did, and it haunts me to this day.”

“I know.”

Hera’s eyes narrowed. “You do?”

“You talk in your sleep, remember?”

“Ah.” She looked up, into the hot sky. The first shades of twilight were beginning to show at the far horizon. Days were long on this world, but they did not last forever. Nothing did. “Eri?”

“Yes, my Lady?”

“This is not going to have a happy ending, is it?”

There was as slight pause, and then: “The omens are against it.”

The Hall of Negotiation had completed its collapse. It had been reduced from a sprawling complex of tents and pyramids into a flat slab of metal, waist-high, ready to be picked up by Hera’s yacht and borne away. “Then we must face our destiny, sister. Unfettered, the Ash Eater could destroy everything we have worked for. I will not allow that.”

“The fleet is ready, Lady Hera. They only await your will.”

Hera turned to her sister, and smiled warmly. “Then let us go. Keeping them waiting would be terribly rude, don’t you think?”

Once
, many years before the awakening of the Pit of Sorrows, when Samantha Carter was very small, she ha
d travelled with her mother and father and brother Mark to the shores of a great lake.

This was a rare treat, because Samantha’s father was away so much, and because her mother was often busy. But some combination of circumstance had occurred which allowed
the four of them to be together for several days, and so the decision was made that they should have a vacation.

The lake was beautiful. It was surrounded by trees, and beyond the trees were mountains, and beyond the mountains a very blue, very clear spri
ng sky. There was a jetty stretching out over the lake’s still surface from which Samantha’s father hoped to fish, and on the shore was a little log cabin for the family to stay in.

Samantha had a room all to herself.

During the first night, while Samanth
a lay awake, looking up at the unfamiliar ceiling, the weather had turned bad. A thunderstorm had rolled down from the mountains, and begun battering the lake shore with driving rain and bright white flashes of lightning. The sound and the ferocity of it w
ere terrifying, and Mark had run into their parents’ room for comfort, but Samantha would not do that. Instead she huddled alone in her bed, shivering with fear, the quilt pulled up to block out the lightning and the deep angry bellows of thunder. To her s
mall ears, it sounded as though the whole world were coming to pieces around her.

At some point the storm must have shouted her into submission, because she awoke to see light on her ceiling. And then her father had appeared next to her, one finger to his
smiling lips.

Together, they had gone outside, Samantha’s bare feet cold on wet ground, into a dream, a wonderland. Morning was bringing a mist up off the lake, lit gold by the low morning sun, so dense that she could not see the water’s far side. The jett
y stretched off into mystery, and the shore was utterly quiet. There wasn’t a breath of wind, nor birdsong, nor even the lap of waves against the sand.

It was as if the world had been reborn during the night, torn apart in the storm’s fury and remade into
something new.

Something wonderful.

Carter sat up hard, out of the dark and into pale, golden light.

She was suffocating, her lungs burning from the inside, and there was something covering her mouth. She ripped it away and dragged in a breath, tasting a flat, powdery foulness in the air, and immediately found herself seized by a fit of ragged, agonized coughing. Carter doubled up, trying to control her breathing, but the itch and burning were too deep. All she could do, for a long time, was to sit and cough the pain from her lungs.

Eventually she managed to still the spasms, although there was an ugly warmth within her ribs that she could only hope would fade soon. She had a pounding headache, and her vision was blurry. When she wiped her eyes, her fingers came down streaked with pale gray.

There was a memory of darkness, of dreadful noises and brilliant flashes. She squinted around, trying to get her bearings, and as she did so a silent, pale figure appeared beside her.

She blinked tears away, and saw that it was Teal’c. He was covered in dust, and a piece of cloth covered the lower part of his face.

“Major Carter,” he said. “You have been unconscious.”

“How…” Speaking was like chewing glass. She took a steadying breath and tried again. “How long for?”

“Twenty-seven minutes.”

“What? Oh, that’s not good.” She tried to get up, but the floor felt as though it were moving. That, along with the pain in her chest, was enough to keep her where she was. “Any longer than a few minutes probably means I’ve got a concussion.”

“Then you should remain still.”

“Yeah.” For a moment, it sounded like a good idea. And then she looked around her, at a world remade.

She was still in the Pit of Sorrows, of course — that much had been obvious even through her soiled tears. The dark outer walls still tilted claustrophobically around her. Behind her, the doorway remained firmly sealed by its slab of golden metal, and the air was bitingly cold.

But there was a mist in the air, thick and choking, lit by the yellow glow from the wall panels.

No, she thought, memories falling away from her. This was no mist. The air was full of dust; the fine, ashy powder that was all that remained of human beings, once the black force from the pillar was done with them.

It was everywhere, clinging to the walls, drifting down from the shadowed ceiling. It was on her clothes, in her hair, coating her skin. It had been in her throat and her lungs.

Even Teal’c was painted with it. He had tied a strip of cloth tied over his nose and mouth to keep some of the stuff from his lungs; part of his jacket lining. He must have done the same to her, while she lay senseless.

Carter tried to get up again. The floor still tipped and shifted under her, making her fear, momentarily, for her senses. It didn’t take long for her to realize that the feeling wasn’t illusory. The Pit really
was
moving.

“Teal’c? What’s happened?”

He took her arm and helped her upright. He had his staff weapon in his other hand and was steadying himself with it. “I believe the Pit of Sorrows is in flight,” he said gravely. “There was a period of violent acceleration. It was during this time that you fell and lost consciousness.”

“Flight?” Ra’s second message came back to her in a rush. “Oh my God, he said ‘Enjoy your trip.’ That’s what he meant… Teal’c, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“I agree. However, there appears to be no way to exit this structure. Even if there was, at the level of acceleration we experienced, we would have left the Earth’s atmosphere many minutes ago.”

It took a moment for the implication to sink in. When it did, Carter felt a cold swoop of terror surge up behind her ribs.

To be locked into the Pit of Sorrows while it lay beneath the desert was nightmare enough, but for the whole awful place to have dragged her and Teal’c up and into the icy vacuum of space… If the Jaffa was right, then the pair of them were entombed in the worst possible way.

And, she remembered, they were not alone.

“The pillar,” she gasped. “Teal’c, is that thing still in there?”

“Our continued survival would suggest so,” he replied. “I have also made regular checks on the pillar’s integrity, and it appears to have survived the takeoff unscathed.”

“I need to see it,” she told him.

“I will assist you.”

“No,” she said, too quickly. Then she gave him a wan smile. “I’ve got it. I
think
I’ve got it…”

She paused before moving, though: the floor was slippery with powder, and her vision wasn’t entirely clear. She took a few seconds to bat at her sleeve until most of the dust came up off it, and then used it to wipe her eyes. That helped a lot, bringing her cramped and frightening new world into a sharper focus. Perhaps a little too sharp, even. There was much around her that she would rather not have seen at all.