Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (10 page)

"Daniel, you really need to take a class in political doublespeak.
Could come in handy if we ever get out of this alive." He tried putting
his full weight on his ankle and couldn't control a full-body flinch at
the immediate wave of protest. The ankle folded.

"Sir?" Carter was immediately at his side. "How bad is it?"

"I'm fine, Carter." He shook off her support and tried to focus on
something else besides the sickening throbs of pain. His neck itched.
When he tried to scratch it, his fingers banged into slick silver mesh,
and memory flooded back. Silver mesh around his throat, some kind
of white stone at the front. A sensation of choking. Doesn't go with
my outfit. He got his fingers under the silver mesh and pulled. He tried
pressing on the stone, the way he'd seen Acton do. Nothing. "Okay,
somebody want to fill me in about the jewelry?" Because now that he
looked, they all had them. Identical matching accessories.

"We can't get them off," Daniel said. "We've been trying."

"Oh, there's always a way."

"Okay," Daniel amended blandly. "There's no way without taking
our heads off, which is, forgive me for saying so, a little counterproductive."

"They went on. They'll come - " Jack's fingers stretched and
strained, and the mesh seemed to constrict around his throat like a
living thing. He choked. " - offs'

"Sir, maybe you should rest for a minute," Carter said.

Actually, his knees were feeling a little unstable. He grunted, hobbled a couple of steps and put his weight against the wall Carter had
used for a backrest. It didn't feel too strong, but it would do. Jack slid
down and stretched out his leg with a suppressed hiss.

"Jack?" Daniel's eyebrows had drawn tight together. "No offense,
but you don't exactly look fine."

"Never been better. Captain? How are your first aid skills?"

"Depends on if it's sprained, broken or needs amputation, sir." Not
that Carter looked to be any prize herself in the health sweepstakes;
he kept sweeping her with looks, trying to see where the blood on
her face had come from. No visible wounds. She crouched at his side
with the kit and manipulated his ankle with ruthless disregard for
the sounds of protest he made. Daniel stood watching, arms crossed,
frowning tensely.

"Not broken, sir," she finally said. "You should probably keep the
boot on, otherwise the swelling's going to be worse. Best I can do is
anti-inflammatories and pain pills, and you should try to stay off of
it.,,

"Which is, oh, not gonna happen, Captain." She was digging
through the kit. "Just the anti-inflammatories. I'll dope up once we're
back home."

"Yes, sir." She passed them over, along with her canteen. He
downed them and passed the water back. "We have enough food for a
couple of weeks, but we're going to need fresh water within the next
two days. So far, there's no sign of life around here, no vegetation, no
nothing. Just ruins, sir."

"Um..." Daniel shifted his weight anxiously. "That's not... exactly
true. I found footprints over there, in the sand. I think they're from the
people we saw being sent through the Stargate earlier. I don't think
we're -

He was cut off by the thick metallic sound of the Stargate activating. One chevron lit up, then two. Jack motioned for Carter to help
him up, and the three of them retreated to the relative cover of the
sagging wall.

Jack reached for the radio on his tac vest and clicked it on.
"Teal'c."

"I am here," Teal'c's voice came through his earpiece. "I have
located some temporary shelter, O'Neill."

"Great. Get back here on the double."

Three chevrons. Five. Seven.

Ka-whoosh. The plasma flume swept out, then snapped back to
stasis.

Daniel's head was exposed to whatever fire might be coming out
of the Gate; Jack grabbed his collar and yanked him down, pulled
the M9 pistol from Daniel's holster and pressed it into his hands,
and gave him an imperative finger-to-lips signal for silence when he
opened his mouth.

Then he peeked over the wall, squinting against the blowing grit,
and saw two people step out of the Stargate, hand in hand. Nobody
carrying staff weapons, or anything that looked like trouble - dressed
in those flowing black robes again, with black veils over their faces.
They were terrified, clinging together for support. They stumbled
down the stairs and huddled together, whipped by the gritty wind, as
others followed them out. Jack counted as they emerged - ten in all.
The wormhole bubble snapped, and as one, all of them turned to stare
at it. Somebody cried out, and two dashed back up the steps as if they
could dive back through the empty circle.

One tall figure dragged the black veil from his head. An older
man, bearded, with his curling shoulder-length gray hair worked with
beads and shells. Fierce as a hawk.

"You dishonor us!" he snapped, and grabbed two of the most panicked of the party, shaking them hard. They calmed down immediately. "Would you have the others see us in such fear? Have you no
pride? You carry the honor of your people! Unveil yourselves. Let the
gods see you."

One by one, they did, dragging the black veils off of their heads.
Apart from Grandpa Preacher, they were all young. Some were barely more than kids. Six men, four women. No packs, no food, no weapons.

Each had a thick silver mesh collar around their throat, white
stones in front, just like SG-1.

"He says - " Daniel began.

"I heard him," Jack interrupted, and only then did it hit him that
he had understood what the old man had said. As if the man had been
speaking modem English.

Huh.

He looked to Daniel for an explanation...

...only to find Teal'c crouched next to him. He hadn't even heard
the Jaffa approach. Damn, the man could give shadows a lesson in
stealth.

Daniel, on the other hand, hadn't relied on stealth, just quickness.
Jack threw out a hand - too late - and then Daniel was around the wall
and approaching the new arrivals, hands held passively at his sides.

Great. Jack braced his elbows on the wall and sighted his MP5 on
Grandpa Preacher, heard the dry metal rattle as Carter followed suit a
bare half-second later.

Carter groaned softly. "Does he always do this?" she asked.

"Yep. Remember Chulak?"

She sent him a wide blue-eyed look. "Should I go after him, Colonel?"

"No. No, he may be crazy, but he knows what he's doing. Hold
your position." Teal'c's warm body was next to Jack's, standing tall,
his staff weapon held in firing position at shoulder height. "Teal'c.
We've got it covered."

Teal'c slowly lowered his weapon and grounded the butt in the
sand. He looked impassive, except for his eyes, intensely focused.

"Big guy?" Jack tugged on the man's BDU shirt. "You want
to present a big easy target, join the Marines. In the Air Force, we
duck."

The Jaffa reluctantly bent his knees.

"Hello," Daniel was saying, in his warmest voice. Hands relaxed
at his sides. "Hi. My name is Daniel Jackson, I'm part of a group
called SG1, don't be afraid, we're not your enemies -"

After the first instinctive recoil, the newcomers hesitantly stepped forward, gathering around him, spoiling any possible line of fire.
Even Grandpa Preacher, though frowning and crossing his arms over
his chest, looked interested. He stepped forward into the center of the
little knot of people and said, "You are not of Helos."

"Well, no, we're not. We're peaceful explorers - "

"You are sent as tribute from another world?"

"Tribute? Ah... "

"You wear the mark ofArtemis. Do your people worship her?"

"No, I wouldn't exactly say worship..." Daniel was struggling.
"Forgive me, but I think it's very strange that we understand each
other. That we're speaking the same language."

Grandpa evidently had no idea what he was talking about. "You
speak our language well enough."

"Okay, but see, you seem to be speaking mine..."

There ensued a tennis match of an argument about who was speaking what, which the other nine members of Grandpa's party watched
with bright-eyed interest.

"Sir?" Carter asked. She hadn't moved, hadn't taken her focus off
of Daniel's six. Iron concentration. Jack approved. "I could be wrong,
but they don't seem all that dangerous."

"Yeah, getting that." He hesitated another second, then straightened up and took the MP5 to a neutral position, sliding the selector
switch into safe mode. "Let's join the party, Captain. Teal'c, come
with."

Jack limped out from behind cover, Carter and Teal'c at his shoulders, and a few of the newcomers shrieked and ran away. Daniel chattered on, earnestly trying to convince the rest of them there wasn't
any danger. Grandpa Preacher wasn't one of those who panicked,
Jack noticed. Neither did a young man, maybe 18, max, who pushed
a younger girl behind him and stood his ground.

"Jack," Daniel greeted him, as brightly as if he hadn't just disobeyed, oh, just about every order Jack had given him. "This is
Alsiros..." Grandpa Preacher. "And this is Pylades, and his sister
Iphigenia." The 18-year-old and the younger girl. She was already
peeking out from behind her brother, cute as a button, probably about
sweet sixteen. Both had long brown hair, curling in glossy ringlets;
both had big brown eyes and fine, delicate bone structure. On Pylades, it looked noble and refined, and subtly morphed into innocent beauty
in Iphigenia.

Pylades gave SG-1 a stiff nod, clearly wary. He didn't let his sister
come near them.

Daniel gestured vaguely at the rest of the milling black-robed people. "Sorry, didn't meet the rest yet."

"We'll do name tags. What's the story?" Jack rested his hands
lightly on his MP5, watching Alsiros's deep-set eyes. Not trusting,
either. He had the special glow of the fanatic to him.

"We were just getting to that. I'm still trying to figure out how he
understands me... Alsiros? You understand my friend?"

"He speaks Greek." Alsiros sounded out of patience with the
whole thing. "Why should I not understand him? Do you think I am
so feeble?"

Daniel turned to Carter, face alight. She looked just as fascinated.
"This is incredible," she said. "If he's speaking Greek but we hear it
as English..."

"...then the Stargate must be translating for us."

"That doesn't make sense. It didn't work for us before."

"Yeah, but look, we used our Stargate to get to Chalcis -

"-and their Stargate to get here," Carter finished, enthusiasm bubbling up. Her blues eyes took on that mad-scientist shine, as if it was
contagious. Maybe Daniel was a carrier. "They had a DHD. We don't
back home, we cobbled the system together by trial and error. Maybe
there's something in the DHDs that translates languages - "

,,yes! Software, some kind of part, I don't know, but something's
doing this." Daniel was almost jittering with excitement. "Captain -
Doctor - do you know what this means? We can - "

` - understand alien cultures, even the ones with root languages
that may not be familiar to us," Carter said. They both grinned like
schoolkids left in charge of the candy store. "We just have to analyze
it and retrofit the - "

Jack rolled his eyes and said, in infinite careful patience, "Kids?
Let's stick to the program. I'm sure these fine folks," not to mention
me, "have better things to do than listen to technobabble."

Daniel took offense. "It's not technobabble, Jack, we're talking
about a breakthrough that could change - "

"Life as we know it, yadda yadda, I'm more interested in finding
out how to get off this rock." The suppressed fury in his voice had
a bracing effect. Some of the glow faded out of Daniel's eyes, and
Carter looked positively chastened. "Now. Gran - Alsiros here said
something about tribute. What's that mean?"

Daniel cleared his throat. "Well, it's actually kind of fascinating.
You remember the story of the Minotaur?"

"Um... Ugly monster. Maze."

"It's a little more complicated than that, but yes. The important
thing is that the Greeks sent a regular tribute of victims to Crete for the
Minotaur, who was a divine mixture of man and beast and ate human
flesh." Daniel indicated the black robed men and women. "Well, so
far as I can tell, there's no Minotaur, but Colonel Jack O'Neill, meet
the tribute from Sikyon. The people we saw come through before we
were -um-

"Sandbagged?" Jack contributed sourly.

" - before we were sent through the Stargate were the tribute from
Chalcis. I assume there must be groups from Mycenae and Delphi
here, or on the way."

"Because...?"

"Obviously, there's someone or something here that they want to
appease, the same way the ancient Greeks wanted to appease the Cretan monster."

Oh, that was a happy thought, and yep, it had Goa'uld written all
over it. And Daniel's enthusiasm for it made Jack's guts clench up.
Don't think you really want to make friends with the monster Danny
boy. Although, hopefully, a couple of high-velocity rounds in the
monster's ass might make it a little less hungry.

Alsiros had had enough. He pulled himself up to a stiff, unbending
height, looked down his nose at Jack, and said, "We will leave now to
make our way to the temple."

"Temple?" Daniel turned to him immediately. "Where?"

"It lies at center of the Great City." Alsiros frowned at him, the
way he'd frown at a puppy puddling the carpet. "Were you given no
instruction?"

"No, we were sent - well, without instructions. Which are...?"

Jack let Daniel keep up the conversation, content to watch over the rest ofAlsiros's party. Nothing special there. They all looked scared,
but mostly determined; the youngest one, the girl - Iphigenia - clung
to her brother's arm with both hands, big brown eyes sneaking nervous glances at Jack from time to time.

The brother didn't seem to approve. He turned to her, whispered
something, and she looked down, cheeks burning.