Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (29 page)

"The goddess has a great big hole in her gut," Jack said grimly.
Daniel had told them that much, somewhere between all of the Abydonian speech. "Whether or not it will kill her is anybody's guess."

"Kill...?" Pylades shook his head. "She can't die. So Iphigenia
told me. The goddess wears many forms. One body dies, another - "

"That's true, Jack, she could have transferred to another host,"
Daniel said. "Though God, I hope not. Was there a sarcophagus?"
Pylades looked blank. "You went to the temple, right?"

"Her guards found us. They took us there," he said. "The goddess -
the goddess weighed our hearts and found me unworthy. She gave
me to her guards and said I was to be sacrificed." Jack saw the panic
surface in his face for a few seconds, and then the kid locked it down.
"I won fr ee, but I couldn't get to Iphigenia. I came here for help."

Daniel wasn't about to be shaken from his question. "Did you see a box, longer than a man - gold - big enough for a coffin - tomb...?"

Pylades frowned. "I saw something. It might have been an altar -
gold, and there were strange symbols on it. There was a moon above
it, a black moon on a field of stars. Gods witness, I don't know - they
took me to the back - I tried to get to my sister - "

Jack's turn to get him off the subject. "How many people in the
temple? Counting the Jaffa?"

"I don't know. Not many. It - it feels like a place of burial.
Many - " His face was sickly white. "Many dead. The smell - but
there are guards, still. I don't think you can defeat them alone, I think,
even with your weapons. She has weapons, too. Terrible..."

He had a bum on his forehead. Jack knew what kind of weapon did
that, he'd seen its effects on Daniel, first-hand.

The kid had tried to protect his sister. No question about that.

Pylades' Adam's apple bobbed as he struggled for control. There
were tears in his eyes. Jack waited, and saw Daniel look away, studying something in the distance. Teal'c was impassive, but then, when
wasn't he? Only Carter reached out to the boy, and put her hand on
his shoulder.

It steadied him, mainly (Jack suspected) because he didn't want
to look weak in front of a woman. Even a woman with automatic
weapons.

"We'll get her back," Carter said, and Jack shot her a sharp, frowning look. He didn't like promises like that, with all kinds of hairpin
turns and impossible odds. Try to get her back, that was better.

But Pylades was already taking it for granted. "Thank you," he
said, and sighed. "She's so young... the goddess recognized her as a
Seer. I do not think she will hurt her."

Yeah, Jack thought cynically. She's the soul of reason, old Artie.

"She leaves her lair at night." Eseios still had that night-predator stealth; he'd slipped up unnoticed. Briseis was beside him, hands
clasped over the barely-visible swell of her baby. "Most of her guards
go with her as well. This we know. During my second Hunt, I sent
white-collars to observe the temple during nightfall and report the
movements of anyone inside. Those left inside number less than half
those who are there in the day."

"Anything else?" Jack asked.

"Most of the Acropolis is a tomb," he said softly. "Her victims
multiply and cry to heaven. She lives in only a few central rooms, we
think. And she has gone mad."

"Ya think?... So we hit her hard, after dark. She's away doing the
crazy thing, we get the control crystal to the DHD..."

"No," Daniel said. "Jack... "

"Daniel, it's a decent plan. We get inside, ransack the place,
find what we need. If Snake-girl comes home, well, great. One less
Goa'uld in the universe."

"Jack."

He met his eyes, harassed. "Daniel?"

The man took in a deep, unsteady breath. "Night is after dark. Sam
and I... we can't be counted on to help. Just the opposite, actually. I
think she could use us against you."

"I would go," Pylades spoke up instantly.

"Yeah, big help, kid." Jack's mind was racing, reading the message
in Daniel's averted eyes, Carter's blank, empty expression. They'd
lost themselves, last night, in a way Jack couldn't begin to understand. It was like Goa'uld possession, only the next day you remembered everything, knew what you'd done... worse than playing house
with a snake, wasn't it? Because at least the host probably wouldn't
know what was happening, what its body was being forced to do. For
Sha're's sake, for Skaara's, he hoped that was true. "Okay, you and
Carter stay here..."

"No." Eseios sounded definite about it. "If you tie them, they will
die - my men will slaughter them, I can't stop that. Let them run. Let
them hunt."

"Tie them and put them in the cage."

"No!" Briseis snapped that out, furious. "I tell you, I saw it happen
once. We tied a young boy, tied him well, and for all that he broke
free in the night, he slaughtered a dozen before we could bring him
down - would you pen innocent children in a cage with these two?
Could you?"

"That won't happen," Daniel said softly. "We're not going in the
cage. And we're not going to hunt."

"Daniel, maybe that's the best choice. In the morning you'll be ..."

"Fine? The same? No. We won't."

"Daniel's right, sir," Carter said. "I'm not going through it again.
You don't know, Colonel. You don't know"

Her eyes were haunted. He looked away from them, saw Daniel with the identical expression, and raised his hands helplessly.
"Right. Can't leave you, can't tie you up, can't lock you up, can't kill
you..."

"What?" Daniel had an odd look on his face.

"I was going to say, without being brought up on charges..."

"No. Back up. Cant kill us..."

Oh, he wasn't going to like this. Wasn't going to like it at all.
"Daniel..."

"I have an idea."

"No, you have a stupid idea. I know, because I've seen that look
before, and I'm not going to - "

"No, you're right, it's not even an idea, it's sort of a plan. I have a
plan." Daniel looked surprisingly smug about it. "Want to hear it?"

"No."

"Jack?"

"If it involves what I think it does..."

"That's exactly what it involves."

"Then no. Don't want to hear it." He leveled a finger at Daniel.
"Eves."

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Carter asked, mystified.

"We're having a strategic discussion."

"About what?"

"Daniel, don't say it..."

"Dying," Daniel said.

He'd told him not to say it.

It couldn't properly be called a plan, really. A plan had simple,
executable steps, and some kind of desirable outcome.

This had a half-assed wild logic to it, but it couldn't be called a plan,
and there was no way Jack O'Neill was going to risk everything on
speculation as to what an eighteen-year-old kid from a provincial Greek
planet had seen in a dark room, when he was scared half to death.

"It was a sarcophagus," Daniel insisted.

"You don't know that. In fact, Daniel, there is no way you can
know it, so stop trying to convince me. If you were a superhero, your
special power would be to leap logic with a single bound..."

"Jack, this Goa'uld has been on this planet for a thousand years.
Of course she has a sarcophagus! If she'd just been looking for a
new host - " Daniel looked briefly, horribly sick. "Then I was lying
there waiting. It would have been easy. I think she went back for her
sarcophagus."

As logical leaps went, it was - once Jack looked back on it - not as
much of a superheroic bound as it had looked on the far side.

"Fine. Maybe she has a sarcophagus. Even if she does, we're talking way too many ifs, Daniel." One finger up. "First of all, you commit suicide, which frankly just stinks as plans go, I don't care how
you dress it up..."

"The collars come off after death. We know that. We've seen it."
Daniel had that stubborn look. The one Jack dreaded. "And if the
collars come off, she can't control us, and we can be assets instead
of liabilities."

"Oh, yeah, sure. If you're not too dead to revive. If the sarcophagus even works, provided it's even there." He resumed the count. Two
fingers up. "Let's continue to examine this brilliant plan. Second, we
have to actually get into this place without, oh, inconveniently dying."
Three fingers. "I don't need a third. This plan sucks." He dropped the
first and third fingers.

Daniel's brows pulled together in a fiercely focused frown. "Got
a better one?"

"Yeah. Kill `em all."

"Jack, this will work."

"What is it about killing them all that doesn't work? If Eseios and
his buddies will step up - "

"Which they won't," Daniel countered. "I know from experience,
they can't be counted on, not for this. If you try to plan on them, you'll
end up fighting everybody."

Carter leaned forward. "Sir," she said, and caught his eyes. Hers
burned with earnestness. "I think Daniel's right. And I think you have
to trust us, and we have to trust you."

"This isn't about trust! I'm not letting you just -" Jack couldn't even say it. Couldn't even believe they were having this conversation. He tossed a rock angrily across the compound, watched the puff
of dust it skimmed off of the open ground, and limped away. Daniel
let him. When Jack looked back, SG-1 was calmly unpacking NIREs
and doing the usual compare-and-trade to try to get the combination
they most liked. Pretending it was just another normal day, and butter
wouldn't melt in their mouths.

He swallowed a curse that would have shamed a Marine drill sergeant, and walked over to where Pylades was sitting, talking quietly
with Briseis. They both fell silent at his approach, shading their eyes
to look up at him.

"Show me what you saw up there," Jack said, and sat. "Draw it."

The kid enthusiastically began going through it, step by painful
step, describing everything in each room so thoroughly that Jack felt
as if Pylades might be some long-lost relation to oh, say, Daniel. "I
don't need to know the color of the walls," Jack interrupted. "Just the
entrances, exits, who's in the rooms. Right? Tactical information."

Pylades drew a floor plan in the dirt with a stick that had probably
once been part of something expensive - it had flecks of gold leaf still
clinging to one end. Every room seemed to have at least two exits,
some as many as three or four. A nightmare, so far as either attack or
defense went. Too many angles, too many places to hide.

The only good news was that Artemis, bug-eyed crazy that she
was, seemed to haunt the front part of the structure. Throne room,
second room in. Some kind of temple with an altar - or sarcophagus - and that black moon symbol, behind it. Past that - Pylades just
described an open area.

"What's there?" Jack asked. Pylades didn't look at him.

"Sacrifices," he said. "We go soon, right? To get my sister."

"Yeah. Soon. Okay, what's here?"

"I don't know. I didn't go so far."

"Here?"

So it went, one question after another, drawing out the details a
little bit at a time. Not that it helped. Pylades didn't have a strategist's
eye; he couldn't say exactly how many Jaffa there were on the steps,
how many in the first room, how many in the big throne room. None
in the temple proper, or so he said, but of course that might change depending on the Goa'uld's moods, phases of the moon, whatever.

A big shadow fell over them. This time, Jack shaded his eyes and
squinted up.

"Teal'c," he said. "Join us. I'm getting a tour of the local sights.
You know, up the hill."

Teal'c squatted down, and Jack ran him through it, point by point.
Pylades watched in fascination. Maybe the kid had a grasp of tactics,
after all. "Again?" Jack asked.

"I have it," Teal'c said. Just like that. One fast run-through, and
he'd remember every detail. That was the way his mind worked. Jack
had never shown him anything more than once, except weird little
cultural details that Teal'c thought were plain stupid and not worth
storage space. "We should rest while we can, and leave before twilight. Eseios has said his men will escort us to the base of the hill, then
go before night falls."

"Big of him," Jack grunted. "Considering we're fighting his war."

"It is not easy to discard one's gods. Especially those who walk
among you."

"You did."

"I took a hundred years," Teal'c replied. "And when I turned
against Apophis, I still did not strike at him directly, only at my own
kind. Do not judge them harshly. They are doing what they can."

"Yeah. Killing each other instead of the enemy."

Teal'c set it aside. "Will you speak with Daniel Jackson about his
plan?"

"His plan bites, Teal'c, so no."

"It has tactical advantages none of the other approaches -

"I said no." Jack kept it hard, cold and abrupt. "First of all, we have
to fight just as hard, but carry dead weight along with us. Second...
shit. I don't even need to count it out. Just no."

Teal'c said nothing. He stood and walked back to the fire where
Daniel and Carter were finishing up their meal. They were swapping
oatmeal bars for cookies, looked like.

"It's a bad plan," Jack told Pylades, who hadn't actually spoken.

«Why?"

"Because it is. Why doesn't anybody believe me?"

He stood up, dusted himself off, and limped back over to the rest of the team. When Daniel tried to talk to him, he gave him a dangerous
look and dug into his Smoky Beef Frankfurters, and dared anybody
to bring up the damn plan.

Carter speculated about the construction of the theater. After a
silent period of monologue, Daniel joined in, and the science talk
flowed back and forth, leaving Jack to brood.

Jack bedded down with his hat over his eyes for a one-hour nap,
leaving precise, instructions with Teal'c about when he expected to
be woken. Daniel waited until Jack was breathing heavily before he
walked over to Briseis and Eseios's patchwork tent. Pylades was with
them. Crouching down, Daniel looked at the diagram that Pylades
had drawn - the wind had already blotted out most of it - and then
up at Eseios.