Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (30 page)

"You know what I want," he said. "Can you help?"

"Your friend will not be pleased if I do."

"Yeah, well, he's grouchy. He'll feel better once it works."

"Do you believe it will? Work?" Briseis sipped at a cup of water.
The cup wasn't glass, Daniel noticed; he doubted anything glass had
survived around here. This was crude pottery, fired over low heat.
They'd made it themselves. In a lot of ways, these people reminded
him ofAbydos, of his people. His adopted people.

And in a certain light, Briseis reminded him of Sha're.

"I wouldn't volunteer for it if I didn't."

"Really." Her voice sounded flat and disbelieving. "I have seen
this before, Daniel. Some can't accept what we are now. What we've
become."

"I don't accept it because... because I haven't become it, not yet.
Look, I'm sorry, but this is our choice, right? We just need a little
help."

She exchanged a look with Eseios, who frowned and shook his
head, jaw set and hard. "I've lost enough. Six men last night. These -
they speak of killing the gods, and yesterday I believed that could
happen, but today... today there are six who say it can't, from Hades.
No."

"Husband-"

"I won't ask it."

"Some might go of their own choice, if it meant an end to this.
You know it."

"I will not ask."

Briseis stared at him, then nodded and put the cup aside. She stood
and walked away, graceful and composed in the cool afternoon light.
She stopped a white-collared man, smiled, and murmured something
to him with a hand on his arm. Eseios watched her with angry eyes,
muttered something behind his hand and bit into a chunk of roughbaked bread.

"Your fault," he said finally, to Daniel. "Until you came, we knew
the order of things. We were making a life for ourselves. You - you
and your friends, you made the goddess angry. We'll all pay the price
in blood."

Aggression and anger came with the collar. Daniel knew that, and
he fought hard to choke back his instinct to fling back words in kind.
Words, and then fists, and then more.

Blood, in the end.

"You aren't living," Daniel said. "You're existing. You can't give
up, not while there's still hope."

Eseios spat out a pebble from his mouthful of food. "Tell it to the
dead."

Teal'c woke Jack up exactly on time. Carter and Daniel were
already packed up and ready, their weapons in Teal'c's possession.
Jack checked the angle of the sun, the distance to the base of the hill,
and signaled to Eseios that they were ready to go.

They had an escort of nine men and three women, all dressed in
black Dark Company robes. As they walked out, the rest of the men,
women and children stood in rows, watching them. Some spoke,
some didn't; some invoked the gods, which more or less creeped Jack
out, given the obvious.

Eseios didn't say anything to him at all. He was pissed off, and
he set a deliberately fast pace up the hill. Jack sighed, set his coping
mechanism a notch higher, and started reciting lines from The Simpsons in his head as he followed the Dark Company up the hill.

"Jack," Daniel said.

"What?"

Daniel nodded to the horizon. The sun was dipping low, the edge
just starting to flirt with disaster. "Soon."

"Yeah. Yo! Dark Company! Little speed!"

"Um, with that ankle, I don't know if that's such a good - "

"Good, bad, it's still an order. Pick it up, Daniel."

Not that it was a problem for SG- l's two Children of the Wolf,
who practically loped as night approached. Teal'c stayed with him as
Carter and Daniel pulled steadily farther and farther ahead.

They made the overgrown trees just below the Acropolis when the
sun was a semicircle, sliced by the horizon.

"Right," Jack said as Eseios stalked back, looking way too good at
it. "Thanks. Better get out."

"We'll hunt the lower part of the city tonight," Eseios said. He
nodded his men permission to go down the hill; they'd been holding
back, because as they left it was a full sprint, all of them moving as
a unit.

As a pack.

Eseios, the alpha male, looked into his eyes and said, "It is a good
plan. You should listen to him."

And before Jack could advise him where to stick it, he was gone
down the hill with the rest of them.

Only... not all of them.

Daniel and Carter were standing off to the side, which was fine; he
had the zip cuffs, he'd tie them and move out fast... but there were
two strong-looking guys in black robes still hanging around, and that
was not fine.

He recognized these guys. Personal bodyguards, from the cell.
Belonged to Briseis, or at least were loyal to her.

Their collars were white.

"Daniel...?" He made it a dangerous sort of question. Daniel didn't
look up. He was going through the pockets of his tac vest - they'd
scavenged both vests and Carter's BDU shirt on the way back from
the night's adventures - and was producing artifacts, folded notes,
leftover digital tapes... "Okay. What the hell are you looking for?"

"Abaggie... ah. Here." He pulled it out and opened it, then sniffed
the contents. Must not have liked the results, because he pulled the
bag quickly away and held it at his side with a grimace of distaste.

"You two," Jack said, rounding on the two bodyguards. "You got
names?"

"Menelaos," one said. Copper-haired, rangy looking.

"Philemon." Dark, olive skin, rippling with scars. Warrior's eyes.
He was almost Teal'c's size.

"Menelaos, Philemon, sorry, been a mistake. You guys take off."

They didn't move. Daniel said, "They're here for me and Sam,
Jack."

Which set him off like a Roman candle, and dammit, he didn't
care. "No! We're not doing this, Daniel!"

Daniel reached into the baggie and pulled out a handful of shiny
green leaves with sharp points, like holly. He counted out half and
put them in Carter's open palm. "Sony. I don't know the dosage. It's
probably pretty potent - "

Jack growled and came at him.

He never even saw Daniel move, just felt the blow that lifted him
off his feet and threw him ten feet across the ground to slam hard
into the ground. Saw stars. Coughed and rolled on his side, and felt
Teal'c's strength levering him back up.

Daniel was staring at him. Daniel with a black stone in his collar
and that fey and feral expression on his face.

Carter, too.

The sun was setting.

"Don't do that again," Daniel said softly. "This is hard, you know.
I don't want to hurt you."

"Then don't." Jack pulled free of Teal'c's grip and limped forward.
"Just don't."

"Jack, Artemis isn't just controlling us by dividing us into hunters
and prey." His voice was coming faster, rougher, driven by urgency.
"Christ, don't you understand? She can make us believe. She can do
anything, once she's close to us. I saw it. I felt it. Didn't you? Don't
you understand this? You need us free."

He was begging him for an answer. Jack, throat tight, thought back
to that second night in the ruins, that moonlight-splashed courtyard,
Artemis's fingers digging in to the soft flesh under his chin. You will
be punished enough, before I am done with you. She'd made him
helpless out there. She'd made Teal'c blind and deaf

"You cant save us," Daniel said. "And she can't control us once
these collars are off. And that's something she can't foresee. It's the
only advantage you'll have."

"Ah God..." He couldn't breathe. Couldn't do this. "No."

"Jack."

"No."

And then Carter, who hadn't spoken at all, said, "Sir, please. I
can't - I can't let her do this to me. I'd rather be dead, even if you
can't bring me back. Last night - last night I tried to murder a child."
Her voice wavered, then went rock steady. "I'd rather be dead, and
you would, too, in my place."

He could have stopped them. He had the guns. All had he had to
do was bark out an order and back it up with a bluff, shoot to wound,
not to kill...

Daniel undid all that by saying, in a very quiet voice, "We trust
you, Jack. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't believe you could
make this work."

For one critical second, he didn't move, and that was enough.

Daniel let his breath out in a little sigh, closed his eyes, and put the
handful of leaves in his mouth.

Jack lunged forward, making a sound that didn't even qualify as
speech, but Teal'c held him back.

Daniel would have broken his neck, anyway.

Carter chewed her own mouthful. Daniel chewed and swallowed,
forced a smile, and said, "Minty. Look, I don't know how long this
will - " His face changed, and went blank and slack.

Oh God no.

Daniel went down. His knees just folded, and then he was down,
looking shocked. Teal'c released Jack, and Jack got there seconds
before the first convulsion hit; Carter collapsed too, caught in Teal'c's
arms on the way, and Jack sent the Jaffa a silent agonized glance as
she started seizing violently as well.

It went on forever, and Jack heard his breathing turn ragged and
tortured as Daniel and Carter died, and died, and kept on dying. He'd
seen a lot of men die, hell, he'd seen the man he was holding in his
arms die once already, but that had been war, battle, a sudden shocking thing.

This was cold and deliberate and worse, so much worse.

And it was worse when it was finally over, and they were quiet.

For a hard, horrible second all Jack could think of with Daniel's
limp warm weight in his arms was the name of his son, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, chanted over and over inside his head in a keening wail.

He couldn't look at Daniel's dead face. He just sat, holding him,
until he heard the soft metallic click of the collar coming open around
his neck. It slithered off to thump down in the grass, and the stone
swirled red, then white.

Jack carefully laid the body down and walked away to lean against
a tree, shuddering, watching the night fall. Above them, the Acropolis
glowed like a beacon.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said quietly from behind him. He had laid
Carter - no, Carter's corpse - down next to Daniel. "Captain Carter -
her collar has released."

Get it together Colonel. It's up to you now

He turned, fixed the two big men wearing the white collars with
a look that made both of them - burly as they were - look nervous.
"Pick them up," he said. "Anything happens to them, you'd better
hope Artemis gets you before I do. Understand?"

They both nodded and moved off behind him. He heard rustling,
grunts, the sounds of bodies being lifted into fireman's carries.

He waited, motionless, watching as something just slightly blacker
than the sky floated up from some open area inside the Acropolis.
Hawk wings opened, and it glided nearly silently over their heads,
heading toward the city.

A Goa'uld glider. Artemis, on the hunt.

"Let's move," he said.

The place was incredible. Daniel would have been in some kind
of religious frothing ecstasy. Jack, cold and furious and hard as steel,
only cared about how many he had to kill, and what he was going to
have to blow up.

Six Jaffa hanging out by the front door, for a start. If Pylades' information was right, SG-1 had to go through four rooms with more than
two entrances in each one to get where they needed to go. No telling
how many guards. Pylades hadn't been exact in the count.

Jack gestured sharply to Teal'c, breaking the targets into groupings. Teal'c nodded and raised his staff weapon.

Jack took in a deep breath, flicked the MP5 to fire position, and
thought, all you have to do is not miss.

He wasn't in the mood to miss, actually.

Three brief bursts, full auto. Three Jaffa down with holes where
their symbiotes used to be. Teal'c had taken out his targets with fast,
accurate energy bolts.

They never got off a shot.

Surprise was blown; Jack pelted forward and attacked the steps. He
ignored the pain. His ankle was so far down the list of things he cared
about that even the pain was just another input, one to be marked off
the list as not tactically useful. He could feel things ripping. Screw it.
That was what infirmaries were for, when the bleeding was over.

He slid on the marble at the top of the steps, paused to put a round
in one of the guards who was still weakly moving, and moved into the
first room. Teal'c flowed in with him, silent as a shadow, unlike the
three Jaffa who pounded noisily out of a side entrance at a dead run
and threw themselves in the path of another combined burst of auto
fire and plasma.

The statues and treasures in the room that Daniel would have
found fascinating were just things to be negotiated around, or shoved
out of his way. Behind Teal'c, Menelaos and Philemon were coming
in, bearing their burdens. Jack could hear their fast, scared breathing.

Prey. Yeah. Prey on this, Artie.

"Left," he ordered Teal'c; they moved together, either side of the
door. Teal'c took high, Jack low, and Teal'c was a half-second faster
to fire at a Jaffa hiding behind a thick-muscled marble statue. It blew
apart. The Jaffa behind it staggered out in the open, blinded, and Jack
took him down. His mental map told him this was the reception room,
where Pylades and Iphigenia had been separated. Pylades had been
taken left, his sister right.

"Left," he said again. Another doorway. Jack turned to check their
six and caught the golden glitter of enemies on their tail; he barked at
Menelaos to duck and fired over his shoulder.

Over Carter's dead body.

Teal'c, facing the other way, was firing too. Getting it from both sides, Goddammit, Daniel, I told you this wouldn't work, but then
suddenly it was quiet again, and Teal'c pronounced an all-clear.

One more room.

Big one. Lots of marble. Columns for days, and at the end, a throne
fit for a goddess. Empty. No sign of any damn sarcophagus.