Heart's Desire (13 page)

“Looks like,” Jack said. He looked a little annoyed. “Didn't you see that guy?”

“I saw him,” Sam said. “I just wasn't sure what would happen if I shot something conductive that's connected to an engine burning explosive gas.”

“Right,” Jack said after a moment. “Well, now we know.”

“Now we do.”

She saw over his shoulder the door in the compartment to the stern opening, saw the metallic glint of a zat's muzzle, and motioned him sharply down; he dropped to one knee, and she fired over his shoulder. The man on the other side of the door yelled, the zat clattering to the deck, and the door swung open just long enough for her to fire again.

It was Keret, she saw when she got close enough. Behind where he was lying she could see through the door into what must be his cabin. Against one wall, a low box bed was piled high with crumpled wool blankets, and a clutter of cups and clothing was strewn around the room. Along the walls, rimmed shelves held a magpie collection of everything from decorated pottery to small clockwork machines that at a glance might have been anything from models of the planets to mousetraps.

Jack came up behind her. “He alive?”

“Looks like,” Sam said. Jack rifled through the man's clothes while Sam worked on finding something to tie the man up with. She settled for slicing a strip from one of the blankets with the knife Jack handed her. Jack pocketed the man's zat, and with a look of satisfaction returned his own sunglasses to his pocket as well.

“One more deck to go,” Jack said. “The one where they're steering the ship. You're sure you can fly this thing?”

She looked up at him. “What if I said no?”

“You'll be fine,” Jack said after a moment. “Let's go.”

“I
would very much prefer to stay until we find Colonel O'Neill and his team,” Hammond said, for what was probably the hundredth time. He was aware that he wasn't in much of a position to make demands. He'd already been escorted back to the Stargate over his strong protests, apologetically but firmly. Behind Walat, SG-1's packs and equipment were now being offloaded from the airship and stacked next to Hammond on the Stargate steps, where their weapons already rested.

Walat shook his head firmly. “It is too great a risk to the High King,” he said. “You must understand.” Behind him the banners of the High King's airship fluttered in the wind, gold fringe trailing from every window. In front of the Stargate, several servants were laying down heavy wool carpets and strewing them with flower petals, most of which promptly whipped away in the breeze. Presumably this was for Asherah's benefit and not for Hammond's own.

 
“What I understand is that you've concealed some fairly important facts from us from the beginning,” Hammond said. He held up a hand as Walat seemed about to mention the incident with the weapons again. “I'm not saying there haven't been mistakes on both sides, but it's my people who are out there in the hands of criminals.”

“It is highly unlikely that they will be harmed,” Walat said. “They will be in much greater danger if you attract Asherah's attention to them by your presence here when she arrives.”

That was unfortunately hard to argue with. “That's assuming the pirates don't think along the same lines and tell her themselves.”

Walat shook his head. “Such impious men would never dream of approaching Asherah or her servants during the festival. She would sense their evil at once and blast them from the sky with her thunderbolts.”

Hammond wasn't sure if Walat actually believed that, or if he was just determined to get the Tau'ri off his porch before the Goa'uld arrived, and was willing to say whatever he thought would accomplish that. Either way, he wasn't making any headway.

He glanced down at the packs. He didn't much like the idea of bringing them back instead of SG-1, and then stacking them in a storeroom somewhere until he knew whether he'd need to unpack them. If he did, it would be to file the videos and the notes away for future study, and to pack up Sam's effects so he could hand them to her father and say
Jacob, you know how sorry I am
. He didn't want to even start down that road yet, but Walat had been firm that none of the gear brought by the Tau'ri could remain for Asherah to see.

 
He looked over the pile of packs and weapons again, and then back up at the airship. The crew were climbing back aboard, clearly finished with their unloading. They'd forgotten one thing, though, and he forced himself to keep a poker face, hoping they wouldn't remember it before they were safely away. Walat had been entirely absorbed in the trade negotiations and the preparations for the ceremony, as far as Hammond could tell, and with any luck he hadn't been paying much attention to anything else.

“I expect you to let us know if you hear anything,” Hammond said grimly.

“Of course, Great General,” Walat said. “If we hear any word of your people, we will contact you as soon as we can.”

“You mean as soon as you can after the festival.”

“Just as I said, as soon as it is possible for us to do so.”

“It's much appreciated,” Hammond said, dialing the gate.

The wrenching pull of the wormhole was still enough of a novelty to take his breath away for a moment as he stepped out of the gate onto the ramp. Luckily it wasn't too long a moment, because he had to step smartly out of the way of SG-1's packs as they came tumbling through behind him. The rifles and Teal'c's staff weapon clattered out behind them, thankfully pushed through the gate rather than thrown, accompanied by a swirl of flower petals that were still settling to the ramp when the wormhole shut down.

“General Hammond,” Dr. Janet Fraiser said, coming down the stairs into the gateroom. “We were starting to worry.” At the end of the ramp, several airmen were moving the MALP he'd sent back ahead of him out of the way. A medical team was standing by near the entrance to the gateroom, but Janet shook her head at them as she saw that they weren't apparently needed.

“And well you might,” Hammond said. “SG-1's gone missing.”

Her eyebrows went up. “From a treaty signing?”

“They've apparently been kidnapped by pirates, if you can believe that.” Hammond said. “And better yet, the Goa'uld who controls this planet will be showing up at any minute for a week-long festival, and the local government has thrown us out for the duration.”

“I can see why they might not want us around if the Goa'uld are visiting, but what do we do now?”

“I don't think there was going to be much I could do on that side to find SG-1, anyway,” Hammond said. “I'm hoping we'll have better luck from this side.”

Janet looked puzzled for a moment, and then smiled slowly. “Major Carter was doing weather surveys with a UAV, wasn't she? It hasn't come back through.”

“And I'm pretty sure the High King and his people have forgotten all about it. I expect Major Carter set it down somewhere out of the way. With any luck, we can get it up in the air again and use it to find the airships that took SG-1. That way as soon as this festival is over, we can send a rescue party through.”

“We'd better hurry,” Janet said. “The more of a head start they have
—”

“I wish it were that simple,” Hammond said reluctantly. “But the Goa'uld party may arrive at any minute. We need to give them at least enough time to get clear of the Stargate so that we don't attract attention when we dial in ourselves.” He shook his head. “They're resourceful people,” he said. “I'm sure they can stay safe until we can send someone to get them.”

“Yes, sir,” Janet said. “They're probably fine.”

 
“That's the spirit,” Hammond said. “We'll give it eight hours before we dial in.”

Hammond turned to take another look at the gate before starting up the stairs to his office. He told himself that SG-1 probably was fine, at least in the sense of being alive and maybe even more or less unhurt. SG-1 had a remarkable way of turning up in one piece despite going through the most harrowing experiences.

He tried not to think about the times recently when they'd come back in somewhat less than one piece, and hoped that this wouldn't be another one.

“L
et's move,” Jack said, motioning Carter ahead of him. She scrambled up the stairs, crouching cautiously to scan the deck above before she straightened and stood to cover him as he climbed the stairs himself.

The man Carter had zatted was still sprawled unmoving, and the door at the far end of the corridor didn't look to have been opened, but he wished he had handcuffs and a more secure lock for the door. Nothing for it but to move fast.

“The upper deck is open, just a rail on the sides,” Carter said. “The controls look to be forward.”

He nodded and motioned her up the stairs. They ended in a hatch, which she pushed up. He took the last few stairs at as close to a run as he could manage, zat in hand, and came out onto the open deck.

It was shockingly cold, the wind whipping across the deck hard enough to rock him back as he stood. Beyond the rail, he could see mountain peaks and open sky beyond them, going by fast enough that they were clearly making good time. Carter was already moving forward, where two men stood over a bank of controls. One of them turned, and she fired.

The second man turned zat in hand, and Carter ducked as he fired, the blast crackling down the rail behind her. Jack scanned the deck, waiting for someone else to move. Carter dropped the second man and sprinted forward toward the controls. Jack could feel a slight change in the angle of the deck, some control pitching them downward, and he took a moment to find his footing securely.

They were high above what had to be an open plain or plateau, with the nearest visible mountain peaks some distance away, which was a very good thing in terms of not immediately running into anything dangerous. On the other hand, they could still run into the ground. The nose pitched farther downward, the wind whipping off the canopy with a noise like enormous sails shuddering.

“Carter!” he called.

“I know!” she said. “I'm on it!”

He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and swung around, raising his zat as someone hit him hard, knocking him to the deck and rolling him over. He jammed his zat against the man's stomach and fired, too close for the zat's energy not to arc through him as well.

He gritted his teeth at the pain and tried not to black out. The world grayed for a moment, and then swam back into view. He managed to shove the other man off him and roll to his feet, or at least stagger to his feet.

The deck still felt anything but level. “Carter!”

“I think we have a problem!” she called.

He climbed the deck to her side, and it was definitely climbing. Something felt very wrong about it, every step taking too much effort. He leaned out over the rail to see if they were really diving at that steep an angle to the ground, and shook his head when they barely seemed to be descending at all. “Carter, what the hell?”

“It's the Goa'uld gravity drive they're using,” she said. “It's creating an artificial gravity field that's affecting the entire ship. I'm guessing it's some kind of failsafe when the controls aren't manned. The good news is, we're descending very slowly, so we're not actually about to crash into the ground. It just feels like it.”

“Good to hear.”

“The bad news is, we are still descending.”

“This might not be a bad place for that,” Jack said, leaning out over the rail again. Some distance below he could see a rocky plateau patched with scrubby trees and undergrowth, rising in the distance to a higher wall of mountains some miles ahead of them. “Setting down somewhere flat could be good.”

“We don't have any way of tying down,” Carter said. “In this wind, we'd just skate across the rock until we hit something. Like those cliffs up there. And we'd probably take the bottom of the hull off in the process.”

The few spindly trees below them wouldn't help; the weight of the airship would snap one of them like a matchstick if they tried to moor the ship to it. “So, what?”

“So, I need to figure out how to engage the gravity generator at maximum strength so that it'll anchor the ship to the ground. That may make it a little uncomfortable for us, but I'm not sure we've got much choice.”