Retaliation (26 page)

“I told you one of my people hasn’t shown up. Actually, he’s one of your people-Corporal Vance.” “We can’t wait forever,” O’Neil said. “Mr. Storey, would you please activate the StarGate?”

Before Storey could move, however, the inner ring of symbols began moving by itself, altering the combi-nation that led to Earth.

“What the hell-?” Storey said, staring.

Daniel whirled on O’Neil. “Maybe now you’ll be-lieve me when I tell you that Ra’s medallion also serves as a StarGate key,” he said. “Sure we believe you,” a pale Barbara Shore said. “Now that she’s used it to lock us all in.”

The StarGate’s inner ring came to a stop. Everyone stared at the gleaming toroid.

“There doesn’t seem to be any connection,” Bar-bara said. “She doesn’t want us to go anywhere,”

Daniel said. The venom in his voice made it clear whom he had in mind. “Either she’ll be coming here, or she’ll send some of her bully boys.”

As if on cue, the StarGate began to pulse with the energy of an impending transit.

Daniel leapt into action. He dumped his blast-lance and pushed by a surprised Marine security type, grabbing a pair of grenades from the man’s web belts. Holding them’ up, he stepped up to face the steadying energy lens forming within the ring.

“Everybody just get into the next chamber,” Daniel said calmly. “Jackson,” O’Neil said sharply. “You know as well as anyone here that StarGate transits are only one-way. You can’t throw those grenades through.” “Oh, the grenades are just backup,” Daniel assured him grimly. “We’re going to have a little experiment in basic physics. I’m going to stand right in the way here-and we’ll see what happens when two bodies attempt to occupy the same space at the same time.

“Jackson!” shouted a horrified Barbara Shore.

“Daniel?” Sha’uri said worriedly.

But Daniel didn’t get a chance to make his sacrifice. A slim figure in dusty BDUs shoved him out of the way. “The colonel needs you,” Lieutenant Charlton said. “Make this count.”

They got the barest glimpse of a masked Horus guard starting to materialize. About half of his body was overlapped by Charlton’s. The guard recoiled in horror when he realized what was about to happen.

There was no way he could stop.

An intolerable glare filled the chamber, and the whole pyramid seemed to shake around them.

When they could see again, the StarGate’s torus was empty of energy ... and Lieutenant Charlton had disappeared.

“Vaporized?” Mitch Storey said in a quiet voice.

“I think maybe there was some sort of bounce-back effect,” Barbara Shore offered shakily.

“Well, it looks as if whatever happened has left us with a free StarGate,” O’Neil said. “See if it works, Mr. Storey-and get us home.” No StarGate setup had ever been undertaken more quickly. Everyone in the room leaned forward as the usual steps of the cycle-crescendoing tone, energy backwash, and finally the formation of the energy lens-took place. They held back long enough to let the ladies go first. Then, in no order other than how close they were to the portal, everyone in the room pelted through the gate.

More than seven hundred feet above the chaos in the hall of the StarGate, Corporal Tom Vance sat in front of a control console on the command deck of the starship Ra’s Eye.

He had faithfully reduplicated everything Mitch Storey had shown him about operating the gunnery controls. The sensor view of the ceiling was in schematic mode. The symbol depicting the vast bulk of the Boat of a Million Years covered most of the representation.

Vance moved the stylized eye of the aiming system until it was dead-center on the huge ship’s ass.

“For all my buddies gone,” he snarled. ‘Take that!”

Aboard the Boat of a Million Years, Khonsu stood silent as Hathor lividly berated him for the failure of the commando raid she’d just ordered through the StarGate.

“What do you mean, something went wrong?” she demanded.

“I believe the transit was somehow interrupted,” he replied. “My belief is that our team was entirely lost.”

“And on what do you base this theory?” Hathor inquired acidly.

“This came back through our portal, Lady.”

“Nothing comes back through the portals-“ Hathor stopped as she realized what her deputy was holding out. Subtly twisted awry, as if it had under-gone some incredible pressures, it was a portion of a Horus mask. And inside, as neatly cut off as the mask had been, was a portion of the former wearer’s head.

Sometimes even a warrior goddess has to stare in shock. Hathor was absorbing one unprecedented occur-rence as another took place. The enormous mass of the vessel they were aboard suddenly kicked upward in a drunken lurch. Both Hathor and her liegeman stag-gered as automatic systems swung into action. One set of burnt-in procedures steadied the craft and brought it higher. Another activated sensors, searching for the aggressor. Reports began echoing through the empty reaches of the command deck-all of them in the incomprehensible tongue of the ancient race that had spawned Ra. “Computer!”

Hathor cried. “Make those reports in my tongue!” The gabble turned into comprehensible speech.

“Automatic defenses have detected source of energy attack.”

Hathor stared. The Earthlings had somehow man-aged to operate the blast-cannon aboard Ra’s Eye?

The automated report continued. “Main batteries targeting aggressor craft.”

Too late Hathor realized the import of what the computer was saying.

As the automated defenses announced, “Firing,” she shouted. “No!” It was too late. A lambent gout of energy flared from the projectors of the huge ship’s main battery. It struck the pinnacle of the ship Ra’s Eye, and for a brief moment the golden quartz resisted the incandescent blast. Then it was gone, as was the command deck- and Tom Vance.

But the deadly thrust of energy continued on, va-porizing the rock of the Abydos pyramid, stabbing down below the surface-and striking the still active StarGate. Hathor and Khonsu both stared numbly at the hell-ish interaction of the blast’s raw power and the Star-Gate’s subtle energies. The space around the blasted pyramid became subtly .. . wrong. Even the light seemed somehow twisted as structures, people, and the ground itself took on an unearthly blue radiance and seemed to wink out of existence. In seconds the spot where her army of Horuses had been massing turned into the epicenter of a huge, gaping cleft extending deep into the planet’s crust.

Shock waves of titanic proportions buffeted even the massive Boat of a Million Years. More automated systems snapped into operation, analyzing the situa-tion and taking the huge starship to a safer distance.

The two humans aboard watched the planet’s final convulsions on the long-range scanner. Abydos be-came a shattered, volcanic hell, the site of the former StarGate marked by a continent-long seam, luridly glaring with lava. Khonsu glanced at the still, beautiful mask of a face beside him, staring at the carnage she’d caused.

The Lady exceeds her legends, he thought. Where she once covered a world with blood, she has now murdered a planet itself.

In the missile silo of Creek Mountain, Colorado, Earth’s StarGate spewed forth the last evacuees from the Abydos debacle. General West and the Marine M.P.’s in charge of security had seen some bizarre sights in the past hours, including a very upset mastadge that had become massively incontinent after its transit. But no one had seen StarGate travelers emerge from the energy lens so closely in time that they seemed a single mass landing atop one another in what looked like an impromptu orgy.

“Jeez,’ muttered one of the guards, “you always hear about cluster fucks, but I never expected to see one...”

Daniel Jackson managed to push himself off Sha’uri, who crawled away, rising to her feet without a look in his direction.

Barbara Shore disentangled herself and turned to the StarGate lens, which had not vanished after the transit but remained, roiling much more wildly than anyone had ever seen it reacting before.

“It’s not done,” she said. “Perhaps Vance-“

The film of energy across the ring suddenly corus-cated with painful brightness, and something flew from the gateway, nearly braining the physicist where she stood. Whatever it was impacted against the secu-rity barriers with the force of a cannon ball.

Back on his feet, Jack O’Neil investigated. “Looks like a piece of stone,” he reported. “It’s dressed on one side, but vitrified-you can still feel the heat radiating from it. Something seems to have melted onto it as well.” He looked to the other side of the still steaming chunk. “Golden quartz.” “I think that’s one of the ceiling stones from the hall of the StarGate,” Daniel said quietly. “Hathor must have fired straight down at us.” He turned to General West. “I suspect that if you try the Abydos coordinates on our StarGate now, you won’t get a connection.”

“You think the StarGate was destroyed?” West demanded.

“More likely, the world is gone.” Barbara Shore sounded sick. For a second West’s poker face cracked. Daniel was surprised to see regret-mixed with a certain satisfac-tion. “I sincerely hope that Abydos is not in as much danger as you suggest,” he said. “Although it would be a relief, I admit, if Hathor lost the Abydos StarGate as a means of reaching us.” “Sorry, General, but she’ll be reaching us anyway,” Daniel said. “Give her about a year. That’s how long it will take that big bastard she’s riding to arrive in the solar system.”

He raked everyone in the room with a cold glare. “And Earth had better be ready.”

[END]

[Information]

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Version 1.0

01-02-2004