SG1-17 Sunrise (37 page)

Silence fell. Absolute silence. Then the applause began, far toward the back of the crowd, and it rolled forward in a wave of enthusiasm until it became thunderous. Jack flung a look at Teal’c, who merely raised an eyebrow.

After a minute, Faelan lifted his hands to quell the crowd, and then Rhionna spoke again. “Before us stand the Elect, men whose lies have denied us, for generations, the means to heal our world. I offer them this choice; disavow your faith and join with us to rebuild Ierna, or leave through the Sungate to
Acarsaid Dorch
and live there amid the lies you have sown.” She looked down at the row of men and women. “Who will join us?”

Tynan Camus stepped forward, signs of strain and fear marking his face, but defiant to the end. Jack could almost admire him for that. But not quite. “Know this,” Tynan said, loud enough to be heard by half the crowd. “The Lord will punish your crimes; you have defied His Will, consorted with the damned and brought them within the Ark. Your sins will be scoured from the land and only the faithful will be spared.” He turned, addressing the silent crowd. “Only damnation awaits you! Though you send us to hell it is you who will Burn beneath the Lord’s wrath, it is you who—”

Something hit him. Tynan cried out, clutching his head as blood spilled through his fingers from a gash above his eye. Then another stone was thrown. Another of the Elect was hit. The Guards didn’t move, seeming nervous and unsure. And Jack saw the whole damn situation about to unravel.

“Teal’c,” he said. “With me.”

In two steps, he was in the thick of it and felt a stone hit his shoulder. “Tanner,” he snapped at the Captain of the Guard, “get your men between the prisoners and the crowd. Faelan—give the damn order already!”

“Open the Sungate!” Faelan barked.

Jack sent a nod to Teal’c who strode over to the DHD as Jack started backing up. “Move!” he ordered the crowd as the gate began to spin. “Clear the area.”

Almost tripping over their robes, the Elect stumbled backward as the last chevron locked and the event horizon surged out amid a whoosh of static and ozone. The awed crowd froze, stones dropping from limp fingers. Even Faelan looked speechless. It was Rhionna who moved first. “The Sungate is open. You have made your choice.
Acarsaid Dorch
awaits.”

With the mob at their back, and hell before them, the Elect shuffled forward. Some muttered prayers, others curses. Rhionna’s face remained impassive as they filed past her, she didn’t even stir when Tynan Camus spat at her feet—save to put a restraining hand on Faelan’s arm.

At the top of the stairs, the showman even now, Tynan lifted his arms to the sky and cried out, “I surrender myself to thy care, oh Lord!” Without looking back he vanished into the unknown.

Unknown to him, at least. Jack knew exactly what awaited him: snow, rock, and a long abandoned research station. Fifty-fifty odds, at least; men like Tynan Camus had a nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.

Calmly Jack watched as the rest of the Elect followed, preferring the terrors of
Acarsaid Dorch
to the prospect of being proven wrong. When the last man had been swallowed by the event horizon, the wormhole collapsed and the gate was still once more.

It was over.

Rhionna looked shell-shocked, same as Faelan. Perhaps they’d just figured out that the whole expectant crowd was looking to them, waiting to be led. They shared a glance, then Rhionna said, “Now we wait for
Sciath Dé
—for the new world to begin.”

And Jack sure as hell hoped she was right. Behind his sunglasses he squinted toward the ugly tower that housed the Ark’s so-called library. If Carter didn’t get the damn shield working, he doubted that the fragile coalition between the Seachráni and the Ark would last. Hope was pretty much all these people had left, and if they lost that… Well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what would happen next.

* * *

Daniel’s initial reaction when Sam told him where the shield was hidden was skepticism. He’d been to the library and seen for himself the dusty, half empty shelves that hadn’t held a book in almost two hundred years. It was an insult to the name ‘library’; repository for knowledge it was not, much less the site for an advanced planetary shield.

“Are you sure it’s here?” he said, trying not to sneeze as the dust motes swirled around him.

“Daniel…” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question, and Sam’s patience seemed to be wearing thin.

“Sorry. It’s just…” He gestured at the abandoned stacks of
Sunrise
scripts and recordings. “Look at this place.”

“Ennis said we’d find it here,” she said, unbuckling her pack.

“Exactly.
Ennis
said we’d find it here. The man wanted us to fail from the get-go.”

Sam shook her head. “You weren’t there. He wouldn’t have lied to her, Daniel. Believe me.”

Daniel sighed, unable to do anything but trust Sam’s conviction. “Then where do we start looking? What are we even looking for?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea, but I’ll know when I find it.”

Before they had a chance to begin their search, a noise from the other end of the library made both of them start. Sam’s hand flew to her sidearm, but Daniel stayed her with a gesture. He recognized the man standing in the shadows of a stack. “Liam?”

The librarian edged out from his hiding place. “Am I to be sent with them?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The others. You’ve sent them to
Acarsaid Dorch
. Am I to be exiled too?”

Daniel thought for a moment, figuring it out. “You’re one of the Elect too.”

“I am the Archivist, as was my father and his father before him.” He was on edge, wary and nervous; Daniel noticed that Sam’s hand had not left her gun. Hesitating briefly, Liam added, “My family has guarded the library’s secrets since the Flood.”

“Its secrets?” It took a few moments for the words to make sense to Daniel.

By the time that happened, Sam had piped up. “The shield. You know where it is?”

Liam paused. “Is it true that Ennis told you the truth in the end?”

“That’s what we want to find out,” she said. “He said it’s here in the library.”

The librarian looked away with a nod and a slight smile, as if some belief had just been affirmed. Then he strode to a towering shelf, his gait purposeful now, all hesitancy gone. He slid his fingers into the gap between the shelving and the wall and, with a grunt of effort, he pulled. The shelf teetered on its edge and came crashing down in a blizzard of yellowed paper.

He moved to the next bookshelf, toppling that one too. Without another word, Daniel and Sam joined him in his task of tearing the library apart, first the shelves, then the wooden panels behind them. Once they were done they stood back, out of breath, and admired their handiwork. Behind one of the discarded wall panels they’d found a computer interface.

“It looks like the technology we found on
Acarsaid Dorch
,” said Sam, approaching it with something akin to wonder. She ran her hand over one of the keyboards and turned to Liam. “Is it?”

“Yes, Major Carter,” replied the librarian. “This is the Knowledge you seek. This is God’s Shield.”

A familiar weariness settled bone-deep into Jack as he made
his way with Teal’c and Faelan to the library. The adrenaline high of the past few days over, he was braced for post-battle lethargy, a fatigue that also was evident in the heavy gait of the man who walked alongside him. Faelan Garret looked as if he wanted to sleep for an entire day at least. Shame he wouldn’t get the chance.

“You’ve got a job ahead of you,” Jack said, though he guessed Faelan already knew as much.

Garret nodded and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know whether to blame you or thank you,” he said with a faint smile.

“I should probably get out of here before you’ve had time to figure that one out.” Grinning, Jack added, “You’ll do just fine.”

“Maybe. At least I won’t be doing it alone.” Faelan’s smile grew broader at the mention of Rhionna.

Jack scratched his jaw and looked away. “Where’d the new Pastor get to anyway?”

“She had other business to take care of.” Faelan’s expression had turned serious.

Business concerning the one person who’d been conspicuously absent for the past few days, Jack surmised. Given what Carter had told him of Sorcha’s part in Ennis’s death, he was curious to know how exactly Rhionna intended to take care of that particular business. He had his own thoughts on the matter, but kept them to himself. And anyway, it was time to get off this planet, let these people sort their own future out.

Of course, before they did that they had one final item on their own agenda to take care of. “Do you think it’s up there?” he asked, tilting back his head to take in the tall building directly in front of them.

“It could be I suppose. Though I can’t see what good it’ll do us now—the damage to our world is already done.”

“Major Carter seems to think it could still help your people,” said Teal’c, as they entered the foyer and made their way to the elevator.

“I hope she’s right.”

“Yeah,” Jack muttered, “me too.”

However, when the elevator doors slid open, it appeared that their doubts had been misplaced. The room was a wreck, shelves and paper and data cartridges strewn all around, and in the sunken central area the floor was gone entirely. In its place a huge metal disc thrummed with an energy that coursed right up through Jack’s boots. Carter stood next to it, grinning with triumph.

“Just in time for the main show, sir,” she said.
     

Jack gave a brief laugh, part amazement, part disbelief. “It works?””

“That’s what we’re about to find out.” She turned to Faelan, who stood open-mouthed, staring. “If it does work though, Faelan, it’s not a quick fix. It could take generations for you to see real benefits.”

“At least there’ll be future generations to see those benefits, Major Carter. I don’t know if I can express my gratitude for that.”

“Letting us come back and study this technology will be thanks enough.”

“That goes without saying.”

She gestured at the console in the wall. “Care to do the honors?”

He nodded, unable to hide his eagerness, and followed Sam to the console, where Daniel and the librarian guy, Beaker or Gonzo, or whatever his name was, were poring over the controls.

“You are not confident in this endeavor, O’Neill.” Evidently, Teal’c didn’t share his CO’s reluctance to voice any lingering doubts.

Jack looked over to where Carter, with no small amount of enthusiasm, was explaining the workings of the console to Faelan. “Well, that’d just make me the guy who punches Santa in the mouth on Christmas morning. I’d much rather say something profound, about long journeys or small steps and huge leaps or some other cliché. Besides”—he rocked back on his heels, looking down at the vibrating floor—“it’s hard to deny that something’s happening here.”

The next few moments were to prove, conclusively, that something was most definitely happening. With a grind of machinery, the roof itself slid open, bathing the library in filtered sunlight. The metal disc in the center of the room shone, brighter and brighter, like a coin tossed into a fire, and with a blast of energy that shook the entire building, a beam of light shot upward from its surface, piercing the dome and flooding the sky beyond.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Jack. There didn’t seem to be any other way to put it.

* * *

Rhionna picked her way through what remained of the Badlands, the savage noon heat clawing at her heavy sunwear. It was a landscape transformed, scoured by the ocean and turned alien and strange. Debris from the depths of the sea—from a world long lost—lay scattered in the mud, baking hard beneath the sun. Some things she recognized—the overturned hull of the
Fánaí na Mara
, a solar sail. Others were a mystery, tantalizing hints of her people’s drowned history.

But seabed treasures had not drawn her from the Ark. She had come outside in search of something else—she hardly knew what to call it. Resolution, perhaps. The closing of the past, and the opening of a future unknown.

Parched mud cracked beneath her boots, stirring dust into the stink of the air; drying seaweed and rotting fish made pungent in the noontide furnace. She should find shelter until the Burn had passed, but she did not have long and could not afford to tarry.

The familiar paths within the Badlands were gone, but she knew her direction in spite of it. How many times had she walked this way? Blind, she could have found her way to the scrap of tarp that flapped in the desiccating Badland winds.

She approached slowly, letting her presence be heard, and stopped some short distance away.

Sorcha Caratauc sat in scant shade with her bony knees drawn up to her chest and her eyes upon the glitter of the sea. Placid now, the ocean was a mere ghost of the monster that had wrought so much destruction upon the land.

Rhionna dared not remove her sunwear to meet Sorcha’s gaze full on. Besides, the old woman was determinedly not looking at her.