SG1-17 Sunrise (7 page)

“It would be respectful to go see what she wants, don’t you think?” said Rhionna, with a half grin and a raised eyebrow. “They are the great and wonderful players after all.” Camus’s lips thinned and his stare snapped from Rhionna to Sam and Teal’c. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I shall entertain our guests, Brother Camus.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he heaved an exasperated sigh. “Remember, Rhionna,” he hissed, “I have ears. Everywhere.” Then he spun on his heel and left. For a few seconds, Rhionna watched his retreat before turning back to grab Sam’s hand. “I can help you find what you seek,” she said, her eyes like flint, all pretence at indifference gone. “But you must help me in return.”

“How?”

Rhionna shook her head, shooting a look after Camus. “If you would learn the truth, leave now. I can buy you a few minutes.” Then she too disappeared into the throng.

Sam and Teal’c didn’t wait. Skirting the crowd they headed for the exit, Sam sparing only one backward glance to see Rhionna engaged in a heated discussion with Camus and the two actors. It wasn’t until they’d both reached the empty courtyard that she opened her hand to look at the piece of paper Rhionna had pressed into her palm. On one side was written a handful of words in bold even strokes.

AND THE LIGHT OF THE SUN SHALL SCOUR EVIL FROM THE LAND—
Sunrise, Chapter Three, Year One.

But it was the words on the other side that provoked a sudden thrill of adventure. She stuffed the note into her pocket. “We’ve got to find the Colonel and Daniel. Now.”

Daniel
reached the bottom of the box and paused for a moment, staring at the empty plastic container. By its side, on the desk, the magazines sat in a neat pile, being fussed over by their archivist.

And if that wasn’t a misnomer he didn’t know what was.

He took in a slow breath, held it for a beat, then let it out carefully. Patience wasn’t exactly his strong suit, not when it came to history—or, more pertinently, to the destruction of the very fabric of history. “Tell me,” he said, lifting his gaze from the box and running his eyes over the shelves in the so called library, “are these magazines all that are kept here?”

Liam blinked at him, eyes twitching. He was hiding something. “We also keep copies of each chapter, of course.”

“What about other books?” Daniel pressed. “Ah, stories? Fables? Accounts of things that happened before…” He floundered for a moment.

“Before the Flood?” Liam offered.

“Yes!” He stood up straight, almost knocking over the stack of magazines in his eagerness. “Exactly. Before the flood.”

“There is nothing,” Ennis cut in. “It was a time of sin that has been long scoured away.”

“But there must be something,” Daniel protested. “Some records or—”

“I said there is nothing!” There was no mistaking the anger in Ennis’s voice, nor the edge of threat. His hands were clasped before him, twisted tight together, and in the light of the fading sun Daniel saw sweat beading on the man’s wide forehead. “Such matters,” Ennis said in a more collected tone, “are only for the Elect.”

“The Elect.” Jack shifted where he stood, his attention switching from Daniel to Ennis. “And who put them in charge? I’m gonna take a wild guess that the Elect weren’t actually elected.”

“We,” Ennis replied, chin lifting, “are elected by God to lead our people. Our seats are handed down through generations.”

“Right.” Jack eyed him for a moment, but didn’t say anymore.

A hereditary council then. Daniel had difficulty picturing Rhionna Channon taking on the role of Pastor some day.

Jack took a step toward the table and thumbed a copy of the magazine. Liam sucked a breath between his teeth and his hand twitched towards Jack’s arm, but he didn’t dare stop him. “Let me get this straight.” Jack’s comment was directed at Daniel. “This is a library of
TV Guides
?”

Letting out a controlled sigh, Daniel looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Bread and circuses,” Jack muttered, dropping the magazine back onto the desk. Liam reached for it, smoothing his hands over the cover. “We’re not gonna find—”

“
Colonel O’Neill
.” Sam’s voice crackled from Jack’s radio, making both Ennis and Liam start. “
Do you copy, sir
?”

Jack toggled his radio with obvious relief. Clearly, this high up, the signal could get through. “What’s up, Carter?”

There was a pause, and then, “Any luck at the library, sir?”

“It’s a bust. How’s the après-church party?”

“Interesting, sir. Teal’c and I are headed your way, ETA about twelve minutes. I’ll give you a sit-rep then.”

Jack shared a look with Daniel. “We’ll meet you outside. O’Neill out.” He shifted his stance toward Ennis as suspicion crawled across the man’s face. Sam hadn’t said much, which probably meant she had something to tell them—something she didn’t want Ennis Channon to hear. “Apparently Carter and Teal’c want to see the sights too.”

“Your words are strange,” Ennis said. There was a meaningful pause, and then, “The Sungate is not far; I can have you escorted there if you wish to depart.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “What Jack’s trying to say, Pastor, is that we’d like to look around some more—if that’s okay with you. If the shield we’re looking for did once exist here, we might be able to retrieve some of the technology and that could help both our peoples.”

“Look around you,” Ennis said. “My people are not in need of assistance.”

“But mine are,” Daniel persisted. “And if we can make it work, the shield could help us defend ourselves against a terrible enemy. We found a device on
–
”

“Daniel…” There was a warning note in Jack’s voice, but Daniel ignored it. You had to throw a little bait to catch a fish. Jack should know that.

Ennis’s eyes turned sharp with fear. “Device? What device?”

“We think it’s a fix, a way of making the shield work.”

“And you have it with you? You have brought it here?”

“No,” Jack lied, before Daniel could answer. “No, it’s still back on
Acarsaid Dorch
, where we found it.”

Liam had been replacing his magazines into the plastic box with a reverence Daniel recognized, but at the mention of
Acarsaid Dorch
his hand stuttered like a CD skipping mid-track, and his breathing hitched in a half-swallowed gasp. Interesting.

“You are a stranger here,” Ennis said into the silence that followed, “and so cannot know that speaking of the Other Place is forbidden to any but the Elect. It was a place of apostasy, and memory of what occurred there has been burned from the lips and minds of our people.”

Jack fixed him with an appraising look. “Has it?”

Ennis said nothing, his expression closed and defensive. Trust Jack to push it too far. Silence mushroomed between them until, with an intake of breath, Ennis said, “I must bring this matter before the Elect. You will remain until I do so.”

“Sure. Why not?” To Daniel’s ears, Jack’s reply sounded more like ‘The Hell we will!’ But Ennis seemed satisfied and bowed his head.

“I shall take my leave,” he said, clearly trying to hide his anxiety, but the half-strangled voice and sheen of sweat on his face gave him away. “I must return to the Chapel before the Elect depart. Professor Kermit will see to your needs until I
 
send men to escort you back to the Council chamber.”

“Oh, I bet he will.” Jack offered a crocodile smile and waited, stock still, until the elevator doors shut behind Ennis. Then turned to Daniel, the smile falling away. “We’re outta here. Now.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Now?”

“Kermit, where’re the stairs?”

Liam looked up, blinking. “Stairs? Through that door, but there are a great many and I should really—”

“Daniel—now.”

Refusing to jump like a raw recruit, he turned to the archivist. “Ah, we appreciate you showing us your records,” he said. “And if you do come across anything—you know, maybe something old tucked away somewhere—anything that mentions the
Sciath Dé
, please contact us.”

Liam’s expression tightened again, and he didn’t answer, just watched. His teeth were clamped together hard enough to make a muscle jump in his jaw. And as Daniel turned to follow Jack out the door, he could feel Liam’s eyes on his back, boring into him until he stepped into the musty corridor and let the heavy door swing shut behind him. The staircase was situated at the end of the hallway, beneath a window dusty in the fading daylight. Jack was already heading down.

Daniel hurried after him. “And we’re taking the stairs because…?”

“Because Carter and Teal’c have some intel, and I wanna be out of here before Caulder’s goons show up.”

There was silence. Daniel hesitated, then said it anyway. “Ennis.”

“What?”

Jack didn’t look around, but Daniel could see the tense set of his shoulders. He almost wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “It’s Ennis’s goons, you said, ‘Caulder.’”

Administrator Caulder, a man so blinkered by the need for survival that he’d enslaved half his population to keep the other half safe. Even at the end, after they’d shattered the lies and broken through to the world above, Caulder hadn’t understood what he’d done wrong.

I was protecting my people—our civilization. Would you do different?

“Just keep walking,” Jack said, not commenting on his slip of the tongue. “The sooner we get out of here the better, I don’t trust any of these bastards.”

“No,” Daniel sighed. “You never do.”

* * *

It was a strange sunset, Sam thought, as she and Teal’c made their way through the empty streets. The light was so diffuse that half the sky gleamed a misty orange, but there was no cloud strata within the dome to make it spectacular, nothing but a gentle fade from white to apricot to nightfall. There was something sterile about it, something that made Sam want to take a deep breath of wild, clean air. It reminded her too much of a different domed city, holding out against the ice. And she wondered what this city was hiding from—and what secrets it kept.

“Major Carter.” Teal’c stopped dead, poised like a cat on the hunt. “Movement ahead.”

Following the direction of his gaze, she saw it too. A flicker of a shadow in one of the side streets, close to an ugly gray building. She eased her zat out of its holster and, with a glance at Teal’c, moved into the shadows. Teal’c did the same, his steady presence behind her feeling like a solid wall. She’d missed him, she realized, during the weeks she’d been Thera. She’d missed this sturdy counterpoint to Daniel’s bright passion and the colonel’s mercurial temper. Perhaps that was why the team had flown apart in the power plant, because Teal’c hadn’t been there to anchor them.

Daylight was fading fast now, the speed of the sunset suggesting they were located close to the equator of the planet. Holding up a fist, she signaled Teal’c to stay back while she approached the corner of the street. She flattened herself against the wall, waited and listened. In the distance, she could hear the jangle of
Sunrise
music coming from one of the many screens, and, underlying that, the thump-thump of booted feet. Military, without a doubt, just like the building in front of her, with its slit windows and bunker-style ground floor. Sounded like Tynan Camus had figured out they’d gone AWOL.

Then, around the corner, she heard what might have been the whisper of fabric moving, the slightest scuff of a boot. Time to make her move.

Zat held in both hands, she snapped from cover, feet braced and finger tight on the trigger.

“Damnit Carter!” The colonel’s P90 swung away from her, just as she lifted her own weapon.

“Sorry, sir.”

Behind him, Daniel said, “A little jumpy, guys?”

“Enemy territory,” the colonel snapped.

“You don’t know that.”

“Daniel…”

“Colonel O’Neill is correct,” Teal’c said, rounding the corner to join them. “There is much we do not understand about this world; we must proceed with caution.”

Daniel held up his hands in defeat. “So, what did you find out?”

“Well, for a start,” Sam said, “I spoke with Rhionna Channon—Ennis’s daughter. She certainly has no love for the Elect, and she says she needs our help.”

“Here we go.” The colonel angrily kicked his boot against the wall. “This is always how it starts.”

“Ah, because this is why we do the job?” Daniel’s brow beetled, his hands plunged into his pockets. In the fading light, the lenses of his glasses gleamed bronze. “What kind of help?”

Sam shook her head. “She didn’t say.”

“Okay, first,” the colonel said, prowling back toward them, “this is not why we do the job. We’re not the Intergalactic Red Cross! Second—”

“Oh, don’t give me that crap about standing orders!” Daniel said. “Weapons technology isn’t the only reason—”

“
Defense
technology,” the colonel said, “is the
only
reason we came here. We’re here for the shield. That’s it.”