03 - The First Amendment (20 page)

“Which ‘they’, Captain? The Jaffa? The tubenecks? The moths?” O’Neill was
just as shaken as Carter, and normally he wouldn’t have minded if she knew it.
But this wasn’t the time or place to allow emotion to control their action. They
had a military problem with immediate consequences not only to his own team but,
very possibly, to Earth itself.

Carter took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. “Unknown, sir. Teal’C
may be able to tell us if this was a weapon the Jaffa had under development, but
it doesn’t match anything I’ve seen or heard him talk about. There are some
similarities between this and the stuff we saw on the battlefield, but as for
which side used it—assuming it wasn’t something available to both sides—I can’t
tell.

“It obviously acted quickly and completely. The remnants show that much.
Maybe further analysis back home will tell us more.”

O’Neill nodded, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “All right, Major. Collect your
sample. Until further notice we’re going to assume everything left on this
planet is an enemy.”

Teal’C, Jackson, and Kinsey watched the other two go, and then Teal’C moved
farther back into cover. Daniel watched as Kinsey kept his mouth shut and
followed, his eyes busy over every detail of the place. Daniel could remember a
time, only a few years ago, when he could publish his research findings in
peer-reviewed journals and engage in endless academic debate over the interpretation of a variation in
hieratic script, with one
side holding that the symbol meant something entirely new and subtle and the
other that the hapless scribe, three thousand years dead, had been caught at
last in a spelling error. That sort of thing happened when one’s words literally
were written in stone.

Newspapers, though—his professors used to sniff with disdain. Newspapers were
created to wrap fish in. Weekly or monthly newsmagazines weren’t much different,
in their opinion. That sort of thing had no scientific value whatsoever. It
added exactly zero to the sum of human knowledge.

Daniel Jackson, Ph.D., wasn’t so sure. Opinions mattered much more in the
day-to-day world than all the reviewed journals in all the university libraries
everywhere. And there were more things in heaven than were dreamt of by all the
Doctors of Philosophy in all the universities in the earth.

He shook his head to clear it of such meanderings, and then shook it again to
get the lank blond hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut again. He would
have gotten one if it hadn’t been for Carter’s racquet-ball challenge.

He hoped the tapes came out. He wanted to take a good long look at the
manipulators on those moth creatures, and he wanted a lot more information about
the details of manufacture of the weapons those long-necked beings carried. He
could tell quite a lot about a species based on one or two stray items, and
could speculate happily about the rest for years. Two new intelligent species on
one world!

Or not. One might be from this world—he knew the human community hadn’t done
much exploration here—and the other from another world. Or they might both be
from other worlds. They might use ships, or—no, at least the tubenecks had
seemed puzzled by the Gate.

How had they managed to miss the aliens the first time? Didn’t the Etaans
have any warning at all?

Shostoka’an smiled maternally down at Jack O’Neill. “We are very few,” she
admitted cheerfully. “We are those of this city, and the outlying places where
we find the yellow metal and farm, and that is all. This is a good place, but
there does not need to be many of our kind here.”

She’s passed over a gorgeous cup, roughly inlaid with gems, some of which had
no counterpart he knew of on Earth. O’Neill had taken a cautious sniff—he’d
learned not to accept proffered food and drink automatically—and made a
face.

Daniel had taken it from him, raised it in salute to the tall, elegant woman,
and sneaked one preliminary sniff himself before downing the concoction. As he
suspected, it was cow’s milk, rich and creamy, straight from the udder, mixed
with blood, probably from the same cow. It made sense as a ceremonial drink for
the Masai. “Thank you,” he said, wiping his mouth. “It is good. You have healthy
herds.”

Shostoka’an nodded in appreciation. “What of your herds on your world? Do
they increase?”

“They do. We are fortunate. There are no”—oh, dear, what would the
local equivalent of lions be?—“no predators where we come from.” He sent
a mental apology to the summarily dismissed fanged half of Earth’s ecosystem.

“Do you have enemies on this world?” Jack had asked.

Shostoka’an had -tilted her head thoughtfully, the ostrichlike plumes waving
in the slight breeze. With instinctive courtesy, she hadn’t offered Jack a
second chance at the blood-and-milk, though Daniel knew Jack would have choked
it down somehow if she had. “Enemies? What do you mean?”

“Those that brought you here are your enemies,” Teal’C had said.

Shostoka’an had smiled brilliantly, teeth and jewelry gleaming equally in the
firelight. “But they have been gone a very, very long time, and never returned. They are all dead now.”

And now Shostoka’an and all her people were missing. He wondered if a few
remained in the outlying farms and the gold mines, hiding from the disaster that
had come to their world.

Teal’C stopped with a wave of the hand. Kinsey moved to the Jaffa’s far side,
and the three of them looked at more of the ruins of Etaa.

“This is worse than the other side,” Kinsey observed.

“No kidding,” Daniel agreed, and unlimbered his camcorder to take a quick
shot of the vanished sections of city wall and crumbled houses within the inner
compounds. He wished he’d brought more tape.

“I do not think there are hostile creatures still in this place,” Teal’C said
thoughtfully. “But we know they are nearby. We must remain cautious.”

“I’ll second that,” Daniel agreed. “I’d like to get closer, though, and see
if I can get better images of some of the damage. The experts back home may be
able to tell what kind of weapon did this.”

“They have a lot of experience in that sort of thing?” Kinsey inquired.

Jackson shrugged. “Some.” Without waiting for Teal’C to comment, he moved
forward, out of the shadow of the trees, the camcorder held to his eye as he
panned slowly across the shattered stones and wood of the wall and the houses
within.

Behind him, he could hear Teal’C’s nearly silent grunt of disapproval, and
Kinsey’s footsteps, following. Teal’C would take up a rearguard position,
Jackson knew, keeping an eye out for anything that might menace them.

Out of the corner of his eye he could still see the remaining tower at the
main entrance to the town. A flicker of movement jerked his attention toward it, and then he saw Teal’C raise a hand in acknowledgment. O’Neill and Carter,
then. Good. He liked knowing where everyone was.

It was odd, he thought, as he approached the breach in the wall; with this
much destruction, there ought to be more smell of decay, more bodies—not just
that lingering unpleasant scent that was sometimes overwhelmingly there,
sometimes not present at all. Maybe the Jaffa had already rounded everyone up
before the tubenecks and moths had shown up. He almost hoped so, and then was
shocked at himself, at the thought that there might be something even worse than
Goa’uld slavery.

He could hear a scrabbling sound coming from behind him and spun around, only
to see Kinsey balancing uncertainly on a pile of rubble. Teal’C, behind the
journalist, was frowning mightily, probably at the other man’s propensity for
seeking out the highest point possible.
You’d think a combat reporter would
know better,
he thought disgustedly, and then he saw Kinsey’s face change
and Teal’C bring his energy staff up to firing position. Teal’C was moving very
slowly. It wasn’t like the Jaffa at all.

He tried to look up, but it was as if he had been caught in molasses. His
arms wouldn’t lift, and he could barely turn his head from side to side. He was
having trouble breathing. He was vaguely aware of a high-pitched whistle.

He could hear loud noises—something beating at the air like giant fans.
Wings.

A shadow swept over him, and he tried to force his head up to see.

Too late. Long knives stabbed into either side of his body, just under his
shoulders, and he was yanked up into the air, his own enhanced weight dragging
him against the sharpness that pinned him, as the wings above him snapped
downward. The camcorder went spinning down to the ground and bounced. The paralysis, and the whistle, stopped at the same time. He heard
the sound of an energy staff being discharged.

He twisted frantically, struggling, and it only drove knives—the talons
projecting from the jointed legs of the moth, too similar to that bug that had
bitten him earlier to be coincidental—deeper into his flesh. He couldn’t lift
his arms to strike back, to wield a weapon of his own. As if adding insult to
injury, the powder from the moth’s wings drifted over him, making him sneeze,
and he felt something deep inside his body go
crunch.

Gusts of wind buffeted him back and forth, but he was past noticing. He had
fainted.

“Okay, I get the picture,” O’Neill said, rising hastily to his feet and
giving the captain a hand up. “That’s enough. I think it’s fair to say that if
there are any human survivors on this world, they’re going to be hiding too deep
for us to find. Let’s get the hell out of here, and blow this Gate. I don’t know
who’s fighting who on this world, but we want no part of it. They’re not going
to follow us home.”

Carter swallowed. “Sir, if I may make a suggestion—”

“Make it snappy, Carter.”

“I think we ought to show this to Mr. Kinsey. He needs to understand what
we’re dealing with.”

O’Neill glared at her, the kind of glare that indicated that he knew she was
right and didn’t much like the fact. “All right,” he said at last. “But if he
doesn’t get it, well, too bad. We’re not spending one more minute here than we
have to. We’ve got no guarantees those aliens aren’t coming back.”

“I think they’re finished,” she said quietly. But O’Neill was already at the
observation window.

“Can’t see them anymore,” he reported. “They’ve got at least another hour
before rendezvous. Let’s stay here for another half hour—or until we see more of
those things—and then head for the meeting place.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Carter, standing at the
cityside window, said sharply, “Sir. That’s Kinsey. And Daniel and Teal’C aren’t with him.”

Teal’C watched in horror as the bolt of energy from his staff passed
harmlessly over the body of the moth. It was flying erratically, weighed down by
the body of the archaeologist, its wings straining to lift itself and its prey
over the rubble. At unpredictable moments the giant wings would grab more air,
causing it to bob up and down, making a second shot extremely risky.

Daniel was impaled on the barbs of a second set of appendages, twisting,
writhing. As the moth struggled to lift itself past a roofline, the two watchers
saw his body go abruptly limp.

The human journalist was as shocked as he was, Teal’C noted; Kinsey simply
showed it more. His face was drained of color, and he was spinning in place,
trying to watch all the skies at once for another of the moth creatures.

“Go to the tower and notify O’Neill and Carter,” Teal’C said rapidly, already
moving at a quick trot toward the house behind which Daniel—and his abductor—had
disappeared. “Stay with them. I will recover Daniel Jackson.”

Frank Kinsey had absolutely no doubt that the Jaffa meant exactly what he
said. He could barely repress the desire to scramble after him, screaming,
“Wait! Stop! Don’t leave me here alone with those things!”

But Teal’C was gone, moving with amazing grace and quickness for such a large
man, his energy staff held close to his side.

And Frank Kinsey was all by himself on an alien world where things swooped
down from the sky, and he wasn’t thinking about headlines anymore.

The tower was to his left, at about ten o’clock. He began running, stumbling, still twisting his neck to try to watch the
skies.

Teal’C pursued the moth creature and its prey with single-minded
determination. While it would be good to have Carter and O’Neill to back him up,
he felt no particular responsibility to Kinsey. The reporter was expendable.
Daniel Jackson was not.

He lost sight of the winged thing as he entered the streets of Etaa. They
weren’t streets, really, just wide dirt tracks between the low fences that set
off the family compounds from each other. Because the compounds were all roughly
circular, the concept of a straight path did not exist in Etaa. Teal’C vaulted
some of the fences in his effort to maintain a line on the direction the moth
had taken. Such an action should have been greeted with questions, protests—it
was very rude not to use the gates. There was nothing, only silence, and an
occasional small powdery black splotch against the yellow ground.

Other than that, the place was scrupulously clean. The Etaans did not litter,
left no trash to clutter the streets of their home. A large trash pit downwind
of the city held the decaying organics that were the refuse of a culture with
low technology. The people of this world knew quite a bit about veterinary
herbs, a little about smelting, and once they had known nothing at all about
Jaffa.

He could hear the sound of his own footsteps on the dry, dusty ground, but
nothing else. He stopped to listen.

The window slits in the houses around him were usually covered with thin
woven cloth, neatly pinned to the inside wall of the house. Now the coverings
were torn loose, flapping out the windows or lying limp on the ground, not even
fluttering in the bit of a breeze. The doors, usually open in a sociable
society, gaped like dead jaws. Teal’C risked a quick glance inside each large thatched building but didn’t bother entering; the moth’s
wingspan was such that he didn’t expect they’d be inclined to take a victim—prisoner? prey?—inside one of the houses.