06 - Siren Song (43 page)

Sam could imagine that was true. At least, they’d come an awfully long way.
They had to be close. It was only fair.

The boat coursed down the tunnel, and time seemed suspended. The walls that
passed by on either side were the same liquid black, the water murmured and
clapped against the boat, breath came and went, around and around. Sam was
surprised to feel Teal’c’s hand shaking her, waking her from a doze. They were
getting there. Daniel was sitting up, still leaning on the Colonel, his eyes
closed.

Colonel O’Neill, though, was watching her, angling his head to see around
Eche who was helping Teal’c to slow their progress when the landing came into
sight. “Good work, Major,” the Colonel said simply.

Sam could only nod, and a smile ghosted across his drawn face.

“Okay, Daniel,” he said, tapping the back of Daniel’s head with his fist.
“Nap time’s over. Let’s go.”

When Daniel’s eyes opened and then squinted, annoyed, into the torchlight,
Sam found herself actually laughing a little, and at the same time feeling a bit
watery with relief inside.

“What?” he mouthed. No sound came out at all. But the Colonel rapped his head
again, and Daniel rubbed at it with the heel of his hand. “Ow,” he said, and
this time it was audible. Whiny and broken, but audible.

While the others crawled out of the boat, Colonel O’Neill felt around inside
his jacket and pulled out Daniel’s glasses. “Here,” he said, handing them over.

Daniel put them on carefully, his hands shaking a little, and raised his head
to peer at Sam. One of the lenses was a spider’s web of cracks. He squeezed that
eye shut. “Gee, thanks,” he whispered, the slight curve of a grin softening the
sarcasm a little.

With a grunt that might have been a rebuke but which came out more like a
laugh, the Colonel pulled the glasses off of Daniel’s face, poked his finger
through the broken lens, shook the pieces out into the river, and reseated the
glasses on Daniel’s nose. “Better?”

The intact lens was opaque with torchlight, but Sam could see Daniel’s other
eye crinkle up. “Much,” he said dryly.

“Good.”

They were a little closer to home.

The Colonel held Daniel’s elbow as they clambered out onto the landing, and
Sam held the Colonel’s when he slipped on the slick stone and almost tipped
backward into the water. Teal’c and the others waited for them where the tunnel
started to angle upward away from the river, but Arts and Aadi weren’t with
them. Aris’ boots rang on the stone as he carried Brenneka toward the light of
the chapel. After checking to make sure that Colonel O’Neill and Daniel seemed
steady enough on their feet, Sam led the way, Hamel stumbling along between
Teal’c and Eche.

Once they were back in the chapel, Aris carried Brenneka to the dais and laid
her gently at its foot, then waved Hamel and Eche over. They spoke together for
a few moments and, although Eche protested, they both remained behind as Aris
came to join SG-1.

“So?” Colonel O’Neill asked.

Daniel was gaping upward at the wall of steel. His unsteady finger pointed as
he took a step toward it, but he came up short against the Colonel’s extended
arm.

“Are you nuts?” the Colonel demanded.

Daniel closed his mouth and frowned as though he were seriously considering
the question.

With a roll of the eyes, the Colonel turned back to Aris. “So?” he repeated.

Aris looked over his shoulder to where Eche was squatting in front of Hamel,
dabbing at Hamel’s face with a square of sterile gauze. Teal’c was watching.
Beside Eche was a small stack of foil packets from Teal’c’s pockets.

“They’ll be safe here while I take you topside to get an idea of what’s going
on up there.” Aadi moved closer to his father. “Yeah, you can come,” Aris added,
although he didn’t look too happy about it. Sam knew how much luck he’d have
getting Aadi to stay behind.

“And then?” she asked.

“Then I bury my sister.” He walked away before they could say more.

Topside was seething. Their small quarter seemed mostly deserted when they
slipped through the low door into the alley and then made their way to the tiny
courtyard, but the unmistakable sounds of a riot came from the direction of the
mine. Sam braced a hand on the gate and leaned back to look up at the Ancient
tower. It rose unperturbed against the pink-edged grey of early morning clouds,
but behind it death gliders cut through the sky in elegant arcs, swooping low to
strafe the streets on the far side of the city, then shooting upward to hang at
the top of their pendulum swings before falling back downward for another run.
Sam counted five as she walked to the other end of the courtyard and stood next
to the Colonel. Above the rooftops they could see the livid glow of a massive
fire: the processing plants, still burning, she guessed. The Colonel’s face was
grim.

“Can’t see squat from here,” he muttered. Then louder, “We need a better
vantage point. See if we can get to the ’gate.”

Aris shouldered past them to lead the way. He stopped when he noticed that
they weren’t following, and he pointed ahead. “Come or not. But make up your
mind. There’s a revolution on, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Sam spared half a thought on why the Colonel started moving then, why he
would even consider following Aris, but there was no time for debate. He took
Aris’ lead, Daniel walking behind, Teal’c at his shoulder. Sam brought up the
rear.

Aris led them away from the worst of the noise. At one of the broader
alleyways, they were caught in the riptide of the crowd, half the people running
away from the riots, half toward it. Teal’c gripped Daniel by the upper arm and
guided him deftly across the intersection after Aris and Aadi, while Sam and the
Colonel took their chances alone, getting bowled over more than once in the
process. From there, the
ha’tak
was visible, and it was clear that the
death gliders were concentrating their fire on the space around it, no doubt
keeping back the crowds. They moved on, winding their way through the streets
and alleys, past gangs of workers with shovels and picks and determined or crazed or desperate expressions, past huddles of
children who hunched themselves into smaller knots or dispersed into the corners
and crevices of the city. Under their feet, the Nitori swirled in glass and the
mosaic faces of their people gazed upward at the empty sky. There was no
lightning or whirlwind. There were six thousand slaves and a few hundred Jaffa,
and a dead wannabe god, and another on his way.

She wondered how far away Yu was and what he would do when he arrived to find
the mine collapsed and the city in full rebellion. Maybe this place was dismal
and miserable and worthless enough that he would find no value in reclaiming it.
Maybe he’d blast the mountains down on them. Sam couldn’t help her gaze straying
to the sky: she looked for a hint of lighting, a gust that could be a whirlwind.
The people were on the road. Where were Ancients and their promises now?

After what seemed like endless turning and doubling back to get around crowds
and noise, they emerged into the square in front of a squat, windowless bunker:
the
roshna
stores. While the death gliders blasted holes in the mosaic
walkways of the old city and toppled the remaining towers into the streets, the
people dodged and ran and killed the Jaffa guards, overwhelming them with
numbers and desperation. They came together in front of the wide doorway of the
storehouse where the sturdy, belligerent bulk of Esa emerged from inside the
bunker. He held his fists over his head, one closed around a staff weapon, the
other clutching a bag full of phosphorescent blue packets. Esa shook his
trophies at the sky and at the death gliders. The roar of the crowd’s triumph
made Sam cover her ears.

Aris skirted the edge of the riot, down another narrow passageway, up a long
flight of stairs and then another, and finally out onto an open landing above
the city. From there they could see plumes of smoke rising from the bunker where
they’d been held, from the processing plants, and even from the blasted hulks of
heavy equipment at the base of the
ha’tak,
although the ship itself
didn’t appear to have been breached. New layers of black dust and smoke hung low
and choking over most of the city, wreathing the
ha’tak
and the Ancient
tower. The death gliders made pass after pass around the mothership, protecting it for a god who was never going to return. Behind Sam
on the landing, Aris’ ship gleamed dully as the first rays of sunlight stabbed
between the mountains.

“Yep,” the Colonel said, gazing into the distance and the smoke. “That’s a
revolution, all right.”

Anarchy was good, Jack thought, as he fought the urge to sit down and pass
out. His eyes were dry and burning from the fine ash and soot in the air.
Overhead, death gliders continued their circular patterns over the city, laying
down cover fire. Jack backed up instinctively, squinting into the sun to see if
they had now become one of the many targets, but the ships soared by without
nearing their position. “How many people do you have contributing to this little
rebellion?” he asked, looking at Aadi.

The kid looked scared to death, but his father’s hand on his shoulder made
him taller, and he lifted his chin. “I don’t know. Bren was the one who planned
it. She always said there were many who would help, once they believed they
could win.”

“Looks like they believe it now,” Jack said. He stared down at the
destruction being wrought in the name of freedom. He’d seen it, been in the
middle of it, what seemed like a thousand times, and the weariness in his body
was the heaviest exhaustion he could ever remember. He shook it off and took a
quick inventory. Carter looked dead on her feet, but she was alert. He could see
it in her eyes, the burden of command and decision-making, still active in her
quick, assessing glances. Teal’c had looked better, and Jack suspected he was
going to hear that Teal’c had taken a few knocks of his own, but it wouldn’t
come up until Fraiser had her hands on him. Daniel was worst off. Jack didn’t
even want to look at the back of his throat. The idea of the wound there made
his teeth clench. They had to get the hell off this world, and if they couldn’t
find a way in the middle of a full-fledged rebellion, they didn’t deserve their
hard-to-kill reputation any longer.

“Sir,” Carter said. “Brenneka told me there are only a few thousand of her
people left. They’re no match for a mothership full of troops.”

“Never underestimate my people, Major.” Aris was watching the sky, and a
calculated look, full of satisfaction, had come over his face. “This has been a long time coming.”

“They’re expecting you to bring weapons to their rescue,” Carter said. The
anger in her tone made Jack turn to look at her. She was shaking, not much, but
enough that Jack could see it. Delayed shock, Jack guessed, but she knew he was
watching her, and she got herself under control. She was a hell of a leader.

“They know by now it’s not going to happen,” Aris said, gesturing at the
valley beneath them, which still trembled with aftershocks from the deep-ground
collapse below. “But they’re still fighting, aren’t they?”

A stab of pain shot up through Jack’s arm, direct from the abused fingers of
his hand, but he ignored it. Beside him, Daniel had slumped at Teal’c’s feet,
but now he groaned and sat up, his eyes more focused than they had been since
they’d left the library. Jack took a long, assessing look at him, at the way his
body was shaking, and said to Aris, “We don’t have time to stand around
debating. Point us the way to the Stargate and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“We do not have our GDOs,” Teal’c said.

Jack turned to look at Carter, whose expression caught his irritation and
flung it right back. “We haven’t exactly been in control of what equipment we
had access to, sir.”

“Well, we can gate to the alpha site,” Jack said, but Aris was already
shaking his head.

“You won’t get through the Stargate,” Aris said. “That’s the only thing on
this rock valuable enough to put a guard on.”

“You could hide with us,” Aadi offered quietly. He rested his fingers on
Carter’s sleeve. “I know our kin would be willing to shelter you here, for as
long as it takes.”

“Thank you, Aadi,” she told him, curling her fingers over his. She gave him a
small, genuine smile, not the kind that was PR. “But you have your own people to
worry about, and we have injured.”

Jack didn’t especially like being lumped into that category, but her
assessment was accurate.

“We could help care for them,” Aadi said, returning Carter’s smile. Under
other circumstances, Jack would have been grateful for any help at all, but now,
accepting it would involve staying. He was turning to Plan C, which involved going by any means necessary.

Aris angled his head up to look at the clouds. “Yu’s coming. By then most of
us will be in the mountains, if we have any luck at all. You can hide there as
well as anywhere.”

“Thanks, but we’ll find our own way,” Jack said. No more caves and tunnels.
When he got home, he was going to sleep in the backyard and stay inside the
mountain only long enough to get to nice, quiet, grassy worlds. He nudged
Teal’c. “What are the odds we can steal one of those cargo ships?”

“About the same as getting to the Stargate,” Aris answered, though he hadn’t
been asked. “You people aren’t equipped.”

Jack’s annoyance flared again, fueled by his sense of urgency. “You have a
better suggestion?”

Aris stroked his son’s hair, once, twice. Aadi looked up at him, and Jack saw
a spark of adoration in the boy’s eyes. So he didn’t hate his father, after all.
Like most teenagers, he’d only thought he did. “A trade,” Aris said. “A fair
bargain.”