Stargate SG1 - Roswell (16 page)

Vala shook her head to clear her mind. Now was not the time to start reminiscing about the good old days when she was ruling half a galaxy and having intimate relationships with the other half. A wagon slowed to round the corner in the direction they were traveling. As with the first cart, it was heavily laden, but there seemed to be sufficient room at the back for the four of them to hitch a ride without being seen.

Almost without thinking, she chased after the wagon and leaped aboard. Employing this sort of
ad hoc
transport came with certain risks, such as landing on a load of animal dung or someone's squishy market vegetables. But for once they'd gotten lucky. This cart was carrying bales of soft fleece.

Mitchell and Daniel were right behind her, while Howard, slower and noisier, had to be helped aboard. Fortunately the owner of the cart didn't seem to notice the racket above the clop of hooves, grinding axles and rumble of wooden wheels over the cobbles.

“Ten blocks,” Daniel whispered in her ear, which was both informative and a rather pleasant sensation. She should make Daniel whisper vital information into her ear more often.

The rest of the journey was slow—it was debatable if they'd gained much time hitching a ride, although it felt good to rest her aching leg—but as they neared the university, even in the dark it was clear the dwellings were larger and set further back from the road. Following Mitchell's lead, Daniel pulled some of the pale wooly fur from an open bale and used it to wipe the bloodstains off his neck and hands.

It had taken little effort to heal her teammate's superficial cuts. Likewise, O'Neill's head wound was fully healed, but Loki had been an entirely different matter again. There was something profoundly wrong with the Asgard, something she could not fully discern, and although she had sealed his burns and knitted his broken bones, Vala suspected he was in dire need of a new body—which would explain why he was so eager to get the time machine operational.

While Vala's only wound had been her leg, the blood from that was now covered by the long coat she wore. Instead, she ran the greasy fleece over her hands. Experience had taught her that smelling like a domesticated animal was a useful accessory in one's nighttime camouflage kit.

An excited hand signal from Howard confirmed they were nearing their destination. Mitchell signaled with his fist and pointed to the shadows and the others nodded silently in understanding. Jumping off the back of borrowed transport was more or less second nature to her, but Howard landed face down in a mud-filled wheel-rut. Helping the youth to his feet,
 
Daniel whispered, “Which way?”

Howard gestured with a decidedly unsteady hand. “Two... two hundred yards, across the park.”

They took off, jogging in that direction. “What about the other stuff that Sam needs?” Vala asked, looking over her shoulder to Howard, who was trying to wipe himself down as he ran. “Where do we get that?”

“Oh...clamps and the like. Urn...the workshop and stables are behind the geochem building.”

They reached an ironwork gate, a rusted and ineffective hindrance easily circumvented by climbing over a short hedge. “How much time do we have?” Daniel directed his question at Howard.

“Time...time...” Howard echoed between puffs, tugging at a small golden chain draped across his vest. Easing closer to a miserly pool of light from a ground floor window, he withdrew a pendant, flipped open the lid, and squinting at the tiny clock inside, said, “It's almost 3:00am.”

“Sunrise this time of year on the east coast is around 0415,” Mitchell informed them. “We'll have to split up if we're gonna find what we need and get the jumper out of here before anyone sees us.”

Ahead of them was a boxy looking three-storey stone building with rows upon rows of arched windows. Mitchell signaled them to stop behind a short, neatly clipped hedge paralleling the pathway. “That the geochem lab?”

“Yes.” Squatting beside them, panting heavily from their jog across the park, Howard pointed to what looked—in the darkness—to be an open wooden building just beyond. “Those are the stables and coach house.”

“Okay, Jackson, you go with Vala to get the opal, I'll take the workshop.”

“There's about ten things on your list,” Vala countered, readjusting her com unit so it wasn't gouging her cheek. “We only need one lump of biogenic silica.”

“She's got a point. Jackson, you and I will take the workshop, Vala gets the opal.” Tapping his com unit, Mitchell added, “No chatter unless it's absolutely essential.”

“Just don't take anything other than the opal rock,” Daniel warned Vala. “I mean it.”

“Right.” She nodded. “No precious jewels and other bits of treasure. Just a shiny rock which is on display...where?”

“I'll take you,” Howard offered, his wheezing now under control. Mostly.

Like Daniel, Mitchell's eyes were constantly taking in their surroundings as he spoke. “I thought we'd agreed you'd just, point out which buildings?”

“Oh, don't be such a spoilsport,” Vala admonished. “Howard's having the time of his life, aren't you, Howard? Besides, we'll be in and out before the guards even begin to wake up.” She lifted her zat and smiled.

With a sharp intake of breath, Howard squeaked, “You're not going to.. .to kill anyone, are you?”

Daniel clapped him on the shoulder and offered him a reassuring smile. “It's not a gun...well, it is a gun, but... It's a ray gun,” he said. “It just knocks people out. Like an electric shock. It's not fatal; you only pass out for a few minutes. We're not going to kill anyone, I promise. Right?” Daniel, displaying a distinct lack of trust, directed the last comment at her.

Vala sniffed, offended by the very notion she would mess with the timeline, or shoot anyone—unless she absolutely had to. Or there was a profit in it for her.

Okay, not that—she really had to stop thinking such larcenous thoughts. Smiling, she nodded and said, “Cross my heart.”

Daniel looked doubtful, but they were running out of time. At a signal from Mitchell, the men waited only long enough to establish there was no movement around the buildings, before vanishing into the nearby shadows. Vala took an additional few moments to work her way around in the other direction toward what Howard assured her was the rear entrance.

She froze when she smelled something unique to this world: burning tobacco plant. Then she saw it; a tiny cinder glow
',
in the darkness that grew momentarily bright before fading and dropping to the level of a man's thigh. Although she was tempted to zat the guard, the soft
thwang
and brief plasma glow would not go unnoticed. She'd seen sufficient people on this world engaged in the addictive behavior of smoking to know that the man probably would move on in a few-moments.

Beside her, Howard's breathing was stilted and overly loud. Vala reached for his hand and patted it gently, calming him, a little tempted to make some remark about amateurs, and then deciding against it, because he was only a boy, after all, and one suffering an excessive degree of anxiety. Nothing would be served here by her being mean spirited.

The glow faded and then fell to the ground. A gritty sound followed, then, finished with his cigarette, the guard moved off. Vala signaled for Howard to wait in the shadow of a low hedge while she ran in a crouch across the grass and up the path to an ill-lit door set back between a pair of fluted concrete pillars.

While her preferred method of dealing with locks generally worked quite well, the primitive mechanisms found on this world had proven slightly more challenging than expected. Admittedly, she'd never had any real trouble getting into the various offices around the SGC, having had plenty of practice on Daniel's door, filing cabinet, desk and that secret little cache of interesting keepsakes he thought no one else knew about. But the small toolkit she'd liberated from Colonel Carter's laboratory before they'd left the SGC proved rather useful, which meant she didn't have to feel guilty about borrowing it in the first place. She had the door open in less than ten seconds.

Howard came running in behind her, panting and mumbling something about the guards. Closing the door, Vala peered into the musty darkness. “Where now?”

“I can't believe I'm doing this.” He was pale and trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement.

“Take a deep breath. Where do we go from here?”

“Up...upstairs.”

The creaking wooden steps were not softened by carpet, and Howard's attempt at tiptoeing was painfully loud to Vala's ears. The stairs led them to a landing directly beneath the window over the entrance, and then turned in the opposite direction to the second floor. Under the window was an ugly wooden cabinet with a glass lid. The beam from her flashlight fractured into several colors when she passed it across the rocks inside.

“Bowenite and Cumberlanite,” Howard said, coining up behind her. “They come from this area. The opal bearing rocks are on the next floor.”

They were halfway up the flight to the third level when she heard what sounded like a gunshot outside, followed immediately by yelling. Then came shouts of, “Fire!” and a series of high-pitched whistles.

“Daniel!” she barked into her com unit. “I heard shots. What's going on?”

Howard gasped loudly, tripped, and fell heavily against her. “What's happening? What do we do?”

Rather than Daniel, O'Neill responded through her com, “What's the problem?”

Ignoring them both, Vala bolted up the remainder of the steps. It was unlikely anyone had noticed their entry, so she could only assume Daniel or Mitchell had managed to get themselves noticed, and that right now they were too busy to reply. Waving her flashlight around the room, she saw twenty or thirty glass-topped wooden display cases. Although fairly certain she knew what to look for, it could still take several minutes of searching. “Howard!” She ran back down the first few steps, grabbed his shoulder and hauled him up. “Where is it?”

Stumbling against the banister, he stuttered over his words. “We... we have to flee! If we're caught here—”

The whistle blowing and cries from outside increased in volume, directly in proportion to a distinctive amber hue. Whatever had caught fire wasn't wasting any time about it. Despite that, given she was standing within a few feet of it, she saw absolutely no point leaving without getting what they'd come for. “Plenty of time for getting away. Now concentrate, Howard. Tell me where to find the opal rock.”

“I think... I...um...yes, it's the case over beneath that window.” He pointed nervously toward the far side of the room, and, grasping the wall to steady himself, inadvertently brushed against an electric switch.

The entire floor was abruptly bathed in light.

“Howard!” she hissed, spinning around. “Are you
trying
to get us caught?”

“No...no... I...!” He fumbled around with the switch, his expression so agonized in the glare of the lights, that she abandoned a momentary desire to throttle him. Besides, there was no time. The view through the windows was very unsettling. The coach house and stables must have been made of tinder because the fire was devouring them. Worse, the intense heat was carrying cinders upward where a light wind had caught them and tossed them toward the geomchem building.

“Daniel? Mitchell? If that fire is some sort of diversionary tactic let me tell you, it's a little over the top.”

“
What
fire?” O'Neill demanded through her radio.

“Mitchell's down!” Voice strained as though he were carrying a heavy weight, Daniel added, “Knocked a lantern into the straw.” His transmission ended abruptly, followed by the sound from outside the building of more gunfire.