Stargate SG1 - Roswell (2 page)

And then the event horizon shot out behind him like a blast from a jet engine punching through water.

“Destroy all those who do not believe!”

Cam fired off a long burst in an arc around his teammate. The impact of the bullets plowing into the gunk sent needle sharp spurts of mud out everywhere, startling the kids into letting Teal'c go. Others still clambering to reach him, were momentarily driven back just long enough for Teal'c, eyes narrowed in determination, to surge forward, grab the platform and haul himself out.

“This is SG-1. We're coming in hot!” Sam announced into her radio.

“The Priors,” a woman cried out over the melee with a manic squeal of delight. “The Priors come to vanquish the enemy!”

And that's when Cam saw two...no three—wasn't that kind of overkill for a backwater planet?—of the baldy priors appear from behind the nearby trees. The large aquamarine stones set in the tips of their wooden staffs glowed ominously

Why did he get the feeling that this was planned?

Teal'c staggered to the 'gate while Cam and Daniel continued to lay down suppressing fire.

“C'mon!”
Sam yelled.

The last thing Cam saw before he and his teammates ducked low and backed into the wormhole were three bright beams of light shooting from the priors' staffs, over their heads and into the Stargate.

CHAPTER TWO

“Close
the iris!”

General Jack O'Neill squinted through the smoke flooding the 'gate room. He wasn't certain if Sergeant Walter Harriman had heard his order above the shriek of wrenching metal, because the iris remained obdurately open. As did the wormhole. Crap.

“It's not responding, sir!”

Glancing in Harriman's direction, Jack saw that the palm scanner controlling the Stargate's protective iris was a lifeless dull gray—unlike the dialing computer, which, along with the bank of monitors and electronic devices lining the walls, was spitting out an alarming spray of pyrotechnics. “Blast doors?” Jack shouted.

“Nothing, sir!”

Carter's warning that SG-1 was coming in hot had brought Jack from his temporary office and down into the control room. Before he could even ask what was going on, the entire underground complex had begun shaking.

Beneath the buildings inside Cheyenne Mountain were thirteen hundred and nineteen springs, each weighing a thousand pounds. In the event of a major earthquake or nuclear attack the springs were supposed to allow horizontal movement of the complex by as much as a foot in all directions. Wondering if the engineers had factored vertical movement into their equations, Jack cringed, ducking out of the way of a light fixture crashing down from the ceiling—which placed him squarely into the oncoming path of Walter and his chair. The sergeant had flung himself backward to avoid a nasty looking electrical discharge from the bank of monitors. The collision tossed Walter out of his seat, and the migraine-inducting woodpeckers that had earlier taken up residence in Jack's head, now launched an additional offensive on his knees. Legs buckling, he cracked his skull on the bench on his way to the floor. He made a stab at standing, but every surface was bucking and heaving like a steer on steroids. If the frames supporting the strengthened Plexiglas overlooking the 'gate room warped—

Right on cue, a loud crack resolved itself into an even louder splintering. So much for the shatterproof Plexiglas. Something else—a glass panel by the sounds of it—also exploded, and an SFA who'd been monitoring a bank of computers, screamed and fell back on top of Jack, shoving him onto the leg of the upturned chair. Legs twisted awkwardly, the woodpeckers inside Jack's knees double-timed their hammering while a second squadron dive-bombed his chest. A rib, maybe two objected loudly. At least there was no telltale
snap
of bones.

The watery blue reflections from the event horizon vanished and the juddering ceased. Any sense of relief that Jack felt was offset by the near certainty that SG-1 had not made it through.

Oh, and there was also the matter of a faucet of warm blood pulsing into his face.

Scrambling out from beneath the injured SFA, Jack reached up to the bench, grabbed the intercom and bawled, “Medical team to the control room,
now!”
The whoosh of fire extinguishers and trumpeting of klaxons competed with the screams of shock and mortal terror from the kid lying on the ground a few feet away, who was desperately trying to clamp his hand over a jet of blood pulsing from a short, deep slice in his neck. The SFA was new on the base and Jack didn't even know his name. Impatiently, he batted the kid's hand away and shoved his thumb into the wound, holding the flaps of the artery closed—he hoped.

Looking around the chaos in the control room, his gut clenched. “SG-1?” he demanded.

Walter found his glasses—one lens fractured—and pulled himself to his feet. He peered down into the 'gate room. Jack couldn't hear the reply above the noise, but he could see the movement of the sergeant's lips and the negative shake of his head. Turning to look down at him, the sergeant brought one hand to the earpiece of his com unit and shouted loudly, “Sir, reports coming in confirm that we're not under attack from the surface. Main computer is down, backup systems will be online in a moment.”

While part of Jack was focused on keeping the injured airman from bleeding out, his overriding concern was for SG-1. Some sort of weird light had preceded the team through the Stargate. This particular brand of weirdness had a distinct whiff of Ori, but since Jack had only been back at the SGC for all of an hour, he wasn't completely up to speed on their latest gadgets. “Any idea what just happened?”

“The moment we have power I'll run a diagnostic, sir, but from what I can tell it appears that the wormhole was... diverted.” Walter's voice was steady, but the harsh shadows cast by the emergency lighting emphasized the concern on his face. “Sir, are you injured?”

“Nope.” Several body parts screamed
liar.
“Diverted? Since when have wormholes been divertable? Maybe SG-1 never left.”

“No sir, SG-1 definitely were in transit.”

Recollections of a busted leg and his ass being frozen into a Popsicle waved a red flag. To the best of Jack's knowledge there were no spare Stargates stashed elsewhere on Earth, which meant Mitchell, Carter, Daniel and Teal'c could be anywhere.

The klaxons abruptly fell silent and the main lights—those that hadn't shattered—came back on. The injured airman started thrashing around under Jack's hand, which resulted in another crimson spray. Rapidly repositioning his grip to stem the flow, Jack injected considerably more calm into his voice than he felt right now, and said, “Got a little leak, here, son, so you need to hold still till the doc arrives.”

Panicked eyes met his, but the two stars on Jack's shoulder carried an authority that held more weight than words alone. The airman's breathing hitched as he made a conscious effort to calm himself, then he took in Jack's blood-soaked face and chest, and mumbled, “Sorry, sir.”

The clump of boots running down metal steps signaled the arrival of the medical team. Jack's gaze remained glued to the kid's, his mind rummaging through an assortment of possibilities, all bad. “No sweat, son. Needed dry-cleaning anyway. First time you've been injured?” He glanced around when Lam squatted beside him.

“Ye...es,sir.”

“Purple Heart, cool scar, and you'll probably be back at work tomorrow morning.”
Subject to there being a morning.
Not that Jack was a pessimist or anything, but the odor of fried electrics, hot metal, chemical flame retardant and blood was tinged with the familiar bouquet of impending doom. The Ori, Dark Side Ascendeds, were making the Goa'uld look like rank amateurs when it came to galactic domination. Actually,
interglactic
domination, because the Ori had already set themselves up with a bunch of happy, dedicated followers in another galaxy, and now had their sites set on the Milky Way in what appeared to be an ongoing squabble with the not-quite-so Dark Side but nevertheless irritating Ancients.

Nothing like an intergalactic, inter-dimensional war to screw up his retirement plans. And just when he'd discovered that there really
were
fish in his pond.

Lam whipped out a set of forceps, an instrument that Jack had become personally acquainted with on several occasions, and nodded for him to release his hand. The kid tried to suppress a cry when the doc took a moment to dig around the wound before getting a firm grip on the artery. Jack gave the airman's shoulder a brief, reassuring squeeze then hoisted himself to his feet and peered down into the 'gate room. “How long before the 'gate is—
son of a...”

“Could be some time, sir.” The edge to Walter's voice had taken on a vaguely resigned tone. “For a moment there, just as it shut down, the Stargate seemed to, well, disappear. When it reappeared...”

Walter didn't have to elaborate. The Stargate had rotated about twenty degrees left and was pitched forward at an alarming angle. The only thing that appeared to be stopping it from completely falling over was the crumpled mass of metal that had once been the ramp.

It looked as if something had reached through the worm-hole, grabbed the mesh, metal sheeting and the .50 cal machine guns that normally flanked the 'gate and balled them together like used aluminum foil.

Of more concern was the half closed iris. On the plus side, from what Jack could make out, the Marines stationed inside the 'gate room were unharmed, and armed reinforcements were already arriving. “Injuries?”

“Minor cuts and bruises, but nothing bad, sir.” Walter reached behind himself, brought his chair upright and sat down, glancing across at the young airman being loaded onto a stretcher. “At least in the 'gate room.”

Jack studied the situation for a moment longer. Sergeant Siler and the newest member of the SGC, Vala Mal Doran, were down in the 'gate room futzing around with the manual iris mechanism. Okay, all in all things weren't so bad. For one thing, they still had a 'gate. “All right—”

The Stargate groaned, tipped another few inches, and then began to dial. “That's not me!” Walter declared, his fingers tapping furiously at the still dead keyboard.

“Get that iris shut—wow!” Jack shouted above the renewed blare of klaxons.

“Sir, the iris mechanism is damaged!” Siler turned and looked up at Jack. “There's no way we can get it closed.”

Which left Jack with only one, gut wrenching option. “Code Red. Lock down the base,” he ordered Walter. “And get those backup systems online.”

Behind them, orderlies were lifting the injured airman onto a stretcher. Jack caught Lam's white-coated arm as she turned to leave. “Not you, Doctor. I need you to insert your command codes.”

Her eyes blanked for a moment before widening in comprehension. She twisted out of his grip; turned and stared through the shattered Plexiglas. “Are you serious?”

Jack didn't have the time to point out that the SGC could not risk the arrival of another Ori bioweapon, not after the thousands who had died last year. Standing orders left him no choice.

In the room below, Vala and Siler dived clear as a narrow vortex of boiling white erupted from the three-foot wide aperture that remained, disintegrating a chunk of mangled ramp before snapping back into place. It was small comfort to realize any Prior who took it into his baldy, self-righteous head to wander through the 'gate right about now would end up losing the lower half of his body to the wrong side of the iris. And as appealing as that notion was, while the titanium leaves of the iris remained even partially open, Earth was vulnerable to attack.