Stargate SG1 - Roswell (34 page)

“How close?”

“Perhaps one hundred and fifty of your feet.”

That was all Sam needed to recover Vala and Mitchell, especially if they could keep the jumper cloaked. “Can we extract the transport device from the pod?”

“I am feeling much better, now.” An closed his eyes, but this time, he seemed far more relaxed. “I could undertake the task in twenty minutes, perhaps.”

She lifted the radio. “Sir, are you reading all of this?”

“All ears, Carter.”

“An, can you explain the procedure to the General to beam us out?”

The Asgard's instructions were interrupted by a loud explosion nearby, followed by an even closer grinding noise directly overhead. “Be a few moments yet, Sam,” Daniel shouted. “We're having...technical issues.”

“What sort of technical issues?” she asked wondering if it had anything to do with the noise. That's when she heard something behind her and realized Cancer Man was standing there.

“General, huh?” he said, tearing the smock from her shoulder to reveal the radio. “Is that your boss's rank in the MGB,
Olga?”

Oh...great. The MGB was soon to be better known as the KGB. Daniel had landed them all in it quite comprehensively last time this had happened, which had resulted in hours of laborious questions, bright lights and more cigarette smoke than a DC nightclub.

Cancer Man called out and within moments, the room was swarming with MPs. Haynes was on their heels, with Brylcreem right behind. Sam raised her hands to show she was unarmed, but someone pushed her to her knees and pressed the barrel of a Springfield against the side of her head. Another half dozen MPs surrounded An on the bed, pointing their weapons at him.

“What's going on?” the doctor, Johnson, demanded, pushing his way past the MPs. “Get away from that bed!”

“Caught ourselves a spy,” Cancer Man said, pulling a pistol from his own shoulder holster. He pushed the barrel of a German Luger—probably a souvenir of the war that he'd pilfered from an actual combatant—into Sam's forehead. “And she's going to tell us her real name, and where her Commie pals are. Right now.”

“Hey!” Johnson objected. “You can't do that!”

“You think so?” Cancer Man said. “She's got a radio. I heard her talking to her boss, a general, no less. They were planning to take that...
thing
outta here. I'm betting it's some Russian experimental monster and that ship is one of their secret weapons.” He pushed the barrel into Sam's forehead even further. She could feel the foresight cutting into her skin.

Sam stared up at Cancer Man. She could see it in his eyes; the ruthless, opportunistic nature that would drive the NID.

“Where's the general you're talking to on this?” Brylcreem snatched the radio from her breast pocket. His face screwed up and he peered at the slim wire. “This another one of your Commie gadgets? Where's the rest of it?” He reached down and roughly pulled her shirt aside, searching for something that didn't exist.
“I
don't know what's going on, but your Commie pals will never get away with it.”

“Got away with the flying saucer, didn't they?” Johnson interrupted. “And if you don't get that gun out of her face—”

“Search her locker,” Brylcreem snarled at the MP. “Every inch of it. There has to be more of the radio around here someplace.”

Johnson's glower shifted from Cancer Man to Brylcreem and then Haynes. “This contravenes all military protocol when it comes to dealing with prisoners. And you're crazy if you think that bit of wire is some sort of radio.”

Cancer Man cocked the Luger. His finger, which was level with Sam's eyes, slowly pulled back on the trigger. “Maybe I am a little crazy at that. Tell me who you are or you're gonna get a bullet, you hear me? I ain't muckin' around.”

“Dana Scully.”

“Same last name as one of the guys who attacked us at the diner,” an MP interrupted.

“Where's your pals, now? What are they doing with that ship?”

“Go to hell.”

His face turned an entertaining shade of puce, but she knew he'd never shoot her. For one thing, she was the only one who might have any answers.

“Agent,” snapped Johnson, “you pull that trigger and so help me I'll have you hauled up in front of a military court and shot!”

The puce was just turning an interesting shade of beet red when a familiar beam of light filled the room, and An vanished. The Luger swung around, but the bullet Cancer Man squeezed off plowed harmlessly into the empty bed. The butt end of the Springfield swung around hard and slammed into her head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Cramped was such an understated word, Daniel decided. Compacted was probably more accurate, but with an NID agent holding a gun to Sam's head, he understood why Jack had tried to beam her and An into the pod.

The sound of a gunshot rang out from their radios at the same moment as An materialized beside him. “Where's Sam?” Daniel demanded, trying to suppress the sense of panic clenching his guts when the transmission from Sam's radio abruptly cut off.

Leveling a round of curses at the Asgard transport, Jack snarled, “That sonofabitch is as good as dead!”

A spotlight with the candlepower of a small sun illuminated the inside of the escape pod. The Asgard cried out in pain and raised his arms in a futile attempt to protect his photosensitive eyes.

Daniel wasn't an expert in the mechanics of Asgard escape pods, but the damage it had sustained when Loki had shot An out of the sky, Jack's failed attempt to tunnel their way out of Roswell plus bumping into the Air Field control tower and what looked to be a section of the hospital roof probably contributed to the failure of the external sensors to compensate for the light.

“O'Neill,” Teal'c called over the radio. “You are visible.”

“Got that,” Jack replied, twisting the control stones around.

They abruptly sped off in the direction of...actually, Daniel wasn't entirely certain of their direction, because they were upside down. Again. “An—” He tried to be gentle as he grasped the Asgard by the arm and helped him untangle himself. “We have to get back there.”

Eyes firmly shut against the blinding spotlights that followed them around the sky, An reached out for the control panel and made a few subtle alterations to the stones. The inside
of the pod instantly darkened until only the muted lights of the stars appeared. Correction. Traffic lights.

“Oops,” Daniel observed. “I think we're in downtown Roswell. And judging by the way people are pointing at us, I don't think we're cloaked.”

Jack shot him an odd look. “Tell me you're not worried about people seeing a flying saucer over Roswell?”

“No. I'm worried about getting close enough to the hospital so we can get Sam out of there.”

“That will no longer be possible,” An said, redirecting the craft, which wasn't exactly flying in a straight line, in the approximate direction of the base. “There is considerably more damage to the flight systems and transport of this unit than I expected. It could take several hours to effect repairs.”

“What do you mean, several hours?” Jack demanded.

The Asgard cringed away from Jack, prompting Daniel to say, “Jack, give him a break. He's not the one who busted the thing. And Sam's not dead, she couldn't be, otherwise she could never send us here to this time.”

“Weren't you the one who pointed out that this timeline is different?”

“They won't have shot her,” he said determinedly. “You know that, Jack. It was a bluff to get her to talk.”

“I am responsible.” The Asgard's shoulders slumped.
“I
am sorry.”

Jack met Daniel's look over An's head. This was an Asgard?
 
“Okay, An,” Jack said, the restraint in his tone obviously forced. “How about we stick to plan A. You land this thing, get the transport out and repaired, install it in the jumper and then we beam Carter out of there.”

An stared at him. “Jumper?”

“Our ship,” Daniel clarified.

“Parked at the northern end of the main runway,” Jack added. “We cloaked yet?”

“I believe so but the systems are not fully operational so I cannot be certain.”

An tweaked the stones again and a thermal image appeared on the HUD, showing the deployment of soldiers—a
lot
of soldiers, which was to be expected, Daniel supposed, given the nukes currently stored on the base, but it was impossible to distinguish the hundreds of individuals, all of whom seemed to be running, inside the base. Scanning wider, the thermal image then revealed a solitary person sitting alone on top of a void in a pile of junk.

“Like a kid watching his favorite cartoon show,” Jack remarked. He still sounded none too happy, but Daniel honestly couldn't bring himself to think that Sam had been shot. It just didn't make sense, regardless of what timeline they were in. The NID agent was bluffing.

He
had
to have been bluffing.

An was still fiddling with the controls. Despite the jumper's cloaking mechanism, some of the components became visible on the pod's HUD. An's eyes narrowed, and then widened. “That is an Ancient vessel.” His voice was incredulous and he turned to Daniel.
“You
are the pilot?”

“Nope.”

The Asgard's gaze took in Jack.

“
Don't
get me started.” With a glance in Daniel's direction, Jack added, “Besides, he's the one who Ascended. Twice.”

“Oh, and in case Sam didn't mention it,” Daniel said, offering An a reassuring smile, “Thor and Heimdall passed on their regards, and we have some green food for you.”

An's eyelids batted furiously. “You have come so far in just sixty Earth years? How is this possible?”

“We're fast learners,” Jack replied, as Daniel braced himself for what was bound to be a bumpy landing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I
can't believe they gave Davis's concession to Carter!” Vala ripped off her straw hat and tossed it onto the table. It slipped across the glass surface like a Frisbee, barely missing the pitcher of iced tea, and landed among the collection of potted baby date palms lining the hotel room balcony. “That rat-faced fez-headed pompous bureaucrat
promised
me that the Department of Antiquities would never give him and Carnarvon another concession.”

A light breeze ruffled the surface of the Nile waters a few hundred yards away, filling the sails of several feluccas. On the far side, the not-so enigmatic Giza pyramids, the decrepit landing pads of a parasitic race, were turning from gold to bronze in the setting sun.

“Calm down.” Cam batted away at the squadron of mosquitoes that had zeroed in on them. It had taken them six years to get to this point, and he wasn't about to let Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon's acquisition of Davis's concession to the Valley of the Kings put him off his stride. “We knew there was a possibility they'd get it first. It just means you're going to have to go back to Highclere Castle and make nice with Almina.”