“Carolyn!” Carter’s voice was sharp with relief. “Where is she?”
“In a sarcophagus,” Jack answered. He stretched cautiously, testing his muscles. Everything still hurt, but nothing was actually injured. The pain sticks worked directly on the nerves, and the sensation was out of all proportion to the damage.
“I don’t suppose you know where they are,” Danyel said.
“I knew I forgot to ask Ra something,” Jack exclaimed. “I had it written down somewhere — no, I don’t know where the sarcophagi are. I kind of thought you might have some idea.”
“Yes, sir, we do,” Carter said.
For a second, Jack thought about telling her to stop calling him sir, but it occurred to him that it was a good way to remind him that this wasn’t really Sam. Sam didn’t call him sir except on very special occasions — and that was something else he really didn’t want to think about right now.
“We do?” The dark-haired woman — Vala — gave Carter a quick look. “I mean, yes, we do.” She favored him with a toothy and completely insincere smile.
“Colonel Carter is right,” the other Teal’c said. He looked really odd with hair, Jack thought. “We must hurry. Ra’s men will soon realize you have escaped.”
“This way,” Carter said.
“How far?” That was Danyel, and Jack thought he knew what prompted the question. He would resent it, except that his knees were feeling as though this might be a relevant bit of information.
“Two levels up,” Carter answered. “In the port quadrant.”
Well, it could be worse, Jack thought. It could be all the way on the other side of the ha’tak, and there might be an entire regiment of Jaffa between them and it. Of course, there still might be, so it was probably better not to borrow trouble. Teal’c took point, staff weapon ready — good move, Jack thought; he was the one most likely to confuse the Jaffa — and Carter settled in six. Vala moved slightly ahead and Jack wasn’t surprised to find Danyel at his elbow.
“I’m fine,” he said, and Danyel nodded.
“Uh-huh.”
“Not my first rodeo.”
“I know.”
“Fine.” They had reached a set of narrow stairs, probably for maintenance, and Jack hauled himself up, trying not to flinch as his knees cracked sharply. “You do know the way out, right?”
“Carter does,” Danyel said, far too cheerfully, Jack thought. And that wasn’t fair, because this was Carter — she was Sam with Air Force training, after all, and nobody made colonel on good looks and astrophysics — but he hated having to trust himself to anyone else. And, OK, maybe that tendency was just a little bit worse after the last few hours with Ra and his men, but — He shut that thought away in the box with everything else he couldn’t afford to think about right now, and concentrated on keeping pace with the others.
There were more Jaffa on this level, a lot more. Teal’c cast around for an alternate route, one that didn’t take them through the main corridors, but even the smaller passages were busy. They finally stopped to regroup in a small storeroom on the level below the sarcophagus room.
“What the hell is he thinking?” Jack said. Frustrated as he was, he kept his voice well down. “Why aren’t these guys out subduing the planet?”
“Because he’s spent a little too long in a sarcophagus?” Carter said. If she was as irritated by the situation as he was, she didn’t show it.
“Unless maybe he’s got something he really wants to protect,” Danyel said. “If so —”
Teal’c was shaking his head. “I do not think so, Danyel. This is not a security deployment.” He smiled, and Jack blinked, trying to remember the last time he’d seen their own Teal’c smile like that. “I think Colonel Carter may be correct. He has spent too much time in his sarcophagus.”
“Well, I never thought much of him,” Vala said. “But how are were going to get past his stupidity?”
Carter and Teal’c exchanged glances. “I think we’re going to need a diversion,” Carter said. “Teal’c, Danyel, and I will draw them off, and Vala, you and General O’Neill will go after Dr. Lam.”
“Split up?” Jack frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Colonel.”
“It’s not what I’d choose,” Carter agreed. “But I don’t see a better alternative. We’re not going to find a way around all these Jaffa.” She grinned then, a sudden, wholly mischievous expression. “Besides, as you’ve repeatedly reminded me, sir — you’re retired.”
Jack felt a momentary flash of anger, but it dissolved immediately into a chuckle. He’d deserved that, and, anyway, she was right. He didn’t see a better option either. “OK, Colonel. We’ll do it your way.”
The Jaffa didn’t know Hor-Aha by sight. In a plain white shenti like theirs the three of them looked the same, three servants bound on an errand. Nobody stopped them in the back corridors of the palace. After all, the attention was on Ra and on the massive mothership hovering. Hor-Aha’s men seemed to have melted away, or at least Daniel hoped that was what had happened to them.
Hor-Aha hesitated, and Daniel stopped beside him. “We have to go.”
“My wife,” Hor-Aha said, looking toward the mothership with an expression Daniel expected he himself knew far too well. “My sons. I don’t know where they’ve been taken.”
Daniel made his voice as confident as he could. “We’ll find them,” he said. “But not this way. You have to lead Egypt, and you can’t do that if you’re taken prisoner again.”
Hor-Aha paused, then nodded gravely. “And you and your friend have risked your life to come for me. I cannot repay your risk with foolishness.” His dark eyes were sharp. “Ra has O’Neill too.”
“We know,” Daniel said. “Colonel Carter has gone after him.”
The pharaoh shook his head. “I am confused by this multiplicity.”
“So are we.”
Cam, who of course hadn’t understood a word of all that, looked back testily. “Are we going or not?”
“We’re going,” Daniel said with what he hoped was the same tone of voice Jack had used to pry him off Abydos.
“All right,” Carter said. They had stopped again at the base of a stairwell, and it seemed as good a time as any to check supplies. “C4?”
Teal’c shook his head. “I have only two blocks, Colonel Carter.”
“I have seven,” Carter said, with satisfaction. “And detonators. We ought to be able to do something useful with that.”
“Hey, whoa,” Danyel said. For a second, he sounded so much like her Daniel that it was disorienting. He was older, browner — and a lot less clothed — but it was still hard not to treat him the way she would their Daniel. And, of course, they’d been the same person only five years ago, which was maybe even more confusing. “We’ve got to be careful what we blow up,” he said. “Ra’s got to be able to take off. We need him gone, not dead. Unfortunately.”
It was a very Daniel objection, and Carter nodded. “I was thinking weapons systems. Target them, and Ra can’t defend himself either, so that’s another reason for him to leave.”
“I’d expect them to be pretty well guarded,” Danyel said.
Teal’c cocked his head to one side. “I believe that if we were to target the power crystals that govern the power flow to the main weapons array, we would not only divert attention from the sarcophagi, but Ra will find it difficult to repair the damage quickly.”
“Pretty much what I was thinking,” Carter said. She rearranged the blocks of C4 in her pockets, putting them ready to hand, and slid a fresh magazine into her P90. “And explosives are the last thing Ra’s going to be expecting given how primitive the planet is.”
“Except that he is thinking about the Ancients,” Danyel pointed out.
“Who aren’t supposed to interfere,” Carter answered.
“And isn’t — aren’t those power crystals in the main engine compartment?” Danyel asked. “How are we going to get at them?”
“There weren’t as many Jaffa toward the stern,” Carter reminded him. “It looked as though Ra had most of them guarding his quarters. We’ll call this Plan A.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask about Plan B,” Danyel said.
“We blow up whatever looks interesting that’s a long way from the sarcophagi,” Carter said.
“It’s better than ‘retreat to the Stargate under fire,’” Danyel said.
“I believe that is generally Plan C,” Teal’c said.
The lowest decks of the ha’tak were quiet, only a handful of Jaffa guarding the obvious entry points. Carter worked her way around them — there were times when she felt as though she’d spent a good quarter of her professional life sneaking around Goa’uld motherships — and they came out at last onto the level just below the main engineering controls.
“There should be a ring platform on this level,” she said, and Teal’c nodded.
“I believe so — this way.”
The platform was unguarded. Not too surprising, Carter thought, considering that the receiving platform was in Ra’s palace, and line-of-sight beaming would just drop them outside the pyramid. Or maybe inside it, on the lowest level? That would be more useful. She studied the controls, not wanting to touch anything in case the system was being monitored. Yes, it should be possible to ring down into the pyramid itself, though there was no way to tell exactly what would be waiting for them. Plan D, she thought, and pointed to the nearest stairs.
“Let’s go.”
The upper corridors were still uncrowded, though there were more Jaffa in evidence, and once a couple of technicians hurried past, talking in low tones about hull integrity testing. The door to the engine compartment was open, light spilling out from the central towers, and Carter gestured for the others to take shelter in the cross corridor behind her. She leaned out carefully, made sure the main corridor was empty, then darted across to flatten herself against the wall beside the door. The hum of the machinery covered the noise as she armed her zat, and she waved for the others to take their places. Teal’c peered quickly into the compartment, then held up two fingers. Carter nodded, and checked her own side: three technicians in sight. She held up three fingers, waited for Teal’c’s nod, then pointed for Danyel to cover them. He nodded, and Carter turned her attention to the compartment.
“Go,” she said, softly, and together she and Teal’c stepped through the open doorway. She dropped the first of her targets before he knew what hit him; the second barely had time to turn before she shot him as well. The third was reaching for something, his own zat or a communicator, there was no telling which, but she brought him down before the device was in his hand. She heard staff blasts behind her, turned to see Teal’c stepping over the first body.
“We are secure, Colonel Carter,” he said.
She nodded, shoving her zat into her belt and reaching for the first block of C4 and its detonator. “Cover the door.”
She didn’t wait for his answer, made her way along the racks of crystals. Every ha’tak was just a little different, but finally she found the drawer she wanted, slid it out. She set the first block of C4 in place, set the timer for fifteen minutes, moved on to the fire control panel. Another block there, and another in the backup trays, and she turned back for the door.
“OK—”
“Colonel Carter!” Teal’c’s shout was punctuated by staff weapons fire. “We have Jaffa.”
Carter drew her zat. “We must have missed somebody.”
“Or they’re monitoring remotely,” Danyel said. He flattened himself against the wall inside the door as another zat blast ripped past him. “I hate to ask, but how long —?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Carter said. “Um, more like eight, now.”
“We cannot fight our way past them,” Teal’c said. His voice was unchanged, but Carter had long ago learned to read the tilt of his eyebrow, and recognized concern when she saw it. She slapped the door controls, sealing them in the compartment, then zatted the box. It exploded on the second shot: the Jaffa weren’t getting past that any time soon.
“This way,” she said, and saw Danyel’s face change from alarm to understanding.
“Access hatch,” he said, and Teal’c nodded.
“Indeed.”
Sure enough, there was a narrow tube-and-ladder leading down to the next level. Carter let herself slide down fast, landing in a crouch ready to cover them, but this corridor was empty, at least for the moment. Above them, alarms began to sound, the noise spreading. Danyel hit the floor beside her, and then Teal’c, and then there was the sharp crack of explosions as the timers went off.
“Well, as diversions go, that’s fairly impressive,” Danyel said, and Carter grinned.
“Thanks. I think it’s time for Plan D.”
“The rings?” Teal’c asked, and she nodded.
“Let’s go.”