Chapter Text
Tarantella
Email to livengoo, still at tiac.net.
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1999 May 16 2315 approx. Earth Standard
The archaeologist remembered what he'd been doing.
"Grafitto on North 23 surface . . ." Daniel Jackson remembered that he'd looked up from his notepad, studying the wall he'd been sketching. The wall was that tacky, Goa'uld gold but it was covered in smoky smudges and in carefully painted images of hunts and . . . he had tilted his head, even knowing the nature of the image would escape him as it had for the three days he'd been mapping these walls. He remembered that he'd wondered whether grafitto was even the right word? Grafitto were images painted on rock walls, and the walls of Goa'uld ships were metal. He'd reached out to touch the cool surface, still unpitted, smooth five thousand years after it had crashed. Old. It had happened while the Goa'uld were still ruling earth. He remembered thinking that it was, oh, maybe, 850 years before the human insurrection? That's what he remembered, knew that's what he'd always remember, those thoughts just before the screams started.
He'd dropped his pencil. Looked up at the corner to see the light waver. Strange shadows had loomed for an instant, but they made no sense. The lamps the survey crew had set up clattered, loudly in the corridors. He knew there'd been gunfire but the lamps were what he remembered. And the screams, of course. Couldn't forget . . . could never forget the screams. He'd heard so many, he knew intimately the difference between a shriek of terror, a woman's high, shrill death scream and a man's deeper bellow. And, of course, the smell of fear. Blood and shit and piss, of course, the smells of death, but most of all, the smell of fear. He hated that one, really did hate it.
He'd been heading towards the corner. It was anyone's guess what he could have done but he'd been heading there when the young airman had barreled around it and into him. The soldier had almost knocked him down, then dragged him down the hall. He should be used to it by now, being dragged places. Should be used to the smell of terror for what it was worth, but he wasn't. The airman - Roscoe? Rostov? Rossitert . . .Rossiter. That was it. Airman Rossiter smelled like terror. His hand had been cold and slick with sweat, squeezing Daniel's painfully as he'd dragged him behind the little, ornamental screen and into the closet.
He remembered what he'd thought then. That this wasn't supposed to happen. That P4x-232 was safe, no Goa'uld, no hostiles. Not supposed to happen.
Fear tasted as bitter as it smelled. Daniel had tried to pry the hand away from his mouth a time or two. He had bruises on his jaw, and when he'd seen the white gleam of Rossiter's eyes in the gloom he'd stopped trying, had just wrapped his fingers lightly around Rossiter's wrist and held still. The airman's pulse raced under the clammy skin. A shadow had darkened the patterned screen of the closet once and he'd thought he'd felt Rossiter's pulse skip under his fingers. The bruises on his jaw ached, and that taste in his mouth . . .
The screaming had stopped a long time ago. There had been strange sounds in the hall for a lot longer, though. None of which were supposed to be there, to be happening at all. Daniel Jackson had listened and known it was something terrible, known it by the silence in the halls and the stink of Frank Rossiter in this gloomy, cramped little closet. And it wasn't supposed to be happening. Grafitto were images on rock, not metal . . . this wasn't supposed to happen. But the images were there, nonetheless and the shadows were there too. God, or gods, but he hated the smell of fear.
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1999 May 17 1500 approx. Earth Standard
It was a training mission and as far as the Colonel was concerned, they were SG ¾ rather than SG1, and they could have done this one even if they'd been SG 10 percent. It certainly wasn't like the training missions the rest of his team had known. Samantha Carter's training mission offworld had been a fight to survive, dusty, terrifying and exhilarating. Teal'c had never known a training mission – his life had been adapt-or-die as far as anyone knew. He certainly wasn't telling. O'Neill's own training mission offworld had pretty much been about like this one – peaceful and relaxed and calm. Except for the bits about being stranded and chased and blown up. And Daniel Jackson being killed, of course, though that wasn't likely to happen this time because their fourth was off in geek paradise studying hieroglyphs or pyramids or whatever, and this place wasn't really like Abydos much at all. In fact, it was lovely, green, peaceful and idyllic. A small lack sparkled in the sun. Fish hopped fishily into the air and their trainee had managed to calm down after shooting the first one. It was a mission which would be politely termed a cakewalk if Air Force personnel were inclined to use polite terms. Which they weren't. In the opinion of SG1's leader, it was the closest they could get to a day in the park and still thousands of light-years from home. God help them if they ran out of . . .oh, sandwiches. Or maybe got a blister on a toe.
Or got so bored they fell over asleep and broke something.
Which seemed like a very possible threat to Col. Jack O'Neill, USAF, retired, rehired, retired again, rehired again, and bored out of his gourd for sure. He distracted himself by showing off, waving a hand in a grand gesture as he announced, "What do you see all around you, Captain Sanborne? I'll tell you. You see trees. Green. Leafy. Trunky. Tree-y." He paused, decided not to ask himself if that was a word when he was pretty sure of the answer. Instead, he shot a carefully-practiced stern-commanding officer-look to the young man listening to him. "And why do you see trees?"
"Uhh . . ." The young man's eyes widened. Jack eyed him, wondering if the kid's coffee complexion had just paled. He knew that his own had in the face of pop quizzes like that.
"'Uhh' wasn't the reason last time I looked, Captain. Try again."
"Air filters?"
Jack smothered a grin. The kid had done his homework at least. If that wasn't a Jacksonian phrase he didn't know what was. "Nice try. Now give me the Carter version."
Brown eyes searched desperately for answers that he wasn't gonna find in a nice forest on a nice lake under a nice, blue sky. Jack sighed. Nice nice nice. Boorrrrrinnggg. He gave the kid a break. "I know, I know. Carter uses words I can't even pronounce, forget about memorizing 'em. If you ask her point blank she'll tell you that Ghoul worlds mostly come in two flavors."
"Right!" Sanborne nodded, gratitude and relief bright in his eyes. "Forest and desert. Standard temperate to tropical or arid environments where the . . . "
"Ghouls."
"Goa'uld," asserted the young captain, stressing the glottal stop, "will find a comfortable environment suitable for habitation and development.
"Yep." Jack cracked his knuckles and stifled a yawn. "What else can I ask you from the basic travel brochure?"
"Brochure?"
"I believe that Colonel O'Neill is twisting your leg." Teal'c glanced back, low voice rumbling in mock disapproval.
"Pulling, Teal'c. Pulling his leg." Jack finished baiting his hook and performed a perfect, practiced cast that dropped it right, smack dab where he aimed it. He gave it a sour glare, bitterly resenting being bored by fishing. Fishing should have been fun. On earth it would have been fun. On a world so far from earth that he couldn't even see Sol . . . it was jarringly out of place and duller than watching paint dry. Nothing to shoot, nothing to do except teach Sanborne how to not get killed on field trips. He hated training missions. Babysitting. Daniel got to go play with rocks and the rest of SG-1 got to go babysit.
"Sir!"
Carter's voice pulled him around fast, weapon automatically dropping into his hands at her urgent tone. "What? What?"
She was just standing there, clear of the tree line and alert, but not looking for anyone. There were no contrails, no whine of aircraft, nothing he could see, and what the hell - but something wasn't right. "Spit it out, Carter," even though she hadn't had time to catch her breath.
"They're calling us home, sir. Something's up."
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1999 May 17 2100 approx. Earth Standard
The conference room had a kind of low-grade buzz of noise made up of whisper of pages in briefing folders turning, the soft clicks of glasses of water or cups of coffee being set on polished wood. In another era there'd have been the shhhh-snick of a slide projector but the computer only whirred as its fan went on. The people sitting around the table, though, were all quiet, watching the grainy film on the screen until it only showed the stargate, still and empty.
Major Samantha Carter fingered the briefing folder in her hands, but couldn't look away from the sputtering gray trailer of the video tape, mind still caught by what she'd seen. The Colonel, bless him, asked what they were all thinking.
"What in the hell was that?"
Dr. Frasier leaned forward, rubbing her eyes. "Short form, Colonel, nobody knows. Yet."
Another tired voice took over for her as General Hammond glanced around at each of them before locking eyes with the Colonel. "At 1810 yesterday SG-4 called in an unspecified medical trauma and informed us that one of their technicians was injured but stable. They were evacuating the whole team to avoid splitting forces on the ground. After that they went silent. At just before 1300 today an unscheduled wormhole opened. The signal was confirmed as SG-4's -"
"Isn't SG-4 one of the dweeb teams?" Sam winced at the look the General shot at Colonel O'Neill, but her CO blundered on, to all appearances immune to the Look of Death. "They're not due back for another week!"
"I'm well aware of that, Colonel O'Neill." Hammond didn't often give vent to sarcasm and Sam bit down on her lips and decided that she, for one, would sit through this briefing as given. "What you just saw is why they evacuated early."
That brought silence all around. None of them had really recognized the people they'd seen. To tell the truth, they hadn't really wanted to. She could still see it. Three people staggering through the gate. No, two really. The third was dragged between them, his face covered by . . . what? For an instant she'd thought of huge, scarring burns but the ridges were too big, too strange. She couldn't remember ever seeing or hearing of anything like it. It looked like a hand or a spider or some kind of aquatic animal. She nibbled her lip then glanced up towards the General. "Weren't there nine people on SG-4? And -" she tapped her open briefing folder, "three stationed at the gate?"
He nodded. "Four in the Air Force contingent, three technicians, two senior technical advisors. And the three airmen holding position at the gate. Their current . . . condition is unknown but considered -" He let the comment hang, sighed and went on. "Airman Tremblay and Dr. Powers were incoherent when they brought Mr. Norton through the gate. If you'll look in your briefing notes, you'll find transcripts of what we were able to gather. The unit decided to evacuate as a group rather than split up. They warned the gate base camp that some of the repeaters were down and that's the last really clear transmission we have from them. Tremblay and Powers are . . . not in a condition to debrief. Perhaps when they come out of sedation again -" He looked hopefully at an exhausted Janet Frasier, who shook her head.
"They're not rational, Sir. They tried to barricade the infirmary before we sedated them. When they're verbal they're not coherent."
Sam shivered. Dr. Powers had worked down the hall from her, kept borrowing her gauges and not returning them. And that was Joe Norton they'd carried back . . . Janet Frasier, sitting next to the General, looked tired but she met Sam's questioning stare. "Janet? That thing on Joe's . . . that thing on his face? Do you have any idea what it was?"
The doctor shut her eyes, paling a little, then looked up, meeting all their stares in turn. "Simple answer, we have no idea. We tried to get it off but . . . I'll . . ." she trailed off, shuddered then visibly gathered herself to continue. "Initial attempts to remove the creature were unsuccessful. You will find a report in your briefing material relating to the results of those attempts. We . . . " She trailed off again.
"C'mon doc. Spit it out. So the guy had a lobster on his face. How bad could it be?" Colonel O'Neill's voice was sarcastic, edged with the nerves they all felt.
"It could kill him, Colonel." The doctor's soft, emotionless voice deflated the Colonel. Stunned them all, to tell the truth. Frasier pulled herself upright, suddenly becoming the officer her rank said she was. "Upon examination we found invasive organs in his airway. The creature appeared to be sustaining his flow of oxygen at that point, and handling respiration, but he was unconscious and unresponsive to stimuli. Our attempts to manually remove it were unsuccessful. X-Rays reveal a very dense, infrastructure and we were unable to break or otherwise manipulate its . . . digits. When we attempted to cut it off him it exuded highly corrosive materials that made further attempts impossible. We followed medical contamination protocols at that point and established a containment barrier around the Airman before evacuating him to the bio-containment lab at Colorado State."
Sam glanced around, seeing the other SG teams there shift uncomfortably. All of them knew it was a risk, some infection or attack from offworld. It was thankfully rare but each time it happened the world got a little smaller, a little more dangerous and earth seemed too fragile to believe. She was about to ask when one of SG-6's people did the job for her.
"Doctor, you said the . . . infection . . . was fatal. What happened?"
Frasier's face was grim, new lines etched at the corners of her mouth. She reached for the remote that Hammond had set down earlier and cued up the next tape. "I don't think you'll believe it unless you see it. This was couriered in about an hour ago."
Sam shifted in her seat, bracing herself, but her first impression was bafflement. The tape showed a man, still beneath white sheets, his face clasped obscenely, then the . . . whatever it was just slid free, dropping limp. He took a convulsive gasp of air and his eyes flew open. His first puzzled minutes of consciousness were so reassuringly normal it was hard to believe what Frasier had said, that this man was dead even as they watched his image.
The tape ran on, giving them his first five minutes of activity. Frasier ran it on fast forward, through a meal and chatter, complaining and stories. Normal. Normal. Normal. Until he rubbed at his chest, a frown marring his ordinary face. The tape suddenly dropped into real time. Sam glanced across the table to see Janet Frasier sit back, hand over her mouth. She looked back at the screen just as Norton gagged and looked up at his attendants. His voice was strained. "I can't breathe. I can't . . . can't . . ." He broke off into a strangled scream and arched back onto the bed.
Sam wanted desperately to look away but couldn't. The screams just kept on, choked and hoarse and he writhed and the gown over his chest was suddenly red, blotted and then soaked red. Something dark lunged up and the tearing sound that wasn't just cloth brought a sour taste to the back of her mouth. She couldn't look away from the screen but she heard the choked sounds the rest of the men and women around her made as they watched the . . . the thing that had ruptured Norton's chest lunge from the bed towards the nearest attendant. The orderly shrieked and spun, pounding on the secure door and screaming for help. And the screen went dark.
"He died too." Frasier took her thumb off the stop button and threw the remote into the center of the table. She was pale but composed, better than Sam felt. "They didn't dare open the door. By the time they were able to get a good fix on . . . on IT, it had killed both the orderlies as well as Norton and was scrambling around the walls of the containment unit. They flooded it with cholinesterase inhibitors then evacuated all air from the room. It was declared dead after 2 hours in vacuum."
She clenched her hands in front of her. Sam thought they were shaking just a little. "Do you . . . does anyone . . ."
"Know what it is?" Frasier looked up at her, eyes haunted. "No. Right now I'm just thankful we got Norton into hard containment before it broke . . ." She didn't finish that thought. "If it had gotten loose here I don't know whether we could have controlled the situation."
"Indeed." Sam glanced to where Teal'c sat next to the Colonel. O'Neill looked shaken, ill. The Jaffa looked . . . not quite as imperturbable as usual. For him, that was practically horror struck. No one else in the room looked like they could bring themselves to talk at all.
Sam tried to frame a question, had to clear her throat against the sick tightness in her chest. "There were three teams on P4X-232, weren't there? Did any of them mention anything like this? What do they say?"
Hammond's voice was dry, controlled. "We don't know, Major."
She swiveled her head, felt more than saw the Colonel and Teal'c echo it. "Asking the General's pardon, sir, but you don't KNOW? When did you evacuate them? You did evacuate them -"
The look on his face cut her off but his voice was calm, too calm. "No Major. Neither of the other teams is within a day's travel of the gate. We've been drawing up plans to evacuate them, but those have been superseded."
"But you did warn, them, right?" The Colonel said before she could, in a tone that no major would dare to use. "They're getting out of there now, right?"
Hammond looked towards him but Sam could see that he didn't quite meet the Colonel's eyes. "Colonel, if it was that simple they'd be out of there right now and you know it. The only way to reach these teams is on foot. They were instructed to go to heightened security as of 1100 when the Gate team failed to check in on schedule. By 1300 today we'd lost contact with SG-10 as well. You were recalled at 1400. SG-9 did make their check in today. We've attempted contact every fifteen minutes since then. SG-9 still responds but SG-10 has remained silent. As of now their status is officially unknown. Currently we plan to deploy retrieval teams at 0200. Your orders, ground conditions and all available intelligence are in your folders. You have four hours, people. I'll see you at the Gate."
The General retreated to his office. SG-3 and 6 huddled together briefly before leaving amid soft speculations on what could have happened and what they'd need. Sam caught a few strained expressions from the corner of her eye, men who almost said something to them then thought better of it, the same look on Janet Frasier's face as she left, until SG-1 were all that was left. Most of SG-1 at least.
SG-10 was missing. They were going after SG-10, no question. The briefing room was suddenly too small, not the place Sam wanted to be. Needed to be. She pressed her hands flat against the cool surface of the table and looked over at Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c, seeing what she felt mirrored in their eyes. None of them needed to say it. Daniel Jackson was with SG-10.
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1999 May 17 2200 approx. Earth Standard
Airman Frank Rossiter flinched. Jeez but the geek had sharp fingernails. For just a second it felt good, a clean wash of anger that took away the sick fear and the watery feeling in his gut. Then the guy hit a sweet spot and pain flared up his arm and terror chilled his skin as Dr. Jackson took a deep, noisy breath. A breath anyone with ears could hear oh Christ, oh Virgin Mary protect him but they were dead. Dead.
"Shutupshutupshutup . . ." Rossiter hissed, keeping his voice so quiet it was more a breath then a noise, leaning so close he could smell the soap on the other man's skin. "Christ's sake don't make a sound!"
"Airman . . ." The voice in his ear was soft, soothing, even as hands wrapped tightly around his wrists and forced them back against Rossiter's chest. "Airman, whatever they were, they're gone. Do you understand? We need to get out of here."
No . . . nonononono! He lashed out, clamping his hands around the other man's face. "You'll get us killed you'll get me killed they'll . . . they'll . . ." He shuddered, stomach lurching and got control of himself by an effort he'd never have believed he had in him. Yanking the archeologist close enough to breathe the words in his ear, he whispered, "You didn't see it. You can't imagine. We can't go out there. They'll rip us apart. We can't. We can't."
Strong thumbs dug into his tendons, forced his hands away from Jackson's face. "Listen." The word, spoken in a normal voice, was shockingly loud in the little room. "I don't hear anything, Rossiter. I don't see anything either. See the lights?" A pale hand moved, splayed out against the pretty screen that was one wall of their hidey hole. "I believe you, I do. But they're not there anymore. The lights aren't moving and there aren't any shadows. We have to leave."
". . . please . . " That tiny squeak couldn't be him, but his skin felt like ice, and his heartbeat pounded in his own ears.
"We can't stay here, Airman." Jackson's eyes were wide and dark in a pale face. "We have to . . . " He didn't go on, just waved at the screen again and got to his feet, pushing Rossiter's hands back and away. "I'll go first. You can wait here, listen for me. But there's no one there."
The archeologist - the CIVILIAN - pushed the door open slowly, slipping out. Rossiter held his breath and waited forever, counting his heartbeats, onetwothreefour - at twenty-five he couldn't stand himself and lunged at the door after the goddamn civvie, bursting into the hall, sure that his last sight in life would be gold and black walls, lights crazily askew, knocked off their stands, blood spattered . . . everywhere. He stared around at the looming shadows, the glints of light off gold and red. Where was the . . . "Jesus!"
"What?" Jackson spun, pressing his back against the wall at the corner he'd been about to turn.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Rossiter was trembling. He could feel it, shaking where he stood like some rookie but that idiot, goddamn fucking civilian suicidal head case - "We're getting out of here, Doc. This way."
Blue eyes - they'd looked black in that closet, he thought irrelevantly - scanned past his shoulder to the end of the corridor. Jackson gestured vaguely towards the corner behind him. "We need to find them. The rest of the team are . . . they're the other way. We can help."
"They're gone, Dr. Jackson." Rossiter slumped. It was so quiet. The geek had been right. Nothing alive was left here but the two of them, nothing around that corner but things that Rossiter never wanted to see again. He spoke softly, respectfully, of the dead. "You didn't see it. They're . . . there's no one left."
"But . . ." his face twisted into a frown. "But there were eight of them. There has to be someone."
The Air Force didn't tell him about this, about how to make somebody believe in this shit. Hell, he didn't believe what he'd seen himself. He shuddered, queasy at a sudden thought as he stepped up next to the archeologist. "You didn't believe me, did you? You really didn't believe me."
Jackson's eyes flickered, the strange light reflecting off his glasses. Rossiter took a deep breath, smelling blood and shit and urine and something else, something acrid and wrong. Jackson's face had gone even paler. "What if somebody . . . there has to be somebody left." That flicker of the eyes again and Rossiter could see him making the connection, hearing the same silence that had taken away the airman's terror, and left only a bitter relief in its place. "Rossiter, didn't anybody . . ."
"I tried to tell you, Doc. Nobody."
He didn't believe him. Not really. Rossiter could see it. Could see him trying to believe that somebody was left to need their help. He reached for the guy's shoulder but the archaeologist slipped out from under his hand, around the corner and down towards where Rossiter would have given a year's pay never to have been and not to go back now. He swallowed hard and stepped around the corner, or tried to. He just couldn't. His bladder felt heavy and his hands shook and, for the life of him, he couldn't make himself take the three steps past the wall that blocked his view.
It was quiet for a long time. Forever. An instant. Dr. Jackson made a sound, a strangled little noise and Rossiter's nails dug deep into his palms. Jesus. He could still see it in his mind's eye, screwed his eyes shut tight as if that'd make the images go away, as if he wasn't thinking of what Jackson'd be seeing even now. Thank God and the Madonna but all he could hear was the soft scuffing of Jackson's feet. No screams. Not even the strange clicking sounds or the squelching noises he knew he'd hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life. Just that quiet sound, uneven as if the guy wasn't able to keep moving. Getting a little louder.
Jackson backed up into Rossiter's line of sight, face white and eyes wide, fixed back the way he'd come. Where Rossiter wouldn't, couldn't look. His glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose and his eyes looked glassy. He jumped when Rossiter spoke. "I told ya, Doc. They're gone."
The guy swallowed convulsively. Rossiter could see how his throat moved, see him collect himself. "You're sure? Are you sure no one could be left? Did they take anyone alive? Could they be -"
"Doc." Rossiter cut him off, shaking his head. "No. I'm sure. And even if I wasn't, I'm damn sure that you and I couldn't get 'em out. I don't know if an armored division could get 'em out and that's God's honest truth."
A shaking hand shoved the glasses back up into place. Jackson looked back over his shoulder. His voice was distant. "They came in through the rupture, didn't they? Where the hull broke when the ship crashed. They . . ." His voice trailed off and he swallowed again, face crumpling. His eyes were too bright when he looked back at Rossiter.
"Come on." This he could do. This, they'd taught him. "We've got to get out of here, Doc. We've got a long way to go."
This time Dr. Jackson let himself be guided, tugged out of the Goa'uld ship and into the moonlit cool of dusk on an alien world. Rossiter paused, checked his compass and got his bearings. The archeologist was starting to notice his surroundings again, and Rossiter was relieved. It'd be easier with two sets of eyes, even when one of 'em was civvie. Triple moons spilled dull light over the ruined city streets. Nasty ground, even when they didn't have to contend with . . . Jesus, but Rossiter hoped they didn't have to contend with Them 'cause no matter how fast or skilled you were, there were just some things you couldn't stop. And it was a long, long way to the stargate and home.
TBC