He peered around the column, just enough to see a handful of Royal Guard emerge from a passage behind the transporter platform. Two of them were carrying the cylinder from the Pit of Sorrows. They were intent on their burden, and he was able to ease back out of sight without being noticed.
He readied himself. If he fired as soon as he emerged, he would be able to take, two, perhaps three before he had to seek cover from their retaliation.
“Set it down, quickly. There is little time.”
That was the First Prime of Neheb-Kau. Teal’c recognized the voice, but the man sounded injured. His words were thick and strained. He had also spoken in English, which was puzzling. Unless…
Teal’c held his fire. A heartbeat later he head another, more familiar voice. “You don’t have to do this.”
It was Major Carter.
Teal’c felt a surge of relief, and of pride in his friend. She had not only survived the attentions of the Goa’uld, but had thrived.
“I have no choice,” the First Prime replied. “My master commands it.”
“Everyone has a choice, Kafra!” She sounded distraught.
“In your world, perhaps. Do not make the error of believing that everyone lives like you.”
The hallway shook again. More of the ceiling cracked away, falling with shattering impacts against the floor. Teal’c stepped from his hiding place. “Major Carter!”
“Teal’c!” He saw her shock, then her smile. She was standing in the centre of the transporter platform, supporting the First Prime with her shoulder. Then his view was blocked as the Royal Guard closed around them, their staff weapons leveled.
The First Prime pushed through. “Hold your fire,” he snapped. “Teal’c?”
“Correct. Release the woman.”
“She goes where my master wills. You are not under the same restraint. Find a secure location, and remain there.”
Light shone down around the group, and the transporter rings dropped to surround them in a cage of stone. Teal’c started towards them.
“Heed my words, Teal’c,” the First Prime called. “To stay in the open is death!”
The light surged, flooded upwards, and was gone.
Teal’c ran to the transporter. The rings started to lift again, but before he could reach them another blast hammered through the ship. He felt it through the deck, the walls, heard it shatter the ceiling and fracture the golden pillars. The lights flickered, dimmed, and finally failed altogether.
The transporter rings tumbled, unsupported. Teal’c dived aside as they crashed down, the lowest shattering under the weight of the others, the ones above tilting, sliding, toppling into a messy, broken heap of stone hoops and rubble.
The topmost ring crunched onto its side, rolled forlornly halfway down the hall, and then fell over.
In the darkness of the corridors beyond the wreckage, Teal’c could see fires burning. He got up. Finding his means of following Major Carter cut off at such a moment was distressing, but given the nature of his day so far, he could not say that he was surprised.
He turned, and sprinted down the hall. The golden doors were unpowered now, but he was able to push his way between them, forcing their weight aside and squeezing into the chamber beyond.
It was a throne room, gloomy and tomb-like, typical of Neheb-Kau’s morbid vanity. There was no-one in sight, just the empty throne on its stepped dais. And behind that, a vast viewport.
Teal’c ran to it, and saw in an instant how desperate his situation had become.
There was a world below him, a turgid black ball, featureless and forbidding. Its curve was huge in the viewport, a great slanted edge taking up three-quarters of the window. It was moving.
The throneship was no longer in a stable orbit.
Teal’c moved closer to the port and looked down. Below him, the outer structure of the Ha’tak stretched away, a sullen black in contrast to the core’s bright golden hull. Its surface was pocked with bright spots of fire, jets of flaming atmosphere gouting into the vacuum, and the edges closest to the planet were starting to glow an ugly, dull red.
Which meant that the shields were down, and the vessel was falling into the planet’s atmosphere.
As he watched, there was another jolt, but this was no explosion. The Ha’tak’s core had separated from its outer structure: the dark curve of the surrounding hull began to rise, slowly, towards the viewport.
Teal’c stepped back. He had seen enough. The throneship was doomed, and there was no means by which he or Major Carter could escape.
All he could do was to ride the core down to the planet’s surface, and hope that whoever had separated the two hulls still retained enough control to slow its descent. There were still explosions ripping through the golden tetrahedron’s decks, but if the secondary engines and their control matrix could be preserved, it might be possible for the ship not to turn itself into a disintegrating fireball on its way down.
For those within, however, even the journey itself could prove fatal. Flesh would always be weaker than metal.
Teal’c knew he needed to find himself somewhere to shelter if he was to live through the next few minutes. He turned from the viewport and headed for one of the throne room’s side doors.
There was a narrow, dark chamber behind it. Again, he was alone there, and nothing but a few scattered items of furniture inside offered any protection. If he stayed, he would probably be shaken to death as the ship came down.
Teal’c was about to leave again when he noticed what squatted in the gloom at the end of the chamber.
The sight of it filled him with loathing. For a long moment he actively considered simply leaving the place and taking his chances, and if Major Carter had not been aboard the throneship he might well have done. But he didn’t just have himself to think about. Sometimes, he reflected, survival was more important than honor.
And so, with an expression of considerable disgust on his face, Teal’c ran to Neheb-Kau’s open sarcophagus and climbed inside.
Jack
O’Neill had no way of knowing for sure how much time had passed since he and Daniel had awoken in the utter darkness of Hera’s holding cell. Even without his watch it would have been easier had there been light to see by, but the cell had been disorientating. He had lost track of his senses there, of his heartbeats. After Hera, or her identical twin sister, had ended her humiliating visit and left them in the dark, it was possible that he might even have dozed.
They must have been in the dark for quite a while, though. After it, the gleaming white corridors of the
Clythena
were painfully bright.
At least he was warmer now. His clothes, thoroughly emptied of any kind of equipment, had been piled next to him in the cell. Even so, he and Daniel found it a little difficult to meet each others’ gaze when they first emerged.
Hera’s Jaffa were waiting for them when they came out of the cell; two of the monstrous Minotaurs, along with a squad of bronze-armored hoplites. O’Neill squinted at them, his eyes watering from the light. “Hi guys. Long time no see.”
“The Goddess requires your presence,” one of the hoplites replied.
“Guess she found a use for us,” Daniel said. O’Neill grinned.
“Once you’ve had Jack, you never go back.”
The hoplite’s eyes narrowed behind the slit of his helm. “You will accompany me to the pel’tak. In silence.”
“Yeah, that might be a problem. I’m kind of a talkative guy.”
The nearest Minotaur rumbled, and took a step forwards. O’Neill found his nose almost touching its naked chest. He tipped his head back, slowly.
“Okay, I get it. No talking, or it’s the ‘arms out of the sockets’ thing again, right?”
“The Goddess was wrong. You are not completely without intellect.” The hoplite gestured towards the far end of the corridor. “Walk.”
O’Neill gave Daniel a sideways look, mimed drawing a zipper along his own lips, and set off into the light.
The control deck of Hera’s flagship was, even O’Neill had to admit, impressive. It was a broad, sweeping place, tiered and ramped, with floors of dark stone and control consoles of brass and white marble. Huge doric columns supported the ceiling, trimmed in shining gold, while the ceiling glowed softly, like a summer sky. It was airy and calm and open, not very much like a Goa’uld structure at all.
“Looks like a health spa,” said Daniel.
O’Neill looked around, at the tanned operators at their consoles, the muscular hoplites ranked at the walls and flanking every hatchway, at the silent, terrible Minotaurs. “Kinda. Maybe one of those orgy scenes in a bad gladiator movie.”
“That was the Romans.”
“I told you, I know that.”
“And when you two have finished trying to raise your spirits with tired banter, we shall continue.”
O’Neill glanced up. Hera was scowling back down at him from a wide throne, atop a high, stepped podium. She was much as when he had last seen her, although she had discarded her headdress to let her glossy golden hair flood down around her shoulders. Her expression, of haughty disdain, was quite identical.
Nevertheless, he had to ask. “So which one are you?”
A smile quirked at the corner of her lips. “Does it matter?”
“Nice of you to let us out,” said Daniel. He rolled his shoulders. “I had this itch, you know, right down here…”
“Oh, I’m sure
some
one
could have scratched it for you, Daniel. You only needed to ask…”
“You know,” said O’Neill. “Where we come from, that’s just… Well, it’s inappropriate.”
Something chimed softly. Hera reached to the arm of her throne and touched a control there. “Speak.”
A barrage of alien syllables issued from it, the strange, fluid-sounding dialect of Goa’uld they had heard on the stricken Tel’tak. Daniel seemed to pick up on one word from it. “Pythia,” he muttered.
“Pie-who?”
“The Pythia. They were oracles.”
Hera finished her conversation, and sat back. “You are well informed, Daniel. The legend of the Pythia was one I personally helped perpetuate.”
“You really had a high old time back in Greece, didn’t you?”
“If only you knew.”
There was a gonging from one side of the pel’tak, and then a thin scrape of metal on metal, like swords drawn across one another. O’Neill looked around to see part of the ceiling iris open, light spilling down to a circular design on the floor. A set of transport rings dropped, hovering into a stacked brass cage. He winced slightly as the transporter flared. His eyes were still a little sensitive, after the dark.
When the rings flew up again, a woman stood in the centre of the circle, clad in brilliant red.
She was tall, slender, with straight dark hair to the small of her back and an open, sorrowful face. She dropped to her knees. “My Lady.”
“Pythia,” said Hera. “What news?”
Pythia got up. “All scans have been completed, Lady. Data has been received and collated from all vessels in the fleet. There was no error.”
“I see.” Hera frowned, her ice-gray eyes narrowed. “Pilot, I would see this.”
An operator nodded, and touched a control. In response, the entire forward wall of the pel’tak separated into sections and slid apart, leaves of white metal folding away to reveal a panorama of intense blackness.
The contrast between it and the whiteness of the pel’tak was almost painful.
“Widescreen,” said O’Neill. “Very nice.”
“Tell me, human.” Hera pointed a small hand at the viewport. “What do you see?”
“Space, I think.”
“Very good. And?”
“Looks like a planet.” It was hard to see, but there was a curve of darkness between him and the stars, its surface showing a faint curve.
“And.”
“Ah…” O’Neill was running out of things to say. “Ships?”
“My fleet, yes. Now tell me, human; do you see the Pit of Sorrows?”
He whirled, all humor gone from him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, fool, that it is not there. We have arrived at the precise location programmed into it by Ra’s technicians. We have activated every sensor array on every fleet, searching for the Pit or its locator beacon. And yet, there is no sign.”
“Oh crap.” He looked at Daniel. “Were we wrong?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone else got here first.”
“Or maybe there is something about the Pit that you did not tell us,” hissed Hera. “Some action you took against it that you failed to mention, while I was sparing your worthless lives.”
“No, we didn’t leave anything out,” insisted Daniel.
Hera held up one hand, examining the brassy device that curled around her fingers. “I think,” she said slowly, “that I will find out for myself. Hoplites?”
Four of the Jaffa strode forwards. O’Neill saw two coming for him, two breaking off towards Daniel. “Hey! Wait!”
“I think I have waited long enough.”
A Jaffa’s hand came down hard on his shoulder.
O’Neill grabbed it, pulled it past him and twisted around, slammed his elbow back into the man’s face. The hoplite’s helm was up, but the impact rocked him.
Pain flared up O’Neill’s arm, but he ignored it, swinging the hoplite around and off balance. He grabbed at the man’s staff weapon. His fingers brushed it, at the instant the other hoplite hammered his own staff into O’Neill’s back.
The breath went out of him. He turned, tried to strike back, but the blow had been well-aimed, and his time in the cell had not been kind to his muscles. He took a second blow under the sternum, and sat down hard.
In moments, the two Hoplites had dragged him to his knees. He looked sideways, and through a haze of pain saw that Daniel had been beaten down just as brutally.
Hera was walking down the steps of her podium. She gestured at the hoplites. “Closer.”
O’Neill felt himself shuffled along, until he was only a meter from where Daniel knelt, his arms dragged agonizingly behind his back.
“And we were getting on so well,” he grated.
“Such spirit. So many little jokes.” Hera raised her hand, and spread her fingers. The gem in her palm glowed. “I wonder how many more I will find inside that tiny brain of yours?”