The guards were on their feet, reaching for their weapons, and the Minotaur was rising too. The sensory assault must have even affected the giant warrior.
“Spartans! Leave the pel’tak, and take that monster with you. Jaffa, take up your weapons and cover the humans and
shol’va
in your midst. They do not hold your Goddess in as high regard as I…”
“Fool!” Hera hissed. Daniel saw her watching helplessly as her soldiers moved away. “Your death is assured!”
“Hold your tongue, witch!” He wrenched her head to the side, drawing a cry from her. “This is the day your rule ends. This ship, this fleet, and the Ash Eaters now belong to the mighty Neheb-Kau!”
There
was a change in the light coming from behind O’Neill. He half turned, still on his knees, to see the graphical globe of the Ash Eater planet had been replaced by a very different view.
Once more, the golden mask of Neheb-Kau looked serenely back at him.
This time, however, the mask’s surroundings were very different. Instead of the gloomy black and gold décor of his own pel’tak, Neheb-Kau stood inside a chamber that was all white and steel and the flickering, shifting panels of data screens. It made him look strange and out of place.
Not that it seemed to bother him. He was standing alongside his First Prime, while Jaffa warriors in gold armor and double serpent helms moved back and forth behind him. Some of the Jaffa were carrying equipment, ornate items of technology in gold and crystal. In contrast, his First Prime was very still, leaning on his staff weapon in order to keep upright.
The wound that had disfigured the man last time O’Neill had seen him looked as if it was trying to take over his whole face. What little actual skin still showed between the blisters looked pale and damp, like the underside of some rotting fungus. His eyes stared out from the mess, desperate and dull.
O’Neill had seen that look before. The man was dying, and he knew it.
“Hera, my dear,” said Neheb-Kau brightly, in his strange, high voice. “Thank you so much for welcoming me aboard this vessel.”
Djetec hadn’t let Hera move. He was still holding her up on the podium, with the asp at her neck. Six hoplites stood at the base of the steps, their staff weapons aimed outwards into the rest of the pel’tak. If it hadn’t been for them, O’Neill would have simply rushed the podium. But the hoplites were loyal to their Goddess, and clearly saw Djetec as the lesser threat. While he lived, at least, so did Hera.
But the clock was ticking. And every nerve in O’Neill’s body was jumping, urging him to move, to attack, to shout. To do anything but stand and listen to Goa’uld snarling at each other.
“Do not ‘Dear’ me, you vile fool!” Hera hissed.
“Forgive me. I forgot — you are not
dear
in any possible sense of the word…”
Despite her position, Hera chuckled. “Where does your obsession lie, Neheb-Kau? With the Ash Eaters, or with me?”
The eyes of his mask glowed for a moment. She had struck a nerve. “Your life is in my hands, Hera. Keep a civil tongue in your head, or I shall have Djetec remove it from you.”
Carter had risen to her feet. “Neheb-Kau, what are you doing?”
“Ah, human! It is good to see you again. I hear you have seen wonders since our parting. And it is you I have to thank for revealing the true glory of this world to me. Although I would have expected the Lady Hera to have used more secure forms of communication…” He stroked his metal beard. “And to think, when I first discovered the Ash Eater, I had no idea that the rest of its race hung just below my feet. Imagine what I could have done, had I known!”
“Yeah, I can imagine,” said O’Neill, getting up. “Every time some girl went off with the guy next to you because he didn’t have a face that was dripping right off his head, you’d sic a bunch of Ash Eaters on her, right? Turn her planet into dust, switch off her sun?”
The mask dipped slightly. “I see your infestation problem has not improved, Hera.”
“It gets worse all the time.”
“Nevertheless, the human fool has a certain vision. Stifled by quite startling stupidity, but vision nonetheless. I will indeed have an Army of Ash Eaters at my command, and the galaxy will tremble before me.”
“The Ash Eaters are a plague!” Hera screamed. “You can’t control them! Nothing can control them!”
“The loss of your ship would suggest otherwise.”
“You are truly insane. When you tried to assassinate Ra with that demon, did you even stop to think of the millions it destroyed? Of the System Lords it killed?
Did you?
”
“Is that why you betrayed me to Ra, Lady?”
O’Neill whirled to stare at her. “You were the one who ratted him out?”
“Would you have not done the same?”
“You know what?” He turned back to the screen, took a few steps towards it. “I would, yeah.”
“Then you are as much a traitor as she, and you will die as she dies. Thrust into the Pit of Sorrows, with the first Ash Eater I draw from its sleep.”
“Buddy, there aren’t going to be any Ash Eaters!” O’Neill spread his hands. “Don’t you get it? The one Ra took from you is in the middle of a black hole right now, and in about seven minutes the rest of ‘em are going to be there too!”
“Really?” Neheb-Kau stepped back, and lifted his ravaged hands. “You still think the Auger will fire and crush the planet below? Human,
where do you think I am?
”
“Oh my God,” Carter whispered. “Colonel, he must be in the Auger control room.”
“Operators,” hissed Hera. “To your posts!”
“Stay where you are,” Djetec snarled.
Hera laughed. “Ignore this fool. If I die, his life is forfeit.”
As the pel’tak staff rose hesitantly back to their control positions, O’Neill ran to the console Hera had used earlier. The operator was just sliding back into his seat.
“Is the program still running?” That was Carter, moving up to the other side of the console. O’Neill glanced back to see that Bra’tac and Teal’c were already working their way back to the podium, and Daniel had taken his place in front of the screen.
The operator shook his head. “No, my Lady. Neheb-Kau has locked the guidance interface.”
“Send guards. Dig him out of there.”
“All the transporters are locked out too, my Lady.” The man’s face had gone white. “And the lower decks are cleared. No-one can reach him.”
“You see, Hera? There is
nothing
you can do. I have spent five thousand years researching and improving our technologies, while you spent your time cavorting with slaves and bedding your way up the ladders of power. I was able to transport directly here from my ship, use my devices to lock out your pathetic guidance program. The Ash Eaters will serve
me
, not fall prey to your fear and ignorance!”
“Then you have doomed us all,” said Hera. Her voice was very different. She sounded as if all the strength had left her; all the Goa’uld superiority and seductiveness and the sneer of cold command had ebbed away in the face of that final revelation, leaving a tired, frightened young woman to face the horror alone. “Everyone will die, Neheb-Kau. Including you.”
“Only those who oppose me will die, Hera.”
“No. Once again, you meddle with forces you do not understand, and they are your undoing. It is a pattern with you, is it not? To lose control of what you seek to master?”
“What do you mean?” He moved closer to the screen, the golden mask filling the picture. “Explain!”
“The Auger is halfway through its initiation cycle. It cannot be shut down, not from the pel’tak, or the control room, or anywhere.” O’Neill saw her glance up at Djetec, and smile. “Since you have blocked its guidance program, it will unleash its energies back into the ship. The Auger will either fire into the planet as I commanded it, or it will detonate and destroy this vessel.”
“What?” O’Neill turned back to the podium, aghast. “Oh, come on!”
“There is nothing
you
can do, Neheb-Kau,” she smiled. “Release the guidance lock, or die in fire.”
“Never!” he howled.
The screen went dead.
“Communications locked out,” said the operator.
“It is over,” said Hera. “Daniel?”
He ran back to her. “What can we do?”
“There is a word you use. I think it has something to do with a game, developed by the Asgard, and bestowed upon you as a gift long ago.” She smiled. “Checkmate.”
“Back on your knees, all of you!” Djetec barked. “My master will defeat your technologies! He will reset the guidance and use your Auger to free the Ash Eaters.”
“You really are one deluded son of a bitch,” O’Neill told him.
“Indeed,” said Hera. “And Djetec? I admire your loyalty. But this cannot be allowed to happen. It is time to remove your advantage.”
She reached across to him, and slapped the head of the asp hard into her own neck.
O’Neill heard the hiss as it struck, and Djetec’s horrified cry.
The pel’tak exploded into chaos. The hoplites swung their weapons around to him, control operators leapt from their posts and rushed up to the podium as Djetec pushed her violently away.
Hera stumbled, gabbed the side of her throne, and sank down at its side. “Kill him,” she choked.
Djetec lifted something from his robes, a fist-sized metal sphere. It spun from his grip as the first staff blast took him in the throat, hurling him backwards to slide, in a bloodied, smoking heap, across the podium and into the rear wall of the pel’tak.
Two hoplites ran after his corpse, stood over it, and began firing again.
Hera turned her heavy head towards Daniel. “Human, come to me…”
There was a bellow from outside, a pounding. O’Neill tried to ignore it. “Carter? How long?”
“Six minutes?” She shrugged. “Maybe less.”
He nodded, then ran up the steps. Daniel was already there, kneeling next to Hera.
“Why?” he whispered.
“Checkmate,” she replied, and smiled. Her eyes were wide, the pupils expanded. Sweat beaded her pale brow, plastering golden hair to white skin. “If
Clythena
explodes, the Ash Eaters will be freed. My sister…” Her breath caught in pain.
“There’s gotta be a way down there,” said O’Neill.
“Of course there is. Djetec used this transporter, and hoped to return. It must still be active.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Hoplites will arm you. Go to him. Unlock…”
“Lady, no…” A hoplite leaned over her. “Neheb-Kau should fall by our hand!”
“Can you remove his technologies?” She smiled weakly. “They go first. Follow them.”
Daniel had taken her hand. “Hera…”
Her eyes glowed, once, the light in them dull and fluttering. They went wide in sudden, unexpected wonder. “
Thalassa
,” she breathed. “
Akouõ thalassa!
”
Silence fell across the pel’tak.
The hatch crashed open, and the Minotaur hammered through, Spartans in its wake. O’Neill put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder.
He stepped away. Daniel got up too. As he did so, the Minotaur dropped to its knees where he had been. Its huge hand fumbled for its own neck armor. There was a click as a control gem was pushed in, and then the brass head split apart, separated, the horns swinging back and down over its shoulders, the metal helm becoming blades and leaves and vanishing. Beneath it, the Minotaur’s scarred, bald head looked surprisingly pale and vulnerable.
The monstrous warrior reached out, fingertips brushing a strand of hair from the dead woman’s forehead. And then, with tears streaming from its eyes, it threw back its mighty head and howled in disbelieving, animal grief.
The spear felt good in O’Neill’s grip. He would have preferred his MP5, but the hoplite weapon was an acceptable substitute, lighter than the standard staff and wickedly bladed. He flipped the priming control with his thumb experimentally, and the spear blades snapped apart. Sparks coursed between them, eager for release. “Carter, what time you got?”
“Four minutes, sir.” She was regarding her staff weapon rather uneasily. “They’ll be waiting for us, won’t they?”
“With any luck, they’ll only be expecting that Djetec guy.” He glanced around, to where the others were bunched around him, a circle of spears facing outwards. “All right people, weapons hot. Operator?”
The console slave nodded to him. “In her name,” he said, and touched the transporter control.
“Actually,” O’Neill muttered as the rings came down, “I was thinking more in terms of saving our asses. But that’ll do.”
White light sizzled down around him, blocking out the pel’tak, the mourning Spartans, the small pale body of Hera being borne away. When it lifted, a Jaffa in gold armor was turning towards him.
O’Neill jammed the spear between two rings and thumbed the trigger. There was a whooping snarl, a kick of recoil, and the Jaffa was spinning away, trailing smoke. O’Neill dragged the spear back as the rings lifted, ducked and rolled aside as a plasma bolt ripped through the air towards him; he heard the rest of his team scatter, firing their own weapons as they spread out.
He saw another Jaffa ahead, running around a curve of wall. The man dropped to one knee and fired again before O’Neill could get a shot off. He dodged back as the bolt splashed molten metal off the deck, then came out low, blasting the Jaffa onto his back.
There were no more in sight. He got up, checked quickly behind him. “Everyone okay?”
“Looking good, sir.” Carter was cradling her spear. “Easier to aim than the other ones.”
“Give me bullets any day.”
All the talk of a control room had made him expect a space that was small and confined, but once again his expectations were confounded. It was a like a corridor, huge and high-ceilinged, its walls curved, with a railed gallery around the outer edge. Metal buttresses supported the gallery, and there were thick, angled viewports ranged along the opposite wall.