WIP for Stargate GenFic day
So, I didn't actually do much writing yesterday, but I do have some WIPs I mean to finish, left from my abortive attempts at the sg1teamficathon. Starting with the one below. I don't usually post WIPs but sg_fignewton is looking for them and other things to celebrate GenFic day. So, here's what I got:
Forced Perspective (1/?)
(Late season 4 or early season 5)
----------------------
"Carter, watch the flank! Don't let them get past you!"
Zat blasts zinging fast and furious from her position, Carter shifted her aim with precision, to no avail. "There's too many of them! I--"
One boulder away, Jack watched a staff blast hit the top of the stone outcrop above his 2IC with an explosive crack, sending them both ducking for cover. This one was all bang and no bite, showering Carter with sand and pebbles, and leaving cotton in both their ears. Still, Carter scrambled back in his direction, firing the zat behind her with little regard to aim. She pulled herself around the flat edge of his boulder and thunked down next to him, panting with adrenaline and exertion.
"There's more than we thought," she said between breaths. "At least another two squads."
Their eyes met in silent counsel for a second, before Sam voiced both their thoughts.
"We can't hold them off here, sir. It's only a matter of time before they get the high ground."
"Agreed, fall back on my mark." Jack tapped his radio, shouting above a new barrage of weapons fire. "Teal'c, company! We're retreating back to the structure!"
"Understood, O'Neill," came the grainy reply.
"You got that, Daniel?" Jack asked over the line.
"Got it, get moving, I'll see you here!"
The "structure" was a hidden cavern carved into one of P29-787's massive boulders, three miles north of the Stargate. The rolling, rugged landscape was pocked with the giant stones-- it looked like the Scottish highlands after the hailstorm of the millennium-- but SG-7's sonar-equipped MALP had found only one that appeared less than natural. In fact, it appeared to hollow out a good portion of the hill underneath it, in a manner too precise to be a natural formation. It was one hell of a find.
Of course, at the moment, Jack was a little pre-occupied with what SG-7 had missed in its initial survey. Nirrti, paranoid as she was, had a range of "off-grid" naquadah mines that used ha'taks and inter-planetary shipping routes rather than Stargates for transport. For the most part the SGC had good intel on her territory, but on some occasions-- some very bad occasions, teams ran afoul of one of her operations on a planet surveyed as derelict.
Nirrti's Jaffa must have swept up from the south; there was probably a river over one of the far rises. The first thing they would've done was take the gate, and they ambushed Jack and Carter on a security sweep only an hour after Daniel had found the structure's entrance. He'd just reported his first findings when they were attacked-- a mid-sized cavern, definitely Asgard, possibly a lab, dead except for a large palette of light controls lining the far wall, and a small glowing cube on a dais in the center of the room.
For now, science and discovery had to take a back seat to saving their necks. Nirrti had their south and east flanks, and SG-1 were cut off from the northwest by steep terrain that would leave them sitting ducks if they tried to reach it under fire. Their best bet was to take a stand at the structure, try to wait out the firestorm until the SGC could send reinforcements.
"Are you ready?" Jack asked as he and Carter shimmied up to standing against the rock. Carter nodded. It was now or never. "Mark!"
Jack took the edge of the boulder, firing a controlled burst as Carter retreated to take cover behind a long, thin shelf of stone. She turned to lay out zat fire for his retreat to the next rank of boulders. They piggy-backed their way to the structure in a little under four minutes' time, meeting up with Teal'c as he fell back from the eastern flank, and stormed in through the doorway past a grim-faced Daniel Jackson, who was manning the jury-rigged door controls determinedly.
Carter nodded a hasty greeting to Teal'c as they took up position along the wall. "Another minute and they'd've had you surrounded."
"Then it is a good thing I know how to shoot backwards." Teal'c gave a rare smile, the one that reminded the rest of his team that he had more years of combat experience than all three of them put together.
A staff blast shot over their heads into the structure, leaving a dark, melted scorch on the white-gray wall behind them. Jack answered with a few quick rounds on semi-automatic, to conserve ammunition.
"Always better to be surrounded together!" Daniel shouted over the din, his eyes never leaving the control panel in front of him.
"Daniel, stop yapping and get that door closed!"
"Working on it--" The next blast hit closer to home, showering Daniel with sparks and chasing him back from the panel, shaking singed fingers. The door closed two-thirds of the way and no further.
"Damn it!" Daniel cried.
Jack frowned at the opening. It narrowed the target in the short run and gave them a breath of relief, but without the door sealed it had gained them only minutes at the most. "Of all the-- Daniel, you said we've got a bank of lights in the lab back there?" At Daniel's quick affirmative, he continued. "Anything that looks like a shield or weapon control?"
"I didn't see anything specific, but the cube could be a power source."
"This whole place wants to hide," Carter said, shouldering her field pack from the corner where she'd left it before their patrol. "They've got to have some kind of shielding for that."
"Good. Daniel, take Carter and find some good buttons to push. Keep radio contact. You have--" Jack ducked his head quickly around the opening and back again-- "about three minutes."
-----
Where it wasn't softly glowing with color-coded controls, the lab was dim and gray and far too still, given the chaos that was transpiring above. Sam and Daniel quickly changed that, rushing into the room with two minutes, forty-five seconds to spare. Daniel headed for the dais at the center of the room, while Sam broke off from him and headed straight to the main control bank. She dropped the field pack at her feet in front of the large structure, just as she located a small row of smooth palm interfaces at about knee level.
Drawing on the memory of every scrap of Asgard tech she'd studied, Sam picked up two interfaces and scanned the palette in front of her. It was one of the most complicated palettes she had seen, taking up a large strip of the back wall with seemingly random bursts of color. She dismissed the oranges and yellows of atmospherics and experimental controls, she only quickly skimmed the ranges of blue that usually signified communications, looking for-- there!
"Found it! Shields!" One thin row of intense green at the bottom of the palette. She initiated contact, placing the palm interfaces on either side of the bar, which oriented automatically, their long edges moving perpendicular to the strip of green.
A thought tickled the back of her mind, but it was gone before she could corral it.
-----
The narrow opening gave them cover, but their sightlines were screwed. It didn't take Nirrti's Jaffa long to disperse from the full frontal assault and start approaching from the boulder's sloping sides. Jack and Teal'c knew they were there; they just couldn't risk their necks to confirm the tactic.
"Found it! Shields" came Carter's triumphant voice, but Jack didn't have the time to answer.
"They will try to blow the door from the side, to increase the size of their point of entry" Teal'c said. "We must retreat--" something caught his eye and he grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him back into the upper alcove. "Now!"
The edge of the door, right where Jack had been standing, was hit with a concentrated burst of staff blasts coming in almost parallel to the door. With less surface to absorb the blast, a large chunk of the sandy rock gave way, barely missing Jack as it crumbled to the floor. He rolled and slammed a palm to the connection on his radio.
"Carter, now would be good!"
-----
Behind her, Sam heard Daniel exclaim, "There's an inscription on this cube! It's an older set of runes--"
The resounding boom of an explosion rattled the floor and echoed down from the corridor as a burst of static prickled across the radio. "Carter, now would be good!"
"Sam, wait--" Daniel said.
"Carter!" came across the radio.
No time. She swept the left interface across the strip, at the exact same time her brain finally got around to remembering a very important fact.
Interfaces orienting perpendicular to the bar meant the shields-- whatever they were-- were already on.
-----
Teal'c took the first Jaffa in the chin with the butt of his staff. Jack was still trying to gain his feet when a second soldier ground a boot into the back of his hand. He screamed something-- then a brilliant flash exploded in front of his eyes with a screeching, howling roar building in his ears. He saw Teal'c go down, then the roar swallowed his thoughts, and everything went black.
*************
Daniel awoke to a splitting headache, an odd ringing in his ears, and the unmistakable sound of someone losing their lunch a few yards away.
"Sam? Are you--" As he rolled to his side and opened his eyes, the question died abruptly. The room was pitch dark, but the ringing in his ears spiked to a dizzying white noise, and he was hit with a wave of nausea. "Oh, god." He sat up, back on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut, cradling his stomach.
There was a weak laugh from the corner. "You just tried to get up, didn't you?"
The din in Daniel's ears died down again and he could hear Sam coughing and spitting. "How could you tell?"
"Stay put, I'm coming to you in a second."
He guessed she was still over by the control palette, if he was still by the cube. Keeping his eyes shut, he swept out a hand and connected with the base of the dais. He inched forward and leaned his forehead against the smooth surface, willing his stomach to settle. He heard Sam moving closer, and in a moment a hand brushed his elbow, and she set something down on the ground beside him-- her field pack, probably. He opened his eyes and turned toward her, trying to focus on her face, but the blackness prevailed, and the ringing in his ears intensified. He groaned, grabbing onto Sam's shoulder as she solidified her grip on his arm.
"Steady," Sam said in his ear. "Quiet for a second."
She let go of his arm and dug around the pack for a moment, then her hand swept meticulously along his arms, legs and head, contacting accidentally at a few points with something that felt like a cold, hard stick.
"Sam, what's going on?"
"Shh." She moved up above him, sweeping whatever it was across the top of the dais as well. He caught a faint sound of static clicks coming from Sam's position but it was muffled, like listening to the wrong end of a phone conversation; she was holding something up to her ear. Then she let out a loud breath, before rummaging around the pack and putting it away. "Geiger counter," she explained.
"What?" Daniel struck a hand out in panic, and smacked it into the base of the dais. "Are we--?"
"No," Sam said quickly, corralling his hands and squeezing them reassuringly. "Nothing set off any alarms. It would take a massive dose of radiation for nausea to set in so fast; this is something else. We're safe here, for now."
Daniel let out a breath of relief. His stomach had stopped doing backflips, and his brain started engaging again. "What happened?," he asked. "I was checking out the inscription on the cube and then the next thing I know I'm on the floor. Was it an attack?"
"Negative. I'm pretty sure it was me." Sam tried to stand up but swayed beside him, almost bringing them both crashing down. "I turned something off, not sure what."
"I saw some kind of flash right before the lights went out. I think I saw the cube change color."
"It's a good bet that whatever shield I released was tied to it. Do you know what it is?"
Daniel brought a hand to the top of the dais, sweeping it along the surface. "Was, I think. It's gone now. I caught some of the inscription-- Skrengvi Idun, something."
"Does that mean anything to you?"
"Not exactly. I-- oh, god!" He tried to stand, peering through the impenetrable dark over the dais and then fell back heavily, retching, as another wave of nausea hit. Sam let him lean his head on her shoulder.
"Give the nausea few minutes; it'll get better."
"Sam, you just threw up in the corner."
"And now I feel better." Daniel felt movement through her shoulder; she was waving a hand, rapidly. "Ugh. My ears are ringing, though. Can you see anything?"
"Nothing but black. You?"
"The same," Sam said grimly.
Shouts and cries echoed faintly away in the direction of the corridor, and they both froze. Daniel blinked, squinting toward the sound and spiking his headache. He felt Sam stiffen.
"We need to secure this area, quickly," she said.
"Nirrti?"
"Her Jaffa, at least. The inner door to the lab should still be operational, right? You didn't have to force it?"
"No, but wait--"
"C'mon. We need to seal that entrance." She hefted the field pack and leveled herself up against the dais, giving him no time to argue. Daniel lurched up with her, his hearing momentarily graying out to a static din.
"What about Jack and Teal'c?" he asked. "They could be in trouble."
"The radio's dead. I can't raise them."
"We'd be sealing them out! They could--"
Sam cut him off, casting off from the dais in the direction of the entryway. "Daniel, our first priority is to secure our position. The Colonel and Teal'c could be fighting, or they could be cut off from us or caught. We don't know, and we're in no shape to help them out right now."
"Right, okay," he answered, trailing along at her elbow. As they walked, the white noise in his ears leveled out to a persistent hum. "Secure our position. It might help if we can find the lights, first."
"I doubt it," Sam said, coming to a stop. "I never saw the control panel go dim, our flashlights don't seem to be working, and even if it was the blast that knocked them out, I'm pretty sure the enemy blew the outer door right before I set off the cube."
Daniel could feel a slight breeze on his face. Some of the distant sounds resolved to shouts of 'kree!' coming from the surface, and he realized they were in front of the entryway. His heart started to pound in his chest. He could follow Sam's reasoning all right, but the benefit of a non-military, non-tactical background meant he could have spent at least another five minutes avoiding the thought of that possibility altogether.
Sam didn't have the luxury. She continued matter-of-factly, as Daniel felt her stretch out a hand in search of a set of door controls. "There should be enough daylight filtering through to at least make out shadows, even if the whole lab went dark, which is unlikely. If our eyes haven't adjusted yet, it's because they can't."
"So we're blind," Daniel concluded.
"I think so. Watch your hands."
Sam pushed a button. In front of them, the door slid closed with a rumble and a sigh.
-----
"Jaffa, kree!"
Jack came to, face down on the ground with a mouth full of dust, his painfully throbbing hand wrenched behind his back and-- he gave an experimental tug-- yeah, tied to the other one. His ears felt cottony, but he could still make out shouts in terse Goa'uld echoing around him, and an occasional staff blast in the distance. Above it all was a single booming voice, very nearly on top of him, calling "kree!" in five-second intervals.
He turned his head, spitting the taste of this particular planet from his mouth. He tried to get a look around, but before he could do so much as blink, something hit the ground heavily with a metallic clink, a foot away from his head. A gauntleted hand grabbed hold of the side of his skull, grinding his temple down into the dirt. He winced, trying to struggle but he was well and truly hog-tied.
"Do not move, Tau'ri."
The metronomic pealing of "kree" had stopped; the soldier had dropped to one knee at Jack's side, and was now speaking inches from his ear. Jack opened the one eye that wasn't face down in the dirt and instantly regretted it; the cotton in his ears exploded to a full-pitched ringing thrum, like an Apache helicopter had appeared in front of him, full throttle and ready for takeoff. His stomach rolled, and he squeezed his eye shut again, groaning.
"Ah, hell..."
He tried to curl around his protesting gut, but the grip on his skull tightened, fingers digging into his cheek. There was another clink of battle armor as his captor shifted position.
"You will answer to my Goddess Nirrti for your transgressions, intruder. Our forces summon her even now."
Jack happened to know that Nirrti was currently doing her best to avoid being summoned by anyone, on the run as she was from all her snaky pals. He gave a short, derisive laugh before he could stop himself, which turned into a cough as he inhaled dust and grit.
The Jaffa growled wordlessly and with a surge of strength, flipped Jack over onto his back, crushing his hands against the ground. His cry of pain was cut short as the gauntleted hand took hold of his throat. He tried to open his eyes again but was met with the same pounding freight-train of white noise and nausea, and slammed them shut with an airless grimace.
"You mock my lord Goddess, filth?" the Jaffa spat.
Damn right he did, but now was not the time for sarcasm. He needed this guy to leave him the hell alone. He tried to answer, but could make no sound until the hand at his throat eased, at which point he choked out a watery, "No, sir."
The Jaffa shook him once, and released him, standing. "You, your companions and your weapons will make a pleasing prize for my Lord. Better alive, but she will not fault me for punishing insolence."
There was a painful tug at his hands-- some kind of rope or lead attached to the bindings, then a boot hit his side and Jack was flipped over, face-down in the dirt again. At least it gave him room to think.
He hadn't caught a glimpse of Teal'c, or of any of the rest of his team. In fact, he hadn't caught a glimpse of anything, and that was unnerving. With concussion, the light sensitivity usually came with increased perception of brightness. He could feel the sun beating down on his shoulder, but it might as well have been a starless midnight for all he'd been able to see. And opening his eyes hurt like hell.
Above him, the soldier took up the cry of "Jaffa, kree" again, every five seconds like clockwork, and the shouts and footsteps were getting closer. Nirrti's Jaffa were regrouping, forming rank.
Jack suppressed a groan. When they got out of this, he was going to have a long talk with Carter about those button-pushing skills of hers.
------
Forced Perspective (1/?)
(Late season 4 or early season 5)
----------------------
"Carter, watch the flank! Don't let them get past you!"
Zat blasts zinging fast and furious from her position, Carter shifted her aim with precision, to no avail. "There's too many of them! I--"
One boulder away, Jack watched a staff blast hit the top of the stone outcrop above his 2IC with an explosive crack, sending them both ducking for cover. This one was all bang and no bite, showering Carter with sand and pebbles, and leaving cotton in both their ears. Still, Carter scrambled back in his direction, firing the zat behind her with little regard to aim. She pulled herself around the flat edge of his boulder and thunked down next to him, panting with adrenaline and exertion.
"There's more than we thought," she said between breaths. "At least another two squads."
Their eyes met in silent counsel for a second, before Sam voiced both their thoughts.
"We can't hold them off here, sir. It's only a matter of time before they get the high ground."
"Agreed, fall back on my mark." Jack tapped his radio, shouting above a new barrage of weapons fire. "Teal'c, company! We're retreating back to the structure!"
"Understood, O'Neill," came the grainy reply.
"You got that, Daniel?" Jack asked over the line.
"Got it, get moving, I'll see you here!"
The "structure" was a hidden cavern carved into one of P29-787's massive boulders, three miles north of the Stargate. The rolling, rugged landscape was pocked with the giant stones-- it looked like the Scottish highlands after the hailstorm of the millennium-- but SG-7's sonar-equipped MALP had found only one that appeared less than natural. In fact, it appeared to hollow out a good portion of the hill underneath it, in a manner too precise to be a natural formation. It was one hell of a find.
Of course, at the moment, Jack was a little pre-occupied with what SG-7 had missed in its initial survey. Nirrti, paranoid as she was, had a range of "off-grid" naquadah mines that used ha'taks and inter-planetary shipping routes rather than Stargates for transport. For the most part the SGC had good intel on her territory, but on some occasions-- some very bad occasions, teams ran afoul of one of her operations on a planet surveyed as derelict.
Nirrti's Jaffa must have swept up from the south; there was probably a river over one of the far rises. The first thing they would've done was take the gate, and they ambushed Jack and Carter on a security sweep only an hour after Daniel had found the structure's entrance. He'd just reported his first findings when they were attacked-- a mid-sized cavern, definitely Asgard, possibly a lab, dead except for a large palette of light controls lining the far wall, and a small glowing cube on a dais in the center of the room.
For now, science and discovery had to take a back seat to saving their necks. Nirrti had their south and east flanks, and SG-1 were cut off from the northwest by steep terrain that would leave them sitting ducks if they tried to reach it under fire. Their best bet was to take a stand at the structure, try to wait out the firestorm until the SGC could send reinforcements.
"Are you ready?" Jack asked as he and Carter shimmied up to standing against the rock. Carter nodded. It was now or never. "Mark!"
Jack took the edge of the boulder, firing a controlled burst as Carter retreated to take cover behind a long, thin shelf of stone. She turned to lay out zat fire for his retreat to the next rank of boulders. They piggy-backed their way to the structure in a little under four minutes' time, meeting up with Teal'c as he fell back from the eastern flank, and stormed in through the doorway past a grim-faced Daniel Jackson, who was manning the jury-rigged door controls determinedly.
Carter nodded a hasty greeting to Teal'c as they took up position along the wall. "Another minute and they'd've had you surrounded."
"Then it is a good thing I know how to shoot backwards." Teal'c gave a rare smile, the one that reminded the rest of his team that he had more years of combat experience than all three of them put together.
A staff blast shot over their heads into the structure, leaving a dark, melted scorch on the white-gray wall behind them. Jack answered with a few quick rounds on semi-automatic, to conserve ammunition.
"Always better to be surrounded together!" Daniel shouted over the din, his eyes never leaving the control panel in front of him.
"Daniel, stop yapping and get that door closed!"
"Working on it--" The next blast hit closer to home, showering Daniel with sparks and chasing him back from the panel, shaking singed fingers. The door closed two-thirds of the way and no further.
"Damn it!" Daniel cried.
Jack frowned at the opening. It narrowed the target in the short run and gave them a breath of relief, but without the door sealed it had gained them only minutes at the most. "Of all the-- Daniel, you said we've got a bank of lights in the lab back there?" At Daniel's quick affirmative, he continued. "Anything that looks like a shield or weapon control?"
"I didn't see anything specific, but the cube could be a power source."
"This whole place wants to hide," Carter said, shouldering her field pack from the corner where she'd left it before their patrol. "They've got to have some kind of shielding for that."
"Good. Daniel, take Carter and find some good buttons to push. Keep radio contact. You have--" Jack ducked his head quickly around the opening and back again-- "about three minutes."
-----
Where it wasn't softly glowing with color-coded controls, the lab was dim and gray and far too still, given the chaos that was transpiring above. Sam and Daniel quickly changed that, rushing into the room with two minutes, forty-five seconds to spare. Daniel headed for the dais at the center of the room, while Sam broke off from him and headed straight to the main control bank. She dropped the field pack at her feet in front of the large structure, just as she located a small row of smooth palm interfaces at about knee level.
Drawing on the memory of every scrap of Asgard tech she'd studied, Sam picked up two interfaces and scanned the palette in front of her. It was one of the most complicated palettes she had seen, taking up a large strip of the back wall with seemingly random bursts of color. She dismissed the oranges and yellows of atmospherics and experimental controls, she only quickly skimmed the ranges of blue that usually signified communications, looking for-- there!
"Found it! Shields!" One thin row of intense green at the bottom of the palette. She initiated contact, placing the palm interfaces on either side of the bar, which oriented automatically, their long edges moving perpendicular to the strip of green.
A thought tickled the back of her mind, but it was gone before she could corral it.
-----
The narrow opening gave them cover, but their sightlines were screwed. It didn't take Nirrti's Jaffa long to disperse from the full frontal assault and start approaching from the boulder's sloping sides. Jack and Teal'c knew they were there; they just couldn't risk their necks to confirm the tactic.
"Found it! Shields" came Carter's triumphant voice, but Jack didn't have the time to answer.
"They will try to blow the door from the side, to increase the size of their point of entry" Teal'c said. "We must retreat--" something caught his eye and he grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him back into the upper alcove. "Now!"
The edge of the door, right where Jack had been standing, was hit with a concentrated burst of staff blasts coming in almost parallel to the door. With less surface to absorb the blast, a large chunk of the sandy rock gave way, barely missing Jack as it crumbled to the floor. He rolled and slammed a palm to the connection on his radio.
"Carter, now would be good!"
-----
Behind her, Sam heard Daniel exclaim, "There's an inscription on this cube! It's an older set of runes--"
The resounding boom of an explosion rattled the floor and echoed down from the corridor as a burst of static prickled across the radio. "Carter, now would be good!"
"Sam, wait--" Daniel said.
"Carter!" came across the radio.
No time. She swept the left interface across the strip, at the exact same time her brain finally got around to remembering a very important fact.
Interfaces orienting perpendicular to the bar meant the shields-- whatever they were-- were already on.
-----
Teal'c took the first Jaffa in the chin with the butt of his staff. Jack was still trying to gain his feet when a second soldier ground a boot into the back of his hand. He screamed something-- then a brilliant flash exploded in front of his eyes with a screeching, howling roar building in his ears. He saw Teal'c go down, then the roar swallowed his thoughts, and everything went black.
*************
Daniel awoke to a splitting headache, an odd ringing in his ears, and the unmistakable sound of someone losing their lunch a few yards away.
"Sam? Are you--" As he rolled to his side and opened his eyes, the question died abruptly. The room was pitch dark, but the ringing in his ears spiked to a dizzying white noise, and he was hit with a wave of nausea. "Oh, god." He sat up, back on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut, cradling his stomach.
There was a weak laugh from the corner. "You just tried to get up, didn't you?"
The din in Daniel's ears died down again and he could hear Sam coughing and spitting. "How could you tell?"
"Stay put, I'm coming to you in a second."
He guessed she was still over by the control palette, if he was still by the cube. Keeping his eyes shut, he swept out a hand and connected with the base of the dais. He inched forward and leaned his forehead against the smooth surface, willing his stomach to settle. He heard Sam moving closer, and in a moment a hand brushed his elbow, and she set something down on the ground beside him-- her field pack, probably. He opened his eyes and turned toward her, trying to focus on her face, but the blackness prevailed, and the ringing in his ears intensified. He groaned, grabbing onto Sam's shoulder as she solidified her grip on his arm.
"Steady," Sam said in his ear. "Quiet for a second."
She let go of his arm and dug around the pack for a moment, then her hand swept meticulously along his arms, legs and head, contacting accidentally at a few points with something that felt like a cold, hard stick.
"Sam, what's going on?"
"Shh." She moved up above him, sweeping whatever it was across the top of the dais as well. He caught a faint sound of static clicks coming from Sam's position but it was muffled, like listening to the wrong end of a phone conversation; she was holding something up to her ear. Then she let out a loud breath, before rummaging around the pack and putting it away. "Geiger counter," she explained.
"What?" Daniel struck a hand out in panic, and smacked it into the base of the dais. "Are we--?"
"No," Sam said quickly, corralling his hands and squeezing them reassuringly. "Nothing set off any alarms. It would take a massive dose of radiation for nausea to set in so fast; this is something else. We're safe here, for now."
Daniel let out a breath of relief. His stomach had stopped doing backflips, and his brain started engaging again. "What happened?," he asked. "I was checking out the inscription on the cube and then the next thing I know I'm on the floor. Was it an attack?"
"Negative. I'm pretty sure it was me." Sam tried to stand up but swayed beside him, almost bringing them both crashing down. "I turned something off, not sure what."
"I saw some kind of flash right before the lights went out. I think I saw the cube change color."
"It's a good bet that whatever shield I released was tied to it. Do you know what it is?"
Daniel brought a hand to the top of the dais, sweeping it along the surface. "Was, I think. It's gone now. I caught some of the inscription-- Skrengvi Idun, something."
"Does that mean anything to you?"
"Not exactly. I-- oh, god!" He tried to stand, peering through the impenetrable dark over the dais and then fell back heavily, retching, as another wave of nausea hit. Sam let him lean his head on her shoulder.
"Give the nausea few minutes; it'll get better."
"Sam, you just threw up in the corner."
"And now I feel better." Daniel felt movement through her shoulder; she was waving a hand, rapidly. "Ugh. My ears are ringing, though. Can you see anything?"
"Nothing but black. You?"
"The same," Sam said grimly.
Shouts and cries echoed faintly away in the direction of the corridor, and they both froze. Daniel blinked, squinting toward the sound and spiking his headache. He felt Sam stiffen.
"We need to secure this area, quickly," she said.
"Nirrti?"
"Her Jaffa, at least. The inner door to the lab should still be operational, right? You didn't have to force it?"
"No, but wait--"
"C'mon. We need to seal that entrance." She hefted the field pack and leveled herself up against the dais, giving him no time to argue. Daniel lurched up with her, his hearing momentarily graying out to a static din.
"What about Jack and Teal'c?" he asked. "They could be in trouble."
"The radio's dead. I can't raise them."
"We'd be sealing them out! They could--"
Sam cut him off, casting off from the dais in the direction of the entryway. "Daniel, our first priority is to secure our position. The Colonel and Teal'c could be fighting, or they could be cut off from us or caught. We don't know, and we're in no shape to help them out right now."
"Right, okay," he answered, trailing along at her elbow. As they walked, the white noise in his ears leveled out to a persistent hum. "Secure our position. It might help if we can find the lights, first."
"I doubt it," Sam said, coming to a stop. "I never saw the control panel go dim, our flashlights don't seem to be working, and even if it was the blast that knocked them out, I'm pretty sure the enemy blew the outer door right before I set off the cube."
Daniel could feel a slight breeze on his face. Some of the distant sounds resolved to shouts of 'kree!' coming from the surface, and he realized they were in front of the entryway. His heart started to pound in his chest. He could follow Sam's reasoning all right, but the benefit of a non-military, non-tactical background meant he could have spent at least another five minutes avoiding the thought of that possibility altogether.
Sam didn't have the luxury. She continued matter-of-factly, as Daniel felt her stretch out a hand in search of a set of door controls. "There should be enough daylight filtering through to at least make out shadows, even if the whole lab went dark, which is unlikely. If our eyes haven't adjusted yet, it's because they can't."
"So we're blind," Daniel concluded.
"I think so. Watch your hands."
Sam pushed a button. In front of them, the door slid closed with a rumble and a sigh.
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"Jaffa, kree!"
Jack came to, face down on the ground with a mouth full of dust, his painfully throbbing hand wrenched behind his back and-- he gave an experimental tug-- yeah, tied to the other one. His ears felt cottony, but he could still make out shouts in terse Goa'uld echoing around him, and an occasional staff blast in the distance. Above it all was a single booming voice, very nearly on top of him, calling "kree!" in five-second intervals.
He turned his head, spitting the taste of this particular planet from his mouth. He tried to get a look around, but before he could do so much as blink, something hit the ground heavily with a metallic clink, a foot away from his head. A gauntleted hand grabbed hold of the side of his skull, grinding his temple down into the dirt. He winced, trying to struggle but he was well and truly hog-tied.
"Do not move, Tau'ri."
The metronomic pealing of "kree" had stopped; the soldier had dropped to one knee at Jack's side, and was now speaking inches from his ear. Jack opened the one eye that wasn't face down in the dirt and instantly regretted it; the cotton in his ears exploded to a full-pitched ringing thrum, like an Apache helicopter had appeared in front of him, full throttle and ready for takeoff. His stomach rolled, and he squeezed his eye shut again, groaning.
"Ah, hell..."
He tried to curl around his protesting gut, but the grip on his skull tightened, fingers digging into his cheek. There was another clink of battle armor as his captor shifted position.
"You will answer to my Goddess Nirrti for your transgressions, intruder. Our forces summon her even now."
Jack happened to know that Nirrti was currently doing her best to avoid being summoned by anyone, on the run as she was from all her snaky pals. He gave a short, derisive laugh before he could stop himself, which turned into a cough as he inhaled dust and grit.
The Jaffa growled wordlessly and with a surge of strength, flipped Jack over onto his back, crushing his hands against the ground. His cry of pain was cut short as the gauntleted hand took hold of his throat. He tried to open his eyes again but was met with the same pounding freight-train of white noise and nausea, and slammed them shut with an airless grimace.
"You mock my lord Goddess, filth?" the Jaffa spat.
Damn right he did, but now was not the time for sarcasm. He needed this guy to leave him the hell alone. He tried to answer, but could make no sound until the hand at his throat eased, at which point he choked out a watery, "No, sir."
The Jaffa shook him once, and released him, standing. "You, your companions and your weapons will make a pleasing prize for my Lord. Better alive, but she will not fault me for punishing insolence."
There was a painful tug at his hands-- some kind of rope or lead attached to the bindings, then a boot hit his side and Jack was flipped over, face-down in the dirt again. At least it gave him room to think.
He hadn't caught a glimpse of Teal'c, or of any of the rest of his team. In fact, he hadn't caught a glimpse of anything, and that was unnerving. With concussion, the light sensitivity usually came with increased perception of brightness. He could feel the sun beating down on his shoulder, but it might as well have been a starless midnight for all he'd been able to see. And opening his eyes hurt like hell.
Above him, the soldier took up the cry of "Jaffa, kree" again, every five seconds like clockwork, and the shouts and footsteps were getting closer. Nirrti's Jaffa were regrouping, forming rank.
Jack suppressed a groan. When they got out of this, he was going to have a long talk with Carter about those button-pushing skills of hers.
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