Archaeology (16a/30)
Title: Archaeology ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7a-- 7b Chapter8 Chapter9a-- 9b Chapter10 Chapter11 Chapter12a-- 12b Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b
XXXXX
Chapter 16: Preparations
XXXXX
15 January 2001; Briefing Room, SGC; 0900 hrs
Jack drummed his fingers on the table. "So," he said to Teal'c as they waited for the others. "No idea what this one's about?"
"I believe we are to discuss MALP telemetry," Teal'c said, folding his hands on the table.
"You know our opinion's not gonna count," Jack said. "If they're briefing the general, it means they've already checked for safety and they've got numbers and...and translations and things."
"All you have to do is say, 'I agree, General,'" Daniel said, scurrying up the stairs. "I'll wink at you when it's time."
Jack scowled.
"Then you have identified a planet that you wish to explore, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said.
"Sam and I have, yes," Daniel said, sliding into a seat next to Jack.
"How's your hand?" Jack said, watching him pick up a pen and tap it against his files.
In answer, Daniel clenched it into a fist a few times. The scar was still vivid on his palm--it might never disappear completely, but considering what it had looked like after he'd yanked the knife out of it, Jack was glad it was as whole as it was. It wasn't a life-threatening injury, but as long as he couldn't grab things well and work a gun, it had kept him completely grounded.
"It's stiffer than I remember," Daniel admitted, "but functional enough, and apparently, it'll improve the more I exercise it. Janet says I'm lucky it'll get better." As if to prove it, he picked up his pen and twirled it between his fingers.
"Sorry, sir," Carter said, coming in from the control room. "I was just finishing with some data. With the DHD up, we're able to screen through potential planets...really fast."
"Then let's get going," the general said, waving them back into their seats. "Major Carter, would you like to start?"
"Thank you, sir," she said, still working on plugging in her laptop. "This is P30-255, the planet Daniel and I have been looking at recently."
The screen changed to a picture of something very...well... "It's purple," Jack said.
Daniel tilted his head at the screen. "Not everything."
"There's a purple tree staring at me," Jack said.
"It's not staring at you, Jack."
"It's purple, Daniel."
"But only the trees," Daniel said, as if that made it better.
"Daniel Jackson, is that not a ziggurat?" Teal'c said.
"Yes," Daniel said, looking relieved. "See, Jack, if you look beyond the purple trees..."
"Wh--wait a minute," Jack said, holding up a hand. "Ziggurats...isn't that Mesopotamia?"
"Well, sir," Carter said, "it's not like a Goa'uld would have had to transplant cultures to places with, uh, matching climates."
"Nor is there any Tau'ri climate that would match with trees of such a hue," Teal'c added.
"In fact," Daniel added, "the climate of this place seems to be a lot friendlier than P2X-388, the planet with Marduk and the Eye of Tiamat. This is fertile enough for a lot of vegetation, with mild temperatures and precipitation comparable to that of local Earth..."
"And the MALP shows no sign of complex life as far as its sensors reach. So it could be abandoned, and on top of that, we don't have to worry about heatstroke like on '388."
"And what are you expecting to find there?" Hammond said.
"Well..." Daniel said, "we don't know. But we've met one Goa'uld so far from the Mesopotamian pantheon--sort of met--and I'd like to learn more. More about Tiamat's race, for instance, or whether Marduk left any other traces behind on this planet, or even information about the Eye of Tiamat and other devices Marduk might have used..."
"It's abandoned?" Jack clarified.
"It may be impossible to know for certain until we explore farther than the MALP was able to see," Teal'c said. "However, it is possible that we may learn about other related Goa'uld and whether they still live."
"But the tree is purple," Jack said.
"I'd like a few samples from that," Carter said, tilting her head at the picture of the purple tree.
"Objections, Colonel?" Hammond said.
Jack thought about objecting to the hours they'd have to spend slogging through another abandoned temple but thought better of it. "No, sir, no good objections. I assume that one's next up for us."
Hammond nodded. "We have a lot of teams already on missions, so I'll send SG-1 to P30-255 as soon as more of our personnel are back on base in case of emergencies. In the meantime...I need to discuss P3X-888 with you."
Daniel looked up. Jack did, too.
"I've reviewed your reasons for wanting to return," Hammond said. "I'm willing to authorize one mission to see whether or not it's safe to pursue relations with the Unas clan you met there. You will all familiarize yourself with the revised protocols to ensure that no Goa'uld infestation is possible, and I'm considering this a highly dangerous planet until further notice. If it weren't for the fact that your presence might be required to establish communications with the leader of that tribe, Mr. Jackson, you wouldn't be going at all."
"Yes, sir," Daniel said. "I understand. Thank you."
"You'll go to P3X-888 with SG-11 following the mission to P30-255, barring any complications. If long-term studies are deemed a viable option, then I will send SG-11 back there to continue those studies."
Daniel stiffened. "SG-11? Sir--"
"Four newly recruited members are being trained right now, and they'll form SG-11 as an engineering and research support team when they're done," Hammond said.
"Oh," Daniel said, looking down at his notes.
"By the time SG-1 finishes on P30-255, SG-11 will have finished their on-base training and orientations. They should be ready for the training tour on the Alpha Site around the same time that Mr. Jackson and Dr. Balinsky are scheduled to finish their second tour of training; I thought we could combine the teams for a joint session. Your mission to P3X-888 will take place after that."
Jack looked around the table. "By 'joint session,' do you mean SG-11 and -13 plus Daniel, or all of us?"
"SG-1 hasn't run any training sessions in over a year," Hammond pointed out. "I thought you might want to oversee this one yourself."
"Yes, sir," Jack said. Daniel turned to give him a considering look, which made him realize he should really talk to Dixon or Warren about what kinds of things Daniel liked to pull in training sessions. Considering Daniel had helped run these kinds of scenarios before...it would be interesting. "But the purple tree planet comes first."
XXXXX
19 January 2001; Temple, P30-255; 1100 hrs
As it turned out, it was a good thing Daniel had insisted on bringing a lot of books with him to P30-255. "It'll just be me this time," he'd pointed out, "not...two people together."
Fortunately, Mesopotamian Goa'ulds weren't too original in the way they locked their doors. At the temple, Daniel tapped one of the bricks experimentally to check that it was, in fact, the same kind of puzzle as the one he and Rothman had solved on P2X-388 and said, "All right. Now I just have to read this, see what myth it is, and figure out what's out of order."
Unfortunately, Daniel wasn't much more an expert on Mesopotamia than he had been back when they'd fished out the Eye of Tiamat, though he claimed that this language was a lot easier to read and matched up much better with Earth dictionaries. Also, Jack still thought the purple trees were weird but they turned out to be oddly charming up close, and Carter was having fun collecting plant life.
Finally, Daniel backed away to open yet another book and said, "Okay. I've got it. It's about the goddess Inanna and her descent into the underworld. Uh, actually...I think she called herself Ishtar, most of the time, except for ritual stuff like this." He waved at the wall.
Jack glanced at Teal'c, who said, "I know very little of Ishtar, but she is indeed a minor Goa'uld."
"Hm," Daniel said absently, still paging through his book. "Well, I need to find the part in this book where she's taking off her clothes..."
Carter's eyes widened and then turned to Jack. Jack could only shrug back at her. Daniel didn't seem to notice anything wrong. "So, uh..." Carter said, clearing her throat. "Who's Ishtar, and why is she taking off her clothes?"
"She's the goddess of fertility, love, war," Daniel said. "Called the courtesan of the gods. Some argue that she wasn't a mother goddess, exactly, but was definitely very associated with sex and...that sort of thing. I'm looking for the myth in which she went to the underworld--the guardians at each stage made her take off pieces of her clothing as a representation of her progressive loss of power."
"Sure," Carter muttered sourly. "Strip the woman and say she's the one who was big on sex."
Daniel didn't seem to notice the comments and went on, "Ishtar was also said to be cruel to her lovers--even Gilgamesh didn't dare to be her lover. She tended to take a man and then kill him. Or send him to Hell, in the case of her husband."
"So..." Jack said, "like Hathor, but meaner."
"Uh...and in Sumer," Daniel said. "Babylon. But Hathor was a System Lord while Ishtar wasn't, which, well, if you're making a judgment of mean or nice... Okay, I found it," he said, cutting off his own discussion and scooting closer again, juggling his books and flashlight so he could see. "First, she takes off the shugurra crown..." He pushed in the first brick. "Then the lapis lazuli rod...the necklace...the beads at her breast...her breastplate, where is it--oh, here it is...her gold bracelets...and her dress."
The stone door crunched and slowly rose. "Nice," Jack said, once it looked like it was clear.
"And no crumbling ceiling this time," Daniel said, sitting back and looking satisfied for a brief second before he ducked his head and began to gather his books.
"Which might mean it hasn't been quite as long since someone came in," Carter pointed out.
Jack grimaced and gripped his gun. "Heads up," he said.
...x...
"No one in the immediate vicinity," Jack said after enough time had passed that it wouldn't feel like jinxing the mission to say it. "Daniel, how's that old stuff looking?"
"Old," Daniel said, frowning at a tablet lying on the ground.
Jack shone his flashlight in his direction.
"Jack," Daniel complained, blocking the light from his eyes. "There's not as much writing here as there was inside Marduk's temple," he explained, "but there are a few tablets and other slabs that look like they were broken off something. We should be able to take them back with us, but last time we went around touching things in a ziggurat, I set off a booby trap, so..."
"Good call," Jack agreed. "Carter, take a good look at whatever Daniel wants to touch before he touches it. When you're done, the two of you load up the FRED and get it ready to send back through the 'gate." She nodded and moved to crouch next to Daniel. "Teal'c, let's take a look around this ziggurat."
Later, as Teal'c followed him through to another chamber in the ziggurat, Jack commented, "Would it kill them to put up some lights in these places?"
Teal'c gave him a look that managed to be expressive despite the darkness.
"Do you recognize any anything?" Jack said. "What do you know about this...Ishy's person?"
"Ishtar," Teal'c corrected. "I know very little of Ishtar's recent activities--only that she was once a powerful minor Goa'uld under the rule of Ra, and it is believed that she retained some of his army after his death."
"Ra?" Jack said. He didn't have to be Daniel to know that was where reality broke from mythology.
"Indeed. Apophis did not know of her most recent whereabouts while I served under him."
"So...not dead," Jack clarified.
Teal'c tilted his head. "I do not know."
"Great," he muttered as they found another chamber. "All we need is--whoa, hold it right there. Dammit, Teal'c, tell me that's not a--"
Instead of answering, Teal'c reached up to his radio and said, "Major Carter, Daniel Jackson. We have found a sarcophagus."
"Uh-oh," Daniel said helpfully.
"We just took the FRED to the Stargate," Carter added, "but we're on our way back."
Jack sighed as they looked at the sarcophagus. "So help me," he said, "if we get trapped in one of these places because of some booby trap again..."
"This one does not appear to be sealed like the one we found in the temple of Marduk," Teal'c noted. "There are controls to allow it to open from the exterior."
"But not the interior?" Jack clarified.
"If I could see the interior," Teal'c said, "I would tell you that, O'Neill."
"Jack, where are you?" Daniel's voice called.
Not turning around, Jack called back, "In here!"
Carter appeared in the corridor behind them, Daniel following. "Should we try to open it, sir?"
"I'll bet there's a Goa'uld in there," Daniel said nervously, pulling out his gun.
"If Ishtar is in that sarcophagus," Carter said, "right now would probably be the best time to take her out--while she's just woken up, possibly a little disoriented, and clearly not surrounded by her armies..."
"Blow it up," Jack suggested.
"Uh..." Daniel said. "Ancient ziggurat...cave in...not to mention wanton destruction of a--"
The sarcophagus creaked.
Jack motioned for the others to take up positions to keep the Goa'uld pinned between them and the wall, then raised his gun. Teal'c crouched behind it, facing Jack but not in his line of fire; this way, at least one of them would be out of the Goa'uld's immediate field of vision.
The doors began to swing open. Jack squinted past the glare of light coming from the interior of the box and--
"Naramu?" a voice said from within. A woman sat up, and her eyes glowed as she surged to her feet and climbed out of the sarcophagus, facing Jack, Carter, and Daniel.
Gunfire rang out. Jack cursed himself a second later when he realized the bullets were bouncing off an energy shield around the woman, and he let go of his gun to pull his knife and whip it toward her.
It caught Ishtar in the side--not fatal, but enough to make her stumble.
Carter kept up her fire, and a single bullet made it through to Ishtar before the Goa'uld could raise her shield again. Daniel scrambled behind a pillar just in time to avoid a concussive blast from the ribbon device.
"Hold!" Jack yelled as Teal'c rose from where he'd been crouching behind the sarcophagus and tackled the woman from the back, slamming her to the ground.
It felt like only a second later when Teal'c was thrown off with a jerk, but when Ishtar stood again and raised her hand, the crystal was cracked.
"Ashtapiru erhu!" she hissed, staring at the broken ribbon device.
"Now!" Jack ordered. Even as he pulled his gun around again, Carter and Daniel opened fire.
Ishtar, goddess of war though she might be, didn't stand a chance under the assault and fell to the ground, bleeding and unmoving.
"Teal'c?" Carter called.
"I am fine," Teal'c said, pushing himself back to his hands and knees. He reached toward her and tested for a pulse. "The Goa'uld is dead," he announced.
"Now, that's what I call a clean strike," Jack said, unable to help feeling a little giddy at the thought that they'd just defeated a Goa'uld, just like that. Daniel was staring at the bullet hole-ridden body with something like both horror and fascination, so Jack added, "Carter, Daniel, make sure there are no more surprises in the sarcophagus and see if there's anything we can salvage."
Jack joined Teal'c at the Goa'uld's side, trying to decide whether to try to strip her of her ribbon device, even if it was broken, and whatever other technology she might have on her person. It was an odd feeling. They said all the time that the Goa'uld were as mortal as anyone--it was the rhetoric they often spouted to Jaffa starting to doubt their gods--but it wasn't often that they saw the proof so starkly like this. Without their armies and their technology--in this case, a little metal glove--Goa'uld were as easy to kill as any human.
"Damn," Carter's voice said. "There's damage to the sarcophagus."
"Well, she was definitely Ishtar," Daniel's voice said. "There's a lion amulet in here and a...a sym-symbol...the star...uh...the--"
"Daniel?" Carter said.
Jack turned around to see Daniel sway against the sarcophagus. Carter grabbed his arm. "What's going on?" Jack said.
"There's something..." Carter said, leaning over the sarcophagus as she steadied Daniel. "It's like some kind of mist--"
Without warning, Daniel's head whipped toward them and fixed on Ishtar's body. "No," Daniel said. "No--my queen!"
"What the--" Jack started, but then Daniel was throwing himself against Carter's grasp in his attempts to reach the Goa'uld. "Daniel, what the hell!" He stood, and then felt the ground start to tilt under his feet. "Whoa."
"Hathor," Carter said suddenly as Jack tried to blink his way back to focus. "We were saying she was like Hathor--Daniel, stop, it's me!" She barely managed to pull Daniel's gun from his hand and toss it out of reach.
A beeping sound came from the sarcophagus. "An alarm," Teal'c said as Jack blinked and tried to think.
"For what?" Carter said. "A trap?"
"Perhaps a call to her Jaffa," Teal'c said.
"Huh," Jack said, shaking his head.
"Teal'c, get Daniel to the Stargate; I'll take the colonel," Carter ordered. "We have to get out of here!"
"I'm okay," Jack said, shaking his head to clear it. "What's--" Carter took him unceremoniously by the arm as Teal'c dragged Daniel out of the room. "Where's he going? What the hell are you doing, Major?"
"Sorry, sir," she said, pushing him roughly toward the exit. Jack turned back to Ishtar, on the ground, noticing for the first time that she was an exceptionally beautiful goddess. "Sir, you have to keep moving. We're in danger here."
"Are you giving me an order?" he asked her, wondering why his feet weren't resisting as she pushed him out of the ziggurat door.
"Uh...s-sure," she said. "Kind of."
"Well, stop it," Jack said, planting his feet. He turned again. "No--we should go back. She's hurt. What happened?"
"Oh, god," Carter said as he made his way back to their queen. "I'm so, so sorry about this, sir."
"About what?" he said, and then something smashed into his head.
...x...
19 January 2001; Infirmary, SGC; 2000 hrs
"...so on one hand," Carter's voice was saying when Jack opened his eyes to a splitting headache, "we killed a minor Goa'uld who may have been in control of some of Ra's former army. We even collected plant samples containing a chemical that seems to be the synthetic precursor to the drug Hathor and Ishtar used to subdue men. On the other hand..."
"Oy," Jack groaned.
"...there's that impending court-martial," she finished.
Jack caught a blurry glimpse of Carter, Teal'c, and General Hammond just before Dr. Fraiser appeared next to his bed. "Ow," he told her.
"I can imagine, Colonel," Fraiser said, shining a penlight into his eyes just to see how much more she could make his head hurt.
"Get that thing away from me," he snapped, batting the light away. "What the--?"
"Jack, shut up," Daniel said from the next to him. Jack turned his head gingerly to see Daniel in the process of covering his own head with his sheets.
Fraiser turned to him. "Stop that, Mr. Jackson," she ordered.
"No," Daniel groaned, clutching the edge of the sheet when she tried to pull it down. "I think...I'm going to be sick."
Jack squinted at his cowering linguist in consternation. "'s wrong with him?"
"How do you feel, Colonel?" Fraiser said, giving up on the sheets and snaking two fingers in to take Daniel's pulse from his wrist instead.
"Like I've got a hangover from hell," he said, looking nervously at the general and wondering why and how he'd gotten wasted and ended up in the infirmary on base, and how Daniel had gotten wasted with him. And then--"Hey, wait, Carter hit me! Why did you hit me?"
Carter glanced at Teal'c. "Sorry, sir."
"Well, as far as we can tell, Daniel got a much bigger dose than you," Fraiser said. "But he didn't get the knock to the head to go with it, so I think you might be about even."
"Major Carter has nothing to apologize for, Colonel," Hammond said.
"Ah, General--sir--" Jack said, holding up a hand. "Not so loud."
Daniel rustled his sheet feebly. "Yes. Please."
"Oh, don't be a baby," Jack said. "Carter hit me." Then he forced his brain to think. "Wait--dose? Of what?"
"There was a drug stored within Ishtar's sarcophagus," Teal'c said.
"Ishtar's love was said to be dangerous even to her lovers," Daniel mumbled. "Told you."
"That's not 'love,'" Jack said incredulously, then winced, closing his eyes.
"She said 'beloved' when she came out," Daniel said.
"Hathor did that with her men, too," Carter put in helpfully.
"They'll be fine, General," Fraiser said. "We know from experience with Hathor that this wears off in a few hours with no long-term side effects."
"Sir," Carter said, looking at Jack, "we think the sarcophagus was rigged with a trap, in a way, and not just with that mist. I didn't have time to take a good look, but I saw something that could have been a transmitter of some sort."
"Uh-huh," Jack said through the pounding in his temples and wondering why she was trying to tell him technical stuff now, of all times.
"We very nearly met resistance as we attempted to escape through the Stargate," Teal'c said. "Someone was attempting to dial into P30-255 even as we dialed the SGC. It is possible that Ishtar planned for her armies to return to her once someone opened the sarcophagus."
"We just redialed," Hammond added. "There are Jaffa at the 'gate wearing Ra's tattoo and tracks suggesting that there are a lot more elsewhere on the planet."
"It seems we have deprived them of their goddess and leader," Teal'c said, smugly happy.
"Yay," Jack said halfheartedly.
"What about the tablets?" Daniel said, pulling the sheet down far enough to open one eye. "We loaded them onto the FRED."
"Yes, Daniel, I got your tablets before the Jaffa got there," Carter said. "They're still in decontamination right now, but I'll have them sent to your office."
"Okay," Daniel said. "Then can people please go away? With due respect and everything."
"Please do," Jack agreed. "Sir."
Hammond chuckled and said, "All right, gentlemen. Consider yourselves lucky: your team's the only one with two members--half of you--who weren't affected by the drug."
Jack decided he'd feel lucky when his head didn't feel like it was going to implode. "If you say so, sir," he said doubtfully.
"Let's let them sleep this off," Fraiser suggested. "Colonel O'Neill, Daniel, I'm going to give you a mild sedative to help you along."
Jack waited patiently for the patter of boots and the clicking of heels away from the bed to tell them that everyone was gone.
He finally dared to open his eyes again--the lights had been dimmed, thank god, and the throbbing in his skull was dimming, too--and found that Daniel had decided on the same and was staring blearily at him.
"We killed Ishtar," Daniel said quietly.
"Yeah," Jack said. "And without major injuries."
"Ishtar was dead in less than a minute, and Apophis has survived the destruction of entire motherships and fleets and...and moons."
"Well, most of them don't lock themselves in sarcophagi," Jack pointed out. "And we still got sprayed, anyway, which would've been bad if we hadn't had Carter and Teal'c." The general was right, he realized--any other team would probably have been lost completely to Ishtar. There weren't many mixed-gender field teams--the only other one currently in operation had one woman out of five members, while SG-1 had had a woman and a Jaffa dealing with one drugged man and a civilian teen. They were lucky, Jack allowed.
"I wonder why Ishtar was in there," Daniel mused. "You don't think someone put her in?"
Jack wondered if Daniel ever stopped thinking, decided not, and said, "She wasn't locked in. She might've put herself in there on purpose."
Daniel rubbed his eyes. "But why?"
"She worked for Ra, right?" Jack said, yawning. "Ra gets killed, she gets a few...what, some stray Jaffa?"
"And maybe some desert or defect to another army...obviously, she didn't even have enough to keep guards around."
"Yep. And then Ra's brother rolls into town with Sokar's army and whomever else he's taken over, because Apophis has taking over a lot of armies lately..."
"So she was alone for some reason and hiding from more powerful Goa'ulds?" Daniel said. "I guess it's possible. Probably figured if it was a Goa'uld who came, she'd be able to get into his or her service, like she did with Ra."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Could be."
After a moment, he heard, "Do you think we could have saved her? I didn't have my zat'nik'tel, but Teal'c had one."
"The host? I think it would have seemed like a good plan until we found out about the drug and ended up with a zatted Goa'uld and two doped-up and armed men to take care of all at once. Then the sarcophagus--a sudden withdrawal from a bad addiction can kill someone, do you know that?"
"I know."
"Well, Ishtar was in that box constantly for...months, years, we don't know how long she was in there. And if she was really old, she wouldn't've survived long without the symbiote keeping her alive anyway."
Daniel was silent for a while. "But we should have thought about it, at least. Capturing her alive. Maybe the Tok'ra could have helped her, even with the sarcophagus withdrawal."
"I thought about it," Jack said. "It wasn't worth the risk, and it happened too fast, anyway."
"I should have thought about it," Daniel amended. "Instead of only thinking about killing the Goa'uld. A year ago, I would have. A few months ago, even."
Which seemed a little foolish--Daniel had had about ten seconds before she Goa'uld had started to come out. Even physically, they probably couldn't have saved her, and that was that. It wasn't something they could afford to take minutes wondering about every time. Daniel hadn't wasted time wondering on the planet, though, which was what counted.
"You helped keep all of us alive by shooting at her," Jack said. "I'll bet she wasted a couple of seconds being confused by the bullets. A zat would've been more familiar and snapped her into immediate action, and any hesitation from us might've gotten us killed. All right?"
"Maybe you're right," Daniel said, sounding only partially convinced.
"I'm always right."
A few minutes later, Jack heard Daniel yawn. "Are you sleepy?" Daniel said.
Jack considered. It took a long time to consider.
"Jack?"
"Huh?" he said.
"Me, too," Daniel said.
"Yeah," Jack agreed.
XXXXX
Continued in Part b...