SG1-25 Hostile Ground(104)

“What’s the ‘red’?” she asked, not liking the color connotations and hoping it was just an irrational instinct.

“You’ll see,” he replied, his voice already an echo in the darkness. “They’ll find you.”

The four of them stood staring up the shaft for a while longer, as if he would suddenly reappear, but when the only sound was the receding clang of boots on metal, Colonel O’Neill looked back down at the hole in the wall. “Follow the Yellow Brick Road, huh?”

Sam took a breath. “Sir, are you sure about this?”

He pulled his cap off and tucked it into his vest, scrubbing a hand through his mussed hair. “Nope, not really,” he said, and stepped through the hole.

The passage was barely that. Crowded and knotted up with rocks and fallen debris, they had to watch their footing and scramble through narrow gaps. But these weren’t the roughhewn caves of Aedan and his people. The debris had a distinct manmade look about it, fabricated with metal rods which would have posed a nasty hazard if not for their flashlights. Daniel noticed the same thing.

“I wonder what this place was built for,” he said, picking his way over fallen masonry.

“Must be some kind of bunker,” said the colonel. “I guess they knew the war was coming.”

“It doesn’t look like it offered much protection.”

“Not if they had bunker-busters. Wouldn’t matter how deep underground it was then.”

“It was most likely a strategic location then, O’Neill,” said Teal’c.

“Probably.”

Sam kicked at the crumbling concrete in her path. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Carter?”

She cast her light over the low-hanging ceiling and then down at the floor. There was another story here, another clue to be found.

Sixteen hours thirty. Twelve hours twenty.

“This damage seems to radiate from the ground up,” she said. “It’s almost as if…”

“As if they self-destructed,” Colonel O’Neill said; he wasn’t asking a question.

“I guess they had no option.”

“They must’ve been pretty desperate.”

Just like us, she thought.

“Red!” Daniel pointed his flashlight at a clear space in the middle of the floor, and sure enough there, visible through the dust and rocks, was a streak of red. Just paint, from the look of it, contrary to the gruesome image Hunter’s instructions had conjured in her head. Scuffed and faded, but definitely red.

The colonel pushed away some of the rubble with his boot. “There’s more of it up ahead. Is that another passage?”

It was a passage, barely noticeable amid the wreckage around it.

“I guess this is our turn off,” said the colonel, and set off into the gloom.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN




The steel doors to the mountain closed with a clang, the noise echoing along the rest of the tunnel. Propped with his back against the wall, Makepeace fought down nausea as Jefferson hurriedly bandaged his bleeding arm. There was nothing he could do about his blown knee.

“Booker,” Makepeace said, spitting words through gritted teeth, “get Maybourne down to the gate room.”

Booker glanced at Jefferson, uncertain. “Yes sir.”

Something impacted on the door, ringing it like a gong. “Staff blast,” Jefferson said. “Those doors won’t hold them long.”

Behind them the tunnel opened up into a parking lot and behind that was the security point and the elevators down into the complex. There were people there too, a last and hopeless line of defense. Makepeace looked up at the ceiling as another staff blast impacted on the doors.

“I don’t know why they’re bothering with the door,” Maybourne said. “They can use ring transporters to get in here.”

“But no deeper into the base,” Makepeace said. “Not without a ring platform. They’ll have to fight their way in from here.”

Maybourne glanced toward the elevators. “The sooner we get to the Stargate, the better.”

Makepeace stared at him, at his jowly face, at the arrogance he still saw in the man’s eyes — and the cowardice. Maybourne was still running but Makepeace wasn’t, not anymore, it was time to pay the price for what he’d done.

“Jefferson,” he said, “help me up.”

The major hauled him upright, and Makepeace took a moment to let the dizziness pass. He could only stand on the one leg, but that would be enough. “How many explosives can we get our hands on?”

He saw Jefferson exchange another glance with Booker. “How much do we need, sir?”

“Enough to blow the tunnel, to bring this whole thing down on top of their heads.”