SG1-25 Hostile Ground(4)
“Teal’c?” Daniel’s voice was weak, panicked. He clutched the wound on his side and his hand came away bloody, the sodden dressing falling to the ground. “Oh no…”
There was no time to help him. Teal’c fired again and Sam felt for the final symbol before she slammed her hand down on the central button.
Behind her, the gate began to spin. She risked a quick glance, only to see the colonel pinned down behind the spinning gate. “Sir!”
“I know!” he barked.
She could see the Jaffa approaching now, from all directions. And then the gliders were back, screaming overhead, mud spewing up as they hammered the ground around the Stargate. Several Jaffa went down, victims of friendly fire, and in that moment of confusion Sam jumped up and opened fire on their ranks. “Colonel!”
He bolted from behind the gate as the seventh chevron locked, diving for cover behind the DHD just as the wormhole exploded out of the Stargate, hissing into the cold rain.
Behind Teal’c, the gliders had swung around for another pass, their cannons strafing the ground in a direct line from the trees to the Stargate. Sam punched through their IDC as soon as the vortex stabilized, and the colonel dragged Daniel to his feet, hauling him toward the gate with one arm while he toggled his radio. “Med team to the gate room! Now!” And then he was gone, practically falling into the wormhole with Daniel in his arms as the oncoming gliders peppered the ground in front of the gate with cannon fire.
Two down, two to go.
Sam exchanged a swift glance with Teal’c. He nodded and opened fire on the Jaffa as she dashed up the steps, kneeling to cover him as he made his own run.
“Major Carter, now!” Teal’c yelled. Together, they threw themselves into the wormhole just as the stone steps exploded beneath their feet.
They tumbled in too fast, and yet somehow the passage through the wormhole took forever — an endless moment of nothingness, of being stretched and reformed and then spat out the other end.
Sam landed hard, hitting the floor with her shoulder and rolling over with too much velocity to get her feet under her. She wound up sprawled on her back — not exactly a dignified homecoming.
She opened her eyes, expecting to see Hammond’s concerned face peering down at her. Maybe Janet’s.
But what she saw was a low, snowy sky.
“What the —?” Scrambling to her feet, she looked around in shock. Teal’c was doing the same, in a low defensive crouch, his weapon raised.
They stood in a blasted landscape, nothing but rock and gray, ashy dirt. To her left, in the far distance, she could make out hills, their peaks shrouded in cloud. There was a sound too, a low roar like the crash of waves against the shore. Snow fell, thin and dirty, and Sam shivered in her muddy, rain-sodden clothes. It was freezing. “Colonel?” she called. “Daniel?”
“Over here.”
She turned. Behind her, half hidden by the crescent of the Stargate, Colonel O’Neill crouched over Daniel who looked like he was out cold. The colonel’s med kit was scattered on the ground and he was grimly pressing another dressing onto Daniel’s wound. It didn’t look like the bleeding was stopping. He glanced up when he felt her eyes on him, his expression as bleak as the landscape. “Major,” he said, “you wanna tell me what the hell just happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know?”
“I —” Why did he always expect her to have the answer right away? She bit back her frustration, her rising panic, and peered up at the Stargate, searching for a solution. It was at an odd angle, tilted up and backward — which explained the rough landing — and it was scorched like it had seen some action. But it obviously still worked, so there was no reason they couldn’t gate home.
She looked around for the DHD. It had to be… It was probably…
Oh crap.
“Yeah,” the colonel said, returning his attention to Daniel. “We’re screwed.”
CHAPTER TWO
There were certain truths Colonel Robert Makepeace understood.
First, the world was in clear and present danger from hostile alien forces possessed of overwhelming military superiority and hell-bent on the enslavement of the entire human race. Second, the Stargate Program was run by a rats’ nest of bureaucrats and politicians who spouted BS about building alliances and upholding American values, all the while keeping their beady eyes fixed on the budget, or the next election, and blind to the horrifying reality beyond the Stargate. In Makepeace’s opinion, those two truths did not sit happily together.
Unfortunately, General Hammond — for all his Texan charm — had one foot firmly planted in the Pentagon. He’d drunk the Kool-Aid and seemed happy to bet their future on the friendship of their so-called allies: the Asgard, the Tollan, and the Tok’ra. But the truth was, if they couldn’t use any of their allies’ technology to take the fight to the Goa’uld, there was no damn point in sending good men and women out there to die in defense of those alliances.