SG1-25 Hostile Ground(68)
Hunter nodded, but kept his gaze fixed on the corridor behind Jack. “We’re collecting intel,” he said. “On the Snatchers.”
“Intel?” Jack said, surprised by the word.
“For Hecate,” Hunter explained.
“Right.” For the Goa’uld — it was important to remember who he was dealing with here.
“Huh,” Daniel said suddenly, standing up straight behind the console. “That’s unexpected.”
Jack waited for him to elaborate, but he either forgot he’d spoken out loud or got distracted, because he was bending over the screen again, squinting at the text. Jack glanced at Carter, who just gave a small shake of her head and a shrug.
“Daniel,” Jack said. “What does it say?”
“Oh,” Daniel glanced up over the tops of his glasses. “Ah, I can’t actually read it.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t read it?”
“No.”
“And yet… ?” He gestured toward the console. “‘Unexpected’, you say?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, I definitely wasn’t expecting the language to be a derivative of Ancient.”
“Ancient?” Carter echoed in surprise. “Really?”
“Oh yeah,” Daniel nodded. “Without a doubt. Ancient was its root language — a long time ago, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Jack ran a hand through his hair, trying to quell his frustration. “So, what, these are some kind of flesh-eating zombie Ancients, now?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel said, with obvious delight.
“Okay.” He took a breath. “Carter?”
“I can’t interrogate the database, sir. There’s data streaming, but the interface isn’t responding.” She grimaced in annoyance. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think there’s anything here that can help us open the gate.”
He acknowledged what he’d suspected with a nod. Not what he wanted to hear but there was no point in wasting time on a dead end. He headed back inside to get his pack. “Right,” he said, “we’ll move out and —”
“Wait!” Daniel’s head was tipped to one side as he squinted at the screen. “Just — Okay, wait, I might have something. Huh…”
He’d disappeared down the rabbit hole again, but Jack figured they could spare a couple of minutes. If anyone could figure it out, it would be Daniel. “Two minutes,” he warned him, slinging his pack over one shoulder. “And then we’re outa here.”
If he heard, Daniel didn’t respond. Jack glanced at his watch, marking the time: he wasn’t joking about the two minutes.
It was evening back home, he noted. The sun would probably be setting. Hard to imagine, in this place, that home was still out there, that its billions of people were still running about oblivious to the threat they faced from so inconceivably far away. Hard to imagine that he’d been one of them, once. Oblivious.
Perhaps because he was thinking of home, something on the cluttered lab bench caught his eye. Was that… ? He peered closer. It was. Half buried beneath something that might, once, have been a Goa’uld hand device he saw a familiar symbol: Earth. Reaching out, he knocked the debris away to reveal a small, square block that looked like it could have been made out of polished soapstone. Five of its sides were smooth and blank, and the only thing on the sixth side was the symbol for Earth. Weird, he thought, that it would be here. But then he remembered the girl, Elspeth, with the symbol tattooed on her arm. Resistance, she’d called it, a symbol of rebellion.
“Okay,” Daniel said behind him, talking to Carter, “so the thing is, I don’t think this is actually a spoken language at all. The syntax is impossible…”
Jack peered more closely at the cube. It looked harmless enough so he touched it, smooth stone beneath his fingertips. He picked it up.
“Anyway,” Daniel was saying, “if I’m right then I think this, here in the corner, translates roughly as ‘schematic’.”
“That’s a map?” Carter said, sounding dubious.
Jack glanced up at them, turning the block over in his hands. “A map of the ship?”
“Well, it’s not Vegas,” Daniel said, one eyebrow lifted.
“Funny.” He nodded toward the console. “Can you see a DHD on there?”
“Just give us a minute…”
“I don’t see it,” Carter said shaking her head. “How is that a map?”
“Think of it more like an anatomical diagram of the body.”
Both he and Carter were bent over the screen now. “Oh! Okay, so we’re here?” Carter said, pointing. “That’s — Wait. Are those life signs?”