SG1-25 Hostile Ground(93)

“Carter, it’s not what you think.” He sighed, sounding frustrated. “There’s a lot more going on here than you know about.”

She looked at him, feeling a new pulse of anxiety. “What do you mean? What’s going on, sir?”

He blew out a long breath, considering his answer. For a while he said nothing, but she could see the frown furrowing his forehead and knew that, whatever this was, it was serious. Eventually, and in a low voice, he said, “Something’s wrong — at home.”

Her heart rate kicked up a notch. “At home?”

“I can’t — I’m under orders — not to tell you about it. I shouldn’t even have said that much, but given our current situation…”

A new fear struck her, nebulous and uncertain, but even more terrifying than the Amam. “Sir, is it the SGC? What —?”

“I can’t tell you,” he warned. “Swear to God, I wish I could. You’ll just have to trust me, Carter, when I say we really need to get home fast —” He broke off suddenly, eyes darting past her shoulder. “What was that?”

Turning, she saw it too, a flicker of movement in the shadows, the same as before. Something there, then gone again. A sliver of cold ran up her spine. “I saw it.” Slipping the sleeping bag from her shoulders, she grabbed her weapon and rose slowly to her feet.

Behind her, the colonel did the same. “Easy,” he murmured, “there are people behind every damn wall.”

“Yes sir.”

Something else moved, like a shadow within a shadow. She shook her head and blinked. It didn’t feel real, somehow, everything felt skewed.

“I don’t like this,” the colonel said.

“No sir.”

Then a sudden shaft of familiar white light shot down from the sky a couple hundred meters to their left, followed by two more, even closer. Something whined overhead, the backdraft rattling the camp. The colonel followed it with the nose of his weapon, but didn’t fire. “Fighter,” he said.

And suddenly there was screaming and running feet coming their way. Panic in the dark.

“Uh-oh,” the colonel said, backing up closer to Hunter’s shack.

“It’s the Amam,” Sam realized. “They’ve come to feed.”

“Convenient,” he growled.

She darted him a look. “What do you mean?”

“Crazy said he could trace me.” There was a cold kind of self-recrimination in his voice. “I’ve brought them right here.”

“Sir, you don’t know that.”

“Well otherwise it’s just a huge damn coincidence, Carter, and I don’t believe in those.”

The running feet and panicked screams were getting closer now, the ominous sound of a mob in flight. Sometimes, Sam thought grimly, there was nothing more dangerous than people.

“Sir, we have to get out of here.”

“I know! Daniel, Teal’c —”

The canvas flew back and Teal’c was already there, staff weapon in hand. Daniel stood behind him, talking urgently to Hunter, whose wife was kneeling on the floor, pulling up several old planks to reveal a shallow hole in the dirt. To hide the child, Sam realized, with a jolt.

“Mob,” the colonel said. “We need to go.”

“Hunter says it’s safer to stay,” Daniel said. “The Amam like to hunt so if you stay quiet they’ll usually pass by in search of, uh, livelier prey.”

“Not this time,” the colonel said. “I’m the one they want.”

“Sir, you don’t know —”

“Teal’c,” he said, barreling right over her objection, “you’re with me. Carter, Daniel — stay with Hunter. We’ll get back to you when we can. Maintain radio silence.”

And with that they were gone, disappearing into the dark just ahead of the vanguard as the panicking horde spilled like floodwater through the myriad alleyways of the camp.

Sam backed up into Hunter’s fragile shelter. Crouching at the entrance, her weapon trained, she watched people stagger past, desperate and frightened. Behind her, she could hear the child whimpering and Daniel’s quiet, reassuring voice talking to Hunter.

But outside people were screaming and her chest tightened in pain; she knew how they were dying and it horrified her.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE




Colorado Springs was burning.

The attack had begun before he left the base, dull booms echoing down into the mountain, rattling lights and turning frightened faces up to the ceiling.

Topside, things were worse. Death Gliders, flying in pairs, dropped out of the clouds and flew in long strafing runs across the city. From the direction of the Air Force Academy, Makepeace could see plumes of black smoke, but there were fighters in the air too — F-16s, scrambled from Peterson, roaring overhead to engage the enemy.