STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust Read online

  “There was once writing here,” he said finally. “Carved into this wall. The coloration is gone, but I am able to identify the characters.”

  Carter aimed her flashlight at the wall, but saw nothing. “What does it say?”

  “There are exhortations to Ra, and instructions for those who enter the Pit of Sorrows.”

  “Instructions for what?”

  “Preparing oneself for death.”

  Carter thought back to Daniel’s initial translation: a deep hole, weeping or lamenting. It wasn’t a huge leap from that to an ominous title like Pit of Sorrows. Even translating from one human language was an imprecise business. Trying to convert Goa’uld to English must have been especially fraught, even if most of that species did appear to be completely bilingual.

  I guess sometimes you just need to see something written down.

  “At least we know we’re in the right place,” said O’Neill. He walked to the corner of the wall and peered around it, aiming the flashlight. “Whoa…”

  “What do you see?” Carter asked him. She trotted across the gritty floor to cover him, wondering why the writing couldn’t be more easily seen. As Daniel had said earlier, System Lords tended to like their statements to be obvious. It didn’t make sense that they would be subtle, not with such a message.

  Perhaps time had worn the coloration away, although that didn’t seem very likely either. The System Lords, immensely long-lived, built to last.

  She reached the corner, brought the gun and the light up again. Past the edge of the wall, the structure opened out in a strange way, and it took Carter a second or two to realize quite what she was seeing. But once she had the spatial relationships fixed in her mind, it became simple.

  The inside of the structure was a flat-topped pyramid, maybe twenty meters across. There were four walls set around its centre, not meeting at the corners, but free-standing, so that she had a clear view from one corner of the pyramid to the other, or would have done had the darkness not been so intense.

  Within the four walls, something tall glittered dully in the flashlight beams.

  O’Neill was already moving forwards. Ahead of him was a squat dais, square and stepped, and vast shapes loomed out of the shadows to overhang it. Carter brought her light up and saw statues, hawk-headed and utterly black, their arms raised in supplication. Each of them was three or four times her own height.

  Between them, at the top of the dais, was what looked like a waist-high column of shining gold.

  The sight was mesmerizing. Carter could see that the column was ornate, ridged and fluted in a design she couldn’t quite grasp at her distance. There was something about its shape that was half church font, half communion goblet, but the proportions of it were oddly disturbing. In the midst of this frightening darkness, surrounded by four granite titans, the golden thing sparked nothing within her but unease.

  She moved the light around, unwilling to fixate on the column while the shadows could still conceal horrors. As she did so, the sound of dust shifting echoed back to her from the far corner.

  She froze. “Colonel!” she hissed urgently.

  He knew her well enough to recognize the tone of voice, as did Teal’c. The Jaffa dropped to one knee, his staff weapon snapping open with a whine of barely-restrained energy. O’Neill was off the steps in seconds, taking up position to cover Carter as she crept forwards. “What is it?”

  “Possible movement, northwest corner.” She paused halfway along the strange inner wall, and as she did the dust ahead of her moved again. There was another sound, too, very faint, like something trying to breathe.

  She still couldn’t see the source of the noises. Her flashlight beam tracked left and right along the floor, picking out random piles of dust, and clusters of what looked like burned sticks, pieces of curved pottery or stone. She felt one of the objects beneath her boot as she moved on, but it gave no resistance to her weight, merely crumbled to nothing beneath her.

  Reflexively, she swallowed. Her mouth was still dry from the dust she’d breathed in, and it was hard not to cough.

  At least it didn’t taste bad. It didn’t taste of anything.

  She had reached the corner. The piles of powder were higher here, as if some breeze had caused the stuff to drift. Carter aimed her flash at the floor, completely baffled.

  A human skull leered back up at her.

  Carter suppressed a jolt of shock, swallowed hard, and then dropped slowly into a crouch, running her light up and down the length of the corpse. “I’ve got a body here,” she called.

  “One of Miles’ people?”

  “I don’t think so. Looks like it’s been here a long time.”

  “No real surprise there, Carter.”

  Something wasn’t right. “Hold on…”

  Despite her unease, she forced herself to look more closely at the body. At first she had thought it ancient, a tattered, mummified thing, little more than pale bone and papery, patchwork skin, half-buried in dust. But now she could see it more closely, there were details that didn’t add up. The few scraps of fabric that still adhered to the corpse looked modern — there was a Levis label near the hip, a button half-sunk between two ribs. A sad little pile of fragments near one hand that might once have been a watch.

  Strands of white-blonde hair around the skull.

  Carter took her hand off the MP-5’s grip, reached out, and tried to lift some of the hair, but it simply went to powder between her finger and thumb. She grimaced, tried to wipe the stain it had left against her jacket, but the movement caused her gun to swing free on its strap. The barrel tapped the corpse’s shoulder.

  There was a soft, soughing noise as the entire ribcage sank into itself, collapsing into a pile of gray ash and powdery, gritty dust. The same stuff, Carter noticed, that was all over the floor.

  The same stuff that still clung to the inside of her mouth.

  She jerked to her feet, gagging, running her sleeve hard along her open mouth, desperately trying to get the awful stuff out of her. She heard O’Neill running towards her, boots crunching over the remains of countless human beings, of limbs and skulls and hearts and minds all rotted to powder in this frigid darkness, and the realization of what she was surrounded by made her stomach flip. A wave of nausea washed up from her feet to her head, and she bent forwards to steady herself against the wall, using the feeling of cold, hard stone against her hand to steady herself.

  That was where she was when a skeletal hand reached out of the shadows and grabbed hold of her ankle.

  Greg Kemp had been a good-looking man, Carter remembered from the faxed file she had read on the C-130. Twenty-eight years old, pale sandy hair, a kind, pleasant face that suited spectacles. Almost handsome.

  He wasn’t handsome any more. Whatever had turned Laura Miles’ left arm into dust had chewed this man up and spat him back out again.

  The arm was the only limb he could move. One of his legs looked largely intact, but there was a portion of his hip that had probably taken some major nerves with it when it had crumbled. There was no way he could have moved out of the corner, not even by crawling. If he’d even tried to stand, Carter thought despairingly, he’d probably have crashed apart like an ill-made scarecrow.

  What hadn’t been turned to ash looked ancient, shriveled and dry, as if he had been buried in hot sand for a thousand years.

  If there was any mercy to be found in this situation, Carter reflected, it was that Kemp didn’t actually seem to be in any pain. Distress, certainly — after all, how many hours had he remained in this Pit of Sorrows, staring out at the ashy corpse of Anna Andersson? Thirty? More?

  Even the thought of it made Carter want to close her eyes and run. Instead she focused her attentions on the stricken man sitting with his back against the black stone wall, and tried to make out what he was saying.

  He had been trying to talk ever since he had grabbed at her, but none of the sounds he was making sounded like language. She wondered if he was irreparab
ly brain-damaged by the assault, or if the mechanisms of speech had been lost to him physically. In either case, she decided, giving him a little water probably couldn’t make things worse.

  When she reached for her canteen, O’Neill put a hand out to stop her. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “It might kill him. He doesn’t look like he could handle a coughing fit right now.”

  “You’re right, sir,” she said. “But he’s been down here a long time. I think I’d want something to drink, even if it did, you know…”

  He took his hand away, and nodded. “Sure. Good call.”

  Kemp spilt most of the water she gave him; his mouth wasn’t the right shape any more. But what little went down his throat didn’t seem to cause him too much pain. He coughed at first, but thankfully Carter’s worst fears were not realized. The man did not shiver apart in front of her.

  Teal’c appeared around the corner. “There are no other survivors,” he reported. “I have appraised Daniel Jackson of our situation. He has contacted the airbase for medical assistance.”

  O’Neill opened his mouth to speak, but Kemp got there first. “Arra,” he said.

  His voice sounded like two dry surfaces being scraped together. “Mr Kemp, don’t try to talk.”

  “Arra,” he said again, his withered hand coming up. “Deh.”

  “Yeah, buddy, she’s dead,” said O’Neill quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  Anna. Carter gave the man a few more rivulets of water from the canteen. He nodded his heavy head in thanks.

  “Mr Kemp?” she began. “Did something attack you?”

  Another nod. The hand came up again. “Tha.”

  Carter looked back. He was pointing, vaguely, at the golden column up on its dais. Somehow that only confirmed her suspicions about the thing. She hadn’t liked the look of it since she had first laid eyes on it.

  “What is it?”

  “Doh no. Blac stah. Wanned ow hee.”

  She threw a glance at O’Neill, but he only shrugged. “I’m not sure I understand,” she told Kemp. “Wanted your…?”

  “Heat,” said Teal’c.

  Kemp nodded.

  Carter got up, turned to look back at the column. It seemed innocent, inanimate, but if what Kemp was saying made any sense at all, the body heat of three people — Anna Andersson, the mercenary Lucas Harlowe, and himself — had been enough to activate it.

  There were four people in the structure now. “Ah, Colonel?”

  “Way ahead of you,” O’Neill told her. He stood, and keyed his radio. “Daniel?”

  “Right here.”

  “We’re coming up. The survivor’s in a bad way — we’re going to need a rope sling.”

  “I’m on it.”

  He reached down to Kemp. “Okay, fella. Teal’c and I are going to lift you up and get you over to the door. Ready?”

  Carter stepped back to give her companions enough room, and held her light steady on Kemp’s ravaged body. They lifted him out of the dust with a horrible ease. He must have weighed little more than a child.

  They carried him slowly, and with infinite care, across the dust towards the base of the shaft. Carter could have stepped in and freed O’Neill’s hands, but he wore an expression that kept the suggestion from her lips. She wondered if, when Kemp was safely on a helicopter and away, Jack O’Neill would feel any better about the lives that had been lost on Sar’tua.

  Then she felt guilty for even thinking it.

  It didn’t take long to reach the doorway. Carter couldn’t help looking back towards the column every few moments, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. Maybe Kemp and the others had gotten closer, she thought.

  O’Neill called Daniel again as they reached the shaft. “How’s it going up there?”

  “Give me a couple more minutes,” he replied. His voice sounded a little odd, and Carter realized he must have been working with both hands while he was using the radio. She imagined him jamming the handset between his cheek and his shoulder as he put the sling together, and the mental image almost made her smile.

  The sooner she was above ground, the better. She’d had enough of being in the dark and the cold for one night. She felt as though the heat was leeching out of her very bones. The longer she spent down in the structure the colder she seemed to be getting.

  No, she realized, with a sudden, crawling unease. She was colder now than she had been a minute ago.

  O’Neill and Teal’c still had Kemp between them. Carter moved away from them, warily, back towards the corner, and then aimed her flashlight towards the column.

  Smoke was coming out of the top.

  “Colonel,” she yelled, bringing the gun up fast. “I think we’ve got a problem here!”

  Dark vapor was spilling languidly from the column’s upper edge, like dry ice in negative. But as it inched down the golden sides of the thing it was separating, splitting into myriad hairs and threads that writhed and coiled in the air.

  Some of them looked as if they were reaching out towards the beam of her flashlight. Black stuff, she thought wildly. Wanted our heat.

  They had all kept their distance from the golden pillar as much as possible, but the meager warmth of their bodies must have still been enough to arouse its dreadful appetite. Carter dropped to one knee, pulled out the stock of the MP-5 and pressed it back hard into her shoulder. Her finger touched the trigger, stayed there, just a little pressure on it as she squinted along the weapon’s iron sights, the squirming tendrils of shadow spilling out ahead of her.

  “Carter,” called O’Neill. “What the hell’s going on back there?”

  From the doorway he wouldn’t be able to see the column. “Just get him out,” she called back.

  A moment later Teal’c appeared next to her. He saw what was happening and snapped his staff into firing position, triggering the business end to spring open like a lethal flower. “O’Neill, we cannot remain here.”

  “Where’s Kemp?” hissed Carter.

  “Over O’Neill’s shoulder.”

  The thought was awful. Carter was about to answer him when something appeared above the rim of the column.

  She tightened her grip on the gun. A pale curve was rising, surrounded and half-obscured by the shadowy feelers, but before Carter could see what it was or squeeze off a shot, the column changed shape.

  The upper part of it unfolded into glittering metal leaves, each leaf flipping up and around, interlocking with a complicated metal noise. Carter had heard that sound before, in the armor of the Jaffa and the mutable technologies of the Goa’uld, but she had never seen a machine quite like the one she was watching now. Within moments the entire top section of it had become a fluted, armored cone.

  The smoky black wisps fell away as if severed, vanishing in the light of Carter’s flash.

  And then the Pit of Sorrows came to life.

  A deafening, unearthly gonging echoed out from every wall, the chime of a cracked iron bell beaten with a giant’s hammer, over and over. It made Carter drop the flashlight in an attempt to get a hand free and cover her ears, but the blindness that caused ceased to become a problem a moment later, when the structure lit up.

  Angled blocks were hinging out of the walls at floor level, each one pouring a sickly golden light out into the structure.

  Carter staggered up, disorientated.

  “We must leave.” Teal’c’s voice carried somehow, even past the gonging.

  They ran to the shaft together.

  O’Neill, she was gratified to see, was most of the way up the chain ladder with Kemp. The ladder itself was swinging wildly around, so she darted forwards and grabbed at the lowest rung, hauling it taut. She saw him look back down.

  “Get up here,” he called.

  “You first, sir. The ladder won’t hold.”

  “Dammit Carter —”

  “Colonel, I think that thing’s contained, whatever it was. The column —”

 
Her next words were lost as an almighty noise issued from the shaft.

  It sounded dreadful, the worst noise she could think of: it was the sound of stone splitting. Carter saw dark fragments dropping towards her, and she ducked away as pieces of granite thumped heavily into the dust at her feet.

  There was a dry hissing, and a gentle rain of sand sprinkled into her hair.

  “Oh no.” She could feel the floor shaking.

  A flashlight beam shone down into her eyes. It was Daniel. “Sam, come on! They’re out!”

  She got a foot onto the rung. “Teal’c, climb with me. I don’t know how much time we’ve got…”

  He didn’t answer, but then he didn’t have to. She found out, before she could even climb another rung that she didn’t have nearly enough.

  Looking up, she had a perfect view of the shaft, its surfaces illuminated in the harsh beam of Daniel’s flashlight. She saw the structure of it ripple, a wave of motion travel down towards her like a whiplash, and then every panel exploded inwards in sequence. This was no mere structural failure, she realized in that last, terrified second. There were bombs around the shaft, buried in the sand, and something had set every damned one of them off.

  Her reflexes kicked in. She jumped back, faster than she could have thought possible, and Teal’c caught her in mid air and swung her away as the shaft erupted down at her.

  They hit the floor together, rolled apart, and both scrambled back through the doorway just before the first tons of stone and sand smashed into the base of the shaft.

  And then there was no shaft. Carter saw, just for a second, a solid mass of rubble crashing down and compacting and filling the narrow space behind the doorframe before a panel of dark metal snapped up from the floor. She’d not even seen the slot it had been concealed in, but the force of its rise was stunning. A meter-long slab of black granite was in its path, and the panel sheared through it without trying.

  The severed end of the panel slammed down into the floor next to Carter’s foot.

  She got up, put her hands to the panel, but it was massively solid, unmoving. She couldn’t even hear the shaft coming apart behind it.