STARGATE SG-1-19-23-Ouroboros-s08 Read online

  Ouroboros

  Melissa Scott

  An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.

  Fandemonium Books

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  Surbiton

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  Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents

  RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON

  in

  STARGATE SG-1™

  AMANDA TAPPING CHRISTOPHER JUDGE

  and MICHAEL SHANKS as Daniel Jackson

  Executive Producers ROBERT C. COOPER BRAD WRIGHT

  MICHAEL GREENBURG RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON

  Developed for Television by BRAD WRIGHT & JONATHAN GLASSNER

  STARGATE SG-1 is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. ©1997-2013 MGM Television Entertainment Inc. and MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion Corp. ©2013 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  Photography and cover art: Copyright ©2013 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  WWW.MGM.COM

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Puzzles

  “I’M NOT buying it, Daniel.”

  Daniel Jackson turned away from the monitor, pointer in hand. Currently the screen was filled with a close-up of the carving over the door of the installation SG-1 had found on P2X-260. “Which part, exactly, aren’t you buying, Jack?”

  “All of it.” General Jack O’Neill squinted at him from the end of the briefing table. It still felt strange to have him there instead of General Hammond, to be a team of three instead of a team of four. Not that Jack hadn’t earned the promotion, and not that he didn’t deserve the chance to get out of the field, but it was just — odd.

  Teal’c tilted his head to one side. “That does not follow, O’Neill.”

  “It’s a metaphor.”

  Daniel hesitated — it was a figure of speech, certainly, but not actually a metaphor — and Sam Carter cleared her throat. “I really think Daniel’s onto something here, sir.”

  “What something?” O’Neill asked. “What I’m hearing is that you found an abandoned lab with about five data crystals left in it and ‘don’t touch, very dangerous’ plastered all over everything in giant letters.”

  “Yes and no,” Daniel said.

  O’Neill looked smug. “I heard yes.”

  “And no,” Daniel said firmly. He looked back at the screen. “It’s very clear from the artifact we found that this lab used to belong to Janus — the same Janus who built the time device we found on Maybourne’s planet.”

  “Who is settling in very nicely on his new home, by the way,” Jack said. “If anybody cares.”

  “Not particularly,” Daniel said. He looked back at the screen, pressed a button to move to a video clip of the lab’s exterior. It was a low building with a heavy stone roof, a style of architecture the Goa’uld had copied repeatedly, with varying degrees of success. A trio of children ran through the scene, which was mercifully silent, but Daniel flinched anyway, their infuriating chant running through his head yet again. Not that he’d ever really been able to get rid of it: every game anybody played seemed to be accompanied by the same monotonous nonsense syllables. By the end of their stay, even Teal’c had looked pained when it started up again. “We’ve had reason before to think that the Ancients weren’t happy with some of Janus’s experiments, and this seems to confirm it.” He touched another button to zoom in on the symbols that formed a band around the single door.

  “And those would be the ones you told me mean Very Very Bad Thing Do Not Touch,” Jack said.

  “Yes. Except in this case it’s a little more complicated.” Daniel worked the controls again, so that the video shifted, panning slowly across a second line of carving.

  “Looks to me like the same thing,” Jack said.

  “It does,” Daniel said. “But if you look more closely, you can see that this carving was done later, overlaying earlier symbols. And if you enhance them —” He adjusted the image again. “You get Janus’s name and a further set of characters.”

  “Which you can’t read,” Jack said.

  Daniel nodded. “Which I can’t read here. But once we got inside the lab…” He dismissed the exterior video, called up the tapes they’d made inside the installation. “There are some places where whoever closed down the lab wasn’t as thorough, and the symbols are legible. They seem to refer to Atlantis.”

  There was a little silence as all four of them stared at the screen. In the temporary lights they’d set up, the colors and the carving looked washed out, without subtlety, and somehow that emphasized the bareness of the room. Not that there were obvious gaps in a wall of equipment; there were no trailing wires or broken screens. Instead, there were the low platforms that crisscrossed the space — obviously the bases of missing consoles — and the narrow ledge that ran the length of the chamber’s wall. And nothing else, no machinery at all.

  “Daniel says that the warning signs are directed at Janus as well as at others,” Sam said. “And when you couple that with the absence of equipment here… I think he took whatever it was he was working on with him, before the other Ancients tried to shut him down.”

  “And you think that — something — has to do with Atlantis,” Jack said.

  “With getting to Atlantis,” Sam said. She held out her hand and Daniel passed her the remote. Sam ran quickly through the tape, found the sequence she wanted. “The lab wasn’t entirely stripped. We did find four data crystals, and our preliminary analysis suggests that Janus was attempting to build something that would supersede the Stargates. And, not incidentally, make it easier to reach Atlantis.”

  On the screen, Sam’s hands worried at a piece of carved stone that looked fractionally darker than the stones around it. She tugged, twisted, and abruptly the stone slid out of the wall, displaying a rack meant to hold crystals. It was big enough for power crystals, Daniel thought, but instead it held only a handful of the smaller crystals the Ancients used to store information — a last minute hiding place, surely, the crystals stashed and forgotten in a final rush to escape…

  “See, that’s where I’m not convinced,” Jack said. “Yes, I’d like to find a way to reach the Pegasus Galaxy that doesn’t require a ZPM — since we don’t have one to spare, and it doesn’t seem as though Weir and her people have found one so that they can dial us — but I just don’t see what good a big empty lab is going to do us.”

  “There has to be another lab,” Sam said. “Sir, it�
�s the only explanation. Janus knew he was in trouble, and had time to remove everything except these last crystals.”

  Daniel said, “All of this, all the warnings, the carvings, are an attempt to get control of whatever it was Janus was working on, either by finding him themselves, or by having the local human population notify them if he returned. The other Ancients thought this thing would work.”

  “You’re pushing it,” Jack said. He looked at Teal’c. “You got anything here?”

  “I believe it is worth further consideration,” the Jaffa said, slowly.

  “Ah,” Jack said. “But consideration where? Do we go back to P2X-260? Daniel said he got everything he was going to get.”

  “I never said that.” Except that he might have, after listening to that chant a few times too many.

  “You’ve got the tapes,” Jack said. “And you’ve got the crystals.” He pushed back his chair. “Unless something turns up on either of them — like, say, directions, a gate address, engraved invitations? — we’ve got other places that look more promising.”

  “I don’t really think so,” Daniel said. Sam gave him a look, but he plunged on anyway. “This is the most interesting lead we’ve had — ”

  “I don’t like interesting,” Jack said. He shook his head. “Give me something solid, and I’ll reconsider.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam said, and Teal’c tipped his head forward in grave acknowledgement.

  Daniel sighed — it wasn’t that Jack was wrong, precisely, but he didn’t have to like it — and nodded. “OK.”

  “I’m still right,” Daniel said. Sam gave him a look of disbelief as she ran her ID through the elevator control, and Daniel sighed. “Well, I’m right about the installation, anyway.”

  “I believe General O’Neill is correct,” Teal’c said. “Our chances of success are far greater if we first find a likely address.”

  “The question is how,” Sam said. “I didn’t want to say it, but those crystals weren’t in good shape. I’m having trouble getting anything coherent from them.”

  “Perhaps the inscriptions will prove more helpful,” Teal’c said. It was hard to tell, but Daniel thought he looked a little skeptical. He felt a bit skeptical about that himself. The Ancients had done a thorough job of destroying the sense of Janus’s carvings — and how likely was it, really, that Janus would have carved the address of his other secret lab on the walls for everyone to see? They were more likely to find some clue in the village that had grown up between the lab and the Stargate, even if it meant having to listen to that infuriating chant again.

  “I still think we should go back,” he said aloud, and this time he was sure Teal’c winced.

  “I do not wish to hear that song again, Daniel Jackson. Not unless it is absolutely necessary.”

  “Oh, don’t remind me!” Sam made a face. “I’d almost managed to get it out of my head. Ticky-tacky-gnat…”

  “Tiskla taskla —” Daniel stopped abruptly. That wasn’t it, either, but there was something about those syllables… “I’m going to stick around awhile,” he said. “I’ve — I’ve maybe got an idea.”

  “Need some help?” Sam asked. The elevator had arrived, and Teal’c absently braced his arm against the door to hold it back.

  “No,” Daniel said. “No, I’m good. I don’t actually know what I’m looking for yet…”

  Sam nodded — she’d heard that before — and stepped into the elevator. Teal’c followed, releasing the doors, and they slid shut with an almost human sigh.

  Daniel turned back to his office, retracing his steps down the rounded corridors. It was getting quiet again, the day crew pretty much gone, the night watch settled to work, and for a moment he wondered if he should stop for coffee before he got back to work. No, probably not — if there was anything to find, he would probably be there all night, and the coffee would help more later. He unlocked the door, flipped on the lights to reveal the papers and disks still stacked on his work table, and rummaged through them until he found the disk Sam had marked “Handle With Care.” He made a face — it was amazing how annoying that chant could be — and stopped abruptly. Amazingly, even improbably annoying, as though someone had deliberately chosen a rhythm and pitch that would stick in a human brain without it really being heard…

  He slipped the disk into the machine, wincing in anticipation, and the screen filled with a line of children holding hands. They were chanting, swinging their arms in time with the words, and a single child ran into the frame, charging straight for the linked arms of two stocky girls. At the last possible moment, they let go, and the running child went sprawling, face down on the muddy ground. Not a nice game, Daniel thought, again, and touched keys to isolate the sound. It was a two-word phrase, repeated over and over, and there was something about it, some syllable that sounded familiar. He reached for a pen, began to transcribe what he was hearing into a phonetic alphabet. He studied the result and then, slowly, began to grin.

  “Tisklamor taksanat,” Daniel said. He was late to the morning briefing, later than usual, and he was glad he’d shaved the day before.

  Teal’c raised an eyebrow. Jack looked at him.

  “Shouldn’t you be naked?”

  “What?”

  “Running in here shouting in Greek,” Jack said. “Aren’t you supposed to have jumped out of a bath or something?”

  “It’s Ancient,” Daniel said. “Closer to Latin — and when did you start reading up on classical scientists?”

  “Carter told me,” Jack said. Sam gave him a look, and Jack matched it with his best smile. “See? Sometimes I pay attention.”

  “I do not know this story, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said. It was hard to tell whether that particular lack of expression was annoyed or merely curious.

  “Oh. Well. There was a Greek scientist named Archimedes, and legend — which probably isn’t true, given the lack of sensitivity of the experiment in question — but anyway, he was working on a problem involving determining the metal content of an object, and supposedly he noticed that there was a relationship between the amount of water he displaced while getting into his bathtub and the mass involved. He was so excited by the discovery that he leaped from his bath and ran down the street shouting ‘Eureka,’ which means, literally, ‘I have found it.’” Daniel felt his voice trail off in the face of Teal’c’s stare. “Having forgotten to dress beforehand.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You probably had to be there,” Jack said, helpfully.

  “That’s — it’s really not the point,” Daniel said.

  “Then what is the point?” Jack asked.

  “The point is, you said you’d let us look for Janus’s lab if we had a better idea of where it was.”

  Jack gave an impatient nod. “Yes. Like a gate address.”

  Daniel smiled. “And that’s exactly what I’ve got for you. One perfectly good gate address. Tisklamor taksanat.”

  “That,” Jack said, “is not a gate address.”

  “Actually, sir, it is,” Sam said. She looked at Daniel. “You mean to tell us that incredibly annoying chant —”

  “Is the address of Janus’s next base,” Daniel said. “Or, at least, it is a gate address. But why else would anyone have embedded it in a children’s nonsense rhyme?”

  “An incredibly adhesive nonsense rhyme,” Sam said.

  “Indeed,” Teal’c said.

  Sam reached for her laptop and began typing. “Sir, it’s a valid address. P6T-847.”

  “Never heard of it,” Jack said.

  Sam peered at her screen. “We sent a MALP through a little more than a year ago. No sign of inhabitants, just a huge field of grass as far as the eye — or the camera — could see. But now… Sir, I think it’s worth checking out. If we could find a way to reach Atlantis, to find out what’s going on —”

  Jack nodded. “All right. Let’s see what’s out there.”

  The image in the screen was almost unchanged from the pictures sent back f
rom the first survey. Tall grass, with dark, tightly closed seed heads waved at the edge of the Stargate’s platform, and as Walter manipulated the camera, zooming out, there was only more grass, stretching toward the horizon. The sky was streaked with cloud, their edges shell-pink in the planetary dawn, and something fluttered in the middle distance, a bird or a large insect, hopping from seed to seed.

  “I’m not seeing any secret lab,” Jack said.

  “It’s going to be hidden,” Daniel pointed out.

  Sam ignored them both, frowning at the control readouts. “Is there any way we can get the MALP further away from the platform?”

  Walter glanced up at her. “Yes, ma’am, I can take it down the steps, but we won’t be able to see anything but grass. It’s taller than our longest periscope extension.”

  Sam sighed. She hadn’t really expected a better answer. “Leave it there, then,” she said, and straightened. “General, there’s no reason not to take a quick look.”

  “Except for there being nothing there,” Jack answered.

  “Or there might be directions to another location,” Daniel said. “That would be like Janus.”

  “If that’s the case,” Jack said, “I expect you to come back before following any more mysterious leads.”

  Daniel looked as though he wanted to protest, but Sam kicked him, none too subtly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you have a go,” Jack said.

  They walked through the gate into a warm breeze and a low buzzing sound. At first Sam thought it was insects, but after a moment she realized that the air was clear of flying things. The noise came from the grass itself, from the wind playing in the hollows of the seed heads. The MALP hadn’t lied. There was nothing but grass as far as she could see, and in every direction. She turned slowly through a full circle, hoping to spot some change, something different in the sea of grass, but there was nothing. The Stargate stood on a stone platform perhaps a meter above the ground, a platform big enough to hold the DHD as well as the gate itself. The sun was well up now, and most of the clouds had burned off, leaving an empty pale blue sky. There was no sound except the buzz of the grass, and the sound of their boots on the stones.