By Arrietty
Prologue
The light flickered up the walls from the naked flame of the torches set deep in their sconces. Though there were many torches, there weren’t enough of them to clearly illuminate the high vaulted ceiling. The steady tramp of the booted feet echoed through the different corridors that led off from the main hall. Eight Jaffa strode purposefully up the centre towards the dais set high up the many wide steps at one end of the hall. On the dais was a large ornate silver throne. Three black and grey velvet cushions had been haphazardly tossed onto the empty seat, the high, curved back preventing them from spilling to the floor. The approaching Jaffa climbed the wide steps of the dais, taking their assigned positions around the throne, one either side, two behind and one at each corner. A loud stamp of many feet reverberated through the great hall as more Jaffa came to attention. They had arrived silently through the numerous corridors leading into the main hall. They now stood, like statues, in long lines, against the walls.
“Jaffa! Kree!” announced one of the guards.
Just then a man sailed into the chamber. He was tall, over six feet, dressed in a large black cloak, with a fitted hood that concealed his hair. Underneath the cloak, he wore dark grey trousers, black boots and a grey shirt; over the shirt was a black leather jerkin. Silver was inlaid in an intricate design throughout the jerkin. His face was hidden behind a black mask with silver inlay, the design giving the wearer, an evil malevolence. He strode haughtily up the stairs onto the dais swirling his cloak around as he sat down. As he looked intently out over the hall, the glow shining from his eyes was evident to all who had the courage to meet his gaze.
Part One
“Chevron 7 encoded and locked,” announced the technician as the wormhole burst into life.
“We are getting a signal from the Tok’ra, Sir.”
“Open the iris, Sergeant,” barked the general.
A solitary man walked smoothly down the gate ramp.
General Hammond quickly moved downstairs to the gate room. Joining Hammond in the gate room were the members of SG-1, Colonel Jack O’Neill, Major Samantha Carter, Teal’c and Jonas Quinn.
“Hello, George,” the man said.
The general answered, “What’s happening, Jacob?”
“Hi, Dad,” Sam Carter said with a smile as she moved forward to give her father a big hug.
“Hello, Sam.” He smiled softly at his daughter and then turned to General Hammond with a more serious look. “We need your help.”
All were seated around the briefing room table as Selmac, Jacob Carter’s symbiote, explained the reason why their help was needed.
“Four days ago, we found a new outpost for the Tok’ra. Eighteen Tok’ra were sent ahead to get the tunnels ready for the remaining members of our cell to arrive. When we arrived two days ago, the tunnels were completed, but there were no signs of seventeen of the Tok’ra. We found one, Renod, you know him by his host’s name Heath. I’m sorry, he lived only long enough to tell us that a Goa’uld, Tolgarth, had taken the missing Tok'ra as prisoners.”
There was an audible gasp in the room, everyone turned around and looked with surprise at the source, it had come from Teal’c. Teal’c, who very rarely showed any sign of emotion, looked shocked.
“I see you have heard of Tolgarth, Teal’c,” said Selmac.
Teal’c silently bowed his head once at Selmac. The others in the room gave him some puzzled looks before turning back to Selmac/Jacob for an explanation. Jacob took over from Selmac and continued.
“Tolgarth is a minor Goa’uld, he is not yet one of the System Lords, but very evil. People do not survive his capture; he uses torture just for the fun of it. He always wears a mask, because he treats his host’s so abominably. After about six months they go stark raving mad, then they are no use to him.”
“Couldn’t he just take over the mad host and then have the body without any resistance?” Jonas asked.
“No,” replied Jacob. “He likes to torture his host, once the host is insane, he wants new material.”
“What do you want us for?” O’Neill asked in a suspicious tone. By now he was beginning to see where this was going and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Soon after we arrived at our new outpost, we were raided. Though we managed to escape, many of the Tok’ra were injured. We only have two other operatives who are available at the moment; the others are on important undercover missions. We are hesitant to bring them back. We need a search and rescue team, we were hoping that you could help us out with extra people. The Tok’ra that have been captured have visited the SGC, so this threat from Tolgarth will affect you as well.”
General Hammond pondered this for a while and then looked at O’Neill, who had been very busy studying the table top while resting his head on his hands. General Hammond returned his attention to Jacob.
“I can’t order any of my people to go, but I will take volunteers.”
He then looked at O’Neill again. In fact everyone in the room looked at O’Neill. He raised his head, then slowly looked around at his team and gave a similar speech as his CO.
“Hey look, I can’t order any of my team to go, but I’ll be in, Jacob.”
Looking at the rest of his team, they each turned to O’Neill and nodded in agreement.
General Hammond looked pleased, as he said. “Well it looks like you have a go, Colonel.” Turning to Jacob, Hammond asked, “Jacob can you give us any more information on Tolgarth?”
“No we cannot, but we do have a Tok’ra operative within Tolgarth’s Jaffa ranks, he has been there three weeks. But unfortunately we haven’t heard from him in the last two weeks,” Jacob informed them.
O’Neill quickly commentated. “It sounds like he may have been compromised; it most probably was him who gave away the plans for the new Tok’ra outpost.”
Selmac, Jacob’s symbiote quickly took over, he had taken umbrage at O’Neill’s suggestion that a Tok’ra would betray his people. Selmac stood up and brought his hands down on the table with a loud slap, making everyone in the briefing room jump physically with surprise. Fortunately Jacob was able to calm him down before he said anything that would cause discord. Jacob thought to himself that it was very unusual for him to be calming down Selmac and not the other way around. Jacob very quietly sat down, looked pointedly at O’Neill and very carefully gave a small shake of his head at O’Neill’s questioning gaze.
Jacob then very carefully continued speaking. “In four hours it will be dead of night on Tolgarth’s planet, here are the co-ordinates.” He carefully handed over a small piece of folded paper to Sam. “The plan is, under the cover of darkness, go in and blow up the outlying buildings. Hopefully the diversion will enable us to rescue the imprisoned Tok’ra and escape.”
After gating to Tolgarth’s planet, now designated PX-157. SG-1, Jacob and two Tok’ra, Telan and Kenar quickly scanned the surrounding foliage just in case any Jaffa were guarding the Stargate. They were surprised at the absence of any guards near the gate. The rescue team quickly established a rendezvous point and then moved silently through the forest towards Tolgarth’s fortress. It took at least two hours before they reached the outlying buildings. They set a number of charges throughout them, timed to detonate simultaneously.
Placing a further charge against a wooden door set into the fortress’ solid stonewall. They hung back and took shelter, waiting for O’Neill to detonate the explosives.
The sound of the different explosions, echoed around the hills that surrounded the fortress. Moving quickly they crept through the smoking ruined door into Tolgarth’s domain.
O’Neill lead the way through the dark tunnels, it was like a warren inside the walls of the fortress. Following the sound of the Jaffa calling out to one another they silently moved through the corridors. Soon they came to a stairwell.
“Telan is this the way to the dungeons? O’Neill asked.
“Yes I believe so.”
“Right, you take point.” O’Neill motioned Carter to follow.
Without realising it, Telan set off a trip wire with his boot. Klaxons reverberated around the building. A cry was taken up from the Jaffa as they pounded their way down the halls towards SG-1 and the Tok’ra.
Carter quickly flattened herself against the wall and pushed Telan up above her on the stairs.
“Quick get back into the tunnels, we can defend better from there,” O’Neill told the Tok’ra.
The leading Jaffa was at the foot of the stairs, saw the movement of Kenar and fired his Staff weapon at him. After being hit in the knee, Kenar fell back against Telan. They both lost their balance and started to tumble down the staircase.
“Carter, watch out!” yelled O’Neill.
But it was too late as they knocked into Carter; they took her with them to the bottom of the long spiral staircase.
After repelling the Jaffa guards with weapon fire, they started down the dimly lit staircase after their fallen comrades, but about half way down they heard some voices coming from a locked room to their right. Stopping their descent, Teal’c and Jonas managed to open the dungeon door; inside they found the missing Tok’ra. Five were dead including the undercover operative and four were badly injured, but the remaining Tok’ra seemed unharmed. Meanwhile, O’Neill and Jacob went on down to the bottom of the staircase to retrieve Carter, Telan and Kenar, but when they got there, there were no sign of them.
“Jacob where could they have gone?” O’Neill asked while peering down one of the two passages leading off from where they were.
“I really don’t know, Jack, we should split up, because they could have gone down either one of these passages.”
“OK, Jacob, I’ll take the left and you take the right one, if you don’t find them, make your way to the rendezvous point and wait there for the rest of the team.”
Nodding once in agreement to O’Neill, Jacob moved off down the right hand passageway. He carefully crept along the wall, the torches sputtered as they burnt. He still couldn’t understand how with all of this technology, the Goa’uld always seemed to insist on still using things from the dark ages. The ground was dry and seemed to be made of hard packed soil, so his shoes made no sound as he stealthily moved along. He began to move faster as the passageway started an incline. Jacob had been walking along these passageways for a long time; it was well after daybreak. As he turned a corner he could see a faint light, he wondered if it was a way out. Starting to slow down again he cautiously moved towards the opening.
Jack O’Neill was beginning to doubt the wisdom of separating with Jacob, they couldn’t use radios down in the passageways, not only because of the noise, but because there was something in the soil that prevented them from working. He clutched his P90 firmly and moved quickly, trying to keep to the shadows. After a while, he came across an empty unguarded room. There were no windows inside the room, but there were some old dirty blankets and a couple of buckets, it smelt awful. From experience he could see from the sparse objects and familiar smell, that this was a holding cell for some unfortunate prisoner. Holding his hand over his mouth and nose, “Phew, I’m outta here,” he muttered under his breath.
More wary now he continued on down the passageway. The torches were becoming more frequent now and he could see more clearly. The floor instead of being hard packed earth was now metal flooring, painted a grey colour. He noticed that the walls were black with intricate silver inlaid patterns, which shone eerily in the torchlight. O’Neill peered closely at the wall just under one of the torches; the pattern looked suspiciously like writing.
“Where are you Daniel when I need you?” O’Neill whispered quietly under his breath, but the writing didn’t look Goa’uld, in fact it could just be décor for all he knew. While he moved away from the wall, he heard the click and whine of a zat’nik’atel. With his P90 drawn ready, he spun around to face his attacker, but his body was enveloped in streaks of bright blue light before he had a chance to fire. O’Neill collapsed with a groan and shuddered into unconsciousness.
“Colonel!”
“Ow! Stop it.” Someone was slapping him on his face. Maybe if he opened his eyes it would stop.
“Ah, Carter!” ‘There, see it stopped.’ “What on earth are you doing, Carter?”
Carter frowned at her CO, sat back on her heels and said, “Nice to see you too, sir! Look we have to get out of here now, before they come back. No time to explain, but I think I’ve found a way to get out of here.”
“Hey, great, where are Telan and Kenar?”
Carter looked down at the ground, then up at O’Neill. “They didn’t make it.”
Colonel O’Neill quickly put up his hand to quieten Carter; he could hear booted feet coming down towards their cell.
The door to their cell opened, a Jaffa stood in the doorway and glowered at them. Neither O’Neill nor Carter was sure if he was first prime or not. He had the mark of a first prime, but instead of being gold, it was silver.
The Jaffa spoke in Goa’uld to them, indicating with his hand that they come with him.
O’Neill carefully stood up, his head was hurting, and he noticed that Carter grimaced as she stood and she also was taking small breaths, her arms were clutched around her rib cage. ‘Oh that’s all we need.’ He groaned to himself, ‘Carter with busted ribs.’ He tried to get close to Carter, but they were placed under armed guard and marched along the passage, there were three Jaffa in between Carter and himself.
O’Neill tried to keep track of where they were going, but the twists and turns of the passages were complicated. His head still hurt and his vision was blurred, so he just had to hope that Carter had managed to remember where they had gone.
Soon they came to a large hall. The hall was huge; the walls were very high, made out of grey stone, blackened over time by the smoke from the torches. Over each doorway an arch sat out proud against the wall, each one rose high up to the ceiling curving towards the middle into a point. Even though the Goa’uld had used antiquated lighting, the hall was warm, there was a faint breeze coming from somewhere. O’Neill wondered if maybe there was under floor heating, or even air conditioning. Unbeknownst to him, his thoughts were running along the same lines as Jacob, at the incongruity of the Goa’uld’s choice of mixing technology with the more simple way of life. While all of this was whizzing through O’Neill’s very sore head, they were marched up to the end of the hall. They were made to stand before the Goa’uld Tolgarth.
The purpose of the design of the mask was to be as intimidating as possible and from the point of view of both O’Neill and Carter it worked. Tolgarth stood up from his throne and stalked down the steps towards O’Neill and Carter. He stood on the bottom steps.
“Kneel before your god!” Tolgarth’s double voice boomed out.
Carter immediately braced herself and waited for her CO’s sarcastic reply and then the blow. Tolgarth’s eyes glowed; he stepped forward closer to them and stared at Carter intensely.
“You, you have had a symbiote in you, why are you still alive?” As Carter was wondering how on earth Tolgarth knew that, he slowly reached out his hand with a hand device on it and blasted her halfway down the large hall. After Sam slid to a stop, she lay silent not moving.
Through all of this O’Neill had not understood much as Tolgarth was speaking in Goa’uld. He did understand the ‘kneel before your god’ bit, but not what had been said to Carter.
When Tolgarth had blasted Carter with the hand device, O’Neill quickly moved towards where she had fallen, he had only taken a few steps before he was knocked to the ground unconscious, with a staff weapon.