Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1 by Sabine C. Bauer Page B

next to the dead soldier. When these people killed,
they killed messily. For the first time since Kandaulo had arrived at
Hamilqart's house, he dared to hope. The hope was spurred further
by a combination of tracks, which -
    "Sam? Teal'c?"
    Daniel Jackson had been examining the interior of the complex,
and now he approached through the trees, his task evidently
completed. What was more, it seemed to have left him agitated
enough not to observe where he was going. A frequent occurrence
with the young man. He tripped and nearly fell, backtracked and
picked up an old-fashioned leather bag.
    "Hey! Did you see this? Kelly's bag."
    It was indeed. Teal'c received the item, and Daniel Jackson
squinted at the small pile that constituted their previous finds.
    "I take it Jack was here?" he asked.
    "Teal'c and I are leaning towards the idea," said Major Carter.
"You come across anything useful?"
    "Depends on how you define useful. According to the people
in there" - Daniel Jackson cocked a thumb in the direction of the
temple - "the first wave of the actual attack came from the roof.
While some of the mob staged a mock run on the gate, the boys on
the roof rappelled into the courtyard and opened a side door."
    "Tactics 101," muttered the Major. "Nice, tidy, almost guaranteed
to work."
    "Tidy being the operative word, which is where it gets
interesting... I mean, you guys know more about this stuff than
I do, but compared to the ship this was asking politely. It looks...
less angry."
    "In what way, Daniel Jackson?"
    "No gratuitous butchery. It's still not pretty; the Tyreans took
casualties and they've got two men seriously wounded, but it seems
to have been a straightforward fight, rather than..." He shrugged.
"You know."
    Less angry... Teal'c turned the words over in his mind. "I believe your description may be apt, Daniel Jackson. O'Neill killed
one of their number, yet they did not kill O'Neill when they had the
chance to do so. They abducted him."

    "What makes you so sure all of a sudden?" Major Carter gazed
at him, the strain in her face easing slightly. Unlike death, capture
could be remedied.
    Teal'c pointed out the tracks he had noticed just prior to Daniel
Jackson's arrival. Two parallel sets of sandal prints scaled the hill.
Between them ran a pair of smudged, uninterrupted marks, almost
certainly left by boot caps.
    "Someone tall and heavy was dragged by two men. I am
confident that this person was O'Neill."
    "What about Kelly?"
    Off to the side yet another trail could be seen. "Professor
Kelly was carried. The imprint left by the right foot is deeper. Her
abductor must have conveyed her slung over his right shoulder."
    Major Carter gave a bleak smile. "Anyone mind if I get Kandaulo
and rub his nose in this?"

     

he groaning was frightful and it wouldn't stop. Drawn-out and
labored, it rose at ten-second intervals, ebbed and erupted again,
interspersed with reedy sighs. He had a vague but nasty suspicion
that he might be responsible for it, because the sheer misery of the
noise roughly equaled the torque somebody had applied to that vise
around his skull.
    Suddenly the groans were overlaid by a new sound, just as
drawn-out but less rhythmic in nature. He was fairly certain that,
on this score, he couldn't possibly be the offender. Even with all the
chili in Mexico both volume and aroma would have been beyond
him. The mother of all farts was followed by a second helping,
marginally less succulent.
    "Graph," he said, not sure what exactly he meant by it.
    The good news was that the groans continued. In other words, if
he'd been the one saying Gmph, he couldn't be the one doing the
groaning.
    How about you open your eyes and check, huh?
    He was still admiring this sterling piece of advice when a whole
new insight wafted through the fog that inhabited his brain. His
current abode moved. To be precise, it rolled. Pitched. Swayed.
    "Oh crap," mumbled Colonel Jonathan `Jack' O'Neill,