[Stargate SG-1 07] - Survival of the Fittest Read online

  SURVIVAL OF

  THE FITTEST

  Stargate SG-1 - 07

  Sabine C. Bauer

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  To Tanya—beta extraordinaire and the one who’s responsible for Everything!

  PROLOGUE

  The childlike face—she’d been a child, first and foremost, a smart, needy, tantrum-throwing teenager who’d made an awful mistake—never moved Jack reached for her neck as if to feel a pulse they both knew had never been there. It wasn’t the pulse he was after, Daniel realized Below her right ear a hidden catch activated and released the energy cell that had powered her. The crystal fizzed briefly and winked out, looking dull and dead its removal a clear case of overkill. Nothing would revive her now. After all, Jack O’Neill, ex-Special Ops, was a crack shot.

  “You stupid son of a bitch!”

  “Hey, you’re welcome.”

  Daniel wanted to hit him, for the glib reply alone.

  Someone up in the control room gave the all clear. The klaxons stopped their wailing, and the gate room fell quiet enough to hear the soft clickety-click and clatter as all throughout the base Reese’s ‘toys’, bereft of the life-force that had fuelled them, disintegrated to a harmless rain of metal wafers.

  Rain or tiny needles of snow. Daniel felt cold Another difference not made, for Reese and for an entire race of beings who were getting their little gray asses whipped by the offspring of her ‘toys’. Too many differences not made. Maybe it was time to leave. No point in staying and pretending things were just fine when everything had changed. Or perhaps nothing had changed.

  He heard himself start up an argument, because he was Daniel and Daniel always argued pitting the ever-same reasoning against the ever-same justifications and with the ever-same results.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Jack said finally. “But this is the way it had to go down, and you know it.”

  Now brush your teeth and go to bed!

  He stopped short of that. Instead he turned away, muttering into his radio, and began walking off toward the blast door. He’d still be holding the gun, always would No difference.

  Daniel didn’t look up, afraid of what he’d see, of the decisions it’d force on him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Convergence: The development of similar features in distantly related lineages due to the effects of similar evolutionary factors.

  The subject, strapped to a gleaming metal table inside a gleaming surgical lab, opened his mouth for a scream. Thankfully that particular audio channel had been set to mute. The scream was enduring and heartfelt, which didn’t come as any great surprise. Suddenly the subject’s eyes rolled up, and he stilled. The solemn face of a white-clad doctor interposed itself between camera and surgical table. The doctor shook his head. Another failure.

  How many had there been? Eight? Nine?

  It was high time to consider the alternative. Frank Simmons switched off the aftermath of the experiment and turned to the central monitor bank. Each screen showed the same image, just from a different angle. The backgrounds varied. French doors and a glimpse of a garden or pristinely starched curtains or a blank white wall. However, all of them showed bars in the foreground and, behind the bars, a man. Or what looked like a man.

  He was dark-haired, tall, and heavily built, and he moved with a curious absence of grace, as though mind and body hadn’t really connected. Which might be the case after all. Some of the guards called him Herman. The likeness was indisputable, but Simmons discouraged the joke. Herman Munster was a cretin. This… thing… on the screen was highly intelligent and commanded the entire knowledge and viciousness of his species. Prettifying him would be lethal.

  Until quite recently the man-thing had been a person called Adrian Conrad. Obscenely rich and incurably ill and unwilling to appreciate, let alone accept, the irony of it. And so he’d paid a large amount of money for a larval Goa’uld and let it infest his body. The alien parasite had cured the disease but usurped the host’s mind in exchange when the removal process had run into a hitch. Tough luck.

  Good luck for the NID. Thanks to Simmons, the secret government agency owned the Goa’uld exclusively. Right now, the thing that had been Conrad sat inside his cage leafing through a textbook. Genetics. Suddenly, and with all signs of disdain, he leaped from his chair and flung the book against the bars.

  “Where are you?” The harmonics of the distorted voice made the speakers hum. “I know you are there! I demand to speak to you!”

  Simmons took another bite from his sandwich—pastrami and pickle, though they made them better in New York—and watched as Conrad paced the cell. Let him stew. Sooner or later he’d grasp that he was a prisoner. Maybe he’d learn some manners then.

  Ten minutes later the sandwich was gone and Conrad had stopped pacing and slumped back onto the chair. It was time. Simmons scrunched the wrapping paper into a tight ball and pitched it at a trash-can. He missed, shrugged, and left the control center.

  When he entered the prisoner’s room, trailed by two guards armed with zat’nikatels, Conrad straightened up, his eyes glowing. “You are late!”

  Ignoring him, Simmons nodded at the guards. “Unlock the cage.”

  Given the Goa’uld’s immense strength, it posed a risk, but it also was a psychological necessity. Remaining outside the cage would have betrayed fear. More importantly, a face-to-face meeting suggested a degree of equality that would facilitate cooperation. The ploy had worked before, it would work now.

  The door of the cage fell shut behind him, and Simmons picked up the book, leisurely flicked through its pages. “Not to your taste, I take it?”

  “It is puerile! Your so-called scientists do not know half of what they ought to know. Even the men my host employed were amateurs.” A sly glint stole into the alien’s human eyes. “You killed another one, did you not? That is why you are here. But I can only tell you what I have told you before. Your plan will fail.”

  “Not if you help me.”

  “Why should I help you? So that you can assemble an army of warriors to destroy my kind?”

  “Your kind?” Simmons leaned back against the bars of the cage and started laughing. “Since when did you develop feelings for the family? Your kind would kill you just as soon as look at you, and you know it.”

  He did, of course. For a second, the eyes flared in annoyance. Then he rose and approached until he was mere inches away, towering over Simmons. From somewhere outside the cage came the dissonant chime of zat’nikatels being readied.

  “Stand down!” Simmons snapped and, more quietly, added, “We’re having a friendly discussion.”

  The parasite molded his host’s face into a smile. “Indeed. Suppose I could help you, human, would you accept my price?”

  “Freedom? Not just yet. You’re a little too useful for that, I’m afraid.”

  “No. Not just yet.” The grimace deepened, bared teeth. “But if I give you those warriors, you are to send them against whom I tell you when I tell you.”

  When hell freezes over! Simmons stared past Conrad and at a strip of sunlight that dissected the white floor of the cage. The reflection was painfully bright, and he closed his eyes, hiding a flicker of triumph. It was true. The Goa’uld’s arrogance was their greatest weakness.

  “Why not?” he said. “With the one obvious exception, of course.”

  “Of course. Unfortunately, I cannot help you.”

  “What?” Simmons’ eyes flew open in time for him to watch Conrad back off in a show of boredom. “What do you mean, you can’t help me?”

  “I mean what I said. I do not have the skill. However�
��”

  “However?” It took some doing, but Simmons managed to bite back a more suitable reply. However, once he’d squeezed that punk dry, he’d kill him personally. Slowly.

  “My mistress possesses the skills you require.”

  “Your mistress? Forgive my skepticism, but mistress implies that you do what she says, not the other way round.”

  “The price I have named will be ample to buy her assistance.”

  “I see.” Simmons allowed a trace of interest to creep into his voice. “And how would I invite your mistress to join us for negotiations?”

  “I assume there were communication globes among the loot you took from our worlds?”

  “Of course, but… What about range?”

  The NID’s tame Goa’uld smiled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The place was vast, gutted, and its acoustics stank. Which was to say you twitched an eyelid and got an echo. Consequently, Colonel Jonathan ‘Jack’ O’Neill, USAF, wasn’t considering any twitching. What he had been considering for the past ten minutes or so was getting up and stretching his legs. His knees were very unhappy with the current state of affairs, a reminder that, maybe, he was getting a little long in the tooth for this.

  This spelled waddling along a metal catwalk in stealth mode and a crouch. And anyone who thought it was a piece o’ cake could be his guest and try it in combat boots. This also was the only way of getting anywhere near the enemy position. The enemy, quite unfairly, had displayed unforeseen tactical originality. Okay, not unforeseen, but Jack still felt a little insulted. Tactical originality was his department.

  Then again, he wasn’t doing too badly himself. The gallery lining the room fifteen meters above the ground seemed inaccessible. The staircases leading up had either collapsed or corroded to brittle red trash, and if, for some perverse reason, you had your heart set on getting up here, you were in for a stint of shinning up the side of the building, forcing a window, and carefully dislodging a bunch of loose bricks. Which they’d done—having the aforementioned perverse reason—and it had paid off. This was the last place the enemy expected them to be. You could tell.

  The hostiles had a three-strong sentry unit holed up amid a few dozen bales of molting white stuff. Cotton, by the looks of it, though what it was doing here beat him. Part of the enemy force was prowling the grounds outside, led on a wild goose chase by Teal’c and his team. The rest were in the building, securing a stairwell Jack wasn’t interested in. Yet. Below, Larry, Curly, and Moe felt safe as babes in arms—never a real smart proposition, in life or in warfare. It got you dead. So far none of them had bothered to check above.

  They’d better not. If they did, things would get ugly in a hurry. Fallback options were at a premium up here. On the bright side, even if they did check, they’d have to look closely. The windows in the two outer walls were blind, encrusted with decades of industrial dirt. The only light trickling in filtered through a handful of broken casements, and the room, nearly a hundred meters long, half as wide, and about thirty high, was mired in almost solid gloom.

  The enemy position sat smack in the northeastern quadrant, beautifully chosen, because it covered both ground floor entrances. Jack O’Neill wanted it. In fact, he coveted it. Once he took it, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. His teams would be able to pick off the hostiles as they came home to roost.

  A faint whiff of herbal shampoo announced that his 2IC had caught up with him. He turned, saw her grin, teeth flashing in a face blackened by camouflage paint. Then she shucked a stray coil of the zip line back onto her shoulder and gave a thumbs-up. Evidently Major Samantha Carter was enjoying herself.

  He signaled her to keep going. With a brisk nod she crept on, followed by Pancaldi and four others. They did good, moving quickly and quietly, until they reached the corner where the catwalk turned along the short wall, some ten meters on from his own position. Perfect. Now all he needed was the third prong of his attack force. And there it was, right on time. Diagonally across, six ghostly shapes settled in behind the railing.

  Daniel and his braves had taken the other way round, with the braves gamely submitting to the command of a geek. Well, if truth be told, Dr. Daniel Jackson had lost his official geek status quite some time ago. Whether he liked it or not, he was getting good at this. Very good. Now he peered over, waiting for the signal. The Stooges down below still were blissfully oblivious. They’d have a rough awakening.

  Showtime.

  Jack raised his hand, thumb, forefinger, and middle finger extended, and slowly began to count down, folding in his thumb, three, then the forefinger, two, then—

  A whirr and a whoosh, five, eight, ten times over, zooming down from the ceiling.

  No! Goddammit, no! He felt himself go ice-cold, knowing what he’d done in one terrible instant, knowing that he’d pulled the screwup to end them all—the same dumbass stunt as the Three Stooges. He hadn’t bothered to check above, because he’d felt too damn sure of himself and his brilliance. It’d make a great epitaph: Here lies Jack O’Neill, Smug Bastard. And not just he. Not just he…

  “Take cover!” he roared.

  Too little, too late. Besides, there wasn’t any cover to be had.

  Black-clad and masked, they hovered on their zip lines like so many giant spiders, and they moved with the same eerie speed, instantly opening fire. Like a mad lightshow, the thin red streaks of laser sights crisscrossed through dust-laden air, hit walls and struts and bodies. One drilled toward him, and Jack rolled away, brought up his own weapon, fired, missed. Somewhere behind him rose a cry. Chen. Chen was down, his group of five a man short now, and it was only the start. Chances were he’d lose them all. The red streak swiveled back, still searching for him, then it went wild. Daniel had taken out the shooter. Go, Daniel!

  Giving up on the non-existent cover, Jack got to his feet, found another target, and had the satisfaction of seeing the man sag into his harness. Next! By now there was a fairly constant barrage from Carter’s corner. She and her group took out three attackers in quick succession. Daniel’s gang clocked up two more. If they could keep it up then maybe, just maybe—

  “Stevens!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Get the lines ready! We’re going down a floor.”

  “Yessir! On your—”

  Stevens toppled as the wall burst outward. It did the same thing in two other places, behind Carter’s and Daniel’s teams. Apiece of mortar ricocheted off Jack’s head, picking up some skin and hair along the way. He reeled back, and the groans volleying from various locations on the gallery told him that the flying masonry casualties were mounting. It was the least of their problems. Through the holes in the walls piled more guys in ninja outfits. Twelve in all, four to each breach, they exploded onto the catwalk like the wrath of God.

  Jack never even had time to aim. He fired anyway, from reflex and an instinctive urge to stop the nemesis thundering toward him. The shot went high, and all he could do was brace for the onslaught. His dance partner was a woman, surprisingly enough, at least an inch taller than he and built like a Russian shot-putter. Etiquette would have to suffer, he concluded, and rammed the butt of his rifle into her midriff. It didn’t slow her down. Miss Universe bellowed like an ox, one beefy hand slapping away the rifle, the other delivering a roundhouse blow that tore Jack off his feet and flung him against the railing.

  It sounded like someone clearing his throat, and he felt it before he heard it—the dry crunch of ancient metal deciding that enough was enough. The railing gave. There was an endless, weightless moment of teetering on the edge and Carter screaming his name. As if it’d been waiting for that chance, a red streak leaped through dusty air and at the middle of her forehead, shearing off the scream. Gravity kicked in the same instant, and Jack fell, ass over tit and almost grateful, still hanging on to his gun, knowing this was it. Here flies Jack O’Neill, Smug Bastard. He’d be lucky if he didn’t survive.

  He landed on something soft and squishy that compacted under his w
eight. Teeth still rattling from the impact, he lay inside a crater of white fluff. Over its rim gawked the baffled faces of Larry, Curly, and Moe.

  “Hi,” Jack said grimly and brought up his rifle. “Just thought I’d drop in.”

  A curiously Dopplered yell from above cut off whatever else he’d meant to say or do. By the time he’d located its origin, it was too late. Miss Universe came hurtling through space like a monster fruit bat, on a trajectory that ended smack atop one Jack O’Neill. Who, knowing what would happen, closed his eyes in silent resignation.

  The First Aid tent had adopted all the atmosphere and civility of the catering marquee at a biker shindig. People were guzzling or spilling coffee of every description—cream and two sugars left the best stains on lab coats—and dropped empty paper cups where they stood. Sergeant Pancaldi had eviscerated an MRE pack to get at the candy bar—which, frankly, he could do without—and sat on a spare gurney, a happily munching nucleus at the heart of the mayhem. Calories or no, you couldn’t discount the curative properties of chocolate. Pancaldi was the only satisfied customer in the entire tent. Everybody else, including the female contingent, was squirting testosterone.

  “…could have killed her!”

  “It was an accident! Besides, she—”

  “Accident, my ass!”

  “I can spell it out for you, jarhead!”

  “Jarhead! Wanna take that up with an officer?”

  The participants in this lively conversation had surrounded a portable defib unit and were threatening to come to blows over it. A shy-looking orderly took his life into his hands and tried to rescue the equipment. “Excuse me?”

  “What officer? Somebody’s actually in charge of you hoodlums?”

  “Excuse me!”

  “Yo, flyboy! Butt out!”

  “Muscles are required, intellect not essential. Can you string the initials into a word Jarhead?”