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  “The rest of the valley is yours to walk.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “We truly appreciate it. Oh — but Daniel won’t be coming with this us this morning. He wants to spend more time in the village. Is that all right?”

  Khenti smiled. “Daniel is a welcome man.”

  He left her then, and for a little while longer she stayed on the river bank watching the workers on the water’s far side follow the rhythms of ancient humanity.

  It’s so peaceful here. So… unspoiled. Untouched. If we get what we’re after, if we come with our needs and our machines and our strange alien ways…

  She felt her guts clench, her heart hitch. It didn’t matter that on balance the people of Mennufer and Adjo’s other villages would gain far more than they lost from reuniting with the world from which their ancestors had been stolen.

  They’ll still be losing something… and that makes me feel like a thief.

  Which was exactly the kind of thought she wouldn’t be sharing with Colonel O’Neill any time soon. Sharing those kinds of thoughts, Daniel thoughts, would get her head bitten clean off her shoulders.

  With a shake of her head she turned her back on the river and the workers in the fields. One more look at the UAV stills and it would be time for her team to go mine hunting.

  Please God, let us find something. Let this not be for nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hammond was debriefing an uneventfully returned SG-6 when the call from Adjo came through to the SGC. Abruptly excusing himself, he hurried into the control room.

  “It’s Colonel O’Neill, sir,” said Harriman, grinning.

  With a pleased nod Hammond toggled the mike. “This is Hammond. Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “Hey, General!” O’Neill’s voice crackled through the speakers, distance not dimming his anarchic cheer. “E.T. O’Neill here, phoning home from sunny Adjo.”

  A lifetime of military discipline meant Hammond was able to completely quash any sight or sound of his immense relief. “And not before time, Colonel. It’s been over two days since your last contact. Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, General. But the gate is hours away from Mennufer — the village — even with Lotar’s handy-dandy shortcuts. Until we get a decent base camp established here I’m afraid daily chitchats are out of the question.”

  He felt his heart thump, hard. Village? Lotar? “Can I take it then, Colonel, you’ve successfully made first contact and are confident your primary mission goal can be achieved?”

  O’Neill’s reply was a resounding sneeze. “Dammit. Sorry, sir. It’s spring here. Is hayfever contagious?”

  Harriman was struggling not to laugh out loud. Hammond flicked him a frowning glance. “Not that I’m aware of, Colonel. What’s your status?”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Mission status is that things are promising. The villagers aren’t the least bit bothered by our presence. If anything they’re thrilled to find they’re not alone in the big bad galaxy.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  O’Neill sneezed again. “Sure is. General, I’ve been feeling my way with the village leadership. I haven’t made any official overtures as far as the mining concessions are concerned, but I’m working up to it. Daniel’s in his element, making friends and recording everyone’s life stories. Carter’s been adopted by a tribe of little girls who can’t get over the color of her hair. At the rate they’re going they’ll have plucked her bald by the end of the week. As for Teal’c… well, Teal’c’s his normal, chatty, gregarious self. It’s all good, sir. I’d say we’re on track.”

  “There’s been no hint of trouble? Nothing to corroborate Teal’c’s concerns about Adjo’s threat level?”

  “Not a thing, sir. Between you and me I think he’s a tad miffed. I think he thinks he’s blotted his copybook.”

  Of course Teal’c would think that. “I doubt that’s possible, Colonel. Let him know I’m pleased, not disappointed. And I have no doubt the Pentagon and the President will share my sentiments. What about Colonel Dixon?”

  No reply. Then the audio-link through the wormhole crackled. “Yeah. Dixon. Well, he’s around. Y’know. Observing. Hasn’t fallen off a mountain yet, or drowned in the river.”

  Not even a few thousand lightyears could disguise O’Neill’s lack of enthusiasm. Hammond swallowed a sigh. “Well, when you see him next tell him that Major Logan has returned safe and sound with SG-6. His other men are still offworld but I’m given to understand they’re also safe.”

  “Yeah, okay, sir. I’ll tell him.”

  “And the mine from UAV footage, Jack? How promising is it?”

  “I can’t say sir, we haven’t located it yet. Carter, Teal’c and Dixon are going to try and slip away from our hosts sometime today and do a bit of scouting. Maybe stumble across it accidentally on purpose. Carter’s pretty sure she’s got a bead on its location. Hopefully they’ll have good news by the time I get back to the village.”

  Hammond grimaced. Hopefully indeed. His hot seat was growing steadily hotter. “Colonel,” he said, “my superiors are going to want to know how soon we can set up our first base camp and start properly surveying any mine you can find on Adjo. What can I tell them?”

  A fusillade of sneezes and some muffled cursing. Then: “Tell them what Daniel keeps telling me, sir. That we can’t march in and start making demands of the Adjoans, that we have to make sure we’ve established a solid foundation of friendship first, that taking things steadily at the start means we can push on faster a bit further down the track. I mean, you know Daniel. Blah blah blah.”

  “I understand, Colonel. But the Pentagon won’t be pleased to hear it.”

  “I’m not exactly turning cartwheels myself, General. And I wish I could say Daniel’s full of crap, but he’s not. So far the locals are friendly but we don’t know them well enough yet to say full steam ahead. Tell the brass to pull their heads in, sir. It’s not like Adjo’s going anywhere.”

  “I doubt I’ll phrase it quite like that, Colonel, but I get the message.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, I don’t suppose you’ve heard back from Jacob, have you?”

  “No, Colonel. I think it’s safe to say the Tok’ra are out of the picture.”

  “So, more good news. Sir, I’ll check back with you as soon as I’ve got something to report.”

  “You do that, Colonel. In the meantime I’ll leave you with this word of warning: I’ll be able to contain the Pentagon’s impatience for another couple of days. Beyond that the pressure will be… considerable. You’ll make my life a lot less complicated if you can provide me with a confirmed plan of action sometime within the next seventy-two hours.”

  “Seventy-two hours it is, sir.” Another sneeze. “Dammit! O’Neill out.”

  “He sounds in a good mood, sir,” said Harriman, as the wormhole disengaged from the Adjo end.

  Hammond nodded. “Please God it lasts.”

  SG-6 were still waiting for him in the briefing room. He returned to them, and spent the rest of their debriefing session only half-listening as he mentally composed conciliatory, stalling memos for the brass and suits in Washington… acutely aware that the seventy-two hour window he’d given O’Neill was at best optimistic. Washington would be hammering him relentlessly by this time tomorrow.

  So bring home the bacon, Jack. For all our sakes, bring it home.

  Damn, but it was a long hike from the village to the Stargate and back again. O’Neill paused in his tramping to retie his jacket sleeves around his middle and take another swig of water from his canteen. Just as he swallowed he sneezed again, explosively. Damn. His nose was itching like a mother, his throat was scratchy, and his eyes felt like they were crawling with ants.

  Since when do I get hayfever? I don’t. Oh, crap.

  Just what he needed, a head cold to go along with his pain in the butt from Dixon.

  He tried to distract himself by admiring the scenery. You’d be hard-pressed to find a pre
ttier place to hike through than Adjo, or at least this stretch of it. It reminded him of Yosemite. Pristine, untainted, with a ripe promise in the air of the seasons, changing. Against his sweaty skin a seductive burgeoning warmth. And everywhere he looked, tight buds unfurling.

  Best thing of all, not a single solitary sign of Goa’uld activity or presence. You’d never know they’d been here. As they had been on Earth, their footprints were erased.

  I just hope I live long enough to see them erased from the whole damned galaxy.

  Breathing deeply, enjoying the spicy aroma of wilderness, he found himself thinking about Lotar. She hadn’t been at the gate when he got there. Hadn’t come running at the sound of the wormhole engaging, which was pretty damned loud and not a sound she’d be used to. The whoosh had sent all the birds in the surrounding trees screaming into the cloudless sky. But even that hadn’t alerted her.

  Uneasy, he’d checked the shrine and found different fresh flowers and a desiccated lizard corpse. His relief had been intense. So she was definitely okay. Absolutely still around. Good… but weird. She knew Ra and Setesh were dead, yet that still didn’t stop her leaving them offerings. Asking them to bless her upcoming marriage.

  Crazy. The sooner we move in here and get these folks caught up to the 20th century the better. It’s a crime, the way they’ve been forced to live.

  Not that Daniel would agree with him. Daniel was completely gonzo over the untouched, unspoiled beauty of Mennufer and its people.

  Easy for him to say. He’s not the one living without toilet paper. Although, come to think of it, he was perfectly happy on Abydos…

  Daniel was a strange, strange man.

  Moving on again, he checked his watch. Two hours more steady walking to go before he reached Mennufer. Roll on getting that first base camp established; he was hiking himself to skin and bone here.

  And by yourself, which isn’t exactly observing safety protocols.

  But he was safe enough. Khenti had assured them there were no dangerous critters in the area. No bears. No wildcats. No wolves or even coyotes. No Adjoan equivalents, either. Just birds, lots of birds, and they weren’t dangerous. But probably he’d have risked frisky fauna anyway. Not only because locating the mine and its bounty was the mission’s top priority and only one person was required to report back to the SGC, but because he’d needed the alone time. A few hours without everyone’s eyes on him. A chance to sweat out his simmering irritation in solitary exercise. Having Dixon around was like carting an unexploded bomb in his back-pack. A genial, co-operative, amusing, unexploded bomb.

  Things would be a lot simpler if he was a bastard.

  But he wasn’t. In fact, under different circumstances, he knew Dixon was the kind of man he could easily call a friend.

  Only I don’t need a new friend. I’ve got all the friends I can handle. What I need is for Dixon to go the hell away.

  But that wasn’t going to happen until this mission was accomplished… and God alone knew how long that was going to take.

  I can do this. I can. I can put up with Dixon staring at me whenever he thinks I’m too busy or preoccupied to notice, or trying to con me into going fishing with him. I can put up with him asking five hundred questions an hour about our past missions and showing off his stupid eidetic memory. I can put up with him charming the locals. And Daniel. And Carter. Even Teal’c.

  He just wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand waiting for the hammer labelled ‘Frank Cromwell’ to fall on his head. Because it was going to fall. Not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. The certainty was in Dixon’s cool, shuttered eyes and the questions he didn’t ask, that burned up the long, awkward silences between them.

  And it didn’t help, either, knowing his team was waiting for that hammer-drop too. He hated feeling their surreptitious gazes on him, their anxious concern. Since his half-assed visit to the house before this mission kicked off, Daniel hadn’t said anything more about the situation but he was thinking, dammit.

  Daniel thought louder than any man alive.

  Even Teal’c was thinking. Not saying anything, that wasn’t his style. But he sure as hell was thinking, almost as loudly as Daniel. And so was Carter. All three of them, thinking and wondering. When the black hole incident had blown up in their faces — when Frank — Afterwards, he’d done such a good job of not letting them talk to him about it. He’d even managed to fend off Daniel, a minor miracle. The only one who’d come close to cracking him had been Fraiser, and even then… he’d said hardly a word. And that was the way he intended to keep it. Dixon or no Dixon, let the hammer fall where it may.

  What the hell use was talking about it, anyway? Frank was dead, without even a body to bury or burn. He was dead, he was gone, it was all so last year.

  Whatever Dixon had come for, he was going to leave empty handed.

  I want my team back. I want it the way it should be, just the four of us. Kicking Goa’uld ass down one side of the galaxy and up the other.

  And it pissed him off that he couldn’t have his way. Pissed him off harder that Hammond had put him in this position, made it impossible for him to say no, because he owed George Hammond more than he could hope to repay in one lifetime.

  I just — I want this mission to be over.

  A warm breeze drifted across his face, carrying with it the scent of growth and rebirth. Of flowers finding their way to the sun. Birds soaked the air with joyous song. Adjo truly was beautiful, an unspoiled paradise.

  Jesus Christ, I hate this friggin’ place. Somebody get me out of here, soon.

  “Okay,” said Sam, catching her breath after another run of shattering sneezes. “Stop a minute. I need to get my bearings.”

  Ever obliging, Teal’c and Colonel Dixon stopped. They were halfway up the valley’s far sloping side, surrounded by saplings and rock outcroppings and some kind of flowering yellow creeper carpeting the ground as far as they could see.

  “Have you become disoriented, Major Carter?” said Teal’c, his tone scrupulously neutral.

  Bless him. If the colonel was here he’d be complaining loudly about me getting him lost. “No. Yes. Temporarily.” She shoved her used tissue back in her pocket and stared at the photo-still from the UAV footage, which showed Lotar’s riverside village and the entrance to what they suspected was a mine. What had better be a mine or we’re all in deep doo-doo. Then she checked her compass and ran the positional math in her head, again.

  “You’re sure it’s a naquadah mine we’re hunting?” said Colonel Dixon.

  She nodded. “I am now. There’s so much naquadah close by I can feel it.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That happen a lot?”

  “No, sir. Almost never.” She shivered, her naquadah-sense tingling like bad pins and needles. “It’s kind of throwing me off. But give me a minute, I’ll get us back on track.”

  Colonel Dixon pretended to be interested in the bark of the closest tree. “Times like these a hot air balloon would come in handy, I reckon.”

  She looked up. “A hot air balloon?”

  He was grinning. “Yeah. Sure. Three-sixty degree visibility. Maneuverable. Adjustable elevation, and not too zippy. I went hot air ballooning in the Australian outback once. Dawn over Alice Springs. Amazing. You’d never believe soil could be so many shades of red.”

  She swallowed impatience. “Sounds great. Unfortunately I forgot to pack my hot air balloon for this mission, so…”

  He was still grinning. Teasing. A light of devilment in his eyes. “Tut tut, Major. That was careless.”

  With a last look at the compass, ignoring him, she nodded. “Okay. We need to head a bit more thataway — ” She pointed to the left. “Over the next rise. The mine entrance should be there.” Without warning she sneezed. Again. She’d been sneezing steadily since they started up this side of the valley.

  “Gesundheit,” said Dixon helpfully.

  “Thank you. Pollen,” she said, fishing in another pocket for a fresh
tissue. “Which I don’t usually react to, but wow. This stuff’s potent. Looks like the Adjoan spring is well and truly sprung. If this keeps up I’ll have to steal a few of Daniel’s antihistamine tablets.”

  “We should continue, Major, so we might establish the presence of a mine as quickly as possible,” said Teal’c. “We may yet be searching for some time, and I do not advise returning to the village in less than full light.”

  He had a point. The valley sides might not be sheer, exactly, but they were relentless. She didn’t care for the idea of negotiating them in the dark, even with a flashlight.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  To her huge relief the opening in the hillside was right where she’d posited. The entrance yawned wide before them, seductively beckoning. Best of all… it really was a mine. Not a cave. Not a deceptive shadow on the UAV footage, or a shallow scrape in the valley. It was a real, live, honest-to-God mine.

  “Man oh man,” said Dixon, catching his breath from the last bit of steep, treacherous climbing. “We found it. Amazing.” Then he turned. “Actually, Major, you found it. Great job.”

  Flushed with exertion, she nodded. “Thanks, Colonel.”

  He laughed. “We’ll have to start calling you Naquadah Woman. Start up a line of comic-books in your honor.”

  “Classified comic-books?” Amused, she wiped her forearm across her face, smearing sweat and grime, aware of a rising jubilation. “Cool.”

  Holy Hannah and her best friends. We did it, General.

  “You are positive it’s a naquadah mine?” Dixon persisted.

  “It is,” said Teal’c, and gestured at their surroundings. “The evidence is irrefutable. Not only do we have Major Carter’s reaction, there is no vegetation for some one hundred meters around the mine’s entrance. Raw naquadah is inimitable to plant life.”

  “Really?” said Dixon, taking a step back. “What about human life?”

  “We’re fine provided our exposure is limited,” Sam assured him.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right,” said Dixon. “You guys mined the stuff for a couple of weeks and you survived.”