STARGATE SG-1 Murder at the SGC by Murder at the SGC (SG1–26)

Author:Murder at the SGC (SG1–26) [Retail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fandemonium Books
Published: 2020-06-29T14:38:03+00:00

Chapter Ten

Cam made his way cautiously down the stair, listening for any sign of movement from below. He heard nothing, but halfway down the stairs his flashlight beam once again disappeared into darkness.

“I don’t hear anything,” Daniel said from over his shoulder. “Before we could hear it breathing.”

“It’s got to be down here, though.”

“Along with Carolyn and Collins.”

“All right,” Cam said, reaching the bottom of the stairs and bracing himself. “Here we go.” He reached out with his left hand and touched rough stone. There was nothing to do but take another step forward into the darkness, hoping his foot would touch stone rather than scales or teeth.

He bumped into something knee-high, and recoiled with such force that he collided with Daniel behind him.

“On your side here,” Daniel said.

“Not an animal,” Cam said. He bent down to feel the edge of what he’d found, and touched straight lines rather than the curving shape of scales. He felt metal under his fingers, and then the stinging buzz of some kind of force field. “Maybe a stasis chamber.”

“Which might have Carolyn in it.”

“Or a large, angry reptile.”

Daniel brushed against him, clearly crouching down to feel the edge of the chamber. “There’s a story like this,” he said.

“The lady and the tiger. I know. Only in the story, he gets a hint. We don’t get a hint.”

“I thought you hated puzzles anyway.”

“I do,” Cam said. “And I’m still not sure how we know if Merlin wants us to find the lady or the tiger. The Ancients haven’t exactly been our best friends every time we’ve tangled with them so far.”

“We know that Merlin wanted to defeat the Ori,” Daniel said.

“The enemy of our enemy is our friend?”

“It’s what we’ve got. And I think I’ve found the control panel for this thing.”

“You’re waiting for me to tell you whether to push buttons, aren’t you?”

“Jack hated it when I pushed buttons without asking him first.”

“I can see why.” Cam took a deep breath and cocked his pistol. “Push the buttons, Jackson. Let’s find out if it’s the lady or the tiger.”

“Here we go,” Daniel said. Cam strained to listen, the small sounds of Daniel pushing buttons seeming to echo through the room. There was a crackle as the force field dissolved under his fingers, and he reached down and felt something warm, and then something hard and distinctly scaly, rising as if a serpentine head was lifting under his hand.

“Please don’t move,” Carolyn’s voice said out of the darkness.

Cam froze. “It’s in there with you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. It’s looking at me right now.”

“Do you want me to shoot it?”

“Not yet. I’ve got my hand on the dagger.”

“Think ‘off,’” Daniel urged.

“I’m trying, it’s just a little hard to concentrate under the circumstances.”

“You can do it.”

The darkness vanished, not like a cloud dispersing, but like turning on a light switch in a dark room. Carolyn was crouching at one end of a long, deep stasis chamber, big enough to lay three men in side by side.

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