Brotherhood (12/27)
Title: Brotherhood ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1 Chapter2a-- 2b Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10a-- 10b Chapter11 Chapter12
XXXXX
The Tok'ra
XXXXX
10 November 1999; Briefing Room, SGC; 1030 hrs
By the time everyone was assembled and Jack walked into the briefing room, Daniel was skimming through a copy of some book called The Egyptian Heaven and Hell. Jack felt that this did not bode well for what he'd say about where Jacob Carter was.
"Kingdom of Sokar," Daniel muttered as he flipped through. "Netu is mentioned as a part of one of the regions of the Egyptian underworld, with Sokar the ruler of some of those regions. Netu...there are references to various monsters, fire feeding into a lake..."
Jack connected death with underworld and fire and suggested, "Hell?"
"Uh...sure. I mean, it does sound rather...hellish." Daniel grimaced. "The point is that it's probably fiery, with 'creatures' that might or might not refer to Jaffa or other soldiers, and..." He hesitated and glanced at Carter. "It's probably not a good place to be."
Carter was shaking her head. "And no one but Jolinar has ever escaped from there? I only carried her for a couple of days. I've never had enough of her memories to see anything like this place you're describing. I'd do anything to help you, believe me, but I'm not sure I can."
"The Tok'ra have memory-enhancing devices," Martouf assured her. Jack saw her expression at the idea of having memory devices used on her and didn't envy her a bit. He hoped Martouf liked her enough that he wouldn't try something harmful on her.
"If we're doing this, we'll need a couple more units, sir," Jack told Hammond.
Martouf shook his head. "A full military incursion will be impossible, Colonel O'Neill."
A little impatient--and by the looks of it, Carter was becoming so, too, with good reason--Jack said, "We do covert. We get in, grab Jacob, and get out."
"Selmak's recovery is obviously a high priority," Martouf hedged. "However, and forgive me, Samantha, but there is more at stake here. The Tok'ra believe that Sokar is about to launch a massive attack against the System Lords. First and foremost, we need to determine what information Selmak has gathered about Sokar's planned attack."
Jack thought that over: Goa'uld killing Goa'uld, Goa'uld dying... "Isn't it a good thing if Sokar kills our enemies for us?"
Teal'c reminded him, "The disorganization of the System Lords' fragmented rule is a far more vulnerable target than that of one powerful Goa'uld, particularly if the Goa'uld is Sokar."
"It took three of the most powerful System Lords together to defeat him last time," Daniel reminded them. "And they didn't even succeed, obviously."
"The fate of the galaxy may be at stake," Martouf added, because he hadn't been overdramatic enough yet today.
"It sounds like we can't refuse," Hammond said grimly. "Colonel, you have a go."
"When do we leave?" Carter asked.
"As soon as you are ready," Martouf said, looking as impatient to start as anyone, "if you are all sure you understand what you are volunteering for."
"Um, General," Daniel said, raising a finger and leaning forward. "I--I know what you're going to say, sir...but it's Jacob."
"Not this time, son," Hammond told him. "This is exactly the kind of thing you're not trained for. SG-1 will go with the Tok'ra to Netu without you."
Daniel swallowed. "The three of you, will that be enough?"
"There are only four descent pods," Martouf told him. "I will accompany SG-1, but only four will be able to disembark from the teltak and enter Netu's atmosphere."
"Teltak?" Jack asked.
"A Goa'uld transport vessel," Teal's provided. "A cargo ship."
Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Whoa...we're going to Hell in a ship?"
"Do not worry," Martouf assured him. "Much of the damage to the ship was repaired."
XXXXX
11 November 1999; Tok'ra Teltak; 0900 hrs
"We still do not know how Jolinar escaped from Netu," Martouf said as the four of them gathered around the teltak to work out their plan. "I cannot allow any of you to descend to the surface without a route of escape, and if Samantha has not been able to remember...the risk to you all is too great."
Jack looked out the window at the surface of Hell. "We're not leaving without Carter's dad."
"It may prove necessary," Martouf said.
"You know what?" Jack started, annoyed. "Maybe that's how the Tok'ra do things, but--"
"There are bigger things at stake, more important than any one of us," Martouf said again. He glanced out as well, then turned back. "I will descend alone to Netu and attempt to find Selmak. When I do, I will relay his intelligence to you through this communicator"--he held up his com device--"and you must return to Vorash to inform the Tok'ra of what Selmak learned."
Carter shook her head. "You're not going without us, Martouf." Teal'c was still in the pilot's seat but listening closely as well.
"Samantha, with no means of escape..."
"We're not leaving without you, either," Jack told Martouf. When the Tok'ra began to argue, he insisted, "No one's being left. Look, it's been done. Jolinar escaped from there once. We can do it again--we'll improvise. Come on, this is practically our specialty."
Martouf stared at Carter, then looked away. "Perhaps Teal'c should remain on the teltak. If we are unable to escape, he will still be able to return to the Tok'ra with our information."
This time Teal'c spoke up to say, "General Carter may be injured, and we will move more quickly if there are enough people to aid him and to do battle should it prove necessary."
"You're pretty recognizable, Teal'c," Jack felt obligated to point out, even though Teal'c would be a really nice advantage to have with them.
In response, Teal'c looked pointedly at the uniforms they wore, complete with SGC markings and zippers and all the things that made them look like they were from Earth. "As are you, O'Neill. I believe we will all be equally despised by the people on Netu."
"Cheery thought," Jack said. "But fair. So, everyone, what do you say?"
Carter fingered the memory device still stuck behind her ear. "I'm game, sir, and I might have an idea to improve odds of success for the greater picture concerning Sokar, too. Is there a...an automatic navigation system on this ship? And can the ship record transmissions?"
"Yes--ah. I see what you mean," Martouf said, moving toward the controls.
"I don't," Jack said.
"We bring the communicator and relay intelligence to the teltak while it remains near Netu, preferably on the far side of the moon, out of sight of Delmak and the ships in orbit there," she explained, looking over Martouf's shoulder. "The transmission will be recorded on this ship."
"I will set the teltak to return to the coordinates of Earth in ten hours' time," Martouf finished. "Whether or not we escape, the Tau'ri can still give the information about Sokar to the Tok'ra."
"Could we not send the teltak to Vorash directly?" Teal'c asked.
"A vessel cannot land there without acknowledgement by the Tok'ra," Martouf explained. "If it did so, the Tok'ra would likely target it, assuming that we had been compromised."
Paranoid much? "Well, you can't land it on Earth," Jack pointed out. "Aside from the fact that this is top secret, there's nowhere for it to land unless we warn them first. And it might take too long for the SGC to get word of it, especially if someone besides the US picks it up first."
"Maybe another friendly planet," Carter said, "one that would be sure to contact the SGC without any probability that the ship could be attacked instead of investigated..."
"Abydos," Jack suggested. "Their only contact is Earth, and they're our only friendly planet that doesn't have the weaponry to destroy the ship and does have a way to open the iris or at least communicate with Hammond by radio. They'll call the SGC." Carter and Teal'c looked at each other, and then Carter shrugged and pointed out the Stargate address for Abydos. "Martouf, can you control where on a planet this ship will land? We have to be sure someone'll see it."
Martouf was already inputting the coordinates. "The ship can detect a Stargate or a set of transportation rings and can be given a command to land a certain distance away. Beyond that, I have no control without greater knowledge of the planet."
"That's good enough," Jack assured him. "It's open desert all around the 'gate and the rings. The 'gate guards should get word to the SGC pretty fast."
Carter opened her supply pack. "I'll leave a message for an SG team to find, so they'll know what to do when they get to the ship."
That done, there was nothing left but to lock themselves in the descent pods and get ready to go to Hell.
XXXXX
11 November 1999; Netu; 1700 hrs
Fire, toxic atmosphere, evil creatures come to insult them and throw them in prison... Jack looked out past the bars of their prison and had to admit that it fit his image of Hell pretty well.
"Are they just gonna leave us here to stew?" Jack said, glancing back once at Jacob where he half-lay and half-sat against the bars of the door. Another look out of their prison cell showed Carter still not back from whatever Bynarr, Sokar's lackey Goa'uld, was doing with her. No use imagining what Bynarr was doing to her just yet. He wiped a sleeve over his brow. "Is it getting hotter, or is it just me?" he asked irritably.
When his three fellow prisoners' eyes tracked momentarily to him, he remembered that he was the only one currently here without a symbiote to take the edge off everything.
"Fine," Jack sighed. "It's just me." He supposed he should be grateful--they'd only been here a few hours, and it was already getting hard to keep breathing without choking on the dryness and the borderline-poisonous air around them. If Jacob hadn't had Selmak to take care of him over the last four days...
Jack wondered how long he and Major Carter would last in this place, even if they never got to the torture part, which was undoubtedly in the cards somewhere. So far, it felt like his lungs were trying to burn their way out of his chest, but he supposed that could have just been the heat. Not, of course, that that would make things any better in the long run.
A clanking sound made Jack stand, but it was only the First Prime, who'd come to gawk at them.
Jack looked over his shoulder--Teal'c was on his feet as well while Martouf crouched protectively over Selmak, but the First Prime did nothing but look at them all. Not that Jack would know, he supposed, if the guy was glaring at them from behind that hooded mask that made him look a lot like an executioner.
Well, hell. They'd converted another high-ranking Jaffa to their cause before, and honestly, who in his right mind would want to stay here to serve a minor Goa'uld if given another choice? "Hey, you," Jack said. "What's your name?"
There was a shifting motion that made Jack think the guy was surprised to be talked to. Well, that, or his uniform was itchy. Jaffa uniforms were like that, and that was without taking the heat into account. "I am Na'onak," the First Prime said, and somehow, Jack could almost swear the guy was amused by something. There was something funny about his voice--maybe that was the point of the mask, after all, some sort of Darth Vader thing that made him sound creepy and Goa'uld-like.
Teal'c stiffened, but Jack threw out an arm and said, "Na'onak, you do know the Goa'uld aren't gods, right? You've gotta know that by now. And I mean, you've got ambitions besides rotting in a dump like this, right, guy like you? You see Teal'c, here--we got him out--"
This time, there was no mistaking Na'onak's laughter. He leaned his helmeted face in close and hissed, "The Goa'uld are gods, O'Neill. You and the shol'va will pay."
Jack was too surprised at being addressed by name to react. Teal'c was not, and he launched himself toward the bars, snarling. Jolted into action, Jack pulled him away, Martouf rising to help restrain him as Na'onak laughed harder and turned to walk away.
"What was that?" Jack demanded once they'd wrestled Teal'c away from the bars and Na'onak was out of sight.
"Na'onak," Teal'c growled.
"Yeah," Jack said, "that was his name--"
"It was not!" Teal'c said. "Na'onak means 'not a god.' He is not a Jaffa--he is a disgraced Goa'uld, forced to serve Sokar's forces."
"I noticed the name," Jacob said, "but he could just be someone like you, Teal'c--a Jaffa they wanted to put in his place. Voice modulators can--"
Teal'c growled and glared at them. "He is a Goa'uld. I know the voice of my former master."
"Your former--oh, for cryin' out loud!" Jack stared at Teal'c. "You're telling me that's Apophis?" Well, it explained how the guy knew them, anyway, and why he'd come to gloat at them. "So my little recruitment spiel wasn't ever gonna work, huh."
"Sokar's sarcophagus," Martouf spoke up. "Perhaps Sokar decided that a lifetime of servitude, stripped of his power and rank, was worse punishment than even death."
Jack sighed, leaning back against the bars. "This day just keeps getting better and better."
Finally, Carter was brought back and stumbled into the cell. Jack took a quick look to make sure she was unhurt--they had no time right now for more than a glance--then checked his watch. They had less than an hour left before Jolinar's teltak was set to take off again for Abydos--hopefully, Jacob's information was enough for the Tok'ra to do something about the threat of Sokar.
Carter glowered darkly until the guards returned to their post, then turned to Jack and said quietly, "Sir, I know how Jolinar escaped."
"Well, we really need a way to escape now, so let's have it," Jack urged.
And so it came out: Bynarr hadn't helped Jolinar escape, or not exactly. She'd seduced him and used him to escape, which Jack was pretty sure wouldn't be an option this time around.
Jack let Carter and Martouf exchange earnest, confused looks of meaningful love-but-not-really for a full six seconds before saying, "But how exactly did Jolinar get out, Major?"
Snapped back to the situation at hand, Carter straightened and said, "There are transportation rings in Bynarr's quarters, and he carries the key to them on his person. Jolinar...managed to get it away from him, used the rings to get up to Sokar's palace, stole a cargo ship, and escaped."
Now, if that wasn't an insane plan, Jack didn't know what was. Luckily, they had experience with pulling off insane. They had two Tok'ra--one of them healthy--a Jaffa, and two humans trained in combat; maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea to try what a lone Tok'ra had managed before.
In the distance, someone called, "The Lord of Netu is dead!"
"What's going on out there?" Jack asked, moving closer to the bars and standing on his toes as if it would help him see.
Carter bent down to check over her father. "That First Prime--Na'onak--just killed Bynarr. I thought Bynarr was going to kill me up until then."
"Apophis seeks vengeance against us," Teal'c said. "It was undoubtedly for that reason that he stopped Bynarr from killing Major Carter. He wishes to torture and execute us by his own hand."
Well, that's great, Jack thought.
"Wh--Apophis?" Carter echoed, lost.
"You're a little behind, Sam," Jacob put in. "Na'onak is Apophis. And it's possible he wants his power back, not just vengeance, and your presence is handing him the bargaining chip he needs. Either way, if he's attacked Bynarr, the denizens will riot."
Already, Jack saw a few of their guards disappearing from sight to investigate the commotion and said, "Then this could be our last chance." Quickly, he relayed the information from the com device to the cargo ship, checking his watch again. In less than half an hour, the ship would be off and headed toward, hopefully, the SGC and the Tok'ra.
"Sir," Carter said dubiously, "the rings go to Sokar's palace. Jolinar escaped, but she was one person, and she had a hand device."
"We've got able-bodied people, too," Jack said. "Does anyone have a better idea? We got the intel up to the ship, and it's on its way to Abydos--we've done our duty to the galaxy. We just need a way out of here, and we'd better act now while people are confused."
Jacob nodded, and Martouf said, "Let us lure the guards toward us. When the doors open, we should be able to overtake them, and then we can proceed to Bynarr's quarters."
Good. Everyone was on board. Now, time for a plan.
"Teal'c, you take Jacob," Jack said quietly. "Carter, when we get there, you and Martouf get that ring platform working. Everyone clear? Good. Jacob, act like you're trying to contact someone." He handed the com device over. "Everyone else, get ready."
Jack gave thanks for the first time for the shadows all over this place and shrank back into one of them with Martouf as Carter and Teal'c took up position on the other side.
"Tal'mak Selmak," Jacob said as loudly as he could, holding the com device. One of the guards outside turned at the sound of his voice, and he and his companion quickly began to walk toward them. "Kel shek? Tal'mak--"
"Kel nok? Kal shak!" one of the guards shouted, opening the door.
Just as one of them reached for Jacob, Martouf flung himself at the man. Carter burst out at the second one with a swift kick to the gut as Jack finished off Martouf's guard from behind. By the time his man was down, Carter's was, too, and they'd gained a couple of sturdy wooden clubs for their trouble. Teal'c had already slung Selmak unceremoniously over his shoulders.
"This way!" Carter said, and they took off after her.
In front of an open chamber, Teal'c hissed, "Halt! Someone approaches!"
They crouched low into a corner, watching as another guard--one of the ones who'd captured them, Apophis's underling--walked past, peered suspiciously around the room, and left.
"Let's go," Jack whispered.
Carter led them into another room where Bynarr's dead form still lay and crouched over him. Jack turned and pushed the doors shut as she said, "The key that activates the rings is gone."
"Where was the key to be inserted?" Martouf asked.
"Here," she said, showing him to a piece on the wall.
Jack barricaded the door and leaned his weight against it as well, hoping no one had seen them and that the doors would be able to hold if someone realized their cell was empty. "Can you make it work?" he asked as Martouf smashed the control interface and examined the mechanism inside.
Martouf reached in to start fiddling. "It will take time."
Teal'c looked up, saw the rings over his head, and set Jacob down in the center before helping Jack at the door. Carter moved to the rings as well.
"The Jaffa will attack as soon as we get up there," Jacob said.
"As will Sokar," Teal'c said. "Energy weapons will be of no use against him if he possesses a hand device."
"I'll try to hold off Sokar," Jack said, knowing there was no time for anyone to argue with him. "Try to take the Jaffa by surprise and pick up a few weapons on the way."
"Almost done," Martouf said.
Someone pounded against the door as the shouting became louder. The door shuddered once, and again. Jack gritted his teeth.
"Get ready," Martouf finally said. Jack checked that the bar holding the door shut was still in place and moved toward the rings, Teal'c following a second later. "It is done!"
Just as Martouf reached the platform, the door creaked. "Marty..." Jack said.
"Two seconds--"
Carter hefted the club in her hand, standing over her father.
Rings fell over them just as the door splintered. Jack had just enough time to see Apophis's scarred face before white light shot through the ceiling and Netu faded away--
--to a hooded figure on a throne. Jack saw an activated hand device, decided that this was probably Sokar, and launched himself bodily at the Goa'uld.
There were scuffling sounds behind him, and he flinched reflexively but couldn't turn around to see when the first staff blast sounded. Sokar's hood fell back, revealing a whitened face roaring in surprise and fury. Jack slammed his elbow into the Goa'uld's face, the force of the impact toppling both of them together off the throne and to the floor. He landed on top and drew his hand back for another blow, but Sokar, aided by his symbiote, was much faster and stronger, and he caught Jack's fist in the hard, metallic grip of a hand device.
"O'Neill!" Teal'c shouted.
Ignoring the crushing pain in his hand, Jack turned and rolled away as much as he could while still held in the Goa'uld's grip. The crystal of the ribbon device heated against his knuckles--
A staff blast burned across Jack's leg, and he hissed as brief shock gave way to a line of fire blazing through his limb. His hand was released, and, off balance, he tumbled the rest of the way off Sokar and to the floor.
An arm gripped him around his chest. Squinting against the pain, Jack tried to twist around enough to free his good leg to kick, until Teal'c called again, "O'Neill, it is I! Martouf, the hand device!"
Jack stopped fighting and let Teal'c drag him away, waiting for his leg to stop burning enough to scramble away on his own. "I'm fine," he choked out.
Staff blasts were sounding with increasing frequency now. He dragged open watering eyes to see Carter and Teal'c had both wrested staff weapons away from someone. As he watched, Carter tossed hers toward her dad where he was propped against a wall and ducked under one blast coming from outside to grab another weapon from the hands of an injured Jaffa, kicking viciously to loosen his grip and turning the staff weapon to keep him down for good. To the other side, a thin line of smoke was rising from Sokar's still form, and Martouf was bent over it.
Teal'c's shot had grazed Jack, but it had taken Sokar full in the chest. This was their chance.
"Sam," Jacob yelled, "the entrance! Hold 'em back!"
The sound of a priming staff weapon jerked Jack's attention away from them. Jack threw himself to the side and landed on his wounded leg with a groan, just in time for Teal'c to blast a hole in one of the last few Jaffa still left in the room.
"Colonel O'Neill!" Martouf called.
Jack forced himself to turn again. There was a staff weapon aimed at him, but it was too late to do move out of the way--
Martouf stepped in front of him, his hand extended. A Goa'uld personal shield shimmered into place around him.
A staff blast was turned by the shield, and Jack took the delay to grab a crude club they'd picked up in Hell and smash it hard into the attacker's gut. As the Jaffa doubled over, Jack ripped the staff weapon away and ducked long enough for Martouf to reactivate the stolen hand device, his eyes flashing as the Jaffa dropped to his knees, and then crumpled to the ground.
A surprised shout from Jacob made Jack whirl around again. "Dad," Carter said, turning away from the doorway to aim at the Jaffa attacking her father.
The sound of something scraping along the ground made Jack turn again to see Sokar disappearing through the room, his limp body dragged away by one of the Jaffa. "Don't let him get away!" Jack called, but by the time they rallied themselves, there were six Jaffa shielding Sokar with their own bodies.
Martouf took an extra second to get his bearings with his stolen hand device and blast them all back, but by then, Sokar had gone.
"We can't let him get away," Jack said, starting to push himself back up to his feet before more of Sokar's Jaffa realized what was going on and came to find them.
"Colonel," Carter said, still crouched warily by the door, "Sokar has a sarcophagus and probably dozens of Jaffa in this palace, a lot of whom are going to be guarding him until he's healed. This is our chance to get out while they're disorganized--the hangar where Jolinar found and stole the teltak is in the other direction from their forces, not far from here."
"The Tok'ra will get our information," Jacob said, Teal'c already helping him up with one arm while still gripping a staff weapon in the other. "We can't do anything now except escape. Hurry, before more guards come back."
Carter stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Jack's waist to steady him, and it was only then that Jack noticed she wasn't using her left hand at all. "I think your wound's mostly cauterized," she said tightly. "Can you walk, sir?"
Jack took a look at his leg for himself, but between the blood and burned and shredded cloth, he couldn't see much. "Grazed," Jack decided, giving his leg an experimental shake. That was a mistake; Carter winced as he squeezed her shoulder in pain. Oh, yeah, this was going to suck. "How bad are you hurt?"
"Did something to my wrist, sir," she said. "I'll live."
"Help me walk--I'll take the staff weapon." One of them half-lame and the other's arm disabled...this wasn't going to be fun.
"I will lead," Lantash growled. With Martouf's personality taking a backseat for the moment, the fervent passion of battle on Lantash's face was lit eerily by the red glow of the crystal in the center of the weapon on his hand. "I can keep them at bay and block their attack. Remain behind me."
"Fine," Jack said. He'd only spoken to the Tok'ra symbiote directly once or twice, but anyone okay with Martouf couldn't be so bad, he thought. Besides, they could use a little less calm composure for a few minutes. "Mar--Lantash, clear our way as much as you can. Everyone with a weapon, guard his back. He goes down, we're all screwed."
"This way," Carter said as they hurried out together. "To your right, Lantash."
It was, Jack found, very useful to have someone with the full, Goa'uld-level control over a hand device. Even ducking into side passageways whenever they could, and even with the distraction of guarding Sokar during his healing process, they still ran into four groups of patrols on their way. Jack picked off a few that Martouf's hand device missed, while Teal'c took care of a few more trickling in from behind them before they managed to reach what Carter thought might possibly be related to her memory of the hangar.
They checked to make sure the place was clear, then sealed themselves in, destroying the control panel by the door as a precaution.
It was only after they'd sealed the door that Jack thought to wonder if that had been the smartest thing to do, after all.
"Carter," Jack said, staring around the mostly-empty bay as Teal'c found his way into a cargo ship and examined the controls. "Are you sure this is the right place?"
"Not...sure, sir," she said, "but if Sokar's planning an attack, maybe most of the ships are somewhere else. There are a few cargo ships left here--"
"This one has improved capabilities from the teltak Jolinar stole years go," Teal'c said, emerging again. "However, its flight capabilities are damaged."
"It is possible that the only ships that remain here are those that have been damaged," Martouf said, resurfacing as he lowered the hand device. "Or incomplete ones still in development."
A rumbling sound came from outside, and then banging on the door.
"Great," Jack muttered. He squinted upward at the panels that would retract to let a ship lift out and said, "We just need anything that can move itself off this planet. There are four ships here--none of them can even get into the sky?"
"This one cannot," Martouf said, quickly dismissing the first one he found.
"Here!" Teal'c called as he checked a third ship. Martouf helped Jacob over as Jack and Carter limped to him as well. "This one also possesses functioning cloaking abilities..."
"...and main engines," Martouf added, "but there is damage to the navigation systems. The monitors appear to be working, but I cannot say if the controls are."
"If we can get out of here and above the atmosphere, even just on the engines alone," Carter said, "maybe we can enter hyperspace and work on patching up the controls when we're somewhere safer than here."
"Risky," Jack said, because no amount of courage could dispel the instinctive terror of being adrift in space with no idea where to go.
A resounding boom came from behind them, as if the Jaffa had found a battering ram for the door.
Then again, other terrors were closer at hand.
"Okay, let's try that," Jack decided, pulling himself onboard and moving with a wince toward the cargo area to stay out of the way.
Teal'c pulled the door closed as Martouf sat in one of the chairs and Carter helped her father to the cargo area as well, holding her left hand close to her body. Teal'c took the other pilot's chair and warned, "They will be prepared for us to attempt an escape by ship. They may attack as soon as the ceiling retracts. We must remain cloaked as long as possible and escape the atmosphere immediately."
"Prepare for ascent," Martouf called, acknowledging Teal'c's words with a nod. Jack gripped the nearest protruding part of the wall he could find. Carter, he saw, was sitting with her back to the wall, her father held tight against herself.
Light began to trickle through the false window by the bridge, and sure enough, they lifted shakily into the air.
"You're, uh...sure this thing can fly, right?" Carter said, grimacing as the ship shuddered ominously again.
Martouf glanced back at her but didn't answer. "Engage cloaking," he said instead to Teal'c. "Prepare to enter hyperspace as soon as possible."
With another groan, the teltak shook again, and then shot directly upward into the sky, rocketing upward so fast that Jack thought they'd surely make it--
Something smashed into the side of the ship. Jack lost his grip and barely managed to avoid kicking Jacob in the head as the Carters slid out of their spot. "What the hell was that?" Jack demanded.
"Sokar's fleet is attacking," Teal'c called back. "Our sensors are failing--I do not know what damage we have sustained."
The teltak swooped again, still chugging upward, as far as Jack could tell. "I thought we were cloaked!"
"We are," Martouf said. "They must have seen the hangar opening. It was only by luck that they hit us, so if we can escape fast enough, before they can hit us again--"
Too late. There was another crash, and then they were all tumbling across the cargo area. Jack curled himself with his arms over his head until his back slammed into a wall and he came to a stop. "Carter, Jacob?"
"F-fine, sir," Carter coughed, squirming around the narrowest space as if trying to find a way to wedge herself and her father in place more tightly.
"The hyperdrive has sustained damage!" Teal'c called.
Crap, Jack thought.
"We will break atmosphere in four seconds," Martouf said.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, though, the ship began to swerve drunkenly. "Marty?" Jack said.
His voice strained, Martouf said, "The main engine has been damaged. I believe we have enough power, and enough momentum, but I have lost all real control."
"We have exited atmosphere," Teal'c announced. "I will attempt the hyperdrive--"
To Jack's relief, a subspace window opened before them. The ship crept toward it with an agonizing slowness that reminded Jack of a hockey puck sliding across the ice with no one to give it another good whack, but they were almost there. They were going to make it--
--and the window faded away.
The ship sailed past the spot where the window once had been and kept going. Jack gaped in disbelief.
"There was too much damage to the hyperdrive," Martouf said, sounding dejected. He rose and hurried to look through the back of the cargo area, where another hyperspace window opened and three of Sokar's ships zipped in. "They must have seen the window and assumed that we had successfully entered hyperspace. They will not find us here, at least."
Jack looked out the window: Sokar's planet of Delmak on one side, Netu on another, and nothing--nothing--on all others. Well, lots of ships, but they were ships floating in nothing.
"So," Jack said, looking around at the tired, resigned expressions of his team, "no hyperdrive, no engines...anything else?"
"I believe we are hovering in orbit around Delmak," Teal'c offered. "We still remain cloaked. However, beyond that..."
"Life support can last several more days," Martouf said. "But there is nowhere to go."
"The cloak is failing!" Teal'c announced suddenly.
"Carter?" Jack asked reflexively.
She pushed herself to her feet with a wince. Martouf stood, and the two of them dashed into the engine room, Martouf ripping the ribbon device from his hand as he went. "On it, sir!" she called back before they disappeared.
Jack slumped back numbly, trying to figure out how long they'd last out here, invisible and floating near Sokar's planet forever or until they died on their own. He met Jacob's eyes and saw the same conclusion reflected there. "We're trapped," he said.
From the next chapter (" To Hell and Back"):
Daniel's eyebrows rose--Abydos had never initiated contact with them before, not unless one of their teams was there. Still, they had their code for a reason, and the iris was open, so Daniel gave a quick "yes, sir" and ran down the steps to the embarkation room.
Note: The book referenced is The Egyptian Heaven and Hell by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, which contains a translation of books of the underworld, including the Book of Am-Tuat.