Transference Protocols, for Kag523
Crossover with: The Mummy (set about six months after the first movie) and contains Evie/Rick as a secondary pairing.
Length: 9000 words
Rating: PG13, for the most part. A little language, a little violence, a little off-screen sex.
Notes: I was really not expecting to write this, I had a nice little introspective piece done when this bit my brain. This is set during the year on New Caprica.
Title: Transference Protocols
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Can't catch me!" Kara called over her shoulder. After a long week of working on the foundation for the school (the construction was actually going to stall soon, if the President didn't get off his ass and out of his little den of iniquity and do some administration work), she'd been ready to burst. A late night of drinking and frakking had left her and Sam sleeping until noon. Tumbling out of bed, they'd showered and eaten and gone for a hike.
Every chance they got, they explored New Caprica. Sam loved the open spaces and the trees, and dragged her up into the hills and down into the valleys. It wasn't something Kara really minded, after all, the planet was her home. But she did feel a bit odd sometimes, as she ran through trees and tumbled down hill-sides full of grass and wild-flowers. It wasn't searching for Earth, though she supposed Earth was probably a lot like New Caprica. Probably warmer, though, but then, everything was warmer than New Caprica.
The settlement still felt like something new and different to her. The smell of fresh and growing things contrasted the earthy smell of the peat they were using around the settlement for fertilizer, and the acridness of the wood smoke that never quite dissipated, now that the nights were getting colder.
As always, their hike was a game, with Sam chasing her up the hills and down the valleys. Kara laughed in sheer enjoyment, then took off from the crest of another ridge. Sam was behind her, laughing as he called after her, "What if I don't want to?"
"Your loss!" She ducked around a sapling, then plunged into the thicket of bushes next to it. Branches smacked into her face and arms, twigs catching in her hair and shirt. Tucking her head down, she slowed a bit and began weaving under the branches. This was a new valley that no one else had covered, and Sam was probably going to complain that it was her turn to mark information down on their map once he'd caught up.
She could hear his heavier steps behind her, and the crash when he hit the bushes. He was too tall to duck under as easily as she did, and she felt a smug satisfaction as she stumbled into a clearing. There hadn't been much to see on New Caprica outside of the growing things and the mud, so the cave mouth that peeked out from behind a skein of vines was new.
Forgetting her plan to go back up the slope to skirt around behind Sam, she moved closer to the opening. "Sam, did you bring a light with you?"
He probably had, the frakker was always prepared. Not that she ever objected to that.
A breath of cooler air brushed across her face as she began pulling the vines away from the cave mouth--if it turned out just to be a shallow depression, she was going to be annoyed.
"Gotcha," Sam's fingers brushed her shoulder, as he joined her, already shining a flashlight through the opening Kara had made. The beam brushed over damp rock, and was swallowed by the distance of the far wall of the cavern. "We should be careful."
Rolling her eyes, Kara took his free hand and ducked into the cave, "Why? Afraid there are Cylons living here?"
He snorted and followed her inside, directing the light at their feet until they were a few feet inside. "Nah, I might get a good reward for turning you over."
Ignoring that suggestion, Kara took the light from him. The interior of the cavern was close for several feet, then seemed to open outwards. There was no sign of a far wall, and she wondered just how deep the tunnel went. Peering at one of the walls, she frowned and moved closer.
There were lines etched into the stone--not randomly, but a progression. She brushed some of the clinging moss from one section, "Does this look like writing to you?"
"It's the trees. They have an alphabet," Sam joked, nudging her with his elbow before he pulled away more lichen.
Something about them were familiar, but Kara didn't know why. She shrugged and turned away, "Let's see what else this place has to offer."
-=-
They were careful to keep track of their route, Sam marking the walls with a piece of stone and Kara memorizing it as she would have a complicated viper maneuver. When they entered a new room, they would stop so Sam could make a quick sketch and put it into the map in its relative place. Kara thought it might be considered a waste of paper, especially as it got more difficult to keep things straight. Many side-rooms and tunnels that split and then rejoined each other four rooms later began to fill the map.
Sam would also examine the etchings, which he thought were familiar. Though he didn't try to decipher them past claiming that one was an arrow that said 'exit'.
Abruptly, Kara stopped in the middle of the latest room. She didn't know why as she slowly turned, light brushing the curved walls around them. There was something here, that she could almost feel--like standing on the deck of a battlestar, a reassuring hum pulsing through her boots.
She sucked in a breath. "Sam, I'm going to turn the light off."
"Kara," his hand wrapped around her arm. "Go ahead." As though he knew her reason, or was feeling that same sense that she was.
In the darkness, the sound was louder. Not as subliminal. She listened for several seconds, then turned the light back on. "There's machinery down here."
"That's impossible," Sam said, his tone flat.
"We're just hearing things, then." With that retort, she turned to continue, and froze. Ahead of them had been another opening. Now that was gone and a slab of stone blocked their way. The writing on it was subtly different, or perhaps the stone itself was wrong. She didn't know and wasn't sure she cared. The hair on the back of her neck was beginning to prickle.
"Damn. We'll have to go back."
Kara scowled at it. He was right, though. Neither of them had tools for breaking down giant slabs of rock.
Before they could move, the slab made a grating sound and began to swing open. Light spilled in from the widening opening, and Kara wondered who would be on New Caprica, in a cave.
~~~~
There were few things Rick O'Connell liked less in life than tombs and spiders. Snakes were up there on the list, so was losing the people he loved (which at this point were his wife and... his wife). He didn't really like archaeology, but he had to admit that the passion Evelyn had for it more than made up for the boring and dusty books, or the languages he couldn't be bothered to learn.
It was simply easier to let her do her thing, while he did his stuff. Namely, collecting useful dangerous implements and watching their backs.
Not to mention following his instincts. Those had stood him in good stead over the years (they'd told him to run like the wind when a prim little English girl looked at him with distrust, but he'd ignored them that one time), which was why he didn't let her out of his sight very often. Evelyn had a penchant for trouble that sometimes left him wondering how she'd manage to survive to her current age.
But then she'd had her brother, and her own common sense. Besides, until the Hamunaptra business, she'd been buried in a library surrounded by books and artifacts. No dangers to be found there outside of paper cuts and boredom.
That had changed, which was why he followed her into her tombs and temples, trailing his fingers in the dust of ancient civilizations until the inevitable happened. Two weeks ago, they'd nearly brought the ceiling down together--though he couldn't blame her entirely, he'd been the one distracting her from her translations. Nearly six months ago there'd been that mummy business.
Still, that was in the past. With a new dig and a mandate from her Scholars in England, Evelyn had a new tomb to excavate. One that hopefully had no curse attached to it. Just in case, though, he had a pistol, two knives and a shotgun. And a bottle of holy water that was probably useless.
As far as he was concerned, you've seen one tomb, you've seen them all, but Rick had to admire the efficiency that went into constructing the damn things. Sand blocks and some sort of mortar that probably no longer existed, lots of half-broken statues in a multitude of rooms, some of them inter-connecting. Whole walls etched with hieroglyphics that had worn down in places, but still were easily read. At least by his wife.
"The notations to the script indicate that this tomb should never be opened," Evelyn said as she moved to touch the line between the blocks. "But knowing grave robbers, it's been desecrated for centuries."
She sounded disappointed, and while Rick could understand her quest for archaeological knowledge, his more practical side was glad that other people had already dealt with the dangers of an unopened tomb. In preparation of keeping up with his new wife, he'd read up a little on the things generally found in tombs and he wasn't looking forward to pits of snakes or falling rocks. Sand filling Hamunaptra had been bad enough to last his lifetime.
"Yeah. There weren't even any traps. What about curses?"
"None that I can see..." she trailed off, fingers tracing the nearly-worn lettering. "Just something about angels, and something called Kezarn."
Angels. Well, that was a step up from un-dead mummies. Still, Rick put a hand on his gun. "What happens if you open it?"
Evelyn flashed him a smile, the one that always got him in trouble. "I've no idea whatsoever."
"Uh-huh."
"You really should have more faith," she retorted. She paused, though, and turned to brush her fingers over another line. "I don't think this is a curse, though I do find it a bit curious. 'Transference operational'. What does that even mean?"
Rick made a face. "I hate this crap."
"Yes, I know," Evie rolled her eyes at him and pulled out her trowel. "Darling, why don't you go see how our lunch arrangements are coming?"
He'd never been good at taking a dismissal well. Rick folded his arms and took a step back, just in case. He might be new at this whole being married thing, and they might have had several spectacular arguments already about his dismissive attitude towards what she found fascinating, but he really did enjoy working with her.
"I've got a better idea. How about I go get that hammer we used on the tent stakes?"
"Don't be ridiculous, that would destroy valuable evidence, Rick," she replied. The tip of her trowel pushed into the opening and she began dragging it downwards. "Besides, I'm sure once the air seal is broken, a mechanism will swing it outwards."
Sometimes, Rick had to admit to himself that it was sort of hot when she was right. Even when it meant the inevitable sound of a curse being uttered somewhere.
Once Evie had broken the seal, she dug around in the stone of the door and then the wall, finally giving a sharp, "A-ha!"
With a click that had him reaching for his gun again, the door swung outwards with the sound of stone scraping stone. Somewhere, a booming sound reverberated through the entire tomb. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he had his gun out and pointed as two people in strange clothing came through the door.
"Oh my--who are you?" Evie demanded of them, sounding annoyed and disappointed. "You're not supposed to be here, you know. The Bainbridge Scholars promised me this would be my--"
"Evie, I don't think they're archaeologists."
The woman was shorter than the man, twigs and rock dust on the half-military clothing she wore. Her eyes flashed between he and Evie, before settling on the gun. "Do you really think that's necessary?"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, Rick," Evie turned away from them, "Put that away." She turned back to the other two and held out a hand. "I'm Evelyn, who are you?"
"I wouldn't put that away just yet." The man was looking past Rick, his eyes wide. "In fact, if you've got a spare--"
The woman swore as Rick spun to face the sound he'd been trying to ignore for the past few seconds. A shifting, dragging noise that had been crawling up his spine like a bad cough. It was exactly what he'd been afraid it would be. Dragging itself into the room, one of its legs damaged (possibly in the rock slide Rick had seen earlier), the mummified remains of some dead idiot made its way towards them.
He fired, hitting it in the shoulder. It staggered, but didn't go down.
"Aim for the legs--" the woman was next to him, her stance that of a fighter.
"It's already missing half of one," he pointed out.
"What the hell is it?"
"A mummy--" Evie had joined them, a horrified fascination in her voice. "Though I'm not sure the proper rituals were adhered to for this one."
The man snorted, "Whatever it is, should we be standing here waiting for it to get us?"
"Probably not. Evie--" Shifting, he pulled the sawed-off from the holster over his shoulder and held out the other gun to her.
She took it without hesitation. "Right. This way, you two--Rick--"
He glanced at her and half-grinned. "I'm right behind you."
The mummy lurched closer.
~~~~
With the adrenaline spiking through her, Kara was trying to decide if this was a hallucination, or something else. She wasn't even sure she believed that Rick had shot the thing. But she had seen it lurch with the impact. Keeping close to Sam seemed the only option, for the moment. That, and getting a gun, if she could. The walls (and they were walls, not a tunnel, hewn out of rock) around them reminded her of the Caprica museum where she'd gotten the Arrow. The etchings on them were similar to the ones in the cave they'd been in before they stepped through the doorway.
"The hell are we?" she muttered to Sam as they hurried through a room. The mummy was speeding up behind them, as though their movements gave it power.
"No idea." He was watching everything as much as she was. Which was probably why he saw the thing lurching from an alcove ahead of them, "Shit--Evie, to the right!"
The woman with Baltar's accent yelped and pointed her gun at the new arrival, firing at it a moment later. It lurched and fell back, a horrible screech emanating from it. "Unfortunately," she said, firing again, "Bullets won't stop the un-dead."
"Don't suppose you happen to remember the spells from the Book, honey?" Rick had joined them, his shotgun wavering between both mummies.
"Not at the moment, no--" with an annoyed sound, she handed the gun back to him. "If you hold this, I can see if it's in my notes."
"Is there another way out of this room?" Sam asked, grabbing Evie's arm and yanking her back with them while she was distracted, going through the little notebook she'd pulled out of a pocket.
"Not unless you happen to have some dynamite on you."
Movement from the doorway behind the mummy made Kara swear, "Sam, we've got two more incoming."
Mummies were not what she'd ordered for her day--though she had to admit, the adrenaline and the danger were sort of intoxicating. A grin found its way to her lips as she moved to stand next to Rick. "I can probably fire that thing, you know."
He shot her a suspicious look. "Don't know you. Don't trust you. Who are you?"
Kara could get behind being distrustful. She was following her gut instinct and trusting he wasn't a Cylon, though. This seemed too frakked up, even for them. "Kara Thrace. He's Sam Anders." When there wasn't a flicker of recognition, Kara figured he wasn't a pyramid fan. "Where are we?"
"Talking later--" the gun was thrust into her hands before he turned to fire.
The shotgun did more damage, but the mummies were still pretty determined.
She pushed the flashlight into her pocket, and fired one shot at the other two, then glanced back over her shoulder to check on Sam in time to find him and Evie moving part of the wall, their fingers digging into holes that hadn't been there before.
"Rick, we found an escape hatch--quickly!"
"Evie, Kara, go--" Rick ordered. "I want a gun at both ends of this party. Sam, I hope you're good with a knife."
Kara almost laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the entire outing. Sam took the long-bladed knife from Rick as Kara moved past him. Evie held a lamp, the light not nearly as bright as the flashlight or torches.
"It's a tunnel," Evie said over her shoulder to Rick, "I'm not certain where it leads."
"Well, it doesn't matter, does it?"
"C'mon," Kara started forward, watching the shadows for more mummies. It wouldn't do them any good to go down the tunnel only to get trapped.
There were more pictograms decorating the walls, and she frowned at them as she went past. The language (if that's what it was) felt familiar, yet not. As though she'd read it at some point and had understood it. But now that knowledge was gone--not eroded, like the countless popular songs she'd forgotten over the years. Simply gone, as though it had never been, leaving only the residual impression that it once had.
"I think this is a different dialect," Evie mumbled, as if to herself. She'd drifted closer to one of the walls, lamp raised as she peered at the stone.
That was the only reason Kara saw the brief glint in the air--with a shout, she reached out and grabbed Evie's arm, pulling her back before she could catch the filament of wire hanging there. Too late, though; with a rumble, the floor began to shift.
Behind them, Kara heard Sam shout for her, and then she and Evie were sprinting as the floor began to slide apart from the middle out; they were lucky it hadn't simply split and dropped them. Ten, twenty feet ahead, it remained solid. If they could just make it!
The stale air and dust burned in her throat and lungs as she panted. Shit, she was getting out of shape--she'd have to start running again during the week, get her lungs back up to par. There was no Galactica to run an entire deck circuit on anymore, and she'd gotten forgetful about that, neglecting her regimen.
It got harder to run as less of the floor remained to step on, the sides retracting into the wall. Kara put on a burst of speed and just made it onto the firmer ground. There was a tug on her arm, and Evie nearly pulled them both back as her foot came down half-off the platform. They both yelped and swayed before Kara dropped to her knees, dragging Evie with her.
After a moment, Evie gasped, "Thank you."
"Don't mention it," panting, Kara twisted around. The length of corridor opened into a dark abyss, Sam and Rick barely visible on the other side. She raised her hand and waved.
Sam waved back.
~~~~
"Well, that's just peachy." Rick said a few more things that weren't particularly kind about the mummies' ancestry, and turned to look at the two still approaching. He wasn't sure why it was only two, but had the unpleasant suspicion that he didn't want to know.
"At least they made it."
Rick shot Sam a disgusted look, then began reviewing the situation. No floor to walk on, wife trapped across an abyss, and mummies. "God, I hate mummies," he muttered.
"I'm beginning to see why."
"So, how'd you two get that wall panel open? Any chance there's another one?"
Bending down, Sam picked up what Rick thought was a stick for a moment before he realized it was a bone of some sort. Probably some other unlucky asshole, trapped ages ago. He held the knife in his other hand, a little uncertainly. "There were instructions on the wall, but there aren't any here."
"Instructions?"
Sam shrugged, "Not quite 'pull to open', but explicit enough. Now, about the two mummies moving towards us. Are you sure they're going to try to kill us?"
"They're mummies. That's what they do." Rick snapped. He wasn't going to get into the philosophy of mummy-extermination. Not when his life was currently on the line. Though, as much as he was annoyed about being in danger, he did sort of like it. A small part of him suspected that was the real reason he stuck around Evie. She was like a trouble-magnet, and he thrived on it.
"Just thought I'd make certain." With two strides, Sam was closer to the mummies, "I've got an idea."
"Yeah?"
"Ever played dodge-ball?"
Rick didn't think that's what the kids he'd been raised with had called it, but he nodded, even if Sam couldn't see it. "Aren't you thinking more of baseball?"
"Probably." The word was said glibly, but Rick could tell Sam didn't know what baseball was.
Interesting.
He'd have to think about it later, though, as Sam had reached the first of the mummies. It was sort of surprising how easy it was for Sam to set them up just so, until he could swing and smack the back of the mummy's head, sending it lurching towards Rick. For his part, Rick waited and then dodged at the last second. The first zombie went off the edge with a strange screaming wail.
The second gave them more of a fight: grabbing for Rick as he dodged, it got a grip on his collar and pulled him with it towards the edge.
Digging in his heels didn't work. For a horrible minute, Rick thought the thing would eat his face or drag him over the edge into the abyss. Then he punched it, hand aching from the impact. Sam punched it twice, and the mummy loosened its grip enough for the two of them to wrestle it over the edge.
It didn't make a sound as it fell.
~~~~
Evie cheered as Rick and Sam bested the mummies, then turned to Kara. "I think I know how to get back to them. There's a logic to the way the outer chambers and corridors are laid-out, so this inner set should mirror, or at least echo that."
With an impatient nod, Kara stood up. "Lead on."
She seemed an impatient, possibly rough woman. Not that Evie knew as many women as she might have. Her mother had been gentle, but adventurous, and Evie had taken her on as a model for everything she could be. It made her smile sometimes, knowing her mother would have been quite amused that her daughter had followed in her footsteps. Her father would have teased her about marrying an American, though he would have understood it, having married her mother.
"How did you get here, by the way?" Evie asked her as they turned a corner that she thought she recognized. "This dig is meant to be off-limits to all but my team."
Which was small, she had to admit, if only to herself. A cartographer, one assistant, and a half-working camera along with six Egyptians for help with the rough work of clearing rock falls and tending camp. But then, she couldn't afford to pay a larger staff. Not yet, at least; they may have carried treasure from Hamunaptra, but Evie refused to destroy her capital this early in her career.
"Oh, you know how it is. One minute you're in a cave, making out with your husband. The next, you're running from mummies," Kara replied, her tone bright and possibly amused.
Evie frowned thoughtfully, "Where are you from?"
"Caprica."
"Isn't that somewhere in the western states of America?" Probably, it was. Evie hadn't ever really paid America much attention--even though Rick was from the United States, he hadn't seemed to have much national pride. Then again, Evie didn't know a great deal about her own home country, either. She was steeped in the world of her mother's country. Egypt was in her blood and in her soul, and she reveled in it as often as not. Dank and cold England held little appeal next to mummies, hieroglyphs and discovering buried treasure.
"Yeah. And I'll be letting the rest of the states know that this is a bad place for vacations."
The clothing Kara wore wasn't even good desert gear--much too warm, and she wasn't carrying water. Evie wasn't, either, and the thought of water made her suddenly want a drink rather desperately. "All the guide books are wrong, then? Egypt is no longer the jewel of mystery it once was?"
"Egypt." Kara seemed to be rolling the name around in her mouth, as though finding unfamiliar things about it. "I suppose not. Is this where you're from?"
"Partly."
Kara didn't seem to be particularly good at getting in Evie's good graces--though saving her life had given her a plus in the column. Being mysterious tomb thieves was a minus. If that was what they were; they didn't seem particularly good at it. Sam had been able to read the glyphs earlier, but he'd seemed surprised by it. Everything they'd done since meeting them had been shaped by the need to survive. Mucking all in together was rather common, in Evie's limited experience, and it had served her well before. She could see them prosecuted after they found the inscription that would lay the mummies to rest.
She just hoped that there was one, and she wasn't deluding herself. After all, finding the book of Ra would be rather difficult at the moment.
Especially as two mummies turned the corner ahead of them. It was at least encouraging that the way they were heading would eventually lead them back to Rick and Sam. But Evie wasn't having an easy time taking comfort in that. Mummies, after all, were hard to kill.
"Shit." Kara stopped and began looking back the way they'd come.
"Take out their legs?" suggested Evie. Running back to an empty pit would be rather pointless, at this point.
"Maybe--wait." Moving towards the wall, Kara reached, out, then pulled her hand back. "There's another booby trap here."
The words were said conversationally, as though there weren't two zombie shuffling ever closer to them. "Well, that's just useful, I'm sure," Evie replied dryly. Bringing the roof down, dropping the floor, getting skewered with spikes or shot with poison darts was just what she'd been looking to do that morning.
Sometimes, she thought maybe Rick was right about archaeology being dangerous, but the knowledge gained was entirely worth it.
"It is, if we're trying to stop the walking dead." Kara pulled Evie to the opposite side of the corridor. "If you don't have the nerves for this, run past them now."
"Well, really!" As though she were that faint-hearted. Firming her stance, Evie looked across at the line of the trap, then back towards the shambling mummies, "I suppose we should be grateful they're the unintelligent sort."
"Don't count your chickens," she replied.
It was a simple enough plan: let the mummies get close enough, shove them at the trap, and run. Their speed and the mummies' shambling movements should be enough to get them out of danger in time. Evie spent the waiting time trying to read the glyphs on the wall. Transference Facility seemed to be something the makers had wanted to get through everyone's head. It was on almost every doorway lintel and worked here and there into the text.
To distract herself, Evie worked at deciphering the rest of it. Instructions for something, and a warning about guardians? Hard to parse, given that the language had evolved away from it, and this seemed to be a different dialect entirely to what she was used to.
With a sudden spurt of movement, the mummies reached them, hands reaching out and mouths opening in strange wails.
"Oh, for goodness' sake--" Evie dodged back, hitting the wall as Kara weighed in, punching at them.
"Run, now," snapped Kara as she dodged a grab and punched again, knocking the mummy back towards the booby trap line.
It all happened so fast, Evie wasn't entirely sure she remembered the events as they happened. A hand closed on her arm. She shrieked and reacted instinctively, her fist impacting dead flesh. Kara was suddenly there, and they wrestled the hand off her arm and then Evie pivoted, swinging the still-clinging mummy.
With a yowl, it lurched backwards and crashed into the wall, triggering the trap.
The roof gave a groaning, shifting sound, and Evie grabbed for Kara's hand, blindly hoping that they'd make it to the distant torchlight before the lantern she'd dropped at some point during the scuffle was buried. Darkness wouldn't help matters.
~~~~
They had returned to the central chamber, without finding a mummy to shoot at along the way. This seemed to make Rick slightly annoyed and tetchy. Sam let it slide, understanding that the underlying worry over his wife's fate was causing it. Probably. For all he knew, Rick was always like this.
Walking around the walls, squinting in the torchlight at the pictograms, Sam again felt that strange sense that he had in the cave. As though he knew this language, instinctively. "I feel like I should know..." he trailed off, eyes widening, as words blossomed in his mind, words that corresponded to images. "I do know. This is so weird. 'And the guardians guard'."
"Guard what? This ancient hole?" Rick scoffed.
Sam shrugged. "I'm just reading what it says." He made a face and turned away, looking towards the doorway he and Kara had walked through. He'd been trying to ignore the fact that he and his wife had stepped through a doorway in a cave into something else. A building, from the way the stones were laid. It was definitely not the cave on New Caprica--but then, he didn't know, it could be something peculiar to the planet, or this could be some sort of Cylon experiment, though Rick and Evie didn't look like any of the skinjobs he'd seen.
It felt real. The worry over Kara that he felt was definitely real. Sure, she could take care of herself, but the walking dead was an unknown quantity (unless he considered Cylons the walking dead). Everything was still so new in some ways, he wondered if she'd appreciate his worry, or want to slug him.
Then again, she was probably just as worried over him.
"You gonna read that wall all day long now?" Rick asked, his sarcasm clear.
Sam shrugged, "Unless you've got a better suggestion?" He wondered if looking for Kara and Evie was really a good idea--this place was as much of a maze as the caves he and Kara had been in (something stirred in his mind, some stray thought or idea, but it was gone when he tried to follow it to some sort of conclusion). It was like looking at a hundred different pyramid plays, all of them just slight variations on a theme.
"You're not from around here, are you." Rick said the words as though he were half-questioning, but mostly certain. "I thought you were American, at first, but there's something that doesn't sit right..."
"No, I don't think Kara and I are." Moving out into the corridor, Sam frowned as he scanned the etchings on the walls. "This is... different--newer and more recent. It looks like it's mostly warnings. 'Do not mess with things man is not meant to know.'"
"Wonderfully vague." muttered Rick impatiently. "Now, can we move on? My wife is somewhere in this blasted catacomb, and I'd like to make sure she stays alive."
Saving Kara was a new idea to Sam. The last time, she'd saved his ass. He grinned a little goofily, but didn't think he could really explain that to Rick. So instead he said, his voice patient. "And get lost while they're looking for us? If we stay here, they'll eventually figure out this is where we are."
"And meanwhile, the mummies get her? Nuh-uh. We're going after them," he pulled his shotgun out again, checking that it was loaded. "I'd let you stay here, but I don't trust you. So get moving, Sam."
The implied threat made Sam raise his eyebrows, but he didn't comment. After all, if it their situations were reversed, and they were standing in the cave on New Caprica, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't make a similar decision. Trying to explain to the security forces of the new colony might be a bit difficult, though. So maybe he would let Evie and Rick go off on their own.
Glancing around, skimming the glyphs, he pointed, "Let's try this way."
~~~~
The roof almost came down on them and smaller stones hit them as they ran. Behind them, the mummies shrieked and then were buried. Evie didn't assume, she looked back over her shoulder as they passed under the lintel of the doorway they'd been heading for. There was no sign of them anymore, just a piled of rock blocking the corridor for the rest of eternity.
Well, probably not the latter, as Evie would see that it was excavated if they needed to read the inscriptions at some point later in the dig. She'd probably have to hire more help, though, and the Scholars wouldn't want to finance it. She hadn't had much of a return for them, after all.
There were more hieroglyphs in the corridor, and she began reading over them as she and Kara slowed their steps.
"We should find our husbands." Kara said, and made a face, as though the words were strange.
Evie wondered if she should tell the other woman she was covered in a fine coating of rock dust. She reached up and rubbed her hand over her cheek and studied the result. Not that she could tell if there was dust, since her hand was the color of sandstone, too. "If I know Rick, he's searching for us."
"Let's head for that central room," suggested Kara, watching the shadows around them as though she expected more mummies to come leaping out at them.
"That would be the logical idea, and I think it's that way," agreed Evie, pointing towards the right. She grimaced, feeling the rock dust clinging to the sweat on her face. "Though a shower would be of more use. Anyway, though, I want to translate this section before we go--it might explain what the guardians are." The mummies, possibly, but Evie wasn't ready to share that theory yet.
Kara shrugged, "If we had radios, we could let them know where we were."
"That would be nice." Not that Evie had any idea what she was talking about. A radio would do them little good, considering portable ones were prohibitively expensive, and stationary would be in the central chamber, and out in their main tent in the camp. "Why don't you check the rest of the corridor carefully for more traps while I try to read these?"
She was already reaching for her notebook and the little pencil she'd been using earlier to take notes with. Something was nagging at her, about the translations she'd done so far.
The guardians of the underworld, what did they have to do with this little-known burial site? Was there truly a curse, and she had overlooked it in her enthusiasm? Evie wouldn't put it past her mind to have quietly shuffled the knowledge away so as not to alarm Rick. He did get so overbearing about curses and mummies.
Not that she minded entirely. Being guarded by her ridiculously cavalier husband was rather exciting. She blushed a little, recalling how he'd managed to distract her that morning for hours.
She moved closer to the hieroglyphs and began clearing the dust off with her brush, trading pencil, brush and notebook from hand to hand as she made notes and tried to decipher the grammar.
"Any luck?" Kara had returned from wandering around, peering into alcoves and poking the walls. She seemed more bored than interested, but Evie didn't care.
Expounding on language was something she was always interested in. She nodded, "Some. There's a lot of talk about guardians of some sort, protecting the--the word isn't something I understand. Maybe the tomb itself? I wonder what sort of treasure it held?" She hurried on before Kara could interrupt, "They're guarding it from outsiders, people who aren't supposed to use it."
"Outsiders, like us?"
"I suppose." With a frown, she made another note in her book. "But that's not really the right set of glyphs. There's something... I can't quite decipher it. But there seems to be some sort of protocols, or pass-code, for the guardians."
Kara was quick, Evie had to give her that. "The mummies are the guardians, then."
"Yes. I think so. It's so vague and unhelpful, though." Evie said, gesturing at the glyphs. "This bit, especially, talks about something called transference protocols."
And it was driving her mad; that couldn't be the right word. It made no sense. Kara shifted from foot to foot, as though eager to get away. Perhaps to find the treasure and steal it to sell, though Evie was beginning to doubt that was who the other woman was. She didn't really seem the treasure-hunter type, especially considering her lack of knowledge. Though she did have enough brains to ask the obvious questions. "What's being transfered?"
Evie opened her mouth, then closed it as her brain unraveled the problem. Maybe there wasn't truly a tomb here, maybe it was something else--a treasure house of some sort. Kezarn might have been a place, not a person. "Oh my God. I've been reading it wrong--" she didn't know why Kara's face tightened, too caught up in her sudden revelation. "It's not transference. It's transport! This bit reads, 'transport protocols active'." Delighted with herself, she turned to the other wall, fingers hovering over the inscriptions as she checked for trip-wires.
The sound of footsteps dragging on sandstone made her freeze, and Kara cursed. "Looks like it's time to move on."
Making a disagreeable sound, a rather dilapidated mummy staggered into the lamplight.
Evie glared at it. "And here I thought a rock fall would stop it."
"Apparently not. C'mon, run--" Kara pushed Evie ahead of her towards the corridor that should lead them back to the central chamber.
~~~~
Sam was letting Rick lead, and the man set a fast pace as they wound their way through the corridors. There had to be another way to where they'd been separated, and if he was right, they were going in the right direction. The building felt as though it had a similar layout to the cave, though the cave had been more rough-hewn. But perhaps that was simply time and moss wearing it down. Sam wasn't sure what he thought of that idea, of two buildings that were older than the civilization of the twelve colonies. One building existing on New Caprica, a second--wherever they were, though it could still be New Caprica. He wasn't going to debate the philosophy of that. Kara had told him about the illusions inside Athena's Tomb, and this could be related--perhaps they were remnants of the exodus of Kobol. Maybe that was why he could read the glyphs--they were ancient colonial writing of some sort.
They hadn't encountered anymore mummies, though Sam was beginning to feel as though he recognized the construction in some way. Something about the irregular alcoves and the straight corridors rang some sort of bell deep in his subconscious.
"Wait," Rick whispered suddenly.
Sam heard the same sound a moment later. Footsteps, quick movements accompanied by the sound of breathing.
The mummies hadn't been breathing.
Moving to one side of the corridor, Sam waited, trying to decide if he were being overly optimistic in assuming it was Kara and Evie.
The hope became reality as Evie came into view, Kara right behind her. Both of them were coated in rock dust, and Sam wondered what had happened and how soon he could help Kara clean up. Not that there was time for that sort of thing.
"Rick!" Evie gasped as she spotted them, "You have to get moving, we're too exposed here."
Behind the women shambled a mummy. It didn't look like the others, and it moved faster, making an eerie growling noise when the women reached the two men.
"The hell is that?" Rick demanded, staring at it.
"Don't ask--RUN."
Pelting past Sam, Kara slapped his ass with expert timing, "C'mon, Sammy. Time to use those long legs for something useful."
The mummy picked up speed, and Sam realized that the thing was two mummies, fused together in some horrible fashion, all four legs working faster. "Shit," he swore, turning and chasing after his wife. He heard Rick behind him.
It had been such a boring day, Sam reflected in amusement. He'd assumed there'd be sex somewhere in the woods, that he and Kara would return with more plant and animal information (well, maybe not the latter, as even the birds seemed unwilling to show themselves when he and Kara were around). Then a nice dinner of some horrible-tasting concoction followed by more sex and booze.
But instead, here he was in some sort of catacomb, being chased by a two-headed mummy with four legs.
Which should have been ludicrous, and Sam was seriously beginning to wonder if it was all a dream. He glanced back to find that they'd managed to put a little distance between them and the mummy. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Central chamber. Protocols," Evie called back.
As though that explained anything.
"The mummies are guardians," continued Evie, as she slowed an looked at he and Rick. "They're here, guarding the Transport Facility. It's not a tomb--though it's listed in the records as one. I don't know why, that's a mystery for another time."
Transport Facility. The words blossomed in Sam's head, colliding with his earlier thought, and he swore again. "Of course! It's a spaceport!"
"A what?"
"Not a spaceport, Sam," objected Kara as she grabbed Evie's arm and got them moving faster.
Kara was right. They hadn't boarded a spaceship to get where they were (Sam was grateful for that, he was tired of metal boxes floating through the blackness of space). They'd walked through a doorway, after wandering through what had felt like miles of cave. So, some sort of other transportation--if it wasn't all in his head.
"We're like the people who didn't buy an train ticket," Evie put in. "We're not authorized, and so the guardians are trying to remove us."
"Honey, that's nice. But how do we stop them?"
"I'd've thought that was obvious, Rick." Stopping, Evie looked at Kara, then Sam. "We send these two back where they came from, and hope that whatever was set in motion decides that it's enough."
~~~~
Though it seemed like a simple idea, in practice, it was much harder. Especially when the double-headed mummy arrived at the central chamber and brought back-up. "This is like that time Rally got busted for meths," Sam told Kara, swinging his re-salvaged club at the mummy that was attempting to recover from the bullet Rick had put in its knee.
She laughed, and ducked the grab of the other mummy before kicking at it. Her boot sent it staggering back a little as she got it in the mid-section with a crunch that might have meant broken bones in someone alive.
Behind them, Evie turned away from one wall and ran to another, Rick trailing her. "You should help them keep the mummies out," she chided him as she made another note, then scratched it out as she realized the translation was wrong. "Oh! Why did they have to couch it all in such generalities!"
"Maybe they thought if they put 'push this button to go to Timbuktu' that people might abuse it," Rick suggested.
"Don't logic at me, Rick. Go help Kara and Sam. I think I've almost got this." She knelt, leaning forward to brush a line of cobwebs free of the stone, then began busily writing again.
He touched her shoulder for an instant, as though to reassure himself that she was all right, and then went to do as she'd suggested. Evie wondered if he knew he was now half-covered in rock dust from hugging her earlier. For a moment, she was distracted as she considered ways of making certain he was completely covered in it before the day was over. Flushing a little, she turned her attention back to the hieroglyphs, losing herself in the pursuit of knowledge.
It really was a different dialect. Older than she was used to, and almost... almost as though it were the root of the Egyptian language that decorated temples and tombs, cartouches and pyramids the country over rather than being simply part of the current language. In a way, it was like Latin being the basis for several of the romance languages, but closer to being similar.
Evie stopped that train of thought, knowing she didn't have time for a dissertation.
"Can I help?" It was Sam, looking at the area above where she was, his fingers tracing the lines of hieroglyph, as though he understood what it said.
"I don't know, can you truly read them?" She still had her doubts, she still wondered where they were from. Tomb raiders with no tomb to raid.
"Sort of." He gave her a half-smile, "Transport protocols, and guardians, and mummies. Not what I was expecting when I got up this morning."
"Nor I. Start on the next wall. Look for anything that says 'return' or 'avoiding prosecution'. Not that I expect the latter to be something the ancient Egyptians would have used in something like this." If it was them.
He moved to do that.
"Wait!" Evie suddenly felt excitement bubbling through her. "I think this is it." Translating as she scanned the glyphs, she said, "To return, reverse protocols."
"Reverse--wait--" Sam hurried away to the far wall, "I saw that here."
"No convenient buttons," replied Evie as she followed him, reading what he'd found. "All right. I hope this is it." She cleared her throat and read the glyphs aloud, not translating them. She probably had the cadences and vowels all wrong, but it didn't matter. Reading aloud always seemed to get the job done, whether it was an ancient book made of gold or an ancient wall made of sandstone. When she reached the end of the second line, the entire chamber gave a violent shudder.
"Oh, Evelyn, honey?" Rick called from the doorway.
"I think--"
Sam interrupted her with a shout as he ran for the inner doorway, "The door, it's closing! Kara, get over here!" He grabbed the edges, shoulders and back straining as the stone scraped against stone and slowly swung inwards.
"Go!" Evie grabbed the pistol from Kara's hands, firing it straight at the mummy about to enter the chamber.
"Thanks--"
A large piece of the ceiling smashed to the floor, as the rumbling continued. It was familiar, though slightly different to the sound of sand flowing inwards to drown a city. Evie tried not to think about how many rooms they would have to run through to escape this death-trap.
"Honey, what have I told you about reading ancient inscriptions aloud," Rick shouted over the sound of the walls and ceilings beginning to crumble.
"It's not my fault--Sam started it!" Which wasn't entirely true, but Evie had no intentions of taking all of the blame, this time.
On the other side of the room, Kara reached Sam, who pushed her through into the chamber beyond, then followed her. They were barely in time; the door slammed shut, stone grinding against stone, sealing them within the chamber that Evie remembered she hadn't ever had a chance to see. Drat.
She fired the last bullet from the gun in her hands, then turned and ran over the mummy as fast as her legs would carry her. Her husband muttered as he followed her. Probably threats about locking her up or never letting her investigate ancient ruins again or how he hated mummies. He was endearingly predictable, and he'd never keep his promises. Of that, she was sure.
For he loved these adventures just as much as she did.
But they would have to survive the collapsing ruin, first.
~~~~
Sam turned the flashlight on, and pushed Kara ahead of him as the cave around them shuddered and shook. Neither of them spoke in that dank, desperate dash for the surface, with the walls falling in around them. Twice, they had to climb over collapsed sections of tunnel. Sam knew at least one of his hands was bleeding from being cut on the raw rock, and Kara had scratches on her arm from half a dozen walls having almost fallen on them.
It was going to look worse once they were in the light, Sam was sure.
Finally, he spotted the entrance. Kara put on a burst of speed and ran ahead of him, dragging the vines out of his way.
With a horrible sound, the cave ceiling collapsed, slabs burying themselves too-quickly to be real. The force drove a cloud of rock dust outwards, and they both hacked and coughed as they worked to escape the thicket.
Once free, Kara went several steps uphill, then dropped forwards, hands on her knees as she gulped in deep breaths of the cleaner air.
Standing over her, Sam slowly turned around, taking in the normal late-afternoon quiet of a Sunday afternoon on New Caprica. He wondered how they would explain their adventure--would it make sense to simply say they'd had a dream of another place? Had they really traveled a galaxy to a land called Egypt? A very small part of him wondered if Egypt was on Earth, but they hadn't had time to ask questions like that. He regretted not staying longer, if only for the opportunity to explore a place that he'd never been before.
"No one would believe us." She finally said, as though in answer to his unspoken thoughts.
"I know." Sam reached down and tugged at her shoulder. When she straightened, he wrapped his arms around her, grateful that they were both alive. "Great story to tell, though."
She snorted, but didn't pull away. "Besides, what would we say? That we walked through a cave to some mythical place called Egypt?"
"With walking mummies."
Pulling her head up, she made a face, "Running mummies."
"Ugh."
They both shuddered, then Kara snickered and poked him. "C'mon, Sammy, I need a shower."
"Do you have rock dust everywhere?"
"Yup."
He smirked and released her to grab her hand, swinging it between them as they started off. "Then, permission to strip you naked and have my way with you, Mrs. Anders?"
"Don't you start with me, Mr. Thrace." She warned.
He chuckled and she joined in as they reached the crest of the hill. He was going to ache like hell in the morning, but it had definitely been worth it. Even if it was nothing more than some sort of shared hallucination.
~~~~
In their tent, with the lights out and the starlight giving everything a low sheen, Evelyn O'Connell shifted just a little. Rick had her arm trapped under his, and it was getting uncomfortable. Still, she was rather content to lay tangled with him, especially since she'd worn him out so well. Feeling very delighted with herself, she kissed his bare shoulder, then settled down.
Sleep would be a long time coming, but she had a whole series of notes on this strange off-shoot of the ancient language to wear her mind down with so it would rest. Those notes would never be published, and the Scholars wouldn't be interested in them (a travel terminal of some sort, that sent you elsewhere? A walking mummy hadn't even been something they would consider). But perhaps future generations would want to know. She would keep a separate diary of it, making notes whenever they came across more of the dialect.
Once she had enough, she might even consider publishing a paper on the differences in the two. Details that only another Egyptologist would appreciate, most likely. Still thrilling, though, to discover an off-shoot of a language that baffled some with its complexity. She wriggled, feeling a little smug about it all.
Rick made a grumbling noise and his arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer.
"Don't worry," she whispered, "I'm sure there won't be any mummies tomorrow." But there would be lots of work; with their current site buried and full of rubble, it was nearly useless. There were rumors of another nearby, though. That would just have to be enough for the Scholars.
With her eyes half-closed, Evie catalogued the symbols until she drifted into sleep.
-f-
Length: 9000 words
Rating: PG13, for the most part. A little language, a little violence, a little off-screen sex.
Notes: I was really not expecting to write this, I had a nice little introspective piece done when this bit my brain. This is set during the year on New Caprica.
Title: Transference Protocols
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Can't catch me!" Kara called over her shoulder. After a long week of working on the foundation for the school (the construction was actually going to stall soon, if the President didn't get off his ass and out of his little den of iniquity and do some administration work), she'd been ready to burst. A late night of drinking and frakking had left her and Sam sleeping until noon. Tumbling out of bed, they'd showered and eaten and gone for a hike.
Every chance they got, they explored New Caprica. Sam loved the open spaces and the trees, and dragged her up into the hills and down into the valleys. It wasn't something Kara really minded, after all, the planet was her home. But she did feel a bit odd sometimes, as she ran through trees and tumbled down hill-sides full of grass and wild-flowers. It wasn't searching for Earth, though she supposed Earth was probably a lot like New Caprica. Probably warmer, though, but then, everything was warmer than New Caprica.
The settlement still felt like something new and different to her. The smell of fresh and growing things contrasted the earthy smell of the peat they were using around the settlement for fertilizer, and the acridness of the wood smoke that never quite dissipated, now that the nights were getting colder.
As always, their hike was a game, with Sam chasing her up the hills and down the valleys. Kara laughed in sheer enjoyment, then took off from the crest of another ridge. Sam was behind her, laughing as he called after her, "What if I don't want to?"
"Your loss!" She ducked around a sapling, then plunged into the thicket of bushes next to it. Branches smacked into her face and arms, twigs catching in her hair and shirt. Tucking her head down, she slowed a bit and began weaving under the branches. This was a new valley that no one else had covered, and Sam was probably going to complain that it was her turn to mark information down on their map once he'd caught up.
She could hear his heavier steps behind her, and the crash when he hit the bushes. He was too tall to duck under as easily as she did, and she felt a smug satisfaction as she stumbled into a clearing. There hadn't been much to see on New Caprica outside of the growing things and the mud, so the cave mouth that peeked out from behind a skein of vines was new.
Forgetting her plan to go back up the slope to skirt around behind Sam, she moved closer to the opening. "Sam, did you bring a light with you?"
He probably had, the frakker was always prepared. Not that she ever objected to that.
A breath of cooler air brushed across her face as she began pulling the vines away from the cave mouth--if it turned out just to be a shallow depression, she was going to be annoyed.
"Gotcha," Sam's fingers brushed her shoulder, as he joined her, already shining a flashlight through the opening Kara had made. The beam brushed over damp rock, and was swallowed by the distance of the far wall of the cavern. "We should be careful."
Rolling her eyes, Kara took his free hand and ducked into the cave, "Why? Afraid there are Cylons living here?"
He snorted and followed her inside, directing the light at their feet until they were a few feet inside. "Nah, I might get a good reward for turning you over."
Ignoring that suggestion, Kara took the light from him. The interior of the cavern was close for several feet, then seemed to open outwards. There was no sign of a far wall, and she wondered just how deep the tunnel went. Peering at one of the walls, she frowned and moved closer.
There were lines etched into the stone--not randomly, but a progression. She brushed some of the clinging moss from one section, "Does this look like writing to you?"
"It's the trees. They have an alphabet," Sam joked, nudging her with his elbow before he pulled away more lichen.
Something about them were familiar, but Kara didn't know why. She shrugged and turned away, "Let's see what else this place has to offer."
-=-
They were careful to keep track of their route, Sam marking the walls with a piece of stone and Kara memorizing it as she would have a complicated viper maneuver. When they entered a new room, they would stop so Sam could make a quick sketch and put it into the map in its relative place. Kara thought it might be considered a waste of paper, especially as it got more difficult to keep things straight. Many side-rooms and tunnels that split and then rejoined each other four rooms later began to fill the map.
Sam would also examine the etchings, which he thought were familiar. Though he didn't try to decipher them past claiming that one was an arrow that said 'exit'.
Abruptly, Kara stopped in the middle of the latest room. She didn't know why as she slowly turned, light brushing the curved walls around them. There was something here, that she could almost feel--like standing on the deck of a battlestar, a reassuring hum pulsing through her boots.
She sucked in a breath. "Sam, I'm going to turn the light off."
"Kara," his hand wrapped around her arm. "Go ahead." As though he knew her reason, or was feeling that same sense that she was.
In the darkness, the sound was louder. Not as subliminal. She listened for several seconds, then turned the light back on. "There's machinery down here."
"That's impossible," Sam said, his tone flat.
"We're just hearing things, then." With that retort, she turned to continue, and froze. Ahead of them had been another opening. Now that was gone and a slab of stone blocked their way. The writing on it was subtly different, or perhaps the stone itself was wrong. She didn't know and wasn't sure she cared. The hair on the back of her neck was beginning to prickle.
"Damn. We'll have to go back."
Kara scowled at it. He was right, though. Neither of them had tools for breaking down giant slabs of rock.
Before they could move, the slab made a grating sound and began to swing open. Light spilled in from the widening opening, and Kara wondered who would be on New Caprica, in a cave.
~~~~
There were few things Rick O'Connell liked less in life than tombs and spiders. Snakes were up there on the list, so was losing the people he loved (which at this point were his wife and... his wife). He didn't really like archaeology, but he had to admit that the passion Evelyn had for it more than made up for the boring and dusty books, or the languages he couldn't be bothered to learn.
It was simply easier to let her do her thing, while he did his stuff. Namely, collecting useful dangerous implements and watching their backs.
Not to mention following his instincts. Those had stood him in good stead over the years (they'd told him to run like the wind when a prim little English girl looked at him with distrust, but he'd ignored them that one time), which was why he didn't let her out of his sight very often. Evelyn had a penchant for trouble that sometimes left him wondering how she'd manage to survive to her current age.
But then she'd had her brother, and her own common sense. Besides, until the Hamunaptra business, she'd been buried in a library surrounded by books and artifacts. No dangers to be found there outside of paper cuts and boredom.
That had changed, which was why he followed her into her tombs and temples, trailing his fingers in the dust of ancient civilizations until the inevitable happened. Two weeks ago, they'd nearly brought the ceiling down together--though he couldn't blame her entirely, he'd been the one distracting her from her translations. Nearly six months ago there'd been that mummy business.
Still, that was in the past. With a new dig and a mandate from her Scholars in England, Evelyn had a new tomb to excavate. One that hopefully had no curse attached to it. Just in case, though, he had a pistol, two knives and a shotgun. And a bottle of holy water that was probably useless.
As far as he was concerned, you've seen one tomb, you've seen them all, but Rick had to admire the efficiency that went into constructing the damn things. Sand blocks and some sort of mortar that probably no longer existed, lots of half-broken statues in a multitude of rooms, some of them inter-connecting. Whole walls etched with hieroglyphics that had worn down in places, but still were easily read. At least by his wife.
"The notations to the script indicate that this tomb should never be opened," Evelyn said as she moved to touch the line between the blocks. "But knowing grave robbers, it's been desecrated for centuries."
She sounded disappointed, and while Rick could understand her quest for archaeological knowledge, his more practical side was glad that other people had already dealt with the dangers of an unopened tomb. In preparation of keeping up with his new wife, he'd read up a little on the things generally found in tombs and he wasn't looking forward to pits of snakes or falling rocks. Sand filling Hamunaptra had been bad enough to last his lifetime.
"Yeah. There weren't even any traps. What about curses?"
"None that I can see..." she trailed off, fingers tracing the nearly-worn lettering. "Just something about angels, and something called Kezarn."
Angels. Well, that was a step up from un-dead mummies. Still, Rick put a hand on his gun. "What happens if you open it?"
Evelyn flashed him a smile, the one that always got him in trouble. "I've no idea whatsoever."
"Uh-huh."
"You really should have more faith," she retorted. She paused, though, and turned to brush her fingers over another line. "I don't think this is a curse, though I do find it a bit curious. 'Transference operational'. What does that even mean?"
Rick made a face. "I hate this crap."
"Yes, I know," Evie rolled her eyes at him and pulled out her trowel. "Darling, why don't you go see how our lunch arrangements are coming?"
He'd never been good at taking a dismissal well. Rick folded his arms and took a step back, just in case. He might be new at this whole being married thing, and they might have had several spectacular arguments already about his dismissive attitude towards what she found fascinating, but he really did enjoy working with her.
"I've got a better idea. How about I go get that hammer we used on the tent stakes?"
"Don't be ridiculous, that would destroy valuable evidence, Rick," she replied. The tip of her trowel pushed into the opening and she began dragging it downwards. "Besides, I'm sure once the air seal is broken, a mechanism will swing it outwards."
Sometimes, Rick had to admit to himself that it was sort of hot when she was right. Even when it meant the inevitable sound of a curse being uttered somewhere.
Once Evie had broken the seal, she dug around in the stone of the door and then the wall, finally giving a sharp, "A-ha!"
With a click that had him reaching for his gun again, the door swung outwards with the sound of stone scraping stone. Somewhere, a booming sound reverberated through the entire tomb. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he had his gun out and pointed as two people in strange clothing came through the door.
"Oh my--who are you?" Evie demanded of them, sounding annoyed and disappointed. "You're not supposed to be here, you know. The Bainbridge Scholars promised me this would be my--"
"Evie, I don't think they're archaeologists."
The woman was shorter than the man, twigs and rock dust on the half-military clothing she wore. Her eyes flashed between he and Evie, before settling on the gun. "Do you really think that's necessary?"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, Rick," Evie turned away from them, "Put that away." She turned back to the other two and held out a hand. "I'm Evelyn, who are you?"
"I wouldn't put that away just yet." The man was looking past Rick, his eyes wide. "In fact, if you've got a spare--"
The woman swore as Rick spun to face the sound he'd been trying to ignore for the past few seconds. A shifting, dragging noise that had been crawling up his spine like a bad cough. It was exactly what he'd been afraid it would be. Dragging itself into the room, one of its legs damaged (possibly in the rock slide Rick had seen earlier), the mummified remains of some dead idiot made its way towards them.
He fired, hitting it in the shoulder. It staggered, but didn't go down.
"Aim for the legs--" the woman was next to him, her stance that of a fighter.
"It's already missing half of one," he pointed out.
"What the hell is it?"
"A mummy--" Evie had joined them, a horrified fascination in her voice. "Though I'm not sure the proper rituals were adhered to for this one."
The man snorted, "Whatever it is, should we be standing here waiting for it to get us?"
"Probably not. Evie--" Shifting, he pulled the sawed-off from the holster over his shoulder and held out the other gun to her.
She took it without hesitation. "Right. This way, you two--Rick--"
He glanced at her and half-grinned. "I'm right behind you."
The mummy lurched closer.
~~~~
With the adrenaline spiking through her, Kara was trying to decide if this was a hallucination, or something else. She wasn't even sure she believed that Rick had shot the thing. But she had seen it lurch with the impact. Keeping close to Sam seemed the only option, for the moment. That, and getting a gun, if she could. The walls (and they were walls, not a tunnel, hewn out of rock) around them reminded her of the Caprica museum where she'd gotten the Arrow. The etchings on them were similar to the ones in the cave they'd been in before they stepped through the doorway.
"The hell are we?" she muttered to Sam as they hurried through a room. The mummy was speeding up behind them, as though their movements gave it power.
"No idea." He was watching everything as much as she was. Which was probably why he saw the thing lurching from an alcove ahead of them, "Shit--Evie, to the right!"
The woman with Baltar's accent yelped and pointed her gun at the new arrival, firing at it a moment later. It lurched and fell back, a horrible screech emanating from it. "Unfortunately," she said, firing again, "Bullets won't stop the un-dead."
"Don't suppose you happen to remember the spells from the Book, honey?" Rick had joined them, his shotgun wavering between both mummies.
"Not at the moment, no--" with an annoyed sound, she handed the gun back to him. "If you hold this, I can see if it's in my notes."
"Is there another way out of this room?" Sam asked, grabbing Evie's arm and yanking her back with them while she was distracted, going through the little notebook she'd pulled out of a pocket.
"Not unless you happen to have some dynamite on you."
Movement from the doorway behind the mummy made Kara swear, "Sam, we've got two more incoming."
Mummies were not what she'd ordered for her day--though she had to admit, the adrenaline and the danger were sort of intoxicating. A grin found its way to her lips as she moved to stand next to Rick. "I can probably fire that thing, you know."
He shot her a suspicious look. "Don't know you. Don't trust you. Who are you?"
Kara could get behind being distrustful. She was following her gut instinct and trusting he wasn't a Cylon, though. This seemed too frakked up, even for them. "Kara Thrace. He's Sam Anders." When there wasn't a flicker of recognition, Kara figured he wasn't a pyramid fan. "Where are we?"
"Talking later--" the gun was thrust into her hands before he turned to fire.
The shotgun did more damage, but the mummies were still pretty determined.
She pushed the flashlight into her pocket, and fired one shot at the other two, then glanced back over her shoulder to check on Sam in time to find him and Evie moving part of the wall, their fingers digging into holes that hadn't been there before.
"Rick, we found an escape hatch--quickly!"
"Evie, Kara, go--" Rick ordered. "I want a gun at both ends of this party. Sam, I hope you're good with a knife."
Kara almost laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the entire outing. Sam took the long-bladed knife from Rick as Kara moved past him. Evie held a lamp, the light not nearly as bright as the flashlight or torches.
"It's a tunnel," Evie said over her shoulder to Rick, "I'm not certain where it leads."
"Well, it doesn't matter, does it?"
"C'mon," Kara started forward, watching the shadows for more mummies. It wouldn't do them any good to go down the tunnel only to get trapped.
There were more pictograms decorating the walls, and she frowned at them as she went past. The language (if that's what it was) felt familiar, yet not. As though she'd read it at some point and had understood it. But now that knowledge was gone--not eroded, like the countless popular songs she'd forgotten over the years. Simply gone, as though it had never been, leaving only the residual impression that it once had.
"I think this is a different dialect," Evie mumbled, as if to herself. She'd drifted closer to one of the walls, lamp raised as she peered at the stone.
That was the only reason Kara saw the brief glint in the air--with a shout, she reached out and grabbed Evie's arm, pulling her back before she could catch the filament of wire hanging there. Too late, though; with a rumble, the floor began to shift.
Behind them, Kara heard Sam shout for her, and then she and Evie were sprinting as the floor began to slide apart from the middle out; they were lucky it hadn't simply split and dropped them. Ten, twenty feet ahead, it remained solid. If they could just make it!
The stale air and dust burned in her throat and lungs as she panted. Shit, she was getting out of shape--she'd have to start running again during the week, get her lungs back up to par. There was no Galactica to run an entire deck circuit on anymore, and she'd gotten forgetful about that, neglecting her regimen.
It got harder to run as less of the floor remained to step on, the sides retracting into the wall. Kara put on a burst of speed and just made it onto the firmer ground. There was a tug on her arm, and Evie nearly pulled them both back as her foot came down half-off the platform. They both yelped and swayed before Kara dropped to her knees, dragging Evie with her.
After a moment, Evie gasped, "Thank you."
"Don't mention it," panting, Kara twisted around. The length of corridor opened into a dark abyss, Sam and Rick barely visible on the other side. She raised her hand and waved.
Sam waved back.
~~~~
"Well, that's just peachy." Rick said a few more things that weren't particularly kind about the mummies' ancestry, and turned to look at the two still approaching. He wasn't sure why it was only two, but had the unpleasant suspicion that he didn't want to know.
"At least they made it."
Rick shot Sam a disgusted look, then began reviewing the situation. No floor to walk on, wife trapped across an abyss, and mummies. "God, I hate mummies," he muttered.
"I'm beginning to see why."
"So, how'd you two get that wall panel open? Any chance there's another one?"
Bending down, Sam picked up what Rick thought was a stick for a moment before he realized it was a bone of some sort. Probably some other unlucky asshole, trapped ages ago. He held the knife in his other hand, a little uncertainly. "There were instructions on the wall, but there aren't any here."
"Instructions?"
Sam shrugged, "Not quite 'pull to open', but explicit enough. Now, about the two mummies moving towards us. Are you sure they're going to try to kill us?"
"They're mummies. That's what they do." Rick snapped. He wasn't going to get into the philosophy of mummy-extermination. Not when his life was currently on the line. Though, as much as he was annoyed about being in danger, he did sort of like it. A small part of him suspected that was the real reason he stuck around Evie. She was like a trouble-magnet, and he thrived on it.
"Just thought I'd make certain." With two strides, Sam was closer to the mummies, "I've got an idea."
"Yeah?"
"Ever played dodge-ball?"
Rick didn't think that's what the kids he'd been raised with had called it, but he nodded, even if Sam couldn't see it. "Aren't you thinking more of baseball?"
"Probably." The word was said glibly, but Rick could tell Sam didn't know what baseball was.
Interesting.
He'd have to think about it later, though, as Sam had reached the first of the mummies. It was sort of surprising how easy it was for Sam to set them up just so, until he could swing and smack the back of the mummy's head, sending it lurching towards Rick. For his part, Rick waited and then dodged at the last second. The first zombie went off the edge with a strange screaming wail.
The second gave them more of a fight: grabbing for Rick as he dodged, it got a grip on his collar and pulled him with it towards the edge.
Digging in his heels didn't work. For a horrible minute, Rick thought the thing would eat his face or drag him over the edge into the abyss. Then he punched it, hand aching from the impact. Sam punched it twice, and the mummy loosened its grip enough for the two of them to wrestle it over the edge.
It didn't make a sound as it fell.
~~~~
Evie cheered as Rick and Sam bested the mummies, then turned to Kara. "I think I know how to get back to them. There's a logic to the way the outer chambers and corridors are laid-out, so this inner set should mirror, or at least echo that."
With an impatient nod, Kara stood up. "Lead on."
She seemed an impatient, possibly rough woman. Not that Evie knew as many women as she might have. Her mother had been gentle, but adventurous, and Evie had taken her on as a model for everything she could be. It made her smile sometimes, knowing her mother would have been quite amused that her daughter had followed in her footsteps. Her father would have teased her about marrying an American, though he would have understood it, having married her mother.
"How did you get here, by the way?" Evie asked her as they turned a corner that she thought she recognized. "This dig is meant to be off-limits to all but my team."
Which was small, she had to admit, if only to herself. A cartographer, one assistant, and a half-working camera along with six Egyptians for help with the rough work of clearing rock falls and tending camp. But then, she couldn't afford to pay a larger staff. Not yet, at least; they may have carried treasure from Hamunaptra, but Evie refused to destroy her capital this early in her career.
"Oh, you know how it is. One minute you're in a cave, making out with your husband. The next, you're running from mummies," Kara replied, her tone bright and possibly amused.
Evie frowned thoughtfully, "Where are you from?"
"Caprica."
"Isn't that somewhere in the western states of America?" Probably, it was. Evie hadn't ever really paid America much attention--even though Rick was from the United States, he hadn't seemed to have much national pride. Then again, Evie didn't know a great deal about her own home country, either. She was steeped in the world of her mother's country. Egypt was in her blood and in her soul, and she reveled in it as often as not. Dank and cold England held little appeal next to mummies, hieroglyphs and discovering buried treasure.
"Yeah. And I'll be letting the rest of the states know that this is a bad place for vacations."
The clothing Kara wore wasn't even good desert gear--much too warm, and she wasn't carrying water. Evie wasn't, either, and the thought of water made her suddenly want a drink rather desperately. "All the guide books are wrong, then? Egypt is no longer the jewel of mystery it once was?"
"Egypt." Kara seemed to be rolling the name around in her mouth, as though finding unfamiliar things about it. "I suppose not. Is this where you're from?"
"Partly."
Kara didn't seem to be particularly good at getting in Evie's good graces--though saving her life had given her a plus in the column. Being mysterious tomb thieves was a minus. If that was what they were; they didn't seem particularly good at it. Sam had been able to read the glyphs earlier, but he'd seemed surprised by it. Everything they'd done since meeting them had been shaped by the need to survive. Mucking all in together was rather common, in Evie's limited experience, and it had served her well before. She could see them prosecuted after they found the inscription that would lay the mummies to rest.
She just hoped that there was one, and she wasn't deluding herself. After all, finding the book of Ra would be rather difficult at the moment.
Especially as two mummies turned the corner ahead of them. It was at least encouraging that the way they were heading would eventually lead them back to Rick and Sam. But Evie wasn't having an easy time taking comfort in that. Mummies, after all, were hard to kill.
"Shit." Kara stopped and began looking back the way they'd come.
"Take out their legs?" suggested Evie. Running back to an empty pit would be rather pointless, at this point.
"Maybe--wait." Moving towards the wall, Kara reached, out, then pulled her hand back. "There's another booby trap here."
The words were said conversationally, as though there weren't two zombie shuffling ever closer to them. "Well, that's just useful, I'm sure," Evie replied dryly. Bringing the roof down, dropping the floor, getting skewered with spikes or shot with poison darts was just what she'd been looking to do that morning.
Sometimes, she thought maybe Rick was right about archaeology being dangerous, but the knowledge gained was entirely worth it.
"It is, if we're trying to stop the walking dead." Kara pulled Evie to the opposite side of the corridor. "If you don't have the nerves for this, run past them now."
"Well, really!" As though she were that faint-hearted. Firming her stance, Evie looked across at the line of the trap, then back towards the shambling mummies, "I suppose we should be grateful they're the unintelligent sort."
"Don't count your chickens," she replied.
It was a simple enough plan: let the mummies get close enough, shove them at the trap, and run. Their speed and the mummies' shambling movements should be enough to get them out of danger in time. Evie spent the waiting time trying to read the glyphs on the wall. Transference Facility seemed to be something the makers had wanted to get through everyone's head. It was on almost every doorway lintel and worked here and there into the text.
To distract herself, Evie worked at deciphering the rest of it. Instructions for something, and a warning about guardians? Hard to parse, given that the language had evolved away from it, and this seemed to be a different dialect entirely to what she was used to.
With a sudden spurt of movement, the mummies reached them, hands reaching out and mouths opening in strange wails.
"Oh, for goodness' sake--" Evie dodged back, hitting the wall as Kara weighed in, punching at them.
"Run, now," snapped Kara as she dodged a grab and punched again, knocking the mummy back towards the booby trap line.
It all happened so fast, Evie wasn't entirely sure she remembered the events as they happened. A hand closed on her arm. She shrieked and reacted instinctively, her fist impacting dead flesh. Kara was suddenly there, and they wrestled the hand off her arm and then Evie pivoted, swinging the still-clinging mummy.
With a yowl, it lurched backwards and crashed into the wall, triggering the trap.
The roof gave a groaning, shifting sound, and Evie grabbed for Kara's hand, blindly hoping that they'd make it to the distant torchlight before the lantern she'd dropped at some point during the scuffle was buried. Darkness wouldn't help matters.
~~~~
They had returned to the central chamber, without finding a mummy to shoot at along the way. This seemed to make Rick slightly annoyed and tetchy. Sam let it slide, understanding that the underlying worry over his wife's fate was causing it. Probably. For all he knew, Rick was always like this.
Walking around the walls, squinting in the torchlight at the pictograms, Sam again felt that strange sense that he had in the cave. As though he knew this language, instinctively. "I feel like I should know..." he trailed off, eyes widening, as words blossomed in his mind, words that corresponded to images. "I do know. This is so weird. 'And the guardians guard'."
"Guard what? This ancient hole?" Rick scoffed.
Sam shrugged. "I'm just reading what it says." He made a face and turned away, looking towards the doorway he and Kara had walked through. He'd been trying to ignore the fact that he and his wife had stepped through a doorway in a cave into something else. A building, from the way the stones were laid. It was definitely not the cave on New Caprica--but then, he didn't know, it could be something peculiar to the planet, or this could be some sort of Cylon experiment, though Rick and Evie didn't look like any of the skinjobs he'd seen.
It felt real. The worry over Kara that he felt was definitely real. Sure, she could take care of herself, but the walking dead was an unknown quantity (unless he considered Cylons the walking dead). Everything was still so new in some ways, he wondered if she'd appreciate his worry, or want to slug him.
Then again, she was probably just as worried over him.
"You gonna read that wall all day long now?" Rick asked, his sarcasm clear.
Sam shrugged, "Unless you've got a better suggestion?" He wondered if looking for Kara and Evie was really a good idea--this place was as much of a maze as the caves he and Kara had been in (something stirred in his mind, some stray thought or idea, but it was gone when he tried to follow it to some sort of conclusion). It was like looking at a hundred different pyramid plays, all of them just slight variations on a theme.
"You're not from around here, are you." Rick said the words as though he were half-questioning, but mostly certain. "I thought you were American, at first, but there's something that doesn't sit right..."
"No, I don't think Kara and I are." Moving out into the corridor, Sam frowned as he scanned the etchings on the walls. "This is... different--newer and more recent. It looks like it's mostly warnings. 'Do not mess with things man is not meant to know.'"
"Wonderfully vague." muttered Rick impatiently. "Now, can we move on? My wife is somewhere in this blasted catacomb, and I'd like to make sure she stays alive."
Saving Kara was a new idea to Sam. The last time, she'd saved his ass. He grinned a little goofily, but didn't think he could really explain that to Rick. So instead he said, his voice patient. "And get lost while they're looking for us? If we stay here, they'll eventually figure out this is where we are."
"And meanwhile, the mummies get her? Nuh-uh. We're going after them," he pulled his shotgun out again, checking that it was loaded. "I'd let you stay here, but I don't trust you. So get moving, Sam."
The implied threat made Sam raise his eyebrows, but he didn't comment. After all, if it their situations were reversed, and they were standing in the cave on New Caprica, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't make a similar decision. Trying to explain to the security forces of the new colony might be a bit difficult, though. So maybe he would let Evie and Rick go off on their own.
Glancing around, skimming the glyphs, he pointed, "Let's try this way."
~~~~
The roof almost came down on them and smaller stones hit them as they ran. Behind them, the mummies shrieked and then were buried. Evie didn't assume, she looked back over her shoulder as they passed under the lintel of the doorway they'd been heading for. There was no sign of them anymore, just a piled of rock blocking the corridor for the rest of eternity.
Well, probably not the latter, as Evie would see that it was excavated if they needed to read the inscriptions at some point later in the dig. She'd probably have to hire more help, though, and the Scholars wouldn't want to finance it. She hadn't had much of a return for them, after all.
There were more hieroglyphs in the corridor, and she began reading over them as she and Kara slowed their steps.
"We should find our husbands." Kara said, and made a face, as though the words were strange.
Evie wondered if she should tell the other woman she was covered in a fine coating of rock dust. She reached up and rubbed her hand over her cheek and studied the result. Not that she could tell if there was dust, since her hand was the color of sandstone, too. "If I know Rick, he's searching for us."
"Let's head for that central room," suggested Kara, watching the shadows around them as though she expected more mummies to come leaping out at them.
"That would be the logical idea, and I think it's that way," agreed Evie, pointing towards the right. She grimaced, feeling the rock dust clinging to the sweat on her face. "Though a shower would be of more use. Anyway, though, I want to translate this section before we go--it might explain what the guardians are." The mummies, possibly, but Evie wasn't ready to share that theory yet.
Kara shrugged, "If we had radios, we could let them know where we were."
"That would be nice." Not that Evie had any idea what she was talking about. A radio would do them little good, considering portable ones were prohibitively expensive, and stationary would be in the central chamber, and out in their main tent in the camp. "Why don't you check the rest of the corridor carefully for more traps while I try to read these?"
She was already reaching for her notebook and the little pencil she'd been using earlier to take notes with. Something was nagging at her, about the translations she'd done so far.
The guardians of the underworld, what did they have to do with this little-known burial site? Was there truly a curse, and she had overlooked it in her enthusiasm? Evie wouldn't put it past her mind to have quietly shuffled the knowledge away so as not to alarm Rick. He did get so overbearing about curses and mummies.
Not that she minded entirely. Being guarded by her ridiculously cavalier husband was rather exciting. She blushed a little, recalling how he'd managed to distract her that morning for hours.
She moved closer to the hieroglyphs and began clearing the dust off with her brush, trading pencil, brush and notebook from hand to hand as she made notes and tried to decipher the grammar.
"Any luck?" Kara had returned from wandering around, peering into alcoves and poking the walls. She seemed more bored than interested, but Evie didn't care.
Expounding on language was something she was always interested in. She nodded, "Some. There's a lot of talk about guardians of some sort, protecting the--the word isn't something I understand. Maybe the tomb itself? I wonder what sort of treasure it held?" She hurried on before Kara could interrupt, "They're guarding it from outsiders, people who aren't supposed to use it."
"Outsiders, like us?"
"I suppose." With a frown, she made another note in her book. "But that's not really the right set of glyphs. There's something... I can't quite decipher it. But there seems to be some sort of protocols, or pass-code, for the guardians."
Kara was quick, Evie had to give her that. "The mummies are the guardians, then."
"Yes. I think so. It's so vague and unhelpful, though." Evie said, gesturing at the glyphs. "This bit, especially, talks about something called transference protocols."
And it was driving her mad; that couldn't be the right word. It made no sense. Kara shifted from foot to foot, as though eager to get away. Perhaps to find the treasure and steal it to sell, though Evie was beginning to doubt that was who the other woman was. She didn't really seem the treasure-hunter type, especially considering her lack of knowledge. Though she did have enough brains to ask the obvious questions. "What's being transfered?"
Evie opened her mouth, then closed it as her brain unraveled the problem. Maybe there wasn't truly a tomb here, maybe it was something else--a treasure house of some sort. Kezarn might have been a place, not a person. "Oh my God. I've been reading it wrong--" she didn't know why Kara's face tightened, too caught up in her sudden revelation. "It's not transference. It's transport! This bit reads, 'transport protocols active'." Delighted with herself, she turned to the other wall, fingers hovering over the inscriptions as she checked for trip-wires.
The sound of footsteps dragging on sandstone made her freeze, and Kara cursed. "Looks like it's time to move on."
Making a disagreeable sound, a rather dilapidated mummy staggered into the lamplight.
Evie glared at it. "And here I thought a rock fall would stop it."
"Apparently not. C'mon, run--" Kara pushed Evie ahead of her towards the corridor that should lead them back to the central chamber.
~~~~
Sam was letting Rick lead, and the man set a fast pace as they wound their way through the corridors. There had to be another way to where they'd been separated, and if he was right, they were going in the right direction. The building felt as though it had a similar layout to the cave, though the cave had been more rough-hewn. But perhaps that was simply time and moss wearing it down. Sam wasn't sure what he thought of that idea, of two buildings that were older than the civilization of the twelve colonies. One building existing on New Caprica, a second--wherever they were, though it could still be New Caprica. He wasn't going to debate the philosophy of that. Kara had told him about the illusions inside Athena's Tomb, and this could be related--perhaps they were remnants of the exodus of Kobol. Maybe that was why he could read the glyphs--they were ancient colonial writing of some sort.
They hadn't encountered anymore mummies, though Sam was beginning to feel as though he recognized the construction in some way. Something about the irregular alcoves and the straight corridors rang some sort of bell deep in his subconscious.
"Wait," Rick whispered suddenly.
Sam heard the same sound a moment later. Footsteps, quick movements accompanied by the sound of breathing.
The mummies hadn't been breathing.
Moving to one side of the corridor, Sam waited, trying to decide if he were being overly optimistic in assuming it was Kara and Evie.
The hope became reality as Evie came into view, Kara right behind her. Both of them were coated in rock dust, and Sam wondered what had happened and how soon he could help Kara clean up. Not that there was time for that sort of thing.
"Rick!" Evie gasped as she spotted them, "You have to get moving, we're too exposed here."
Behind the women shambled a mummy. It didn't look like the others, and it moved faster, making an eerie growling noise when the women reached the two men.
"The hell is that?" Rick demanded, staring at it.
"Don't ask--RUN."
Pelting past Sam, Kara slapped his ass with expert timing, "C'mon, Sammy. Time to use those long legs for something useful."
The mummy picked up speed, and Sam realized that the thing was two mummies, fused together in some horrible fashion, all four legs working faster. "Shit," he swore, turning and chasing after his wife. He heard Rick behind him.
It had been such a boring day, Sam reflected in amusement. He'd assumed there'd be sex somewhere in the woods, that he and Kara would return with more plant and animal information (well, maybe not the latter, as even the birds seemed unwilling to show themselves when he and Kara were around). Then a nice dinner of some horrible-tasting concoction followed by more sex and booze.
But instead, here he was in some sort of catacomb, being chased by a two-headed mummy with four legs.
Which should have been ludicrous, and Sam was seriously beginning to wonder if it was all a dream. He glanced back to find that they'd managed to put a little distance between them and the mummy. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Central chamber. Protocols," Evie called back.
As though that explained anything.
"The mummies are guardians," continued Evie, as she slowed an looked at he and Rick. "They're here, guarding the Transport Facility. It's not a tomb--though it's listed in the records as one. I don't know why, that's a mystery for another time."
Transport Facility. The words blossomed in Sam's head, colliding with his earlier thought, and he swore again. "Of course! It's a spaceport!"
"A what?"
"Not a spaceport, Sam," objected Kara as she grabbed Evie's arm and got them moving faster.
Kara was right. They hadn't boarded a spaceship to get where they were (Sam was grateful for that, he was tired of metal boxes floating through the blackness of space). They'd walked through a doorway, after wandering through what had felt like miles of cave. So, some sort of other transportation--if it wasn't all in his head.
"We're like the people who didn't buy an train ticket," Evie put in. "We're not authorized, and so the guardians are trying to remove us."
"Honey, that's nice. But how do we stop them?"
"I'd've thought that was obvious, Rick." Stopping, Evie looked at Kara, then Sam. "We send these two back where they came from, and hope that whatever was set in motion decides that it's enough."
~~~~
Though it seemed like a simple idea, in practice, it was much harder. Especially when the double-headed mummy arrived at the central chamber and brought back-up. "This is like that time Rally got busted for meths," Sam told Kara, swinging his re-salvaged club at the mummy that was attempting to recover from the bullet Rick had put in its knee.
She laughed, and ducked the grab of the other mummy before kicking at it. Her boot sent it staggering back a little as she got it in the mid-section with a crunch that might have meant broken bones in someone alive.
Behind them, Evie turned away from one wall and ran to another, Rick trailing her. "You should help them keep the mummies out," she chided him as she made another note, then scratched it out as she realized the translation was wrong. "Oh! Why did they have to couch it all in such generalities!"
"Maybe they thought if they put 'push this button to go to Timbuktu' that people might abuse it," Rick suggested.
"Don't logic at me, Rick. Go help Kara and Sam. I think I've almost got this." She knelt, leaning forward to brush a line of cobwebs free of the stone, then began busily writing again.
He touched her shoulder for an instant, as though to reassure himself that she was all right, and then went to do as she'd suggested. Evie wondered if he knew he was now half-covered in rock dust from hugging her earlier. For a moment, she was distracted as she considered ways of making certain he was completely covered in it before the day was over. Flushing a little, she turned her attention back to the hieroglyphs, losing herself in the pursuit of knowledge.
It really was a different dialect. Older than she was used to, and almost... almost as though it were the root of the Egyptian language that decorated temples and tombs, cartouches and pyramids the country over rather than being simply part of the current language. In a way, it was like Latin being the basis for several of the romance languages, but closer to being similar.
Evie stopped that train of thought, knowing she didn't have time for a dissertation.
"Can I help?" It was Sam, looking at the area above where she was, his fingers tracing the lines of hieroglyph, as though he understood what it said.
"I don't know, can you truly read them?" She still had her doubts, she still wondered where they were from. Tomb raiders with no tomb to raid.
"Sort of." He gave her a half-smile, "Transport protocols, and guardians, and mummies. Not what I was expecting when I got up this morning."
"Nor I. Start on the next wall. Look for anything that says 'return' or 'avoiding prosecution'. Not that I expect the latter to be something the ancient Egyptians would have used in something like this." If it was them.
He moved to do that.
"Wait!" Evie suddenly felt excitement bubbling through her. "I think this is it." Translating as she scanned the glyphs, she said, "To return, reverse protocols."
"Reverse--wait--" Sam hurried away to the far wall, "I saw that here."
"No convenient buttons," replied Evie as she followed him, reading what he'd found. "All right. I hope this is it." She cleared her throat and read the glyphs aloud, not translating them. She probably had the cadences and vowels all wrong, but it didn't matter. Reading aloud always seemed to get the job done, whether it was an ancient book made of gold or an ancient wall made of sandstone. When she reached the end of the second line, the entire chamber gave a violent shudder.
"Oh, Evelyn, honey?" Rick called from the doorway.
"I think--"
Sam interrupted her with a shout as he ran for the inner doorway, "The door, it's closing! Kara, get over here!" He grabbed the edges, shoulders and back straining as the stone scraped against stone and slowly swung inwards.
"Go!" Evie grabbed the pistol from Kara's hands, firing it straight at the mummy about to enter the chamber.
"Thanks--"
A large piece of the ceiling smashed to the floor, as the rumbling continued. It was familiar, though slightly different to the sound of sand flowing inwards to drown a city. Evie tried not to think about how many rooms they would have to run through to escape this death-trap.
"Honey, what have I told you about reading ancient inscriptions aloud," Rick shouted over the sound of the walls and ceilings beginning to crumble.
"It's not my fault--Sam started it!" Which wasn't entirely true, but Evie had no intentions of taking all of the blame, this time.
On the other side of the room, Kara reached Sam, who pushed her through into the chamber beyond, then followed her. They were barely in time; the door slammed shut, stone grinding against stone, sealing them within the chamber that Evie remembered she hadn't ever had a chance to see. Drat.
She fired the last bullet from the gun in her hands, then turned and ran over the mummy as fast as her legs would carry her. Her husband muttered as he followed her. Probably threats about locking her up or never letting her investigate ancient ruins again or how he hated mummies. He was endearingly predictable, and he'd never keep his promises. Of that, she was sure.
For he loved these adventures just as much as she did.
But they would have to survive the collapsing ruin, first.
~~~~
Sam turned the flashlight on, and pushed Kara ahead of him as the cave around them shuddered and shook. Neither of them spoke in that dank, desperate dash for the surface, with the walls falling in around them. Twice, they had to climb over collapsed sections of tunnel. Sam knew at least one of his hands was bleeding from being cut on the raw rock, and Kara had scratches on her arm from half a dozen walls having almost fallen on them.
It was going to look worse once they were in the light, Sam was sure.
Finally, he spotted the entrance. Kara put on a burst of speed and ran ahead of him, dragging the vines out of his way.
With a horrible sound, the cave ceiling collapsed, slabs burying themselves too-quickly to be real. The force drove a cloud of rock dust outwards, and they both hacked and coughed as they worked to escape the thicket.
Once free, Kara went several steps uphill, then dropped forwards, hands on her knees as she gulped in deep breaths of the cleaner air.
Standing over her, Sam slowly turned around, taking in the normal late-afternoon quiet of a Sunday afternoon on New Caprica. He wondered how they would explain their adventure--would it make sense to simply say they'd had a dream of another place? Had they really traveled a galaxy to a land called Egypt? A very small part of him wondered if Egypt was on Earth, but they hadn't had time to ask questions like that. He regretted not staying longer, if only for the opportunity to explore a place that he'd never been before.
"No one would believe us." She finally said, as though in answer to his unspoken thoughts.
"I know." Sam reached down and tugged at her shoulder. When she straightened, he wrapped his arms around her, grateful that they were both alive. "Great story to tell, though."
She snorted, but didn't pull away. "Besides, what would we say? That we walked through a cave to some mythical place called Egypt?"
"With walking mummies."
Pulling her head up, she made a face, "Running mummies."
"Ugh."
They both shuddered, then Kara snickered and poked him. "C'mon, Sammy, I need a shower."
"Do you have rock dust everywhere?"
"Yup."
He smirked and released her to grab her hand, swinging it between them as they started off. "Then, permission to strip you naked and have my way with you, Mrs. Anders?"
"Don't you start with me, Mr. Thrace." She warned.
He chuckled and she joined in as they reached the crest of the hill. He was going to ache like hell in the morning, but it had definitely been worth it. Even if it was nothing more than some sort of shared hallucination.
~~~~
In their tent, with the lights out and the starlight giving everything a low sheen, Evelyn O'Connell shifted just a little. Rick had her arm trapped under his, and it was getting uncomfortable. Still, she was rather content to lay tangled with him, especially since she'd worn him out so well. Feeling very delighted with herself, she kissed his bare shoulder, then settled down.
Sleep would be a long time coming, but she had a whole series of notes on this strange off-shoot of the ancient language to wear her mind down with so it would rest. Those notes would never be published, and the Scholars wouldn't be interested in them (a travel terminal of some sort, that sent you elsewhere? A walking mummy hadn't even been something they would consider). But perhaps future generations would want to know. She would keep a separate diary of it, making notes whenever they came across more of the dialect.
Once she had enough, she might even consider publishing a paper on the differences in the two. Details that only another Egyptologist would appreciate, most likely. Still thrilling, though, to discover an off-shoot of a language that baffled some with its complexity. She wriggled, feeling a little smug about it all.
Rick made a grumbling noise and his arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer.
"Don't worry," she whispered, "I'm sure there won't be any mummies tomorrow." But there would be lots of work; with their current site buried and full of rubble, it was nearly useless. There were rumors of another nearby, though. That would just have to be enough for the Scholars.
With her eyes half-closed, Evie catalogued the symbols until she drifted into sleep.
-f-