CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Capturing one of the warriors alive proved not to be so easy. In fact, it was pretty much a catastrophe. They'd guessed that, because he escaped the first attempt on his life, Ramius would be a prime target for another attack. Sam determined that, though the armor of the drones was impervious to bullets and all forms of energy weapons, something small and sharp would penetrate the bodysuit portion of the armor. The plan was to stake out the Stargate on Ramius' planet and capture one of the warriors when it came through, tranquilizing it with a dart.
But things didn't work out that way. After waiting quite a while for one of the drones to show up, when it finally did, their plan proved to be totally ineffective. The tranquilizer appeared to have no effect on the soldier, and the force field that was supposed to trap it didn't stop it. It walked right through the field. Everyone opened fire on the drone, but it was completely unfazed, its energy weapons killing the three rebel Jaffa and wounding Colonel Reynolds.
They tried to blow it up with Claymores, but it did no good. Next, they tried C-4, enough to bring down an Al'Kesh. The massive explosion didn't put a mark on the thing. It kept right on walking.
And then things really got bad. Apparently, the big commotion had drawn the attention of Ramius' Jaffa, and they descended upon the SGC personnel and Bra'tac. Everyone had no choice but to surrender.
They were all locked in a cell. Jack's attempt to convince Ramius that they didn't come to kill him failed spectacularly. Fortunately for the good guys, their guess that the drone Sam had newly christened "supersoldier" would attack the fortress to kill Ramius proved to be right. It wasn't so fortunate for the Goa'uld. He was killed while trying to escape through the rings. Teal'c and Bra'tac had spoken with one of the Jaffa guarding them, telling him that Ramius wasn't invincible and would attempt to flee like a coward, leaving his people to die for him. When that Jaffa realized that they had been right, he freed them.
After that, they had another success. Sam came up with a plan for capturing the supersoldier. They ringed the escaping drone up into the hold of one of Ramius' cargo ships. Then they voided the atmosphere from the hold. It took ten minutes, but the supersoldier finally lost consciousness. At last, their mission was successful.
'Oh, this is so not good,' was the thought going through Daniel's mind.
After arriving in Honduras and traveling twenty miles by land, Daniel and Bill had met up with their guide, Rogelio, at Cantina LaLupita, and the man reluctantly agreed to take them south, insisting all the while that they would find no Mayan temples there, that all the ruins were to the north. When they arrived at the location Daniel and Jacob had determined was where the temple harboring the device should be, there appeared to be nothing there. Daniel told everyone to start searching. Quite suddenly, Bill discovered the temple – when he fell into it. It turned out that the temple was hidden underground, which explained why no one had ever found it.
Daniel and Bill went down into the ruins and followed a narrow passageway that ended in a chamber with no exit. It was devoid of any sort of writing or symbols, giving no clues as to where the device might be hidden. But then Daniel thought of something. The legend of the Fountain of Youth said that all nearby water flowed toward it. Taking Bill's canteen, Daniel poured water on the floor of the chamber. The water flowed toward a spot in the floor, then through a crack in the mortar between the stones. Daniel put his ear to the floor and heard the falling water striking a hard surface, which told him that there was a hidden compartment beneath the floor. He and Bill pried up one of the stones, and there it was, the Telchak device.
Their triumph was short-lived. No sooner had they removed the device when a trap was sprung. The chamber began filling up with water very rapidly. As they attempted to escape through the narrow passageway, it seemed certain that they'd drown. But, even as Daniel's lungs were screaming for air, and he didn't think he could last another moment, he found the exit. Rogelio helped him and Bill out.
Unfortunately, things did not improve from there, for appearing out of the jungle were four armed men. They took Daniel, Bill and Rogelio captive and forced them to march, blindfolded, through the jungle. At one point, Rogelio apparently tried to escape and was shot.
Now, Daniel and Bill were being held captive in a shack within a small encampment, wondering what was going to happen next. The archeologist didn't know who their captors were, although he was guessing that they were Honduran rebels. His attempts to convince the leader that he and Bill were just archeologists and no ransom would be paid for them hadn't worked.
What worried Daniel the most was that the rebels had the Telchak device. If they accidentally turned the thing on, they could all be in very big trouble. Not that he and Bill weren't already in very big trouble. They were overdue for their scheduled check-in, and, sooner or later, people would begin to suspect that something had happened. The problem was that nobody knew where they were.
Daniel's thoughts turned to Danny, worried about how the boy was going to react when he was told that Daniel was missing. This had to end okay. Danny couldn't lose someone else he loved so soon.
Daniel vowed that, no matter what it took, he would get home to the people he loved.
The supersoldier, stripped of its main armor and wearing only the bodysuit, was imprisoned by metal bands around its limbs and neck, standing upright and unable to move. Bra'tac and Teal'c were in the isolation room with it, hoping to find out who it served and from where it came. In the observation room above were Jacob, Sam and General Hammond.
"Who do you serve?" Bra'tac asked, approaching it. "Hmm? Speak!"
"I serve Anubis," the drone said, confirming their suspicions.
"How were you created?" Teal'c asked.
The supersoldier made some noises, but did not reply. Bra'tac turned to the people watching up in the observation room and shook his head. Hammond nodded once in silent reply.
"I think it's safe to assume they're not going to get anything more out of him," the general said to the two people in the room with him. "Have you found anything else?"
"Our initial scans indicate below normal brainwave patterns emanating from both the symbiote and the host," Sam replied. "Basically, he's got all the strength and healing powers of a normal Goa'uld, but none of the normal personality traits."
"The Goa'uld use sophisticated brainwashing techniques," Jacob said.
"I'm open to suggestions," the general told them. "How can we find out what it knows, if anything?"
"There is one possibility," Jacob answered. "We may be able to use a memory recall device to access any conscious images in its mind as it thinks them."
"Do it."
Hammond left the room. As he headed for the elevator, an airman approached him. The general listened to the news the man was bringing, deeply concerned.
He had just dismissed the man when he heard Jack call out to him. He turned to the colonel.
"Any word from Daniel?" Jack asked.
"No. Doctor Jackson is now six hours overdue per his regular contact schedule."
"That's late, even for Daniel."
"The Honduran government has assured the State Department they're looking into it. They've sent some people to their last reported location. So far, they've found nothing."
'Crap. I do not have a good feeling about this.' "Sir—"
Hammond held up his hand, halting Jack's statement. "I know what you're going to say, and the answer is no, at least not yet. Let's wait to see what the Hondurans find out. Doctor Jackson and Doctor Lee may just have run into a little trouble that's preventing them from reporting in. It could be as simple as their radio not working."
"Or they could be in really big trouble. Sir, you know as well as I do that they should never have been sent there without backup. I had a bad feeling about this right from the start."
"I understand, Colonel, but it's the way it had to be. We couldn't risk having the Honduran government getting suspicious or even finding out about the device and confiscating it. As it is, they are now asking uncomfortable questions about Doctor Jackson and Doctor Lee, wondering what they were doing and why the State Department seems so concerned about them."
"Yeah, well, all I care about right now is that we find them, alive and well. There's a little boy on this base who's waiting for Daniel to come home, and I'll be damned if I'm going to tell him that Daniel's not ever coming home again."
Jack went in search of the others and found Sam, Teal'c and Bra'tac in the observation room overlooking the captured drone.
The major noticed the frown on his face. "Sir, what's wrong?"
"Daniel hasn't reported in. He's six hours overdue. Some people were sent to where he and Lee were last known to be, but they didn't find any sign of them."
"What?!" Sam exclaimed. "Does anyone have any idea what happened?"
"No, not yet."
"What is to be done?" Teal'c asked, frowning.
"They'll keep searching the area, I'd guess, try to find some clue to where Daniel and Lee are."
"Dammit! I knew we should have gone with them," Sam cursed.
"I agree, Carter. All we can do now is hope that they're okay."
"What am I going to tell Danny?"
"Nothing for right now. There's no point in worrying the kid yet. Let's just wait to see what the Honduran government finds out." Jack looked about. "Where's Jacob?"
"He's getting one of the memory recall devices so we can use it on the supersoldier. The soldier is refusing to talk, and we think we may be able to get some information with the memory device."
Jack nodded. "Okay. Let me know what you find out."
Jacob stood at the elevator, waiting for the doors to open. When they did, he was surprised to see Danny before him, with no adult in sight.
"Hi, Jacob," the boy greeted with a smile.
"Danny, what are you doing wandering around all by yourself?" the Tok'ra asked as he stepped into the elevator.
"I'm not wandering around, I'm going to the commissary," Danny corrected. "I'm allowed to go there by myself. Jack said we haven't had any alien monsters attack the commissary yet, although he sometimes thinks that the people who cook the food are alien monsters in disguise." Danny paused for a moment. "He was joking about that last part."
Jacob smiled in amusement. "Ah, I see. Well, would it be okay if I accompanied you there anyway?"
"Yeah."
Jacob studied the child, more than a little curious about this eight-year-old version of Daniel. "So, do you like living with Daniel?"
"Uh huh. I have to pretend that he's my father sometimes because not everybody knows that I'm a clone. But that's okay. Daniel is almost like my real dad. We're a family."
"I'm glad to hear that." Jacob couldn't help but think that it was pretty interesting that Daniel was now a father to a copy of himself.
The doors opened on Level 22, and the two of them headed down the corridor toward the commissary. Jacob stayed with Danny until they reached the entrance, then he said goodbye and returned to the elevator to resume his journey back to the observation room. When he got there, he noticed that Sam appeared to be very worried about something.
"What's up?" he asked.
Sam told her father the news about Daniel.
"I'm sure he'll be all right, Sam," Jacob assured his daughter. "Daniel is a tough man to kill."
A call was put in to Hammond, and he joined them down in the isolation room to witness the resumption of the interrogation. As he, Sam, Teal'c and Bra'tac watched, Jacob prepared to use the memory recall device on the drone warrior. The holographic projector that worked in conjunction with the device had been set up on a table.
"If his brainwaves are compatible with the device, we should be able to see whatever he's thinking holographically," the Tok'ra explained. He placed the tiny disk that was the memory device on the supersoldier's temple.
Teal'c approached it. "What is your planet of origin?"
A few seconds passed, then the image of a star field was formed by the holographic projector.
"That's the sky above his planet," Jacob assumed.
"I don't recognize any of these star configurations," Sam said. "This could be anywhere."
"We have star mapping technology that should be able to pinpoint this location in the galaxy." Jacob smiled. "He just gave us his homeworld."
Teal'c turned to the warrior, a smile of triumph on his face.
"I'll take the data back to the Tok'ra base," Jacob said. "It might take a while to find out what star system that is."
As they waited for Jacob to return, the thing that was mostly on the minds of Jack, Sam and Teal'c was not Anubis or the warriors he had created, but their missing teammate. With each passing hour without news of Daniel, their fears increased. Sam didn't dare go to visit Danny. She knew that she wouldn't be able to hide her concern. Instead, she called him and asked what he was doing.
"I'm using the Italian language program Daniel bought me," the boy said. "It's way better than language tapes. I've already learned a whole bunch of stuff."
"Daniel will be very proud of you," Sam responded, keeping her voice light with an effort.
"When is he coming home? I miss him."
Sam closed her eyes briefly, swallowing. "I know. I miss him, too. I don't know when he'll be home, Danny. Soon, I hope." Sam cleared the lump from her throat. "Uh, I've got to go. I'll talk to you later, okay?"
"Okay. Bye, Sam."
Sam hung up the phone. "Please be all right, Daniel," she whispered.
At that moment, an unscheduled off-world activation was announced. Figuring that it was probably her father returning, Sam went to the gate room to meet him. They both went up to the briefing room. General Hammond was on the phone in his office, apparently deep in conversation.
Jacob filled Sam in on what they'd learned, handing her a data disk.
Just then, Jack, Teal'c and Bra'tac came in.
"Whatcha got?" the colonel asked.
Sam asked her father to turn down the lights as she loaded the data onto the computer and had the star map display on the briefing room screen. The gate address of the planet was shown as well.
"The Tok'ra call it Tartarus," she told her teammates and Bra'tac. "It's a seemingly unoccupied planet on the edge of Goa'uld controlled space."
"The Tok'ra are currently trying to get as close as they can to assess any defenses that might be there," Jacob said.
At that moment, Hammond came in from his office. The look on his face sent Sam's stomach into her shoes. Something was wrong.
"Sir?" she inquired.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news. I just received a communiqué from the State Department in Washington. It appears that Daniel Jackson and Doctor Lee have been kidnapped. Our best guess is they've crossed the border into Nicaragua. However, as of this moment, we have no idea where they are."
Jack and Sam shared a look of deep worry.
"Sir, is there anything at all that we can do?" Sam asked the general.
"I'm afraid not. At least not at this time."
"What's the plan?" Jack asked.
"An attempt will be made to find out who the kidnappers are and what they want. Beyond that, I cannot say yet."
"We have to get them out," Sam said.
"Everything possible will be done to bring them home, Major," Hammond assured her. "I will let all of you know the moment I hear anything."
"Thank you, sir," Jack said.
He and the others left the briefing room. Not surprisingly, they went to Daniel's office.
"This shouldn't have happened," Sam said. "If we'd been with him. . . ."
"It might still have happened, Carter," Jack told her. "We don't know how many there were or how well armed."
"But at least we'd be with Daniel, not here wondering if he's okay."
"I, too, would prefer to be at Daniel Jackson's side," Teal'c stated. "Together, we would have had a greater chance to escape from these people who have taken him and Doctor Lee."
Jack sighed. "Yeah. I've been thinking that, too. But Daniel's a resourceful kind of guy, and he's tough, too. He'll be okay." He wasn't sure if he spoke the words to reassure his teammates or himself.
"Oh, God. I have to tell Danny," Sam said. "How am I going to tell him this?"
"We'll do it together, Carter."
Jack and Sam went to Daniel's quarters, dreading what they'd have to tell the child who loved Daniel so much.
Danny was sitting at the desk, working on the computer. As they entered the room, he turned around and saw the looks on their faces.
"What's wrong?" he asked, immediately getting scared. "Is it Daniel? Did something happen to him?"
Sam sat on the nearby bed. "Danny, there's been trouble. Some people have kidnapped Daniel and Doctor Lee."
"Kidnapped? But why? Do they want money?"
Jack went down on one knee beside the boy's chair. "We don't know, yet, Danny. Right now, we don't even know who has them."
Danny's eyes filled with tears. "But you're going to go rescue them, right?"
"We don't know where they are," Sam replied, holding back her own tears.
"But we're going to find out," Jack assured the boy. "Then we'll do all we can to get them back."
Danny lunged toward the colonel, throwing his arms around him. Jack hugged him back, pressing his face into the child's neck. Dammit. This had to turn out all right. They had to get Daniel back, for Danny's sake and everyone else's.
Nobody got much sleep that night. Danny, who stayed with Jack in his quarters, finally went to sleep at around eleven, but had several nightmares, from which Jack kept having to awaken him. Every time he held the weeping child, telling Danny that it was just a bad dream and Daniel was going to be okay, Jack prayed with all his might that he was right. He wanted to be doing something, to be on a flight to Honduras to go find Daniel. But, until they knew more, there was nothing they could do.
The next day was torture for Danny and the three members of SG-1. Jacob had returned to the Tok'ra base, where the High Council was discussing plans to infiltrate Anubis' base on Tartarus. Bra'tac was gone as well. He would be returning tomorrow.
Wednesday night was another restless night for everyone. That night, Danny stayed with Sam. Every time he cried from a nightmare, she cried with him. She felt like her heart was breaking, that the pain of the little boy in her arms was her own.
The next morning, Jack went to Hammond's office yet again. The general was talking to someone on the red phone.
"Thank you, sir," Hammond said. "Yes, I do as well." He hung up the phone. "The State Department has received a ransom demand for Doctor Jackson and Doctor Lee." He turned to face Jack. "We've been given seventy-two hours to pay or they will be killed."
"Do they know who's behind it?"
"The kidnappers haven't identified themselves, but intel indicates we're dealing with Honduran anti-government revolutionaries. They're following the book on this one. Officially, they have no intention of paying any ransom."
"Unofficially?"
"Our ties with the Honduran government are at stake. No one is willing to risk breaking policy over this."
Jack knew what that meant. No ransom would be paid. "So, we send a team in to extract 'em. We've done it before."
"Obviously, the rebels are betting that our tenuous relationship with the Nicaraguan government will prevent us from taking action. But they're wrong. I've called the president, and he's agreed to help. As we speak, he's requesting that the CIA gather whatever intel they can. But whether he's willing to risk an international incident. . . ."
Though Jack didn't express his thoughts aloud, he really didn't give a damn about an international incident. All he cared about was getting Daniel back.
"Thank you, sir," he said.
"I'll let you know the second I hear anything."
Upon hearing the news, Sam became even more worried. Honduran revolutionaries could be brutal. What might they be doing to Daniel and Bill? They'd already had the two men captive for at least a day and a half. The only good news was that the president was now involved and would probably okay a rescue mission. But would it be in time?
A chilling thought froze Sam's mind. What if Daniel and Bill were already dead? There was no proof that they were alive, only the word of the rebels. The two men could have been killed within hours of being taken.
No. No, that couldn't be. Daniel had to be alive. Sam could not accept anything else.
Everyone decided not to tell Danny the news that they had only three days to get Daniel out before he was killed. They did, however, tell him that the president would probably let them go rescue the kidnapped men.
Jack and Sam had both remained on base since learning of his disappearance. They'd wanted to be there for any news that came in. As the second day since their friend's kidnapping dragged on, every one of the people who loved him were plagued with the fear that they might never see him again.
Daniel looked out through the crack between two boards of the shack that had been his and Bill's prison for the past two days. The sun was around an hour from setting. Neither of the men had been given any water since the dirty half a cupful that Rafael, the rebel leader, let them have perhaps a couple of hours after they were first put in the shack. They had been given no food at all. Both men were suffering from dehydration and were beginning to weaken from hunger. Right now, Daniel felt like he'd sell every worldly possession he owned for a tall glass of water.
On the first day, Rafael came to the shack and questioned them, wanting to know who they worked for. Daniel had insisted that they were just archeologists, but the man didn't believe him. When the rebel threatened to kill one of them to get the U.S. Government's attention, Daniel got angry and threatened back, telling Rafael that very powerful people were going to come for them, and he'd be sorry if he didn't release them now. The man didn't believe him and left. Daniel just hoped that what he said was true, that people were working on finding and rescuing them.
Since then, Rafael had come and talked to them several more times. Neither Daniel nor Bill said anything in response to the questioning. They'd both been punched in the gut a few times, but not hard enough to cause any internal damage. Daniel had also been hit in the face. He was the one they'd focused on the most. The archeologist didn't think it was because Rafael thought he was the weaker of the two. On the contrary, it was clear that the rebels knew Daniel was the leader. Perhaps it was for that reason that he was targeted more. Regardless of the reason, Daniel was glad of it. Every time the rebels hit Bill, it hurt Daniel more than when he was hit himself. Bill shouldn't be here. He had no experience with this kind of thing, whereas Daniel was no stranger to captivity and torture, both physical and psychological.
At that moment, the door to the shack was opened, and Daniel was taken out. The rebels roughly took him to the hut that was apparently some kind of command center and possibly Rafael's quarters. He was forced to sit in a chair. Rafael was sitting on the edge of a table, which held fresh pineapple and clean water. Daniel tried not to show how much he wanted it as the rebel leader poured some water into a cup.
Rafael drank noisily from the cup. "You've not had water or food for two days." He ate a piece of the pineapple. "Mm. Mmmm. Muy delicioso. Pick of the season. This is very good." He threw away what was left of the piece of fruit he was eating, his eyes fastened on Daniel. "Today, we're going to start slow." He stood and walked around the table. "I'm going to ask you again." He removed a cloth, revealing the Telchak device. "What is this?"
Daniel took a steadying breath, but did not reply. 'Don't think about the water. Don't think about the water,' he told himself. God, he wanted that water so badly, and the pineapple, too. He'd never been a huge lover of pineapple, but, right now, he'd eat a whole one in a single sitting.
The rebel leader noted his silence. "And this is the part where you do not talk. Okay." He took another bite of pineapple, then waved the piece in front of Daniel's face. "Hmm? For you," he touched the piece of fruit to Daniel's lips, then took it away, "and your friend, if you tell me what this is." When Daniel still didn't speak, he sighed. "I don't know how long someone can go without food, but I believe the human body needs water every three or four days." He took another drink from the cup.
God, this was almost worse than being ribboned, Daniel thought. "It's an ancient artifact," he said in a subdued voice.
"An artifact?"
"Yeah. I'm-I'm an archaeologist. That's what I do. I-I-I look for . . . artifacts. And, um, uh . . ." he let out a little laugh that was one part exhaustion, the other part nervousness, "found one." His smile died. "Seriously, I-I'm an archaeologist. You guys can look me up on the internet, if you want." He looked over his shoulder at the two men behind him. "You have a computer?"
"It all makes perfect sense," Rafael said. "You're nothing more than an archaeologist, and you find and study artifacts."
"Makes perfect sense," Daniel agreed wearily.
"Hmm. I'm going to ask you one last time. What is this?" Daniel clammed up. "And again, you're not so talkative. What gives you the right to come into our country and steal valuable artifacts? You call yourself a scientist? You're nothing but a thief. And you think you're better than me. But I have reasons for what I do."
"I don't doubt that."
Apparently, Daniel's statement angered the rebel leader.
"Chalo," he said to one of the men.
Chalo went over to another table and uncovered a car battery with jumper cables attached to it. Also attached to the battery was some copper wire, which wound around another object on the table. The rebel rubbed the ends of the jumper cable together, making them spark. Daniel flinched, turning his face away.
"And here's something else you should not doubt, compadre," Rafael said, seeing fear in Daniel's eyes for the first time. "You will tell me what I want to know."
Daniel stared at the battery fearfully. He knew what it would do to him, the agony he'd suffer.
Rafael gestured at Chalo, who covered the battery back up. "How about if we let you think about that tonight, think about how very painful it would be to have all that electricity flow though your body. Personally, I've never experienced it, but I've seen many a strong man cry like an infant and beg for mercy."
Daniel didn't tell the man that he already knew what it felt like to have that kind of power scorch through his body. A zat blast wasn't exactly the same thing, but it probably felt somewhat the same. And then there was what the Bedrosians did to him. When they found the DHD and asked Daniel what it was, he'd told them with complete honesty. Not surprisingly, Rigar didn't believe him. They started in on him with the weapon the man had used to render Jack and Sam unconscious in their cages. It had apparently been put on a lower setting, however. Instead of knocking him out, it just hurt like hell and made it impossible to breathe while he was being shocked. Rigar used it a couple times, then got frustrated and tossed him back into his cage. After that, Daniel swore that he'd never look at cattle prods the same way again.
Daniel was taken back to the shack.
"What happened?" Bill asked him anxiously.
"I think we'd better really start hoping that help is on the way."
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