STARGATE SG-1: Kali's Wrath (SG1-28) Page 9

  Jacob Carter shook his head. “Not a chance. I’m allergic to traffic lights,” he said with a wry smile. “I always take the back roads. I wouldn’t’ve been anywhere near where that donnybrook happened.”

  As usual when he spoke to humans, Bra’tac only understood about a quarter of what Jacob Carter said, but he was able to ascertain the meaning even if the specifics were beyond him. “It is a terrible thing to lose the one you love.”

  “Yeah, well, like you, I haven’t talked to too many people about that day. Selmak groks, but he shares my head. The other Tok’ra — I’m not sure they’d really get it, y’know? Especially since I didn’t just lose my wife that day — I pretty much lost both my kids, too.”

  “I am honored that you shared with me, then.”

  “Yeah, well, I figured you would get it.” He chuckled bitterly. “It’s funny, I can’t for the life of me even remember what it was at the base that got me so sidetracked.” He sighed. “Anyhow, Sam kept wandering off on her own, hangin’ out in places I wasn’t too thrilled with. I tried to warn her, but I was pretty much the last guy on Earth she’d listen to at that point. If I told her the sky was blue, she’d convince herself it was green. So I let her make her own mistakes.”

  “That is,” Bra’tac said gently, “sometimes the only alternative.”

  “Still stinks, though. But she found her way eventually. Kinda nice when your kid outdoes your expectations, ain’t it?”

  “Indeed. When I trained Teal’c it was to replace me as First Prime and to use his position to work from within, to make life under Apophis at least tolerable. I never believed a true Jaffa rebellion was possible until Teal’c met O’Neill, your daughter, and Dr. Jackson. I thought he was a naïve fool to even consider such an action — but he took it, and we are better for it. The Jaffa Rebellion grows with each passing day, and it is all because of Teal’c. I could not be more proud.”

  “Hey, if it wasn’t for Sam being part of the Stargate program, I’d be dead right now. I was less than a week from cancer killin’ me before I blended with Selmak. My entire life’s changed ‘cause of her.”

  “That would not have happened but for your guidance. Perhaps that guidance was not as overt as mine with Teal’c, but I have seen your work in this battle we both fight, Jacob Carter, and I see a great deal of you in your daughter. She has your courage, your forthrightness, and your strength.”

  “Yeah, and somebody else’s brains.” He grinned. “I’ve been joking that she gets her smarts from Selmak’s side of the family. But seriously, thanks, Bra’tac. I’ve seen your work, too, and that means a lot.”

  Bra’tac nodded, and Jacob Carter nodded back.

  They continued the rest of the way to Imphal in companionable silence.

  CHAPTER TEN

  P3X-418

  DANIEL Jackson really didn’t want to be enjoying himself.

  But it was hard to resist the allure of what Kali had given him.

  Her Jaffa had led him to an office that had an old oak desk, with everything in easy reach — including the mug of water he’d asked for. The desk itself was in the center of the room, with the large window looking out over the majestic snow-covered mountains just to his left. Daniel appreciated the effect: the magnificent vista was accessible but not a distraction.

  Of course, the material Kali had provided was distraction enough. Some of it was recorded on scrolls, amazingly enough, but most was on the tablet readers that they’d found on a number of Goa’uld worlds. Daniel had about a dozen tablets, plus one of those eggs that moved the text from one ‘page’ to the next.

  The scrolls were, like the lettering on Kali’s mothership, written in the Devanagari alphabet, and Daniel was able to struggle through enough to recognize them as accounts of the colonization of Imphal. It took a while to muddle through those, partly because the language had evolved in odd directions, partly because the descriptions could charitably be described as flowery. Kali didn’t simply travel to the world, instead she was decribed as ‘journeying powerfully across the stars in her grand vessel that conveyed her between the stars’. Her Jaffa didn’t just construct the settlement, but rather they ‘painstakingly crafted the finest shelters from the raw materials on the world, using only their bare hands and their fortitude’.

  Curiously, Daniel found no references to the construction of the redoubt that he was currently inside. Then again, he was fairly certain that it was already here when Kali arrived.

  The tablets were much easier to get through, written as they were in the standardized Goa’uld language, which Daniel had become fluent in during his year on Abydos.

  Daniel had always had a natural facility for languages. When he was a boy in school, he’d always aced his foreign language classes, having mastered French, Italian, and Spanish upon completing the sixth grade. By the time he got his Bachelor’s, he knew a dozen, and he was up to twenty-two on that fateful day when Catherine Langford had approached him.

  He had hit rock bottom, that day. That morning, he’d awoken to an eviction order, and then the entire crowd walked out of his lecture. In their defense, the eviction notice had caused his speech to be somewhat more histrionic than he’d originally intended.

  Either way, though, he kind of wished he could go back in time and tell his younger self not to hesitate when the strange old woman pulled up in a limousine and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He went from a homeless laughingstock to an Air Force employee who had an apartment in Colorado Springs.

  After deciphering the chevrons on the Stargate, he got to go to an alien planet. On Abydos, for the first time in his life, he was home. On Earth, his only family was parents utterly absorbed by their work before their tragic deaths in an accident at a museum in New York, and a crazy grandfather. But on Abydos, he found in Sha’re, Skaara, and Kasuf the family that Earth had never been able to give him. Instead of Claire and Melburn Jackson’s distraction and Nicholas Ballard’s insanity, the Abydonians gave him unconditional affection. They welcomed him without question, gave him food and shelter and, most of all, love.

  Sha’re gave Daniel many things, including the twenty-third language in his lexicon — which enabled him to sit and read through the tablets Kali had provided for him.

  Had he not been able to read them, Kali might have viewed Daniel as equally expendable as Jack.

  He was just glad that she had agreed to heal Jack.

  As System Lords went, Kali wasn’t all that bad. Not that she was in any way good, but as he flipped through the tablets, he noticed that — for a goddess with a reputation as a destroyer — she had surprisingly few conquests. He knew from Tok’ra intelligence that she had been elevated to the ranks of the System Lords mainly by attrition. SG-1 had wiped out so many of the extant System Lords that it created a power vacuum. Kali had been one of those to fill the vacancies.

  Her record of conquest, though, was almost paltry by comparison to her fellows. The number of planets under her domain was among the smallest of the current spate of System Lords.

  However, her holdings were all fairly strong, and very few of them had changed hands. The tablets included all those records.

  Kali had promised Daniel some assistance from among her subjects. That was mostly for the negotiations themselves, but for now Kali did send one young woman up. “My name,” she said, “is Aparna, Dr. Jackson. I’m here to give you aid with translating the tablets. I am fluent in the written language of the gods.”

  “Um, okay, well, so am I.”

  Aparna’s eyes went wide. “I apologize.” She bowed her head. “While all the Kula speak the gods’ tongue, few are those who know it in its written form. You must be very wise.”

  Daniel smiled. “So must you be, if you can read it.”

  She shrugged. “It is my duty. My service to the Mother Goddess is as archivist.”

  “Well, based on what I’ve seen so far, you do your job very well.”

  “Thank you. I do my best in service of the Mother G
oddess.”

  Unable to help himself, Daniel winced at Aparna’s obeisance to a Goa’uld.

  To her credit, and Daniel’s irritation, she noticed. “You do not approve of my devotion, Dr. Jackson?”

  Deciding to do her the favor of being honest, Daniel replied, “No, Aparna, I don’t. The Goa’uld aren’t gods, they’re parasites who take on human form and enslave and murder innocent people. Apophis kidnapped several humans, including my wife and brother-in-law. They were implanted with Goa’uld, forced to subsume their very existence to an alien consciousness with delusions of divinity. The hilarious part is that they were comparitvely lucky. The ones who didn’t get chosen? They were killed and discarded.”

  “Well, of course,” Aparna said. “Apophis is an evil god. The Mother Goddess would never do such a thing. All the Goa’uld in her service are hosted by mortals who have chosen that life.”

  Daniel blinked. That was, of course, true of Ramprasad, but only because he was a Tok’ra. “Really?”

  Aparna nodded. “There are many acolytes who train all their lives to host one of the gods. The few who are chosen are always grateful for the opportunity to become immortal in the service of the Mother Goddess.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “How could it possibly be wrong?” Aparna sounded genuinely confused, which Daniel found heartbreaking. “The Kula are cared for by the Mother Goddess. She provides us with food and shelter and health and happiness. She protects us — with her own divinity and with the Jaffa. None of the Kula are starving, Dr. Jackson, and none of us are unhappy.”

  “The people of this world were probably pretty unhappy when the Reetou killed them. She did a poor job of protecting you from them.”

  “Is that not why you are here, Dr. Jackson?”

  Daniel actually smiled at her scoring that particular rhetorical point. “Fair enough, but I’m only here because Kali threatened the people of Bangalore.”

  Aparna frowned. “Bangalore is my homeworld.”

  “When Kali captured me and my teammates, she said that if we didn’t cooperate — if I didn’t conduct these negotiations and if Sam didn’t do work in her lab — she’d wipe out the entire population of Bangalore.”

  Shaking her head, Aparna said, “You are either mistaken or lying, Dr. Jackson. The Mother Goddess would never do such a thing.”

  “I can’t prove it to you, sadly, but I can assure you it did happen. Look, I’ll agree that Kali isn’t as bad as some of the other Goa’uld. Good for her for not actually kidnapping people and forcing them to become hosts. But it’s just a question of degree. She’s not a goddess, she’s a living being just like any other, who happens to control powerful technology that she stole and adapted from another, older race.”

  Aparna shook her head, and Daniel realized that it was out of pity. “Do you think my devotion to the Mother Goddess comes from her power? I told you, she has protected us for millennia. I do not pledge myself to her service because she performs mighty feats, for I have seen others, including the Jaffa, perform similar feats. It is her dedication to our lives that compels me, Dr. Jackson.” She took a breath. “Now then — since I may not aid you in translating, is there another method by which I can assist?”

  Daniel just stared at her for several seconds. He had to admit to never seeing this before. Usually, the Goa’uld’s subjects were cowed into submission. But Aparna’s devotion came from a much more intellectual place.

  Not that that made it any better. Slavery was still slavery, and even a well-treated slave still didn’t have the power to walk away without consequence.

  However, he knew he wouldn’t win the argument with Aparna. So he just answered her question: “Some more water would be nice. Translating can be thirsty work.”

  She actually favored him with a smile. “Indeed. It is also easy to lose yourself in the act of reading and lose track of one’s physical needs like eating and drinking.”

  “And sleeping,” Daniel added, returning the smile.

  “I will bring you a pitcher.” She bowed her head and then left.

  He stared at the doorway for several seconds after her depature before turning his attention back to the tablets.

  She did indeed bring a pitcher, and the ice water was quite refreshing. As he sipped it, he read over the account of Ares trying to take one of Kali’s worlds and failing.

  Then he turned his attention to another tablet, which told of an expansionist campaign by Heru’ur. He moved in on many territories at once, challenging Bastet and Sobek as well as Kali. Individually, they were no match for even a fraction of Heru’ur’s forces, but Kali’s solution was to ally with the other two Goa’uld. Presented with a united front, Heru’ur backed off.

  Interestingly, according to this archive, the betrayal of Sobek by Bastet and Kali was done only to prevent Sobek from doing likewise. In the joint confrontation against Heru’ur, he had taken the fewest losses and he thought that gave him a superior position. So at the feast celebrating their alliance and victory over Heru’ur, Bastet and Kali had him killed.

  Most important, though, was the tablet that contained accounts of all of Kali’s campaigns against the Reetou. Interestingly, every single one followed the pattern that Jacob had laid out — and that they had experienced in the SGC — three years earlier. Covert strike teams of five performing surgical strikes and then departing.

  “Are you comfortable, Dr. Jackson?”

  Daniel turned toward the doorway at the voice, which was not Aparna, but rather Kali herself. “Yes, it’s a very gilded cage you’ve put me in.”

  She actually smiled. “Hardly that. This was Ramprasad’s study. He often found it an efficacious place to work. His service will be greatly missed.”

  “Mmm.” Daniel figured it was best not to focus on Ramprasad, since it wouldn’t do to let Kali know that he was still alive and also a Tok’ra. Instead, he said, “I noticed in your rather detailed history of the conversion of Imphal into one of the worlds in your domain that there’s no mention of how this place was built. Which isn’t surprising, since it really isn’t your usual style.”

  Kali nodded. “In fact, the structure was here when I claimed this planet. No doubt it was built into the side of the mountain because it made it more defensible. It has weathered many centuries intact, and it seemed the wisest place to put my headquarters on this world.”

  “Your headquarters. Which you almost never used, since this is only one of your worlds. Tell me, did anyone besides Ramprasad and a few servants get to come into your large, defensible stronghold? Or did you just leave them literally out in the cold?” Daniel’s question was as much in response to Aparna’s blind devotion as anything — he was hoping for something he could use in a later discussion with the archivist.

  For her part, Kali’s smile fell and she glowered at him, her eyes briefly glowing. “The winters on Imphal are cold ones, but the summers are quite pleasant. None of the Kula object to living outside the redoubt. And when a blizzard strikes, the people retreat here. I am not a cruel goddess, Dr. Jackson.”

  “In fact, you’re not any kind of goddess, you’re a parasite masquerading as one.”

  Shrugging, Kali asked, “What else defines divinity if not the devotion of those who worship? The Kula believe, and that is all that matters.”

  Daniel snorted.

  But before he could comment further, Kali held up her right hand. “We could argue this point endlessly, Dr. Jackson, and it would serve no purpose. Your biases leave you room only for hatred for the Goa’uld.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “On the contrary. Daniel Jackson, called ‘doctor’ due to your academic achievements in subjects relating to ancient history and linguistics. The Tau’ri military recruited you to assist in the deciphering of the workings of the chappa’ai that your people unearthed. You then travelled along with Colonel O’Neill and a contingent of Tau’ri warriors to Abydos where you killed Ra, and then re
mained there with your wife, Sha’re, until she was taken by Apophis and made to host Amaunet.”

  Taking off his glasses to rub his eyes, Daniel said, “Fine, you know the first thing about me, and maybe the second or third.” He replaced his glassses and stared right at her. “And you didn’t record any of that information, since your archivist was unaware of it.”

  “Aparna is quite skilled at her job, but she is only in charge of the public records. Intelligence about my enemies is not something I would entrust to anyone who is not either Goa’uld or Jaffa. And not even all of them.”

  Daniel nodded, acknowledging the point, if not actually conceding it. “Still, you know I come by my hatred for you and your kind pretty honestly, all things considered.”

  “Yes. But I would posit that you do not know the first thing, as you put it, of my own history.”

  “Oh, I think I know enough. You were referred to — I’m sorry, still are referred to — as Kali the Destroyer. The actions of your Jaffa led to a word in my language that describes unpleasant, poorly behaved miscreants.”

  Kali smiled once again, and to Daniel’s surprise, it was a rueful one, an emotion he never would have credited any Goa’uld capable of feeling. “Ah yes, a remnant of my early career, shall we say. I was originally in the service of Shiva and performed many unsavory acts on his behalf.”

  That actually surprised Daniel. “Really? That isn’t in the records, either.”

  “No.” Kali hesitated. “Intelligence about foes is not all that is kept out of the public records. I served Shiva before the Goa’uld first came to your homeworld. That story is not in the archives, as it is not relevant to the Kula. But I think you should hear it, Dr. Jackson.”

  “Oh?” Daniel found himself torn between his intellectual curiosity and his hatred. The former was champing at the bit to hear ancient history from someone who was actually there. The latter wanted Kali to leave the room as fast as possible, a feeling he always had when in the same room as a Goa’uld.