STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust by Peter J. Evans

man’s calm was more likely due to the loss of most of his nerve endings and lung tissue. He’d be unable to feel much pain by now, and the lack of oxygen in his blood would be causing him to slip into a coma. The death of his symbiote, at this stage, could only have been a blessing.
    As O’Neill watched, the man spoke a few words, haltingly, his voice a dry rasp. Bra’tac answered, and with that the man nodded, very slightly, and did something with his mouth that might once have been a smile.
    “What was that?” O’Neill whispered. Teal’c brought his head a little closer.
    “He asked if his wife and son were safe.”
    “I guess Bra’tac lied.”
    “He did not. He told him that they would be reunited soon.”
    O’Neill’s knotted stomach twisted just a little tighter. “We can’t stay,” he said.
    “I am aware of that, O’Neill.” Bra’tac hadn’t looked up. He was still holding the man’s head. “We all are.”
    “So…”
    “A moment.”
    The man on the table opened one eye. It was all he had left. “
Fre’tauc
,” he breathed — a name, O’Neill could tell — but the breath didn’t reverse, just kept coming out, a thin, pale vapor in the cold, out, and out, until there was nothing more to come.
    The eye didn’t close, and there was no other change in the man. He simply became fractionally more still.
    Bra’tac bowed his head lower, just for a moment, then took his hands away and stood straight. “
Jaffa!
” he snapped. “
Ya’isid ma’gue!
”
    O’Neill didn’t need a translation of that. “About time,” he muttered, and turned for the door. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the sky outside.
    “Aw, crap,” he sighed.
    Dark scythes of metal, three of them, small but growing with horrible speed, were diving down out of the clouds to swoop in low over the plateau. O’Neill saw them race over the humped shape of the downed Tel’tak.
    Sparks of fire appeared under their wings.
    “Incoming!” he yelled. “Get down!”
    As soon as he had shouted he knew he’d wasted his breath. The people around him were warriors, almost from birth, and had probably forgotten more about death gliders and their ways than he would ever know. They scattered, those with staff weapons forming up at the doorway and the temple’s open windows, while the unarmed clustered low around the walls, children hustled instantly into the centre of each protective group. O’Neill heard the sizzle and click of weapons being readied, Teal’c’s among them, and then the gliders were over his head, their shrieks battering his ears.
    Outside, buildings were flashing apart in deafening, sledgehammer detonations, their walls hammered into gravel and burning shards.
    Bra’tac was at one of the windows. He’d picked up a staff weapon from somewhere, and its business end was smoking hot. The man must have loosed as many blasts at the gliders as the staff was capable of firing, and then a few.
    A puzzled frown was creasing his dark face. “O’Neill, where is the Tel’tak?”
    “Say what?” O’Neill joined him at the window, staring out over the plateau. The window wasn’t all that far away from the door he’d been looking out of. He should have been able to see Sephotep’s doomed experiment from here.
    The Tel’tak was gone. The plateau was empty.
    “The hell? It was there a second ago!”
    “Was it destroyed?”
    He might have missed the sound of the ship exploding in the attack, but there was no wreckage, no fire. The cargo ship was simply
gone
.
    “The gliders are on their return pass,” growled Teal’c.
    “Should we get to the other side?”
    “No,” Bra’tac replied, holding his aim. “We must weather the storm and wait for them to pass — it is sometimes possible to bring down a glider with a shot to the stern.”
    The rising scream of glider engines was making it difficult to think — the temple was ringed with glassless windows, and it echoed. “How possible?”
    “Not