Keeping his P90 carefully trained on the Goa'uld's head, Tony circled away from the door. "Lose the glove. Slowly." He instructed menacingly. Even at close range, the only sure way to kill a Goa'uld was a headshot, so he kept his gun steady. The ribboned metallic glove the alien wore on his right hand was both a remote for their technology, and a weapon.
The Goa'uld complied, his face deadpan. [There is no need to do anything precipitous,] his eyes flicked over Tony's uniform, [Colonel. We need not be enemies.] He dropped the glove on the ground.
"Glad to hear it. Now move." Tony kept a wary eye and a safe distance. If the alien rushed him, he'd have a moment's warning.
As they left the ship, Tony could see Zo'hait peeking out of the room down the corridor in which they'd safeguarded Blake. Time to clean up this mess. "All right. If you want to keep breathing, you'll tell me where the nearest sarcophagus is."
The Goa'uld's brow furrowed in surprise. [I do not know.]
Tony hissed in frustration. "You're lying. Every Goa'uld in charge has one. It's how your kind can keep going through the centuries!"
[I am not lying!] His eyes flashed with a white light for a moment. [That technology is restricted to the System Lords and their followers alone. Neither I nor my Lord has one.]
"Then I guess you're no use to me." Tony tightened his finger on the trigger.
For a moment, nervousness could be seen on the Goa'uld's face. He spread his hands. [I assume one of your own is injured, hence the question. I can still help, if you allow me to retrieve the proper tool.]
"Where?"
[A storage room, one level above us.] He responded immediately.
Tony gave it a moment's thought. Blake didn't have long, and it was doubtful any Jaffa would be a problem as long as he had a Goa'uld hostage. "If you make even one wrong move…" he promised.
The Goa'uld nodded and moved ahead of him, carefully.
-.-
"How's it going?" Nelson inquired, stepping into the cramped control room/cockpit of the alien ship. Four Survivors waited in the spacious rear section, guarding the only entrance; Desousa had taken the others out to start planting explosives.
Haley grimaced. "Slowly." Her fingers danced over the controls. "I can access the Goa'uld computer easily enough, but it looks like whoever last worked on this thing put in a lockout command. I can't make any changes, and that includes powering up the 'belly turret'." She looked up from the console, worried. "I hope David has a good backup plan, because we may need it. I've only gone through about a tenth of the permutations I can think of to bypass the lockout. Are you sure we can't just snatch up one of the maintenance guys and get them to do it for us?"
He shook his head. "Not without making a bunch of noise. Then we'd have the rest of the garrison all up in our business before we could even blink." He put a hand on her shoulder. "I do have some good news. Looks like Premin'aha was up to the task after all. They're all set and waiting over there." He peered out the window for a moment. "Looks like Desousa's back, too. Keep trying. I'm gonna go talk to him."
A brilliant flash of light washed through the control room, and a split-second later, a tremor followed it.
Nelson squinted out the window. The flash had come from the right direction, and at about the right time. "Ok, new plan. We're going, right now."
Haley didn't hesitate. As they both left the cockpit, Nelson spoke into his radio. "Prem, Alzi, we've officially worn out our welcome. Send the message and get out of there, now!"
No sound at all came from the radio.
-.-
It seemed the Goa'uld was in a hurry. It hadn't taken long for them to get the healing tool: a palm-sized disc with a strap to hold it on the Goa'uld's hand. It emitted a faint light and a pulsating noise as he moved it slowly over Blake's unconscious form. With his other hand, the Goa'uld removed the bandages one by one as the injury slowly sealed itself up. Before the wound was completely healed though, the Goa'uld sat up, looking drained and nervous. Zo’hait kept his gun at the ready, as the the Goa'uld slowly stood up.
"Why did you stop?" Tony demanded. "Keep going."
[His body has suffered extreme shock. He will recover in time, but if I do any more right now, it will do him more harm than good.] The apprehension on his face had intensified. [There is something you must know-]
"Hold that thought." Tony cut him off as his radio crackled. He held it to his ear. "I didn't catch that. Repeat."
There was a burst of static, before a voice responded. "Govis here, sir. Jahu and the rest are hunting down the stragglers in the mine, but I found some kind of control room here."
"And?"
"And I can't be sure, sir, but there's Goa'uld writing on the screens here, and it looks like a countdown in progress!"
Tony's blood ran cold. "How long?"
"Less than three minutes."
He rounded on the Goa'uld. "Now I know why you were in such a rush. What happens in three minutes?"
[The explosives imbedded in the substructure detonate, destroying my facility and burying the mines completely.] The Goa'uld explained steadily. He shrugged. [Given the importance of my work, my Lord insisted on some rather excessive security measures. The self-destruct activated automatically as soon as your people breached the lower mines.]
"I'm sure it did." Tony responded drily. "Shut it off."
[I can try to do so, but if I fail… I can pilot that alkesh to a safe distance, and it can easily carry all of us. It would be wiser to do so now, rather than wait.]
"Even if you're telling the truth, my people wouldn't get out in time." Tony pulled his 9 mil, cocked it, and held it to the Goa'uld's temple. "Shut. It. Off."
He flinched. [Of course. I'll require my… glove… from the ship.]
"I'll get it." He holstered his gun. "Zo, keep your sights on his head. It's the only surefire way to kill them."
Zo'hait nodded grimly and tightened his grip on the gun.
-.-
Hargrove had shut his eyes tight and covered his ears, but the burst of light and sound was still overwhelming. When he could see again, he squinted through the scope, and found he didn't need to. Even from this distance, the damage was evident to the naked eye. The entire north side of the palace was gone, and the rest had been gutted by the explosion. The forcefield was gone, too, as far as he could tell. There was no way anyone, even a Goa'uld, could have survived. As he watched, what was left of the south wall toppled and fell into the newly formed crater.
He clicked his radio three times, a general mission-accomplished message, and stopped when he realized he hadn't heard anything from it. He tried again.
Still nothing.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, he opened the radio up and got a faceful of smoke, smelling of burnt circuitry.
"Did the Goa'uld, uh… ‘jam’ us?" Cayo had turned back and was staring over his shoulder. He understood the concepts, but had trouble remembering all the words, sometimes.
"No, something fried my radio. When the others don't hear from us, they'll go to plan B. We'll need to hurry to meet up with them."
Hargrove pocketed what was left of his radio and headed quickly with Cayo downhill towards the rendezvous. It only took them a few moments to link up the rest of SR-1, and a few more minutes to meet Ahardt and the rest just outside the city's south wall. He couldn't see any obvious injuries, and all of them began heading towards the 'gate.
As they moved, Hargrove looked sideways at Ahardt. "Any problems?"
"My radio died for some reason, but otherwise, no. We didn't have time to steal a ship, but otherwise, things went as planned."
Hargrove and Cayo exchanged a glance. "Ours died too."
"Are you kidding?" Haley cut in impatiently. "We didn't shut down the pyramid! There will be Goa'uld gliders after us any minute now!"
Almost as soon as she finished speaking, another explosion could be heard inside the city. Everyone glanced back and could see fires near the pyramid's upper levels. Ahardt snickered. "You were saying?"
Desousa shook his head, and motioned them all to get moving again. "I was gonna say something like 'wait for it', but the charges went off a bit early."
"How-" Haley was still staring, and Hargrove pulled her arm to get her moving. "I thought you said you didn't have enough C4 to get them all!"
"That's why I didn't even try." Desousa explained. "Standard sapper technique: if you can't hit all your targets, then you have to settle for immobilizing them. I blew the supports for the hangar doors instead."
"But how? You couldn't have set them off by radio, and a timer wouldn't do it either; you couldn't know exactly when to set it."
Desousa smiled as they entered the treeline. "I'm glad to see your grasp of military tactics is improving. I set a tripwire on the hangar bay doors. As soon as they started to open, all the C4 went off. I doubt even something as small as a glider could get through the rubble now."
Ahardt clapped him on the back, as the others made appreciative noises.
Haley nodded, slowly. "I think I know what happened to the radios." She added a little defensively. She probably wanted to earn back some respect from the 'jarheads', as her husband called them. "When a nuclear bomb goes off, an EMP is released. The naquadah reactor was nowhere near as destructive as a nuke, but it must have had a similar effect. I should have seen this coming."
"What is an… EMP?" Suna queried, and Cayo stepped in close to hear as well.
"It's like that radiation weapon we found," Hargrove explained, "but instead of killing people, an electromagnetic pulse fries anything that uses electricity. Our guns should be fine, but anything that needs a battery is probably toast. I could really use a radio, but I doubt there's a working one within twenty miles."
"Oh! Mine should still work!" Haley groped around in her pack for her radio and handed it to him. "I shut it off so I could work on the ship in peace, and forgot to turn it back on, so it shouldn't have been affected!"
He gave her his best approximation of a grateful smile, and ran a bit ahead, turning it on.
The rest of them kept moving in silence for a moment.
Haley shook her head. "That was a pretty risky move, though, David! If they'd started opening the hangar doors while you were still setting the C4…"
"I know. That's the problem with backup plans. They're usually dangerous, and almost always have crappy odds. Still, it worked, didn't it?"
She gave him a nervous smile. "I'm still shaking. Is that normal?"
"For a first-timer in a combat situation? Oh yeah."
"You did fine, Haley." Ahardt put in, and Suna gripped her shoulder encouragingly.
Hargrove stepped back to the group. "Change of plans. We're not heading back to the SR." He gave a momentary glance in Haley's direction before continuing. "We'll route through P5V-1604 and then head to Site B- that's Hovak- instead."
Ahardt and Desousa nodded, but Haley looked suspicious. "What's wrong?"
He hid a wince. He'd hoped she wouldn't be able to tell. "I'm not sure," he admitted, "but the Colonel mentioned Blake."
Her nervousness apparently forgotten, Haley was the first one to get back to the 'gate.
