06 - Siren Song by Jamie Duncan, Holly Scott - (ebook by Undead) Read Free Book Online Page B

spreading a
hand out beside his waist, let his fingers fall into the lines and angles of the
strange script. He could feel the meaning in them vibrating through his
fingertips. A memory stirred—a silver-backed fish darting under black water—and faded. He let go of the wall and rubbed his temple with his knuckles. He’d
seen this script before. Behind his eyes, he could feel the pressure of wind
blowing up from an ocean, the smell of salt, warm grass. The Ancient words
seemed to bruise his backbone and the pain anchored him. His fingers found their
way back to the alien script. Still on his knees in Aris’ grip, Jack glared
into the space in front of him, breathing hard.
    “Easter,” Daniel whispered. He rolled onto his shoulder and pushed himself
away from the door with one hand. He let his head fall back, and his eyes
trailed the script from right to left, from left to right, drifting downward
until they fell on the familiar shapes of the Ancient letters. They were layered on top of the original incised
writing, as incongruous as graffiti on the Parthenon.
    Behind him, Jack grunted and there was a muffled thud as he fell forward onto
the stone floor. Outside the crushers on the plateau pounded their unrelenting
rhythm and sent their vibrations deep into the mountain, through bedrock, into
Daniel’s bones, a shuddering like music you can’t dance to. The Ancient letters
seemed to float in front of the cryptic text, fuzzed around the edges as they
jittered a little in front of Daniel’s eyes, keeping time with the pounding in
the mountain or maybe the pounding of his heart—he couldn’t tell. He heard a
gust of breath as Jack sat up and cradled his hand against his chest. Aris’
boots scraped the floor. The sounds were too bright, and in Daniel’s mind’s eye
there was a transitory gleam offish scattering, memory dispersing, coming
together—the smell of ocean, warm grass bending away from a salt-wind. Beneath
the rumble and the shiver of the mountain, beyond his breathing, beyond the
blocky, interlocking segments of the Ancient warning, he could see blank-eyed
faces turned away from the sea.
    “Easter,” Daniel said again, more firmly, nodding.
    “Easter,” Jack repeated, his voice thin and breathy with not shouting. “As in
bunny?”
    Daniel turned to him, smiling, but the smile faded when he saw Jack’s face.
The hiss of wind in grass was lost to the grinding of the mine, the mass of the
planet bearing down on them. Daniel leaned against the door again, let it take
his weight. “As in Island,” he said.

 
 
CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    “I’m sorry, sir. We should’ve tried to take him.” Sam winced as she made a final turn with the strip torn from the hem of Teal’c’s
t-shirt and pulled the knot gently, binding the Colonel’s little finger to the
next one.
    “Ow,” he said dully, as though by rote. Then: “It’s only a broken finger,
Major. Save the heroics for the big stuff.”
    Sam looked up from her task and nodded toward the faint shimmer of the force
field. Beyond it, Daniel was standing like he had been for the last twenty
minutes: head thrown back, lips moving around unvoiced words, eyes roaming the
text on the door. “If we’d acted then, maybe we wouldn’t be here now,” she said.
“Tactically, this position is way worse.”
    “Thanks,” the Colonel answered and pushed her hands away as she made some
final adjustments. “Insightful analysis.”
    “I’m just saying—”
    “I got it, Major. Things suck. Pretty much par for the course.” He started to
rub the back of his neck with his damaged hand but grimaced at the sting of pain
and stopped. “Any minute now some Jaffa’s going to come in here and be totally
humorless and make us kneel.” He got up, walked a few paces and flicked the
field experimentally, then sucked on his tingling finger. “I hate kneeling.”
    “As do I,” Teal’c said. He was sitting against the rock wall with his