STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust by Peter J. Evans Read Free Book Online

was a tight note to her voice that O’Neill didn’t like at all.
    He ducked back in. “What?”
    “No go, sir. It’s not built to be tripped manually.”
    “Can’t you just pull some of those crystals out?”
    She shook her head. “They lock when there’s power going through them.”
    “Well, smash them or something!”
    Carter stared at him. “I think that would be a really good way to detonate the generator.”
    “O’Neill,” said Teal’c. “We must warn the refugees.”
    “Next on my list.” He went for the hatch, stopped momentarily on the threshold. “Teal’c, you’re with me. Carter, find a way to kill the signal. If you have to, drop a grenade into that relay and run.”
    “Understood, sir.”
    He jumped out of the hatch, his boots crunching onto the plateau’s frosty surface. The wind had picked up, whipping at his uniform and stinging his face with sleet. “Next time, arctic gear,” he growled to himself. “Regardless.”
    The temple was several hundred meters away, almost hidden behind boulders and jagged, broken ground. The clearest route to it was close to the edge of the cliff, which O’Neill didn’t like at all, not with the storm almost on top of him. Probably better than clambering through the boulders, though. “What do you think, Teal’c? This way?”
    The man didn’t answer, just set off past O’Neill at a fast jog.
    “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” O’Neill took a second to tighten the sling on his MP5, then began to follow the Jaffa.
    It wasn’t easy. Teal’c didn’t seem to notice the weather at all, but O’Neill was being buffeted by the wind with every step. Having to squint against the sleet made things even more difficult. It was all he could do to keep up the pace.
    There wasn’t any other option, though. The refugees needed to get through the gate
now
.
    O’Neill forced his attention down to the stone beneath his boots, jogging forwards as fast as he could, only raising his head every few meters to gauge his progress. Teal’c was still ahead of him, already out of shouting distance. If that wasn’t bad enough, the gale must have been whistling through some rock formation close by, giving forth a rising whine that O’Neill was finding quite painful.
    There was another sound, more familiar: the crackle of his radio demanding attention. He lowered his head to it. “Carter?”
    Static hissed out at him for a moment, before wind-noise he had been hearing rose suddenly into a rippling shriek.
    He’d heard that sound before.
    There wasn’t even time to spin and face what was coming. O’Neill hurled himself forwards as the ground where he had been standing turned into a cloud of fire and shattered stone, a brutal explosion that sent him whirling through the air and straight towards the edge of the cliff.

Chapter 3.
Goodnight, Travel Well
     
    If Jack O’Neill hadn’t have jumped when he did, the shockwave from that blast would have pulverized him, shattered his insides. But in doing so he had given his body enough lift to be spun, by the blast and the freezing wind, to the cliff-edge and its frightening drop onto the killing ground below.
    For one dreadful, airborne moment, all he could see in his future was a long dive and a messy impact, but then the hard edge of the cliff whirled up towards him and smashed heavily into his face and chest. The breath went out of him in a guttural whoop as his ribs compressed, then he was sliding wildly, grabbing at the rocks around him, feeling them slice his skin even through the deadening cold.
    He managed to stop himself just before he ran out of plateau.
    A second went past while he tried to remember how to breathe, how to think. He had fetched up on his belly, head and shoulders in mid air, and spent a short time staring down at the Stargate while pieces of cliff rained down past him. Then, when he had regained control of his lungs, he scrambled back a short distance and flipped himself over.
    His gun had gone