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

been blasted apart by the death glider. Every remaining opening vomited thick smoke, and Jaffa were desperately trying to extinguish the fire with great urns and jugs of water. A couple were trying to fight their way in through the debris, but the flames were too intense, the smoke too dark and choking. There was no hope, O’Neill could see that before he even reached the place, but the cries from within the structure were pitiful.
    Several other Jaffa were clustered around a figure that twisted on the hard ground.
    He skated to a halt next to them, while Teal’c ran to the burning house. Bra’tac was there, along with some of the Jaffa he had seen earlier, their hands on the figure that shuddered on the cold stone. They looked as if they were trying to hold the man down, to restrict his writhing, but their efforts were becoming more redundant with every second. The Jaffa’s strength was ebbing away into the air.
    If O’Neill had seen this stricken warrior before, he couldn’t have recognized him now. Fire, and the electric energies of the death glider’s weapons had seen to that.
    “What can I do?” he asked dully, his stomach a knot. “Morphine?”
    Bra’tac shook his head. “His symbiote would have suppressed the pain,” he said quietly. “Had it lived.”
    He spoke to the men with him, gesturing into the temple. Between them, they lifted the dying Jaffa and carried him into the darkness. O’Neill watched them go, then stumbled back towards the smaller building.
    The screaming had ceased. The fires inside the structure were lessening, but wet smoke was still pouring from the openings. There was a vile reek to it. The Jaffa who had been throwing water were standing at the windows, looking in, silent and still. Teal’c was with them, as unmoving as the rest.
    “Nothing could be done for them,” he said, as O’Neill approached.
    “Them?”
    “The woman and the child.”
    O’Neill closed his eyes for second. “God,” he breathed, in spite of himself.
    He felt Teal’c move past him. “There are no gods here.”
    Not yet
, O’Neill thought.
    He followed Teal’c into the temple. As he went in he could see that the outer walls of the place were massively thick, which would have given him some hope if he’d thought for a second that death gliders were the only things on their way. The staff cannons carried by the Goa’uld fighters would be hard pressed to penetrate that weight of solid stone, it was true, but one good run by an Al’kesh bomber and the temple would simply fly to dust, along with all who sheltered there.
    Which, judging by the number of people crowding within, must have been almost everyone on Sar’tua.
    The interior of the temple was dark, the shadows broken only by a few flickering lanterns. O’Neill glanced quickly about as he walked inside, trying to gauge his surroundings, but most of the space was lost to him. There were a lot of pillars, he could see that, and a circular dais at the centre, but most of what he saw were people; ragged, nervous Jaffa warriors, a few women, some stoic, hard-eyed kids. Many of them carried pathetic bundles of possessions, wrapped and bound remnants of whatever lives they had left behind on Chulak.
    O’Neill wondered how long he’d last in this unforgiving place, with just a ragged cloak to keep out the cold and whatever he might have grabbed while fleeing a burning city. Not long, he decided. In fact, what were these people eating? He’d not seen a scrap of plant or animal life since he’d got here.
    The burned Jaffa had been set down on a rough table. Bra’tac had taken up position at one end of it, and had the man’s scorched head in his hands. If the feeling of carbonized tissue and bone under his fingertips caused him any distress he didn’t show it. Instead he was soothing the stricken Jaffa with soft words and reassuring, if upside-down, smiles.
    It looked like it was working, although O’Neill had an ugly feeling that the injured