Sabine C. Bauer - Stargate SG-1 #1: Trial by Fire

An ear-splitting crack and dust and morsels of shattered stone rained down from the lintel above her head.

"Bloody Nora!" Siobhan Kelly jerked around.

"Do I have your attention now?" That nasty black box of a gun draped across his midriff, he came swaggering towards her like something out of those Rambo films and had the nerve to grin.

"You shot at me!"

"I didn't shoot at you. If I'd shot at you, you wouldn't be complaining."

This wasn't funny. "Of all the

"Ah!" A surprisingly elegant hand flew up and he took off his sunglasses, hard and angry eyes belying the grin. "In case you hadn't noticed, Professor, we're not in Kansas anymore. Carter here explained a few facts to you just now, but maybe you didn't get the message. So -"

"Oh please! I've been conducting excavations since before you were an itch in your daddy's trousers. Do you have any idea of who I am?"

"One huge honkin' pain in the mikta. I, on the other hand, am the guy who's under orders to bring you back in one piece, and if you interrupt me again I'll gag you. We didn't get a chance to introduce ourselves, so, for the record, I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill. Colonel means you'll do exactly as I tell you when I tell you, and if I'm not around, you'll listen to Major Carter. Are we clear on this?"

SABINE C. BAUER

To Sally and Tom -you know why!

he rangers' jeep finally accelerated and sped off along a barely visible track. It chased up a cloud of powdery dirt and exhaust fumes, and once that had settled at last a dust-covered figure crept from a hollow beneath the pueblo's northern wall.

"About time," the figure muttered and sneezed.

Ten years or so ago he'd have turned up his nose at the Indiana Jones antics. Ten years or so ago he'd been an assistant professor (tenure track) and would have had no problem getting a digging permit. Those could be surprisingly hard to come by if you weren't affiliated to some accredited research institution. On the other hand, how many assistant professors (tenure track or no) got to go zipping across the galaxy for a living? There was something to be said for lousy hours and constant peril.

Okay, so the Air Force probably could have sorted out a digging permit. But that would have meant queries and paperwork, followed by red tape and questions, followed by inquiries and procedure. Besides, this wasn't anything to do with the Air Force. This was to do with his being inquisitive. Not to mention that playing hide-andseek with the National Park rangers actually was fun.

Dr. Daniel Jackson grinned and tried to fluff the dust from his hair. Pointless, really. Chaco Canyon was the place where dust had been invented, together with multi-story masonry and rulerstraight highways. The latter being weird, because the Anasazi hadn't been familiar with the concept of wheels. This and other inconsistencies had piqued his curiosity, which partly explained why he was skulking around here. Lousy hours and constant peril notwithstanding, he still was an archaeologist. He remembered that well enough.

With the jeep gone, the canyon fell quiet again. The jackdaws returned, wheeling above parched clay ruins and cawing their annoyance at having been disturbed. Daniel sympathized. The rangers' patrol visit had cost him half an hour.

"So what?"

This wasn't a mission. This was Thanksgiving weekend, and he only had himself to worry about. Jack had gone fishing; Teal'c had barricaded himself in his quarters as soon as he'd heard that Jack was going fishing; and Sam was tinkering with something or other in her lab, which meant that, unless Earth came under attack from the Goa'uld, she wouldn't resurface anytime soon. Nobody had suggested communal turkey carving, and in a way Daniel was grateful.

Truth was, it still felt odd being back in a... corporeal way. It felt even odder among other people. Partly because other people, from natural nosiness and sometimes genuine concern, tended to ask where he'd been for fifteen months. Even if Daniel could have resolved that question to his own or anybody else's satisfaction, he wouldn't have been allowed to divulge the answer. And the reasonably vague but truthful I ascended to a higher plane of existence generally proved a mood killer, except among Buddhist monks. In short, smalltalk got a bit awkward these days.

A breeze sprang up and chased a couple of dust devils across the plateau, swirling pink and orange in the low sun. Time to do some shoveling. Daniel hopped back into the kiva - a vault where religious ceremonies had been held. A shaft of muted daylight dropped through the ceiling after him, picking out a sleeping bag, a backpack, some cooking gear, and a laptop huddling in a comer.

Yesterday he'd discovered a corridor down here, buried under rubble and undisturbed. If anything lay beneath, he'd see it within the next couple of hours, thanks to somewhat abbreviated excavation methods his former instructors wouldn't have approved of. But the proper shoring up of tunnels and scrupulous sifting of dirt for bone fragments and shards of pottery fell by the wayside if you didn't have a digging permit and hordes of eager student helpers.

In the back wall yawned the hole he'd dug so far. It stretched downwards through hopefully solid debris. If it wasn't solid, he'd find out soon enough. Daniel grabbed a trowel, eased himself in, and cautiously began to crawl. The air smelled of mould and that indefinable dry and heavy something he recalled from digs in Egypt. Age or death, either one would do. Strictly speaking, there wasn't much difference between this and browsing through a subterranean library at the point of imminent collapse. Alright, so there was a difference. The fate of mankind didn't hinge on this. As far as he knew...