Chapter Text
“What happened here?”
Nobody answered. Frankly, the scene almost spoke for itself.
There were at least half a dozen Jaffa corpses scattered around the village gates, their armour scorched and cratered with staff blasts, their helmets reduced to scrap metal death masks. In the streets beyond, dozens more were strewn from one end of the town to the next, slumped against walls, collapsed over tables, tumbled down staircases, lying in the doorways of houses that they’d tried to use as cover, half-buried under piles of still-smouldering rubble, or simply heaped in hillocks from the last desperate melees between combatants.
Worst of all were the civilians, for most of them were simply lying face-down in the middle of the street with gaping wounds torn in their backs, all of them clearly shot while trying to retreat. The few who weren’t had clearly been used as human shields by the Jaffa, not that it had done them much good.
The village itself was in ruins. Barely a quarter of the rough stone houses were still standing, and most of them were scarred and pockmarked by staff blasts; the rest had been bombarded into featureless rubble by what looked to be an aerial assault by death gliders. In the background, flames hungrily gnawed at market stalls, carts, baskets of produce, and any other kindling ignited in the crossfire.
SG-1 reviewed the scene as they crept through the ruined streets, anxiously checking every remaining and around every corner for any sign of life, without success. This settlement was already dead; it was only a matter of time before the fire or Jaffa reinforcements swept the whole thing off the map.
O’Neill eyed one of the civilian corpses sprawled across the paving stones nearby. As far as he could remember, he’d been one of the village elders who’d welcomed them to the town when they’d arrived, less than five hours ago; now he was dead along with the rest of his people, all of them massacred while SG-1 had been wasting time investigate some ruin a few miles away when they could have been helping.
About the only consolation was that it looked like the Jaffa who’d slaughtered them hadn’t fared much better.
“What the hell happened here?” O’Neill demanded.
Teal’c eyed the Jaffa corpses. “These are not all Serpent Guards, O’Neill,” he observed. “These bodies here are Horus Guards. These are the Bast Guards. And these over here are the Royal Guards of Lord Yu. All Jaffa belonging to different System Lords.”
“And from the looks of things, they all killed each other. You think this is the start of some of Goa’uld civil war?”
“Believe me, we’re not that lucky,” sighed Daniel.
Was it O’Neill’s imagination, or was he more downbeat than usual?
“Sad but true, sir,” said Carter. “If there really was a full-scale war between the Goa’uld, then it wouldn’t be limited to one-off battles in isolated settlements like this. There’d be space battles, full-scale planetary bombardments, crashed ships… We’d be seeing the results all over Goa’uld territory-”
“And hearing of it from Master Bra’tac,” added Teal’c. “I agree. These troops would have no reason to use this village as a battleground.”
“So why are they all here, killing each other?”
“The usual reason, I’d bet,” said Daniel. “Look at these ones over here: they’re carrying recording equipment, crates. Same with those ones over here. They were after something in this village.”
“And they weren’t interested in sharing with rival Jaffa,” concluded O’Neill. “Fair enough. Question is, if this thing they were after was valuable enough to kill each other over, where’s the reinforcements?”
There was a nerve-wracking silence, broken only by the muffled crunch of their footsteps as they continued through the streets.
“Maybe it’s best if we don’t stick around here too long.”
“Agreed.”
“Likewise.”
“Indeed.”
Ahead lay the village hall, a squat one-story building where SG-1 had briefly met with the elders scant hours ago to discuss a visit to the ruins. Of all the buildings in town, it was one of the few that hadn’t been damaged at all, not even in the bombardment, and as they crept closer, O’Neill realized why: several Jaffa had been making their way towards the hall before they’d been killed, and all of them were carrying recording equipment.
A Serpent Guard lay dead in the doorway, a massive hole punched through his armour and into his belly.
Teal’c eyed the body strangely. “His symbiote is missing,” he murmured.
“What, you think it escaped?”
“No. Judging by the blood around his pouch, it was removed from this Jaffa by force, likely fatally.”
Carter reached out to move the Serpent Guard’s body closer so she could get a better look at the wound… and as the corpse shifted, something slid from the corpse’s right arm and clunked to the ground.
It was a large stone tablet, carved with unfamiliar symbols and soaked in the Jaffa’s blood.
O’Neill had seen this thing before: it had been sitting on the altar behind the elders during their first visit to the town hall, but all three of the old fogies had said it was just a relic of their ancestors held in respect of their sacrifices. “Nothing dangerous,” they’d assured them. “Just a harmless block of stone from the ruins. You’ll find more interesting things out there.”
And yet, judging by the corpses leading to the hall and all the bloody bootprints making their way across the square towards the tablet, there were an awful lot of Jaffa who were very interested in this harmless block of stone.
“Is this what they were after?” he asked.
Carter checked her various instruments. “Not picking up anything that’d justify all this, so it’s this tablet or nothing, sir.”
She reached down and gently prised the dead Jaffa’s hands away from the tablet, then went about mopping up some of the larger bloodstains, enough to reveal the tablet’s contents. Carved into its rough-cut grey surface was a long string of arcane-looking words, followed by a series of familiar-looking symbols.
“Is that a Gate address?”
Carter, who was already hastily jotting down the symbols in her notepad, nodded. “I’d say yes. If it’s this part of the tablet these Jaffa were after, I’m guessing this address has to be somewhere critically valuable to the System Lords, maybe a resource-rich world or a source of salvageable technology.”
O’Neill grimaced. “What are the chances that one of these Jaffa managed to send the address back to their commanders?”
Now it was Carter’s turn to grimace. “Very high, sir. All it’d take would be one transmission, or maybe just one Jaffa getting out of here alive… and we don’t know how many of them survived the battle.”
“Told you we weren’t that lucky.”
“Lighten up, Daniel. Now, other than this Gate address, is there anything worthwhile on this damn thing?”
Daniel adjusted his glasses, allowing O’Neill a closer look at the dark rings around his eyes, and peered down at the tablet. “To those who stand against Ra, hide these words from the light of the sun and use them only if you have no other choice,” he translated. “For this is the way to Pharos, the lost beacon to the future.”
Teal’c, who’d been keeping a close watch for any returning Jaffa up until then, snapped to attention.
“Pharos?” he echoed, his face suddenly dismayed.
“You’ve heard of it?”
“As have many First Primes over the years. Does the inscription say anything else?”
“Uh… just below the gate address, it says, ‘The secret of the Augur’s Foresight lies within the three-tined black mountain of the waves, at…’ and the rest is just gibberish. Either whoever was carving this into the stone didn’t have time to finish, or they had a change of heart and decided to destroy the exact whereabouts of whatever this ‘Augur’s Foresight’ is.”
Teal’c looked even grimmer than usual at this. “There was a time when Apophis was obsessed with learning the location of Pharos and the fortress he believed was hidden there. He devoted hundreds of his loyal servants including myself to the search for any mention of it, but he always searched in vain. Now it seems that the System Lords have finally found it… and if they were willing to fight so openly over the Gate address, Pharos itself may be enough to provoke all-out war.”
“But why?” asked Carter. “What’s so important about Pharos and why couldn’t anyone find it up until now?”
Teal’c was opening his mouth to reply, but then the sound of an explosion split the air, followed by the distant sounds of angry shouts and heavy footsteps making their way through the streets towards them.
“Guess we don’t need to wonder about anyone sending reinforcements anymore,” said Daniel.
“And that’s our cue to leave!” said O’Neill briskly. “We can talk about this later; let’s get back to the Gate! You got the address, Carter?”
“Down to the last symbol, sir.”
“Good. Now, let’s get moving…”