Malalo

(Down)

"How long has it been?"

Sam took a careful step over a half-buried rock, bracing herself on a patch of waxy undergrowth before reaching out a helping hand. They'd developed a system for navigating the sodden undergrowth and unstable terrain. Run-off from the day's on-again, off-again showers had wreaked havoc on the trail, and the leaden tromping of the Jaffa's boots on the path hadn't done it any more favors. Sam had opted for making their way alongside the established path, instead. The plants and grasses offered greater stability than the slick mud of the trail, and in the extremely unlikely chance that they were being followed, their footsteps would be less visible.

And so, they'd gone as quickly as possible alongside the path. Sam would step first, finding sure footing amid the still-soggy grasses and low bushes, and then the Colonel would follow. He was growing steadier, stronger - more sure of his balance. Sometimes he still needed to reach out and grab a trunk or steady himself before taking a larger step, but those moments were becoming less frequent.

It was getting dark, but the clouds had blown up and over the mountains at the center of the island. Two of the planet's moons were visible already, along with myriad stars. There was something to be said for the lack of streetlights or other artificial sources of illumination. The slide into night had been a gentle, gradual thing, and both Sam's and the Colonel's eyes had adjusted easily. Small favors.

"Carter?"

Dragging herself back, she glanced at the Colonel, who was approaching a fallen sapling. "Yes, Sir?"

"Time."

"Around ten minutes since the last time you asked." It was a guess. She pushed the branches of a bush aside using the machete's knife edge. Bracing herself, she then reached out and offered a hand to the Colonel, but he grasped the tree on the other side instead and moved ahead. He'd been doing that more and more - gaining strength. This was the first time he'd positioned himself ahead of her since his collapse, a fact Sam noted with some satisfaction. He was progressing further and further away from surrendering to the pain. And when he'd pushed past her just now, she'd noticed that another light on the bomb strapped to his chest had blinked back to green.

It was the little things. Wasn't that the cliche?

But still. Worry roiled around in Sam's head like crabs tumbling in the surf. Daniel. Teal'c. Aki and his kane. The infant still in the possession of Nirrti. That damned bomb still digging its probes into the Colonel's chest.

And then there was the kiss. Her confession. The moment they'd shared. During their subsequent steady hurtle down the mountain, nothing else had been said about it. Typical of their relationship - status quo being what it was - they'd both retreated back into the relationship netherworld they seemed to relish. Sam supposed that she could pass it off later as a heat-of-the-moment thing - something that she had needed to use in order to shock the man back into the land of the living.

Sort of an emotional form of defibrillation.

But she'd be lying. And he'd know it, but he'd play along, because that was what they did.

"C'mon, Carter." O'Neill's longer stride had carried him a few yards away from her, and Sam shook herself out of her thoughts, hiking faster to catch up.

"Sorry, Sir."

"You okay?"

"Yeah." She looked at him, catching him at exactly the same moment that a random gust of wind blew the flaps of his jacket wide. For a scarce breath, she was struck at the odd way the lights on Nirrti's device illuminated his face. Green light cast an ill-looking glow across the majority of his face, while orange tinged the rest. "I'm fine."

The path curved southward, down towards the village and ocean. Here in the lower parts of the mountains, the vegetation wasn't as lush or thick - transitioning from dense trees and shrubs to more scraggly bushes, waxy grasses, and palms. The forest here was quieter, too, allowing the distant sound of the ocean to waft upwards.

Sam followed as the Colonel made his way along the edge while staying in the forested area. The mud had swallowed the Jaffa's footsteps, but there were still signs they'd passed. Even through the dimness of the night, they could see broken twigs on trees and shrubs, leaves trodden into the mud, and the odd obvious disturbances left behind by careless passers-by. They'd been moving fast.

Down. The terrain took a nosedive into a ravine of sorts, and Sam angled her feet sideways to gain more purchase on the soggy, steep slope. A quick glance at the Colonel told her O'Neill had done the same. He'd also grown confident enough to navigate the descent without moving from tree to tree to use as anchors, maneuvering downward fully on his own power. Again - the little things.

The ravine bottomed out in a sharp 'V', and then jolted upwards towards a crest. The rise wasn't terribly steep, but Sam still lengthened her stride until she'd fallen into step beside O'Neill. She tightened her grip on the machete, angling the lethal side outward and away from her CO. Due to the darkness - or perhaps because of her exhaustion - she'd miscalculated the rise and found herself sliding quickly backwards in the wet, loose soil.

"Keep up Carter."

"I'm trying, Sir."

"Try harder."

He'd gotten several strides ahead of her, nearly to the top of the ravine. Sam adjusted her weapon again, reaching out with her free hand to grasp an exposed tree root for leverage. Straining, she fit the edge of her boot against a rock and tested it for give before using the rock to steady her climb towards a half-sunk log. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Colonel muscling his way towards the summit in much the same way - rocks and tree trunks providing stability on the wet mountainside. He was making good time - better than she was. Grimacing, she shoved her way past another tree and wedged her feet against a stump to gain some more traction, glancing up again to check on the Colonel.

He was gone.

"Colonel?" Sam climbed quickly - recklessly - ignoring the pain raging in her thighs and calves as she reached the summit. Blackness greeted her on the other side, blackness and the sickening sound of something heavy falling against and through foliage. Even with the brightness of the planet's moons, she could see nothing more than what seemed to be a sea of treetops before the leafy mass gave way far, far below to the silvery undulation of the ocean. "Sir?"

Silence. Tentatively, she stepped across the precipice, seeking a foothold. Her heart pounded in her ears, her breath heavy in the night air. She could see trees - or the tops of them. But the ground just seemed to give way to nothing but space. Squinting, she peered through the ink. "Sir!"

She could hear him - little more than a groan in the blackness and distance. Muttering a curse, Sam lowered herself to a seated position, scooching over the edge on her rear-end as she probed the ground around her with the machete and heels. Loose sandy soil - volcanic. Much blacker than that farther up the mountain, which explained why she couldn't make out much below the thick canopy of trees. She should take the time to find a safer way down - but the Colonel's situation made that luxury impossible.

Cursing her own impatience, she scooted downward, attempting a controlled skid down what appeared to be a cliff side by grabbing onto nearby trunks and branches. The soil was incredibly loose, like heavy, wet sand, and no matter how she tried to steer herself, she started to move faster. Curling herself into a ball, she protected her head with one hand while holding tightly to the knife with the other as her descent quickly flew out of control - rapidly devolving from a gentle slide to a flailing tumble.

It hurt - she hit what felt like three rocks in succession, and then rolled right through a stand of thin, flowering vines. Thick leaves slapped her face and hands, and she was hit two - three more times by roots and logs. Immature trunks whizzed past, growing upward at a seemingly impossibly angle based on her downward trajectory. Sam grasped wildly with her free hand for something - anything that could stop her, but the branches whipped through her grasp, wrenching her fingers and cutting her palm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a large palm looming ahead, and she gritted her teeth, flattening herself out and hooking an arm around the trunk.

Pain - the impact knocked the wind out of her - her shoulder immediately blossomed into an exquisite kind of agony that sent her careening towards a different kind of blackness. Frantically, she fought for control, taking a quick inventory as a way to maintain consciousness. It felt as if the joint had been ripped out the socket, but since she'd stopped moving, Sam figured that couldn't be the case. If she'd dislocated it, she couldn't have held on, right? Or so she hoped. She took a long moment to breathe, working her way past the shock and into enough lucidity to tenderly move her fingers, her wrist, her elbow. The pain was blinding, but she had full range of motion. Just wrenched, then. Not dislocated or broken.

"Carter?" Faint, but sure, the Colonel's voice made its way through the darkness.

"I'm here, Sir."

"Where?"

"I got caught on a tree." Steeling herself, her jaw tight, she kicked out with a foot and drew herself upright using her abs and back. It wasn't until she was sitting that he realized that she'd lost her machete. Damn. Squinting into the blackness, she searched for the Colonel. She'd been able to hear him clearly, so couldn't be far. "Where are you?"

"I'm on the ground, Carter."

"Are you on your back?"

"What the hell matter does that make?"

If he were that ornery, he couldn't possibly be dying, right? Sam grimaced, tenderly moving her right arm even as she squinted into the dark, scanning the forest floor in search of her lost weapon. No dice. She couldn't see much of anything. Reaching up with her non-aching arm, she tousled her hair, dislodging leaves and soil that she'd collected on her way down the mountainside. "If you're on your back, I could see the lights on your chest."

"Ah." There was a scuffling noise, and then he spoke again. "Better now?"

And there he was. To her left, around twenty feet away, a dim orange/green glow. As an added bonus, in the ambient light of the bomb, she could see her weapon lying in the roughage between them, the broken bits of shells and bones gleaming in the moons' light.

"Hold on, Sir." Sam braced herself, then rolled her right shoulder. Painful, but not as bad, now. She could move it however she'd need to, but it was going to hurt. Janet would call her "ambulatory". Her father would have told her to "suck it up and walk it off". Breathing deeply, she reached out with both arms and grabbed vegetation, using it to pull herself upright. "I'm coming."

The canopy obscured most of the moonlight, now, and even those twenty feet seemed to take forever to traverse. Bending to retrieve the knife took but a moment of time, but righting herself made things go woozy and black again. Pausing, she leaned against a tree until the nausea passed and she could move again. The undergrowth was so thick that it felt as if she were wading in it rather than walking. Even using the blade in her hand to ferret out obstacles, she still tripped on a large boulder half-buried in the soil, only regaining her balance in the moment before she fell. The terrain here was rugged, nearly impassable, and crowded with dense brush, although blessedly not as steep as the mountainside down which they'd fallen.

The Colonel had skidded to a stop near the base of another rise, his leg wedged between two small palm trees. While his position wasn't necessarily painful, the angle at which he'd landed didn't allow him enough leverage to rise on his own. Incongruously, he lay staring up at her, seemingly leisurely, his head cradled on his folded hands, the bomb glowing dully in the night. He face was filthy from the fall, but he still managed to crack a wry smile. "I just need a hand with the leg."

Sam sighed. Moving around behind the palms, she gripped his boot, slowly shoving it upwards and then threading it through the V between the trees. Once he'd been unstuck, O'Neill rolled over and gathered himself to stand.

Shifting her weapon to her sore arm, she extended the other to him. "I don't have a clue where we are, Sir."

"Well, I smell ocean."

"Me too. But it's a full day's hike from the palace back down to the village, so how did we get so close to the beach just from falling down a mountain?"

"Maybe there's a bay on the other side of the village. We've never explored that far past it."

"True." Sam considered. Making another quick scan of their surroundings, she caught a glimpse of a strange shape in the darkness to their left. Taking a few steps towards it, she raised a palm to her CO. "Just a minute, Sir. Stay there."

"Fat chance, Carter. What do you see?" Naturally, he followed her.

Square shapes - too perfect to be anything but man made. Gently, she probed at the mountainside with her boot, then Sam bent down and reached out to run her hands along the edge of what felt like - "Stairs."

"What?"

"These are stairs, Sir. Carved into the volcanic rock in the mountain. Remember? There are similar ones on the other side of the wash-out areas where we - " She still couldn't speak casually about their first experience on the planet. Every time she thought about it, she remembered his face as she clung to his wrist, hanging over the rushing water in the middle of a flash flood. She'd never forget his voice screaming as she'd let go. She swallowed against the fear that still rose in her gut. "Where I got lost that time."

"I remember." His face was thoughtful in the glow of the lights on his chest. "But why would there be steps here? There's nothing on this side of the island."

"That we know of."

"Wouldn't Aki or Kawehi have told us?"

"I'm not sure we ever asked, Sir."

"True." Sighing, he turned his attention to the ground beneath them, reaching out to hold onto a low-flung flowering tree for balance as he bent towards the ground. "Captain."

"Yes, Sir?"

"Look."

Footprints. Bootprints, actually, visible in the low, sick lights of the bomb. She could see both Jaffa footwear and the unmistakeable, achingly familiar marks that told her that Daniel had made his way down this staircase, as well. She hadn't even thought to try to glean clues from the soil, and yet, there they were. Turning, she was able to make out a beaten trail heading further down towards the ocean. "They're still heading towards the village, it looks like."

O'Neill's voice was soft, but determined. "Then let's go."

Down again. The terrain still veered ocean-ward. Both the Colonel and Sam walked quickly, less carefully than before, their feet sliding on the rain-slicked ground. A path had been worn into the ground from the base of the steps into the forest, and they followed it as it descended through the vegetation. It was easier here - without the constant worry of tripping over roots and rocks. The moonlight created an eerie glow as it filtered through the leaves and branches above them.

A quick glance at the Colonel assured Sam that he truly hadn't been harmed by the fall.

He rolled his eyes, aware of her scrutiny. "I'm doing okay Carter."

Caught, Carter smiled into the darkened trail before them. "Sorry, Sir. I was just worried about you."

The Colonel scowled at her. "About me or about the bomb?"

"Both." Sam admitted it both to herself and to him. "It's been a little dicey navigating all of this with you rigged up like you are."

"We'll figure it out. As soon as we've found Niirti and stopped her from taking that baby, you'll do your thing and we'll all go home."

"I hope so, Sir."

"Come on, now Carter." He looked at her again, with an odd, appraising sort of expression. "Where's freaking Pollyanna when I need her?"

"Pollyanna never had to diffuse her boss, did she?"

"Funny."

"Just thinking realistically."

But he wasn't listening. Stopping suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her arm, then redirected her attention from the path before them to a wide patch of silver-green grass. "Do you see that?"

Peering intently through the darkness, she could make out shadows on the meadow beyond-shapes that didn't resemble the vegetation in the area.

"Dead pigs." The Colonel pointed at three or four smaller shapes before angling a gesture at larger, darker ones further on. "And those two way over there have got to be Jaffa."

"So, obviously, something happened here."

Unbelievably, O'Neill sounded amused. "Looks like."

"Hold on, Sir. I'm going to go check things out." Sam bent low, creeping stealthily around the far side of the bush until she'd found another bit of cover a few yards further on. Crouching low, she jogged along a line of young trees mixed with a few scattered stands of bamboo until she could get a clear look at the area. There were four dead pigs - their bodies scorched by staff blasts. The Colonel was right about the Jaffa, too, except that there were three. Two of them bore the evidence of what had probably been Teal'c's staff weapon, while the third seemed to have bled out from a gaping wound just above his cowl. His throat had been slashed.

Turning, she was heading back towards the ravine when she noticed the Colonel making his way towards her. He was flushed, but moving steadily, the eerie glow on his chest still mostly green. Stopping a few feet away from her, he lifted his brows in question.

Sam exhaled. "So, three Jaffa down that I can see."

"There's another one over there." He gestured to the place where the trail re-entered the forest. "It's too big and bulky to be a local."

"So, four Jaffa dead."

The Colonel sighed, and pointed to where two of the pigs lay heaped together, another, smaller form on the ground next to them. "There's another casualty over there. Looks like one of Aki's men."

"Dead?"

"Probably."

"Damn."

"Anything we can scavenge?"

Sam shook her head, sighing. "They've been picked clean. No weapons, no supplies."

"Any sign of Daniel and Teal'c?"

"Footprints. A chaotic mess of footprints." She glanced back over to the field, shrugging dismissively. "That's about all I can make out. I've never been as good at reading sign as Teal'c or Daniel."

"Well, there's one thing in our favor, then."

Carter couldn't help the incredulity that oozed into her tone. "In our favor? What could possibly be in our favor?"

"They're down four Jaffa, but they haven't ditched any of their equipment. That means that they're each hauling more crap."

A tiny smile dented the corner of Sam's lip. "That means they'll be slower."

In the darkness, the Colonel's grin caught at the moonlight, creating an odd flash of white. "Let's go catch up."

They started moving again, skirting the carnage while keeping close to cover. Sam took point, with the Colonel close behind. The landscape had flattened out here, with lower, scraggly trees interspersed with waist-high bushes and young palms. The smell of the ocean was stronger here, too, the wind a leisurely breeze rather than the stronger force it was up on the mountain. They hotfooted through the brush, passing two more dead pigs and another Jaffa whose body had landed draped grotesquely across a rock, blood glistening in a pool on the grasses below him. He hadn't been dead long.

Saving their energy for the descent, neither spoke, moving with the unconscious rhythm that they'd developed over the years. Faster now, not bothering to disguise their trail, they moved towards an odd volcanic cliff wall that rose sharply out of the lowlands. Just to the south of the cliff, a long line of palms marched in a row across the visible horizon. Sam glanced at her watch - it'd been around fifteen minutes since they'd come across the bodies in the meadow. She peered intently into the darkness before them, wary of the area around the cliff, but more leery of the palms and the unknown beyond. The hair on the back of her neck lifted - and it had nothing to do with the breeze. Beside her, the Colonel seemed to slow a bit. After a few more steps, he reached out grabbed her hand.

"You smell ambush?"

Sam looked over at him, studying his darkened expression. "It just feels wrong."

"Yeah." O'Neill squeezed her fingers gently before letting go. "Come on."

Turning sharply, he aimed towards the ridge, ducking behind foliage until they came up against the cliff wall. Hugging it, they edged along the rough rock until they reached the point where the ridge abruptly ended. Sam was in front, her weapon held ready as she paused at the cliff's end. The moonlight was filtering around the trees and brush - not offering much by way of real light. Taking a quick glance around the end of the cliff, Sam paused, closing her eyes for a moment as she listened.

Wind. Leaves rustling. Further off, she could hear the even, steady roll of the ocean waves hitting the beach. Shifting her focus, she listened off to her left, poking her head around the rock face again and back towards what she presumed to be the direction of the village.

More leaves. The quiet hush of night - and then - a step? A shushing of leather against the wet soil and ground cover. And then louder - unmistakable - another step. Crouching down, she gestured for the Colonel to hunker back into the rock before edging out again. She tested the weapon in her hand, waiting, counting the beats as they neared.

The sounds were quiet - too quiet to be a run-of-the-mill Jaffa. One of Nirrti's special guard, then? Sam held her breath as the steps grew stronger, as more sounds eked their way through the darkness. Leaves scraping against fabric, twigs crackling and snapping. A hushed whisper. The smooth 'fwhip' of metal against leather.

Willing herself to relax, Carter chanced another furtive look around the edge of the cliff. Shadows moved just beyond - one mountainous, and the other slighter, thought still tall and athletic. The larger man carried a staff weapon, while the other one wore -

Groaning, Sam straightened, her voice a harsh whisper into the night. "Daniel? Teal'c?"

The sounds suddenly stopped before a lone voice made its way through the darkness. "Sam?"

Picking her way around the corner, Sam lowered the machete to her side as her friends appeared out of the darkness. "Where have you two been?"

"It is good to see you, Major Carter." Teal'c inclined his head in greeting, his smile broader - more relieved - than usual.

"Yeah. Good." Daniel stepped closer. "Did you find Jack?"

"I'm here, Daniel." His voice emerged from the brush at the base of the rock formation.

"Are you okay?" Daniel moved around Sam to reach towards his friend. "They took you away and then it seemed like everything happened so fast."

"I'm fine."

Sam turned to look at her CO, her gaze flickering down towards his chest. He'd zipped up his jacket again, effectively hiding the device.

"Because one of the guards said something about - "

"I'm fine." He'd used his 'Colonel' voice.

One glance at Daniel, however, told Sam that the younger man wasn't convinced. His eyes lifted to Sam's, appraising her expression and demeanor. "How about you, Sam?"

"I'm just glad that we've found you two."

"Because you look worried."

"I am worried, Daniel. We're in a world of hurt at the moment."

"Daniel. Our focus is on the kid." O'Neill braced his fingertips on his hips, his pose one of seeming normalcy. "Let's keep that in mind."

"Okay then." Daniel reached into his jacket, withdrawing a familiar, heavy object from an inside pocket. "I brought you a present, Jack."

The Colonel's lips curved into a real smile as his fingers curved around the grip of his Walther. "Hot damn, Daniel. Where the hell did you come up with this?"

"Well, there was this herd of pigs."

"Right." Sam nodded. "Teal'c and I saw Aki and his men drive a huge pack of them down the mountain after Nirrti's guards."

"We heard them coming down the mountain, but we were on the staircase, and the pigs went careening over the edge of a ridge instead. They caught back up to us in the meadow."

"We saw that." O'Neill had busied himself with checking the load in his weapon. Apparently satisfied, he reseated the magazine with a satisfying 'snick'. "Dead pigs. Dead Jaffa."

"I think that Nirrti's guard was able to kill a few of the village men."

"We only saw one dead." Sam frowned. "I'm hoping that was it."

"To be honest, I'm not sure. Once I realized what was happening, I ran towards the forest, and one of the locals - I think his name was Kaleo - cut me free and handed me a knife. Everyone was fighting, people and pigs were everywhere. I found the trunk that had our gear in it and cracked it open with the knife and grabbed whatever I could. Sorry, Sam all I was able to grab was Jacks gun and my Zat.

Sams shrug seemed to suffice as absolution, because Daniel continued. Nirrti noticed and sent a few of her minions my way, and so I took off back towards the forest where I fortuitously ran into Teal'c. By that time, the majority of the fighting was over, though. The Jaffa were totally freaked out by the pigs, and Nirrti made it clear that they needed to head back towards the 'Gate."

Sam absorbed that. "But how are they going to get back to it? Isn't the area still flooded out?"

"That's the weird thing, Sam." Daniel shook his head, his brow furrowed. "During the melee, she grabbed the baby from the guard carrying her and took off towards the woods. A few of her Jaffa followed her, but she ordered the rest to return back towards the village. In the opposite direction from where she was going."

O'Neills mouth gaped open for a beat or two as he thought about that. "Why?"

"Who knows?"

"Maybe she wants them to take more babies." Sam pressed her palm to her forehead. Damn, but she was tired. "Maybe she's still not certain that she's got the right one."

"It is most likely that she had ordered the Jaffa to destroy the people of the village." Teal'c's tone had turned bitter. Nirrti cares little for humans other than as subjects of her experiments.

True. Daniel exhaled sharply. And sick.

"Well, obviously, we can't let that happen." O'Neill took a few steps down towards the line of palm trees. With his unladen hand, he pointed towards the north, past the odd volcanic ridge they'd been hugging. "So, the village is that way."

Daniel nodded in the opposite direction. "Right. And Nirrti took off towards those palms."

Jack scowled. "Why didn't you follow her?"

"Teal'c and I both figured that she'd round the outer edge of the clearing and make her way back towards the village. It's really not far from here. The staircase in the mountain back there skirts a ton of the hike that we had to make to get up to the palace in the first place. It's like the most amazing short-cut ever. I'm sure that you couldn't see it, but part of it goes through the mountain in a volcanic tube of some sort.

Weve experienced the tubes. The words eked out before Sam could stop them. A withering look from the Colonel had her biting back any more explanations.

Daniel noticed, but chose to move on. Anyhow, we followed Aki's men as far as the outer edge of the village. Only a few Jaffa made it that far, and there was no sign of Nirrti at all. She must have gone the other way."

"And the Jaffa in the village?"

"They have been subdued." This from Teal'c.

"Which means - "

"They're dead. At least a bunch of them are. They were still fighting when Tealc, Aki, and I found each other and had a little con-fab." Daniel's eyes flared behind the lenses of his glasses. "Regardless, Nirrti still has at least four guards with her, and we don't have a clue where she's going."

"That is not entirely accurate, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c used his staff weapon to point southward, in the likely direction that the Goa'uld had taken. "Nirrti called to one of her Jaffa that he should prepare the 'kesh kal mah' for transport.

"And what is that, Teal'c?" Sam felt a thread of trepidation creep up her spine.

"Literally translated, it would mean 'sanctuary ship'."

"We've decided that it must be a boat of some sort that Nirrti has prepared in order to transport the babies. Like some kind of floating nursery." Daniel glanced at Teal'c. "At least, that's our best guess. That's why we came back this way. Most of the village's men were embroiled with making sure that all of the Jaffa were captured or killed. Aki took two of his guys around towards the beach, but it's all rocks and tidal pools that way. They're going to have to hike around a pretty steep cliff to make it back up to where Nirrti was headed."

Jack mulled over the information. "So - they can take the baby to the 'Gate using a boat of some sort. They don't need to wait for the flooding to subside." The Colonel glared into the distance, where the ocean could barely be seen between the waving limbs and leaves of the trees.

"That's why we were heading this way." Daniel reached up and adjusted the bandana around his head. "We were hoping to be able to find them before they could set sail."

The Colonel swore softly, then angled himself towards the palm trees southward. "Come on, then, people. Get a move on."