SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne by Steven Savile

needed to punch in the final co-ordinate and open the Stargate. The growls in Teal’c’s ears were equal parts agony, desperation and determination. O’Neill wasn’t about to fail them, even if it cost him his own life.
    Teal’c roared.
    Fifty feet from the gate the blue water of the event horizon ripped out of the aperture. The way home was open. O’Neill had done it. Teal’c saw the colonel go down again. The sucking silence that followed was hideous. Then both Carter and Daniel Jackson were yelling — this time the sound was primal and filled with fear for the fallen O’Neill.
    Teal’c ducked beneath a wild burst of fire from a Jaffa weapon, and ran, hard, fast, keeping low, his arms and legs pumping. A burning man staggered across his path. The flames consumed him, turning his flesh to blistered sores. Teal’c fired once, putting the Jaffa out of his misery, and was past him. He ran to O’Neill’s side and gathered him into his arms. The colonel shuddered once, violently, and opened his eyes. “Go!” he rasped.
    “Indeed,” Teal’c said, rising. He watched Daniel Jackson’s back disappear through the gate and followed him. “We do not leave men behind, O’Neill. That is the law.”
    But O’Neill had lapsed into unconsciousness.
    Teal’c gathered him into his arms.
    The Mujina stood on the first of four steps leading up to the Stargate.
    “Deliver him to your people, Teal’c. It is your duty.”
    “One more word and I shall silence you forever. Do you understand? Go through the Stargate.”
    The creature turned and scurried up the remaining steps, hesitated at the threshold, and then threw itself into the rippling blue wormhole.
    Carrying O’Neill, Teal’c turned and cast one last lingering look back the way he had come before stepping through the gate. The killing field was littered with burning Jaffa, a hundred points of light, one for each dying warrior. It was a hellish sight that would burn forever within him.

Chapter Thirteen
     
Take the Long Way Home
     
    “We’ve got an incoming wormhole, sir,” Harriman’s fingers rattled out a series of commands on the dialing computer. The screen flashed through a series of iconic images. They had become a second language to Walter Harriman. He back-calculated the point of origin as each new chevron encoded. “It’s too early for it to be SG-1 or SG-12, Sir, they’re not expected back for another twenty two hours.”
    General George Hammond looked up at the array of screens above their heads. The digital reads scrolled through at an alarming rate making it impossible to read any of the data they offered. Hammond drew in a deep breath. The waiting was the worst. The ninety seconds from the first contact through to the final chevron locking down. He traversed the gamut of emotions in that short space of time, from surprise to curiosity, anxiety, hope, all of them. He studied Harriman, reading the man because he couldn’t hope to read the screens. Harriman was agitated, which was never a good sign.
    “It’s Colonel O’Neill’s IDC.”
    “Open the iris, Sergeant. Let’s bring our people home.”
    One of the white-coated gate technicians punched in the code to open the iris, and out in the gate room the huge naqahdah shield contracted smoothly into the Stargate’s frame. A dozen soldiers wielding M16s lined up on either side of the ramp, their guns aimed solely on the eye of the wormhole. If anything other than O’Neill and his team came through the Stargate all hell would break loose down there, but it would be a cold day in the sun before they would establish a foothold on his watch. No matter how many times he had stood there and counted his men and women as they went out, and counted them coming home again, there was always that moment of doubt that this time would be the time something went wrong. Wormhole physics was hardly the most foolproof of disciplines. With Murphy always lurking just over his shoulder, there was always that