03 - The First Amendment Read Online Free Page B

and eager to cooperate,
with Earth in the battle against their common enemy. So when SG-4 had gone in
with a full research team, they’d expected to find allies, not a trap. They were
easy pickings. O’Neill felt guilty about it, of course—he’d screwed up
royally, not that anybody would ever admit it. That was another reason why
O’Neill had tried to take over this assignment. But it was SG-2’s job to do the
dirty work, and they were here to do it. Under a competent commander, dammit.
    The area around the Gate was cleared ground. The few patches of trees nearby
were at least twenty yards away. SG-2 hustled for cover, taking its bearing from
the directions they’d been given; on the other side of that line of vegetation,
there’d be a broad plain, and then the tall towers that marked the native
stronghold.
    The natives were strictly low tech, the reports said. The only thing they’d
have to worry about was the Jaffa. But those reports were from SG-1, and Morley
wasn’t dumb enough to believe them, even though the survivors agreed that the
only heavy artillery belonged to the Jaffa. He moved his men through dripping
trees and oily vines, ignoring the shrieks of things that probably weren’t
birds.
    His second-in-command, Lieutenant Fries, kept looking up, as if trying to
identify the noises. Alarm calls? Morley wondered. But no, it couldn’t be. There
was so much noise, coming from all directions, that nobody could tell if one
particular set of shrill cries was a warning of intruders.
    They formed a loose array at the tree line, grenade launchers already loaded
and ready. The tactical meeting had discussed the possibility of a direct
frontal attack: “Let’s blow a hole in it and blast them to hell and back.”
    Unfortunately that would probably result in the immediate deaths of the
captives, so that plan was discarded, somewhat to Morley’s disappointment.
    There had been speculation about whether the captives were still alive or
even still on P7X-924. Morley refused to call it Etaa—that was just
another instance of O’Neill losing sight of the mission. So what if that’s what
the natives called home? The man had to personalize everything. Planetary
coordinate designation numbers were good enough for Morley. It wasn’t like he
was planning a vacation here.
    The behavior of the Jaffa and their efforts to capture some of the SG-4 team
alive argued that the humans had been taken for a reason, probably
interrogation. Hammond had decreed that SG-2 would assume the captives were
alive unless otherwise proven. As for their location, well, if they weren’t
still on the purple world, it would be up to SG-2 to find out where they’d been
taken.
    The town looked pretty much as described—mud walls, two big circular
stone towers on either side of a pair of outsize wooden gates bound by rough
iron. The place was the biggest “city” identified so far on this planet, and it
only had a population of maybe ten thousand or so. Some outlying farms existed,
but nobody had investigated them yet. SG-1 had said there was a lot of movement
in and out of Etaa-the-city, but right now the gates gaped open and empty.
    No activity in the streets of the city was visible through the gate. Fries
looked over at Morley and shrugged, a half-grin on his face. “Quiet,” he
whispered. “Too quiet.”
    It was, of course. There should have been activity. The Gate was close enough
to the main population center that its activation wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
    “Launch a spy eye,” Morley had ordered. Fries had to dig the little
remote-controlled plane out of his pack, set it up.
    And then the enemy had opened fire.
    The humans had retreated and scattered along the tree line, hitting the
ground and returning fire. High explosives roared. Lances of pure energy pierced
the trees.
    If the other side had been human, Morley would have expected them to use infrared to locate and target the body heat of
intruders.