06 - Siren Song Read Online Free Page A

marveled at how deadliness could look so beautiful. Daniel watched, too, his
face falling into lines of concentration, his eyes becoming more and more
distant, as though Teal’c’s orderly gestures were a part Daniel’s own mental
exercise, a physical mantra that led Daniel inward. Sam watched him watch Teal’c
and resisted the urge to smooth the frown from his forehead.
    Finally, as Teal’c came to the end of the sequence and began again, she
turned back to the crystals with a sigh. Blue, clear, red, green. If she had a
screwdriver she could pull the whole housing out of the wall, and then she’d be
getting somewhere, maybe. Over the hum of the hyperspace engines, she could hear
Teal’c’s measured breathing. Blue, clear, red, green. The Colonel slept,
rationing resources. Daniel explored the inside of his head, on the trail of
details about Sebek, things he’d known in another life. The cargo hold seemed
charged with potential energy, stored up, going nowhere. Or somewhere.
    When Daniel spoke, his soft voice made her jump. “You know,” he ventured
tentatively, “we could let him take us where he wants and maybe see if we
actually can help.”
    “Go where Aris Boch wants us to go? I don’t think that will sit well with the
Colonel.”
    “Aris said that there are people in danger. Keeping the Goa’uld from killing
people isn’t such a bad thing.”
    “You’re assuming we can believe a single thing he says.” She was tempted to
start prying at the housing again, but her fingertips were still a little numb
from the last time, so she settled for glaring at the panel. “I’m not sure I
want to stake my life on it.”
    He looked at his boots, his jaw set. “We know his people are oppressed.”
    “Most of the galaxy is oppressed.”
    “That’s the tricky part, isn’t it?”
    She fumbled the crystal she was holding and caught it against her stomach. In
the center of the room, Teal’c stopped moving and became an attentive stroke of
darker space at the fringes of her vision.
    Daniel went on, “How do you decide what… who… is worth dying for?”
    “You tell me,” she demanded before she could stop herself. Sam felt a sudden
anger expanding inside her chest, making her throat bum.
    Daniel’s wince put the fire out fast. More than a little appalled at herself,
she closed her eyes and tried not to think of First Minister Dreylock and her
denial of Kelownan culpability in the accident that had taken Daniel’s life.
Dreylock had made Daniel into a criminal. And that was a crime.
    As if he were the rebellious voice in her head, Teal’c said, “Some neither
appreciate nor seem to deserve such sacrifice.”
    Daniel looked at him, and, after a moment of consideration, straightened from
the wall. “People are people. Appreciation isn’t the point. You don’t ask for
the appreciation of the Jaffa when you fight for them. You don’t ignore their
oppression because they’re undeserving. You believe in their freedom, even if
some of them don’t.”
    Sam looked from Teal’c to Daniel and back again. Teal’c had a point; the
smaller, meaner part of her came back to Dreylock, her insufferable, arrogant
self-righteousness as she’d accepted Daniel’s gift while simultaneously
insisting it was valueless. The anger flared again. The Colonel had fought until
the moment of Daniel’s death to prove that his sacrifice meant something. The thought of Aris selling that kind of sacrifice for his own gain made
her sick. But Daniel was right, too; even Teal’c acknowledged it. The conflict
between the two positions made an irritating noise in her brain, like the
grinding of gears that failed to mesh. She rubbed her temple with her knuckles
as if she could get in there and fix that. Now, Sam tried not to see Daniel in
the infirmary bed, held together by bandages, dissolving into light. Gone.
Instead, she looked at him standing two feet away from her, miraculously remade,
completely new, still