The muddy scent led to a modest courtyard, toward one of the corners of the ship. The area was open to four stories above, with open-sided passageways forming balconies on each level. On the side nearest the center of the ship, the balconies were vertically aligned; on the opposite side, they overhung, following the ship’s in-sloping exterior contour in a stepwise fashion, like the wall of an inverted ziggurat. Beneath this airspace was a pit, perhaps three meters deep, nicely sculpted into a habitat including reeds and rocks, water, a sand spit, and a few trees.
And crocodiles. Sam could see four of them, basking on the sand in the artificial sunlight.
She scanned the balconies carefully. From her vantage point, there was only one guard, directly opposite to and one level higher than her position. He appeared inattentive--easy pickings for a staff blast. Sam guessed watching the swamp was not a duty given to the sharpest of soldiers.
She steeled herself to peek over the solid rail of the passage. Teal’c was dead, and had been so for over a day. These were crocodiles, and he was meat. What she found, if she found anything, could be gruesome.
Slowly she searched the pit with her eyes. There were the crocodiles, there was a slide-mark on the sand, a stain that might have been blood, a tangle of drowned papyrus stems. A stand of papyrus, another crocodile...her mental inventory built slowly.
There was a movement on the balcony directly across from her, beneath the Jaffa. Sam ducked.
An orange-cloaked slave scuttled into view from a corridor at the far end of the pit, on some errand from here to there. Mid-path, he stopped, as on a whim, and stepped to the edge of the pit, directly above the crocodiles, stealing a moment’s diversion from the tasks of his masters.
As he peered over the rail, his shadow must have fallen on one of the animals. It startled away from him, disturbing its fellows and hissing loudly before diving into the water.
And Sam saw the shreds of Teal’c’s uniform, battered into the sand where the beasts had been napping.
"You! To your work!" Sam heard the voice of a Jaffa, commanding from the balcony directly above her. The guard on the far duty jolted to formality before realizing the command was not directed at him. He scrambled to look over the edge at the slave, but the man had already stepped back from the brink.
Whoa. One at each end! Sam mentally kicked herself for missing the deployment overhead.
The slave cocked his head, looking briefly at the source of the voice. He was tall, and brown–the same color as Teal’c--which made Sam’s heart leap. Then she noticed he was lighter in build. For a moment, Sam imagined a whiff of defiance in the man’s stance, before he proceeded uneventfully on his way.
"Hataka," she heard the Jaffa voice mutter above.
Quietly, Sam stalked away from the well-guarded space.
She told herself it was only the stench that turned her stomach, and the obvious disdain the Jaffa had toward humans, and the fact that she hadn’t eaten in over a day. But her mind kept drifting to the thought of Teal’c’s remains, torn asunder and consumed in that ignoble place.
Daniel had lost Sha’uri. Jack had lost Skaara. But until now, the Goa’uld had not really taken anyone close to Sam. Granted her father was host to a Tok’Ra, but that was a positive move–in fact she saw him more often off-world than she had when he’d lived on Earth.
But now Teal’c was gone, and Sam realized the comfort she’d taken in his quiet strength.
She was beginning to understand hate.
Klorel would pay.
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