Read Online STARGATE SG-1: Oceans of Dust by Peter J. Evans - Free Book Online

Carter ducked through as the entire building erupted upwards into a vast geyser of burning stone. Teal’c was just behind her, the liquid mirror closing around him as a humped shape lifted from the plateau, accelerated cleanly past the rising fountain of debris and vanished in a shimmer like heat-haze. O’Neill saw the clouds part as the cloaked ship made its escape, and then he too stepped through the gate, backwards, the radio still in his hand.
    Just as the event horizon closed over his eyes, he saw that awful shadow break through the white sky, all edges and angles. And then he was gone.
     
    A tumbling, whirling fall through a space that could not exist, a speed where there could be no motion, light where there could be no vision, time where none existed…
    He stepped backwards onto the ramp, into the flat, warm air of Stargate Command. “Okay,” he snapped, turning around. “What the hell’s wrong with the…”
    There was a small army of marines at the base of the access ramp, weapons leveled.
    “Radio,” he finished.
    From behind him came a grinding, metallic squeal, like the closing of a giant’s rusty shears. Someone was shutting the iris.
    Daniel, Carter and Teal’c were still on the ramp, looking down at the armed men surrounding them. Daniel had his arms half-raised, as though he were considering surrender. “Ah, Jack? Any idea what’s going on here?”
    “Not much.” O’Neill picked a marine at random, fixed him with the kind of quiet, frozen look his drill sergeants used to use on him, back in the day. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be here for
un
scheduled activations?”
    The man swallowed. “Sorry, sir.”
    There was an echoing click as the gate room’s internal address system came on. “
Security teams stand down,
” it bellowed. “
Repeat, stand down.
”
    At that, the entire gate room seemed to fall still. The crimson beacons above the big security doors stopped rotating and switched off, the sirens wailing into silence. The doors unlocked and slid aside. And then even the Stargate shut down, the rippling blue light of it fading as the event horizon lost cohesion.
    There was the welcome sound of two dozen automatic weapons being switched to safety.
    “Is it just me,” O’Neill sighed, as the marines shouldered arms and filed away from the ramp, “or has today really not gone according to plan?”
    “Internal security alert,” said Carter, glancing around. “Level two?”
    “Level three, Major.”
    The voice was deep, with an edge of Texan twang, and O’Neill was very glad indeed to hear it. “General,” he smiled as Hammond stepped into the gate room. “Was it something I said?”
    “Sorry about that, Colonel.” Hammond didn’t look at all happy. “Things have been a little on edge around here for the past couple of hours.”
    “What happened?”
    “We got a message. From an old friend of yours.”
    O’Neill’s chest tightened a little. “Apophis?”
    “If only,” said Hammond. “It was Ra.”

Chapter 4.
Bedshaped
     
    The Stargate had begun to dial itself at three thirty-seven AM, not long after SG-1 had left for Sar’tua. Since it had been entirely possible that the team had run into trouble and needed to return ahead of schedule, the technicians monitoring the gate had been expecting an Iris Deactivation Code. Instead, what came through the wormhole was a multi-frequency signal of terrifying power.
    The communications system went into overload immediately. Most of the failsafe cut-outs — designed to protect the operations room’s delicate equipment from just such an assault — activated as their creators intended, but at least one didn’t shut off fast enough, leading to a feedback spike that blew out two servers and actually started a small fire. By the time the signal had finished transmitting some seventy seconds later, the gate room’s comms were completely down, leaving SG teams One, Seven and Fifteen stranded offworld.
    General George Hammond