SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Read Online Free PDF

accomplished half the things we are led to believe, you are most certainly a worthy ally.”
    “Thank you, I think. You seem to have the advantage here, what with us being so famous and all. You, on the other hand are?”
    Her smile broadened slightly. “I am Jerichau of the Tok’ra, I share this body with Selina Ros, my host,” she introduced herself. Jack pulled a face, making a show of trying to remember if he had heard of her. “We received your transmission, there is much we must talk about.”
    “Isn’t there always?” Jack said.
    “Can we talk somewhere…” Jerichau gestured toward the line of guns, “away from all of the weapons?”
    “Of course. The briefing room,” Hammond said. “Teal’c, Doctor Jackson, Major Carter, if you would care to join us? At ease, everyone.”
    The six of them adjourned to the solitude of the briefing room and settled themselves around the conference table. The lighting in the room was subdued. Jack pressed his palms down flat against the tabletop. He could feel the eddies of the air-conditioning blowing around them.
    “Talk to us,” he told Jerichau without looking up. There was no preamble. Now was not the time for it. The Tok’ra obviously knew more than they would let on. They played their little games of politics about as well as Daniel played poker. He tried to put aside his natural mistrust but as long as they were playing with a loaded deck he was going to be suspicious — it was thinking like that that kept him alive.
    “We have reason to believe that your visitor was indeed Tok’ra.”
    “Go on.”
    “Much is unknown and will remain so until we have the chance to examine the remains, but Nyren Var was working to recover a weapon of sorts. She has been out of contact for several cycles now. In her last transmission she reported that the Goa’uld were aware of the weapon and had sent Jaffa to hunt it down.”
    “I’m not sure I follow,” Hammond interrupted. “Why would they need to hunt for a weapon? That’s a peculiar choice of words, isn’t it?”
    “Indeed it is, General, but no less accurate for it. The weapon in question is a living thing. A creature known as Mujina.”
    “Okay, now you’ve got my attention,” O’Neill said, looking up from his hands. “What are we talking about here? Big? Small? Breathes fire? Lay it on me.”
    “Mujina is an archetypal creature, O’Neill.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
    It was Daniel who answered, not the Tok’ra woman. He pushed his glasses back along his nose. “Archetypes are personality templates, Jack. Joseph Campbell identified them during his research into the monomyth, the single story that is at the root of all the others. There’s the Mentor, the Hero, ah, others that are more obscure, like the threshold guardian, or the herald, then, more interestingly, the shadow, which is the embodiment of everything we would like to defeat, and the shapeshifter —”
    “Now hold on a minute,” O’Neill cut across Daniel. “Are you telling me this ‘weapon’ has the ability to change shape? That’s a bit more than breathing fire…”
    “Not physically, I doubt,” Daniel said, and then turned to Jerichau for confirmation or denial. “Shapeshifting in this respect relates more to the fact that the shapeshifter is more of a catalyst, it makes things happen and you are never quite sure as to its allegiances.”
    “So it
can’t
change shape?”
    “Jerichau?”
    “Doctor Jackson is quite right in his summation of the Mujina’s gifts. It is an archetypal creature, a blank slate if you like, capable of being all things to all people, from hero to shadow, shapeshifter and trickster.”
    “So you’re saying it isn’t to be trusted.”
    “In the wrong hands nothing is, Colonel O’Neill,” the Tok’ra said.
    “And, let’s be blunt, the wrong hands would be Goa’uld,” Jack finished the thought for everyone around the table. Jerichau nodded. “Now, let me get this