Stargate Atlantis #24

by Melissa Scott

  “What, more than we have already?”

  “Worse,” Bartolan said, and saw them both snap to attention. He laid out what Innyes had told him, and saw their expressions change as they took in the seriousness of the problem. “Right now, I think our best option is to land the Pride on the nearest world without a Stargate and wait for the disease to run its course. When that’s done, we can make a short hop to a world with a Stargate and send for help from there.”

  “I’m not sure we can land the Pride with only three people,” Agosten said.

  “Which is why we need to act now, before we lose any more crew,” Bartolan answered.

  “What about a world with an orbital Ring?” Orsolya asked. “We could probably get Pride into orbit; I’m not as comfortable making a hyperspace jump.”

  Bartolan laid his hand on the interface again, querying the system. He felt the ship stir again, and a new message appeared on the secondary screen. “The closest one is another ten hours in hyperspace. I don’t think we can make it.”

  “No more do I,” Agosten said.

  “No,” Orsolya said. “What can we make?”

  Bartolan looked at his screen. “If we can make three hours more in hyperspace, we’ll be within reach of two systems — the ship calls them Baidu and Farnos. Baidu has an orbital gate, but is listed as uninhabited; Farnos has no gate and is not currently inhabited. It’s the closest, too.”

  “Has the database been updated?” Agosten asked.

  Bartolan repeated the query, and grimaced at the ship’s answer. “Not for this section of space.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t have a Stargate, it’s unlikely to be inhabited,” Orsolya said. “Assuming the Ancients didn’t add one later.”

  “Farnos,” Agosten said, then shrugged. “I don’t see that we have much choice.”

  “None at all,” Bartolan said. He rubbed his neck, hoping that the ache at the base of his skull was just exhaustion.

  Innyes reluctantly relaxed the quarantine enough to allow the navigator second class Esztli to join the others in the control room, and he settled himself into the pilot’s chair while Bartolan queried the navigation system again. The ship responded sluggishly, almost querulously, as though it wasn’t sure he had the right to talk to it — it was a bit like a horse he had once ridden, when he had done his time on the farm settlements, and he curbed the ship firmly, too. At last, it gave him the exit coordinates and fed them to the pilot; he set the exit countdown as well, and leaned back in his seat, switching his intercom setting to the captain’s channel. He would stay at the station in case of trouble, but he needed to be able to hear everything now.

  He could hear Orsolya’s people working through their own checklists, readying for the moment when the hyperdrive cut out and the sublight engines took over; he could feel the pilot testing the controls, shifts of pressure against the interface as though a bird were stretching its wings. They were close now, the numbers flashing from yellow to red, and Orsolya called for her technicians to be ready. She was in the loop now, too, a spring ready to snap. He could feel the tension, feel the energies shifting as she adjusted the engines, and then they were out and into normal space, the navigation systems whirring up to speed as they searched for local coordinates.

  “Main engines on line,” Orsolya announced, though Bartolan could already feel them pulsing at the base of his spine.

  “I have control,” Esztli said. “All systems green. Course and speed?”

  Bartolan looked down at the navigation console, numbers slotting rapidly into place, flicking from gold to green as the ship confirmed its Ancient markers. The course to Farnos, ship, he thought, and realized he was shivering.

  The numbers appeared, Farnos itself at the outer edge of their sensors. Scan, please, he thought. Is it inhabited? Is there a Stargate?

  He felt something like impatience, but pressed the question forward, and felt the scanners come on line.

  “Damn it,” someone said, and in the same moment, he felt it. Farnos had a Stargate, and a population, he could feel the weight of it in the scanners’ returns.

  Baidu, he told the ship. Give us a course to Baidu. Distantly, he felt the ship respond, and heard Esztli answer. “Course set for Baidu, Captain. ETA fifteen hours.”

  Good, Bartolan thought. That would be all right. They could last that long. He closed his eyes for a moment, and heard someone say, “Captain! Are you all right, Captain?”

  Just tired, he thought, but the words were too hard, and he slid into unconsciousness.

  ~#~

  The day after the official ceremony was filled with further tours, a formal luncheon — with Dahlia’s scientists, this time — and concluded with the fireworks that had been postponed from the night before. That would delay their departure even further, John thought, with an inward groan, but there was no diplomatic way to get out of it, just as there was no diplomatic way to get out of the luncheon. To his surprise, the morning tour proved more interesting than he’d expected, taking them down into the lower depths of the cavern-city, where the City Guard trained. He had expected grim, dark-walled corridors and tiny, monastic cells for living quarters; instead, the trainees lived in a single large cavern, its roof supported by steel-and-stone pillars carved to look like trees, and their quarters were stacked three stories high, each with a window that looked out onto walkways protected by geometric ironwork. Some of the top-level rooms had badges on their doors: the cadet officers, their guide explained, who got the warmest rooms as a privilege of rank.

  “It looks like New Orleans,” Lorne said under his breath. “I mean, if the wrought-iron had a few more curves.”

  “A little bit,” John agreed. And that was weird enough make him want to shake his head: the dour Genii shouldn’t have anything that reminded him of laid-back, louche New Orleans.

  Beyond that cavern was the training ground, a series of interconnecting tunnels and slides and occasional padded chambers that reminded John of the obstacle courses back in basic training. He saw the Marines perk up, seeing something familiar, and wasn’t surprised when their escort, a fresh-faced young captain, offered them the chance to try one of the runs.

  “I’ll pass,” Beckett said, but John heard Hernandez whisper, “Outta sight…”

  The other Marines looked just as excited, and he had to admit he was tempted. He’d bet on the Marines’ fitness over the best of the Genii any day — and besides, he told himself, it was good intel to find out how the Genii trained their people. “Harries? Major? You up for it?”

  Harries’s grin lit up the cavern. “Yes, sir!”

  “I’m game,” Lorne said, and John looked back at their escort.

  “Captain, you’ve got a deal.”

  It didn’t take long to fit them out with the padded vests and rounded helmets that the Genii seemed to think were suitable safety gear. The Genii also distributed square lights that could be carried in the hand or slung around the neck, and John frowned. “Why not headlamps?” he said, to their escort, and the man gave him an odd look.

  “We want to be able to get rid of them quickly if we encounter Wraith. They focus on our lights, we can manipulate them much better this way.”

  Except that the Wraith could see in near total darkness, far better than humans could. John nodded anyway. “Makes sense.”

  “We’re going to go through the short course — short course A,” the Genii said. “None of the traps will be primed, though you should be able to see and avoid them. I’ll lead, and Kelen will bring up the rear. Jesko, half-lights, please.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Beckett murmured.

  John grinned. “We’re cementing good relations with our allies. Ready when you are, Captain.”

  “Sergeant!” The Genii captain waved to a scarred man who rolled back what had seemed to be a protruding piece of rock. Beyond it, John could see red-toned light and more rock. “Ready, gentlemen? Then begin!’

  He ducked under the low opening, and
John copied him, keeping low as the rough-hewn ceiling was barely six feet tall. He heard one of the Marines swear, more in resignation than in actual pain, and concentrated on following the Genii. A few yards in, the ground pitched steeply downhill, the Genii captain half stepping, half sliding on the loose gravel. John copied him, one hand on the wall, then snatched his hand back just in time as he saw the metal bar poised to catch him. It was well padded, but it would still have left a sizable bruise, and the Genii glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Well spotted, sir.”

  “Thanks.” John looked over his own shoulder. “Everybody got that?”

  There was a murmur of agreement, and the captain hurried them on. Across an open cavern where a pit trap gaped to catch the careless, then up another tunnel, past flashing lights and a simulated cave-in, then through a stretch of tunnel so narrow they had to crawl on hands and knees. John caught the rhythm of it — God, if Ronon were here, he’d be loving this — and propelled himself fiercely in the captain’s wake. Another downward tunnel, also with wall traps, then a sharp switchback that made John hesitate in spite of himself. The Genii saw and nodded.

  “Yes, we’d usually set an ambush here, but not today.”

  The tunnel zig-zagged twice more, and then abruptly they were back where they had started, blinking in the sudden light. Rountree and Peebles exchanged discreet high-fives, and even Johnston looked pleased with himself. John caught his breath, and nodded to the Genii. “That was fun. Nice bit of exercise.”

  “Yeah.” Harries shrugged himself out of the padded vest, still grinning. “I feel like a three-year-old, sir — again!”

  “Next time, we’ll do it with the traps set,” the Genii captain promised.

  “Is there likely to be a next time?” Beckett asked, with mild alarm, and Hernandez gave him a friendly nudge.

  “Hell, I hope so, Doc.”

  “You’re all mad,” Beckett said, but he was smiling, and John let the captain lead them away.

  After that, the luncheon was bound to be an anti-climax, though Beckett, at least, seemed glad to talk to a number of the scientists. John found himself seated next to Dahlia, as he had known he would be, and put on his best smile.

  “I’m glad everything’s going well with Avenger — I mean, Pride of the Genii. Looks like you’ve gotten her back into solid shape.”

  “We suffered significant damage in the battle with Queen Death,” Dahlia answered, “including to the hull and to some of our ventral shield generators. But we were able to salvage parts from another wreck, and fit them to the Pride.”

  “Another wreck?” John knew his tone was sharper than he’d meant.

  Dahlia’s smile was complacent. “Yes. Oh, don’t worry, Colonel, it was well within our agreed-upon sphere. In fact, we’ve known about it for some years, but it was so badly damaged that there was no point in attempting any salvage until we had the Pride. And the Ancient gene, of course.”

  “Of course.” John paused. “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Actually, very well. We’ve been able to locate people with the gene within our area of influence, and have persuaded many of them to join us, plus we’ve had very good success in linking in our artificial version. The ship seems to perceive no difference between them, which I confess was a pleasant surprise.”

  “It surprises me, too,” John said, and winced, realizing too late how the words might be heard.

  “I know you would prefer that we not succeed in mastering the Ancients’ technology,” she said, “but someone needs to prepare for the inevitable. The Wraith will not stay away forever.”

  This was where he really wished Teyla were there: she would know the right way to turn the conversation, to disagree without offending. He took a breath. “We think — I think — the new retrovirus is a game-changer. The Wraith won’t have to keep hunting into our territories — and we, both Atlantis and the Genii, can make it very painful if they try.”

  “But at a cost,” Dahlia said. “You’ve given hundreds of thousands of humans — hundreds of thousands of us — to the Wraith, as slaves. No, worse, as cattle, as food to be harvested. It’s sheer luck that we were your allies, or we might have ended there, too.”

  “The alternative was to let Queen Death destroy everyone,” John pointed out. It wasn’t the first time he’d had this argument, but it stung every time. “You had a price for your cooperation. So did the Wraith. This was the best we could do.”

  “And what will happen when the people who are under Wraith rule want to be free? Will we tell them, no, we we made a bargain, and you lost?” Dahlia shook her head. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  It was, John thought, an honest answer, not the one Radim or his government would have wanted her to give. He chose his words carefully, wanting to give her at least some honesty in return. “I don’t know what we’ll do. As I’ve said before, I’m the senior military officer on Atlantis, and Atlantis is a civilian project. I’m not going to be the one to make that decision, and I don’t know what they’d do. At worst — at worst, we’ve bought time for everyone to recover before we have to go to war again.”

  “The Wraith will recover, too,” Dahlia pointed out.

  “That’s the price of our recovery.”

  “So we pass the war along to our children, or our grandchildren?” Dahlia shook her head. “No parent would wish that.”

  “Or maybe there is no war,” John said. “Maybe something changes. Maybe the retrovirus makes a difference. Maybe the Wraith decide they don’t want to eat people, or maybe the Ancients come back and turn us all into fish, I don’t know. We’ve made time for something else to happen.”

  “Do you really believe it can?”

  “I do.” John searched for the words that might convince her, and found none. “I do.”

  “The Wraith never change,” she said, but there was less bitterness in her voice than before. Someone on her other side spoke to her and she turned to speak with him, pasting a polite smile on her face.

  The rest of the meal passed without incident, though John wished he’d been more articulate. He wasn’t a diplomat, wasn’t even the kind of soldier who could move from command to conference room, not like the people they’d had to study in ROTC. Atlantis needed someone like that, someone who could — He cut that thought off, grimacing at its pointlessness. What Atlantis had was him: he’d have to do the job.

  When the luncheon ended, they filed out of the hall, headed for yet another tour, and John found himself next to Beckett. The doctor gave him an appraising look.

  “I saw you had a long chat with Miss Radim.”

  “We talked,” John said.

  “She’s very determined,” Beckett said. “Passionate about her people. She wouldn’t have gone with us to retrieve the Pride otherwise. For that matter, she wouldn’t be head of Sciences.”

  “She doesn’t like our deal with the Wraith.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I like it,” Beckett said. “But it’s a damn sight better than any other alternative we had.”

  “If we’d —“ Used Hyperion’s device, John started to say, and swallowed the words. If the Genii ever found out that Atlantis had once had a device that would destroy all the Wraith in the galaxy and hadn’t used it, the alliance would fall to pieces. Beckett nodded as though he’d heard the unspoken words — but of course he’d been there, for the hunt and the battle and all the decisions.

  “We couldn’t.”

  John nodded. The device would have killed not just Wraith but everyone with Wraith DNA, Teyla and Torren and McKay after his transformation, and anyone else unlucky enough to have been born with what the Athosians called the Gift. That had been a big reason not to.

  Beckett’s face hardened. “And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t sign up for genocide.”

  And that was the other. He nodded again, and Beckett tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “So. All for the best then, really.”

  The afternoon’s tour was
aboveground, showing off orchards and fields that were carefully planted to seem like natural growth, or the remains of long-abandoned settlements. They could see groups of children in the distance, gathering windfall fruit in one place, clustered around a teacher in another field, knee-deep in a stream further on. John had expected them to be in uniforms, probably with colored scarves like kids in North Korea, or the old Soviet Union, but they were dressed like the farmers they had encountered when he first visited the Genii homeworld.

  “Is there much point in keeping up the pretense?” he said, to their guide — one of the housekeepers who had been taking care of them — and she gave him a startled look.

  “Pretense? Oh, no, it’s a privilege. To compensate for the extra danger of living aboveground.”

  “So you’re not trying to convince strangers that you’re just a bunch of simple farmers anymore.”

  She shrugged. “We don’t like to share all our secrets, Colonel. Any more than Atlantis does.”

  But we don’t pretend to be something we’re not. John closed his mouth over the words, all too aware of the secrets Atlantis kept. And besides, if they were wrong about the agreement with the Wraith, the concealed farms would be necessary again. The Genii were betting on its failure. That was a depressing thought, and it stayed with him the rest of the day, through the tour of the Genii launch area — easily sophisticated enough to use for orbital defense, John thought, and guessed he was meant to notice — and their return to the underground capital’s entrance to view the fireworks display.

  Most of the city seemed to have turned out, climbing out of hidden openings in the rock face and filling the narrow ground at the entrance, and there were food vendors and even peddlers selling pennants and spheres half-full of some glowing liquid. Given the Genii’s carelessness about radioactive materials, he wasn’t convinced they didn’t contain radium, and was glad the sellers were confined to the main crowd, well clear of his people. There were plenty of soldiers in evidence, forming a perimeter around the VIP stand, clustered at the main entrance, and strolling in pairs and trios through the crowd. The Genii didn’t seem to notice them, or maybe there was some weird social convention that made armed soldiers invisible at public events. More likely they were just so used to it that they didn’t notice.