Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon

by James Swallow

  "This is Dr. Weir acknowledging receipt of transmission. We're ready to lower the shield at your discretion."

  "Elizabeth, it's Carson here," he began, "don't drop the force field. This is just an update."

  When she spoke again, Beckett heard the wary tone in her voice. "Okay, Carson, I understand. What's your status over there? We're at Condition Blue, over"

  Beckett nodded to himself. After Kenealy had Gated back with Hill's body, the other doctor had been under orders to give Weir the full story on what had taken place on Halcyon since Sheppard had left with the Puddle Jumper, and that included Rodney's kidnapping. As part of new security protocols introduced on Atlantis, they had created a series of seemingly innocuous code phrases that could be inserted into radio communications to allow off world teams to send a warning that they were operating under duress. Condition Blue meant that Weir understood that Carson was on unfriendly ground, and she was ready to assist. The doctor searched his memory for a moment for the correct counter-sign. "It's, ah, Condition Yellow," he said. "We're okay here, for the moment."

  Elizabeth relaxed a little-but only a little. She stared at the open Stargate, visualizing Carson on the other side, his expression taut with concern. Weir had gone over Kenealy's report a dozen times, scouring it for anything she could use. Other duties vital to the running of Atlantis had slipped as the situation on Halcyon had gotten worse, and she had to admit she was finding it hard to keep her mind on the job at hand while her friends were in harm's way out in the Pegasus Galaxy.

  "Can you speak freely?"

  "Aye, go ahead."

  "I'm ready to come through myself to take up a role as negotiator. Perhaps I might be able to secure Rodney's release if I spoke directly with the Lord Magnate."

  There was a pause. "Staff Sergeant Mason is firmly against that idea, Elizabeth, and I'm sure Colonel Sheppard would be to, if he were here. We don't want to bring another senior member of Atlantis staff in where they can take a shot at them. They might decide you're a better bet than McKay and go for you instead."

  Weir glanced down from the control room to where a squad of men armed with heavy machine guns and assault rifles stood at the ready, poised to advance through the Stargate on her word. She hated playing the military card, but at this stage her options were very limited. "In that case, Carson, we can go for the more direct approach. Major Lorne and his unit are standing by." Elizabeth left that offer hanging, fully aware that Beckett would understand what she was hinting at.

  A different voice broke in on the radio channel. "Mason here, ma'am. As much as I'd like to agree to that, it's my estimation that a show of greater force would be very bad for your Dr. McKay. We need to deal with this at our end."

  "I hear you, Staff Sergeant." Elizabeth glanced at the Gate Technician to her right. "Keith, tell Lorne and his team to stand down. For the moment."

  Beckett was speaking again. "Things are moving quickly here. Lord Daus has given us notice that his men have apparently located Rodney, although he hasn't shown any proof yet."

  Weir frowned. "Apparently? If they found him, why isn't he back with you? Where's Colonel Sheppard?"

  "On a hunting expedition." She listened carefully as Carson outlined the content of Sheppard's discussion with the Magnate and the trade of the rogue Wraith for the Atlantis team's scientist.

  "And John went along with this?"

  "Aye, although he was nae very happy about it." She heard the doctor sigh heavily over the radio link. "But that's not the worst of it. We potentially have a much bigger problem than McKay's capture. Sheppard detected and destroyed a marker drone in orbit over Halcyon. It was of Wraith origin, Elizabeth. They tagged this planet as a food source thousands of years ago. "

  Weir felt her breath catch in her throat. Beckett's statement hung in the air, and everyone in the control room who heard it felt the same jagged little dagger of fear the word `Wraith' engendered. They had all been there, watching the storms of weapons fire against the city's shield dome when the aliens had laid siege to Atlantis, and all of them understood the ruthless threat the Wraith posed. She heard a soft, muttered curse from over her shoulder. Dr. Radek Zelenka had entered the control room without her noticing, and now stood there, his face pale behind his glasses.

  Elizabeth clamped down on her own concerns and moved past them. "Do you know if the beacon was transmitting? Are there Wraith on the way to you?"

  "We can't be sure. It's possible."

  She tapped her hand on the console. "Then I want you back here. If Halcyon is under threat of Wraith attack, I don't want my people there a second longer than they need to be."

  "That's not going to happen," he replied wearily. "Gate travel to or from this planet has been suspended, under penalty of being shot to pieces. Until that changes, we're stuck here. And even if we could go, I've still got work to do here. Elizabeth, a lot of these people here are dying."

  "They'll all be dying if the Wraith come for them," muttered Zelenka.

  She hated to admit it, but the scientist had a point.

  "Carson, making those people healthy isn't going to count for anything if a Hive Ship drops out of hyperspace over their planet!" Weir's voice sounded in Beckett's ear and he looked at Mason once again. The SAS trooper was watching the gun turrets. "If we want to help the Halcyons, we need to think about evacuating them to another world! Let me come through and I can talk to Daus -"

  "No, Dr. Weir," snapped Mason. "I can't allow that. I'm the ranking military authority here in the Lieutenant Colonel's absence, and I'm telling you this. Anyone who comes through that Gate will be a red smear ten seconds later."

  "Staff Sergeant, do I have to remind you who is in command of this expedition?"

  Beckett swallowed hard at the soldier's gruesome description, but he saw the sense in it. "Elizabeth, listen. He's right. They'll shoot you down and not even blink."

  When Weir spoke again, it was with firm resolve. "Then in that case, Staff Sergeant Mason, I expect you to make sure Dr. Beckett and the rest of the team are kept safe until we can get all of you home."

  "Orders received and understood, ma'am," replied the soldier.

  "Carson?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Try to keep out of trouble. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can get you another ride, understood?"

  Beckett and Mason exchanged glances, an unspoken communication passing between them. There were some things that Weir wasn't willing to discuss on an open channel, but her meaning was clear.

  "Understood," replied the doctor, the stress of the last few hours abruptly settling on him. "Halcyon out."

  Elizabeth turned to Zelenka, to find the scientist already working at a control console, his hands flying over the glassy Atlantean keypad, then to a laptop, then back again. "Radek, can you pinpoint the-"

  "Location of the Daedalus?" A semi-transparent screen shimmered and solidified into a display of the Pegasus Galaxy's interstellar region. Zelenka touched a control and three cursors illuminated. "This is us, Atlantis. This is Daedalus. This is the Halcyon star system."

  Weir gave a small smile at the man's ability to anticipate her request; but then he was a genius, like so many of the experts that had come with her from Cheyenne Mountain. "It's within their hyperspace transit range. We may have another option after all." She gestured to the duty technician. "Get sub-space communications on line for me. Send a priority one flash message to Colonel Caldwell."

  "On it," came the reply.

  "How long do you think it would take them to make the journey?"

  Zelenka licked his lips. "That all depends on the energy flux curve they've been operating on during this voyage. You see, if it's a high co-efficient, then there could be a ten to twenty percent variation in the muon-"

  "A ballpark figure, Radek," she broke in. "I don't need the decimal places."

  "Oh. Of course. Ball-park." He hesitated, considering. "Thirty, perhaps thirty-five hours."

  Weir studied the screen. "I
s there nothing they could do to shave some time off that?"

  Zelenka shook his head. "Even if they run the drives hot, it still wouldn't make more than a couple of hours difference. Hyperspace travel doesn't work like conventional rockets. It is all gravity curvatures and boson intersections." He gave her a weak grin. "As a famous engineer once said, `you cannot change the laws of physics."'

  "A famous engineer?"

  "Yes. I believe he was from Moscow."

  "Dr. Weir?" The technician called out. "I have Daedalus on the comm."

  She tapped her headset. "Colonel Caldwell?"

  The voice of the starship's commander crackled from a hidden speaker. "Doctor. You're lucky you caught us. We've been conducting experiments on the edge of a Jovian planet's atmosphere, using the hydrogen ram scoop array developed by Colonel Carter"

  Even though she couldn't see him, Weir held up her hand for quiet. "Colonel, as much as I would usually be fascinated by such an interesting scientific endeavor, I'm afraid I have to ask you to cut it short. We have a situation in the Halcyon system, a few parsecs from your current location." She entered a data string on her computer. "I'm sending you galactic co-ordinates for the system on a side channel, along with everything we have up until now on the mission there."

  "Let me guess," Caldwell said dryly. "Sheppard 's team is in trouble?"

  "For starters."

  At another time, Caldwell might have argued the matter with her or made an issue of Sheppard's involvement; but the professional relationship between Weir and the captain of the Daedalus had now grown to the point where each had a level of respect for the other, and to Caldwell's credit he accepted her orders without question. "Tell inc what I need to know, Doctor, and we'll be on our way."

  "There's a good possibility that the planet Halcyon is under imminent threat of Wraith attack, and right now our people can't Gate off world. You are to proceed to Halcyon at full military speed and offer all assistance needed to Colonel Sheppard and his team... And be prepared to engage the Wraith in force when you get there."

  She heard Caldwell take a deep breath. "All right. Daedalus concurs." After a moment, the colonel spoke again, quietly so that only Weir could hear him. "Elizabeth, that planet's a day and a half away even at full throttle. If the Wraith are heading there, we may already be too late."

  "I know, Colonel," she admitted. "Good hunting, Daedalus. Atlantis out."

  he cavern was dank and smelled faintly of rotting meat. No human hunter had ever dared to venture this deep into the core of the enclosure; or at least if they did, they never returned to speak of it.

  The Wraith that the Halcyons had christened `Scar' toyed with some of the items his pack mates had stripped from the prey, picking them up and sniffing them, moving them about with a clawed finger. Presently, he gathered up a pistol made of black steel and turned it in his hand. The weapon was interesting. Scar recognized the shape and form of a primitive ballistic firearm, but at the same time he could see that this was far more advanced than the guns carried by the hunters they usually culled. He licked the frame, tasting sweat and the smallest remnants of flesh-scent there. Scar had always been fascinated by the machinery of lesser species, the way that they forced metals from the ground into hard shapes instead of fashioning organics, bone and bio-matter as the Wraith did. It was a peculiarity of his, an affectation his kindred rarely shared.

  One of the pack spat angrily as it came upon something in the pile, and Scar snatched it from his grip. The Wraith growled; the device was a small screen with buttons about its frame, made from some sort of crystalline material that glowed with an inner light. Scar knew the origin of it immediately. The old enemy, his kind's most ancient foe, had fabricated this. With a sudden jerk of motion, the Wraith threw the device into the air and fired the human weapon at it. Sharp retorts of sound echoed around the cave with yellow flashes of discharge from the barrel. The pack snarled at the noise, but Scar grinned widely as the Ancient scanner struck the rock in a rain of broken fragments.

  The gunfire jerked Teyla from her painful slumber and she twitched against gooey bonds that held her hands behind her back. The Athosian blinked and tried to make sense of where she was, remembering the trapdoor and the black pit beneath it. She looked around. A cave. No way to know how much time has passed. She caught sight of Bishop, similarly secured a few feet away. He was wavering on the edge of alertness, his head lolling. Teyla tried to work her wrists free, but she had no success. The thick, gelatinous matter that ensnared them was some kind of secreted web, pliant but impossible to break.

  Then she shivered, and not through the cold. In her head there were growls and snarls, a wild animal chorus of base, bloodhungry minds. She saw the Wraith, clustered around each other, and before them the single male in ragged clothes with her handgun in his fist. The alien's garb was similar to the coats and battle gear she had seen before on other high-ranking Wraith, but it was ripped and torn, ravaged by combat and years of life as a fugitive. He came closer to her, and in the dimness Teyla saw his scarred and ruined cheek, his single blinded eye.

  "What," husked the alien, working at the word. "What are. You?" He spoke haltingly, as if he had not had to form proper speech in a long time and the manner of it had become unfamiliar to him. "What are you?" repeated Scar. "Not the hunters. Not... Not the Enemy. You have their machines... But you are not one of them."

  Once, when she was a girl, Teyla had seen her father put a whitehorn to death because it had escaped from the corral and gorged itself on poisonous fruit. In the moments before he had put the animal out of its misery, it had looked directly at her and the Athosian had seen the light of bestial madness in its gaze. She saw the same thing now on the face of the Wraith that confronted her.

  Teyla marshaled her resolve and stared him in the eye, refusing to give the Wraith anything. Scar brandished the Beretta pistol under her nose, and she flinched from the stink of hot cordite. "You... Are different from that male." He jerked his head at Bishop, and she could feel him in her thoughts again, the same black slick of consciousness that had caressed her psyche out in the forest. "You are touched by us." Scar rocked back on his haunches and made a clicking noise in his throat, what must have been the Wraith equivalent of a chuckle. "How lucky you are."

  She couldn't stop herself. Teyla pulled hard against her bonds, slamming forward a few inches before the sticky ropes went tight and reined her in. Still, she took a little reward in the momentary recoil on the Wraith's face. Scar sneered and composed himself. "I know you. Sensed you." She felt him pushing at her mind and fought to hold him out; fought and failed.

  "Tey-lah," said Scar, drawing the word from her. He sounded out the syllables of her name, savoring the resonance of them. "You are far from home, prey." Hate washed over her from him, thick and oily, cold as the kiss of space itself. She gagged.

  "Why don' you pick a fight with a bloke, bozo?" Bishop said thickly. "Ought to get yourself a new haircut while you're at it. Th' metal band look went out with Bon Jovi."

  The Wraith gave the soldier a sideways look but didn't respond to him. "They want to feed," he told Teyla, jerking his head at the rest of his kindred. "Soon I will let them."

  "I do not fear you, creature." The words came up of their own accord.

  Scar made the clicking noise again. "Lie."

  "If I perish, it will be knowing that a hundred thousand Wraith corpses line my way to the afterlife, all of them dead by my hand!"

  He cocked his head. "Oh. A warrior, then, Tey-lah? Proud and strong." He sniffed. "Still prey, at the end."

  She watched the glitter of intelligence in Scar's eyes. Daus had been right when he said this Wraith was not like the others on Halcyon. Where his pack mates loped and snapped at each other like primitive simians, Scar was cogent and clever. But there was something else in there, a peculiar need that went beyond his desire to feed off them. The fragmented psionic connection Teyla shared with the Wraith was a two-way street, and she could feel a churn of c
onflict in the alien's mind. Something akin to loneliness, a sad little streak of arrogance that boiled away just below the surface. She saw broken pieces of thought, there and gone like reflections in shards of a shattered mirror, and an abrupt realization came to her. Scar was concealing something, an old and dark hatred buried deep in his psyche. He was nursing it, cupping the flame of a rage that had been burning for countless years. He had a plan.

  The Wraith sniffed at the air and toyed with the pistol. "Brutal and direct," he said, considering the gun. "The simplicity of it amuses me." Scar leaned closer and she caught a whiff of his alien odor. "You are not of the Enemy, but you have their devices. Tell me now. Are they dead? Are the Gatebuilders dead?" When Teyla did not answer, he gave a guttural chug and one of the other Wraiths scrambled over to Bishop, brandishing its feeding maw. The pack mate hovered over the soldier, raw desire bright in its dead eyes. "Answer, or the male is ash."

  "Don't tell him nothing," spat the soldier.

  Teyla licked dry lips. There was no doubt in her mind that Scar would have Bishop killed if she did not answer him. "The Ancients are gone. We don't know where. They abandoned their cities, vanished."

  "Gone." Scar considered this for a moment. "It is fitting. The Enemy died while I slept..."

  There was another blink of his memory there in her brain, hard and brittle, of a cold sleep in the chambers of a Hive Ship. The aftermath of a battle, many lives lost and great destruction wrought. She was seeing into him.

  Scar glanced at her. "Yes," His words were a gentle hiss. "We came to cull these worlds and found the Enemy here, lying in wait for us. They poisoned the air with their device. Shielded the prey with it. We could not land, could not feed."

  "The dolmen," Teyla spoke without meaning to. "The Ancients placed it on Halcyon to protect the natives from you."

  The Wraith's head bobbed. "At the height of its power, it drove us mad to be near it. So we remained in space."

  Teyla heard noises, half-whispers that came across an impossible distance, across thousands of years. Weapons fire, the roars of combatants and the screams of the dying. Scar was showing her flashes of his past, of a great conflict.