Vekken nodded at his master's evaluation. "Overnight, the Fourth Dynast's military power would be reduced to nothing. Our clan would be inundated with challenges for the throne from every quarter, and we would not be able to answer them with superior force."
"Listen to me," said Rodney, forcing his voice steady. "If you do not destroy this ship, then your throne won't matter. The Wraith will cut across your planet like a plague of locusts and consume everything. You talked to me about compulsion, well, compel this." He advanced a step, and Vekken immediately blocked his way. "You don't have a choice, man! Give up this ship and your Hounds, or watch Halcyon die. You have no other option!"
"You are wrong," said Daus, the practiced conceit of a hundred generations returning to him, denying everything that he did not wish to hear. "I have you. And you'll find another way, or I will order you to be tortured until you die."
The Magnate swept out of the chamber with Vekken trailing behind him.
Rodney's hands contracted into fists and he shouted at the man's back in impotent, incredulous fury. "No! Don't turn away from me, damn it! Can't you understand? You're signing this planet's death warrant!"
"Keep the craft at a higher altitude," demanded Scar, watching Sheppard closely from the co-pilot's seat of the Puddle Jumper. "Do not deliberately attempt to alert the locals to our presence."
John said nothing but inwardly he frowned. "Whatever you say. It's your fare, I'm just the cab driver." Sheppard had been hoping there was an outside chance that a Halcyon defense gunner with and itchy trigger finger might spot the cruising ship and throw a little flak at it, but once they climbed to a couple of thousand feet, the guns the Dynasts used wouldn't even reach the fast-moving vessel. He had successfully deceived the alien about the functionality of the Jumper's cloaking device, claiming that it had been damaged by the shots from the Wraith beacon in orbit. Scar had shown a flicker of concern when Sheppard mentioned that the marker satellite was now nothing more than space dust, but the alien hadn't let it change his plans. On his orders, they were still flying northwards, describing a course that took them toward the site of the Ancient dolmen. John kept the throttle set at the middle detent, trying to lengthen the time of the flight while he worked out a plan of action.
So far, so bad, he told himself. Sheppard gave Scar a sideways glance. Something about a Wraith sitting there as comfortable as anything inside an Ancient ship was just... Well, wrong. It lay badly with the colonel on a bone-deep, instinctual level, and he wondered if there wasn't something in the ATA gene he carried, the genetic connection to the Ancient bloodline, that made him dislike being in such close proximity to a Wraith. For his part, Scar seemed quite unruffled by the whole experience. If anything, he was fascinated by the soft glow of the Jumper's control console, studying it closely like a human would scrutinize a bug under a magnifying glass.
Still, for all his apparent distraction, the Wraith never once slackened his grip on the controller box attached to Teyla's steel leash. The Athosian woman sat behind Scar, her shoulders hunched forward and her hands supporting the metal collar at her neck. Sheppard chewed down a surge of anger at the sight of his friend's mistreatment. For a moment, Teyla caught his eye and she forced a weak nod. Hang in there, he thought, I'll get you out of this.
And yet he hadn't been able to save Ronon. The Satedan was back down there, miles away now in the forest clearing, maybe dead, maybe alive. Of all the men he had ever met, John Sheppard had never known any person to have a survival instinct as strong as Ronon Dex did, and he just hoped that he could get through this and go back for the brusque ex-soldier. But with each passing second they were getting further and further away from Ronon, not to mention Beckett and the others; and as for McKay... This whole mission was coming to pieces around his ears, and here was John, forced to play dial-a-ride for a Wraith raiding party.
Scar snapped out a guttural yowl at the other Wraiths in the back compartment of the Jumper. They were skittish and nervous, hissing and clawing at one another like cats in a cage two sizes too small. Scar's growls quieted them down for the moment, and he noticed Sheppard watching him.
"They obey me," he noted. "Despite all the ill-effects of the device, they still have enough intelligence to know that."
"Uh-huh," John pretended to be indifferent. "So how come you can chew gum and walk at the same time, but not them? Why aren't you doing the monkey?"
"Your idiom is peculiar." Scar sniffed. "I am a simply superior. My cadre is of a more intellectual vein than the common Wraith."
A humorless smile crossed Teyla's face. "You sound like Daus and the other nobles. The hunters. They also like to think they are superior."
"In my case, it is truth and not self-delusion."
Sheppard shrugged. "If you say so."
He turned the Jumper to avoid the peak of a snow-capped mountain and in the distance he saw a white patch among the foothills. The dolmen was just visible as a slate gray dot sitting on a broad arena of bare stone. Almost the instant the ship turned to face the distant obelisk, the feral Wraith in the rear compartment began to whine. The colonel saw Scar flinch. His hand crept toward a control on the console. Perhaps he could pull the same gag he had with the hitchhiker, dropping the hatch and turning off the gravity dampeners -
"Do not be foolish," Scar's voice was low and loaded with menace. He had Teyla's pistol in his hand. "We have come this far without incident. I would prefer not to kill you while we are still airborne."
"Just stretching my fingers," he lied.
The closer they approached, the more it was clear that the dolmen was causing the Wraith-Scar included-physical pain. Sheppard shot Teyla a look that said be ready, and she nodded back.
"I would think you would not wish to approach the dolmen," the woman began, "does it not hurt you to be so close to it?"
"The agony is intense." Scar bit out the words through gritted teeth. "But now the machine runs weak. After ten thousand years, we can tolerate it this much." He jerked Teyla's leash and the woman grabbed at her collar. "I know you will attempt to defy me at this moment, as you think I am distracted." He worked the controller and the collar contracted a little. "You are mistaken. Obey me, human."
The Jumper's on-board computer had recognized the dolmen as a piece of kindred Ancient technology and brought up a scan of the monument. Sheppard saw a cutaway of the interior. It was a maze of molecule-thin antennae broadcasting disruptive energy patterns on the Wraith's psychic wavelength.
"Destroy it," growled Scar. "Now."
"What? No way!" retorted the colonel. "That thing's got a ZPM powering its core. The detonation of something like that would blow the planet apart!"
"Wrong," spat the Wraith. He extended a finger and pointed to a section of the dolmen. "Target your weapons drones here. It will collapse the construct and discharge the energy safely."
"How can... You be sure?" gasped Teyla.
Scar grinned cruelly. "I have killed more of the Enemy than I can count. Destroyed hundreds of... Of their craft. I know how to defeat them!" He tightened the collar another notch on Teyla's neck. "Do it now!"
The sensing mechanisms in the pilot's chair had already read Sheppard's train of thought and warmed a pair of drones for launch. The targeting cues on the head-up display framed the hit location on the dolmen, locking the weapons on. Every fiber in his being told him that this was not what he wanted to do, that this would be the absolute worst choice he could make; but there on the floor of the Puddle Jumper was Teyla Emmagan, dying by inches and gasping for one more breath of air. And John could not let her die.
"Firing," he grated, the word catching hard in his throat. Sheppard did not even need to touch a control. The two drones ejected from the Jumper's outrigger pods and spun away in brilliant corkscrews of yellow lightning. John brought the ship around hard, veering away at full throttle, making for the upper atmosphere. If the Wraith was wrong, they could quickly find themselves on the edge of a planet-sized fireball.
The watchful canopy display tracked the drones on their unerring course straight into the timeless gray stone of the obelisk. The matter-energy conversion matrix inside the complex Ancient missiles ignited and shattered the dolmen at the precise point Scar had indicated. Sheppard had been correct; a poorly aimed shot might have ruptured the contained bubble of spacetime inside the crystalline Zero Point Module, allowing exotic particles of a kind never seen in this universe to shatter and release an apocalyptic storm of energy. Scar, however, had not lied. The impact point of the drones flattened a monument that had stood untouched for a hundred centuries, and the broadcast array collapsed in on itself. In a single, star-bright flash of power, the ZPM discharged the last of its potency into the sky. Even though the module was nearly drained, the force of the release sent lances of static discharge racing around the planet, warping tidal forces and whipping tornadoes and storms into instant fury. People in the cities and in the High Palace unlucky enough to be looking in its direction were blinded by the glare. A plume of glittering light punched out into space, and then dissipated.
On the ground, the dolmen and everything around it for a twenty mile radius was a pale wasteland of burnt soil. Airships and gyro-flyers too close to the shockwave were ripped apart or blown from the sky. In some regions, tall towers and tenement buildings were felled by earth tremors. Birds died in mid-air and fell to earth in flocks. Fallout made of burnt ash swirled into gray cloud masses. There were thunderstorms and hurricanes the like of which had never been seen on Halcyon before.
But all these consequences were forgotten as the pervasive energy of the dolmen ceased across the planet. Freed of the maddening mental interference of the Ancient device, every corralled Wraith, every Hound in every pen and street on Halcyon was released from psychic bondage. Some died from the shock, others as their kindred turned upon them; but all were wild with frenzy, their minds reduced to uncontrolled, brutal, animalistic madness.
The shockwave of charged air that radiated from the energy plume hit the Puddle Jumper's aft and flipped it end over end. Sheppard's controls refused to answer as he worked the steering yoke. The ground below raced past the cockpit canopy to be replaced by the azure sky, then repeated, green and blue, green and blue.
He was aware of Scar and Teyla there beside him, of the monstrous snarling cries coming from the other Wraith; but these were things he had to tune out of his mind, concentrating hard on the play of atmosphere across the blunt hull of the ship and the stuttering pulses of thrust from the gravity drives.
"No," he said under his breath, "no, don't... Don't do it..." Sheppard always talked to a bird whenever he flew it. Some pilots thought it was an eccentric quirk, others nodded sagely and agreed it was the thing to do, as if they were somehow communicating with the craft like it was a riding animal. There was no doubt in John's mind that the gene-linked Jumpers were the closest thing to a ship that actually could understand you; but that didn't stop this one from ignoring him now.
All the primary flight systems in the vessel went off-line at once. Forward thrust went instantly to nothing, and the gravity coils that held the un-aerodynamic Jumper fuselage in the air ceased as well. The ship stopped tumbling and started falling, like the big green brick it resembled. They still had normal gravity inside the cabin, thanks to the fact that the inertial dampeners were on a different circuit to the thrusters, but all that meant was that Sheppard, Teyla and their Wraith passengers would have a comfortable ride all the way down to the point the Jumper smashed into the landscape and crumpled like a beer can.
Teyla blurred in the corner of his vision and she heard a cry of anger from Scar as the Athosian woman barreled into him, knocking the alien out of his seat and on to the deck. "Great time for an escape attempt," he said, not daring to take his gaze away from the crippled, half-dead control console in front of him. Sheppard racked his brains for the sequence of manual start-up protocols that McKay had drawn from the Ancient databases on Atlantis, running his hands over the glassy buttons and feathering the g-drive throttle. He got a brief flicker of light from the head-up display before it died again. John ignored a crash and howl of pain as something heavy-probably an angry Wraith-collided with a box of gear clamped to the bulkhead. The Jumper rocked and threatened to nose over into another tumbling spin.
They were high when the shockwave struck, but now that altitude was being chewed up by Halcyon's unforgiving gravity. If he could just get this thing into a hover, if he could just get out of the chair and help Teyla...
"Come on!" Sheppard slapped the control panel with the flat of his hand, and held a breath, running through the re-start sequence from the top. This panel, that button, then this switch, that one, that one, then here and the throttle.
The display on the canopy blinked on, off, and then on again. Suddenly he was looking at an altimeter blinking red for danger and a string of collision warnings. John slammed the throttle forward and the Jumper bucked like a bronco, shifting and swinging. He reacted without thinking about it, throwing the ship into a static vertical hover mode, pushing off from his seat, turning in place, ready to vault over the console to Teyla's assistance.
The Athosian woman collided with him and slammed Sheppard back down into his chair, reeling away. Scar was behind her, his pale greenish-white face twisted in murderous fury. He had the end of the steel leash in his hand, dragging on it. In the other was the pistol, aimed at John. "Pathetic," it snarled.
Sheppard blew out a breath. "That's all the thanks I get for stopping you from becoming a greasy spot on the countryside?"
Scar shoved Teyla into the co-pilot's seat and sat behind her. Over his shoulder, the other Wraith were strangely quiet, cowed by the fury of their master.
Teyla's tawny complexion was waxy and dull. The Hound collar was taking its toll on her. "I tried," she husked, speaking through a bruised throat.
John grimaced, angry that he hadn't been able to come to her aid.
The Wraith holstered the Beretta again. "Show me a map. "
"Knock yourself out," grated Sheppard as a topographical display formed on the glass in front of them. "Where next, the beach? Want to get a little sun, huh?"
Scar showed him a location, miles to the northwest in a hilly, unpopulated area. "Take us there, or-"
"I know the drill," he retorted, and guided the Jumper away. "What's out in the middle of nowhere that you're so interested in?"
But the alien merely sneered at him and sat back in its seat. John grudgingly pushed the ship up to cruising speed and scrutinized the display in front of him. The Puddle Jumper's sensor suite was focusing on the point where Scar had ordered him to go, running a comparison through its database to a faint energy trace it had detected. After a moment, the Jumper's computer provided him with a report. There was something out there, all right, something large; a Wraith starship.
hrough the gyro-flyer's porthole, Carson saw the eggshaped hot-air balloon drifting over the high barrier fence around the compound, watching blinks of light signal from the skeletal gondola tethered beneath it.
"We are over the hunting enclosure now," he heard Linnian say behind him. "Highness, the border guards are querying our approach."
"They see my seal upon this flyer's hull well enough," Lady Erony's reply was terse. "I do not need to justify my arrival to a mere guardsman."
"Nevertheless, they will be bound-bound to inform your father of your presence here," continued the adjutant, "and he will be displeased."
"Then let him be."
Dr. Beckett turned away from the oval window as the gyroflyer descended and went low over the treetops. Linnian was already stalking back toward the flight deck, his posture tense and annoyed. Carson watched him pause to whisper orders to one of the riflemen standing at arms. Close to the soldier were two figures in heavy metal armor, so steady and unmoving that he might have thought they were statues had he not known better. The Hounds stood at attention, their stylized wolf-head helmets bowed in obedient submission. Becke
tt's fingers gripped the seat arms. It didn't matter how the Halcyons dressed them up, it still set his nerves on edge being this close to Wraiths.
"My mother always said they can smell fear, like a scent in the air."
He glanced at Erony and gave a weak smile. "I thought that was dogs."
"They killed her, you know," The admission fell from Erony's lips, out of nowhere, and Carson felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the young woman. "She took a splinter out on a sortie when I was a child, and I never saw her again. Just the withered husk of what she used to be." The proud and severe mask slipped, and Beckett found himself looking into the real Erony, the girl with fears and doubts and sorrows that she would never dare to show to her peers.
"I'm sorry," he told her, although the words were weak. In his line of work, Carson had often had the terrible duty of carrying news of a death to loved ones, and no matter how many times he said those platitudes, there was always a void inside him that went with them.
"Yes," Erony replied, "you are. So many say that they regret her passing, those who knew her and fought alongside her, but it is merely lip-service to her memory. You never even met my mother, and yet you keenly feel her death."
"I'm a doctor. If I didn't care about people I wouldn't be doing this job."
She looked away. "Halcyon has treated you Atlanteans poorly, and yet you still offer our commoners aid. You squander resources on people who cannot serve to strengthen your nation. You talk when you should fight. You fight when you should retreat. Why? I do not understand you."
"It's who we are, lass. Being strong does not automatically mean you have to become the bully in the playground. Strength is nothing without responsibility or conscience."
The mask moved back into place, her face hardening. "My father once told me that conscience and ethics are words that weak men hide behind when they cannot find the courage of their convictions."
"And what do you think, Your Highness?" Carson gave her a level stare. "Do you believe that compassion is a weakness?"
Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon Page 24
