“Ronon has known much harm from your kind,” Teyla said rather sharply. “He is of Sateda.”
There was no comprehension in her face. “And what?”
Teyla lifted her chin. “You have been here since before Sateda was destroyed?”
“I have been here twenty-one planetary years,” Alabaster said. “Twenty-one years with no news and no word from outside. I did not know that any of my kin lived.”
Teyla let out a breath. “Then I have much to tell you. May we come inside?”
Alabaster nodded slowly. “If you will abide by the six symbols of truce, your cleverman and you.”
“We shall,” Teyla said, “And we will do no harm to your child.”
“Then come within.”
The inside of the cave was dark, but perhaps not so to a Wraith’s eyes. Teyla had gotten used to moving in the dark as though she knew what she was doing when she was Steelflower, wearing Steelflower’s face but without her vision. Rodney had not. His Wraith vision had been real. And so he promptly fell over a chair.
“Sorry,” Rodney said, picking it and himself up.
There were two chairs, presumably for Alabaster and the humans she consulted with, and Teyla took one as by right, leaving Rodney standing. Miraculously he did not complain.
*I know how this goes,* he said, his mind voice as clear as if he’d spoken, tinged with faint embarrassment. *I know how a cleverman acts in the presence of his queen.*
*Dear Rodney,* she thought. *I know I can count on you, my friend.*
*You can.* Rodney stood behind her chair, jaw forward like a pit bull.
There were no offers of refreshment. Wraith did not eat together. “How did you come to this place?” Teyla asked, leaning forward in her chair, her hands together as one should hold them when one does not mean threat.
Alabaster still held the child’s hand, and now she let him go to return to his games. “Twenty-one planetary years ago,” she said quietly, “My mother died. No, my mother was murdered by another hive, by Hightower’s men, Hightower of the lineage of Cloud. We were taken by treachery and boarded. My father bought time for our cruiser to put off with me and a few others aboard, for I was newly carrying my son and he feared for my life as he had for my mother’s. It was her last wish that he should guard me rather than her, and he did so.”
Dishonor. Dishonor that a Consort should outlive his Queen, even at her wish.
“Our ship took fire even as we fled, and we were badly damaged. We opened a hyperspace window, but when we came out we could not decelerate properly because of thruster damage. We entered this world’s atmosphere like a missile, on a ballistic course. There was one lifepod.” Her eyes met Teyla’s, and for a moment she saw as Alabaster had seen, the deadly calm on the bridge, the hatch irising shut, the commander and his three men still and dark at their posts.
“For the queen,” Rodney said.
“The ship crashed north of here,” Alabaster said. “There was nothing left.”
Teyla bent her head.
“I was injured, alone. The villagers took me in. They said I was the Bride of the Lord of the Dead, sent from the skies to bring them hope. I did not persuade them otherwise.” Her voice had a bitter note, one that suddenly reminded Teyla of Guide, that tone, that inflection. “I have lived here twenty-one years of this planet with them for company, hoping against hope that some of my people would somehow find me. The Ring is orbital. I have had no way of reaching it, and if any Darts have come through culling they have not come here.”
“And your son?” Teyla asked.
“Darling was born my second year here. He is nineteen years old.” Alabaster looked at Teyla sharply. “You did not know our children take so long to grow? We are long lived, and twenty years to us is not half a lifetime.”
“I have only met one young one before,” Teyla demurred. Ellia.
“He does not feed yet, except on such food as the villagers bring in trade. Fruit, eggs, plants from the sea…” She looked over at the child by the hearth. “But you have told me nothing. Tell me.”
“Guide is well known to me,” Teyla said carefully. “It was he who taught me to speak mind to mind, and who has tutored me in much I know. He is a power yet, the Consort of one Steelflower…” And she could not hide it, not mind to mind. She was Steelflower, one more turning in Guide’s machinations, one more gambit on the table — a human woman with the mind of a queen, brought forward to forge an alliance and legitimize his power.
“Oh, Father,” Alabaster said softly. “What are you playing at?”
Rodney snorted. “I don’t think anybody knows that.”
Alabaster’s eyes flicked up to him, and Teyla saw Rodney blush. “That is Guide through and through,” Alabaster said.
Teyla thought it wise to lay the trades on the table. “What is it you want?”
“Is that not obvious?” Alabaster asked. “Safe passage for myself and my son back to the hive, to where my father is. You said that you were his ally. If so, then you know what I will be worth to him. He will pay you whatever you ask.”
Teyla knew the truth of that, felt it in her bones.
“And what do you want?” Alabaster asked shrewdly, her eyes flicking from Teyla to Rodney. “You have not come here by chance.”
“We came here seeking something hidden long ago by the First Mothers,” Teyla said carefully. “A power source.”
“The ZPM,” Alabaster said. Her eyes did not leave Teyla’s now. “And more besides. You are seeking Hyperion’s weapon. But you must know that it will kill you as surely as it will me. It works by destroying the mind, burning out all that is touched by our abilities, all that carries our genetic code, leaving nothing but a mindless body behind it. It will leave you a husk, you and your cleverman both.”
Teyla felt a chill run down her back, but it was true. She knew it as surely as anything. “How do you know that?” she asked.
“Because I am Osprey’s daughter too,” Alabaster said. “And I know she left it here for a reason. If you seek it on behalf of the humans, you seek your own death, Teyla Emmagan.”
John hurried up the path to the clifftop swearing under his breath. He didn’t like leaving Teyla to deal with the Wraith queen by herself, but he’d seen her do it before. Steelflower had done it, and it looked like this was more likely to involve talking than shooting. Even if the queen had the ZPM, she couldn’t use it here. It would be better to barter it to them for passage off this planet, back to Todd or wherever. And having her might give them a hold over Todd. No, she was more use to them alive than dead, and they were way more use to her. After all, she couldn’t fly the puddle jumper even if she could find it under its cloak. And good luck trying to dominate Teyla mind to mind! John would lay good money that even the queen they’d met in the submerged power station under the sea nearly three years ago wouldn’t get the best of Teyla now.
John got to the top of the cliff and looked around for Ronon. Where the hell…?
Ronon was a little ways along the cliffs, sitting on the stones looking out to sea. He didn’t move as John came up beside him, as John sat down beside him on the rocks, their shoulders not quite touching. The wind off the ocean lifted Ronon’s hair. His eyes were clear, and somehow he looked younger than John had ever seen him.
John swallowed. “I understand how you feel,” he began.
“No, you don’t, Sheppard.” Ronon didn’t look at him, and his voice was quiet, his eyes on the sea. A wave crashed ashore, spray dashing thirty feet up the cliff and then subsiding. “You have no idea the things I’ve seen.”
John glanced away, as if there were some answer in the water, picking up a rock and worrying it between his fingers. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.” He paused, putting the words together, and then went on. “But I know this. It’s done and you can’t change it. The only thing you can change is the guy it turns you into.”
Ronon looked at him sideways, and John turned the stone around in his hand,
tossing it over the edge and watching it disappear into the waves. “You don’t want to be a guy who kills little kids.” The bodies were still there in memory, the ruined village smoking from the airstrike. It was still a sick feeling, still a punch in the gut, even here in the clean sea wind — but it was far away. Time and distance blurred the memory, not into forgiveness but into occasional oblivion.
Ronon glanced away, his eyes on the far horizon. “I can’t do this, Sheppard.”
“I know you can’t.” John swallowed. “I’m not going to ask you to do this again.” He’d pushed too far. He’d pushed Ronon beyond where he could go. If he pushed any more he’d break him. Everybody has limits.
“McKay is one thing,” Ronon said. “I mean, it’s McKay. He’ll get over it. It’s just like he’s been sick or something.”
“Yeah,” John said.
“Teyla…” Ronon looked out to sea, his eyes clear and scoured clean, as though he were looking for the right words.
“Teyla’s back to normal now,” John said.
“No, she’s not. She’s changed. You’ve changed. We’ve all changed.” Ronon shook his head. “I don’t know who any of us are anymore.”
John didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say except things change. People change. Ronon said they wouldn’t, but they did. And sometimes it was bad and sometimes it was good but it was always a crap shoot.
“I could go back to Sateda,” Ronon said, the wind lifting his hair away from his brow, “but I’m not crazy enough to think that it would be like it was. It wouldn’t be going home. That place doesn’t exist anymore.” He shook his head. “Radek talks about rebuilding and trees growing and new generations like somehow that fixes it. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t make it the way it was.”
John swallowed. “No,” he said. He stretched his legs out in front of him. “My mom said that the past was a different country, a place you could never visit. So you gotta find something you want, something out there in front of you that’s worth it. A new world. A new sun. Something worth living for.”
Ronon looked at him sideways. “I thought you had a death wish.”
“Not so much a wish as a …” John looked for the right word.
“A geas?”
“Yeah, maybe.” He picked up another little rock, turned it around in his hands carefully. “I’d rather stick around. I mean, there’s Atlantis. It, you know, kind of needs me. And there’s Teyla. She’d be really upset if I died. And Torren. It would tear him up. And you and McKay…”
“You think we need you too.” Ronon’s voice was quiet.
John tossed the rock over. “Yeah, kind of.”
Ronon watched it fall, its trajectory clean and swift. “At first I just wanted to stay alive,” he said quietly. “That’s all. Just stay alive. And then I thought maybe I could hunt them. I could avenge Sateda. I can’t bring anybody back from the dead, but I can avenge them. I can make them pay in blood for every kid, every old person, every place I lived that was ground into rubble. Every person I ever loved.” His voice stopped.
John waited.
“If I’m not a Satedan Immortal and I’m not a runner and I’m not a Wraith hunter, who am I?”
“My friend,” John said. “You’ll have to figure out the rest.”
Ronon looked at him sideways. “Just like that?” he said with a bitter smile.
“Yeah, just like that.”
Out to sea a cloud bank was building, cool and purple and white. White as snow, white as Antarctica where an alien drone had chased him, where a chair beneath the ice had called to him. I think anyone who doesn’t want to walk through a Stargate is cracked, O’Neill said, and he hadn’t gotten it then. He’d never seen a gate, never seen a sunrise on a strange world. There were beginnings worth having but nobody could give them to you. All they could give you was a gate to walk through.
There would be a gate for Ronon, but he’d have to decide if it was a door into summer. John hoped he was still around for that part.
He put his hand on Ronon’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go on back and see if McKay has managed to totally screw up Teyla’s negotiations.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Underground
“We sought this world as a haven because of Osprey’s memories,” Alabaster said, her hands flat on the arms of her chair. “Again and again through the centuries it has served our line as a last place of refuge. I thought to come here for some little time, and when that time had passed and my father did not seek me I thought that he was dead.”
Teyla nodded, watching as the child fed the fire bits of driftwood. “Carefully, Darling,” Alabaster said.
“Is that his name?” Teyla asked bemusedly.
“He is too young for a true name,” Alabaster said. “He still wears his Mother Name, the one I gave him when first I saw him. When he is older he will earn his First Name.” She looked over at the child again, past him to the flames. “What happened to my father?”
“He was captured by the Genii,” Teyla said. “He spent seventeen years as a prisoner until Colonel Sheppard came, that same blade whom you just saw. They were prisoners together and planned an escape together. That is how the first tie between us was made.”
“Seventeen years.” Alabaster’s voice was quiet. “And surely he thinks me dead.”
“I believe he does,” Teyla said. “And he will rejoice greatly to know that you are alive, and that you and your son are well.”
“And if I return with you,” Alabaster said, her eyes on Teyla’s, “to the City of the Lanteans, as you say, I will be your ally rather than your prisoner? Forgive me if I am slow to believe that.”
“As you should be,” Teyla said. After all, here Alabaster might be stranded but she was at least free. “But our alliance with your father is of great worth to us. We both stand against Queen Death, she who claims the mantle of Coldamber of the lineage of Night. Admittedly you give us leverage over your father, but your alliance is worth more to us than your death. If you should raise your banner against Death, a genuine queen of the line of Osprey, a true contender for power, you could do far more to oppose her than I have been able to as Steelflower.”
“And yet what you have done is not inconsiderable.” Alabaster put her hands together in thought. “But it is not only a matter of trusting you.” Her eyes met Teyla’s. “But trusting your people with Hyperion’s weapon.”
Rodney shifted behind Teyla’s chair. “Look, we’ve dealt with Ancient weapons before. The Attero Device — I mean, we did clear it out, us and your father. After we’d made a mess, but… Anyway, I’m sure that I could figure out something to do with Hyperion’s weapon. Some way to change it or modify it.”
“So that it only killed others?” Alabaster looked skeptical.
“I am very attached to my life,” Rodney said. “Believe me, I am very, very interested in living. I’m not about to use a weapon that’s going to kill me too.”
Alabaster glanced up at Rodney, a slight smile on her face. “Is your cleverman as smart as he thinks he is? Or does he prosper only on a handsome face and wit?”
A slow blush started crawling up Rodney’s cheeks, and his mental sputtering was plain to Teyla. “I assure you he is very clever,” Teyla said. “If not perhaps as omnipotent as he would like to believe he is.” She leaned forward in her chair. “If we do not have the ZPM we will be crushed by Queen Death. And you know as well as I that it is folly to take the ZPM from this place and leave Hyperion’s weapon. It will not stay hidden once it is found, and so the only choice we may make is whether it is better in our hands or the hands of others. You know there are others who will use it without a second thought.”
Ronon, she thought, and buried it as deeply in her mind as she might. But Ronon would never have that choice. John would see to that. Hyperion’s weapon would rest in Woolsey’s fussy, cautious hands, not the hands of vengeful Sateda. Or perhaps it would be taken to Earth for study. Perhaps Sam
would take it aboard the Hammond and Ladon Radim would never hear of it.
Oh Ronon, she thought, how far we have come from home, you and I! If I had it in my hands now, to kill all the Wraith that ever were at the price of only my own death and my son’s — to save all Athosians yet unborn from all Cullings to come — I could not. Perhaps Jennifer has the right of it, Jennifer and Guide. Perhaps there is another way that does not lead to this: sororicide, that the daughters of the Ancients kill one another.
Alabaster smiled grimly as though she had followed every thought. “And if I kill you now so that you will not take it?”
“You will not succeed,” Teyla said. “And you and your son will die rather than me and mine.”
“And must it be one or the other?” Alabaster asked. Her voice was like her father’s, dispassionate, as though this were some academic question to be debated by scholars in dusty old rooms.
“I hope not,” Teyla said. “But I do not know.” She lifted her chin, and the thought of Guide came back to her, listening to her story in the dark. Once, there were three sisters… “But I do know that there is no hope if we cannot find it between us. It rests in our hands today and if we turn from this I do not know when this chance will come again. We are Osprey’s daughters, both of us, the heirs of her suffering and of her awful vengeance. And so it comes to us to decide.”
Alabaster shook her head sadly. “And you would have me believe that your people will not use Hyperion’s weapon to destroy us?”
“Not if there is another way,” Teyla said. “And your father believes there is. He has been working on a retrovirus with our Dr. Keller.” Rodney shifted behind her, but she did not look around. “And it may change everything.”
John came back down the trail cautiously with Ronon behind him. He didn’t know what he’d find. Hopefully just Teyla still chatting up a Wraith queen, like that was totally normal. Somehow his idea of normal had gotten seriously skewed.
STARGATE ATLANTIS: Secrets (Book 5 in the Legacy series) Page 23
