Entanglement

by Martha Wells

  "If we have the necessary materials, we will provide them." The Queen turned back to the console. She nodded to Kethel, who reluctantly began to hit the touchpads.

  Zelenka leaned in between John and Rodney to whisper, "Rodney, there is enough C-4 for this?"

  Rodney gave him an annoyed look. "Of course not. But combined with the energy drones-"

  "Ali, I see." Zelenka nodded, then clutched his head and winced in pain.

  "Oh yes, Dr. McKay," Miko said, lifting her brows in comprehension.

  "The energy drones?" John stared at him. He wasn't keen on the Eidolon getting a look at those. "Can't you just-"

  "No, just shut up and trust me," Rodney whispered.

  Then Kethel said, "The alien ship is accepting our communication."

  "What?" John said, startled. "What are you telling them?"

  Kethel gave him a glare. "Our vessels can't get close enough to lift your ship off the platform without being fired on."

  John had thought the Eidolon meant to do something else to get the jumper off the platform. He didn't have a clue what that something else could be, but he hadn't thought it involved just asking the Wraith for it. "And they're just going to let you have it."

  His skepticism must have crossed the cultural and species barrier just fine, because the Queen looked at him, her eyes a flat black. "They killed seven of our line when they destroyed our survey ship, which was unarmed and gave them no provocation, and three others when they invaded this installation. I do not wish them to have control of this Quantum Mirror, anymore than you do. I am prepared to negotiate for what I need to destroy them, nothing further. And I have no compunction against lying to them."

  "Okay," John said slowly. That was sort of reassuring, except for what the Queen hadn't said. She hadn't commented on how the Eidolon in the control room had died, or what the Wraith were likely to do to any they caught. She wasn 't surprised, John thought, realizing what else had struck him as wrong. Just like the other Eidolon who had witnessed it. Nobody asked, nobody said `what the hell is that?' Maybe it was just a cultural miscommunication thing, maybe Trishen had told them what she had sensed from the Wraith back home, but John didn't think so. It was confirmation of what he had suspected about Trishen: The Eidolon might not need to feed on other sentient beings, but they weren't unfamiliar with the concept. Though he didn't have any intention of asking about it just at the moment. He said, "You sure they're going to listen to you?"

  The Queen didn't answer. She stepped around the console, moving to the open area in front of the windows.

  Trishen shifted closer to them, her arms folded and her shoulders hunched a little anxiously. "The holovid will only pick up the area immediately around her. They won't be able to see you."

  "Oh, that's very reassuring," Rodney said in a sour undertone.

  The blue glow of a holo-projection formed in the air a few steps in front of the Queen. Then a male Wraith appeared in it.

  John tensed, tightening his hold on the P-90; he had been prepared for a hologram, and the image was translucent, but somehow that didn't matter much. Teyla stirred uneasily and Ronon shifted position, his hand flexing on his gun's grip. Rodney muttered, "This could go very badly."

  The Wraith started to say, "You will comply with our orders-"

  The Queen said, "Quiet." Her voice reverberated harshly, and John would have sworn she got taller. "Where is your mistress, or is she afraid to face me, even over this distance?"

  The Wraith froze. In a different tone, it said, "She is not with us."

  "Then return to her. Leave this place the way you came.

  The Wraith hissed, recovering a little. "That is impossible."

  "I can make it possible."

  The Wraith hesitated again. John thought, it didn't know that. It thought it was a possibility, but it wasn't sure. The Wraith might have thought the Mirror's activation was an accident. Or something we did. Then the Wraith said, "We want the humans. They are of our feeding grounds, they belong to us. Return them and we will leave you."

  John felt Rodney shift uncomfortably beside him. Teyla gave him a look, pressing her lips together. This was the part John was most worried about too.

  But the Queen said, "You have destroyed one of my ships."

  The Wraith hissed, open-mouthed, barring its teeth. The Queen lowered her chin, staring him down. Finally the Wraith said, "What do you want?"

  She said, "The humans' ship."

  It snarled. "Impossible."

  "Then we have no further reason to speak."

  It glared at her. The Queen gave the impression that she could stand there all day without blinking. Oh, this is just great, John thought incredulously. The Eidolon didn't have a card to play, except their Queen's ability to bluff the Wraith into temporary submission. And he had the feeling that if there had been a Wraith Queen aboard that ship, then things would be going a lot worse right now. Finally the Wraith said, "How do we know you have the humans?"

  The Queen didn't move, but Trishen started, then turned to them urgently, whispering, "She wants one of you to come forward, to look as if you are a prisoner-"

  John flicked a look at Teyla, saw they had both had the same thought. The Eidolon have a mental communication thing going, just like the Wraith. But that didn't change the fact that the Wraith needed to know that the Eidolon had something they wanted. Keeping his voice low, he told Trishen, "I'll do it." He unclipped his P-90 and pulled the 9mm out of his holster, handing both off to Miko and Radek. Teyla and Rodney looked like they wanted to object-everybody looked like they wanted to object-but if the Wraith got the idea there was a temporary human-Eidolon alliance, this plan was over before it had gotten started.

  John stepped past Trishen to where Kethel was waiting uncertainly. John whispered, "Drag me over there and throw me down."

  The Eidolon grabbed his arm and an instant later John hit the floor at the Queen's feet. He landed on his bad knee and went sprawling, unable to choke back a yelp. Not that hard, he thought, bracing on his forearm, unsteadily levering himself up a little. He heard a muffled protest and a scuffle behind him, and snuck a look under his arm. Teyla had stepped in front of Ronon, having planted an elbow in his chest to stop an instinctive surge forward. Rodney looked like he was holding back a loud objection, and Miko and Radek both had expressions of startled sympathy.

  John pushed up a little more, pressing a hand to his side as a cracked rib protested the movement. He squinted up at the holographic Wraith. It stared down at him, its face twisted into an avid expression.

  The Queen said, "You see."

  The Wraith didn't take its eyes off John. The Queen shifted and the hem of her skirts brushed John's arm; his instinctive flinch away from her was completely genuine. It must have looked convincing, because the Wraith said, "If I allow you to take the ship, you will return them to us.

  "You will not interfere when I take the ship, and we will speak further." She lifted a hand, and the hologram vanished.

  John breathed out in relief. The Queen stepped away immediately, turning to face the consoles. You're welcome, John thought sourly. He shoved himself into a sitting position, trying to get his good leg under him so he could stand.

  Then somebody said, "Did I injure you?"

  John looked up, startled, to see Kethel looming over him. For a moment he thought the Eidolon was being sarcastic. But Kethel kept staring at him like he actually expected an answer.

  Then Teyla and Rodney and the others reached them. Ronon grabbed John's arm and hauled him to his feet, sneering at Kethel. Addressing everybody, John said, "Relax, I'm fine." Kethel seemed almost embarrassed, and the Queen was very clearly not acknowledging this little exchange. John almost wondered if this was some odd alien courtesy, that she was trying not to make Kethel's mistake worse by drawing attention to it.

  Still facing away from them, the Queen said, "Are these creatures... Are all the Wraith like that one?"

  John wasn't sure what she meant, if sh
e was asking about the Wraith's appearance or violent tendencies. Rodney answered her, lifting his chin to say, "Actually, that one seemed a little more amenable to reason than usual."

  Watching the Queen narrowly, Teyla said, "They think of nothing but feeding and culling, and hunting our people. It is their entire reason for existence."

  The Queen tapped her long-fingered hands on the blue metal of the console. John wondered just how much she could sense from the Wraith, if they could sense anything from her. She said, "I believe you are correct. They seem... curiously unable to visualize anything outside the scope of their own concerns. What has caused that?" She turned to look at Teyla, tilting her head. "Is it genetic?"

  Teyla wet her lips, hesitating, as if the idea that she was having an actual conversation with a Hive Queen was weirding her out as much as it was John. "We do not know. They have always been as they are. From what we have learned, even the Ancestors did not entirely understand them."

  The Queen nodded, a flicker of something in her expression that was gone too quickly to read. She said, "On the top level there is a maintenance bay with a roof access, large enough for your ship. If they allow us to retrieve it, I will have it brought there." With that, she strode out of the room, sweeping Trishen and several of the males with her.

  Kethel lingered behind, saying, "I will take you there when you're ready." He hesitated, then added, "I apologize for injuring you." He moved away to wait with the other Eidolon.

  Everybody stared after him. Brow furrowed, watching the Eidolon with deep suspicion, Ronon commented, "That was weird."

  John had to agree. Frowning, Rodney said, "Did a Wraith-like being just show remorse over almost knocking you unconscious?" He waved a hand beside his head. "The cognitive dissonance is causing my perception of reality to fade in and out, so I wasn't sure I heard right."

  "Yeah." John was almost the same height as the adult Eidolon, and never having smacked a human around before, Kethel must have assumed John was just as strong as he was. And now they know we aren 't. Probably not a good thing. He took his pistol and the P-90 back from Radek and Miko, saying, "Whatever. Let's get up there."

  It's working so far Rodney thought. At some frightening point in all this, that had become his mantra. Not that he believed in mantras. He actually hated mantras.

  The Eidolon had sent another ship to get the jumper off the Mirror platform, intending to lift it with a tractor beam and ferry it over to the installation. Rodney and the others watched the process via one of the holographic screens in the maintenance bay, a big round room with two triangular hatches forming a square portal in the roof, easily large enough for a craft several times the size of the jumper. Various smaller chambers with work areas opened off several archways in the walls, and there was a raised plat form with some kind of control station toward the back. The Eidolon were occupying it, so Rodney hadn't managed to get a look at what was up there yet. Safe from the Wraith, the Ancients who had fled here hadn't bothered to gut this installation the way they had the original version.

  On the display of the Mirror platform, Rodney could see that the eclipse was starting to pass, the warmer light of the system's primary washing out the Mirror's silvery glow. The Eidolon ship stirred up dust on the platform as it moved to hover over the puddle jumper, which was still wedged awkwardly atop the crushed darts. The Wraith hadn't fired on it. Yet. If Rodney survived this, he was definitely coming out of it with another ulcer.

  Kusanagi was chewing on her fingernails, Ronon was glowering at the screen, and Sheppard was doing his stoic manly calm act. Cradling her P-90, Teyla shifted uneasily and said, "If the Wraith fire now-"

  "We're screwed," Zelenka finished darkly.

  "There are degrees of screwed," Rodney said, wanting to disagree with Zelenka just to distract himself. But they had no idea how far the Eidolon's good will would extend, and if this didn't work... Oh yes, ulcer He grimaced. Maybe two. Didn't that cause blood poisoning?

  Zelenka began, "If one of those degrees of screwed is very-

  Sheppard said, "They aren't firing." The stoic thing didn't quite conceal his relief.

  The jumper was lifting off the platform in the Eidolon tractor beam, some debris from the smashed darts drawn up with it, glittering in the sunlight. The display's orientation changed, following the Eidolon ship as it headed up toward the installation roof. Overhead, the triangular hatches groaned and started to slide open. Rodney felt his ulcers unclench a little. He rubbed his hands together briskly. "Right, here we go."

  While the jumper was being lowered gently into the bay, Trishen brought them a case of replacement crystals, asking, "Will any of these do?" They were in pristine condition, gleaming faintly in the light from the milky glass overheads. Rodney swallowed hard, controlled the urge to grab the entire case and run away, and managed to ask, "Did you manufacture these?"

  "No, we don't know how yet," she said, regarding the case regretfully. "We gather them from sites left behind by the Creators." Looking up at Rodney with sudden hope, she asked, "Do you know how to-"

  "No." Glumly, he chose a selection of replacement crystals.

  Then he gathered everybody on the jumper's ramp, saying, "Two teams, one works on repairing the power train, the other removes the drones and builds the bomb. Our time is extremely, one might say fatally, limited, so everybody works. Everybody except Ronon; we don't want him touching anything delicate or potentially explosive.

  Ronon contemplated Rodney in silence, then said, "I'd rather stand watch."

  "It's better if I do crystals," Zelenka said, poking cautiously at his new bandage. Kusanagi had changed the dressing but now that his bruises were starting to turn greenish-black, he looked, if anything, worse. "If I pass out in the middle, nothing will explode. You had better take Miko, and perhaps the Colonel. Teyla can help me."

  Rodney sighed in annoyance. "No, actually, the Colonel is the last person we want handling the drones."

  Sheppard actually looked offended. "Why not?"

  Rodney rolled his eyes, and considered mentioning various reasons, such as Sheppard's belief that all the jumpers were his property, leading him to stand around looking personally violated whenever anyone made absolutely necessary but tricky adjustments to vital systems, not to mention his habit of demanding to know how long it was going to take at ten second intervals. To save argument, Rodney decided to go with the real point of concern. "As we discovered in Antarctica, the drones don't have to be mounted in a launching device in order to activate. Carson, the most incompetent natural gene carrier that we have, managed to fire one with the weapons chair right off Peter's work bench. It may be impossible for you to set them off just by direct physical contact, but I'd rather not make the experiment while I'm sitting next to a pile of C-4. Neither Kusanagi nor I have ever had much luck with the chair, so we should be safe. Fairly safe. Marginally safe."

  Sheppard's brow furrowed. "Oh."

  They got to work.

  The energy drones were only accessible from outside the jumper, tucked into the hull below the drive pods, so Rodney and Kusanagi had to pull the housing, then carefully remove each drone from the launch rack. Detaching connections on one end of the rack, Rodney did a double-take as Kusanagi lifted out a drone. They were bullet-shaped, with trailing tentacle-like filaments; in flight, they looked like glowing squids. He asked tightly, "Did that just ...quiver?"

  "Urn, no, Dr. McKay. I'm shaking," Kusanagi admitted, gently lowering the drone to the floor.

  Rodney relaxed. "Well, stop it. Do you have low blood sugar?" He felt his vest pockets, looking for a power bar.

  "No, it's... fear." She winced, pushing her glasses back up on her nose.

  "Oh." They stared bleakly at each other for a moment, and he knew it wasn't handling Ancient energy missiles that made her afraid. If she wanted reassurance, he was aware he had limitations in that area; he would have to send her to talk to Sheppard or Teyla. But she didn't ask for it, just smiled wanly. Rodney nodded, lettin
g out his breath. "Yes, well, that's a rational response to the situation."

  When they had most of the drones out, Rodney crawled out from under the drive pod, intending to go inside and check Zelenka's work. Some of the Eidolon were watching from a safe distance, including Edane, the young one who had tried to talk to Teyla. They seemed to be more curious about the technology than anything else, and spoke among themselves in a perfectly ordinary way. It was still incredibly unnerving.

  As Rodney was heading around the bulk of the jumper toward the hatch, Edane stepped forward, saying, "Please let me help. Our technology is different, but I think I know enough that I could assist you."

  "Oh, no, I appreciate the offer, but you know, classified material, regulations-" Rodney backed toward the ramp where Ronon had stationed himself "We just can't-"

  "He means `no, thanks,"' Ronon said, with an unfriendly grin, and Rodney bolted inside.

  Just inside the hatchway, he almost ran into Sheppard, who demanded, "What happened?"

  Rodney shook his head, waving it aside. He was a little annoyed at himself for overreacting. "Nothing, nothing." Inside the rear cabin, they had the lower side panel open and Teyla was crouched beside it, removing the drained crystals from the matrix. Rodney scanned their work with a frown, while Sheppard glared suspiciously out the hatch. "I'm going to make sure Zelenka isn't about to short out the main bus."

  Rodney went forward to the cockpit, where Zelenka was crouched under the console. "What was that?" Zelenka asked, blinking up at him worriedly.

  "One of the Eidolon asked to help." Rodney waved a hand, dismissing it. "Seems to mean well, but..."

  "Large `but,"' Zelenka agreed fervently. "Working in close quarters-"

  "Yes, huge enormous `but."' Being in a small enclosed space with an alien who might be able to suck the life out of you with a touch wasn't exactly Rodney's notion of an ideal work environment either. Maybe the uncertainty of not knowing whether the Eidolon could feed on them-No, no, the certainty would definitely be worse. Rodney sat on his heels to look inside the console, taking the light away from Zelenka to flash it over the crystals. "How is this going? You've got the polarity aligned properly?"