SGA-16 Homecoming - Book 1 of the Legacy Series

by Graham, Jo

  “Will you and Torren stay here this time? Not Torren alone for a few nights?”

  Teyla swallowed. Her eyes evaded his. Rodney was pacing around, swinging his arms. “There is much to do…” she began.

  “You are never coming back.” Kanaan said it as a statement, and there was no anger in his voice. He shook his head, a rueful smile on his face, as though he smiled at his own foolishness. Her father had looked thus, when he said that a man who tried to tame the wind got what he deserved. “This is not your home, Teyla. Perhaps it never has been. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow you will return, but you do not. There is always a good reason.”

  “When things are…” she began, and her eyes pricked with tears.

  “You are never coming,” Kanaan said quietly. “This is something I know. You will never stay here and work in the fields, hunt the forests and leave your white towers.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?” Teyla blinked hard. There was no course that was not wrong, no choice that a good person could make. She knew what she should do. She should stay here with her people, raise her son as an Athosian should be raised, in the bosom of the people. She should not walk away.

  “I want you to release me.”

  Her eyes flew to his, but there was no bitterness there, only understanding.

  “Teyla, we came together briefly in sorrow. You mourned your friend Kate, and I mourned those I had lost. We were friends who took comfort in one another. And that was as it should be, that you should find hope in me and I in you.” He looked down at Torren, playing in the entrance of the tent. “Our son is a gift unlooked for, to both of us. But he is not enough to bind us together when the paths of our lives have never run together. I cannot live in your world, among your white towers, and you do not belong here.”

  “I am not my mother,” she said, though her voice choked. “I am not a woman who just walks away.”

  “You are not,” he said. “And I am not asking to keep Torren here with me, but only to see him and have him stay with me from time to time, that he may know me as well. I am not trying to take your son from you, Teyla. But this…” Kanaan shook his head. “We were not meant to be together. It has been more than a year that we have lived apart, for first one good reason and then another. But I think we both know that we will never share a bed again.”

  “Kanaan, if that is what… I can do better. When next I come here, when there is more time…”

  He put his hand on her wrist, her old friend. “Teyla, can you honestly tell me that your heart is not given to another? Or even that it is free?”

  She dropped her eyes. “That does not matter.”

  “It matters very much.” He took both her hands in his. “I loved my wife, Tre, who is dead. I have known real love, love as deep as the seas. Do you think I could be content with the pretense of it? Do you think I am a man who would wish that? Let us release one another, in honesty and friendship.”

  “I have failed,” she said, and the bitterness pooled in her throat. “I am no better than Tegan Who Walked Through Gates, hurting those who came into her path as unthinking as the flood dashes away the autumn’s leaves. I have ruined everything and made everyone miserable.”

  “Nothing is ruined while life and hope lasts,” he began.

  And then.

  Their heads lifted as one, like startled prey animals which have suddenly caught the scent of the hunter. On the ground before the tent, Torren opened his mouth in a long scream.

  “Wraith!” Teyla shouted.

  They were too far from the gate to hear or see the whoosh of the Stargate opening, but Darts traveled very, very fast indeed.

  “Wraith!” Kanaan yelled. “Halling! They have come through the Ring!”

  Rodney swore, he and John turning at the same time.

  Teyla swept the screaming toddler up with one arm, the one not carrying the P90, and thrust him at Kanaan. “Run!” she said. “Run away from the tents and get down. The Darts will be drawn by our fire!”

  “Everybody scatter!” Halling yelled, his voice carrying. “Into the fields! Get into the woods! It’s a Culling!”

  Kanaan did not hesitate. Grabbing Torren about the waist, he sprinted for the long grass and the trees beyond it, Torren reaching back red-faced. “Momma!”

  His cry was the last thing she heard as she turned around.

  “Spread out!” John shouted. “Four points! Get them in a crossfire! Lorne, go left!”

  Four points. Darts cull in a straight line, their beam sweeping up what is directly beneath the ship. Taking fire from four points, they could not dive on more than two at once, leaving the others free to fire. The trick was for the two dived upon to get out of the way. Instinct says to run, but running before a Dart is folly. Instinct says to throw oneself to the ground, but that makes no difference. What one must do is at odds with instinct—one must dodge at 90 degrees to the culling beam. Once one is out of the narrow path, the Dart cannot touch one, no matter how close it comes.

  “Incoming!” Ronon shouted.

  There were three Darts, sleek and bright in the afternoon sun, coming in low and swift.

  John stood right in their path, in the middle of the square, with Ronon beyond him and to the right.

  “Rodney?” Teyla yelled.

  “Got it.” John and Ronon were taking the fire. She and Rodney and Lorne’s men must make the shot.

  The first Dart swooped low, making the sickening sound of a predator in a dive that so innately unnerved humans. She did not look at John. She did not watch to see if he and Ronon would get out of the way. She waited for the shot.

  Just there. The bright tracers blazed away, like moments elongating, scoring along the wing, diagonally across the Dart’s underbelly, snapping off steel.

  “Teyla!” Ronon called, fresh as though he were having a good time. “Second.”

  The second Dart dove on her, and it took all her will to wait until the last moment, until it was too late to change course at that speed. And then she flung herself to the left, the culling beam missing her by feet as the Dart swept overhead. There was the rattle of fire, and she saw it lurch, saw the beam generator sparking and the blue field died.

  “Good shot, Ronon!” John yelled from wherever he was.

  The third Dart went into a dive. Gunfire rattled off it, one wing smoking as something hit. Lorne jumped clear as the blue beams deployed.

  After that there was no thinking, just movement rehearsed so often as to become instinct. Eight shooters on three Darts was not good, but it bought time for the Athosians to flee, and the Darts seemed to be intent on the team. Again and again they dove on them, ignoring easier targets—reapers trapped in the open in the field, a few elders who could not run fast, a child who broke from cover and would have been snapped up, had the Dart’s pilot not been intent on Rodney.

  The P90 heated against her shoulder. Teyla put in the last clip, swinging about as another dove on John. He threw himself flat just past the edge of the beam.

  Some part of her mind that was still thinking thought it was odd to ignore so many other targets, but perhaps they wanted to get rid of resistance first. It was not usually a Wraith technique, but they did adapt to new situations all too well.

  “Rodney!” One of the Darts was diving on him.

  “I see it!” Rodney dodged left ninety degrees, gun in hand. Too late she saw what was wrong. The one diving had no beam generator. It was the one that had taken fire from Ronon. It was a decoy. The second Dart, just behind it, deployed its culling beam in parallel.

  “Rodney!”

  Ronon’s fire hit the third Dart. Something blew out, and it twisted in the air, turning and lifting as the pilot struggled for control, heading back toward the Stargate. One of Lorne’s men fired, dark smoke trailing from its wing as it passed overhead.

  The first Dart pulled out of the dive, the second following after, nearly clipping the treetops as it went, driving hard and low for the gate.

  John
was beside her, chest heaving with exertion, sweat running down his face, making tracks in the dust. The three Darts raced for the Stargate, a streak of smoke behind them.

  “Everybody ok?” John asked.

  Teyla choked and could hardly get the words out. “No. They got Rodney.”

  * * *

  It was getting solidly dark by the Stargate, the night closing in outside the circle of the lights they had brought from Atlantis. John paced the edge of the circle, P90 still tight against his chest, biting back the need to ask what kind of progress they were making. Zelenka was doing everything he could, laptop patched into the DHD, reading the buffer, Halling and Teyla at his side, checking the addresses as they appeared. Ronon had taken a Marine team to search the village perimeter, not because any of them really expected to find anything, but because he had to do something. Beckett was back at the village, tending to the few injuries, mostly cuts and bruises, one badly sprained ankle when one of the young women had stepped wrong as she fled. He knew that, knew that the jumper they’d brought through just in case would report if and when they found anything, and it still took everything he had to keep from asking again.

  “Colonel Sheppard.”

  Lorne’s voice crackled in his earpiece, and he felt the adrenaline shoot through him. “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got nothing, sir. No sign the Wraith have been in orbit. It looks like it was a straight raid through the gate.”

  He’d expected as much, but the disappointment was still painful, left the taste of bile in his throat. “Copy that. You can bring them home, Major.”

  “Permission to make one more sweep,” Lorne said. “Out to lunar orbit. There might be something—”

  “Negative,” John said. A part of him wanted to say yes, send them out one more time, and maybe even one more after that, but if they hadn’t found any trace of Wraith activity, then the Wraith hadn’t been there.

  “Copy,” Lorne said, after a moment. “We’re heading back to the village, eta six minutes.”

  “Six minutes,” John acknowledged, and turned back to the DHD. At least it gave him an excuse to ask for an update.

  “Lorne’s finished his search,” he said, and shook his head as Teyla turned too quickly. “Nothing.”

  “We did not expect it,” she said, but he could see the same unreasonable disappointment in her eyes.

  “Can we dial home, or do we need to wait to use the gate?” John went on.

  “I have copied the buffer,” Radek said. He looked even less tidy than usual, hair standing up and his glasses smudged, a mark on his nose where he had adjusted his glasses with dirty hands. “It is just a matter now of weeding out the known addresses. Which we are doing.”

  “OK,” John said. He wanted to tell them to hurry, that every second they wasted was a second when Rodney could be dying, but they all knew that, knew it too well. His chest prickled, as though he could still feel the points where Todd’s claws had pierced the skin, as though at any second his own life would be dragged from him, and he shook himself, hard, turned his back on the others to touch the radio again. “Major. You can head straight back to Atlantis. Give them an update, and tell them to stand by.”

  There was a little pause before Lorne answered, and John guessed he had swallowed a protest.

  “Roger that.”

  “John,” Teyla said, at his elbow, and he looked down to see her face as taut and worried as he felt. She started to say something more, then stopped, shaking her head. “I think—I don’t know.”

  “Yeah.” He laid his hand on her shoulder, just for an instant, seeing again the sparkle of the culling beam, hearing the whine of the Darts. “They were after Rodney,” he said, slowly, the thought that had been nagging at him finally coming clear. “This wasn’t random, and it wasn’t a regular Culling. They wanted McKay.”

  Teyla’s breath caught in her throat, but she nodded slowly. “Yes. The Darts could have had many of my people, but they concentrated on us. I thought they were trying to break our resistance, but—I fear you are right, John.”

  “Yeah.” John took a breath. “There’s one good thing about it. If they were after him specifically, they aren’t going to just feed on him right away.”

  Teyla tipped her head to one side, her expresion lightening a fraction. “That is true.”

  Of course, if the Wraith wanted McKay in particular, it was because they wanted something from him, and that was so not good… John shoved that thought aside, trying to hold onto the only shred of hope. Rodney was a lot tougher than he looked, and smart as hell; he’d be able to buy time, resist until they could come after him. It would take time to get him back to whatever hive had sent the Darts—and he hoped to hell it wasn’t Queen Death’s—and in that time… He turned back to the DHD. “How’s it coming?”

  Radek looked at him. “We have an answer,” he said. “There were thirty-seven addresses in the buffer, from the last six months. Halling and Teyla have identified twenty-eight of them, and I believe we can eliminate them, for now. It is not likely this attack came from a human world. That leaves nine addresses to investigate.”

  “I am sorry,” Halling said. “I would not for anything have had our people used this way.”

  “It’s not your fault,” John said.

  “If there is anything more—” Halling began, and John managed a smile.

  “You’ve done it already. Nine addresses—we can search nine addresses.”

  “Maybe we can eliminate others, too,” Radek said, not looking up from his screen. “Once we are back on Atlantis. It’s possible.”

  “Yes,” Teyla said.

  “Yeah,” John said. A light was moving in the night sky, bright against the stars, and Lorne’s voice sounded in his ear.

  “Preparing to dial the gate, Colonel.”

  “Lorne’s coming through,” Sheppard said, and glanced around to be sure the area was clear before he touched his radio. “Go ahead, Major.”

  The symbols lit, and the wormhole whooshed open, leaving the event horizon shimmering blue, casting light brighter than day. The jumper hovered for a moment, adjusting its course, and slid through. John took a breath, and touched his radio again. “Ronon. Bring your team back. We’ve got places to go.”

  “Did you find where they took him?” Ronon’s voice was eager.

  “We’ve got some places to start,” John said. He looked around the circle of light, seeing the Marines on guard, Halling still shaking his head, shamefaced, Radek bent over his computer as though he could force some last piece of information from it. Teyla looked back at him, grave and resolute, and he nodded slowly. They had a starting point, and they would make that be enough.

  The Authors

  A message from Melissa

  A little over a year ago, I was standing in a convention’s dealers’ room surveying a table full of books, and an old and dear friend handed me a novel called Black Ships, saying, “If you read nothing else this year, read this.” His advice was, as always, spot on: I bought Jo Graham’s first novel, dived into its world, and ended up finishing it in the hotel lobby at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. Happily, I was also on a panel with Jo, and we started a conversation about writing and stories that hasn’t really ended yet. She and Amy Griswold reintroduced me to Stargate Atlantis, and invited me to be a part of Legacy. I’m honored to be working with you—this has been a complete delight.

  I’d also like to thank our early readers, whose comments have been perceptive and very helpful indeed. What errors remain are ours, not the fault of the folks who read and commented on the early drafts.

  And finally, I’d like to thank Carl Cipra for handing me that copy of Black Ships. I owe you one!

  * * *

  A message from Jo

  Many years ago, when I was a college student, I read a wonderful book called Five Twelfths of Heaven. I never dreamed that one day I would write a book myself with the author! Melissa Scott has been an idol of mine for many years, and it’s been an abso
lute thrill to work on Homecoming with her. Thank you, Melissa, for everything I have learned!

  I’d also like to thank Amy Griswold who put in countless hours of thought and discussion on Homecoming and the Legacy series. And there are not thanks enough for Sally Malcolm, our super editor, who has given us this amazing opportunity. I also appreciate the help of Katerina Niklova, who kindly rendered some of Radek’s lines into Czech.

  I’d also like to thank the early readers who have given us their helpful feedback at every turn, especially Rachel Barenblat, Gretchen Brinckerhoff, Mary Day, Imogen Hardy, Anna Kiwiel, Anna Lidstrom, Gabrielle Lyons, Kathryn McCulley, Jennifer Robertson, Anjali Salvador, Lina Sheng, Lena Strid, and Casimira Walker-Smith. Without you the whumping wouldn’t be nearly as much fun!

  Sneak Preview

  Stargate Atlantis: The Lost

  Book two of the Legacy series

  by Jo Graham & Amy Griswold

  “Offworld activation! Colonel Sheppard’s IDC.”

  They came through the gate in good order, the ninth passage in three days, Teyla last on six, herding Radek Zelenka ahead of her. Zelenka clutched his laptop case, and Ronon, just ahead of him, looked back over his shoulder.

  Above, Richard Woolsey hurried out on the walkway from his office, looking down over the railing with scarcely concealed worry. “Anything, Colonel?”

  John shook his head, dropping the muzzle of his P90 down.

  Woolsey’s face fell. “Come up and tell me, all of you.”

  Wearily, the team climbed the stairs, Teyla reaching up to catch Zelenka’s arm when he stumbled.

  “I am fine,” he said quietly.

  “Of course,” she said. He did not look fine to her. Unshaven, his hair in need of washing, Radek looked like all of them did at this point, a bunch of scruffy renegades and madmen who had not slept in days. “But I do not think you should go out again right away.”

  Radek shrugged, preceding her up the stairs and around toward the conference room. “If we need to go, I will go,” he said.