Quicksilver flinched as the stunner’s blast knocked the human backward, the weapon clattering from his hands.
*That was close,* Ember said, and slipped the stunner back into its holster.
*Yes, too close,* Quicksilver snapped. *You should have checked better in here.*
*And how was I to do that when you rushed in first?* Ember asked. *We hold the hall for now, and the transport chamber, but some of this group got away, and Greyblood reports that the Lanteans are regrouping.*
Ember’s eyes fixed on the body sprawled at the base of the sculpture. There were holes in the arm of his coat and across one hip, and he reached greedily for the human, dragging him into a more accessible position. A jolt of something remarkably like panic shot through Quicksilver.
*No — *
Ember glanced over his shoulder, frowning slightly. *I must feed*
*There’s no time,* Quicksilver said. *I need your help.*
Ember gave the human a last hungry look, but came obediently to his feet. *What must I do?*
*Watch this,* Quicksilver said, and waved at a screen. *Watch if it spikes — if it goes over this line. Why they didn’t give me a master of sciences physical — *
*Because none would agree to it,* Ember said. *And what do I do if it does?*
*Just tell me,* Quicksilver said. He frowned at the board, remembering the pattern: here, and here, and a code, and then here again, and another password —
With a soft click, the ZPM rose from its socket, glowing orange, wound with veins as dark as his own, shot here and there with shades of red and rusty green. He smiled, and stepped around the console, lifted it carefully from its socket. The light faded and died, and he felt a twinge of inappropriate sorrow. *All right. Where’s the case?*
*Here.*
Ember held it out, open to reveal the heavy padding, roughly shaped to fit the tapering cylinder. Quicksilver laid it in place and closed the case over it, cinching the clasps tight. That should protect the ZPM against almost anything, including direct machine gun fire —
*Quicksilver!* That was Wakeful, his tone urgent. *Time to go.*
*Coming,* Quicksilver answered, and together they started for the door.
John waved his team to a halt as they reached the transport chamber, not much liking the idea of what had to come next. They’d never make it down through the maze of corridors blocked by security doors, even if Rodney had left a single path through the maze as an alternate means of escape for himself. That meant this was their way down. The only problem was, the Wraith knew that, too.
It would be nice to be able to send a grenade down ahead of them. All they needed was someone who could hotwire the transport chamber to activate from outside without someone having to touch the map on its back wall. John was pretty sure he’d watched Rodney do that once, but all he could call up was a vivid memory of covering the corridor, saying “Hurry up, McKay,” while Rodney said “Believe me, no one is as committed to our survival here as me.”
It wasn’t going to get better the longer he thought about it. “Let’s do this,” he said, waiting until the airmen and Marines had flattened themselves against the sides of the transport chamber walls before he tagged the screen at the back of the chamber, whipping his P90 around toward the doors in the same movement.
Nothing happened. “Oh, come on,” he said.
“Maybe they shut it down,” one of the Marines volunteered.
“It’s showing as active, and so is the one near the ZPM chamber, but nothing’s happening.” Internal sensors were offline, but the transport chamber map was still obligingly showing him which transport chambers were functional. The maps were just glorified elevator maps, not part of the internal security system, and it looked like Rodney had overlooked shutting them down. Good, John thought; it wasn’t like they’d gotten a lot of other breaks.
The map was showing a transport chamber on the floor above the ZPM room. He nearly punched it, and hesitated, his fingers hovering over the map. He just didn’t buy it. Rodney would have wanted an easy escape route. He wouldn’t have shut down the nearest transport chamber, but he also wouldn’t have wanted security teams transporting in from all over the city.
“Look at that,” he said. “These two transport chambers way down below the ZPM level. “There’s nothing down there Rodney would want.”
“So?”
“So, I’m betting that to get to where we want to go, we have to take a detour. Watch yourselves.” He tapped one of the two transport chambers. Nothing happened, so he tapped the other, and was rewarded by the bright flash of the transporter activating. He swung the muzzle of his P90 up as the doors opened, but the long corridor was empty.
“Now what, sir?” one of the Marines said from behind him.
“Now, I’m betting that the other transport chamber on this level will take us to the one outside the ZPM room.”
“Unless this whole thing is just designed to waste our time,” a young airman said from his other side as they advanced.
“Unless it is,” John said, in a tone that he hoped would discourage further useless speculation on all the ways they could be screwed at the moment. “Trust me, I’m pretty sure I know how Rodney’s mind works.” He reached for his radio. “Radek, what’s your situation?” There was no answer. “Dr. Zelenka, come in.” There was nothing but silence. His hand clenched on the grip of his P90.
They were rounding a corner toward the second transport chamber when John heard the whine of the transport chamber activating. Too slow, he snarled at himself, at the same time that he was diving back behind the corner, trying to get the team behind what little cover there was.
The Wraith wouldn’t be expecting them here, or at least he hoped not, because the element of surprise was about their only advantage. If they came around the corner firing — he could see it all too clearly, rounding the corner already firing, Rodney’s head turning, his body jerking back as the P90 fire tore into him.
“Flashbang,” he mouthed, and someone pressed a stun grenade into his hand. He pulled the pin and tossed it, turning his head away into the crook of his arm, feeling the thunderclap through the soles of his feet and stabbing through his ears. He swung around the corner to see the Wraith staggering back, one of them stumbling to his knees and hopefully getting in the way of the others.
John fired at one of the drones and dodged bolts of blindly aimed stunner fire, marking his targets. Three males, a handful of drones, and there was Rodney, arm thrown over his eyes, holding the ZPM case. “Try to take the rest of them out!” John yelled.
Rodney swung his stunner around, apparently toward the sound of John’s voice, and John dodged again. The drones still seemed dazed, but the other male Wraith were recovering fast, too fast. One of them was firing purposely, though his eyes were streaming, and one of the Marines went down under stunner fire, the smartass airman dragging him back around the corner.
“Rodney!” John shouted. “Damn it, I will shoot you!”
Rodney snarled, baring teeth, his own eyes watering as well, though John thought he was starting to focus on his face. “Don’t you start!”
It sounded like Rodney, too much like Rodney as John aimed. He’d try a leg shot, but he remembered all too well that he hadn’t been able to drop Ford that way, and Rodney looked fully Wraith. If he had to shoot him in the chest…
“Hey, I know you,” Rodney said, squinting at him, and John hesitated. Maybe, just maybe, Rodney was snapping out of it.
“That’s right,” John said. “It’s me.”
“You killed my brother,” Rodney said. “You are going to be so sorry you did that.” He fired, and as John dodged the stunner blast, he saw that the drones were moving again, lunging around the corner toward him. Toward him in particular, apparently. Great. He backed up, firing, trying not to trip over anybody.
One of the drones grabbed the airman who was covering the downed Marine and shook him like a ragdoll, shoving him back against the wall with his han
d clawing the man’s chest even as John was firing. Another Marine was down, the Wraith drones piling onto them, trying to force them back against the wall.
The young airman screamed, and John knew he wasn’t going to take the drone down in time. The other Marine still standing grabbed at the drone, pulling it back, and John shot it in the head.
“Sir!” the other airman yelled. The first of the Wraith had reached the transport chamber at the other end of the hall.
“Shoot them!” John yelled back.
“But Dr. McKay — ”
“That’s an order!” The man fired, but he didn’t have a clear shot. He hit one of the other male Wraith, who screamed and shoved Rodney into the transport chamber, throwing himself in after him. One of the males was down, unmoving. The other two made it into the transport chamber as John watched, the doors closing with two drones still on their feet in the hallway.
They went down under a hail of gunfire, and John turned, dropping to one knee beside the fallen airman. He looked like he was years dead, like something you’d find if you dug up a desert grave. Grieg, his name patch said, and John would probably still be thinking of him as that smartass when he had to write the letter home.
“Ah, Jesus,” the other airman said, going to his knees beside Grieg. He’d probably never seen this before. John had seen it plenty of times, enough that his eyes didn’t linger on the man’s face.
“Fall back, into the transport chamber.” The stunned Marine was staggering to his feet, the other Marine helping him up. John reached for his radio as he moved. “Lorne, come in,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“You mean another one?” Lorne said. He sounded harried, which from Lorne suggested they still had a hell of a fight on their hands up there.
“Rodney just got past us with the ZPM,” he said. “I’m guessing he’s on his way back up to the Stargate.”
“We’ve just taken back the control room,” Lorne said. “We’re trying to get someone up here who can get back into the computer — ”
“Zelenka’s not responding to his radio,” John said. “Just don’t let Rodney get to the gate. I’m on my way back up.”
“Copy that,” Lorne said, tightly, and John hit the button and let everything dissolve in the transporter’s light.
“Everybody down there in the gateroom, we have incoming Wraith in the transport chamber,” Lorne said over the intercom down to the gateroom. “They’ve got the ZPM and Dr. McKay. You are authorized to use whatever force is necessary to — ”
There was a rattle of gunfire and then Colonel Sheppard’s voice yelling “Jesus, hold your fire!”
That meant Rodney hadn’t transported to the chamber on the gateroom level. All right, if he’d heard that they’d taken back the gateroom, that made sense, but going anywhere else wouldn’t get him out of the city —
“The jumper bay,” Lorne said. “We need a security team up to the jumper bay!” He was already moving for the stairs, activating his radio as he ran. “If anybody can get find a way to get back into the computer and keep them from dialing out, now would be a really good time.”
He was the first one up to the jumper bay, although he could hear the sound of pounding feet behind him. He saw them across the bay coming out of the transport chamber, and ducked behind one of the jumpers that was partly disassembled for repair. He didn’t have a good shot, and he didn’t want to draw their fire for no purpose. If he could get close enough to shoot at the ZPM case that he could see Rodney carrying, that ought to at least provide a distraction.
“Lorne, this is Sheppard,” Sheppard said over the radio. “I’ve got teams on their way up to you now — ”
“That would be nice,” Lorne said.
“I’m right behind them. See if you can get one of the jumpers in the air, try and cut them off.”
He started moving toward one of the jumpers, but that didn’t mean he liked the idea. “Sir, if we start fighting it out right above the gateroom — ”
“I know,” Sheppard said. “But we can’t let them take the ZPM.”
There were Marines coming up behind him, now, and two of the male Wraith turned at the sound, firing stunner bolts toward them. A couple of drones started running toward the Marine team, taking heavy fire but being effectively distracting. Lorne kept his eyes on Rodney.
He aimed for the ZPM case, and fired a tight burst. The case jerked in Rodney’s hands, sparks flying, but whatever they’d done to Rodney must have given him Wraith strength; he held onto the case, clutching it to his chest with one arm as he punched at the door controls of the jumper.
One of the male Wraith was behind Rodney now, in the way, and Lorne shot him. He hissed, staggering back, but the jumper door was opening, and Rodney and the male Wraith piled inside. One of the Wraith drones was down, the other one staggering to one knee.
None of them were looking at him. He made a dash out from cover toward the nearest jumper, diving in as the door opened. He reached for the controls and started powering up. All he needed was a couple of seconds for the shields and inertial dampeners to kick in and they just might be in business.
He didn’t get them. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye at the same time that the jumper sounded a warning, both audible and seemingly shrieking directly into his brain: collision alert.
He saw the other jumper bearing down on him, felt the impact, and then the second impact as the jumper smashed back into the one behind it. There was no pain, just a metallic crashing noise that seemed to go on for a very long time as the world around him went black.
John was on his way up from the control room to the gateroom, taking the stairs two at a time, when someone called from behind him, “The incoming wormhole’s cutting off!”
He had a moment’s hope that meant they’d gotten the computers back before he heard the heavy grind of the gate dialing. It was followed by an echoing crash from above their heads.
He took the rest of the stairs at a dead run, skidding out into the jumper bay to see one of the jumpers hovering above the door down into the gateroom, which was already sliding open. Another jumper had clearly skidded halfway across the gateroom floor; it was on its side, and looked like it had taken some pretty heavy damage.
John made a dash for one of the other jumpers, but he knew there was no time. He powered it up anyway, urging it under its breath to power up faster — come on, baby, hurry — and was still working on getting weapons initialized as the guidance system kicked in, sweeping it out toward the jumper bay door and down into the gateroom.
The other jumper was already sliding through the event horizon, and as the weapons finally came online, it disappeared through, the wormhole shimmering for another few heartbeats before it vanished.
John let the jumper lower to the gateroom floor and climbed out. The gateroom suddenly seemed very quiet. “Major Lorne, what’s your status?”
It took a moment for anyone to respond. “Lorne’s down,” someone said over the radio. “We’re trying to get a medical team up here.”
“Copy that,” he said. He waved the Marines in the gateroom who were still on their feet into position to guard the gate. He could see too many people down, stunned or worse, and they must have more casualties in the rest of the city.
Up in the control room, Salawi was just sliding back behind her console. She looked up when he came up the stairs. “They said this level was clear, so I thought I should — ”
“You thought right,” John said. “Can we dial out?”
She glanced at her screen. “I think so,” she said. “The main gate controls were never locked out.”
“Dial the alpha site, now,” he said. “And when the wormhole goes down in thirty-eight minutes, dial it again unless you hear otherwise. I don’t want anyone dialing in while we don’t have control of the security system.” He reached for his radio. “Dr. Zelenka, this is Colonel Sheppard. Please respond.”
He wasn’t really hoping for a response from Zelenka
, and was caught short in surprise when he got one.
“I am here,” Radek said shakily. “They have taken the ZPM, I am sorry — ”
“Don’t be,” John said. “Just see if you can get us full computer access back.”
“I am already working on it,” Radek said. “I have been able to patch into the computer systems here, and I think I may have something.”
“We need those security doors down,” John said. “I’ve got a lot of men down, and Dr. Keller says she’s stuck on the level her quarters are on, along with most of her staff.”
“I am working as fast as I can,” Radek said. “You do not have to inspire me to action by explaining how dire is the emergency. It will not really help me work.”
“Right,” John said. “Security teams, report in. We may still have some Wraith in the city, and internal sensors are still down. I’m going to see if I can get Teyla to give us some idea whether we still have company, but until then, watch yourselves.” He leaned against the wall, adrenaline-fueled energy beginning to ebb. “Teyla, what’s your status?”
“I am still on a residential level,” she said, the frustration in her voice nearly crackling over the radio. “We are safe, but cut off here. John, what is happening?”
“Rodney took the ZPM,” John said. “We’re in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter Nine
Aftermath
John carried his cup of coffee to the head of the table, taking a certain morbid pleasure in seeing how many people looked just as bad as he felt. Radek looked worse, but that didn’t really count. He doubted the engineer had slept more than a few hours since the attack, and he’d been pretty heavily stunned into the bargain. Keller looked like death warmed over, too, though these days that metaphor didn’t work the way it used to. Ronon didn’t look as though he’d gotten any rest, either, sprawled sideways in his chair with a stare that suggested he was actually sleeping with his eyes open. Caldwell and Carter both looked better — as though they’d had a chance to get some sleep and a decent shower — and Teyla was as sharp as ever, but Beckett clearly hadn’t shaved since the attack. John ran his own hand over his chin, hoping that Woolsey was right and cleanliness was next to leadership, and took a last long swallow of the coffee.
STARGATE ATLANTIS: Allegiance(Book three in the Legacy series) Page 10
