SGA-21 - Inheritors - Book VI of the Legacy Series

by Melissa Scott

  "Ok," O'Neill said. "There are a lot more of them than I'd like, and they're closer than I wish. So what else is new?"

  It was probably a joke, John thought, but not many people were smiling.

  "There is some good news on that front," Woolsey said. "As of 0400 this morning, Major Lorne reported the Pride of the Genii on course with an anticipated arrival time of 1800 hours. That puts them here several hours ahead of the Wraith."

  Yeah, assuming they really were going to cooperate, John thought. Though Radim wasn't stupid enough to think that he could stand up against Queen Death without Atlantis's help.

  "Any word from Todd's fleet?" Carter asked.

  "Unfortunately, no." Woolsey's mouth thinned. "And as – I assume – we are still unable to meet his conditions...." His voice trailed off.

  "Sheppard?" O'Neill asked.

  John spread his hands. "No luck so far. We're still working on it."

  "Keep me posted."

  "Yes, sir." John refrained from adding that he'd be getting more done if he wasn't in this meeting, particularly since half the people here were the ones who'd been looking for the weapon. Ronon will find it, he told himself. If anyone can come up with that needle in this haystack, it's Ronon.

  "Colonel Carter," O'Neill said. "What's the Hammond's status?"

  "Thanks to Dr. Zelenka's team overnight and Dr. Lee this morning, we're in pretty good shape," Carter answered. "We're at ninety percent of optimum right now, and Dr. Lee tells me he can get us to ninety-five percent by tonight."

  "Nice," O'Neill said, and there was an appreciative murmur around the table. "Colonel Sheppard, what about the city itself?"

  John collected himself. "With the evacuations proceeding, we'll be down to essential personnel, plus Major Holmes's teams. We'll have enough people to defend the central spire, though we'll want to evacuate the outlying areas once the shooting starts." He could see the look in O'Neill's eye, and forestalled the question. "We'd need a couple hundred men to defend that perimeter. But we can hold the center."

  "Okay," O'Neill said. "Which brings us to the big question. What are our options as far as Atlantis goes?"

  There was a long silence, no one wanting to be the first to speak. Woolsey cleared his throat at last. "General, the IOA has a long-standing recommendation that, if attacked in force by the Wraith, the expedition should evacuate all remaining personnel and destroy the city behind them."

  "Or we could fight," John said, in spite of himself. O'Neill was looking at him, and he shrugged one shoulder. "We've held off the Wraith before, and we've got a fully-charged ZPM. We can sit here and take pot-shots while they try to break through the shield."

  "The shield will hold for quite a while," Zelenka said. "And – we have tried to work out a way to destroy the city before this, and could not do it. I am not confident we could do it now."

  "If we overloaded the ZPM," Carter began, and the engineer shook his head.

  "We thought of that. Even a ZPM at full power is not enough to do the kind of damage we need."

  "Or we could fight," John said again, not quite as softly as he'd meant.

  "We could," Carter said. "But if it's just the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii and the city's puddle-jumpers against the fleet that Queen Death's bringing in - much as I hate to say it, we need Todd's fleet if we're going to have a chance."

  "Todd's going to cave," John said. "He can't afford not to. If we don't fight Queen Death together, he's going to be her next snack."

  "We can't count on that," Woolsey said. "He has made his position very clear."

  "And yet we simply cannot destroy the city," Zelenka said. "Not we must not or we may not, but we cannot. And the Wraith must not take it."

  "If we destroy most of it," O'Neill said, though he didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about the idea. "The Wraith don't have the ATA gene, how much use can they make of the wreckage?"

  "They're not the Replicators," Carter said.

  "But they are very, very clever technicians," Zelenka said. "We have seen that time and time again, they match what we have found to stop them. And if they capture the ZPM even partially intact – they could reach Earth."

  John bit his lip. There had to be another way, something that didn't mean destroying the city, or sitting down to the same long siege that had nearly destroyed the Ancients.... "General," he said. "We launch the city."

  There was another moment of silence, everyone staring at him, and finally O'Neill said, "Go on."

  "Look." John took a breath, trying to order his tumbling thoughts. "Atlantis was designed to fly, designed to go into hyperspace, and it's a hell of a weapons platform. We've got enough drones to make this work. When Queen Death's fleet gets here, we lift the city and use it as our mothership. If Todd joins us, great, we can kick Death's ass. If he doesn't – well, we've got the option of taking the city into hyperspace and getting the hell out of here, so we can fight another day."

  "We will not be able to use the Stargate once we are flying," Zelenka said, but he didn't exactly sound displeased.

  Both Carter and Holmes were nodding, and even Keller looked impressed. John looked down the length of the table, waiting for O'Neill's decision. For some reason, the Antarctic base loomed in his mind, the city barely a hint of domes hidden under snow and ice. He could barely remember the man he'd been then, the one who'd said he liked the quiet, liked having nothing more demanding to do than to ferry visiting brass around. And then a rogue drone nearly knocked him out of the sky, and O'Neill had told him he was crazy not to want to walk through the gate into another galaxy, a potentially one-way trip to the lost city of the Ancients. Six years ago, and O'Neill looked older and more tired, but surely he was still the man to take the chance.

  "Is there enough power in the ZPM for this?" O'Neill asked.

  "We have two now," Zelenka answered. "Yes, I think there is."

  "All right," O'Neill said. "We'll make that our main plain."

  "The IOA," Woolsey began, and O'Neill lifted an eyebrow.

  "I don't think there's any need to let them know what we're planning until we're sure we can do it, do you?"

  Woolsey gave a thin smile. "Perhaps not."

  "Colonel Sheppard," O'Neill said. "She's your baby. Get her ready to fly."

  "Yes, sir," John said, the relief washing over him. "Thank you."

  Chapter Eleven

  Preparing for the Worst

  William Lynn closed the last of the storage cases and looked around the long narrow room he'd called his lab for the few months he'd been on Atlantis. It was stripped nearly bare, only a few cables and the spare laptop to remind him of what the room had become; now that it was returned to its Ancient form, he wondered again what it had originally been intended for. Beyond the long window, the sea was gray in the city's shadow, the sun sparking from the waves beyond its edges.

  The word had come through at twenty-two hundred hours the night before: non-essential personnel were to prepare for evacuation starting at oh-eight-hundred, and archeology fell firmly into the non-essential category. Fortunately, fieldwork for the SGC taught one to be ready to run at a moment's notice, and none of his staff had lost the habit. They'd been ready by oh-one hundred hours, and now it was only the final boxes that had to be hauled to the gateroom, along with the last of the backup drives. They were all perched now on a little cart, not heavy and not even very awkward, just waiting to be taken away.

  He turned again, surveying the empty room, and Miranda James looked up from the laptop.

  "That's everything transferred, Doc."

  "Thank you." He forced a smile. "You can shut it down, then."

  "Right." She frowned as the screen went dark, then closed the lid with a final-sounding snick. "When are you scheduled to go through?"

  "I don't have a time yet," William answered. "You?"

  She glanced at her watch. "Eleven-fifty. Time for coffee, anyway. What are you doing about your stuff?"

  "Leaving it, I suppo
se," William said. "I'd settled in, rather, and there's quite a lot to try to move."

  "Yeah, me, too." She shook her head. "I don't know, it's not that I want to stay – I've done a Wraith invasion twice now, thank you very much! But I feel kind of guilty leaving."

  "There's not much either of us can do that would be useful," William said. Sensible though he knew they were, the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn't want to leave, he realized, and shoved the thought aside. He reached for his tablet and checked the screen. "The next step is to check in with Sergeant Pollard so he can put it into the transfer queue." So that everything moves through the Stargate as efficiently as possible, he thought, and every scrap of power is conserved for the coming battle.

  "Want me to take care of that?" Miranda asked. "It looks like you've got plenty still to do."

  "That'd be brilliant, thanks." William helped her push the cart through the door, and glanced back at the window as the door closed behind her. No, he didn't want to leave – somehow, in the middle of work and all the ordinary tasks of an SGC social scientist, he'd fallen for Pegasus, and for Atlantis. He stared blindly at the sunlit towers, seeing instead the ruins of Sateda, half rebuilt, smelling of wood smoke and mint-and-lemon tea. Even on this world, icy and barren, there were things still to be explored. He remembered Radek taking him down to the city's lowest levels, where unexpectedly the sea's black depths teemed with light, with life, a squid's tentacle mimicking a flashlight waved behind thick glass.

  And yet, practically speaking, he was of no use to anyone. He wasn't a soldier and he wasn't a technician, and those were the skills needed now. And quite possibly he'd merely be in the way, a nuisance, though if he stayed in his quarters and did nothing, surely no one could object. It was only his own life he was risking....

  He shook his head, and turned his back on the window. He would do what he had to do.

  Radek found Dr. Keller briskly stacking boxes in cabinets in the infirmary and waited for a moment until she noticed him.

  "Sorry, just trying to get the fragile stuff squared away in case we get shaken up in here," she said, wedging boxes into the back corner of a shelf tightly enough that they seemed unlikely to shift. "What can I do for you?"

  "I would like you to give me the retrovirus," Radek said.

  Jennifer put down the box in her hand and turned to face him. "You know that Mr. Woolsey recommended against distributing the retrovirus."

  "He said it was optional for civilian personnel."

  "It's really early in the testing process," Jennifer said. "Carson and I have made a couple of changes that we hope will eliminate the side effects I had, or at least make them much less serious. But we haven't had time to see if that works. I want to be very clear about the risks. You could go into convulsions. It's possible that you could die."

  "I am willing to take the risk."

  "Do you mind if I ask why?"

  Radek shrugged. "I have been in Atlantis since the first year we were here. That was a very bad year." Faces rose unbidden in memory, friends withered into corpses. He had seen death before, but not like that, shocking and obscene and terrifying. He had thought, briefly, about returning to Earth once that was possible, where he would never have to watch that kind of death again.

  He had decided that Atlantis was worth it, and never regretted it. But it was always a shadow underneath everything they did, the knowledge that one bad mission could mean returning to Atlantis in a bag, a shrunken thing to be buried in a closed coffin so his family would not see what he had become.

  "The Wraith have killed so many of us," he went on, shaking off the memories. "I do not want to die that way. If there is fighting in the city, or God forbid if I am ever captured, I want to have every chance."

  "You know that if you are captured, having the retrovirus could mean being trapped in the feeding cells ... pretty much indefinitely."

  "From which there is a chance of escape. From death, not so much so."

  "I'm not arguing with that," Jennifer said. "I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into."

  "I am sure."

  "All right. If you're absolutely sure." She crossed to a different refrigerated cabinet and withdrew a small bottle, which she set on a tray as she began unwrapping a syringe. Her white coat was crisp, her hair drawn back in her usual tight ponytail, but there were dark circles under her eyes.

  "How are you doing?" he asked.

  She looked up. "What do you mean?"

  "I heard about you and Rodney. I am sorry."

  "Yes, well," Jennifer said. "I guess we just ... aren't working out."

  "He is a difficult man," Radek said. "I say this as his friend."

  "He's not so bad," Jennifer said. "We just want different things, I guess. Eventually, I'd like to go home, and I don't think he does. Which is a problem."

  "I am starting to settle down here, myself," Radek said. "I am not sure I will ever go back to Prague. But life in Atlantis is very much an acquired taste."

  "I wish I could acquire it. Everyone else seems to have the knack."

  "It is not heaven," Radek said. "It is just another small town. Not everyone wants to live in the same small town, no matter how many wonders it holds."

  "I suppose not," Jennifer said. She picked up the syringe, and he could see her drawing her professional dignity back around her. "Roll up your sleeve."

  The needle stung, and afterwards his arm burned. He flexed it gingerly.

  "If you have any unusual symptoms, any nausea or lightheadedness, come back right away," Jennifer said.

  "I will."

  "If all goes well, in twelve hours we can test your immunity with a willing Wraith," Jennifer said. "Assuming there are any of those around at that point, and that you're even up for that."

  Radek shifted uncomfortably. "Is that actually required?"

  "It would be helpful to me in figuring out whether the formula actually works," Jennifer said. "But, again, there's an element of risk. I'm not going to ask you to do it, and certainly nobody's going to order you to do it."

  He let out a breath. "I will do it," he said, although his skin crawled at the idea.

  "Thank you." She glanced down at her hands and cleared her throat awkwardly. "And, umm, thank you for not deciding I'm the bad guy in this whole mess with Rodney. I know he's probably talked about it to you."

  "Because when we work I am a captive audience," Radek said, and then relented. "He is my friend, and I would like him to be happy, but not at your expense."

  She smiled at him, a more genuine smile that lit her face. She was only very young and a bit shy, he thought, not his romantic type, but someone who might make a good friend in time. "Thanks," she said.

  "I should be thanking you," Radek said, rolling his sleeve back down. "You may have just saved me from the Wraith."

  "Thank me when we know it works."

  "If you believe it will work, then I trust you."

  "Try not to test it by being attacked by a Wraith today, okay?"

  Radek breathed a laugh. "I promise you, I will try."

  John stopped in the mess hall for yet another cup of coffee, though by now his teeth were starting to feel as though they were coated with a thin film. After the real doughnuts at the briefing — O’Neill hadn’t been kidding — the long-packaged pastries still on the counter were less than appealing, and he settled for just coffee. He still wasn’t entirely sure this was going to work, but all in all he thought they had a better chance flying than staying on the planet. Of course, it would be better if Todd would just cooperate….

  “Colonel Sheppard?”

  He looked up, startled, to see a couple of the civilian scientists hovering uncertainly. He recognized the city’s new archeologist — well, not new, exactly, but newer than some — but not the freckled woman with him. “Yes?”

  “Might we have a quick word?” That was the woman, and she seemed to realize in the same instant that he didn’t recognize her. “Claire G
reensmith. I’m one of the geologists.”

  John nodded. “As long as you really mean quick — yeah, go ahead.”

  “Very quick, I promise.” That was Lynn, with a fleeting smile. “Colonel, how would we go about becoming essential?”

  John blinked once, and then the meaning hit him. “You’d be a lot better off leaving. Both of you.”

  “Yes, well.” Lynn spread his hands. “All my things are still here, and it’s just such a bother to pack —“

  “We know the risk, I assure you,” Greensmith said. “It’s just — I don’t want to leave the city. Not now.”

  Not ever, John thought, reading the determination in her face, and wondered if Lynn felt that same passion. “How good a shot are you?”

  “Not bad, actually.” Greensmith smiled, and Lynn shrugged.

  “As good as any social scientist who’s been with the SGC.”

  “Passable,” John said.

  Lynn nodded. “About that, yes.”

  John sighed. He ought to tell them to leave, to protect themselves, but he understood loving the city, this astonishing place, alien and familiar all at once. “Exploration geologist?” he said.

  Greensmith nodded.

  “That sounds essential to me,” John said. He looked at Lynn. “And I’m sure you’ve memorized a lot of useful gate addresses and could help people get along on those worlds if our people have to go to ground somewhere.”

  Lynn smiled. “Yes, I believe I have.”

  “I’ll put you both on the list,” John said.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Greensmith said, and Lynn echoed her.

  “Yeah,” John said. “Thank me later.”

  Radek had managed to snatch a three-hour nap since the briefing, and that and the shower and clean clothes had given him a shot of energy. And if he needed more incentive, he thought, all he had to do was check the screens that showed the oncoming Wraith fleet. They were now well within range of the normal sensors, without resorting to Rodney's jury-rigged adjustments, and it wasn't looking good. Half a dozen hives was a lot of ships at the best of times, and at least some of them would be equipped with the new shield technology. Thanks to Rodney, Radek thought, shoving his glasses up on his nose, and couldn't manage to feel guilty. At least Colonel Carter had gotten a description of how the new shields worked, and thought she could use that to wear down the enemy.