“We cannot be sure of that,” Ease said. “We should join her, or flee.”
Several of the other officers snarled at the bald verb, the hint of cowardice, and Alabaster raised her head. “I do not believe your queen would wish to hear such words.”
“Our queen listens to advice,” Ease snapped. "Nor does she punish a man for speaking his mind.”
“Enough,” Guide said. “We will stand off and observe.” He would give Sheppard that much, and hope that would force the Lanteans' hand.
Time to get out of here, Sam thought. With Todd's fleet sitting it out, the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii were seriously outnumbered. They'd hit. Now it was time to run. She opened the comm again. "302s, this is your recall order. Return to the Hammond."
"Forward shield at 30%," Franklin said. "There's a crew on it."
But that would take time. Repairs weren't instant, even when possible. "Repeat, this is your recall," Sam said.
"That is not possible, Colonel Carter." Teal'c's voice was measured, and no one but she would have noticed the stress in it. "We are tightly pressed."
It meant something if Teal'c was tightly pressed, but he had five Darts on him, zigzagging and rolling as if to scrape them off along the Pride of the Genii's shields. He'd better not hit the shields either. It would be the same as if he'd hit a solid surface at Mach 4.
"Hocken?"
"Hammond's hit the recall," Hocken said. The stress in her voice was evident, ducking under the Pride to try to get on the tail of Teal'c's pursuers. "Break off if you can."
Which she wasn't doing, as that would mean abandoning Teal'c. You don't do that.
Mitchell dropped in on her wing, so close their silhouettes overlapped on the heads up display, both firing at once. One Dart exploded and the other four broke the formation, scattering to evade.
"Colonel?" Lorne asked on the comm.
"We can't jump," Sam said. "Our 302s are stuck."
No more time, then, Ronon thought, watching the specks of light on the sensor screens cluster together in increasingly heated battle. Out there good men and women were fighting what could only be a losing battle. It was time to end this, and he was the only one who could end it all for good.
He muttered some excuse and left the control room, walking out on the balcony. No one was paying much attention to him anyway. Outside, the shield arched against the stars, their planet hanging blue and bright overhead.
He drew Hyperion's weapon out of his coat. He held it for a moment, feeling its weight in his hand, and took a deep breath of the chill air. His finger rested on the trigger.
Behind him, he heard the doors to the balcony open, and heard John's familiar step. There was enough time to act, a long few heartbeats to either pull the trigger or put the weapon away out of sight. Instead, he drew his pistol left-handed, turning with both weapons trained on John.
"Give it to me, Ronon," John said.
Ronon shook his head slowly. John's hand inched toward his sidearm and Ronon shook his head more sharply, his hand tightening on the trigger of his pistol. He could stun John before John could draw, and John knew it.
"You don't want to do this," John said.
"Yeah, I do."
"It's not worth it."
"No more Wraith," Ronon said. "I'd happily die for that."
"I know you want people to be safe."
"I want the Wraith dead," Ronon said.
John's eyes seemed to look into him. "Do you want that more?"
"This'll do both."
"It'll kill Teyla and Rodney."
"I'm sorry," Ronon said flatly. "I wish there was time to figure out a way to save them, but there's not. That fleet out there is going to bury us, and if we don't use the weapon we're going to lose our only chance."
"You're going to be the one to kill them, Ronon, just like putting a bullet through their heads," John said. "Rodney, and Teyla, and every other person in the Pegasus galaxy whose only crime is that one of their ancestors was experimented on by the Wraith. Could you do it if you had to look them in the eye and shoot them? Say that all those people are acceptable collateral damage and shoot them one by one?"
"If I had to," Ronon said. His hand was sweating despite the cold, and he tightened his grip on Hyperion's weapon. "If it was the only way, I'd do it."
"Even Torren?" John's voice was even and unrelenting. "If it were Torren standing here in front of you, I want to know if you could get down on one knee, and put your gun against his little head, and look into his eyes, and pull that trigger."
He wanted to say yes. He had to say yes. He'd sworn that he was willing to make any sacrifice, to do anything to destroy the Wraith. If what it took was killing a little kid he'd seen born, a little kid he'd played with and watched tucked into bed at night–
"Give me the weapon, Ronon."
He was holding onto the weapon so hard that his hand was shaking. "I ought to do it," he said from between gritted teeth. "Why can't I do it?"
"Because you're human," John said softly. "And you love Torren, and you love Teyla and even Rodney, and if the Wraith turn you into someone who's ready to kill the people he loves, then they win, Ronon. They win. Because they've made you worse than they are."
For a long moment, his finger trembled on the trigger. The Wraith had made him into a runner, a hunted animal, and then a hunter who killed them ruthlessly and without mercy. In Atlantis he'd remembered what it was to be a soldier and a man. And now he had people who trusted him to protect them. People like Torren.
"I'm nothing like them," Ronon said. In one swift move, he held Hyperion's weapon out to John, and John took it from him.
"You're a good man, Ronon."
He shook his head. "Tell that to the people who are going to get eaten by the Wraith because I couldn't pull the trigger."
"We'll see about that," John said. "There's still time to destroy this thing. If we can get Guide's fleet in on our side, we've got a fighting chance."
"And after that?"
"Let's worry about 'after that' after that, okay?" John turned on his heel and headed inside, Ronon trailing after him. He felt drained and strangely weightless, as if he'd been carrying something heavy at arm's length for days and had finally put it down.
John jogged into the control room and skidded to a stop. "We found Hyperion's weapon," he said. "Radio the Hammond and tell them to come get it."
"The Hammond is out of range," Woolsey said.
"So get it back in range."
Woolsey shook his head, his face pale. "Colonel Carter reports that she is heavily pressed by Wraith ships. The Hammond can't come back for Hyperion's weapon."
Chapter Eighteen
The Willing Sacrifice
The Marine guards were gone at last. Presumably with Atlantis under attack by the Wraith they had better things to do than watch Rodney McKay sit in a cell. He'd felt the city lift, a low rumble of subsonics in his bones. They'd done it without him. Presumably Zelenka had handled the technical end and Sheppard had been in the chair.
And he was still here in the cage, unable to give vital help because they wouldn't trust him even though they needed him.
But the Marines were gone now. Everyone was busy. So it was time.
Rodney sauntered casually over to the corner pillar that had the control box on the outside, out of reach of course, and on the other side of the force field. After that time with the Replicators, did they seriously think he'd ever again put himself in a position where he couldn't get the cell open in two seconds flat?
The brig control boxes weren't part of the city's systems, a security feature intended to prevent someone from seizing a control terminal somewhere and being able to release prisoners remotely. No, you had to go to each cell and use the self-contained unit. Definitely safer, and also highly unlikely that Zelenka and Jeannie had checked them when they cleared all his code out of the system.
Rodney leaned over, speaking clearly and distinctly. Sometimes simple was best. "T
wo, three, five, thirteen, eighty-nine." The force field died and the door bars slid open.
Rodney McKay was back in business.
They finally had the weapon, just a little too late. John Sheppard leaned over Zelenka's shoulder in the control room. Data streamed in from Atlantis' sensors, much more simplistic than the data feeds to the chair but clear enough. Those distant points of light were the 302s engaging Queen Death's Darts, while the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii evaded the hive ships' fire, trying to take shots and back off. But it wasn't going to work. They were outnumbered, and the cruisers were herding them, closing in in three dimensions, boxing them in a translucent cube of fields of fire from which there would be no escape.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the system, Guide's fleet waited. And they would wait until the weapon was destroyed. Or they would wait until it was too late.
Sam had thought she could dump it in the sun, but Sam was engaged, her life and her ship on the line with no margin for error. Sam wasn't going to be able to do anything about the weapon, not now and maybe not ever.
Okay. Dumping it in the sun would destroy it. And the only way to do that was with a puddle jumper. Yeah, that would mean taking a puddle jumper through the edges of the battle zone, but it could be cloaked. He could do that.
He could. And nobody else. John looked around the control room. O'Neill bent over a console on the lower tier, no doubt giving Airman Salawi hives by rubbernecking over her shoulder. He could fly the city in a pinch. Or Carson. But neither of them could take a puddle jumper smoothly through incidental fire, and besides it was his job, not the general's, not the doctor's.
John straightened up, walking purposefully toward the stairs. Woolsey was in his office but didn't look up, his head bent over data screens. Dump it in the sun. He'd have to get in pretty close to make sure the weapon was destroyed quickly, but the jumper's shields could handle it. The cloak couldn't. Once he got into the coronasphere the level of radiation would render the cloak useless. Anybody could see him. Including Queen Death's Darts. Not that they could dip into the coronasphere, but they could sure as hell shoot at him. And he couldn't exactly dodge.
He stopped on the stairs, turning back to look, Atlantis in her hubbub, the gateroom filled with everyone about their work. No one looked up, not even Radek, pushing his glasses back up on his nose as he toggled power around, talking in his headset at the same time. He thought he'd seen a flash of red by the console, the place where Elizabeth had stood before, the first time he'd taken out a puddle jumper to stop a Wraith fleet, but of course there was no one there. It was memory.
He turned and bounded up the stairs to the jumper bay.
John Sheppard's hands were quick and confident on the controls of the puddle jumper, putting it through the preflight warm-up. They didn't hesitate at all. After all, he'd done this hundreds of times. It wasn't any different because it was the last time.
This time it was truly the last.
How many times had he done this before expecting to die, even courting death? Each time he'd figured it was fair. Someone had to do it and it ought to be him, the marked man. Borrowed time ran out.
The first time had been with the Genii's improvised nuke, a desperate Hail Mary pass, the last chance to take out a hive ship. He'd figured he'd had two years, more than Holland or Mitch or Dex got – two years when he'd sometimes felt like it would have been better if he'd gone with them, paid the price in full. He hadn't resented it. He'd looked Elizabeth full in the face and run up the stairs to the jumper bay and she hadn't called him back. She knew. And she knew it had to be.
The last time he'd had more time to think, waiting for his target over Earth sleeping below, cities stretching like chains of light across continents. He'd drifted in low orbit, his 302 inert, watching oceans and continents beneath him, watching a last sunrise over the Pacific Rim, swift and sudden and so beautiful that a lump came in his throat. And it was still fair. Him, not Ronon. Him, not Rodney who had Jennifer now and a whole life ahead of him. Him, not Teyla, who had Torren who needed her.... It was his job, his life for his team's, his life for everyone on Earth. He was the marked man, and it was fair. It had to be, and he was at peace with that.
And now. John's eyes flickered shut for one moment, feeling the jumper's engines warming beneath him.
This time it was hard. He couldn't help but imagine all the mornings he might wake up beside someone who loved him, all the days that might be spent in the city of his dreams, all the years of watching Torren grow from baby to boy to man. John Sheppard didn't want to die.
And maybe that was how it worked, he thought. Maybe that was part of the price. You had to want to live to die. You had to want to live for it to be worth something.
But it still had to be done.
John checked the power indicators one last time. Show time. He heard a faint noise behind him as his hand slid to the button to close the tailgate....
...a blue flash enveloped Sheppard and he sprawled sideways, dropping out of the chair half in the middle of his turn, hand open against the deck plates unmoving.
"Sorry, John," Rodney said, stepping over him. He grabbed him by both wrists and dragged, hauling him through the back and out the tailgate, his white hair gleaming blue in the jumper's running lights.
He left him lying on the deck just behind the tailgate and went forward, the back gate rising obediently. The jumper was already warmed up, the controls ready under his hands. Rodney eased the jumper forward, lifting up as the ceiling above opened to the starry sky.
Jack glared at the tactical display as though he could somehow change what he was seeing. Three of Queen Death's cruisers had made their own microjump to engage the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii, and now his ships were fully engaged. A light flashed, became a swarm of tiny dots, and he swore: the biggest of the cruisers had just launched Darts. Hammond launched 302s to counter, but that was going to delay them even further. He pushed himself away from the display.
"Colonel Sheppard!"
There was no answer, and he looked around the control room. "Where's Sheppard?"
"He was here," Woolsey began, and a new light began to flash on the console in front of the young airman – Salawi, her name badge read.
"What's that?" Jack demanded.
"Someone's launching a puddlejumper, sir," Salawi answered, her hands busy on the board. "I can't shut it down."
Jack swore again, loudly and with greater feeling. "Sheppard."
"What?" Woolsey looked up sharply, shock replaced with comprehension as he made the same calculation. "No, that would be suicide –"
"Yeah." Jack glared at the screen. "Salawi, open a channel."
"Sorry, sir," she answered. "They're not answering."
"Damn it, Sheppard," Jack said. He could do the same math, though: take the jumper, drop the weapon into the sun so Todd could see it, and just maybe save the day for everyone. He might even, if he was very lucky, actually survive, though the odds against were astronomical. All of which paled when weighed against the lives he might save. Trust Sheppard to see it first, and to act. I ought to bust him back to airman for that – except if he survives, he'll have saved us all, and if he doesn't.... Well, he may still have saved us all, but even if he hasn't, even if Atlantis has to cut and run, it won't matter in the slightest. And maybe I'm just jealous because I didn't think of it first.
But that wasn't a general's job – wasn't really a colonel's job, either, but it really wasn't a general's. He took a deep breath. "Can you track him?"
"Negative," Salawi said. "He's cloaked. The jumper's off our sensors entirely."
And that was that. Jack took a breath, put Sheppard and his suicide mission firmly out of his mind. "All right," he said aloud. "Dr. Beckett, I'm going to take the chair. We're going after Queen Death's fleet."
Ronon made his way down to the detention cells, wanting to look in on Rodney. He'd been trying not to think of the man as his friend while he was considering using Hyperion'
s weapon, trying to think of him as already dead. But he wasn't dead, and it must have been driving him crazy to be locked up with the city in flight and a battle about to begin.
John and Carter would find some way to destroy the weapon, he was sure, and then Todd's Wraith would jump in on their side. They'd beat Queen Death, and then ... they'd go on fighting the Wraith. He wasn't sure whether he hated himself for letting the weapon that would have ended that fight out of his hands, or whether he felt a deep sense of relief. Maybe both, as little sense as that made.
If he told Rodney that he'd been planning to use the weapon, Rodney would tell him he was crazy. He could already hear him yelling: What were you thinking? You would have killed me! There are enough things in this galaxy that want to kill me without having to worry about you!
But Rodney would forgive him. He wasn't sure if Teyla ever would, if he ever told her. Not when Torren's life had hung in the same balance. But Rodney would, in his own strange way, understand. Maybe he should tell him, and give him a chance to shout about something and wave his hands around. It would only be fair, and it might make Rodney feel better.
He palmed open the door, and stopped stock-still. The force-field that should have surrounded the cell was down, and the cell was empty.
"McKay," he snarled, and reached up to turn his radio on. "Sheppard, this is Ronon. McKay's loose." There was no answer. "Sheppard. Do you read me?"
Still no answer. Maybe he was heading out to the Hammond with the weapon. "Woolsey, this is Ronon. You read me?"
"Yes, Ronon," Woolsey said, sounding distracted.
"McKay's gone," Ronon said. "I just checked his cell. There's no one here."
"Damn," Woolsey said shortly. "All right. We'll send out security teams looking for him. Hopefully we can find him before he does too much damage."
"Where's Sheppard?"
"On his way to drop the weapon into the sun," Woolsey said. His voice was strained. "Which is probably a one-way mission."
SGA-21 - Inheritors - Book VI of the Legacy Series Page 21
